I Can Only Make You Cry with these Words
Pairing: Jaejoong/Yoochun
Length: Oneshot
Word Count: 2,180
Rating: R
Genre: Angst, AU
Warnings: Underage Drinking, Sex, Attempted Suicide
Summary: Yoochun and Jaejoong become best friends, except that's just not enough.
A/N: Just... Be nice about this fic. Title taken from Belle and Sebastian's "Get Me Away from Here, I'm Dying".
I Can Only Make You Cry with these Words
It starts something like this:
Yoochun comes back to Korea after four years in hell. He’s not interested in much of anything except maybe music. People stay away from him because he’s unfamiliar and he doesn’t talk without prodding, a habit he’s picked up to keep from saying anything wrong. He can’t use lack of comprehension as an excuse to leave most work untouched or at least incomplete anymore, so he throws himself into it as an escape. A notebook is better company than people who think he’s not the same as they are. At least it has margins to draw in.
Yoochun takes music theory. There is a group of friends in the class and they fascinate him, especially the one with the almost-feminine features and soft voice and ever-changing hair colors. He eavesdrops on their conversations when they’re supposed to be working on ear training, listens to them gripe about the current state of the music industry and how they want to change it and how that brand new trio is certainly a step in the right direction for pop. He wants to join in, wants to think out loud and use his fourteen-year-old brain to figure out how to solve the problems of the country’s rapidly deteriorating popular culture.
Yoochun switches his seat after a few months. He’s automatically included in the conversation. He hits it off with the one he finds the most interesting, named Jaejoong. The group seems to worry about him, about his self-destructive behavior in particular, but Yoochun just finds it fascinating. He discovers a high tolerance for alcohol and a taste for cigarettes, learns how to walk barefoot on city streets, finds someone that fits him the way they tell you friends are supposed to fit. Maybe, just maybe, they muse when they’re half-drunk on some rooftop somewhere they told their parents they’d never go, they’re soulmates.
Even when they’re sober, they like the sound of that.
It gets complicated like this:
Yoochun tells Jaejoong he loves him. Jaejoong nods, smiles, hugs him. Yoochun doesn’t mean anything by it; he’s simply affirming their soulmate status, the fact that they’re going to be friends forever no matter what.
They want to run away, because this town is boring. They want to go to Seoul, go and discover love and lust and success and what it’s like to be somebody. They want to pretend, maybe dress Jaejoong up in girls’ clothes for kicks so they don’t seem so suspicious. They promise each other they’ll meet up the night of the last day of school. Even if they don’t run, they’ll at least meet each other. They both know they’ll run.
Yoochun starts telling Jaejoong he loves him a lot more often than is usually considered necessary by friends. They withdraw from the others they used to group themselves with, except for Hyunjoong, and Yoochun starts thinking. He wonders why he can’t help but notice how beautiful Jaejoong is, why he can’t stop touching the guy for no reason at all, why he can’t maybe be in love with him. One day he sleeps over at Jaejoong’s house and even though he’s got his own sleeping bag, he crawls into Jae’s bed and spends the night there, and it’s warm and soft and right and he’s not exactly turned on by the body curved against his but he likes it just the same.
He sends him an e-mail. They like to talk via e-mail, because it’s cheaper than phone calls but more conducive to discussion than texting. He starts off rambling about Jaebeom’s removal from 2PM and how this relates to his own experience in America. Somehow, he ends up telling Jaejoong that he’s in love with him like he should be with a girl. He doesn’t know what Jaejoong’s going to say, how he’s going to react. He knows this could be the end of their friendship, but he hits send anyway, and doesn’t sleep very well that night.
The next morning, Yoochun asks Jaejoong if he received his e-mail. Jaejoong says no, he was grounded for stealing money from one of his sisters and his parents are being hardcore about it this time. Yoochun doesn’t know what to say, just knows that he feels like ripping out his own hair or jumping off the roof or maybe just kissing Jaejoong because wouldn’t that be easier than words? You can at least lie about the motives behind actions, anyway.
Jaejoong comes to him with open arms sometime after lunch.
“I read your e-mail. I feel the same way about you. I have since last January. I… was starting to think about telling you, especially because of the way you’ve been touching me lately. But you’re so much stronger and braver than I am. I love you.”
