Melody and Harmony
Title: Melody and Harmony
Pairing: JaeChun
Rating: Pg-13
Length: Oneshot
Genre: Angsty Fluffy Romance
Summary: The birth of 'Colors', or how to write a love song for Hello Kitty when your life is falling apart around you.
Yoochun had just sunk into the tub when Jaejoong wandered inside the bathroom, looking like something had that been washed onto a beach and abandoned for weeks: his hair and face a mess of angles.
“You weren't in the room when I came in. I miss you, puppy”
Yoochun rolled his eyes and sank down lower until the only parts of his body that could be seen were his face and his knees, protruding out from the soapy water.
“It's only 6 o'clock. And don't try to flatter me, kitten, I'm not sharing the tub with you today. These bubbles are all mine”
“Selfish” Jaejoong pouted as he walked over, “what kind of person won't share the joys of a bubble bath with his best friend?”
“Any person over the age of five”
“I’m too tired to take a bath anyways” Jaejoong sighed as he slumped by the tub.
“That really explains so much”
“Yoochunnie, I’m tired”
“Then sleep”
And a normal person would just walk the ten feet to where there was a perfectly good bedroom with a perfectly good bed with perfectly good sheets and blankets and pillows. But Jaejoong wasn’t a normal person. So instead, he climbed up to the rim of the bathtub and curled himself on it, head resting next to the tap and his feet dangling off the edge of the tub, toes curling and uncurling in the steamy air.
And a normal person would toss Jaejoong off and lecture him about personal space and then send him off the ten feet to the perfectly good bedroom with two perfectly good beds that had a perfectly acceptable amount of space between them. But Yoochun wasn’t a normal person so he just leaned his head against the tiled wall next to the tap, grinning as he breathed in the air Jaejoong exhaled: letting the warm water wash away the fatigue of his body and Jaejoong’s warm breath wash away the fatigue in his mind.
“I figured out how I wanted the rap verse for Colors to go, so I just have to get it on a soundboard and then the composition will be done” Yoochun said after a few comfortable, silent seconds.
Jaejoong hummed, eyes closed. “Then we’ll have to start on the lyrics soon”
“That’s the fun part”
“You wanna know what other part of me is fun?”
Yoochun turned his head a fraction of an inch and raised one of his eyebrows. “If you’re trying to proposition me then you should know I don’t put out for anything less than satin sheets and champagne”
“As if. Don’t forget that I walked in on you doing the dirty with our backup dancer in a shower stall” Jaejoong yawned lazily.
“Like I could forget that. Besides, it wasn’t just any backup dancer. It was Hyeri. You’ve seen how her hips move”
Jaejoong smiled. “I’ve done more than just seen…”
“Please don’t tell me you’ve slept with her too”
“A true gentleman does not kiss and tell, puppy-ah. But she did tell me you have a small dick”
“How cruel”
Jaejoong opened his eyes, grinning. “Don’t worry, little buddy, I still love you the best” he said, swirling his hand in the water near Yoochun’s lap.
“It must be so painful to be in a one-sided love” Yoochun retorted with a sigh.
“Yoochun hyung, have you seen Ja…” Changmin walked into the bathroom and stopped in the doorway, letting off the mother of all groans. There was a fumbling sound and Jaejoong closed his eyes just before the click of a camera echoed in the bathroom.
“If you want to take pictures, at least let me put on some bb cream…”
“I’m going to backmail the two of you with these” Changmin said as he snapped another quick three shots, phone zoomed in on where Jaejoong’s hand was lazily swaying in the water.
“What’s there to blackmail us with?” Yoochun asked.
“We’re just discussing our new song” Jaejoong added, innocently.
“Yeah, while one of you is naked and the other one is curled up next to him on the tub like some sort of demonic cat!!”
“Wow, where is all this aggression coming from, Changmin-ah? Did Yoochunnie steal your girlfriend?”
“His boyfriend” Yoochun corrected with the beginnings of a full blown troll grin spreading on his face. “Kyuhyun likes me better”
Jaejoong raised the top half of his body, slinking forward so that his face was even closer to Yoochun’s. “Kyuhyun likes me more than he likes you”
“Kyu said I was the hyung he wanted to meet the most, kitten”
“Well, puppy, Kyuhyunnie told me I was his favorite person in the whole world”
“Oh really? But Kyu….”
“Kyuhyun hates both of you idiots” Changmin growled in annoyance, throwing his hands up in the air as he stormed out of the bathroom.
Jaejoong collapsed in a fit of giggles, falling straight into the tub. He mourned the mess his new Hello kitty pajamas had become, but then a second later Yoochun fell half on top of him-body shaking in laughter, wet arms clutching onto the sad, sopped Hello Kitty on Jaejoong’s chest-and nothing seemed like that big of a deal anymore.
“It looks like you ended up sharing your bubbles with me anyways” Jaejoong said when they had both calmed down, scooping up a pile of foam and depositing it on Yoochun’s head.
Yoochun was too busy painting a bubble mustache on Jaejoong to answer.
That night, when everyone else in the dorm was sleeping, Yoochun stared hard at the pages of a notebook that one of the fans had given them. The pages were green with images of dinosaurs drinking martinis splayed at the top.
He thought of Jaejoong, curled on the lip of the tub. How his eyelashes brushed over his cheeks, how his skin reddened where the steam of the hot water hit him.
Picking up his pencil, Yoochun penned down a line that came into his mind, sure that he’d be able to include it into the song somehow.
Until the light shines in your heart, let’s nestle close together, so that we can sleep
~~~***~~~
“This song is for Hello Kitty” Jaejoong said, voice serious, sounding like he was reading an obituary for his own soul.
In the background, their managers their handlers were filtering around and distributing their schedules for the next month. They were supposed to be in three separate countries all within the span of a week and Jaejoong mourned the state of his back, which was always hurting these days, and the state of his dark circles, which would need some extra strength foundation, and the state of his life and did SM think they were wizards who could just apparate because how were they supposed to be in Tokyo in the morning and Shanghai at night and…
“Yeah, you didn’t shut up about it for a week after Sanrio picked us to do this”
Yoochun’s voice was deep and hoarse without sleep.
“Well, these lyrics you wrote are kind of depressing aren’t they? ‘Right now somewhere, someone is in pain, all alone, passing through a sleepless night’…”
“You think Hello Kitty can’t have problems?” Yoochun asked, slumping so that his and Jaejoong’s sides were all but connected to each other. “She could have a very deep and dark side to her that we don’t know about. She could enjoy coming home and drinking a bottle of sake every night”
A group of trainers entered the room and announced they that were going to have to have some added dance rehearsals to make sure they were prepared for the show later tonight. They gave Yoochun and Jaejoong extra pointed looks while they said it. Jaejoong responded by waving his arms in a half-hearted octopus dance while Yoochun just curled more into himself.
“Don’t project your feelings onto poor Hello Kitty” Jaejoong continued as the trainers contemplated adding another hour of dance practice. He could already feel the pain of his old knee injury flaring up. Tonight would be another sleepless mess of hot packs and stretches.
“You don’t think Hello Kitty can drink?”
“Of course she can’t” Jaejoong said, popping his back as he stretched his arms.
Yoochun flipped to a new page in the green notebook, penning a quick ‘yes’ and ‘no’ before he turned to the right where Yunho was staring at himself in the mirror, fingers dancing over sunken cheekbones, eyes dark with determination.
“Yo, Yunho hyung, do you think Hello Kitty can drink?”
“Shouldn’t you two be going over the dance routines again?”
Jaejoong snorted out a crackly ‘Yes, sajang-nim’. Yoochun slumped down and rested his head on Jaejoong’s shoulder, lips curling a smile onto his neck.
“Just answer the question”
“If I say yes, will you two go and practice?”
“Sure thing, hyung” Yoochun said, not even making an effort to move an inch. Yunho sighed and walked out of the room, probably to call over the more obedient members to go and start practice.
“I think he’s given up on us”
“Good” Jaejoong said, cocking his head to the side so it knocked onto the top of Yoochun’s moppy hair. “I think I’ll break if anybody tries to make me dance right now”
“Is this what I have to look forward to in my old age?”
Jaejoong opened his mouth to protest but then saw Junsu and Changmin entering the room from the corner of his eye. So, instead, he just slapped on a leery grin. “Well, Chun-ah, KyuKyu told me that he likes his men older…”
“If you want me to set you up with Kyuhyun so badly you just have to ask, hyung” Changmin said with a grin.
“No thanks, I like to play hard to get” Jaejoong answered, blowing a kiss to their maknae. Changmin pretended to catch it and throw it back.
“My Kyutie pie would never return my kisses!” Jaejoong gasped in mock hurt, clutching onto his chest. “Why don't you love me like he does, maknae?”
“Because I'm obviously not worthy of your all mighty love”
Jaejoong preened, face exploding in a bright smile as he got up and walked over to Changmin. “You precious little boy. Come over here and let your hyung give you a hug”.
Changmin noped right out of there, running around the room as Jaejoong chased him with unstable steps-almost crashing into a mirror.
Yoochun observed them both with an indulgent smile, which only grew bigger as Jaejoong head-planted into a pile of discarded coats that had been left in the middle of the floor, taking Changmin down with him. Junsu snorted as the eldest and youngest members dissolved into a mess of giggles and Yoochun turned to him, notebook out.
“Hey Su, do you think Hello Kitty can drink?” he asked.
“No” Junsu answered without missing a beat. “She doesn’t have a mouth”
~~~***~~~
Sometimes, more recently than ever before, life became nothing more than a jumble of exhaustion and chaos. There were so many noises and lights and it felt like none of them had control of their bodies anymore.
Jaejoong let them dress him however they wanted. Let them primp his hair and cover his eye bags and frown lines with layers of bb cream, until he looked like a perfect little doll.
When he hurt, he let them wrap his joints with flesh covered tapes and push pain pills down his throat. When he was sick or too tired to even think of moving, he let them stick an IV in him-the medicine blending together in swirling white tears-drip dropping under his skin.
They were shuttled in planes and buses and cars, the screams of fans overwhelming. They stood on stage and sang and laughed and pretended they were okay and one day-on some stage in some country-Jaejoong thought he had lost sight of everything. All the lights collided together and blinded him. He didn’t know where he was, didn’t know what he was doing. Barely knew his own name.
But when he looked up, all that was there was Yoochun, who looked just as tired and disoriented, possibly even more so. Yoochun who looked two seconds away from as asthma attack. Yoochun who turned his head-eyes hazy-and through the mess that was their lives, found Jaejoong.
