tvxq: la ville des lumières
la ville des lumières
yoochun/jaejoong. 1,638w.
Je peux plus respirer dans ce monde avec toi.
On the plane they learn survival French together, où se trouve la gare? and parlez-vous anglais? until the syllables all run together. "I can't do this," Jaejoong surrenders after a while. "Why do they have all these letters if they don't even say them? Pouvez-vous m'aider?"
"J'ai perdu mon portefeuille," Yoochun replies. His pronunciation is probably insulting. "Quelle heure est-il? Au secours." Jaejoong hits his arm with the phrasebook.
An hour from landing, Yoochun tells him, "It doesn't matter, anyway. We know the important words."
"What important words?"
Yoochun leans closer so he can be heard over the engines: "Bonjour. S'il vous plaît. Merci. L'amour."
Jaejoong hits him again.
Jetlag is familiar by now, but the freedom to nap until four in the afternoon is blessedly new. Yoochun wakes up cocooned in thin sheets still wearing his jeans and socks. His mouth tastes like stale airport food. He sits up, groggy, shirtless, and doesn't remember where he is until the pieces of conversational French from the TV click into place. The water's running in the bathroom. Their belongings have been thrown around the hotel room instead of properly unpacked. Along the bed's headboard is painted good night bonne nuit, above it a row of black and white photographs: beaches, clock towers, lighthouses.
When Jaejoong comes out of the shower, his skin's pink from the steam and his hair is wet and tangled. Yoochun is caught in a wreck of bare arms and knees as Jaejoong free-falls onto the bed.
"Good morning," says Jaejoong.
"Good morning," says Yoochun. He curls his toes, rubbing them up Jaejoong's calf. The muscle there jumps. "You're heavy."
Jaejoong squirms away so he can lean against the headboard. His shoulders hide the beginning of night. "Get dressed," he says. He smells like unfamiliar, floral hotel soap. "We're going exploring. I can't believe you fell asleep on me like that."
Yoochun hugs a pillow. "You know you're going to piss all the coffee out of your system soon and then you'll be a sad, empty shell of a human being."
"Don't underestimate me," says Jaejoong.
He passes out within the next fifteen minutes, his head bowed towards his chest. Yoochun watches him for a while, propped up on an elbow, before he takes pity and moves Jaejoong onto the pillow next to him. Jaejoong's knees curl up. He buries his face into Yoochun's armpit. There'd been a second after landing when Yoochun'd looked out the plane's small square window and felt like turning around and flying straight back to Korea. It'd only been a second.
The metro isn't as difficult as they'd anticipated. They share their train with sleek businessmen, students, other tourists. Jaejoong turns toward the tinted windows as they fly into stations and past underground lights and waiting commuters. He and Yoochun sit together, sharing earphones in the shake of the rails, the flow of people, water in and out.
Yoochun is an amateur photographer at best. He snaps pictures of street corners, small cafés, people with strong eyebrows and wild clothing who catch his attention. Jaejoong, against the background of cars and fast-moving clouds, or with his sweater hanging loose from his shoulders, his mouth halfway into a smile. For one of them, Jaejoong is in the motion of reaching at the camera, fingers spread out, hiding himself. The picture catches sunlight behind the dark shape of his hand.
He switches to video on top of the Arc de Triomphe and pans across the streets between rows of red trees, the tops of old churches. Jaejoong's hair is flying in every direction, his cheeks and nose pink from the cold. Yoochun turns the camera onto themselves as he narrates, "Here we are in Paris, freezing our asses off." Jaejoong's fingers sneak bunny ears above his head. "The city's beautiful," he continues. "The girls here are beautiful, too."
The camera shakes, blurs. Jaejoong leans closer to the lens with his hands in his sleeves, rocking on his feet, adding, "We haven't gotten into trouble yet. We miss you."
"Je t'aime," says Yoochun (again, days later back on the metro after the art museums, cathedrals, and cemeteries, when Jaejoong's lost in the stutter of the train and can't hear).
On accident, he wakes up in the middle of night and finds Jaejoong curled up on the edge of the mattress, his knees tucked in like a child's, his arms wrapped around them. Smoke curls from his mouth, thin and white. Yoochun'd left the windows open and now they let in a few taxi horns, agitating the curtains. The only color is in the flicker-red burn of a cigarette thieved from Yoochun's pack, Jaejoong's dirty blond hair, Jaejoong's eyes looking nowhere, turned gray-blue in the smoke.
