Oneshot - Where Skies Meet End on End (part two)
They meet up for coffee again the next morning, early into another clear summer day.
Black coffee has never tasted sweeter, Yoochun thinks, resting the lip of his white porcelain mug against his mouth, eyes tracing the shape of Jaejoong’s words. The other has the same habit as Yunho and illustrates his stories with hands that flutter and settle like graceful birds along the tabletop.
Yoochun can’t seem to stop staring.
“Earth to Park Yoochun,” Jaejoong’s snapping his fingers at him now, eyes bright with a spark of laughter. “Come in, Park Yoochun! Hey, what’re you staring at?”
“What?” he knows the question, but his tongue has curled in the form of three letters one word and he needs time to swallow them back before he remembers how to say anything else. “Nothing. Just listening to you talk.”
“Really,” Jaejoong raises an eyebrow.
“Yes?” Yoochun tries on a smile. He feels like he’s giving away secrets that Jaejoong can read in the seams where his lips meet.
“You could always just admit that my good looks are quite distracting,” Jaejoong shrugs, diva star attitude. “Honesty is a virtue, you know.”
“So is humility, hyung,” Yoochun laughs.
“But I wear pride so much better,” Jaejoong says, wicked like he’s writing up conspiracy plots against the world in his head.
When he puts it like that, Yoochun really can’t argue.
~
Jaejoong insists on showing him the heart and bloodstreams of Paris and Yoochun readily agrees.
Its narrow streets stretch in every which way and Jaejoong leads him in twists and turns through cobble-lined streets bustling with people and ringing with voices. Yoochun finds history and some sort of untold story in every stone ledge and dusty street corner. Jaejoong hides a laughs at his amazement, sounding wild and free like the storm of wings that beats the pavement stones as the two of them run through the Place de la Concorde.
Famous places like the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe pass in snapshots of postcard glory, remaining long enough for a quick letter to self before Jaejoong’s tugging him through the streets and down another tree-lined alleyway.
They end up wandering past backdoors and picket fences, faces tilted up to count the different colours of laundry fluttering above their heads. There’s a fork in the road where they meet a fat golden retriever sleeping in the shade of an old oak tree, who grumbles and snorts softly when Yoochun stops to scratch him under the ears. A little blue-eyed girl peeks out shyly from the lowest branch of the tree, framed by leaf shadows like a forest nymph. Jaejoong gives her a mock salute and she giggles, slips down and introduces them to her dog, whose name is Robert.
A window bangs open high overhead and a woman, voice thick with a Normandy accent, calls, ‘Lucille!’
For a picture-perfect moment, girl and dog share identical silhouettes, head tilted and one ear cocked in the air. Then she’s flashing them a quick grin, scampering away as her dog lopes after her. Yoochun stares in some bafflement.
Jaejoong smiles. “This is part of the magic of Paris. You meet all sorts of people here.”
~
Paris afternoons are slow like molasses and the two of them whittle away the hours with a trip down to the Seine River and its Îles.
The quays are filled with tourists and locals alike, and the air is busy with music and conversations overtop the bellow of steamboats. Everywhere, Yoochun sees lovers hand-in-hand, hearts exchanged in kisses and secret smiles, and remembers just what Paris is famous for.
As they head into L’Île Saint-Louis, they come across a girl selling balloons.
“Do you believe in wishes, Yoochun?” Jaejoong asks.
Yoochun thinks back to every letter he’s painted in the morning condensation on his windowpane and says, “Yeah. Yeah, I do.”
“You know, they say that if you write your wish on a balloon and release it, and it’s received by the skies without getting blown off-course, then someone up there will grant your wish.” Jaejoong has a secret smile hanging at the side of his lips. Yoochun wonders where he can find the key to unlock it.
Jaejoong buys them each a balloon, midnight blue for him and ivory white for Yoochun, contradictions in colour.
Yoochun writes his heart on the lower corners of the balloon, takes a deep breath, and lets it go. They both stand in the middle of the Pont Marie, over the lifeblood of the city of Paris, faces tilted to the sun and watching midnight and ivory disappear into the clear, blue sky.
~
Three days fly past in a similar manner and Yoochun starts to feel like he can sketch out the streets of Paris in the blue-green veins of his hand. He closes his eyes and all he sees are rays of sunlight reflected off chocolatier’s windows, glinting off the ornate curls of black streetlamps, illuminating a halo behind Jaejoong’s smile.
An hour before dawn arrives with the start of his sixth day, Jaejoong phones him at 4:45 and tells him to drag his sorry ass out of bed; he’ll be there in fifteen minutes. Yoochun stares at the nest of blankets on his bed, and considers, for a reckless moment, jumping back into bed, screw the consequences. Somehow, he finds himself pulling on a pair of jeans nevertheless.
As promised, Jaejoong picks him up at his hotel, slumped in one of the lobby chairs and halfway to comatose.
“Hey, c’mon, let’s go.”
The lady at the reception desk is dozing off into her hands, and Jaejoong steals a handful of mints out of the ex-fishbowl on the counter.
And this is how Yoochun finds himself in Jaejoong’s second-hand Renault, sucking at a thank-you hotel mint. “5:00 am, Jaejoong? Really?” He’s bitching and he knows it. “You couldn’t give me another two hours?”
“Suck it up, princess. The sun would’ve been up by then.” Jaejoong nudges him playfully, crunching on his mint. “You’re going to love this, trust me.”
“I don’t love anything until 7:00 and I’ve had my double-shot espresso, sorry to say.”
Jaejoong pulls a face at him, “Stop whining like a girl and eat your mints, Park Yoochun.”
Wisely, Yoochun does, but fifteen minutes later, may or may not let his elbow travel accidentally into Jaejoong’s ribs.
The roads are lined with streetlamps lighting the way, disappearing in streams past the car windows. Jaejoong drives them to into the 20th arrondissement, wheels kicking up silence in the empty road. He steers into the back roads of Belleville’s Chinatown, stopping in an alleyway. “We’re here!” he sings, voice loud in the stillness.
“What,” Yoochun says, unimpressed. “What am I supposed to be seeing, exactly?”
“You have to get out of the car first, stupid.” Jaejoong sighs. “Do they not make you guys with brains included anymore?”
“Shut up, it’s too early for this.”
The alleyway stinks of fish and garbage and Yoochun adds disbelief to it as Jaejoong clambers over the railings and up the stairs leading to the fire escape.
“I, um. Are you sure this is legal?”
Jaejoong’s grin is quick and white in the dark, bordering on feral. “It is if we don’t get caught.”
The side of the building is rough red brick and the paint rusts and flakes off on Yoochun’s palms. Gravity drags at his shoes between the slats of the rickety stairs and he tries not to look. He’s lost count of how many turns they’ve made when Jaejoong reaches the top, makes a small jump and shimmies over the fence marking out the edge of the roof against the lightening sky. “C’mon,” Jaejoong says. His hands are warm and soft, reminding Yoochun of a girl’s, if not for the strength in the muscles and cords as they haul Yoochun up and over.
