[changmin/yunho] love cycle
May. 13th, 2009 10:24 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
binmusic.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
jewelledhourstitle : love cycle
pairing : changmin-centric, changmin/yunho, gen-DBSK
author :![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
binmusic
rating : r
words : 9741
summary : changmin discovers that life outside of the laundromat might be worth living.
a/n : a long overdue fic for the person i am useless to,yuxo , i'll try to be better i swear. i should warn against the weirdness of this fic, it's a bit cracky, a little serious and really just a lot ridiculous. apologizing ahead of time for any occ because i'm still experimenting with their characters. comments/concrit welcomed :D
The first position Changmin holds at the laundromat is that of the errand boy. He's two months shy of eleven and his mother's just been hospitalized, heart problems of some sort is all he's told. Too young to man the counter and too old to just sit and look cute for the customers, his father makes up the job title, scrawling it onto faded memo paper and in the end all he does is stay in the back matching dull yellow order tickets to the number on the clothes.
He's fifteen when he meets Yoochun for the first time. Four years since his mother's death but the rumors never die. It's gossip that follows him around like a shadow, persistent and stubbornly attached to his surname. He begs his father to let him start in a new school, two miles farther and in another town altogether, it would cost almost double the price in transportation so Changmin walks. He wakes at five o'clock every morning and leaves by six, always getting there a handful of minutes before the big clock in the hall strikes seven-fifteen.
His second week at school and he comes in contact with the class bullies. Changmin's tall for his age, but he's lean and pale, a classic example of what his grandmother calls "skin and bones." He supposes it gives him the meek aura of someone who'd take the humiliation quietly. Lunches get thrown out the sixth floor window, vinegar mixed into his water bottle and regular appointments with the toilet bowl are what he has to look forward to these days. He doesn't attempt to fight back, doesn't want the principal to call his father in and doesn't want his father to have to explain again, so he takes it.
His fifth month at the school and he comes home bruised and shirt torn. They've started using him as aiming target now, three points for contact with the face, two if it hits a limb and ten if it nails his crotch. Changmin can't pee for two days afterwards and spends three hours in the hospital while the doctors stick a tube in him to draw out the urine.
He returns to school the next day and tells them he's had enough, "Father can't pay for the medical bills." They laugh and instead of empty coke cans, it is the large beer canisters they've taken out now.
Changmin closes his eyes, it's not fear, just acceptance and he waits for the dull thwack of the cold metal against his skin with slumped shoulders and resignation.
That's how he misses the entrance of one Park Yoochun.
"Dudes, what's happening? Oh fuck, are you guys-SHIT that ain't right I'm-"
Changmin opens his eyes to find a boy around his age with spikey black hair running out of the empty courtyard. He watches as the others drop their ammunition and chase after him, dragging him back in by the ears.
An hour later they're sitting side by side, nursing identical black and blue bruises on their shoulders and backs.
"Name's Park Yoochun, my friends called me Micky, like the mouse except not so much."
Changmin grabs the hand and they release simultaneously with groans, Yoochun's a octave lower than Changmin's.
"Shim Changmin. My dad calls me Changmin."
Yoochun hands him a piece of gum, "Minnie, like the mouse except-"
"Not so much?"
"Exactly."
They bond over straight from America gum that's more than a little melted from being left in Yoochun's back ass pocket the whole plane ride over from New York. Changmin shows him the other scars he's accumulated, and tells him about his secret homemade recipe that'll speed up the healing process. And when Changmin slathers on a generous amount of the paste, Yoochun refrains from complaining about the odor that frankly, reminds him too much of the subways in the city.
Years later he remembers to ask Changmin about it and the younger boy smirks and tells him to wait, disappearing into the bathroom and coming back minutes later with a suspicious container of what smells like pee. "It's simply hyung, all you need is fresh urine and some potting soil. Urine has some fantastic healing abilities." Yoochun's sure, that's why he ends up throwing the "fresh and magical" urine back at Changmin and running for protection he finds in Yunho's arms.
Yoochun ends up becoming Changmin's new and really only friend. He's somewhat of a hot commodity, fresh off the plane from America, and drops random English words that impresses the girls and teachers alike. Changmin has his doubts about the coolness of Yoochun's "Yeah yeah yeah!," "Holler at yo boy," and "What's cookin' good lookin'," and he's further unconvinced of Yoochun's mastery of the English language when he confuses a "he" for "she". Three times.
