【table, chaptered 7/10】 the world's not between us
FANDOM tvxq, au
PROMPT hard candy
PAIRING jaemin
WORDS 1345
RATING r
A/N table #5 'hypermania' and prompts from 10pastryhearts. ♥ to itsplashes for being my beta.
you wrote this? changmin asked. he was out of breath; the school had four stories and only stairs to the roof. he skipped them in twos a few times. jaejoong turned on him with his back against the chainlink fence. he linked his fingers with the old metal, caged himself against the sky.
you saw me, didn't you? you felt it.
changmin stared at him. he frowned. jaejoong's face sobered under his hard eyes. he was so blond against the hollow backdrop of late summer blue. it was windy and his bangs obscured the delicateness of his eyebrows.
take a picture. it'll last longer.
unless i throw it away.
jaejoong emerges from his cage and punches him square in the stomach. changmin sees stars and music notes, clips of jaejoong's face on an antique film reel, then the fearless sky. jaejoong's footsteps walking away vibrate through the concrete beneath his head. the door slams.
changmin knows he hates him a little.
'you have a letter,' his mother tells him three days later. it's a golden morning, lazy and hot. cicadas drone outside, merciless as sunlight. changmin puts his empty milk glass in the sink and eyes the plain white envelope in her ringless fingers. she hands it to him and doesn't idle close for long. changmin flips the blank letter over.
'it's sunday,' he comments.
'it was stuck in the door.' he nods aimlessly, like he doesn't quite understand. he opens the flap and takes out the crisp sheet of paper, folded into three segments. there's neat bars of music penciled down the page. evenly spaced. and like the first spray of monsoon raindrops on pavement, big gray music notes cascade across the lines. on the bottom right corner, there's a note,
write this for me. you owe me.
changmin wipes his mouth and breathes again (like he has to remember how.) he's focused less on the page of music and how it got to his front door.
jaejoong has a slowness about him. time gets a little blurry in his path; something diffuses when he moves, wraps around his limbs, climbs into the depth of his eyes. even when he runs. or when he smiles. there's something painstaking that makes him difficult to look away from.
even when he's already gone. (two hours earlier jaejoong had gone up to the two-step porch of changmin's house. he had no fear of being seen. he had no fear of anything. sunlight caught lazily in his eyelashes and the threads of red flannel. his lips were a little dry, like his heart-words, lips, hearts, they were all connected-he slips the letter into the door and steps back out into the sun.)
changmin doesn't put the letter back in the envelope.
that night they sit on the first porch step of jaejoong's house, rickety wood and chipping paint, and sip warm strawberry wine from short glass cups. the cheap stuff, jaejoong's mother's. the bottle holds the paper with music notes and lyrics down between them. one debt that's been repaid.
'i think we should make out.'
'no, thanks.'
jaejoong laughs colorlessly, 'what if i asked you to sing? i don't sing for anyone.'
changmin grimaces. 'you didn't even apologize for last week,' his eyebrows knit with an afterthought, 'and don't go telling all your secrets.'
jaejoong's tongue goes to fill up the space in his ear, breathing through all the elegant canals, leaving little room for his voice.
it's not a secret.
changmin shoves him off and jaejoong swings at his arm; his knuckles connect with a skinny bicep. the pain comes later, almost numb. almost asleep, but it awakens and coils around in his stomach, faded and tracing around in his ribcage. it makes changmin's vision go a pretty blue. jaejoong stirs next to him and lights up a cigarette. his lighter looks expensive.
'hey, kiss me,' jaejoong says. changmin face turns. he knows what's going on here, he's read about things like this, picked them down to the bones of their adjectives.
'life's not a love story,' he replies. jaejoong's eyes sober and he rests his chin on his arms. his teeth are full of ghostly cold smoke, lucky menthols.
'says who,' he mumbles. his voice is low and so faint the breeze threatens to take it. (like smoke, like what mirrors have done to you-)
'says,' changmin squints at nothing. he takes jaejoong's cigarette, 'i don't know. life.' changmin knows he has the good grace, the constitution, to say no. but he's more stubborn than any of these combined. his lips press into a line on the filter against thumb and forefinger. jaejoong laughs, soft, gazing at him. he holds the cigarette like a girl.
'give me that, you're not pretty enough to smoke.' jaejoong reaches and takes it back. the filter's a little damp with something like strawberries and it tastes less like salvation and more like a lie. it leaves his stomach empty and his chest emptier, crawling with something neither of his two addictions are helping. jaejoong's eyes must be stinging because the next time he looks over, changmin is looking at him.
something slow and kinetic zips between them.
you couldn't be closer, could you? will you chase this time? jaejoong puts his cigarette down, swallows back the taste of the world and erases it. he pushes aside the music notes, the words, the lucky menthol pack, his lighter, his sight, the crushed strawberries in a bottle, the breeze that steals the smoke from his tongue, the visions of men being crushed by speeding buses, whispers on changmin's lips,
just kiss me.
