latenightchai: They Change Their Sky (Part 1/2)
Title: They Change Their Sky
Author: latenightchai
Pairing/Focus: JJaejoong/Changmin, Yoochun/Junsu, OT5
Rating: PG-13
Final word count: 11,136 words
Summary: There are myths that say that cameras can steal your soul: that having your likeness, your essence, captured in film, is to lose that piece of you forever. They're just myths, of course - but what can myths mean, when you're already a legend, and a member of the most photographed band in the world?
“[The] magical relationship between photographs and their subjects… is illustrated by the belief in some societies that the camera will somehow steal a part of one’s physical or spiritual being”
-Daniel Wojcik, “Polaroids from Heaven.” The Journal of American Folklore. Spring, 1996. p.137
“Idol group TVXQ put its name on the Guinness World Record Book for the second time… From the day of their debut to March 19, 2009, the five members are estimated to have been photographed about 500 million times in magazines, albums jackets, and commercials, etc.”
-KBS World News, March 24, 2009
*
“They change their sky, not their soul, who run across the sea” -Quintus Horatius Flaccus
*
Yoochun wakes up one morning and his reflection is gone.
Nothing else is different: he wakes up groggy and drags himself, tripping over clothes and cords, to the bathroom so he can splash water on his face. It’s only when he straightens and the water slides away that he looks up into the mirror that he realizes that there is nothing looking back. He blinks once, twice - rubs his eyes, splashes his face one more time. He looks again.
And then his reflection is there. It’s the same image as always, staring back at him; the same sunken, tired eyes and scraggy hair that’s splintered and damaged from too much dye. But… when Yoochun leans close, pressing his fingers to the mirror, it seems a little transparent at the edges. A wisp of hair at his temple, curling away into nothing. The tip of his fingers, with skin faded to grey to be natural.
He thinks maybe he’s sleep deprived - he knows he is, and obviously he’s not seeing things right. He shakes it off and tries to forget about it.
*
Jaejoong is cooking lunch; he’s got everything laid out, water on boil, and he’s cutting vegetables. It’s thoughtless work and he enjoys it, the steady slice of the knife, the tension that melts away each time he applies a quick jab of pressure. When he’s done he reaches back absently for a towel to wipe the knife, only to freeze when he hears the shout.
“Jaejoong! Oh shit-! ”
He whips around to look at Yunho, who is barreling towards him and looking horrified. Jaejoong doesn’t understand and looks around quickly, seeing nothing amiss, but then Yunho’s next to him and reaching for his hand, which is still reaching for that towel… and resting casually in the blue flames of the burner.
He hisses and jerks his hand away, more on instinct than anything. Yunho’s already got the sink faucet on and tugs his hand under the cold water.
“Are you ok? Does it hurt?” Yunho asks gently. Jaejoong shakes his head and the stare at his fingers, the side of his hand, the skin that’s already white and bubbling. “God, that looks at least second-degree. What the hell, Jaejoong?” he adds softly, like an afterthought of shock.
But Jaejoong is just as stunned. “I didn’t even feel it,” he says. He feels the water, the sensation of it running over his hand. But he doesn’t feel the cold, doesn’t feel the burn, doesn’t feel any pain at all. I swear, I didn’t even feel it-
*
Yunho is persuaded not to take Jaejoong to an emergency room; after some careful pleading, he doesn’t even alert their manager. He and Yunho are the only ones in the apartment and by the time the others get back from the recording, Jaejoong’s skin has rippled-ripped-peeled and taken on the pink shine of new skin. They don’t talk about it, and by the time they go to bed, it’s healed as if it never were.
They don’t talk about it, but Yunho doesn’t forget. It takes a few days, a gradual buildup of weeks, but soon he starts to have nightmares about it. In his dreams it’s as if he’s taking all the pain Jaejoong should have felt; he dreams he’s burning up, flames tearing him apart into bits of nothing. Yunho’s dreams have always been too vivid - violent colors and emotions; fear, even when he knows he’s dreaming. Or worse, when he doesn’t know whether he’s awake or asleep and when he feels phantom pains and inexplicable urges and can’t control his own body, the painful pound of his heart is only too real The other four have to wake him up on more than one occasion because of such nightmares.
But then, one night, the dreams stop. Instead when he closes his eyes at night, he is left in nothing but a void of darkness, endlessly horrifying. There are no false images, no fears or hurts; just him, his mind, and a stretch of eternity. He doesn’t know which is worse.
*
Junsu has felt hollow for years. But he doesn’t know how to describe the feeling to the others - so he doesn’t. He just keeps smiling.
*
Changmin has always liked the cold. He likes feeling cool air on his skin and seeing his breath mist in the air and bundling up in layer upon layer to keep warm. But, lately, he can’t seem to get warm at all. He shivers even in the sunlight and his hands are icy to the touch. Jaejoong is the only one who can hold his hand these days - the only who does it without a yelp of shock or a carefully-hidden wince.
“Lucky me,” Jaejoong says, but his smile is small and doesn’t really reach his eyes.
It’s not like it’s a bad thing. He isn’t uncomfortable feeling cold all the time; mostly he just feels sort of… numb. Like his whole body is too frozen to feel it, like it’s just easier not to move at all. It’s not like it’s a bad thing, not really. Just strange.
*
Yoochun wakes another morning and his reflection is gone, again, and no amount of face-splashing will bring it back. He locks himself in the bathroom, ignores when the others knock and shout. He stares and stares but his reflection is gone. He stares and waits but there is no sign of Park Yoochun.
The next thing he knows there’s a bangbangbang on the door, hard enough to rattle even the mirrorglass. Shaken out of his reverie, he looks up and realizes it’s all dark - night, and the whole day has passed him by. He opens his mouth to speak but can’t, like his voice has fled along with time and his reflection.
“Yoochun! Open the door, please - now!” Yunho shouts, the commanding, angry tone belying his request.
Yoochun goes and opens the handle, only enough for the lock to slip free of the latch and the door to swing open an inch, maybe a little more. He stands close, enough for them to see him but so that they can’t see in.
“Are you okay?” The older man asks slowly, his eyes running over Yoochun like he’s looking for something wrong. Something is wrong; something is missing - but Yoochun can’t say that, and from his empty throat forces up a weak ’yeah.’
Jaejoong appears behind Yunho’s shoulder, looking worriedly into the bathroom -and then he freezes, face going pale. Yoochun panics and his eyes, unbidden, slip a look to the mirror behind him.
His reflection is back, wide-eyed and gaunt. He finds his voice.
“I-” He clears his throat, suddenly feeling claustrophobic and wanting nothing more than to just get out. “I’m sorry. I was just… thinking.”
Yunho doesn’t look like he’s buying it, but when Yoochun pushes out of the room he doesn’t stop him, either. Jaejoong is still there, and Yoochun knows that look, that shock, like he’s seen something he shouldn’t have- like he didn’t see something he should have.
*
Junsu is in perfect health the day he collapses at a photoshoot. None of them have been feeling well… not sick, really, but not quite right, either. It only intensifies when they’re at the shoot, with each new post, each click of the camera, but the single release is coming up too fast and they can’t afford to get behind schedule.
The director isn’t happy. Yoochun is too pale, no matter how much make-up they apply. Changmin is too stiff, Yunho too lackluster, Jaejoong too detached, and Junsu… Junsu just hits the ground. Hard.
He’s rushed to the local hospital, but the doctors say nothing is amiss. Jaejoong hears them talk of exhaustion and psychosomatic symptoms, but he doesn’t really pay attention. He watches his members instead, the way they all look drawn and tense, like they’ve come from a funeral instead of a simple photoshoot.
Only Junsu smiles like nothing is wrong. Yunho and Changmin listen avidly, anxiously to the doctor’s words, while Yoochun looks back at him, questions lying dormant behind his lips. Jaejoong can only shake his head, and Yoochun reaches out to hold his hand a little too tight.
*
Yunho takes to wandering around the apartment at night. He doesn’t like sleeping, not anymore. Every time he closes his eyes the darkness is there, like it’s waiting for him. So one night he doesn’t go to sleep at all. He ignores Jaejoong’s unsubtle looks and reads for hours by low lamplight, ignoring the lure of sleep, that heavy pressure in the back of his mind.
He hears every tick of the clock, can feel the time pass too-slow as he goes line to line until his eyes can’t focus any longer and the words twist and float on the page. The world is in the witching hours when he gives up, and he wanders the apartment, room to room, doing anything to pass the time, waiting for the light of dawn to come streaking in through the lines of the curtains. When it finally does he can’t possibly feel rested - but neither does he feel the least bit tired.
It’s three days before he falls asleep again, and even then it’s just an hour, maybe less, before he’s reeling away from the emptiness of his own subconscious. It’s like that part of him is just… missing.
So he spends the rest of the night lying in pretend, staring at the ceiling and waiting for the darkness to pass. He thinks if it’s maddening to sleep, it’s insanity to live like this - conscious all the time, never allowed for one second to stop thinking.
He realizes, in some way, the nightmares never really stopped.
*
And Jaejoong is starting to have suspicions. In the quiet moments he thinks, staring off into space, perfectly still but for the constant rubbing of his hand. It’s become a nervous habit, kneading the outer edge his palm - the first sign, the inexplicable burn - as if by touch alone he can understand what’s happening. They’ve all noticed it; during interviews he’ll sit silently, working his hand in his lap until Yunho will reach over with a too-bright smile and grab his hand to stop him and Ah, Jaejoong, what do you think about-
Jaejoong’s thinking he’s got a paper-cut on his thumb that doesn’t sting. He’s thinking that he had dance practice this morning but his knee doesn’t ache like it usually does.
