#09. places we'll go;
: places we’ll go
: yoochun-centric | pg
: yoochun and the four people he meets on the bus to heaven
: for tvxqfic’s prompt challenge; four addicts, one normal person, a bus and a flat tire /sighs
.i
Yoochun finds out-after two hours of dying in a crowded street in downtown Seoul-that Heaven has tiny buses to take people where they need to go.
He doesn’t remember any details about his death. He only remembers leaping, flying, and falling-and when he fell, he hit the pavement hard, broke a few bones and shattered his heart.
And when he tries to recall his life on Earth, he can only think of the things he would’ve liked to have done in his life, not the things that he had experienced before.
As he looks out the bus's windows, he thinks he would’ve liked to have said goodbye.
.ii
“Whatcha in for, Kid?”
Yoochun glances at the graying man behind the wheel of the bus, wonders why no one has wings here, and says, “Plowed over by a speeding car-didn’t catch what type or model.”
The bus driver laughs at him, wrinkles digging trenches into his face, and motions for him to get on the bus. “Sit back and relax, Kid, it’ll all be over soon-kind of like life.”
.iii
His clothes are torn, right knee and shin peeking out from behind ripped denim, and there are jagged cuts that pierce through his pale skin in bright red. His hair is messy and he feels glass cutting into his body in awkward angles. It hurts even if he can’t feel it anymore.
Heaven says they’ll fix him up as soon as he moves on.
.iv
The first person he meets is named Yunho. He says he is fifty-four but he looks twenty-one, lived a good life, and missed his own funeral because he was too scared to face his family after his death.
“Internet junkie,” Yunho says with a stretch of his arms, backs of his hands hitting the glass pane and legs extending for miles down the aisles. He grins charmingly, a real smile and not the fake sympathetic ones the receptionist lady gave Yoochun when he arrived in this world. “I had them all. Twitter, Myspace, especially Facebook-thousands of friends and played all the games from Café World to Sorority Life.”
Yoochun blinks at him, unconsciously picking at the scabs of dried blood on his palm, and watches as Yunho’s eyes darken with grief over past mistakes.
“But then I realized something,” he says with a small frown. “None of that ever mattered. And I almost lost everything because of it-my house, my car, my wife, hell even my family.”
“…how’d you die?” Yoochun fidgets in the bus seat, fingernails catching in frayed denim at his knees.
Yunho flashes that genuine smile at him again, twists the gold band around his finger, and replies, “Heart attack. It wasn’t too bad, though; I had everyone I loved with me when I went.”
Yoochun tries to think of those that were near him when his heart stopped beating, but he can only recall muted voices crying from blank faces.
.v
Changmin. He is tall with legs as long as Yunho’s, stiff and straight, and the sharp angles of his face hollow out his cheeks and sculpt his jaw line. But his lips remain set straight, eyes vacant, and there’s this odd twitch in his body every time he moves.
He doesn’t say much, just takes a seat beside Yunho and looks out the window at the passing clouds that float in and out of sight every few seconds.
“Drugs,” Changmin murmurs, drawing his arms up over his chest and he never meets their eyes. “Used valium for anxiety, then for everything in between-or at least that’s what they told me. I really can’t remember dying or anything that comes before that.”
He stops talking and Yoochun starts thinking. He realizes that he doesn’t remember dying either.
.vi
“Get the fuck out of my way.”
Blond hair, black eyes, and cheeks sunken in; he takes a seat in the back of the bus, underneath a dim light where the radio crackles through the speakers in broken spurts of music. Yoochun picks asphalt from his wounds, wincing when he realizes that the pieces are in too deep and it’s hard to tug them out.
“What the hell is your problem?” Changmin asks, stone-faced and lips set. Yunho puts a hand on his thigh, frowning, but says nothing as he waits for this man’s response.
He looks down at his hands, searching for the answers to the very root of his problem, and Yoochun can make out visible scars-some old, some new, but always there-running like highways across his flesh. A face and a body not his own, never knew he would die under the knife because he had gone through these procedures a millions times before. But his heart is all his, and the only thing he knows is real. He says his name was Jaejoong, and that they had not given him any anesthesia.
“What the fuck would any of you know about beauty anyway?” he snaps, voice rough and eyes glinting in time with the flickering lights overhead.
And when the bus picks up a radio station somewhere in the outskirts of space, he hears Jaejoong’s voice swing along to the jazzy music; Yoochun thinks he might know what beauty really is.