Despite all this, Changmin likes Yoochun. Three weeks after they meet, he brings him home to the laundromat where Yoochun promptly tells him he's the "coolest person ever, love you hard," in English, slang and all. It's silly but it makes him smile, wide and a bit embarrassed.
And so it becomes that more often than not, Yoochun and Changmin spend their weekends at the laundromat, picking lint clumps out of the dryers and sleeping atop rows of washing machines on Sunday nights. Yoochun gets customers with his spiffy English, adding a fancy foreign sound word here and there in a sentence with a bright smile and wink. Changmin waits behind the counter, garment already in hand, ready for customer retrieval.
He learns at eighteen that his uncanny knack for matching the customer to their garments isn't just a coincidence but something Yoochun tells him is "Photographic memory you lucky bastard." No longer the same shy and belittled boy he once was, Changmin builds up a sarcastic demeanor, all snark and bite.
He's also spent enough time with Yoochun to learn a few English words, mainly curses and pick-up lines, and so when he hears, "Fucking hell, would you check out the ass on him," he's not entirely surprised to look up and find a smiley teen, not much older than him with deep dimples and a rather confused look on his face.
"I'm sorry?" He asks, glancing at his yellow ticket still folded neatly in a square on the counter.
Changmin reaches under the counter for a bright turquoise bag and hands it over to him, "Thank you Kim-sshi, come again soon."
The boy smiles in return, still puzzled, and walks away, bag already overturned in his hand, no doubt creasing the perfectly folded clothes Changmin's spent most of last night on.
"Stop checking him out, he's definitely got a girlfriend," Changmin tells him pointedly.
"Doesn't mean I can't appreciate his assets," Yoochun says with an appreciative grin, or leer, opinion changes depending on who you ask.
"I doubt he'd be happy to find you staring at his derriere, no matter how fine it may be."
"Just say ass. How often does he come?"
"Twice a month, his father's the owner of that bookstore three streets down."
"The one with the giant purple Barney-like thing in the front?"
"If you mean the giant purple dinosaur, then yes."
"Hmm..."
"No."
"No what?"
"No, we are not going over there after work today."
"Tomorrow?"
"Never and stop pouting."
Yoochun flips him off and finds a pair or take-out chopsticks flung into his face a beat later, "How the hell do you do that?"
"What?"
"ESPN."
"ESP and the answer is still no."
"Fine, I'll go myself."
Five days later, Yoochun comes in an hour late and with a highly satisfied grin on his face that reminds Changmin of the orange tabby cat down the block after it finds a particularly satisfying meal of dead rats or the like.
"What'd you do?"
"Don't know what you're talking about."
The Kim boy with the very fine backside chooses to walk in then, face a nice shade of scarlet and voice raised a few pitches higher than expected of a normal boy, "I've got a girlfriend!!" he screams in the general direction of Yoochun, carefully keeping his eyes on the clock above their heads.
Yoochun beckons him forward with a finger that Changmin immediately hooks with his index and pulls hard on, "Sorry Kim-sshi, is there something I can do for you?"
"He-he's-he's a-"
"Horny bastard? I'm sorry, he's sick."
The boy falters, eyes lowering and suddenly more sympathetic, "Oh, er, it's okay then, nevermind."
"Hey Su-ah, I LIKE BIG BUTTS AND I CANNOT-"
Changmin kicks him in the shin and Yoochun ends it with an incredibly off-pitched note, two octaves out of his range.
"Once again, he's sick. There's not much hope he'll be cured."
The boy eyes them suspiciously and bites the bottom on his lip, "Is this a real disease or..."
"It's not in the books yet but I assure you it's very real."
Changmin's surprised by the tinkle of laughter that the boy emits, a loud laugh that rises and falls in a rhythm he finds himself liking.
"I'm Junsu, you can stop calling me Kim-sshi, that's my dad."
"Shim Changmin and sicko is-"
"Oh, you're Changmin? He told me that was his name."
Changmin glares at Yoochun and kicks him again, this time a little higher and in an area he knows to be much more painful. "He's Park Yoochun."
Junsu laughs again at Yoochun's hunched figure, twitching dramatically on the floor complete with hearty half-dead moaning.
"Dramatic," Changmin scoffs under his breath, "Get up, I wasn't even aiming."
Changmin's not sure how what kind of friendship could form under those circumstances but one does and soon the duo of Micky and Minnie Mouse becomes a trio of Micky, Minnie and honorary mouse Su-ah.
