Ship/Member: Junhui/Minghao Major Tags: Mentions of suicide, implied past suicide Additional Tags: Minghao-centric, Tomorrow au, afterlife, grim reapers, past life Permission to remix: Please ask
A/N: Inspired by that very last scene of the show. Minghao as Joonggil, Junhui as Ryeon, Jihoon as Ryunggu, Seokmin as Joonwoong.
***
There’s no need for Minghao to accompany the crisis management team on missions—and he doesn’t accompany them, not really. But that’s him copping out on semantics, something he never thought he’d find himself doing. At work, nonetheless. There are only so many times he can claim to be “coincidentally passing by” while another human tries to destroy the most precious thing they have ever been gifted.
He's still learning how to unlearn that way of thinking but it’s a work in progress. Centuries of looking down on those who he called weak don’t wipe away in an hour of accessing his memories.
Seeing Junhui helps. It reminds Minghao exactly what he lost—sometimes the most precious thing you can forsake isn’t your own life.
Not that Minghao needs a reminder. Junhui haunts every waking thought he’s had—and the nightmares had long preceded him finding out the truth anyway. Earlier it used to be just flashes but now Junhui of the past—all the pasts they’ve shared, as humans and as reapers—and the Junhui in front of him mesh together and every new morning finds him capable of more feeling than he’d ever thought to possess after dying.
Maybe that’s why he keeps returning to their missions—to hear Junhui talk down someone at the very edge of their life from giving up on themselves, to watch him offer someone an understanding that he never got in his own lifetime, to listen and know in his veins that eight centuries more of repentance will not be enough, will never be enough.
Jihoon doesn’t trust him—he never says it outright, deferential to his superiors as a force of habit—but Minghao can tell. And why should he? Minghao may have known Junhui longer but it’s Jihoon who’s been by his side, who has stuck by him in all the ways that matter.
He never says anything but he watches Minghao, with an ever-perceptive eye whenever he invariably shows up at their crisis sites—whenever he finds excuses to come down to their office. If Junhui notices Minghao’s newfound habit of orbiting him, he never lets on. But Jihoon, in nothing but a glance, makes Minghao aware of himself—of what lines he doesn’t deserve to cross but is instinctively trying to.
Still, despite what it looks like on the surface, Jihoon doesn’t scare Minghao—not the way Seokmin does when he returns. Fifty years seem to pass quicker than a blink and Seokmin who has seen Minghao at his ugliest is Junhui’s strongest shield. For everyone else, he’s still the annoyingly cheerful and earnest employee who by a stroke of luck or misfortune landed at Jumadeung half a century ago.
But Minghao can see how living a full human life has hardened him—how his old memories of Jumadeung returning have emboldened him to stand up to people like Minghao who are guilty of fistfighting him and abusing their power, back when Seokmin was a mere human.
And yet even he can’t deter Minghao from seeking out Junhui like a parched man ready to kill for a mere drop of water in a desert.
Junhui has never sent Minghao away, after all. Even though he could—and by all means, should want to keep even Minghao’s shadow out of his sight. His kindness extends beyond his line of work, as it always has.
They don’t talk about the past and nor do they behave like anything other than the colleagues they are.
But sometimes—just a rare sometimes:
“You look tired,” Junhui says, as they’re walking out of another long meeting with the Emperor, “Did you have a nightmare again?” He adds and then stops himself mid-sentence, looking horrified, like he never meant to say anything in the first place.
Minghao is lucky his emotions on don’t show on his face when he replies, demurely even, “Not last night. Just handling a difficult case at the moment.”
“Ah. Uh—okay.” Junhui manages to say before nodding in farewell and walking away briskly.
He’s embarrassed that he’s let his concern show—and Minghao can understand why. Even if Junhui doesn’t let his feelings slip again—even if these moments too fade away as the years go by…Minghao will be content in the knowledge that despite everything he has done, someone has continued to care for him for as long as time itself.
