unfinished yunho/changmin fic!

[dewberrie]

: how to train your zombie to not eat brains
: yunho/changmin | pg-13
: yunho adopts himself a zombie
was supposed to be for the homin comm's halloween fic contest last year. it got out of hand and i lost steam. :(

Yunho adopted a zombie against all better judgment screaming, “You’re a fucking idiot! He’s going to eat your fucking brains!” But trust was the key to all relationships, and Changmin didn’t seem to have any interest in him or his internal organs. So, Yunho took him home.

Yunho met him while he was on his way home from work, smelling of tomato sauce and Junsu’s secret family recipe smeared across the bridge of his nose to his left temple. Changmin was slumped against a tombstone in the cemetery picking at a fingernail caked with dirt. Yunho thought they both needed a bath, and maybe that they were the same type of lonely people; except, you know, Changmin wasn’t really a person anymore.

“Are you lost?” Yunho asked as he leaned over the railing to the cemetery, fingers gnarled around the twisted black frame.

The other shook his head still focused on his muddy fingertips. “No.” Then, as an afterthought, “I just really have a shit load of fun hanging out with dead people all night.”

“Oh.” Yunho assumed he looked entirely baffled, and the man on the ground must have thought it was funny because he was smiling slightly now. “Are you an orphan?”

His brows furrowed in thought, as if Yunho baffled him, which he probably did. “I’m a zombie.”

That’s where his better judgment first started kicking in, the hairs on his arms raising with every second the other’s stare seemed to be on him. Yunho always had a problem hearing that tiny voice that usually let him know when he was getting in over his head.

“So you’re an orphan zombie?”

He smiled a bit wider then, head inclining to the side and his hair falling in dirty clumps across his forehead. “Something like that.”

Yunho nodded as if their conversation was a normal one you’d have on the streets with a stranger. He rubbed his jaw where the makings of facial hair had already appeared, and he could feel the tomato-and-basil-surprise concoction still present along his hairline. Well, he thought as he stood there rocking on the balls of his feet, at least it wasn’t the worst first impression he’d ever given.

“I need to wash this off me,” he said a bit begrudgingly motioning quickly to his soiled attire, a frown on his face and his hands reverting back to his pockets. He started walking back down the broken pavement that made up the sidewalk before halting and going back to his previous post at the fence. Changmin seemed amused. “I’ll see you around, right?”

The zombie stared back at him, practically through him, and then nodded. “Yeah, I’ll see you.”

Yunho grinned, walking backwards as his heart rate sped up and raced like a runaway train. The tiny voice in the back of his head quieted down until it could be heard faintly murmuring, “You’re an idiot, and you never listen to me. I feel like a neglected girlfriend you bastard.”

The first person he talked to about the whole situation was his best friend in the entire living world - because he was sure that his new zombie friend would be his best friend in the, well, nonliving world. Jaejoong wasn’t always the most sensible, but he was the easiest to talk to and offered his own version of impartial advice, that much Yunho was thankful for.

“So,” he started smoothly, hand on the marble countertop of the kitchen’s island. Jaejoong’s face remained bored, annoyed that there was nothing better to do at five o’clock on a Sunday afternoon. Except get laid, and Yunho was currently cramping his style. “What would you do if you met a zombie?”

“Blow his fucking brains out,” Jaejoong answered without a moment’s hesitation, and Yunho fancied the thought of Jaejoong already having met a zombie before. “Simple.”

Yunho blinked, biting at his bottom lip. “But what if he was friendly - you know, like Casper except he’s a zombie instead of a ghost.” Jaejoong’s facial expression had yet to waver; Yunho flailed. “And he’s cute.”

“Well,” Jaejoong glanced up at the swirls in the ceiling’s plaster, musing Yunho’s random topic further. “I’d probably have dirty, dirty sex with him,” Yunho’s face fell, perturbed, “and then I’d shoot him in the head.”

Yunho blanched. “You’re disgusting.” He gathered his notebook of questions in his hands and stuffed it back into his messenger bag, clearly not receiving the answers he wanted. “You’re no help. I’m asking Yoochun.”

“Good luck finding answers there!” His shout fell in time with the sound of the door slamming.

So it turned out that Yoochun’s advice sucked about as much as Jaejoong’s did.

“Give him to the zoo?”

Yunho blinked a couple times with his face scrunched in mild confusion. “What the hell? He’s not an animal, Yoochun.”

Yoochun glanced down to his fingernails. He’d painted them green in honor of his new “go green” attitude. Make love not war, hug trees, something like that. Yunho hadn’t cared because he knew that Yoochun’s new lifestyle would end within a week and he’d be back to his purple phase.

