FIC: A Story For The Grandkids [Jaejoong/Yunho]
a story for the grandkids
jaejoong/yunho; 2,843
PG (with some pottymouthing courtesy of kim jaejoong)
help_haiti fic for ksha2222 who gave me a fluffy jaeho prompt. i hope i did it justice!
Long after it happens (much, much longer, really), Jaejoong will think that it's funny and even a bit sweet how he and Yunho end up together. But right now, as he stared horrified into the hole in the middle of the stage where Yunho was at the bottom clutching his ankle with a bunch of stage hands huddled around him -- courtesy of one of Jaejoong's incredibly graceful spins -- Jaejoong felt like the worst person in the world.
"Oh my god. Fuck. Fuckfuckfuck. Fucking motherf--"
"Hyung, please," Changmin said from beside him, cutting off the long string of obscenities that Jaejoong just continued in his head.
"... Yunho?" he said, crouching down. He hugged his knees and craned his head over the edge. "Are you okay?"
No one answered him.
---
"Oh god, what if it gets infected? What if they have to amputate? What if he dies???"
"I am seriously going to slap you," Changmin said. He looked at Yoochun. "What about you?"
"Serious slappage in the future," Yoochun nodded.
"I'm being serious too!" Jaejoong said and didn't wait for a response before he shuffled away to sit at the front of the stage, his legs dangling off the edge. Almost immediately after, Junsu sat down next to him.
"It's just a sprained ankle," Junsu said, rubbing one of Jaejoong's shoulders. "He'll be fine in two weeks, tops, just like I was. Don't worry so much."
Jaejoong peeked out from where he was hiding behind his hands, then dropped one to squeeze Junsu's leg. Most of the time when Jaejoong freaked out about something, Junsu was right there with Yoochun and Changmin in making fun of him, but then there were times like these when Junsu just seemed to know that Jaejoong wasn't telling everything and showed impressive patience, letting Jaejoong reveal things at his own pace. "We had a fight this morning," he said finally. "It was stupid. Some dumb shit about the schedule and how Yoochun's getting into one of his funks again."
"I know, I heard." Junsu smiled as he combed his fingers through Jaejoong's hair. "It'll be okay. I bet Yunho forgave you before we even left the house."
"So you don't think he though I did it on purpose?"
"If you say one more stupid thing, the plan to slap you back to sanity is going to become a three man job."
Jaejoong didn't have to say anything else. He simply smiled and tipped his head against Junsu's shoulder, just enjoying Junsu's brand of tough love for the moment.
---
Yunho was already back from the doctor's when they stumbled into the apartment that night. He was sprawled on the couch, his back up against one armrest while his foot was on the other, propped up by extra cushions. Balanced on his chest was a container of cup ramen and when he saw them, he beamed and said, "Hey guys, they're showing Bambi and Bambi II back to back on the Disney Channel!"
"You are really taking this injury thing hard, aren't you?" Changmin said, pulling the hood of Yunho's sweatshirt over his head as he passed by on his way to the kitchen.
"Can you bring me some ice cream?" Yunho called after him, and really, only Yunho could get away with ordering Changmin around and live to tell about it.
Jaejoong looked everywhere but at Yunho, then sighed and said loudly, "Okay, good night!" and slipped away before anyone could stop him. So what if it was only 7 o'clock?
Safely hidden away under his covers, Jaejoong plotted out how to avoid Yunho for the next two weeks, up to and including temporarily changing his career path to monasticism. He could totally rock a buzz cut, or at least way better than what Yoochun tried to do.
There was a knock on the door and Jaejoong could tell from the rhythm that on the other side was Changmin. "I'm sleeping," he said, throwing a pillow over his face.
"Can you do that and make food at the same time?"
Jaejoong knew Changmin wasn't there just to ask about dinner, at least not only about dinner even if Changmin would never say it outright. "There's still leftovers in the fridge. Be creative and make do."
There was no reply or even any sounds of Changmin walking away. Then a quiet, "Okay, good night, hyung." Things had been different between them since the lawsuit mess faded away. It wasn't a bad different, but all of them changed a little over the past three years and Jaejoong and Changmin still needed more time to rediscover how they fit together.
