APTF [9/13]
Title: A Prayer Time Forgot
Length: Chaptered [9/13]
Rating: NC17 now, to be safe.
Genre: Umm. Unsure. Angst, supernatural, generally. Weirdness. We'll see.
Pairing: Yes, there are pairings. (Gasp! A first!) I'm guessing it's YunJae.
Summary: Something inside of him is cracking like an eggshell being pitted against ceramic and he wonders just how people actually survive being parents.
Prologue + Chapter 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
---
Chapter Nine
Just float, Yoochun-ah. It’s easy.
There is light above him and darkness below him. His chest is burning, burns like it’s on fire and it hurts so much that he wants to cry but every time he opens his mouth there’s nothing but water, lots and lots of water. Bitter and powerful and crushing him with each passing second.
…I can’t breathe.
Don’t mind that.
It hurts.
Just float.
And Yoochun does, imagines he’s a bird caught in a draft, the last fringes of his consciousness focusing on someone calling his name somewhere far away.
---
It happens like a slow-moving nightmare, Jaejoong shouting (“Help me! HELP ME! Yunho, for the love of God-!”), him running, the realization of Yoochun’s absence coupled with the fact of the locked bathroom weighing down on him like lead weights on his shoulders, crushing, squeezing the air and blood out of him. “YOOCHUN!” he shouts over and over, his fists banging on the wood that makes up the door, and it’s a cycle as it’s only silence that answers him, only the echo his own voice that’s present in his ears. “YOOCHUN!”
(The Kim boy was found dead this morning, drowned, by the river. You boys knew him, didn’t you?)
“Yunho! Get out of the way!” He hears Jaejoong shout, and he moves just in time to avoid the aluminum baseball bat coming down on the door handle, the sharp clanging sound of metal against metal filling their ears. Already he can barely breathe, his sight already tinged with gray. He keeps his balance by holding on to the wall, hears as Jaejoong shouts at him, at the door (“Open, OPEN, you fucker! FUCK! Don’t you dare think it, Jung Yunho! Fuck, I’ll kill you! I swear to God I’ll kill you if you think it!”) as the bat is brought down once, twice, thrice, makes splinters rain down on them, until the door handle finally sags in defeat and Yunho, fueled solely by adrenaline, rams the door open with his shoulder.
The floor is slick with water and several toys are spilled across the tiles. The bathtub, at the end, is suspiciously full.
“No. No no no no…” Yunho hears himself saying as he propels himself forward. He lands on his knees by the bathtub, plunges his hands into the tepid water.
(Probably hit his head on a rock. Either way, he’s dead. Poor kid.)
It only takes a few seconds before his fingers brush across skin, the front of a terry-cloth bathrobe and still, little fingers.
“Jaejoong! Fuck, JAEJOONG!”
He jumps into the water fully-clothed, lifts Yoochun out with shaking arms. Yoochun is heavy in his hold, heavy and still, with his lips blue and his skin pale. The sight paralyzes Yunho and roots him to his spot as he attempts to shake life back into his nephew before Jaejoong snatches Yoochun almost angrily from him and sets him down on the floor. Tears are blinding him, black fear coursing through his system like poison; he’s trembling so badly he can’t even stand straight and when he tries to get out of the tub, he nearly slips.
“Jesus Christ he’s not breathing…CPR…”
He’s dead. He’s dead. Oh fuck. It’s my fault. It’s my fault.
“Don’t freak on me! Goddamnit it, get a grip, Yunho! Call an ambulance, call a fucking ambulance right now!” Jaejoong is pumping up and down Yoochun’s chest, his breaths heavy. “Yoochun, Yoochun, breathe for hyung, come on, kid, don’t do this to me…”
Yunho can barely form words but miraculously the paramedics understand him, ask enough questions to figure out where they are and what’s happened. “He’s dead,” he says as bile rises up his throat. “He’s dead, he’s dead, oh God, he’s dead”, the sound of Jaejoong’s frantic counting suddenly lost to him until suddenly there’s the sound of gagging and gasping and Yoochun is alive on the floor, coughing, retching water, shaking as Jaejoong gathers him soaking wet, and Yunho rushes to his side and holds him as he gulps in air, crying nearly the same time as Yoochun does, frightened, shaken, but oh so very relieved that he’s whole and alive and okay.