'just kiss me.'
changmin does and the world inhales to suck everything out from between them. he feels beautiful in his mouth, almost too soft for the angle of his jaw. jaejoong's fingers halt, tip the angle, push it around. they almost pull away once but only press deeper for the same slick tastes of wine and cigarettes.
beautiful. it's a beautiful kiss.
jaejoong waits for it. he's never wanted to wait no, i wanted to live like you, i wanted to race, think of striped, fluttering ties but he's waiting for the moment when the shadow lifts. when the sun glares from behind the still forms of trees and flat, stagnant rooftops, and takes away all the black. blinds him.
all he tastes is the empty halo of smoke at the back of changmin's throat.
nothing.
changmin pulls back and remembers again to breathe for the second time. he wipes his lips of jaejoong like he'd wipe away a drop of liquor or milk and upholds some bleak emotion like he was crowned with it. jaejoong's eyes are black and helpless, big, dark sunflower eyes that turn to the sun that will always deny them and set. he just laughs and swallows with the slowness changmin can't help watching. it hurts.
'all right.'
all right.
they crushed the bottle of wine on the front porch. it was acidic and pink, wrecked what they'd made of their words and music. changmin almost wrecked his head on the staircase banister, tangled up in frenetic kisses. he breathed into jaejoong's hair, caught wisps of sunlight, gasped at the feel of tongue on his neck.
you're-going to wake someone up, he murmured; more breathless than he wanted. his hands slid up jaejoong's shirt, around his back, gave him the press forward until their hips met and he drowned himself in the sense of touch. in the back of his mind, climbing the stairs was a secondary thing.
i won't, jaejoong replied. his voice seemed detached from what his hands were doing, popping buttons off his shirt collar. he moved them up the stairs, almost tripped them twice. changmin's feet hit a level playing field at the top and he slammed jaejoong into a closed door. he finally kissed back.
he wanted to feel the crush of chests and the tatter of lungs and how jaejoong sounded while broken in his memory, something about constitutions and graces-
-the question had no right answer, only that he sounded gorgeous on the insides of his teeth. jaejoong couldn't catch his breath, changmin wouldn't give it back to him.
jaejoong fumbles for the doorknob to his room and repeats in his head,
ONCE UPON A TIME,
(he gasps in the dark)
this was not a love story.
PROMPT hard candy
PAIRING jaemin
WORDS 1345
RATING r
A/N table #5 'hypermania' and prompts from 10pastryhearts. ♥ to itsplashes for being my beta.
you wrote this? changmin asked. he was out of breath; the school had four stories and only stairs to the roof. he skipped them in twos a few times. jaejoong turned on him with his back against the chainlink fence. he linked his fingers with the old metal, caged himself against the sky.
you saw me, didn't you? you felt it.
changmin stared at him. he frowned. jaejoong's face sobered under his hard eyes. he was so blond against the hollow backdrop of late summer blue. it was windy and his bangs obscured the delicateness of his eyebrows.
take a picture. it'll last longer.
unless i throw it away.
jaejoong emerges from his cage and punches him square in the stomach. changmin sees stars and music notes, clips of jaejoong's face on an antique film reel, then the fearless sky. jaejoong's footsteps walking away vibrate through the concrete beneath his head. the door slams.
changmin knows he hates him a little.
'you have a letter,' his mother tells him three days later. it's a golden morning, lazy and hot. cicadas drone outside, merciless as sunlight. changmin puts his empty milk glass in the sink and eyes the plain white envelope in her ringless fingers. she hands it to him and doesn't idle close for long. changmin flips the blank letter over.
'it's sunday,' he comments.
'it was stuck in the door.' he nods aimlessly, like he doesn't quite understand. he opens the flap and takes out the crisp sheet of paper, folded into three segments. there's neat bars of music penciled down the page. evenly spaced. and like the first spray of monsoon raindrops on pavement, big gray music notes cascade across the lines. on the bottom right corner, there's a note,
write this for me. you owe me.
changmin wipes his mouth and breathes again (like he has to remember how.) he's focused less on the page of music and how it got to his front door.
jaejoong has a slowness about him. time gets a little blurry in his path; something diffuses when he moves, wraps around his limbs, climbs into the depth of his eyes. even when he runs. or when he smiles. there's something painstaking that makes him difficult to look away from.
even when he's already gone. (two hours earlier jaejoong had gone up to the two-step porch of changmin's house. he had no fear of being seen. he had no fear of anything. sunlight caught lazily in his eyelashes and the threads of red flannel. his lips were a little dry, like his heart-words, lips, hearts, they were all connected-he slips the letter into the door and steps back out into the sun.)
changmin doesn't put the letter back in the envelope.
that night they sit on the first porch step of jaejoong's house, rickety wood and chipping paint, and sip warm strawberry wine from short glass cups. the cheap stuff, jaejoong's mother's. the bottle holds the paper with music notes and lyrics down between them. one debt that's been repaid.
