sisyphus
super junior ; donghae/kyuhyun ; pg-13 ; 5,096 words ; for harroween. happy birthday~ (very late in coming otl)
second chances aren't worth it.
/
12.04.2081
The tips of Kyuhyun's fingers tap relentlessly against his keyboard, click-clacking away in a steady rhythm. Donghae brings his coffee cup up to his lips, slurps softly and washes around the taste of caramel in his mouth, leans his head against the side of the window.
Frost covers the glass, creeping up the sides and edges, blurring the image of a beautiful wonderland outside of the walls. His breath comes in long draws of carbon dioxide, white against the steaming glass. Kyuhyun looks up once, twice, from his laptop screen, dark hair falling against his temple and escaping from his cap.
"Nostalgic?"
Donghae hums. "I haven't been back in Mokpo for so long. I've missed it."
"It only makes sense to miss your hometown," Kyuhyun says. His fingers never stop their tapping, eyes focused on the screen, lips pressed together in slight concentration. "Besides, you probably only missed the snow."
"Not my fault that Seoul is trashed with pollution and lights," Donghae takes another sip. "But I don't regret that either."
"Really now."
"Really." Donghae grins sloppily, white cap sliding down his forehead. "Or else I wouldn't have been able to meet the love of my life."
Kyuhyun snorts. "I didn't know you appreciated instant-ramen that much."
The older male sips more of his coffee, steadily running out at a fast pace. Seoul, with its lights, sleek metal pavements and glass doors of opportunity, is the center of South Korea. Donghae remembers walking in the city's borders and immediately feeling that raw, under-your-skin knowing that he was out of place. With his dorky little accent and lacking the cold contempt that seemed to grab hold of all of Seoul's population, he stuck out like a sore thumb and a toxic item.
He doesn't remember, exactly, how he met the people he met, or how he felt for the people he felt as he does now. He supposes that part was left to fate, and Donghae followed it willing around like a lost child after its mother, like a puppy after its owner.
There's nothing magical about a small little town-slash-village-slash-neighbourhood where everyone could pass off as one another, their personalities mixing one by one into the drone of familiar faces and similar days. Donghae still sees it though, in the natural apple tree that they hold in great reverence (it was the only natural one in the country - perhaps more than a hundred years old and still blooming in it's own biosphere) and in the reddened faces of people as they hold their hearts in their hands.
Donghae sneaks a look at Kyuhyun, whose brow is adorably furrowed as he tries to work his computer, cheeks quickly accompanying a rising pink as his anger starts to resurface at the cafe's low networking service. Donghae takes another sip of his coffee and then realizes, bemusedly, that it was his third one so far and now he was well on his fourth.
"You took me to a crappy place with crappy wi-fi on purpose," Kyuhyun grumbles. "God, I hate you so much." The corner of his mouth turns down with displeasure before he all but slams his laptop close, the smooth surface disappearing into a thin edge and stuffed into a black bag.
"How could such hurtful words pass from your lips? You love me, darling!"
Kyuhyun shakes his head at Donghae's faux imitation of some scandalized bourgie; "I honestly wonder why I do half the time. No, wait - make that three fourths of the time."
"I don't know whether if I should hit you or if I should kiss you. Both sound about good, actually."
Kyuhyun tastes like day old paper and chocolate, just the way Donghae likes it. Their lips meet for a brief second before Kyuhyun retreats back, the barest hint of a smile plastered clearly across his face. His nose is capped with red, dark eyes wide against the pallor of his face. Donghae thinks that Kyuhyun's a little bit too pale for his own good, sometimes sickly looking, but there are moments when he beams with a smile that makes Donghae forget why he's even breathing.
His hands are roughened from work, leathery tan against his knuckles. He breathes in fire and exhales ice, a monumental reminder of all things gone wrong in the personification of a childishly grinning man. Donghae throws out his cup and hears it clink in the trash can, feels Kyuhyun's arm wrapping around his waist as Donghae cuffs his neck, both pressed steadily together, heartbeats slinking in between through the spaces of wool scarves.
"Hyung, it's snowing," Kyuhyun mumbles out the obvious, wiping at the fluff in his hair. "Can we go somewhere where I don't feel like I'm freezing into the next Cryogenic Age?"
