[fic] Inamorato (YunJaeHo) Part 1
Title: Inamorato
Rating: NC-17
Genre: AU, Angst, Dark, Drama, Supernatural, Psychological, Tragedy (?)
Warnings: AU, angst, darkfic, supernatural (incubi), character death (but not really), the occult, minor gender-bender (duh, incubi), minor drug abuse (caffeine pills), and...I think that's everything.
Summary: Until Death do us part - a farce; for true love, Death is only the beginning.
I would like to take a moment to give my beta Chloe a huge thank you for volunteering to beta-read this fic! I didn't think it would ever get finished despite my many attempts at beginning and beginning again. She has been awesome, and I owe her a lot for listening to me babble and helping me figure out a lot of things. I originally wanted to wait until this fic was finished before I started posting it (I'm just under 16k now), but you can thank yoochunforehead for threatening my tentacles pestering me. 8D
Don't forget to heed the warnings! And comment, because I love to hear everyone's thoughts. ♥
It was morning, and unlike the crisp late autumn air he was used to tasting on the tip of his tongue, Yunho tasted sorrow instead. It was bitter like a virulent poison - a steady trickle down the back of his throat and into his sickened stomach. The unease was not something to which he was well-adjusted, and so he found himself trying in vain to chase it away, but as Yunho took in the greying skies and the dismal earth, all he saw was the reflection of sorrow as it settled on the chilled air.
On Sundays Yunho didn’t have any classes, so he resorted to heading to a nearby coffee shop to study or enjoy the day as it began. A hot chocolate and a muffin always put him in a good mood, so much so that it had become a weekly ritual. Some days he would just relax and enjoy good conversation, while others he would squeeze in a bit of studying. Luckily for him all of his final exams had been the week prior, and so he began with a cleaned slate.
But still, the ill foreboding feeling in his gut did not relent. Later in the morning the skies released a light drizzle that painted the world in monochrome, exhausting and dreary. Enjoying the last gulp of the now cold chocolate beverage, Yunho remembered his best friend and how the enigmatic man was probably enjoying the weather. He was a strange one, but always brilliant and lovely like the sun.
At least, until recently.
Yunho had not seen Jaejoong in a good 3 weeks, but he didn’t let it bother him since both were busy with classes. Jaejoong was terribly preoccupied with his dissertation for his religious studies, while Yunho had exams for his psychology major. The last time they were together, Jaejoong had been in a strange stupor as he buried himself in his research. Then, Yunho had thought nothing of it, but now the memory made his stomach clench in fear.
Yunho tried to brush off the feeling, wondering if he’d eaten something bad for dinner. Leftover pizza probably was not the best choice, but it was the easiest and the cheapest so he couldn’t help himself. It was time for him to go home and clean up the mess of dirty laundry, however, the second he stepped outside the quaint café, his phone went off and Yunho found himself with an earful of a sobbing woman whose voice he could barely understand.
“Minjung?” Yunho asked, holding the phone away from his ear so the piercing screams didn’t make him go deaf. It didn’t help the crippling fear he felt twisting at his insides. “Minjungie, you need to calm down. I can’t understand you...”
Kim Minjung, one of Jaejoong’s many siblings, did not often call Yunho’s phone. Everyone in the Kim family had Yunho’s phone number merely as a second way to contact Jaejoong since the two of them were so oft together, but judging by the sounds of Minjung’s hysterical sobs and indecipherable mutterings, something awful had happened. Yunho felt it in his gut. He’d felt it all morning.
It took him a couple of minutes before the woman could speak lucidly, and by that time Yunho was already half way back to his apartment.
She sobbed and hiccupped, “Jaejoong c-committed suicide. Hyunjoong found his b-body this morning.”
Yunho’s phone shattered on the ground.
*
Dearest Mother, Father, all of my precious siblings, and My Yunho:
Do not worry your hearts out for me. This is not goodbye, but rather...
See You Later.
*
The Kim family was one of a kind.
Yunho had met their much beloved youngest when they were young, just after Yunho’s twelfth birthday. His family had just moved from the countryside to a nice posh housing district in Seoul when he had quite literally run into the other boy as he chased the old family dog down the sidewalk. Jaejoong had not been angry, but rather excited, and from the moment their eyes met they had an inexplicable bond that had kept them together for over ten years.
Kim Jaejoong was one of the youngest children adopted by an elderly Christian couple, a Kim Jongkook, Preacher at the local church, and Kim MiJin. Yunho didn’t know much but he knew they were unable to have children of their own, which lead to them adopting as many children as they did. Jaejoong was not the last one they adopted, but he was the youngest and Yunho thought he was the one that shined the brightest. He’d been four years old when he was adopted, sobbing as he passed from his biological mother’s arms (who was sad not to give her son away, but sad because she could not love him the way he needed and deserved to be) to Kim Minyoung’s open arms.
In the many years Yunho had been acquainted with the family, he knew they were just as picture perfect as they looked. His family was as large as it was wealthy and flowing with love and acceptance. The Kims, all eleven of them, had the biggest hearts Yunho had ever known.
And yet, on this sorrowful day, to know that the most beloved of them all had taken his life shook the very foundations of the entire family.
Pastor Jongkook sat with his distraught wife in the family room when Yunho arrived, and though he should not have been, he was shocked to see all eight of the remaining children huddled amongst each other. There was Kim Minjung, barely a year older than Jaejoong, who looked ashen and unkempt like she’d just woken up and hadn’t the time to shower or wash her face when news of the tragedy struck.
Kim Hyunjoong was beside her, curled up in her embrace as his face was stained with his rife agony. He was absolutely torn apart by what he had seen that morning, not expecting it in the least. All he wanted to do was use the toilet and take a shower, but instead he had found his little brother collapsed on the floor.
Jaejoong’s skin had been so pale it was a sickening shade of grey, and he had been so, so cold to the touch. Panic had trapped Hyunjoong’s breath in his throat as he hesitantly touched Jaejoong’s bare shoulder, then he had shaken him and rolled him over until he’d screamed and screamed.
“He knew exactly what he was doing,” one of the policemen said as they zipped his body and loaded it into the ambulance. Jaejoong’s recipe for suicide had been placed meticulously out in front of him, various poisonous plants and medications no one knew how he had gotten access to.
Yunho thought he was going to be sick as he took a seat opposite the grief-stricken family. Jaejoong had been the closest friend he’d ever had, his other half, and Yunho didn’t know what he’d do without the man’s light shining in his life anymore.
Police came and went, and Yunho had somehow been roped into being asked a few questions. He told them everything he knew, starting from when he’d first met Jaejoong as young boys, then to his beginning as a major in religious studies and philosophy. He wanted to follow his father’s footsteps, Jaejoong told him once. Both of them had been so close to graduation, and Jaejoong had been working studiously on his dissertation. It was around this time that he’d begun to act a bit different, had become withdrawn, and Yunho felt so damn stupid for not trying to talk to Jaejoong about it.
“I’m sorry,” Yunho found himself apologizing to the family, heart heavy with sorrow and regret. This might not have happened if only he had -
“Don’t blame yourself,” Pastor Kim said, a sympathetic hand resting upon Yunho’s right shoulder. His hand was warm, his gaze kind, but there were lines of troubled suffering adding years to his face. “Not a single one of us knew of his troubles. There is no use dwelling on the past, on what we could have done... Accepting this and moving forward is the best we can do right now.”
The man squeezed Yunho’s shoulder one last time, eyes glassy with tears, as he returned to his family. The gesture shocked him, a sort of dismissal that left a strange sensation clawing at his insides. Of course Yunho was the outsider here, the one that did not belong to this family.
With a heavy heart and a low murmur he wasn’t even sure the grieving family heard, Yunho departed from the home that, without Jaejoong, was just foreign and unfamiliar.
*
Jaejoong’s funeral came and went, the skies dark and ominous and the wind fierce and chilled against Yunho’s blushing cheeks. He wore his best outfit, a cheap suit ironed into crisp neatness that somehow matched the somber atmosphere amongst grieving friends and family. Pastor Kim sang eulogies of praise and hymns of sanctimonious blessings to his son’s soul, and he shared with everyone all of the beautiful memories his son had helped create. Some of his teary-eyed daughters had taken to the podium to say a few words about their beloved lost sibling, one of them choking up and wailing before she could even get a word out.
It was impossible to not cry. Whilst Yunho squared his shoulders and tried to remain strong as he clasped his hands in front of him, he found it difficult to manufacture a remotely calm facade as he stared at Jaejoong’s picture resting along a floral arrangement behind his casket. Kim Jaejoong, who was brilliant and lovely in ways that reminded Yunho of the sun - the same sun that had been in hiding - whose untimely departure from life left a hole in the hearts of many that would never be filled quite the same way again.
Once again, Yunho felt like an outsider spectating from a distance. This man had been his best friend, his other half, and yet there was just something about the way Jaejoong’s family huddled together in an embrace that spoke Go Away.
Yunho left before they actually buried him.
*
Summer was Yunho’s favorite season of the year, right before the rainy season when the air was warm and thick with humidity, but the sun shone bright and it gave everything around him life. Often he and Jaejoong would enjoy walks along the Han River, discussing life and laughing over something silly that had happened in one of their classes.
Despite being in completely different majors, the two of them still managed to find common ground and they bonded in ways Yunho swore he felt to his soul. The feeling that he dared not put a name to, in fear of ruining the simplicity and beauty of it, summoned a smile every time he thought of the fair-haired man beside him.
“We should go bowling tonight,” Yunho said as he licked along the dripping edge of his cone. “Heechul and Leeteuk invited us along.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Jaejoong smiled, and birds twittered, flowers bloomed, and the sun’s halo danced off his hair.
Yunho’s heart lurched in his chest and he found himself smiling in return. He was a fool unable to deny his best friend anything if he asked.
And he would have it no other way.
*
One morning Yunho woke up and he felt different, like something had been moved from its place and he could not find it. Like something had been stolen from him, but it was an odd sort of feeling that he couldn’t quite place.
He ignored it.
Yunho attended his classes on autopilot, taking notes and writing papers without any real thought. A teacher, a classmate, and a friend had all commented on his lack of attentiveness but he brushed it off as if a fly had buzzed too close. By the time he had returned from his dazed stupor, he hadn’t a single clue what he had been doing but was unable to find it in himself to give a damn.
On the way back toward his apartment, Yunho ran into none other than Jaejoong’s brother, Hyunjoong. The man looked colorful and lively despite his recent tragedy, and he was laughing with a group of friends. His arm had curled possessively around a pretty little thing’s narrow waist, and every so often he would bend down to whisper in her ear or kiss her cheek. They all looked happy, and he, in love.
“Oh, hey Yunho!” Hyunjoong waved.
“Hey.” Yunho waved back as he wandered casually to his side. Of everyone in Jaejoong’s massive family, Hyunjoong was probably the only other sibling to which he would consider himself close. That still wasn’t saying much.
“We’re going to celebrate tonight,” someone to the left of Hyunjoong said, someone Yunho recognized as his best friend Kyujong.
