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“I love you the most, sweetheart.”
The words land like the kisses Changbin bestows on his skin. Sweet. Fluttery. Filling Hyunjin with an unspeakable, unnameable joy, one he will never be able to verbalise.
He giggles. Turns around in the cage of Changbin’s arms and kisses him back, blushing from head to curling toes, nosing up against Changbin’s face.
“I love you too,” Hyunjin whispers. He kisses Changbin and kisses him and can’t stop kissing him, drawing him closer until they’re pressed against each other with nowhere else to go, until Hyunjin wishes he could climb into Changbin’s skin and stay there, cradled in his warmth, nestled right up against the strong pounding of his blood-warm heart.
Changbin reaches around him and blindly flicks the stove off. “You’re going to burn something down,” he admonishes, but it’s lost under Hyunjin pressing insistently forward again, laughing, practically floating with the delight of the taste of Changbin on his tongue.
“I love you,” Hyunjin repeats. He’s got Changbin up against the opposite counter. His lips are starting to hurt from how hard they’re kissing. Not even the Earth splitting in half could tear him away now.
“I love you too,” Changbin murmurs. “I love you, I love you, I love—”
“Hyunjin. Hyunjin. Wake up.”
Hyunjin startles awake to Changbin standing over him with Hyunjin’s phone in his hand. Changbin’s head is tilted, staring down at him. “You weren’t waking up,” he says. “Your alarm was loud.”
“Oh.” Hyunjin rubs his eyes and holds his hand out for his phone. “Sorry, let me turn it off.”
Changbin doesn’t hand the phone over. “It was loud,” he repeats. A tiny crinkle forms between his eyebrows. His eyes dim, take on a hint of emotion. “Really loud.”
Abruptly, Hyunjin sits up and snatches the phone away from Changbin, his heart suddenly hammering. “Right, I’m sorry. Sorry, baby. I didn’t realise.” He turns his phone off and shoves it under his pillow. Changbin’s eyes follow it. He doesn’t move for a long moment, face eclipsed with a unsettling stillness. Hyunjin watches him, dread and fear coalescing into a solid rock in his gut.
“Baby.” He reaches out cautiously. Takes Changbin’s cold hand in his own. “It’s off. There won’t be any more loud noise. I’m sorry.”
Changbin doesn’t look at him. He’s still staring at the pillow. His jaw is tight. The veins in his eyes darken, face shadowed.
“Changbin,” Hyunjin repeats. He squeezes his hand. “Baby, look at me.”
A long pause and then Changbin’s eyes flick over to him.
“No more alarms,” Hyunjin says, trying to keep his voice calm and even. “Okay?”
Something in Changbin eases. His eyes lose dimension and go back to their flat gaze. The shadows recede.
“I made you breakfast,” Changbin says finally. He turns and his hand slides out of Hyunjin’s grip. “You’re going to be late for work.”
Hyunjin watches him leave, heart still pounding.
When he comes downstairs fifteen minutes later, hastily dressed and still damp from the shower, Changbin is sitting as far from the kitchen as the dining table will allow. On the table sits a bowl of cereal and an apple, just like every morning. Sometimes, if it’s a good day, Changbin will make him a smoothie. But he doesn’t like to stay in the kitchen for long and Hyunjin doesn’t press.
“Thank you for breakfast, baby,” he says. Changbin doesn’t reply, but he watches Hyunjin eat hastily and pocket the apple for later. “Are you going to work today?”
Changbin tilts his head. “Maybe.” He doesn’t say anything else. He doesn’t say much these days. Doesn’t laugh. Rarely smiles. He’s still and cold when Hyunjin leans down to kiss him goodbye at the front door. He used to run so hot—almost blisteringly so—and Hyunjin, despite his propensity for sweating even in mild weather, would lean into him and press his cold hands under his shirt, against his stomach, just to make him shriek.
Now, he doesn’t lean into Hyunjin. He kisses back, as if it’s an afterthought, and he doesn’t smile when Hyunjin waves from his car.
