musical chairs.
Title: [and it feels like it’s just you & me again] musical chairs
Genre: romance // fluff // angst
Rating: PG for implied sex, swearing, and tobacco usage
Pairing: yoochun/junsu
Summary: [“there is a reason why it’s oftentimes called a “love seat,” junnie.”] in which yoochun thinks that junsu is maybe, kind of, possibly beautiful.
Disclaimer: quite possibly, maybe, no, never going to happen.
Notes: i blame younghee for the furniture-fetish and for making me think in such ways. but this also is an offering of belated love for the birthdays of the following wonderful people, sally and inga. yeah, blame my utter fail.
+ + +
When Yoochun arrives in Korea, steps foot in this seemingly foreign world for the first time in almost five years, he is greeted with smiling, anxious faces that make his insides tie in knots and his hands clam up.
{ he ticks off the names that he tried to remember on the plane ride, tries to place them with the faces of the four boys standing before him, but the names get so jumbled up and he’s not sure if it is shim yunho or jung jaejoong - }
His eyes - wide and filled with nervous delight - scan the happy faces, the ones that are so much different than the people he can barely seem to remember from back in Virginia. He holds up his hand, giving them a small wave that only seems to make them grin at him more. (and how can any set of people be this happy all the time).
There is a boy, shorter than the rest and with baby fat that has yet to be lost, and he seems to be the most excited about the newest addition to their little quartet. Yoochun doesn’t think he’s that attractive - not as much as the dark haired beauty silently eyeing him from farther away - but there’s something about this sweet boy that makes Yoochun’s heart twitter.
“Hello, I’m Kim Junsu,” he introduces, his lips curling upwards and his eyes squinting near the edges so Yoochun has the clearest view of his laugh lines.
There’s something about the way that the boy’s whole face lights up when he smiles, spreading throughout his whole body like wildfire, that makes him maybe, kind of, possibly cute.
{ - the only name that remains embedded into his jetlagged brain is kim junsu }
+
He kisses Junsu (just because he can).
It’s not angry, rough, and all about domination. It’s not sweet, gentle, and made up of love and secret longing. It’s just a gentle peck on the lips, light, wispy, barely there. Maybe it’s kind of like a whisper, kind of fleeting, could have been imagined.
{ yoochun lets out the breath he’s been holding, nervous scared insecure weak, and suddenly it’s like the night of their debut all over again - except this means more, much more }
Junsu brushes it off in a matter of seconds, quicker than a heartbeat (and Yoochun would know, his heart was beating rapidly - fasterfasterfaster). He’s back to watching the television again, body curled into the leather couch (the one that Jaejoong fell in love with on a trip to a mall in Japan - so in love with it that he demanded it be shipped to their apartment in Korea), and eyes trained on the moving figures on the screen.
The kiss didn’t mean anything. Nothing at all.
{ he failed geography back in high school; yoochun definitely isn’t going to get that “denial isn’t just a river in egypt” }
+
Some things in life just lose value, and to one lead vocalist, this happens a lot. It usually means headaches for the other band members, but Jaejoong is relentless and he did grow up in a household full of females to learn from (the other four never had a chance).
“Jaejoongie, we just finished conquering Asia…again,” Changmin says snippily in that tone he uses when one of the elder band members is being more stupid that usual (yoochun scoffs, him? stupid? hah!), “And now you want to conquer our apartment, too, and leave me with an empty stomach!”
Jaejoong shoots him that look - the one that has even fearless leader Yunho cowering (but Changmin is maybe immune to it - after all he is the master of bending people to his will, and bend they do). “If you expect anything to eat, then you’re going to help me throw out all this useless garbage and redecorate our home.” Changmin was not, however, immune to threats involving his stomach and what went inside it.
They go about marking everything they don’t want to keep with bright pink tape borrowed from a certain flamboyant Kim Heechul, and Jaejoong barely bats an eye as he slaps a piece of the colorful tape onto the worn out leather of the old couch the band had had since their early days in Japan.
No one says anything, they just go about their business, and Yoochun cannot help but let his sympathetic gaze land on the couch. There are tiny sears from careless usage of cigarettes (back before they knew better than to smoke in the apartment) and a few rips from tussles that Changmin and Junsu had on occasion (before they realized that the second youngest was just never going to win). But despite this, the baritone finds this couch more than special.
It’s where he kissed Junsu for the very first time (and maybe, might have, sort of meant it).
{ yoochun doesn’t do sentimental, really, he doesn’t; he just thought junsu might (have thought the couch meant something to him, too) }
+
On the newest couch one lazy Saturday afternoon, Yoochun shows Junsu the true meaning of “passionable.”
{ it’s an intense wave of emotions that crashes down upon yoochun whenever junsu’s body heat mingles with his own, circuitry fried and brain a little more than scrambled (he prefers his eggs sunny side up, kind of like the baritenor) }
The other three are not at the apartment yet, and it’s so hot and it makes Yoochun’s mind go haywire. He knows that by this point he should be through with making up excuses, but he is not entirely sure about his feelings, so it’s always easier to pretend.