"Calm your circuits," Donghae presses his lips against a cold cheek, sees how Kyuhyun melts under his hands like sunshine on a white, wintry neverland. "Body heat is essential for staying warm." Perhaps he's enjoying this too much, but while Kyuhyun is standing on his land, lost on his roads, Donghae is willing to walk as far as he can to bring the sun back over his head. And he never really gets chances like this - god be damned if he was to waste it.
"You're enjoying this, aren't you." It's said as more of a statement than a question, and Kyuhyun turns in Donghae's open arms, leaning down to press his head against a broad shoulder. His breath comes in large puffs of crystallized air, of processed oxygen that he has yet to adapt to. "You asshole, I'm never coming back to Mokpo with you. Ever."
"It's better than Seoul." The smell of sandalwood and vanilla hits Donghae like a familiar melody. "Here, we're all alone."
Kyuhyun glances up, and his eyes catch on to a woman passing by, her eyes turned in half-moons, giving them a peculiar stare. "Hyung, you liar. People are looking."
"Shut up. I'm trying to be romantic here."
A laugh. "Can we just visit your father? I really want to talk to him again." At Donghae's half pout-scowl that marrs his face in a comically hilarious way, Kyuhyun pulls up his scarf so that it covers his nose and mouth, brings out the pink in his cheeks like he's a shy child. "And maybe later, we can have a date or something."
"Promise?"
Donghae can't see, but Kyuhyun smiles through the free falling snow, through their interlinked hands. "Promise."
/
12.04.2089
He can still remember the colour of the trees, twisting and anchoring above their heads, the soft fall of snowflakes on their heads like the world wants to suffocate them whole - Donghae remembers things, but that's all he does. He remembers. That's all sort of what life is, an interlinked chain of memories that everyone's trying to remember. Trying to relive all the days of breathing, speaking, crawling up the sides of humanity like they belong there.
"Donghae," Eunhyuk says, annoyance dripping off his tone and the tip of his pencil. "Pay attention. Where are you going to go if you keep spacing off all the time?"
Donghae remembers a time too, when Eunhyuk was his friend. Maybe a lover. Maybe a partner. Where Eunhyuk was the one that bailed him out of jail and paid for his rent for a year, pushed him into the river when he wasn't looking, slipped a note in someone else's locker with his name on it.
This Eunhyuk looks forward with his curved eyes, like scythes, like death blades - staring at the mass of people before him like a king before his people. And Donghae remembers that his remembering is just remembering, and sometimes they might not even be the right kind of remembering at all.
I'll go into the past, Donghae thinks in response. I'll go to my memories where everything is better than where I am.
They stare at him, those poor souls, pleas in their eyes. Ashen faces look up at him with decaying smiles, their mouths stretched down into an endless upside down smile. There are doctors, policemen, carpenters, locksmiths, politicians, chefs. Wives and husbands and children, brothers and sisters and friends and lovers.
"Group 1.3 has been delivered safely," Eunhyuk speaks, fingers pressing against his microphone. "Going to recharge now. Entry closed. Sector 5 security activated." And without a word, he turns - leaves, walks away into nothingness while Donghae's left looking down - searching, searching, always searching for a face he doesn't remember.
/
12.15.2081
The first time hurts the most.
Even now, the pain still sears into him like a fresh blade, digs into his collarbones. The feeling flowers past his ribs, through this throat, stems at the root of his mouth, spreads throughout the rest of his body like a silent disease. It's almost as if he's feeling his own blood churn again -
"That sounds corny," Kyuhyun comments, and the fantasy is ruptured, shattered into pieces.
Donghae pushes back his laptop and sighs in frustration. "Would it kill you to stop doing that?"
"But that was really corny. Like, grade-A level corn, straight from the ground. The kind of stuff they sell at the air markets." Kyuhyun pops something in his mouth, almost like he's enjoying the show. "Write that down if you want, that was good."
It's still the extreme cold of winter, set dead in the days in between and falling further and further into a whirlpool of ash-colored snow and the slow metabolism of the earth replenishing itself. Donghae closes his notebook and sets it aside, pulls Kyuhyun's shoulders toward his until their temples meet, forcing the other to look out the window.
"Do you see that?"
"Yeah, almost looks a blizzard."
