On edge.

            Yunho couldn’t think of a single phrase that described how he felt everyday since their meeting better than that one did. And he had certainly spent a lot of time thinking about it – much more time than he was comfortable admitting.

            But it fit. It fit perfectly.

            Every muscle felt tense, every sense he was aware of, and even those that he wasn’t, on alert for the wisp of that gentle voice he had been conditioned to detest.

            Yes, the phrase was perfect. More accurate than anything else he could think of, even after racking his brain for hours to try and pinpoint the exact nature of his feelings.

            Yunho was on edge.

            And all it would take was one little push before he fell from his delicately perched position just on the edge of resistance.

            One little push before he plummeted to the ground that waited beneath him, that called him so invitingly, that cried his name with the same voice he had heard so many times before.

            The voice that screamed at him again and again, just one more step, Yunho.

            The voice that sailed through his ears and settled deep in his bones, repeating the words like a mindless and hypnotic whisper.

            Just one more step.

            “Yunho?” Jaejoong called, breaking the illusion of calm Yunho had been feebly trying to convince himself wasn’t just a farce.

            That voice. That carelessly gentle voice that still screamed danger with every word.

            Yunho wanted it gone.

            “What?” He hissed.

            “I want to go to sleep.” He said timidly. Yunho couldn’t help but scoff. The boy’s shyness, if that’s what it even was, seemed to come and go at random. The words he had spoken with the utmost conviction just hours ago seemed like a faded memory now that he was standing before him, whispering apprehensively in the silence of the cramped apartment.

            “Then go to sleep.” Yunho called from the couch, without so much as a glance upward from his reading material. Truth be told, he didn’t have a clue what he was even looking at. His eyes had been uselessly scanning the same lines again and again, Jaejoong’s presence alone serving as enough of a distraction to make it nigh impossible to process a single word.

            “I don’t want to sleep in my uniform.” He grumbled. Yunho looked up at him, but regretted it the moment he had.

            His eyes, his wide, pitch black eyes that were so drenched in innocence while everything in his face screamed otherwise, stared back at him with the kind of pleading look that Yunho couldn’t bear to see.

            “Can I borrow a pair of pajamas?” He asked.

            It was times like these when Yunho cursed the silence of his apartment. He could hear the boy breathing, hear the slight creaks of the floorboards where he shifted his weight, what little he had, back and forth against the floor. Every single movement was clear as day before him, his alertness making them impossible to ignore.

            And what was the point of denying him?

            Every time Yunho said no to the boy’s numerous demands, he knew full well he’d secede sooner or later on the matter. The only purpose the initial refusal served was to create a certain distance between them, to keep him at arm’s length, to make it clear that he didn’t enjoy his presence, he only dealt with it, as one deals with a particularly difficult problem. A pain, an inconvenience, but an unfortunate necessity.

            But now that he was here, now that he was in his home of all places, what could Yunho possibly to do create anything even resembling a distance between them?

            It wasn’t possible. Denying him would be a waste of time.

            And the less time he could spend talking to the boy, the better things were.

            “Fine.” He said, dragging his stiff limbs off the couch and walking to his bedroom. “Stay out here.” He said. Having him in his house was bad enough. He at least wanted to keep one place away from him, one place that wouldn’t be tainted by the boy’s all too powerful presence.

            How such a small person could have such an effect on his brain was mind-boggling.

            He was everywhere. In his thoughts, in his words, and now, standing in his home, glancing at him tentatively with the most beautifully dangerous eyes Yunho had ever seen.

            Those beautiful eyes that seemed to nudge at his back, urging him on at every chance they could.

            Just one more step, Yunho.

            Just one more.

            “Here.” Yunho growled, shoving the pajamas into the boy’s slight arms. He saw Jaejoong press them gently to his face, mumbling a muffled ‘thanks’ that he barely heard through the folds of cotton fabric.

            Yunho sighed and turned away, deciding his best bet was to just get ready for bed himself. It was fairly late, and sleeping would pass the time spent with him in his house as painlessly as possible. Sleep was an infinitely more desirable option than staying up any later, tactfully avoiding conversation with him by keeping as much of a distance as possible, a difficulty, since one was never too far from anyone in that small apartment.

            But the desirability of sleep didn’t make it any easier to do.

