phosphenes, x
JooNew, angst, pg-15, AU.
as per prompted by amazing joonew
prompt: Brothers on a Hotel Bed
4731 w
“What are you doing?”
Changsun was surrounded by tissues and wrapped up in a blanket, strongly resembling a burrito. He sneezed, as half an answer. “I'b sick,” he stated, as the other half of the answer, and Jinki sighed.
“Really? When we're finally on vacation? In Italy?”
“Dode start.”
Jinki nodded in a defeated sort of way and shuffled off. He came back a few minutes later with hot tea. “Drink up.”
“Why?”
“Get better.”
“Thags.”
“Welcome.”
He walked out again and searched his room for his briefcase. “Changsun!” he yelled. “Where did I put my briefcase?”
“TAKE RESPODSIBILITY FOR YOUR THIGS!”
“No,” Jinki muttered, rebelliously, and kicked his foot. It struck something soft and his briefcase flew out the other end of the bed.
“Go Jinki,” Changsun waved his arms uselessly in an attempt at cheerleading when Jinki re-entered his room, and Jinki grinned, raising the briefcase victoriously. “Wait, whad are you doig, though,” Changsun blinked.
“Work,” Jinki shrugged, pulling his laptop out and starting it up.
“How log you goig do work, though.”
Jinki opened up a spreadsheet and connected to the hotel's wifi. “A couple hours, I guess. Just need to get his reports done, and then I'll check email and do whatever else.”
Changsun sneezed and groaned. “Okay. But you're goig out today.”
Jinki shook his head at once. “You're sick. I have to take care of you, you know.”
Changsun sneezed again, extremely loudly. “Jut a cold,” he shook his head as well. “I ca' haddle it.”
“Sure, Changsun,” Jinki raised his eyebrows at the screen as he copied column names from previous reports and pastes them over again, thinking for the millionth time that he really should just make templates and be over with the first few steps, but by the time he finished that thought, he'd already filled all the columns and had started logging into Dotten's accounts.
Meanwhile, Changsun blew out his nose and cried involuntarily.
Jinki snuck a glance at him. “You're crying, noona. You really can't handle this, no matter how much you think you can.”
“Shud ub,” Changsun blinked away fast-streaming tears and rolled over, trying to sleep.
Jinki typed quickly, filling up rows and tables with digits and dots and dollar signs. “Hey, Changsun,” he yawned, as the big hand ticked to twelve and the little hand finally dragged to one. Changsun turned to look at him with vindictive eyes.
“What.”
“I'm done.”
“With what?”
“Work.”
The vindictiveness vanished. “Oh, that's great! Then you can go around and tour!”
“Changsun.” Jinki pulled the lid down and stuffed it back in the briefcase.
“Jinki, I'm serious. You are going to go out, and be a man, and... do stuff, and,” Changsun looked around the room, searching for words, “And make me proud, or something.”
Jinki sighed.
“I'm winning this argument, then?” Changsun grinned, clapping his hands. “I've won this argument! Good. Get ready.”
Changsun didn't really win - at least, Jinki liked to think that he just let Changsun think so. In fact, (in Jinki's continued opinion) Changsun never actually won, because Jinki provided him with seven different reasons that he needed a caretaker for the day, even as he slipped out his pyjamas and looked around for a pair of jeans that did not have holes at the knees and were actually worth wearing (“I thought I could trust you with bag packing,” Jinki interrupted himself and held up a pair of ripped jeans that belonged to Changsun's guitarist band days. Changsun made a miserable face in response).
He stopped and opened his mouth and closed it as he tried to remember his eighth reason.
“How many reasons have I listed so far?”
“Dunno,” Changsun wiggled his toes, avoiding the look Jinki was sending him.
“Idiot. Seven.”
“Oh.”
“Yes. Why have you been keeping quiet?” Jinki went on his knees, searching for sneakers.
“To give you a false sense of security.”
Jinki didn't see any sneakers, so he threw the next best thing up at Changsun - a smelly sock with a blackened sole.
“That stinks,” Changsun complained, plaintively. “I can smell it a bit.”
Jinki crawled out of the room, distracted. “That was the point!” he called out, a minute later, proudly wearing his shoes.
