“Jessica? Jessica?!” Jaejoong shrieked, grasping the collar of Yunho’s already crinkled suit until his fingers turned the same shade of white as the fabric he held. Yunho could do nothing but swallow vacantly, throat ripping dryly as he was faced with the rage of a boy who was probably capable of anything he put his mind into. He had already stolen his phone number, broken into his house and flat-out refused to leave, what more would he do for the sake of his feelings? 

Yunho averted his eyes, not sure he even wanted to let that question simmer in his mind for anything longer than just a split second. (The duration of which already felt much too long.)

“Yes,” he answered flatly. He had finally figured out his mistake. Harsh as he pretended to be, and harsh as all his other students thought, or assumed, he was, he had given up far too much leniency with Jaejoong. Leniency he wasn’t even completely aware he had. It’s not like he ever had a reason to employ it in any way. His mercy had been spurred by him and him alone - prior to this, he simply had no use for it. 

Jaejoong had taken advantage of his kindness. His slight acts of conscience had spiraled well out of control, from picking him up off the side of the road on that winter tinged day to letting him sleep in his bed, something Yunho couldn’t help but cringe at with each slight remembrance. 

The moment Jaejoong spotted any crack in his defenses, which, at the moment, were laden with them, he ran in, donning a yellow helmet and chiseling away until the rock crumbled to dust. 

Now? He needed to be as straightforward as possible. If Jaejoong saw no cracks, then he saw no weakness. And if he saw no weakness, then there was nothing at which he could chip away. He would not be up against cracked stone, but hardened metal, an impenetrable shield of a titanium face. He would back off and eventually just give up. 

Wouldn’t he?

“Her? Are you serious?” He growled, pulling at Yunho’s shirt so forcefully he swore he could hear the strings creaking and stretching, taut and nearly pulled to their limit. Yunho simply glanced at the ceiling, hoping that if he just looked away from the boy whose very heart he was crushing with a few unfeeling words then he wouldn’t feel the guilt pool at the base of his stomach, hardening like wet cement and weighing down his every limb, as it always did. 

But, as usual, he was wrong.

“Yes Jaejoong.” He answered as mildly as he could. But how could he be expected  to keep his voice so unfeeling when he was doing something so cruel?

When he was doing something he wasn’t even sure he wanted to do?

“She’s nice. She works with me. And most importantly, she’s age-appropriate,” Yunho hissed, spitting words like daggers into a crestfallen face. 

Forget about defense. Right then, Yunho was on the offensive.

“Jaejoong, you need to forget about me,” he said forcefully, pulling Jaejoong’s nearly frozen hands from the tattered remains of the collared jacked he wore and placing them at his sides. “You’re wasting your time. This - “ he said, gesturing between the two of them “ - is never going to happen. It can’t happen. You need to just... let it go.”

He let his nerves take over as he bit his lip in shame. 

Shame, yes. Because it wasn’t what he wanted, but it’s what he deserved.

Jaejoong had been let down time and time again by every adult that was in his life. He had been cast aside, abused, and ignored by the people who were supposed to protect him. Disappointment was the norm, and any act of kindness felt like something he just didn’t deserve. 

And Yunho was the one adult who hadn’t treated him like he was less than. The only adult who had given him the time of day, who had shown him at least a shred of caring and an ounce of respect, on the rare occasions Yunho had given them.

Jaejoong was so unused to any benevolent act that the slightest acknowledgment, the slightest bit of charity, had spurred feelings of ‘love’ beneath the hardened and apathetic shell he developed to protect him from that same disappointment he had been subjected to every day of his lifetime. 

But now Yunho was just another cold and unfeeling figure to be added to the list Jaejoong kept, the list that was already far too long. 

“No,” Jaejoong whispered, lips and cheeks reddening as he stared at his hands. 

“What?”

“I... I’m not going to give up.” 

He, thankfully, slid off of Yunho’s lap, opting instead to sit on the edge of the bed and allow Yunho a few moments to catch his breath and settle his pulse back to human levels. 

He could see his thin shoulder blades jutting out into the cotton of his shirt, casting slight shadows past his back as he shook in silence. 

