after your life; live
after your life; live
yunho/changmin
r
the world is the same after you kill yourself. everything's just a little bit worse.
warning: happy, happy fic but is themed around suicide.
---
“Hung himself.”
“Car accident.”
“No, look at his neck! Look at that creepy angle! Has to be a hanging.”
“And I’m telling you, car accident.”
Jaejoong kicks him extra hard in the shin. “There’s no way that’s a car accident.”
“How did you live all the way to twenty-three with that pea-brain of yours? Car accident!”
“Shim Changmin!”
“Ooooh, out comes the last name.”
“I’m going to. To. To!”
Changmin raises an unamused eyebrow. “What, kill me? Kill me until I’m dead twice?”
“Fine! I’ll...bet you that fine piece of ass that just walked in here that that guy hung himself.”
Now, Changmin’s not usually one to take up Jaejoong’s bets. But as he swivels around in the perpetually squeaky stool he’s occupying and lays his eyes on a real, genuine smile for the first time since he can remember, something inside him just...stops.
Or starts, depending on how you look at it.
---
“Hi,” Yunho says, uncertain about so many things he doesn’t even know where to start. The pretty blond man in front of him is kind of creeping him out with that tunnel-vision stare but he’s not going to say no to a new friend. God knows he needs a friend right now.
“So how’d you do it?” the man suddenly bursts out.
“...What?” Yunho asks.
“Jaejoong!” Another man cuts in, and Yunho feels time stop. And his body do a hot bloodrush that makes his head feel light. “I told you,” this tall, sophisticated, gorgeous creature continues to say, “car accident. Now you owe me this.” And waves Yunho up and down.
“So,” Jaejoong drawls after an uncomfortable and unnecessarily long staring contest with Mr. Gorgeous, “how do you feel about men?”
---
About a week ago, Yunho remembers waking up in the middle of the road in this town. The last thing he remembers is pushing his friend’s girlfriend out of the way of an oncoming car and that’s honestly all he recalls. He sat in spot in the middle of the road until dark fell all around him and a passing car almost ran into his face. Again.
It was another day and a half after that he realized there was a huge blue-purple bruise on the right side of his body, starting at the knee and sprawling up all the way up to his ribcage like ink in water. It doesn’t hurt to touch but it certainly looks painful to touch. He just doesn’t take his shirt off anymore.
A nice man around his age had found him that same day and took him in, no questions asked. Everything’s just a little worse, here, the man had said.
The shower is always just a little too cold.
The store will always be out of your favourite kind of cheese.
The day is always too hot to be comfortable in just a t-shirt and the night will always be too cold to be comfortable in just a sweater.
Yunho figures, if this is what happens after you die, then there really isn’t much to look forward to for the people still alive.
And it was on the last day he stayed in the nice man’s house that he found out with a jolt: this is where you go when you kill yourself. Punishment, the man had said. Because you’re not forgiven for taking your own life. So when you try to escape, you escape to a world that is exactly the same.
But everything’s just a little worse, here.
---
“So,” Jaejoong says, after the three of them have settled comfortably awkward at the bar, “welcome to my bar.”
“Thanks,” Yunho says.
“You can’t smile here,” Changmin states. It’s like he knows it’s for a fact, and yet, he says it while staring at the smile on Yunho’s lips, the certainty in his voice obviously strained.
“How come? Well...nothing to smile about, I guess...if you kill yourself.”
“No, we just...” Jaejoong says, looking at Changmin and then at Yunho again, “we just can’t anymore. We can’t.”
Just that much worse, here.
---
Yunho moves in with Jaejoong and Changmin. They fight for the mattress like they’ve been friends for lifetimes but where they are now, what’s the point in being unfriendly? Everyone’s in the same boat. In the end, Changmin somehow uses his words and mindfucks Jaejoong into thinking he wants to sleep on the couch and extends a non-committal, nonchalant invitation to Yunho to sleep on the same bed. Yunho remembers blushing like a virgin and accepting and not getting any sleep, lying ramrod straight on his side, counting Changmin’s breaths and the small ducks of Jaejoong’s bedroom wallpaper.
He helps out at the bar, though for about a month-which Changmin tells him is a stupidly long amount of time to get adjusted-he doesn’t do much except get in the way. The women love him, though, and he gets tipped well. Much better than Changmin, Jaejoong tells him. But that’s just because Changmin’s an unsociable ogre who wouldn’t know how to be a people person if someone brained him with the knowledge.
Yunho thinks that Changmin is plenty nice; just very, very quiet and impossible to figure out. And hard to talk to. Mainly because he’s so very, very quiet and impossible to figure out.
Okay, so Jaejoong could be a little right.
It just doesn’t make him like Changmin any less, that’s all.
---
A little over half a year passes in Jaejoong’s cozy house. Yunho doesn’t keep track of time very well; the days brighten and darken but he hasn’t seen the Sun or the Moon or any stars since he woke up here so he doesn’t even know if the days are actually days. Jaejoong always marks them off on his calendar regardless.
“So how’d you do it?” Changmin asks him one night, as they’re getting ready for bed. Somehow, and this is beyond Yunho’s comprehension, Jaejoong has determined that he likes the couch more than the bed and has left the two of them alone about it.
“Do what?” Yunho asks. He slides under the sheets, wiggling his toes to warm them up. The spring that will always poke into his back settles itself on the small of his back.
“Kill yourself.”
