giraffes
jaejoong/yunho
angst & slight fluff
pg13
3946 words
for sakurasdr3am
Somewhere in a little town by the border, there is a zoo. It’s not a big zoo, really, quite a little one at that but Yunho doesn’t mind its size. He likes it like this, with just enough animals to keep business running but still not big enough for them to be busy in any season other than during the summer months, when the town children will come to feed the monkeys or peer at Samson and Delilah, the pair of old lions that seem to have always been here.
Yunho likes the giraffes best though. They’re tall and quiet all the time, somewhat like Yunho who doesn’t like to talk much. He always takes longest with them, leaning on his broom to watch their awkward elegance long after he’s swept the enclosure clean. Nelly, Zuri, Dante, Naomi, Yunho can name each of them just by looking at the patterns of their hides.
-
The first time Yunho hears of the war, it’s only through the newspapers, sometimes from passing visitor from out of town. Did you know about the guns? The gathering in the north? Did you hear, did you hear? Yunho will merely nod with a smile and direct them on to the little souvenir kiosk by the exit.
“All proceeds go towards the animals,” he’ll say and the war is still far away, somewhere over the hills towards the north. No matter. It can stay as far away as it likes. In the meantime, Yunho has animals to feed and enclosures to clean. There’s no place for war here.
-
“Are you staying?” a boy called Junsu asks Yunho one day when he’s feeding the rams. “I heard they’re coming soon,” he says and Yunho just shrugs in the way he always does, stamping hay from his boots. He gives Junsu a sunny smile that’s reflected in turn. Yunho likes Junsu, he really does, mainly because he comes here often to see the seals and talk to Yunho. Says he likes Yunho’s job and the way the seals swim. Yunho likes his job too.
“I’m not leaving if they come, though,” Yunho finally says and Junsu nods in understanding. He’s sitting on the railing, swinging his legs as Yunho fills a trough with fresh water. “I love this place. Besides, who’s going to take care of the animals when I’m gone?”
Junsu taps a rousing rhythm on the railing and hums to it.
“I will,” he says after making it through three bars. “I’m not leaving too.”
-
The days grow shorter and Yunho finds himself spending more time with the giraffes, just watching them. There’s nothing much to do during the winter months and there are fewer visitors than ever nowadays, what with all this uncertainty. Some say the war is here and Yunho doesn’t know whether to believe them. Shops are closed. People are leaving. There is news about towns further up north burning, you can taste the ashes in the air with the tip of your tongue on when the wind blows the right way . Yunho asks Junsu about this and the boy just smiles.
“They’re just winter bonfires. Shrubs and trees and dead leaves burning for warmth,” he says in a way that Yunho refuses to disbelieve so that’s that. Junsu isn’t one to lie to him anyways. It’s going to be a long winter this year but Yunho isn’t going anywhere.
-
The first shots are fired on the fifteenth of December.
It’s ten days to Christmas and Yunho hears them when he’s letting himself out of Nelly’s pen, the floor scattered with fresh sand and hay. Somewhere over the hills, the staccato sound of machine gun fire is spooking the animals and Yunho doesn’t have time to do anything else other than calm the ones he can. The zebras are running in confused circles, breaths showing in the cold as they snort in fear over this new unheard noise. Chaos in the form of whinnies and snarls and frenzied calls that have no name from all directions, animals rearing into each other, biting, crying as snow starts to fall and soldiers pour into the roads.
Only the giraffes are quiet and this is where Yunho finds himself again, standing in the doorway of Nelly’s pen in the shadows to watch everything he’s known go up in flames. Sometimes he hears gunfire close enough to make him shake, slink back further into the shadows and as he sits down on the hay he’d just lay down himself earlier, he fears for Junsu, his animals. So this is war. Fire and guns and loud noises, streaks of light in the dark.
At least the giraffes are safe. Yunho can see them standing in a silent clump by the trees to survey the damage being done over the zoo’s fences, calm as ever. If they could talk, they would tell Yunho that this was only a preliminary raid, sourcing for footholds and places to make camp.
Zuri would tell him how the local butcher took a shot to the chest, but not before he sent his family out the back door and blocked it with himself. Naomi might have seen trucks of soldiers rumbling down the main road, running over bodies their comrades had left in the street, Dante the way some of the townspeople fought for homes and friends and everything they owned, mobbing lone soldiers to tear apart before being driven back by bullets to the head.
And Nelly? Nelly calmly keeps an eye on the road leading out of the town, noting with relief the exact moment the soldiers get back into their trucks and drive away, somewhat satisfied with their spoils. Morning comes when they leave, watery sunlight over the town as it’s very foundations shiver in the wake of the aftermath.
-
Yunho cannot find Junsu. There are bodies in the street, yes, and he thinks he knows some of them but none are Junsu. Some part of him is weeping but whether out of relief or fear of the unknown, he can’t pinpoint just yet. For now, Yunho just wanders the streets with whoever is still here and he gets blood all over his hands, touching the splattered walls.
