yuxo
in
_starcandy
[Fic] Send a Heartbeat to
Title: Send a Heartbeat to
Author: yuxo
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: JaeMin, HoMin
Summary: I didn't realize you were unhappy until I saw you happy.
A/N: for procreational . hi, babydoll. *points to icon* as my personal asldjsdjwela amazing icon slave, clare, i love you forever. i hope this doesn't fail entirely. :X sorry about the butchering of your prompt. :'D ♥
---
The thing with Jaejoong is: he can just be himself and have everyone (fall in) love (with) him.
---
Yunho is his best friend. They’ve been side by side since the very beginning of Dong Bang Shin Ki and they’ve lost battles together, won wars together, cried and bled and still fight to this day against everything that stands in their way. Junsu is Yunho’s oldest friend but Jaejoong is his best friend and that’s always counted for something different.
Changmin is his precious dongsaeng.
Thought he was an angel, Yunho had said to him all those years ago, after the first time they all met and shook hands awkwardly in a little office.
He is one, Jaejoong had never said back.
He sees blatant hero worship in Changmin’s gaze every time the youngest turns to look at their leader. Would it be the same, he wonders, if he had become leader instead, as tradition goes, as age dictates?
But on days when Changmin’s lonely or tired or just in dire need of a hug, it’s Jaejoong’s arms that are always open, Jaejoong’s shoulder that he cries on. It can’t be that great to be leader, Jaejoong figures; hero worship is nice and all, but nobody will choose a detached warmth for the sake of business over true affection for the sake of love.
It takes little over a year for Changmin to trip over the words and Jaejoong to kiss him after the third attempt of hyung, I-I li- I li- I l-like y-.
In the end, he wins an angel and loses nothing for it, and he doesn’t think he’s been happier.
---
The thing with Jaejoong is: he gives and gives and gives (his love) and he’s forgotten how to receive (it).
---
The days are too busy for them to keep track of one by one. Jaejoong marks the passage of time into sections of before and after certain events that are worth remembering.
Dong Bang Shin Ki go to Japan for the first time half a year after Jaejoong takes Changmin’s first kiss. The second, third, tenth, nth kiss is accompanied by vague memories of the day it happened, because Jaejoong keeps things like this close to his heart to warm him and keep him safe when things are a little too hard to bear.
Their forty-sixth kiss happens an hour before he’s told his best friend’s been poisoned. He’s bone weary after he visits Yunho in the hospital and rants in a muted voice the entire time how he’s going to find that girl and make her take a dose of her own medicine. Yunho laughs and hugs him from the hospital bed, telling him to go home and get some rest, and that yes, three bowls of soup and two day’s worth of his favourites are quite enough to get him through the night.
He thinks nothing of it when Changmin chooses to stay, pouting when glaring at the nurses don’t get him anywhere, sitting down with pleased finality next to Yunho’s bed, smiling as much as circumstances allow him to.
Jaejoong goes home after the forty-seventh kiss, a quick peck on the lips, a distracted smile from the both of them.
---
The thing with Jaejoong is: despite every part of his logical being screaming at him to grow some sense, he is and always will make all the life choices of a hopeless romantic.
---
For a time, Changmin doesn’t interact with Yunho very much at all.
Jaejoong can tell that Yunho’s more than a little and even more than a lot upset about it, but their leader doesn’t like it when people know he’s not perfect in all senses of the word and hides it the best he can.
He doesn’t know why, but he does know that he and Changmin have sex for the first time in Paris, and it’s kind of extremely awkward, over far too quickly, and beautiful in its own right.
Changmin punches him lightly on the arm afterwards, something callous falling from his lips, but the bite’s taken out of the words by the fond smile on his face. Once the youngest falls asleep, curled into a big ball under the blankets of their hotel bed, Jaejoong wanders onto the balcony and takes a deep breath of Parisian night air.