“Yoochun-ah, Yoochun-ah.” He says over and over, rocking his nephew back and forth, for once just letting him cry and cry and cry, never having realized just how precious the sound could be. “Yoochun-ah.”
---
One to two days for observation, the doctor says. He’s okay for the most part, just a little shaken up. We’ve given him a sedative to help him rest.
Junsu meets them in the emergency room, pale-faced and frightened from the way he had been told through the phone. “Changmin had wanted to come but his parents hadn’t allowed him to since he has school tomorrow. Jesus Christ what in the hell happened?” he says, looks from Yoochun on the bed to Yunho on the chair to Jaejoong on the other side. “Hyung-deul…” but Yunho is only focusing on Yoochun, is holding his small hand in his own and watches as the boy takes in slow, deep breaths, obviously asleep. Nausea rises in him as that night’s events come back to him and he stands, startling both Junsu and Jaejoong with the angry screech of the chair. “Keep an eye on him for a few,” he says to no one in particular, and he turns to stride towards the door, not really caring whether he’s followed or not.
“Yunho.”
His balance falters the moment the door’s closed and he stumbles, falls to the ground as his knees buckle, one hand over his mouth as another wave of nausea overcomes him. A hand grips his elbow, an arm slings protectively over his shoulder. “Yunho!”
He opens his eyes and there’s Jaejoong in front of him, kneeling, holding a hand to his forehead. “Jesus, are you all right?” He gives a faint shake of his head as an answer, a hand still clapped over his mouth and Jaejoong understands, is gentle as he helps him get to his feet. “Can you stand? C’mon, let’s get some fresh air. C’mon.”
The hospital coffee is watery and disgusting but Yunho downs it in one gulp, feels the empty heat travel from his esophagus to his stomach as he lifts his chin up to gulp down sweet, cold air, just enough to start feeling the nausea ebb away. Jaejoong is nearby buying food from the convenience store in the lobby, and he returns with a chocolate bar he thrusts in the direction of Yunho’s face. “Eat,” he says. “To make it go away.”
Yunho obeys him, too numb, too tired to think for himself, and he hears, feels Jaejoong beside him as the other unwraps a second candy bar, takes piece by piece of the chocolate with a cigarette and a soda. Neither of them speaks, already content with the sound of the crinkling of wrappers and the swishing of liquid inside of cans that thrums in between them, but it’s Yunho first who breaks the silence, chocolate and words unsaid now too thick in his mouth.
“If it hadn’t been for you…” he starts to say. “If it hadn’t been…Yoochun would have…”
“He’s fine now,” Jaejoong interjects. Under the moonlight he almost glows, his eyes glistening like scarabs. “He’s okay. Don’t stress about it.”
“If he had died it would have been my fault.”
“Don’t be stupid, Yunho. For one thing he didn’t die. Second, accidents happen. It doesn’t make you a bad uncle. Or adult or whatever.” Jaejoong takes a swig of soda before looking at him, studying him. “Don’t work yourself too much about it, huh? And…I’m sorry if I’d yelled at you too much a while ago.”
He’d learned First Aid too, a long time ago in school. “I couldn’t even fucking move.” Yunho says and his voice trembles, and then suddenly there’s Jaejoong’s arms around him, his lips resting lightly on the side of his head.
“Hey. Hey, it’s okay, huh? It’s okay.” Jaejoong whispers, their clothes still damp and heavy under their winter coats. Yunho almost says it, He drowned that night. He died because of me. It was my fault already heavy and bitter on his tongue, but it comes out another way, as something less scathing and barefaced.
