Nobody Knows: Chapter 10
Title: Nobody Knows
Pairing(s): Yunho/Jaejoong, a.o.
Genre: Romance, Angst, Drama, Humor
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Incest, Sexual content (involving minors for the first part!)
Length: 10/?
Beta'd by: daramjwi
Summary: In a broken family two brothers cling onto each other for affection, but when their childlike need for attention result in less and less innocent experiments, things go downhill fast. Struggling with jealousy, forbidden attraction and the desperate need to be loved, Yunho and Jaejoong keep forgetting about one thing: What would happen if someone found out?
---
Yunho woke up by the sound of the front door closing. He blinked, disoriented; his bedroom was still dark and his alarm clock indicated it was a little past three. As he rubbed the sleep out of his eyes he tried to think of what it was that had awoken him at a time like this. Soft footsteps sounded from the other side of the door and he realized straight away: Jaejoong had arrived home.
He sat up straight, flung his blankets off him and put on his slippers. Maybe Jaejoong was tired after where ever he came from, but he wanted to talk to him, tell him what Park Jaesang had been like today even though he knew Jaejoong wasn't interested. Most of all he wanted a little bit of his brother's attention, before it would be morning and their mom's presence made certain things impossible.
He waited a few dreary, quiet minutes to make sure Jaejoong had entered his own bedroom and had closed the door before he opened the balcony door. The first thing he noticed once he shifted Jaejoong’s doors aside was that his brother had gone to bed straight away. No matter what time it was, Jaejoong usually took a while before going to bed. That was odd.
"Hyung?" he whispered.
In his bed Jaejoong lay curled up in his blanket, doubting if he should pretend to be asleep or not. When Yunho nudged him so he could climb in bed beside him he dropped his half-hearted pretense and scooted over to leave enough space for him.
He wrapped an arm around Yunho and nuzzled up against him. Maybe his little brother was tired and would fall asleep straight away. But with how restlessly Yunho was shifting beside him he could tell the other was wide-awake.
"Where did you go?" Yunho asked with a whispered voice, mostly to start a conversation.
"Went to a bonfire with Seunghyun and Hyunjoong…" Jaejoong mumbled.
"A bonfire?" Yunho sounded a lot more interested now and Jaejoong shifted away a little so he could look at him. That he wasn't going to get any sleep soon was evident.
"Yeah," he replied, and began explaining what it had looked like, the fires roaring on either side of him and the many people that had been there. He concluded with the police arriving and putting an abrupt end to the short-lived night.
"Whoa," Yunho whispered, sounding a little envious. "I wish I could have gone."
"Not sure if you would've liked it. It was very crowded."
"I can handle crowded," Yunho muttered a little offended.
"I'm sure you can, I didn't mean it that way." He smiled and pulled Yunho a little closer. His little brother’s frame was comforting and warm against his worn out, cold body. "So what did you do today?"
Yunho summed up how the meeting with their mother's new boyfriend went, but unlike earlier, he wasn't all that keen on talking about it anymore. There was something funny about Jaejoong: his smell. It wasn't the faint scent of cigarettes and campfires lingering in his hair and skin that stood out, nor the familiar smell of mint and Jaejoong's barely there anymore body-wash. It was something dark and seductive he had always associated with his older brother, but was very off now: Jaejoong smelled like sex. Faintly, but without a doubt, he could sense it.
"Hyung," he began after finishing his story. His brother's hand was holding his, his eyes already closed.
"Hm?" Jaejoong retorted sleepily.
"Did something else happen at the bonfire?"
Jaejoong opened his eyes and glanced up at him. The look on his brother's face told him it wasn't a question if something had happened, but rather if he was going to tell him or not. As far as Yunho knew they had always shared everything, and the mere fact that Jaejoong hesitated on telling him made him feel weird, angry, and unsure.
Eventually Jaejoong nodded, releasing his hand to fold his own underneath his head. "I met this girl," he started slowly, "Her name's Yuri. She's going to graduate from high school this year."
Yunho heard his heart drum inside his ears. A year ago he would have been hanging at his brother's lips for more information, eager for his stories, but now he no longer wanted to hear it. He felt something terribly uncomfortable in the pit of his stomach, like an enraged animal was clawing at his insides in a desperate attempt to get out. He swallowed.
