Fic-DBSK-Decrescendo
Title: Decrescendo
Author: virdant
Length: 1,531 words; one-shot
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Angst
Pairing: OT5-ish for one reference near the middle.
Summary: Usually, he doesn’t. Usually, he slides on determination the way the others slip on clothing, and he fights his way through fear and worry slick in his throat. He does so often enough that it’s almost a habit, to struggle with the others instead of letting everything he has carry him through life.
Notes: Junsu's fic in When the Enemy is the Self 'verse. It would be better to have read Plunging Downwards, Anodyne, After All, and Regardless beforehand, but it's not necessarily necessary to understand this fic.
Decrescendo
Junsu has escapism refined to a fine art.
Usually, he doesn’t. Usually, he slides on determination the way the others slip on clothing, and he fights his way through fear and worry slick in his throat. He does so often enough that it’s almost a habit, to struggle with the others instead of letting everything he has carry him through life.
But he also knows that given a choice, he would carefully pack up everything and leave. He knows that if not given a choice he would escape.
Slip away like sand trickling through tightly clutched fingers.
*
He sits at the sidelines of life as everything crumbles, fragile structures sculpted from sand crumbling as the sun bakes water away.
Because despite what others think, Junsu understands the difference between watching and doing. He lives in a state of perpetual awareness, yet only dimly aware of what’s going on.
“Junsu,” Jaejoong says one day, voice soft enough that Junsu strains to hear the notes that Jaejoong’s voice is wavering on. “Are you listening to me?”
Junsu’s eyes are closed, since he was tired before Jaejoong started talking. He has two choices: open his eyes and tell Jaejoong yes, or tilt his head away and feign sleep.
“Sleep well,” Jaejoong whispers, and the choice is made for him.
Junsu lets Jaejoong make the choice for him because what else is there for him to do? He closes his eyes and pretends that life is just a dream, and when he opens them again, none of this will have happened.
*
It’s not only Jaejoong, though Jaejoong is the first to touch Junsu gently on the arm and ask for him to listen.
Junsu is good at listening, though he loathes doing so. Listening brings back memories of silence when all he wanted was a voice to sing with.
“Do you think that they’re happy?” Changmin asks out of the blue one day, when Junsu walks past him with music in his ears. It takes Junsu a half-second longer than it usually does to realize that Changmin’s talking to him as he pulls out an earbud to ask Changmin to repeat what he just said.
“Do you think that they’re happy,” Changmin repeats obligingly, and Junsu notices the strange look on his face: confused and upset.
“Who?” Junsu asks.
“Jaejoong. Yoochun. Yunho. Everybody.”
Changmin’s voice cuts through the rise and fall of notes and static.
“I don’t know,” Junsu says, and laughs as he backs away from Changmin, because he doesn’t want to think that the others aren’t. He takes the opportunity to twist words around, and he babbles out an excuse swiftly before he leaves, a single earbud dangling from a plastic-insulated wire.
He slides it back into his ear when he’s all alone in darkness, and music croons in his ear, with him, forever.
*
In the same way Jaejoong and Yunho observe Yoochun, Junsu watches. But he watches in an almost clinical manner, as if he wants to see how Yoochun will collapse. He doesn’t, he quickly reassures himself, but still, he watches Yoochun but does nothing.
“You don’t do anything.” Changmin’s voice cuts through his justifications. “You’re scared.”
Junsu laughs quickly to hide his surprise and reaches for earphones.
“Don’t,” Changmin warns.
Junsu asks, “Do you really think doing anything will help?” before he disappears around a corner with wires trailing from his ears.
*
“Yes,” Yunho tells him, voice thick and tired. He slurs his words, as if he doesn’t know what he’s saying, exhaustion and desperation slung together in one syllable.
Junsu stares at him with pity. Yunho doesn’t understand. He doesn’t understand that wasting so much energy on uncontrollable circumstances leaves not enough energy to grasp the things that matter.
“Do you think that you can actually do anything?” Junsu asks, thumbing up the volume. Yunho’s answer is lost in the sound of music, and Junsu clutches the notes close to him, pitches fluttering through his mind.
He can see Yunho’s mouth moving, words slipping out, but all he can hear is the layered theme of a fugue as he turns the volume higher, higher, higher.
*
When Junsu loses his voice, he prays and begs for it back. The three years he spends searching are years he spends with sheep music under his fingers at night and days spent making do with instruments to sing for him.
It’s not the same, and once his voice is there again he sings whenever he can in a desperate bid to keep it with him.