“Goodbye, Jinki,” Changsun waved, and burrowed under his blankets.
Jinki sighed. “See you.”
When he actually found himself one block away from the hotel, he shoved his hands in his pockets and tried not to have some form of a panic attack. It was coming, though. He could literally feel it coming, like a train, whistle shrill and piercing.
What the hell was he doing there? Why hadn't he convinced Changsun to let him stay? Why, in fact, did he need to follow Changsun's orders? What was he going to do now?
A little boy ran past, laughing wildly, with a bright green balloon. It flew after him wildly, string snagging, balloon dancing madly in the wind. What should I do next? What should I do next? Changsun had told him to tour. Explore. Enjoy. It was somehow related to being a man. Maybe he should walk around a bit. Walk around, one foot in front of the other. He stared at his shoelaces, the loops and the loose threads fraying in the middle. About to take another step forward, he stopped. He should have taken a map, directions, something. That running-somehow-right-back-to-safety stunt had been pure chance - intuition and adrenaline - and he sure as hell didn't want to go through all that again (or anything at all, anymore). He searched uneasily among the cracks in the pavement for another line of thought.
What would Changsun do? Pat him on the back, silently, maybe pull him along somewhere. What would Jonghyun do? No use thinking about Jonghyun. “Come on, hyung,” a voice invaded his head, anyway. “A couple of paces won't hurt! Come on, shuffle. Shuffle shuffle!”
Jinki smiled in spite of himself. That really was something Jonghyun would say. So he shuffled, and pretended that his back had been patted and his hand was being pulled.
A reason that most people prefer not to lie, or hide away secrets, is that once they start, it is either difficult to stop - or, once stopped, it can be easy, it can be tempting, it can be an itching idea attacking their brain, desperate to start again.
It hadn't been long enough for Jinki to successfully kill the itching in his mind. He began looking around, at an in the shops that eventually surrounded him, for something to acquire then hide; something to do and then deny doing.
Lying becomes a verbal, mental, conceptual drug, a spiderweb with threads that are constantly in victim's blind spot, unable to be seen. Lying becomes like sticky honey that is sometimes sweet, sometimes sour - but always sticky. The secrets burn at the back of the tongue, make the walls of their throats glue together and make it hard to breathe. The after effects and the finding out and the getting caught are all part of the hangover. Once it's done with, people can start again. Of course, with each new start, there are more obstacles - glass shards of broken trust in the honey - and hurts all the more when throats are still raw.
He spotted them in a corner store - Scampoli, its weathered neon lights proclaimed - amidst his wanderings that day, and they struck him as slightly pretty; their chalky shade of pink was one Changsun might like for another towel if they had another bathroom. That's all he registered of them at first, and he passed on, looking at the other objects underneath the glass counters. He looked at the watches, stamps, stray notes of foreign money (he found some from Hungary and Vietnam), broken alarm clocks (his eyes skipped over those quickly first, but he forced himself to look back at them). After a while, he figured he couldn't spend all day in a shop - the rest of the city was still standing, unexplored. He left, shoving his shoulder against the heavy door and stumbling out unceremoniously.
Jinki came back the next day, pushing the glass door open and wincing apologetically when the bells rang, waking up the old man in the store with a snort.
The newspaper fluttered to the floor, forgotten, as the man sprang to his feet and yawned, scruffy mustache jumping up and down as he called out to the closed door at the back of the shop, “Ah! Che ore sono?” [What time is it?]
“Nove!” [Nine!] a high voice answered, and a little boy popped his head out through the door, grinning with three missing teeth.
The old man looked at the clock, and nodded. Then he spotted Jinki who had already started looking around the shop again. “Buono giorno!” [Good morning!] he smiled to him.
Jinki turned around, blinking rapidly. “Grazi! Buono...” [Thank you! Good - ]
He flapped his arms helplessly when he realized he'd forgotten the proper greeting, and the man laughed in understanding. He nodded, patted his shoulder, and spoke rustily, “En...jwoy!”
Jinki gulped and nodded back, trying not to flinch away from his touch. He saw them once more, and realized they were nestled in a box without a lid, with a slip of paper folded amongst them.