"What's she like?" Yunho asked, his tone of voice unfazed despite what he felt. Jaejoong looked at him, intently, as if to calculate his mood.
"Pretty... I suppose," he answered.
"Did you kiss her?" Yunho asked, not sure if he wanted to know the answer.
Jaejoong chuckled, eyeing him in an endearing fashion. "We did a lot more than just kiss."
Yunho barely even realized he was clenching the bedspread, and neither did Jaejoong, who had his eyes focused on his fingers trailing over the pillow. His eyes sparkled with a sort of delight Yunho couldn't bare to see at this moment.
"I guess you could say I'm not a virgin anymore," Jaejoong stated, and Yunho’s heart sunk. For that short second Yunho felt an indescribable need to punch him as he comprehended what feeling jealous, really jealous was like.
"It was weird though," Jaejoong continued, still staring at the pillow case where his hand lay, "I always thought it'd feel special but it didn't, not really. It was over so fast." This time he did look up.
Yunho must have lost the ability to hide his emotions because his brother's face fell the moment their eyes met. "Yunho-yah?" he asked, worried, "Are you okay?"
Yunho slapped his brother's hand away when he reached for him, and struggled out of the bed.
"Wait, don't go," Jaejoong almost pleaded, his voice no longer a whisper. "What's wrong? Something I said?"
"Leave me alone."
"Yunho..."
"Shut up, I hate you!" he blurted out, and the moment the words had escaped his lips a light flicked on and shone from underneath Jaejoong's bedroom door. It wasn't in the living room, it wasn't bright enough for that, but that would only be a matter of time; their mother was awake. Panicked he looked at his older brother, their mother's footsteps already hearable.
"Go," Jaejoong hissed, "Go back to your room, now!"
He reacted quickly, forgetting his slippers as he rushed out of Jaejoong's room, jumped over the balcony rail and sped back inside his bedroom. Once in bed he pulled the covers over his head and was only just in time. The door opened.
Motionless he waited, his heart pounding, until she closed the door and opened the next. Apparently Jaejoong had been less convincing into pretending to be asleep, because he could hear him talking to her. He didn't strain to listen however.
Still trembling he closed his eyes, and bit his lip as he clenched his hand over his chest. It felt as if someone had stabbed him and shattered his heart to pieces. The first tear rolled over his cheek as the lights turned off and his mother returned to her own room. But this time the silence gave him no relief, if not, it only made the suffocating feeling inside him worse. He pressed his nose in his pillow and cried softly.
---
The next week Yunho refused to talk to Jaejoong. Whenever Jaejoong entered a room where his little brother was the other would promptly turn around and leave. Even their mother noticed something was wrong. She had made failed attempts at trying to pry out of Yunho what it was that was bothering him, but it had only resulted in him shouting for the both of them to leave him the fuck alone. Their mother didn't even dare to scold him for his cursing, too shocked by the sudden outburst.
At first Jaejoong still hoped that whatever had gotten into Yunho would pass, but when the days turned into a week, and one week into two, he became anxious. Yunho still refused to speak to him. That this was because he had sex with someone else was obvious but there was something he didn’t grasp. Back then the older girl had asked him huskily how he felt about having his first time taken by a stranger. By that time she had turned him on so much he would've said yes to pretty much anything. It was over as soon as it had started, and both of them knew it was just for this once. He had taken something his Yunho had not been able to give him and should not have been expected to give him. Was that so bad?
Yunho was his little brother, and he knew him well enough by now to see why he was like this. Yunho was jealous, terribly so. He had made a grave mistake. For the first time he wondered if what they had been doing, what he wanted them to do still, was wrong.
Sighing Jaejoong rested his head on the coffee table, the clean sheet of paper in front of him as empty as it had been an hour ago. Their mom wasn't going to be home tonight, but unlike before the argument between him and Yunho this did not make him anywhere near excited. It was past six and Yunho still had not returned, staying at Taekwondo practice longer than ever. He was avoiding him like Jaejoong was avoiding their mother's new lover. This insight stung.
In the end he was no longer able to take it; the more time he spend alone thinking about it the more guilty he felt, and he stood up to get the phone. He hesitated to call one of his two best friends, but remembered Seunghyun was at his grandparent's place and Hyunjoong was grounded for his ridiculously bad grades. Eventually he called his cousin.