“Jaejoong-ah…Do you believe in karma?”
(His mother is sobbing into her hands at the doorway of the living room and Siwon hyung is on the ground, felled by their father’s blow.)
“No.”
Jaejoong hugs him tighter from behind.
(He runs and shields his brother’s body, protects it from the torrent of fists that rain down on his back.)
“But I believe in fate.”
(How could you. Their father is sobbing. How could you. How could you. How could you.)
---
The next two days pass by like honey trickling off of the back of a spoon and Yunho keeps vigil by Yoochun’s bedside as Yoochun sleeps, keeps awake as the bustle of doctors and nurses come in at irregular intervals to check on his nephew (also to prod them to go home and rest because Yoochun is obviously going nowhere, but they stay all the same, survive on dry variety shows and the occasional cigarette), refuses to eat as the mere sight of food makes his stomach turn. Jaejoong is worried about him, he can tell, an emotion cleverly hidden behind large folds of anger and annoyance as Yunho heaves at the smell of ramyeon Junsu brings in and turns away from the tray of kimbap Jaejoong appears with, but it isn’t long before it gets the better of him,
(I don’t…deal well with things like this, he says on the second straight day of his refusal to provide some sort of explanation for his behavior, I’m sorry. But Jaejoong isn’t buying it, and forces into his hand with unbecoming rage a piece of kimbap. That’s bullshit, the other man says, fuming. This is life, Yunho. You’re not a child. I’m not your mother so I’m not going to coddle you, but fuck you if you think I’m just going to stand around and let you make yourself sick. You just live, goddamnit; you’ve no excuse. You choose to live. Now eat the fucking kimbap before I force it into you. And Yunho, unwilling to be at the receiving end of Jaejoong’s sudden ire as well as lacking the strength to argue, finally nods, gives in, follows)
much to everyone’s relief.
He’s only gotten an hour of sleep when Yoochun first wakes on the dawn of the third day. The slightest movement coming from the bed is enough to jolt him out of his slumber and jump up from the sofa he’s sharing with a still-sleeping Junsu, making his way quietly but quickly across the room past Jaejoong who’s settled into the armchair for the night, feet and too-thin legs hanging languid from the side, head pillowed by a bundled-up jacket. Yoochun is rubbing his eyes when he leans over the bed railings, and whimpers at the sight of him, holds his arms up in a way that he hasn’t done for a long time. “Hyung,” Yoochun says, sounding as though he’s about to cry, and Yunho, without words, lifts him up, careful not to disturb any of the intrusive wires connected to his nephew, and holds him in a rocking embrace, cherishing the familiar warm weight in his arms.
“Did you have a good sleep? Are you okay?” he whispers, watching from the corner of his eye the patches of colored light that waltz on the walls, grey morning light passing through the rainbow of balloons Junsu has planted all over the room. Yunho’s fingers run through Yoochun’s soft hair, trace the warmth blossoming on his baby-soft cheeks. “You had me so worried. You’re okay now, huh, Mickybo?”
He feels Yoochun’s fingers curl around a fistful of his shirt, then as he rubs his nose like a sleepy puppy. Little legs coil around his waist. “I wanted to see Daddy,” he says softly, as though speaking in a dream. “But I didn’t get to. He wasn’t there.”
Yunho remembers how hard it was to tell his nephew why his Mommy and Daddy had gone and where they had gone off to, forcing himself to make up stories of happier places up in the sky where no one can see or touch you; always the same sad story over and over and over. He’s relieved now somewhat, but he bites his lip all the same. Whoever said time heals all wounds was a fucking liar. “I’m sorry, Yoochun-ah.”
“But you’re here.”
Four nights and three days of constant worry and nausea and cigarettes and Yunho now can’t even tell which side of the room is up or down but it’s all right. It’s all right if only for this.
