John 4:18
Title: John 4:18
Authors: butterflyweb and rawthornewrites
Genre: AU
Rating: Hard R
Pairing: MinSu
Summary: There is no fear in love.
The frayed couch sheds fluff under his fingers, possibly because Changmin's holding on for dear life to a yard sale acquisition that has seen more years than its current owners. It's his only grasp on reality at present. Nothing much else registers between the images being paraded on TV and the spring that's carved a hole into the upholstery to poke him in the thigh - not even the sound of the front door.
"Hey, I'm home!" calls a cheerful voice. Always cheerful, even as the world is ending. If he could move, if he could speak, he'd say that's what he loves about him. Instead fingernails dig in harder, the torn edge of one catching on a stray thread and tugging.
"Hi," he croaks quietly, finally, words slipping around the fingers pressed to his mouth.
The couch dips beside him, a thin form pressed close to his shoulder. "What's this?"
Junsu is warm and loud, breaths lifting a faded Gay Alliance logo on his chest. Up and down. Up. And down.
"It's downtown," Changmin tells him, even if it's not answering the question.
Fingertips slip into his mouth, biting viciously at the skin, nails already down to a quick. A warm hand pulls them away, fingers winding with his own.
"Stop that," Junu tells him, automatic, eyes fixed on the television as the words begin to filter in.
"Hundreds dead at a subway station in... Thousands wounded... A rush hour climax... Terrorists are being blamed... The square, a prominent spot for the local gay and lesbian community..." The newscasters trip over their words. Teleprompters malfunction.
And all the while Changmin sits with the couch spring digging into his thigh and Junsu's fingers clutching his.
"Shit..." the other man sighs, at length. "And I was going to go by there after work."
"It's been on all day," Changmin whispers numbly, hand moving to return to his mouth, held fast by Junsu. "They just keep showing it over and over again..."
Junsu squeezes hard.
"We should turn it off." He makes no move to do so.
You can't turn off reality.
*
They are in school when it happens. It's accidental; an event outside of their control and their upbringing but unavoidable all the same. One minute they're best friends, trading dirty jokes about idiosyncratic teachers like boys do, and the next Junsu's hand is on his thigh and it isn't a mistake.
Changmin swallows hard. "Junsu.."
The older boy looks at him, caramel-colored bangs falling into his eyes, teeth worrying the corner of a plump lower lip. He slides his hand up a little further, testing unknown waters.
"Is this okay?" he asks, voice hushed, as if someone will overhear. Changmin likes to pretend the possibility is minute.
Another hard swallow and against his better judgment, he nods, not entirely sure what he's agreeing to. Junsu is his friend and he's a boy. It doesn't take a genius to grasp why this is harder than it should be.
He doesn't have soft curves and he doesn't call him 'oppa'. It's strange, but Changmin doesn't want him to.
"Changmin?" Uncertainty floods the other boy's voice and it snaps Changmin out of his reverie. Junsu sits back, the brush of fabric audible as the other boy's fingertips slip over denim.
"No, wait--"
Changmin catches his hand, clutching hard. It's a little desperate and his hold is a little shaky but he can't afford to relax it for fear Junsu might get the wrong idea.
"Wait," he tells him. "Just... wait."
The fingers wrapped in his fist twine like branches with his own.
Changmin swallows thickly, keeping his head down, hair falling into his face.
"I....I didn't mind. I didn't mind you doing....that."
Junsu's cheeks flush a little. "Yeah?"
Changmin smiles shakily. "Really."
Somewhere along the way, there is a kiss, teeth banging together and tongues too wet over chapped lips. Somewhere along the way, Junsu says 'I like you' and Changmin says it right back.
*
They don't have a bed yet, so they sleep on the floor, but sleeping bags and no pillows are ten times better than a warm bed in his parents' house. At least here they can be who they want to be, even if it is in an empty house with no electricity.
"We'll get one of those big couches," Junsu murmurs into his shoulder. "And we'll put it right there. In front of the TV."
"We don't have a TV," he teases, a smile tugging at his lips.