.vii
Junsu is the last person to step onto the bus, eyes small and voice stuck somewhere at the back of his throat waiting to come out and say hello. He grasps at something lying over his heart every time the bus’s tires squeal against the road, and tentatively makes his way to a seat near to Jaejoong at the back of the bus.
Yoochun blinks his eyes away from him, focuses on the pitch black of outside the bus
“How'd you end up in a place like this?” Yoochun asks the window, touches the surface and sees himself for what he is. His lips curl upwards but the creases in his forehead ruin the effect, so much so that now he just looks lifeless and confused and exactly how he feels.
Junsu says nothing at first, lingering across the aisle, two seats down, and partially hidden from view, and maybe he's a little scared to come too close to anyone. “I tried to fly. Gravity let me down.”
Yoochun nods, looks to the other three people riding this bus and whispers, “Death is a bitch.”
And the boy with the sad eyes stares at him, looking for something that might be there somewhere hidden behind anxiety. Yoochun guesses he finds it when all he does is smile at him-cracked around the edges, a piece of a whole.
.viii
The bus breaks down. Flat tire.
The bus driver says it has never happened before in all his centuries of directing angels and demons to their rightful homes. Jaejoong rolls his eyes and slouches against the metal shell of the bus, eyes downward and lips drawn into a line. Junsu stands off to the side, staring straight ahead, and if Yoochun squints he can make out the arching of the gates somewhere in the distance.
“The bus won’t be ready for some time,” the bus driver states as he opens a panel on the side of the bus, signaling for help. “You can walk the rest of the way.”
Yunho nods to the man and starts walking in the direction the bus driver had pointed to, but he stops mid-step and turns to face the other four, still standing in their spots. Changmin stuffs his hands in his pockets and after kicking at the dusty ground he sidles alongside Yunho, stride for stride.
Jaejoong rolls his eyes, annoyed, but there is something pulling the corner of his mouth up into a smile.
Junsu holds back for a while, shifting from side to side, and then follows along behind the other three, catching Yoochun’s hand and pulling their bodies closer so that everything touches from shoulders to hips, fingers laced between.
.ix
Somewhere along the way Yoochun’s life bleeds into one moment and then falls away in a sharp note.
Jaejoong is laughing more now, singing to a beat in their heads and in the air, and Yunho’s pressing long fingers to the elder’s throat, pulling out everything artificial in his life until nothing exists but the reality of them. Changmin’s brown eyes are bright and innocent, lively as he takes in the towering gates not too far away anymore-just slightly out of reach now. They are forgetting how they died, only remembering how they lived.
Junsu is the last to forget, and before he does he kisses Yoochun near the entryway to heaven, fingers clenching and body shaking. He laughs against Yoochun’s mouth, the sound echoing in the back of Yoochun’s throat, and then Junsu pulls away with a glimmer in his eyes.
“I always wanted to be famous. I practiced, auditioned, everything,” Junsu whispers, forehead against Yoochun’s and he’s picking at the item hanging around his neck again. He unfists his hand and shows Yoochun exactly what it was. A bullet. “I was shot the night of my first big concert.”
He clenches the bullet in his hand, between their chests, and feels the object imprinting itself into his palm. Then he unclasps the hook in the back and lets the chain slide through the hole drilled into the bullet, smiling.
If anything, his eyes are lighter as he pulls away. “It was time for me to get that off my chest.”
.x
He doesn’t remember anything anymore.
But he feels Jaejoong’s hand in his, scars gone, and there’s a natural glow about him as he laughs and doesn’t care about what people think of him anymore. Yunho’s gold band is a figment of imagination as he grasps Changmin’s hand tighter in his, the younger male’s body relaxed and his eyes alight with fiery youth. And Junsu talks to him everyday just to see how things are, smile whole and nothing cracked any longer.
Yoochun looks at his hand and can no longer see zigzagging streaks of red dotting alongside jagged pieces of glass anymore.
Heaven had said that they’ll fix them when they moved on.
