trinka
yunjae everlasting secret contest entry
jaejoong/yunho
angst/fantasy
r
2172 words
Can you hear it, the sound of nothing? Of white walls, of filtered light through windows barred, the stark sound of your own heartbeat in your ears. Now come in closer, closer still. Is anyone looking?
You can’t really be too sure, the way the shadows flirt with corners, whether or not anyone is really listening. But you are, aren’t you?
Shh.
Sit by me, don’t make a sound. Closer, lean in closer still if you can. Can you hear me?
They don’t believe me.
Not one sentence, not even a word, no matter how hard I try to tell them.
Now listen carefully, I’m going to tell you a secret.
-
Finding Yunho takes a while, maybe a little more but Jaejoong doesn’t really mind, not when he has all the time in the world and beyond it. Shifting through the dust of a hundred worlds, a thousand cities dying edged with the last breaths of men only to find him standing on a street curb one rainy Wednesday in some nameless city, waiting for the last bus home.
I think I know you.
I’m sorry?
Overhead, the light of watching streetlamps flicker, slow buzz of electricity flirting with tangled wires. The bus comes and leaves, empty, driver pulling away from the curbside with narrowed eyes at the man with the confused face, looking at something behind the night air.
Don’t be, Jaejoong says softly and drags Yunho down with him through the puddles of murky rain on the pavement, right on to the other side of what ifs.
-
Jaejoong thinks he understands humans a little, why the ones he used to bring over would cower by the wall, eyes wide and hands shaking. This one is no different save for the fact that he drips muddy puddle water onto the floor, shivers more from fear than the cold.
Are you afraid of me?
I-if I said n-n-no, would it ch-change anything?
Complex, fickle little things; with wants and needs and fears constantly changing, differing from one to the next. He’s learnt one or two of them by now, about how they need to be fed,
(His name was Changmin, all long limbs and defined angles that sharpened with every day Jaejoong dragged him through. Two, maybe three weeks before he faded from razor thin to nothing and Jaejoong remembers throwing the body into the sea.)
how you shouldn’t ever forget about them,
(His name was Junsu, all sunshine eyes and summer smiles that lighted up this dark little corner of where the wild things lie. Centuries for seconds and time had fluttered, stumbled by on crippled wings. Jaejoong returned to an empty room with rotting bones.)
about how their greatest fear will always be of the unknown.
That is not my decision to make.
Jaejoong kneels in front of Yunho, makes each wet patch on the floor and on his clothes close in on itself slowly, like rain falling in reverse. Stays until he’s stopped shaking.
My name is Jaejoong, he finally says, something quiet behind those words making Yunho meet his eyes.
Now you have no reason to be afraid of me.
-
This time around with Yunho, Jaejoong learns about their fixation with questions, with wanting to know and understand and pry everything apart with their messy tools until they can’t put it back together again.
Who are you?
What is this?
Where am I?
When can I go back?
Jaejoong is vague at the very best, says Never with the hint of a smile as he takes Yunho by the arm, leads them through long grass and onto pebbled beaches barefooted.
The seas here are white, the color of blue tinged summer clouds, cold enough to make Yunho clutch back at Jaejoong when the waves creep slow towards his feet and later, with Jaejoong teaching him how to fly from the edges of sea cliffs with their feet on the ground, Yunho can’t figure out which question Jaejoong had answered.
-
I’ll only answer the right questions, human.
Define a right question.
There is a pause and a warm wind is blowing steady from the inland, ruffling their hair, driving Yunho closer to the white waves for a cold sort of comfort. Jaejoong follows in his footprints, leaves none of his own behind.
You ask me who I am when you actually want to know what I am.
Then fine, answer me now. What are you?
The smell of sand and sea and the water here is like glass, going over his head as Jaejoong pulls him underwater, laughing.
-
Of course he never told me, probably couldn’t if he had wanted to but I think I know, I think I can feel it.
He’s the colour of winter skies at sunrise, he’s the sound of first snow falling, clouds playing in the sun. He’s the wind in your hair on rainy days, a shadow by the road when you drive home on unfamiliar roads, he’s how meeting the same stranger twice, thrice feels. Déjà vu, the dream that comes back to you in the middle of the afternoon, the way sleep clings to you on too early weekends.
He’s the space between the sky and the horizon, the things secrets are made of.