A childish grin, sharp teeth biting at his collarbone. "Well, then we'll get one of those, too. And a huge bed so that one of us doesn't fall off when we get....adventurous."
Changmin laughs, loud and hitching, the sound echoing off the walls.
He holds him a little tighter, legs wrapped around a thin waist and isn't this adventure enough? Living on their own, no jobs, no future and no one to help them.
"And we'll get a claw footed tub in the bathroom so we can soak up in lavender bubbles," Junsu goes on, daydreaming for all he's worth. His chin is sharp on Changmin's chest when he looks up. "What would you like? I'll let you decorate a little, too."
"Oh, will you?" Changmin grins, pecking an awkward kiss on his forehead. "Hmm. I want...art on the walls. My parent's house...all that beige...it felt like a prison. It was a prison. I don't want our home to be like that."
Junsu nods, poking his chin into Changmin's ribs and it tickles as much as it makes him wince.
"Maybe I'll start painting again," he muses. "Maybe I'll paint you nude and put you up on the wall. It would be very decadent, wouldn't it?"
Changmin gives him a half-smile, fingers combing through the other man's hair. "Pervert. But you should paint. We could hang a big one right there." He points to a wide wall. "Or you could paint the wall. Like a mural."
"Or I could paint you," Junsu giggles, unshaken. He leans into Changmin's hand and sometimes it's like he doesn't realize the world they're living in. Like he doesn't care.
Changmin kisses his left eyebrow and mutters something useless like I love you.
Junsu finds his hand inside the sleeping bag, winding their fingers together. He's always loved to hold hands, warm palms pressed together, fingers tangled loose or tight. He never cared when palms got sweaty, always laughing and forcing Changmin to dodge obstacles that might part them.
He makes Changmin's heart so full sometimes he can hardly stand it. And one day, he thinks he won't be able to.
*
They can hear the rally through the cracked bedroom window as they make love. It's summer and Sunday and the traffic is too slow to cover the chants of an angry mob. Like a sick sort of background music, it carries over into the room, seeping between sweat-slick bodies.
"Changmin--" It's harsh and wet and dirty in his ear and his hips strain upwards, fingers digging into the mattress.
One knee is drawn up, foot flat on the mattress, holding Junsu in place as he digs his nails into his shoulder. "Harder--"
Harder go the chants, voices of men and women and children yelling something that might as well be Sieg Heil but isn't. It would be unoriginal.
Changmin tries to block them out, to hear Junsu's moans instead and almost makes it. Almost gets them there. But his rhythm falters and his thrusts turn erratic, body curving into the other man's.
"Don't stop," his lover breathes.
"Won't. Won't stop," Changmin breathes, hiding his face against the other man's shoulder, feeling his eyes sting.
It's closing in around them, like water on fours sides of paper thin walls, pushing them in till they burst. He can feel the flood lapping at the foot of their bed. Drives hard, as if it'll keep them safe. As if they're safe here.
Horns sound somewhere in the distance, like a battle-cry of sorts and Changmin feels it down to his bones, kindling the flame that died when he left home. It flares up again, that old hurt, that old fear, and he falters, grasping at the sheets for answers.
Junsu shakes in his arms and it's not all arousal, but that's okay. That's okay.
"I love you," Changmin tells him over the roar, over the hate that filters in through their bedroom window, over the hisses and spits of a cracked damn about to give.
"Shut up," Junsu sobs, holding him tighter. "Don't tell me that. You don't need to tell me that."
"I love you," he repeats, desperate, eyes closed.
The world doesn't end with a scream or a thousand, but it stops to listen.
*
The eviction notices pile up in the trashcan. They're illegal, alright, but they're as good as the real thing and they all say the same thing: you're not wanted here.
Changmin crumples up the latest with shaking fists. It doesn't make the bin, instead falling to the wayside on the kitchen floor. The old bat can pick it up herself, he thinks. She can rub her face in them once they're gone - and no doubt she will.