Only after Hyunjin is down the street and well away from their home does he finally turn his phone back on. It’s his fault for not hearing the alarm. He hates what it does to Changbin. How it brings him close to his last memory. How it twists him into something wholly unfamiliar. Close to monstrous.
At the first red light, Hyunjin puts his head down against the steering wheel and allows himself one shaky, shuddering exhale.
Hyunjin doesn’t know how long he’s been sitting here. He meant to stay later, to catch up on the work he’d left by the wayside in the last few months. It wasn’t like there was any reason to go home. The office is dark now, quiet and empty, the yawning shadows stretching over the floor like creeping fingers.
Hyunjin eyes them and then turns back to his desk. The ever present numbness threatens to drown him. He can’t remember the last time he felt—anything.
His hands go mechanically to the keyboard and then fall back down to his side.
The time reads 8:23. He’s lost an hour just sitting here. He can’t figure out if he’s awake or not.
“Are you okay?”
Time seems to snap back into motion. Hyunjin looks up from his desk. One of the interns, Jeongin—he thinks—is standing there, staring down at him. “What?”
“Are you okay?” Jeongin repeats. He doesn’t seem perturbed by Hyunjin sitting here alone. Hyunjin wonders what an intern is doing here. “It’s really late.”
Oh. Hyunjin looks back at his computer screen, which has gone black. He didn’t realise. He looks back up at Jeongin. “I’m fine.” He’s back at work three months after Changbin’s—after the accide—after the fire—
It’s been three months. He’s fine. He’s fine.
What else can he be?
He’s fine.
Jeongin doesn’t move. “Your husband died,” he says and Hyunjin flinches.
“What?” He asks, almost uncomprehending at first, and then an anger and grief rises from the depth of his body, so strong that he starts trembling. His vision starts to blur at the edges and he can hear his blood pounding in his ears. “What the fuck?”
Jeongin only stares at him, unmoving. “I can help,” he says. “If you want to feel better, I mean.”
“I don’t want any drugs,” Hyunjin spits. “Get the fuck away from me.”
“Not drugs.” Jeongin takes a step forward. His hip brushes Hyunjin’s desk and Hyunjin jerks away, the back of his chair hitting the wall. He hates that he took the corner desk. Before it used to be a good thing—he could sit and text Changbin under his desk and no one would be the wiser. Now, he feels isolated. The air conditioner blasts over him. He wears thick sweaters to work every day and he still feels the cold, down to his aching bones.
There’s no one around. The office sits, silent and empty, still, as if holding its breath. As if in anticipation.
Jeongin is still staring at him. “No pills. No pamphlets. No false promises. I can help. If you’d like. I can make your wish come true.”
His wish. His greatest wish. The only thing Hyunjin ever wishes for anymore is Changbin. His hands tremble. He brings them up to his cross necklace, holding it tight in one fist. The metal cuts into his skin.
“Really?” An owl hoots somewhere in the distance.
Jeongin’s gaze fixes on his hand. His eyes are so black. Hyunjin has never noticed that before. Black and unmoving.
“Really. I promise.”
Changbin has ordered dinner when Hyunjin gets home.
They eat quietly in front of the television. When Hyunjin glances over, it looks like Changbin is staring through the screen. He eats mechanically. One scoop of rice. One spoon of soup. Alternating one by one.
“Do you want to watch something else?” Hyunjin asks.
Changbin looks over. “We can watch what you want.”
“We can watch whatever you want, baby. I just want to be here with you.”
Hyunjin turns back to the screen, blinking back a sudden burning in his eyes. “Okay,” he says quietly. “This is fine, then.”
There’s no dishes except for the cereal bowl and Hyunjin washes that up along with the plastic bowls to toss into the recycling. Changbin hovers at the edge of the kitchen and Hyunjin glances over his shoulder.
“You don’t have to stay, baby,” he says carefully. “You can go upstairs, I’ll be done soon.”
Changbin’s eyes flick to the stove and then back to him. He shakes his head, one short aborted movement and remains where he is, knuckles white where he’s gripping the wall.