But it did make him smile how the way Changmin asked after him, pretending to only care about being fed, didn't change at all, not even a bit.
Jaejoong lay in bed quietly, more than once thinking about how he shouldn't be such a coward, to go back out there and ask Yunho if he needed anything because god forbid the other three be able to take care of anything living, including themselves. That was still the thought in his head when he rolled over clutching the pillow, eventually lulled to sleep by the muted sounds of Disney drifting down from the living room.
---
The truth was, Jaejoong had always been a bit awkward with Yunho. Most of their time together had always been spent in a professional setting and they were both so different from who they were on stage that when they got home and shook their personas off, there was never really a moment when Jaejoong felt like he knew Yunho the way he knew the rest of them.
So, the first time Jaejoong looked at Yunho and thought, I want to kiss you, definitely made his world a little crazy. He wasn't sure when and how it happened, thinking Yunho was good-looking for a guy to thinking he was good-looking enough to be kissable, but it did and those feelings that he ignored for a good year or so hadn't gone away since the last time they were all in this apartment together.
The thing about wanting to avoid someone was that Jaejoong was the worst person at doing it. He couldn't disappear the way Yoochun and Changmin could, mostly because he was always the first one to call uncle and give up, needing the company. Worse, it was especially true now.
They decided to reschedule the tour dates for the next two weeks because a comeback tour couldn't really afford a sprained ankle the same way a regular tour had. While management worked on that, they had the next week off while Yunho recuperated. The time off wasn't supposed to be a vacation, they could be called in for a 4-person rehearsal, but Jaejoong stared at his phone and wondered if he could get away with going home for a day or two, visit his parents.
He had been hiding in his room the entire morning and it was almost noon now. He wasn't sure what exactly he thought Yunho would do to him, but whatever it was, his grumbling stomach wasn't going to put up with it. He tip-toed to the door and stuck his ear against it, listening for any movement from outside. All he could make out was the sound of Junsu's video games, no traces of Yunho's voice. That was good enough.
Jaejoong probably looked ridiculous sticking his head out into the hallway first as if expecting to be bombarded. But a few steps later, that's exactly what happened when he reached the living room and suddenly, Yoochun and Changmin came from out of nowhere and grabbed him, shoving him onto the couch.
"We're not doing this anymore," Yoochun said. Both he and Changmin looked as if they hadn't slept all night, their hair a mess. "We don't care what your problem is, but we physically cannot do this anymore. He is the devil."
Jaejoong was quiet as he stared back and forth between the two of them. "Did I sleep through the apocalypse or something? What are you talking about?"
Just then, one of the bedroom doors slammed shut and Junsu appeared, grumbling to himself as he speed walked to the kitchen with a glass of juice in his hand. "There's too much sugar in store-bought juice, Junsu," they could hear Junsu muttering while he was none too gentle with the cupboards. "Don't you want me to get better quickly, Junsu? Jaejoong would've known to get fresh-squeezed, Junsu." The sounds stopped and Junsu marched back out wielding a hand juicer. "He is possessed. There is no way any human can be this demanding. I know a priest who does exorcisms and he can be here in half an hour."
"Seriously, what is going on?" Jaejoong said. He regretted speaking up immediately because it made Junsu notice his presence and Junsu looked a bit like he was ready to kill.
"This is your fault," Junsu said, pointing the juicer at Jaejoong's face. "You did this."
"I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about," Jaejoong said, though he was starting to formulate a theory that had to do with Yunho and his inability to deal with injury and illness like a grown up. "Plus I would like to remind you of the heartfelt conversation we had yesterday between a hyung and his dongsaeng about how accidents happen and how it's unhealthy to blame yourself over things that can't be controlled."
"I lied."
"Well, that's just mean."
That was pretty much the last thing he got to say before he was manhandled into the kitchen, and then to where he was now, standing in front of Yunho's door with a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice.
"I don't need to be babysat," Jaejoong said, glancing at the three of them standing behind him and essentially trapping him with nowhere to go except inside Yunho's room.