            He tossed and turned for what felt like hours, the image of him cropping up behind his eyelids the moment he closed his eyes for mere milliseconds.

            He wasn’t sure what he was expecting.

            If he couldn’t so much as focus with the boy constantly on his mind, how would he be able to sleep now that the boy lay just through the protection of the suddenly much too thin walls between them?

            To convince himself it was even a remote possibility was an exercise in futility.

            He sighed and sat up in bed, a slight wave of relief settling in his stomach when he remembered that he didn’t have to go to work the next day, or rather, considering the time, that day. It seemed the weekends were the only things keeping him even remotely sane.

            Stepping into the living room he immediately averted his eyes from the couch where he knew Jaejoong was sleeping. If his eyes landed on his resting face for even a  moment, no matter how short, he knew it would stir that burning feeling in his stomach once again.

            He didn’t know why, and, truthfully, he didn’t want to.

            The less he knew, the better.

            He slid the door open to the balcony, stepping out onto the cool late fall air and regretting his decision to not bring at least a thin jacket along with him. Though the cold did serve one purpose, it numbed him enough not to think of anything else.

            It made the burning, the anger, the tenseness just float away in a sea of nothing.

            Just one cigarette, he told himself.

            And as the smoke filled his lungs, as stub after stub was flicked off the balcony and sent plummeting to the floor, he kept telling himself.

            Just one more.

            Just one more.

            The tenseness returned more powerfully than before at the sound of the door sliding open behind him.

            He prayed it was Yoochun, finally back from his day of doing god knows what at such a strange hour.

            But no matter how much he wished it was, he knew he couldn’t convince himself.

            Perhaps Yunho had come out here to wait for him in the first place. Perhaps he knew he would follow him out here. He didn’t know, and even if it were true, he’d never admit it to himself.

            Perhaps he wanted to meet him out there.

            But he would never admit that.

            “What are you doing? It’s one in the morning.” Yunho hissed, smoke drifting through his lips and chasing his words into the night sky. Yunho’s clothing was much too large for Jaejoong. His shirt hung dangerously low off of his shoulders, proudly displaying his pale white collarbones that seemed to jut out from his soft skin, skin made much more radiant by the constant assault of the moonlight above them. His pants were so large he had to hold them to keep them up, a task difficultly managed as his sleeves hung so low over his hands and rendered them nearly completely inefficient.

            Jaejoong remained quiet for a few moments before walking silently beside him and placing his hands on the banister next to Yunho’s own. As expected, Jaejoong was so close Yunho could feel their shoulders touching, the heat from the younger boy fighting against the bitter cold air that had surrounded them.

            And for some reason, Yunho didn’t want to push him away.

            It was the cold, he told himself. With Jaejoong standing so close to him, it made the air just a bit more bearable.

            It was the cold.

            Nothing but the cold.

            “I couldn’t sleep.” Jaejoong admitted quietly, his gentle voice matching the quiet air around them. Yunho sighed and inhaled deeply, body burning from the smoke that drifted lazily down his throat. Or, at least, that’s what he had convinced himself.

            “When did you start smoking?” Jaejoong muttered, tilting his head sideways and looking up at Yunho with his characteristic and almost laughably wide eyes.

            Jaejoong was young.

            Jaejoong was innocent.

            Jaejoong was pure.

            Wasn’t he?

            Yunho saw no reason to not answer the boy’s question. The distance was gone, anyway. Further resistance was not only useless, but a complete waste of time.

            The balance had already shifted.

            It was too late to fix it now. 

            “When I was about your age.” Yunho admitted.

            “Why?” Jaejoong asked.

            “Because I was sixteen.” Yunho said, taking another long drag from his cigarette. “And all sixteen year olds are ing idiots.”

            He couldn’t even remember why he had actually started anymore. Since then it had just become something that he did. He didn’t think twice about it.

            “Can I try?” Jaejoong asked. 

            Yunho stared at his serious expression, searching for some kind of reason that he had asked in the first place. But his eyes gave away nothing but a strange determination.

            “Absolutely not.” He said finally, turning back out toward the sky before him. There was only so long he could look at the boy before something inside him would just snap.

            “Why not?”

