Seasons of Love
Title: Seasons of Love
Pairing: JaeChun
Rating: Pg-13
Length: Oneshot
Genre: Romance
Summary: Park Yoochun is an ordinary kid from the US who's haunted by a decision he made to turn down an offer from SM Entertainment when he was 15. Kim Jaejoong is a jaded idol in Four Seasons, one of Korea's hottest boy groups.
"I'm fine, mom" Yoochun sighed into his cellphone as he made his way to the baggage claim. “The flight was good and the food was good and I'm good, don't worry”
He reached the luggage carousel and smiled awkwardly at the pretty girl that had been seated next to him the whole flight. She had fallen asleep on his shoulder halfway through a documentary about bulldogs and then tried to give him her number during the second episode of Say Yes to the Dress.
Yoochun had awkwardly motioned to his screen, hoping the fact he was watching a show about wedding dresses would give her a hint. She just asked if he was planning on getting married soon. He told her it was illegal for him to get married in Korea and she scrunched up her nose saying no, I think Americans can get married there if they want.
So Yoochun decided it was better to just go along with it and that's how he ended up with a scrap of paper that somehow smelled like strawberries in his pocket: a loopy Choi Minhee with a number written underneath it.
“I even made a friend on the plane, mom, so don't worry. No, she's not a serial killer.....You're right I can't know that for sure, but she only watched documentaries about puppies the whole time on the plane......yes, I know serial killers do start out with small animals. Ok, I won't call her...really, I'll throw away her number right away and oh, my luggage is here, mom. I'll call you later”
Yoochun hung up his phone with a grateful rush of breath and collected his suitcase as it lazily rolled past him, careful to not make eye contact with Choi Minhee as he quickly made his way towards where the airport express subway stop was.
It was only then that Yoochun allowed himself to relax a little, taking in the sites of a city that was technically his home. He had been thirteen when he had moved from Korea to the US, but Seoul felt foreign to him now. He couldn't remember much of anything: even the language felt awkward on his tongue. His mother had encouraged him and Yoohwan to speak English as much as possible after the move, and now all the signs around him felt like patterns on old, faded quilts: the threads were warm and familiar but the original pictures had grown faint in his mind.
The subway train pulled to a stop and a robotic female voice asked him to step away from the doors as they opened with a woosh. Yoochun stepped inside, and looked up at the map, remembering the station he was supposed to get off at.
Underneath the lit up station map was an advertisement that caught Yoochun's attention the moment his eyes fell on it.
SM Entertainment presents: Four Seasons! Winter Concert tour. Come and travel through the seasons of love!
There was a picture of four men, all in various states of serious winter contemplation underneath the cheesy words.
Yoochun stared at them for a few seconds, once again remembering what could have been.
~~~***~~~
The walk from the subway station to the guest house wasn't too bad. But it was certainly a lot nosier than Yoochun had been expecting. In Fairfax the whole city shut down after 10 and even then, the only places you could ever count on to be open after 8 were a few gas stations and a handful of 24 hour diners.
Here, it was well past midnight but there were still throngs of people milling about; middle aged men, their wedding-ring adorned hands clutching onto women a little too young, a little too drunk. University students who looked like they had just alighted from the pages of a fashion magazine. Foreigners speaking in a language that made Yoochun fondly think of home, in loud and obnoxious tones that made Yoochun sick as the thought back to his middle and high school days.
Yoochun didn't know which is preferred, the dead feeling of Fairfax, Virginia or the perma-bustle of Seoul. He wasn't a social person anyways. His hobbies were solitary ones: listening to records while drinking wine stolen from his mother's hidden liquor cabinet. Driving, in the middle of the night, into DC so he could see all the monuments lit up.
Maybe it was a good thing, he thought, as he caught sight of a building with a bright sign glaring “GARDEN TERRACE GUEST HOUSE” onto the already bright street. Preferring to be by himself meant that he would be okay in any environment.
He opened the door to the guest house and was immediately assaulted by the sight of a life size poster of 4 familiar, contemplative looking men wearing white.
Again? Yoochun thought as he stared at the man in the middle of the poster, the familiar face that had hung-in secret-in his closet back home. A fitting if not ironic location.
“Hello! Welcome to....oh, are you SaeEun's kid?”
Yoochun turned his head to find a middle aged man who had once upon a time been his mother's friend. He had offered Yoochun a place to stay and a job working at the guest house he ran.
“Yes. I'm Park Yoochun. Nice to meet you” Yoochun bowed deeply.
“Kim Dongyul. But no time for all that boy, it's a good thing you're here! We've been getting in so many foreigners lately and they keep asking me things I don't understand.”
“Oh...”
“It's because of that thing” the man continued ranting, stabbing a finger into the poster. Yoochun winced as it left a hole in one of the members' faces. “You have some pretty boys sing songs about seasons or whatever it is and suddenly all of the teenage girls in the world are descending upon Seoul”
And, as if on cue, a girl wearing an oversized t-shirt that said “I LOVE SUMMER HEECHUL” bedazzled on the front in rhinestones walked over to the two men.
“Do you have any toothpaste here?” she asked in english, waving her toothbrush like a baton.
Dongyul turned to Yoochun with a look of tired panic.
“I've got this” Yoochun said, nobly, leading the girl to the bathroom.
Halfway there, he realized he didn't even know where the bathroom was.
~~~***~~~
Yoochun didn't have much time to rest before Dongyul threw him straight to work. The older man hadn't been lying when he said that they were full to the brim with Four Seasons fans, all from various countries. As the only english speaking staff member, Yoochun found himself inundated with not only requests, but also with girls trying to start conversations with him.
“Why did you move back to Korea?” one girl asked. She was from also from Virginia and she was holding a fansign that had hand drawn pictures of Autumn Jaejoong and Spring Yunho in very scandalous positions.
“Wanted to see my home country again” Yoochun answered with what he hoped was a believable smile. It was a much easier answer than trying to explain how he had this empty feeling inside of him ever since he was 15. That, for whatever reason, he felt like answer to that was somewhere here in Seoul.
“Do you like kpop?”
Another group of girls wearing red shirts came through the lobby, giggling at something on their phone. “I'm more of a rock fan”
“What about Four Seasons? Do you know them?” The girl asked.
And Yoochun didn't want to admit that he did. That his brother had bought him a poster of ~Autumn Jaejoong~ in a kpop shop in DC as a gag gift and that he kept it hung up in his closet. That his phone's ringtone was Four Seasons' debut song “Seasons of Love”, some cheesy pop monstrosity with a chorus that sounded like it was sung by an angel. That once upon a time he had been in something called Brother's Entertainment and SM had asked him to come to Korea to be part of a new boy group they wanted to make.