He remembers what life is like without a voice. He refuses to risk music for anything. He doesn’t think he can live if he loses it again.
*
Jaejoong carefully says nothing to him.
Junsu doesn’t try to talk.
They sit facing each other. Junsu struggles to control the twitching in his fingers-he needs music in his ears and a song in his throat.
Jaejoong doesn’t say anything though. Instead, he just stares at Junsu with almost envy, and Junsu doesn’t know why Jaejoong would envy him.
*
They call for him, and he can almost hear them through the blaring of noise that even now is fading away no matter how often he turns up the volume.
When Changmin’s fit sends bowls clattering and leaves Jaejoong shivering in Yoochun’s embrace, Junsu closes the door to his room and sings his worry out until there’s no more. As Jaejoong and Yoochun tangle together until Junsu doesn’t know who is Jaejoong and who is Yoochun anymore, he studies music until his eyes blur over the black print.
Yunho asks, “Do you know what’s going on?”
“Sure,” Junsu replies flippantly, because he does. Yunho wouldn’t understand, he thinks. He almost offers music on the palm of his hand to try to explain to Yunho that nothing matters except for the rise and fall of melody and harmony.
Instead, he slides earphones back in and falls back into the rondo: the repetition of a theme over and over and over.
“Everything’s going away.”
*
Yoochun’s eyes focus everywhere except for upon Junsu.
Junsu sits and watches, the same way he sits and watches when Jaejoong is sitting across from him.
I’m sorry, he thinks. I didn’t think it would turn out this way.
But now that things are this way, all he can do is clutch the sounds tighter in a desperate hope that maybe they won’t abandon him again.
*
Junsu shakes his head, carefully, so the earphones stay in his ears and don’t slide out. “You can’t help them anymore, Yunho,” he tries, because if Yunho continues with this, then it’s another voice lost.
Yunho’s voice is a thin melody running counterpoint to the music in his ear. “Help me help them then. Together.”
Junsu flinches at the discord, polyrhythm done wrong. He babbles something, and he’s not certain what he’s saying as he backs away, hearing the sounds fade away.
Yunho laughs, and the sound cuts through the cadenza.
Junsu presses the earphones deeper in. He needs this. “I can’t. I can’t. I can’t,” he whimpers, and he can’t hear the music anymore.
*
Before they knew each other personally, they stood bounded by necessity, separate individuals under a unifying goal.
Jaejoong with his too cold eyes, Yoochun wary, Changmin with wisdom beyond his years, and Yunho struggling to keep them together in legato. Different, yet together.
That was the beginning.
For the fleetest of days, weeks, months in their prime, they are one. For the briefest of seconds within those days, they are not five individuals clearly separate, but interchangeable in the rawest meaning of that word. Separate yet connected, the same to anybody who looks from outside, who doesn’t see the way they linger, barely connected through an overhanging goal that melds five similar people into one.
This is how Junsu watches it end, their bond snapping until the five of them separate, prone, voices cut short.
The harsh staccato breaths of individuality without anything to bring them together. Individuality and the separation it entails.
*
Tension fills his gut as he spreads out the papers. Black letters in neat rows. Angular, nothing like the smooth roundness of notes on sheet music-music that Yoochun can’t read, music that only Junsu pours over in a desperate attempt to assure himself that the music is there, around him, even though no matter where he goes he can’t hear the others’ voices harmonizing.
The letters say garble that Junsu doesn’t understand. Changmin would understand, if Junsu showed him these papers. But Junsu doesn’t. Instead, he pours over the terms, and manages to work out what they tell him.
Junsu translates the science into music. They always were interconnected. If the others were here, they would cry: Yoochun with his tears already there, Yunho trying consolation, Jaejoong fighting until he realizes that there’s no use fighting when it’s just them, and Changmin understanding, understanding and understanding.
But they aren’t here.
He sings his grief. Not the love songs that rest on shelves to never be sung to again, but the raw song of grief.
Con forza.
With force.
The way he always sang.
End.
End Notes: Well, this took a while. K thinks it sucks and other fic is better but well, this is better plot wise. It fits better into WES 'verse. I'm content.
Additionally, yes, I am attempting to imply that Junsu doesn't sing at the end of this 'verse.
Want to read more? Click here for rambling about WES 'verse.
Don't want to go through long rambles just to find the two fics that didn't quite make the cut for this 'verse (but have no place outside of it?) Click the WES 'verse tag or here for the Yunho-centric fic and here for the Junsu-centric fic.