“Oh. Car accident.”
“Not much of an accident if you meant it.”
“No, I pushed my friend’s girlfriend out of the way. I guess I knew it was coming but...well,” Yunho laughs, only with a little humor, “I guess I didn’t think I would actually...die.”
“Oh,” Changmin says, sliding into bed as well, maintaining a careful distance from the older man. “Is that really what happened?”
“Yeah.”
He doesn’t get a reply for a long time and then Changmin turns the light off. They stare at the ceiling for a while, in silence except for the sound of Jaejoong dropping things out in the living room, listening to each other breathe. It doesn’t occur to him to ask Changmin how he offed himself.
Yunho wakes up first the next morning, nose buried in Changmin’s hair, arm around the other’s waist, front pressed to back like they’re meant to fit that way.
---
“We’re going on a roadtrip,” Jaejoong announces out of the blue at the bar, in the middle of guessing how an extremely large man who wouldn’t stop burping managed to get himself here.
“Where to?” Yunho asks.
“To see a good friend of mine.”
---
The car radio will always be affected by just enough static to annoy but not enough for them to want to drive in silence.
“Jaejoong,” Changmin says offhandedly, looking out the window. Yunho thinks Changmin is gorgeous with his hair ruffling in the wind. “You should sing.”
Jaejoong turns the radio off and opens his mouth, and Changmin almost manages a smile when he looks in the rearview mirror and sees Yunho gaping.
“I used to sing,” the eldest explains with a shrug.
“So how come you’re here now?”
“Hated my life,” Jaejoong answers. Yunho sees something dark in the other man’s eyes and chooses not to press.
---
They drive for what seems like forever. Sometimes they stop in little shops and rest stations along the way, sometimes they just sleep in the car. Yunho thinks it’s pretty incredible that everything can still function the same way and the people are so unquestioningly nice here. Sometimes he wonders just which world is worse.
Everything looks like Las Vegas; the desert part of it. A paved road that leads into the distance with some desert shrubbery is the most exciting view they have.
A week into it, Yunho comes back to the car after dark to find Changmin curled up asleep in the backseat, Jaejoong sitting on the ground outside, leaning against the car door, smoking a cigarette.
“Where did you get those?” Yunho asks, sitting next to the older man.
“Killed myself with them in my back pocket. They never run out.”
Makes as much sense as anything else. “Can I have one?”
“They’re stale.”
“So why don’t you get a new pack?”
“All of them are stale.”
And that makes more sense than anything else.
“You should quit, then,” Yunho sighs, “it’s really bad for your health.”
“You sound like Changmin,” Jaejoong snorts. “We’re all dead, remember?”
“Can’t see how it would hurt.”
“Changmin likes you,” Jaejoong says, suddenly. “A lot. I’m not going to like it when you leave, but probably not as much as him.”
“He does?” Wow, those words came out easy despite feeling like something’s trying to choke him in his chest. “How do you know?”
“I can tell.”
“That really isn’t much to go on.”
Jaejoong heaves a sigh and taps ash off the end of his cigarette, tipping his head against the car door. “It’s the way he looks at you when he thinks nobody’s looking. Like he’s hurt somewhere and he can’t figure it out for himself. It’s hard to watch.”
“Why are you telling me this?” Yunho asks immediately, head down, fingers drawing strange shapes into the sand. “You said I’m going to leave, right? If I’m leaving, why did you tell me?”
He doesn’t get an answer for that one. “He was alone his entire life, Yunho-yah. And now I’m all that he has and he won’t even let me in all the way because he’s so afraid that I’ll leave him too. He’s always alone.” With a heavy sigh, Jaejoong pushes himself to his feet, brushing dirt off his pants. “Why do you think he’s here?”
---
Jaejoong’s words never leave him after that. Time suddenly seems to go slower when he’s with Changmin. He picks up on the smallest things he’s never noticed before. The way Changmin doesn’t hold his gaze for more than two seconds. Making the effort to not let their hands brush more than necessary. Avoiding all physical contact, really, unless he has to. The way he always lets Yunho go first.
And the more he thinks about it, as they drive to a destination on a straight road with no turns in sight, packed in a hot car with nothing but their thoughts, the more he thinks he can’t leave.
Not when he worries how Jaejoong will manage to keep Changmin happy. Will Changmin get to eat his favourites? Will Jaejoong go with him on midnight trips to the convenience store down the street to get plain cheesecake without the crumble? Will Jaejoong hold onto him in his sleep when he has another one of his terrible nightmares? Will Jaejoong find answers and amusement and comfort and understanding in the silence Changmin always keeps? Will Jaejoong see the things Changmin never says in his eyes? Will Jaejoong make him blush as he steps out of the shower-
Oh, he thinks, suddenly. Damn.
Damn, this could be like.
Damn, this could be love.
Changmin drops Jaejoong’s lighter under the front seat of the car and Jaejoong one-touches him for it. Lighters are hard to come by in this world. Yunho hears the distinct sound of the black hole of Things Forever Lost suck the lighter in and wonders, if he rides shotgun later, whether or not he can manage to drop his heart in there too.
---
He’s never really noticed just how awkward it is with only the two of them. The day Yunho finally musters up enough courage to say something, they get to where they’re going.
“This is it,” Jaejoong sighs in satisfaction, sweeping his arm out at the big, white building surrounded by nothing else by the side of the road.
