two for the road
two for the road
~ 2,060 w, pg-13, (yoona/changmin)
changmin wishes she would wake up and look at him with love and not hate - instead of a glare, a smile, and instead of an insult, a civil morning greeting.
■ changyoon again, I know /shot but I can't help myself!
■ this is inspired by an Audrey Hepburn movie called 'Two For The Road' so ofc, I dedicate this to my miook and also to bollywoodrecord for reading over this for me (credit her for the last sentence), you are the best bb and I'm so glad that we've become so much closer lately ♥ /thank you twitter
■ okay, the next one coming, I promise will be another pairing, hopefully haesica (but yes, changyoon is coming afterwards lol)
They’ve been driving aimlessly for hours, mostly on the highway. Changmin turns the radio on, bad pop songs playing that they both know are just to fill the void of their silence. Some 80’s song comes on. Yoona groans, deciding she has had just about enough, and reaches over, doing what she should have done from the start: turn off the damn radio. Changmin glares at the road instead of her, one hand visibly tightening on the steering wheel, the other jabbing at the radio with agitation.
Yoona wants to scream so she does.
He ignores her but gets off the highway anyway, hitting the brake abruptly; the screeching noise blends in with her cry. The car stops but Yoona doesn’t - she keeps on going until her throat gives out on her.
Changmin purses his lips, fumbles in his pocket for a cigarette before pulling one out from the packet. He extracts one and places it between his lips.
“I want to go home.”
“Too bad,” he flicks the lighter with ease, taking one puff and then another, “you can’t.”
-
Yoona doesn’t look at him the entire time. She doesn’t speak either. She used to put up a fight, argue back, but now the only thing they’re left to hang on to is the deafening silence.
Changmin turns away, stares out the window and tries not to feel anything. He learns that they’re better off if there are no feelings and nonsense and words that mean nothing at all.
The waitress notices them between orders. He sees her smile from the corner of his eyes, and she strides over right away, pen and paper pad in hand.
“What would you like today?”
Not sparing her a glance, Yoona orders a long list of food - dinner special, apple pie, orange juice and hot chips. She folds the menu up and slides it across the table to him, her eyes on the napkin holder the entire time.
“And you?” The bleached blonde smiles at him again, flirtatious this time as she bends over to look at the menu with him, “How about…..” she drifts off and so does her hand on his leg.
“I’ll have what she’s having.”
The girl involuntarily removes her touch, frowning as she nods and goes off to take another order. Changmin wonders if Yoona missed the incident or just doesn’t care. Then he wonders further if she doesn’t care because she trusts him or she doesn’t care because it doesn’t matter to her anymore.
“Can we talk about it at least?”
“What’s the point, Changmin?” Yoona’s voice is cold and removed, “Talking won’t fix anything - not us anyway.”
Her gaze lingers on him for a few minutes then the moment is gone before Changmin could convince her otherwise.
-
They parked for the night because they're too tired to drive and because the middle of nowhere can be kind of pleasant, if detached from other human lives. The distance between Changmin and her might as well be the distance between the earth and the sun. Yoona curls up against her side of the car and he against his side, and they play the silent game of steal-the-blanket , Yoona blaming him for her coldness (physically, emotionally, maybe it all).
“Changmin,” she begins dryly. “You asleep?”
“Yes.”
She rolls her eyes at this. “Couldn’t you have gotten a bigger car?”
“Couldn’t you have loved me more?”
Yoona looks at him, breaking his own rule. She doesn’t know what to say to that. Changmin doesn’t want her to.
-
Changmin’s having a hard time pinpointing what their problem is. He thinks about it over a cig. Is it the lack of communication? The way they could go on forever in silence, no words, no glances? Or was it the lies they told? The infidelity? The mistakes both of them had made, once or twice. There used to be a time where Yoona would try to conceal it at least, and now she gets out of bed at three in the morning, not returning until three days later. This pattern continues and soon, Changmin too, falls into it with their next door neighbor.
“That will be five dollars, thank you.”
He gives the man the money and leaves with a box of donuts.
She’s still sound asleep, fingers curling around the blanket he had long given up to her the previous night. Changmin wishes she would wake up and look at him with love and not hate - instead of a glare, a smile, and instead of an insult, a civil morning greeting. But it’s only a wish and most of those never come true.