He blinks hard against the pressure in his eyes, feet sinking into the faded carpet. Follows the speckled baseboard up to the sprawling mural that covers the third wall, watches with a lump the size of a softball in his throat as Junsu runs his fingers over a broad stroke.
The absence of a smile on his lover's face feels like a physical pain. It's wrong. Junsu has always smiled. Always.
A few meager boxes sit packed in the middle of the floor, waiting for a new home. Changmin swipes angrily at his eyes. This was supposed to be their dream.
The floor creaks. Junsu meets his eyes and his own are full of shadows and fog. "Ready to go?" he asks, soft like he did when they were together the first time. Is this okay.
No, Changmin thinks. No, it's really not.
He nods instead, arms folded over his chest. "I'll get us a taxi." There's no way they can struggle through public with all those boxes. With all their worldly possessions, like gypsies. Nomads.
Junsu's lips go tight, shoulders tense and straight.
"Where are we going to go? Changmin....where the fuck are we going to go?"
Changmin looks away, to the open door and the road.
"We'll figure something out." Because there are others like them. Because they're not cockroaches to be exterminated out of sight, whatever political dogma may say.
There will be elections again in four years. There will be another chance for them.
His head hurts with the lie. "Come on," he tells his lover, his best friend, his spouse - who just happens to be a man. And for that, they're losing everything.
"Let's go."
*
All the have to call their own is a cot at the end of the row and whatever clothes and necessities they can fit beneath it. Their rings are the only things of value that they leave unlocked, experience having made them wiser.
Changmin clutches two mugs full of watered-down tea, weaving through rows and rows of beds, head down and eyes ahead. There's no one left to trust anymore.
Not the mother and daughter who share the cot to their right and who lent them a toothbrush last night, nor the old man with the glass eye on the cot to their left, who quotes the Bible all the time. Changmin tells himself he doesn't judge, but he doesn't know what those verses mean and if they're addressed to him.
Out of habit, he makes a point to avoid his gaze as he sits beside Junsu's warm body on the bed.
"Here," he smiles, holding out a cup. The one that isn't chipped around the rim.
"Thanks," the other man replies quietly, circles dark under his eyes. hair limp and hanging around his face. Changmin slides an arm around his waist. Holds him close.
Nearly drops the cup in shock when a shadow looms over them.
Long fingers, an artist's fingers, tug down a ratty beanie. "Have you seen Yoohwan?" Handsome features are lined in stress, eyes dark with long hours and sleepless nights.
The question's always the same.
"I need to find him. We must have gotten seperated. Have you seen him?"
Changmin feels his heart break a little more, like it does every time he has to shake his head and say "sorry, no, I haven't. Maybe someone else has seen him."
Maybe he's been taken.
He holds Junsu a little tighter at the thought. The rumors are starting to sound more and more like reality each day.
Across from them, the man with the glass eye turned his split tongue in their direction. "There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love."
Junsu grips Changmin's hand hard.
"Tell him hyung's looking for him," the thin man whispers, arms around himself. Starts to wander away. "Tell him hyung is looking for him."
They watch him go, one madman among madmen, and hold each other tighter.
*
The cold bites into his skin through the metal and the concrete, silence more deafening than his own screams during interrogation. It's Room 101 and these are his rats. This silence.
Even the toilet is silent, no matter how many times he tries flushing it.
He no longer feels the stench or see the rat-sized cracks in the walls. He no longer counts the days with scratch marks on the floor.
He lies in the middle of a cold floor, fingertips bleeding where he worries them with his teeth. Like a caged animal chewing at its own foot. Eyes stare into the darkness, blank and unseeing and he thinks he's going mad. Has gone. Past tense, present, it's all the same here.
His mind is drifting slowly. It's easier that way.
It means he doesn't have to think about - worry about - care about - what happens to himself. To Junsu. Means he's free to face his own death and his God and spit blood back at both. It's an adequate response. The gift of water from a man starved for it.
He laughs hollow and hoarse, all by himself like a nutjob in an asylum.
It's not that far from the truth and the laughs only grow louder when he feels warmth on his cheeks. He turns his face into the dirty floor, pounding at it with bleeding fists.