The lights below twinkle like stars and they’re just as bright as the ones he sees when he turns his face up to smile at the sky.
“Je t’aime,” he says, tilting his head to the side and laughing. Changmin’s still in the same position when he turns around to look through the glass doors.
“Bonjour. Pouvez-vous m’aider?” Jaejoong asks, “je t’aime.”
---
It’s a dark and stormy night.
It’s a dark and stormy night when Yoochun tries to beat Jaejoong in an arm wrestle, lord knows why, when a loud thud reverberates through the apartment, prompting five heads to snap up in alarm.
“What was that?” Junsu asks from the workroom.
“Did someone try to break in?” Yunho whispers, mind drifting to the croquet mallet stuffed away in Changmin’s closet.
Yoochun grabs Jaejoong’s hand and tells the both of them that he’s not afraid, really. “I bet it was a flying squirrel or something.”
“Guys!” Changmin calls from his room, a note of panic running through his voice.
By the time they all rush in, Changmin’s no longer afraid-in fact, he’s being attacked in the form of a huge hug, stunned expression settled on his face.
“Changmin?” Jaejoong asks, blinking.
“Yeah?” Two voices reply, one coming out with much more misery than the other, one sounding completely flabbergasted.
“…Who are you?” Yunho asks the stranger.
The figure sniffs and turns around slowly.
“Changmin. I’m Changmin.”
---
When they wake up the next day, there are four Changmins wandering around the kitchen.
“Well, damn,” Jaejoong says.
“Better get cooking now,” Junsu mutters, the epitome of calm, going to the couch and lying down, counting backwards from three hundred with his hands covering his face.
“Tell me more,” Yoochun nods sympathetically, soothing the back of a crying Changmin who’s positively sobbing into the edge of the kitchen table.
“Junsu-hyung!” Changmin chirps, jumping on Junsu’s unsuspecting figure atop the couch, “Come play a video game with me!”
“Yunho-hyung,” Changmin says, staring at Changmin, pulling at Yunho’s sleeve. “I don’t thin-”
“Hey, sexy,” Changmin whispers, though his eyes are sad, yanking Yunho away from Changmin’s grasp, pushing him back against a counter, “I’m Changmin, but you can call me tonight.”
“Changmin!” Jaejoong, Yoochun, and Junsu yell, scandalized at the blatant flirting going on.
“I need to talk to you,” Changmin chokes, eyes open too wide to be healthy, grabbing Jaejoong by the hand and running for their room.
“You’re my Changmin, right?” Jaejoong asks once the door’s closed, hesitation written in every line of his body, raising an eyebrow in wariness.
He sees Changmin falter for a second, gaze dropping to the ground. “Y-yeah, it’s…me,” he says eventually to his feet before looking back up. “Look, I don’t know what’s going on, but-”
“There are a lot of you.”
“…Yes, thank you, captain obvious, for that enlightening observation.”
Jaejoong punches him six times on the bicep.
“Okay, okay, hyung, I get it! I’m sorry.” He raises his hands in surrender. “I’m just weirded out, that’s all. You didn’t like…put a curse on me or anything, right?”
“Why would I do that?” Jaejoong demands, “Besides! Now I have no way of telling all of you apart!”
A too-long moment of silence drapes over them and Jaejoong isn’t sure if he should be worried or not. He can practically see Changmin turning that statement over in his head.
“Listen-”
“I think we should go figure out what’s going on,” Changmin interrupts, taking Jaejoong’s hand and pulling him out into the hallway again.
---
The thing with Jaejoong is: he misjudges circumstances a lot of the time because he’s too preoccupied with believing in the best.
---
He probably should’ve suspected something the first time Changmin crawls into his bed and says, “But you were first” for no reason at all. He would’ve asked if the youngest hadn’t suddenly pinned him to the bed with a fierce kiss, and everything else just failed to matter from that point.
It feels like something off, but with a grand total of four Changmins running around the apartment, everything feels off.