“Por favore?” [Please?]
He pointed to them. A little boy ran out, clad in a green shirt and denim shorts. “You Engliz?” he asked, and grinned again.
Jinki shook his head, blinking again. “Just know it.” The kid made him want to grin back, but he couldn't.
“You wan' tham pinks?”
Jinki wiggled his shoulders, tried to smile back. His lips twitched up for a second, and the boy clapped. “Yes, tham pinks.” He felt like something was rushing through his brain, a quick little somebody running through all the files and drawers, banging doors through all the rooms in his mind. The little somebody was going so fast that wind, kicked up from their feet, was rushing through his ears, although the door to the shop was shut so there was no wind around him. It was exciting, and suddenly he felt that he really was smiling.
Meanwhile, the little boy had reached under the glass counter and taken the box out, placed it in front of him. Jinki looked at it curiously, then at the old man. “Touch?” he suggested, pointing a finger and poking at the air around it.
“Si, touch. Buono,” the other nodded.
He picked one up. It was a pretty pill - a capsule, to be precise - and as he held it against the straggling sunlight (the store's windows really needed cleaning), he saw that it was empty. To fill, maybe, he pondered, and placed it back in the box. The little boy looked solemn, now. He unfolded the paper, and tilted his head back in surprise.
Suicide pills, he read. To be taken in preparation for the actual act.
Instructions:
Clear up all arguments, loose ends, troubles
Clean your house
Take as many pills as desired
Then, at the bottom, in smaller script, (These pills are empty and will have no effect.)
On a closer look at the box, he guessed there were around twenty of the pills nestled there. Jinki glanced at the kid. He'd skipped off the stool and was standing a bit away, chattering to the old man. He pondered for a minute, perhaps two, weighting the one pill in his right hand against the box in his left. “Quant'e?” he blurted, finally, holding out the box.
“No need izzpik Italiano here,” the kid chirruped. “I izzpik Engliz, yes? No need!”
“Okay,” Jinki smiled, kindly. “How much?”
The two held a hurried conversation. “Eet will be...” the boy trailed off, and consulted the elder again. “Two and one and two lire.”
“Two hundred and eleven?”
“I theenk.”
Jinki fished about in his pocket, brought all his money out. It wasn't enough. He was about to put them back, disappointed, before he remembered how Changsun had wanted him to take his own money. Didn't that imply that Changsun also wanted him to spend his own money, in whatever way he'd wanted? Of course not, something whispered in his ear. He swallowed and tried to promise them that he'd come back the next day with the complete amount, but they wouldn't take it. They shook their heads with polite smiles. “We like you,” the boy said. “But other people...” he waved his hands in the direction of the exit door. “Too many cheats a'ready.”
Well, he could understand that, so he nodded politely, too. He pushed the box back against the wall of the shelf, feeling something actually sink inside his ribs. Then the boy ran up to him and halted suddenly, teetering forward, threatening to bump his head against Jinki's stomach. He regained his balance in a second, beaming. “I, Ronaldo. He, Paolo,” the boy pointed first to himself, then the elder man. “Paolo my grannypapa.”
“I'm Jinki.”
“Short! Your name,” Ronaldo commented, wonderingly.
Paolo then called out to his grandson, perhaps a “Come away, stop pestering our customer!” because the next moment Ronaldo was smiling apologetically as he retreated to the back room.
Jinki waved at him, and decided to continue his foray into the shop. Scampoli closed at four in the afternoon, though, so he didn't spend much time before making his way back to the hotel.
He fumbled with the key and stuffed it in, squeezing his eyes shut against the colors on the door that would be screaming at him if he dared to pry his eyelids apart.
The lock clicked open and he stumbled in, heart racing as wild, rushing ideas settled in. He would go back, he decided, firmly, shutting the door behind him. Back to his secret, tucked away safely behind the fragile glass door of the shelf. He didn't know the street name (he barely knew any names around there), but he remembered the way there easily enough.
“Jinki? Is that you?”
Jinki stood stock still. He'd forgotten Changsun, slightly. Forgotten the essence of Changsun; Changsun's way of being.
“Yeah,” he mumbled in reply.
