multiversallogs | come on be alive again

Entry tags:

come on be alive again

Who: Sunny & Jae.
What: Post-horrors decompressing, and some words.
Where: Sunny's apartment.
When: After they escape the disastrous fashion show. (So.. A WHILE AGO we do what we want.)
Warnings: Discussion of traumatic events, EMBARRASSING CRYING, feelings.

It never occurs to Jae to go to his apartment and not Sunny's. His own place is bigger, has more of his things - the material, cosmetic objects he drowns himself in as a ritual to manage his anxiety. Whether his nerves are too raw for his routine to have any impact on or if he just plain thinks this will work better, he doesn't know or consciously inspect. He wants (needs) to be at Sunny's because it's Sunny's and for that fact alone it's the safest place; his things are there, it smells like him, it's his domain and responsibility and all Jae has to do is take a shower and then hide behind him. It's impossibly selfish.

He's in the bathroom, in yoga pants and an oversized Baedal Ifrits shirt (his; he has enough of his stuff at Sunny's to get by, and vice versa), and his hands keep shaking and making it impossible to close the cap on the mouth wash he's trying to put away. The same thing happened with the hand soap, and the towel earlier. He doesn't make an issue out of it, he stills all movement when it happens, carefully making sure Sunny isn't looking directly at him. His desperation is well-acted, but there despite it; he's hiding something. He wants it go to away, he wants to ask Sunny a hundred things, and he wants his ability to communicate like a normal person (like Sunny is used to him being) to come back and for his nervous system not to be in shock.

He gets the cap back on, and sets the bottle back with a brittle sort of care. Like it might break.

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Jae squeezes Sunny's hand, though he's quiet for a long time - maybe not so long. But it feels like it, to him.

When he's finally feeling less like he's going to fall apart at any moment, Jae sits up, moving enough so that he can face Sunny somewhat. He's still clinging to his hand, and looking down at their entwined fingers.

"When we got out, I did things I don't remember. I know I did something that - it helped us, but I just.. don't remember. The woman who did most of it, Chaerin, told me afterwords that it was beautiful." He squeezes Sunny's hand more. "I thought it was so terrible that she'd say something like that but now I--"

He stalls a bit. Finally looks up, and his voice is quieter. "When I first saw you fighting, and when I see you now, I understand what she meant.

"I never thought I'd trust anyone again."

He isn't altogether sure what a good response is to that, because Jae's words please him in a fundamental kind of way, both in frivolous flattery as well as something stronger and hungrier. This final part, however, rewards Jae with Sunny's giving into compulsion; he smiles in a mellow gladness, hand gripping tighter again before deciding that's not enough, or quite right.

Sits smoothly and deliberately, a hand up to urge Jae's face closer to his so that he might kiss him with a sort of gentle firmness. Mumbled against Jae's mouth, there is humour in it even if Sunny means what he says with; "Same." For all that he hasn't suffered as Jae has, hasn't feared for the consequence of trusting, but putting investment in a single person is new and exciting, and trust is mutual.

It's too fast, especially for someone who's never been in a relationship before (not even one of those little fleeting fake ones as a kid), but Jae feels like he can't help himself. He was so unsure at first, as if there was some kind of betrayal happening, but - Sunny.

Jae wraps his arms around his shoulders, presses their foreheads together. He still feels unsettled and shaken in his core, emotionally exhausted from having to unload all of that, but now he feels - tritely, probably - that it's all going to be okay. He's never had the experience of comfort and support after something traumatic. He doesn't know if he can put how much he appreciates it into words.

Instead he gently tackles him back down against the mattress, and buries his face against Sunny's shoulder. Clinging a bit, affectionately, comfortably.

It gets a laugh, as it never really fails to, Sunny comfortable with flinging his arms around Jae and letting both cups of tea go cold. Maybe someone turns off the lamp before they sleep, maybe not, conversation dwindling into longer pauses in between.

