send your love to
send your love to
yunho/changmin
pg-13
secrets on postcards of love.
this is love on postcards! \:D/!
---
Changmin’s always been able to take a step back and objectively assess a circumstance he doesn’t necessarily want to be a part of but is a part of, anyway. It makes life easier. Without emotional motivation, he can make the best judgments, find the right solutions, come to an answer that is level-headed and rational.
After he joins Dong Bang Shin Ki, he runs that capability over with a steam roller and chucks it out the window.
His realization of his complete failure in being able to maintain sensibility doesn’t hit until Yunho-hyung goes to get his teeth fixed. In all honesty, the wonky smiles made his heart go doki-doki as the Japanese girls say.
Because Yunho-hyung is cool. And his hyung. And leader. And really cool. He’s also nice and sweet and cuddly and charismatic and entirely intimidating but a big softie and a dork at home. Most of all, he’s real. Changmin likes him a lot. They hold hands sometimes and the one real rational thought he bothers to have is: when I get older, Yunho-hyung won’t hold hands with me anymore.
The day that Yunho comes home with brand spankin’ new dental crowns, his cheeks are swollen and his face is strained. It’s easy to see how hard he tries not to let the rest of them notice how much pain he’s in. The first night, Changmin can hear Jaejoong-hyung quietly talking to his best friend in the other room, refusing to go to sleep when Yunho is kept awake by the pain. Changmin feels his heart squeeze. He stares at the ceiling and wishes he had words and a big heart like Jaejoong-hyung does to tell Yunho all the confusing things he can’t piece together, the things keeping him awake at night. And the most terrifying part of the whole thing is, it doesn’t feel like it’s going to go away. Ever.
The day after that, Yunho wakes up after too little sleep to find a crumpled, scrawled note taped to his shirt. The paper is creased as if the author had meant to throw it out. The writing is rushed and messy. Yunho wonders if it’s because taking time to write it out would’ve resulted in the note going into a garbage bin after all.
He reads it until even after he’s memorized every word. Then tucks it into his pocket with his phone, blinking away a mysterious wetness in his eyes.
He never asks which one of them wrote it.
---
Yunho almost forgets about the entire thing as over a year passes. Sometimes he thinks he’s going to break under the pressure of his responsibilities, or forget the mask he has to keep up at all times for the public eye, or just collapse from missing home, his mom, his dad, his baby sister. The days he gets into fights with the other members are the worst. Those are the days when he thinks, it’ll be fine to just quit. It’s okay to be weak, sometimes.
But he doesn’t.
Jaejoong talks him through it. Yoochun plays him half-written songs. Junsu comforts him like nobody else, the way only an oldest friend can.
And Changmin listens. Always. Yunho’s worried about how at home he is with the youngest. There could be problems if (when) he misjudges a line (or ten) and crosses it.
A week before the band’s second anniversary, Changmin makes a run to the post office. He finds that postage is entirely ridiculous during Christmas season for rush delivery and pays for three stamps with an unimpressed glare.
The day after they celebrate TVXQ’s two years together, Jaejoong calls Yunho into the living room.
“You have mail.”
Yunho narrows his eyes at his best friend. “Why are you smiling like that. It unsettles my soul.”
“Just read it.”
Yunho takes the postcard with a curious tilt of his head. It’s simple and adorable and he feels a rush of déjà vu; his mind immediately goes to a fuzzy memory of a messy note taped to a shirt he’s already grown out of.
His heart clenches and Jaejoong shakes his head when he looks up.
“I didn’t send it. Whoever did obviously didn’t want you to know. No return address.”
Yunho doesn’t say anything; just takes it with him, ignoring Jaejoong’s half-joking questions about what their responsible band leader’s been doing at night, and hides away in his room. After a pause, he pulls open his clothes drawer and tucks the postcard away under his favourite shirts, snug against the back left corner.
It’s going to be a good year next year, he decides with a smile.
---
Another year passes. Yunho can’t help the nearly overwhelming sense of disappointment he feels when he wakes up after the band’s third anniversary only to receive nothing in the mail. Maybe it was just a one-time thing.
