Undone (5/8)
Title: Undone (Full Circle pt. 5)
Pairing: Jongdae/Joonmyun
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: experimental prose, terminal illness, major character death
Disclaimer: I own nothing, written just for fun.
A/N: Thank you to
bluedreaming who helped with a lot of things. (and I'm sorry, Jongdae T.T)
Soundtrack is here. First part originally posted here.
March 1, 2015: 2:53AM
“I’m sorry, hyung.”
Joonmyun’s sigh is the only answer, but his arm tightening ever so slightly around Jongdae’s waist, still too loose to call an embrace, means he’s awake. Joonmyun can hear him.
Why is it always easier in the dark.
“I didn’t mean for things to end this way,” Jongdae says, and if his voice
cracks
it’s only because the room is sapped dry by the heater and the electric blanket and the hot pulse of Joonmyun’s wrist against his rib
cage.
“Who says things are ending,” Joonmyun says, even though he’s supposed to be
pretending
to sleep. Joonmyun is a gentle humility that always averts its gaze, allows Jongdae his dignity even while stroking up and down his spine in
unending
circles and holding the hair away from his eyes as he vomits into the porcelain pure. Joonmyun is the quiet heartbeat that found him in the dark. Jongdae is the voice that called him with a scream he can’t remember, the sharp edges of his fading vision still fluttering at the fringes of his lashes.
“You’re so cold,” Joonmyun had said, and wrapped him in his blanket wrapped arms and carried him to the bed and said nothing about the dark or the slippery fear still sliding through Jongdae’s lungs in shaky breaths.
Jongdae is too grateful to express it. Joonmyun understands even this.
(Joonmyun always)
The ceiling fan circles and the fan patterns smeared in dried paint circles across the
ceiling
Jongdae can’t see, but he can feel the rush of the air like the pulse of breath through lips at the nape of his neck. If his arms were long he could reach up to brush fingertips across the sea of dried waves, the grain in the dusky layer prickling pebbles up his arms.
Jongdae’s arms are barely long enough to wrap up Joonmyun so he wraps himself up instead, huddled under the covers, and lets Joonmyun pretend to not-wrap them both in his embrace. The
feeling
in Jongdae’s body, but mostly his arms, is impossibly light yet too heavy to lift from the mattress. Jongdae’s fingertips are trapped in silky jello amber, perhaps an ant or two lodged between his splayed fingerweb. Lemon flavor. Hospital smell. Jongdae prefers orange to lemon because
(Joonmyun always)
sometimes the yellow in his eyes in the mirror is just sickening. There’s no other word for it. His own reflection makes him nauseous these days and even the glasses don’t help anymore. Jongdae’s arms are boneless weight, nothing but bone
stretched
under paperlight skin. The parchment of Jongdae’s tongue traces the inside of lips, always his own, always cracked, sometimes the taste of iron seeping through and getting all mixed up with the lemon. No, not lemon. Orange
(Joonmyun always)
is better, and Jongdae’s supposed to focus on positive thoughts these days. Even his dreams should be hopeful, the doctor says, and Jongdae nods and looks away and no one mentions the threatening vapor of opiate fueled nightmares misting at the sterilized corners of the room.
His grandmother’s guest house is always spotless of course, the smell of citrus and old wood, old cedar. Just like Joonmyun’s cologne. Not like the hospital cobweb-free gleam. Soft things aren’t supposed to gleam. They’re supposed to haze over like the steam at the rim of a cocoa mug. Baekhyun is good at handing him cocoa mugs, and so is Joonmyun.
Joonmyun is soft, in most places. Even the press of his wrist bone
etched
into Jongdae’s hipbone feels soft in the dark.
Why is it always easier in the dark.
Joonmyun is soft, especially his eyes that always focus around Jongdae, even when averted. Joonmyun is soft in his eyes and his gaze and soft things aren’t supposed to gleam the way Joonmyun’s eyes do in the not-light of predawn when he hands Jongdae coffee mugs of burnt roast, all hazed over at the rims.
