phosphenes, ix
JooNew, angst, pg-15, AU.
as per prompted by amazing joonew
prompt: Brothers on a Hotel Bed
2822 w
The very air tasted different. Crisp, slightly smoky, and green. Extremely green. Trees lined the boulevard, bicycles and cars and pretty people. Flower stalls and the English alphabet everywhere. Well, not technically English - there were the Italian accents now and then.
Windows and windows and more windows, the small squares with painters lined up, one after the other. "Portait?" Changsun whispered in his ear, and Jinki shrugged. "Dunno."
"Oh, come on," Changsun tugged at his arm and paid out a few bills to a young, curly haired redhead. "Painting," he pronounced carefully, in English, and pointed to them both. The artist nodded, and picked up her brush.
"Are we supposed to stay like this for a while," Jinki spoke loudly, trying to keep his mouth as still as possible. It was exhaustive and he didn't bother adding a questioning accent.
"Think so," Changsun's smile was also frozen in place.
"How long."
There was an unsure silence. Jinki tried not to roll his eyes.
"Dunno," was the eventual answer, and they both stifled sighs.
The painting turned out pretty. "Very pretty," Changsun tucked it under his arm. "We look kind of Italian ourselves."
But we're not. Jinki smiled thinly at him and nodded.
The windows started their journey across his vision again as he dragged his feet, following Changsun. People bustled behind them, over tables, around racks, in front of shelves. A few windows belonged to shoe shops. Changsun stopped at every one.
"Do you have," Jinki groaned when they entered the eighth, "A shoe fetish."
Changsun gave him a prim look.
"Or something?" Jinki tried again.
"I want new shoes," Changsun replied, shortly, and Jinki shook his head. No need to be so picky about it.
They didn't end up buying shoes that day, and eventually the next window in line looked into a coffee shop, so they sat in little white chairs for the next half hour, sipping lattes and people-watching.
"This is nice," Changsun yawned, stretching his legs under the table and leaning back in his chair. Jinki narrowed his eyes at a customer who walked by their table and onto the street.
"What is it?"
Jinki shook his head and kept staring. The white jacket was familiar, but nothing else about him was. Except maybe the hair... Jinki pushed his chair out and ran after the man. "Stop!" Nobody stopped. People rarely did.
"Stop!" Jinki yelled again, and the man turned around. For a split second, he was scared to look at the stranger in the face, but he squared his shoulders. His resemblance to Jonghyun was striking - big eyes, thick eyebrows. But his jaw was softer, chin more pointed.
"Sorry," Jinki muttered, turning around and bumping into Changsun.
"What was that about?" Changsun was angry. Irritated.
"Nothing," Jinki muttered, standing still against the other's shoulder.
"Okay."
Jinki allowed himself to be taken by the hand and pulled back to the hotel. They checked in and bumped into the bellboy in the elevator.
"Sorry," he squeaked.
Jinki stared after him, until the doors closed. Then he sighed and leaned back against the wall. "Something up?"
"Saw Jonghyun, almost. Kind of."
He didn't miss the way Changsun straightened at once, shoulders squaring. "It's okay, he's not a bad person, Changsun. I've told you before."
"And I've told you before," Changsun spoke through gritted teeth as they reached the eleventh floor. "I don't trust him."
Yeah. Jinki waited for Changsun to take out the keys and unlock their room, wincing at the design on the doors. I know. Peacock blue engravings decorated the cream panels, and the door knob was a dirty bronze. The clashes made him nauseous.
He remembered other times he'd have to struggle with colors. Times when Jonghyun was always there, squeezing his shoulder and telling him it was okay.
Changsun looked at him over his shoulder and led him through the doorway. Jinki shuddered, drawn to the patterns on the door.
“Come on.”
