A Clear Midnight [2/3]
Title: A Clear Midnight
Character: Jaejoong POV, but includes all the rest
Length: 2/3
Rating/Genre: NC-17 for Jaejoong's language; angst
Summary: At around half-past ten, I was sprawled across several chairs in the terminal, staring up at the ceiling, reflecting on my goddamned life and how everything that had to do with me was so fucked up. I could even write a whole goddamned book about it: How to Be Majorly Fucked Up by Kim Jaejoong.
A/N: I just decided this will be a threeshot. Please comment if you read to help me improve! :)
First chapter at my journal.
Credit to "What's Eating Gilbert Grape" for one of Jae's lines.
Two
My last therapist was this tall thin man who resembled something like a preying mantis. Every time I entered his goddamn office (which always smelled of licorice or gym socks or something disgusting like that) his big bug eyes would stare at me until I sat down on the patent leather seat in front of him. It always made me so damn uncomfortable, that creepy guy staring at me like that.
“Your father tells me you and Yunho were especially close,” he told me one time. I bolted up in my seat as though a rod had been stuck up my ass. I hated the way he said “Yunho”, as though he’d known him, as though he was the one who’d spent nine fucking years with him as a next-door neighbor. I hated it too that my goddamned father couldn’t keep his mouth shut about things like these. “He also mentioned your other friends, Junsu and Yoochun. Can you tell me about them?”
We sat in goddamn silence for nearly twenty minutes. I didn’t tell him a thing.
It’s not that I don’t want to tell people about Yunho. If I could I would tell the whole world. He’s the nicest goddamn guy you’ll ever meet, I’d say and I’d mean it, which is big for me. I’d tell him about the others too. How Yoochun used to copy my Maths homework in exchange for him giving me A-grade papers for English. How Junsu has a laugh that sounds like the tinkling of a million bells and how I wish I were more like him. How Changmin is so goddamn smart that he actually goes to a school for geniuses, leaving the rest of us losers behind. I just hated how the fucking therapist made himself appear like he was my goddamn best friend just so I would spill my guts out to him. Well, fuck. He’s not. My father basically squandered his money on him. The goddamn guy was supposed to be the best in the city, but he couldn’t get a word out from me.
At around half-past ten, I was sprawled across several chairs in the airport terminal, staring up at the ceiling, reflecting on my goddamned life and how everything that had to do with me was so fucked up. I could even write a whole goddamned book about it: How to Be Majorly Fucked Up by Kim Jaejoong. Yunho had always told me that, just to sass me. But I’d never really minded. I’m seriously considering it now.
“You know what your problem is, Jaejae?” he would tell me, and I would punch him in the shoulder for calling me that goddamn nickname. “You know why you always feel so fucked up? It’s because you just refuse to be happy. You just have to goddamn try sometimes. It won’t kill you to just try.”
Yunho usually never swore, not unless he was exasperated. I guess I made him reach the end of his rope sometimes. I never told him but sometimes I envied him. He was just so goddamn perfect that you really couldn’t point a bad finger at his direction. He got a fucking Porsche for his seventeenth birthday last year when my own father was still deciding whether or not he was going to let me drive.
Something caught in my throat and I sat up to cough. I coughed so badly I felt like I was hacking a goddamn lung out. That’s what you get for smoking like a chimney, hyung, Junsu used to say whenever he would see me winded out after ten minutes of gym class. I used to tell him to fuck the hell off and leave my goddamn blackened lungs alone. If he were here now to tell me off though, I’d probably start listening. I miss him. I fucking miss all of them.
We used to sneak into Yunho’s bedroom on random days at midnight. He would always leave his window unlocked for all of us to clamber in. Some days he’d already be asleep so we’d either wake him up or just sit there in the dark whispering stories until we’d fall asleep ourselves on the carpeted floor. On days that he’d be still awake, we’d take a drive around the city with the windows down and a few cans of cold beer in our hands, turning aimlessly down streets and alleyways that always looked so unfamiliar when bathed in the dark. Often, I brought Changmin with me, but only because he was the one who’d insist. I always made sure to bring him home by 2 AM though. I’m not that bad of an older brother. I do care.
“Hyung deul!” Changmin would whine when Yunho would steer his car towards our street. “Not yet! It’s not even 2:30!”
“Dad would kill us, Min,” I would tell him. “No, actually, he’d kill me. I don’t think I’d be of much use if I were dead.”
“You aren’t of much use now so I don’t think there’ll be any difference,” Yoochun would crow jokingly and I would throw at him the nearest thing I can grab: a beer can, my cap or a random pen sitting on the dashboard. “Fuck you,” I’d reply with a laugh.