When they walk in, they hear a loud exclamation and then a blur of blond as a shorter man nearly jumps on top of Jaejoong, startling Changmin back a few steps.
“Jaejoong-hyung!” the man nearly shouts, smile fit to split his face open. “It’s been forever since you’ve come here! Did you find another one?” He looks at Changmin. “Him?” Then at Yunho. “Him? Which one?”
“It’s nice to see you too, Junsu-yah,” Jaejoong says, pulling Yunho forward. “It’s him.”
Yunho waves with a smile. “Smiling, huhn?” Junsu notes, then laughs, a strange eukyangkyang that echoes off of pristine white walls. “It’s you, alright. Wait here.”
A few minutes later, Junsu comes back with someone following him.
“What exactly are we-” Yunho starts.
“PARK YOOCHUN!” Jaejoong shouts.
“KIM JAEJOONG!” the man presumably named Yoochun shouts back, and nearly sprints over to Jaejoong, laughing like a fool as they collide in a hug. “You suck! You said you’d call more often!”
“My calls never go through to you!” Jaejoong pouts. “I try and I try and I rack up these ridiculous long-distance charges.”
“Calling me isn’t cheap.”
“Then the least you could do is pick up!”
“I don’t get your calls!”
“See if I call you anymore!”
“I didn’t follow you in life and then in death so you could be the worst soulmate in the history of ever!”
“You always make that argument!” Jaejoong wails, hitting him playfully in the chest. “It’s not fair! I want to use that sometime!”
“So call me more often,” Yoochun laughs. He hugs Jaejoong again before pulling away to look at Yunho. “So, you must be here because we’ve made a mistake?”
“What?” Yunho asks, world still whirling from what’s been packed into the last five minutes.
“You. You’re smiling. And Jaejoong only brings back the ones we messed up with.”
“Is that what you really do?” Changmin asks, looking at Jaejoong.
“What...am I doing here?”
Yoochun gives Yunho a strange look after exchanging glances with Junsu. “Well,” he says slowly, “you didn’t mean to kill yourself, right? We’re here to send you back.”
---
In the middle of being whisked away to be interrogated by Yoochun and filling out an application for a passport, Yunho almost forgets about Changmin. It isn’t until he’s almost done filling out the form that he suddenly slams the pen down on the table and startles Yoochun so bad the other man almost falls out of his chair.
“Is something wrong?” Yoochun asks, fluttering his hand at his heart.
“This question.”
Yoochun leans over the table. “Do you want to go back,” he reads upside-down. “That’s a rather straight-forward question.” He gives Yunho’s expression a long look. “Do you want to go back, Yunho-sshi?” he asks.
“Of course!” Yunho says. He runs fingers through his hair in frustration. “Of course I do. I have so many friends to go back to and my life wasn’t bad at all and...”
“Do you have family?”
“No,” Yunho sighs, “they died when I was still a kid. But...there’s still so much...my friends...school...”
“Then just finish it,” Yoochun says softly. “If you want to go back, we’re glad to send you.”
Of course he wants to go back. There’s so much-
He thinks of Jaejoong singing in the kitchen on his days off while making lunch. The people he’s come to know working in the bar. The black hole under the passenger seat he drops Jaejoong’s stuff in just for a reaction.
The way Changmin’s eyelashes curl against his cheeks as he sleeps, his whole body tucked away unknowingly in Yunho’s arms.
“Is it okay if I go back tomorrow?” Yunho asks after a deep breath, signing his name at the bottom of the form. “Is there a place we can all stay tonight so I can say my goodbyes?”
“You’re the first one to have ever asked for that,” Yoochun answers, smiling gently. “I’m kind of surprised. But yeah, there is. I’ll take you guys.”
On his way out of the room, Yoochun stops him, making a humming noise and then resting his hand on Yunho’s shoulder. “Listen...you should just tell him.”
“Tell him what?” Yunho asks miserably.
“That you love him.”
“It’s...I...”
“Yeah, hyung,” Yoochun says with a smile, “it really is that easy.”
---
That night, Yunho can’t stop pacing in his room. He keeps looking at the wall and around the nicely furnished room for something he can’t find and almost tears his hair out in frustration. What now? He asked for time to say goodbye and now he’s got it and here he is, doing nothing.
A knock at the door startles him a couple of inches in the air. Jaejoong comes barging in without waiting for an answer.
“So,” he says.
“So?” Yunho asks.
“You’re not going to do anything?”
It’s suddenly too hard to maintain eye contact. “Like you said, I’m going to leave.”
“Fine,” Jaejoong answers immediately, turning on his heel, “guess you aren’t worth it after all.”
“Wait!” Yunho calls as Jaejoong starts walking out. “Just...wait. Wouldn’t it be worse if I said anything? Did anything? I mean what is he going to do afte-”
“Jung Yunho,” Jaejoong sighs, turning around, eyes tired, eyebrows knit together. “When will it ever, ever be worse, in life, in death, in anywhere, to know that you’re loved by someone?”
Yunho’s breath catches at the simple words and wonders dimly if Jaejoong’s lost someone before, if it has anything to do with Yoochun, if Junsu’s related to it. And then, he can’t bring himself to care. All he knows is his feet carrying him past the older man and down the hall to Changmin’s room and going in without a warning or invitation.
He never gets to see the smile on Jaejoong’s face as he passes.
---
It’s something he never would have done in life.
