At that moment, Yunho felt quite a few emotions that all seemed to be vying and leaping for his complete attention. A gathering of chaos swarmed and stifled his thoughts and took a few moments of silent standing to differentiate, but even when he had, he wasn’t sure quite what to make of it all.

            He certainly felt sick to his stomach, though exactly what feeling that was a result of was far from clear. It could have been a number of problems, seeing as the influx of emotion was more of a myriad of things rather than a sorted and categorized collection of feelings, and discerning just what was what seemed out of the range of possibility.

            As he stood there for a few moments of shocked silence, his nervousness became heavily apparent – his hands and legs seemed to be shaking against his will, and his joints had gone stiff, clenched by the strict hand of panic.

            And, although he could only identify it after some time, there was guilt. Strong and unrelenting, a burning existence that only served to infuriate him further.

            But, perhaps more powerfully than the others, he felt the surging need to punish the very person responsible.

            “Yoochun!” He screamed, storming back into the kitchen with his fists clenched at his sides, trying to keep himself from externalizing his anger in the most violent manner he could think of.

            “Hm?” Yoochun said, lifting his head from his plate and flashing a look of foolish innocence in his direction. Yunho could feel his nails digging into the palms of his hands. With the strength of his fingers wrapped so tightly in his palm, he was sure he would draw blood if he continued, but, due to the magnitude of his anger, it seemed like an unfortunate inevitability.

            “What the hell is wrong with you?!” He demanded, shoving a pointed finger toward Yoochun’s face. Though his hands ached to solve the problem with a swift blow to his cheek and nothing more, that would only serve to cause more issues, not to mention a bruised and aching fist. It seemed intimidation was the only form of violence he could resort to. 

            “What do you mean?”

            “What do you think I mean?” Yunho spat. Yoochun simply continued staring with a look as blank as a sheet of white paper fixed toward Yunho’s harsh gaze. It seemed Yoochun wasn’t kidding – in his constant state of extreme distraction, or stupidity, he hadn’t realized what he had done. “Why would you say something like that?”

            “Something like what?”

            “Are you kidding around, or are you really this much of an idiot?”

            Yoochun rolled his eyes and lifted his now empty plate, placing it in the sink with a loud crash. His habit of being unnecessarily loud seemed to persist even at the most serious of moments, and although he had lived with him for years, Yunho was still not quite used to the grating of his ears with every extraneous sound produced from his roommate’s rash clumsiness. “How was I supposed to know the kid was in love with you?” He said with a shrug, the words making Yunho shudder slightly at the shoulders.

            He had never thought about it quite like that. Jaejoong’s request had been met with nothing but shock and panic, not rational thought. But now that Yoochun had said it, now that he had verbalized something so outrageously foreign, it terrified him even more. He weighed the words carefully on his mind and held them against his lips as delicately as you would a child, rolling them over his tongue in slight whispers as he processed the implication, the true meaning behind what Yoochun had declared.

            Prior to that moment, Jaejoong’s feelings were utterly irrelevant. Unknown and intentionally so. Before this disaster, Yunho was perfectly content to leave it at that. Not only for the sake of convenience – willful ignorance called for significantly less thought and analysis – but also for the sake of his own sanity. Thinking of such a topic was just an incredibly strenuous process, and one he chose to avoid at all costs.

            But now that he was staring it in the face, it was impossible. 

            “D-do you have any common sense at all?” Yunho snapped, his voice quivering from the sheer rage that threatened to reach its breaking point at any moment.

            Yoochun let a mischievous smile settle itself on the crease of his lips as he leaned backward onto the counter, a rare smugness present in his face that was entirely unlike his usual removed cheerfulness. “Apparently,” he said, tapping his hands playfully on the granite counter, “I have more than you.”

            Yunho gritted his teeth together and slammed his hands on the table, an empty display of anger that the both of them knew carried no weight. He was just frustrated.

            Frustrated that he hadn’t realized it himself. Frustrated that it took the words of Yoochun, a man whose foolishness knew no bounds, to tell him something he should have figured out ages ago. 

            And most of all, frustrated that now that Jaejoong had finally left, now that he had done the one thing that Yunho had been begging him to do since he had made first eye contact with those entrancingly beautiful eyes of his, he didn’t want him gone.

            Now that Jaejoong had walked so easily out of his apartment, the only thing he could think about was whether or not he would return.