He takes off his jacket and put it over her. She wakes up and expectantly cuts him off from her world.
-
“I hate you.”
Changmin slams his foot hard on the brakes and they halt, stunned, hearts beating erratically. She has said lots of venomous things to him over the year, but this was never one of them. He doesn’t know how to deal with it.
“I hate you so much!” Yoona’s practically crying now.
Her face turn red when she yells at him, tears rushing down like waterfalls, clinging to her cheeks.
He says the only thing he can think of: “I’m sorry”
“That doesn’t do it anymore.”
“I know.”
Then Yoona hugs him, her face buried against his shoulder, her tears soaking through his favourite shirt. “I’m sorry too.”
-
She picks this little family-run diner at the side of the road. The ‘E’ is missing from the name ‘Fate’ and they laugh over it like it’s the comedic break for this trip.
Yoona orders for him - all the pies and ice cream there is.
“I’m going to get fat from all this cream,” Changmin says after a bottle of beer.
“You wish,” she grins. “You’ll go back to being a stick in no time.”
“Yeah?” He smiles a little, quick and amused. “What if I don’t? Would you still stay with me?”
Yoona laughs. “Sure. Not because of you though; I like my man with a big, round belly.”
“Liar,” Changmin accuses, smiling faintly.
-
Sometimes Yoona struggles to find sleep and stays awake at night. She spends the hours tracing patterns on his back with her eyes, and wonders when and where exactly things went wrong between them. A part of her hopes they can start fresh again.
The only thing she wants more than to be happy is for him to be happy.
-
There’s a day where the heat is too hard to bare and the silence destroys what’s left of them. It starts with the fidgeting, and then the nail biting, and soon the uncontrollable feet tapping. The beads of sweat travel to his eyes but it doesn’t blur his vision enough for her closing and opening mouth to go unnoticed from him. Changmin knows what she’s going to say if she could get the words out, but he pushes against the gas pedal instead, speeding up faster and faster.
“I can’t do this anymore.”
He stops and it is over now.
Wordlessly, Yoona gets out, kicks the dirt with her boots and starts to walk.
“Get back in the car, Yoo -”
“I tried,” she snaps over his faint voice, “I tried, alright? But it hurts, what you and I did to each other, and it doesn’t just go away. Being with you - seeing you - hurts, even breathing you - hurts and I’m sick of pretending that I can be with you and the pain and the lying and the cheating and all of this.”
“We can talk about this,” he trails after her, “Just get bac -”
Yoona stops and he expects her to give him a dirty look and open the door. But she doesn’t - she
just laughs, tears hovering on her eye lashes. “Talk?” she yells, hysteric, “I’m done talking, don’t you get that?” A pause, and then she adds, “I’m done with us.”
Changmin knows better than to believe she means any of it, they fight all the time. Why should this be any different? He thinks to himself but once she’s out of sight, the fear creeps in on him at lightning speed - Yoona has never said she’s done before, what if she really means it?
So he just stands there patiently and waits for her to come back to him.
(she never came back)
-
Changmin knew since they were fifteen that he loved her. But he never knew just how much he loved her until now, when he’s driving around aimlessly, calling out her names, crying at the excruciating pain of losing her all over again and he’s begging, he realizes, begging for her to return to him.
When he finds her, she’s sitting at the steps outside the small diner, staring down at the two pumpkin pies in her lap with a look he can’t place. Yoona looks up at him, her eyes damp and solemn. Changmin can feel her waiting; she's waiting for him to force her to explain herself.
He doesn’t.
Changmin simply sweeps her into his arms and shushes her, because he knows her.
“Why didn’t you come after me?” She cries into him, holding onto him because he's the only thing she ever truly loved. And he lets her, because she's not pushing him away, that’s good enough for him, “The pies are cold now.”
He keeps whispering ‘I love you’ and she keeps nodding.
-
The charade stops, finally.
“Do you want to break up?’
“No.”
-
They sleep together in the backseat that night, Yoona letting him hold her as she clings onto him like he’s the only thing she has left. Changmin touches her once in a while, his hands running up and down her back.
“Did you sleep with her?”
He sighs. “No, I slept with Jessica, not her - not Sooyoung.”