“Now, girls,” Yunho would say in a tone similar to what his mother would use, “behave.”
And even though we’d know it’s just a joke and there’s actually no need to settle down, we usually would and Junsu would pet Changmin’s head to soothe him and Yoochun would try and distract him by playing a game like Name the Constellation if it were a clear night. Yunho would just smile in the driver’s seat without changing his course. I would turn up the volume on the radio a little louder just because the better songs are always played in the early mornings.
I checked my watch. It was nearly time to go. I’d booked a first-class ticket back with my father’s credit card. He was going to fucking murder me the second I would appear on our doorstep, but I couldn’t care less.
“Jae,” Yunho had asked me once. We had been on top of a hill, our bodies stretched out on the grass. Changmin had been sleeping in the car and Yoochun and Junsu had been singing faint hymns in the dark beside me to lull themselves to sleep. “What do you wish for?”
I’d looked up at the starless sky, my hands behind my head listening as the sounds of summer faded away. We smelled of cigarettes and dewdrops and a half-filled bag of jellybeans lay abandoned at our heads. We had been nearly seniors by then and, for some reason, I didn’t feel so goddamned doomed as I usually did.
“I don’t know,” I’d said, because it was the truth. Yunho had that knack to easily pull things out from me. I never bothered lying, it was too much of a chore since he’d usually find out I was one way or the other.
“There has to be something,” he said. “Anything.”
When he said it, I thought of Changmin curled up in the car with a satisfied smile on his face, Junsu giggling beside me as he and Yoochun shared a joke, Yoochun singing softly old rhymes we’d learned back in elementary school just because he wanted to see if he could still remember, and Yunho, the Golden Boy, my best friend, lying by my side, Mr. Fuck Up, after sharing a cigarette.
“I just…want to be who I can be,” I breathed, my eyes looking straight up at the sky. I meant it, and I knew Yunho knew too. “I just want to be…a good person. Someone I can be proud of being. Just that. I just want to be that.”
Yunho had said nothing but had taken my hand in his in order to squeeze it. He had never been one for words (that was Yoochun). But he always knew what to say through what he did. Remembering just fucking breaks my heart sometimes.
“Now boarding flight CX918 to Seoul.”
Here we go.
Character: Jaejoong POV, but includes all the rest
Length: 2/3
Rating/Genre: NC-17 for Jaejoong's language; angst
Summary: At around half-past ten, I was sprawled across several chairs in the terminal, staring up at the ceiling, reflecting on my goddamned life and how everything that had to do with me was so fucked up. I could even write a whole goddamned book about it: How to Be Majorly Fucked Up by Kim Jaejoong.
A/N: I just decided this will be a threeshot. Please comment if you read to help me improve! :)
First chapter at my journal.
Credit to "What's Eating Gilbert Grape" for one of Jae's lines.
Two
My last therapist was this tall thin man who resembled something like a preying mantis. Every time I entered his goddamn office (which always smelled of licorice or gym socks or something disgusting like that) his big bug eyes would stare at me until I sat down on the patent leather seat in front of him. It always made me so damn uncomfortable, that creepy guy staring at me like that.
“Your father tells me you and Yunho were especially close,” he told me one time. I bolted up in my seat as though a rod had been stuck up my ass. I hated the way he said “Yunho”, as though he’d known him, as though he was the one who’d spent nine fucking years with him as a next-door neighbor. I hated it too that my goddamned father couldn’t keep his mouth shut about things like these. “He also mentioned your other friends, Junsu and Yoochun. Can you tell me about them?”
We sat in goddamn silence for nearly twenty minutes. I didn’t tell him a thing.
It’s not that I don’t want to tell people about Yunho. If I could I would tell the whole world. He’s the nicest goddamn guy you’ll ever meet, I’d say and I’d mean it, which is big for me. I’d tell him about the others too. How Yoochun used to copy my Maths homework in exchange for him giving me A-grade papers for English. How Junsu has a laugh that sounds like the tinkling of a million bells and how I wish I were more like him. How Changmin is so goddamn smart that he actually goes to a school for geniuses, leaving the rest of us losers behind. I just hated how the fucking therapist made himself appear like he was my goddamn best friend just so I would spill my guts out to him. Well, fuck. He’s not. My father basically squandered his money on him. The goddamn guy was supposed to be the best in the city, but he couldn’t get a word out from me.
