pikasu
in
crosswards
stardust from yesterday
Title: Stardust from Yesterday
Author: pikasu
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Romance
Pairing: Yunho/Jaejoong
Summary: There is something a little off about Jaejoong that draws Yunho towards him. Jaejoong's eyes are lost, and Yunho wants to find them. But will he lose himself before that happens instead?
A/N: Thank you noir_sakura20 for the wonderful beta as always! Funnily enough, this was inspired by Steven Tyler's comment on American Idol to one of the contestants, and also by Andrea Gibson's poetry.
-
"I just love that you're out of your mind. Beautifully so."
-- Steven Tyler
Yunho catches sight of a boy with a drooping school uniform facing a blank wall in a corner, and somehow he knows that he is a little off. A glimpse of his nametag, and he realises that Kim Jaejoong is the name to that face. Their eyes meet for a moment, and that alone is enough to throw Yunho off, plant a shiver in his bones. Jaejoong's eyes are distant and dark, as if he's somewhere else. They are deep pools that Yunho fears to swim in. Above all, they look lost. Like Jaejoong's never meant to be here. Like perhaps he's not even here at all.
Later when he passes him by, Yunho notices how he is talking to the wall in soft hushed tones he cannot catch. The first thought that flits through Yunho's head is whether he could see ghosts. There's something a little strange about Jaejoong that prevents him from vanquishing that thought, because there's a slightest chance that his inkling isn't as silly as he thinks after all.
When he sleeps that night, he dreams of struggling in night water. Water so black he couldn't see his hands. And Yunho couldn’t see if he was swimming to the surface at all. That's why he eventually drowns. In the morning when he wakes, his throat aches like how it would have been if someone had gripped it and slowly squeezed the breath out of him.
Jaejoong's eyes are burned at the back of his mind.
-
In Biology, Yunho notices Jaejoong walking into the lab. Curiosity rustled, he wonders why Jaejoong's here. He's a year younger after all. There are faint shufflings of paper, taps of pens and hushed whispers but above all, there is a faint smile on Jaejoong's face as he speaks to Mrs. Park, the teacher. Apparently Jaejoong is smart enough to be here. Apparently he knows enough about the human body to skip grades. But apparently, from the way Yunho's eyes light up in wonder, he didn’t know Jaejoong could smile so beautifully.
Soon enough, the conversation ends and the smile vanishes, replaced by a thin line as Jaejoong walks to his seat. More like gliding, under close scrutiny. As if he isn't using his legs. He settles next to Yunho, and their eyes briefly meet. Jaejoong's are still as black as Yunho remembers from the other day. Except now, there is a tiny light in them, like a soft candle placed underneath his gut, softly melting his flesh away. It burns. But they still look so lost.
Yunho can feel the shiver approaching like waves, breaking onto his skin when he looks at Jaejoong, skin as pale as dove feathers in moonlight. "I'm Yunho," he says, an attempt to start a conversation, but he is hesitant. Because Yunho isn’t expecting anything back. People usually don't.
"Jaejoong," is a reply he gets though, voice light like the wind but unsettling all the same. The shiver grows, encircling his spine in thick vines, never letting go. There is silence once again, but Jaejoong is an enigma that Yunho wants to unravel. He's been experiencing so much normality everyday that he isn't sure if he wants anymore of that. Jaejoong is different. He pushes on.
"Arteries huh," he waves a pen to the board, mentally smacking himself for his eloquence or lack thereof. Surprisingly, Jaejoong laughs. It comes out airy like his voice and somehow it makes Yunho want to hear more. But it stops as fast as it had begun and then it is quiet again. Yunho decides that maybe socializing could wait another day.
Sneaking peeks at Jaejoong's notebook allows Yunho to see intricate drawings of a heart, the arteries and veins that join it with faint scribbles of annotations littered at the side. And he notices how Jaejoong only colours a side of it. He only fills in the blue.
There's something about Jaejoong then that fascinates Yunho. Maybe because he's a little off, like the jump of static on the television screen. The odd one out. Yunho keeps staring, watching as the blues in the venules are filled in with every stroke of Jaejoong's pen.
"If blood's all red here," Jaejoong asks, mid-lesson, blue pen pointing to an artery while staring at the twists and turns it makes through his heart sketch. "Then wonder why they turn blue instead when you strangle someone?"
Jaejoong lifts his head, faces Yunho as the pen rests on the page. It blots, spreads across, filling the arteries with blue. There's a fog in his eyes, thick, and it spills over to Yunho's pounding heart. There's something about Jaejoong's question that punctures straight through. Normally Yunho would find someone like him strange and a freak. But Jaejoong can never be labelled under 'normally'.
"And blood is made of red blood cells, lymphocytes, phagocytes, plasma and platelets and-" Jaejoong continues. He snatches a red pen and outlines the heart red, traces it thick until it drips from the bottom. "So how," he whispers, voice soft in wonder. "Can it look so beautiful?"
Yunho is silent throughout. When the lesson ends, Jaejoong tears that page out and folds it into quarters, the back of it stained with blots of red and blue mixing to an ugly purple. He passes it to Yunho, who tucks it deep in his pocket with a smile on his face as farewell.
When he reaches home, there are no stars mapping the sky but the moon is full and an ominous white. It trickles into his bedroom, where Yunho shys away to a corner, a hand wrapped around his pulse. He brings his wrist to his ears and tries to hear the sound of his heartbeat. Then he squeezes it, tight and unwavering, until it turns blue like the veins on that folded paper nodding to the night breeze. It reminds him of Jaejoong.
-
Noon the next day finds Yunho sneaking to the rooftop, listening to the whispers of people that tell him of Jaejoong having his meals there. And sure enough he spots Jaejoong, hair knotted by the wind and lunch wrapped around his bony fingers. Jaejoong is eating pumpkin, smushed into little pieces and browning at the edges. He frowns, eyebrows knotted as he sticks out a hand offering a sandwich. It is refused with a polite shake, and a gesture to join him. Yunho complies, but only because it is Jaejoong.
Beside Jaejoong are five lit candles tracing a W onto the concrete. Yunho sits on the other end, the candles a wall that prevents him from getting closer, but also something to focus on as Jaejoong chews on the mutilated mush of pumpkin. Every time the wind blows, the orange of the flame is drawn into a wisp, the yellow arching into a teardrop before it extinguishes. As if it's sad to leave the world in smoke. Every time that happens, Jaejoong grabs a lighter from his pocket, cups the wick from the wind and coaxes the flame alive again. It is always silent when Yunho's with Jaejoong. Somehow he finds that he notices things more when they're together. Like how he realizes how high the sky is when the smoke curls and fades away to heaven, and how the light's been in a constant battle with his silhouette.
The wax drips from the tip of the candle and stains the concrete a murky white. "You like it here?" Yunho finally breaks the silence, gesturing to the rooftop.
Jaejoong looks up from his pumpkin, eyelids fluttering like butterfly wings; it makes Yunho's breath hitch. "High places make me feel like I'm further away from hell," he says softly and then turns away again. A moment there makes Jaejoong's eyes appear even more lost, like they had been at crossroads before and had taken a wrong turn.
