did i fool you
Did I Fool You
OT5, Gen, implied Yunjae
PG
Changmin tries to put it all back in place.
For burntmuffins89. Based off Changmin's "new" skinny image. ):
Violins, trombones, pianos, choirs and entire orchestras have always filled Changmin’s head, ever since he first opened his eyes. There are cymbals too, ones that like to crash just to add to the clutter he begrudgingly enjoys. He knows it won’t be going away anytime soon. So he hums along to the soundtrack his subconscious has created and lets it lead him into the pop sensation spotlight where he gets to watch all kinds of love unfold (and stick himself in the middle of all of them).
It’s like having a twin, Changmin thinks when Junsu calls his brother for the second time in one hour, except you can’t tell them to shut up and just play computer games with you.
The music stops the same day the locksmith comes. When he leaves, Changmin stands outside the front door and turns his new key, hearing the door click and unclick (click and unclick), and knowing that Jaejoong, Junsu, and Yoochun’s keys will only scrape the new metal.
He finds Yunho at the kitchen table, watching some drama on his laptop with Bambi in his lap. As casually as he can, Changmin drops into a chair beside him.
“Hey.”
Yunho laughs at something, then turns to Changmin with a grin. “Oh my God, I’m getting secondhand embarrassment from my own acting.” He points, and Changmin sees Yunho running across the screen with his shirt pulled over his face, another shirt declaring his love, and the rest of the soccer team circling around him. “At least I got to kiss Go Ara despite it!”
Changmin scoffs, “My kiss scene’s going blow yours out of the water. Yeonhee’s going to kiss back.”
“To the netizens, nobody, not even you, can ever beat out Jaejoong’s kiss scene with Hyojoo.” Yunho’s smile freezes for a second as he says this, but it melts when he reaches over to ruffle Changmin’s hair and adds in a rather cocky tone, “Better start lifting those weights. Yeonhee only likes tough guys, you know.”
“I am tough. Have you seen my arms lately?” Changmin starts rolling up his sleeves to prove it.
“Yea, yea, that’s what they all say, and then you open them up and they all have these soft little hearts made of gold.”
Oddly enough, it’s Junsu who manages to sneak a call to Changmin first. He’s in a phone booth, huddled in two jackets because of the dipping temperature, and though Changmin can hear that he has a cold, Junsu sounds cheerful for the most part.
“How are you and Yunho holding up?” he asks, breath puffing white in the air and sounding loudly in Changmin’s ear.
“Okay. We watch too much television and eat a lot of take-out.” Changmin has to clear the lump from his throat before he continues. “Uh, how are you three? I bet Jaejoong’s making entire three-course meals with only a few Japanese shows to go on and no practice schedule to hold him back.”
Junsu pauses, then sighs. “No, not really. Yoochun’s always locked up in his room; composing, he says. And Jaejoong pretty much glued to his computer. You won’t believe how many hours he spends doing practically nothing.”
“That doesn’t sound like Jaejoong.”
“He created a dummy account on those fan sites and joined both you and Yunho’s cyworlds and Navers, or whatever. His excuse is that he’s checking up on you two. You guys probably have a billion comments from him because-“ Junsu is interrupted by an impatient banging on the booth’s window. “Somebody’s been waiting outside forever and they keep giving me this face, so I’m going to go now! I miss you and Yunho, don’t get too fat on take-out and don’t let Yunho pine over Jaejoong too much. Bye!” He kisses the phone, because it’s a Junsu thing to be as fakely affectionate as possible, and hangs up.
Changmin puts the phone back into its cradle. Yunho is sleeping on the couch (again) and he draws a blanket over the other man, tucks him in a little bit, and tiptoes to the kitchen for leftovers.
The refrigerator hums, white noise, and Changmin shuts the door without taking anything because it reminds him of the great masterpiece his mind used to be three weeks ago and it makes him feel lonely. He falls asleep at the kitchen table. He dreams of Jaejoong sitting in front of his computer, eyes taped open twenty-four-seven and the light from the screen staining his skin blue.
They sing together for the first time in months. Junsu belts out his part like he’s bursting at the seams with emotion, and everybody is jealous because they had to force it.
“I ran out of breath on my line. That never happens.” Changmin hears Jaejoong say this from the other side of the make-up room afterwards just as Yunho, on his right, says, “I was off-tune on my part, too flat. That never happens.”
Changmin eats less kimbap and pizza. He watches himself each morning in the mirror, fogged from the shower; his cheekbones are sharper, the outline of his face somehow more visible than before, and his collarbones are sticking out more and more like Yoochun’s. Girls find it sexy, he convinces himself and puts on his clothes.
Yunho left out a plate of scrambled eggs for him, but Changmin finds he doesn’t have much of an appetite. It’s because I stopped growing a long time ago, he tells himself and puts the plate back in the refrigerator.
The recording camera (and the drama director) doesn’t notice that his pants are slung lower on his hips than usual because Changmin comes on set with a smile and runs when he’s told to.
In the midst of filming chaos, Changmin hears the music in the back of his head, tinny and strained, but there nonetheless. He thinks that, even if Junsu hogs the PS3, Yoochun can’t dress himself for shit, Jaejoong forgets to clean occasionally, and Yunho won’t admit that he’s really a sixteen-year-old girl trapped inside a man’s body, maybe everything will be worth its weight in gold when the time comes. Changmin keeps running even when the director shouts for him to stop.
Cymbals ring in his ears.
The gap between Yunho and Jaejoong gets that much smaller; ten kilograms smaller, to be exact. It’s a start.
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notes: uhhh, i don't know what this is but it came out the way i wanted it to (?).
changmin looks so stressed. i just want him to eat his sorrows away cry into yunho's neck and for this lawsuit thing to conclude itself already.
comment?