내일, 오늘
Major Tags: Mentions of suicide, implied past suicide
Additional Tags: Minghao-centric, Tomorrow au, afterlife, grim reapers, past life
Permission to remix: Please ask
A/N: Inspired by that very last scene of the show. Minghao as Joonggil, Junhui as Ryeon, Jihoon as Ryunggu, Seokmin as Joonwoong.
***
There’s no need for Minghao to accompany the crisis management team on missions—and he doesn’t accompany them, not really. But that’s him copping out on semantics, something he never thought he’d find himself doing. At work, nonetheless. There are only so many times he can claim to be “coincidentally passing by” while another human tries to destroy the most precious thing they have ever been gifted.
He's still learning how to unlearn that way of thinking but it’s a work in progress. Centuries of looking down on those who he called weak don’t wipe away in an hour of accessing his memories.
Seeing Junhui helps. It reminds Minghao exactly what he lost—sometimes the most precious thing you can forsake isn’t your own life.
Not that Minghao needs a reminder. Junhui haunts every waking thought he’s had—and the nightmares had long preceded him finding out the truth anyway. Earlier it used to be just flashes but now Junhui of the past—all the pasts they’ve shared, as humans and as reapers—and the Junhui in front of him mesh together and every new morning finds him capable of more feeling than he’d ever thought to possess after dying.
Maybe that’s why he keeps returning to their missions—to hear Junhui talk down someone at the very edge of their life from giving up on themselves, to watch him offer someone an understanding that he never got in his own lifetime, to listen and know in his veins that eight centuries more of repentance will not be enough, will never be enough.
Jihoon doesn’t trust him—he never says it outright, deferential to his superiors as a force of habit—but Minghao can tell. And why should he? Minghao may have known Junhui longer but it’s Jihoon who’s been by his side, who has stuck by him in all the ways that matter.
He never says anything but he watches Minghao, with an ever-perceptive eye whenever he invariably shows up at their crisis sites—whenever he finds excuses to come down to their office. If Junhui notices Minghao’s newfound habit of orbiting him, he never lets on. But Jihoon, in nothing but a glance, makes Minghao aware of himself—of what lines he doesn’t deserve to cross but is instinctively trying to.
Still, despite what it looks like on the surface, Jihoon doesn’t scare Minghao—not the way Seokmin does when he returns. Fifty years seem to pass quicker than a blink and Seokmin who has seen Minghao at his ugliest is Junhui’s strongest shield. For everyone else, he’s still the annoyingly cheerful and earnest employee who by a stroke of luck or misfortune landed at Jumadeung half a century ago.
But Minghao can see how living a full human life has hardened him—how his old memories of Jumadeung returning have emboldened him to stand up to people like Minghao who are guilty of fistfighting him and abusing their power, back when Seokmin was a mere human.
And yet even he can’t deter Minghao from seeking out Junhui like a parched man ready to kill for a mere drop of water in a desert.
Junhui has never sent Minghao away, after all. Even though he could—and by all means, should want to keep even Minghao’s shadow out of his sight. His kindness extends beyond his line of work, as it always has.
They don’t talk about the past and nor do they behave like anything other than the colleagues they are.
But sometimes—just a rare sometimes:
“You look tired,” Junhui says, as they’re walking out of another long meeting with the Emperor, “Did you have a nightmare again?” He adds and then stops himself mid-sentence, looking horrified, like he never meant to say anything in the first place.
Minghao is lucky his emotions on don’t show on his face when he replies, demurely even, “Not last night. Just handling a difficult case at the moment.”
“Ah. Uh—okay.” Junhui manages to say before nodding in farewell and walking away briskly.
He’s embarrassed that he’s let his concern show—and Minghao can understand why. Even if Junhui doesn’t let his feelings slip again—even if these moments too fade away as the years go by…Minghao will be content in the knowledge that despite everything he has done, someone has continued to care for him for as long as time itself.
And that will be enough—it has to be, doesn’t it?