A/N: I actually wrote this one ages ago, but oddly enough, my older brother caught me writing fics, and he asked to read one. Since this one was my tamest, I gave it to him hoping I wouldn't be judged too badly. Surprisingly, he really liked it, so that's how it came out of hibernation. So, yup. My brother has read my Yunjae fiction. What is life.

0o0

I miss you. I miss you. I want to see you. I miss you. I miss you. I want to see you. I miss you. I miss you. I want to see you. I miss you. I miss you. I want to see you.

He typed the words over and over again. 29 characters over the word limit. 42 characters over. Ignoring the warnings, he continued to press the familiar keys his fingers had been finding all too often lately. They were the same words he wove into every song he'd written since he'd left, the words he filled his blank computer screen with when he was alone, the never-ending plea he pounded into his cell phone keyboard, even though he hadn't had the right number to send it to then. Heechul had supplied that later, with the caveat that he wasn't allowed to use it to cause trouble for anyone. Look, I know you're angry and upset and lonely and all that pretty stuff, but he's not exactly in the best place either. If you mess him up again, I'll buy him a new phone with a new number, and you'll have to carve it out of my brain to get it.

So Jaejoong hadn't bothered him. The first few times he'd called, he hadn't said anything when Yunho picked up, simply listening to his flat “Hello, who is it?”, his unsteady breathing, then the sharp beep when he dropped the call. He was surprised that Yunho kept answering when he called-- usually, they had to be careful about taking calls from unknown numbers, in case they were sasaeng fans or hackers-- but he was sure Yunho was a little bit like him. Waiting for that moment of reconnection, hoping against hope that it was even possible that they could speak to each other again through everything that had happened.

Every time he'd called, Jaejoong thought he'd say something to Yunho-- something pleading or accusatory, he wasn't sure-- but there was too much to express that he didn't know where to begin, and he wound up not saying anything at all and breathing waveringly into the phone like a stalker. It took to the tenth time he called for Yunho to take the initiative and talk to him. “Look,” he'd said, his voice more exhausted than Jaejoong had ever heard it. “I don't know if you're a fan or whatever, but if you are, could you please stop calling? I'm sure you know... I'm sure you understand that there's someone I'm waiting to hear from, and if you keep on calling like this... I'll keep on hoping that it's him.” He paused, his voice lowering. “And if it's you... please say something. Please. Just one word.”

Jaejoong held his breath, wondering if he should hang up. Instead, he'd said one word. “Hey.”

He'd heard a deep sigh on the other line, and then a long pause. “Hey.”

Ever since then, they'd been talking. Just a little, so as not to open the floodgates and drown each other in their bitterness all over again. Jaejoong would call him before going to bed and they'd murmur to each other in stilted sentences. How are you? Fine. Eating well? Of course. Yunho would call him from the airport as he walked past their fans (still theirs, they weren't giving up, they were still fighting for all five of them) and not say anything, simply flooding Jaejoong's ears with something they had once shared together, leaving the sharp thought of you're not here where you should be hanging between them.

Jaejoong never said he missed him, though. He didn't want to cry anymore, or show this foolish fragility he hadn't thought existed within him. They'd hurt each other so much already that as he was tempted to believe there were no new places left to wound, but the rawness of his heart told him that it wasn't true. He didn't want to go through it all over again, not this soon. He didn't want to face up to Yunho's sadness either, knowing he'd played his own part in it. He wasn't the enemy here-- he knew that he'd only done what he'd had to do, but that didn't mean it wasn't painful, or that it hadn't damaged what had existed between them. A wall had been placed between them, and as much as he resented it, he knew there would still be a long climb ahead of them to get over it.

Still, his fingers were relentless on the keyboard. I miss you. I miss you. I want to see you. Two hundred characters over the limit. How long would it be before he reached his limit? It was tiring. The not talking properly, the isolation the three of them had suffered, knowing they couldn't hold onto anything they'd once had, knowing that there were so many places they weren't welcome anymore. The act of turning on his computer and seeing all the pictures sent to him. Yunho with bags under his eyes, his weight fluctuating, Changmin not cracking a smile, the interviewers' wide smiles as they danced around painful subjects and little by little erased their history by pretending it away.