“I’ll wait. I don’t care.”

“Jaejoong - “

“No! You... you don’t get a say in this. You don’t get a say in how I feel, or... or what I do.” 

Yunho wanted to reach out and put a hand on his shoulder, to calm the slight shakes that shuddered through the thin expanse of bone and gentle skin he had had the pleasure of touching a few minutes prior. That skin that emitted heat in waves, that felt like the warm ripples of a mid-summer rain...

“I’ll wait for you to come to your senses. Because you’re kind. I... I know you are. And I know you feel something for me.”

Yunho felt a pit at the base of his throat as he swallowed down the words that were springing up like weeds. This was speculation from a boy that was biased, to say the least. Blinded with love and confused with his own childish infatuation. He didn’t know what he was saying, and he certainly had no right to predict the so-called ‘feelings’ Yunho held for him. 

Or, at least, that’s what he told himself. But the sudden jolt in blood pressure and the rapid pulsing in his fingertips certainly spoke otherwise. 

Yunho found himself pleading for some sort of verbal communication from him. Something deeper than his stubborn refusals and shallow commands. His body longed for it, his heart ached to hear a few comforting words just so he could know that Jaejoong wasn’t angry, he wasn’t upset, he didn’t hate Yunho or put him on the same lowered plane of adults that had done nothing but put him down every chance they had. 

For the first time, he knew what it felt like to be terrified of hatred. 

And it made him sick.

He needed him to speak. His newfound conviction wouldn’t allow him to press him to his chest and send him on his way, sure that Jaejoong would linger at his footsteps the day after. Just a few words were enough. 

But when Jaejoong slid off the bed and out the door without even a glance toward Yunho’s direction, he felt every fiber praying to hear his soft voice of forgiveness shatter with one exhale. 

Jaejoong said he wouldn’t give up. And yes, that was the opposite of what he wanted. The opposite of his intent. But when he thought about his declaration being untrue, he was somehow terrified.

And then he felt the doubt, the creeping shame, the sheer self hatred as he realized, as much as he wanted to hear words of forgiveness, he wanted more to hear words of love, those familiar words that sparked sweaty palms and bouts of nervousness or something else entirely in Yunho’s chest. 

And that, nothing but that sinful and inexplicable feeling, was the most shameful of all. 

“I can’t believe that between the two of us, I’m the single one,” Yoochun grumbled, tossing a pair of socks Yunho had just folded up in the air as he made faces toward the wall. 

Yunho eyed him up and down, gaze stopping at his stained shirt, unkempt hair and unevenly buttoned shirt. “Yeah, I really can’t believe it,” he said with a half-hearted snort, continuing to fold the clothes he knew full well Yoochun would just destroy later on. 

Yoochun missed the pair of socks he was tossing and flinched as it bounced off of his nose. “Hey, you should have her over. I want to meet her.” 

“Introduce you two? No way,” he scoffed. “I’d rather not have her question my choice of friends on day one, thank you.” 

“That sounded rude, so I’m going to ignore it.” 

Yunho frowned as he folded the last of the the laundry and placed it back into the basket. He had tried to occupy his mind by immersing himself in menial chores, but after scrubbing the kitchen, picking up all the rooms in the apartment (not as tremendous a task as it sounded, since their apartment was incredibly small), and doing not only his laundry, but Yoochun’s, several times, he was left with absolutely nothing else to do. 

“Your phone is ringing.”

“Leave it,” Yunho commanded, biting his nails nervously. It was surely Jessica, as he promised to go out with her later that day, but at that moment his heart felt too heavy to leave the house at all. His cheap apartment was his bomb shelter. In there, nothing could happen. Time stood still. Disaster lay outside, and ‘outside’ was not a place he was interested in at the moment.

“So why won’t you, hm? Scared I’m going to steal her away?” Yoochun said with a wink and a curved sly smile. 

Yunho scoffed. Sometimes with Yoochun the line between ‘kidding’ and ‘delusional’ were quite blurred, and even more distorted when the element of alcohol was thrown into the equation. 

“Hardly.”

