(no subject)
the gods of rain.
jaejoong/changmin(/yoochun).
pg-13; 4,639 words.
for kaiiser & windup_bird.
the gods of rain
by Becs
I wonder what it's like to be the rainmaker.
I wonder what it's like to know that I made the rain.
--Matchbox 20
It is the hottest summer Korea has had in years when Changmin finds Jaejoong again. It is, on all accounts, an accident; it has been at a long time since Changmin has thought of Jaejoong, and much longer since he has looked for him. The sun is setting warm and orange between the Seoul skyscrapers, but the heat still lays heavy on Changmin's shoulders as he leaves the office. Despite having shed his jacket hours ago, his collar is sticking to the back of his neck. He stops at a corner cafe for a drink.
Kim Jaejoong is, as always, unmistakable. He has never been able to blend in, and Changmin sees him without even meaning to. He does not realize it, at first: even after all this time, there is still a part of him that expects to see Jaejoong every day. Then he double-takes, and almost stops breathing.
Despite the heat, Jaejoong is nursing a large mug of black coffee, the steam curling up in wispy tendrils around his familiar features. He looks up, as if on cue, and smiles. "Hi," he says, as if he is not surprised at all to see Changmin standing there, gaping at him. His voice is warm in ways the sun could never quite reach. For a moment, Changmin thinks he might cry; instead he walks over and sits carefully in the chair across from Jaejoong.
"It's been a long time," Changmin says. It is a statement and a million questions all at once.
"You just got off work?" Jaejoong tilts his head. The quirk of his mouth has not changed since the last time Changmin saw him - except, Changmin remembers, he was not smiling then. He nods; Jaejoong orders him a cold drink, then sits and sips at his coffee. Changmin wants to ask: how are you drinking something so hot in this weather? He wants to ask: where have you been? and, why are you here now? He just does not know what to ask first.
"You should come visit me," Jaejoong says.
It should not be that simple, Changmin thinks. There should be small talk and awkward moments and answers, and he almost tells Jaejoong this, but what comes out of his mouth is "When?" and then, "Where?" After all, answers have never been very important when it comes to Jaejoong.
Jaejoong still laughs the same way, deep and rich with a hand to his mouth. He studies Changmin for a moment, his eyes smiling. "Meet me here again on Wednesday and I'll show you," he says. The waiter comes with Changmin's drink and Jaejoong finishes his coffee, hands his mug to the waiter, and leaves.
Changmin lives alone in a one bedroom, one bath apartment. The bookshelves are organized alphabetically and he never leaves dirty dishes in the sink, even though visitors are such a rarity that it would not matter if he was messy. His bedroom overlooks downtown Seoul so that on some long nights the neon nighttime seeps in through the windows and keeps him up until he's too exhausted to sleep. Sometimes, he pulls the shades closed, but that does not keep out the inevitable reminders of another apartment where he used to watch the city at night.
He is up at dawn on Wednesday morning, and the meteorologist on channel seven tells him that there is no sign of rain for the next week; this is the worst drought Korea has had in a while. Outside, it is once again nearly unbearably hot, the sun glaring down with rays burning like hatred.
The workday is longer than usual with the promise of Jaejoong at the end. Changmin wonders instead of working: did Jaejoong find him, or was it really just chance? Where did he live now, and what did he do? Did he ever have trouble sleeping, plagued with memories disguised as dreams? and a million other things that he would never ask, because he would rather have Jaejoong without the answers than lose him again.
He is almost afraid that he imagined the entire meeting, but Jaejoong is already waiting when he gets to the cafe, leaning against an old sports car that is just a little too worn to be classy. Changmin climbs in, and Jaejoong drives away from Seoul.
They end up in a neighborhood of small townhouses about a half-hour outside of the city. The ride is mostly quiet; Jaejoong does not play the radio, but he opens the windows and the wind whipping past is almost like music. They pull into a parking spot in front of a white door that looks clasutrophobic between the red one on its left and the green one on its right - or maybe it's Jaejoong that's out of context in this quiet, homely place.
"Papa!" squeals a voice from the next yard over and a moment later Jaejoong is scooping a little girl into his arms, kissing her forehead and balancing her on his hip. She beams and clings to his neck, and although the resemblence is not strong, Changmin feels his stomach churning.
Jaejoong calls a thank you to the girl next door and leads Changmin inside with the little girl still in his arms. "This is Haeyon," he explains, kissing her forehead again. "Haeyon, this is Papa's friend Changmin. You can call him oppa."
"Hi, oppa!" she chirps, waving a little hand.
Haeyon watches TV while Changmin sits with Jaejoong at the kitchen table, where they can keep an eye on her but she cannot overhear them. Jaejoong makes coffee for himself and pours Changmin a glass of cold juice.
"She's almost five," Jaejoong says, his voice warm with affection.
"She's yours?" Changmin asks.
Jaejoong grins offhandedly and shrugs. "That's what the note said. I found her on my doorstep when she was just about a year old."
Changmin frowns. "She could be anybody's," he says. "Didn't you have her tested, or try to find her mother?"
Jaejoong stares at him for a long time, until Changmin looks away and downs the rest of his juice with a few long gulps. When he sets the glass back down, Jaejoong's mouth is quirked up in a smile again.
"Where's the fun in that?" he asks.
Haeyon runs back into the kitchen, and Jaejoong scoops her up and tickles her until she shrieks with laughter.
Changmin thinks that he has probably always been in love with Jaejoong, or at least for as long as he has known him. He cannot remember a time when he did not yearn for the other boy - man - but neither can he remember a time when Jaejoong was anything but unattainable. Before, it was just fear and feelings that got in the way; Changmin does not know if that was easier or harder than the miles and years between them now. He can't remember those days well enough to compare them.
