SH 2013: for bulletthestars (2/2)
Previous
"You can be anywhere you want to be. You travel in the blink of an eye. You have no sense of touc-you can touch, but you can't feel it. You do whatever you are made to do," Yixing says, eyes on the road, voice calm and melodic.
Joonmyun sits next to him in his car.
At the next stop light, Yixing looks at him and smiles. "The stairway to heaven is in the alleyway near the -- intersection."
Joonmyun swallows.
"Do you believe me now?" Yixing asks.
The light turns green.
"Why did you do it?" Joonmyun asks.
Yixing smiles. His voice is quiet. "I fell in love."
Joonmyun frowns. A horn beeps from behind them. Yixing turns his eyes back to the road. He keeps talking."I was drawn to him like I was to no other. I wanted to see him every day, touch him. The longing to touch, to feel, had never been as intense as that moment."
They sit in silence. If Joonmyun had a beating heart, he imagined it would be heard throughout the car, thump thump thump.
"How did you do it?" Joonmyun asks.
They turn and stop at another red light. Luhan is sitting on top of the metal, looking down at them. "You just fall," Yixing says, looking at the light as if he could see Luhan. Luhan lifts two fingers up in salute.
The light flickers to green. Joonmyun sits still.
They arrive at Yixing's apartment. Yixing turns the car engine off.
"Is it worth it?" Joonmyun finally asks.
A light flickers in Yixing's eyes. "Yes."
*
Yixing’s apartment is neat-and sparse. The barest essentials for a human are there and not much else. There’s a photo on the coffee table. Joonmyun looks at it.
“Is that him?”
Yixing looks over at him, at the photo on the coffee table. “No.”
Joonmyun looks at him.
"The person I gave up immortality for… I think we weren't meant to be together," Yixing says carefully, as if it were a minefield.
"Why are you still smiling?" Joonmyun asks.
"I am?" Yixing laughs, hand coming up to cover the wistful smile from his face. There’s an indent on his cheek when he smiles. "We need to work on your emotion recognition, Joonmyun-ah."
Joonmyun looks away. "But you said taking the fall was worth it."
"It was. It is."
"I don't understand," Joonmyun says, again. The more Joonmyun talks to humans the more he realizes he can’t understand them at all. They defy logic!
"Humans are so fragile," Yixing murmurs. "Their bodies, their relationships can fall apart so easily. Still, I don't regret a single thing."
The doorbell rings. Yixing looks at the door in surprise. After a second, he moves past Joonmyun to the door.
“Hyung.” A tall boy is standing at the doorway, hands jammed into his pockets. Joonmyun recognizes him as the one in the photo.
Yixing blinks. “It’s Thursday. And it’s late. Don’t you have class tomorrow?”
The boy shrugs. “Our morning class got cancelled… so I thought I’d come see you tonight.”
Yixing smiles at him and Joonmyun wishes he was better at reading emotions, because there is something different about this smile than the ones he’s shown Joonmyun so far.
“Okay, I was just getting dinner ready.”
“I already ate. It’s 10 o’clock, hyung.”
Yixing laughs. “I know, but we got a call for a body when we were about to go home-you know, crime knows no hours.”
The boy with slanted eyes and a long face sits on the countertop, backs of his shoes hitting the cupboards rhythmically, while Yixing looks through the refrigerator. The back of his jacket says SEHUN in large letters.
“Hyung,” he says, head tilted slightly to the side. Joonmyun thinks he’s trying to convey something with his eyes, only Joonmyun can’t read it.
Yixing glances at Joonmyun quickly, an empty spot to Sehun’s eyes, before he lets out a chuckle. He stands and walks over to Sehun, placing his hands on Sehun’s knees, lifting his face up. Their lips meet, fingers tangling together. Joonmyun blinks.
He takes it as his cue to leave.
*
“What did you like best about living?” Joonmyun asks. The top stoplight lights up. They walk forward, among the cars.
“Pancakes,” Amber decides.
*
“Is loving just about touching?” Joonmyun asks.
Kris pushes through the fog of sleep, reacts out of instinct at the sound, hand moving under his pillow to curl around the edges of a knife. He looks at Joonmyun blearily. The sheets rustle under him. “Fuck. What time is it.”
“It’s seven of your hours.”
Sunlight tries to seep through the dark curtains.
“Fuck,” Kris says again. He closes his eyes. Slowly, his grip on the knife loosens.
Joonmyun repeats his question.
Kris grumbles into his pillow. “It’s seven in the morning, what are you doing here.”
“I believe we have already established the answer to that question,” Joonmyun says. Then he smiles, remembering that Kris told him to do so.
“Ugh,” Kris grumbles. “I mean-don’t you only come out at night.”
“Well, that’s absurd. I’m an angel, not a vampire.”
Kris glares at him.
“Is loving just about touching?” Joonmyun asks. “Kissing?”
“You’ve turned into a broken record,” Kris grumbles. He sits up, his hair tousled. He is not wearing a shirt. “No, loving is not just about sex.”
