hold your hair in deep devotion (how deep?)

[antigone]

I started writing this shortly after finishing anyone can fall, as I wanted to explore Jaemin's character and his relationship with Renjun, but never got to finish it. I believe that anyone can fall is my best work and for some reason I'm afraid to getting close to it again in fear of ruining it, or something like that — anyway, here's to Pacific Rim and loves that transcend our beings, I suppose.





Title: a ruin is the sum of what we are
Pairing: Jaemin/Renjun (NCT)
WC: 1,364 words

(2016)

"Hello," he says, settling down his duffel bag on the naked bed by the window. The boy on the other side of the room doesn't seem to have acknowledged him. "Excuse me, hi, I'm Jaemin!"

Still, the boy doesn't look up from his comic book. Jaemin frowns, maybe he did something wrong?, and there's a gentle pat on his back before he turns around.

"Renjun doesn't speak Korean," says a boy, in English. He's got doe eyes and a big German flag thrown over his bunk bed. "I'm Yangyang, nice to meet you."

He's able to blurt out a "Nice to meet you, too," without major problems, but something in the back of Jaemin's head feels funny. He doesn't know why he expected all of his roommates to speak Korean just because he bumped into a very excited Hyunjin back in the entrance hall. "Room 47!" he had said. "And save a bed for me, will you?"

He sits down when Yangyang turns to continue doing whatever, and the boy on the other side of the room still looks far more interested in his comic than interacting with his roommates. In some way, Jaemin understands him — he, too, would feel overwhelmed to suddenly share a room with five other people, somewhere entirely different. The rest of their roommates arrive soon — Hyunjin, followed by a boy named Donghyuck with the brightest smile and the biggest suitcase, and a quiet kid named Jeno with whom Jaemin shared the last of his gummy bears from the trip, just because he, too, didn't know what to say.

The war, Jaemin thinks, is sickening. On his first night at the Jaeger Academy, Jaemin wonders how many of the kids his age in the entrance hall will make it past the first cut — "Only the best of the best become Rangers," Yangyang had told him, elbow bumping into Jaemin's side, during dinner. "You can't risk the fate of humanity, right?" —, and how long those who make it will endure. He remembers looking at his younger siblings back home and thinking I am doing this because I love you, I am doing this because I don't want you to.

Sickening. He rolls onto his stomach on the bed and sighs, thousands and thousands miles from home, and on the other side of the room, the timid sound of pages turning and a flashlight lit under the covers. He falls asleep to that.

(2019)

Jaemin is nineteen when he watches, first hand through the tiny television in his dorm room, the way a category 4 Kaiju, codenamed Stormbreaker, pulls at the side of Limitless with its clawed hand and fishes out from the conn-podd who he learns to be Jaehyun Jung.

He's a lifeless ragdoll from what Jaemin can see, thrown to the side like he's not one of the greatest Rangers to ever exist, and this life of them is just so fucking fragile, isn't it? To him, Jaehyun was a god, but then again even gods can fall. The cameras then fix at the Jaeger, convulsing with the loss of a limb, of a pilot, and how Limitless' remaining blaster shoots at the Kaiju one, two, three, four and five times, four times too many for a cannon this powerful, before eventually shutting down.

Jaemin doesn't want to see the end of it, but he does anyway. An infinite amount of footage consisting of Mark Lee pulling his own co-pilot from a pool of Kaiju blue, both of them covered in that beautiful and toxic madness, is everything the internet talks about anyway. A god, maybe. Mark surely is. The Kaiju blue melts his drivesuit like water and sugar and he carries Jaehyun away from the mess like he's not going to be scarred for life after piloting on his own for what must have felt like an eternity for him.

Jaemin figures, Jaemin hopes that no one lets Mark see all the leaked pictures, test results, the videos and the articles that showcase the horror of a near-death experience of the world's golden duo. He thinks of Mark stuffing his face with chocolate pudding back at the Jaeger Academy and wishes for once that they could be fifteen again.

But he's been told this before. Countless times. It takes a huge fucking amount of guts to be a Ranger, and it takes a bigger amount of guts to be someone like Mark. He looks to the other side of his room, to where Renjun sleeps peacefully, and he can't even fathom the thought of losing him, or the thought of almost losing him. That feeling hits him so violently that he feels like throwing up.

Almost is always worse than the thing itself. Shit happens. People die all the time in this life of them. They mourn their dead, they memorialize the attacks, they move on. But almost? Almost is Jaehyun Jung strictly prohibited from setting foot on a Jaeger ever again, almost is Mark Lee's drivesuit melting on his skin, almost is seeing and feeling and being your Drift partner as they're dragged away by a Kaiju. It's a miracle that they're both alive, people in the Shatterdome say, it's a miracle that Mark took the Kaiju down on his own. I thought it was over for them.

Almost is always worse than the thing itself because over is over, but memories remain, and in this life of them, that's double the amount of history to go over later. The fear? That nothing survives. The greater fear? That something does. So the world's best shot at this war survives, but Jaemin still wonders why he feels as if he's walking to his own grave.

(2018)

"I'm afraid," Renjun tells him as he zips up his suit, his back turned to Jaemin. "I don't think I'll ever stop being afraid. I just wanted you to know that."

"I'm afraid too," Jaemin replies. He has never set foot inside a real Jaeger, and though he knows that this is nothing but another simulation like many others they've gone through before, there's something different about doing it with a Drift partner. Objectively speaking, it's been two days since the results came out, pairs and trios here and there, and he's not upset that he won't be Drifting with Hyunjin like he thought he would. There are bigger and brighter things now, and they're at Jaemin's arm's reach. He extends a hand and squeezes Renjun's shoulder. "But let's do it anyway."

Objectively speaking, it's been two years since they first met, and half of their class has dropped out, and Jeju is underwater, and the world is just as scary as it was when they were both sixteen and off to fight a war neither of them really thought they could win. Jaemin had his first kiss on a cramped bathroom after the initial cut with Mark Lee's hands cupping his snotty face and they were teenagers, anyway, they were children, but not anymore. He still remembers the first thing Renjun had ever said to him, and the look on Jeno's face knowing they'll graduate with honors, and Donghyuck is still as insufferable as he was at sixteen — they'll be okay. It's the last simulation ever. Tomorrow they'll be Rangers.

"Yeah," Renjun nods, squeezing Jaemin's hand with his own. "Let's do it anyway."

(2021)

The Russian language is hard on his tongue and the Russian weather is hard on his skin, but Jaemin doesn't mind neither as he pulls his coat tighter around himself, spinning on his heels as he tries to look at everything at once. This Shatterdome is the biggest he's ever seen, filled to the brim with Rangers and multiple J-Tech teams busy with work and work and work, and he can't help but to reach out and wrap his hand around Renjun's arm, mouth pressed to his hair: "Mark-5 Jaegers with double core. We were playing with toys this entire time."

Renjun clicks his tongue. "Maybe so. Vladivostok ain't as bad as I thought it would be," he replies, and then in broken Russian, adds: "Welcome to the future, Jaemin. Welcome home."