Jae won't quite wake up alone. Sunny is intent on waiting for him to stir, having not... actually slept, perhaps a bit creepily. He is patient in that way, content to just lie unmoving for the duration of Jae to sleep off his exhaustion and let his own mind wander about what they haven't talked about. He thinks, maybe, he ought to tell Jae what exactly it is he finds beautiful, how much he knows about Prometheus and what happened and is happening in Russia. It's a wild rush of feeling, the urge to truth-tell, although only in the way water rapids are while the landscape remains unmoving beneath it. That part of him that was named Seo-Jin and likes Starcraft and likes being tackled to bed.

When Jae wakes up, Sunny is moving while he's still caught in the daze in between, his hand beneath Sunny's back as the smaller of the two rolls off bed to clear away stale tea, and investigate breakfast. It will be elaborate. Maybe. Or just indulgent.

He sleeps well, like he almost always seems to with Sunny - though maybe it's just because he's so wiped out. Sometimes he still has nightmares even when he goes to sleep feeling safe, but tonight he doesn't; out like a light, sticking to Sunny like a security blanket. Jae isn't aware that Sunny doesn't really sleep, though he does sense on some level that the other man isn't as involved with the hands-on grime-and-sweat mortal life like he is. He doesn't mind.

In the initial swimmy-headed moments of consciousness come morning, Jae attempts to prevent Sunny from fleeing the bed, making a monosyllabic noise of protest and clinging to his arm as he moves - but it's a failure, and he flops his hand back down after. A few more moments of warmth-seeking languish, and Jae decides that, yeah, he should probably at least brush his teeth before he attempts seduction this early in the morning. So he sits up, bed sheet over his shoulders like a cape, hair sticking up every which-way, eyes bleary. Sexy.

He yawns and rubs at his hair, listening to the noises from the kitchen and gathering a blanket around his shoulders, wrapped up. Screw moving. He says, "Good morning" through another yawn, and half-flops back down. "I hope you don't have work today." Because I'm going to make the saddest face in the world until you call in otherwise, his tone says. Jae sits for a while more, then something catches his eye; he knows Sunny's apartment pretty well, and most of the nick-knacks therein. Maybe it's just the morning light and this angle that makes it look different.

The mattress creaks a bit as Jae leans over, pressing it at an unusual diagonal, so that he can reach and pry something with slim fingers out from under a book in the nightstand. It's a quiet process, but not a silent one. When he sits back how he was, there's a tiny electronic beep. When he asks his question, his voice is still muddy, foggy, his brain not quite having shaken off sleep yet. Auto-pilot, innocent of the dots waiting to be connected.

"Where'd you find my phone?"

"I do not have work today," is in an automated 'yes dear' tone, a light joke by way of good morning. Sunny has the pan on, because he will make bacon, because he knows that Jae is an insane meat eater and he can't complain himself. Currently slicing some tomatoes to fry as well, to have on toast, and he twists a look over his shoulder to add, "Mainly to make sure you'll do the dishes for me."

Bright, exaggerated grin follows, before Sunny is back to his task. A new day ought to begin well, he thinks, because last night had a lot of-- gore, and then a lot of feelings. It's probably enough to drive a wedge in between two people as much as it might bring them closer together, conversely. He is pitching for one of those two things. By way of feeding his boyfriend.

But then there's that question. Where'd you find my phone?

Sunny goes still, mind already charging ahead to bypass the 'huh?' and the 'what phone?' part of the exchange, the fork he'd been using to navigate food partially raised even as he turns around to just look at Jae, marvelling as everything fits so neatly into place. He's happy, in response -- he wants to laugh, and Jae can probably see that, light firelight dancing behind Sunny's eyes.

"St. Kelley's," he says.

Even as he asks, the sleep-addled wheels are turning; Jae's still emotionally wrung-out from last night, and he feels like there's gum in the mechanisms of his thought process - but not enough to leave him clueless.

The look on his face is probably amazing, going from confusion to puzzlement to something like shock and wonder and then - panic, a little?! Uh.

Jae's phone isn't - wasn't - in Baedal. It didn't come with him, he remembers complaining about it, even if the initial sight of it (an unusual and kitschy designer case, dinged in familiar ways) lulled him into a false sense of security, an old habit of normalcy long-gone back on Earth. Sunny had his phone, his phone that's in London.