Joonmyun stares.
“What?” Kris asks.
Joonmyun looks up. He finds himself forming a smile to cover the foreign feeling of uneasiness. “So what is love about?”
“You’re an angel. Weren’t you made to-you know, never mind.” Kris says. “Love is… about somebody else. To care for somebody else, outside of your own happiness. To choose to make someone else happy. To choose to commit to another person, or a cause, or whatever, and to see it through. Not that I’d know if it actually works out that way.” Kris hits his pillow repeatedly, then lies back on it. “I’m going back to bed, it’s too early for this.”
Then as a joke, he adds, “Either get in here or leave.”
“I don’t need sleep,” Joonmyun says and disappears.
Kris pretends he’s not disappointed and that he doesn’t care. Joonmyun’s an angel, after all. And Kris? He’s just a killer.
Blood seeps into his dreams again.
*
“What did you like best about living?” Joonmyun asks. The lights change. The cars move forward. They do too, following another angel-Kyungsoo-who is guiding a small boy to the stairway in the alleyway.
“Books,” Seohyun says, smiling dreamily.
*
“You said the person you fell for wasn’t meant for you,” Joonmyun says.
Joonmyun finds himself in Yixing’s living room again. Yixing is drinking coffee, papers on his desk.
“That was the simplest way to put it,” Yixing says. “More accurately, the he that existed at that point in time and the being that I was at that point in time were not able to make things work.”
“Somebody told me that loving someone was choosing to see it through ‘til the end.” Joonmyun says.
Yixing smiles. Sadness, Joonmyun thinks. “I did. Until the end, until he told me that he did not love me anymore.”
“But how could you live with it? Knowing you wanted him. Knowing you…loved him.” Joonmyun asks. Yixing brings to him a new perspective, one that differs from Kris and Luhan’s. It’s not fully human, and not fully angel observing a human. Yixing is someone who’s lived as both and maybe understands both.
Yixing makes a noncommittal noise. “I’ve realized that sometimes, we lose important things… to open the path for us to find something better.”
“But how can one be sure of that?” Joonmyun asks.
“You’re not,” Yixing says. “You’ll never really know the outcomes of the ‘what-ifs’… what if I fell later, when we could handle being together? All I know is the now… and now, I’m happy with what I have.”
It’s quiet for a while, the air filled with things they know are present but don’t dare talk about.
“Were you lonely?” Joonmyun asks instead.
Yixing looks at him and understands that Joonmyun means were you lonely in heaven?
“Thinking about it,” Yixing pauses. “I suppose I was. Camaraderie as an angel…it’s different, than when you’re human. As angels… we talk to each other as colleagues. The ability to care for each other… angels who care for their own are few and far between, much more angels who learn to feel and choose to stay in heaven.”
“As a human…” Yixing laughs, eyes disappearing, cheek dimpling. “It’s different. You feel it everywhere.”
*
Joonmyun thinks about robots. Angels had potential inside of them that could be awakened. It just wasn’t, most of the time. Or was it awakened a lot and he was just made not to think so? Were they all made not to think so? Lucifer was a prominent figure in his mind, the most famous one to awaken his curiosity-and as humans say, curiosity killed the cat. But it’s an urban legend, Joonmyun’s brain insists.
Joonmyun thinks of Yixing, and then of Luhan-who at this point, he is sure, has fully awakened his own and may just be staying in heaven for shits and giggles, he doesn’t know, really, Luhan’s pretty hard to figure out, and Joonmyun hasn’t mastered this Socratic method of thinking yet (a part of him is still horrified, Questioning everything! How impudent!, but another part of him wants to know more, see more, understand more, talk to Kris more-)-and maybe even Minseok, and maybe even others too-
Was everything he knew, the thoughts in his head from the moment he was made, a lie?
*
“What did you like best about living?” Joonmyun asks. The lights change and the cars move forward.
“Singing,” Baekhyun says, hands in his pockets.
Joonmyun wonders what Kris will answer, when his time comes. He wonders why he wants Kris to mention him.
*
Kris walks around, but no signs of Joonmyun appear. If he’s being honest, he’s forgotten what it feels like to have a constant, and Joonmyun-strange, pragmatic, yet somehow still innocent-pulls emotions out of him like no one else has ever been able to do. There’s an irony in there somewhere, he knows, because Joonmyun himself isn’t capable of feeling, and yet-
Kris leans on the railing and watches the water flow below him while he waits for the fireworks.
He knows that he is becoming too attached to this angel, this otherworldly being. Part of him doesn’t care and just wants to see Joonmyun, talk to him, see Joonmyun smile and mean it.
Mostly, he knows that Joonmyun will get bored and move on, focus his observations on another human. To a kinder one, one who is not haunted by blood, whose soul is not tainted. A good person. One that did not bow down to the struggles of life, lived righteously, and took the moral high ground. A strong person.
Soon, Joonmyun will realize there is nothing in Kris that can be salvaged; nothing in him worth saving, much less liking.
Kris lights a cigarette.
