fic: no room for optimism

Jun 30, 2009 23:09

Title: No Room for Optimism, or 3 Times Jaejoong and Yoochun Didn't Work and 1 Time They Did
Pairing: A whole mess of them. Jaejoong/Yunho, Jaejoong/Changmin, Jaejoong/Yoochun, Yunho/Changmin.
Rating: PG
Notes: Written for the best remix challenge ever. I got symphonied. Surprise! I did three of your fics, actually. Remixed fic links in the fic. The last isn't a remix, hope that is allowed.
Summary: Jaejoong was the first, the best, the worst, and the last. He always will be.


one: things always look easier from a distance.

Jaejoong doesn’t need to tell Yoochun for Yoochun to guess, and Jaejoong knows that. It makes it easier. Jaejoong doesn’t have to confess the things he does his best to ignore because Yoochun already knows.

“We’ve seen the way Changmin looks at him,” Jaejoong tells Yoochun brightly and if there is anything Yoochun hates about Jaejoong, it is his willingness to give things up.

“Yeah,” Yoochun says, and shrugs. “I guess we have.” What he doesn’t say is, Yeah, and we’ve seen the way he looks at Changmin.

Jaejoong walks into the room he shares with Yoochun, footsteps calm but heavy. He lies down, arm over his eyes, and exhales, slow. There is something choked up in his breathing and Yoochun sits up, worry getting the best of him.

“Hey,” he says gently, putting down his book. “Want to talk about it?”

Jaejoong clears his throat and affects the mock-cheerful tone Yoochun absolutely hates, mostly because it means Jaejoong won’t talk, no matter what. “Not really,” he replies brightly. “I’m going to go to sleep, actually.”

Yoochun doesn’t have to walk out to know what’s going on, doesn’t have to see Changmin’s legs tangled up with Yunho’s in something more than just friendship. Doesn’t have to see the adoration in their magnae’s eyes, and to see it reciprocated in Yunho’s. The terse line of Jaejoong’s body says it all and Yoochun almost wants to yell at Jaejoong. Don’t you know you’re never going to be happy this way? he wants to ask. There should be a limit to selflessness, Jaejoong-ah.

He says: “Okay. Just so you know, I’m here.”

Yoochun sees the looks Jaejoong can’t help: the covert glances in Yunho and Changmin’s direction when they’re together, the underlying yearning that Jaejoong, for all his good intentions, can’t hide.

Stop doing this to yourself, Yoochun wants to say. You made this happen. But that would be cruel and cruelty is not something Jaejoong could handle right now, so Yoochun says nothing. He laces his fingers with Junsu and almost feels guilty for being so lucky; because sometimes it occurs to him - all this, Junsu, just came for him so easily.

“Hey, Jaejoong-ah.”

“Yes, Yoochun?”

“Did you know - uh this is kind of awkward for me so I’m sorry but - before Junsu.”

“…Before Junsu?”

“Before Junsu. It was you. You were first. I never told you. Sorry.”

Jaejoong laughs, but it’s humorless, more to fill the silence than anything. Yoochun shrugs, feigning nonchalance, but his hands shake when he tugs on the chain around his neck (Junsu has a matching one. Jaejoong had helped Yoochun pick it out).

“Me too, Chunnie,” is Jaejoong’s eventual response. “Before Yunho. A long time ago. The first time. It was you.”

two: find me a city with streets paved of gold.

Jaejoong told Yoochun once, not so much in words as he did through gestures, through the way his eyes always seemed to anchor onto Yoochun’s when he was on a stage until finally, finally, Yoochun thought - stop. I can’t be this for you anymore.

He lives with Jaejoong. They’re best friends. Yoochun goes to every single one of Jaejoong’s gigs, no matter how small or strange or fantastic. Yoochun is number one on Jaejoong’s speed dial. Yoochun runs his (sometimes fabricated) stories about America by Jaejoong before telling them to Junsu and Jaejoong tells Yoochun that his most shameless indulgence is dreaming about being famous in America.

Yoochun’s always been Jaejoong’s best friend, just like how Hyukjae’s always been Junsu’s best friend and how Bora is Yunho’s best friend and, luckily, girlfriend. For Junsu and Yunho and Jaejoong, everyone else will always come second. Maybe Yoochun could blame it on youth, or something but the truth is, Yoochun doesn’t know how to deal with this. He doesn’t know what to do with Jaejoong’s intensity, doesn’t know if he can handle the look in Jaejoong’s eyes and the slowly growing elephant in the corner of their room.

“Are you sure?” Junsu’s eyebrows are almost in his hairline and Yoochun feels so awkward, like his hands and throat are ten times too big for his body. “I mean, you guys are…close, but how can you tell?”

“I don’t know,” Yoochun says irritably, scratching the back of his neck. “I just thought - you know what, forget it. Forget I told you this. Sorry.”

“No, don’t,” Junsu replies, touching Yoochun’s shoulder. “Sorry. It’s just hard to believe, you know.”