They sit there till the flames die, wax hardening on the floor. Jaejoong uses his lighter and ghosts the flame onto the wax, melting it once again, giving it life. Then Yunho watches, in morbid fascination, as Jaejoong dips a finger in, and then to his skin. He traces the expressway of his veins, driving to a dead end before he takes a short cut to his chest where his heart is.
"Doesn't it hurt?" Yunho asks, enraptured. Jaejoong is painting his wrists in strokes now, outlining his bones in searing white. He stops, turns to look at Yunho, eyes a million miles away.
"Everything hurts when you think it does," is a reply he gets. Yunho blinks, sucks in a quick breath and purses his lips thoughtfully. He is silent throughout, until the rays of the sun fall like ribbons, making way for darkness to ink the sky. It is a starless night, but the moon is bright. Once again Yunho is home late. The moonbeams are dancing on his wall like how the wax had danced on Jaejoong's skin. That night, Yunho dreams of Jaejoong, holding a knife as he pins Yunho against the floor and carves his bones out till they turn into dust.
Everything hurts when you think it does.
-
"They say people with no parents go to hell," Jaejoong tells him one day at the rooftops. This time he is tracing the outline of a broken skull onto the floor with a chalk. The chalk bits are swept up by the wind whenever Jaejoong scrapes it across the concrete. Yunho visibly tenses. Sometimes it takes all of his control not to go straight to Jaejoong, tuck him into a corner till he manages to unravel all his knots.
"Your parents?" Yunho questions, realizing he must tread carefully.
Jaejoong stares at him, his eyes a little uncertain. The chalk quivers slightly in his hands. "Will I go to hell?"
Yunho is stunned. It's the first time he's heard that Jaejoong's parents are dead. He pauses, then shakes his head and smiles. "In fact, I think you'll go to heaven." There's something about Jaejoong that makes Yunho say the most inappropriate things. But Jaejoong laughs at this remark. It makes him feel a little better. Then it is quiet once again. Yunho cannot bring himself to meet Jaejoong's eyes. He always has a feeling that Jaejoong is better at reading his emotions than he is, so instead he lets his mind wander and pictures the many ways his parents could have died: in a car crash in the midst of fog, dense and endless like Jaejoong's eyes, their bones burnt into ashes and veins into wax that clung onto the steering wheel of the car, wishing for a second chance to make that turn.
"My parents were attacked," Jaejoong finally says, vanquishing Yunho's thoughts. He brings the chalk up and stabs it right at the hole in the skull he has drawn. "They told me Umma's skull turned into stardust." A sharp stroke and the addition of a few broken bits of bones. Then flecks. Stardust.
"What about your father?" Yunho asks.
Jaejoong stares at Yunho, his eyes glazed and his smile unerring. "Appa did it. On Halloween he crushed a pumpkin. Then he turned Umma into stardust before he burned himself into ashes."
A gentle breeze sweeps across Yunho's hair, heavy in Yunho's heart. Jaejoong shuffles, the chalk rubs against his pants and the fabric sends it into clouds. White like the fog. White like how washed out bones would look like. Jaejoong abruptly swivels, and beams, carefree yet heartaching.
"I'd like to think his ashes were buried under stardust," he murmurs, lodging the words in Yunho's chest. Impulse makes Yunho throw care to the wind and embraces Jaejoong, hugging him so tightly that it felt as if he had wanted to realign Jaejoong's bones such that they sing at the sound of love. His love.
-
In Biology the next day, they learn of dreams and hallucinations. The phenomena of seeing things that are not present, visual perceptions that don't reconcile with reality. It causes Yunho to blink too many a time. There's a constant question ringing in his head if what's in front of him is truly there. He swerves to face Jaejoong, right at the moment where he catches a slow smile spreading across Jaejoong's face as he doodles clouds spanning the entire page of his notebook. And Yunho, breath catching and face blushing, wishes very much that what he is seeing in front of him isn't an illusion.
-
"Do you think Umma's stardust was an illusion?" Jaejoong asks during the lesson. Yunho frowns, fingers going over the clouds on Jaejoong's notebook, drawing them out into wisps. "I don't think so," he replies. And the finger stops. It's always difficult to answer Jaejoong's questions. They aren’t the usual ones he gets.
"What about Appa-" Jaejoong presses on. "Maybe he didn't turn into ashes. Maybe they're somewhere far away in-"
"Jaejoong," Yunho slides a hand over and envelopes Jaejoong's, tight and comforting. "Illusions are rare."
"This is real. This," he squeezes his hand. "Is us."
Later on, Yunho notices splatters on the clouds, like it's raining rivers, spilling over to the vessels and the hearts Jaejoong had sketched. He tries to tell himself it's not Jaejoong's tears. Jaejoong doesn't cry that easily.
-
Jaejoong does nothing but draw at the rooftop. There's a strange morbidity when it comes to his drawings: bloodied wings, dried bones and everything broken. If art was a reflection of one's true self, then Yunho would have been very worried. It doesn't make Yunho love it any lesser though; Jaejoong's art is like a kite string pulling him in, tuning his soul to the rhythm of Jaejoong's heart. It's as close as he gets to Jaejoong's true thoughts.
"Why are they all broken?" He decides to question. Today, Jaejoong is carving waves onto the leftover apples meant for lunch.
"Even a rose has thorns," is the only explanation he gets. The blade pierces into the red skin of the apple, scraping it off before it plunges into its flesh. A ship. A sky. A jellyfish.
"They say jellyfishes don't have hearts," Jaejoong says, as he finishes off with one, hand sticky with syrup and scratched with blood from cuts. Yunho never knows what to say. He grasps onto an apple once Jaejoong's done with it, syrup and blood rubbing onto his hands, staining them. A soft gasp from Jaejoong when he brings it to his lips and bites into it.
"And they say we do," Jaejoong continues softly, as he watches Yunho trace the remaining of the broken waves and the torn sky. His eyes are sad, and his blood on Yunho's knuckles stings.
"If I could tell you something that isn't broken," Yunho begins, after a period of silence. His fingers are sticky, and the apple has been reduced to nothing but its core. "Would you draw it out for me?"
Jaejoong blinks, hands clenching onto the blade and his head tilts in wonderment. A smile tugs at his lips. "I would."
Yunho grins, mouth curved into a lilt. Jaejoong makes him so reckless. "Love," he says, grabbing hold of Jaejoong's hand and letting it rest on his chest, on his pulsating heart. "Love."
"But love's not always whole," Jaejoong protests, cheeks flushing a faint red. The birds above chirp as the clouds drift by, and the apple cores roll away like wheels on a highway. To nowhere. To the very edge of the sky.
"But neither is it always broken."
-
"Will I go to hell?" Jaejoong asks again. Recently it seems as if it's the only thing he's been asking Yunho. The prospect of hell. The notion of dying. Every time Jaejoong asks, he gets a little more desperate, panicked even. And it's unsettling for Yunho. Not because Jaejoong is thinking of death, but because he cannot understand Jaejoong any better. Jaejoong's eyes still spell of planets and light years away.
"Does heaven really have gates that will keep you out?" is Yunho's reply this time. There are a lot of things he believes in and this is not one of them.
"There are voices in my head," Jaejoong replies quietly. The wind that courses through this time is a little heavier, a little more disquieting. He lowers his head, nails gripping at his palm, pale and trembling. "They say the shadows will come and get me." His eyes widen, and there is a tinge of fright as he inches towards the sun, avoiding any form of darkness, until he realizes he cannot avoid himself.
