don't forget to cry
don't forget to cry
yunho/changmin
r
death isn't like anyone imagines. except the horrible part.
warning: death. apparently, i like to kill yunho and jaechun. dreamt half of this.
---
Yunho dies in a car crash.
It’s exactly like the movies. One of the three bottles of lychee vodka he had had to buy after losing a rigged game of jankenpo had fallen under the passenger seat on his drive back home and he had had to pick it up. Of course, at the time, he was on a twisted, curvy, terribly-lit road reserved for shortcuts, swerving dangerously out of the single lane he was allowed to drive in. And of course, as soon as he finds it and looks up, there’s a massive cargo truck headed at him at about a bajillion miles per hour, or seventy-three, whichever, and the single, lonely thought of ohhhhh fuck was his only company before he finds himself standing outside of the burning wreckage that was his car, staring down at a confused mess of twisted, screaming metal.
“I’ve seen worse,” Yoochun says, suddenly appearing out of nowhere. Yunho thinks he must be in a state of shock. Or something, because one minute he’s turning to give Yoochun a hearty handshake and the next, he’s puking all over the guy’s shoes.
“Ugh...sorry,” Yunho says, though it comes out hysterical and half a sob. This can’t be happening, he thinks deliriously, I’m too young for this. All the things he hasn’t done yet, and, and-
“That happens too,” Yoochun says. He takes a long drag on his cigarette before kicking the toe of his shoe against the ground and all of Yunho’s vomit goes sliding off like there’s a layer of saran wrap on his bright pink Chucks. “Well, angel, I guess,” he says with a shrug at Yunho’s bug-eyed stare, “angel’s probably the closest thing to describing me to you.”
“What’s...what’s the next closest thing?”
“Reaper.”
“Oh,” Yunho says, then starts giggling uncontrollably.
“Yeah,” Yoochun says, looking unsurprised, “people do that a lot too. Don’t worry, the crying will set in soon.”
---
Twenty minutes later-at least, that’s what his cracked watch says-Yunho’s sitting back on his heels and crying into his hands, sobbing so hard that he can barely pull in a breath. His head feels light, his car is still on fire, and the man in the cargo truck is somehow frozen in time and space with a look of horror on his face, halfway out of his truck.
“Wh-what now!?” Yunho screams, tempted to kick out at Yoochun who’s still smoking the same goddamn cigarette, grabbing at his own hair instead. He has no illusions, doesn’t bother trying to trick himself into thinking that this is a terrible nightmare. Self-delusional, false hope is worse than reality.
“Now...you get...” Yoochun pauses to flip through a little black book with a red lock on it. “...Twenty-seven minutes to say everything you need to say to one person in your life.”
“What!” Yunho screams, still staring at his burning car. One bottle of lychee vodka had cost him twenty-seven dollars and eighty-four cents. Times three, plus the bobble-head of Hello Kitty that his sister had given him for Christmas four years ago sitting on his dashboard, and the leopard print seat cushion thrown in the backseat from his mom, all burning away in his car. Plus, he still had payments on the damn thing. His dad is going to...to... “He can’t even kill me anymore!” Yunho screams, ready to fall over and just die. Or something else, because he is dea- “I’m DEAD!” he screams, falls over, and throws a small tantrum.
“You want your twenty-seven minutes or you just want to go up with me?” Yoochun asks, absolutely disaffected.
“How can you be so calm!?”
“Look, I feel bad for you and all, but I died in the freaking convenience store with a pack of Jae- with a pack of my friend’s cigarettes in one hand and a gun in the other. I’m always going to be known to my family and friends as that guy who blew his own head off in a convenience store at quarter past one in the morning and what can I do about that? Nothing.”
Yunho stares at him, wiping his face with his hands. He successfully smears gravel and dirt all over his cheeks. “You killed yourself?”
“Yup.”
“Then...then...shouldn’t you be burning in eternal Hell or something?”
“We’ll talk about that later,” Yoochun says, rolling his eyes and sighing, “for now, do you want your twenty-seven minutes or not?”
“I...um...”
“I really wouldn’t take them if I were you.”
“Why not?”
“It’s a lot harder to say goodbye.”
“What do you mean? I don’t care. Just give them to me.”
“Alright,” Yoochun replies with another shrug, and Yunho gets a funny feeling in the pit of his stomach when he sees real emotion in Yoochun’s eyes for the first time in the last half hour. It looks like sadness.
---
Hands shaking, Yunho stares at the pulsing house in front of him, lively party in full swing at two in the morning, swallowing the cubes of fear and uncertainty stabbing into his throat and all the way down to his stomach. Yoochun had given him a few rules a.k.a. guidelines a.k.a. advice on how to handle this.
For one, he can only appear to one person and one person only, so choose very wisely. His accident is transported to another plane for now so nobody will know anything is wrong. Nobody will be able see him except the one person he reveals himself to. After exactly twenty-seven minutes, as in exactly one-thousand, six-hundred and twenty seconds, his body will fail to hold shape even in the presence of his One Important Person and then he has to go with Yoochun. During their talk, there will be one chime for one minute remaining, one chime for thirty seconds, one chime per second for the last ten seconds. Someone will discover his dead body after exactly twenty-seven minutes and the news will spread within three to round out the half hour. And that’s pretty much that.
His first instinct had obviously been to go see his mother. But the more he had thought about it, the crueller that seemed. Yoochun had warned him: chances are, nobody will believe him no matter what he says. And then, when she finds out he really has died, her first and only son, how would that affect her mind? Her body?
His father goes out the window right along with his mom.
He wouldn’t inflict that kind of psychological torture onto his sister; she’s far too young to lose an older brother like this.
His extended family? His friends?
