Stupid Lies: Let It All Burn Down
Title: Stupid Lies: Let It All Burn Down
Chapter: 5 (of ?)
Pairing: Jinyoung/Jaebum, Jinyoung/Mark
Rating: PG13
Word Count: 6175
Summary: The third installment to the Bleeding Love Saga. It follows Bleeding Love: Stupid Questions and Bleeding Love: Stupid Cliches. It would be beneficial to read those two first. AU.
[They say that time flies, but you keep breaking its wings.]
_____________
So take it slow and let time heal everything
They say that time flies, but you keep breaking its wings.
You’ll never fade (fade, fade) fade to black (fade to black)
Please fade (fade, fade) fade to black
But the nightmares come back
“Eyes, Nose, Lips” by Tablo featuring Taeyang
-
I’m losing control
It’s been way too long
I’m losing control
It’s been way too long
Stop fucking with my brain
Stop spitting on my pain
I’ll burn you in flame
“Losing Control” by Nell
_____________
It’s three days after meeting Jinyoung in the hallway of Parker Center that he returns. Jinyoung had sent him a short email to request a copy of the filming consent form as well as to let him know he could schedule an hour to meet with him to be interviewed either Thursday or Friday the following week.
Despite being both easier and quicker to email the form to Jinyoung, he figures since he’s in the area (if by being in the area means nearly an hour away) he can drop by Parker Center and deliver the paperwork in person. It’s stupid really, but now that he had seen Jinyoung he feels all the control he had - the control he had to walk away and stay away - slipping and crumbling like sand castles on the beach.
It will be okay, he tells himself. (He’s heard positive thinking will lead to a positive outcome, or some bullshit like that.) They are grown adults. Jinyoung obviously has no problem acting indifferent toward him. He needs to work on it and put actual effort into it, but he’s determined to play the game that Jinyoung has started - the one where they’re nothing but strangers, with no past, no history. Practice makes perfect, and it’s better that he perfect his act before he officially starts the filming process. He has to be one-hundred percent professional. Not just because it’s his job, not just because that’s what Jinyoung wants and expects, but because of the importance of the documentary.
When he arrives at Parker Center, the receptionist recognizes him from the time before and after he assures her that he remembers the way to Jinyoung’s office, she hands him a visitor’s badge to clip onto his button-down shirt.
A few minutes later, he runs into Youngjae after exiting the elevator. Youngjae’s headed the opposite way but stops when he sees him to exchange a smile and say a quick ‘hello’.
The door to Jinyoung’s office is already open but he knocks to make his presence known.
“Jae-JB.” Jinyoung’s face shows a moment of surprise then it’s gone and his face is a blank canvas. “What are you doing here?” He sees the file folder in Jaebum’s hand and infers what it holds. “You could have just emailed me the form. There really was no reason for you to come here.”
There really was no reason for you to come here.
It’s not even that harsh of a statement, it’s just in the way that Jinyoung says it that makes him feel wholly unwelcome.
It will be okay, he told himself. (Lies.) What’s that saying again? Positive thoughts, positive outcome? (More lies.)
Practice makes perfect. (Still undecided if that’s a complete lie as well.) He’s determined to act like Jinyoung, to take a page from his playbook and act like there is no history between them.
“I know.” He congratulates himself that his voice sounds unaffected as he hands Jinyoung the folder. “I had the forms in my car already and was nearby so I figured why not drop them off?” Running into Youngjae earlier reminds him of a question he needed to ask Jinyoung. “Since Mr. Baldwin put you in charge as the liaison, I know I need to run things by you first before doing anything, so I wanted to see if it would be all right to interview some of your staff? Although your interview will be the lead, I would like the chance to hear from the other therapists as well. If that’s okay with you?”
Jinyoung takes a moment to consider the question before answering. “As long as you don’t interfere with their work and they’re willing to talk to you, I have no problem with it.”
“Follow-up question. Is it okay to schedule a separate interview time and date with them?” He wants to make sure he won’t cause any issues for the therapist or Jinyoung.
“I don’t think I can set aside time to be present for each of their interviews but keep me informed of the time and date, and I may be able to stop by for a few minutes. I trust my staff,” Jinyoung tells him. “But when it comes to the patients and their families, I’ll always need to be present any time you film… but since I’m still working on that for you, we can discuss those details another time.”
“All right that sounds good, I won’t keep you any longer since I know I stopped by unannounced…”
Jinyoung checks his watch and stands up. “I do need to head out, but before you go, why don’t you stop by Youngjae’s office? It’s three doors down to the right. I think you should interview him for the film.”
-
It’s Monday morning and Jaebum is in Youngjae’s office. It’s a bit smaller in size compared to Jinyoung’s, but there are a couple paintings hanging on the walls that brighten up the space.
“Where do you want me?” Youngjae asks, after welcoming Jaebum into his office. He met him downstairs in Parker Center’s lobby at ten till ten despite Jaebum telling him the week before he didn’t need to make the effort since he knew his way now. “I mean is it okay to sit behind my desk?” he hurries to add. “Or should I move my chair closer to yours? I guess we could always film this in a therapy room that’s not being used.”
“Your office is perfectly fine.”
“You know JB, maybe this isn’t such a great idea.” When Jaebum had told him last Thursday he wanted to interview him for the film, he’d been so surprised and overwhelmed that he found himself agreeing without hesitation. But then over the weekend, his nerves got the better of him and now he isn’t so sure about it. “This is reminding me of my fear of public speaking. I’ve never been a great speaker. You should interview Junior of course, and I think maybe Danielle or Stephen would be-”
“Actually it was Junior who suggested that I talk to you first.”
“He did?” Jaebum nods. The knowledge that his boss recommended him makes him feel a little better.
“You can sit behind your desk,” Jaebum answers Youngjae’s earlier question as he finishes setting up his filming equipment and checking to make sure the camera view is just right. He plans to sit across from Youngjae with his chair turned slightly toward the camera to catch only his profile. He wants the main focus to be on Youngjae, not him. “And we’ve talked plenty before, we’re on a first name basis already,” he jokes and sees Youngjae crack a smile. “There’s no reason to be nervous.”
“Yeah, but this is different.” He points to the camera that is in the corner of his office. In a few moments a blinking red light will turn on and he’s afraid he’ll make a mistake and get really tongue-tied. The documentary is important and he would hate to embarrass himself, especially in front of someone like Jaebum who seems to be the picture definition of cool and collected.
“It doesn’t have to be. Just think of it as the two of us having a conversation.” After hitting the record button, he takes a seat opposite Youngjae. “I don’t want you to be so focused on sounding perfect that you sound like a textbook. I want you to be you. When that happens, people will see your sincerity and your love of music therapy and that’s the key to making a great film. Moving people, making them feel… making them care about something they may never heard of before.”
“Okay.” It sounds easy when Jaebum says it like that, it’s just nerves are hard to overcome. “I’ll try.”
He had promised Jinyoung he wouldn’t pressure anyone to participate in the filming, and while Jinyoung had meant that mainly in regards to the patients and their families, Jaebum feels it’s just as important to extend the same courtesy to all Parker Center employees. Youngjae had been nothing but kind and helpful since they first met, and he worries that the younger man may have agreed to be interviewed simply because he is nice.
“What if we begin the interview, and if you start to feel too uncomfortable at any time, I’ll stop immediately?” Jaebum suggests. “And even if we stop twenty minutes later and I’ve already got footage, if you decide you don’t want me to use it, I won’t.”
