BFF's Wedding JuNMa Sidestory
Title: A Spiral That Consumes Us.
Pairing: JunMa
Rating: R
Summary: Toma remembers his life and love with Jun and how he ended up working for him.
Note: This is a SideStory of My Bff’s Wedding involving JunMa. The tone is extremely different and it is set at a time BEFORE the timeline of BFF’s Wedding. The pact between Jun and his father was mentioned briefly in BFF’s Wedding. But just to be clear it was that Jun could live with Toma but not be in a relationship with him.
Toma’s POV
I can’t remember when our love had begun.
Maybe it was when I first met him. I was barely one and he a few months older. I don’t remember those times, just heard from my mother that I used to play with him then. Somehow I can feel that even then I loved him.
My earliest memory of him was when we were four and we would play hide and seek and he’d push me in the mud and I’d start crying and my mom would scold me instead of him. I didn’t understand then why I’d be the one scolded when he was being a brat but later I figured it was because she worked for him, his family. I was just the maid’s son. Of course I was wrong even when it was his fault. Those are the rules of hierarchy in society.
I stopped going to play with him after that, wanting to keep my dignity. My mother offered a few times saying things like, “He misses you, and don’t you miss him?”
In a twisted way I did but I couldn’t stand being discriminated against like that. I always failed to understand him and it’d always lead to a misunderstanding. After a while I thought I could live my life without seeing him again and in fact I think I didn’t even think about him.
I was wrong though and eventually I couldn’t help but think about him.
When I was ten his mother came and stuffed a little rucksack with the little things I owned and took me to their house. I don’t remember the move, I don’t remember him from then, I was too busy crying. I had left my home because it wasn’t there anymore, because my mother wasn’t there anymore.
She wasn’t anywhere anymore.
I could do nothing but mourn her death, not realizing how deeply our lives were starting to intertwine. It wasn’t important then, he wasn’t important and my new life wasn’t important. In fact I had no idea what would happen to me and I didn’t care.
He kept out of my way and I out of his.
I started attending his school eventually but we set off differently, he’d go in his car, I’d use the bus. We packed different lunches and we’d eat separately.
When I dropped my lunch on the ground one day, he offered me his.
It looked delicious and was in fact prepared by a chef: the eggs with olive faces, tomatoes cut into a flower, tempura and rice with a pretty pattern of furikake. I looked at it and longed for it but I refused.
I didn’t want any more favours from him. I was already in his debt too much. Being a freeloader weighed down on my being every single moment of my life and the feeling got worse as I grew older
I didn’t want such a life. And it was this drive, the drive for my freedom that I worked extremely hard to top my class, to keep the perfect scores that I needed to get in to a good college or to maybe be eligible for a scholarship.
He didn’t seem to work as hard but he was still top of his own class, which was one class senior to mine. He was extremely popular. He had everything that entails popularity; looks, wealth, a cool personality and athletics.
I was nerdy, I realized. Sometimes I felt frustrated for having to work so hard to achieve what he did so easily. I know it meant that I was stupid but I had to overcome my shortcomings, like the fact that I was broke, living on another family, had no home to take friends, let alone girls, to.
The funniest thing was that no one found out we lived together. Not even his bully and equally popular friends who’d steal books out of my locker occasionally. It was a wonder they didn’t, we never particularly discussed hiding it. The few times we did meet for prolonged periods were during meals at home and it’d be in awkward silence until one of us decided it would be better to eat someplace else. It was as though an unspoken mutual agreement that we decided to stay out of each other’s way.
Even that didn’t last long.
It was unfortunate and really unpleasant, the way we had to interact again.
It was due to his friends who had targeted me. They were the elites of the school and people rarely bothered them when they did things.
Even if those were terrible things.
It had started with little things like spilling ink over homework to dropping sodas on my head to stealing my money.
But it started getting more intense when I suddenly became their human punch bag. I bumped into one of his friends in the corridor after school. It was during the time when most clubs were conducted so the hallways were deserted except for the soccer players on their break.
He was one of them.
The bump caused my science experiment, a jar full of ground beetles to break and the beetles escaped. I was outraged but I didn’t do anything other than try to pick up the scurrying beetles. I was aware of them stepping on the beetles. I knew it was fruitless to speak up because there must have been at least five of them. I just tried to save as many as I could before they could kill them all.
Having procured four I held the beetles tenderly in my hand trying to think of a place to carry them in because the jar had broken.
I was so concentrated on the bugs that I didn’t realize one of them to be teasing me. My lack of response must have irked them because the next thing I knew one of them had stepped on my foot.
Hard.
The boot spikes easily broke through my flimsy sneaker and punctured skin. The beetles escaped and someone else from the group killed them too. I nursed my foot, lamenting the beetles and again all too busy to notice their verbal abuse.
I was picked up and shoved against the locker before every one of them took turns into hitting me, punching different parts of my face and body until everything felt wet and warm and it ached so much that it had become numb.
“C’mon Jun finish it.”
I cracked open a bruised eye to see him pick up a shard of glass from the ground. I still didn’t know what he meant to do with it, not even when his accomplice straightened out my right hand.
Before I could realize a sharp pain shot through my hand to my shoulder as he pushed the shard into my hand and I cried out for the first time since they’d assaulted me clutching my bleeding hand as they let me go, sinking to the ground.
Somehow I couldn’t believe he had done it.
I started crying; wailing in fact.
Composing myself again, for it was unforgivable for a 17 year old boy to cry I washed my hand and made it towards home...at least to the place that sheltered me until I could make something of myself.
For the first time in my life he was there to greet me as I walked in through the huge gates. It shocked me and in fact at first I tried to slink through, thinking it was a meeting brought forth by unfortunate timing. But he seemed to have waited for me since he was holding a first aid kit, I didn’t argue when he pulled me to a chair and began nursing the wound. I wanted to shout and hit him, tell him he was totally twisted but I watched in silence as he tied the ends of the bandages together.
It was his house, his rules. I was just living here, his helpless, caged animal.
The Matsumotos weren’t unkind but I certainly wasn’t their son. In the clothes I was given, food I was served and the treatment I received there was a clear difference between me and Jun and his sister. They lived a life of luxury and I lived a life that was certainly much more luxurious than the one my mother had provided me before but it wasn’t the same.
There was a barrier that couldn’t have been crossed between the real heirs of the household and me.
Eventually though he would cross that barrier and I would follow, scraping a haphazard path between these two worlds.
It had become a strange routine. In school he’d bully me, beat me up with all his friends and when I would come home he’d tend to the bruises personally.
I didn’t talk to him during these times and neither did he. However the silence was not uncomfortable, they weren’t meaningless either. In the way his touches would linger or in the way he’d look at me with eyes alive with unsaid emotions it felt as though little by little I’d gotten to know him.
I know how he looked when he was happy, when he was sad or frustrated, when he was concentrating. Little by little and subconsciously I stopped seeing him as the person who’d hurt me but knew him as the person who would at the end of the day heal me.
It was on one of these routines that it happened. He was dabbing antiseptic on a cut above my brow; his body was close radiating comforting warmth that did more wonders than that stinging medicine ever could.
He gently plastered a band-aid over the cut and somehow his thumb ended up trailing down my cheeks until he’d had cupped them. For a moment I was looking up at him, at his deep beautiful eyes before he pressed his lips softly to mine.
There was a moment of shock as I felt his soft lips, looked at his earnestly closed eyes before slowly lowering my own and pressing back.
I felt wonderful but I knew that I shouldn’t. In a way it was taking enough liberty to let him nurse my cuts and bruises everyday and I let him only because he was partly responsible for them but to kiss him? There was no reason other than my own selfish desires to do so.
