FIC: Looking Forward to Looking Back
Title: Looking Forward to Looking Back
Pairing/Fandom: Jiyong & Henry/ Big Bang & Super Junior
Genre: Is Growing Up a Genre?
Rating: G
Summary: What we remember from childhood, we remember forever-permanent ghosts, stamped, inked, imprinted, eternally seen. (Cynthia Ozick)
A/N: Readers, I could not resist the temptation of writing a second Genri (as the lovely Priya suggested) fic. The first one was well received by many of you and -honestly?- I was surprised. I mean, cracky pairing is cracky. But yeah. I gave in to another of Adele's songs from her album 21 and here it is.
justcallmepriya gave me the general idea for this. Actually, she gave me a brilliant base to work on. So brilliant, in fact, that I feel like throwing myself off a cliff for failing to incorporate certain elements that she suggested. Darling, I'm really really sorry I didn't put that one bit in; you'll see it when you read this story. Ugh. I'll make it up to you---somehow.
IMPORTANT: If the music player doesn't work for you for some reason, just go over here to youtube and let it play on loop while you read. Just in case :)
--
“Jiyongie, I’m sorry for leaving a message in your voicemail right now. I suppose you’re busy with your work?”
Static, crackle, static.
“Darling, I really don’t know how to tell you this.”
A sob resonates from the machine and echoed in the empty narrow corridor.
Static, crackle, static.
“Jiyongie… your father passed away.”
Silence.
--
Jiyong woke up to the sounds of pots and pans from the kitchen and the sounds of his mother and sister’s voice as they conversed. Somewhere in the house he can hear his uncle as he reprimanded his cousin and the creaking of un-oiled hinge when his aunt opened the back door, possibly to water the gardens. Groaning, Jiyong buried his face into his pillow and inhaled the clean smell of home and the detergent his mother used. The sunlight that trickled from the parted curtain painted his room in brilliant gold and the wind from the slightly faulty window rustled the papers on his desk.
His childhood room is just as he remembered it.
Old school books still sits quietly in their place on the bookshelves, records neatly stacked in a corner with his old school bag propped haphazardly against the wall, untouched since the last day of school years ago. Grainy pictures adorned the light lilac of his wall, the faces of the youngsters in them grinning and laughing in youthful glee, full of promises and hope. The numbers by his doorframe remained unchanged, just like the time when his father measured him every year until he was 13.
His father.
Where would he even begin? Should he start with how his father gave him disapproving looks throughout his youth? Should he start with how his father took away his guitar because he wasn’t paying enough attention to his school work? Or maybe he should start with how his father constantly tore him down in front of his cousins? Maybe perhaps start with how his father tried to talk him into picking another field of studies when he went to college?
Or maybe he should just start with how he barely knew his father.
It bothered Jiyong that the things he remembered of his father were the things that drove him away from home. What does it say about him that the one thing he remembered all too clearly was the time when his father stood silently aside, face stoic and unfeeling as his mother hugged him before sending him off on the train to Seoul?
The rest of the memories he possessed of his dad are blurred like pictures taken at night filled with too much alcohol with a camera that wasn’t all that good. They were grainy and dark and filled with shadows and ‘did he’ or ‘why didn’t he’. Those memories slide and merged with each other into a messy hue of ‘why don’t you understand’ and ‘I hate you I hate you I hate you, you just don’t get it’.
A revenge, Jiyong grimaced as the word crossed his mind. This must be his father’s final act of revenge, forcing him to speak in front of family and friends about the man and his life. Oh, yes. Pick the one person who freely threw ‘leave me alone’ and ‘stop it, dad just stop it’ and ‘I’m leaving, I’m leaving’ at the man. Why not? Why not let the lad speak of his father in front of everyone that mattered and let them laugh at the boy who let go when his father told him to hold on?
Stomach clenched, breathing harsh, tears forced away.
… what in the world was he going to say?
--
“You’ll do fine, Jiyongie.” His mother smiled kindly at him, her hands grasping one of his as they sat on the white chairs. “Don’t you worry, dear.”
“I don’t-“ he sighed, his free hand fiddling with the hem of his black suit. “Mom, you should do it. You knew him best. Dad would have-“
“He asked for you.” She whispered, her hands tight around his. “He wanted you.”