Jaejoong drives too fast, and Changmin thinks that he does not care nearly as much as he should. There are far too many implications, there, maybe, or just too many unanswerable questions. By the time Jaejoong drops him back off at his apartment, Changmin knows that his life will never be the same, but at least it is revolving around something familiar again.
"I'll be back soon," Jaejoong says. It becomes routine, and Changmin does not mind that Jaejoong picks the time and place, because he can sleep well just knowing that he will see him again.
They go out for dinner at a normal restaurant and a normal hour, because now it is far less likely for anyone to recognize them, and those who do still put their faces with the celebrities they were are usually too hesitant to approach. Changmin does not have the appetite he once had, but Jaejoong insists on paying and so he eats every bite of his dinner. It is half a conscious decision and half an attempt to prove to both of them that things do not have to be as different as they make them. He knows it is a futile effort, though. There are some things that can never be fixed.
Jaejoong picks at his food, and Changmin notices for the first time how much skinnier Jaejoong is than he remembers. He does not say anything, though, and instead wonders if one day all the questions inside him will climb up his throat like vomit, forcing themselves out with the ugly stench of the past.
For now, though, he eats his pasta one piece at a time and studies the other man's face, looking for the answers he knows are not there.
"Remember," Jaejoong says after a long silence that Changmin is not sure was comfortable or not, "when Yoochun tried to make us spaghetti 'the American way' and almost burned down the apartment?"
He says it as if it is something he has not thought about in a long time, but Changmin knows that everything Jaejoong does is probably tagged with a memory much like that one. He knows, because he tries really hard to ignore those memories.
"Yes," Changmin says. "You hit him with a frying pan and then made us bulgogi." Despite himself, the corner of his mouth twitches up into a smile.
After dinner, they step back out into the still heat of the nighttime. Jaejoong leans against the outside of the building and sighs.
"I wish it would rain," he says.
Changmin looks up at the sky but he doesn't find any clouds.
He does not think he will ever be at home anywhere but the city, but Changmin learns to appreciate the drive from Seoul to Jaejoong's house. It is, as drives go, scenic and even beautiful in places, but Changmin thinks that anything would be beautiful when he looks at it with Jaejoong next to him.
One day, Jaejoong stops on the side of the road and they get out of the car to watch the sun set over the Han river. The sky is painted fierce pinks and reds is if the air itself has been set aflame by the heat; the sun is a fiery orange that sets sparks jumping over the water like stars for another universe.
Changmin looks at Jaejoong, bathed in the sunset almost like a spotlight, and cannot help but ask: "What are we, Jaejoong?"
Jaejoong turns and smiles at him. He reaches up to touch Changmin's face, fingertips brushing whisper-soft over his cheekbone, and for a moment, Changmin thinks Jaejoong in going to kiss him. But then he turns back to the river, his eyes looking out past the sun.
"We are everything that's left," he says. He looks up at Changmin again, but Changmin cannot read his eyes. "We're everything that both of us never had."
They get in the car and drive.
Haeyon likes to swing, Jaejoong says, and so they take her to a park a few blocks away. To Changmin, it is almost like walking through another world of quiet streets and tall trees with Jaejoong at his side. The little girl runs ahead, and when she turns and grins and waves at them, Changmin can almost see Jaejoong in the way her eyes sparkle with quiet mischief.
They sit on a wooden picnic table while Haeyon plays and talk about nothing: work and life and everything that's not important. Changmin had thought that Jaejoong had not seemed very different, but here in the soft light of the afternoon he can see the lines that crinkle gently at the corners of his tired eyes when he smiles. He does not speak softly, but his voice does not project as it once did. Kim Jaejoong is not on stage anymore.
"She's such a sweet girl," Jaejoong says, but his gaze is drifting past the playgroud into the distance.
Changmin looks from the child carelessly climbing the slide ladder to the man sitting next to him. Jaejoong is reaching for a cigarette, lighting it, exhaling a dirty cloud of smoke; Changmin almost says, I thought you quit, but then remembers how long ago that was and bites his tongue.
"Do you remember," Jaejoong says slowly, cigarette smoke curling around his words, "when we did that photoshoot and we were all seeing who could jump the highest off the swings?"
Changmin remembers. He remembers that his jeans were uncomfortably tight that day, that it was too warm to wear a jacket but he was anyway. He remembers that Yunho beat him in arm wrestling, again, and that Yoochun kissed Jaejoong under the slide when they thought no one was looking. He looks away from the playground and says, "Yeah. Junsu got the highest, but Yunho said it didn't count because he fell on his ass when he landed." He finds himself smiling at the memory.
Jaejoong smushes his cigarette ash onto the picnic table, his eyes still far away. "Was that in Japan or Korea?"
Changmin turns to look at him. "Korea, of course." He does not know how he could forget.
"Right," Jaejoong says distantly. Then, suddenly, he turns to meet Changmin's gaze, his eyes as bright and intense as Changmin always remembers them being. "Changmin."
"Jaejoong?" he asks, taken aback.
Jaejoong's voice is deadly serious, and Changmin can't look away from him. "I'm going to die," he says.
Changmin's stomach turns over inside him and his heart stops beating. He chokes on his own voice for a moment and then blurts desperately: "What? Why?"
Jaejoong stares at him a moment longer, then bursts into laughter. He laughs and laughs and laughs, doubling over against his knees with his shoulders shaking. He laughs until he's almost crying and Changmin almost wants to punch him, but he hasn't heard Jaejoong laugh in so long that he just sits and watches him with tears pricking his eyes and vomit crawling up his throat.
