B-11-3A
jaejoong/changmin
angst
pg13
7535 words
remix of jaceni's Love Pain
after
Changmin knows he has to be crazy whenever thoughts like these cross his mind, but sometimes, just sometimes, it feels like Jaejoong has never left.
“Here,” he will murmur under his breath and trail his fingers against the crack that spiderwebs from the window frame. “And here.” The place where floorboards have been worn smooth by pacing feet, scratched on the surface by dragging furniture legs. Jaejoong haunts these places and Changmin looks for him there, splays his fingers across the cracks and follows the scratches with a shaking touch. “Where are you?” he’ll hear himself ask and no matter how long it has been, some part of Changmin still expects an answer. Hands over his eyes and cool breath against the back of his neck, Jaejoong laughing as he tells Changmin that he’s just so fucking brilliant at hide and seek these days, how will Changmin ever find him if he doesn’t reveal himself?
It’s been the longest game of his life, trying to find Jaejoong again. Where to start? A folded page in a forgotten book, the stain on the floorboards where Jaejoong had spilled a cup of apple juice, Jaejoong could be hiding in any of these places so Changmin checks them over and over again, remembers snatches of conversations or maybe a touch against his skin. A map in the wallpaper that has started to flake away, revealing the whitewashed walls underneath. Coordinates sketched in dust. Perhaps he’s not remembering enough, Jaejoong must have left signs he’s been overlooking.
Changmin is a ghost in his own apartment, looking for the places where Jaejoong might be hiding. How many years has it been now? Ten, twenty? He has stopped counting after five and Changmin has watched the world move on without him, Seoul’s skyline ever-changing whenever he chooses to pull the curtains back. They’ve taken the bed away, but it doesn’t matter. Changmin lies on the floor in the late afternoon sunshine and tells his body to remember how it felt like to curve around another person’s. Tries to remember hair, eyes, voice, laughter.
He lies for hours in the sun and tries to remember how it used to feel like to be warm.
before
The real estate office has been kind enough to warn Changmin about buying this particular unit, the man across the table with the handlebar mustache and a bad comb-over actually leaning over the papers to shake Changmin’s hand once he signs the papers. “You, sir, are the bravest person I’ve met,” Changmin remembers him saying. Changmin doesn’t have it in him to reply that he isn’t as brave as he’s desperate for a place to stay, honestly.
“I don’t believe too much in urban legends and the sort, so it doesn’t really bother me.”
And it’s true to some extent, he doesn’t have the head or even the time to entertain myths and legends. So what if the corner apartment has been unoccupied ever since the building came up? And every potential owner has backed out merely after seeing the place? B-11-3A commands a gorgeous view of the Seoul skyline, sits right smack dab in the middle of Changmin’s bus route and best of all, comes at a dirt cheap price. A teaching aid’s salary at the neighbourhood college is nothing to shout about, but even Changmin is able to afford this and still have money left over to furnish the place with cheap, self-assembled Swedish furniture.
Of course Changmin has seen the place himself before putting his signature down, he isn’t as stupid as he’s desperate. Other than the fact that the apartment needs a good, thorough cleaning and maybe some wallpaper to cover the walls, everything seems to be in order. No strange shadows, no creaking floorboards when everyone is standing still, no suspicious activity unless he counts how the intern who had been assigned to show him the place was practically quaking in her stilettos, wringing her perfectly manicured hands every now and then.
“A bit drafty, isn’t it?” he commented to her, trying to get her mind off whatever it was that was making her so nervous and she had started to nod vigorously before remembering that it was her job to sell the place, not amplify it’s apparently numerous faults to Changmin.
“It’ll be better with furniture in?” she had finally suggested. “Curtains, a nice heavy carpet on the floor…and you do have a wonderful view of the city from here, Mr.Shim.”
-
One week after moving in, Changmin has to admit that he does have a wonderful view of the city from the eleventh floor, even if the intern’s suggestion that a heavy carpet on the floor might help with the draft issue is a load of cowpat. It still feels a little cold no matter how high he turns the heating on, Changmin even getting on all fours one day to check the walls for any potential holes or whatever it might be that’s causing the rooms to have a perpetual chill.
Unsurprisingly, there isn’t anything wrong with the walls or even the heater for that matter, Changmin finally putting it down to the psychological effects that come with listening to too many people telling him that his apartment is haunted. By what or who, no one could tell him, which makes things even more frustrating than ever but Changmin lets it go after a while, just takes to wearing socks whenever he’s at home.
-
The first time he meets Jaejoong, Changmin is wearing a pair of mismatched socks. One striped blue and white, the other a warm brown with the threads just coming a little unraveled at the toe.
“Those are some godawful ugly socks,” Jaejoong tells him, swinging his legs from the dining table and Changmin drops the pot of soup he had been carrying from stove to table, getting chicken cubes and bits of vegetables all over the floor while Jaejoong laughs and laughs. “And you need to work on your hand eye coordination.”
-
“What…what are you doing in my house?”
“How about I ask you the same question?”
-
Jaejoong has been here for years.
“Centuries, actually,” Jaejoong says casually and watches while Changmin cleans up the mess on the floor, questioning his own sanity all the while. “How do you think I’d be able to do-” A nudge against Changmin’s shoulder with one swinging foot, and Changmin feels a chill run through him before physics, gravity demands that he topple over, “-this? Takes years of practice, hanging around, to do something like this.”
The tone of voice is proud, but there’s no mistaking the hint of bitterness that rides just under the words.
“I’ve been here for a long, long time.”
-
A web search has Changmin knowing that the closest thing Jaejoong is would be a gwishin, someone left behind with unfinished business either unable to or unwilling to move on. “Gwishin,” scoffs Jaejoong, having moved to the couch while Changmin takes up residence on the one-seater, laptop on the coffee table in front of him. “Stories made to scare little children. Do I look like I’m hovering off the floor? Legless? Gwishin, pfah.”
“Why are you still here, then?”
“How do you know you’re not hallucinating me?” Jaejoong retorts and throws a cushion at the floor, getting up to stalk off through one of the walls. It takes two, long hours before Changmin can finally make himself pick the cushion up from across the room, hands shaking all the while. Jaejoong comes back just after two in the morning and almost makes Changmin scream when he appears next to Changmin’s bed, Changmin clutching the sheets close to his chin as he tries to edge away without actually showing that he’s moving.
“Sorry,” Jaejoong says and extends a hand that Changmin supposes he should shake. “Been a while since I’ve talked to anyone, let alone lived with someone. It’s a bit of a touchy subject, the whole gwishin thing. I prefer the term disembodied soul, it’s far more politically correct. Friends?”
Changmin shakes the proffered hand and finds Jaejoong’s skin oddly, pleasantly cold.
-
Even if Jaejoong is a hallucination, Changmin has come to the conclusion that he’s a damned good one. Maybe it’s a way for Changmin to comfort itself over the fact that he’s slowly losing his marbles every time he eats breakfast to the sound of Jaejoong singing softly under his breath, but at least Changmin can be rest assured that he has a brilliant imagination? And also an apparent flair for raunchy songs in Middle Korean? Jaejoong’s favorite is one about a bear and a maiden fair, Changmin snorting his cereal up his nose more times than he can count whenever he hears it.
Changmin never does bring the topic of Jaejoong being left behind again and Jaejoong doesn’t encourage an open discussion on it, preferring to sit with Changmin at the dining table in the evenings, talk about inane things while he scratches marks into the cheap wood. “To save your sanity,” he points out and carves his initials there with one fingernail, a J that was more like a straight line with a diagonal, slightly jagged tail. “Of course, you can always try and convince yourself that you carved this yourself, whatever goes. Don’t say I never tried to help you stay sane.”
It becomes routine after a while, Jaejoong keeping Changmin company the nights he had to stay up marking student essays, passing him different coloured pens whenever he asks for them. Green for grammar. Red for spelling mistakes. Blue for everything that fit neither category. Jaejoong would ask him about his day and Changmin would Jaejoong about the life he had before this, the years he spent haunting the drywalls and the times he remembered from…before.
“Why don’t we just keep that for a rainy day?” Jaejoong usually deflects and turns the tables on Changmin, gets the man to tell him about how teaching was like, how he landed the job to begin with, how long more till he could call Changmin professor.
“A long, long while,” Changmin laughs at that particular question. The school is allowing him to do his MA in English while he assists, but at the rate he’s going, gods know how long till he can finally finish. “A very long while.”
Jaejoong gets this look in his eyes at that, half amusement and half something a little darker, a little sadder.
“I’ve got time to spare.”
-
It’s a comfortable enough living arrangement, if not a strange one. Changmin stops questioning his sanity after a while and decides that if he’s going to have to live with Jaejoong for the rest of his stay in this apartment, he might as well make something good out of it. Like a paranormal security guard who can make sure that Changmin will never get robbed. Or maybe, a friend.
Sometimes Jaejoong moves things out of boredom, puts Changmin’s coffee cup in the bottom cupboard instead of leaving it on the rack where it belongs. Sometimes even scares Changmin witless by sitting on him in the middle of the night, a cold weight that laughs and calls Changmin a wuss when Changmin tries to shove him off and go back to sleep. It doesn’t get that scary after a while, but Changmin still plays along for Jaejoong’s benefit since the gwishin doe seem to get a huge kick out of it. At any rate, according to Jaejoong, it’s far more entertaining than spending his nights up on the roof, waiting for morning to come.