“Changmin,” he says one night, right before they’re about to go to bed.
“Yeah?”
“I need to tell you something.”
Changmin immediately comes to Yunho’s bedside, sitting down on the edge, looking at the older man quizzically, lips puffed out and eyes big. Yunho bites the inside of his cheek to resist the urge to hug him.
“I got a postcard last year.”
Something flickers in Changmin’s eyes though he quickly turns away to hide it. Yunho’s gotten to read him well enough to notice and his heart suddenly skips a beat. “Oh yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“...What about it?”
“...Nothing,” Yunho says after a while, acting on impulse and reaching over to quickly ruffle Changmin’s hair. “Just love it a lot.”
“Oh,” Changmin says, still not looking at him, though now there’s a tell-tale blush creeping into his cheeks.
“Yeah,” Yunho breathes, smiling a bit. “Thanks for always listening to me, Changmin-ah. You make me smile.”
Changmin turns his head even more to the other side and clears his throat. “You’re welcome, hyung.” It’s so quiet that Yunho has to strain to hear it.
---
The one day that Yunho gets to the mail first, he’s rewarded with another postcard.
Despite everything in his brain telling him not to jump to conclusions, he’s suddenly almost certain about who the sender is. He doesn’t know if he’s imposing his own desires onto a situation, but even if he is, does it matter when the mere thought gets his heart going quadruple time?
---
On his birthday, manager-hyung brings an unhealthy amount of alcohol for them to consume in their home. Better to be drunk privately than do something stupid after sneaking out, he had said. They celebrate like the world is ending tomorrow and Yunho gets so wasted he has to re-open all his presents the next day to remember what they were. Apparently, his drunken self thought it would be appropriate to re-wrap them.
“Yunho!” Jaejoong shouts from the living room, interrupting his train of thought.
He winces as he stumbles out to smack his best friend on the arm. “Could your voice be any louder!?”
“You have mail.”
Yunho nearly snatches it out of Jaejoong’s hand in his haste.
“Yah! I didn’t get to read it ye-” Jaejoong starts to complain and Yunho shoves him into a piece of furniture.
It’s another postcard, no return address, the writing unfamiliar.
“Jaejoong-ah,” he says, cutting the older man off in a rant about the youth of this world these days that’s aimed primarily at him.
“What.”
“Do you know where Changmin was last night at eleven? Because I don’t. Remember much of anything, I mean.”
Jaejoong closes his eyes and presses his wrist to his forehead. “Well...from what I can remember...we were really drunk. I was with him in his room at chopsticks hour. To make wishes. I wished for new boots! You know, the ones with the fur an-yah!! You’re not even listening!”
Yunho is too busy not listening to hear the eldest’s complaints, reading the postcard over and over again until he gets back to his room. He fits it under the first postcard. Then almost falls onto his bed.
He’s falling in love in postcards.
---
“I think I know,” he says to Yoochun months later, when he can think of the postcards without getting tongue-tied and disgusting.
“Who?” Yoochun asks, sucking on a popsicle. It’s obscene.
“Changmin.”
Yoochun promptly chokes on cherry flavoured ice and Yunho secretly hopes it’s painful. “...Are you...um...okay, hyung, lay off the crack pipe once in a while.”
“Shut up, Yoochun.”
“Just saying, you should probably talk to him.”
“I do. A lot.”
“Then has he ever given you an indication that it would be him?”
“...Um...”
Yunho squirms in his seat. Yoochun gives him a sympathetic smile. “Hyung, do you have a crush?”
“No!” Yunho nearly shrieks in the manliest of fashions.
The two of them sit in silence for a long, long stretch of time while Yunho sorts himself out and Yoochun pretends he’s coughing instead of laughing.
“Hyung?”
“Actually,” Yunho sighs, pressing the heels of his palms to his eyes. “I think I might be falling a bit in love with him...”
Yoochun chokes on his popsicle for the second time. “Oh, Yunho,” he coughs out a minute later.