And it’s not only feeling that’s slipping away. He thinks of the way Yoochun’s reflection flickers in the quiet moments between morning and night; the way Yunho’s nightmares are playing havoc with his head and he isn’t sleeping right anymore. It’s the way being around people has started making Jaejoong uncomfortable, and the thought of a camera makes him sick.
The world doesn’t seem as bright as it to be it - it’s monotone, distant, empty. And Jaejoong realizes something in him - in them - is changing. Something deep and inherent, fragile and far too quiet… but it’s happening and he can’t make it stop.
*
And then Changmin stops eating. It’s slow, but gradually he stops eating those between-meal snacks, that extra piece of food left on the table. He stops talking about food and stops being hungry at all. They joke about it, but when the already-skinny man drops ten pounds in two weeks, their manager takes him to the hospital.
“I’m fine,” he says when he returns. “They said my metabolism is probably slowing down - it’s why I’m so cold, too. See? It’s nothing.”
It’s the fact that he doesn’t care that bothers them the most. Junsu teases him to try and trick him into eating. Yoochun and Yunho take to monitoring his diet, strictly and unsuccessfully. Jaejoong even starts cooking regularly again, something he’s avoided since the accident, not that he usually has time anyway - but now he’s more desperate than anything.
“C’mon, Changmin-ah,” he coaxes, “I’ll cook you anything you want. I’ll cook your favorite.”
“No, Jaejoong. I’m not hungry,” Changmin replies.
“Anything you want, I promise,” he pleads. He grabs Changmin’s arm and is scared by how many fingers he can fit around his wrist. “This is not healthy. This is not a slow metabolism. You need to eat. Please, I’m worried.”
At those words Changmin gives him a slow, measuring look, but eventually he relents. He sits at the table with a crooked smile and eats everything put in front of him while Jaejoong beams. He congratulates himself all evening, tells himself that it’s happiness that keeps him up when everyone is asleep and he’s lying awake and restless.
That’s before he hears the sound of feet running, the wet sound of retching. He jumps out of bed and follows the noises to the bathroom, his gut rolling in sympathy, his throat closing in fear. Sure enough, Changmin is there, bent over the toilet ad empting his stomach in sickening lurches. Yunho sits over him, patting his back and murmuring soothingly. He stands up when he sees Jaejoong, meeting him at the doorway. “I heard him run in here…” he murmurs.
Jaejoong bites his lip. “I’ll take care of it. Go back to sleep.”
Yunho gives him a rueful smile but leaves anyway - Jaejoong spares a thought that he’s been too lenient lately, too complacent when he’s normally so headstrong - but dismisses it because Changmin heaves again, and Jaejoong is rushing over to him.
“Oh god, Changmin-ah… I am so, so sorry.”
Changmin lifts his head. His eyes are red like he’s been crying and his chest convulses, forcing him to lean back down again. Jaejoong coaches him through it all, making sure he’s done completely before turning to clean up the mess. Changmin watches him silently as he wipes at the floor, and it’s only a moment before Jaejoong breaks. He abandons the rag and goes to Changmin, pulling him into a tight hug.
Changmin sighs, melting into the embrace, and Jaejoong wants to think he’s doing something good. He rocks back and forth, resting his chin on the younger man’s head and humming into his hair. “It’s okay, it’s okay,” he croons.
But it’s not. Not at all.
“I feel wrong,” Changmin finally says. Not sick, not bad. Wrong. Jaejoong keeps humming, keeps rocking, and they both ignore it when he starts to cry.
*
“Changminnie…” Junsu frowns, his forehead wrinkling with the effort.
“He’ll be okay,” Yoochun starts slowly. “The doctors… they don’t know anything” -and that’s a gross understatement, there’s nothing medical, nothing natural about what’s happening to them- “but he’s got us, right?”
Junsu keeps frowning, and Yoochun doesn’t like it at all. He keeps trying. “We can… whatever is going on… as long as we just keep going, we’ll be fine. We’ll be fine.”
The silent question goes unanswered. He looks down and picks at the loose threads of Junsu’s comforter listlessly. Junsu is at the head of the bed, unmoving, curled around his pillow. They’ve been that way for minutes - maybe hours, Yoochun isn’t sure. Time passes a little differently, these days.
His eyes slide to the closest mirror. It’s unconscious, a nervous habit, to check if he’s still there - and he is, though it’s not so stable. Washed-out, flickering. He thinks he looks like a corpse.
His eyes slide back to the comforter. Junsu sighs softly, chest falling on the exhale, and it’s the most he’s moved in a while. Yoochun would have normally teased the younger man and his ability to stay still, but it doesn’t seem worth it. He doesn’t think Junsu will react, anyway. Just another thing that’s changing.
“What do you…” he starts hesitantly, pausing to think. “What do you see, when you look at me?”
Junsu tilts his head, only enough to look at Yoochun. “I see you,” he says softly. “You’re right here.”
Yoochun sighs. The answer is vague yet full of meaning - almost poetic, in a way. Another thing he could’ve teased the younger man about, another thing that just doesn’t see worth it.
He thinks, maybe, Junsu was just trying to be reassuring, but it still falls flat between them.
He looks back to his reflection like it’s an addiction. He stares until Junsu reaches out - slowly, so slowly - and pulls him away, until they’re lying side by side.
“It’s no use,” Junsu says. Yoochun wonders if that’s his answer, but simply nods and closes his eyes. He can just barely feel the threads under his fingers, and he keeps picking at them until he feels them unravel completely.
*
No one says anything about it, not really - any attempt is too hesitant, too faltering, too easily pushed aside and forgotten. But they all feel it, they know it’s happening. When Yunho stops sleeping completely and Changmin stops eating altogether and both stop caring. When Yoochun’s reflection is fleeting at best and Jaejoong becomes paranoid over every little thing that goes wrong. Junsu still doesn’t seem too affected, not to the rest of them, but there’s a silence that settles over the apartment that he doesn’t bother to break.
It’s the unspoken. It is the undeniable feeling that they are bereft of who they used to be. They are shells of their former selves, and there is no undoing what’s been done. And, somehow, it feels like it has all been unavoidable.
*
“We love you, Cassiopeia! Thank you! Thank you!” They chant, their voices almost-but-not-quite drowned out by the screams. They bow deep from the waist, smiles painted on their faces as thick as stage make-up. They are professionals if nothing else. The cameras keep flashing, endless flares of light like moonlight off dark water, a stadium full of fans desperate to take home an image, a memory, a piece of Dong Bang Shin Ki.
And then they stumble off stage, and Yoochun cries because he’s in pain and Changmin lies still on the couch like a dead man and Jaejoong rubs his hand until it’s raw and Junsu bites his lip to keep from screaming and Yunho coughs up something that’s too dark to be blood.
“Why are we doing this?” Jaejoong finally asks. He isn’t breathing hard because he doesn’t get tired, but he feels more drained, more faded than ever. He’s sick of this charade, of forcing emotions he doesn’t feel. He knows they all feel the same; they’re only keeping it up because they doesn’t know what else to do.
“Why do anything at all?” Changmin answers. He’s so still - Jaejoong doesn’t even see his lips move when he speaks.
Junsu is biting his lip hard enough to make it bleed, but it doesn’t. Yunho won’t meet Jaejoong’s eyes. Yoochun will, but all he can offer is a hopeless shrug. It’s answer enough.
*
Dong Bang Shin Ki disbands on the brink of winter, when the frost sits on the edge of the wind and only two of them can feel it. They don’t make it to their next anniversary. They are no longer gods, and they are free to go out and be normal people.
Problem is, they aren’t. Normal, people. Jaejoong isn’t sure which fits more, these days.
Junsu goes home, claiming to ‘take some time off.’ Yoochun goes home as well, burying himself in the music and family he won’t let himself let go of. It’s for them that he keeps up the pretense - keeps going - selling his compositions and living life like is expected of him.
Yunho does one even better -he gets married. She’s a pretty girl with a smile as sweet as his. The ceremony is beautiful and huge, the bride having no trouble finding four maid’s of honor to match four best men. And Yunho seems to actually care for her; the four of them can only send him off with bitter hopes and best wishes. The couple buys a home on the outskirts of Seoul, ready to settle down and start a family.
Changmin gets his own apartment in Seoul. Jaejoong does the same - but he doesn’t last in it long. It’s too quiet, too sad, and the silence is so much more ominous when there aren’t other people to share it. He feels like he could drive himself crazy. If he isn’t already.
He shows up on Changmin’s doorstep one day with two suitcases’ worth of clothes. “I can’t do this alone,” he says.
Changmin lets him in without a word.
*
They live. Sort of-
Yunho hates lying next to his wife when she sleeps - he hates lying to her. He is truly endeared to the girl, her bright eyes and lively movements, and he hates that when he touches her he feels absolutely
Nothing will stop Yoochun from keeping up the appearance. He vows that to himself, even when his family feels further away than ever. He won’t let it happen; he owes it to them - to all of them, his brother and his mother and
Everyone thinks Junsu is depressed, and he doesn’t know how to contradict them. The music has gone from him and all he does stay in bed and flip through the photo albums his mother has made over the years. He traces the familiar images and under his fingers it’s almost like he feels something, almost like
Something close to hope burns in Changmin the first time he kisses Jaejoong. For the first time he touches someone and feels warmth, feels sparks of emotion that smolder in him, words that feel like ashes in his throat because they can’t describe the way
It hurts when Jaejoong pulls back and looks into Changmin’s eyes, because he knows that it isn’t enough. In Changmin he sees the same pain, the fear - but he sees the acceptance, too. The kiss becomes a pact, for even without words they understand that this is how it will be, how it probably always be - but for now, at least they have each other. They’ll cope
-As well as they can.
