fic: You and me, we'd look so much better up-side-down
Title: You and me, we'd look so much better up-side-down
Fandom/Ship: White Christmas (drama), Jo Young Jae-centric, onesided! Young Jae/Eun Sung
Rating/Warnings: PG-13, Mentions of abuse, self harm, depression and minor disturbing imagery
Summary: He finds out quickly that the world can become a lot uglier when narrowed down to exist solely behind a prison of concrete and high glass walls. Young Jae makes himself into the prince of his own rejected fairytale.
He’s fourteen when his mother marries someone who is all money and not much of anything else. ‘This is everything we’ve always wanted’ she tells him and forces them both to believe it with a near religious conviction. Young Jae is told to stop being himself-- be a better boy for the both of them and Young Jae counts this as his starting point of becoming someone far worse.
Step dad teaches Young Jae quickly that money can buy you free of every sin and moral obligation. Like cardinal letters, the depth of your pockets can let you buy a clear conscience from the crimes you’ve committed.
His new stepfather cheats on his taxes and cheats on Young Jae’s mother. He paints the surface of Young Jae’s back in red and purple lines with his belt and cuts him verbally with every word directed at him.
“Some things you just do best to forget.” His mother always repeats after she orders him to lie on his stomach and starts to rub down his back. And she lives as she learns-- erasing the memories of other women chosen before her and her own sins; the begging cries of her half naked, frozen son banging on the front door.
A memory and a grudge means nothing when you’re the only one holding it, so Young Jae fills his head with things that are constant. Historical facts, lines from books and rows of equations becomes his new memories. His teachers still despise him, but his test scores are the best his school has ever seen and this becomes his saving grace of sorts, because this is what gets him into Susin.
Sunlight hits her and pales in comparison to her smile, it fills her up and shines out of her pores. She’s the girl who makes everyone turn their head at the sound of her laugh and even the shrewdest of men would believe in miracles if she spoke to them. Yoon Eun Sung is the perfect white canvas of beauty and Young Jae feels like he’s a fine layer of black dust on it’s surface just by being in the same room as her.
Things doesn’t get better just because he’s left his old hell and he finds out quickly that the world can become a lot uglier when narrowed down to exist solely behind a prison of concrete and high glass walls. When one of the boys find out that he’s a bastard whose mother married herself into new money, the first thing the boy does is try to use him for test results and threatens to make the rest of his high school years into misery unless he complies. Young Jae decides that he needs to bring back an old part of himself and uses his fists to refuse the order.
As the boy lies on the pristine floor-- now stained with splashes of red -- Young Jae gives up on becoming clean slate and picks up his old cloak of dirt and fear and re-ties it around his shoulders.
He never planned on becoming a creature hiding around her corners, but here he is anyway. It’s accidental and coincidental he lies to himself and believes it more with each quirk of her lips as she gossips with her friends.
Her face is scrunched up in mild disapproval as she listens to her friend’s story and her eyes become darker when she speaks again, “You shouldn’t get involved with a boy like Taehwan, Jiyeon,” she lectures the girl in front of her “he’s friends with Jo Young Jae. That boy is like a plague--” Eun Sung says and shudders. “everything that touches him rots and turns into ashes.”
The name sticks and there’s a small sense of pride that fills him that it was her who gave it to him. The hate he feels for her judgement is tinged with elation that Yoon Eun Sung got her spotless hands dirty in his name and an icy hot feeling spreads in his stomach over the knowledge that she’s tainted with his black fingerprints that will be impossible to wash herself clean from.
Young Jae wants to hold on to her as tight as he can and cling until she’s crawling in the filth with him.
Her light is dimming by each day when he first sees it. He doesn’t think anyone else knows, but then again no one else has ever watched her in the way he has. No one else have ever watched and waited for her darkness to show, for her smiles to fall and her eyes to go dead. And it’s in his search for the ugly parts of her that he see’s the small dark lines peeking out from beneath her school uniform, the sight of them clashing horribly with the paleness of her skin.
Young Jae wonders if she’ll break like him one day, if her shallow scars can become a miniature map for the lashes on his back and once safe in the dark corners of his room, he starts fantasizing about her small hands guiding his fingers up her legs and under her skirt for him to pick at the nearly healed scabs until they are bleeding again-- open and wet-- just for him.
“A bully with a rich father. People like you is really the last thing this school needs.” Were the first words she ever spoke to him. After that it became like a game for him, an obsession over how many times she could get close to touch him and sully herself.
Moo Yul may have gotten all her love and the rest of the world has had to share her smiles and her kindness, (The same world who is now sharing her indifference and Moo Yul who is now stuck with her rejection.) but Young Jae gets all her anger and her contempt and those things have always only been for him. Her vicious words and distaste for him drips black like hot tar from her fingertips and spews from her mouth, it sears and burns itself into his skin and for her, he’s going to wear every blister and scar with pride. He takes everything that nobody else wants from her and keeps it like a token close to his chest, hidden under the layers of things he wishes he never were.
Sunlight hits her, but it doesn’t fill her up or even reflect from her anymore. Instead it gets sucked up and dies in the rapidly deepening hollows beneath her worryingly protruding cheekbones.