Hyunjin turns back to the sink and takes a shuddering breath. The tears have already arrived and he bites into his lower lip to stop the sob from escaping. Wonders if this would have been easier if he hadn’t rebuilt the house. If Changbin would have been better off in a new place. He finishes up the dishes quickly through blurred eyes and turns the tap off, hastily scrubbing at his face before he turns back to Changbin.
Changbin hasn’t moved. When Hyunjin nears, he reaches for him. Stunned, Hyunjin freezes and lets Changbin touch his wet face.
“You’re crying.” Changbin’s fingers trail down his cheek. He looks at Hyunjin. “Because of me.” Maybe it’s meant to be a question, but Changbin’s inflection is flat.
Hyunjin sniffs. “No, of course not, baby.”
Changbin’s hand drops lower. Palm resting against Hyunjin’s heart. He frowns slightly. Presses harder. “I don’t feel like that.”
“What—what do you mean?” Hyunjin wipes at his eyes, pushes his hair away from his face.
Changbin touches his own chest and then presses back against Hyunjin’s. “You feel warm.”
Something cold and viscous drips into Hyunjin’s lungs, akin to the slow coagulation of dread. An icy-white foreboding that always seems to exist around Changbin. He hates the sensation. How Changbin makes him feel now—always slightly afraid.
“What?” He reaches for Changbin and only then does he realise that this is the first time he’s touched Changbin in months. They don’t touch anymore—not really. Not outside quick kisses. Brushes of hands. Of shoulders.
They used to be inseparable and now the mere sensation of Changbin’s hand against his chest, is making Hyunjin reel back, breathless, consumed once again by a grief that never really left him. He stands there for so long, fighting back another onslaught of tears, that he doesn’t remember why he’s about to touch Changbin in the first place, his hands hovering over him, unsure of if he’s allowed this basic instinct.
Changbin stares at him. “Do you see?”
“What?” Hyunjin asks. “Oh—no, wait.” He presses his hand into Changbin’s shirt, seeking a heartbeat that doesn’t exist. The emptiness jars him.
Hyunjin jumps back, hand falling to his side. “Oh.” It’s a paltry response but Changbin doesn’t seem to care that Hyunjin is wordless once again. Once again, choking back a lump in his throat. Once again holding his cross tight in his hand, feeling his heart pound hard against his chest.
“We don’t feel the same.”
Hyunjin’s lower lip trembles. “It’s okay.” He inches forward. Changbin doesn’t move, stands still and cold while Hyunjin reaches for him. “It’s okay, baby. We don’t have to be the same.”
“We don’t.”
“No, of course not.” Hyunjin shudders. Tears are falling down his face again and he makes no move to wipe them away. Can’t pull his hands away from Changbin, from his still heart. “No, I love you. It’s okay.”
Changbin stares at him unblinking. “You love me.”
“More than anything in the world,” Hyunjin whispers. He shuffles closer and wraps Changbin up in a hug. “I love you so much.”
Changbin doesn’t hold him back. It’s enough to shake Hyunjin apart. He buries his wet face in Changbin’s neck and clutches his still body and tries to pretend like he can’t smell the faint scent of cold, stale air that clings to Changbin like a second skin.
“Hyunjinnie, I don’t think this is a good idea,” Felix whispers, not for the first time that evening. They’re on the outskirts of town, at the abandoned church that had burnt down over twenty years ago, stepping carefully over burnt dead grass and piles of debris.
Hyunjin looks at the scorch marks on the crumbled facade and feels bile rise up in his throat. He looks away and pushes at the gate. It creaks open slowly, an eerie screeching sound ricocheting through the empty yard.
The layout of the church grounds are oddly similar to the graveyard they buried Changbin at. He didn’t have a will, nor had he ever mentioned to Hyunjin what he’d like—it’s not like they walked around talking about their inevitable death. Hyunjin buried him under a massive oak tree in a corner plot, and started crying so hard during the ceremony, he was unable to stand to throw the fistful of dirt over Changbin’s coffin.