“Celebrate?” Yunho balked, though he tried not to show it. What the hell were they celebrating? Was he the only one still grieving the loss of his best friend?
“Yeah, Hyunjoong and Hwangbo are finally together after weeks of dancing around each other.” Kyujong’s excitement was palpable, as if he was happy for his friend. There would be no more anguished whispers of a perceived unrequited love, no more muted pleas for her to look his way, just this once.
“Oh.”
Yunho was stupefied. This man had just discovered his brother’s dead body almost two weeks ago, and now he was already moving on? Of all the Kim’s family, Jaejoong and Hyunjoong had been the closest both because of their ages and because they were the last two to be adopted. They were also both the only two that had been adopted late enough to remember their biological parents. While Jaejoong’s mother had chosen to give him up and had his best interests at heart, Hyunjoong’s parents had died in a terrible car accident and no other blood relatives would accept him in their home. It was tragic really, their stories, but they had that one thing in common and it had created a bond between them. It was the closest imitation of the water of the womb they would ever experience.
And Hyunjoong, in all of his wayward sense of humor and beneath his “cool” persona, had a big heart hidden within him. Yunho was not willing to compare his own grief to Hyunjoong’s, to the very same brother that had discovered Jaejoong’s suicide.
“Are you okay?” Hyunjoong frowned at the man before him, fingers clenching around the cotton of Hwangbo’s shirt around her waist.
“No,” Yunho admitted. “I’m still trying to cope with Jaejoong’s...death.”
Hyunjoong didn’t say a word, but his brows furrowed and his lips pressed together into a thin line. Yunho would have assumed that he was suppressing the horrible memories of what he’d stumbled upon that morning. But as the seconds ticked by, the more confused Hyunjoong appeared, and the more unsettled Yunho felt.
“Jaejoong?” Hyunjoong echoed after a long, quiet moment of pondering. “Who is that?”
Yunho’s breath caught in his throat as thousands of words grouped together in his mind, things he could say but also the things he couldn’t. He wanted to give Hyunjoong the benefit of the doubt, but who in their right mind would deal with tragedy by suppressing it to the darkest corners of their minds? Certainly not Hyunjoong, not anyone in the Kim family. They had been raised better than that.
Yunho’s stomach churned and lurched, trying to crawl up his throat as Hyunjoong’s question replayed over and over again. He contemplated sitting down with him and telling him that denying Jaejoong’s existence wouldn’t make dealing with the pain of his suicide any easier, but at the same time, something within him held back. It was a rock in his gut, holding his tongue down and his body in place.
“I...” Hesitating, Yunho spared the group one more incredulous glance. “Nevermind,” he muttered.
Everyone handled grief in their own ways, and though Yunho wasn’t sure he himself was handling it at all, he knew it would be wrong of him to criticize Hyunjoong’s own questionable methods.
As Yunho walked away from them, he felt his stomach crawling up his throat and his blood chilled in his veins. He felt every last palpitation of his heart through his entire being, slow but powerful as if it would explode from his chest. It was a feeling that made his throat go dry, his palms clammy and hands shaking like quivering leaves in a storm.
There was something so, so wrong.
*
That night Yunho dreamt in monochrome. He dreamt of darkness as it surrounded him, paradoxically as cold as it was warm, his very being warring between the two stark contrasts. But there was a familiarity in the way the darkness loomed over him, stood by his side, and seemed to smile down upon him. He felt his heart flooding his being with warmth as a wisp of that eerie blackness flickered like flames, beckoning it from the depth of his soul.
Curiosity was only natural. He reached out for the strange wisps and found it slipped through his fingers like lukewarm water, and his hand was even wet as he pulled away. Confusion settled in his chest as the strange water-flame settled on the obscured ground and rippled with each breath Yunho took.
Taking a step back, Yunho was shocked to discover it was everywhere. The black water had overcome him, clogged his senses and trapped him in its depths. Breath escaped him, and when he opened his mouth to scream, it rushed down his throat and filled his lungs before his throat convulsed with a sad effort at swallowing it all first. The first gulp burned in his throat, burned all the way down to his stomach, but he didn’t have time to think or even wince as he kept swallowing until he knew it was all in vain.
In the morning, Yunho awoke with a migraine and a stuffy head, the dream fading with the last vestiges of sleep in the back of his mind. When he rolled over and attempted to sit up, the world around him spun and he found himself somehow on the other side of the bed instead.
It was a fitful time trying to right himself despite his distorted equilibrium, and when he was finally able to stand, making it into the bathroom to pop a couple of Tylenol was an entirely new challenge. He leaned against the wall, hands leading him around corners and keeping him upright. He could barely think straight around the intense pounding and jack-hammering in his skull, but somehow he managed.
Yunho fought with the bottle of Tylenol from the medicine cabinet behind the mirror, catching his seemingly gaunt and sleepless self’s reflection from the corner of his eyes. He swallowed two pills dry just before his legs gave out on him and he slid down the wall, eyes closed and limbs like lead.
Yunho must have sat there for twenty minutes, just long enough for the medicine to affect him. His head cleared, he could feel his toes again, and the migraine receded. He waited a several moments longer before he dared to stand again, to trust his body, before returning to his bedroom. It was cold and stuffy in his room. He turned off the air conditioner before crawling underneath the sheets again, agony rushing through his bloodstream as he imagined the smiling face of his now dead best friend.
On a normal day he’d probably text Jaejoong, tell him that he felt awful, and Jaejoong would be here to suffuse him in his motherly affections. Jaejoong would overreact adorably, would fuss and make him lie in bed as he prepared a hearty breakfast for him...
Oh how much he wanted that right now...
But never again.
Why, Jaejoong? Why did you do it?
Yunho closed his eyes as he remembered the last time he saw Jaejoong with the healthy flush of life. Though he had been withdrawn and not all that like himself, he had been alive and everything had been okay even if it wasn’t. Even if Jaejoong had been pulling away from everyone and everything, even if Jaejoong had been disgruntled about being forced to visit his family over the weekend.
Even if -
How long were you planning this for, Jaejoong?
Jaejoong’s autopsy report told Yunho and his family nothing that they didn’t already know. He’d been steadily drugging himself for a while, and how Yunho had failed to not notice any illness was beyond him. (But you couldn’t have, a voice whispered to him. You couldn’t have because you didn’t see him when he was sick.) The final straw was a fatal dose of something they referred to as the suicide tree, a plant that was well known for its toxins and was infamous for its use throughout history as the drug of choice when it came to assassinating people. It was so easy to slip into someone’s food unnoticed.
Before Yunho knew it, his face was hot and burning with excess of tears. The Jaejoong he’d known and loved for year would have never done this. There was no rhyme or reason to it. The Jaejoong he knew was a man that loved life, was the very embodiment of all things he considered bright and lovely, and all he did was want to help others. He wanted to follow in his father’s footsteps and become a man of the Church, to serve God and spread His word and love to those without it.
The strangest idea occurred to Yunho. He jumped from the comfort and warmth of his bed, pulled on a pair of dirty jeans and dug out a clean t-shirt, and ran out the door. It was a random whim, one he wasn’t sure he should be entertaining, but he couldn’t help it as his body seemed to be moving of its own accord. (That, and he dared not stop himself.)
In almost an hour, Yunho was standing before his best friend’s old dorm room. His heart beat wildly in his chest like a drum, body hesitating as he raised his fist to knock. Why was he doing this? Jaejoong was dead. The only thing he was about to do was make a fool out of himself. He was at Jaejoong’s old dorm, ready to knock as if he expected Jaejoong to open it with bright smiles and sunshine like the past several weeks had never happened.
Instead, what he got was an eyeful of a naked man.
He was a little on the short side, just a couple of inches below Yunho’s own staggering height of 6’1”, and his body was lean and thin and had the barest hints of muscular definition beneath his dark skin. The man stopped and blinked at Yunho, shock rooting him firmly in his place.
“You’re not...”
He wasn’t Jaejoong.
It had only been a couple of weeks and they’d already moved someone else into the dorm.
How could they?
“I’m sorry.”
Yunho ran.
*
Summer came to a sweltering, bittersweet end and brought with it the musk of autumn and the chill of impending winter. With finals upon him, he hadn’t the time to work past his grief. He was still just as hurt as he’d been since the day he found out, his chest ripped apart with the sheer agony being the only thing he felt. University was a welcome distraction, one that filled his mind with stress and worry and knowledge until he forgot about everything else.
The scent of books and their printed pages kept him company when he slept, sometimes in bed, and other times bent awkwardly at his kitchen table where he’d been studying. The end was so close, so near to him he could taste it.
It tasted sour - spoiled.
It must have been well after midnight when Yunho paused to stretch, to stand up and get the blood pumping through his veins again. He thought about calling it a night and going to bed, but as his back popped, with it came the memory of smiles and sunshine that made raw his agony once again.
Jaejoong’s memory was a vicious assailant, pushing him down and holding tight. Yunho knew it was unhealthy the way he could not cope with his best friend’s loss, but he also knew that he had to allow himself the necessary time to grieve. Time he didn’t have. The longer he let it go on, the tighter the specter of Jaejoong’s memories would hold on, the deeper it would dig its claws until it would become a part of him.
Yunho couldn’t live like this. It would drive him insane. Slowly, but surely. Little by little as it screwed into his skin and penetrated his bones...
In the living room there was a portrait placed precariously along a shelf of other knick-knacks, seemingly useless things that Yunho’s mother had insisted upon when he first got the apartment. She said it looked nice and attracted eyes and gave a good impression to guests. In that picture frame was a photo years old, probably from the beginning of high school when he and Jaejoong had known each other for only a couple of years and they were getting closer every day. Yunho remembered Jaejoong’s ridiculously long hair in that picture, the way he posed and how he stuck out his tongue. Yunho remembered laughing so hard at his best friend that he’d thrown his arm over Jaejoong’s shoulder and given him a noogie, telling him how weird he was and thinking about how much he loved that about Jaejoong.
Yet when Yunho looked at the picture frame, he only saw himself. He saw himself standing off to the side with a silly grin, limbs too long and hair looking like he’d stuck his finger in a socket. Yunho used to have the worst trouble trying to get his hair to stay down as a teenager, static electricity loved him too much to let go.
Yunho’s throat constricted and closed in on itself as he realized Jaejoong had disappeared from their photo. The very same photo his mother had taken just because she’d gotten herself a fancy new digital camera and she wanted to try it out, but the three of them had been strangely enamored with the image that they’d gotten it printed and framed.
Jaejoong was fucking gone.
Yunho sank to his knees as he was overwhelmed with a torrential mass of emotions. Fear. Anxiety. Confusion. Jaejoong had been dead for a couple of months and everything was so different.
“No. No, no, no...”
Yunho didn’t sleep easy that night, dreaming of darkness once again. He woke up as bile crawled up his throat, and almost didn’t make it to the toilet in time. He puked until he was dry-heaving and it hurt.
It was going to be a bad day.