Jiyong stared at his mother’s wrinkled face. The crow’s feet around her eyes are prominent now and the laugh lines on her face dips and curves around the apples of her cheeks as she smiled wider and him, eyes shining and streaks of silver in her hair glinting. He turned and looked forward at the closed casket, his brain noted how the colored lights from the stained glass window basked the dark wood in reds and greens, just like the kaleidoscope his father made for him when he was a little boy.
“Mom, I really don’t think-“
Jiyong stopped.
Soft soothing melody filled the room like a warm blanket on a winter’s night, muffling the noises of spring from outside. Almost subconsciously Jiyong closed his eyes and let the music take him away as his mind raced to recognize the instrument that created such wonderful sounds. The music takes him back to his boyhood when his father would hoist Jiyong up on his shoulders and spun in circles, laughing as Jiyong shrieked with delight. The dips and curves that the melody made gave Jiyong a memory of his dad teaching him to play the guitar -the irony of his father taking it away in later years not lost on him even as his chest hurt from the pounding of his heart- as they soaked their feet in a stream, summer painting the memory a golden hue.
His hands clenched on his knees as his heart became heavy with the memory of his father telling him to hold tight as he raced down the dirt path of the family orchard on his little red vespa while the sounds of his sister complaining loudly to his mother grew faint. He hears his father’s laughter as clearly as he heard it the day he tripped into a puddle of mud when he refused to listen to his father and ran in his yellow rubber boots after a spring shower.
Just as quiet as it began, the melody stopped and everything came to a standstill.
Jiyoung opened his eyes and his gaze fell onto a familiar face that was all cheeks and large brown eyes. A boy stood in the middle of the platform and right in front of the large stained glass window, arms at his side with a violin tucked neatly in one hand while the other held the bow. Green and red-dyed sunlight softly outlines his silhouette while flecks of gold glinted off his spiky hair and he glowed.
“Mom,” he rasped. “Mom, I can’t do this. I didn’t-I don’t have the right. I can’t, Mom. I just-I’m sorry.”
And he ran.
--
It was a modest-sized clearing by the canal, the grass a healthy shade of green and the tiny wild flowers dotted the green carpet in a pretty picture of white, yellow and pink. Ducks waddled from their nests and swam into the clean water, the ducklings falling into a neat line behind the females while the others dived with their white feathers in the air, surfacing in triumphed with fishes to fill their bellies. Up in the sky, kites littered the clear sky no bigger than little specks of multicolored blobs with tails trailing behind them.
A slight breeze caressed Jiyong’s face as he lay on his back, one arm thrown across his eyes while the other squeezed his waist. His suit jacket was thrown carelessly aside and his tie was undone. His phone rang for about half a dozen times awhile ago before he shut it off and thrown it somewhere with the daisies, mouth barely working as he sobbed into his hands.
“Your mother’s looking for you.”
Jiyong’s body went rigid. Consciously, he lowered his arm and stared right up at the same face he saw before he ran like a coward from the funeral home. Strands of brown hair framed the young face as the boy stared right back at Jiyong, his body bent gently at the waist and his hands propped on his knees. His pink lips pulled in a small smile as he continued to stare back Jiyong.
“Why did you run?”
The older of the two grimaced. “Shut up.”
“Ok.”
The younger boy shrugged and promptly sat beside Jiyong, legs stretched and arms supporting him as he leaned back to soak up the sun. His suit jacket neatly folded on the side with his violin case sitting snugly in the middle of the black bundle, a stark contrast against the bed of wild flowers. For a moment nobody spoke as they gazed at the swimming ducks and fallen leaves floating down the canal.
Jiyong sighed.
“What are you doing here, Henry?”
“Soaking up whatever sunlight I can get my hands on, of course.”
“That’s not what I meant and you know it.”
“Fine.” Henry’s lips pushed together in a tight smile. “Your dad died, hyung. Why wouldn’t I be here?”
“You’re telling me,” Jiyong pushed himself up on his elbows and glared. “That you flew all the way from Canada because my dad died?”
“Yep.”
Jiyong’s glare dropped at the honest answer, so nonchalantly given and stared at Henry for the nth time that day. “Why? He doesn’t mean anything to you. You don’t even know him.”
“I wouldn’t say that.” Henry pursed his lips. “I think I knew him well enough to fly thousands of miles just to see him off.” He narrowed his eyes, the sharp gaze boring holes into Jiyong’s skull. “Why did you run, hyung?”