“This is it,” Yoochun had said, looking away and up at the stars, puffing away. “Everything there is, all you can do; it all comes down to this. I never took my twenty-seven minutes. I’m glad I didn’t. Good luck, hyung.”
Swallowing one last time, Yunho walks straight through the door to Junsu’s house, bumping into people who didn’t even feel him there, being pushed through throngs of people he knew and called his friends when he was alive, people he could not care less about now that it matters.
He finds Changmin in the kitchen.
---
“Hyung!” Changmin nearly cries, slamming an empty shot glass onto the counter, satisfyingly buzzed. “Took you long enough to get back! Now where-” He pauses and looks at Yunho’s empty hands. “Where’s my lychee vodka?”
“Changmin-ah,” Yunho says, trying to keep his voice normal, though he no longer knows what normal’s supposed to be, pulling his lips into what he hopes looks like a smile, “I need to talk to you about something.”
“What, did you spend my and Junsu’s money to buy yourself a sister for Bambi?”
“Changmin-ah, Changmin, please, I really need to talk to you.”
Changmin’s gaze sharpens almost immediately as his smile dampens. Yunho tries smiling extra hard to make the look of worry in the younger man’s eyes go away but he doesn’t think it works. “Hyung? Yunho, what’s wrong? Hey, you’re really pale-”
“Come with me,” Yunho breathes, grabbing Changmin by the wrist and leading him upstairs. When he gets to Junsu’s guest room, he pulls both of them inside and closes the door behind him, locking it after a deep breath. Changmin hadn’t noticed that nobody had greeted him on their way through the crowd. That was already...what? Five minutes? Six?
“Yunho-hyung...?” Changmin asks. “You’re...I’m...what’s-”
“Sit down,” Yunho says, pulling the younger man to the bed, sitting down next to each other, holding his hands in his own. “I need you to tell me a few things.”
“Like...what?”
“What are you going to do when you graduate in two years?”
“I don’t know?” Changmin asks, incredulous, eyebrows bunched together in confusion.
“With your degree, tell me what you’re going to do.”
“Be...a journalist or something?”
“Alright,” Yunho breathes, smiling with difficulty, wondering why this is so hard. If this is the only closure he’s allowed to have, he wishes it would be easy and fun, with Changmin smiling at him in that way of his instead of the sick look of worry pointed in his direction. “And...you, you should visit my family more often, whenever you can, okay? My parents love you.”
“...I...hyung, what-”
“Tell me what you’re planning to do for the weekend.”
Changmin gives him an odd look and starts ticking things off, speaking slowly by himself. Eventually, he trails off, fingers curling into Yunho’s palms. “Are you okay?”
“How many kids are you going to have?”
“What? I don’t-”
“And what are you going to name your daughter?”
“Yunho,” Changmin says, voice taking on an angry edge, “what are you-”
“You need to name her Jiyul, do you understand?” Yunho interrupts, feeling tears well in his eyes. This is the moment, he thinks, where the real sadness comes. Yoochun had warned him, but what’s really supposed to prepare him for his heart shattering right in his ribcage? “Jiyul, because that’s a beautiful name, and you’ll have a beautiful-”
“Yunho!” Changmin says, sharp and loud, eyes wide with alarm and mouth set in a grim frown. “What’s wrong with you? Why are you saying these things to me?” His hands are gripping Yunho’s to the point where his knuckles are turning white, a ball of real fear lodged in his throat. “Is something wrong? You know that Jiyul’s your baby girl’s name. You’ve only told me a million times. And...what’s wrong? Yunho, what’s wrong?”
“You’re my best friend, Changmin,” Yunho answers instead. He bites his lip when Changmin’s drops his head in frustration, shaking it back and forth in incomprehension. “Don’t forget that, alright?”
“Why would I forget it?” Changmin asks, looking up at Yunho with desperation. “What’s wrong? Are you going somewhere? Did something happen?”
“And in the next week, you’re not going to do anything irrational or stupid, alright?”
Changmin lets go of Yunho’s hands and grabs the older man by the shoulders instead. “We’re not even having the same conversation!” he nearly shouts, more fear than anger, shaking him a little. “What’s going on? Why are you saying these things? I don’t want to hear them. What’s wrong with you?”
“I never did tell you this, but you probably know,” Yunho continues. He sneaks a look down at his watch. Eleven minutes left. “We’ve never really just been friends, have we?”
Changmin blinks wide with shock and jolts a bit where he’s sitting, nails digging into Yunho’s shoulders. “What-”
“I wish I had told you sooner,” Yunho whispers, looking into Changmin’s eyes. “I wish I had.”
Something cold and hard hits Changmin’s stomach and claws its way up his throat. He can vaguely feel his blood pumping ice through his veins, struggling not to tremble as Yunho gently presses a hand against the curve of his cheek.
“Changmin-ah,” Yunho whispers. There’s nothing in the name except sadness and he sees Changmin cringe in fear. Eight minutes.
“Yunho-” Changmin breathes, and Yunho kisses him, full and hard and desperate and gentle, sliding their lips together the way he’s always wanted to, hasn’t had a chance until everything was one step too late.
Changmin’s hands clutch at his shoulders, bunching Yunho’s shirt in clenched fists. He tilts his head sideways and the kiss deepens until they’re both drowning in it, all the feelings almost lost to expectations suddenly exploding without restraint. Yunho’s arms wind around Changmin’s waist until they’re pressed against one another. He doesn’t think that it’s fair to be able to feel such warmth anymore; it’s like salt in his bleeding wound, a teasing reminder to what he’s already lost, a lingering heat to a candle that’s already been put out.
