So Much Mine: Section Twenty-One
Section Twenty-One
First off, I would like to thank everyone who has read and also those who have commented. I hope that you have patience with me as I continue this fic. Thank you all for your encouragement and opinions. I do appreciate it all...and I'm sure you're all sick of hearing me say that. But I am. Also, thank you for forwarding your fondness of this fic to others. That is a humbling thing and I am honoured by that gesture. Thank you all very much.
Pairing: JaeHo
Rating: Overall NC-17. This section refers to sexual content.
Sections in the past have been Betaed by: Ranalore. She has also provided many a Yoosu moment in her drooling :) ::::Grins:::
Summary: The beginning of a shifting relationship. Hot Korean boys. Sex. Dancing and some angry words. Not necessarily in that order. Not necessarily in each section.
Previous Sections:
One; Two; Three; Four; Five; Six; Seven; Eight; Nine; Ten; Eleven; Twelve; Thirteen; Fourteen; Fifteen; Sixteen; Seventeen; Eighteen; Nineteen; Twenty
Nothing remained of the day, night pulled tight around the hours left to them. The sun’s rays had long been cooled from the walls of the apartment building, a final sting of winter’s cold etching iced ferns on the broad windows overlooking the street. A single light burned in the living room, turning the red plush of the large sofa to blood, cradling two young men in its cavernous womb.
Yunho lay sprawled on his back, legs stretched down towards the window, holding a supple Jae curved onto his side, the singer’s spine nudged up against the couch’s back cushions. With his knees pulled up, Jae’s weight rested mostly on Yunho’s hip, the leader’s hands roaming over the singer’s curved muscles, stroking at the lower V of his waist. Jae’s breathing was even, his soulful eyes half closed in thought, nibbling at the edge of his thumb as he listened to Yunho’s heartbeat. Resting his cheek on the leader’s chest gave Jaejoong comfort, the slow thumping of a bass beat driving into the depths of his soul, a music he would never tire of. Below his fingers, Yunho’s pulse echoed the rhythm, a brassy counterpoint along the rise of the young man’s neck.
They’d lain that way for nearly an hour now, full from a late dinner, just listening to the apartment noises as the others quieted down, settling into a heavy slumber. Both were tired from the heated discussion between the five, Junsu first suggesting that they move rooms so Jaejoong and Yunho could have privacy. A series of objections rounded hot among them, not the least of which was Jae insisting that no one’s life be turned upside down by his needs and desires. Yunho had rounded on his lover, demanding to know the reasons for turning down the offer, the sloe-eyed singer pulling him aside to whisper in his ear, a hot suggestive sibilance that rounded Yunho’s expression into one of wonder.
He’d changed his mind right then, refusing to switch rooms with the other two, Yunho’s word final in the argument. The leader’s tone would brook no interference with his decision, Junsu’s objections overruled with a single pointed look. Yoochun shot Jaejoong a look of relieved gratitude, following up the mouthed thank you with a long hug, an embrace tight with relief and suppressed affections.
Yunho decided in lying there, that he never had a greater peace than in that moment when Jaejoong padded from the kitchen after putting away the dishes he’d washed. The leader had laid back, his stomach full from rice and hot vegetables, a spicy shrimp stew ladled into the bowl. Junsu just wished them a good night and headed back to the bedrooms, Changmin already asleep, fallen over in exhaustion from the long day. Yoochun wiped down the counter and hugged at his friend’s waist, resting his chin on Jaejoong’s shoulder to whisper a final quiet thank you, leaving the singer alone in the living room.
A pat on his stomach drew Jaejoong over, Yunho watching the long-limbed singer walk over the rug in deliberate, sensual steps. Yunho reached for Jae’s hand, pulling him down on top of him, the singer sliding down around to rest on his side, easing into the space against the sofa back until both of them were comfortable, Jaejoong’s long legs slanted across Yunho’s thighs, bending back to rest on top of his shins.
With the thinness of Jae’s t-shirt, Yunho found he could feel every line of muscle on the singer’s body, even thumbing at the bar piercing Jae’s nipple, the square ends plumping up the nub as it responded to Yunho’s questing fingers. A soft moan breathed out of Jaejoong and into the emptiness in Yunho’s soul, filling the void with a silken wet darkness of promise and need.