“Really?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Thank you.” He feels silly that he is so nervous but it’s who he is. “All right.” He takes a breath and nods to Jaebum that he’s ready.
Hoping to help the younger man lessen his anxiety and take his mind further away from the blinking red light of the camera, he decides to start with a simple question. “Why did you want to become a music therapist?”
Youngjae’s eyes dart from the camera to Jaebum. His eyes widen slightly in surprise because it’s not a question he thought he would be asked for the film. “You really want to know?”
Jaebum nods yes, giving Youngjae a smile of encouragement.
“It’s kind of a long story I guess but all right, sure.” As his mind starts to drift toward the reason why he chose his profession, thoughts about being filmed or messing up or embarrassing himself begin to fade away and it’s just him, Jaebum, and his memories alone in the room. “My grandfather had cancer.”
“I’m sorry.” The words leave his mouth automatically but the sincerity in them is genuine, knowing it’s hard to watch someone close to you suffer and be in pain.
“Thank you. We were really close. My father left when I was five and my grandfather stepped up and became that father-figure for me. I have two younger sisters, and my mom worked two jobs trying to raise the three of us on her own.”
“Your mother sounds like a strong woman.”
“She really is.” Youngjae smiles in agreement. “We often spent time at our grandparents’ house after school and during the summer it was practically our second home. While my sisters followed my grandmother around, I could always be found next to my granddad. I wanted to be just like him when I grew up. He was my hero.”
Hearing Youngjae speak about the close relationship he had with his grandfather makes Jaebum remember (and miss) his own. Even though he can predict how Youngjae’s story ends, he still hopes to be proven wrong.
“I had just turned thirteen when my mom sat me down one night and told me that her dad had been diagnosed with cancer. I didn’t fully understand what it meant except that it sounded scary. I remember asking her if he was going to die. He did chemotherapy and long hospital stays became the norm. It was summertime and all my friends were interested in going to water parks and attending basketball camp and all I wanted to do was be there for my granddad. At first my mom didn’t want me spending so much time at the hospital but I can be pretty stubborn too…”
“She was worried about you.”
“I know,” Youngjae softly agrees. “I ended up spending a lot of time there anyway, because it was hard on my grandmother to stay long hours day in and day out and my mom couldn’t afford to take off much time from work. I usually spent the night there with him. I hated the thought of him being scared or lonely. I just… it bothered me a lot.”
“And music?” The filming has become secondary as he listens to Youngjae talk, still he asks the question to help Youngjae refocus and to help him not dwell too long on difficult memories.
“Oh, yeah… sorry.” Youngjae shakes his head as if to clear it. “My granddad always loved music. I think that’s why I enjoyed it so much to be honest. I remember being around seven or eight outside with my granddad as he tinkered around the garage - that’s what he called it ‘tinkering’ and getting out of my grandmother’s hair.” He lets out a small laugh at the recollection. “I would sit on an upturned bucket and hand my grandfather tools as he needed them and listen to him sing along to the radio that played in the background.”
The scene Youngjae paints is one Jaebum can easily picture in his mind.
“Later to help keep his mind off the nausea and side effects that came with treatment, I brought him his old radio so he could listen to it whenever he wanted to but more often than not, he asked me to sing to him instead. So I started to sing to him his favorite hymns and songs that he grew up listening to. If there was a song I didn’t know, I would look up the lyrics and practice so that I could sing it to him the next time.”
“What was your grandfather’s favorite song?”
“It was my grandmother’s favorite actually but it became his as well because he loved her so much.” He can’t help but smile as he thinks of his grandparents’ marriage and how happy they were together. “It’s a song sung by Otis Redding. “That’s How Strong My Love Is.” I remember after learning my grandfather’s cancer had spread, I went over to their house and that song started playing on the radio just as I was about to enter the kitchen. My grandfather got up from where he had been sitting at the table… he was a little unsteady on his feet but he took my grandmother in his arms and started dancing with her. I can still hear the sound of my grandmother’s laughter as she chastised him for getting his clothes dirty since she was covered in flour from making a pie crust. But my granddad didn’t care at all, he just continued to sing her that song while they danced.”
It’s one of his favorite memories that he had of his grandparents, and it’s one Youngjae cherished and kept close to his heart because it got a lot harder after that. “On better days during treatment, my granddad would try and sing along with me. But toward the end, it got more difficult for him until finally it was just me singing alone in the room. I would sing for God I don’t know… hours… whatever I could do to help try and take his mind off the pain. To give him comfort, I would have done anything.”
“How old were you when he passed away?” Jaebum gently asks.
“Sixteen. My grandfather had just gifted me his car, and I didn’t want it. It was his, and he was going to get better and drive it again. It was stupid I know, but I couldn’t give up that irrational hope that maybe the doctors were wrong and he could beat the cancer spreading through his body. He was strong, the strongest person I knew, and he was a fighter, he had already fought so hard… if anyone could beat cancer, he could. So I refused the car saying I didn’t need it. It was a week later when my mom got the three a.m. phone call from the hospital. It was a school night, so that meant I couldn’t-” Youngjae pauses, feeling himself getting emotional at the memory. He takes a couple breaths and ends with, “I wasn’t there.”
“You were there for him,” Jaebum counters. “In every way that you could have been at that age, more than others your age even… your grandfather knew how much you loved him.” He says the last part with confidence because it’s easy for Jaebum to feel the strength of Youngjae’s love for his grandfather, and the depth of his grief, from the way he talks about him.
“For months I felt guilty about not being there that night. I was in school so I wasn’t allowed to stay the night except for Friday and Saturday. I was a sophomore in high school, and up to that point, with everything going on my grades weren’t really a priority for me. I wasn’t quite failing yet, but I didn’t care either. But after he passed, I was so incredibly angry at everything and everyone. It was unfair. Why him, you know? There was so much more that I wanted to tell him… that I wanted him to teach me. My mother and grandmother both tried to talk to me, but I didn’t want to listen. I wanted to stay mad at the world. Then one day in literature class, I was actually thinking about skipping but I knew I was already pushing my mom’s limits so for whatever reason, I stayed. I don’t remember the exact wording but my teacher assigned us to write a paper about memory and the five senses. We had to pick one sense that we felt had the strongest tie to memory and write a paper in support of our choice.”
“And you chose hearing,” Jaebum guesses.
“I did. I wrote a paper on music and my grandfather and what it meant to me. How so many moments in my life had a music soundtrack attached. How hearing a certain song on the radio could bring a smile to my face because of the happy memory associated with it, and how I would turn the radio to a different station as soon as the opening bars to a certain song played because it was too painful to listen to it. It was a week later when my teacher returned our papers. There was no grade on mine, just a ‘see me after class’ in red ink. I sat through class getting myself worked up, I already had my speech halfway planned on how I had worked hard on the paper, staying up late to finish it even, and I didn’t deserve to fail.”
“So after class, you went up and…”
“I made an A minus. My teacher, Ms. Baker, she told me she was glad to see that I finally decided to put some real effort into my homework and then she handed me some papers she printed off about music therapy. She said that she thought I might be interested in learning more about it. I read everything she gave me during my next class and when I got home from school that afternoon I researched more. It was then that I started to focus on my studies again. It was like a switch had been flipped, and I knew exactly what I wanted to do.”
