Suckerpunch Romance (JaeJoong/OC)
Suckerpunch Romance
Jaejoong/OC
This is dedicated to theprerogative, because we were having Starbucks and I said - "I have to write something."
Based on Jaejoong's statement of wanting to marry a fan.
suckerpunch romance
Today in the blink of an eye
I'm holding on to something and I do not know why I tried.
Boys Like Girls; Thunder
It’s stupid, really, how they meet. It was possibly one of the more unglamorous moments in her life, and she blames the stupid, obsessive Cassopeia bitches for practically running her over in their surge to get to the five boys they are all fixated on. She hurries along, because she would like to get Changmin’s autograph, thank you very much, and godammit not again she finds herself falling past a bodyguard and sprawling onto the floor.
“Arrrgh!”
There is a flurry of activity and hands everywhere, pulling and pushing and shoving and in the midst of it she thinks she sees Changmin - if he bloody leaves without signing her poster she is going to cut a (Cassiopeia) bitch, honest to god - but then a hand reaches out and pulls her clean off the floor and onto her feet, and she blinks in a daze as she comes face to face with Kim Jaejoong.
“You’re not perfect,” is the first thing she blurts out. She can see the bags under his eyes and the oncoming zits on his forehead and the lines around his mouth and… ew, is that a drool stain? It’s probably only a few moments that she’s staring at him but it feels like time has slowed down. This probably happens when your brain stops functioning, she decides, somewhere deep inside her head where the plug’s still in. Kim Jaejoong looks like he is about to reply, but then the bodyguard is pushing her again, back into the sea of crazy Cassiopeia fans and she kind of kicks him in the shin because Changmin is leaving, he’s shuffling off with Junsu behind him and she yells “CHANGMIN, HEY!”
Jaejoong is still staring at her. She’s too devastated by her favourite member leaving to notice. Then he lowers his head and is led away with a hassled-looking Yunho.
…So that was how it occurred. Dating Kim Jaejoong is weird at first, because when you’ve seen someone on TV too often you tend to believe what you see, but you kinda think that perhaps there’s something more to the celebrities than what they are onstage. But Kim Jaejoong is exactly who he portrays himself to be, and it is both maddening and… anti-climax, somehow. He is apparently a persona who is in love with 1) talking, 2) long text messages and 3) his own reflection. Narcissist, she calls him more than once, when he checks his appearance out in the mirror. And it is more than surreal when they hang out together in the boys’ apartment because they can’t do normal things like go to the movies. Even with a mask, fangirls know Jaejoong immediately; it’s insane, she thinks, how they’ve memorized the way he walks, the way he gestures when he speaks, the way his shirt falls past his shoulder just so. It’s a crazy world, and she feels ashamed to think that she was once a part of it.
“Superstars don’t date fans,” she tells him when he asks her out the first time, at some fan meeting for which she won a VIP pass for. “And anyway, if I could date one of you, it’d be Changmin, sorry.”
“What do you like so much about Changmin?” Jaejoong asks, looking slightly hurt. “Isn’t he kind of tall for you, anyway?”
Tactless jerk. She’s never actually noticed Jaejoong, to be honest - he’s a great vocalist and he’s prettier than her, to be sure, but he’s hardly the man of her dreams. She likes the solid, dependable type. The taller the better. Quiet and gallant. Jaejoong is an amusement park compared to Changmin’s mountain stream of Evian. She frowns at the comparison for a moment, and Jaejoong takes her hand, quickly, discreetly.
“Here’s my number,” he says. “Consider it. Please.”
She keeps the piece of paper shoved into the back of her underwear drawer and forgets about it. She attends college classes and works her butt off at the local supermarket, dreams of a future as a high flying accounts executive in a marketing firm, in classy business suits and pretty shoes that she doesn’t even dare to think about affording right now. And it’s only when her friends cajole her, a month later, to join them for Mirotic Live Concert Tour that she remembers the slip of paper. She goes home and stares at it, the crumpled number in between her panties and lace bras, and shrugs to herself. She takes out her phone and dials.