“You should leave,” someone tells him. He has a backpack on and there’s a haunted look in his face, the shadows of the past twelve hours evident in the hollows. “They’re coming back soon.”
“But who’s going to take care of the animals?” Yunho asks him but the man is already gone, joining the small stream of people slouching out to the countryside.
-
The door to Yunho’s house is open when he gets there but Yunho isn’t too surprised. He didn’t lock it often, people knowing he didn’t have anything worth stealing inside anyways. Yunho is a loner, he is, with a smile for everyone and a quiet life revolving around his beloved zoo. It’s hard to steal something that’s too big to steal so Yunho isn’t worried, only mildly surprised to see bloodstains on his bare wooden floors.
There’s a man in soldier’s tattered uniform propped up against Yunho’s one-seater near the window and Yunho knows he’s the reason why there are dark red smudges on the walls, as if he had been trying to hold himself up for a few more steps before collapsing just shy of the chair.
“I have a gun,” the man says weakly and Yunho startles, eyes widening as an army-issue pistol is aimed at him with some effort. “Don’t make me use it.”
“You won’t have to.”
Yunho spreads his hands slowly to show he’s holding nothing. The man himself doesn’t look too dangerous but it’s the gun that Yunho’s worried about. Gun wounds are bound to hurt. They stand a room apart from each other for a few moments before the soldier’s grip loosens, his aim growing sloppy. There’s a deep gash down his cheek and one growing part of his uniform is darker than the rest of it.
“You’re bleeding,” Yunho observes and the man’s hand is faltering more than ever, the effort from keeping his gun trained on Yunho making his eyes going unfocused. “If you put down that gun-”
Yunho doesn’t even get to finish his sentence before the man suddenly drops his gun, slumping and falling sideways as he gives in to unconsciousness. Blood is pooling like slow water where he lies.
-
Humans are considerably different from animals but to Yunho, it doesn’t seem so hard. There had been a fox brought in years and years back, when he was still only slightly more than a boy and had just started helping out at the zoo. She had a bullet in her side from some failed hunting expedition and Yunho had watched, cringing, when his superior calmly plucked the bullet from her, dressing the wound and binding her up tight after that. She had lived seven years in her own little section near the lions and Yunho thinks of her now as he runs with the soldier in his arms back to the zoo.
Seven years. Seven was a lucky number, wasn’t it? It wasn’t a lot in human years but he supposed the soldier would be thankful.
-
Yunho doesn’t know what to do with the man’s gun while he waits for the latter to wake. He might need it again when he wakes up (Yunho is sure he will, is so very sure because nothing has died under Yunho’s hands just yet and even if the soldier did, at least it wasn’t one of his animals) so Yunho just hides it under a loose stone in the giraffe’s enclosure. Stealing is bad but hiding is different, isn’t it?
Besides, Yunho is also sure that the last thing on the man’s mind when he wakes up will be his gun.
-
It is an empty town that Yunho wanders through, even the bodies taken from the street to be given a hasty burial. Shops have their windows smashed in, houses with their front doors open, flower beds trampled. It makes Yunho nervous so he hurries past them all, carrying blankets and clean clothes and food to the room he’s left the soldier in.
He hasn’t even checked on his animals yet and the thought makes Yunho move even faster, almost tripping over one trailing sleeve of a jumper as he makes his way across bare streets. Never once does it cross his mind that he’s helping someone who has possibly stripped this town to its bare, charred bones. To Yunho, the world is a little too complicated to comprehend all at once so he takes things as they come, like how right now, there’s a man lying on a work table in the medical bay and Yunho needs to get these blankets to him.
-
“What do I call you?” Yunho asks the soldier during one of those rare, waking moments he has.
“Jaejoong,” the soldier says and drops his head back onto Yunho’s borrowed pillow, exhausted from the conversation. “You can call me Jaejoong.”
-
The hours pass in a haze. Yunho goes about the zoo, trying to fix whatever damage has been done but there’s not much to repair. The soldiers had more or less avoided the place, knowing there isn’t anything of value here and for that, Yunho is thankful. The routine he’s used to isn’t all that different even, with only the somewhat minor addition of caring for Jaejoong.
The fever that Jaejoong had been drifting in and out of earlier breaks on the third day. Yunho isn’t used to the Northen style of speech but sitting up for the first time in days, Jaejoong tells him, haltingly, about how he hadn’t wanted to do this at all. The ransacking, the raids. None. He had tried to defect during the melee but had run into a townsperson, gotten stabbed before he could even explain he was running.
“Maybe I should have stayed in the army,” he says bitterly and tells Yunho thank you anyways.
“And I’m sorry, too. For everything.”
Yunho wants to tell him that it’s not his fault, being part of a unit wasn’t the same as actually carrying the actual deeds out but he doesn’t know how to. Instead, Yunho just smiles and says “It’s okay.”
Even though it’s not.
-
Jaejoong doesn’t ask where his gun is and Yunho doesn’t bring the matter up. Instead, Jaejoong prefers to talk about other things, like how army life isn’t what he wants and how he doesn’t even want to go home anymore.