He thought he had mastered the art of not feeling long ago. It unsettles him that meeting someone who truly doesn't feel showed him that he still does.
*
“You’re not checking on your human today,” Luhan observes.
“I am getting too attached,” Joonmyun says. A foreign feeling bubbles up inside him, gripping his insides.
“I hate to break it to you but-you’re way past that point,” Luhan says.
Joonmyun knows Luhan is right. He severely dislikes it when Luhan is right. He ignores Luhan for a full five minutes.
“What do I do?” he finally whispers.
“Well,” Luhans says, a laugh at the corner of his mouth. “What do you feel like doing?”
“I...” Joonmyun’s stomach lurches.
What do you feel like doing?
Luhan is looking at him, all traces of laughter gone. Luhan is looking at him like he’s known all along. That somewhere along seeing Kris’ hands shake when he took his first human life, somewhere along discussions that opened his mind, somewhere along sitting with Kris in silence for a night, somewhere along watching the fireworks with him, somewhere along getting to know Kris and seeing him differently than he saw himself, he has learned to feel. That his attachment is not only because he finds Kris interesting, a human to observe, but because he has developed feelings for Kris.
For the first time in Joonmyun’s creation, he wants. Badly.
Joonmyun closes his eyes.
*
“I think,” Joonmyun says, as if weighing each word that leaves his mouth. “I may have grown attached to you.”
“Yeah?” Kris is stunned for a second, before he laughs in disbelief. What a strange time for Joonmyun to develop a sense of humor. “You angels don’t feel things, remember?”
Joonmyun wets his bottom lip. Kris eyes the action. “It’s not that we don’t have the capacity to feel. It’s just… we weren’t made with it ready, unlike you humans. That doesn’t mean we can’t learn.”
Kris’ heart constricts. Carefully, guardedly, like he is too used to being disappointed to even hope, he asks, “What are you saying?”
Joonmyun is quiet. He sorts out his thoughts.
Kris doesn’t take his eyes of Joonmyun, afraid he’ll disappear, blend into the shadows of his dark apartment, never to be seen again.
“I want to see you everyday. Be with you everyday. Do mundane things with you. See you smile-“ Joonmyun stops; he’s heard this speech before. Different words, sure, but the essence is just the same.
Oh.
Oh.
Kris feels a little like the world is reeling. His hands shake. “Why me?”
“Why not?” Joonmyun asks, but his mind is running haywire at the realization. It is one thing to come to terms with his attachment.
It is another thing completely to realize his attachment runs deeper than he initially thought.
Kris closes his eyes; maybe Joonmyun will disappear if he opens them again. Maybe this is just a dream, maybe Kris’ mind has finally given up on him after years of stress and guilt. He doesn’t want it to be a hallucination, no, but he needs to be sure-he needs to know it’s real, that this being who’s showing him how there is still a little bit of humanity left in him, something in him worth getting to know, Kris needs-he needs to know he’s not getting his hopes up for nothing.
He opens his eyes.
Joonmyun is still there.
Kris takes a deep breath, decides. It has always been all or nothing for someone like him. He walks closer.
Kris holds one of Joonmyun's hands is over his heart.
"Do you feel that?" Kris whispers, mouth pressing close to Joonmyun.
Joonmyun’s fingers lie flat against his chest. The fingers curl into a fist as Kris’ heart speeds up at the touch. Kris closes the distance between them.
"No," Joonmyun whispers when they break apart. His eyes are wide. "I can't."
He disappears.
Kris looks at his empty living room. The lights are off save for a lamp. He’d found it an antique store, shopping during what would’ve been Tao’s 21st birthday. It casts eerie shadows on the wall. Kris buries his face in his hands, rubs his tired eyes with his palms.
Maybe there really is a God and He’s fucking with Kris because of everything Kris has done.
Kris snorts. “Is this fun for you? Waving what I want under my nose then taking it away?” He says to the ceiling.
God-or The One Upstairs, as Joonmyun calls Him-doesn’t dignify him with an answer.
*
Joonmyun doesn’t know what to do. He wants to go back. He wants to run away. He wants to stay.
He wants.
He closes his eyes and breathes, arms extended on either side of him.
The wind rushes and ruffles his hair and jacket; he doesn’t feel it.
The light changes to green; he doesn’t see it.
He breathes.
His mind is at war. He wants to go back. He wants to run away. He wants to stay.
He wants.
*
Joonmyun is standing on top of the stop light at the intersection. He looks down at the cars passing by. It has been a day and he has run through all the arguments, all the scenarios in his head-and somehow, somehow, he always comes back to this.
He wants. So he decides.
The way he chooses to go is forward, with everything he has. Even if it means leaving all he’s known, a life that gives him purpose, a life he’s used to.
"Don't do it," a voice says. He looks, and Luhan is watching him. Luhan's lips lift up into a smile. "Not here."
He nods to the cars passing below. “That’s going to hurt. And it’s not going to be pretty.”
In a flash, Joonmyun is next to Luhan, on top of a building.
"Where then?" Joonmyun asks.
