and this is
and this is
Yunho/Jaejoong
AU/Romance/Angst; PG-13
7,241 words.
Being the one who waited has always been a painful thing. Yunho had just never known it.
Written for dbsk_secretgame's 2009 Partner Challenge and placed third in the Best Yunho category; prompt was this picture ('come home')
Note: This is only Yunho's POV, so to understand the full story, please go here for what it is (Jaejoong's POV), written by the amazing latenightchai. :')
“Jae...?”
“Go back to sleep.”
The quick, light kiss Yunho feels on his shoulder soothes him. It’s been a while since Jaejoong had been so affectionate with him, and it lulls him to sleep more than anything else can.
He pads into the kitchen while his fingers are busy finishing knotting his tie and looks around, searching for the note Jaejoong usually leaves whenever he has an early schedule. When he can’t find it, he shrugs, mouth slightly smiling as he thinks that maybe Jaejoong had been too rushed this morning to pen him a note. It’s not the first time it’s happened, and he’s gotten used to waking up to find that Jaejoong has gone to work.
He fishes out his cell phone and dials him as he rummages around trying to put together a lunch, hoping to hear his voice. He gets the voice mail though and ends up having to say, a smile in his voice, “Hey, I missed you this morning. Call me back and let me know when you’re going to come home, I’ll try to get something ready for you to eat. I can’t guarantee that it’ll be as good as your cooking, but at least there’s going to be something warm for you to relax with when you get back, right? Have a great day at work, Jaejoong-ah.”
“Hyung!”
Yunho looks up from where he’s standing next to the elevators, hoping to get to his office before the incoming 8 o’clock crowd arrives, to see Junsu leaning over the glass railing on the stairs above, grinning, hair already partially disheveled. Yunho smiles and mouths that he’s waiting for the elevator as Junsu motions with his hands to hurry up, to get up there. He grins when Junsu rolls his eyes, and when Junsu suggests with his pointed eyebrow to take the stairs instead, the elevator’s arriving gives him a chance to secretly mock-pout at Junsu’s narrowed eyes, laughing to himself as he walks inside.
He finds Junsu waiting right in front of him when he steps out, eyes still narrowed and mouth twisted. Yunho hides a grin when he sees Junsu’s mouth quiver at the effort of keeping his mouth in the same shape and reaches over to poke his cheeks, laughing when Junsu avoids his fingers. “What were you saying?” Yunho asks, grinning, as he heads towards his office.
“I... don’t remember. Wait, wait, let me think!”
Junsu’s adorable like this, Yunho thinks. With his eyebrows slightly scrunched up in concentration, he looks like he’s ready to take on the world, one step at a time. “Let me know when you remember,” Yunho sing-songs.
“Ah, right, Yoochun just called and said that he finished a new song. Want to come along with me later when I go to his studio place? I think he needs more bribery. He keeps refusing to give me his songs to produce, even when I keep giving into his ‘demands’ to do this and this and that,” Junsu says, eyes starting to glitter.
“I’m not surprised,” Yunho teases. “It’s always fun to see you angry. But sure, I’ll go with you. Do you want to go during lunch break? I don’t have a lot of things on my schedule today, so I’m sure that we can take a longer break.”
Junsu nods, and Yunho hides a smile when he notices how the glitter in Junsu’s eyes had already begun to harden to a glint.
When Yoochun opens the door to his studio, the first words out of his mouth as he looks at Junsu are “No, I’m not selling you my song. I only invited you here to listen, not buy.” The slight laughter in his eyes contradicts his words though, and as Yunho and Junsu enter, toeing off their shoes as they go, he pretends not to hear Junsu’s constant stream of chatter, choosing to look at Yunho, smile, and say, “I’m guessing Jaejoong’s busy today. He didn’t call me like he usually does.”
It’s the first time Yunho feels that there’s something wrong; Jaejoong always, always calls Yoochun, no matter how busy he is that day. (“I guess it’s like a ritual for me?” Jaejoong laughs. “My day doesn’t feel right without talking to Yoochun for some reason.”) “R-Really...” Yunho slowly replies. “I don’t know, he left before I woke up this morning, and he still hasn’t returned my call yet.”
“Oh.” Yoochun’s eyes narrow onto Yunho’s face, and after a moment of silent thinking, he exhales, almost as if something he’d been thinking about had been proven true. He bites his bottom lip, head turned to the side, and then looks back up at Yunho. “Well, tell him to call me whenever he calls you back.”
When Yunho leaves later, he’s left wondering if Yoochun knows something he doesn’t; he’d noticed the constant glances Yoochun had sent towards him the entire time, and the troubled look on his all-too-transparent face slightly alarms him, seeing as it had only appeared after they talked about Jaejoong.
Even though he knows he’s being paranoid, he calls Jaejoong again, hoping that he would pick up. The voice mail answers him again though, and the uneasiness is obvious in his voice when he leaves his message. “Hey, where are you? I’m starting to worry, and I think Yoochun’s worried too. He says to call him, by the way. Call both of us back.”
Two days pass without a single call, and Yunho nearly goes insane with worry, wondering if something had happened to Jaejoong. He’s sitting at the kitchen table, staring at the tabletop, dry-eyed, and talking to Changmin without processing anything when Changmin suddenly asks, “Say, did Jaejoong-hyung come back yet? He didn’t say anything about going for so long when I drove him to the airport.”
Yunho jumps and focuses on the voice coming out of his phone. “Y-You drove him to the airport?” he stammers. He wants to yell, yell at Changmin for not telling him anything, but he knows that Changmin sometimes takes his knowledge about his hyung for granted, assuming that everyone around him knows what he knows. “Changmin-ah, I’ve been waiting here at my goddamned kitchen table for the past two days, going crazy with worry over Jaejoong, and you didn’t think to tell me that you knew where he went?”
“I’m sorry, hyung. I thought you knew.”
Changmin’s voice sounds so guilty, Yunho blearily thinks, that he couldn’t help but forgive him. He softly cuts off the rest of Changmin’s words. “Please, Changmin. Just tell me where he is.” His voice breaks as his head dips onto the tabletop, tears trailing a broken track over the bridge of his nose to land on the wood’s worn surface.
“London. He’s in London.”
He’s come to expect the voice mail. He just didn’t think that it would hurt so much though, when he realizes that Jaejoong’s not picking up on purpose.
“So I talked to Changmin. London, huh...? Jaejoong... I. I don’t... Call me, please?”
It takes Junsu a week before he finally snaps. Yunho’s in his office, working on his most recent case, as Junsu’s standing in front of his desk, talking. Yunho doesn’t really pay attention though, seeing as he’s having a hard enough time concentrating on the work in front of him, and he jumps when Junsu suddenly takes a hold of his chair and wheels it to face him. Yunho hadn’t even noticed him walking to the side of his desk.
“Hyung,” Junsu quietly says. “Will you please stop trying to act like nothing’s wrong? It’s hard to see you pretending to be so strong just to notice that you’re nothing like how you used to be.”
Yunho slowly raises his eyes and looks at him. He tries out a smile. “I’m not acting.”
Junsu takes a breath before answering, jaws and fists clenched as he stares up at the ceiling. “I don’t believe that, Yunho-hyung. I’ve known you for years, and I can tell when you’re hiding something. If you don’t feel like working, stop forcing yourself and take a few days, weeks, even months off. I’m sure the company wouldn’t mind, seeing as you’ve practically killed yourself working for them ever since you’ve entered the company.”
Yunho feels his eyes crinkle up without him forcing for the first time in the whole week as he continues to look at Junsu. The earnest look on his face makes him smile, but it also makes him want to cry; the emotions he’s been tamping down in order to not feel the heartbreak he knows he’ll feel almost overpowers him, stronger than he’d thought they’ll be. He glances away, blinking at the sudden blurriness in his vision, and lets out a sigh. “I’m not forcing myself to work, Junsu-yah. This is the only way I know that can take my mind off Jaejoong and the worrying about him, even if it’s temporary.”
Junsu blows out a sigh of his own and turns to walk back to the front of the desk. Once he stops walking, he gazes at Yunho’s face before he leans over and grabs Yunho’s hand, holding it tight. “Make sure you know what you’re doing, Yunho-hyung. I don’t think Jaejoong-hyung would be happy to see you so thin and drawn looking when he comes back,” he gently says. At Yunho’s silent nod, he lets go and moves to go to the door. He looks back before he fully exits and slightly smiles. Take care, Yunho-hyung, his eyes seem to say.
Yunho manages to softly give a smile. I’ll try.
He drinks himself into a stupor that night, having taken Junsu’s advice and asked for a month’s worth of leave. Everywhere he turns, he’s bombarded with memories of Jaejoong and his indelible mark on everything he touches.
