190 mph [ii / ii]
sekai | twoshot | romance, motherofall!aus | pg-13
part one; the servant part two; the prince
Life starts the second he lost his balance on the branch of an oak tree. His nerves tried, but they couldn't fight gravity as it tugs Sehun's lithe, ten year old body down the ground. His right rubs against soil. Muscles and bones crack from the sudden impact.
Pain longs to make itself known through a sob and a shrill cry: things he forbade himself from repressing. At an even younger age, Prince Oh Sehun was taught to never let the sun see you suffer underneath it. Don't wince or clench your fist. Never be open about your emotions. You're giving your precious sword to your enemy. Cry, scream if you have to, but child for heaven's sake, don't let anyone see you vulnerable. You're a prince, Sehun has grown up listening to sermons such as these. They're the lullabies tucking him to sleep.
Mentally replaying his father's words, he gets up, keeping the hurt inside. Fate plays a trick on him by choosing this moment to reveal the King emerging from the palace. Awkwardly, yet humbly walking beside him is a boy with skin the color of dried wood, hair darker than a raven's wing, eyes gleaming like polished porcelain.
Sehun wills his spine to stretch straight as he meets his father halfway. Spring's renewed leaves witnessed how Sehun nods politely to his father and the widening of the strange boy's eyes when the King introduced them to each other.
"Kim Jongin, meet my son, the prince Sehun. He's the one I told you about. He'll be the one you're going to look after," The King smiles, leaving the two boys to wonder why introductions were necessary. Sehun is the prince of this kingdom. Who doesn't know him?
"Thank you. I'll be putting myself under your care," It's Sehun who bows, fifteen degrees down with arms at his sides. He bites the inside of his cheek when his right shoulder strains with the movement.
"No, thank you for this honor."
He is thirteen now; Jongin fourteen.
Time intertwined the strands of their life tighter, pulling their limbs until it accommodated their ages. Archery training, horse-back riding, stroking thick ink against paper to perfection; doing royal activities together marred Oh Sehun and Kim Jongin. Together, they are nature in it's purest form. Jongin is the water gushing out from the streams. Sehun is the wind as it drops to freezing point, halting Jongin's way. But he's also the summer breeze sending ripples on Jongin's surface.
Sehun convinces himself he dislikes the careless peasant. Dislikes him enough to drag him out for late night walks, to tell him things he's never whispered to someone else before. These are the secrets Sehun had been storing inside him for years in fear they'll mean less when handed out to another soul:
-Sehun has nights when he feels his dad doesn't love him.
-On mornings, these doubts are cleared by the sun's visits.
-Sweets are his guilty pleasure.
-The afternoon they met, Sehun fell off a tall tree.
-He can't recall why he was up in that tree in the first place.
-He's missing his mom who moved to heaven minutes after he entered earth.
-The most touching love story, he thinks, is the tale of how his father fell in love with his mother.
"The workers and guards here say that my mother was a witch. She came from a family with some sort of sorcery lineage. I saw portraits of her. She's extremely beautiful," Sehun shares one evening after practicing calligraphy. His voice falters a bit. Jongin winces. "Some misconception. Folks said the King was just infatuated by her beauty, said she used a charm on him. God, if they only know how wrong they are."
Leaning against a wooden post, tired yet enamored, Jongin urges Sehun to continue on his story with a nod.
Sehun clasps his hands together. "Have you seen the hall of archives?"
"The one where old books are dumped? Stinks like a bird's anus? Yes."
His words tug Sehun's lips up to a smile. "Exactly. That one. I sneaked in there before. For curiosity's sake. One of the books state that spells only last for as long as whoever casts it lives. This is more than enough. This is how I knew it was really love between my parents."
Three deep dents separate Jongin's furrowed brows from each other. Sehun reaches out to flatten it with his index and middle fingers. It's incredibly warm where skin meets skin. "I don't understand. Does knowing that proves love?"
"At night, when I walk around the palace and pass by my father's room, I'd hear him crying. Loudly, quietly, sometimes they're sobs. They're for my mother because he chokes out her name when I think he can breathe again. I heard them first when I was five years old, and I until now they're as loud and empty as before. It's love," Kim Jongin thanks the heavens Sehun wasn't looking at him when he mentioned the word love. "And I think it's as genuine as the ground we're standing on right now."
This is when Jongin crosses the line dividing admiration from love.
"Maybe you should take off that jade necklace, your majesty. I don't deem it practical underwater," There goes Jongin again with his mocking voice and shoulders sculpted leaner by the years.
"No thank you, I'm much more comfortable. Without this, I am a fish without gills."
"Suit yourself. Your mother wouldn't like her jewels to be drenched."
"No, she wouldn't like it if I don't wear the only thing she left behind for me," The rest of Sehun's argument slips along with Jongin's clothes. Piece by piece, gracefully and precisely. Entranced, the sixteen-year-old prince trembles as Jongin's hand tugs, pulls away the fabric embracing his body. It's as if Jongin not only strips down his robe, but also the barriers guarding everything Sehun holds dear.
When Jongin is appropriately bare for the lake to wrap him in a damp hug, Sehun is having difficulty breathing. Jongin trashes about, splashing clear water in every direction. His eyes crinkles at the sides, lines moving towards childish happiness. It angers Sehun that there isn't a word combining desire, need, fascination, and helplessness. Not a single word could condense how he feels about the indifferent boy caressed by nature.
Trees encircling the lake aids in giving them privacy. Water showers him with love by sailing down the smooth planes of his chest, resting on the pit between his collarbones; kissing every inch of Jongin with droplets. Sehun joins the cosmos in praising Kim Jongin by the thuds of his heart.
Your mother wanted you to have this. She said this will give you the very thing you might need. Don't ask me anymore, son. I don't understand your mother half the time, too. His father's explanation as he handed out the necklace echoes in his mind. He traces the outlines of the jade, looks at Jongin and sends a message. Maybe the heavens can pass this on to his mother: The very thing that I need just might be a short distance away from me. Mom, if I walk about ninety steps, I'll be able to reach him. He is so close, mom. So close.
"No prince, the rules dictate that you shan't do that."
"Setting a court official's robe on fire is very unkind of you."
"No, prince. I don't think it's a good idea to drink sake for six hours straight."
Jongin's lips combats all of Sehun's positive and careless outlook in life. Through the years, his 'caretaker' cast shadows on Sehun, in every aspect of his development.
I'll be back, Jongin muttered.
Sehun is left alone to stare in awe at Jongin's retreating figure. Unable to believe that this guy who criticized Sehun's habit for ten fucking years is now carrying arrows behind him, fighting for a battle that was supposed to be Sehun's. Four minutes of unnerving silence pushes Sehun into retrieving another set of weapons from his training room.
I won't allow this to happen, he gears up before leaving, thinking of the stern servant who never really left his side.
Death is beautiful, in a sense. It gets you thinking of three things.
It makes you aware of the most tender parts of you; your organs, flesh, muscles, each vein branching out of your heart.
And death also causes you to think of hands; how they could do magnificent things like pluck harmonious music off strings or caress your lover's body, yet at the same time release an arrow lethal enough to pierce the life out of another human being.
And last, and definitely not the least, death illuminates a person's importance in the life you've lived so far.
Your life would flash right before your eyes; lies. The last thing Sehun sees right before his eyes shut close, is Jongin leaning in so close, close, closer against his lips, he must have tried to kiss some life into Sehun.
✖✖✖
Jongin gives importance to inanimate things Sehun had usually overlooked before.
The couch with its moldy upholstery is now worth a bar of gold because it's where Jongin slumped down lazily, arms dangling at his sides, head resting on Sehun's lap. Jongin even made the floral-patterned apron special by sliding it on the night of Sehun's fourteenth birthday when he wanted some homemade chocolate cake more than he ever wanted anything else at that time. A year ago, it was a stained, jade ring Jongin claimed to have bought for just a few won. Needless to say, Sehun treasures it to the point where everyone around him thinks he'll carry that thing down to his grave.
