He jerked awake, his eyes flying open in shock for a moment before remembering where he was. The remnants of the nightmare lingered at the back of his mind uncomfortably, reminding him of something that he couldn’t yet pinpoint. The vestiges of the unpleasant dreams , fluttering further away as he tried to grasp at them, tried to remember them. Eventually he gave up, settling for rolling off the bed to get rid of the immobilizing helplessness that coursed through him as an aftermath, because it was near impossible to recall them unless there was a stronger form of reminder in real life.
 
Dragging himself to the bathroom, he washed his face, hoping to shake off the distasteful feelings left behind by dreams he couldn’t, for the life of him, remember. The water on the bedside table had long since been depleted, and he was thirsting for a taste of liquid. Walking to the kitchen, he found Changmin at the dining table, a soup spoon bearing thick, viscous liquid raised halfway to the latter’s waiting mouth. Changmin froze, mouth open in an expression similar to that of a goldfish’s – when it was gasping for breath under water.
 
Yunho had to grip the doorframe for support as a hearty laugh bubbled up and his vision swam. As the black spots faded into colourless, he teased, “Changmin-ah, stealing some of my soup?”
 
“H  hyung!”
 
Laughter once again threatened to overflow from his chest as Yunho relished in the sight of his maknae spluttering. He supposed he was right, then, that the flustered man had been planning to finish all the food. Yunho clicked his tongue, shaking his head at the maknae, and sighed dramatically. “I’m disappointed in you, Changmin. Eating up a patient’s food?”
 
The other man smiled awkwardly, and a little something that Yunho couldn’t decipher. Was it relief? But that would make no sense. Shrugging it off, he went to the stove, where the steaming soup sat in a large pot, and spooned some into a bowl for himself.
 
“It’s really hot, you just made it? Wait   you cooked?!”
 
---
 
Perfect lips closed around the filter, their owner inhaling, and then releasing the smoke into the air, the wisps of white gas forming tendrils against the night sky. A slight draft destroyed the ripples of white cigarette smoke in the air, and he pulled his jacket tighter around himself, the leather slightly stretching under the exertion. His eyes turned to the window that he knew so well, having stared intently through it to decipher the state of its occupants so many times. A small smile tugged at his lips when he remembered the sheer number of times he had wished they smoked, or drank, so they would lean out of the window, like he usually did himself and also the equal number of times he sustained the guilt that came almost immediately with the selfish wish.
 
The pitch black of the room was suddenly replaced with white light that reflected off the glass panel of the window, breaking his silent musings.
 
Ah, Yunho’s awake.
 
And even though he knew he should move his feet, should get into the car, should drive off now, he couldn’t. He didn’t want to. His heart had leapt oddly at the sight of light permeating the room and still living in the moment, he found himself desperately praying that Yunho would look out the window so he could take one more look at Yunho, and if he was entirely truthful with himself, so Yunho would see him in the carpark. With all these thoughts in mind, he allowed his legs to be rooted to the ground for a few more excruciating moments that were entirely too long, yet entirely too short. Long because he was waiting for Yunho to peer out, to do something, yet short, because it wasn’t enough time before he had to turn away.
 
The moments passed by in seconds, and ticked into minutes, and he could no longer say ‘just a little while more’ to himself, as much as he wanted to. He extinguished the forgotten cigarette under his foot, and put on his shades, still staring at the window, his shades being a necessity in putting more distance between his logical self and the burning, feral need to run back to the apartment he only just left, and alert the other occupant of his presence.
 
With his shades acting as a dimming partition between his eyes and the world, he could pretend that the light from the room wasn’t as bright, wasn’t as alluring, and didn’t mean Yunho was awake and would soon find the soup Jae had left    even if he wouldn’t know it had been Jae. And it was easier to slip into his car, to ignore the tears that were blurring the edges of his vision.
 
It was easier to grip the steering wheel, and drive away as if he had never been here.
 
---
 
Yunho was bored. As much as he loved what he did, and knew that he got to experience so much more than many other people did in a lifetime, there were things he disliked, and at the top of the list would be the waiting. And that was exactly what he was doing right now – waiting. Well, he was also flipping Min’s phone open and close, but that hardly counted, since it was because of the boredom that he was doing it.
 
This waiting thing had gotten much worse since the lawsuit, he suddenly realized. Before, there had always been more than just him waiting, and when they were together, it wasn’t considered waiting. It was more fun than anything else. He wondered how they were spending their waiting periods now – were they like him, remembering better times when they were together, or were they still having fun? He guessed it was the former, considering how much trouble SM Entertainment has been giving them. Or maybe that was him hoping. Hoping that they still missed him and Min – all of them, but especially a particular member of the trio whose embarrassed laughter always manages to send his toes curling and his heart warming.
 
The phone vibrated in his hand, and he glanced down at the screen to find that the maknae had received a new message. Flicking his eyes back up to the set where the canvas-like backdrop with its picture-perfect home was overshadowed by Changmin, who had always managed to draw eyes to himself like a magnet without trying, and to the photographer who was entirely focused on the task at hand, and he decided it could wait if it was nothing urgent. His name in the short message caught his attention though.
 