That maybe, in another world, in another dimension, in another time, he would have been the one on stage singing.
So instead he just motioned to the huge poster hung in the entrance of the guest house. “It would be impossible not to with those advertisements all over the city.”
~~~***~~~
Four months in and Seoul still felt as foreign as ever, but new memories were starting to stitch over the worn fabric quilt in Yoochun's mind. He would occasionally come across places that had him reeling in unexpected nostalgia: a park him and Yoohwan used to go to, an old ice cream store that looked suspiciously like the one his mother owned back in Fairfax, an elementary school painted in colors and sounds that were plucked straight from the pages of his childhood.
Even the language was becoming more familiar, to the point where he sometimes struggled to remember english words. And Yoochun thought he could really get used to this.
His cell phone rang, the opening lines to Seasons of Love coming from his pocket. Yoochun picked up the phone quickly before any passerby's could judge him on his taste in ringtones.
“Hello?”
“Yoohun-ah!” Dongyul's voice yelled from the other side of the line, the sound of teenage girls chattering excitedly in Japanese in the background, “I have a favor to ask”
“Sure hyung”
“I have some decorations for the guest house that I reserved at that toy store in M Plaza. You know, the one right below that record store you go to all the time”
“Yeah”
“Well we just got some unexpected guests that I have to check in, so can you go pick up the decorations for me?”
Yoochun agreed easily. He was in the neighborhood anyways and he figured he could even stop by that record store once he picked up the decorations.
However, Dongyul had not mentioned that said decorations was actually a massive teddy bear that was as tall as Yoochun and twice as fat. The bear was wearing a tshirt with the guesthouses name on it, surrounded by hearts and flowers.
“Would you like one of our staff to help you carry it to your car?” a worker asked.
Yoochun thought of the bike that he had ridden over on, currently parked in front of the mall, and wanted to cry. How was he going to bring this monstrosity back to the guest house with him on a bike? He figured he'd have to strap it in behind him and already wanted to die from the upcoming embarrassment.
“It's fine” Yoochun said, grabbing a hold of the bear by its giant head and dragging it out of the store. There was no way he was going to be able to go down the escalator with the thing, so he made his way over to the corner where the elevators were. No one really used them so he hoped that he could make it out of the mall with a little of his dignity intact.
The elevator door slid open and, as his luck would have it, there was already another man in there. He was the same build as Yoochun-tall and slim-and had a hat shoved down below his eyes and a mask pulled up to his nose. So Yoochun figured the guy probably wanted some privacy. Or was deathly ill. Either way, he didn't seem like someone who would care much about sharing the elevator with a massive stuffed animal so Yoochun entered into the small area and let the doors close behind him.
There was something really familiar about the other guy, from what little of his face that Yoochun could see. He narrowed his eyes and stared, unaware of how creepy he probably looked. Actually this guy looked like...
The other guy, most likely feeling Yoochun's laser sharp stare, looked up and Yoochun almost let out a gasp.
It was! It was him....Autumn Jaejoong.....
Yoochun immediately looked away, trying to act calm even though the object of his prepubescent desires was standing mere inches away from him.
Try not to act like a fanboy. Try not to act like a fanboy
Yoochun wondered how exactly one could do that, so he just struck up his most casual pose, which probably didn't look casual at all, especially since he was also holding onto a massive teddy bear. But Jaejoong didn't look phased so maybe it was working and they just had two more floors to go so...
But of course, Yoochun's phone decided to start ringing at that very second and Seasons of Love blasted into the small elevator.
Yoochun slowly looked up, mortified, and caught Jaejoong's eye. The other man blinked, letting out a cough that sounded a little too much like a laugh.
The ringtone seemed extra long-ringing non-stop as both men tried to pretend like it wasn't. Jaejoong's voice bounced out from Yoochun's pocket; an excited staccato “Seasons! Seasons! Seasons of Love!” and the real Jaejoong leaned against the side of the elevator, containing his silent mirth.
Yoochun wondered if anything could make this situation more embarrassing....
...and then the elevator door opened to what seemed to be a whole class of high school girls ready with cameras, pointed straight at Yoochun and his bear. Well, they were probably pointed at Jaejoong, but the bear blocked most everything else out.
“Shit” Yoochun heard Jaejoong whisper, and he could see the man's shoulders-which had just been shaking in laughter-sag down. And he could see bits of the man's eyes looking panicked and Yoochun didn't really know what he was doing or why he was doing anything, but seeing Jaejoong's eyes like that just seemed....wrong.
So he did the first thing that came to mind. Which was throw the oversized bear at the crowd of girls and grab Jaejoong's arm, dragging him across the hallway, into the men's restroom.
He let go of Jaejoong's arm when they were in front of the sink, and the idol gave him a frightened look.
“Hey man. I'm flattered you're a fan and everything, but if you wanted my autograph, you could have just asked me. No need to drag me into a bathroom”
Yoochun's jaw dropped. “W...what...no..I...what....I don't want your autograph” he explained in a rush. “I was just trying to save you”
“From what?”
Yoochun swung his arms in the direction of the bathroom door. “Those girls outside! They looked like they were about to murder you”
Jaejoong looked at the door and shook his head. “They're just fans”
“Do you have a show happening in the mall?”
“No”
“Then why are there so many fans out there?”
“They're everywhere” Jaejoong said with something that was half a sigh and half a shrug. “They follow us everywhere”
“Even at your house?”
Jaejong scoffed “Especially at my house”
And suddenly Yoochun was very glad that he hadn't taken SM up on their offer years ago. This close up, in the harsh bathroom lights, Jaejoong looked exhausted in a way that was deeper than just normal fatigue.
“You've never heard of sasaeng fans?” Jaejoong asked.
“No, I grew up in the US” Yoochun said. “So I wasn't being heroic saving you from a group of crazy murderers?”
“We can pretend you were if that makes you feel any better” Jaejoong answered with a grin. “You can be the manly hero saving me from a horde of crazed killers”
“Okay. But just so you know, you owe me a new bear”
“You're really killing the manly hero vibe, man”
Just then Jaejoong's phone rang. He glanced at the screen before answering.
“Junsu-yah! I was just about to come over and....what? Well I told you Sungmin is an idiot but you still let him write it....what do you expect me to do? I don't know english...wait...”
Jaejoong put his hand over his phone speaker and looked up at Yoochun.
“You said you grew up in the US, right?”
Yoochun nodded.
“Can you do me a little favor?”
