fic: Rewind {Beast, Dooseob}
Title: Rewind
Length: one-shot
Series: Re:Verse
Author: M_K Yujji
Rating: pg
Genre: drama, angst, romance
Pairing/Characters: Yoseob (Dooseob)
Warnings: RPS, Future-ish sort of fic, Strange happenings
Disclaimer: Though real people are used as characters, this fic bears no resemblance to Real Life and these people are not owned by me.
Comments/Notes: Perhaps I've been listening to Garth Brooks' Til You Come Back to me Again a few too many times at work lately....
Summary: Second chances are hard to come by. Especially when you don't realize you need one until it's too late.
~*~*~
October 15, 2024
“Yah, Yoseob, don’t forget to pick me up at seven, all right? That’s late enough to be fashionable, but not so late to be rude, don’t you think? Aish, are you even listening to me? Yoseob.”
The man in question sighed and finally looked up from his laptop. “Why are you even bothering me with this? You know that I have other plans tonight.”
Jiyoon pouted slightly, rolling her eyes. She’d have put her hands on her hips and stomped her foot - she’d worked hard on making that particular sequence look appropriately aggravated without damaging her appearance - but she was sitting. It lost effect if she wasn’t standing - she’d tried it before. “I thought you agreed that we should make more public appearances together. The public-”
“No, you stated and I ignored. That’s not agreeing.” Yoseob turned his attention back to his computer. He was supposed to be working on his memoirs, something he thought absolutely ridiculous. Old people did memoirs. Actors or singers who had peaked and were going into the sunset of their careers did memoirs. Thirty-some-odd year old entertainers who were still going stronger than ever did not do memoirs.
His PR agent thought it would be good for his career and image, though, and what the dragon demanded, the dragon got.
He made a face and re-read the section he’d spent most of the morning working on.
They’re not kind when you’re first starting out, but then, they’re not supposed to be. They’re supposed to be making sure you’ve got what it takes to stick through the obstacles of fame.
A lot of them didn’t think I could do that.
They said that I wasn’t ‘star material’.
Well, I showed them, didn’t I?
He sighed. A writer he was not.
Before he could delete the entire mess, his laptop was taken away. “Hey!”
Jiyoon did stomp this time as she shut the lid and dropped the computer onto the table with a dull ‘thud’, completely ignoring his protests. “Dammit, Yoseob. I get that your career is the most important thing in the world to you. It’s why we get along so well, but this is important too. Rumors are starting.”
“There’ve been rumors for years. None of them have ever damaged either one of us.” There’d been rumors before he’d even been someone worth talking about.
She made a face that wasn’t at all attractive which let him know just how truly frustrated she actually was. “I’m asking you to escort me to one awards show. You’re like… the biggest part of my acceptance speech. It’s going to fall flat if you’re not there.”
“How is that my problem?” he muttered, standing up and grabbing his blazer. If he wasn’t going to get anymore writing done, he might as well go do something else useful. Maybe his manager would help him find a ghost writer. Any writing he had to do was just going to end up making the world think he was uneducated. “You shouldn’t have assumed I’d come. It’s not like my plans are new. I’m always busy on October 15th.”
“It’s been fifteen years, Yoseob! I think he’d understand if you didn’t go just this once.”
Yoseob froze for a moment before turning cold eyes to the woman. “We may be married, but don’t you ever presume to speak of him again. You don’t have that right.”
Then he left, uncaring of her reaction.
~*~*~
“If you don’t like her, why’d you marry her?”
Yoseob made a face and gestured for the bottle of soju. “I don’t dislike her. And we make an attractive couple, everyone says so.”
“….” Seungho sighed and shook his head as he passed over the bottle. “I can’t believe you chose a wife based on whether or not her appearance matched yours or not.”
“Well-”
Seungho waved a hand at him. “No, never mind. I do believe it. It’s just like you.”
There was no apology on Yoseob’s face as he shrugged. “It’s as good a method as any. And look. We’ve managed not to kill each other or drag each other through the tabloids for ten whole years.”
“You’re too hung up on your career.”