“...What. I just. He’s really wonderful, Yoochun-ah.”
“I know, Yunho-yah.” Yoochun smiles, honest and comforting, and tilts his head back, ignoring the way Yunho gapes as he slides the entire popsicle into his mouth and down his throat.
---
Yunho decides that even if Changmin isn’t the one sending him those postcards, he doesn’t really give a flying poop worth a damn.
The thing is, it isn’t until their insane, frothing at the mouth kind of tiredness during Mirotic promotions, flying back and forth between Korea and Japan every day and a half, that Yunho realizes he hasn’t been talking to Changmin very often as of late. In fact, the younger man seems to be withdrawing into himself again, avoiding their gazes, claiming fatigue and going to spend time alone in his room as soon as they get home.
A distinctly not good feeling settles itself into the corners of his heart. Has he taken too long to figure these things out for himself? Yoochun looks at him like something’s urgent and Yunho can’t figure it out.
Right after the new year passes, Jaejoong gets the mail and tosses a postcard at Yunho as he comes into the kitchen for breakfast. He reads it with tired eyes and drops his forehead onto the table after, clutching the small rectangle to his chest.
---
A few nights later, Yunho catches Changmin in his room, and quietly closes the door behind him. It’s come to a point where he has trouble even talking to the younger man anymore and he hates that, hates that they’re awkward, hates that he feels like complete and utter shit all the time without a soft, unconscious giggle and a bright, warming smile to close his days.
“Changmin-ah,” he says after a pause, chewing on his lower lip when he sees Changmin’s frame tense.
“Yeah, hyung?”
“I’ve got something to show you.”
He walks to Changmin’s bed and sits down because the younger man no longer comes to his, offering the postcard with both hands and setting it on the bedspread when Changmin doesn’t take it.
“I got another one,” Yunho starts.
“It’s stupid,” Changmin says, suddenly, looking away with his lips twisted. “Who writes things like that?”
Changmin’s expression is enough to tell Yunho all he needs to know. Only someone who understands the feeling and is helpless against it can make an expression so full of despair. Even still, Yunho’s heart lurches in his chest. “I don’t think it’s stupid,” he says, quietly.
“Why not? It’s cowardly. Immature. Completely unproductive.”
Yunho doesn’t say anything. He can’t find any words to describe how he’s feeling, can’t find the courage to form a statement to tell Changmin how he feels. Changmin abruptly leaves the bed as they sit through another tense silence, saying nothing before disappearing out the door.
Yunho gently picks up the postcard and cups it in his palms, curling it into his chest.
---
The most irrational thing anyone can ever do, Changmin decides, is fall in love. It doesn’t make any sense. Day in and day out, all you can do is think of that one person, overanalyze every little thing they do, go out of your way to see them and talk to them and make them happy. And when things aren’t happy sunshine and rainbow bonbons, love is a sick and twisted kind of pain. It’s constantly on your mind, where the days are dull and the nights are endless, where you can’t breathe sometimes because it’s just too much for any person to handle, buried alive under the sense of complete surrender and overwhelming vulnerability.
And even when he thinks he should be able to go back to before, now that he’s pretty much said what he’s needed to to Yunho, it doesn’t get any better.
He waits in the darkness of the living room after the others have all gone to sleep and waits, and keeps waiting, and nothing changes.
It doesn’t go away.
---
Yunho almost screams when someone jumps on top of him in the middle of the night and literally slaps something hard in his face.
“Fuc-” he starts and Jaejoong snaps his mouth shut for him.
“Listen to me,” he says, flicking Yunho in the forehead. “Yoochun and I have decided that we have had quite enough of your asshattery.”
“Hmmffmfmmn?” Yunho asks.
“Do you know what people do after falling in love?” Jaejoong asks, smile wide, eyes crinkled, leaning down to Yunho’s ear.
Yunho shakes his head, eyes big.
“They’re just, in, love,” Jaejoong whispers, and runs out of the room again, leaving Yunho alone with a new postcard stuck to his cheek. He peels it off his face and turns the light on, flipping it over, feeling a smile push his cheeks up and force them to stay there.
