[fic] Letters and Sacrifices
Title: Letters and Sacrifices
Pairings: YooSuMin, Yunjae
Rating: NC-17
Warnings" THIS IS BASED OFF OF THE VERY, VERY, VERY RECENT NEWS ABOUT JYJ. IF THAT IS REALLY BOTHERING YOU, PLEASE DON'T READ IT!
A/N: Like the warning said - I almost feel sick that my muse got something out of the recent news, but I suppose in dealing with it, I just wrote. The quality may not be up to par, but I felt like I should share. This one is actually a SCENE with a letter. I couldn't get to the main fic because I'm busy and the news crushed my 'OMG HAPPY GUYS' muse D: I'm stuck right after the Hahaha song and teasing Yunho T_T; this isn't entirely tied in with "Letters Home" and thus I'm posting it as a one-shot.
Summary: A companion one-shot to "Our Own Brand of Paradise" (and Letters Home) - set just after the recent news. Check your friendly DBSK news site if you have no clue what I'm talking about...
Min,
I miss you. Really, I really really miss you. I need you. We need you. Please…
Changmin looked up from the letter once more, tapping his foot as the elevator inched too slowly up toward the right floor. Yunho’s hand fell on his shoulder.
“Calm down. I know you’re upset-”
“You aren’t?!” The maknae shrugged the hand off and turned to glare at his leader. “I can’t believe this! They’re supposed to be on our side, they promised-”
“They were empty promises.” Yunho’s face was blank with lack of emotion. “All we seem to get are empty promises.”
“At least we get promises. They just got bait.”
The door dinged open and Changmin ran. A woman dodged him as he bolted down the hallway, but he didn’t care enough to apologize. Yunho would do it for him with how stoic he was looking now. Someone had to be the constant calm, and he was certainly pulling it off. Finally, finally, he reached the door and banged on it hard, not bothering with a proper knock.
The second it swung open he dove, enveloping whoever was on the other end in his arms. “Who-”
Silence.
Sobs, hard, loud sobs as Yunho walked in behind the youngest and shut the door. Yoochun was bawling in Changmin’s arms, hands fisted in his shirt. There was a small gasp as Junsu rounded the corner, eyes red and generally looking exhausted. He kept his mouth shut, though, and led the leader around from the hallway and into the living room.
Jaejoong was curled in a ball on the couch facing the cushions. One hand was underneath his head to act as a pillow, the other on his ipod, silently searching through songs that he wanted to sing but couldn’t find the heart to belt out like he used to. Yunho approached him slowly, not wanting to alarm him. The tearstains on his lover’s face hurt him deeper than the most painful scars. Softly, his hand reached out of its own accord to touch the elder’s shoulder. Jaejoong curled in tighter and ducked his head.
“I said I didn’t want to talk.”
“Jae.”
“Leave me alone.”
“Jaejoong, baby, I-”
“I said go away!” Jaejoong’s arm lashed out and he turned, a headphone falling out of his ears. He hadn’t heard a word that Yunho had spoken, only felt his touch, but was now face to face with him. Yunho ignored the pain that came from being smacked hard in the side and stared back. The air was tense with uncertainty. “Yunho…?”
“Baby-”
“Is that… I’m not asleep? I’m not dreaming this? It seems like everything lately has been unreal, and I-”
Yunho kneeled down and kissed him, arms wrapping securely around the elder’s torso. Jaejoong cried silently, a mix of relief and pain and uncertainty and fear. It was a completely different approach from Yoochun’s loud near-wails from the hallway. He was in dire need of that second lifeline, and to have Changmin appear suddenly and unexpectedly was enough to shock his already shot nerves.
Junsu led the two of them slowly out of the front hallway and down another, their small apartment in Japan only a two-bedroom - not that any of the three living there minded. Changmin lifted Yoochun’s frail and shaking body onto the bed and moved him toward the middle, the pianist keeping his death grip on the other’s shirt. He and Junsu curled up on both sides of the eldest, and the latter wasn’t offended when Yoochun turned to Changmin again, crying into his chest as he held him, Junsu’s hand rubbing his back soothingly.
The crying went on for minutes, hours, days, months, years… too long under any circumstances. Junsu was numb, Changmin could see it on his face. Yoochun was the one who broke first, and Jaejoong had probably shut down. That was how it had worked the first time, he noted, but that time he wasn’t there for them. Not like he was now.