*
Shortly after Jaejoong turns thirty, he gets his military enlistment notice. His family worries, quietly, subtle in their acknowledgement of Jaejoong’s… eccentricities. His sisters, when he visits home for the ‘going away party’ his mother tries to throw him, give him sidelong looks and click their tongues. Of course they’ve noticed the way their bubbling younger brother has changed, how he goes strangely silent in those moments he thinks they aren’t looking. He’s a decent actor for the cameras, but it’s a poor excuse of pretending in front of their watchful eyes.
“Have some cake, Jaejoong,” says the oldest, ushering her own daughter up to hand her uncle a healthy slice.
Jaejoong waves it off with a strained smile. They notice he’s gotten thinner; he doesn’t eat half of what he used to.
“You’ll want to eat as much as you can,” says another. “Won’t get much cake in the barracks.”
Everyone chuckles, except for Jaejoong.
He leaves that night. At the last second his father pulls him aside, and asks if he’ll consider deferring his enlistment. For health reasons, he says pointedly. Jaejoong stares at his father and the lines of age that have dug themselves deep into his skin. His wrinkled hands have taken care of Jaejoong all his life, lifted him up as a child and, as he grew older, provided the sort of solid comfort a man gives another man - a tight grip on a shoulder, a strong clap on the back. These hands and this man, who took in an orphan that no one wanted just so he could have a son, and had looked forward to the day when that boy would enter the military and do his country proud.
Jaejoong isn’t going to shame his father by not completing his service… but it’s not for the reasons the old man would probably like. His career is over, his life is stagnant, and he just doesn’t have it in him to protest. Besides, he’s still in the same shape he was when he was twenty-three - he couldn’t be exempt, even if he wanted to.
There’s an old ache there, and Jaejoong tries to hold on to it, to remember it and why, but it fades away as quickly as it came.
The train ride back to Seoul is a blur. The next day he goes to the army base quietly, no friends or fans to say goodbye. He plans to keep his head down and do what he’s told and be the soldier Korea wants him to be. It’s just another role to play.
*
When Yoochun’s mother asks him to meet this girl, this daughter of a friend-of-a-friend, he doesn’t think twice about resisting. He wants her to be happy, and that means acting like he is happy, too. It’s not hard - in fact, as time goes on, it gets a bit easier to pretend. Even when his body and spirit feel barren, beyond repair, his mind is all too willing to fall for the lie.
And it is his mind that connects with the girl he meets. His mind enjoys their conversation, as they fall into a playful banter that he used to know so well: familiar and yet refreshing. In a way.
He understands then what Yunho might like about his wife. He calls him that night - wanting to be sure, but not knowing how.
“I met a girl today.”
“Oh?” Yunho asks quietly, though with curiosity unfeigned.
“Yes.” He doesn’t know what else to say.
After a while Yunho sighs, a wash of static over the line. “That’s good, Yoochun. It’s very good.”
“…You think so?”
“I do. If you like her, you should do something about it. That’s what you should do.”
“What I should do,” Yoochun huffs, thinking. “I do like her,” he adds softly.
“That’s good,” Yunho says again. He speaks so matter-of-factly, and it makes the hair rise on Yoochun’s arms. He closes his eyes and wonders if this what Yunho tells himself; if this is what he says to make himself believe the lies. He wonders if Yunho actually does believe it.
“So you’ll see her again?” Yunho says.
“Yeah,” Yoochun licks at his lips. “Yeah, ‘think I will.”
“I’m happy for you, Yoochun,” he says, tone suddenly light. “You deserve to have someone, and to be happy.”
Yoochun can’t help but smile. “Thanks, hyung.”
“I’m really happy for you.”
*
Three weeks out of basic training has Jaejoong climbing onto his stiff regulation-issue mattress and staring at the ceiling, breathing deeper and slower until he falls asleep. When he wakes up, it’s to an officer hitting the metal side of his bed, telling him to wake up and get his stuff together.
He’s being discharged; his two years are up.
As he’s escorted off-base, he looks around in confusion, in amazement, because things are the same and yet they’re different - like two years really have passed while he was sleeping. But, the more he thinks, the more he wonders if he really was asleep. Every path feels well-worn, rote. People wave to him and their faces are familiar but-not. It’s like déjà-vu, as if his time here has been nothing more than figments of a dream.
When he arrives back at his apartment, his family is waiting for him with warm welcome. He tries to match it and celebrate with them, but his sense of time and place is too disjointed. Even when he starts feeling steady, around the time the sky outside is falling into twilight, his heart still isn’t in it. The noise bothers him. The light bothers him. He feels… stale.
His parents and sisters leave, finally, and then he’s left with his other family. Just the four of them.
“Welcome back,” Yunho says with a faint smile.
“How was it?” Yoochun asks curiously.
Jaejoong thinks for a long time. “I wasn’t paying attention. And then it was over.”
He looks up and Yoochun, Yunho look thoughtful. Junsu looks uncomfortable. Changmin looks right through him.
The married men leave first, although Yoochun insists on bringing his wife around tomorrow, for Jaejoong to finally meet. Soon after they leave Junsu falls asleep on their couch, and it’s decided he’ll stay the night. “He looks so tired,” Jaejoong comments as he puts a blanket over him.
Changmin nods. “He’s been… quiet the past couple of years. He hasn’t been in touch. A lot like you.”
Jaejoong gives him a look. “I was busy.”
“You weren’t paying attention,” Changmin corrects, this time looking right at Jaejoong. So he was paying attention, Jaejoong thinks. He almost feels like smiling.
“But he looks thinner,” Changmin adds. “Doesn’t he?”
Jaejoong shrugs. “You’re one to talk. Have you eaten anything since I’ve been gone?”
Changmin nods. “I went out with my parents a few times. I ate then.”
“A few times? In two years?” he huffs, shaking his head.
He comes up behind Changmin, wrapping his arms around him, pressing against him, feeling the warmth of another body, a familiar presence. He inhales - and then realizes just exactly what he’s overlooked these past two years.
Ever since that night, in all this time, he hasn’t taken a single breath. He hasn’t needed to.
“I missed you so much,” he breathes deep, taking in air. His lungs fill and the world comes into focus a little bit more. “I wasn’t alive without you.”
And Changmin puts an arm over his, and matches him breath for breath.
*
Since the day they were married, everyone talked about Yunho’s soon-to-be children. Everyone knew that Yunho and his wife wanted several, and would be wonderful parents. Everyone agreed those children would be beautiful and kind and just as remarkable as their parents. And, reasonably, everyone is disappointed when year after year passes by and those children never come.
The couple tries in-vitro, but it never takes. Yunho and his wife go to every specialist they’re referred to and waste tens of thousands of dollars, but never even get as much as a false hope. Something is always missing, and Yunho is bitter and quick to give in; you need to two people to create new life, and he just isn’t up to the task. In the end he opens up a dance studio and, with a faint smile that only his ex-members really understand, claims that all his students are his children. Now he has twenty-five - and more.
Everyone still talks, though, about how disappointed he must be. How strong he must be to carry on like he does. Yunho was always the best at keeping up the façade.
*
Seven years after they disband, Junsu is brought to the emergency room and immediately taken into surgery. The official story is that it was an accident: a fall down a flight of stairs that left him worse for wear. His family knows different. Only four people know the truth.
Jaejoong knows the moment he gets the call from Junho.
“Jaejoong-hyung, it’s Junsu. Please-”
And Jaejoong jumps into action and runs and breaks the speed limit twice-over on his way to the hospital. Because he knows. Because it’s Junsu - Junsu, the one who was always happy, the one who seemed like he might be okay even when the rest of them were ready to fall apart.
He’s the first to arrive. “Why, Junsu?” he pleads, his fingers digging into cheap linen sheets. He looks straight into Junsu’s eyes so he doesn’t have to see the angry lines of stitches that railroad the younger man’s wrists.
“I just wanted to see, hyung. I just wanted to know if I could,” he says softly. Jaejoong can hear Junsu’s mother crying from the hallway.
“The doctors say you were lucky to survive,” Jaejoong whispers, swallowing thickly. “It’s practically a miracle.”
Junsu shakes his head, eyes somehow wild and dull at the same time. “No, it wasn’t luck. It wasn’t a miracle. It wasn’t. You understand. right, Jaejoong? You understand.”
And Jaejoong does. He does and it hurts as much as it terrifies him.
*
Junsu is sent home with a promise to get professional help. But Yunho knows it won’t do any good. There’s no way to fix… this. It makes him sick but he doesn’t know what to do, now. Junsu’s actions have come too close to breaking the silent vow he’s kept all these years: don’t talk about it, don’t let it get to you, and maybe it will go away.
But it’s gone for so long and it isn’t just not going away - it’s getting worse. Just days before Yoochun had confessed to Yunho that he’s given up sleeping. He wanted to ask Yunho’s advice on how to hide the fact from his wife - after all, Yunho has been doing it from the beginning.
And then there’s Changmin and Jaejoong… there’s something going on there. Something quiet, profound, but the two of them have become so closed into each other, it’s impossible for Yunho to put his finger on what. They’ve come to an understanding, he thinks, but about what he has no idea.
Yoochun comes up behind him, then, and together they watch as Junsu is wheeled out of his room. Junsu, who tried to kill himself and failed because… because, Yunho doesn’t even want to think about it.