Sender: Unknown
Subject: Hi! ^^
Is Yunho better?
 
Slightly intrigued – who’d know that he was sick (he hadn’t had a schedule that day) and ask Changmin about him? –, he quickly replied with a ‘Who is this?’, deciding to bring up any one of the times Changmin had snagged his laptop (or maybe his food, though it wasn’t quite the same, it’d still work if he was going for quantity) without asking first if Changmin did get upset.
 
The vibration made him jump a little – he was expecting a reply, but not this quick – and he opened the message:
 
Sender: Unknown
Subject: You pabo! >:(
I told you this was my number the other day! Was the only thing on your mind my soup? >_< You didn’t answer my question!
 
Yunho almost dropped the phone in his surprise, then gripped it so hard that his knuckles turned white as the thoughts came linking themselves together in his mind; touches that were too dreamy in his feverish state, the weight on the bed, laced fingers, a dream too real to be false. , the hallucination that had been too perfect to be fake.
 
It had been perfect because it had been the real thing – it was Jae himself.
 
---
 
Anger – unlike what everyone described it to be – isn’t fiery, or searing. It doesn’t burn red and it doesn’t become all-consuming heat in his chest, blurring his vision or making it bloom scarlet. It isn’t at all like how people sing about it, Yunho knew for a fact.
 
Because it was cold.
 
Funny how people lied in their songs while his were so much truth (or as much as he could get out, under the scrutiny of the company).
 
This… frost – biting away at his edges, clawing at his legs, freezing at his eyes – made his mind sharper, made the world clearer in its colours and sounds. His senses were at high alert; he identified the smells better, he strode faster, with more purpose, and his thoughts tumbled through his head with a soundless mechanical churn (don’t ask him how that works, but it does). He’d heard that the cold tended to slow biological processes, but as the tendrils of chill wrapped around his demeanour, he realized his precision increased, his walk became so purposeful it could almost be termed as predatory. Even drowning in the emotions, he briefly noted that he enjoyed the looks of apprehension that passed through more than one passer-by’s face as they glanced at his own features. It brought a rush with it, a heady sense of power, but did nothing to ease the subzero climate.
 
He quickened his steps, feeling the need to be alone more urgently than before. Once he reached the gents, he pushed open the door roughly, the metal handle on the other side slamming on the wall, the sound echoing through the unventilated space as he stepped over the threshold. The door swung back on its hinges, narrowly missing his shoulder with a sweep of wind, and he turned the lock, listening to it click in place. For lack of something to do, he used the toilet numbly, flushed, and leaned over to watch the ripples in the whirlpool as they disappeared, the water stilling again. It was with a poker face that he washed his hands at the sink, not betraying his feelings to even the emptiness of the room.
 
Then all hell had broken loose, and he was slamming his fist against the wall. The anger was still cold, still calculating, and still not white-hot and precisely why he was punching the wall. Even as his head was reciting his schedule – a photo shoot, a fan meeting the following day, performance, then back for a photo shoot – it had decided that he didn’t need his fist for much, as long as not much was visible. It decided that he, in fact, needed the pain to function. The bouts of pain bursting in his knuckles, blossoming in his fist, actually felt soothing; it was rhythmic, and familiar – and familiar was good; familiar was… less painful.
 
He caught hold of a thought that had unconsciously been running through his mind. This pain is good; I can do better with this pain.
 
He felt a bitter smile tug at his lips. Well, well, ever the leader – ever the responsible and logical leader. He blinked even as tears refused to make their way to his eyes, the rims of his eyes aching with the strain of not being able to shed its tears, and his heart an even more aching absence in his chest, where it should have sat thumping.
 
As he watched his skin split on one particularly hard slam, leaving tiny smears of blood on the once pristine wall, he could distinctly hear Jaejoong’s voice, his beautiful laughter like wind chimes tinkling by his ear, sending sparks of pain right to where his lost heart should have been.
 
“Yun, you need to loosen up, you need to follow your heart~”
 
He’d ruffled Jae’s hair and pinched his cheek, and leaning in, whispered “you’ll follow your heart plenty for us, and I’ll follow my head enough for two,” like he always did.
 
His heart clenched at the scene that played out in front of his unseeing eyes.
 
If only    if only he’d known that they wouldn’t be together enough for Jae to balance out his straight-laced, cold logic, he’d have listened. If only he’d heeded Jae, he’d have known that day – that the warm lump on his bed had been Jae. If only he’d stopped using his head for a while, for just one moment.
 
And now it was too late, and he only had himself to blame. He wanted to throw away everything he was, everything thatmade him – leader, responsibility, logic, principles – but he hadn’t (was it because of pride, or was it fear?).
 
And because of that, he had lost everything he had – Jae.
 
That was the thought that finally – finally – led the silent, continuous tears out of his eyes, much like his sorrow was dragging out the droplets. Misery sure loves company.

♥♥♥

I got a little depressed writing this :( Ahh I hope I can update again soon! :O