"No, Kyuhyunnie. One day, one day you'll see - my words are going to be printed across every page there is out there, quoted about, a household saying that everyone uses. People aren't going to remember me, but they'll remember my words - every single person out there, walking in the snow or falling asleep on their desks or tripping over themselves."
Kyuhyun turns his head so that their faces are close enough to count the pores on his skin, to match every strand of hair to the other. "Words are forgotten. Eventually." He sniffs a little, leans back into the couch.
"Are you going to forget me?"
"Maybe, if you continue to deliver crappy lines like that one."
"I'll throw your laptop - and all it's pretty little notes - into the river."
"I'll burn every single one of your drafts and feed them to the dogs."
That's the drum of life, Donghae thinks - not the erratic beating of his heart in his chest or the pink fanning across lively faces; but the steady pitter patter of rain, needle-thin and pounding on their window, fingers curling into his palm. Not exactly holding hands, but holding something in something else, like a closed off secret inside a secret, a smile inside a frown.
Kyuhyun holds little balls of light in his palms that shine from the fingertips, and Donghae wonders how his mind thinks like a poet and how his hands write like a teacher. It doesn't happen - it's not supposed to happen - but it does, and he's left with the fragmented pieces of his half-finished leaves of papers and ink stains on his cuff.
/
12.06.2089
"Don't mix those two up. It'll cause a rupture." Donghae tries to keep his eyes open as Eunhyuk talks, he really does, but being this way doesn't serve him any better. His mind is wired to not pay attention, to wander off to different places, to think about different things. It's hard enough to walk two feet in front of him without falling; forget trying to make sense of - whatever he's trying to make sense of.
"I'm not you," he says emptily, enjoying the little glare that Eunhyuk throws his way. Mindlessly, he wonders where his easy-going friend went, but he remembers that it also isn't his place - his time - and goes back to not thinking, not feeling, slipping his arms through a white lab coat and never sleeping at night.
/
12.30.2081
"Sing me something," Donghae mutters, his head lolling against the side of Kyuhyun's shoulder.
"What should I sing?" Kyuhyun pauses in his drama watching, his eyes glued to the screen. Donghae likes Kyuhyun best when he's like this; his mouth slightly open and eyes wide, faces changing with the scene of characters across the screen. Sometimes he's smiling, sometimes he's laughing, sometimes his eyes are covered with the glassy sheen of tears. Sometimes he's upset and sometimes he's loving, and like this Donghae sees all of Kyuhyun in a way that he doesn't usually.
"I dunno. Anything."
A flash of thunder, hungry and loud, crashes outside. Donghae's eyes flicker to it and he pokes Kyuhyun's cheek. The younger man doesn't move, still absorbed fully into his land of historical dramas, when people spoke on handheld phones and laptops were still a half an inch thick.
"It's raining," Donghae notes. "Sing me a sad song."
"Are you sad?"
"Being with you is never sad."
Kyuhyun gives him a level glare that Donghae supposes he deserves, but he can't help it. He grins; at least Kyuhyun's noticed him now. It's worth something to hold his attention, even for a little while.
"Sing one of your church songs," Donghae says, "Or maybe if you ever stop being such an ass, one of those pretty melodies you make."
Kyuhyun scoffs and falls quiet, his lips pursed in a sort of defiant closure. Donghae breathes slowly - in and out, watching the miracle of life as Kyuhyun's heart beats through his chest, eyes faced forward - faced away. It makes him wonder, sometimes, if there's something wrong; if there's a problem that's waiting to resurface, or a tragedy hanging above their heads, just waiting to rain down on them like the oncoming storm. The woman on the screen begins to cry, tears falling on her (aesthetically) flawless face, no music playing in the background. Donghae barely realizes that Kyuhyun's muted the whole drama this whole time, watching as their mouths spoke, watching as their bodies moved.
"I can think of it my way then," Donghae remembers him saying. "I don't have to pretend they're in some sort of story where someone dies or someone gets betrayed. I don't have to do anything but imagine."
Kyuhyun starts humming - this sad, jittery little tune that draws itself out as long as the sun can shine. And Donghae, Donghae for some reason, feels like he wants to cry.
There's something so familiar about this, something very reminiscent, but he can't remember what it is. Donghae's never been good at remembering, anyway. He tries to get a grasp on the slowly stretching emptiness, shove it firmly out-of-the-way, but it stays like an old friend or an unwanted enemy; holding onto his shoulder tightly and refusing to let go.