"Somewhere safer," Luhan replies. "Where your human bones and flesh won't get crushed by an onslaught of cars, preferably."
They go to an abandoned house. Joonmyun thinks there used to be a garden out front; it’s overrun with weeds. Luhan instructs him to drop there instead.
“Are you sure about this?” Luhan asks. “I’ll only ask once.”
Joonmyun takes a deep breath.
“You can get hurt. You’ll feel pain. Fear. When you become human, your life will end,” Luhan says. He doesn’t say, you might get stuck in hell-living a human life over and over again.
“I’m sure.”
*
The first thing Joonmyun feels is pain. The second, joy.
The grass is damp against his back. His body feels uncoordinated and heavy and like it had taken a bad fall. He smells about ten different things at once.
Oh! And the colors! He doesn’t know the names of any of them, but there are so many. The sky is a different color than the clouds and the grass and the houses and the mailboxes and the intersection-the lights in the intersection were three different colors altogether!!
Joonmyun just sits and blinks there, dazzled, while Luhan laughs.
He gets his bearings much later and Luhan accompanies him to a familiar doorstep-he’s never had to ring the bell before, though.
*
He stands in front of Kris’ front door and blinks. It’s just a door.
And yet its presence is so daunting. It is the difference between here and there, between a life without Kris and…well.
A sudden onslaught of feelings hit him. What if Kris doesn’t feel the same? What if he is angry? What if Joonmyun gave up his immortality for nothing? How will he survive being human?
Joonmyun stands frozen in front of the door. The doorbell switch is covered with a sheen of dust.
The decision is taken out of his hands when Kris opens the door, almost an hour after Joonmyun arrives. He looks surprised to find Joonmyun there.
Joonmyun swallows.
“Hi,” Joonmyun says, standing awkwardly. He shuffles his feet on the welcome mat. They make a rough noise.
“Hi,” Kris says, opening the door wider. His brow is furrowed. “I knew there was someone out here, I thought they sent someone to-never mind. Why are you standing out here?”
Joonmyun looks at him, then reaches up and cradles his face. He laughs, tears springing to the corner of his eyes. Warmth floods beneath his palm. “Oh.”
Kris looks at him, managing to look more confused. Joonmyun remembers his hasty exit the last time that were together. He doesn’t apologize.
“I’m human now,” Joonmyun says. There is warmth flooding his chest, threatening to take over his whole body.
Kris looks at him and feels like his world has been turned upside down. “How?”
“I fell,” Joonmyun says, rubbing his arms. There are grass stains on his jacket.
Kris swallows. He is wearing an expression Joonmyun doesn’t recognize-not on Kris’ face, anyway.
“You can... you can do that?” Kris asks.
Joonmyun nods, fingers skating over Kris' face before his hands fall to his sides.
“Why?”
Joonmyun is still smiling. “I fell.”
Kris furrows his brow, opens his mouth-but he’s interrupted by arms closing around his neck. He feels the unspoken for you in Joonmyun’s embrace.
Joonmyun is warm. Joonmyun smells like spring.
Joonmyun is finally, finally real.
*
Joonmyun stands around at Kris’ apartment, eyes wide, taking in everything.
"It's like I'm seeing everything for the first time," Joonmyun says. "Although... the inside of your apartment is mostly the same color as it was when I was an angel."
Kris has nothing to say to that, so he shrugs. He watches as Joonmyun runs his hand over the leather sofa, feeling the texture. His heart beats faster watching Joonmyun take his first new look at his apartment.
"There are so many things I must learn... Colors… Texture… How to live like one of you," Joonmyun turns and looks at Kris. He plays with the edges of his leather jacket, fingers clutching the ends.
Kris realizes that Joonmyun is afraid. That Joonmyun has thrown away everything-his immortality, his life, for him. And he is not asking for anything in return.
Kris swallows. His constant is right here in his living room. His constant has become human. "Don't worry. I'll be here for you."
Joonmyun’s eyes shine bright when he smiles.
*
Joonmyun is holding a knife, touching the wooden end, observing his reflection in the steel metal. He runs a finger slowly to the ridged edges. He presses the edge to his palm. Pain spurts from his palm, a line of blood trickling out. Joonmyun watches fascinated, even as the knife drops to the floor. The blood trickles down his wrist.
“What color is that?” Joonmyun asks, dazed.
Kris looks up and sees him, mutters a curse. He knocks things over as he searches for something, grabbing Joonmyun’s hand and running it under the sink.
Joonmyun hisses but keeps watching the brightest color he’s seen swirl down the drain.
“What?” Kris asks, lifting Joonmyun’s hand up above his head to help stop the bleeding. He starts bandaging the wound.
“It’s such a beautiful color,” Joonmyun says. He smiles.
“….Red. It’s red,” Kris says. “Stop smiling.”
“Is all blood like that?” Joonmyun asks, facing him. He winces when Kris slathers medicine on the cut.
“Yeah,” Kris says, voice quiet as he bandages Joonmyun’s hand. He keeps taking peeks at Joonmyun from under his lashes.
