okay
jaejoong/yunho
angst
pg13
3081 words
it don't make no difference
escape one last time
it's easier to believe in this sweet madness oh
this glorious sadness that brings me to my knees
-Angel
Jaejoong is leaving.
There's a confused miasma of mismatched clothes strewn across the room, essential trinkets thrown haphazard inside half filled suitcases and of course, Jaejoong, sitting in the middle of it all, bright eyed at three in the afternoon.
“There’s still time for you to come, you know.” He turns a spare wristwatch over in his hands, second hand tick tick ticking time away and in it goes, nestled between rolled up socks and a cell phone charger.
For the thousandth time today, Yunho is tempted to leave as well, thinks of how it’d be like to pack only the bare necessities of his life into a carry bag and get on a plane, off to somewhere far away with Jaejoong. Leave behind the claustrophobic 17th floor office suite overlooking the outskirts of Tokyo that Avex has gracefully granted him despite it being only his second year working behind stages and not on them, potted indoor plant from Changmin wilting in the corner. Akiko directing calls and new workloads to him from her desk in the front partition.
But no, there’s a report on someone or other’s weekly sales due at 5pm today. Someone needs to be here to say tadaima to Jaejoong’s okaeri when he comes home, whenever that might be.
“I’ll be okay,” says Yunho with less feeling than he actually means and Jaejoong leans into him, packing forgotten for a moment. Hands intertwine, hearts trip over themselves trying to keep up with one another for the last time in a long, long while.
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
“I’ll be back before you know it.”
Jaejoong is leaving.
-
Jaejoong sends him postcards from places with long, unpronounceable names like Ulaanbaatar and Novosibirsk, Ljubljana, snapshots of sunsets that are two weeks old by the time Yunho gets them. Old clouds, late horizons stashed inside envelopes postmarked from a world and a half away. Yunho lines them up on his wall with store bought blu-tack so that he wakes up to a Tibetan sunrise one day, city skyline of Amsterdam at twilight on another, tracing Jaejoong’s winding path across continents on the way to the bathroom.
There’s a message from Akiko on his voicemail and it plays in the background as he brushes his teeth, clipped and far too polite Japanese reminding him about today’s board meeting. Mint-flavoured kisses are stashed away for later, Jaejoong is going to have a lot of catching up to do.
One morning passes and Yunho is trying not to take up too much space with his dancer’s legs tucked under the meeting room table, daydreaming of smogless skies, blue hills beyond office walls.
“Yunho-san?”
“Ah. Yes?”
Wary looks all around and Yunho shuffles his papers, head down. A formality, of course, SME picking up the pieces of dongbangshinki to give the fans something to talk about while waiting for the next new debut, scattering them as far as their reach can go.
Changmin’s in Taipei, overseeing a new concept group, playing at manager and bad tempered sunbaenim. Junsu somewhere in Seoul along with Yoochun, composing chart toppers and writing lovelorn ballads that never make it past the final cut because oh Yoochun-sshi, don’t you know what the market wants now? It must’ve been different from your time.
And Jaejoong? Jaejoong had smiled at the proposal, at the nine to five job and cushy salary, nice company pad in the heart of Korea before handing it back unsigned.
“No thank you,” he said with that strange he gets when he’s far too happy for his own good and had taken Yunho out to drink to their new jobs, Yunho getting to be one of Avex’s new higher ups, Jaejoong getting to be a slacker.
“To us.”
Junsu, clingy when drunk, Changmin batting him off his arm half heartedly because Taipei is far away and he’ll want to remember tonight for a long time. Yoochun looking on with approving smirks.
“Always wanted to be a bum my whole life, if that singing thing didn’t work out,” Jaejoong slurred over his nth bottle of cheap, roadside drink and Yunho had laughed, said “Well you’re going to need a place to do that, won’t you?”, eyes hazy. Jaejoong bought a one way ticket to Japan the next morning, moved in with Yunho within the week.
“Yunho-san, thank you for coming today, it’s been a pleasure,” lies the chairman through his teeth and Yunho does the same, goes one step further, offers a thousand watt smile that doesn’t go unreturned. Everyone’s a professional here.