“Yah… If I wasn’t so hung up on it, I wouldn’t be nearly as successful as I am, would I?” He had exactly the life he’d planned on having when he’d taken the first steps into the entertainment industry all those years before.
His little mental checklist was completely checked off.
Become a famous singer? Check.
Marry a super model or an actress? Check/check.
Make lots of money? Check.
“Does it make you happy?”
Yoseob sighed and rolled his eyes. “I have everything I ever wanted. What’s not to be happy about?”
He very carefully did not look at anything other than the bottle of soju in his hands.
“Yeah, Yoseob. You look like a barrel of laughs, all right.” Seungho’s voice was sardonic, but that wasn’t anything unusual when he was talking to Yoseob.
Honestly, they’d never been friends or even particularly close. Before this yearly ritual had started, they’d only barely tolerated each other for a mutual friend’s sake.
It struck Yoseob as funny just then that this person he’d once disliked more than any other was now the person he felt closest to, that Seungho was the one person in the entire world who truly understood certain things about him.
He laughed out loud, harder than he had in a while. He laughed until he felt the trickle of hysteria creeping underneath it. He laughed and laughed and laughed, barely managing to get control of himself before it started running more towards sobs.
“Hey! You kids aren’t suppose to-” The intruder broke off as Seungho stood up and the light reflected off of his face properly. The man bowed immediately, his light bobbing with his movement, casting eerie shadows around them. “Oh… Oh, I’m so sorry Yang-sshi. I didn’t realize it was you. Please forgive me.”
Seungho waved off the apology. “There’s nothing to forgive, Ahjusshi. A man has to do his job.”
Yoseob stayed quiet until the groundskeeper had moved away again. “If he ever goes to the tabloids, no explanation we can give is going to save our careers.”
“Does it bother you enough to stop?”
It wasn’t a new question. Every year the groundskeeper forgot that they were there and every year he interrupted them. Personally, Yoseob thought the place needed to find someone with a few more of his marbles still attached.
Every year, he worried that he and Seungho were going to find their activities speculated about on the front page of some tabloid or another.
Every year, Seungho posed the same question.
Yoseob thought about his wife, accepting yet another prestigious award without her husband. He thought about the speculation that had been rife from the moment they’d married, the ceremony the first seeming interest he’d shown in anything but his career in all the time that the press had known his name.
He finally looked around them, the dark, depressive air seeming to push at him from all sides, demanding attention.
In fifteen years, worry over his career hadn’t been enough to keep him away from this place. Only this one thing…
“No.”
Seungho glanced at him, startled by the new answer to the old question. He didn’t comment on it directly, though. Just nodded and sat back down in the lawn chair he’d dragged out earlier. Yoseob hadn’t bothered with a chair this year, knowing he’d probably get too drunk to stay in it anyways.
He tossed back the rest of the bottle, relishing the way the burn of the alcohol seemed to burn away the edges of his memory as nothing else ever managed to do.
Everyone should be glad he was so concerned with appearances. Otherwise he’d have become an alcoholic years ago. Of course… if he hadn’t been so concerned with his career and the way his actions effected it… maybe there’d have never been a need to chase away old ghosts.
“Do you ever wish you could change things?” Seungho asked out of the blue.
“Every day.”
The answer slipped out before he even considered it, but Yoseob knew it was nothing less than the truth. In the dark hours of the morning when he lay in bed with nothing to distract him from his thoughts, he had to face the knowledge that he’d made the wrong choice all those years ago.
He had the life he’d always planned, but it was a bitter success because he’d already lost everything he’d always needed. He’d been too blinded by his ambition and it was only later, when it was too late, that he’d realized just how all-encompassing that loss really was.
“Yah, gimme another bottle,” he demanded, flopping an arm towards his companion. If he was thinking about it this hard, he obviously wasn’t drunk enough yet.
Seungho complied, and watched in silence as Yoseob managed to plow his way through half the bottle in one long pull.
The world went a little sideways then and Yoseob flopped backwards onto his back, staring up at the sky and wondering at how close the stars seemed to be. “D’ya think he minds us crashing on top of him like this?”
