[Meteors] Chapter 13
Chapter: 13
Pairings: YooMin
Rating: PG
Genre: Romance, Fluff, slight Angst
Summary:
There is only one truth, Changmin believes, and only one question - is it the one you want?
There is only chance, Yoochun thinks - the meteor crashes, or it doesn’t. And if it does the only question is, will you run fast enough or let the stars collide?
Part 13. Of facts and red roses.
There are facts you aren’t supposed to question.
Fire burns. Ice is cold. Water is wet. Chocolate is life, and Changmin doesn’t like men. He doesn’t. He 100% doesn’t. Make it 200%.
He never questioned it before Yoochun’s sudden declaration and he didn’t question it after. What bothered him was that he didn’t notice. You are supposed to notice when your only friend, the one you’ve known for years, that friend you know by heart happens to be in love with you. But Changmin didn’t and he had plenty of time to ponder about it while Yoochun was away… putting his analytical mind to work, ordering, listing, labeling feelings and sorting memories, until he came to the brilliant conclusion that he had no idea how such a thing happened.
It happened though. That’s a fact, one with little consideration for Changmin’s lines, and it bothered him the way a pebble in your shoe bothers you - something not supposed to be here yet it’s always on your mind.
So yes, Changmin did think a lot about it, but never to wonder if that was the kind of feelings he could reciprocate. The mere idea never crossed his mind - and why should it? Changmin doesn’t like men, snow melts, birds fly, and you have to eat to live.
Then Yoochun came back, and it proved hard to think of an ‘I love you’ as an inconvenience or an offensive attack on his sacrosanct logic. There were feelings to consider, but feelings were never the way Changmin favored. Feelings aren’t reliable. There are no lines to trace here, no right way to go.
No.
Changmin naturally reverted to what had never betrayed him - truth, facts, causes, consequences - and it took some time but he finally found his answer: he didn’t notice because the mere idea that Yoochun could love him had never even crossed his mind. Just like you wouldn’t suspect the earth is round if no one had ever told you.
Changmin rather liked that. It made sense. If he had had just an inkling of what was going on… a hint, the slightest clue that Yoochun loved him, then surely Changmin would have noticed. Without doubt.
But surely you have to like men to imagine such a possibility, and Changmin doesn’t like men, so he didn’t consider it, and he didn’t notice.
If Changmin liked men he would have considered it, and he would have noticed.
If Changmin had been aware of Yoochun like a man who likes men is aware of other men then Changmin would surely have considered the possibility of Yoochun liking him and hence he would have noticed, but he has never seen Yoochun as someone he could like like this since he doesn’t like men so he didn’t consider it and he didn’t notice. Yes, that made perfect sense.
Changmin needed to make sure though, and more importantly to know what Yoochun feels now. And the only way he found to do that was to go backwards… back up the solid chain of causes and consequences.
It’s merely a matter of perspectives, he tells himself. Try being aware of him like he’s aware of you, and the signs will become obvious.
Pay attention to the words that could mean more than what they seem, to the gestures that look casual but could be deliberate. Pay attention to his looks, expressions, silences, and wonder which of them could shelter that ‘I love you’ Changmin doesn’t know what to make of but can’t stop thinking about - he wants to know where Yoochun hides the feelings he doesn’t want him to see.
That’s how Changmin unknowingly starts playing a dangerous game, disregarding the lines that define him, putting aside what he knows he is and isn’t in order to pretend to be someone else… someone who could like and need Yoochun without unquestioningly putting him in a nice square with the word ‘friend’ written above. Someone who could see Yoochun and think “what if this guy loved me?” And ultimately, someone who could watch Yoochun and wonder, “what if I loved that guy?”
It’s just pretence… it’s just the farfetched way that causes and consequences lead him to choose, and it just can’t go wrong, he tells himself.
That’s how Changmin forgets that beyond the facts, there are the feelings too.
~
I have nothing planned this evening
Just so you know
▪ Thanks, I guess
I’ll be at the new coffee shop
▪ …
What?
I’m just telling you about my evening
The one I’m going to spend alone at the new coffee shop
▪ YOOCHUN.
Since I’ve nothing else to do
▪ Stop it ok?
▪ I appreciate your concern, but we’re just going to settle matters for the apartment
▪ I’ll sign the damn papers, give them to her, and it will be over
You haven’t seen Jungmi in months
▪ So what?
▪ I’m perfectly fine
I thought you never lied
“What is this???”
“Well… there’s a chocolate cake, chocolate mousse and a chocolate waffle. Oh and hot cocoa-“
“I know what a chocolate mousse is, but-“
“With lots of whipped cream! Drink it while it’s hot!”
“Seriously Yoochun… roses?”
“I knooow! Aren’t they nice?!”
“I don’t care! I’m a guy!”
“Who said it was for you?”
“…”
“Alright don’t be jealous. They are for you.”
“I’m not jealous!”
“It was to make you smile.”
“…what?”
“The roses.”
“Is it me or you really don’t make any sense?”
“You asked me once why I bought them the first time. It was to make you smile.”
It’s late when they leave the coffee shop together that night. A gush of cold wind greets them as soon as they step outside, prompting Yoochun to turn up the collar of his jacket. Changmin doesn’t seem to mind the cold, or rather doesn’t seem to notice. They pass by the subway station without a word, walking side by side, their arms nearly touching.
“In the end it could have been much worse, right?” Yoochun ventures after a while, in the kind of tone they probably use to announce someone they have some terminal disease but it’s okay, they still have about three months to live.
Changmin doesn’t answer. He’s holding his bouquet of roses much like he did the first one, years ago - like a grocery bag. Tonight however he’s drunk. The flowers keep bumping against walls as he walks, though it’s hard to tell if he’s doing it on purpose. His expression has been closed and dark for the best part of the evening, and nothing Yoochun said could bring a smile on his face or ease the stiffness in his body.
