and i'm not good to go
obsidian wing
yunho&jaejoong, yoochun
pg, au, drama, comedy, romance, prison-fic
somehwut angst, but happy-for-nothing yunho spoils the mood
must i have a summary? yunho meets jaejoong in jail
for l4ur42008 because it's your birthday :)
obsidian wing
black & branded; carved under my skin
{i used to be nice, soft and tender
but if I keep going crazy like this
you’ll turn me into something bad}
Does blood corrupt like money?
Does it turn a good man over the other end?
Does it?
Jaejoong holds his mother’s fading hands; swears that he’ll make her better. Swears on his lifeblood that he’ll get her to a doctor, but he doesn’t know how. Her chest tightens, and he swears under his breath.
He has no money, no education, no alternative.
He has no father.
His mother uses the last of her strength to unclasp the necklace around her neck.
‘Keep it,’ she gasps, her head rolling back.
Jaejoong holds the trinket in the palm of his hand. She’ll sleep for another two days, and who’s to say, she might never get up again.
The crystal waters glitter with hovering wings, brilliant specks of rainbow sunlight reflecting off their cloaks of flight. A baby dragonfly dances on the crown of the boy’s head, tickling the strands of his hair. He catches it between two fingers, studying its miniature wings. The insect fights for its life, jiggling for all it’s worth. He wonders if he would be able to keep it with him in one of those glass jars used to store peanut butter and jelly, but a gentle voice drifts into his conscience. Let it go, Joongie, the man says. The boy looks up into his compassionate gaze. Willingly, he releases the little creature, watches it flit back into the cloud of dragonflies as he runs into his father’s open arms and finds that there’s no better place than home.
The streets are empty of jobs.
Jaejoong fingers the pendant dangling between his chest. It’s the last of the gold they have, and even then, it isn’t enough to buy away the pain that wracks his mother’s ailing body.
At the end of the road, he comes across a grubby shop house, it’s display window dirtier than the pavements. From afar, he can make out a white piece of paper slapped onto the murky glass like an obscene remark.
Upon closer look, they’re hiring. An asissytant, it said in horrid handwriting.
A tattoo assistant.
He walks through the shabby door, although the bell rings a little too sharply, although it smells like the faint scent of a trap.
You have my eyes, Joongie, the man says, tilting the boy’s chin upward. Do I have your nose too? the boy asks, climbing into his father’s lap. ‘Let’s see,’ and the man places their cheeks side by side. They cross their eyes comparing the tip of their noses, laughter skidding about the room. Do I have everything you have? the boy asks again, counting the wrinkles on his father’s face. Yes Joongie, the man replies, you even have my heart.
The Tatist jerks upward at the sound of the bell. It hardly ever rang.
There were moments life didn’t go your way, and moments life did. This was one of those.
‘Welcome,’ he says, stretching out in a yawn. ‘What can I do for you on this glorious hot-ass day?’
‘You could give me the job,’ the man says.
‘Ah, so you’re here for the interview.’ The Tatist steps out from behind his rotting counter, sniffing the stale air. ‘Good thing is, puppy, there’s no interview. Only a test.’
The man stiffens, wondering if this is all a joke. ‘What do I have to do?’
The Tatist’s voice takes a serious note. ‘This is where it gets bad. Are you pain tolerant, sweet cheeks?’
‘That depends. How much are you offering?’
‘Five hundred a month if you succeed. That sound right?’
The Tatist can see the light go up in the other man’s eyes. Nobody offered five hundred to an assistant. It was like daylight robbery, with the victim giving consensus. He smirks.
‘I’ll do it. The test.’
‘Name please?’
‘Kim Jaejoong.’
‘Okay, Jaejoong-shi. Come in.’ And then he leads this Jaejoong, who has beauty unlike anything he’s ever seen, into what has to be the most ugliest room in all of Gwangju.
‘Strip,’ the Tatist says, pulling out a cigarette, lighting it with a flick of a match. Jaejoong gives him a glare as fatal as the deathly vapors he’s puffing on.
‘You must be mistaken. I’m not some whore-‘
‘Relax, mushroom-pie. I’m going to tattoo your back. Just that. Unless you want me to do it with your shirt still on. It’ll hurt a lot worst, lemme tell you beforehand.’
The Tatist stubs his cigarette butt, reaching for his tattoo gun instead.
Jaejoong hesitates. Only gang members in Gwangju were marked by tattoos - all over their bodies. If he had one, he’d be scarred for life. But he needed this job as much as he needed his mother alive.
‘Which design?’
‘It’s up to me. Take it or leave it, baby.’ His words come off as warning to Jaejoong. The Tatist didn’t take shit either.
Jaejoong removes his shirt, chest down on the grimy bed, his necklace pinching his neck. He gives the go ahead to start, and what shoots down his back must have only been half the pain his mother puts up with.
He passes out before the Tatist can finish.
‘Be a good man, Joongie. Grow up like how I’ve taught you to.’ The little boy nods to everything, his smile confident. His father straightens the collar around his neck. He looks like he’s leaving for somewhere. When will you be coming back? the boy asks. His father gives no answer, only looks back at his wife with love and longing. Your mother, the man whispers, stay with her till the end.
When Jaejoong rolls off the bed with a splitting headache, the Tatist offers him aspirin. They are unhelpful for the burns that slice his back.
‘Wanna see?’ the Tatist asks, holding up a blurred mirror. Jaejoong can only distinguish a mass of bloodied snakes from the mess.
‘It’s horrible,’ he mumbles, words not catching up with his tongue.
‘Well, you passed the test,’ the Tatist states. Jaejoong groans, finding every walking inch an agony. ‘Come back tomorrow, Jaejoong-shi, and then you can start work.’
A customer swaggers in as he staggers out, and it’s obvious he’s with the mafia, or with the underground drug dealers, or someone who should just go to freaking prison but Jaejoong is too tired to noticeably care.
Instead, he goes home to a house nearly razed to the ground by fire. The neighbors had been there to help him put it out.
His mother had come out of it barely alive, but still asleep, soot covering her body. The walls around her have scribbling in what must have been blood - pig, cow, human?
Your father hasn’t paid up, it wrote. But dead men don’t settle outstanding debts, do they? Seven hundred by tomorrow. Or else.
He falters for a second, and then he’s off to the Tatist to ask for an advance in his salary; to promise that he’d slog his whole life away under him if it would mean keeping his mother safe.
It goes against everything his father had taught him. The police don’t object to that. You don’t rob and murder a man on the streets for money. Not even if you needed it because your wife was dying. You can’t just kill a person to save the life of another. Don’t end up like me, the man warns his son. But I have everything you have, the boy reminds him solemnly, wondering how he could turn out any different.
‘Where’re you gonna get the seven hundred?’ the Tatist asks none too concernedly. Jaejoong had explained that he’d needed that amount of money. As to what for, the Tatist isn’t sure, but Jaejoong wasn’t going to reveal any part of his sob story to an unhelpful stranger - to tell him that he had been born into poverty, that his mother had been sick since childbirth, that his father had had to dig for money to cover her medical fees like needle in a haystack.
Jaejoong’s lips curve into a grim line. He’d tried asking the Tatist for an advance, but the man had refused him because he hadn’t started work, and who’s to say if he wouldn’t be taking the money and running off.
‘I don’t know how, but I’ll get it,’ he grates, twisting the pendant around his neck with a fervor.
There were ways to obtain cash. Only that the methods were illegal. His father had done that, had robbed and killed a man to pay his debt. His dearest father, who’d been arrested and executed for trying. The very same father who’d left all responsibility under his son’s name.
‘You know, if you plan to rob a store, the one opposite to mine has the worst security system.’
The Tatist laughs. He’s messing around, but Jaejoong doesn’t have time for games.
‘Thanks for the tip,’ he murmurs, stalking out. The bell rings behind him like a call for disaster.
Impending doom, Jaejoong thinks.
At midnight, he burglarizes the store opposite the tattoo parlor.
He’d come to the conclusion that there were situations which called for desperate measures. Come to the understanding that mistakes had serious consequences.