Junsu, despite the fact that he's rich, so loaded that Changmin imagines if cash could really grow on trees, it would grow in Junsu's backyard, ends up hanging around the laundromat more than at his own store. The real Kim-sshi ends up calling the laundromat to ask for his son and after about a month of phonecalls, Changmin finds himself with a dinner invite and a new Auntie that complains of talking to him more than her own son.
"Couldn't fucking keep it in your pants, now we've got to go to dinner at the most expensive restaurant-"
Yoochun laughs, pulling at Changmin to slow down, "I'm not with Junsu like that. And it's just dinner, stop freaking out Minnie."
"I'm not some stuffed Disney toy, stop calling me that. And it's dinner with the most influential family in town. Why aren't you freaking out? Isn't this that you meeting the parents shit?"
"Su-ah's my friend, I'm not having sex with him and we're not dating."
"Right, and your hand just automatically sits on his ass because it's comfortable there."
"...Well it kind of is."
"Stop thinking about it! Come help me find a suit that isn't going to cost me my entire life savings."
"Kind of hard considering your entire life savings is shit."
An hour later Changmin realizes Yoochun's pretty much right and that his life savings would probably buy him two pairs of socks or maybe a tie if he's really smart with his money. Yoochun drags Changmin back to the laundromat where they spend another hour and half searching through the lost and found clothes ("Always lost and never found again," Yoochun calls them. "For a fucking valid reason," Changmin curses back at his friend) before they find a navy blue blazer and khaki slacks that didn't look three inches too short ("I'm TALL," Changmin nearly screams. "Just wear longer socks," Yoochun patiently tells him).
Dinner ends up being completely casual, Junsu and family showing up in baggy shorts and summer colored polo shirts. Yoochun tries not to laugh at the look on Changmin's face but finds it hard when the younger boy accidentally speaks his mind again, half-shouting, "Fuck me, my life is hard."
Junsu's eyebrow twitches, as does his father's and mother's before the three burst out in laughter, loud and frighteningly more alike than Changmin ever thought possible. He blushes a bit and takes off his blazer, throwing it at Yoochun's guffawing face and rolls up his sleeves with a heated glare at Junsu that shuts him up immediately.
Changmin thinks it really isn't fair for Junsu to be rich and happy. It's not fair, especially when he's poor and mostly miserable. He doesn't fault Junsu for it though, and it's not like he really can. Not when Junsu's laughing and poking him at his sides, eyes bright and warm with obvious affection.
Not when the older boy's hugging him tightly and stuffing him with a constant supply of Pocky, the expensive dark chocolate only-for-men kind. Not when he's cracking those awfully un-funny jokes of his and certainly not when he voluntarily makes himself the butt (no pun intended) of their insults with a cheerful grin and unabashed smile, just to get Changmin out of his "I want to eat kittens for dinner" mood.
He loves Junsu, just like he loves Yoochun and for the first time in his nineteen years, Changmin thinks he could be happy.
He doesn't however, think this luck will last him long, but like most of his life, he's wrong and it does. He enters into college that Fall, a small local community college since he can't afford any better and despite the fact that Yoochun certainly can, he tags along anyway, telling him, "What the hell, Micky and Minnie together forever!! Besides, I'll get an easy A just copying off you."
Junsu, having spent most of his summer in cram sessions (when he wasn't being sneaked out by Changmin or cutting entirely due to family emergency aka Yoochun's crank from lack of dolphin), easily gets accepted into his University of choice, a top-ranked one in all of Asia. Changmin calculates, entirely for Yoochun's benefit, that it's only forty-six minutes away by car, if you drive over a hundred and ten at all times and if said car was in good condition, i.e., not the beat-up red Toyota Changmin owns.
Their first semester at college passes by seamlessly, Changmin earning himself an A because he can't help but be gifted with a photographic memory that enables him to pass with little effort while Yoochun manages a solid B due mostly to the combined efforts of Changmin and Junsu, both taking turns to make sure he attended class. Junsu offered a kiss per class attended until Yoochun realized that meant he was suddenly allowed kisses when butt-touching had at first been frowned upon. And despite all the constant food bribery, by withholding his homework from the older man, Changmin ensured that he did all his own work and handed it in on time, or at least in the same month.
By his second semester, Changmin's already got college down as the number one most dull and mundane place in existence. He imagines if there was such a thing as hell, it would be like this. Waking up every morning before the Sun rose and running to take the bus for eighty minutes just to sit through intensely boring lectures and dodge saliva spray from Professors that have problems talking without spitting.
And just as he's about ready to write off this educational institution as another mistake, life delivers him a punch, and as Yoochun would put it, "Fucker's got quite a left hook."
