Shadowplay (2/2)
He’s there when Sehun wakes up, slipping past the nurses an easy task for an invisible boy, and Sehun seems surprised to see him, eyes widening in the way Jongin’s grown to love as he slowly reaches up a hand to touch Jongin’s face, making sure that he’s real.
“Hey,” Jongin says weakly, placing his own hand over Sehun’s trembling one, willing his strength to travel down his arm and into Sehun’s tired body.
“What happened?” Sehun asks quietly, and his voice is tired, almost scared, and it’s enough to bring tears to Jongin’s eyes that he quickly fights back. Sehun is just another flower he has to care for, to cover in newspaper and save from the frost.
“I was hoping you would be able to tell me that,” Jongin says, pasting a wan smile on his face because he knows it will reassure Sehun. “You just appeared out of the dark, all beat up, and told me you needed help.”
“Damn,” Sehun mutters, turning his face towards the ceiling, the same way Jongin’s watched flowers reach towards the light season after season, and Jongin knows that the only way to deal with this is to be patient. He has to wait for Sehun to bloom on his own.
“I was really worried,” Jongin says, reaching over and grabbing Sehun’s limp hand, covering it with both of his own. Sehun’s skin is icy cold, and Jongin wills his hands to transfer heat faster, give their warmth to Sehun the way they once gave it to the tea Sehun brought with him. Sehun opens his mouth as if to speak, closes it again, then opens it once more.
“I hate this,” he finally says, and the deep bitterness in the words leaves a terrible aftertaste in Jongin’s mouth. “I hate that no one can forget me. I hate being trapped like this. Everywhere I go, there’s someone who knows who I am, someone who knows what I was, what I was before I met you, and I can’t hide because you can’t hide from yourself…”
Jongin is silent, hoping that he’ll go on but sure that this is too good to be true because this is Sehun, who’s never said “I love you,” who sometimes kisses Jongin too hard, their teeth clacking together, just to taste the blood in his mouth when Jongin’s too-dry lips split open. This is Sehun who drives too fast on rain-slicked roads and wants, more than anything, to be forgotten.
“This,” Sehun says, and he motions to his body as if to reference every bruise, every shattered bone and twisted tendon and brittle soul, “was an accident. But I’m afraid that one day it won’t be. What if, one day, I do this to myself on purpose? What if this is the only way to truly forget?”
“You don’t need this,” Jongin says, and he only realizes that he’s crying when Sehun reaches up a wondering hand to his face and it comes away wet. “You have me. If you’re the only one who can truly see me, then maybe I’m the only person who can truly forget you.”
“But that’s the problem,” Sehun says with a smile that tears at Jongin’s heart. “You’re the one person I don’t want to be forgotten by.”
This time it’s Jongin who drives Sehun to the beach, though they end up in the same position, sitting side by side in the sand, Jongin drawing endless circles that collapse, one by one, under their own weight, as Sehun stares out at the ocean.
“It’s still beautiful,” Jongin says and Sehun nods slowly, as if he’s not sure whether to agree or not.
“I wonder how the people on those boats feel,” Sehun says, pointing with a bandaged hand at a cluster of small white sailboats hovering against the horizon.
“I bet they feel very adventurous. And brave and scared and happy,” Jongin replies, even though he knows Sehun doesn’t really want a response.
“Did you know that in some villages near the sea they ring a bell every time a sailor dies?” Sehun says suddenly, and Jongin shoots him a worried glance. “I think I’d like to be remembered like that. With just the short, loud, solemn clang of a church bell and then nothing else. That sounds so peaceful.”
“I suppose,” Jongin says, running a few strands of dune grass through his fingers. “But it also sounds kind of impersonal. How would you know which ring stands for which person?”
“That’s the beauty of it,” Sehun says with a tired grin. “If you have to be remembered, you might as well be remembered as part of a group. Anonymity in numbers.”
“If I had a bell, I would ring it for you every day, even if you weren’t dead,” Jongin says thoughtfully. “And you’d know it was specially for you.”
“That’s because you’re ridiculously emotional and stuck outside of time,” Sehun snorts, twining their fingers together. “I bet you don’t even worry about getting old.”
“Well, that is just because I know my good looks will only improve with time,” Jongin sniffs, and it’s almost worth the heartache to hear Sehun’s clear laugh echo out over the water.
Jongin hopes those people on the boats hear it, and wonder.