"Su.." he whispers into the dark, and hits again, hard, to punish himself.
There is no fear in love, the old man said. John 4:18. But there is anger.
*
Junsu gets a job waiting tables for a little while and they make enough money to buy a night in a proper hotel, with proper rooms and walls and no bathroom queues. It's not the Hilton, but it's the bet they've had in weeks and they use their time there sparingly.
They haven't been together in two months. They haven't felt each other's bodies since winter rolled in and cautious touches under the covers became impossible. As infallible as memory can be, Changmin almost wishes it didn't interfere. He doesn't want to remember that Junsu's cheeks were fuller. That his ribs didn't show.
That's knowledge from the Before.
They live in the After, now.
Changmin sits against the headboard, the wood digging into his back, hands tight on thin hips. Junsu's hands are locking behind his neck, staring at him with half-lidded eyes. His throat is tight, lips parted around soft noises.
"Junsu..."
"Mmm?" His lover doesn't talk much anymore. There isn't much to say.
His hips roll forward and back lazily because there is no rush, not anymore. No jobs, no deadlines. No dinner dates with friends.
Changmin kisses his mouth in lieu of speech.
He wants to tell him so many things. But he doesn't have the energy, not anymore, and so he just holds onto him. Just kisses him and loves him with hands and mouth and touch because he knows it's all he has to give.
And when Junsu lets go, his head back and his chest heaving, he holds him with hands over his spine, feeling the tremors in his lover's body down to his core. He keeps them there, a happy thought for darker days to come.
"Changmin..." That's all it takes; his name, sobbed more so than moaned through chapped lips and he follows suit, a little cry stuck in his throat.
They lie close together in the aftermath, Changmin's hand at the small of Junsu's back, foreheads pressed together. He thinks of days in the summer, when they would lie out in the baseball field where the grass was too high, Junsu's head on his shoulder. Thinks of the shelter, of hollow-eyed men, and silent women and the shadow that hovers over them all.
He knows they'll pay for this, this one more minute of closeness they share, and the thought only makes him hold Junsu tighter.
He won't give him up.
*
"Have you seen Junsu?" The words like sandpaper in his mouth, Changmin forces them out, projects them louder and louder with each shaking head that tells him no, sorry. Maybe someone else.
He wanders as if lost, teeth biting into his fingers, feet shuffling over concrete. Approaches a kind-looking mad with a strong jaw and hollow cheeks.
"Have you seen him? I can't find him anywhere...have you seen him?" Clutches at the man's shirtsleeve only to be shaken off and told to get lost. Most people tell him to get lost. He brings bad luck. They all do.
The rejects. The undesirables.
He stands in the middle of a crowded room, his feet sinking into cold concrete and eyes leaking water but nobody sees him and he sees no one.
"Junsu!" he yells and yells until breath catches in his throat and reality sinks in.
Maybe someone else has seen him.
Maybe he's been taken.
He falls, knees cracking on the concrete, but he doesn't feel it, doesn't hear it over rushing breaths and the sick thud of his own heart.
Taken. Taken. Taken from him, taken away, taken by them.
*
His ring sits on the counter top, shiny and lonely under neon lights. It clashes with the grimy mirror and the hairs in the sink, but this is as good as it gets. As close as it gets.
Changmin stares down at the silver band and the things it represents. Love. Loyalty. Meaningless words now because the institution has been rendered meaningless by a government people were bullied into electing.
Fear is what convinced them and fear is what they get now for breakfast and lunch and dinner. Fear à la mode.
He sits in the tub, knees drawn up to his chin and waits.
It's only a matter of time.
*
He doesn't remember if he fought. He doesn't remember a lot of things, on his knees with his head in a bucket and water crawling like a swarm of spiders into his lungs. He screams and it's swallowed again and again until all he can remember is the sweetness of the air he craves.
They drag him up, cold, cruel fingers clutching his shoulder, digging into his jaw. They shoot questions that he doesn't know the answers to, that he never knew the answers to and he understands enough to catch on to the pretense.
The schoolyard bullies never needed a reason.