And amongst all other things, he’d resigned himself to the fate that he’d be exactly the same man his father had been.
{it’s like i’m a puppet to you
i’ll remove the spell that you
have put on me again
I beg you, beg you}
They arrest him on the evening he pays up his family’s outstanding debt.
He’s thrown into jail with no phone call, no lawyer, no trial. The justice system was as corrupt as the underground world. Jaejoong was guilty until proven innocent, and even then, he knew he was not.
‘Change into these,’ the officer barks, throwing a circus get-up in his face - an orange so bright it could light up the towns on Christmas eve.
They haul him to medium security. Here they housed all kinds of criminals, except murderers, because they were executed within a week. The state wasn’t going to spend its budget spoon-feeding serious offenders.
This was the only prison facility in the whole of Gwangju. The inmates found here made up the entire population of criminals within the city. Bred under harsh circumstances, they were tough nuts to crack. Yet the security wasn’t tight. The prisoners were able to do almost anything they wanted without being heavily scrutinized.
Besides, they let him keep the necklace around his neck.
The guards feed him to the sharks after all the paperwork is done, not that there’s much about his life that needs archiving.
They dump him in the main holding area, where all the other convicts roam freely. Jaejoong can feel their dirty gazes slide down his skin like sewage. He looks away, but never down at the ground - if he did he’d be jail bait.
What happens next happens so fast Jaejoong isn’t sure if it’s reality. A small brute comes at him from the rear end with a weapon fashioned out of a jagged piece of wood, stabbing him hard in the back.
The makeshift knife is tiny, almost harmless, but the damage is done. The wardens subdue the man, fighting him all the way to the isolation cells.
Jaejoong gets sent to the medic. It’s the second scar he’d have to wear on his back.
♣
Yunho has a visitor.
‘Officer Choi,’ he coos, tarnishing the name as he enters the prison's visitation room. The guards fidget uncomfortably.
‘Yunho-shi,’ the officer responds, unaffected by the insolence in the other man’s tone. Out of all the justice officials, Officer Choi was one of the few who made it a point to stick to the law. The man was clean as white-washed laundry.
‘I would have bribed you to hand me a smoke, but,’ Yunho taunts, dragging the last syllable. Choi wouldn’t have budged if he’d asked for a stick of caramel candy. The officer promptly ignores all the little side remarks, pushing him down into the chair.
‘You get five minutes. I’m watching you,’ Choi warns, tugging his lapel in a stiff gesture as Yunho shoots him the slyest grin.
His visitor wears the weirdest slippers ever. Yunho stares at it in mock disgust, never mind that he’s clothed in an outstanding orange jumpsuit himself.
‘And you call yourself a fashionista, Yoochunah,’ he jibes, leaning back in his chair and propping his ankles on the table. The other man inconspicuously rolls a cigarette towards Yunho.
‘You’re losing it,’ Yoochun mumbles, smiling easily. ‘I’ve been telling you to get some fresh air around here.’
‘The only fresh air I get is what comes out another man’s stinky ass.’
Yoochun snorts, grating his chair against the floor in a loud screech. The guards tense at the sound. ‘Whatever, man. Let’s keep this short. I know you don’t believe in God and Buddha and stuff like that, but what about angels? They have wings. They can save your soul.’
Angels, huh.
Yunho plants his feet back on the ground, leaning towards Yoochun. ‘I’m too far gone for this religious crap,’ he grits.
Officer Choi seems to disagree. He gives a loud-ass cough.
‘Time,’ he grouches, signaling to the guards. Yunho gets up without any assistance. He winks at Yoochun, who takes that as goodbye.
‘See you when I see you, Boss,’ Yoochun murmurs, lighting his smoke. He waves without turning behind, a curt movement of the hand.
Yunho flips on his heels and walks right into Officer Choi with the cunning air of someone who’s been there, done that.
He tucks the smuggled cigarette into Choi’s breast pocket naughtily. ‘I don’t smoke, Officer,’ he whispers , giving him a mock salute as he saunters back into captivity.
♣
Jaejoong jumps whenever someone makes a noise behind him, ready to defend himself. He crouches near corners, tenses up if anyone approached him from the rear. The medic tells him that he’s suffering from post-trauma after the attack.
It hasn’t even passed shower time, and already he doesn’t know if he’ll survive around here for the next ten years.
He pulls his shirt off quickly, climbing out of his pants in a flash. Showering in prison meant absolutely no privacy. He hadn’t thought about that when he’d broken into the shop, desperate for the money.
Were there instances where you forgot who you were and all the principles you stood for?
Moments where your better judgment became clouded at a time where you needed it the most?
Or did the sins of the father run in the family like it did in blood?
His back to the wall, he lets the fall of water pound sense onto his crown. There’s no shame despite his nudity. He had no right to whatever’s left of his pride.
The water runs black, and Jaejoong wonders if it’s the tattoo rubbing off, washing him good as new. But no, it’s just the dirt he’s collected, along with a hundred other men.
♣
Yunho spots what he’s looking for.
An angel.
He makes the first move.
{everyday i dream of you
do you love me?
do you love me?}
The arena - it’s what the guards call the canteen. Anytime now, there’ll be two inmates picking a fight. Jaejoong just never suspected that he’d be one of them.
The bully that bumps into his shoulders turns on him suddenly as he joins the interminable queue from the counter to the outskirts of the cafeteria. Surprised, but not caught off guard, Jaejoong reacts.
He’d found himself a weapon, not unlike the sharp object found in the hands of the man who’d stabbed him. With the ease of a practised assassin, he slams the thug in the balls with a kneecap, sliding the blade against his jugular.
He can feel the adrenaline now. Fear, disgust, death - all these pulsing against his wrist. The knife draws a line between them, thin and red and dangerous along the other man’s neck.
‘Don’t mess with me,’ Jaejoong snarls, kicking the man aside.
The guards arrive late, pushing everyone apart. Jaejoong slinks to the corner, ensuring that his back is to the wall. Dinner resumes. Their stand-off had merely served its purpose as entertainment.
From the other side of the four walls, a tall man approaches with his tray. He had a scar - no, two scars - and a wide, floppy smile outlining the contours of his face.
The man sits uninvited, plopping the tray carelessly on the steel table. Jaejoong glares at him.
‘Skipping your meal?’ the man asks casually, still beaming like the sun Jaejoong had missed a day ago.
‘What’s it to you?’ Jaejoong scowls, thoroughly pissed after the ordeal he’d had to put up with. The man’s smile is frighteningly disarming.
‘You have some skill there, slugging Batshit with that sucker punch. I heard you survived a stabbing by Threeface too - it happens quite commonly here.’
‘Are you threatening me?’ Jaejoong asks, his eyes gone dead. The other man silences - that grin transforms into a smirk.
‘I’m here to offer you protection.’
Jaejoong scoffs at him. ‘Protection?’
‘I’m mafia,’ the man says, crossing his arms across his chest smugly.
‘What do you want from me?’ Jaejoong sighs through clenched teeth. His vision doubles. His back throbs with an intensity that reminds him of his mother, alone and vulnerable.
Is it the burn of the tattoos?
The hand he stretches to touch the knife wound on his lower back returns smeared with blood.
‘Hey! Yah! What’s wrong?!’ the tall man calls out frantically as Jaejoong begins losing consciousness.
He has the voice of gentle thunder, and the firm hands around Jaejoong become soothing enough to put him to sleep.
♣
Yunho paces the cage - there’s no other description to it. Night falls cautiously around them, bathing shadows all over the floor.
The medics had deemed Jaejoong fit to return to his quarters to rest, and Yunho had twisted fingers until finally the guards relent, bunking Yunho with the injured man.
He couldn’t help but feel responsible for Jaejoong’s suffering.
After all;
‘You passed out,’ Yunho announces when Jaejoong wakes from his reverie. ‘You burst your stitches back there.’
The other man moves slowly, shifting out of bed and walking toward the iron bars as if he’d forgotten where he’d gone. In front of him is a blank wall, a reflection of his future.