“But why not?”
“Because they’ll make me do things I don’t want to do,” Jaejoong says and Yunho feels sorry for him.
He can’t empathize too much, it’s not in his nature but the idea of being forced to do something other than be at the zoo makes him cringe. There had been a before, of course, in another town and another place. Sometimes Yunho wondered if it was even a whole different life altogether. He doesn’t remember much now but in that before, things hadn’t been quiet like this. There had been silences, yes, of course, the uncomfortable kind when people stared at him and made him feel awful for simply not getting some things.
Yunho didn’t like the before very much but the now he lived in made up nicely for it. People understood better, maybe even appreciated him and most of all, Yunho didn’t have to say more words than necessary. The animals didn’t care if he turned phrases oddly or if he was incapable of being socially adept. They didn’t treat him differently in the slightest bit, regardless of anything and that made Yunho happier than he could possibly ever describe.
Some part of Yunho wants to tell Jaejoong all this but the silence stretches on, Yunho doesn’t know how to find the right words to match the right emotions so he just asks Jaejoong what he feels like eating.
“Bread?” he asks helpfully because that’s honestly all he has left. Perhaps he’ll have to revise his stand on stealing, or just plan taking, since no one is around to notice anymore.
“Anything you have,” Jaejoong says without missing a beat and Yunho smiles.
-
“You don’t have to take care of me,” Jaejoong tells Yunho time and time again. “I don’t know why you do it.”
“Why wouldn’t I?” Yunho asks him back. He doesn’t understand why he shouldn’t take care of Jaejoong. Did wearing a uniform make one so different from another? He actually voices this out to Jaejoong and the latter seems bemused by the prospect.
“That’s actually a good point.”
“Thank you,” Yunho says awkwardly, unsure if Jaejoong is serious or being sarcastic. Jaejoong then goes to ask him something about the zoo and Yunho forgets all about his doubts.
-
Winter wears on. Christmas day comes and goes without any fanfare, Jaejoong unsure of what actually happens during Christmas because where he comes from, Christmas doesn’t exist. Yunho doesn’t care for Christmas but for Jaejoong’s sake, he tells Jaejoong about how the town looks at night with the lights all up and tinsel on the trees, about how the zoo will be closed and he’ll usually spend Christmas eve watching the giraffes sleep standing as the 24th passes into the 25th.
“They wake up when the fireworks start though,” Yunho adds. It’s the longest he’s talked in a long while.
“Giraffes sleep standing?” Jaejoong asks him wide eyed and Yunho, almost shyly, offers to take Jaejoong to see them the moment the latter can walk again.
“A Christmas present,” Yunho says and Jaejoong laughs at the novelty of it all.
-
Yunho’s pantry has run out of food. There are shops will a few measly, overlooked cans of food left and Yunho takes these, leaving money on the counter for them despite knowing there’s no one around to say “Here’s your change, thank you and have a nice day.” Yunho doesn’t know how to break habits well but it’s all good.
Jaejoong doesn’t seem to mind his eccentricities, even less so when one night Yunho trips over the word “Aspergers” and takes seven tries to say it right.
“Seven’s a lucky number,” Jaejoong says as a way of brushing it off and Yunho beams.
-
One crisp morning, Jaejoong holds on to Yunho’s arm and walks a few shaky steps. By midday, they’re both standing by the giraffe enclosure and even though none of the giraffes are asleep, Jaejoong is obviously captivated.
“I like the giraffes best,” Yunho says with the barest hint of pride. Before the town had emptied, people had sometimes known him as the giraffe keeper. He knows a lot about giraffes, even enough to fascinate the school excursion groups. Did you know that a lion could die from a giraffe kick? Or that the modern word for giraffe originated from the Arabic one, ziraafa?
Jaejoong takes all of this in with more amusement than Yunho thought he would and when Jaejoong asks to see the lions, Yunho offers him his hand.
-
Sometimes it feels like the war isn’t happening. Yunho has moved most of his belongings to the zoo offices, staying there with Jaejoong because that’s the way things feel like they should be. Yunho can pretend for days on end that it has always only been him, Jaejoong and the zoo but then in the middle of the night, he’ll think of the gun hidden under the rock and things will start snapping back into focus again.
“Will they come back?” Yunho asks Jaejoong whenever he remembers. Jaejoong’s face will darken and he doesn’t know either, maybe they will, maybe they won’t. He wasn’t high ranking enough (rank, soldier, gun, war) to know plans and such but Jaejoong knows Yunho is only asking for the sake of knowing, not doing anything in response.
“You’re never going to leave, are you?” Jaejoong asks him back and Yunho shakes his head.
“The animals are here,” he says simply and Jaejoong absently touches the bandages covering his side.
“I won’t leave too.”
Yunho thinks back to a boy called Junsu. Jaejoong isn’t Junsu but the words are the same, nothing yet about the result of them.
“Why?” Yunho prompts slowly and Jaejoong looks him straight in the eye, winter sunlight threaded through his hair.
