(2011)
all WIPs from 2011.
DAMAGE RATING
dbsk
war AU
'what do you mean, the university is shutting down?' the straps of jaejoong's bag dig into his shoulders, heavy in the heat. it’s about half past one in the afternoon. the administration office of the university is crowded with students. the air stinks of the clove cigarettes that so many of the girls like to smoke these days, clenched between white teeth and red lips.
'i mean,' the receptionist says tiredly, 'the university is closing for as long as the war goes on.'
the ceiling fan stirs jaejoong's papers on the counter, the wilted flowers by the receptionist's telephone. jaejoong catches the stale scent of potpourri as he rubs his eyes, feeling the textbooks in his bag shift. 'do we get a reimbursement?' he asks.
'fifty percent,' she says. 'come back later. we'll see what we can do.' her makeup can't hide the way her eyes and cheeks sink in, waxy. jaejoong takes the receipt and mouths the words she was too scared to say: if the war ends.
jaejoong is six months into university before they all start shutting down. the beaten up secondhand radio he keeps in the studio reports that there are too many airstrikes and blackouts to keep all the schools and shops open. no one other than soldiers are allowed in or out of the cities now; the people in the country take to the coast, waiting for overcrowded leaking boats. the ones left over start blocking up their windows and hoarding illicit outdated weapons under their beds. there isn’t much else for them to do.
jaejoong rings his mother to tell her the news. 'are you coming home?' she asks. the reception is bad, and jaejoong had had to wait almost an hour just for five minutes on the public payphone. the queue stretches for another block behind him.
'i can’t. they’ve locked the city down.' jaejoong shifts the phone to the other shoulder. 'but i thought that i might, you know, seeing as they're recruiting...'
she sighs. the sound crackles against the earpiece, white. ‘i thought you would.’
the phone tender taps jaejoong’s shoulder, rubbing his fingers. ‘one more minute,’ he says. ‘then another five thousand.’
jaejoong waves him away. ‘look, ma, i’ve got to go. i’ll send you the receipt, you can get that cashed in if the banks open. take care of yourself, okay? i’ll come and see you if i can.’
‘come back safely,’ she says.
IN ANOTHER WORLD
dbsk; ot5, jaejoong/Yoochun
In this world, Dong Bang Shin Ki never happens.
Choikang Changmin is quick to grow up. He’s the tallest of friends but not the oldest, and he’s the first to taste the bitter foam of beer and the first to put a cigarette to his lips. He’s the first to learn how to drive, scratching the left wing mirror by accident as he backs out of the drive. On weekends he takes girls out for drives down the Han River, eventually stopping by the bridge to watch the boats go past. They drink cola from glass bottles and kiss when the sun goes down, the girl turning her body so that one arm is pressed against the seat and Changmin is the one who has to close the distance.
Kim Jaejoong meets Park Yoochun just once. It’s at a party at the house of a friend of a friend. There is more alcohol than food, people passing bottles around and eating bbopgi on sticks and pajun with their fingers. The television is on but hardly anyone is watching. Jaejoong wanders down the cramped corridors, ducking his head as he presses against the wall to let a group of girls in small dresses pass. There are framed pictures on the walls, strange oil paintings of caves and dark pools of water.
Jaejoong steps out into the backyard. Mosquito lamps glow dimly in the shadows of the garden. There is a flowering wisteria by the fence. With every stray breeze, it drops purple blooms to the ground, the petals dry and browned from the heat.
-
They share a fumbling kiss, Jaejoong’s back pressed against the brick of the house. They are still warm from the afternoon sun. It is difficult to see Yoochun’s face through the darkness. He tastes like soju and the dying summer.
Jung Yunho works as a removalist. He knows how to fit a mattress through a doorway, how to unscrew the feet of a coffee table, how to pack the maximum number of picture frames into a box without a single pane of glass cracking.
