hold our tongues and fill our lungs | #tac ficmix
hold our tongues and fill our lungs
taemin/sulli ft. kai and krystal
pg-13, 3137w
-- for naomi, remix of onceuponataem's heartbreaking give us a little love. i set out remixing there comes the soft rain (the first fic of yours i read ;;), but it wasn't turning out the way i wanted it to (read: it was really bad) so i scrapped it and it ended up like this. i hope you like it somewhat! (prompt: "lay me down" by sam smith)
two weeks before:
This is Taemin’s last night on Earth. A club three blocks from where he and Jinri first met, no, encountered each other is filled with varying forms of smoke. He’s nursing a cigarette between his lips, the tip still glowing a burnt orange, coughing. Nonetheless, he inhales. He inhales as if it is the last breathe he will ever take (he’s not far off) and coughs out the plumes of tar that can’t fuck up his lungs any more than he already has.
Taemin doesn’t know that this is his last night, though he knows his life is prematurely drawing to a close. Maybe if he knew that today was the last, he would’ve listened to Jongin - stayed home and read a fucking book or something. Think about Jinri. Eat dinner with Jongin and all his old friends that suddenly care again now that he’s dying. Think about Jinri. Human empathy’s so conditional like that - no one gives a fuck until you’re about to kick the bucket, and then they cry like they’ll miss you when they treated you like shit when you were still healthy and well and alive. He coughs out another plume of smoke behind the back of his hand. Thinks about Jinri again.
But he’s here, in this club three blocks from where he and Jinri first met - no, encountered each other. He remembers the way her nicotine lips felt against his, kickstarting the slowing of his heart, giving her nicotine gum that she never wanted to use. I want to die, she told him and Taemin frowned because he remembers thinking that, too, until he actually started dying and realized what a waste of time it was. I can save her, he whispered to himself in between coughing later that night. I can save her - the smile, so bright on her face when she told him she refused alcohol and cigarettes - I can save her -
Some girl giggles in his ear. Not Jinri. Taemin leans away from her but she leans closer with a promise, wanna go somewhere quiet? He shakes his head because only smoke escapes when he opens his mouth now, and he’ll start coughing as the tendrils rise up to mix with the fog from the dry ice machines. The girl’s hand starts up his thigh and suddenly his breath is caught in his throat - Jinri, Jinri, Jinri - and there is no breath after it to soothe his blackened lungs.
What the fuck, she starts, taking her hand back. He falls off the couch, and his throat burns and someone starts screaming call a fucking ambulance, call the fucking ambulance!
Oh, he thinks, when he starts blinking in and out of consciousness. So this is what it feels like. He wasn’t particularly afraid about it before, but now, no breath hitting his lungs, the taste of nicotine gum - too sweet - somehow on his tongue, Jinri’s smile in his mind - he’s fucking terrified. I want to die, he told Jongin when he picked up his first pack of cigarettes after years of not knowing where his life was going and Jongin frowned because he didn’t get it and didn’t believe him then.
There are things we say because we don’t understand the apprehension behind them until we get there. Seems like a good idea, but it’s not, and someone’s pulled him outside where the cool night air brushes against his face like Jinri’s gentle fingertips, whispering in his ear I want to die, I want to die, I want to die.
Taemin starts laughing. Nothing is especially humorous about the situation - his vision is fading, his heart is slowing at a steady pace, and his laughs escape his lips as breathless, labored sounds - but he doesn’t want to be afraid or cry or leave the world with Jinri still in it without a smile, so he laughs. He laughs until he can’t, and then nothing’s funny anymore.
There’s no moon in the sky. Shame, is the last thought that passes his mind. Actually, the penultimate one. His real last thought is about Jinri and the last packet of nicotine gum he gave her that she actually put into her pocket.
Now he sees a moon in the sky. It’s the last thing he sees.
now:
Jinri wants matching coffins for them both. “It’ll be cute, don’t you think?” she slurs to Soojung, who’s trying to drag her drunk best friend back to her flat, but Jinri’s still-lighted cigarette keeps almost searing her cheek. She gives up and lets Jinri slide onto the street, laughing all the way down.