Finally Yoochun stopped shaking. He had cried all the tears that he could. The silent sobs worried Changmin that perhaps the elder had managed to dehydrate himself from crying so hard, but the fact that Junsu had not gotten up told him that nothing was wrong.
Correction, nothing worse was wrong.
“How did you come?” Junsu’s whisper was loud in the deafening silence, and Changmin stared into his pained eyes. “How did you get here? You must be so busy-”
“I couldn’t stand by and watch. I got a letter from Yoochun this morning just before I saw the news. I grabbed the first plane I could.”
Yoochun started crying again, fisting his hands even harder into Changmin’s shirt. Junsu blinked back at him. “But SM-”
“I don’t care what they say. I needed to be here for you and that’s what I’m going to do.”
“Y-you need to-to be c-careful.” Yoochun was barely audible, but somehow his words rang loud in clear in the others’ ears. “We’ve l-lost everyth-ing. Don’t make t-that mis-take.”
“Shh, Chunnie, we haven’t lost anything.” Junsu wrapped his arms around the other, just above Changmin’s own. He nuzzled into the back of his neck and lightly pressed his lips to the skin there. “Everything will be okay.”
“They p-pl-ayed us. We’re their toys.”
“No, baby, we’re not. They cornered us. It wasn’t fair. We did the right thing.”
“I j-just… I w-ant t-t-to sing…”
“I know, baby, I know.” They laid in silence for a little while, Yoochun’s shaking and sobbing slowly calming once more. Changmin felt his breathing slow until the pianist had succeeded in crying himself to sleep. He met Junsu’s eyes and the elder nodded, the two of them carefully slipping away to talk in the hallway.
“What… I don’t understand.” Changmin sighed, leaning back against the wall, mirroring Junsu, who tilted his head in question. “What happened?”
“It was gradual and fast at the same time. I can’t even… can we not talk about it now, Min? I’m sorry, I just… I can’t really process it myself yet.” Before he could even realize he was doing it, Junsu crossed the small space to find himself in Changmin’s arms. “Chunnie’s a mess and Jaejoong won’t talk to anyone. I almost think he might talk to Yoochun but he can barely get a word out without getting upset.”
“Yunho-yah might be able to get something out of him.”
Junsu was silent for a moment before he nodded slowly. “I almost forgot he was here.”
---
The silence in the living room was ridiculous. Or so Yunho would’ve thought if he had not just now stopped hearing Yoochun’s cries. It was the contrast, then, that was so astonishing. Jaejoong finally pulled away from his arms and motioned for him to fit onto the couch if he could. It was touchy, but they did it, cramming themselves into the small space with a bit of difficulty.
“I can’t believe this.”
“I know, me neither.”
“We thought we’d finally gotten our heads back up above water. …How’re your concerts going?”
“Jae, I don’t think that’s too important-”
“How are your concerts going? Are you successful?” The desperation in Jaejoong’s eyes left Yunho with no choice but to go along with it.
“Very successful, though the ocean of red is there for the three of you just as much as it is for us.”
“They’re there?” Yunho almost cheered at the shimmer in the other’s eyes. “Cassiopeia? They’re still there?”
“Jae, they wouldn’t leave us. At least, I was praying that they wouldn’t leave us. We were surprised at the first concert just how much support we still have.” He smoothed down the other’s hair with a smile. “The fans aren’t going to leave us like that. Bigeast is here too, you know. You saw them.”
“But now, now they’ll leave us. They’ll think we’ve deserted them-”
“Baby, stop that.”
“There’s no reason for them to love us anymore, Yunho. We can’t give them anything. We’ve been exploited so much, it’s all I want to do and I give up everything for it, maybe we’ve gone too far-”
“My Jae doesn’t deserve to live in a cage. You aren’t meant to be caged. My Jaejoong is a bird that needs to fly, and SM wasn’t allowing you to do that. Let’s call Avex… animal control trying to get you back into that corner. You deserve better.”
There was a sudden shift in Jaejoong’s expression, and it caught Yunho off-guard. “So, then, what about your contract with Avex? And Changmin’s? What about that?”
“It’s the same as the one with all five of us, technically it’s still valid-”
“We have different sources, Yunnie-ah.”