“Tada!” Jaejoong’s arms are stretched like wings against the sky. “The most beautiful place on Earth.”
“Wow,” Yoochun breathes, exhalation a caught bird in his throat. In front of him the rest of Belleville is laid out in clusters of dark rooftops that seem close enough to step onto in a hopscotch game. In the distance, he can see the rectangular Louvre, and the Eiffel Tower punctuates the sky even further down. Jaejoong spins him around with hands underneath his shoulder blades and Yoochun discovers the beginning of a sunrise peeking out from the horizon line, colouring the edges of the sky and lighting up the corners of Paris.
“That’s beautiful,” he murmurs, breath fogging just a bit in the chill of early morning. “Thank you,” he says and Jaejoong’s beaming like a child awarded candy for a job well done.
“Told you you’d like it.”
Yoochun nods, watching the glow of pink bleach Jaejoong’s hair into a light brown and dust a blush on his cheeks, fingers missing the shape of his camera. He imprints the image to memory instead, framed and titled ‘Magic’. “You still owe me coffee though. And breakfast.”
Jaejoong sighs dramatic enough to be the pride of the Grand Rex stage. “Fair enough.”
~
They spend the day shopping through Belleville and Ménilmontant. Jaejoong not only treats Yoochun to breakfast, he also takes him to a dinner of what he calls Parisien Chinese food. Lunch is hopelessly lost somewhere between the patisserie and a shared bag of fried dough strips. Clock hands run at the speed of a pocket watch wound too tightly and soon the sky is darkening along the horizon, leaving Yoochun with his throat full of voiceless confessions.
Jaejoong drives him back to the hotel, the traffic slow, the night colder than usual. Yoochun fidgets with knuckles and fingers, feet scuffing against Jaejoong’s threadbare car rug. His knees won’t stop shaking.
The familiar lights of the Quartier Latin envelope them and suddenly the hotel is right there, larger than life. In that moment, Yoochun has never hated anything more.
“I guess this is it, huh?” Jaejoong murmurs. He’s staring somewhere past the dashboard and Yoochun feels like he’s already left, turned tail and gunned it back down Saint-Michel.
“Yeah… it’s been - it’s been a good week, spending it w-with you.” He’s stuttering. He hasn’t done that since eighth grade. “Um, Jaejoong -”
They both jump as thunder cracks in the distance and rain suddenly pours in torrents down the Fibreglass windows. Yoochun’s still thinking in the past tense of disorientation; at his side, caution is abandoned to the wind. “Hey,” Jaejoong says, and leans over.
The dry press of mouth on mouth is a secret folded up between rumbles of thunder. Jaejoong is ethereal under liquid lightning, sharp and knife-edge brittle for a heart-stopping moment. This is a truth, Yoochun reads in his eyes, hears it mouthed silent against his skin.
I know, he answers with soft fingertips. I know. I feel it too.
~
Morning after’s are always endlessly awkward, Yoochun thinks, hands cupping coffee steam and uncertainty, watching the lump under the cotton sheets. He doesn’t know where they sit now.
Twenty minutes later, he’s relocating the hotel phone and dragging it through the balcony doors. Long-distance calls are expensive, but the bill isn’t his.
“Hello?” Yunho sounds tiny through a mouthpiece and Yoochun’s feeling the distance.
“Hyung.”
“Yoochunnie?” he can hear Yunho shake himself awake. Yoochun checks his watch - he’s forgotten to count in the time difference.
“Sorry for bothering you, hyung.”
“It’s no problem. What’s wrong?”
Yoochun considers skirting around the subject, play it safe to keep the revelations at bay. He hesitates too long.
“Chun-ah? Is this about Jaejoong?” Yoochun can almost hear him leafing through all his plans, wondering what went wrong, where this well-oiled machine lost a bolt.
“Um, yeah. I, um. I don’t know what we are now.”
“Oh. Don’t worry. He plays serious, Chun-ah.” Yoochun can hear the fond smile, transcribed through 5000 miles of static. “Jaejoong may be flighty, but he always ends up leaving his heart with people he loves.”
“Oh.”
Yunho chuffs a soft laugh. “Do you want another week? Find out where this goes?”
“Are you sure, hyung?”
“Of course! We won’t die without you, you know.”
The truth stings just a bit.
A pause. Yunho’s realized it too. “Hey. We won’t die, but it’ll be real lonely around here. Junsu’s been moping like a puppy dog all week.”
Yoochun laughs, knots unravelling and chest warm, remembering the silliness that comes with that face. “Thanks, hyung.”
“No problem, Yoochunnie. Take care of him, alright?”
Yoochun looks through the glass doors at the bump of white curled up small in the middle of his bed. “Yeah. I will, hyung.”
~
Yoochun discovers that Jaejoong comes awake quietly, watching him with sleepy eyes that had been bolted shut just moments before. “Hey,” Jaejoong whispers like a secret, smudged outlines and hair like ink against the starched hotel pillows.
“Hey yourself,” Yoochun replies, smiling. “It’s half past noon. Hurry up, I haven’t eaten since last night.” He’s folding bits of his personal life back into his suitcase, separating them from the neutrality of hotel room accessories. Jaejoong’s tracking his movements, eyes nervous and unsure. Yoochun picks up a clean shirt of his and throws it at him, along with a pair of pants. “Go,” he says, jerking a thumb at the bathroom door. “Go make yourself decent for the world so we can eat.”
The slow pad of Jaejoong’s footsteps across the carpet sounds like contemplation and the weighing of possibility against probability.
It takes another fifteen minutes for all of Yoochun’s things to be packed back into his suitcase, his moving house on wheels back in business. The room looks like nobody’s lived here, except for the messy sheets and Jaejoong standing in the center of the room, exhibiting collarbone and left shoulder in one of Yoochun’s oversized band t-shirts.
“All right, let’s go.” Yoochun says and snags him by the wrist. Jaejoong follows, and Yoochun wonders at this switch of roles.
The elevator is empty all the way down to the lobby. Somewhere around the fifth floor, Jaejoong asks, “Are we okay?”
Past the fourth floor, Yoochun says, “Yeah, we are.”
“Oh,” says Jaejoong as they approach the third floor.
A floor later, Yoochun adds, “If you want, we have another week to make sure.”
The doors glide open at the lobby. The link of their fingers feels like a promise.
~
Somehow, Yoochun transitions easily into Jaejoong’s life.
The same afternoon he moves in is marked with a sudden summer cloudburst and the two of them drip water all over the floor as Jaejoong fumbles with the keys. Yoochun watches their two rivers creep across concrete and meet in a whoosh. Floodwaters open and create an ocean.