Yoochun looked at Jaejoong, noticing for the first time the bag that the other man was carrying. It had the logo of his favorite record shop stamped on the front. Yoochun felt a warmness spread across his chest. He nodded again.
~~~***~~~
When he got up in the morning, Yoochun had thought about his day would go. He figured he would work all morning and then go out to his favorite dukbokki stand for lunch. Maybe take a bike ride along the Han and over the Banpo Bridge. Possibly catch a late night movie at that art house theatre he had discovered in Hapjeong.
What he hadn't imagined was that he'd somehow end up in a luxurious apartment in Apujeong, sitting on a sofa across from two idol singers he had only ever seen on TV.
In front of him was a piece of paper that had a few nonsense english sentences written on it.
You'll feel my words, my electronic disco soul in your heart
Watch out girl, so feel my love to tear you apart
Yoochun frowned. “Well this is....uh it's.....”
“It's total trash, right?” Jaejoong finished.
“Pretty much”
The blue haired man, who Jaejoong had introduced as Kim Junsu, groaned and sunk down into the sofa. “I figured it would be”
“I told you that Sungmin writes shit lyrics” Jaejoong said to the man before turning to Yoochun. “Sungmin is Junsu's member” he waved his hand towards a blown up picture of Junsu and another guy that was hanging on the wall. The word “2Soulz” was written in red across the bottom.
Junsu pouted “I thought maybe it wouldn't be so bad...”
“Please, Yoochun has terrible taste in music and he even he can see how bad these lyrics are”
Yoochun looked towards Jaejoong, offended. “I don't have terrible taste in music!”
Jaejoong looked back with both eyebrows raised “I heard your ringtone”
“That was one of your songs!”
“And all of our songs are terrible” Jaejoong said easily. “Just like this thing Sungmin wrote is going to be”
Junsu groaned again.
“Why did you let this Sungmin guy write a song when you know he's not good at it?” Yoochun asked. Junsu sighed deeply.
“I didn't let him. He gave some sort of presentation about the wonders of SM at a university so the company decided to reward him by letting him write a song for our new album”
“Well that.....doesn't sound like a normal system” Yoochun said after a few silent seconds.
Jaejoong snorted. “Welcome to SM”
In the end, Jaejoong convinced Yoochun to change the english parts of the lyrics (How the hell is Sungmin going to know he changed them, Su? He doesn't know english! He probably just googled 'words' and wrote down whatever came up.) and earned Junsu's eternal admiration along with Jaejoong's phone number.
“In case Yunho ever decides to write English raps” Jaejoong said solemnly as he put Yoochun's number into his own phone. “Then that'll be a real emergency”
~~~***~~~
It turned out that Yoochun didn't even have to wait for Yunho to test out his song-writing skills because only one week later, Kim Jaejoong walked into the garden terrace guest house as though he owned the whole place.
Yoochun looked up from the manhwa he had been reading and almost choked on air. Because there he was: all flip flops and sweatpants and too big shirts and hair that he hadn't bothered to comb in days.
And there Jaejoong was, looking as though he had stepped fresh out of a dream, wrapped in a tight white t-shirt and boots laced over jeans that were ripped and dyed black. Sunglasses covered half his face but the tilt of his nose and the fullness of his lips were unmistakable.
And none of this made sense because this was a small, ordinary, slightly run down guest house in Dongjak and Kim Jaejoong Autumn Jaejoong was made for luxury and 5 star hotels with marble lobbies.
“I was hoping this was the place you worked at!” Jaejoong said sunnily as he caught sight of Yoochun behind the front desk. “I have an english dilemma”. He thrust two cups into Yoochun's face: one of them saying strawberry ice cream while the other said lemon frozen yogurt, both in english.
“Which one of these is ice cream?”
Yoochun wordlessly pointed to the one with smiling strawberries on the label and Jaejoong preened, immediately opening it stabbing at the ice cream with a plastic spoon.
“This was your dilemma?”
Jaejoong nodded. “I just bought these at that foreign store down the road and I wanted to make sure I brought the frozen yogurt back to Heechul.”
“Does Heechul like frozen yogurt?”
Jaejoong smiled widely. “Hates it”
Yoochun couldn't help but chuckle. Dead Souls played from the record player in the corner of the room and Jaejoong didn't have to ask to know that it was Yoochun's. Because the player was the same model he had started out with, and all of his Joy Division records were already scratched and weathered from being overplayed and somehow it made sense that Yoochun would be the same. He didn't know why, but it just made sense.
“Do you like to go on drives?” Yoochun asked suddenly. Jaejoong looked at the other man with raised eyebrows.
“Dongyul has an old car that he lets me borrow and I like to go on drives sometimes...”
Yoochun loved to drive alone, so he had no idea why he was bringing this up.
And Jaejoong had access to a garage full of top of the line sports cars that SM leased out to their idols, so the idea of driving in some beat up junker probably shouldn't have been so appealing.
But it didn't stop Jaejoong from saying “I'm free tomorrow night, want to drive to the beach to see the sunrise?”
And it didn't stop Yoochun from letting out a relieved sigh as he said “Yeah, that sounds great.”
~~~***~~~
Yoochun had a wonderful collection of classic rock CDs, a mix of western and Korean songs that both felt equally nostalgic.
And Jaejoong had a wonderful voice that was meant for these songs; some strange mix of lilting and husky that seemed to be crafted for late night drives with the windows rolled down and the sticky summer heat hanging heavily, capturing every note that came out of the man's mouth.
“Why don't you sing rock?” Yoochun demanded as they cruised down the highway, the last strains of Seoshi coming out of the car's old speakers.
“I couldn't”
“Of course you could. You were...made for this” Yoochun pressed. Jaejoong looked at him with something dark in his eyes. His lips were pulled into a thin line.
“I can't” he said, voice strained. “I'm Autumn Jaejoong. I sing r&b and pop and I dance and that's what I can do. I wasn't made for anything else”
Yoochun didn't say anything afterwards. Jaejoong looked out the window, tapping his fingers to the beat of the songs that played, keeping his mouth shut.
And Yoochun thought back to when Brothers had told him that SM wanted him to come back to Korea to be part of a group. How he had decided he hadn't been made for that. How he watched Four Seasons debut months later-their first stage playing on some cable channel in a Laundromat he worked at part time after school-how he had seen Jaejoong, looking so young and wide eyed and excited and how he had felt something. This burning feeling that he had lost something very important in his life.
It was that feeling that haunted him and made him eventually decide to come back to Korea, in order to find whatever it was that he had missed. And now he was wondering if that thing had actually been Jaejoong from the start.