"We're not leaving until we see you go inside and stay there."
Jaejoong stared at Changmin, then shook his head. "You know what forms a strong, forever bond between band members? Tough enough to withstand any and all kinds of lawsuits? Trust. Which I am not feeling it from any of you right now, so you should all go and think long and hard about that."
And that was the last thing he said before he was manhandled again, this time into Yunho's room.
Yunho, unsurprisingly, was flipping through their set list and all the final details they had been discussing before Jaejoong bumped his clumsy ass into him. He looked amused when Jaejoong stumbled in and the door was shut behind him.
"I brought you juice," Jaejoong mumbled from where he was standing just a few feet inside as if expecting Yunho to get up and come get it.
"I can't walk."
"... Right. I'd say it wasn't my fault, but..." Jaejoong drifted off, smiling awkwardly as he moved closer and set the glass down on the bedside table.
Yunho smiled back. "But it is?"
"Yeah. So, um, great. Have your juice. I'll just," Jaejoong gestured behind him, "leave you to it."
He'd only taken one step when Yunho said, "You're not going to apologize?" It caught Jaejoong completely off-guard and he stared at Yunho, trying to figure out if he was being serious or not. Yunho smiled and pointed at his ankle.
Jaejoong took a deep breath. "Okay, I just feel like yesterday you said that me apologizing profusely for half an hour--"
"Kiss it better."
"-- and being a general nuisance to everyone who was trying to get you out of a hole in the floor -- wait, what?"
"Kiss it better," Yunho said, again with a completely straight face.
"Your ankle," Jaejoong said slowly, making it sound halfway between a question and a statement. Yunho nodded, still looking perfectly calm.
"Hasn't your mother ever kissed your --"
"Please do not say boo boo," Jaejoong said, and groaned when Yunho fell silent. "Okay. One, I am not actually your mother. Two, you are not 5 years old. And three, your ankle is by your foot."
"So you'd rather kiss somewhere that's not by my foot."
"Why are we even having this conversation?"
"Like, for example, my cheek," Yunho said, completely ignoring Jaejoong. He pointed at his cheekbone. "I do have a bruise right here. You can't see it, but it's there."
"You're being serious?"
Yunho shrugged. "You don't have to. You can go back to avoiding me."
Jaejoong frowned, thinking that wasn't very fair. "That's not very fair."
"So just a kiss on the cheek," Yunho said. "Then you won't have to feel guilty anymore or keep avoiding me."
After considering it for a moment, Jaejoong actually leaned in to do it, but froze and pulled back. "This is weird." Though he wasn't sure if this was weird because he couldn't deny wanting it or weird because Yunho was the one who suggested it.
"Why?"
"Because," Jaejoong said slowly, "I'm a guy."
"And?"
Jaejoong stared at Yunho flatly. "Really?" he said. "No one else in this group is as aware of his own masculinity as you are, and takes any opportunity to show it, and you're wondering why?"
Yunho rolled his eyes and grabbed Jaejoong wrist, tugging him down to sit on the edge of the bed. "That's just my sparkling personality," he said while Jaejoong failed epically at maintaining eye contact. "Anyway, I asked you to so it isn't weird for me, and I think if you didn't want to as well, you would've said some pretty nasty things about me deserving to get injured and left by now."
Jaejoong really, really hated when Yunho was insightful. In fact, he was so caught up in being annoyed that it took a couple of seconds for him to realize that not only was Yunho still holding on to his wrist, but Yunho's thumb was stroking back and forth against the inside of Jaejoong's wrist. "Oh my god," he said, vaguely horrified. "You know that I -- that I like you."
Yunho stared at him long enough for Jaejoong to feel the start of paranoia seep in, thinking that he just ruined everything by saying the completely wrong thing, but then Yunho just burst out laughing.
"God, I can't believe how long that took," Yunho said, and kissed Jaejoong.
What little Jaejoong could focus on while his brain proceeded to sputter out on him basically amounted to the fact that Yunho was kissing him and Yunho was, exactly as Jaejoong imagined, definitely very kissable. By the time Yunho pulled away, it still took Jaejoong a while before he could say, "How long?" and have it make sense. Which, for a two word sentence, was pretty embarrassing.