He is.
He is.
He is all that and nothing I’ve ever felt like before.
-
It doesn’t feel like it but time does pass here, in leaps and bounds and inexplicable ways that Yunho finds he couldn’t care less about anymore. The hours that Jaejoong disappears, days on end sometimes and Yunho finds himself missing the fey
(of course he is, he reasons to himself when Jaejoong isn’t around to take up all the space in his head, what other explanation is there)
man with unruly hair that never seems to grow past skimming the tops of his shoulders, with coal black eyes that tell no lies if you ask no questions. There must be days here too, given how every sunset Jaejoong shows him always starts at a different place, shadows lengthening this way one day and the other the next.
Are you ever going to give me a straight answer?
Are you ever going to stop asking me questions?
Frustrating, perhaps, but the times Jaejoong just stays put, somewhat content to stargaze with Yunho from grassy hilltops and try to get Yunho to explain the concept of satellites to him,
(how can anything be brighter than stars?)
it doesn’t really matter that much.
-
Yunho stays with Jaejoong until the skies shed their blue, take up shifting garments of low clouds for show instead. The sea is too cold to go into today.
Will you ever let me go?
Were you under the impression that I’ve been holding you here against your wishes?
Answer the question, Jaejoong.
Answer mine, human, and I might consider yours.
The fire in front of them burns low and Jaejoong makes it flare again with a careless flick of his fingers, makes ash swirl up in pretty patterns.
No.
And no, Jaejoong concludes after he’s stopped laughing, the sound ethereal as it echoes off high ceilings and bounces off vine clad walls.
Then will you let me go back?
Being with Jaejoong is like drawing three breaths in a time frame meant for one, heart pushed to its limits, gasping when you can’t catch up, a drug-like kind of euphoric high when you can. The colours here are too bright, the sky to near, everything far too real.
Is that the same as letting you go?
Yunho is silent, staring into the flames that Jaejoong had drawn out from midwinter air.
Not if you come with me.
-
Glamour he called it, another one of his pretty words for something as simple as shape shifting. Simple, simple to him of course, he never really stood out to me back there, not when every blade of grass, every grain of sand felt like a work of art. But put him here, with our dirty sidewalks and smog skylines, he was more beautiful than you could ever possibly imagine
He would have the most beautiful eyes, he would, the colour of burnt copper one day, back to his original black the next. I never really liked those, it made it feel like he could see into you but you never could him.
-
It’s the same bus stop with the same flickering streetlamps, the same bus pulling away and it could have probably have been the same night, same everything.
But how…when-…
Why do humans always ask questions, Jaejoong sighs and refuses to say anything else until Yunho takes him home, the both of them walking under evenly spaced out patches of light through a sleeping city, one with stumbling feet unused to cracked pavements, another with shaky hands that run over every surface they pass, both quite unbelieving.
Yunho lives in a small, two room apartment with a plastic kitchen table, one creaky bed with worn out springs, peeling paint on the walls, bare floors.
It’s a change, Jaejoong says in that quiet voice of his and sits in the corner with the least metal, getting mildew and dust all over himself. There’re leftovers in the fridge and Yunho throws those out, rinses the chipped mug in the sink. Cleans the tabletop with a rag as Jaejoong watches him, eyes tearing holes into his back and Yunho throws the cloth into the sink, goes to Jaejoong in his corner and kisses him on the lips.
It’s a change.
-
If Jaejoong could dictate which way the wind blew, how far the sea would stretch on his side of reality, he can’t do nothing more than watch and maybe learn a thing or two about these humans here. He doesn’t question Yunho when he leaves for work and Yunho doesn’t tell him where he’s going, something akin to that odd compromise from when time didn’t come labeled with names like minutes or hours.
The traffic passes outside Yunho’s apartment window and Jaejoong watches it go, uses the daytime hours trying to figure out what this love thing Yunho keeps talking about is, the nighttime ones finding out.
-
Six months, one week, four days and seventeen hours pass, Yunho coming back home everyday to fold himself against Jaejoong, breathing lighter, heart beating faster for this little dark fairytale he’s managed to steal away.
Do you love me?
Will you ever learn, human?
Their bodies fit all wrong but Jaejoong insists on sharing the bed with Yunho, closes his eyes when the lights get turned off and Yunho kisses the base of his neck, twines their fingers together.