In their sophomore year, Yoochun signs them up for Creative Writing, a payback of sorts for the previous semester when Changmin had them enrolled into a Statistics class that Yoochun likens to "Infuriatingly bad and slow sex with an inexperienced fucker who doesn't know where to put his hands or worse, his dick."
Changmin tells him with eloquence like that, he shouldn't be wasting time in Creative Writing, might as well just publish a damn memoir.
Years later Yoochun will still bring it up, telling anyone willing to listen (and those not so willing), how with a simple "Let's take Creative Writing," he had helped Changmin find his prince charming and happily ever after.
Changmin doesn't refute the happily ever after part, after all it's not something he can lie about, but he's more than willing to slap the other man in the head to remind him he's as much a man as his prince charming is.
Normally speaking, Changmin would've been the first to drop kick you and call you names even MTV would've beeped out, had you told him that he'd fall head over heels for a tall and dashing young man while in college. It's exactly the worst kind of stereotypical and hackneyed shit he wouldn't put up with. But then again, tall, dashing and fucking gorgeous aren't qualities one is supposed to fight against.
No, Changmin muses, he'd been doomed from the start.
He meets the bff, the Micky to his Minnie first, a very shocking blonde Korean man two years his elder, who if he were to be honest, is really just batshit insane and definitely the kind of weird that even aliens wouldn't be interested in beaming up. And as Changmin later learns, he's also got the most annoying habit of speaking in cliches or popular movie quotes.
Changmin gets partnered with him for a writing assignment when Yoochun shows up too late for class one Tuesday morning, leaving Changmin alone to fend for himself. He's told to go sit next to a Kim Jaejoong who immediately raises his hand and gestures for him to take the empty seat on his right with a charming smile that threatens to blind Changmin.
He takes the seat with a mumble of mostly unpleasant words, already in a bad mood, complaining to himself that it's entirely unfair and plain creepy for anyone to have teeth that bright.
They don't exchange typical pleasantries, nor does either of them actually introduce themselves to one another. Months of sitting in a class with barely twenty people in it makes it hard for Changmin to pretend he doesn't know his senior's name or that he hasn't noticed him before.
Kim Jaejoong, twenty-two years of age, a used-to-be raven haired young man who appears to have a penchant for dying his hair different shades of the color spectrum to suit his changing moods. He goes from brick red on Monday to chocolatey brown on Friday and now on Tuesday, he's the lightest shade of yellow possible, vibrant and pale as could be.
He constantly taps his pencil against the edge of the desk, eraser mostly chewed down to the rim, beating out a tune that Changmin knows but can never place.
An hour of tap-taptap-tap and half-way through class, Jaejoong leans close and whispers, "Cheer up, beggars can't be choosers," with a shy smile and a curiously endearing tilt of his head.
Changmin fights the urge to snap the pencil in half and shove it somewhere Jaejoong would have difficulty removing without surgical help. He bites hard on his lip instead and grimaces in reply, lifting his head up in time to see Yoochun entering class with his customarily large cup of coffee in hand.
He's ready to grab at the older man and yell him something nasty when he hears a soft and polite "Excuse me," directed towards him from the other side.
Looking up he finds a tall young man in a pair of black framed glasses staring down at him, "You're in my seat," he continues, eyes directed mostly towards Jaejoong on the left.
Changmin swallows and thinks that he rather hates tall people with ebony soft shoulder length hair who tower over others like that looking gorgeous and so fine.
"Mine, he's mine."
It isn't until the words are out of his mouth that he realizes how stupid and nonsensical he's sounding and by then it's too late to take them back.
"Yunho-yah, better late than never I guess. But Changmin and I are doing a project together. Sorry," the other man says, a laugh present somewhere in his voice to match the amused look Yunho is currently sending them.
Yoochun pushes Changmin's arm out of the way and smiles at Yunho, "I'm not taken," he says brightly, ignoring the daggers his best friend sends at him, "Come sit next to me hyung."
"Not taken my ass, what's that you're doing every night with Junsu then?" He snaps under his breath, refusing to stare as Yunho walks through the aisle to settle into the seat nearest him and next to Yoochun.
Yoochun pointedly ignores the comeback and takes a sip of his coffee instead, "Want to go get some lunch later hyung?"
Instead of Yunho, Jaejoong answers, leaning over completely into Changmin's space to dive into the conversation, "Let's eat, drink and be merry!"
Yunho laughs, face brightened by the confusion Jaejoong's eccentricity causes in the other boys, "That's a yes in Jaejoongie speak."