Author: virdant
Length: 1,531 words; one-shot
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Angst
Pairing: OT5-ish for one reference near the middle.
Summary: Usually, he doesn’t. Usually, he slides on determination the way the others slip on clothing, and he fights his way through fear and worry slick in his throat. He does so often enough that it’s almost a habit, to struggle with the others instead of letting everything he has carry him through life.
Notes: Junsu's fic in When the Enemy is the Self 'verse. It would be better to have read Plunging Downwards, Anodyne, After All, and Regardless beforehand, but it's not necessarily necessary to understand this fic.
Decrescendo
Junsu has escapism refined to a fine art.
Usually, he doesn’t. Usually, he slides on determination the way the others slip on clothing, and he fights his way through fear and worry slick in his throat. He does so often enough that it’s almost a habit, to struggle with the others instead of letting everything he has carry him through life.
But he also knows that given a choice, he would carefully pack up everything and leave. He knows that if not given a choice he would escape.
Slip away like sand trickling through tightly clutched fingers.
*
He sits at the sidelines of life as everything crumbles, fragile structures sculpted from sand crumbling as the sun bakes water away.
Because despite what others think, Junsu understands the difference between watching and doing. He lives in a state of perpetual awareness, yet only dimly aware of what’s going on.
“Junsu,” Jaejoong says one day, voice soft enough that Junsu strains to hear the notes that Jaejoong’s voice is wavering on. “Are you listening to me?”
Junsu’s eyes are closed, since he was tired before Jaejoong started talking. He has two choices: open his eyes and tell Jaejoong yes, or tilt his head away and feign sleep.
“Sleep well,” Jaejoong whispers, and the choice is made for him.
Junsu lets Jaejoong make the choice for him because what else is there for him to do? He closes his eyes and pretends that life is just a dream, and when he opens them again, none of this will have happened.
*
It’s not only Jaejoong, though Jaejoong is the first to touch Junsu gently on the arm and ask for him to listen.
Junsu is good at listening, though he loathes doing so. Listening brings back memories of silence when all he wanted was a voice to sing with.
“Do you think that they’re happy?” Changmin asks out of the blue one day, when Junsu walks past him with music in his ears. It takes Junsu a half-second longer than it usually does to realize that Changmin’s talking to him as he pulls out an earbud to ask Changmin to repeat what he just said.
“Do you think that they’re happy,” Changmin repeats obligingly, and Junsu notices the strange look on his face: confused and upset.
“Who?” Junsu asks.
“Jaejoong. Yoochun. Yunho. Everybody.”
Changmin’s voice cuts through the rise and fall of notes and static.
“I don’t know,” Junsu says, and laughs as he backs away from Changmin, because he doesn’t want to think that the others aren’t. He takes the opportunity to twist words around, and he babbles out an excuse swiftly before he leaves, a single earbud dangling from a plastic-insulated wire.
He slides it back into his ear when he’s all alone in darkness, and music croons in his ear, with him, forever.
*
In the same way Jaejoong and Yunho observe Yoochun, Junsu watches. But he watches in an almost clinical manner, as if he wants to see how Yoochun will collapse. He doesn’t, he quickly reassures himself, but still, he watches Yoochun but does nothing.
“You don’t do anything.” Changmin’s voice cuts through his justifications. “You’re scared.”
Junsu laughs quickly to hide his surprise and reaches for earphones.
“Don’t,” Changmin warns.
Junsu asks, “Do you really think doing anything will help?” before he disappears around a corner with wires trailing from his ears.
*
“Yes,” Yunho tells him, voice thick and tired. He slurs his words, as if he doesn’t know what he’s saying, exhaustion and desperation slung together in one syllable.
Junsu stares at him with pity. Yunho doesn’t understand. He doesn’t understand that wasting so much energy on uncontrollable circumstances leaves not enough energy to grasp the things that matter.
“Do you think that you can actually do anything?” Junsu asks, thumbing up the volume. Yunho’s answer is lost in the sound of music, and Junsu clutches the notes close to him, pitches fluttering through his mind.
He can see Yunho’s mouth moving, words slipping out, but all he can hear is the layered theme of a fugue as he turns the volume higher, higher, higher.
*
When Junsu loses his voice, he prays and begs for it back. The three years he spends searching are years he spends with sheep music under his fingers at night and days spent making do with instruments to sing for him.
It’s not the same, and once his voice is there again he sings whenever he can in a desperate bid to keep it with him.