“Because you’re here.”
-
One night, Yunho is sitting up with Jaejoong to watch the giraffes go to sleep. No luck on that just yet but Yunho tells Jaejoong about how he’s named all of them. Nelly over there, Zuri and Dante, Naomi regarding them with wise eyes.
“They only sleep a maximum of 2 hours a day,” Yunho whispers to Jaejoong. The night is too still for actual talk tonight.
“So what makes you think we’ll catch them now?” Jaejoong whispers back and Yunho shrugs.
“I don’t think we will but we can try.”
They sit in silence for a while until Yunho suggests that they do something else to pass the time while waiting for one of the herd to fall asleep.
“What?”
“This.”
Yunho has only seen people do it but it doesn’t seem like that hard a thing to imitate. He turns towards Jaejoong and by the light of distant stars, darkened streetlights, he presses his lips very gently to Jaejoong’s. A moment passes and something akin to terror flares in Yunho’s chest. Was this right? Did he do something bad? Was there-...at that moment, Dante lays down and arches his neck over his back, dozing for a little while with his head on his hind legs but Jaejoong misses this because he’s too occupied with kissing Yunho back.
-
Yunho doesn’t know what to make of this newfound feeling that’s thumping in his chest. Jaejoong calls it love but Yunho isn’t sure there’s even a name for something like, whether something this wild and amazing can even hold a name down.
“You’ve never loved someone?” Jaejoong asks him one night when their legs are tangled and Yunho is tired, so tired in the best way possible. “Ever?”
Yunho thinks about his job, the giraffes, a boy called Junsu but they all pale in comparison to this. Jaejoong lays a head on his chest and says he doesn’t have to answer if he doesn’t want to.
“Never,” Yunho says softly just when Jaejoong is falling asleep and Jaejoong wakes up just enough to kiss Yunho on the collarbone.
-
Jaejoong wants to know about the animals so Yunho tells him whatever he can. Here’s Samson and there’s Delilah, they’re probably older than you. These are the seals, there’s the zebras. Do you suppose they’re white with black stripes or black with white stripes?
Jaejoong peers at the zebras for a long while.
“White,” he concludes with a grin, leaning into Yunho’s hold. He still can’t walk far without some help but Yunho doesn’t mind in the slightest. “White with black stripes.”
Yunho finds himself being impossibly happy because he’s always thought so too.
-
February 3rd. It’s exactly fifty days since Yunho has met Jaejoong and Yunho wakes up to the sound of gunfire in the distance, Jaejoong asleep beside him.
“No,” he says to himself and Jaejoong is stirring too, now. “No.”
Over in the giraffe enclosure, Naomi peers into the distance and decides she doesn’t like the look of the trucks coming this way.
-
“We have to leave,” Jaejoong tells Yunho but Yunho can’t, he just can’t. Who will feed the animals? Who will take care of them?
“They’ll be okay,” Jaejoong lies and Yunho isn’t angry at being lied to, he knows Jaejoong is only doing this because he knows better but Yunho can’t bring himself to leave. Not when the animals are still here, but he can’t bring himself to leave Jaejoong either. One or the other. Which one to never see again?
“I’m not leaving if you don’t leave.”
Yunho knows the following things: armies don’t take kindly to defectors. People will wonder why the animals are still alive after so long. They will be found. He will never see Jaejoong again. As long as the animals are still here, Yunho will never leave.
Yunho loves Jaejoong more than he’ll ever know how to explain.
“Make me leave,” Yunho finally says because habits are hard to break and Jaejoong will know how to break them. This is cold, simple logic. If there is nothing left to stay for, Yunho won’t stay. “I still have your gun.”
-
Yunho packs whatever they can take and despite himself, he follows Jaejoong out into the evening light. They need to leave before nightfall.
“You don’t have to see this,” Jaejoong says softly but Yunho just shakes his head. Of course he has to. The animals here know him better than Jaejoong and just…Yunho swallows at the thought, Jaejoong laying a hand on his arm.
They leave the giraffes for last.
“They’re sleeping,” Yunho points out to Jaejoong and sure enough, all four are closer to the ground than Jaejoong has ever seen, necks resting in pattered arches. Jaejoong follows Yunho into the enclosure one last time and quietly, shoots each giraffe in the head. Yunho doesn’t cry but just squeezes Jaejoong’s hand very tightly after each shot, touching the still warm hides of each giraffe in turn. Naomi. Zuri. Nelly. Dante.
“I’m sorry,” Jaejoong says when it’s all over. “I’m so sorry.”
This time around, Yunho means it when he says “It’s okay.”
-
One year on, Yunho still likes giraffes the best but loves Jaejoong the most.
end.
