Improper Lovers
improper lovers
dbsk/snsd - changmin/yoona - pg
4326w~
yoona was always the stronger of the two.
warning: character death
a/n: requested by aoza, i know i warned you beforehand but i offer you my sincerest apologies anyways. why do my requests all end up angsty ;_; in any case, i love you a lot and though i promise happy changyoon in the future, i do hope you enjoy this. muah ♥
Yoona looks sadly beautiful in white. She's smiling, but her skin is a pasty pale color and her hair has become coarse strings of black, the only color left the fading pink of her lips, vivid shining eyes because to her everything is still alright. She smiles when he enters the room and she smiles when he takes her cold, shaking hand, and Changmin tries to smile back even though he knows everything is not alright, and the seconds wasted were the blessed seconds they didn't know they were supposed to hold on to.
Yoona looks beautiful in white, but he didn't think it would be like this. Changmin finds it quite heartbreaking.
He doesn't think he fell in love with her, per se. Changmin isn't really sure those kinds of things happen to him. All a coincidence, he would call it, but if Yoona lived long enough for a child of her own she would tell them it happened like it does in the fairy tales, the step by step manner where they meet eyes and something clicks. A switch flipped, a button pressed, a buzzer that Changmin didn't even know was turned on until it was too late to turn it off.
It's raining, when he first sees her. The clouds are covering all source of sunlight and he can barely see her figure lingering at the bus stop through the pouring rain, but then she sneezes and he remembers thinking how stupid it was for someone to have left their house without an umbrella on a day like this.
He holds his umbrella over her anyways, though it's kind of useless by then, and Changmin also remembers the way she had barely smiled at him before sneezing again and how all he could think of doing was patting her back awkwardly, hoping to drive away the cold even though it was too far in. Her smile was beautiful even then.
Yoona got sick quite easily, he came to realize. Back then it was just the rain.
Her favorite gift is flowers. Changmin doesn't understand why, but they litter her hospital room in shades of pinks and reds anyways, most of them from him, and she doesn't ever seem to get tired of them. He arrives one afternoon with a bouquet in hand and Yoona's smile lights up the already white room. "Peonies, my favorite," she squeals, and he doesn't understand why at the time.
"Come, sit," she says, sitting up suddenly and coughing as she pats at the foot of her bed.
"Don't hurt yourself, I'm coming," Changmin says, smiling, and the way the bed suddenly deflates at his sitting makes him scared. She was barely anything before, Yoona, and now she is left to skin and bones.
Yoona grins at him and then buries her face into the flowers, inhaling so deeply he's afraid all the air will get lost inside of her. She doesn't pull away, clenching the stem of the bouquet so tightly that her knuckles turn white - Changmin opens his mouth to ask her what, exactly, she is doing, but then she pulls away with her eyes still closed and smiles. There are pink petals hanging from her hair. "Wow. They smell wonderful."
"I'm glad you like them."
She opens her eyes, twinkling pupils against her pasty skin as she looks at him. "I'm losing my sense of smell, you're going to have start spraying these flowers with your cologne so I can recognize them."
Changmin smiles, leaning forward to brush the petals out of her hair and kiss her forehead lightly. It's burning up but her hands are cold, and she grins beautifully at him anyways with the flowers still in grasp. She replaces the vase of orchids next to her hospital bed with the peonies and asks him to get some more when they start to wither away.
Peonies are given to heal, he later reads. Yoona wishes on them, but Changmin finds them kind of useless. The orchids were better off.
Changmin is the typical guy in the movies. He asks her out on a sunny day, an attempt at flirting although she is oblivious and Yoona is just the pretty girl back then, even though she doesn't seem to see it.
He coaches the middle school kid's soccer team, one of which happens to be Yoona's younger cousin. It's the little things, she tells him later. Fate, or destiny, small words that don't mean much to him but she lives by, so Changmin tries to believe in them too.
Yoona doesn't seem to recognize him, but he approaches her after practice and the kids are fooling around enough for him to go off on his own. "Hey," and she looks up at him, smiling and shading her eyes against the sun with her hand. "I'm the guy from the other rainy day, with the umbrella?"
"Oh, right! Thank you, if I had known you were here I would've brought it back. How are you, by the way? I hope you didn't get sick or anything." She's a talkative one, but he isn't quiet sure he minds, then.
"Yeah, um, yeah, I'm fine. I should be asking you, you looked really sick that day?"
She laughs, her eyes still squinted from smiling or the sun or naturally, he doesn't really know. "No, I'm fine. Thank you for asking, in any case. So you coach the soccer team?"
It goes on from there, small talk and lovely conversation and the things Changmin wasn't ever really good at, except Yoona's good enough for the both of them. She has a lot of words and each one is lined with a tilted smile and a hitched laugh, and he wishes the day would never end except it's time for everyone to go home too soon.
He asks her out, finally, and if Im Yoona knew how to love, she wouldn't have said yes.
Changmin is happy she did anyways. She never does return his umbrella.