Jaejoong’s not sure how he feels about seeing his lover constantly attached to each of his bandmates.
Junsu’s always preoccupied with playing one game or another with Changmin. They come up with ridiculous penalty games and Yunho almost dies one night because he’s too torn between crying with laughter and yelling in outrage when he walks through the door to find both of them near-naked and doing ridiculous poses in front of the window.
Yoochun spends all his time comforting Changmin. It’s now considered normal to see them hugging each other on the couch, whispering quietly between the two of them, glancing around occasionally to make sure nobody’s listening.
Jaejoong’s okay with it when he walks into the workroom one day and finds Changmin seated in Yunho’s lap, kissing him gently, arms resting on his shoulders, a faint blush staining his cheeks.
He’s okay with it because Changmin’s hand in his tightens and Jaejoong gently closes the door, going back to his room, lets Changmin kiss his worries away.
Changmin tastes like the past.
---
The thing with Jaejoong is: he’s completely selfless (for everyone else’s sake), and believes in letting go of things when they’re still beautiful.
---
“Changmin-ah,” Jaejoong whispers in the night, tucking a damp strand of hair behind the younger’s ear as they lie together, “I want you to know something.”
“Yeah?” Changmin replies, eyes closed, voice thick with sleepiness.
“I love you.”
“I know.”
Jaejoong nods to himself. “Okay.”
Before he’s completely under, he swears he hears Changmin say “I loved you too,” but he’s asleep by the time his brain registers it.
When he wakes up, the bed is empty.
When he walks out to the living room, Junsu is collapsed half on and half off the couch by himself, an indent of a body next to him.
When he turns into the kitchen, his soulmate is drooling slightly onto the kitchen table, an empty chair next to him.
When he opens the door to Yunho’s room, he finds his best friend curled against an angel he fell in love with years ago. He looks peaceful and well-rested and happy in a way he seldom truly is and Jaejoong’s stomach drops out of his toes.
And he sees Changmin, arm wrapped around Yunho’s waist, a comfortable smile on his face even in slumber.
Jaejoong walks back out with tears in his eyes and a choking ache in his chest and no surprise in his heart, no surprise at all, and he wonders if maybe he knew all along.
---
The thing with Jaejoong is: he likes to remember broken things (like love) at their best instead of insisting on piecing them back together and forever be reminded by the cracks of what was lost.
---
Though Jaejoong approaches it calmly and with a smile on his face, Changmin still ends up choking on sobs and apologies and hides himself away for an entire week. Jaejoong isn’t mad, really just sad about the entire ordeal, and has to keep himself from crying along with the youngest as they talk through what happened.
Changmin fell in love, that’s what happened.
But you were first, Changmin whispers with vehemence through the tears, fierce determination in his eyes as he holds Jaejoong’s gaze, proud truth in his voice, Jaejoong-ah, I loved you first.
It means something to him. Jaejoong knows he’s an entire slew of firsts for Changmin, a few too private to mention, but in the end, it doesn’t leave him with much. Changmin isn’t his first love and Changmin isn’t his first real heartache but the youngest certainly comes close.
Yunho approaches him two days later with guilt written all over his face and Jaejoong’s heart flips a little to see his best friend so upset with himself.
“Sorry, sorry sorry sorry JaeJae I’m so sorry I’m sorry,” Yunho repeats again and again, but he’s not going to let Changmin go, anyone can see that.
There are certain things you can’t argue with. Junsu when he’s trying to get twenty-three extra seconds of sleep. Yoochun when he’s insistent on meeting up with Yoohwan. Changmin when he sees any one of his bandmates taking less than stellar care of themselves and feels the need to interfere. Yunho when he’s pushed to the point of doing what’s best for all of them, not what management tells them to do.
And you just can’t argue with love.
“I forgive you,” Jaejoong smiles back, and he does.