“I want to fuck you right here,” Sehun says with the tone of firm finality Jongin’s come to recognize as his attempt to maintain control whenever he feels it slipping away.
“Here? On the ground?” Jongin asks, because that’s where they are, lying atop of Jongin’s pile of old blankets, prickly briars forming a protective covering over their heads, dappled light turning Sehun’s skin almost as golden as Jongin’s.
“Yes, here,” Sehun says, eyes wide and dark with want, and Jongin can already feel the familiar heat pooling in his stomach. But there’s something this time that makes him pause, makes him hesitate. Because this park is more than his home, it’s his sanctuary, so different from Sehun’s world of fast cars and white hotel rooms that just thinking about it makes Jongin’s head spin. But Sehun’s eyes are so very dark and Jongin is so very in love that suddenly it doesn’t matter where they are, he just needs Sehun to touch him, to leave a tangible reminder on his skin that Sehun cares about him, no matter if it’s not as much as Jongin cares for him.
It’s only later, when Jongin is seconds away from exploding, Sehun buried so deep inside him he feels like they’re practically one person, external barriers dissolving in the pale moonlight, that something makes his throat close up, trapping the air in his lungs. And maybe it’s the way Sehun’s eyes absorb the moonlight, or the way Jongin can see, even from this position flat on his back, the lilies and matted jasmine withering from white to brown in the cold air, but his heart suddenly burns so brightly he’s surprised Sehun can’t see it glowing, can’t feel it beneath his hands, beneath his tongue.
Jongin’s not sure what this feeling is, but when Sehun is gone and he’s lying there alone, gazing up at the bright stars flamboyant enough to cut through the city lights, he can’t move, can’t cry, can’t even think. He can only lie there, breathing in and out, trying to prevent the burn from spreading out of his chest, out from his heart.
Because Jongin knows that if it spreads, it’ll set the world aflame.
It’s the middle of the day when Sehun comes, which is strange after so many nights of moon-soaked meetings, in the hotels Sehun chooses or on the bench Jongin has spent so many years watching, calla lilies captivated witnesses to their frantic motions and hastily swallowed sounds.
He’s also not alone, which is even stranger. In all these years Sehun has never brought anyone with him to the park, to Jongin’s home and their secret place, their quiet place. The man, who Sehun introduces as Luhan, has kind eyes, Jongin thinks, but his smile is rough, jagged, and Jongin is afraid of him.
“He’s just a good friend,” Sehun explains as they watch Luhan wander in between trees and bushes, stopping every once in a while to examine a particularly beautiful flower. “And he wondered where I went all the time, so I decided to show him. Don’t worry about it.”
Jongin nods and smiles and directs Luhan towards the most stunning roses, the most vividly green vines, but he knows Sehun is lying.
Luhan smells of money and blood, and as Jongin leads him around the park he keeps stopping to touch his touch his lip, his nose, trying to find a cause for the metallic tang in the back of his throat. Luhan grins at him when he does this, as if reveling in the discomfort he’s caused, and his white teeth shine in the bright sunlight like porcelain knives. When he turns to leave, waving goodbye to Sehun and smiling that same vicious smile at Jongin, Luhan’s foot lands directly on the patch of calla lilies Jongin’s tried so hard to keep alive. Luhan doesn’t even notice as he saunters off down the alleyway, but Jongin feels frozen in place, staring at the crushed and mangled flowers beaten into the dark earth.
For the first time in a long time, Jongin feels cold.
Sehun comes again several days later, and Jongin is almost loath to see him, preferring instead to stay where he is, lying on his back, staring up at the way the shadows of the leaves twist and sway in the breeze. It’s a sunny day, and Jongin sees Sehun’s captive sunlight shimmering at the edges of his vision before he sees the rest of him.
“Look, I’m sorry about Luhan, okay?” Sehun says, throwing himself down on the grass next to Jongin’s still form. “Let me make it up to you. We’ll go out and do whatever you want, I promise. It’ll all be up to you.”
“And what if I want to stay here,” Jongin says slowly, reaching up a hand to play with the outer seam of Sehun’s jeans. He’s feeling so tired today, like all he wants to do is sit and watch the clouds drift by.
But Sehun is adamant. “No, come on, it’s good for you to get out of this place, to stop being invisible sometimes. Please? For me?”
