Title: Cold Comfort for Change
Pairing: Changmin/Yoochun
Rating:PG
Author: Radioheading
Genre: Romance, supernatural, angst
Chapters: Part one of a Two-shot.
Summary: Changmin dies just before his 18th birthday. But life isn't over yet, not for him, or the person he's assigned to watch over, Park Yoochun.

 

When Changmin wakes up, it's to warmth that bathes on his skin, sun stroking gold fingers across tired cheeks. He's on a blanket, in the middle of a field and someone sits next to him, but all he can see is legs, folded Indian-style.

 

“Hey,” the guy says, looking down at him. He squints through the glare of five o'clock light.

 

“I like the place you've got here. It's quiet.”

 

Changmin wonders if he should just go back to sleep because he's still in the grips of delicious fatigue, the kind that licks its lips, content, as consciousness flees and it gets a chance to come out and play.

 

“I'm Jaejoong.” He holds out a hand, one that is warm to the touch when Changmin grabs at it, closes his larger palm around thin fingers. When they let go he brings the hand in front of his eyes, uses it as a visor.

 

“Want to talk about it?” Jaejoong asks, brushing auburn bangs away from the eyes they hide with an impatient toss of his head.

 

“No.” Changmin says, looks at Jaejoong a little closer, notes the plush mouth, clear skin, face that could break hearts. Jaejoong stills, stares back, calm under the scrutiny. Changmin wants to tell him something, maybe that he's beautiful, but he thinks better of it and lays his head back down on the blanket. Weight shifts next to him and there are words in his ear, whispers of how it gets easier, promises of help. A hand, that same warmth, slips into his and Changmin allows the touch but can't help imagine it's someone else. The hands that wipe at the few tears that escape are rougher than he's used to, but they serve the same purpose.

 

“Miss them?”

 

Changmin nods in response to a stupid question, one that would have at least gotten an incredulous eyebrow raise, had he been feeling more like himself. He doesn't move for awhile, shuts his eyes but keeps sleep from crawling back.

 

The sun's half-lidded gaze is still filtering through tree tops when he sits up an hour or so later, hugs his knees to his chest and rests his chin there, looking out into a forest that surrounds on all sides.

 

“Where are we?” Jaejoong asks, without moving.

 

“Field behind my house,” he answers, sure that his voice doesn't catch on any of the words, a fumble that could unwind him. It can't happen.

 

“S'nice,” Jaejoong mutters, unfolds his limbs gracefully so he's standing up, looking down at Changmin again. When Changmin follows he's secretly happy to be considerably taller than Jaejoong.

 

“Where are we going?” They fall into a comfortable pace, shoes swishing in plastic tones against the grass. Jaejoong's smile, when it pulls at his lips, is more like a crack, a slip that's sadness and an apology.

 

“You're going to say goodbye.”

* * *

Jaejoong hangs back while Changmin watches his mother sit in what was his bedroom. She clenches the sheets of his bed between her fingers, nails digging in. She's not crying but short, quick breaths punctuate the silence that edges in, presses down on shoulders and mouths, the thick, choking kind that makes sound a fleeting memory. Changmin forgets himself. Sits next to her on sheets that still have fabric softener scent clinging to them, the one from the bottle with sunflowers on it. He tells her it's ok by rubbing the top of her hand, trying to get her to release the hold that must be cramping her fingers, but he somehow misses. His touch fails to connect, moves through instead (like passing through water and coming out dry) and so he stands up, whispers into the shell of her ear things he should have said when he was alive and looks at Jaejoong, who leads him away, past his father sitting at the kitchen table, staring into space.

 

Changmin can't touch him either.

 

He blinks and they're in his school, in front of an empty seat that has yet to be cleaned out. It's glaring, the shine of the fake wood, only emphasized by the other students who sit stock still, staring down at nothing. The teacher says his name, a murmur that quavers only slightly, and the class repeats after her, a collective acknowledgment. A collective goodbye. The boy who sits next to Changmin, or did, glances at him and for a split second hope jumps into his throat, but then his seatmate's gaze slides back down at his own clutched hands.

 

The day continues, people, places, held breath and silence, what life could have been. In the eyes of those he loves is the future, paths dotted with pain and joy and the bittersweet melody that is life, something he is no longer a part of. He'll carry those who mattered in himself, walk with them in memory, in who they are and who he was.