“Don’t mention it.”
-
don’t miss me too much, I do enough for the both of us
It’s scrawled in Jaejoong’s barely legible handwriting, cheap ink pen making syllables blur together and it takes Yunho a good five minutes to get through one sentence but it’s the best five minutes of his day.
beautiful out here. bet you’re kicking yourself now, aren’t you?
Then there are the phone calls, Jaejoong’s name flashing on his caller ID at two in the morning from halfway across the world because oh sorry, it’s the middle of the
night there, isn’t it? But anyways since you’re awake, Rome, Rome is amazing, you should fly out and meet me, can’t you get away?
And Yunho will say no, Jaejoong-ah, you know I can’t, Jaejoong making sad noises at him half heartedly before nagging him back to bed with a g’night, but it’s the middle of the afternoon here oh well.
Yunho can never fall back to sleep after that, heart stumbling across borders, wandering until the sun comes up and pulls him back to his lonely apartment high up above a city that suddenly feels too small for comfort.
-
The first thing Yunho thinks when the phone rings shrill at six am is where is Jaejoong today?
“Are you ever going to be able to grasp the concept of timelines?” he mumbles into the phone and waits for Jaejoong’s laugh on the other end, buzz of passing pedestrians in the background.
There’s silence on the other end of the line and Yunho sneaks a glance at the caller ID. Junsu’s name scrolls across the screen in pixilated flashes.
“Junsu? Is something wr-…”
“Jaejoong,” comes the answer midsentence and Yunho can feel his breath hitch in his throat. “Jaejoong. Jaejoong is dead.”
Yunho’s hand goes slack and he drops the phone, muffled thud on the sheets. Jaejoong’s side of the bed.
Jaejoong.
Jaejoong.
Jaejoong is gone.
-
Yunho calls Jaejoong’s cell. Leaves messages that escalate rapidly from warnings to pick up to pleas to please, please pick up to mindless raging at the dead, how can you leave me, how dare you how dare you how dare you, the busy tone sent back after each try starting to feel like an electronic mockery, sorry please try again later ringing in his ears long after he’s given up.
Junsu calls him again somewhere between the 26th and 30th try, says something about flying back to Seoul for the funeral and Yunho doesn’t really know what he’s saying through the tears.
“Okay,” he whispers into the phone when Junsu is done, voice hoarse from screaming at ghosts. “Okay. I’ll be there.”
Somewhere cold and far away, a cell phone rings and rings and rings for the longest time.
-
Yunho flies economy, a red eye flight that has the cabin crew bowing sleepily to him at one in the morning. A flight attendant offers him a complimentary newspaper (“Japanese or Korean, sir?” Korean, please.”) on the way in and he takes it to his seat, almost desperate to have some kind of distraction, at least until he’s standing on familiar ground. The words blur in and out of focus during taxi, take-off, share market fluctuations and interviews and world economy related things he should probably read, accidents, football matches, deaths.
The report is hidden behind the guise of World News, page 32.
Toledo: A bus, carrying 20 tourists, collided with an oncoming car in the outskirts of Toledo, killing 12 people and seriously injuring 13, reported local authorities. The vehicles collided in the late night crash about 10 miles from the city. “We tried to get most of the passengers out before the bus exploded,” said one of the police officers at the scene. Inquests are still being made as to how the accident happened but authorities believe that it is purely human error. A Korean national has been identified as one of the dead and family members have requested that the press do not issue a name for privacy but it has been widely speculated that the deceased is-
Yunho is glad for the dimmed out cabin lights but it still doesn’t stop a concerned air stewardess from stooping to his seat to ask what’s the matter.
“Sir? Is everything okay?”
“It’s nothing,” he says and wipes at his eyes with the back of his hand. “I’m okay, really.”
Promises are meant to be kept.
-
Seoul is still Seoul, all bright lights and chasing cars that go in endless loops around city blocks, down freeways, babble of voices speaking in a language that shouldn’t sound foreign and Yunho has to bite back the Japanese that comes up too naturally when he checks into the hotel, switching to Korean instead. The front desk staff eyes him curiously and someone behind the counter whispers
“Jung Yunho, don’t you know him?”