For a brief moment once he’s completely drunk, Yunho wildly entertains the notion of moving out-all too soon though, he realizes that he’ll miss the little things around the apartment that Jaejoong had personalized and its memories too much to ever seriously consider letting the place go. He winds up standing in front of the framed picture they have on top of the nightstand in their bedroom, bottle of vodka in one hand and cell phone in the other. He somehow always has his phone with him these days, almost as if Jaejoong’s going to be calling at any minute and Yunho’s just waiting for the call.
The picture’s of them standing in front of China’s flag after finally managing to finish climbing up the Great Wall. Even though it was snowing and they looked almost double their size with the amount of clothing they’d piled on, it’s obvious that they were so happy back then, back when they had first decided to move in together and had chosen to visit Beijing during the winter as a way of celebration. They’d even managed to rope Yoochun, Junsu, and Changmin into going with them, and as Yunho’s eyes trace over Jaejoong’s face, bright in its laughter, his finger press Jaejoong’s speed dial once again.
He doesn’t bother with paying attention to the ringing anymore. Once the beep sounds, he chokes out, “Jaejoong, please, tell me what went wrong. Tell me so I can fix it, so that you’ll be willing to come back. If not for me, at least for Yoochun, for Junsu, for Changmin. They miss you so much. I miss you so much. I miss you, Jaejoong-ah, I miss you so fucking much I can’t even breathe anymore-”
The phone slides from his hand and drops to the ground, eventually hanging up by itself as Yunho collapses onto the floor, sobbing. As his heart finally breaks, he lets himself fall to pieces for the first time since Jaejoong’s left.
Two weeks are spent in the solitude of the apartment, Yunho leaving only occasionally to buy groceries or to stock up on basic necessities. He slowly goes through all the music Jaejoong has, an eclectic mixture of jazz, blues, classical, opera, and Korean pop that he always used to play when he secluded himself in his studio, working on his next collection. Yunho finds that he always slightly smiles whenever he hears a familiar song that reminds him of Jaejoong, an unnamed comfort settling over him with the playing of well remembered songs.
As he cleans and does house chores, Yunho tries to keep everything the same as when Jaejoong had first decorated the apartment, wanting to keep the memories for as long as possible. Once in a while though, in his more heartbroken moments, he gets the urge to throw everything out and start all over; once he gets as far as packing all of Jaejoong’s remaining clothing into a garbage bag, intending to give them all to charity, before his heart reminded him that the clothes were the only remaining items of Jaejoong that still smell like him. He ends up putting them back to where they belonged, hands smoothing away the wrinkles he’d unintentionally caused. He never again touches Jaejoong’s closet.
He hears from Yoochun that Jaejoong had left a message, but he doesn’t ask what Jaejoong said. He simply nods and says oh when Yoochun tells him. There’s no point in asking when it’s obvious that if Jaejoong had something to say to him, he would’ve left a message on Yunho’s phone.
Yoochun visits him near the end of the third week, looking at Yunho’s face the moment he walks in the door. “You don’t look so bad,” he remarks, eyes taking care to glance around the apartment, almost as if to check if Jaejoong’s mementos are still left where they were originally placed.
“Don’t worry,” Yunho says wryly as he goes to the kitchen. “I’m not the type to go without showers or shaves. I tend to not want to reek of alcohol.”
Yoochun softly laughs, but as soon as Yunho returns, hand carrying two cups of coffee, his face smoothes out, eyes carefully watching Yunho again. “Hyung,” he hesitantly begins, “Jaejoong-”
“-you know, you and Jaejoong always had that habit,” Yunho interrupts. He’s looking down at his coffee, eyes half-closed and far away.
“What habit?”
Yunho glances up and smiles slightly. “That little habit of laughing and then immediately wiping your face of all emotion. He always did it whenever he wanted to say something to me and was afraid of how I would take it. It was how I knew something was wrong.”
It’s now Yoochun’s turn to look away, uncomfortable with what he came to say. “Hyung, this morning, Jaejoong-hyung called-”
“He called you again, right?” Yunho softly asks. He sighs and runs his hand over his face, over his hair. “How is he?”
Yoochun pauses. “He’s… okay. He’s in Venice right now, and he was in Paris for a few days.”
Yunho bows his head, hiding his face from Yoochun, and a long moment passes before he answers. “…Paris,” he whispers, “he was in Paris.”
The white-knuckled grip Yoochun sees Yunho holding his cup with alarms him, and he reaches out to take it before Yunho drops it. He has to pull hard before Yunho lets him take it, and he sets it onto the coffee table, silent as he tries to let Yunho calm himself down.
Yunho makes an unintelligible noise and looks up after a few minutes. The small, tight smile he forces onto his face goes against the slight shimmer in his eyes, but he acts as though the tears aren’t blinding him, murmuring, “Thanks for telling me that he’s okay, Yoochun-ah. It’s good to hear from him again, isn’t it?”
Yoochun quietly nods his head. “Yeah.”
The day he goes back to work, Yunho decides to lessen the time he spends working. Jaejoong’d always complained about him never making enough time for them.
He makes it a goal to have enough time left over during the week to go exercise, to catch up with friends he hasn’t talked to in a while, to visit places he’s always wanted to visit but hasn’t had enough time to actually see. He realizes that he hasn’t called his parents in weeks and makes the next call a priority. He starts a checklist of the things he wants to do, slowly marking things off as the days, weeks, go by.
He’s out with his friends one day when someone suggests going to the next performance by the Korean National Ballet Company. Yunho tentatively agrees, and he finds himself sitting in a front row seat the following weekend, surrounded by expectant, cheerful friends who’d never known of his relationship with Jaejoong. He thinks it’s ironic that even though he’d tried his best to try to avoid anything that can make him think of Jaejoong even more than he already does, he still ends up going to the one event that he’d enjoyed the most out of all the artistic events Jaejoong’d dragged him to see.
The moment the curtains rise and the dancers gracefully enter onto the stage, Yunho experiences a sense of nostalgia-in all the little moments he had never learned to truly treasure before Jaejoong left, sitting next to Jaejoong as the ballet began and hearing his initial small gasp of appreciation were among his most missed memories.
He enjoys the show anyways though, and when his group of friends and he leave, all admiring the skill and grace with which the dancers moved with, Yunho stays silent, lost in remembering how Jaejoong had gushed each time they’d left.
(“Weren’t those dancers gorgeous? The way they’d moved-wow. It was almost as if they didn’t even have to think about putting their arms and legs where they belonged. They moved so fluidly, so sensuously… If only I could have even a little bit of their grace.”
He bites back a smile at the wistful tone in Jaejoong’s voice; it’s common knowledge for everyone who knows Jaejoong that he was often clumsy, blundering around until someone comes to steady him. “I think you’re perfect just the way you are, Jaejoong-ah.”)
Before he notices it, spring arrives, and Jaejoong’s been gone for almost three months, having left in the middle of winter. His workload is starting to increase, as spring’s around the time when all the groups in his company begin to plan their comebacks, and he has to continuously schedule meetings with composers, lyricists, choreographers to make sure everything’s ready for the company’s stars. With all the work he has to do, Yunho finds that he thinks of Jaejoong less and less, and when he’s finally finished with one particularly trying meeting and is relaxing at home, he realizes that his heart doesn’t break anymore with just a mere thought of Jaejoong. It still hurts though, but the pain isn’t as strong as it used to be.
It’s only now when the pain isn’t as strong that he works up the courage to look back on his memories, something he hasn’t dared to do in months. He reminisces over the things Jaejoong used to do for him and muses over things he’d done that had pissed Jaejoong off; in the midst of one lazy day in bed with the rain pouring outside, he finally notices that for months before Jaejoong took off, their relationship had changed. He hadn’t noticed it back when it first started to happen-but that was to be expected, seeing as he was always the dense, slow one, needing someone to point out a detail before he registers it.
Jaejoong had been the first of many things for him; the first man he’d ever loved in a romantic sense, the first person he’d willingly went against society rules for, the first person he’d ever lived with… He was the first of so many things, it’s now hard for Yunho to even imagine what it would be like if it was another person doing the same things.
Small details were something he’d never really paid attention to, thinking that the end goals were more important, so when change occurs at such a slow, steady pace that Jaejoong was so capable of doing, he doesn’t notice it. He doesn’t even look back at his past, most of the time. Just like the days following the time he’d once come home drunk, something he made sure didn’t happen often, seeing as Jaejoong didn’t like it, the gradual transformation of their relationship into something fake hadn’t alarmed him; he’d just thought it was because of their spending less time together, him in his work and Jaejoong in his painting.
(He doesn’t want to say it, but he knows part of it is his fault. He should’ve worked harder at it, should’ve done something to change where their relationship was heading. He can think of all these excuses for why he didn’t do anything, but he knows they don’t add up to anything, lost in the huge regret he has.
