a/n: long paragraphs and possible tears
(also, the bold is minho's writing, and the italics are flashbacks. just saying to prevent confusion)
Dearest Taemin,
Remember when I saved your life?
Minho had no idea of what was in store for him when he stepped out onto the street that rainy night, annoyed by the lack of peace, quiet and edible food in his household. Roughly grabbing a nearby coat which he later noticed was his father's, but was too lazy to go back to change it, he had stormed outside angrily, not even noticing the hammering rain until he was soaking to his flesh. Yet, he didn't stop walking, the flashbacks of the fights and arguments still bouncing around his brain.
I don't need you anymore!
Just get out of my house!
Don't touch me! I'm calling the police!
It was always the same every 12:45am, when his father returned from drinking from his friends or doing whatever the fuck he did when he wasn't home. His mother, a sick, frail woman who was getting frailer by the day, was sick of it, and Minho's tolerance levels were starting to falter too. He hated the fights, hated listening to his parents' curses, hated putting up with his father's drunken stupor. He hated it, all of it, and the only way he could genuinely empty his mind was to run, at one in the morning, in the lonely, freezing cold streets of Seoul.
Minho didn't even feel the piercing cold of the rain as it hit him.
He ran, the flashbacks and shoutings bouncing around in his mind.
He had been doing this for a while now; he had planned a simple route, a rectangle around the neighbourhood large enough to drain his anger and with it his energy.
He ignored the screaming of his muscles and the aching of feet and ran, ran until the raindrops mixed with the sweat on his forehead and his clothes were drenched with moisture he couldn't identify. The dark, lonely streets of Seoul accepted him with wide, welcoming arms, and Minho ran into them, desperately trying to rid himself of the memories that haunted him.
Normally he would have taken the left street which would have eventually led him back to his street, but he followed his instinct and continued his run up the road. He had never been on it and didn't know where it led to, but it would delay his arrival and Minho wanted to stay out as much as he possibly could. The shoutings in his mind weren't fading away anytime soon.
He ended up running across the shore, where the inviting smell of sea salt and sand beckoned to him. He ended up jogging across the beach shore, and slowed to a walk at the inviting smell of sea salt and sand and the vicious crashing of the waves. His steps decelerated and eventually stopped altogether and he crumbled into a shivering heap in the middle of the car-park. If anyone saw him, surely they would have thought he was mad.
"Choi Minho's the name," he would have told them, grinning as he panted. "They might be crazy, but I'm not."
He was unsure how long he lay there, just watching the waves form and break again, until he spotted the lonely figure walk down the pier. At first he assumed it was a mere fisherman, but then his mind pointed out that it was the dead of night and that the waves were raging. Curious, he ignored the screaming of his muscles and stood up shakily, making his way towards the lone figure.
He was only a few steps into his journey before a cold possibility halted him in his tracks. What if it was a drunk? No-one in their right mind would be so close to the beach at this time of the hour, when the waves were at their peak and ready to swallow anyone who as much as tried to approach them. He made up his mind and prepared to turn back home, but it was then when he saw the stranger spread his arms, allowing the feeling of the overpowering wind to overwhelm him.
It took Minho a moment of two to notice the stranger was inching closer and closer to the end of the pier, and his brain kicked into auto-pilot and he shot to his feet, sprinting as fast as he could go to the lone person.
The person didn't notice him until Minho grabbed him from the back of his jacket and yanked his backwards. He heard a shrill scream as the stranger fell onto Minho's wet chest, and once he realised what was going on, he thrashed and fought Minho's strong arms.
"Don't you dare!" Minho yelled, pulling the boy towards him, away from the monstrous waves.
"Let me go! Let me go right now!"
Minho didn't let go. He wouldn't let this person kill himself, whoever it was.
The angry shouting and lashing didn't end for another half an hour or so, then Minho curiously eyed the stranger's face to see if he was still conscious. It turned out to be a boy after all – couldn't be any older than Minho, really – but he couldn't see his facial features from the lack of light. He did, however, notice the tears when they came streaming down his face and onto his oversized jacket.
You were so young. You didn't deserve the pain you went through.
Minho learned after a week or so that the boy's name was Taemin. His mother had died at an early age, leaving Taemin with an alcoholic, abusive father who couldn't care less about his seven-year-old son. Minho felt bad for Taemin, but a different side of him was glad that he had found someone who felt the same as he did.
Taemin's father's income started to drop steadily as jobs became rarer and rarer. People wanted responsible people to work for them, and Mr. Lee was everything but. Eventually, he just left his home and everything in it—including his growing debts and ten-year-old Taemin.
Taemin decided to live by himself, stealing his food and occasionally hanging out with a street musician, dancing for some coins as an income. It wasn't long before the police found out about him, and very soon after that Taemin was forced into a children's home, along with hundreds of other children who had shared fates as bad as Taemin's or almost worse.