“Yeah, because dying’s cute,” Soojung deadpans, brushing Jinri’s hair out of her face. Jinri giggles and slaps her hands away.
“It is,” she says, suddenly serious. “Romantic, isn’t it? Laying side-by-side, in matching coffins. Whoever digs us up thousands of years later will know we loved each other.”
Soojung laughs, two-parts harsh and one-part sympathetic, all toward the night sky. “Don’t you think he’s still alive?”
Jinri’s eyes are glassy when they glance back towards Soojung, reflecting her and the quarter moon behind her in her dark irises. “Do you think I’m still sane?”
Soojung doesn’t know how to reply.
one week and three days before:
Taemin’s funeral is understated. Of course, he doesn’t know this - the main character of a funeral is never quite…knowledgeable about these things - but Jongin does, in his black dress shirt and trousers. Jongin doesn’t think he’ll cry, but frustrated tears start fogging his eyes and he starts screaming I told you to stop, you bastard, I told you didn’t I? to Taemin’s smiling portrait and the funeral director has to ask him to take a moment outside.
I want you to find this girl for me, Taemin told him last week or so, a hesitant smile on his face - tired but, Jongin had to squint to catch it, happy. Just make sure she’s doing alright? After I’m gone?
Jongin had slammed his fists down on the table. Stop talking like it’s going to happen so soon, dumbass, c’mon Taemin -
Her name’s Jinri, and that was that.
Jongin only remembers this - the girl’s name - when they take Taemin’s body for cremation. He’ll be just like his old cigarette butts, Jongin thinks, sitting on a pew with his head in his hands, his best friend disappearing into a pile of ashes. Burned bright when he was alive - he takes a shaky breath and something burns at the bridge of his nose where he’s trying to keep the tears in - but eventually, burned out.
now:
It’s a night, not unlike Taemin’s last night on Earth. Jinri’s asleep on her couch, empty beer bottles in front of her, trash can next to them, Taemin’s jacket that smells like ashtrays and muck and her now, she supposes, curled in her arms. Her breathing is deep and even except for a ragged, watery sigh every now and then, a sparing hiccup in between those too.
Behind the darkness of her eyelids, Jinri dreams of a boy with soft hair and even softer smiles placing that jacket over her, coughing a few times, whispering an I love you forever in her ear, kissing her like she’s something precious, something fragile, something not wrecked over nicotine and wired with alcohol, and then she realizes she’s not dreaming - she’s remembering - but she’s not actually awake, either.
Am I dead? she wonders. She feels Taemin’s hand in hers, squeezing her fingers gently - he was always so gentle, so warm, so doomed and something in the pit of her stomach stirs -
She grabs the trash can before she starts throwing up. And before her vomit soaks the contents of the waste basket, Jinri sees a packet of Nicorette, one of the last that he pressed into her hands - I love you forever -
“Do you still love me?” Jinri whispers to her ceiling, wiping the back of her mouth and making sure not to ruin the jacket. She looks up because she assumes - even though his lungs were probably shit and his liver not much better - that he went to heaven. He was good to her, at least. “Can people love each other long after they’re both dead?”
No answer.
That’s why they need the matching coffins.
one week before:
Jongin has a name, but he doesn’t have an address, or a picture, or, most importantly, a damn phone number. It’s not like he can really go around asking every girl he sees for her name.
He finds some of Taemin’s beers in his refrigerator. Only one out of the six pack has been touched. I’m celebrating my death, he told Jongin when Jongin asked.
Fucking up your liver, that’s what it is, he frowned back and Taemin just smiled before wondering aloud why he didn’t decide to stay with Jongin sooner.
Takes a swig of it. Jongin doesn’t like the taste - never had, and he remembers Taemin was the same when they drank for the first time together. He wonders when it was exactly that Taemin fell into a life of nicotine and alcohol and wonders why he wasn’t around to see his best friend disappear into the abyss until the state of his lungs forced him out.