“I mean, she could have screamed at you” Yoochun goes on awkwardly “or cried. She didn’t cry, did she?”
“She didn’t.”
“So it went well.”
“It did.”
Changmin stops. They are in an empty street, in front of the illuminated window of a clothing store. The autumn breeze is blowing relentlessly, a sharp edge to it foretelling winter. The night sky is clear however, and in spite of the city lights they’d be able to spot the stars above if they just cared to look.
“Yoochun…”
“Mmh?”
“I was going to marry her” Changmin says, his voice slurred but still soft.
Yoochun looks at him for the first time since they left the coffee shop, just in time to see the young man rub his face with his hands, out of tiredness or to hide a stray tear.
“It made me happy, you know” Changmin goes on in the same quiet tone, “to look at her… think… think I’d found the right person. I… It used to make me so happy...”
“Changmin-“
“And now it’s like…”
The young man looks up, gaze lost in the darkness above as if searching for answers there.
“Now… I think I never want to see her again” he adds in an even lower voice.
Yoochun instinctively makes a move like to take his hand. He stops. He closes his fists tightly, a shadow briefly passing in his eyes.
“It’s weird right?” Changmin continues, his face still tilted up. There’s a distinct crack in his voice now. “I was going to marry her. That’s what our lives… that’s what it was going to be. But now… now I’m hoping I’ll never meet her again. I don’t want to meet anyone ever again.”
This time Yoochun reaches out for him, but he barely touched his arm that the young man jerks away. The bouquet falls from his hand, roses spilling on the ground at their feet. Changmin takes a step back. He’s looking at Yoochun now but even the sheen of tears isn’t enough to alter the sudden hardness of his gaze - something both angry and defensive that makes Yoochun recoil instinctively.
The silence doesn’t last - one heartbeat, two, three… staring at each other, stumbling over invisible lines that weren’t there before. A distance that changed.
“I’m going home” Changmin announces at last and turns away abruptly, a bit unsteady on his feet.
Yoochun doesn’t try to hold him back. He doesn’t move for long minutes, staring at the young man’s back until Changmin turns at the corner of the street. Then he crouches down and carefully picks the roses scattered on the ground, his gestures slow and methodical. The tip of his fingers brushes lightly against the roses stems, where the thorns were removed. His hands tighten around the bouquet once he gathered them all and he stays like this, eyes fixed sadly on the ruined flowers.
“You have to smile” he says very softly, his voice blending in the night and cold wind, “no matter what…”
~
The plan was to pay attention to Yoochun. More precisely, it was to pay attention to those things about Yoochun that Changmin is not supposed to pay attention to.
The plan was to try and see with a fresh eye what he had never thought to question before - that Yoochun’s looks, words and gestures toward him could outline something else than friendship.
It worked, to some extent.
There are Yoochun’s looks, yes.
The way Yoochun’s gaze lingers on him after he laughs, and the times when Changmin is absorbed in something and a presence starts weighing on the edge of his consciousness, and he realizes belatedly that Yoochun is staring. He can feel that gaze on him much more easily than before now. Much more often too, but he still can’t tell what Yoochun is thinking about whenever he stares like this. Once or twice he tried to guess but that proved too troubling, so Changmin stopped. Or rather, he tried to.
Now it’s hard not to imagine what Yoochun could be thinking. Changmin hasn’t forgotten the only time when he glimpsed the other’s feelings. He still remembers the bare emotions and needs making the older man’s voice strained and his eyes afire. It’s hard not to imagine what Yoochun could still be thinking even now when he stares like this. Or rather, maybe picturing it shouldn’t be so easy.
Yoochun’s words too.
Whether caring or teasing, the small sentences that Changmin used to brush off because they were just part of who Yoochun was to him… for him. Tentative words of comfort that Yoochun never uses but with him, because Yoochun doesn’t comfort people but Changmin is the exception. Jokes, banter, flirting that used to mean nothing but that Changmin started viewing into a new light, and now he finds it impossible to act like it’s all just for fun.
Now Changmin can’t tell anymore when Yoochun is serious and when he isn’t. Before he knows it, he’s replaying each of those sentences, turning them in his mind over and over again, wondering about their true meaning. He has known Yoochun for eight years… he knows him by heart, and it should be simple. But it’s not. It’s hard, and that alone makes Changmin feel as if he’s missing the whole point of the relationship that means the most to him.
And Yoochun’s gestures.
Touches that seemed casual until Changmin started questioning what they really meant. Embraces that he can’t bring himself to initiate anymore. It used to be normal, simple - Yoochun leaning on him when they watch a movie and it gets sad or scary, Yoochun taking his hand when one of them feels down, Yoochun messing with his hair and calling him a brat and laughing, laughing, loud and bright, eyes crinkled with laughter as Changmin scowls and bats his hand away.
Changmin doesn’t know anymore how he should respond to those. He doesn’t dare to start any of it in case Yoochun misunderstands, but he doesn’t want him to think something has changed. He tries to keep their relationship just as it used to be, but the slightest gesture now triggers a swarm of questions and doubts, and it’s getting hard to act unaffected.
And yet it was all so easy before.
It was so simple. It was Yoochun… Changmin’s only friend, the one who knows him best and cares the most, the one who could fix anything with just a look, a word, a touch.
The plan was to pay attention to all those, and it worked too well. Changmin is now aware of them… aware of Yoochun like he never intended to be, and it’s too late already when he realizes it.
Soon it’s not Yoochun’s looks, but his eyes instead - a deep brown that would seem dark and yet it shines, at times sparkling with mirth or mischief, at times soft and enveloping, caring… caring like few people have ever cared for him. Eyes that see everything Changmin is. Eyes that accept it all.
It’s not Yoochun’s words anymore… it’s his voice.
It’s not Yoochun’s gestures now. It’s the warmth of his body and the spark of electricity whenever their skin touch.
And that scares him.