Their next date is at the hospital. Changmin doesn't bring a bouquet of flowers, but he gets permission to take her outside walking, and neither of them can remember the last time she's spent more than ten minutes outside. "Confinement," Yoona calls it. He doesn't care to argue.
She takes in a deep breath as soon as the step outside of the hospital doors, the smell of cleaning alcohol and sick people washed away by the fresh outside air. It's humid, and Changmin can feel his shirt sticking to his back, but Yoona seems to love it. She coughs and turns to him, smiling, holding his arm a little tighter than necessary as they walk towards the hospital garden in the back.
Yoona's steps are slow and cautious, and she has to sit every couple of minutes, finding a bench or traveling back to the last one as she catches her breath, smiling the whole time. Changmin wonders what her first charm was, in the millions he's fallen into.
"Sorry this is taking so long, I'm just," she sighs, holding on to his arm, "I'm just so tired."
Changmin wants to tell her not to apologize, that there's no reason to, but she won't listen either way. "That's okay." Yoona looks up and grins at him, leaning up to kiss him.
Their lips meet for only seconds before begins to pull away after their, but his hands reach up to her face and he holds her, only what seems like hours later realizing that she needs a breath and she finally pulls back to begin laughing, coughing at the same time. "Oh my god Yoona, I'm so sorry-" but she isn't listening, still in her fit of giggles.
"That's - that's okay," Yoona chokes, as gracefully as one of her kind can, looking up at him with tears brimming her eyes. "I liked it anyways." Changmin can feel himself turning red and there's a lot of reasons he loves her, and he thinks her way of embarrassment is up there in the list too.
They are outside for barely half an hour when Yoona's coughing periods grow unbearably longer, and it takes her longer to get from one bench to the next. He takes her inside after she finds a suitable handful of flowers, and the outside world has become too much for faltering Im Yoona. Changmin wishes he could help her.
He hadn't known she was sick. Yoona had reasons, excuses lining her sleeve, another one ready to pull out when he asked questions and tried to help, are you okay's answered with i'm fine, this happens all the time and her smile was too beautiful to be deceiving at the time.
Changmin is waiting at her apartment, sitting in her bedroom as she attempts to finish getting ready even though she looks flawless as it is. She enters the bedroom paler than usual and tells him she'll only be a minute, and he smiles at her but she doesn't catch it because Yoona is already rushing to the bathroom.
She vomits in the sink twice, and Changmin comes in a little too late, when she's already rinsed her mouth and brushed her teeth and applied a fresh coat of lipgloss for another date night because this has become routine for her.
Yoona smiles at him and it frightens him, a little. "Are you okay?"
"Of course, I'm fine," she says, pushing him out the door and following after him as she slips on a pair of flats and links her arm with his. "It's nothing serious, just side effects is all." Changmin doesn't get the chance to ask her of what, because she is popping two breath mints in her mouth and dragging him out the door behind her.
Side effects of life, is what she meant. He comes to realize that a little too late, too.
Changmin comes by one day when the sun has set and it is raining outside, the pitter-patter of the raindrops against the gravel her favorite lullaby. She finds room in her hospital bed and he squeezes himself on to the little space uncomfortably and it is his favorite place in the world anyways.
She thanks him every day, Yoona, but he doesn't really know why. Today is no different.
"How have you stayed with me for so long?" she asks, slipping her fingers through his. Yoona isn't looking at him but he looks at her and it's the ghostly type of beautiful, the way she is slowly fading away. "I don't know what I did in my past life to deserve this, but I must have been one hell of a good person."
He laughs, and he wishes he could say the same to her in words she would believe.
Yoona isn't good at the material items, but Changmin never did like the technicalities. She's better at the emotion and she's better with Changmin, better with words and better with laughter and better with the optimism and the hope and at handing him the rope with a smile on her face because she is too weak to hold on to it now.
Changmin falls asleep with Yoona humming in his arms and if that isn't worth something, he doesn't think anything is.
When he finally figures out it is too late.
Yoona takes on his request to go hiking three months into their relationship, and he hates the way she always tries to be so uplifting, so Superman-like when she is the Lois Lane that he isn't able to save.
She holds out longer than he would have expected her to, now. Changmin holds her arm and pushes branches out of the way, and to her each step is another milestone climbed, but at the time he couldn't understand why her breathing was so heavy and why she couldn't speak more than a couple of words at a time, the sun beating down and the sweat running down her neck cold.
Yoona smiles the whole way. "It feels amazing outside, I feel like I haven't exercised in forever. We should do this more often," she says, and that's when her legs give out on her and she can't see him anymore.
It's over an hour before they finally get into a hospital and Yoona is tested and Changmin feels angrier than he should.
When he gets into the hospital room, Yoona is covered in blankets and sweating, and her eyes are red rimmed. "Why didn't you tell me you were sick?" he asks, resisting the urge to yell, and she still smiles at him, even then.
"Everyone gets sick once in a while."
"Not like - not like this, like you! Why didn't you tell me?"