Tears
are a kind of steam, you know, water back to the sky and sea, just not evaporated
yet
is what he told Baekhyun. And Baekhyun smiled, because Baekhyun is kind like that. Baekhyun has his soft edges, too, underneath his teeth and kitten claws and
ears
that hear too much when Jongdae has the bathroom door locked against the pain. Baekhyun’s smile is how Jongdae forces breakfast into his veins and remembers which sock matches which other sock that all look almost the same. Joonmyun’s smile is...something crystal, breakable, not quite invisible in the dark like
wet
dew set against a diamond mirror wine glass microscope lens terrarium dome jar
(Joonmyun always)
is a lot of things. Jongdae is tired of trying to splice out where one thing begins and another thing ends and his bones are tired in an ancient misty sort of way. Not brittle. Just...old. Jongdae’s tongue feels like dirt in his mouth and Joonmyun’s arms and breath and brittle bleached hair against his skin is insulating loam. It all feels
rich
somehow.
Why are things easier in the dark.
“Hyung,”
Jongdae breathes, because he likes that word. He can’t say it to Baekhyun or his grandmother or any of the doctors at the hospitals, even to the interns Joonmyun’s close to in age, even to the intern with
pitch
dark eyes behind dark frames who always winks and taps a pen to his nametag as he enters. Hi, I’m Minseok, and I’ll be taking care of you today, he taps and says even though Jongdae’s been
countless
times on the same examining table with the same sort of poison dragging through his veins as he waits. The drugs are more or less always the same, even if the marks they leave on him are as unique as a lover’s teeth charted in cruel bites against skin, charted in cruel paths across the gleam in the unforgiving
boundless
sky.
“Hm?”
Joonmyun hums, because every sound from his lips sounds like water or music or the snap and spray of citrus oil into the air at the first rip of orange acid skin.
“Nothing,”
Jongdae says, and Joonmyun’s arms tighten again. Both of them this time. The one encircling his hip and the fingers laced through his poison brittle hair. “Just…” Jongdae waited til he’s too weak to do anything about it, too weak to resist any longer, too weak not to break at the first hint of hazy mist from the rims of Joonmyun’s
eyes.
Jongdae wants to kiss the sweet salt from his eyelids and feel the soft and the gleam against his lips. Maybe Joonmyun’s tears would taste like tangerines, if everything in this world were
fair,
like some bright and perfect essence. Aether and light. Joonmyun swallows and Jongdae breathes again and the
air
tightens like fingers and the suffocation is a relief and a pain Jongdae’s heart can’t take any longer. Jongdae
wants
a lot of things. Joonmyun’s lips, first of all. And his teeth and his brittle strands and his soft haze and his loneliness and his porcelain pure. Everything
(Joonmyun always)
haunts
him through his dreams and through the dull noise of socks in the washer. His headache never ends these days and his heartache...
“I want--”
“What do you want, and I’ll try, anything, my best,”
Joonmyun says, and Jongdae nods against the too-small-for-two pillow because he knows. Joonmyun already
(Joonmyun always)
has. “It’s ok,” Jongdae says, but not really. His feelings are too much and they melt into the dull weight of his fingertips and settle there, peacefully numb like the press of Joonmyun’s forehead into his shoulder.
Is relief a kind of peace,
or is it the other way around?
Jongdae feels light on the inside and heavy
around the edges and he can’t
remember anymore.
“Hyung,” he breathes, and “it isn’t fair. Hyung.”
“If this world were fair you wouldn’t be breaking.” A sigh. “If this world were fair your pain would be mine and I would be--”
“Don’t.” Fingers tighten on a wrist
bone.
Joonmyun
(Joonmyun always)
has held Jongdae’s pain with the gentlest grasp.
Why is it so hard even in the dark.
because one alone
(“I love you”
(“I know”
It’s
(not
((never
too late.
(Joonmyun always-
(part four here) (part six here)