They cross through the yard and pause outside the entrance of the church. One of the doors is gone while the other hangs off its hinges, almost parallel to the floor. The inside is dark. A shadowed figure waits at the end.
“Hyunjin,” Felix whispers again. A small hand clutches at Hyunjin’s sleeve. “I really—”
“I know, Lix, okay? I know. But I can’t just—” Hyunjin’s breath catches. It hurts to swallow around the dam lodged in his throat. “It’s been hell. I wake up and I’m in hell and I spend every second of every day just thinking about him and wishing for him and—and hating myself for what I did—”
Felix’s eyes are shimmering, huge and wet. “Hyunjinnie, you didn’t do anything wrong—”
Hyunjin shakes his head wildly. “It doesn’t matter. I was so close to giving up and if I can just—if this will just bring him—if there’s even a chance, I have to take it. I have to.”
Felix sniffs. His hand wraps around Hyunjin’s arm and squeezes. “Okay. Okay. I’m right here. I’ve got you.”
They step through the entrance tentatively. Jeongin is waiting at the front, watching them draw near.
“Did you bring it?”
His hand is shaking too hard to pull his wedding ring off. After a few seconds, Felix reaches over, gently takes his left hand, and slides it off for him. He hands it to Jeongin and then steps back, hand going to his cross necklace. Hyunjin looks away from his ring resting in Jeongin’s hand. He loves that ring, the white gold band, the inscription around the inside, the curved edge where it fit perfectly against the stone of his engagement ring. Changbin had gone through seven iterations of designs with their jeweler before finding one that fit. After he’d proposed he’d shown Hyunjin all of them, and every single one made Hyunjin fall in love with him more.
“What are you going to do?” Hyunjin whispers. The moonlight spills over the broken remains: the concrete rubble, the broken and burned pews, the shattered windows.
Jeongin’s eyes are dark, reflecting none of it. He closes his hand around Hyunjin’s wedding ring. “I’m going to bring him back. Just like you wanted.”
Whatever magic—evil, curses, whatever—Jeongin did had somehow fixed it all. Changbin was back and no one seemed to remember that he’d died. No one except Hyunjin and Felix. His grave remained though, at the base of the oak tree that was slowly turning orange and gold and brown as summer gave over to fall and the air turned colder, the days shorter.
“This feels so weird,” Felix says. “I know he’s alive. I saw him on the couch two hours ago but it still feels like…” He trails off but Hyunjin can finish the sentence for him. Like he’s buried here. Like there’s a body under the ground. Like he shouldn’t be alive.
He leans down and brushes the leaves off the top of the gravestone. The inscription is simple. Hyunjin hadn’t been able to think of anything poetic or beautiful. He’d been too busy trying not to join Changbin. If it hadn’t been for Felix, he probably would have.
“Are you going to get rid of it?”
A dark stone, inscribed with nine words. Changbin Seo. Loved and loved and loved even more.
Hyunjin shakes his head. “I can’t.”
Felix doesn’t question him. Instead, he reaches over to take Hyunjin’s hand and tugs him upright. “Let’s get you home then. To your actual husband.”
To his husband. Alive and well in only the barest definition. Is it still Changbin if he doesn’t smile? If his eyes don’t light up anymore? If he doesn’t kiss Hyunjin, touch Hyunjin, love Hyunjin?
Is that still his husband?
Hyunjin sits quietly in the passenger seat and looks out the window, watching the streets buzz by in a blur of white and red and gray. It had taken months to get their house restored again, but Hyunjin had been so glad to come home. To return to the same bright yellow door, and the slippery wood staircase. To the overgrown grass in the front lawn and the old windows that drip condensation in the summer.
When he enters the living room, Changbin looks up at him. He doesn’t appear to have been doing anything. Maybe he was just waiting for Hyunjin to come home. Sitting in the exact same place Hyunjin left him, with those blank, glassy eyes staring at the same patch of wall.