Yoochun doesn't fall back asleep until Jaejoong puts his cigarette out in the ashtray next to his feet and exhales clear and smokeless again like he's been called back down. If he were brave enough, it'd go differently, he wouldn't need to wait, he could stitch Jaejoong back into his body on his own. But he's still learning, and the cigarettes help, so he pretends that they're being brave for him and that on the inside of each burning, rolled up paper he's written things like: I'm here. I can be the wrist to tie your kite to, the company you fight your way through winter with. We don't need to keep going from country to country; I can give you somewhere to stay.
He thinks about calling home, or taking cellphone pictures to send captioned with time, place, and "wish you were here". In the seven days he's in Paris, he dials the first three numbers of Junsu's cell a hundred times, or his mom's, or the old telephone at their apartment. Then he remembers he can't make calls in Europe, and his fingers pantomime the rest instead.
The next day they get lost in the Galeries Lafayette. Buying gifts from cheaper stores: shirts, hats, useless trinkets and souvenirs. People-watching from benches, stories high under the glass dome. The anonymity feels like relief.
Jaejoong falls in love with a black coat later. He travels his fingers down its sleeve, over the column of gold embossed buttons. "Yoochun," he says, looking at the price tag, "take my wallet away from me."
"Your birthday's in a few months," Yoochun says instead.
"Are you deaf?"
"I'll pay for half of it," he says. "You can pay for my ice cream."
It's good ice cream. Jaejoong steals mouthfuls as they walk down the sidewalk. He leads Yoochun past fashion boutique windows, and rows of sidewalk lamps that reflect in the water. The sky turns dark navy. They follow the Seine wearing gloves and heavy scarves, and don't stand out. Halfway across the Pont Neuf, Jaejoong leans forward, pitched towards the river. Yoochun sits between the lamp posts, his palms flat on the stone ledge. His hands are cold. When he laces his fingers through the spaces between Jaejoong's, it's with an unnamed anxiety waiting for time to stop, for something to change, or break, but he's underestimating the size of Paris, and how they're allowed to be smaller.
Yoochun throws a pillow at him. "Come down."
"Come up. I can see into the next hotel. Someone's getting naked." Jaejoong trips on the hems of both of their jeans. He has a glass of champagne in one hand; the other one tries to pull Yoochun to his feet. When Yoochun finally follows Jaejoong up, Jaejoong rewards him with the champagne glass, empty again.
"There's more," Jaejoong says, and jumps off the bed. He lands, unsteady.
"Don't fall," says Yoochun. He looks out the window, but the room across the street is dark. He glimpses his reflection in the glass and fixes his hair on reflex, because being eight thousand kilometers away from his stylists doesn't mean everything gets left behind. Jaejoong comes back with two glasses, half-full, and a handful of complementary wrapped chocolates that he tosses onto the bed. They link their arms together to drink, spilling most of it, two connected shadows on hotel wallpaper. Jaejoong asks, "Remember my birthday last year?"
"Touring," says Yoochun, slow, tasting it, "and then backstage."
"Your present was the best one," says Jaejoong.
"I don't remember," says Yoochun. He can feel the angles of a wardrobe rack against his back. Hiding between costumes that smelled like hairspray. No one ever jumps on a red-eye flight to Paris unless they're running. Away from something or towards it, Yoochun had handed over his boarding pass without stopping to decide.
"You just said you did." Jaejoong already knows. Jaejoong's likely known since the beginning, but Jaejoong's also the kind of person who needs to fly halfway across the world because he wants to miss home instead of hate it. Suddenly Yoochun wonders what he's even fucking doing here.
"I don't remember," Yoochun says again, desperate not to be the only one reaching out this time. "What was it?"
Jaejoong kisses him. His sleeve is wet with champagne, and cold on Yoochun's wrist. Yoochun meets him halfway.
The 2am before Paris, Yoochun had packed his suitcase with a deck of cards, their French travel guide, the plush rabbit Jaejoong had won for him years ago at Disneyland, sheets of staff paper wedged in a notebook, accessories that weren't his. A half-empty pack of cigarettes hidden under a pair of jeans, regrets folded between his moisturizer and a toothbrush. Three-year exhaustion woven into his clothes. There were time zones copied onto the inside of his wrist, his heart pressed like flowers between the pages of a map, and the stump of wings at his ankles, waiting to lift him from the ground.