~
November. Early evening. An empty street. Rain pouring down. Blurred surroundings and muffled sounds. From where they stand the world is blue and cold, and everything beyond the heavy curtain of rain doesn’t seem quite real. They found shelter under a roof overhang when the first icy raindrops turned into a downpour.
There’s water everywhere… drumming on the pavement, dripping down from the roof, running in the gutter at their feet. They are drenched. Changmin’s wet hair looks darker than usual, plastered on his forehead and temples. The bottom of Yoochun’s pants is soaked. Their breaths come out in small white puffs.
Their shelter is small. There’s no space to move, just enough for them not to touch. Even so their hands accidentally brushed twice, and both times their gazes met only to break away at once.
They can’t even see the other side of the street. They can’t hear a sound except sometimes when a car passes by, and the continuous drumming of pouring rain is momentarily disrupted and rises, swells, roars before fading away in the distance and reverting to its steady thrumming. Rain takes everything… colors, sounds, and even time, until all dissolve into one same watercolor moment, one same blurred sensation - blue and frozen. Endless.
“It’s funny…” Yoochun says quietly, like speaking to himself.
“What is?” Changmin asks, sniffing. “Not the fact that I’m falling sick at this exact moment but there’s nothing to do but wait and pray we won’t die of pneumonia, I hope.”
“Right now, this…” Yoochun goes on as if he didn’t hear, “I dreamed of something like this, once.”
For a short moment there’s nothing but the sound of rain, until Changmin answers, all traces of sarcasm gone from his tone.
“What kind of dream?”
Yoochun looks at him. Their gazes meet for the third time, and they don’t avert their eyes.
They don’t.
Rain falls and falls and drowns everything around, blind and loud, but in their eyes, the silence grows. Seconds pass and each one of them adds meanings to this moment - unclear, undefined, but meanings they won’t be able to deny happened. Barely distinct, underwater, silent, but here. And still, rain falls, like a promise that this moment is safe and shielded from both the past and future. Like to cover the sound of racing hearts.
“A sad one” Yoochun says very softly, “the kind that you don’t realize is a dream. The kind that’s perfect until you wake up, and you realize it’ll never happen.”
Changmin doesn’t avert his eyes even when Yoochun’s gaze starts clearing - the subtle shimmer of guarded emotions fissuring again at last after so long, revealing only the shadows of feelings that were kept locked away. An impression. A variation. A reality. Changmin doesn’t avert his eyes, once faced with Yoochun’s heart - the very truth he’s been searching for all those weeks. He doesn’t look away, and Yoochun doesn’t back out. Beyond them, there’s only rain.
It takes strength to look into the truths that scare you. It takes courage to risk again what once cost you so much.
It’s easier when they can choose to do so… when the circumstances are right, when time seems to crack open just for them as if to say ‘now… now is the chance I’m giving you’. Not a step forward. Not an actual change. A pause, rather… a moment to stop, look, see, and acknowledge that when nothing in the world seems real but them, when reality turns blue and time freezes, they become something different… something that holds other meanings.
Changmin looks down. The tip of Yoochun’s fingers grazing against the back of his hand, a touch cold and ghostly. When he looks again, Yoochun is watching him. A lopsided smile. A shy attempt.
“Your hand is always warm” Yoochun says, his voice barely audible above the thrumming of rain.
Words that he used to disguise as jokes, and that Changmin used to hear as such. Words that bear the scars of a painful journey, still wrapped in both hesitations and faith… Words that Changmin might finally hear for what they are. He averts his eyes.
“I don’t have dreams like yours” he says, staring ahead, past the curtain of rain… staring into the hazy frontiers of a world they can’t see. “And I think dreams shouldn’t make you sad.”
He glances at Yoochun, his eyes serious, the strand of wet hair plastered on his temple drawing a funny little comma here.
“Only reality should.”
Changmin takes Yoochun’s hand and tugs him forward, stepping out of their hiding place.
“It’s no use staying here” he adds, his tone not betraying anything. “We’ve no idea when it’ll stop and I’m not spending the night here.”
Yoochun follows him like he has always done, into the pouring rain.
~
It’s too late when Changmin finally acknowledges how far things have gone.
It’s too late to try and make sense of it, and too late to stop it. His thoughts go one way, his senses another, and his heart scatters newfound, unshaped feelings around - like a well-oiled mechanic would suddenly lose it. All unpredictable. It confuses him to the point that he wonders if this is all happening… if that is still him, Changmin, and who is that guy who can’t think straight when he feels Yoochun’s eyes on him, who flees Yoochun’s touch when he used to need it?
He doesn’t know what is true about himself anymore. He feels so lost that sometimes he wishes he could just leave far away like Yoochun did, and pretend nothing ever happened.
But Changmin doesn’t run. He faces things.
He faces himself, and one day takes a deep breath, and acknowledges that something has changed. Obviously. The only question is “what”, since he refuses to believe he could suddenly be attracted to Yoochun that way. No. You don’t just start liking men out of nowhere. You don’t just become gay, what’s more for one person only - the thought reassures him… it even makes him smile, so absurd it sounds.
It’s just his mind getting carried ahead, he thinks a few days later in a department store, his eyes on Yoochun as the older man reviews video games, searching for one to buy for his brother. Changmin watches him silently. As odd as they are, the thoughts filling his head have become familiar of late.
How Yoochun begged him to help him choose Christmas presents for his family even though he knows Changmin is utterly useless when it comes to picking presents, even more so when said present are to be creative. When Yoochun grabbed his wrist to drag him inside earlier, disregarding Changmin’s protests that he hates crowded places. Studying Yoochun’s face now - focused, frowning. The older man passes a hand through his hair, sighing in frustration, and Changmin unconsciously stores the image away in his memories.
His gaze lowers to Yoochun’s eyes.
To Yoochun’s lips.
Three weeks ago, Changmin went as far as wondering whether he could - theoretically, as a man who doesn’t like men - kiss Yoochun.