Jaejoong finally has the door open, just as the rain ups the ante.
“Stand here, don’t move,” Jaejoong instructs, waddling away in search of towels. Yoochun toes off his soggy sneakers and explores the entryway instead.
There are black-framed pictures lining the walls, just like the ones Yunho’s got in his office. Yoochun recognizes Jaejoong’s signature in the strange angles and the slightly off-kilter focus on the photos. He likes to approach life from never-thought-of ways, Yoochun thinks. Not through the front door or the back alleyway, but rather through a window set high on the wall so he can watch surprise and amazement blossom on faces when he pops his head through.
It makes Yoochun laugh and his heart constrict just a little bit.
~
The air in Jaejoong’s apartment is warm and somehow kind. Yoochun doesn’t know why he makes the connection, but he thinks it may have something to do with breathing in the callous hotel air conditioning by himself for the past week.
The apartment is small, smaller than his back at home. There’s only enough space for two bedrooms and a kitchen and a small space that houses a couch and an old-style TV. Light pours in from the balcony that hides behind white curtains, and Yoochun gets a peek at shirts and pants and checkerboard boxers, strung on a line.
Jaejoong introduces him to the guest room, a single bed creature with a window that stares sullenly out into the mossy brick wall of the building next door. The room is dark and cramped and Jaejoong apologizes sheepishly. Yoochun doesn’t mind. Jaejoong’s bedroom is right across the hallway and he sneaks in there every night anyways.
~
Within three days, Yoochun learns to love Jaejoong’s hand-me-down couch. Now that Yoochun knows Paris like a childhood home, Jaejoong teaches himself to him instead. They imitate the lovers on the banks of the Seine and trade hearts with each kiss, memorizing the countless secrets pressed into skin.
Jaejoong has an old radio that whispers instead of sings, swing melodies and jazz solos made soft by static. Their world is set to the saxophones of Frank Sinatra and Duke Ellington, soundtracks of a budding romance. They map all the different ways their bones fit into each other and create a Paris of their own inside the small apartment.
~
On the last day of his stay, Yoochun lets Jaejoong curl into the body heat he leaves behind on the mattress and runs off to the market as soon as dawn traces curious fingers along the windowsill. The line of shops around the corner is just opening up their doors and the warm scent of fresh baguettes and buttery croissants wafts through the air.
Yoochun points into the display, smiling shyly at the French girl standing behind the counter. She nods in understanding, slipping two orders of croissants and two of each kind of Danish into a brown paper bag.
On his way back, he passes by a flower shop. The myriad of colours are startling against the pale cobblestones and the blank slate of a sky in early mornings. At the storefront, there is a tin tub of white lilies, cousins to the yellow-orange explosion he’d sat next to when he first met Jaejoong. He tips his head towards them and breathes in the fresh sweetness. Vaguely, he remembers reading somewhere that they mean ‘forever in love’.
~
Jaejoong wakes up at five to nine, blinking eyelashes against Yoochun’s bare shoulder. “Morning,” Jaejoong’s mouth presses into his back. His fingers are encircled around Yoochun’s wrist like a child.
“Hey,” Yoochun whispers back.
Morning market chatter filter in pieces through the curtains, tip toeing around the quiet in the room. Sunlight slants in shards through the blinds, splashing onto the floor.
“You should get up,” Yoochun says, combing the remnants of dreams out of Jaejoong’s hair. “I got us some breakfast earlier.”
“Oh,” Jaejoong’s still trying to clean up blurred edges, pulling his skin better around his frame. “Thanks.”
“No need. I borrowed your wallet.” He didn’t actually, but it’s enough to snap Jaejoong back into place, indignation flying in the form of feather pillows that smell faintly of citrus shampoo.
Fifteen minutes later, all the sheets are on the ground and Yoochun is pinned with his arm behind his back, laughing.
“Uncle?” Jaejoong asks smugly. He always knows when victory is within reach.
“Yeah, yeah, okay.” Yoochun rubs his freed arm. “I was joking, you know. God, you’re so violent in the mornings.”
A shrug and Jaejoong’s tugging on Yoochun’s discarded shirt, uninterested in details now that he’s won and there’s food on the table. He’s back a minute later, sticking his head through the doorway. “The food isn’t getting any warmer, you know.”
Yoochun laughs and gives up with the sheets and pillows. He can take a hint.
~
“Oh,” Yoochun remembers just as Jaejoong is licking the syrup off his fingers after the last bite of his fruit Danish.
“What?” Jaejoong glances up and uses this opportunity to steal Yoochun’s Danish off his plate. He has a weak spot for pineapples.
Yoochun swats half-heartedly at him as he gets up and heads onto the balcony. He’s stuck the lilies in a bucket that used to hold two old champagne bottles in the corner of Jaejoong’s living room. For some reason, it’s the only thing in the entire apartment that is capable of holding more than a litre of water. Not including Jaejoong’s pots, of course, because Yoochun values his life.
When he gets back to the table, Jaejoong is chewing on the stem of his macchiato cherry, the red bright like curiosity.
His heart’s beating double-time, just like when they first met, and he thinks it’s kind of ridiculous to be experiencing the stomach-churning nerves again, all over an armful of flowers. “Hey, um.” Yoochun doesn’t know where all his words go when he’s around Jaejoong. “So. This.”
Jaejoong’s eyes have gone soft. He has such an expressive face, Yoochun’s discovered, and so far love is Yoochun’s favourite look on him.
“Hey.” Suddenly, Jaejoong’s there, pressing a wad of tissue under Yoochun’s eyes. Yoochun realizes with a start that he’s tearing up a bit. “You’re such a hopeless girl, Yoochun.”
Fingers shaking like an earthquake, he passes the slip of paper to Jaejoong, the one that has the meaning of these flowers written on it in the flower girl’s elegant cursive.
He can only curl his lips in a watery smile as Jaejoong hides his face in Yoochun’s shirt and pretends he’s not spreading little lakes between the cotton fibres.
~
Goodbyes are never easy.
“Promise you’ll email and call, every single day,” Jaejoong’s saying, ticking items off his fingers like a grocery list. Yoochun doesn’t doubt he was up all night memorizing. “And remember to eat, and dress warmly, and tell Yunho that his ass will have a nice date with my frying pan to look forward to if he ever overworks you. Remember your fruits and vegetables, and no, three cups of coffee a day is not sustenance, it’s just a shitload of caffeine. Don’t sleep too late and -”
“Ummaaa,” Yoochun whines, clasps a hand over Jaejoong’s mouth. “I’m not a child anymore. I can take care of myself.”
“Yeah, yeah, you’re a big kid now.” Jaejoong mumbles. He pretends to wipe away a tear. “My baby, growing up so fast.”