"Hey," Kyuhyun pokes his shoulder, and Donghae is ripped out of his little land of fantasy. "Why're you crying?"
Donghae reaches up and wipes experimentally at his face, and he realizes - that without him even noticing, there's been silent tears glossing down the side of his face. Kyuhyun turns around and attempts to face him but Donghae holds him in place, grips his shoulder until his knuckles turn white until he acknowledges that - "I'm sad," he whispers.
For some odd reason, he is. He's so pathologically drenched in sorrow that he's soaking in it, that it's this sort of collar around his neck that threatens to choke him alive. The funny part is, he doesn't even know why, and it's making him feel worse.
"Hyung - "
"Kyuhyun, sing me a song," he repeats. He has to hear Kyuhyun sing. Something's going to happen, Donghae thinks, something is going to happen and he's going to be irrevocably, entirely sad. "Sing me a happy song. I'm never sad when I'm with you."
Kyuhyun complies.
Donghae wonders how long it'll be until he's sad all the time.
/
12.06.2081
"This is your idea of a date?" Kyuhyun stares at the amusement park unamused, a frown placing itself delicately on his features. It hasn't snowed in over two days but the air is still frost-bitingly cold with the despair of winter, and Kyuhyun doesn't take any chances. He's covered in head to toe in warmth and protective clothes against the weather, and so is Donghae (with much prodding from his obsessive boyfriend).
Donghae laughs merrily, clapping like a little kid and jumping up and down like his usual hyper self. "Come on - like you've never secretly wanted to go to an amusement park near Christmas. Everything's so pretty." Donghae pokes the soft flesh of Kyuhyun's bicep, while the other shys away. "I know your inner girl is rejoicing, don't deny it."
"What inner girl," Kyuhyun snaps back. "Whatever - as long as it's not some lame place like that restaurant we went to back in Tokyo."
Donghae's smile slowly fades into a flickering grimace. "That place was awful, wasn't it?"
"There were living bugs in my soup."
The older coughs. "But the arcade afterward was fun. Let's hurry - they're giving out free tickets and then after twelve we'll have to pay again - "
"Cheap bastard," Kyuhyun mutters as Donghae pulls him across the road to the entrance, but there's the vaguest hint of a smile on his face anyway. It doesn't look too bad, Kyuhyun thinks, with it's joyful little stalls and bright colors. It's a grand difference between the stark grey of the sky, like a foreshadowing omen that dusts the crowns of their heads.
Donghae drags him to the nearest sight - a merry go round, which Kyuhyun immediately shoots down with a crinkle of his nose. "No."
"What? Oh, come on. You have to go on one of these things every time you come to an amusement park. It's like, a fucking rule."
"I'm a rulebreaker. Circular rides make me sick."
"What about the Ferris Wheel then, you jerk?"
Kyuhyun shrugs and looks like he's actually thinking about it. "Ferris Wheels are different they go up, not sideways. And you can stay in the middle of the seat. And they don't make me want to throw up."
"You're too sensitive," Donghae sniffs, poking Kyuhyun's cheek in annoyance. "Stop being sensitive." Kyuhyun pushes Donghae's hand away and glares, and Donghae thinks that there's something a little lacking in his gaze - the heat, maybe, the intense darkness of his eyes that always draws Donghae in.
Maybe he hasn't noticed before, but the spots on Kyuhyun's cheeks look a little too red, his face a little too pale, eyes a little too glassy.
Donghae ends his observation when Kyuhyun tugs on his jacket, smiling slyly, half-pointing and half-dragging him toward one of those shooting game stalls (with moving targets goddamn) that Donghae never wins. Donghae forgets the oddity of the other's silence in the ring of his happy laughter as he watches Donghae fail over and over to hit the bullseye at the right time.
Maybe that was Donghae's problem. Maybe he never really could hit the bullseye at the right time.
/
12.15.2089
It's one thing that they teach you throughout your time in school. It's an honor to work for the government; it's an honor to work for your country. An honor, they say, to bring in millions of people every week for testing, an honor to watch them die, an honor to pile their bodies in an incinerator and watch the flames of failed fruition. Donghae thinks that he can learn to leave without honor, really. All he needs is his words, but no one listens to his words. Not even himself.