“Who?”
“Oh, you’re too young to remember, aren’t you?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Don’t tell me you don’t know dongbangsh-…”
Yunho walks to the elevators without a second glance.
-
It feels like every other hotel room he’s stayed in before, starched sheets and minimalist décor, flat screen TV in one corner, door leading to the cramped bathroom refusing to close properly. It feels, oddly enough, like home; life lived out of a suitcase with four others making it all feel vaguely familiar.
Three in one sachets of coffee placed neatly in the complimentary goods basket. Two towels on the rack. Mini bar stocked with overpriced canned drinks.
You can’t escape little constants like this, no matter where you go.
Yoochun calls him around three am, asks whether he’d like to trade the hotel room for the spare one in his apartment, Junsu can sleep with him for the night.
“I’m okay.”
It’s starting to feel overused, that line, but Yoochun doesn’t seem to mind.
“I wish I was,” comes the voice from the phone and Yunho closes his eyes, wants to hang up before Yoochun starts crying but Junsu takes over the line, telling him to get some sleep, they’ll be round the hotel about 10am.
“Yunho?”
“Yeah?”
“It’s okay if you don’t-…”
“I’m okay,” Yunho says with a tired sort of finality and the line goes dead.
-
In the still quiet of rented rooms, Yunho learns that it’s not okay, no matter how many times he says it, no matter how many times a day he’s been thinking it. Akiko had blocked out the next one week or so of his schedule with a demure “I’m so sorry,”, had even offered to book the next flight out of Tokyo on the company account, get the hotel sorted out as well.
“Things like that are always so sudden,” she said to him on the way out and handed him the necessary print outs. He hadn’t even said thank you.
Yunho thinks of how it must have been like to die, tries to evade sleep by replaying horror film reels of twisted metal, charred flesh burning burning burning with acrid smoke and scorching heat. Jaejoong having no time to scream upon collision, lungs filling with-
“It wasn’t really like that, you know. U-know.”
Yunho sits up, hands clutching at the sheets and there’s Jaejoong perched on the very edge of his bed, toying with the bedspread as if it’s the most natural thing in the world to be alive.
“This is a dream.”
“Always were one for the obvious, weren’t you?”
Jaejoong makes an exasperated sound and looks up at Yunho, eyes as bright as the last time he’d looked into them.
“Well, are you just going to lie there?”
“I-…”
“If this is a dream, that means you have no control whatsoever over what you want to do. You might want to lie there and gape stupidly at me but I want you to come with me.”
Yunho gets up and follows.
-
“I’m from your past, appearing in your present, showing you things from a could’ve-been future. What do you suppose that makes me? The ghost of Christmas everything? But given the fact that it’s not even near Christmas now…”
Jaejoong is rambling and Yunho can feel his throat clench with tears that haven’t managed to make their way out till now, with Jaejoong leaning his head on Yunho’s shoulder in the sunshine, looking out on empty streets.
“You remember Prague?”
Yunho can feel one tear slide down his cheek and Jaejoong wipes it away, tsk-tsk-tsk-ing at it.
“Asked you a question, Jung Yunho. Be a man and answer it.”
“Of course I do, you insufferable undead person.”
“There. Much better.”
Jaejoong turns back to the street and Yunho follows his gaze, a familiar looking wall, line of shops, cobbled street. It’s Prague, dead and empty.
“Remember when they made us wear those ridiculous outfits, made me look like I had my pants up to chest! But the top hats, those were fun, weren’t they?”
“Yeah.”
Blink and Jaejoong is standing behind him, arms wrapped around his waist under the shadow of the most famous structure in the world.
“Paris,” breathes Yunho and Jaejoong hums, aux champs elysees under his breath, close to Yunho’s ear.
“Captain observant,” comments Jaejoong and tightens his grip, Yunho relaxing into it and holding Jaejoong’s hands in place, as if afraid he’d get left behind when Jaejoong decides to leave. Watching the Eiffel Tower light up under French sunsets with no one around, world silent save for Jaejoong’s humming, it makes Yunho’s head swim and heart burst.