“I was afraid to break this moment with talking…” Jae whispered, his teeth nipping at Yunho’s earlobe. “But speaking now, it feels so warm. Like the inside of you when you…gave me yourself on me…in my mouth. Can we lie here and never move?“
“If I could, I would keep us here like this forever. They would find us here when the sun finally burst from the sky.” Yunho sighed, stroking at his lover’s lower back, feeling the heaviness in his groin respond with a wakening desire. His sex pushed up into the curving hollow of Jae’s hip, fitting into the space between them in a lazy furl, resting there in a comfortable pressing desire sated merely by the presence of the young man’s body. “This must be what heaven is like. Just being here with you. And a full stomach. That is just an extra. Dinner was tasty, Boo. You take good care of us.”
“I think we all just needed something in our stomachs besides grief and arguments.” Jaejoong said, pressing his hand on Yunho’s stomach. Nimble fingers moved the fabric of the leader’s shirt into a slow slide, revealing the taut cluster of sinew and muscles under Yunho’s golden skin. Jae traced the line of faint sienna down from his lover’s navel to the slight dip above his groin, running the pad of his finger back and forth before trailing to trace out the curves of Yunho’s stomach muscles.
“It’s nice.” Yunho’s guts clenched at Jae’s touch, his sex insistent in the cupped space. Pushing the rising desire back, the young man lay, one hand raised over his head while the other explored the sublime form against him. “I am glad you told me about Yoochun’s affections. You and I can… make do with our passions. Chunnie-ah is…”
”Clumsy.” Jae supplied the word Yunho was looking for. “I’m not sure if they will ever get around to admitting that they like one another. Or they could just be afraid to venture out in that way. It’s not the easiest thing in the world to do.”
“No, it’s not.” Yunho agreed, his thoughts on the world at large. “What are we going to do? Between us, I mean. I know that… you’re unsure about showing much between us.”
“We can’t share what is between us. Not out in the open.” Jae placed his fingers on Yunho’s mouth, the leader’s stubborn nature rising with words of objection. “Please listen to me, Yunnie-ah. Please.”
“I’ve thought about this. And I want you to know that I’m asking you to be something you are not.” Jaejoong’s eyes wetted under the strain of the truth, a realization of what he would lose should the world’s eyes pried deep into his life. “We are living on the edge of everyone’s eyes and there are people who would see us as…wicked and evil. You had to struggle with that yourself. You can’t deny that.”
“I still struggle with it.” Yunho wisped a kiss into his lover’s hair, pressing his cheek on the young man’s crown. “I’m sorry for that but it’s a struggle. My body and heart want you and my soul weeps because I worry about its sanity. Everything that I’ve heard about being with…another man tells me that this is wrong but I can’t say that I feel anything but joy when I have you against me. I just feel like… I want everyone to know. I don’t want to live a lie.”
“A lie is what we have to live outside of these walls.” Jaejoong tilted his head up, sitting partially erect to stare down into Yunho’s eyes. The leader’s gaze moistened, his hard-pressed stubbornness refusing to give. “We can’t let us destroy what chance the others have to make a successful life. And I can’t allow you to lose everything you’ve worked for just because you think you love me.”
“I don’t think, Jaejoong, I know.” Yunho corrected him coldly, fingers biting into Jae’s shoulder. His tone softened at the flickering grief in his lover’s face. “I don’t know what I have to do to make you believe that. This isn’t something that’s going to go away. Even if I walked away from you right now, I know that you are going to haunt me in my marrow until I go insane. I’m not just with you because it’s something that others would see as wrong and I want to try something forbidden. I’m here because I can’t be anywhere else. Tell me you don’t feel the same way.”
“I feel selfish.” Jaejoong cut back on a sob, catching it deep into his throat. “That’s how I feel.”
Yunho lowered his hand from above his head, rubbing his thumb at the creases of Jae’s eyes, catching the salt from his tears on the pad. Lifting his hand free from Jae’s face, he licked at the wetness, taking Jae’s pain into his mouth before bending his head and kissing the remaining drops from the other’s face. “Don’t cry, Boo. Please. It undoes me.”
“I think I believed that if we… if I could just have you with me that the world would somehow change…and it would be fine between us. We could go outside and hold hands or kiss…and the truth is, that we can’t. I know it’s silly to think that everything would magically change.” Jae’s body hiccupped, grief caught in the gaps of his joy. “I’m a fool sometimes. I think that if things can just go right, nothing will ever touch me wrong again. That’s stupid, I know.”
“It’s not stupid. It’s what I love about you. One of the things that makes you.. someone Changmin admires, I think. There’s so much hope inside of you...like a golden crane skimming over blue waters…something unexpected and hauntingly beautiful.” Yunho contemplated the personality of the young man he cradled in his heart. “You confuse me still. I sometimes think I have you all figured out and then you do something I can’t explain.”