He doesn’t smile and he doesn’t leap up to greet Hyunjin. Doesn’t push him against the entryway and kiss him deeply. He doesn’t do anything, but Hyunjin still loves him anyway. Foolishly, helplessly, desperately so. It’s not his Changbin, but it’s close enough—he’s close enough and that’s all that matters.
Before Hyunjin had climbed out of the car, Felix had looked over and asked in a halting, fearful voice, “Are you really okay, Hyunjinnie? Is he okay?”
He’s not. Neither of them are. Hyunjin sits down next to Changbin and reaches over to take his cold hand in his own.
Changbin doesn’t interlace their fingers. He stares down at their hands. “Are you happy. That I’m back.”
Hyunjin looks at him. At the scar on his chin. The curve of his jaw. His curly hair that hasn’t grown an inch since he came back—since Hyunjin arrived at the burnt down bones of their house on the same night that Jeongin took his wedding ring and found Changbin standing in the middle of their kitchen, still and covered in soot.
Happy? Is Hyunjin happy?
“Are you happy to be back?”
As soon as he says it, he knows it’s a stupid question. But he has to know. If this thing that walks like Changbin—resembles him in form and function–if this person, this apparition, wants to be here. If there is something inside him that will breathe what the old Changbin would have wanted—if he would have wanted this for himself—for them both.
Changbin looks at him. “I don’t know.”
Hyunjin nods. He’s trembling all over again but for once, the tears don’t come. He squeezes Changbin’s hand. “I don’t regret what I did,” he says. Confesses. “Not one bit. I know I should. I know I should have let you move on—that I should have moved on, but I couldn’t. I can’t imagine a life without you. I won’t. I can’t.”
“Because you love me.”
Hyunjin presses his lips together. “Yes. Because I love you.”
Changbin nods once as if processing that, accepting it. And he doesn’t say anything else. Hyunjin doesn’t either. He sits on the couch and holds Changbin’s hand and is pathetically, stupidly grateful to whatever it was that let him have this. At least he has this.
“That isn’t him.”
“I know.”
“Hyunjinnie.”
“I know. I know. But what can I do? I didn’t have him and now—now I do.”
“He wasn’t meant to come back.”
The cross cuts into Hyunjin’s palm. He doesn’t look away from Changbin, standing by the window, unmoving and pale.
“I don’t care.”
Changbin doesn’t go into the kitchen if he can help it. He can’t stand the heat anymore—not even a balmy seventy degrees and the house is always kept freezing cold. He doesn’t work but his parents had died early in his twenties and left him a sizeable sum. Enough that Hyunjin doesn’t technically need to go to work but he does, anyway. He needs the space from Changbin and his unsettling quiet. His unblinking eyes. Even if he doesn’t regret it, anxiety and dread still flutter at his chest like trapped birds.
He still goes to sleep and dreams about Changbin’s burnt body lying in the morgue, his blistered skin, the exposed muscle, how red and raw he was all over. He wakes up and sees a living version of it walking around his mausoleum of a house, untouched and perfect. Not a single scar on him, not even the dimple on his chin from when he cracked his jaw into the ground after falling off a skateboard as a kid. It’s his Changbin—one that is wholly untouched. Inhuman.
He needs the space. Jeongin isn’t around anymore and Hyunjin doesn’t question it. He hadn’t shown up for work the day after Changbin’s appearance and no one ever mentioned it. It was as if he’d only existed to Hyunjin. A fragment of an apparition that flitted away as soon as it extracted what it wanted from him.
Hyunjin looks down at his bare finger with the tan line from his absent ring.
His greatest wish.
“You’re afraid of me.”
Hyunjin startles. He turns. Changbin is standing in their bathroom, too-long pajamas brushing the floor. Most of his clothes had been lost in the fire. Hyunjin had too but he’d had time in between Changbin’s death and his resurrection. He’d dug into their savings to rebuild the house, even though Felix had made unsure noises about him moving somewhere new. He’d bought new clothes, printed out and replaced old pictures. He hasn’t gotten around to doing the same for Changbin; he wears a lot of Hyunjin’s things now.