Yoochun pretends along with him. “Oh, umma. You have to take care of yourself. Remember to take the arthritis meds that the doctors prescribed, one after each meal, and don’t forget to put on your information tag before you leave the house, in case you get lost -”
“Hey, watch it!” A hand messes his bangs into his eyes. “I’m not that much older than you, dongsaeng!”
Yoochun laughs. Jaejoong is a light bundle against him, all sinew and muscle with a waver in his bones that has the potential to melt into tears. “Hey,” he murmurs, swallowing back the thick feeling in his throat. “I’ll be fine. You take care of yourself too, ok?”
“You better email and call every day, or else your ass is right up there with Yunho’s on the list of dates my frying pan’s got lined up.”
“Gotcha.” the loudspeakers buzz through the vaulted ceilings of the airport and Yoochun’s able to decipher his flight number and Seoul from the ripples of French. He can tell from the look on Jaejoong’s face that he’s heard it too. “Love you, Jae.”
“Stop it, you big girl.” Jaejoong slaps him on the arm. There’s no teeth there. “Hurry up before I decide to abduct you back to the apartment, Jung Yunho be damned.”
Yoochun can feel his smile wobbling at the edges. “Take care, hyung. I’ll call you when I get there.”
“You better.” his fingers are tangled in hem of his t-shirt, one of Yoochun’s. A keepsake. “Hey.”
“Hm?”
“I’ll miss you.”
“Yeah.”
“I love you.”
“Y-yeah.”
“Stop crying, damn it. I’ll see you soon, ok?”
“Mhm, y-yeah.” it’s not quite the truth, but Yoochun wishes it was.
iv. "A part of you has grown in me, and so you see, it's you and me together forever. Never apart, maybe in distance, but never in heart." - Unknown
Yoochun’s never been fond of planes, hating the altitude and the feeling of instability away from the ground. This trip back home takes the cake as the worst he’s ever had and not for the reasons people normally complain about to their relatives on the ground.
His flight is substantially empty and he asks to be switched to the very back of the aircraft, where there are three rows of empty seats. He spends the distance from the skies of France to the airspace over Korea listening to the thrum of the engine and curled up against the absence beside him, sliding his fingers over the bumps of a scrawled phone number and pretending there is someone there.
It’s a long thirteen hours.
~
Hearing Korean all around him is almost foreign in the first half an hour. Yoochun finds it strange to listen and be able to understand that the three young girls a little distance away from him are visiting their grandmother, and the two businessmen chatting behind him are back to work after a business conference in Australia. He almost misses the alien syllables of the French language, despite being constantly trailed by confusion and the hair-tearing panic that comes with the inability to communicate.
His battered suitcase thumps onto the carrousel and he snatches it up, fingers already fumbling in his jacket to flip open his cell phone. The phone seems to ring on forever.
When Jaejoong picks up, his voice is slow and slurred from sleep. Yoochun’s always forgetting about time zones and the distances.
“Hey. I’m back in Korea.”
“Yoochun?” A muffled yawn. Yoochun pictures messy hair and tendons stretching as Jaejoong pulls himself back into existence. “That’s great. How was your flight?”
“It was all right. We didn’t meet much turbulence.” Yoochun never shares his monsters. It’s a personal policy.
“That’s good. And how was the food? One to five on a scale of plasticity.”
“Didn’t eat any. I slept the whole way.” It’s close enough to the truth.
There’s a pause. Yoochun resents the static between them. “Hey,” he whispers.
“Yea?”
“I miss you.”
“Miss you too.”
“Wish you were here.”
“Me too.” Jaejoong, when he’s caught in that place between asleep and aware, is pliant enough to say anything.
“I’ll talk to you tomorrow?”
“Yea. Give my love to Yunho and the others.”
“Will do. Night, Jaejoong.”
“Night, Yoochun.”
~
When he pushes through the air-conditioned bubble of the airport, Yoochun finds Incheon in the middle of a 30° afternoon. Everything is blindingly vivid, like a photograph with the saturation turned up high. Junsu waves at him from beside a palm tree, where he’s balancing on one leg like a flamingo in sunglasses.
Yunho and Changmin are waiting in the car with smiles and an iced latte, and it’s great to see them all again, greeting him with varying degrees of enthusiasm and curiosity toward his trip. As the stereo blasts the latest bubblegum pop and Yoochun joins Junsu in belting it out, he finds that he fits right back with them, like a puzzle piece that had been only temporarily misplaced.
But he can’t help but notice how Paris has sandpapered him down a little, so that his edges click with the others but occasionally show little gaps of nothing in between. Sometimes, under the hot studio lights or in the shadow-laden lamplight of his apartment, he’ll look down and wonder at the empty heart-shaped hole where he’s lost a piece of himself somewhere, a clean and perfect cut that is like the aftermath of paper pressed through a hole punch.
~
The first few weeks are hard.
Memories of another’s body heat next to his own at night is difficult to shake off and Yoochun finds himself lugging out Jaejoong’s old mattress, curling up in the indent that countless nights have worn into sagging springs.
During the day, his life is a little bit brighter, filled with Yunho and Junsu and Changmin’s collective company, on top of a flowing work schedule at the studio to keep stray thoughts in line and stranded fingers occupied.
It’s the nights that Yoochun comes to dread, when monsters dance on his walls and moonlight stretches out all the shadows. After three consecutive nights of waking up from nightmares to find loneliness sitting heavy on his chest, Jaejoong’s Polaroid is taped to a frame and stood beside his bed. He stares past the glass and pretends the person inside is smiling through time and distance, just for him.
~
Things settle into a bit of equilibrium. Yoochun develops a habit of spending mornings with his keyboard and mouse instead of facedown on the kitchen table.
Jaejoong sends him snatches of Paris days, folded into little electronic envelopes that blink impatiently in Yoochun’s inbox.
From: jjoongie@caramail.com
To: “hey you”
Date: Tues, June 30, 2009 at 11:05 PM
Subject: ♪Love was made for me and you~♪
Hey
I saw Lucille today \(^_^)/ \(^_^)/ \(^_^)/
She asked me where you’d gone and I told her you went home. Sorry, but she seems to be under the impression that you’re an alien now /(^o^)/
<
<
<
xoxo,
Jae ☜(^▽^)☞
PS. It rained today and made me think of you
Yoochun makes believe he’s able to live on these texts alone. Jaejoong has a tendency to abuse emoticons in the worst of ways, but somehow, the obnoxious neon flashes bring back memories of Jaejoong’s colours under the Parisian sun. Yoochun saves them all into a separate folder marked with '♥' and trades back with little bits of his own life.
From: mickypark@citynet.co.kr
To: “the one I love”
Date: Wed, July 1, 2009 at 7:15 AM
Subject: ♪Had me at hello~♪
Hey Jae
,
I hope you told her I came from asteroid B612. Cuz that’s where all the cool kids are
And you better not have pulled the Uranus joke or I will be forced to hit you very hard when I see you next. (¬_¬)
(Wait, do they even have that in French?
