red fish, blue fish
Red Fish, Blue Fish
Yunho/Jaejoong
PG-13
Yunho takes Jaejoong’s heart when he sleeps. Others like to take his shoes.
The first time it happens, Jaejoong falls asleep mid-sentence over the dishes.
He wakes up an hour later to Yoochun slapping at his cheeks and Yunho yelling at the operator over the phone because he’s speaking too fast for her to understand. From where he’s lying on the couch, his fingers can barely reach far enough to get Yunho’s attention, gently prying the phone away to set it back in its cradle. Junsu tells him to go to bed but Jaejoong’s eyes wander over to the dishes left unwashed in the sink. There is a whole list of things to do before bed.
“I’m okay now. It was probably just the summer heat,” he says as if that excuses passing out into an empty pot and almost drowning in the soap bubbles.
Though Yoochun starts hauling Jaejoong off to bed no later than ten o’clock, Jaejoong starts to pass out more and more often-during meetings, recordings, photo shoots, even when he just walks down the street to buy soju from the convenience store. His form slumps gracelessly over tables, sidewalks, store displays, into people, and causes panic.
Yunho bitterly thinks it was only sort of funny the first time.
Changmin decides to hide all of Jaejoong’s pots and pans to keep him from falling asleep and charring himself on the stove. But when Yunho walks past the kitchen, he sees Jaejoong sitting at the table staring longingly at the empty cabinets and feels just guilty enough to give back one pot for jjigae.
He has always liked watching Jaejoong cook. It makes him feel like he’s four years old all over again, watching his mother stir the broth in his favorite soup and giggling in his high-chair. Jaejoong even wipes Yunho’s mouth when he thinks nobody is looking.
It’s nice to be taken care of.
It makes him feel-
what is that word again?
Two days later, Yunho finds Jaejoong crumpled at the bottom of the stairs in a live hall, fingers clutching at one of Yoochun’s new piano scores and his wrist broken in more places than one.
“Narcolepsy, sudden attacks of sleep. It’s not fatal by itself,” the doctor sounds more optimistic than he should after twelve hours of testing. He lets them piece together words and actions for themselves and forces a weak smile.
“So I’m just going to sleep through the rest of my life?” Jaejoong asks, voice soft and monotonous. He can see himself missing all the important scrapbook moments of Dong Bang Shin Ki and his resolves decays just a little more. He can’t fathom living without seeing Junsu trip over the same shoe in the doorway every morning or Changmin’s crooked smile or Yoochun crying on stage, looking over at Junsu crying too, and crying harder. Anxiously, his clammy fingers tangle in his matted blond hair.
He can’t live missing all of Yunho’s smiles.
The clock flips its way to seven o’clock but it doesn’t feel like morning.
Yunho suddenly grabs his uninjured hand and yanks him angrily out of the wheelchair. Because Kim Jaejoong, Yunho seethes quietly, does not need a wheelchair, because Kim Jaejoong is not so crippled that he can’t still stand on his own two feet. Because Kim Jaejoong broke his wrist, not his spine.
Jaejoong lets Yunho stumble into him, the curve of his neck cradling Yunho’s head and all of his burdens, and he gently strokes Yunho’s hair, the soft brown strands slipping easily through his fingers.
Activities have been suspended. Yunho has more free time than he has ever wanted and he spends his days lounging uselessly on the couch watching reruns of “Family Outing.”
Jaejoong plods into the living room in Junsu’s sneakers with two suitcases. Yoochun’s keyboard is tucked under his arm and he deliberately ignores Yoochun’s yells from their work room about how the sound of Jaejoong’s keyboard doesn’t flow as well as his own. For the first time in a week, Yunho drops his gaze from the television.
“I want to go find my birth mother,” Jaejoong announces, shutting off the television and swinging Yunho’s car keys around his finger. “But I didn’t know what I could take of yours with me so you’re driving.”
Yunho raises a brow and doesn’t argue despite the number of things of his Jaejoong already takes without asking. “Where are we going?” he asks, noticing that all the drawers in his bureau have been pulled out and are empty when he stands up to take the keys.
Jaejoong shrugs. “Maybe back to my hometown.”
At the door, Changmin tries to make them stay longer by trying to convince Jaejoong that he needs to change shirts and that Yunho needs to take a shower. “Jaejoongie, are you sure you’ve Lysol-ed the countertops enough times?” he blurts out in desperation, thinking of all the midnight snacks and good night hugs he’s not going to get.
