tvxq/super junior: nothing better
nothing better
4 seasons au, jaejoong/donghae on the side. explicit. 3,005w.
for mytigerhobbes, help_haiti.
No one has the energy left to get fancy with the beds. Youngwoon and Yunho cram all four mattresses onto the dusty living room floor and Jaejoong tears open the moving boxes trying to find some blankets. There aren't enough so he pulls out Heechul's fake fur collection too.
"You little shit," Heechul says, lying prone on a mattress.
On the grand scale of humanity, Jaejoong gets along with Heechul pretty well. He wraps himself up in leopard print. "How do I look?"
"I've rolled around naked in that," says Heechul. "Just so you know."
Yunho claims the mattress with the best air conditioning benefits and falls spread-eagle onto it, burying his face against a stiff bedspring. "Give it a rest, guys."
Youngwoon returns from the kitchen with two cases of lukewarm beer. "No one rests," he declares. "We're celebrating."
The rest of their furniture arrives tomorrow morning. For now Jaejoong uses Youngwoon as a chair and a box warning FRAGILE as a coffee table while he scours the phonebook for a pizza place that's still open this late.
"Cheese," Youngwoon shouts. "Lots of cheese. Like a kilogram of cheese."
"Lots of cheese and lots of sausage," says Yunho.
Heechul leers. "Extra sausagey."
The pizza delivery girl hangs up on him as soon as Jaejoong repeats, "Extra sausagey," so they give up on food and drunk-dial Donghae over speakerphone. Yunho gets his first taste of a cigarette and coughs for a minute straight before Jaejoong takes pity and trades Yunho his half-empty bottle of beer.
"I don't know why you guys like that," Yunho says, finishing Jaejoong's beer and watching Jaejoong smoke.
"It's just a thing," Jaejoong says. He sucks in smoke and breathes it back out. He's good at this.
Heechul says, "A very oral thing," drawing out oral like a five year old's first swear word.
Jaejoong and Youngwoon pass the cigarette back and forth until it burns all the way down. They lie stretched out over one of the mattresses, flicking ash onto the hardwood floor. The balcony door has slid open on its own, circulating muggy summer air through their new apartment. Yunho and Heechul fall asleep against each other and a stack of boxes, like skyscrapers after an earthquake. Heechul is using his Russian fur hat as a pillow, and his shoulders cover the cardboard printed with CAUTION. Next to Jaejoong, Youngwoon smells like cheap beer and menthol and all the odd things that've come to mean comfort. Eventually they help Yunho and Heechul into bed. Then Jaejoong lies awake in silence, watching the sliver of polluted sky that's visible from the living room, framed by stark white walls.
Heechul is doing overtime at the recording studio because he's been too busy running around the city filming dramas to practice singing. No one holds it against him. Heechul works hard, they've all heard him memorizing lines into five in the fucking morning. Jaejoong knows better than anyone: you don't make it out of a small town riding only on a pretty face. It's just that this, the music, the group, it was never Heechul's first choice. He doesn't say it but everyone knows.
Youngwoon came home half an hour ago and the first thing he did was make instant ramen. When he joins Jaejoong on the worn leather couch, he's in boxers and a white t-shirt, scratching his stomach.
"Don't you have to be up in a few hours?"
Jaejoong yawns into the back of his wrist. The TV is playing old cartoons on mute. "Can't sleep."
Their floor lamp's lightbulb is starting to die. Yellow shapes flicker across the wall and Youngwoon's unshaven face. He looks down when he eats and the shadow that cuts open his cheek is big enough that Jaejoong thinks he could hide in it. "This tastes like ass," Youngwoon says around a mouthful of noodles.
"Swear jar," Jaejoong answers automatically.
"We don't have a swear jar."
"Manager wants us to start one. He says we need to practice not ruining our public image before we even develop a public image."
"That's fucking balls," says Youngwoon.
They watch Wile E. Coyote flatten under an Acme anvil. Youngwoon frowns at his ass-ramen but he finishes it anyway. The four of them are hungry all the time. After rehearsals, between schedules, halfway through the night, constantly eating and moving and craving more, like nothing inside their bodies knows how to stop. Sometimes it's so bad that Jaejoong doesn't think he'll ever be satisfied.