Joonmyun hums.
“You’re not allowed in the kitchen,” Kris decides. Holding Joonmyun’s hand, he leads him to the living room. They have a lot of work to do.
*
Joonmyun is a fast learner. He is already familiar with humans and their technology. He is easily distracted though, by the simplest things-the colorful wings of a butterfly, the wind, the smell of bacon, a spinning top, the heat of boiling water.
He also finds that being an angel in the human world is a lot easier than being a human in the human world.
As an angel, he could be anywhere in the blink of an eye, just by thinking of a location. As a human-he has to walk, take confusing public transportation, get jostled by other humans.
Then there are the smells-the smell of cheese melting, burgers frying, flowers, new books, old books, grass-and then there’s dog waste in the park, dumpsters, fish in the grocery aisle. Kris takes him everywhere he can, proud of the fact that he is the one showing Joonmyun all these things for the first time. Selfishly, Kris knows that Joonmyun will never forget him like this-that everything he sees will always contain the memory of Kris, and he wants it that way.
Kris takes Joonmyun on a food trip and laughs and laughs at him as Joonmyun tastes bitter, spicy, sour, and sweet. Joonmyun can’t resist and tries to put almost anything edible in his mouth. There’s a story about a cigarette butt in there too, but Kris is still kind of horrified about it.
But the sights-oh, the sights! Joonmyun’s seen everything before, but never in color. It’s enough that everything is new again.
*
They sit on the embankment and watch the fireworks.
Joonmyun’s eyes are wide, his mouth open in a little ‘o.’
“Wow,” he keeps saying. “Wow.”
Kris laughs.
*
Joonmyun grows into a personality. He becomes a human that smiles often, at everything, in all situations. When Joonmyun likes something, when he’s amazed at something (and it happens a lot), his smile is as bright as a thousand suns. When he’s confused or embarrassed, he laughs, an awkward sound that’s different from when he’s truly happy.
It seems like he’s taken to heart what Kris said about being serious and smiling and although Kris wants to take it back, he can’t find it in himself to do so.
Joonmyun is fucking beautiful when he smiles.
*
For human Joonmyun, the world is something new, something that astonishes at every turn. Kris is more than a little charmed; for him and everyone else, the world is a matter of course. Hardly anything amazed him anymore, in the way that everything becomes ordinary when you get older.
Joonmyun likes colors and prints. His wardrobe slowly builds up over the weeks, ghastly things that Kris tries to discourage him from choosing but ends up buying for him anyway. Joonmyun grins at him over a rack of red and green sweaters, exclaiming over the different detailed holiday prints woven in the design.
Kris smiles at him, a little sad. Was that emotion called wistful?
“May you never grow so used to the world that nothing will amaze you anymore,” Kris says.
Joonmyun thinks that is impossible; that there will always be something new to discover, something new to learn every single day. Already, he feels like life is rushing past him, a kiss on the cheek and she’s out the door, leaving Joonmyun standing to hurry and follow. His human life feels like it’s on fast forward, compared to his life as an angel.
As an angel, he could even spend hours on end cataloging his days and thoughts. Now-now there are too many things he wants to do, see and feel, he can hardly keep track of them all, much less spend all day wrapped up only in his thoughts with no distractions. Since taking the fall, he’s been awash in sensations, so focused on enjoying life, on being alive, on taking as much as he can from this experience, because-because he knows it will end one day.
It is a far cry from the initial passivity, the distant observer role of an angel.
He says this out loud to Kris, and ends with a smile that says, you were right; human lives are more beautiful.
Kris buys him a gramophone.
*
Touching-and being touched-is a feeling that Joonmyun found no words to describe. Kris told him there are words for that, like smooth (the marble countertop in Kris’ kitchen) and rough (some weird square that Kris called sandpaper) and soft (the thing Kris sleeps on) and hard (almost everything in this world, really).
“So what’s this then?” Joonmyun asks, cradling Kris’ wrist between his hands.
Kris looks at him. “What do you think?”
“Well…” Joonmyun purses his lips. “It’s smooth and the bones underneath are hard.”
“There are other ways to feel things,” Kris says. His eyes are dark.
“How?”
“Like this,” Kris murmurs. He lifts Joonmyun’s chin up, and presses their lips together slowly.
“How’s that?”
Joonmyun licks his lips. “Wet?”
Kris laughs, curls his fingers into the back of Joonmyun’s neck. “Close your eyes,” he says. Joonmyun does and Kris kisses him again. Their lips align, soft, until Kris slowly opens his mouth to draw Joonmyun’s lower lip between his. Joonmyun feels a churning in his gut, and is reminded of the fireworks display Kris took him to see the other day-only this time, the fireworks are bursting beneath his eyelids.
Lips press into his jaw, the side of his neck, his collarbones; large hands hold his hips steady. Joonmyun is shaking and he doesn’t know why but he knows he doesn’t want it to stop.