Authors: butterflyweb and rawthornewrites
Genre: AU
Rating: Hard R
Pairing: MinSu
Summary: There is no fear in love.
The frayed couch sheds fluff under his fingers, possibly because Changmin's holding on for dear life to a yard sale acquisition that has seen more years than its current owners. It's his only grasp on reality at present. Nothing much else registers between the images being paraded on TV and the spring that's carved a hole into the upholstery to poke him in the thigh - not even the sound of the front door.
"Hey, I'm home!" calls a cheerful voice. Always cheerful, even as the world is ending. If he could move, if he could speak, he'd say that's what he loves about him. Instead fingernails dig in harder, the torn edge of one catching on a stray thread and tugging.
"Hi," he croaks quietly, finally, words slipping around the fingers pressed to his mouth.
The couch dips beside him, a thin form pressed close to his shoulder. "What's this?"
Junsu is warm and loud, breaths lifting a faded Gay Alliance logo on his chest. Up and down. Up. And down.
"It's downtown," Changmin tells him, even if it's not answering the question.
Fingertips slip into his mouth, biting viciously at the skin, nails already down to a quick. A warm hand pulls them away, fingers winding with his own.
"Stop that," Junu tells him, automatic, eyes fixed on the television as the words begin to filter in.
"Hundreds dead at a subway station in... Thousands wounded... A rush hour climax... Terrorists are being blamed... The square, a prominent spot for the local gay and lesbian community..." The newscasters trip over their words. Teleprompters malfunction.
And all the while Changmin sits with the couch spring digging into his thigh and Junsu's fingers clutching his.
"Shit..." the other man sighs, at length. "And I was going to go by there after work."
"It's been on all day," Changmin whispers numbly, hand moving to return to his mouth, held fast by Junsu. "They just keep showing it over and over again..."
Junsu squeezes hard.
"We should turn it off." He makes no move to do so.
You can't turn off reality.
*
They are in school when it happens. It's accidental; an event outside of their control and their upbringing but unavoidable all the same. One minute they're best friends, trading dirty jokes about idiosyncratic teachers like boys do, and the next Junsu's hand is on his thigh and it isn't a mistake.
Changmin swallows hard. "Junsu.."
The older boy looks at him, caramel-colored bangs falling into his eyes, teeth worrying the corner of a plump lower lip. He slides his hand up a little further, testing unknown waters.
"Is this okay?" he asks, voice hushed, as if someone will overhear. Changmin likes to pretend the possibility is minute.
Another hard swallow and against his better judgment, he nods, not entirely sure what he's agreeing to. Junsu is his friend and he's a boy. It doesn't take a genius to grasp why this is harder than it should be.
He doesn't have soft curves and he doesn't call him 'oppa'. It's strange, but Changmin doesn't want him to.
"Changmin?" Uncertainty floods the other boy's voice and it snaps Changmin out of his reverie. Junsu sits back, the brush of fabric audible as the other boy's fingertips slip over denim.
"No, wait--"
Changmin catches his hand, clutching hard. It's a little desperate and his hold is a little shaky but he can't afford to relax it for fear Junsu might get the wrong idea.
"Wait," he tells him. "Just... wait."
The fingers wrapped in his fist twine like branches with his own.
Changmin swallows thickly, keeping his head down, hair falling into his face.
"I....I didn't mind. I didn't mind you doing....that."
Junsu's cheeks flush a little. "Yeah?"
Changmin smiles shakily. "Really."
Somewhere along the way, there is a kiss, teeth banging together and tongues too wet over chapped lips. Somewhere along the way, Junsu says 'I like you' and Changmin says it right back.
*
They don't have a bed yet, so they sleep on the floor, but sleeping bags and no pillows are ten times better than a warm bed in his parents' house. At least here they can be who they want to be, even if it is in an empty house with no electricity.
"We'll get one of those big couches," Junsu murmurs into his shoulder. "And we'll put it right there. In front of the TV."
"We don't have a TV," he teases, a smile tugging at his lips.