“Go back, Henry. Just-shut the hell up and go back.”
Jiyong fell back heavily and turned away, his face tight and jaws clenched. The earthy smell filled his nose as he stared resolutely at the blades of grass in his line of visions, silently cataloging the tiny drops of dew on their underside. He forced his head to meticulously paint a mental picture of the little lady bug that clung to the leaf of a dandelion, colors appearing stroke by stroke in his mind. The silence stretched as Jiyong’s brush made gentle strokes of colors to the mental picture, careful to add the almost microscopic veins of the grass.
“When you left for Seoul, I was a wreck.”
Jiyong squinted his eyes. The gentle strokes of his brush becoming slightly harsher as he continued to paint the mental picture.
“I had no one here; my parents and my family thousands of miles from where I am and I was alone.” Jiyong heard the hesitation in Henry’s voice as he stubbornly adds new colors to the picture. “You’re pretty much the only friend I had here, anyway.”
Jiyong flinched.
“Your dad-he-” a shuddering breath, “he heard me practicing my music in your family orchard. Remember, hyung? That spot near the rosemary bush? Yeah- well. He kind of just…sat there and watched me play like you used to do, you know? Sometimes he reads the day’s paper while I play. We didn’t ever talk, but it meant a lot to me…what he did.” His voice faltered. “It wasn’t the same, it wasn’t like having you back or anything like that, but-but just meant a lot.”
Jiyong had by now turned his head to study Henry’s face as the boy ruffled his hair nervously, his other hand twisting the grass. “He brought his old guitar, once. We played and then… and then he told me that he misses you, too.”
Silence once again reigned between them. The wind carried the sounds of children playing somewhere further down the canal while the kites in the sky slowly made their ascend higher and higher into the clouds. The picture of the lady bug in Jiyong’s mind slowly corrodes as a brighter, prettier picture of Henry materialized, framed by summers spent in the creak with four other boys that Jiyong hadn’t seen in ages.
“After that I graduated high school and got into Uni back home.” Henry shrugged, his fingers making tiny braids with the longer grasses. “I never heard from him again, until your mom called and told me he died.”
Quietly, Jiyong’s hand reached out and touched the back of Henry’s left hand, softly stroking his thumb across the pale skin.
“Mom said he wanted me to talk -you know- about him. At the funeral.” Jiyong’s hand enclosed Henry’s, his fingernails digging slightly into the soft skin. “I couldn’t. I just couldn’t because I don’t get how am I suppose to say anything when I barely knew him.”
“So you ran.”
Henry slowly lay back, slipping seamlessly into the space beside Jiyong with his head propped on the older boy’s shoulders. Their joined hands rested between Jiyong’s side and Henry’s chest as they younger boy aligned their bodies like puzzle pieces. They held each other’s gaze like they used to as kids, silently communicating as the rest of the world spoke in loud voices all around them.
Jiyong smiled wryly.
“Yeah.” He chuckled humorlessly. “So I ran.”
--
He is way too tired for this.
Jiyong scowled as dirt splattered across his designer’s boots, soiling the leather and casting specks of black against his pristine beige slacks. He consciously smoothed down his white polo and peered at the small clearing through his dark shades. The same rosemary bush grew by the small stone bench, its surface corroded by Mother Nature. All around him, his family’s orchard was silent and calm as the harvest season had ended right before he arrived.
Looking closely, he smiled when he saw his and Henry’s name carved on the bark of one of the trees, sloppy letters cut across the rough brown surface. He idly traced Henry’s name with his fingers as his eyes wandered across the small clearing, stopping only to study the occasional squirrel that jumped from tree to tree, their fluffy little tails flying behind them like some bizarre pillow.
Memories of afternoons spent lying on the grass with Henry in their school uniforms with their homework strewn across the greenery flashed in Jiyong’s head, as fresh as the day it happened. He could almost taste the succulent flesh of the peach as he bit into them, their juices flowed freely down his wrist and stained his rolled up sleeves. Henry’s lovely laughter echoed through the orchard when Jiyong tackled the boy into a crushing, sticky peach scented hug instead of finishing the essays and reports.
“You’re here early.”