“Don’t bite down, okay?” Kris mutters into his chin. Joonmyun blinks as something wet traces across his lower lip. His eyes flutter closed at the sensation, eyelashes brushing Kris’ cheeks. Kris’ tongue traces the inside of his mouth, slowly running over the roof, tangling with his tongue. Joonmyun moans and tries not to bite down at the surprising sensation, fingers squeezing Kris’ biceps.
Soon, his legs are wrapped around Kris’ waist and he’s being hoisted off to bed, the mattress bouncing against his back.
Kris looks at him then, his eyes soft, tender, and oh, this was the way Yixing looked when-but Kris is speaking, words slowly filtering in Joonmyun’s brain, “If it makes you uncomfortable, tell me to stop, okay?”
Joonmyun tries to answer, swallows. He feels like his tongue is too big for his mouth. He nods instead. Kris kisses him again, but this time his fingers have slid under Joonmyun’s shirt, dancing along the planes of his ribs. Joonmyun’s shirt is tossed aside and the way Kris looks at him again makes Joonmyun shiver-and then he can’t think anymore; lips are at his neck, wet and slightly ticklish, and he’s never felt anything like this before, his body almost out of his control, reacting in ways he doesn’t know how to handle. He tries to focus, quick stings of pain that morph into pleasure when he feels teeth and then a soothing tongue on his neck, thumbs rubbing insistent circles over his nipples.
He shifts his hips, an unfamiliar need building, even as his heart races and he tries to breathe.
“Kris,” he manages, hips shifting again and he gasps when his movement brings an even sharper pleasure between his legs. So he does it again, feeling the strength of Kris’ thigh between his own, and fuck those fireworks were multiplying under his eyelids.
“Not yet,” Kris murmurs, his large hands bracketing Joonmyun’s hips and pushing them down gently. His lips and tongue work on a spot behind Joonmyun’s ear and Joonmyun feels like crying at the stirring in his gut, the way his heart is racing, the denial of pleasure and he wants wants wants that feeling again-
“This okay?” Kris asks and it takes Joonmyun a second to notice his pants have been removed, his cock lying against his belly.
“I-“ Joonmyun says, frowns at his stomach. “It’s never done that before.”
Kris laughs into Joonmyun’s neck, chest rising and falling and it makes his shirt brush against Joonmyun’s length. Joonmyun’s eyes widen at the sensation.
“I really don’t know what to do,” Joonmyun says, flushed, even though he knows that Kris knows that.
Kris smiles at him again, the smile where Joonmyun can notice his gums, the one that makes him look more human and less like a billboard advertisement. Lips find Joonmyun’s chin, his nose, his forehead.
“Don’t worry. For now, all you have to do,” Kris takes Joonmyun’s earlobe between his teeth, “is feel.”
It’s then that Kris wraps a hand around Joonmyun and Joonmyun gasps, hands scrambling for purchase on Kris’ shoulders, fingers digging in the soft fabric of Kris’ shirt, the material sliding over his overheated skin. There’s a stirring in his gut, his heart racing and his breath coming out in rapid succession; it’s more sensations he doesn’t know what to do with and he can’t think-the heat continues to build inside him, Kris’ lips finding his own again and it barely takes three strokes of Kris’ large hand wrapped around him before he gasps into Kris’ mouth, hips arching off the bed, eyes blown wide.
Kris is surprised, but he schools his features back to normal when Joonmyun comes down from his high and turns to him.
“Uhm. Wow,” Joonmyun says.
Krs smiles, the corners of his eyes crinkling. Joonmyun lifts a hand and traces them.
“How do I-you-” Joonmyun says but finds that he’s lost the ability to construct sentences.
Kris chuckles, tosses his own shirt off. “That was the human version of heaven.”
His tone is mock serious and on some plane, Joonmyun thinks he really does believe that.
“Trust me, heaven is nothing like that,” Joonmyun says.
Kris laughs and Joonmyun finds himself reaching up to wrap his hands around Kris’ neck. When Joonmyun leans up to kiss him, he hears Kris’ sharp intake of breath and thinks that maybe, he isn’t the only one feeling all this. The thought sends tingles through his whole body, thinking if he can make someone feel that way, if people can make each other feel that way-happy, stomach churning, butterflies-then that was more than amazing.
Maybe The One Upstairs wasn’t so crazy, making these humans, after all.
*
When Joonmyun hesitantly kisses along Kris’ jaw and neck, Kris tenses.
“Am I doing it wrong?” Joonmyun whispers, hands frozen.
“No,” Kris says, bracing himself on his forearms next to Joonmyun’s head. “I just might come too soon.” He motions to the sticky mess on Joonmyun’s stomach.
“Oh,” Joonmyun frowns. “But…isn’t that good?”
Kris smiles and nips his nose, before grabbing tissues to wipe his stomach.
“Sorry, I just don’t…like putting that in my mouth,” Kris says, shooting the tissues in the wastepaper basket.