They don’t kiss right then and there, although Yoochun really does want to. They kiss in Jaejoong’s bedroom two weeks later, when his entire family and grandmother are in the house. They wander down to a park in the area holding hands and making out all over the place, wondering if they’ll get caught, avoiding any mention of Yoochun’s refusal to tell his parents about their relationship. Jaejoong’s parents know. They know their son is gay, and they sure as hell aren’t happy, but they were never happy with him anyway.
Yoochun doesn’t even know if he’s gay. He loves Jaejoong, he’s sure of that, and he loves the way his lips and Jaejoongs’ connect, loves the feel of Jae’s hand in his, relishes the sensations rushing south when Jaejoong runs light fingers up and down his back beneath his t-shirt. He’s started looking at men as attractive. He’d tap that whole trio they got excited about- Changmin, Junsu, Yunho, are there names- if he got the chance. He’s not sure he’s always going to feel this way, but for now, it’s the only thing that’s right, and he accepts and embraces the fact. He just happens to know his parents most definitely won’t.
It falls apart something like this:
Jaejoong comes over one day and Yoochun’s parents get suspicious as to why they’re so quiet up in Yoochun’s room when they’re usually screaming at the top of their lungs about god knows what. They read the lyrics to a song he’s scribbled in one of his omnipresent notebooks, a song about everything he and Jaejoong have done up to this point. His mom calls school the next day and says the dentist appointment he’s had scheduled for months has been moved up an hour, but takes him into the car and talks with him about what she’s discovered about her son instead. Yoochun says almost nothing. He cries, wants to hit something, wants to curl up in a ball and die. Mostly, he just wants Jaejoong.
He doesn’t understand why they don’t see that he might not be like this five years from now, why they can’t see that it has to be like this, with Jaejoong. Instead they call up private schools in the area, seeing if they’ll accept a transfer student so late in the year. One does, but after lies and lies and lies Yoochun somehow manages to convince them it won’t be necessary.
Yoochun’s parents blame Jaejoong. They blame Jaejoong for the slip in their sons’ grades, for making Yoochun the mess he’s become. Yoochun doesn’t bother telling them that he was the one that confessed, doesn’t bother reminding them that his grades were never that good in the first place.
Nothing changes in their relationship, except Yoochun’s drinking habits. He can’t leave the house anymore, so he starts stealing his parents’ limited alcohol supply, locking himself in his room, ignoring his parents until they just give up. He asks Jaejoong to bring it into school for him, and Jaejoong obliges. Jaejoong is worried, very worried, but Yoochun just tells him he’ll make it, he’ll be fine, he’s going to have to be fine. Jaejoong doesn’t even drink anymore.
Sometimes, Yoochun stops in the middle of the hall at school, eyes glazed over, and mutters to himself, “I’m awake. This is real. I’m not dreaming. I’m not dreaming.” Those are the days when Jaejoong lets his hand crawl up Yoochun’s thigh and massage his crotch during lunch or math or whatever class they have together, sending his mind to some better, nicer place.
They have sex for the first time in a school bathroom during an assembly three days after the new school year starts and they haven’t been able to communicate for months, as Yoochun’s parents have taken his cellphone and limited his time on the computer. Yoochun tops, moving recklessly in and out of the man he can’t keep his mind off of until they’re both moaning so loudly it’s a wonder they’re not caught. He fists Jaejoong’s cock, every movement rough and confused and more than a little bitter, muttering something that sounds like “fuck, Jaejoong, I love you,” seconds before he comes, eyes shut and mouth open, head thrown back like in the movies. He’s never, ever felt this good before.
They hold hands openly in school now. Everyone knows they’re together, and although they get heckled, at least they’re being honest. At least, Yoochun figures, he doesn’t have to pretend he’s not the person he is here.
Yoochun’s mother stumbles across a song called “Bored to Suicide” that Yoochun’s written some lyrics for when his new notebook falls open while she’s cleaning. She asks him the meaning, and he’s so fucking sick of lying he tells her that it’s not at all metaphorical. It takes a long time, until his father finally comes home from the dinner party he’s been at, for him to whisper the words he wishes he’d never be forced to utter: “Jaejoong and I. We’re together. We never stopped.”