Jinki nodded and went straight to his room. He sat himself down on the carpet, remembering the times he'd gone around the city, at home, with Jonghyun. The candy shop, the visit to the park, the time they found an abandoned bus stop with a broken bench and made up ridiculous ballads. And he remembered the art museum, the way the curator had been telling them about the life of the painter who'd done one of the darker pieces in the collection.
Jonghyun had whispered in Jinki's ear, that it hadn't seemed that hard, so how come the painter had come up with such drama in the scene he'd portrayed? (Jinki remembered it was a single hand, standing on its finger, drenched in blood against a dark background. There more details, but they weren't as important.) So Jinki had spoken up, and the curator had shrugged. “Someone's shot of poison could be another's tub of acid. What affects us to an extent may not affect someone else at all, or more so, or less.”
Jinki had experienced some kind of epiphany then, but the curator didn't know, he'd gone on. “And we can never know what anyone personally experiences unless they decide to tell us, you know? We can never know a person, truly.”
The epiphany had exploded from a quiet spark to a tsunami, pressing in on his stomach from all sides. However much time he'd spent with Jonghyun, he didn't know him as well as he thought. “Tommy rot,” Jonghyun had whispered under his breath, and although Jinki still gave a chuckle as he recalled everything, it did nothing to ease his fears.
He rubbed his eyes and lay down, staring up at the ceiling. And then there was Changsun's attitude towards Jonghyun. Shoving all the bad consequences of, honestly, Jinki's stupidity, onto Jonghyun.
Blame, he thought, gathering his fingers in the carpet's fronds (turquoise, his least favorite shade of blue), was a terrible concept. Blaming someone meant loading all fault of a situation - or an aspect of a situation - onto someone. Someone or someones, it didn't matter, because blame was terrible. It ignored everything good a person did, erased all trust and replaced it with paranoia, insecurity, suspicion. And what good came of it? No food, no money, no love - nothing. Except maybe anger, and the world - what was the world made of, anyway? Individuals! Individuals, then - weren't exactly in want of more of it.
“I ever meet the brute, I'll squeeze the life out of him.”
There was already enough of violence without planning it.
(Or having nightmares of it - but he batted his hand at that, impatiently.)
As far as he knew, everyone had a motive for doing that they did. Nobody else might know of it, or understand it, but it was there, believed in by the person acting on it, and deserving of belief by everyone the actions affected. Jonghyun had to have a reason.
“What's with all this... sad business?”
Jonghyun cared.
Everyone had their own side to the story. Nobody knew it properly unless it was shared.
“Benefit of the doubt,” Jinki whispered, drowsily, and turned onto his stomach, falling asleep.
He was shaken awake no more than five minutes later, and dragged into the room with the TV and tiny sofa. When he unshut his mucus-glued eyes, he saw his legs sprawled out in front of him, and a grinning Changsun. That's when he realized there was a soft drip of water on his face.
“Changsun,” Jinki rasped. “What. Are you doing.”
Changsun giggled and dropped a wet towel in Jinki's lap.
Jinki fell into a dull stupor where he knew what was going on and could hear everything around him, but couldn't quite tell whether it was night or day, and whether the sounds of the shower came from very close or three miles away. Then Changsun dropped something in the shower, and Jinki frowned and said something like 'argbarg' and hoisted himself onto his feet.
“Why are you showering?” he yelled.
“We're going to go explore the city!”
“This morning wasn't enough for you?” His wails didn't have much effect on the closed bathroom door.
“No! We still haven't gotten any shoes!” And, apparently, not on Changsun, either.
“I don't want to go!”
“Then what was the point of coming?”
Jinki sighed, aimed a kick at Changsun's bed, then thought better of it and pulled on a sweater.
-
“What the hell are we doing, Changsun,” Jinki hissed.
“Being tourists.”
“We don't have to go around and try on shoes for three hours straight in the morning and then three hours straight in the afternoon for us to be tourists, Changsun.”
“Mhm?”
Jinki widened his eyes. “You are amused by this.”