*
Later Yunho almost literally ran into Kim Hyunjoong, who had been awfully close and cloyingly affectionate with his new girlfriend by the South Hall.
“Hey,” Hyunjoong said, and Yunho replied with a meager whisper. He still felt terrible from his morning wake-up call and nothing he tried seem to soothe his queasy stomach.
“You look terrible,” Hyunjoong added none too helpfully, the corner of his mouth twitching upward in a poor semblance of a smile. Yunho was aware of his terrible appearance as he had had very little time to himself, just enough to comb his fingers through his wild hair (which didn’t do much to begin with anyway) and pick a shirt and a pair of jeans off the bedroom floor to wear. There hadn’t been enough time to even see if they were clean or not.
Yunho knew he looked like a hot mess but giving a damn about it was beyond him at this point. He felt like shit.
“Are you okay?” Hyunjoong asked again, lips pressed in a thin line. Yunho recognized the concern and felt his stomach lurch, felt himself yearning with the need to just talk.
No, he was not okay.
“Do you have a minute?” Yunho asked in a low voice, gaze flitting toward Hwangbo. The other man also looked to his girlfriend, and they shared a meaningful look before she departed.
“What do you need?”
“I need to be completely serious,” Yunho started, slowly, hesitantly, because admitting this to himself, let alone out loud to Hyunjoong, was about to open a can of worms he wasn’t sure he was ready to face yet. “I can’t...”
“Can’t what, Yunho? What’s going on?” Hyunjoong’s concern gave Yunho the last courage he needed to let the words spill forth from his lips. It was so easy for the whole family to accept the death of their youngest and dearest when they all had faith, belief in God and Heaven and that everything was going to be okay. Belief that death was just the true beginning of the afterlife, real life. Yunho remembered Pastor Kim’s heartfelt sermon and couldn’t help but feel overwhelmed by his profound sadness and grief.
Yunho didn’t have that faith. Yunho didn’t know whether he believed in God or not, whether or not he believed there was life after death.
“I’m not okay, Hyunjoong... I’m having a really hard time dealing with Jaejoong’s death...”
Hyunjoong’s brows furrowed as he frowned again. “Hey, look, everyone goes through loss at some point in their lives and sometimes it’s hard. This Jaejoong, he was important to you right?”
This Jaejoong, he was important to you right?
Yunho rubbed a hand over his stomach to quell the torrential squall of sickness as it threatened to erupt and overwhelm him.
“Why are you talking like you don’t know him...?” Yunho whispered his incredulous question.
Hyunjoong gave him a look, a dark look, a confused look. “Because I don’t, Yunho. I don’t know who this Jaejoong person is and I don’t know why you keep expecting me to.”
“Because he was your brother!” Yunho exploded. “You mean to tell me that you found his dead body and you’re just going to pretend he never existed? I thought I was handling it bad, but it seems like you need some help.”
A few passers-by glanced between the two men at Yunho’s outburst, but they moved on without a second glance. Every second passed by, thick and terse and filled with electricity as their emotions filled the space between them. Hyunjoong squared his shoulders, jaw tense and posture straight as he attempted to tower over Yunho, but that intimidation tactic was hard when Hyunjoong was a couple of inches shorter.
“I know you’re studying psychology, Yunho, but I think you’re the one with the problems,” he began, voice low and dark and angry. “I never had a brother named Jaejoong. I don’t know who the fuck you’re talking about. I think you are the one with some serious issues here and you need to have your noggin looked at before you start taking it out on other people. You’re lucky that I’m a nice enough person to tell you this before I tell you to fuck off.
“Have - a - nice - day.” Hyunjoong ended his tirade by punctuating the ordinarily pleasant phrase with all of his displeasure, his anger, at Yunho, before turning on his heels and disappearing into the steady throng of college students. Those words carried with them a note of finality, the feeling that whatever friendship could have existed between them was no longer possible.
Yunho was stunned. Of all people, he had never expected this from Hyunjoong. He had never expected that Hyunjoong would be so merciless to him, still locked tight in denial and unable to free himself. Unwilling to accept the kind hand of others.
And yet, Hyunjoong’s words had managed to put that awful thread of doubt into the back of his mind.
*
A noxious plume of smoke permeated the air between the two boys, spinning into abstract shapes before fading into dusk. Yunho found the smell nauseating at best, deplorable otherwise. His stomach curled as he spared his best friend a look of stark disapproval.
“That stuff is disgusting, how the hell can you stand it?” Yunho asked.
Jaejoong, smiling through a mouthful of a filter, inhaled before answering, “It makes me feel good.”
“It makes you stink,” Yunho shot back. “It kills your lungs and your tastebuds and your everything else, and it stinks.”
A chuckle spilled from Jaejoong’s mouth as he walked ahead of his best friend, shaking his head. It wasn’t a big deal, really, and why the hell did Yunho have to sound like such a goody two shoes about it?
“If it’s really so bad for us, why is it still legal? Why do so many people do it?” Jaejoong asked, inhaling another virulent plume.
Yunho made a face as he put some distance between them.
“Because there are chemicals in it that your body becomes addicted to, and that dependency is what keeps things the way they are,” he bit out, spiteful as he kicked a stone across the street.
The two of them were just a couple of seventeen year old teenagers walking around the street at night, thankful for the secluded location of their gated housing community. The whole area was rife with the scent of money but it was nice and it had privacy reminiscent of the days Yunho had spent growing up in Gwangju.
“Wanna try?” Jaejoong offered the cigarette to Yunho, his lips quirked upward.
“No,” Yunho said, but he snatched it from Jaejoong’s fingers anyway and inhaled as much smoke as he could.
And it burned. It burned from his tongue to his chest and his whole body wracked with coughs as his body forcefully expelled the unwanted chemicals from it. He could barely breathe, eyes watering and throat convulsing as he gagged and dry-heaved.
“Are you okay?” Jaejoong’s face swam into focus and then out again as tears spilled over. He yanked the still-burning cigarette from Yunho’s fingers and stomped it out on the street, wiping the tears from Yunho’s eyes as he cooed to soothe his irritated lungs.
When Yunho’s coughing fit began to calm down, he could hear Jaejoong in near hysterics above him. “Oh my god, I’m so sorry I won’t ever do it again I didn’t know, it just looked cool and I - ”
“Good,” Yunho rasped, pushing his best friend away. “If you ever smoke again I will kick your ass. This sucks.”
“Are you gonna be okay?” Jaejoong frowned, a hand rubbing up and down the broad slope of Yunho's back.
Yunho took a deep breath of clean, crisp air and revelled in its sweetness. “Only if you promise me you really won’t ever smoke again.”
“Deal.” Jaejoong’s lips twisted upward in a cynical smile as he reached into his pocket and tossed the entire pack of cigarettes into a nearby trash bin. His best friend was right, they were gross and that was not something he wanted to waste the rest of his life on.
“Now we’re both gonna be okay,” Yunho laughed. “And we’ll live long, prosperous lives together.”
“Double deal.”
*
It was, by far, not the most intelligent ideas that Yunho had ever had, but he felt it was the right thing to do. He felt it was necessary to do. Clutched in his hand he held his mobile phone, a familiar phone number glaring back at him from the touch screen surface. He hesitated, uncertainties holding him back, but when he remembered his confrontation with Hyunjoong he knew he had to do it.
Pressing the green call button, Yunho waited with baited breath as he tried to figure out what to say. Was it even his place to say anything? He wondered, doubted again, but by the time the Pastor’s docile wife had answered the phone, he knew he couldn’t go back.
“Yunho?” the woman greeted familiarly, without the warmth he was accustomed to, but instead filled with a confusion that chilled him.
He was intruding, and though he refused to acknowledge it yet, he could feel it in his bones.
“Do you have a few moments?” Yunho asked as he began pacing the length of his living room. He listened to the woman shuffle in the background before she spoke into the line again, and Yunho just let it all out.
He told her about his angst, his troubles, and his fears. He told her about Hyunjoong, about how worried he was for the other man at his stark denials, his refusal to accept Jaejoong’s death in the way he pretended he’d never been alive.
“Yunho?” Mrs. Kim’s tone stopped him dead in his tracks, and a lump of dread settled in his throat. “Yunho, honey, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t know who Jaejoong is and I can tell you I never adopted a son by that name. Hyunjoongie was the last one.”
Yunho nearly choked as a rush of hot tears stained his cheeks. Was this really happening? Was the whole family denying Jaejoong’s existence? Or was he going insane?
“MiJin - ” Yunho gasped.
“Yunho, are you okay? Are you really okay? You were always such a quiet boy in church and your parents were always worried about you. You know we’re always willing to help, but I can’t help you when you’re not making any sense...”
Why did they say that Yunho was the one that didn’t make sense when it was really them? Why were they denying the existence of their own son? What was it about Jaejoong and his death that was so easy to push away like it had never happened?
Yunho didn’t understand, and he needed to. He needed to understand this madness.
“MiJin - ”
Mrs. Kim scolded, “Yunho don’t be so impolite - ”
“This is not okay. I don’t know what’s going on, but this isn’t okay. He was your son. He may not have been your flesh and blood but Jaejoong was your son and when he smiled he could light up a whole room. Now he’s dead and you’re all pretending he doesn’t exist? Why would you do such a thing?” Yunho’s tirade trailed off into an incredulous whisper at the end, his heart burning from within his chest as he thought about the bright-eyed man that was his other half, that he feared he would not be able to live without only to realize these fears were truth.
Kim MiJin cleared her breath, and that’s when he heard the sudden chill in her voice, “Yunho, I pray God helps you because there is something awfully wrong with you right now. If this is all you have to say, please don’t call my home or speak to anyone of us again.”
She hung up on him.
Kim MiJin actually hung up on him.
Yunho remembered the photo and Jaejoong’s disappearance from it and felt sick.
“No...”
*
Yunho spent his winter break studying for the final semester of college and, against his better ideas, decided it would be best to see a therapist after all. She was a thin woman with strict, stern features but kind eyes that softened the years of her face. She was nice, and she listened, which was all Yunho really needed at this point. He needed someone to listen to him and believe him, someone to reassure him that he wasn’t going insane.
Yet a part of him believed that he was, bit by bit. Slowly, but surely. It was a thought in the back of his mind, one that drifted to and fro with his every breath.
You’re going to lose your mind. Why else would you only remember a dead person no one else does?
It wasn’t a conspiracy theory.
It wasn’t a horror movie.
Jung Yunho really did fear that he might be going insane because he was the only person who remembered Jaejoong.
The strange thing was, however, that Yunho did not reveal this thought to his therapist. He told her of his aching grief, the agony that arose in his bosom at the mere thought of his best friend who had long since been lost for life. She listened. She was sympathetic. She cared.
That was all Yunho needed to know he wasn’t going crazy.
(But you really are, aren’t you?)
*
Despite having seen a therapist and gaining some pretty good tips on how to deal with grief, Yunho just couldn’t. There was no way he would be able to accept the death of his best friend, of one of his most beloved people that he had never been able to see his life without. Jaejoong was like the sun, guiding him through the day to day ventures of life. Without him, Yunho’s world was dark and he couldn’t see. He couldn’t move.