---
For the whole week, Changmin barely even looks at Yunho, let alone talk to him. But the older man isn’t too distraught over it, too busy scribbling something into a small notebook, frowning, crossing things out, erasing and redrawing. Junsu takes a peek over his shoulder once and Yunho almost takes out his eye with the point of his mechanical pencil in outrage.
On a Thursday night, when Changmin’s already in bed and rechecking the locks on his heart, Yunho comes in with his hands behind his back, a shy smile on his face.
“Hyung...” Changmin says, quiet and wary, sitting up and taking a deep breath. “Is something wrong?”
“You have mail,” Yunho answers softly, moving forward and sitting on Changmin’s bedside, just an arm’s length away. “It’s from me.”
He hands the simple postcard he’s made to Changmin, watches the younger man take it with shining eyes and shaking fingers.
Sometimes, walls aren’t built to keep people out.
They’re only built to see who cares enough to break them down.
Changmin blinks the tears away in his eyes, unable to keep them from spilling anyway, feeling too much at once to do anything but cry. Relief, hurt, joy, gratitude, love.
“Always was,” he laughs shakily, and pulls Yunho forward by the collar until all the distance is gone.
---
Randomly, one sunny Sunday morning, they’re all strangely awake and in each other’s presence. Changmin disentangles himself from Yunho’s warmth and walks into the kitchen. He fishes something out of his pocket before taking a magnet and sticking it on the fridge.
Jaejoong’s smiling so wide that he thinks his face might fall apart. Yoochun’s laughing audibly, eyes twinkling, holding onto Junsu who’s rolling his eyes but laughing too. Only the youngest, really.
Yunho collects Changmin back in his embrace, tilting his head and kissing the other man gently on his lips.
“Love’s always worth it,” Jaejoong sings to himself.
---
---
so many thanks and love to postsecrets. for all of you out there who've forgotten or are just having a hard time: enjoy life once in a while. smile. laugh. go get some bubble tea with a friend. :) think about homin. XD :P ♥
yunho/changmin
pg-13
secrets on postcards of love.
this is love on postcards! \:D/!
---
Changmin’s always been able to take a step back and objectively assess a circumstance he doesn’t necessarily want to be a part of but is a part of, anyway. It makes life easier. Without emotional motivation, he can make the best judgments, find the right solutions, come to an answer that is level-headed and rational.
After he joins Dong Bang Shin Ki, he runs that capability over with a steam roller and chucks it out the window.
His realization of his complete failure in being able to maintain sensibility doesn’t hit until Yunho-hyung goes to get his teeth fixed. In all honesty, the wonky smiles made his heart go doki-doki as the Japanese girls say.
Because Yunho-hyung is cool. And his hyung. And leader. And really cool. He’s also nice and sweet and cuddly and charismatic and entirely intimidating but a big softie and a dork at home. Most of all, he’s real. Changmin likes him a lot. They hold hands sometimes and the one real rational thought he bothers to have is: when I get older, Yunho-hyung won’t hold hands with me anymore.
The day that Yunho comes home with brand spankin’ new dental crowns, his cheeks are swollen and his face is strained. It’s easy to see how hard he tries not to let the rest of them notice how much pain he’s in. The first night, Changmin can hear Jaejoong-hyung quietly talking to his best friend in the other room, refusing to go to sleep when Yunho is kept awake by the pain. Changmin feels his heart squeeze. He stares at the ceiling and wishes he had words and a big heart like Jaejoong-hyung does to tell Yunho all the confusing things he can’t piece together, the things keeping him awake at night. And the most terrifying part of the whole thing is, it doesn’t feel like it’s going to go away. Ever.
The day after that, Yunho wakes up after too little sleep to find a crumpled, scrawled note taped to his shirt. The paper is creased as if the author had meant to throw it out. The writing is rushed and messy. Yunho wonders if it’s because taking time to write it out would’ve resulted in the note going into a garbage bin after all.
He reads it until even after he’s memorized every word. Then tucks it into his pocket with his phone, blinking away a mysterious wetness in his eyes.
