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The thing is, Yoochun hasn’t talked to Cousin Linda in ages.
More specifically, he hasn’t spoken to her since he was twelve and they were at some family barbeque on the Fourth of July, celebrating American Independence day with their fathers drinking Asahi beer and muttering about the rise of the white empires.
To be quite honest, Yoochun knows that their fathers were probably, most likely talking about something else—the economy, army days, that time Yoochun got stuck in a tree (they love bringing that up) and they had get a firefighter team to bring him down—but that doesn’t really matter. The thing that matters is that he can’t remember what he last said to Cousin Linda—who he really just calls Linda, even though back then, she used to be Hye-mi before stubbornly insisting she be called Linda—and that really should matter, because that really just proves that Yoochun should not have to go to this wedding.
The problem is that because he hasn’t talked to Cousin Linda Otherwise Known as Hye-mi in years, Yoochun’s mother thought that it would be a good idea for them to, “Catch up, connect, family is important,” she says over the phone. And Yoochun can picture her at home, sitting in the kitchen, the phone gently pressed to the ear and wearing those ridiculous butter yellow slippers that have faded off to the point they’re white. His mother says things like that, like how family is still family, or how destiny does not choose you and you should make your own fate, she always says things like that, things Yoochun wants to believe in and listen to, the things that only mothers can say and he won’t understand.
But again, he doesn’t understand and yet he listens.
Which is why how he ends up going to Cousin Linda’s wedding.
The problem with hiring his friend’s friend’s sister’s boyfriend’s friend of a friend as a date is that Yoochun had low expectations. Yoochun was really hoping that those low expectations would be met, that he’d end up with some very awkward person who likes to collect tennis balls and wears bottle thick glasses and doesn’t do anything but count their tennis balls.
Yoochun’s fine with his low expectations being completely dissuaded, as long as they’re just mildly out of the water, not some motorboat just coming to power through with blonde hair and eyes that light up with each laugh and that his friend’s friend’s sister’s boyfriend’s friend of a friend is a man.
“You’re a man.”
“Oh, yeah.”
“I’m a man.”
“Oh,” and the guy looks him up and down and says, “You know. I can work with that.”
His mother and Yoohwan look between Yoochun and Jaejoong and then Yoohwan says, “He’s prettier than all your ex girlfriends combined.”
Turns out that Kim Jaejoong doesn’t collect tennis balls, he does however occasionally wear glasses late at night when tired. Kim Jaejoong however was better informed than Yoochun was about Cousin Linda’s Wedding and being A Last Minute Date for a Dateless Lawyer Who Spends So Much Time In Office that His Own Personal In-tray Is Always Empty, “Or at least that’s how they described the situation,” and after a long pause, “And they paid me to be here,” he admits and then adds with a rather feral smile, “And they showed me a photo.”
Yoochun looks on dumbly.
“I’m fine with you being a man.”
At that point, Yoochun thinks it’d be a good idea to go pay his elation and respects to Cousin Linda and her rather boring looking groom.
The wedding is fine, except for the part when someone says something really inappropriate, along the lines of: “I wanted to pork Linda back in high school,” and something about the groom, “He used to be a doofus until I grabbed him by the collar and forced him to cut his fucking hair, but bro, you gotta shower more,” and Yoochun assumes that Cousin Linda must lead a life with very colourful friends.
And Yoochun is fine with that, Yoochun likes colour and friends and Cousin Linda who told him his tie was very nice and, “Oh Yoochunnie-aah, you finally sorted your hair out. Remember when you had those weird blonde things?” and that would have been nice except that, “And I always knew about. You know. I’m very proud of you.”
And then Yoochun looks to his left where His Man Date That Should Have Been a Woman is drinking anything that looks vaguely alcoholic and he just sighs and says, “Thank you. It’s an important step for me.”