"If I had known you love something like that so much, I would have saved up for an even better ring to give you," Jongin regularly reminds Sehun this, for reasons unknown and he'd ribbon it up with, "I'm quite touched you value it."
"No need. It's just captivating and really amusing, that's all." Sehun would always shrug Jongin's worry off with this reply, instead of the truth: You could give me a cube of sugar and I still would spend ten minutes of every hour taking care of it. Not about the thing given, but about the giver.
Incidentally, Jongin doesn't give a damn regarding materials. He likes everything with a pulse. Anything warm, made out of bones and has their own biological clock. Blood and hands and hair, they're fascinating, he'd say with lips parted open in reverence and Sehun concludes the only reason why Jongin sticks beside him as if they're connected at their hips, is because he makes Jongin feel remotely alive.
Maybe, just maybe, Jongin doesn't care who Sehun is, only about what he is: human and tender.
And it's never a good thing to think when you like someone. It means there's a truck-full of others just like you.
His childhood friend's cutest state is ten minutes right after he wakes up and Sehun makes sure to barge into Jongin's room at exactly 9;43 in the morning just to witness Jongin in all of his dishelved glory. Tousled raven hair, clear eyes blinking its way to reality, and if Sehun is lucky, Jongin's shirt actually hitches up higher, revealing a lot of skin. Sehun really likes Jongin's skin. Every inch of it.
There's a lot of skinship going on when Jongin--who's definitely acting weird today--takes Sehun's hand in his and whispers a set of cheesy words that leaves Sehun a blushing mess. A few minutes later, Sehun will jump around his own room, with flailing arms trying to wipe the fluffiness away. He'll instruct himself to never wash the hand Jongin touched. The sheets and pillows on his bed will be scattered around the room, all due to pure excitement.
But it'll be later. For now, he brushes his friend off and leaves with the words, "Get really, we'll be going out later."
1950; this year is going to be safe, they said.
No more gunshots at the crack of dawn. The grenades will vanish, along with the tremor it brings to the citizens who hears its explosion and treats them like alarm clocks. Comfort and safety will replace any deep scars the war left. Not that these two friends need to be protected. Kim Jongin and Oh Sehun finds refuge in the 38th parallel, the most dangerous place to be at a time like this.
Six months into going to this place, and so far, the only injury they got was when Sehun tripped on his own feet and scraped his knee. Yet listening to the chaos stirring behind them has him hoping he shouldn't have dragged Jongin along. Not today. Or any day where he can be hurt.
Let's go, Let's go, Jongin's voice is as shaky as his fingers wrapped around Sehun's wrist. As if reacting on impulse, Sehun purposely slows down to cover Jongin's back with his own lithe body. He looks back at the men with their guns and squinted eyes. Just in time, he catches one turn to them, muzzle obviously pointed to their direction. The man pulls the trigger before Sehun could say anything, not that he wanted to.
Sehun goes down with a bang, a flash of regret, and a wave of pleasure in knowing that he saved the only person he needed to save. Stay with me, prince. From his blurred vision, Jongin's face is creased with worry and Sehun wants to tell him worry doesn't look good on him, that he's already happy and it's all because of Jongin and his skin and smile and that goddamned hand running through everything but Sehun.
But following the unforgiving laws of nature, death fills his mouth and sighs out of his lips before any words can.
He wanted to say; I stayed.
✖✖✖
Hospitals are white, everyone knows that. White sheets, white pillows, white walls, white coats protecting doctors and nurses from whatever they need to be protected from. Oh Sehun doesn't think it's a coincidence that the interior of a coffin is white, too. Hospitals are prologues to death. Sehun happens to fall in love over and over again with the words in the first page.
"Oh, it's you again." Baekhyun, the nurse who witnessed Sehun develop his growing insanity, smiles at him under the light bulb's dull glow. Sehun is reminded how sickness extends even to the ones trying to cure them. Through the months, Sehun watched how the fire behind Baekhyun's eyes burnt itself into ashes.
"It's me and where else can I be but here?"
"Milan, South Africa, Western Europe, Las Vegas, and god forbid, Bhusan. Shit, Sehun there's more to life than visiting the place where your lover died half a year ago. I keep controlling myself, but this is too much." A sigh and an elevator look. This is what Baekhyun is all about. "Listen, on the first week of every month, I'm on the nightly shift and for the rest of the month, I work for the whole morning and afternoon. I take care of patients and help doctors and I think I'm secretly better than them. I know what I have to do because I've been doing it for the past three years. That's what I should know. That's what I'm supposed to care about."
The air conditioner's rumble on the side of the empty lobby pops the balloon of silence between the dark-haired nurse and the boy with the sad, sad eyes. Sehun holds his breath.
"But then I know you come here at every five p.m. Then you loiter around the corridors and I don't know if you're trying to call on Luhan's ghost or wish you're sick enough to be confined here. I don't know what kept you coming back here for six months, and I think you don't even know why. I'm not annoyed or curious anymore. Now, I just pity you." Baekhyun's confession is supposed to hurt, but it doesn't and this is when Sehun comprehends how much of an empty shell he is. You can't kill something as invincible as air (and just as fleeting).
"You're right, you're right. Okay," He murmurs absent-mindedly, more of an attempt to get the short hospital employee off his back.
Baekhyun sighs. "I don't know what to do with you anymore."
Life restarts the moment Baekhyun pushes Sehun inside some patient's room. In the two seasons he's been hovering like some spirit over the hospital walls, he's never entered another room after Luhan died in one. Different sheets, different things around the room draws out the same memory.
"I want you to meet someone. You might need to meet this someone." Baekhyun guides him by his elbow deeper towards the room. All the same settings from all the hospital wards in the world: clean space all over, mortality's tangible presence tucked under the bed. Perhaps, perhaps it's only the patient and the disease that's gotten him inside that sets it apart from the rest.
"This is Kim Jongin,"
And Kim Jongin is the sick person lying by the deathbed; a stack of dark hair and lids closed in peaceful sleep. In the tangle of wires and machines keeping him alive, Sehun fails to see what he's got to do with Kim Jongin. Answers fly out of Baekhyun's mouth as if Sehun asked the questions he's been wondering about out loud. "He's been in a coma for five months due to hypoxia."
"Dumb it down, please."
"Our Central Nervous System requires a lot of oxygen to its neurons. People get by this, but you know, there's always a glitch in our programming. The ones who suffer from the lack of necessary oxygen often ends up with cardiac arrest or this or maybe both. Not pretty, either way."
He's terribly sick, Sehun forms his own conclusion. Baekhyun lost Sehun in the butchering of words like neurons, cardiac arrest, glitches. Why do we need to classify types of suffering? "So he's terribly sick and forever asleep, I get it. And you want me to be buddy-buddies with him? I don't get it."
Baekhyun who runs a hand through his hair before ruffling it. Out of frustration or madness, possibly somewhere in the middle. "It'd save all our lives. You talk to him about your troubles, and I could finally get rid of you. Tell him all the burdens in that heart of yours. He'll keep secrets, even your darkest ones. And then we all live happily ever after."
Sehun laughs, clasping his hands together. "D'you really think trying this out would solve everything?"
"Yes, this will work." Baekhyun pats Sehun's shoulder. Lightly. "On a scale from one to over-trusting I am pretty damn naive, but I want you to know that this world is made out of sugar. It can crumble so easily but don’t be afraid to stick your tongue out and taste it."
Misery finds company, even if they weren't looking for it in the beginning. Even if the other one is as good as dead and the whole set up seemed to be scratched in the stars. Thanks to Baekhyun's maternal pleading, bribery, and eventually, locking up the room with only Sehun and the comatose patient inside, visiting Kim Jongin became a part of Sehun's daily routine.