Changmin groans, pushing slightly at Jaejoong until the older man leans back into his seat, bangs flopping a bit and Changmin swears he hears the entire row of girls in the back sighing in unison, "Freaks," he mumbles under his breath, startled when he finds Yunho frowning at him with an almost angry purse of his lips.
Changmin opens his mouth and then closes it, cursing inwardly at his own inability to keep it shut at the right times. Except he discovers he's no longer got control of his motor skills either and cursing inwardly is now code for cursing outwardly, loud and very clear in public for them to hear, "What the fuck self, shut up," he mumbles and slaps himself mentally when Yoochun sends him the "Talking out loud again, idiot" look that he's used so many times it should be patented by now.
"Fucking hell," he breathes out again, mindful of Yoochun's, "Still doing it" look, "I, um-"
Yunho looks at him, mostly unimpressed and shrugs, "So what's for lunch?"
Changmin learns over lunch that Jaejoong and Yunho are best friends, the kind that come two in a pack, like twinkies or dingdongs, and they've known each other since the start of time practically, having spent all of their educational years together and lived ten minutes apart all their lives.
The affection and love Jaejoong and Yunho have for one another is what Changmin decides to be blatantly in your face obvious. He watches Jaejoong pick the chili peppers out of a bowl of noodles and push it towards Yunho, a pair of chopsticks and glass of water along with it. And when a trio, of basically horny idiots, constantly send catcalls and suggestive winks towards their table, Yunho gets up to kick their asses, a jumble of accented Korean spilling from his mouth that Changmin finds oddly attractive.
Jaejoong laughs it off, a hand on Yunho's arm that settles the younger male down back into his seat with a frustrated glare.
Like a mama dog and its pup, Changmin thinks to himself, eyes grazing thoughtfully over the duo seated across from him.
Yoochun clears his throat and jabs Changmin with his spork. Changmin glares at him and picks up his own chopstick to do the same, except somewhere that'd hurt more and possibly draw blood if he's lucky.
"You should get that checked," Yunho says while munching on a bag of potato chips.
"What?" Changmin snaps automatically, unused to talking in a nice tone to anyone really.
"You keep thinking out loud, it's a problem. I'm sure they've got a shot of some kind for that sort of thing."
Changmin looks at Yoochun who confirms he's been doing it again and he knocks his head on the edge of the table, "God just-"
"Gag me with a spoon!" Jaejoong says loudly, cutting off Changmin with a wide grin.
"You're weird," Changmin blurts out, eyes wide at the oddity that is Kim Jaejoong.
"And you're not?" Yunho fires back readily, a challenge in his eyes.
"Not as weird as him," Changmin replies somewhat defensively, mostly just being honest.
Yunho stares at Changmin for a few seconds before he chuckles, a warm grin that has the youngest softening in response. "Don't think it's possible for anyone to be weirder than Jaejoongie."
"True fact," Jaejoong adds, stuffing a piece of his sushi into Changmin's mouth as he opens it to say something, "Eat your heart out."
Changmin doesn't argue, for one Yunho's big in the muscular sense and more than a little intimidating and for two, Jaejoong's sushi might just be the best he's ever tasted.
And like that, Changmin learns how easy it is to love. Or want someone as much as he does Yunho.
Lunch together ends up being a regular thing, the four of them meeting up outside of college gates to grab some takeout or if Changmin's lucky, eat Jaejoong's delicious home-cooked food. Two weeks after they meet, Changmin decides his hyung is most likely a cooking god, and decides to treat him as such, buying him inordinate amounts of vegetables and cuts of meat so he'd be able to cook as much as possible.
Yunho comes home one day to find Changmin, Yoochun and Junsu spread out in his living room, the Wii out and all three going crazy over an insane level of Guitar Hero : World Tour.
"Huh," he says mostly to himself as he watches the three fight over who'd get to play the bass, undeniably the easiest out of the three instruments available.
"Get off! Your fingers are too fat and your hands aren't big enough to cover all the buttons," Changmin hisses at the other two, triumphantly holding the bass over his head with a cheeky grin.
He turns around to find Yunho stripping off his hoodie and dies appropriately, dropping the plastic instrument to the floor with a crash and collapsing into the couch face first, hands immediately reaching for a pillow to cover his reaction to the older man.
Yoochun leans over and blows into his ear, "Getting excited now are we?" he leers with a greasy grin.
Changmin shoves him away with a hard push, "Shut up and give me the damn sticks."