A childish grin, sharp teeth biting at his collarbone. "Well, then we'll get one of those, too. And a huge bed so that one of us doesn't fall off when we get....adventurous."
Changmin laughs, loud and hitching, the sound echoing off the walls.
He holds him a little tighter, legs wrapped around a thin waist and isn't this adventure enough? Living on their own, no jobs, no future and no one to help them.
"And we'll get a claw footed tub in the bathroom so we can soak up in lavender bubbles," Junsu goes on, daydreaming for all he's worth. His chin is sharp on Changmin's chest when he looks up. "What would you like? I'll let you decorate a little, too."
"Oh, will you?" Changmin grins, pecking an awkward kiss on his forehead. "Hmm. I want...art on the walls. My parent's house...all that beige...it felt like a prison. It was a prison. I don't want our home to be like that."
Junsu nods, poking his chin into Changmin's ribs and it tickles as much as it makes him wince.
"Maybe I'll start painting again," he muses. "Maybe I'll paint you nude and put you up on the wall. It would be very decadent, wouldn't it?"
Changmin gives him a half-smile, fingers combing through the other man's hair. "Pervert. But you should paint. We could hang a big one right there." He points to a wide wall. "Or you could paint the wall. Like a mural."
"Or I could paint you," Junsu giggles, unshaken. He leans into Changmin's hand and sometimes it's like he doesn't realize the world they're living in. Like he doesn't care.
Changmin kisses his left eyebrow and mutters something useless like I love you.
Junsu finds his hand inside the sleeping bag, winding their fingers together. He's always loved to hold hands, warm palms pressed together, fingers tangled loose or tight. He never cared when palms got sweaty, always laughing and forcing Changmin to dodge obstacles that might part them.
He makes Changmin's heart so full sometimes he can hardly stand it. And one day, he thinks he won't be able to.
*
They can hear the rally through the cracked bedroom window as they make love. It's summer and Sunday and the traffic is too slow to cover the chants of an angry mob. Like a sick sort of background music, it carries over into the room, seeping between sweat-slick bodies.
"Changmin--" It's harsh and wet and dirty in his ear and his hips strain upwards, fingers digging into the mattress.
One knee is drawn up, foot flat on the mattress, holding Junsu in place as he digs his nails into his shoulder. "Harder--"
Harder go the chants, voices of men and women and children yelling something that might as well be Sieg Heil but isn't. It would be unoriginal.
Changmin tries to block them out, to hear Junsu's moans instead and almost makes it. Almost gets them there. But his rhythm falters and his thrusts turn erratic, body curving into the other man's.
"Don't stop," his lover breathes.
"Won't. Won't stop," Changmin breathes, hiding his face against the other man's shoulder, feeling his eyes sting.
It's closing in around them, like water on fours sides of paper thin walls, pushing them in till they burst. He can feel the flood lapping at the foot of their bed. Drives hard, as if it'll keep them safe. As if they're safe here.
Horns sound somewhere in the distance, like a battle-cry of sorts and Changmin feels it down to his bones, kindling the flame that died when he left home. It flares up again, that old hurt, that old fear, and he falters, grasping at the sheets for answers.
Junsu shakes in his arms and it's not all arousal, but that's okay. That's okay.
"I love you," Changmin tells him over the roar, over the hate that filters in through their bedroom window, over the hisses and spits of a cracked damn about to give.
"Shut up," Junsu sobs, holding him tighter. "Don't tell me that. You don't need to tell me that."
"I love you," he repeats, desperate, eyes closed.
The world doesn't end with a scream or a thousand, but it stops to listen.
*
The eviction notices pile up in the trashcan. They're illegal, alright, but they're as good as the real thing and they all say the same thing: you're not wanted here.
Changmin crumples up the latest with shaking fists. It doesn't make the bin, instead falling to the wayside on the kitchen floor. The old bat can pick it up herself, he thinks. She can rub her face in them once they're gone - and no doubt she will.
He blinks hard against the pressure in his eyes, feet sinking into the faded carpet. Follows the speckled baseboard up to the sprawling mural that covers the third wall, watches with a lump the size of a softball in his throat as Junsu runs his fingers over a broad stroke.