His father slaps him. Yoochun’s standing in front of the refrigerator, screaming, “If you hate me so much, just fucking shoot me already. I want to die. I just want to die. If you hate me, why won’t you just kill me? I’d be better off dead,” when the hand meets his cheek and he doesn’t know what he’s even supposed to do. He collapses a little, knees weak, before running to his room and crawling into bed. His brother is somewhere sobbing, scared for his life, and all Yoochun can see are shades of red and gold and a plan formulating in his mind.
It ends something like this:
Yoochun spends the next day on the verge of tears. His dad wandered in sometimes last night, talking about nasty Spanish wine he shouldn’t have drank so much of, apologizing for what he did, but it doesn’t matter. Yoochun’s not wanted, not loved, and if he dies, at least there’ll be the spirits of all the others that went before him to guide him. He writes a suicide note and tells Jaejoong good-bye before each gets on his own bus home, kissing him more passionately than they usually dare to in public.
Yoochun sits down in his room and starts drinking. He’s going to drink until he passes out, until there’s nothing left anywhere but a few bits of his mind floating around and then he’s going to die, slowly, painfully, pathetically, choking on his own vomit, just as he deserves.
They pump his stomach, send him to a psychologist, and he feels better. He doesn’t even tell Jaejoong what he’s tried to do, although he’s certain he knows. Jaejoong always knows, but this time, he doesn’t say a thing. He just continues loving Yoochun until they start drifting apart.
Yoochun falls in love with a girl, or something. She’s talkative and flirty and maybe a little bit of a slut, but he likes her and she likes him and one day she kisses him good-bye and he decides he likes it, maybe even wants it. Jaejoong goes on to make new friends in the little gay community the school’s got going for it, regailing Yoochun with stories of all the things they’re planning to do. They break up, move on, become new people, figure out who the hell they are.
It starts something like this:
Yoochun doesn’t have any other friends in his small history class his last year of high school, so he sits next Jaejoong. They haven’t talked in something akin to forever, but he knows they’ve still got lots in common, knows that he’s not attracted to him anymore. He knows that they weren’t lying to themselves when they said they were soulmates, and he knows just how much he’s missed talking to Jaejoong the way they did when they were just friends.
Yoochun also knows who Yoochun is now, and he knows Jaejoong helped him find it. He figures he owes him at least a few more conversations before they meander down their separate paths, a few more pieces of evidence to show that what they had was real, just maybe not the type of real Yoochun was meant for.
Length: Oneshot
Word Count: 2,180
Rating: R
Genre: Angst, AU
Warnings: Underage Drinking, Sex, Attempted Suicide
Summary: Yoochun and Jaejoong become best friends, except that's just not enough.
A/N: Just... Be nice about this fic. Title taken from Belle and Sebastian's "Get Me Away from Here, I'm Dying".
I Can Only Make You Cry with these Words
It starts something like this:
Yoochun comes back to Korea after four years in hell. He’s not interested in much of anything except maybe music. People stay away from him because he’s unfamiliar and he doesn’t talk without prodding, a habit he’s picked up to keep from saying anything wrong. He can’t use lack of comprehension as an excuse to leave most work untouched or at least incomplete anymore, so he throws himself into it as an escape. A notebook is better company than people who think he’s not the same as they are. At least it has margins to draw in.
Yoochun takes music theory. There is a group of friends in the class and they fascinate him, especially the one with the almost-feminine features and soft voice and ever-changing hair colors. He eavesdrops on their conversations when they’re supposed to be working on ear training, listens to them gripe about the current state of the music industry and how they want to change it and how that brand new trio is certainly a step in the right direction for pop. He wants to join in, wants to think out loud and use his fourteen-year-old brain to figure out how to solve the problems of the country’s rapidly deteriorating popular culture.
Yoochun switches his seat after a few months. He’s automatically included in the conversation. He hits it off with the one he finds the most interesting, named Jaejoong. The group seems to worry about him, about his self-destructive behavior in particular, but Yoochun just finds it fascinating. He discovers a high tolerance for alcohol and a taste for cigarettes, learns how to walk barefoot on city streets, finds someone that fits him the way they tell you friends are supposed to fit. Maybe, just maybe, they muse when they’re half-drunk on some rooftop somewhere they told their parents they’d never go, they’re soulmates.
Even when they’re sober, they like the sound of that.
It gets complicated like this:
Yoochun tells Jaejoong he loves him. Jaejoong nods, smiles, hugs him. Yoochun doesn’t mean anything by it; he’s simply affirming their soulmate status, the fact that they’re going to be friends forever no matter what.