The skies displayed behind the glass windows had been stuffed with angry, gray rain clouds when Sehun initiated his first conversation with Kim Jongin: I am the Oh Sehun, nice to meet you. How do you do? A stupid question, but it felt right at that time. Dim skies giving way to white clouds of various altitudes marked the first week of Sehun's friendship with the perpetually asleep man. Now that Sehun is at ease sitting beside the bed, the heavens express their calm by being a clear blue.
Sehun got used to Jongin slowly. A subtle shift in his clock: three digits of the short hand dedicated to tangling Jongin in the vines of all the questions, memories Sehun could grasp. From the second he cried his way into the earth, to the year he discovered his love for literature, dripping down to the car accident that crashed Luhan out of his life, Sehun recounts his history to Kim Jongin. Jongin's skin absorbs Sehun's words like fresh ink on paper.
Whenever Sehun's sentences echoes back to him, he allows himself to fall into the fantasy that Kim Jongin is awake. Kim Jongin can move on his own accord and Kim Jongin is saying everything Sehun longs to hear: Don't worry so much, I'm sure Luhan loved you to his final minute. You're not alone. You could still do fine on your own.
Then the ECG smacks Sehun back to reality with its monotonous beeps, reminding him that just because something beats doesn't mean it could speak.
Sehun comes over to room 430 everyday.
He wears clothes bathed in floral, fabric softeners. The scent permeates the atmosphere, overpowering the stench of medicines. Unfortunately, Baekhyun doesn't miss the strong aroma tickling his nostrils from the lobby meters down.
"Are you stopping by a florist before coming here? You smell so gay."
Sehun bites the inside of his cheek, refrains from commenting about what he saw yesterday: Baekhyun having a quickie behind the vending machine with a tall, weird man who looked like a cross between human and chihuahua. Byun Baekhyun has no right to talk about homosexuality.
"Nah, I read this article in Wikipedia about comatose patients. It said that even in that deep state of slumber, they're still aware of their senses. Now I don't know about you, but if I was Jongin, I'd want something constant everyday. Smelling like heaven just puked on me is fine as long as Jongin knows who it is the heavens puked on."
"Tell me more about Kim Jongin, doesn't he have any relatives visiting him?"
"So you're bossing me around now. I see how it is."
"Any family members coming over?"
"No, as far as I know. His bills are paid by a relative working overseas, but aside from that, no one ever comes here for him ever since he's been confined."
Sehun finally discovers something sadder than drowning in an ocean of unconsciousness while the rest of the world frolics on steady land and morning coffees--having no one to hope for.
Compassionate is something people don't think Oh Sehun is. He's just so self-centered for that. Sehun's too sad to want to cheer someone else up, too selfish to extend kindness. So there must be another name for the feeling tying him up and towing him to Kim Jongin's room every single afternoon.
Animatedly, he talks of this Yifan guy from work who is a tall, Chinese-Candian half-breed and with reverence, he reads his favorite poems out loud to Jongin, he lets Jongin know what living in the four corners of a novel feels like. By the week after the first year of 'light, one-way conversations', Sehun catches a slight twitch from Jongin's fingers. It's both insignificant and worth the whole universe to Sehun.
That night, he recites a passage from a poem by Bob Hicok, something he found beautiful;
Hear when I say “I never want to be without you,”
somewhere else I am saying
“I never want to be without you again.” And when I touch you
in each of the places we meet
in all of the lives we are, it’s with hands that are dying
and resurrected.
When I don’t touch you it’s a mistake in any life,
in each place and forever.
And instinctively, he reaches for Kim Jongin's limp hands, finding them much more magnificent than words. Wondering, for the first time, if he'd done this before and they mean something more each time. "What would your voice sound like? Do you like words? What's your favorite book? Do you fall in love with fictional characters? I do, all the time. It hurts, but it's a beautiful kind of hurt. Have you ever been hurt before?"
Again with the heart-shattering silence.
There are many spaces in Kim Jongin; between his fingers, the gap from his shoulder to his jaw, the hole between his lips where a thin tube is inserted to keep him alive. Oh Sehun has seven seconds to spare. This is more than enough for him to lean forward, tug the tube and replace it with his lips instead.
Contrary to Chbosky's 'and in that moment, i swear we were infinite' line, nothing about this second is infinite. If only, it dawns on Sehun how calculated and unstable everything is. Jongin's bed screams fragility, the clock on the wall ticks down the seconds, Jongin's lips acknowledge the foreign feel of Sehun's lips. There's tenderness in the way Sehun closes his eyes to see explosions, in the fact that he'd love Jongin too long without touching or hugging, without doing anything books dictate you have to do before loving someone.
Just then, the ground shakes tremendously. Sehun grips Jongin's wrist as everything around them groans down.
✖✖✖
He had been looking for a muse, but kissed home a stripper with wet lips and experienced hands instead. Things tumbled downhill the instant Kai's elbow rested against the table. The blow had been cushioned by a warm smile and eyes knowing Sehun would take him then and there.
You're far from a muse, he turns to Kai sleeping soundly beside him. His naked back rises and falls with every breathing and from underneath the blankets, Sehun clenches his fist to prevent any eager scratching. It must be fifth, sixth, or is it the eighth time they've crashed into bed like this; surprise meetings, suggestive looks, rushed whispers accompanied by unzipped jeans.
Kai is sorely living for the 'now'; I want this now, let's do this now, let's go now. He goes against Sehun's faith in the past, present, and the near future.
"I want you now," Kai would state, teeth sharp against Sehun's throat, wrist, the dip of his hips as he moves closer to Kai. (It's a lie, Kai can never be close enough). Now, has Sehun wondering about Kai's history and future. Will he be a part of it, or would that be another body to feed promises of the present into? The thought of possible betrayal haunts Sehun.
Summer is already peeking between the wet buildings, Kai's roots are already planted in Sehun's foundation, and memories had been made under the pretense of 'let's just go with it for now'. They've exchanged more than just kisses and pick-up lines. Touched not only each other's body, but also the boxes of childhood secrets preserved throughout the years.
"Nothing beats the feeling of dancing," Even with his energy drained by the wooden floor he practiced on for hours, Kai still beams at Sehun slumped down against the mirror. Sehun aggressively bites a peppero stick and recalls the scent of his palette, the feel of dabbing watercolor into his canvass.
"No, nothing beats the feeling of painting," He takes another stick from the box, munches and swallows.
"No, dancing is art." Kai pirouettes his way to Sehun. Sehun stops chewing to appreciate the sway of Kai's limbs, even though the whole thing is supposed to be funny. Nine steps and Kai is already in front of him, leaning down until they're face to face. When Kai's warm breath tickles the area near Sehun's lips, the latter automatically closes his lids, hoping for the kiss that didn't come.
Had Sehun keep his eyes open, he'd have seen a mischievous smile taint Kai's lips; Kai as he moves closer to bite the chocolate-covered stick off Sehun's lips. Sehun opens his eyes and Kai is in front of him, biting his peppero stick and looking perfect while bathing in the golden sunlight.
"I like you like this now," Sehun admits and Kai smiles at him, galaxies pasted in his eyes. Sehun realizes that this; him and Jongin and the distance between them, is art.
Inspiration comes to Sehun in the form of french films, planetariums, bouquets in shaking hands, and even in the melodies of orchestra music. Kai, though, proves him wrong when it comes to art. Without words, Kai teaches Sehun how dancing to the right tune can claw a painting out of him, that hiding under blankets at one a.m while grinning at each other, as if you've both done something you shouldn't have done, could stuff your stomach with butterflies. Using only his fingers, Kai shows Sehun what it's like create a masterpiece without a brush.
There had been a time when all Sehun could conjure are faint, morbid images with dark themes and elements. Now, he carves asteroids on Kai's thighs, digs for both love and lust on the curve of Kai's waist.
"What are you working on?" Kai asks for the eighteenth time (Sehun keeps count).
"It's a secret," he says before locking the door behind him. It always begins with Kai inquiring about Sehun's work and ends with Sehun rushing over to his studio; their polished version of hide-and-seek.
