angelus
Angelus
Yunho/Changmin
PG-13
Changmin’s house floats up into the sky and doesn't come down.
Something sewn, sloppily but lovingly, together as a secret santa fic for iridize .
1.
Every weekday, Changmin has his morning rush. He always gets out of bed half an hour late because he can’t ever seem to unwrap himself from his cocoon of blankets fast enough, is glad he took a shower the night before, skips breakfast, and trips out the door trying to step into his shoes. Having the early shift at the insurance firm sucked.
Except one day, he opens the front door and almost plummets five-thousand kilometers to his death on the highway below. He’s left in awe for a few minutes on his porch: clouds sifting along, someone’s lost balloon pops nearby, everything and everybody looking like they’re part of a dollhouse world beneath his feet-does he get electricity up here?
Then he heads back in. He throws his dress shoes onto the rack, hangs his work clothes up, and crawls into bed again. This must be a dream. And like the realist he is, Changmin thinks he’ll wake up from it.
2.
Of course his house is still too far off the ground by the time he does wake up.
“I have really shitty dreams,” Changmin mutters and slams the front door shut again. “I just want dreams about sunshine and meadows, but noooo-“
Instead of going back to bed (or crying himself back to sleep) like any normal person, he looks around his sparsely decorated apartment and takes in a deep agitated breath. He had to clean. After all, cleaning always helped Jaejoong calm down after a bad day at work. He opens the closet door to pull out the broom and dustpan he had rarely used before and drags it towards the kitchen.
Five minutes later, while he’s standing on his toes to dust the top of the windows, a big white blur crashes through the front door. The whole house shakes and Changmin fails to cling to the window frame and topples to the floor.
“Who-what are you?” Changmin demands.
The stranger blinks his round eyes, shakes the nimbus from his wings and toga, and grins. “My name’s Yunho and I’m an angel!”
Of course he would be.
Changmin groans and presses his forehead into his knees.
3.
“Well, you see, I’m actually sort of lost,” Yunho says casually over a cup of tea.
“Lost?” Changmin offers him cream and sugar and motions to the little glass shakers in the middle of the table.
“Yea. I was on my way to East Castle, but then I almost ran into a plane’s engine and took a wrong right turn somewhere.” Yunho accompanies all of his words with wild gestures. After a pause to stir some milk into his tea, he shrugs and smiles hesitantly. “And here I am.” Changmin barely even changes his facial expression before Yunho waves his hands around again and announces, “But I’ll be out of your hair once I figure out where I am, or somebody comes to get me. Whichever comes first!”
Changmin doesn’t even realize he’s madly whisking cream into his tea like his life depends on it until Yunho pokes his shoulder. He stops grinding his teeth long enough to mumble, “Oh, uh, East Castle?”
“Do you know where it is?” Yunho’s eyes light up.
“About as much as I know where my house is right now,” Changmin replies, pointing towards the window and the endless blue sky outside with his spoon.
“Oh, whose house is this then?”
“This is my house; it’s just not supposed to be in the sky. I live on the ground, Earth, you know?”
Yunho nods as if he knows. “Junsu likes to screw with stuff like that sometimes. It’ll be fixed in a couple of days and you’ll be back down on Earth in now time.” He reaches for one of the crumpets on the plate and turns it around in his palms for a moment, observing, before taking a bite. It’s slightly burnt, but tastes mostly sweet and he can almost feel the hard work and heart put into making these.
Changmin wordlessly moves to the window. Yunho takes another crumpet.
4.
“If you’re an angel, you must’ve died already, right?”
Yunho stops fiddling with the television remote and nods. “I had a tumor in the right side of my brain and it just kept growing until there was nothing that could be done.” When Changmin’s face falls a bit, he quickly adds, “It was a long time ago.” And smiles again.
“That must have been tough.” Changmin draws the curtains shut for the first time and scoots his chair over to where Yunho is sitting on the couch. When Yunho folds back his wing a little, he gets a peek at the freckle on Changmin’s cheek, the almost sad curve of his brows, and eyes so dark they look black even up close. He moves his wing back when Changmin’s gaze almost falls on his.
“No, not really. I took a trip around the world and died in some theatre playing Mozart rock musicals. I had more fun than I ever did before. You should try that, having fun.”
5.
Two hours later, Changmin’s entire living room is covered in blankets and chairs, and they’re both huddled underneath the caving roof of a Lion King comforter.
“What just happened to my house?” Changmin pretends to mourn.
“We just made it cozier. Look, we can even have some cake and chocolate drink under here and tell ghost stories,” Yunho says, pulling out a plastic bag of what looks like hot chocolate powder and some packaged strawberry swirl cakes. Changmin stares at them in disbelief.