Could I have saved him? Jongin wonders, pouring the rest of the beer down the kitchen sink. The brown liquid looks like oil in the night. The packs of nicotine gum during those last few weeks, blowing too much cash on just one, let alone several - they’re not for me, Taemin always said, with a small smile on his face, a smile like the hesitant one that graced his lips when he brought up Jinri, or whatever her name was.
And then Jongin gets it.
now:
Soojung’s trying to take her shopping. They both have a cigarette between their lips, but this is Jinri’s third in an hour and Soojung’s first.
“I’ve been reading the newspaper these days,” Jinri starts, tapping her cigarette against the ashtray in Soojung’s car. Some of the ashes miss when Soojung pushes on the gas pedal again.
“Why?” Soojung asks with a sigh, like she’s not sure she wants to know. Jinri smiles and opens the window, sticking her right arm out, cigarette dangling between her fingers. It loosens in her grip and is taken by the wind.
“The obituary column,” she says nonchalantly.
There’s silence between them, only the engine humming quietly, for a while, and then Jinri speaks again. “Mind taking me to the nearby cemetery?”
“Jinri.” Soojung’s voice is low and warning, her knuckles turning white with how tightly she grips the steering wheel - don’t do this, Jinri, don’t do this - but Jinri just smiles.
“I want to die,” Jinri starts. There’s no fear present in her voice. “I want to die, and I told him that. But of course he - he was supposed to save me, you know - he goes and fucking dies first!”
Soojung slams on the brakes, throwing Jinri forward in her seat. “Jinri, stop!” she yells. “You can’t just say that -”
“But that’s how I feel!” Jinri screams. “I want to die, I want to die, and he just dies! Fucking nicotine gum and all that crap about how I’m beautiful and how he loves me and then he’s just not here anymore, do you know how much that fucking hurts, Soojung?” She glares at Soojung, who’s at a loss for what to say, and uses her friend’s stunned silence to her advantage. “No. You don’t.”
Soojung rests her forehead against the steering wheel for a moment, biting her bottom lip. When she leans back in her seat, her eyes are steely and cool and wavering, but Jinri doesn’t give a fuck. “I’m taking you home, Jinri,” she says, voice steady, turning on the engine again.
Jinri laughs, caustic. “Can a girl never get what she wants in this world?”
Soojung throws the car into reverse. They hit a dead end.
three hours before:
It’s past midnight and before dawn when Jongin sees a girl with a jacket that reminds him of one of Taemin’s over her shoulders, leaning heavily against a small table near a dimly lit café three blocks from the club where his best friend died. She coughs a few times and, Jongin walks a few steps forward, is that a smile on her face? - small and resigned like this is her fate, like she’s been in this very same position a fair number times before.
“Hey!” he calls out before he knows what he’s doing. She looks up and her eyes are lifeless, almost - flickering only when they register his figure from across the street before leaning back down. “Hey,” he breathes again, looking both ways before jogging over to her.
She’s lighting another cigarette by the time Jongin sits down across from her. “Are you Jinri?” he asks, because why the hell not. He’s only fulfilling a dead man’s wish, anyway.
She flinches at the name. “Maybe,” she opts for, cryptically, exhaling a cloud of smoke that shrouds whatever hints Jongin could’ve found in her expression. When the smoke dissipates, her eyes are still almost-lifeless. He clears his throat.
Honestly, Jongin didn’t know what to expect. But he can tell that Taemin’s absence - Taemin’s death, if she knew about that, which she probably did - did nothing to save her, no matter how valiant the attempt his friend made was. Jinri smells so strongly of cigarette smoke that Jongin thinks she leaves a trail of its scent behind her and black circles shade under her eyes, so noticeable that they’re two tints darker than the night. Jongin can tell that she’s beautiful, but she looks as pale as death, and she carries the beginning of the look on her as if she’s anticipating it’ll be in next season.
He swallows and prepares himself to ask the dumbest question he’ll probably ever ask in his life. “Are you alright?”