While Sunny was in - Russia.

Oh. Oh.

"It's a black Android," he says, though he's still staring at the rainbow polka dot iPhone clutched in his hand, expression tremulous. He's not holding an Android, it's back at his apartment, in a slim fabric cover underneath the book he arrived with, all in a box under his bed; he put it there after he got it for sending a note out on a little boat, which he'd lied about doing. Repeatedly.

Jae curls in on himself like he's been stung, one hand holding the phone against his chest like a lifeline and the other over his face - he still hasn't looked up. "Are you serious?"

Edited 2012-08-10 09:34 (UTC)

The fork in hand turns between creeping fingers, a show of nervousness, although-- if this inspires some sort of fall out for Jae, Sunny is reasonably sure he can wait it out. There can come a point where enough emotions kind of cancel one another out into a generic kind of white noise that's, well, unpleasant. He keeps smiling because--

He can't stop, actually, even if Jae is experiencing some alarm. "You got a black Android?" he asks, pointing with utensil, a peal of laughter following -- delighted, too, that there is a balance to it, and he hadn't seen that part coming.

"You're Kasu in England."

It's not unpleasant. It's just - so much. Jae feels at once like his chest is tightening so much he might not be able to breathe, and like he's coming apart at the seams; he'd never be able to articulate it even in his head and the boiled-over emotional sensation comes to be too much and -

- he leaves the phone on the bed and then he's up and across to the kitchen doorway Sunny's standing in (quick, faster than he should be able to move, but that's the furthest thing from his mind at present) and he nearly bowls him over with sudden, clinging contact. That coming-apart-inside feeling manifests in his magic, not wholly unlike how he was bleeding somewhere unseen when Sunny first met him in a beach-side dinner, but the difference is this doesn't hurt: his manipulative magic is sympathetic, now, the overflow of it surely something that Sunny can feel. He's happy, overjoyed even, shocked, overwhelmed. Jae's emotional batteries are so far past drained it's a wonder he can even be coherent.

"I'm Kasu on the internet," he corrects, and though his face is mashed against Sunny's shoulder, his choked-up voice and the fact that he's shaking a little betrays that he's actually crying (not while they were being attacked by a nightmarish monster, not while he was telling him about being a science experiment, this). "Only with-- Aja."

Everything makes so much sense now.

Eee. Sunny is swift to return embrace with as much zeal as if Kasu and Aja had just met IRL and in more normal circumstances, he'd imagined -- because he didn't worry too much about being a weird creepy daydream stalker about his Internet boyfriend -- they'd hug like this. Just as strongly, too, and Kasu would wonder why that was, but Jae knows better.

"We're the dorkiest dorks," he proclaims, happiness zippering tense and wavering in his voice, squeezed out through compulsive grin. A hand grips the back of Jae's head and he turns his own to place a kiss at the other man's temple.

Breakfast just sort of patiently cooks itself for a while.

"I figured the phone had to be yours. I mean, Kasu's. I really missed you." Which is super weird, in this context.

God help him, all he wants to do is hold Sunny and cry for an hour. He's unbelievably happy, but now he's shell shocked in the complete opposite direction of the night before - and part of him is panicking at the coincidence. This place that kidnapped him, traumatized him, has done this, proving beyond a shadow of a doubt - beyond familiar faces and apocalypses - that he's supposed to be here, guided by a fateful force whose only actions in the past have left him trapped or near death. A cell phone and someone smiling at him is turning his entire reality inside out.

Still, he's trying to reel it in, because he doesn't actively want to come off like some crazy emotional wreck, even though he doesn't really... understand... what his feelings are doing, right now. Jae's always been repressed, always kept it to himself; this is just hitting too many vulnerable places in him at once, and now his insides are in an avalanche. He rubs at his face with one hand and keeps the other arm around Sunny's shoulders, protective and sheltered at once.

"I kept worrying about being a traitor," he says, still choked up and not-quite looking at him, torn between wanting to meet his eyes finally and being embarrassed about having suddenly burst into tears. "But I liked you too much. I never like anybody, I should have known."

