jewelledhours | [donghae-centric] trips to nowhere

trips to nowhere by

catskilt
donghae-centric; friendship donghae/sungmin, donghae/eunhyuk
g; 634 words
airports are not train stations, and hotels are not a home.
set during the hectic oct-dec months of sj-m in 2009.

In and out, check-in and check-out, baggage rows, cold leather transit lounge seats, in and out, up and down.

Hello, says the air stewardess, your boarding pass please.

Taipei in the morning, back to Beijing for the night, says the manager.

Ge, says Henry, eyes shadowed with fatigue, I wish I could go to sleep and not wake up until next year.

He's so tired. Airports are not train stations; boarding a plane is not like getting on a train. Hotels are not a home; a featureless room with neutral bedsheets and a marble-top bathroom sink is not the cosy half-white room he shares with Jungsu hyung, who mutters in the night and cries out and lets him creep into bed with him, cold feet and all.

He misses Jungsu so much he sometimes feels like opening his mouth and wailing like the kind of spoilt little boy whom everyone hates. He misses Donghee laughing in the kitchen trying to make apple juice with the blender in the kitchen, and Heechul getting scratched by Heebum when attempting to give him a bath. Visits are not enough; sometimes he barely sees them except at the event they're all attending and then he's off again, bundled into some groaning van moving onwards to yet another airport and another airplane and another cream-coloured, bland hotel room.

Passport and boarding pass, says the airline ticket agent at the check-in counter, a pretty young woman with a heavily powdered face.

He watches her tag his luggage and move it onto the conveyor belt. He's not quite sure where he's flying from, or where he's flying to. He's in some city where they speak a foreign language and the accent is strange on his ears, sounds nothing like the Chinese he practises at with his language tutor. Wo hao lei, he thinks; wonders how they say that in this city, whether there's another word they use for this drained, exhausted, dried out feeling.

It'll get better, Hyukjae says over the phone. The schedule will slow down and you won't have to run around so much from city to city anymore.

He wants to curl up on the sofa in the 12th floor dorm, watch the night lights of Seoul dim and brighten at him, sip hot chocolate and ease himself into Hyukjae's warm side. Watch the flickering lights on the television screen and the changing expressions on Hyukjae's face as they fight aliens or fall in love through the internet or save the world from the ambitions of a madman, all during those two hours between four and six am when GMT+9 is asleep and they're taking it slow in a world that glories in rush.

I want to go home, he says to Sungmin, when he calls the 11th floor dorm at midnight and Sungmin is the only one around.

Sungmin doesn't say anything. There's a bit of disturbance on the phone line, a sound of things moving about, and then he hears a few bars on the guitar. He doesn't recognise the tune, maybe it's Sungmin's new concoction or practice melody, but it's soft and yearning and makes him want to cry. He's sitting in the transit area with Zhou Mi and Ryeowook snoozing on either side of him and he's crying, listening to Sungmin's music, thinking of Korea and kimchi and barbequed meat and Teukie hyung crying out in his sleep and Youngwoon walking his dog by the beach, waiting for the day he can return to Super Junior.

Sungmin stops playing and a moment later his voice filters through from Korea to China. Home is always here for you, he says.

A voice booms overhead, telling them to board the plane. Donghae closes his handphone and gets up.

It's time for yet another trip to nowhere.

---

written way back in october last year, and entirely forgotten about until now. this is really a meek attempt at reviving this fic journal ;_;

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

microlight.livejournal.com

Oh my, this is so lovely. You really capture the sense of fatigue. I especially liked the repetition of the travel imagery; it was enough to give a hopeless, useless feeling without being too much. Great work.

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[donghae-centric] trips to nowhere

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