A/N- Oh dear. I don't think this turned out anything like how you wanted the prompt to be at all :( I tried to follow it so you've got a hurt!Jae, some angst and Yunjae? dies omg sakurasdr3am I'm horrendously sorry if this wasn't what you wanted ;_; Merry Christmas? I'll write you something else if you'd like!
angst & slight fluff
pg13
3946 words
for sakurasdr3am
Somewhere in a little town by the border, there is a zoo. It’s not a big zoo, really, quite a little one at that but Yunho doesn’t mind its size. He likes it like this, with just enough animals to keep business running but still not big enough for them to be busy in any season other than during the summer months, when the town children will come to feed the monkeys or peer at Samson and Delilah, the pair of old lions that seem to have always been here.
Yunho likes the giraffes best though. They’re tall and quiet all the time, somewhat like Yunho who doesn’t like to talk much. He always takes longest with them, leaning on his broom to watch their awkward elegance long after he’s swept the enclosure clean. Nelly, Zuri, Dante, Naomi, Yunho can name each of them just by looking at the patterns of their hides.
-
The first time Yunho hears of the war, it’s only through the newspapers, sometimes from passing visitor from out of town. Did you know about the guns? The gathering in the north? Did you hear, did you hear? Yunho will merely nod with a smile and direct them on to the little souvenir kiosk by the exit.
“All proceeds go towards the animals,” he’ll say and the war is still far away, somewhere over the hills towards the north. No matter. It can stay as far away as it likes. In the meantime, Yunho has animals to feed and enclosures to clean. There’s no place for war here.
-
“Are you staying?” a boy called Junsu asks Yunho one day when he’s feeding the rams. “I heard they’re coming soon,” he says and Yunho just shrugs in the way he always does, stamping hay from his boots. He gives Junsu a sunny smile that’s reflected in turn. Yunho likes Junsu, he really does, mainly because he comes here often to see the seals and talk to Yunho. Says he likes Yunho’s job and the way the seals swim. Yunho likes his job too.
“I’m not leaving if they come, though,” Yunho finally says and Junsu nods in understanding. He’s sitting on the railing, swinging his legs as Yunho fills a trough with fresh water. “I love this place. Besides, who’s going to take care of the animals when I’m gone?”
Junsu taps a rousing rhythm on the railing and hums to it.
“I will,” he says after making it through three bars. “I’m not leaving too.”
-
The days grow shorter and Yunho finds himself spending more time with the giraffes, just watching them. There’s nothing much to do during the winter months and there are fewer visitors than ever nowadays, what with all this uncertainty. Some say the war is here and Yunho doesn’t know whether to believe them. Shops are closed. People are leaving. There is news about towns further up north burning, you can taste the ashes in the air with the tip of your tongue on when the wind blows the right way . Yunho asks Junsu about this and the boy just smiles.
“They’re just winter bonfires. Shrubs and trees and dead leaves burning for warmth,” he says in a way that Yunho refuses to disbelieve so that’s that. Junsu isn’t one to lie to him anyways. It’s going to be a long winter this year but Yunho isn’t going anywhere.
-
The first shots are fired on the fifteenth of December.
It’s ten days to Christmas and Yunho hears them when he’s letting himself out of Nelly’s pen, the floor scattered with fresh sand and hay. Somewhere over the hills, the staccato sound of machine gun fire is spooking the animals and Yunho doesn’t have time to do anything else other than calm the ones he can. The zebras are running in confused circles, breaths showing in the cold as they snort in fear over this new unheard noise. Chaos in the form of whinnies and snarls and frenzied calls that have no name from all directions, animals rearing into each other, biting, crying as snow starts to fall and soldiers pour into the roads.
Only the giraffes are quiet and this is where Yunho finds himself again, standing in the doorway of Nelly’s pen in the shadows to watch everything he’s known go up in flames. Sometimes he hears gunfire close enough to make him shake, slink back further into the shadows and as he sits down on the hay he’d just lay down himself earlier, he fears for Junsu, his animals. So this is war. Fire and guns and loud noises, streaks of light in the dark.
At least the giraffes are safe. Yunho can see them standing in a silent clump by the trees to survey the damage being done over the zoo’s fences, calm as ever. If they could talk, they would tell Yunho that this was only a preliminary raid, sourcing for footholds and places to make camp.
Zuri would tell him how the local butcher took a shot to the chest, but not before he sent his family out the back door and blocked it with himself. Naomi might have seen trucks of soldiers rumbling down the main road, running over bodies their comrades had left in the street, Dante the way some of the townspeople fought for homes and friends and everything they owned, mobbing lone soldiers to tear apart before being driven back by bullets to the head.
And Nelly? Nelly calmly keeps an eye on the road leading out of the town, noting with relief the exact moment the soldiers get back into their trucks and drive away, somewhat satisfied with their spoils. Morning comes when they leave, watery sunlight over the town as it’s very foundations shiver in the wake of the aftermath.
-
Yunho cannot find Junsu. There are bodies in the street, yes, and he thinks he knows some of them but none are Junsu. Some part of him is weeping but whether out of relief or fear of the unknown, he can’t pinpoint just yet. For now, Yunho just wanders the streets with whoever is still here and he gets blood all over his hands, touching the splattered walls.