He remembers what life is like without a voice. He refuses to risk music for anything. He doesn’t think he can live if he loses it again.
*
Jaejoong carefully says nothing to him.
Junsu doesn’t try to talk.
They sit facing each other. Junsu struggles to control the twitching in his fingers-he needs music in his ears and a song in his throat.
Jaejoong doesn’t say anything though. Instead, he just stares at Junsu with almost envy, and Junsu doesn’t know why Jaejoong would envy him.
*
They call for him, and he can almost hear them through the blaring of noise that even now is fading away no matter how often he turns up the volume.
When Changmin’s fit sends bowls clattering and leaves Jaejoong shivering in Yoochun’s embrace, Junsu closes the door to his room and sings his worry out until there’s no more. As Jaejoong and Yoochun tangle together until Junsu doesn’t know who is Jaejoong and who is Yoochun anymore, he studies music until his eyes blur over the black print.
Yunho asks, “Do you know what’s going on?”
“Sure,” Junsu replies flippantly, because he does. Yunho wouldn’t understand, he thinks. He almost offers music on the palm of his hand to try to explain to Yunho that nothing matters except for the rise and fall of melody and harmony.
Instead, he slides earphones back in and falls back into the rondo: the repetition of a theme over and over and over.
“Everything’s going away.”
*
Yoochun’s eyes focus everywhere except for upon Junsu.
Junsu sits and watches, the same way he sits and watches when Jaejoong is sitting across from him.
I’m sorry, he thinks. I didn’t think it would turn out this way.
But now that things are this way, all he can do is clutch the sounds tighter in a desperate hope that maybe they won’t abandon him again.
*
Junsu shakes his head, carefully, so the earphones stay in his ears and don’t slide out. “You can’t help them anymore, Yunho,” he tries, because if Yunho continues with this, then it’s another voice lost.
Yunho’s voice is a thin melody running counterpoint to the music in his ear. “Help me help them then. Together.”
Junsu flinches at the discord, polyrhythm done wrong. He babbles something, and he’s not certain what he’s saying as he backs away, hearing the sounds fade away.
Yunho laughs, and the sound cuts through the cadenza.
Junsu presses the earphones deeper in. He needs this. “I can’t. I can’t. I can’t,” he whimpers, and he can’t hear the music anymore.
*
Before they knew each other personally, they stood bounded by necessity, separate individuals under a unifying goal.
Jaejoong with his too cold eyes, Yoochun wary, Changmin with wisdom beyond his years, and Yunho struggling to keep them together in legato. Different, yet together.
That was the beginning.
For the fleetest of days, weeks, months in their prime, they are one. For the briefest of seconds within those days, they are not five individuals clearly separate, but interchangeable in the rawest meaning of that word. Separate yet connected, the same to anybody who looks from outside, who doesn’t see the way they linger, barely connected through an overhanging goal that melds five similar people into one.
This is how Junsu watches it end, their bond snapping until the five of them separate, prone, voices cut short.
The harsh staccato breaths of individuality without anything to bring them together. Individuality and the separation it entails.
*
Tension fills his gut as he spreads out the papers. Black letters in neat rows. Angular, nothing like the smooth roundness of notes on sheet music-music that Yoochun can’t read, music that only Junsu pours over in a desperate attempt to assure himself that the music is there, around him, even though no matter where he goes he can’t hear the others’ voices harmonizing.
The letters say garble that Junsu doesn’t understand. Changmin would understand, if Junsu showed him these papers. But Junsu doesn’t. Instead, he pours over the terms, and manages to work out what they tell him.
Junsu translates the science into music. They always were interconnected. If the others were here, they would cry: Yoochun with his tears already there, Yunho trying consolation, Jaejoong fighting until he realizes that there’s no use fighting when it’s just them, and Changmin understanding, understanding and understanding.
But they aren’t here.
He sings his grief. Not the love songs that rest on shelves to never be sung to again, but the raw song of grief.
Con forza.
With force.
The way he always sang.
End.
End Notes: Well, this took a while. K thinks it sucks and other fic is better but well, this is better plot wise. It fits better into WES 'verse. I'm content.
Additionally, yes, I am attempting to imply that Junsu doesn't sing at the end of this 'verse.
Want to read more? Click here for rambling about WES 'verse.
Don't want to go through long rambles just to find the two fics that didn't quite make the cut for this 'verse (but have no place outside of it?) Click the WES 'verse tag or here for the Yunho-centric fic and here for the Junsu-centric fic.