Jongin looks up and he sees that Sehun’s eyes are soft, almost scared, and Jongin has spent hours writing poems about those eyes in the warm dirt, spent days searching vainly for that patch of netted sunlight among the trees, and he knows before he actually finds the words that he’s going to say yes.
“All right, let’s go,” his voice says, and Jongin thinks that this feels almost like the days when he tried to talk to people without knowing he was already invisible.
They end up speeding out of the city, Sehun saying he knows the perfect place to fill Jongin’s request for somewhere peaceful, somewhere full of life. They drive up into the hills, following roads that twist and wind and force Sehun to slow down much more than he likes. But he does it, switching deftly between gas and accelerator, until they reach a turnoff opening onto a large field.
It’s more like a hill, Jongin thinks, grassy and green, with the smell of bees in the air. At the top of the hill sits a giant oak tree and this is where Sehun leads him, grabbing his hand and pulling him over until they both tumble down between its knotted roots, laughing at the warm breeze and the yellow sun.
Jongin is pleased with the place, looking out with bright eyes across the rolling waves of grass-much simpler and calmer than the waves of the ocean-and he starts with surprise when Sehun’s hands suddenly reach across and frame his face, pulling him around so they’re looking directly at each other.
And Sehun kisses him, long and slow and sweet and Jongin feels like a flower slowly opening to the sun. But when Jongin tries to deepen the kiss, the way he knows Sehun likes, Sehun stops him, dropping his hands into his lap and looking out towards the speck of city in the distance.
“You don’t have to do that today,” Sehun says softly, and Jongin thinks he looks so beautiful like this, skin the color of flowers, hair the color of tree bark, sitting still and quiet in the shade.
“Then what was that for?” Jongin asks curiously. But Sehun doesn’t answer, instead pulling Jongin forward again and kissing him softly, smoothly, until they’re breathless, but there’s none of that frantic movement Jongin’s grown accustomed to, none of that desperate want in Sehun’s fingers, in the lines of his mouth.
“I like it here,” Jongin sighs when they finally part, falling back against the gnarled roots like small fish released from a bowl to lie gasping on the sand.
“I hope you know how much I care about you,” Sehun says suddenly, but when Jongin looks at him curiously he’s staring stoically at the horizon. “Because I do, you know.”
“I love you,” Jongin says simply, reaching up to brush Sehun’s hair out of his eyes.
Sehun doesn’t reply.
It’s getting dark by the time they head back down the hill, back down the thin and winding roads until they reach the wide, bright stretches of the highway. They drive in silence, just like they usually do, but this silence seems thicker to Jongin, somehow deeper and more dangerous than silence usually is. Jongin is no stranger to silence. But this silence feels more like loss.
“Thank you for taking me out today,” Jongin says as they near the park. But his words fail to shred the silence as he had hoped-instead they simply squeeze deep inside it, deeper and deeper, until they finally suffocate and disappear.
“I think you should come back with me tonight,” Sehun says, and his eyes seem oddly dim to Jongin, though he’s used to them not reflecting the light of the oncoming cars or the rising moon.
“I wish I could,” Jongin says gently. “But I need to be there tonight. Some of the baby birds are hatching and I need to make sure they don’t fall out of their nests. I’m trying to regrow the calla lilies.”
“But why?” Sehun asks angrily, voice harsh and grating. “You don’t have to do any of those things. Don’t you understand, Jongin? That park survived for years without you. You’re not its sole protector, its knight in shining armor. Come back with me, please. I need you.”
And Sehun’s eyes are definitely dimmer than usual, Jongin feels like he’s trying to look past a dark curtain, trying vainly to shove aside a swath of black fabric to see what lies behind.
“I can’t, Sehun,” Jongin says, and he’s not sure why or how to explain it but there’s just something in his bones that belongs with that grass, with those trees and flowers, and it can’t be replaced by anything. Not even Sehun.
“You have to,” Sehun says sharply, and presses on the gas just as they pass the alleyway, shooting the car forward, farther in the night, farther away from the park.
“Sehun!” Jongin shouts, and now he can feel the pain and heat building in his chest and he has to get away, has to get out of this car, has to go back to the place where he can sit in silence and stare at the moon without worrying about love or city lights or dark, dark eyes.
“I’m sorry, Jongin,” Sehun sobs, and now Jongin can see the tears threatening to spill over onto his cheeks, clearing away the black veil over Sehun’s eyes until all Jongin can see is pure, tremulous darkness. It scares him. “I’m doing this for you, for us.”