He needed his sunlight again.
Before Yunho knew it, he was a college graduate and Jaejoong’s death was over a year into the past. The worst part was graduation day was on the one year anniversary to the date that Jaejoong’s body was discovered on his bathroom floor, and as valedictorian of his class, he made sure he gave a heartfelt speech about his best friend that ripped open the wound in his chest anew.
By the time he walked off stage his eyes burned, his throat was closing in on itself, and he swore he could feel the hot blood pulsing out of his broken heart, down his chest and all over his cap and gown.
It hurt so much, so fucking much Yunho thought if there was every any perfect moment to lose his sanity, it would be this one, right here in front of hundreds of people all with their eyes on him.
In the back, Yunho locked himself into a bathroom stall and curled up by the toilet before he allowed himself the freedom to cry. He’d been doing so, so good and now the only thing he knew was pain. The only thing he saw was Jaejoong’s eyes, Jaejoong’s smile, and if Yunho took a breath deep enough, he swore he could scent his signature Bvlgari musk that had been a present from his dearest brother, Heechul.
The Kims no longer talked to him, nor did they dare to spare him any glances when they happened to be near each other in public. It hurt to think the family he had once known so well had become this, all because of the death of their youngest.
That night Yunho went home and he lost himself. His sorrows drowned him as he cried and cried, as he threw the nearest object he could reach and screamed out his agony. He heard something shatter on the floor but didn’t think twice about it as he sunk to his knees, tears blurring his vision and soaking his face, his torso forced to the ground by the weight of his pain.
“Why?” Yunho whimpered. “Why, why, why?”
Why did you leave me Jaejoong?
Why didn’t you share your burden instead of taking your own life so cruelly?
Did it hurt? Did you regret it in your last moments?
Before Yunho knew it, he was lucid again and could see himself holding a glass shard tightly between his fingers. The sharpened edges dug into his skin and hurt, a thin rivulet of blood dripping slowly onto the dark carpeted floor beneath him.
In that moment, Yunho considered taking his own life to be with his best friend.
But he didn’t. He couldn’t. Something held him back, like a phantom murmur in the back of his mind that reminded him too much of the life that Jaejoong had once had. The life that Yunho would now have to live for him.
That night, he threw himself onto his bed and did not rest easy.
*
Yunho was not a person that tended to remember his dreams. On average he forgot them, the last strange remnants disappearing into a forgotten abyss somewhere as he fought against the last vestiges of sleep. There were times, however, when he had particularly vivid dreams and could remember parts of them. Or he could remember that he’d had a dream and how vivid it had been, but details would always elude him.
This, on the other hand, was going to be a dream he would remember from start to finish.
This dream would start with a whisper, soft and sweet against the shell of his ear. It would start with a low hum and the tickle of hair brushing against his back and his left arm, caressing him in waves with firm hands over his shoulders.
It would start with a woman, naked, as she rested upon him. He could feel the heat of her body as she sat with her knees on either side of his hips, body dipping low as her hands glided from his lower back and up to his shoulders with a constant, firm pressure. Every worry, every thought - gone.
“Feel good?” she asked, hands caressing the rising slope of Yunho’s ass. A hot wave of lust tore through him, potent and heady as her nails ran up and down his back.
“Feels nice,” Yunho hummed, turning on his side so he could face her.
What he saw should have made his heart stop in his chest, but instead made something in his gut tighten as another wave of heat crashed over him.
She was beautiful, lithe with a narrow waist, small, but supple breasts and pale skin. Dark curls fell over her shoulders in silken waves, framing a fey face with an all too familiar coquettish smile and wide eyes. Unlike what he was used to seeing, broad shoulders and a firm jaw, Yunho saw soft curves and a pointed chin.
He could feel himself twitch and watched her smile grow in return, body curving into an arc as she threw her head back and moaned with Jaejoong’s face, hips rolling as she let out a quiet moan.
There was no way this was not a dream.
“Do you know how long I’ve been waiting for this?” Jae asked, her voice a low guttural purr that had him twitching again. (Yunho couldn’t bring himself to call this beautiful dream girl Jaejoong, he just could not, but fuck she looked so much like him.) It was almost embarrassing how much his body responded to the sight of a beautiful woman in his lap and ready for the taking.
Jae leaned down, tongue peeking from between her plush lips, and let the soft swell of her breasts drag against Yunho’s chest, pulling with it a potent bout of lust that possessed him so fiercely he nearly lost himself.
She has Jaejoong’s face.
Damp heat settled at the hollow of Yunho’s throat as Jae licked a thick stripe up his neck, along the angle of his jaw, and finally settling at the corner of his mouth. Her lips twitched before she pressed against him for a kiss and it was sweet and hot and he melted in her arms.
She murmured against Yunho’s mouth, whispering sweet nothings to him as he finally let himself give in to the one thing he had always wanted. Large hands followed the curves of her body, outlining every last dip and curve and spreading warmth between them. She kissed him again, this time her tongue dipping inside of his mouth for a taste, to tease. Yunho knew he was helpless to her whims as he gave in, his hands curling in her thick hair at the base of her neck.
Jae shifted, rubbing against him before she reached down, fingers grasping him tight as he slipped into her molten depths. It was slick and hot and tight around him, pulsing with every smooth roll of her hips above him.
She whimpered, eyes closed and head thrown back as her hips settle into a pattern of rise and fall, pleasure ebbing and flowing from her body and into his. At this point Yunho had completely lost himself, entranced by the familiar thickness of her mouth as her tongue swept out, teeth digging into the lower lip. Her nose, her cheekbones, her eyes - everything about her, was Jaejoong, and Yunho didn’t understand nor did he want to.
He just wanted to feel.
He just wanted to love and be loved.
Their bodies moved together in a beautiful harmony, his hips rolling up as hers dropped down and back again. The strain in her thighs became evident after several long, beautiful moments of pleasure, and Yunho was astounded by the need to share as much with her as he could. He pulled her down until they were chest to chest, the swell of her breasts tempting him until he distracted himself by pulling at her hair again. Her head jerked back, eyes closed again as she let out a sinful, dirty sound that made his dick hard as a rock inside of her. She laid there above him, her hips rolling in small waves as he took the lead of their carnal embrace, cheek pressed against Yunho’s as her hot, gasping breaths sound next to his ear.
“Please,” she begged, a hand sliding between their sweaty bodies to rub against her clit. Yunho flipped them over, pressing her down on her back as he slid right back inside her depths with a harsh thrust. She nearly screamed, body jolted from the force alone as her fingers worked fast to bring her the bliss she so desperately sought.
Yunho could feel his orgasm building up inside of his belly, a pressure, light at first, then growing in intensity with every slide back into her that pulled bit by bit of his sanity away from him.
She has Jaejoong’s face.
Eyes closed, Yunho took a moment to remember his friend and found it much too easy to picture Jaejoong and his hard, solid body instead of this soft and curvy feminine one. It was that thought - an instant he swore he actually saw it - he last remembered when pleasure blinded him as his orgasm swept him away with a torrential force. His hips stuttered, whole body going still as he rode wave after wave of his orgasm with a short, shallow thrust into her pliant body.
Beneath him, she whispered soothingly as her fingers ran up and down his back, lips tracing the echo of his heartbeat in his throat. With each pulse of his release into her, Yunho felt himself growing weaker and weaker still, eyes half-lid with exhaustion. He tried to pull away from her, but her legs around his waist held him in place.
"Sshhh," she murmured. "You're okay, you've done so well, baby. Better than I thought you would..."
Everything went dark.
*
Yunho woke up to the uncomfortable sensation of dried come on his stomach and the incessant blaring of his alarm clock. Still half asleep, he jumped out of bed and slammed his fist on the annoying thing.
Except the sound did not stop, and Yunho had to fight against the temptation of darkness again as he peeled open his eyes and rubbed away the last grains of sleep. There was something off about the air around him, a disconcerting quality that had him speculating his surroundings with suspicion.
Nothing felt right anymore. And it didn’t help that he felt like he hadn’t slept a wink last night.
That dream, though. Oh, that dream....
Yunho was no stranger to wet dreams, having gone through a vicious and embarrassing cycle when he was in his early teenage years. He’d hated leaving messes in his bed that he would try to hide as he cleaned up the next morning, avoiding suspicious looks from his mother and his little sister as he swam in a pool of shame. He couldn’t stand how that experience had left him feeling uncomfortable in his own skin, like things in his life were completely out of control. This feeling was no different, though he had long since made his peace with it.
Now it was just a minor irritant.
Still, looking back on his years as a teenager, Yunho had never had a wet dream that vivid before. Hell, he’d never had a dream that he’d remembered with such startling clarity, ever.
As crazy as it sounded, he found himself deeply unsettled by it. Something just wasn’t right. It was too real, too vivid, and he couldn’t help the way his stomach curled when he thought that the object of his nocturnal affections had been none other than a twistedly beautiful, and very female, Jaejoong. Yunho had no doubts his friend would have looked exactly like that should he have been born a woman, beautiful and lithe and soft. If Jaejoong had any sin, it was the sin of vanity. He loved himself too much, focused too much on his appearance and had a complicated night and morning ritual with a cream for this and a cream for that included.
When they were teenagers, Jaejoong had gone through a slight rebellious streak that had his hair growing just a little past his shoulders. It had a natural wave to it, not completely straight, and the female in his dream had had hair that went to the small of her back in gentle curls, as if she had braided her hair when it was wet and let it dry before taking it out.
In his twenty-three years of life, Yunho had dated and had multiple relationships, none of which ever became serious. He’d never had sex with any of them because it had never been something he was interested in, and yet the thought of his attraction to the feminine Jaejoong had his body singing a dirge in the name of lust, and with it came a frightening thought that settled too easy into his skin. As if he’d known it all along, and now it was time to finally admit it out loud.
Yunho had loved Jaejoong. With every last fiber of his being.
Jaejoong had been the other half to Yunho’s whole, the one person whom Yunho could not see his life continuing peacefully without. Now that Jaejoong was really and truly gone, Yunho’s life was still held together but only by threadbare seams, seams he continually refortified whenever a single one snapped before the others could follow. On the inside, Yunho was a mess. A disaster.
And he loved Jaejoong.
The most terrifying thing of all about this was that Yunho knew his unrequitted and unacknowledged love was the sole reason for his suffering. But now that he knew, now that he had accepted the truth into his heart, it hurt even more to think about Jaejoong.
There were a lot of things in life that Yunho had not yet given much thought to, and rather unfortunately, this was one of them. He knew what the majority of his friends and his family thought about such things, even all of society as was meticulously drilled into their brains since youth, but he had not given himself the time to work out his own personal opinion.
Dread coiled in Yunho’s stomach as he wondered if this made him a sick man, a horrible person. He wondered if this meant he needed help. He wondered if this meant his family, his friends, everyone he’d ever known, would leave him. He wondered if they might stay by his side.
But most of all, he wondered what it meant.
