Action without thought was the bane of Yunho’s otherwise mundane colored existence. While his pressed demeanor and calculated manner spoke the opposite, both affected to communicate that very idea, once finally driven beneath indifference, perhaps the only honest emotion he had, his frustration dictated far too many of his choices. 

Because when it came down to it, that was the single emotion that drove his actions. Emotionless, dull, whatever other boring adjective that could be used to describe Yunho were all completely accurate. He was not the emotionally charged type that let the floodgates open at nothing but a few words. He wasn’t the kind of person to get riled up over nothing and end up bloodied and bruised, staggering with a couple black eyes and a cut lip displayed as a trophy for a dirty bar fight with a nameless man twice his size. 

No, he was the type to simply let it simmer. Trapped and hidden, it burned and burned in silence with a grim faced host that did nothing but shrug his shoulders, take a few drags from a cigarette and toss it over the balcony along with any problems he probably would be better off dealing with it face to face, if he had the emotional maturity to attempt such a thing. Which, it was safe to say, he did not. 

It was rare, but that’s not to say it wasn’t routine. Don’t be fooled. The lack of expression of his emotions certainly didn’t mean he had none. He had plenty. He simply masked them with an outer shell of dissonance while they grew and grew, festering and bubbling deep within him until he just snapped. Routine. Whether in high school, where he simply decided he had enough and threw his desk hard enough to warrant a month long suspension, or college, where a rage driven attempt to drop out left him with nothing but a scolding from his parents, it was pure frustration that led him to snap. 

And where had it left him now? Tangled in a mess of something he couldn’t bear to think about and tied down with the rope of a young boy’s emotion? He felt nothing but the taste of previously untouched lips still tingling upon his own even a day later, with thirty some odd kids sitting perched at scattered desks somehow failing to occupy his attention. In fact, in a packed room littered with kids, papers and noise, the only thing he noticed was the single empty desk stuck like a beacon in the corner of the room. 

The students lined up in front of his desk and half-heartedly dropped their tests into the collection bin, whispering to each other and shooting him wary looks before disappearing out of his classroom for the weekend. 

And this time when the bell rang its song of freedom through the halls, Yunho didn’t even move. He simply didn’t have the energy to. 

He stared at the stack of papers and considered getting a head start, but even lifting his hand proved to be impossible in his lethargic state. He felt drained. Like he barely had any energy left to breathe. Each lift of his chest felt painful, like his ribs were pressing on his lungs and leaving him feeling heavy and restrained. 

He suddenly straightened his back at the sound of a gentle knock on his door, eyes brightening immensely as a family face poked through, a sea of light brown hair following in her every step. 

“Yunho!” She said with a gentle smile that eased him immensely. It was all it took. All it took to settle his swarming thoughts, to eject the seize of immorality from the coils of his brain.

“Hey Jessica,” he muttered, dropping the now heavy stack of tests onto his desk and leaning back in his chair. She seemed a bit more fidgety than usual. Her persistent poise was slightly rattled. “Is something wrong?”

“No!” She responded quickly, moving her palm past her red tinged cheeks and tucking a stray hair behind her ear. “I mean... uh... could I talk to you? Just for a minute?”

“Sure,” he said, rapidly clearing off his desk in an attempt to make at at least slightly more presentable. It was, after all, the last chance he had. 

The last chance to return to the decorated normalcy so far from his grasp. The last chance he had to cast his little problem away and grip tightly to what was expected of him, the very same strategy that had gotten him to where he was with barely a single obstacle - save the very problem he would now stamp out. The last chance he had to jump from this fantastical escapade and plummet back to reality. 

“This will only take a minute.”

Yunho entered his apartment as if it were a lion’s den. One silent step onto the aged wooden floor, a wary glance around, then a quick step in, shutting the door behind him and plastering himself against the wall behind him. 

“Yoochun,” he said sternly, noticing his roommate lying on the couch only moments before the powerful stench of weed reached his nose. Yoochun turned at his voice and propped himself up on his hand. It seemed, for once, he had decided to be attentive. “Did anyone come into the apartment today?” He glanced around nervously, still convinced they weren’t alone. It wouldn’t be entirely unheard of for Jaejoong to simply skip school and wait for him there. 

“No,” Yoochun hummed in response.

“Are you lying?”

“No.” 

“Look, Yoochun, this is important.” 

“I swear!” Yoochun grumbled, tossing his hands behind his head in frustration. “Look, I’m tired. And you ask too many questions. Just relax.”

Yunho sighed. Attentive was one thing. Helpful, on the other hand, was something else entirely. “Fine,” he grumbled. There was really only so far he could get with Yoochun anyway. He seemed to think that every single problem on earth could be solved by simply not thinking about it. “Just look me in the eye and tell me no one came here today.” 

Yoochun rolled around and settled his eyes directly on Yunho’s in a single unmoving stare. “I promise,” he said sternly, his words laden with such conviction that disbelief was an impossibility. Yoochun could be trusted around once a year. It seemed at this moment, Yunho was going to use it up. 

Until a pair of night stained eyes peeked out from the frame of Yunho’s room, stopping his breath and heart in one simple swing of a door. 

“Oh, well, except for him,” Yoochun said, gesturing toward the raven haired boy with only a portion of his body outside of his bedroom door. “But you know, he’s pretty much always here.” 

Yunho whipped around, his entire face lit up in a blaze of sheer anger. The one time he had trusted Yoochun with anything, and it had resulted in the exact thing he was trying to avoid. “Yoochun, I asked if anyone had come in the apartment. Last time I checked, in order for someone to be in a room, they had to at some point walk into it.”

“Well I didn’t know you meant him!”

“I said anyone!”  