 

Changmin knows, when Jaejoong takes his hand and they slide to a new location (here and gone, arriving in less time than a heart takes to beat) that what he's leaving behind is himself, who he would be, the life that isn't his anymore. If Jaejoong wants tears, if he's expecting a breakdown, then Changmin is glad to disappoint him. He's standing back, holding the truth an arm's length away, detaching himself from what it is to be human because he's not anymore. Not really.

 

He stares into space until Jaejoong clears his throat, motions for him to follow down the hallway he'd brought them to, one that ends with a door. Fingers wrap around Changmin's wrist and pull, hard, so he fumbles forward a few steps, through the thin wood he's stopped in front of. He passes through easily, molecules melting through without resistance, though it feels like sandpaper is rubbing him down gently, scrub, not a scrape.

 

“You'll get used to it,” Jaejoong drops his arm, a Cheshire cat grin pulling up one of the corners of his generous mouth.

 

“Thanks for the warning.” His tone could wither the hardiest of plants, but the slight animosity is forgotten when he notices that the apartment is not empty.

 

“This,” Jaejoong say, motioning to the man on the couch, the one who stares at the television with glazed eyes, making it obvious that he's absorbing nothing, “is Yoochun.”

 

 

* * *

Jaejoong had told him to watch Yoochun.

 

Watch him do what? The man, or boy, really—he didn't look more than a few years older than Changmin—had done nothing in four hours. Had not eaten, drank, used the bathroom, or even scratched his nose. Changmin tries patience, but it doesn't fit, so he shrugs it off, paces back and forth in front of the tv, stopping every once in awhile to peer out through the glass door on the wall adjacent to Yoochun, one that opens to a small balcony. The sun is out.

 

“Wasting the day away, sitting here,” he grumbles, sitting on the cheap coffee table in front of the sofa. It's strewn with newspapers, headlines he doesn't read before planting himself heavily. He stares at Yoochun, at pale skin and hair that would be nice if it wasn't greasy and limp. The eyes catch him, though, intelligent, dark and bloodshot. Changmin looks down.

 

“What the fuck, Jaejoong?” Anger rises in his throat, clenches teeth. He's been abandoned, left out to sea by someone who was supposed to help him. Unless this is hell. In which case, nice job. The thought makes his eyes roll because he, fucking innocent Shim Changmin, has never done anything that would warrant eternal damnation. He's pretty sure if there is a God, He wouldn't care about the magazines a boy stashes under his bed. Ooh. Magazine his mother is probably going to find. His lips twist without mirth and he strangles the loss that creeps up behind him, moves to wrap its arms around his shoulders. He wishes his biggest worry was his mom finding his porn stash, but it doesn't matter now. Not when he's got a catatonic to watch.

 

“Go outside,” he says to Yoochun, inching forward until they're almost touching. “It's a nice day.”

 

No response.

 

“God, what a waste of time.” He rolls back, pulls his feet up. “You know,” he says, looking at Yoochun's unkempt hair, “You should really cut your hair if you're going the emo route.”

 

 

And that's when it happened.

 

Yoochun laughed.

 

* * *

 

Yoochun stands over the stove, hands on the counter, staring down a kettle of water as it boils.

 

“I know you can hear me.” Changmin settles next to the man, leans on the hard surface of the fridge. “The whole chuckle into a cough thing doesn't actually work.” Yoochun's hands tighten, muscles tense but he doesn't speak, doesn't acknowledge that anything is amiss in the seemingly empty apartment.

 

“This is pointless.” Changmin gets close, enough to speak directly into Yoochun's ear, doesn't notice that the other is shaking, almost imperceptibly, quakes the make his shoulders twitch.

“Why am I here? What is so important about a hermit?” Changmin's lip curls into a sneer. He wants to hurt, to wound something because those feelings are flooding up again. Yoochun's apartment only reminds him that he has no home anymore, has no one and doesn't know how to get back to his field, to the place where late afternoon stretches into infinity. He closes his eyes, sighs out air he isn't sure why he's breathing and turns away, takes a few steps and looks back, where Yoochun is now sitting on the floor, scrunched against the wall.