At around half-past ten, I was sprawled across several chairs in the airport terminal, staring up at the ceiling, reflecting on my goddamned life and how everything that had to do with me was so fucked up. I could even write a whole goddamned book about it: How to Be Majorly Fucked Up by Kim Jaejoong. Yunho had always told me that, just to sass me. But I’d never really minded. I’m seriously considering it now.
“You know what your problem is, Jaejae?” he would tell me, and I would punch him in the shoulder for calling me that goddamn nickname. “You know why you always feel so fucked up? It’s because you just refuse to be happy. You just have to goddamn try sometimes. It won’t kill you to just try.”
Yunho usually never swore, not unless he was exasperated. I guess I made him reach the end of his rope sometimes. I never told him but sometimes I envied him. He was just so goddamn perfect that you really couldn’t point a bad finger at his direction. He got a fucking Porsche for his seventeenth birthday last year when my own father was still deciding whether or not he was going to let me drive.
Something caught in my throat and I sat up to cough. I coughed so badly I felt like I was hacking a goddamn lung out. That’s what you get for smoking like a chimney, hyung, Junsu used to say whenever he would see me winded out after ten minutes of gym class. I used to tell him to fuck the hell off and leave my goddamn blackened lungs alone. If he were here now to tell me off though, I’d probably start listening. I miss him. I fucking miss all of them.
We used to sneak into Yunho’s bedroom on random days at midnight. He would always leave his window unlocked for all of us to clamber in. Some days he’d already be asleep so we’d either wake him up or just sit there in the dark whispering stories until we’d fall asleep ourselves on the carpeted floor. On days that he’d be still awake, we’d take a drive around the city with the windows down and a few cans of cold beer in our hands, turning aimlessly down streets and alleyways that always looked so unfamiliar when bathed in the dark. Often, I brought Changmin with me, but only because he was the one who’d insist. I always made sure to bring him home by 2 AM though. I’m not that bad of an older brother. I do care.
“Hyung deul!” Changmin would whine when Yunho would steer his car towards our street. “Not yet! It’s not even 2:30!”
“Dad would kill us, Min,” I would tell him. “No, actually, he’d kill me. I don’t think I’d be of much use if I were dead.”
“You aren’t of much use now so I don’t think there’ll be any difference,” Yoochun would crow jokingly and I would throw at him the nearest thing I can grab: a beer can, my cap or a random pen sitting on the dashboard. “Fuck you,” I’d reply with a laugh.
“Now, girls,” Yunho would say in a tone similar to what his mother would use, “behave.”
And even though we’d know it’s just a joke and there’s actually no need to settle down, we usually would and Junsu would pet Changmin’s head to soothe him and Yoochun would try and distract him by playing a game like Name the Constellation if it were a clear night. Yunho would just smile in the driver’s seat without changing his course. I would turn up the volume on the radio a little louder just because the better songs are always played in the early mornings.
I checked my watch. It was nearly time to go. I’d booked a first-class ticket back with my father’s credit card. He was going to fucking murder me the second I would appear on our doorstep, but I couldn’t care less.
“Jae,” Yunho had asked me once. We had been on top of a hill, our bodies stretched out on the grass. Changmin had been sleeping in the car and Yoochun and Junsu had been singing faint hymns in the dark beside me to lull themselves to sleep. “What do you wish for?”
I’d looked up at the starless sky, my hands behind my head listening as the sounds of summer faded away. We smelled of cigarettes and dewdrops and a half-filled bag of jellybeans lay abandoned at our heads. We had been nearly seniors by then and, for some reason, I didn’t feel so goddamned doomed as I usually did.
“I don’t know,” I’d said, because it was the truth. Yunho had that knack to easily pull things out from me. I never bothered lying, it was too much of a chore since he’d usually find out I was one way or the other.
“There has to be something,” he said. “Anything.”
When he said it, I thought of Changmin curled up in the car with a satisfied smile on his face, Junsu giggling beside me as he and Yoochun shared a joke, Yoochun singing softly old rhymes we’d learned back in elementary school just because he wanted to see if he could still remember, and Yunho, the Golden Boy, my best friend, lying by my side, Mr. Fuck Up, after sharing a cigarette.
“I just…want to be who I can be,” I breathed, my eyes looking straight up at the sky. I meant it, and I knew Yunho knew too. “I just want to be…a good person. Someone I can be proud of being. Just that. I just want to be that.”
Yunho had said nothing but had taken my hand in his in order to squeeze it. He had never been one for words (that was Yoochun). But he always knew what to say through what he did. Remembering just fucking breaks my heart sometimes.
“Now boarding flight CX918 to Seoul.”
Here we go.