“You know, Jinki,” Changsun turned around and nodded, seriously. “I think you're right.”
Jinki stamped his foot in the middle of the pavement. Some people turned around to look, so he dragged Changsun by the collar onto a nearby bench, where he forced him to sit down. Then he started pacing. “Changsun, we are foreigners in this place, check?”
“Bazinga.”
“We live in a hotel, check?”
“Correct.”
“We are here on a tourist visa, yes or no?”
“No.”
“Very funny. Does that or does that not make us, by definition - by our very breathing in this country - tourists?”
“Yes.”
“Then why are we having a marathon throughout the streets of Italy?”
“I need to lose weight.”
“Changsun!”
It didn't really make a difference because Changsun wanted new shoes and Jinki wanted him to have new shoes, too, so they went on walking and breaking their feet, anyway.
It was six in the evening when he looked up from his shoes to the shop window they were standing in front of, Changsun debating whether or not to go in, and Jinki saw a mirror. He saw mirrors, actually, lots and lots of them. Big, small, round, rectangular, with plain frames and ones with elaborate work. In all the times he'd been shocked, surprised, disappointed, angry - his heart had never actually stopped. But it did now.
He didn't see Changsun in the reflection of any of those mirrors, and the reflections of himself that he saw were not him. He saw his sneakers, his jeans, his jacket. Saw the arms of the jacket stuffed into his pockets. He saw stark white staring at him from under the hood of his jacket. Stark white, and holes. It was blinding, almost, seeing it everywhere, reflected on every surface, polished and spotless. He looked through from one mirror to the next, every single one. Every single one showed him a grinning row of teeth, empty eyes, a flat nose.
He screamed.
“Jinki!” Changsun yelled after him, and Jinki half-turned his head as he ran, caught his reflection for half a second in another window, saw his normal self, saw other people and the blue sky and buildings behind him. It scared him even further, everything, everything, everyone, and he shook his head and ran on, legs screaming from exhaustion already, blind to his surroundings.
“Jinki - come on, calm down - Jinki!” Changsun tried to latch onto his arm, but Jinki threw him off.
He kept running, running away, from him, himself, from the reflection, that skull.
He didn't know where he was going - he must have gone through at least three red pedestrian signals. Red, green, grey, yellow, red. The road and pavement blurred together ahead of him, running down and around and around him, engulfing, swallowing. The manholes jumped out at him, the little gutters suddenly massive and gaping. Cars honked, drivers leaned out of windows and yelled at him, and it all melded, all the sound, around him, from high school and college and dorm life, from the bed springs from That Day to the teachers giving them detention, to Jonghyun's swearing when he stubbed his toe, to Changsun's fights with his friends over the phone, to the sound of his own hushed crying in the bathroom stalls for as long as he could remember. It all melded into a deafening noise, the most seething silence, or something between the two, or something more than the two could ever be, and it pounded at every window in his mind until they broke and he gave in.
He stopped, and bowed over, hands on his knees, spent. He heard someone running after him, felt the vibrations up his knees through the pavement when the person came close, and didn't move. He closed his eyes and tried to breathe, and then tried not to breathe, and then got jerked to his shoulders and turned around.
Blue blue blue, sky blue and lake water blue, and kind blue and warm blue, Changsun blue, Changsun's blue shirt and the smell of freshly-washed laundry, and maybe sweat that made him wrinkle his nose, and Changsun's arms around his shoulders, locking him in place.
“It's okay,” Changsun whispered, chin on Jinki's head, and Jinki closed his eyes, tried hard to believe.
He had a strange sensation of having a solid shoulder underneath his head, felt a few tears eek out from somewhere, felt Changsun patting his back and telling him everything was alright.
Perhaps it was alright. Perhaps it was.
Perhaps?
Jinki shook his head, heavily, and sighed. “I'm sorry.”
“Nothing to be sorry about,” Changsun muttered, sounding slightly embarrassed, and Jinki shook his head again, so fast that he got dizzy.