“I would have liked to see Paris again.”
“You’re seeing it now.”
Jaejoong casts him a you know what I mean look and they’re seated on the couch in the apartment they rented for the shoot, smell of breakfast cooking on the stove, citrusy scent of orange juice from opened store-bought packages. Yunho finds that he’s holding a plate of half finished scrambled eggs in one hand, Jaejoong picking pieces from it.
“If you’re wondering,” Jaejoong manages around a mouthful of eggs, “If you’re wondering why I’m showing you the same old same old when I’ve travelled half the world, it’s because you fantastic little imagination can’t imagine it well enough. No offense of course, trying to comprehend the wonder of a Mongolian grassland sunrise is a little hard to achieve if you haven’t been there yourself.”
Yunho pokes at the eggs absently, spears one piece and hands it to Jaejoong who eats it with a contented smile.
“So this is a dream.”
“A dream,” says Jaejoong wistfully and looks away, Yunho finding himself knee-deep in sea water when he cataches Jaejoong’s eyes again. Bora Bora. There’re tropical coloured shallow water fish darting in and out, around their legs. Ticklish.
“That’s why everything feels so much more…perfect, doesn’t it?”
And Jaejoong is right because the sky is bigger, the horizon nearer, colours so much more vivid. Yunho breathes deep and Jaejoong pulls him into the water, cold and laughing.
“So much more perfect.”
“Jaejoong.”
And they’re in their shared apartment in Tokyo, Jaejoong sprawled on the couch and Yunho seated on the floor, holding one of Jaejoong’s carelessly flung hands. A talk show is playing on mute in the background.
“Hmm?”
For a moment, it feels like everything else but this is a dream, the phone call in the morning, the newspaper report, the flight home, hotel room in the silent dark. Jaejoong leaving.
“You’re a terrible liar, you know that?”
“I said I’d be back before you knew it, didn’t I?”
Jaejoong squeezes Yunho’s hand a little sadly and the television flickers off, Yunho climbing onto the couch to cuddle and hopefully go to sleep, wake up with Jaejoong’s legs entangled with his, share mint-flavoured kisses in the morning sun.
“Jaejoong. ” It rolls off his tongue easy, hangs in the air. Yunho thinks he’ll miss saying his name, have it come up easy and natural and so very alive.
They sit in silence for a while and Jaejoong is ghosting touches along the back of Yunho’s neck, brushing hair away, touching skin feather light. Even now, in dreamscapes, Jaejoong finds time to bring colour to Yunho’s cheeks, cold hands slipping under his shirt, tracing collarbones. Yunho is passive.
“You won’t hate me for it? For lying?” he asks and Yunho can’t see Jaejoong’s face in the growing dark, seeks out comfort instead in warm hands and shivering breaths.
“No. I don’t think I could even if I wanted to.”
“As if you could ever want to hate me.”
“As if you could ever not be such a big headed idiot.”
“As if we could-…” Jaejoong starts and doesn’t finish, Yunho hearing the mistake in that sentence all too clear. There’s no time to linger on mistakes.
“Did it hurt?”
Jaejoong sighs and Yunho is lying in his hotel bed, staring up at a face that feels too faded, too far away to be real.
“Jaejoong, did it hurt?”
“Why do you need to know all the little details?”
“Because they matter. Because you matter. Stop avoiding the question.”
Jaejoong looks away and Yunho doesn’t dare to, thoughts of heaven and angels and dreams that only come once in a lifetime tugging on his sub-consciousness.
“You know, U-know.”
“I don’t, Jae-ah.”
“Yunho.”
Ethereal, Jaejoong’s lips pressed against his and Yunho reaches up to deepen it, craving and wanting and needing this so badly it almost hurts because Jaejoong is leaving, leaving but there’s nothing there but cold air.
“Promise me you’ll be okay.”
Seoul sunlight sneaks in through the cracks in the curtains. It’s eight thirty five in the morning and Jaejoong is gone.
