If Only for the Moment
“To the two people who might be watching this… I want tell them that I love them.”
The first and last words Jaejoong ever got to say to the two group members to this very night in such a long, long time. Using the award as an excuse to get through- it was better than nothing.
Jaejoong sat at the bar of the club, taking in his surroundings quietly as he surveyed the mass of bodies that swayed to and fro in front of him. Normally he would have been concerned that someone might recognize him, but not tonight; tonight, the club had a special promotional theme going on that forced every partygoer to wear a mask.
Tonight was the masquerade.
Such events only took place about twice-maybe three times- in a year, and Jaejoong oftentimes went with the other members to have a little fun without getting caught. The singer felt his memory latch onto the scene of him trying to shove a drunken Changmin away from the very bar that he sat at, Yoochun and Yunho in tow with unstoppable laughter wracking their frames.
Yunho…
Jaejoong literally gasped for air for a brief second, feeling all at once much too overcome with emotion. Just the thought of the man’s very name condemned him to some kind of slip of all possible reality, and the singer grabbed for his drink to let the alcohol bring him back down to earth.
Only hours earlier- minutes after the MAMA awards ended, really- Jaejoong had coerced Junsu into calling Eunhyuk of Super Junior, setting up an elaborate system of communication that basically ended in his own message being relayed to the DBSK leader through someone he was not wholly associated with. All in the name of not getting caught.
Glancing through the eye holes of his own mask at the ice in the empty glass before him, Jaejoong wondered in passing if perhaps his compulsion to come to this club tonight had nothing to do with seeing Yunho at all, and everything to do with hiding from himself through a flimsy, transparent charade.
But everything left his mind completely as he looked up, seeing that torturous image sitting before him, shot in hand. Jaejoong would recognize that mask- those eyes, those lips, that heated skin- anywhere.
Although he showed absolutely no signs of it, Jaejoong knew that Yunho had established the presence of his past lover only right next to him. Neither man said a word; words weren’t important at this point. Things had become so broken, so out of joint with the relative beat of the very cosmos, that they didn’t resemble true life anymore.
True life wouldn’t leave five men to dwindle in pain constantly, mentally tearing themselves apart for what they felt was their own little nip in the thread that held a family together. True life wouldn’t tear apart lovers and friends, leaving a gaping hole of mistrust in its wake. True life couldn’t do this to them; fate had made a slip-up, because this reality just couldn’t exist.
Without a sound, Yunho’s hand reached out for Jaejoong’s to grab it. Carefully, the bigger man led the eldest through the weaving crowd of people, pushing here and there in frustration as he tried to make it past the oncoming wave of bodies.
Finally, he made it to his destination: an abandoned hallway in one of the darker corners of the building. Letting Jaejoong’s hand go, Yunho stood leaning against the wall opposite the singer with his arms across his chest expectantly. You called me here, his stance seemed to say. What is it?
With sour awareness, Jaejoong told himself this place resembled not too far off what he had been feeling in the past couple of months- empty, cold, and dirty.
Through his own mask, Jaejoong couldn’t help but feel with a bitter twinge of pain that he and Yunho were reliving a kind of twisted version of their very first song and music video, Tri-Angle. How ironic, that when things are at their worst and are on the brink of breaking they resemble the tranquil beginning the most.
“I meant every word I said,” Jaejoong forced through his lips, looking into the eyes of his former lover. “Every damn word and more.”
Yunho’s deep brown eyes took on a black hue in the odd colors of the club, and they peered at the smaller man with a fiery kind of passion, if not a painful kind at that. He said nothing, but continued to look on, as if seeing more in front of him than just plain old Kim Jaejoong accompanied by the seedy backdrop of a grimy brick wall.
“I never meant to hurt anyone.” It was barely audible through the noise of the blaring music, the DJ’s come-ons to the crowd, the cheers; the far-off sounds of people in lust for one night. It was barely audible, but it was heard.
In a preparatory heated embarrassment, Yunho watched as Jaejoong delicately, with the nonchalance and coldness years of stage acting took, looked to the ground in quiet shame. “I didn’t know the family would break apart. I didn’t think for a minute or a second this would spiral out of-“ a soft whimper escaped his mouth, and Jaejoong covered the treasonous orifice with his hand and kept his eyes transfixed onto the floor.
With a crooked smile, the leader fondly paralleled the act with that of the man’s laughter in better times. The effeminate hand placement along with the surprisingly manly if not charming hysterics reminded Yunho of the past; a point in his life where everything seemed so simple because living, to him, had been standing by the side of Jaejoong alone.
Things were not so simple anymore.
A hiccup resounded in the cramped space the two men occupied, and it took Jaejoong only seconds to realize it was he who created the noise. Quickly he held his breath, not wanting to let Yunho know the weaknesses that consumed him on an almost daily basis with not even the stage cover of Youngwoong Jaejoong to protect him now.