Jiyong mock glared at Henry as they younger boy broke into a slight jog and grinned up at him, hair falling into his face and that ridiculous baseball hat on his head. Jiyong allowed himself to drink in the sight of Henry clothed in his well worn jeans and plaid shirt, scuffed sneakers just as dirty as Jiyong’s boots and a black backpack hug loosely on one shoulder. His eyes then traced Henry’s soft open face, delighted in the way the leaves casted their shadows across the pale skin like the patterns on his sister’s summer frock.
“Well, you got me here.” Jiyong mockingly spread his arms with a grimace. “What do you want?”
“To show you..” Henry slung his backpack forward, unzipped it and shoved the black bag in Jiyong’s face. “This.”
The blond slid off his shades and peered into the bag, his eyes raked across the knick knacks and a container that looked like a decent sized cookie tin. Jiyong’s eyebrows rose. “Want to explain this to me, kid?”
Henry rolled his eyes and stalked pass Jiyong before sitting in the middle of the small clearing, the contents of the backpack tumbled all over the patch of grass as he shook the black carrier. With a long suffering sigh, Jiyong took it as his cue to sit and gingerly faced Henry who seemed to be rummaging through a pile of papers and cards jumbled together in the slightly rusty cookie tin. Frowning, Jiyong reached out and picked out an old yellowed postcard of the Coliseum from the silver shallow depth of the tin.
He froze.
“Henry...Henry, is this what I think it is?”
Still staring at the postcard, Jiyong didn’t notice as Henry pulled another one out of the pile, scrutinized it with a critical eye and pressed it into Jiyong’s trembling hand. “Yes, it is. It’s exactly what you think.”
Jiyong gulped as he read his father’s handwriting, penned decades ago back when he was a young man back packing around the world with his friends. The postcards were from all over the place; from the Maldives to Bali, from Paris to Dublin, and from Osaka to somewhere in China.
Carefully placing the postcards in a neat pile, he shuffled the heap of objects and fished out a grainy stained picture of his father in his early teens; eyes squinted in half moons and looking dapper in his dark school uniform. More followed the first picture and Jiyong shuffled through various captured memories of his father’s youth, utterly caught in the nostalgia.
“Look at these.”
Henry passed him a palm full of tiny folded paper cranes, yellowed from age and bent from being cramped in a small space. Jiyong took one an examined it closely, almost choking when he saw his name written on the wings.
“They’re all the same, hyung.” Henry whispered. “They have your name on the wings. I think-“ Henry hesitated, his hand rubbing soothingly on Jiyong’s arm. “I think he was praying for you. See, here?” He pointed to the almost faded writing on one of the paper cranes. “He’s praying that you’d be happy, wherever you are.”
Jiyong’s eyes burned and his throat clogged. The cranes trembled in his hands as his body shook and folded in on itself. His shoulders felt heavy, far too heavy and his heart felt weary enough to stop. The pressure in his chest pushed against his ribs like a monster trying to claw out and his vision blurred. Soft noises escaped through his lips and he let the paper cranes tumble back down onto the green grass.
Warmth engulfed him as Henry drew him into a hug; a soft hand pressing his face into the younger’s shoulder. The hand slid down to cradle his neck, fingers working slowly to rub soothingly against the heated skin. The arm across his shoulders squeezed him against the slighter body as another tremble wrecked through his entire body, his own hands tremored despite having a fistful of the plaid shirt.
--
The wind blew all around as the world moved in colors, the green of the trees and the brown of the fallen leaves danced with the breeze in a pretty waltz as they teased Jiyong’s hair, framing his small face and caressing his skin. His eyes are closed and his face upturned to catch the gentle beams of the sun, his lips parted and his cheeks a tender shade of pink.
He wiggled his toes, feeling the water between them as it flowed slowly between the little digits, little splashes absorbed by his rolled up slacks. The tiny pebbles at the bottom of the stream gave him a pleasant pressure as he walked a little further in, submerging his feet ankle deep in the cold waters. He inhaled the sweet scents around him and allowed the memories to finally peacefully overwhelm him; the memories of his father smiling loving caring teaching tending guiding praying adoring him all his life.
A soft splashing sound of someone walking through the water rippled through the memories like a drop of water in a still pond, a calloused hand wrapped itself securely around his own as the heat of another seeped through his loose white shirt. With his eyes still closed, Jiyong tilted his head to the side and buried his nose into soft hair, inhaling the smell of peaches and old music sheets. He murmured the boy’s name and nuzzled deeper into the nest of hair, his body warm from the sun and his toes pleasantly cool from the stream.