A month turns into three, leaping into six and Changmin never does get to telling anyone about his permanent houseguest, not even Junsu who lives a few doors away and would drop by to watch football with Changmin some nights. Jaejoong hides himself away then, the only sign that he’s watching being when Changmin feels a breath of cold air behind his neck, Junsu unconsciously hunching a little closer over his bowl of crisps as the game goes on.
It shouldn’t be comforting to know that Jaejoong is hanging around and Changmin probably doesn’t have the best word choice in the world, but comforting seems to fit the bill for now.
-
Sometimes, Changmin has bad days at work. Maybe it’s finals month for one of his classes, Chagmin coming home with three folders worth of papers to re-mark after the class professor has already gone through them or maybe it’s orientation week, Changmin needing to get up at ass o’clock in the morning before limping back home past seven at night, head ringing from the raucous team cheers and whatnot that the new students always manage to come up with. In any case, Jaejoong usually knows it’s been a bad day the moment Changmin steps through the door.
“Go shower,” he would say helpfully and by the time Changmin comes back out, hair still damp and curling at the edges, there’s be a mug of hot tea waiting on the kitchen table, Jaejoong swinging his legs from his perch next to it.
“Bad day?”
“Pretty much, yeah.”
Changmin can rank his bad days on a scale of one to ten. Two for when he comes home to find that he forgot to pick up some milk from the store. Five for a ton of assignments to look through. Seven when the nth draft of his thesis from hell is due soon and he’s dead tired. Ten when all of that happens on the same day.
“I’m calling in sick tomorrow,” he announces to Jaejoong when he falls into bed just past three am. “I need sleep. And milk. Goddamn milk.”
Jaejoong just makes an understanding sound and sits on the floor, head resting against the side of Changmin’s bed frame. “How about I tell you story that will make your bad day look like peanuts? Or would you rather I kiss your psychological boo-boos better?”
“I’d rather have my dose of Schadenfreude, thanks. Bring it on,” mumbles Changmin from under his pillow where he has hidden himself, waiting for blessed sleep to take him. He’s feeling a lot calmer now that tomorrow’s schedule has been emptied, having enough time to finish marking his assignments, complete the draft and still sleep in. And buy milk, if he ever remembers. “Make it good, I’m in a mood to take a little pleasure in other people’s misery.”
“For the sake of clarity, let’s call the main character Jaejoong,” the gwishin starts off and Changmin extracts his head from under the pillow, blinking at Jaejoong who merely smiles serenely back. It’s just about moonset now outside his apartment window and the glow from it has Jaejoong look a little more ethereal than usual. “And no interruptions during my session, I don’t like repeating myself.”
-
There had been stables here, once. How long ago, Jaejoong didn’t even care to remember anymore, but when he talked about the wooden rows of stalls, how he used to sleep in the small landings above where the horses were kept, it was easy for Changmin to see that Jaejoong still remembered a good deal. They were owned by a high ranking government official and Jaejoong liked his messenger horses the best, sleek, smaller boned creatures than the bad tempered war stallions that tried to bite him whenever he cleaned their stalls.
“Yunho liked them though,” Jaejoong went on to say, sighing as he leaned against the wall. “Only gods know how he managed to calm them down enough to even get close, but that was Yunho for you. Maybe they could smell his highborn blood or something, fuck, I don’t know.” But, anyways. Yunho. They had a good run, a few years of sneaking around at night, literal tumbles in the hay. The landings were only built for one stable boy to sleep on yet that never stopped them from trying to squeeze two people there the nights they could, Yunho reading to Jaejoong from the texts he squirreled away from the main house and Jaejoong teaching Yunho how to distinguish the sounds of one horse from another.
“We had candles up there, a stupid thing to have when the whole place could go up at any moment if the right things caught fire. But how were you supposed to read without them?”
It had been cold the night their luck finally ran out and Jaejoong wouldn’t even have woken up if not for Yunho shouting in his ear, the both of them barely making it out of the place alive. Jaejoong doesn’t know how the candle fell over and doesn’t want to speculate, voice going a little dull as he recounts the trial after that.
“Of course I had to cover his ass for him,” he says with only the faintest trace of bitterness. “No one could know he was in there with me so I had to step up and say that yes, I fucked up, I let the fire happen on my watch. Yunho tried, of course, intervened and all that, but what could he have logically done when he wasn’t supposed to even know my name?” A hand is raised towards his throat and Jaejoong looks straight ahead, seeing something that Changmin can’t. By now, Changmin is pretty much regretting his Schadenfreude comment.
“You don’t have to tell me the whole story,” Changmin attempts and Jaejoong just snaps at him to remember not to interrupt, he was already wrapping up as it was.
“So they hung me,” he finishes off with all the finesse of someone telling Changmin that the weather is quite pleasant today. “The end. Oh and of course, factor in the whole haunting this place and all that, absolutely boring stuff if you ask me.” The hand comes back down and Jaejoong looks up at Changmin, face unreadable save for the small, slightly out of place smile that curves on his lips. “Now do you feel better about your bad day? I’ve pretty much had a bad few lifetimes by now.”
Changmin opens his mouth to say something, maybe “I’m sorry,” or “I didn’t know,” or just…anything for that matter but Jaejoong shushes him.
“Go to bed,” he says and gets up, probably headed for the roof. “My current lifetime is looking up a little for now so don’t worry your little head about it. Remember to get the milk tomorrow, by the way.”
-
The first Christmas that Changmin spends in his apartment is a freezing one, Jaejoong hovering around him as he sets up the slightly miserable looking Christmas tree in one corner not helping one bit. “Why are you so cold all the time?” Changmin complains and makes Jaejoong follow him round the tree as he puts the lights around the miniature plastic branches, Jaejoong holding part of the electric cord so that the lights won’t get tangled.
“Why are you such a pussy about the cold?” snaps Jaejoong back without too much feeling. Jaejoong doesn’t seem to take his Christmas lights assignment as a punishment at all, the gwishin actually looking like he’s enjoying himself. “Go turn the heater up a little more or something, gods, humans and their need to regulate their body temperatures.”
When they’re done and the heater has been turned up a few degrees, Jaejoong sits in front of the lighted up tree with an expression on his face that’s can be simply described as rapturous. “You like it?” Changmin ventures as he decides to brave the cold radiating off Jaejoong’s skin and goes to sit next to Jaejoong, watching the lights flick from setting to setting. Now chasing, now dimming, now brighter than ever. It almost makes the tree look festive.
“It was made with my slave labour, of course I like it.”
By the time Changmin goes to bed, Jaejoong is still sitting in front of the tree.
-
Jaejoong apparently likes Christmas more than he lets up on, which is slightly ironic to Changmin since Jaejoong technically shouldn’t exist, being a slightly blasphemous being in Christian theology and all that. School has already broken for Christmas break but Changmin stays back all the same, helping the professors look over teaching plans for January and spell-check numerous worksheets that will be waiting for students the moment they come back. The trip to the store is pretty much an unplanned one or so that’s what Changmin tries to tell himself when he walks in, picks the gift out and has it wrapped in its own little box, even complete with one of fancily tied ribbons on the top.
“Someone’s late tonight,” Jaejoong crows when Changmin walks in through his front door. It’s nearing eight thirty at night, the detour to the store having cost more than a bit of time and maybe Changmin has his slightly OCD tendencies to blame as well, scouring the street for the perfect thing. “Bad day again? Do you need another sob story from my life to make you feel better?”
“Merry Christmas,” Changmin says a little wearily in return instead and hands Jaejoong the small, gift wrapped box. Jaejoong’s eyes go wide.
-
They’re approximately three days to the actual day and Changmin forbids Jaejoong to open his present until Christmas morning, partly because he wants Jaejoong to have a taste of the tradition, mostly because it’s amusing to watch Jaejoong go stir crazy. “What’s in it?” Jaejoong demands day after day. “What’s in it?”
Changmin doesn’t back down, though. He has faced classes full of students handing up assignments late because they apparently couldn’t differentiate Tuesday and Thursday so Jaejoong’s complaining is actually peanuts. At least it is for the first three days, before Jaejoong switches tactics and takes to waking Changmin up at ungodly hours to demand for the present to be opened. By now, at least Changmin doesn’t have to show up at work anymore but the few days leading up to Christmas sees Changmin buying more coffee than usual to make it through the day.
-
At midnight, just as the 24th gives way to Christmas day, Changmin sits in front of the tree with Jaejoong again. Pulls the lone present out from under it and hands it to Jaejoong who reverently accepts the gift, all the hyperactivity from before strangely gone now that he’s actually in the actual moment. “It’ll be another year before I get to do this again,” he sighs and unties the ribbon, opens the gift box only to fall over laughing with glee a few moments later.
“You like it?” Changmin asks a little more nervously than he should have and Jaejoong is trying to right himself, reaching into the box to pull out a miniature electric Christmas tree. It runs on a single AAA battery and looks about as tacky as they come, even with a tiny little lighted up angel perched on the very top. Jaejoong loves it to bits.