Kim Jaejoong moves out of his family home and into an apartment one day. He calls the moving company Yunho works for, from a payphone at Yongsan Station because his oldest sister had been on the phone with her boyfriend and he needed a walk anyway.
The phone rings twice. It’s Yunho who picks up.
We are all familiar with the dreams that we believe, briefly, are real. When Jung Yunho wakes up one night, he is convinced for a minute that he had just been on stage, beside four other men. He remembers the ribbed grip of the microphone, the pull of the slightly too small shirt, the hot strobe light burning spots into his vision. But he’s here, in a bed beside the warm body of his wife, the moonlight cutting through their gauzy curtains and illuminating her face. He’s still here, in this apartment in the backstreets of Gangnam-gu. He’s still here, but the vividness of the dream lingers in his bones until he drifts into sleep again.
When he wakes in the morning, he does not remember the dream.
They all take the same 205J flight to Japan in the winter of 2011. Yunho is taking his wife to Nagoya. Junsu is going to see his aunt and uncle, who have lived in Japan for the last ten years. Changmin is doing an anthropologic research convention. Yoochun is joining a multinational architectural firm based in Tokyo. Jaejoong is tired of Seoul and the way Korean rolls off his tongue without any effort and yet he has nothing to say. He craves a place where he understands nothing and knows no one, where he can fumble the syllables across his tongue and carve a place for himself on foreign shores. All of them are looking for an escape.
In another world, five young men stand on the stage. Each of them takes a deep breath and finds their voice.
THE SILENCE WILL COME
dbsk; jaejoong/yunho
assassins AU
Human brutes, like other beasts, find snares and poison in the provision of life, and are allured by their appetites to their destruction.
-Jonathan Swift
Jung Yunho visits every Sunday afternoon.
Business is slowest on Sunday afternoons, Jaejoong had told him once. Yunho had raised an eyebrow and said nothing. The next time he came, it was on a wet Sunday. Rain had struck the windows of the shop as he peeled the damp coat from his shoulders and kissed Jaejoong on the couch. The smell of bitter, burning roots in the air.
Jaejoong’s shop sells traditional Korean medicine. It is tucked into a side street of Anyang that consists primarily of stationery businesses. There are a few shops that sell rice paper and a few that sell brushes made from fox and marmoset hair. One shop specialises in ink, and its dusty window displays are made up of scrolls of thick black calligraphy.
Jaejoong’s shop is situated above a subway station, on the second storey. There is only a small handwritten sign indicating its existence, taped onto the door to the stairs. The door is next to the entrance to the subway station, but hardly anyone notices it. They are watching their step as they descend towards the subway, or checking their tickets.
A bell attached to the second door at the top of the stairs rings as one enters the shop.
The shop itself is cramped with shelves and cardboard boxes of dried herbs. Behind the counter is a wall lined with wooden drawers, each carefully labelled. White steam from herbal infusions brewed in the back room winds into the shop, lingering by the ceiling and causing the polish of the wooden furniture to pucker and crack. A second-hand couch with faded upholstery sits in the corner.
On any day, one might find Jaejoong on the couch, smoking Esse Menthols. He would rise when the bell rings, placing his still burning cigarette into a silver ash tray. He would smile. And say: ‘Welcome.’
Kim Jaejoong sells traditional Korean medicine. What he also sells, in the back room amidst the clouds of white steam and smoke, is poison.
Yunho first heard of Jaejoong’s shop by reputation. He first visited to look around, saying that he was looking to purchase an ounce of sliced angelica. Jaejoong had weighed it on a set of brass scales, wrapping the angelica in a square of thin scarlet paper. ‘Will I see you again?’ he had asked, fingers tying a string around the parcel. Long, pale hands. Yunho imagined kissing his wrist bones.
He reached out and touched the parcel. Angelica. The name of an ex-girlfriend, and a sweet, musky taste that lays thick and hungry on your tongue.
‘Yes,’ he said.
The second time he visited Jaejoong, he asked for belladonna.