It was evident since long back that I found him attractive.
I tried to back away after a while but his hand only slid to my neck as he tilted his head to fit our lips better; my upper lips between his and his bottom lip between mine. It matched perfectly. I fell right into the little movements of his lips against mine; into the way his hand drew little circles on my nape, in the shy way his tongue probed for entrance.
I fell right in and it might have been hours that we shared that moment. But it broke with a startled gasp from him as though he just realized what he was doing. He left me alone there with my gloomy thoughts and the sinking feeling of having done something wrong.
Maybe it was, but I just could never convince myself of it.
Not now and maybe never.
The bullying got worse but it wasn’t because they’d hit me more or longer but because when I’d come home he’d no longer wait for me. I nursed my wounds alone and for some reason that just made the pain worse.
One day it got a little out of hand.
I ran from them, I couldn’t take it anymore, not when I didn’t have his support. So I ran but they cornered me at the rooftop and they held me down. I didn’t know what they were planning but I still struggled against the strong hold on my legs and hands. I saw one of them approaching with an injection in his hand.
“Don’t be afraid, it’s just a harmless experiment.” One of them sneered as they pinched my face between two fingers. I struggled harder. Whatever they were doing I knew it wasn’t harmless. I cried for help.
“It’s just rabbit’s blood, don’t be afraid!”
I couldn’t believe it, he was there. How could he just watch them do this? I might have started crying, but I was too busy shouting for help to notice the tears.
I shouted for help, for anyone’s help, for his help.
And finally he heard me.
The boy crouched over me with the injection was pulled away, the sun he had been blocking shone on me like hope. He got them all off me one by one and hit them until they were all writhing on the floor half in pain and half in shock. He stood up meanwhile, wiped my face, fixed my clothes.
We looked at each other. I wanted to say thank you but it was stuck in my throat. And even that moment was spent in silence between us, as was the usual case. Somehow I knew he knew I was grateful.
He simply turned and walked away and after a while I followed, not wanting one of the rogues to suddenly jump up and grab me again.
Our paths crossed again at home. This time the tension was different. It wasn’t the usual ‘must get away’ vibe but more of an ‘I want to but don’t know how to prolong this’ vibe. But our meeting was as brief as per usually, it’s just that for the whole day I couldn’t stop thinking about him.
He acted so strangely afterwards. It left me baffled. I heard the door open and my jaw dropped when I saw him peeking through before making his way in uninvited. I scooted back on the bed brought my knees to my chest to take up as little space as possible as I made a way for him to sit down. He did for a while; tense at the edge of the bed before he climbed it fully and sat facing me, his hands on my knee.
My knees parted under his subtle guidance and he moved closer to fill in the freed space. It happened again. We kissed and the passion escalated to a point where I realized I was lying on the bed with him, when the kiss broke for air.
His face was mesmerizing and I was easily captivated by the red blush, messy hair and uncontrolled breathing. But it was short lived as his face disappeared into my neck, soft brushes and kisses, slow and loving. It was only when he caught onto the hem of my shirt that the alarm bells started ringing and I panicked for a moment before I realized I could do nothing about this. Or maybe and it was a maybe I did not particularly want to think about, I didn’t want to do anything about this.
Somehow I didn’t think my first time would be like this much less with this person but it was and I couldn’t bring myself to regret. That night I had sex with Jun. Or should I say I made love with him. It hurt a lot and I probably bled but he was gentle and slow and caring and my chest could almost burst with the feelings he evoked in me but most of all it was the fact that he was there the whole night and we held each other close maybe by choice or by need in that small single bed of mine.
In contrary to what I thought, he didn’t avoid me after the incident. He actually greeted me when we woke up next morning naked and still curled around each other and kissed me before pulling on his clothes and getting ready for school.
Breakfast was cheerful, an adjective I’d never thought I would be able to use. He smiled and even though it wasn’t his first time to smile during breakfast it was mine as I returned it. He held my hand as he led me out to the car he used to go to school with before I politely refused, preferring the bus anyway.
In school we weren’t as open with each other but at least we didn’t pointedly avoid each other anymore. And even though we weren’t exactly announcing to the world we were together (can I really call it that?) we didn’t act like complete strangers either. Word about him standing up for me spread and with that spread rumours in gratis.
Rumours didn’t bother him, I should know, he’s had many sorts of rumours already gone around about him before. And even though the concealed looks and quiet murmur about me buzzing around me was new I figured it couldn’t be worse than getting beaten to pulp every other day.
To my great disappointment he didn’t appear that night. Not that I was a sex maniac or anything but it was just that I missed him. Even though we never spoke much and I’m sure I could keep count of the words we actually spoke to each other till now. I felt I could tell him anything if I wanted to and that feeling of comfort that he made me feel was one that I really wanted to feel more.
I was called upon a few days later though, I recognized the scullery maid I’d often chatter with or teach a few kanji characters shyly peek in through my door to convey a formal order from the junior master addressed to me.
I followed her as she led me to his room. I believe it’s the first time I’d ever get to see it. She bowed, as she closed the door behind me, to him of course. There is no reason for her to bow to me.
He smiled softly as he scooted back as an indication for me to sit. I did returning the smile.
I stopped feeling reservations around him a while back, settling down comfortably trusting it to be taken in the right spirit. It was as he scooted closer again and wound his arms around my shoulder. He asked me how I was softly, almost unsurely because when it came to conversations we were still a little behind.
His kiss after I replied was surer.
For the lack of anything better to do probably, we had sex again and he was prepared this time. It didn’t hurt as much as the first but felt just as great, if possible more. This time I’m definite we made love. There was no hesitation, no self-contradiction when we met. It was pleasantly natural and I think maybe it was at this moment that I finally realized that I really did love him.
When I thread my hands into his hair and stroked the black locks to see his face relax under my touch I found myself wishing he felt the same.
It was a wonder how no one noticed how we’d gotten much closer. I still refused to ride his car so he took the bus with me, cribbing and complaining the whole way but I caught the sappy smile barely concealed under his not-so-unhappy frown.
Maybe they noticed and didn’t say anything.
We did eventually get over the fact that we couldn’t talk freely and ended up chattering away at meals and would talk the whole night away, play games sexual or not.
People definitely noticed, maybe it was his intimidating nature that kept anyone from ever expressing their views on the new friendship.
Things started changing again when he graduated and left for college. I spent dreading this everyday we were so blissfully together. I guessed he wasn’t particularly good with farewells if his acting cold towards me for the last few weeks before leaving was a clue.
In contrary to whatever impression he wanted to leave behind I knew he didn’t hate me because in a way I could sense the pain he went through and his fear of going away.
Actually I was afraid too. I didn’t want to be separated from him. It felt like my mother passing away all over again.
He was leaving his home and going to a completely unknown place. For me I was losing the only thing that I could even call home. I wish these days he’d keep me close because I wanted to stay close to him. Make as many memories as possible. On retrospect, I might have had the right then to do so but at that time I couldn’t be sure. He had decided to come into my life, to befriend me so he has the power to withdraw himself. I thought I had no say in this. I only watched from afar as he attended farewell parties and family dinners and reunions, a part of neither his friends nor family I began to wonder what I was to him.
It was taking a liberty to assume he loved me though it couldn’t hurt to pretend, at least not more than accepting that I was just a toy to play with to stave of boredom. The novelty of which has long been worn off.
It was on the last night before he had to leave that he had come to my room again. I was surprised to see him; hastily wiping my tears on the bed sheet before I turned to him.