“Because it you liked the Christmas tree and all so much and I thought-“ Changmin is horrible at explaining himself and he knows it, Jaejoong probably knows it from the way he’s smiling, “-maybe you’d appreciate having one around all year so…yeah. Merry Christmas.”
“I didn’t get you a present in return,” Jaejoong says a little disappointedly. “That’s how the tradition goes, right? Exchanging gifts? It’s a bit difficult to get a gift though, when I’m basically confined here.”
-
At ten minutes past midnight, Jaejoong has come up with an idea for his gift to Changmin.
“Can we pretend that today…well okay, yesterday, today is only ten minutes old anyways…that yesterday was a bad day?”
Changmin is surprised but plays along, it’s not really that uncommon anymore for him to go along with whatever Jaejoong wants.
“I offered you two options for bad days, remember?” There’s a slight flush to Jaejoong’s cheeks that Changmin has never seen before and it sounds impossible, given Jaejoong’s usual attitude towards things, but it might be that Jaejoong is blushing. “One, either to stoke your masochistic side by relating horrible stories about my life to make you feel better about yours and the other…”
What comes next, Changmin already expects, remembering all too well what Jaejoong’s last offer had been and yet, when it happens, Changmin can still feel his heart stutter a little. Jaejoong’s lips are as cold as the rest of him but they still feel soft against Changmin’s, one cool hand coming up behind Changmin’s head to bring Changmin just a fraction closer.
“Merry Christmas,” Jaejoong says when he pulls away and when he smiles, it feels like the air has turned just a little bit warmer.
-
Some part of Changmin, the logical, sane, straight thinking part of him tells him that this is going to end in a disaster. The other part, the one that has been granted more and more freedom ever since Jaejoong turned up on the kitchen table that night, the one that sits on the couch with Jaejoong’s head in his lap as they watch mindless television shows over the New Year break, that part tells him that he’s very well going to enjoy himself until this ends.
-
It’s been a year and nothing much has changed. Changmin still has bad days, Jaejoong still has Changmin choosing between two ways to make a bad day into a good one again, but the small difference is that Changmin usually picks both options. So Jaejoong will sit weightless in Changmin’s lap and tilt the man’s chin towards him, kiss the curve of Changmin’s jaw and move to his lips, the side of his mouth, eventually tell Changmin about that one year that someone had actually tried to move in out of desperation.
“Not unlike you,” he muses and Changmin snorts. “He only lasted a few days though, left before I even had a chance to say hi.”
“You caused mischief, didn’t you?”
“It was only some shadow play, I swear! I would have tried pulling the same thing on you as well but-“
“But?”
“But you were more likeable than the last tenant.”
This earns Jaejoong a kiss in return. Changmin feels like he hasn’t seen his sanity in ages and he doesn’t find himself missing it one bit.
“And now?”
“Downright lovable, you useless compliment-fishing wretch of a human.”
-
Two years since and Changmin’s mother is trying to find out why her son isn’t actively trying to produce some grandchildren from her, Jaejoong barely able to hide his amusement whenever he listens in on her phone conversations with Changmin.
“I just haven’t found the right one,” Changmin says awkwardly and Jaejoong worms his way onto Changmin’s lap, hiding laughter all the while. “I swear, I will one day, it’s just not the right time.”
“And I’m not the right one?” Jaejoong mouths as Changmin’s mother goes into her usual tirade about how Changmin should find a nice girl to settle down with before she
does it for him.
The moment she hangs up, Jaejoong is convulsing in laughter, trying to get Changmin to imagine what it’d be like if he ever met Changmin’s mother. “Maybe my good looks, wit and charm will convince her that I’m the right one,” he tells Changmin.
“You don’t have a uterus. Ergo, you’re not the right one. Not for her at any rate.”
“But for you?”
Changmin grins and pulls Jaejoong down on him, never really getting used to how light Jaejoong feels or how the gwishin’s skin can still send shivers down his spine when he curls a hand around Jaejoong’s cheek.
“You’re the right one,” he confirms and Jaejoong calls him out on being overly sentimental, despite how it’s obvious that Jaejoong is more pleased than he lets up on.
-
In summer time, Jaejoong uses the cold that follows him around to Changmin’s advantage. The apartment will be deliciously cool whenever Changmin comes back sweating from his daily commute from school to apartment and at night, Jaejoong sleeps in Changmin’s arms, keeps the heat at bay and sheets bearable to sleep under. Wintertime is a different matter though and it takes a while before they can find a compromise. Touching Jaejoong has become something close to an addiction for Changmin and Jaejoong appears to feel the same, which makes things slightly difficult when temperatures outside dip to below freezing.
Changmin has taken to wearing both socks and mittens while at home during those months, switching to gloves when he needs some workable form of dexterity. It isn’t as fulfilling as skin on skin contact but it’s okay, Changmin taking what he can get by even going as far as to pull on layer after layer of jumpers before crawling into bed with Jaejoong, the cold seeping through all the same.
Even then, everything is still okay.
-
One of Changmin’s favorite things to do on the weekends is to just lie in the sun with Jaejoong at his side. It’s an odd feeling to be both warm and cold at the same time but it’s not an unpleasant one, Jaejoong declaring that he doesn’t mind since he can’t feel the warmth anyways. The sunlight that comes in through the windows is smog-filtered and it lights up the dust mites in the air like no other, leads to Jaejoong giving snide comments about Changmin’s lack of housekeeping skills.
“You hardly vacuum,” Jaejoong sniffs. “Do you even own a vacuum cleaner, Changmin?”
“Shut up and let me enjoy my weekend, will you?”
The sunlight gets thinner in autumn and they will draw the curtains by then, retreat back to the couch so that Changmin can pretend to be productive as he marks papers with the television blaring. He’s completed his Masters by now and the school has offered him a permanent lecturing post, one that comes with a far more comfortable salary and a whole lot more paperwork.
“You’re such a miser to not even want to get a vacuum cleaner now that you can actually afford one,” chides Jaejoong and Changmin finally relents one day, just buys the damned thing to keep Jaejoong quiet. There’s a certain sort of domesticity to his life now and Changmin finds that he doesn’t quite mind having to argue over stupid things like vacuum cleaners with Jaejoong for the rest of his life.
-
It’s the middle of year three. Jaejoong feels a little colder to touch some days but Changmin just puts it down to the weather. Summer temperatures have been climbing for days now and the news anchor has been saying things about how this will possibly be one of the hottest summers Seoul has seen in decades. Maybe the difference between the heat outside and the cold of Jaejoong’s skin is getting too vast and his head is playing tricks on him? Or maybe Jaejoong has always been this cold and it’s the heat now that’s finally making Changmin realize it?
In any case, Changmin doesn’t want to entertain any other speculations and Jaejoong is quiet on the issue.
-
Changmin doesn’t classify them as signs the first time he notices them, but once he does, it’s too late to do anything but let things go on. Hadn’t he told himself that things were going to end badly and despite that knowing, he was willing to see it through all the same? One time, Changmin reaches for Jaejoong’s hand and his touch goes right through to the upholstery of the couch, Jaejoong sitting very, very still as Changmin tries to compose himself.
“What happened back there?” he asks Jaejoong and Jaejoong’s hand is solid again when he places it on Changmin’s knee.
“Just tired,” Jaejoong says. It’s a blatant, bold faced lie and Changmin knows it the moment the words leave Jaejoong’s mouth. “Sorry, my mistake.”
They fight after that, Jaejoong saying over and over again that he has no clue before stalking off to go sit in the bedroom by himself, leaving Changmin to brood on the couch as night falls further still. It’s almost a given thing that Jaejoong does know something but why he won’t let up on it, Changmin cannot comprehend. When Changmin finally does force himself to walk into his bedroom and lie down on the bedcovers, Jaejoong is already apologizing, the both of them tripping over their words in a flawed attempt to get them out first.
“I shouldn’t have-” begins Jaejoong.
“But I was-” says Changmin.
In the end, sleep is the best compromise they can both come up with and by the morning light, it’s easy to believe that none of last night had ever happened at all.
-
The next sign happens over the course of a few months. Sure, Jaejoong uses his “I’m tired,” excuse once a week and Changmin has almost willed himself to believe it even, but when the lapses in memory start, that’s when Changmin starts to get this sick feeling in his gut.
Jaejoong will sit at the coffee table for hours on end, playing with the little electronic Christmas tree that Changmin had gotten him that first year and later forget that he was ever there, a look of utter confusion on his face when Changmin tells him he’s going to need to change the batteries if he keeps it up.
“Change what batteries?” Jaejoong asks. He has just gotten up from the couch and the Christmas tree is still warm to touch from over-usage.
“The Christmas tree?” prompts Changmin and Jaejoong looks at the couch, the coffee table, back to Changmin.
“What about it?”
“You were playing with it?”
“I…just came from the kitchen.”
And Changmin will have to sit Jaejoong down and tell Jaejoong gently that no, he came from the kitchen at noontime, right after being incredibly unhelpful in dishwashing. Point out to a bewildered Jaejoong that it’s three in the afternoon now.