.fin
A/N- written a while back for the dbsk_secretgame 's Guess Who :DD read the prompt (#22) here~
angst
pg13
3081 words
it don't make no difference
escape one last time
it's easier to believe in this sweet madness oh
this glorious sadness that brings me to my knees
-Angel
Jaejoong is leaving.
There's a confused miasma of mismatched clothes strewn across the room, essential trinkets thrown haphazard inside half filled suitcases and of course, Jaejoong, sitting in the middle of it all, bright eyed at three in the afternoon.
“There’s still time for you to come, you know.” He turns a spare wristwatch over in his hands, second hand tick tick ticking time away and in it goes, nestled between rolled up socks and a cell phone charger.
For the thousandth time today, Yunho is tempted to leave as well, thinks of how it’d be like to pack only the bare necessities of his life into a carry bag and get on a plane, off to somewhere far away with Jaejoong. Leave behind the claustrophobic 17th floor office suite overlooking the outskirts of Tokyo that Avex has gracefully granted him despite it being only his second year working behind stages and not on them, potted indoor plant from Changmin wilting in the corner. Akiko directing calls and new workloads to him from her desk in the front partition.
But no, there’s a report on someone or other’s weekly sales due at 5pm today. Someone needs to be here to say tadaima to Jaejoong’s okaeri when he comes home, whenever that might be.
“I’ll be okay,” says Yunho with less feeling than he actually means and Jaejoong leans into him, packing forgotten for a moment. Hands intertwine, hearts trip over themselves trying to keep up with one another for the last time in a long, long while.
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
“I’ll be back before you know it.”
Jaejoong is leaving.
-
Jaejoong sends him postcards from places with long, unpronounceable names like Ulaanbaatar and Novosibirsk, Ljubljana, snapshots of sunsets that are two weeks old by the time Yunho gets them. Old clouds, late horizons stashed inside envelopes postmarked from a world and a half away. Yunho lines them up on his wall with store bought blu-tack so that he wakes up to a Tibetan sunrise one day, city skyline of Amsterdam at twilight on another, tracing Jaejoong’s winding path across continents on the way to the bathroom.
There’s a message from Akiko on his voicemail and it plays in the background as he brushes his teeth, clipped and far too polite Japanese reminding him about today’s board meeting. Mint-flavoured kisses are stashed away for later, Jaejoong is going to have a lot of catching up to do.
One morning passes and Yunho is trying not to take up too much space with his dancer’s legs tucked under the meeting room table, daydreaming of smogless skies, blue hills beyond office walls.
“Yunho-san?”
“Ah. Yes?”
Wary looks all around and Yunho shuffles his papers, head down. A formality, of course, SME picking up the pieces of dongbangshinki to give the fans something to talk about while waiting for the next new debut, scattering them as far as their reach can go.
Changmin’s in Taipei, overseeing a new concept group, playing at manager and bad tempered sunbaenim. Junsu somewhere in Seoul along with Yoochun, composing chart toppers and writing lovelorn ballads that never make it past the final cut because oh Yoochun-sshi, don’t you know what the market wants now? It must’ve been different from your time.
And Jaejoong? Jaejoong had smiled at the proposal, at the nine to five job and cushy salary, nice company pad in the heart of Korea before handing it back unsigned.
“No thank you,” he said with that strange he gets when he’s far too happy for his own good and had taken Yunho out to drink to their new jobs, Yunho getting to be one of Avex’s new higher ups, Jaejoong getting to be a slacker.
“To us.”
Junsu, clingy when drunk, Changmin batting him off his arm half heartedly because Taipei is far away and he’ll want to remember tonight for a long time. Yoochun looking on with approving smirks.
“Always wanted to be a bum my whole life, if that singing thing didn’t work out,” Jaejoong slurred over his nth bottle of cheap, roadside drink and Yunho had laughed, said “Well you’re going to need a place to do that, won’t you?”, eyes hazy. Jaejoong bought a one way ticket to Japan the next morning, moved in with Yunho within the week.
“Yunho-san, thank you for coming today, it’s been a pleasure,” lies the chairman through his teeth and Yunho does the same, goes one step further, offers a thousand watt smile that doesn’t go unreturned. Everyone’s a professional here.