Junsu’s face is such a lovely shade of red, shirt unbuttoned and gathering at the bends of his elbows, and his eyes are staring down at Yoochun who fumbles his way along the other’s body. He’s nervous and shy and somewhere in the back of his mind he thinks that Christmas is coming early this year (flustered, scarlet cheeks combined with the fuzzy, green velvet of the couch).
“So this is what sex is like?” Junsu murmurs in that shaky, breathy voice of his, except now it’s laced with lust and hormones - it’s wonderful, music to the composer’s ears.
{ they are still just boys no matter how much they’ve grown. junsu still isn’t beautiful like the women yoochun’s met before. but yoochun’s heart has never beat so fast in his life, and he’s sure that not even the girls he has been with have looked as amazing beneath him as junsu does now }
Yoochun stops his ministrations, eyes scared and skittering to a bright red mark he left in the dip of Junsu’s collar bones, and he asks, “What did you think it’d be like?” He knows that Junsu has never done this before, he’s afraid the other is already regretting what they are doing (Yoochun thinks that maybe it would be best if Junsu did stop them now).
{ yoochun isn’t as experienced as many people like to think. he thought he was in love with the girl, he did, there was nothing else to describe the way he felt at that time (but clearly it was a mistake in the end, one he was letting junsu make at this moment) }
“I thought people did these things on beds,” he answers in between choked gasps, fingers rough and knotted in Yoochun’s hair as the other dips his lips back down to suckle on the baritenor’s neck.
{ junsu has soft hands, but they’re not small. yoochun can name a million things he likes about junsu, but he thinks maybe those slim fingers and smooth palms top the list - especially when they slide down his chest, slippery with sweat, and they’re both panting each other’s names }
He lets his lips curve into a smile along the side of Junsu’s neck, right below the other’s ear, and he can feel a racing heart hammer against his mouth. “There’s a reason why it’s oftentimes called a loveseat, Junnie.”
{ yoochun doesn’t believe in love, so he can’t possibly be in love with junsu }
Junsu cries out his name, body quivering with pleasure that Yoochun has caused, and his eyes are glazed over with an emotion so pure that it has Yoochun’s heart rumbling (and he knows it isn’t because of post-orgasmic feelings). The sheen on his body makes him look maybe, kind of, possibly attractive.
{ lying has never gotten him anywhere, but pretending has always been fun. he’d like to pretend that junsu is nothing to him for just a moment longer }
+
A few years down the road has them both once again sharing an apartment, sharing a couch, and sharing each other’s oxygen.
{ yoochun gave up breathing any air that wasn’t recycled by kim junsu first }
Except this time they are not Xiah Junsu and Micky Yoochun of the famous Asian band Tong Vfang Xien Qui. They are merely soloist Kim Junsu and his personal composer Park Yoochun, two very different people with two very similar dreams. The couch isn’t black leather like the one where they kissed for the first time. It’s not green velvet like the one where they might have made a mistake but neither cared too much about it.
The couch is not even a couch. It’s a chair, small and comfortable and it kind of feels like home. But Yoochun supposes that it’s not because of the chair, but maybe because of the boy who sits on the armrest, feet in the ex-baritone’s lap and fingers running through his unruly dark locks (he likes his hair longer because he loves the feel of Junsu’s fingers curling into the tresses).
“You know,” Junsu starts, eyes glued on the screen but he gives off the impression that he’s not even watching it unlike years ago when they had their first kiss, “we’ve been together for almost half our lives, and you’ve never told me you loved me, Yoochunnie.”
Yoochun glances up, dumbfounded, before he turns back to the television, spluttering, “What the hell are you talking about?”
Junsu’s fingers unravel themselves from Yoochun’s hair (he instantaneously misses the touch) and his feet move out of the composer’s lap. He can admit that he’s a bit unnerved by the steady gaze directed on him, and without even looking he knows Junsu’s lips are drawn into a taut line and his eyes are narrowed seriously.
“You kissed me, we’ve had sex or made love or however else you wish to put it,” Junsu says exasperatedly and he’s talking a bit too fast for Yoochun to comprehend exactly what they’re talking about. “I even gave you a ring, dammit, the least you can do is tell me you love me!”
“Junnie,” Yoochun finally breathes, pulling the red-faced (maybe only slightly humiliated) and angry man into his arms. The sight is almost comical, but the way his lower lip juts out slightly into a pout is too adorable to resist so Yoochun laughs. Junsu doesn’t think it’s funny, but he’s too busy sulking to do much more than hit Yoochun in the chest. “Why didn’t you just tell me?”
“You kissed me first!”
“Alright, then,” the ex-baritone murmurs, lips a ghost of a whisper against the other’s protruding ones, and finally confesses, “I love you.”
{ the way junsu’s eyes light up like the diamonds in yoochun’s rings reminds the composer of when they first met, how the other boy just stood out even though he wasn’t the prettiest face around }
“I love you, too.”
{ yoochun thinks that junsu is maybe, kind of, possibly beautiful -
- and maybe he’s known this all along }