To be clear, Yoochun did specify to his friend that he needed a date for a family wedding. “You know, where there’d be a lot of family around and I need them to stop asking questions, like when I’m going to have children or why am I still single,” because all that is just downright awkward and it’s not that Yoochun doesn’t want children or that he wants to be forever alone, eating ramyun everyday and drafting wills. It’s just that Yoochun doesn’t know when is the right time to have children, who is the right person for that sort of thing. Yoochun thinks of his old girlfriends and how it just wasn’t right, “You don’t like me enough,” and how he’s still single because he was too obsessed with his work, too absentminded, “You aren’t interested in me,” the last one complained.
So Yoochun did really need this date, just for people to stop asking why are you single, “Don’t you want to settle down and be happy?” as though being a somewhat stable lawyer isn’t something to be happy about. Fine, so Yoochun might not be happy.
“You look downright miserable. It’s a wedding. I love weddings, you should drink,” Kim Jaejoong the Date That Was the Wrong Gender tells him before pouring him a drink and clinking their glasses together. “Come on, you look like you’re at a funeral.”
But at that point, Uncle On Linda’s Father’s Side comes over and says, “I was gay once. Back in school. Didn’t work out for me. But I’m glad for you!”
And that’s when Yoochun starts with the drinking.
In between some disapproving hisses, silent dismay and proud support, Yoochun decides that he really needs a cigarette. And maybe to send an email to his colleague about checking the affidavit for that guy that was at the bedside of the old man, the other old man though because Yoochun is quite sure his colleague wasn’t paying attention to which old man—fair enough, there are a lot of dying old men as clients when it comes to the field of succession law—and so he makes some excuse about needing the toilet. And his bladder. That is very small. So he needs a toilet. With his phone. Or something.
So Yoochun takes his phone, drafts his email as quickly as he can with minimal amount of typing errors and lights up, sucking up all the nicotine he can before someone taps him on the shoulder and Yoochun whirls around, all ready to flick the cigarette away and swear that it was someone else. He’s a good boy. Yoochun wears cardigan sets, he puts on a tie and he does a nine to seven.
Except it’s his date. Who more than happily spent the evening leaning back in his chair, talking to everyone else and completely obliterating everyone’s view of Yoochun as the decent, single man who does boring things and turning him into the guy who’s been hiding a secret boyfriend for years, “We were just looking for the right time to tell you,” Jaejoong had said seriously to a scandalised elderly relative who Yoochun can’t even remember meeting.
Yoochun prepares to flick away his cigarette but His Mistaken Wedding Date reaches over, takes it from his hand and then takes a very long drag.
“So, you’re kinda ignoring me. Like, it’s really upsetting but there’s so much alcohol that I’m not that angry. But you’re buying me dinner tomorrow, so it’s fine. You can ignore me more, but you have to pay more attention later. I intend to get wasted enough that you can’t help but want to take me home, take care of me and you want me badly.”
“You say really inappropriate things.”
“I’m being paid to your wedding date. Inappropriate sexual come-ons are part of the package.”
The cigarette’s finished up so Yoochun lights up another and then says, “I’m not really good at dating. You should go home if this is terrible. I mean, it was a bad idea, asking Bum to help me find a date. I knew he’d just give me something terrible. He once set me up with a girl who wanted to eat my socks.”
Kim Jaejoong the Date Who Has Been Ignored snorts and takes the cigarette once more, and asks, “So you’re a lawyer?”
“What?”
“You’re a lawyer, right. Do you get to like, defend justice?”
“Being a lawyer is nothing like a videogame,” Yoochun says helplessly, watching as his date takes a slow drag, almost like giving the cigarette head and thinking oh fuck, he’s nice to look at. “It’s really boring. You sit in the office and pull long hours. You also have to have bad hair. I used to have awesome hair,” not that it actually matters what type of hair he has. Not that it matters to him that Jaejoong thinks he has awesome hair.
Except that he’s been a terrible date.
And Jaejoong looks really nice under the shady street lights, oral sexing a cigarette. Or maybe that’s just only in Yoochun’s head.