“You had me pretty scared,” he says. Something inside of him is cracking like an eggshell being pitted against ceramic and he wonders just how people actually survive being parents. “Me, Jaejoong hyung, Junsu hyung, Changmin hyung. You had all of us terrified.”
Yoochun nuzzles into his neck, something Yunho vaguely remembers doing himself as a child. “S’okay,” Yoochun says, resting his head on Yunho’s shoulder. “I’m okay.”
Yunho can finally breathe easily.
---
He stays even though he can’t, even though he shouldn’t. It’s been nearly three hours since Yoochun’s been discharged and one since they’d been dropped off at the apartment by Junsu (“They’ll be all right with you, won’t they?” Junsu asks, speaking in hushed tones now as the both of them stand at the open doorway of the apartment and Jaejoong’s initial reply comes in the form of getting from him the duffel bag filled with Yoochun’s clothes: “Yes, of course they will be, Junsu-sshi.”) but Jaejoong can’t find it in him to leave. Wrapped in the apartment’s disconcerting silence, he puts Batman pajamas back in drawers, loads the washing machine with a bagful of laundry, fixes toys and bedspreads, and replaces peanut butter jar tops, occasionally looking over his shoulder as the feeling that he’s being watched intensifies, but always winding up in the middle of being extremely relieved and disappointed as he’s greeted by nothing but sunlight and shadows playing tag on the walls and ceiling the moment he whips his head around.
(“You were a clever little one, always choosing the best hiding places,” his mother used to say, her eyes crinkling into a smile before a sure frown would slowly mar her delicate features.)
A thud and he turns around again, heart racing fast against his chest. Yoochun’s baseball rolls innocently across the floor from where it fell from one of the shelves. Jaejoong watches it for a bit, nearly expects it to stop and be hurled at him before he shakes his head and walks over to where it is to pick it up and place it back onto the shelf.
(“I never worried about you, you know. Not until the day you didn’t come home to me.”)
There are echoes of lullabies and odd black-and-white memories filling his brain when he goes to check on Yunho and Yoochun in Yunho’s bedroom. On the bed, Yoochun has kicked off the blankets and lies like a bird shot down from the sky, arms and legs spread wide across the mattress as though attempting some odd Indian dance, a contrast to Yunho who keeps him in place with a protective embrace, always on his side with one of his legs and his head bent towards his chest, as though trying to shirk the world even in sleep. Jaejoong hides a smile behind his hand before he proceeds to cover both with a spare blanket he fishes out from one of the closets and tugs gently Yoochun’s thumb away from his puckered mouth.
(“I thought I would never find you again…)
The camera is on Yunho’s desk, hunched beside the shiny silver laptop like a rock. It feels like an anvil in his hands and his shoulders ache from the weight. It turns on with a soft schwing! sound and he runs through the pictures one by one with more than a few hesitant clicks. There are ten, maybe twelve pictures of him, he discovers, obviously stolen but still beautifully taken, shots of color popping out between rows and rows of Yunho’s staple black-and-white.
(…but I thought wrong.”)
He hesitates before he erases all traces of him on the camera, and bites his lip when he moves on to the laptop, erasing picture by picture of him from Yunho’s files. The computer screen glows innocently at him after, smiles at him like there’s nothing wrong, and he eases his guilt by rubbing his palms on the seat of his jeans as though it would make it go away.
(“You are and have always been my son. Nothing can change that. Nothing.”)
Even in sleep, the sadness doesn’t disappear from Yunho’s face, and something inside of Jaejoong aches the more he looks at him. His hands shake.
I’m sorry, he whispers. I can’t do this, I can’t I can’t I can’t
He brushes a strand of Yunho’s hair away from his face, gives a pained smile as Yunho reacts to the touch by following it with the movement of his head.
Please don’t look for me when I go away.
(“My Jaejoong-ah.”)
---
In his newest paintings there are two little boys again, running, flying, hiding between and among bold strokes of color, wearing the same smiles and faces, but never meeting, never touching, never knowing the other exists.