A treacherous tear leaked from the battered man’s left eye, and he silently wished that it would fall to the ground as fast as possible or that it trailed near his mouth where he could lick the salty liquid out of existence. Yunho didn’t need to see him cry- he himself was the cause of the trouble in the first place, and it was not his right to cry… to feel. To care. To himself, Kim Jaejoong was nothing but an angel fallen from grace, damned to an eternity of misdeeds and broken relationships.
A shaky hand reached out towards Jaejoong’s cheek. Slowly- so slowly- Yunho’s fingers travelled to the base of his ear, trapping the singer’s head in his fragile grasp. The leader was actually afraid to touch his former lover, who at this moment looked so much like a shattered porcelain doll it terrified him.
Yunho let his eyes trail over the figure of Jaejoong, standing in the ghostly electric club lights, his head down low- not to hide his tears, the younger realized, but to hide his insecurities- and gently lifted the singer’s feathery mask from his face.
Jaejoong cringed and began to lightly shake, almost as if in fear or anticipation; Yunho could not tell. Without asking, he let his thumb trace the line of that single tear that only seconds earlier had been released, coming to a stop after he successfully swiped it away from the smaller man’s cheek.
Jaejoong followed his every move, eyes glued to the leader’s hand as he performed the action. The emotion that burbled inside him was nothing new, and nothing short of passion and love with a pinch of lust thrown into the mix. It was unfortunate that this time, the feeling sent him on a wave of agonizing realization that nothing could ever again be what it used to be. He looked into his partner’s eyes carefully, searching for words.
Yunho dared to smirk at him, lifting his own feathered mask up to his forehead and bringing his thumb up to his lips tentatively; and then he licked the lone tear from his skin, façade-black eyes sweeping down to meet Jaejoong’s own stunned ones.
“Yunho…sshi…”
That honorific, that one god-damn syllable threw Yunho over the edge. It was in that one syllable he realized that even through all the terrible things that had happened- the court hearings, the fights, the screaming, the crying, and the forceful vengeance of the entertainment industry- he had always, somewhere deep inside of himself, trusted that he would never hear that awkward -sshi be added to his name from Jaejoong’s mouth.
With a ferocity that even surprised himself, the leader grabbed his former lover by his honey hair- thinking bitterly he hadn’t even noticed the stupid color change until now- and had him pressed against the wall of the club with a painful shove.
The smaller man cried out at the occurrence, but willingly let himself be pushed. Desperately he clung to the warm body in front of him, wrapping his legs around Yunho’s waist with relative ease, and God, he could think clearer in this position than he had been able to in months alone.
Lights danced behind Jaejoong’s eyelids as Yunho claimed his lips in what felt like eons and then some. Tongues danced and teeth nibbled; fingers explored the expanse of the others’ exposed skin and Jaejoong literally moaned into the feeling of his partner’s mouth sidling down near his collarbone.
And just as quickly as it started, it stopped.
Yunho pulled Jaejoong’s face to his with calm and ease that the eldest could not even fathom at a moment like this.
He spoke for the first time that night. “You don’t get to use -sshi when you speak to me, do you understand? Just because things are fucked up-“ he ground his hips into the smaller man’s, making him whimper with wanton need - “does not mean you and I are at the level- or will ever be near the level- to distance ourselves from the other. Not with what we had!”
Jaejoong cried out as Yunho pushed him harder into the brick wall behind him, and he only wrapped his legs more sturdily around the leader. “Do you still love me?” He heard himself ask. It dawned on himself slightly that he might be masochistic, seeing as how he enjoyed being thrown against things at the moment and needed to reaffirm emotions that he was sure no longer existed in the other man.
Yunho mildly lessened his grip on the singer, taken aback by the question. A million answers ran through his mind. He could lie, and make everything less complicated; or he could tell the truth, and screw everything up; make things harder, impossible.
“There’s never been a time I haven’t.” The truth. There was no way to go back on this; no way to fix things now. No way to push Jaejoong out of his life for his own benefit, or to save him.
But now wasn’t the time to be thinking about these kinds of things; in the morning, when he woke with a splitting headache and a mind reminding him in glimpses the sin he promised himself never to commit for the sake of himself and Jaejoong, that’s when he would care. For now, though- he had given in to temptation, and he had to accept his punishment.
Gripping harshly onto Jaejoong’s sides, he ripped his lover from the wall and frantically kissed him, finally giving in to the passion he had lost ever since the madness of the lawsuit began. Jaejoong ran his fingers up and over Yunho’s neck to land them in his hair, quick at untidying the short strands.
For a brief minute, Yunho stopped his attack on the older man’s mouth to breathe, “I love you,” against his skin in succession, hands travelling underneath Jaejoong’s shirt to trace the outline of his abs. Jaejoong gasped and landed his head between the leader’s neck and shoulder, and he breathed in the scent that was Yunho- his band mate, brother, best friend, and lover.
If this is all I can get, I think I can take it.
A/N: ... stick to comedy, right? Yeah, yeah, I know...