Young Jae thinks that she’s never looked more beautiful.
Fandom/Ship: White Christmas (drama), Jo Young Jae-centric, onesided! Young Jae/Eun Sung
Rating/Warnings: PG-13, Mentions of abuse, self harm, depression and minor disturbing imagery
Summary: He finds out quickly that the world can become a lot uglier when narrowed down to exist solely behind a prison of concrete and high glass walls. Young Jae makes himself into the prince of his own rejected fairytale.
He’s fourteen when his mother marries someone who is all money and not much of anything else. ‘This is everything we’ve always wanted’ she tells him and forces them both to believe it with a near religious conviction. Young Jae is told to stop being himself-- be a better boy for the both of them and Young Jae counts this as his starting point of becoming someone far worse.
Step dad teaches Young Jae quickly that money can buy you free of every sin and moral obligation. Like cardinal letters, the depth of your pockets can let you buy a clear conscience from the crimes you’ve committed.
His new stepfather cheats on his taxes and cheats on Young Jae’s mother. He paints the surface of Young Jae’s back in red and purple lines with his belt and cuts him verbally with every word directed at him.
“Some things you just do best to forget.” His mother always repeats after she orders him to lie on his stomach and starts to rub down his back. And she lives as she learns-- erasing the memories of other women chosen before her and her own sins; the begging cries of her half naked, frozen son banging on the front door.
A memory and a grudge means nothing when you’re the only one holding it, so Young Jae fills his head with things that are constant. Historical facts, lines from books and rows of equations becomes his new memories. His teachers still despise him, but his test scores are the best his school has ever seen and this becomes his saving grace of sorts, because this is what gets him into Susin.
Sunlight hits her and pales in comparison to her smile, it fills her up and shines out of her pores. She’s the girl who makes everyone turn their head at the sound of her laugh and even the shrewdest of men would believe in miracles if she spoke to them. Yoon Eun Sung is the perfect white canvas of beauty and Young Jae feels like he’s a fine layer of black dust on it’s surface just by being in the same room as her.
Things doesn’t get better just because he’s left his old hell and he finds out quickly that the world can become a lot uglier when narrowed down to exist solely behind a prison of concrete and high glass walls. When one of the boys find out that he’s a bastard whose mother married herself into new money, the first thing the boy does is try to use him for test results and threatens to make the rest of his high school years into misery unless he complies. Young Jae decides that he needs to bring back an old part of himself and uses his fists to refuse the order.
As the boy lies on the pristine floor-- now stained with splashes of red -- Young Jae gives up on becoming clean slate and picks up his old cloak of dirt and fear and re-ties it around his shoulders.
He never planned on becoming a creature hiding around her corners, but here he is anyway. It’s accidental and coincidental he lies to himself and believes it more with each quirk of her lips as she gossips with her friends.
Her face is scrunched up in mild disapproval as she listens to her friend’s story and her eyes become darker when she speaks again, “You shouldn’t get involved with a boy like Taehwan, Jiyeon,” she lectures the girl in front of her “he’s friends with Jo Young Jae. That boy is like a plague--” Eun Sung says and shudders. “everything that touches him rots and turns into ashes.”
The name sticks and there’s a small sense of pride that fills him that it was her who gave it to him. The hate he feels for her judgement is tinged with elation that Yoon Eun Sung got her spotless hands dirty in his name and an icy hot feeling spreads in his stomach over the knowledge that she’s tainted with his black fingerprints that will be impossible to wash herself clean from.
Young Jae wants to hold on to her as tight as he can and cling until she’s crawling in the filth with him.
Her light is dimming by each day when he first sees it. He doesn’t think anyone else knows, but then again no one else has ever watched her in the way he has. No one else have ever watched and waited for her darkness to show, for her smiles to fall and her eyes to go dead. And it’s in his search for the ugly parts of her that he see’s the small dark lines peeking out from beneath her school uniform, the sight of them clashing horribly with the paleness of her skin.
Young Jae wonders if she’ll break like him one day, if her shallow scars can become a miniature map for the lashes on his back and once safe in the dark corners of his room, he starts fantasizing about her small hands guiding his fingers up her legs and under her skirt for him to pick at the nearly healed scabs until they are bleeding again-- open and wet-- just for him.
“A bully with a rich father. People like you is really the last thing this school needs.” Were the first words she ever spoke to him. After that it became like a game for him, an obsession over how many times she could get close to touch him and sully herself.
Moo Yul may have gotten all her love and the rest of the world has had to share her smiles and her kindness, (The same world who is now sharing her indifference and Moo Yul who is now stuck with her rejection.) but Young Jae gets all her anger and her contempt and those things have always only been for him. Her vicious words and distaste for him drips black like hot tar from her fingertips and spews from her mouth, it sears and burns itself into his skin and for her, he’s going to wear every blister and scar with pride. He takes everything that nobody else wants from her and keeps it like a token close to his chest, hidden under the layers of things he wishes he never were.
Sunlight hits her, but it doesn’t fill her up or even reflect from her anymore. Instead it gets sucked up and dies in the rapidly deepening hollows beneath her worryingly protruding cheekbones.
Young Jae thinks that she’s never looked more beautiful.