Yunho makes to follow but -
‘Get away from me,’ Jaejoong growls, turning on Yunho as the man advances from behind. He wasn’t going to let anyone near his back.
‘Whoa easy, I’m not going to hurt you,’ Yunho murmurs, speaking as if he were taming a wild mustang. It calms Jaejoong’s racing heart.
‘I’m Yunho, by the way,’ the man introduces, wanting to shake his hand. Jaejoong slaps it away. ‘Nice to meet you too, Jaejoong.’
He wants to ask how Yunho had gotten wind of his name, but by now the entire prison should have known who he was - might even have given him a humiliating nickname as well.
‘- so we’re room mates now,’ Yunho blabbers on, obviously unable to read the atmosphere - Jaejoong hadn’t been listening.
‘Do you like to sing, Jaejoongie?’ Yunho wonders, scratching the mole above his lip.
Jaejoong shivers at the use of his pet name, memories crawling out into the light - a little like chilled ice down the spine on a hot summer’s day.
‘I can’t go to sleep if I don’t sing. You won’t mind if I do, right?’
Jaejoong tilts his head to the left, surveying his new home. Yunho carries on anyway, no need for Jaejoong’s reply. He climbs up to his upper bunk, singing his head off as Jaejoong clambers back to bed, his headache dulling.
From a few prison cells away, shouts arise like cries of goodnight.
‘Yah Yunho! Shut the hell up! There are people trying to sleep here, dimwit!’
Yunho only sings louder - rapping even - as if to spite them, and contrary to what should have been, Jaejoong eases into the deepest of dreamless sleep.
{i want to hold you in my arms
i will do anything and even more
you are my fantasy, i’ll put
everything in my stake to have you}
In the morning, they work the fields. It’s part of their daily schedule, something like corrective work order.
Jaejoong sulks, muscles rippling under the shade of the clouds. He had been appointed to dig up a gigantic hole.
Yunho jests with his fellow inmates some few feet away until the guards break them up for causing too much noise.
He goes back to bothering Jaejoong.
‘Hot day, huh?’
Silence and the thud of shovel on soil.
‘It gets hotter in the afternoon, Jaejoongie. You don’t have to work too hard.’
Jaejoong snaps. Maybe it’s the way Yunho utters his name, maybe it’s the infuriating way he appeared so relaxed, or maybe, it could be the frustrating ache that’s been eating into his back.
‘Leave me alone,’ he snarls, his tone like poison. The swing of his shovel is menacing. Soil gives way like sponge cake. Jaejoong is going to dig this crater if he has to die inside it trying. His ego would still rear its ugly head in such situations. He wasn’t going to let himself faint in front of the other man again. It was unbecoming.
Yunho observes all this coolly.
'I’ll help you,’ he says, resolve biting into Jaejoong’s personal space. His shovel drills the ground under Jaejoong like a sword, heaving spade after spade of dirt despite the sweltering heat.
The two men work side by side without a word, the heap of ground they’ve unearthed towering over their heads.
Just barely before lunch, their job is completed. Yunho hollers for food, heading into the building as the whole gin bang of prisoners follow suit.
Jaejoong tails after them cautiously, but not before having noticed that the mountain of dug-up soil surrounding the hole on Yunho’s side had been double the height of his.
♣
After the lights go out, Yunho comes down with a fever.
He had exerted too much energy in the fields, the heat of the sun being the culprit.
Jaejoong tells him that he has to see the doctor, but Yunho refuses, a ghastly sheen of sweat covering his skin.
With whatever experience of illnesses he’d had from taking care of his mother, Jaejoong peels off his shirt, soaking it in water. He drapes the wet cloth over Yunho’s forehead.
‘This is the best I can do,’ he mumbles, switching sides to the cloth every five minutes and moistening it with fresh tap water every ten.
In those brief intervals Jaejoong walks off to the basin, Yunho catches the faint sliver of an angel’s wings tattooed on his shoulder, amidst the other dark sketches that cover the man’s entire back.
But what about angels?
They can save your soul.
Jaejoong returns with a mug of water.
‘Drink this,’ he says, lifting Yunho’s head and tipping drops of it into his mouth.
‘It tastes like orange juice,’ Yunho rasps, offering a sickly smile. Jaejoong stays at his side, nursing his fever with utmost care.
‘Don’t you like to sing, Jaejoongie?’ Yunho asks, his fever slowing down. ‘I can’t sleep without a song.’
Jaejoong removes the cloth, washing it off in the sink again. He had skin the color of moonlight, Yunho thinks. The touch of damp cloth to his head breaks the trance he’s in. Perhaps sickly people think weird things.
‘Sleep,’ Jaejoong whispers. Yunho moves his dry lips to protest that he really can’t go to bed without a lullaby of sorts, but Jaejoong puts a finger to his mouth.
‘I’ll sing for you, Yunhoyah.’
And Yunho should have expected it, how Jaejoong puts meaning into melody.
Beautiful, he concludes as sleep comes for him like cherubim on a dying man’s bed.
For the first time in many nights, the prison stays unusually quiet, no yells and shouts for Yunho to shut his singing trap. Only Jaejoong, and a voice that could put the angels to shame.
♣
In the wee hours of dawn the next day, Yunho’s fever subsides.
‘Your singing does wonders, Jaejoongie,’ he teases when he has energy enough to speak. Jaejoong shrugs, punching Yunho in the stomach when the other man stealthily hugs him from behind.
‘Don’t touch me,’ Jaejoong shrieks, fear written like lyrics in his eyes.
‘Shit, Yunho, I’m sorry.’ He bends over him, offering the collapsed man a hand. Yunho takes it, leaping back up.
‘It’s okay, I forgot about your phobia,’ he says, feeling woozy from the sudden change in position.
‘I - After that attack, I can’t think straight when anyone creeps up on me like that. I get paranoid. I’m sorry,’ he mutters, unable to lift his gaze from the cement floor.
‘It’s okay,’ Yunho repeats.
Jaejoong exhales anxiously. ‘It’s my fault you’d gotten sick. If you hadn’t helped me out in the fields, you wouldn’t have ended up like that.’
Yunho climbs back up to his bunk, peeking over the edge of the railings.
‘You’re still recovering from that stab wound. They should never have let you done manual labor. Idiots,’ he curses.
It only makes Jaejoong feel twice as bad, for having felt irritated at Yunho when he’d told him not to work so hard. The other man was only thinking on his behalf; had even dug the earth twice as vigorously for his sake.
‘I’ll be fine,’ Jaejoong says, but it comes out less than convincing.
Yunho climbs back down from the second deck. It makes Jaejoong wonder why he’d gone up in the first place. Then there’s the sound of keys rattling, and he realizes it’s already time for breakfast.
Two trays of food boomerang in, and Yunho sits cross-legged on the floor in front of his. ‘Food,’ he sings happily, stuffing his stomach with water and cold bread.
‘Do you trust me, Jaejoongie?’ he asks when they’ve finished eating.
The guards had opened the prison gates for them to leave for the working fields - another day of shoveling dirt.
Yunho peers over his shoulder at Jaejoong as they file down the corridor.
‘I’ll watch your back,’ he promises, and Jaejoong -
Jaejoong lets him.
{i need to stop thinking about you
because i can’t take it no more
in the name of god, why do you worry}
Yoochun visits again.
Yunho does his weekly routine of annoying Officer Choi who shoots him fierce looks; looks that don’t deter the other man.
‘I would have bribed you to get me some candy, but,’ Yunho sniggers, enjoying the aggravated expression playing out on Choi’s face. The officer shoves him into his seat, asks him to stop spouting rubbish.
Yunho’s right hand man walks in, donning the most hideous hairstyle ever. Yunho gapes, choking on spit, never mind that his hairstyle is none too fine either.
‘I have nothing to say about your hair,’ he states, keeping his eyes averted from the nest Yoochun called his latest perm.
‘What say you to this then?’ Yoochun slurs, slipping Yunho mint lozenges out of sight of the guards. ‘Jesus died and rose again in three days. You’re running out of time for salvation.’