Love, a voice whispered in the back of his mind. It means love.
next →
Rating: NC-17
Genre: AU, Angst, Dark, Drama, Supernatural, Psychological, Tragedy (?)
Warnings: AU, angst, darkfic, supernatural (incubi), character death (but not really), the occult, minor gender-bender (duh, incubi), minor drug abuse (caffeine pills), and...I think that's everything.
Summary: Until Death do us part - a farce; for true love, Death is only the beginning.
I would like to take a moment to give my beta Chloe a huge thank you for volunteering to beta-read this fic! I didn't think it would ever get finished despite my many attempts at beginning and beginning again. She has been awesome, and I owe her a lot for listening to me babble and helping me figure out a lot of things. I originally wanted to wait until this fic was finished before I started posting it (I'm just under 16k now), but you can thank yoochunforehead for threatening my tentacles pestering me. 8D
Don't forget to heed the warnings! And comment, because I love to hear everyone's thoughts. ♥
It was morning, and unlike the crisp late autumn air he was used to tasting on the tip of his tongue, Yunho tasted sorrow instead. It was bitter like a virulent poison - a steady trickle down the back of his throat and into his sickened stomach. The unease was not something to which he was well-adjusted, and so he found himself trying in vain to chase it away, but as Yunho took in the greying skies and the dismal earth, all he saw was the reflection of sorrow as it settled on the chilled air.
On Sundays Yunho didn’t have any classes, so he resorted to heading to a nearby coffee shop to study or enjoy the day as it began. A hot chocolate and a muffin always put him in a good mood, so much so that it had become a weekly ritual. Some days he would just relax and enjoy good conversation, while others he would squeeze in a bit of studying. Luckily for him all of his final exams had been the week prior, and so he began with a cleaned slate.
But still, the ill foreboding feeling in his gut did not relent. Later in the morning the skies released a light drizzle that painted the world in monochrome, exhausting and dreary. Enjoying the last gulp of the now cold chocolate beverage, Yunho remembered his best friend and how the enigmatic man was probably enjoying the weather. He was a strange one, but always brilliant and lovely like the sun.
At least, until recently.
Yunho had not seen Jaejoong in a good 3 weeks, but he didn’t let it bother him since both were busy with classes. Jaejoong was terribly preoccupied with his dissertation for his religious studies, while Yunho had exams for his psychology major. The last time they were together, Jaejoong had been in a strange stupor as he buried himself in his research. Then, Yunho had thought nothing of it, but now the memory made his stomach clench in fear.
Yunho tried to brush off the feeling, wondering if he’d eaten something bad for dinner. Leftover pizza probably was not the best choice, but it was the easiest and the cheapest so he couldn’t help himself. It was time for him to go home and clean up the mess of dirty laundry, however, the second he stepped outside the quaint café, his phone went off and Yunho found himself with an earful of a sobbing woman whose voice he could barely understand.
“Minjung?” Yunho asked, holding the phone away from his ear so the piercing screams didn’t make him go deaf. It didn’t help the crippling fear he felt twisting at his insides. “Minjungie, you need to calm down. I can’t understand you...”
Kim Minjung, one of Jaejoong’s many siblings, did not often call Yunho’s phone. Everyone in the Kim family had Yunho’s phone number merely as a second way to contact Jaejoong since the two of them were so oft together, but judging by the sounds of Minjung’s hysterical sobs and indecipherable mutterings, something awful had happened. Yunho felt it in his gut. He’d felt it all morning.
It took him a couple of minutes before the woman could speak lucidly, and by that time Yunho was already half way back to his apartment.
She sobbed and hiccupped, “Jaejoong c-committed suicide. Hyunjoong found his b-body this morning.”
Yunho’s phone shattered on the ground.
*
Dearest Mother, Father, all of my precious siblings, and My Yunho:
Do not worry your hearts out for me. This is not goodbye, but rather...
See You Later.
*
The Kim family was one of a kind.
Yunho had met their much beloved youngest when they were young, just after Yunho’s twelfth birthday. His family had just moved from the countryside to a nice posh housing district in Seoul when he had quite literally run into the other boy as he chased the old family dog down the sidewalk. Jaejoong had not been angry, but rather excited, and from the moment their eyes met they had an inexplicable bond that had kept them together for over ten years.
Kim Jaejoong was one of the youngest children adopted by an elderly Christian couple, a Kim Jongkook, Preacher at the local church, and Kim MiJin. Yunho didn’t know much but he knew they were unable to have children of their own, which lead to them adopting as many children as they did. Jaejoong was not the last one they adopted, but he was the youngest and Yunho thought he was the one that shined the brightest. He’d been four years old when he was adopted, sobbing as he passed from his biological mother’s arms (who was sad not to give her son away, but sad because she could not love him the way he needed and deserved to be) to Kim Minyoung’s open arms.
In the many years Yunho had been acquainted with the family, he knew they were just as picture perfect as they looked. His family was as large as it was wealthy and flowing with love and acceptance. The Kims, all eleven of them, had the biggest hearts Yunho had ever known.
And yet, on this sorrowful day, to know that the most beloved of them all had taken his life shook the very foundations of the entire family.
Pastor Jongkook sat with his distraught wife in the family room when Yunho arrived, and though he should not have been, he was shocked to see all eight of the remaining children huddled amongst each other. There was Kim Minjung, barely a year older than Jaejoong, who looked ashen and unkempt like she’d just woken up and hadn’t the time to shower or wash her face when news of the tragedy struck.
Kim Hyunjoong was beside her, curled up in her embrace as his face was stained with his rife agony. He was absolutely torn apart by what he had seen that morning, not expecting it in the least. All he wanted to do was use the toilet and take a shower, but instead he had found his little brother collapsed on the floor.
Jaejoong’s skin had been so pale it was a sickening shade of grey, and he had been so, so cold to the touch. Panic had trapped Hyunjoong’s breath in his throat as he hesitantly touched Jaejoong’s bare shoulder, then he had shaken him and rolled him over until he’d screamed and screamed.
“He knew exactly what he was doing,” one of the policemen said as they zipped his body and loaded it into the ambulance. Jaejoong’s recipe for suicide had been placed meticulously out in front of him, various poisonous plants and medications no one knew how he had gotten access to.
Yunho thought he was going to be sick as he took a seat opposite the grief-stricken family. Jaejoong had been the closest friend he’d ever had, his other half, and Yunho didn’t know what he’d do without the man’s light shining in his life anymore.
Police came and went, and Yunho had somehow been roped into being asked a few questions. He told them everything he knew, starting from when he’d first met Jaejoong as young boys, then to his beginning as a major in religious studies and philosophy. He wanted to follow his father’s footsteps, Jaejoong told him once. Both of them had been so close to graduation, and Jaejoong had been working studiously on his dissertation. It was around this time that he’d begun to act a bit different, had become withdrawn, and Yunho felt so damn stupid for not trying to talk to Jaejoong about it.
“I’m sorry,” Yunho found himself apologizing to the family, heart heavy with sorrow and regret. This might not have happened if only he had -
“Don’t blame yourself,” Pastor Kim said, a sympathetic hand resting upon Yunho’s right shoulder. His hand was warm, his gaze kind, but there were lines of troubled suffering adding years to his face. “Not a single one of us knew of his troubles. There is no use dwelling on the past, on what we could have done... Accepting this and moving forward is the best we can do right now.”
The man squeezed Yunho’s shoulder one last time, eyes glassy with tears, as he returned to his family. The gesture shocked him, a sort of dismissal that left a strange sensation clawing at his insides. Of course Yunho was the outsider here, the one that did not belong to this family.
With a heavy heart and a low murmur he wasn’t even sure the grieving family heard, Yunho departed from the home that, without Jaejoong, was just foreign and unfamiliar.
*
Jaejoong’s funeral came and went, the skies dark and ominous and the wind fierce and chilled against Yunho’s blushing cheeks. He wore his best outfit, a cheap suit ironed into crisp neatness that somehow matched the somber atmosphere amongst grieving friends and family. Pastor Kim sang eulogies of praise and hymns of sanctimonious blessings to his son’s soul, and he shared with everyone all of the beautiful memories his son had helped create. Some of his teary-eyed daughters had taken to the podium to say a few words about their beloved lost sibling, one of them choking up and wailing before she could even get a word out.
It was impossible to not cry. Whilst Yunho squared his shoulders and tried to remain strong as he clasped his hands in front of him, he found it difficult to manufacture a remotely calm facade as he stared at Jaejoong’s picture resting along a floral arrangement behind his casket. Kim Jaejoong, who was brilliant and lovely in ways that reminded Yunho of the sun - the same sun that had been in hiding - whose untimely departure from life left a hole in the hearts of many that would never be filled quite the same way again.
Once again, Yunho felt like an outsider spectating from a distance. This man had been his best friend, his other half, and yet there was just something about the way Jaejoong’s family huddled together in an embrace that spoke Go Away.
Yunho left before they actually buried him.
*
Summer was Yunho’s favorite season of the year, right before the rainy season when the air was warm and thick with humidity, but the sun shone bright and it gave everything around him life. Often he and Jaejoong would enjoy walks along the Han River, discussing life and laughing over something silly that had happened in one of their classes.
Despite being in completely different majors, the two of them still managed to find common ground and they bonded in ways Yunho swore he felt to his soul. The feeling that he dared not put a name to, in fear of ruining the simplicity and beauty of it, summoned a smile every time he thought of the fair-haired man beside him.
“We should go bowling tonight,” Yunho said as he licked along the dripping edge of his cone. “Heechul and Leeteuk invited us along.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Jaejoong smiled, and birds twittered, flowers bloomed, and the sun’s halo danced off his hair.
Yunho’s heart lurched in his chest and he found himself smiling in return. He was a fool unable to deny his best friend anything if he asked.
And he would have it no other way.
*
One morning Yunho woke up and he felt different, like something had been moved from its place and he could not find it. Like something had been stolen from him, but it was an odd sort of feeling that he couldn’t quite place.
He ignored it.
Yunho attended his classes on autopilot, taking notes and writing papers without any real thought. A teacher, a classmate, and a friend had all commented on his lack of attentiveness but he brushed it off as if a fly had buzzed too close. By the time he had returned from his dazed stupor, he hadn’t a single clue what he had been doing but was unable to find it in himself to give a damn.
On the way back toward his apartment, Yunho ran into none other than Jaejoong’s brother, Hyunjoong. The man looked colorful and lively despite his recent tragedy, and he was laughing with a group of friends. His arm had curled possessively around a pretty little thing’s narrow waist, and every so often he would bend down to whisper in her ear or kiss her cheek. They all looked happy, and he, in love.
“Oh, hey Yunho!” Hyunjoong waved.
“Hey.” Yunho waved back as he wandered casually to his side. Of everyone in Jaejoong’s massive family, Hyunjoong was probably the only other sibling to which he would consider himself close. That still wasn’t saying much.
“We’re going to celebrate tonight,” someone to the left of Hyunjoong said, someone Yunho recognized as his best friend Kyujong.