Yoona turns away and he can see the smile on her face, still, and how she is struggling to keep it there even though the tears have already fallen and this is the first time he has seen her crying. "Because I don't want to be like this, Changmin." Her voice is smooth and if anyone, she should be angry, but she isn't, and the whole two years they are together Changmin has never once seen her unhappy. "I just want to be like normal people, that can go on normal dates, and I just wanted to be like a normal girl that could make her boyfriend happy. I don't like being treated differently, Changmin."
Her voice cracks at the end and she holds the blanket up to her eyes, pressing it against her soaked face, and Changmin doesn't have the courage to hold her. Yoona was always the stronger of the two.
Changmin brings takeout the day of the announcement. Her favorite meal, in a plastic styrofoam box, the plastic bag carrier unable to conceal its scent. He's unusually happy, today, and he finds himself wanting to run to Yoona's hospital room, see her wide smile and the gratitude of something good to eat. She's only allowed outside food once a month.
The doctor stops him before he enters her room, and he can see through the small window her laughing face as she jokes with the nurse that has become her best friend.
"I thought you should know," the doctor begins, and the way he talks is when Changmin's expression finally falls, "is that there isn't much time left. She's starting to get weaker, her breathing levels are abnormal when she is sleeping, and frankly I don't…" The doctor sighs, and his hand drops from Changmin's arm. "I don't think she has the will to hold on. She doesn't seem to want it anymore."
"Don't say that."
"Changmin, I'm just telling you-"
"No, stop, don't say that. Don't say anything."
Changmin breaks away from him and pushes the hospital door open, and Yoona turns to look at him, that slowly-spreading smile reappearing as she makes out his face. "Changmin! I didn't know you were coming today." He drops the plastic bag on the table and goes straight to her hospital bed, taking her face in his hands and kissing her. When he finally pulls away, her eyes are searching his face and Changmin doesn't know what she is reading. "What's wrong?"
"You - you're trying still, right? You're holding on, right?"
"What are you talking about?"
He feels his hands shaking and drops them from her face, grabbing her shoulders instead and hoping he isn't hurting her. "Just say yes! Just tell me you're holding on, tell me that you still - that you still want this, want, want me."
"Yes, of course - of course I do, why would you even ask that?"
He sighs, closing his eyes as he finally relaxes against the bed, letting his hands drop from her shoulders. She uses the chance to take his face in hers, but his lip is quivering and he doesn't have the heart to look her in the eyes. Yoona is saying something, but he can't hear her, can't understand the muffled words from her lips because all he needs to know is that she is still, still in his arms and still alive.
Changmin ponders over it later that night, and he realizes that Yoona is a good liar, and the doctor was probably right. Who is he, anyways, to ask her to keep holding on? Her will has fallen and Changmin thinks his would too, eventually. He's past wondering how it hasn't already.
She's at his house for a mini-celebration after their soccer team's first practice of the season, him on the floor and her sitting behind him on the couch. Yoona's legs are wrapped around Changmin's torso and despite not being able to move, he finds the position strangely comforting.
Yoona leans down to his ear and he can feel her smile against his skin. "Do you want a massage?"
Changmin laughs at her spontaneity and she takes that as a yes, rearranging herself on the couch so she can reach his shoulders. She begins pushing down against his muscle and if he were honest with himself, he can't really feel much, but she tries and her effort is enough anyways. Her thumbs dig into his shoulder blade and it should feel good but Yoona is weak, and it only intensifies the pain from his lack of exercise.
She catches on pretty quickly. "This doesn't feel good, does it?"
"No, it feels fine, keep going!" but Yoona has already stopped and her head falls into her hands, and Changmin turns around to see her shaking quietly, water trickling out of her hands and down her arm. He hasn't seen her cry like this. "Yoona…"
"God, this sucks!" She takes in a deep breath and picks her head, wiping away the wetness on her face and brushing her hair out of her eyes. "I can't do anything anymore, not even a simple massage."
"It's okay, I wasn't even that sore-"
"That isn't the point! I just wanted to help, and I," Yoona pauses to breathe again, because when she gets worked up her lungs do too and it takes more of an effort to keep going than it would usually, "I can't. I can't ever help you."
Changmin picks himself up from the ground, settling down next to her on the couch and wrapping his arm around her waist. "Don't say that. You don't need to give me a massage or make food for me to help." He smiles at her and she reaches forward, brushing the hair out of his eyes through her tears. "See, like that. That's enough help for me." Yoona breaks out into a grin and he laughs, leaning forward to kiss her. When she pulls away, her eyes are twinkling and he thinks he's done his job right this time. "That's enough for me too."
He likes the days when the little things made her feel better. They've lost their touch, now.
Friday nights are their movie nights. It's a routine they've only recently picked up on, but suddenly Yoona's been having the craving to catch up on every foreign film out there and he finds himself watching reruns of American action films and European romances, and really he just likes holding her hand for the dulling two and a half hours.
Changmin comes over bearing three different requests she'd pointed out over the week, only to come into her hospital room to find her sleeping with the television blasting some mystery show.
"Yoona?"