He can see why anyone would fall in love with Jung Yunho. Given the opportunity and long enough ago, he would’ve done the same thing.
---
The thing with Jaejoong is: he moves on and he loves and loves and loves because he can (and he only deserves everything in the world).
---
Somehow, through the use of his damned persistent wiles, Yoochun manages to get the gang together for a night out on the town. And by a night out on the town, he means ninja their way down the street until they find a relatively unknown karaoke bar and getting smashed out of their minds. Too many bottles of soju later, Jaejoong sits in mild drunken alarm as the entire story pours out of his mouth.
“Okay, I see it as…a problem with his tear ducts,” Hyunjoong slurs about Yoochun’s Changmin.
“So not,” Yoochun snorts, tipping his glass back, grimacing at the burn down his throat.
Jaejoong blinks with effort and feels his face. “Is my face on fire? It’s really hot.”
“Just like you,” Seunghyun leers.
“Shut up,” Jaejoong says kindly, taking another shot.
“I can’t believe you didn’t get them to grovel at your feet,” Seunghyun adds, “I know you love them and all, but your best friend and your boyfriend? That just doesn’t seem right.”
“They grovelled all on their own,” Yoochun coughs as vodka goes down the wrong way.
“So who were they?” Hyunjoong interrupts, waving his glass back and forth unsteadily, “why would a bunch of Changmins just appear?”
Jaejoong smiles gently to himself. He’s thought this one over time and time again and he thinks he’s pretty much got it figured out.
“I named them all!” Yoochun nearly giggles as he picks up the karaoke mic, blowing into it and humming an off-tune, drunken chorus of Love in the Ice.
“Let’s hear it!”
“I named my buddy Inconsolable Grief. And Junsu-babe got Repressed Childishness. And...Jaejoongie got…well…”
“First Love,” Jaejoong mutters loud enough for them to hear.
Yoochun nods, perhaps more sober than he should be able to. “And leader-sshi had Changmin. Has. Changmin.” He shoots a glance at Jaejoong.
“Man, that sucks,” Seunghyun says quietly after a beat of silence.
“Next round on me!” Hyunjoong shouts, standing up and wobbling out the door to order more alcohol for the bunch of them.
“You okay?” Yoochun asks quietly, taking Jaejoong’s hand and lacing their fingers together.
Jaejoong smiles to himself, picking up a microphone and closing his eyes. He thinks of Changmin’s smiles to Yunho when he thinks nobody’s looking, their shy kisses not quite hidden behind the bathroom door, the way they hold hands in the van and Yunho will brush the youngest’s cheek with his knuckles and something akin to enthralled worship in his face.
He thinks of how Changmin never looked so in love, how defiant he looks sometimes, almost as if daring the world to challenge what he feels for Yunho and Yunho alone.
How Changmin’s never looked like that for him before.
“You know what?” he says to Yoochun, smiling, feeling freer than he has in a while.
In the end, he loses an angel but keeps his best friend, gains another one, and knows in his heart it can’t be any other way.
“I think I will be.”
---
I didn't realize you were unhappy until I saw you happy.
---
HIDES IN A CORNER. I'M SORRY. IT'S MY FIRST JAEMIN. D: I'M SORRY IT'S NOT A HAPPILY EVER AFTER? ......I'M SORRY MY HOMIN BIAS COMPLETELY LEAKED THROUGH!?!?!?!? DDDDD: ;A;
three trillion thanks to ta_knee_shuh for being my personal information ball and listening to me bitch over msn.
ISN'T MY ICON BEAUTIFUL ASDLKJSDFJ CRIES I LOVE YOU SO MUCH procreational . from those days back when you were making me icons about ryo and listening to me freak about NewS and ryopi and then suddenly to dbsk and homin and just, i love you, babydoll. ♥ don't leave me ever!
let's all pretend not to notice how jaemin's my first OTP and how i'll always love it since it's a first love and all and how that doesn't equate to the entire fic COUGHS FOERVER DIES.
thanks for reading. :') ♥
Author: yuxo
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: JaeMin, HoMin
Summary: I didn't realize you were unhappy until I saw you happy.