"They're here now," he says calmly. "They said I shouldn't have told you about them becau-- no don't. Stop-" Jaejoong buries himself in Yunho, nails digging into Yunho's shoulder in shape of vines. "I don't want to turn into stardust," he whispers frantically, clawing at the cotton of Yunho's uniform. "Not now, not-" It's the most vulnerable Yunho has ever seen of Jaejoong, and he's not sure if he wants to find out more. It takes a lot for Yunho not to act on his feelings, but instead extend a hesitant hand, and wrap Jaejoong tightly with it, hoping that it's enough to protect Jaejoong against himself.
Later when Jaejoong visibly relaxes, his words still resound in Yunho's head. He thinks if Jaejoong ever turned into stardust, he would have prepared a bag to sweep it all in so that he could keep him safe.
-
The voices in Jaejoong's head grow fiercer, more relentless as the days pass. Now, Jaejoong tells him, quivering, that they promise of violent flames and pitchforks, forked tails impaling through guts. And Yunho will whisper to him, sometimes hollering, (he would cup his hands to Jaejoong's ear like a seashell, because he thinks that maybe the sound of the ocean would drown the voices out) not of the symphony of harps or the halos, but of rooftops and Biology lessons. Look at where we are now, Yunho murmurs. Look at how much further we have to go. Look at us, he says. Look at us.
And this is when he thumbs across Jaejoong's tears, wiping the broken trails across his cheeks, erasing borders before he leans forward and kisses Jaejoong. His lips are trembling, but they are soft like feathers; the kiss burns fiery as if it melts their lips, melding them together into one and most of all, Jaejoong's eyes are closed, fluttering in bliss. The distance between them had never felt that small.
Nails dig into Yunho's skin, so forceful like an imprint, a memory for this, and it curves into bloodied crescents when they're done. Jaejoong stares, and lowers his head meekly when he realizes it. But Yunho merely laughs, whispers comfort into his ear and brushes it off. As an apology, Jaejoong's fingers ghost over the indents on Yunho's skin, brushes against the blood and traces with it two identical hearts. One on Yunho's wrist and one on his own.
The heart brushed with blood eventually dries, crusts on Yunho's skin and browns. It doesn't wash off, even after days, and it stings sometimes.
Maybe that's love, Yunho thinks, staring at the heart. It has all its pins and pricks, but it's stubborn. Something permanent that always lingers.
-
It's always hard to watch someone fall apart, piece themselves together and then fall again. Jaejoong arrives at the rooftop every time with more scratches, a little more bloodied and a little more shaken. This time though, Yunho has his kisses to make it all better. Somehow it's as if the tremors in Jaejoong rattle into Yunho when they kiss, and for that moment, Yunho can pretend that Jaejoong is okay again. But then the aftershocks always come. Even drawing doesn't help - everything Jaejoong draws seem to end up spelling Hell.
Sometimes Yunho will take the brush or seize the chalk from his hands and lie Jaejoong against the wall. He'd draw angel wings, as if they sprouted from Jaejoong's back, in hope that maybe Jaejoong will start believing in heaven himself.
-
One day, Jaejoong barges in, eyes red and hysterical. "I'm going to hell," he screams, frightened, rips his hair and claws at his skin till they left angry red marks. He clambers right to the very edge of the rooftop and squats there, his back facing a stunned Yunho. "I'm going to hell," he repeats, the chalk and blood matted on his skin like bruises, scars gained from wars waged with himself. There's something off about the way Jaejoong says it, as if the voices have morphed into something more, into a guillotine hugged by gravity above his neck. Like he's starting to believe in it himself. There's always something about illusions. If you're in it long enough, you'll start to question reality too.
Inside, Yunho is freaking out when he takes powerful strides towards Jaejoong and seizes his hand, quick, and tugs him away from danger. There is a brief struggle, because Jaejoong does not budge, as if the voices have grown vines that planted his feet to the concrete. A plant never moves lest it's uprooted. There is an inward sigh of relief when Jaejoong is back in his arms, albeit crying. It comes out in soft choked sobs, tears that pooled onto Yunho's sleeve, spilling over like how skin does when it's snipped. "Please don't let them take me," he pleads, so desperate it pierces right through Yunho's heart. "Please."
Though Yunho bends and kisses away all of Jaejoong's tears and breathes comfort into his lungs, Jaejoong is thoroughly shaken, hands frequently finding its way to cover his ears. But how does one shy away from himself?
Yunho's never felt so helpless. "I won't," he reassures Jaejoong. "I won't."
Even that, sounds uncertain to him.
-
There comes a point where Yunho starts questioning things. Like if the voices in Jaejoong's head are real. Like if there are voices in people's heads in the very first place. Now there are times where Yunho starts hearing things himself, soft tapping of chalk against concrete, or the flick of a lighter. The same things Jaejoong use to create art. At night, the tappings are loud and persistent. He tries to force them out by stuffing a pillow to his ears, but they refuse to budge, a constant reminder to the broken bones and the hot wax. The hot wax solidified the other time, when Jaejoong traced them to his skin, and they cracked, right at his chest. Like his heart was on fire and it melted.
Yunho never got any sleep after that.
He knows there are fifteen thousand and forty-two specks on his ceiling wall. When he closes his eyes, they do not fade. Not getting any sleep amidst exhaustion is not as frustrating as it is terrible. Sometimes it feels as if the joints holding his bones together are slowly giving way, and Yunho cannot imagine cushions underneath to keep himself from breaking because he is too tired, his mind too awake to fall asleep. On lucky days when he manages to fall into slumber, Yunho dreams of the tapping chalk and flames burning, melting his skin till he turned into ashes. Maybe Hell exists after all.
The nights are long but the days after are longer. Jaejoong comes to the rooftop with dark purple bruises and his fingertips black. Yunho, despite his exhaustion, is taken aback and very much worried.
"What happened?" Yunho asks, a hand tentatively bringing Jaejoong's fingertips to his lips. He breathes a kiss over them - as if it'll be able to bleach the black away. Jaejoong's eyes are distant again, quietly resigned, but his pulse is frantic in its thrumming. The fear won't go away.
"They tried to take me to hell," Jaejoong whispers, fingers flinching away from Yunho's lips. "The flames came and I couldn't run."
"I looked so blue, Yunho-yah," There are tears in his eyes now, and the black that's brushed onto Jaejoong's fingertips seemed to have spread, following the tracks of his veins. "I looked so blue." He whispers. So blue, so blue.
The sky is a backdrop to Jaejoong's fears. It is a cloudless day. Cloudless, and an ominous blue. At the back of Yunho's head, he remembers how Halloween's in two days as he looks on, helplessly, at the scars on Jaejoong's skin.
Jaejoong's parents had turned blue on that day. Blue, he thinks, before they became stardust and ashes.
-
The day before Halloween, they are at the rooftop counting the number of bones in their bodies when Jaejoong suddenly freezes. He shivers, fingers like icicles dipped into ashes and he covers his mouth in a muffled scream. Above everything, Yunho can see a faint orange crawling up Jaejoong's ears, like fire on a curtain. It leaves a trail of black, charred bits falling off Jaejoong to the floor. It's as if the voices in his head have turned into devils, burnt Jaejoong till all his blood dried and now they are on his skin, ready to bring him down to hell.