Her smile is dry. “Can’t get any closer to death than this, right?” She coughs. “Feels not so bad.”
Jongin frowns, not sure what to say to that. Jinri answers for him instead. “How’s Taemin?”
He looks down into his lap, studying his clasped fingers. “He’s dead.”
This time when she smiles, it’s not as dry. There’s a lingering sadness sticking to the upturned corners of her mouth, even in the dim lighting of the café nearby. “I figured,” she whispers. Her bottom lip trembles, but her smile stays put.
“Thought he was going to save me,” Jinri continues and Jongin sees tears well up in her eyes. “I’d quit smoking and drinking and we’d be happy together.” She wipes at them with the back of her hand, taking out a packet of cigarettes from her coat pocket. Her fingers shake as she presses a cancer stick to her lips. Jongin feels like he’s watching a car crash in slow motion - ultimately destructive, but he can’t find himself to stop her.
“And then he,” she almost spits the word, affectionately, “dies first.” Jinri shakes her head and fiddles with her lighter. The grin dancing shyly on her lips is almost amused now. “Tell me…which cemetery is he buried at?”
Jongin raises his eyebrows, wondering why she’s asking. “Taemin was cremated.”
And then she starts laughing. Jinri laughs and laughs and laughs until tears streak down her pale, pale face and then she’s digging the palm of her hand, cigarette between her index and middle finger, into her right eye and she’s crying.
Jongin doesn’t know what to do. Hold onto her hand? The tip of her cigarette still burns. Offer to get her home? Her choked sobs, punctuated by deep smoker’s coughs, are still rattling her body. So he settles for this:
“I’m sorry, Jinri.”
She looks up to meet his eyes briefly. And her eyes are beautiful - teary and almost lifeless, fate has played with her too many times, put hope in her heart only to tear it out, fiber by fiber - but haunting. “Can a girl never get what she wants in this world?” is the last thing Jinri says to Jongin, voice shaking and wet, before her eyes don’t meet his again, even when he offers to get her something to drink or drive her home.
He sighs, knowing it’s futile. Jongin stands up, about to walk away, when he feels a square package in his pants pocket. He pulls it out, considers it for a moment, then glances at Jinri, before deciding to give it to her.
She doesn’t look up at him. “He’d want you to have this,” Jongin supplies, placing the package before her on the table.
Jinri stares and stares and stares until Jongin can’t watch her watching the package any longer with her - he has to squint to see it - now-lifeless eyes.
It’s a pack of Nicorette.
now:
This is Jinri’s last night on Earth. The street that Jongin drove away from her on, the street bordering the small table near a dimly lit café where she and Taemin first met, no, encountered, each other is quiet. This street is where it ends, Jinri thinks as she lies down on the asphalt, right in between the dotted lines separating one way from the other - there’ll be no accidents here, she tells herself. All intentional.
Jinri knows that this is her last night, though she didn’t until an hour ago. Maybe if she knew today would be her last, she would’ve apologized to Soojung. Something along the lines of: I’m just a bitch, and I’m sorry you had to be stuck with me. Oh, and please quit smoking.
Instead, she thinks about Taemin. His soft hair, the kind smile on his lips whenever he looked at her, the way he kissed her, the way he gave her his coffee that one day, the I love you forever, and even the damn fucking nicotine gum. And even though what’s left of him is sitting in a drawer amongst thousands of others, Jinri thinks about being buried in a cemetery beside him, matching coffins and all.
There’s a moon in the sky. Almost full. I’m laying beside him in the dirt, she convinces herself as she closes her eyes. And we’re safe together.
There are things we say because we don’t understand the apprehension behind them until we get there. Seems like a good idea, but it’s not, and Jinri hears tires on the asphalt, coming her way, and suddenly she’s fucking terrified, so terrified that she has to whisper I want to die, I want to die, I want to die to herself, waiting for the impact. Her fingers find the packet of nicotine gum Jongin set before her and she -
Now she sees no moon in the sky.