            “ you,” he hissed, storming off into his bedroom just to rid the sound of Yoochun’s smug laughter from his ears. He couldn’t stomach it – the sound that only further proved his own lack of foresight, the results of a problem that he should have been well aware of far before they blew up in his face.

            He sat on his bed and held his head in his hands, fingers shaking at the sheer frustration that pulsed through arms. He felt it. That anger, that uncontrollable rage that he wanted nothing more than to shift toward someone else.

            But he couldn’t.

            Head in his hands and heart in his throat, he ran over every second of every moment of what had led up to the situation he found himself in.

            And every time, no matter how much he contorted and twisted events to his advantage, he was the only one who could hold blame.

            “We’re going to be having a quiz tomorrow, so I hope you’ve all been keeping up with the homework.”

            Yunho scanned the audience of bored students with a persistent disinterest, eyes glazing over the still faceless figures before landing on the empty spot that was Jaejoong’s desk. Three days of absences – yes, Yunho was keeping track – without so much as a phone call.

            Yunho thought that class without Jaejoong would be infinitely more relaxing, but it just wasn’t. That glare that used to make him so uneasy had gone, but the feeling it left certainly hadn’t.

            He felt sick. Ravaged by guilt and burdened with blame. And he was worried.

            The chances that Jaejoong was skipping school out of his own volition, a sort of anger-based rebellion that existed for the sole purpose of spiting Yunho, were slim to none. Those bruises on his face that he refused to talk about spoke volumes even without his commentary. And every day that passed without him in the classroom made the worry grow exponentially, until the unsettling feeling evolved into a full-blown terror.

            And his own responsibility made it infinitely worse.

            He shut the door to his apartment with a slam and tossed his bag on the couch, relieved that after hours upon hours of teaching he was finally home to relax the rest of the day away. Without Jaejoong, class had somehow felt longer, though he had previously thought that completely impossible.

            He jumped slightly as Yoochun exited the kitchen and waltzed into the living room, sitting down on the couch with a relaxed air that only managed to irritate Yunho. He couldn’t relax no matter how he tried, and he certainly didn’t appreciate how easy it was for Yoochun.

            Yoochun smiled as he sent a casual grin in Yunho’s direction, either completely oblivious to the heavy tension between the two or too aware of it, only acting with an affected civility adopted with the single intention of making Yunho even angrier.

            Regardless of which tactic it was, the unknowing or all-knowing, which, if Yunho had learned anything from living with him for years, were two extremes Yoochun seemed to fall in and out of quite frequently, Yunho needed advice. And even if Yoochun wasn’t the most fitting of candidates, he was essentially his only option.

            “Jaejoong hasn’t been to school in three days,” he bluntly declared, folding his arms defiantly in the doorway. Though he was conceding at least slightly in bringing up the topic with him, he didn’t want to give Yoochun the satisfaction of being in the clear. Yunho had swiftly, perhaps too swiftly, placed the blame onto himself and himself alone. He couldn’t forget that Yoochun was still at least slightly at fault. And if he could remember that, then perhaps he could shift the guilt onto someone else.

            “Is that so?” Yoochun asked, leafing through a magazine that Yunho remembered mindlessly discarding onto the coffee table the night before.

            “Yoochun, this is serious.”

            Yoochun just barely raised an eye at him with an incredible look of disinterest. “And why are you telling me this?” He questioned, returning his gaze back to the magazine and perusing the pages with an equally casual demeanor.

            “You saw those bruises! He obviously lives in a bad environment!” Yunho stared in amazement as Yoochun opted to remain silent. For Yoochun to be this apathetic was entirely unlike him. Yoochun was foolish and at times incompetent, but he wasn’t cruel. Far from it. His silence was incredibly unusual. “Something might have happened to him and this is how you respond?” He snapped.

            “So you care about him?” Yoochun said suddenly without so much as a sidelong glance in his direction.

            “W-what?”

            Yoochun sighed and threw his head back in exasperation. “I thought you didn’t care about him.”

            “I…I don’t. W-what the hell are you talking about…”

            “Oh, you don’t, huh…” Yoochun stood up and stretched his arms behind his head, letting his spine arch backward, a careless yawn rolling lazily off of his tongue. “Which is exactly why you’re crying to me about him potentially being in danger, right?” He asked. Yunho bit his tongue and stared intently at the floorboards, avoiding eye contact with Yoochun at all costs. Because he had nothing to say to him. No clever words, no quick dismissals, absolutely nothing to deflect the words he so wanted to deny. “That’s why you can’t stop thinking about him, right? Because you don’t care?”