“I’m not,” Hyunjin says. The lie twangs through him like a broken string. “Of course not.”
Changbin tilts his head. “I scare you. I can hear it.”
Hear his heartbeat? The way his breath catches? The everpresent dread drip, drip, dripping into his stomach into a growing pool of hurt and grief that doesn’t ever feel like it’ll evaporate? Hyunjin doesn’t want to know.
Hyunjin puts down his toothbrush and steps close to Changbin. “You don’t scare me,” he repeats. He takes Changbin’s hand and pulls it up to his chest, to his thundering heart. Maybe if Hyunjin says it out loud enough, it’ll become true.
“I love you,” he says and Changbin’s fingers spasm ever so slightly on his bare skin. Hyunjin wonders what it is he hears now.
Hyunjin’s not home when it happens.
He hates himself for it.
Sometimes he wishes he had been there. Then they could have at least died together.
He’s pretty sure Changbin doesn’t sleep anymore.
When he goes to sleep, he’s turned away from Changbin, too afraid to look at him. The way he rests on the bed, back flat, staring up at the ceiling unblinkingly. He doesn’t have dark circles or any signs of exhaustion but Changbin is utterly untouched by all of it. Stoic and static no matter what happens, no matter how much time passes from his death.
When he wakes, he’s always pressed up against Changbin. His face against his cold skin. His hand clutched in his shirt, around his waist, on his arm. Holding onto something that doesn’t really exist.
Changbin looks down at him with those flat eyes. “You’re awake.”
Hyunjin rubs at his eyes. The nightmare still lingers at the edge of his mind. The endless shrieking of the fire alarm. The house filled with smoke. Changbin disoriented and burning alive. Sleep refuses to let him go and he pushes closer into Changbin’s body, clinging to him, fingers digging into his side seeking comfort.
“Why didn’t you get up?” He mumbles. Changbin’s usually out of bed before Hyunjin even wakes.
“You were crying out.”
Hyunjin frowns. “I was?”
“You kept saying my name.”
Hyunjin stills, suddenly wide awake. “Oh,” he says, hand falling away from Changbin. He scoots back to catch a better glimpse of Changbin’s face. “Well, I—”
“Were you dreaming about me dying?”
Hyunjin is suddenly nauseous. Changbin is staring at him, unblinking.
“Yes,” he confesses quietly. His hands fist in the sheets. “I dream about it all the time.”
“What do you dream of?”
Hyunjin hesitates. His stomach roils. It’s always been hard to lie to Changbin. “I—” Sometimes I dream about our house burning and I can hear you screaming and I run and run and run and I never make it in time. I dream and wonder and wish you’d left—I don’t know why you stayed. I think about how terrified you must have been when you died. The words won’t come. Something like heartburn is crawling up his throat, making tears burn at the back of his eyes. “Changbin, I—I can’t.” His voice cracks. “I—” Once again his voice fails him and he shudders, burying his face in his hands. He’s crying again. He never seems to stop crying these days.
“I’m sorry,” Hyunjin whispers when he can finally regain control of his voice. “I wish I could tell you—but…”
“It’s okay. I love you, sweetheart.”
Hyunjin freezes. Ice trickles down his veins and his heart skips several beats. He looks up through tears. “What?”
Changbin is still staring at him. “I love you, sweetheart,” he repeats, utterly toneless.
Hyunjin opens his mouth and all that he manages is a shuddering, wet gasp. Tears spill down his face in earnest, burning their way down his cheeks. “I love you too,” he whispers. He reaches for Changbin and pulls him tight to his chest, burying his face in Changbin’s curls. Changbin doesn’t hold him back but this—this is enough. This is all he needs. “I love you,” he says, muffled and thick and something in him breaking into a million, irreparable pieces. I need you. Don’t ever leave me again. I can’t ever let you go. “More than anything else in the world.”
Changbin doesn’t reply.