"Since before the lawsuit. Changmin told me."
"Changmin knows?"
Yunho laughed softly. "Changmin knows a lot," he said. "Shouldn't surprise you. Anyway, I didn't believe him at first, then I started noticing you always staring creepily at me--"
"--I'm not creepy--"
"-- and then the legal stuff happened and I realized that I missed you in a slightly different way than how I missed Yoochun and Junsu."
Jaejoong blinked at him.
"I like you too, you dumbass!" Yunho said, throwing his hands up. "Seriously, I can't believe I had to use the My Cheek Is Bruised, Come Kiss It Better ploy and still have to spell it out for you."
"I don't know if I'm insulted or moved by your declaration," Jaejoong said, even as he smiled. "So why are you telling me now?"
Yunho suddenly looked sheepish. "Well, I felt bad that you were beating yourself up over it and... it was kind of my own fault that this happened."
"What?"
"I've kind of been wanting to tell you for two weeks now, but kept chickening out and you probably wouldn't have bumped into me if I hadn't been, you know, hovering unnecessarily close to you in the first place." Yunho mumbled the last part.
Jaejoong punched Yunho's shoulder lightly. "You jerk."
"Hey, still legitimately injured here!"
"Shut up and kiss me again."
Yunho smiled. "Happy to."
---
Jaejoong felt a little bad that when Yoochun came to check on them five minutes later, he was straddling Yunho's lap and Yunho's hands were up his shirt while they made out.
"Holy shit, jesus--!" Yoochun said, slamming the door quickly.
Jaejoong pulled away from Yunho hesitantly, but only just enough to talk. "That'll fix his bad mood, right?"
"Uh huh," Yunho mumbled, already trying to steal more kisses. "He'll be fine."
The door opened again. "I hope you know there will be a group meeting about this!"
Jaejoong grabbed the nearest object -- a melted ice pack from the bedside table -- and chucked it in the direction of Yoochun's voice.
It was good to have everyone together again.
jaejoong/yunho; 2,843
PG (with some pottymouthing courtesy of kim jaejoong)
help_haiti fic for ksha2222 who gave me a fluffy jaeho prompt. i hope i did it justice!
Long after it happens (much, much longer, really), Jaejoong will think that it's funny and even a bit sweet how he and Yunho end up together. But right now, as he stared horrified into the hole in the middle of the stage where Yunho was at the bottom clutching his ankle with a bunch of stage hands huddled around him -- courtesy of one of Jaejoong's incredibly graceful spins -- Jaejoong felt like the worst person in the world.
"Oh my god. Fuck. Fuckfuckfuck. Fucking motherf--"
"Hyung, please," Changmin said from beside him, cutting off the long string of obscenities that Jaejoong just continued in his head.
"... Yunho?" he said, crouching down. He hugged his knees and craned his head over the edge. "Are you okay?"
No one answered him.
---
"Oh god, what if it gets infected? What if they have to amputate? What if he dies???"
"I am seriously going to slap you," Changmin said. He looked at Yoochun. "What about you?"
"Serious slappage in the future," Yoochun nodded.
"I'm being serious too!" Jaejoong said and didn't wait for a response before he shuffled away to sit at the front of the stage, his legs dangling off the edge. Almost immediately after, Junsu sat down next to him.
"It's just a sprained ankle," Junsu said, rubbing one of Jaejoong's shoulders. "He'll be fine in two weeks, tops, just like I was. Don't worry so much."
Jaejoong peeked out from where he was hiding behind his hands, then dropped one to squeeze Junsu's leg. Most of the time when Jaejoong freaked out about something, Junsu was right there with Yoochun and Changmin in making fun of him, but then there were times like these when Junsu just seemed to know that Jaejoong wasn't telling everything and showed impressive patience, letting Jaejoong reveal things at his own pace. "We had a fight this morning," he said finally. "It was stupid. Some dumb shit about the schedule and how Yoochun's getting into one of his funks again."