“I’d always thought- I mean, he was okay. He never really acted like… I’d hoped he was okay,” Yoochun breathes, not able to hide his desperation.
Yunho swallows hard and turns to give Yoochun a hug, turns so he can look away from the reminder that Junsu’s become. “I think he’d been hoping that, too.”
*
In the next year, Junsu tries to commit suicide four more times. After the last attempt, he is admitted to a psychiatric ward so that he can be under constant supervision. There is no covering that up - the press goes into a frenzy trying to find out the truth. There’s speculation, everything from depression to drugs to a childhood of pressure finally catching up to him.
Changmin unplugs their home phone, and cancels their newspaper and cable and internet subscriptions. Jaejoong doesn’t protest. Contact with the outside world hasn’t seemed all that important for a long time. But Changmin keeps going- changing their locks, emptying their refrigerator, throwing away all the mirrors in the house. The younger man slowly methodically, does away with anything that he deems unimportant or impermanent… and that’s a lot of things.
He only stops when he gets to their old albums. He takes out each set of liner notes, flipping through the pictures, looking at them - smiling and heartbroken and serious and warm and earnest, xiah-micky-yoongwoong-choikang-uknow. Us.
Changmin touches them each one reverently and tries to remember these boys and what it was like to be them. For they are the “real” Changmin - what he is now is nothing, nothing but an empty, incomplete copy. He goes to rip them up but Jaejoong stops him, a gentle hand on his that say no. no. they’re all we have left-
*
Yoochun’s thirty-fifth birthday is a big affair, mostly because of the old joke that, between his drinking and smoking, he would never live past that age. Yet lived he has, and so the entire world seems to have decided to throw him a party. He is less than excited.
“I don’t want to celebrate this,” he says as Jaejoong straightens his tie. His wife has arranged for a big gala to be thrown in his honor, and the suit Yoochun has to wear for the event has only served to make him more uncomfortable with the whole affair.
Behind him Changmin chides, “It’s just a part. You’ll survive.”
They all pause and Changmin eyes go flat, dark, dead. Yoochun squirms and Jaejoong reprimands him softly. “Hold still… ah, done,” he says, stepping back, breaking the moment.
Yoochun turns to Yunho for confirmation. “How does it look?” he asks. It’s not like he can check for himself.
“You look great,” Yunho says, and it’s true. Yoochun looks great - they all do, because outwardly they look no different from those album covers, from when they were Dong Bang Shin Ki, early twenties and top of the world.
But there are things that couldn’t be more different. None of them like being the center of attention anymore. Down the hall is a party filled with too much light and noise and too many people. Every year it gets harder and harder to remember why they even try. Junsu’s absence is like a physical thing.
“Just get through the night,” Jaejoong says impassively. “It’s just one night.”
Before they go out, they gather around like old times, comforting only in its nostalgia, and hold hands. No one mentions that none of their hands are even close to warm.
*
Yunho goes home with his wife. She talks the whole drive home, about this person and so-and-so who knows so-and-so and oh, did you know that-?
Yunho nods and tries to keep focus on her words. His attention is drifting, spread thin between the road and her and his own weariness. He imagines what it would be like to sleep this apathy away - and then laughs bitterly. He doesn’t even remember what it’s like to sleep.
His wife, interrupted by his laughter, gives him a strange look. “What is it?”
He shakes his head, not bothering to answer. She huffs angrily and turns to look out the window. She doesn’t speak again, and Yunho tries to care. But, after the party - having to talk to all those people and smile until his face didn’t-hurt and pose for all those damn pictures - it’s harder than usual, harder to convince himself that he isn’t just pretending, that he’s supposed to be charming and flourishing and perfect.
He looks over at his wife. She’s wearing an emerald-green dress, he knows, but all he sees is shades of grey. He looks down at the tie she picked out to match her emerald-green dress, but it’s near invisible, blending in with the shadows and his dark suit jacket.
For the first time he feels truly lost. He’s empty, a withered flower that doesn’t even have color to keep it company.
*
Jaejoong and Changmin arrive home from the party, and Jaejoong goes and falls straight into bed. He’s not going to sleep, because he doesn’t do that anymore. None of them do, except for Junsu, but that’s only when he takes the pills they give him.
He’s just so tired of moving. It takes too much effort; the night has left him sapped of strength. From somewhere behind him he hears Changmin come into the room. With gentle hands the younger man lifts him up and peels off his jacket. He doesn’t try with the shirt, the buttons requiring too much dexterity for his careful progression, but he slowly undoes off Jaejoong’s tie. His fingers leave spots of cold where they touch his neck, and again on his ankles, his feet, when he tugs off his shoes. Jaejoong lets his eyes follow Changmin’s work, and when he’s done lifts a heavy hand in an offer to reciprocate. Changmin pushes it back down to the bed, following it with his whole body, settling behind him; Changmin wants to be strong one, this time, and Jaejoong won’t deny him
They lie together, not talking, not breathing. Jaejoong’s been doing this more and more; he’ll stop breathing and two, three months will pass by unnoticed. Public opinion is that he’s become a recluse - Changmin, too. They were the strangest ones in Dong Bang Shin Ki, after all.
His family has all but given up, unable or unwilling to understand how different he’s become. Jaejoong feels horrible he doesn’t feel anything for their concern, but at least now they’ve stopped disturbing him. They’re just glad he has Changmin to take care of him.
In truth, they take care of each other. Jaejoong doesn’t know how the others do it.
Beside him Changmin shifts, lifting a hand to trace the lines of Jaejoong’s tattoo. The left wing, the right wing. Hope to the end.
TVXQ.
SOUL.
He traces the last word over and over again.
“It’s so ironic,” he finally says. Jaejoong doesn’t respond, but he doesn’t need to. Together they lay, out of time, and let the weeks crawl by.
*
Yoochun knocks on a door that’s disturbingly dusty. He hasn’t seen or heard from Jaejoong or Changmin since the party, and it’s been over a month. He wonders if they’ve ever even left.
His question is answered when Jaejoong eventually opens the door and he’s wearing the same shirt Yoochun last saw him in, though slightly more wrinkled, carrying the faint mildewed smell of neglected closets.
“Finally. Gonna let me?” he asks snidely, although his heart’s not in it. Jaejoong steps aside silently, and Yoochun takes a cautious half-step in. Forget Jaejoong- the whole place smelled of disuse. “What do you guys do in here?” he grumbles, not really expecting an answer. He reaches back and hauls in a suitcase behind him. “I’m staying here for awhile, okay?”
It isn’t that he’s coming to check up on them, although that had been a part of it. After days of passive arguing and strained silence, his wife had not-so-subtly requested that he go. He thinks he made a mistake in complying so easily. She’s starting to suspect something, which isn’t all that surprising. The few years they’ve had together have been good, but by no means perfect, and Yoochun’s never been the best of liars. She thinks Yoochun’s been too secretive, been acting too strange… but what she suspects is only that he’s cheating, and for that Yoochun is kind of relieved. He can’t imagine the alternative.
So he comes to stay with Changmin and Jaejoong. It only lasts a week, yet even in that time he can see the difference his presence makes. He may have a faulty reflection and a bad case of insomnia but he still eats sometimes, for what it’s worth. Everything about their apartment is unsettling, but in a way that leaves an unknown something buzzing in the back of his head, asking to be recognized- remembered. Instead, he opens the curtains and clears the musty air.
“Do you guys… do you know what you’re doing? It’s like you’ve stopped caring,” he asks nervously.
Changmin and Jaejoong share a look. “We have,” Changmin finally says. “Does it matter?”
Yoochun shakes his head wearily. It’s weird, it’s heartrending, to think that the liveliest members of their band have become so cut off from the world. Yoochun and Yunho have been keeping active, keeping alive, but the other three have just let themselves… go. He repeats his thoughts aloud and just gets sad looks in return.
“We’re not going anywhere, Yoochun. Not yet.”
*
Yunho knows he shouldn’t let Yoochun’s problems get to him. The cracks are showing and Yunho is concerned for him, but Yunho won’t let it happen to himself. He won’t. He was far too complacent in the beginning - he refuses to give in now. He can’t.
That doesn’t mean, however, that he is any less stressed. He still teaches at the studio, although his apprentice, a pretty young girl who could make one hell of an idol if she wanted, has been taking over more and more of his classes. He sleepwalks his way through a whole week, wrapped up in his own head and all the issues inside, and it’s only the sudden squeak of shoes scuffing the ground that brings him back to himself.
“Ow-”
He turns around and looks at his students - seven of them, an advanced class that he teaches twice a week. He had been in the middle of demonstrating a particular move he’d learned from Stephanie, way back when. He cocks his head as the students pause, breathing hard. He motions for them to take a break and get some water.
One boy lingers, staring at him strangely. That’s weird,” he says, chest heaving in exertion.
Yunho looks at him, perfect stillness in contrast to the room around him. “What was?”
“It’s nothing, probably-” he rubs the towel against his neck like it’s a nervous action. “It’s just, when I looked up to see you, y’know, copy the move, it was like. Well, for a moment I could have sworn you weren’t there.”
Yunho can feel himself freezing, his muscles tightening in panic. He looks past the boy to the mirror that stretches along the entire wall of the dance studio, and for a moment hopes he was imagining things - but no, there it is. For just a moment, his reflection flickers.
He feels cold - colder than usual, anyway. He says something to him, exactly what it is he doesn’t know, doesn’t care, but as soon as the words leave his mouth he’s excusing himself, leaving the room and it’s damning mirrors.