“You should leave,” someone tells him. He has a backpack on and there’s a haunted look in his face, the shadows of the past twelve hours evident in the hollows. “They’re coming back soon.”
“But who’s going to take care of the animals?” Yunho asks him but the man is already gone, joining the small stream of people slouching out to the countryside.
-
The door to Yunho’s house is open when he gets there but Yunho isn’t too surprised. He didn’t lock it often, people knowing he didn’t have anything worth stealing inside anyways. Yunho is a loner, he is, with a smile for everyone and a quiet life revolving around his beloved zoo. It’s hard to steal something that’s too big to steal so Yunho isn’t worried, only mildly surprised to see bloodstains on his bare wooden floors.
There’s a man in soldier’s tattered uniform propped up against Yunho’s one-seater near the window and Yunho knows he’s the reason why there are dark red smudges on the walls, as if he had been trying to hold himself up for a few more steps before collapsing just shy of the chair.
“I have a gun,” the man says weakly and Yunho startles, eyes widening as an army-issue pistol is aimed at him with some effort. “Don’t make me use it.”
“You won’t have to.”
Yunho spreads his hands slowly to show he’s holding nothing. The man himself doesn’t look too dangerous but it’s the gun that Yunho’s worried about. Gun wounds are bound to hurt. They stand a room apart from each other for a few moments before the soldier’s grip loosens, his aim growing sloppy. There’s a deep gash down his cheek and one growing part of his uniform is darker than the rest of it.
“You’re bleeding,” Yunho observes and the man’s hand is faltering more than ever, the effort from keeping his gun trained on Yunho making his eyes going unfocused. “If you put down that gun-”
Yunho doesn’t even get to finish his sentence before the man suddenly drops his gun, slumping and falling sideways as he gives in to unconsciousness. Blood is pooling like slow water where he lies.
-
Humans are considerably different from animals but to Yunho, it doesn’t seem so hard. There had been a fox brought in years and years back, when he was still only slightly more than a boy and had just started helping out at the zoo. She had a bullet in her side from some failed hunting expedition and Yunho had watched, cringing, when his superior calmly plucked the bullet from her, dressing the wound and binding her up tight after that. She had lived seven years in her own little section near the lions and Yunho thinks of her now as he runs with the soldier in his arms back to the zoo.
Seven years. Seven was a lucky number, wasn’t it? It wasn’t a lot in human years but he supposed the soldier would be thankful.
-
Yunho doesn’t know what to do with the man’s gun while he waits for the latter to wake. He might need it again when he wakes up (Yunho is sure he will, is so very sure because nothing has died under Yunho’s hands just yet and even if the soldier did, at least it wasn’t one of his animals) so Yunho just hides it under a loose stone in the giraffe’s enclosure. Stealing is bad but hiding is different, isn’t it?
Besides, Yunho is also sure that the last thing on the man’s mind when he wakes up will be his gun.
-
It is an empty town that Yunho wanders through, even the bodies taken from the street to be given a hasty burial. Shops have their windows smashed in, houses with their front doors open, flower beds trampled. It makes Yunho nervous so he hurries past them all, carrying blankets and clean clothes and food to the room he’s left the soldier in.
He hasn’t even checked on his animals yet and the thought makes Yunho move even faster, almost tripping over one trailing sleeve of a jumper as he makes his way across bare streets. Never once does it cross his mind that he’s helping someone who has possibly stripped this town to its bare, charred bones. To Yunho, the world is a little too complicated to comprehend all at once so he takes things as they come, like how right now, there’s a man lying on a work table in the medical bay and Yunho needs to get these blankets to him.
-
“What do I call you?” Yunho asks the soldier during one of those rare, waking moments he has.
“Jaejoong,” the soldier says and drops his head back onto Yunho’s borrowed pillow, exhausted from the conversation. “You can call me Jaejoong.”
-
The hours pass in a haze. Yunho goes about the zoo, trying to fix whatever damage has been done but there’s not much to repair. The soldiers had more or less avoided the place, knowing there isn’t anything of value here and for that, Yunho is thankful. The routine he’s used to isn’t all that different even, with only the somewhat minor addition of caring for Jaejoong.
The fever that Jaejoong had been drifting in and out of earlier breaks on the third day. Yunho isn’t used to the Northen style of speech but sitting up for the first time in days, Jaejoong tells him, haltingly, about how he hadn’t wanted to do this at all. The ransacking, the raids. None. He had tried to defect during the melee but had run into a townsperson, gotten stabbed before he could even explain he was running.
“Maybe I should have stayed in the army,” he says bitterly and tells Yunho thank you anyways.
“And I’m sorry, too. For everything.”
Yunho wants to tell him that it’s not his fault, being part of a unit wasn’t the same as actually carrying the actual deeds out but he doesn’t know how to. Instead, Yunho just smiles and says “It’s okay.”
Even though it’s not.
-
Jaejoong doesn’t ask where his gun is and Yunho doesn’t bring the matter up. Instead, Jaejoong prefers to talk about other things, like how army life isn’t what he wants and how he doesn’t even want to go home anymore.