You are always by my side, giving me courage and hope
Yoochun had written that in their green notebook the other day. At the end of the concert, Jaejoong ignored the ache of his bones and instead grabbed a towel and a water bottle for Yoochun. He opened the door to the dressing room only to find the other half of his soul standing there with the exact same things in his hands.
“Hyung, for you”
Courage and hope, Jaejoong thought as they exchanged towels and water with knowing grins. It would keep them alive for another day.
~~~***~~~
Jaejoong was woken up one morning with a hundred and something pounds of Yoochun sitting on his chest, cutting off his airway.
“Costco finally opened in Seoul, hyung. Let’s go!”
Jaejoong didn’t know who or what a Costco was, but he was 2 seconds away from asphyxiating to death so he just nodded his head wildly, pushing at the heavy weight on top of him. Yoochun rolled off with a laugh, pulling on the first article of clothing he found (Jaejoong’s favorite shirt: the black one with a bunny with devil horns on it) as he made his way out the room with a ‘see you in 10 minutes, hyung!’
Jaejoong took 15 minutes to get ready, out of spite, but Yoochun didn’t mind as he piled the both of them into his car and drove down the snowy streets, a mad grin on his face.
“Umma used to go to Costco all the time when we were in the states. Wait until you try the pizza there, it’s great. And they sell socks in packs of a hundred! It’s so crazy. We can get Christmas gifts for everyone there”
“100 pairs of socks, just what my noonas have always dreamed of getting” Jaejoong sighed. Yoochun shoved him in the shoulder, eyes still set on the road.
“They have other things there too, okay!”
And as Jaejoong stepped into the huge store, eyes wide and fingers lax on the cart, Yoochun knew that he had made the right choice bringing his hyung there. They made a beeline for the back of the building where Yoochun had promised there would be a massive wine selection.
The baritone was contemplating between two bottles of red when Jaejoong rolled down the aisle, standing ontop of the shopping cart, an economy sized pack of 200 tampons in his hand.
“Hey, do you think we should get these as a Christmas gift for Changmin?”
Yoochun looked up and grinned widely. “Get one for Yunho hyung too.” He held up the two bottles of wine. “Which one of these should we get for Junsu’s gift?”
Jaejoong looked at them, tapping a finger on his lips. “Get them both. That way we’ll each have our own bottle once we steal it from him”
“Have I ever told you that you’re a genius?”
“A true chunjae” Jaejoong said with a nod. He motioned to the box in his hands. “I think these come in scented as well. Yunho would probably appreciate that”
Half an hour later Jaejoong and Yoochun were in the food court, sharing a massive slice of cheese pizza while the results of their shopping trip-2 bottles of wine and 400 tampons-sat on the seat next to them.
“This is nice” Jaejoong said around a mouth of cheese and tomato sauce.
“I told you they have good pizza here!”
“I mean this trip. I’m shocked we even had a free moment to go shopping”
“We didn’t” Yoochun admitted. “Last night I might have causally mentioned to manager hyung that I saw a bunch of cockroaches in the training room so they cancelled dance practice today to have the place fumigated”.
Jaejoong chuckled but then sobered up pretty quickly. “We shouldn’t have to go through these kind of lengths in order to get a couple of free hours after months of non-stop work”
Yoochun shrugged. “What can we do?”
“We…we can leave?” Jaejoong suggested, poking at the pizza. “Leave SM…”
“Can we?” Yoochun asked with wide eyes. Now it was Jaejoong’s turn to shrug.
“I don’t really know. I don’t think anybody has really done it before, leaving before their contract was over.”
“Like our contract is even legal” Yoochun snorted. Jaejoong smiled at him.
“We probably can’t leave, but…if we could, I think it would be nice”
“Of course it would be nice” Yoochun said. “Finally making the music we want or controlling our own schedules. We’d probably still be overworked, but at least it would be because we wanted to be”
And, yes, Jaejoong thought. That was exactly what he was thinking too. Though he shouldn’t have been surprised. Yoochun thought the same as him about everything. Suddenly, he took out their green notebook and flipped it to the page they had been scribbling their lyrics on.
Even before we were born, we knew that we would meet and that we would be searching for our dreams together
“Even before we were born, huh?” Yoochun asked, reading over Jaejoong’s shoulders. The elder turned his head with a grin.
“Don’t you feel that way sometimes?”
And Yoochun nodded. He felt that way all of the time.
~~~***~~~
They didn’t bring up the topic of possibly leaving SM until a week later, when they returned from a mid-day photoshoot only to find Junsu curled up in a ball in the middle of the dorm living room. Changmin was standing next to him, hands nervously out as though he wasn’t sure whether to comfort his hyung or call for an ambulance.
Jaejoong took one look at the scene and immediately hopped into action, sprinting over with clumsy steps, almost tripping on his own feet as he made his way to Junsu. He kneeled down on the ground and wrapped his arms around the shaking boy.
“What happened to him?” he asked Changmin, who just shook his head in confusion.
“I have no idea, hyung! One minute we were playing games and then he got a phone call and just collapsed like this”
“Is it Junho? Your parents?” Yoochun asked, joining Jaejoong on the ground next to Junsu. “Are they hurt?”
“They’re fine” Junsu said. His voice sounded heavy and chocked, as though there were sobs caught in his throat. And this wasn’t okay. Because Junsu was the mood maker of the group, the eternally cheerful one whose bad moods were few and far between and could always be fixed with pictures of palm trees and beaches.
“Then what’s going on, Su-yah?” Yoochun asked. His low, lazy voice sounded particularly soothing and Jaejoong was thankful for it.
“We can fix whatever it is that’s happening” Jaejoong added. Changmin nodded wildly next to him.
"Who called you?”
Junsu sucked in shaky breath. “Manager hyung”
“Okay” Yoochun said. So it was work related. They could deal with work related. “What did he say to you?”
“It’s Mozart” Junsu continued, voice becoming even smaller than it was before.
Jaejoong stilled beside Junsu. Because like rock was for him, Mozart was the ultimate dream for Junsu. Jaejoong knew that rock was a futile goal, SM wasn’t very keen on having any of the members do a solo and even if they were, they would never let him do a full solo rock album. But Mozart…Mozart was a very attainable dream for Junsu. Both the director and the producer had approached the singer as though his casting was already a done deal. This was everything that Junsu had wanted for a long time now, and all that stood between him and his dreams was for SM to approve it.
“SM approved it, didn’t they?” Changmin asked “the Mozart staff was so eager to cast you, hyung”
Junsu shook his head “They told them no. SM wants to start producing their own musicals so they didn’t want me in Mozart”
“Oh, Su” Jaejoong breathed out, holding onto the man in his arms a little tighter. He knew was it was like to have a dream unfulfilled.
“They can’t do that!” Changmin squeaked out.
“They did” Junsu said, bitterly. And Yoochun decided that bitter was a look that he hated on Junsu. That bitterness and Junsu didn’t belong in the same sentence…the same universe...as one another. “This is the only thing that I’ve asked them for since I’ve debuted and they told me no”
“What can we do?” Jaejoong asked the other two members next to him. Changmin just shrugged, looking lost. Yoochun bit his lip and looked up at Jaejoong.
“We could…hyung, like you said before. We could…”
“Leave” Jaejoong finished.
“Leave where?” Junsu asked, finally peaking his head out of his arms to look at the other members. His hair was sticking up at all angles and the fact that none of them pointed it out in jest spoke to the seriousness of the situation.
“Leave SM” Jaejoong answered.
“We…can we?” Junsu asked, frowning. “Is that even something that’s possible?”
“Of course it’s not possible” Changmin countered. “This is SM. They own the entertainment industry in Korea. We can’t just leave”
“We could” Jaejoong insisted, looking around at them wildly. “If we all went together who would stop us from leaving?”
“Leaving what?”
The four members turned their head to where Yunho had just walked through the doorway. He only had one shoe off, the other one half dangling off his foot with untied laces. His coat was on the ground near the door.
Jaejoong and Yoochun looked at each other and then to the other two members, who were sitting silent, not knowing how to bring up the crazy idea that they had just been discussing.
Jaejoong swallowed and turned back to Yunho. “Leaving SM”
“Like for a trip?”
“Like for forever”
Yunho rolled his eyes and laughed. “Yeah, like that could happen”. He bent down to take off his other shoe, tossing it somewhere in the vicinity of his coat. When he straightened back up, four serious faces were looking back at him. “Wait...you weren’t joking?”
“Why would we joke about something like this?” Jaejoong asked, forcefully. Yoochun moved slightly closer to him, pressing a hand against his back in silent support.
“Because it’s insane! No one has ever left a company like this before. It…it’s not something that idols can do”
“We’ve done plenty of things that people thought idols could never do” Jaejoong argued back. “Nobody thought we’d be able to make it in Japan, but look at what we did. As long as it’s us, we can do it”
Yunho stood still. His lips were pursed which was a sign that he was thinking very hard about what Jaejoong was saying.
“Dinner” he said finally. “We have some free time tomorrow night so we’re going to sit down for a dinner and talk this through”
“Why can’t we talk this through now?” Junsu asked from the confines of Jaejoong’s arms, which were still loosely wrapped around him.
“Because I think we all need to sleep on this and then discuss it rationally tomorrow” Yunho answered. He walked down the hallway to his room-the only solo room that was in the dorm. Jaejoong knew he would be in there for the rest of the day, thinking over their options. He hoped Yunho wouldn’t call his dad, because there was no way that his dad would let him leave.
“Hyung”
Jaejoong looked back down at Junsu, who was staring at him with a look of determination. “Hyung, if you’re serious about this then…my dad knows a lawyer who can look into things”
“Tell your dad to get in contact with him”
“Wait” Changmin interrupted. “Aren’t you moving a little too fast? At least wait for dinner tomorrow”
“This is something that we need, Minnie” Jaejoong said. What he didn’t say was that this had almost become a life and death situation for him. He couldn’t survive like this, not for much longer. He needed to get out, and no matter what decision Yunho came to or what happened during dinner, it wasn’t going to change his mind.
“I…I think this is something that can happen” Junsu said. “I’ll go talk to my dad now” He got up, looking in much higher spirits than he had just moments before, and walled to his room. Changmin silently followed.
Jaejoong turned to look at Yoochun. “You were pretty quiet throughout that whole thing. What're you thinking?”
“You already know what I’m thinking” Yoochun said with a half-smile. “We share the same thoughts, remember?”
“I know we’ve brought this up before, but now I feel like we have to at least give it serious consideration. For Junsu-yah if nothing else. He would be so brilliant without anything holding him back, wouldn’t he?”