He never asks which one of them wrote it.
---
Yunho almost forgets about the entire thing as over a year passes. Sometimes he thinks he’s going to break under the pressure of his responsibilities, or forget the mask he has to keep up at all times for the public eye, or just collapse from missing home, his mom, his dad, his baby sister. The days he gets into fights with the other members are the worst. Those are the days when he thinks, it’ll be fine to just quit. It’s okay to be weak, sometimes.
But he doesn’t.
Jaejoong talks him through it. Yoochun plays him half-written songs. Junsu comforts him like nobody else, the way only an oldest friend can.
And Changmin listens. Always. Yunho’s worried about how at home he is with the youngest. There could be problems if (when) he misjudges a line (or ten) and crosses it.
A week before the band’s second anniversary, Changmin makes a run to the post office. He finds that postage is entirely ridiculous during Christmas season for rush delivery and pays for three stamps with an unimpressed glare.
The day after they celebrate TVXQ’s two years together, Jaejoong calls Yunho into the living room.
“You have mail.”
Yunho narrows his eyes at his best friend. “Why are you smiling like that. It unsettles my soul.”
“Just read it.”
Yunho takes the postcard with a curious tilt of his head. It’s simple and adorable and he feels a rush of déjà vu; his mind immediately goes to a fuzzy memory of a messy note taped to a shirt he’s already grown out of.
His heart clenches and Jaejoong shakes his head when he looks up.
“I didn’t send it. Whoever did obviously didn’t want you to know. No return address.”
Yunho doesn’t say anything; just takes it with him, ignoring Jaejoong’s half-joking questions about what their responsible band leader’s been doing at night, and hides away in his room. After a pause, he pulls open his clothes drawer and tucks the postcard away under his favourite shirts, snug against the back left corner.
It’s going to be a good year next year, he decides with a smile.
---
Another year passes. Yunho can’t help the nearly overwhelming sense of disappointment he feels when he wakes up after the band’s third anniversary only to receive nothing in the mail. Maybe it was just a one-time thing.
“Changmin,” he says one night, right before they’re about to go to bed.
“Yeah?”
“I need to tell you something.”
Changmin immediately comes to Yunho’s bedside, sitting down on the edge, looking at the older man quizzically, lips puffed out and eyes big. Yunho bites the inside of his cheek to resist the urge to hug him.
“I got a postcard last year.”
Something flickers in Changmin’s eyes though he quickly turns away to hide it. Yunho’s gotten to read him well enough to notice and his heart suddenly skips a beat. “Oh yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“...What about it?”
“...Nothing,” Yunho says after a while, acting on impulse and reaching over to quickly ruffle Changmin’s hair. “Just love it a lot.”
“Oh,” Changmin says, still not looking at him, though now there’s a tell-tale blush creeping into his cheeks.
“Yeah,” Yunho breathes, smiling a bit. “Thanks for always listening to me, Changmin-ah. You make me smile.”
Changmin turns his head even more to the other side and clears his throat. “You’re welcome, hyung.” It’s so quiet that Yunho has to strain to hear it.
---
The one day that Yunho gets to the mail first, he’s rewarded with another postcard.
Despite everything in his brain telling him not to jump to conclusions, he’s suddenly almost certain about who the sender is. He doesn’t know if he’s imposing his own desires onto a situation, but even if he is, does it matter when the mere thought gets his heart going quadruple time?
---
On his birthday, manager-hyung brings an unhealthy amount of alcohol for them to consume in their home. Better to be drunk privately than do something stupid after sneaking out, he had said. They celebrate like the world is ending tomorrow and Yunho gets so wasted he has to re-open all his presents the next day to remember what they were. Apparently, his drunken self thought it would be appropriate to re-wrap them.
“Yunho!” Jaejoong shouts from the living room, interrupting his train of thought.
He winces as he stumbles out to smack his best friend on the arm. “Could your voice be any louder!?”
“You have mail.”
Yunho nearly snatches it out of Jaejoong’s hand in his haste.