A groggy Junsu straggles into living room looking for his shoes.
Jaejoong laughs but nods. Reaching up to ruffle Changmin’s hair, Yunho promises, “I’ll bring him back” with a smile.
Yunho drives until the paved road ends. Stepping out to stretch his legs, he leans over the car door to peer at the sliver of ocean just beyond the fields. It’s summer and the air is saccharine with the smell of fruits too ripe and sea salt. He looks over the hood of the car, expecting Jaejoong to be already dashing down the hills to ask the workers if they know where his mother has gone but there is no one new in the corn fields.
Sighing, Yunho sits back into the driver’s seat to watch Jaejoong doze against the dashboard. Without Jaejoong awake to ramble and point out the little beautiful things he always misses, he feels lonely and slightly lost and he reaches over the radio buttons for Jaejoong’s hand. He hears Jaejoong stir at his touch, his fingers twitching in Yunho’s grasp, and he wonders how such tiny, pale hands, even when broken in three places, manage to keep everything from falling through.
Leaning his head against the steering wheel, Yunho tries to count all the little beautiful things he can find in Jaejoong’s sleeping face.
“Oh, her?”
The field hand stops plowing the field to wipe the sweat from his brow and stare at the two men in front of him. It wasn’t every day famous city boys came looking for somebody long lost in a tiny village. “She moved away some time ago-two years ago, I think. You should probably ask the old lady who lives in the cottage by the peach groves for the name of the city. It was some place foreign.”
Jaejoong thanks him and eagerly pushes Yunho along the dirt path. The humid air of the valley makes Yunho’s skin stick to Jaejoong’s palms, the paper fan they found in the car’s glove compartment only able to rustle their hair.
Humming one of Yoochun’s new songs, Jaejoong pulls Yunho through the overwhelming perfume of oranges. Yunho harmonizes with him, stopping mid-step to pick a peach and tear into the fuzzy peel, bits of fruit sticking underneath his nails and the juice dripping off his elbows to the dirt below. The way his eyes are darting to avoid Jaejoong’s wide eyes only makes Jaejoong’s head feel lighter, not just from the sun. Mischievously, he sticks out his tongue for the first bite.
The sweetness stings at the roof of his mouth, a new delirium washing over him at the brief taste of Yunho’s fingertips.
“What if she went to Mars? Would you come along with me then too?” he wonders aloud out-of-the-blue. Yunho wants to laugh but Jaejoong is wavering in front of him with a held breath, seriously waiting for a yes or no.
Dizzy, he closes his eyes and Yunho closes in. He can smell the salt of the other man’s sweat and cologne and his brow knits, feeling hot breath trail from his neck to his cheek, and the ridge of Yunho’s nose bumps his. He’s sure Yunho can feel how hard it is for him to breathe, to open his eyes, to stop-
Then Yunho is swallowing his short breaths with his lips. They’re kissing hard, slow and long, the hand stroking Jaejoong’s hip molding him into a helplessness he’s only seen in films.
In the light, Yunho’s eyes are copper but Jaejoong’s own eyes darken with pleasure at what they’ve done: they’ve ruined their friendship for something more serious and, in the middle of nowhere, it feels more than okay. “Can I kiss you?” Yunho whispers a little too late. Jaejoong grins, feeling like a million bucks.
“Spain. A town just outside Madrid. I don’t know why she went there.” The old woman frowns and sweeps more dust off her porch.
Jaejoong falls asleep in the mulberry bushes on the way back to the car.
Oddly enough, Jaejoong can’t fall asleep on the plane. Not even the cup of hot chocolate Yunho orders from the stewardess helps and neither do Yunho’s lips caressing his neck and collarbone. But even though his entire head feels too heavy for his neck, Jaejoong realizes that it’s one of the only times he can watch Yunho sleep and he tugs the younger man’s body away from the window to lean against his own. There’s no putting a blanket over Yunho’s sleeping face this time.
He holds his headphones to his ears and plays the CD Yoochun recorded for him just before they left. Maybe he can even write some lyrics with everything feeling so quiet. Yunho subtly wakes up some time in the middle of the song and notices the flutter of the other man’s eyelashes against his cheek.
“Would your mother be as beautiful as you are?” Yunho murmurs into Jaejoong’s ear, drawing attention away from the music to the words he’s tracing against the blonde’s thigh.
영원히. Forever, for ever, for never, for...