Before Sehun lies everything his imagination could share to paper, but never to Kai himself. They're too embarrassing and trusting because all that's captured in charcoal and acrylic are stuff about astronomy, more art, and anatomy. All related to Kai, of course.
Hanging on the wall is a medium-sized, framed portrait of Kai with stardust caught in his hair and nebulae glowing in the dark of iris. Constellations trace the lines of his jaw and shoulders, rose petals growing out of his lips.
"I don't like cuddling,"
"I do," Kai chuckles, snuggling deeper into the crook of Sehun's neck. The dust of sleep is still in Sehun's eyes as Kai binds them closer with his arms. "I like touching and hugging and kissing."
"And fucking." Sehun adds.
Kai laughs, his chest shaking against Sehun's back. "And fucking, too. I like doing everything with you. Hey Sehun, hey. Hey Sehun, hey."
"I can hear you perfectly fine, what is it?"
"Promise me something," The tone of Kai's voice lowers, timbres swirling in the air. "Promise me that you'll be careful from now on. Promise me you'll look both ways before crossing the street. That you'll never forget how dangerous guns can be. Whenever you're tempted to jump from something high to kill yourself, promise me you'll take three deep breaths and think of things that make you happy. Then turn around and brew yourself some tea. Promise me that you won't go to places that can kill you. Promise me you'll try to stay alive."
"That's a ridiculously easy promise to keep. Alright, I promise." Sehun brings up his right hand, raising his pinky finger and wraps it around Kai's waiting one. "In turn, promise me you'll try to say things like 'tomorrow', 'next time', 'after a month'. Promise me you'll make plans and boring to-do lists. This isn't really hard to do, isn't it? I'll be alive and you, well, just try to be a normal person."
Kai tightens his hold on Sehun's pinky, tugs his hand toward him and secures the string of promises with a light kiss. If kisses were sounds, this one would be a whisper, a grazing of lips against lips and tongue. Something so beautiful it would be a sin to say anything else. Bed sheets cling to Sehun's legs, and Kai understands: he does not want to let go of Sehun either.
"Later," Kai pants, diving deeper into the pillows. "I'm going to go and practice. After work, maybe we can have some take out Chinese and binge on those old films you like to watch. Tomorrow's my day off, let's go for a picnic. I heard they're nice and refreshing. And when we arrive home, let's have sex. Make love, if you think it's more romantic."
"That," Sehun's traps Jongin's neck with his arms. "Sounds like a good and safe plan."
Sometimes, we create accidents instead of endings.
Maybe they've been smudged to the point where it's hard to differentiate this from that. Sehun should never had said 'I love you' to Jongin. If he'd known Jongin would only choose to drive them into a dark dirt road, he wouldn't have accepted the invitation.
But it's too late now.
190 mph. The numbers blink at him, illuminating the silver platter where his memories are laid out: the past, the present, the repeating futures. In the indigo darkness, the only things that stand out are the orange neons, the veins on the side of Sehun's neck and temples. Everything beside Sehun blurs as the images behind his vision turns clearer.
Kai laughing as Sehun felt each shake. "And fucking, too. I like doing everything with you. Hey Sehun, hey. Hey Sehun, hey."
"Let's say you didn't always love me."
"What if I've seen you and fallen in love with you in a lot of parallel worlds?"
"This is for the best," Kai says and he has already pushed the gas pedal as hard as it can go. Jigsaw pieces click in Sehun's mind. Kai in a hospital bed. Kai dancing under the spotlight. Kai sitting beside him, calling himself a writer. Kai wrapping a hand on his wrist, pulling him away from chaos. Kai leaning against the railing, young and carefree. Kai in ancient robes. Kai as Kim Jongin.
"Just remember that I, Kim Jongin, love you and it doesn't matter if you forget everything else," Jongin says, voice as unstable as the car speeding through the dark.
"The prince was killed because he was stupid enough to get killed, and just when the servant wanted to pull a sleeping-beauty on the prince, they both vanished."
"Go on and jump,"
Sehun remembers, and fresh tears trail after bittersweet memories. On this very second, he regrets forcing Jongin to say words about the future. Tomorrow, next week, after two years; obviously based on experience, he can never rely on the assurance that they'd live forever.
"I'll be back."
"I'll be back for you, always." Jongin, the servant, says and tightens his hold on his prince's hand; the only thing that remained steady as the ground vanished and they tumbled and tumbled down to kiss the pit of death waiting for them.
Thank you, I'll be putting myself under your care.
✖✖✖
There isn't much to say about Jongdae's life aside from how he never got what he wanted.
Six year old Jongdae asked Santa for a remote-controlled helicopter, yet ended up unwrapping a plastic toy gun on Christmas morning. Wished for a brand-new car for his graduation present, but was handed the keys of a horrendous orange truck instead. Dreamed of becoming a poet, but found himself driving down the road towards professional journalism. After a lifetime of unfulfilled expectations, Jongdae stopped hoping.
And this is what a hopeless man looks like (you might see him in the street): hair three inches longer than what was acceptable, stained, black-rimmed glasses slipping down his nose, unlit cigarette dangling at the corner of his lips because lightening them up is so mainstream. Jongdae is anything but mainstream.
No one likes him; he's too pretentious and tries too hard. But it's okay since Jongdae isn't fond of other human beings either; Let me shit on your opinions.
Tolerating Jongdae isn't difficult because he does a damned good job at writing. His co-workers established that it's cool to have no manners and stink all the way to Jeju and back as long as what Jongdae does is good and passed on time. Due to this outstanding quality, Jongdae's the perfect person to cover the latest scoop; a peculiar happening hinted by an anonymous caller.
"Here we are. Geumgangsan Mountains," Beside him, a man with chubby cheeks turns off the engines, takes his bag and pulls the keys out. Jongdae nearly forgot him.
"Who are you again?" Jongdae steps out of the car. Chubby cheeks follows.
He's too used to this to be dazed by Jongdae's inattention. Clutching the strap of his black bag tighter, he recites, "I am Minseok, your photographer. I'm working with you today and I will take shots of whatever you can gather."
"Oh, okay Minseok the photographer. Let's get going then. It's too cold today, isn't it?" Jongdae begins making light, small talk as they trudge closer to the looming mountains, its sharp edges and calloused rocks.
Minseok nods. He doesn't remind Jongdae they've been covering scoops side-by-side for three years now.
It's as bad as the caller said.
Guided by the map Jongdae drew earlier to indicate the location of said fallen car, it took twenty-six minutes for Jongdae and Minseok the photographer to find the ditch it landed in. It strikes Jongdae as suspicious that someone would know about an accident like this in an abandoned area.
Dewy and fresh, each branch of a tree they happen to pass by emits such leafy colors Minseok just has to fumble to remove his camera from his bag and take in nature's goodness inside the lens.
Jongdae moves forward, ignoring the shutter sound, ignoring Minseok and everything outside his personal bubble. The mountains are intimidating and beautiful, but that doesn't diminish the danger lurking behind them.
"Minseok the photographer? Come here for a second . . . " Jongdae's voice gets smaller the farther he goes. Mindlessly, Minseok trails along, vision locked on Jongdae's dark clothes in the midst of all the greenery. Jongdae had always been the very thing Minseok can't pry his eye off. "That is so sad."
Jongdae chokes on the word sad as if it's a tangible rope coiling around his larynx. Minseok looks and wishes he didn't. The journalist and photographer walks side by side.
Sentences knots itself into other sentences in the folds of Jongdae's brain. Eventually, Minseok runs out of angles to capture the heart-breaking scene in front of them. To Jongdae, a million adjectives hides on the ground: covered by lost twigs and wrecked metal parts, inserted behind the button of a soiled shirt, peeking through thick eyebrows brushing over pale cheeks.
"At least they died together," Minseok stares at the interlaced fingers.
Jongdae observes the two bodies, shrugs his shoulders, keeping his gaze on the broken pieces of a green stone that might have been jade.