But his arms had wrapped completely around me and his lips pressed against mine desperately. I reciprocated in full fervour. It was dizzying and I had lost all common sense whenever we embraced like that.
It was wonderful yet terrifying, dangerous feelings all on the surface so strong yet so volatile. As though a small tip would set it aflame.
“I...I couldn’t.” He gasped as he broke our kiss for just a second before diving back. I couldn’t breath and my lungs threatened to burst but I couldn’t bring myself to detach my lips from his, at this moment this was something I needed more than just oxygen to live.
“I couldn’t give it up” Whispered into my skin all hot, wet and clumsy. His hands roamed viciously over my skin, claiming and possessive, burning all in its wake.
He was rough like always when he entered but the expression in his eyes so tender that nothing burned anymore, it became a warm haze around me, cushioned me as he rocked back and forth taking my body with his rhythm.
And as we gradually frayed from that rhythm, skirting on the edge of consciousness as the pleasure only build higher, higher and higher I heard him whisper softly almost inaudibly into the shell of my ear.
“I love you, Toma. So Much.”
It was as though time came to a standstill but it really didn’t, I was aware of the burn of his length sliding in and out but I was numbed with that one little sentence circling my mind in a pleasant buzz.
His hand closed around me and I came undone with a gasp as his grip tightened unmercifully and tugged ferociously. I gave into the white spots momentarily swimming around in front of my eyes before I became aware of his body falling against the bed. I didn’t hesitate as I grabbed his waist and pulled his body close, holding him tightly, and his heartbeat fast and demanding. I imagined myself returning his words in all the ways possible but in the end I couldn’t.
I felt like a failure hoping that he’d understand with my gestures.
He left the next day and I was left behind with the sinking feeling of not having told him how much I loved him.
I cried, all the time. Because I know he was keeping in touch with his family but not me. I know why he was so angry. Insecurity must only be making him angrier and a whole year passed in misery like that.
I was too afraid, too dependent on his gestures and vigour to realize that my inputs were just as necessary.
When he came back from his first year of college he brought back a girl.
She was cute, courteous, good at cooking and gentle in her gestures. She was the kind of girl you’d bring home to your parents. Every time I’d see her, settling in more and more comfortably within the household, sharing tender moments with him and even passionate ones (they tended not to be very discreet at times) its like I could see my life unwinding and my growing relationship with Jun playing backwards until I saw them kissing on the very same couch he first kissed me and I had gone to a time before that kiss, a time when this huge house was just a shelter and the inhabitants no more significant than strangers walking in the same street.
I couldn’t say I was happy with the turn of events but I lived with it.
I don’t know, it’s just that sometimes I wish he would just…talk to me.
I just got kind of frustrated after a while and in the end I took the initiative to break the silence with one small hello. It was comical really at how shocked he was; so much that he never greeted back.
“How are you?” I pressed wanting to get the ball rolling no matter what now that I took the matter in hand.
“Good” He nodded his head for a while looking lost, “You?”
“Really great. No more bullying since I’m a senior and everything.” I smiled also nodding enthusiastically, so that for one moment we simply bobbed our heads in silence.
“I see.”
“I’m waiting for the results of the entrance exams. I really hope they went well. So I’m really nervous.”
“Don’t be. I’m sure you did well.”
“Is that so? Well I want to take your word for it then!” It was reaching a point where his participation was no more than a distant monotone and mine an unnatural enthusiasm. I was about to retire labelling it a failure when she came in all cheerful and dressed up.
“Jun-chan I’m going shopping now, okay? Remember our date tonight!” She said curling a finger tenderly through his hair and he caught her hand kissing it softly before craning up to kiss her on the lips.
I didn’t like the show and inside you could say I was boiling, I tried to suppress it. I was so focused on squashing down the urge to kill her that I didn’t pay attention to how I looked on the outside. I guessed it was transparent. His voice sounded amused the next time he spoke up.
“You hate her don’t you?”
Of course I do but there is no logical reason as to why I so despise her presence so I couldn’t just admit it upfront like that, “Well she’s really nice and pretty and gentle and I think she makes really nice sushi.”
“But you still don’t like her.”
He was so annoyingly persistent all of a sudden it was just…annoying!
“I like her!” I finally lied though I should admit I’ve lied more convincingly before. I stalked towards the gate not wanting him to understand my true feelings about him bringing a girl home to meet his parents. Where talks of marriage were shot out left right and centre and a few dozen grandchildren popping up here and there.
“You’re lying.” He caught me before I could leave the room and his skin against mine caused my wrist to crackle with electricity upon his grip, “Don’t lie to me.”
“I will if I want to!” I don’t know from where this rebellious nature suddenly popped up. Maybe because how he was standing with his body pressed against mine, my hands pinned against the wall I was leaning on where my thoughts kept on going back to a time when this was so natural and I could just lean forward and kiss him and talk to him that I just wanted to hide my tightly reigned yearning which was thrasheing violently to succumb to his closeness.
“Why don’t you like her?” He asked with a soft tone of voice as though coaxing a little boy guilty of stealing sweets, brushing my hair back from my forehead, letting his hands slide down slowly down to my shoulders. It was just colossally unfair to me because this was what he did before kissing me and now that he has someone else, the loneliness will just be that much harder to bear.
“I said! I like her!” I shoved him off.
He looked shocked for a moment at being pushed and even though he was asking for it I was frozen in fear because by the look on his face it seemed like I had crossed a boundary I never should have.
The wind bristled against my ear as I was pushed violently back and hit the wall and I was immobilised, his body pressed completely against mine as he kissed me.
I couldn’t say I put too much of a struggle.
But there was a startled gasp from behind us and even though he ignored it and kept kissing me, he was pulled back violently, our lips detaching with a loud sucking sound and my head felt light as it spun from the intensity of the kiss.
The punch came as a surprise and hence I had fallen unconscious.
I don’t know how long I was out but the next time I opened my eyes we were out on the street, Jun sitting atop the dumpster I was laying against.
“What happened?”
“My dad is an asshole so I left home.” He smiled, “We left home.”
“What! Jun but you-
He had jumped down and put his fingers on my lips, “To find our own.”
It seemed like a promise then, but eventually the hardships became too much for two poor students, one of which was accustomed to a lavish lifestyle and Jun went back to his father to come up with a compromise.
Finally falling into that degenerative spiral of a pact that his father made with us.
Title: Escaping the Spiral
Pairing: JunMa
Rating: PG
Warning: Angst
Summary: Four years later Jun is still recollecting his life after Toma left him.
Note: This is the SECOND Junma sidestory to My BFF’s wedding. It is set AFTER the timeline of BFF’s wedding.
Jun’s POV
I don’t know why I didn’t look for him but I didn’t.
I can’t tell if it’s a mistake because he pops up into my head every now and then. I moved back in with my parents eventually, a house that held so many memories that sometimes I could look at a wall and imagine him leaning against it, lost and out of place trying to mesh with the plain boring texture of it.
I see his face, his smile at inopportune moments of the day but I still hadn’t done anything. A part of me held me back, a part that wanted to end his suffering, his life with me now that I think about it was horrible. I did whatever I felt like and he’d follow me everywhere, sacrifice everything and when he finally decided to pursue his own path I felt like it wasn’t something I should interfere with.
No matter how frustrated I got, sometimes staying awake the whole night and imagining his calm breathe beside me, sometimes imagining his serious face when he was working the meticulous movements of his hands whether he’d make dinner or type up a progress update, sometimes it’d be his tired face when I’d come back home drunk and he’d catch me when I’d slip, his tender hold.