TBC
A/N: Lots of clues in this chapter if you look.
Length: Chaptered [9/13]
Rating: NC17 now, to be safe.
Genre: Umm. Unsure. Angst, supernatural, generally. Weirdness. We'll see.
Pairing: Yes, there are pairings. (Gasp! A first!) I'm guessing it's YunJae.
Summary: Something inside of him is cracking like an eggshell being pitted against ceramic and he wonders just how people actually survive being parents.
Prologue + Chapter 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
---
Chapter Nine
Just float, Yoochun-ah. It’s easy.
There is light above him and darkness below him. His chest is burning, burns like it’s on fire and it hurts so much that he wants to cry but every time he opens his mouth there’s nothing but water, lots and lots of water. Bitter and powerful and crushing him with each passing second.
…I can’t breathe.
Don’t mind that.
It hurts.
Just float.
And Yoochun does, imagines he’s a bird caught in a draft, the last fringes of his consciousness focusing on someone calling his name somewhere far away.
---
It happens like a slow-moving nightmare, Jaejoong shouting (“Help me! HELP ME! Yunho, for the love of God-!”), him running, the realization of Yoochun’s absence coupled with the fact of the locked bathroom weighing down on him like lead weights on his shoulders, crushing, squeezing the air and blood out of him. “YOOCHUN!” he shouts over and over, his fists banging on the wood that makes up the door, and it’s a cycle as it’s only silence that answers him, only the echo his own voice that’s present in his ears. “YOOCHUN!”
(The Kim boy was found dead this morning, drowned, by the river. You boys knew him, didn’t you?)
“Yunho! Get out of the way!” He hears Jaejoong shout, and he moves just in time to avoid the aluminum baseball bat coming down on the door handle, the sharp clanging sound of metal against metal filling their ears. Already he can barely breathe, his sight already tinged with gray. He keeps his balance by holding on to the wall, hears as Jaejoong shouts at him, at the door (“Open, OPEN, you fucker! FUCK! Don’t you dare think it, Jung Yunho! Fuck, I’ll kill you! I swear to God I’ll kill you if you think it!”) as the bat is brought down once, twice, thrice, makes splinters rain down on them, until the door handle finally sags in defeat and Yunho, fueled solely by adrenaline, rams the door open with his shoulder.
The floor is slick with water and several toys are spilled across the tiles. The bathtub, at the end, is suspiciously full.
“No. No no no no…” Yunho hears himself saying as he propels himself forward. He lands on his knees by the bathtub, plunges his hands into the tepid water.
(Probably hit his head on a rock. Either way, he’s dead. Poor kid.)
It only takes a few seconds before his fingers brush across skin, the front of a terry-cloth bathrobe and still, little fingers.
“Jaejoong! Fuck, JAEJOONG!”
He jumps into the water fully-clothed, lifts Yoochun out with shaking arms. Yoochun is heavy in his hold, heavy and still, with his lips blue and his skin pale. The sight paralyzes Yunho and roots him to his spot as he attempts to shake life back into his nephew before Jaejoong snatches Yoochun almost angrily from him and sets him down on the floor. Tears are blinding him, black fear coursing through his system like poison; he’s trembling so badly he can’t even stand straight and when he tries to get out of the tub, he nearly slips.
“Jesus Christ he’s not breathing…CPR…”
He’s dead. He’s dead. Oh fuck. It’s my fault. It’s my fault.
“Don’t freak on me! Goddamnit it, get a grip, Yunho! Call an ambulance, call a fucking ambulance right now!” Jaejoong is pumping up and down Yoochun’s chest, his breaths heavy. “Yoochun, Yoochun, breathe for hyung, come on, kid, don’t do this to me…”
Yunho can barely form words but miraculously the paramedics understand him, ask enough questions to figure out where they are and what’s happened. “He’s dead,” he says as bile rises up his throat. “He’s dead, he’s dead, oh God, he’s dead”, the sound of Jaejoong’s frantic counting suddenly lost to him until suddenly there’s the sound of gagging and gasping and Yoochun is alive on the floor, coughing, retching water, shaking as Jaejoong gathers him soaking wet, and Yunho rushes to his side and holds him as he gulps in air, crying nearly the same time as Yoochun does, frightened, shaken, but oh so very relieved that he’s whole and alive and okay.
