—

Jaejoong’s a princess and he lives in the tallest tower of his pink castle and has hundreds of servants cleaning his room when his mom tells him to. He can eat candy all day long and play with his dolls and not get scolded.

His sisters dress him up and put pretty ribbons in his hair and pinch his cheeks when they tell him there’s no cuter girl in the world. They give him a tiny bucket and a spade and send him to play in the sandbox all by himself because they are too busy swooning over their boyfriends.

So Jaejoong builds himself a castle out of sand and looks around expectantly for his servants to arrive. He glances over at the boy next door who’s sitting on the stairs, playing with a toy truck. He pouts because he also wants a toy truck but none of his sisters have any.

‘Want to play together?’ a tiny twerp he hasn’t seen before looks at him while holding a toy car and a voracious look appears on Jaejoong’s face. He hides it well, smiling at him sweetly and nodding. This one can be his first servant, he decides.

The boy sitting on the stairs jumps up and rushes to them. He kicks some sand in Jaejoong’s face and hits his first servant on the arm.

‘I’m going to tell sis, how does he dare to insult a princess!’ Jaejoong shouts scandalized and stands up to brush the sand off his skirt. The little car model is hidden underneath his shirt and he hopes the younger won't notice.

—

His neighbor always sits in the same café as he does but he's never alone. He’s always with his dumb friend who doesn’t get even the simplest of math problems. Sometimes he wants to go over and grab that heavy book and hit them both on their heads.

Instead Jaejoong sits in his seat and flirts with his eyes.

He giggles, blushes, turns away when their eyes meet but nothing seems to break the y boy’s determination to teach his friend math.

Jaejoong shakes his head, sighs and texts Changmin. Instead of his hot crush, he’s going to spend time with his gluttonous friend who's in love with a rice bowl.

—

Jaejoong’s growing impatient because his neighbor’s not made the effort to talk to him not even once. He’s tried every trick in the book on seduction that he may or may not have stolen from his sisters and he's running out of ideas.

He’s tried cute, sultry, unapproachable, available, needy, desperate (and very desperate) and now he’s close to becoming indifferent.

‘He’s in denial, Changmin, he’s so deep in denial it will take twice my lifetime to dig him out of there’ he complains as they pass his neighbor in his friend’s new Porsche. It stinks to have a rich friend who never allows him to drive. It stinks to have a rich friend whose main priority in life is his next dinner.

‘This is the weirdest love affair I have ever experienced’ Changmin comments and Jaejoong gives him a nasty side-eye. He’s not the one in love with his breakfast.

—

Jaejoong knows exactly when to leave his apartment to meet his neighbor in the mornings. He plans these meetings maliciously, always smiling at him and swooning when his neighbour smiles back; but they never say a word to each other, not even once.

Jaejoong’s growing more and more worried about his sanity because he’s fallen so deep it’s not even funny.

Does he like me? Does he have a girlfriend? Does he have a boyfriend?

Slowly Jaejoong’s turning into his neighbor’s personal stalker. He secretly takes photos of him and he’s gotten to know the name of the company he’s working for and he’s completely sure that soon, very soon his knight in shining armor is going to approach him. Any day now.

—

It’s been twenty five years and Jaejoong is about to give up when there’s a knock on his door. His neighbor Jung Yunho is standing there with a ring in his hands and a proposal on his lips. First he’s shocked but then he cannot hold back a laugh.

He tells him his name and thinks he’s going to die from the changes in the other’s expression.

Yunho rushes away and Jaejoong falls on the floor crying. He’s not sure if it’s from the absurdity or the tragedy of the entire situation but he cannot stop.

—

A day passes and nothing happens. Another day goes by and he’s completely ignored. A week crawls away and yet Yunho hasn’t come to apologize. The one time they accidentally meet, Yunho flees from him like the plague.

Jaejoong calls Changmin and complains that his neighbor is an idiot.

He huffs and puffs but nothing changes.

Yunho moves out and Jaejoong frowns as he watches the whole scene unraveling outside his window.

He rips Yunho’s schedule off his wall, throws out the photos he’s secretly taken and destroys the wedding magazines he borrowed from his sisters.

He calls his colleague who’s been asking him out for ages and agrees.

He throws knifes at a picture of Yunho taken from a finance magazine where he had an interview the day he was promoted. Jaejoong had been very proud of his future husband that day.

He slaps his face when he looks at himself in the mirror and cuts off some strands of hair in anger.

Finally he stands in front of his door and waits because he knows that he and Yunho are not just two people living in this world who accidentally met. No, they are two people destined to be together, destined to love each other and stay at each other’s side forever and ever and ever and nothing, nothing can break them apart. He decides that stands, waiting for Yunho to come to his senses, knock on his door and ask him to stay with him forever.

Then there’s a sound and Yunho’s really standing on his doorstep. Jaejoong cannot believe his luck because he felt like giving up in the first five minutes after he made his promise to stand and wait in front of his door forever.

He smiles and hugs Yunho because if he does that the other will not have a chance to escape. He’s so glad Yunho’s back and now, when he has him again, he’s never letting him go.

—

Changmin’s chewing on the pork he’s given but finds it hard to swallow because of the stare trying to make him choke. Yunho’s watching him like a dog on guard and he knows that if he makes one wrong move he’ll have his hand bitten off.

‘Is he always like that?’ the younger complains turning to Jaejoong who has just come out of the kitchen with another bowl full of rice.

‘I don’t know but- he’s pretty slow’ the other laughs in reply ‘if it took him twenty five years to figure out that I’m a boy, it may take him an eternity to believe that you are not my ex boyfriend’

Yunho narrows his eyes but doesn’t turn his stare away from the tall stupid-looking boy. He knows that a fancy car, a cute face and a good job is everything a girl could ever ask for. Even if his girl turned out to be a boy.

tbc

a/n: same story, diferent pov.