It’s the last thing Jinri sees.
taemin/sulli ft. kai and krystal
pg-13, 3137w
-- for naomi, remix of onceuponataem's heartbreaking give us a little love. i set out remixing there comes the soft rain (the first fic of yours i read ;;), but it wasn't turning out the way i wanted it to (read: it was really bad) so i scrapped it and it ended up like this. i hope you like it somewhat! (prompt: "lay me down" by sam smith)
two weeks before:
This is Taemin’s last night on Earth. A club three blocks from where he and Jinri first met, no, encountered each other is filled with varying forms of smoke. He’s nursing a cigarette between his lips, the tip still glowing a burnt orange, coughing. Nonetheless, he inhales. He inhales as if it is the last breathe he will ever take (he’s not far off) and coughs out the plumes of tar that can’t fuck up his lungs any more than he already has.
Taemin doesn’t know that this is his last night, though he knows his life is prematurely drawing to a close. Maybe if he knew that today was the last, he would’ve listened to Jongin - stayed home and read a fucking book or something. Think about Jinri. Eat dinner with Jongin and all his old friends that suddenly care again now that he’s dying. Think about Jinri. Human empathy’s so conditional like that - no one gives a fuck until you’re about to kick the bucket, and then they cry like they’ll miss you when they treated you like shit when you were still healthy and well and alive. He coughs out another plume of smoke behind the back of his hand. Thinks about Jinri again.
But he’s here, in this club three blocks from where he and Jinri first met - no, encountered each other. He remembers the way her nicotine lips felt against his, kickstarting the slowing of his heart, giving her nicotine gum that she never wanted to use. I want to die, she told him and Taemin frowned because he remembers thinking that, too, until he actually started dying and realized what a waste of time it was. I can save her, he whispered to himself in between coughing later that night. I can save her - the smile, so bright on her face when she told him she refused alcohol and cigarettes - I can save her -
Some girl giggles in his ear. Not Jinri. Taemin leans away from her but she leans closer with a promise, wanna go somewhere quiet? He shakes his head because only smoke escapes when he opens his mouth now, and he’ll start coughing as the tendrils rise up to mix with the fog from the dry ice machines. The girl’s hand starts up his thigh and suddenly his breath is caught in his throat - Jinri, Jinri, Jinri - and there is no breath after it to soothe his blackened lungs.
What the fuck, she starts, taking her hand back. He falls off the couch, and his throat burns and someone starts screaming call a fucking ambulance, call the fucking ambulance!
Oh, he thinks, when he starts blinking in and out of consciousness. So this is what it feels like. He wasn’t particularly afraid about it before, but now, no breath hitting his lungs, the taste of nicotine gum - too sweet - somehow on his tongue, Jinri’s smile in his mind - he’s fucking terrified. I want to die, he told Jongin when he picked up his first pack of cigarettes after years of not knowing where his life was going and Jongin frowned because he didn’t get it and didn’t believe him then.
There are things we say because we don’t understand the apprehension behind them until we get there. Seems like a good idea, but it’s not, and someone’s pulled him outside where the cool night air brushes against his face like Jinri’s gentle fingertips, whispering in his ear I want to die, I want to die, I want to die.
Taemin starts laughing. Nothing is especially humorous about the situation - his vision is fading, his heart is slowing at a steady pace, and his laughs escape his lips as breathless, labored sounds - but he doesn’t want to be afraid or cry or leave the world with Jinri still in it without a smile, so he laughs. He laughs until he can’t, and then nothing’s funny anymore.
There’s no moon in the sky. Shame, is the last thought that passes his mind. Actually, the penultimate one. His real last thought is about Jinri and the last packet of nicotine gum he gave her that she actually put into her pocket.
Now he sees a moon in the sky. It’s the last thing he sees.
now:
Jinri wants matching coffins for them both. “It’ll be cute, don’t you think?” she slurs to Soojung, who’s trying to drag her drunk best friend back to her flat, but Jinri’s still-lighted cigarette keeps almost searing her cheek. She gives up and lets Jinri slide onto the street, laughing all the way down.