Three weeks ago, the answer was a flat “no”. One week later, “no” shifted into “I don’t know”. Three days ago, Changmin looked attentively as Yoochun was asleep on his couch after an exhausting day, Chinese noodles and a boring action movie, and he found that if he tried hard to set aside the fact that this was Yoochun and he was a guy, then “yes”, maybe, those were lips he could kiss.
That means nothing though, Changmin is thinking now.
It would mean something if he suddenly started wanting to kiss guys around, not just Yoochun, and not through complicated mental gymnastics meant to overlook that said lips are in fact a man’s.
A staff approaches them at that exact moment, asking if they need help. Yoochun jumps on him at once and starts explaining what Yoowhan wants, sounding a tad desperate. Changmin’s eyes zero on the salesman’s lips.
No.
No, definitely, he thinks, relieved. Not in a thousand years.
It’s ‘no’ as well for the man in front of them in the queue at the checkout, ‘no’ for the guy who bumps into them and makes Yoochun drop his packages which fall with an ominous breaking sound, ‘no’ again for the policeman who stares bemusedly as Yoochun explains that he wants to fill a case for a hit-and-run against the stranger who broke the hideous vase he bought for Jaejoong (who decided last week that he was going to master ikebana).
During the next days, it’s ‘no’ for each of Changmin’s colleagues - the one who has three kids, the one who’s a sports addict, and the one who’s half-Filipino. It’s ‘no’ for both his neighbors, ‘no’ for the man owning the bookstore across the street, ‘no’ for Junsu (thank God), ‘no’ for the brother of Junsu’s girlfriend, ‘no’ for the driver of the bus he takes to go to see his mother, and ‘no’ for the drunk teenager who follows him all the way back home one evening begging for a cigarette.
It’s ‘no’ for every man he sees during the next three weeks, and while it doesn’t solve Changmin’s problem and doesn’t make the situation any less confusing, he’s glad to be spared that at least.
~
Saturday afternoon, mid-January. They are both at Yoochun’s new place, a small flat that he started renting two weeks ago. He could have afforded a bigger one but he likes cramped spaces. He says they make him feel at home.
Yoochun just woke up from his afternoon nap and he’s sitting on his unmade bed, still fully clothed and yawning irrepressibly. He stretches his arms above his head, rubs the sleep from his eyes, and grimaces when he notices that outside the sky is darkening already. Blame Skype conference calls at 3am with your new employer who happens to live on the other side of the world.
Changmin is sitting cross-legged on the floor next to the bed with Yoochun’s laptop, reading the next batch of emails the other will need to send for work and checking them for mistakes. On the floor next to him, there is a plate of chocolate cookies (for himself) and a full cup of coffee with milk (for Yoochun). He started the coffeemaker as soon as he heard him stir awake, and he knows better than to talk to Yoochun before the older man downed at least half the cup.
For a long moment they stay in companionable silence. There’s no other sound than the light tapping of Changmin’s fingers on the keyboard, and the occasional hum from Yoochun, who dragged himself out of bed and on the floor next to the younger man. He’s reading mangas, his cup cradled in his left hand, smiles passing on his face as he reads. Their gazes haven’t crossed once since Yoochun woke up. Their arms are nearly touching.
Nearly.
Distance and closeness. Blurring lines. A ripple.
“Yoochun…?”
“Mmmh?”
“Do you still love me?”
Yoochun looks up from his book and finds Changmin’s clear eyes - intent, piercing, unsettling. He doesn’t look away. Dark eyes - searching, probing, guarded. The words they didn’t say and the questions they didn’t ask, outlining another kind of silence. Endless and bare, this one. Suspended. Immense. Spreading over them like a dark night sky, full of lights and secrets alike.
Above, meteors cross and pass each other, and draw paths of fires.
Amidst them, a lost star gathers lights, shedding layers of darkness as it approaches the inevitable conclusion of its course - luminous and perfect. Already too bright to be shunned and ignored.
“I do.”
Their gazes don’t break at once. Silence lingers for a handful of seconds, this time brimming with words they cannot find and questions without answers. Far. Unfamiliar. A new ground the two of them are not ready to tread upon just yet.
Changmin is the first to avert his eyes. He nods. He says nothing. Yoochun reverts to his manga. They let seconds and minutes pass… they let time slowly bring them back to the shelter of habits, that intimate knowledge of each other that is both a blessing and a wall.
They let hours and days pass, but neither of them moves or forgets. The silence is still there, unfolding deep down and rolling questions and feelings over and over again in its white waves, washing them away from all unnecessary disguises. There is only one truth.
~
And then there was a “yes”.
That day Changmin was coming home feeling rather happy. It was going at well at work. The disjointed parts of his life were settling back into place. He felt he was looking ahead again. He had leftovers prepared by his mother in the fridge for tonight’s dinner, and nice plans for the week-end. The owner of the bookstore across the street bowed his head when he passed by and Changmin greeted him in the same fashion, glancing at the guy’s lips like he’d been doing reflexively for weeks now for every man he saw.
It’s not before he was in the stairs leading to his apartment that Changmin realized that was a “yes” just now. He stopped dead in his tracks. He replayed the brief encounter. Pictured the young man’s lips again - rather full, rather red, and not unlike Yoochun’s. A man’s lips. And “yes”, lips he could kiss though it was still “no” just the day before, and Changmin sat down right where he was, in the stairs. He suddenly felt like crying.
He suddenly felt terribly alone. It took several minutes before he finally pushed himself to his feet. He didn’t sleep that night. Instead Changmin spent hours looking into himself, and questioning everything he found there.
Part 14.
Note: FINALLY are we getting somewhere, are we??!! XD Ok fingers crossed here, I tried to make this as realistic as possible and I do hope it works... >< It was quite a challenge to write too, so I'm curious to know how it turns out in a reader's eye? Sorry for the one day delay too, please accept my apologies in the form of a gentle start of YooMin at last ;-)
Thank you for reading/commenting!