“Yoochun-ah, Yoochun-ah.” He says over and over, rocking his nephew back and forth, for once just letting him cry and cry and cry, never having realized just how precious the sound could be. “Yoochun-ah.”
---
One to two days for observation, the doctor says. He’s okay for the most part, just a little shaken up. We’ve given him a sedative to help him rest.
Junsu meets them in the emergency room, pale-faced and frightened from the way he had been told through the phone. “Changmin had wanted to come but his parents hadn’t allowed him to since he has school tomorrow. Jesus Christ what in the hell happened?” he says, looks from Yoochun on the bed to Yunho on the chair to Jaejoong on the other side. “Hyung-deul…” but Yunho is only focusing on Yoochun, is holding his small hand in his own and watches as the boy takes in slow, deep breaths, obviously asleep. Nausea rises in him as that night’s events come back to him and he stands, startling both Junsu and Jaejoong with the angry screech of the chair. “Keep an eye on him for a few,” he says to no one in particular, and he turns to stride towards the door, not really caring whether he’s followed or not.
“Yunho.”
His balance falters the moment the door’s closed and he stumbles, falls to the ground as his knees buckle, one hand over his mouth as another wave of nausea overcomes him. A hand grips his elbow, an arm slings protectively over his shoulder. “Yunho!”
He opens his eyes and there’s Jaejoong in front of him, kneeling, holding a hand to his forehead. “Jesus, are you all right?” He gives a faint shake of his head as an answer, a hand still clapped over his mouth and Jaejoong understands, is gentle as he helps him get to his feet. “Can you stand? C’mon, let’s get some fresh air. C’mon.”
The hospital coffee is watery and disgusting but Yunho downs it in one gulp, feels the empty heat travel from his esophagus to his stomach as he lifts his chin up to gulp down sweet, cold air, just enough to start feeling the nausea ebb away. Jaejoong is nearby buying food from the convenience store in the lobby, and he returns with a chocolate bar he thrusts in the direction of Yunho’s face. “Eat,” he says. “To make it go away.”
Yunho obeys him, too numb, too tired to think for himself, and he hears, feels Jaejoong beside him as the other unwraps a second candy bar, takes piece by piece of the chocolate with a cigarette and a soda. Neither of them speaks, already content with the sound of the crinkling of wrappers and the swishing of liquid inside of cans that thrums in between them, but it’s Yunho first who breaks the silence, chocolate and words unsaid now too thick in his mouth.
“If it hadn’t been for you…” he starts to say. “If it hadn’t been…Yoochun would have…”
“He’s fine now,” Jaejoong interjects. Under the moonlight he almost glows, his eyes glistening like scarabs. “He’s okay. Don’t stress about it.”
“If he had died it would have been my fault.”
“Don’t be stupid, Yunho. For one thing he didn’t die. Second, accidents happen. It doesn’t make you a bad uncle. Or adult or whatever.” Jaejoong takes a swig of soda before looking at him, studying him. “Don’t work yourself too much about it, huh? And…I’m sorry if I’d yelled at you too much a while ago.”
He’d learned First Aid too, a long time ago in school. “I couldn’t even fucking move.” Yunho says and his voice trembles, and then suddenly there’s Jaejoong’s arms around him, his lips resting lightly on the side of his head.
“Hey. Hey, it’s okay, huh? It’s okay.” Jaejoong whispers, their clothes still damp and heavy under their winter coats. Yunho almost says it, He drowned that night. He died because of me. It was my fault already heavy and bitter on his tongue, but it comes out another way, as something less scathing and barefaced.