Changmin’s unresponsive against him for as long as he is surprised and then he’s kissing Yunho back like he hasn’t had human contact in years, and maybe, he really hasn’t. He clutches at Yunho’s shirt and runs fingers through his hair and Yunho wonders this time, if he willingly dies from feeling like this, what kind of a world he would wake up in.
“Hyung,” Changmin pants as they fall into bed, Yunho’s fingers brushing his cheek in simple adoration. But that’s all he says, mouth opening and closing with no sound coming out.
“You don’t have to say anything,” Yunho says, and kisses him again.
He doesn’t remember much of anything from that night and yet he remembers every single detail. They sear into his body the way Changmin’s touch does. He’s never been undone like this, felt like this, needed like this. He’s never felt so happy that he can’t help but feel sad.
Changmin stutters out a nervous confession of never having done this before and Yunho almost melts even though he’s never been like this with another man either. It’s ridiculous and awkward but somewhere along the way he laughs and has to blink away the tears in his eyes, finding peace and stability in Changmin’s kisses instead.
And when they’re finally together, Yunho can’t ever seem to pull in enough air into his lungs. He doesn’t stop kissing Changmin even when the need to breathe becomes urgent. All the muted sighs, muffled moans, soft whimpers pressed into his neck, his cheeks, his lips, all of it; he prints them into his heart. Their fingers lace atop the bedsheets. The entire world spins. He knows nothing matters except this man arching beneath him, fingernails digging into his back, lips crushed desperately to his own.
Yunho’s positive there’s no such thing as heaven because there can’t be anything better than having Changmin here like this.
“Yunho,” Changmin whispers an eternity after, when brightness starts filtering in through the small window in the wall.
“Yeah?” He holds Changmin that much tighter and closes his eyes. But Changmin doesn’t say anything else. “Just ask me to stay, Changmin-ah,” he nearly begs, “please, just ask.”
He feels a minute but still there shake of Changmin’s head. And even though he was expecting it, it still feels like he’s falling apart inside. He hates Changmin for being so unselfish. He hates Changmin for wanting more for Yunho than himself. He hates Changmin, so much, because he’s never loved anyone with such force that it’s all he can do to just clutch the younger man in a choking embrace and keep the tears in his eyes from spilling over.
---
It’s all kinds of ridiculous. Yunho stands in a one-man line consisting of himself while another guy in white looks over his passport.
A passport to the living. Now that’s a novel idea.
“Alright sir,” he hears, the words final and cutting into his unfocused thoughts. “Please proceed ahead. Enjoy your life.”
He walks forward with a nod and turns back for a split second to wave. He catches sight of Jaejoong and Changmin’s feet in his line of vision but nothing else; he doesn’t trust himself to see more.
As he rounds the corner, Yunho slows and turns his head, just enough to see because he can’t fight the urge. Changmin’s already walking away, shoulders set and head down.
And then an arm comes up and wipes something away and Yunho squeezes his eyes shut and runs, as fast as his feet will carry him, away from Changmin’s tears, away from this world, away from these things he was never supposed to touch or know in the first place.
He leaves his heart behind so he’ll never forget them.
---
“Drowning.”
“Pills.”
“Drowning. Look at how puffed up he is.”
“Pills will bloat you too.”
“Changmin, you do this just to be difficult.”
“Don’t get angry just because I’m smarter.”
“You!” Jaejoong starts, smacking Changmin in the face with the cloth he was using to dry glasses. “You always-”
“He drowned, I asked,” a voice cuts in on their conversation.
Changmin turns his head and suddenly, the world falls out under his feet again. There’s nothing but stunned, uncomfortable silence as he stares for the longest time until Jaejoong interrupts their staring contest, clearing his throat with obvious exasperation.
“So, Yunho-yah, back so soon?”
“It hurt being on life support so I yanked it out myself,” Yunho says, shrugging. He never once takes his eyes off of Changmin. “Figured a day with that kind of pain was more than enough. Thought my chest was trying to rip itself open.”
“That was your heart, dear,” Jaejoong says, and runs away before Changmin can throw something in his face.
“So...” Yunho says after another uncomfortable silence, walking right into Changmin’s personal space, placing a finger under the other’s chin and tilting his face up. “There’s this thing I’ve been meaning to tell you...”
He almost panics when Changmin’s eyes fill with tears.
“Yunho,” Changmin chokes out around the lump in his throat. He needs this man, needs him to be here. He can’t be without Yunho anymore. He doesn’t know how to be.
Yunho pulls him into a tight hug and breathes in Changmin’s scent as deeply as he can. Strokes his hair. Kisses his cheek, his lips. Brushes a thumb across the angry, thick scars running jagged on Changmin’s wrists, and kisses those too.
“They don’t love you like I love you,” Changmin whispers, closing his eyes as a tear rolls down his cheek. “So don’t leave me anymore.”
“Love you too much to even think it,” Yunho whispers back, sure and immediate. There isn’t any hesitation as he reaches forward and pulls Changmin into a deep kiss, arms circling his waist and keeping him there. They pull away from each other just enough to breathe and Yunho smiles at him, nothing but love and affection.
Changmin smiles back.
Everything’s just a little worse, here. The toothpaste will always be uncapped. There is always a line at the checkout no matter what time of day it is. Cellphones are always on the last bar no matter how much they’re charged.
Yunho kisses Changmin full on the lips. He's never been better.
And they finally start to live.