He hadn’t thought that Jaejoong would’ve noticed his crying in the shower after drinking with Seunghyun; when he’d come home, it was already way past the time he usually slept at, never changing in his sleeping habits. He’d thought that he managed to hide it, the anguish he’d felt at having a friend leave him just because of the person he’d loved, but now, looking back at Jaejoong’s expression when he heard the message Seunghyun’d left-he hadn’t been able to pick up the phone, and Jaejoong always went straight to the message machine once he got home-it was obvious he’d known. Jaejoong had known, and it had hurt.)
Yunho gets drunk the night he realizes exactly where things had started to go wrong. He wants to numb himself to his stupidity, but even when he’s drunk, he knows that everything had been his fault. He should’ve been the one who left, not Jaejoong.
After a week, he gets enough courage to go to Yoochun, guessing that Jaejoong had probably already told him everything as they were the closest among the five. Yoochun manages to open the door before he run back to his studio, saying something about how he has to get this melody out before he loses it.
Yunho just softly laughs, knowing that Yoochun’s always been this way, putting his work before everything else unless he knew it was important. Yunho had been the same way, once. He used to know when it was okay to focus on his work and when it hadn’t been.
The ringing of Yoochun’s cell phone startles him, and when Yoochun yells at him to pick it up, not yet done with his song, he does so, not looking at the caller ID before he says, “Hello? Yoochun’s phone, Yunho speaking.”
“…Yunho?”
His heart jumps-breaks, comes back to life, bleeds-at the voice on the other line. Whipping the phone off his ear and staring at the bright LED screen, he doesn’t dare believe that it’s really Jaejoong he’s talking to. He’d never thought he’d ever be able to hear Jaejoong’s voice again, and before he can control it, words come out of his mouth, almost gibberish in their hurry. “…Jaejoong? Is this Jaejoong?!”
“Oh, no - Yunho, I shouldn’t, this isn’t - I should go -”
“N-no, don’t hang up! ...j-just. How’ve you been? You -” He cuts off the rest of his words. He could tell they were almost accusatory, almost demanding. He doesn’t have the right to demand anything of Jaejoong anymore, so he simply swallows the things he wants to say.
“…I’m, I’m okay, yah? Listen, Yunho, maybe this isn’t such a good idea.” Jaejoong’s voice makes it sound like he’s on the edge of tears, and there’s nothing Yunho had ever wanted to do more than to somehow pull Jaejoong into his arms.
He keeps blinking at the tears in his eyes, but he manages to somehow choke out a laugh, hoping that it didn’t sound like it was forced. “Yeah, maybe this isn’t. But it’s… really good to hear your voice again.”
“Yeah… I mis-I mean, I…” The slight pause Yunho hears gives him a moment to take a breath, to convince himself that Jaejoong hadn’t been about to say ‘I miss you.’ There’s no reason for him to say that anymore, and neither is there reason for him to somehow think that Jaejoong would say it. “Um, you sound good. You’re doing good, aren’t you?”
It’s the hardest lie he’d ever been made to say, but he says it anyway. “I… I guess so. Are you… happy?”
“I went to Paris.”
Four simple words, Yunho thinks. Just four simple words, and they throw his world into chaos. Hearing from Yoochun is so different than hearing it straight from Jaejoong’s mouth. He laughs again, and this time he couldn’t stop it from sounding slightly bitter. “Yeah, I heard from Yoochun. But, Paris, Jaejoong-ah. It… must’ve been beautiful.”
“It was. But everywhere’s been beautiful… There’s a lot to see, yah?”
He takes a breath before he answers, “…I know.”
Jaejoong starts rambling, and it’s so reminiscent of the past when Jaejoong would just start talking about anything that crossed his mind that he finds it hard to even focus. He manages to catch the last part of what Jaejoong’s saying though, and what he hears makes him almost-almost-wish that he didn’t hear it. “…but it doesn’t mean I don’t miss home.”
His voice clogs in his throat. He’d thought he was the only one who missed anything about their past. But his mind takes over his heart, and it tells him that perhaps Jaejoong didn’t really mean home as in the apartment they’d shared, perhaps Jaejoong didn’t really mean him, perhaps perhaps… he just meant Seoul and its weather and the people who live in it. “Oh, Jaejoong-ah,” he murmurs in an undertone, guilt and regret coloring the words until he doesn’t know what he’s really trying to say. He clears his throat. “Everyone misses you, you know. It took them a while to get used to you gone.”
“Probably just me taking care of them,” Jaejoong laughs with a subtle edge in his voice, “but they’re not kids anymore. They don’t need me.”
“Y-yeah, I guess they don’t,” Yunho answers. He looks up at the ceiling and wonders if he should really say it, but there’s nothing he can do to stop the words from coming out of his mouth-they’d been rusting in his heart for too long. “But you know… I… I really miss you.”
“Yunho… I miss you too,” Jaejoong whispers. “…I love you, you know that, right?”
He didn’t think that there would be anything that he would hear that could make him really, seriously cry, but then he hadn’t counted on what Jaejoong would say. It had been always like that between them, Jaejoong throwing him off balance with his carefree, easy nature. He doesn’t want to, but he starts to cry, saying through a strangled sob, “Yeah, I know, Jaejoong-ah. I love you too. I always will.”
“I-I should probably go -”
“N-no, don’t!” Yunho desperately interrupts. “Just stay on the phone with me. You don’t have to say anything, just… let me hear you for a while.” Maybe he said too much, he wildly thinks, maybe Jaejoong hadn’t meant ‘love’ the same way he once had. But it doesn’t matter to him anymore, and all he wants is-even if it’s just for a moment-to feel as though the past months hadn’t happened.
“No, no, no,” Jaejoong says, almost chanting it. “Don’t make it harder. I’m going to go, but I’ll talk to you lat -”
“-Alright,” he interrupts again. He’d always known things couldn’t go back to the way it used to be. “But remember this, Jaejoong-ah. Yoochun, Junsu, Changmin, and I are waiting for you. We’ll still be here whenever you decide to come back. And…” he trails off, once again unsure about whether or not what he’s about to say still falls within the boundary Jaejoong’s set. “I’m still going to be where you left me. In our apartment, in our bed. No matter what.” It doesn’t matter if it’s futile. He doesn’t care anymore. He’s just going to do his best to tell Jaejoong that even if he decides to never come back, he’s still going to be there.
“Damnit, Yunho, that’s not what I want,” Jaejoong grits out. “I’m not just going to come back and have everything be the same. I just can’t do that. I just can’t.”
Yunho understands what Jaejoong means. He really does. But it’s hard telling that to his heart. “Then what do you want changed, Jae? I can’t change anything if you don’t tell me!”
“I want… What I want is for you to consider, really consider this - us. I left because… because I needed to do it for me, and I want you to do something for you. Be honest, if you really - if you really want me to come back.” Jaejoong pauses, seeming as though he’s thinking, but before Yunho can say anything, he starts again, stronger, “And don’t give me an answer now, because I really mean it. I don’t want you to change for me, I don’t… Jesus, I’m rambling. I’m sorry -”
Yunho’s left speechless. He rubs his palms into his eyes, wiping away dried tears, and sighs, letting his heart take over his mouth. “We’ve been together for years, Jaejoong-ah. Even if I hadn’t wanted to, I’ve still changed.” More than anyone would realize, Yunho thinks with a slight twist of his mouth. “That’s how people grow. And being separated for so long… Jaejoong, you’ve no idea how many times I hated you for leaving me without a single note, anything. But still… I always missed you. I missed you even when I was drunk and crazy. And since you don’t want me to say anything now, I won’t, but don’t be sorry. Please don’t be sorry. You didn’t do anything wrong.” It was all, and only, his fault.
“I-I shouldn’t, I mean - this wasn’t a good idea, I’ve got to go, I’m sorry, I need to -” Jaejoong hangs up after a flurry of words.
Yunho stands there, hand holding the now silent phone to his ear. It seems like he’s been doing that a lot lately, a part of his brain muses, and it’s not until Yoochun slightly shakes him does he realize that minutes have passed. The shocked look on Yoochun’s face amuses him, and as he stares at Yoochun’s mouth, wondering why it’s moving without any sound, his fingers drop the phone, numb.
The sudden sound of the phone crashing onto the hardwood floor wakes him up. He looks back at Yoochun, and he now hears the things that have been coming out of his own mouth. “Oh my god - Yoochun - Jaejoong - phone - my heart - why - what is this - I-I can’t take this -”
Yoochun gently holds him as he cries.
He can’t focus on his work at all the next few days. He shuts off his phone, both home phone and cell phone, just to have some peace and quiet. It doesn’t help when Yoochun tells both Junsu and Changmin what happened, and all three of them practically trip over themselves in their rush to make sure Yunho’s okay.
The first weekend after talking to Jaejoong, Yunho opens his door to find Junsu right out in front, hand raised and finger pointed, ready to press the doorbell. Before he can say anything, he’s squished in a tight hug, with his nose buried in Junsu’s jacket.