“Celebrate?” Yunho balked, though he tried not to show it. What the hell were they celebrating? Was he the only one still grieving the loss of his best friend?
“Yeah, Hyunjoong and Hwangbo are finally together after weeks of dancing around each other.” Kyujong’s excitement was palpable, as if he was happy for his friend. There would be no more anguished whispers of a perceived unrequited love, no more muted pleas for her to look his way, just this once.
“Oh.”
Yunho was stupefied. This man had just discovered his brother’s dead body almost two weeks ago, and now he was already moving on? Of all the Kim’s family, Jaejoong and Hyunjoong had been the closest both because of their ages and because they were the last two to be adopted. They were also both the only two that had been adopted late enough to remember their biological parents. While Jaejoong’s mother had chosen to give him up and had his best interests at heart, Hyunjoong’s parents had died in a terrible car accident and no other blood relatives would accept him in their home. It was tragic really, their stories, but they had that one thing in common and it had created a bond between them. It was the closest imitation of the water of the womb they would ever experience.
And Hyunjoong, in all of his wayward sense of humor and beneath his “cool” persona, had a big heart hidden within him. Yunho was not willing to compare his own grief to Hyunjoong’s, to the very same brother that had discovered Jaejoong’s suicide.
“Are you okay?” Hyunjoong frowned at the man before him, fingers clenching around the cotton of Hwangbo’s shirt around her waist.
“No,” Yunho admitted. “I’m still trying to cope with Jaejoong’s...death.”
Hyunjoong didn’t say a word, but his brows furrowed and his lips pressed together into a thin line. Yunho would have assumed that he was suppressing the horrible memories of what he’d stumbled upon that morning. But as the seconds ticked by, the more confused Hyunjoong appeared, and the more unsettled Yunho felt.
“Jaejoong?” Hyunjoong echoed after a long, quiet moment of pondering. “Who is that?”
Yunho’s breath caught in his throat as thousands of words grouped together in his mind, things he could say but also the things he couldn’t. He wanted to give Hyunjoong the benefit of the doubt, but who in their right mind would deal with tragedy by suppressing it to the darkest corners of their minds? Certainly not Hyunjoong, not anyone in the Kim family. They had been raised better than that.
Yunho’s stomach churned and lurched, trying to crawl up his throat as Hyunjoong’s question replayed over and over again. He contemplated sitting down with him and telling him that denying Jaejoong’s existence wouldn’t make dealing with the pain of his suicide any easier, but at the same time, something within him held back. It was a rock in his gut, holding his tongue down and his body in place.
“I...” Hesitating, Yunho spared the group one more incredulous glance. “Nevermind,” he muttered.
Everyone handled grief in their own ways, and though Yunho wasn’t sure he himself was handling it at all, he knew it would be wrong of him to criticize Hyunjoong’s own questionable methods.
As Yunho walked away from them, he felt his stomach crawling up his throat and his blood chilled in his veins. He felt every last palpitation of his heart through his entire being, slow but powerful as if it would explode from his chest. It was a feeling that made his throat go dry, his palms clammy and hands shaking like quivering leaves in a storm.
There was something so, so wrong.
*
That night Yunho dreamt in monochrome. He dreamt of darkness as it surrounded him, paradoxically as cold as it was warm, his very being warring between the two stark contrasts. But there was a familiarity in the way the darkness loomed over him, stood by his side, and seemed to smile down upon him. He felt his heart flooding his being with warmth as a wisp of that eerie blackness flickered like flames, beckoning it from the depth of his soul.
Curiosity was only natural. He reached out for the strange wisps and found it slipped through his fingers like lukewarm water, and his hand was even wet as he pulled away. Confusion settled in his chest as the strange water-flame settled on the obscured ground and rippled with each breath Yunho took.
Taking a step back, Yunho was shocked to discover it was everywhere. The black water had overcome him, clogged his senses and trapped him in its depths. Breath escaped him, and when he opened his mouth to scream, it rushed down his throat and filled his lungs before his throat convulsed with a sad effort at swallowing it all first. The first gulp burned in his throat, burned all the way down to his stomach, but he didn’t have time to think or even wince as he kept swallowing until he knew it was all in vain.
In the morning, Yunho awoke with a migraine and a stuffy head, the dream fading with the last vestiges of sleep in the back of his mind. When he rolled over and attempted to sit up, the world around him spun and he found himself somehow on the other side of the bed instead.
It was a fitful time trying to right himself despite his distorted equilibrium, and when he was finally able to stand, making it into the bathroom to pop a couple of Tylenol was an entirely new challenge. He leaned against the wall, hands leading him around corners and keeping him upright. He could barely think straight around the intense pounding and jack-hammering in his skull, but somehow he managed.
Yunho fought with the bottle of Tylenol from the medicine cabinet behind the mirror, catching his seemingly gaunt and sleepless self’s reflection from the corner of his eyes. He swallowed two pills dry just before his legs gave out on him and he slid down the wall, eyes closed and limbs like lead.
Yunho must have sat there for twenty minutes, just long enough for the medicine to affect him. His head cleared, he could feel his toes again, and the migraine receded. He waited a several moments longer before he dared to stand again, to trust his body, before returning to his bedroom. It was cold and stuffy in his room. He turned off the air conditioner before crawling underneath the sheets again, agony rushing through his bloodstream as he imagined the smiling face of his now dead best friend.
On a normal day he’d probably text Jaejoong, tell him that he felt awful, and Jaejoong would be here to suffuse him in his motherly affections. Jaejoong would overreact adorably, would fuss and make him lie in bed as he prepared a hearty breakfast for him...
Oh how much he wanted that right now...
But never again.
Why, Jaejoong? Why did you do it?
Yunho closed his eyes as he remembered the last time he saw Jaejoong with the healthy flush of life. Though he had been withdrawn and not all that like himself, he had been alive and everything had been okay even if it wasn’t. Even if Jaejoong had been pulling away from everyone and everything, even if Jaejoong had been disgruntled about being forced to visit his family over the weekend.
Even if -
How long were you planning this for, Jaejoong?
Jaejoong’s autopsy report told Yunho and his family nothing that they didn’t already know. He’d been steadily drugging himself for a while, and how Yunho had failed to not notice any illness was beyond him. (But you couldn’t have, a voice whispered to him. You couldn’t have because you didn’t see him when he was sick.) The final straw was a fatal dose of something they referred to as the suicide tree, a plant that was well known for its toxins and was infamous for its use throughout history as the drug of choice when it came to assassinating people. It was so easy to slip into someone’s food unnoticed.
Before Yunho knew it, his face was hot and burning with excess of tears. The Jaejoong he’d known and loved for year would have never done this. There was no rhyme or reason to it. The Jaejoong he knew was a man that loved life, was the very embodiment of all things he considered bright and lovely, and all he did was want to help others. He wanted to follow in his father’s footsteps and become a man of the Church, to serve God and spread His word and love to those without it.
The strangest idea occurred to Yunho. He jumped from the comfort and warmth of his bed, pulled on a pair of dirty jeans and dug out a clean t-shirt, and ran out the door. It was a random whim, one he wasn’t sure he should be entertaining, but he couldn’t help it as his body seemed to be moving of its own accord. (That, and he dared not stop himself.)
In almost an hour, Yunho was standing before his best friend’s old dorm room. His heart beat wildly in his chest like a drum, body hesitating as he raised his fist to knock. Why was he doing this? Jaejoong was dead. The only thing he was about to do was make a fool out of himself. He was at Jaejoong’s old dorm, ready to knock as if he expected Jaejoong to open it with bright smiles and sunshine like the past several weeks had never happened.
Instead, what he got was an eyeful of a naked man.
He was a little on the short side, just a couple of inches below Yunho’s own staggering height of 6’1”, and his body was lean and thin and had the barest hints of muscular definition beneath his dark skin. The man stopped and blinked at Yunho, shock rooting him firmly in his place.
“You’re not...”
He wasn’t Jaejoong.
It had only been a couple of weeks and they’d already moved someone else into the dorm.
How could they?
“I’m sorry.”
Yunho ran.
*
Summer came to a sweltering, bittersweet end and brought with it the musk of autumn and the chill of impending winter. With finals upon him, he hadn’t the time to work past his grief. He was still just as hurt as he’d been since the day he found out, his chest ripped apart with the sheer agony being the only thing he felt. University was a welcome distraction, one that filled his mind with stress and worry and knowledge until he forgot about everything else.
The scent of books and their printed pages kept him company when he slept, sometimes in bed, and other times bent awkwardly at his kitchen table where he’d been studying. The end was so close, so near to him he could taste it.
It tasted sour - spoiled.
It must have been well after midnight when Yunho paused to stretch, to stand up and get the blood pumping through his veins again. He thought about calling it a night and going to bed, but as his back popped, with it came the memory of smiles and sunshine that made raw his agony once again.
Jaejoong’s memory was a vicious assailant, pushing him down and holding tight. Yunho knew it was unhealthy the way he could not cope with his best friend’s loss, but he also knew that he had to allow himself the necessary time to grieve. Time he didn’t have. The longer he let it go on, the tighter the specter of Jaejoong’s memories would hold on, the deeper it would dig its claws until it would become a part of him.
Yunho couldn’t live like this. It would drive him insane. Slowly, but surely. Little by little as it screwed into his skin and penetrated his bones...
In the living room there was a portrait placed precariously along a shelf of other knick-knacks, seemingly useless things that Yunho’s mother had insisted upon when he first got the apartment. She said it looked nice and attracted eyes and gave a good impression to guests. In that picture frame was a photo years old, probably from the beginning of high school when he and Jaejoong had known each other for only a couple of years and they were getting closer every day. Yunho remembered Jaejoong’s ridiculously long hair in that picture, the way he posed and how he stuck out his tongue. Yunho remembered laughing so hard at his best friend that he’d thrown his arm over Jaejoong’s shoulder and given him a noogie, telling him how weird he was and thinking about how much he loved that about Jaejoong.
Yet when Yunho looked at the picture frame, he only saw himself. He saw himself standing off to the side with a silly grin, limbs too long and hair looking like he’d stuck his finger in a socket. Yunho used to have the worst trouble trying to get his hair to stay down as a teenager, static electricity loved him too much to let go.
Yunho’s throat constricted and closed in on itself as he realized Jaejoong had disappeared from their photo. The very same photo his mother had taken just because she’d gotten herself a fancy new digital camera and she wanted to try it out, but the three of them had been strangely enamored with the image that they’d gotten it printed and framed.
Jaejoong was fucking gone.
Yunho sank to his knees as he was overwhelmed with a torrential mass of emotions. Fear. Anxiety. Confusion. Jaejoong had been dead for a couple of months and everything was so different.
“No. No, no, no...”
Yunho didn’t sleep easy that night, dreaming of darkness once again. He woke up as bile crawled up his throat, and almost didn’t make it to the toilet in time. He puked until he was dry-heaving and it hurt.
It was going to be a bad day.
*
Later Yunho almost literally ran into Kim Hyunjoong, who had been awfully close and cloyingly affectionate with his new girlfriend by the South Hall.