I had taken it all for granted, thought he’d always be there and I threw it all away myself. But he never came back even though I’d never told him to go. Was I someone he feared? That one little misunderstanding and he takes the opportunity to break it off for good? I never asked how he felt. I never made sure that the life he had once chosen to lead with me was the one he wanted.
I never even cared. I always told myself it was alright to tie him with me because I love him. But how could he have ever known? It must have been impossible for him to tell.
Maybe they are little things but these things keep me from chasing after him the way I want to. It might bw too late and he might never know but I want to for the first time respect what he wants.
My father talks about marriage one day and he shows me a picture of a girl with the brightest smile imaginable. I remember his smile, his twinkling eyes and laugh lines and his happy face and I accept. I realize when I see his image that it’s been years and I might never see him again.
It’s not a dream, my marriage doesn’t flit across my head while it happens. I’m very aware of it, very aware of my wife, very aware of what I go through and I push him to the back of my head. He’s something that had happened in the past and I tried to lock it up.
Sadly I can’t say being with my wife is any different than those girls I pick up at clubs but I’d never express that and little by little playing the role of a perfect, caring husband it started feeling less like a lie. Maybe I’d just grown into it or maybe I had really left things from the past behind.
Going to bed with her is just a protocol as is everything else. I wonder if she can tell when I touch her. I can tell her I love her but I can’t fake the way my heart beats for someone else. One day she asks in a soft voice if it’s okay to try and have a family. I get confused at first but she tugs at my shirt and kisses me softly, I wrap my arms around her and nod. She says thank you, her voice happy and grateful and I remember him again so vivid in my head it’s overwhelming. I can feel his aura surrounding me as I lay her down, I can feel his lips when I kiss her, I can feel his heart beat against mine and I ache when I realized that it was all just an illusion as I look at the face of my wife tired and hopeful.
She gets pregnant soon and I can’t remember why or how but I’m excited when she tells me and I pick her up and twirl her around and she laughs, hits me on the forehead when I don’t let her get down. Having a baby is exciting as becoming a father is an overwhelming responsibility. The next few months are spent in an confusing array of events ranging from lectures to parties to lessons on parenting and taking care of the expecting mother.
Of many of the gifts in the baby shower is a ticket to the theatre under the pretence that exposure to the arts increases the baby’s versatility. Going to the theatre was a habit I had dropped before and one that I had picked up only for his sake for he loved the theatre and could go only when I would seemingly tagging along whereas actually it was me who tagged along. Once there was no one to tag me along there was no need to go to the theatre.
It was a much talked about play and I knew my wife really wanted to go even though I didn’t and so we went, her excited chatter about the music and the director and the upcoming new actor all just fluttering past my consciousness.
Little did I know when the curtain lifted and a soft music played in sync with the brightening spotlight that when the person underneath the spotlight would lift his head I would see him again. His voice filled the auditorium and his sharp footsteps as he crossed the stage in a graceful dance left my muscles trembling. For a moment I couldn’t understand what was happening and that in that dark room it was just I and he performing for me. I felt jealous of all the eyes on his beautiful form and I could feel the rage taking over me a dug my fingernails into the arms of the chair all the while fighting the urge to take him away and hide him from the world, to protect him and to let everyone else know that he was mine.
It was when I thought of him as mine did I realize how horrible I was and why he left. Under the pretence of love I had possessed him and taken away his freedom, kept him under a veil telling myself it was what was good for him and now that he was free and could express himself, climbing up to where he deserves to be I had again felt the urge to strip him of that. I don’t know why but while the rest of the audience broke into laughter I could only bite my lips and cry.
Slowly through the 2 hours that he skipped on and off the stage more confident and radiant than I had ever seen him, more alive than he had ever been with me I accepted his freedom, the only person it benefitted was myself for by the time the curtains fell I had managed a smile. I walked out of the theatre slowly partly because my wife couldn’t walk very fast and partly because I was deep in thought. It was like I was being called back and seeing him after so long, the part that always wanted to chase after him and keep him hidden in my arms was in turmoil; I saw her to the car and excused myself taking a slight detour out of the parking and to a flower shop just across the street.
I bought a bouquet and twisting it in my hand I made my way backstage. The last people were coming out from his dressing room, a group of giggling girls and the security stopped me, telling me visiting was not allowed anymore. I walked up here having gathered a lot of courage, I had flowers and the only thing between me and the person I had yearned for four years was a wooden door. I was not to be deterred so easily.
There was a shout from inside for me to be allowed in probably since I was creating such a ruckus and the security guard looked at me like I was some hopeless stalker and allowed me to pass.
He was waiting for me with a bright smile and a huge thank you still in his stage clothes panting and drenched in sweat, enthusiastic non the less but when he took the bouquet and saw my face properly the smile was wiped straight off his face and he stumbled back his body becoming rigid as he looked at me.
“The performance was great.” I whispered quietly and he managed a grimace before thanking me again. He twiddled his fingers together as I looked around the room. I didn’t want to leave just yet.
“Toma…” And it was like something broke inside both of us when I uttered his name and just like he’d always do before he rushed towards me and before I knew it he was there right in front of me and jumped into my arms, burrowing into me as though he wanted to hide there. I tightened my arms around him in an instinct long rusted but surprisingly still strong within me and we held each other tight, feeling years of longing and separation breaking loose and threatening to consume us both. He buried his face into my shoulder and tightened his hold even more until I could feel his body shaking and tears wetting my skin.
After so long I felt content. Having finally with me the one thing that had ever mattered.
He raised his head eventually and the heat of the moment had reduced to a gentle, warm flicker.
“Jun…I…I…Jun” and he closed his red eyes and his lips trembled with tightly reigned emotions as he let out a sigh.
He looked so vulnerable, so beautiful that I cupped his face lightly and kissed him.
A gentle kiss to calm his nerves and I rested out foreheads together as he took control over his breathing. And in one final gesture of longing he brought his hands to grip my shoulder tightly as I drew circles on his cheeks with my thumb.
We kissed again and again and again until I could see him smile lightly and it’s like I couldn’t stop kissing him. I kissed all over his face, tasting the salty tears clinging to his eyes, the bridge of his nose, the curve of his cheek until he was sighing.
And that just made me want him more, to devour him, his beautiful body, his grace, his love and keep it all for myself.
Maybe he would have let me, maybe it’s what he wanted even but just then my phone rang and I saw the name of my pregnant wife flashing on the screen. The phone call dissolved the heat between us as he had stepped precariously back until I was oddly cold and just in the same way I realized that I had moved on from this already. We both have and there’s no point in coming back to it.
Maybe it was from the expression on my face or maybe it was from the change in body language that he understood or maybe he had known long since but when I looked at him again his face wasn’t desperate or pleading but adorned with his beautiful bright smile. And though his eyes were red and his lips still trembled a little I knew it was genuine and this time it was he who cupped my face and placed a chaste kiss on my forehead.
“I’m glad.”
And I left without turning back, tucking Toma into an unresolved corner of my heart.
I went back to my wife and the new life I had chosen to lead and he, I’m sure, went back to his.
A/N: Like I said I like angst and contrasting endings though this is pretty much a stand alone from BFF’s Wedding. Even though there were many people who expressed interest in reading the Junma sidestories I didn’t promote this one in the end for I want people especially those who don’t really like JunMa to remember BFF’s Wedding as a happy and funny fic. This one was quite morbid…so…uh for those who read it... please don’t let it affect your light view of the main story!
