Oneshot| Three| for a private challenge with chunxo
Yoochun fingers the smooth, worn keys of the piano absently, his eyes staring past the many photo frames piled on the cramped space of his desk.
He doesn't know what to do and he's not sure if he really has any options left.
It's selfish of me to want like this.
So he thinks and he thinks and when he decides he can think no more he hastens to obey Yunho's call for bed. Even as he hurries, he muses that he's not sure he can face it all again in the morning, but that's a thought for the sunrise to reveal.
Sleep brings him more trouble than waking. He dreams of being two- one sweet and silly (in love) and the other rough around the edges, a ciphered map with only one master key (open for only one to own). He dreams of sneaking into the rooms of those he most desires- one unsure, ready to be led by the hand; the other impulsive, ready to venture at his pace.
He dreams of slipping under cotton sheets and shushing sleepy mouths- the sweet him with a finger tapping soft lips, the rough him with a kiss- and taking hands in his own. He dreams of choosing both instead of one.
He dreams of singing two songs (much too alike and much too different at the same time) and sweetly running hands over soft planes of skin and roughly giggling in a way more intimate than touch alone can breach.
He dreams of maddening beginnings and equally maddening ends and the strange, terrifying freedom of wearing two skins.
He should be scared, but he isn't; he's liberated.
There are no choices to make with two.
The real terror lies in being one.
He wakes to nervous looks from the two he loves. They avoid him without avoiding him (Yoochun knows them; they don't go by the cryptic rules of literary license- too easy for him to read) and look strangely at each other when they feel the similarity (there are no secrets between any of them, just confusion, just feelings, just things that feel like they shouldn't be said).
And Yoochun's worries come back to him.
It isn't right. He just doesn't know what it is yet and he has yet to choose between two again. He finds himself longing for sleep, longing for the lack of constraints of society and fairness and everything in between.
He thinks he might be going insane.
Sleep, once again, brings a different sort of haven. He- two again (not really different, just sides, facets of the same man, the same Yoochun)- slips into those rooms again, careful, more quiet than silent can be, and just observes, picks out the little bits of life like they might be pros and cons. He counts the lists, edits, revises, and counts again, reshuffling a bit every time.
It has no sense, no conclusion, but he doesn't have to choose when there's two anyways, so he doesn't try to.
He regrets that decision in the morning.
Something's wrong he concludes again, frowning as he watches their interactions without really watching. Something's off and he can't quite reach it, but he's certainly catching onto what he can do.
He needs the cover of dark to take out the little things that aren't secrets but aren't quite said. He needs to make the intangible tangible in a way that doesn't happen through song (a means to an end he thinks he discovers while he feels their duet spiral straight towards his heart; a danger when he's one) and he wishes he could summon two while awake, but he gets the feeling that the system just doesn't work that way- if there is a system to be followed in the first place.
He finds himself less and less content with being one, with having to have only one, but it's too easy to have two, to be two, and who doesn't want easy when they can rationalize it?
Monotony versus mayhem.
He wishes it would work out and save his aching head.
He's worried when night comes again, presented with a situation that hasn't happened before. Neither of his dearest hearts are sleeping, not even nodding a wink and he tries to back away but they see him (one of him anyways) and beckon him in.
"I know you're there. Talk to me?"
And now it's too similar. They could be one at the moment and he's not sure when their lines blurred like his expanded. It leaves him confused, but not refusing and he glances at himself before answering the summons that his heart(s) has (have) long desired.
They trouble him with sudden likeness (not sameness, to say so would be a sin, would make him guilty of wanting something simple, something less than they deserve when he thinks he's troubled their psyches so) a nervous sort of something that reeks of being a secret.
"I have to talk to you..."
"About a couple of nights ago..."
The pieces fall into place in a puzzle Yoochun didn't even know he was piecing together from separate strains of speech that make (too much like one for comfort), but it's covered by the shock of being real- of having been two.
"...I don't regret anything..."
"...I just don't think it can work out..."
He thinks he might have mixed them out, the salty and the sweet and he stares at the two he wants (disorienting; color schemes along the walls in both rooms have to remind him what's happening) like he doesn't know who they are.
Maybe he doesn't; they certainly aren't what he expects. Dong Bang Shin Ki isn't supposed to have secrets (just feelings that aren't listened to). Soulmates aren't supposed to have secrets either. Neither are people in love.
Right?
He thinks he might have the color schemes wrong now, that he may have wandered into someone else's house. Secrets are less welcome than being two is, so it's not surprising that they know- that they can carry on this conversation without batting an eye.
"I can't be with you."
"There's only room for one."
"Two is hard to handle..."
And Yoochun floats away. He doesn't like the dream anymore; not when the terrors of being one and the responsibilities of it can follow him where two used to be free.
They avoid him without avoiding him again and he's so desperate for an answer that he asks Changmin to help him.
"It's called distance, hyung. I'd use it if I were you. You aren't going to like what you see if you keep... testing the waters like this. I don't want you hurt by something you can't control."
Yoochun doesn't want to hear it though and he tries for Yunho instead who shakes his head like something's a shame.
"Just... this is one fire that you cannot play with 'Chun. We'd hate to see you get hurt."
And he nods at Changmin almost as if to indicate the plurality of the desire.
Yoochun doesn't like the answer; doesn't like being that they make him sound like he hast to be only one and so he retreats; impatient for a sleep that can't come too soon.
It's a last ditch attempt- Yoochun knows it- when he becomes two again that night to check on the ones he thinks he wants (it's a feeling, never a secret; they can read him like a book) and something shatters when he realizes coldly that their rooms are empty.
He thinks it might be the facets of his heart.
He doesn't want to give up just yet though.
He splits away, looking for anything to disprove what they all know (feelings- they don't talk about them but it doesn't mean they aren't there, doesn't mean they're secrets to be kept. He collides with himself in the living room and coalesces into one.
It can't be...
When he wakes up he still doesn't believe it. It just doesn't make sense that he's been chasing after a two that were already a one in the first place.
The only problem with that theory is that it all makes sense.
They didn't have to look for answers by trying to be two; not when music bound them into being one already.
It was his heart that they had been trying to salvage, to say, to show the way.
Never the other way around.
His dream breaks.
There's no point in being two when they're already one.
That night, he dreams of two coming to him, of one that's softer than he seems (a sweet lover in disguise) and other that's all wit and caustic words (a shell to hide the words he dances around). They want him to be a one that's sweet and in love and rough around the edges just waiting to be mapped.
They come for him, facets and all.
At the end of the night he forgets all about the two he once chased (they can have each other; it's a happiness that he wanted but that they deserve) and lets himself fall for two as one.
Come morning, the sun shines on something new (three) and Yoochun doesn't think he could be happier.
There are no choices in their three, no feelings-that-feel-like-secrets, no silly misconceptions that make him need to be two.
He finds the freedom in being a part of three that's better than being five and that he never wants to let go of.
Yunho and Changmin are enough for him.
More than.
It helps him realize that Jaejoong and Junsu can be his friends (best, part of his soul), closer than skin without needing to be something for him to take for his own.
They can have two. Yoochun'll take his three any day.
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