[FIC] Heaven is a Place On Earth * 8A/15
Title: Heaven is a Place On Earth (HPOE)
Length: (8A/15)
Author: pinkelatta (missusgabriel@soompi)
Rating M18 (allusions to sex, some coarse language)
Warning: This fic takes some artistic license with religious and sexual themes - if you find this offensive, please do not continue. I decided to exercise more restraint with this fic so that it doesn't spiral out of control. There will be only 15 chapters, barring any mishaps, and every chapter will be titled for a part of the lyrics of the main theme song (this is an important element). There may be other songs added to the soundtrack from time to time to go with each chapter. Some familiarity with the basic tenets of Christianity will be useful.
Summary: It was all very simple and straightforward. A battle between good and evil - just like every other battle between good and evil there ever was, there ever had been. In fact, it was so simple that even the movies always made it look a whole lot more complicated than it really was.
Good VS Evil.
Angel VS Devil.
It would have been over in the swish of a wing.
This time, however, they'd reckoned without love.
Suddenly, being in the same room as Siwon felt unbearably stifling. Yunho wanted to curse Siwon out and tell him to stop playing around. But the look in Siwon’s eyes had his mouth sealed shut and his heartbeat loud in his ears. Siwon had his hands steepled over his wine glass, fingers Yunho thought he had known still and composed as their owner awaited an answer.
It just wasn’t possible, was it? Yunho felt bewildered in his own grasp of the situation. He couldn’t possibly be dining with the Devil himself, could he? Would the Devil be that good in bed? Why would the Devil do this personally?
“The answers are, yes, yes, and it depends,” Siwon cracked a sinister smile, obviously reading Yunho’s mind like an open book.
“It’s not even safe to think anymore,” Yunho remarked, for the first time in his life feeling the extent of fearing someone else, perhaps fearing Death himself. Even so, he found himself saying out loud, “I need to think about this, it’s too… too much.” It was his first time admitting to anyone that even Jung Yunho could be overwhelmed by something.
“Take all the time you want, Yunho,” Siwon smiled brightly, the radiance of it at odds with the grim situation. “I’ve got all the time in the world. It could be yours - all yours.”
Yunho stared at the lanky figure’s back as he strolled easily out of the restaurant, hands in his pockets, without paying for the meal.
“I have… questions.”
“About?”
Yunho didn’t know how to begin. He dropped his head and ran both hands uneasily through his hair. He’ll probably think I’m mad, he thought, knowing without looking how the white-haired boy next to him sat staring quietly out over the Han River with his lips pursed into a pout, patiently waiting for his answer.
“Do you believe in the devil?”
“Of course.”
“What if… what if I told you I had met him?”
“You, what?!” Jaejoong wished fervently for his powers back, right about now. Yunho had been visited by the devil himself and he couldn’t sense it in the slightest?
“I… He works for me.” Now that sounded downright absurd.
“He works for you?” Jaejoong repeated his words as if he hadn’t heard him right the first time around. “Jung Yunho, the devil works for you?” There was the barest hint of mirth in his voice.
“Look, I’m serious, Jae!” He looked up in a plea for credibility, meeting Jaejoong’s incredulous stare full on. “He’s my personal assistant and I… I…”
Jaejoong watched Yunho’s mouth open and close like a goldfish, eyes unblinking and nodding encouragingly for him to finish the sentence. “And you…?”
“I… We…” It was too weird. Yunho settled for, “we fucked.”
Jaejoong wasn’t in the least surprised by the modus operandi - one couldn’t expect gentlemanliness from the devil after all, could one? But Yunho? He wasn’t sure what to think. Yunho was his charge, and had been right under his nose all this while too.
“Tell me more.”
“More? What more?” Yunho spluttered. “What do you wanna know? How good a fuck he is? How he measures up?”
“No, Yunho,” came the answer, patience obviously somewhat strained. “His name, what he wants from you. There’s no such thing as a free lunch - you knew that, didn’t you?”
Yunho was silent for a moment. No, he had to admit he hadn’t thought it through. Jaejoong was right - he should have seen it coming.
Finally: “Choi Siwon is his name. He says he wants my soul.”
Jaejoong exhaled. So, this must be why the Abba Avinu wanted him here. Before Siwon got to Yunho. He contemplated Yunho for a long second. This Jung Yunho must be something really special, to warrant both him and Siwon himself making an appearance. He couldn’t fathom what, though - Yunho was just like any other feckless chaebol there’d ever been in history. Handsomer than most, that much he would grant, and less annoying than still others, but still - just a chaebol. There probably wasn’t a chaebol who didn’t sell his soul for one thing or another sooner or later.
“So did you agree?” asked Jaejoong, feeling a tad foolish - if he’d had his powers he wouldn’t have had to ask.
“I said… I needed time to think it over,” confessed Yunho, looking like a very lost child. “So you don’t think I’m crazy? Does he really want my soul? What does he really want? I don’t understand all this religious shit.”
“Well, if you really want to know - it’s not all hocus-pocus, you know,” Jaejoong frowned at the use of the words “religious” and “shit” as a compound term. “Your soul is the eternal portion of you, the essence of any sentient being, made from the breath of life that God bestowed on human beings when He created them. By virtue of that alone, it is precious - it’s not replicable. Humans have struggled for so long to recreate it, to bring back to life things that have given up their souls, or infuse life into a non-animate thing.”
“Like Frankenstein?” Yunho interjected. Jaejoong nodded, and he continued, “But what can you DO with it? I mean, the story goes that the devil is always out to get our souls - but what CAN he do with it anyway? Does he eat them and become more powerful? What?”