Yoochun’s piano melodies fade just a little. Jaejoong stares at the invisible letters burning into his flesh and says nothing.
The hot air buzzes in Madrid. Here, there are beautiful people and secretly, Yunho feels ugly standing outside of the airport in the midst of them and trying to flag down a taxi. Jaejoong is limp as a ragdoll in his arms. He’s making a funny face in his sleep, but he still looks vulnerable and more attractive than anybody else around this way, a strand of blond hair straying over his nose.
“A dónde va?” the driver asks. Yunho tells him the name of the motel they booked in a bad accent and wishes he could be the one sleeping when they end up circling the entire city on an unasked-for tour and have to pay double the normal fare.
He’s outside, kicking at a slightly broken motorbike he managed to buy from a pawn shop around the corner, when Jaejoong wakes up, sheets warm against his bare skin. It’s somehow pleasant knowing Yunho put him to bed. The spot above his eyebrow tingles where he imagines there might have been a kiss. Through the spaces between the blinds, Jaejoong knocks on the windowpane for attention and admires the line of Yunho’s body for a moment when he slouches against the motorcycle’s engine and beckons Jaejoong with a smile.
Pulling on the pants neatly folded at the foot of the bed, he trips out the door barefoot. Though the motel is a bit run down, it’s close to the plaza and he can see a red-striped arch of the dusk-hued buildings across the street.
It reminds him a lot of Paris: it’s a place where people fall in love.
“We’re so going to get lost,” Yunho groans, turning the map right side up when he realizes he’s been looking at it upside down for half an hour. Jaejoong squints to see the tiny print. Madrid doesn’t end anywhere near where they’re staying and he purses his lips, finger tracing along a highway towards a familiar name.
“Let’s go here tomorrow,” he says cheerfully. Yunho surprises him with a chaste kiss and grins at him like he said let’s get married and have a shotgun wedding instead.
“I am so in love with you.”
“I know.”
Heavy breaths. A sweet gasp of harder, closed eyes, the first shudder against Yunho’s chest.
“You feel good.” One hand curls around his arm, the other cupping his cheek like how lovers hold each other afterwards-and Yunho does too, pulling him so close that Jaejoong fears he might be swallowed up whole, gone, by morning-and the white sheets will never quite be the same.
The girl who opens the door of the last house looks almost exactly like Yunho’s first girlfriend. Jaejoong notices it too.
“A quién buscan?” she asks, smoothing her hair back and forcing a polite smile when Yunho can only gape stupidly and Jaejoong loosens his grip on Yunho’s hand. “Perdon, deben estar aqui desde Corea por mi tia, si?”
At the word Korea, Jaejoong nods.
“Gone March. Pneumonia. Like to come in?” There’s an ugly silence. Her Korean is as broken as the thought that Jaejoong missed his mother by merely two months.
Yunho looks over her shoulder into the empty house, decides the stairway somehow looks too sad, and shakes his head for the both of them. She looks apologetically at Jaejoong and closes the door. They sit on the porch steps for a while with Jaejoong’s head in Yunho’s lap, the cicadas in the damp summer answering all of their insecurities.
They get lost on the way back. The motorcycle breaks down while circling a roundabout in the middle of nowhere.
Jaejoong falls asleep in the middle of their impromptu kisses.
Yunho traces the outline of Jaejoong’s figure on the asphalt with the chalk he has in his jacket pocket. The jagged sound is dulled by the silence and he sighs when he’s finished, standing up to see a bulky outline waving at him and wishing Jaejoong would wake up before the sun rises.
Jaejoong wakes up on the taxi ride back to the motel, eyes rimmed red, and he doesn’t know why he says, “I’m sorry.”
Water splashes against the edge of the bathtub as Yunho draws a white washcloth in between Jaejoong’s shoulder blades and over the curve of his arm. Jaejoong pushes around a rubber duck, trying to not pay attention to how desire is pooling in the pit of his stomach and he bites his lip when Yunho’s fingers dance down the side of his thigh.
“Can I wash your hair?” Jaejoong asks suddenly, clambering for the shampoo without waiting for an answer. In his hands, Yunho is putty, shoulders slipping down beneath the water’s surface. He tries to steal a few kisses here and there, but Jaejoong tells him to close his eyes and starts to rinse out the soap. When Yunho leans further into him, sighing contentedly, he suddenly drops the shower head, climbs out of the tub, and lopes away to bed in his towel without any explanation or apology.