Taemin couldn't stand the children there. They bullied him for being so scrawny for his age and girls looked down on him because he was so weak. He was the runt of the litter. Even the adults neglected him time to time. Eventually, at the age of thirteen, Taemin decided he couldn't take it anymore. Gathering the little amount of items he had, he snuck away from the children's home. It was back to the streets for Taemin, but he was becoming growingly used to it.
He made a friend when he was fifteen, a little girl named Hanna who was homeless like he. She never told Taemin what happened to her or her family – she could barely speak, to start off with – and when Taemin turned sixteen he found her dead on the floor under the big oak tree on the outskirts of the forest—their hideout. Her fragile little body had been ripped apart by a wild animal that had emerged from the depths of the forest for some fresh meat. There was blood everywhere. It sickened Taemin right to his stomach. Another year of living alone scarred him even more. He decided, on the twenty-fifth of June, that he wasn't strong enough anymore to handle this burden called life.
He was going to end it for himself, end all the pain, but he couldn't, because Minho had saved him at the last minute.
Minho had taken him into his home but kept the boy secret from his parents. It took a while to persuade Taemin to start a new life in Minho's attic, but seeing as there was nothing else left for him to do, Taemin agreed, and allowed Minho to carry the younger boy to his home. Sneaking him in wasn't hard. Minho's mother was sobbing in her room and his father had passed out on the kitchen floor. The older boy was used to it by now.
He fed Taemin, clothed him and made him promise that he wouldn't leave and befriend Taemin until they were old enough to leave the Choi's household and start a life of their own.
Neither boy had any idea of what that promise would hold for them in the future.
Two times Taemin tried to run away, both times Minho caught him. On the second time, Taemin had tried the attic windows to run away, and Minho ended up locking them both to prevent the boy's escape.
He didn't know why he was so drawn to the younger boy. He just was.
But then it all went away. It went away for both of us.
Minho was eighteen when he left his parents' house, straight after graduating from school. Taemin was overjoyed—he was just as sick of spending his days teaching himself to read with Minho's old storybooks just as much as Minho was of keeping him locked in the little room like a rare canary.
His mother had given him the largest amount of money she could afford, his father disowned him for betraying his family like so. Minho used his mother's money to move into a small room above a bakery. It had one bed and a small bathroom and kitchen, but Taemin and Minho learned to share. Sometimes Minho would sleep on the floor and Taemin would have the bed. Rarer times, Taemin would sleep on the floor despite Minho's protests, but Minho would end up placing his blankets onto Taemin's sleeping body and curl into a tight ball to prevent himself from freezing on the mattress. Other nights, Taemin would start gasp awake from the nightmares in the middle of the night and wouldn't stop crying until Minho crept into the bed alongside the smaller boy and wrapped his strong arms around him once more, hushing and humming him to sleep.
Minho started to work for the bakery and ordered Taemin to stay home. He told Taemin – and himself – that it was because he felt that the younger had gone through enough in his short life, but deep inside he knew it was to prevent him from running away.
Taemin never really obeyed Minho anyway. While Minho was out, he would dance on the streets and earn any kind of income he was offered. When Minho would ask where the coins came from, Taemin would lie and say that the baker's woman had left him a tip, a helping hand. Minho never believed him, but he was grateful that Taemin didn't leave him.
And then everything finally got better.
Minho, at the age of twenty-one, finally accepted why he refused to allow Taemin on the streets, refused to let his gold canary leave its cage. He told himself he was disgusting, he was sinful, he was going to burn in hell for it, but there was no denying it.
Taemin was beautiful, with his sleek, long black hair that framed his small face and complimented his large, Bambi eyes. His body was small and fragile, all the more why Minho wanted to keep him for himself and not share with anyone. He accepted that he loved Taemin, and as much as he hated that fact, he wanted Taemin to know. He told Taemin, over and over again when the boy was sleeping. He would stroke the boy's hair and whisper it repeatedly, onto his lips, into his ear, onto the feather-soft skin of his face and neck and everywhere else in his reach.
He never knew that Taemin was awake, listening to his every word.
He didn't know until Valentine's Day, the Valentine's Day before Taemin had turned twenty-two and Minho twenty-three. Taemin had saved up the coins and bought Minho a pair of shoes – a new pair, Minho had been wearing the same shoes for years – and promised himself that that night, he would step out and admit to his roommate that he too shared the same feelings. When Minho came home that night, smelling of fresh bread and flour, he carried a slice of cake decorated with the Hangul of Taemin's name. He had bargained for that slice of cake, offering to work extra hours in the morning for a week in exchange of that single slice. It was worth it though, when he saw Taemin's eyes light up upon seeing the coloured pastry.
