Sometimes, Youngjae feels invincible. When he’s singing, when he’s on the stage, he feels like nothing could ever pull him down. But sometimes, he feels as fragile as the thinnest seashell scattered on some forgotten beach. It comes when he’s the only one who hasn’t got the dance move down, it comes when he fails to hit that high note, it comes when comments pass about his baby fat. When those days come, he prefers to bury under his blankets and sleep the day away.

But what makes him fall apart at the seams is the way that Daehyun smiles at him, the way that Daehyun sings, the way that Daehyun would pat his knee. He’s at once invigorated and at once undone. At once whole, and at once crushed. He likes the way the sunshine makes a halo of light on his hair, he likes the way Daehyun’s eyes crinkle when he smiles, he likes the way that the pair of thick lips forms vowels when he sings, likes it when Daehyun looks into his eyes when they harmonise.

He floats on cloud nine when they stare at each other like that.

It’s frightening because he has such a long way to fall to earth.

He thinks that Daehyun is an angel sent to lead his soul to salvation. Lying exhausted on the ground of the dance studio, looking up at Daehyun who’s singing, looking up at the fluorescent lights behind Daehyun, he thinks he can imagine wings of pure white spread from Daehyun’s back. They’d be powerful, large, soft and downy, everything that is Daehyun.

“Daehyun-hyung’s singing is getting better every day!” It’s Jongup’s voice, and Youngjae sighs as Daehyun stops singing to address the younger.

“Thank you, Jonguppie.” Daehyun grins, and even though it’s not directed at Youngjae, he feels something flutter in his stomach. It’s a pleasant feeling, one that distracts him so that he misses the way Daehyun’s gaze lingers a little longer than necessary on Jongup’s body.

Sometimes, Youngjae feels like he can soar in the heavens, but they’re burrowed wings. He doesn’t belong in the sky amongst the clouds. He’s reminded he’s a human without a means to fly when he comes down with a cold. His nose is sniffily, his throat scratchy and he’s in a sour mood when he’s confined to only gazing at the sky through a small window in their bedroom. Jongup’s sick too, running a slight fever, and is currently lying on Daehyun’s bed since Daehyun’s is a bottom bunk and doesn’t require climbing the ladders to access, unlike Jongup’s bed. Jongup’s a little delirious, but Youngjae is just angry that Yongguk’s imprisoned him here when he’s perfectly capable of practising.

Daehyun walks in, ending Youngjae’s mental tirade against the leader and making Youngjae shift his forlorn staring out the window onto Daehyun. There’s a tray balanced in his hands, two cups of water and two different bottles of medicine on top. With a clatter, they’re settled on Youngjae’s bedside table since his is the cleanest, and Daehyun opens a bottle, shaking two small pills into his palm that he hands over to Youngjae who takes it reluctantly.

“Don’t forget to drink all the water.” The cup of water is pressed gently into his palms.

He sighs as he pops the pills into his mouth and swallows the water, all done under the watchful gaze of Daehyun. He gulps it all down, then hands the empty glass back. Settling into his blanket, Youngjae closes his eyes, since he has nothing better to do but sleep.

When he drifts off, he misses the way Daehyun softly threads his fingers through Jongup’s hair as the younger leans into the touch. He doesn’t see how Daehyun brings the cup up to Jongup’s lips whispering quiet words into his ears. Youngjae is dead to the world when Jongup, still half unconscious, clings onto Daehyun’s shirt and all Daehyun responds with is a soft smile.

So it comes without surprise when the plate shatters in the kitchen.

His eyes are wide, his hands are trembling uncontrollably, yet he feels stiff as a statue, rooted to the ground with cement, forced to endure the sight before him. Jongup clutches at Daehyun his face buried in the older’s chest, eyes peeking out uncertainly at Youngjae. Youngjae knows, in some distant corner of his non-functioning mind, that he probably looks like a fool standing there, gaping, with cuts all over his leg from the flying bits of plate while he hears a different kind of distinct shattering within him. It’s like the bright blue sky that he’s been admiring all this time has been ripped off, revealed to be wallpaper covering the hideous dark mass of poisonous clouds that lay underneath.

Daehyun’s holding Jongup close, hugging the shorter, glaring at Youngjae. There’s a warning in his eyes, but Youngjae mentally, and hysterically, laughs at Daehyun, because Jongup isn’t the one that will be hurt, that is hurting, so Daehyun doesn’t need to protect Jongup. When Youngjae blinks, the negative of the scene is pressed into the back of his eyelids—Daehyun cupping Jongup’s face lovingly, thick lips pressed softly against the others, one arm curled possessively around the younger’s waist—and that one blink hurts so much. Hurts so ing much that Youngjae would gladly take an injection of acid to this. And he’s dizzy, there’s something lodged in his throat, his arms are numb, he feels nauseous, because, by the heavens, how could he have been so blind? It doesn’t matter now. Even as the energy drains from him, leaving him slumped against the doorway, even as the blood continues to drip down his legs, even when he blinks and there’s that ing negative again, all blue and white and he’s not the one, it just doesn’t matter anymore.