He’s shy but outspoken, romantic but tactless and absolutely horrible to date. They sit in a corner of some obscure, probably rat-infested diner on the outskirts of Seoul and she wonders if the fans think dating Dong Bang Shin Ki means classy restaurants, designer wear and delicious soju. She makes do with over fried fish and chips and Jaejoong’s wide-eyed stare through the brown of his sunglasses. Their conversation is halting and slow, because she can’t possibly tell him about the awesome MinSu fanfiction she’d just read that morning or about how excited she is about the tour because his damn head might just burst. So she settles with the silence and announces, after the food is cleared -
“This is the worst date I’ve ever had.”
Jaejoong leans on a hand and looks at her, half-smiling. He’s so plain without his makeup on, just a guy with overly metrosexual clothes and a nice face. She huffs, leaning back in her seat.
“Changmin might have brought you to a better place,” he agreed.
“I should be dating Changmin.”
“Go write some fanfiction, go.”
“Are you making fun of me, you jerk?”
“I love Cassiopeia.”
And it goes on like this, on Saturday late nights, raining or otherwise. She hates Jaejoong’s flamboyant sense of style, hates his contrived love poems to her through emails and hates his attempts to get fresh with her. She hates the stupid cologne he wears, Yves Saint Laurent mixed with sweat from dance practice, and hates his moodswings when they come, alienating their conversation altogether. God, she really hates Jaejoong. Yet, she can’t help but think, she hates most of all how they can only meet past midnight on Saturdays, because that’s when the world is asleep and that is when it's safest for both of them.
You don’t shout about love, not this kind of love. He tells her one of those nights that he won’t be back for awhile, he’ll be going to Japan and Thailand for the tour and whatever, so “take care, okay?” he sounds exhausted, eye bags more prominent than ever as they stand by the flickering hallway outside her rundown apartment.
“Have fun,” she says. “Kiss some girls.”
His lips quirk into a smile - tired and lilting but there it is. “Reading fanfiction again, Sooyoung-ah?”
She rolls her eyes and he leans in, smells of the summer breeze and the perfume she so hates, presses his lips on hers and she thinks, god, can he be any more unromantic? She wanted her first kiss in some nice spot by Han River, not outside her door with the lamp dying out and cockroaches scuttling over their shoes. He pulls away and pats her head affectionately. “You can go write about that,” he says, and his eyes have the nerve to crinkle.
She smacks him over the head for violating her and slams the door in his face.
Beep. She opens her cellphone. You’re cute when you’re angry.
She buries her head in her pillow, writes ‘RAAAAGE’ all over her paper journal before staring at the Dong Bang Shin Ki poster at her ceiling. Changmin watches over her, like God. Jaejoong is beside him as always, gaze as intense as the devil. She makes an incoherent sound and switches off the light.
He calls her on Saturday evening, after midnight. She is cramming for her exams and has no mood to entertain him. He keeps silent on the phone as she reads through her economics textbook, and finally she says, “what are you doing?”
There is no reply for awhile, and she thinks maybe he’s fallen asleep. Then she hears him.
“Listening to you breathe.”
Mushy. Disgusting. What the hell, Jaejoong. No, it will not make a good love song. “What’s wrong with you?” she asks finally. She pictures his face, doe eyes barely open from lack of sleep, a smile missing from his lips and that spunky, teasing personality toned down for interviews because he gets overzealous sometimes, and the management knows it. Silence for a minute, and she’s about to ask him if she can hang up when he says, “I screwed up. The routine.”
A moment passes, and she snorts.
“The fans like it when you screw up.”
A pause. “How’s that?”
She proceeds to explain to him the amount of humour that goes on in Cassiopeia (she leaves out the part about the wank), chill out and all that, people think it’s cute when they see a glimpse of human in you. You don’t have to be perfect all the damn time.
Jaejoong’s laughter makes her kind of smile. “Is that so,” he says, and she detects the relief in his voice, even if it won’t make Yunho any less upset with him but “No one cares. Seriously,” she says. “You have us on your side.”
“I have you,” he says.
She sits for the exams and moan about it to her friends, works hard at the supermarket until her feet ache and her hands roughen, finishes her day when the sky turns to black. Maybe it is out of habit, but she goes back to the disgusting diner where she and Jaejoong usually have their dates and orders the over fried fish and chips. She watches the cars go by through the glass pane and hums Bolero under her breath. She doesn’t really understand it, but her heart kind of hurts now that it’s been a month without him. She shrugs off the feeling and takes another bite of her buttered fish, the awful taste rolling off her tongue. But it’s okay, she thinks, it’s okay.