A/N: for procreational . hi, babydoll. *points to icon* as my personal asldjsdjwela amazing icon slave, clare, i love you forever. i hope this doesn't fail entirely. :X sorry about the butchering of your prompt. :'D ♥
---
The thing with Jaejoong is: he can just be himself and have everyone (fall in) love (with) him.
---
Yunho is his best friend. They’ve been side by side since the very beginning of Dong Bang Shin Ki and they’ve lost battles together, won wars together, cried and bled and still fight to this day against everything that stands in their way. Junsu is Yunho’s oldest friend but Jaejoong is his best friend and that’s always counted for something different.
Changmin is his precious dongsaeng.
Thought he was an angel, Yunho had said to him all those years ago, after the first time they all met and shook hands awkwardly in a little office.
He is one, Jaejoong had never said back.
He sees blatant hero worship in Changmin’s gaze every time the youngest turns to look at their leader. Would it be the same, he wonders, if he had become leader instead, as tradition goes, as age dictates?
But on days when Changmin’s lonely or tired or just in dire need of a hug, it’s Jaejoong’s arms that are always open, Jaejoong’s shoulder that he cries on. It can’t be that great to be leader, Jaejoong figures; hero worship is nice and all, but nobody will choose a detached warmth for the sake of business over true affection for the sake of love.
It takes little over a year for Changmin to trip over the words and Jaejoong to kiss him after the third attempt of hyung, I-I li- I li- I l-like y-.
In the end, he wins an angel and loses nothing for it, and he doesn’t think he’s been happier.
---
The thing with Jaejoong is: he gives and gives and gives (his love) and he’s forgotten how to receive (it).
---
The days are too busy for them to keep track of one by one. Jaejoong marks the passage of time into sections of before and after certain events that are worth remembering.
Dong Bang Shin Ki go to Japan for the first time half a year after Jaejoong takes Changmin’s first kiss. The second, third, tenth, nth kiss is accompanied by vague memories of the day it happened, because Jaejoong keeps things like this close to his heart to warm him and keep him safe when things are a little too hard to bear.
Their forty-sixth kiss happens an hour before he’s told his best friend’s been poisoned. He’s bone weary after he visits Yunho in the hospital and rants in a muted voice the entire time how he’s going to find that girl and make her take a dose of her own medicine. Yunho laughs and hugs him from the hospital bed, telling him to go home and get some rest, and that yes, three bowls of soup and two day’s worth of his favourites are quite enough to get him through the night.
He thinks nothing of it when Changmin chooses to stay, pouting when glaring at the nurses don’t get him anywhere, sitting down with pleased finality next to Yunho’s bed, smiling as much as circumstances allow him to.
Jaejoong goes home after the forty-seventh kiss, a quick peck on the lips, a distracted smile from the both of them.
---
The thing with Jaejoong is: despite every part of his logical being screaming at him to grow some sense, he is and always will make all the life choices of a hopeless romantic.
---
For a time, Changmin doesn’t interact with Yunho very much at all.
Jaejoong can tell that Yunho’s more than a little and even more than a lot upset about it, but their leader doesn’t like it when people know he’s not perfect in all senses of the word and hides it the best he can.
He doesn’t know why, but he does know that he and Changmin have sex for the first time in Paris, and it’s kind of extremely awkward, over far too quickly, and beautiful in its own right.
Changmin punches him lightly on the arm afterwards, something callous falling from his lips, but the bite’s taken out of the words by the fond smile on his face. Once the youngest falls asleep, curled into a big ball under the blankets of their hotel bed, Jaejoong wanders onto the balcony and takes a deep breath of Parisian night air.
The lights below twinkle like stars and they’re just as bright as the ones he sees when he turns his face up to smile at the sky.