The older man snorted in amusement. “You’re the one laying on his grave, not me.”
Yoseob nodded and curled over on his side, fingers sinking into the grass and dirt, wishing he could feel the person there instead. “Miss him….”
Whispered words brushed his ear, the breath behind them making his shiver a little. “If you could go back and fix it… would you? Even if it meant you don’t get the life you planned for?”
“Yes,” he whispered back, his eyes clenched shut as he remembered a precious smile that had been missing from his life for fifteen years. He’d give up anything to have that smile back.
A hand brushed across his hair and it seemed like maybe a kiss pressed against his temple, but surely Seungho wouldn’t have done that. They weren’t that drunk… were they? “Okay, then. One second chance, little Seobie… Don’t screw it up this time.”
Yoseob swallowed hard at the nickname. No one called him Seobie anymore. No one had since….
Darkness took him before he could finish the thought.
~*~*~
Yoseob whimpered slightly as consciousness returned abruptly.
His head felt like it was spinning wildly and he was dangerously close to losing whatever dinner he’d managed to force down the night before. He wasn’t much of a drinker, but just one night a year he did his level best to kill himself with alcohol poisoning.
It never worked, of course. He passed out before he could do any real damage.
“Yah! He’s awake!”
The shout made Yoseob cringe and curl in on himself.
“Oh, sorry…” Gentle hands stroked his hair and Yoseob slowly began to relax into the touch. “Come on, Seobie… Open your eyes…”
He made a disgruntled noise since he couldn’t shake his head or force words through his parched throat.
Why on earth was Doojoon bothering him after-
His eyes flew open and he sat straight up, nearly busting Doojoon’s nose as the other barely reacted quickly enough. “Doojoon….”
Then he had to clench his eyes shut again and hold himself very, very still until the world stopped threatening to spin away from him. Once it was settled again, he slowly cracked first one eye open, then the other, afraid that the illusion had vanished.
Doojoon smiled and brushed his hair back. “Yah… who else were you expecting?” He hesitated and glanced towards the door before leaning in and pressing a soft kiss against Yoseob’s cheek. “You really scared the hell out of us, you know, passing out like that. I know how important training is, but you shouldn’t neglect yourself to-”
His words were cut off as Yoseob launched himself forward, wrapping both arms around Doojoon’s neck and holding on for dear life. “Doojoon, doojoon!”
“Umm…” Doojoon’s arms came up and around him without hesitation despite the obvious confusion on his face. “Are you okay, Seobie? Did you hit your head when you fell?”
“I’m better than okay, you… you’re-” Yoseob didn’t even try to hold back the tears that soaked his cheeks. The body against his was solid and warm and alive. He’d never believed in miracles but this could be nothing else. He pulled back and held Doojoon’s face between his hands.
Hands that looked remarkably unlined with age and with none of the tell tale bumps and knobs from all the times he’d broken his fingers over the years.
He caught sight of his reflection across the room and his breath caught. “Doojoon….”
Concern and confusion marred the beautiful face as Doojoon hesitated. “Yeah, Seobie?”
“What… what year is it… What’s the date?”
“October 16, 2008. You only passed out for a few hours, Seobie…” Doojoon smiled, but the worry was still plain in his eyes. “It did seem like forever, though.”
“If you could go back and fix it… would you? Even if it meant you don’t get the life you planned for?”
It couldn’t be. It wasn’t even possible. He’d finally lost his mind. Or the alcohol had poisoned him after all.
Maybe he was dead and this was heaven.
He didn’t feel dead, though.
If anything, he felt more alive than he had in years.
Fifteen years to be exact.
“Okay, then. One second chance, little Seobie… Don’t screw it up this time.”
He swallowed hard and leaned into Doojoon, relishing in the strong support he’d been standing without for far too long, first by choice and then by circumstance.
He’d made the wrong choice before, choosing his career over his love, and he’d paid for that mistake every day of his life.
People didn’t really get second chances. It wasn’t how the world worked.
And yet…
His eyes slipped shut for a moment as he wrapped his arms around Doojoon and held on tight. Crazy or not, impossible or not….