“Sometimes I do things that make you mad.” The singer snorted a chuckle through the remnants of his tears. “That’s probably not going to change.”
“Probably not.” Yunho admitted. “I don’t think I’m ever going to convince you that you are loved…by us or the fans. You seek to fill that hole in your soul, that need for everyone to love you despite that you know there are people who aren’t going to like us…aren’t going to like you. You want to be loved, Jaejoong, and at the same time, erect walls so no one can see inside of you…where the most lovely parts are.”
“If people knew me… knew the inside of me.” Jaejoong shook his head, tucking himself back into Yunho’s shoulder. “They wouldn’t love me. They would think that I was something terrible and sinful that drew you into an evil that is going to eat your soul. There are more of my father out there than there are of Changmin or the others. You can’t tell me otherwise.”
“It doesn’t have to be that way.” Yunho knotted his hand into Jae’s hair, wishing he could ease into the other’s spirit and remove the inky cancerous tangle the world placed there. “The people that we’re around…”
“The people that we are around are different from the world that is looking in, Yunho.” Jaejoong refused to give in, a subtle stubbornness that matched his lover’s. “I’ve seen what happens to men who end up outside of their world, thinking that they are safe because they’ve forgotten how much… they…men like Scarlet and me… are hated.”
“It’s different now.” Yunho replied, his thoughts on how he felt a few months ago. His animosity seemed so foreign, placed in a central pit of unwelcome thought and curdled sour by a need for the young man under his hands. “Korea…is changing. I’ve seen it. You have too.”
“It’s not changing quick enough for us to love one another where others can see, Yunnie-ah.” The singer’s face became distant, a faint old pain rising from the fractured bits of his psyche. “When I lived in Itaewon… before…everything here, I was more than grateful for Scarlet’s protection. She gave me someplace safe to live and the men who court her are always… powerful…so powerful that they don’t care who thinks of them as being Iban-in. For them, they have risen high enough that they can openly be with someone like Scarlet.”
“But for someone who…doesn’t know where he is yet, like I was...” Jaejoong’s features closed, a cracked carapace barely open enough for Yunho to see the young man he loved in its depths. “It was dangerous to walk alone not just because there are men there who want to…take their pleasures on someone smaller but because of the rage they have inside of them for wanting other men.”
“I spent a lot of time at Trance. I either worked or came home, hoping that the walk between the two would be short. I never went out without having others around me because I’ve…seen what happens if someone who is considered… gay is out by himself and the wrong people meet up with him on the street.” Yunho shuddered at the pain in Jae’s voice, holding his lover tight against him, hoping to purge the anguish festering in long-unhealed lesions. “I was working one night when one of the singers was brought in. He’d been coming to work, walking along the sidewalk. It wasn’t even dark yet, the sun was just at the horizon and he… a few men were there, wanting more than just a teasing talk they can get at the club.”
“There was nothing left of his face, I don’t think.” Jae broke, his tears hot and burning. “He wasn’t nice to me. Always pushing me around and taunting me, saying hurtful things just to dig under my skin. I didn’t care for him but when one of the bouncers brought him inside, I couldn’t help but cry.”
“There was so much blood, from everywhere. It was like he was a toy that they could play with until he broke. And then they just tossed him aside and walked away, laughing for their own pleasure. I sat there trying hold his head together, listening to him try to breathe through a nose I couldn’t even find any more.” The singer rubbed his hands together, remembering the hot of the dancer’s blood and the creeping ichors of his skull leaking through Jae’s fingers. “Scarlet… he was there to help me, be safe from something like that happening to me. So I would never end up on that floor, bleeding my life out.”
“I will never let something like that happen to you, Jaejoong.” The leader’s ire peaked, a cresting tsunami of rage at the fear his lover felt inside of him. Jae’s terror was as real to Yunho as the beat of his blood under his skin. “I would kill anyone who came near you. We all would. No one is ever going to touch you like that. We are safer here. I promise you. You will never ever go back to that.”
“I know it’s better because we are safe from that kind of anger…that kind of disgust that those men have inside of themselves because they really long for the touch of a man. I believe that. And I know we live safer in our own little world where so few people can touch us but if someone wanted to harm one of us, it would be easy to do.” Jae said, wrapping his arm around Yunho’s waist, tucking himself deeper into a warm embrace. “That is very much a truth, Yunnie-ah. You’re just too trusting to want to believe that.”
“You are a bit like Changmin yourself. You live in a world where everyone is like you. Demanding but honourable. You would change your mind and then that is how it should be for everyone. Tonight was like that. You wanted to switch rooms until I told you about Yoochun…and Junsu, then because wanting something for yourself would hurt another, you changed your mind. And there was not going to be any argument about it.” Jaejoong’s words drove a nail into Yunho’s heart, a piercing length of cold iron in his coppery blood.