Three more days, says the text message.
She can’t believe her eyes. She hasn’t checked with the forums since she’s started dating - no, scratch that - hanging out with Jaejoong, because she knows how they tend to bash anything female in relation to Dong Bang Shin Ki and she’d rather not picture herself getting annihilated. But now she logs on and there it is, in bright sparkly text and asterisks. Dong Bang Shin Ki is coming home.
Jaejoong is coming home.
I’ll meet you at Han River, 1AM.
She shudders in the chill of the night and rubs her hands together, and can’t help but think that it really isn’t that cold, so why the hell is she shivering? 1AM, she sits by the stone steps and blows into her fingers. 1.15AM and she thinks the fucker is late and he is going to die for this. 1.30AM she stands up and starts to head for home, but then she sees him standing a few feet behind her, a cap over his eyes and a mask over his nose. She knows him, by now, understands the way he stands, with a slight slouch in his shoulders and a hand in his pocket. “Are you trying to scare me?” she snaps, halfway pissed but she hears her voice tremble. It feels like fear.
“I’m sorry,” he says, stepping forward.
And it’s kind of ridiculous to hold someone close when she can’t see your eyes (under the cap) or hear your words properly (the mask on his face) but somehow it works for her because seeing his face would just make her feel like punching him and it works for him, too, because he doesn’t want her to see him like this, childish and needy and missing her so much. “You smell like a plane,” she tells him.
“You smell like home,” he says.
They kiss, maybe once or twice before she tells him he’s doing it all wrong as usual, and “you know what, Jaejoong, it’s never going to work out between you and me. You don’t know what a girl wants, you can’t even carry a conversation with me without making fun of me, and now I understand why you were never my favourite, you’re just too weird and your clothes are too colourful and I wish you were Changmin, but you’re right, he’d be too tall and you’re just - “ her voice kind of falters -“you’re just perfect for me.”
Maybe it won’t work out, she thinks later, after Jaejoong’s kissed her into a spell, until she can’t see anymore, can’t think anymore - maybe they’re doomed like this. But his fingers curl over her wrist and god, she hates him, loves him so much for all the little things that make him Jaejoong, and so she lets herself hold on, just a little bit longer.
Jaejoong/OC
This is dedicated to theprerogative, because we were having Starbucks and I said - "I have to write something."
Based on Jaejoong's statement of wanting to marry a fan.
suckerpunch romance
Today in the blink of an eye
I'm holding on to something and I do not know why I tried.
Boys Like Girls; Thunder
It’s stupid, really, how they meet. It was possibly one of the more unglamorous moments in her life, and she blames the stupid, obsessive Cassopeia bitches for practically running her over in their surge to get to the five boys they are all fixated on. She hurries along, because she would like to get Changmin’s autograph, thank you very much, and godammit not again she finds herself falling past a bodyguard and sprawling onto the floor.
“Arrrgh!”
There is a flurry of activity and hands everywhere, pulling and pushing and shoving and in the midst of it she thinks she sees Changmin - if he bloody leaves without signing her poster she is going to cut a (Cassiopeia) bitch, honest to god - but then a hand reaches out and pulls her clean off the floor and onto her feet, and she blinks in a daze as she comes face to face with Kim Jaejoong.
“You’re not perfect,” is the first thing she blurts out. She can see the bags under his eyes and the oncoming zits on his forehead and the lines around his mouth and… ew, is that a drool stain? It’s probably only a few moments that she’s staring at him but it feels like time has slowed down. This probably happens when your brain stops functioning, she decides, somewhere deep inside her head where the plug’s still in. Kim Jaejoong looks like he is about to reply, but then the bodyguard is pushing her again, back into the sea of crazy Cassiopeia fans and she kind of kicks him in the shin because Changmin is leaving, he’s shuffling off with Junsu behind him and she yells “CHANGMIN, HEY!”
Jaejoong is still staring at her. She’s too devastated by her favourite member leaving to notice. Then he lowers his head and is led away with a hassled-looking Yunho.