“Are you all right, hyung?” Junsu asks.
Yunho can’t find his voice for a moment, so he just smiles into Junsu’s jacket, eyes slightly reddening as he squeezes Junsu tighter. He gives a halfhearted shrug, but when he pulls back, he looks down at Junsu and croaks, “Now that you’re here, sort of.”
“Lies.”
Both Junsu and Yunho turn to see Changmin walking down the hallway. “From what Yoochun told me, and from what I see right now, you’re clearly lying, hyung,” Changmin says. The small grin that accompanies his words takes a little of the sting away, and Yunho reaches out to pull him into the circle he and Junsu made when he comes into reach.
He laughs as Changmin pretty much harrumphs at the show of affection; Changmin doesn’t pull away though, and they stand there for a while in Yunho’s open doorway, not caring if any of Yunho’s neighbors saw them.
“What, I don’t get a group hug either?”
Junsu cheerfully retorts at Yoochun’s suddenly appearing, “Came too late. Sorry, come again next time.”
Yunho has to hide his smile. Just by having something around him that never seem to change can mean so much, he thinks, especially when they’re your closest friends.
“Just look at that smile,” Changmin teases as Yunho slightly lets go of him and Junsu to drag Yoochun inside their group hug. “Makes it seem like the all his worries just disappeared at the sight of Yoochun-hyung coming. Should Jaejoong-hyung be worried?”
“Oh, shut up, Changmin,” Yunho says, lips curling up again. “You get on my nerves.” He slowly starts to shift them inside the apartment, wanting to close the door.
Changmin flashes a well-used grin. “I know. I make it a point in life to annoy all my hyungs.” At Yunho, Yoochun, and Junsu’s eye rolls, he laughs and holds up a casket of soju. “But still, I know you all love me. Especially when I bring the alcohol.”
Before Junsu manages to grab the nearest bottle out of the casket, Yoochun steals it away from Changmin and runs inside Yunho’s apartment, teasing Junsu as he runs, “Whoops, too late, Junsu-yah. Maybe you’ll get some next time.”
The noise he hears from somewhere in his apartment as Junsu and Yoochun horse around slightly comforts him, and Yunho lets out a sigh, knowing that the three of them had only come over to cheer him up, not wanting him to go back to the shell he’d been months ago back when Jaejoong’d first left. He’s still not the same as back then-he’s not sure he’ll ever be the same again-but he’s going to try his best to not let them down.
He’ll change, he’ll learn to live around the hole in his life with Jaejoong gone. He owes it to himself, he owes it to Jaejoong, and he owes it to them.
With his new goal set in mind, he works even harder now. He finishes cases in half the time he used to, and the upper managements reward him with a larger salary and more vacation days. He doesn’t forget to use them, and when he’s finished with the largest cases of the year, he takes another two weeks off, this time only just to rest and maybe, just maybe, find a way to make a new life.
The two weeks pass by in a blur, and Yunho goes back to work, refreshed. He never used to notice the interested glances ladies give him, but now he does. He doesn’t bother with asking any of them out though, as he already knew Jaejoong had already taken up the largest and most important part of his heart. There’s just not anything left for ladies to bother with, and Yunho settles for being friends with most of them.
He comes home to an apartment with more touches of himself now, no longer just Jaejoong’s marks decorating the walls. Even though he can’t paint to save his life (and Jaejoong had always made fun of him for that), he finds that having little pieces of evidence, no matter how they were made, of someone caring for the place makes living in a silent apartment so much more easier.
The little brown stain on the floor from back when Jaejoong and he had first moved in is now a small hill, complete with grass, flowers, and the sun rising from behind it. It’s not a masterpiece, but Yunho’s satisfied with how it looks.
It takes getting used to, but he learns to be happy with what he has, a working life full of challenges and a personal life filled to the brim with caring friends. He doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to let go of Jaejoong; he knows that he’ll always spend the rest of his life worrying and thinking about him. He knows that this love he feels for him won’t change, and he also knows that the answer he gave Jaejoong won’t change. He’s learning how to have patience now, and as he waits for both Jaejoong’s and his heart to fully heal, he makes the most of what he has.
By the time summer begins to appear in Seoul, Yunho’s more content than he’d ever been before Jaejoong had first come into his life. It’s nothing compared to the times Jaejoong and he had been together, but he’s learned to appreciate the small details in life, something Jaejoong had always told him to do.
Changmin shows up alone at his office one day, looking worried and uncertain. It’s such an odd look for him to wear that Yunho’s automatically concerned as well, mind jumping wildly to conclusions. Changmin doesn’t say anything for a few moments and just slowly paces around, muttering under his breath.
Yunho simply waits him out. Changmin had always been a person who would speak only when ready. He starts when Changmin suddenly goes right up to his desk though, and slams his hands on the wood.
“Okay, hyung,” Changmin mutters. “You have two choices. One is to to first listen to the whole story before you decide to do anything, and the other is to decide whether or not you want to break your heart open again.”
Yunho’s getting a horrible feeling that the reason Changmin came is because of Jaejoong. “...That would depend on how badly my heart might be broken again.”
“Well,” Changmin says, “it’s not guaranteed that your heart will be broken again. It’s just the matter of how much you’re willing to risk the chance of getting your heart broken again. There’s a difference, trust me.”
He’s silent for a moment as he takes in what Changmin’s insinuating; so if he’s willing to get his heart broken again, just as it’s finally starting to heal, he might be able to gain something from it. Gain what?
Changmin grimaces when Yunho asks. “There’s only one thing you’ll gain, and you know what it is.”
Yunho softly chuckles. He guesses that it’s Jaejoong, and Changmin’s slight lift of his eyebrow confirms that. “I think I want to hear the entire story first.”
Ten minutes later, Yunho’s staring at his office’s ceiling with his head hurting with a headache and his heart screaming at him to finally take advantage of the chance life’s giving him. Changmin’s still standing at the front of his desk, nervously jumping on the balls of his feet.
“W-what are you going to do, hyung?” Changmin tentatively asks. “I know this is sudden, but since Jaejoong-hyung is going to be in Tokyo tomorrow, I’m planning on leaving tonight. I’m going to need it before I leave for the airport.”
He takes a deep breath. “I know.” He’d always thought he would be prepared when the time came for Jaejoong to come back. He just didn’t think it would be so early, and that Jaejoong would still be so close, yet so far away. Even though he wants to fly over to Tokyo now, he knows he can’t. There’s no saying what Jaejoong’s feeling right now, and him suddenly appearing in front of him when Jaejoong had done so much to avoid him would only hurt them both.
His mind flashes back to his conversation with Jaejoong, and he suddenly realizes what he can give Changmin to bring to Jaejoong. He grabs the nearest piece of paper he can find on his desk and scribbles his feelings onto it. He folds it, neatly tucking it into envelope, and seals it. His hand trembles when he finally hands it to Changmin.
He doesn’t know what to expect when he receives a text from Changmin a week later. It’s a simple ‘Gave it to him. Don’t know what he thought of it since I gave it right when I was about to board the plane. Sorry, hyung.’
He learns more details from Yoochun and Junsu, both who had gave something to Changmin to pass along to Jaejoong. He finds that Changmin, sneaky bastard that he was, took along his selca pictures and practically planned out how and when Jaejoong would find them. Jaejoong’s reaction to them makes Yunho’s heart ache from guilt that he’d had the three of them to comfort him when Jaejoong didn’t.
He keeps telling himself not to expect too much, that even though Jaejoong might’ve read the letter and understood what it meant, it didn’t mean that Jaejoong was ready to come back. He says it like a mantra, muttering it under his breath until he’s sure the people around him think he’s crazy. He knows that Changmin, Junsu, and Yoochun do, wondering if his knowing that Jaejoong’s so close had somehow harmed his brain. Yunho doesn’t bother trying to correct them.
Yunho’s touching up the little hill painting when he hears the pounding on the door. He carefully sets down the paint and brushes on the floor where even if something spills, it won’t touch the painting. He wipes his hand on his apron, heading down the hallway to where the door is. The pounding doesn’t stop, and as he wonders who it could be, he yells out, “Coming!”
He peeks out the window to try to catch a glimpse of who the person is, but the person’s standing at the angle where he’s not able to see him. Something bright blinks up at him from the ground, and he glances at it-and then looks at it again. They look like Jaejoong’s keys.
The door’s open in the next second, and he stares out to see the one person he’s been longing to see for months, the one person he knows he’ll never get used to looking at. His eyes look at everything all at once, the sun-bleached hair, the darker tan, the eyes that have always looked the same, and he drinks it all in, memorizing and contrasting the changes with the Jaejoong that had left.
He can’t think of anything to say, anything to do. He opens his mouth and the only thing that comes out is
You came back home.
Note: Again, please drop by latenightchai's other half of the story here to read Jaejoong's POV. :) It'll completely clear up your questions.