He doesn’t look back. He can’t.
Part 2
Author: latenightchai
Pairing/Focus: JJaejoong/Changmin, Yoochun/Junsu, OT5
Rating: PG-13
Final word count: 11,136 words
Summary: There are myths that say that cameras can steal your soul: that having your likeness, your essence, captured in film, is to lose that piece of you forever. They're just myths, of course - but what can myths mean, when you're already a legend, and a member of the most photographed band in the world?
“[The] magical relationship between photographs and their subjects… is illustrated by the belief in some societies that the camera will somehow steal a part of one’s physical or spiritual being”
-Daniel Wojcik, “Polaroids from Heaven.” The Journal of American Folklore. Spring, 1996. p.137
“Idol group TVXQ put its name on the Guinness World Record Book for the second time… From the day of their debut to March 19, 2009, the five members are estimated to have been photographed about 500 million times in magazines, albums jackets, and commercials, etc.”
-KBS World News, March 24, 2009
*
“They change their sky, not their soul, who run across the sea” -Quintus Horatius Flaccus
*
Yoochun wakes up one morning and his reflection is gone.
Nothing else is different: he wakes up groggy and drags himself, tripping over clothes and cords, to the bathroom so he can splash water on his face. It’s only when he straightens and the water slides away that he looks up into the mirror that he realizes that there is nothing looking back. He blinks once, twice - rubs his eyes, splashes his face one more time. He looks again.
And then his reflection is there. It’s the same image as always, staring back at him; the same sunken, tired eyes and scraggy hair that’s splintered and damaged from too much dye. But… when Yoochun leans close, pressing his fingers to the mirror, it seems a little transparent at the edges. A wisp of hair at his temple, curling away into nothing. The tip of his fingers, with skin faded to grey to be natural.
He thinks maybe he’s sleep deprived - he knows he is, and obviously he’s not seeing things right. He shakes it off and tries to forget about it.
*
Jaejoong is cooking lunch; he’s got everything laid out, water on boil, and he’s cutting vegetables. It’s thoughtless work and he enjoys it, the steady slice of the knife, the tension that melts away each time he applies a quick jab of pressure. When he’s done he reaches back absently for a towel to wipe the knife, only to freeze when he hears the shout.
“Jaejoong! Oh shit-! ”
He whips around to look at Yunho, who is barreling towards him and looking horrified. Jaejoong doesn’t understand and looks around quickly, seeing nothing amiss, but then Yunho’s next to him and reaching for his hand, which is still reaching for that towel… and resting casually in the blue flames of the burner.
He hisses and jerks his hand away, more on instinct than anything. Yunho’s already got the sink faucet on and tugs his hand under the cold water.
“Are you ok? Does it hurt?” Yunho asks gently. Jaejoong shakes his head and the stare at his fingers, the side of his hand, the skin that’s already white and bubbling. “God, that looks at least second-degree. What the hell, Jaejoong?” he adds softly, like an afterthought of shock.
But Jaejoong is just as stunned. “I didn’t even feel it,” he says. He feels the water, the sensation of it running over his hand. But he doesn’t feel the cold, doesn’t feel the burn, doesn’t feel any pain at all. I swear, I didn’t even feel it-
*
Yunho is persuaded not to take Jaejoong to an emergency room; after some careful pleading, he doesn’t even alert their manager. He and Yunho are the only ones in the apartment and by the time the others get back from the recording, Jaejoong’s skin has rippled-ripped-peeled and taken on the pink shine of new skin. They don’t talk about it, and by the time they go to bed, it’s healed as if it never were.
They don’t talk about it, but Yunho doesn’t forget. It takes a few days, a gradual buildup of weeks, but soon he starts to have nightmares about it. In his dreams it’s as if he’s taking all the pain Jaejoong should have felt; he dreams he’s burning up, flames tearing him apart into bits of nothing. Yunho’s dreams have always been too vivid - violent colors and emotions; fear, even when he knows he’s dreaming. Or worse, when he doesn’t know whether he’s awake or asleep and when he feels phantom pains and inexplicable urges and can’t control his own body, the painful pound of his heart is only too real The other four have to wake him up on more than one occasion because of such nightmares.
But then, one night, the dreams stop. Instead when he closes his eyes at night, he is left in nothing but a void of darkness, endlessly horrifying. There are no false images, no fears or hurts; just him, his mind, and a stretch of eternity. He doesn’t know which is worse.
*
Junsu has felt hollow for years. But he doesn’t know how to describe the feeling to the others - so he doesn’t. He just keeps smiling.
*
Changmin has always liked the cold. He likes feeling cool air on his skin and seeing his breath mist in the air and bundling up in layer upon layer to keep warm. But, lately, he can’t seem to get warm at all. He shivers even in the sunlight and his hands are icy to the touch. Jaejoong is the only one who can hold his hand these days - the only who does it without a yelp of shock or a carefully-hidden wince.
“Lucky me,” Jaejoong says, but his smile is small and doesn’t really reach his eyes.
It’s not like it’s a bad thing. He isn’t uncomfortable feeling cold all the time; mostly he just feels sort of… numb. Like his whole body is too frozen to feel it, like it’s just easier not to move at all. It’s not like it’s a bad thing, not really. Just strange.
*
Yoochun wakes another morning and his reflection is gone, again, and no amount of face-splashing will bring it back. He locks himself in the bathroom, ignores when the others knock and shout. He stares and stares but his reflection is gone. He stares and waits but there is no sign of Park Yoochun.
The next thing he knows there’s a bangbangbang on the door, hard enough to rattle even the mirrorglass. Shaken out of his reverie, he looks up and realizes it’s all dark - night, and the whole day has passed him by. He opens his mouth to speak but can’t, like his voice has fled along with time and his reflection.
“Yoochun! Open the door, please - now!” Yunho shouts, the commanding, angry tone belying his request.
Yoochun goes and opens the handle, only enough for the lock to slip free of the latch and the door to swing open an inch, maybe a little more. He stands close, enough for them to see him but so that they can’t see in.
“Are you okay?” The older man asks slowly, his eyes running over Yoochun like he’s looking for something wrong. Something is wrong; something is missing - but Yoochun can’t say that, and from his empty throat forces up a weak ’yeah.’
Jaejoong appears behind Yunho’s shoulder, looking worriedly into the bathroom -and then he freezes, face going pale. Yoochun panics and his eyes, unbidden, slip a look to the mirror behind him.
His reflection is back, wide-eyed and gaunt. He finds his voice.
“I-” He clears his throat, suddenly feeling claustrophobic and wanting nothing more than to just get out. “I’m sorry. I was just… thinking.”
Yunho doesn’t look like he’s buying it, but when Yoochun pushes out of the room he doesn’t stop him, either. Jaejoong is still there, and Yoochun knows that look, that shock, like he’s seen something he shouldn’t have- like he didn’t see something he should have.
*
Junsu is in perfect health the day he collapses at a photoshoot. None of them have been feeling well… not sick, really, but not quite right, either. It only intensifies when they’re at the shoot, with each new post, each click of the camera, but the single release is coming up too fast and they can’t afford to get behind schedule.
The director isn’t happy. Yoochun is too pale, no matter how much make-up they apply. Changmin is too stiff, Yunho too lackluster, Jaejoong too detached, and Junsu… Junsu just hits the ground. Hard.
He’s rushed to the local hospital, but the doctors say nothing is amiss. Jaejoong hears them talk of exhaustion and psychosomatic symptoms, but he doesn’t really pay attention. He watches his members instead, the way they all look drawn and tense, like they’ve come from a funeral instead of a simple photoshoot.
Only Junsu smiles like nothing is wrong. Yunho and Changmin listen avidly, anxiously to the doctor’s words, while Yoochun looks back at him, questions lying dormant behind his lips. Jaejoong can only shake his head, and Yoochun reaches out to hold his hand a little too tight.
*
Yunho takes to wandering around the apartment at night. He doesn’t like sleeping, not anymore. Every time he closes his eyes the darkness is there, like it’s waiting for him. So one night he doesn’t go to sleep at all. He ignores Jaejoong’s unsubtle looks and reads for hours by low lamplight, ignoring the lure of sleep, that heavy pressure in the back of his mind.
He hears every tick of the clock, can feel the time pass too-slow as he goes line to line until his eyes can’t focus any longer and the words twist and float on the page. The world is in the witching hours when he gives up, and he wanders the apartment, room to room, doing anything to pass the time, waiting for the light of dawn to come streaking in through the lines of the curtains. When it finally does he can’t possibly feel rested - but neither does he feel the least bit tired.
It’s three days before he falls asleep again, and even then it’s just an hour, maybe less, before he’s reeling away from the emptiness of his own subconscious. It’s like that part of him is just… missing.
So he spends the rest of the night lying in pretend, staring at the ceiling and waiting for the darkness to pass. He thinks if it’s maddening to sleep, it’s insanity to live like this - conscious all the time, never allowed for one second to stop thinking.
He realizes, in some way, the nightmares never really stopped.
*
And Jaejoong is starting to have suspicions. In the quiet moments he thinks, staring off into space, perfectly still but for the constant rubbing of his hand. It’s become a nervous habit, kneading the outer edge his palm - the first sign, the inexplicable burn - as if by touch alone he can understand what’s happening. They’ve all noticed it; during interviews he’ll sit silently, working his hand in his lap until Yunho will reach over with a too-bright smile and grab his hand to stop him and Ah, Jaejoong, what do you think about-
Jaejoong’s thinking he’s got a paper-cut on his thumb that doesn’t sting. He’s thinking that he had dance practice this morning but his knee doesn’t ache like it usually does.