Youngwoon sticks his hand out to mess up Jaejoong's hair. He's kind of a dick sometimes, but he dotes on Jaejoong like it's his job. "You should go to bed."
"I'm not tired," Jaejoong says, but it comes out sounding childish.
Youngwoon half-grins. "Yeah, you are. Go to bed. Everyone has a limit."
Heechul is still out. Heechul has a limit. He'll keep doing too many things at once before one day it hits him that he's had enough, he needs to choose. And Youngwoon'll keep smoking and eating and drinking like sooner or later he'll find out how much it'll take for any of them to be full. Jaejoong goes to bed but he doesn't fall asleep until he hears Heechul come through the front door, kicking off his shoes, opening the refrigerator, for now still brimming with hunger.
Jaejoong goes running. He jumps a fence onto high school property, a few blocks away from the apartment, and runs the empty track until he feels sick. The weather is just cold and angry enough this early in the morning that Jaejoong can let it skin him raw until all he has to think about is pushing the air out of his lungs. The burn in his thighs, the sound of his feet hitting the ground. He works out but he's never made a hobby of doing hard cardio, and by the end he's wrecked. He sits high up on the bleachers, leans over his knees and breathes. From there, the track looks smaller, so that Jaejoong can see the entirety of the long circle he'd been running, how none of it has led him anywhere.
They invite friends over on the weekend before their first single releases. Someone brings weed, and the room begins to blur with gray smoke. Donghae and Jay had been watching nature documentaries online until a pop-up ad steered them to gross-out porn; they watch that now with the same thoughtful fascination. Hyukjae has disconnected the video game console but Junsu keeps mashing buttons anyway, shouting at Mario to move his fat ass.
Jaejoong lies the floor, watching the ceiling fan slow down and speed up. He thinks for a minute, then says, "I'm a master at ping pong."
Next in their circle, Yoochun takes a luxurious hit. He coughs and passes the joint. "Um. She touched my virgin dong."
"Dong isn't a real word," Yunho says, because he takes his role as game moderator very seriously.
"Egg foo yong," Yoochun tries again. "Michelle Kwan."
"Disqualified."
"Suck my dong."
"Shut up, it's my turn to start," Heechul says. He clears his throat. "My favorite color is purple."
"Something something something nurple," Jaejoong says.
"Nurple isn't," Yunho starts.
"It is," Yoochun says, and makes some graphic hand gestures. "It's like, when you twist someone's nipples really hard--"
"You really don't need to--" Yunho says.
"Here, let me show you," Yoochun says, vindictively.
Jaejoong staggers to his feet. "I'm walking away from this," he says, before Yoochun can finish wrestling off Yunho's shirt.
The bathroom walls cocoon around him. Jaejoong leans over the sink, shakes out the fog. The rings on his fingers clank against the porcelain. Down the hall someone is playing their new song and Jaejoong can hear the familiar hook scratching through his brain like a needle over vinyl, making him feel claustrophobic. He splashes his face with water. The cold stuns his skin. He wants to climb into the bathtub and soak in it for days. He could swim down the drain into the ocean and float out there, with the sun and sea-foam and albatross that have never heard of Four Seasons. He'll grow a sunburn and drink coconut milk everyday and get all the second chances he needs.
Jaejoong toes off his socks and rolls up his jeans and he has one leg inside the empty bathtub when he remembers he can't swim. The panic makes him back up. The shower curtain slips from his palm and wrestles back. The bathroom door opens and Jaejoong hits his ankle against the tub, heart racing with drugged-up paranoia. But it's only Donghae who falls in, drunk off wine coolers, his hair like a destroyed nest under his cabbie hat. "There you are," he says, smiling that white, animated smile that dentists jack off to. "We need to talk. You need to stop calling me and asking about my refrigerator. I know it's you guys. I have caller ID."
Donghae's voice sounds far away, coming in across a long desert. Jaejoong rubs the back of his hand against his eyes. "I'm wigging out a little," he hears himself say.