Officer Choi cocks an eyebrow. Their eccentric conversations go nowhere.
Three days, huh.
Yunho shakes his head. ‘Fix that hair before you try to fix my soul, Yoochunah.’
Yoochun self-consciously touches the curls framing his cheekbones, affected by Yunho’s verbal attack on his hairdo. ‘I’m just saying…’
‘Time,’ Officer Choi grunts. It isn’t even past three minutes.
‘Hey, that’s not fair,’ Yunho protests as the guards pick him up by the elbows. They never used handcuffs on him. So far he’d been pretty harmless.
‘Was it fair when you raped that girl?’ Officer Choi inquires, his tone scathing. Yunho clenches his mouth shut.
‘See you on the other side, Boss,’ Yoochun says, excusing himself quickly.
Yunho waves at his retreating figure, shaking himself free of the guards. Again he walks into Officer Choi, redemption glimmering in his pupils like inky hope.
‘I don’t really like sweets, Officer,’ he confesses, pushing Yoochun’s secreted white candy into the officer’s palm, stomping hard on one of Choi’s well-polished boots in a fit of tantrum so that the reflection in it becomes more than foggy.
♣
Jaejoong becomes accustomed to Yunho; such that without one there is no other.
When Yunho goes for his visitations, Jaejoong ponders the fate of his mother; if anything bad has happened to her.
‘Is there something growing on the floor that I should know about?’ Yunho asks. Jaejoong tilts his head upward, and it comes so close to Yunho’s. His breath trickles down the other man’s chin.
‘My mother,’ Jaejoong gushes, the words flowing out before his mind can arrange them. He decides in that split second to tell Yunho everything.
‘My mother - she’s sick! It’s the reason I stole! There were debtors after her - they were going to burn down the house and if I didn’t - if I hadn’t, she’d be killed! I don’t know if she’s still alive - the guards didn’t let me make my phone call. If anything happens to her, Yunhoyah, I don’t know what I’d do.’
Yunho gathers Jaejoong to himself, patting the smaller man’s head. ‘There there, she’ll be alright. I’ve got your back, Jaejoongie.’
And did he; in more ways than one could imagine.
♣
‘I need to make that phone call,’ Yunho yodels to the wardens after Jaejoong’s anxiety had simmered to ash. A guard stops by the cell, checking to see what’s the matter.
Officer Choi arrives at the gates of Yunho’s quarters, agitated by the convict’s whimsical demands. ‘And what might that phone call be about, Yunho-shi?’ he asks sarcastically.
‘Salvation,’ Yunho replies, and Officer Choi, who wears a rosary under all those layers of uniform, softens his incorruptible heart to let this pitiful criminal have his last chance at being redeemed.
♣
‘Yoochunah, h e l l o~’ Yunho greets. ‘I have a question.’
Officer Choi stands guard by the phone booth, picking his nails somberly.
‘Do you remember the angel that approached Mother Mary?’
‘What?!’ Yoochun gawks. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’
‘Mother Mary,’ Yunho repeats, trying to get his point across in secret code.
‘Angels and Mother Mary, what the heck! - this whole religious talk is confusing me!’
‘Yoochun, listen. I have another question. Is Mother Mary alright?’
Officer Choi perks up, alert. He couldn’t hear the conversation on the other end of the line, but whatever Yunho was getting at didn’t seem very salvation-like to him.
‘I mean,’ Yunho repeats, coughing slightly. ‘Is it alright if I believe in Mother Mary?’
Yoochun takes an infinity to understand the whole meaning in its entirety. ‘You mean, the angel had a Mother? Damn, this is some shit right here. I get it, Boss.’ A long stall, then - ‘Man, I want to say how much I love you but it’s embarrassing. Our phone conversation’s being tapped, so uhh, I’ll just hang up for now. God bless your soul, dude.’
‘Right. Thank you for your listening ears, Yoochun. Amen.’
The call ends abruptly, the line going static. There’s a collective pause, then -
‘I’m Catholic!’ Yunho announces to anyone in the room who bothers to listen, clapping his hands in glee.
Officer Choi grins. It’s the best news he’s heard in all three years of prison misery.
{you’re stuck in my heart! it’s us in the torn picture
and i’ll remove the spell you’ve put on me again
i beg you drop her, drop her}
That afternoon, when Jaejoong is alone because Yunho is making his phone call, a beast intrudes into his cell during lock-out hours where most of the inmates are at the bath or free to move around.
It chokes him from behind, and Jaejoong is too terrified to scream, noiseless croaks escaping his throat.
The beast is a large man with veins that stood out from his neck. He tugs at Jaejoong’s pants, ripping off his shirt.
Pinned down like a dying insect at the brink of death or worse, Jaejoong has never felt more alive, knowing that if he gave up now, he’ll lose the remains of his existence.
He claws at the man on top of him viciously, kicking and flailing. When he finds the voice to scream, it’s Yunho that comes running.
The beast is knocked off him, and Yunho leaps on top of the huge prisoner, strangling him with one hand. The near unconscious man fights for air, but Yunho stills him with the other, his face as dark as the emotions swirling around him.
Never before has Jaejoong felt such a suffocating presence. This was another side to the cheerful man he’d come to recognise;
Yunho is about to commit murder.
‘Yunhoyah,’ Jaejoong gasps. ‘Let him go.’
At the sound of Jaejoong’s plea, the last vestiges of Yunho’s self control returns. He releases his death-grip on the other man.
The beast sputters, fleeing the minute he can stand.
‘Why’d you stop me?’ Yunho’s voice is steady, but his hands tremble with rage. ‘He almost raped you. If I hadn’t come -‘
Jaejoong wraps himself about Yunho, grabbing his shaking hands. ‘You’re not a murderer,’ he soothes, saying it over and over again until it becomes a part of Yunho as much as Yunho had become a friend of his.
In that same evening, the beast is pronounced dead on the spot by the medics. He’d tried to rape another man - had gotten himself killed instead.
The prison spends the next few hours hushed except for the fierce cry of a lone crow circling the grounds.
♣
This letter to Jaejoong comes from a neighbor.
It wrote simply, in such understandable terms, that his mother had gone missing, assumingly taken by the debtors that had haunted her house since the very beginning. They hadn’t written anything more, but Jaejoong imagines the blood stained sheets, evidence that they had killed her because no one was around to pay up the remaining debt.
Jaejoong cries himself to sleep, muted sobs that amplify and take flight in the other man’s heart.
Yunho can’t make any other calls to Yoochun to verify the truth. Visitations were also banned because word had gone out to Officer Choi that he’d attacked an inmate - never mind that he’d done it to defend someone else.
Choi never got his facts right, not even until now. However morally upright, he was plain stupid.
Yunho kneels at Jaejoong’s bedside, emotionally attached to the smaller man. Beauty never fit such unkind conditions.
If only;
The light-snoring man turns in his sleep, his head bobbing as if he’d agreed to something he knew not what.
Yunho leans over him, drawn like a magnet to those rose petal lips.
He stops breathing the instance their lips touch. Quickly pulling back, he puts a hand over his mouth, the staying taste of Jaejoong’s tears on his tongue.
Shit, he thinks, glancing out to the obsidian night.
Shit.
♣
Yunho has two days left. Yoochun had already warned him.
Jaejoong shudders awake, the after effects of his nightmare lingering around him like bed head. His eyes are swollen from all the crying. He rolls up to see Yunho splayed on the floor below him.
Yunho’s eylids are puffy from a night of no sleep. He’d lain on the floor like a guardian, watching for signs of change in the future through the tiny prison window they had.
Jaejoong’s voice splinters slightly. ‘I dreamt - ‘
He doesn’t finish off that sentence.
‘What if I had never landed here, Yunhoyah - what if I hadn’t resorted to theft; if I had just borrowed from another debtor to pay up for the other, if -‘
‘If we had never met?’ Yunho questions, and these words he swallows like bile at the back of his throat, because;
Jaejoong looks the lying man in the eye.