Yunho tries to douse the flames, pours water from his bottle onto Jaejoong and hugs the air out of him. But Jaejoong's cries only grow louder. “Jaejoong!”, Yunho shouts, frantic and desperate. He doesn't know what to do. He never does, when it comes to Jaejoong. And Jaejoong does not respond, the voices in him tugging harshly at his neck, away from reality. “Jaejoong!”, Yunho tries again. The trail of black has stopped now, down his shoulders to his wrists and ends there. There are bruises and scratches, red meshed with purple mapping the whites of Jaejoong's skin. Yunho cannot help himself but think that despite everything, they're still beautiful.
"I don't want to go to hell," Jaejoong whispers to him after he has sufficiently calmed, though he is still trembling. There is a fear in his voice that pierces straight into Yunho's veins, fills his body with a fear similar as well. There are doves on the rooftop, innocent and pure. The feathers they shed fall onto Jaejoong, like broken wings. For a moment, the black fades, wiped away by the feathers, but afterwards it's there again, together with the white. Heaven and Hell.
Yunho wants, terribly so, as the lighter in his head flicks on and off, and the chalk is tapping his heart again, to say that he doesn't want to either. No one wants to go to hell. "You won't," is what he tells Jaejoong instead. Because Yunho still wants to see Jaejoong smile again. They are a love that burns, but Yunho is not going to let them turn into ashes any time soon. At least, he thinks, better to explode into stardust than to be scorched till they're black and fragile.
"Look," Yunho says softly, traces the worry lines on Jaejoong's face and ghosts his lips across Jaejoong's. "Look at us. Look at where we are now. Look at how much further we have to go."
Jaejoong nods, trying to swallow his words, hoping they'll shove the voices out. There's not enough space for everything after all. He gulps once and hugs Yunho tight, his charred fingertips rough on Yunho's skin. "Can you see Hell from here?" Yunho asks him. And Jaejoong pauses, before he shakes his head.
Yunho smiles then, and hugs him tight. "But," he says, tilting Jaejoong's chin to the skies.
"You can see Heaven."
Feathers have never looked so white.
-
That day, they do not part. Jaejoong is too frightened and Yunho is too worried. Their hands are locked firmly and Jaejoong brings him to his house, ten blocks away in an apartment too quiet. The rooms are sparse with furniture. In fact there's hardly anything at all. But there are pumpkins lined by the walls and a bed with sheets that smelt of Jaejoong.
At night, the sounds in Yunho's head fade and the only thing that keeps him from sleep is the sound of Jaejoong's breathing, afraid and wary. Moonlight kisses his skin white again, but the purples and reds from his cuts and bruises do not fade. Neither do the trails of black that map Jaejoong's vessels. Yunho hugs him tight. He hugs him close. An attempt to soothe the creases on Jaejoong's face and the tremors in his bones. "Heaven's right here," Jaejoong whispers to him at twilight. He snuggles closer, tries not to cringe when his wounds rub against fabric. Yunho meets his eyes, worried but loving. Now, Jaejoong's eyes aren't that far away anymore. Like they're back in one full circle and heading for Yunho. The knots are loose and somehow it feels as if all he needs is one more hug to unravel everything that he couldn't before. They kiss this time, gentle and loving, like their lips are singing on the same key now, in perfect harmony like there never was before. The strings that wound them tight are cut and the blues in their veins spill over to the reds. Everything felt right.
There are stars in the sky shining bright that night without a single cloud. And there are tiny flecks painted against the dark blue. Stardust. Like they're closer to Heaven than ever before.
-
In the morning of Halloween, Yunho wakes up to find that he is hugging himself. There is no Jaejoong, but there is a paper in his hand that he tucks away for later. Now it is finding Jaejoong that is most important. And the sounds are back. This time there is a crackling of a flame, unsettling. He saunters out of the sheets and out of the room in attempt to find Jaejoong. But Jaejoong isn't anywhere in the house. Instead, there are stars carved out from pumpkins suspended on nylon strings in one of the rooms, wax lining the cracks of the walls. Worry sneaks its way into Yunho's heart; it quickens the pounding.
A storm of footsteps is heard before Yunho is face to face with the anxiety on a lady's face, keys in her hands. The landlord, he presumes, and attempts a hesitant smile.
"You shouldn't be here," she says, voice tight. Yunho blinks, curious and confused. Jaejoong has rights to invite whoever he wants back, doesn’t he?
"But the person staying here invited me-" Yunho starts, but he is cut off immediately after with a panicked glance.
"There's no one living here," she says shakily. Yunho is taken aback. He clenches onto the creases of his shirt. The tapping of chalk resounds too loud in his ears and he blinks, as if it'll force the sound out.
"Then how do you explain this," Yunho protests, gesturing above at the star-carved pumpkins that catch the sun rays and glimmer as if they're real. "Ghosts can't carve pumpkins."
The lady is pale now, and terribly so. "What are you talking about?" she asks. "There's nothing in this room."
Yunho is stunned, the sound of fire in his mind draws louder as if the flame's closer to his heart now, threatening to melt his soul till it became rivers.
"The family that lived here died five years ago on this day," she whispers. "In a fire."
Yunho’s breath catches and he rubs his eyes, rough and frantic. There were most definitely pumpkins and there most definitely had been a Jaejoong, most lovely and most beautiful. The person he had spent the last few weeks with, pouring love into his blood. A Biology lesson comes back to him and the voices in his head jumble into a big mess. Hallucinations. The paper in his pocket crumples and the dust in the room stirs.
"He must have gone to Heaven," Yunho breathes and watches as the flecks of dust catch the orange of the sun, bright like stardust. Like a part of Jaejoong's there. With him.
Yunho takes the paper out from his pocket, unfolds it, and laughs when he sees the picture. It's a picture of him. Love, Jaejoong writes. Is not always broken. And there are scribbles underneath that Yunho has no heart to read. Now his fingers are brushed black at its tips too, charred and angry and he can feel his mind drifting away. There is a tunnel at the end of his vision and his heart is marching towards it. Slowly, his skin becomes marred with black though he does not feel a thing. The lady is shouting at him, but Yunho cannot bring himself to care. Because he knows that there is not enough courage in him, to ask, to bring up the question of whether or not he's holding anything in his hands at all.
The wind stirs emptiness in the room. The skies are blue and Jaejoong's eyes are burned at the back of Yunho's head, as dark as ever. But now, they are smiling. Like he's finally happy. Like he's finally found Heaven.
-
Thank you for making me believe in Heaven.
(Thank you for being my Heaven.)
A/N: This was one of the hardest things I had to write. Mainly because 1) I am afraid of ghosts and 2) I am terrified of ghosts. I was cursing at myself for choosing Halloween, of all themes ;;; Thank you to chun_ji for the initial reading and for cheering me on, and also moonkissedx for the support and gloating. Also lots of thanks to the people who were there for me during late nights when I was too scared to continue writing because I am awfully faint-hearted. I don't think I'll ever write something like this ever again. Although it isn't really all that scary...let's just say that I'm very faint-hearted.