"What's so funny?" he finally asks quietly when Jaejoong has stopped laughing and is just watching Haeyon play on the swings.
Jaejoong shrugs, his mouth quirking up in a half-smile. "We all die eventually, Changminnie."
At sunset, they sit on the bridge overlooking the river, their feet swinging into the vast stretch of nothing below them. Jaejoong is quiet for a long time, looking out past the horizon; Changmin looks down at the water, sparkling with sunlight. He does not think about jumping, but he wonders if Jaejoong ever does.
Changmin wonders, sometimes, if it is coincidence or sick irony that it has not rained since he found Jaejoong when, on the last day he saw him, it rained straight through the night. He remembers thinking something about their God crying, but he also remembers finally understanding why anyone would be an atheist. The rain soaked clean through his shirt, that day, and he hadn't thought to bring a coat.
Now, he listens every morning to the newscasters cheerfully annouce summer heat records and worry over droughts and shortages. He tunes them out and wonders if he will see Jaejoong today, but he has not seen him since that afternoon at the playground.
He waits one week, then two. He hovers at the corner cafe until the manager frowns at him and he buys something he knows he will not drink. He lays awake, watches the nightscape outside his window and wonders if he did something wrong, this time, or if it is like last time when he did not do anything at all.
When it has been nearly three weeks, he rents a car and drives out of Seoul to Jaejoong's place. The old sports car is not out front, but he stands at the door and knocks for half an hour until his knuckles are scratched and bruised, then sits down on the front step and waits.
He sits until the sun is sinking behind the farthest row of townhouses, and Jaejoong still has not come. He hears keys jingling and looks up with a start, but it is only the girl next door who was watching Haeyon the first day he came here. Standing, he starts walking toward her; she looks confused for a moment, then tilts her head in recognition.
"Changmin oppa? Jaejoong oppa's friend," she says, giving him a nervous little smile.
"Yes. Um." Changmin returns the smile. He suddenly feels a little awkward, standing in a stranger's yard asking her where his lost bandmate went. Still, he gives an apologetic nod for interrupting her and asks carefully, "Have you seen him lately? I haven't heard from him in a few days..."
She peers at him quizzically, as if he is half-hidden in the fading evening light. "He's not here anymore. He left... about three weeks ago, I think? What, you didn't know?"
Changmin turns again to look at Jaejoong's door; it looks almost tragic, suddenly, abandoned and forlorn. A door to a house that is no one's home.
"I don't know where he went," the girl is continuing, frowning a little. "It was all very sudden. They barely said goodbye."
It is a little too familiar and a little too final, and on the way home Changmin has to pull over twice because he is afraid he's going to throw up. But he swallows hard and blinks back tears; by the time he gets home, it is just another normal sleepless night.
But two weeks later, he wakes up to record high temperatures and, with a jolt, he knows exactly where Jaejoong is.
He does not like the train ride, though he is not sure if that is because of the journey or the destination. But even that is better than the walk from the station: it is long and hot, and his shirt is damp with sweat by the time he reaches the cemetery. It is an almost violent contrast to the pouring rain from the day of the funeral.
He had fought for it. He had screamed and kicked and cried like a child, had wailed and accused and begged while Jaejoong sat still in the corner with eyes as empty as the apartment they were leaving. Still, in the end, they got it. At the time, Changmin had thought it was because they would have wanted it that way, but now he thinks that maybe he thought it would be easier to move on if all of his grief was consolidated in one place.
Sometimes, he's still not sure if he has moved on yet.
They are all three in a row with neat, matching headstones: Yunho, Junsu, Yoochun. Changmin has said their names a million times in his head, but he dares not speak them aloud; he is afraid they will sound too different from what he remembers. There are two more spots to Yoochun's right, still empty. Jaejoong said, once, that it was morbid to already have his gravesite picked out at twenty-five. Changmin had been crying too hard to respond.
But he is right: Jaejoong is there, cross-legged on the ground, persperation staining down the back of his shirt. He has been here all day, Changmin realizes. Technically, it is a day early: four years ago tomorrow would be right, but Changmin knows that Jaejoong would rather remember their last day together than the first day alone.
Jaejoong is not crying, but there are tracks down his face that Changmin is sure are not from sweat. His eyes are fixed on that one name, and they remind Changmin of so many sleepless nights and restless days that, for a moment, he thinks that one day he and Jaejoong might be able to understand each other again.
Jaejoong does not look surprised when he looks up from Yoochun's headstone to see Changmin watching him quietly. He says his name, so softly that Changmin barely hears it, but the tears that well in his eyes again say volumes more than any words ever could.
"I know you loved him," Changmin says. His voice wavers a little at the end, and he clenches his jaw shut tight.
"He loved me," Jaejoong says, his gaze falling soft on the headstone again. He stands, loose blades of grass clinging limply to his jeans; when he looks at Changmin again, Changmin's heart twists in his chest and he swallows the lump in his throat.
"I tried really hard." Jaejoong's voice is helpless and broken. "I tried so hard, I really did."
Tried to what? Changmin wants to ask. To forget? To remember? To move on, to live, to die?
He folds Jaejoong in his arms and thinks that this is one more answer he will probably never have.
Changmin can count the times he has seen Jaejoong inconsolable on one hand; with them - with everyone - Jaejoong has always been the comforter. So Changmin finds them a park bench and they sit, but he is not sure what else to do as Jaejoong sits with his head in his hands, quiet except for the occasional slow, ragged breath.
