Falling from the Sky [Part 8]
[Part 8] -- Mwahaa! x3
It was quiet inside the black SUV.
It felt odd to Yoochun as he pressed himself as far away from Jaejoong as possible and stared emotionlessly out the window. Usually the manager would still be chewing him out at this point, but the only thing he had ever uttered were those four terrible words before ripping him and Junsu apart.
The radio wasn’t even on as it always was. Just the sound of violent raindrops as they battered the car.
But Yoochun paid no attention to Jaejoong whose knuckles were turning ghastly white on the steering wheel. He only had one thing on his mind.
Junsu. Junsu. Junsu. Junsu. Junsu.
He lifted one hand and pressed a button. The window slid down and a downpour of rain surged into the passenger side of the vehicle.
“Put up the window,” Jaejoong finally seethed through gritted teeth without looking in Yoochun’s direction.
Yoochun propped his elbow on the edge of the window, supported his chin on his fist and let the rain soak his already wet body.
“Put up…the window,” Jaejoong’s sinister voice rose in volume. His usual threats didn’t follow.
After a defiant pause and re-drenching himself from the torso up, Yoochun pressed the button again and closed the window.
Jaejoong took a deep breath and slowly, menacingly exhaled in one long hot breath.
“Do you know how much money you cost me today?”
Yoochun didn’t stir.
“Do you know how long the staff had to wait for your sorry face to show up to the shooting of your own music video?” Jaejoong said evenly.
Still Yoochun showed no signs he was even listening.
“Do you know how much it’s going to cost to pay for all the damaged props because we couldn’t move the set in time before the rain wiped nearly everything away?”
When Yoochun failed to respond a third time, Jaejoong whipped his head toward the passenger seat, nearly driving into oncoming traffic.
“Open your mouth, Park Yoochun,” He growled in a low menacing voice.
Yoochun inhaled and exhaled, seemingly unphased. “Why couldn’t we give him a ride home?”
Jaejoong clenched his jaw and gripped the wheel harder. “All this time you’ve been ignoring me because you’re worried about that kid?” He kept his voice controlled but his vision blurred.
Yoochun remained silent and leaned his forehead on the window. If he cried now the manager wouldn’t know since his face was already dripping with rain.
Jaejoong looked ahead with pure poison in his dark eyes. “Well, since he kidnapped my star and cost me so much money, he can get lost in a back alley and drown in rain for all I care.” He said dully.
Suddenly, Yoochun came to life and swiftly spun his head toward the other. “Take it back,” He hissed.
If Jaejoong felt a strange rift from witnessing Yoochun become over the edge angry for the first time since they’d met, he didn’t show it. “Give me back my money.”
“Is that all you care about? Money?” Yoochun snapped, his face growing red with anger.
“I have my priorities,” Jaejoong retorted. “My career, your career, my money, your money.”
Yoochun breathed heavily. “You’ve never loved once in your life, have you?”
Suddenly, the car jolted to the right, almost jerking Yoochun out of his seat and Jaejoong slammed the brakes as the car parked in front of the hotel. “I have loved, but I never let it get in the way of my professionalism.” He angrily slung the seatbelt over his shoulder and opened the door. “And how do you know you’re in love with this kid after one day?”
Yoochun jumped out of the car, slamming the door behind him and ran to catch up with Jaejoong. “I don’t know. And I never will know if you keep tearing us apart and treating him the way you do. And I’ve know him for two days. We spent the night together.”
Jaejoong’s eyes darkened as he swung open the doors of the lobby and headed to the left. “I see. So it’s lust, not love.”
“I wouldn’t have bothered to take him to the library if it was just lust,” Yoochun widened his gait to match evenly with Jaejoong’s as they marched heatedly passed the front desk.
Jaejoong scoffed. “Oh, so that’s what you were doing while I was calling Bada’s manager and telling her not to bother showing up to the shoot? And what exactly were you going to do at the library? Did you bring the lube?”
“Why can’t you just accept that I like Junsu?” Yoochun countered angrily.
Jaejoong stopped at the elevator, pushed the button, and after a moment’s pause, he stepped through the doors, joining a wealthy-looking mother and her pre-teen daughter with Yoochun right behind him. “Because you’re a celebrity. You’ve got more to focus on than your latest boy toy.”
The girl in the elevator raised her eyebrows and the woman shuffled her feet nervously. Once the girl caught sight of the back of Yoochun’s head, her mouth dropped in awe.
Yoochun dug his fingers into Jaejoong’s collarbone and jerked the man towards himself. “I would never think of Junsu like that. He means so much more to me than that.”