‘Then maybe, Yunhoyah, my mother might have still been alive.’
part two: (two days or he'd never make it;)
yunho&jaejoong, yoochun
pg, au, drama, comedy, romance, prison-fic
somehwut angst, but happy-for-nothing yunho spoils the mood
must i have a summary? yunho meets jaejoong in jail
for l4ur42008 because it's your birthday :)
obsidian wing
black & branded; carved under my skin
{i used to be nice, soft and tender
but if I keep going crazy like this
you’ll turn me into something bad}
Does blood corrupt like money?
Does it turn a good man over the other end?
Does it?
Jaejoong holds his mother’s fading hands; swears that he’ll make her better. Swears on his lifeblood that he’ll get her to a doctor, but he doesn’t know how. Her chest tightens, and he swears under his breath.
He has no money, no education, no alternative.
He has no father.
His mother uses the last of her strength to unclasp the necklace around her neck.
‘Keep it,’ she gasps, her head rolling back.
Jaejoong holds the trinket in the palm of his hand. She’ll sleep for another two days, and who’s to say, she might never get up again.
The crystal waters glitter with hovering wings, brilliant specks of rainbow sunlight reflecting off their cloaks of flight. A baby dragonfly dances on the crown of the boy’s head, tickling the strands of his hair. He catches it between two fingers, studying its miniature wings. The insect fights for its life, jiggling for all it’s worth. He wonders if he would be able to keep it with him in one of those glass jars used to store peanut butter and jelly, but a gentle voice drifts into his conscience. Let it go, Joongie, the man says. The boy looks up into his compassionate gaze. Willingly, he releases the little creature, watches it flit back into the cloud of dragonflies as he runs into his father’s open arms and finds that there’s no better place than home.
The streets are empty of jobs.
Jaejoong fingers the pendant dangling between his chest. It’s the last of the gold they have, and even then, it isn’t enough to buy away the pain that wracks his mother’s ailing body.
At the end of the road, he comes across a grubby shop house, it’s display window dirtier than the pavements. From afar, he can make out a white piece of paper slapped onto the murky glass like an obscene remark.
Upon closer look, they’re hiring. An asissytant, it said in horrid handwriting.
A tattoo assistant.
He walks through the shabby door, although the bell rings a little too sharply, although it smells like the faint scent of a trap.
You have my eyes, Joongie, the man says, tilting the boy’s chin upward. Do I have your nose too? the boy asks, climbing into his father’s lap. ‘Let’s see,’ and the man places their cheeks side by side. They cross their eyes comparing the tip of their noses, laughter skidding about the room. Do I have everything you have? the boy asks again, counting the wrinkles on his father’s face. Yes Joongie, the man replies, you even have my heart.
The Tatist jerks upward at the sound of the bell. It hardly ever rang.
There were moments life didn’t go your way, and moments life did. This was one of those.
‘Welcome,’ he says, stretching out in a yawn. ‘What can I do for you on this glorious hot-ass day?’
‘You could give me the job,’ the man says.
‘Ah, so you’re here for the interview.’ The Tatist steps out from behind his rotting counter, sniffing the stale air. ‘Good thing is, puppy, there’s no interview. Only a test.’
The man stiffens, wondering if this is all a joke. ‘What do I have to do?’
The Tatist’s voice takes a serious note. ‘This is where it gets bad. Are you pain tolerant, sweet cheeks?’
‘That depends. How much are you offering?’
‘Five hundred a month if you succeed. That sound right?’
The Tatist can see the light go up in the other man’s eyes. Nobody offered five hundred to an assistant. It was like daylight robbery, with the victim giving consensus. He smirks.
‘I’ll do it. The test.’
‘Name please?’
‘Kim Jaejoong.’
‘Okay, Jaejoong-shi. Come in.’ And then he leads this Jaejoong, who has beauty unlike anything he’s ever seen, into what has to be the most ugliest room in all of Gwangju.
‘Strip,’ the Tatist says, pulling out a cigarette, lighting it with a flick of a match. Jaejoong gives him a glare as fatal as the deathly vapors he’s puffing on.
‘You must be mistaken. I’m not some whore-‘
‘Relax, mushroom-pie. I’m going to tattoo your back. Just that. Unless you want me to do it with your shirt still on. It’ll hurt a lot worst, lemme tell you beforehand.’
The Tatist stubs his cigarette butt, reaching for his tattoo gun instead.
Jaejoong hesitates. Only gang members in Gwangju were marked by tattoos - all over their bodies. If he had one, he’d be scarred for life. But he needed this job as much as he needed his mother alive.
‘Which design?’
‘It’s up to me. Take it or leave it, baby.’ His words come off as warning to Jaejoong. The Tatist didn’t take shit either.
Jaejoong removes his shirt, chest down on the grimy bed, his necklace pinching his neck. He gives the go ahead to start, and what shoots down his back must have only been half the pain his mother puts up with.
He passes out before the Tatist can finish.
‘Be a good man, Joongie. Grow up like how I’ve taught you to.’ The little boy nods to everything, his smile confident. His father straightens the collar around his neck. He looks like he’s leaving for somewhere. When will you be coming back? the boy asks. His father gives no answer, only looks back at his wife with love and longing. Your mother, the man whispers, stay with her till the end.
When Jaejoong rolls off the bed with a splitting headache, the Tatist offers him aspirin. They are unhelpful for the burns that slice his back.
‘Wanna see?’ the Tatist asks, holding up a blurred mirror. Jaejoong can only distinguish a mass of bloodied snakes from the mess.
‘It’s horrible,’ he mumbles, words not catching up with his tongue.
‘Well, you passed the test,’ the Tatist states. Jaejoong groans, finding every walking inch an agony. ‘Come back tomorrow, Jaejoong-shi, and then you can start work.’
A customer swaggers in as he staggers out, and it’s obvious he’s with the mafia, or with the underground drug dealers, or someone who should just go to freaking prison but Jaejoong is too tired to noticeably care.
Instead, he goes home to a house nearly razed to the ground by fire. The neighbors had been there to help him put it out.
His mother had come out of it barely alive, but still asleep, soot covering her body. The walls around her have scribbling in what must have been blood - pig, cow, human?
Your father hasn’t paid up, it wrote. But dead men don’t settle outstanding debts, do they? Seven hundred by tomorrow. Or else.
He falters for a second, and then he’s off to the Tatist to ask for an advance in his salary; to promise that he’d slog his whole life away under him if it would mean keeping his mother safe.
It goes against everything his father had taught him. The police don’t object to that. You don’t rob and murder a man on the streets for money. Not even if you needed it because your wife was dying. You can’t just kill a person to save the life of another. Don’t end up like me, the man warns his son. But I have everything you have, the boy reminds him solemnly, wondering how he could turn out any different.
‘Where’re you gonna get the seven hundred?’ the Tatist asks none too concernedly. Jaejoong had explained that he’d needed that amount of money. As to what for, the Tatist isn’t sure, but Jaejoong wasn’t going to reveal any part of his sob story to an unhelpful stranger - to tell him that he had been born into poverty, that his mother had been sick since childbirth, that his father had had to dig for money to cover her medical fees like needle in a haystack.
Jaejoong’s lips curve into a grim line. He’d tried asking the Tatist for an advance, but the man had refused him because he hadn’t started work, and who’s to say if he wouldn’t be taking the money and running off.
‘I don’t know how, but I’ll get it,’ he grates, twisting the pendant around his neck with a fervor.
There were ways to obtain cash. Only that the methods were illegal. His father had done that, had robbed and killed a man to pay his debt. His dearest father, who’d been arrested and executed for trying. The very same father who’d left all responsibility under his son’s name.
‘You know, if you plan to rob a store, the one opposite to mine has the worst security system.’
The Tatist laughs. He’s messing around, but Jaejoong doesn’t have time for games.
‘Thanks for the tip,’ he murmurs, stalking out. The bell rings behind him like a call for disaster.
Impending doom, Jaejoong thinks.
At midnight, he burglarizes the store opposite the tattoo parlor.
He’d come to the conclusion that there were situations which called for desperate measures. Come to the understanding that mistakes had serious consequences.