“I mean, you can hardly get angry at her for that,” Yoochun said with a laugh, striking some kind of odd pose from his usual position on the couch. Yunho cringed, faith in his friend and confidence in his decision of roommates dwindling far too quickly for his liking. 

“I didn’t need to see that.”

“But you appreciate it, I know you do.” 

Yoochun rolled off the couch and walked to the kitchen, grunting a stray obscenity under his breath as he noted they were out of beer and settling for a cup of water. 

“But really, hypothetically, I mean, what if she did cheat on you?” Yoochun said, sipping lightly on his drink and frowning, apparently quite miffed that it didn’t hold the same burn of alcohol that kept him running on a day to day basis. “I mean, it would be a bit hypocritical for you to get mad at her.” 

“What are you talking about?” 

“I’m talking about your little mistress.” Yoochun said. Yunho nearly swallowed his tongue and dropped the bin of fresh laundry he had just spent a near hour folding and refolding. 

“That annoying kid? Please.”

“Oh, don’t even fool me with that. Do you know how long you two were in the bedroom? God, I could practically hear the bed creaking. Fifteen?” Yoochun whistled. “That’s ed up. Even for me.”

“Yoochun, get your mind out of the gutter. We were just talking,” Yunho spat, rushing down the hallway to put away the laundry and thanking his luck for giving him another distraction, brief as it may have been. 

“Talking. Right. Okay,” Yoochun called, the ice in his glass clinking as he shuttered with silent laughter. “Exactly what bedrooms are for.”

“Yoochun, I don’t have time to deal with you right now.” 

“You never do.”

Yunho threw the clothing into the drawers with no precision, sleeves and fabric flopping wildly as he let his anger take care of the task for him. He could do without the guilt trip today, especially at that moment when he already felt it plenty on his own. 

“He loves you, right?”

“What the hell does it matter?” Yunho said, storming back into the living room and tossing his bag over his shoulder. 

“I mean, what are you going to do about it?”

“What am I going to do?” Yunho said, turning around furiously to face his roommate. “Why the hell is this kid my responsibility? I’m not obligated to hold his goddamn hand everywhere I go! He’s gone. He’s out of my life. I’m not babying him anymore. That isn’t my job.”

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

“So what do you propose I do? Sleep with him to make him feel better? In case you haven’t realized it yet, Yoochun, that’s pretty ing illegal!”

Yoochun poured his cup into the sink, apparently tired of its blandness and glanced at the ceiling with smug satisfaction. “So that’s your only qualm, hm? The legality of it? That’s your only issue?”

Yunho’s face froze up at Yoochun’s accusation. He found himself a stuttering, incoherent mess, grasping for the proper words that seemed to hang in front of him, just outside his reach. 

He didn’t have to explain himself to anyone. His reasons didn’t matter, and more importantly, he didn’t want to think about them. He didn’t want to think about Jaejoong, what he knew and what he didn’t, what he wanted and what he craved...

“You know what? I’m going out. This is a waste of my time.” Yunho scoffed, grabbing his phone and dialing Jessica’s number. 

What business of his was Jaejoong? They had no relation, no connection. Their only relationship was that of a young boy’s imagination. He was an adult, well versed in the way of life and completely without need of a small companion tailing at his heels. 

Lust was no option. Hunger bred sin. He was out of mind and out of reach. 

Yunho was unhinged, Jaejoong, untouched. Uncorrupted. 

And he would remain so, a statue of white in the polluted filth of his world. 

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

A/N - Hey envies! Thanks for dealing with my random updates. Thought I'd get another one in before I continue work on my other fics. This one is my most popular at the moment, so I like the keep you readers happy in return!

Guys, please vote for this fic! There's actually a decent chance of it getting featured, and I think that would be really cool! Only vote if you truly enjoy it, though. I would really appreciate it if you did!

This chapter is a bit of filler, but it was necessary to wrap up the other scene. Also I got a lot of requests for more of Yoochun, so I hope this chapter made you Yoochun lovers happy :)

I think you all might hate me for the next chapter, but I'm not sure. 

Thank you all!

-Gelisi

P.S. Think we can get to 500 subs with this update?