“How would you know after two days?” Jaejoong shrugged off the other’s hand and continued staring forward. “Besides, you’re too busy for a relationship. If you want people to continue calling you Best Artist of the Year, you’ll do as I say and keep your pants on.”
The doors opened as soon as the girl had found a pen and a scrap piece of paper from her pocket and held them up to Yoochun, as he walked off, completely unaware.
“I’m not a child anymore,” Yoochun’s normally low pitched voice was steadily rising. “I don’t need your help in my personal life.”
Jaejoong quickened his pace down the hallway. “I’ve been in this business longer than you. And trust me, you’ll need help when you’re doing photo shoots every other day in a different country, spending days at a time with no sleep on a sixty second commercial, recording for hours with no food, rehearsing your dance routines nonstop, meeting greedy CEO’s left and right, and performing late night concerts while trying to remember to get your boyfriend the perfect gift for his birthday.”
Yoochun was shaking by the time the two reached their room number.
“What is this trash?” Jaejoong said distastefully kicking over one of the shopping bags laid out in front of the door that Yoochun had purchased earlier that day.
“I’ve already gotten Junsu a birthday present today,” Yoochun spat through hitched breaths.
“Really, Yoochun?” Jaejoong forcibly swiped the room key through its slot and opened the door. “Does it have anything to do with this crap on the floor? So this Junsu is after your money, right?”
Yoochun slammed the door behind them, rattling the single painting of clouds floating on a blue horizon labeled Heaven in gold loopy letters printed under it hanging on the wall. “No, Jaejoong. The present I gave him can’t be thrown away.”
Jaejoong poised himself on the edge of his bed and looked over at Yoochun for the first time since they had gotten out of the car. “This Junsu is going to destroy everything we’ve worked for. Look at yourself getting worked up over one person. You’re not even calling me Jae and trying to smooth talk your way out of trouble.”
For the first time, the two had switched mentalities. Yoochun was quivering in anger and Jaejoong was lounging around completely unphased, but with eyes that could slice through bricks.
“You can’t keep me from loving Junsu.”
“How do you know you love him?”
“It just happened, okay?” Yoochun was finally shouting. “I spent the day with him and I realized that he needed me. And if I’m not around him, I can’t help him. And if I can’t help him, I feel empty inside. That’s how I know. All I want is his-“
“Happiness?” Jaejoong sneered. “Celebrities don’t have time for that kind of happiness.”
“What if I don’t want to be a celebrity anymore? What if I don’t want to be myself anymore?” Yoochun shouted.
Jaejoong let a fragment of silence rip through the room before whispering savagely, “You’re not the only one who doesn’t want to be himself sometimes, Yoochun. You’re not alone.” His voice regained a bit more heat. “You need to learn how to keep your love-struck head on straight and maintain a certain level of professionalism.”
“Like you?” Yoochun said under his breath.
Jaejoong held Yoochun’s gaze before responding stonily. “Yes. But you’re ruining it.”
Something inside Yoochun swelled and finally burst. He yanked the picture of heaven on the wall between their beds and threw it across the room, taking the nail holding it in place and a chunk of paint with it. He pulled all the sheets and blankets off his own bed, wadded them up in frustration, and flung them towards the door. He walked over to the floor length window, ripped off the curtains and lobbed them behind him, while Jaejoong simply watched with his legs crossed. Stomping past Jaejoong perched on his bed, Yoochun took the small TV into his arms and smashed it into the night stand, crushing a lamp and the alarm clock.
Before he could make his way towards the bathroom to begin hurling around bottles of shaving cream and toothpaste, Jaejoong finally stood up and grabbed Yoochun’s arm.
“It’s that kid’s birthday today, right?” His dark eyes bore into Yoochun’s own as the other glared back through hot tears.
Yoochun was panting too heavily for him to make a response.
“Well, give this to him for me as a present,” Before Yoochun could even make sense of the situation, Jaejoong had launched a closed fist into his chin.
Yoochun stumbled back onto his bare bed, clutching his face as the other came at him with fire in his eyes. He lunged towards Jaejoong’s stomach and drove him back into the desk until the older man cried out as his spine bore into the wood.
He shoved Yoochun on the floor and grabbed his shirt collar.
“What do you even like about him?” He growled into the other’s face.
Yoochun dug his fingernails into the back of Jaejoong’s neck. “He’s pure.” He choked back angrily.
“Well, you’re not,” Jaejoong punched Yoochun again in the face. He reeled back again until Yoochun caught his wrist and swung him on his back until Yoochun had successfully overpowered him.