Jaejoong shook his head. It was hard to explain. Even as an angel he didn’t know how to answer some of these questions.
“Well, you can see it as a kind of battle - you know, when Lucifer fell from Heaven?”
Yunho shook his head - he didn’t know.
“Basically, to cut a long story short, God created angels and humans, populating the Earth and Heavens in His own image - meaning we are like Him in appearance and spirituality. But one particularly beautiful angel felt that he deserved more and better, and in his pride, sinned against God and was punished. His supporters among the angels rose up with him. It was a major mess - but finally he was expelled from Heaven along with his supporters. Since then, they wander the Earth seeking to come between God and Man.”
“Uh huh… so my soul is like a casino chip?”
For lack of a better explanation, Jaejoong nodded. “He doesn’t eat the souls, he just imprisons them in his domain so that they cannot travel to Heaven upon the death of the body, like God had intended for humans to do. He makes them suffer, because the soul is still a consciousness, just that there is no physical body.”
“Every game has to end - when do they cash in the chips?”
Jaejoong found himself, for the first time, without an answer.
“I don’t like this - I’m not a pawn or a chip,” Yunho stated. “I have thoughts and feelings.”
“That’s what makes this game complicated,” Jaejoong clarified. “The chips have minds of their own. It’s called free will. That’s why Siwon has to ask you to give him your soul - he can’t take it without your consent.”
“Free will,” repeated Yunho. He knew this concept. He’d dealt with it more often than he cared to think about. “What’s the use, when you can’t control the final outcome anyway? I mean, so what if you make a decision? If someone else can override it? I mean, he’s God, isn’t he? What he says, goes. He’s omnipresent, omniscient, if he knows everything, and knows what my decision is gonna be, why bother to let me make it?”
Jaejoong sighed. Yunho was a tough customer. Abba, if You’re listening, help me out here… he prayed silently. No answer came. No wonder humans felt alienated from God, he mused. The silence and feeling of utter abandonment was resounding.
Yunho watched Jaejoong deep in thought, hair falling into his eyes and a serious expression on his delicate features. He had a newfound respect for the Moonboy, listening to him explain the intricacies of religion with such confidence and aplomb. He’d never been one for religion - his only interaction with God was probably when he cursed him out for all the negative things in his life. He wondered where Jaejoong had learned all this - did they teach all these things in church? As a boy he’d visited a church once or twice, out of curiosity. But even the old and knowledgeable fathers had never displayed such profound understanding of how it all came together. Yet this young man, no older than he was, answered him earnestly and sincerely, with such a sense of peace that for a moment, Yunho wanted to know the God who had evidently granted it to Jaejoong.
“Am I going to die, if I agree to give it to him?”
“No - you won’t drop dead on the spot, if that’s what you’re asking. It becomes a contract, sealed with your blood, pledging your soul to the devil after your death. Of course, if at any time you truly repent and come back to God, He will forgive you and take you back as His child.”
“Then everyone would just sell their souls and redeem them later,” Yunho challenged.
“Once you start on the wrong path, it’s not that easy to turn back,” Jaejoong warned. “It’s easy to give something away - but not to take it back. It’s not like you say a spell or prayer and abracadabra - you are magically saved from Hell. Genuine belief in the heart, the right spirit and mindset is necessary. A soul is not a thing to be trifled with - you only have one, and it’s even more important than your life, because when life has ended, it is your soul that still lives on.”
Yunho merely blinked in confusion. He was way out of his depth here. “Well, if it’s as precious as you say, I guess I won’t be selling it then.” Fractionally, he wondered if there were buyers for such things, applying his business acumen and wondering fleetingly if there was money to be made from it.
“Good,” smiled Jaejoong, somewhat relieved that he had no further questions for now. He could feel his human body tiring from all the thinking, which he noted wryly, didn’t happen at angel-speed. Besides the physical exertion, however, there was a new feeling clouding up his headspace. He couldn’t put a name to it, but it lay heavily on his mind. He closed his eyes, fingers to his temples massaging away at the soft spot there.
Yunho’s mind, on the other hand, was whirring away. There was so much to process and understand - if it was all true, that was. He stared at the purveyor of the information, long white fingers falling still as the chin that he couldn’t see slumped forward slightly. A crooked smile lifted the corners of his mouth - the beautiful boy must have dozed off. Shaking his head at the thin white shirt that was all Jaejoong wore, he shrugged off his own jacket and draped it over the other’s broad shoulders.
He got up and moved away from Jaejoong, one hand reaching for his pack of cigarettes and the other for a lighter. Lighting up a stick, he inhaled deeply and let the smoke wear away some of the tension.
At the crossroads between life and death, no, not quite. A battle for the soul went beyond death. He was only twenty-one now. He didn’t know how long he had to go, but common sense supposed it would be quite a long ride. Even if he gave up his soul, what would he get in return? He certainly didn’t want Siwon in a relationship - especially now that Siwon had revealed himself to be the devil, things obviously wouldn’t be the same anymore. It did explain Siwon’s uncanny perfection. He wondered if Siwon would keep up the pretence of working for him now. He even began to question if the other employees would suddenly have their memories erased, like some science fiction movie, such that no one would remember that a Choi Siwon had ever worked with them. Or was it just him who had been going mad all along?
“I can do that.” A familiar voice sounded beside him.
Yunho jumped. He could have sworn it had been only him and Jaejoong on that riverbank.
“Relax, it’s me,” Siwon smiled, emanating an unnatural charm that both drew Yunho in and repulsed him at the same time “It’s a hard decision, isn’t it?”
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