Jaejoong had stiffened. Yunho didn’t miss the way his hand strayed towards the bronze knife on the counter top. For cutting roots, Jaejoong had explained during Yunho’s last visit. Unusually sharp knife for cutting roots, Yunho had said, and Jaejoong had not answered.
Jaejoong said: ‘It doesn’t come cheap.’
Yunho leaned in closer. ‘Cost isn’t an issue,’ he said.
Jaejoong’s fingertips rested gently on the handle of the knife.
‘Wait here,’ he said.
Like the angelica, the belladonna was wrapped in a square of red paper and tied with string. Jaejoong cut the string with the brass knife. Yunho paid in cash, which went not into the register but into a hidden box beneath it. As he picked up the package, he was surprised by the lightness of it; inside, there was enough poison to kill a man within the hour.
Jaejoong asked: ‘Who is it going to be?’
Yunho turned to leave. ‘Read the papers and see,’ he said.
Poison kills quietly. When Yunho visited the shop again, there was a folded newspaper on the small table by the couch. Yunho knows what the headlines on the front page will read: rising politician dead, autopsy in process. Half an Esse Menthol burned in the silver ashtray. Jaejoong was not in the shop, but Yunho could hear him moving around the back room, and the sound of a kettle whistling. A hiss of steam, and Jaejoong emerged, dusting his hands.
‘Back again,’ he said.
‘I brought you a gift,’ said Yunho.
The gift was a knife. The shape of it was clear through the brown wrapping paper. It was, simultaneously, an invitation and a warning. Just as the moon invites the dawn, so too does it warn of the chill of the night. The knife sat on the countertop between two quiet men. Jaejoong took the invitation and leaned over the knife to cup Yunho’s jaw in the palm of his hand. The same fingers that had cut, dried and crushed a belladonna flower dragged gently down Yunho’s cheek.
Neither man would thank the other for this.
The first time they fuck, it is dusk on a Sunday and as Yunho pulls the shirt from Jaejoong’s body he discovers the tattoo.
It is a flowering plant on Jaejoong’s left hip bone. In the dimness it is difficult to make out the details. He runs a thumb over the inked petals. Jaejoong’s skin is pale and warm beneath the flowers. ‘What is it?’ he asks.
Through the darkness, there is a flash of teeth, a smile. ‘It’s monkshood,’ he says. ‘It’ll kill you within the hour.’
‘If you were investigated, this would ruin you.’
Jaejoong laughs quietly and leans up to kiss his mouth. When Yunho pulls away, it’s to slide down and press his lips to the flowers.
PUSHING DAISIES
dbsk
titular AU
a/n i strongly recommend watching pushing daisies. i enjoyed it thoroughly and wanted to write dbsk into its universe.
The future speeds towards us like a car towards deer on the highway. There is no time to run from it. There is nothing to do but look into the headlights and wait for impact.
Kim Jaejoong is precisely ten years and ten days old when he discovers that he can bring the dead to life.
He is running down the street. He is running because he is chasing his dog, Bokshil. The street is lined with garages and driveways. It is snowing lightly, but the snow already on the ground is ankle deep. It is perhaps five p.m and the little light of a Seoul winter is quickly fading. Bokshil’s leash drags through the snow behind him, cutting a line through his two rows of paw prints.
Jaejoong is breathing hard. The air is harsh on his tongue. His lungs and legs ache, but he keeps running and trying to call out Bokshil’s name. He swallows the word when Bokshil races across a side street just as a car approaches. There is a sick thud, the dog hits the ground, the car drives away. Jaejoong is close enough to see all of this, but the time it takes for him to reach the dog is enough for him to know that it is dead. He skids to a halt, his knees hit the ground and he puts his hands on the dog. There is a spark. The dog jumps as though electrified, and suddenly he is alive again.
This is how it begins.