Both arms around Sunny's shoulders again, and Jae ducks his head close, feeling like they're on an island of - something, something where everything else is far away, every noise, every smell. Dreamlike. He pulls back enough to look at him at last. "This is - I'm not asleep - I mean this is real?" Pleading, too earnest to let his embarrassment smother the childish question; he realizes as he contemplates the surreal feeling that he must have dreamed this, before, the focused memory of it melting away in the morning but the feeling remaining coiled in his head. Sunny being Aja, every part of everything he wanted out of a companion existing as one person right in front of him. It shouldn't be real. It's too good to be real.

But it has to be. (The way his hands tighten, fingers curl, at the back of Sunny's neck, say just how badly he needs it to be.)

Edited 2012-08-11 19:56 (UTC)

Sunny isn't crying, but he keeps wanting to laugh; sometimes he does, small expressions of giddiness, like when Jae says he was worried, because Sunny was worried too, in his own way. His hands settle on Jae's shoulders when the other man eventually pulls back, remaining close.

"Really real, that's why it's awesome. Wait. I can't believe I was Internet stalking you in like two ways already," he says, suddenly, slightly alarmed as his hands lift off Jae's shoulders to plant on his own face (as if he were capable of feeling shame). "I was chatting to DJ Kim the whole time, that's so weird."

--which he knows is the shallow and lulzy end of the spectrum in comparison to having everything he liked about Kasu and got out of that interaction transplanted into Baedal just for him somehow, but it really needed to be said. And maybe Jae could stand to laugh too.

And Jae does laugh, a little, one of those genuine but still a little hypersensitive ones - but the somewhat pathetically wet look in his eyes is more obviously happy tears!! now. Jae lays his hands flat against Sunny's chest, tugging slightly at his shirt in an almost teasing motion at his sudden faux-embarrassment.

"You were so cute," he says, hands moving to his hips (a sign that he's calming down, not clinging so literally). "On the network." When he showed up, when they spoke for the first time, his gleeful flailing and demand for a do-over.

(You had him at hello!!)

"I-Oh, shit." Bacon is transforming itself into slightly burnt bacon, Jae leans over to see what he's distracted Sunny from doing.

His hands come up to take Jae's face between his palms which has at least three purposes; 1) he greases away any shed tears, smearing their tracks into indefinite dampness, 2) he steers Jae's attention away from his failed attempt at breakfast, and 3) he can kiss him again like so, brief but intense and insistent.

"It got me lunch," Sunny says. On being cute. "And I'm going to save the house from being set on fire, hold all of those thoughts."

Finally, he breaks away, turns off the heat of the stove top, waves a hand to dismiss some of the collected smoke.

Edited 2012-08-12 22:24 (UTC)

Jae takes a moment when Sunny turns, first merely hovering then leaning forward, pressing a kiss to the back of his neck and then resting his forehead against the back of his shoulder for a moment, hands still at his hips but backwards, now. "M'gonna brush my teeth," he says, unusual in that it's in English and they converse almost exclusively in Korea; he really is tired, floating about between languages like that without realizing it. (Sometimes, if he's stressed and can't think of a word, he'll default to one in Japanese in his head and end up furious; why he looks so mad when he stumbles over his words is a mystery, to most people.)

Taking a minute to collect himself is probably A Good Idea, so he does, even though he doesn't really want to leave Sunny (his hands part last, when he steps away). Jae looks in the mirror and oh, yes, he looks like an absolute wreck, awesome. So he puts himself together, breathes, runs the water for a bit longer than he needs to, staring at himself until he looks less like he's going to shatter into a million pieces (he doesn't have any closets left to crack open, surely he has to start coming back around, now).

It's a minor victory that he doesn't come out of the bathroom expecting the world to have reverted to how it was before Sunny-is-Aja (he looks - briefly, stealthily, but he does - to make sure his phone still exists where he left it).

Jae doesn't say anything and watches Sunny in the kitchen, not sure what he should be thinking, but-

-He feels pretty good.

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