“You would give everything of yourself so others will be comfortable and happy but at the same time, you demand perfection in what we have to give back. It’s what makes you a good leader.” Jaejoong kissed at the skin under his face, a soft wet laving of love. “It’s why we follow you…it’s why I fell in love with you. You make me want to live in your world, even as imperfect as I am, you make me want to be a better person so you would love me more.”
“I can’t love you more.” Yunho cupped Jae’s chin, lifting the other up so he could see down into the pretty face that captured most of his thoughts. “You drive me insane. Nothing you do makes any sense until you give me a small little key to open up a box of your thoughts and then everything is clear. You are like a celebration, hidden presents that I have to find before the wholeness of the gift is complete. I don’t think it’s going to be easy loving you, Kim Jaejoong. I have to be prepared for that.”
“I am asking you to lie…to the world, Yunho.” Jaejoong whispered, turning over until his body pressed tight on his lover’s. They lay there, chest to chest, Jae’s legs straddling Yunho’s hips in a loving embrace. “You have to promise me that what we have…remains between us because I couldn’t bear it if someone hurt you because you love me. Or one of the others. I don’t mind having you only inside of these walls. It means I can have you forever then.”
“I can’t promise that I won’t touch you.” Yunho’s hands cupped at Jaejoong’s legs, running up to cradle the ripeness of his rear. “I can’t keep from touching you. Don’t ask me to.”
“I know.” Jaejoong licked at Yunho’s mouth, savouring the almost kiss when their breaths mingled in the air. “You make me shy. More than normal. And I want you to touch me. I just don’t want to lose you because of it.”
“There’s something that I have to… “ Yunho pulled his head back slightly, meeting Jae’s eyes. “I have to talk to my parents…about us.”
The reality of the Jung family knowing of the intimacy between them frightened Jaejoong, a terror clearly visible on his pretty face. Shaking his head in refusal, Jae objected loudly. “No, you cannot. Your parents…they… Yunho, you can’t do this to them.”
“I won’t lie to the people I love, my Joongie.” The young man stroked at his lover’s neck, running sensitive fingers down the startled singer’s body. Everything was now in place, just at the precipice of having the world at his fingertips, Yunho knew in his heart that in order to plummet into the happiness just inside of his reach, he would have to solidify who he was, opening himself up to a pain that Jaejoong knew only too well. “If my parents can’t …accept me for loving you…then I will be fine with that. I will have you to keep my heart warm.”
“You are their only son, Yunnie-ah.” Jaejoong entreated. “And their eldest. It would…break them apart. You would give them that much pain?”
“No, I would give them that much joy.” Yunho captured Jaejoong’s mouth with his own, suckling at the sorrow the other held in his heart. The kiss lasted but a mere moment of forever, slashing through the other’s words to silence Jae’s uncertainties. “They will love the you that is inside of the distant Jaejoong you show them. I know they will. It will be a shock, I know this. I’ve never… wanted another man. I’ve never wanted anyone like I want you.”
“There is nothing that will keep me from being besides you, Kim Jaejoong.” Yunho insisted, taking another taste of the young man into his mouth. “There are razors in my heart that grow sharp when I think of my life without you. I ache when I see how beautiful you are with tears on your face, and then I all I can think of is how you taste then, the salt on your skin so much like the seed that you spilled into my hand tonight.”
“I’ll never find someone else that I could love as much as I love you.” Yunho whispered against his lover’s mouth, hoping the words traveled down into Jae’s body and lodged into the broken pieces of the singer’s battered heart. “If you knew how much I loved you, you would run so far from the fear of my obsession. And I would have to hunt you down and drag you back. My parents… everyone who says they love me should know how I feel about you. Know of that power you have over me and how much it weakens me…how much it strengthens me.”
“I don’t want to be the reason for your parents to turn away from you.” Jaejoong wept, his tears falling silently into Yunho’s cupped hand.
“You are going to be the reason that I live. That I love. My parents will find the happiness in that and if not, then I will do it for them.” Yunho replied, licking at the other’s face, wiping the trails of silver pain from Jae’s smooth skin. “I would have you laugh as much as you cry. I want to taste that joy on my tongue. There’s nothing more I want than to swallow your words into me… I want to be there pressed into you when you tell me that you love me, your body clenching under mine. I want to be able to see you when you are asleep, your dreams filled with me instead of the blood of your pain. That’s going to be our life, Joongie-ah. That is what I promise to give you.”