Yunho/Jaejoong
AU/Romance/Angst; PG-13
7,241 words.
Being the one who waited has always been a painful thing. Yunho had just never known it.
Written for dbsk_secretgame's 2009 Partner Challenge and placed third in the Best Yunho category; prompt was this picture ('come home')
Note: This is only Yunho's POV, so to understand the full story, please go here for what it is (Jaejoong's POV), written by the amazing latenightchai. :')
“Jae...?”
“Go back to sleep.”
The quick, light kiss Yunho feels on his shoulder soothes him. It’s been a while since Jaejoong had been so affectionate with him, and it lulls him to sleep more than anything else can.
He pads into the kitchen while his fingers are busy finishing knotting his tie and looks around, searching for the note Jaejoong usually leaves whenever he has an early schedule. When he can’t find it, he shrugs, mouth slightly smiling as he thinks that maybe Jaejoong had been too rushed this morning to pen him a note. It’s not the first time it’s happened, and he’s gotten used to waking up to find that Jaejoong has gone to work.
He fishes out his cell phone and dials him as he rummages around trying to put together a lunch, hoping to hear his voice. He gets the voice mail though and ends up having to say, a smile in his voice, “Hey, I missed you this morning. Call me back and let me know when you’re going to come home, I’ll try to get something ready for you to eat. I can’t guarantee that it’ll be as good as your cooking, but at least there’s going to be something warm for you to relax with when you get back, right? Have a great day at work, Jaejoong-ah.”
“Hyung!”
Yunho looks up from where he’s standing next to the elevators, hoping to get to his office before the incoming 8 o’clock crowd arrives, to see Junsu leaning over the glass railing on the stairs above, grinning, hair already partially disheveled. Yunho smiles and mouths that he’s waiting for the elevator as Junsu motions with his hands to hurry up, to get up there. He grins when Junsu rolls his eyes, and when Junsu suggests with his pointed eyebrow to take the stairs instead, the elevator’s arriving gives him a chance to secretly mock-pout at Junsu’s narrowed eyes, laughing to himself as he walks inside.
He finds Junsu waiting right in front of him when he steps out, eyes still narrowed and mouth twisted. Yunho hides a grin when he sees Junsu’s mouth quiver at the effort of keeping his mouth in the same shape and reaches over to poke his cheeks, laughing when Junsu avoids his fingers. “What were you saying?” Yunho asks, grinning, as he heads towards his office.
“I... don’t remember. Wait, wait, let me think!”
Junsu’s adorable like this, Yunho thinks. With his eyebrows slightly scrunched up in concentration, he looks like he’s ready to take on the world, one step at a time. “Let me know when you remember,” Yunho sing-songs.
“Ah, right, Yoochun just called and said that he finished a new song. Want to come along with me later when I go to his studio place? I think he needs more bribery. He keeps refusing to give me his songs to produce, even when I keep giving into his ‘demands’ to do this and this and that,” Junsu says, eyes starting to glitter.
“I’m not surprised,” Yunho teases. “It’s always fun to see you angry. But sure, I’ll go with you. Do you want to go during lunch break? I don’t have a lot of things on my schedule today, so I’m sure that we can take a longer break.”
Junsu nods, and Yunho hides a smile when he notices how the glitter in Junsu’s eyes had already begun to harden to a glint.
When Yoochun opens the door to his studio, the first words out of his mouth as he looks at Junsu are “No, I’m not selling you my song. I only invited you here to listen, not buy.” The slight laughter in his eyes contradicts his words though, and as Yunho and Junsu enter, toeing off their shoes as they go, he pretends not to hear Junsu’s constant stream of chatter, choosing to look at Yunho, smile, and say, “I’m guessing Jaejoong’s busy today. He didn’t call me like he usually does.”
It’s the first time Yunho feels that there’s something wrong; Jaejoong always, always calls Yoochun, no matter how busy he is that day. (“I guess it’s like a ritual for me?” Jaejoong laughs. “My day doesn’t feel right without talking to Yoochun for some reason.”) “R-Really...” Yunho slowly replies. “I don’t know, he left before I woke up this morning, and he still hasn’t returned my call yet.”
“Oh.” Yoochun’s eyes narrow onto Yunho’s face, and after a moment of silent thinking, he exhales, almost as if something he’d been thinking about had been proven true. He bites his bottom lip, head turned to the side, and then looks back up at Yunho. “Well, tell him to call me whenever he calls you back.”
When Yunho leaves later, he’s left wondering if Yoochun knows something he doesn’t; he’d noticed the constant glances Yoochun had sent towards him the entire time, and the troubled look on his all-too-transparent face slightly alarms him, seeing as it had only appeared after they talked about Jaejoong.
Even though he knows he’s being paranoid, he calls Jaejoong again, hoping that he would pick up. The voice mail answers him again though, and the uneasiness is obvious in his voice when he leaves his message. “Hey, where are you? I’m starting to worry, and I think Yoochun’s worried too. He says to call him, by the way. Call both of us back.”
Two days pass without a single call, and Yunho nearly goes insane with worry, wondering if something had happened to Jaejoong. He’s sitting at the kitchen table, staring at the tabletop, dry-eyed, and talking to Changmin without processing anything when Changmin suddenly asks, “Say, did Jaejoong-hyung come back yet? He didn’t say anything about going for so long when I drove him to the airport.”
Yunho jumps and focuses on the voice coming out of his phone. “Y-You drove him to the airport?” he stammers. He wants to yell, yell at Changmin for not telling him anything, but he knows that Changmin sometimes takes his knowledge about his hyung for granted, assuming that everyone around him knows what he knows. “Changmin-ah, I’ve been waiting here at my goddamned kitchen table for the past two days, going crazy with worry over Jaejoong, and you didn’t think to tell me that you knew where he went?”
“I’m sorry, hyung. I thought you knew.”
Changmin’s voice sounds so guilty, Yunho blearily thinks, that he couldn’t help but forgive him. He softly cuts off the rest of Changmin’s words. “Please, Changmin. Just tell me where he is.” His voice breaks as his head dips onto the tabletop, tears trailing a broken track over the bridge of his nose to land on the wood’s worn surface.
“London. He’s in London.”
He’s come to expect the voice mail. He just didn’t think that it would hurt so much though, when he realizes that Jaejoong’s not picking up on purpose.
“So I talked to Changmin. London, huh...? Jaejoong... I. I don’t... Call me, please?”
It takes Junsu a week before he finally snaps. Yunho’s in his office, working on his most recent case, as Junsu’s standing in front of his desk, talking. Yunho doesn’t really pay attention though, seeing as he’s having a hard enough time concentrating on the work in front of him, and he jumps when Junsu suddenly takes a hold of his chair and wheels it to face him. Yunho hadn’t even noticed him walking to the side of his desk.
“Hyung,” Junsu quietly says. “Will you please stop trying to act like nothing’s wrong? It’s hard to see you pretending to be so strong just to notice that you’re nothing like how you used to be.”
Yunho slowly raises his eyes and looks at him. He tries out a smile. “I’m not acting.”
Junsu takes a breath before answering, jaws and fists clenched as he stares up at the ceiling. “I don’t believe that, Yunho-hyung. I’ve known you for years, and I can tell when you’re hiding something. If you don’t feel like working, stop forcing yourself and take a few days, weeks, even months off. I’m sure the company wouldn’t mind, seeing as you’ve practically killed yourself working for them ever since you’ve entered the company.”
Yunho feels his eyes crinkle up without him forcing for the first time in the whole week as he continues to look at Junsu. The earnest look on his face makes him smile, but it also makes him want to cry; the emotions he’s been tamping down in order to not feel the heartbreak he knows he’ll feel almost overpowers him, stronger than he’d thought they’ll be. He glances away, blinking at the sudden blurriness in his vision, and lets out a sigh. “I’m not forcing myself to work, Junsu-yah. This is the only way I know that can take my mind off Jaejoong and the worrying about him, even if it’s temporary.”
Junsu blows out a sigh of his own and turns to walk back to the front of the desk. Once he stops walking, he gazes at Yunho’s face before he leans over and grabs Yunho’s hand, holding it tight. “Make sure you know what you’re doing, Yunho-hyung. I don’t think Jaejoong-hyung would be happy to see you so thin and drawn looking when he comes back,” he gently says. At Yunho’s silent nod, he lets go and moves to go to the door. He looks back before he fully exits and slightly smiles. Take care, Yunho-hyung, his eyes seem to say.
Yunho manages to softly give a smile. I’ll try.
He drinks himself into a stupor that night, having taken Junsu’s advice and asked for a month’s worth of leave. Everywhere he turns, he’s bombarded with memories of Jaejoong and his indelible mark on everything he touches.