"Yeah, together."
F I N
part one; the servant part two; the prince
Life starts the second he lost his balance on the branch of an oak tree. His nerves tried, but they couldn't fight gravity as it tugs Sehun's lithe, ten year old body down the ground. His right rubs against soil. Muscles and bones crack from the sudden impact.
Pain longs to make itself known through a sob and a shrill cry: things he forbade himself from repressing. At an even younger age, Prince Oh Sehun was taught to never let the sun see you suffer underneath it. Don't wince or clench your fist. Never be open about your emotions. You're giving your precious sword to your enemy. Cry, scream if you have to, but child for heaven's sake, don't let anyone see you vulnerable. You're a prince, Sehun has grown up listening to sermons such as these. They're the lullabies tucking him to sleep.
Mentally replaying his father's words, he gets up, keeping the hurt inside. Fate plays a trick on him by choosing this moment to reveal the King emerging from the palace. Awkwardly, yet humbly walking beside him is a boy with skin the color of dried wood, hair darker than a raven's wing, eyes gleaming like polished porcelain.
Sehun wills his spine to stretch straight as he meets his father halfway. Spring's renewed leaves witnessed how Sehun nods politely to his father and the widening of the strange boy's eyes when the King introduced them to each other.
"Kim Jongin, meet my son, the prince Sehun. He's the one I told you about. He'll be the one you're going to look after," The King smiles, leaving the two boys to wonder why introductions were necessary. Sehun is the prince of this kingdom. Who doesn't know him?
"Thank you. I'll be putting myself under your care," It's Sehun who bows, fifteen degrees down with arms at his sides. He bites the inside of his cheek when his right shoulder strains with the movement.
"No, thank you for this honor."
He is thirteen now; Jongin fourteen.
Time intertwined the strands of their life tighter, pulling their limbs until it accommodated their ages. Archery training, horse-back riding, stroking thick ink against paper to perfection; doing royal activities together marred Oh Sehun and Kim Jongin. Together, they are nature in it's purest form. Jongin is the water gushing out from the streams. Sehun is the wind as it drops to freezing point, halting Jongin's way. But he's also the summer breeze sending ripples on Jongin's surface.
Sehun convinces himself he dislikes the careless peasant. Dislikes him enough to drag him out for late night walks, to tell him things he's never whispered to someone else before. These are the secrets Sehun had been storing inside him for years in fear they'll mean less when handed out to another soul:
-Sehun has nights when he feels his dad doesn't love him.
-On mornings, these doubts are cleared by the sun's visits.
-Sweets are his guilty pleasure.
-The afternoon they met, Sehun fell off a tall tree.
-He can't recall why he was up in that tree in the first place.
-He's missing his mom who moved to heaven minutes after he entered earth.
-The most touching love story, he thinks, is the tale of how his father fell in love with his mother.
"The workers and guards here say that my mother was a witch. She came from a family with some sort of sorcery lineage. I saw portraits of her. She's extremely beautiful," Sehun shares one evening after practicing calligraphy. His voice falters a bit. Jongin winces. "Some misconception. Folks said the King was just infatuated by her beauty, said she used a charm on him. God, if they only know how wrong they are."
Leaning against a wooden post, tired yet enamored, Jongin urges Sehun to continue on his story with a nod.
Sehun clasps his hands together. "Have you seen the hall of archives?"
"The one where old books are dumped? Stinks like a bird's anus? Yes."
His words tug Sehun's lips up to a smile. "Exactly. That one. I sneaked in there before. For curiosity's sake. One of the books state that spells only last for as long as whoever casts it lives. This is more than enough. This is how I knew it was really love between my parents."
Three deep dents separate Jongin's furrowed brows from each other. Sehun reaches out to flatten it with his index and middle fingers. It's incredibly warm where skin meets skin. "I don't understand. Does knowing that proves love?"
"At night, when I walk around the palace and pass by my father's room, I'd hear him crying. Loudly, quietly, sometimes they're sobs. They're for my mother because he chokes out her name when I think he can breathe again. I heard them first when I was five years old, and I until now they're as loud and empty as before. It's love," Kim Jongin thanks the heavens Sehun wasn't looking at him when he mentioned the word love. "And I think it's as genuine as the ground we're standing on right now."
This is when Jongin crosses the line dividing admiration from love.
"Maybe you should take off that jade necklace, your majesty. I don't deem it practical underwater," There goes Jongin again with his mocking voice and shoulders sculpted leaner by the years.
"No thank you, I'm much more comfortable. Without this, I am a fish without gills."
"Suit yourself. Your mother wouldn't like her jewels to be drenched."
"No, she wouldn't like it if I don't wear the only thing she left behind for me," The rest of Sehun's argument slips along with Jongin's clothes. Piece by piece, gracefully and precisely. Entranced, the sixteen-year-old prince trembles as Jongin's hand tugs, pulls away the fabric embracing his body. It's as if Jongin not only strips down his robe, but also the barriers guarding everything Sehun holds dear.
When Jongin is appropriately bare for the lake to wrap him in a damp hug, Sehun is having difficulty breathing. Jongin trashes about, splashing clear water in every direction. His eyes crinkles at the sides, lines moving towards childish happiness. It angers Sehun that there isn't a word combining desire, need, fascination, and helplessness. Not a single word could condense how he feels about the indifferent boy caressed by nature.
Trees encircling the lake aids in giving them privacy. Water showers him with love by sailing down the smooth planes of his chest, resting on the pit between his collarbones; kissing every inch of Jongin with droplets. Sehun joins the cosmos in praising Kim Jongin by the thuds of his heart.
Your mother wanted you to have this. She said this will give you the very thing you might need. Don't ask me anymore, son. I don't understand your mother half the time, too. His father's explanation as he handed out the necklace echoes in his mind. He traces the outlines of the jade, looks at Jongin and sends a message. Maybe the heavens can pass this on to his mother: The very thing that I need just might be a short distance away from me. Mom, if I walk about ninety steps, I'll be able to reach him. He is so close, mom. So close.
"No prince, the rules dictate that you shan't do that."
"Setting a court official's robe on fire is very unkind of you."
"No, prince. I don't think it's a good idea to drink sake for six hours straight."
Jongin's lips combats all of Sehun's positive and careless outlook in life. Through the years, his 'caretaker' cast shadows on Sehun, in every aspect of his development.
I'll be back, Jongin muttered.
Sehun is left alone to stare in awe at Jongin's retreating figure. Unable to believe that this guy who criticized Sehun's habit for ten fucking years is now carrying arrows behind him, fighting for a battle that was supposed to be Sehun's. Four minutes of unnerving silence pushes Sehun into retrieving another set of weapons from his training room.
I won't allow this to happen, he gears up before leaving, thinking of the stern servant who never really left his side.
Death is beautiful, in a sense. It gets you thinking of three things.
It makes you aware of the most tender parts of you; your organs, flesh, muscles, each vein branching out of your heart.
And death also causes you to think of hands; how they could do magnificent things like pluck harmonious music off strings or caress your lover's body, yet at the same time release an arrow lethal enough to pierce the life out of another human being.
And last, and definitely not the least, death illuminates a person's importance in the life you've lived so far.
Your life would flash right before your eyes; lies. The last thing Sehun sees right before his eyes shut close, is Jongin leaning in so close, close, closer against his lips, he must have tried to kiss some life into Sehun.
✖✖✖
Jongin gives importance to inanimate things Sehun had usually overlooked before.
The couch with its moldy upholstery is now worth a bar of gold because it's where Jongin slumped down lazily, arms dangling at his sides, head resting on Sehun's lap. Jongin even made the floral-patterned apron special by sliding it on the night of Sehun's fourteenth birthday when he wanted some homemade chocolate cake more than he ever wanted anything else at that time. A year ago, it was a stained, jade ring Jongin claimed to have bought for just a few won. Needless to say, Sehun treasures it to the point where everyone around him thinks he'll carry that thing down to his grave.