Thank you (even though most of you would be throwing tomatoes at me and if any of you did need tissues…I kind of did…you may throw the used ones at me too)
Pairing: JunMa
Rating: R
Summary: Toma remembers his life and love with Jun and how he ended up working for him.
Note: This is a SideStory of My Bff’s Wedding involving JunMa. The tone is extremely different and it is set at a time BEFORE the timeline of BFF’s Wedding. The pact between Jun and his father was mentioned briefly in BFF’s Wedding. But just to be clear it was that Jun could live with Toma but not be in a relationship with him.
Toma’s POV
I can’t remember when our love had begun.
Maybe it was when I first met him. I was barely one and he a few months older. I don’t remember those times, just heard from my mother that I used to play with him then. Somehow I can feel that even then I loved him.
My earliest memory of him was when we were four and we would play hide and seek and he’d push me in the mud and I’d start crying and my mom would scold me instead of him. I didn’t understand then why I’d be the one scolded when he was being a brat but later I figured it was because she worked for him, his family. I was just the maid’s son. Of course I was wrong even when it was his fault. Those are the rules of hierarchy in society.
I stopped going to play with him after that, wanting to keep my dignity. My mother offered a few times saying things like, “He misses you, and don’t you miss him?”
In a twisted way I did but I couldn’t stand being discriminated against like that. I always failed to understand him and it’d always lead to a misunderstanding. After a while I thought I could live my life without seeing him again and in fact I think I didn’t even think about him.
I was wrong though and eventually I couldn’t help but think about him.
When I was ten his mother came and stuffed a little rucksack with the little things I owned and took me to their house. I don’t remember the move, I don’t remember him from then, I was too busy crying. I had left my home because it wasn’t there anymore, because my mother wasn’t there anymore.
She wasn’t anywhere anymore.
I could do nothing but mourn her death, not realizing how deeply our lives were starting to intertwine. It wasn’t important then, he wasn’t important and my new life wasn’t important. In fact I had no idea what would happen to me and I didn’t care.
He kept out of my way and I out of his.
I started attending his school eventually but we set off differently, he’d go in his car, I’d use the bus. We packed different lunches and we’d eat separately.
When I dropped my lunch on the ground one day, he offered me his.
It looked delicious and was in fact prepared by a chef: the eggs with olive faces, tomatoes cut into a flower, tempura and rice with a pretty pattern of furikake. I looked at it and longed for it but I refused.
I didn’t want any more favours from him. I was already in his debt too much. Being a freeloader weighed down on my being every single moment of my life and the feeling got worse as I grew older
I didn’t want such a life. And it was this drive, the drive for my freedom that I worked extremely hard to top my class, to keep the perfect scores that I needed to get in to a good college or to maybe be eligible for a scholarship.
He didn’t seem to work as hard but he was still top of his own class, which was one class senior to mine. He was extremely popular. He had everything that entails popularity; looks, wealth, a cool personality and athletics.
I was nerdy, I realized. Sometimes I felt frustrated for having to work so hard to achieve what he did so easily. I know it meant that I was stupid but I had to overcome my shortcomings, like the fact that I was broke, living on another family, had no home to take friends, let alone girls, to.
The funniest thing was that no one found out we lived together. Not even his bully and equally popular friends who’d steal books out of my locker occasionally. It was a wonder they didn’t, we never particularly discussed hiding it. The few times we did meet for prolonged periods were during meals at home and it’d be in awkward silence until one of us decided it would be better to eat someplace else. It was as though an unspoken mutual agreement that we decided to stay out of each other’s way.
Even that didn’t last long.
It was unfortunate and really unpleasant, the way we had to interact again.
It was due to his friends who had targeted me. They were the elites of the school and people rarely bothered them when they did things.
Even if those were terrible things.
It had started with little things like spilling ink over homework to dropping sodas on my head to stealing my money.
But it started getting more intense when I suddenly became their human punch bag. I bumped into one of his friends in the corridor after school. It was during the time when most clubs were conducted so the hallways were deserted except for the soccer players on their break.
He was one of them.
The bump caused my science experiment, a jar full of ground beetles to break and the beetles escaped. I was outraged but I didn’t do anything other than try to pick up the scurrying beetles. I was aware of them stepping on the beetles. I knew it was fruitless to speak up because there must have been at least five of them. I just tried to save as many as I could before they could kill them all.
Having procured four I held the beetles tenderly in my hand trying to think of a place to carry them in because the jar had broken.
I was so concentrated on the bugs that I didn’t realize one of them to be teasing me. My lack of response must have irked them because the next thing I knew one of them had stepped on my foot.
Hard.
The boot spikes easily broke through my flimsy sneaker and punctured skin. The beetles escaped and someone else from the group killed them too. I nursed my foot, lamenting the beetles and again all too busy to notice their verbal abuse.
I was picked up and shoved against the locker before every one of them took turns into hitting me, punching different parts of my face and body until everything felt wet and warm and it ached so much that it had become numb.
“C’mon Jun finish it.”
I cracked open a bruised eye to see him pick up a shard of glass from the ground. I still didn’t know what he meant to do with it, not even when his accomplice straightened out my right hand.
Before I could realize a sharp pain shot through my hand to my shoulder as he pushed the shard into my hand and I cried out for the first time since they’d assaulted me clutching my bleeding hand as they let me go, sinking to the ground.
Somehow I couldn’t believe he had done it.
I started crying; wailing in fact.
Composing myself again, for it was unforgivable for a 17 year old boy to cry I washed my hand and made it towards home...at least to the place that sheltered me until I could make something of myself.
For the first time in my life he was there to greet me as I walked in through the huge gates. It shocked me and in fact at first I tried to slink through, thinking it was a meeting brought forth by unfortunate timing. But he seemed to have waited for me since he was holding a first aid kit, I didn’t argue when he pulled me to a chair and began nursing the wound. I wanted to shout and hit him, tell him he was totally twisted but I watched in silence as he tied the ends of the bandages together.
It was his house, his rules. I was just living here, his helpless, caged animal.
The Matsumotos weren’t unkind but I certainly wasn’t their son. In the clothes I was given, food I was served and the treatment I received there was a clear difference between me and Jun and his sister. They lived a life of luxury and I lived a life that was certainly much more luxurious than the one my mother had provided me before but it wasn’t the same.
There was a barrier that couldn’t have been crossed between the real heirs of the household and me.
Eventually though he would cross that barrier and I would follow, scraping a haphazard path between these two worlds.
It had become a strange routine. In school he’d bully me, beat me up with all his friends and when I would come home he’d tend to the bruises personally.
I didn’t talk to him during these times and neither did he. However the silence was not uncomfortable, they weren’t meaningless either. In the way his touches would linger or in the way he’d look at me with eyes alive with unsaid emotions it felt as though little by little I’d gotten to know him.
I know how he looked when he was happy, when he was sad or frustrated, when he was concentrating. Little by little and subconsciously I stopped seeing him as the person who’d hurt me but knew him as the person who would at the end of the day heal me.
It was on one of these routines that it happened. He was dabbing antiseptic on a cut above my brow; his body was close radiating comforting warmth that did more wonders than that stinging medicine ever could.
He gently plastered a band-aid over the cut and somehow his thumb ended up trailing down my cheeks until he’d had cupped them. For a moment I was looking up at him, at his deep beautiful eyes before he pressed his lips softly to mine.
There was a moment of shock as I felt his soft lips, looked at his earnestly closed eyes before slowly lowering my own and pressing back.
I felt wonderful but I knew that I shouldn’t. In a way it was taking enough liberty to let him nurse my cuts and bruises everyday and I let him only because he was partly responsible for them but to kiss him? There was no reason other than my own selfish desires to do so.