“...Hyung!” Changmin says in an audible, heaving gasp as soon as the kiss breaks. “I don’t-”
Six minutes, Yunho’s watch says.
“Just don’t say anything,” Yunho whispers and joins their lips again. For a second he’s afraid that Changmin will push him away but the younger man just pulls him in deeper.
It’s too easy to get lost in the feeling. Changmin parts his lips and Yunho’s tongue immediately slips in, exploring, tasting, memorizing. It’s not fair that this is the first and last time. Changmin moans into his mouth and Yunho almost runs out of the room himself, feeling like he’s going to die from sadness alone. Instead, he just lets Changmin’s tongue tangle with his own, run over his teeth, allows arms to wrap around his neck tighter than is comfortable, revels in the heat running between them.
“Hyung- Yunho-” Changmin pants against his lips, fingers restless in the older man’s hair, “you’re right. I didn’t- I never wanted to tell you, but you’re right. We’ve never just been friends. And, you- you’re not leaving, you’re not allowed to-”
Two minutes. “Just let me kiss you!” Yunho asks in a breath and Changmin makes a small noise of distress. He’s helpless against it though, hands shaking in excitement and dread and genuine terror from the look in Yunho’s eyes, just trying with all his might to pull the older man as close to himself as possible.
Hard, crazy kissing. Slow, gentle kissing. Yunho doesn’t know how to make it last.
“Keep your eyes closed,” he whispers, lips a breath away from Changmin’s, thumbing at the younger man’s cheek. One hard, tolling chime from his small wristwatch. One minute. “And no matter what, I don’t want you to open your eyes until someone else comes, understand?”
Changmin shakes his head in defiance.
“Changmin. Please.”
A hesitant nod. Yunho feels Changmin’s fingers dig into his flesh as if to keep him there.
He holds one hand firmly over Changmin’s eyes to make his point. “Don’t open your eyes.” Kissing Changmin again, he slowly removes his hand, heart catching in his throat when another booming chime thunders through the house. Thirty seconds. Pulling away, Yunho fights to keep his voice steady, tears welling in his eyes, rock lodged painfully in his throat. He lets them spill over to take in one last look of Changmin’s face, eyes closed, cheeks flushed, lips kissed red.
“Yunho,” Changmin nearly whimpers, tears caught on his eyelashes, afraid to open his eyes, afraid to even ask what’s going on.
Yunho leans in. Last kiss. He makes it gentle, puts as much of his unbeating heart into it as he can, tries to sear it into his mind. Another chime. Ten seconds. “I love you,” he whispers in Changmin’s ear.
Seven seconds. He pulls away.
Five. Gets up.
Four. Walks backwards out of the room, eyes fixed on Changmin’s face, watches a tear roll down the younger man’s cheek.
“Yunho?” Changmin whispers.
Two.
“Yunho?”
One.
The world suddenly turns off like a switch was flicked. Yunho can still see the image of Changmin sitting on the bed in the back of his brain, can still hear his name being called, and he knows he’ll never be able to answer again.
If he had known it was going to end like this, he would have kissed Changmin sooner.
---
“How’d it go?” Jaejoong asks, finding Yunho sitting by himself in utter darkness. He snaps his fingers and all the black washes over with a comforting coral color, one lonely, crappy elevator standing in the middle of vast emptiness.
“Who’re you?” Yunho asks. His voice is dead. He feels dead. He is dead.
“Kim Jaejoong. Angel or something.”
“Where’s Yoochun?”
“Ah...yeah...I kinda overslept earlier,” Jaejoong says, laughing sheepishly. “He covered for me.”
Yunho doesn’t respond. He holds his palms clasped to his heart, trying to keep the warmth from seeping out anymore.
“Let’s go,” Jaejoong says gently, pulling Yunho up by the elbow. “I know it’s hard to let go. You really shouldn’t have taken your twenty-seven minutes.”
“That’s what Yoochun told me.”
“Well, for good reason,” Jaejoong says, eye twitching, jabbing the up button on the elevator. “It used to be an hour, you know! A whole hour! I had an hour. I went to say goodbye to Yoochun and somehow, in that hour, he managed to convince himself that it was worth it to follow me.”
“...You...he...”
“Uh huhn,” Jaejoong says, clearly unimpressed, “that stupid idiot pulled a gun on himself right after my hour was over. So of course they shortened it to twenty-seven minutes in case anyone else decided to do the same. ” They step into the elevator. A pleasant song comes on and Jaejoong presses one button out of about a billion. “Sorry if you felt like it wasn’t enough time to say goodbye. Yoochun’s...heart was in the right place, I guess.”
“Why isn’t he in eternal Hell then?” The elevator starts and Yunho feels them floating upwards.
“You’ll get used to the concept sooner or later, but there isn’t any capital Hell or Heaven or something. You should stop saying it like that.”
“What?” Yunho asks. Nothing would really surprise him at this point.
“Basically, depending on who you are and what you’ve done in your life, you get to live out your afterlife in the corresponding kind of lifestyle you deserve. Like you, you’re on the...one-hundred twenty-third floor. That’s pretty decent!”
“And...what did Yoochun get?”
“He’s on the ninety-ninth. The nine-series floors are craaaaazy.”
“How is he being punished?”
“He’s not.”
“What?” Yunho asks again.
“Well...he really shouldn’t have killed himself, because you’re given life and freedom for free, and taking that from yourself isn’t cool. I suppose that it’s nice when we get into the same elevator and I get to press a button higher than his.” Jaejoong grins like a little boy. “It’s so satisfying when my floor’s higher.”
“But...why isn’t he punished?”
“Why would he be punished for unquestioningly loving me like an idiot?” Jaejoong asks with a laugh, looking at Yunho like he’s a bit stupid, and Yunho realizes with a laugh of his own how stupid of a notion it was.