.xi
He remembers leaping, flying, and never touching the ground.
probably didn’t do the prompt justice. at all. written in pieces (meaning: it began weeks ago, ended a few minutes before posting /fail.) was supposed to be 5k plus but i cut it short, so it probably feels very jumpy/rushed. sorry ;; i now need sleeeeep. read, hope you enjoy, and comment if you can
: yoochun-centric | pg
: yoochun and the four people he meets on the bus to heaven
: for tvxqfic’s prompt challenge; four addicts, one normal person, a bus and a flat tire /sighs
.i
Yoochun finds out-after two hours of dying in a crowded street in downtown Seoul-that Heaven has tiny buses to take people where they need to go.
He doesn’t remember any details about his death. He only remembers leaping, flying, and falling-and when he fell, he hit the pavement hard, broke a few bones and shattered his heart.
And when he tries to recall his life on Earth, he can only think of the things he would’ve liked to have done in his life, not the things that he had experienced before.
As he looks out the bus's windows, he thinks he would’ve liked to have said goodbye.
.ii
“Whatcha in for, Kid?”
Yoochun glances at the graying man behind the wheel of the bus, wonders why no one has wings here, and says, “Plowed over by a speeding car-didn’t catch what type or model.”
The bus driver laughs at him, wrinkles digging trenches into his face, and motions for him to get on the bus. “Sit back and relax, Kid, it’ll all be over soon-kind of like life.”
.iii
His clothes are torn, right knee and shin peeking out from behind ripped denim, and there are jagged cuts that pierce through his pale skin in bright red. His hair is messy and he feels glass cutting into his body in awkward angles. It hurts even if he can’t feel it anymore.
Heaven says they’ll fix him up as soon as he moves on.
.iv
The first person he meets is named Yunho. He says he is fifty-four but he looks twenty-one, lived a good life, and missed his own funeral because he was too scared to face his family after his death.
“Internet junkie,” Yunho says with a stretch of his arms, backs of his hands hitting the glass pane and legs extending for miles down the aisles. He grins charmingly, a real smile and not the fake sympathetic ones the receptionist lady gave Yoochun when he arrived in this world. “I had them all. Twitter, Myspace, especially Facebook-thousands of friends and played all the games from Café World to Sorority Life.”
Yoochun blinks at him, unconsciously picking at the scabs of dried blood on his palm, and watches as Yunho’s eyes darken with grief over past mistakes.
“But then I realized something,” he says with a small frown. “None of that ever mattered. And I almost lost everything because of it-my house, my car, my wife, hell even my family.”
“…how’d you die?” Yoochun fidgets in the bus seat, fingernails catching in frayed denim at his knees.
Yunho flashes that genuine smile at him again, twists the gold band around his finger, and replies, “Heart attack. It wasn’t too bad, though; I had everyone I loved with me when I went.”
Yoochun tries to think of those that were near him when his heart stopped beating, but he can only recall muted voices crying from blank faces.
.v
Changmin. He is tall with legs as long as Yunho’s, stiff and straight, and the sharp angles of his face hollow out his cheeks and sculpt his jaw line. But his lips remain set straight, eyes vacant, and there’s this odd twitch in his body every time he moves.
He doesn’t say much, just takes a seat beside Yunho and looks out the window at the passing clouds that float in and out of sight every few seconds.
“Drugs,” Changmin murmurs, drawing his arms up over his chest and he never meets their eyes. “Used valium for anxiety, then for everything in between-or at least that’s what they told me. I really can’t remember dying or anything that comes before that.”
He stops talking and Yoochun starts thinking. He realizes that he doesn’t remember dying either.
.vi
“Get the fuck out of my way.”
Blond hair, black eyes, and cheeks sunken in; he takes a seat in the back of the bus, underneath a dim light where the radio crackles through the speakers in broken spurts of music. Yoochun picks asphalt from his wounds, wincing when he realizes that the pieces are in too deep and it’s hard to tug them out.
“What the hell is your problem?” Changmin asks, stone-faced and lips set. Yunho puts a hand on his thigh, frowning, but says nothing as he waits for this man’s response.
He looks down at his hands, searching for the answers to the very root of his problem, and Yoochun can make out visible scars-some old, some new, but always there-running like highways across his flesh. A face and a body not his own, never knew he would die under the knife because he had gone through these procedures a millions times before. But his heart is all his, and the only thing he knows is real. He says his name was Jaejoong, and that they had not given him any anesthesia.
“What the fuck would any of you know about beauty anyway?” he snaps, voice rough and eyes glinting in time with the flickering lights overhead.
And when the bus picks up a radio station somewhere in the outskirts of space, he hears Jaejoong’s voice swing along to the jazzy music; Yoochun thinks he might know what beauty really is.