…So that was how it occurred. Dating Kim Jaejoong is weird at first, because when you’ve seen someone on TV too often you tend to believe what you see, but you kinda think that perhaps there’s something more to the celebrities than what they are onstage. But Kim Jaejoong is exactly who he portrays himself to be, and it is both maddening and… anti-climax, somehow. He is apparently a persona who is in love with 1) talking, 2) long text messages and 3) his own reflection. Narcissist, she calls him more than once, when he checks his appearance out in the mirror. And it is more than surreal when they hang out together in the boys’ apartment because they can’t do normal things like go to the movies. Even with a mask, fangirls know Jaejoong immediately; it’s insane, she thinks, how they’ve memorized the way he walks, the way he gestures when he speaks, the way his shirt falls past his shoulder just so. It’s a crazy world, and she feels ashamed to think that she was once a part of it.
“Superstars don’t date fans,” she tells him when he asks her out the first time, at some fan meeting for which she won a VIP pass for. “And anyway, if I could date one of you, it’d be Changmin, sorry.”
“What do you like so much about Changmin?” Jaejoong asks, looking slightly hurt. “Isn’t he kind of tall for you, anyway?”
Tactless jerk. She’s never actually noticed Jaejoong, to be honest - he’s a great vocalist and he’s prettier than her, to be sure, but he’s hardly the man of her dreams. She likes the solid, dependable type. The taller the better. Quiet and gallant. Jaejoong is an amusement park compared to Changmin’s mountain stream of Evian. She frowns at the comparison for a moment, and Jaejoong takes her hand, quickly, discreetly.
“Here’s my number,” he says. “Consider it. Please.”
She keeps the piece of paper shoved into the back of her underwear drawer and forgets about it. She attends college classes and works her butt off at the local supermarket, dreams of a future as a high flying accounts executive in a marketing firm, in classy business suits and pretty shoes that she doesn’t even dare to think about affording right now. And it’s only when her friends cajole her, a month later, to join them for Mirotic Live Concert Tour that she remembers the slip of paper. She goes home and stares at it, the crumpled number in between her panties and lace bras, and shrugs to herself. She takes out her phone and dials.
He’s shy but outspoken, romantic but tactless and absolutely horrible to date. They sit in a corner of some obscure, probably rat-infested diner on the outskirts of Seoul and she wonders if the fans think dating Dong Bang Shin Ki means classy restaurants, designer wear and delicious soju. She makes do with over fried fish and chips and Jaejoong’s wide-eyed stare through the brown of his sunglasses. Their conversation is halting and slow, because she can’t possibly tell him about the awesome MinSu fanfiction she’d just read that morning or about how excited she is about the tour because his damn head might just burst. So she settles with the silence and announces, after the food is cleared -
“This is the worst date I’ve ever had.”
Jaejoong leans on a hand and looks at her, half-smiling. He’s so plain without his makeup on, just a guy with overly metrosexual clothes and a nice face. She huffs, leaning back in her seat.
“Changmin might have brought you to a better place,” he agreed.
“I should be dating Changmin.”
“Go write some fanfiction, go.”
“Are you making fun of me, you jerk?”
“I love Cassiopeia.”
And it goes on like this, on Saturday late nights, raining or otherwise. She hates Jaejoong’s flamboyant sense of style, hates his contrived love poems to her through emails and hates his attempts to get fresh with her. She hates the stupid cologne he wears, Yves Saint Laurent mixed with sweat from dance practice, and hates his moodswings when they come, alienating their conversation altogether. God, she really hates Jaejoong. Yet, she can’t help but think, she hates most of all how they can only meet past midnight on Saturdays, because that’s when the world is asleep and that is when it's safest for both of them.
You don’t shout about love, not this kind of love. He tells her one of those nights that he won’t be back for awhile, he’ll be going to Japan and Thailand for the tour and whatever, so “take care, okay?” he sounds exhausted, eye bags more prominent than ever as they stand by the flickering hallway outside her rundown apartment.
“Have fun,” she says. “Kiss some girls.”
His lips quirk into a smile - tired and lilting but there it is. “Reading fanfiction again, Sooyoung-ah?”
She rolls her eyes and he leans in, smells of the summer breeze and the perfume she so hates, presses his lips on hers and she thinks, god, can he be any more unromantic? She wanted her first kiss in some nice spot by Han River, not outside her door with the lamp dying out and cockroaches scuttling over their shoes. He pulls away and pats her head affectionately. “You can go write about that,” he says, and his eyes have the nerve to crinkle.
She smacks him over the head for violating her and slams the door in his face.
Beep. She opens her cellphone. You’re cute when you’re angry.