Thank you for reading :) I hope it worked for you!
Author: pikasu
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Romance
Pairing: Yunho/Jaejoong
Summary: There is something a little off about Jaejoong that draws Yunho towards him. Jaejoong's eyes are lost, and Yunho wants to find them. But will he lose himself before that happens instead?
A/N: Thank you noir_sakura20 for the wonderful beta as always! Funnily enough, this was inspired by Steven Tyler's comment on American Idol to one of the contestants, and also by Andrea Gibson's poetry.
-
"I just love that you're out of your mind. Beautifully so."
-- Steven Tyler
Yunho catches sight of a boy with a drooping school uniform facing a blank wall in a corner, and somehow he knows that he is a little off. A glimpse of his nametag, and he realises that Kim Jaejoong is the name to that face. Their eyes meet for a moment, and that alone is enough to throw Yunho off, plant a shiver in his bones. Jaejoong's eyes are distant and dark, as if he's somewhere else. They are deep pools that Yunho fears to swim in. Above all, they look lost. Like Jaejoong's never meant to be here. Like perhaps he's not even here at all.
Later when he passes him by, Yunho notices how he is talking to the wall in soft hushed tones he cannot catch. The first thought that flits through Yunho's head is whether he could see ghosts. There's something a little strange about Jaejoong that prevents him from vanquishing that thought, because there's a slightest chance that his inkling isn't as silly as he thinks after all.
When he sleeps that night, he dreams of struggling in night water. Water so black he couldn't see his hands. And Yunho couldn’t see if he was swimming to the surface at all. That's why he eventually drowns. In the morning when he wakes, his throat aches like how it would have been if someone had gripped it and slowly squeezed the breath out of him.
Jaejoong's eyes are burned at the back of his mind.
-
In Biology, Yunho notices Jaejoong walking into the lab. Curiosity rustled, he wonders why Jaejoong's here. He's a year younger after all. There are faint shufflings of paper, taps of pens and hushed whispers but above all, there is a faint smile on Jaejoong's face as he speaks to Mrs. Park, the teacher. Apparently Jaejoong is smart enough to be here. Apparently he knows enough about the human body to skip grades. But apparently, from the way Yunho's eyes light up in wonder, he didn’t know Jaejoong could smile so beautifully.
Soon enough, the conversation ends and the smile vanishes, replaced by a thin line as Jaejoong walks to his seat. More like gliding, under close scrutiny. As if he isn't using his legs. He settles next to Yunho, and their eyes briefly meet. Jaejoong's are still as black as Yunho remembers from the other day. Except now, there is a tiny light in them, like a soft candle placed underneath his gut, softly melting his flesh away. It burns. But they still look so lost.
Yunho can feel the shiver approaching like waves, breaking onto his skin when he looks at Jaejoong, skin as pale as dove feathers in moonlight. "I'm Yunho," he says, an attempt to start a conversation, but he is hesitant. Because Yunho isn’t expecting anything back. People usually don't.
"Jaejoong," is a reply he gets though, voice light like the wind but unsettling all the same. The shiver grows, encircling his spine in thick vines, never letting go. There is silence once again, but Jaejoong is an enigma that Yunho wants to unravel. He's been experiencing so much normality everyday that he isn't sure if he wants anymore of that. Jaejoong is different. He pushes on.
"Arteries huh," he waves a pen to the board, mentally smacking himself for his eloquence or lack thereof. Surprisingly, Jaejoong laughs. It comes out airy like his voice and somehow it makes Yunho want to hear more. But it stops as fast as it had begun and then it is quiet again. Yunho decides that maybe socializing could wait another day.
Sneaking peeks at Jaejoong's notebook allows Yunho to see intricate drawings of a heart, the arteries and veins that join it with faint scribbles of annotations littered at the side. And he notices how Jaejoong only colours a side of it. He only fills in the blue.
There's something about Jaejoong then that fascinates Yunho. Maybe because he's a little off, like the jump of static on the television screen. The odd one out. Yunho keeps staring, watching as the blues in the venules are filled in with every stroke of Jaejoong's pen.
"If blood's all red here," Jaejoong asks, mid-lesson, blue pen pointing to an artery while staring at the twists and turns it makes through his heart sketch. "Then wonder why they turn blue instead when you strangle someone?"
Jaejoong lifts his head, faces Yunho as the pen rests on the page. It blots, spreads across, filling the arteries with blue. There's a fog in his eyes, thick, and it spills over to Yunho's pounding heart. There's something about Jaejoong's question that punctures straight through. Normally Yunho would find someone like him strange and a freak. But Jaejoong can never be labelled under 'normally'.
"And blood is made of red blood cells, lymphocytes, phagocytes, plasma and platelets and-" Jaejoong continues. He snatches a red pen and outlines the heart red, traces it thick until it drips from the bottom. "So how," he whispers, voice soft in wonder. "Can it look so beautiful?"
Yunho is silent throughout. When the lesson ends, Jaejoong tears that page out and folds it into quarters, the back of it stained with blots of red and blue mixing to an ugly purple. He passes it to Yunho, who tucks it deep in his pocket with a smile on his face as farewell.
When he reaches home, there are no stars mapping the sky but the moon is full and an ominous white. It trickles into his bedroom, where Yunho shys away to a corner, a hand wrapped around his pulse. He brings his wrist to his ears and tries to hear the sound of his heartbeat. Then he squeezes it, tight and unwavering, until it turns blue like the veins on that folded paper nodding to the night breeze. It reminds him of Jaejoong.
-
Noon the next day finds Yunho sneaking to the rooftop, listening to the whispers of people that tell him of Jaejoong having his meals there. And sure enough he spots Jaejoong, hair knotted by the wind and lunch wrapped around his bony fingers. Jaejoong is eating pumpkin, smushed into little pieces and browning at the edges. He frowns, eyebrows knotted as he sticks out a hand offering a sandwich. It is refused with a polite shake, and a gesture to join him. Yunho complies, but only because it is Jaejoong.
Beside Jaejoong are five lit candles tracing a W onto the concrete. Yunho sits on the other end, the candles a wall that prevents him from getting closer, but also something to focus on as Jaejoong chews on the mutilated mush of pumpkin. Every time the wind blows, the orange of the flame is drawn into a wisp, the yellow arching into a teardrop before it extinguishes. As if it's sad to leave the world in smoke. Every time that happens, Jaejoong grabs a lighter from his pocket, cups the wick from the wind and coaxes the flame alive again. It is always silent when Yunho's with Jaejoong. Somehow he finds that he notices things more when they're together. Like how he realizes how high the sky is when the smoke curls and fades away to heaven, and how the light's been in a constant battle with his silhouette.
The wax drips from the tip of the candle and stains the concrete a murky white. "You like it here?" Yunho finally breaks the silence, gesturing to the rooftop.
Jaejoong looks up from his pumpkin, eyelids fluttering like butterfly wings; it makes Yunho's breath hitch. "High places make me feel like I'm further away from hell," he says softly and then turns away again. A moment there makes Jaejoong's eyes appear even more lost, like they had been at crossroads before and had taken a wrong turn.