There’s thudding behind him, shaking the floorboards, the noise thundering across the dorm. Junhong appears in the doorway first. He takes one good look at the couple in the kitchen, then adverts his eyes to Youngjae. Youngjae meets those brown ones, holds it. It’s more than a mirror. Those eyes don’t just reflect his pain—that pain is his own. It’s an understanding, not to patch the wallpaper of the sky back together, but to live under that hideous black of truth. And just like that, Junhong pushes past Yongguk and Himchan who’ve shown up at the doorway. There’s a loud bang that resonates right through Youngjae’s chest, shaking up some of the broken pieces inside there.

“You go after him. You’re closer to him,” Himchan whispers into the silence.

Yongguk only shakes his head. “He’s been feeling homesick lately, on top of this. It’s better if he has someone who has more of that motherly touch.”

A look passes between the two oldest as Youngjae slips down the doorframe, his legs threatening to collapse and send him onto the pieces of broken plate on the ground. He wouldn’t mind the pain. He’d probably can’t feel it anyway. There’re too many new scratches he’s gotten in the past minute, what’s a few more anyway?

“Where to?”

“The park.”

When the second bang echoes through the dorm, Youngjae’s legs give out completely and he crashes onto the floor. He feels the shards digging into his legs, but they don’t pierce his skin. May as well—he laughs bitterly, the dry chuckles sounding ominous in the absolute silence, causing Yongguk to sigh and pick the boy off the ground by the waist and place the limp body onto the nearest chair—wouldn’t want the floor to be even messier than it is. Someone needs to clean it.

“Daehyun, Jongup,” Yongguk growls, and the sheer amount of control Yongguk has over the anger that Youngjae can feel simmering beneath Yongguk’s skin causes the younger to shiver involuntarily. “Leave.”

The two stay frozen. Probably confused, or uncertain, or something, since Youngjae can’t see past Yongguk’s shoulder, he can only guess. Yongguk’s mouth is pulled into a frown and his eyes are serious and hard. It’s such a far stretch from the normally soft-hearted, goofy leader that Youngjae can’t help but think that he does in fact resemble those annoyed brown bears that the fans compare Yongguk to. The thought’s absurd, it’s not at all funny, but he laughs. It’s a horrible sound, it grates harshly even on his own ears, but he can’t stop the dry hoarse noise, half-way between a sob and a chuckle, from falling through his lips.

As if his laughter—or whatever it actually is—is some sort of cue, there’s a lot of shuffling, a murmured “watch for the broken plate, Jonguppie”, and shortly afterward the soft click of the front door. It’s just Yongguk and Youngjae now, in the kitchen, Yongguk’s hands still on Youngjae’s waist, the noise from Youngjae’s lips dying down into a wheeze, their breathing the only other thing that Youngjae can hear. It’s comforting to have the older’s warm hands steadying him as his sky shatters and rains down on him. His head lolls as he closes his eyes, concentrating on the feeling of those hands, the security, the solace.

Yongguk silently retreats, and Youngjae misses the warmth, but there’s the soft rustle of the drawer, the slight acrid odour of herbal medicine mixed with the sharp stinging of western medicine which are gone in a second when the drawer closes, and then Yongguk is pressing a wet cloth to his cuts. He doesn’t wince when Yongguk rubs antiseptic in, he has no energy left to do so, he just quietly lets Yongguk patch up his physical wounds.

They find themselves on the couch after Youngjae’s legs are all bandaged up. Half of his body is curled on top of the older, head resting on Yongguk’s shoulder, legs tangled with Yongguk’s. A hand runs up and down his back in that repetitive soothing motion that calms him, allows his breath to even out, and he’s almost content. Almost.

“I don’t know how it came to this,” Yongguk admits, voice softer and at a low hum with none of the anger that had possessed him before.

It falls silent, not because Youngjae doesn’t want to dignify that statement with a comment, but because he too doesn’t really understand how it all amounted to this. How had he missed the interactions between the two? Daehyun and him, they were the closest to each other, so where did Jongup factor in? Jongup was supposed to go with Junhong who’s been waiting ever since the two met, held back only because Junhong’s too young and too innocent, still stuck in that high school crush stage of his life, shy and hesitant. He just wants to scream, yell, pound Jongup with his fists, throw books at him, fling those stupid dumbbells right in Jongup’s face, but he knows that that is just jealousy speaking, and if he did Daehyun would terminate their friendship without further argument. So he does the next best thing and buries his face into Yongguk’s shoulder.

“Talk to me, Youngjae-ah,” Yongguk murmurs.

Youngjae can only shake his head.

He’s hurt and he doesn’t know how to say it.

He feels like a tossed seashell, crushed beneath someone’s feet and left to just lie there, broken.

“Please. Talk to me, let me comfort you.”

Youngjae feels a pressure on his forehead, feels the arms around him tighten. And it takes this for him to breakdown, because it’s not Daehyun who dropped the kiss on his forehead, it’s not Daehyun who’s holding him, it’s Yongguk who already has Himchan, and Daehyun now has Jongup and this isn’t what he’d envisioned. He’s not crying because he wants Daehyun, he knows he can’t force Daehyun to even look at him, he’s crying for the sky that hadn’t even been there to begin with.

Omg, what is this;; I don't even know what I've written...
Originally meant to have a Bangjae ending, but wth, Youngjae's not going to get over Daehyun that quickly :L I dislike the ending to this. When I have my fanfic comeback in November I'm so writing a Bangjae fic.
I have my first exam in a week, I haven't been studying, I've been reading fics from morning to night, I've even branched out into Infinite (read: woogyu) fics, and now I'm screwed. Hahaha, goodbye future! OTL