“Don’t mention it.”
-
don’t miss me too much, I do enough for the both of us
It’s scrawled in Jaejoong’s barely legible handwriting, cheap ink pen making syllables blur together and it takes Yunho a good five minutes to get through one sentence but it’s the best five minutes of his day.
beautiful out here. bet you’re kicking yourself now, aren’t you?
Then there are the phone calls, Jaejoong’s name flashing on his caller ID at two in the morning from halfway across the world because oh sorry, it’s the middle of the
night there, isn’t it? But anyways since you’re awake, Rome, Rome is amazing, you should fly out and meet me, can’t you get away?
And Yunho will say no, Jaejoong-ah, you know I can’t, Jaejoong making sad noises at him half heartedly before nagging him back to bed with a g’night, but it’s the middle of the afternoon here oh well.
Yunho can never fall back to sleep after that, heart stumbling across borders, wandering until the sun comes up and pulls him back to his lonely apartment high up above a city that suddenly feels too small for comfort.
-
The first thing Yunho thinks when the phone rings shrill at six am is where is Jaejoong today?
“Are you ever going to be able to grasp the concept of timelines?” he mumbles into the phone and waits for Jaejoong’s laugh on the other end, buzz of passing pedestrians in the background.
There’s silence on the other end of the line and Yunho sneaks a glance at the caller ID. Junsu’s name scrolls across the screen in pixilated flashes.
“Junsu? Is something wr-…”
“Jaejoong,” comes the answer midsentence and Yunho can feel his breath hitch in his throat. “Jaejoong. Jaejoong is dead.”
Yunho’s hand goes slack and he drops the phone, muffled thud on the sheets. Jaejoong’s side of the bed.
Jaejoong.
Jaejoong.
Jaejoong is gone.
-
Yunho calls Jaejoong’s cell. Leaves messages that escalate rapidly from warnings to pick up to pleas to please, please pick up to mindless raging at the dead, how can you leave me, how dare you how dare you how dare you, the busy tone sent back after each try starting to feel like an electronic mockery, sorry please try again later ringing in his ears long after he’s given up.
Junsu calls him again somewhere between the 26th and 30th try, says something about flying back to Seoul for the funeral and Yunho doesn’t really know what he’s saying through the tears.
“Okay,” he whispers into the phone when Junsu is done, voice hoarse from screaming at ghosts. “Okay. I’ll be there.”
Somewhere cold and far away, a cell phone rings and rings and rings for the longest time.
-
Yunho flies economy, a red eye flight that has the cabin crew bowing sleepily to him at one in the morning. A flight attendant offers him a complimentary newspaper (“Japanese or Korean, sir?” Korean, please.”) on the way in and he takes it to his seat, almost desperate to have some kind of distraction, at least until he’s standing on familiar ground. The words blur in and out of focus during taxi, take-off, share market fluctuations and interviews and world economy related things he should probably read, accidents, football matches, deaths.
The report is hidden behind the guise of World News, page 32.
Toledo: A bus, carrying 20 tourists, collided with an oncoming car in the outskirts of Toledo, killing 12 people and seriously injuring 13, reported local authorities. The vehicles collided in the late night crash about 10 miles from the city. “We tried to get most of the passengers out before the bus exploded,” said one of the police officers at the scene. Inquests are still being made as to how the accident happened but authorities believe that it is purely human error. A Korean national has been identified as one of the dead and family members have requested that the press do not issue a name for privacy but it has been widely speculated that the deceased is-
Yunho is glad for the dimmed out cabin lights but it still doesn’t stop a concerned air stewardess from stooping to his seat to ask what’s the matter.
“Sir? Is everything okay?”
“It’s nothing,” he says and wipes at his eyes with the back of his hand. “I’m okay, really.”
Promises are meant to be kept.
-
Seoul is still Seoul, all bright lights and chasing cars that go in endless loops around city blocks, down freeways, babble of voices speaking in a language that shouldn’t sound foreign and Yunho has to bite back the Japanese that comes up too naturally when he checks into the hotel, switching to Korean instead. The front desk staff eyes him curiously and someone behind the counter whispers
“Jung Yunho, don’t you know him?”