Donghae reaches out for him, and he can't take care of anyone like this but he's nice enough to try. "Do you want some water? If you're hungry, someone brought cheeseburgers."
Jaejoong finds a second of clarity: Donghae's shirt is well-worn and soft between his fingers. "Don't go anywhere," he says.
Donghae laughs. His face is pink, and his hand is very warm on the small of Jaejoong's back. "Wanna dance?"
He offers his other arm to Jaejoong. Jaejoong spins around in the tub, and Donghae tries to dip him next but he's drunk and smaller than Jaejoong so all he really does is lean his entire body in close. Jaejoong pushes his mouth against Donghae's. His lips are dry and Donghae exhales and slides his eyes shut. Heechul is going to kill me, Jaejoong thinks, but Donghae is relaxed and grinning into the kiss like it's the best thing in the world so Jaejoong takes Donghae's shoulders and pulls him into the bathtub.
He knocks Donghae's hat to the floor so he can grab Donghae's hair, soft and a little damp with sweat. It's easy to go with it, rocking his hips against Donghae's and feeling how hard Donghae is in his jeans. There's no current to fight against. Donghae is inexpert but enthusiastic like he is with everything else, guitar and English and people. Jaejoong tugs Donghae's cock out and likes the way Donghae gasps, hitched, and fucks into Jaejoong's fist like he can't help it. They gave Jaejoong summer for a reason.
Time stretches around them. When Donghae kisses Jaejoong again, sinking his tongue into Jaejoong's mouth, it's like a first kiss, and when Donghae scratches down Jaejoong's back, it's like Jaejoong's never been touched before. It gives Jaejoong a punch-drunk rush, like someone took a stereo and turned the bass up high, the way Donghae licks a quick stripe up his own palm before shoving it down Jaejoong's jeans and making him come, pulling it out of him so sudden and hard that Jaejoong has to bite Donghae's shoulder to stay standing.
Donghae's cock is thick and heavy against Jaejoong's thigh, and Jaejoong reaches for it again before his knees have even steadied. Donghae smiles at him again, flushed and hopeful, his hand pushing down on Jaejoong's shoulder, and Jaejoong doesn't have to think about it, he doesn't have to worry about anything here, he drops to his knees as Donghae's fingers knot around his hair and pull his mouth onto Donghae's cock. He lets someone else guide him for a change.
Jaejoong wakes up in bed, on top of a warm chest. His mouth tastes like bad decisions. He looks up, scrubbing at the shirt button indentations on his cheek, and says, "Fuck," when he comes centimeters away from Donghae's sleeping face. Donghae shifts, mumbles, but doesn't wake up. Jaejoong checks under the covers: Donghae's smiley face briefs are rucked around his knees, still on. He slides out of Donghae's arms and grabs a pillow off the floor for Donghae to cuddle with instead. He reminds himself to add some money to the swear jar.
He goes to the bathroom, brushes his teeth, and collects his socks and t-shirt from the tub. It's almost noon and their apartment hasn't been fully evacuated. There are people on the couch, floor, and Junsu is curled up under the coffee table. Heechul is the only one awake, hair pinned up, craters for eyes. Jaejoong doesn't want to talk but Heechul has already seen him, so he blows his bangs out of his face and joins him in the kitchen. There's a plate of leftover take-out on the counter and empty cheeseburger wrappers on the floor. The dishes are piled up in the sink.
"Morning," Jaejoong says. His head feels fuzzy and his throat is sore.
Heechul wiggles his fingers at him in a hello. "How did you sleep?"
"Great." Jaejoong opens the fridge. "What hasn't expired yet?"
"The OJ is still good."
Jaejoong pulls out the carton of orange juice. He pours a glass for Heechul too, as if the vitamin C will give Heechul a soul. Heechul just kind of looks at Jaejoong, like he fucking knows everything, and it makes Jaejoong's cheeks darken with irritation.
"Go ahead," he says, in case Heechul's waiting for the starter gun, "tell me why I suck as a human being."