“Je t’aime,” he says, tilting his head to the side and laughing. Changmin’s still in the same position when he turns around to look through the glass doors.
“Bonjour. Pouvez-vous m’aider?” Jaejoong asks, “je t’aime.”
---
It’s a dark and stormy night.
It’s a dark and stormy night when Yoochun tries to beat Jaejoong in an arm wrestle, lord knows why, when a loud thud reverberates through the apartment, prompting five heads to snap up in alarm.
“What was that?” Junsu asks from the workroom.
“Did someone try to break in?” Yunho whispers, mind drifting to the croquet mallet stuffed away in Changmin’s closet.
Yoochun grabs Jaejoong’s hand and tells the both of them that he’s not afraid, really. “I bet it was a flying squirrel or something.”
“Guys!” Changmin calls from his room, a note of panic running through his voice.
By the time they all rush in, Changmin’s no longer afraid-in fact, he’s being attacked in the form of a huge hug, stunned expression settled on his face.
“Changmin?” Jaejoong asks, blinking.
“Yeah?” Two voices reply, one coming out with much more misery than the other, one sounding completely flabbergasted.
“…Who are you?” Yunho asks the stranger.
The figure sniffs and turns around slowly.
“Changmin. I’m Changmin.”
---
When they wake up the next day, there are four Changmins wandering around the kitchen.
“Well, damn,” Jaejoong says.
“Better get cooking now,” Junsu mutters, the epitome of calm, going to the couch and lying down, counting backwards from three hundred with his hands covering his face.
“Tell me more,” Yoochun nods sympathetically, soothing the back of a crying Changmin who’s positively sobbing into the edge of the kitchen table.
“Junsu-hyung!” Changmin chirps, jumping on Junsu’s unsuspecting figure atop the couch, “Come play a video game with me!”
“Yunho-hyung,” Changmin says, staring at Changmin, pulling at Yunho’s sleeve. “I don’t thin-”
“Hey, sexy,” Changmin whispers, though his eyes are sad, yanking Yunho away from Changmin’s grasp, pushing him back against a counter, “I’m Changmin, but you can call me tonight.”
“Changmin!” Jaejoong, Yoochun, and Junsu yell, scandalized at the blatant flirting going on.
“I need to talk to you,” Changmin chokes, eyes open too wide to be healthy, grabbing Jaejoong by the hand and running for their room.
“You’re my Changmin, right?” Jaejoong asks once the door’s closed, hesitation written in every line of his body, raising an eyebrow in wariness.
He sees Changmin falter for a second, gaze dropping to the ground. “Y-yeah, it’s…me,” he says eventually to his feet before looking back up. “Look, I don’t know what’s going on, but-”
“There are a lot of you.”
“…Yes, thank you, captain obvious, for that enlightening observation.”
Jaejoong punches him six times on the bicep.
“Okay, okay, hyung, I get it! I’m sorry.” He raises his hands in surrender. “I’m just weirded out, that’s all. You didn’t like…put a curse on me or anything, right?”
“Why would I do that?” Jaejoong demands, “Besides! Now I have no way of telling all of you apart!”
A too-long moment of silence drapes over them and Jaejoong isn’t sure if he should be worried or not. He can practically see Changmin turning that statement over in his head.
“Listen-”
“I think we should go figure out what’s going on,” Changmin interrupts, taking Jaejoong’s hand and pulling him out into the hallway again.
---
The thing with Jaejoong is: he misjudges circumstances a lot of the time because he’s too preoccupied with believing in the best.
---
He probably should’ve suspected something the first time Changmin crawls into his bed and says, “But you were first” for no reason at all. He would’ve asked if the youngest hadn’t suddenly pinned him to the bed with a fierce kiss, and everything else just failed to matter from that point.
It feels like something off, but with a grand total of four Changmins running around the apartment, everything feels off.