AFTER THE DARK
infinite
apocalypse AU
warning for character death
a/n the concept of this was a post-apocalypse world in which infinite live in a lighthouse
They come to him, in the low light. There are six of them: Dongwoo, Sungjong, Sungyeol, Hoya, Myungsoo, Woohyun. They come as ghosts, the sulphur bleeding into their skin. Their shadows are thick and shiver across the broken asphalt of the cracked street.
When dawn arrives, peeling across the horizon and the broken teeth of the skyscrapers, Sunggyu turns off the lights. He turns to the six boys in the room. They had spent the night waiting for others, but there had been no one else. This is the ghost city. Here are the ghosts.
Sunggyu takes a deep breath.
Sunggyu leans over the railings to look at the water. The horizon is unbroken as always. The others have stopped expecting ships when they look at it. He's the only one who still comes up here to watch for them. He keeps the light burning, biting his lip when he thinks of how much power it uses. There is only one generator, and the nights are growing colder. None of them have a glove between them, so he buries his hands deep in his pockets. The wind hisses around him, and below, amongst the rocks, the sea writhes like a pit of snakes.
There is a sound behind him, audible over the wind. The door swings backwards, and Woohyun climbs through the opening. He holds a hand to his eyes, against the glare of the light.
'I knew a boy when I was eight,' says Woohyun.
'So did I,' says Sunggyu. 'Several classes worth.'
Woohyun allows him a smile. 'This one stole my lunch. And after school, he felt so bad about it that he bought me another one with his pocket money. And the day before I changed schools, he came into the locker room where I was packing up my gym gear. 'So you're really going,' he said. And I said yeah, I am, and he walked over and he looked right at me. I mean, really looked. Then without saying a word he walked out.'
Sunggyu asks: 'What school was this?'
'Changwon South Elementary.' Woohyun nudges Sunggyu's shoulder. 'You?'
'Changwon South Elementary,' he says.
'You're a fucking liar,' says Woohyun. But he can't help looking up into Sunggyu's face. 'You're a fucking liar,' he says again.
Sunggyu turns away from his gaze. The boy in Woohyun is clear as water. He wants to say to him: you're an idiot, you're never going to grow up, you're such a kid. Instead, he lets himself laugh: 'Yeah, I'm a fucking liar.'
Sungjong falls asleep at high noon. Woohyun joins they set aside a tin of peaches, his favourite. Whilst Sunggyu cuts the lid of the tin open with the pocket knife, Myungsoo crawls over behind him to shake Sungjong’s shoulder. ‘Hey,’ he says, ‘wake up.’
Then, quietly: 'Please, wake up.'
The knife slips. Syrup and blood spill across Sunggyu's palm; shaking, he stands and turns to where Sungjong is laid on his back.
They dig into the stony shore. It is hours before the grave is deep enough. They turn off their torches to save the batteries, working by the moonlight. Sand stings Sunggyu’s eyes. His hand hurts with every movement of the shovel, but he works steadily, ploughing through the ground. Every action feels like déjà vu. He’s already been here, in his mind. The moment Sungjong had come down with the fever, his eyes overbright, Sunggyu had begun to taste the grave dirt. He had opened the tin of peaches and feared, known, what Woohyun would when he touched Sungjong’s shoulder and the younger boy would not wake. Coward, he mouths as he digs. Coward, coward, coward. He digs and he digs, through the dirt and stone and sand until there is a space large enough to fit the shrouded shape that Sungyeol and Myungsoo carry over.
The place is high on the shore, well away from the tide. None of them can put any words together to make a semblance of ceremony. They bury the body, and leave a large, storm-ravaged rock as a marker, and walk away one by one. Sunggyu stays behind, still trying to find the words inside him. All he finds are stones, heavy stones, in the pit of his stomach and laid across his tongue. There’s nothing to say. The moon is still rising. The tide is retreating. Their friend is dead beneath the sand.
He looks up, at the receding backs of the other boys, hunched and exhausted as they return to the lighthouse. And he picks up the shovel, and follows the living.