“Okay,” she says, sitting up.
“You slept with Taecyeon,” he says flatly.
She smiles at him wearily and press a kiss to his forehead.
-
Changmin comes back from the convenient store one day to find Yoona packing. She packs up her life, and then his, and then everything that is them into a suitcase.
He blinks, staring at her for a long moment. “What are you doing?”
She turns to him, tugging a strand of her chocolate brown lock behind her ear. Changmin pauses on his track, assuming she’s going to hurl insults his way.
“Are you leaving?” Changmin asks, needing her to tell him.
“Yes-”
“Don’t go.”
“I - ”
Changmin pulls her towards him clumsily for a kiss and repeats himself, “Stay with me, Yoona, I swear to god if you leave this time again - just don't go anywhere without me, I can't take it."
Yoona gets on the next train and Changmin wonders aloud if it’s him who loves too much or if it’s her who loves him too little.
-
Two weeks later, Yoona’s back to knocking at the door of their apartment. Changmin lets her in, looking at her without seeing her.
She expects their reunion to be tentative and uneasy, of course, but deep down, the pain is still there. They starts to redraw the boundaries, through the process only able to scream at each other, ugly words thrown aroundin the darkness that has consumed them both. There's too much they cannot say for fear of destroying themselves further, so they build up a wall and start a war.
By the end of the day, they are back where they started, in each other’s arms.
-
“You shouldn’t have come back,” Changmin says in bed one night.
“I shouldn’t have left.”
“No,” he agrees, his arms tightening around her waist, “You shouldn’t have.”
“How long are we going to live in the past, Changmin?”
“Some things are hard to forget,” Changmin replies, looking straight at her. “But I’m trying.”
She just stares at him, her eyes searching his face slowly. “I know. Me too,” Yoona concludes.
-
A summer and a half later, the two of them are lying side by side on the beach. She’s putting sunscreen on her legs and he’s listening to the same radio station with the bad pop songs.
“Wanna hit the road again?”
They laugh.
In the mustang, just between the two of them, Changmin and Yoona break and mend each other’s heart. His hand finds hers and to them it’s alright anyways.
~ 2,060 w, pg-13, (yoona/changmin)
changmin wishes she would wake up and look at him with love and not hate - instead of a glare, a smile, and instead of an insult, a civil morning greeting.
■ changyoon again, I know /shot but I can't help myself!
■ this is inspired by an Audrey Hepburn movie called 'Two For The Road' so ofc, I dedicate this to my miook and also to bollywoodrecord for reading over this for me (credit her for the last sentence), you are the best bb and I'm so glad that we've become so much closer lately ♥ /thank you twitter
■ okay, the next one coming, I promise will be another pairing, hopefully haesica (but yes, changyoon is coming afterwards lol)
They’ve been driving aimlessly for hours, mostly on the highway. Changmin turns the radio on, bad pop songs playing that they both know are just to fill the void of their silence. Some 80’s song comes on. Yoona groans, deciding she has had just about enough, and reaches over, doing what she should have done from the start: turn off the damn radio. Changmin glares at the road instead of her, one hand visibly tightening on the steering wheel, the other jabbing at the radio with agitation.
Yoona wants to scream so she does.
He ignores her but gets off the highway anyway, hitting the brake abruptly; the screeching noise blends in with her cry. The car stops but Yoona doesn’t - she keeps on going until her throat gives out on her.
Changmin purses his lips, fumbles in his pocket for a cigarette before pulling one out from the packet. He extracts one and places it between his lips.
“I want to go home.”
“Too bad,” he flicks the lighter with ease, taking one puff and then another, “you can’t.”
-
Yoona doesn’t look at him the entire time. She doesn’t speak either. She used to put up a fight, argue back, but now the only thing they’re left to hang on to is the deafening silence.
Changmin turns away, stares out the window and tries not to feel anything. He learns that they’re better off if there are no feelings and nonsense and words that mean nothing at all.
The waitress notices them between orders. He sees her smile from the corner of his eyes, and she strides over right away, pen and paper pad in hand.
“What would you like today?”
Not sparing her a glance, Yoona orders a long list of food - dinner special, apple pie, orange juice and hot chips. She folds the menu up and slides it across the table to him, her eyes on the napkin holder the entire time.