“Ready, hyung?”
Jiyong smiled against the tresses and guided his lips down, down, grazing the boy’s temple and tracing the contours of the soft cheeks, slid lower still to pepper kisses on the perfect jawline and finally settled on the corner of those full lips.
“As ready as I’ll ever be.”
He opened his eyes slowly, lazily gazing back at pretty brown eyes that glinted under the light of the sun. A basket is pushed into his hands and he let his eyes fall onto the multicolored paper cranes, freshly folded the night before under the light of the moon as they camped out by the canal, legs stretched out on the green grass and wildflowers, a blanket shared between the two of them.
Henry nodded encouragingly at him and his smile widened just a little bit as he picked up a pink crane and carefully placed it on the water surface, gliding away with the current the moment Jiyong’s fingers released its wing. He picked a yellow one from the basket and repeated the motion; his eyes silently took in his father’s name on the paper wing. Soon, a rainbow of paper cranes glided down the stream, fascinating the ducklings as they swam behind their mothers and delighting little children as they played on the shore.
Basket empty, Jiyong pulled the last paper crane from his pocket slightly crumpled but pretty with its sapphire blue wings and little gold swirls decorating its body. He dropped the paper crane into Henry’s cupped hands and grinned as the boy tentatively traced the names on the wings in neat curvy handwriting. Jiyong’s grin stretched into a toothy smile when Henry bit his lips as his fingers made its way to the body of paper crane where Jiyong had penned his wish.
“You should put it in the water, Henry-yah.”
The violinist jerked his head, his body angled to lean slightly against Jiyong as he gingerly dropped the crane on the water surface. His face painfully bared as he watched the blue little origami floated away from them, taking the wish away to be granted.
“Feel better?”
“Yeah,” Jiyong sighed, his lips curved in a smile and his arms wrapped around Henry’s waist as they both swayed slightly, their slacks steadily soaking up the water. “I feel better-“
A kiss.
“So much better.”
--
“Appa, what are you doing?” Jiyong stood on tiptoes as his nose touched the edge of his father’s desk, his eyes wide at the array of colored papers and pens on the mahogany surface.
“I’m folding paper cranes, Jiyongie.” His father smiled, wrinkled face softened as he paused to ruffle his son’s hair. “See this?” he picked one up, lightly scratching the tip of its beak against Jiyong’s like an Eskimo kiss.
“But why?”
“Because I’m making a wish.” The older man picked up a sharpie and carefully wrote a short sentence on the body of the crane. “Like this.”
“But,” Jiyong squinted. “It has my name on it. Appa, why does it have my name on it?”
His father laughed, a rich low sound that echoed in the small sunlit study. “Because it’s for you, Jiyongie.” The man pulled his son onto his lap, his eyes filled with love as he showed the crane to the young boy. “It says ‘give him happiness’.”
“Oh.”
“Would you like me to teach you, Jiyongie?”
---
‘give him peace’
&
‘give us forever <3’
----
" It was in the darkest of my days
When you took my sorrow and you took my pain
And buried them away, you buried them away "
--
A/N: And that, is that. I apologize for the utter fail that it is. Its just that -personally- I think that Day Dreamers Dream of Jane Austen is really really hard to top. I mean, there's a reason why I think that fic is my baby. Ack. Sorry if this one let you down, guys. Now to distract you lot, HOW ABOUT I TRY MESSING UP EVERYONE'S OTP BY COUGHING UP A YUNHO/MIMI FIC, EH?! DON'T LIE AND SAY THAT SMTOWN JAPAN DIDN'T GIVE YOU IDEAAAAAAAAAS :D (gawd, I probably shouldn't say stupid things like that.)
Again, I grovel at your feet for your forgiveness my lovely Priya TT__TT The Sweethome Alabama didn't happen. I tried, I swear I really did. But then I heard Corrine Bailey Ray's Like A Star when I was driving today and -awww maaaan- you know how I get when songs get into my head D: -sobs- all my creys, bb. All my creys.
Ps: i this works perfectly, then this would be my second attempt to post this thing properly. LJ, stop messing with me, PLEASE.