He says it quietly, so softly that he barely even hears it beyond a mumble himself, but Yoona jolts awake anyways, rubbing her eyes and looking over to catch his eye. She smiles with her sleepy gaze and if wasn't so prepared to watch a movie, he wouldn't mind just watching her sleep instead. "Hi. Um, how are you? What are holding?"
"It's Friday, remember?"
"What's Friday?"
Changmin holds up the DVDs in his hand and she sighs, shaking her head and laughing lightly. "Oh, right. I forgot. Sorry, I just - um, come on, come sit next to me." Yoona shuffles over on the bed, wincing as she moves over and finding a way to grin at him anyways, giggling as the bed deflates when he seats himself next to her. "So, what are the choices for today?"
Yoona ends up going for some Italian classic whose name he doesn't really know how to pronounce, and when they're finally settled on the hospital bed, lights out and movie rolling, he can feel her head hit his shoulder, resting their soundly for the next twenty minutes until he moves his arm a little, waking her up. "You awake?"
She sits up, rubbing at her eyes and yawning widely. "Oh my god, did I fall asleep? Is it done already?"
"No, it just started." Changmin smiles, wrapping his arm around her and pulling her closer to him. "Tired much?"
"Yeah, I just," Yoona yawns again, covering her mouth and blinking slowly. "I'm tired, I'm just so tired. Can we watch this movie another time?" but he's already reaching for the remote, shutting off the television so they are surrounded by darkness, the only light the city lights from outside her window. "All the time, Changmin, I'm just so tired." She looks up at him and smiles, but it isn't the same smile from the garden and it hits him, then.
The routine breaks faster than it started, and by then it's swung right past the both of them.
Yoona calls him when he's out of town, and he can feel her smile even though she's been crying. Changmin thinks he knows Yoona well enough to realize this. "Hi, Changmin. How is your trip going?"
"Horrible. I miss you."
She laughs and her laugh isn't as light as it normally is, and he thinks to ask her what's wrong. He doesn't, because Yoona knows the words he is thinking before they come out of his mouth, and Changmin wonders if that was the first part of them. "I just… Um, I wanted to let you know that I was admitted yesterday, before you came home and saw me like this."
"Admitted? What do you mean? Like what?"
He wishes he hadn't asked, he wishes he'd found out with her, but Yoona likes it better this way, and he thinks all he's ever cared about was Yoona. "Into the hospital. It's uh, permanent. Permanent residency, they called it."
Terminal, is what they'd meant. Both of them know and neither of them understand. It's the little things, she'd always said.
The admittance date into the hospital was approaching quickly. Yoona had only one thing written on her bucket list.
"No last regrets? What does that mean?"
Yoona sighs in response, and Changmin takes it to be his responsibility to help her with whatever time they've got left.
He packs her bags an hour after he makes his plan and whisks away Yoona with an inhaler and all the medical precautions, and they drive for three and a half hours before they reach their destination. She's asleep by the time they get there, and Changmin carries her to their hotel room. It's their first and last night there.
They wake up when the sun is rising and he helps her to the end of the pier. Yoona isn't allowed in the water, but the waves rise up against the legs of the pier and the water splashes against her legs anyways.
Changmin holds Yoona in his arms, her head on his shoulder, and she feels like a feather against the rest of the world. She hums and Yoona wasn't ever the best singer, but she liked songs and Changmin liked her voice and he wonders if that's all that mattered. If that was the simple answer to life and it's difficulties when you are withering away.
They sit there majority of the day, leaving only twice - once to eat, and another to stretch - and she finally speaks when the sun is setting and all last words are commenced.
"Sorry."
"Why?"
Yoona sighs, tightening her weak grip on his hand and brushing her blowing hair away from the wind. "I don't know. For everything, I guess." Changmin doesn't know how to stop her. "For this relationship, for not being able to do anything for you, for just… For wasting away two years of your life, I guess." She looks at him with tears in her eyes and grins the way she does when she knows she's right. "You can't get those years back, you know?"
He smiles and lets go of her hands, pulling her head close so it is against his chest. She is so tiny, Yoona, and he wonders if he could keep her in the palm of his hand and never let her go. "I didn't want them back anyways."
She laughs and he can feel her tears soaking through his t-shirt, hot salty tears that he knows are leaking from his own eyes too. The clock is ticking and he can hear the hands pushing forward, begging to go faster no matter how many times he tells them to stop. The first choked sob is followed by a second, and then Yoona is a crying mess in his arms, and he doesn't know how to love her anymore than he already does.
They get back home late that night and Yoona crosses the one item off of her bucket list. There's nothing left to live for.
Changmin isn't by her bedside when she passes away, but he is told she was smiling when she fell asleep, and she was beautiful unbroken, then, too. Im Yoona, the goddess in this life and probably the hereafter too.
"He needs a beautiful image of me in his head," she had said. "Not a dying one."