Yoochun nodded. “Music is his life…”
Jaejoong pondered over those words for a few seconds, liking the way they sounded in his head. “Hey, Chun, can you pass me the…”
The green notebook was in his hands before he could even finish the sentence. He chuckled “We really do have the same brain, don’t we?” and opened the book. He took off the clip on pen and wrote down a couple of lines.
My music is my life. For your, for your smile. Because our hearts are linked together
“We’re actually going to do this, aren’t we?” Yoochun asked, leaning back until he was lying on the ground of the living room, looking up at the ceiling.
“I don’t know” Jaejoong said. “I want to, and I think Junsu wants to as well. We can’t keep living like this, Chun. We’ll…we’ll…”
“We’ll die soon” Yoochun said. “You can already feel your body falling apart, can’t you?”
“God yes” Jaejoong said. He laid down next to Yoochun, curling up into his side.
“I don’t know if Changmin or Yunho hyung will want to leave”
“They have to” Jaejoong frowned. “We have to do it together”
“What if they don’t?”
Jaejoong didn’t know the answer to that question. Well deep down he did, but he didn’t want to say it out loud. He wanted them to all leave together. But at the end of the day, the only person he needed to go with him was right by his side.
~~~***~~~
Yoochun woke up at midnight, feeling as though something was out of place. With a groan, he rolled over so that he was facing the bed that was mere feet away from his.
It was empty.
And it wasn't like that was unusual. Yoochun had woken up to the sight of an empty bed countless times before. Jaejoong was a night owl, and he did some of his best work during the hours when the rest of Seoul was asleep. But tonight, there was a nagging feeling tugging at Yoochun's stomach and he knew it wouldn't go away until he found wherever his best friend had gone too.
So Yoochun slipped out of bed, bones creaking in protest, feet contracting at they hit the icy cold floor. He padded out of the room and down the silent hallway, opening the door to their composing room only to find it empty. With a silent yawn, Yoochun walked towards the kitchen-stopping when he saw that the door to the balcony was open, cold wind rushing into the dorm and blowing the soft white curtains until they billowed like clouds, hiding the details of the two people who were currently in the midst of some sort of serious discussion.
Yoochun immediately recognized Jaejoong and Yunho's silhouettes and a flash of something rotten coursed through him. He wasn't a jealous person, but serious talks at midnight had always been his and Jaejoong's thing. It felt wrong to see Jaejoong having one with someone that wasn't him. But at the same time, he couldn't help but feel curious.
Slowly, Yoochun inched closer to the open doorway, trying to hear what the two eldest members were saying.
“You saw what happened to JTL hyungs, Jaejoong. What's going to stop SM from doing that to us?” Yunho's unique voice sounded muffled but still clearly audible.
“What can they do to us if we go together? You think they can stop our fans?”
“They'll do everything in their power to try, you know that. Why can't we just wait until our contracts are over? We don't need to rock the boat...”
“Because we're going to die if we don't, Yunho-yah. We can't keep going like this”
“It'll be even harder out there”
“But at least we'll be doing what we want”
“You don't want this?”
Yoochun heard Jaejoong sigh. His silhouette slumped down, almost in defeat. “It's not that I don't want this. It's just...I need more. We need more because we deserve so, so much more”
“I need to talk to my father about this” Yunho sounded just as defeated.
“If you talk to your father, you're never going to leave”
“Well I can't not talk to him. He's my father!”
A silence fell over the both of them and Yoochun held in his breath, afraid the noise of his breathing would alert them of his presence.
Finally Jaejoong spoke. “You know I am willing to fight for any of the members, Yunho. I will fight to the death of any of you. But I need for you to be fighting with me. On my side. If we're not, then I can't do anything for you. If we're not, then...I can't do anything but leave you behind.”
Yoochun felt his throat burning from not breathing. Felt his heart burning from Jaejoong's words. He turned back and went down the hallway, back into his bedroom where it was quiet and safe. He wondered what a world without Jaejoong would be like. What it would be like to be left behind.
Wondered if Jaejoong was willing to leave him behind as well...
~~~***~~~
Dinner the next night was at a restaurant that all of the members had been coming to for years whenever they were in Korea. The owners knew them well and would always reserve the private dining room in the back for them whenever they decided to drop by for a meal.
And this dinner was a very private affair. Tucked away in the private room, isolated from the noises and clutter of the main dining room, the five boys met without any managers or staff with them. The table was already laden with all of their favorite dishes, but nobody really had much of an appetite.
“Dance practice was a little awkward today” Yunho started, cutting through the silence of the room.
“Of course it was” Yoochun snorted. “We had this big ~dinner~ plan hovering over our heads”
“Yeah, hyung” Changmin said. “It would have been better if we had just talked about it yesterday”
“Well you just sprung this on me yesterday!” Yunho said, holding up his hands.
“This was sprung on all of us yesterday” Junsu sighed, before turning to Jaejoong and Yoochun. “Besides the two of them.”
“Nothing is ever sprung on them” Changmin agreed with a small chuckle.
“I talked to the lawyer that my dad knows” Junsu continued. “He’d have to look over a copy of our contract, but from what I’ve told him, he said that we have a good case if we wanted to get out of it. Something about how the length of the contract is illegal”
“You already talked to a lawyer about this?” Yunho asked, eyes growing wide.
“Just briefly. We’ll have to go meet with him in person before anything becomes official. But my hyung also has this roommate who’s older brother is looking to start an entertainment company so if we wanted to…”
“You're going way too fast!” Yunho said, looking like he was going to have a panic attack. “I thought we were going to discuss this together. Not talk about lawyers and new entertainment companies…”
“You want to stay, then” Jaejoong asked. “Your father managed to talk you into it?”
“I want to do what’s best for my family” Yunho answered. “My actual family back in Gwangju and the family here in this room.” He looked over at Jaejoong and Yoochun. “I thought of all people, the two of you would know the importance of keeping a family together”
Jaejoong felt like the breath had been knocked out of him. “That isn’t fair, Yunho”
Yunho looked apologetic as he turned his attention from Jaejoong to the other man he had been adressing. “Yoochun-ah, you agree with me, right? You just brought your mom and brother to Seoul so you know you can’t let them down”
Yoochun stiffened. “I…it won’t let them down”
“SM is going to destroy us if we leave, I can’t do that to my family. They need me. Your family needs you too, don’t they?”
“Don’t try to pressure him like that” Junsu yelled, looking over at the shell-shocked baritone. “Yoochun said that he wanted to leave, didn’t you?”
“I…I just want....”
“Well forgive me for thinking that Yoochun gives a fuck about his family” Yunho retorted.
And…that was just too far.
“Don’t talk to me about not caring about my family” Yoochun said, words coming out like a growl. His whole body was shaking and his hands clenched at his side. It took a lot to anger Yoochun. He was, by far, the calmest member. The member who could take complaints and take insults and take anger and sadness and frustration: who would take and take and take from everyone around him and carry it deep inside his heart.
But when it all bubbled out, it was something serious. Not many people had the opportunity to see an angry Yoochun. Among the members, Jaejoong was the only one to have witnesses it before. So he just sat off on the side, in between Junsu and Changmin, observing without a word.
“Then don’t try to break up our family” Yunho cried.
Yoochun turned red and his voice raised to a yell “You are not my family! My family would not want me to keep working so hard that I die! My family actually gives a shit about me” he turned towards the other three members who were sitting silently. “None of you are my family so stop pretending like you are!”
And with that, Yoochun turned and stormed out of the room. He opened the door and the lively chatter from the rest of the restaurant filtered in a for a mere second before the door was slammed shut and the remaining four members were left in the silence of the private room once more.
The quietness, which had seemed like a blessing half an hour ago, was now stifling and thick: capturing Yoochun’s last words and holding them.
Junsu immediately looked at Jaejoong, who had his eyes closed and head tilted back until it rested on the wall behind him. His hands were clenched into fists in his lap.
Changmin sat stock still in stunned silence and Yunho stopped his pacing as he stared at the ground.
“This is....this has been....” Yunho stuttered, unable to finish any sentence that started to come out of his mouth. “I'm going to go back to the dorm. You guys can leave when you feel like”
“We all came in only one car” Junsu pointed out.
“I need to ride the subway for awhile, clear my head” Yunho said, walking out of the room, opening and shutting the abused door with much gentler force.
The room was silent again and Junsu started to shake with nervous energy. This was not how he had seen this night going. He had known that it wouldn't have been pretty, but the outburst from Yoochun was something that no one could have expected.
“I've never seen Yoochun hyung that angry before” Changmin said finally.
“You should go after him” Junsu added, slightly nudging the silent Jaejoong. Jaejoong shook his head, eyes still closed tight.
“Not right now, Su-yah. He needs some time to cool down”
“He's going to his mother's house and he'll cool down during the trip there” Junsu countered. “You should be there tonight. For him. He's....not going to be okay once he realizes what he said to you”
“What he said to us” Changmin corrected, but even without the pointed look Junsu sent him he knew that what Yoochun had said was completely different when it came to Jaejoong. After five years together Changmin did like to think of his bandmates as a family-a dysfunctional and loud and sometimes violent family bonded together through the years of having no one else but each other to rely on.
And he also knew there were limits to the depth of their relationship. They were brought together by a corporation, after all, and as rosy a picture as the mind wanted to paint, the glaring fact was that they didn't choose each other, that they were created and made and brought together for monetary reasons, for a company that wanted them to be a family for the fans and business partners for each other.
But Jaejoong and Yoochun were different. From the day that Yoochun had been brought into their training room as an awkward kid with cropped blonde hair and a dorky smile, Jaejoong had scooped him up, nestled him under his wings, and never let him go. If nobody knew any differently, they would think the two were actual brothers or at the very least best friends from childhood.
Jaejoong finally opened his eyes and looked at Junsu. “Su, listen. I know Yoochun better than...”
“No” Junsu interrupted, his voice hard with determination “I know that you and Yoochun have that soulmate connection and that you can basically read each other's minds, but sometimes I think you're too close to see the bigger picture. Sometimes you need an outsider's perspective.”
“You're hardly an outsider” Jaejoong retorted.
“When you two are concerned, everyone else is an outsider” Junsu scoffed. “Go talk to him, hyung. He shouldn't be alone tonight”
Jaejoong's eyes flicked over to Changmin. “Su-yah...”
“Go, hyung. I'll take care of the maknae”
"Do I need taking care of?" Changmin groaned as Jaejoong flashed Junsu a thankful smile and left the room.