“Really. My fault. And I'm sorry.” He swayed where he stood, and sighed into a drowsy haze where his head lolled forward and he sometimes saw his shoes and Changsun's shoes on the pavement, sometimes his shoes and Jonghyun's shoes on a tiled floor, sometimes bare feet on grass. It was sickening, and every step made him want to vomit. He stopped in the middle and turned to the side, to throw up. Nothing came. He kept trying, spent and annoyed at himself, and finally he managed some burning, strangling acidic spittle forced up his throat. All the while he felt Changsun's hand patting his head. It was heavy, and Changsun was obviously no expert at patting people's heads, but it was nice, and he almost fell asleep again, sitting on the road, by his vomit.
“Up you get,” Changsun huffed, pulling him up, and an age later they somehow wound up at the hotel room again.
“Tea?”
Jinki shook his head.
“Soup?”
Jinki shook his head again, and pointed to his room. Changsun nodded and stepped aside.
He walked forward, considered letting himself fall into the carpet again, but went to the bathroom instead. He turned around, breathing slowly, letting his fingers trail over the slight chips in the wood and the cold, metal knob. The knob was smaller back home. He twisted it, and the lock clicked shut at once. He looked over to his left, saw the mirror, facing the wall at his back.
It only showed the wall's reflection, and the little, lonely black shelf in the middle. It was empty, nothing in the cabinet, nothing on it. It looked stark and bare and bore into his mind, so he rolled his eyes and gave in, taking his hoodie off and flinging it onto the surface. It made him feel better.
He saw the hoodie in the mirror, empty, lifeless, with nothing white underneath it. No bones under there. Everything's okay, he mouthed, and raised a hand in front of the mirror. Pink skin and stubby fingers looked back at him. He let out a breath and shifted forward completely.
He saw his own face, soft, slightly chubby, bangs hanging over his eyes messily, pale in the light of the bulb on the ceiling. He leaned forward, nose almost touching the mirror, staring hard. He couldn't remember looking at himself so scrutinizingly at himself since Changsun had gone by himself to the graduation party, saying None of these clothes suit you, Jinki, what the hell were you thinking? This is why you're supposed to go shopping with me. These don't even fit the dress code, and left him at home to paint.
He lifted his hand to his face, considered punching himself, punching the mirror, and dropped it.
He unlocked the door and went back to the tiny dining room. Changsun was eating lunch, a second, filled plate set in the place opposite him. “Is the food good?” Jinki called out.
“It's okay. Wanna eat?”
Jinki pulled up a chair and stared at the sandwiches piled in front of him.
“Take a bit, man, it won't hurt.” Changsun gave him a little smile.
Might as well. Jinki reached for the middle sandwich and took a bite. Cheese and cucumbers and tuna. It was okay, like Changsun said.
“Gonna start work soon?”
Jinki shrugged, eyelids weighing more by the second. “I guess?”
Changsun chewed and swallowed. “Want a sandwich with mayonnaise?”
“Don't think so. Do you know what's on the first on my work list?”
Changsun took a start and frowned at the tablecloth. “I think... some investment reports?” He looked up and Jinki recognized the look that passed over his face for a second. What're we doing, exactly? Then it was gone, and Changsun raised an amused eyebrow. “Those investments are private, aren't they?”
“Yeah.”
“Lazy boss.”
“You don't even know,” Jinki shook his head, grateful for the lack of actual questions.
They turned in early, and Jinki sat up at the foot of his bed alone through the night, kicking at the carpet. He spotted a shooting star out the window, and recalled reading something by a Russian-sounding person. A Vladmir something. What was it again?
Mind you, sometimes the angels smoke, hiding it with their sleeves, and when the archangel comes, they throw the cigarettes away: that's when you get shooting stars.