“Yah! I didn’t get to read it ye-” Jaejoong starts to complain and Yunho shoves him into a piece of furniture.
It’s another postcard, no return address, the writing unfamiliar.
“Jaejoong-ah,” he says, cutting the older man off in a rant about the youth of this world these days that’s aimed primarily at him.
“What.”
“Do you know where Changmin was last night at eleven? Because I don’t. Remember much of anything, I mean.”
Jaejoong closes his eyes and presses his wrist to his forehead. “Well...from what I can remember...we were really drunk. I was with him in his room at chopsticks hour. To make wishes. I wished for new boots! You know, the ones with the fur an-yah!! You’re not even listening!”
Yunho is too busy not listening to hear the eldest’s complaints, reading the postcard over and over again until he gets back to his room. He fits it under the first postcard. Then almost falls onto his bed.
He’s falling in love in postcards.
---
“I think I know,” he says to Yoochun months later, when he can think of the postcards without getting tongue-tied and disgusting.
“Who?” Yoochun asks, sucking on a popsicle. It’s obscene.
“Changmin.”
Yoochun promptly chokes on cherry flavoured ice and Yunho secretly hopes it’s painful. “...Are you...um...okay, hyung, lay off the crack pipe once in a while.”
“Shut up, Yoochun.”
“Just saying, you should probably talk to him.”
“I do. A lot.”
“Then has he ever given you an indication that it would be him?”
“...Um...”
Yunho squirms in his seat. Yoochun gives him a sympathetic smile. “Hyung, do you have a crush?”
“No!” Yunho nearly shrieks in the manliest of fashions.
The two of them sit in silence for a long, long stretch of time while Yunho sorts himself out and Yoochun pretends he’s coughing instead of laughing.
“Hyung?”
“Actually,” Yunho sighs, pressing the heels of his palms to his eyes. “I think I might be falling a bit in love with him...”
Yoochun chokes on his popsicle for the second time. “Oh, Yunho,” he coughs out a minute later.
“...What. I just. He’s really wonderful, Yoochun-ah.”
“I know, Yunho-yah.” Yoochun smiles, honest and comforting, and tilts his head back, ignoring the way Yunho gapes as he slides the entire popsicle into his mouth and down his throat.
---
Yunho decides that even if Changmin isn’t the one sending him those postcards, he doesn’t really give a flying poop worth a damn.
The thing is, it isn’t until their insane, frothing at the mouth kind of tiredness during Mirotic promotions, flying back and forth between Korea and Japan every day and a half, that Yunho realizes he hasn’t been talking to Changmin very often as of late. In fact, the younger man seems to be withdrawing into himself again, avoiding their gazes, claiming fatigue and going to spend time alone in his room as soon as they get home.
A distinctly not good feeling settles itself into the corners of his heart. Has he taken too long to figure these things out for himself? Yoochun looks at him like something’s urgent and Yunho can’t figure it out.
Right after the new year passes, Jaejoong gets the mail and tosses a postcard at Yunho as he comes into the kitchen for breakfast. He reads it with tired eyes and drops his forehead onto the table after, clutching the small rectangle to his chest.
---
A few nights later, Yunho catches Changmin in his room, and quietly closes the door behind him. It’s come to a point where he has trouble even talking to the younger man anymore and he hates that, hates that they’re awkward, hates that he feels like complete and utter shit all the time without a soft, unconscious giggle and a bright, warming smile to close his days.
“Changmin-ah,” he says after a pause, chewing on his lower lip when he sees Changmin’s frame tense.
“Yeah, hyung?”
“I’ve got something to show you.”
He walks to Changmin’s bed and sits down because the younger man no longer comes to his, offering the postcard with both hands and setting it on the bedspread when Changmin doesn’t take it.
“I got another one,” Yunho starts.
“It’s stupid,” Changmin says, suddenly, looking away with his lips twisted. “Who writes things like that?”
Changmin’s expression is enough to tell Yunho all he needs to know. Only someone who understands the feeling and is helpless against it can make an expression so full of despair. Even still, Yunho’s heart lurches in his chest. “I don’t think it’s stupid,” he says, quietly.