"Thought you hated the drums," Junsu says as he reaches into his back pockets for the sticks.
"I'm sexually frustrated, what's it to you?!" Changmin snaps, grabbing the sticks and banging harder than necessary onto the color coded pads.
"Jaejoongie?" Yunho calls out, mostly oblivious to the rowdy trio in his apartment.
"Kitchen!" a voice calls out from behind the counter and Yunho waves absentmindedly at the boys, walking into the kitchen.
"Cooking?" He asks, coming behind Jaejoong to grab a piece of watermelon off the serving plate.
"Yunho-yah! Keep your hands to yourself! That's for them!"
He escapes unscathed and with a giant plate of neatly cut and irresistibly sweet watermelon that he drops onto the living room table, grabbing the guitar away from Junsu with a toothy grin.
"You guys suck," he teases, hands automatically lining up with the appropriate colors.
Yoochun restarts the game and Changmin find the sight of a serious and focused Yunho to be more attractive than one of him with a tank top on, and that's saying a lot. Changmin predictably loses the round for them, finding it impossible to focus on the right colors and step on the pedal at the same time.
He mutters to himself, an unconscious pout of frustration on his face that has Yunho smiling and dumping the guitar back into Junsu's lap.
Changmin feels a hand in his hair and hits it hard with a stick, "Yah get your greasy hand out of my-"
He's surprised to find Yoochun giving him an amused look from the couch and Junsu laughing loudly, the guitar tightly gripped in his hand.
Process of elimination. He looks up to find Yunho clutching his hand and jumping in the air animatedly, "Geez Changmin-ah, who pissed you off?"
"Yunho-hyung, oh God, I-I'm so sorry. I thought you were Tweedledee and Tweedledum."
He gets a half-hearted glare that's soon replaced with an easy grin that sends his heart beating in double time, "Ah that's okay, didn't hurt much anyway."
Changmin sighs, relieved and leans back into the seat, "Is there something you wanted?"
Yunho blinks and scratches his head in an incredibly adorable way that makes Changmin want to squirm ridiculously like a girl, it's embarrassing.
"I did but..."
Changmin nods encouragingly and waits, catching the exchange of looks between the two on the couch and reminds himself to kick their asses for it later.
"Oh right!" Yunho exclaims, bending down to grab the pedal from underneath Changmin's socked right foot, "I can do the purple part for you, it's much easier this way," he says with a wide smile, a hand still on Changmin's ankle.
All Changmin can do is smile in return at the warm touch on his foot and wiggle his toes as an absurd response to it.
"Yah, Yunho-sshi caught red-handed! Stop making moves on the youngest," Jaejoong calls out from the kitchen, head popping over the counter with a disapproving smirk.
Yunho drops his foot immediately, blubbering incoherently at Jaejoong and apologizing to Changmin at the same time. He takes the pedal with him as far as the extension will allow and sits on the opposite corner of the couch, legs drawn up and pedal resting on top with his chin dropped despondently over it.
Changmin can't help but smile at him and wonders how it is possible that this hyung of his, three years older, could be more adorable than most kids and even some babies. Because despite his serious attitude and intense focus in school, outside of it he's nothing more than a giant kid, living and loving life harder than anyone Changmin knows.
Yunho smiles larger than most, laughs louder than Junsu and leaves a piece of himself in everything he does.
Changmin watches as Yunho punches down on the pedal with gusto, bopping his head along to the beat he probably hears in his head because God knows they're all failing miserably, Junsu's three notes behind on the guitar, all that's heard from Yoochun is the twang of his misses and Changmin hasn't lifted his sticks since they song started.
Yunho looks up at him and smiles, eyes crinkling at the corners and sends him a questioning look when he notices his hands are still at his sides.
Changmin picks his arm up obediently and blindly hits a note so hard he misses, falling to the floor. It sends Yoochun into a fit of giggles, literally dying of laughter. He pulls Junsu down with him, a string of Eu Kyang Kyangs that Yunho soon joins in with his rich baritone laughs.
It's the scene that Jaejoong walks into, Changmin furiously batting at the howling trio in futile attempts to stop them. It isn't until Yoochun's got his hands under Changmin's arms and Yunho's gripping onto his legs tightly to lift Changmin up that Jaejoong steps in. Brandishing a pair of long chopsticks, he pokes Yunho on the head, Junsu in the right butt cheek and Yoochun in the chest, "You're all off your rockers. Dinner's ready, and wash your hands before you even think of eating," he says as he breezes pass them.