For a brief moment once he’s completely drunk, Yunho wildly entertains the notion of moving out-all too soon though, he realizes that he’ll miss the little things around the apartment that Jaejoong had personalized and its memories too much to ever seriously consider letting the place go. He winds up standing in front of the framed picture they have on top of the nightstand in their bedroom, bottle of vodka in one hand and cell phone in the other. He somehow always has his phone with him these days, almost as if Jaejoong’s going to be calling at any minute and Yunho’s just waiting for the call.
The picture’s of them standing in front of China’s flag after finally managing to finish climbing up the Great Wall. Even though it was snowing and they looked almost double their size with the amount of clothing they’d piled on, it’s obvious that they were so happy back then, back when they had first decided to move in together and had chosen to visit Beijing during the winter as a way of celebration. They’d even managed to rope Yoochun, Junsu, and Changmin into going with them, and as Yunho’s eyes trace over Jaejoong’s face, bright in its laughter, his finger press Jaejoong’s speed dial once again.
He doesn’t bother with paying attention to the ringing anymore. Once the beep sounds, he chokes out, “Jaejoong, please, tell me what went wrong. Tell me so I can fix it, so that you’ll be willing to come back. If not for me, at least for Yoochun, for Junsu, for Changmin. They miss you so much. I miss you so much. I miss you, Jaejoong-ah, I miss you so fucking much I can’t even breathe anymore-”
The phone slides from his hand and drops to the ground, eventually hanging up by itself as Yunho collapses onto the floor, sobbing. As his heart finally breaks, he lets himself fall to pieces for the first time since Jaejoong’s left.
Two weeks are spent in the solitude of the apartment, Yunho leaving only occasionally to buy groceries or to stock up on basic necessities. He slowly goes through all the music Jaejoong has, an eclectic mixture of jazz, blues, classical, opera, and Korean pop that he always used to play when he secluded himself in his studio, working on his next collection. Yunho finds that he always slightly smiles whenever he hears a familiar song that reminds him of Jaejoong, an unnamed comfort settling over him with the playing of well remembered songs.
As he cleans and does house chores, Yunho tries to keep everything the same as when Jaejoong had first decorated the apartment, wanting to keep the memories for as long as possible. Once in a while though, in his more heartbroken moments, he gets the urge to throw everything out and start all over; once he gets as far as packing all of Jaejoong’s remaining clothing into a garbage bag, intending to give them all to charity, before his heart reminded him that the clothes were the only remaining items of Jaejoong that still smell like him. He ends up putting them back to where they belonged, hands smoothing away the wrinkles he’d unintentionally caused. He never again touches Jaejoong’s closet.
He hears from Yoochun that Jaejoong had left a message, but he doesn’t ask what Jaejoong said. He simply nods and says oh when Yoochun tells him. There’s no point in asking when it’s obvious that if Jaejoong had something to say to him, he would’ve left a message on Yunho’s phone.
Yoochun visits him near the end of the third week, looking at Yunho’s face the moment he walks in the door. “You don’t look so bad,” he remarks, eyes taking care to glance around the apartment, almost as if to check if Jaejoong’s mementos are still left where they were originally placed.
“Don’t worry,” Yunho says wryly as he goes to the kitchen. “I’m not the type to go without showers or shaves. I tend to not want to reek of alcohol.”
Yoochun softly laughs, but as soon as Yunho returns, hand carrying two cups of coffee, his face smoothes out, eyes carefully watching Yunho again. “Hyung,” he hesitantly begins, “Jaejoong-”
“-you know, you and Jaejoong always had that habit,” Yunho interrupts. He’s looking down at his coffee, eyes half-closed and far away.
“What habit?”
Yunho glances up and smiles slightly. “That little habit of laughing and then immediately wiping your face of all emotion. He always did it whenever he wanted to say something to me and was afraid of how I would take it. It was how I knew something was wrong.”
It’s now Yoochun’s turn to look away, uncomfortable with what he came to say. “Hyung, this morning, Jaejoong-hyung called-”
“He called you again, right?” Yunho softly asks. He sighs and runs his hand over his face, over his hair. “How is he?”
Yoochun pauses. “He’s… okay. He’s in Venice right now, and he was in Paris for a few days.”
Yunho bows his head, hiding his face from Yoochun, and a long moment passes before he answers. “…Paris,” he whispers, “he was in Paris.”
The white-knuckled grip Yoochun sees Yunho holding his cup with alarms him, and he reaches out to take it before Yunho drops it. He has to pull hard before Yunho lets him take it, and he sets it onto the coffee table, silent as he tries to let Yunho calm himself down.
Yunho makes an unintelligible noise and looks up after a few minutes. The small, tight smile he forces onto his face goes against the slight shimmer in his eyes, but he acts as though the tears aren’t blinding him, murmuring, “Thanks for telling me that he’s okay, Yoochun-ah. It’s good to hear from him again, isn’t it?”
Yoochun quietly nods his head. “Yeah.”
The day he goes back to work, Yunho decides to lessen the time he spends working. Jaejoong’d always complained about him never making enough time for them.
He makes it a goal to have enough time left over during the week to go exercise, to catch up with friends he hasn’t talked to in a while, to visit places he’s always wanted to visit but hasn’t had enough time to actually see. He realizes that he hasn’t called his parents in weeks and makes the next call a priority. He starts a checklist of the things he wants to do, slowly marking things off as the days, weeks, go by.
He’s out with his friends one day when someone suggests going to the next performance by the Korean National Ballet Company. Yunho tentatively agrees, and he finds himself sitting in a front row seat the following weekend, surrounded by expectant, cheerful friends who’d never known of his relationship with Jaejoong. He thinks it’s ironic that even though he’d tried his best to try to avoid anything that can make him think of Jaejoong even more than he already does, he still ends up going to the one event that he’d enjoyed the most out of all the artistic events Jaejoong’d dragged him to see.
The moment the curtains rise and the dancers gracefully enter onto the stage, Yunho experiences a sense of nostalgia-in all the little moments he had never learned to truly treasure before Jaejoong left, sitting next to Jaejoong as the ballet began and hearing his initial small gasp of appreciation were among his most missed memories.
He enjoys the show anyways though, and when his group of friends and he leave, all admiring the skill and grace with which the dancers moved with, Yunho stays silent, lost in remembering how Jaejoong had gushed each time they’d left.
(“Weren’t those dancers gorgeous? The way they’d moved-wow. It was almost as if they didn’t even have to think about putting their arms and legs where they belonged. They moved so fluidly, so sensuously… If only I could have even a little bit of their grace.”
He bites back a smile at the wistful tone in Jaejoong’s voice; it’s common knowledge for everyone who knows Jaejoong that he was often clumsy, blundering around until someone comes to steady him. “I think you’re perfect just the way you are, Jaejoong-ah.”)
Before he notices it, spring arrives, and Jaejoong’s been gone for almost three months, having left in the middle of winter. His workload is starting to increase, as spring’s around the time when all the groups in his company begin to plan their comebacks, and he has to continuously schedule meetings with composers, lyricists, choreographers to make sure everything’s ready for the company’s stars. With all the work he has to do, Yunho finds that he thinks of Jaejoong less and less, and when he’s finally finished with one particularly trying meeting and is relaxing at home, he realizes that his heart doesn’t break anymore with just a mere thought of Jaejoong. It still hurts though, but the pain isn’t as strong as it used to be.
It’s only now when the pain isn’t as strong that he works up the courage to look back on his memories, something he hasn’t dared to do in months. He reminisces over the things Jaejoong used to do for him and muses over things he’d done that had pissed Jaejoong off; in the midst of one lazy day in bed with the rain pouring outside, he finally notices that for months before Jaejoong took off, their relationship had changed. He hadn’t noticed it back when it first started to happen-but that was to be expected, seeing as he was always the dense, slow one, needing someone to point out a detail before he registers it.
Jaejoong had been the first of many things for him; the first man he’d ever loved in a romantic sense, the first person he’d willingly went against society rules for, the first person he’d ever lived with… He was the first of so many things, it’s now hard for Yunho to even imagine what it would be like if it was another person doing the same things.
Small details were something he’d never really paid attention to, thinking that the end goals were more important, so when change occurs at such a slow, steady pace that Jaejoong was so capable of doing, he doesn’t notice it. He doesn’t even look back at his past, most of the time. Just like the days following the time he’d once come home drunk, something he made sure didn’t happen often, seeing as Jaejoong didn’t like it, the gradual transformation of their relationship into something fake hadn’t alarmed him; he’d just thought it was because of their spending less time together, him in his work and Jaejoong in his painting.
(He doesn’t want to say it, but he knows part of it is his fault. He should’ve worked harder at it, should’ve done something to change where their relationship was heading. He can think of all these excuses for why he didn’t do anything, but he knows they don’t add up to anything, lost in the huge regret he has.