Youngjae turns the wooden photo frame that sits on his desk around so that Jaebum can see it. It’s a picture of his grandfather and him, a candid shot that his grandmother had snapped when they were out in the garage tinkering about. He’s wearing a pair of overalls to match with his granddad and his grin shows that he had just lost his front tooth.
“This is my way of keeping my granddad’s spirit alive and to always remember him. Of course the field of music therapy is a lot more complex than just listening and singing along to music, there is actual schooling involved…”
-
It’s been almost a week since he dropped off the filming consent forms and besides another brief email to confirm that he’s still scheduled to come by Friday to interview him, he hasn’t seen or spoken to Jinyoung further. He’s going to wait to ask Jinyoung in person how the patients’ filming approval is coming along and if anyone wants to discuss the documentary more in-depth with him.
He hasn’t been sleeping well. Not since he left New York for Vegas has his sleeping habits been this terrible. It’s been a week with too little sleep and too many dreams. Dreams that turned into nightmares that woke him up in a cold sweat with his heart beating much too fast because it had felt so vividly real. He’s tempted to go pick up some over-the-counter sleeping aide, but he refuses to fall into that cycle of codependence again.
It’s well after three in the morning when his body finally succumbs to exhaustion and he drifts into a dream world filled with saints and demons alike, all rooted in memory.
He’s back in Paris. A business trip, for three weeks. The weekend’s are his to do whatever he wishes, and he uses the free time to explore the city’s art museums. The Louvre is perhaps the most famous one but he finds that he likes the slightly lesser known Musée d’Orsay better. The former railway station turned art museum houses the largest collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist masterpieces in the world ranging from greats like Van Gogh, Monet, Renoir, and Cézanne.
He often loses track of time whenever art is involved so he’s not surprised that several hours have passed and it’s late afternoon when he steps back into the direct sunlight. With camera in hand, he strolls along the outside, snapping a couple artistic shots of the museum and the people hurrying toward unknown destinations.
He’s debating between visiting another museum - Musée de l’Orangerie, specifically to see the two oval rooms that display eight of Monet’s famed Nymphéas - or to save it for another time when he sees Jinyoung walking toward him which is weird because it’s daytime, much too soon for him to be dreaming. He blinks, the sun bright in his eyes, and the man that is Jinyoung steps closer into view and he sees that he’s mistaken. It’s not Jinyoung, it’s just someone who looks eerily similar.
The guy introduces himself as Minjoon. A graduate student studying in Paris for the semester. Korean. Minjoon is noticeably excited to meet another Korean while abroad, while Jaebum is disconcerted to see someone that looks like he could be Jinyoung’s long lost twin. Disconcerted but when Minjoon asks if he would be interested in taking their conversation to a nearby eatery, he finds himself saying yes without hesitation.
And as the sun begins to set, the sky turning a kaleidoscope of pinks, purples, and yellows, neither of them put any real effort into saying goodbye and parting ways. Taking a walk after dinner, they stop to browse in a few shops, before ending their night at a little cafe. They sit outside to enjoy the Parisian springtime, the night breeze sweet and cool, and eat dessert sans coffee due to the late hour. The Eiffel Tower can be seen far off into the distance, a beacon in the night all brightly lit and twinkling.
“I take it you like your dessert?” Jaebum asks, pointing to Minjoon’s plate where only a few bites remain of his crêpes filled with chocolate and berries and topped with a dusting of powdered sugar. He had already finished the crème brûlée he ordered.
Minjoon pops a sliced strawberry into his mouth and nods. “It’s delicious. Thanks for the recommendation.” He takes another bite, and then looking at Jaebum he scoops up his dessert, making sure the bite contains an equal amount of all the good stuff, and brings the fork to Jaebum’s mouth. “Here, I’ll even be nice and share,” he offers with a grin and a hint of playfulness.
It’s something Jinyoung would do, he thinks. The smile and mischievous glint in his eyes is so fucking uncannily like Jinyoung that it takes his breath away. Of course half the time Jinyoung would choose to be a tease and take the offered sweet back and eat it himself at the very last second. Jinyoung and his fondness for sweet things was a force to be reckoned with, and his soft spot for Jinyoung meant that he never minded.
He’s a little too caught up in memories until he hears Minjoon speak, apologizing for crossing a line, his cheeks beginning to flush a bright pink and it makes Jaebum feel badly. He catches Minjoon’s hand mid-air that holds the fork and brings it to his mouth again, eating the sweet offered.
It’s not like Minjoon’s been that subtle in his attraction toward him, and it’s not like he’s discouraged the attention either. It’s obvious by Minjoon’s body language - standing a little too close, brushing hands as they strolled along the Parisian streets, his eyes that not-so-discreetly checked him out - that he’s interested in something more than just dinner and dessert.
He pays the bill, like he did for dinner before, and takes Minjoon’s hand in his to link their fingers together. “Why don’t we go back to my hotel?”
It’s a few hours later when he hears Jinyoung’s voice calling him. He’s lost in dreamland, and wanting to stay there, he grabs his pillow, throwing it over his head to minimize the voice of his best friend who wishes to disturb his sleep.
“Jaebum… Bummie, Bummie, Bummie… Bummie hyung!” Jinyoung singsongs in a much-too-cheerful for this hour voice. “Come on, wake up sleeping beauty. You told me last night to make sure you were up by seven and here it is seven oh six and you’re still ignoring me,” Jinyoung grumbles, grabbing the pillow and throwing it toward the bottom of the bed out of his friend’s reach.
“Hey! I was using that!” He rolls onto his back and opens his eyes to glare at Jinyoung. “Five more minutes please, for all the love you claim to have for me… please… I stayed up until six this morning studying.”
Jinyoung looks at him and sighs, giving in. “Fine, ten more minutes, but if you’re not up then I’m going to fill a bucket with ice cold water and toss it on you!”
Jaebum frowns. “Don’t be mean,” he whines. “I’m tired.”
“I know, but you still have an eight a.m. class to attend, the one where you have to take that test you stayed up late studying for.” Before leaving the room, Jinyoung grabs the pillow and hands it back to Jaebum. “I’ll be back,” he warns, then adds in a softer voice, “I’m making breakfast. All your favorites.”
The scene changes and he’s still in bed, but this time instead of college-age him, he’s ten years old. It’s the summer he broke his arm. He’s reading a manga (Inuyasha) Jinyoung had brought him the week before and missing the other boy. Jinyoung had called him a couple nights ago to apologize, telling him that he wouldn’t be able to visit since his grandparents were in town.
“Jaebum hyung! Did you miss me? Huh, did you? It feels like it’s been for-EVER since I came over!” Jinyoung comes barging into his bedroom, much like an excited puppy that’s been alone all day and whose owner just came home.
Seeing Jinyoung makes him want to smile, but since he’d just been pouting earlier about missing his best friend he decides it’s only fair to have a bit of fun first.
“Do I know you? You do look familiar, but… I mean…”
Jinyoung stops in his tracks and frowns, his head tilted slightly to the side as he studies his best friend’s face. “Aw hyung, don’t do that to me. You know I wanted to come see you!” He takes his backpack off and lets it drop to the floor.
Jaebum ends up cracking a smile because it’s useless to pretend to be mad at the other boy. He could never be upset with Jinyoung, it was impossible. “I know, I was just playing,” he says, closing the comic he was reading and placing it on the nightstand by his bed. “I thought your grandparents were still in town for a few more days?”