“But why not?”
“Because they’ll make me do things I don’t want to do,” Jaejoong says and Yunho feels sorry for him.
He can’t empathize too much, it’s not in his nature but the idea of being forced to do something other than be at the zoo makes him cringe. There had been a before, of course, in another town and another place. Sometimes Yunho wondered if it was even a whole different life altogether. He doesn’t remember much now but in that before, things hadn’t been quiet like this. There had been silences, yes, of course, the uncomfortable kind when people stared at him and made him feel awful for simply not getting some things.
Yunho didn’t like the before very much but the now he lived in made up nicely for it. People understood better, maybe even appreciated him and most of all, Yunho didn’t have to say more words than necessary. The animals didn’t care if he turned phrases oddly or if he was incapable of being socially adept. They didn’t treat him differently in the slightest bit, regardless of anything and that made Yunho happier than he could possibly ever describe.
Some part of Yunho wants to tell Jaejoong all this but the silence stretches on, Yunho doesn’t know how to find the right words to match the right emotions so he just asks Jaejoong what he feels like eating.
“Bread?” he asks helpfully because that’s honestly all he has left. Perhaps he’ll have to revise his stand on stealing, or just plan taking, since no one is around to notice anymore.
“Anything you have,” Jaejoong says without missing a beat and Yunho smiles.
-
“You don’t have to take care of me,” Jaejoong tells Yunho time and time again. “I don’t know why you do it.”
“Why wouldn’t I?” Yunho asks him back. He doesn’t understand why he shouldn’t take care of Jaejoong. Did wearing a uniform make one so different from another? He actually voices this out to Jaejoong and the latter seems bemused by the prospect.
“That’s actually a good point.”
“Thank you,” Yunho says awkwardly, unsure if Jaejoong is serious or being sarcastic. Jaejoong then goes to ask him something about the zoo and Yunho forgets all about his doubts.
-
Winter wears on. Christmas day comes and goes without any fanfare, Jaejoong unsure of what actually happens during Christmas because where he comes from, Christmas doesn’t exist. Yunho doesn’t care for Christmas but for Jaejoong’s sake, he tells Jaejoong about how the town looks at night with the lights all up and tinsel on the trees, about how the zoo will be closed and he’ll usually spend Christmas eve watching the giraffes sleep standing as the 24th passes into the 25th.
“They wake up when the fireworks start though,” Yunho adds. It’s the longest he’s talked in a long while.
“Giraffes sleep standing?” Jaejoong asks him wide eyed and Yunho, almost shyly, offers to take Jaejoong to see them the moment the latter can walk again.
“A Christmas present,” Yunho says and Jaejoong laughs at the novelty of it all.
-
Yunho’s pantry has run out of food. There are shops will a few measly, overlooked cans of food left and Yunho takes these, leaving money on the counter for them despite knowing there’s no one around to say “Here’s your change, thank you and have a nice day.” Yunho doesn’t know how to break habits well but it’s all good.
Jaejoong doesn’t seem to mind his eccentricities, even less so when one night Yunho trips over the word “Aspergers” and takes seven tries to say it right.
“Seven’s a lucky number,” Jaejoong says as a way of brushing it off and Yunho beams.
-
One crisp morning, Jaejoong holds on to Yunho’s arm and walks a few shaky steps. By midday, they’re both standing by the giraffe enclosure and even though none of the giraffes are asleep, Jaejoong is obviously captivated.
“I like the giraffes best,” Yunho says with the barest hint of pride. Before the town had emptied, people had sometimes known him as the giraffe keeper. He knows a lot about giraffes, even enough to fascinate the school excursion groups. Did you know that a lion could die from a giraffe kick? Or that the modern word for giraffe originated from the Arabic one, ziraafa?
Jaejoong takes all of this in with more amusement than Yunho thought he would and when Jaejoong asks to see the lions, Yunho offers him his hand.
-
Sometimes it feels like the war isn’t happening. Yunho has moved most of his belongings to the zoo offices, staying there with Jaejoong because that’s the way things feel like they should be. Yunho can pretend for days on end that it has always only been him, Jaejoong and the zoo but then in the middle of the night, he’ll think of the gun hidden under the rock and things will start snapping back into focus again.
“Will they come back?” Yunho asks Jaejoong whenever he remembers. Jaejoong’s face will darken and he doesn’t know either, maybe they will, maybe they won’t. He wasn’t high ranking enough (rank, soldier, gun, war) to know plans and such but Jaejoong knows Yunho is only asking for the sake of knowing, not doing anything in response.
“You’re never going to leave, are you?” Jaejoong asks him back and Yunho shakes his head.
“The animals are here,” he says simply and Jaejoong absently touches the bandages covering his side.
“I won’t leave too.”
Yunho thinks back to a boy called Junsu. Jaejoong isn’t Junsu but the words are the same, nothing yet about the result of them.
“Why?” Yunho prompts slowly and Jaejoong looks him straight in the eye, winter sunlight threaded through his hair.