It was evident since long back that I found him attractive.
I tried to back away after a while but his hand only slid to my neck as he tilted his head to fit our lips better; my upper lips between his and his bottom lip between mine. It matched perfectly. I fell right into the little movements of his lips against mine; into the way his hand drew little circles on my nape, in the shy way his tongue probed for entrance.
I fell right in and it might have been hours that we shared that moment. But it broke with a startled gasp from him as though he just realized what he was doing. He left me alone there with my gloomy thoughts and the sinking feeling of having done something wrong.
Maybe it was, but I just could never convince myself of it.
Not now and maybe never.
The bullying got worse but it wasn’t because they’d hit me more or longer but because when I’d come home he’d no longer wait for me. I nursed my wounds alone and for some reason that just made the pain worse.
One day it got a little out of hand.
I ran from them, I couldn’t take it anymore, not when I didn’t have his support. So I ran but they cornered me at the rooftop and they held me down. I didn’t know what they were planning but I still struggled against the strong hold on my legs and hands. I saw one of them approaching with an injection in his hand.
“Don’t be afraid, it’s just a harmless experiment.” One of them sneered as they pinched my face between two fingers. I struggled harder. Whatever they were doing I knew it wasn’t harmless. I cried for help.
“It’s just rabbit’s blood, don’t be afraid!”
I couldn’t believe it, he was there. How could he just watch them do this? I might have started crying, but I was too busy shouting for help to notice the tears.
I shouted for help, for anyone’s help, for his help.
And finally he heard me.
The boy crouched over me with the injection was pulled away, the sun he had been blocking shone on me like hope. He got them all off me one by one and hit them until they were all writhing on the floor half in pain and half in shock. He stood up meanwhile, wiped my face, fixed my clothes.
We looked at each other. I wanted to say thank you but it was stuck in my throat. And even that moment was spent in silence between us, as was the usual case. Somehow I knew he knew I was grateful.
He simply turned and walked away and after a while I followed, not wanting one of the rogues to suddenly jump up and grab me again.
Our paths crossed again at home. This time the tension was different. It wasn’t the usual ‘must get away’ vibe but more of an ‘I want to but don’t know how to prolong this’ vibe. But our meeting was as brief as per usually, it’s just that for the whole day I couldn’t stop thinking about him.
He acted so strangely afterwards. It left me baffled. I heard the door open and my jaw dropped when I saw him peeking through before making his way in uninvited. I scooted back on the bed brought my knees to my chest to take up as little space as possible as I made a way for him to sit down. He did for a while; tense at the edge of the bed before he climbed it fully and sat facing me, his hands on my knee.
My knees parted under his subtle guidance and he moved closer to fill in the freed space. It happened again. We kissed and the passion escalated to a point where I realized I was lying on the bed with him, when the kiss broke for air.
His face was mesmerizing and I was easily captivated by the red blush, messy hair and uncontrolled breathing. But it was short lived as his face disappeared into my neck, soft brushes and kisses, slow and loving. It was only when he caught onto the hem of my shirt that the alarm bells started ringing and I panicked for a moment before I realized I could do nothing about this. Or maybe and it was a maybe I did not particularly want to think about, I didn’t want to do anything about this.
Somehow I didn’t think my first time would be like this much less with this person but it was and I couldn’t bring myself to regret. That night I had sex with Jun. Or should I say I made love with him. It hurt a lot and I probably bled but he was gentle and slow and caring and my chest could almost burst with the feelings he evoked in me but most of all it was the fact that he was there the whole night and we held each other close maybe by choice or by need in that small single bed of mine.
In contrary to what I thought, he didn’t avoid me after the incident. He actually greeted me when we woke up next morning naked and still curled around each other and kissed me before pulling on his clothes and getting ready for school.
Breakfast was cheerful, an adjective I’d never thought I would be able to use. He smiled and even though it wasn’t his first time to smile during breakfast it was mine as I returned it. He held my hand as he led me out to the car he used to go to school with before I politely refused, preferring the bus anyway.
In school we weren’t as open with each other but at least we didn’t pointedly avoid each other anymore. And even though we weren’t exactly announcing to the world we were together (can I really call it that?) we didn’t act like complete strangers either. Word about him standing up for me spread and with that spread rumours in gratis.
Rumours didn’t bother him, I should know, he’s had many sorts of rumours already gone around about him before. And even though the concealed looks and quiet murmur about me buzzing around me was new I figured it couldn’t be worse than getting beaten to pulp every other day.
To my great disappointment he didn’t appear that night. Not that I was a sex maniac or anything but it was just that I missed him. Even though we never spoke much and I’m sure I could keep count of the words we actually spoke to each other till now. I felt I could tell him anything if I wanted to and that feeling of comfort that he made me feel was one that I really wanted to feel more.
I was called upon a few days later though, I recognized the scullery maid I’d often chatter with or teach a few kanji characters shyly peek in through my door to convey a formal order from the junior master addressed to me.
I followed her as she led me to his room. I believe it’s the first time I’d ever get to see it. She bowed, as she closed the door behind me, to him of course. There is no reason for her to bow to me.
He smiled softly as he scooted back as an indication for me to sit. I did returning the smile.
I stopped feeling reservations around him a while back, settling down comfortably trusting it to be taken in the right spirit. It was as he scooted closer again and wound his arms around my shoulder. He asked me how I was softly, almost unsurely because when it came to conversations we were still a little behind.
His kiss after I replied was surer.
For the lack of anything better to do probably, we had sex again and he was prepared this time. It didn’t hurt as much as the first but felt just as great, if possible more. This time I’m definite we made love. There was no hesitation, no self-contradiction when we met. It was pleasantly natural and I think maybe it was at this moment that I finally realized that I really did love him.
When I thread my hands into his hair and stroked the black locks to see his face relax under my touch I found myself wishing he felt the same.
It was a wonder how no one noticed how we’d gotten much closer. I still refused to ride his car so he took the bus with me, cribbing and complaining the whole way but I caught the sappy smile barely concealed under his not-so-unhappy frown.
Maybe they noticed and didn’t say anything.
We did eventually get over the fact that we couldn’t talk freely and ended up chattering away at meals and would talk the whole night away, play games sexual or not.
People definitely noticed, maybe it was his intimidating nature that kept anyone from ever expressing their views on the new friendship.
Things started changing again when he graduated and left for college. I spent dreading this everyday we were so blissfully together. I guessed he wasn’t particularly good with farewells if his acting cold towards me for the last few weeks before leaving was a clue.
In contrary to whatever impression he wanted to leave behind I knew he didn’t hate me because in a way I could sense the pain he went through and his fear of going away.
Actually I was afraid too. I didn’t want to be separated from him. It felt like my mother passing away all over again.
He was leaving his home and going to a completely unknown place. For me I was losing the only thing that I could even call home. I wish these days he’d keep me close because I wanted to stay close to him. Make as many memories as possible. On retrospect, I might have had the right then to do so but at that time I couldn’t be sure. He had decided to come into my life, to befriend me so he has the power to withdraw himself. I thought I had no say in this. I only watched from afar as he attended farewell parties and family dinners and reunions, a part of neither his friends nor family I began to wonder what I was to him.
It was taking a liberty to assume he loved me though it couldn’t hurt to pretend, at least not more than accepting that I was just a toy to play with to stave of boredom. The novelty of which has long been worn off.
It was on the last night before he had to leave that he had come to my room again. I was surprised to see him; hastily wiping my tears on the bed sheet before I turned to him.