DAMAGE RATING
dbsk
war AU
'what do you mean, the university is shutting down?' the straps of jaejoong's bag dig into his shoulders, heavy in the heat. it’s about half past one in the afternoon. the administration office of the university is crowded with students. the air stinks of the clove cigarettes that so many of the girls like to smoke these days, clenched between white teeth and red lips.
'i mean,' the receptionist says tiredly, 'the university is closing for as long as the war goes on.'
the ceiling fan stirs jaejoong's papers on the counter, the wilted flowers by the receptionist's telephone. jaejoong catches the stale scent of potpourri as he rubs his eyes, feeling the textbooks in his bag shift. 'do we get a reimbursement?' he asks.
'fifty percent,' she says. 'come back later. we'll see what we can do.' her makeup can't hide the way her eyes and cheeks sink in, waxy. jaejoong takes the receipt and mouths the words she was too scared to say: if the war ends.
jaejoong is six months into university before they all start shutting down. the beaten up secondhand radio he keeps in the studio reports that there are too many airstrikes and blackouts to keep all the schools and shops open. no one other than soldiers are allowed in or out of the cities now; the people in the country take to the coast, waiting for overcrowded leaking boats. the ones left over start blocking up their windows and hoarding illicit outdated weapons under their beds. there isn’t much else for them to do.
jaejoong rings his mother to tell her the news. 'are you coming home?' she asks. the reception is bad, and jaejoong had had to wait almost an hour just for five minutes on the public payphone. the queue stretches for another block behind him.
'i can’t. they’ve locked the city down.' jaejoong shifts the phone to the other shoulder. 'but i thought that i might, you know, seeing as they're recruiting...'
she sighs. the sound crackles against the earpiece, white. ‘i thought you would.’
the phone tender taps jaejoong’s shoulder, rubbing his fingers. ‘one more minute,’ he says. ‘then another five thousand.’
jaejoong waves him away. ‘look, ma, i’ve got to go. i’ll send you the receipt, you can get that cashed in if the banks open. take care of yourself, okay? i’ll come and see you if i can.’
‘come back safely,’ she says.
IN ANOTHER WORLD
dbsk; ot5, jaejoong/Yoochun
In this world, Dong Bang Shin Ki never happens.
Choikang Changmin is quick to grow up. He’s the tallest of friends but not the oldest, and he’s the first to taste the bitter foam of beer and the first to put a cigarette to his lips. He’s the first to learn how to drive, scratching the left wing mirror by accident as he backs out of the drive. On weekends he takes girls out for drives down the Han River, eventually stopping by the bridge to watch the boats go past. They drink cola from glass bottles and kiss when the sun goes down, the girl turning her body so that one arm is pressed against the seat and Changmin is the one who has to close the distance.
Kim Jaejoong meets Park Yoochun just once. It’s at a party at the house of a friend of a friend. There is more alcohol than food, people passing bottles around and eating bbopgi on sticks and pajun with their fingers. The television is on but hardly anyone is watching. Jaejoong wanders down the cramped corridors, ducking his head as he presses against the wall to let a group of girls in small dresses pass. There are framed pictures on the walls, strange oil paintings of caves and dark pools of water.
Jaejoong steps out into the backyard. Mosquito lamps glow dimly in the shadows of the garden. There is a flowering wisteria by the fence. With every stray breeze, it drops purple blooms to the ground, the petals dry and browned from the heat.
-
They share a fumbling kiss, Jaejoong’s back pressed against the brick of the house. They are still warm from the afternoon sun. It is difficult to see Yoochun’s face through the darkness. He tastes like soju and the dying summer.
Jung Yunho works as a removalist. He knows how to fit a mattress through a doorway, how to unscrew the feet of a coffee table, how to pack the maximum number of picture frames into a box without a single pane of glass cracking.