“And you?” The bleached blonde smiles at him again, flirtatious this time as she bends over to look at the menu with him, “How about…..” she drifts off and so does her hand on his leg.
“I’ll have what she’s having.”
The girl involuntarily removes her touch, frowning as she nods and goes off to take another order. Changmin wonders if Yoona missed the incident or just doesn’t care. Then he wonders further if she doesn’t care because she trusts him or she doesn’t care because it doesn’t matter to her anymore.
“Can we talk about it at least?”
“What’s the point, Changmin?” Yoona’s voice is cold and removed, “Talking won’t fix anything - not us anyway.”
Her gaze lingers on him for a few minutes then the moment is gone before Changmin could convince her otherwise.
-
They parked for the night because they're too tired to drive and because the middle of nowhere can be kind of pleasant, if detached from other human lives. The distance between Changmin and her might as well be the distance between the earth and the sun. Yoona curls up against her side of the car and he against his side, and they play the silent game of steal-the-blanket , Yoona blaming him for her coldness (physically, emotionally, maybe it all).
“Changmin,” she begins dryly. “You asleep?”
“Yes.”
She rolls her eyes at this. “Couldn’t you have gotten a bigger car?”
“Couldn’t you have loved me more?”
Yoona looks at him, breaking his own rule. She doesn’t know what to say to that. Changmin doesn’t want her to.
-
Changmin’s having a hard time pinpointing what their problem is. He thinks about it over a cig. Is it the lack of communication? The way they could go on forever in silence, no words, no glances? Or was it the lies they told? The infidelity? The mistakes both of them had made, once or twice. There used to be a time where Yoona would try to conceal it at least, and now she gets out of bed at three in the morning, not returning until three days later. This pattern continues and soon, Changmin too, falls into it with their next door neighbor.
“That will be five dollars, thank you.”
He gives the man the money and leaves with a box of donuts.
She’s still sound asleep, fingers curling around the blanket he had long given up to her the previous night. Changmin wishes she would wake up and look at him with love and not hate - instead of a glare, a smile, and instead of an insult, a civil morning greeting. But it’s only a wish and most of those never come true.
He takes off his jacket and put it over her. She wakes up and expectantly cuts him off from her world.
-
“I hate you.”
Changmin slams his foot hard on the brakes and they halt, stunned, hearts beating erratically. She has said lots of venomous things to him over the year, but this was never one of them. He doesn’t know how to deal with it.
“I hate you so much!” Yoona’s practically crying now.
Her face turn red when she yells at him, tears rushing down like waterfalls, clinging to her cheeks.
He says the only thing he can think of: “I’m sorry”
“That doesn’t do it anymore.”
“I know.”
Then Yoona hugs him, her face buried against his shoulder, her tears soaking through his favourite shirt. “I’m sorry too.”
-
She picks this little family-run diner at the side of the road. The ‘E’ is missing from the name ‘Fate’ and they laugh over it like it’s the comedic break for this trip.
Yoona orders for him - all the pies and ice cream there is.
“I’m going to get fat from all this cream,” Changmin says after a bottle of beer.
“You wish,” she grins. “You’ll go back to being a stick in no time.”
“Yeah?” He smiles a little, quick and amused. “What if I don’t? Would you still stay with me?”
Yoona laughs. “Sure. Not because of you though; I like my man with a big, round belly.”
“Liar,” Changmin accuses, smiling faintly.
-
Sometimes Yoona struggles to find sleep and stays awake at night. She spends the hours tracing patterns on his back with her eyes, and wonders when and where exactly things went wrong between them. A part of her hopes they can start fresh again.
The only thing she wants more than to be happy is for him to be happy.
-
There’s a day where the heat is too hard to bare and the silence destroys what’s left of them. It starts with the fidgeting, and then the nail biting, and soon the uncontrollable feet tapping. The beads of sweat travel to his eyes but it doesn’t blur his vision enough for her closing and opening mouth to go unnoticed from him. Changmin knows what she’s going to say if she could get the words out, but he pushes against the gas pedal instead, speeding up faster and faster.
“I can’t do this anymore.”
He stops and it is over now.
Wordlessly, Yoona gets out, kicks the dirt with her boots and starts to walk.