But his arms had wrapped completely around me and his lips pressed against mine desperately. I reciprocated in full fervour. It was dizzying and I had lost all common sense whenever we embraced like that.
It was wonderful yet terrifying, dangerous feelings all on the surface so strong yet so volatile. As though a small tip would set it aflame.
“I...I couldn’t.” He gasped as he broke our kiss for just a second before diving back. I couldn’t breath and my lungs threatened to burst but I couldn’t bring myself to detach my lips from his, at this moment this was something I needed more than just oxygen to live.
“I couldn’t give it up” Whispered into my skin all hot, wet and clumsy. His hands roamed viciously over my skin, claiming and possessive, burning all in its wake.
He was rough like always when he entered but the expression in his eyes so tender that nothing burned anymore, it became a warm haze around me, cushioned me as he rocked back and forth taking my body with his rhythm.
And as we gradually frayed from that rhythm, skirting on the edge of consciousness as the pleasure only build higher, higher and higher I heard him whisper softly almost inaudibly into the shell of my ear.
“I love you, Toma. So Much.”
It was as though time came to a standstill but it really didn’t, I was aware of the burn of his length sliding in and out but I was numbed with that one little sentence circling my mind in a pleasant buzz.
His hand closed around me and I came undone with a gasp as his grip tightened unmercifully and tugged ferociously. I gave into the white spots momentarily swimming around in front of my eyes before I became aware of his body falling against the bed. I didn’t hesitate as I grabbed his waist and pulled his body close, holding him tightly, and his heartbeat fast and demanding. I imagined myself returning his words in all the ways possible but in the end I couldn’t.
I felt like a failure hoping that he’d understand with my gestures.
He left the next day and I was left behind with the sinking feeling of not having told him how much I loved him.
I cried, all the time. Because I know he was keeping in touch with his family but not me. I know why he was so angry. Insecurity must only be making him angrier and a whole year passed in misery like that.
I was too afraid, too dependent on his gestures and vigour to realize that my inputs were just as necessary.
When he came back from his first year of college he brought back a girl.
She was cute, courteous, good at cooking and gentle in her gestures. She was the kind of girl you’d bring home to your parents. Every time I’d see her, settling in more and more comfortably within the household, sharing tender moments with him and even passionate ones (they tended not to be very discreet at times) its like I could see my life unwinding and my growing relationship with Jun playing backwards until I saw them kissing on the very same couch he first kissed me and I had gone to a time before that kiss, a time when this huge house was just a shelter and the inhabitants no more significant than strangers walking in the same street.
I couldn’t say I was happy with the turn of events but I lived with it.
I don’t know, it’s just that sometimes I wish he would just…talk to me.
I just got kind of frustrated after a while and in the end I took the initiative to break the silence with one small hello. It was comical really at how shocked he was; so much that he never greeted back.
“How are you?” I pressed wanting to get the ball rolling no matter what now that I took the matter in hand.
“Good” He nodded his head for a while looking lost, “You?”
“Really great. No more bullying since I’m a senior and everything.” I smiled also nodding enthusiastically, so that for one moment we simply bobbed our heads in silence.
“I see.”
“I’m waiting for the results of the entrance exams. I really hope they went well. So I’m really nervous.”
“Don’t be. I’m sure you did well.”
“Is that so? Well I want to take your word for it then!” It was reaching a point where his participation was no more than a distant monotone and mine an unnatural enthusiasm. I was about to retire labelling it a failure when she came in all cheerful and dressed up.
“Jun-chan I’m going shopping now, okay? Remember our date tonight!” She said curling a finger tenderly through his hair and he caught her hand kissing it softly before craning up to kiss her on the lips.
I didn’t like the show and inside you could say I was boiling, I tried to suppress it. I was so focused on squashing down the urge to kill her that I didn’t pay attention to how I looked on the outside. I guessed it was transparent. His voice sounded amused the next time he spoke up.
“You hate her don’t you?”
Of course I do but there is no logical reason as to why I so despise her presence so I couldn’t just admit it upfront like that, “Well she’s really nice and pretty and gentle and I think she makes really nice sushi.”
“But you still don’t like her.”
He was so annoyingly persistent all of a sudden it was just…annoying!
“I like her!” I finally lied though I should admit I’ve lied more convincingly before. I stalked towards the gate not wanting him to understand my true feelings about him bringing a girl home to meet his parents. Where talks of marriage were shot out left right and centre and a few dozen grandchildren popping up here and there.
“You’re lying.” He caught me before I could leave the room and his skin against mine caused my wrist to crackle with electricity upon his grip, “Don’t lie to me.”
“I will if I want to!” I don’t know from where this rebellious nature suddenly popped up. Maybe because how he was standing with his body pressed against mine, my hands pinned against the wall I was leaning on where my thoughts kept on going back to a time when this was so natural and I could just lean forward and kiss him and talk to him that I just wanted to hide my tightly reigned yearning which was thrasheing violently to succumb to his closeness.
“Why don’t you like her?” He asked with a soft tone of voice as though coaxing a little boy guilty of stealing sweets, brushing my hair back from my forehead, letting his hands slide down slowly down to my shoulders. It was just colossally unfair to me because this was what he did before kissing me and now that he has someone else, the loneliness will just be that much harder to bear.
“I said! I like her!” I shoved him off.
He looked shocked for a moment at being pushed and even though he was asking for it I was frozen in fear because by the look on his face it seemed like I had crossed a boundary I never should have.
The wind bristled against my ear as I was pushed violently back and hit the wall and I was immobilised, his body pressed completely against mine as he kissed me.
I couldn’t say I put too much of a struggle.
But there was a startled gasp from behind us and even though he ignored it and kept kissing me, he was pulled back violently, our lips detaching with a loud sucking sound and my head felt light as it spun from the intensity of the kiss.
The punch came as a surprise and hence I had fallen unconscious.
I don’t know how long I was out but the next time I opened my eyes we were out on the street, Jun sitting atop the dumpster I was laying against.
“What happened?”
“My dad is an asshole so I left home.” He smiled, “We left home.”
“What! Jun but you-
He had jumped down and put his fingers on my lips, “To find our own.”
It seemed like a promise then, but eventually the hardships became too much for two poor students, one of which was accustomed to a lavish lifestyle and Jun went back to his father to come up with a compromise.
Finally falling into that degenerative spiral of a pact that his father made with us.
Title: Escaping the Spiral
Pairing: JunMa
Rating: PG
Warning: Angst
Summary: Four years later Jun is still recollecting his life after Toma left him.
Note: This is the SECOND Junma sidestory to My BFF’s wedding. It is set AFTER the timeline of BFF’s wedding.
Jun’s POV
I don’t know why I didn’t look for him but I didn’t.
I can’t tell if it’s a mistake because he pops up into my head every now and then. I moved back in with my parents eventually, a house that held so many memories that sometimes I could look at a wall and imagine him leaning against it, lost and out of place trying to mesh with the plain boring texture of it.
I see his face, his smile at inopportune moments of the day but I still hadn’t done anything. A part of me held me back, a part that wanted to end his suffering, his life with me now that I think about it was horrible. I did whatever I felt like and he’d follow me everywhere, sacrifice everything and when he finally decided to pursue his own path I felt like it wasn’t something I should interfere with.
No matter how frustrated I got, sometimes staying awake the whole night and imagining his calm breathe beside me, sometimes imagining his serious face when he was working the meticulous movements of his hands whether he’d make dinner or type up a progress update, sometimes it’d be his tired face when I’d come back home drunk and he’d catch me when I’d slip, his tender hold.