“Who?”
“Oh, you’re too young to remember, aren’t you?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Don’t tell me you don’t know dongbangsh-…”
Yunho walks to the elevators without a second glance.
-
It feels like every other hotel room he’s stayed in before, starched sheets and minimalist décor, flat screen TV in one corner, door leading to the cramped bathroom refusing to close properly. It feels, oddly enough, like home; life lived out of a suitcase with four others making it all feel vaguely familiar.
Three in one sachets of coffee placed neatly in the complimentary goods basket. Two towels on the rack. Mini bar stocked with overpriced canned drinks.
You can’t escape little constants like this, no matter where you go.
Yoochun calls him around three am, asks whether he’d like to trade the hotel room for the spare one in his apartment, Junsu can sleep with him for the night.
“I’m okay.”
It’s starting to feel overused, that line, but Yoochun doesn’t seem to mind.
“I wish I was,” comes the voice from the phone and Yunho closes his eyes, wants to hang up before Yoochun starts crying but Junsu takes over the line, telling him to get some sleep, they’ll be round the hotel about 10am.
“Yunho?”
“Yeah?”
“It’s okay if you don’t-…”
“I’m okay,” Yunho says with a tired sort of finality and the line goes dead.
-
In the still quiet of rented rooms, Yunho learns that it’s not okay, no matter how many times he says it, no matter how many times a day he’s been thinking it. Akiko had blocked out the next one week or so of his schedule with a demure “I’m so sorry,”, had even offered to book the next flight out of Tokyo on the company account, get the hotel sorted out as well.
“Things like that are always so sudden,” she said to him on the way out and handed him the necessary print outs. He hadn’t even said thank you.
Yunho thinks of how it must have been like to die, tries to evade sleep by replaying horror film reels of twisted metal, charred flesh burning burning burning with acrid smoke and scorching heat. Jaejoong having no time to scream upon collision, lungs filling with-
“It wasn’t really like that, you know. U-know.”
Yunho sits up, hands clutching at the sheets and there’s Jaejoong perched on the very edge of his bed, toying with the bedspread as if it’s the most natural thing in the world to be alive.
“This is a dream.”
“Always were one for the obvious, weren’t you?”
Jaejoong makes an exasperated sound and looks up at Yunho, eyes as bright as the last time he’d looked into them.
“Well, are you just going to lie there?”
“I-…”
“If this is a dream, that means you have no control whatsoever over what you want to do. You might want to lie there and gape stupidly at me but I want you to come with me.”
Yunho gets up and follows.
-
“I’m from your past, appearing in your present, showing you things from a could’ve-been future. What do you suppose that makes me? The ghost of Christmas everything? But given the fact that it’s not even near Christmas now…”
Jaejoong is rambling and Yunho can feel his throat clench with tears that haven’t managed to make their way out till now, with Jaejoong leaning his head on Yunho’s shoulder in the sunshine, looking out on empty streets.
“You remember Prague?”
Yunho can feel one tear slide down his cheek and Jaejoong wipes it away, tsk-tsk-tsk-ing at it.
“Asked you a question, Jung Yunho. Be a man and answer it.”
“Of course I do, you insufferable undead person.”
“There. Much better.”
Jaejoong turns back to the street and Yunho follows his gaze, a familiar looking wall, line of shops, cobbled street. It’s Prague, dead and empty.
“Remember when they made us wear those ridiculous outfits, made me look like I had my pants up to chest! But the top hats, those were fun, weren’t they?”
“Yeah.”
Blink and Jaejoong is standing behind him, arms wrapped around his waist under the shadow of the most famous structure in the world.
“Paris,” breathes Yunho and Jaejoong hums, aux champs elysees under his breath, close to Yunho’s ear.
“Captain observant,” comments Jaejoong and tightens his grip, Yunho relaxing into it and holding Jaejoong’s hands in place, as if afraid he’d get left behind when Jaejoong decides to leave. Watching the Eiffel Tower light up under French sunsets with no one around, world silent save for Jaejoong’s humming, it makes Yunho’s head swim and heart burst.