"Don't be scared," he whispered. "There's nothing to be afraid of."
a/n: fighting for me because I intend to finish this within two weeks.
as per prompted by amazing joonew
prompt: Brothers on a Hotel Bed
2822 w
The very air tasted different. Crisp, slightly smoky, and green. Extremely green. Trees lined the boulevard, bicycles and cars and pretty people. Flower stalls and the English alphabet everywhere. Well, not technically English - there were the Italian accents now and then.
Windows and windows and more windows, the small squares with painters lined up, one after the other. "Portait?" Changsun whispered in his ear, and Jinki shrugged. "Dunno."
"Oh, come on," Changsun tugged at his arm and paid out a few bills to a young, curly haired redhead. "Painting," he pronounced carefully, in English, and pointed to them both. The artist nodded, and picked up her brush.
"Are we supposed to stay like this for a while," Jinki spoke loudly, trying to keep his mouth as still as possible. It was exhaustive and he didn't bother adding a questioning accent.
"Think so," Changsun's smile was also frozen in place.
"How long."
There was an unsure silence. Jinki tried not to roll his eyes.
"Dunno," was the eventual answer, and they both stifled sighs.
The painting turned out pretty. "Very pretty," Changsun tucked it under his arm. "We look kind of Italian ourselves."
But we're not. Jinki smiled thinly at him and nodded.
The windows started their journey across his vision again as he dragged his feet, following Changsun. People bustled behind them, over tables, around racks, in front of shelves. A few windows belonged to shoe shops. Changsun stopped at every one.
"Do you have," Jinki groaned when they entered the eighth, "A shoe fetish."
Changsun gave him a prim look.
"Or something?" Jinki tried again.
"I want new shoes," Changsun replied, shortly, and Jinki shook his head. No need to be so picky about it.
They didn't end up buying shoes that day, and eventually the next window in line looked into a coffee shop, so they sat in little white chairs for the next half hour, sipping lattes and people-watching.
"This is nice," Changsun yawned, stretching his legs under the table and leaning back in his chair. Jinki narrowed his eyes at a customer who walked by their table and onto the street.
"What is it?"
Jinki shook his head and kept staring. The white jacket was familiar, but nothing else about him was. Except maybe the hair... Jinki pushed his chair out and ran after the man. "Stop!" Nobody stopped. People rarely did.
"Stop!" Jinki yelled again, and the man turned around. For a split second, he was scared to look at the stranger in the face, but he squared his shoulders. His resemblance to Jonghyun was striking - big eyes, thick eyebrows. But his jaw was softer, chin more pointed.
"Sorry," Jinki muttered, turning around and bumping into Changsun.
"What was that about?" Changsun was angry. Irritated.
"Nothing," Jinki muttered, standing still against the other's shoulder.
"Okay."
Jinki allowed himself to be taken by the hand and pulled back to the hotel. They checked in and bumped into the bellboy in the elevator.
"Sorry," he squeaked.
Jinki stared after him, until the doors closed. Then he sighed and leaned back against the wall. "Something up?"
"Saw Jonghyun, almost. Kind of."
He didn't miss the way Changsun straightened at once, shoulders squaring. "It's okay, he's not a bad person, Changsun. I've told you before."
"And I've told you before," Changsun spoke through gritted teeth as they reached the eleventh floor. "I don't trust him."
Yeah. Jinki waited for Changsun to take out the keys and unlock their room, wincing at the design on the doors. I know. Peacock blue engravings decorated the cream panels, and the door knob was a dirty bronze. The clashes made him nauseous.
He remembered other times he'd have to struggle with colors. Times when Jonghyun was always there, squeezing his shoulder and telling him it was okay.
Changsun looked at him over his shoulder and led him through the doorway. Jinki shuddered, drawn to the patterns on the door.
“Come on.”
Jinki nodded and went straight to his room. He sat himself down on the carpet, remembering the times he'd gone around the city, at home, with Jonghyun. The candy shop, the visit to the park, the time they found an abandoned bus stop with a broken bench and made up ridiculous ballads. And he remembered the art museum, the way the curator had been telling them about the life of the painter who'd done one of the darker pieces in the collection.