The family had always considered Jihyo a bit of the odd one; she was still unmarried at the age of twenty-seven and did not seem very keen on doing so either. She was very outgoing, and whenever she was bored she had the strange but striking tendency to enlighten anyone who stood but close enough with the secrets on how to make a BDSM relationship work. Because she didn’t care if her listener was a senior or a five-year old she was no longer invited to the annual family gatherings. Jaejoong was fond of her though.
About half an hour after the short call she was knocking on his door. When he opened up she appeared with a widespread smile on her face. "My favorite cousin!" The one she called her favorite cousin depended on the day of the week and the position of the moon, she had told Jaejoong once. But he supposed today he was her favorite simply for inviting her. "Can I come in?”
"Yeah, of course," he replied with a smile, her good mood being contagious and her presence welcomingly distracting. "Yunho's not home yet, but he’ll be here later.”
"And your mom?”
“Away for the night.” He chose not to comment on the relieved expression that appeared on his cousin’s face as he guided her in. While she went to make tea for them he settled on the couch, and waited quietly.
"Are you still riding that motorcycle of yours?" she asked, handing him a mug filled with hot tea. She pulled a pillow from underneath the table and sat down on the floor.
He shook his head no. "The owner found out and double locked the shed, even with Seunghyun's skills there's no way of opening it now."
"Ah, too bad," she replied, being the person who had encouraged him the most. If his mother would find out about that she would receive an angry call for sure, but Jaejoong knew how to keep his mouth shut. "Oh well, at least you know how to drive now. It's something you never really forget you know." She appeared nostalgic for a moment. "So, what's the reason for this invitation?” she proceeded after a short silence. “I'm betting it's not because you're lonely, cause I know you have more than enough friends to help you with that." She winked.
Jaejoong shifted a little awkwardly in his seat. He had nothing to complain about on the social department, but there were some things boys just did not discuss amongst each other. At least not the boys he knew.
"You're going to ask me about sex, aren't you?"
He flushed deep red and tried to look anywhere but at his cousin.
"Ah, I knew it," she said, looking very happy with herself as she made a dramatic gesture at the ceiling. "Since the day you were born I've been waiting for this!"
Jaejoong did not know how to respond to that.
"Well now, don't be shy," she said, sounding more serious as she scooted to the front of her pillow. "Ask away, I'm sure I know the answers to all your question... Well almost, but try me nevertheless."
He nodded, took his mug in both hands and stared down at it intently. "Imagine..." He could practically feel his cousin's intense stare pierce through his skull, and that didn't make him anymore comfortable. "Imagine this boy was dating... someone."
"This is a completely hypothetical situation I presume?"
"Yes," he replied, unaware that she was making fun of him. "But the boy never really realized he was dating this person, because he thought they were only experimenting."
"Still hypothetical?"
"Yes."
"Right." She nodded. There was a thoughtful expression on her face.
"And then the boy had sex with another person, and hurt the other b- the first person because of it."
"The what? Are we talking about another boy here, or was that just a slip of the tongue there?"
For the second time Jaejoong blushed, bright red. "Uhm..."
"Doesn't matter," she said, waving her remark away. "Go on."
"Yes, okay," Jaejoong replied unsurely, then proceeded, "So now the person that was hurt doesn't want to talk to him anymore and avoids him."
"So you want to know what this boy should do?"
He nodded, nervously biting his lip.
"Well, first of all, does the boy feel sorry for what he did?"
He took a moment to think about it. Did he feel sorry for what he had done with that girl? He wasn't sure. "I don't think he really feels sorry for sleeping with someone else, since they never agreed on not doing so, but he does feel really sorry that he hurt the person he cares for.”
"And does the boy know what it is that hurt the other so much?"
He tilted his head, a little confused. Surely it was because he had sex with the girl instead of doing it with Yunho. Now that he thought about it, that didn't sound very logical. Yunho hadn't really seemed keen on having sex anymore in the first place, and when he had told him about how he kissed girls, and messed around with them earlier, there had been no problem. So why now? "Because... he cheated on him?" Jaejoong realized a little too late he had given away the gender of 'the other'. If Jihyo noticed she did not care however.
"People have lots of different reasons why they don't want their partner to cheat, but the feeling they get when it happens is usually the same."