Changsun called again. “Jinki?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Jinki repeated, poking his head through the doorway of Changsun's room. “It's me.” Then he wrinkled his nose. “Stinks like sickness and clogged sinuses in here.”
“Go away, Jinki,” Changsun rolled his eyes good-naturedly, and Jinki sped to his own room.
Changsun. Very important, unforgettable. Unthinkable to forget. Changsun was blue and he had brown hair and brown eyes and hated combs and ankle socks ad used to eat whole cakes by himself when he was eight and Jinki was six. Changsun, guitarist, human resources manager, caretaker, friend, brother - brother - roommate, shopper, shoe-lover, eater. Changsun, age twenty three, moody, scared, sad, like him. It was okay. It was all going to be okay. Changsun.
Secrets.
Blue, like the sky.
Pink and white, streaks in the sky.
Warm, hand over his hand, shoulder to shoulder. Breathing, reassuring.
Gleaming, cold, on a glass shelf. Lifeless.
“Achoo!”
Forget the secrets.
Changsun, blue, warm. Nothing else.
Jinki scrambled to make tea.
__
“Didn't you used to paint, Jinki?” Changsun managed to convey between numerous blowings of his nose.
Mermaids, a tulip, Changsun's hand holding a pen, Changsun's old bangs, Jonghyun's ear with its many piercings, the chamberpot display at school. “Used to,” Jinki emphasized, fluffing Changsun's pillows.
“Why not any more?”
Jinki flung back the curtains, slid the window shut. The city lay out below them, moon resting low on the pinnacle of a church. Good landscape, easy lighting. His fingers curled around an imaginary brush. He stared out, stared and stared. Then he turned back ad smiled. “Paint was expensive, Changsun. You said so yourself.”
He bit his tongue at the look on Changsun's face - guilty, resigned. Perhaps he shouldn't have said that.
Silence stretched between them as they looked at each other, tried not to.
“Goodnight, Jinki,” Changsun whispered, pulling his covers up to his nose.
Perhaps he should apologize. He stood there, awkwardly.
“I said goodnight.”
“Night, Changsun,” Jinki said, quietly, and walked out.
His own room had a balcony. He hung over the banisters, tired and sleepless, 'til the sky turned silver, and pink. He didn't move.
Changsun joined him at seven in the morning (or perhaps six - he left his watch on the bedside table), shivering, his nose pink and his face puffy.
“Morning. Sleep well?”
Jinki gave a noncommittal grunt. Changsun probably took that as a 'yes', because he patted his back and went away.
Changsun.
Secrets.
Changsun didn't seem too bad after breakfast, but he insisted on staying and Jinki going out. “No more sitting in for you,” he almost growled, literally shoving Jinki out.
“That's not very civil,” Jinki kicked at the door, stubborn.
“As far as I remember, you didn't sign up for civil. You signed up for me.”
“Don't get ideas in your head, prick!”
“Jinki.”
“Fine.”
He made his way back to the shop without any hesitation. It took him fifteen minutes to walk there, and he bought a miniature ice lolly from a passing vendor on the way. The bell rang again, and Paolo stood up at once respectfully, tipping the old straw hat he was wearing that day, scraggly beard mistakenly tucked into the neck of his shirt.
Jinki looked around, but Ronaldo was nowhere to be seen. He felt a little weight plummeting down to his stomach when he didn't see him. The shop didn't seem very alive without the tiny boy. “Ronaldo...?” he asked, quietly, and the old man grinned, pointing to the room, then feigning sleep.
Oh, so he was sleeping. Jinki nodded, feeling a bit better.
He wandered around, exploring it properly now that he had more time, and found all manners of things; clockwork toys, clean little paintbrushes, wooden carvings and sets of shiny knives. Ronaldo peeked his head out at one point, squealed at the sight of him and jumped around behind the counter. He stared at Jinki, lips pouting and cheeks full of words and perhaps questions he wanted to let loose, but Jinki caught the old man shaking his head sternly.
“Ronaldo,” he called out, finally. “Can you come here?”
The boy ran towards him, huffing as he pushed against the little swinging door at the counter. “I'm in grade two,” were the first words out his mouth.