When the elevator dings open, Jaejoong leads Yunho out to a completely normal-looking neighbourhood. Built on clouds, of course. A little girl holding a bunch of red, heart-shaped cloud balloons hands him one as he passes.
“Welcome home, for now,” Jaejoong says, and Yunho walks into his new house with no questions asked, hoping there’s a furnished bedroom in there.
---
Changmin sits on the bed for another minute and a half, feeling cold swallow him whole now that Yunho’s no longer in the room. He’s alone, he’s terrified, he’s literally in tears.
He opens his eyes with hesitation to find the bedroom door still closed. He hadn’t even heard Yunho open and close it. Hell, he still couldn’t get over Yunho telling him that he lov-
“Changmin!” Junsu screams, eyes wild with panic, bursting through the door. “Changmin! I found you- oh my god, Changmin-”
“Junsu-hyung!” Changmin says in surprise, swiping at his eyes and standing to go to the nearly hysterical older man, catching him mid-fall. “Junsu, what-”
“There’s been an accident,” Junsu sobs, clutching at him, “it’s, I’m so sorry- Changmin- we shouldn’t have made him go, we should’ve-” Any further words disintegrate into sobs and Changmin feels the world go bleach-burned bright.
He grabs the phone still clutched in Junsu’s hand and brings it to his own ear. It’s Yunho’s little sister, sobbing uncontrollably, calling for her older brother.
Changmin sinks to the floor with Junsu sobbing in his arms. He doesn’t feel anything except numb.
---
Yunho wakes up on a bed of clouds, feeling even worse than he did earlier. Jaejoong’s sitting on his bedside like a creeper and smiling at him like everything isn’t fucked up and wrong, like he didn’t lose his heart back in the world of the living.
“You missed your big day!” Jaejoong says brightly.
“My birthday?” Yunho deadpans.
“No, your funeral! Everyone went!”
“...What.”
“You get to go back once to check in on the real world,” Jaejoong explains, “and most people decide to go to their own funeral to see how many people showed and just who exactly showed up.”
“Didn’t I just die...yesterday?”
“Time here and time there’s not exactly...the same.”
“...I...see.”
“Wanna go back now?”
“What day is it now?”
“Uh...well, you’re buried? And you have a nice headstone?”
“Didn’t you get lessons in being an angel at all?” Yunho asks. He knows he shouldn’t be taking his frustrations out on Jaejoong but the angel could be a little more...sensitive.
“Hey, I’m closer to a reaper than an angel if you want to get technical,” Jaejoong frowns, poking Yunho in the cheek. “I’m just awesome and nice. And since you’re wondering, yes, Shim Changmin went.”
“What, you read minds now?”
“No, it’s written all over your face.”
“Did he cry?” Yunho asks gently, looking down at his lap. His cloud blanket suddenly feels suffocating but he doesn’t kick it off.
“No.”
“Good,” Yunho says with a soft smile, “he never cries about anything. I’m glad he didn’t.”
---
He takes up Jaejoong’s offer after all. It’s hard to deny yourself something like one last trip back to the world you lived your life in, where everyone you love is still breathing and trying to make it through life the best they know how. Yunho makes an extremely short mental checklist of his dead friends and relatives to hunt down later.
Jaejoong brings him down, out of the place that’s sort of heaven and hell but not, down to the real world. He sees his family suffering in grief, he cries, he sees a lot of his friends mourning, he feels bad. He sees the rest of the world carrying on all the same.
He sees Junsu talking on the phone, talking to someone else about Changmin, how the younger man still hasn’t cried yet and that’s worrisome. Yunho imagines that Hyukjae’s on the other end but his mind focuses in on Changmin’s name.
Jaejoong leaves him alone as soon as they get to the cemetery. “Just call me when you’re ready,” he says, smiling encouragingly, turning and vanishing into thin air.
Yunho wanders the rows and rows of dead people. He memorizes the names of a few interesting sounding ones to look up once he goes back to...his new home. He almost can’t believe it when he looks up to find Changmin sitting by himself in front of his grave, on the grass, staring lifelessly ahead.
Words escape him and they’re useless anyway. It’s not like Changmin would even know he’s there. So instead, Yunho goes to sit by Changmin’s side, tips his head sideways to rest on Changmin’s shoulder, winds an arm around Changmin’s waist, and closes his eyes.
---
Changmin stares at Yunho’s grave marker. He’s read the epitaph hundreds of times already, has sat in this exact place for the last week, day after day, refusing to go home until long after the sun sets.
And then suddenly, it’s like he can feel Yunho around him. His heart viciously starts tearing itself to pieces with no warning at all as the older man’s presence surrounds him like a warm blanket.
A sob comes ugly and broken from deep inside his chest. “Yunho,” he whispers, clenching his fists because there’s no Yunho to hold on to anymore, wishing he didn’t feel like the other man was somehow still there. “Yunho!” he calls out, repeating the name to a whimper, looking around wildly, then back at the headstone, curling in on himself with the force of his sobs.
He’s never felt so alone. He’s never felt such pain. He’s never cried like this. He doesn’t care about any of it.
“Just come back!” Changmin cries, choking on his words, tears running down his face. The words are twisted and horrible like his voice, like his expression, like his heart. “Come back to me, just come back!”
He almost believes he can feel Yunho holding him when he closes his eyes. It’s the worst kind of torture he’s ever felt. “It’s not fair,” he says in a small, childish voice, tears plopping fat and round onto his hands and pants. “You didn’t even let me.”
Changmin looks up and can hear that whisper in his ear, I love you, Yunho had told him between kisses.