First off, I would like to thank everyone who has read and also those who have commented. I hope that you have patience with me as I continue this fic. Thank you all for your encouragement and opinions. I do appreciate it all...and I'm sure you're all sick of hearing me say that. But I am. Also, thank you for forwarding your fondness of this fic to others. That is a humbling thing and I am honoured by that gesture. Thank you all very much.
Pairing: JaeHo
Rating: Overall NC-17. This section refers to sexual content.
Sections in the past have been Betaed by: Ranalore. She has also provided many a Yoosu moment in her drooling :) ::::Grins:::
Summary: The beginning of a shifting relationship. Hot Korean boys. Sex. Dancing and some angry words. Not necessarily in that order. Not necessarily in each section.
Previous Sections:
One; Two; Three; Four; Five; Six; Seven; Eight; Nine; Ten; Eleven; Twelve; Thirteen; Fourteen; Fifteen; Sixteen; Seventeen; Eighteen; Nineteen; Twenty
Nothing remained of the day, night pulled tight around the hours left to them. The sun’s rays had long been cooled from the walls of the apartment building, a final sting of winter’s cold etching iced ferns on the broad windows overlooking the street. A single light burned in the living room, turning the red plush of the large sofa to blood, cradling two young men in its cavernous womb.
Yunho lay sprawled on his back, legs stretched down towards the window, holding a supple Jae curved onto his side, the singer’s spine nudged up against the couch’s back cushions. With his knees pulled up, Jae’s weight rested mostly on Yunho’s hip, the leader’s hands roaming over the singer’s curved muscles, stroking at the lower V of his waist. Jae’s breathing was even, his soulful eyes half closed in thought, nibbling at the edge of his thumb as he listened to Yunho’s heartbeat. Resting his cheek on the leader’s chest gave Jaejoong comfort, the slow thumping of a bass beat driving into the depths of his soul, a music he would never tire of. Below his fingers, Yunho’s pulse echoed the rhythm, a brassy counterpoint along the rise of the young man’s neck.
They’d lain that way for nearly an hour now, full from a late dinner, just listening to the apartment noises as the others quieted down, settling into a heavy slumber. Both were tired from the heated discussion between the five, Junsu first suggesting that they move rooms so Jaejoong and Yunho could have privacy. A series of objections rounded hot among them, not the least of which was Jae insisting that no one’s life be turned upside down by his needs and desires. Yunho had rounded on his lover, demanding to know the reasons for turning down the offer, the sloe-eyed singer pulling him aside to whisper in his ear, a hot suggestive sibilance that rounded Yunho’s expression into one of wonder.
He’d changed his mind right then, refusing to switch rooms with the other two, Yunho’s word final in the argument. The leader’s tone would brook no interference with his decision, Junsu’s objections overruled with a single pointed look. Yoochun shot Jaejoong a look of relieved gratitude, following up the mouthed thank you with a long hug, an embrace tight with relief and suppressed affections.
Yunho decided in lying there, that he never had a greater peace than in that moment when Jaejoong padded from the kitchen after putting away the dishes he’d washed. The leader had laid back, his stomach full from rice and hot vegetables, a spicy shrimp stew ladled into the bowl. Junsu just wished them a good night and headed back to the bedrooms, Changmin already asleep, fallen over in exhaustion from the long day. Yoochun wiped down the counter and hugged at his friend’s waist, resting his chin on Jaejoong’s shoulder to whisper a final quiet thank you, leaving the singer alone in the living room.
A pat on his stomach drew Jaejoong over, Yunho watching the long-limbed singer walk over the rug in deliberate, sensual steps. Yunho reached for Jae’s hand, pulling him down on top of him, the singer sliding down around to rest on his side, easing into the space against the sofa back until both of them were comfortable, Jaejoong’s long legs slanted across Yunho’s thighs, bending back to rest on top of his shins.
With the thinness of Jae’s t-shirt, Yunho found he could feel every line of muscle on the singer’s body, even thumbing at the bar piercing Jae’s nipple, the square ends plumping up the nub as it responded to Yunho’s questing fingers. A soft moan breathed out of Jaejoong and into the emptiness in Yunho’s soul, filling the void with a silken wet darkness of promise and need.