Jonghyun had whispered in Jinki's ear, that it hadn't seemed that hard, so how come the painter had come up with such drama in the scene he'd portrayed? (Jinki remembered it was a single hand, standing on its finger, drenched in blood against a dark background. There more details, but they weren't as important.) So Jinki had spoken up, and the curator had shrugged. “Someone's shot of poison could be another's tub of acid. What affects us to an extent may not affect someone else at all, or more so, or less.”
Jinki had experienced some kind of epiphany then, but the curator didn't know, he'd gone on. “And we can never know what anyone personally experiences unless they decide to tell us, you know? We can never know a person, truly.”
The epiphany had exploded from a quiet spark to a tsunami, pressing in on his stomach from all sides. However much time he'd spent with Jonghyun, he didn't know him as well as he thought. “Tommy rot,” Jonghyun had whispered under his breath, and although Jinki still gave a chuckle as he recalled everything, it did nothing to ease his fears.
He rubbed his eyes and lay down, staring up at the ceiling. And then there was Changsun's attitude towards Jonghyun. Shoving all the bad consequences of, honestly, Jinki's stupidity, onto Jonghyun.
Blame, he thought, gathering his fingers in the carpet's fronds (turquoise, his least favorite shade of blue), was a terrible concept. Blaming someone meant loading all fault of a situation - or an aspect of a situation - onto someone. Someone or someones, it didn't matter, because blame was terrible. It ignored everything good a person did, erased all trust and replaced it with paranoia, insecurity, suspicion. And what good came of it? No food, no money, no love - nothing. Except maybe anger, and the world - what was the world made of, anyway? Individuals! Individuals, then - weren't exactly in want of more of it.
“I ever meet the brute, I'll squeeze the life out of him.”
There was already enough of violence without planning it.
(Or having nightmares of it - but he batted his hand at that, impatiently.)
As far as he knew, everyone had a motive for doing that they did. Nobody else might know of it, or understand it, but it was there, believed in by the person acting on it, and deserving of belief by everyone the actions affected. Jonghyun had to have a reason.
“What's with all this... sad business?”
Jonghyun cared.
Everyone had their own side to the story. Nobody knew it properly unless it was shared.
“Benefit of the doubt,” Jinki whispered, drowsily, and turned onto his stomach, falling asleep.
He was shaken awake no more than five minutes later, and dragged into the room with the TV and tiny sofa. When he unshut his mucus-glued eyes, he saw his legs sprawled out in front of him, and a grinning Changsun. That's when he realized there was a soft drip of water on his face.
“Changsun,” Jinki rasped. “What. Are you doing.”
Changsun giggled and dropped a wet towel in Jinki's lap.
Jinki fell into a dull stupor where he knew what was going on and could hear everything around him, but couldn't quite tell whether it was night or day, and whether the sounds of the shower came from very close or three miles away. Then Changsun dropped something in the shower, and Jinki frowned and said something like 'argbarg' and hoisted himself onto his feet.
“Why are you showering?” he yelled.
“We're going to go explore the city!”
“This morning wasn't enough for you?” His wails didn't have much effect on the closed bathroom door.
“No! We still haven't gotten any shoes!” And, apparently, not on Changsun, either.
“I don't want to go!”
“Then what was the point of coming?”
Jinki sighed, aimed a kick at Changsun's bed, then thought better of it and pulled on a sweater.
-
“What the hell are we doing, Changsun,” Jinki hissed.
“Being tourists.”
“We don't have to go around and try on shoes for three hours straight in the morning and then three hours straight in the afternoon for us to be tourists, Changsun.”
“Mhm?”
Jinki widened his eyes. “You are amused by this.”
“You know, Jinki,” Changsun turned around and nodded, seriously. “I think you're right.”