Jaejoong eyed her questioning.
"Betrayed."
He opened his mouth to say something, and then closed it again when he could not find the words.
"Of course there're other emotions involved, but the main issue is that they were cheated by a person they thought they could trust. Simple as that. And that doesn’t feel good."
"But it's not like I did it on purpose," Jaejoong tried to defend himself.
"That doesn't matter," she replied. "What matters is how he feels about it, and obviously he feels hurt. Otherwise he wouldn't bother to avoid you."
Jaejoong sighed. His heart cringed as he thought about the cold shoulder Yunho had been giving him for weeks now. The word 'betrayed' made it sound even worse. "So what should I do now?"
"Apologize of course." She chuckled, stood up to give him a gentle nudge and then went for the hallway where she got her bag off the hook. "And then I don't mean your average sorry, but something extravagant. Buy him a million roses or something." He could hear her rummaging through her stuff.
He wanted to say he didn't have money for a million roses, but the phone ringing interrupted him. He stood up to get it.
While his cousin proceeded rummaging in her shoulder bag he picked up the phone, pressing it against his ear before saying. “Hello, Kim Jaejoong speaking.” He raised his eyebrows at his cousin, who came in with something clutched in her hand stuffed it inside his bag without asking for his consent.
"Hello, are you a relative of Jung Yunho?"
"Yes," he replied, turning his attention back to the phone. "I’m his brother… Why?"
"Yunho collapsed during sports practice and we cannot reach your mother. Do you know where she is?”
“I… I’m not sure,” Jaejoong replied. His voice had turned small.
At the other side of the line it remained silent for a while. Then the male’s voice proceeded. “He's in the hospital right now.” Jaejoong didn’t know where to look, his heart beating unpleasantly fast. “It appears he is uninsured however, and I’m afraid we cannot keep him here without payment guarantee... Is there an adult nearby?”
He turned to his cousin, who still had his bag in her hands and was eyeing him with a questioning expression. Before she could ask him what was wrong he had handed her the phone. He sat back on the couch, feeling dizzy, while his cousin answered.
---
A/N: Actually I'm not too sure if this cliffhanger is much better than the previous one... O.o Another fast update?
---
Previous || Next
Pairing(s): Yunho/Jaejoong, a.o.
Genre: Romance, Angst, Drama, Humor
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Incest, Sexual content (involving minors for the first part!)
Length: 10/?
Beta'd by: daramjwi
Summary: In a broken family two brothers cling onto each other for affection, but when their childlike need for attention result in less and less innocent experiments, things go downhill fast. Struggling with jealousy, forbidden attraction and the desperate need to be loved, Yunho and Jaejoong keep forgetting about one thing: What would happen if someone found out?
---
Yunho woke up by the sound of the front door closing. He blinked, disoriented; his bedroom was still dark and his alarm clock indicated it was a little past three. As he rubbed the sleep out of his eyes he tried to think of what it was that had awoken him at a time like this. Soft footsteps sounded from the other side of the door and he realized straight away: Jaejoong had arrived home.
He sat up straight, flung his blankets off him and put on his slippers. Maybe Jaejoong was tired after where ever he came from, but he wanted to talk to him, tell him what Park Jaesang had been like today even though he knew Jaejoong wasn't interested. Most of all he wanted a little bit of his brother's attention, before it would be morning and their mom's presence made certain things impossible.
He waited a few dreary, quiet minutes to make sure Jaejoong had entered his own bedroom and had closed the door before he opened the balcony door. The first thing he noticed once he shifted Jaejoong’s doors aside was that his brother had gone to bed straight away. No matter what time it was, Jaejoong usually took a while before going to bed. That was odd.
"Hyung?" he whispered.
In his bed Jaejoong lay curled up in his blanket, doubting if he should pretend to be asleep or not. When Yunho nudged him so he could climb in bed beside him he dropped his half-hearted pretense and scooted over to leave enough space for him.
He wrapped an arm around Yunho and nuzzled up against him. Maybe his little brother was tired and would fall asleep straight away. But with how restlessly Yunho was shifting beside him he could tell the other was wide-awake.
"Where did you go?" Yunho asked with a whispered voice, mostly to start a conversation.
"Went to a bonfire with Seunghyun and Hyunjoong…" Jaejoong mumbled.