Jaejoong’s not sure how he feels about seeing his lover constantly attached to each of his bandmates.
Junsu’s always preoccupied with playing one game or another with Changmin. They come up with ridiculous penalty games and Yunho almost dies one night because he’s too torn between crying with laughter and yelling in outrage when he walks through the door to find both of them near-naked and doing ridiculous poses in front of the window.
Yoochun spends all his time comforting Changmin. It’s now considered normal to see them hugging each other on the couch, whispering quietly between the two of them, glancing around occasionally to make sure nobody’s listening.
Jaejoong’s okay with it when he walks into the workroom one day and finds Changmin seated in Yunho’s lap, kissing him gently, arms resting on his shoulders, a faint blush staining his cheeks.
He’s okay with it because Changmin’s hand in his tightens and Jaejoong gently closes the door, going back to his room, lets Changmin kiss his worries away.
Changmin tastes like the past.
---
The thing with Jaejoong is: he’s completely selfless (for everyone else’s sake), and believes in letting go of things when they’re still beautiful.
---
“Changmin-ah,” Jaejoong whispers in the night, tucking a damp strand of hair behind the younger’s ear as they lie together, “I want you to know something.”
“Yeah?” Changmin replies, eyes closed, voice thick with sleepiness.
“I love you.”
“I know.”
Jaejoong nods to himself. “Okay.”
Before he’s completely under, he swears he hears Changmin say “I loved you too,” but he’s asleep by the time his brain registers it.
When he wakes up, the bed is empty.
When he walks out to the living room, Junsu is collapsed half on and half off the couch by himself, an indent of a body next to him.
When he turns into the kitchen, his soulmate is drooling slightly onto the kitchen table, an empty chair next to him.
When he opens the door to Yunho’s room, he finds his best friend curled against an angel he fell in love with years ago. He looks peaceful and well-rested and happy in a way he seldom truly is and Jaejoong’s stomach drops out of his toes.
And he sees Changmin, arm wrapped around Yunho’s waist, a comfortable smile on his face even in slumber.
Jaejoong walks back out with tears in his eyes and a choking ache in his chest and no surprise in his heart, no surprise at all, and he wonders if maybe he knew all along.
---
The thing with Jaejoong is: he likes to remember broken things (like love) at their best instead of insisting on piecing them back together and forever be reminded by the cracks of what was lost.
---
Though Jaejoong approaches it calmly and with a smile on his face, Changmin still ends up choking on sobs and apologies and hides himself away for an entire week. Jaejoong isn’t mad, really just sad about the entire ordeal, and has to keep himself from crying along with the youngest as they talk through what happened.
Changmin fell in love, that’s what happened.
But you were first, Changmin whispers with vehemence through the tears, fierce determination in his eyes as he holds Jaejoong’s gaze, proud truth in his voice, Jaejoong-ah, I loved you first.
It means something to him. Jaejoong knows he’s an entire slew of firsts for Changmin, a few too private to mention, but in the end, it doesn’t leave him with much. Changmin isn’t his first love and Changmin isn’t his first real heartache but the youngest certainly comes close.
Yunho approaches him two days later with guilt written all over his face and Jaejoong’s heart flips a little to see his best friend so upset with himself.
“Sorry, sorry sorry sorry JaeJae I’m so sorry I’m sorry,” Yunho repeats again and again, but he’s not going to let Changmin go, anyone can see that.
There are certain things you can’t argue with. Junsu when he’s trying to get twenty-three extra seconds of sleep. Yoochun when he’s insistent on meeting up with Yoohwan. Changmin when he sees any one of his bandmates taking less than stellar care of themselves and feels the need to interfere. Yunho when he’s pushed to the point of doing what’s best for all of them, not what management tells them to do.
And you just can’t argue with love.
“I forgive you,” Jaejoong smiles back, and he does.
He can see why anyone would fall in love with Jung Yunho. Given the opportunity and long enough ago, he would’ve done the same thing.