Mostly it's a haze of memories, so tightly intertwined with each other that he can't really tell one from another.
Usually, Donghae would look at himself in the mirror first thing every morning, smile and get ready for the day - brush his teeth, comb his hair. Now he doesn't even try. He doesn't want to see what stares back at him.
The employee's cafeteria is still serving coffee in the morning, to his small pleasure. The line is small and it's still dark outside, so he supposes that it hasn't been too long since he last woke up. Lab coat on, labels around his neck, he clocks in with a single finger to the touch-sensitive pad. Everyday morning. The singular humdrum of life that pounds at his conscience.
"Hey, you're one of the Head Scientists of the Poisons Control and Illness Center, right?" It's a newbie, Donghae proposes, going by the still colorful tinge of his face and the unwanted innocent laid dead in his eyes.
"Hmm," Donghae replied, hands gripping his cup tighter.
The male, probably no older than his mid twenties, has his eyes wide open. "Whoa. That's some achievement you got there. And you're only what - twenty nine? You must've spent some time working for all those degrees to - "
"I'm thirty two, kid," Donghae mutters, running his hands through his hair. He doesn't exactly know where twenty nine came from. Somedays, he feels like he's ninety. "And no, it didn't take long to get all my degrees."
The trainee frowns. His nametag has a bright red 'INTERN' and underneath, neatly scrawled handwriting; 'Lee Taemin'. "But isn't the PCIC the hardest department? What with all the epidemics going around - especially the one that they call the Silent Death - "
"You talk too much for an intern," Donghae takes another sip of his coffee. "Thing is, it's not fun working with sick people." Sick people, in lines and rows, lines and rows, columns and cross edges, shuffling with lifeless eyes toward the pad of their death. "And it gets tiring, kid. There's nothing much to it."
"Then why do you have the job?"
Donghae pauses.
"Because I don't want it," he replied, rubs his coffee cup with old bones. And because he doesn't want it, they give it to him - just because they don't want to see the people suffer. They want to see him suffer too. Suffer until he breaks, until he becomes another emotionless machine. Like them. Like Eunhyuk.
Days like these, it doesn't sound too bad after all.
"You should get another job," Donghae says, crushing his cup. "Maybe a reporter. You ask enough questions to be one." And he walks away from Lee Taemin the Intern, who stares at him with his mouth agape in a perfect 'o'. Except Donghae doesn't feel like the hero with his back straight, his stance tall. He feels like a villain, like a monster, and his shoulders and hunched, eyes low, as he walks near the walls all the way toward his portion of the Center to start his day.
The clock reads 8:00 PM, but he doesn't really notice.
/
12.31.2081
"Hey Kyuhyun," Donghae murmurs, stroking the other's forehead while they're still in bed, "What do you say we buy a house in some other place than Seoul?"
"Where?" Kyuhyun breathes softly on his shoulder, his forehead touching the shell of Donghae's ear. "Everywhere else is too expensive. I like our little apartment."
"We could settle down somewhere after we get married," he continues, staring up at the ceiling. "Maybe somewhere south. Or somewhere warm. I don't want to worry about things anymore."
Kyuhyun hums, but doesn't reply.
"Kyuhyun?"
"Yeah. Yeah sure, Hae. Whatever you want." Kyuhyun yawns, swats at Donghae's mouth to get him to shut up - in some sort of semblance. Presses his cheek against warm, bare skin. "I don't really mind."
Donghae's mind goes miles a minute, but Kyuhyun's doesn't move an inch.
After Donghae gets up, checks himself in the mirror and gets ready for his classes, he kisses Kyuhyun on the forehead - who's still blissfully asleep. And when he comes back at ten at night, eyes nearly shut, he doesn't seem to notice that Kyuhyun hasn't moved from that spot all day.
What he does notice, however, is that Kyuhyun's not exactly breathing anymore.
/
2.20.2090
It's been two months and three days since Donghae had last seen Taemin. It's not like Donghae's counting, exactly. It's more like he just always remembers. That's why they want him so much - because he always remembers.
He remembers dates and times and faces, facts and algorithms and equations. He remembers them all and it doesn't take too hard - or too long - for him to be where he wants to be, have any job he pleases. Or so most think.