He was never going to let go again.
~*~*~
fin
Length: one-shot
Series: Re:Verse
Author: M_K Yujji
Rating: pg
Genre: drama, angst, romance
Pairing/Characters: Yoseob (Dooseob)
Warnings: RPS, Future-ish sort of fic, Strange happenings
Disclaimer: Though real people are used as characters, this fic bears no resemblance to Real Life and these people are not owned by me.
Comments/Notes: Perhaps I've been listening to Garth Brooks' Til You Come Back to me Again a few too many times at work lately....
Summary: Second chances are hard to come by. Especially when you don't realize you need one until it's too late.
~*~*~
October 15, 2024
“Yah, Yoseob, don’t forget to pick me up at seven, all right? That’s late enough to be fashionable, but not so late to be rude, don’t you think? Aish, are you even listening to me? Yoseob.”
The man in question sighed and finally looked up from his laptop. “Why are you even bothering me with this? You know that I have other plans tonight.”
Jiyoon pouted slightly, rolling her eyes. She’d have put her hands on her hips and stomped her foot - she’d worked hard on making that particular sequence look appropriately aggravated without damaging her appearance - but she was sitting. It lost effect if she wasn’t standing - she’d tried it before. “I thought you agreed that we should make more public appearances together. The public-”
“No, you stated and I ignored. That’s not agreeing.” Yoseob turned his attention back to his computer. He was supposed to be working on his memoirs, something he thought absolutely ridiculous. Old people did memoirs. Actors or singers who had peaked and were going into the sunset of their careers did memoirs. Thirty-some-odd year old entertainers who were still going stronger than ever did not do memoirs.
His PR agent thought it would be good for his career and image, though, and what the dragon demanded, the dragon got.
He made a face and re-read the section he’d spent most of the morning working on.
They’re not kind when you’re first starting out, but then, they’re not supposed to be. They’re supposed to be making sure you’ve got what it takes to stick through the obstacles of fame.
A lot of them didn’t think I could do that.
They said that I wasn’t ‘star material’.
Well, I showed them, didn’t I?
He sighed. A writer he was not.
Before he could delete the entire mess, his laptop was taken away. “Hey!”
Jiyoon did stomp this time as she shut the lid and dropped the computer onto the table with a dull ‘thud’, completely ignoring his protests. “Dammit, Yoseob. I get that your career is the most important thing in the world to you. It’s why we get along so well, but this is important too. Rumors are starting.”
“There’ve been rumors for years. None of them have ever damaged either one of us.” There’d been rumors before he’d even been someone worth talking about.
She made a face that wasn’t at all attractive which let him know just how truly frustrated she actually was. “I’m asking you to escort me to one awards show. You’re like… the biggest part of my acceptance speech. It’s going to fall flat if you’re not there.”
“How is that my problem?” he muttered, standing up and grabbing his blazer. If he wasn’t going to get anymore writing done, he might as well go do something else useful. Maybe his manager would help him find a ghost writer. Any writing he had to do was just going to end up making the world think he was uneducated. “You shouldn’t have assumed I’d come. It’s not like my plans are new. I’m always busy on October 15th.”
“It’s been fifteen years, Yoseob! I think he’d understand if you didn’t go just this once.”
Yoseob froze for a moment before turning cold eyes to the woman. “We may be married, but don’t you ever presume to speak of him again. You don’t have that right.”
Then he left, uncaring of her reaction.
~*~*~
“If you don’t like her, why’d you marry her?”
Yoseob made a face and gestured for the bottle of soju. “I don’t dislike her. And we make an attractive couple, everyone says so.”
“….” Seungho sighed and shook his head as he passed over the bottle. “I can’t believe you chose a wife based on whether or not her appearance matched yours or not.”
“Well-”
Seungho waved a hand at him. “No, never mind. I do believe it. It’s just like you.”
There was no apology on Yoseob’s face as he shrugged. “It’s as good a method as any. And look. We’ve managed not to kill each other or drag each other through the tabloids for ten whole years.”
“You’re too hung up on your career.”