'i think we should make out.'
'no, thanks.'
jaejoong laughs colorlessly, 'what if i asked you to sing? i don't sing for anyone.'
changmin grimaces. 'you didn't even apologize for last week,' his eyebrows knit with an afterthought, 'and don't go telling all your secrets.'
jaejoong's tongue goes to fill up the space in his ear, breathing through all the elegant canals, leaving little room for his voice.
it's not a secret.
changmin shoves him off and jaejoong swings at his arm; his knuckles connect with a skinny bicep. the pain comes later, almost numb. almost asleep, but it awakens and coils around in his stomach, faded and tracing around in his ribcage. it makes changmin's vision go a pretty blue. jaejoong stirs next to him and lights up a cigarette. his lighter looks expensive.
'hey, kiss me,' jaejoong says. changmin face turns. he knows what's going on here, he's read about things like this, picked them down to the bones of their adjectives.
'life's not a love story,' he replies. jaejoong's eyes sober and he rests his chin on his arms. his teeth are full of ghostly cold smoke, lucky menthols.
'says who,' he mumbles. his voice is low and so faint the breeze threatens to take it. (like smoke, like what mirrors have done to you-)
'says,' changmin squints at nothing. he takes jaejoong's cigarette, 'i don't know. life.' changmin knows he has the good grace, the constitution, to say no. but he's more stubborn than any of these combined. his lips press into a line on the filter against thumb and forefinger. jaejoong laughs, soft, gazing at him. he holds the cigarette like a girl.
'give me that, you're not pretty enough to smoke.' jaejoong reaches and takes it back. the filter's a little damp with something like strawberries and it tastes less like salvation and more like a lie. it leaves his stomach empty and his chest emptier, crawling with something neither of his two addictions are helping. jaejoong's eyes must be stinging because the next time he looks over, changmin is looking at him.
something slow and kinetic zips between them.
you couldn't be closer, could you? will you chase this time? jaejoong puts his cigarette down, swallows back the taste of the world and erases it. he pushes aside the music notes, the words, the lucky menthol pack, his lighter, his sight, the crushed strawberries in a bottle, the breeze that steals the smoke from his tongue, the visions of men being crushed by speeding buses, whispers on changmin's lips,
just kiss me.
'just kiss me.'
changmin does and the world inhales to suck everything out from between them. he feels beautiful in his mouth, almost too soft for the angle of his jaw. jaejoong's fingers halt, tip the angle, push it around. they almost pull away once but only press deeper for the same slick tastes of wine and cigarettes.
beautiful. it's a beautiful kiss.
jaejoong waits for it. he's never wanted to wait no, i wanted to live like you, i wanted to race, think of striped, fluttering ties but he's waiting for the moment when the shadow lifts. when the sun glares from behind the still forms of trees and flat, stagnant rooftops, and takes away all the black. blinds him.
all he tastes is the empty halo of smoke at the back of changmin's throat.
nothing.
changmin pulls back and remembers again to breathe for the second time. he wipes his lips of jaejoong like he'd wipe away a drop of liquor or milk and upholds some bleak emotion like he was crowned with it. jaejoong's eyes are black and helpless, big, dark sunflower eyes that turn to the sun that will always deny them and set. he just laughs and swallows with the slowness changmin can't help watching. it hurts.
'all right.'
all right.
they crushed the bottle of wine on the front porch. it was acidic and pink, wrecked what they'd made of their words and music. changmin almost wrecked his head on the staircase banister, tangled up in frenetic kisses. he breathed into jaejoong's hair, caught wisps of sunlight, gasped at the feel of tongue on his neck.
you're-going to wake someone up, he murmured; more breathless than he wanted. his hands slid up jaejoong's shirt, around his back, gave him the press forward until their hips met and he drowned himself in the sense of touch. in the back of his mind, climbing the stairs was a secondary thing.
i won't, jaejoong replied. his voice seemed detached from what his hands were doing, popping buttons off his shirt collar. he moved them up the stairs, almost tripped them twice. changmin's feet hit a level playing field at the top and he slammed jaejoong into a closed door. he finally kissed back.
he wanted to feel the crush of chests and the tatter of lungs and how jaejoong sounded while broken in his memory, something about constitutions and graces-
-the question had no right answer, only that he sounded gorgeous on the insides of his teeth. jaejoong couldn't catch his breath, changmin wouldn't give it back to him.
jaejoong fumbles for the doorknob to his room and repeats in his head,
ONCE UPON A TIME,
(he gasps in the dark)
this was not a love story.