And amongst all other things, he’d resigned himself to the fate that he’d be exactly the same man his father had been.
{it’s like i’m a puppet to you
i’ll remove the spell that you
have put on me again
I beg you, beg you}
They arrest him on the evening he pays up his family’s outstanding debt.
He’s thrown into jail with no phone call, no lawyer, no trial. The justice system was as corrupt as the underground world. Jaejoong was guilty until proven innocent, and even then, he knew he was not.
‘Change into these,’ the officer barks, throwing a circus get-up in his face - an orange so bright it could light up the towns on Christmas eve.
They haul him to medium security. Here they housed all kinds of criminals, except murderers, because they were executed within a week. The state wasn’t going to spend its budget spoon-feeding serious offenders.
This was the only prison facility in the whole of Gwangju. The inmates found here made up the entire population of criminals within the city. Bred under harsh circumstances, they were tough nuts to crack. Yet the security wasn’t tight. The prisoners were able to do almost anything they wanted without being heavily scrutinized.
Besides, they let him keep the necklace around his neck.
The guards feed him to the sharks after all the paperwork is done, not that there’s much about his life that needs archiving.
They dump him in the main holding area, where all the other convicts roam freely. Jaejoong can feel their dirty gazes slide down his skin like sewage. He looks away, but never down at the ground - if he did he’d be jail bait.
What happens next happens so fast Jaejoong isn’t sure if it’s reality. A small brute comes at him from the rear end with a weapon fashioned out of a jagged piece of wood, stabbing him hard in the back.
The makeshift knife is tiny, almost harmless, but the damage is done. The wardens subdue the man, fighting him all the way to the isolation cells.
Jaejoong gets sent to the medic. It’s the second scar he’d have to wear on his back.
♣
Yunho has a visitor.
‘Officer Choi,’ he coos, tarnishing the name as he enters the prison's visitation room. The guards fidget uncomfortably.
‘Yunho-shi,’ the officer responds, unaffected by the insolence in the other man’s tone. Out of all the justice officials, Officer Choi was one of the few who made it a point to stick to the law. The man was clean as white-washed laundry.
‘I would have bribed you to hand me a smoke, but,’ Yunho taunts, dragging the last syllable. Choi wouldn’t have budged if he’d asked for a stick of caramel candy. The officer promptly ignores all the little side remarks, pushing him down into the chair.
‘You get five minutes. I’m watching you,’ Choi warns, tugging his lapel in a stiff gesture as Yunho shoots him the slyest grin.
His visitor wears the weirdest slippers ever. Yunho stares at it in mock disgust, never mind that he’s clothed in an outstanding orange jumpsuit himself.
‘And you call yourself a fashionista, Yoochunah,’ he jibes, leaning back in his chair and propping his ankles on the table. The other man inconspicuously rolls a cigarette towards Yunho.
‘You’re losing it,’ Yoochun mumbles, smiling easily. ‘I’ve been telling you to get some fresh air around here.’
‘The only fresh air I get is what comes out another man’s stinky ass.’
Yoochun snorts, grating his chair against the floor in a loud screech. The guards tense at the sound. ‘Whatever, man. Let’s keep this short. I know you don’t believe in God and Buddha and stuff like that, but what about angels? They have wings. They can save your soul.’
Angels, huh.
Yunho plants his feet back on the ground, leaning towards Yoochun. ‘I’m too far gone for this religious crap,’ he grits.
Officer Choi seems to disagree. He gives a loud-ass cough.
‘Time,’ he grouches, signaling to the guards. Yunho gets up without any assistance. He winks at Yoochun, who takes that as goodbye.
‘See you when I see you, Boss,’ Yoochun murmurs, lighting his smoke. He waves without turning behind, a curt movement of the hand.
Yunho flips on his heels and walks right into Officer Choi with the cunning air of someone who’s been there, done that.
He tucks the smuggled cigarette into Choi’s breast pocket naughtily. ‘I don’t smoke, Officer,’ he whispers , giving him a mock salute as he saunters back into captivity.
♣
Jaejoong jumps whenever someone makes a noise behind him, ready to defend himself. He crouches near corners, tenses up if anyone approached him from the rear. The medic tells him that he’s suffering from post-trauma after the attack.
It hasn’t even passed shower time, and already he doesn’t know if he’ll survive around here for the next ten years.
He pulls his shirt off quickly, climbing out of his pants in a flash. Showering in prison meant absolutely no privacy. He hadn’t thought about that when he’d broken into the shop, desperate for the money.
Were there instances where you forgot who you were and all the principles you stood for?
Moments where your better judgment became clouded at a time where you needed it the most?
Or did the sins of the father run in the family like it did in blood?
His back to the wall, he lets the fall of water pound sense onto his crown. There’s no shame despite his nudity. He had no right to whatever’s left of his pride.
The water runs black, and Jaejoong wonders if it’s the tattoo rubbing off, washing him good as new. But no, it’s just the dirt he’s collected, along with a hundred other men.
♣
Yunho spots what he’s looking for.
An angel.
He makes the first move.
{everyday i dream of you
do you love me?
do you love me?}
The arena - it’s what the guards call the canteen. Anytime now, there’ll be two inmates picking a fight. Jaejoong just never suspected that he’d be one of them.
The bully that bumps into his shoulders turns on him suddenly as he joins the interminable queue from the counter to the outskirts of the cafeteria. Surprised, but not caught off guard, Jaejoong reacts.
He’d found himself a weapon, not unlike the sharp object found in the hands of the man who’d stabbed him. With the ease of a practised assassin, he slams the thug in the balls with a kneecap, sliding the blade against his jugular.
He can feel the adrenaline now. Fear, disgust, death - all these pulsing against his wrist. The knife draws a line between them, thin and red and dangerous along the other man’s neck.
‘Don’t mess with me,’ Jaejoong snarls, kicking the man aside.
The guards arrive late, pushing everyone apart. Jaejoong slinks to the corner, ensuring that his back is to the wall. Dinner resumes. Their stand-off had merely served its purpose as entertainment.
From the other side of the four walls, a tall man approaches with his tray. He had a scar - no, two scars - and a wide, floppy smile outlining the contours of his face.
The man sits uninvited, plopping the tray carelessly on the steel table. Jaejoong glares at him.
‘Skipping your meal?’ the man asks casually, still beaming like the sun Jaejoong had missed a day ago.
‘What’s it to you?’ Jaejoong scowls, thoroughly pissed after the ordeal he’d had to put up with. The man’s smile is frighteningly disarming.
‘You have some skill there, slugging Batshit with that sucker punch. I heard you survived a stabbing by Threeface too - it happens quite commonly here.’
‘Are you threatening me?’ Jaejoong asks, his eyes gone dead. The other man silences - that grin transforms into a smirk.
‘I’m here to offer you protection.’
Jaejoong scoffs at him. ‘Protection?’
‘I’m mafia,’ the man says, crossing his arms across his chest smugly.
‘What do you want from me?’ Jaejoong sighs through clenched teeth. His vision doubles. His back throbs with an intensity that reminds him of his mother, alone and vulnerable.
Is it the burn of the tattoos?
The hand he stretches to touch the knife wound on his lower back returns smeared with blood.
‘Hey! Yah! What’s wrong?!’ the tall man calls out frantically as Jaejoong begins losing consciousness.
He has the voice of gentle thunder, and the firm hands around Jaejoong become soothing enough to put him to sleep.
♣
Yunho paces the cage - there’s no other description to it. Night falls cautiously around them, bathing shadows all over the floor.
The medics had deemed Jaejoong fit to return to his quarters to rest, and Yunho had twisted fingers until finally the guards relent, bunking Yunho with the injured man.
He couldn’t help but feel responsible for Jaejoong’s suffering.
After all;
‘You passed out,’ Yunho announces when Jaejoong wakes from his reverie. ‘You burst your stitches back there.’
The other man moves slowly, shifting out of bed and walking toward the iron bars as if he’d forgotten where he’d gone. In front of him is a blank wall, a reflection of his future.