Jinki bit back a smile. “But you know English well!”
“I smart,” he replied, proudly, a smug smile on his face.
The old man blurted in then, a stream of pretty, guttural sounds repressed in the very clear tone of don't you dare say anything embarrassing or offensive. Paolo got a 'do you think I'm stupid?' frown in reply for his efforts, before Ronaldo's attention returned once more to Jinki. “Which grade you in?”
Jinki tilted his head in thought, fingers tracing the design on the steel under his hand. “Hmm,” he mused. “Grade seventeen. No more school for me!”
“Seveh-teen,” the boy whispered, eyes wide and shining. “I not even seventeen years.”
Jinki patted his head. “You will be, don't worry.”
He was ignored. “Seveh-teen exciting,” Ronaldo gushed, and started trying to convey all his grand seventeen year old goals and dreams in broken English. But the first two words had already sent Jinki to another place, made him think of his own seventeenth year. Preparing for the SATs. Memorizing books. Never getting a haircut because there was never any time to get one. The milk party. Purple sweaters and rough denim jeans with holes at the knees, hurried kisses in bathroom stalls, hands tangling in hair, senseless grinding, little moans and hoots from outside the stall. Always the hoots, always the piss on the floor outside, on purpose.
“Mister!” A tug at his sleeve. Automatically, his tongue lifted and he tried to put a vague outline of an almost-thought into words. “Seventeen's okay,” he heard himself saying. “Just be careful.”
Ronaldo shook his head fervently. “If careful, not exciting.”
Jinki gave him a small smile, was reminded of Jonghyun. “You're right.”
The kid followed him constantly as he went around the shop and finally picked up the box again. “Enough money now.”
“Good,” Ronaldo beamed, cheerful (Jinki choked in amusement at his eagerness). “Ay! Lire!” he yelled to his grandfather , who immediately frowned from the counter and shook his head. “You are a fool!” he - probably - hissed, and Ronaldo hung his head, accepting Jinki's bills subduedly.
As Jinki turned to leave, the boy pressed something into his palm and closed his fingers over it. He shook his head when Jinki looked questioningly at him, and solemnly waved goodbye.
__
Later, with the box stuffed securely in his pocket as he threw the contents of Changsun's trash into the garbage bin outside, he took out the little English letter that Ronaldo had given him. A capital, cursive 'G'. Probably for the 'J' in 'Jinki'. He smiled at it, the dull wooden carving, cold in his hand.
Cold, like the pills, like the opposite of Changsun.
How are you not a monster.
Jinki took a deep breath and shoved it into the other pocket in his jeans. There was nothing wrong. There was nothing wrong with what he was doing. It was all just pretend, anyway.
Just pretend.
__
Jinki watched Changsun's lids flutter shut, closed his own eyes and head Changsun's breath slow down and even out. He opened them again. The moonlight from the window fell across the bed, a white streak across the floor, climbing up the side of Changsun's bed and across his hands. It was brilliant, really, and he breathed carefully, trying not to upset the calm balance of that second, trying to absorb and analyze every scent, every breath of the wind in the room.
Gradually, his own eyelids began to weigh heavily, so he went to his room, and aimlessly stood on top of his own bed. The moonlight there fell full on his face, and he lifted his arms. His fingers grazed against the ceiling, and he smiled a little to himself, staring at the glass door that lead to the balcony.
He tried thinking of something, but for once his brain was too tired. The only word that registered in his head was 'lonely', and it drove him to a vague, uncomfortable state of mind. He jumped off the bed and opened the doors, to look out the balcony.
The moon hung low in the sky, stars glimmering harshly, fixed in their positions. Jinki looked down, across the gardens of the hotel, and started.
A lone figure climbed over the fence and fell into the grass. It rolled over and stayed there for a while, face and knees turned up to the sky, lying down.
Jinki felt himself trembling. The person obviously didn't belong there - he should've come in from the front entrance. There was no back entrance, just the spiked fence surrounding the gardens. It could be a normal person, surely, perhaps a teenage trespasser doing it for kicks, or someone homeless, or a thief, or a murderer - no no, a normal person. Someone who would be alright if he went down and talked to them, perhaps said hello and sat next to them. Someone normal, someone okay.