Pairings: YooMin
Rating: PG
Genre: Romance, Fluff, slight Angst
Summary:
There is only one truth, Changmin believes, and only one question - is it the one you want?
There is only chance, Yoochun thinks - the meteor crashes, or it doesn’t. And if it does the only question is, will you run fast enough or let the stars collide?
Part 13. Of facts and red roses.
There are facts you aren’t supposed to question.
Fire burns. Ice is cold. Water is wet. Chocolate is life, and Changmin doesn’t like men. He doesn’t. He 100% doesn’t. Make it 200%.
He never questioned it before Yoochun’s sudden declaration and he didn’t question it after. What bothered him was that he didn’t notice. You are supposed to notice when your only friend, the one you’ve known for years, that friend you know by heart happens to be in love with you. But Changmin didn’t and he had plenty of time to ponder about it while Yoochun was away… putting his analytical mind to work, ordering, listing, labeling feelings and sorting memories, until he came to the brilliant conclusion that he had no idea how such a thing happened.
It happened though. That’s a fact, one with little consideration for Changmin’s lines, and it bothered him the way a pebble in your shoe bothers you - something not supposed to be here yet it’s always on your mind.
So yes, Changmin did think a lot about it, but never to wonder if that was the kind of feelings he could reciprocate. The mere idea never crossed his mind - and why should it? Changmin doesn’t like men, snow melts, birds fly, and you have to eat to live.
Then Yoochun came back, and it proved hard to think of an ‘I love you’ as an inconvenience or an offensive attack on his sacrosanct logic. There were feelings to consider, but feelings were never the way Changmin favored. Feelings aren’t reliable. There are no lines to trace here, no right way to go.
No.
Changmin naturally reverted to what had never betrayed him - truth, facts, causes, consequences - and it took some time but he finally found his answer: he didn’t notice because the mere idea that Yoochun could love him had never even crossed his mind. Just like you wouldn’t suspect the earth is round if no one had ever told you.
Changmin rather liked that. It made sense. If he had had just an inkling of what was going on… a hint, the slightest clue that Yoochun loved him, then surely Changmin would have noticed. Without doubt.
But surely you have to like men to imagine such a possibility, and Changmin doesn’t like men, so he didn’t consider it, and he didn’t notice.
If Changmin liked men he would have considered it, and he would have noticed.
If Changmin had been aware of Yoochun like a man who likes men is aware of other men then Changmin would surely have considered the possibility of Yoochun liking him and hence he would have noticed, but he has never seen Yoochun as someone he could like like this since he doesn’t like men so he didn’t consider it and he didn’t notice. Yes, that made perfect sense.
Changmin needed to make sure though, and more importantly to know what Yoochun feels now. And the only way he found to do that was to go backwards… back up the solid chain of causes and consequences.
It’s merely a matter of perspectives, he tells himself. Try being aware of him like he’s aware of you, and the signs will become obvious.
Pay attention to the words that could mean more than what they seem, to the gestures that look casual but could be deliberate. Pay attention to his looks, expressions, silences, and wonder which of them could shelter that ‘I love you’ Changmin doesn’t know what to make of but can’t stop thinking about - he wants to know where Yoochun hides the feelings he doesn’t want him to see.
That’s how Changmin unknowingly starts playing a dangerous game, disregarding the lines that define him, putting aside what he knows he is and isn’t in order to pretend to be someone else… someone who could like and need Yoochun without unquestioningly putting him in a nice square with the word ‘friend’ written above. Someone who could see Yoochun and think “what if this guy loved me?” And ultimately, someone who could watch Yoochun and wonder, “what if I loved that guy?”
It’s just pretence… it’s just the farfetched way that causes and consequences lead him to choose, and it just can’t go wrong, he tells himself.
That’s how Changmin forgets that beyond the facts, there are the feelings too.
~
I have nothing planned this evening
Just so you know
▪ Thanks, I guess
I’ll be at the new coffee shop
▪ …
What?
I’m just telling you about my evening
The one I’m going to spend alone at the new coffee shop
▪ YOOCHUN.
Since I’ve nothing else to do
▪ Stop it ok?
▪ I appreciate your concern, but we’re just going to settle matters for the apartment
▪ I’ll sign the damn papers, give them to her, and it will be over
You haven’t seen Jungmi in months
▪ So what?
▪ I’m perfectly fine
I thought you never lied
“What is this???”
“Well… there’s a chocolate cake, chocolate mousse and a chocolate waffle. Oh and hot cocoa-“
“I know what a chocolate mousse is, but-“
“With lots of whipped cream! Drink it while it’s hot!”
“Seriously Yoochun… roses?”
“I knooow! Aren’t they nice?!”
“I don’t care! I’m a guy!”
“Who said it was for you?”
“…”
“Alright don’t be jealous. They are for you.”
“I’m not jealous!”
“It was to make you smile.”
“…what?”
“The roses.”
“Is it me or you really don’t make any sense?”
“You asked me once why I bought them the first time. It was to make you smile.”
It’s late when they leave the coffee shop together that night. A gush of cold wind greets them as soon as they step outside, prompting Yoochun to turn up the collar of his jacket. Changmin doesn’t seem to mind the cold, or rather doesn’t seem to notice. They pass by the subway station without a word, walking side by side, their arms nearly touching.
“In the end it could have been much worse, right?” Yoochun ventures after a while, in the kind of tone they probably use to announce someone they have some terminal disease but it’s okay, they still have about three months to live.
Changmin doesn’t answer. He’s holding his bouquet of roses much like he did the first one, years ago - like a grocery bag. Tonight however he’s drunk. The flowers keep bumping against walls as he walks, though it’s hard to tell if he’s doing it on purpose. His expression has been closed and dark for the best part of the evening, and nothing Yoochun said could bring a smile on his face or ease the stiffness in his body.
“I mean, she could have screamed at you” Yoochun goes on awkwardly “or cried. She didn’t cry, did she?”