“I have a feeling we're going to hate each other after this is over” Changmin sighed. Junsu nodded his head, suddenly feeling 10 years older than he was.
“Nothing will be the same” Junsu said: thinking of the non-stop schedules, the sleepness nights when he felt his throat tightening up, knowing his life revolved around his ability to sing, to be SM's golden boy with a golden voice. To Mozart, a dream so far away, to the endless texts Junho sent him, all of which he was too tired to respond to. “But maybe it's for the best...”
“We're going to end up as a broken family, aren't we?” Changmin asked after a few silent seconds.
“Yeah”
Changmin nodded his head to the door that Jaejoong had just walked out of. “So who gets custody of ChunJae?”
For the first time that night, Junsu grinned. “I do”
~~~***~~~
Jaejoong had only been to Yoochun's mother's house a few times, mostly to drop off a drunken Yoohwan after the younger boy decided to go out with his brother for late night drinks.
But he still found himself tracing the steps to the Park household like it was his own childhood home, familiar and worn into his brain. It was an impressive apartment in a gorgeous building with vines creeping up soft cream sides. He remembered pouring through real estate sites for a month with Yoochun, narrowing the list of potential apartments down and then visiting them together-trying to decide which would be good enough for the family Yoochun loved to an almost scary extent.
The word family made Jaejoong’s chest tighten, remembering the words Yoochun had yelled out in the restaurant. But he pushed those feelings aside, knowing the younger member hadn’t really meant them. Yoochun tended to become a bit dramatic when he was angry, and he lashed out with what he knew would hurt the most. But he didn’t mean it. He couldn’t mean it. Please don’t let him mean it.
Jaejoong knocked on the door to the apartment and it was opened only seconds later by a very frazzled yet graceful women. Even in distress, Yoochun’s mother looked beautiful.
“Oh Jaejoong-ah” she sighed, face sagging in relief. “I was hoping you would come”
“I got caught up in something, umma, sorry I’m late” Jaejoong said, trying to keep his words and tone as neutral as possible. He didn’t know how much Yoochun had told his family and he didn’t want to upset the woman more than she already seemed to be.
“It’s fine, Jaejoong-ah. Yoochunnie just came here not too long ago. He went straight to the balcony and refused to talk to us” the lady said, looking down the hallway with worry. “It’s getting colder outside and he doesn’t even have a jacket…”
“I’ll take him one” Jaejoong said, opening the coat closet as naturally as if he was in his own home, and grabbing a faded blue hoodie that he vaguely remembered buying for himself in Japan a couple of years back.
“Did something happen to my son?”
Jaejoong turned around and gave the woman what he hoped was a reassuring smile. “Nothing like that, umma. It was just a small band fight. It’ll be fine”
It had to be fine.
Jaejoong walked down the main hallway until it opened up into a cozily decorated living room. Yoohwan was sprawled out on an overstuffed sofa, eyes leaving the TV screen as Jaejoong walked in.
“Yo hyung” the younger boy said, raising his fist lazily.
“When did you start talking like a rapper?” Jaejoong snorted, mussing Yoohwan’s hair as he walked by. “Stop hanging around Seunghyun so much”
“Why? Big Bang is so much cooler than DBSK anyways”
“Then I guess you can ask your precious Big Bang to take you on that beach trip this weekend…”
“I take it all back! There’s no one cooler than you, hyung!”
And Jaejoong felt himself laugh despite all the emotions swirling in the pit of his stomach. This was so natural, felt so right. Just like the way his own family had adopted Yoochun, reserving him the best seat at the family table during holidays and giving him the first pick at the food. And if Jaejoong had to fight for this, then that was okay. Because this was worth fighting for.
He opened the door to the balcony quietly, not wanting to disturb the hunched figure in the corner. Yoochun was leaning forward against the railing, cigarette burning in trembling fingers. Jaejoong stared at the shivering back-slender, delicate-so much like his own.
Walking over, he placed the hoodie over Yoochun’s shoulders. The younger man turned suddenly, eyes wide as they fell on Jaejoong, mouth opening and closing in silence. Jaejoong ignored it all as he tied the sleeves together around Yoochun’s neck, turning the hoodie into some sort of makeshift cotton cloak.
“You’re going to catch a cold if you stay out here too long” Jaejoong said, trying to sound nonchalant as he took the cigarette from Yoochun’s fingers and stuck it into his own mouth. The burn felt nice in his throat. He leaned on the railing next to Yoochun, close enough so that their shoulders touched.
After a few seconds, Yoochun took the cigarette out of Jaejoong’s mouth, placing it in his own for a long inhale and exhale before stubbing it out on the metal railing beneath his fingers.
“I didn’t think you’d come”
“I wasn’t going to” Jaejoong admitted. “I thought you’d need some time alone. But Junsu convinced me to come”
“Junsu, huh?”
Jaejoong nodded. “He’s a lot more perceptive than we give him credit for”
Silence fell between them again and Jaejoong tried to distract himself by drumming a random pattern on the railing. It took him a few seconds to realize that it was the song that him and Yoochun had been composing.
Yoochun must have realized it too, because his lips quirked up ever so slightly before drooping back down.
“Hyung….Jae…I”
Jaejoong closed his eyes, preparing himself for whatever Yoochun was about to say. Please don’t let it be that…
“I meant what I said” Yoochun breathed. Jaejoong felt his heart constrict.
“My family means so much to me, hyung. You know that. And my friends mean a lot to me too, but not as much as my family. I don’t want to hurt my family, not when I finally got them back”
Jaejoong wanted to say that he understood and that family was important, but he couldn’t. Because he kept thinking about the past 5 years of memories and the times they drove to the middle of nowhere at night and the times they shared their dreams and secrets over bowls of ramen and how they fit so perfectly into each other’s lives, to the point where Yoochun had become the most important part of Jaejoong’s life. And Jaejoong wouldn’t be able to stand it if he wasn’t the most important part of Yoochun’s life too, so instead of saying everything was fine he just asked,
“And what about me?”
“You…you aren’t my family, hyung”
And yeah, that hurt.
“You aren’t my friend either”
Jaejoong felt something warm covering his hands and he looked down to see Yoochun’s fingers grasping him, holding his hands so tightly that both of their knuckles were going white.
“You are…we are…we’re…”
Yoochun struggled with the words, struggled to think of something that described the two of them.
“We’re soulmates” Jaejoong finished, looking up at Yoochun.
“We’re soulmates” Yoochun agreed. “I don’t care what anybody else wants. I don’t…you’re…you’re the only person in this world that I trust and…wherever you go, I go too. You know that”
“Yoochun-ah…”
“I don’t care if it means that I end up hurting my family, I don’t care if it means that I stay in SM for a million more years. Whatever you pick, I’ll be there. I don't want to be left behind, hyung. Not by you.”
Jaejoong breathed out, so thankful that-as always-Yoochun’s heart was the same as his. The road ahead wouldn’t be easy, and there would be plenty more that they needed to fight for, but him and Yoochun would be together so everything would work out. Even if it meant that they would move to the countryside and become farmers and spend the rest of their days raising cows and planting corn…it would be okay.
“I would never pick a path that would hurt you” Jaejoong said finally.
And Yoochun knew. Even the people he loved ended up hurting him at one point or another, by accident or on purpose or just because they didn’t understand his heart enough to know what they were doing. Everyone had. Everyone but Jaejoong.
“I know, hyung. And whatever path you pick, I’ll support you.”
“So we’ll fight this together?” Jaejoong asked. “Even if none of the rest of them decide to join us?”
Yoochun grinned and laced their fingers together, straightening one of them so that it pointed at Jaejoong. “We’ll fight this together”
“Even if we end up as farmers?”
“I think I’m kind of hoping we’ll end up as farmers” Yoochun answered, smiling at the thought of Jaejoong in cut offs, slopping mud into pig pens or whatever it is that famers did. They’d be terrible farmers.
“We’d be terrible farmers” Jaejoong sighed. Yoochun chuckled and grasped Jaejoong’s hand a little tighter. Soulmates. Who would have thought it would have become such a perfect title for them.
“You know you do owe the rest of them an apology, right?” Jaejoong said “Yunho just left and went to go ride on subways by himself and you know that he always gets really weird when he comes back from doing that.”
Yoochun sighed. “Since we just agreed that we’ll do everything together I think we should…”
“Nuh uh, buddy. You’re on your own for this”
They took a taxi back to the dorm. Jaejoong, drained out, slept with his head resting on Yoochun’s shoulder while Yoochun took out the little green notebook that he had in his bag and scribbled down a few lines.
Thank you. Thank you forever. These glittering feelings are your gifts to me. You’ve taught me how to support each other, to watch over each other, so that I’m not lonely anymore
~~~***~~~
“So” Junsu said, as he looked at the paper in his hand, “do you two even have an explanation why this turned into a love song halfway through?”
“W..what?” Yoochun sputtered as Jaejoong pouted at the same time, giving Junsu sad looks.
“This is a song about how the two of you are in love, isn’t it?” Junsu asked with narrowed eyes.
Jaejoong groaned dramatically. “SuSu-yah. This is a song for Hello Kitty, a song about making the whole world happy. Why are you questioning your hyungs like this?”
“So you’re trying to tell me that ‘The love that was piled up is riding on the melody. I want to convey my love to you forever and ever’ isn’t supposed to be some sort of gross confession?”
“It’s…it’s about our fans!” Yoochun said quickly.
“And the fact that the two of you went out on some weekend honeymoon trip to Busan this past weekend was also for the fans, I’m guessing” Junsu asked, deadpan.
“We wanted to take you” Jaejoong said, eyebrows pushed together in deep thought. “But you were busy with uh…”
“life?” Yoochun finished, helpfully.
“So busy with life, Su-yah” Jaejoong added.
Junsu looked at the two of them with a mix of exasperation and unmasked happiness. He was happy for his hyungs that, no matter what the nature of their relationship was, that they had somehow managed to find each other. But that still didn’t stop him from wanting to strangle them 90% of the time. So instead, he just threw the completed lyrics for Colors at them and walked out the door, wondering if there was still time for him to get in a game of Mario Cart before practice. Maybe he could even corral Changmin into playing with him…
Jaejoong picked up the lyrics and looked through the notes that Junsu had left them. Most of them consisted of terribly drawn puking faces next to the more sappy lyrics. But there was one note in particular that made him chuckle, passing the pages to Yoochun with a shake of his head.
Let’s nestle close together so that we can sleep. Like a melody and harmony in love Are you serious hyungs?????