“Because you’re here.”
-
One night, Yunho is sitting up with Jaejoong to watch the giraffes go to sleep. No luck on that just yet but Yunho tells Jaejoong about how he’s named all of them. Nelly over there, Zuri and Dante, Naomi regarding them with wise eyes.
“They only sleep a maximum of 2 hours a day,” Yunho whispers to Jaejoong. The night is too still for actual talk tonight.
“So what makes you think we’ll catch them now?” Jaejoong whispers back and Yunho shrugs.
“I don’t think we will but we can try.”
They sit in silence for a while until Yunho suggests that they do something else to pass the time while waiting for one of the herd to fall asleep.
“What?”
“This.”
Yunho has only seen people do it but it doesn’t seem like that hard a thing to imitate. He turns towards Jaejoong and by the light of distant stars, darkened streetlights, he presses his lips very gently to Jaejoong’s. A moment passes and something akin to terror flares in Yunho’s chest. Was this right? Did he do something bad? Was there-...at that moment, Dante lays down and arches his neck over his back, dozing for a little while with his head on his hind legs but Jaejoong misses this because he’s too occupied with kissing Yunho back.
-
Yunho doesn’t know what to make of this newfound feeling that’s thumping in his chest. Jaejoong calls it love but Yunho isn’t sure there’s even a name for something like, whether something this wild and amazing can even hold a name down.
“You’ve never loved someone?” Jaejoong asks him one night when their legs are tangled and Yunho is tired, so tired in the best way possible. “Ever?”
Yunho thinks about his job, the giraffes, a boy called Junsu but they all pale in comparison to this. Jaejoong lays a head on his chest and says he doesn’t have to answer if he doesn’t want to.
“Never,” Yunho says softly just when Jaejoong is falling asleep and Jaejoong wakes up just enough to kiss Yunho on the collarbone.
-
Jaejoong wants to know about the animals so Yunho tells him whatever he can. Here’s Samson and there’s Delilah, they’re probably older than you. These are the seals, there’s the zebras. Do you suppose they’re white with black stripes or black with white stripes?
Jaejoong peers at the zebras for a long while.
“White,” he concludes with a grin, leaning into Yunho’s hold. He still can’t walk far without some help but Yunho doesn’t mind in the slightest. “White with black stripes.”
Yunho finds himself being impossibly happy because he’s always thought so too.
-
February 3rd. It’s exactly fifty days since Yunho has met Jaejoong and Yunho wakes up to the sound of gunfire in the distance, Jaejoong asleep beside him.
“No,” he says to himself and Jaejoong is stirring too, now. “No.”
Over in the giraffe enclosure, Naomi peers into the distance and decides she doesn’t like the look of the trucks coming this way.
-
“We have to leave,” Jaejoong tells Yunho but Yunho can’t, he just can’t. Who will feed the animals? Who will take care of them?
“They’ll be okay,” Jaejoong lies and Yunho isn’t angry at being lied to, he knows Jaejoong is only doing this because he knows better but Yunho can’t bring himself to leave. Not when the animals are still here, but he can’t bring himself to leave Jaejoong either. One or the other. Which one to never see again?
“I’m not leaving if you don’t leave.”
Yunho knows the following things: armies don’t take kindly to defectors. People will wonder why the animals are still alive after so long. They will be found. He will never see Jaejoong again. As long as the animals are still here, Yunho will never leave.
Yunho loves Jaejoong more than he’ll ever know how to explain.
“Make me leave,” Yunho finally says because habits are hard to break and Jaejoong will know how to break them. This is cold, simple logic. If there is nothing left to stay for, Yunho won’t stay. “I still have your gun.”
-
Yunho packs whatever they can take and despite himself, he follows Jaejoong out into the evening light. They need to leave before nightfall.
“You don’t have to see this,” Jaejoong says softly but Yunho just shakes his head. Of course he has to. The animals here know him better than Jaejoong and just…Yunho swallows at the thought, Jaejoong laying a hand on his arm.
They leave the giraffes for last.
“They’re sleeping,” Yunho points out to Jaejoong and sure enough, all four are closer to the ground than Jaejoong has ever seen, necks resting in pattered arches. Jaejoong follows Yunho into the enclosure one last time and quietly, shoots each giraffe in the head. Yunho doesn’t cry but just squeezes Jaejoong’s hand very tightly after each shot, touching the still warm hides of each giraffe in turn. Naomi. Zuri. Nelly. Dante.
“I’m sorry,” Jaejoong says when it’s all over. “I’m so sorry.”
This time around, Yunho means it when he says “It’s okay.”
-
One year on, Yunho still likes giraffes the best but loves Jaejoong the most.
end.
A/N- Oh dear. I don't think this turned out anything like how you wanted the prompt to be at all :( I tried to follow it so you've got a hurt!Jae, some angst and Yunjae? dies omg sakurasdr3am I'm horrendously sorry if this wasn't what you wanted ;_; Merry Christmas? I'll write you something else if you'd like!