Jinki stamped his foot in the middle of the pavement. Some people turned around to look, so he dragged Changsun by the collar onto a nearby bench, where he forced him to sit down. Then he started pacing. “Changsun, we are foreigners in this place, check?”
“Bazinga.”
“We live in a hotel, check?”
“Correct.”
“We are here on a tourist visa, yes or no?”
“No.”
“Very funny. Does that or does that not make us, by definition - by our very breathing in this country - tourists?”
“Yes.”
“Then why are we having a marathon throughout the streets of Italy?”
“I need to lose weight.”
“Changsun!”
It didn't really make a difference because Changsun wanted new shoes and Jinki wanted him to have new shoes, too, so they went on walking and breaking their feet, anyway.
It was six in the evening when he looked up from his shoes to the shop window they were standing in front of, Changsun debating whether or not to go in, and Jinki saw a mirror. He saw mirrors, actually, lots and lots of them. Big, small, round, rectangular, with plain frames and ones with elaborate work. In all the times he'd been shocked, surprised, disappointed, angry - his heart had never actually stopped. But it did now.
He didn't see Changsun in the reflection of any of those mirrors, and the reflections of himself that he saw were not him. He saw his sneakers, his jeans, his jacket. Saw the arms of the jacket stuffed into his pockets. He saw stark white staring at him from under the hood of his jacket. Stark white, and holes. It was blinding, almost, seeing it everywhere, reflected on every surface, polished and spotless. He looked through from one mirror to the next, every single one. Every single one showed him a grinning row of teeth, empty eyes, a flat nose.
He screamed.
“Jinki!” Changsun yelled after him, and Jinki half-turned his head as he ran, caught his reflection for half a second in another window, saw his normal self, saw other people and the blue sky and buildings behind him. It scared him even further, everything, everything, everyone, and he shook his head and ran on, legs screaming from exhaustion already, blind to his surroundings.
“Jinki - come on, calm down - Jinki!” Changsun tried to latch onto his arm, but Jinki threw him off.
He kept running, running away, from him, himself, from the reflection, that skull.
He didn't know where he was going - he must have gone through at least three red pedestrian signals. Red, green, grey, yellow, red. The road and pavement blurred together ahead of him, running down and around and around him, engulfing, swallowing. The manholes jumped out at him, the little gutters suddenly massive and gaping. Cars honked, drivers leaned out of windows and yelled at him, and it all melded, all the sound, around him, from high school and college and dorm life, from the bed springs from That Day to the teachers giving them detention, to Jonghyun's swearing when he stubbed his toe, to Changsun's fights with his friends over the phone, to the sound of his own hushed crying in the bathroom stalls for as long as he could remember. It all melded into a deafening noise, the most seething silence, or something between the two, or something more than the two could ever be, and it pounded at every window in his mind until they broke and he gave in.
He stopped, and bowed over, hands on his knees, spent. He heard someone running after him, felt the vibrations up his knees through the pavement when the person came close, and didn't move. He closed his eyes and tried to breathe, and then tried not to breathe, and then got jerked to his shoulders and turned around.
Blue blue blue, sky blue and lake water blue, and kind blue and warm blue, Changsun blue, Changsun's blue shirt and the smell of freshly-washed laundry, and maybe sweat that made him wrinkle his nose, and Changsun's arms around his shoulders, locking him in place.
“It's okay,” Changsun whispered, chin on Jinki's head, and Jinki closed his eyes, tried hard to believe.
He had a strange sensation of having a solid shoulder underneath his head, felt a few tears eek out from somewhere, felt Changsun patting his back and telling him everything was alright.
Perhaps it was alright. Perhaps it was.
Perhaps?
Jinki shook his head, heavily, and sighed. “I'm sorry.”
“Nothing to be sorry about,” Changsun muttered, sounding slightly embarrassed, and Jinki shook his head again, so fast that he got dizzy.