"You don't," Heechul says. "You are completely average. Jumping the nearest dick to fuck the existentialism away isn't exactly Shakespeare."
Someone trips into a wall as they're coming down the hallway. Donghae's groggy voice: "You guys fighting?"
"No," Heechul says, "we're just talking."
Donghae peers into the kitchen, hiding his eyes from the fluorescent light, his hair sticking up in every direction. There's a well-formed bruise on his shoulder. "About what?"
Jaejoong blurts out, "Cheeseburgers."
"Okay. Where's the aspirin?"
"Behind the bathroom mirror."
Donghae leaves to nurse his hangover, and Heechul continues, "Stop eating cheeseburgers in the bathroom. At least take them out for dinner first."
Jaejoong frowns. "The cheeseburger didn't have a problem with it."
"The cheeseburger was drunk."
"It was a consensual meal!"
"Look, I don't care if you want to eat cheeseburgers in the bathroom or in the bedroom or in outer fucking space, as long as you're not eating them because of your ongoing existential crisis."
"Stop saying I'm having an existential crisis," Jaejoong says. "I just want this to work out."
Donghae has started throwing up in the bathroom. Heechul gets up to be a good friend and go hold back his hair. He lays his palm against the crown of Jaejoong's head as he walks past. "Everything has an expiration date," he says. "Grow up, okay?"
It's not cruel because it's Heechul. Jaejoong throws both of their cups in the sink and turns on the tap, watching the water level inch higher, steady and inevitable. Out in the living room, he sees Yoochun roll off the couch, naked for no real reason, and shuffle out onto the balcony for a smoke. It's going to be a long morning. Jaejoong decides to make breakfast.
The single sells worse than predicted. Youngwoon pretends to shrug it off and spends hours at the gym. Heechul buys a cat, because he's been saying that if Jaejoong's allowed to screw around with Donghae, he's allowed to have a pet. Jaejoong goes running again, not at the track this time but along the river, trying to catch up to the water. When he comes home, he takes the stairs up to the apartment roof. His skin is still overheated, and the wind feels good on his face.
Yunho comes up for him once it gets dark. "Youngwoon brought back dinner," he says, idling near the stairwell. "You hungry?"
"Starving," Jaejoong says. He leans his elbows against the concrete ledge so he can see the telephone poles and trees below, lit up by headlights. "Are you happy?"
"What?"
"Are you happy," Jaejoong repeats. "With where you are right now?"
Yunho joins him at the edge of the roof. "I don't know," he says. Yunho will know he's happy when he's successful and married and has more kids than he can count on his fingers and toes. "Are you?"
Jaejoong chews on his thumbnail and shrugs. He pulls his sleeve over his fist and tucks it under his chin, watching the people on the sidewalks below him. Tonight he'll go home and the four of them will commiserate their mediocrity with horror movies and porn. Tomorrow he'll splurge half his paycheck on dinner with Donghae. The day after that, the week starts over, and maybe he'll stop thinking about time as if it's this big, scary thing. As if a measure of distance isn't perpetually made up of smaller increments. From up high, everyone looks like they have a destination.
"I guess," he says, when he remembers Yunho asked him something. "Yeah."
Neither of them says anything else for awhile. Then Yunho's forehead wrinkles and he asks, "Were they serious about the swear jar?"
"Shit fuck cocksucking bitch ass tit whore."
"Damn," Yunho offers.
"Damn," Jaejoong says.
Yunho squeezes Jaejoong's shoulder. "Come down when you're ready," he says, and adds, with nothing but sincerity, "I heard you guys talking about cheeseburgers. I know we all get cravings sometimes, I mean I love pie, but don't forget your diet, alright?"
Jaejoong smiles. He fishes out a cigarette and lights up, blowing the first lungful of smoke at Yunho's disappearing back. Somedays Jaejoong wonders how the four of them were thrown together. They're all too individual, solar-powered. It's like trying to push a snake back into the skin that it's already shed. Somedays it fits too tight; somedays it flakes apart. Today, it works.
Today, this is what he wanted, Jaejoong thinks, and clears his lungs. He's found a good thing.