“Why would you?” Joonmyun asks, eyes round in confusion. Kris laughs again before running his fingers down Joonmyun’s sides. He kisses Joonmyun’s collarbone and soon Joonmyun is awash in new sensations again, his fingers tangled in Kris’ hair when Kris runs his tongue repeatedly over a nipple. One of Kris’ hands is rubbing at the inside of his thigh, thumb occasionally brushing against his balls.
Joonmyun doesn’t know what to focus on, so he anchors his gaze on Kris’ blonde hair as the other trails a path down his chest.
Breathe, Joonmyun thinks when Kris mouths at the inside of his thigh, biting and marking the white flesh.
Breathe breathe breathe, Joonmyun breathes. Breathebbreathe when Kris’ breath ghosts over him, tongue slowly tracing patterns. He lets out a choked whine when Kris’ mouth finally descends and Joonmyun’s lost, one hand clutching the bed sheets, the other gripping Kris’ hair.
How had he thought that living without any kind of feeling was enough? It’s not just the pleasure tingling up his spine, or the way he runs out of breath when Kris does that thing with his tongue; it’s the way he feels when Kris just looks at him, when he smiles and-and other things, amazing things like the sun warming his face, the color red, fireworks, and the breeze running through his hair.
Kris has lubed fingers inside him now, fingers rubbing insistently on a spot that makes Joonmyun’s breath catch. It stings a little, but Kris is patient, mutters soothing words in his ear and distracts him with his mouth.
“Heaven is not like this-but I think you will still like it,” Joonmyun mumbles.
Kris laughs, a little self-deprecating.
“You’re the closest to heaven that I’ll ever be,” he whispers into Joonmyun’s skin.
*
Kris rinses them both, hand splayed on the small of his back, their chests flush together as the water runs over them.
There’s a thing humans do, mostly to infants; they’d bring them to a church and wash them with ‘blessed’ water, to ease their entrance to heaven. Joonmyun thinks this is like that, only in reverse. This is his rebirth in the human world.
Kris wonders what introducing a former angel to the sins of the flesh says about him.
*
“Sex,” Joonmyun says.
“Yeah,” Yixing laughs, eyes crinkling. “There is that.”
Yixing’s apartment is clean and well-lit. Everything gives off an aura of purity and neatness and there are no dark corners. Light shines through the curtains on the big windows. It is a far cry from Kris’ apartment and Joonmyun wonders how the people he’s come to like the most in this world are so different. He wonders if all humans are this different too.
“And it’s everything else too,” Joonmyun stops, fumbles. The human Joonmyun has a harder time constructing sentences, translating his feelings into words, overwhelmed by the abundance of different emotions he can feel at once.
Yixing nods, smiling. Yixing understands, anyway.
*
They are walking down a pier, ice creams in hand. The place is alive with noise, running children and couples standing by the bay. A man holding balloons stands in the corner, handing a red balloon to a small child. Joonmyun sees Kyungsoo nearby, in his black jacket and jeans, glancing at him before gently guiding the child away from an oncoming cyclist.
Joonmyun takes in the blue of the sea, and then the blue of the sky. He looks at the shapes of the clouds, the colors of the balloons, the prints on peoples’ clothes. He inhales the smell of salt from the water and the hotdogs roasting along the dock, the scent of Kris’ aftershave. He squeezes the warm hand holding his, content.
Kris is looking at him. Smiling. It's a weird smile.
Joonmyun waits for him to talk.
"When you get used to this world... you won't think as much of me," Kris says, that smile still on his face.
You don’t see yourself the way that I do, Joonmyun thinks. He schools his face into a frown. “I’ll always think the world of you.”
*
Joonmyun is dancing. There is something on the television, and he is following it, step for step. It feels fucking amazing. He spins, sweat on his brow. The hairs on his arms are on end, and at the back of his neck, he feels a tingling like someone is watching him. He smiles and continues dancing, arms moving to copy the person on the television. He laughs when he successfully finishes the routine.
A chuckle comes from the corner of the room. Joonmyun turns and smiles. "I knew you were watching the whole time."
Luhan smiles at him. "So you did." Joonmyun flops down on the couch and enjoys the way the soft cushion feels on his tired muscles. Luhan is blonde. Joonmyun never knew that. He wonders if all the other angels had different hair and skin colors too.
"Why have you never fallen?" Joonmyun asks. It has been bothering him for a long time now. It was Luhan who wanted to see colors, Luhan who wanted to stand under the rain. It was Luhan who inadvertently put the idea in his head.
Luhan smiles. "Because I have no reason to."
They stare at each other. Joonmyun tries to read Luhan's eyes. Staying with humans as long as Luhan had and not learning to love seems kind of impossible. Joonmyun thinks of hotel pillars, burgers, rain, colors, and Minseok, and it all makes sense. A car pulls up on the driveway. Luhan grins at him, nods in a 'See-you-later' fashion and disappears.
"Hi," Kris says, smiling as he is greeted with an armful of Joonmyun.
Joonmyun grins at him. Kris leans down and kisses him.
When they break apart, Kris's hands around Joonmyun's waist, Kris asks, "What were you doing?"