            “Now who said I couldn’t stop thinking about him?” Yunho protested.

            “You don’t have to say it. It’s obvious.”

            Yunho let his weight shift as he rolled back and forth on his ankles. Those words came as a slap to the face, a barrage of sheer truth that he just couldn’t counter. Because Yoochun was right. He wasn’t just worried, he was in a panic. As much as he wanted to, he couldn’t stop thinking about him. It wasn’t that simple.

            As indifferent as he pretended to be, the idea of Jaejoong being in danger made him sick to his stomach.

            “S-so…” He whispered, making the final leap of ultimate humility as he lowered himself enough to ask Yoochun for advice, “what…what should I do?”

            Yunho cringed as his question was met with nothing but a scoff from an unwilling advocate. That same smugness that had made home in Yoochun’s eyes was stronger than ever, an insufferable mark of unfortunately justifiable self-righteousness ever-present on his face.

            “Don’t ask me questions you already know the answer to.”

            Yunho clenched his fists together one last time before turning around and sprinting out the doorway, feet slamming against the carpeted corridors with muffled noises as he made his way to his car and started it with shaky hands.

            Yoochun, for most likely the first time in his life, had been right about something. Yunho knew the answer to his question the moment he had asked. No, he had known it long before he had asked. He just needed some form of confirmation from somebody else. And Yoochun’s self assured tone, as much as he wanted to slap it out of him as hard as he could, served as the strongest confirmation he could have hoped for.

            He knew Jaejoong was in danger. He knew it full well. He wasn’t so stupid that he couldn’t see the signs that had so clearly laid themselves out in front of him. And he couldn’t just willfully ignore them anymore because their sheer existence did nothing but hurt. He couldn’t turn his back on them because whenever he did, he could still feel their presence.

            There was nothing he could do anymore.

            The silence outside of Jaejoong’s apartment made the nerves all the more powerful. He had no distractions form the quivering of his hands against the steering wheel, nothing but the buzzing of incoherent thoughts to keep him company as he willed himself out of the car and up to his doorway.

            He knocked twice for good measure, the solid wood against his hands feeling firm and reassuring as his body felt everything but. The door swung open after quite a long time, revealing not just a man that Yunho had never seen before, but also the overwhelming stench of alcohol that made even Yunho, who spent nearly every moment not at work getting drunk at a bar or on the couch next to his equally unmotivated roommate, turn his nose up in disgust.

            “Who’re you?” The man spat, the smell burning stronger as his putrid breath hit Yunho directly in the face. The man looked to be in his mid-forties, though Yunho was never quite good at guessing ages, and was very visibly drunk.

            “I’m a… friend of Jaejoong’s,” he muttered. Though the thought of a twenty-eight year old being friends with a high school student was questionable at best, Yunho couldn’t help but feel that the man was slightly too intoxicated to take note or even care. “Is he home?”

            “What? Jaejoong? Yeah. Hang on.”

            He turned toward the stairs and yelled Jaejoong’s name in a slurred, half formed shout before staggering out of the doorway and out of his sight, apparently satisfied that whatever job he had been assigned was over and done with.

            Yunho heard the scampering of footsteps down the stairs before Jaejoong, eyes wide and mouth hung ajar, appeared in front of the doorway looking completely and utterly shocked that for once, Yunho was the one who had sought him out rather than the other way around.

            Jaejoong grabbed the door and attempted to close it in his face, but was stopped as Yunho reached a hand up and forced it back open.

            “Wait,” Yunho pleaded, “Just wait. Listen to me.”   

            Jaejoong hung his head low as he dug his fingers into the wood, holding the door like he would slam it in Yunho’s face the moment he eased up.

            Yunho lifted his free hand and placed it on the boy’s chin, tilting his face upwards until he could finally see exactly what he was looking for. The bruises hadn’t healed. No, not even close. They were even worse now. Purple and nearly black, they decorated his dimly lit face with scattered blotches of reddened skin.

            “I’m… sorry,” he whispered, unsure as to what exactly he was apologizing for. He just wanted to get rid of that persistently powerful guilt that had taken up every inch of emotion he had to spare. Jaejoong bit his lip and remained silent, tightening his grip on the doorway and averting his eyes to the floor, despite countless attempts Yunho made to force him to make eye contact. He turned Jaejoong’s head side to side, inspecting the damage that made his stomach turn with every inch of split skin present on his face. “You… aren’t safe here, are you?”