"I know, I heard." Junsu smiled as he combed his fingers through Jaejoong's hair. "It'll be okay. I bet Yunho forgave you before we even left the house."
"So you don't think he though I did it on purpose?"
"If you say one more stupid thing, the plan to slap you back to sanity is going to become a three man job."
Jaejoong didn't have to say anything else. He simply smiled and tipped his head against Junsu's shoulder, just enjoying Junsu's brand of tough love for the moment.
---
Yunho was already back from the doctor's when they stumbled into the apartment that night. He was sprawled on the couch, his back up against one armrest while his foot was on the other, propped up by extra cushions. Balanced on his chest was a container of cup ramen and when he saw them, he beamed and said, "Hey guys, they're showing Bambi and Bambi II back to back on the Disney Channel!"
"You are really taking this injury thing hard, aren't you?" Changmin said, pulling the hood of Yunho's sweatshirt over his head as he passed by on his way to the kitchen.
"Can you bring me some ice cream?" Yunho called after him, and really, only Yunho could get away with ordering Changmin around and live to tell about it.
Jaejoong looked everywhere but at Yunho, then sighed and said loudly, "Okay, good night!" and slipped away before anyone could stop him. So what if it was only 7 o'clock?
Safely hidden away under his covers, Jaejoong plotted out how to avoid Yunho for the next two weeks, up to and including temporarily changing his career path to monasticism. He could totally rock a buzz cut, or at least way better than what Yoochun tried to do.
There was a knock on the door and Jaejoong could tell from the rhythm that on the other side was Changmin. "I'm sleeping," he said, throwing a pillow over his face.
"Can you do that and make food at the same time?"
Jaejoong knew Changmin wasn't there just to ask about dinner, at least not only about dinner even if Changmin would never say it outright. "There's still leftovers in the fridge. Be creative and make do."
There was no reply or even any sounds of Changmin walking away. Then a quiet, "Okay, good night, hyung." Things had been different between them since the lawsuit mess faded away. It wasn't a bad different, but all of them changed a little over the past three years and Jaejoong and Changmin still needed more time to rediscover how they fit together.
But it did make him smile how the way Changmin asked after him, pretending to only care about being fed, didn't change at all, not even a bit.
Jaejoong lay in bed quietly, more than once thinking about how he shouldn't be such a coward, to go back out there and ask Yunho if he needed anything because god forbid the other three be able to take care of anything living, including themselves. That was still the thought in his head when he rolled over clutching the pillow, eventually lulled to sleep by the muted sounds of Disney drifting down from the living room.
---
The truth was, Jaejoong had always been a bit awkward with Yunho. Most of their time together had always been spent in a professional setting and they were both so different from who they were on stage that when they got home and shook their personas off, there was never really a moment when Jaejoong felt like he knew Yunho the way he knew the rest of them.
So, the first time Jaejoong looked at Yunho and thought, I want to kiss you, definitely made his world a little crazy. He wasn't sure when and how it happened, thinking Yunho was good-looking for a guy to thinking he was good-looking enough to be kissable, but it did and those feelings that he ignored for a good year or so hadn't gone away since the last time they were all in this apartment together.
The thing about wanting to avoid someone was that Jaejoong was the worst person at doing it. He couldn't disappear the way Yoochun and Changmin could, mostly because he was always the first one to call uncle and give up, needing the company. Worse, it was especially true now.
They decided to reschedule the tour dates for the next two weeks because a comeback tour couldn't really afford a sprained ankle the same way a regular tour had. While management worked on that, they had the next week off while Yunho recuperated. The time off wasn't supposed to be a vacation, they could be called in for a 4-person rehearsal, but Jaejoong stared at his phone and wondered if he could get away with going home for a day or two, visit his parents.
He had been hiding in his room the entire morning and it was almost noon now. He wasn't sure what exactly he thought Yunho would do to him, but whatever it was, his grumbling stomach wasn't going to put up with it. He tip-toed to the door and stuck his ear against it, listening for any movement from outside. All he could make out was the sound of Junsu's video games, no traces of Yunho's voice. That was good enough.