“They are,” Jinyoung replies, while looking around his friend’s room to see if he needed any help cleaning it. “My grandmother asked why I was looking so down today and I told her that I hadn’t gotten to see you since they came into town. And when I explained that you broke your arm while saving me-”
“It wasn’t that big of a deal.” He feels embarrassed that Jinyoung kept making him sound like some superhero, and when Jinyoung wasn’t doing that, he kept apologizing to him over and over and that was just as bad.
“It was too! And my grandmother agreed and told my mom that you shouldn’t keep a boy from his best friend, especially not one who saved my grandson.” Jinyoung imitates his grandmother’s voice making Jaebum laugh. “She even drove me herself, and-” he stops to pick up his backpack and unzip it to pull out a tupperware container full of chocolate chip cookies, “she made these for you before we came over. Freshly baked!”
“I always knew your grandmother loved me best.” Jaebum grins and reaches for the container, making ‘gimme’ hands at Jinyoung.
“Hey, now… she’s my grandmother, so she should love me best. But you’re definitely a close second.” Jaebum grabs a cookie and offers the opened container to Jinyoung who shakes his head no. “They’re all yours. Besides I ate a couple. Taste testing,” he says before Jaebum could complain.
“Your grandmother is a really great baker,” Jaebum tells him after finishing off the cookie. He could easily eat a dozen, but knows his mother wouldn’t like that.
“Maybe I’ll have my grandmother teach me,” Jinyoung says, considering the idea.
“I didn’t think you would be interested in baking,” Jaebum teases his friend.
“I’m not.” Jinyoung shrugs. “Well not really, but you seem to like them so I’ll learn for you and that way I can always make you cookies whenever you want.”
“That sounds nice. Come here, sit down.” He pats the empty spot on the bed next to him. He knows Jinyoung still feels guilty about his injury and knows his friend is being extra careful anytime he comes near him. Jinyoung always hangs back at a distance, until Jaebum makes a big enough fuss that Jinyoung finally gives into his demands. Jinyoung looks hesitant and he pouts. “I’ve missed you.”
Jinyoung grins at that. “Of course you would, I am super cool after all.”
“Well I wouldn’t go that far,” Jaebum jokes back as Jinyoung steps closer and takes a seat carefully on Jaebum’s bed.
“See that’s the problem, you’re not cool enough to recognize how amazingly awesome I am,” Jinyoung tosses back and before long they fall into their easy rhythm of teasing and joking around with each other.
It’s a little while later during a lull in their conversation that Jinyoung asks the important question. “How’s your arm today?”
“Still broken.”
Jinyoung rolls his eyes. “Quit being a smart-” he stops to glance back at the opened door and seeing no adults around continues, “a. s. s.”
“You rebel, you.”
“Seriously, come on. You had a doctor’s appointment today, right?” Jaebum nods. “What did he say?”
“He wasn’t ready to take the cast off, which is what I was hoping for. It itches like crazy, and I can’t properly scratch and not thinking about it… uh, how many times has my mother told me not to think about it? When you’re itching that bad and there’s no relief, there’s no way to not think about it. It’s like Murphy’s Law or something!”
Jinyoung’s heard this rant before (a few times in fact) but nods his head in sympathy. “I’m sorry. Do you know how long he thinks you’ll have to wear the cast?”
“I’ve got another appointment next week, and he says maybe I can have it removed then. God I hope so! I’ll still need to be careful and everything, maybe keep it in a sling for a while. Will possibly need some PT.” He makes a disgruntled face at the idea. He would very much like to avoid more doctors and hospitals. It’s his summer vacation after all.
“PT?”
“Physical therapy.” Thinking of an idea, he adds, “Hey, maybe you can come with me some days?” He thinks it would be much more fun if Jinyoung could be there too.
“Would that be allowed?”
“It should be. You’re my best friend. I need support and stuff,” Jaebum claims.
Jinyoung grins. “If it’s okay with your mom and mine, I’ll come to your therapy appointments. We’re best friends. Forever, right?”
“Forever,” Jaebum echoes as Jinyoung’s smiling cherub face changes and morphs into adult Jinyoung.
Jinyoung is standing before him right in the middle of Parker Center. His eyes filled with disappointment and accusation.
“You said we’d be best friends forever.”
“You promised.”
“Liar.”
“Why did you do that?”
“JB,” Jinyoung scoffs in disgust. “What happened to Jaebum Im, my best friend? The one that said he would always be there for me?”
He stands motionless, letting Jinyoung fling words at him, without trying to deny or make excuses. There are no excuses to be made. There are no words to right the wrongs.
The scene shifts again and this time he’s in Seoul. On a job, filming a music video for an up-and-coming idol group. There’s a flurry of activity and cacophony of noise surrounding him as he works to organize the set. He calls for a short break for the idols to rest and recharge before their next dance sequence.
Turning to find his assistant, he sees Jinyoung instead, standing off in the distance just staring straight through him. His facial expression filled with sadness.
“Jaebum… hyung, don’t you miss me?”
“Of course I do.” He misses Jinyoung more than all the words combined in the dictionary. He walks forward, wanting to reach out and touch Jinyoung, but with each step he takes toward his friend, Jinyoung takes a step backward.
“Too bad. I don’t miss you,” Jinyoung says before disappearing into nothingness.
He stands alone for a long time and then he’s in front of his college apartment. The one he shared with Jinyoung. He’s got his hands full of books and he barely manages to get the door open. But he does and then he sees Jinyoung crying and it’s like a punch in his stomach. He doesn’t understand how everyone can be smiling when Jinyoung has been crying.
There are champagne flutes - champagne bubbles never fail to make his nose twitch in reflex.
“Jaebum, Jaebummie hyuuuung, my lovely Bummmmmiiiieee.” His books drop to the floor. Jinyoung’s kiss, his smile. “I love you!”
Jinyoung engaged to be married. Not to him, never to him, but to Mark.
His heart breaking, bleeding both inside and out.
Tears that fall and keep falling until the sky opens up to share his pain. A rain storm, outside a bar without an umbrella. It’s not like he feels anything anyway. He’s much too numb, but he finds that that thought doesn’t really scare him. He’s like Pinocchio, a puppet made of wood. But unlike the puppet, he doesn’t want to be a real boy.
A door opens.
Jinyoung is there, worried-
“Jaebum, Jaebum. Wake up… please, it’s not real.” The voice is loud and insistent, but it’s the feeling of being shaken that helps pull him back to the present. He opens his eyes and blinks owlishly at the bright light of the bedside lamp in his Paris hotel room. He sees Jin-no, Minjoon staring down at him with worry.
“I’m sorry, you seemed to be having a bad dream,” Minjoon says in way of explanation.
He rubs a tired hand across his face, as if trying to erase the remnants of the dream from his mind. Seeing that Minjoon is already dressed, he frowns and glances at the bedside clock. It reads a quarter after five. “Do you have somewhere you need to be this morning?”
“No, I just thought you wouldn’t want me to be here when you woke up. I thought maybe-”
“Don’t think,” Jaebum softly interrupts, rising from his sleeping position and leaning toward the younger man. He places a hand around the back of Minjoon’s neck to bring him closer. “Come back to bed,” he murmurs before kissing Minjoon who is most definitely not Jinyoung.
But he doesn’t care, not right now, not when he’s drowning in memories best forgotten.
Not wanting to think anymore, he loses himself in the feeling of Minjoon’s lips on his and Minjoon’s hands on his body.
_____________
This chapter was incredibly hard to write, and I know it’s (probably) not what you expected but I hope you liked it anyway.