“You didn’t even let me.”
---
yunho/changmin
r
death isn't like anyone imagines. except the horrible part.
warning: death. apparently, i like to kill yunho and jaechun. dreamt half of this.
---
Yunho dies in a car crash.
It’s exactly like the movies. One of the three bottles of lychee vodka he had had to buy after losing a rigged game of jankenpo had fallen under the passenger seat on his drive back home and he had had to pick it up. Of course, at the time, he was on a twisted, curvy, terribly-lit road reserved for shortcuts, swerving dangerously out of the single lane he was allowed to drive in. And of course, as soon as he finds it and looks up, there’s a massive cargo truck headed at him at about a bajillion miles per hour, or seventy-three, whichever, and the single, lonely thought of ohhhhh fuck was his only company before he finds himself standing outside of the burning wreckage that was his car, staring down at a confused mess of twisted, screaming metal.
“I’ve seen worse,” Yoochun says, suddenly appearing out of nowhere. Yunho thinks he must be in a state of shock. Or something, because one minute he’s turning to give Yoochun a hearty handshake and the next, he’s puking all over the guy’s shoes.
“Ugh...sorry,” Yunho says, though it comes out hysterical and half a sob. This can’t be happening, he thinks deliriously, I’m too young for this. All the things he hasn’t done yet, and, and-
“That happens too,” Yoochun says. He takes a long drag on his cigarette before kicking the toe of his shoe against the ground and all of Yunho’s vomit goes sliding off like there’s a layer of saran wrap on his bright pink Chucks. “Well, angel, I guess,” he says with a shrug at Yunho’s bug-eyed stare, “angel’s probably the closest thing to describing me to you.”
“What’s...what’s the next closest thing?”
“Reaper.”
“Oh,” Yunho says, then starts giggling uncontrollably.
“Yeah,” Yoochun says, looking unsurprised, “people do that a lot too. Don’t worry, the crying will set in soon.”
---
Twenty minutes later-at least, that’s what his cracked watch says-Yunho’s sitting back on his heels and crying into his hands, sobbing so hard that he can barely pull in a breath. His head feels light, his car is still on fire, and the man in the cargo truck is somehow frozen in time and space with a look of horror on his face, halfway out of his truck.
“Wh-what now!?” Yunho screams, tempted to kick out at Yoochun who’s still smoking the same goddamn cigarette, grabbing at his own hair instead. He has no illusions, doesn’t bother trying to trick himself into thinking that this is a terrible nightmare. Self-delusional, false hope is worse than reality.
“Now...you get...” Yoochun pauses to flip through a little black book with a red lock on it. “...Twenty-seven minutes to say everything you need to say to one person in your life.”
“What!” Yunho screams, still staring at his burning car. One bottle of lychee vodka had cost him twenty-seven dollars and eighty-four cents. Times three, plus the bobble-head of Hello Kitty that his sister had given him for Christmas four years ago sitting on his dashboard, and the leopard print seat cushion thrown in the backseat from his mom, all burning away in his car. Plus, he still had payments on the damn thing. His dad is going to...to... “He can’t even kill me anymore!” Yunho screams, ready to fall over and just die. Or something else, because he is dea- “I’m DEAD!” he screams, falls over, and throws a small tantrum.
“You want your twenty-seven minutes or you just want to go up with me?” Yoochun asks, absolutely disaffected.
“How can you be so calm!?”
“Look, I feel bad for you and all, but I died in the freaking convenience store with a pack of Jae- with a pack of my friend’s cigarettes in one hand and a gun in the other. I’m always going to be known to my family and friends as that guy who blew his own head off in a convenience store at quarter past one in the morning and what can I do about that? Nothing.”
Yunho stares at him, wiping his face with his hands. He successfully smears gravel and dirt all over his cheeks. “You killed yourself?”
“Yup.”
“Then...then...shouldn’t you be burning in eternal Hell or something?”
“We’ll talk about that later,” Yoochun says, rolling his eyes and sighing, “for now, do you want your twenty-seven minutes or not?”
“I...um...”
“I really wouldn’t take them if I were you.”
“Why not?”
“It’s a lot harder to say goodbye.”
“What do you mean? I don’t care. Just give them to me.”
“Alright,” Yoochun replies with another shrug, and Yunho gets a funny feeling in the pit of his stomach when he sees real emotion in Yoochun’s eyes for the first time in the last half hour. It looks like sadness.
---
Hands shaking, Yunho stares at the pulsing house in front of him, lively party in full swing at two in the morning, swallowing the cubes of fear and uncertainty stabbing into his throat and all the way down to his stomach. Yoochun had given him a few rules a.k.a. guidelines a.k.a. advice on how to handle this.
For one, he can only appear to one person and one person only, so choose very wisely. His accident is transported to another plane for now so nobody will know anything is wrong. Nobody will be able see him except the one person he reveals himself to. After exactly twenty-seven minutes, as in exactly one-thousand, six-hundred and twenty seconds, his body will fail to hold shape even in the presence of his One Important Person and then he has to go with Yoochun. During their talk, there will be one chime for one minute remaining, one chime for thirty seconds, one chime per second for the last ten seconds. Someone will discover his dead body after exactly twenty-seven minutes and the news will spread within three to round out the half hour. And that’s pretty much that.
His first instinct had obviously been to go see his mother. But the more he had thought about it, the crueller that seemed. Yoochun had warned him: chances are, nobody will believe him no matter what he says. And then, when she finds out he really has died, her first and only son, how would that affect her mind? Her body?
His father goes out the window right along with his mom.
He wouldn’t inflict that kind of psychological torture onto his sister; she’s far too young to lose an older brother like this.
His extended family? His friends?