Everything stung. The talking, the not talking, the seeing, the not being able to see. He missed him. Missed them both, but him in particular. He wanted everything about him back: the arms that had once held him so gently, so possessively, the eyes that had held him inside, the lips that embraced his against all odds and expectations, the hands that had melted and reformed him into who he was now. He had taken the risk of losing it, but he'd thought the strength of what it was would outlast everything. Was he wrong? Were they going to stay this way forever, having half-hearted conversations over the phone, never meeting face to face, never facing everything head on?

I want to see you. I want to see you. I want to see you. I want to see you. He typed until he was a thousand characters over. Then he deleted the words one by one, watching them vanish until there was just 140 of the characters left, then hit the submit button. Not enough. But it will do. It wasn't something he was supposed to say. The fans would go crazy, the antis, too. Some people would blame him. You were the one who walked. You have no right. He didn't know if he had the right or not. All he knew was this was what he wanted more than anything. I want to see you.

A few hours later, he was getting in bed when his phone rang. It was Yunho's number on the screen. Jaejoong held his breath and took the call. “Hey,” he said, the same one word he greeted him with every time now. Their safe word, so they could feel each other out and how they were feeling whenever they talked to each other.

“Could you not, please?”

Jaejoong blinked. “Could I not...”

“Post about missing us. Please, just don't.”

“Have a problem with it?”

“Several problems. The same problems you're going through.”

“Am I supposed to lie and pretend that I'm not lonely with you?” Jaejoong asked, his voice rising. “I know I'm partially to blame for the way things are. I know that! But I didn't want it to be like this. Seeing your face on television, seeing other people beside you when I can't even be within a mile of you without crossing some sort of stupid line I didn't even consent to making. I can't even do anything for Changminnie, even though he's looking so sad and tired these days, and I--” He held back a sob, covering his mouth. No, no, no more tears. Enough. This isn't going well. Just hang up on him. End it for good, now. You lost him, you can't have him back, just cut the string completely and save yourself this. But still, he couldn't stop himself. “I wanted you to come,” he whispered, his voice almost unrecognizable as he fought back the onslaught of emotion. “I wanted you to come with me.”

“I wanted you to stay with me.”

“I couldn't.”

“Why couldn't you?”

“Why couldn't you? You love me. You loved me. That's what you said. It wasn't enough, it was never enough. You've always, always chosen other people over me.”

The other line went silent. “You think that? You really think that?”

Jaejoong didn't say anything. He couldn't.

“You chose just as much as I did, but I'm to one who's wrong? You say you miss me, but who is the one who broke up with who? 'I can't see you anymore, it's too painful for me, let's just end this'. And now 'I want to see you'? You want to see me so badly? Then don't say those kinds of things in the first place. I feel like an idiot, too, saying I would hang on to you no matter what, that I would never let anything happen to us, and now you're...” Jaejoong heard a strangled noise from the other line. “How do you want me to feel? Do you think this is any easier for me? Wanting to see you, knowing that I'm not supposed to, knowing that if I had chosen differently...” He trailed off. “Seriously, what do you want me to do? Do you want to stay broken up? Do you want to see me? I loved you more than anyone else. I still do. If you're going to keep giving and taking how you feel away, wouldn't it be better if you didn't see me or talk to me or miss me and keep me thinking that there's still something I have left after all of this?”

“What did you expect me to do?” Jaejoong yelled into the phone. “When I left, they said there's no way I could come back, that I should resign myself to not seeing you anymore. They changed your numbers, changed mine, banned us from everything, told us we couldn't even say your names, that we should just disappear... how was I supposed to hold onto you when I'd lost complete control of everything? I didn't want to not be with you, but what could I do? I couldn't go back. You were already gone. I still can't reach you where I am. But I'm waiting... always waiting for this time to pass and change into a time where I don't have to do this anymore. Am I not supposed to love you anymore because I made that mistake? I can't do it. I can't lie as easily as you do.”

“I don't lie to you.”

“No, but you do to everyone else. I know you. You're hiding so many things from everyone.”

“I have people to protect. People who were already hurt by what happened. And I can't be honest about everything. Not without hurting you, too.”

“Go ahead. Hurt me. I don't care.”

Yunho laughed bitterly. “Sure you don't. Now who's not being honest?”