"A bonfire?" Yunho sounded a lot more interested now and Jaejoong shifted away a little so he could look at him. That he wasn't going to get any sleep soon was evident.
"Yeah," he replied, and began explaining what it had looked like, the fires roaring on either side of him and the many people that had been there. He concluded with the police arriving and putting an abrupt end to the short-lived night.
"Whoa," Yunho whispered, sounding a little envious. "I wish I could have gone."
"Not sure if you would've liked it. It was very crowded."
"I can handle crowded," Yunho muttered a little offended.
"I'm sure you can, I didn't mean it that way." He smiled and pulled Yunho a little closer. His little brother’s frame was comforting and warm against his worn out, cold body. "So what did you do today?"
Yunho summed up how the meeting with their mother's new boyfriend went, but unlike earlier, he wasn't all that keen on talking about it anymore. There was something funny about Jaejoong: his smell. It wasn't the faint scent of cigarettes and campfires lingering in his hair and skin that stood out, nor the familiar smell of mint and Jaejoong's barely there anymore body-wash. It was something dark and seductive he had always associated with his older brother, but was very off now: Jaejoong smelled like sex. Faintly, but without a doubt, he could sense it.
"Hyung," he began after finishing his story. His brother's hand was holding his, his eyes already closed.
"Hm?" Jaejoong retorted sleepily.
"Did something else happen at the bonfire?"
Jaejoong opened his eyes and glanced up at him. The look on his brother's face told him it wasn't a question if something had happened, but rather if he was going to tell him or not. As far as Yunho knew they had always shared everything, and the mere fact that Jaejoong hesitated on telling him made him feel weird, angry, and unsure.
Eventually Jaejoong nodded, releasing his hand to fold his own underneath his head. "I met this girl," he started slowly, "Her name's Yuri. She's going to graduate from high school this year."
Yunho heard his heart drum inside his ears. A year ago he would have been hanging at his brother's lips for more information, eager for his stories, but now he no longer wanted to hear it. He felt something terribly uncomfortable in the pit of his stomach, like an enraged animal was clawing at his insides in a desperate attempt to get out. He swallowed.
"What's she like?" Yunho asked, his tone of voice unfazed despite what he felt. Jaejoong looked at him, intently, as if to calculate his mood.
"Pretty... I suppose," he answered.
"Did you kiss her?" Yunho asked, not sure if he wanted to know the answer.
Jaejoong chuckled, eyeing him in an endearing fashion. "We did a lot more than just kiss."
Yunho barely even realized he was clenching the bedspread, and neither did Jaejoong, who had his eyes focused on his fingers trailing over the pillow. His eyes sparkled with a sort of delight Yunho couldn't bare to see at this moment.
"I guess you could say I'm not a virgin anymore," Jaejoong stated, and Yunho’s heart sunk. For that short second Yunho felt an indescribable need to punch him as he comprehended what feeling jealous, really jealous was like.
"It was weird though," Jaejoong continued, still staring at the pillow case where his hand lay, "I always thought it'd feel special but it didn't, not really. It was over so fast." This time he did look up.
Yunho must have lost the ability to hide his emotions because his brother's face fell the moment their eyes met. "Yunho-yah?" he asked, worried, "Are you okay?"
Yunho slapped his brother's hand away when he reached for him, and struggled out of the bed.
"Wait, don't go," Jaejoong almost pleaded, his voice no longer a whisper. "What's wrong? Something I said?"
"Leave me alone."
"Yunho..."
"Shut up, I hate you!" he blurted out, and the moment the words had escaped his lips a light flicked on and shone from underneath Jaejoong's bedroom door. It wasn't in the living room, it wasn't bright enough for that, but that would only be a matter of time; their mother was awake. Panicked he looked at his older brother, their mother's footsteps already hearable.
"Go," Jaejoong hissed, "Go back to your room, now!"
He reacted quickly, forgetting his slippers as he rushed out of Jaejoong's room, jumped over the balcony rail and sped back inside his bedroom. Once in bed he pulled the covers over his head and was only just in time. The door opened.
Motionless he waited, his heart pounding, until she closed the door and opened the next. Apparently Jaejoong had been less convincing into pretending to be asleep, because he could hear him talking to her. He didn't strain to listen however.