Yunho makes to follow but -
‘Get away from me,’ Jaejoong growls, turning on Yunho as the man advances from behind. He wasn’t going to let anyone near his back.
‘Whoa easy, I’m not going to hurt you,’ Yunho murmurs, speaking as if he were taming a wild mustang. It calms Jaejoong’s racing heart.
‘I’m Yunho, by the way,’ the man introduces, wanting to shake his hand. Jaejoong slaps it away. ‘Nice to meet you too, Jaejoong.’
He wants to ask how Yunho had gotten wind of his name, but by now the entire prison should have known who he was - might even have given him a humiliating nickname as well.
‘- so we’re room mates now,’ Yunho blabbers on, obviously unable to read the atmosphere - Jaejoong hadn’t been listening.
‘Do you like to sing, Jaejoongie?’ Yunho wonders, scratching the mole above his lip.
Jaejoong shivers at the use of his pet name, memories crawling out into the light - a little like chilled ice down the spine on a hot summer’s day.
‘I can’t go to sleep if I don’t sing. You won’t mind if I do, right?’
Jaejoong tilts his head to the left, surveying his new home. Yunho carries on anyway, no need for Jaejoong’s reply. He climbs up to his upper bunk, singing his head off as Jaejoong clambers back to bed, his headache dulling.
From a few prison cells away, shouts arise like cries of goodnight.
‘Yah Yunho! Shut the hell up! There are people trying to sleep here, dimwit!’
Yunho only sings louder - rapping even - as if to spite them, and contrary to what should have been, Jaejoong eases into the deepest of dreamless sleep.
{i want to hold you in my arms
i will do anything and even more
you are my fantasy, i’ll put
everything in my stake to have you}
In the morning, they work the fields. It’s part of their daily schedule, something like corrective work order.
Jaejoong sulks, muscles rippling under the shade of the clouds. He had been appointed to dig up a gigantic hole.
Yunho jests with his fellow inmates some few feet away until the guards break them up for causing too much noise.
He goes back to bothering Jaejoong.
‘Hot day, huh?’
Silence and the thud of shovel on soil.
‘It gets hotter in the afternoon, Jaejoongie. You don’t have to work too hard.’
Jaejoong snaps. Maybe it’s the way Yunho utters his name, maybe it’s the infuriating way he appeared so relaxed, or maybe, it could be the frustrating ache that’s been eating into his back.
‘Leave me alone,’ he snarls, his tone like poison. The swing of his shovel is menacing. Soil gives way like sponge cake. Jaejoong is going to dig this crater if he has to die inside it trying. His ego would still rear its ugly head in such situations. He wasn’t going to let himself faint in front of the other man again. It was unbecoming.
Yunho observes all this coolly.
'I’ll help you,’ he says, resolve biting into Jaejoong’s personal space. His shovel drills the ground under Jaejoong like a sword, heaving spade after spade of dirt despite the sweltering heat.
The two men work side by side without a word, the heap of ground they’ve unearthed towering over their heads.
Just barely before lunch, their job is completed. Yunho hollers for food, heading into the building as the whole gin bang of prisoners follow suit.
Jaejoong tails after them cautiously, but not before having noticed that the mountain of dug-up soil surrounding the hole on Yunho’s side had been double the height of his.
♣
After the lights go out, Yunho comes down with a fever.
He had exerted too much energy in the fields, the heat of the sun being the culprit.
Jaejoong tells him that he has to see the doctor, but Yunho refuses, a ghastly sheen of sweat covering his skin.
With whatever experience of illnesses he’d had from taking care of his mother, Jaejoong peels off his shirt, soaking it in water. He drapes the wet cloth over Yunho’s forehead.
‘This is the best I can do,’ he mumbles, switching sides to the cloth every five minutes and moistening it with fresh tap water every ten.
In those brief intervals Jaejoong walks off to the basin, Yunho catches the faint sliver of an angel’s wings tattooed on his shoulder, amidst the other dark sketches that cover the man’s entire back.
But what about angels?
They can save your soul.
Jaejoong returns with a mug of water.
‘Drink this,’ he says, lifting Yunho’s head and tipping drops of it into his mouth.
‘It tastes like orange juice,’ Yunho rasps, offering a sickly smile. Jaejoong stays at his side, nursing his fever with utmost care.
‘Don’t you like to sing, Jaejoongie?’ Yunho asks, his fever slowing down. ‘I can’t sleep without a song.’
Jaejoong removes the cloth, washing it off in the sink again. He had skin the color of moonlight, Yunho thinks. The touch of damp cloth to his head breaks the trance he’s in. Perhaps sickly people think weird things.
‘Sleep,’ Jaejoong whispers. Yunho moves his dry lips to protest that he really can’t go to bed without a lullaby of sorts, but Jaejoong puts a finger to his mouth.
‘I’ll sing for you, Yunhoyah.’
And Yunho should have expected it, how Jaejoong puts meaning into melody.
Beautiful, he concludes as sleep comes for him like cherubim on a dying man’s bed.
For the first time in many nights, the prison stays unusually quiet, no yells and shouts for Yunho to shut his singing trap. Only Jaejoong, and a voice that could put the angels to shame.
♣
In the wee hours of dawn the next day, Yunho’s fever subsides.
‘Your singing does wonders, Jaejoongie,’ he teases when he has energy enough to speak. Jaejoong shrugs, punching Yunho in the stomach when the other man stealthily hugs him from behind.
‘Don’t touch me,’ Jaejoong shrieks, fear written like lyrics in his eyes.
‘Shit, Yunho, I’m sorry.’ He bends over him, offering the collapsed man a hand. Yunho takes it, leaping back up.
‘It’s okay, I forgot about your phobia,’ he says, feeling woozy from the sudden change in position.
‘I - After that attack, I can’t think straight when anyone creeps up on me like that. I get paranoid. I’m sorry,’ he mutters, unable to lift his gaze from the cement floor.
‘It’s okay,’ Yunho repeats.
Jaejoong exhales anxiously. ‘It’s my fault you’d gotten sick. If you hadn’t helped me out in the fields, you wouldn’t have ended up like that.’
Yunho climbs back up to his bunk, peeking over the edge of the railings.
‘You’re still recovering from that stab wound. They should never have let you done manual labor. Idiots,’ he curses.
It only makes Jaejoong feel twice as bad, for having felt irritated at Yunho when he’d told him not to work so hard. The other man was only thinking on his behalf; had even dug the earth twice as vigorously for his sake.
‘I’ll be fine,’ Jaejoong says, but it comes out less than convincing.
Yunho climbs back down from the second deck. It makes Jaejoong wonder why he’d gone up in the first place. Then there’s the sound of keys rattling, and he realizes it’s already time for breakfast.
Two trays of food boomerang in, and Yunho sits cross-legged on the floor in front of his. ‘Food,’ he sings happily, stuffing his stomach with water and cold bread.
‘Do you trust me, Jaejoongie?’ he asks when they’ve finished eating.
The guards had opened the prison gates for them to leave for the working fields - another day of shoveling dirt.
Yunho peers over his shoulder at Jaejoong as they file down the corridor.
‘I’ll watch your back,’ he promises, and Jaejoong -
Jaejoong lets him.
{i need to stop thinking about you
because i can’t take it no more
in the name of god, why do you worry}
Yoochun visits again.
Yunho does his weekly routine of annoying Officer Choi who shoots him fierce looks; looks that don’t deter the other man.
‘I would have bribed you to get me some candy, but,’ Yunho sniggers, enjoying the aggravated expression playing out on Choi’s face. The officer shoves him into his seat, asks him to stop spouting rubbish.
Yunho’s right hand man walks in, donning the most hideous hairstyle ever. Yunho gapes, choking on spit, never mind that his hairstyle is none too fine either.
‘I have nothing to say about your hair,’ he states, keeping his eyes averted from the nest Yoochun called his latest perm.
‘What say you to this then?’ Yoochun slurs, slipping Yunho mint lozenges out of sight of the guards. ‘Jesus died and rose again in three days. You’re running out of time for salvation.’