“I heard. Blonde streaks. Hobo style. Homeless chic. It’s cool. My friend has blue hair right now. That’s why I’m here. Because he told me you needed a date. I nearly didn’t, you know. Because they were talking up how you’re really boring and well, dull. Until I held two of his cats hostage until he gave me a photograph.”
“You held a cat hostage?”
“Two of them,” Jaejoong says seriously. “They think that I need to go and meet someone nice and boring and settle down and find some sort of stability.”
Yoochun stares. And then takes the cigarette back for a puff.
“I broke up with my man-friend. He went back to his wife.”
“You had a man-friend?”
“Before that I had a girlfriend. And then I had a boyfriend with a gambling problem. I apparently make terrible life choices.”
“You’re being paid to go to a wedding with a guy you don’t even know,” Yoochun says helplessly, “I’m starting to understand. You also drink like a fish.”
“Well, you don’t know how to be a date.”
“It’s a wedding. You’re meant to just,” Yoochun tries to words but then the words fail and Jaejoong raises an eyebrow. “Listen, Jaejoong-ssi. I’m sorry to disappoint but I wasn’t looking for a man date.”
“You’re not looking, are you?” Jaejoong says.
“I’m trying to smoke,” Yoochun replies, as though it’s smart and he takes another puff of the cigarette.
Jaejoong stands there, blonde hair like a fairytale prince or those heroes from Final Fantasy and then asks him, “So like. You wanna go out tomorrow?”
When he meets Jaejoong for coffee the next day, his mother sends him a message, asking him to thank Jaejoong for holding her purse when she went off to the ladies. And why did Yoochun not tell him any sooner.
Jaejoong is triumphant when Yoochun tells him this, “I make a better date than you.”
“I wasn’t trying,” Yoochun argues. “I was simply acquiescing to the pre-requisites of modern society that I not turn up to a family gathering of significant importance alone in an attempt to appear that I have appropriately integrated into modern society.”
Jaejoong stares.
So Yoochun quickly over-sugars his coffee and then takes a long gulp.
Jaejoong wordlessly trades their coffees, reaches for more sugar to add into the already sugary black coffee.
“I think we should do this,” Jaejoong says seriously. “Have coffee, hold hands and date. I haven’t been with a boring guy before.”
Yoochun chokes on the foamy cappuccino with extra chocolate powder and takes a moment to cough. And wipe the coffee dripping out of his nostrils.
“Like, Junsu-yah keeps insisting that if I try nice and normal, then maybe my soul won’t be so damaged. He tried taking me to church but then decided that maybe I’m a lost cause so he’ll settle for having someone else mend my soul instead. Either that or he just wanted his cats back.”
Yoochun weakly reaches for the biscuits that Jaejoong had bought whilst waiting for him, chewing on the biscotti as though it’ll give him some courage. It tastes nutty and wheaty. Nutty courage, Yoochun supposes. “Do you do this often?”
“Steal cats?”
“No, I mean.” He waves his hands vaguely at Jaejoong.
“Dye my hair? Junsu’s hair is blue.”
“No, I mean,” and he chomps down on the biscotti again and then swallows. “You’re very. Open.”
“I’m really not,” Jaejoong tells him seriously. “I say meaningless things. They’re more distracting and endear me onto people. And then they won’t leave me. At least, not at the start.”
And Yoochun thinks, oh fuck.
Cousin Linda calls him the next day, from her holiday in Monaco—turns out her boring groom is really loaded and Yoochun politely does not ask if that makes him any less boring—and she asks him, “So how long have you been going out with Jaejoongie?”
“Jaejooing-ssi and I are, uh.” He doesn’t quite know what is the appropriate way to tell her that he doesn’t really know what to do when he doesn’t have a date to weddings. Yoochun would usually go alone but family weddings are different. Family weddings bring up questions and speculations and inferences that Yoochun has failed at many things. Yoochun did not want to fail to bring a date. So instead, he says, “When did you start calling him Jaejoongie?”