I had taken it all for granted, thought he’d always be there and I threw it all away myself. But he never came back even though I’d never told him to go. Was I someone he feared? That one little misunderstanding and he takes the opportunity to break it off for good? I never asked how he felt. I never made sure that the life he had once chosen to lead with me was the one he wanted.
I never even cared. I always told myself it was alright to tie him with me because I love him. But how could he have ever known? It must have been impossible for him to tell.
Maybe they are little things but these things keep me from chasing after him the way I want to. It might bw too late and he might never know but I want to for the first time respect what he wants.
My father talks about marriage one day and he shows me a picture of a girl with the brightest smile imaginable. I remember his smile, his twinkling eyes and laugh lines and his happy face and I accept. I realize when I see his image that it’s been years and I might never see him again.
It’s not a dream, my marriage doesn’t flit across my head while it happens. I’m very aware of it, very aware of my wife, very aware of what I go through and I push him to the back of my head. He’s something that had happened in the past and I tried to lock it up.
Sadly I can’t say being with my wife is any different than those girls I pick up at clubs but I’d never express that and little by little playing the role of a perfect, caring husband it started feeling less like a lie. Maybe I’d just grown into it or maybe I had really left things from the past behind.
Going to bed with her is just a protocol as is everything else. I wonder if she can tell when I touch her. I can tell her I love her but I can’t fake the way my heart beats for someone else. One day she asks in a soft voice if it’s okay to try and have a family. I get confused at first but she tugs at my shirt and kisses me softly, I wrap my arms around her and nod. She says thank you, her voice happy and grateful and I remember him again so vivid in my head it’s overwhelming. I can feel his aura surrounding me as I lay her down, I can feel his lips when I kiss her, I can feel his heart beat against mine and I ache when I realized that it was all just an illusion as I look at the face of my wife tired and hopeful.
She gets pregnant soon and I can’t remember why or how but I’m excited when she tells me and I pick her up and twirl her around and she laughs, hits me on the forehead when I don’t let her get down. Having a baby is exciting as becoming a father is an overwhelming responsibility. The next few months are spent in an confusing array of events ranging from lectures to parties to lessons on parenting and taking care of the expecting mother.
Of many of the gifts in the baby shower is a ticket to the theatre under the pretence that exposure to the arts increases the baby’s versatility. Going to the theatre was a habit I had dropped before and one that I had picked up only for his sake for he loved the theatre and could go only when I would seemingly tagging along whereas actually it was me who tagged along. Once there was no one to tag me along there was no need to go to the theatre.
It was a much talked about play and I knew my wife really wanted to go even though I didn’t and so we went, her excited chatter about the music and the director and the upcoming new actor all just fluttering past my consciousness.
Little did I know when the curtain lifted and a soft music played in sync with the brightening spotlight that when the person underneath the spotlight would lift his head I would see him again. His voice filled the auditorium and his sharp footsteps as he crossed the stage in a graceful dance left my muscles trembling. For a moment I couldn’t understand what was happening and that in that dark room it was just I and he performing for me. I felt jealous of all the eyes on his beautiful form and I could feel the rage taking over me a dug my fingernails into the arms of the chair all the while fighting the urge to take him away and hide him from the world, to protect him and to let everyone else know that he was mine.
It was when I thought of him as mine did I realize how horrible I was and why he left. Under the pretence of love I had possessed him and taken away his freedom, kept him under a veil telling myself it was what was good for him and now that he was free and could express himself, climbing up to where he deserves to be I had again felt the urge to strip him of that. I don’t know why but while the rest of the audience broke into laughter I could only bite my lips and cry.
Slowly through the 2 hours that he skipped on and off the stage more confident and radiant than I had ever seen him, more alive than he had ever been with me I accepted his freedom, the only person it benefitted was myself for by the time the curtains fell I had managed a smile. I walked out of the theatre slowly partly because my wife couldn’t walk very fast and partly because I was deep in thought. It was like I was being called back and seeing him after so long, the part that always wanted to chase after him and keep him hidden in my arms was in turmoil; I saw her to the car and excused myself taking a slight detour out of the parking and to a flower shop just across the street.
I bought a bouquet and twisting it in my hand I made my way backstage. The last people were coming out from his dressing room, a group of giggling girls and the security stopped me, telling me visiting was not allowed anymore. I walked up here having gathered a lot of courage, I had flowers and the only thing between me and the person I had yearned for four years was a wooden door. I was not to be deterred so easily.
There was a shout from inside for me to be allowed in probably since I was creating such a ruckus and the security guard looked at me like I was some hopeless stalker and allowed me to pass.
He was waiting for me with a bright smile and a huge thank you still in his stage clothes panting and drenched in sweat, enthusiastic non the less but when he took the bouquet and saw my face properly the smile was wiped straight off his face and he stumbled back his body becoming rigid as he looked at me.
“The performance was great.” I whispered quietly and he managed a grimace before thanking me again. He twiddled his fingers together as I looked around the room. I didn’t want to leave just yet.
“Toma…” And it was like something broke inside both of us when I uttered his name and just like he’d always do before he rushed towards me and before I knew it he was there right in front of me and jumped into my arms, burrowing into me as though he wanted to hide there. I tightened my arms around him in an instinct long rusted but surprisingly still strong within me and we held each other tight, feeling years of longing and separation breaking loose and threatening to consume us both. He buried his face into my shoulder and tightened his hold even more until I could feel his body shaking and tears wetting my skin.
After so long I felt content. Having finally with me the one thing that had ever mattered.
He raised his head eventually and the heat of the moment had reduced to a gentle, warm flicker.
“Jun…I…I…Jun” and he closed his red eyes and his lips trembled with tightly reigned emotions as he let out a sigh.
He looked so vulnerable, so beautiful that I cupped his face lightly and kissed him.
A gentle kiss to calm his nerves and I rested out foreheads together as he took control over his breathing. And in one final gesture of longing he brought his hands to grip my shoulder tightly as I drew circles on his cheeks with my thumb.
We kissed again and again and again until I could see him smile lightly and it’s like I couldn’t stop kissing him. I kissed all over his face, tasting the salty tears clinging to his eyes, the bridge of his nose, the curve of his cheek until he was sighing.
And that just made me want him more, to devour him, his beautiful body, his grace, his love and keep it all for myself.
Maybe he would have let me, maybe it’s what he wanted even but just then my phone rang and I saw the name of my pregnant wife flashing on the screen. The phone call dissolved the heat between us as he had stepped precariously back until I was oddly cold and just in the same way I realized that I had moved on from this already. We both have and there’s no point in coming back to it.
Maybe it was from the expression on my face or maybe it was from the change in body language that he understood or maybe he had known long since but when I looked at him again his face wasn’t desperate or pleading but adorned with his beautiful bright smile. And though his eyes were red and his lips still trembled a little I knew it was genuine and this time it was he who cupped my face and placed a chaste kiss on my forehead.
“I’m glad.”
And I left without turning back, tucking Toma into an unresolved corner of my heart.
I went back to my wife and the new life I had chosen to lead and he, I’m sure, went back to his.
A/N: Like I said I like angst and contrasting endings though this is pretty much a stand alone from BFF’s Wedding. Even though there were many people who expressed interest in reading the Junma sidestories I didn’t promote this one in the end for I want people especially those who don’t really like JunMa to remember BFF’s Wedding as a happy and funny fic. This one was quite morbid…so…uh for those who read it... please don’t let it affect your light view of the main story!
Thank you (even though most of you would be throwing tomatoes at me and if any of you did need tissues…I kind of did…you may throw the used ones at me too)