Kim Jaejoong moves out of his family home and into an apartment one day. He calls the moving company Yunho works for, from a payphone at Yongsan Station because his oldest sister had been on the phone with her boyfriend and he needed a walk anyway.
The phone rings twice. It’s Yunho who picks up.
We are all familiar with the dreams that we believe, briefly, are real. When Jung Yunho wakes up one night, he is convinced for a minute that he had just been on stage, beside four other men. He remembers the ribbed grip of the microphone, the pull of the slightly too small shirt, the hot strobe light burning spots into his vision. But he’s here, in a bed beside the warm body of his wife, the moonlight cutting through their gauzy curtains and illuminating her face. He’s still here, in this apartment in the backstreets of Gangnam-gu. He’s still here, but the vividness of the dream lingers in his bones until he drifts into sleep again.
When he wakes in the morning, he does not remember the dream.
They all take the same 205J flight to Japan in the winter of 2011. Yunho is taking his wife to Nagoya. Junsu is going to see his aunt and uncle, who have lived in Japan for the last ten years. Changmin is doing an anthropologic research convention. Yoochun is joining a multinational architectural firm based in Tokyo. Jaejoong is tired of Seoul and the way Korean rolls off his tongue without any effort and yet he has nothing to say. He craves a place where he understands nothing and knows no one, where he can fumble the syllables across his tongue and carve a place for himself on foreign shores. All of them are looking for an escape.
In another world, five young men stand on the stage. Each of them takes a deep breath and finds their voice.
THE SILENCE WILL COME
dbsk; jaejoong/yunho
assassins AU
Human brutes, like other beasts, find snares and poison in the provision of life, and are allured by their appetites to their destruction.
-Jonathan Swift
Jung Yunho visits every Sunday afternoon.
Business is slowest on Sunday afternoons, Jaejoong had told him once. Yunho had raised an eyebrow and said nothing. The next time he came, it was on a wet Sunday. Rain had struck the windows of the shop as he peeled the damp coat from his shoulders and kissed Jaejoong on the couch. The smell of bitter, burning roots in the air.
Jaejoong’s shop sells traditional Korean medicine. It is tucked into a side street of Anyang that consists primarily of stationery businesses. There are a few shops that sell rice paper and a few that sell brushes made from fox and marmoset hair. One shop specialises in ink, and its dusty window displays are made up of scrolls of thick black calligraphy.
Jaejoong’s shop is situated above a subway station, on the second storey. There is only a small handwritten sign indicating its existence, taped onto the door to the stairs. The door is next to the entrance to the subway station, but hardly anyone notices it. They are watching their step as they descend towards the subway, or checking their tickets.
A bell attached to the second door at the top of the stairs rings as one enters the shop.
The shop itself is cramped with shelves and cardboard boxes of dried herbs. Behind the counter is a wall lined with wooden drawers, each carefully labelled. White steam from herbal infusions brewed in the back room winds into the shop, lingering by the ceiling and causing the polish of the wooden furniture to pucker and crack. A second-hand couch with faded upholstery sits in the corner.
On any day, one might find Jaejoong on the couch, smoking Esse Menthols. He would rise when the bell rings, placing his still burning cigarette into a silver ash tray. He would smile. And say: ‘Welcome.’
Kim Jaejoong sells traditional Korean medicine. What he also sells, in the back room amidst the clouds of white steam and smoke, is poison.
Yunho first heard of Jaejoong’s shop by reputation. He first visited to look around, saying that he was looking to purchase an ounce of sliced angelica. Jaejoong had weighed it on a set of brass scales, wrapping the angelica in a square of thin scarlet paper. ‘Will I see you again?’ he had asked, fingers tying a string around the parcel. Long, pale hands. Yunho imagined kissing his wrist bones.
He reached out and touched the parcel. Angelica. The name of an ex-girlfriend, and a sweet, musky taste that lays thick and hungry on your tongue.
‘Yes,’ he said.
The second time he visited Jaejoong, he asked for belladonna.