            Yunho felt his stomach burning at the boy’s question. He found himself gritting his teeth, trying to figure out if the innocence that was saturated in the boy’s voice was a lie or not. He couldn’t tell.

            Even after all this time, Jaejoong was a mystery to him.

            His eyes spoke – but not enough.

            Yunho didn’t know a thing.

            He used to love that. That he knew nothing, and he didn’t want to know. The less he knew, the more distance there was between them.

            But now the distance was gone.

            Now they were just two people, standing shoulder to shoulder, practically huddling together in the cold air of the night.

            Distance? From the boy who found his way into every thought, that had already successfully crawled his way into his subconscious?

            Resistance?

            Just who was Yunho fooling?

            He inhaled deeply, storing up the smoke far inside his lungs. His hands s up and found themselves at rest on Jaejoong’s chin. Jaejoong’s skin was even smoother than it looked, the blaring heat tingling at his fingertips and trailing up his arms.

            It was the closest Yunho had ever been to him.

            And although Yunho had noted the very fact before, this only served to reaffirm it.

            The boy was beautiful. 

            His eyes looked surprised, his full and red lips slightly parted in shock as he stared at Yunho in confusion, most likely wondering why the man who had ignored him, who had scorned him at every moment, was now resting his hands on his face and searching every corner of his face with glazed over eyes. 

            Absolutely beautiful.

            He leaned over until their faces were inches apart, until their noses grazed each other’s, until he could feel the boy’s hot breath ghosting over his lips and mixing with the cold air around them.

            Without another word he exhaled all the smoke he had been storing in his lungs, watching as the boy’s face contorted and his nose scrunched in disgust at the blackened air. He wrapped his fingers around the collar of Yunho’s shirt for stability and hunched over as he coughed, trying to rid his lungs of the remnants of smoke that had found their way inside.

            “That’s why not.” Yunho hissed above the boy’s head, now bent against his chest as he sputtered and choked the air out of his chest. “Why do you ask so many questions, anyway?”

            Jaejoong breathed heavily, back rising in falling in a rhythmic pattern that Yunho couldn’t help but be hypnotized by.

            “B-because…” He choked. “I want to know everything about you.”

            “You said that already.” Yunho said quickly, almost cutting him off before he could finish. Hearing that sentence once had already driven him crazy enough. Just what would hearing it twice do to him? “But why?”

            “I-I told you already.” He whispered. “I don’t know why.”

            For all that Yunho didn’t know about Jaejoong, it seemed Jaejoong knew even less about himself.

            The night was too quiet. Too cold. Too still.

            There was no distraction, nothing Yunho could do to let his mind wander from the current situation before him.

            There was nothing but him.

            He suddenly noted the way Jaejoong’s hands were clinging to his shirt, his body much too close to his own, the way Yunho’s hands were unknowingly settled on the boy’s slight and thin hips before him.

            Dangerous.

            “Go inside.” Yunho said. “Go to sleep.”

            Jaejoong’s hands slid down his chest, his touch more shiver inducing than the cold, before they came to rest at his sides.

            He looked like he wanted to say something. His mouth hung open, eyes glistening with what Yunho hoped were leftover effects from the smoke.

            He wanted to say something. Yunho didn’t know what it was, but he knew the desire was there.

            But he only managed two words, two words of what looked like the endless stream of words he just wanted to let fly forth from his mouth.   

            “Goodnight, Yunho.”

            He ran inside, shutting the door with a slam and leaving Yunho absolutely and utterly alone.

            He flicked the cigarette off of the balcony and watched it spiral to the earth. The air suddenly felt even colder without him standing at his side.  

            The boy was innocent, he told himself.

            Pure.

            But deep down, even he didn’t believe it. He only convinced himself it was true to alleviate the guilt he felt deep in the pit of his stomach.

            And his gentle voice called him, the soft whisper that sailed through his ears as it always did.

            One more step, Yunho, it cried.

            The earth below looked so inviting.

            It greeted him with open arms and watched him with welcoming eyes.

            Just one more step. 

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

A/N- This chapter was fun to write. 

I never have a lot to say in the A/N of this story. I always blab on in my 2min story, but when it comes to this one, I have nothing to say...

A lot of people on livejournal hate Yunho in this story. I'm confused by that, but oh well. 

ANYWAY

Love you guys, and see you next week!

-Gelisi