They reached the beach an hour before the sun was supposed to rise. The sky was already dulling into an inky, grayish color as both Yoochun and Jaejoong trudged across the sand until they found a place that wasn't too close to the tide but still close enough that the sea water would occasionally mist against their toes.
Yoochun looked over towards Jaejoong. “Let's play a game”
Jaejoong looked back and raised a single eyebrow. “A game?”
“I tell you a secret about me and then you tell me one about yourself”
Jaejoong snorted. “That isn't exactly a game. But fine”
Yoochun gazed at the black water that stretched out in front of them and wiggled his bare toes in the sand. “When I was fifteen, a few months before you debuted, SM asked me to come to Korea to be part of a new boyband”
Jaejoong's mouth dropped open in surprise.
“I said no because I didn't want to leave my brother and mother, my mom needed my help. And also...I didn't think I would be any good at that life. I mean, I was just some random kid with mediocre english and a terrible haircut. And I'm still nothing that special. Not boyband material anyway”
Jaejoong looked like he wanted to say a lot about that. But he stopped himself, nose twitching.
“So I guess that's my secret. I could have been the fifth member of Four Seasons”
“There aren't five seasons” Jaejoong said finally, mouth rising at the corners. “Maybe you would have been stuck with Junsu-yah and that idiot Sungmin in 2soulz”
“Does 3soulz sound as cool?”
“As if anything that ends in a z can sound cool”
Yoochun chuckled and threw some sand at Jaejoong. “Now it's your turn”
Jaejoong leaned back until he was lying down on top of the sand, looking straight into the sky. He didn't say anything and just stayed there, silent and still, watching as pink slowly started seeping against the grey and doused the remaining stars.
“You're going to miss the sunrise” Yoochun huffed as the silence continued to stretch on. He grabbed the neck of Jaejoong's tshirt and hoisted him up so that the older boy could see the very tip of the sun peak over the dark waves.
The sun was halfway up in the sky when Jaejoong finally decided to talk.
“I hate Four Seasons”
Yoochun had kind of been expecting that confession.
“I hate everything about being in the band, about being in SM, about being an idol” Jaejoong continued. “I spend most of the time we're at home sitting in front of the window in my room and wishing I had never come to Seoul to audition”
Yoochun leaned closer to Jaejoong. “Before I came to Korea, I would spend hours in front of the window in my room wishing I had”
Jaejoong chuckled without mirth. “Heechul always worries about me, Kangin and Yunho too. They think I'm too mopey and that I spend too much time on my compositions. Junsu's the only one who takes them seriously”
“You compose?” Yoochun asked, eyes wide.
“Nothing fit for our group” Jaejoong answered, smiling. “You want to see them sometime?”
“Of course”
“You might be disappointed, being a Four Seasons fanboy and all...”
Yoochun pushed Jaejoong into the sand.
~~~****~~~
Jaejoong comes over one night with a folder full of compositions. Yoochun pours over them with an eagerness he had never felt for anything before. They sneak Dongyul's keyboard onto the roof where Yoochun plays the songs as Jaejoong sings along softly. Each one of them was perfect.
Junsu comes over one day, looking around the guest house with a critical eye, and tells Yoochun that Jaejoong sort of accidentally threw his phone into the Han and wanted to let Yoochun know that he'd be in Japan for a month.
Yoochun pretends like it's no big deal, but he can't sleep and spends all of his nights playing Jaejoong's compositions over and over until they're engrained in him, until his heart beats to the rhythms that Jaejoong had penned down.
Jaejoong shows up again one night with the most beautiful smile, asking Yoochun if he wanted to take a road trip to Busan. They go to the aquarium and buy matching penguin backpacks and drink really great coffee by the beach as Jaejoong excitedly talks about his new compositions and Yoochun talks about his family back home.
Yoochun meets Heechul one day in the fall and beautiful man gives him a once over before walking into his room. Yoochun figures Heechul doesn't like him and he's okay with that because he doesn't think he really likes Heechul either.
Jaejoong and Yoochun go back to the mall where they first met and spend hours pouring over records in-what they had discovered-was their mutual favorite store. Yoochun likes Eric Clapton and Jaejoong likes Seo Taiji so they both compromise and buy Song Chang Sik's complete collection of works, which they listen to back in the guest house on a grogeous spring afternoon when all the guests are out.
Yoochun meets Kangin, who is a lot nicer than Heechul, but who looks resigned-a strange mix of sad and restless-whenever he talks about Jaejoong. As though he knows that Jaejoong isn't meant to be there, that one day he won't be there anymore.
Yoochun and Jaejoong sit on the rooftop of the guesthouse with a shared pack of cigarettes and a bottle of soju that Jaejoong had gleefully stolen from Yunho. Yoochun asks Jaejoong why he had picked him-out of the millions of people in Seoul, out of the thousands of random encounters Jaejoong had with strangers every day-why he had chosen to be friends with him.
“It was your eyebrows” Jaejoong said. “They droop down and look so sad. They intrigued me”
And that was such a Jaejoong answer that Yoochun couldn't even say anything. And his heart thrummed and he knew, for certain, that this had been the missing piece of him all along. That even though they had missed the chance to meet 10 years ago in SM, fate had still led them to that same mall. And even if they hadn't met at that mall, they would have still met, somewhere, someday, somehow.
And so he tells Jaejoong that he thinks maybe they're soulmates.
And Jaejoong agrees.
~~~***~~~
Exactly two years after the fateful encounter in the elevator, Jaejoong comes to the guest house. He's trembling nervously but his eyes are lit up with a fire unlike Yoochun had ever seen before.
“I need to rent a room” he says.
“For how long?”
“Months” Jaejoong answers. “Years. I don't know. Forever”
Yoochun frowns. “Did something happen to your dorm?”
“We finally decided to do it. Su and I. We're going to sue SM and get out. Finally make the music we want”
Yoochun huffs, suddenly feeling extremely warm--pride and happiness swirling in the pit of his stomach. “Well, all of our rooms are booked right now. But we do have an opening if you don't mind sharing a room”
“As long as my roommate doesn't mind having to share with a nervous wreck of an ex-idol who likes cigarettes too much and keeps the lights on at night.”
“He won't have a problem with that” Yoochun said. “As long as you don't mind sharing a room with an almost-idol who likes taking late night drives and tinkering on the keyboard at 2am”
Jaejoong smiles widely. “I think I can manage”
A/N: One of the many prompts that Nicky and I managed to cook up! As always, it sort of got away from me at places but overall it was a really fun idea to come up with and write and I hope I did it justice!