Changmin doesn't know if there's a difference. Either way, he loves her.
request of the day
otp
chanyeol/seohyun
gdragon/cl
jongsuk/woobin
minho/krystal
bap
sehun
exo?????????
dbsk/snsd - changmin/yoona - pg
4326w~
yoona was always the stronger of the two.
warning: character death
a/n: requested by aoza, i know i warned you beforehand but i offer you my sincerest apologies anyways. why do my requests all end up angsty ;_; in any case, i love you a lot and though i promise happy changyoon in the future, i do hope you enjoy this. muah ♥
Yoona looks sadly beautiful in white. She's smiling, but her skin is a pasty pale color and her hair has become coarse strings of black, the only color left the fading pink of her lips, vivid shining eyes because to her everything is still alright. She smiles when he enters the room and she smiles when he takes her cold, shaking hand, and Changmin tries to smile back even though he knows everything is not alright, and the seconds wasted were the blessed seconds they didn't know they were supposed to hold on to.
Yoona looks beautiful in white, but he didn't think it would be like this. Changmin finds it quite heartbreaking.
He doesn't think he fell in love with her, per se. Changmin isn't really sure those kinds of things happen to him. All a coincidence, he would call it, but if Yoona lived long enough for a child of her own she would tell them it happened like it does in the fairy tales, the step by step manner where they meet eyes and something clicks. A switch flipped, a button pressed, a buzzer that Changmin didn't even know was turned on until it was too late to turn it off.
It's raining, when he first sees her. The clouds are covering all source of sunlight and he can barely see her figure lingering at the bus stop through the pouring rain, but then she sneezes and he remembers thinking how stupid it was for someone to have left their house without an umbrella on a day like this.
He holds his umbrella over her anyways, though it's kind of useless by then, and Changmin also remembers the way she had barely smiled at him before sneezing again and how all he could think of doing was patting her back awkwardly, hoping to drive away the cold even though it was too far in. Her smile was beautiful even then.
Yoona got sick quite easily, he came to realize. Back then it was just the rain.
Her favorite gift is flowers. Changmin doesn't understand why, but they litter her hospital room in shades of pinks and reds anyways, most of them from him, and she doesn't ever seem to get tired of them. He arrives one afternoon with a bouquet in hand and Yoona's smile lights up the already white room. "Peonies, my favorite," she squeals, and he doesn't understand why at the time.
"Come, sit," she says, sitting up suddenly and coughing as she pats at the foot of her bed.
"Don't hurt yourself, I'm coming," Changmin says, smiling, and the way the bed suddenly deflates at his sitting makes him scared. She was barely anything before, Yoona, and now she is left to skin and bones.
Yoona grins at him and then buries her face into the flowers, inhaling so deeply he's afraid all the air will get lost inside of her. She doesn't pull away, clenching the stem of the bouquet so tightly that her knuckles turn white - Changmin opens his mouth to ask her what, exactly, she is doing, but then she pulls away with her eyes still closed and smiles. There are pink petals hanging from her hair. "Wow. They smell wonderful."
"I'm glad you like them."
She opens her eyes, twinkling pupils against her pasty skin as she looks at him. "I'm losing my sense of smell, you're going to have start spraying these flowers with your cologne so I can recognize them."
Changmin smiles, leaning forward to brush the petals out of her hair and kiss her forehead lightly. It's burning up but her hands are cold, and she grins beautifully at him anyways with the flowers still in grasp. She replaces the vase of orchids next to her hospital bed with the peonies and asks him to get some more when they start to wither away.
Peonies are given to heal, he later reads. Yoona wishes on them, but Changmin finds them kind of useless. The orchids were better off.
Changmin is the typical guy in the movies. He asks her out on a sunny day, an attempt at flirting although she is oblivious and Yoona is just the pretty girl back then, even though she doesn't seem to see it.
He coaches the middle school kid's soccer team, one of which happens to be Yoona's younger cousin. It's the little things, she tells him later. Fate, or destiny, small words that don't mean much to him but she lives by, so Changmin tries to believe in them too.
Yoona doesn't seem to recognize him, but he approaches her after practice and the kids are fooling around enough for him to go off on his own. "Hey," and she looks up at him, smiling and shading her eyes against the sun with her hand. "I'm the guy from the other rainy day, with the umbrella?"
"Oh, right! Thank you, if I had known you were here I would've brought it back. How are you, by the way? I hope you didn't get sick or anything." She's a talkative one, but he isn't quiet sure he minds, then.
"Yeah, um, yeah, I'm fine. I should be asking you, you looked really sick that day?"
She laughs, her eyes still squinted from smiling or the sun or naturally, he doesn't really know. "No, I'm fine. Thank you for asking, in any case. So you coach the soccer team?"
It goes on from there, small talk and lovely conversation and the things Changmin wasn't ever really good at, except Yoona's good enough for the both of them. She has a lot of words and each one is lined with a tilted smile and a hitched laugh, and he wishes the day would never end except it's time for everyone to go home too soon.
He asks her out, finally, and if Im Yoona knew how to love, she wouldn't have said yes.
Changmin is happy she did anyways. She never does return his umbrella.