Jaejoong tapes a note to the bathroom mirror. He looks it over once more before slipping quietly out the door and hastily into the taxicab he had called for the night before. The driver drops him off in the outskirts of the city for forty Euros.
The countryside is misty with early morning dew, almost like some land out of a fairytale, and Jaejoong takes a deep breath to calm his nerves. It’s strange being alone after spending an entire month glued to somebody’s side. He walks the rest of the way to the little two-story house from yesterday, gravel crunching under his feet, and stops to stare at the dull red window trimmings. He can almost imagine his mother waving at him from the open window on the second floor.
When the screen door bangs open, he instinctively darts behind the side of the house. The same girl from the day before ambles out with a basket of laundry, humming to herself. Gathering his wits, Jaejoong steps onto the lawn and clears his throat. “Excuse me?” he calls out and she looks surprised. “My mother used to live here and I was wondering if you could tell me about her.” He hopes she can understand what he’s saying.
The girl pauses, setting her shirts down. She nods knowingly after a long moment, inviting him in with a wave of her hand, and disappears momentarily to bring back a photo album. He sits down on one of the worn cushions of the couch next to her. She asks him if he wants anything to drink and he shakes his head, swallowing the nervous lump in his throat.
“Your mother cry every time we see pictures of you on the internet. Said that she was happy you are so pretty and that so many people can love you for her.” The plastic covering on the pages of the album crinkle when they peel apart and Jaejoong balances the book on his knees to see the pictures for himself. He notices that he has his mother’s nose. There are photographs of her with her friends, his biological father, in Korea, in Spain, by the ocean, smiling, laughing-and he’s not in a single one. No baby pictures, no pictures of her pregnant, no sign he had ever been a part of her.
“She said she loved you.”
Jaejoong doesn’t believe a word she says, but leans his head against her shoulder instead and wonders if this is what Yunho’s first love felt like.
Yunho tears the motel room apart looking for where he might have misplaced Jaejoong in his sleep. When he goes to brush his teeth for the second time out of frustration, he notices the pink sticky note on the mirror: I’ll be back soon -Jaejoong. He crumples it up and collapses back onto the bed with his hands over his face. How could Jaejoong have gone out alone when he didn’t even speak a single word of Spanish?
There are so many places in Spain to run to that Yunho doesn’t even know where to start looking. He can see Jaejoong accidentally taking the wrong shortcut into a gypsy alleyway and getting robbed and then getting forced to become a gypsy himself, shamelessly begging for money. Pinching the bridge of his nose to quell a sudden headache, Yunho reaches for the phone to call a taxicab.
If only he could not worry.
On the side of the road back to the city, Jaejoong topples into the field of dry grass growing next to the asphalt. The telephone wires strung overhead are deserted by the birds, gray clouds rolling in, the smell of dust and sun and gasoline making the air seem yellow.
A beat-up sedan stops and the driver tiptoes over to take all the money he has in his pockets.
A few hours later, a stolen luxury car screeches to a halt and the criminals steal his shoes.
Just before six o’clock that evening, Jaejoong wakes up, dismayed by everything he’s suddenly missing. He sits there, brow furrowed for a long while, wondering why, oh why, it has to be him. A neon-green taxi pulls over and, out of despair, he flings his shirt over his head at whoever opens the car door and screams, “Fine, just take it! Do you want my pants too?” His fingers fumble with the buttons.
The shirt slips to the floor from where it had draped itself over Yunho’s face. Jaejoong immediately stills, ashamed of how immature and needy he’s being, and clenches his teeth, wondering why he suddenly can’t feel normal anymore.
“Your pants are too short for me,” Yunho tells him, all calm like they’re the same people they were three weeks ago.
At the airport, Jaejoong finds a quarter for the payphone lying on the floor. He hasn’t heard anyone but Yunho’s voice in weeks and he starts hoping he doesn’t get Yoochun’s voicemail after the third ring. There’s a click and he holds his breath, sighing in relief when a tired voice mutters, “Hello?”
“It’s Jaejoong,” he tries to sound as cheerful as possible.
Something clatters to the floor and Junsu’s voice excitedly pestering “Who is it? Is it Yunho? Jaejoong?” rings in the background until Yoochun sets his phone on speaker. He doesn’t sound anywhere near as happy to hear Jaejoong’s voice as Junsu is.
“Is something wrong?” Jaejoong asks, watching Yunho sit down near their luggage and letting him hold hands.