“Yeah, because dying’s cute,” Soojung deadpans, brushing Jinri’s hair out of her face. Jinri giggles and slaps her hands away.
“It is,” she says, suddenly serious. “Romantic, isn’t it? Laying side-by-side, in matching coffins. Whoever digs us up thousands of years later will know we loved each other.”
Soojung laughs, two-parts harsh and one-part sympathetic, all toward the night sky. “Don’t you think he’s still alive?”
Jinri’s eyes are glassy when they glance back towards Soojung, reflecting her and the quarter moon behind her in her dark irises. “Do you think I’m still sane?”
Soojung doesn’t know how to reply.
one week and three days before:
Taemin’s funeral is understated. Of course, he doesn’t know this - the main character of a funeral is never quite…knowledgeable about these things - but Jongin does, in his black dress shirt and trousers. Jongin doesn’t think he’ll cry, but frustrated tears start fogging his eyes and he starts screaming I told you to stop, you bastard, I told you didn’t I? to Taemin’s smiling portrait and the funeral director has to ask him to take a moment outside.
I want you to find this girl for me, Taemin told him last week or so, a hesitant smile on his face - tired but, Jongin had to squint to catch it, happy. Just make sure she’s doing alright? After I’m gone?
Jongin had slammed his fists down on the table. Stop talking like it’s going to happen so soon, dumbass, c’mon Taemin -
Her name’s Jinri, and that was that.
Jongin only remembers this - the girl’s name - when they take Taemin’s body for cremation. He’ll be just like his old cigarette butts, Jongin thinks, sitting on a pew with his head in his hands, his best friend disappearing into a pile of ashes. Burned bright when he was alive - he takes a shaky breath and something burns at the bridge of his nose where he’s trying to keep the tears in - but eventually, burned out.
now:
It’s a night, not unlike Taemin’s last night on Earth. Jinri’s asleep on her couch, empty beer bottles in front of her, trash can next to them, Taemin’s jacket that smells like ashtrays and muck and her now, she supposes, curled in her arms. Her breathing is deep and even except for a ragged, watery sigh every now and then, a sparing hiccup in between those too.
Behind the darkness of her eyelids, Jinri dreams of a boy with soft hair and even softer smiles placing that jacket over her, coughing a few times, whispering an I love you forever in her ear, kissing her like she’s something precious, something fragile, something not wrecked over nicotine and wired with alcohol, and then she realizes she’s not dreaming - she’s remembering - but she’s not actually awake, either.
Am I dead? she wonders. She feels Taemin’s hand in hers, squeezing her fingers gently - he was always so gentle, so warm, so doomed and something in the pit of her stomach stirs -
She grabs the trash can before she starts throwing up. And before her vomit soaks the contents of the waste basket, Jinri sees a packet of Nicorette, one of the last that he pressed into her hands - I love you forever -
“Do you still love me?” Jinri whispers to her ceiling, wiping the back of her mouth and making sure not to ruin the jacket. She looks up because she assumes - even though his lungs were probably shit and his liver not much better - that he went to heaven. He was good to her, at least. “Can people love each other long after they’re both dead?”
No answer.
That’s why they need the matching coffins.
one week before:
Jongin has a name, but he doesn’t have an address, or a picture, or, most importantly, a damn phone number. It’s not like he can really go around asking every girl he sees for her name.
He finds some of Taemin’s beers in his refrigerator. Only one out of the six pack has been touched. I’m celebrating my death, he told Jongin when Jongin asked.
Fucking up your liver, that’s what it is, he frowned back and Taemin just smiled before wondering aloud why he didn’t decide to stay with Jongin sooner.
Takes a swig of it. Jongin doesn’t like the taste - never had, and he remembers Taemin was the same when they drank for the first time together. He wonders when it was exactly that Taemin fell into a life of nicotine and alcohol and wonders why he wasn’t around to see his best friend disappear into the abyss until the state of his lungs forced him out.