Eventually, he puts a careful hand on Jaejoong's shoulder, fingers curling slightly into the fabric of the other boy's shirt. Jaejoong does not look up, but Changmin can feel him letting out a long sigh.
"It wasn't fair," he says, words choked, muffled into his palms.
"I know," Changmin says quietly.
"No," Jaejoong says, looking up finally. His eyes are red, full of all the emotion that Changmin is just now noticing has been missing from them. "It wasn't fair for us."
Changmin sighs and looks away into the trees. "I know," he says again. For once, he thinks, he understands - even if their us is different.
They fall quietly back into routine: Jaejoong goes back to his little townhouse with Haeyon and shows up at the cafe a few times a week for Changmin. But everything is a little more careful and a little more awkward, and sometimes it makes Changmin want to scream at Jaejoong, tell him to get over himself and move on, but he could never ask something of Jaejoong that he's never been able to do himself.
Jaejoong holds Changmin's hand sometimes, though, when they are walking or sitting together, or he'll brush fingertips over Changmin's wrist or the back of his neck, or stare at him for so long that Changmin has to find something to do, just so he won't ask why. Jaejoong stands too close; Changmin lets him, because it proves that he's there.
"I didn't find you on purpose," Jaejoong says, out of nowhere, rummaging through his pantry for some spice that Changmin has never known the function of. Changmin does not respond, just watches him until Jaejoong reemerges and catches his eye. "I had meant to never-- well, I didn't know if I'd be able to give you up if I saw you again."
Changmin bites hard on his lip, then asks softly: "Why would you ever want to give me up in the first place?"
Jaejoong sighs and puts a hand on Changmin's cheek.
"Appa!," Haeyon shrieks from the next room.
Jaejoong smiles, just a little bit, and closes his eyes for a moment before pulling his hand away. His fingers curl in on each other, and he turns sharply away. "She's Yoochun's," he says, so quietly that Changmin has to convince himself that he didn't mishear.
Jaejoong disappears into the next room before he can respond, and when Haeyon comes rushing into the kitchen in a fit of giggles, all Changmin can think to do is to gather her up into his arms and squeeze her tight to his chest. Haeyon just laughs and kisses Changmin's cheek; when Changmin looks up, Jaejoong is watching them with something like sadness written across his face.
"It's the least I could do, isn't it?" he asks. Changmin has to assume it's rhetorical, because his voice is caught in his throat.
Changmin's thoughts on the way home are much like the trees lining the roadside: caught and illuminated for a split-second in the sharp glow of headlights before slipping half-formed back into the darkness. Eventually, he decides the trees are easier to grasp than his thoughts and just leans his head against the window, watching them as Jaejoong's car speeds down the road.
"You drive too fast," he says softly, his eyes still fixed out the window.
"Hm? Jaejoong says, looking over; Changmin can feel Jaejoong's eyes on him, deep and dark and full of impossibilities. He looks back over, slowly, but halfway there he's blinded by oncoming headlights.
look out!
--screech, burning rubber,
shattering glass, sharp--
stop! (yoochun, or yunho-- can't see to tell)
junsu's fingers, too-tight, digging in,
oh god
oh god--
spinning,
crunch, crash, upside-down,
everywhere and nowhere and
silence.
After what seems like years, Changmin opens his eyes. He blinks away the light that seems foreign to his eyes, and then he starts to breathe again. The car is crooked, half on the road with the back end leaning into the roadside ditch; there are no trucks or blinding headlights, just Jaejoong next to him, hands white-knuckled on the steering wheel and eyes wide and blank staring out over the dashboard. It frightens Changmin, a little bit, so he does not say anything and waits for Jaejoong to come back to now.
Finally, after a too-long, too-tense minute, all of the strength seems to seep out of Jaejoong; he sags in his seat, leaning his head against the steering wheel with a long sigh.
"God," he mutters, half-audible.
"You don't believe in God," Changmin says. The words slip out before he even thinks them, absurdly and ironically true.
Jaejoong is quiet for a moment, then laughs: quietly at first, then rich and deep. It is not like the way he laughed that afternoon on the playground; instead, it is almost the same as the laugh that Changmin remembers. It is almost whole.
"No," Jaejoong says, "I don't."
He shifts back into drive and the car jerks onto the road. The rest of the trip back to Seoul is quiet, as usual, but it does not have the heaviness that Changmin has become to accustomed to and, as they pass over the Han river, Jaejoong reaches over and squeezes his hand. He does not say anything, but Changmin knows that they are thinking the same thing in guilt-stained relief:
I guess we really were supposed to make it.
Haeyon is with a babysitter for the night, Jaejoong says, and helps himself to Changmin's apartment. He has an innate sense for the place, it seems, and does not even ask where anything is when he makes dinner for the two of them; for a moment, as he lays the dishes out, Changmin thinks that it could almost be before if they weren't both so much older now. They eat in silence, but Jaejoong insists on cleaning up afterward; Changmin never could get all the little stuck-on bits off right, he says. Changmin does not have anything else to do, though, so he stays and watches the other man in his kitchen and wonders if anything but this will ever feel natural.
When he finishes, Jaejoong smiles up at Changmin in that sad way he has now and says, "Let's go to bed, Changmin."
"It's barely ten," Changmin says.
"Shhh," Jaejoong says, and kisses him.
Changmin wonders, later, when Jaejoong is asleep against him and they are tangled in the sheets and each other, if it really does make sense or if he is just pretending it does because Jaejoong's skin against his feels exactly how he has always imagined it. Asleep, Jaejoong does not look nearly as sad; Changmin wonders if it is because the people in your dreams do not die.
When he wakes up, it is raining.