“Well,” Yoochun starts, and then feels a little guilty. “Well I’m not completely sure. It just - it just seems that way, you know? Sometimes.”

“Oh.” Junsu frowns a little. “Yeah, I guess. Sometimes. But, hey, don’t be an asshole about it. Be nice. You don’t even know for sure.”

“I guess,” Yoochun says, and thinks about how Jaejoong had shook so much when he tried to kiss him two nights ago that he almost missed. “Don’t worry, I won’t do anything.”

Yoochun is still Jaejoong’s best friend, but Jaejoong is more like the guy Yoochun lives with and has classes with and spends a lot of time with. When people ask who Yoochun’s friends are, he’s careful to couch Jaejoong right in between Yunho and Bora, before Hyukjae but after Junsu. A safe middle. (He feels terrible, he does. Especially when Junsu gives him a reproachful look because Yoochun and Junsu are good friends, but Hyukjae and Junsu are best friends and Yoochun is crossing over into territory he was never invited to.)

Yunho introduces them to Changmin and about four weeks in, Yoochun briefly wonders a little about where he could put Changmin in his mental list - maybe after Jaejoong, maybe after Hyukjae?

A few more months in and then Yoochun sees the way Jaejoong looks at Changmin and he realizes it has been a long time since Jaejoong had turned to him with confession in his eyes and quiet words on his tongue.

Yoochun watches it happen, not without a bit of jealousy. The thing is this - Jaejoong and Changmin are so, so perfect for each other that he can’t even begrudge Changmin for burrowing himself so far under Jaejoong’s skin that there’s no more room for Yoochun. The thing is this - Yoochun had did his best to keep Jaejoong an arm’s length away that he didn’t notice when Jaejoong drifted even farther of his own accord.

“You’re pathetic,” Junsu tells him.

“I know,” Yoochun grumbles. “You don’t have to tell me.”

“You’re an asshole for being jealous,” Junsu remarks, blowing on his nails. “I don’t want to say I told you so but…I told you so.”

“Oh shut up,” Yoochun grouses, and slaps Junsu’s leg.

“You don’t even have a right to be jealous,” Junsu continues loudly, kicking at Yoochun. “So stop it. It’s unsightly. It doesn’t make you look cool. Just suck it up and maybe when Jaejoongie is famous he will let you write his songs for him.”

Yoochun bites back a laugh. “Yeah, you’re right,” he says. “Maybe I’ll get lucky.”

three: a moment so small you could hold it in your hands.

It isn’t the first time Yoochun has seen Jaejoong kiss Yunho - it’s not exactly a secret, but it’s also not exactly something one brings up at dinner - but each time feels like the first. He almost, but not quite, holds back the breath that straggles out of his throat, the little hop in his heart he just can’t help but feel. He watches Jaejoong’s mouth slide over Yunho’s and it’s only when he realizes his left side is going numb from how much weight he’s putting on the wall that he feels a little bit like a voyeur.

Yoochun can’t help but envy them, envy this - even though Jaejoong and Yunho could never kiss in public or hold hands in any sense but jokingly, Yoochun knows just how lucky they are. There is a tiny, ugly feeling of both reproach and resentment in his heart - one that says, you should’ve had this. You were first. Because Yoochun remembers holding Jaejoong’s hand in his, eyes darting everywhere and finally stammering out around the fear in his throat - You, Jaejoong. You have no idea. You don’t know what you do to people.

And it is pathetic, what Yoochun does. This secret watching, this masochistic voyeurism. Because he has seen Yunho and Jaejoong together and he knows that for the two of them, there is the smallest chance (still more than any of the rest of them have) that they could make it work. Because he and Jaejoong are so similar that Yoochun sees in Yunho what Jaejoong does. Because Yoochun knows that if he wasn’t so hopelessly in love with Jaejoong, it would be with Yunho, with the same blind adoration Jaejoong shows.

All in all, it isn’t fair. It really isn’t. I should have this, the bitter voice in his head says. It’s the softer part of him, the romantic in him, that responds, it wouldn’t be half as perfect if it were you.

one: this is the happiness no one talks about, for fear of it being taken away.

Jaejoong and Yoochun are fundamentally similar but different enough that it makes everything, the falling in love, the worrying, the paranoia, the eventual and inevitable happy ending, the ever after, work. They are both hopeless, hopeless romantics, both self-sacrificing and passive, both worriers and avoiders; Changmin calls it a goddamn miracle that they ever sucked up their misgivings about each other.

The difference is this: Yoochun thinks about all the ways he and Jaejoong might not have worked, and that makes him grip Jaejoong’s hand just a little bit harder, scared of a possibility that so easily could have been.

Jaejoong thinks about how they did work, and holds Yoochun’s hand like they were inevitable, like they would’ve found each other no matter what - if not in this life, then another.

pairing: jaejoong/changmin, fandom: dbsk, pairing: jaejoong/yunho, pairing: jaejoong/yoochun

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