The four of them exchange looks before jumping off the floor, pushing and pulling at one another to get to the bathroom the quickest. By default of having longer legs, Changmin and Yunho reach first, the older man pushing open the door and Changmin slamming it close and locking it with a mismatched smile at his hyung.
"It's good to be tall sometimes," Yunho laughs, turning on the faucet and handing Changmin the soap, brushing his fingers across Changmin's open palm in the process.
And really, Changmin surmises as his entire body freezes from the touch, a simple brushing of skin, dead skin at that, shouldn't illicit such a response from him. He must really be wanting some sex. Changmin frowns inwardly, are virgins even supposed to be this horny all the time?
He realizes Yunho's stopped moving, hands motionless under the still running warm water and groans, "I said that out loud again didn't I?"
Yunho chuckles oddly, his voice cracking a few times as he tries to form a sentence, "You know what? I-I er, I can just wash my hands outside in the kitchen with Jaejoongie. Take your time in here."
He walks around Changmin to get to the door, taking special care not to touch him this time, pressing as close as he can to the wall before reaching for the doorknob and ducking his head to avoid Changmin's gaze, "See you outside."
Changmin hears the rush of Junsu's and Yoochun's voices, "Hyung what took you two so long?" and "Why are you so red Hyung? Are you okay?" before the door closes again, leaving him alone in a bathroom that's suddenly a bit bigger than before.
He takes his sweet time inside, counting slowly from one to twenty while washing his hands, making sure he's scrubbing every last speck of dirt, visible or not. The duo outside knock and complain loudly, at times kicking the door until Jaejoong's snapping at them, "You break it, you buy it!"
Changmin sits on the toilet seat and moans again, how much more stupid can one get, he thinks, slapping himself a few times. Mortification he thinks, it'd be nice if he could find a hole large and deep enough to crawl into now.
"Are you jacking off in there Minnie? We can hear you moaning you know," Yoochun inquires, following it up with an appreciative whistle.
Changmin hears the loud clattering of dishes and a crash followed by Jaejoong's voice, "Yunho-yah! Watch what you're doing butterfingers!"
Changmin flings the door open just in time to hear Junsu ask if Yunho was okay and hear the oldest reply, "He's just choking, don't mind him. The mental image is overwhelming for his small brain."
"Jaejoong!"
Changmin walks in to find Yunho on the floor, spazzing if he were to be technical about it, and clutching onto Jaejoong's pants, hands holding on so tightly the pants looked to be slipping.
"Uh, wow, talk about compromising positions," Changmin says, oddly aware that everyone is suddenly staring at him.
Yunho scrambles up, clawing at Jaejoong and almost taking out Junsu's eye in the process.
Dinner is quiet, mostly filled with mindless chatter about school and work. It isn't until Jaejoong brings up that both he and Yunho have been searching for jobs and Yoochun chimes in to say Changmin's laundromat is hiring that he starts to pay attention.
"Changminnie's hiring, or well his dad is. We need another person to help out at the store during the weekends," Yoochun says in between mouthfuls of rice.
"Don't chew and talk at the same time," Jaejoong lectures, picking up a piece of fish with his chopsticks and dropping them into Yunho's half empty bowl. "Now tell us more," he continues, waiting until Yoochun finishes chewing to give him some chicken.
"It's nothing much, he just needs someone to come in Saturday and Sunday to clean around the laundromat. We've finally persuaded him to take the weekend off."
Changmin drinks his soup, keeping an eye on Yunho out of the corner of his eye, watching as he scoops the rice into his mouth with large movements.
"Huh, what do you think Yunho-yah?"
Yunho shrugs, coughing as he hurries in swallowing his food. "Just one position right? Doesn't sound like hard work, you take it Jaejoongie."
Junsu coughs, "Actually, my dad's hiring too. Someone to stack books and basically hang around and keep an eye on the place."
Jaejoong perks up and wiggles in his seat, "What a perfect fit! I love reading."
"No, you don't," Yunho says with a laugh, "You don't even own a book."
Jaejoong narrows his eyes, "I look better in glasses."
"I'm the one that needs glasses."
"Yunho-yah, I think you should work at the laundromat."
"Eh? Why?"
"Yunho-yah."
"Jaejoongie?"
"Stupid is as stupid does."
"That makes no sense in this context."
"Just do as I say!"
Yunho shrugs, reaching for some of the fried egg, "Why didn't you just say so then? Sure."