-
“I don’t like what’s happening.”
“You think I do?”
-
When Jaejoong actually starts flickering out of sight and stays missing for a day, Changmin calls into his school to put in a week-long emergency leave. The internet is just about as helpful as Jaejoong is and the only thing that Changmin can find about gwishin disappearing is them having completed their final tasks or fulfilled their last wishes. “Have you done anything lately?” he quizzes Jaejoong and Jaejoong only looks forlorn, curled up by Changmin’s side staring at the computer screen. “Jaejoong this is serious, you need to tell me if you’ve done anything so that I can…”
Changmin stops himself short, well aware that he has no real way of completing that sentence. So that he can do what, exactly? Stop it? Reverse time to make sure Jaejoong never did it? Deprive Jaejoong of finally moving on?
Jaejoong had disappeared on a Sunday, after a whole Saturday full of flickering and hands grasping at nothing, only to reappear on Monday with no idea that he had been gone for a full twenty four hours. Changmin doesn’t have any words to say when Jaejoong stumbles back into the bedroom, drawn by the sound of Changmin trying not to cry into his pillow.
“Why the fuck are you crying?” he demands and Changmin really does feel tears running down his cheeks then, pulls Jaejoong close to him and tells him that he’s fucking crying because he thought Jaejoong had left, left for good and would never come back.
“You have insecurity issues,” Jaejoong points out. He still thinks he has only been gone for a few minutes, from living room to bedroom.
“A day, Jaejoong. It’s Monday today, it’s Monday.”
Tuesday morning dawns and Changmin is still hunched over his computer with eye bags forming under his eyes and more caffeine than blood in his arteries. There is no answer other than the obvious one.
-
By Friday, Jaejoong decides he cannot take any more of this.
“So you do know something,” Changmin growls without too much anger, too tired and too upset to do anything but to let Jaejoong shush him.
“I had a hunch.”
“That you could have told me about earlier.”
“Would that have changed anything, honestly? Can anything even be changed?”
The stark grief in Jaejoong’s own voice is like a jolt to Changmin; the man draws in a shaky breath and the laptop falls to the floor. As much as Jaejoong would like to deny the term gwishin and parade his politically correct terms around, there’s no escaping the fact that the criteria remain the same. Gwishin stay on because they have something left to do, something more to complete and the moment that’s done, there’s no other reason to remain.
“So I’m not a reason now?” Changmin hears himself demanding, inexplicably. It’s a clingy, desperate sounding question. “I’m not a reason to stay?”
An expression of hurt passes Jaejoong’s face and his hands are cool when they come up to cup Changmin’s face, Jaejoong leaning in so that their foreheads are just touching, Changmin breathing in the faint scent of grass that Jaejoong always carries with him.
“You know I would stay if I could,” he says softly and Changmin feels his throat tighten, airways constrict with the threat of tears. “You know that.”
-
In the end, Jaejoong is leaving because of Changmin. No matter what angle that Changmin sees it from, it’s as ironic as hell and makes no sense, even if Jaejoong insists that this is how things work. Four years to love someone and then Jaejoong could move on. Had Yunho lasted only four years, then? Or less than that and the gods saw it fit to have Jaejoong experience it longer before he was out of commission for good? Either way, Changmin is torn between falling down on his knees in gratitude for the four years he has had and cursing their names for only having four when they could have had eight, sixteen, thirty.
“You never told me,” Changmin says and tries to keep the accusing tone out of his voice.
“And if I did, what then? You don’t think this wouldn’t still have happened?”
Changmin cannot help but wonder sometimes whether this has all been just an elaborate ruse. Could you even trick yourself into falling in love just to escape? “Even if I told you, even if it did change things for you, I swear to gods that I would have still felt the same,” Jaejoong continues on and Changmin closes his eyes, buoyed by the sound of Jaejoong’s voice as he commits the sound to memory.
In the end, he finds that he simply doesn’t care. Falling is falling is falling all the same, and when Changmin opens his eyes he can see the few Christmas gifts that he had bought Jaejoong over the years. A stuffed reindeer sitting on the cabinet. A glass bauble that hangs on the coat stand in the corner. They’re still half a year to Christmastime and Changmin doesn’t know if Jaejoong will be around that long.
“Likewise,” he tells Jaejoong and goes to drag the Christmas tree out to set up in June.
-
“I could move away.” Changmin comes up with the idea one evening, pile of student assignments untouched as he plays with Jaejoong’s hair. It’s not as dark as it used to be and sometimes it feels like he’s touching air but it’s alright, Changmin doesn’t want to linger on things like this. “I could move away and then come back and maybe-”
“Do you honestly think that you leaving would make me love you any less?” The words are soft and there’s a spark of fear in Jaejoong’s eyes as he sits up. “Even if you move to the other end of the world, nothing is going to change how this works.” Jaejoong punches Changmin lightly in the arm then, weak attempt at a smile. “You’re pretty fucking dense for someone who’s supposed to be educating the next generation, you know that?”
What Jaejoong really wants to say is this: nothing is ever going to change the way I feel about you. Jaejoong isn’t one for dramatics or theatrics, abhors lines like that the way Changmin hates students who cannot comprehend that the word stuff doesn’t require an s at the end to make it plural so Changmin doesn’t hold his breath to hear the words, only brushes the hair out of Jaejoong’s face with a smile of his own. Promises not to leave if Jaejoong doesn’t want him to.
After that, Jaejoong goes back to passing Changmin the right coloured pen he needs next and it feels like things just might be okay.
-
It’s August and the heat is worse than ever, Changmin taking to sleeping with the covers thrown off and Jaejoong pressed against him whenever he naps on weekend afternoons. It’s sometime around four, four thirty on a Sunday when Jaejoong shakes him awake.
“Changmin,” he says in this small voice that Changmin has never heard before and Changmin take some time to wake up, sleepily reaching for Jaejoong only to have his hand touch the sheets instead. This has been happening more and more these days. “Changmin.”
And in that one moment, it’s as if Changmin knows. Something inside clicks, something curls up and withers, dies when Jaejoong pulls him out of bed and Changmin stumbles after him.
“You’re leaving.” Changmin’s voice is hoarse and Jaejoong sits him down on the floor, the both of them kneeling in a patch of warm sunlight.
“I am,” agrees Jaejoong softly and there’s this strange light in his eyes. Perhaps it’s happiness, grief, anger. Maybe it’s just the way the light catches Jaejoong at that one
moment. Changmin is wondering how he’s going to live again after this.
“Changmin, listen, promise you’ll find me again after this? You’ll come look for me, right?”
For the first time, Jaejoong’s hand is warm when it brushes Changmin’s cheek and Changmin thinks he just might cry then, turning his face towards the touch while Jaejoong calls him a stupid, stupid human who needs to answer him right now, save the tears for later.
“Promise me you’ll come find me,” he says again and Changmin grasps Jaejoong’s hand in his, remembering every last touch and every last word. There’s no time left.
“I promise.”
This is a satisfactory enough answer for Jaejoong and he sighs, going to sit in Changmin’s lap with his back to the sunlight. “It’s warm,” Jaejoong murmurs as he lays his head on Changmin’s shoulder. “I haven’t been warm in a long time, Changmin.”
Changmin holds him until it feels as if there’s nothing left to hold, Jaejoong as weightless as a thought. The sun has climbed as high as it can go by now and it’s making its slow descent over the city, the light growing more golden by the minute.
“Don’t open your eyes, okay?” Jaejoong turns his head just a fraction and his lips are brushing against Changmin’s neck, as human as they will ever be. Changmin finds himself trying to remember the cold that used to come with Jaejoong, the chilled kisses and freezing fingertips. “Remember me the way you knew me. Live, remember.”
The last thing that Changmin hears is Jaejoong laughing close to him, calling him a ridiculous human who needs to remember his promise and the next time he opens his eyes, Jaejoong is gone. Changmin sits there long after twilight has fallen.
After
Sometimes, Changmin makes lists in his head of all the things he wants to say to Jaejoong whenever they next meet. Things like I love you, I’ve missed you so much. I’ve spent years looking for you because you, you bastard, you never told me how to find you.
Changmin makes lists and wanders his apartment, always coming back to that one patch of sunlight that has been the only constant all these years. He doesn’t even trust his own memories anymore, not after so long. Had Jaejoong been sitting on the kitchen table or the chair when they first met? How about the socks? Where did the socks come in?
Did Jaejoong ever exist?
He lies down on the floorboards and watches the dust mites float upwards, thinks of Jaejoong and the smell of grass, a story that once had horses in it. When he finds Jaejoong again one day, he’ll make Jaejoong retell it right from the start. Changmin thinks he should have listened to Jaejoong about the whole living and remembering part but Changmin is the stupid human, remember? The stupid, sentimental human who can’t keep the most simple of promises. Jaejoong is probably hiding from him because of this, but Changmin knows he’ll find Jaejoong one of these days. In a memory that he’ll suddenly remember, in a heart stutter. He’s looked everywhere so those are the last few places left that Jaejoong can be hiding. Another few years won’t make a difference; Changmin knows he has all the time in the world now.