Could I have saved him? Jongin wonders, pouring the rest of the beer down the kitchen sink. The brown liquid looks like oil in the night. The packs of nicotine gum during those last few weeks, blowing too much cash on just one, let alone several - they’re not for me, Taemin always said, with a small smile on his face, a smile like the hesitant one that graced his lips when he brought up Jinri, or whatever her name was.
And then Jongin gets it.
now:
Soojung’s trying to take her shopping. They both have a cigarette between their lips, but this is Jinri’s third in an hour and Soojung’s first.
“I’ve been reading the newspaper these days,” Jinri starts, tapping her cigarette against the ashtray in Soojung’s car. Some of the ashes miss when Soojung pushes on the gas pedal again.
“Why?” Soojung asks with a sigh, like she’s not sure she wants to know. Jinri smiles and opens the window, sticking her right arm out, cigarette dangling between her fingers. It loosens in her grip and is taken by the wind.
“The obituary column,” she says nonchalantly.
There’s silence between them, only the engine humming quietly, for a while, and then Jinri speaks again. “Mind taking me to the nearby cemetery?”
“Jinri.” Soojung’s voice is low and warning, her knuckles turning white with how tightly she grips the steering wheel - don’t do this, Jinri, don’t do this - but Jinri just smiles.
“I want to die,” Jinri starts. There’s no fear present in her voice. “I want to die, and I told him that. But of course he - he was supposed to save me, you know - he goes and fucking dies first!”
Soojung slams on the brakes, throwing Jinri forward in her seat. “Jinri, stop!” she yells. “You can’t just say that -”
“But that’s how I feel!” Jinri screams. “I want to die, I want to die, and he just dies! Fucking nicotine gum and all that crap about how I’m beautiful and how he loves me and then he’s just not here anymore, do you know how much that fucking hurts, Soojung?” She glares at Soojung, who’s at a loss for what to say, and uses her friend’s stunned silence to her advantage. “No. You don’t.”
Soojung rests her forehead against the steering wheel for a moment, biting her bottom lip. When she leans back in her seat, her eyes are steely and cool and wavering, but Jinri doesn’t give a fuck. “I’m taking you home, Jinri,” she says, voice steady, turning on the engine again.
Jinri laughs, caustic. “Can a girl never get what she wants in this world?”
Soojung throws the car into reverse. They hit a dead end.
three hours before:
It’s past midnight and before dawn when Jongin sees a girl with a jacket that reminds him of one of Taemin’s over her shoulders, leaning heavily against a small table near a dimly lit café three blocks from the club where his best friend died. She coughs a few times and, Jongin walks a few steps forward, is that a smile on her face? - small and resigned like this is her fate, like she’s been in this very same position a fair number times before.
“Hey!” he calls out before he knows what he’s doing. She looks up and her eyes are lifeless, almost - flickering only when they register his figure from across the street before leaning back down. “Hey,” he breathes again, looking both ways before jogging over to her.
She’s lighting another cigarette by the time Jongin sits down across from her. “Are you Jinri?” he asks, because why the hell not. He’s only fulfilling a dead man’s wish, anyway.
She flinches at the name. “Maybe,” she opts for, cryptically, exhaling a cloud of smoke that shrouds whatever hints Jongin could’ve found in her expression. When the smoke dissipates, her eyes are still almost-lifeless. He clears his throat.
Honestly, Jongin didn’t know what to expect. But he can tell that Taemin’s absence - Taemin’s death, if she knew about that, which she probably did - did nothing to save her, no matter how valiant the attempt his friend made was. Jinri smells so strongly of cigarette smoke that Jongin thinks she leaves a trail of its scent behind her and black circles shade under her eyes, so noticeable that they’re two tints darker than the night. Jongin can tell that she’s beautiful, but she looks as pale as death, and she carries the beginning of the look on her as if she’s anticipating it’ll be in next season.
He swallows and prepares himself to ask the dumbest question he’ll probably ever ask in his life. “Are you alright?”