“Jaejoong-ah…Do you believe in karma?”
(His mother is sobbing into her hands at the doorway of the living room and Siwon hyung is on the ground, felled by their father’s blow.)
“No.”
Jaejoong hugs him tighter from behind.
(He runs and shields his brother’s body, protects it from the torrent of fists that rain down on his back.)
“But I believe in fate.”
(How could you. Their father is sobbing. How could you. How could you. How could you.)
---
The next two days pass by like honey trickling off of the back of a spoon and Yunho keeps vigil by Yoochun’s bedside as Yoochun sleeps, keeps awake as the bustle of doctors and nurses come in at irregular intervals to check on his nephew (also to prod them to go home and rest because Yoochun is obviously going nowhere, but they stay all the same, survive on dry variety shows and the occasional cigarette), refuses to eat as the mere sight of food makes his stomach turn. Jaejoong is worried about him, he can tell, an emotion cleverly hidden behind large folds of anger and annoyance as Yunho heaves at the smell of ramyeon Junsu brings in and turns away from the tray of kimbap Jaejoong appears with, but it isn’t long before it gets the better of him,
(I don’t…deal well with things like this, he says on the second straight day of his refusal to provide some sort of explanation for his behavior, I’m sorry. But Jaejoong isn’t buying it, and forces into his hand with unbecoming rage a piece of kimbap. That’s bullshit, the other man says, fuming. This is life, Yunho. You’re not a child. I’m not your mother so I’m not going to coddle you, but fuck you if you think I’m just going to stand around and let you make yourself sick. You just live, goddamnit; you’ve no excuse. You choose to live. Now eat the fucking kimbap before I force it into you. And Yunho, unwilling to be at the receiving end of Jaejoong’s sudden ire as well as lacking the strength to argue, finally nods, gives in, follows)
much to everyone’s relief.
He’s only gotten an hour of sleep when Yoochun first wakes on the dawn of the third day. The slightest movement coming from the bed is enough to jolt him out of his slumber and jump up from the sofa he’s sharing with a still-sleeping Junsu, making his way quietly but quickly across the room past Jaejoong who’s settled into the armchair for the night, feet and too-thin legs hanging languid from the side, head pillowed by a bundled-up jacket. Yoochun is rubbing his eyes when he leans over the bed railings, and whimpers at the sight of him, holds his arms up in a way that he hasn’t done for a long time. “Hyung,” Yoochun says, sounding as though he’s about to cry, and Yunho, without words, lifts him up, careful not to disturb any of the intrusive wires connected to his nephew, and holds him in a rocking embrace, cherishing the familiar warm weight in his arms.
“Did you have a good sleep? Are you okay?” he whispers, watching from the corner of his eye the patches of colored light that waltz on the walls, grey morning light passing through the rainbow of balloons Junsu has planted all over the room. Yunho’s fingers run through Yoochun’s soft hair, trace the warmth blossoming on his baby-soft cheeks. “You had me so worried. You’re okay now, huh, Mickybo?”
He feels Yoochun’s fingers curl around a fistful of his shirt, then as he rubs his nose like a sleepy puppy. Little legs coil around his waist. “I wanted to see Daddy,” he says softly, as though speaking in a dream. “But I didn’t get to. He wasn’t there.”
Yunho remembers how hard it was to tell his nephew why his Mommy and Daddy had gone and where they had gone off to, forcing himself to make up stories of happier places up in the sky where no one can see or touch you; always the same sad story over and over and over. He’s relieved now somewhat, but he bites his lip all the same. Whoever said time heals all wounds was a fucking liar. “I’m sorry, Yoochun-ah.”
“But you’re here.”
Four nights and three days of constant worry and nausea and cigarettes and Yunho now can’t even tell which side of the room is up or down but it’s all right. It’s all right if only for this.
“You had me pretty scared,” he says. Something inside of him is cracking like an eggshell being pitted against ceramic and he wonders just how people actually survive being parents. “Me, Jaejoong hyung, Junsu hyung, Changmin hyung. You had all of us terrified.”