He hadn’t thought that Jaejoong would’ve noticed his crying in the shower after drinking with Seunghyun; when he’d come home, it was already way past the time he usually slept at, never changing in his sleeping habits. He’d thought that he managed to hide it, the anguish he’d felt at having a friend leave him just because of the person he’d loved, but now, looking back at Jaejoong’s expression when he heard the message Seunghyun’d left-he hadn’t been able to pick up the phone, and Jaejoong always went straight to the message machine once he got home-it was obvious he’d known. Jaejoong had known, and it had hurt.)
Yunho gets drunk the night he realizes exactly where things had started to go wrong. He wants to numb himself to his stupidity, but even when he’s drunk, he knows that everything had been his fault. He should’ve been the one who left, not Jaejoong.
After a week, he gets enough courage to go to Yoochun, guessing that Jaejoong had probably already told him everything as they were the closest among the five. Yoochun manages to open the door before he run back to his studio, saying something about how he has to get this melody out before he loses it.
Yunho just softly laughs, knowing that Yoochun’s always been this way, putting his work before everything else unless he knew it was important. Yunho had been the same way, once. He used to know when it was okay to focus on his work and when it hadn’t been.
The ringing of Yoochun’s cell phone startles him, and when Yoochun yells at him to pick it up, not yet done with his song, he does so, not looking at the caller ID before he says, “Hello? Yoochun’s phone, Yunho speaking.”
“…Yunho?”
His heart jumps-breaks, comes back to life, bleeds-at the voice on the other line. Whipping the phone off his ear and staring at the bright LED screen, he doesn’t dare believe that it’s really Jaejoong he’s talking to. He’d never thought he’d ever be able to hear Jaejoong’s voice again, and before he can control it, words come out of his mouth, almost gibberish in their hurry. “…Jaejoong? Is this Jaejoong?!”
“Oh, no - Yunho, I shouldn’t, this isn’t - I should go -”
“N-no, don’t hang up! ...j-just. How’ve you been? You -” He cuts off the rest of his words. He could tell they were almost accusatory, almost demanding. He doesn’t have the right to demand anything of Jaejoong anymore, so he simply swallows the things he wants to say.
“…I’m, I’m okay, yah? Listen, Yunho, maybe this isn’t such a good idea.” Jaejoong’s voice makes it sound like he’s on the edge of tears, and there’s nothing Yunho had ever wanted to do more than to somehow pull Jaejoong into his arms.
He keeps blinking at the tears in his eyes, but he manages to somehow choke out a laugh, hoping that it didn’t sound like it was forced. “Yeah, maybe this isn’t. But it’s… really good to hear your voice again.”
“Yeah… I mis-I mean, I…” The slight pause Yunho hears gives him a moment to take a breath, to convince himself that Jaejoong hadn’t been about to say ‘I miss you.’ There’s no reason for him to say that anymore, and neither is there reason for him to somehow think that Jaejoong would say it. “Um, you sound good. You’re doing good, aren’t you?”
It’s the hardest lie he’d ever been made to say, but he says it anyway. “I… I guess so. Are you… happy?”
“I went to Paris.”
Four simple words, Yunho thinks. Just four simple words, and they throw his world into chaos. Hearing from Yoochun is so different than hearing it straight from Jaejoong’s mouth. He laughs again, and this time he couldn’t stop it from sounding slightly bitter. “Yeah, I heard from Yoochun. But, Paris, Jaejoong-ah. It… must’ve been beautiful.”
“It was. But everywhere’s been beautiful… There’s a lot to see, yah?”
He takes a breath before he answers, “…I know.”
Jaejoong starts rambling, and it’s so reminiscent of the past when Jaejoong would just start talking about anything that crossed his mind that he finds it hard to even focus. He manages to catch the last part of what Jaejoong’s saying though, and what he hears makes him almost-almost-wish that he didn’t hear it. “…but it doesn’t mean I don’t miss home.”
His voice clogs in his throat. He’d thought he was the only one who missed anything about their past. But his mind takes over his heart, and it tells him that perhaps Jaejoong didn’t really mean home as in the apartment they’d shared, perhaps Jaejoong didn’t really mean him, perhaps perhaps… he just meant Seoul and its weather and the people who live in it. “Oh, Jaejoong-ah,” he murmurs in an undertone, guilt and regret coloring the words until he doesn’t know what he’s really trying to say. He clears his throat. “Everyone misses you, you know. It took them a while to get used to you gone.”
“Probably just me taking care of them,” Jaejoong laughs with a subtle edge in his voice, “but they’re not kids anymore. They don’t need me.”
“Y-yeah, I guess they don’t,” Yunho answers. He looks up at the ceiling and wonders if he should really say it, but there’s nothing he can do to stop the words from coming out of his mouth-they’d been rusting in his heart for too long. “But you know… I… I really miss you.”
“Yunho… I miss you too,” Jaejoong whispers. “…I love you, you know that, right?”
He didn’t think that there would be anything that he would hear that could make him really, seriously cry, but then he hadn’t counted on what Jaejoong would say. It had been always like that between them, Jaejoong throwing him off balance with his carefree, easy nature. He doesn’t want to, but he starts to cry, saying through a strangled sob, “Yeah, I know, Jaejoong-ah. I love you too. I always will.”
“I-I should probably go -”
“N-no, don’t!” Yunho desperately interrupts. “Just stay on the phone with me. You don’t have to say anything, just… let me hear you for a while.” Maybe he said too much, he wildly thinks, maybe Jaejoong hadn’t meant ‘love’ the same way he once had. But it doesn’t matter to him anymore, and all he wants is-even if it’s just for a moment-to feel as though the past months hadn’t happened.
“No, no, no,” Jaejoong says, almost chanting it. “Don’t make it harder. I’m going to go, but I’ll talk to you lat -”
“-Alright,” he interrupts again. He’d always known things couldn’t go back to the way it used to be. “But remember this, Jaejoong-ah. Yoochun, Junsu, Changmin, and I are waiting for you. We’ll still be here whenever you decide to come back. And…” he trails off, once again unsure about whether or not what he’s about to say still falls within the boundary Jaejoong’s set. “I’m still going to be where you left me. In our apartment, in our bed. No matter what.” It doesn’t matter if it’s futile. He doesn’t care anymore. He’s just going to do his best to tell Jaejoong that even if he decides to never come back, he’s still going to be there.
“Damnit, Yunho, that’s not what I want,” Jaejoong grits out. “I’m not just going to come back and have everything be the same. I just can’t do that. I just can’t.”
Yunho understands what Jaejoong means. He really does. But it’s hard telling that to his heart. “Then what do you want changed, Jae? I can’t change anything if you don’t tell me!”
“I want… What I want is for you to consider, really consider this - us. I left because… because I needed to do it for me, and I want you to do something for you. Be honest, if you really - if you really want me to come back.” Jaejoong pauses, seeming as though he’s thinking, but before Yunho can say anything, he starts again, stronger, “And don’t give me an answer now, because I really mean it. I don’t want you to change for me, I don’t… Jesus, I’m rambling. I’m sorry -”
Yunho’s left speechless. He rubs his palms into his eyes, wiping away dried tears, and sighs, letting his heart take over his mouth. “We’ve been together for years, Jaejoong-ah. Even if I hadn’t wanted to, I’ve still changed.” More than anyone would realize, Yunho thinks with a slight twist of his mouth. “That’s how people grow. And being separated for so long… Jaejoong, you’ve no idea how many times I hated you for leaving me without a single note, anything. But still… I always missed you. I missed you even when I was drunk and crazy. And since you don’t want me to say anything now, I won’t, but don’t be sorry. Please don’t be sorry. You didn’t do anything wrong.” It was all, and only, his fault.
“I-I shouldn’t, I mean - this wasn’t a good idea, I’ve got to go, I’m sorry, I need to -” Jaejoong hangs up after a flurry of words.
Yunho stands there, hand holding the now silent phone to his ear. It seems like he’s been doing that a lot lately, a part of his brain muses, and it’s not until Yoochun slightly shakes him does he realize that minutes have passed. The shocked look on Yoochun’s face amuses him, and as he stares at Yoochun’s mouth, wondering why it’s moving without any sound, his fingers drop the phone, numb.
The sudden sound of the phone crashing onto the hardwood floor wakes him up. He looks back at Yoochun, and he now hears the things that have been coming out of his own mouth. “Oh my god - Yoochun - Jaejoong - phone - my heart - why - what is this - I-I can’t take this -”
Yoochun gently holds him as he cries.
He can’t focus on his work at all the next few days. He shuts off his phone, both home phone and cell phone, just to have some peace and quiet. It doesn’t help when Yoochun tells both Junsu and Changmin what happened, and all three of them practically trip over themselves in their rush to make sure Yunho’s okay.
The first weekend after talking to Jaejoong, Yunho opens his door to find Junsu right out in front, hand raised and finger pointed, ready to press the doorbell. Before he can say anything, he’s squished in a tight hug, with his nose buried in Junsu’s jacket.