 

“You're not real,” he's whispering, over and over in a low, smooth voice, rich like espresso in the morning. “Not real, not real, not real.” Changmin doesn't know what to do because this emotion, this outpouring makes him uncomfortable. He can't deal with tears, reminders of grief. But he kneels, tells Yoochun that it's alright over and over until it's an amalgam of sounds that have no real meaning but need to be said, anyway.

 

“I'm so sorry,” Yoochun forces out between the muffled cries that shake his chest, making him jerk like a puppet to keep the noise in. The spasms turn the words harsh, attach razors to the edges.

 

“For what?” Changmin asks, drawn into the stranger, who's biting his fleshy bottom lip so hard Changmin worries that he'll cut straight through. But Yoochun doesn't give anything else, just points vague toward the living room.

 

“Table,” he manages before hiding his face behind piano hands, long fingers that taper elegantly, though the nails are torn and bitten down to the quick.

 

What Changmin finds there is the same copy of one newspaper, one that details how a life was saved at the cost of another, a selfless, brave act that would surely lighten the terrible weight of the death of a youth, of a boy of barely 18.

* * *

 

“What am I doing here?” Changmin hisses at Jaejoong, who decided to show up hours later, after Yoochun had gone back to ignoring him before shuffling off to what he assumed was a bedroom.

 

“You know who he is?” Jaejoong just asks, ignoring the question. Changmin nods, unable to say it. “He is your task.”

 

“Task?”

 

“Your job is to save him.”

 

“I thought I already had.”

 

“Now is when it counts.”

 

Changmin vaults forward, entwines his hands in Jaejoong's shirt and pushes him against the wall where he stands and is distracted for a moment in how comforting it is to be able to touch someone else, to feel solid.

 

“You're walking me in circles.” He's close to Jaejoong, bigger than him, but he feels that somehow, now, that doesn't actually matter. “What is this? Why aren't I in Heaven or Hell or just wandering around as a ghost? What's the point of this?” He's unsteady, spinning out under circumstances that he can't make sense of, can't balance like a chemistry equation. His legs turn to jell-o, tremors shooting through nerves because he just wants some fucking answers and suddenly it's Jaejoong who's holding him up, supporting him with deceptive strength he didn't expect from the other's lithe body.

 

“When you know,” Jaejoong's face remains impassive, a carefully crafted facade that speaks of experience—maybe too much. “I'll find you. Until then, it's your job to stay with Yoochun.” He looks up into Changmin's eyes, pleading.

 

“Don't take this lightly,” he says, relaxing his grip around Changmin's waist, and then is gone, melts into the air of the sparse apartment. It's uncomfortable, the space, a place with glaring white walls that lack any personal touches and a few pieces of threadbare furniture. He swallows once, twice. Need a distraction. His eyes are drawn to the closed door behind which Yoochun's privacy lies, a personal boundary that Changmin hates to tread over, but being alone isn't an option right now.

 

He rubs his arms when he reaches the other side of the door, skin itching from the wood. The room is dark, calm because it at least feels somewhat like a home, has an overstuffed bed where Yoochun is sprawled under a thick blanket, breaths deep enough to tell Changmin he's asleep. He sits on the floor, hooks his arms around knees and lets himself go too, grateful that he can still sleep.

 

* * *

 

 

Changmin learns that Yoochun has a routine. Every morning, he gets up, a fields a call from someone that must be a parent the way Yoochun answers, obligatory affirmatives and mm—hmms, and sometimes the voice comes out of the receiver a little loud, so the question, always the same one, can be heard.

 

Are you alright?

 

He imagines that Yoochun would be semi convincing if it weren't for the small details most don't look closely enough to catch. The way his hands shake when he looks in the mirror for a bit too long, the way he can lapse into stillness that's broken when Changmin shuffles by or coughs quietly. Yoochun does leave the apartment, though, because he is a student (double-majoring in creative writing and music theory, if the books by the bed are to be trusted), but his phone never rings, and he comes back immediately after classes.

 

“Why don't you have friends?” Changmin wonders one day when Yoochun plants himself in front of the television after toying with a few exercises from his writing textbook. When the other boy stiffens, he realizes he's spoken aloud. But more importantly, Yoochun glances toward him out of the corner of his eye and the dark irises flick back to the tv immediately after, but he'd looked.

 

“I sing Wonder Girls at the top of my lungs for hours on end and this is what catches your attention?”