Through choking gasps, Jaejoong grunted. “I know what you did with Hyun Joong at that party, you whore.”
Yoochun cried out as he sent a fist sailing into Jaejoong’s jaw.
“And you drink every chance you get and you’re underaged.”
Yoochun smashed his left cheek.
“And if you think I’ll forget when you told me you stole money from your own mother before your debut, you’re wrong.”
Yoochun smashed his right cheek.
“And if you think sleeping with Kangin’s ex for revenge after he was caught cheating on Leeteuk makes you as pure as your precious Junsu, then you’re only as stupid as he is.”
Yoochun choked back a sob and faltered with the next assault. Jaejoong shoved the other off of him and pushed him over the smashed TV and the shattered glass on the floor. He straddled Yoochun and grabbed the other by the shoulders, almost dislodging the joints in his arms as he brought his face closer to his.
He stopped.
Jaejoong stared into Yoochun’s tear-streaked eyes and realized how close their lips were to one another. He realized how smooth the skin on Yoochun’s face would be if he stroked it just once. He realized how close we was to losing control of everything he had strived for up to this moment if he wrapped his arms around the man beneath him and embraced him until the sun came up the next day.
Yoochun’s eyes hardened and he gulped.
Just do it, Yoochun thought bitterly. Kiss me. For once in your entire life, just do what you want to do. Screw professionalism. It’s already come to this. Kiss me if it means giving in to your freedom.
Jaejoong swayed a bit, inching his lips closer to Yoochun, then pulled away. He swung his leg from around the other’s waist, grabbed his wallet and stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind him. Yoochun sighed shakily. That was what he hated about Jaejoong.
After a moment of new found silence, Yoochun laid back on the white sheets he had recently thrown to the floor and spread his arms out. Without bothering to nurse his numerous wounds or blow the dark locks of hair hanging around his bleeding face, he sighed in a deep and doleful breath and drifted off into painful sleep.
He dreamed of a dark angel who’d lost his halo made of granite. The black wings on the small boy’s back were much too big for his size, but lay tattered and unkempt by his side. The boy sat down and began to cry after a long sorrowful search as tears slipped through Yoochun’s closed eyelids.
Inside the dream, Yoochun found himself wishing that the boy would never find his halo.
It was quiet inside the black SUV.
It felt odd to Yoochun as he pressed himself as far away from Jaejoong as possible and stared emotionlessly out the window. Usually the manager would still be chewing him out at this point, but the only thing he had ever uttered were those four terrible words before ripping him and Junsu apart.
The radio wasn’t even on as it always was. Just the sound of violent raindrops as they battered the car.
But Yoochun paid no attention to Jaejoong whose knuckles were turning ghastly white on the steering wheel. He only had one thing on his mind.
Junsu. Junsu. Junsu. Junsu. Junsu.
He lifted one hand and pressed a button. The window slid down and a downpour of rain surged into the passenger side of the vehicle.
“Put up the window,” Jaejoong finally seethed through gritted teeth without looking in Yoochun’s direction.
Yoochun propped his elbow on the edge of the window, supported his chin on his fist and let the rain soak his already wet body.
“Put up…the window,” Jaejoong’s sinister voice rose in volume. His usual threats didn’t follow.
After a defiant pause and re-drenching himself from the torso up, Yoochun pressed the button again and closed the window.
Jaejoong took a deep breath and slowly, menacingly exhaled in one long hot breath.
“Do you know how much money you cost me today?”
Yoochun didn’t stir.
“Do you know how long the staff had to wait for your sorry face to show up to the shooting of your own music video?” Jaejoong said evenly.
Still Yoochun showed no signs he was even listening.
“Do you know how much it’s going to cost to pay for all the damaged props because we couldn’t move the set in time before the rain wiped nearly everything away?”
When Yoochun failed to respond a third time, Jaejoong whipped his head toward the passenger seat, nearly driving into oncoming traffic.
“Open your mouth, Park Yoochun,” He growled in a low menacing voice.
Yoochun inhaled and exhaled, seemingly unphased. “Why couldn’t we give him a ride home?”
Jaejoong clenched his jaw and gripped the wheel harder. “All this time you’ve been ignoring me because you’re worried about that kid?” He kept his voice controlled but his vision blurred.
Yoochun remained silent and leaned his forehead on the window. If he cried now the manager wouldn’t know since his face was already dripping with rain.