Thoughtlessly, he pulled on a jacket and slipped quietly out the suite, locking the door behind him and hiding the key under the mat. The stairs were nearer than the elevator so he padded down them, the coldness of the marble seeping through his thick, fuzzy socks. He go down six flights of stairs, with 'what the hell are you doing?' echoing constantly in every footstep he made and every sound that floated by from the others' rooms as he hurried as fast as he could.
The man at the receptionist desk stood up in half-alarm as he jogged to the entrance, and sat back down uncertainly after he recognized him. Jinki paid no attention, fully regretting every pull of his muscles as he grew nearer and nearer to the stranger. Stranger. He suddenly recalled the man in the white suit from work, and jerked to a halt at once.
That man is at work. You are in Italy, he reasoned with himself, and winced as the grass somehow managed to pierce through his socks and prickle at his big toe. “Hello?” he called out, and the person stood up at once, their back to them. He was a meter away now. “I'm sorry for intruding,” Jinki persisted, awkwardly, sensing the quivering tension from the other man (he could make out that I was “I just - ”
The person turned, trembling, avoiding his eyes.
Jinki stopped. The grass bit at his knees, and stones pushed up at his palms, cutting into his skin. The whole ground had moved up to him and he found himself barely able to keep himself up on his knees. “You left,” he whispered.
Jonghyun shook his head, took a step backward, guilt heavy on his features.
“You fucking left,” Jinki accused, lungs shuddering. “You disappeared, and you didn't come back. I was in the hospital.” Jonghyun stared at him, eyes beseeching, mouth opening and closing, as if he was trying to say something, but Jinki wouldn't let him. He wasn't going to let him. He was going to hurt Jonghyun. He had to hurt Jonghyun. “What the hell do you think you're doing, standing there? You didn't apologize, you didn't do anything. I was in the hospital, half dead, for four weeks. A month.
“Did you come to see me? Did you give a shit? I got hit because I was following you, because you decided to take a different way home.” It was wrong, of course. He'd have gotten hit whatever he did. Jonghyun could have been right there and Jinki could have just not seen him. It wasn't really Jonghyun's fault, and it physically pierced Jonghyun to say all this. He could feel the worms in the grass crawling under his nails and boring holes in his mind. He could feel dirty, could feel soil between his teeth and on his tongue, could see tears streaming down Jonghyun's face, but the dirt didn't come out, he kept coughing and spittin and words kept coming out, words he didn't want to say but somehow forced themselves out.
“Changsun had to delay his holidays, had to have the shock of his life, because you took off at the last second. You almost killed me. You left me.” His throat was sore, it hurt so much. Why did it hurt so much? What was that high pitched noise in his ears? It couldn't be his own voice, it was much too high, it hurt too much. He'd never screamed so much. He couldn't be screaming, he was just talking. He was just vomiting words, bullets.
“Tell me, Jonghyun, did you have something more important than a dying friend in the hospital? I can understand if you didn't give a shit if I'd just fallen over and concussed because I'd tripped on my own feet, but this was different. Aren't you my friend, Jonghyun? Aren't you my friend?”
And the realization that maybe Jonghyun wasn't, maybe Jonghyun didn't care, maybe - he shook his head and got to his feet, the world rocking around at crazy angles beneath him. “No,” he croaked, throat raw. “Get lost. Get lost. Get away.”
Jonghyun ran forward, fell on his knees, reached out for his shoulder - wait, hadn't he gotten up? Maybe not, because the world didn't leave him alone, it was up against his hands and under his chin again. Why was his chin wet? There was orange near his face. It stank. Why didn't the world leave him alone? He batted Jonghyun's hand away, tears falling up to his temple and into his hair. The streetlights outside the fence shivered and bent over in double, laughing. It was the water in the sink all over again, now the moon might as well have been a star, now it was radiating incessantly into his face, the light burning his eyes.
“Jinki,” he heard a soft whisper, but Jinki shook his head again and turn onto his back, heaving onto his shirt.
“Go away,” Jinki's voice shook and died into a sob.
He heard footsteps moving away from him, over the grass, and he swallowed quickly-drying bile.