“I would have liked to see Paris again.”
“You’re seeing it now.”
Jaejoong casts him a you know what I mean look and they’re seated on the couch in the apartment they rented for the shoot, smell of breakfast cooking on the stove, citrusy scent of orange juice from opened store-bought packages. Yunho finds that he’s holding a plate of half finished scrambled eggs in one hand, Jaejoong picking pieces from it.
“If you’re wondering,” Jaejoong manages around a mouthful of eggs, “If you’re wondering why I’m showing you the same old same old when I’ve travelled half the world, it’s because you fantastic little imagination can’t imagine it well enough. No offense of course, trying to comprehend the wonder of a Mongolian grassland sunrise is a little hard to achieve if you haven’t been there yourself.”
Yunho pokes at the eggs absently, spears one piece and hands it to Jaejoong who eats it with a contented smile.
“So this is a dream.”
“A dream,” says Jaejoong wistfully and looks away, Yunho finding himself knee-deep in sea water when he cataches Jaejoong’s eyes again. Bora Bora. There’re tropical coloured shallow water fish darting in and out, around their legs. Ticklish.
“That’s why everything feels so much more…perfect, doesn’t it?”
And Jaejoong is right because the sky is bigger, the horizon nearer, colours so much more vivid. Yunho breathes deep and Jaejoong pulls him into the water, cold and laughing.
“So much more perfect.”
“Jaejoong.”
And they’re in their shared apartment in Tokyo, Jaejoong sprawled on the couch and Yunho seated on the floor, holding one of Jaejoong’s carelessly flung hands. A talk show is playing on mute in the background.
“Hmm?”
For a moment, it feels like everything else but this is a dream, the phone call in the morning, the newspaper report, the flight home, hotel room in the silent dark. Jaejoong leaving.
“You’re a terrible liar, you know that?”
“I said I’d be back before you knew it, didn’t I?”
Jaejoong squeezes Yunho’s hand a little sadly and the television flickers off, Yunho climbing onto the couch to cuddle and hopefully go to sleep, wake up with Jaejoong’s legs entangled with his, share mint-flavoured kisses in the morning sun.
“Jaejoong. ” It rolls off his tongue easy, hangs in the air. Yunho thinks he’ll miss saying his name, have it come up easy and natural and so very alive.
They sit in silence for a while and Jaejoong is ghosting touches along the back of Yunho’s neck, brushing hair away, touching skin feather light. Even now, in dreamscapes, Jaejoong finds time to bring colour to Yunho’s cheeks, cold hands slipping under his shirt, tracing collarbones. Yunho is passive.
“You won’t hate me for it? For lying?” he asks and Yunho can’t see Jaejoong’s face in the growing dark, seeks out comfort instead in warm hands and shivering breaths.
“No. I don’t think I could even if I wanted to.”
“As if you could ever want to hate me.”
“As if you could ever not be such a big headed idiot.”
“As if we could-…” Jaejoong starts and doesn’t finish, Yunho hearing the mistake in that sentence all too clear. There’s no time to linger on mistakes.
“Did it hurt?”
Jaejoong sighs and Yunho is lying in his hotel bed, staring up at a face that feels too faded, too far away to be real.
“Jaejoong, did it hurt?”
“Why do you need to know all the little details?”
“Because they matter. Because you matter. Stop avoiding the question.”
Jaejoong looks away and Yunho doesn’t dare to, thoughts of heaven and angels and dreams that only come once in a lifetime tugging on his sub-consciousness.
“You know, U-know.”
“I don’t, Jae-ah.”
“Yunho.”
Ethereal, Jaejoong’s lips pressed against his and Yunho reaches up to deepen it, craving and wanting and needing this so badly it almost hurts because Jaejoong is leaving, leaving but there’s nothing there but cold air.
“Promise me you’ll be okay.”
Seoul sunlight sneaks in through the cracks in the curtains. It’s eight thirty five in the morning and Jaejoong is gone.
.fin
A/N- written a while back for the dbsk_secretgame 's Guess Who :DD read the prompt (#22) here~