“Why not? It’s cowardly. Immature. Completely unproductive.”
Yunho doesn’t say anything. He can’t find any words to describe how he’s feeling, can’t find the courage to form a statement to tell Changmin how he feels. Changmin abruptly leaves the bed as they sit through another tense silence, saying nothing before disappearing out the door.
Yunho gently picks up the postcard and cups it in his palms, curling it into his chest.
---
The most irrational thing anyone can ever do, Changmin decides, is fall in love. It doesn’t make any sense. Day in and day out, all you can do is think of that one person, overanalyze every little thing they do, go out of your way to see them and talk to them and make them happy. And when things aren’t happy sunshine and rainbow bonbons, love is a sick and twisted kind of pain. It’s constantly on your mind, where the days are dull and the nights are endless, where you can’t breathe sometimes because it’s just too much for any person to handle, buried alive under the sense of complete surrender and overwhelming vulnerability.
And even when he thinks he should be able to go back to before, now that he’s pretty much said what he’s needed to to Yunho, it doesn’t get any better.
He waits in the darkness of the living room after the others have all gone to sleep and waits, and keeps waiting, and nothing changes.
It doesn’t go away.
---
Yunho almost screams when someone jumps on top of him in the middle of the night and literally slaps something hard in his face.
“Fuc-” he starts and Jaejoong snaps his mouth shut for him.
“Listen to me,” he says, flicking Yunho in the forehead. “Yoochun and I have decided that we have had quite enough of your asshattery.”
“Hmmffmfmmn?” Yunho asks.
“Do you know what people do after falling in love?” Jaejoong asks, smile wide, eyes crinkled, leaning down to Yunho’s ear.
Yunho shakes his head, eyes big.
“They’re just, in, love,” Jaejoong whispers, and runs out of the room again, leaving Yunho alone with a new postcard stuck to his cheek. He peels it off his face and turns the light on, flipping it over, feeling a smile push his cheeks up and force them to stay there.
---
For the whole week, Changmin barely even looks at Yunho, let alone talk to him. But the older man isn’t too distraught over it, too busy scribbling something into a small notebook, frowning, crossing things out, erasing and redrawing. Junsu takes a peek over his shoulder once and Yunho almost takes out his eye with the point of his mechanical pencil in outrage.
On a Thursday night, when Changmin’s already in bed and rechecking the locks on his heart, Yunho comes in with his hands behind his back, a shy smile on his face.
“Hyung...” Changmin says, quiet and wary, sitting up and taking a deep breath. “Is something wrong?”
“You have mail,” Yunho answers softly, moving forward and sitting on Changmin’s bedside, just an arm’s length away. “It’s from me.”
He hands the simple postcard he’s made to Changmin, watches the younger man take it with shining eyes and shaking fingers.
Sometimes, walls aren’t built to keep people out.
They’re only built to see who cares enough to break them down.
Changmin blinks the tears away in his eyes, unable to keep them from spilling anyway, feeling too much at once to do anything but cry. Relief, hurt, joy, gratitude, love.
“Always was,” he laughs shakily, and pulls Yunho forward by the collar until all the distance is gone.
---
Randomly, one sunny Sunday morning, they’re all strangely awake and in each other’s presence. Changmin disentangles himself from Yunho’s warmth and walks into the kitchen. He fishes something out of his pocket before taking a magnet and sticking it on the fridge.
Jaejoong’s smiling so wide that he thinks his face might fall apart. Yoochun’s laughing audibly, eyes twinkling, holding onto Junsu who’s rolling his eyes but laughing too. Only the youngest, really.
Yunho collects Changmin back in his embrace, tilting his head and kissing the other man gently on his lips.
“Love’s always worth it,” Jaejoong sings to himself.
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so many thanks and love to postsecrets. for all of you out there who've forgotten or are just having a hard time: enjoy life once in a while. smile. laugh. go get some bubble tea with a friend. :) think about homin. XD :P ♥