Changmin lies for hours in the sun and waits to remember.
fin.
angst
pg13
7535 words
remix of jaceni's Love Pain
after
Changmin knows he has to be crazy whenever thoughts like these cross his mind, but sometimes, just sometimes, it feels like Jaejoong has never left.
“Here,” he will murmur under his breath and trail his fingers against the crack that spiderwebs from the window frame. “And here.” The place where floorboards have been worn smooth by pacing feet, scratched on the surface by dragging furniture legs. Jaejoong haunts these places and Changmin looks for him there, splays his fingers across the cracks and follows the scratches with a shaking touch. “Where are you?” he’ll hear himself ask and no matter how long it has been, some part of Changmin still expects an answer. Hands over his eyes and cool breath against the back of his neck, Jaejoong laughing as he tells Changmin that he’s just so fucking brilliant at hide and seek these days, how will Changmin ever find him if he doesn’t reveal himself?
It’s been the longest game of his life, trying to find Jaejoong again. Where to start? A folded page in a forgotten book, the stain on the floorboards where Jaejoong had spilled a cup of apple juice, Jaejoong could be hiding in any of these places so Changmin checks them over and over again, remembers snatches of conversations or maybe a touch against his skin. A map in the wallpaper that has started to flake away, revealing the whitewashed walls underneath. Coordinates sketched in dust. Perhaps he’s not remembering enough, Jaejoong must have left signs he’s been overlooking.
Changmin is a ghost in his own apartment, looking for the places where Jaejoong might be hiding. How many years has it been now? Ten, twenty? He has stopped counting after five and Changmin has watched the world move on without him, Seoul’s skyline ever-changing whenever he chooses to pull the curtains back. They’ve taken the bed away, but it doesn’t matter. Changmin lies on the floor in the late afternoon sunshine and tells his body to remember how it felt like to curve around another person’s. Tries to remember hair, eyes, voice, laughter.
He lies for hours in the sun and tries to remember how it used to feel like to be warm.
before
The real estate office has been kind enough to warn Changmin about buying this particular unit, the man across the table with the handlebar mustache and a bad comb-over actually leaning over the papers to shake Changmin’s hand once he signs the papers. “You, sir, are the bravest person I’ve met,” Changmin remembers him saying. Changmin doesn’t have it in him to reply that he isn’t as brave as he’s desperate for a place to stay, honestly.
“I don’t believe too much in urban legends and the sort, so it doesn’t really bother me.”
And it’s true to some extent, he doesn’t have the head or even the time to entertain myths and legends. So what if the corner apartment has been unoccupied ever since the building came up? And every potential owner has backed out merely after seeing the place? B-11-3A commands a gorgeous view of the Seoul skyline, sits right smack dab in the middle of Changmin’s bus route and best of all, comes at a dirt cheap price. A teaching aid’s salary at the neighbourhood college is nothing to shout about, but even Changmin is able to afford this and still have money left over to furnish the place with cheap, self-assembled Swedish furniture.
Of course Changmin has seen the place himself before putting his signature down, he isn’t as stupid as he’s desperate. Other than the fact that the apartment needs a good, thorough cleaning and maybe some wallpaper to cover the walls, everything seems to be in order. No strange shadows, no creaking floorboards when everyone is standing still, no suspicious activity unless he counts how the intern who had been assigned to show him the place was practically quaking in her stilettos, wringing her perfectly manicured hands every now and then.
“A bit drafty, isn’t it?” he commented to her, trying to get her mind off whatever it was that was making her so nervous and she had started to nod vigorously before remembering that it was her job to sell the place, not amplify it’s apparently numerous faults to Changmin.
“It’ll be better with furniture in?” she had finally suggested. “Curtains, a nice heavy carpet on the floor…and you do have a wonderful view of the city from here, Mr.Shim.”
-
One week after moving in, Changmin has to admit that he does have a wonderful view of the city from the eleventh floor, even if the intern’s suggestion that a heavy carpet on the floor might help with the draft issue is a load of cowpat. It still feels a little cold no matter how high he turns the heating on, Changmin even getting on all fours one day to check the walls for any potential holes or whatever it might be that’s causing the rooms to have a perpetual chill.
Unsurprisingly, there isn’t anything wrong with the walls or even the heater for that matter, Changmin finally putting it down to the psychological effects that come with listening to too many people telling him that his apartment is haunted. By what or who, no one could tell him, which makes things even more frustrating than ever but Changmin lets it go after a while, just takes to wearing socks whenever he’s at home.
-
The first time he meets Jaejoong, Changmin is wearing a pair of mismatched socks. One striped blue and white, the other a warm brown with the threads just coming a little unraveled at the toe.
“Those are some godawful ugly socks,” Jaejoong tells him, swinging his legs from the dining table and Changmin drops the pot of soup he had been carrying from stove to table, getting chicken cubes and bits of vegetables all over the floor while Jaejoong laughs and laughs. “And you need to work on your hand eye coordination.”
-
“What…what are you doing in my house?”
“How about I ask you the same question?”
-
Jaejoong has been here for years.
“Centuries, actually,” Jaejoong says casually and watches while Changmin cleans up the mess on the floor, questioning his own sanity all the while. “How do you think I’d be able to do-” A nudge against Changmin’s shoulder with one swinging foot, and Changmin feels a chill run through him before physics, gravity demands that he topple over, “-this? Takes years of practice, hanging around, to do something like this.”
The tone of voice is proud, but there’s no mistaking the hint of bitterness that rides just under the words.
“I’ve been here for a long, long time.”
-
A web search has Changmin knowing that the closest thing Jaejoong is would be a gwishin, someone left behind with unfinished business either unable to or unwilling to move on. “Gwishin,” scoffs Jaejoong, having moved to the couch while Changmin takes up residence on the one-seater, laptop on the coffee table in front of him. “Stories made to scare little children. Do I look like I’m hovering off the floor? Legless? Gwishin, pfah.”
“Why are you still here, then?”
“How do you know you’re not hallucinating me?” Jaejoong retorts and throws a cushion at the floor, getting up to stalk off through one of the walls. It takes two, long hours before Changmin can finally make himself pick the cushion up from across the room, hands shaking all the while. Jaejoong comes back just after two in the morning and almost makes Changmin scream when he appears next to Changmin’s bed, Changmin clutching the sheets close to his chin as he tries to edge away without actually showing that he’s moving.
“Sorry,” Jaejoong says and extends a hand that Changmin supposes he should shake. “Been a while since I’ve talked to anyone, let alone lived with someone. It’s a bit of a touchy subject, the whole gwishin thing. I prefer the term disembodied soul, it’s far more politically correct. Friends?”
Changmin shakes the proffered hand and finds Jaejoong’s skin oddly, pleasantly cold.
-
Even if Jaejoong is a hallucination, Changmin has come to the conclusion that he’s a damned good one. Maybe it’s a way for Changmin to comfort itself over the fact that he’s slowly losing his marbles every time he eats breakfast to the sound of Jaejoong singing softly under his breath, but at least Changmin can be rest assured that he has a brilliant imagination? And also an apparent flair for raunchy songs in Middle Korean? Jaejoong’s favorite is one about a bear and a maiden fair, Changmin snorting his cereal up his nose more times than he can count whenever he hears it.
Changmin never does bring the topic of Jaejoong being left behind again and Jaejoong doesn’t encourage an open discussion on it, preferring to sit with Changmin at the dining table in the evenings, talk about inane things while he scratches marks into the cheap wood. “To save your sanity,” he points out and carves his initials there with one fingernail, a J that was more like a straight line with a diagonal, slightly jagged tail. “Of course, you can always try and convince yourself that you carved this yourself, whatever goes. Don’t say I never tried to help you stay sane.”
It becomes routine after a while, Jaejoong keeping Changmin company the nights he had to stay up marking student essays, passing him different coloured pens whenever he asks for them. Green for grammar. Red for spelling mistakes. Blue for everything that fit neither category. Jaejoong would ask him about his day and Changmin would Jaejoong about the life he had before this, the years he spent haunting the drywalls and the times he remembered from…before.
“Why don’t we just keep that for a rainy day?” Jaejoong usually deflects and turns the tables on Changmin, gets the man to tell him about how teaching was like, how he landed the job to begin with, how long more till he could call Changmin professor.
“A long, long while,” Changmin laughs at that particular question. The school is allowing him to do his MA in English while he assists, but at the rate he’s going, gods know how long till he can finally finish. “A very long while.”
Jaejoong gets this look in his eyes at that, half amusement and half something a little darker, a little sadder.
“I’ve got time to spare.”
-
It’s a comfortable enough living arrangement, if not a strange one. Changmin stops questioning his sanity after a while and decides that if he’s going to have to live with Jaejoong for the rest of his stay in this apartment, he might as well make something good out of it. Like a paranormal security guard who can make sure that Changmin will never get robbed. Or maybe, a friend.
Sometimes Jaejoong moves things out of boredom, puts Changmin’s coffee cup in the bottom cupboard instead of leaving it on the rack where it belongs. Sometimes even scares Changmin witless by sitting on him in the middle of the night, a cold weight that laughs and calls Changmin a wuss when Changmin tries to shove him off and go back to sleep. It doesn’t get that scary after a while, but Changmin still plays along for Jaejoong’s benefit since the gwishin doe seem to get a huge kick out of it. At any rate, according to Jaejoong, it’s far more entertaining than spending his nights up on the roof, waiting for morning to come.