A/N: Obligatory
Pairing: JaeChun
Rating: Pg-13
Length: Oneshot
Genre: Angsty Fluffy Romance
Summary: The birth of 'Colors', or how to write a love song for Hello Kitty when your life is falling apart around you.
Yoochun had just sunk into the tub when Jaejoong wandered inside the bathroom, looking like something had that been washed onto a beach and abandoned for weeks: his hair and face a mess of angles.
“You weren't in the room when I came in. I miss you, puppy”
Yoochun rolled his eyes and sank down lower until the only parts of his body that could be seen were his face and his knees, protruding out from the soapy water.
“It's only 6 o'clock. And don't try to flatter me, kitten, I'm not sharing the tub with you today. These bubbles are all mine”
“Selfish” Jaejoong pouted as he walked over, “what kind of person won't share the joys of a bubble bath with his best friend?”
“Any person over the age of five”
“I’m too tired to take a bath anyways” Jaejoong sighed as he slumped by the tub.
“That really explains so much”
“Yoochunnie, I’m tired”
“Then sleep”
And a normal person would just walk the ten feet to where there was a perfectly good bedroom with a perfectly good bed with perfectly good sheets and blankets and pillows. But Jaejoong wasn’t a normal person. So instead, he climbed up to the rim of the bathtub and curled himself on it, head resting next to the tap and his feet dangling off the edge of the tub, toes curling and uncurling in the steamy air.
And a normal person would toss Jaejoong off and lecture him about personal space and then send him off the ten feet to the perfectly good bedroom with two perfectly good beds that had a perfectly acceptable amount of space between them. But Yoochun wasn’t a normal person so he just leaned his head against the tiled wall next to the tap, grinning as he breathed in the air Jaejoong exhaled: letting the warm water wash away the fatigue of his body and Jaejoong’s warm breath wash away the fatigue in his mind.
“I figured out how I wanted the rap verse for Colors to go, so I just have to get it on a soundboard and then the composition will be done” Yoochun said after a few comfortable, silent seconds.
Jaejoong hummed, eyes closed. “Then we’ll have to start on the lyrics soon”
“That’s the fun part”
“You wanna know what other part of me is fun?”
Yoochun turned his head a fraction of an inch and raised one of his eyebrows. “If you’re trying to proposition me then you should know I don’t put out for anything less than satin sheets and champagne”
“As if. Don’t forget that I walked in on you doing the dirty with our backup dancer in a shower stall” Jaejoong yawned lazily.
“Like I could forget that. Besides, it wasn’t just any backup dancer. It was Hyeri. You’ve seen how her hips move”
Jaejoong smiled. “I’ve done more than just seen…”
“Please don’t tell me you’ve slept with her too”
“A true gentleman does not kiss and tell, puppy-ah. But she did tell me you have a small dick”
“How cruel”
Jaejoong opened his eyes, grinning. “Don’t worry, little buddy, I still love you the best” he said, swirling his hand in the water near Yoochun’s lap.
“It must be so painful to be in a one-sided love” Yoochun retorted with a sigh.
“Yoochun hyung, have you seen Ja…” Changmin walked into the bathroom and stopped in the doorway, letting off the mother of all groans. There was a fumbling sound and Jaejoong closed his eyes just before the click of a camera echoed in the bathroom.
“If you want to take pictures, at least let me put on some bb cream…”
“I’m going to backmail the two of you with these” Changmin said as he snapped another quick three shots, phone zoomed in on where Jaejoong’s hand was lazily swaying in the water.
“What’s there to blackmail us with?” Yoochun asked.
“We’re just discussing our new song” Jaejoong added, innocently.
“Yeah, while one of you is naked and the other one is curled up next to him on the tub like some sort of demonic cat!!”
“Wow, where is all this aggression coming from, Changmin-ah? Did Yoochunnie steal your girlfriend?”
“His boyfriend” Yoochun corrected with the beginnings of a full blown troll grin spreading on his face. “Kyuhyun likes me better”
Jaejoong raised the top half of his body, slinking forward so that his face was even closer to Yoochun’s. “Kyuhyun likes me more than he likes you”
“Kyu said I was the hyung he wanted to meet the most, kitten”
“Well, puppy, Kyuhyunnie told me I was his favorite person in the whole world”
“Oh really? But Kyu….”
“Kyuhyun hates both of you idiots” Changmin growled in annoyance, throwing his hands up in the air as he stormed out of the bathroom.
Jaejoong collapsed in a fit of giggles, falling straight into the tub. He mourned the mess his new Hello kitty pajamas had become, but then a second later Yoochun fell half on top of him-body shaking in laughter, wet arms clutching onto the sad, sopped Hello Kitty on Jaejoong’s chest-and nothing seemed like that big of a deal anymore.
“It looks like you ended up sharing your bubbles with me anyways” Jaejoong said when they had both calmed down, scooping up a pile of foam and depositing it on Yoochun’s head.
Yoochun was too busy painting a bubble mustache on Jaejoong to answer.
That night, when everyone else in the dorm was sleeping, Yoochun stared hard at the pages of a notebook that one of the fans had given them. The pages were green with images of dinosaurs drinking martinis splayed at the top.
He thought of Jaejoong, curled on the lip of the tub. How his eyelashes brushed over his cheeks, how his skin reddened where the steam of the hot water hit him.
Picking up his pencil, Yoochun penned down a line that came into his mind, sure that he’d be able to include it into the song somehow.
Until the light shines in your heart, let’s nestle close together, so that we can sleep
~~~***~~~
“This song is for Hello Kitty” Jaejoong said, voice serious, sounding like he was reading an obituary for his own soul.
In the background, their managers their handlers were filtering around and distributing their schedules for the next month. They were supposed to be in three separate countries all within the span of a week and Jaejoong mourned the state of his back, which was always hurting these days, and the state of his dark circles, which would need some extra strength foundation, and the state of his life and did SM think they were wizards who could just apparate because how were they supposed to be in Tokyo in the morning and Shanghai at night and…
“Yeah, you didn’t shut up about it for a week after Sanrio picked us to do this”
Yoochun’s voice was deep and hoarse without sleep.
“Well, these lyrics you wrote are kind of depressing aren’t they? ‘Right now somewhere, someone is in pain, all alone, passing through a sleepless night’…”
“You think Hello Kitty can’t have problems?” Yoochun asked, slumping so that his and Jaejoong’s sides were all but connected to each other. “She could have a very deep and dark side to her that we don’t know about. She could enjoy coming home and drinking a bottle of sake every night”
A group of trainers entered the room and announced they that were going to have to have some added dance rehearsals to make sure they were prepared for the show later tonight. They gave Yoochun and Jaejoong extra pointed looks while they said it. Jaejoong responded by waving his arms in a half-hearted octopus dance while Yoochun just curled more into himself.
“Don’t project your feelings onto poor Hello Kitty” Jaejoong continued as the trainers contemplated adding another hour of dance practice. He could already feel the pain of his old knee injury flaring up. Tonight would be another sleepless mess of hot packs and stretches.
“You don’t think Hello Kitty can drink?”
“Of course she can’t” Jaejoong said, popping his back as he stretched his arms.
Yoochun flipped to a new page in the green notebook, penning a quick ‘yes’ and ‘no’ before he turned to the right where Yunho was staring at himself in the mirror, fingers dancing over sunken cheekbones, eyes dark with determination.
“Yo, Yunho hyung, do you think Hello Kitty can drink?”
“Shouldn’t you two be going over the dance routines again?”
Jaejoong snorted out a crackly ‘Yes, sajang-nim’. Yoochun slumped down and rested his head on Jaejoong’s shoulder, lips curling a smile onto his neck.
“Just answer the question”
“If I say yes, will you two go and practice?”
“Sure thing, hyung” Yoochun said, not even making an effort to move an inch. Yunho sighed and walked out of the room, probably to call over the more obedient members to go and start practice.
“I think he’s given up on us”
“Good” Jaejoong said, cocking his head to the side so it knocked onto the top of Yoochun’s moppy hair. “I think I’ll break if anybody tries to make me dance right now”
“Is this what I have to look forward to in my old age?”
Jaejoong opened his mouth to protest but then saw Junsu and Changmin entering the room from the corner of his eye. So, instead, he just slapped on a leery grin. “Well, Chun-ah, KyuKyu told me that he likes his men older…”
“If you want me to set you up with Kyuhyun so badly you just have to ask, hyung” Changmin said with a grin.
“No thanks, I like to play hard to get” Jaejoong answered, blowing a kiss to their maknae. Changmin pretended to catch it and throw it back.
“My Kyutie pie would never return my kisses!” Jaejoong gasped in mock hurt, clutching onto his chest. “Why don't you love me like he does, maknae?”
“Because I'm obviously not worthy of your all mighty love”
Jaejoong preened, face exploding in a bright smile as he got up and walked over to Changmin. “You precious little boy. Come over here and let your hyung give you a hug”.
Changmin noped right out of there, running around the room as Jaejoong chased him with unstable steps-almost crashing into a mirror.
Yoochun observed them both with an indulgent smile, which only grew bigger as Jaejoong head-planted into a pile of discarded coats that had been left in the middle of the floor, taking Changmin down with him. Junsu snorted as the eldest and youngest members dissolved into a mess of giggles and Yoochun turned to him, notebook out.
“Hey Su, do you think Hello Kitty can drink?” he asked.
“No” Junsu answered without missing a beat. “She doesn’t have a mouth”
~~~***~~~
Sometimes, more recently than ever before, life became nothing more than a jumble of exhaustion and chaos. There were so many noises and lights and it felt like none of them had control of their bodies anymore.
Jaejoong let them dress him however they wanted. Let them primp his hair and cover his eye bags and frown lines with layers of bb cream, until he looked like a perfect little doll.
When he hurt, he let them wrap his joints with flesh covered tapes and push pain pills down his throat. When he was sick or too tired to even think of moving, he let them stick an IV in him-the medicine blending together in swirling white tears-drip dropping under his skin.
They were shuttled in planes and buses and cars, the screams of fans overwhelming. They stood on stage and sang and laughed and pretended they were okay and one day-on some stage in some country-Jaejoong thought he had lost sight of everything. All the lights collided together and blinded him. He didn’t know where he was, didn’t know what he was doing. Barely knew his own name.
But when he looked up, all that was there was Yoochun, who looked just as tired and disoriented, possibly even more so. Yoochun who looked two seconds away from as asthma attack. Yoochun who turned his head-eyes hazy-and through the mess that was their lives, found Jaejoong.