“Maybe the museum could do something with him or a research facility, you know, like in Resident Evil,” he stated with a wave of his hand, ignoring the way Yunho’s expression darkened with his suggestions. “What? You’re the one that wanted my advice, and this is clearly a hypothetical situation anyway, so why worry.”

“But,” he paused, unsure of how to explain the lonely begin in the cemetery, “what if this were a real life zombie living in our town and only a few blocks away from where we are right now.”

Yoochun’s smile wore away into a shocked expression. Then his lips curved into a frown. “We’d blow his brains out!”

“That seems kind of cruel considering he hasn’t done anything.”

“It’s a zombie-eat-human-brain world out there,” he remarked flippantly. Yunho rolled his eyes. “And I’d rather it be his brains, you know, as opposed to mine.”

Yunho resisted the urge to tell Yoochun that he didn’t have any brains to be eaten anyway.

Junsu wasn’t supposed to hear about these questions. But he said he heard it through the grapevine, meaning Yoochun.

“I thought I was your friend, too.” Junsu huffed, folded his arms across his chest and shifted his weight from one Converse-clad foot to the other, clearly pissed off. “Doesn’t my opinion matter?”

“Not in the slightest,” Yoochun chimed in from the living room with a bottle of green-apple flavored Kool-Aid tucked between his thighs, mouth full of popcorn. Jaejoong sat beside him with one foot in the floor and the other behind Yoochun’s spine, letting his best friend toss kernels into his open mouth.

“Get a room!”

Jaejoong grinned, slow and sleazy, and it sent tingles up Yunho’s spine. “We already have this one, but thanks for offering.”

Junsu rolled his eyes, running his fingers through his windswept brown hair to try and tame it. Jaejoong said he looked like he just got gangbanged by bikers, a comment that went ignored for the most part with the exception of a crude finger gesture from Junsu.

Yunho slung his left arm over Junsu’s slighter frame, resting his chin on the other’s shoulder, and sighed. “Well, after the answers I got from these two douchebags, I gave up on wondering, really.” Junsu turned those brown eyes of his on Yunho, and regardless of how small they were, they still scared the shit out of him at times when leveled with a glare. “But what would you do in case there happened to be a zombie in town?”

Junsu winked at him, shrugging out of the loose embrace. “I’d definitely want the epidemic to spread. How badass would it be to have a zombie apocalypse?”

Yunho faltered in an attempt at speaking against this idea, and Yoochun and Jaejoong were too busy immersed in their soap operas to much care for anything Junsu ever said. Besides it would be kickass to have an influx of the T-virus to take over the world, kind of like those movies where there’s always a group of heroes that have fucking awesome guns. Yunho would like to have gun.

“Very badass, Junsu.”

So that was how Yunho found himself with a pile of video games and DVDs regarding the matter at hand. He’d played fifty-six hours of nonstop Resident Evil and Left 4 Dead, moving on to Silent Hill just because it seemed fitting. He watched all the classic films from Dawn of the Dead to White Zombie. He even threw in the Stepford Wives because he imagined it related to the matter at hand in some way, and Yoochun’s inner feminist wouldn’t approve of the film.

He thought of guts and glory and badass machine guns. Exploding heads and staggered walks. Peeling skin and teeth meant for tearing flesh from others. He thought of everything that made zombies so popular to begin with.

Then he thought of Changmin.

He repeated the whole process once more starting from number one.

“So.” Changmin lifted those black eyes to him, small smile evident in the faint stream of light provided by the streetlights, or maybe it was a trick of the light and the way Yunho seemed content in his presence. He leaned onto the railing, wanting to be closer to observe Changmin in every possible way. “You don’t seem like most zombies, so in that sense, I have to wonder if you’re, like, a Stephenie Meyers’ version of a zombie.”

“I don’t really know who the fuck that is,” Changmin replied monotonously as he shrugged and glanced back to the wearing away of his shoes. When he sensed that Yunho was going to explain he simply said, “and I really don’t give a fuck as to who that is either.”

Changmin was beautiful in that eerie kind of way, dark brown hair falling in clumps over his forehead, matted with grime and dirt, and his eyes were as black as the sky hanging over their heads. The glimmer of life was not present. There was nothing at all except a dead boy with a nonexistent pulse. His body was frail, skin an ashen grey, and Yunho wondered if some of the muscle tissue had begun to wear away until the brightest white of bone was all that was left beneath his tattered clothes. Yunho felt his stomach flutter with something akin to butterflies, but he brushed it off as nerves skittering from being so close to someone so potentially dangerous.