Do you love me?
Slow, unsure, withheld, there’re so many ways to describe it. Like flying with your feet on the ground. Jaejoong holds onto Yunho’s shoulders the very first time and this pain thing is as new as this pleasure one, the sound of traffic outside the window suddenly so very far away. He keeps his eyes open from then on, watches Yunho make him feel, feel things, like kissing the bruise he left from last time on his hip, fucking him slow with his back up against one peeling wall.
Do you?
-
I did.
I do.
More than anything.
I always, always will.
-
The city smog hangs heavy, shrouds the top of skyscrapers (I could touch the sky without the help of metal, Jaejoong says and helps to close the windows, draw the curtains), twists its way through cracks. Makes him curl up longer beside Yunho in the morning.
Will you go back with me?
He doesn’t say anything but the metal is killing him, making his glamour crack in places, the light in his eyes dull to embers. Yunho will miss this, the smell of wet asphalt, the metallic glint of cars on the road and he tells Jaejoong, watching the city skyline light itself up from the roof of the apartment building.
Will you stay?
-
He said he’d come back, when the cars have rusted for me, when I’m tired of the rain. I’ve tried, you know. To stop the cars from moving, to stop the roads from going where they’re supposed to lead to, tried so hard to stop the clouds from gathering.
They still don’t believe me. They won’t let me go. You’re crazy, they say but they’ve never seen sunsets over white seas, they’ve never walked on the other side of what ifs. They’ve never known something so real that it even terrifies you sometimes.
You do believe me, don’t you?
He’ll find me, it’s taking a while, these metal cuffs may have something to do with it, that flimsy, useless metal door too.
But he’ll find me.
He’ll find me.
Can you hear it? The sound of nothing.
Listen closer to what’s hiding behind it, can you hear it now?
Waves. Wind. The sound of what a secret is made of.
He’ll find me.
Shh, don’t tell anyone.
[fin]
a/n--> obvsly didn't get even close to winning but s'ok, thoughts are amazing love since I'd like to know where I went wrong and etc :D other entries are all here ♥ oh and though I highly doubt loveclouds will see this and this is slightly irrelevant but Trinka is actually a really great song off her really great Homin fanmix
jaejoong/yunho
angst/fantasy
r
2172 words
Can you hear it, the sound of nothing? Of white walls, of filtered light through windows barred, the stark sound of your own heartbeat in your ears. Now come in closer, closer still. Is anyone looking?
You can’t really be too sure, the way the shadows flirt with corners, whether or not anyone is really listening. But you are, aren’t you?
Shh.
Sit by me, don’t make a sound. Closer, lean in closer still if you can. Can you hear me?
They don’t believe me.
Not one sentence, not even a word, no matter how hard I try to tell them.
Now listen carefully, I’m going to tell you a secret.
-
Finding Yunho takes a while, maybe a little more but Jaejoong doesn’t really mind, not when he has all the time in the world and beyond it. Shifting through the dust of a hundred worlds, a thousand cities dying edged with the last breaths of men only to find him standing on a street curb one rainy Wednesday in some nameless city, waiting for the last bus home.
I think I know you.
I’m sorry?
Overhead, the light of watching streetlamps flicker, slow buzz of electricity flirting with tangled wires. The bus comes and leaves, empty, driver pulling away from the curbside with narrowed eyes at the man with the confused face, looking at something behind the night air.
Don’t be, Jaejoong says softly and drags Yunho down with him through the puddles of murky rain on the pavement, right on to the other side of what ifs.
-
Jaejoong thinks he understands humans a little, why the ones he used to bring over would cower by the wall, eyes wide and hands shaking. This one is no different save for the fact that he drips muddy puddle water onto the floor, shivers more from fear than the cold.
Are you afraid of me?
I-if I said n-n-no, would it ch-change anything?
Complex, fickle little things; with wants and needs and fears constantly changing, differing from one to the next. He’s learnt one or two of them by now, about how they need to be fed,
(His name was Changmin, all long limbs and defined angles that sharpened with every day Jaejoong dragged him through. Two, maybe three weeks before he faded from razor thin to nothing and Jaejoong remembers throwing the body into the sea.)
how you shouldn’t ever forget about them,
(His name was Junsu, all sunshine eyes and summer smiles that lighted up this dark little corner of where the wild things lie. Centuries for seconds and time had fluttered, stumbled by on crippled wings. Jaejoong returned to an empty room with rotting bones.)
about how their greatest fear will always be of the unknown.