I can breathe better in this world with you.
rewritten 8/2010
yoochun/jaejoong. 1,638w.
Je peux plus respirer dans ce monde avec toi.
On the plane they learn survival French together, où se trouve la gare? and parlez-vous anglais? until the syllables all run together. "I can't do this," Jaejoong surrenders after a while. "Why do they have all these letters if they don't even say them? Pouvez-vous m'aider?"
"J'ai perdu mon portefeuille," Yoochun replies. His pronunciation is probably insulting. "Quelle heure est-il? Au secours." Jaejoong hits his arm with the phrasebook.
An hour from landing, Yoochun tells him, "It doesn't matter, anyway. We know the important words."
"What important words?"
Yoochun leans closer so he can be heard over the engines: "Bonjour. S'il vous plaît. Merci. L'amour."
Jaejoong hits him again.
Jetlag is familiar by now, but the freedom to nap until four in the afternoon is blessedly new. Yoochun wakes up cocooned in thin sheets still wearing his jeans and socks. His mouth tastes like stale airport food. He sits up, groggy, shirtless, and doesn't remember where he is until the pieces of conversational French from the TV click into place. The water's running in the bathroom. Their belongings have been thrown around the hotel room instead of properly unpacked. Along the bed's headboard is painted good night bonne nuit, above it a row of black and white photographs: beaches, clock towers, lighthouses.
When Jaejoong comes out of the shower, his skin's pink from the steam and his hair is wet and tangled. Yoochun is caught in a wreck of bare arms and knees as Jaejoong free-falls onto the bed.
"Good morning," says Jaejoong.
"Good morning," says Yoochun. He curls his toes, rubbing them up Jaejoong's calf. The muscle there jumps. "You're heavy."
Jaejoong squirms away so he can lean against the headboard. His shoulders hide the beginning of night. "Get dressed," he says. He smells like unfamiliar, floral hotel soap. "We're going exploring. I can't believe you fell asleep on me like that."
Yoochun hugs a pillow. "You know you're going to piss all the coffee out of your system soon and then you'll be a sad, empty shell of a human being."
"Don't underestimate me," says Jaejoong.
He passes out within the next fifteen minutes, his head bowed towards his chest. Yoochun watches him for a while, propped up on an elbow, before he takes pity and moves Jaejoong onto the pillow next to him. Jaejoong's knees curl up. He buries his face into Yoochun's armpit. There'd been a second after landing when Yoochun'd looked out the plane's small square window and felt like turning around and flying straight back to Korea. It'd only been a second.
The metro isn't as difficult as they'd anticipated. They share their train with sleek businessmen, students, other tourists. Jaejoong turns toward the tinted windows as they fly into stations and past underground lights and waiting commuters. He and Yoochun sit together, sharing earphones in the shake of the rails, the flow of people, water in and out.
Yoochun is an amateur photographer at best. He snaps pictures of street corners, small cafés, people with strong eyebrows and wild clothing who catch his attention. Jaejoong, against the background of cars and fast-moving clouds, or with his sweater hanging loose from his shoulders, his mouth halfway into a smile. For one of them, Jaejoong is in the motion of reaching at the camera, fingers spread out, hiding himself. The picture catches sunlight behind the dark shape of his hand.
He switches to video on top of the Arc de Triomphe and pans across the streets between rows of red trees, the tops of old churches. Jaejoong's hair is flying in every direction, his cheeks and nose pink from the cold. Yoochun turns the camera onto themselves as he narrates, "Here we are in Paris, freezing our asses off." Jaejoong's fingers sneak bunny ears above his head. "The city's beautiful," he continues. "The girls here are beautiful, too."
The camera shakes, blurs. Jaejoong leans closer to the lens with his hands in his sleeves, rocking on his feet, adding, "We haven't gotten into trouble yet. We miss you."
"Je t'aime," says Yoochun (again, days later back on the metro after the art museums, cathedrals, and cemeteries, when Jaejoong's lost in the stutter of the train and can't hear).
On accident, he wakes up in the middle of night and finds Jaejoong curled up on the edge of the mattress, his knees tucked in like a child's, his arms wrapped around them. Smoke curls from his mouth, thin and white. Yoochun'd left the windows open and now they let in a few taxi horns, agitating the curtains. The only color is in the flicker-red burn of a cigarette thieved from Yoochun's pack, Jaejoong's dirty blond hair, Jaejoong's eyes looking nowhere, turned gray-blue in the smoke.