And it’s not only feeling that’s slipping away. He thinks of the way Yoochun’s reflection flickers in the quiet moments between morning and night; the way Yunho’s nightmares are playing havoc with his head and he isn’t sleeping right anymore. It’s the way being around people has started making Jaejoong uncomfortable, and the thought of a camera makes him sick.
The world doesn’t seem as bright as it to be it - it’s monotone, distant, empty. And Jaejoong realizes something in him - in them - is changing. Something deep and inherent, fragile and far too quiet… but it’s happening and he can’t make it stop.
*
And then Changmin stops eating. It’s slow, but gradually he stops eating those between-meal snacks, that extra piece of food left on the table. He stops talking about food and stops being hungry at all. They joke about it, but when the already-skinny man drops ten pounds in two weeks, their manager takes him to the hospital.
“I’m fine,” he says when he returns. “They said my metabolism is probably slowing down - it’s why I’m so cold, too. See? It’s nothing.”
It’s the fact that he doesn’t care that bothers them the most. Junsu teases him to try and trick him into eating. Yoochun and Yunho take to monitoring his diet, strictly and unsuccessfully. Jaejoong even starts cooking regularly again, something he’s avoided since the accident, not that he usually has time anyway - but now he’s more desperate than anything.
“C’mon, Changmin-ah,” he coaxes, “I’ll cook you anything you want. I’ll cook your favorite.”
“No, Jaejoong. I’m not hungry,” Changmin replies.
“Anything you want, I promise,” he pleads. He grabs Changmin’s arm and is scared by how many fingers he can fit around his wrist. “This is not healthy. This is not a slow metabolism. You need to eat. Please, I’m worried.”
At those words Changmin gives him a slow, measuring look, but eventually he relents. He sits at the table with a crooked smile and eats everything put in front of him while Jaejoong beams. He congratulates himself all evening, tells himself that it’s happiness that keeps him up when everyone is asleep and he’s lying awake and restless.
That’s before he hears the sound of feet running, the wet sound of retching. He jumps out of bed and follows the noises to the bathroom, his gut rolling in sympathy, his throat closing in fear. Sure enough, Changmin is there, bent over the toilet ad empting his stomach in sickening lurches. Yunho sits over him, patting his back and murmuring soothingly. He stands up when he sees Jaejoong, meeting him at the doorway. “I heard him run in here…” he murmurs.
Jaejoong bites his lip. “I’ll take care of it. Go back to sleep.”
Yunho gives him a rueful smile but leaves anyway - Jaejoong spares a thought that he’s been too lenient lately, too complacent when he’s normally so headstrong - but dismisses it because Changmin heaves again, and Jaejoong is rushing over to him.
“Oh god, Changmin-ah… I am so, so sorry.”
Changmin lifts his head. His eyes are red like he’s been crying and his chest convulses, forcing him to lean back down again. Jaejoong coaches him through it all, making sure he’s done completely before turning to clean up the mess. Changmin watches him silently as he wipes at the floor, and it’s only a moment before Jaejoong breaks. He abandons the rag and goes to Changmin, pulling him into a tight hug.
Changmin sighs, melting into the embrace, and Jaejoong wants to think he’s doing something good. He rocks back and forth, resting his chin on the younger man’s head and humming into his hair. “It’s okay, it’s okay,” he croons.
But it’s not. Not at all.
“I feel wrong,” Changmin finally says. Not sick, not bad. Wrong. Jaejoong keeps humming, keeps rocking, and they both ignore it when he starts to cry.
*
“Changminnie…” Junsu frowns, his forehead wrinkling with the effort.
“He’ll be okay,” Yoochun starts slowly. “The doctors… they don’t know anything” -and that’s a gross understatement, there’s nothing medical, nothing natural about what’s happening to them- “but he’s got us, right?”
Junsu keeps frowning, and Yoochun doesn’t like it at all. He keeps trying. “We can… whatever is going on… as long as we just keep going, we’ll be fine. We’ll be fine.”
The silent question goes unanswered. He looks down and picks at the loose threads of Junsu’s comforter listlessly. Junsu is at the head of the bed, unmoving, curled around his pillow. They’ve been that way for minutes - maybe hours, Yoochun isn’t sure. Time passes a little differently, these days.
His eyes slide to the closest mirror. It’s unconscious, a nervous habit, to check if he’s still there - and he is, though it’s not so stable. Washed-out, flickering. He thinks he looks like a corpse.
His eyes slide back to the comforter. Junsu sighs softly, chest falling on the exhale, and it’s the most he’s moved in a while. Yoochun would have normally teased the younger man and his ability to stay still, but it doesn’t seem worth it. He doesn’t think Junsu will react, anyway. Just another thing that’s changing.
“What do you…” he starts hesitantly, pausing to think. “What do you see, when you look at me?”
Junsu tilts his head, only enough to look at Yoochun. “I see you,” he says softly. “You’re right here.”
Yoochun sighs. The answer is vague yet full of meaning - almost poetic, in a way. Another thing he could’ve teased the younger man about, another thing that just doesn’t see worth it.
He thinks, maybe, Junsu was just trying to be reassuring, but it still falls flat between them.
He looks back to his reflection like it’s an addiction. He stares until Junsu reaches out - slowly, so slowly - and pulls him away, until they’re lying side by side.
“It’s no use,” Junsu says. Yoochun wonders if that’s his answer, but simply nods and closes his eyes. He can just barely feel the threads under his fingers, and he keeps picking at them until he feels them unravel completely.
*
No one says anything about it, not really - any attempt is too hesitant, too faltering, too easily pushed aside and forgotten. But they all feel it, they know it’s happening. When Yunho stops sleeping completely and Changmin stops eating altogether and both stop caring. When Yoochun’s reflection is fleeting at best and Jaejoong becomes paranoid over every little thing that goes wrong. Junsu still doesn’t seem too affected, not to the rest of them, but there’s a silence that settles over the apartment that he doesn’t bother to break.
It’s the unspoken. It is the undeniable feeling that they are bereft of who they used to be. They are shells of their former selves, and there is no undoing what’s been done. And, somehow, it feels like it has all been unavoidable.
*
“We love you, Cassiopeia! Thank you! Thank you!” They chant, their voices almost-but-not-quite drowned out by the screams. They bow deep from the waist, smiles painted on their faces as thick as stage make-up. They are professionals if nothing else. The cameras keep flashing, endless flares of light like moonlight off dark water, a stadium full of fans desperate to take home an image, a memory, a piece of Dong Bang Shin Ki.
And then they stumble off stage, and Yoochun cries because he’s in pain and Changmin lies still on the couch like a dead man and Jaejoong rubs his hand until it’s raw and Junsu bites his lip to keep from screaming and Yunho coughs up something that’s too dark to be blood.
“Why are we doing this?” Jaejoong finally asks. He isn’t breathing hard because he doesn’t get tired, but he feels more drained, more faded than ever. He’s sick of this charade, of forcing emotions he doesn’t feel. He knows they all feel the same; they’re only keeping it up because they doesn’t know what else to do.
“Why do anything at all?” Changmin answers. He’s so still - Jaejoong doesn’t even see his lips move when he speaks.
Junsu is biting his lip hard enough to make it bleed, but it doesn’t. Yunho won’t meet Jaejoong’s eyes. Yoochun will, but all he can offer is a hopeless shrug. It’s answer enough.
*
Dong Bang Shin Ki disbands on the brink of winter, when the frost sits on the edge of the wind and only two of them can feel it. They don’t make it to their next anniversary. They are no longer gods, and they are free to go out and be normal people.
Problem is, they aren’t. Normal, people. Jaejoong isn’t sure which fits more, these days.
Junsu goes home, claiming to ‘take some time off.’ Yoochun goes home as well, burying himself in the music and family he won’t let himself let go of. It’s for them that he keeps up the pretense - keeps going - selling his compositions and living life like is expected of him.
Yunho does one even better -he gets married. She’s a pretty girl with a smile as sweet as his. The ceremony is beautiful and huge, the bride having no trouble finding four maid’s of honor to match four best men. And Yunho seems to actually care for her; the four of them can only send him off with bitter hopes and best wishes. The couple buys a home on the outskirts of Seoul, ready to settle down and start a family.
Changmin gets his own apartment in Seoul. Jaejoong does the same - but he doesn’t last in it long. It’s too quiet, too sad, and the silence is so much more ominous when there aren’t other people to share it. He feels like he could drive himself crazy. If he isn’t already.
He shows up on Changmin’s doorstep one day with two suitcases’ worth of clothes. “I can’t do this alone,” he says.
Changmin lets him in without a word.
*
They live. Sort of-
Yunho hates lying next to his wife when she sleeps - he hates lying to her. He is truly endeared to the girl, her bright eyes and lively movements, and he hates that when he touches her he feels absolutely
Nothing will stop Yoochun from keeping up the appearance. He vows that to himself, even when his family feels further away than ever. He won’t let it happen; he owes it to them - to all of them, his brother and his mother and
Everyone thinks Junsu is depressed, and he doesn’t know how to contradict them. The music has gone from him and all he does stay in bed and flip through the photo albums his mother has made over the years. He traces the familiar images and under his fingers it’s almost like he feels something, almost like
Something close to hope burns in Changmin the first time he kisses Jaejoong. For the first time he touches someone and feels warmth, feels sparks of emotion that smolder in him, words that feel like ashes in his throat because they can’t describe the way
It hurts when Jaejoong pulls back and looks into Changmin’s eyes, because he knows that it isn’t enough. In Changmin he sees the same pain, the fear - but he sees the acceptance, too. The kiss becomes a pact, for even without words they understand that this is how it will be, how it probably always be - but for now, at least they have each other. They’ll cope
-As well as they can.