They sit there till the flames die, wax hardening on the floor. Jaejoong uses his lighter and ghosts the flame onto the wax, melting it once again, giving it life. Then Yunho watches, in morbid fascination, as Jaejoong dips a finger in, and then to his skin. He traces the expressway of his veins, driving to a dead end before he takes a short cut to his chest where his heart is.
"Doesn't it hurt?" Yunho asks, enraptured. Jaejoong is painting his wrists in strokes now, outlining his bones in searing white. He stops, turns to look at Yunho, eyes a million miles away.
"Everything hurts when you think it does," is a reply he gets. Yunho blinks, sucks in a quick breath and purses his lips thoughtfully. He is silent throughout, until the rays of the sun fall like ribbons, making way for darkness to ink the sky. It is a starless night, but the moon is bright. Once again Yunho is home late. The moonbeams are dancing on his wall like how the wax had danced on Jaejoong's skin. That night, Yunho dreams of Jaejoong, holding a knife as he pins Yunho against the floor and carves his bones out till they turn into dust.
Everything hurts when you think it does.
-
"They say people with no parents go to hell," Jaejoong tells him one day at the rooftops. This time he is tracing the outline of a broken skull onto the floor with a chalk. The chalk bits are swept up by the wind whenever Jaejoong scrapes it across the concrete. Yunho visibly tenses. Sometimes it takes all of his control not to go straight to Jaejoong, tuck him into a corner till he manages to unravel all his knots.
"Your parents?" Yunho questions, realizing he must tread carefully.
Jaejoong stares at him, his eyes a little uncertain. The chalk quivers slightly in his hands. "Will I go to hell?"
Yunho is stunned. It's the first time he's heard that Jaejoong's parents are dead. He pauses, then shakes his head and smiles. "In fact, I think you'll go to heaven." There's something about Jaejoong that makes Yunho say the most inappropriate things. But Jaejoong laughs at this remark. It makes him feel a little better. Then it is quiet once again. Yunho cannot bring himself to meet Jaejoong's eyes. He always has a feeling that Jaejoong is better at reading his emotions than he is, so instead he lets his mind wander and pictures the many ways his parents could have died: in a car crash in the midst of fog, dense and endless like Jaejoong's eyes, their bones burnt into ashes and veins into wax that clung onto the steering wheel of the car, wishing for a second chance to make that turn.
"My parents were attacked," Jaejoong finally says, vanquishing Yunho's thoughts. He brings the chalk up and stabs it right at the hole in the skull he has drawn. "They told me Umma's skull turned into stardust." A sharp stroke and the addition of a few broken bits of bones. Then flecks. Stardust.
"What about your father?" Yunho asks.
Jaejoong stares at Yunho, his eyes glazed and his smile unerring. "Appa did it. On Halloween he crushed a pumpkin. Then he turned Umma into stardust before he burned himself into ashes."
A gentle breeze sweeps across Yunho's hair, heavy in Yunho's heart. Jaejoong shuffles, the chalk rubs against his pants and the fabric sends it into clouds. White like the fog. White like how washed out bones would look like. Jaejoong abruptly swivels, and beams, carefree yet heartaching.
"I'd like to think his ashes were buried under stardust," he murmurs, lodging the words in Yunho's chest. Impulse makes Yunho throw care to the wind and embraces Jaejoong, hugging him so tightly that it felt as if he had wanted to realign Jaejoong's bones such that they sing at the sound of love. His love.
-
In Biology the next day, they learn of dreams and hallucinations. The phenomena of seeing things that are not present, visual perceptions that don't reconcile with reality. It causes Yunho to blink too many a time. There's a constant question ringing in his head if what's in front of him is truly there. He swerves to face Jaejoong, right at the moment where he catches a slow smile spreading across Jaejoong's face as he doodles clouds spanning the entire page of his notebook. And Yunho, breath catching and face blushing, wishes very much that what he is seeing in front of him isn't an illusion.
-
"Do you think Umma's stardust was an illusion?" Jaejoong asks during the lesson. Yunho frowns, fingers going over the clouds on Jaejoong's notebook, drawing them out into wisps. "I don't think so," he replies. And the finger stops. It's always difficult to answer Jaejoong's questions. They aren’t the usual ones he gets.
"What about Appa-" Jaejoong presses on. "Maybe he didn't turn into ashes. Maybe they're somewhere far away in-"
"Jaejoong," Yunho slides a hand over and envelopes Jaejoong's, tight and comforting. "Illusions are rare."
"This is real. This," he squeezes his hand. "Is us."
Later on, Yunho notices splatters on the clouds, like it's raining rivers, spilling over to the vessels and the hearts Jaejoong had sketched. He tries to tell himself it's not Jaejoong's tears. Jaejoong doesn't cry that easily.
-
Jaejoong does nothing but draw at the rooftop. There's a strange morbidity when it comes to his drawings: bloodied wings, dried bones and everything broken. If art was a reflection of one's true self, then Yunho would have been very worried. It doesn't make Yunho love it any lesser though; Jaejoong's art is like a kite string pulling him in, tuning his soul to the rhythm of Jaejoong's heart. It's as close as he gets to Jaejoong's true thoughts.
"Why are they all broken?" He decides to question. Today, Jaejoong is carving waves onto the leftover apples meant for lunch.
"Even a rose has thorns," is the only explanation he gets. The blade pierces into the red skin of the apple, scraping it off before it plunges into its flesh. A ship. A sky. A jellyfish.
"They say jellyfishes don't have hearts," Jaejoong says, as he finishes off with one, hand sticky with syrup and scratched with blood from cuts. Yunho never knows what to say. He grasps onto an apple once Jaejoong's done with it, syrup and blood rubbing onto his hands, staining them. A soft gasp from Jaejoong when he brings it to his lips and bites into it.
"And they say we do," Jaejoong continues softly, as he watches Yunho trace the remaining of the broken waves and the torn sky. His eyes are sad, and his blood on Yunho's knuckles stings.
"If I could tell you something that isn't broken," Yunho begins, after a period of silence. His fingers are sticky, and the apple has been reduced to nothing but its core. "Would you draw it out for me?"
Jaejoong blinks, hands clenching onto the blade and his head tilts in wonderment. A smile tugs at his lips. "I would."
Yunho grins, mouth curved into a lilt. Jaejoong makes him so reckless. "Love," he says, grabbing hold of Jaejoong's hand and letting it rest on his chest, on his pulsating heart. "Love."
"But love's not always whole," Jaejoong protests, cheeks flushing a faint red. The birds above chirp as the clouds drift by, and the apple cores roll away like wheels on a highway. To nowhere. To the very edge of the sky.
"But neither is it always broken."
-
"Will I go to hell?" Jaejoong asks again. Recently it seems as if it's the only thing he's been asking Yunho. The prospect of hell. The notion of dying. Every time Jaejoong asks, he gets a little more desperate, panicked even. And it's unsettling for Yunho. Not because Jaejoong is thinking of death, but because he cannot understand Jaejoong any better. Jaejoong's eyes still spell of planets and light years away.
"Does heaven really have gates that will keep you out?" is Yunho's reply this time. There are a lot of things he believes in and this is not one of them.
"There are voices in my head," Jaejoong replies quietly. The wind that courses through this time is a little heavier, a little more disquieting. He lowers his head, nails gripping at his palm, pale and trembling. "They say the shadows will come and get me." His eyes widen, and there is a tinge of fright as he inches towards the sun, avoiding any form of darkness, until he realizes he cannot avoid himself.