They want to run away, because this town is boring. They want to go to Seoul, go and discover love and lust and success and what it’s like to be somebody. They want to pretend, maybe dress Jaejoong up in girls’ clothes for kicks so they don’t seem so suspicious. They promise each other they’ll meet up the night of the last day of school. Even if they don’t run, they’ll at least meet each other. They both know they’ll run.
Yoochun starts telling Jaejoong he loves him a lot more often than is usually considered necessary by friends. They withdraw from the others they used to group themselves with, except for Hyunjoong, and Yoochun starts thinking. He wonders why he can’t help but notice how beautiful Jaejoong is, why he can’t stop touching the guy for no reason at all, why he can’t maybe be in love with him. One day he sleeps over at Jaejoong’s house and even though he’s got his own sleeping bag, he crawls into Jae’s bed and spends the night there, and it’s warm and soft and right and he’s not exactly turned on by the body curved against his but he likes it just the same.
He sends him an e-mail. They like to talk via e-mail, because it’s cheaper than phone calls but more conducive to discussion than texting. He starts off rambling about Jaebeom’s removal from 2PM and how this relates to his own experience in America. Somehow, he ends up telling Jaejoong that he’s in love with him like he should be with a girl. He doesn’t know what Jaejoong’s going to say, how he’s going to react. He knows this could be the end of their friendship, but he hits send anyway, and doesn’t sleep very well that night.
The next morning, Yoochun asks Jaejoong if he received his e-mail. Jaejoong says no, he was grounded for stealing money from one of his sisters and his parents are being hardcore about it this time. Yoochun doesn’t know what to say, just knows that he feels like ripping out his own hair or jumping off the roof or maybe just kissing Jaejoong because wouldn’t that be easier than words? You can at least lie about the motives behind actions, anyway.
Jaejoong comes to him with open arms sometime after lunch.
“I read your e-mail. I feel the same way about you. I have since last January. I… was starting to think about telling you, especially because of the way you’ve been touching me lately. But you’re so much stronger and braver than I am. I love you.”
They don’t kiss right then and there, although Yoochun really does want to. They kiss in Jaejoong’s bedroom two weeks later, when his entire family and grandmother are in the house. They wander down to a park in the area holding hands and making out all over the place, wondering if they’ll get caught, avoiding any mention of Yoochun’s refusal to tell his parents about their relationship. Jaejoong’s parents know. They know their son is gay, and they sure as hell aren’t happy, but they were never happy with him anyway.
Yoochun doesn’t even know if he’s gay. He loves Jaejoong, he’s sure of that, and he loves the way his lips and Jaejoongs’ connect, loves the feel of Jae’s hand in his, relishes the sensations rushing south when Jaejoong runs light fingers up and down his back beneath his t-shirt. He’s started looking at men as attractive. He’d tap that whole trio they got excited about- Changmin, Junsu, Yunho, are there names- if he got the chance. He’s not sure he’s always going to feel this way, but for now, it’s the only thing that’s right, and he accepts and embraces the fact. He just happens to know his parents most definitely won’t.
It falls apart something like this:
Jaejoong comes over one day and Yoochun’s parents get suspicious as to why they’re so quiet up in Yoochun’s room when they’re usually screaming at the top of their lungs about god knows what. They read the lyrics to a song he’s scribbled in one of his omnipresent notebooks, a song about everything he and Jaejoong have done up to this point. His mom calls school the next day and says the dentist appointment he’s had scheduled for months has been moved up an hour, but takes him into the car and talks with him about what she’s discovered about her son instead. Yoochun says almost nothing. He cries, wants to hit something, wants to curl up in a ball and die. Mostly, he just wants Jaejoong.
He doesn’t understand why they don’t see that he might not be like this five years from now, why they can’t see that it has to be like this, with Jaejoong. Instead they call up private schools in the area, seeing if they’ll accept a transfer student so late in the year. One does, but after lies and lies and lies Yoochun somehow manages to convince them it won’t be necessary.
Yoochun’s parents blame Jaejoong. They blame Jaejoong for the slip in their sons’ grades, for making Yoochun the mess he’s become. Yoochun doesn’t bother telling them that he was the one that confessed, doesn’t bother reminding them that his grades were never that good in the first place.