A month turns into three, leaping into six and Changmin never does get to telling anyone about his permanent houseguest, not even Junsu who lives a few doors away and would drop by to watch football with Changmin some nights. Jaejoong hides himself away then, the only sign that he’s watching being when Changmin feels a breath of cold air behind his neck, Junsu unconsciously hunching a little closer over his bowl of crisps as the game goes on.
It shouldn’t be comforting to know that Jaejoong is hanging around and Changmin probably doesn’t have the best word choice in the world, but comforting seems to fit the bill for now.
-
Sometimes, Changmin has bad days at work. Maybe it’s finals month for one of his classes, Chagmin coming home with three folders worth of papers to re-mark after the class professor has already gone through them or maybe it’s orientation week, Changmin needing to get up at ass o’clock in the morning before limping back home past seven at night, head ringing from the raucous team cheers and whatnot that the new students always manage to come up with. In any case, Jaejoong usually knows it’s been a bad day the moment Changmin steps through the door.
“Go shower,” he would say helpfully and by the time Changmin comes back out, hair still damp and curling at the edges, there’s be a mug of hot tea waiting on the kitchen table, Jaejoong swinging his legs from his perch next to it.
“Bad day?”
“Pretty much, yeah.”
Changmin can rank his bad days on a scale of one to ten. Two for when he comes home to find that he forgot to pick up some milk from the store. Five for a ton of assignments to look through. Seven when the nth draft of his thesis from hell is due soon and he’s dead tired. Ten when all of that happens on the same day.
“I’m calling in sick tomorrow,” he announces to Jaejoong when he falls into bed just past three am. “I need sleep. And milk. Goddamn milk.”
Jaejoong just makes an understanding sound and sits on the floor, head resting against the side of Changmin’s bed frame. “How about I tell you story that will make your bad day look like peanuts? Or would you rather I kiss your psychological boo-boos better?”
“I’d rather have my dose of Schadenfreude, thanks. Bring it on,” mumbles Changmin from under his pillow where he has hidden himself, waiting for blessed sleep to take him. He’s feeling a lot calmer now that tomorrow’s schedule has been emptied, having enough time to finish marking his assignments, complete the draft and still sleep in. And buy milk, if he ever remembers. “Make it good, I’m in a mood to take a little pleasure in other people’s misery.”
“For the sake of clarity, let’s call the main character Jaejoong,” the gwishin starts off and Changmin extracts his head from under the pillow, blinking at Jaejoong who merely smiles serenely back. It’s just about moonset now outside his apartment window and the glow from it has Jaejoong look a little more ethereal than usual. “And no interruptions during my session, I don’t like repeating myself.”
-
There had been stables here, once. How long ago, Jaejoong didn’t even care to remember anymore, but when he talked about the wooden rows of stalls, how he used to sleep in the small landings above where the horses were kept, it was easy for Changmin to see that Jaejoong still remembered a good deal. They were owned by a high ranking government official and Jaejoong liked his messenger horses the best, sleek, smaller boned creatures than the bad tempered war stallions that tried to bite him whenever he cleaned their stalls.
“Yunho liked them though,” Jaejoong went on to say, sighing as he leaned against the wall. “Only gods know how he managed to calm them down enough to even get close, but that was Yunho for you. Maybe they could smell his highborn blood or something, fuck, I don’t know.” But, anyways. Yunho. They had a good run, a few years of sneaking around at night, literal tumbles in the hay. The landings were only built for one stable boy to sleep on yet that never stopped them from trying to squeeze two people there the nights they could, Yunho reading to Jaejoong from the texts he squirreled away from the main house and Jaejoong teaching Yunho how to distinguish the sounds of one horse from another.
“We had candles up there, a stupid thing to have when the whole place could go up at any moment if the right things caught fire. But how were you supposed to read without them?”
It had been cold the night their luck finally ran out and Jaejoong wouldn’t even have woken up if not for Yunho shouting in his ear, the both of them barely making it out of the place alive. Jaejoong doesn’t know how the candle fell over and doesn’t want to speculate, voice going a little dull as he recounts the trial after that.
“Of course I had to cover his ass for him,” he says with only the faintest trace of bitterness. “No one could know he was in there with me so I had to step up and say that yes, I fucked up, I let the fire happen on my watch. Yunho tried, of course, intervened and all that, but what could he have logically done when he wasn’t supposed to even know my name?” A hand is raised towards his throat and Jaejoong looks straight ahead, seeing something that Changmin can’t. By now, Changmin is pretty much regretting his Schadenfreude comment.
“You don’t have to tell me the whole story,” Changmin attempts and Jaejoong just snaps at him to remember not to interrupt, he was already wrapping up as it was.
“So they hung me,” he finishes off with all the finesse of someone telling Changmin that the weather is quite pleasant today. “The end. Oh and of course, factor in the whole haunting this place and all that, absolutely boring stuff if you ask me.” The hand comes back down and Jaejoong looks up at Changmin, face unreadable save for the small, slightly out of place smile that curves on his lips. “Now do you feel better about your bad day? I’ve pretty much had a bad few lifetimes by now.”
Changmin opens his mouth to say something, maybe “I’m sorry,” or “I didn’t know,” or just…anything for that matter but Jaejoong shushes him.
“Go to bed,” he says and gets up, probably headed for the roof. “My current lifetime is looking up a little for now so don’t worry your little head about it. Remember to get the milk tomorrow, by the way.”
-
The first Christmas that Changmin spends in his apartment is a freezing one, Jaejoong hovering around him as he sets up the slightly miserable looking Christmas tree in one corner not helping one bit. “Why are you so cold all the time?” Changmin complains and makes Jaejoong follow him round the tree as he puts the lights around the miniature plastic branches, Jaejoong holding part of the electric cord so that the lights won’t get tangled.
“Why are you such a pussy about the cold?” snaps Jaejoong back without too much feeling. Jaejoong doesn’t seem to take his Christmas lights assignment as a punishment at all, the gwishin actually looking like he’s enjoying himself. “Go turn the heater up a little more or something, gods, humans and their need to regulate their body temperatures.”
When they’re done and the heater has been turned up a few degrees, Jaejoong sits in front of the lighted up tree with an expression on his face that’s can be simply described as rapturous. “You like it?” Changmin ventures as he decides to brave the cold radiating off Jaejoong’s skin and goes to sit next to Jaejoong, watching the lights flick from setting to setting. Now chasing, now dimming, now brighter than ever. It almost makes the tree look festive.
“It was made with my slave labour, of course I like it.”
By the time Changmin goes to bed, Jaejoong is still sitting in front of the tree.
-
Jaejoong apparently likes Christmas more than he lets up on, which is slightly ironic to Changmin since Jaejoong technically shouldn’t exist, being a slightly blasphemous being in Christian theology and all that. School has already broken for Christmas break but Changmin stays back all the same, helping the professors look over teaching plans for January and spell-check numerous worksheets that will be waiting for students the moment they come back. The trip to the store is pretty much an unplanned one or so that’s what Changmin tries to tell himself when he walks in, picks the gift out and has it wrapped in its own little box, even complete with one of fancily tied ribbons on the top.
“Someone’s late tonight,” Jaejoong crows when Changmin walks in through his front door. It’s nearing eight thirty at night, the detour to the store having cost more than a bit of time and maybe Changmin has his slightly OCD tendencies to blame as well, scouring the street for the perfect thing. “Bad day again? Do you need another sob story from my life to make you feel better?”
“Merry Christmas,” Changmin says a little wearily in return instead and hands Jaejoong the small, gift wrapped box. Jaejoong’s eyes go wide.
-
They’re approximately three days to the actual day and Changmin forbids Jaejoong to open his present until Christmas morning, partly because he wants Jaejoong to have a taste of the tradition, mostly because it’s amusing to watch Jaejoong go stir crazy. “What’s in it?” Jaejoong demands day after day. “What’s in it?”
Changmin doesn’t back down, though. He has faced classes full of students handing up assignments late because they apparently couldn’t differentiate Tuesday and Thursday so Jaejoong’s complaining is actually peanuts. At least it is for the first three days, before Jaejoong switches tactics and takes to waking Changmin up at ungodly hours to demand for the present to be opened. By now, at least Changmin doesn’t have to show up at work anymore but the few days leading up to Christmas sees Changmin buying more coffee than usual to make it through the day.
-
At midnight, just as the 24th gives way to Christmas day, Changmin sits in front of the tree with Jaejoong again. Pulls the lone present out from under it and hands it to Jaejoong who reverently accepts the gift, all the hyperactivity from before strangely gone now that he’s actually in the actual moment. “It’ll be another year before I get to do this again,” he sighs and unties the ribbon, opens the gift box only to fall over laughing with glee a few moments later.
“You like it?” Changmin asks a little more nervously than he should have and Jaejoong is trying to right himself, reaching into the box to pull out a miniature electric Christmas tree. It runs on a single AAA battery and looks about as tacky as they come, even with a tiny little lighted up angel perched on the very top. Jaejoong loves it to bits.