Lee Taemin, still with those softly innocent eyes and baby face, walks up to him while he's clocking in for work.
"You lied," is the first thing he says.
"Pardon?" Donghae coughs into his hand, wonders why this kid was talking to him.
"You said it didn't take long to get all your degrees, reach the top of the charts in such a sort while," Taemin explains, fingers fumbling, frown on his face. "But it took you years. Nearly ten."
"Really. And how would you know this?"
"You were going to get your MD in this field and then work at some Institute in Mokpo, your hometown. You were a genius, a respected scholar, even then - and you only needed a few more months to complete your entire course requirements. But then you fell in love with someone and changed your major, changed your whole life, and then you disappeared." Taemin doesn't speak loudly, thank god, but his voice is strong and relentless. "And then suddenly, six years later, you come back and it's almost like nothing happened at all."
A pause. Donghae listens as the other runs through his life story, tries to file the memory, but there's six years worth that he can't seem to bring up. "I guess," he says a few minutes later. "What are you doing?"
"I'm a reporter," Taemin replied. "And you were right. It is better for me. But I decided that my first project would be on the seemingly empty lives of the Institute workers who don't seem to be as heartless as they look."
Donghae catches Eunhyuk's eye from across the din, who nods at him to get a move on.
"Oh no," he says absentmindedly, "They're probably even more." Donghae smooths back his hair. "If you wanted to know something, you should've asked."
Taemin purses his lips. "I didn't think you would remember."
"Of course I would," he echoes, though it doesn't even sound true to him. "I remember everything."
Maybe that was his problem. Maybe he didn't remember everything. Or maybe he didn't want to.
/
1.20.2081
His father claps his back, sympathetic eyes staring him down, burning a hole through his brain. Donghae stands, stone faced in front of the grave, slowly disappearing under a wintry frost of snow and hail. His suit is wet in minutes, but he doesn't accept his father's umbrella.
"I don't get it," The marble shines mockingly in the dim sunlight. "He's not supposed to be dead."
"Son," his father says encouragingly, trying to make him see, "Kyuhyun has been sick for a long time. It was coming on for a while now."
"He never told me."
"He knew that you wouldn't be able to take it."
Donghae's lips turn blue in the cold, wet strings of hair plastered against the side of his face. He knew he should've been angry. Should've lashed out, hit something, yelled at Kyuhyun for abandoning him, for never telling him, for never trusting him. But somewhere inside Donghae knows that Kyuhyun just wanted to ease his pain. Somewhere inside him Donghae knows that Kyuhyun knew that he wouldn't be mad. He could never be mad at Kyuhyun.
The rest of him just feels empty.
"Yeah," Donghae sniffs, wipes his face tiredly with the sleeve of his suit, "I don't think I ever will be able to take it."
"Son - "
"I'm gonna go home." Which is a misconception, of course. There's no home left for Donghae. His home died softly in sleep, painless and comfortable. His home is six feet under and now forever unreachable.
/
12.26.2089
Five days.
In the middle of the night, Donghae shoots up in the middle of his sleep, breathing in harsh chemical air from the Institute and rubbing light out of his eyes. Everything comes rushing back.
Five days until hell starts again.
/
12.27.2089
Four days.
/
12.28.2089
Three.
/
12.29.2089
Two.
/
12.30.2089
One.
/
12.04.2081
"Nostalgic?"
Donghae hums. "I haven't been back in Mokpo for so long. I've missed it."
/
12.30.2081
"Kyuhyun, sing me a song," he repeats. He has to hear Kyuhyun sing. Something's going to happen, Donghae thinks, something is going to happen and he's going to be irrevocably, entirely sad. - and he's not sure how to stop it. "Sing me a happy song. I'm never sad when I'm with you."
Kyuhyun complies.
And Donghae, Donghae wonders how long it'll be until he's sad all the time.
so this is late and it doesn't make sense and it's really rushed with absolutely no plotline mapped out and unbetaed with tons of mistakes and i wrote this over a period of one turbulent month and i am so sorry for everything because otl this legit sucks but i got you something for your birthday hooray? orz don't kill me and i will explain if needed what was going thruogh my head
because nothing makes sense in my head how do you sense i'm not so sure ;;; (hope you like it karin bb but i understand if you don't i'm just yeah.)