“We do. And I can’t do anything about that.”
“We just have to trust each other, right?”
Yunho nodded, pleased. “We just have to trust each other."
“And the fans,” Junsu added, padding in from the hallway with Changmin right behind him. Jaejoong gave him a quizzical look. “Chunnie, he fell asleep. He was running a fever at last check before we came out here. He has filming in Korea, he’s going to need to go to a doctor.”
Changmin could see how much the stress was breaking Junsu down. Now, not only was he dealing with lawsuit drama left and right, Yoochun was falling ill. Changmin reached over to brush the hair out of his eyes, but he just shook it back in them. “Yunho-yah… how did you know to come here?”
“It wasn’t me.” Yunho pointed up toward the maknae with a small smile. “Minnie-ah is quite a genius when it comes to these things.”
“When it comes to everything.” The youngest retorted sharply.
Junsu chuckled.
Jaejoong laughed.
And whatever sacrifice that Yunho and Changmin had made on a whim to cross the water to meet them… now it was totally worth it.
---
Min,
I miss you. Really, I really really miss you. I need you. We need you. Please…
I’m not really sure what to tell you. I’ve been avoiding sharing all the stuff that’s gone down up until now because I thought it was unimportant. I got my hopes up.
Guess we can’t do that anymore.
No, I can’t do that anymore. Everytime I get shot down I break. Again, and again, and again.
You deserve the chance to hope. Don’t lose faith, Minnie-ah. I love you too much to let you fall into the dark abyss that I’m falling into. Junsu will pull me out eventually.
I’d love it if you could too, but-
Well, Minnie, don’t sacrifice yourself for me. Junsu would probably say the same. Lately he’s whispered at night how we have to take risks because that’s who we are. We can’t break out anymore if we end up in the same cage.
Being caged sounds really good right now.
Love you, Changmin. Please be safe. Make good choices. Don’t get sick. Don’t get hurt.
~Yoochun ♥
---
Thoughts? If you read it and it upset you, I'm sorry. I know a lot of people are sensitive about this. I'm kind of sensitive about it. The main fic will be updated soon, it's just that my muse kinda got crushed...
♥ you all! ♥ Keep the faith, they'll come back somehow.
Pairings: YooSuMin, Yunjae
Rating: NC-17
Warnings" THIS IS BASED OFF OF THE VERY, VERY, VERY RECENT NEWS ABOUT JYJ. IF THAT IS REALLY BOTHERING YOU, PLEASE DON'T READ IT!
A/N: Like the warning said - I almost feel sick that my muse got something out of the recent news, but I suppose in dealing with it, I just wrote. The quality may not be up to par, but I felt like I should share. This one is actually a SCENE with a letter. I couldn't get to the main fic because I'm busy and the news crushed my 'OMG HAPPY GUYS' muse D: I'm stuck right after the Hahaha song and teasing Yunho T_T; this isn't entirely tied in with "Letters Home" and thus I'm posting it as a one-shot.
Summary: A companion one-shot to "Our Own Brand of Paradise" (and Letters Home) - set just after the recent news. Check your friendly DBSK news site if you have no clue what I'm talking about...
Min,
I miss you. Really, I really really miss you. I need you. We need you. Please…
Changmin looked up from the letter once more, tapping his foot as the elevator inched too slowly up toward the right floor. Yunho’s hand fell on his shoulder.
“Calm down. I know you’re upset-”
“You aren’t?!” The maknae shrugged the hand off and turned to glare at his leader. “I can’t believe this! They’re supposed to be on our side, they promised-”
“They were empty promises.” Yunho’s face was blank with lack of emotion. “All we seem to get are empty promises.”
“At least we get promises. They just got bait.”
The door dinged open and Changmin ran. A woman dodged him as he bolted down the hallway, but he didn’t care enough to apologize. Yunho would do it for him with how stoic he was looking now. Someone had to be the constant calm, and he was certainly pulling it off. Finally, finally, he reached the door and banged on it hard, not bothering with a proper knock.
The second it swung open he dove, enveloping whoever was on the other end in his arms. “Who-”
Silence.
Sobs, hard, loud sobs as Yunho walked in behind the youngest and shut the door. Yoochun was bawling in Changmin’s arms, hands fisted in his shirt. There was a small gasp as Junsu rounded the corner, eyes red and generally looking exhausted. He kept his mouth shut, though, and led the leader around from the hallway and into the living room.