That is not my decision to make.
Jaejoong kneels in front of Yunho, makes each wet patch on the floor and on his clothes close in on itself slowly, like rain falling in reverse. Stays until he’s stopped shaking.
My name is Jaejoong, he finally says, something quiet behind those words making Yunho meet his eyes.
Now you have no reason to be afraid of me.
-
This time around with Yunho, Jaejoong learns about their fixation with questions, with wanting to know and understand and pry everything apart with their messy tools until they can’t put it back together again.
Who are you?
What is this?
Where am I?
When can I go back?
Jaejoong is vague at the very best, says Never with the hint of a smile as he takes Yunho by the arm, leads them through long grass and onto pebbled beaches barefooted.
The seas here are white, the color of blue tinged summer clouds, cold enough to make Yunho clutch back at Jaejoong when the waves creep slow towards his feet and later, with Jaejoong teaching him how to fly from the edges of sea cliffs with their feet on the ground, Yunho can’t figure out which question Jaejoong had answered.
-
I’ll only answer the right questions, human.
Define a right question.
There is a pause and a warm wind is blowing steady from the inland, ruffling their hair, driving Yunho closer to the white waves for a cold sort of comfort. Jaejoong follows in his footprints, leaves none of his own behind.
You ask me who I am when you actually want to know what I am.
Then fine, answer me now. What are you?
The smell of sand and sea and the water here is like glass, going over his head as Jaejoong pulls him underwater, laughing.
-
Of course he never told me, probably couldn’t if he had wanted to but I think I know, I think I can feel it.
He’s the colour of winter skies at sunrise, he’s the sound of first snow falling, clouds playing in the sun. He’s the wind in your hair on rainy days, a shadow by the road when you drive home on unfamiliar roads, he’s how meeting the same stranger twice, thrice feels. Déjà vu, the dream that comes back to you in the middle of the afternoon, the way sleep clings to you on too early weekends.
He’s the space between the sky and the horizon, the things secrets are made of.
He is.
He is.
He is all that and nothing I’ve ever felt like before.
-
It doesn’t feel like it but time does pass here, in leaps and bounds and inexplicable ways that Yunho finds he couldn’t care less about anymore. The hours that Jaejoong disappears, days on end sometimes and Yunho finds himself missing the fey
(of course he is, he reasons to himself when Jaejoong isn’t around to take up all the space in his head, what other explanation is there)
man with unruly hair that never seems to grow past skimming the tops of his shoulders, with coal black eyes that tell no lies if you ask no questions. There must be days here too, given how every sunset Jaejoong shows him always starts at a different place, shadows lengthening this way one day and the other the next.
Are you ever going to give me a straight answer?
Are you ever going to stop asking me questions?
Frustrating, perhaps, but the times Jaejoong just stays put, somewhat content to stargaze with Yunho from grassy hilltops and try to get Yunho to explain the concept of satellites to him,
(how can anything be brighter than stars?)
it doesn’t really matter that much.
-
Yunho stays with Jaejoong until the skies shed their blue, take up shifting garments of low clouds for show instead. The sea is too cold to go into today.
Will you ever let me go?
Were you under the impression that I’ve been holding you here against your wishes?
Answer the question, Jaejoong.
Answer mine, human, and I might consider yours.
The fire in front of them burns low and Jaejoong makes it flare again with a careless flick of his fingers, makes ash swirl up in pretty patterns.
No.
And no, Jaejoong concludes after he’s stopped laughing, the sound ethereal as it echoes off high ceilings and bounces off vine clad walls.
Then will you let me go back?
Being with Jaejoong is like drawing three breaths in a time frame meant for one, heart pushed to its limits, gasping when you can’t catch up, a drug-like kind of euphoric high when you can. The colours here are too bright, the sky to near, everything far too real.
Is that the same as letting you go?
Yunho is silent, staring into the flames that Jaejoong had drawn out from midwinter air.
Not if you come with me.
-
Glamour he called it, another one of his pretty words for something as simple as shape shifting. Simple, simple to him of course, he never really stood out to me back there, not when every blade of grass, every grain of sand felt like a work of art. But put him here, with our dirty sidewalks and smog skylines, he was more beautiful than you could ever possibly imagine
He would have the most beautiful eyes, he would, the colour of burnt copper one day, back to his original black the next. I never really liked those, it made it feel like he could see into you but you never could him.