Comments/constructive criticism are much appreciated.
Chapter: 5 (of ?)
Pairing: Jinyoung/Jaebum, Jinyoung/Mark
Rating: PG13
Word Count: 6175
Summary: The third installment to the Bleeding Love Saga. It follows Bleeding Love: Stupid Questions and Bleeding Love: Stupid Cliches. It would be beneficial to read those two first. AU.
[They say that time flies, but you keep breaking its wings.]
_____________
So take it slow and let time heal everything
They say that time flies, but you keep breaking its wings.
You’ll never fade (fade, fade) fade to black (fade to black)
Please fade (fade, fade) fade to black
But the nightmares come back
“Eyes, Nose, Lips” by Tablo featuring Taeyang
-
I’m losing control
It’s been way too long
I’m losing control
It’s been way too long
Stop fucking with my brain
Stop spitting on my pain
I’ll burn you in flame
“Losing Control” by Nell
_____________
It’s three days after meeting Jinyoung in the hallway of Parker Center that he returns. Jinyoung had sent him a short email to request a copy of the filming consent form as well as to let him know he could schedule an hour to meet with him to be interviewed either Thursday or Friday the following week.
Despite being both easier and quicker to email the form to Jinyoung, he figures since he’s in the area (if by being in the area means nearly an hour away) he can drop by Parker Center and deliver the paperwork in person. It’s stupid really, but now that he had seen Jinyoung he feels all the control he had - the control he had to walk away and stay away - slipping and crumbling like sand castles on the beach.
It will be okay, he tells himself. (He’s heard positive thinking will lead to a positive outcome, or some bullshit like that.) They are grown adults. Jinyoung obviously has no problem acting indifferent toward him. He needs to work on it and put actual effort into it, but he’s determined to play the game that Jinyoung has started - the one where they’re nothing but strangers, with no past, no history. Practice makes perfect, and it’s better that he perfect his act before he officially starts the filming process. He has to be one-hundred percent professional. Not just because it’s his job, not just because that’s what Jinyoung wants and expects, but because of the importance of the documentary.
When he arrives at Parker Center, the receptionist recognizes him from the time before and after he assures her that he remembers the way to Jinyoung’s office, she hands him a visitor’s badge to clip onto his button-down shirt.
A few minutes later, he runs into Youngjae after exiting the elevator. Youngjae’s headed the opposite way but stops when he sees him to exchange a smile and say a quick ‘hello’.
The door to Jinyoung’s office is already open but he knocks to make his presence known.
“Jae-JB.” Jinyoung’s face shows a moment of surprise then it’s gone and his face is a blank canvas. “What are you doing here?” He sees the file folder in Jaebum’s hand and infers what it holds. “You could have just emailed me the form. There really was no reason for you to come here.”
There really was no reason for you to come here.
It’s not even that harsh of a statement, it’s just in the way that Jinyoung says it that makes him feel wholly unwelcome.
It will be okay, he told himself. (Lies.) What’s that saying again? Positive thoughts, positive outcome? (More lies.)
Practice makes perfect. (Still undecided if that’s a complete lie as well.) He’s determined to act like Jinyoung, to take a page from his playbook and act like there is no history between them.
“I know.” He congratulates himself that his voice sounds unaffected as he hands Jinyoung the folder. “I had the forms in my car already and was nearby so I figured why not drop them off?” Running into Youngjae earlier reminds him of a question he needed to ask Jinyoung. “Since Mr. Baldwin put you in charge as the liaison, I know I need to run things by you first before doing anything, so I wanted to see if it would be all right to interview some of your staff? Although your interview will be the lead, I would like the chance to hear from the other therapists as well. If that’s okay with you?”
Jinyoung takes a moment to consider the question before answering. “As long as you don’t interfere with their work and they’re willing to talk to you, I have no problem with it.”
“Follow-up question. Is it okay to schedule a separate interview time and date with them?” He wants to make sure he won’t cause any issues for the therapist or Jinyoung.
“I don’t think I can set aside time to be present for each of their interviews but keep me informed of the time and date, and I may be able to stop by for a few minutes. I trust my staff,” Jinyoung tells him. “But when it comes to the patients and their families, I’ll always need to be present any time you film… but since I’m still working on that for you, we can discuss those details another time.”
“All right that sounds good, I won’t keep you any longer since I know I stopped by unannounced…”
Jinyoung checks his watch and stands up. “I do need to head out, but before you go, why don’t you stop by Youngjae’s office? It’s three doors down to the right. I think you should interview him for the film.”
-
It’s Monday morning and Jaebum is in Youngjae’s office. It’s a bit smaller in size compared to Jinyoung’s, but there are a couple paintings hanging on the walls that brighten up the space.
“Where do you want me?” Youngjae asks, after welcoming Jaebum into his office. He met him downstairs in Parker Center’s lobby at ten till ten despite Jaebum telling him the week before he didn’t need to make the effort since he knew his way now. “I mean is it okay to sit behind my desk?” he hurries to add. “Or should I move my chair closer to yours? I guess we could always film this in a therapy room that’s not being used.”
“Your office is perfectly fine.”
“You know JB, maybe this isn’t such a great idea.” When Jaebum had told him last Thursday he wanted to interview him for the film, he’d been so surprised and overwhelmed that he found himself agreeing without hesitation. But then over the weekend, his nerves got the better of him and now he isn’t so sure about it. “This is reminding me of my fear of public speaking. I’ve never been a great speaker. You should interview Junior of course, and I think maybe Danielle or Stephen would be-”
“Actually it was Junior who suggested that I talk to you first.”
“He did?” Jaebum nods. The knowledge that his boss recommended him makes him feel a little better.
“You can sit behind your desk,” Jaebum answers Youngjae’s earlier question as he finishes setting up his filming equipment and checking to make sure the camera view is just right. He plans to sit across from Youngjae with his chair turned slightly toward the camera to catch only his profile. He wants the main focus to be on Youngjae, not him. “And we’ve talked plenty before, we’re on a first name basis already,” he jokes and sees Youngjae crack a smile. “There’s no reason to be nervous.”
“Yeah, but this is different.” He points to the camera that is in the corner of his office. In a few moments a blinking red light will turn on and he’s afraid he’ll make a mistake and get really tongue-tied. The documentary is important and he would hate to embarrass himself, especially in front of someone like Jaebum who seems to be the picture definition of cool and collected.
“It doesn’t have to be. Just think of it as the two of us having a conversation.” After hitting the record button, he takes a seat opposite Youngjae. “I don’t want you to be so focused on sounding perfect that you sound like a textbook. I want you to be you. When that happens, people will see your sincerity and your love of music therapy and that’s the key to making a great film. Moving people, making them feel… making them care about something they may never heard of before.”
“Okay.” It sounds easy when Jaebum says it like that, it’s just nerves are hard to overcome. “I’ll try.”
He had promised Jinyoung he wouldn’t pressure anyone to participate in the filming, and while Jinyoung had meant that mainly in regards to the patients and their families, Jaebum feels it’s just as important to extend the same courtesy to all Parker Center employees. Youngjae had been nothing but kind and helpful since they first met, and he worries that the younger man may have agreed to be interviewed simply because he is nice.
“What if we begin the interview, and if you start to feel too uncomfortable at any time, I’ll stop immediately?” Jaebum suggests. “And even if we stop twenty minutes later and I’ve already got footage, if you decide you don’t want me to use it, I won’t.”