*
Shortly after Jaejoong turns thirty, he gets his military enlistment notice. His family worries, quietly, subtle in their acknowledgement of Jaejoong’s… eccentricities. His sisters, when he visits home for the ‘going away party’ his mother tries to throw him, give him sidelong looks and click their tongues. Of course they’ve noticed the way their bubbling younger brother has changed, how he goes strangely silent in those moments he thinks they aren’t looking. He’s a decent actor for the cameras, but it’s a poor excuse of pretending in front of their watchful eyes.
“Have some cake, Jaejoong,” says the oldest, ushering her own daughter up to hand her uncle a healthy slice.
Jaejoong waves it off with a strained smile. They notice he’s gotten thinner; he doesn’t eat half of what he used to.
“You’ll want to eat as much as you can,” says another. “Won’t get much cake in the barracks.”
Everyone chuckles, except for Jaejoong.
He leaves that night. At the last second his father pulls him aside, and asks if he’ll consider deferring his enlistment. For health reasons, he says pointedly. Jaejoong stares at his father and the lines of age that have dug themselves deep into his skin. His wrinkled hands have taken care of Jaejoong all his life, lifted him up as a child and, as he grew older, provided the sort of solid comfort a man gives another man - a tight grip on a shoulder, a strong clap on the back. These hands and this man, who took in an orphan that no one wanted just so he could have a son, and had looked forward to the day when that boy would enter the military and do his country proud.
Jaejoong isn’t going to shame his father by not completing his service… but it’s not for the reasons the old man would probably like. His career is over, his life is stagnant, and he just doesn’t have it in him to protest. Besides, he’s still in the same shape he was when he was twenty-three - he couldn’t be exempt, even if he wanted to.
There’s an old ache there, and Jaejoong tries to hold on to it, to remember it and why, but it fades away as quickly as it came.
The train ride back to Seoul is a blur. The next day he goes to the army base quietly, no friends or fans to say goodbye. He plans to keep his head down and do what he’s told and be the soldier Korea wants him to be. It’s just another role to play.
*
When Yoochun’s mother asks him to meet this girl, this daughter of a friend-of-a-friend, he doesn’t think twice about resisting. He wants her to be happy, and that means acting like he is happy, too. It’s not hard - in fact, as time goes on, it gets a bit easier to pretend. Even when his body and spirit feel barren, beyond repair, his mind is all too willing to fall for the lie.
And it is his mind that connects with the girl he meets. His mind enjoys their conversation, as they fall into a playful banter that he used to know so well: familiar and yet refreshing. In a way.
He understands then what Yunho might like about his wife. He calls him that night - wanting to be sure, but not knowing how.
“I met a girl today.”
“Oh?” Yunho asks quietly, though with curiosity unfeigned.
“Yes.” He doesn’t know what else to say.
After a while Yunho sighs, a wash of static over the line. “That’s good, Yoochun. It’s very good.”
“…You think so?”
“I do. If you like her, you should do something about it. That’s what you should do.”
“What I should do,” Yoochun huffs, thinking. “I do like her,” he adds softly.
“That’s good,” Yunho says again. He speaks so matter-of-factly, and it makes the hair rise on Yoochun’s arms. He closes his eyes and wonders if this what Yunho tells himself; if this is what he says to make himself believe the lies. He wonders if Yunho actually does believe it.
“So you’ll see her again?” Yunho says.
“Yeah,” Yoochun licks at his lips. “Yeah, ‘think I will.”
“I’m happy for you, Yoochun,” he says, tone suddenly light. “You deserve to have someone, and to be happy.”
Yoochun can’t help but smile. “Thanks, hyung.”
“I’m really happy for you.”
*
Three weeks out of basic training has Jaejoong climbing onto his stiff regulation-issue mattress and staring at the ceiling, breathing deeper and slower until he falls asleep. When he wakes up, it’s to an officer hitting the metal side of his bed, telling him to wake up and get his stuff together.
He’s being discharged; his two years are up.
As he’s escorted off-base, he looks around in confusion, in amazement, because things are the same and yet they’re different - like two years really have passed while he was sleeping. But, the more he thinks, the more he wonders if he really was asleep. Every path feels well-worn, rote. People wave to him and their faces are familiar but-not. It’s like déjà-vu, as if his time here has been nothing more than figments of a dream.
When he arrives back at his apartment, his family is waiting for him with warm welcome. He tries to match it and celebrate with them, but his sense of time and place is too disjointed. Even when he starts feeling steady, around the time the sky outside is falling into twilight, his heart still isn’t in it. The noise bothers him. The light bothers him. He feels… stale.
His parents and sisters leave, finally, and then he’s left with his other family. Just the four of them.
“Welcome back,” Yunho says with a faint smile.
“How was it?” Yoochun asks curiously.
Jaejoong thinks for a long time. “I wasn’t paying attention. And then it was over.”
He looks up and Yoochun, Yunho look thoughtful. Junsu looks uncomfortable. Changmin looks right through him.
The married men leave first, although Yoochun insists on bringing his wife around tomorrow, for Jaejoong to finally meet. Soon after they leave Junsu falls asleep on their couch, and it’s decided he’ll stay the night. “He looks so tired,” Jaejoong comments as he puts a blanket over him.
Changmin nods. “He’s been… quiet the past couple of years. He hasn’t been in touch. A lot like you.”
Jaejoong gives him a look. “I was busy.”
“You weren’t paying attention,” Changmin corrects, this time looking right at Jaejoong. So he was paying attention, Jaejoong thinks. He almost feels like smiling.
“But he looks thinner,” Changmin adds. “Doesn’t he?”
Jaejoong shrugs. “You’re one to talk. Have you eaten anything since I’ve been gone?”
Changmin nods. “I went out with my parents a few times. I ate then.”
“A few times? In two years?” he huffs, shaking his head.
He comes up behind Changmin, wrapping his arms around him, pressing against him, feeling the warmth of another body, a familiar presence. He inhales - and then realizes just exactly what he’s overlooked these past two years.
Ever since that night, in all this time, he hasn’t taken a single breath. He hasn’t needed to.
“I missed you so much,” he breathes deep, taking in air. His lungs fill and the world comes into focus a little bit more. “I wasn’t alive without you.”
And Changmin puts an arm over his, and matches him breath for breath.
*
Since the day they were married, everyone talked about Yunho’s soon-to-be children. Everyone knew that Yunho and his wife wanted several, and would be wonderful parents. Everyone agreed those children would be beautiful and kind and just as remarkable as their parents. And, reasonably, everyone is disappointed when year after year passes by and those children never come.
The couple tries in-vitro, but it never takes. Yunho and his wife go to every specialist they’re referred to and waste tens of thousands of dollars, but never even get as much as a false hope. Something is always missing, and Yunho is bitter and quick to give in; you need to two people to create new life, and he just isn’t up to the task. In the end he opens up a dance studio and, with a faint smile that only his ex-members really understand, claims that all his students are his children. Now he has twenty-five - and more.
Everyone still talks, though, about how disappointed he must be. How strong he must be to carry on like he does. Yunho was always the best at keeping up the façade.
*
Seven years after they disband, Junsu is brought to the emergency room and immediately taken into surgery. The official story is that it was an accident: a fall down a flight of stairs that left him worse for wear. His family knows different. Only four people know the truth.
Jaejoong knows the moment he gets the call from Junho.
“Jaejoong-hyung, it’s Junsu. Please-”
And Jaejoong jumps into action and runs and breaks the speed limit twice-over on his way to the hospital. Because he knows. Because it’s Junsu - Junsu, the one who was always happy, the one who seemed like he might be okay even when the rest of them were ready to fall apart.
He’s the first to arrive. “Why, Junsu?” he pleads, his fingers digging into cheap linen sheets. He looks straight into Junsu’s eyes so he doesn’t have to see the angry lines of stitches that railroad the younger man’s wrists.
“I just wanted to see, hyung. I just wanted to know if I could,” he says softly. Jaejoong can hear Junsu’s mother crying from the hallway.
“The doctors say you were lucky to survive,” Jaejoong whispers, swallowing thickly. “It’s practically a miracle.”
Junsu shakes his head, eyes somehow wild and dull at the same time. “No, it wasn’t luck. It wasn’t a miracle. It wasn’t. You understand. right, Jaejoong? You understand.”
And Jaejoong does. He does and it hurts as much as it terrifies him.
*
Junsu is sent home with a promise to get professional help. But Yunho knows it won’t do any good. There’s no way to fix… this. It makes him sick but he doesn’t know what to do, now. Junsu’s actions have come too close to breaking the silent vow he’s kept all these years: don’t talk about it, don’t let it get to you, and maybe it will go away.
But it’s gone for so long and it isn’t just not going away - it’s getting worse. Just days before Yoochun had confessed to Yunho that he’s given up sleeping. He wanted to ask Yunho’s advice on how to hide the fact from his wife - after all, Yunho has been doing it from the beginning.
And then there’s Changmin and Jaejoong… there’s something going on there. Something quiet, profound, but the two of them have become so closed into each other, it’s impossible for Yunho to put his finger on what. They’ve come to an understanding, he thinks, but about what he has no idea.
Yoochun comes up behind him, then, and together they watch as Junsu is wheeled out of his room. Junsu, who tried to kill himself and failed because… because, Yunho doesn’t even want to think about it.