“Hey,” Hyunjoong said, and Yunho replied with a meager whisper. He still felt terrible from his morning wake-up call and nothing he tried seem to soothe his queasy stomach.
“You look terrible,” Hyunjoong added none too helpfully, the corner of his mouth twitching upward in a poor semblance of a smile. Yunho was aware of his terrible appearance as he had had very little time to himself, just enough to comb his fingers through his wild hair (which didn’t do much to begin with anyway) and pick a shirt and a pair of jeans off the bedroom floor to wear. There hadn’t been enough time to even see if they were clean or not.
Yunho knew he looked like a hot mess but giving a damn about it was beyond him at this point. He felt like shit.
“Are you okay?” Hyunjoong asked again, lips pressed in a thin line. Yunho recognized the concern and felt his stomach lurch, felt himself yearning with the need to just talk.
No, he was not okay.
“Do you have a minute?” Yunho asked in a low voice, gaze flitting toward Hwangbo. The other man also looked to his girlfriend, and they shared a meaningful look before she departed.
“What do you need?”
“I need to be completely serious,” Yunho started, slowly, hesitantly, because admitting this to himself, let alone out loud to Hyunjoong, was about to open a can of worms he wasn’t sure he was ready to face yet. “I can’t...”
“Can’t what, Yunho? What’s going on?” Hyunjoong’s concern gave Yunho the last courage he needed to let the words spill forth from his lips. It was so easy for the whole family to accept the death of their youngest and dearest when they all had faith, belief in God and Heaven and that everything was going to be okay. Belief that death was just the true beginning of the afterlife, real life. Yunho remembered Pastor Kim’s heartfelt sermon and couldn’t help but feel overwhelmed by his profound sadness and grief.
Yunho didn’t have that faith. Yunho didn’t know whether he believed in God or not, whether or not he believed there was life after death.
“I’m not okay, Hyunjoong... I’m having a really hard time dealing with Jaejoong’s death...”
Hyunjoong’s brows furrowed as he frowned again. “Hey, look, everyone goes through loss at some point in their lives and sometimes it’s hard. This Jaejoong, he was important to you right?”
This Jaejoong, he was important to you right?
Yunho rubbed a hand over his stomach to quell the torrential squall of sickness as it threatened to erupt and overwhelm him.
“Why are you talking like you don’t know him...?” Yunho whispered his incredulous question.
Hyunjoong gave him a look, a dark look, a confused look. “Because I don’t, Yunho. I don’t know who this Jaejoong person is and I don’t know why you keep expecting me to.”
“Because he was your brother!” Yunho exploded. “You mean to tell me that you found his dead body and you’re just going to pretend he never existed? I thought I was handling it bad, but it seems like you need some help.”
A few passers-by glanced between the two men at Yunho’s outburst, but they moved on without a second glance. Every second passed by, thick and terse and filled with electricity as their emotions filled the space between them. Hyunjoong squared his shoulders, jaw tense and posture straight as he attempted to tower over Yunho, but that intimidation tactic was hard when Hyunjoong was a couple of inches shorter.
“I know you’re studying psychology, Yunho, but I think you’re the one with the problems,” he began, voice low and dark and angry. “I never had a brother named Jaejoong. I don’t know who the fuck you’re talking about. I think you are the one with some serious issues here and you need to have your noggin looked at before you start taking it out on other people. You’re lucky that I’m a nice enough person to tell you this before I tell you to fuck off.
“Have - a - nice - day.” Hyunjoong ended his tirade by punctuating the ordinarily pleasant phrase with all of his displeasure, his anger, at Yunho, before turning on his heels and disappearing into the steady throng of college students. Those words carried with them a note of finality, the feeling that whatever friendship could have existed between them was no longer possible.
Yunho was stunned. Of all people, he had never expected this from Hyunjoong. He had never expected that Hyunjoong would be so merciless to him, still locked tight in denial and unable to free himself. Unwilling to accept the kind hand of others.
And yet, Hyunjoong’s words had managed to put that awful thread of doubt into the back of his mind.
*
A noxious plume of smoke permeated the air between the two boys, spinning into abstract shapes before fading into dusk. Yunho found the smell nauseating at best, deplorable otherwise. His stomach curled as he spared his best friend a look of stark disapproval.
“That stuff is disgusting, how the hell can you stand it?” Yunho asked.
Jaejoong, smiling through a mouthful of a filter, inhaled before answering, “It makes me feel good.”
“It makes you stink,” Yunho shot back. “It kills your lungs and your tastebuds and your everything else, and it stinks.”
A chuckle spilled from Jaejoong’s mouth as he walked ahead of his best friend, shaking his head. It wasn’t a big deal, really, and why the hell did Yunho have to sound like such a goody two shoes about it?
“If it’s really so bad for us, why is it still legal? Why do so many people do it?” Jaejoong asked, inhaling another virulent plume.
Yunho made a face as he put some distance between them.
“Because there are chemicals in it that your body becomes addicted to, and that dependency is what keeps things the way they are,” he bit out, spiteful as he kicked a stone across the street.
The two of them were just a couple of seventeen year old teenagers walking around the street at night, thankful for the secluded location of their gated housing community. The whole area was rife with the scent of money but it was nice and it had privacy reminiscent of the days Yunho had spent growing up in Gwangju.
“Wanna try?” Jaejoong offered the cigarette to Yunho, his lips quirked upward.
“No,” Yunho said, but he snatched it from Jaejoong’s fingers anyway and inhaled as much smoke as he could.
And it burned. It burned from his tongue to his chest and his whole body wracked with coughs as his body forcefully expelled the unwanted chemicals from it. He could barely breathe, eyes watering and throat convulsing as he gagged and dry-heaved.
“Are you okay?” Jaejoong’s face swam into focus and then out again as tears spilled over. He yanked the still-burning cigarette from Yunho’s fingers and stomped it out on the street, wiping the tears from Yunho’s eyes as he cooed to soothe his irritated lungs.
When Yunho’s coughing fit began to calm down, he could hear Jaejoong in near hysterics above him. “Oh my god, I’m so sorry I won’t ever do it again I didn’t know, it just looked cool and I - ”
“Good,” Yunho rasped, pushing his best friend away. “If you ever smoke again I will kick your ass. This sucks.”
“Are you gonna be okay?” Jaejoong frowned, a hand rubbing up and down the broad slope of Yunho's back.
Yunho took a deep breath of clean, crisp air and revelled in its sweetness. “Only if you promise me you really won’t ever smoke again.”
“Deal.” Jaejoong’s lips twisted upward in a cynical smile as he reached into his pocket and tossed the entire pack of cigarettes into a nearby trash bin. His best friend was right, they were gross and that was not something he wanted to waste the rest of his life on.
“Now we’re both gonna be okay,” Yunho laughed. “And we’ll live long, prosperous lives together.”
“Double deal.”
*
It was, by far, not the most intelligent ideas that Yunho had ever had, but he felt it was the right thing to do. He felt it was necessary to do. Clutched in his hand he held his mobile phone, a familiar phone number glaring back at him from the touch screen surface. He hesitated, uncertainties holding him back, but when he remembered his confrontation with Hyunjoong he knew he had to do it.
Pressing the green call button, Yunho waited with baited breath as he tried to figure out what to say. Was it even his place to say anything? He wondered, doubted again, but by the time the Pastor’s docile wife had answered the phone, he knew he couldn’t go back.
“Yunho?” the woman greeted familiarly, without the warmth he was accustomed to, but instead filled with a confusion that chilled him.
He was intruding, and though he refused to acknowledge it yet, he could feel it in his bones.
“Do you have a few moments?” Yunho asked as he began pacing the length of his living room. He listened to the woman shuffle in the background before she spoke into the line again, and Yunho just let it all out.
He told her about his angst, his troubles, and his fears. He told her about Hyunjoong, about how worried he was for the other man at his stark denials, his refusal to accept Jaejoong’s death in the way he pretended he’d never been alive.
“Yunho?” Mrs. Kim’s tone stopped him dead in his tracks, and a lump of dread settled in his throat. “Yunho, honey, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t know who Jaejoong is and I can tell you I never adopted a son by that name. Hyunjoongie was the last one.”
Yunho nearly choked as a rush of hot tears stained his cheeks. Was this really happening? Was the whole family denying Jaejoong’s existence? Or was he going insane?
“MiJin - ” Yunho gasped.
“Yunho, are you okay? Are you really okay? You were always such a quiet boy in church and your parents were always worried about you. You know we’re always willing to help, but I can’t help you when you’re not making any sense...”
Why did they say that Yunho was the one that didn’t make sense when it was really them? Why were they denying the existence of their own son? What was it about Jaejoong and his death that was so easy to push away like it had never happened?
Yunho didn’t understand, and he needed to. He needed to understand this madness.
“MiJin - ”
Mrs. Kim scolded, “Yunho don’t be so impolite - ”
“This is not okay. I don’t know what’s going on, but this isn’t okay. He was your son. He may not have been your flesh and blood but Jaejoong was your son and when he smiled he could light up a whole room. Now he’s dead and you’re all pretending he doesn’t exist? Why would you do such a thing?” Yunho’s tirade trailed off into an incredulous whisper at the end, his heart burning from within his chest as he thought about the bright-eyed man that was his other half, that he feared he would not be able to live without only to realize these fears were truth.
Kim MiJin cleared her breath, and that’s when he heard the sudden chill in her voice, “Yunho, I pray God helps you because there is something awfully wrong with you right now. If this is all you have to say, please don’t call my home or speak to anyone of us again.”
She hung up on him.
Kim MiJin actually hung up on him.
Yunho remembered the photo and Jaejoong’s disappearance from it and felt sick.
“No...”
*
Yunho spent his winter break studying for the final semester of college and, against his better ideas, decided it would be best to see a therapist after all. She was a thin woman with strict, stern features but kind eyes that softened the years of her face. She was nice, and she listened, which was all Yunho really needed at this point. He needed someone to listen to him and believe him, someone to reassure him that he wasn’t going insane.
Yet a part of him believed that he was, bit by bit. Slowly, but surely. It was a thought in the back of his mind, one that drifted to and fro with his every breath.
You’re going to lose your mind. Why else would you only remember a dead person no one else does?
It wasn’t a conspiracy theory.
It wasn’t a horror movie.
Jung Yunho really did fear that he might be going insane because he was the only person who remembered Jaejoong.
The strange thing was, however, that Yunho did not reveal this thought to his therapist. He told her of his aching grief, the agony that arose in his bosom at the mere thought of his best friend who had long since been lost for life. She listened. She was sympathetic. She cared.
That was all Yunho needed to know he wasn’t going crazy.
(But you really are, aren’t you?)
*
Despite having seen a therapist and gaining some pretty good tips on how to deal with grief, Yunho just couldn’t. There was no way he would be able to accept the death of his best friend, of one of his most beloved people that he had never been able to see his life without. Jaejoong was like the sun, guiding him through the day to day ventures of life. Without him, Yunho’s world was dark and he couldn’t see. He couldn’t move.