Jaejoong was curled in a ball on the couch facing the cushions. One hand was underneath his head to act as a pillow, the other on his ipod, silently searching through songs that he wanted to sing but couldn’t find the heart to belt out like he used to. Yunho approached him slowly, not wanting to alarm him. The tearstains on his lover’s face hurt him deeper than the most painful scars. Softly, his hand reached out of its own accord to touch the elder’s shoulder. Jaejoong curled in tighter and ducked his head.
“I said I didn’t want to talk.”
“Jae.”
“Leave me alone.”
“Jaejoong, baby, I-”
“I said go away!” Jaejoong’s arm lashed out and he turned, a headphone falling out of his ears. He hadn’t heard a word that Yunho had spoken, only felt his touch, but was now face to face with him. Yunho ignored the pain that came from being smacked hard in the side and stared back. The air was tense with uncertainty. “Yunho…?”
“Baby-”
“Is that… I’m not asleep? I’m not dreaming this? It seems like everything lately has been unreal, and I-”
Yunho kneeled down and kissed him, arms wrapping securely around the elder’s torso. Jaejoong cried silently, a mix of relief and pain and uncertainty and fear. It was a completely different approach from Yoochun’s loud near-wails from the hallway. He was in dire need of that second lifeline, and to have Changmin appear suddenly and unexpectedly was enough to shock his already shot nerves.
Junsu led the two of them slowly out of the front hallway and down another, their small apartment in Japan only a two-bedroom - not that any of the three living there minded. Changmin lifted Yoochun’s frail and shaking body onto the bed and moved him toward the middle, the pianist keeping his death grip on the other’s shirt. He and Junsu curled up on both sides of the eldest, and the latter wasn’t offended when Yoochun turned to Changmin again, crying into his chest as he held him, Junsu’s hand rubbing his back soothingly.
The crying went on for minutes, hours, days, months, years… too long under any circumstances. Junsu was numb, Changmin could see it on his face. Yoochun was the one who broke first, and Jaejoong had probably shut down. That was how it had worked the first time, he noted, but that time he wasn’t there for them. Not like he was now.
Finally Yoochun stopped shaking. He had cried all the tears that he could. The silent sobs worried Changmin that perhaps the elder had managed to dehydrate himself from crying so hard, but the fact that Junsu had not gotten up told him that nothing was wrong.
Correction, nothing worse was wrong.
“How did you come?” Junsu’s whisper was loud in the deafening silence, and Changmin stared into his pained eyes. “How did you get here? You must be so busy-”
“I couldn’t stand by and watch. I got a letter from Yoochun this morning just before I saw the news. I grabbed the first plane I could.”
Yoochun started crying again, fisting his hands even harder into Changmin’s shirt. Junsu blinked back at him. “But SM-”
“I don’t care what they say. I needed to be here for you and that’s what I’m going to do.”
“Y-you need to-to be c-careful.” Yoochun was barely audible, but somehow his words rang loud in clear in the others’ ears. “We’ve l-lost everyth-ing. Don’t make t-that mis-take.”
“Shh, Chunnie, we haven’t lost anything.” Junsu wrapped his arms around the other, just above Changmin’s own. He nuzzled into the back of his neck and lightly pressed his lips to the skin there. “Everything will be okay.”
“They p-pl-ayed us. We’re their toys.”
“No, baby, we’re not. They cornered us. It wasn’t fair. We did the right thing.”
“I j-just… I w-ant t-t-to sing…”
“I know, baby, I know.” They laid in silence for a little while, Yoochun’s shaking and sobbing slowly calming once more. Changmin felt his breathing slow until the pianist had succeeded in crying himself to sleep. He met Junsu’s eyes and the elder nodded, the two of them carefully slipping away to talk in the hallway.
“What… I don’t understand.” Changmin sighed, leaning back against the wall, mirroring Junsu, who tilted his head in question. “What happened?”
“It was gradual and fast at the same time. I can’t even… can we not talk about it now, Min? I’m sorry, I just… I can’t really process it myself yet.” Before he could even realize he was doing it, Junsu crossed the small space to find himself in Changmin’s arms. “Chunnie’s a mess and Jaejoong won’t talk to anyone. I almost think he might talk to Yoochun but he can barely get a word out without getting upset.”