“Really?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Thank you.” He feels silly that he is so nervous but it’s who he is. “All right.” He takes a breath and nods to Jaebum that he’s ready.
Hoping to help the younger man lessen his anxiety and take his mind further away from the blinking red light of the camera, he decides to start with a simple question. “Why did you want to become a music therapist?”
Youngjae’s eyes dart from the camera to Jaebum. His eyes widen slightly in surprise because it’s not a question he thought he would be asked for the film. “You really want to know?”
Jaebum nods yes, giving Youngjae a smile of encouragement.
“It’s kind of a long story I guess but all right, sure.” As his mind starts to drift toward the reason why he chose his profession, thoughts about being filmed or messing up or embarrassing himself begin to fade away and it’s just him, Jaebum, and his memories alone in the room. “My grandfather had cancer.”
“I’m sorry.” The words leave his mouth automatically but the sincerity in them is genuine, knowing it’s hard to watch someone close to you suffer and be in pain.
“Thank you. We were really close. My father left when I was five and my grandfather stepped up and became that father-figure for me. I have two younger sisters, and my mom worked two jobs trying to raise the three of us on her own.”
“Your mother sounds like a strong woman.”
“She really is.” Youngjae smiles in agreement. “We often spent time at our grandparents’ house after school and during the summer it was practically our second home. While my sisters followed my grandmother around, I could always be found next to my granddad. I wanted to be just like him when I grew up. He was my hero.”
Hearing Youngjae speak about the close relationship he had with his grandfather makes Jaebum remember (and miss) his own. Even though he can predict how Youngjae’s story ends, he still hopes to be proven wrong.
“I had just turned thirteen when my mom sat me down one night and told me that her dad had been diagnosed with cancer. I didn’t fully understand what it meant except that it sounded scary. I remember asking her if he was going to die. He did chemotherapy and long hospital stays became the norm. It was summertime and all my friends were interested in going to water parks and attending basketball camp and all I wanted to do was be there for my granddad. At first my mom didn’t want me spending so much time at the hospital but I can be pretty stubborn too…”
“She was worried about you.”
“I know,” Youngjae softly agrees. “I ended up spending a lot of time there anyway, because it was hard on my grandmother to stay long hours day in and day out and my mom couldn’t afford to take off much time from work. I usually spent the night there with him. I hated the thought of him being scared or lonely. I just… it bothered me a lot.”
“And music?” The filming has become secondary as he listens to Youngjae talk, still he asks the question to help Youngjae refocus and to help him not dwell too long on difficult memories.
“Oh, yeah… sorry.” Youngjae shakes his head as if to clear it. “My granddad always loved music. I think that’s why I enjoyed it so much to be honest. I remember being around seven or eight outside with my granddad as he tinkered around the garage - that’s what he called it ‘tinkering’ and getting out of my grandmother’s hair.” He lets out a small laugh at the recollection. “I would sit on an upturned bucket and hand my grandfather tools as he needed them and listen to him sing along to the radio that played in the background.”
The scene Youngjae paints is one Jaebum can easily picture in his mind.
“Later to help keep his mind off the nausea and side effects that came with treatment, I brought him his old radio so he could listen to it whenever he wanted to but more often than not, he asked me to sing to him instead. So I started to sing to him his favorite hymns and songs that he grew up listening to. If there was a song I didn’t know, I would look up the lyrics and practice so that I could sing it to him the next time.”
“What was your grandfather’s favorite song?”
“It was my grandmother’s favorite actually but it became his as well because he loved her so much.” He can’t help but smile as he thinks of his grandparents’ marriage and how happy they were together. “It’s a song sung by Otis Redding. “That’s How Strong My Love Is.” I remember after learning my grandfather’s cancer had spread, I went over to their house and that song started playing on the radio just as I was about to enter the kitchen. My grandfather got up from where he had been sitting at the table… he was a little unsteady on his feet but he took my grandmother in his arms and started dancing with her. I can still hear the sound of my grandmother’s laughter as she chastised him for getting his clothes dirty since she was covered in flour from making a pie crust. But my granddad didn’t care at all, he just continued to sing her that song while they danced.”
It’s one of his favorite memories that he had of his grandparents, and it’s one Youngjae cherished and kept close to his heart because it got a lot harder after that. “On better days during treatment, my granddad would try and sing along with me. But toward the end, it got more difficult for him until finally it was just me singing alone in the room. I would sing for God I don’t know… hours… whatever I could do to help try and take his mind off the pain. To give him comfort, I would have done anything.”
“How old were you when he passed away?” Jaebum gently asks.
“Sixteen. My grandfather had just gifted me his car, and I didn’t want it. It was his, and he was going to get better and drive it again. It was stupid I know, but I couldn’t give up that irrational hope that maybe the doctors were wrong and he could beat the cancer spreading through his body. He was strong, the strongest person I knew, and he was a fighter, he had already fought so hard… if anyone could beat cancer, he could. So I refused the car saying I didn’t need it. It was a week later when my mom got the three a.m. phone call from the hospital. It was a school night, so that meant I couldn’t-” Youngjae pauses, feeling himself getting emotional at the memory. He takes a couple breaths and ends with, “I wasn’t there.”
“You were there for him,” Jaebum counters. “In every way that you could have been at that age, more than others your age even… your grandfather knew how much you loved him.” He says the last part with confidence because it’s easy for Jaebum to feel the strength of Youngjae’s love for his grandfather, and the depth of his grief, from the way he talks about him.
“For months I felt guilty about not being there that night. I was in school so I wasn’t allowed to stay the night except for Friday and Saturday. I was a sophomore in high school, and up to that point, with everything going on my grades weren’t really a priority for me. I wasn’t quite failing yet, but I didn’t care either. But after he passed, I was so incredibly angry at everything and everyone. It was unfair. Why him, you know? There was so much more that I wanted to tell him… that I wanted him to teach me. My mother and grandmother both tried to talk to me, but I didn’t want to listen. I wanted to stay mad at the world. Then one day in literature class, I was actually thinking about skipping but I knew I was already pushing my mom’s limits so for whatever reason, I stayed. I don’t remember the exact wording but my teacher assigned us to write a paper about memory and the five senses. We had to pick one sense that we felt had the strongest tie to memory and write a paper in support of our choice.”
“And you chose hearing,” Jaebum guesses.
“I did. I wrote a paper on music and my grandfather and what it meant to me. How so many moments in my life had a music soundtrack attached. How hearing a certain song on the radio could bring a smile to my face because of the happy memory associated with it, and how I would turn the radio to a different station as soon as the opening bars to a certain song played because it was too painful to listen to it. It was a week later when my teacher returned our papers. There was no grade on mine, just a ‘see me after class’ in red ink. I sat through class getting myself worked up, I already had my speech halfway planned on how I had worked hard on the paper, staying up late to finish it even, and I didn’t deserve to fail.”
“So after class, you went up and…”
“I made an A minus. My teacher, Ms. Baker, she told me she was glad to see that I finally decided to put some real effort into my homework and then she handed me some papers she printed off about music therapy. She said that she thought I might be interested in learning more about it. I read everything she gave me during my next class and when I got home from school that afternoon I researched more. It was then that I started to focus on my studies again. It was like a switch had been flipped, and I knew exactly what I wanted to do.”
Youngjae turns the wooden photo frame that sits on his desk around so that Jaebum can see it. It’s a picture of his grandfather and him, a candid shot that his grandmother had snapped when they were out in the garage tinkering about. He’s wearing a pair of overalls to match with his granddad and his grin shows that he had just lost his front tooth.