“This is it,” Yoochun had said, looking away and up at the stars, puffing away. “Everything there is, all you can do; it all comes down to this. I never took my twenty-seven minutes. I’m glad I didn’t. Good luck, hyung.”
Swallowing one last time, Yunho walks straight through the door to Junsu’s house, bumping into people who didn’t even feel him there, being pushed through throngs of people he knew and called his friends when he was alive, people he could not care less about now that it matters.
He finds Changmin in the kitchen.
---
“Hyung!” Changmin nearly cries, slamming an empty shot glass onto the counter, satisfyingly buzzed. “Took you long enough to get back! Now where-” He pauses and looks at Yunho’s empty hands. “Where’s my lychee vodka?”
“Changmin-ah,” Yunho says, trying to keep his voice normal, though he no longer knows what normal’s supposed to be, pulling his lips into what he hopes looks like a smile, “I need to talk to you about something.”
“What, did you spend my and Junsu’s money to buy yourself a sister for Bambi?”
“Changmin-ah, Changmin, please, I really need to talk to you.”
Changmin’s gaze sharpens almost immediately as his smile dampens. Yunho tries smiling extra hard to make the look of worry in the younger man’s eyes go away but he doesn’t think it works. “Hyung? Yunho, what’s wrong? Hey, you’re really pale-”
“Come with me,” Yunho breathes, grabbing Changmin by the wrist and leading him upstairs. When he gets to Junsu’s guest room, he pulls both of them inside and closes the door behind him, locking it after a deep breath. Changmin hadn’t noticed that nobody had greeted him on their way through the crowd. That was already...what? Five minutes? Six?
“Yunho-hyung...?” Changmin asks. “You’re...I’m...what’s-”
“Sit down,” Yunho says, pulling the younger man to the bed, sitting down next to each other, holding his hands in his own. “I need you to tell me a few things.”
“Like...what?”
“What are you going to do when you graduate in two years?”
“I don’t know?” Changmin asks, incredulous, eyebrows bunched together in confusion.
“With your degree, tell me what you’re going to do.”
“Be...a journalist or something?”
“Alright,” Yunho breathes, smiling with difficulty, wondering why this is so hard. If this is the only closure he’s allowed to have, he wishes it would be easy and fun, with Changmin smiling at him in that way of his instead of the sick look of worry pointed in his direction. “And...you, you should visit my family more often, whenever you can, okay? My parents love you.”
“...I...hyung, what-”
“Tell me what you’re planning to do for the weekend.”
Changmin gives him an odd look and starts ticking things off, speaking slowly by himself. Eventually, he trails off, fingers curling into Yunho’s palms. “Are you okay?”
“How many kids are you going to have?”
“What? I don’t-”
“And what are you going to name your daughter?”
“Yunho,” Changmin says, voice taking on an angry edge, “what are you-”
“You need to name her Jiyul, do you understand?” Yunho interrupts, feeling tears well in his eyes. This is the moment, he thinks, where the real sadness comes. Yoochun had warned him, but what’s really supposed to prepare him for his heart shattering right in his ribcage? “Jiyul, because that’s a beautiful name, and you’ll have a beautiful-”
“Yunho!” Changmin says, sharp and loud, eyes wide with alarm and mouth set in a grim frown. “What’s wrong with you? Why are you saying these things to me?” His hands are gripping Yunho’s to the point where his knuckles are turning white, a ball of real fear lodged in his throat. “Is something wrong? You know that Jiyul’s your baby girl’s name. You’ve only told me a million times. And...what’s wrong? Yunho, what’s wrong?”
“You’re my best friend, Changmin,” Yunho answers instead. He bites his lip when Changmin’s drops his head in frustration, shaking it back and forth in incomprehension. “Don’t forget that, alright?”
“Why would I forget it?” Changmin asks, looking up at Yunho with desperation. “What’s wrong? Are you going somewhere? Did something happen?”
“And in the next week, you’re not going to do anything irrational or stupid, alright?”
Changmin lets go of Yunho’s hands and grabs the older man by the shoulders instead. “We’re not even having the same conversation!” he nearly shouts, more fear than anger, shaking him a little. “What’s going on? Why are you saying these things? I don’t want to hear them. What’s wrong with you?”
“I never did tell you this, but you probably know,” Yunho continues. He sneaks a look down at his watch. Eleven minutes left. “We’ve never really just been friends, have we?”
Changmin blinks wide with shock and jolts a bit where he’s sitting, nails digging into Yunho’s shoulders. “What-”
“I wish I had told you sooner,” Yunho whispers, looking into Changmin’s eyes. “I wish I had.”
Something cold and hard hits Changmin’s stomach and claws its way up his throat. He can vaguely feel his blood pumping ice through his veins, struggling not to tremble as Yunho gently presses a hand against the curve of his cheek.
“Changmin-ah,” Yunho whispers. There’s nothing in the name except sadness and he sees Changmin cringe in fear. Eight minutes.
“Yunho-” Changmin breathes, and Yunho kisses him, full and hard and desperate and gentle, sliding their lips together the way he’s always wanted to, hasn’t had a chance until everything was one step too late.
Changmin’s hands clutch at his shoulders, bunching Yunho’s shirt in clenched fists. He tilts his head sideways and the kiss deepens until they’re both drowning in it, all the feelings almost lost to expectations suddenly exploding without restraint. Yunho’s arms wind around Changmin’s waist until they’re pressed against one another. He doesn’t think that it’s fair to be able to feel such warmth anymore; it’s like salt in his bleeding wound, a teasing reminder to what he’s already lost, a lingering heat to a candle that’s already been put out.