Sehun races through several red lights, ignoring the honking and screeching of tires in his wake, and he doesn’t slow down until they hit a wall of cars, jammed together, no side alleys to turn down, no stoplights to run through. Sehun turns to Jongin with frantic eyes, but Jongin is already gone, whispered “I’m sorry” echoing in the breeze blowing through the open car door.
Jongin’s not sure how he knows the way back, but as he runs down dark city streets, past stumbling party-goers and harried office workers who don’t even glance his way as he slips between them, he seems to know every street to take, how to avoid blocks where he’d have to wait for traffic lights or alleys with thick walls instead of parks at their ends.
He’s not sure how long it takes him to make his way back, but as soon as his heart leaps at the sight of familiar streets, it’s pushed down again with such a violent jolt that he stumbles, nearly falling before he manages to press himself against the wall of a building, one hand clutched to his aching chest, the other securing him to the rough brick, tethering him to reality.
When he feels well enough to stand, trying his best to ignore the way his heart is beating as if it wants to escape his chest, he stumbles the last few feet to the street corner, starts to run down the alley as fast as he can with numb feet and wobbly legs.
And then he stops dead.
It’s gone.
The park, the trees, the flowers, the grass, all of it, reduced to dark ashes that swirl upwards in the ice-cold breeze, sticking in Jongin’s throat, choking him. A few lumps of twisted metal are all that remain of the supports that once held up the benches, his benches. Jongin sinks to his knees, clouds of ash and dirt rising up around him like a poisonous blanket. On the ground in front of him lies a single blue egg, hairline fractures spreading across its surface like roots spreading through the soil. He can taste blood and money in his mouth.
He’s still there when Sehun finds him, hair matted with sweat, voice hoarse from yelling Jongin’s name as he races down the alley. Jongin hears him coming but he doesn’t move, eyes fixed on the small blue egg, a dot of color against the endless field of darkness.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” Sehun mouths wildly, reaching down to grab Jongin’s arm, to try to pull him to his feet. But his touch burns like fire against Jongin skin and Jongin wrenches his arm out of his grasp, leaping to his feet and moving back until all he can see is Sehun’s skin shining in the moonlight, his dark eyes lost in shadow.
“Why?” Jongin asks, choking on ashes, a corrupted version of the question Sehun asked him all those months ago.
“I had to, Jongin, don’t you see? I had to,” Sehun says, and his voice is trembling so hard his words seem to shiver with static by the time they reach Jongin’s ears. “It was the only way I can every truly be forgotten.”
“You said you wanted me to remember,” Jongin shoots back, eyes cold in the moonlight, and he hopes his words pierce Sehun like knives, wants to see Sehun bleed silver-black blood over the charred remains of Jongin’s world.
“I did. I do! Don’t you see?” Sehun shouts, hysteria edging into his voice, twining with his words. “I want you to remember me for as long as you live but as long as you were here, in this park, you were this ageless being, this invisible boy, and I could see myself growing old and you staying here forever, young and beautiful and remembering and I couldn’t stand it, Jongin, what I want more than anything is to be forgotten, don’t you understand that? Don’t you understand what that would mean for me?”
Jongin stops short, confused by Sehun’s words, by the utter despair wrapped around them. Jongin has never thought of himself as immortal, or even ageless. He just lives slowly, unhurried, cycling with the seasons in a way that leaves him years behind all the humans in the city who rush through their lives, turning one year into the next as if slowing down will kill them, will make their swiftly beating hearts explode. He thought Sehun understood that.
“But you didn’t have to do this,” Jongin says quietly into the silence, the same silence that absorbed them in the car, and now Jongin can see why it feels more like loss than absence.
“I did, Jongin,” Sehun moans, fists clenched so tight Jongin can see the skin of his palms threatening to break. “Now that this place is gone, we can truly be together. You and I. And when we both die I will be gone, completely forgotten.”
“I can’t see why you’d want to spend the rest of your life with an invisible boy,” Jongin says coldly, and he can see Sehun shrinking beneath his words, lifting a hand slightly as if to ward off blows that never come.
“You know you’re not invisible to me, Jongin,” Sehun says loudly, squeezing his eyes shut so tight his eye sockets seem to disappear, his face becoming a smooth blank mask marked only by his thin, bright mouth. “You never have been.”