Joonmyun smiles, thumb drawing circles on the back of Kris's neck. "Just enjoying the simple things."
They stand and kiss for a long time.
*
Kris’ phone rings that afternoon. Joonmyun is bundled in a hideous Christmas sweater, head on Kris’ lap, trying to make sense of a sitcom. The phone rings and the sound feels like it reverberates through the apartment.
Kris feels his face turn pale. He excuses himself and takes the call in his room, face a stoic mask. Behind him, the sitcom’s laugh track trills. He answers the call, subdued, business-like.
The past few weeks with Joonmyun have been amazing-and the sudden noise feels like he has been just forcefully dragged back down to reality. The one where he is an assassin. Nothing more.
Maybe Joonmyun doesn’t think anything of killing. Maybe for Joonmyun it’s Kris’ purpose. And Kris, Kris wants to believe that. Wants to go back to believing that he doesn’t care about anything, that he can take lives without guilt, wants to fool himself that he had been able to do that since the first time he shot a person.
But he’s got Joonmyun now.
He doesn’t want to be that person with so much blood on his hands.
He doesn’t want to touch Joonmyun with these hands. He wants to be better.
He paces his room after he takes the call; his mind is a mess. He doesn’t know why this bothers him so much-Joonmyun doesn’t care about what he does for a living. Joonmyun knows what he does and doesn’t care; he couldn’t ask for a more understanding partner.
Except Joonmyun doesn’t understand, not fully, does he?
What it means to take a fellow human life?
*
“I have to go tonight,” Kris says. He looks for his gun, cigarettes, gloves.
“Oh,” Joonmyun says, leaning against the door. His sweater is a size too big, slipping over his hands. “A job?”
“Yeah.” Kris looks up at him. Joonmyun looks so innocent; even if he has seen more deaths in this world than Kris has. It is one thing to be an observer-to just see and learn; another thing to participate-to feel and understand. Kris started seeing these lines clearly since getting to know Joonmyun. He wonders when Joonmyun will realize the difference.
Joonmyun smiles. “It’s weird to think that I won’t be the one escorting that soul…”
Kris doesn’t know what to say to that.
*
Joonmyun continues watching the sitcom, smiling up at Kris before giving him a goodbye kiss. Kris can see the light from the TV screen through the curtains on the front window.
Just one last time, Kris decides as he closes the door to his apartment and faces the chilly night air.
He doesn’t know what the hell to do for a living afterwards, but he’ll figure it out. He has Joonmyun now.
They’ll figure it out.
*
It’s Minseok who visits this time.
“Hi,” Minseok’s voice is quiet, subdued. The morning light filters through the dark curtains.
“Good morning,” Joonmyun replies, smiling. Maybe he can try making pancakes for Kris today. He’s watched him enough times. He pokes through the wooden cupboards.
“Joonmyun,” Minseok says. His black clothes match Kris’ dark furniture.
“Yeah?” Joonmyun asks, running his finger down the instructions on the back of the pancake box.
“Joonmyun, Kris is gone,” Minseok says.
Joonmyun freezes. The box drops to the floor, spilling white powder everywhere.
“Luhan picked him up this morning. I guess there was trouble at his job,” Minseok says softly.
Joonmyun understands why it’s Minseok and not Luhan who is here. Minseok is always calm.
“Please leave,” Joonmyun says.
“Joonmyun,” Minseok starts.
“Please,” Joonmyun says. When he turns to face Minseok, his mouth is upturned into a smile. His eyes are telling a different story.
Minseok looks at him. “You’ve adapted well.”
He disappears.
*
“Do you regret it?” Kyungsoo whispers. It’s been a week and Joonmyun feels like he’s been strung dry. His eyes are painful from crying, his heart heavy and hollow at the same time.
The pier is bustling with noise. Kyungsoo stands next to Joonmyun; they watch as the balloon man ties a string to a child’s wrist. She runs off, the red balloon trailing behind her.
Joonmyun closes his eyes.
The world is so unfair. This world is so unfair. He knows that fairness is a concept only made by humans. It fits.
He thinks of his life in heaven. Purposeful, unfeeling, needed, set. He imagines never taking the fall.
He thinks of living an eternity without knowing Kris . Not experiencing his warm embrace, his tender kiss, or even just one simple touch.
Slowly, he opens his eyes. Breathes. The air smells of the sea, hotdogs, laughter. It smells of life.
Joonmyun looks at Kyungsoo, “No.”
His heart tells him that even if he could only spend one minute as a human with Kris, he would still take the fall.
For the first time since Kris’ death, he smiles. A real one. “I don’t regret it at all.”
“So,” Luhan asks. “What did you like best about your life?”
Kris thinks of the fire, the orphanage, Tao. He thinks of the people who had died under his hands, his jail cell, the blood on the pavement. He thinks of his apartment-the first thing he called his own, his bed, french fries, and dumplings. He thinks of fireworks, rap music, playing cards with Chanyeol, cold beer. He thinks of the first snowfall, warm drizzles, flowers in the spring. He thinks of Joonmyun.
He smiles.