“Really. My fault. And I'm sorry.” He swayed where he stood, and sighed into a drowsy haze where his head lolled forward and he sometimes saw his shoes and Changsun's shoes on the pavement, sometimes his shoes and Jonghyun's shoes on a tiled floor, sometimes bare feet on grass. It was sickening, and every step made him want to vomit. He stopped in the middle and turned to the side, to throw up. Nothing came. He kept trying, spent and annoyed at himself, and finally he managed some burning, strangling acidic spittle forced up his throat. All the while he felt Changsun's hand patting his head. It was heavy, and Changsun was obviously no expert at patting people's heads, but it was nice, and he almost fell asleep again, sitting on the road, by his vomit.
“Up you get,” Changsun huffed, pulling him up, and an age later they somehow wound up at the hotel room again.
“Tea?”
Jinki shook his head.
“Soup?”
Jinki shook his head again, and pointed to his room. Changsun nodded and stepped aside.
He walked forward, considered letting himself fall into the carpet again, but went to the bathroom instead. He turned around, breathing slowly, letting his fingers trail over the slight chips in the wood and the cold, metal knob. The knob was smaller back home. He twisted it, and the lock clicked shut at once. He looked over to his left, saw the mirror, facing the wall at his back.
It only showed the wall's reflection, and the little, lonely black shelf in the middle. It was empty, nothing in the cabinet, nothing on it. It looked stark and bare and bore into his mind, so he rolled his eyes and gave in, taking his hoodie off and flinging it onto the surface. It made him feel better.
He saw the hoodie in the mirror, empty, lifeless, with nothing white underneath it. No bones under there. Everything's okay, he mouthed, and raised a hand in front of the mirror. Pink skin and stubby fingers looked back at him. He let out a breath and shifted forward completely.
He saw his own face, soft, slightly chubby, bangs hanging over his eyes messily, pale in the light of the bulb on the ceiling. He leaned forward, nose almost touching the mirror, staring hard. He couldn't remember looking at himself so scrutinizingly at himself since Changsun had gone by himself to the graduation party, saying None of these clothes suit you, Jinki, what the hell were you thinking? This is why you're supposed to go shopping with me. These don't even fit the dress code, and left him at home to paint.
He lifted his hand to his face, considered punching himself, punching the mirror, and dropped it.
He unlocked the door and went back to the tiny dining room. Changsun was eating lunch, a second, filled plate set in the place opposite him. “Is the food good?” Jinki called out.
“It's okay. Wanna eat?”
Jinki pulled up a chair and stared at the sandwiches piled in front of him.
“Take a bit, man, it won't hurt.” Changsun gave him a little smile.
Might as well. Jinki reached for the middle sandwich and took a bite. Cheese and cucumbers and tuna. It was okay, like Changsun said.
“Gonna start work soon?”
Jinki shrugged, eyelids weighing more by the second. “I guess?”
Changsun chewed and swallowed. “Want a sandwich with mayonnaise?”
“Don't think so. Do you know what's on the first on my work list?”
Changsun took a start and frowned at the tablecloth. “I think... some investment reports?” He looked up and Jinki recognized the look that passed over his face for a second. What're we doing, exactly? Then it was gone, and Changsun raised an amused eyebrow. “Those investments are private, aren't they?”
“Yeah.”
“Lazy boss.”
“You don't even know,” Jinki shook his head, grateful for the lack of actual questions.
They turned in early, and Jinki sat up at the foot of his bed alone through the night, kicking at the carpet. He spotted a shooting star out the window, and recalled reading something by a Russian-sounding person. A Vladmir something. What was it again?
Mind you, sometimes the angels smoke, hiding it with their sleeves, and when the archangel comes, they throw the cigarettes away: that's when you get shooting stars.
"Don't be scared," he whispered. "There's nothing to be afraid of."
a/n: fighting for me because I intend to finish this within two weeks.