-
It’s the same bus stop with the same flickering streetlamps, the same bus pulling away and it could have probably have been the same night, same everything.
But how…when-…
Why do humans always ask questions, Jaejoong sighs and refuses to say anything else until Yunho takes him home, the both of them walking under evenly spaced out patches of light through a sleeping city, one with stumbling feet unused to cracked pavements, another with shaky hands that run over every surface they pass, both quite unbelieving.
Yunho lives in a small, two room apartment with a plastic kitchen table, one creaky bed with worn out springs, peeling paint on the walls, bare floors.
It’s a change, Jaejoong says in that quiet voice of his and sits in the corner with the least metal, getting mildew and dust all over himself. There’re leftovers in the fridge and Yunho throws those out, rinses the chipped mug in the sink. Cleans the tabletop with a rag as Jaejoong watches him, eyes tearing holes into his back and Yunho throws the cloth into the sink, goes to Jaejoong in his corner and kisses him on the lips.
It’s a change.
-
If Jaejoong could dictate which way the wind blew, how far the sea would stretch on his side of reality, he can’t do nothing more than watch and maybe learn a thing or two about these humans here. He doesn’t question Yunho when he leaves for work and Yunho doesn’t tell him where he’s going, something akin to that odd compromise from when time didn’t come labeled with names like minutes or hours.
The traffic passes outside Yunho’s apartment window and Jaejoong watches it go, uses the daytime hours trying to figure out what this love thing Yunho keeps talking about is, the nighttime ones finding out.
-
Six months, one week, four days and seventeen hours pass, Yunho coming back home everyday to fold himself against Jaejoong, breathing lighter, heart beating faster for this little dark fairytale he’s managed to steal away.
Do you love me?
Will you ever learn, human?
Their bodies fit all wrong but Jaejoong insists on sharing the bed with Yunho, closes his eyes when the lights get turned off and Yunho kisses the base of his neck, twines their fingers together.
Do you love me?
Slow, unsure, withheld, there’re so many ways to describe it. Like flying with your feet on the ground. Jaejoong holds onto Yunho’s shoulders the very first time and this pain thing is as new as this pleasure one, the sound of traffic outside the window suddenly so very far away. He keeps his eyes open from then on, watches Yunho make him feel, feel things, like kissing the bruise he left from last time on his hip, fucking him slow with his back up against one peeling wall.
Do you?
-
I did.
I do.
More than anything.
I always, always will.
-
The city smog hangs heavy, shrouds the top of skyscrapers (I could touch the sky without the help of metal, Jaejoong says and helps to close the windows, draw the curtains), twists its way through cracks. Makes him curl up longer beside Yunho in the morning.
Will you go back with me?
He doesn’t say anything but the metal is killing him, making his glamour crack in places, the light in his eyes dull to embers. Yunho will miss this, the smell of wet asphalt, the metallic glint of cars on the road and he tells Jaejoong, watching the city skyline light itself up from the roof of the apartment building.
Will you stay?
-
He said he’d come back, when the cars have rusted for me, when I’m tired of the rain. I’ve tried, you know. To stop the cars from moving, to stop the roads from going where they’re supposed to lead to, tried so hard to stop the clouds from gathering.
They still don’t believe me. They won’t let me go. You’re crazy, they say but they’ve never seen sunsets over white seas, they’ve never walked on the other side of what ifs. They’ve never known something so real that it even terrifies you sometimes.
You do believe me, don’t you?
He’ll find me, it’s taking a while, these metal cuffs may have something to do with it, that flimsy, useless metal door too.
But he’ll find me.
He’ll find me.
Can you hear it? The sound of nothing.
Listen closer to what’s hiding behind it, can you hear it now?
Waves. Wind. The sound of what a secret is made of.
He’ll find me.
Shh, don’t tell anyone.
[fin]
a/n--> obvsly didn't get even close to winning but s'ok, thoughts are amazing love since I'd like to know where I went wrong and etc :D other entries are all here ♥ oh and though I highly doubt loveclouds will see this and this is slightly irrelevant but Trinka is actually a really great song off her really great Homin fanmix