Moving On 1/2
Title: Moving On 1/2
Pairing: YunJae
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1076
Song: Graduation by Vitamin C
Disclaimer: Don’t own anything.
Summary: Graduation; the photographs of the days before that, and memories they make of the days long after.
♥♥♥
Jaejoong watches with a smile, as yet another one of his sisters finally graduates. Some of his sister’s friends who seem to have a little bit of a crush on him slowly advance towards him. Their way over to him is halting, filled with stray giggles and nervous laughter. After having been through his fair share of sisters’ graduation ceremonies, he’s used to it, and smiles just a little as one of them meets his eyes.
It seems to encourage her - Jihye, was it? - just enough, and under her suddenly-persistent nudges, her group of friends finally make it to him.
“Oppa~” Jihye (it sounds familiar but he isn’t quite sure if it’s her name) bats mascara-laden eyelashes at him with shiny, just-wetted lips. “We were wondering if we could take a picture?”
Jaejoong blinks, and again. Then he smiles, nodding his head. “Sure!”
He misses the look of surprise on Jihye’s face when he reaches for the gadget in her hand, and looks up puzzled when she jerks her hand away. “Oppa, I mean together. With you…?”
She trails off a little unsurely and the group of girls are silent, tensed.
“Um.” He squeaks, bites his lip. But the downcast looks that immediately follows fill him with guilt and he changes his mind, smiling. “Well, okay.”
Because, after all, isn’t graduation all about chasing dreams?
---
He’s sure if he bites his lip anymore it’s going to bleed, but he can’t seem to stop either. Every time he realises he’s driving his teeth into his lip, he stops; but every time he stops realising, he seems to chew on it again.
He’s cold and nervous and he’s freezing up and he’s been out here way too long and-shit, just-where is Yunho?!
Oh right.
He hasn’t sent the message to Yunho yet.
Aish, he’s so stupid. But he wants to laugh and cry at the same time. Laugh at his foolishness because it’s something that Yunho would totally laugh at, always laughs at. Cry because he can hear Yunho’s teasing, chiding response to his silliness.
My Joongie, what are you going to do without me?
Yes indeed, what? The tears sting at his eyes so he doesn’t continue the thought.
The unshed tears, however, give him strength to drift half-frozen fingers over the keypad of his phone. The cold metal burned into his palm, giving him a painful reminder that this is reality and if it all crashed and burned, there’s no way to hit replay.
Be brave, Jaejoong, be brave. He holds his breath and presses the ‘send’ button.
---
+ And if you got something that you need to say
You better say it right now +
Jaejoong paces, leaving shoeprints in the newly fallen snow. He gets a little tired from all the tension in his body, so he leans against the wall, hoping Yunho won’t show up when he’s looking like a spineless man leaning on a cane. Eventually he squats where he stood, heedless of his creaseless graduation robe, telling himself that as long as Yunho shows up, it doesn’t matter what he looks like when he does.
Just come, Yunho, just come.
Text message after text message without a reply. He ends up sitting on the ground for a long, long while, staring at his phone dejectedly, before he gets up and goes home, pretending that the droplets that stained the ground a little darker grey aren’t his.
---
There’s still no reply, and Jaejoong doesn’t know how to deal with the broken pieces of his heart that Yunho used to pick up. So there he sits, looking out the window in the supposed mirth of post-graduation. Until his father comes in and announces that it’s time to go.
+ ‘cause you don't have another day +
---
He walks down the steps one by one, somehow still expecting Yunho to burst through the door like he always does (because it’s like his second home). But it doesn’t happen and Jaejoong is trudging through the door with his luggage before he realises, and loading the luggage into the car.
+ ‘cause we're moving on and we can't slow down
These memories are playing like a film without sound +
On the ride there, his parents sense his forlornness and, for once, keep their words to themselves. He’s grateful, but he doesn’t feel like saying a word, or perhaps he’s afraid he will break off with a cry, and break down instead. So instead, he spends the minutes between his house and the destination thinking, committing the sights of his hometown to memory. The cars pass by and he stares so hard at the playground they first met his eyes hurt, and he closes his eyes when it disappears from sight; knowing he’s unable to forget, he embraces it instead, so that maybe - just maybe - he’ll be able to think of this heartache without hurting too much one day (even though he doesn’t know when).
+ And I keep thinking of that night in June
I didn't know much of love
But it came too soon +
---
On the airplane, Jaejoong asks for the window seat. His pale face and monotonous voice guarantees him the change of seat once his parents notice. He stares out the reinforced glass at the night sky, the clouds going on for miles and miles.
+ I keep, keep thinking that it's not goodbye
Keep on thinking it's a time to fly
And this is how it feels +
When he closes his eyes, he wonders how he’s to erase half of his entire life from his memories.
Wonders how when he looks at clouds and he remembers when they lay on the grass by the river and just imagined the clouds to be fluffy shapes, when he remembers Yunho in everything he sees, he touches, when Yunho has always been half of everything he is and everything he has.
It doesn’t matter what he says, what he insists. He knows he can’t, it’s not possible and he doesn’t want to lie to himself by trying. What he has - what they have - is too big, too deep, too large to simply snap his fingers and announce forgotten.
Eyes closed, he lets his heart say what his lips couldn’t;
+ Will the past be a shadow that will follow us 'round?
Will these memories fade when I leave this town +
Yunho… I love you.
♥♥♥
A/N: Do you guys get it? The bolded words are in the present and the rest of the story is a flashback. Sorry I chose to write it all in present tense, it’s like he’s reliving the memory! I know I should be finishing my last chapter of LFTL, but I’m sorry, this plagued me, and I had to write it. I haven’t gotten a song!muse for the longest time! And I’m happy with this, heh.