“...Hyung!” Changmin says in an audible, heaving gasp as soon as the kiss breaks. “I don’t-”
Six minutes, Yunho’s watch says.
“Just don’t say anything,” Yunho whispers and joins their lips again. For a second he’s afraid that Changmin will push him away but the younger man just pulls him in deeper.
It’s too easy to get lost in the feeling. Changmin parts his lips and Yunho’s tongue immediately slips in, exploring, tasting, memorizing. It’s not fair that this is the first and last time. Changmin moans into his mouth and Yunho almost runs out of the room himself, feeling like he’s going to die from sadness alone. Instead, he just lets Changmin’s tongue tangle with his own, run over his teeth, allows arms to wrap around his neck tighter than is comfortable, revels in the heat running between them.
“Hyung- Yunho-” Changmin pants against his lips, fingers restless in the older man’s hair, “you’re right. I didn’t- I never wanted to tell you, but you’re right. We’ve never just been friends. And, you- you’re not leaving, you’re not allowed to-”
Two minutes. “Just let me kiss you!” Yunho asks in a breath and Changmin makes a small noise of distress. He’s helpless against it though, hands shaking in excitement and dread and genuine terror from the look in Yunho’s eyes, just trying with all his might to pull the older man as close to himself as possible.
Hard, crazy kissing. Slow, gentle kissing. Yunho doesn’t know how to make it last.
“Keep your eyes closed,” he whispers, lips a breath away from Changmin’s, thumbing at the younger man’s cheek. One hard, tolling chime from his small wristwatch. One minute. “And no matter what, I don’t want you to open your eyes until someone else comes, understand?”
Changmin shakes his head in defiance.
“Changmin. Please.”
A hesitant nod. Yunho feels Changmin’s fingers dig into his flesh as if to keep him there.
He holds one hand firmly over Changmin’s eyes to make his point. “Don’t open your eyes.” Kissing Changmin again, he slowly removes his hand, heart catching in his throat when another booming chime thunders through the house. Thirty seconds. Pulling away, Yunho fights to keep his voice steady, tears welling in his eyes, rock lodged painfully in his throat. He lets them spill over to take in one last look of Changmin’s face, eyes closed, cheeks flushed, lips kissed red.
“Yunho,” Changmin nearly whimpers, tears caught on his eyelashes, afraid to open his eyes, afraid to even ask what’s going on.
Yunho leans in. Last kiss. He makes it gentle, puts as much of his unbeating heart into it as he can, tries to sear it into his mind. Another chime. Ten seconds. “I love you,” he whispers in Changmin’s ear.
Seven seconds. He pulls away.
Five. Gets up.
Four. Walks backwards out of the room, eyes fixed on Changmin’s face, watches a tear roll down the younger man’s cheek.
“Yunho?” Changmin whispers.
Two.
“Yunho?”
One.
The world suddenly turns off like a switch was flicked. Yunho can still see the image of Changmin sitting on the bed in the back of his brain, can still hear his name being called, and he knows he’ll never be able to answer again.
If he had known it was going to end like this, he would have kissed Changmin sooner.
---
“How’d it go?” Jaejoong asks, finding Yunho sitting by himself in utter darkness. He snaps his fingers and all the black washes over with a comforting coral color, one lonely, crappy elevator standing in the middle of vast emptiness.
“Who’re you?” Yunho asks. His voice is dead. He feels dead. He is dead.
“Kim Jaejoong. Angel or something.”
“Where’s Yoochun?”
“Ah...yeah...I kinda overslept earlier,” Jaejoong says, laughing sheepishly. “He covered for me.”
Yunho doesn’t respond. He holds his palms clasped to his heart, trying to keep the warmth from seeping out anymore.
“Let’s go,” Jaejoong says gently, pulling Yunho up by the elbow. “I know it’s hard to let go. You really shouldn’t have taken your twenty-seven minutes.”
“That’s what Yoochun told me.”
“Well, for good reason,” Jaejoong says, eye twitching, jabbing the up button on the elevator. “It used to be an hour, you know! A whole hour! I had an hour. I went to say goodbye to Yoochun and somehow, in that hour, he managed to convince himself that it was worth it to follow me.”
“...You...he...”
“Uh huhn,” Jaejoong says, clearly unimpressed, “that stupid idiot pulled a gun on himself right after my hour was over. So of course they shortened it to twenty-seven minutes in case anyone else decided to do the same. ” They step into the elevator. A pleasant song comes on and Jaejoong presses one button out of about a billion. “Sorry if you felt like it wasn’t enough time to say goodbye. Yoochun’s...heart was in the right place, I guess.”
“Why isn’t he in eternal Hell then?” The elevator starts and Yunho feels them floating upwards.
“You’ll get used to the concept sooner or later, but there isn’t any capital Hell or Heaven or something. You should stop saying it like that.”
“What?” Yunho asks. Nothing would really surprise him at this point.
“Basically, depending on who you are and what you’ve done in your life, you get to live out your afterlife in the corresponding kind of lifestyle you deserve. Like you, you’re on the...one-hundred twenty-third floor. That’s pretty decent!”
“And...what did Yoochun get?”
“He’s on the ninety-ninth. The nine-series floors are craaaaazy.”
“How is he being punished?”
“He’s not.”
“What?” Yunho asks again.
“Well...he really shouldn’t have killed himself, because you’re given life and freedom for free, and taking that from yourself isn’t cool. I suppose that it’s nice when we get into the same elevator and I get to press a button higher than his.” Jaejoong grins like a little boy. “It’s so satisfying when my floor’s higher.”
“But...why isn’t he punished?”
“Why would he be punished for unquestioningly loving me like an idiot?” Jaejoong asks with a laugh, looking at Yunho like he’s a bit stupid, and Yunho realizes with a laugh of his own how stupid of a notion it was.