“He told me I could call him Jaejoongie if he could call me Miss Linda.”
“Miss Linda,” Yoochun echoes.
“It has a nice ring to it, don’t you think? He sent me a photo of his friend’s cats. They’re very cute.”
When Yoochun calls Jaejoong for coffee again on the basis that he needs Jaejoong to stop sending cat photos to Cousin Linda, Jaejoong tells him, “Sorry. I’m busy. I can’t meet for coffee.”
Yoochun deflates and thinks no, it’s fine. You can call her Miss Linda. You can call her Cousin Linda. Just meet me so I can tell you to stop saying inappropriate things, like that you want her to call you Jaejoongie. Let me come meet your stupid Final Fantasy face so I can tell you these things and you can say something inappropriate in response.
“I’m playing with the cats. Want to play with cats?”
Yoochun won’t stop sneezing but Leo more than happily chases after the using feather on a stick, jumping between Jaejoong and Yoochun’s laps. The other cat, which Jaejoong doesn’t know the name of, it’s lazy and languid and sleeping on one of Yoochun’s legs.
“I thought you gave them back.”
“I took two more. He has loads of them,” Jaejoong dismisses. “He won’t notice until—”
“YOU THIEF,” a very weirdly dressed Smurf shrieks, crashing into the living room and waving his arms around. “BABIES,” he hisses, picking up Namelessly Lazy and Leo. “And hello. He’s better looking in person,” Smurf says to Jaejoong and then to Yoochun, “You’re better looking in person.”
“This is Junsu-yah,” Jaejoong says conversationally, pouring some tea into a cup and saucer for Junsu the Smurf Hair guy. “Junsu-yah. This is Yoochunnie. He’s related to Cousin Linda.”
“Oh, the really loaded one who’s going to Greece for the honeymoon?”
“No, it’s Monaco.”
“You talk about Cousin Linda?” Yoochun asks weakly, taking a sip of tea from cup and trying not to throw his saucer.
Jaejoong has a tea set on the floor. As though it’s a mat hatter’s tea party, a tea set with cups and saucers and milk and honey and none of it matches because one cup is buttercup yellow and the saucer is pink and green polka dots and the other cup has pinstripes with a cornflower blue saucer. Yoochun’s cup is marbled orange and yellows with a cotton candy pink saucer. Jaejoong’s apartment is a mess of Warhol imitations on the wall and a rhinestone bedazzled phone with a flat screen that takes up a massive amount of space on the wall. Junsu’s hair clashes with the orange sofa.
When Yoochun first stepped in, Jaejoong had to clear magazines and a soccer ball and some deconstructed plastic Ikea stools out of the way. “I tried going for chic and elegant, and it worked until three years ago,” Jaejoong explained before handing Yoochun a cat toy.
Junsu leans against the sofa. All three of them are sitting on the floor, never mind the perfectly good orange sofa. He sips from the tea cup, and smiles at Jaejoong and then looks at Yoochun and says, “So I hear you’re like Phoenix Wright.”
At that point, Yoochun picks up Languid and Lazy and hugs him close. And proceeds to sneeze non-stop.
Yoochun goes to work with red eyes, a running nose and a voice mail from Cousin Linda saying that they need to do lunch when she’s back from Monaco, him and his lovely new boyfriend. His entire office listens in. Yoochun probably shouldn’t play his messages with his phone on speaker mode.
The thing is, Jaejoong does weird things like disappearing off to Jejudo and coming back with pork and carrots and making kimchi-jjigae with carrots and it tastes amazing. But then Jaejoong disappears for two weeks and calls Yoochun, the bass pounding in the background and his voice slurring and swearing that it’s not like he supports people doing terrible things, but he could use friends, but his friends might do terrible things but people are terrible and wait, wait. Never mind. Shots, let’s shots and bye. And Yoochun is there, phone pressed to his ear at three am and not sure what to make of it.