---
The thing with Jaejoong is: he moves on and he loves and loves and loves because he can (and he only deserves everything in the world).
---
Somehow, through the use of his damned persistent wiles, Yoochun manages to get the gang together for a night out on the town. And by a night out on the town, he means ninja their way down the street until they find a relatively unknown karaoke bar and getting smashed out of their minds. Too many bottles of soju later, Jaejoong sits in mild drunken alarm as the entire story pours out of his mouth.
“Okay, I see it as…a problem with his tear ducts,” Hyunjoong slurs about Yoochun’s Changmin.
“So not,” Yoochun snorts, tipping his glass back, grimacing at the burn down his throat.
Jaejoong blinks with effort and feels his face. “Is my face on fire? It’s really hot.”
“Just like you,” Seunghyun leers.
“Shut up,” Jaejoong says kindly, taking another shot.
“I can’t believe you didn’t get them to grovel at your feet,” Seunghyun adds, “I know you love them and all, but your best friend and your boyfriend? That just doesn’t seem right.”
“They grovelled all on their own,” Yoochun coughs as vodka goes down the wrong way.
“So who were they?” Hyunjoong interrupts, waving his glass back and forth unsteadily, “why would a bunch of Changmins just appear?”
Jaejoong smiles gently to himself. He’s thought this one over time and time again and he thinks he’s pretty much got it figured out.
“I named them all!” Yoochun nearly giggles as he picks up the karaoke mic, blowing into it and humming an off-tune, drunken chorus of Love in the Ice.
“Let’s hear it!”
“I named my buddy Inconsolable Grief. And Junsu-babe got Repressed Childishness. And...Jaejoongie got…well…”
“First Love,” Jaejoong mutters loud enough for them to hear.
Yoochun nods, perhaps more sober than he should be able to. “And leader-sshi had Changmin. Has. Changmin.” He shoots a glance at Jaejoong.
“Man, that sucks,” Seunghyun says quietly after a beat of silence.
“Next round on me!” Hyunjoong shouts, standing up and wobbling out the door to order more alcohol for the bunch of them.
“You okay?” Yoochun asks quietly, taking Jaejoong’s hand and lacing their fingers together.
Jaejoong smiles to himself, picking up a microphone and closing his eyes. He thinks of Changmin’s smiles to Yunho when he thinks nobody’s looking, their shy kisses not quite hidden behind the bathroom door, the way they hold hands in the van and Yunho will brush the youngest’s cheek with his knuckles and something akin to enthralled worship in his face.
He thinks of how Changmin never looked so in love, how defiant he looks sometimes, almost as if daring the world to challenge what he feels for Yunho and Yunho alone.
How Changmin’s never looked like that for him before.
“You know what?” he says to Yoochun, smiling, feeling freer than he has in a while.
In the end, he loses an angel but keeps his best friend, gains another one, and knows in his heart it can’t be any other way.
“I think I will be.”
---
I didn't realize you were unhappy until I saw you happy.
---
HIDES IN A CORNER. I'M SORRY. IT'S MY FIRST JAEMIN. D: I'M SORRY IT'S NOT A HAPPILY EVER AFTER? ......I'M SORRY MY HOMIN BIAS COMPLETELY LEAKED THROUGH!?!?!?!? DDDDD: ;A;
three trillion thanks to ta_knee_shuh for being my personal information ball and listening to me bitch over msn.
ISN'T MY ICON BEAUTIFUL ASDLKJSDFJ CRIES I LOVE YOU SO MUCH procreational . from those days back when you were making me icons about ryo and listening to me freak about NewS and ryopi and then suddenly to dbsk and homin and just, i love you, babydoll. ♥ don't leave me ever!
let's all pretend not to notice how jaemin's my first OTP and how i'll always love it since it's a first love and all and how that doesn't equate to the entire fic COUGHS FOERVER DIES.
thanks for reading. :') ♥