Yoochun nuzzles into his neck, something Yunho vaguely remembers doing himself as a child. “S’okay,” Yoochun says, resting his head on Yunho’s shoulder. “I’m okay.”
Yunho can finally breathe easily.
---
He stays even though he can’t, even though he shouldn’t. It’s been nearly three hours since Yoochun’s been discharged and one since they’d been dropped off at the apartment by Junsu (“They’ll be all right with you, won’t they?” Junsu asks, speaking in hushed tones now as the both of them stand at the open doorway of the apartment and Jaejoong’s initial reply comes in the form of getting from him the duffel bag filled with Yoochun’s clothes: “Yes, of course they will be, Junsu-sshi.”) but Jaejoong can’t find it in him to leave. Wrapped in the apartment’s disconcerting silence, he puts Batman pajamas back in drawers, loads the washing machine with a bagful of laundry, fixes toys and bedspreads, and replaces peanut butter jar tops, occasionally looking over his shoulder as the feeling that he’s being watched intensifies, but always winding up in the middle of being extremely relieved and disappointed as he’s greeted by nothing but sunlight and shadows playing tag on the walls and ceiling the moment he whips his head around.
(“You were a clever little one, always choosing the best hiding places,” his mother used to say, her eyes crinkling into a smile before a sure frown would slowly mar her delicate features.)
A thud and he turns around again, heart racing fast against his chest. Yoochun’s baseball rolls innocently across the floor from where it fell from one of the shelves. Jaejoong watches it for a bit, nearly expects it to stop and be hurled at him before he shakes his head and walks over to where it is to pick it up and place it back onto the shelf.
(“I never worried about you, you know. Not until the day you didn’t come home to me.”)
There are echoes of lullabies and odd black-and-white memories filling his brain when he goes to check on Yunho and Yoochun in Yunho’s bedroom. On the bed, Yoochun has kicked off the blankets and lies like a bird shot down from the sky, arms and legs spread wide across the mattress as though attempting some odd Indian dance, a contrast to Yunho who keeps him in place with a protective embrace, always on his side with one of his legs and his head bent towards his chest, as though trying to shirk the world even in sleep. Jaejoong hides a smile behind his hand before he proceeds to cover both with a spare blanket he fishes out from one of the closets and tugs gently Yoochun’s thumb away from his puckered mouth.
(“I thought I would never find you again…)
The camera is on Yunho’s desk, hunched beside the shiny silver laptop like a rock. It feels like an anvil in his hands and his shoulders ache from the weight. It turns on with a soft schwing! sound and he runs through the pictures one by one with more than a few hesitant clicks. There are ten, maybe twelve pictures of him, he discovers, obviously stolen but still beautifully taken, shots of color popping out between rows and rows of Yunho’s staple black-and-white.
(…but I thought wrong.”)
He hesitates before he erases all traces of him on the camera, and bites his lip when he moves on to the laptop, erasing picture by picture of him from Yunho’s files. The computer screen glows innocently at him after, smiles at him like there’s nothing wrong, and he eases his guilt by rubbing his palms on the seat of his jeans as though it would make it go away.
(“You are and have always been my son. Nothing can change that. Nothing.”)
Even in sleep, the sadness doesn’t disappear from Yunho’s face, and something inside of Jaejoong aches the more he looks at him. His hands shake.
I’m sorry, he whispers. I can’t do this, I can’t I can’t I can’t
He brushes a strand of Yunho’s hair away from his face, gives a pained smile as Yunho reacts to the touch by following it with the movement of his head.
Please don’t look for me when I go away.
(“My Jaejoong-ah.”)
---
In his newest paintings there are two little boys again, running, flying, hiding between and among bold strokes of color, wearing the same smiles and faces, but never meeting, never touching, never knowing the other exists.
TBC
A/N: Lots of clues in this chapter if you look.