Jaejoong looked ahead with pure poison in his dark eyes. “Well, since he kidnapped my star and cost me so much money, he can get lost in a back alley and drown in rain for all I care.” He said dully.
Suddenly, Yoochun came to life and swiftly spun his head toward the other. “Take it back,” He hissed.
If Jaejoong felt a strange rift from witnessing Yoochun become over the edge angry for the first time since they’d met, he didn’t show it. “Give me back my money.”
“Is that all you care about? Money?” Yoochun snapped, his face growing red with anger.
“I have my priorities,” Jaejoong retorted. “My career, your career, my money, your money.”
Yoochun breathed heavily. “You’ve never loved once in your life, have you?”
Suddenly, the car jolted to the right, almost jerking Yoochun out of his seat and Jaejoong slammed the brakes as the car parked in front of the hotel. “I have loved, but I never let it get in the way of my professionalism.” He angrily slung the seatbelt over his shoulder and opened the door. “And how do you know you’re in love with this kid after one day?”
Yoochun jumped out of the car, slamming the door behind him and ran to catch up with Jaejoong. “I don’t know. And I never will know if you keep tearing us apart and treating him the way you do. And I’ve know him for two days. We spent the night together.”
Jaejoong’s eyes darkened as he swung open the doors of the lobby and headed to the left. “I see. So it’s lust, not love.”
“I wouldn’t have bothered to take him to the library if it was just lust,” Yoochun widened his gait to match evenly with Jaejoong’s as they marched heatedly passed the front desk.
Jaejoong scoffed. “Oh, so that’s what you were doing while I was calling Bada’s manager and telling her not to bother showing up to the shoot? And what exactly were you going to do at the library? Did you bring the lube?”
“Why can’t you just accept that I like Junsu?” Yoochun countered angrily.
Jaejoong stopped at the elevator, pushed the button, and after a moment’s pause, he stepped through the doors, joining a wealthy-looking mother and her pre-teen daughter with Yoochun right behind him. “Because you’re a celebrity. You’ve got more to focus on than your latest boy toy.”
The girl in the elevator raised her eyebrows and the woman shuffled her feet nervously. Once the girl caught sight of the back of Yoochun’s head, her mouth dropped in awe.
Yoochun dug his fingers into Jaejoong’s collarbone and jerked the man towards himself. “I would never think of Junsu like that. He means so much more to me than that.”
“How would you know after two days?” Jaejoong shrugged off the other’s hand and continued staring forward. “Besides, you’re too busy for a relationship. If you want people to continue calling you Best Artist of the Year, you’ll do as I say and keep your pants on.”
The doors opened as soon as the girl had found a pen and a scrap piece of paper from her pocket and held them up to Yoochun, as he walked off, completely unaware.
“I’m not a child anymore,” Yoochun’s normally low pitched voice was steadily rising. “I don’t need your help in my personal life.”
Jaejoong quickened his pace down the hallway. “I’ve been in this business longer than you. And trust me, you’ll need help when you’re doing photo shoots every other day in a different country, spending days at a time with no sleep on a sixty second commercial, recording for hours with no food, rehearsing your dance routines nonstop, meeting greedy CEO’s left and right, and performing late night concerts while trying to remember to get your boyfriend the perfect gift for his birthday.”
Yoochun was shaking by the time the two reached their room number.
“What is this trash?” Jaejoong said distastefully kicking over one of the shopping bags laid out in front of the door that Yoochun had purchased earlier that day.
“I’ve already gotten Junsu a birthday present today,” Yoochun spat through hitched breaths.
“Really, Yoochun?” Jaejoong forcibly swiped the room key through its slot and opened the door. “Does it have anything to do with this crap on the floor? So this Junsu is after your money, right?”
Yoochun slammed the door behind them, rattling the single painting of clouds floating on a blue horizon labeled Heaven in gold loopy letters printed under it hanging on the wall. “No, Jaejoong. The present I gave him can’t be thrown away.”
Jaejoong poised himself on the edge of his bed and looked over at Yoochun for the first time since they had gotten out of the car. “This Junsu is going to destroy everything we’ve worked for. Look at yourself getting worked up over one person. You’re not even calling me Jae and trying to smooth talk your way out of trouble.”
For the first time, the two had switched mentalities. Yoochun was quivering in anger and Jaejoong was lounging around completely unphased, but with eyes that could slice through bricks.
“You can’t keep me from loving Junsu.”
“How do you know you love him?”
“It just happened, okay?” Yoochun was finally shouting. “I spent the day with him and I realized that he needed me. And if I’m not around him, I can’t help him. And if I can’t help him, I feel empty inside. That’s how I know. All I want is his-“
“Happiness?” Jaejoong sneered. “Celebrities don’t have time for that kind of happiness.”