“Changmin is cutting his nails with safety scissors because he doesn’t know where he packed his nail clippers,” Yoochun says somewhat randomly, sounding lost. Junsu mumbles something and Jaejoong realizes that his happiness was extremely short-lived. “We’re changing apartments in a few days. Are you two going to be back by then or should we pack all your things for you?” Jaejoong’s words get caught his in throat but Yoochun seems to hear his unasked question.
“Management is forcing Junsu and I to go solo.” Jaejoong almost drops the phone. Yunho’s eyes dart from the floor to his face worriedly and Jaejoong forges a smile. “Changmin’s signed some modeling contract with a huge brand for a year and he’s going to school. I wouldn’t worry about him if I were you.”
“What about Yunho?”
The phone switches into Junsu’s hands as Yoochun loses his composure and Junsu quietly explains, “When he gets back, they’ll have another contract all written up for him. They want him solo too.”
Jaejoong can’t help but want to know, “What about me?”
“We’re waiting for you to get better.” His breathing crackles down the phone, whispering little sweet nothings to comfort Yoochun. “I looked it up on the internet and there are medicines and therapies for narcolepsy. You’re going to get better, aren’t you? You’re going to get better and make us come back, right?”
It’s quiet except for the echo of chatter in the airport and the sound of Yoochun leaning further, more helplessly, into Junsu. “I know you’re still there. Say something.” Jaejoong doesn’t know what he can promise that so he hangs up.
They’re sitting at a bus stop stupidly watching the traffic. From afar, it doesn’t even look like they know each other with Jaejoong sitting on the opposite end of the bench from Yunho, his eyes trained on a blemish in the concrete. A few buses come and go, taking away people until the street corner is empty except for the two of them. Shifting against the metal, Jaejoong turns to look at Yunho with large sad eyes.
“You should sign that new contract. I think it’d be nice to turn on the television and be able to see you on every channel like before,” he says without thinking, rubbing his chapped hands together.
“I don’t want to,” Yunho replies, his lower lip sticking out like a child’s and he returns to staring at the peeling ocean-blue paint between them. He can almost see waves, his fingers tracing an invisible dock. “It’s not the same. I’m going to wake up every morning and not have anybody else in the place to wake up with. If you let me sign it, you’re letting me be alone.”
Jaejoong breathes, “Oh.” It’s just like Yunho to make things seem like it’s not his own fault. “What are you going to do then?”
“I’ll graduate, go be a lawyer or something. We can take a ridiculous loan from the bank that we can never really pay back, buy a mansion and a fancy car, and when we get evicted, we should move to Alaska,” Yunho rattles off his plan with a straight face for the most part. Putting a hand on his knee, Jaejoong tries not to laugh because it’s really not as illogical as it sounds and because-
“I’d like that.”
Of course it doesn’t turn out as Yunho says.
Something twists in Jaejoong’s chest when he swallows the pills that he had left sitting on the tray for a couple of hours. They’re tiny and blue and they force him to stay awake all night. He lives at the hospital, in a starch-white wonderland that makes him feel sorry for himself. Yunho divides his free time between their one-bedroom apartment and room two-hundred sixty-six where Jaejoong only sometimes crawls out from beneath the covers to sneak a kiss and ask how his day was.
“It was okay. I brought you some fried tofu if you’re hungry,” he says softly, wishing for even a half-mast grin so his day could get better. He tries to rub out the purple swelling beneath Jaejoong’s eyes with his thumb. “I told them to make it extra spicy.”
“Junsu’s new song made it to number one in Korea.” Jaejoong nods at the television with a proud smile. “Yoochun’s debuting next week in Japan with his single. It’s the one I was listening to on the plane going to Spain, remember?”
Grumbling, Yunho forces Jaejoong to take a bite of the food he bought and glances at the music video playing on the screen. He frowns, setting the chopsticks down when Jaejoong refuses to eat anymore. “Did the company run out of money to spend on costumes? That jacket looks like it belongs to my sister.”
“I think it makes Junsu sexy,” Jaejoong says with his mouth full, a mischievous reflection in his eye teasing Yunho’s possessiveness. Pushing his glasses higher up on his nose, the younger man opens the textbook he had left on the nightstand and pretends to be jealous.
But his heart skips a beat when Jaejoong touches his hand, brushing his lips against the back of it.
“You were always the most popular in Japan, you know,” Yunho tells him.
“You’ve always been popular,” Jaejoong reminds him back and fiddles with his silver hospital bracelet when Yunho casts his gaze to the floor.