(end)
jaejoong/changmin(/yoochun).
pg-13; 4,639 words.
for kaiiser & windup_bird.
the gods of rain
by Becs
I wonder what it's like to be the rainmaker.
I wonder what it's like to know that I made the rain.
--Matchbox 20
It is the hottest summer Korea has had in years when Changmin finds Jaejoong again. It is, on all accounts, an accident; it has been at a long time since Changmin has thought of Jaejoong, and much longer since he has looked for him. The sun is setting warm and orange between the Seoul skyscrapers, but the heat still lays heavy on Changmin's shoulders as he leaves the office. Despite having shed his jacket hours ago, his collar is sticking to the back of his neck. He stops at a corner cafe for a drink.
Kim Jaejoong is, as always, unmistakable. He has never been able to blend in, and Changmin sees him without even meaning to. He does not realize it, at first: even after all this time, there is still a part of him that expects to see Jaejoong every day. Then he double-takes, and almost stops breathing.
Despite the heat, Jaejoong is nursing a large mug of black coffee, the steam curling up in wispy tendrils around his familiar features. He looks up, as if on cue, and smiles. "Hi," he says, as if he is not surprised at all to see Changmin standing there, gaping at him. His voice is warm in ways the sun could never quite reach. For a moment, Changmin thinks he might cry; instead he walks over and sits carefully in the chair across from Jaejoong.
"It's been a long time," Changmin says. It is a statement and a million questions all at once.
"You just got off work?" Jaejoong tilts his head. The quirk of his mouth has not changed since the last time Changmin saw him - except, Changmin remembers, he was not smiling then. He nods; Jaejoong orders him a cold drink, then sits and sips at his coffee. Changmin wants to ask: how are you drinking something so hot in this weather? He wants to ask: where have you been? and, why are you here now? He just does not know what to ask first.
"You should come visit me," Jaejoong says.
It should not be that simple, Changmin thinks. There should be small talk and awkward moments and answers, and he almost tells Jaejoong this, but what comes out of his mouth is "When?" and then, "Where?" After all, answers have never been very important when it comes to Jaejoong.
Jaejoong still laughs the same way, deep and rich with a hand to his mouth. He studies Changmin for a moment, his eyes smiling. "Meet me here again on Wednesday and I'll show you," he says. The waiter comes with Changmin's drink and Jaejoong finishes his coffee, hands his mug to the waiter, and leaves.
Changmin lives alone in a one bedroom, one bath apartment. The bookshelves are organized alphabetically and he never leaves dirty dishes in the sink, even though visitors are such a rarity that it would not matter if he was messy. His bedroom overlooks downtown Seoul so that on some long nights the neon nighttime seeps in through the windows and keeps him up until he's too exhausted to sleep. Sometimes, he pulls the shades closed, but that does not keep out the inevitable reminders of another apartment where he used to watch the city at night.
He is up at dawn on Wednesday morning, and the meteorologist on channel seven tells him that there is no sign of rain for the next week; this is the worst drought Korea has had in a while. Outside, it is once again nearly unbearably hot, the sun glaring down with rays burning like hatred.
The workday is longer than usual with the promise of Jaejoong at the end. Changmin wonders instead of working: did Jaejoong find him, or was it really just chance? Where did he live now, and what did he do? Did he ever have trouble sleeping, plagued with memories disguised as dreams? and a million other things that he would never ask, because he would rather have Jaejoong without the answers than lose him again.
He is almost afraid that he imagined the entire meeting, but Jaejoong is already waiting when he gets to the cafe, leaning against an old sports car that is just a little too worn to be classy. Changmin climbs in, and Jaejoong drives away from Seoul.
They end up in a neighborhood of small townhouses about a half-hour outside of the city. The ride is mostly quiet; Jaejoong does not play the radio, but he opens the windows and the wind whipping past is almost like music. They pull into a parking spot in front of a white door that looks clasutrophobic between the red one on its left and the green one on its right - or maybe it's Jaejoong that's out of context in this quiet, homely place.
"Papa!" squeals a voice from the next yard over and a moment later Jaejoong is scooping a little girl into his arms, kissing her forehead and balancing her on his hip. She beams and clings to his neck, and although the resemblence is not strong, Changmin feels his stomach churning.
Jaejoong calls a thank you to the girl next door and leads Changmin inside with the little girl still in his arms. "This is Haeyon," he explains, kissing her forehead again. "Haeyon, this is Papa's friend Changmin. You can call him oppa."
"Hi, oppa!" she chirps, waving a little hand.
Haeyon watches TV while Changmin sits with Jaejoong at the kitchen table, where they can keep an eye on her but she cannot overhear them. Jaejoong makes coffee for himself and pours Changmin a glass of cold juice.
"She's almost five," Jaejoong says, his voice warm with affection.
"She's yours?" Changmin asks.
Jaejoong grins offhandedly and shrugs. "That's what the note said. I found her on my doorstep when she was just about a year old."
Changmin frowns. "She could be anybody's," he says. "Didn't you have her tested, or try to find her mother?"
Jaejoong stares at him for a long time, until Changmin looks away and downs the rest of his juice with a few long gulps. When he sets the glass back down, Jaejoong's mouth is quirked up in a smile again.
"Where's the fun in that?" he asks.
Haeyon runs back into the kitchen, and Jaejoong scoops her up and tickles her until she shrieks with laughter.
Changmin thinks that he has probably always been in love with Jaejoong, or at least for as long as he has known him. He cannot remember a time when he did not yearn for the other boy - man - but neither can he remember a time when Jaejoong was anything but unattainable. Before, it was just fear and feelings that got in the way; Changmin does not know if that was easier or harder than the miles and years between them now. He can't remember those days well enough to compare them.