“I’d always thought- I mean, he was okay. He never really acted like… I’d hoped he was okay,” Yoochun breathes, not able to hide his desperation.
Yunho swallows hard and turns to give Yoochun a hug, turns so he can look away from the reminder that Junsu’s become. “I think he’d been hoping that, too.”
*
In the next year, Junsu tries to commit suicide four more times. After the last attempt, he is admitted to a psychiatric ward so that he can be under constant supervision. There is no covering that up - the press goes into a frenzy trying to find out the truth. There’s speculation, everything from depression to drugs to a childhood of pressure finally catching up to him.
Changmin unplugs their home phone, and cancels their newspaper and cable and internet subscriptions. Jaejoong doesn’t protest. Contact with the outside world hasn’t seemed all that important for a long time. But Changmin keeps going- changing their locks, emptying their refrigerator, throwing away all the mirrors in the house. The younger man slowly methodically, does away with anything that he deems unimportant or impermanent… and that’s a lot of things.
He only stops when he gets to their old albums. He takes out each set of liner notes, flipping through the pictures, looking at them - smiling and heartbroken and serious and warm and earnest, xiah-micky-yoongwoong-choikang-uknow. Us.
Changmin touches them each one reverently and tries to remember these boys and what it was like to be them. For they are the “real” Changmin - what he is now is nothing, nothing but an empty, incomplete copy. He goes to rip them up but Jaejoong stops him, a gentle hand on his that say no. no. they’re all we have left-
*
Yoochun’s thirty-fifth birthday is a big affair, mostly because of the old joke that, between his drinking and smoking, he would never live past that age. Yet lived he has, and so the entire world seems to have decided to throw him a party. He is less than excited.
“I don’t want to celebrate this,” he says as Jaejoong straightens his tie. His wife has arranged for a big gala to be thrown in his honor, and the suit Yoochun has to wear for the event has only served to make him more uncomfortable with the whole affair.
Behind him Changmin chides, “It’s just a part. You’ll survive.”
They all pause and Changmin eyes go flat, dark, dead. Yoochun squirms and Jaejoong reprimands him softly. “Hold still… ah, done,” he says, stepping back, breaking the moment.
Yoochun turns to Yunho for confirmation. “How does it look?” he asks. It’s not like he can check for himself.
“You look great,” Yunho says, and it’s true. Yoochun looks great - they all do, because outwardly they look no different from those album covers, from when they were Dong Bang Shin Ki, early twenties and top of the world.
But there are things that couldn’t be more different. None of them like being the center of attention anymore. Down the hall is a party filled with too much light and noise and too many people. Every year it gets harder and harder to remember why they even try. Junsu’s absence is like a physical thing.
“Just get through the night,” Jaejoong says impassively. “It’s just one night.”
Before they go out, they gather around like old times, comforting only in its nostalgia, and hold hands. No one mentions that none of their hands are even close to warm.
*
Yunho goes home with his wife. She talks the whole drive home, about this person and so-and-so who knows so-and-so and oh, did you know that-?
Yunho nods and tries to keep focus on her words. His attention is drifting, spread thin between the road and her and his own weariness. He imagines what it would be like to sleep this apathy away - and then laughs bitterly. He doesn’t even remember what it’s like to sleep.
His wife, interrupted by his laughter, gives him a strange look. “What is it?”
He shakes his head, not bothering to answer. She huffs angrily and turns to look out the window. She doesn’t speak again, and Yunho tries to care. But, after the party - having to talk to all those people and smile until his face didn’t-hurt and pose for all those damn pictures - it’s harder than usual, harder to convince himself that he isn’t just pretending, that he’s supposed to be charming and flourishing and perfect.
He looks over at his wife. She’s wearing an emerald-green dress, he knows, but all he sees is shades of grey. He looks down at the tie she picked out to match her emerald-green dress, but it’s near invisible, blending in with the shadows and his dark suit jacket.
For the first time he feels truly lost. He’s empty, a withered flower that doesn’t even have color to keep it company.
*
Jaejoong and Changmin arrive home from the party, and Jaejoong goes and falls straight into bed. He’s not going to sleep, because he doesn’t do that anymore. None of them do, except for Junsu, but that’s only when he takes the pills they give him.
He’s just so tired of moving. It takes too much effort; the night has left him sapped of strength. From somewhere behind him he hears Changmin come into the room. With gentle hands the younger man lifts him up and peels off his jacket. He doesn’t try with the shirt, the buttons requiring too much dexterity for his careful progression, but he slowly undoes off Jaejoong’s tie. His fingers leave spots of cold where they touch his neck, and again on his ankles, his feet, when he tugs off his shoes. Jaejoong lets his eyes follow Changmin’s work, and when he’s done lifts a heavy hand in an offer to reciprocate. Changmin pushes it back down to the bed, following it with his whole body, settling behind him; Changmin wants to be strong one, this time, and Jaejoong won’t deny him
They lie together, not talking, not breathing. Jaejoong’s been doing this more and more; he’ll stop breathing and two, three months will pass by unnoticed. Public opinion is that he’s become a recluse - Changmin, too. They were the strangest ones in Dong Bang Shin Ki, after all.
His family has all but given up, unable or unwilling to understand how different he’s become. Jaejoong feels horrible he doesn’t feel anything for their concern, but at least now they’ve stopped disturbing him. They’re just glad he has Changmin to take care of him.
In truth, they take care of each other. Jaejoong doesn’t know how the others do it.
Beside him Changmin shifts, lifting a hand to trace the lines of Jaejoong’s tattoo. The left wing, the right wing. Hope to the end.
TVXQ.
SOUL.
He traces the last word over and over again.
“It’s so ironic,” he finally says. Jaejoong doesn’t respond, but he doesn’t need to. Together they lay, out of time, and let the weeks crawl by.
*
Yoochun knocks on a door that’s disturbingly dusty. He hasn’t seen or heard from Jaejoong or Changmin since the party, and it’s been over a month. He wonders if they’ve ever even left.
His question is answered when Jaejoong eventually opens the door and he’s wearing the same shirt Yoochun last saw him in, though slightly more wrinkled, carrying the faint mildewed smell of neglected closets.
“Finally. Gonna let me?” he asks snidely, although his heart’s not in it. Jaejoong steps aside silently, and Yoochun takes a cautious half-step in. Forget Jaejoong- the whole place smelled of disuse. “What do you guys do in here?” he grumbles, not really expecting an answer. He reaches back and hauls in a suitcase behind him. “I’m staying here for awhile, okay?”
It isn’t that he’s coming to check up on them, although that had been a part of it. After days of passive arguing and strained silence, his wife had not-so-subtly requested that he go. He thinks he made a mistake in complying so easily. She’s starting to suspect something, which isn’t all that surprising. The few years they’ve had together have been good, but by no means perfect, and Yoochun’s never been the best of liars. She thinks Yoochun’s been too secretive, been acting too strange… but what she suspects is only that he’s cheating, and for that Yoochun is kind of relieved. He can’t imagine the alternative.
So he comes to stay with Changmin and Jaejoong. It only lasts a week, yet even in that time he can see the difference his presence makes. He may have a faulty reflection and a bad case of insomnia but he still eats sometimes, for what it’s worth. Everything about their apartment is unsettling, but in a way that leaves an unknown something buzzing in the back of his head, asking to be recognized- remembered. Instead, he opens the curtains and clears the musty air.
“Do you guys… do you know what you’re doing? It’s like you’ve stopped caring,” he asks nervously.
Changmin and Jaejoong share a look. “We have,” Changmin finally says. “Does it matter?”
Yoochun shakes his head wearily. It’s weird, it’s heartrending, to think that the liveliest members of their band have become so cut off from the world. Yoochun and Yunho have been keeping active, keeping alive, but the other three have just let themselves… go. He repeats his thoughts aloud and just gets sad looks in return.
“We’re not going anywhere, Yoochun. Not yet.”
*
Yunho knows he shouldn’t let Yoochun’s problems get to him. The cracks are showing and Yunho is concerned for him, but Yunho won’t let it happen to himself. He won’t. He was far too complacent in the beginning - he refuses to give in now. He can’t.
That doesn’t mean, however, that he is any less stressed. He still teaches at the studio, although his apprentice, a pretty young girl who could make one hell of an idol if she wanted, has been taking over more and more of his classes. He sleepwalks his way through a whole week, wrapped up in his own head and all the issues inside, and it’s only the sudden squeak of shoes scuffing the ground that brings him back to himself.
“Ow-”
He turns around and looks at his students - seven of them, an advanced class that he teaches twice a week. He had been in the middle of demonstrating a particular move he’d learned from Stephanie, way back when. He cocks his head as the students pause, breathing hard. He motions for them to take a break and get some water.
One boy lingers, staring at him strangely. That’s weird,” he says, chest heaving in exertion.
Yunho looks at him, perfect stillness in contrast to the room around him. “What was?”
“It’s nothing, probably-” he rubs the towel against his neck like it’s a nervous action. “It’s just, when I looked up to see you, y’know, copy the move, it was like. Well, for a moment I could have sworn you weren’t there.”
Yunho can feel himself freezing, his muscles tightening in panic. He looks past the boy to the mirror that stretches along the entire wall of the dance studio, and for a moment hopes he was imagining things - but no, there it is. For just a moment, his reflection flickers.
He feels cold - colder than usual, anyway. He says something to him, exactly what it is he doesn’t know, doesn’t care, but as soon as the words leave his mouth he’s excusing himself, leaving the room and it’s damning mirrors.
He doesn’t look back. He can’t.
Part 2