“Because it you liked the Christmas tree and all so much and I thought-“ Changmin is horrible at explaining himself and he knows it, Jaejoong probably knows it from the way he’s smiling, “-maybe you’d appreciate having one around all year so…yeah. Merry Christmas.”
“I didn’t get you a present in return,” Jaejoong says a little disappointedly. “That’s how the tradition goes, right? Exchanging gifts? It’s a bit difficult to get a gift though, when I’m basically confined here.”
-
At ten minutes past midnight, Jaejoong has come up with an idea for his gift to Changmin.
“Can we pretend that today…well okay, yesterday, today is only ten minutes old anyways…that yesterday was a bad day?”
Changmin is surprised but plays along, it’s not really that uncommon anymore for him to go along with whatever Jaejoong wants.
“I offered you two options for bad days, remember?” There’s a slight flush to Jaejoong’s cheeks that Changmin has never seen before and it sounds impossible, given Jaejoong’s usual attitude towards things, but it might be that Jaejoong is blushing. “One, either to stoke your masochistic side by relating horrible stories about my life to make you feel better about yours and the other…”
What comes next, Changmin already expects, remembering all too well what Jaejoong’s last offer had been and yet, when it happens, Changmin can still feel his heart stutter a little. Jaejoong’s lips are as cold as the rest of him but they still feel soft against Changmin’s, one cool hand coming up behind Changmin’s head to bring Changmin just a fraction closer.
“Merry Christmas,” Jaejoong says when he pulls away and when he smiles, it feels like the air has turned just a little bit warmer.
-
Some part of Changmin, the logical, sane, straight thinking part of him tells him that this is going to end in a disaster. The other part, the one that has been granted more and more freedom ever since Jaejoong turned up on the kitchen table that night, the one that sits on the couch with Jaejoong’s head in his lap as they watch mindless television shows over the New Year break, that part tells him that he’s very well going to enjoy himself until this ends.
-
It’s been a year and nothing much has changed. Changmin still has bad days, Jaejoong still has Changmin choosing between two ways to make a bad day into a good one again, but the small difference is that Changmin usually picks both options. So Jaejoong will sit weightless in Changmin’s lap and tilt the man’s chin towards him, kiss the curve of Changmin’s jaw and move to his lips, the side of his mouth, eventually tell Changmin about that one year that someone had actually tried to move in out of desperation.
“Not unlike you,” he muses and Changmin snorts. “He only lasted a few days though, left before I even had a chance to say hi.”
“You caused mischief, didn’t you?”
“It was only some shadow play, I swear! I would have tried pulling the same thing on you as well but-“
“But?”
“But you were more likeable than the last tenant.”
This earns Jaejoong a kiss in return. Changmin feels like he hasn’t seen his sanity in ages and he doesn’t find himself missing it one bit.
“And now?”
“Downright lovable, you useless compliment-fishing wretch of a human.”
-
Two years since and Changmin’s mother is trying to find out why her son isn’t actively trying to produce some grandchildren from her, Jaejoong barely able to hide his amusement whenever he listens in on her phone conversations with Changmin.
“I just haven’t found the right one,” Changmin says awkwardly and Jaejoong worms his way onto Changmin’s lap, hiding laughter all the while. “I swear, I will one day, it’s just not the right time.”
“And I’m not the right one?” Jaejoong mouths as Changmin’s mother goes into her usual tirade about how Changmin should find a nice girl to settle down with before she
does it for him.
The moment she hangs up, Jaejoong is convulsing in laughter, trying to get Changmin to imagine what it’d be like if he ever met Changmin’s mother. “Maybe my good looks, wit and charm will convince her that I’m the right one,” he tells Changmin.
“You don’t have a uterus. Ergo, you’re not the right one. Not for her at any rate.”
“But for you?”
Changmin grins and pulls Jaejoong down on him, never really getting used to how light Jaejoong feels or how the gwishin’s skin can still send shivers down his spine when he curls a hand around Jaejoong’s cheek.
“You’re the right one,” he confirms and Jaejoong calls him out on being overly sentimental, despite how it’s obvious that Jaejoong is more pleased than he lets up on.
-
In summer time, Jaejoong uses the cold that follows him around to Changmin’s advantage. The apartment will be deliciously cool whenever Changmin comes back sweating from his daily commute from school to apartment and at night, Jaejoong sleeps in Changmin’s arms, keeps the heat at bay and sheets bearable to sleep under. Wintertime is a different matter though and it takes a while before they can find a compromise. Touching Jaejoong has become something close to an addiction for Changmin and Jaejoong appears to feel the same, which makes things slightly difficult when temperatures outside dip to below freezing.
Changmin has taken to wearing both socks and mittens while at home during those months, switching to gloves when he needs some workable form of dexterity. It isn’t as fulfilling as skin on skin contact but it’s okay, Changmin taking what he can get by even going as far as to pull on layer after layer of jumpers before crawling into bed with Jaejoong, the cold seeping through all the same.
Even then, everything is still okay.
-
One of Changmin’s favorite things to do on the weekends is to just lie in the sun with Jaejoong at his side. It’s an odd feeling to be both warm and cold at the same time but it’s not an unpleasant one, Jaejoong declaring that he doesn’t mind since he can’t feel the warmth anyways. The sunlight that comes in through the windows is smog-filtered and it lights up the dust mites in the air like no other, leads to Jaejoong giving snide comments about Changmin’s lack of housekeeping skills.
“You hardly vacuum,” Jaejoong sniffs. “Do you even own a vacuum cleaner, Changmin?”
“Shut up and let me enjoy my weekend, will you?”
The sunlight gets thinner in autumn and they will draw the curtains by then, retreat back to the couch so that Changmin can pretend to be productive as he marks papers with the television blaring. He’s completed his Masters by now and the school has offered him a permanent lecturing post, one that comes with a far more comfortable salary and a whole lot more paperwork.
“You’re such a miser to not even want to get a vacuum cleaner now that you can actually afford one,” chides Jaejoong and Changmin finally relents one day, just buys the damned thing to keep Jaejoong quiet. There’s a certain sort of domesticity to his life now and Changmin finds that he doesn’t quite mind having to argue over stupid things like vacuum cleaners with Jaejoong for the rest of his life.
-
It’s the middle of year three. Jaejoong feels a little colder to touch some days but Changmin just puts it down to the weather. Summer temperatures have been climbing for days now and the news anchor has been saying things about how this will possibly be one of the hottest summers Seoul has seen in decades. Maybe the difference between the heat outside and the cold of Jaejoong’s skin is getting too vast and his head is playing tricks on him? Or maybe Jaejoong has always been this cold and it’s the heat now that’s finally making Changmin realize it?
In any case, Changmin doesn’t want to entertain any other speculations and Jaejoong is quiet on the issue.
-
Changmin doesn’t classify them as signs the first time he notices them, but once he does, it’s too late to do anything but let things go on. Hadn’t he told himself that things were going to end badly and despite that knowing, he was willing to see it through all the same? One time, Changmin reaches for Jaejoong’s hand and his touch goes right through to the upholstery of the couch, Jaejoong sitting very, very still as Changmin tries to compose himself.
“What happened back there?” he asks Jaejoong and Jaejoong’s hand is solid again when he places it on Changmin’s knee.
“Just tired,” Jaejoong says. It’s a blatant, bold faced lie and Changmin knows it the moment the words leave Jaejoong’s mouth. “Sorry, my mistake.”
They fight after that, Jaejoong saying over and over again that he has no clue before stalking off to go sit in the bedroom by himself, leaving Changmin to brood on the couch as night falls further still. It’s almost a given thing that Jaejoong does know something but why he won’t let up on it, Changmin cannot comprehend. When Changmin finally does force himself to walk into his bedroom and lie down on the bedcovers, Jaejoong is already apologizing, the both of them tripping over their words in a flawed attempt to get them out first.
“I shouldn’t have-” begins Jaejoong.
“But I was-” says Changmin.
In the end, sleep is the best compromise they can both come up with and by the morning light, it’s easy to believe that none of last night had ever happened at all.
-
The next sign happens over the course of a few months. Sure, Jaejoong uses his “I’m tired,” excuse once a week and Changmin has almost willed himself to believe it even, but when the lapses in memory start, that’s when Changmin starts to get this sick feeling in his gut.
Jaejoong will sit at the coffee table for hours on end, playing with the little electronic Christmas tree that Changmin had gotten him that first year and later forget that he was ever there, a look of utter confusion on his face when Changmin tells him he’s going to need to change the batteries if he keeps it up.
“Change what batteries?” Jaejoong asks. He has just gotten up from the couch and the Christmas tree is still warm to touch from over-usage.
“The Christmas tree?” prompts Changmin and Jaejoong looks at the couch, the coffee table, back to Changmin.
“What about it?”
“You were playing with it?”
“I…just came from the kitchen.”
And Changmin will have to sit Jaejoong down and tell Jaejoong gently that no, he came from the kitchen at noontime, right after being incredibly unhelpful in dishwashing. Point out to a bewildered Jaejoong that it’s three in the afternoon now.