Pairing: JaeChun
Rating: Pg-13
Length: Oneshot
Genre: Romance
Summary: Park Yoochun is an ordinary kid from the US who's haunted by a decision he made to turn down an offer from SM Entertainment when he was 15. Kim Jaejoong is a jaded idol in Four Seasons, one of Korea's hottest boy groups.
"I'm fine, mom" Yoochun sighed into his cellphone as he made his way to the baggage claim. “The flight was good and the food was good and I'm good, don't worry”
He reached the luggage carousel and smiled awkwardly at the pretty girl that had been seated next to him the whole flight. She had fallen asleep on his shoulder halfway through a documentary about bulldogs and then tried to give him her number during the second episode of Say Yes to the Dress.
Yoochun had awkwardly motioned to his screen, hoping the fact he was watching a show about wedding dresses would give her a hint. She just asked if he was planning on getting married soon. He told her it was illegal for him to get married in Korea and she scrunched up her nose saying no, I think Americans can get married there if they want.
So Yoochun decided it was better to just go along with it and that's how he ended up with a scrap of paper that somehow smelled like strawberries in his pocket: a loopy Choi Minhee with a number written underneath it.
“I even made a friend on the plane, mom, so don't worry. No, she's not a serial killer.....You're right I can't know that for sure, but she only watched documentaries about puppies the whole time on the plane......yes, I know serial killers do start out with small animals. Ok, I won't call her...really, I'll throw away her number right away and oh, my luggage is here, mom. I'll call you later”
Yoochun hung up his phone with a grateful rush of breath and collected his suitcase as it lazily rolled past him, careful to not make eye contact with Choi Minhee as he quickly made his way towards where the airport express subway stop was.
It was only then that Yoochun allowed himself to relax a little, taking in the sites of a city that was technically his home. He had been thirteen when he had moved from Korea to the US, but Seoul felt foreign to him now. He couldn't remember much of anything: even the language felt awkward on his tongue. His mother had encouraged him and Yoohwan to speak English as much as possible after the move, and now all the signs around him felt like patterns on old, faded quilts: the threads were warm and familiar but the original pictures had grown faint in his mind.
The subway train pulled to a stop and a robotic female voice asked him to step away from the doors as they opened with a woosh. Yoochun stepped inside, and looked up at the map, remembering the station he was supposed to get off at.
Underneath the lit up station map was an advertisement that caught Yoochun's attention the moment his eyes fell on it.
SM Entertainment presents: Four Seasons! Winter Concert tour. Come and travel through the seasons of love!
There was a picture of four men, all in various states of serious winter contemplation underneath the cheesy words.
Yoochun stared at them for a few seconds, once again remembering what could have been.
~~~***~~~
The walk from the subway station to the guest house wasn't too bad. But it was certainly a lot nosier than Yoochun had been expecting. In Fairfax the whole city shut down after 10 and even then, the only places you could ever count on to be open after 8 were a few gas stations and a handful of 24 hour diners.
Here, it was well past midnight but there were still throngs of people milling about; middle aged men, their wedding-ring adorned hands clutching onto women a little too young, a little too drunk. University students who looked like they had just alighted from the pages of a fashion magazine. Foreigners speaking in a language that made Yoochun fondly think of home, in loud and obnoxious tones that made Yoochun sick as the thought back to his middle and high school days.
Yoochun didn't know which is preferred, the dead feeling of Fairfax, Virginia or the perma-bustle of Seoul. He wasn't a social person anyways. His hobbies were solitary ones: listening to records while drinking wine stolen from his mother's hidden liquor cabinet. Driving, in the middle of the night, into DC so he could see all the monuments lit up.
Maybe it was a good thing, he thought, as he caught sight of a building with a bright sign glaring “GARDEN TERRACE GUEST HOUSE” onto the already bright street. Preferring to be by himself meant that he would be okay in any environment.
He opened the door to the guest house and was immediately assaulted by the sight of a life size poster of 4 familiar, contemplative looking men wearing white.
Again? Yoochun thought as he stared at the man in the middle of the poster, the familiar face that had hung-in secret-in his closet back home. A fitting if not ironic location.
“Hello! Welcome to....oh, are you SaeEun's kid?”
Yoochun turned his head to find a middle aged man who had once upon a time been his mother's friend. He had offered Yoochun a place to stay and a job working at the guest house he ran.
“Yes. I'm Park Yoochun. Nice to meet you” Yoochun bowed deeply.
“Kim Dongyul. But no time for all that boy, it's a good thing you're here! We've been getting in so many foreigners lately and they keep asking me things I don't understand.”
“Oh...”
“It's because of that thing” the man continued ranting, stabbing a finger into the poster. Yoochun winced as it left a hole in one of the members' faces. “You have some pretty boys sing songs about seasons or whatever it is and suddenly all of the teenage girls in the world are descending upon Seoul”
And, as if on cue, a girl wearing an oversized t-shirt that said “I LOVE SUMMER HEECHUL” bedazzled on the front in rhinestones walked over to the two men.
“Do you have any toothpaste here?” she asked in english, waving her toothbrush like a baton.
Dongyul turned to Yoochun with a look of tired panic.
“I've got this” Yoochun said, nobly, leading the girl to the bathroom.
Halfway there, he realized he didn't even know where the bathroom was.
~~~***~~~
Yoochun didn't have much time to rest before Dongyul threw him straight to work. The older man hadn't been lying when he said that they were full to the brim with Four Seasons fans, all from various countries. As the only english speaking staff member, Yoochun found himself inundated with not only requests, but also with girls trying to start conversations with him.
“Why did you move back to Korea?” one girl asked. She was from also from Virginia and she was holding a fansign that had hand drawn pictures of Autumn Jaejoong and Spring Yunho in very scandalous positions.
“Wanted to see my home country again” Yoochun answered with what he hoped was a believable smile. It was a much easier answer than trying to explain how he had this empty feeling inside of him ever since he was 15. That, for whatever reason, he felt like answer to that was somewhere here in Seoul.
“Do you like kpop?”
Another group of girls wearing red shirts came through the lobby, giggling at something on their phone. “I'm more of a rock fan”
“What about Four Seasons? Do you know them?” The girl asked.
And Yoochun didn't want to admit that he did. That his brother had bought him a poster of ~Autumn Jaejoong~ in a kpop shop in DC as a gag gift and that he kept it hung up in his closet. That his phone's ringtone was Four Seasons' debut song “Seasons of Love”, some cheesy pop monstrosity with a chorus that sounded like it was sung by an angel. That once upon a time he had been in something called Brother's Entertainment and SM had asked him to come to Korea to be part of a new boy group they wanted to make.