“Yunho-yah might be able to get something out of him.”
Junsu was silent for a moment before he nodded slowly. “I almost forgot he was here.”
---
The silence in the living room was ridiculous. Or so Yunho would’ve thought if he had not just now stopped hearing Yoochun’s cries. It was the contrast, then, that was so astonishing. Jaejoong finally pulled away from his arms and motioned for him to fit onto the couch if he could. It was touchy, but they did it, cramming themselves into the small space with a bit of difficulty.
“I can’t believe this.”
“I know, me neither.”
“We thought we’d finally gotten our heads back up above water. …How’re your concerts going?”
“Jae, I don’t think that’s too important-”
“How are your concerts going? Are you successful?” The desperation in Jaejoong’s eyes left Yunho with no choice but to go along with it.
“Very successful, though the ocean of red is there for the three of you just as much as it is for us.”
“They’re there?” Yunho almost cheered at the shimmer in the other’s eyes. “Cassiopeia? They’re still there?”
“Jae, they wouldn’t leave us. At least, I was praying that they wouldn’t leave us. We were surprised at the first concert just how much support we still have.” He smoothed down the other’s hair with a smile. “The fans aren’t going to leave us like that. Bigeast is here too, you know. You saw them.”
“But now, now they’ll leave us. They’ll think we’ve deserted them-”
“Baby, stop that.”
“There’s no reason for them to love us anymore, Yunho. We can’t give them anything. We’ve been exploited so much, it’s all I want to do and I give up everything for it, maybe we’ve gone too far-”
“My Jae doesn’t deserve to live in a cage. You aren’t meant to be caged. My Jaejoong is a bird that needs to fly, and SM wasn’t allowing you to do that. Let’s call Avex… animal control trying to get you back into that corner. You deserve better.”
There was a sudden shift in Jaejoong’s expression, and it caught Yunho off-guard. “So, then, what about your contract with Avex? And Changmin’s? What about that?”
“It’s the same as the one with all five of us, technically it’s still valid-”
“We have different sources, Yunnie-ah.”
“We do. And I can’t do anything about that.”
“We just have to trust each other, right?”
Yunho nodded, pleased. “We just have to trust each other."
“And the fans,” Junsu added, padding in from the hallway with Changmin right behind him. Jaejoong gave him a quizzical look. “Chunnie, he fell asleep. He was running a fever at last check before we came out here. He has filming in Korea, he’s going to need to go to a doctor.”
Changmin could see how much the stress was breaking Junsu down. Now, not only was he dealing with lawsuit drama left and right, Yoochun was falling ill. Changmin reached over to brush the hair out of his eyes, but he just shook it back in them. “Yunho-yah… how did you know to come here?”
“It wasn’t me.” Yunho pointed up toward the maknae with a small smile. “Minnie-ah is quite a genius when it comes to these things.”
“When it comes to everything.” The youngest retorted sharply.
Junsu chuckled.
Jaejoong laughed.
And whatever sacrifice that Yunho and Changmin had made on a whim to cross the water to meet them… now it was totally worth it.
---
Min,
I miss you. Really, I really really miss you. I need you. We need you. Please…
I’m not really sure what to tell you. I’ve been avoiding sharing all the stuff that’s gone down up until now because I thought it was unimportant. I got my hopes up.
Guess we can’t do that anymore.
No, I can’t do that anymore. Everytime I get shot down I break. Again, and again, and again.
You deserve the chance to hope. Don’t lose faith, Minnie-ah. I love you too much to let you fall into the dark abyss that I’m falling into. Junsu will pull me out eventually.
I’d love it if you could too, but-
Well, Minnie, don’t sacrifice yourself for me. Junsu would probably say the same. Lately he’s whispered at night how we have to take risks because that’s who we are. We can’t break out anymore if we end up in the same cage.
Being caged sounds really good right now.
Love you, Changmin. Please be safe. Make good choices. Don’t get sick. Don’t get hurt.
~Yoochun ♥
---
Thoughts? If you read it and it upset you, I'm sorry. I know a lot of people are sensitive about this. I'm kind of sensitive about it. The main fic will be updated soon, it's just that my muse kinda got crushed...
♥ you all! ♥ Keep the faith, they'll come back somehow.