“I was afraid to break this moment with talking…” Jae whispered, his teeth nipping at Yunho’s earlobe. “But speaking now, it feels so warm. Like the inside of you when you…gave me yourself on me…in my mouth. Can we lie here and never move?“
“If I could, I would keep us here like this forever. They would find us here when the sun finally burst from the sky.” Yunho sighed, stroking at his lover’s lower back, feeling the heaviness in his groin respond with a wakening desire. His sex pushed up into the curving hollow of Jae’s hip, fitting into the space between them in a lazy furl, resting there in a comfortable pressing desire sated merely by the presence of the young man’s body. “This must be what heaven is like. Just being here with you. And a full stomach. That is just an extra. Dinner was tasty, Boo. You take good care of us.”
“I think we all just needed something in our stomachs besides grief and arguments.” Jaejoong said, pressing his hand on Yunho’s stomach. Nimble fingers moved the fabric of the leader’s shirt into a slow slide, revealing the taut cluster of sinew and muscles under Yunho’s golden skin. Jae traced the line of faint sienna down from his lover’s navel to the slight dip above his groin, running the pad of his finger back and forth before trailing to trace out the curves of Yunho’s stomach muscles.
“It’s nice.” Yunho’s guts clenched at Jae’s touch, his sex insistent in the cupped space. Pushing the rising desire back, the young man lay, one hand raised over his head while the other explored the sublime form against him. “I am glad you told me about Yoochun’s affections. You and I can… make do with our passions. Chunnie-ah is…”
”Clumsy.” Jae supplied the word Yunho was looking for. “I’m not sure if they will ever get around to admitting that they like one another. Or they could just be afraid to venture out in that way. It’s not the easiest thing in the world to do.”
“No, it’s not.” Yunho agreed, his thoughts on the world at large. “What are we going to do? Between us, I mean. I know that… you’re unsure about showing much between us.”
“We can’t share what is between us. Not out in the open.” Jae placed his fingers on Yunho’s mouth, the leader’s stubborn nature rising with words of objection. “Please listen to me, Yunnie-ah. Please.”
“I’ve thought about this. And I want you to know that I’m asking you to be something you are not.” Jaejoong’s eyes wetted under the strain of the truth, a realization of what he would lose should the world’s eyes pried deep into his life. “We are living on the edge of everyone’s eyes and there are people who would see us as…wicked and evil. You had to struggle with that yourself. You can’t deny that.”
“I still struggle with it.” Yunho wisped a kiss into his lover’s hair, pressing his cheek on the young man’s crown. “I’m sorry for that but it’s a struggle. My body and heart want you and my soul weeps because I worry about its sanity. Everything that I’ve heard about being with…another man tells me that this is wrong but I can’t say that I feel anything but joy when I have you against me. I just feel like… I want everyone to know. I don’t want to live a lie.”
“A lie is what we have to live outside of these walls.” Jaejoong tilted his head up, sitting partially erect to stare down into Yunho’s eyes. The leader’s gaze moistened, his hard-pressed stubbornness refusing to give. “We can’t let us destroy what chance the others have to make a successful life. And I can’t allow you to lose everything you’ve worked for just because you think you love me.”
“I don’t think, Jaejoong, I know.” Yunho corrected him coldly, fingers biting into Jae’s shoulder. His tone softened at the flickering grief in his lover’s face. “I don’t know what I have to do to make you believe that. This isn’t something that’s going to go away. Even if I walked away from you right now, I know that you are going to haunt me in my marrow until I go insane. I’m not just with you because it’s something that others would see as wrong and I want to try something forbidden. I’m here because I can’t be anywhere else. Tell me you don’t feel the same way.”
“I feel selfish.” Jaejoong cut back on a sob, catching it deep into his throat. “That’s how I feel.”
Yunho lowered his hand from above his head, rubbing his thumb at the creases of Jae’s eyes, catching the salt from his tears on the pad. Lifting his hand free from Jae’s face, he licked at the wetness, taking Jae’s pain into his mouth before bending his head and kissing the remaining drops from the other’s face. “Don’t cry, Boo. Please. It undoes me.”
“I think I believed that if we… if I could just have you with me that the world would somehow change…and it would be fine between us. We could go outside and hold hands or kiss…and the truth is, that we can’t. I know it’s silly to think that everything would magically change.” Jae’s body hiccupped, grief caught in the gaps of his joy. “I’m a fool sometimes. I think that if things can just go right, nothing will ever touch me wrong again. That’s stupid, I know.”
“It’s not stupid. It’s what I love about you. One of the things that makes you.. someone Changmin admires, I think. There’s so much hope inside of you...like a golden crane skimming over blue waters…something unexpected and hauntingly beautiful.” Yunho contemplated the personality of the young man he cradled in his heart. “You confuse me still. I sometimes think I have you all figured out and then you do something I can’t explain.”
“Sometimes I do things that make you mad.” The singer snorted a chuckle through the remnants of his tears. “That’s probably not going to change.”