Yunho likened himself to an elderly lady and Changmin as a shady character nearby. But then he thought that that was the most stupid thing to associate themselves with in the world. More like a really hot girl with big boobs and a creepy pervert that lingered in the shadows. He liked that one better.

“I,” Yunho paused, gestured between them, “I like you,” Changmin raised his head in confusion, nails no longer interesting nor the peeling skin at his knuckles. “I mean, you seem really cool even if you’re dead, and I just don’t want you to use me.”

“In what way would I possibly want to use you? Really.”

Yunho faltered, blinked, and answered, “You could be pretending to be the atypical zombie, but really you’re just waiting for me to let my guard down so that you can harvest my intestines or whatever you find incredibly kinky and tasty… something like that.” He frowned and Changmin mimicked the gesture. “A relationship like that can’t end well.”

Changmin stood from his sitting position, stepping closer to Yunho’s still frowning figure, and said, “First off, do you know what kind of shit goes through your intestines? I’m not fucking with that. Secondly, if I’d wanted to eat you, I would’ve done so already because I see no point in fucking around while hungry.” Changmin leered and Yunho’s pulse rate hammered heavily, practically beating through his abdominal cavity and straight into Changmin’s hands. “You aren’t really my type.”

“Oh, well in that case,” Yunho smiled again, reaching for Changmin’s fingers and tugging them gently, “would you like to come and live with me?”

And when he smiled like that, it was hard to say no. But, then again, Yunho probably would have taken him anyway.

Changmin adapted himself easily to this new lifestyle. Of course, he’d disappear sometimes, maybe off to find food, but Yunho waved it off as unnecessary to ask and just because they were living together did not mean that they had to know what each other was doing every second of every day. Definitely not.

His apartment was small; one bedroom and one bathroom, a kitchen off to the side with a table in the middle, a decent sized living room with a few select pieces of furniture. He had offered his bed to Changmin, saying that he was the guest and that it would be impolite not to offer. Changmin was more comfortable on the couch, or so he said, knees bent over the armrest and one arm dangling over the edge. He didn’t look comfortable to Yunho, but Yunho wasn’t a zombie so he really couldn’t pass judgment.

When Changmin had stumbled upon Yunho’s Confidential: Zombie Training Manual he had merely raised an eyebrow to Yunho’s embarrassed flailing, flipping through the pages with a small smile on his face.

“Is this really how I’m viewed?”

Yunho faltered and rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly, swaying from one foot to the other. “The general public is very close minded. I’m sure they’ll come around one day.”

“Bad reputations are hard to break away from.”

“Well,” Yunho hummed in thought, taking back his confidential files and hoping Changmin didn’t see the really stupid doodled hearts all over the page with his name on it. He smiled at him like he was worth the world and said, “They just need time to see you for what you are!”

“A zombie that has a diet consisting of human flesh and brains?”

He bristled, eyes widened to an extent Changmin found almost comical, and he took Changmin by the shoulders, panicked. “You’re more than that! You’re good.” He could not stress that enough by mere words so he shook Changmin a little, hands tightened on bony shoulders.

And Changmin just shook his head, dark eyes black and cold as they lingered on Yunho’s lips for the briefest of moments, and he stepped away. Yunho fiddled with his shirt’s hem, nervous under that blank stare.

“Have fun explaining that to the rest of the world.”

Yunho was usually a straightforward person. There was no point in beating around the bush, and honesty was always the policy; or, whatever shit his mother had said at some point during his childhood. He didn’t like hiding things from his friends, especially Jaejoong because he had large arms and knew how to place a direct hit to his solar plexus.

But coming out about Changmin was difficult, considering the advice his friends had given him prior to him taking a zombie home.

“Your friend looks like he’s in need of a doctor,” Jaejoong observed from the couch, peering at Changmin through blond highlights. Jaejoong twisted the lock of hair around his finger, flicking his gaze back to his awkward best friend. “Or a mortician.”

Yunho laughed. Nervously. Changmin glanced at him from his place on the chair to the left of the entertainment center. Jaejoong’s right eyebrow disappeared into his hairline.

“Haha.” He fidgeted and threw an arm around Jaejoong, nuzzling his nose into his neck. Jaejoong was not amused, pinching Yunho’s side until he removed himself. “You’re so funny, Jaejoong. Changmin just gets sick easily, that’s all.”

“Then he should be under better care than this.”