Jaejoong also comes over to his place when Yoochun says he’s busy, he’s drafting for another old man and Jaejoong comes over because Cousin Linda contacted Yoochun’s mother for his address, “Your mother also asks me to tell you to please wash your socks, make sure you wear a fresh pair because that’s how you’ll get toe fungus if you don’t,” and he comes with soju and fried chicken and marshmallows and says, “You’ll stay up late, right? I’m gonna stay up late,” and he sits with Yoochun, learning how to knit from online videos.
Jaejoong seems to steal cats on a regular basis. He also tells Yoochun very seriously one day that he knows Yoochun has a driver’s licence but he wants to hold one of the cats whilst riding in the car, “Can you drive me to pick up my niece?”
Yoochun meets the most adorable girl in the world, and Jaejoong persuades her to call Yoochun, “New Favourite Uncle,” so that Yoochun would take them to a cat café. Junsu calls about thirty five times, in an attempt to retrieve his cats.
His allergies flare up and he goes home and lets his mother force fed him ginseng chicken soup whilst Yoohwan watches Formula One and screams at Hamilton, “PEDAL TO THE FREAKING METAL,” before adding, “I need an extra for my team, can your man date play?”
Yoochun and Jaejoong end up in a baseball match. Yoochun thought it was soccer so Jaejoong turned up with a jersey, perfectly dishevelled blonde hair and knee socks. Yoohwan had to get him to change and explain, “Soocer was last year. This year I’m playing baseball,” and Yoohwan’s friends all wave at them and then send Jaejoong and Yoochun into right and left field.
Except that the baseball game is ridiculously slow and Yoochun ends up lying down on his back next to Jaejoong who stares at the clouds.
And Yoochun half expects Jaejoong to point out shapes, only for Jaejoong to say sadly, “You’re going to get sick of me.”
“What?”
“I’m a fuck up.”
And Jaejoong stands up, forces a smile and runs into the in-field and hollers, “Let’s do this!” and everyone cheers. The game picks up.
Jaejoong avoids him for two weeks. Except that Jaejoong apparently talks to Yoochun’s mother and Cousin Linda. Except that Junsu the Smurf gives him a call and they meet for drinks and Junsu talks about wanting to see Wicked and reading Dracula and convinces Yoochun to download music illegally. Except that Yoochun thinks of how the light in Jaejoong’s eyes flickered in and out as the sun set that evening, the field emptied out and Yoochun hears it over and over, “I’m a fuck up,” and what is that meant to mean.
Jaejoong then sweeps into the lobby of Yoochun’s office one day and asks the receptionist, “Is there a good looking man here? I’m looking for a good looking man.”
They accidentally direct him to some guy sitting three cubicles down from Yoochun.
Yoochun takes Jaejoong to eat hot pot.
Then Yoochun tells him, “I have no friends. I had this break down in my last year of university and no one talks to me. Ever. I can only date women who I meet when very drunk and after that, they don’t want me after a few months because I’m afraid to tell them I can’t remember how to breathe sometimes and that I like to knit to calm myself down.”
“When do you have time off?” Jaejoong asks him. “I want to go to Tokyo to see the Giant Gundam. I mean, I’ve seen it before, but that was with someone else. I want to you to see the Giant Gundam. We could go to the ramen museum, but that’s in Osaka.”
Yoochun pours them some soju and Jaejoong immediately drinks.
“Junsu-yah says I’m a dick for avoiding you like that,” Jaejoong says finally.
“I had to ask someone to find me a wedding date.”
“I lied. Junsu never paid me.”
“I can’t go to Tokyo with you,” Yoochun tells him seriously. “I have to work. I don’t know what you do. I don’t actually know you. But you know me. I’m really boring. I work five days a week. Six if you include how I take work home. You know my mother, you know my brother.”
“We’re watching the next F1 together.”