“This is my way of keeping my granddad’s spirit alive and to always remember him. Of course the field of music therapy is a lot more complex than just listening and singing along to music, there is actual schooling involved…”
-
It’s been almost a week since he dropped off the filming consent forms and besides another brief email to confirm that he’s still scheduled to come by Friday to interview him, he hasn’t seen or spoken to Jinyoung further. He’s going to wait to ask Jinyoung in person how the patients’ filming approval is coming along and if anyone wants to discuss the documentary more in-depth with him.
He hasn’t been sleeping well. Not since he left New York for Vegas has his sleeping habits been this terrible. It’s been a week with too little sleep and too many dreams. Dreams that turned into nightmares that woke him up in a cold sweat with his heart beating much too fast because it had felt so vividly real. He’s tempted to go pick up some over-the-counter sleeping aide, but he refuses to fall into that cycle of codependence again.
It’s well after three in the morning when his body finally succumbs to exhaustion and he drifts into a dream world filled with saints and demons alike, all rooted in memory.
He’s back in Paris. A business trip, for three weeks. The weekend’s are his to do whatever he wishes, and he uses the free time to explore the city’s art museums. The Louvre is perhaps the most famous one but he finds that he likes the slightly lesser known Musée d’Orsay better. The former railway station turned art museum houses the largest collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist masterpieces in the world ranging from greats like Van Gogh, Monet, Renoir, and Cézanne.
He often loses track of time whenever art is involved so he’s not surprised that several hours have passed and it’s late afternoon when he steps back into the direct sunlight. With camera in hand, he strolls along the outside, snapping a couple artistic shots of the museum and the people hurrying toward unknown destinations.
He’s debating between visiting another museum - Musée de l’Orangerie, specifically to see the two oval rooms that display eight of Monet’s famed Nymphéas - or to save it for another time when he sees Jinyoung walking toward him which is weird because it’s daytime, much too soon for him to be dreaming. He blinks, the sun bright in his eyes, and the man that is Jinyoung steps closer into view and he sees that he’s mistaken. It’s not Jinyoung, it’s just someone who looks eerily similar.
The guy introduces himself as Minjoon. A graduate student studying in Paris for the semester. Korean. Minjoon is noticeably excited to meet another Korean while abroad, while Jaebum is disconcerted to see someone that looks like he could be Jinyoung’s long lost twin. Disconcerted but when Minjoon asks if he would be interested in taking their conversation to a nearby eatery, he finds himself saying yes without hesitation.
And as the sun begins to set, the sky turning a kaleidoscope of pinks, purples, and yellows, neither of them put any real effort into saying goodbye and parting ways. Taking a walk after dinner, they stop to browse in a few shops, before ending their night at a little cafe. They sit outside to enjoy the Parisian springtime, the night breeze sweet and cool, and eat dessert sans coffee due to the late hour. The Eiffel Tower can be seen far off into the distance, a beacon in the night all brightly lit and twinkling.
“I take it you like your dessert?” Jaebum asks, pointing to Minjoon’s plate where only a few bites remain of his crêpes filled with chocolate and berries and topped with a dusting of powdered sugar. He had already finished the crème brûlée he ordered.
Minjoon pops a sliced strawberry into his mouth and nods. “It’s delicious. Thanks for the recommendation.” He takes another bite, and then looking at Jaebum he scoops up his dessert, making sure the bite contains an equal amount of all the good stuff, and brings the fork to Jaebum’s mouth. “Here, I’ll even be nice and share,” he offers with a grin and a hint of playfulness.
It’s something Jinyoung would do, he thinks. The smile and mischievous glint in his eyes is so fucking uncannily like Jinyoung that it takes his breath away. Of course half the time Jinyoung would choose to be a tease and take the offered sweet back and eat it himself at the very last second. Jinyoung and his fondness for sweet things was a force to be reckoned with, and his soft spot for Jinyoung meant that he never minded.
He’s a little too caught up in memories until he hears Minjoon speak, apologizing for crossing a line, his cheeks beginning to flush a bright pink and it makes Jaebum feel badly. He catches Minjoon’s hand mid-air that holds the fork and brings it to his mouth again, eating the sweet offered.
It’s not like Minjoon’s been that subtle in his attraction toward him, and it’s not like he’s discouraged the attention either. It’s obvious by Minjoon’s body language - standing a little too close, brushing hands as they strolled along the Parisian streets, his eyes that not-so-discreetly checked him out - that he’s interested in something more than just dinner and dessert.
He pays the bill, like he did for dinner before, and takes Minjoon’s hand in his to link their fingers together. “Why don’t we go back to my hotel?”
It’s a few hours later when he hears Jinyoung’s voice calling him. He’s lost in dreamland, and wanting to stay there, he grabs his pillow, throwing it over his head to minimize the voice of his best friend who wishes to disturb his sleep.
“Jaebum… Bummie, Bummie, Bummie… Bummie hyung!” Jinyoung singsongs in a much-too-cheerful for this hour voice. “Come on, wake up sleeping beauty. You told me last night to make sure you were up by seven and here it is seven oh six and you’re still ignoring me,” Jinyoung grumbles, grabbing the pillow and throwing it toward the bottom of the bed out of his friend’s reach.
“Hey! I was using that!” He rolls onto his back and opens his eyes to glare at Jinyoung. “Five more minutes please, for all the love you claim to have for me… please… I stayed up until six this morning studying.”
Jinyoung looks at him and sighs, giving in. “Fine, ten more minutes, but if you’re not up then I’m going to fill a bucket with ice cold water and toss it on you!”
Jaebum frowns. “Don’t be mean,” he whines. “I’m tired.”
“I know, but you still have an eight a.m. class to attend, the one where you have to take that test you stayed up late studying for.” Before leaving the room, Jinyoung grabs the pillow and hands it back to Jaebum. “I’ll be back,” he warns, then adds in a softer voice, “I’m making breakfast. All your favorites.”
The scene changes and he’s still in bed, but this time instead of college-age him, he’s ten years old. It’s the summer he broke his arm. He’s reading a manga (Inuyasha) Jinyoung had brought him the week before and missing the other boy. Jinyoung had called him a couple nights ago to apologize, telling him that he wouldn’t be able to visit since his grandparents were in town.
“Jaebum hyung! Did you miss me? Huh, did you? It feels like it’s been for-EVER since I came over!” Jinyoung comes barging into his bedroom, much like an excited puppy that’s been alone all day and whose owner just came home.
Seeing Jinyoung makes him want to smile, but since he’d just been pouting earlier about missing his best friend he decides it’s only fair to have a bit of fun first.
“Do I know you? You do look familiar, but… I mean…”
Jinyoung stops in his tracks and frowns, his head tilted slightly to the side as he studies his best friend’s face. “Aw hyung, don’t do that to me. You know I wanted to come see you!” He takes his backpack off and lets it drop to the floor.
Jaebum ends up cracking a smile because it’s useless to pretend to be mad at the other boy. He could never be upset with Jinyoung, it was impossible. “I know, I was just playing,” he says, closing the comic he was reading and placing it on the nightstand by his bed. “I thought your grandparents were still in town for a few more days?”