---
inspired by Wristcutters: A Love Story. go watch it. :) and love the homin! ♥
yunho/changmin
r
the world is the same after you kill yourself. everything's just a little bit worse.
warning: happy, happy fic but is themed around suicide.
---
“Hung himself.”
“Car accident.”
“No, look at his neck! Look at that creepy angle! Has to be a hanging.”
“And I’m telling you, car accident.”
Jaejoong kicks him extra hard in the shin. “There’s no way that’s a car accident.”
“How did you live all the way to twenty-three with that pea-brain of yours? Car accident!”
“Shim Changmin!”
“Ooooh, out comes the last name.”
“I’m going to. To. To!”
Changmin raises an unamused eyebrow. “What, kill me? Kill me until I’m dead twice?”
“Fine! I’ll...bet you that fine piece of ass that just walked in here that that guy hung himself.”
Now, Changmin’s not usually one to take up Jaejoong’s bets. But as he swivels around in the perpetually squeaky stool he’s occupying and lays his eyes on a real, genuine smile for the first time since he can remember, something inside him just...stops.
Or starts, depending on how you look at it.
---
“Hi,” Yunho says, uncertain about so many things he doesn’t even know where to start. The pretty blond man in front of him is kind of creeping him out with that tunnel-vision stare but he’s not going to say no to a new friend. God knows he needs a friend right now.
“So how’d you do it?” the man suddenly bursts out.
“...What?” Yunho asks.
“Jaejoong!” Another man cuts in, and Yunho feels time stop. And his body do a hot bloodrush that makes his head feel light. “I told you,” this tall, sophisticated, gorgeous creature continues to say, “car accident. Now you owe me this.” And waves Yunho up and down.
“So,” Jaejoong drawls after an uncomfortable and unnecessarily long staring contest with Mr. Gorgeous, “how do you feel about men?”
---
About a week ago, Yunho remembers waking up in the middle of the road in this town. The last thing he remembers is pushing his friend’s girlfriend out of the way of an oncoming car and that’s honestly all he recalls. He sat in spot in the middle of the road until dark fell all around him and a passing car almost ran into his face. Again.
It was another day and a half after that he realized there was a huge blue-purple bruise on the right side of his body, starting at the knee and sprawling up all the way up to his ribcage like ink in water. It doesn’t hurt to touch but it certainly looks painful to touch. He just doesn’t take his shirt off anymore.
A nice man around his age had found him that same day and took him in, no questions asked. Everything’s just a little worse, here, the man had said.
The shower is always just a little too cold.
The store will always be out of your favourite kind of cheese.
The day is always too hot to be comfortable in just a t-shirt and the night will always be too cold to be comfortable in just a sweater.
Yunho figures, if this is what happens after you die, then there really isn’t much to look forward to for the people still alive.
And it was on the last day he stayed in the nice man’s house that he found out with a jolt: this is where you go when you kill yourself. Punishment, the man had said. Because you’re not forgiven for taking your own life. So when you try to escape, you escape to a world that is exactly the same.
But everything’s just a little worse, here.
---
“So,” Jaejoong says, after the three of them have settled comfortably awkward at the bar, “welcome to my bar.”
“Thanks,” Yunho says.
“You can’t smile here,” Changmin states. It’s like he knows it’s for a fact, and yet, he says it while staring at the smile on Yunho’s lips, the certainty in his voice obviously strained.
“How come? Well...nothing to smile about, I guess...if you kill yourself.”
“No, we just...” Jaejoong says, looking at Changmin and then at Yunho again, “we just can’t anymore. We can’t.”
Just that much worse, here.
---
Yunho moves in with Jaejoong and Changmin. They fight for the mattress like they’ve been friends for lifetimes but where they are now, what’s the point in being unfriendly? Everyone’s in the same boat. In the end, Changmin somehow uses his words and mindfucks Jaejoong into thinking he wants to sleep on the couch and extends a non-committal, nonchalant invitation to Yunho to sleep on the same bed. Yunho remembers blushing like a virgin and accepting and not getting any sleep, lying ramrod straight on his side, counting Changmin’s breaths and the small ducks of Jaejoong’s bedroom wallpaper.
He helps out at the bar, though for about a month-which Changmin tells him is a stupidly long amount of time to get adjusted-he doesn’t do much except get in the way. The women love him, though, and he gets tipped well. Much better than Changmin, Jaejoong tells him. But that’s just because Changmin’s an unsociable ogre who wouldn’t know how to be a people person if someone brained him with the knowledge.
Yunho thinks that Changmin is plenty nice; just very, very quiet and impossible to figure out. And hard to talk to. Mainly because he’s so very, very quiet and impossible to figure out.
Okay, so Jaejoong could be a little right.
It just doesn’t make him like Changmin any less, that’s all.
---
A little over half a year passes in Jaejoong’s cozy house. Yunho doesn’t keep track of time very well; the days brighten and darken but he hasn’t seen the Sun or the Moon or any stars since he woke up here so he doesn’t even know if the days are actually days. Jaejoong always marks them off on his calendar regardless.
“So how’d you do it?” Changmin asks him one night, as they’re getting ready for bed. Somehow, and this is beyond Yunho’s comprehension, Jaejoong has determined that he likes the couch more than the bed and has left the two of them alone about it.
“Do what?” Yunho asks. He slides under the sheets, wiggling his toes to warm them up. The spring that will always poke into his back settles itself on the small of his back.
“Kill yourself.”
“Oh. Car accident.”