-
“I don’t like what’s happening.”
“You think I do?”
-
When Jaejoong actually starts flickering out of sight and stays missing for a day, Changmin calls into his school to put in a week-long emergency leave. The internet is just about as helpful as Jaejoong is and the only thing that Changmin can find about gwishin disappearing is them having completed their final tasks or fulfilled their last wishes. “Have you done anything lately?” he quizzes Jaejoong and Jaejoong only looks forlorn, curled up by Changmin’s side staring at the computer screen. “Jaejoong this is serious, you need to tell me if you’ve done anything so that I can…”
Changmin stops himself short, well aware that he has no real way of completing that sentence. So that he can do what, exactly? Stop it? Reverse time to make sure Jaejoong never did it? Deprive Jaejoong of finally moving on?
Jaejoong had disappeared on a Sunday, after a whole Saturday full of flickering and hands grasping at nothing, only to reappear on Monday with no idea that he had been gone for a full twenty four hours. Changmin doesn’t have any words to say when Jaejoong stumbles back into the bedroom, drawn by the sound of Changmin trying not to cry into his pillow.
“Why the fuck are you crying?” he demands and Changmin really does feel tears running down his cheeks then, pulls Jaejoong close to him and tells him that he’s fucking crying because he thought Jaejoong had left, left for good and would never come back.
“You have insecurity issues,” Jaejoong points out. He still thinks he has only been gone for a few minutes, from living room to bedroom.
“A day, Jaejoong. It’s Monday today, it’s Monday.”
Tuesday morning dawns and Changmin is still hunched over his computer with eye bags forming under his eyes and more caffeine than blood in his arteries. There is no answer other than the obvious one.
-
By Friday, Jaejoong decides he cannot take any more of this.
“So you do know something,” Changmin growls without too much anger, too tired and too upset to do anything but to let Jaejoong shush him.
“I had a hunch.”
“That you could have told me about earlier.”
“Would that have changed anything, honestly? Can anything even be changed?”
The stark grief in Jaejoong’s own voice is like a jolt to Changmin; the man draws in a shaky breath and the laptop falls to the floor. As much as Jaejoong would like to deny the term gwishin and parade his politically correct terms around, there’s no escaping the fact that the criteria remain the same. Gwishin stay on because they have something left to do, something more to complete and the moment that’s done, there’s no other reason to remain.
“So I’m not a reason now?” Changmin hears himself demanding, inexplicably. It’s a clingy, desperate sounding question. “I’m not a reason to stay?”
An expression of hurt passes Jaejoong’s face and his hands are cool when they come up to cup Changmin’s face, Jaejoong leaning in so that their foreheads are just touching, Changmin breathing in the faint scent of grass that Jaejoong always carries with him.
“You know I would stay if I could,” he says softly and Changmin feels his throat tighten, airways constrict with the threat of tears. “You know that.”
-
In the end, Jaejoong is leaving because of Changmin. No matter what angle that Changmin sees it from, it’s as ironic as hell and makes no sense, even if Jaejoong insists that this is how things work. Four years to love someone and then Jaejoong could move on. Had Yunho lasted only four years, then? Or less than that and the gods saw it fit to have Jaejoong experience it longer before he was out of commission for good? Either way, Changmin is torn between falling down on his knees in gratitude for the four years he has had and cursing their names for only having four when they could have had eight, sixteen, thirty.
“You never told me,” Changmin says and tries to keep the accusing tone out of his voice.
“And if I did, what then? You don’t think this wouldn’t still have happened?”
Changmin cannot help but wonder sometimes whether this has all been just an elaborate ruse. Could you even trick yourself into falling in love just to escape? “Even if I told you, even if it did change things for you, I swear to gods that I would have still felt the same,” Jaejoong continues on and Changmin closes his eyes, buoyed by the sound of Jaejoong’s voice as he commits the sound to memory.
In the end, he finds that he simply doesn’t care. Falling is falling is falling all the same, and when Changmin opens his eyes he can see the few Christmas gifts that he had bought Jaejoong over the years. A stuffed reindeer sitting on the cabinet. A glass bauble that hangs on the coat stand in the corner. They’re still half a year to Christmastime and Changmin doesn’t know if Jaejoong will be around that long.
“Likewise,” he tells Jaejoong and goes to drag the Christmas tree out to set up in June.
-
“I could move away.” Changmin comes up with the idea one evening, pile of student assignments untouched as he plays with Jaejoong’s hair. It’s not as dark as it used to be and sometimes it feels like he’s touching air but it’s alright, Changmin doesn’t want to linger on things like this. “I could move away and then come back and maybe-”
“Do you honestly think that you leaving would make me love you any less?” The words are soft and there’s a spark of fear in Jaejoong’s eyes as he sits up. “Even if you move to the other end of the world, nothing is going to change how this works.” Jaejoong punches Changmin lightly in the arm then, weak attempt at a smile. “You’re pretty fucking dense for someone who’s supposed to be educating the next generation, you know that?”
What Jaejoong really wants to say is this: nothing is ever going to change the way I feel about you. Jaejoong isn’t one for dramatics or theatrics, abhors lines like that the way Changmin hates students who cannot comprehend that the word stuff doesn’t require an s at the end to make it plural so Changmin doesn’t hold his breath to hear the words, only brushes the hair out of Jaejoong’s face with a smile of his own. Promises not to leave if Jaejoong doesn’t want him to.
After that, Jaejoong goes back to passing Changmin the right coloured pen he needs next and it feels like things just might be okay.
-
It’s August and the heat is worse than ever, Changmin taking to sleeping with the covers thrown off and Jaejoong pressed against him whenever he naps on weekend afternoons. It’s sometime around four, four thirty on a Sunday when Jaejoong shakes him awake.
“Changmin,” he says in this small voice that Changmin has never heard before and Changmin take some time to wake up, sleepily reaching for Jaejoong only to have his hand touch the sheets instead. This has been happening more and more these days. “Changmin.”
And in that one moment, it’s as if Changmin knows. Something inside clicks, something curls up and withers, dies when Jaejoong pulls him out of bed and Changmin stumbles after him.
“You’re leaving.” Changmin’s voice is hoarse and Jaejoong sits him down on the floor, the both of them kneeling in a patch of warm sunlight.
“I am,” agrees Jaejoong softly and there’s this strange light in his eyes. Perhaps it’s happiness, grief, anger. Maybe it’s just the way the light catches Jaejoong at that one
moment. Changmin is wondering how he’s going to live again after this.
“Changmin, listen, promise you’ll find me again after this? You’ll come look for me, right?”
For the first time, Jaejoong’s hand is warm when it brushes Changmin’s cheek and Changmin thinks he just might cry then, turning his face towards the touch while Jaejoong calls him a stupid, stupid human who needs to answer him right now, save the tears for later.
“Promise me you’ll come find me,” he says again and Changmin grasps Jaejoong’s hand in his, remembering every last touch and every last word. There’s no time left.
“I promise.”
This is a satisfactory enough answer for Jaejoong and he sighs, going to sit in Changmin’s lap with his back to the sunlight. “It’s warm,” Jaejoong murmurs as he lays his head on Changmin’s shoulder. “I haven’t been warm in a long time, Changmin.”
Changmin holds him until it feels as if there’s nothing left to hold, Jaejoong as weightless as a thought. The sun has climbed as high as it can go by now and it’s making its slow descent over the city, the light growing more golden by the minute.
“Don’t open your eyes, okay?” Jaejoong turns his head just a fraction and his lips are brushing against Changmin’s neck, as human as they will ever be. Changmin finds himself trying to remember the cold that used to come with Jaejoong, the chilled kisses and freezing fingertips. “Remember me the way you knew me. Live, remember.”
The last thing that Changmin hears is Jaejoong laughing close to him, calling him a ridiculous human who needs to remember his promise and the next time he opens his eyes, Jaejoong is gone. Changmin sits there long after twilight has fallen.
After
Sometimes, Changmin makes lists in his head of all the things he wants to say to Jaejoong whenever they next meet. Things like I love you, I’ve missed you so much. I’ve spent years looking for you because you, you bastard, you never told me how to find you.
Changmin makes lists and wanders his apartment, always coming back to that one patch of sunlight that has been the only constant all these years. He doesn’t even trust his own memories anymore, not after so long. Had Jaejoong been sitting on the kitchen table or the chair when they first met? How about the socks? Where did the socks come in?
Did Jaejoong ever exist?
He lies down on the floorboards and watches the dust mites float upwards, thinks of Jaejoong and the smell of grass, a story that once had horses in it. When he finds Jaejoong again one day, he’ll make Jaejoong retell it right from the start. Changmin thinks he should have listened to Jaejoong about the whole living and remembering part but Changmin is the stupid human, remember? The stupid, sentimental human who can’t keep the most simple of promises. Jaejoong is probably hiding from him because of this, but Changmin knows he’ll find Jaejoong one of these days. In a memory that he’ll suddenly remember, in a heart stutter. He’s looked everywhere so those are the last few places left that Jaejoong can be hiding. Another few years won’t make a difference; Changmin knows he has all the time in the world now.
Changmin lies for hours in the sun and waits to remember.
fin.