            “What?”

            “Just answer the question.”

            He dropped his arms at his sides before reaching up and covering his face with his hands, shaking his head back and forth slowly, silently, as if he was fearful of being watched by someone dangerous, which seemed to be a very distinct possibility at this point.

            “Okay,” Yunho said, taking a moment to process just what he was supposed to do in this situation. Wasn’t this the very reason he had come? Wasn’t it Jaejoong’s safety that had driven him there in the first place? “If you’re not safe here, you shouldn’t be here,” he stated simply, unable to say anything but the obvious.

            “W-what do you mean?”

            Yunho sighed just once, a slight exhale that wasn’t done out of anger or exasperation, but relief. That he could finally help him. That he could make him safe – if he would allow it.

            “What I’m trying to say is…” He lifted his hand from his chin and rested it gently on the side of the boy’s face, careful not to irritate the wounds he had sustained from god knows what had happened. “Stay with me. For a while. If… if it will help.”

            Yunho grimaced as the words left his mouth, the pain of waiting for his answer making his stomach turn knots inside of himself.

            But the sudden jolt of Jaejoong tensing in his hands as he reached downward and took the fabric of his shirt into his tight fists was all the answer he needed.

            “Wait here…” Jaejoong whispered, dashing up the stairs with quick steps. Yunho ran his shaking fingers through his hair as a sign of pure relief, the guilt washing out of his body and bleeding onto the pavement below him as he finally rid himself of the feeling that had haunted him in the three day’s of the younger boy’s absence.

            Jaejoong was young. He was not naïve, he was not stupid, but he was young. He needed someone to keep watch over him.

            And if the people who were supposed to do it weren’t doing their jobs, then Yunho had to take it into his own hands.

            It was simple.

            “Okay,” Jaejoong said, reemerging a few minutes later and stepping out onto the walkway with a backpack slung over his shoulder and a few random items tucked in the crevice of his slender arm, “Let’s go.”

            Jaejoong was young, but not the kind of young that makes adults enraged. He was innocent, but not the kind of innocent that drove people to frustration.

            He was small, he was young, and he was the kind of innocent Yunho wanted to protect.

            Yunho nodded, leading the way down the path, and, with a strange feeling of satisfaction warming his chest, let it slide as the young boy reached up and intertwined his fingers with Yunho’s own, the heat from his touch marking the first joyful feeling Yunho had encountered in three long days.  

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A/N- I promised I'd have this up soon. Oops. I totally lied. That was not soon at all. 

Okay, so, I've been pretty busy lately... I know you don't care at all, but I just want to explain the reason for my absence. As most of you know, I play lacrosse. Our team just won the conference championships, and now we're taking on the state tournament. This means I've been playing a lot of games, and between that and homework, I just haven't found the time to sit down and write a whole chapter. So I'm sorry this took long. Also, as a plus, I won all-division for lacrosse. If you don't know what that is, it's just an individual award that you receive for being one of the best players in the conference. So that made me happy! Okay I know you guys don't really care about my boring jock life, but that's why the update was late. I , I know. 

Uhhh I guess that's all I hafta say

Thanks for the comments! You guys are too good to me. 

See ya (hopefully) soon!

-Gelisi

P.S. Haha by the way the Livejournal readers were complaining so much about the lack of that I had to give them this message: 

"Now, on a more serious note. You guys do know I absolutely do not need to share this story with you guys, right? It's actually a pain in the to update here on LJ, and it would be infinitely easier just to stop altogether. While I get many supportive comments, I get way too many comments complaining about the slow pace and that apparently my story is 'annoying'. If you think it's annoying, then why on earth are you wasting your time not only reading it, but also commenting on it? This fic is very obviously not about . There will be , just not any time soon. It is intentionally slow paced. I'm not going to speed it up because you guys are all begging for to happen. I can handle constructive criticism. In fact, I welcome it. But this isn't constructive criticism. This is you, whining because they haven't had yet. And that's pathetic. If you don't like it, stop reading it and stop wasting my time with your comments. The end. 

For all of you who have been supportive, thank you! It really means a lot. I hope to continue posting here. But if I feel like I should stop, be warned. I will just stop." 

Thank you, AFF readers, for not complaining so much that I had to make a post like that. You guys are the best! 

I can't believe I actually had to make that post. 

/sigh. 

Livejournal readers. 'Nuff said.