That maybe, in another world, in another dimension, in another time, he would have been the one on stage singing.
So instead he just motioned to the huge poster hung in the entrance of the guest house. “It would be impossible not to with those advertisements all over the city.”
~~~***~~~
Four months in and Seoul still felt as foreign as ever, but new memories were starting to stitch over the worn fabric quilt in Yoochun's mind. He would occasionally come across places that had him reeling in unexpected nostalgia: a park him and Yoohwan used to go to, an old ice cream store that looked suspiciously like the one his mother owned back in Fairfax, an elementary school painted in colors and sounds that were plucked straight from the pages of his childhood.
Even the language was becoming more familiar, to the point where he sometimes struggled to remember english words. And Yoochun thought he could really get used to this.
His cell phone rang, the opening lines to Seasons of Love coming from his pocket. Yoochun picked up the phone quickly before any passerby's could judge him on his taste in ringtones.
“Hello?”
“Yoohun-ah!” Dongyul's voice yelled from the other side of the line, the sound of teenage girls chattering excitedly in Japanese in the background, “I have a favor to ask”
“Sure hyung”
“I have some decorations for the guest house that I reserved at that toy store in M Plaza. You know, the one right below that record store you go to all the time”
“Yeah”
“Well we just got some unexpected guests that I have to check in, so can you go pick up the decorations for me?”
Yoochun agreed easily. He was in the neighborhood anyways and he figured he could even stop by that record store once he picked up the decorations.
However, Dongyul had not mentioned that said decorations was actually a massive teddy bear that was as tall as Yoochun and twice as fat. The bear was wearing a tshirt with the guesthouses name on it, surrounded by hearts and flowers.
“Would you like one of our staff to help you carry it to your car?” a worker asked.
Yoochun thought of the bike that he had ridden over on, currently parked in front of the mall, and wanted to cry. How was he going to bring this monstrosity back to the guest house with him on a bike? He figured he'd have to strap it in behind him and already wanted to die from the upcoming embarrassment.
“It's fine” Yoochun said, grabbing a hold of the bear by its giant head and dragging it out of the store. There was no way he was going to be able to go down the escalator with the thing, so he made his way over to the corner where the elevators were. No one really used them so he hoped that he could make it out of the mall with a little of his dignity intact.
The elevator door slid open and, as his luck would have it, there was already another man in there. He was the same build as Yoochun-tall and slim-and had a hat shoved down below his eyes and a mask pulled up to his nose. So Yoochun figured the guy probably wanted some privacy. Or was deathly ill. Either way, he didn't seem like someone who would care much about sharing the elevator with a massive stuffed animal so Yoochun entered into the small area and let the doors close behind him.
There was something really familiar about the other guy, from what little of his face that Yoochun could see. He narrowed his eyes and stared, unaware of how creepy he probably looked. Actually this guy looked like...
The other guy, most likely feeling Yoochun's laser sharp stare, looked up and Yoochun almost let out a gasp.
It was! It was him....Autumn Jaejoong.....
Yoochun immediately looked away, trying to act calm even though the object of his prepubescent desires was standing mere inches away from him.
Try not to act like a fanboy. Try not to act like a fanboy
Yoochun wondered how exactly one could do that, so he just struck up his most casual pose, which probably didn't look casual at all, especially since he was also holding onto a massive teddy bear. But Jaejoong didn't look phased so maybe it was working and they just had two more floors to go so...
But of course, Yoochun's phone decided to start ringing at that very second and Seasons of Love blasted into the small elevator.
Yoochun slowly looked up, mortified, and caught Jaejoong's eye. The other man blinked, letting out a cough that sounded a little too much like a laugh.
The ringtone seemed extra long-ringing non-stop as both men tried to pretend like it wasn't. Jaejoong's voice bounced out from Yoochun's pocket; an excited staccato “Seasons! Seasons! Seasons of Love!” and the real Jaejoong leaned against the side of the elevator, containing his silent mirth.
Yoochun wondered if anything could make this situation more embarrassing....
...and then the elevator door opened to what seemed to be a whole class of high school girls ready with cameras, pointed straight at Yoochun and his bear. Well, they were probably pointed at Jaejoong, but the bear blocked most everything else out.
“Shit” Yoochun heard Jaejoong whisper, and he could see the man's shoulders-which had just been shaking in laughter-sag down. And he could see bits of the man's eyes looking panicked and Yoochun didn't really know what he was doing or why he was doing anything, but seeing Jaejoong's eyes like that just seemed....wrong.
So he did the first thing that came to mind. Which was throw the oversized bear at the crowd of girls and grab Jaejoong's arm, dragging him across the hallway, into the men's restroom.
He let go of Jaejoong's arm when they were in front of the sink, and the idol gave him a frightened look.
“Hey man. I'm flattered you're a fan and everything, but if you wanted my autograph, you could have just asked me. No need to drag me into a bathroom”
Yoochun's jaw dropped. “W...what...no..I...what....I don't want your autograph” he explained in a rush. “I was just trying to save you”
“From what?”
Yoochun swung his arms in the direction of the bathroom door. “Those girls outside! They looked like they were about to murder you”
Jaejoong looked at the door and shook his head. “They're just fans”
“Do you have a show happening in the mall?”
“No”
“Then why are there so many fans out there?”
“They're everywhere” Jaejoong said with something that was half a sigh and half a shrug. “They follow us everywhere”
“Even at your house?”
Jaejong scoffed “Especially at my house”
And suddenly Yoochun was very glad that he hadn't taken SM up on their offer years ago. This close up, in the harsh bathroom lights, Jaejoong looked exhausted in a way that was deeper than just normal fatigue.
“You've never heard of sasaeng fans?” Jaejoong asked.
“No, I grew up in the US” Yoochun said. “So I wasn't being heroic saving you from a group of crazy murderers?”
“We can pretend you were if that makes you feel any better” Jaejoong answered with a grin. “You can be the manly hero saving me from a horde of crazed killers”
“Okay. But just so you know, you owe me a new bear”
“You're really killing the manly hero vibe, man”
Just then Jaejoong's phone rang. He glanced at the screen before answering.
“Junsu-yah! I was just about to come over and....what? Well I told you Sungmin is an idiot but you still let him write it....what do you expect me to do? I don't know english...wait...”
Jaejoong put his hand over his phone speaker and looked up at Yoochun.
“You said you grew up in the US, right?”
Yoochun nodded.
“Can you do me a little favor?”