“Do you want me to be honest?”

“Go right ahead, Jaejoong ah.”

“I want to forget everything that's happened, that will happen, even if it's only just for one night. I want to be together with you, for you to hold me again, for you to say 'I love you' without it having to sound like the world is ending, or that you're saying something you shouldn't. I want you to show me that even though we're not together, you're not going to love anyone else or give anyone else what you've given to me, no matter who you meet and see when I'm not there. I want you to wait for me as long and as faithfully as I'm going to wait for you.” He paused. “And if I can't have all of that, if that's impossible, I just want you to know that I miss you. I want to see you.”

“I told you, don't say these things to me.”

“You wanted me to be honest. Why can't I?”

“Because even though I want the same things you do, I keep worrying that there is no room for us to go forward. Because even now, all we can talk about is doubting each other, since we didn't choose the same thing. Because even though I know that, and I know there's a thousand more things standing in our way than there were before, I can't stop thinking that we belong together, no matter how far apart we drive ourselves. But most of all, I can't bear to hear you say miss me and want to see me because it makes me do stupid things.”

Jaejoong grabbed a tissue and began swiping at his eyes. “Like...?”

“Drive to your apartment.”

“Drive to my...?” Jaejoong choked. “Wait, I'm not even living where I did before. Where are you going?”

“Heechul gave me the address. You're the fifth floor, right? Look out our window.”

Jaejoong ran to the balcony and threw the window open. Yunho was standing there, a cell phone pressed up against his damp face. His eyes were puffy and swollen-- he rarely cried, but he wasn't disguising it in the slightest now. It felt like years since Jaejoong had seen him, and all the subtle differences wrung his heart. Hadn't his face been fuller, his hair been styled a different way? Why had all these changes happened without him there to watch over them? Why did they have to keep hurtling forward into a future without each other in it? Already, he felt more tears falling down his face. He'd changed, too. His face was thinner, his hair had grown too long, and he'd fallen behind in upkeeping it. Was Yunho also feeling that regret that he hadn't been there for any of it? Or was he simply so happy to be back that he didn't care?

Yunho lowered his phone and looked up at Jaejoong. “Hey,” he said.

Suddenly, Jaejoong felt irrationally angry. Hey? HEY?!?! I haven't seen your face in person in months to have you show up out of nowhere in front of my house, and all you can say is Hey? No sorry, no demands for an apology, nothing more than that? Even though he knew he was the one who'd broken back into Yunho's life with a casual 'Hey', he realized now that it wasn't enough. He wanted to scream at him, to tear into the heart of what they both really wanted to say. “You idiot!” Jaejoong yelled, slamming his hands against the railing. “You... dumb... stupid... !”

“You wanted to see me?”

“Who wants to see you?” he asked, sniffling with what he was sure was a very ugly face. “I can't right now. I have to... fix myself.”

“Fix what? You look perfect.”

“My eyes and nose are running. I'm wearing unwashed sweat pants. I haven't showered for two days. I smell and my apartment is messy.”

“I haven't showered for three days. My sweatpants are also unwashed. My nose is also running.”

“If I let you up, I'm not going to want to clean. Myself or the apartment.”

“Me either. Let me up, please. I'll do what you want. Whatever you want. Just let me see you.”

“You're seeing me,” Jaejoong said, already grabbing the key in his pocket.

“I want to not be broken up anymore, too.”

“Then ask me out, idiot.”

“Kim Jaejoong, do you have any interest in being my lover?”

“I made that choice once already. You still owe me the happy ending you promised.” He threw down the key. “If you go away again, I'll kill you.”

“Same.”

“Then get up here, and promise me. Show me how much you love me properly this time.”

“Okay.” He wiped his face, holding tight to the key. “Wait for me.”

“Not waiting anymore. Just get here.”

Still, he waited for the brief seconds, allowing the time it took for the door below to open and shut, for the elevator to fall and rise to his floor, for the key to scrape against the lock, for the door knob to turn, for the person he had needed so badly for so long to finally stand in front of him fully once again, arms spread open and ready for him to step into them, into the place he had thought he had lost but had stayed waiting for him, waiting for this impossible moment of reconnection that wasn't so impossible now, after all.

0o0