)
Btw, my blue fish curtains tripped up Changmin again today (¬_¬)
He dropped a full box of Cheerios all over my floor
You’d think he would’ve learned to duck by now, you know? I refuse to believe this is the same kid who’s currently got a 90% average in all his classes (¬_¬)
missing you,
Chun
PS. We haven’t gotten any rain yet, but the weatherman is predicting storms for next week. I miss you, Jae
In their words, Yoochun finds assurance that Jaejoong isn’t just a sepia-toned photograph, fading away to shadows of gray ghost smiles. He prints out all their emails back and forth, lines them up on his bedroom walls in chronological order, framed at the corners with sparkly heart-shaped stickers that Changmin calls girly and gay.
Every night, the moon still illuminates loneliness baring its teeth from dark corners, but he looks at the pages of their story written across his walls and believes that, somewhere across the ocean, there’s someone still loving him.
~
The emails stop coming one day.
It’s a normal day in the middle of April; clears skies and highs of 20°, says the weatherman through Yoochun’s radio speakers.
Yoochun clicks through fifteen messages of spam and ads, accumulated like dustbunnies under his bed in one night.
Confusion trails a spark of ice that washes down his spine when he deletes one last ad from - Weight Watchers - discover weight loss freedom and finds the words ‘no new messages’ pulled up in front of his eyes.
Ten minutes; he’s making up reasons and maybe’s.
Four hours; his mind is doing a quick self-examination, flipping through the pages, searching for a line stepped over.
After work, the inbox says (1) but it’s just a Vicodin ad that’s made its way in while Yoochun was at the studio.
He tosses and turns all night, finally sitting up at three to watch the streetlights stretch along his walls as traffic passes by his window.
Dawn comes and goes and the next morning ends up being a scene of déjà vu.
At work, Yunho sends him home early, with orders to go to bed and stay in bed. Yoochun’s been spacing out all day, chewing on pen lids and filtering out all the noise around him, so that Junsu has to call his name four or five times just to get the lighting adjusted to the left by 20 degrees for a single shot.
Yoochun spends the afternoon distracted, walking in circles around his apartment before collapsing on the living room floor, misplaced coffee mug be damned. He stares up at the ceiling and wonders why Jaejoong seems to have taken with him his ability to remember all the important things.
When dusk begins to creep along the curtains into the room, Yoochun sucks in a deep breath and decides to take the initiative.
From: mickypark@citynet.co.kr
To: “the one I love”
Date: Fri, April 16, 2010 at 8:45 PM
Subject: This is Earth calling Kim Jaejoong
Hey Jae,
Haven’t gotten an email from you. Is everything ok?
Reply soon.
Love you,
Chun
Ten minutes are spent staring dry-eyed at his internet homepage, his fingers forgetting their destined tasks. A ding signifies the arrival of a new message. His cursor has never moved so fast.
From: postmaster@mail.citynet.co.kr
To: mickypark@citynet.co.kr
Date: Fri, April 16, 2010 at 8:55 PM
Subject: Delivery Status Notification (Failure)
This is an automatically generated Delivery Status Notification.
Delivery to the following recipients failed.
jjoongie@caramail.com
There’s a rush in his ears and the world tips upside-down. Despair is a familiar evil sneaking in through the back door.
He doesn’t sleep that night.
~
Two days later and empty-handed, Yoochun’s holding a staring contest with his phone, collecting courage at his fingertips like marbles.
Since that first phone call at the airport, he hasn’t tried to call again. As much as he misses Jaejoong’s voice, the vacant sound that the phone receiver brings him has started to become the thing of his nightmares. The static that used to soften their music into something to be inhaled and shared is now felt keenly as distance separating Seoul from Paris.
As a child, Yoochun had always been the type to sit with a little bit loneliness hollow in his chest after he hangs up the phone. Now he’s feeling 5500 miles accurately in an empty hole right underneath his sternum.
A sudden knock sounds at the door and all of Yoochun’s concentration scatters.
Yunho grins at him, quick and warm, chin keeping an apple trapped on top of the paper grocery bag. “Hey, what’s up?”
Yoochun lies through his teeth. “I’m okay. It’s nothing.”
The Freudian slip goes unnoticed as Yunho gets caught in his own sneakers and the apple makes its way underneath Yoochun’s shoe cabinet.
As Yunho swears and makes his apologetic way into the kitchen, Yoochun kneels down and scoops up the wayward apple. He pretends not to hear the phone mocking him in the living room.
~
Changmin is the first to notice Yoochun’s new tendency to stare into the corners of his apartment, eyes tracing cracks into shadows, hoping to locate the secret whereabouts of the key that will lock up the box that’s seeping loneliness through its cardboard walls, written in the plaster of this apartment.
“Hyung,” Changmin says, four days in. He’s got his ass sticking out of Yoochun’s fridge, and at first, Yoochun’s too busy comparing the shade of his ceiling to his memory of Jaejoong’s to notice that the other’s not mumbling to the jar of kimchi.
“Hm? What?” he asks, a minute late. The gap between ‘okay’ and ‘fucking depressed’ becomes impossible to bridge in those sixty seconds.
Changmin’s casually checking the date on the milk, watching him over the top of the carton. Yoochun doesn’t know what he sees.
A moment and Changmin shrugs, takes a swig. “You okay lately?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. It’s nothing.” Yoochun wishes he knew what kind of diagnosis the doctor’s made.
“Hmm,” Changmin gives up on the fridge and starts in on the cupboards instead. “Sorry, but ‘it’s nothing’ implies that there is something.”
Stupid psychology major, Yoochun thinks. “‘It’s nothing’ implies that it’s none of your business, dongsaeng.”
“Nonsense. Everything’s my business.” A quick smile flashed his way. “Said the ahjussi downstairs.”
Yoochun’s not sure how to respond to that. Instead, he watches Changmin contemplate the jar of peanut butter and passes him a spoon. “We’re out of bread. Sorry.”
“Again? But Yunho did the shopping two days ago!” Changmin frowns at the cupboard door, as if it’s the one that has personally ruined his afternoon snack. “Do you have gigantic mice or something?”
“Nope, only one Kim Junsu.”
Somehow, Changmin can make even licking peanut butter off a spoon sound sullen. Yoochun almost wants to laugh; would, if it wasn’t for the ambiguity hanging stiff in the air.
“Hey,” Changmin’s saying suddenly. “Don’t worry, alright? Jaejoong’s a free spirit, but he always comes back to places that feel like home.” He winks, spoon sticking out of his mouth at a jaunty 75°. “And apparently he thinks you might, so there’s nothing to worry about.”
Yoochun’s not sure how to respond to that either. He’s a little disappointed that his acting is possibly worse than he thought. “How do you know?”