“Probably not.” Yunho admitted. “I don’t think I’m ever going to convince you that you are loved…by us or the fans. You seek to fill that hole in your soul, that need for everyone to love you despite that you know there are people who aren’t going to like us…aren’t going to like you. You want to be loved, Jaejoong, and at the same time, erect walls so no one can see inside of you…where the most lovely parts are.”
“If people knew me… knew the inside of me.” Jaejoong shook his head, tucking himself back into Yunho’s shoulder. “They wouldn’t love me. They would think that I was something terrible and sinful that drew you into an evil that is going to eat your soul. There are more of my father out there than there are of Changmin or the others. You can’t tell me otherwise.”
“It doesn’t have to be that way.” Yunho knotted his hand into Jae’s hair, wishing he could ease into the other’s spirit and remove the inky cancerous tangle the world placed there. “The people that we’re around…”
“The people that we are around are different from the world that is looking in, Yunho.” Jaejoong refused to give in, a subtle stubbornness that matched his lover’s. “I’ve seen what happens to men who end up outside of their world, thinking that they are safe because they’ve forgotten how much… they…men like Scarlet and me… are hated.”
“It’s different now.” Yunho replied, his thoughts on how he felt a few months ago. His animosity seemed so foreign, placed in a central pit of unwelcome thought and curdled sour by a need for the young man under his hands. “Korea…is changing. I’ve seen it. You have too.”
“It’s not changing quick enough for us to love one another where others can see, Yunnie-ah.” The singer’s face became distant, a faint old pain rising from the fractured bits of his psyche. “When I lived in Itaewon… before…everything here, I was more than grateful for Scarlet’s protection. She gave me someplace safe to live and the men who court her are always… powerful…so powerful that they don’t care who thinks of them as being Iban-in. For them, they have risen high enough that they can openly be with someone like Scarlet.”
“But for someone who…doesn’t know where he is yet, like I was...” Jaejoong’s features closed, a cracked carapace barely open enough for Yunho to see the young man he loved in its depths. “It was dangerous to walk alone not just because there are men there who want to…take their pleasures on someone smaller but because of the rage they have inside of them for wanting other men.”
“I spent a lot of time at Trance. I either worked or came home, hoping that the walk between the two would be short. I never went out without having others around me because I’ve…seen what happens if someone who is considered… gay is out by himself and the wrong people meet up with him on the street.” Yunho shuddered at the pain in Jae’s voice, holding his lover tight against him, hoping to purge the anguish festering in long-unhealed lesions. “I was working one night when one of the singers was brought in. He’d been coming to work, walking along the sidewalk. It wasn’t even dark yet, the sun was just at the horizon and he… a few men were there, wanting more than just a teasing talk they can get at the club.”
“There was nothing left of his face, I don’t think.” Jae broke, his tears hot and burning. “He wasn’t nice to me. Always pushing me around and taunting me, saying hurtful things just to dig under my skin. I didn’t care for him but when one of the bouncers brought him inside, I couldn’t help but cry.”
“There was so much blood, from everywhere. It was like he was a toy that they could play with until he broke. And then they just tossed him aside and walked away, laughing for their own pleasure. I sat there trying hold his head together, listening to him try to breathe through a nose I couldn’t even find any more.” The singer rubbed his hands together, remembering the hot of the dancer’s blood and the creeping ichors of his skull leaking through Jae’s fingers. “Scarlet… he was there to help me, be safe from something like that happening to me. So I would never end up on that floor, bleeding my life out.”
“I will never let something like that happen to you, Jaejoong.” The leader’s ire peaked, a cresting tsunami of rage at the fear his lover felt inside of him. Jae’s terror was as real to Yunho as the beat of his blood under his skin. “I would kill anyone who came near you. We all would. No one is ever going to touch you like that. We are safer here. I promise you. You will never ever go back to that.”
“I know it’s better because we are safe from that kind of anger…that kind of disgust that those men have inside of themselves because they really long for the touch of a man. I believe that. And I know we live safer in our own little world where so few people can touch us but if someone wanted to harm one of us, it would be easy to do.” Jae said, wrapping his arm around Yunho’s waist, tucking himself deeper into a warm embrace. “That is very much a truth, Yunnie-ah. You’re just too trusting to want to believe that.”
“You are a bit like Changmin yourself. You live in a world where everyone is like you. Demanding but honourable. You would change your mind and then that is how it should be for everyone. Tonight was like that. You wanted to switch rooms until I told you about Yoochun…and Junsu, then because wanting something for yourself would hurt another, you changed your mind. And there was not going to be any argument about it.” Jaejoong’s words drove a nail into Yunho’s heart, a piercing length of cold iron in his coppery blood.