She buries her head in her pillow, writes ‘RAAAAGE’ all over her paper journal before staring at the Dong Bang Shin Ki poster at her ceiling. Changmin watches over her, like God. Jaejoong is beside him as always, gaze as intense as the devil. She makes an incoherent sound and switches off the light.
He calls her on Saturday evening, after midnight. She is cramming for her exams and has no mood to entertain him. He keeps silent on the phone as she reads through her economics textbook, and finally she says, “what are you doing?”
There is no reply for awhile, and she thinks maybe he’s fallen asleep. Then she hears him.
“Listening to you breathe.”
Mushy. Disgusting. What the hell, Jaejoong. No, it will not make a good love song. “What’s wrong with you?” she asks finally. She pictures his face, doe eyes barely open from lack of sleep, a smile missing from his lips and that spunky, teasing personality toned down for interviews because he gets overzealous sometimes, and the management knows it. Silence for a minute, and she’s about to ask him if she can hang up when he says, “I screwed up. The routine.”
A moment passes, and she snorts.
“The fans like it when you screw up.”
A pause. “How’s that?”
She proceeds to explain to him the amount of humour that goes on in Cassiopeia (she leaves out the part about the wank), chill out and all that, people think it’s cute when they see a glimpse of human in you. You don’t have to be perfect all the damn time.
Jaejoong’s laughter makes her kind of smile. “Is that so,” he says, and she detects the relief in his voice, even if it won’t make Yunho any less upset with him but “No one cares. Seriously,” she says. “You have us on your side.”
“I have you,” he says.
She sits for the exams and moan about it to her friends, works hard at the supermarket until her feet ache and her hands roughen, finishes her day when the sky turns to black. Maybe it is out of habit, but she goes back to the disgusting diner where she and Jaejoong usually have their dates and orders the over fried fish and chips. She watches the cars go by through the glass pane and hums Bolero under her breath. She doesn’t really understand it, but her heart kind of hurts now that it’s been a month without him. She shrugs off the feeling and takes another bite of her buttered fish, the awful taste rolling off her tongue. But it’s okay, she thinks, it’s okay.
Three more days, says the text message.
She can’t believe her eyes. She hasn’t checked with the forums since she’s started dating - no, scratch that - hanging out with Jaejoong, because she knows how they tend to bash anything female in relation to Dong Bang Shin Ki and she’d rather not picture herself getting annihilated. But now she logs on and there it is, in bright sparkly text and asterisks. Dong Bang Shin Ki is coming home.
Jaejoong is coming home.
I’ll meet you at Han River, 1AM.
She shudders in the chill of the night and rubs her hands together, and can’t help but think that it really isn’t that cold, so why the hell is she shivering? 1AM, she sits by the stone steps and blows into her fingers. 1.15AM and she thinks the fucker is late and he is going to die for this. 1.30AM she stands up and starts to head for home, but then she sees him standing a few feet behind her, a cap over his eyes and a mask over his nose. She knows him, by now, understands the way he stands, with a slight slouch in his shoulders and a hand in his pocket. “Are you trying to scare me?” she snaps, halfway pissed but she hears her voice tremble. It feels like fear.
“I’m sorry,” he says, stepping forward.
And it’s kind of ridiculous to hold someone close when she can’t see your eyes (under the cap) or hear your words properly (the mask on his face) but somehow it works for her because seeing his face would just make her feel like punching him and it works for him, too, because he doesn’t want her to see him like this, childish and needy and missing her so much. “You smell like a plane,” she tells him.
“You smell like home,” he says.
They kiss, maybe once or twice before she tells him he’s doing it all wrong as usual, and “you know what, Jaejoong, it’s never going to work out between you and me. You don’t know what a girl wants, you can’t even carry a conversation with me without making fun of me, and now I understand why you were never my favourite, you’re just too weird and your clothes are too colourful and I wish you were Changmin, but you’re right, he’d be too tall and you’re just - “ her voice kind of falters -“you’re just perfect for me.”
Maybe it won’t work out, she thinks later, after Jaejoong’s kissed her into a spell, until she can’t see anymore, can’t think anymore - maybe they’re doomed like this. But his fingers curl over her wrist and god, she hates him, loves him so much for all the little things that make him Jaejoong, and so she lets herself hold on, just a little bit longer.