"If I had known you love something like that so much, I would have saved up for an even better ring to give you," Jongin regularly reminds Sehun this, for reasons unknown and he'd ribbon it up with, "I'm quite touched you value it."
"No need. It's just captivating and really amusing, that's all." Sehun would always shrug Jongin's worry off with this reply, instead of the truth: You could give me a cube of sugar and I still would spend ten minutes of every hour taking care of it. Not about the thing given, but about the giver.
Incidentally, Jongin doesn't give a damn regarding materials. He likes everything with a pulse. Anything warm, made out of bones and has their own biological clock. Blood and hands and hair, they're fascinating, he'd say with lips parted open in reverence and Sehun concludes the only reason why Jongin sticks beside him as if they're connected at their hips, is because he makes Jongin feel remotely alive.
Maybe, just maybe, Jongin doesn't care who Sehun is, only about what he is: human and tender.
And it's never a good thing to think when you like someone. It means there's a truck-full of others just like you.
His childhood friend's cutest state is ten minutes right after he wakes up and Sehun makes sure to barge into Jongin's room at exactly 9;43 in the morning just to witness Jongin in all of his dishelved glory. Tousled raven hair, clear eyes blinking its way to reality, and if Sehun is lucky, Jongin's shirt actually hitches up higher, revealing a lot of skin. Sehun really likes Jongin's skin. Every inch of it.
There's a lot of skinship going on when Jongin--who's definitely acting weird today--takes Sehun's hand in his and whispers a set of cheesy words that leaves Sehun a blushing mess. A few minutes later, Sehun will jump around his own room, with flailing arms trying to wipe the fluffiness away. He'll instruct himself to never wash the hand Jongin touched. The sheets and pillows on his bed will be scattered around the room, all due to pure excitement.
But it'll be later. For now, he brushes his friend off and leaves with the words, "Get really, we'll be going out later."
1950; this year is going to be safe, they said.
No more gunshots at the crack of dawn. The grenades will vanish, along with the tremor it brings to the citizens who hears its explosion and treats them like alarm clocks. Comfort and safety will replace any deep scars the war left. Not that these two friends need to be protected. Kim Jongin and Oh Sehun finds refuge in the 38th parallel, the most dangerous place to be at a time like this.
Six months into going to this place, and so far, the only injury they got was when Sehun tripped on his own feet and scraped his knee. Yet listening to the chaos stirring behind them has him hoping he shouldn't have dragged Jongin along. Not today. Or any day where he can be hurt.
Let's go, Let's go, Jongin's voice is as shaky as his fingers wrapped around Sehun's wrist. As if reacting on impulse, Sehun purposely slows down to cover Jongin's back with his own lithe body. He looks back at the men with their guns and squinted eyes. Just in time, he catches one turn to them, muzzle obviously pointed to their direction. The man pulls the trigger before Sehun could say anything, not that he wanted to.
Sehun goes down with a bang, a flash of regret, and a wave of pleasure in knowing that he saved the only person he needed to save. Stay with me, prince. From his blurred vision, Jongin's face is creased with worry and Sehun wants to tell him worry doesn't look good on him, that he's already happy and it's all because of Jongin and his skin and smile and that goddamned hand running through everything but Sehun.
But following the unforgiving laws of nature, death fills his mouth and sighs out of his lips before any words can.
He wanted to say; I stayed.
✖✖✖
Hospitals are white, everyone knows that. White sheets, white pillows, white walls, white coats protecting doctors and nurses from whatever they need to be protected from. Oh Sehun doesn't think it's a coincidence that the interior of a coffin is white, too. Hospitals are prologues to death. Sehun happens to fall in love over and over again with the words in the first page.
"Oh, it's you again." Baekhyun, the nurse who witnessed Sehun develop his growing insanity, smiles at him under the light bulb's dull glow. Sehun is reminded how sickness extends even to the ones trying to cure them. Through the months, Sehun watched how the fire behind Baekhyun's eyes burnt itself into ashes.
"It's me and where else can I be but here?"
"Milan, South Africa, Western Europe, Las Vegas, and god forbid, Bhusan. Shit, Sehun there's more to life than visiting the place where your lover died half a year ago. I keep controlling myself, but this is too much." A sigh and an elevator look. This is what Baekhyun is all about. "Listen, on the first week of every month, I'm on the nightly shift and for the rest of the month, I work for the whole morning and afternoon. I take care of patients and help doctors and I think I'm secretly better than them. I know what I have to do because I've been doing it for the past three years. That's what I should know. That's what I'm supposed to care about."
The air conditioner's rumble on the side of the empty lobby pops the balloon of silence between the dark-haired nurse and the boy with the sad, sad eyes. Sehun holds his breath.
"But then I know you come here at every five p.m. Then you loiter around the corridors and I don't know if you're trying to call on Luhan's ghost or wish you're sick enough to be confined here. I don't know what kept you coming back here for six months, and I think you don't even know why. I'm not annoyed or curious anymore. Now, I just pity you." Baekhyun's confession is supposed to hurt, but it doesn't and this is when Sehun comprehends how much of an empty shell he is. You can't kill something as invincible as air (and just as fleeting).
"You're right, you're right. Okay," He murmurs absent-mindedly, more of an attempt to get the short hospital employee off his back.
Baekhyun sighs. "I don't know what to do with you anymore."
Life restarts the moment Baekhyun pushes Sehun inside some patient's room. In the two seasons he's been hovering like some spirit over the hospital walls, he's never entered another room after Luhan died in one. Different sheets, different things around the room draws out the same memory.
"I want you to meet someone. You might need to meet this someone." Baekhyun guides him by his elbow deeper towards the room. All the same settings from all the hospital wards in the world: clean space all over, mortality's tangible presence tucked under the bed. Perhaps, perhaps it's only the patient and the disease that's gotten him inside that sets it apart from the rest.
"This is Kim Jongin,"
And Kim Jongin is the sick person lying by the deathbed; a stack of dark hair and lids closed in peaceful sleep. In the tangle of wires and machines keeping him alive, Sehun fails to see what he's got to do with Kim Jongin. Answers fly out of Baekhyun's mouth as if Sehun asked the questions he's been wondering about out loud. "He's been in a coma for five months due to hypoxia."
"Dumb it down, please."
"Our Central Nervous System requires a lot of oxygen to its neurons. People get by this, but you know, there's always a glitch in our programming. The ones who suffer from the lack of necessary oxygen often ends up with cardiac arrest or this or maybe both. Not pretty, either way."
He's terribly sick, Sehun forms his own conclusion. Baekhyun lost Sehun in the butchering of words like neurons, cardiac arrest, glitches. Why do we need to classify types of suffering? "So he's terribly sick and forever asleep, I get it. And you want me to be buddy-buddies with him? I don't get it."
Baekhyun who runs a hand through his hair before ruffling it. Out of frustration or madness, possibly somewhere in the middle. "It'd save all our lives. You talk to him about your troubles, and I could finally get rid of you. Tell him all the burdens in that heart of yours. He'll keep secrets, even your darkest ones. And then we all live happily ever after."
Sehun laughs, clasping his hands together. "D'you really think trying this out would solve everything?"
"Yes, this will work." Baekhyun pats Sehun's shoulder. Lightly. "On a scale from one to over-trusting I am pretty damn naive, but I want you to know that this world is made out of sugar. It can crumble so easily but don’t be afraid to stick your tongue out and taste it."
Misery finds company, even if they weren't looking for it in the beginning. Even if the other one is as good as dead and the whole set up seemed to be scratched in the stars. Thanks to Baekhyun's maternal pleading, bribery, and eventually, locking up the room with only Sehun and the comatose patient inside, visiting Kim Jongin became a part of Sehun's daily routine.