“Inside sources.” Changmin taps the side of his nose, grins. “Have some faith, hyung.”
Yoochun’s still chewing that over when he realizes Changmin has already left, calling “See you later, hyung! Thanks for the food!” through Yoochun’s doorway. It’s after the door thuds shut that he notices the kid has made off with his peanut butter and his carton of milk.
Damn it.
~
Another week passes, and Yoochun knows that Yunho knows what’s up.
“I’m fine, Yunho,” he says before Yunho can get a word in, hoping to put a premature death to Confrontations: Round Two.
It doesn’t quite work.
“Are you sure, Chun-ah? You don’t want to talk about it?”
“I’m fine. Changmin’s already had this pep talk with me.”
Yunho’s very good at pouting like a kicked puppy. Yoochun feels bad, but he’s the type to lick his wounds in private.
“Just know that I’m always here, Chunnie-ah.”
“Yeah, I know. Thanks, but I can get through this.”
It’s hard, but it’s been personal right from the start.
~
It’s been three weeks. Yoochun picks up the receiver one day and dials a number that his fingers know by the touch of pen nib indents on paper.
There’s a pause like an indrawn breath. Yoochun hears the worst in that silence.
A click, and an automated female voice tells him something in monotone French. The words flow too fast for him to catch, but he knows exactly what she means.
He replaces the receiver. He’s always had a bad habit of picking at scabs until they bleed.
~
A month, and Yoochun’s heart begins to tear at the edges. He hasn’t slept in days.
Nights are spent at the kitchen table, radio playing whatever station Junsu happens to have left the dial on. With his head full of buzzing, Yoochun hears it in sound waves and frequencies and everything that eventually meshes into noise; he doesn’t care, as long as it drowns out the silence curling outward from the corners of his apartment.
He traces F-A-I-T-H in invisible letters against his mahogany table, pretending to wield magic in the tips of his fingers that will make everything okay again. He thinks about happily-ever-afters, about soulmates and their truths written in the stars.
A sad love song comes on and he gets up to turn off the radio.
~
Junsu finds himself sent on suicide missions more and more often, armed with blueberry muffins in a bag with a Starbucks espresso and a tentative smile.
Yoochun has a mild temper that rarely shows its teeth, but he has a tendency to change with the angle of the sun when he’s low on sleep.
“Morning, Yoochunnie,” Junsu’s humming quietly, paper bag crinkling. “Nice hair.”
Yoochun slits open one eye and watches as the other twirls lopsided pirouettes across his linoleum floor, elbow nearly taking out the coffee pot. “What’re you doing here, Su?”
“I brought breakfast.” Junsu’s singing all his words less out of whimsy and more in an attempt to keep his voice light. Yoochun may not be the most aware when in the middle of his insomnia runs, but this much he can tell.
“I’m not hungry.”
“Lies.” Junsu tugs at his arm. “Get up, you big bum! You need to eat and there’s a muffin and your morning shot of caffeine just waiting for you in that bag.” He’s never been one to read the neon signs that point left when he likes right better.
Yoochun’s throat constricts around the first bite and he nearly spits it back out. The second goes down easier with a mouthful of coffee and he suddenly finds that he’s much hungrier than he thought.
“Did you eat already?” he asks, mouth full of blueberries and muffin crumbs.
“Yeah, I bought a bagel and ate it on the way here.” Junsu’s perched on a kitchen stool, swinging his feet against empty air. He reminds Yoochun of a child, all big eyes and trusting heart the size of North America. “Hey, Yoochunnie,” Junsu says, face tilted and tracing the shapes of the water-stains on Yoochun’s ceiling. “Hang in there, ok? Everything will work out.”
Yoochun’s picking his muffin to pieces. He says nothing, just thinks about the hint of a secret he can see peeking from the edges of Junsu’s words. “You want a sip?” he asks instead.
“Okay!” Junsu has a completely misguided sense of the term ‘just a sip’ and always ends up downing a mouthful. Yoochun figures he can let it go this time.
“Hey, Su?”
“Yea?” Wayward fingers freeze like criminals caught on the run, five inches from his crumb-littered napkin.
Yoochun hides a smile in the cardboard curve of his coffee cup. “Thanks.”
“No problem!” Junsu’s beaming at him, all cat-got-the-cream satisfaction mingled with genuine glee. Yoochun watches in amusement as the rest of his muffin steadily disappears into the other’s mouth. He steals the last bite out of Junsu’s fingers and tries not to choke as fingers dig into his side in retaliation. Junsu puffs his cheeks in a pout and stomps his feet, a grin tucked at the corners of his five-year-old petulance.
Yoochun doesn’t feel so alone anymore.
~
It’s a week to his birthday and Yoochun’s been sensing some sort of subdued commotion flitting at the edges of his interactions all week.
The calendar in the office gets flipped to June and the fourth is circled in sparkly green pen. Someone, probably Junsu, has filled the box with glittery gel pen fireworks. Yoochun smiles at the sight and tries to ignore the pang that wavers at the edge of his lips.
“Hey,” Yunho says during lunch break that same day, watching Yoochun watch old music videos on Youtube. “Want anything?”
Yoochun raises an eyebrow. “Not really, unless that teriyaki chicken’s up for grabs.”
“I was talking about your birthday, actually.” The chicken ends up in Yoochun’s bowl nevertheless.
Yoochun chews slowly, pretending to think. He knows exactly what he wants, and he also knows better than to ask. He scrolls through the playlist and clicks on another video. “Nah, I’m fine.”
Yunho has understanding soft on his face. “How about a party?” he asks. “Just the four of us and a lot of booze?”
“And Moulin Rouge?”
“Fine by me.” Yunho shrugs, lips curling at the corners. “I don’t know what Changmin will have to say about that though.”
“It’s my birthday. He gets to play errand boy if he complains.”
Yunho laughs and slings an arm around his shoulder. “Sure,” he agrees. “As long as I’m not the one to end up with spiders in my sheets come morning.”
“I’ll make sure your innocence remains crystal clear.” Yoochun promises solemnly. “You can trust me with your virgin purity.” He squirms away laughing from the finger aimed at his ribs. Arms pin him down and the computer chair dumps them both on their asses.
“Hey,” Yunho tells him quietly, ruffling warm affection through Yoochun’s hair. “You’ve done well, dongsaeng.”
Yoochun forces the knot at the back of his throat to come out as the huff of a laugh. “You’re so weird, hyung,” he says and clambers back into his seat.
~
The day of his birthday, Yoochun finds himself with a day off and restlessness in the lines of his bones. He prowls around his apartment, settles in his bed and tries to fool himself into sleep. It doesn’t work, and he lies down in the center of the living room instead, pretending to write out his secrets from the past year into the plaster of his ceiling.
At half past ten, his phone breaks the silence and startles him into movement.