“You would give everything of yourself so others will be comfortable and happy but at the same time, you demand perfection in what we have to give back. It’s what makes you a good leader.” Jaejoong kissed at the skin under his face, a soft wet laving of love. “It’s why we follow you…it’s why I fell in love with you. You make me want to live in your world, even as imperfect as I am, you make me want to be a better person so you would love me more.”
“I can’t love you more.” Yunho cupped Jae’s chin, lifting the other up so he could see down into the pretty face that captured most of his thoughts. “You drive me insane. Nothing you do makes any sense until you give me a small little key to open up a box of your thoughts and then everything is clear. You are like a celebration, hidden presents that I have to find before the wholeness of the gift is complete. I don’t think it’s going to be easy loving you, Kim Jaejoong. I have to be prepared for that.”
“I am asking you to lie…to the world, Yunho.” Jaejoong whispered, turning over until his body pressed tight on his lover’s. They lay there, chest to chest, Jae’s legs straddling Yunho’s hips in a loving embrace. “You have to promise me that what we have…remains between us because I couldn’t bear it if someone hurt you because you love me. Or one of the others. I don’t mind having you only inside of these walls. It means I can have you forever then.”
“I can’t promise that I won’t touch you.” Yunho’s hands cupped at Jaejoong’s legs, running up to cradle the ripeness of his rear. “I can’t keep from touching you. Don’t ask me to.”
“I know.” Jaejoong licked at Yunho’s mouth, savouring the almost kiss when their breaths mingled in the air. “You make me shy. More than normal. And I want you to touch me. I just don’t want to lose you because of it.”
“There’s something that I have to… “ Yunho pulled his head back slightly, meeting Jae’s eyes. “I have to talk to my parents…about us.”
The reality of the Jung family knowing of the intimacy between them frightened Jaejoong, a terror clearly visible on his pretty face. Shaking his head in refusal, Jae objected loudly. “No, you cannot. Your parents…they… Yunho, you can’t do this to them.”
“I won’t lie to the people I love, my Joongie.” The young man stroked at his lover’s neck, running sensitive fingers down the startled singer’s body. Everything was now in place, just at the precipice of having the world at his fingertips, Yunho knew in his heart that in order to plummet into the happiness just inside of his reach, he would have to solidify who he was, opening himself up to a pain that Jaejoong knew only too well. “If my parents can’t …accept me for loving you…then I will be fine with that. I will have you to keep my heart warm.”
“You are their only son, Yunnie-ah.” Jaejoong entreated. “And their eldest. It would…break them apart. You would give them that much pain?”
“No, I would give them that much joy.” Yunho captured Jaejoong’s mouth with his own, suckling at the sorrow the other held in his heart. The kiss lasted but a mere moment of forever, slashing through the other’s words to silence Jae’s uncertainties. “They will love the you that is inside of the distant Jaejoong you show them. I know they will. It will be a shock, I know this. I’ve never… wanted another man. I’ve never wanted anyone like I want you.”
“There is nothing that will keep me from being besides you, Kim Jaejoong.” Yunho insisted, taking another taste of the young man into his mouth. “There are razors in my heart that grow sharp when I think of my life without you. I ache when I see how beautiful you are with tears on your face, and then I all I can think of is how you taste then, the salt on your skin so much like the seed that you spilled into my hand tonight.”
“I’ll never find someone else that I could love as much as I love you.” Yunho whispered against his lover’s mouth, hoping the words traveled down into Jae’s body and lodged into the broken pieces of the singer’s battered heart. “If you knew how much I loved you, you would run so far from the fear of my obsession. And I would have to hunt you down and drag you back. My parents… everyone who says they love me should know how I feel about you. Know of that power you have over me and how much it weakens me…how much it strengthens me.”
“I don’t want to be the reason for your parents to turn away from you.” Jaejoong wept, his tears falling silently into Yunho’s cupped hand.
“You are going to be the reason that I live. That I love. My parents will find the happiness in that and if not, then I will do it for them.” Yunho replied, licking at the other’s face, wiping the trails of silver pain from Jae’s smooth skin. “I would have you laugh as much as you cry. I want to taste that joy on my tongue. There’s nothing more I want than to swallow your words into me… I want to be there pressed into you when you tell me that you love me, your body clenching under mine. I want to be able to see you when you are asleep, your dreams filled with me instead of the blood of your pain. That’s going to be our life, Joongie-ah. That is what I promise to give you.”