“They are,” Jinyoung replies, while looking around his friend’s room to see if he needed any help cleaning it. “My grandmother asked why I was looking so down today and I told her that I hadn’t gotten to see you since they came into town. And when I explained that you broke your arm while saving me-”
“It wasn’t that big of a deal.” He feels embarrassed that Jinyoung kept making him sound like some superhero, and when Jinyoung wasn’t doing that, he kept apologizing to him over and over and that was just as bad.
“It was too! And my grandmother agreed and told my mom that you shouldn’t keep a boy from his best friend, especially not one who saved my grandson.” Jinyoung imitates his grandmother’s voice making Jaebum laugh. “She even drove me herself, and-” he stops to pick up his backpack and unzip it to pull out a tupperware container full of chocolate chip cookies, “she made these for you before we came over. Freshly baked!”
“I always knew your grandmother loved me best.” Jaebum grins and reaches for the container, making ‘gimme’ hands at Jinyoung.
“Hey, now… she’s my grandmother, so she should love me best. But you’re definitely a close second.” Jaebum grabs a cookie and offers the opened container to Jinyoung who shakes his head no. “They’re all yours. Besides I ate a couple. Taste testing,” he says before Jaebum could complain.
“Your grandmother is a really great baker,” Jaebum tells him after finishing off the cookie. He could easily eat a dozen, but knows his mother wouldn’t like that.
“Maybe I’ll have my grandmother teach me,” Jinyoung says, considering the idea.
“I didn’t think you would be interested in baking,” Jaebum teases his friend.
“I’m not.” Jinyoung shrugs. “Well not really, but you seem to like them so I’ll learn for you and that way I can always make you cookies whenever you want.”
“That sounds nice. Come here, sit down.” He pats the empty spot on the bed next to him. He knows Jinyoung still feels guilty about his injury and knows his friend is being extra careful anytime he comes near him. Jinyoung always hangs back at a distance, until Jaebum makes a big enough fuss that Jinyoung finally gives into his demands. Jinyoung looks hesitant and he pouts. “I’ve missed you.”
Jinyoung grins at that. “Of course you would, I am super cool after all.”
“Well I wouldn’t go that far,” Jaebum jokes back as Jinyoung steps closer and takes a seat carefully on Jaebum’s bed.
“See that’s the problem, you’re not cool enough to recognize how amazingly awesome I am,” Jinyoung tosses back and before long they fall into their easy rhythm of teasing and joking around with each other.
It’s a little while later during a lull in their conversation that Jinyoung asks the important question. “How’s your arm today?”
“Still broken.”
Jinyoung rolls his eyes. “Quit being a smart-” he stops to glance back at the opened door and seeing no adults around continues, “a. s. s.”
“You rebel, you.”
“Seriously, come on. You had a doctor’s appointment today, right?” Jaebum nods. “What did he say?”
“He wasn’t ready to take the cast off, which is what I was hoping for. It itches like crazy, and I can’t properly scratch and not thinking about it… uh, how many times has my mother told me not to think about it? When you’re itching that bad and there’s no relief, there’s no way to not think about it. It’s like Murphy’s Law or something!”
Jinyoung’s heard this rant before (a few times in fact) but nods his head in sympathy. “I’m sorry. Do you know how long he thinks you’ll have to wear the cast?”
“I’ve got another appointment next week, and he says maybe I can have it removed then. God I hope so! I’ll still need to be careful and everything, maybe keep it in a sling for a while. Will possibly need some PT.” He makes a disgruntled face at the idea. He would very much like to avoid more doctors and hospitals. It’s his summer vacation after all.
“PT?”
“Physical therapy.” Thinking of an idea, he adds, “Hey, maybe you can come with me some days?” He thinks it would be much more fun if Jinyoung could be there too.
“Would that be allowed?”
“It should be. You’re my best friend. I need support and stuff,” Jaebum claims.
Jinyoung grins. “If it’s okay with your mom and mine, I’ll come to your therapy appointments. We’re best friends. Forever, right?”
“Forever,” Jaebum echoes as Jinyoung’s smiling cherub face changes and morphs into adult Jinyoung.
Jinyoung is standing before him right in the middle of Parker Center. His eyes filled with disappointment and accusation.
“You said we’d be best friends forever.”
“You promised.”
“Liar.”
“Why did you do that?”
“JB,” Jinyoung scoffs in disgust. “What happened to Jaebum Im, my best friend? The one that said he would always be there for me?”
He stands motionless, letting Jinyoung fling words at him, without trying to deny or make excuses. There are no excuses to be made. There are no words to right the wrongs.
The scene shifts again and this time he’s in Seoul. On a job, filming a music video for an up-and-coming idol group. There’s a flurry of activity and cacophony of noise surrounding him as he works to organize the set. He calls for a short break for the idols to rest and recharge before their next dance sequence.
Turning to find his assistant, he sees Jinyoung instead, standing off in the distance just staring straight through him. His facial expression filled with sadness.
“Jaebum… hyung, don’t you miss me?”
“Of course I do.” He misses Jinyoung more than all the words combined in the dictionary. He walks forward, wanting to reach out and touch Jinyoung, but with each step he takes toward his friend, Jinyoung takes a step backward.
“Too bad. I don’t miss you,” Jinyoung says before disappearing into nothingness.
He stands alone for a long time and then he’s in front of his college apartment. The one he shared with Jinyoung. He’s got his hands full of books and he barely manages to get the door open. But he does and then he sees Jinyoung crying and it’s like a punch in his stomach. He doesn’t understand how everyone can be smiling when Jinyoung has been crying.
There are champagne flutes - champagne bubbles never fail to make his nose twitch in reflex.
“Jaebum, Jaebummie hyuuuung, my lovely Bummmmmiiiieee.” His books drop to the floor. Jinyoung’s kiss, his smile. “I love you!”
Jinyoung engaged to be married. Not to him, never to him, but to Mark.
His heart breaking, bleeding both inside and out.
Tears that fall and keep falling until the sky opens up to share his pain. A rain storm, outside a bar without an umbrella. It’s not like he feels anything anyway. He’s much too numb, but he finds that that thought doesn’t really scare him. He’s like Pinocchio, a puppet made of wood. But unlike the puppet, he doesn’t want to be a real boy.
A door opens.
Jinyoung is there, worried-
“Jaebum, Jaebum. Wake up… please, it’s not real.” The voice is loud and insistent, but it’s the feeling of being shaken that helps pull him back to the present. He opens his eyes and blinks owlishly at the bright light of the bedside lamp in his Paris hotel room. He sees Jin-no, Minjoon staring down at him with worry.
“I’m sorry, you seemed to be having a bad dream,” Minjoon says in way of explanation.
He rubs a tired hand across his face, as if trying to erase the remnants of the dream from his mind. Seeing that Minjoon is already dressed, he frowns and glances at the bedside clock. It reads a quarter after five. “Do you have somewhere you need to be this morning?”
“No, I just thought you wouldn’t want me to be here when you woke up. I thought maybe-”
“Don’t think,” Jaebum softly interrupts, rising from his sleeping position and leaning toward the younger man. He places a hand around the back of Minjoon’s neck to bring him closer. “Come back to bed,” he murmurs before kissing Minjoon who is most definitely not Jinyoung.
But he doesn’t care, not right now, not when he’s drowning in memories best forgotten.
Not wanting to think anymore, he loses himself in the feeling of Minjoon’s lips on his and Minjoon’s hands on his body.
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This chapter was incredibly hard to write, and I know it’s (probably) not what you expected but I hope you liked it anyway.
Comments/constructive criticism are much appreciated.