Jaejoong drives too fast, and Changmin thinks that he does not care nearly as much as he should. There are far too many implications, there, maybe, or just too many unanswerable questions. By the time Jaejoong drops him back off at his apartment, Changmin knows that his life will never be the same, but at least it is revolving around something familiar again.
"I'll be back soon," Jaejoong says. It becomes routine, and Changmin does not mind that Jaejoong picks the time and place, because he can sleep well just knowing that he will see him again.
They go out for dinner at a normal restaurant and a normal hour, because now it is far less likely for anyone to recognize them, and those who do still put their faces with the celebrities they were are usually too hesitant to approach. Changmin does not have the appetite he once had, but Jaejoong insists on paying and so he eats every bite of his dinner. It is half a conscious decision and half an attempt to prove to both of them that things do not have to be as different as they make them. He knows it is a futile effort, though. There are some things that can never be fixed.
Jaejoong picks at his food, and Changmin notices for the first time how much skinnier Jaejoong is than he remembers. He does not say anything, though, and instead wonders if one day all the questions inside him will climb up his throat like vomit, forcing themselves out with the ugly stench of the past.
For now, though, he eats his pasta one piece at a time and studies the other man's face, looking for the answers he knows are not there.
"Remember," Jaejoong says after a long silence that Changmin is not sure was comfortable or not, "when Yoochun tried to make us spaghetti 'the American way' and almost burned down the apartment?"
He says it as if it is something he has not thought about in a long time, but Changmin knows that everything Jaejoong does is probably tagged with a memory much like that one. He knows, because he tries really hard to ignore those memories.
"Yes," Changmin says. "You hit him with a frying pan and then made us bulgogi." Despite himself, the corner of his mouth twitches up into a smile.
After dinner, they step back out into the still heat of the nighttime. Jaejoong leans against the outside of the building and sighs.
"I wish it would rain," he says.
Changmin looks up at the sky but he doesn't find any clouds.
He does not think he will ever be at home anywhere but the city, but Changmin learns to appreciate the drive from Seoul to Jaejoong's house. It is, as drives go, scenic and even beautiful in places, but Changmin thinks that anything would be beautiful when he looks at it with Jaejoong next to him.
One day, Jaejoong stops on the side of the road and they get out of the car to watch the sun set over the Han river. The sky is painted fierce pinks and reds is if the air itself has been set aflame by the heat; the sun is a fiery orange that sets sparks jumping over the water like stars for another universe.
Changmin looks at Jaejoong, bathed in the sunset almost like a spotlight, and cannot help but ask: "What are we, Jaejoong?"
Jaejoong turns and smiles at him. He reaches up to touch Changmin's face, fingertips brushing whisper-soft over his cheekbone, and for a moment, Changmin thinks Jaejoong in going to kiss him. But then he turns back to the river, his eyes looking out past the sun.
"We are everything that's left," he says. He looks up at Changmin again, but Changmin cannot read his eyes. "We're everything that both of us never had."
They get in the car and drive.
Haeyon likes to swing, Jaejoong says, and so they take her to a park a few blocks away. To Changmin, it is almost like walking through another world of quiet streets and tall trees with Jaejoong at his side. The little girl runs ahead, and when she turns and grins and waves at them, Changmin can almost see Jaejoong in the way her eyes sparkle with quiet mischief.
They sit on a wooden picnic table while Haeyon plays and talk about nothing: work and life and everything that's not important. Changmin had thought that Jaejoong had not seemed very different, but here in the soft light of the afternoon he can see the lines that crinkle gently at the corners of his tired eyes when he smiles. He does not speak softly, but his voice does not project as it once did. Kim Jaejoong is not on stage anymore.
"She's such a sweet girl," Jaejoong says, but his gaze is drifting past the playgroud into the distance.
Changmin looks from the child carelessly climbing the slide ladder to the man sitting next to him. Jaejoong is reaching for a cigarette, lighting it, exhaling a dirty cloud of smoke; Changmin almost says, I thought you quit, but then remembers how long ago that was and bites his tongue.
"Do you remember," Jaejoong says slowly, cigarette smoke curling around his words, "when we did that photoshoot and we were all seeing who could jump the highest off the swings?"
Changmin remembers. He remembers that his jeans were uncomfortably tight that day, that it was too warm to wear a jacket but he was anyway. He remembers that Yunho beat him in arm wrestling, again, and that Yoochun kissed Jaejoong under the slide when they thought no one was looking. He looks away from the playground and says, "Yeah. Junsu got the highest, but Yunho said it didn't count because he fell on his ass when he landed." He finds himself smiling at the memory.
Jaejoong smushes his cigarette ash onto the picnic table, his eyes still far away. "Was that in Japan or Korea?"
Changmin turns to look at him. "Korea, of course." He does not know how he could forget.
"Right," Jaejoong says distantly. Then, suddenly, he turns to meet Changmin's gaze, his eyes as bright and intense as Changmin always remembers them being. "Changmin."
"Jaejoong?" he asks, taken aback.
Jaejoong's voice is deadly serious, and Changmin can't look away from him. "I'm going to die," he says.
Changmin's stomach turns over inside him and his heart stops beating. He chokes on his own voice for a moment and then blurts desperately: "What? Why?"
Jaejoong stares at him a moment longer, then bursts into laughter. He laughs and laughs and laughs, doubling over against his knees with his shoulders shaking. He laughs until he's almost crying and Changmin almost wants to punch him, but he hasn't heard Jaejoong laugh in so long that he just sits and watches him with tears pricking his eyes and vomit crawling up his throat.