You are always by my side, giving me courage and hope
Yoochun had written that in their green notebook the other day. At the end of the concert, Jaejoong ignored the ache of his bones and instead grabbed a towel and a water bottle for Yoochun. He opened the door to the dressing room only to find the other half of his soul standing there with the exact same things in his hands.
“Hyung, for you”
Courage and hope, Jaejoong thought as they exchanged towels and water with knowing grins. It would keep them alive for another day.
~~~***~~~
Jaejoong was woken up one morning with a hundred and something pounds of Yoochun sitting on his chest, cutting off his airway.
“Costco finally opened in Seoul, hyung. Let’s go!”
Jaejoong didn’t know who or what a Costco was, but he was 2 seconds away from asphyxiating to death so he just nodded his head wildly, pushing at the heavy weight on top of him. Yoochun rolled off with a laugh, pulling on the first article of clothing he found (Jaejoong’s favorite shirt: the black one with a bunny with devil horns on it) as he made his way out the room with a ‘see you in 10 minutes, hyung!’
Jaejoong took 15 minutes to get ready, out of spite, but Yoochun didn’t mind as he piled the both of them into his car and drove down the snowy streets, a mad grin on his face.
“Umma used to go to Costco all the time when we were in the states. Wait until you try the pizza there, it’s great. And they sell socks in packs of a hundred! It’s so crazy. We can get Christmas gifts for everyone there”
“100 pairs of socks, just what my noonas have always dreamed of getting” Jaejoong sighed. Yoochun shoved him in the shoulder, eyes still set on the road.
“They have other things there too, okay!”
And as Jaejoong stepped into the huge store, eyes wide and fingers lax on the cart, Yoochun knew that he had made the right choice bringing his hyung there. They made a beeline for the back of the building where Yoochun had promised there would be a massive wine selection.
The baritone was contemplating between two bottles of red when Jaejoong rolled down the aisle, standing ontop of the shopping cart, an economy sized pack of 200 tampons in his hand.
“Hey, do you think we should get these as a Christmas gift for Changmin?”
Yoochun looked up and grinned widely. “Get one for Yunho hyung too.” He held up the two bottles of wine. “Which one of these should we get for Junsu’s gift?”
Jaejoong looked at them, tapping a finger on his lips. “Get them both. That way we’ll each have our own bottle once we steal it from him”
“Have I ever told you that you’re a genius?”
“A true chunjae” Jaejoong said with a nod. He motioned to the box in his hands. “I think these come in scented as well. Yunho would probably appreciate that”
Half an hour later Jaejoong and Yoochun were in the food court, sharing a massive slice of cheese pizza while the results of their shopping trip-2 bottles of wine and 400 tampons-sat on the seat next to them.
“This is nice” Jaejoong said around a mouth of cheese and tomato sauce.
“I told you they have good pizza here!”
“I mean this trip. I’m shocked we even had a free moment to go shopping”
“We didn’t” Yoochun admitted. “Last night I might have causally mentioned to manager hyung that I saw a bunch of cockroaches in the training room so they cancelled dance practice today to have the place fumigated”.
Jaejoong chuckled but then sobered up pretty quickly. “We shouldn’t have to go through these kind of lengths in order to get a couple of free hours after months of non-stop work”
Yoochun shrugged. “What can we do?”
“We…we can leave?” Jaejoong suggested, poking at the pizza. “Leave SM…”
“Can we?” Yoochun asked with wide eyes. Now it was Jaejoong’s turn to shrug.
“I don’t really know. I don’t think anybody has really done it before, leaving before their contract was over.”
“Like our contract is even legal” Yoochun snorted. Jaejoong smiled at him.
“We probably can’t leave, but…if we could, I think it would be nice”
“Of course it would be nice” Yoochun said. “Finally making the music we want or controlling our own schedules. We’d probably still be overworked, but at least it would be because we wanted to be”
And, yes, Jaejoong thought. That was exactly what he was thinking too. Though he shouldn’t have been surprised. Yoochun thought the same as him about everything. Suddenly, he took out their green notebook and flipped it to the page they had been scribbling their lyrics on.
Even before we were born, we knew that we would meet and that we would be searching for our dreams together
“Even before we were born, huh?” Yoochun asked, reading over Jaejoong’s shoulders. The elder turned his head with a grin.
“Don’t you feel that way sometimes?”
And Yoochun nodded. He felt that way all of the time.
~~~***~~~
They didn’t bring up the topic of possibly leaving SM until a week later, when they returned from a mid-day photoshoot only to find Junsu curled up in a ball in the middle of the dorm living room. Changmin was standing next to him, hands nervously out as though he wasn’t sure whether to comfort his hyung or call for an ambulance.
Jaejoong took one look at the scene and immediately hopped into action, sprinting over with clumsy steps, almost tripping on his own feet as he made his way to Junsu. He kneeled down on the ground and wrapped his arms around the shaking boy.
“What happened to him?” he asked Changmin, who just shook his head in confusion.
“I have no idea, hyung! One minute we were playing games and then he got a phone call and just collapsed like this”
“Is it Junho? Your parents?” Yoochun asked, joining Jaejoong on the ground next to Junsu. “Are they hurt?”
“They’re fine” Junsu said. His voice sounded heavy and chocked, as though there were sobs caught in his throat. And this wasn’t okay. Because Junsu was the mood maker of the group, the eternally cheerful one whose bad moods were few and far between and could always be fixed with pictures of palm trees and beaches.
“Then what’s going on, Su-yah?” Yoochun asked. His low, lazy voice sounded particularly soothing and Jaejoong was thankful for it.
“We can fix whatever it is that’s happening” Jaejoong added. Changmin nodded wildly next to him.
"Who called you?”
Junsu sucked in shaky breath. “Manager hyung”
“Okay” Yoochun said. So it was work related. They could deal with work related. “What did he say to you?”
“It’s Mozart” Junsu continued, voice becoming even smaller than it was before.
Jaejoong stilled beside Junsu. Because like rock was for him, Mozart was the ultimate dream for Junsu. Jaejoong knew that rock was a futile goal, SM wasn’t very keen on having any of the members do a solo and even if they were, they would never let him do a full solo rock album. But Mozart…Mozart was a very attainable dream for Junsu. Both the director and the producer had approached the singer as though his casting was already a done deal. This was everything that Junsu had wanted for a long time now, and all that stood between him and his dreams was for SM to approve it.
“SM approved it, didn’t they?” Changmin asked “the Mozart staff was so eager to cast you, hyung”
Junsu shook his head “They told them no. SM wants to start producing their own musicals so they didn’t want me in Mozart”
“Oh, Su” Jaejoong breathed out, holding onto the man in his arms a little tighter. He knew was it was like to have a dream unfulfilled.
“They can’t do that!” Changmin squeaked out.
“They did” Junsu said, bitterly. And Yoochun decided that bitter was a look that he hated on Junsu. That bitterness and Junsu didn’t belong in the same sentence…the same universe...as one another. “This is the only thing that I’ve asked them for since I’ve debuted and they told me no”
“What can we do?” Jaejoong asked the other two members next to him. Changmin just shrugged, looking lost. Yoochun bit his lip and looked up at Jaejoong.
“We could…hyung, like you said before. We could…”
“Leave” Jaejoong finished.
“Leave where?” Junsu asked, finally peaking his head out of his arms to look at the other members. His hair was sticking up at all angles and the fact that none of them pointed it out in jest spoke to the seriousness of the situation.
“Leave SM” Jaejoong answered.
“We…can we?” Junsu asked, frowning. “Is that even something that’s possible?”
“Of course it’s not possible” Changmin countered. “This is SM. They own the entertainment industry in Korea. We can’t just leave”
“We could” Jaejoong insisted, looking around at them wildly. “If we all went together who would stop us from leaving?”
“Leaving what?”
The four members turned their head to where Yunho had just walked through the doorway. He only had one shoe off, the other one half dangling off his foot with untied laces. His coat was on the ground near the door.
Jaejoong and Yoochun looked at each other and then to the other two members, who were sitting silent, not knowing how to bring up the crazy idea that they had just been discussing.
Jaejoong swallowed and turned back to Yunho. “Leaving SM”
“Like for a trip?”
“Like for forever”
Yunho rolled his eyes and laughed. “Yeah, like that could happen”. He bent down to take off his other shoe, tossing it somewhere in the vicinity of his coat. When he straightened back up, four serious faces were looking back at him. “Wait...you weren’t joking?”
“Why would we joke about something like this?” Jaejoong asked, forcefully. Yoochun moved slightly closer to him, pressing a hand against his back in silent support.
“Because it’s insane! No one has ever left a company like this before. It…it’s not something that idols can do”
“We’ve done plenty of things that people thought idols could never do” Jaejoong argued back. “Nobody thought we’d be able to make it in Japan, but look at what we did. As long as it’s us, we can do it”
Yunho stood still. His lips were pursed which was a sign that he was thinking very hard about what Jaejoong was saying.
“Dinner” he said finally. “We have some free time tomorrow night so we’re going to sit down for a dinner and talk this through”
“Why can’t we talk this through now?” Junsu asked from the confines of Jaejoong’s arms, which were still loosely wrapped around him.
“Because I think we all need to sleep on this and then discuss it rationally tomorrow” Yunho answered. He walked down the hallway to his room-the only solo room that was in the dorm. Jaejoong knew he would be in there for the rest of the day, thinking over their options. He hoped Yunho wouldn’t call his dad, because there was no way that his dad would let him leave.
“Hyung”
Jaejoong looked back down at Junsu, who was staring at him with a look of determination. “Hyung, if you’re serious about this then…my dad knows a lawyer who can look into things”
“Tell your dad to get in contact with him”
“Wait” Changmin interrupted. “Aren’t you moving a little too fast? At least wait for dinner tomorrow”
“This is something that we need, Minnie” Jaejoong said. What he didn’t say was that this had almost become a life and death situation for him. He couldn’t survive like this, not for much longer. He needed to get out, and no matter what decision Yunho came to or what happened during dinner, it wasn’t going to change his mind.
“I…I think this is something that can happen” Junsu said. “I’ll go talk to my dad now” He got up, looking in much higher spirits than he had just moments before, and walled to his room. Changmin silently followed.
Jaejoong turned to look at Yoochun. “You were pretty quiet throughout that whole thing. What're you thinking?”
“You already know what I’m thinking” Yoochun said with a half-smile. “We share the same thoughts, remember?”
“I know we’ve brought this up before, but now I feel like we have to at least give it serious consideration. For Junsu-yah if nothing else. He would be so brilliant without anything holding him back, wouldn’t he?”