4 seasons au, jaejoong/donghae on the side. explicit. 3,005w.
for mytigerhobbes, help_haiti.
No one has the energy left to get fancy with the beds. Youngwoon and Yunho cram all four mattresses onto the dusty living room floor and Jaejoong tears open the moving boxes trying to find some blankets. There aren't enough so he pulls out Heechul's fake fur collection too.
"You little shit," Heechul says, lying prone on a mattress.
On the grand scale of humanity, Jaejoong gets along with Heechul pretty well. He wraps himself up in leopard print. "How do I look?"
"I've rolled around naked in that," says Heechul. "Just so you know."
Yunho claims the mattress with the best air conditioning benefits and falls spread-eagle onto it, burying his face against a stiff bedspring. "Give it a rest, guys."
Youngwoon returns from the kitchen with two cases of lukewarm beer. "No one rests," he declares. "We're celebrating."
The rest of their furniture arrives tomorrow morning. For now Jaejoong uses Youngwoon as a chair and a box warning FRAGILE as a coffee table while he scours the phonebook for a pizza place that's still open this late.
"Cheese," Youngwoon shouts. "Lots of cheese. Like a kilogram of cheese."
"Lots of cheese and lots of sausage," says Yunho.
Heechul leers. "Extra sausagey."
The pizza delivery girl hangs up on him as soon as Jaejoong repeats, "Extra sausagey," so they give up on food and drunk-dial Donghae over speakerphone. Yunho gets his first taste of a cigarette and coughs for a minute straight before Jaejoong takes pity and trades Yunho his half-empty bottle of beer.
"I don't know why you guys like that," Yunho says, finishing Jaejoong's beer and watching Jaejoong smoke.
"It's just a thing," Jaejoong says. He sucks in smoke and breathes it back out. He's good at this.
Heechul says, "A very oral thing," drawing out oral like a five year old's first swear word.
Jaejoong and Youngwoon pass the cigarette back and forth until it burns all the way down. They lie stretched out over one of the mattresses, flicking ash onto the hardwood floor. The balcony door has slid open on its own, circulating muggy summer air through their new apartment. Yunho and Heechul fall asleep against each other and a stack of boxes, like skyscrapers after an earthquake. Heechul is using his Russian fur hat as a pillow, and his shoulders cover the cardboard printed with CAUTION. Next to Jaejoong, Youngwoon smells like cheap beer and menthol and all the odd things that've come to mean comfort. Eventually they help Yunho and Heechul into bed. Then Jaejoong lies awake in silence, watching the sliver of polluted sky that's visible from the living room, framed by stark white walls.
Heechul is doing overtime at the recording studio because he's been too busy running around the city filming dramas to practice singing. No one holds it against him. Heechul works hard, they've all heard him memorizing lines into five in the fucking morning. Jaejoong knows better than anyone: you don't make it out of a small town riding only on a pretty face. It's just that this, the music, the group, it was never Heechul's first choice. He doesn't say it but everyone knows.
Youngwoon came home half an hour ago and the first thing he did was make instant ramen. When he joins Jaejoong on the worn leather couch, he's in boxers and a white t-shirt, scratching his stomach.
"Don't you have to be up in a few hours?"
Jaejoong yawns into the back of his wrist. The TV is playing old cartoons on mute. "Can't sleep."
Their floor lamp's lightbulb is starting to die. Yellow shapes flicker across the wall and Youngwoon's unshaven face. He looks down when he eats and the shadow that cuts open his cheek is big enough that Jaejoong thinks he could hide in it. "This tastes like ass," Youngwoon says around a mouthful of noodles.
"Swear jar," Jaejoong answers automatically.
"We don't have a swear jar."
"Manager wants us to start one. He says we need to practice not ruining our public image before we even develop a public image."
"That's fucking balls," says Youngwoon.
They watch Wile E. Coyote flatten under an Acme anvil. Youngwoon frowns at his ass-ramen but he finishes it anyway. The four of them are hungry all the time. After rehearsals, between schedules, halfway through the night, constantly eating and moving and craving more, like nothing inside their bodies knows how to stop. Sometimes it's so bad that Jaejoong doesn't think he'll ever be satisfied.