"What's so funny?" he finally asks quietly when Jaejoong has stopped laughing and is just watching Haeyon play on the swings.
Jaejoong shrugs, his mouth quirking up in a half-smile. "We all die eventually, Changminnie."
At sunset, they sit on the bridge overlooking the river, their feet swinging into the vast stretch of nothing below them. Jaejoong is quiet for a long time, looking out past the horizon; Changmin looks down at the water, sparkling with sunlight. He does not think about jumping, but he wonders if Jaejoong ever does.
Changmin wonders, sometimes, if it is coincidence or sick irony that it has not rained since he found Jaejoong when, on the last day he saw him, it rained straight through the night. He remembers thinking something about their God crying, but he also remembers finally understanding why anyone would be an atheist. The rain soaked clean through his shirt, that day, and he hadn't thought to bring a coat.
Now, he listens every morning to the newscasters cheerfully annouce summer heat records and worry over droughts and shortages. He tunes them out and wonders if he will see Jaejoong today, but he has not seen him since that afternoon at the playground.
He waits one week, then two. He hovers at the corner cafe until the manager frowns at him and he buys something he knows he will not drink. He lays awake, watches the nightscape outside his window and wonders if he did something wrong, this time, or if it is like last time when he did not do anything at all.
When it has been nearly three weeks, he rents a car and drives out of Seoul to Jaejoong's place. The old sports car is not out front, but he stands at the door and knocks for half an hour until his knuckles are scratched and bruised, then sits down on the front step and waits.
He sits until the sun is sinking behind the farthest row of townhouses, and Jaejoong still has not come. He hears keys jingling and looks up with a start, but it is only the girl next door who was watching Haeyon the first day he came here. Standing, he starts walking toward her; she looks confused for a moment, then tilts her head in recognition.
"Changmin oppa? Jaejoong oppa's friend," she says, giving him a nervous little smile.
"Yes. Um." Changmin returns the smile. He suddenly feels a little awkward, standing in a stranger's yard asking her where his lost bandmate went. Still, he gives an apologetic nod for interrupting her and asks carefully, "Have you seen him lately? I haven't heard from him in a few days..."
She peers at him quizzically, as if he is half-hidden in the fading evening light. "He's not here anymore. He left... about three weeks ago, I think? What, you didn't know?"
Changmin turns again to look at Jaejoong's door; it looks almost tragic, suddenly, abandoned and forlorn. A door to a house that is no one's home.
"I don't know where he went," the girl is continuing, frowning a little. "It was all very sudden. They barely said goodbye."
It is a little too familiar and a little too final, and on the way home Changmin has to pull over twice because he is afraid he's going to throw up. But he swallows hard and blinks back tears; by the time he gets home, it is just another normal sleepless night.
But two weeks later, he wakes up to record high temperatures and, with a jolt, he knows exactly where Jaejoong is.
He does not like the train ride, though he is not sure if that is because of the journey or the destination. But even that is better than the walk from the station: it is long and hot, and his shirt is damp with sweat by the time he reaches the cemetery. It is an almost violent contrast to the pouring rain from the day of the funeral.
He had fought for it. He had screamed and kicked and cried like a child, had wailed and accused and begged while Jaejoong sat still in the corner with eyes as empty as the apartment they were leaving. Still, in the end, they got it. At the time, Changmin had thought it was because they would have wanted it that way, but now he thinks that maybe he thought it would be easier to move on if all of his grief was consolidated in one place.
Sometimes, he's still not sure if he has moved on yet.
They are all three in a row with neat, matching headstones: Yunho, Junsu, Yoochun. Changmin has said their names a million times in his head, but he dares not speak them aloud; he is afraid they will sound too different from what he remembers. There are two more spots to Yoochun's right, still empty. Jaejoong said, once, that it was morbid to already have his gravesite picked out at twenty-five. Changmin had been crying too hard to respond.
But he is right: Jaejoong is there, cross-legged on the ground, persperation staining down the back of his shirt. He has been here all day, Changmin realizes. Technically, it is a day early: four years ago tomorrow would be right, but Changmin knows that Jaejoong would rather remember their last day together than the first day alone.
Jaejoong is not crying, but there are tracks down his face that Changmin is sure are not from sweat. His eyes are fixed on that one name, and they remind Changmin of so many sleepless nights and restless days that, for a moment, he thinks that one day he and Jaejoong might be able to understand each other again.
Jaejoong does not look surprised when he looks up from Yoochun's headstone to see Changmin watching him quietly. He says his name, so softly that Changmin barely hears it, but the tears that well in his eyes again say volumes more than any words ever could.
"I know you loved him," Changmin says. His voice wavers a little at the end, and he clenches his jaw shut tight.
"He loved me," Jaejoong says, his gaze falling soft on the headstone again. He stands, loose blades of grass clinging limply to his jeans; when he looks at Changmin again, Changmin's heart twists in his chest and he swallows the lump in his throat.
"I tried really hard." Jaejoong's voice is helpless and broken. "I tried so hard, I really did."
Tried to what? Changmin wants to ask. To forget? To remember? To move on, to live, to die?
He folds Jaejoong in his arms and thinks that this is one more answer he will probably never have.
Changmin can count the times he has seen Jaejoong inconsolable on one hand; with them - with everyone - Jaejoong has always been the comforter. So Changmin finds them a park bench and they sit, but he is not sure what else to do as Jaejoong sits with his head in his hands, quiet except for the occasional slow, ragged breath.