“Hello?”
“Good morning, Park Yoochun-sshi? This is the lobby downstairs calling.”
“Ah, yes.”
“We’ve received a package with your name. Would you like to come pick it up?”
Yoochun’s not sure what to think. His fingers trace a question mark into his carpet. “Um. Are you sure it’s mine?”
“Yes, sir. It just came in. We were asked to page you down immediately.”
“Oh. All right. I’ll be right down.”
It turns out to be a brown, nondescript parcel, the kind that could be delivering either tax return documents or a ticking time bomb. There’s no return address, no stamps, just his name and a curious weight.
Yoochun’s a little skittish the entire way up to his apartment.
The flap is sealed with liberal amounts of wiry duct tape. It’s only after he confirms the lack of ticking inside that he puts away the thought of throwing it out the window, and gets up to grab a pair of scissors instead.
When tipped upside-down, the contents sift onto Yoochun’s coffee table in a quiet avalanche. In place of snow are photos, all Polaroids, white borders stark against the dark wood of the table. Encased in pressed-flower time are all the places he’s been to: the narrow streets he’s tread, the small shops he’s stepped into, the niches where he made up stories about the cornerstones, all within the city of Paris.
A picture of a high class restaurant, gilded in gold and pearl, two empty seats at a table next to a vase dripping lilies, where heartbeats accelerated with the rise of violins.
A picture of the small café, a cup half full of black coffee on the table by the window, two hearts scrawled in condensation.
A picture of a red balloon, a wish stretching wistfully around it: I want to be with you right now.
At the bottom of the pile, Yoochun finds a beloved face, lips curled with mischief hiding at the corners. It’s just a bit out-of-focus, off-center and obviously self-shot. He presses it over his heart and watches as his secrets run down his apartment walls, swimming in pools of liquid words before his eyes.
~
The afternoon brings chaos and noise in the form of one Shim Changmin and one Kim Junsu. Yoochun’s watching his ocean floor when he hears them tumble through his front door, bickering and breathless with laughter. He barely has time to shift off the couch before they spill themselves and two huge bags of party decorations all over his cushions. As it is, he gets a roll of streamers to the head anyway.
“Ow, way to make an entrance, you guys.”
Changmin shrugs apologetically at him. Junsu’s trying to balance the roll of streamers on Yoochun’s head. Yoochun goes against his better sense and throws a pack of confetti at him, effectively starting an impromptu war on his living room couch.
Ten minutes in, it occurs to him that half the decorations aren’t going to make it out in any state other than destroyed. It’s a terrible waste, but Changmin chooses that moment to lob a fat candle at him and Yoochun feels like he’s absolutely obligated to retaliate.
~
The hours roll by and soon they’re switching on the lights and letting the radio blast dance tunes throughout the apartment.
“I wish Yunho-hyung would hurry up,” Changmin sighs. ‘I’m hungry.”
“You know he’s going to be late, Minnie-ah.” Junsu’s shredding leftover pieces of streamer into homemade confetti and arranging them into a messy rainbow. He throws a handful of green at Changmin. “Besides, you’re always hungry.”
“Says the one that ate two sticks of toast within a day.”
“It was two days! Get your facts straight, dongsaeng,” Junsu scoffs.
“Hey, does Yunho have somewhere else to go before he comes here?” Yoochun interrupts before his living room undergoes another round of trashing à la Party World.
“Yea, um, he has too, uh,” Junsu’s stuttering, something like panic flashing at his fingertips.
“He has to pick up some new equipment that came in the other day,” Changmin cuts in smoothly. He throws a handful of Junsu’s own confetti back at him.
“Oh,” Yoochun says, watching as Junsu grins sheepishly.
He begins to get impatient when the clock inches close to half past eight. Their stomachs have begun to sing in a trio of growls and Yoochun frowns. “What the hell is taking so long?”
“Traffic, maybe?” Junsu answers absently from the floor. He graduated from confetti half an hour ago to Yoochun’s Wii Mario Kart.
“I’m hungry,” Changmin whines. He’s never terribly mature when it comes to matters of the stomach. At this stage, Yoochun can sort of understand - pride doesn’t feed you, after all.
“I’m going to kick his ass for making me starve on my birthday,” he decides. “He doesn’t get any of my cake.”
“What cake? The original plan was Chinese takeout and booze.” Changmin stretches out along Yoochun’s couch, then curls back up as his stomach emits a particularly loud gurgle.
“Wait, why’d you guys buy candles then?” Yoochun eyes the candles, sitting in a neat row along the edge of his coffee table, one of them broken where he’d stepped on it by accident.
Changmin’s hands - dangling off the arm of the couch - spread themselves out in what looks to be half a shrug, without the shoulders. “Ask Junsu.”
“You can put them on the fried rice. We can write happy birthday in ketchup for you.” Junsu says promptly, then swears just as promptly as he hits a banana peel and skids into a wall.
“Like hell that fried rice is going to be there long enough for you to stick any candles in,” Yoochun groans. He’s contemplating that jar of peanut butter sitting back in his pantry when his ears pick up the sound of a key scraping inside the lock.
“Hey, sorry I’m late,” Yunho calls. A string of expletives answers him, overtop Junsu’s triumphant shout of victory as he beats Changmin’s high score. Yunho pokes his head tentatively into the living room. “Um, I have dinner?”
“Just get your ass in here already, Jung Yunho,” Yoochun says, glaring. Changmin oozes off the couch and slithers toward the source of food, pausing to stick a foot in Junsu’s back along the way.
“Sorry,” Yunho’s apologizing sheepishly, holding out white takeout boxes like a truce. “I had to pick up something along the way.”
Yoochun’s already digging through the bags, searching for the carton that’s emitting the smell of seafood. “Yeah, I heard. But you honestly couldn’t wait until tomorrow to pick up the equipment?”
“What equipment?” Yunho asks.
“For the studio?” Yoochun hands Changmin the lemon chicken, confiscating a piece as his service fee. He discovers a carton of oysters, drizzled in cheese and cilantro.
“Um, what?” Confusion makes Yunho sound ridiculously young. Out of the corner of his eye, Yoochun catches sight of Junsu gesturing madly. “Oh,” says Yunho. “The equipment. Um, yeah. Sorry about that. It kind of couldn’t wait?”
Yoochun eyes him suspiciously. Yunho’s terrible at lying and Yoochun’s seeing traces of it in the aversion of his eyes and chewed lower lip.
“I also picked up a surprise for you though?” Yunho offers. “It should be here in fifteen minutes or so.”
Yoochun’s tempted to pursue the issue, except Changmin’s already moved onto the sweet-and-sour pork and there’s no way Yoochun’s going to let that go without a fight.
~
Yunho’s surprise arrives at exactly fourteen minutes to nine. The sound of the doorbell that announces its arrival is strangely loud amidst the cacophony of Junsu and Changmin’s Wii tournament wrestling with the radio.