Still trembling he closed his eyes, and bit his lip as he clenched his hand over his chest. It felt as if someone had stabbed him and shattered his heart to pieces. The first tear rolled over his cheek as the lights turned off and his mother returned to her own room. But this time the silence gave him no relief, if not, it only made the suffocating feeling inside him worse. He pressed his nose in his pillow and cried softly.
---
The next week Yunho refused to talk to Jaejoong. Whenever Jaejoong entered a room where his little brother was the other would promptly turn around and leave. Even their mother noticed something was wrong. She had made failed attempts at trying to pry out of Yunho what it was that was bothering him, but it had only resulted in him shouting for the both of them to leave him the fuck alone. Their mother didn't even dare to scold him for his cursing, too shocked by the sudden outburst.
At first Jaejoong still hoped that whatever had gotten into Yunho would pass, but when the days turned into a week, and one week into two, he became anxious. Yunho still refused to speak to him. That this was because he had sex with someone else was obvious but there was something he didn’t grasp. Back then the older girl had asked him huskily how he felt about having his first time taken by a stranger. By that time she had turned him on so much he would've said yes to pretty much anything. It was over as soon as it had started, and both of them knew it was just for this once. He had taken something his Yunho had not been able to give him and should not have been expected to give him. Was that so bad?
Yunho was his little brother, and he knew him well enough by now to see why he was like this. Yunho was jealous, terribly so. He had made a grave mistake. For the first time he wondered if what they had been doing, what he wanted them to do still, was wrong.
Sighing Jaejoong rested his head on the coffee table, the clean sheet of paper in front of him as empty as it had been an hour ago. Their mom wasn't going to be home tonight, but unlike before the argument between him and Yunho this did not make him anywhere near excited. It was past six and Yunho still had not returned, staying at Taekwondo practice longer than ever. He was avoiding him like Jaejoong was avoiding their mother's new lover. This insight stung.
In the end he was no longer able to take it; the more time he spend alone thinking about it the more guilty he felt, and he stood up to get the phone. He hesitated to call one of his two best friends, but remembered Seunghyun was at his grandparent's place and Hyunjoong was grounded for his ridiculously bad grades. Eventually he called his cousin.
The family had always considered Jihyo a bit of the odd one; she was still unmarried at the age of twenty-seven and did not seem very keen on doing so either. She was very outgoing, and whenever she was bored she had the strange but striking tendency to enlighten anyone who stood but close enough with the secrets on how to make a BDSM relationship work. Because she didn’t care if her listener was a senior or a five-year old she was no longer invited to the annual family gatherings. Jaejoong was fond of her though.
About half an hour after the short call she was knocking on his door. When he opened up she appeared with a widespread smile on her face. "My favorite cousin!" The one she called her favorite cousin depended on the day of the week and the position of the moon, she had told Jaejoong once. But he supposed today he was her favorite simply for inviting her. "Can I come in?”
"Yeah, of course," he replied with a smile, her good mood being contagious and her presence welcomingly distracting. "Yunho's not home yet, but he’ll be here later.”
"And your mom?”
“Away for the night.” He chose not to comment on the relieved expression that appeared on his cousin’s face as he guided her in. While she went to make tea for them he settled on the couch, and waited quietly.
"Are you still riding that motorcycle of yours?" she asked, handing him a mug filled with hot tea. She pulled a pillow from underneath the table and sat down on the floor.
He shook his head no. "The owner found out and double locked the shed, even with Seunghyun's skills there's no way of opening it now."
"Ah, too bad," she replied, being the person who had encouraged him the most. If his mother would find out about that she would receive an angry call for sure, but Jaejoong knew how to keep his mouth shut. "Oh well, at least you know how to drive now. It's something you never really forget you know." She appeared nostalgic for a moment. "So, what's the reason for this invitation?” she proceeded after a short silence. “I'm betting it's not because you're lonely, cause I know you have more than enough friends to help you with that." She winked.
Jaejoong shifted a little awkwardly in his seat. He had nothing to complain about on the social department, but there were some things boys just did not discuss amongst each other. At least not the boys he knew.
"You're going to ask me about sex, aren't you?"
He flushed deep red and tried to look anywhere but at his cousin.
"Ah, I knew it," she said, looking very happy with herself as she made a dramatic gesture at the ceiling. "Since the day you were born I've been waiting for this!"