Yoochun nodded. “Music is his life…”
Jaejoong pondered over those words for a few seconds, liking the way they sounded in his head. “Hey, Chun, can you pass me the…”
The green notebook was in his hands before he could even finish the sentence. He chuckled “We really do have the same brain, don’t we?” and opened the book. He took off the clip on pen and wrote down a couple of lines.
My music is my life. For your, for your smile. Because our hearts are linked together
“We’re actually going to do this, aren’t we?” Yoochun asked, leaning back until he was lying on the ground of the living room, looking up at the ceiling.
“I don’t know” Jaejoong said. “I want to, and I think Junsu wants to as well. We can’t keep living like this, Chun. We’ll…we’ll…”
“We’ll die soon” Yoochun said. “You can already feel your body falling apart, can’t you?”
“God yes” Jaejoong said. He laid down next to Yoochun, curling up into his side.
“I don’t know if Changmin or Yunho hyung will want to leave”
“They have to” Jaejoong frowned. “We have to do it together”
“What if they don’t?”
Jaejoong didn’t know the answer to that question. Well deep down he did, but he didn’t want to say it out loud. He wanted them to all leave together. But at the end of the day, the only person he needed to go with him was right by his side.
~~~***~~~
Yoochun woke up at midnight, feeling as though something was out of place. With a groan, he rolled over so that he was facing the bed that was mere feet away from his.
It was empty.
And it wasn't like that was unusual. Yoochun had woken up to the sight of an empty bed countless times before. Jaejoong was a night owl, and he did some of his best work during the hours when the rest of Seoul was asleep. But tonight, there was a nagging feeling tugging at Yoochun's stomach and he knew it wouldn't go away until he found wherever his best friend had gone too.
So Yoochun slipped out of bed, bones creaking in protest, feet contracting at they hit the icy cold floor. He padded out of the room and down the silent hallway, opening the door to their composing room only to find it empty. With a silent yawn, Yoochun walked towards the kitchen-stopping when he saw that the door to the balcony was open, cold wind rushing into the dorm and blowing the soft white curtains until they billowed like clouds, hiding the details of the two people who were currently in the midst of some sort of serious discussion.
Yoochun immediately recognized Jaejoong and Yunho's silhouettes and a flash of something rotten coursed through him. He wasn't a jealous person, but serious talks at midnight had always been his and Jaejoong's thing. It felt wrong to see Jaejoong having one with someone that wasn't him. But at the same time, he couldn't help but feel curious.
Slowly, Yoochun inched closer to the open doorway, trying to hear what the two eldest members were saying.
“You saw what happened to JTL hyungs, Jaejoong. What's going to stop SM from doing that to us?” Yunho's unique voice sounded muffled but still clearly audible.
“What can they do to us if we go together? You think they can stop our fans?”
“They'll do everything in their power to try, you know that. Why can't we just wait until our contracts are over? We don't need to rock the boat...”
“Because we're going to die if we don't, Yunho-yah. We can't keep going like this”
“It'll be even harder out there”
“But at least we'll be doing what we want”
“You don't want this?”
Yoochun heard Jaejoong sigh. His silhouette slumped down, almost in defeat. “It's not that I don't want this. It's just...I need more. We need more because we deserve so, so much more”
“I need to talk to my father about this” Yunho sounded just as defeated.
“If you talk to your father, you're never going to leave”
“Well I can't not talk to him. He's my father!”
A silence fell over the both of them and Yoochun held in his breath, afraid the noise of his breathing would alert them of his presence.
Finally Jaejoong spoke. “You know I am willing to fight for any of the members, Yunho. I will fight to the death of any of you. But I need for you to be fighting with me. On my side. If we're not, then I can't do anything for you. If we're not, then...I can't do anything but leave you behind.”
Yoochun felt his throat burning from not breathing. Felt his heart burning from Jaejoong's words. He turned back and went down the hallway, back into his bedroom where it was quiet and safe. He wondered what a world without Jaejoong would be like. What it would be like to be left behind.
Wondered if Jaejoong was willing to leave him behind as well...
~~~***~~~
Dinner the next night was at a restaurant that all of the members had been coming to for years whenever they were in Korea. The owners knew them well and would always reserve the private dining room in the back for them whenever they decided to drop by for a meal.
And this dinner was a very private affair. Tucked away in the private room, isolated from the noises and clutter of the main dining room, the five boys met without any managers or staff with them. The table was already laden with all of their favorite dishes, but nobody really had much of an appetite.
“Dance practice was a little awkward today” Yunho started, cutting through the silence of the room.
“Of course it was” Yoochun snorted. “We had this big ~dinner~ plan hovering over our heads”
“Yeah, hyung” Changmin said. “It would have been better if we had just talked about it yesterday”
“Well you just sprung this on me yesterday!” Yunho said, holding up his hands.
“This was sprung on all of us yesterday” Junsu sighed, before turning to Jaejoong and Yoochun. “Besides the two of them.”
“Nothing is ever sprung on them” Changmin agreed with a small chuckle.
“I talked to the lawyer that my dad knows” Junsu continued. “He’d have to look over a copy of our contract, but from what I’ve told him, he said that we have a good case if we wanted to get out of it. Something about how the length of the contract is illegal”
“You already talked to a lawyer about this?” Yunho asked, eyes growing wide.
“Just briefly. We’ll have to go meet with him in person before anything becomes official. But my hyung also has this roommate who’s older brother is looking to start an entertainment company so if we wanted to…”
“You're going way too fast!” Yunho said, looking like he was going to have a panic attack. “I thought we were going to discuss this together. Not talk about lawyers and new entertainment companies…”
“You want to stay, then” Jaejoong asked. “Your father managed to talk you into it?”
“I want to do what’s best for my family” Yunho answered. “My actual family back in Gwangju and the family here in this room.” He looked over at Jaejoong and Yoochun. “I thought of all people, the two of you would know the importance of keeping a family together”
Jaejoong felt like the breath had been knocked out of him. “That isn’t fair, Yunho”
Yunho looked apologetic as he turned his attention from Jaejoong to the other man he had been adressing. “Yoochun-ah, you agree with me, right? You just brought your mom and brother to Seoul so you know you can’t let them down”
Yoochun stiffened. “I…it won’t let them down”
“SM is going to destroy us if we leave, I can’t do that to my family. They need me. Your family needs you too, don’t they?”
“Don’t try to pressure him like that” Junsu yelled, looking over at the shell-shocked baritone. “Yoochun said that he wanted to leave, didn’t you?”
“I…I just want....”
“Well forgive me for thinking that Yoochun gives a fuck about his family” Yunho retorted.
And…that was just too far.
“Don’t talk to me about not caring about my family” Yoochun said, words coming out like a growl. His whole body was shaking and his hands clenched at his side. It took a lot to anger Yoochun. He was, by far, the calmest member. The member who could take complaints and take insults and take anger and sadness and frustration: who would take and take and take from everyone around him and carry it deep inside his heart.
But when it all bubbled out, it was something serious. Not many people had the opportunity to see an angry Yoochun. Among the members, Jaejoong was the only one to have witnesses it before. So he just sat off on the side, in between Junsu and Changmin, observing without a word.
“Then don’t try to break up our family” Yunho cried.
Yoochun turned red and his voice raised to a yell “You are not my family! My family would not want me to keep working so hard that I die! My family actually gives a shit about me” he turned towards the other three members who were sitting silently. “None of you are my family so stop pretending like you are!”
And with that, Yoochun turned and stormed out of the room. He opened the door and the lively chatter from the rest of the restaurant filtered in a for a mere second before the door was slammed shut and the remaining four members were left in the silence of the private room once more.
The quietness, which had seemed like a blessing half an hour ago, was now stifling and thick: capturing Yoochun’s last words and holding them.
Junsu immediately looked at Jaejoong, who had his eyes closed and head tilted back until it rested on the wall behind him. His hands were clenched into fists in his lap.
Changmin sat stock still in stunned silence and Yunho stopped his pacing as he stared at the ground.
“This is....this has been....” Yunho stuttered, unable to finish any sentence that started to come out of his mouth. “I'm going to go back to the dorm. You guys can leave when you feel like”
“We all came in only one car” Junsu pointed out.
“I need to ride the subway for awhile, clear my head” Yunho said, walking out of the room, opening and shutting the abused door with much gentler force.
The room was silent again and Junsu started to shake with nervous energy. This was not how he had seen this night going. He had known that it wouldn't have been pretty, but the outburst from Yoochun was something that no one could have expected.
“I've never seen Yoochun hyung that angry before” Changmin said finally.
“You should go after him” Junsu added, slightly nudging the silent Jaejoong. Jaejoong shook his head, eyes still closed tight.
“Not right now, Su-yah. He needs some time to cool down”
“He's going to his mother's house and he'll cool down during the trip there” Junsu countered. “You should be there tonight. For him. He's....not going to be okay once he realizes what he said to you”
“What he said to us” Changmin corrected, but even without the pointed look Junsu sent him he knew that what Yoochun had said was completely different when it came to Jaejoong. After five years together Changmin did like to think of his bandmates as a family-a dysfunctional and loud and sometimes violent family bonded together through the years of having no one else but each other to rely on.
And he also knew there were limits to the depth of their relationship. They were brought together by a corporation, after all, and as rosy a picture as the mind wanted to paint, the glaring fact was that they didn't choose each other, that they were created and made and brought together for monetary reasons, for a company that wanted them to be a family for the fans and business partners for each other.
But Jaejoong and Yoochun were different. From the day that Yoochun had been brought into their training room as an awkward kid with cropped blonde hair and a dorky smile, Jaejoong had scooped him up, nestled him under his wings, and never let him go. If nobody knew any differently, they would think the two were actual brothers or at the very least best friends from childhood.
Jaejoong finally opened his eyes and looked at Junsu. “Su, listen. I know Yoochun better than...”
“No” Junsu interrupted, his voice hard with determination “I know that you and Yoochun have that soulmate connection and that you can basically read each other's minds, but sometimes I think you're too close to see the bigger picture. Sometimes you need an outsider's perspective.”
“You're hardly an outsider” Jaejoong retorted.
“When you two are concerned, everyone else is an outsider” Junsu scoffed. “Go talk to him, hyung. He shouldn't be alone tonight”
Jaejoong's eyes flicked over to Changmin. “Su-yah...”
“Go, hyung. I'll take care of the maknae”
"Do I need taking care of?" Changmin groaned as Jaejoong flashed Junsu a thankful smile and left the room.