Jaejoong probably looked ridiculous sticking his head out into the hallway first as if expecting to be bombarded. But a few steps later, that's exactly what happened when he reached the living room and suddenly, Yoochun and Changmin came from out of nowhere and grabbed him, shoving him onto the couch.
"We're not doing this anymore," Yoochun said. Both he and Changmin looked as if they hadn't slept all night, their hair a mess. "We don't care what your problem is, but we physically cannot do this anymore. He is the devil."
Jaejoong was quiet as he stared back and forth between the two of them. "Did I sleep through the apocalypse or something? What are you talking about?"
Just then, one of the bedroom doors slammed shut and Junsu appeared, grumbling to himself as he speed walked to the kitchen with a glass of juice in his hand. "There's too much sugar in store-bought juice, Junsu," they could hear Junsu muttering while he was none too gentle with the cupboards. "Don't you want me to get better quickly, Junsu? Jaejoong would've known to get fresh-squeezed, Junsu." The sounds stopped and Junsu marched back out wielding a hand juicer. "He is possessed. There is no way any human can be this demanding. I know a priest who does exorcisms and he can be here in half an hour."
"Seriously, what is going on?" Jaejoong said. He regretted speaking up immediately because it made Junsu notice his presence and Junsu looked a bit like he was ready to kill.
"This is your fault," Junsu said, pointing the juicer at Jaejoong's face. "You did this."
"I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about," Jaejoong said, though he was starting to formulate a theory that had to do with Yunho and his inability to deal with injury and illness like a grown up. "Plus I would like to remind you of the heartfelt conversation we had yesterday between a hyung and his dongsaeng about how accidents happen and how it's unhealthy to blame yourself over things that can't be controlled."
"I lied."
"Well, that's just mean."
That was pretty much the last thing he got to say before he was manhandled into the kitchen, and then to where he was now, standing in front of Yunho's door with a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice.
"I don't need to be babysat," Jaejoong said, glancing at the three of them standing behind him and essentially trapping him with nowhere to go except inside Yunho's room.
"We're not leaving until we see you go inside and stay there."
Jaejoong stared at Changmin, then shook his head. "You know what forms a strong, forever bond between band members? Tough enough to withstand any and all kinds of lawsuits? Trust. Which I am not feeling it from any of you right now, so you should all go and think long and hard about that."
And that was the last thing he said before he was manhandled again, this time into Yunho's room.
Yunho, unsurprisingly, was flipping through their set list and all the final details they had been discussing before Jaejoong bumped his clumsy ass into him. He looked amused when Jaejoong stumbled in and the door was shut behind him.
"I brought you juice," Jaejoong mumbled from where he was standing just a few feet inside as if expecting Yunho to get up and come get it.
"I can't walk."
"... Right. I'd say it wasn't my fault, but..." Jaejoong drifted off, smiling awkwardly as he moved closer and set the glass down on the bedside table.
Yunho smiled back. "But it is?"
"Yeah. So, um, great. Have your juice. I'll just," Jaejoong gestured behind him, "leave you to it."
He'd only taken one step when Yunho said, "You're not going to apologize?" It caught Jaejoong completely off-guard and he stared at Yunho, trying to figure out if he was being serious or not. Yunho smiled and pointed at his ankle.
Jaejoong took a deep breath. "Okay, I just feel like yesterday you said that me apologizing profusely for half an hour--"
"Kiss it better."
"-- and being a general nuisance to everyone who was trying to get you out of a hole in the floor -- wait, what?"
"Kiss it better," Yunho said, again with a completely straight face.
"Your ankle," Jaejoong said slowly, making it sound halfway between a question and a statement. Yunho nodded, still looking perfectly calm.
"Hasn't your mother ever kissed your --"
"Please do not say boo boo," Jaejoong said, and groaned when Yunho fell silent. "Okay. One, I am not actually your mother. Two, you are not 5 years old. And three, your ankle is by your foot."
"So you'd rather kiss somewhere that's not by my foot."
"Why are we even having this conversation?"
"Like, for example, my cheek," Yunho said, completely ignoring Jaejoong. He pointed at his cheekbone. "I do have a bruise right here. You can't see it, but it's there."