“It’s okay, you know,” Yoochun doesn’t actually know what he’s saying. “It’s okay.”
And Jaejoong pauses mid drink, sets down the glass and says, “I have a lot of sisters. And they have kids. My parents are really old. They love me enough that I could crash the moon to the earth and they’ll clap. I have reasons to be happy.”
“But you’re not happy.”
“You say insensitive things.”
“You started it with the inappropriate,” Yoochun remarks mildly.
Jaejoong smiles, and Yoochun feels warm. It’s not from the chamisol.
Jaejoong works at a bookshop. It sells magazines and manga and long novels. Jaejoong wears oversized glasses, a horrible sweater and very tight jeans. He also wears a soft blue apron over the top of everything.
Yoochun brings him coffee. It’s dark, but sweet.
Jaejoong gives him a reading list. And it’s a mess of shounen manga, travel guides and literature, “You should read this one,” Jaejoong tells him and gives him a book, “It’s sad because it’s about a guy who loves a girl who will never love him but she thinks she does for a moment. They can’t be together and he just endlessly loves her. And some other guy is telling the story.”
Yoochun rearranges his cubicle. He gets a colourful pen holder and he puts bobble head figures of the Avengers around the screen of his computer. Thor nods along once in awhile. He goes online and buys a Baby Groot and gives it to Jaejoong.
Yoohwan watches the F1 with Jaejoong and Junsu comes along and helps Yoochun’s mother in the kitchen. They cut veggies and make japchae and Yoochun dumbly sits on the sofa as Jaejoong and Yoohwan talk about who might win, about McLaren—“Not a person,” they keep insisting, “It’s a team, it’s a long story,” and Yoochun nods as though he totally gets it—and how Button needs to get rid of that moustache.
A probably decent looking British man is being interviewed and Jaejoong complains, “He used to be a sex god.”
The British man is not so decent looking, Yoochun decides. “He has a weird moustache.”
Jaejoong sighs, “Yeah. I know. It’s misfortunate.”
The last Yoochun checked, Formula One was about cars.
Cousin Linda takes him and Jaejoong out for barbeque without her boring and yet rich husband. Cousin Linda and Jaejoong talk about Monaco, about Japan and mainly about how Cousin Linda should passive aggressively put her sister in law in place. Jaejoong is an expert on this, he has many sisters and Cousin Linda nods knowingly and almost in awe of his knowledge.
He’s a gentleman and he turns over the pork and beef.
Yoochun makes a wrap and hands it over to Jaejoong.
Their fingertips brush and Yoochun thinks, now really, oh fuck.
The problem is that things are becoming a matter of Before Jaejoong and After Jaejoong. Before Jaejoong is drab and grey and After Jaejoong is midnight fishing trips and drinking champagne out of teacups. Before Jaejoong, Yoochun wears his suit how he should and his hair flat. After Jaejoong, Yoochun has Instax photos stuck up on his cubicle and finally reads depressing literature and yet listens to bubblegum girl group pop.
Jaejoong buys an army of bobble heads for Yoochun to put in his cubicle. Except they don’t fit so they’re in Yoochun’s bedroom, lining his windowsill.
He keeps forgetting, on those days when it’s colourless—because it does become that, things do become shades of grey once more—that he should be taking his coffee straight. He keeps adding sugar, and then looking to hand it to someone else.
Jaejoong gets on the stage in some bar in Hongdae. He sits with a guitar and a microphone and the light hits him the right way and Yoochun forgets to breathe, forgets it all.
The phone doesn’t ring and no one comes to give him coffee. Jaejoong avoids him once more and Yoochun thinks what could be wrong.
But Yoochun pretends it’s all fine and then Jaejoong turns up for dinner at Yoochun’s mother’s place. The four of them sit down for dinner and then after, Yoochun and Jaejoong take the train back to Yoochun’s place. They stand side by side and then get out for a platform transfer.
Then Jaejoong says, “I wish I could fix me.”