“Yah… If I wasn’t so hung up on it, I wouldn’t be nearly as successful as I am, would I?” He had exactly the life he’d planned on having when he’d taken the first steps into the entertainment industry all those years before.
His little mental checklist was completely checked off.
Become a famous singer? Check.
Marry a super model or an actress? Check/check.
Make lots of money? Check.
“Does it make you happy?”
Yoseob sighed and rolled his eyes. “I have everything I ever wanted. What’s not to be happy about?”
He very carefully did not look at anything other than the bottle of soju in his hands.
“Yeah, Yoseob. You look like a barrel of laughs, all right.” Seungho’s voice was sardonic, but that wasn’t anything unusual when he was talking to Yoseob.
Honestly, they’d never been friends or even particularly close. Before this yearly ritual had started, they’d only barely tolerated each other for a mutual friend’s sake.
It struck Yoseob as funny just then that this person he’d once disliked more than any other was now the person he felt closest to, that Seungho was the one person in the entire world who truly understood certain things about him.
He laughed out loud, harder than he had in a while. He laughed until he felt the trickle of hysteria creeping underneath it. He laughed and laughed and laughed, barely managing to get control of himself before it started running more towards sobs.
“Hey! You kids aren’t suppose to-” The intruder broke off as Seungho stood up and the light reflected off of his face properly. The man bowed immediately, his light bobbing with his movement, casting eerie shadows around them. “Oh… Oh, I’m so sorry Yang-sshi. I didn’t realize it was you. Please forgive me.”
Seungho waved off the apology. “There’s nothing to forgive, Ahjusshi. A man has to do his job.”
Yoseob stayed quiet until the groundskeeper had moved away again. “If he ever goes to the tabloids, no explanation we can give is going to save our careers.”
“Does it bother you enough to stop?”
It wasn’t a new question. Every year the groundskeeper forgot that they were there and every year he interrupted them. Personally, Yoseob thought the place needed to find someone with a few more of his marbles still attached.
Every year, he worried that he and Seungho were going to find their activities speculated about on the front page of some tabloid or another.
Every year, Seungho posed the same question.
Yoseob thought about his wife, accepting yet another prestigious award without her husband. He thought about the speculation that had been rife from the moment they’d married, the ceremony the first seeming interest he’d shown in anything but his career in all the time that the press had known his name.
He finally looked around them, the dark, depressive air seeming to push at him from all sides, demanding attention.
In fifteen years, worry over his career hadn’t been enough to keep him away from this place. Only this one thing…
“No.”
Seungho glanced at him, startled by the new answer to the old question. He didn’t comment on it directly, though. Just nodded and sat back down in the lawn chair he’d dragged out earlier. Yoseob hadn’t bothered with a chair this year, knowing he’d probably get too drunk to stay in it anyways.
He tossed back the rest of the bottle, relishing the way the burn of the alcohol seemed to burn away the edges of his memory as nothing else ever managed to do.
Everyone should be glad he was so concerned with appearances. Otherwise he’d have become an alcoholic years ago. Of course… if he hadn’t been so concerned with his career and the way his actions effected it… maybe there’d have never been a need to chase away old ghosts.
“Do you ever wish you could change things?” Seungho asked out of the blue.
“Every day.”
The answer slipped out before he even considered it, but Yoseob knew it was nothing less than the truth. In the dark hours of the morning when he lay in bed with nothing to distract him from his thoughts, he had to face the knowledge that he’d made the wrong choice all those years ago.
He had the life he’d always planned, but it was a bitter success because he’d already lost everything he’d always needed. He’d been too blinded by his ambition and it was only later, when it was too late, that he’d realized just how all-encompassing that loss really was.
“Yah, gimme another bottle,” he demanded, flopping an arm towards his companion. If he was thinking about it this hard, he obviously wasn’t drunk enough yet.
Seungho complied, and watched in silence as Yoseob managed to plow his way through half the bottle in one long pull.
The world went a little sideways then and Yoseob flopped backwards onto his back, staring up at the sky and wondering at how close the stars seemed to be. “D’ya think he minds us crashing on top of him like this?”
The older man snorted in amusement. “You’re the one laying on his grave, not me.”