“She didn’t.”
“So it went well.”
“It did.”
Changmin stops. They are in an empty street, in front of the illuminated window of a clothing store. The autumn breeze is blowing relentlessly, a sharp edge to it foretelling winter. The night sky is clear however, and in spite of the city lights they’d be able to spot the stars above if they just cared to look.
“Yoochun…”
“Mmh?”
“I was going to marry her” Changmin says, his voice slurred but still soft.
Yoochun looks at him for the first time since they left the coffee shop, just in time to see the young man rub his face with his hands, out of tiredness or to hide a stray tear.
“It made me happy, you know” Changmin goes on in the same quiet tone, “to look at her… think… think I’d found the right person. I… It used to make me so happy...”
“Changmin-“
“And now it’s like…”
The young man looks up, gaze lost in the darkness above as if searching for answers there.
“Now… I think I never want to see her again” he adds in an even lower voice.
Yoochun instinctively makes a move like to take his hand. He stops. He closes his fists tightly, a shadow briefly passing in his eyes.
“It’s weird right?” Changmin continues, his face still tilted up. There’s a distinct crack in his voice now. “I was going to marry her. That’s what our lives… that’s what it was going to be. But now… now I’m hoping I’ll never meet her again. I don’t want to meet anyone ever again.”
This time Yoochun reaches out for him, but he barely touched his arm that the young man jerks away. The bouquet falls from his hand, roses spilling on the ground at their feet. Changmin takes a step back. He’s looking at Yoochun now but even the sheen of tears isn’t enough to alter the sudden hardness of his gaze - something both angry and defensive that makes Yoochun recoil instinctively.
The silence doesn’t last - one heartbeat, two, three… staring at each other, stumbling over invisible lines that weren’t there before. A distance that changed.
“I’m going home” Changmin announces at last and turns away abruptly, a bit unsteady on his feet.
Yoochun doesn’t try to hold him back. He doesn’t move for long minutes, staring at the young man’s back until Changmin turns at the corner of the street. Then he crouches down and carefully picks the roses scattered on the ground, his gestures slow and methodical. The tip of his fingers brushes lightly against the roses stems, where the thorns were removed. His hands tighten around the bouquet once he gathered them all and he stays like this, eyes fixed sadly on the ruined flowers.
“You have to smile” he says very softly, his voice blending in the night and cold wind, “no matter what…”
~
The plan was to pay attention to Yoochun. More precisely, it was to pay attention to those things about Yoochun that Changmin is not supposed to pay attention to.
The plan was to try and see with a fresh eye what he had never thought to question before - that Yoochun’s looks, words and gestures toward him could outline something else than friendship.
It worked, to some extent.
There are Yoochun’s looks, yes.
The way Yoochun’s gaze lingers on him after he laughs, and the times when Changmin is absorbed in something and a presence starts weighing on the edge of his consciousness, and he realizes belatedly that Yoochun is staring. He can feel that gaze on him much more easily than before now. Much more often too, but he still can’t tell what Yoochun is thinking about whenever he stares like this. Once or twice he tried to guess but that proved too troubling, so Changmin stopped. Or rather, he tried to.
Now it’s hard not to imagine what Yoochun could be thinking. Changmin hasn’t forgotten the only time when he glimpsed the other’s feelings. He still remembers the bare emotions and needs making the older man’s voice strained and his eyes afire. It’s hard not to imagine what Yoochun could still be thinking even now when he stares like this. Or rather, maybe picturing it shouldn’t be so easy.
Yoochun’s words too.
Whether caring or teasing, the small sentences that Changmin used to brush off because they were just part of who Yoochun was to him… for him. Tentative words of comfort that Yoochun never uses but with him, because Yoochun doesn’t comfort people but Changmin is the exception. Jokes, banter, flirting that used to mean nothing but that Changmin started viewing into a new light, and now he finds it impossible to act like it’s all just for fun.
Now Changmin can’t tell anymore when Yoochun is serious and when he isn’t. Before he knows it, he’s replaying each of those sentences, turning them in his mind over and over again, wondering about their true meaning. He has known Yoochun for eight years… he knows him by heart, and it should be simple. But it’s not. It’s hard, and that alone makes Changmin feel as if he’s missing the whole point of the relationship that means the most to him.
And Yoochun’s gestures.
Touches that seemed casual until Changmin started questioning what they really meant. Embraces that he can’t bring himself to initiate anymore. It used to be normal, simple - Yoochun leaning on him when they watch a movie and it gets sad or scary, Yoochun taking his hand when one of them feels down, Yoochun messing with his hair and calling him a brat and laughing, laughing, loud and bright, eyes crinkled with laughter as Changmin scowls and bats his hand away.
Changmin doesn’t know anymore how he should respond to those. He doesn’t dare to start any of it in case Yoochun misunderstands, but he doesn’t want him to think something has changed. He tries to keep their relationship just as it used to be, but the slightest gesture now triggers a swarm of questions and doubts, and it’s getting hard to act unaffected.
And yet it was all so easy before.
It was so simple. It was Yoochun… Changmin’s only friend, the one who knows him best and cares the most, the one who could fix anything with just a look, a word, a touch.
The plan was to pay attention to all those, and it worked too well. Changmin is now aware of them… aware of Yoochun like he never intended to be, and it’s too late already when he realizes it.
Soon it’s not Yoochun’s looks, but his eyes instead - a deep brown that would seem dark and yet it shines, at times sparkling with mirth or mischief, at times soft and enveloping, caring… caring like few people have ever cared for him. Eyes that see everything Changmin is. Eyes that accept it all.
It’s not Yoochun’s words anymore… it’s his voice.
It’s not Yoochun’s gestures now. It’s the warmth of his body and the spark of electricity whenever their skin touch.
And that scares him.