Yunho looked affronted. He shoved Jaejoong’s shoulder with both his hands. “I’m taking care of him. He’s happier here! Isn’t that right, Changmin?” Said person, or zombie, just nodded, engrossed in the way the television seemed to soften out their features. Yunho smiled, victorious. “See? He’s fine.”

“He looks dead.” He bit his bottom lip. “Or, at least like he’s dying.” He turned his attention back to Yunho, twisting his fingers in his scarf. “Where did you meet?”

Yunho, without thinking, said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, “The cemetery, where else would you find a zombie?”

“Holy shit, Yunho!” Jaejoong clambered off the couch and stumbled into the wall, chest heaving and fingers pointing accusingly. “What the hell were you thinking? A fucking zombie, you’re out of your damn mind!”

Yunho tried to calm him, but from a distance, waving his hands around frantically. “He’s a good zombie, though! You know, with a kind heart -”

“That’s a lie, technically,” Changmin corrected from the chair, raw pieces of chicken he had found in Yunho’s fridge littering the coffee table before him. “I don’t have a heart.”

Yunho chose to ignore him.

“He hasn’t eaten my brains yet!”

Jaejoong sighed, exasperated. “That’s because you don’t have any to begin with!” He pulled at the ends of his scarf, tossing wary glances at Changmin who refused to move away from his place on the chair. “He could be waiting for the right moment to strike.”

“I trust him,” Yunho said with a small smile and slight shrug of his shoulders. “It would mean something to me, as my best friend, if you tried to get along with him as well.”

Jaejoong frowned. He folded his arms over the white of his t-shirt, shoulders and elbows stiff from the fabric of his beige jacket. “You’re using the friend card against me. I never thought you capable of being so low; I blame Junsu for all this, encouraging you like that.” He looked down, smiling into his chest. “Whatever, but I’m not happy about this.”

Yunho grabbed him by the wrist, lingering over the pulse, and grinned. “You’ll get over it.”

Explaining to Yoochun and Junsu hadn’t been too hard. They had taken it fairly well, and they were more interested in knowing everything about Changmin as opposed to destroying what was left of his flesh, much to Jaejoong’s dismay.

“So,” Yoochun asked with a large grin on his face, slinging an arm around the back of the couch, barely brushing against Changmin. Yunho huffed. “Do you ever masturbate? Have sex? Are you afraid your dick will fall off?”

“Why the sudden interest in my dick?” he asked instead, and Junsu choked on the herbal tea that he’d demanded be placed in Yunho’s fridge in case he ever visited which was all the time. The freeloader.

Yoochun twitched in his seat, considering what he’d say next, before shrugging. “It just seems like it’d be difficult to pull off without losing a limb.”

Changmin’s eyes fluttered, still dark and dead; Jaejoong said that they freaked him out the most. “Then I guess I’d have to be very careful wouldn’t I?”

Yoochun patted his back in understanding, a concerned expression on his face as he tried his hardest to relate. Junsu threw his slipper at Yoochun’s shoulder, missing and hitting his cheek instead. Changmin rolled his black eyes to Yunho who just smiled behind the rim of his coffee mug, eyes crinkled at the corners and fingers tapping on the ceramic. Changmin blinked away with a scowl.

Then Yoochun sobered up once again, hand clamped over Junsu’s mouth, as he straddled him with his knees to either side of Junsu’s hips. His curious eyes remained on Changmin.

“Wait, what would you do if your dick did fall off?”

Somewhere, caught between the weeks they spent together, Changmin became restless, eyes always a hull and fingers constantly twitching. Yunho would try to touch his shoulder and only succeed in having his hand brushed off harshly.

“I don’t know what to do,” Yunho whined to Jaejoong, perched precariously on the edge of his bed, the hole in his left sock serving as his only source of amusement due to Changmin’s sudden bout of anger.

Jaejoong sighed on the other line, a spoon clinking against a glass sounding over it. “You know what they say about caged birds needing to be set free.”

“He’s not a bird.” Yunho paused and wiped his palms over the rounding of his knees, phone cradled in an awkward position against his jaw. “Actually, he doesn’t seem too fond of birds.”

“And why’s that?”

Yunho rubbed at his forehead, tired and not at all ready to remember what he had found in his bathtub the day before. “He leaves their carcasses in the bathroom.”

He really didn’t blame Jaejoong for ending the call there.

a/n: i wish i finished this :( oh, well. anyway, i'm posting it here regardless! better to be shared in time for the holiday spirit than gather virtual dust on my computer. ♥ i hope you enjoyed this much at least, and have a great time on halloween!

to dongbangsuju20 lj hates me and i just got your recent messages it seems. i'm replying to them now if you're wondering! and working on your yoosu :) ♥