“Are you all right, hyung?” Junsu asks.
Yunho can’t find his voice for a moment, so he just smiles into Junsu’s jacket, eyes slightly reddening as he squeezes Junsu tighter. He gives a halfhearted shrug, but when he pulls back, he looks down at Junsu and croaks, “Now that you’re here, sort of.”
“Lies.”
Both Junsu and Yunho turn to see Changmin walking down the hallway. “From what Yoochun told me, and from what I see right now, you’re clearly lying, hyung,” Changmin says. The small grin that accompanies his words takes a little of the sting away, and Yunho reaches out to pull him into the circle he and Junsu made when he comes into reach.
He laughs as Changmin pretty much harrumphs at the show of affection; Changmin doesn’t pull away though, and they stand there for a while in Yunho’s open doorway, not caring if any of Yunho’s neighbors saw them.
“What, I don’t get a group hug either?”
Junsu cheerfully retorts at Yoochun’s suddenly appearing, “Came too late. Sorry, come again next time.”
Yunho has to hide his smile. Just by having something around him that never seem to change can mean so much, he thinks, especially when they’re your closest friends.
“Just look at that smile,” Changmin teases as Yunho slightly lets go of him and Junsu to drag Yoochun inside their group hug. “Makes it seem like the all his worries just disappeared at the sight of Yoochun-hyung coming. Should Jaejoong-hyung be worried?”
“Oh, shut up, Changmin,” Yunho says, lips curling up again. “You get on my nerves.” He slowly starts to shift them inside the apartment, wanting to close the door.
Changmin flashes a well-used grin. “I know. I make it a point in life to annoy all my hyungs.” At Yunho, Yoochun, and Junsu’s eye rolls, he laughs and holds up a casket of soju. “But still, I know you all love me. Especially when I bring the alcohol.”
Before Junsu manages to grab the nearest bottle out of the casket, Yoochun steals it away from Changmin and runs inside Yunho’s apartment, teasing Junsu as he runs, “Whoops, too late, Junsu-yah. Maybe you’ll get some next time.”
The noise he hears from somewhere in his apartment as Junsu and Yoochun horse around slightly comforts him, and Yunho lets out a sigh, knowing that the three of them had only come over to cheer him up, not wanting him to go back to the shell he’d been months ago back when Jaejoong’d first left. He’s still not the same as back then-he’s not sure he’ll ever be the same again-but he’s going to try his best to not let them down.
He’ll change, he’ll learn to live around the hole in his life with Jaejoong gone. He owes it to himself, he owes it to Jaejoong, and he owes it to them.
With his new goal set in mind, he works even harder now. He finishes cases in half the time he used to, and the upper managements reward him with a larger salary and more vacation days. He doesn’t forget to use them, and when he’s finished with the largest cases of the year, he takes another two weeks off, this time only just to rest and maybe, just maybe, find a way to make a new life.
The two weeks pass by in a blur, and Yunho goes back to work, refreshed. He never used to notice the interested glances ladies give him, but now he does. He doesn’t bother with asking any of them out though, as he already knew Jaejoong had already taken up the largest and most important part of his heart. There’s just not anything left for ladies to bother with, and Yunho settles for being friends with most of them.
He comes home to an apartment with more touches of himself now, no longer just Jaejoong’s marks decorating the walls. Even though he can’t paint to save his life (and Jaejoong had always made fun of him for that), he finds that having little pieces of evidence, no matter how they were made, of someone caring for the place makes living in a silent apartment so much more easier.
The little brown stain on the floor from back when Jaejoong and he had first moved in is now a small hill, complete with grass, flowers, and the sun rising from behind it. It’s not a masterpiece, but Yunho’s satisfied with how it looks.
It takes getting used to, but he learns to be happy with what he has, a working life full of challenges and a personal life filled to the brim with caring friends. He doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to let go of Jaejoong; he knows that he’ll always spend the rest of his life worrying and thinking about him. He knows that this love he feels for him won’t change, and he also knows that the answer he gave Jaejoong won’t change. He’s learning how to have patience now, and as he waits for both Jaejoong’s and his heart to fully heal, he makes the most of what he has.
By the time summer begins to appear in Seoul, Yunho’s more content than he’d ever been before Jaejoong had first come into his life. It’s nothing compared to the times Jaejoong and he had been together, but he’s learned to appreciate the small details in life, something Jaejoong had always told him to do.
Changmin shows up alone at his office one day, looking worried and uncertain. It’s such an odd look for him to wear that Yunho’s automatically concerned as well, mind jumping wildly to conclusions. Changmin doesn’t say anything for a few moments and just slowly paces around, muttering under his breath.
Yunho simply waits him out. Changmin had always been a person who would speak only when ready. He starts when Changmin suddenly goes right up to his desk though, and slams his hands on the wood.
“Okay, hyung,” Changmin mutters. “You have two choices. One is to to first listen to the whole story before you decide to do anything, and the other is to decide whether or not you want to break your heart open again.”
Yunho’s getting a horrible feeling that the reason Changmin came is because of Jaejoong. “...That would depend on how badly my heart might be broken again.”
“Well,” Changmin says, “it’s not guaranteed that your heart will be broken again. It’s just the matter of how much you’re willing to risk the chance of getting your heart broken again. There’s a difference, trust me.”
He’s silent for a moment as he takes in what Changmin’s insinuating; so if he’s willing to get his heart broken again, just as it’s finally starting to heal, he might be able to gain something from it. Gain what?
Changmin grimaces when Yunho asks. “There’s only one thing you’ll gain, and you know what it is.”
Yunho softly chuckles. He guesses that it’s Jaejoong, and Changmin’s slight lift of his eyebrow confirms that. “I think I want to hear the entire story first.”
Ten minutes later, Yunho’s staring at his office’s ceiling with his head hurting with a headache and his heart screaming at him to finally take advantage of the chance life’s giving him. Changmin’s still standing at the front of his desk, nervously jumping on the balls of his feet.
“W-what are you going to do, hyung?” Changmin tentatively asks. “I know this is sudden, but since Jaejoong-hyung is going to be in Tokyo tomorrow, I’m planning on leaving tonight. I’m going to need it before I leave for the airport.”
He takes a deep breath. “I know.” He’d always thought he would be prepared when the time came for Jaejoong to come back. He just didn’t think it would be so early, and that Jaejoong would still be so close, yet so far away. Even though he wants to fly over to Tokyo now, he knows he can’t. There’s no saying what Jaejoong’s feeling right now, and him suddenly appearing in front of him when Jaejoong had done so much to avoid him would only hurt them both.
His mind flashes back to his conversation with Jaejoong, and he suddenly realizes what he can give Changmin to bring to Jaejoong. He grabs the nearest piece of paper he can find on his desk and scribbles his feelings onto it. He folds it, neatly tucking it into envelope, and seals it. His hand trembles when he finally hands it to Changmin.
He doesn’t know what to expect when he receives a text from Changmin a week later. It’s a simple ‘Gave it to him. Don’t know what he thought of it since I gave it right when I was about to board the plane. Sorry, hyung.’
He learns more details from Yoochun and Junsu, both who had gave something to Changmin to pass along to Jaejoong. He finds that Changmin, sneaky bastard that he was, took along his selca pictures and practically planned out how and when Jaejoong would find them. Jaejoong’s reaction to them makes Yunho’s heart ache from guilt that he’d had the three of them to comfort him when Jaejoong didn’t.
He keeps telling himself not to expect too much, that even though Jaejoong might’ve read the letter and understood what it meant, it didn’t mean that Jaejoong was ready to come back. He says it like a mantra, muttering it under his breath until he’s sure the people around him think he’s crazy. He knows that Changmin, Junsu, and Yoochun do, wondering if his knowing that Jaejoong’s so close had somehow harmed his brain. Yunho doesn’t bother trying to correct them.
Yunho’s touching up the little hill painting when he hears the pounding on the door. He carefully sets down the paint and brushes on the floor where even if something spills, it won’t touch the painting. He wipes his hand on his apron, heading down the hallway to where the door is. The pounding doesn’t stop, and as he wonders who it could be, he yells out, “Coming!”
He peeks out the window to try to catch a glimpse of who the person is, but the person’s standing at the angle where he’s not able to see him. Something bright blinks up at him from the ground, and he glances at it-and then looks at it again. They look like Jaejoong’s keys.
The door’s open in the next second, and he stares out to see the one person he’s been longing to see for months, the one person he knows he’ll never get used to looking at. His eyes look at everything all at once, the sun-bleached hair, the darker tan, the eyes that have always looked the same, and he drinks it all in, memorizing and contrasting the changes with the Jaejoong that had left.
He can’t think of anything to say, anything to do. He opens his mouth and the only thing that comes out is
You came back home.
Note: Again, please drop by latenightchai's other half of the story here to read Jaejoong's POV. :) It'll completely clear up your questions.