When the elevator dings open, Jaejoong leads Yunho out to a completely normal-looking neighbourhood. Built on clouds, of course. A little girl holding a bunch of red, heart-shaped cloud balloons hands him one as he passes.
“Welcome home, for now,” Jaejoong says, and Yunho walks into his new house with no questions asked, hoping there’s a furnished bedroom in there.
---
Changmin sits on the bed for another minute and a half, feeling cold swallow him whole now that Yunho’s no longer in the room. He’s alone, he’s terrified, he’s literally in tears.
He opens his eyes with hesitation to find the bedroom door still closed. He hadn’t even heard Yunho open and close it. Hell, he still couldn’t get over Yunho telling him that he lov-
“Changmin!” Junsu screams, eyes wild with panic, bursting through the door. “Changmin! I found you- oh my god, Changmin-”
“Junsu-hyung!” Changmin says in surprise, swiping at his eyes and standing to go to the nearly hysterical older man, catching him mid-fall. “Junsu, what-”
“There’s been an accident,” Junsu sobs, clutching at him, “it’s, I’m so sorry- Changmin- we shouldn’t have made him go, we should’ve-” Any further words disintegrate into sobs and Changmin feels the world go bleach-burned bright.
He grabs the phone still clutched in Junsu’s hand and brings it to his own ear. It’s Yunho’s little sister, sobbing uncontrollably, calling for her older brother.
Changmin sinks to the floor with Junsu sobbing in his arms. He doesn’t feel anything except numb.
---
Yunho wakes up on a bed of clouds, feeling even worse than he did earlier. Jaejoong’s sitting on his bedside like a creeper and smiling at him like everything isn’t fucked up and wrong, like he didn’t lose his heart back in the world of the living.
“You missed your big day!” Jaejoong says brightly.
“My birthday?” Yunho deadpans.
“No, your funeral! Everyone went!”
“...What.”
“You get to go back once to check in on the real world,” Jaejoong explains, “and most people decide to go to their own funeral to see how many people showed and just who exactly showed up.”
“Didn’t I just die...yesterday?”
“Time here and time there’s not exactly...the same.”
“...I...see.”
“Wanna go back now?”
“What day is it now?”
“Uh...well, you’re buried? And you have a nice headstone?”
“Didn’t you get lessons in being an angel at all?” Yunho asks. He knows he shouldn’t be taking his frustrations out on Jaejoong but the angel could be a little more...sensitive.
“Hey, I’m closer to a reaper than an angel if you want to get technical,” Jaejoong frowns, poking Yunho in the cheek. “I’m just awesome and nice. And since you’re wondering, yes, Shim Changmin went.”
“What, you read minds now?”
“No, it’s written all over your face.”
“Did he cry?” Yunho asks gently, looking down at his lap. His cloud blanket suddenly feels suffocating but he doesn’t kick it off.
“No.”
“Good,” Yunho says with a soft smile, “he never cries about anything. I’m glad he didn’t.”
---
He takes up Jaejoong’s offer after all. It’s hard to deny yourself something like one last trip back to the world you lived your life in, where everyone you love is still breathing and trying to make it through life the best they know how. Yunho makes an extremely short mental checklist of his dead friends and relatives to hunt down later.
Jaejoong brings him down, out of the place that’s sort of heaven and hell but not, down to the real world. He sees his family suffering in grief, he cries, he sees a lot of his friends mourning, he feels bad. He sees the rest of the world carrying on all the same.
He sees Junsu talking on the phone, talking to someone else about Changmin, how the younger man still hasn’t cried yet and that’s worrisome. Yunho imagines that Hyukjae’s on the other end but his mind focuses in on Changmin’s name.
Jaejoong leaves him alone as soon as they get to the cemetery. “Just call me when you’re ready,” he says, smiling encouragingly, turning and vanishing into thin air.
Yunho wanders the rows and rows of dead people. He memorizes the names of a few interesting sounding ones to look up once he goes back to...his new home. He almost can’t believe it when he looks up to find Changmin sitting by himself in front of his grave, on the grass, staring lifelessly ahead.
Words escape him and they’re useless anyway. It’s not like Changmin would even know he’s there. So instead, Yunho goes to sit by Changmin’s side, tips his head sideways to rest on Changmin’s shoulder, winds an arm around Changmin’s waist, and closes his eyes.
---
Changmin stares at Yunho’s grave marker. He’s read the epitaph hundreds of times already, has sat in this exact place for the last week, day after day, refusing to go home until long after the sun sets.
And then suddenly, it’s like he can feel Yunho around him. His heart viciously starts tearing itself to pieces with no warning at all as the older man’s presence surrounds him like a warm blanket.
A sob comes ugly and broken from deep inside his chest. “Yunho,” he whispers, clenching his fists because there’s no Yunho to hold on to anymore, wishing he didn’t feel like the other man was somehow still there. “Yunho!” he calls out, repeating the name to a whimper, looking around wildly, then back at the headstone, curling in on himself with the force of his sobs.
He’s never felt so alone. He’s never felt such pain. He’s never cried like this. He doesn’t care about any of it.
“Just come back!” Changmin cries, choking on his words, tears running down his face. The words are twisted and horrible like his voice, like his expression, like his heart. “Come back to me, just come back!”
He almost believes he can feel Yunho holding him when he closes his eyes. It’s the worst kind of torture he’s ever felt. “It’s not fair,” he says in a small, childish voice, tears plopping fat and round onto his hands and pants. “You didn’t even let me.”
Changmin looks up and can hear that whisper in his ear, I love you, Yunho had told him between kisses.
“You didn’t even let me.”
---