dbsk_flashfic | a matter of perspective (flashfic challenge 178: give) (Reply)

Title: A Matter of Perpsective
Author: cosmicanomaly
Word Count: 1300ish
Concrit: Sure, but please be gentle!
Pairing: Gen, OT5 (implied broken!yunjae)
Summary: Everyone hurts when two of them fight.

It starts with a crash.

Black infinity slips past his fingertips like runaway tendrils of a whispered song, and Junsu slowly meets consciousness to the sounds of hatred floating through the walls. Concert rehearsals and late night recordings have recently been topped off with solo promotions, and all the consecutive overnight practices have left him physically and mentally exhausted, holding him down as the world sways in its place. As it sweeps him under the current, he thinks he hears Jaejoong and he thinks he hears Yunho. Even through the haze in his sleep-fogged mind, he can tell that they are fighting. Jaejoong shouts so loudly that his voice shreds between the words, and Yunho reciprocates angrily enough to burn it to dust. Blows are exchanged, something hits the wall - it breaks - and then the shouting begins anew.

He turns his head to look at the clock. The numbers blink five forty seven, casting a pale blue light into the room and clashing with the sunrise seeping through the curtains. Changmin is sleeping peacefully, headphones still encased around his ears from the night before. Yoochun is not in his bed.

He sits up with a sigh, rubbing a fist against tired eyes as he maps out their schedule for the day, wondering if it will ever get easier to put on a show when they have all had less than three hours of sleep and a lifetime worth of pain.

When he opens his eyes, all he sees are dots.

His lungs burn and his chest hurts, the way it always does when he has been running too long too far too fast. A part of him knows that he should be back at the dorm trying to make amends, but at the moment, he does not want to say sorry any more than he wants to say goodbye. Right now he wants to be angry and he wants to be alone.

(He also wants to be normal and he wants to be anonymous, but Yunho has always wanted things that he can’t have.)

He tries to think of the members as his responsibility before he thinks of them as his friends, but the way he feels so small while thinking of them right now suggests that perhaps they are neither.

He knows that this is his fault.

Yunho was the one who couldn’t control his temper this time, who fired back insults and harder and stronger as he stood unmoving at the edge of the waters, unwilling to take the fall for Jaejoong’s stubbornness once again. The way Jaejoong’s face fell upon seeing this side of him hurt more than he would like to admit, and maybe that was what fueled him to go further – to remind him that he isn’t made of stone, that cannot always take the hurt and reciprocate with love. He wanted to show him that he is human too, and that his patience really is finite.

He thinks maybe he just wanted Jaejoong to put his feelings first, the way that he has always tried to do for everyone else.

Cold wind flicks freshly dyed hair in and out of his eyes as he runs past the riverside with a familiar sting that blurs his vision and burns his heart every time he makes the mistake of being selfish.

Their smiles turn on right when the cameras do, and just like always, they look charismatic and stunning and heartbreakingly beautiful.

It is an old process, one that they have practiced and perfected over the years, but there is another element interfering with the picture this time, creating static, and the end result feels distinctly out of place. This time, the genuity is way too hard to fake. They have lived this life long enough to know how to sell beautifully packaged lies as easily as counting one two three, but lying to each other is a challenge they have yet to conquer. The words come out cold and clipped, lined with poison and bits and pieces of cryptic riddles that cannot be recognized by the crew as of yet, but will fall into place and solve themselves in due time.

Once they finish shooting, the rift reappears automatically, with an uncomfortable silence that has long since replaced warm conversation and friendly banter. Remnants of a previously impenetrable friendship lay scattered on the ground as they pass through the motions of their everyday routine, doing everything they can to avoid touching or talking or looking each other in the eye.

Yoochun does not want to relive his childhood, but when he looks at Jaejoong and Yunho and compares them then and now, his mind replays the tragedy over and over and over again.

Life plays itself out like a beautiful song, opening its doors with a soft melody that lures them in by their heartstrings, drawing them to the center as it unravels and surrounds them in smokes and mirrors and brilliant flashing lights that hypnotize them with misconceptions that this is the world, the limit to their eternity, and that there is nothing outside but dark and death. Deceptive lyrics poison their hearts like liquid nitrogen, with promises of forever in a prison called paradise, and they watch, tied and gagged, as it takes away their warmth and fills them up with cold.

Sometimes when Jaejoong tries peering through the fog, he can make out the faint outlines of broken hearts and he wonders if they are suspended at the apex of a wasteland.

(Yunho has been dancing to this tune for so long that he has become afraid of the silence.

And Jaejoong –

Jaejoong wouldn’t mind dancing with him, as long as he knew that he would not be standing alone when the song ends.)

Rainfall nurtures a seed of doubt in the emptiness, grows into a dream of a better reality, and when Jaejoong reaches out to touch it, their bonds break and the smoke clears and they shatter violently, like glass records falling from infinity, and they pierce everyone with the shards in the aftermath.

Jaejoong sits beside him in the van, drawing attention to himself even though he is quiet. He chews on his lips and shakes his legs and keeps flipping to the next song on his iPod. Every now and then, he glances at Changmin searchingly, who avoids his blatant call for help as he turns on his tablet and puts on his headphones, effectively locking himself out of the all the drama.

Changmin has never had the patience to deal with Jaejoong when he gets like this.

Jaejoong is selfish, insecure, irrational and impulsive. He likes to talk for the sake of talking, and he likes to argue for the sake of arguing. He falls in love with the drama harder than he falls in love, and it ends up disastrous for anyone and everyone who gets in the way. He goes through impromptu mood swings and has overzealous whims and a self-destructive habit of reading between the lines, taking them out of context, and wallowing in his conclusions.

When he lashes out, it is usually Yunho who shoulders the burden, who douses his anger and realigns his thoughts. Yunho is the logic to Jaejoong’s emotion, the ground to his sky, the other half who knows all of his secrets and his flaws and knows how to compensate for them in turn.

Changmin has always associated the words 'dedication' and 'selflessness' with their leader, because if not for those two constant traits of his, they never would have made it this far. Yunho invests one hundred and ten percent of himself in his work, sacrifices himself for responsibility, and he never once complains.

But with months and months and years of pushing and prodding and hurting, even someone as strong as Yunho can snap.

Jaejoong really should have seen this coming.