Youngwoon sticks his hand out to mess up Jaejoong's hair. He's kind of a dick sometimes, but he dotes on Jaejoong like it's his job. "You should go to bed."
"I'm not tired," Jaejoong says, but it comes out sounding childish.
Youngwoon half-grins. "Yeah, you are. Go to bed. Everyone has a limit."
Heechul is still out. Heechul has a limit. He'll keep doing too many things at once before one day it hits him that he's had enough, he needs to choose. And Youngwoon'll keep smoking and eating and drinking like sooner or later he'll find out how much it'll take for any of them to be full. Jaejoong goes to bed but he doesn't fall asleep until he hears Heechul come through the front door, kicking off his shoes, opening the refrigerator, for now still brimming with hunger.
Jaejoong goes running. He jumps a fence onto high school property, a few blocks away from the apartment, and runs the empty track until he feels sick. The weather is just cold and angry enough this early in the morning that Jaejoong can let it skin him raw until all he has to think about is pushing the air out of his lungs. The burn in his thighs, the sound of his feet hitting the ground. He works out but he's never made a hobby of doing hard cardio, and by the end he's wrecked. He sits high up on the bleachers, leans over his knees and breathes. From there, the track looks smaller, so that Jaejoong can see the entirety of the long circle he'd been running, how none of it has led him anywhere.
They invite friends over on the weekend before their first single releases. Someone brings weed, and the room begins to blur with gray smoke. Donghae and Jay had been watching nature documentaries online until a pop-up ad steered them to gross-out porn; they watch that now with the same thoughtful fascination. Hyukjae has disconnected the video game console but Junsu keeps mashing buttons anyway, shouting at Mario to move his fat ass.
Jaejoong lies the floor, watching the ceiling fan slow down and speed up. He thinks for a minute, then says, "I'm a master at ping pong."
Next in their circle, Yoochun takes a luxurious hit. He coughs and passes the joint. "Um. She touched my virgin dong."
"Dong isn't a real word," Yunho says, because he takes his role as game moderator very seriously.
"Egg foo yong," Yoochun tries again. "Michelle Kwan."
"Disqualified."
"Suck my dong."
"Shut up, it's my turn to start," Heechul says. He clears his throat. "My favorite color is purple."
"Something something something nurple," Jaejoong says.
"Nurple isn't," Yunho starts.
"It is," Yoochun says, and makes some graphic hand gestures. "It's like, when you twist someone's nipples really hard--"
"You really don't need to--" Yunho says.
"Here, let me show you," Yoochun says, vindictively.
Jaejoong staggers to his feet. "I'm walking away from this," he says, before Yoochun can finish wrestling off Yunho's shirt.
The bathroom walls cocoon around him. Jaejoong leans over the sink, shakes out the fog. The rings on his fingers clank against the porcelain. Down the hall someone is playing their new song and Jaejoong can hear the familiar hook scratching through his brain like a needle over vinyl, making him feel claustrophobic. He splashes his face with water. The cold stuns his skin. He wants to climb into the bathtub and soak in it for days. He could swim down the drain into the ocean and float out there, with the sun and sea-foam and albatross that have never heard of Four Seasons. He'll grow a sunburn and drink coconut milk everyday and get all the second chances he needs.
Jaejoong toes off his socks and rolls up his jeans and he has one leg inside the empty bathtub when he remembers he can't swim. The panic makes him back up. The shower curtain slips from his palm and wrestles back. The bathroom door opens and Jaejoong hits his ankle against the tub, heart racing with drugged-up paranoia. But it's only Donghae who falls in, drunk off wine coolers, his hair like a destroyed nest under his cabbie hat. "There you are," he says, smiling that white, animated smile that dentists jack off to. "We need to talk. You need to stop calling me and asking about my refrigerator. I know it's you guys. I have caller ID."
Donghae's voice sounds far away, coming in across a long desert. Jaejoong rubs the back of his hand against his eyes. "I'm wigging out a little," he hears himself say.