The skies displayed behind the glass windows had been stuffed with angry, gray rain clouds when Sehun initiated his first conversation with Kim Jongin: I am the Oh Sehun, nice to meet you. How do you do? A stupid question, but it felt right at that time. Dim skies giving way to white clouds of various altitudes marked the first week of Sehun's friendship with the perpetually asleep man. Now that Sehun is at ease sitting beside the bed, the heavens express their calm by being a clear blue.
Sehun got used to Jongin slowly. A subtle shift in his clock: three digits of the short hand dedicated to tangling Jongin in the vines of all the questions, memories Sehun could grasp. From the second he cried his way into the earth, to the year he discovered his love for literature, dripping down to the car accident that crashed Luhan out of his life, Sehun recounts his history to Kim Jongin. Jongin's skin absorbs Sehun's words like fresh ink on paper.
Whenever Sehun's sentences echoes back to him, he allows himself to fall into the fantasy that Kim Jongin is awake. Kim Jongin can move on his own accord and Kim Jongin is saying everything Sehun longs to hear: Don't worry so much, I'm sure Luhan loved you to his final minute. You're not alone. You could still do fine on your own.
Then the ECG smacks Sehun back to reality with its monotonous beeps, reminding him that just because something beats doesn't mean it could speak.
Sehun comes over to room 430 everyday.
He wears clothes bathed in floral, fabric softeners. The scent permeates the atmosphere, overpowering the stench of medicines. Unfortunately, Baekhyun doesn't miss the strong aroma tickling his nostrils from the lobby meters down.
"Are you stopping by a florist before coming here? You smell so gay."
Sehun bites the inside of his cheek, refrains from commenting about what he saw yesterday: Baekhyun having a quickie behind the vending machine with a tall, weird man who looked like a cross between human and chihuahua. Byun Baekhyun has no right to talk about homosexuality.
"Nah, I read this article in Wikipedia about comatose patients. It said that even in that deep state of slumber, they're still aware of their senses. Now I don't know about you, but if I was Jongin, I'd want something constant everyday. Smelling like heaven just puked on me is fine as long as Jongin knows who it is the heavens puked on."
"Tell me more about Kim Jongin, doesn't he have any relatives visiting him?"
"So you're bossing me around now. I see how it is."
"Any family members coming over?"
"No, as far as I know. His bills are paid by a relative working overseas, but aside from that, no one ever comes here for him ever since he's been confined."
Sehun finally discovers something sadder than drowning in an ocean of unconsciousness while the rest of the world frolics on steady land and morning coffees--having no one to hope for.
Compassionate is something people don't think Oh Sehun is. He's just so self-centered for that. Sehun's too sad to want to cheer someone else up, too selfish to extend kindness. So there must be another name for the feeling tying him up and towing him to Kim Jongin's room every single afternoon.
Animatedly, he talks of this Yifan guy from work who is a tall, Chinese-Candian half-breed and with reverence, he reads his favorite poems out loud to Jongin, he lets Jongin know what living in the four corners of a novel feels like. By the week after the first year of 'light, one-way conversations', Sehun catches a slight twitch from Jongin's fingers. It's both insignificant and worth the whole universe to Sehun.
That night, he recites a passage from a poem by Bob Hicok, something he found beautiful;
Hear when I say “I never want to be without you,”
somewhere else I am saying
“I never want to be without you again.” And when I touch you
in each of the places we meet
in all of the lives we are, it’s with hands that are dying
and resurrected.
When I don’t touch you it’s a mistake in any life,
in each place and forever.
And instinctively, he reaches for Kim Jongin's limp hands, finding them much more magnificent than words. Wondering, for the first time, if he'd done this before and they mean something more each time. "What would your voice sound like? Do you like words? What's your favorite book? Do you fall in love with fictional characters? I do, all the time. It hurts, but it's a beautiful kind of hurt. Have you ever been hurt before?"
Again with the heart-shattering silence.
There are many spaces in Kim Jongin; between his fingers, the gap from his shoulder to his jaw, the hole between his lips where a thin tube is inserted to keep him alive. Oh Sehun has seven seconds to spare. This is more than enough for him to lean forward, tug the tube and replace it with his lips instead.
Contrary to Chbosky's 'and in that moment, i swear we were infinite' line, nothing about this second is infinite. If only, it dawns on Sehun how calculated and unstable everything is. Jongin's bed screams fragility, the clock on the wall ticks down the seconds, Jongin's lips acknowledge the foreign feel of Sehun's lips. There's tenderness in the way Sehun closes his eyes to see explosions, in the fact that he'd love Jongin too long without touching or hugging, without doing anything books dictate you have to do before loving someone.
Just then, the ground shakes tremendously. Sehun grips Jongin's wrist as everything around them groans down.
✖✖✖
He had been looking for a muse, but kissed home a stripper with wet lips and experienced hands instead. Things tumbled downhill the instant Kai's elbow rested against the table. The blow had been cushioned by a warm smile and eyes knowing Sehun would take him then and there.
You're far from a muse, he turns to Kai sleeping soundly beside him. His naked back rises and falls with every breathing and from underneath the blankets, Sehun clenches his fist to prevent any eager scratching. It must be fifth, sixth, or is it the eighth time they've crashed into bed like this; surprise meetings, suggestive looks, rushed whispers accompanied by unzipped jeans.
Kai is sorely living for the 'now'; I want this now, let's do this now, let's go now. He goes against Sehun's faith in the past, present, and the near future.
"I want you now," Kai would state, teeth sharp against Sehun's throat, wrist, the dip of his hips as he moves closer to Kai. (It's a lie, Kai can never be close enough). Now, has Sehun wondering about Kai's history and future. Will he be a part of it, or would that be another body to feed promises of the present into? The thought of possible betrayal haunts Sehun.
Summer is already peeking between the wet buildings, Kai's roots are already planted in Sehun's foundation, and memories had been made under the pretense of 'let's just go with it for now'. They've exchanged more than just kisses and pick-up lines. Touched not only each other's body, but also the boxes of childhood secrets preserved throughout the years.
"Nothing beats the feeling of dancing," Even with his energy drained by the wooden floor he practiced on for hours, Kai still beams at Sehun slumped down against the mirror. Sehun aggressively bites a peppero stick and recalls the scent of his palette, the feel of dabbing watercolor into his canvass.
"No, nothing beats the feeling of painting," He takes another stick from the box, munches and swallows.
"No, dancing is art." Kai pirouettes his way to Sehun. Sehun stops chewing to appreciate the sway of Kai's limbs, even though the whole thing is supposed to be funny. Nine steps and Kai is already in front of him, leaning down until they're face to face. When Kai's warm breath tickles the area near Sehun's lips, the latter automatically closes his lids, hoping for the kiss that didn't come.
Had Sehun keep his eyes open, he'd have seen a mischievous smile taint Kai's lips; Kai as he moves closer to bite the chocolate-covered stick off Sehun's lips. Sehun opens his eyes and Kai is in front of him, biting his peppero stick and looking perfect while bathing in the golden sunlight.
"I like you like this now," Sehun admits and Kai smiles at him, galaxies pasted in his eyes. Sehun realizes that this; him and Jongin and the distance between them, is art.
Inspiration comes to Sehun in the form of french films, planetariums, bouquets in shaking hands, and even in the melodies of orchestra music. Kai, though, proves him wrong when it comes to art. Without words, Kai teaches Sehun how dancing to the right tune can claw a painting out of him, that hiding under blankets at one a.m while grinning at each other, as if you've both done something you shouldn't have done, could stuff your stomach with butterflies. Using only his fingers, Kai shows Sehun what it's like create a masterpiece without a brush.
There had been a time when all Sehun could conjure are faint, morbid images with dark themes and elements. Now, he carves asteroids on Kai's thighs, digs for both love and lust on the curve of Kai's waist.
"What are you working on?" Kai asks for the eighteenth time (Sehun keeps count).
"It's a secret," he says before locking the door behind him. It always begins with Kai inquiring about Sehun's work and ends with Sehun rushing over to his studio; their polished version of hide-and-seek.