Her smile is dry. “Can’t get any closer to death than this, right?” She coughs. “Feels not so bad.”
Jongin frowns, not sure what to say to that. Jinri answers for him instead. “How’s Taemin?”
He looks down into his lap, studying his clasped fingers. “He’s dead.”
This time when she smiles, it’s not as dry. There’s a lingering sadness sticking to the upturned corners of her mouth, even in the dim lighting of the café nearby. “I figured,” she whispers. Her bottom lip trembles, but her smile stays put.
“Thought he was going to save me,” Jinri continues and Jongin sees tears well up in her eyes. “I’d quit smoking and drinking and we’d be happy together.” She wipes at them with the back of her hand, taking out a packet of cigarettes from her coat pocket. Her fingers shake as she presses a cancer stick to her lips. Jongin feels like he’s watching a car crash in slow motion - ultimately destructive, but he can’t find himself to stop her.
“And then he,” she almost spits the word, affectionately, “dies first.” Jinri shakes her head and fiddles with her lighter. The grin dancing shyly on her lips is almost amused now. “Tell me…which cemetery is he buried at?”
Jongin raises his eyebrows, wondering why she’s asking. “Taemin was cremated.”
And then she starts laughing. Jinri laughs and laughs and laughs until tears streak down her pale, pale face and then she’s digging the palm of her hand, cigarette between her index and middle finger, into her right eye and she’s crying.
Jongin doesn’t know what to do. Hold onto her hand? The tip of her cigarette still burns. Offer to get her home? Her choked sobs, punctuated by deep smoker’s coughs, are still rattling her body. So he settles for this:
“I’m sorry, Jinri.”
She looks up to meet his eyes briefly. And her eyes are beautiful - teary and almost lifeless, fate has played with her too many times, put hope in her heart only to tear it out, fiber by fiber - but haunting. “Can a girl never get what she wants in this world?” is the last thing Jinri says to Jongin, voice shaking and wet, before her eyes don’t meet his again, even when he offers to get her something to drink or drive her home.
He sighs, knowing it’s futile. Jongin stands up, about to walk away, when he feels a square package in his pants pocket. He pulls it out, considers it for a moment, then glances at Jinri, before deciding to give it to her.
She doesn’t look up at him. “He’d want you to have this,” Jongin supplies, placing the package before her on the table.
Jinri stares and stares and stares until Jongin can’t watch her watching the package any longer with her - he has to squint to see it - now-lifeless eyes.
It’s a pack of Nicorette.
now:
This is Jinri’s last night on Earth. The street that Jongin drove away from her on, the street bordering the small table near a dimly lit café where she and Taemin first met, no, encountered, each other is quiet. This street is where it ends, Jinri thinks as she lies down on the asphalt, right in between the dotted lines separating one way from the other - there’ll be no accidents here, she tells herself. All intentional.
Jinri knows that this is her last night, though she didn’t until an hour ago. Maybe if she knew today would be her last, she would’ve apologized to Soojung. Something along the lines of: I’m just a bitch, and I’m sorry you had to be stuck with me. Oh, and please quit smoking.
Instead, she thinks about Taemin. His soft hair, the kind smile on his lips whenever he looked at her, the way he kissed her, the way he gave her his coffee that one day, the I love you forever, and even the damn fucking nicotine gum. And even though what’s left of him is sitting in a drawer amongst thousands of others, Jinri thinks about being buried in a cemetery beside him, matching coffins and all.
There’s a moon in the sky. Almost full. I’m laying beside him in the dirt, she convinces herself as she closes her eyes. And we’re safe together.
There are things we say because we don’t understand the apprehension behind them until we get there. Seems like a good idea, but it’s not, and Jinri hears tires on the asphalt, coming her way, and suddenly she’s fucking terrified, so terrified that she has to whisper I want to die, I want to die, I want to die to herself, waiting for the impact. Her fingers find the packet of nicotine gum Jongin set before her and she -
Now she sees no moon in the sky.
It’s the last thing Jinri sees.