“Oh well,” Yoochun sighed, flopping face first into the couch that was much filthier than Yunho would have liked. Yoochun’s housekeeping skills, if they could even be called that, were lacking, to say the least. “It isn’t my problem.”

Yunho was only able to hiss under his breath at Yoochun’s carelessly selfish remark. Because what he said was true. He had nothing to do with this. It was entirely Yunho’s problem and no one else’s. 

He clenched and unclenched his fists over and over, trying to settle the pounding of his heart and relax the blood swarming and pulsing in his fingertips. It was his problem, and even worse, it was his fault. 

He was the one who had initiated that lust filled kiss the night before. With his feelings held taut on a single thread, his frustration laced fingers had pulled it until it snapped and plummeted to the bottomless pit that was Jaejoong’s pull. He had given in, he had fallen, he had let his lips carelessly bolder through his tactfully placed yet thin willed walls. 

He had made his mistake. And he had the sole responsibility to fix it. 

“Come here,” he snapped, leaving behind his beyond useless roommate on a stained couch and grabbing Jaejoong by the wrist, pulling him into his bedroom for a comparatively more private place for a conversation. “Look,” he began, deciding to start his point with no hesitation. If he prolonged it any longer he’d surely get nervous and run the other way. “I don’t know what you think happened last night, but...”

“I know exactly what happened last night,” Jaejoong interrupted, an uncharacteristic gleam gracing his dark eyes. Yunho swallowed nervously. He had expected to give him a quick lecture, a pat on the back, and a push out the door. No problems, no interruptions, no backlash from the younger boy.

But thinking about Jaejoong and his stubbornness that could stop boulders, he had absolutely no idea why he had expected that in the first place. 

“You kissed me last night,” he said with a light smile, as if the memory of that star scattered night was flowing freely in his mind. “You have feelings for me, don’t you?” 

“What?” Yunho sputtered. “No. No.”

“Liar.”

“Look, what happened last night was a mistake. A misjudgment. Nothing more.” Perhaps if he thought hard enough, he could claim that the kiss was nothing more than a tool to placate Jaejoong and nothing else. But that much thought and mental mutation was far beyond Yunho’s mental capabilities. 

“Do you really think I’d believe that?” Jaejoong spat, crossing his arms across his chest as he always did, perhaps shielding himself from Yunho’s words. “What kind of person kisses someone as a mistake? And even if it was...” His frown shifted, turning into a half-smirk that sickened Yunho’s already tender stomach. “That still means you were thinking about it. That your single knee-jerk reaction was not to push me away, but to kiss me...” Jaejoong smiled and took another step closer to Yunho, cornering him at the edge of the bed. “I think that’s even more telling, don’t you think?” 

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” 

“I think I do.” 

Jaejoong moved forward once again, forcing Yunho to fall backward onto the mattress, arms extended to break his fall. 

“You... you found me at my house. You were worried about me.” 

“Jaejoong, stop - “

“That night. You took me for dinner because you couldn’t leave me out there in the cold all alone.”

Yunho’s mind jumped back to that night he had found Jaejoong perched alone on the stone wall. He remembered how easily he had relegated his actions as a mere responsibility, but how much of that was true?

How much was his responsibility - and how much was his choice?

“Jaejoong...”

“You care about me in a way no one else ever has,” Jaejoong murmured, his voice like a somber song lost in winter air. He slid onto the bed, placing his knees on either side of Yunho’s hips and reaching his pale fingers up to his cheek. His touch didn’t feel like ice as Yunho had expected. It was warm, tinged with an inviting and comforting flame. “You care about me. You do. But you always say you don’t. You always push me away. Do you know how that feels?”

Yunho closed his eyes, lost in Jaejoong’s careful full caress. The heat from his legs warmed his lap and clouded his judgment - if there was any of it left at all. 

“I’m sorry.” 

If Yunho was in any sort of coherent state he would have jumped up at the very words that had come from his mouth. Apologizing? To the boy who had muddled his feelings into a puddle of nothing, yet everything all at once? Just how far gone was he?

He couldn’t even speak if he wanted to. The feeling of Jaejoong’s legs beside his lap and his hands beneath his chin had left him without a single breath. He closed his eyes as he s his hands up the boy’s curved back, settling his palm on the center of his spine and feeling his warmth pulse on his hands. 

Jaejoong leaned forward and it was breath upon breath, mixing and mingling with stuffy apartment air. Not a kiss, but a graze, a delicate brush of soft lips on his own and a surge of shivers up his arms. 

He had to stop it, to tell Jaejoong what he had come to tell him, but how? How could he pull this boy away? This soft, delicate mass of gentle limbs and graceful touches that had fallen into his lap couldn’t be moved. His willpower was exhausted.

“Jaejoong...” He said, the air of his whisper sent straight through the boy’s own lips. 

“Hm?” Jaejoong murmured, running his mouth gently across Yunho’s neck until frigid goose bumps scattered across his skin.

“I...” He muttered, savoring the last few touches before inhaling sharply to say what he finally needed to say. 

Because his decision would finally push Jaejoong away, finally remove the problem that had tailed at his ankles and swatted at his brain for months upon months. 

And that’s what he wanted, wasn’t it?

“Jaejoong,” he said forcefully, pushing the boy away from him and looking him right into the eye. What he said would remove him from his sight - but would it evict him from his mind?

But if he said that he believed it, would even he think it truth?

“I’m going to start dating Jessica now.” 

------------

A/N - Sorry for the delay. I've been too busy to even breathe and I finally managed to force this chapter out in between homework, school, and doctor's visits. Still struggling with health issues. Thanks for dealing with me. 

Twitter and tumblr are here as usual. Feel free to yell at me. 

Also everyone seems so surprised when I say this even though I've said it a few times but uh... I do run wtfasianfanfics. Yeah. That's my blog. Umm....

See you soon. 

-Gelisi