Donghae reaches out for him, and he can't take care of anyone like this but he's nice enough to try. "Do you want some water? If you're hungry, someone brought cheeseburgers."
Jaejoong finds a second of clarity: Donghae's shirt is well-worn and soft between his fingers. "Don't go anywhere," he says.
Donghae laughs. His face is pink, and his hand is very warm on the small of Jaejoong's back. "Wanna dance?"
He offers his other arm to Jaejoong. Jaejoong spins around in the tub, and Donghae tries to dip him next but he's drunk and smaller than Jaejoong so all he really does is lean his entire body in close. Jaejoong pushes his mouth against Donghae's. His lips are dry and Donghae exhales and slides his eyes shut. Heechul is going to kill me, Jaejoong thinks, but Donghae is relaxed and grinning into the kiss like it's the best thing in the world so Jaejoong takes Donghae's shoulders and pulls him into the bathtub.
He knocks Donghae's hat to the floor so he can grab Donghae's hair, soft and a little damp with sweat. It's easy to go with it, rocking his hips against Donghae's and feeling how hard Donghae is in his jeans. There's no current to fight against. Donghae is inexpert but enthusiastic like he is with everything else, guitar and English and people. Jaejoong tugs Donghae's cock out and likes the way Donghae gasps, hitched, and fucks into Jaejoong's fist like he can't help it. They gave Jaejoong summer for a reason.
Time stretches around them. When Donghae kisses Jaejoong again, sinking his tongue into Jaejoong's mouth, it's like a first kiss, and when Donghae scratches down Jaejoong's back, it's like Jaejoong's never been touched before. It gives Jaejoong a punch-drunk rush, like someone took a stereo and turned the bass up high, the way Donghae licks a quick stripe up his own palm before shoving it down Jaejoong's jeans and making him come, pulling it out of him so sudden and hard that Jaejoong has to bite Donghae's shoulder to stay standing.
Donghae's cock is thick and heavy against Jaejoong's thigh, and Jaejoong reaches for it again before his knees have even steadied. Donghae smiles at him again, flushed and hopeful, his hand pushing down on Jaejoong's shoulder, and Jaejoong doesn't have to think about it, he doesn't have to worry about anything here, he drops to his knees as Donghae's fingers knot around his hair and pull his mouth onto Donghae's cock. He lets someone else guide him for a change.
Jaejoong wakes up in bed, on top of a warm chest. His mouth tastes like bad decisions. He looks up, scrubbing at the shirt button indentations on his cheek, and says, "Fuck," when he comes centimeters away from Donghae's sleeping face. Donghae shifts, mumbles, but doesn't wake up. Jaejoong checks under the covers: Donghae's smiley face briefs are rucked around his knees, still on. He slides out of Donghae's arms and grabs a pillow off the floor for Donghae to cuddle with instead. He reminds himself to add some money to the swear jar.
He goes to the bathroom, brushes his teeth, and collects his socks and t-shirt from the tub. It's almost noon and their apartment hasn't been fully evacuated. There are people on the couch, floor, and Junsu is curled up under the coffee table. Heechul is the only one awake, hair pinned up, craters for eyes. Jaejoong doesn't want to talk but Heechul has already seen him, so he blows his bangs out of his face and joins him in the kitchen. There's a plate of leftover take-out on the counter and empty cheeseburger wrappers on the floor. The dishes are piled up in the sink.
"Morning," Jaejoong says. His head feels fuzzy and his throat is sore.
Heechul wiggles his fingers at him in a hello. "How did you sleep?"
"Great." Jaejoong opens the fridge. "What hasn't expired yet?"
"The OJ is still good."
Jaejoong pulls out the carton of orange juice. He pours a glass for Heechul too, as if the vitamin C will give Heechul a soul. Heechul just kind of looks at Jaejoong, like he fucking knows everything, and it makes Jaejoong's cheeks darken with irritation.
"Go ahead," he says, in case Heechul's waiting for the starter gun, "tell me why I suck as a human being."