Nothing changes in their relationship, except Yoochun’s drinking habits. He can’t leave the house anymore, so he starts stealing his parents’ limited alcohol supply, locking himself in his room, ignoring his parents until they just give up. He asks Jaejoong to bring it into school for him, and Jaejoong obliges. Jaejoong is worried, very worried, but Yoochun just tells him he’ll make it, he’ll be fine, he’s going to have to be fine. Jaejoong doesn’t even drink anymore.
Sometimes, Yoochun stops in the middle of the hall at school, eyes glazed over, and mutters to himself, “I’m awake. This is real. I’m not dreaming. I’m not dreaming.” Those are the days when Jaejoong lets his hand crawl up Yoochun’s thigh and massage his crotch during lunch or math or whatever class they have together, sending his mind to some better, nicer place.
They have sex for the first time in a school bathroom during an assembly three days after the new school year starts and they haven’t been able to communicate for months, as Yoochun’s parents have taken his cellphone and limited his time on the computer. Yoochun tops, moving recklessly in and out of the man he can’t keep his mind off of until they’re both moaning so loudly it’s a wonder they’re not caught. He fists Jaejoong’s cock, every movement rough and confused and more than a little bitter, muttering something that sounds like “fuck, Jaejoong, I love you,” seconds before he comes, eyes shut and mouth open, head thrown back like in the movies. He’s never, ever felt this good before.
They hold hands openly in school now. Everyone knows they’re together, and although they get heckled, at least they’re being honest. At least, Yoochun figures, he doesn’t have to pretend he’s not the person he is here.
Yoochun’s mother stumbles across a song called “Bored to Suicide” that Yoochun’s written some lyrics for when his new notebook falls open while she’s cleaning. She asks him the meaning, and he’s so fucking sick of lying he tells her that it’s not at all metaphorical. It takes a long time, until his father finally comes home from the dinner party he’s been at, for him to whisper the words he wishes he’d never be forced to utter: “Jaejoong and I. We’re together. We never stopped.”
His father slaps him. Yoochun’s standing in front of the refrigerator, screaming, “If you hate me so much, just fucking shoot me already. I want to die. I just want to die. If you hate me, why won’t you just kill me? I’d be better off dead,” when the hand meets his cheek and he doesn’t know what he’s even supposed to do. He collapses a little, knees weak, before running to his room and crawling into bed. His brother is somewhere sobbing, scared for his life, and all Yoochun can see are shades of red and gold and a plan formulating in his mind.
It ends something like this:
Yoochun spends the next day on the verge of tears. His dad wandered in sometimes last night, talking about nasty Spanish wine he shouldn’t have drank so much of, apologizing for what he did, but it doesn’t matter. Yoochun’s not wanted, not loved, and if he dies, at least there’ll be the spirits of all the others that went before him to guide him. He writes a suicide note and tells Jaejoong good-bye before each gets on his own bus home, kissing him more passionately than they usually dare to in public.
Yoochun sits down in his room and starts drinking. He’s going to drink until he passes out, until there’s nothing left anywhere but a few bits of his mind floating around and then he’s going to die, slowly, painfully, pathetically, choking on his own vomit, just as he deserves.
They pump his stomach, send him to a psychologist, and he feels better. He doesn’t even tell Jaejoong what he’s tried to do, although he’s certain he knows. Jaejoong always knows, but this time, he doesn’t say a thing. He just continues loving Yoochun until they start drifting apart.
Yoochun falls in love with a girl, or something. She’s talkative and flirty and maybe a little bit of a slut, but he likes her and she likes him and one day she kisses him good-bye and he decides he likes it, maybe even wants it. Jaejoong goes on to make new friends in the little gay community the school’s got going for it, regailing Yoochun with stories of all the things they’re planning to do. They break up, move on, become new people, figure out who the hell they are.
It starts something like this:
Yoochun doesn’t have any other friends in his small history class his last year of high school, so he sits next Jaejoong. They haven’t talked in something akin to forever, but he knows they’ve still got lots in common, knows that he’s not attracted to him anymore. He knows that they weren’t lying to themselves when they said they were soulmates, and he knows just how much he’s missed talking to Jaejoong the way they did when they were just friends.
Yoochun also knows who Yoochun is now, and he knows Jaejoong helped him find it. He figures he owes him at least a few more conversations before they meander down their separate paths, a few more pieces of evidence to show that what they had was real, just maybe not the type of real Yoochun was meant for.