Their next date is at the hospital. Changmin doesn't bring a bouquet of flowers, but he gets permission to take her outside walking, and neither of them can remember the last time she's spent more than ten minutes outside. "Confinement," Yoona calls it. He doesn't care to argue.
She takes in a deep breath as soon as the step outside of the hospital doors, the smell of cleaning alcohol and sick people washed away by the fresh outside air. It's humid, and Changmin can feel his shirt sticking to his back, but Yoona seems to love it. She coughs and turns to him, smiling, holding his arm a little tighter than necessary as they walk towards the hospital garden in the back.
Yoona's steps are slow and cautious, and she has to sit every couple of minutes, finding a bench or traveling back to the last one as she catches her breath, smiling the whole time. Changmin wonders what her first charm was, in the millions he's fallen into.
"Sorry this is taking so long, I'm just," she sighs, holding on to his arm, "I'm just so tired."
Changmin wants to tell her not to apologize, that there's no reason to, but she won't listen either way. "That's okay." Yoona looks up and grins at him, leaning up to kiss him.
Their lips meet for only seconds before begins to pull away after their, but his hands reach up to her face and he holds her, only what seems like hours later realizing that she needs a breath and she finally pulls back to begin laughing, coughing at the same time. "Oh my god Yoona, I'm so sorry-" but she isn't listening, still in her fit of giggles.
"That's - that's okay," Yoona chokes, as gracefully as one of her kind can, looking up at him with tears brimming her eyes. "I liked it anyways." Changmin can feel himself turning red and there's a lot of reasons he loves her, and he thinks her way of embarrassment is up there in the list too.
They are outside for barely half an hour when Yoona's coughing periods grow unbearably longer, and it takes her longer to get from one bench to the next. He takes her inside after she finds a suitable handful of flowers, and the outside world has become too much for faltering Im Yoona. Changmin wishes he could help her.
He hadn't known she was sick. Yoona had reasons, excuses lining her sleeve, another one ready to pull out when he asked questions and tried to help, are you okay's answered with i'm fine, this happens all the time and her smile was too beautiful to be deceiving at the time.
Changmin is waiting at her apartment, sitting in her bedroom as she attempts to finish getting ready even though she looks flawless as it is. She enters the bedroom paler than usual and tells him she'll only be a minute, and he smiles at her but she doesn't catch it because Yoona is already rushing to the bathroom.
She vomits in the sink twice, and Changmin comes in a little too late, when she's already rinsed her mouth and brushed her teeth and applied a fresh coat of lipgloss for another date night because this has become routine for her.
Yoona smiles at him and it frightens him, a little. "Are you okay?"
"Of course, I'm fine," she says, pushing him out the door and following after him as she slips on a pair of flats and links her arm with his. "It's nothing serious, just side effects is all." Changmin doesn't get the chance to ask her of what, because she is popping two breath mints in her mouth and dragging him out the door behind her.
Side effects of life, is what she meant. He comes to realize that a little too late, too.
Changmin comes by one day when the sun has set and it is raining outside, the pitter-patter of the raindrops against the gravel her favorite lullaby. She finds room in her hospital bed and he squeezes himself on to the little space uncomfortably and it is his favorite place in the world anyways.
She thanks him every day, Yoona, but he doesn't really know why. Today is no different.
"How have you stayed with me for so long?" she asks, slipping her fingers through his. Yoona isn't looking at him but he looks at her and it's the ghostly type of beautiful, the way she is slowly fading away. "I don't know what I did in my past life to deserve this, but I must have been one hell of a good person."
He laughs, and he wishes he could say the same to her in words she would believe.
Yoona isn't good at the material items, but Changmin never did like the technicalities. She's better at the emotion and she's better with Changmin, better with words and better with laughter and better with the optimism and the hope and at handing him the rope with a smile on her face because she is too weak to hold on to it now.
Changmin falls asleep with Yoona humming in his arms and if that isn't worth something, he doesn't think anything is.
When he finally figures out it is too late.
Yoona takes on his request to go hiking three months into their relationship, and he hates the way she always tries to be so uplifting, so Superman-like when she is the Lois Lane that he isn't able to save.
She holds out longer than he would have expected her to, now. Changmin holds her arm and pushes branches out of the way, and to her each step is another milestone climbed, but at the time he couldn't understand why her breathing was so heavy and why she couldn't speak more than a couple of words at a time, the sun beating down and the sweat running down her neck cold.
Yoona smiles the whole way. "It feels amazing outside, I feel like I haven't exercised in forever. We should do this more often," she says, and that's when her legs give out on her and she can't see him anymore.
It's over an hour before they finally get into a hospital and Yoona is tested and Changmin feels angrier than he should.
When he gets into the hospital room, Yoona is covered in blankets and sweating, and her eyes are red rimmed. "Why didn't you tell me you were sick?" he asks, resisting the urge to yell, and she still smiles at him, even then.
"Everyone gets sick once in a while."
"Not like - not like this, like you! Why didn't you tell me?"