"They're here now," he says calmly. "They said I shouldn't have told you about them becau-- no don't. Stop-" Jaejoong buries himself in Yunho, nails digging into Yunho's shoulder in shape of vines. "I don't want to turn into stardust," he whispers frantically, clawing at the cotton of Yunho's uniform. "Not now, not-" It's the most vulnerable Yunho has ever seen of Jaejoong, and he's not sure if he wants to find out more. It takes a lot for Yunho not to act on his feelings, but instead extend a hesitant hand, and wrap Jaejoong tightly with it, hoping that it's enough to protect Jaejoong against himself.
Later when Jaejoong visibly relaxes, his words still resound in Yunho's head. He thinks if Jaejoong ever turned into stardust, he would have prepared a bag to sweep it all in so that he could keep him safe.
-
The voices in Jaejoong's head grow fiercer, more relentless as the days pass. Now, Jaejoong tells him, quivering, that they promise of violent flames and pitchforks, forked tails impaling through guts. And Yunho will whisper to him, sometimes hollering, (he would cup his hands to Jaejoong's ear like a seashell, because he thinks that maybe the sound of the ocean would drown the voices out) not of the symphony of harps or the halos, but of rooftops and Biology lessons. Look at where we are now, Yunho murmurs. Look at how much further we have to go. Look at us, he says. Look at us.
And this is when he thumbs across Jaejoong's tears, wiping the broken trails across his cheeks, erasing borders before he leans forward and kisses Jaejoong. His lips are trembling, but they are soft like feathers; the kiss burns fiery as if it melts their lips, melding them together into one and most of all, Jaejoong's eyes are closed, fluttering in bliss. The distance between them had never felt that small.
Nails dig into Yunho's skin, so forceful like an imprint, a memory for this, and it curves into bloodied crescents when they're done. Jaejoong stares, and lowers his head meekly when he realizes it. But Yunho merely laughs, whispers comfort into his ear and brushes it off. As an apology, Jaejoong's fingers ghost over the indents on Yunho's skin, brushes against the blood and traces with it two identical hearts. One on Yunho's wrist and one on his own.
The heart brushed with blood eventually dries, crusts on Yunho's skin and browns. It doesn't wash off, even after days, and it stings sometimes.
Maybe that's love, Yunho thinks, staring at the heart. It has all its pins and pricks, but it's stubborn. Something permanent that always lingers.
-
It's always hard to watch someone fall apart, piece themselves together and then fall again. Jaejoong arrives at the rooftop every time with more scratches, a little more bloodied and a little more shaken. This time though, Yunho has his kisses to make it all better. Somehow it's as if the tremors in Jaejoong rattle into Yunho when they kiss, and for that moment, Yunho can pretend that Jaejoong is okay again. But then the aftershocks always come. Even drawing doesn't help - everything Jaejoong draws seem to end up spelling Hell.
Sometimes Yunho will take the brush or seize the chalk from his hands and lie Jaejoong against the wall. He'd draw angel wings, as if they sprouted from Jaejoong's back, in hope that maybe Jaejoong will start believing in heaven himself.
-
One day, Jaejoong barges in, eyes red and hysterical. "I'm going to hell," he screams, frightened, rips his hair and claws at his skin till they left angry red marks. He clambers right to the very edge of the rooftop and squats there, his back facing a stunned Yunho. "I'm going to hell," he repeats, the chalk and blood matted on his skin like bruises, scars gained from wars waged with himself. There's something off about the way Jaejoong says it, as if the voices have morphed into something more, into a guillotine hugged by gravity above his neck. Like he's starting to believe in it himself. There's always something about illusions. If you're in it long enough, you'll start to question reality too.
Inside, Yunho is freaking out when he takes powerful strides towards Jaejoong and seizes his hand, quick, and tugs him away from danger. There is a brief struggle, because Jaejoong does not budge, as if the voices have grown vines that planted his feet to the concrete. A plant never moves lest it's uprooted. There is an inward sigh of relief when Jaejoong is back in his arms, albeit crying. It comes out in soft choked sobs, tears that pooled onto Yunho's sleeve, spilling over like how skin does when it's snipped. "Please don't let them take me," he pleads, so desperate it pierces right through Yunho's heart. "Please."
Though Yunho bends and kisses away all of Jaejoong's tears and breathes comfort into his lungs, Jaejoong is thoroughly shaken, hands frequently finding its way to cover his ears. But how does one shy away from himself?
Yunho's never felt so helpless. "I won't," he reassures Jaejoong. "I won't."
Even that, sounds uncertain to him.
-
There comes a point where Yunho starts questioning things. Like if the voices in Jaejoong's head are real. Like if there are voices in people's heads in the very first place. Now there are times where Yunho starts hearing things himself, soft tapping of chalk against concrete, or the flick of a lighter. The same things Jaejoong use to create art. At night, the tappings are loud and persistent. He tries to force them out by stuffing a pillow to his ears, but they refuse to budge, a constant reminder to the broken bones and the hot wax. The hot wax solidified the other time, when Jaejoong traced them to his skin, and they cracked, right at his chest. Like his heart was on fire and it melted.
Yunho never got any sleep after that.
He knows there are fifteen thousand and forty-two specks on his ceiling wall. When he closes his eyes, they do not fade. Not getting any sleep amidst exhaustion is not as frustrating as it is terrible. Sometimes it feels as if the joints holding his bones together are slowly giving way, and Yunho cannot imagine cushions underneath to keep himself from breaking because he is too tired, his mind too awake to fall asleep. On lucky days when he manages to fall into slumber, Yunho dreams of the tapping chalk and flames burning, melting his skin till he turned into ashes. Maybe Hell exists after all.
The nights are long but the days after are longer. Jaejoong comes to the rooftop with dark purple bruises and his fingertips black. Yunho, despite his exhaustion, is taken aback and very much worried.
"What happened?" Yunho asks, a hand tentatively bringing Jaejoong's fingertips to his lips. He breathes a kiss over them - as if it'll be able to bleach the black away. Jaejoong's eyes are distant again, quietly resigned, but his pulse is frantic in its thrumming. The fear won't go away.
"They tried to take me to hell," Jaejoong whispers, fingers flinching away from Yunho's lips. "The flames came and I couldn't run."
"I looked so blue, Yunho-yah," There are tears in his eyes now, and the black that's brushed onto Jaejoong's fingertips seemed to have spread, following the tracks of his veins. "I looked so blue." He whispers. So blue, so blue.
The sky is a backdrop to Jaejoong's fears. It is a cloudless day. Cloudless, and an ominous blue. At the back of Yunho's head, he remembers how Halloween's in two days as he looks on, helplessly, at the scars on Jaejoong's skin.
Jaejoong's parents had turned blue on that day. Blue, he thinks, before they became stardust and ashes.
-
The day before Halloween, they are at the rooftop counting the number of bones in their bodies when Jaejoong suddenly freezes. He shivers, fingers like icicles dipped into ashes and he covers his mouth in a muffled scream. Above everything, Yunho can see a faint orange crawling up Jaejoong's ears, like fire on a curtain. It leaves a trail of black, charred bits falling off Jaejoong to the floor. It's as if the voices in his head have turned into devils, burnt Jaejoong till all his blood dried and now they are on his skin, ready to bring him down to hell.