The absence of a smile on his lover's face feels like a physical pain. It's wrong. Junsu has always smiled. Always.
A few meager boxes sit packed in the middle of the floor, waiting for a new home. Changmin swipes angrily at his eyes. This was supposed to be their dream.
The floor creaks. Junsu meets his eyes and his own are full of shadows and fog. "Ready to go?" he asks, soft like he did when they were together the first time. Is this okay.
No, Changmin thinks. No, it's really not.
He nods instead, arms folded over his chest. "I'll get us a taxi." There's no way they can struggle through public with all those boxes. With all their worldly possessions, like gypsies. Nomads.
Junsu's lips go tight, shoulders tense and straight.
"Where are we going to go? Changmin....where the fuck are we going to go?"
Changmin looks away, to the open door and the road.
"We'll figure something out." Because there are others like them. Because they're not cockroaches to be exterminated out of sight, whatever political dogma may say.
There will be elections again in four years. There will be another chance for them.
His head hurts with the lie. "Come on," he tells his lover, his best friend, his spouse - who just happens to be a man. And for that, they're losing everything.
"Let's go."
*
All the have to call their own is a cot at the end of the row and whatever clothes and necessities they can fit beneath it. Their rings are the only things of value that they leave unlocked, experience having made them wiser.
Changmin clutches two mugs full of watered-down tea, weaving through rows and rows of beds, head down and eyes ahead. There's no one left to trust anymore.
Not the mother and daughter who share the cot to their right and who lent them a toothbrush last night, nor the old man with the glass eye on the cot to their left, who quotes the Bible all the time. Changmin tells himself he doesn't judge, but he doesn't know what those verses mean and if they're addressed to him.
Out of habit, he makes a point to avoid his gaze as he sits beside Junsu's warm body on the bed.
"Here," he smiles, holding out a cup. The one that isn't chipped around the rim.
"Thanks," the other man replies quietly, circles dark under his eyes. hair limp and hanging around his face. Changmin slides an arm around his waist. Holds him close.
Nearly drops the cup in shock when a shadow looms over them.
Long fingers, an artist's fingers, tug down a ratty beanie. "Have you seen Yoohwan?" Handsome features are lined in stress, eyes dark with long hours and sleepless nights.
The question's always the same.
"I need to find him. We must have gotten seperated. Have you seen him?"
Changmin feels his heart break a little more, like it does every time he has to shake his head and say "sorry, no, I haven't. Maybe someone else has seen him."
Maybe he's been taken.
He holds Junsu a little tighter at the thought. The rumors are starting to sound more and more like reality each day.
Across from them, the man with the glass eye turned his split tongue in their direction. "There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love."
Junsu grips Changmin's hand hard.
"Tell him hyung's looking for him," the thin man whispers, arms around himself. Starts to wander away. "Tell him hyung is looking for him."
They watch him go, one madman among madmen, and hold each other tighter.
*
The cold bites into his skin through the metal and the concrete, silence more deafening than his own screams during interrogation. It's Room 101 and these are his rats. This silence.
Even the toilet is silent, no matter how many times he tries flushing it.
He no longer feels the stench or see the rat-sized cracks in the walls. He no longer counts the days with scratch marks on the floor.
He lies in the middle of a cold floor, fingertips bleeding where he worries them with his teeth. Like a caged animal chewing at its own foot. Eyes stare into the darkness, blank and unseeing and he thinks he's going mad. Has gone. Past tense, present, it's all the same here.
His mind is drifting slowly. It's easier that way.
It means he doesn't have to think about - worry about - care about - what happens to himself. To Junsu. Means he's free to face his own death and his God and spit blood back at both. It's an adequate response. The gift of water from a man starved for it.
He laughs hollow and hoarse, all by himself like a nutjob in an asylum.
It's not that far from the truth and the laughs only grow louder when he feels warmth on his cheeks. He turns his face into the dirty floor, pounding at it with bleeding fists.