Officer Choi cocks an eyebrow. Their eccentric conversations go nowhere.
Three days, huh.
Yunho shakes his head. ‘Fix that hair before you try to fix my soul, Yoochunah.’
Yoochun self-consciously touches the curls framing his cheekbones, affected by Yunho’s verbal attack on his hairdo. ‘I’m just saying…’
‘Time,’ Officer Choi grunts. It isn’t even past three minutes.
‘Hey, that’s not fair,’ Yunho protests as the guards pick him up by the elbows. They never used handcuffs on him. So far he’d been pretty harmless.
‘Was it fair when you raped that girl?’ Officer Choi inquires, his tone scathing. Yunho clenches his mouth shut.
‘See you on the other side, Boss,’ Yoochun says, excusing himself quickly.
Yunho waves at his retreating figure, shaking himself free of the guards. Again he walks into Officer Choi, redemption glimmering in his pupils like inky hope.
‘I don’t really like sweets, Officer,’ he confesses, pushing Yoochun’s secreted white candy into the officer’s palm, stomping hard on one of Choi’s well-polished boots in a fit of tantrum so that the reflection in it becomes more than foggy.
♣
Jaejoong becomes accustomed to Yunho; such that without one there is no other.
When Yunho goes for his visitations, Jaejoong ponders the fate of his mother; if anything bad has happened to her.
‘Is there something growing on the floor that I should know about?’ Yunho asks. Jaejoong tilts his head upward, and it comes so close to Yunho’s. His breath trickles down the other man’s chin.
‘My mother,’ Jaejoong gushes, the words flowing out before his mind can arrange them. He decides in that split second to tell Yunho everything.
‘My mother - she’s sick! It’s the reason I stole! There were debtors after her - they were going to burn down the house and if I didn’t - if I hadn’t, she’d be killed! I don’t know if she’s still alive - the guards didn’t let me make my phone call. If anything happens to her, Yunhoyah, I don’t know what I’d do.’
Yunho gathers Jaejoong to himself, patting the smaller man’s head. ‘There there, she’ll be alright. I’ve got your back, Jaejoongie.’
And did he; in more ways than one could imagine.
♣
‘I need to make that phone call,’ Yunho yodels to the wardens after Jaejoong’s anxiety had simmered to ash. A guard stops by the cell, checking to see what’s the matter.
Officer Choi arrives at the gates of Yunho’s quarters, agitated by the convict’s whimsical demands. ‘And what might that phone call be about, Yunho-shi?’ he asks sarcastically.
‘Salvation,’ Yunho replies, and Officer Choi, who wears a rosary under all those layers of uniform, softens his incorruptible heart to let this pitiful criminal have his last chance at being redeemed.
♣
‘Yoochunah, h e l l o~’ Yunho greets. ‘I have a question.’
Officer Choi stands guard by the phone booth, picking his nails somberly.
‘Do you remember the angel that approached Mother Mary?’
‘What?!’ Yoochun gawks. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’
‘Mother Mary,’ Yunho repeats, trying to get his point across in secret code.
‘Angels and Mother Mary, what the heck! - this whole religious talk is confusing me!’
‘Yoochun, listen. I have another question. Is Mother Mary alright?’
Officer Choi perks up, alert. He couldn’t hear the conversation on the other end of the line, but whatever Yunho was getting at didn’t seem very salvation-like to him.
‘I mean,’ Yunho repeats, coughing slightly. ‘Is it alright if I believe in Mother Mary?’
Yoochun takes an infinity to understand the whole meaning in its entirety. ‘You mean, the angel had a Mother? Damn, this is some shit right here. I get it, Boss.’ A long stall, then - ‘Man, I want to say how much I love you but it’s embarrassing. Our phone conversation’s being tapped, so uhh, I’ll just hang up for now. God bless your soul, dude.’
‘Right. Thank you for your listening ears, Yoochun. Amen.’
The call ends abruptly, the line going static. There’s a collective pause, then -
‘I’m Catholic!’ Yunho announces to anyone in the room who bothers to listen, clapping his hands in glee.
Officer Choi grins. It’s the best news he’s heard in all three years of prison misery.
{you’re stuck in my heart! it’s us in the torn picture
and i’ll remove the spell you’ve put on me again
i beg you drop her, drop her}
That afternoon, when Jaejoong is alone because Yunho is making his phone call, a beast intrudes into his cell during lock-out hours where most of the inmates are at the bath or free to move around.
It chokes him from behind, and Jaejoong is too terrified to scream, noiseless croaks escaping his throat.
The beast is a large man with veins that stood out from his neck. He tugs at Jaejoong’s pants, ripping off his shirt.
Pinned down like a dying insect at the brink of death or worse, Jaejoong has never felt more alive, knowing that if he gave up now, he’ll lose the remains of his existence.
He claws at the man on top of him viciously, kicking and flailing. When he finds the voice to scream, it’s Yunho that comes running.
The beast is knocked off him, and Yunho leaps on top of the huge prisoner, strangling him with one hand. The near unconscious man fights for air, but Yunho stills him with the other, his face as dark as the emotions swirling around him.
Never before has Jaejoong felt such a suffocating presence. This was another side to the cheerful man he’d come to recognise;
Yunho is about to commit murder.
‘Yunhoyah,’ Jaejoong gasps. ‘Let him go.’
At the sound of Jaejoong’s plea, the last vestiges of Yunho’s self control returns. He releases his death-grip on the other man.
The beast sputters, fleeing the minute he can stand.
‘Why’d you stop me?’ Yunho’s voice is steady, but his hands tremble with rage. ‘He almost raped you. If I hadn’t come -‘
Jaejoong wraps himself about Yunho, grabbing his shaking hands. ‘You’re not a murderer,’ he soothes, saying it over and over again until it becomes a part of Yunho as much as Yunho had become a friend of his.
In that same evening, the beast is pronounced dead on the spot by the medics. He’d tried to rape another man - had gotten himself killed instead.
The prison spends the next few hours hushed except for the fierce cry of a lone crow circling the grounds.
♣
This letter to Jaejoong comes from a neighbor.
It wrote simply, in such understandable terms, that his mother had gone missing, assumingly taken by the debtors that had haunted her house since the very beginning. They hadn’t written anything more, but Jaejoong imagines the blood stained sheets, evidence that they had killed her because no one was around to pay up the remaining debt.
Jaejoong cries himself to sleep, muted sobs that amplify and take flight in the other man’s heart.
Yunho can’t make any other calls to Yoochun to verify the truth. Visitations were also banned because word had gone out to Officer Choi that he’d attacked an inmate - never mind that he’d done it to defend someone else.
Choi never got his facts right, not even until now. However morally upright, he was plain stupid.
Yunho kneels at Jaejoong’s bedside, emotionally attached to the smaller man. Beauty never fit such unkind conditions.
If only;
The light-snoring man turns in his sleep, his head bobbing as if he’d agreed to something he knew not what.
Yunho leans over him, drawn like a magnet to those rose petal lips.
He stops breathing the instance their lips touch. Quickly pulling back, he puts a hand over his mouth, the staying taste of Jaejoong’s tears on his tongue.
Shit, he thinks, glancing out to the obsidian night.
Shit.
♣
Yunho has two days left. Yoochun had already warned him.
Jaejoong shudders awake, the after effects of his nightmare lingering around him like bed head. His eyes are swollen from all the crying. He rolls up to see Yunho splayed on the floor below him.
Yunho’s eylids are puffy from a night of no sleep. He’d lain on the floor like a guardian, watching for signs of change in the future through the tiny prison window they had.
Jaejoong’s voice splinters slightly. ‘I dreamt - ‘
He doesn’t finish off that sentence.
‘What if I had never landed here, Yunhoyah - what if I hadn’t resorted to theft; if I had just borrowed from another debtor to pay up for the other, if -‘
‘If we had never met?’ Yunho questions, and these words he swallows like bile at the back of his throat, because;
Jaejoong looks the lying man in the eye.
‘Then maybe, Yunhoyah, my mother might have still been alive.’
part two: (two days or he'd never make it;)