“Get back in the car, Yoo -”
“I tried,” she snaps over his faint voice, “I tried, alright? But it hurts, what you and I did to each other, and it doesn’t just go away. Being with you - seeing you - hurts, even breathing you - hurts and I’m sick of pretending that I can be with you and the pain and the lying and the cheating and all of this.”
“We can talk about this,” he trails after her, “Just get bac -”
Yoona stops and he expects her to give him a dirty look and open the door. But she doesn’t - she
just laughs, tears hovering on her eye lashes. “Talk?” she yells, hysteric, “I’m done talking, don’t you get that?” A pause, and then she adds, “I’m done with us.”
Changmin knows better than to believe she means any of it, they fight all the time. Why should this be any different? He thinks to himself but once she’s out of sight, the fear creeps in on him at lightning speed - Yoona has never said she’s done before, what if she really means it?
So he just stands there patiently and waits for her to come back to him.
(she never came back)
-
Changmin knew since they were fifteen that he loved her. But he never knew just how much he loved her until now, when he’s driving around aimlessly, calling out her names, crying at the excruciating pain of losing her all over again and he’s begging, he realizes, begging for her to return to him.
When he finds her, she’s sitting at the steps outside the small diner, staring down at the two pumpkin pies in her lap with a look he can’t place. Yoona looks up at him, her eyes damp and solemn. Changmin can feel her waiting; she's waiting for him to force her to explain herself.
He doesn’t.
Changmin simply sweeps her into his arms and shushes her, because he knows her.
“Why didn’t you come after me?” She cries into him, holding onto him because he's the only thing she ever truly loved. And he lets her, because she's not pushing him away, that’s good enough for him, “The pies are cold now.”
He keeps whispering ‘I love you’ and she keeps nodding.
-
The charade stops, finally.
“Do you want to break up?’
“No.”
-
They sleep together in the backseat that night, Yoona letting him hold her as she clings onto him like he’s the only thing she has left. Changmin touches her once in a while, his hands running up and down her back.
“Did you sleep with her?”
He sighs. “No, I slept with Jessica, not her - not Sooyoung.”
“Okay,” she says, sitting up.
“You slept with Taecyeon,” he says flatly.
She smiles at him wearily and press a kiss to his forehead.
-
Changmin comes back from the convenient store one day to find Yoona packing. She packs up her life, and then his, and then everything that is them into a suitcase.
He blinks, staring at her for a long moment. “What are you doing?”
She turns to him, tugging a strand of her chocolate brown lock behind her ear. Changmin pauses on his track, assuming she’s going to hurl insults his way.
“Are you leaving?” Changmin asks, needing her to tell him.
“Yes-”
“Don’t go.”
“I - ”
Changmin pulls her towards him clumsily for a kiss and repeats himself, “Stay with me, Yoona, I swear to god if you leave this time again - just don't go anywhere without me, I can't take it."
Yoona gets on the next train and Changmin wonders aloud if it’s him who loves too much or if it’s her who loves him too little.
-
Two weeks later, Yoona’s back to knocking at the door of their apartment. Changmin lets her in, looking at her without seeing her.
She expects their reunion to be tentative and uneasy, of course, but deep down, the pain is still there. They starts to redraw the boundaries, through the process only able to scream at each other, ugly words thrown aroundin the darkness that has consumed them both. There's too much they cannot say for fear of destroying themselves further, so they build up a wall and start a war.
By the end of the day, they are back where they started, in each other’s arms.
-
“You shouldn’t have come back,” Changmin says in bed one night.
“I shouldn’t have left.”
“No,” he agrees, his arms tightening around her waist, “You shouldn’t have.”
“How long are we going to live in the past, Changmin?”
“Some things are hard to forget,” Changmin replies, looking straight at her. “But I’m trying.”
She just stares at him, her eyes searching his face slowly. “I know. Me too,” Yoona concludes.
-
A summer and a half later, the two of them are lying side by side on the beach. She’s putting sunscreen on her legs and he’s listening to the same radio station with the bad pop songs.
“Wanna hit the road again?”
They laugh.
In the mustang, just between the two of them, Changmin and Yoona break and mend each other’s heart. His hand finds hers and to them it’s alright anyways.