"Su.." he whispers into the dark, and hits again, hard, to punish himself.
There is no fear in love, the old man said. John 4:18. But there is anger.
*
Junsu gets a job waiting tables for a little while and they make enough money to buy a night in a proper hotel, with proper rooms and walls and no bathroom queues. It's not the Hilton, but it's the bet they've had in weeks and they use their time there sparingly.
They haven't been together in two months. They haven't felt each other's bodies since winter rolled in and cautious touches under the covers became impossible. As infallible as memory can be, Changmin almost wishes it didn't interfere. He doesn't want to remember that Junsu's cheeks were fuller. That his ribs didn't show.
That's knowledge from the Before.
They live in the After, now.
Changmin sits against the headboard, the wood digging into his back, hands tight on thin hips. Junsu's hands are locking behind his neck, staring at him with half-lidded eyes. His throat is tight, lips parted around soft noises.
"Junsu..."
"Mmm?" His lover doesn't talk much anymore. There isn't much to say.
His hips roll forward and back lazily because there is no rush, not anymore. No jobs, no deadlines. No dinner dates with friends.
Changmin kisses his mouth in lieu of speech.
He wants to tell him so many things. But he doesn't have the energy, not anymore, and so he just holds onto him. Just kisses him and loves him with hands and mouth and touch because he knows it's all he has to give.
And when Junsu lets go, his head back and his chest heaving, he holds him with hands over his spine, feeling the tremors in his lover's body down to his core. He keeps them there, a happy thought for darker days to come.
"Changmin..." That's all it takes; his name, sobbed more so than moaned through chapped lips and he follows suit, a little cry stuck in his throat.
They lie close together in the aftermath, Changmin's hand at the small of Junsu's back, foreheads pressed together. He thinks of days in the summer, when they would lie out in the baseball field where the grass was too high, Junsu's head on his shoulder. Thinks of the shelter, of hollow-eyed men, and silent women and the shadow that hovers over them all.
He knows they'll pay for this, this one more minute of closeness they share, and the thought only makes him hold Junsu tighter.
He won't give him up.
*
"Have you seen Junsu?" The words like sandpaper in his mouth, Changmin forces them out, projects them louder and louder with each shaking head that tells him no, sorry. Maybe someone else.
He wanders as if lost, teeth biting into his fingers, feet shuffling over concrete. Approaches a kind-looking mad with a strong jaw and hollow cheeks.
"Have you seen him? I can't find him anywhere...have you seen him?" Clutches at the man's shirtsleeve only to be shaken off and told to get lost. Most people tell him to get lost. He brings bad luck. They all do.
The rejects. The undesirables.
He stands in the middle of a crowded room, his feet sinking into cold concrete and eyes leaking water but nobody sees him and he sees no one.
"Junsu!" he yells and yells until breath catches in his throat and reality sinks in.
Maybe someone else has seen him.
Maybe he's been taken.
He falls, knees cracking on the concrete, but he doesn't feel it, doesn't hear it over rushing breaths and the sick thud of his own heart.
Taken. Taken. Taken from him, taken away, taken by them.
*
His ring sits on the counter top, shiny and lonely under neon lights. It clashes with the grimy mirror and the hairs in the sink, but this is as good as it gets. As close as it gets.
Changmin stares down at the silver band and the things it represents. Love. Loyalty. Meaningless words now because the institution has been rendered meaningless by a government people were bullied into electing.
Fear is what convinced them and fear is what they get now for breakfast and lunch and dinner. Fear à la mode.
He sits in the tub, knees drawn up to his chin and waits.
It's only a matter of time.
*
He doesn't remember if he fought. He doesn't remember a lot of things, on his knees with his head in a bucket and water crawling like a swarm of spiders into his lungs. He screams and it's swallowed again and again until all he can remember is the sweetness of the air he craves.
They drag him up, cold, cruel fingers clutching his shoulder, digging into his jaw. They shoot questions that he doesn't know the answers to, that he never knew the answers to and he understands enough to catch on to the pretense.
The schoolyard bullies never needed a reason.