Yoochun doesn’t think Jaejoong can be fixed. He doesn’t think Jaejoong needs to be pieced together to fit into pre-requisite modern society. He thinks all the hazardous pieces, all coloured and stained are better this way, it’s artistic, and he thinks it could be like a Jackson Pollack. He thinks Jaejoong is better, not like everything else.
For Yoochun, it’s a matter of After Jaejoong. That After Jaejoong, he does his work on Saturday nights with Jaejoong learning how to knit and cursing at the wool. That he goes for long walks when it’s all too much and Jaejoong calls and says no, don’t walk without me, you’ll get lost or something. He knows that After Jaejoong, the silence is filled and no longer overwhelming.
They get into the next train and Yoochun stands next to him. Doesn’t want to move.
That night, Yoochun tells Jaejoong, “Let’s have dinner.”
“We had dinner.”
“Let’s have dinner,” Yoochun repeats.
“I’m not hungry,” Jaejoong says.
“Then let’s not have dinner,” Yoochun says.
And Jaejoong follows him home.
They don’t have dinner.
Yoochun says to him, “I don’t want to fix you. I want you to take me to Osaka and then let’s be late for the train to Tokyo.”
“I’m a fuck up,” Jaejoong tells him. “I was your wedding date because I was lonely and everyone thinks I could use a nice person to make me steady. I can’t be steady around you. I want to make you laugh because I don’t always see you laugh. I’m a fuck up. I can’t do anything right and I love the wrong types of way and I get jealous and think that everyone is going to leave me. I’m a fuck up. I can’t be the thing that messes up your perfectly happy life because I’m very terribly unhappy.”
“I got held back a year,” Yoochun confesses. “I couldn’t graduate on time. I failed things and everyone who I used to know will tell you about how I burnt out and couldn’t handle it.”
“It’s okay, that you couldn’t. Everyone has those moments.”
“Everyone has those moments,” Yoochun tells him. “You can have those moments.”
They don’t have dinner. They aren’t hungry.
Cousin Linda calls Yoochun, to tell him that she’s pregnant and to ask, “So are you and Jaejoongie going to figure things out?”
Yoochun is silent and then asks her, “I thought you bought it. That I was suddenly into men.”
“Everyone knows that you aren’t into men. No one really cares if you turn up alone. Everyone was just glad that you found someone.”
“I didn’t find him,” Yoochun says.
“It’s more the other way round, isn’t it.”
Yoochun fails at a lot of things. He fails to know how to attach to person, he failed classes and he failed to be straight laced and boring. Yoochun fails at remembering to breathe, to fall for a boring person who would have him in an apartment with boring moments and a cubicle without colour. Yoochun thinks he can live with that. Yoochun used to not live well with it. Yoochun used to let the pressure build up and then the world steamrolling him into a moment when he can’t, he can’t, he won’t, he can’t.
Yoochun and Jaejoong take the train together now. Jaejoong’s changed jobs. He’s working as a bartender a few stops away and it’s opposite shifts. He’s doing the bookstore thing once a week. Jaejoong sometimes plays on a stage in Hongdae and he comes home with his eyes wide and his cheeks flushed and he sometimes tells Yoochun that he’s broke because his friend really needed the money.
Yoochun oversteps one time and asks Junsu to be around more, “I don’t know the others around him. And I don’t know if I can trust any of them,” because he doesn’t want Jaejoong to be around people who don’t listen when he says things, when Jaejoong says he’s a fuck up and people laugh it off. Yoochun wants the world to stop, to let Jaejoong have that moment, to say it and then to breathe. Yoochun wants to stop the world for him in those moments so Jaejoong can pick up the pieces he drops, so that his heart isn’t over the floor as everyone moves on.
And Junsu tells him, “Don’t do this to him. Let him do it as he does.”
And Yoochun gets it, he does, but then he looks at Jaejoong and his stupid blonde hair and his stupid golden heart and says, “I need you to not be okay, but I need you to not let yourself be not okay,” and it doesn’t make sense and they don’t speak for weeks.