Jaejoong did not know how to respond to that.
"Well now, don't be shy," she said, sounding more serious as she scooted to the front of her pillow. "Ask away, I'm sure I know the answers to all your question... Well almost, but try me nevertheless."
He nodded, took his mug in both hands and stared down at it intently. "Imagine..." He could practically feel his cousin's intense stare pierce through his skull, and that didn't make him anymore comfortable. "Imagine this boy was dating... someone."
"This is a completely hypothetical situation I presume?"
"Yes," he replied, unaware that she was making fun of him. "But the boy never really realized he was dating this person, because he thought they were only experimenting."
"Still hypothetical?"
"Yes."
"Right." She nodded. There was a thoughtful expression on her face.
"And then the boy had sex with another person, and hurt the other b- the first person because of it."
"The what? Are we talking about another boy here, or was that just a slip of the tongue there?"
For the second time Jaejoong blushed, bright red. "Uhm..."
"Doesn't matter," she said, waving her remark away. "Go on."
"Yes, okay," Jaejoong replied unsurely, then proceeded, "So now the person that was hurt doesn't want to talk to him anymore and avoids him."
"So you want to know what this boy should do?"
He nodded, nervously biting his lip.
"Well, first of all, does the boy feel sorry for what he did?"
He took a moment to think about it. Did he feel sorry for what he had done with that girl? He wasn't sure. "I don't think he really feels sorry for sleeping with someone else, since they never agreed on not doing so, but he does feel really sorry that he hurt the person he cares for.”
"And does the boy know what it is that hurt the other so much?"
He tilted his head, a little confused. Surely it was because he had sex with the girl instead of doing it with Yunho. Now that he thought about it, that didn't sound very logical. Yunho hadn't really seemed keen on having sex anymore in the first place, and when he had told him about how he kissed girls, and messed around with them earlier, there had been no problem. So why now? "Because... he cheated on him?" Jaejoong realized a little too late he had given away the gender of 'the other'. If Jihyo noticed she did not care however.
"People have lots of different reasons why they don't want their partner to cheat, but the feeling they get when it happens is usually the same."
Jaejoong eyed her questioning.
"Betrayed."
He opened his mouth to say something, and then closed it again when he could not find the words.
"Of course there're other emotions involved, but the main issue is that they were cheated by a person they thought they could trust. Simple as that. And that doesn’t feel good."
"But it's not like I did it on purpose," Jaejoong tried to defend himself.
"That doesn't matter," she replied. "What matters is how he feels about it, and obviously he feels hurt. Otherwise he wouldn't bother to avoid you."
Jaejoong sighed. His heart cringed as he thought about the cold shoulder Yunho had been giving him for weeks now. The word 'betrayed' made it sound even worse. "So what should I do now?"
"Apologize of course." She chuckled, stood up to give him a gentle nudge and then went for the hallway where she got her bag off the hook. "And then I don't mean your average sorry, but something extravagant. Buy him a million roses or something." He could hear her rummaging through her stuff.
He wanted to say he didn't have money for a million roses, but the phone ringing interrupted him. He stood up to get it.
While his cousin proceeded rummaging in her shoulder bag he picked up the phone, pressing it against his ear before saying. “Hello, Kim Jaejoong speaking.” He raised his eyebrows at his cousin, who came in with something clutched in her hand stuffed it inside his bag without asking for his consent.
"Hello, are you a relative of Jung Yunho?"
"Yes," he replied, turning his attention back to the phone. "I’m his brother… Why?"
"Yunho collapsed during sports practice and we cannot reach your mother. Do you know where she is?”
“I… I’m not sure,” Jaejoong replied. His voice had turned small.
At the other side of the line it remained silent for a while. Then the male’s voice proceeded. “He's in the hospital right now.” Jaejoong didn’t know where to look, his heart beating unpleasantly fast. “It appears he is uninsured however, and I’m afraid we cannot keep him here without payment guarantee... Is there an adult nearby?”
He turned to his cousin, who still had his bag in her hands and was eyeing him with a questioning expression. Before she could ask him what was wrong he had handed her the phone. He sat back on the couch, feeling dizzy, while his cousin answered.
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A/N: Actually I'm not too sure if this cliffhanger is much better than the previous one... O.o Another fast update?
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