"You're being serious?"
Yunho shrugged. "You don't have to. You can go back to avoiding me."
Jaejoong frowned, thinking that wasn't very fair. "That's not very fair."
"So just a kiss on the cheek," Yunho said. "Then you won't have to feel guilty anymore or keep avoiding me."
After considering it for a moment, Jaejoong actually leaned in to do it, but froze and pulled back. "This is weird." Though he wasn't sure if this was weird because he couldn't deny wanting it or weird because Yunho was the one who suggested it.
"Why?"
"Because," Jaejoong said slowly, "I'm a guy."
"And?"
Jaejoong stared at Yunho flatly. "Really?" he said. "No one else in this group is as aware of his own masculinity as you are, and takes any opportunity to show it, and you're wondering why?"
Yunho rolled his eyes and grabbed Jaejoong wrist, tugging him down to sit on the edge of the bed. "That's just my sparkling personality," he said while Jaejoong failed epically at maintaining eye contact. "Anyway, I asked you to so it isn't weird for me, and I think if you didn't want to as well, you would've said some pretty nasty things about me deserving to get injured and left by now."
Jaejoong really, really hated when Yunho was insightful. In fact, he was so caught up in being annoyed that it took a couple of seconds for him to realize that not only was Yunho still holding on to his wrist, but Yunho's thumb was stroking back and forth against the inside of Jaejoong's wrist. "Oh my god," he said, vaguely horrified. "You know that I -- that I like you."
Yunho stared at him long enough for Jaejoong to feel the start of paranoia seep in, thinking that he just ruined everything by saying the completely wrong thing, but then Yunho just burst out laughing.
"God, I can't believe how long that took," Yunho said, and kissed Jaejoong.
What little Jaejoong could focus on while his brain proceeded to sputter out on him basically amounted to the fact that Yunho was kissing him and Yunho was, exactly as Jaejoong imagined, definitely very kissable. By the time Yunho pulled away, it still took Jaejoong a while before he could say, "How long?" and have it make sense. Which, for a two word sentence, was pretty embarrassing.
"Since before the lawsuit. Changmin told me."
"Changmin knows?"
Yunho laughed softly. "Changmin knows a lot," he said. "Shouldn't surprise you. Anyway, I didn't believe him at first, then I started noticing you always staring creepily at me--"
"--I'm not creepy--"
"-- and then the legal stuff happened and I realized that I missed you in a slightly different way than how I missed Yoochun and Junsu."
Jaejoong blinked at him.
"I like you too, you dumbass!" Yunho said, throwing his hands up. "Seriously, I can't believe I had to use the My Cheek Is Bruised, Come Kiss It Better ploy and still have to spell it out for you."
"I don't know if I'm insulted or moved by your declaration," Jaejoong said, even as he smiled. "So why are you telling me now?"
Yunho suddenly looked sheepish. "Well, I felt bad that you were beating yourself up over it and... it was kind of my own fault that this happened."
"What?"
"I've kind of been wanting to tell you for two weeks now, but kept chickening out and you probably wouldn't have bumped into me if I hadn't been, you know, hovering unnecessarily close to you in the first place." Yunho mumbled the last part.
Jaejoong punched Yunho's shoulder lightly. "You jerk."
"Hey, still legitimately injured here!"
"Shut up and kiss me again."
Yunho smiled. "Happy to."
---
Jaejoong felt a little bad that when Yoochun came to check on them five minutes later, he was straddling Yunho's lap and Yunho's hands were up his shirt while they made out.
"Holy shit, jesus--!" Yoochun said, slamming the door quickly.
Jaejoong pulled away from Yunho hesitantly, but only just enough to talk. "That'll fix his bad mood, right?"
"Uh huh," Yunho mumbled, already trying to steal more kisses. "He'll be fine."
The door opened again. "I hope you know there will be a group meeting about this!"
Jaejoong grabbed the nearest object -- a melted ice pack from the bedside table -- and chucked it in the direction of Yoochun's voice.
It was good to have everyone together again.