“I have a feeling we're going to hate each other after this is over” Changmin sighed. Junsu nodded his head, suddenly feeling 10 years older than he was.
“Nothing will be the same” Junsu said: thinking of the non-stop schedules, the sleepness nights when he felt his throat tightening up, knowing his life revolved around his ability to sing, to be SM's golden boy with a golden voice. To Mozart, a dream so far away, to the endless texts Junho sent him, all of which he was too tired to respond to. “But maybe it's for the best...”
“We're going to end up as a broken family, aren't we?” Changmin asked after a few silent seconds.
“Yeah”
Changmin nodded his head to the door that Jaejoong had just walked out of. “So who gets custody of ChunJae?”
For the first time that night, Junsu grinned. “I do”
~~~***~~~
Jaejoong had only been to Yoochun's mother's house a few times, mostly to drop off a drunken Yoohwan after the younger boy decided to go out with his brother for late night drinks.
But he still found himself tracing the steps to the Park household like it was his own childhood home, familiar and worn into his brain. It was an impressive apartment in a gorgeous building with vines creeping up soft cream sides. He remembered pouring through real estate sites for a month with Yoochun, narrowing the list of potential apartments down and then visiting them together-trying to decide which would be good enough for the family Yoochun loved to an almost scary extent.
The word family made Jaejoong’s chest tighten, remembering the words Yoochun had yelled out in the restaurant. But he pushed those feelings aside, knowing the younger member hadn’t really meant them. Yoochun tended to become a bit dramatic when he was angry, and he lashed out with what he knew would hurt the most. But he didn’t mean it. He couldn’t mean it. Please don’t let him mean it.
Jaejoong knocked on the door to the apartment and it was opened only seconds later by a very frazzled yet graceful women. Even in distress, Yoochun’s mother looked beautiful.
“Oh Jaejoong-ah” she sighed, face sagging in relief. “I was hoping you would come”
“I got caught up in something, umma, sorry I’m late” Jaejoong said, trying to keep his words and tone as neutral as possible. He didn’t know how much Yoochun had told his family and he didn’t want to upset the woman more than she already seemed to be.
“It’s fine, Jaejoong-ah. Yoochunnie just came here not too long ago. He went straight to the balcony and refused to talk to us” the lady said, looking down the hallway with worry. “It’s getting colder outside and he doesn’t even have a jacket…”
“I’ll take him one” Jaejoong said, opening the coat closet as naturally as if he was in his own home, and grabbing a faded blue hoodie that he vaguely remembered buying for himself in Japan a couple of years back.
“Did something happen to my son?”
Jaejoong turned around and gave the woman what he hoped was a reassuring smile. “Nothing like that, umma. It was just a small band fight. It’ll be fine”
It had to be fine.
Jaejoong walked down the main hallway until it opened up into a cozily decorated living room. Yoohwan was sprawled out on an overstuffed sofa, eyes leaving the TV screen as Jaejoong walked in.
“Yo hyung” the younger boy said, raising his fist lazily.
“When did you start talking like a rapper?” Jaejoong snorted, mussing Yoohwan’s hair as he walked by. “Stop hanging around Seunghyun so much”
“Why? Big Bang is so much cooler than DBSK anyways”
“Then I guess you can ask your precious Big Bang to take you on that beach trip this weekend…”
“I take it all back! There’s no one cooler than you, hyung!”
And Jaejoong felt himself laugh despite all the emotions swirling in the pit of his stomach. This was so natural, felt so right. Just like the way his own family had adopted Yoochun, reserving him the best seat at the family table during holidays and giving him the first pick at the food. And if Jaejoong had to fight for this, then that was okay. Because this was worth fighting for.
He opened the door to the balcony quietly, not wanting to disturb the hunched figure in the corner. Yoochun was leaning forward against the railing, cigarette burning in trembling fingers. Jaejoong stared at the shivering back-slender, delicate-so much like his own.
Walking over, he placed the hoodie over Yoochun’s shoulders. The younger man turned suddenly, eyes wide as they fell on Jaejoong, mouth opening and closing in silence. Jaejoong ignored it all as he tied the sleeves together around Yoochun’s neck, turning the hoodie into some sort of makeshift cotton cloak.
“You’re going to catch a cold if you stay out here too long” Jaejoong said, trying to sound nonchalant as he took the cigarette from Yoochun’s fingers and stuck it into his own mouth. The burn felt nice in his throat. He leaned on the railing next to Yoochun, close enough so that their shoulders touched.
After a few seconds, Yoochun took the cigarette out of Jaejoong’s mouth, placing it in his own for a long inhale and exhale before stubbing it out on the metal railing beneath his fingers.
“I didn’t think you’d come”
“I wasn’t going to” Jaejoong admitted. “I thought you’d need some time alone. But Junsu convinced me to come”
“Junsu, huh?”
Jaejoong nodded. “He’s a lot more perceptive than we give him credit for”
Silence fell between them again and Jaejoong tried to distract himself by drumming a random pattern on the railing. It took him a few seconds to realize that it was the song that him and Yoochun had been composing.
Yoochun must have realized it too, because his lips quirked up ever so slightly before drooping back down.
“Hyung….Jae…I”
Jaejoong closed his eyes, preparing himself for whatever Yoochun was about to say. Please don’t let it be that…
“I meant what I said” Yoochun breathed. Jaejoong felt his heart constrict.
“My family means so much to me, hyung. You know that. And my friends mean a lot to me too, but not as much as my family. I don’t want to hurt my family, not when I finally got them back”
Jaejoong wanted to say that he understood and that family was important, but he couldn’t. Because he kept thinking about the past 5 years of memories and the times they drove to the middle of nowhere at night and the times they shared their dreams and secrets over bowls of ramen and how they fit so perfectly into each other’s lives, to the point where Yoochun had become the most important part of Jaejoong’s life. And Jaejoong wouldn’t be able to stand it if he wasn’t the most important part of Yoochun’s life too, so instead of saying everything was fine he just asked,
“And what about me?”
“You…you aren’t my family, hyung”
And yeah, that hurt.
“You aren’t my friend either”
Jaejoong felt something warm covering his hands and he looked down to see Yoochun’s fingers grasping him, holding his hands so tightly that both of their knuckles were going white.
“You are…we are…we’re…”
Yoochun struggled with the words, struggled to think of something that described the two of them.
“We’re soulmates” Jaejoong finished, looking up at Yoochun.
“We’re soulmates” Yoochun agreed. “I don’t care what anybody else wants. I don’t…you’re…you’re the only person in this world that I trust and…wherever you go, I go too. You know that”
“Yoochun-ah…”
“I don’t care if it means that I end up hurting my family, I don’t care if it means that I stay in SM for a million more years. Whatever you pick, I’ll be there. I don't want to be left behind, hyung. Not by you.”
Jaejoong breathed out, so thankful that-as always-Yoochun’s heart was the same as his. The road ahead wouldn’t be easy, and there would be plenty more that they needed to fight for, but him and Yoochun would be together so everything would work out. Even if it meant that they would move to the countryside and become farmers and spend the rest of their days raising cows and planting corn…it would be okay.
“I would never pick a path that would hurt you” Jaejoong said finally.
And Yoochun knew. Even the people he loved ended up hurting him at one point or another, by accident or on purpose or just because they didn’t understand his heart enough to know what they were doing. Everyone had. Everyone but Jaejoong.
“I know, hyung. And whatever path you pick, I’ll support you.”
“So we’ll fight this together?” Jaejoong asked. “Even if none of the rest of them decide to join us?”
Yoochun grinned and laced their fingers together, straightening one of them so that it pointed at Jaejoong. “We’ll fight this together”
“Even if we end up as farmers?”
“I think I’m kind of hoping we’ll end up as farmers” Yoochun answered, smiling at the thought of Jaejoong in cut offs, slopping mud into pig pens or whatever it is that famers did. They’d be terrible farmers.
“We’d be terrible farmers” Jaejoong sighed. Yoochun chuckled and grasped Jaejoong’s hand a little tighter. Soulmates. Who would have thought it would have become such a perfect title for them.
“You know you do owe the rest of them an apology, right?” Jaejoong said “Yunho just left and went to go ride on subways by himself and you know that he always gets really weird when he comes back from doing that.”
Yoochun sighed. “Since we just agreed that we’ll do everything together I think we should…”
“Nuh uh, buddy. You’re on your own for this”
They took a taxi back to the dorm. Jaejoong, drained out, slept with his head resting on Yoochun’s shoulder while Yoochun took out the little green notebook that he had in his bag and scribbled down a few lines.
Thank you. Thank you forever. These glittering feelings are your gifts to me. You’ve taught me how to support each other, to watch over each other, so that I’m not lonely anymore
~~~***~~~
“So” Junsu said, as he looked at the paper in his hand, “do you two even have an explanation why this turned into a love song halfway through?”
“W..what?” Yoochun sputtered as Jaejoong pouted at the same time, giving Junsu sad looks.
“This is a song about how the two of you are in love, isn’t it?” Junsu asked with narrowed eyes.
Jaejoong groaned dramatically. “SuSu-yah. This is a song for Hello Kitty, a song about making the whole world happy. Why are you questioning your hyungs like this?”
“So you’re trying to tell me that ‘The love that was piled up is riding on the melody. I want to convey my love to you forever and ever’ isn’t supposed to be some sort of gross confession?”
“It’s…it’s about our fans!” Yoochun said quickly.
“And the fact that the two of you went out on some weekend honeymoon trip to Busan this past weekend was also for the fans, I’m guessing” Junsu asked, deadpan.
“We wanted to take you” Jaejoong said, eyebrows pushed together in deep thought. “But you were busy with uh…”
“life?” Yoochun finished, helpfully.
“So busy with life, Su-yah” Jaejoong added.
Junsu looked at the two of them with a mix of exasperation and unmasked happiness. He was happy for his hyungs that, no matter what the nature of their relationship was, that they had somehow managed to find each other. But that still didn’t stop him from wanting to strangle them 90% of the time. So instead, he just threw the completed lyrics for Colors at them and walked out the door, wondering if there was still time for him to get in a game of Mario Cart before practice. Maybe he could even corral Changmin into playing with him…
Jaejoong picked up the lyrics and looked through the notes that Junsu had left them. Most of them consisted of terribly drawn puking faces next to the more sappy lyrics. But there was one note in particular that made him chuckle, passing the pages to Yoochun with a shake of his head.
Let’s nestle close together so that we can sleep. Like a melody and harmony in love Are you serious hyungs?????
A/N: Obligatory
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