“Not much of an accident if you meant it.”
“No, I pushed my friend’s girlfriend out of the way. I guess I knew it was coming but...well,” Yunho laughs, only with a little humor, “I guess I didn’t think I would actually...die.”
“Oh,” Changmin says, sliding into bed as well, maintaining a careful distance from the older man. “Is that really what happened?”
“Yeah.”
He doesn’t get a reply for a long time and then Changmin turns the light off. They stare at the ceiling for a while, in silence except for the sound of Jaejoong dropping things out in the living room, listening to each other breathe. It doesn’t occur to him to ask Changmin how he offed himself.
Yunho wakes up first the next morning, nose buried in Changmin’s hair, arm around the other’s waist, front pressed to back like they’re meant to fit that way.
---
“We’re going on a roadtrip,” Jaejoong announces out of the blue at the bar, in the middle of guessing how an extremely large man who wouldn’t stop burping managed to get himself here.
“Where to?” Yunho asks.
“To see a good friend of mine.”
---
The car radio will always be affected by just enough static to annoy but not enough for them to want to drive in silence.
“Jaejoong,” Changmin says offhandedly, looking out the window. Yunho thinks Changmin is gorgeous with his hair ruffling in the wind. “You should sing.”
Jaejoong turns the radio off and opens his mouth, and Changmin almost manages a smile when he looks in the rearview mirror and sees Yunho gaping.
“I used to sing,” the eldest explains with a shrug.
“So how come you’re here now?”
“Hated my life,” Jaejoong answers. Yunho sees something dark in the other man’s eyes and chooses not to press.
---
They drive for what seems like forever. Sometimes they stop in little shops and rest stations along the way, sometimes they just sleep in the car. Yunho thinks it’s pretty incredible that everything can still function the same way and the people are so unquestioningly nice here. Sometimes he wonders just which world is worse.
Everything looks like Las Vegas; the desert part of it. A paved road that leads into the distance with some desert shrubbery is the most exciting view they have.
A week into it, Yunho comes back to the car after dark to find Changmin curled up asleep in the backseat, Jaejoong sitting on the ground outside, leaning against the car door, smoking a cigarette.
“Where did you get those?” Yunho asks, sitting next to the older man.
“Killed myself with them in my back pocket. They never run out.”
Makes as much sense as anything else. “Can I have one?”
“They’re stale.”
“So why don’t you get a new pack?”
“All of them are stale.”
And that makes more sense than anything else.
“You should quit, then,” Yunho sighs, “it’s really bad for your health.”
“You sound like Changmin,” Jaejoong snorts. “We’re all dead, remember?”
“Can’t see how it would hurt.”
“Changmin likes you,” Jaejoong says, suddenly. “A lot. I’m not going to like it when you leave, but probably not as much as him.”
“He does?” Wow, those words came out easy despite feeling like something’s trying to choke him in his chest. “How do you know?”
“I can tell.”
“That really isn’t much to go on.”
Jaejoong heaves a sigh and taps ash off the end of his cigarette, tipping his head against the car door. “It’s the way he looks at you when he thinks nobody’s looking. Like he’s hurt somewhere and he can’t figure it out for himself. It’s hard to watch.”
“Why are you telling me this?” Yunho asks immediately, head down, fingers drawing strange shapes into the sand. “You said I’m going to leave, right? If I’m leaving, why did you tell me?”
He doesn’t get an answer for that one. “He was alone his entire life, Yunho-yah. And now I’m all that he has and he won’t even let me in all the way because he’s so afraid that I’ll leave him too. He’s always alone.” With a heavy sigh, Jaejoong pushes himself to his feet, brushing dirt off his pants. “Why do you think he’s here?”
---
Jaejoong’s words never leave him after that. Time suddenly seems to go slower when he’s with Changmin. He picks up on the smallest things he’s never noticed before. The way Changmin doesn’t hold his gaze for more than two seconds. Making the effort to not let their hands brush more than necessary. Avoiding all physical contact, really, unless he has to. The way he always lets Yunho go first.
And the more he thinks about it, as they drive to a destination on a straight road with no turns in sight, packed in a hot car with nothing but their thoughts, the more he thinks he can’t leave.
Not when he worries how Jaejoong will manage to keep Changmin happy. Will Changmin get to eat his favourites? Will Jaejoong go with him on midnight trips to the convenience store down the street to get plain cheesecake without the crumble? Will Jaejoong hold onto him in his sleep when he has another one of his terrible nightmares? Will Jaejoong find answers and amusement and comfort and understanding in the silence Changmin always keeps? Will Jaejoong see the things Changmin never says in his eyes? Will Jaejoong make him blush as he steps out of the shower-
Oh, he thinks, suddenly. Damn.
Damn, this could be like.
Damn, this could be love.
Changmin drops Jaejoong’s lighter under the front seat of the car and Jaejoong one-touches him for it. Lighters are hard to come by in this world. Yunho hears the distinct sound of the black hole of Things Forever Lost suck the lighter in and wonders, if he rides shotgun later, whether or not he can manage to drop his heart in there too.
---
He’s never really noticed just how awkward it is with only the two of them. The day Yunho finally musters up enough courage to say something, they get to where they’re going.
“This is it,” Jaejoong sighs in satisfaction, sweeping his arm out at the big, white building surrounded by nothing else by the side of the road.