.vii
Junsu is the last person to step onto the bus, eyes small and voice stuck somewhere at the back of his throat waiting to come out and say hello. He grasps at something lying over his heart every time the bus’s tires squeal against the road, and tentatively makes his way to a seat near to Jaejoong at the back of the bus.
Yoochun blinks his eyes away from him, focuses on the pitch black of outside the bus
“How'd you end up in a place like this?” Yoochun asks the window, touches the surface and sees himself for what he is. His lips curl upwards but the creases in his forehead ruin the effect, so much so that now he just looks lifeless and confused and exactly how he feels.
Junsu says nothing at first, lingering across the aisle, two seats down, and partially hidden from view, and maybe he's a little scared to come too close to anyone. “I tried to fly. Gravity let me down.”
Yoochun nods, looks to the other three people riding this bus and whispers, “Death is a bitch.”
And the boy with the sad eyes stares at him, looking for something that might be there somewhere hidden behind anxiety. Yoochun guesses he finds it when all he does is smile at him-cracked around the edges, a piece of a whole.
.viii
The bus breaks down. Flat tire.
The bus driver says it has never happened before in all his centuries of directing angels and demons to their rightful homes. Jaejoong rolls his eyes and slouches against the metal shell of the bus, eyes downward and lips drawn into a line. Junsu stands off to the side, staring straight ahead, and if Yoochun squints he can make out the arching of the gates somewhere in the distance.
“The bus won’t be ready for some time,” the bus driver states as he opens a panel on the side of the bus, signaling for help. “You can walk the rest of the way.”
Yunho nods to the man and starts walking in the direction the bus driver had pointed to, but he stops mid-step and turns to face the other four, still standing in their spots. Changmin stuffs his hands in his pockets and after kicking at the dusty ground he sidles alongside Yunho, stride for stride.
Jaejoong rolls his eyes, annoyed, but there is something pulling the corner of his mouth up into a smile.
Junsu holds back for a while, shifting from side to side, and then follows along behind the other three, catching Yoochun’s hand and pulling their bodies closer so that everything touches from shoulders to hips, fingers laced between.
.ix
Somewhere along the way Yoochun’s life bleeds into one moment and then falls away in a sharp note.
Jaejoong is laughing more now, singing to a beat in their heads and in the air, and Yunho’s pressing long fingers to the elder’s throat, pulling out everything artificial in his life until nothing exists but the reality of them. Changmin’s brown eyes are bright and innocent, lively as he takes in the towering gates not too far away anymore-just slightly out of reach now. They are forgetting how they died, only remembering how they lived.
Junsu is the last to forget, and before he does he kisses Yoochun near the entryway to heaven, fingers clenching and body shaking. He laughs against Yoochun’s mouth, the sound echoing in the back of Yoochun’s throat, and then Junsu pulls away with a glimmer in his eyes.
“I always wanted to be famous. I practiced, auditioned, everything,” Junsu whispers, forehead against Yoochun’s and he’s picking at the item hanging around his neck again. He unfists his hand and shows Yoochun exactly what it was. A bullet. “I was shot the night of my first big concert.”
He clenches the bullet in his hand, between their chests, and feels the object imprinting itself into his palm. Then he unclasps the hook in the back and lets the chain slide through the hole drilled into the bullet, smiling.
If anything, his eyes are lighter as he pulls away. “It was time for me to get that off my chest.”
.x
He doesn’t remember anything anymore.
But he feels Jaejoong’s hand in his, scars gone, and there’s a natural glow about him as he laughs and doesn’t care about what people think of him anymore. Yunho’s gold band is a figment of imagination as he grasps Changmin’s hand tighter in his, the younger male’s body relaxed and his eyes alight with fiery youth. And Junsu talks to him everyday just to see how things are, smile whole and nothing cracked any longer.
Yoochun looks at his hand and can no longer see zigzagging streaks of red dotting alongside jagged pieces of glass anymore.
Heaven had said that they’ll fix them when they moved on.
.xi
He remembers leaping, flying, and never touching the ground.
probably didn’t do the prompt justice. at all. written in pieces (meaning: it began weeks ago, ended a few minutes before posting /fail.) was supposed to be 5k plus but i cut it short, so it probably feels very jumpy/rushed. sorry ;; i now need sleeeeep. read, hope you enjoy, and comment if you can