Yoseob nodded and curled over on his side, fingers sinking into the grass and dirt, wishing he could feel the person there instead. “Miss him….”
Whispered words brushed his ear, the breath behind them making his shiver a little. “If you could go back and fix it… would you? Even if it meant you don’t get the life you planned for?”
“Yes,” he whispered back, his eyes clenched shut as he remembered a precious smile that had been missing from his life for fifteen years. He’d give up anything to have that smile back.
A hand brushed across his hair and it seemed like maybe a kiss pressed against his temple, but surely Seungho wouldn’t have done that. They weren’t that drunk… were they? “Okay, then. One second chance, little Seobie… Don’t screw it up this time.”
Yoseob swallowed hard at the nickname. No one called him Seobie anymore. No one had since….
Darkness took him before he could finish the thought.
~*~*~
Yoseob whimpered slightly as consciousness returned abruptly.
His head felt like it was spinning wildly and he was dangerously close to losing whatever dinner he’d managed to force down the night before. He wasn’t much of a drinker, but just one night a year he did his level best to kill himself with alcohol poisoning.
It never worked, of course. He passed out before he could do any real damage.
“Yah! He’s awake!”
The shout made Yoseob cringe and curl in on himself.
“Oh, sorry…” Gentle hands stroked his hair and Yoseob slowly began to relax into the touch. “Come on, Seobie… Open your eyes…”
He made a disgruntled noise since he couldn’t shake his head or force words through his parched throat.
Why on earth was Doojoon bothering him after-
His eyes flew open and he sat straight up, nearly busting Doojoon’s nose as the other barely reacted quickly enough. “Doojoon….”
Then he had to clench his eyes shut again and hold himself very, very still until the world stopped threatening to spin away from him. Once it was settled again, he slowly cracked first one eye open, then the other, afraid that the illusion had vanished.
Doojoon smiled and brushed his hair back. “Yah… who else were you expecting?” He hesitated and glanced towards the door before leaning in and pressing a soft kiss against Yoseob’s cheek. “You really scared the hell out of us, you know, passing out like that. I know how important training is, but you shouldn’t neglect yourself to-”
His words were cut off as Yoseob launched himself forward, wrapping both arms around Doojoon’s neck and holding on for dear life. “Doojoon, doojoon!”
“Umm…” Doojoon’s arms came up and around him without hesitation despite the obvious confusion on his face. “Are you okay, Seobie? Did you hit your head when you fell?”
“I’m better than okay, you… you’re-” Yoseob didn’t even try to hold back the tears that soaked his cheeks. The body against his was solid and warm and alive. He’d never believed in miracles but this could be nothing else. He pulled back and held Doojoon’s face between his hands.
Hands that looked remarkably unlined with age and with none of the tell tale bumps and knobs from all the times he’d broken his fingers over the years.
He caught sight of his reflection across the room and his breath caught. “Doojoon….”
Concern and confusion marred the beautiful face as Doojoon hesitated. “Yeah, Seobie?”
“What… what year is it… What’s the date?”
“October 16, 2008. You only passed out for a few hours, Seobie…” Doojoon smiled, but the worry was still plain in his eyes. “It did seem like forever, though.”
“If you could go back and fix it… would you? Even if it meant you don’t get the life you planned for?”
It couldn’t be. It wasn’t even possible. He’d finally lost his mind. Or the alcohol had poisoned him after all.
Maybe he was dead and this was heaven.
He didn’t feel dead, though.
If anything, he felt more alive than he had in years.
Fifteen years to be exact.
“Okay, then. One second chance, little Seobie… Don’t screw it up this time.”
He swallowed hard and leaned into Doojoon, relishing in the strong support he’d been standing without for far too long, first by choice and then by circumstance.
He’d made the wrong choice before, choosing his career over his love, and he’d paid for that mistake every day of his life.
People didn’t really get second chances. It wasn’t how the world worked.
And yet…
His eyes slipped shut for a moment as he wrapped his arms around Doojoon and held on tight. Crazy or not, impossible or not….
He was never going to let go again.
~*~*~
fin