Yunho tries to douse the flames, pours water from his bottle onto Jaejoong and hugs the air out of him. But Jaejoong's cries only grow louder. “Jaejoong!”, Yunho shouts, frantic and desperate. He doesn't know what to do. He never does, when it comes to Jaejoong. And Jaejoong does not respond, the voices in him tugging harshly at his neck, away from reality. “Jaejoong!”, Yunho tries again. The trail of black has stopped now, down his shoulders to his wrists and ends there. There are bruises and scratches, red meshed with purple mapping the whites of Jaejoong's skin. Yunho cannot help himself but think that despite everything, they're still beautiful.
"I don't want to go to hell," Jaejoong whispers to him after he has sufficiently calmed, though he is still trembling. There is a fear in his voice that pierces straight into Yunho's veins, fills his body with a fear similar as well. There are doves on the rooftop, innocent and pure. The feathers they shed fall onto Jaejoong, like broken wings. For a moment, the black fades, wiped away by the feathers, but afterwards it's there again, together with the white. Heaven and Hell.
Yunho wants, terribly so, as the lighter in his head flicks on and off, and the chalk is tapping his heart again, to say that he doesn't want to either. No one wants to go to hell. "You won't," is what he tells Jaejoong instead. Because Yunho still wants to see Jaejoong smile again. They are a love that burns, but Yunho is not going to let them turn into ashes any time soon. At least, he thinks, better to explode into stardust than to be scorched till they're black and fragile.
"Look," Yunho says softly, traces the worry lines on Jaejoong's face and ghosts his lips across Jaejoong's. "Look at us. Look at where we are now. Look at how much further we have to go."
Jaejoong nods, trying to swallow his words, hoping they'll shove the voices out. There's not enough space for everything after all. He gulps once and hugs Yunho tight, his charred fingertips rough on Yunho's skin. "Can you see Hell from here?" Yunho asks him. And Jaejoong pauses, before he shakes his head.
Yunho smiles then, and hugs him tight. "But," he says, tilting Jaejoong's chin to the skies.
"You can see Heaven."
Feathers have never looked so white.
-
That day, they do not part. Jaejoong is too frightened and Yunho is too worried. Their hands are locked firmly and Jaejoong brings him to his house, ten blocks away in an apartment too quiet. The rooms are sparse with furniture. In fact there's hardly anything at all. But there are pumpkins lined by the walls and a bed with sheets that smelt of Jaejoong.
At night, the sounds in Yunho's head fade and the only thing that keeps him from sleep is the sound of Jaejoong's breathing, afraid and wary. Moonlight kisses his skin white again, but the purples and reds from his cuts and bruises do not fade. Neither do the trails of black that map Jaejoong's vessels. Yunho hugs him tight. He hugs him close. An attempt to soothe the creases on Jaejoong's face and the tremors in his bones. "Heaven's right here," Jaejoong whispers to him at twilight. He snuggles closer, tries not to cringe when his wounds rub against fabric. Yunho meets his eyes, worried but loving. Now, Jaejoong's eyes aren't that far away anymore. Like they're back in one full circle and heading for Yunho. The knots are loose and somehow it feels as if all he needs is one more hug to unravel everything that he couldn't before. They kiss this time, gentle and loving, like their lips are singing on the same key now, in perfect harmony like there never was before. The strings that wound them tight are cut and the blues in their veins spill over to the reds. Everything felt right.
There are stars in the sky shining bright that night without a single cloud. And there are tiny flecks painted against the dark blue. Stardust. Like they're closer to Heaven than ever before.
-
In the morning of Halloween, Yunho wakes up to find that he is hugging himself. There is no Jaejoong, but there is a paper in his hand that he tucks away for later. Now it is finding Jaejoong that is most important. And the sounds are back. This time there is a crackling of a flame, unsettling. He saunters out of the sheets and out of the room in attempt to find Jaejoong. But Jaejoong isn't anywhere in the house. Instead, there are stars carved out from pumpkins suspended on nylon strings in one of the rooms, wax lining the cracks of the walls. Worry sneaks its way into Yunho's heart; it quickens the pounding.
A storm of footsteps is heard before Yunho is face to face with the anxiety on a lady's face, keys in her hands. The landlord, he presumes, and attempts a hesitant smile.
"You shouldn't be here," she says, voice tight. Yunho blinks, curious and confused. Jaejoong has rights to invite whoever he wants back, doesn’t he?
"But the person staying here invited me-" Yunho starts, but he is cut off immediately after with a panicked glance.
"There's no one living here," she says shakily. Yunho is taken aback. He clenches onto the creases of his shirt. The tapping of chalk resounds too loud in his ears and he blinks, as if it'll force the sound out.
"Then how do you explain this," Yunho protests, gesturing above at the star-carved pumpkins that catch the sun rays and glimmer as if they're real. "Ghosts can't carve pumpkins."
The lady is pale now, and terribly so. "What are you talking about?" she asks. "There's nothing in this room."
Yunho is stunned, the sound of fire in his mind draws louder as if the flame's closer to his heart now, threatening to melt his soul till it became rivers.
"The family that lived here died five years ago on this day," she whispers. "In a fire."
Yunho’s breath catches and he rubs his eyes, rough and frantic. There were most definitely pumpkins and there most definitely had been a Jaejoong, most lovely and most beautiful. The person he had spent the last few weeks with, pouring love into his blood. A Biology lesson comes back to him and the voices in his head jumble into a big mess. Hallucinations. The paper in his pocket crumples and the dust in the room stirs.
"He must have gone to Heaven," Yunho breathes and watches as the flecks of dust catch the orange of the sun, bright like stardust. Like a part of Jaejoong's there. With him.
Yunho takes the paper out from his pocket, unfolds it, and laughs when he sees the picture. It's a picture of him. Love, Jaejoong writes. Is not always broken. And there are scribbles underneath that Yunho has no heart to read. Now his fingers are brushed black at its tips too, charred and angry and he can feel his mind drifting away. There is a tunnel at the end of his vision and his heart is marching towards it. Slowly, his skin becomes marred with black though he does not feel a thing. The lady is shouting at him, but Yunho cannot bring himself to care. Because he knows that there is not enough courage in him, to ask, to bring up the question of whether or not he's holding anything in his hands at all.
The wind stirs emptiness in the room. The skies are blue and Jaejoong's eyes are burned at the back of Yunho's head, as dark as ever. But now, they are smiling. Like he's finally happy. Like he's finally found Heaven.
-
Thank you for making me believe in Heaven.
(Thank you for being my Heaven.)
A/N: This was one of the hardest things I had to write. Mainly because 1) I am afraid of ghosts and 2) I am terrified of ghosts. I was cursing at myself for choosing Halloween, of all themes ;;; Thank you to chun_ji for the initial reading and for cheering me on, and also moonkissedx for the support and gloating. Also lots of thanks to the people who were there for me during late nights when I was too scared to continue writing because I am awfully faint-hearted. I don't think I'll ever write something like this ever again. Although it isn't really all that scary...let's just say that I'm very faint-hearted.
Thank you for reading :) I hope it worked for you!