When they walk in, they hear a loud exclamation and then a blur of blond as a shorter man nearly jumps on top of Jaejoong, startling Changmin back a few steps.
“Jaejoong-hyung!” the man nearly shouts, smile fit to split his face open. “It’s been forever since you’ve come here! Did you find another one?” He looks at Changmin. “Him?” Then at Yunho. “Him? Which one?”
“It’s nice to see you too, Junsu-yah,” Jaejoong says, pulling Yunho forward. “It’s him.”
Yunho waves with a smile. “Smiling, huhn?” Junsu notes, then laughs, a strange eukyangkyang that echoes off of pristine white walls. “It’s you, alright. Wait here.”
A few minutes later, Junsu comes back with someone following him.
“What exactly are we-” Yunho starts.
“PARK YOOCHUN!” Jaejoong shouts.
“KIM JAEJOONG!” the man presumably named Yoochun shouts back, and nearly sprints over to Jaejoong, laughing like a fool as they collide in a hug. “You suck! You said you’d call more often!”
“My calls never go through to you!” Jaejoong pouts. “I try and I try and I rack up these ridiculous long-distance charges.”
“Calling me isn’t cheap.”
“Then the least you could do is pick up!”
“I don’t get your calls!”
“See if I call you anymore!”
“I didn’t follow you in life and then in death so you could be the worst soulmate in the history of ever!”
“You always make that argument!” Jaejoong wails, hitting him playfully in the chest. “It’s not fair! I want to use that sometime!”
“So call me more often,” Yoochun laughs. He hugs Jaejoong again before pulling away to look at Yunho. “So, you must be here because we’ve made a mistake?”
“What?” Yunho asks, world still whirling from what’s been packed into the last five minutes.
“You. You’re smiling. And Jaejoong only brings back the ones we messed up with.”
“Is that what you really do?” Changmin asks, looking at Jaejoong.
“What...am I doing here?”
Yoochun gives Yunho a strange look after exchanging glances with Junsu. “Well,” he says slowly, “you didn’t mean to kill yourself, right? We’re here to send you back.”
---
In the middle of being whisked away to be interrogated by Yoochun and filling out an application for a passport, Yunho almost forgets about Changmin. It isn’t until he’s almost done filling out the form that he suddenly slams the pen down on the table and startles Yoochun so bad the other man almost falls out of his chair.
“Is something wrong?” Yoochun asks, fluttering his hand at his heart.
“This question.”
Yoochun leans over the table. “Do you want to go back,” he reads upside-down. “That’s a rather straight-forward question.” He gives Yunho’s expression a long look. “Do you want to go back, Yunho-sshi?” he asks.
“Of course!” Yunho says. He runs fingers through his hair in frustration. “Of course I do. I have so many friends to go back to and my life wasn’t bad at all and...”
“Do you have family?”
“No,” Yunho sighs, “they died when I was still a kid. But...there’s still so much...my friends...school...”
“Then just finish it,” Yoochun says softly. “If you want to go back, we’re glad to send you.”
Of course he wants to go back. There’s so much-
He thinks of Jaejoong singing in the kitchen on his days off while making lunch. The people he’s come to know working in the bar. The black hole under the passenger seat he drops Jaejoong’s stuff in just for a reaction.
The way Changmin’s eyelashes curl against his cheeks as he sleeps, his whole body tucked away unknowingly in Yunho’s arms.
“Is it okay if I go back tomorrow?” Yunho asks after a deep breath, signing his name at the bottom of the form. “Is there a place we can all stay tonight so I can say my goodbyes?”
“You’re the first one to have ever asked for that,” Yoochun answers, smiling gently. “I’m kind of surprised. But yeah, there is. I’ll take you guys.”
On his way out of the room, Yoochun stops him, making a humming noise and then resting his hand on Yunho’s shoulder. “Listen...you should just tell him.”
“Tell him what?” Yunho asks miserably.
“That you love him.”
“It’s...I...”
“Yeah, hyung,” Yoochun says with a smile, “it really is that easy.”
---
That night, Yunho can’t stop pacing in his room. He keeps looking at the wall and around the nicely furnished room for something he can’t find and almost tears his hair out in frustration. What now? He asked for time to say goodbye and now he’s got it and here he is, doing nothing.
A knock at the door startles him a couple of inches in the air. Jaejoong comes barging in without waiting for an answer.
“So,” he says.
“So?” Yunho asks.
“You’re not going to do anything?”
It’s suddenly too hard to maintain eye contact. “Like you said, I’m going to leave.”
“Fine,” Jaejoong answers immediately, turning on his heel, “guess you aren’t worth it after all.”
“Wait!” Yunho calls as Jaejoong starts walking out. “Just...wait. Wouldn’t it be worse if I said anything? Did anything? I mean what is he going to do afte-”
“Jung Yunho,” Jaejoong sighs, turning around, eyes tired, eyebrows knit together. “When will it ever, ever be worse, in life, in death, in anywhere, to know that you’re loved by someone?”
Yunho’s breath catches at the simple words and wonders dimly if Jaejoong’s lost someone before, if it has anything to do with Yoochun, if Junsu’s related to it. And then, he can’t bring himself to care. All he knows is his feet carrying him past the older man and down the hall to Changmin’s room and going in without a warning or invitation.
He never gets to see the smile on Jaejoong’s face as he passes.
---
It’s something he never would have done in life.