“What if I don’t want to be a celebrity anymore? What if I don’t want to be myself anymore?” Yoochun shouted.
Jaejoong let a fragment of silence rip through the room before whispering savagely, “You’re not the only one who doesn’t want to be himself sometimes, Yoochun. You’re not alone.” His voice regained a bit more heat. “You need to learn how to keep your love-struck head on straight and maintain a certain level of professionalism.”
“Like you?” Yoochun said under his breath.
Jaejoong held Yoochun’s gaze before responding stonily. “Yes. But you’re ruining it.”
Something inside Yoochun swelled and finally burst. He yanked the picture of heaven on the wall between their beds and threw it across the room, taking the nail holding it in place and a chunk of paint with it. He pulled all the sheets and blankets off his own bed, wadded them up in frustration, and flung them towards the door. He walked over to the floor length window, ripped off the curtains and lobbed them behind him, while Jaejoong simply watched with his legs crossed. Stomping past Jaejoong perched on his bed, Yoochun took the small TV into his arms and smashed it into the night stand, crushing a lamp and the alarm clock.
Before he could make his way towards the bathroom to begin hurling around bottles of shaving cream and toothpaste, Jaejoong finally stood up and grabbed Yoochun’s arm.
“It’s that kid’s birthday today, right?” His dark eyes bore into Yoochun’s own as the other glared back through hot tears.
Yoochun was panting too heavily for him to make a response.
“Well, give this to him for me as a present,” Before Yoochun could even make sense of the situation, Jaejoong had launched a closed fist into his chin.
Yoochun stumbled back onto his bare bed, clutching his face as the other came at him with fire in his eyes. He lunged towards Jaejoong’s stomach and drove him back into the desk until the older man cried out as his spine bore into the wood.
He shoved Yoochun on the floor and grabbed his shirt collar.
“What do you even like about him?” He growled into the other’s face.
Yoochun dug his fingernails into the back of Jaejoong’s neck. “He’s pure.” He choked back angrily.
“Well, you’re not,” Jaejoong punched Yoochun again in the face. He reeled back again until Yoochun caught his wrist and swung him on his back until Yoochun had successfully overpowered him.
Through choking gasps, Jaejoong grunted. “I know what you did with Hyun Joong at that party, you whore.”
Yoochun cried out as he sent a fist sailing into Jaejoong’s jaw.
“And you drink every chance you get and you’re underaged.”
Yoochun smashed his left cheek.
“And if you think I’ll forget when you told me you stole money from your own mother before your debut, you’re wrong.”
Yoochun smashed his right cheek.
“And if you think sleeping with Kangin’s ex for revenge after he was caught cheating on Leeteuk makes you as pure as your precious Junsu, then you’re only as stupid as he is.”
Yoochun choked back a sob and faltered with the next assault. Jaejoong shoved the other off of him and pushed him over the smashed TV and the shattered glass on the floor. He straddled Yoochun and grabbed the other by the shoulders, almost dislodging the joints in his arms as he brought his face closer to his.
He stopped.
Jaejoong stared into Yoochun’s tear-streaked eyes and realized how close their lips were to one another. He realized how smooth the skin on Yoochun’s face would be if he stroked it just once. He realized how close we was to losing control of everything he had strived for up to this moment if he wrapped his arms around the man beneath him and embraced him until the sun came up the next day.
Yoochun’s eyes hardened and he gulped.
Just do it, Yoochun thought bitterly. Kiss me. For once in your entire life, just do what you want to do. Screw professionalism. It’s already come to this. Kiss me if it means giving in to your freedom.
Jaejoong swayed a bit, inching his lips closer to Yoochun, then pulled away. He swung his leg from around the other’s waist, grabbed his wallet and stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind him. Yoochun sighed shakily. That was what he hated about Jaejoong.
After a moment of new found silence, Yoochun laid back on the white sheets he had recently thrown to the floor and spread his arms out. Without bothering to nurse his numerous wounds or blow the dark locks of hair hanging around his bleeding face, he sighed in a deep and doleful breath and drifted off into painful sleep.
He dreamed of a dark angel who’d lost his halo made of granite. The black wings on the small boy’s back were much too big for his size, but lay tattered and unkempt by his side. The boy sat down and began to cry after a long sorrowful search as tears slipped through Yoochun’s closed eyelids.
Inside the dream, Yoochun found himself wishing that the boy would never find his halo.