Before Sehun lies everything his imagination could share to paper, but never to Kai himself. They're too embarrassing and trusting because all that's captured in charcoal and acrylic are stuff about astronomy, more art, and anatomy. All related to Kai, of course.
Hanging on the wall is a medium-sized, framed portrait of Kai with stardust caught in his hair and nebulae glowing in the dark of iris. Constellations trace the lines of his jaw and shoulders, rose petals growing out of his lips.
"I don't like cuddling,"
"I do," Kai chuckles, snuggling deeper into the crook of Sehun's neck. The dust of sleep is still in Sehun's eyes as Kai binds them closer with his arms. "I like touching and hugging and kissing."
"And fucking." Sehun adds.
Kai laughs, his chest shaking against Sehun's back. "And fucking, too. I like doing everything with you. Hey Sehun, hey. Hey Sehun, hey."
"I can hear you perfectly fine, what is it?"
"Promise me something," The tone of Kai's voice lowers, timbres swirling in the air. "Promise me that you'll be careful from now on. Promise me you'll look both ways before crossing the street. That you'll never forget how dangerous guns can be. Whenever you're tempted to jump from something high to kill yourself, promise me you'll take three deep breaths and think of things that make you happy. Then turn around and brew yourself some tea. Promise me that you won't go to places that can kill you. Promise me you'll try to stay alive."
"That's a ridiculously easy promise to keep. Alright, I promise." Sehun brings up his right hand, raising his pinky finger and wraps it around Kai's waiting one. "In turn, promise me you'll try to say things like 'tomorrow', 'next time', 'after a month'. Promise me you'll make plans and boring to-do lists. This isn't really hard to do, isn't it? I'll be alive and you, well, just try to be a normal person."
Kai tightens his hold on Sehun's pinky, tugs his hand toward him and secures the string of promises with a light kiss. If kisses were sounds, this one would be a whisper, a grazing of lips against lips and tongue. Something so beautiful it would be a sin to say anything else. Bed sheets cling to Sehun's legs, and Kai understands: he does not want to let go of Sehun either.
"Later," Kai pants, diving deeper into the pillows. "I'm going to go and practice. After work, maybe we can have some take out Chinese and binge on those old films you like to watch. Tomorrow's my day off, let's go for a picnic. I heard they're nice and refreshing. And when we arrive home, let's have sex. Make love, if you think it's more romantic."
"That," Sehun's traps Jongin's neck with his arms. "Sounds like a good and safe plan."
Sometimes, we create accidents instead of endings.
Maybe they've been smudged to the point where it's hard to differentiate this from that. Sehun should never had said 'I love you' to Jongin. If he'd known Jongin would only choose to drive them into a dark dirt road, he wouldn't have accepted the invitation.
But it's too late now.
190 mph. The numbers blink at him, illuminating the silver platter where his memories are laid out: the past, the present, the repeating futures. In the indigo darkness, the only things that stand out are the orange neons, the veins on the side of Sehun's neck and temples. Everything beside Sehun blurs as the images behind his vision turns clearer.
Kai laughing as Sehun felt each shake. "And fucking, too. I like doing everything with you. Hey Sehun, hey. Hey Sehun, hey."
"Let's say you didn't always love me."
"What if I've seen you and fallen in love with you in a lot of parallel worlds?"
"This is for the best," Kai says and he has already pushed the gas pedal as hard as it can go. Jigsaw pieces click in Sehun's mind. Kai in a hospital bed. Kai dancing under the spotlight. Kai sitting beside him, calling himself a writer. Kai wrapping a hand on his wrist, pulling him away from chaos. Kai leaning against the railing, young and carefree. Kai in ancient robes. Kai as Kim Jongin.
"Just remember that I, Kim Jongin, love you and it doesn't matter if you forget everything else," Jongin says, voice as unstable as the car speeding through the dark.
"The prince was killed because he was stupid enough to get killed, and just when the servant wanted to pull a sleeping-beauty on the prince, they both vanished."
"Go on and jump,"
Sehun remembers, and fresh tears trail after bittersweet memories. On this very second, he regrets forcing Jongin to say words about the future. Tomorrow, next week, after two years; obviously based on experience, he can never rely on the assurance that they'd live forever.
"I'll be back."
"I'll be back for you, always." Jongin, the servant, says and tightens his hold on his prince's hand; the only thing that remained steady as the ground vanished and they tumbled and tumbled down to kiss the pit of death waiting for them.
Thank you, I'll be putting myself under your care.
✖✖✖
There isn't much to say about Jongdae's life aside from how he never got what he wanted.
Six year old Jongdae asked Santa for a remote-controlled helicopter, yet ended up unwrapping a plastic toy gun on Christmas morning. Wished for a brand-new car for his graduation present, but was handed the keys of a horrendous orange truck instead. Dreamed of becoming a poet, but found himself driving down the road towards professional journalism. After a lifetime of unfulfilled expectations, Jongdae stopped hoping.
And this is what a hopeless man looks like (you might see him in the street): hair three inches longer than what was acceptable, stained, black-rimmed glasses slipping down his nose, unlit cigarette dangling at the corner of his lips because lightening them up is so mainstream. Jongdae is anything but mainstream.
No one likes him; he's too pretentious and tries too hard. But it's okay since Jongdae isn't fond of other human beings either; Let me shit on your opinions.
Tolerating Jongdae isn't difficult because he does a damned good job at writing. His co-workers established that it's cool to have no manners and stink all the way to Jeju and back as long as what Jongdae does is good and passed on time. Due to this outstanding quality, Jongdae's the perfect person to cover the latest scoop; a peculiar happening hinted by an anonymous caller.
"Here we are. Geumgangsan Mountains," Beside him, a man with chubby cheeks turns off the engines, takes his bag and pulls the keys out. Jongdae nearly forgot him.
"Who are you again?" Jongdae steps out of the car. Chubby cheeks follows.
He's too used to this to be dazed by Jongdae's inattention. Clutching the strap of his black bag tighter, he recites, "I am Minseok, your photographer. I'm working with you today and I will take shots of whatever you can gather."
"Oh, okay Minseok the photographer. Let's get going then. It's too cold today, isn't it?" Jongdae begins making light, small talk as they trudge closer to the looming mountains, its sharp edges and calloused rocks.
Minseok nods. He doesn't remind Jongdae they've been covering scoops side-by-side for three years now.
It's as bad as the caller said.
Guided by the map Jongdae drew earlier to indicate the location of said fallen car, it took twenty-six minutes for Jongdae and Minseok the photographer to find the ditch it landed in. It strikes Jongdae as suspicious that someone would know about an accident like this in an abandoned area.
Dewy and fresh, each branch of a tree they happen to pass by emits such leafy colors Minseok just has to fumble to remove his camera from his bag and take in nature's goodness inside the lens.
Jongdae moves forward, ignoring the shutter sound, ignoring Minseok and everything outside his personal bubble. The mountains are intimidating and beautiful, but that doesn't diminish the danger lurking behind them.
"Minseok the photographer? Come here for a second . . . " Jongdae's voice gets smaller the farther he goes. Mindlessly, Minseok trails along, vision locked on Jongdae's dark clothes in the midst of all the greenery. Jongdae had always been the very thing Minseok can't pry his eye off. "That is so sad."
Jongdae chokes on the word sad as if it's a tangible rope coiling around his larynx. Minseok looks and wishes he didn't. The journalist and photographer walks side by side.
Sentences knots itself into other sentences in the folds of Jongdae's brain. Eventually, Minseok runs out of angles to capture the heart-breaking scene in front of them. To Jongdae, a million adjectives hides on the ground: covered by lost twigs and wrecked metal parts, inserted behind the button of a soiled shirt, peeking through thick eyebrows brushing over pale cheeks.
"At least they died together," Minseok stares at the interlaced fingers.
Jongdae observes the two bodies, shrugs his shoulders, keeping his gaze on the broken pieces of a green stone that might have been jade.
"Yeah, together."
F I N