Changmin’s unresponsive against him for as long as he is surprised and then he’s kissing Yunho back like he hasn’t had human contact in years, and maybe, he really hasn’t. He clutches at Yunho’s shirt and runs fingers through his hair and Yunho wonders this time, if he willingly dies from feeling like this, what kind of a world he would wake up in.
“Hyung,” Changmin pants as they fall into bed, Yunho’s fingers brushing his cheek in simple adoration. But that’s all he says, mouth opening and closing with no sound coming out.
“You don’t have to say anything,” Yunho says, and kisses him again.
He doesn’t remember much of anything from that night and yet he remembers every single detail. They sear into his body the way Changmin’s touch does. He’s never been undone like this, felt like this, needed like this. He’s never felt so happy that he can’t help but feel sad.
Changmin stutters out a nervous confession of never having done this before and Yunho almost melts even though he’s never been like this with another man either. It’s ridiculous and awkward but somewhere along the way he laughs and has to blink away the tears in his eyes, finding peace and stability in Changmin’s kisses instead.
And when they’re finally together, Yunho can’t ever seem to pull in enough air into his lungs. He doesn’t stop kissing Changmin even when the need to breathe becomes urgent. All the muted sighs, muffled moans, soft whimpers pressed into his neck, his cheeks, his lips, all of it; he prints them into his heart. Their fingers lace atop the bedsheets. The entire world spins. He knows nothing matters except this man arching beneath him, fingernails digging into his back, lips crushed desperately to his own.
Yunho’s positive there’s no such thing as heaven because there can’t be anything better than having Changmin here like this.
“Yunho,” Changmin whispers an eternity after, when brightness starts filtering in through the small window in the wall.
“Yeah?” He holds Changmin that much tighter and closes his eyes. But Changmin doesn’t say anything else. “Just ask me to stay, Changmin-ah,” he nearly begs, “please, just ask.”
He feels a minute but still there shake of Changmin’s head. And even though he was expecting it, it still feels like he’s falling apart inside. He hates Changmin for being so unselfish. He hates Changmin for wanting more for Yunho than himself. He hates Changmin, so much, because he’s never loved anyone with such force that it’s all he can do to just clutch the younger man in a choking embrace and keep the tears in his eyes from spilling over.
---
It’s all kinds of ridiculous. Yunho stands in a one-man line consisting of himself while another guy in white looks over his passport.
A passport to the living. Now that’s a novel idea.
“Alright sir,” he hears, the words final and cutting into his unfocused thoughts. “Please proceed ahead. Enjoy your life.”
He walks forward with a nod and turns back for a split second to wave. He catches sight of Jaejoong and Changmin’s feet in his line of vision but nothing else; he doesn’t trust himself to see more.
As he rounds the corner, Yunho slows and turns his head, just enough to see because he can’t fight the urge. Changmin’s already walking away, shoulders set and head down.
And then an arm comes up and wipes something away and Yunho squeezes his eyes shut and runs, as fast as his feet will carry him, away from Changmin’s tears, away from this world, away from these things he was never supposed to touch or know in the first place.
He leaves his heart behind so he’ll never forget them.
---
“Drowning.”
“Pills.”
“Drowning. Look at how puffed up he is.”
“Pills will bloat you too.”
“Changmin, you do this just to be difficult.”
“Don’t get angry just because I’m smarter.”
“You!” Jaejoong starts, smacking Changmin in the face with the cloth he was using to dry glasses. “You always-”
“He drowned, I asked,” a voice cuts in on their conversation.
Changmin turns his head and suddenly, the world falls out under his feet again. There’s nothing but stunned, uncomfortable silence as he stares for the longest time until Jaejoong interrupts their staring contest, clearing his throat with obvious exasperation.
“So, Yunho-yah, back so soon?”
“It hurt being on life support so I yanked it out myself,” Yunho says, shrugging. He never once takes his eyes off of Changmin. “Figured a day with that kind of pain was more than enough. Thought my chest was trying to rip itself open.”
“That was your heart, dear,” Jaejoong says, and runs away before Changmin can throw something in his face.
“So...” Yunho says after another uncomfortable silence, walking right into Changmin’s personal space, placing a finger under the other’s chin and tilting his face up. “There’s this thing I’ve been meaning to tell you...”
He almost panics when Changmin’s eyes fill with tears.
“Yunho,” Changmin chokes out around the lump in his throat. He needs this man, needs him to be here. He can’t be without Yunho anymore. He doesn’t know how to be.
Yunho pulls him into a tight hug and breathes in Changmin’s scent as deeply as he can. Strokes his hair. Kisses his cheek, his lips. Brushes a thumb across the angry, thick scars running jagged on Changmin’s wrists, and kisses those too.
“They don’t love you like I love you,” Changmin whispers, closing his eyes as a tear rolls down his cheek. “So don’t leave me anymore.”
“Love you too much to even think it,” Yunho whispers back, sure and immediate. There isn’t any hesitation as he reaches forward and pulls Changmin into a deep kiss, arms circling his waist and keeping him there. They pull away from each other just enough to breathe and Yunho smiles at him, nothing but love and affection.
Changmin smiles back.
Everything’s just a little worse, here. The toothpaste will always be uncapped. There is always a line at the checkout no matter what time of day it is. Cellphones are always on the last bar no matter how much they’re charged.
Yunho kisses Changmin full on the lips. He's never been better.
And they finally start to live.
---
inspired by Wristcutters: A Love Story. go watch it. :) and love the homin! ♥