Yoochun looked at Jaejoong, noticing for the first time the bag that the other man was carrying. It had the logo of his favorite record shop stamped on the front. Yoochun felt a warmness spread across his chest. He nodded again.
~~~***~~~
When he got up in the morning, Yoochun had thought about his day would go. He figured he would work all morning and then go out to his favorite dukbokki stand for lunch. Maybe take a bike ride along the Han and over the Banpo Bridge. Possibly catch a late night movie at that art house theatre he had discovered in Hapjeong.
What he hadn't imagined was that he'd somehow end up in a luxurious apartment in Apujeong, sitting on a sofa across from two idol singers he had only ever seen on TV.
In front of him was a piece of paper that had a few nonsense english sentences written on it.
You'll feel my words, my electronic disco soul in your heart
Watch out girl, so feel my love to tear you apart
Yoochun frowned. “Well this is....uh it's.....”
“It's total trash, right?” Jaejoong finished.
“Pretty much”
The blue haired man, who Jaejoong had introduced as Kim Junsu, groaned and sunk down into the sofa. “I figured it would be”
“I told you that Sungmin writes shit lyrics” Jaejoong said to the man before turning to Yoochun. “Sungmin is Junsu's member” he waved his hand towards a blown up picture of Junsu and another guy that was hanging on the wall. The word “2Soulz” was written in red across the bottom.
Junsu pouted “I thought maybe it wouldn't be so bad...”
“Please, Yoochun has terrible taste in music and he even he can see how bad these lyrics are”
Yoochun looked towards Jaejoong, offended. “I don't have terrible taste in music!”
Jaejoong looked back with both eyebrows raised “I heard your ringtone”
“That was one of your songs!”
“And all of our songs are terrible” Jaejoong said easily. “Just like this thing Sungmin wrote is going to be”
Junsu groaned again.
“Why did you let this Sungmin guy write a song when you know he's not good at it?” Yoochun asked. Junsu sighed deeply.
“I didn't let him. He gave some sort of presentation about the wonders of SM at a university so the company decided to reward him by letting him write a song for our new album”
“Well that.....doesn't sound like a normal system” Yoochun said after a few silent seconds.
Jaejoong snorted. “Welcome to SM”
In the end, Jaejoong convinced Yoochun to change the english parts of the lyrics (How the hell is Sungmin going to know he changed them, Su? He doesn't know english! He probably just googled 'words' and wrote down whatever came up.) and earned Junsu's eternal admiration along with Jaejoong's phone number.
“In case Yunho ever decides to write English raps” Jaejoong said solemnly as he put Yoochun's number into his own phone. “Then that'll be a real emergency”
~~~***~~~
It turned out that Yoochun didn't even have to wait for Yunho to test out his song-writing skills because only one week later, Kim Jaejoong walked into the garden terrace guest house as though he owned the whole place.
Yoochun looked up from the manhwa he had been reading and almost choked on air. Because there he was: all flip flops and sweatpants and too big shirts and hair that he hadn't bothered to comb in days.
And there Jaejoong was, looking as though he had stepped fresh out of a dream, wrapped in a tight white t-shirt and boots laced over jeans that were ripped and dyed black. Sunglasses covered half his face but the tilt of his nose and the fullness of his lips were unmistakable.
And none of this made sense because this was a small, ordinary, slightly run down guest house in Dongjak and Kim Jaejoong Autumn Jaejoong was made for luxury and 5 star hotels with marble lobbies.
“I was hoping this was the place you worked at!” Jaejoong said sunnily as he caught sight of Yoochun behind the front desk. “I have an english dilemma”. He thrust two cups into Yoochun's face: one of them saying strawberry ice cream while the other said lemon frozen yogurt, both in english.
“Which one of these is ice cream?”
Yoochun wordlessly pointed to the one with smiling strawberries on the label and Jaejoong preened, immediately opening it stabbing at the ice cream with a plastic spoon.
“This was your dilemma?”
Jaejoong nodded. “I just bought these at that foreign store down the road and I wanted to make sure I brought the frozen yogurt back to Heechul.”
“Does Heechul like frozen yogurt?”
Jaejoong smiled widely. “Hates it”
Yoochun couldn't help but chuckle. Dead Souls played from the record player in the corner of the room and Jaejoong didn't have to ask to know that it was Yoochun's. Because the player was the same model he had started out with, and all of his Joy Division records were already scratched and weathered from being overplayed and somehow it made sense that Yoochun would be the same. He didn't know why, but it just made sense.
“Do you like to go on drives?” Yoochun asked suddenly. Jaejoong looked at the other man with raised eyebrows.
“Dongyul has an old car that he lets me borrow and I like to go on drives sometimes...”
Yoochun loved to drive alone, so he had no idea why he was bringing this up.
And Jaejoong had access to a garage full of top of the line sports cars that SM leased out to their idols, so the idea of driving in some beat up junker probably shouldn't have been so appealing.
But it didn't stop Jaejoong from saying “I'm free tomorrow night, want to drive to the beach to see the sunrise?”
And it didn't stop Yoochun from letting out a relieved sigh as he said “Yeah, that sounds great.”
~~~***~~~
Yoochun had a wonderful collection of classic rock CDs, a mix of western and Korean songs that both felt equally nostalgic.
And Jaejoong had a wonderful voice that was meant for these songs; some strange mix of lilting and husky that seemed to be crafted for late night drives with the windows rolled down and the sticky summer heat hanging heavily, capturing every note that came out of the man's mouth.
“Why don't you sing rock?” Yoochun demanded as they cruised down the highway, the last strains of Seoshi coming out of the car's old speakers.
“I couldn't”
“Of course you could. You were...made for this” Yoochun pressed. Jaejoong looked at him with something dark in his eyes. His lips were pulled into a thin line.
“I can't” he said, voice strained. “I'm Autumn Jaejoong. I sing r&b and pop and I dance and that's what I can do. I wasn't made for anything else”
Yoochun didn't say anything afterwards. Jaejoong looked out the window, tapping his fingers to the beat of the songs that played, keeping his mouth shut.
And Yoochun thought back to when Brothers had told him that SM wanted him to come back to Korea to be part of a group. How he had decided he hadn't been made for that. How he watched Four Seasons debut months later-their first stage playing on some cable channel in a Laundromat he worked at part time after school-how he had seen Jaejoong, looking so young and wide eyed and excited and how he had felt something. This burning feeling that he had lost something very important in his life.
It was that feeling that haunted him and made him eventually decide to come back to Korea, in order to find whatever it was that he had missed. And now he was wondering if that thing had actually been Jaejoong from the start.