Jaejoong had stiffened. Yunho didn’t miss the way his hand strayed towards the bronze knife on the counter top. For cutting roots, Jaejoong had explained during Yunho’s last visit. Unusually sharp knife for cutting roots, Yunho had said, and Jaejoong had not answered.
Jaejoong said: ‘It doesn’t come cheap.’
Yunho leaned in closer. ‘Cost isn’t an issue,’ he said.
Jaejoong’s fingertips rested gently on the handle of the knife.
‘Wait here,’ he said.
Like the angelica, the belladonna was wrapped in a square of red paper and tied with string. Jaejoong cut the string with the brass knife. Yunho paid in cash, which went not into the register but into a hidden box beneath it. As he picked up the package, he was surprised by the lightness of it; inside, there was enough poison to kill a man within the hour.
Jaejoong asked: ‘Who is it going to be?’
Yunho turned to leave. ‘Read the papers and see,’ he said.
Poison kills quietly. When Yunho visited the shop again, there was a folded newspaper on the small table by the couch. Yunho knows what the headlines on the front page will read: rising politician dead, autopsy in process. Half an Esse Menthol burned in the silver ashtray. Jaejoong was not in the shop, but Yunho could hear him moving around the back room, and the sound of a kettle whistling. A hiss of steam, and Jaejoong emerged, dusting his hands.
‘Back again,’ he said.
‘I brought you a gift,’ said Yunho.
The gift was a knife. The shape of it was clear through the brown wrapping paper. It was, simultaneously, an invitation and a warning. Just as the moon invites the dawn, so too does it warn of the chill of the night. The knife sat on the countertop between two quiet men. Jaejoong took the invitation and leaned over the knife to cup Yunho’s jaw in the palm of his hand. The same fingers that had cut, dried and crushed a belladonna flower dragged gently down Yunho’s cheek.
Neither man would thank the other for this.
The first time they fuck, it is dusk on a Sunday and as Yunho pulls the shirt from Jaejoong’s body he discovers the tattoo.
It is a flowering plant on Jaejoong’s left hip bone. In the dimness it is difficult to make out the details. He runs a thumb over the inked petals. Jaejoong’s skin is pale and warm beneath the flowers. ‘What is it?’ he asks.
Through the darkness, there is a flash of teeth, a smile. ‘It’s monkshood,’ he says. ‘It’ll kill you within the hour.’
‘If you were investigated, this would ruin you.’
Jaejoong laughs quietly and leans up to kiss his mouth. When Yunho pulls away, it’s to slide down and press his lips to the flowers.
PUSHING DAISIES
dbsk
titular AU
a/n i strongly recommend watching pushing daisies. i enjoyed it thoroughly and wanted to write dbsk into its universe.
The future speeds towards us like a car towards deer on the highway. There is no time to run from it. There is nothing to do but look into the headlights and wait for impact.
Kim Jaejoong is precisely ten years and ten days old when he discovers that he can bring the dead to life.
He is running down the street. He is running because he is chasing his dog, Bokshil. The street is lined with garages and driveways. It is snowing lightly, but the snow already on the ground is ankle deep. It is perhaps five p.m and the little light of a Seoul winter is quickly fading. Bokshil’s leash drags through the snow behind him, cutting a line through his two rows of paw prints.
Jaejoong is breathing hard. The air is harsh on his tongue. His lungs and legs ache, but he keeps running and trying to call out Bokshil’s name. He swallows the word when Bokshil races across a side street just as a car approaches. There is a sick thud, the dog hits the ground, the car drives away. Jaejoong is close enough to see all of this, but the time it takes for him to reach the dog is enough for him to know that it is dead. He skids to a halt, his knees hit the ground and he puts his hands on the dog. There is a spark. The dog jumps as though electrified, and suddenly he is alive again.
This is how it begins.