"You don't," Heechul says. "You are completely average. Jumping the nearest dick to fuck the existentialism away isn't exactly Shakespeare."
Someone trips into a wall as they're coming down the hallway. Donghae's groggy voice: "You guys fighting?"
"No," Heechul says, "we're just talking."
Donghae peers into the kitchen, hiding his eyes from the fluorescent light, his hair sticking up in every direction. There's a well-formed bruise on his shoulder. "About what?"
Jaejoong blurts out, "Cheeseburgers."
"Okay. Where's the aspirin?"
"Behind the bathroom mirror."
Donghae leaves to nurse his hangover, and Heechul continues, "Stop eating cheeseburgers in the bathroom. At least take them out for dinner first."
Jaejoong frowns. "The cheeseburger didn't have a problem with it."
"The cheeseburger was drunk."
"It was a consensual meal!"
"Look, I don't care if you want to eat cheeseburgers in the bathroom or in the bedroom or in outer fucking space, as long as you're not eating them because of your ongoing existential crisis."
"Stop saying I'm having an existential crisis," Jaejoong says. "I just want this to work out."
Donghae has started throwing up in the bathroom. Heechul gets up to be a good friend and go hold back his hair. He lays his palm against the crown of Jaejoong's head as he walks past. "Everything has an expiration date," he says. "Grow up, okay?"
It's not cruel because it's Heechul. Jaejoong throws both of their cups in the sink and turns on the tap, watching the water level inch higher, steady and inevitable. Out in the living room, he sees Yoochun roll off the couch, naked for no real reason, and shuffle out onto the balcony for a smoke. It's going to be a long morning. Jaejoong decides to make breakfast.
The single sells worse than predicted. Youngwoon pretends to shrug it off and spends hours at the gym. Heechul buys a cat, because he's been saying that if Jaejoong's allowed to screw around with Donghae, he's allowed to have a pet. Jaejoong goes running again, not at the track this time but along the river, trying to catch up to the water. When he comes home, he takes the stairs up to the apartment roof. His skin is still overheated, and the wind feels good on his face.
Yunho comes up for him once it gets dark. "Youngwoon brought back dinner," he says, idling near the stairwell. "You hungry?"
"Starving," Jaejoong says. He leans his elbows against the concrete ledge so he can see the telephone poles and trees below, lit up by headlights. "Are you happy?"
"What?"
"Are you happy," Jaejoong repeats. "With where you are right now?"
Yunho joins him at the edge of the roof. "I don't know," he says. Yunho will know he's happy when he's successful and married and has more kids than he can count on his fingers and toes. "Are you?"
Jaejoong chews on his thumbnail and shrugs. He pulls his sleeve over his fist and tucks it under his chin, watching the people on the sidewalks below him. Tonight he'll go home and the four of them will commiserate their mediocrity with horror movies and porn. Tomorrow he'll splurge half his paycheck on dinner with Donghae. The day after that, the week starts over, and maybe he'll stop thinking about time as if it's this big, scary thing. As if a measure of distance isn't perpetually made up of smaller increments. From up high, everyone looks like they have a destination.
"I guess," he says, when he remembers Yunho asked him something. "Yeah."
Neither of them says anything else for awhile. Then Yunho's forehead wrinkles and he asks, "Were they serious about the swear jar?"
"Shit fuck cocksucking bitch ass tit whore."
"Damn," Yunho offers.
"Damn," Jaejoong says.
Yunho squeezes Jaejoong's shoulder. "Come down when you're ready," he says, and adds, with nothing but sincerity, "I heard you guys talking about cheeseburgers. I know we all get cravings sometimes, I mean I love pie, but don't forget your diet, alright?"
Jaejoong smiles. He fishes out a cigarette and lights up, blowing the first lungful of smoke at Yunho's disappearing back. Somedays Jaejoong wonders how the four of them were thrown together. They're all too individual, solar-powered. It's like trying to push a snake back into the skin that it's already shed. Somedays it fits too tight; somedays it flakes apart. Today, it works.
Today, this is what he wanted, Jaejoong thinks, and clears his lungs. He's found a good thing.