“You say that,” Jongin says, watching a few blackened leaves fall from a soot-stained branch. “But sometimes I wonder.”
And Jongin turns and walks away, leaving Sehun standing amid the whirling ash, glowing like a solemn candle left in the middle of the wide, wide ocean.
Jongin isn’t sure where he’s going, isn’t sure where his feet are taking him, until he finds himself standing at the base of the apartment building he once lived in, the place he once called home. It’s a simple matter to slip past the night guard standing outside the building-they don’t train them to watch for invisible intruders-and make his way up to the fourth floor apartment where he lived. He wonders who lives there now. He wonders how his sisters are doing, if his parents are still alive. But he can’t bring himself to worry about them, no tears come to his eyes when he thinks of them dying, fading away into dust, into ashes.
He slumps down on the hallway floor, pulls his knees to his chest, and sits, silently, watching the sliver of moonlight coming in through an open skylight creep closer and closer to his feet. He doesn’t know what he’s going to do when morning comes. Perhaps he’ll just continue to sit here, invisibly watching the people go by carrying their groceries, their briefcases, their children.
Maybe, if he sits here long enough, he can pretend the line of stains along the carpet is a trail of motionless ants, he can pretend the balled-up tissue in the corner is a lily he needs to coax into blooming.
The moonlight is hot where it touches his skin and Jongin is asleep before he can think any more about ashes.
Every morning he awakes with the ghost of Sehun’s kiss warm against his lips. He never knows where he is anymore-the cold stone benches or hard, cracked dirt of city parks and city sidewalks all melt together into an endless gritty swirl.
Every day he takes a newspaper from a different newspaper stand, skimming the pages for anything that might give him a clue, might show him what became of Sehun after he left him standing there in the dark amid the destruction of the invisible fire.
There’s nothing there again, today, and Jongin’s not sure whether to feel sad or pleased. He wonders if Sehun is looking for him. The memory of Sehun’s hands against his hips makes him nearly sick with want but every memory is tinged with the shadow of ashes, lit from within with the glow of a dark fire.
Jongin wanders down a stretch of chained-off trail running along the edge of the water. A few runners pass him, hearts thumping loudly, healthily, in their chests. A stray dog sniffs curiously at his toes, as if trying to ascertain where the strange human smell is coming from. He walks past a couple sitting on a bench and there’s a sharp twinge in his heart as he watches them clasp their hands together, exchanging a matching set of sunny smiles.
Eventually he finds a bench less dirty and rundown than the rest and there he sits, legs curled up beneath him, sun rippling across his skin as if trying to find a way into his blood.
It’s there that Sehun finds him.
He sits down next to Jongin, slides over to close the gap between them, and says, “I can’t stop thinking about you.”
“I know,” Jongin says, not because he knows Sehun’s thoughts but because he knows his own.
“I had to do it,” Sehun says softly, placing a hand on Jongin’s thigh, heat bleeding from his palm into Jongin’s skin.
“I know,” Jongin says, not because of his own thoughts but because he knows Sehun’s.
“Come with me,” Sehun says suddenly, lifting the hand resting on Jongin’s thigh to grip Jongin’s wrist tightly. Sehun’s fingers are icy cold, and Jongin can feel the imprint of his hand burning through his pants. “Come with me and we can finally be together, the way you wanted.”
And Jongin loves the way Sehun’s lips bow upward with excitement, the way his dark eyes gleam, the way his skin slides so softly against Jongin’s. He loves the way Sehun’s laughter sounds like sunshine and the way Sehun’s moans taste on his tongue.
And Jongin thinks that this is somehow fitting, that they met in the place Jongin loved and they’ll say their goodbyes in the place Sehun’s always wanted to be. It’s somehow fitting that the ocean will swallow them, will pattern its ripples of light and color onto Jongin’s skin and maybe he’ll finally feel the cold.
“I love you,” Sehun gasps, and as they fall Jongin wishes he could believe him.
The reports start coming in the next day, body found washed up on the beach, wayward son of one of the city’s leading politicians, all very sad indeed, most unfortunate, though it has garnered the man as many votes as sympathy cards, all in all not a bad deal for having your son jump off a bridge, if he’s going to do it you may as well get something out of it.
No one believes the fisherman in his little boat who insists there were two splashes when the boy hit the water.
In a little park at the end of a dark alley in the heart of the city, two pure white lilies tentatively poke their heads above the dark earth.
END.