Yoona turns away and he can see the smile on her face, still, and how she is struggling to keep it there even though the tears have already fallen and this is the first time he has seen her crying. "Because I don't want to be like this, Changmin." Her voice is smooth and if anyone, she should be angry, but she isn't, and the whole two years they are together Changmin has never once seen her unhappy. "I just want to be like normal people, that can go on normal dates, and I just wanted to be like a normal girl that could make her boyfriend happy. I don't like being treated differently, Changmin."
Her voice cracks at the end and she holds the blanket up to her eyes, pressing it against her soaked face, and Changmin doesn't have the courage to hold her. Yoona was always the stronger of the two.
Changmin brings takeout the day of the announcement. Her favorite meal, in a plastic styrofoam box, the plastic bag carrier unable to conceal its scent. He's unusually happy, today, and he finds himself wanting to run to Yoona's hospital room, see her wide smile and the gratitude of something good to eat. She's only allowed outside food once a month.
The doctor stops him before he enters her room, and he can see through the small window her laughing face as she jokes with the nurse that has become her best friend.
"I thought you should know," the doctor begins, and the way he talks is when Changmin's expression finally falls, "is that there isn't much time left. She's starting to get weaker, her breathing levels are abnormal when she is sleeping, and frankly I don't…" The doctor sighs, and his hand drops from Changmin's arm. "I don't think she has the will to hold on. She doesn't seem to want it anymore."
"Don't say that."
"Changmin, I'm just telling you-"
"No, stop, don't say that. Don't say anything."
Changmin breaks away from him and pushes the hospital door open, and Yoona turns to look at him, that slowly-spreading smile reappearing as she makes out his face. "Changmin! I didn't know you were coming today." He drops the plastic bag on the table and goes straight to her hospital bed, taking her face in his hands and kissing her. When he finally pulls away, her eyes are searching his face and Changmin doesn't know what she is reading. "What's wrong?"
"You - you're trying still, right? You're holding on, right?"
"What are you talking about?"
He feels his hands shaking and drops them from her face, grabbing her shoulders instead and hoping he isn't hurting her. "Just say yes! Just tell me you're holding on, tell me that you still - that you still want this, want, want me."
"Yes, of course - of course I do, why would you even ask that?"
He sighs, closing his eyes as he finally relaxes against the bed, letting his hands drop from her shoulders. She uses the chance to take his face in hers, but his lip is quivering and he doesn't have the heart to look her in the eyes. Yoona is saying something, but he can't hear her, can't understand the muffled words from her lips because all he needs to know is that she is still, still in his arms and still alive.
Changmin ponders over it later that night, and he realizes that Yoona is a good liar, and the doctor was probably right. Who is he, anyways, to ask her to keep holding on? Her will has fallen and Changmin thinks his would too, eventually. He's past wondering how it hasn't already.
She's at his house for a mini-celebration after their soccer team's first practice of the season, him on the floor and her sitting behind him on the couch. Yoona's legs are wrapped around Changmin's torso and despite not being able to move, he finds the position strangely comforting.
Yoona leans down to his ear and he can feel her smile against his skin. "Do you want a massage?"
Changmin laughs at her spontaneity and she takes that as a yes, rearranging herself on the couch so she can reach his shoulders. She begins pushing down against his muscle and if he were honest with himself, he can't really feel much, but she tries and her effort is enough anyways. Her thumbs dig into his shoulder blade and it should feel good but Yoona is weak, and it only intensifies the pain from his lack of exercise.
She catches on pretty quickly. "This doesn't feel good, does it?"
"No, it feels fine, keep going!" but Yoona has already stopped and her head falls into her hands, and Changmin turns around to see her shaking quietly, water trickling out of her hands and down her arm. He hasn't seen her cry like this. "Yoona…"
"God, this sucks!" She takes in a deep breath and picks her head, wiping away the wetness on her face and brushing her hair out of her eyes. "I can't do anything anymore, not even a simple massage."
"It's okay, I wasn't even that sore-"
"That isn't the point! I just wanted to help, and I," Yoona pauses to breathe again, because when she gets worked up her lungs do too and it takes more of an effort to keep going than it would usually, "I can't. I can't ever help you."
Changmin picks himself up from the ground, settling down next to her on the couch and wrapping his arm around her waist. "Don't say that. You don't need to give me a massage or make food for me to help." He smiles at her and she reaches forward, brushing the hair out of his eyes through her tears. "See, like that. That's enough help for me." Yoona breaks out into a grin and he laughs, leaning forward to kiss her. When she pulls away, her eyes are twinkling and he thinks he's done his job right this time. "That's enough for me too."
He likes the days when the little things made her feel better. They've lost their touch, now.
Friday nights are their movie nights. It's a routine they've only recently picked up on, but suddenly Yoona's been having the craving to catch up on every foreign film out there and he finds himself watching reruns of American action films and European romances, and really he just likes holding her hand for the dulling two and a half hours.
Changmin comes over bearing three different requests she'd pointed out over the week, only to come into her hospital room to find her sleeping with the television blasting some mystery show.
"Yoona?"