“Are you freaking Doraemon?”
“Do you have hot water?”
Changmin snorts. “Do I even get water up here?”
“You should.” Yunho crawls out from under the fort of blankets to stretch his wings. “You’re in Heaven, after all. You get everything up here.” Changmin tumbles out a minute later, shielding his eyes from the sudden sunlight and watches Yunho as he starts towards the kitchen. Though his wings look heavy, his steps are light, on his toes and it looks like he’s floating across the tile. For the first time in his life, Changmin feels dumbfounded. His heart’s fluttering too, in that uncomfortable, choking kind of way.
He blames it on Heaven for being so perfect.
6.
Love is a stupid little thing.
Changmin hates it for being sporadic, fickle, generally unnecessary in the grand scheme of life, able to stop his breath, how it fills and radiates off every fiber of Yunho’s being, and the little time it takes for it to take root in his own body between bites of strawberry swirl cake and sips of hot chocolate spiked with rum.
7.
“I feel like I’m flying!”
“You can’t be flying if I’m holding onto you.”
“Why are you holding onto me then?”
“So you don’t fall over the edge of the porch railing and end your mortal life.”
“Oh. Well, don’t you deserve a gold medal for that.”
The world with its clouds and rays of sunshine spins underneath them, meaninglessly, hopelessly, while Yunho tugs Changmin back into the house. They’re waiting for rescue but neither of them need it anymore.
8.
Yoochun is every bit as much of a nightmare as Yunho. He knocks on the door one early morning, hair perfectly trimmed and eyes perfectly gray-everything so perfect-perfect-and voice perfectly kind, and Changmin wants nothing more than to punch him in the face and tell him to fuck off, they’re having their breakfast tea and muffins. It’s quite an important affair, thank you very much.
“I’ve come to get Yunho. He’s been missing for quite a few days and the East Castle requests his presence,” Yoochun says. Changmin wedges himself in the door to keep from having to let him in.
Yunho comes up behind Changmin, curious, and almost breaks the door swinging it open. “Yoochun!” he cries. “What took you so long?”
“Tracking systems don’t really work when you’re hiding in a place that’s not mapped,” Yoochun points out, flicking Yunho in the forehead and frowning. “What’s a human doing up here?”
“Oh, Junsu probably messed up an order from the higher ups. They’ll have it fixed soon, won’t they? Changmin says he misses his family and his friends and the record store that’s on the street corner.” The eagerness to leave is evident in Yunho’s voice, yet his feet hesitate to move from where they’re planted behind Changmin.
“He’ll be back down by tomorrow morning.” Yoochun nods and smiles only out of politeness. “I’ll make sure of it.”
Slowly, Yunho steps around Changmin in the doorway. He bows deeply and rises with a deep sort of sadness in his face. “I had a lot of fun. Did you have fun too?” he asks, taking Changmin’s hands in his and rising on his toes to kiss Changmin’s forehead when there’s a forced “Yea, I did.” There’s a mutual nod, then their fingers slip apart and Yunho turns to leave. Yoochun’s already halfway to wherever. “Don’t try to fly, okay? You have to have wings to fly,” Yunho adds, looking over his shoulder.
Changmin crosses his arms. “I’m not that retarded. Go do whatever and hit Junsu in the head for me for mucking up my work week.”
9.
Yunho kisses his own palm and then presses it against Changmin’s lips.
10.
Changmin wakes up the next morning, still half an hour late and stumbling out the door with all his clothes rumpled, and sprints to catch the bus. The air smells like gasoline on a hot summer day. He leans his forehead against the cold metal hand railing, breathless, and tucks his hands into his pants pockets and pulls out a small square of cake wrapped up in plastic. He feels as if he’s forgotten something.
The bus lurches forward and stops with a squeal. Changmin glances up to meet the gaze of another man, one with perfect hair and perfect eyes and a warm, million-watt smile that leaves him feeling like he’s at home.
“Hey, can I sit here?”
Changmin moves his briefcase and smiles so widely for the first time in forever that his face hurts from it. “No, go ahead. Have I met you before?”
11.
And so it is.
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notes: YES HEAVEN HAS A TRACKING SYSTEM FOR THOSE DIRECTION-STUPID ANGELS. Also, angels = Christmas = Merry late Christmas to all of you (and happy birthday to Junsu! I missed his birthday due to hectic finals week and sledding /sadface).
Sorry about the fast-paced fluff this time around. Hopefully it was still enjoyable.
Comment?
[edit: epic typo is epic. yoochun, not jaejoong, is an angel. thanks to those who pointed it out. :)]