~
November. Early evening. An empty street. Rain pouring down. Blurred surroundings and muffled sounds. From where they stand the world is blue and cold, and everything beyond the heavy curtain of rain doesn’t seem quite real. They found shelter under a roof overhang when the first icy raindrops turned into a downpour.
There’s water everywhere… drumming on the pavement, dripping down from the roof, running in the gutter at their feet. They are drenched. Changmin’s wet hair looks darker than usual, plastered on his forehead and temples. The bottom of Yoochun’s pants is soaked. Their breaths come out in small white puffs.
Their shelter is small. There’s no space to move, just enough for them not to touch. Even so their hands accidentally brushed twice, and both times their gazes met only to break away at once.
They can’t even see the other side of the street. They can’t hear a sound except sometimes when a car passes by, and the continuous drumming of pouring rain is momentarily disrupted and rises, swells, roars before fading away in the distance and reverting to its steady thrumming. Rain takes everything… colors, sounds, and even time, until all dissolve into one same watercolor moment, one same blurred sensation - blue and frozen. Endless.
“It’s funny…” Yoochun says quietly, like speaking to himself.
“What is?” Changmin asks, sniffing. “Not the fact that I’m falling sick at this exact moment but there’s nothing to do but wait and pray we won’t die of pneumonia, I hope.”
“Right now, this…” Yoochun goes on as if he didn’t hear, “I dreamed of something like this, once.”
For a short moment there’s nothing but the sound of rain, until Changmin answers, all traces of sarcasm gone from his tone.
“What kind of dream?”
Yoochun looks at him. Their gazes meet for the third time, and they don’t avert their eyes.
They don’t.
Rain falls and falls and drowns everything around, blind and loud, but in their eyes, the silence grows. Seconds pass and each one of them adds meanings to this moment - unclear, undefined, but meanings they won’t be able to deny happened. Barely distinct, underwater, silent, but here. And still, rain falls, like a promise that this moment is safe and shielded from both the past and future. Like to cover the sound of racing hearts.
“A sad one” Yoochun says very softly, “the kind that you don’t realize is a dream. The kind that’s perfect until you wake up, and you realize it’ll never happen.”
Changmin doesn’t avert his eyes even when Yoochun’s gaze starts clearing - the subtle shimmer of guarded emotions fissuring again at last after so long, revealing only the shadows of feelings that were kept locked away. An impression. A variation. A reality. Changmin doesn’t avert his eyes, once faced with Yoochun’s heart - the very truth he’s been searching for all those weeks. He doesn’t look away, and Yoochun doesn’t back out. Beyond them, there’s only rain.
It takes strength to look into the truths that scare you. It takes courage to risk again what once cost you so much.
It’s easier when they can choose to do so… when the circumstances are right, when time seems to crack open just for them as if to say ‘now… now is the chance I’m giving you’. Not a step forward. Not an actual change. A pause, rather… a moment to stop, look, see, and acknowledge that when nothing in the world seems real but them, when reality turns blue and time freezes, they become something different… something that holds other meanings.
Changmin looks down. The tip of Yoochun’s fingers grazing against the back of his hand, a touch cold and ghostly. When he looks again, Yoochun is watching him. A lopsided smile. A shy attempt.
“Your hand is always warm” Yoochun says, his voice barely audible above the thrumming of rain.
Words that he used to disguise as jokes, and that Changmin used to hear as such. Words that bear the scars of a painful journey, still wrapped in both hesitations and faith… Words that Changmin might finally hear for what they are. He averts his eyes.
“I don’t have dreams like yours” he says, staring ahead, past the curtain of rain… staring into the hazy frontiers of a world they can’t see. “And I think dreams shouldn’t make you sad.”
He glances at Yoochun, his eyes serious, the strand of wet hair plastered on his temple drawing a funny little comma here.
“Only reality should.”
Changmin takes Yoochun’s hand and tugs him forward, stepping out of their hiding place.
“It’s no use staying here” he adds, his tone not betraying anything. “We’ve no idea when it’ll stop and I’m not spending the night here.”
Yoochun follows him like he has always done, into the pouring rain.
~
It’s too late when Changmin finally acknowledges how far things have gone.
It’s too late to try and make sense of it, and too late to stop it. His thoughts go one way, his senses another, and his heart scatters newfound, unshaped feelings around - like a well-oiled mechanic would suddenly lose it. All unpredictable. It confuses him to the point that he wonders if this is all happening… if that is still him, Changmin, and who is that guy who can’t think straight when he feels Yoochun’s eyes on him, who flees Yoochun’s touch when he used to need it?
He doesn’t know what is true about himself anymore. He feels so lost that sometimes he wishes he could just leave far away like Yoochun did, and pretend nothing ever happened.
But Changmin doesn’t run. He faces things.
He faces himself, and one day takes a deep breath, and acknowledges that something has changed. Obviously. The only question is “what”, since he refuses to believe he could suddenly be attracted to Yoochun that way. No. You don’t just start liking men out of nowhere. You don’t just become gay, what’s more for one person only - the thought reassures him… it even makes him smile, so absurd it sounds.
It’s just his mind getting carried ahead, he thinks a few days later in a department store, his eyes on Yoochun as the older man reviews video games, searching for one to buy for his brother. Changmin watches him silently. As odd as they are, the thoughts filling his head have become familiar of late.
How Yoochun begged him to help him choose Christmas presents for his family even though he knows Changmin is utterly useless when it comes to picking presents, even more so when said present are to be creative. When Yoochun grabbed his wrist to drag him inside earlier, disregarding Changmin’s protests that he hates crowded places. Studying Yoochun’s face now - focused, frowning. The older man passes a hand through his hair, sighing in frustration, and Changmin unconsciously stores the image away in his memories.
His gaze lowers to Yoochun’s eyes.
To Yoochun’s lips.
Three weeks ago, Changmin went as far as wondering whether he could - theoretically, as a man who doesn’t like men - kiss Yoochun.