He says it quietly, so softly that he barely even hears it beyond a mumble himself, but Yoona jolts awake anyways, rubbing her eyes and looking over to catch his eye. She smiles with her sleepy gaze and if wasn't so prepared to watch a movie, he wouldn't mind just watching her sleep instead. "Hi. Um, how are you? What are holding?"
"It's Friday, remember?"
"What's Friday?"
Changmin holds up the DVDs in his hand and she sighs, shaking her head and laughing lightly. "Oh, right. I forgot. Sorry, I just - um, come on, come sit next to me." Yoona shuffles over on the bed, wincing as she moves over and finding a way to grin at him anyways, giggling as the bed deflates when he seats himself next to her. "So, what are the choices for today?"
Yoona ends up going for some Italian classic whose name he doesn't really know how to pronounce, and when they're finally settled on the hospital bed, lights out and movie rolling, he can feel her head hit his shoulder, resting their soundly for the next twenty minutes until he moves his arm a little, waking her up. "You awake?"
She sits up, rubbing at her eyes and yawning widely. "Oh my god, did I fall asleep? Is it done already?"
"No, it just started." Changmin smiles, wrapping his arm around her and pulling her closer to him. "Tired much?"
"Yeah, I just," Yoona yawns again, covering her mouth and blinking slowly. "I'm tired, I'm just so tired. Can we watch this movie another time?" but he's already reaching for the remote, shutting off the television so they are surrounded by darkness, the only light the city lights from outside her window. "All the time, Changmin, I'm just so tired." She looks up at him and smiles, but it isn't the same smile from the garden and it hits him, then.
The routine breaks faster than it started, and by then it's swung right past the both of them.
Yoona calls him when he's out of town, and he can feel her smile even though she's been crying. Changmin thinks he knows Yoona well enough to realize this. "Hi, Changmin. How is your trip going?"
"Horrible. I miss you."
She laughs and her laugh isn't as light as it normally is, and he thinks to ask her what's wrong. He doesn't, because Yoona knows the words he is thinking before they come out of his mouth, and Changmin wonders if that was the first part of them. "I just… Um, I wanted to let you know that I was admitted yesterday, before you came home and saw me like this."
"Admitted? What do you mean? Like what?"
He wishes he hadn't asked, he wishes he'd found out with her, but Yoona likes it better this way, and he thinks all he's ever cared about was Yoona. "Into the hospital. It's uh, permanent. Permanent residency, they called it."
Terminal, is what they'd meant. Both of them know and neither of them understand. It's the little things, she'd always said.
The admittance date into the hospital was approaching quickly. Yoona had only one thing written on her bucket list.
"No last regrets? What does that mean?"
Yoona sighs in response, and Changmin takes it to be his responsibility to help her with whatever time they've got left.
He packs her bags an hour after he makes his plan and whisks away Yoona with an inhaler and all the medical precautions, and they drive for three and a half hours before they reach their destination. She's asleep by the time they get there, and Changmin carries her to their hotel room. It's their first and last night there.
They wake up when the sun is rising and he helps her to the end of the pier. Yoona isn't allowed in the water, but the waves rise up against the legs of the pier and the water splashes against her legs anyways.
Changmin holds Yoona in his arms, her head on his shoulder, and she feels like a feather against the rest of the world. She hums and Yoona wasn't ever the best singer, but she liked songs and Changmin liked her voice and he wonders if that's all that mattered. If that was the simple answer to life and it's difficulties when you are withering away.
They sit there majority of the day, leaving only twice - once to eat, and another to stretch - and she finally speaks when the sun is setting and all last words are commenced.
"Sorry."
"Why?"
Yoona sighs, tightening her weak grip on his hand and brushing her blowing hair away from the wind. "I don't know. For everything, I guess." Changmin doesn't know how to stop her. "For this relationship, for not being able to do anything for you, for just… For wasting away two years of your life, I guess." She looks at him with tears in her eyes and grins the way she does when she knows she's right. "You can't get those years back, you know?"
He smiles and lets go of her hands, pulling her head close so it is against his chest. She is so tiny, Yoona, and he wonders if he could keep her in the palm of his hand and never let her go. "I didn't want them back anyways."
She laughs and he can feel her tears soaking through his t-shirt, hot salty tears that he knows are leaking from his own eyes too. The clock is ticking and he can hear the hands pushing forward, begging to go faster no matter how many times he tells them to stop. The first choked sob is followed by a second, and then Yoona is a crying mess in his arms, and he doesn't know how to love her anymore than he already does.
They get back home late that night and Yoona crosses the one item off of her bucket list. There's nothing left to live for.
Changmin isn't by her bedside when she passes away, but he is told she was smiling when she fell asleep, and she was beautiful unbroken, then, too. Im Yoona, the goddess in this life and probably the hereafter too.
"He needs a beautiful image of me in his head," she had said. "Not a dying one."
Changmin doesn't know if there's a difference. Either way, he loves her.
request of the day
otp
chanyeol/seohyun
gdragon/cl
jongsuk/woobin
minho/krystal
bap
sehun
exo?????????