He looks up a moment later with his lower lip caught in his teeth, somewhere between playful and serious. “Only so you’d notice.”
Two months later, they get to go home. Jaejoong gets to see the apartment Yunho managed to rent out for the first time. With all its wrong angles and cramped hallways, it gives them more reasons to pin each other to the walls and fool around and Jaejoong has only fallen asleep once.
Jaejoong is having a staring contest with the orange medicine bottles lining the kitchen counter. Maybe if he can stay awake long enough without taking any more of those blue capsules, he won’t have to take them at all. He hopes.
From the doorway, Yunho watches Jaejoong push himself beyond rationale. His already tired face is getting more ashen by the minute and his eyes-his beautiful eyes that were always wide and searching-are barely open and Yunho wonders if he’s been awake the entire time he had been at school.
“Are you-“ Yunho begins, but Jaejoong shushes him and goes back to the army of medicine containers.
Knowing that it’s no use to argue with the other man, Yunho lets out a sigh into Jaejoong’s shoulder and washes up for night. At six in the morning, he feels the bed dip in one direction, a warm body pressing into his side insistently like a small child, scared and needy. “Let’s go back.”
With a smile, he runs his fingers through the choppy blond hair spilling across his chest. It’s strange that after so many years, his heart can’t keep from thumping loudly at every little thing Jaejoong does. Even when it’s just a simple a cappella lullaby slipping into the air, the tune pulsates with his body’s rhythm.
Like this is it.
He feels like he’s going to pass out from the excitement of their first live concert in a year. The screaming from the crowd hasn’t changed in all those days and he grabs Changmin’s hand tightly in anticipation. Yoochun is smiling at him for the first time in what seems like forever. Junsu is yelling for somebody to not to forget to wear his hat-the rest of them are too lost in their own elation to hear him-before he disappears onto the stage.
Changmin lets go of his hand to follow Junsu, wishing Jaejoong good luck with a wink. He doesn’t remember when he gets on stage himself, pouring his soul into the microphone, the lyrics to all their old songs coming back to him like a sweet memory. This is where he belongs.
Underneath the shining, swimming light, he breathlessly grins at everything and doesn’t remember why he suddenly loses sight of Yunho because he was just singing, singing-
“You collapsed again.”
It hits him like a ton of bricks.
Except for the five of them, it’s completely empty backstage and Jaejoong roughly pushes his way back to the stage only to see that it’s been stripped-completely bare, like they had never been there before-covered in a thin protective paper. Junsu grabs his arm, holds onto him tightly when he screams that it can’t just end like this, that he was meant to be there, that he wasn’t wrong about that.
But the pieces of their perfect cookie have crumbled to dust.
When Jaejoong is restlessly sleeping, his head shaking against Yunho’s thigh, the rest of them look at each other. Their faces speak volumes of the hideous disappointing truth, of what they are going to now, and Yoochun breaks the silence in a lifeless monotone, “I think I’m done with this.”
Nobody says anything in argument. There’s a rip in the fabric on the couch Junsu keeps pulling at, the threads breaking his nails and revealing the gray stuffing beneath.
Yoochun lights a cigarette nonchalantly, running his knuckles over the back Jaejoong’s calf which is pressed into his own knee.
“Somewhere with sunflowers,” Changmin starts slowly, his eyes running over the equally tired and confused faces of the people he can’t stop loving, unexplainably. “We should all go some place where there are lots of sunflowers and buy a little house next to pond and be happy.” They’d live with people who didn’t want their fame and had never heard of them before. Yunho’s eyes flicker with hopefulness.
“And Yoochun can write songs on the balcony and we can all work nine to five days and come home to Jaejoong cooking and yelling at Yunho for being late,” Junsu throws in eagerly, already brightening.
Staring up at the ceiling, Yunho ruminates on this. It would be nice to be able to get lost in a patch of sunflowers so tall and thick it would take hours to stop going in circles. He can see them dancing, drunk on soju and normalcy, in a white house with hideous green shutters, all of the windows open so anybody can belt out a song to no one in particular whenever they want to, even in the dead of winter.
It’s so real he can almost taste Jaejoong’s smile in his mouth.
“Sunflowers. Jaejoong would like that.”
________________
notes: Translating what is in Spanish: (taxi driver) Where to? (girl) Who are you looking for? Sorry, you must be here from Korea for my aunt?
I rather like how this one turned out.
Review?