They take the train together in silence and then they suddenly talk.
Yoochun meets Jaejoong’s sisters, all of them, Jaejoong’s parents and they all ask him, “Stay a bit longer,” and so he does, even though he has work the next morning.
Jaejoong’s father doesn’t bat an eyelid, he tells him both to open the window as it’s really humid out. Jaejoong’s mother tries to overfeed them and his sisters, oh his sisters just want him to know that they are terrifying, that he better remember their faces because they will be terrifying if they have to be.
Yoochun gets the message, clear and simple.
Jaejoong runs away to Tokyo. Yoochun goes after him and they go to the Giant Gundam and they don’t talk about it. Yoochun takes two days off from work across the weekend so they can go to Tokyo Tower and eat at the fish markets. They buy back souvenirs, and Jaejoong also buys back boxes of matcha Kit Kats for Cousin Linda.
They come home and Jaejoong’s head falls on his shoulder during the plane ride.
“You’re not a fuck up,” Yoochun says to him, when Jaejoong tries to stay the night but tries to leave halfway. “You’re not perfect but no one is. I’m the one who failed things here.”
“You don't know that,” Jaejoong replies hoarsely, looking as though he wants to tear his hair out, that he wants to leave. Yoochun might want him to leave because it’s scary, it’s close proximity. Any close and it’ll be real, it’ll be seared into their memories, across their hearts and it’ll burn, it’ll be that slow burning that keeps them alive, keeps them warm and heated and unable to do anything but want more. “You aren’t a failure.”
“And you aren’t a fuck up.”
“You don’t know that,” Jaejoong repeats.
And so Yoochun thinks, what if Jaejoong is a fuck up. What if one day it get tiring, the back and forth and the vibrancy and the colour and he gets sick of Jaejoong stealing cats and and smokes like giving head, how all the lights hit the sharpness of his cheekbones and Yoochun is sick of that for sure, sick of forgetting how to breathe in those moments, and Yoochun thinks of what if it gets frustrating, if he wants to go back to Before Jaejoong and he thinks no, it’s fine. But still, he has to think of what if Jaejoong is a fuck up.
“I don’t care,” and it’s true.
Jaejoong is wide eyed and prepared to bolt, he’s a lost waif with big eyes and floppy scarecrow hair from sleeping on the bed. Yoochun’s back is killing him from the sofa.
“When are we going to fuck?” Jaejoong asks him.
“Whenever you want.”
“I’m really bad at monogamy.”
“I’ve never done it with a guy before.”
“It’s okay,” Jaejoong tells him. “The only guy you should do it with is me.”
Jaejoong calls him from Jejudo one day and says, “We should go camping on the beach,” and Yoochun sits in his cubicle and looks at his bobble head army. “We should take a cat with us,” Jaejoong adds as an afterthought. “Do you get allergies in your sleep?”
Yoochun thinks that he can’t really choose what happens next, that Jaejoong is in defiance of it all and what is the norm, that there are still pieces of his heart across the floor from when Yoochun isn’t there to let the world come to a standstill. Yoochun can live with that. He feels the searing across his heart, until his breathlessness is unreasonable, and he knows that now, he’s looking. He can see it now. He breathes in, sharp.
“Let’s have coffee,” Yoochun says when Jaejoong gets a new job, and this time he’s selling laptops in a department store.
They end up meeting for dinner, “But I’m not hungry,” Jaejoong tells him and that’s okay. They walk back to Yoochun’s apartment, close enough that Jaejoong’s fingertips brush against the back of Yoochun’s hand. Soon, not yet. Soon. He knows he’s gone, he thinks that he’s completely gone gone gone and Yoochun thinks it’s fine.
“Hey,” Jaejoong says suddenly. “I need a date to my sister’s wedding.”
Yeah, Yoochun thinks. They’re going to be fine.