He needed his sunlight again.
Before Yunho knew it, he was a college graduate and Jaejoong’s death was over a year into the past. The worst part was graduation day was on the one year anniversary to the date that Jaejoong’s body was discovered on his bathroom floor, and as valedictorian of his class, he made sure he gave a heartfelt speech about his best friend that ripped open the wound in his chest anew.
By the time he walked off stage his eyes burned, his throat was closing in on itself, and he swore he could feel the hot blood pulsing out of his broken heart, down his chest and all over his cap and gown.
It hurt so much, so fucking much Yunho thought if there was every any perfect moment to lose his sanity, it would be this one, right here in front of hundreds of people all with their eyes on him.
In the back, Yunho locked himself into a bathroom stall and curled up by the toilet before he allowed himself the freedom to cry. He’d been doing so, so good and now the only thing he knew was pain. The only thing he saw was Jaejoong’s eyes, Jaejoong’s smile, and if Yunho took a breath deep enough, he swore he could scent his signature Bvlgari musk that had been a present from his dearest brother, Heechul.
The Kims no longer talked to him, nor did they dare to spare him any glances when they happened to be near each other in public. It hurt to think the family he had once known so well had become this, all because of the death of their youngest.
That night Yunho went home and he lost himself. His sorrows drowned him as he cried and cried, as he threw the nearest object he could reach and screamed out his agony. He heard something shatter on the floor but didn’t think twice about it as he sunk to his knees, tears blurring his vision and soaking his face, his torso forced to the ground by the weight of his pain.
“Why?” Yunho whimpered. “Why, why, why?”
Why did you leave me Jaejoong?
Why didn’t you share your burden instead of taking your own life so cruelly?
Did it hurt? Did you regret it in your last moments?
Before Yunho knew it, he was lucid again and could see himself holding a glass shard tightly between his fingers. The sharpened edges dug into his skin and hurt, a thin rivulet of blood dripping slowly onto the dark carpeted floor beneath him.
In that moment, Yunho considered taking his own life to be with his best friend.
But he didn’t. He couldn’t. Something held him back, like a phantom murmur in the back of his mind that reminded him too much of the life that Jaejoong had once had. The life that Yunho would now have to live for him.
That night, he threw himself onto his bed and did not rest easy.
*
Yunho was not a person that tended to remember his dreams. On average he forgot them, the last strange remnants disappearing into a forgotten abyss somewhere as he fought against the last vestiges of sleep. There were times, however, when he had particularly vivid dreams and could remember parts of them. Or he could remember that he’d had a dream and how vivid it had been, but details would always elude him.
This, on the other hand, was going to be a dream he would remember from start to finish.
This dream would start with a whisper, soft and sweet against the shell of his ear. It would start with a low hum and the tickle of hair brushing against his back and his left arm, caressing him in waves with firm hands over his shoulders.
It would start with a woman, naked, as she rested upon him. He could feel the heat of her body as she sat with her knees on either side of his hips, body dipping low as her hands glided from his lower back and up to his shoulders with a constant, firm pressure. Every worry, every thought - gone.
“Feel good?” she asked, hands caressing the rising slope of Yunho’s ass. A hot wave of lust tore through him, potent and heady as her nails ran up and down his back.
“Feels nice,” Yunho hummed, turning on his side so he could face her.
What he saw should have made his heart stop in his chest, but instead made something in his gut tighten as another wave of heat crashed over him.
She was beautiful, lithe with a narrow waist, small, but supple breasts and pale skin. Dark curls fell over her shoulders in silken waves, framing a fey face with an all too familiar coquettish smile and wide eyes. Unlike what he was used to seeing, broad shoulders and a firm jaw, Yunho saw soft curves and a pointed chin.
He could feel himself twitch and watched her smile grow in return, body curving into an arc as she threw her head back and moaned with Jaejoong’s face, hips rolling as she let out a quiet moan.
There was no way this was not a dream.
“Do you know how long I’ve been waiting for this?” Jae asked, her voice a low guttural purr that had him twitching again. (Yunho couldn’t bring himself to call this beautiful dream girl Jaejoong, he just could not, but fuck she looked so much like him.) It was almost embarrassing how much his body responded to the sight of a beautiful woman in his lap and ready for the taking.
Jae leaned down, tongue peeking from between her plush lips, and let the soft swell of her breasts drag against Yunho’s chest, pulling with it a potent bout of lust that possessed him so fiercely he nearly lost himself.
She has Jaejoong’s face.
Damp heat settled at the hollow of Yunho’s throat as Jae licked a thick stripe up his neck, along the angle of his jaw, and finally settling at the corner of his mouth. Her lips twitched before she pressed against him for a kiss and it was sweet and hot and he melted in her arms.
She murmured against Yunho’s mouth, whispering sweet nothings to him as he finally let himself give in to the one thing he had always wanted. Large hands followed the curves of her body, outlining every last dip and curve and spreading warmth between them. She kissed him again, this time her tongue dipping inside of his mouth for a taste, to tease. Yunho knew he was helpless to her whims as he gave in, his hands curling in her thick hair at the base of her neck.
Jae shifted, rubbing against him before she reached down, fingers grasping him tight as he slipped into her molten depths. It was slick and hot and tight around him, pulsing with every smooth roll of her hips above him.
She whimpered, eyes closed and head thrown back as her hips settle into a pattern of rise and fall, pleasure ebbing and flowing from her body and into his. At this point Yunho had completely lost himself, entranced by the familiar thickness of her mouth as her tongue swept out, teeth digging into the lower lip. Her nose, her cheekbones, her eyes - everything about her, was Jaejoong, and Yunho didn’t understand nor did he want to.
He just wanted to feel.
He just wanted to love and be loved.
Their bodies moved together in a beautiful harmony, his hips rolling up as hers dropped down and back again. The strain in her thighs became evident after several long, beautiful moments of pleasure, and Yunho was astounded by the need to share as much with her as he could. He pulled her down until they were chest to chest, the swell of her breasts tempting him until he distracted himself by pulling at her hair again. Her head jerked back, eyes closed again as she let out a sinful, dirty sound that made his dick hard as a rock inside of her. She laid there above him, her hips rolling in small waves as he took the lead of their carnal embrace, cheek pressed against Yunho’s as her hot, gasping breaths sound next to his ear.
“Please,” she begged, a hand sliding between their sweaty bodies to rub against her clit. Yunho flipped them over, pressing her down on her back as he slid right back inside her depths with a harsh thrust. She nearly screamed, body jolted from the force alone as her fingers worked fast to bring her the bliss she so desperately sought.
Yunho could feel his orgasm building up inside of his belly, a pressure, light at first, then growing in intensity with every slide back into her that pulled bit by bit of his sanity away from him.
She has Jaejoong’s face.
Eyes closed, Yunho took a moment to remember his friend and found it much too easy to picture Jaejoong and his hard, solid body instead of this soft and curvy feminine one. It was that thought - an instant he swore he actually saw it - he last remembered when pleasure blinded him as his orgasm swept him away with a torrential force. His hips stuttered, whole body going still as he rode wave after wave of his orgasm with a short, shallow thrust into her pliant body.
Beneath him, she whispered soothingly as her fingers ran up and down his back, lips tracing the echo of his heartbeat in his throat. With each pulse of his release into her, Yunho felt himself growing weaker and weaker still, eyes half-lid with exhaustion. He tried to pull away from her, but her legs around his waist held him in place.
"Sshhh," she murmured. "You're okay, you've done so well, baby. Better than I thought you would..."
Everything went dark.
*
Yunho woke up to the uncomfortable sensation of dried come on his stomach and the incessant blaring of his alarm clock. Still half asleep, he jumped out of bed and slammed his fist on the annoying thing.
Except the sound did not stop, and Yunho had to fight against the temptation of darkness again as he peeled open his eyes and rubbed away the last grains of sleep. There was something off about the air around him, a disconcerting quality that had him speculating his surroundings with suspicion.
Nothing felt right anymore. And it didn’t help that he felt like he hadn’t slept a wink last night.
That dream, though. Oh, that dream....
Yunho was no stranger to wet dreams, having gone through a vicious and embarrassing cycle when he was in his early teenage years. He’d hated leaving messes in his bed that he would try to hide as he cleaned up the next morning, avoiding suspicious looks from his mother and his little sister as he swam in a pool of shame. He couldn’t stand how that experience had left him feeling uncomfortable in his own skin, like things in his life were completely out of control. This feeling was no different, though he had long since made his peace with it.
Now it was just a minor irritant.
Still, looking back on his years as a teenager, Yunho had never had a wet dream that vivid before. Hell, he’d never had a dream that he’d remembered with such startling clarity, ever.
As crazy as it sounded, he found himself deeply unsettled by it. Something just wasn’t right. It was too real, too vivid, and he couldn’t help the way his stomach curled when he thought that the object of his nocturnal affections had been none other than a twistedly beautiful, and very female, Jaejoong. Yunho had no doubts his friend would have looked exactly like that should he have been born a woman, beautiful and lithe and soft. If Jaejoong had any sin, it was the sin of vanity. He loved himself too much, focused too much on his appearance and had a complicated night and morning ritual with a cream for this and a cream for that included.
When they were teenagers, Jaejoong had gone through a slight rebellious streak that had his hair growing just a little past his shoulders. It had a natural wave to it, not completely straight, and the female in his dream had had hair that went to the small of her back in gentle curls, as if she had braided her hair when it was wet and let it dry before taking it out.
In his twenty-three years of life, Yunho had dated and had multiple relationships, none of which ever became serious. He’d never had sex with any of them because it had never been something he was interested in, and yet the thought of his attraction to the feminine Jaejoong had his body singing a dirge in the name of lust, and with it came a frightening thought that settled too easy into his skin. As if he’d known it all along, and now it was time to finally admit it out loud.
Yunho had loved Jaejoong. With every last fiber of his being.
Jaejoong had been the other half to Yunho’s whole, the one person whom Yunho could not see his life continuing peacefully without. Now that Jaejoong was really and truly gone, Yunho’s life was still held together but only by threadbare seams, seams he continually refortified whenever a single one snapped before the others could follow. On the inside, Yunho was a mess. A disaster.
And he loved Jaejoong.
The most terrifying thing of all about this was that Yunho knew his unrequitted and unacknowledged love was the sole reason for his suffering. But now that he knew, now that he had accepted the truth into his heart, it hurt even more to think about Jaejoong.
There were a lot of things in life that Yunho had not yet given much thought to, and rather unfortunately, this was one of them. He knew what the majority of his friends and his family thought about such things, even all of society as was meticulously drilled into their brains since youth, but he had not given himself the time to work out his own personal opinion.
Dread coiled in Yunho’s stomach as he wondered if this made him a sick man, a horrible person. He wondered if this meant he needed help. He wondered if this meant his family, his friends, everyone he’d ever known, would leave him. He wondered if they might stay by his side.
But most of all, he wondered what it meant.
Love, a voice whispered in the back of his mind. It means love.
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