They reached the beach an hour before the sun was supposed to rise. The sky was already dulling into an inky, grayish color as both Yoochun and Jaejoong trudged across the sand until they found a place that wasn't too close to the tide but still close enough that the sea water would occasionally mist against their toes.
Yoochun looked over towards Jaejoong. “Let's play a game”
Jaejoong looked back and raised a single eyebrow. “A game?”
“I tell you a secret about me and then you tell me one about yourself”
Jaejoong snorted. “That isn't exactly a game. But fine”
Yoochun gazed at the black water that stretched out in front of them and wiggled his bare toes in the sand. “When I was fifteen, a few months before you debuted, SM asked me to come to Korea to be part of a new boyband”
Jaejoong's mouth dropped open in surprise.
“I said no because I didn't want to leave my brother and mother, my mom needed my help. And also...I didn't think I would be any good at that life. I mean, I was just some random kid with mediocre english and a terrible haircut. And I'm still nothing that special. Not boyband material anyway”
Jaejoong looked like he wanted to say a lot about that. But he stopped himself, nose twitching.
“So I guess that's my secret. I could have been the fifth member of Four Seasons”
“There aren't five seasons” Jaejoong said finally, mouth rising at the corners. “Maybe you would have been stuck with Junsu-yah and that idiot Sungmin in 2soulz”
“Does 3soulz sound as cool?”
“As if anything that ends in a z can sound cool”
Yoochun chuckled and threw some sand at Jaejoong. “Now it's your turn”
Jaejoong leaned back until he was lying down on top of the sand, looking straight into the sky. He didn't say anything and just stayed there, silent and still, watching as pink slowly started seeping against the grey and doused the remaining stars.
“You're going to miss the sunrise” Yoochun huffed as the silence continued to stretch on. He grabbed the neck of Jaejoong's tshirt and hoisted him up so that the older boy could see the very tip of the sun peak over the dark waves.
The sun was halfway up in the sky when Jaejoong finally decided to talk.
“I hate Four Seasons”
Yoochun had kind of been expecting that confession.
“I hate everything about being in the band, about being in SM, about being an idol” Jaejoong continued. “I spend most of the time we're at home sitting in front of the window in my room and wishing I had never come to Seoul to audition”
Yoochun leaned closer to Jaejoong. “Before I came to Korea, I would spend hours in front of the window in my room wishing I had”
Jaejoong chuckled without mirth. “Heechul always worries about me, Kangin and Yunho too. They think I'm too mopey and that I spend too much time on my compositions. Junsu's the only one who takes them seriously”
“You compose?” Yoochun asked, eyes wide.
“Nothing fit for our group” Jaejoong answered, smiling. “You want to see them sometime?”
“Of course”
“You might be disappointed, being a Four Seasons fanboy and all...”
Yoochun pushed Jaejoong into the sand.
~~~****~~~
Jaejoong comes over one night with a folder full of compositions. Yoochun pours over them with an eagerness he had never felt for anything before. They sneak Dongyul's keyboard onto the roof where Yoochun plays the songs as Jaejoong sings along softly. Each one of them was perfect.
Junsu comes over one day, looking around the guest house with a critical eye, and tells Yoochun that Jaejoong sort of accidentally threw his phone into the Han and wanted to let Yoochun know that he'd be in Japan for a month.
Yoochun pretends like it's no big deal, but he can't sleep and spends all of his nights playing Jaejoong's compositions over and over until they're engrained in him, until his heart beats to the rhythms that Jaejoong had penned down.
Jaejoong shows up again one night with the most beautiful smile, asking Yoochun if he wanted to take a road trip to Busan. They go to the aquarium and buy matching penguin backpacks and drink really great coffee by the beach as Jaejoong excitedly talks about his new compositions and Yoochun talks about his family back home.
Yoochun meets Heechul one day in the fall and beautiful man gives him a once over before walking into his room. Yoochun figures Heechul doesn't like him and he's okay with that because he doesn't think he really likes Heechul either.
Jaejoong and Yoochun go back to the mall where they first met and spend hours pouring over records in-what they had discovered-was their mutual favorite store. Yoochun likes Eric Clapton and Jaejoong likes Seo Taiji so they both compromise and buy Song Chang Sik's complete collection of works, which they listen to back in the guest house on a grogeous spring afternoon when all the guests are out.
Yoochun meets Kangin, who is a lot nicer than Heechul, but who looks resigned-a strange mix of sad and restless-whenever he talks about Jaejoong. As though he knows that Jaejoong isn't meant to be there, that one day he won't be there anymore.
Yoochun and Jaejoong sit on the rooftop of the guesthouse with a shared pack of cigarettes and a bottle of soju that Jaejoong had gleefully stolen from Yunho. Yoochun asks Jaejoong why he had picked him-out of the millions of people in Seoul, out of the thousands of random encounters Jaejoong had with strangers every day-why he had chosen to be friends with him.
“It was your eyebrows” Jaejoong said. “They droop down and look so sad. They intrigued me”
And that was such a Jaejoong answer that Yoochun couldn't even say anything. And his heart thrummed and he knew, for certain, that this had been the missing piece of him all along. That even though they had missed the chance to meet 10 years ago in SM, fate had still led them to that same mall. And even if they hadn't met at that mall, they would have still met, somewhere, someday, somehow.
And so he tells Jaejoong that he thinks maybe they're soulmates.
And Jaejoong agrees.
~~~***~~~
Exactly two years after the fateful encounter in the elevator, Jaejoong comes to the guest house. He's trembling nervously but his eyes are lit up with a fire unlike Yoochun had ever seen before.
“I need to rent a room” he says.
“For how long?”
“Months” Jaejoong answers. “Years. I don't know. Forever”
Yoochun frowns. “Did something happen to your dorm?”
“We finally decided to do it. Su and I. We're going to sue SM and get out. Finally make the music we want”
Yoochun huffs, suddenly feeling extremely warm--pride and happiness swirling in the pit of his stomach. “Well, all of our rooms are booked right now. But we do have an opening if you don't mind sharing a room”
“As long as my roommate doesn't mind having to share with a nervous wreck of an ex-idol who likes cigarettes too much and keeps the lights on at night.”
“He won't have a problem with that” Yoochun said. “As long as you don't mind sharing a room with an almost-idol who likes taking late night drives and tinkering on the keyboard at 2am”
Jaejoong smiles widely. “I think I can manage”
A/N: One of the many prompts that Nicky and I managed to cook up! As always, it sort of got away from me at places but overall it was a really fun idea to come up with and write and I hope I did it justice!