Minho would never forget when the boy wrapped his arms around his neck, squeezing him tightly, a broad smile atop his face. He would never forget when he pried the boy off him, held him at an arm's distance before drawing him in again, pressing his lips onto the younger boy's.
He would never forget the sensation that jolted through his veins when Taemin returned the kiss.
Before it crashed back down to what it used to be.
Things made dramatic changes after that kiss. Minho slept in Taemin's bed more often. They shared everything they had—if not more than they already did. Minho waited more eagerly for five-o'clock when the bakery closed and he would return upstairs to his beloved.
However, the baker had seen them one night, when they were in each other's arms, lips attached to one another's. He grew disgusted of them both, increased their fees and when the confused boys couldn't pay them, he kicked them out heartlessly onto the cold streets of wintry Seoul.
It was like Minho and Taemin were back to square one—back on the streets they loathed. Fortunately, however, they sought refuse in a rich gentleman's house—he had seen Taemin dance before and was interested in the younger boy. He dressed Taemin in fine clothing and gave him his own stage at the heart of the city. People from all around Seoul came to watch the boy perform his nightly dances. Things were getting better again, or that's what they thought for the first few weeks. The gentleman, who was married with children of his own, quickly grew tired of Minho, whose talents of kicking goals and making superb apple pie did not interest him. Without telling Taemin, he sent Minho away with a couple of servants to a business partner's house for some trading. He had instructed the servants to kill Minho and dispose his body in a deep river, but they had to bring evidence—Minho's bloodied shirt.
However, the servants had grown to like Minho. They told Minho to leave and to never come back, and tore off his shirt, soaking it with a couple of park pigeons' blood. Minho had no choice to escape the city, his heart heavy without his lover. He couldn't return either, for surely the man would get kill Minho and, if Taemin reacted foully, he would kill him too. He turned to leave Seoul, but not before making both servants promise to take care of Taemin.
We thought we lost everything.
Taemin continued his life as a dancer for another few days, then started to suspect something about Minho's absence. He didn't dare confront the man about it—he feared his temperamental ways. Instead he kept quiet about it until he was satisfied with his earrings, then set out secretly in desperate search for Minho.
For endless months, he searched town after town for the older man, but had no luck. Eventually, he settled on purchasing a small house on the outskirts of Inchon, the birthplace of his mother. Every Valentine's Day he revisited that room above the bakery and stood at the door, the door he had spent his fondest memories on the other side of. Minho would never show up.
But the angels proved us wrong.
Taemin was thirty-five when he wandered back to the same Seoul beach he was so close to ending his life. He stood at the pier and outstretched his arms, allowing the wind to tickle his body, just like he had on that night. He couldn't help the gasp that escaped his lips when he felt an all too familiar pair of muscled arms snake around his small waist, holding him close.
"Don't you dare," whispered that husky voice he loved so much, and Taemin knew he was going to be okay.
It was the twenty-fifth of June. Nineteen years later, Minho had come back to save him.
We became inseparable, you and I.
Minho had been all around Korea during his absence—from the violently dangerous streets of Pyongyang to the dangerously lonely of Seoul. He decided everything was dangerous without you, and spent every step he took pondering about how he could take Taemin back without hurting either of them.
The solution came by itself when he saw Taemin standing listlessly at the pier, arms outstretched. His prayers had been answered.
The pair wasted no time in preparing for their engagement. They had a small ceremony amongst themselves – they knew no one else, anyway – and moved to Taemin's small Inchon house. They adopted a young, nameless child before they left Seoul, and Taemin named her Hanna.
And we stayed that way even when death did us apart.
It had happened all too suddenly and way too soon. Hanna, the three-year-old they had adopted, was in her mid-twenties—a strong, loud woman who had already landed a successful career and found her true love.
Cancer was starting to spread around the world and was slowly but surely creeping up onto innocents and taking them away from the people who loved them and needed them in life. Taemin was among those people.
Minho and Hanna spent every last moment he could by Taemin's bedside, sobbing and praying that God would spare their beloved. However, their good luck had been spent and Minho and Taemin's living marriage ended on their thirty-second anniversary—Taemin was only fifty-six when he breathed his last and uttered his final, "I love you both," with it.
Hanna went in and out of depression, but it faded when she started a family of her own and her house was brightened once again with the laughter of children. Minho didn't speak to anyone for years.
I'm still yours, Taemin, and you're still mine.
He remained a lone mute even when he had hit the seventy-year-old mark at the nursing home. The nurses and doctors brought in comedians and clowns and even tried to use his grandchildren to cheer him up, but even the sight of the precious balls of joy and laughter didn't bring a squeak out of the elder.
He had decided the moment Taemin's eyes fluttered closed he'd stay that way.
Forever,
Choi Minho.
A/N: tissues are supplied in your bathroom, har har har. comments are nice so leave one and i'll leave a penny under your pillow 3