“Oh, you might want to get that, Chun-ah,” Yunho says, jerking a thumb at the door. Yoochun makes a face at him and gets up reluctantly.
He discovers that Yunho’s kicked off his shoes haphazardly at the entranceway again. The two sneakers point towards the door in an almost-arrow. “Yeah, I got it, you guys.” Yoochun smiles slightly. “Geez, even his shoes,” he mutters, bending down to set them neatly next to Changmin’s Nikes.
The door swings open and his heart jolts, air caught sharp and forgotten in his lungs. Familiar dark eyes meet his on the other side.
“J-Jae,” he stutters. “Jaejoong.”
“Hey,” the other says. “Happy birthday.” Jaejoong’s hair is platinum blond now and Yoochun might be staring a little bit. He can’t quite grasp the surreality of the situation.
"Um. One sec," he says and shuts the door. All his monsters have crowded into the room and the part of him that is afraid of the intangibility of dreams can’t bring himself to reopen that door. He listens to his pulse thunder in his ears, thinks about smiles tinted with subdued excitement and curled with secrets at the ends. He thinks about five letters pressed into mahogany wood and four letters traced onto glass. Yoochun’s a romantic and he believes in the magic of second chances. Sucking in a deep breath, he takes a leap of faith.
The world on the other side of the door is the same except Jaejoong’s now got an eyebrow cocked, wry amusement curling up one side of his lips. Yoochun lets out a breath he hadn’t been aware he was holding.
“Can I come in now?” Jaejoong asks, and only the slight shifting of his feet betrays an uncertainty that Yoochun can just barely see at the corner of his eyes.
“Yeah.”
An arm wraps around his waist and he’s inhaling Jaejoong’s familiar citrus scent. Relief buckles his knees and tumbles the both of them in a pile on the floor of his entryway.
“Hi,” Jaejoong whispers into the side of his neck. “I missed you.”
Yoochun’s trying to swallow back that familiar thick feeling rising in his throat. He knows he’s fighting a lost battle when his vision starts to blur. “W-where’d you go?”
“Soul-searching. But I’m back.” Jaejoong smudges gentle fingers under his eyes. “God, stop crying! You’re such a girl, Chun.”
“I’m not crying,” Yoochun sniffles. “And you owe me forever for making me worry.”
“Yeah, yeah. I’ll make it up to you later, ok?” Jaejoong grins, warm and tipped with mischief. Yoochun twines their limbs together and curls around this warm feeling a little bit longer.
Sound filters down the hallway in slow sifts. He hears the distant bright mechanic trill that signifies the end of a race and easily deduces the winner by Junsu’s triumphant yell. The radio switches to a rare slow song, the kind that couples dance to on private evenings in, set to the sound of twin heartbeats.
“Hey,” Jaejoong murmurs into his ear, voice soft like the scratch of an old record. “We should probably get off your floor.”
“Why? It’s clean. I swept it two weeks ago.”
“That’s disgusting. Get off me, my hygiene is at stake here.”
Despite the tone, Jaejoong takes his outstretched hands and tugs him to his feet like an indulgent mother lifts up a child. Yoochun can’t stop smiling.
“Oh, by the way. These.” A hand folds over his eyes. There’s the crinkle of cellophane and the scent of lilies.
Yoochun peeks through the gaps in the mesh of Jaejoong’s fingers and laughs. “‘Forever in love’? Now who’s the girl?”
Jaejoong’s hands fall from his eyes to pinch him in the cheek. They linger and stroke along his jaw line up to his ear. “Shut up, they were originally your idea.”
“And now you’re just as sappy as I am.”
“Yeah, I guess so.” Jaejoong’s laughing, hand catching the sound and eyes crinkled slightly at the edges.
Yoochun isn’t the one who left but he’s feeling like he’s come to the end of a journey. “Hey,” he leans in and whispers like a secret. “Welcome home.”
Jaejoong catches his words and trades in his own, pressed into the corner of Yoochun’s mouth. “I’m home, love.”
“For good?” Heart-to-hearts cross the short distance between them, apologies and thanks carried at the tips of fingertips, miss-you-love-you’s sketched into skin.
“Yeah.”
The link of their fingers feels like a promise.
v.
Every house where love abides
And friendship is a guest,
Is surely home, and home sweet home
For there the heart can rest.
~Henry Van Dyke
In the middle of downtown Seoul, there is a little apartment where the afternoon sun creates an ocean and two hearts beat in sync. Yoochun wakes up each morning with shared dreams between his fingers and joint breaths in his lungs; he breathes in citrus and feels happiness flutter feather-light wings through the waterways of his veins.
All the moments of his waking days, he documents and frames within the white of Polaroid borders. Jaejoong teaches him the art in photography and they take pictures of hands around coffee cups, good-night kisses, peeks of collarbones and the smiles bridging hearts.
Yoochun’s the one to suggest a family portrait of the five of them, a dramatic proposal executed with secret smiles over the dinner table at one of Jaejoong’s hotpot Fridays. Yunho’s eyes crinkle with glee and he’s already planning dates and costumes three minutes in. Junsu is all little-boy enthusiasm and Changmin finds himself vastly outnumbered.
They pick a day by vote and are in the studio an hour before opening hours, preparing equipment and adjusting lights. Junsu carts out the rack of 80’s stripper wear; feathers fly as Changmin and Junsu engage in a contest to see how many feather boas they can wrap around the other. Changmin wins with a grand total of five before Jaejoong confiscates it all and sends them to help Yoochun with his morning wake-up process in the corner.
The general chaos of setting up slows and condenses down to twenty minutes. Finally, Jaejoong is left standing behind the camera, trying to adjust the timer.
“Hyung, hurry up!” Changmin calls.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m coming, wait -”
“Ugh, Junsu, your hands is on my -” Yoochun swats at the offending appendage.
“Sorry, Yunho’s arm - hyung!”
“Wait, I’m trying to adjust the background -”
“Hyung, I’ll do it. I’m taller.”
“Oh! Oh, I got it! Guys, ten seconds!”
“Hurry, Minnie!”
“Nine… eight…” Junsu sings, already trying on his best smile.
“Yeah, okay, I’m trying!” Changmin fumbles.
“Seven…six…”
“Junsu. Your hand.” Yoochun growls.
“Oops, sorry! Four…”
“Okay, everyone smile!” Jaejoong squishes himself into the space between Yoochun and Changmin.
“Three… two…”
Click.
Home, Yoochun thinks, watching smiles brighten the air and glitter in the early morning light. His heart feels like a balloon filled with helium and love, weightless enough to carry him away into the endless blue sky. Jaejoong catches his eye and grins; home has never been about places, but rather about the people you find there.
And this is where we belong.
Masterlist: here