Three weeks ago, the answer was a flat “no”. One week later, “no” shifted into “I don’t know”. Three days ago, Changmin looked attentively as Yoochun was asleep on his couch after an exhausting day, Chinese noodles and a boring action movie, and he found that if he tried hard to set aside the fact that this was Yoochun and he was a guy, then “yes”, maybe, those were lips he could kiss.
That means nothing though, Changmin is thinking now.
It would mean something if he suddenly started wanting to kiss guys around, not just Yoochun, and not through complicated mental gymnastics meant to overlook that said lips are in fact a man’s.
A staff approaches them at that exact moment, asking if they need help. Yoochun jumps on him at once and starts explaining what Yoowhan wants, sounding a tad desperate. Changmin’s eyes zero on the salesman’s lips.
No.
No, definitely, he thinks, relieved. Not in a thousand years.
It’s ‘no’ as well for the man in front of them in the queue at the checkout, ‘no’ for the guy who bumps into them and makes Yoochun drop his packages which fall with an ominous breaking sound, ‘no’ again for the policeman who stares bemusedly as Yoochun explains that he wants to fill a case for a hit-and-run against the stranger who broke the hideous vase he bought for Jaejoong (who decided last week that he was going to master ikebana).
During the next days, it’s ‘no’ for each of Changmin’s colleagues - the one who has three kids, the one who’s a sports addict, and the one who’s half-Filipino. It’s ‘no’ for both his neighbors, ‘no’ for the man owning the bookstore across the street, ‘no’ for Junsu (thank God), ‘no’ for the brother of Junsu’s girlfriend, ‘no’ for the driver of the bus he takes to go to see his mother, and ‘no’ for the drunk teenager who follows him all the way back home one evening begging for a cigarette.
It’s ‘no’ for every man he sees during the next three weeks, and while it doesn’t solve Changmin’s problem and doesn’t make the situation any less confusing, he’s glad to be spared that at least.
~
Saturday afternoon, mid-January. They are both at Yoochun’s new place, a small flat that he started renting two weeks ago. He could have afforded a bigger one but he likes cramped spaces. He says they make him feel at home.
Yoochun just woke up from his afternoon nap and he’s sitting on his unmade bed, still fully clothed and yawning irrepressibly. He stretches his arms above his head, rubs the sleep from his eyes, and grimaces when he notices that outside the sky is darkening already. Blame Skype conference calls at 3am with your new employer who happens to live on the other side of the world.
Changmin is sitting cross-legged on the floor next to the bed with Yoochun’s laptop, reading the next batch of emails the other will need to send for work and checking them for mistakes. On the floor next to him, there is a plate of chocolate cookies (for himself) and a full cup of coffee with milk (for Yoochun). He started the coffeemaker as soon as he heard him stir awake, and he knows better than to talk to Yoochun before the older man downed at least half the cup.
For a long moment they stay in companionable silence. There’s no other sound than the light tapping of Changmin’s fingers on the keyboard, and the occasional hum from Yoochun, who dragged himself out of bed and on the floor next to the younger man. He’s reading mangas, his cup cradled in his left hand, smiles passing on his face as he reads. Their gazes haven’t crossed once since Yoochun woke up. Their arms are nearly touching.
Nearly.
Distance and closeness. Blurring lines. A ripple.
“Yoochun…?”
“Mmmh?”
“Do you still love me?”
Yoochun looks up from his book and finds Changmin’s clear eyes - intent, piercing, unsettling. He doesn’t look away. Dark eyes - searching, probing, guarded. The words they didn’t say and the questions they didn’t ask, outlining another kind of silence. Endless and bare, this one. Suspended. Immense. Spreading over them like a dark night sky, full of lights and secrets alike.
Above, meteors cross and pass each other, and draw paths of fires.
Amidst them, a lost star gathers lights, shedding layers of darkness as it approaches the inevitable conclusion of its course - luminous and perfect. Already too bright to be shunned and ignored.
“I do.”
Their gazes don’t break at once. Silence lingers for a handful of seconds, this time brimming with words they cannot find and questions without answers. Far. Unfamiliar. A new ground the two of them are not ready to tread upon just yet.
Changmin is the first to avert his eyes. He nods. He says nothing. Yoochun reverts to his manga. They let seconds and minutes pass… they let time slowly bring them back to the shelter of habits, that intimate knowledge of each other that is both a blessing and a wall.
They let hours and days pass, but neither of them moves or forgets. The silence is still there, unfolding deep down and rolling questions and feelings over and over again in its white waves, washing them away from all unnecessary disguises. There is only one truth.
~
And then there was a “yes”.
That day Changmin was coming home feeling rather happy. It was going at well at work. The disjointed parts of his life were settling back into place. He felt he was looking ahead again. He had leftovers prepared by his mother in the fridge for tonight’s dinner, and nice plans for the week-end. The owner of the bookstore across the street bowed his head when he passed by and Changmin greeted him in the same fashion, glancing at the guy’s lips like he’d been doing reflexively for weeks now for every man he saw.
It’s not before he was in the stairs leading to his apartment that Changmin realized that was a “yes” just now. He stopped dead in his tracks. He replayed the brief encounter. Pictured the young man’s lips again - rather full, rather red, and not unlike Yoochun’s. A man’s lips. And “yes”, lips he could kiss though it was still “no” just the day before, and Changmin sat down right where he was, in the stairs. He suddenly felt like crying.
He suddenly felt terribly alone. It took several minutes before he finally pushed himself to his feet. He didn’t sleep that night. Instead Changmin spent hours looking into himself, and questioning everything he found there.
Part 14.
Note: FINALLY are we getting somewhere, are we??!! XD Ok fingers crossed here, I tried to make this as realistic as possible and I do hope it works... >< It was quite a challenge to write too, so I'm curious to know how it turns out in a reader's eye? Sorry for the one day delay too, please accept my apologies in the form of a gentle start of YooMin at last ;-)
Thank you for reading/commenting!