Eventually, he puts a careful hand on Jaejoong's shoulder, fingers curling slightly into the fabric of the other boy's shirt. Jaejoong does not look up, but Changmin can feel him letting out a long sigh.
"It wasn't fair," he says, words choked, muffled into his palms.
"I know," Changmin says quietly.
"No," Jaejoong says, looking up finally. His eyes are red, full of all the emotion that Changmin is just now noticing has been missing from them. "It wasn't fair for us."
Changmin sighs and looks away into the trees. "I know," he says again. For once, he thinks, he understands - even if their us is different.
They fall quietly back into routine: Jaejoong goes back to his little townhouse with Haeyon and shows up at the cafe a few times a week for Changmin. But everything is a little more careful and a little more awkward, and sometimes it makes Changmin want to scream at Jaejoong, tell him to get over himself and move on, but he could never ask something of Jaejoong that he's never been able to do himself.
Jaejoong holds Changmin's hand sometimes, though, when they are walking or sitting together, or he'll brush fingertips over Changmin's wrist or the back of his neck, or stare at him for so long that Changmin has to find something to do, just so he won't ask why. Jaejoong stands too close; Changmin lets him, because it proves that he's there.
"I didn't find you on purpose," Jaejoong says, out of nowhere, rummaging through his pantry for some spice that Changmin has never known the function of. Changmin does not respond, just watches him until Jaejoong reemerges and catches his eye. "I had meant to never-- well, I didn't know if I'd be able to give you up if I saw you again."
Changmin bites hard on his lip, then asks softly: "Why would you ever want to give me up in the first place?"
Jaejoong sighs and puts a hand on Changmin's cheek.
"Appa!," Haeyon shrieks from the next room.
Jaejoong smiles, just a little bit, and closes his eyes for a moment before pulling his hand away. His fingers curl in on each other, and he turns sharply away. "She's Yoochun's," he says, so quietly that Changmin has to convince himself that he didn't mishear.
Jaejoong disappears into the next room before he can respond, and when Haeyon comes rushing into the kitchen in a fit of giggles, all Changmin can think to do is to gather her up into his arms and squeeze her tight to his chest. Haeyon just laughs and kisses Changmin's cheek; when Changmin looks up, Jaejoong is watching them with something like sadness written across his face.
"It's the least I could do, isn't it?" he asks. Changmin has to assume it's rhetorical, because his voice is caught in his throat.
Changmin's thoughts on the way home are much like the trees lining the roadside: caught and illuminated for a split-second in the sharp glow of headlights before slipping half-formed back into the darkness. Eventually, he decides the trees are easier to grasp than his thoughts and just leans his head against the window, watching them as Jaejoong's car speeds down the road.
"You drive too fast," he says softly, his eyes still fixed out the window.
"Hm? Jaejoong says, looking over; Changmin can feel Jaejoong's eyes on him, deep and dark and full of impossibilities. He looks back over, slowly, but halfway there he's blinded by oncoming headlights.
look out!
--screech, burning rubber,
shattering glass, sharp--
stop! (yoochun, or yunho-- can't see to tell)
junsu's fingers, too-tight, digging in,
oh god
oh god--
spinning,
crunch, crash, upside-down,
everywhere and nowhere and
silence.
After what seems like years, Changmin opens his eyes. He blinks away the light that seems foreign to his eyes, and then he starts to breathe again. The car is crooked, half on the road with the back end leaning into the roadside ditch; there are no trucks or blinding headlights, just Jaejoong next to him, hands white-knuckled on the steering wheel and eyes wide and blank staring out over the dashboard. It frightens Changmin, a little bit, so he does not say anything and waits for Jaejoong to come back to now.
Finally, after a too-long, too-tense minute, all of the strength seems to seep out of Jaejoong; he sags in his seat, leaning his head against the steering wheel with a long sigh.
"God," he mutters, half-audible.
"You don't believe in God," Changmin says. The words slip out before he even thinks them, absurdly and ironically true.
Jaejoong is quiet for a moment, then laughs: quietly at first, then rich and deep. It is not like the way he laughed that afternoon on the playground; instead, it is almost the same as the laugh that Changmin remembers. It is almost whole.
"No," Jaejoong says, "I don't."
He shifts back into drive and the car jerks onto the road. The rest of the trip back to Seoul is quiet, as usual, but it does not have the heaviness that Changmin has become to accustomed to and, as they pass over the Han river, Jaejoong reaches over and squeezes his hand. He does not say anything, but Changmin knows that they are thinking the same thing in guilt-stained relief:
I guess we really were supposed to make it.
Haeyon is with a babysitter for the night, Jaejoong says, and helps himself to Changmin's apartment. He has an innate sense for the place, it seems, and does not even ask where anything is when he makes dinner for the two of them; for a moment, as he lays the dishes out, Changmin thinks that it could almost be before if they weren't both so much older now. They eat in silence, but Jaejoong insists on cleaning up afterward; Changmin never could get all the little stuck-on bits off right, he says. Changmin does not have anything else to do, though, so he stays and watches the other man in his kitchen and wonders if anything but this will ever feel natural.
When he finishes, Jaejoong smiles up at Changmin in that sad way he has now and says, "Let's go to bed, Changmin."
"It's barely ten," Changmin says.
"Shhh," Jaejoong says, and kisses him.
Changmin wonders, later, when Jaejoong is asleep against him and they are tangled in the sheets and each other, if it really does make sense or if he is just pretending it does because Jaejoong's skin against his feels exactly how he has always imagined it. Asleep, Jaejoong does not look nearly as sad; Changmin wonders if it is because the people in your dreams do not die.
When he wakes up, it is raining.
(end)