AFTER THE DARK
infinite
apocalypse AU
warning for character death
a/n the concept of this was a post-apocalypse world in which infinite live in a lighthouse
They come to him, in the low light. There are six of them: Dongwoo, Sungjong, Sungyeol, Hoya, Myungsoo, Woohyun. They come as ghosts, the sulphur bleeding into their skin. Their shadows are thick and shiver across the broken asphalt of the cracked street.
When dawn arrives, peeling across the horizon and the broken teeth of the skyscrapers, Sunggyu turns off the lights. He turns to the six boys in the room. They had spent the night waiting for others, but there had been no one else. This is the ghost city. Here are the ghosts.
Sunggyu takes a deep breath.
Sunggyu leans over the railings to look at the water. The horizon is unbroken as always. The others have stopped expecting ships when they look at it. He's the only one who still comes up here to watch for them. He keeps the light burning, biting his lip when he thinks of how much power it uses. There is only one generator, and the nights are growing colder. None of them have a glove between them, so he buries his hands deep in his pockets. The wind hisses around him, and below, amongst the rocks, the sea writhes like a pit of snakes.
There is a sound behind him, audible over the wind. The door swings backwards, and Woohyun climbs through the opening. He holds a hand to his eyes, against the glare of the light.
'I knew a boy when I was eight,' says Woohyun.
'So did I,' says Sunggyu. 'Several classes worth.'
Woohyun allows him a smile. 'This one stole my lunch. And after school, he felt so bad about it that he bought me another one with his pocket money. And the day before I changed schools, he came into the locker room where I was packing up my gym gear. 'So you're really going,' he said. And I said yeah, I am, and he walked over and he looked right at me. I mean, really looked. Then without saying a word he walked out.'
Sunggyu asks: 'What school was this?'
'Changwon South Elementary.' Woohyun nudges Sunggyu's shoulder. 'You?'
'Changwon South Elementary,' he says.
'You're a fucking liar,' says Woohyun. But he can't help looking up into Sunggyu's face. 'You're a fucking liar,' he says again.
Sunggyu turns away from his gaze. The boy in Woohyun is clear as water. He wants to say to him: you're an idiot, you're never going to grow up, you're such a kid. Instead, he lets himself laugh: 'Yeah, I'm a fucking liar.'
Sungjong falls asleep at high noon. Woohyun joins they set aside a tin of peaches, his favourite. Whilst Sunggyu cuts the lid of the tin open with the pocket knife, Myungsoo crawls over behind him to shake Sungjong’s shoulder. ‘Hey,’ he says, ‘wake up.’
Then, quietly: 'Please, wake up.'
The knife slips. Syrup and blood spill across Sunggyu's palm; shaking, he stands and turns to where Sungjong is laid on his back.
They dig into the stony shore. It is hours before the grave is deep enough. They turn off their torches to save the batteries, working by the moonlight. Sand stings Sunggyu’s eyes. His hand hurts with every movement of the shovel, but he works steadily, ploughing through the ground. Every action feels like déjà vu. He’s already been here, in his mind. The moment Sungjong had come down with the fever, his eyes overbright, Sunggyu had begun to taste the grave dirt. He had opened the tin of peaches and feared, known, what Woohyun would when he touched Sungjong’s shoulder and the younger boy would not wake. Coward, he mouths as he digs. Coward, coward, coward. He digs and he digs, through the dirt and stone and sand until there is a space large enough to fit the shrouded shape that Sungyeol and Myungsoo carry over.
The place is high on the shore, well away from the tide. None of them can put any words together to make a semblance of ceremony. They bury the body, and leave a large, storm-ravaged rock as a marker, and walk away one by one. Sunggyu stays behind, still trying to find the words inside him. All he finds are stones, heavy stones, in the pit of his stomach and laid across his tongue. There’s nothing to say. The moon is still rising. The tide is retreating. Their friend is dead beneath the sand.
He looks up, at the receding backs of the other boys, hunched and exhausted as they return to the lighthouse. And he picks up the shovel, and follows the living.