Yoochun doesn't fall back asleep until Jaejoong puts his cigarette out in the ashtray next to his feet and exhales clear and smokeless again like he's been called back down. If he were brave enough, it'd go differently, he wouldn't need to wait, he could stitch Jaejoong back into his body on his own. But he's still learning, and the cigarettes help, so he pretends that they're being brave for him and that on the inside of each burning, rolled up paper he's written things like: I'm here. I can be the wrist to tie your kite to, the company you fight your way through winter with. We don't need to keep going from country to country; I can give you somewhere to stay.
He thinks about calling home, or taking cellphone pictures to send captioned with time, place, and "wish you were here". In the seven days he's in Paris, he dials the first three numbers of Junsu's cell a hundred times, or his mom's, or the old telephone at their apartment. Then he remembers he can't make calls in Europe, and his fingers pantomime the rest instead.
The next day they get lost in the Galeries Lafayette. Buying gifts from cheaper stores: shirts, hats, useless trinkets and souvenirs. People-watching from benches, stories high under the glass dome. The anonymity feels like relief.
Jaejoong falls in love with a black coat later. He travels his fingers down its sleeve, over the column of gold embossed buttons. "Yoochun," he says, looking at the price tag, "take my wallet away from me."
"Your birthday's in a few months," Yoochun says instead.
"Are you deaf?"
"I'll pay for half of it," he says. "You can pay for my ice cream."
It's good ice cream. Jaejoong steals mouthfuls as they walk down the sidewalk. He leads Yoochun past fashion boutique windows, and rows of sidewalk lamps that reflect in the water. The sky turns dark navy. They follow the Seine wearing gloves and heavy scarves, and don't stand out. Halfway across the Pont Neuf, Jaejoong leans forward, pitched towards the river. Yoochun sits between the lamp posts, his palms flat on the stone ledge. His hands are cold. When he laces his fingers through the spaces between Jaejoong's, it's with an unnamed anxiety waiting for time to stop, for something to change, or break, but he's underestimating the size of Paris, and how they're allowed to be smaller.
Yoochun throws a pillow at him. "Come down."
"Come up. I can see into the next hotel. Someone's getting naked." Jaejoong trips on the hems of both of their jeans. He has a glass of champagne in one hand; the other one tries to pull Yoochun to his feet. When Yoochun finally follows Jaejoong up, Jaejoong rewards him with the champagne glass, empty again.
"There's more," Jaejoong says, and jumps off the bed. He lands, unsteady.
"Don't fall," says Yoochun. He looks out the window, but the room across the street is dark. He glimpses his reflection in the glass and fixes his hair on reflex, because being eight thousand kilometers away from his stylists doesn't mean everything gets left behind. Jaejoong comes back with two glasses, half-full, and a handful of complementary wrapped chocolates that he tosses onto the bed. They link their arms together to drink, spilling most of it, two connected shadows on hotel wallpaper. Jaejoong asks, "Remember my birthday last year?"
"Touring," says Yoochun, slow, tasting it, "and then backstage."
"Your present was the best one," says Jaejoong.
"I don't remember," says Yoochun. He can feel the angles of a wardrobe rack against his back. Hiding between costumes that smelled like hairspray. No one ever jumps on a red-eye flight to Paris unless they're running. Away from something or towards it, Yoochun had handed over his boarding pass without stopping to decide.
"You just said you did." Jaejoong already knows. Jaejoong's likely known since the beginning, but Jaejoong's also the kind of person who needs to fly halfway across the world because he wants to miss home instead of hate it. Suddenly Yoochun wonders what he's even fucking doing here.
"I don't remember," Yoochun says again, desperate not to be the only one reaching out this time. "What was it?"
Jaejoong kisses him. His sleeve is wet with champagne, and cold on Yoochun's wrist. Yoochun meets him halfway.
The 2am before Paris, Yoochun had packed his suitcase with a deck of cards, their French travel guide, the plush rabbit Jaejoong had won for him years ago at Disneyland, sheets of staff paper wedged in a notebook, accessories that weren't his. A half-empty pack of cigarettes hidden under a pair of jeans, regrets folded between his moisturizer and a toothbrush. Three-year exhaustion woven into his clothes. There were time zones copied onto the inside of his wrist, his heart pressed like flowers between the pages of a map, and the stump of wings at his ankles, waiting to lift him from the ground.
I can breathe better in this world with you.
rewritten 8/2010