And that's how Changmin finds himself waking up two hours before opening time on Saturday just to show Yunho the ropes. He points out the broken machines, "That one's problematic, you've got to kick it three times and then jam the coin slot in a few times before it'll work," and tells Yunho about the customers, "There's one that comes in every Sunday night claiming to have left something here. Don't worry about it though, she always comes back the next day to tell us she found it at home or in the car somewhere."
Yunho sits behind the counter on the stool next to Changmin, hand absentmindedly twirling a pencil in the air, "So, when does it get busy around here?"
"Never does," Yoochun says from the doorway with a bag of doughnuts and coffee in hand. "Hungry?"
Changmin grabs for the jelly doughnuts before glancing up at Yunho and offering it to him, "Hyung, you want?"
Yoochun swoons dramatically, dropping into the plastic chairs that line the side, "The world must be falling! Our Changminnie's just offered food to someone else and was polite at it."
Changmin throws a powdered doughnut at the older man, sending him diving onto just cloroxed floor for it. He smirks before turning back to face Yunho, "Hyung?"
Yunho smiles at him, raising a hand to affectionately ruffle his hair, "No, thanks Changmin-ah, I'm not hungry, maybe later."
Changmin frowns but lets it go, opting to bite into a chocolate covered doughnut instead, packing away two of them for Yunho to eat later.
Yunho forgets about food, weekends are easily the laundromat's busiest days and despite what Yoochun's told him, Yunho finds it difficult to find time to sit and rest, much less eat.
It's nearing five by the time Yunho finds himself seated way in the back, behind the rows of machines and in the dimly lit staff room that really used to be Changmin's bedroom. There's still some clothes to be folded and packed, not to mention some to iron and hang up but he's been ordered by Changmin to go back and take a thirty minute break, "Mandatory and definitely not up for argument."
Yunho walks around the small room that barely takes him ten steps to reach from one side to the other. It's not hard for him to picture the younger boy in here, lanky overgrown limbs tucked into a bed too small, sleeping in a room that he should've long moved out of. He sits at the edge of the bed and falls down into it with a light oomph that rustles up the dust in the hardly ever used sheets.
Sneezing twice, Yunho shifts about to find a comfortable spot, finally settling onto his side and facing the faded yellow wallpaper across from the door. He's not too tired and probably a bit hungry if he were being honest, but he's more than a little lazy to get off the thin mattress and get his lunch from the tiny miniature fridge.
Yunho closes his eyes, waiting for his own breath to even out and his heart to slow down. He creates an image in his head of sixteen year old Changmin, legs already miles long and frame too skinny for his liking. A sixteen year old with a mind too sharp for his classes and a personality shunned by his classmates, Yunho imagines Changmin to be shy and introverted, hiding himself away in this room, his self-created haven of sorts.
He's filled with a sudden, overwhelming want to protect this boy who hides under the covers at night during thunderstorms, saves food in clear plastic containers for the next day and smiles as though his heart had already been broken.
Yunho wonders if Changmin knows that he's already been falling for him and that it might be too late to stop.
Changmin waits a full hour before going into the room after the older man, figuring he's probably fallen asleep or lost track of the time. He finds Yunho curled up on his bed, old worn blanket loosely fisted in his hands and mouth open, a line of clear drool leading to the damp lake on the pillow.
He bites his lip to hold in the laughter and moves forward to cover his hyung with the blanket, taking care not to wake him with any sudden movements. Changmin bends down, leaving him face to face with the other man and gently pushes back some of his longer bangs. He leans forward, close enough for him to breathe in Yunho's aftershave and inhales deeply, taking a bit of the older man with him as he leaves the room.
Yunho wakes up much later to Yoochun's poking and it isn't until he gets home that he finds the bag of doughnuts in his backpack, taped with a green sticky that read, "Yummy, eat me Hyung!"
A few days later, Yunho meets Shim-sshi in the laundromat, accidentally bumping into the much older but still handsome man while he's sweeping the floors.
There were many apologies given and accepted before Yunho finally stopped bowing, mostly due in part to Changmin and Yoochun holding him up on either side and refusing to let him go down again.
"My dad's not a dictator," Changmin huffs, telling him the only thing his dad is mad at is the fact Yunho had kneeled down and apologized for twenty-three times.
Yunho gets used to life working at the laundromat, the constant inability to breathe in fresh air, the fact that he'll most likely only hear about seventy percent of what anyone is saying at anytime inside the store and he even convinces himself that spending two full days a week with Changmin mean nothing more to him than if he had spent them with Junsu or anyone else.
He's also somewhat of a charmer, as Changmin learns only three weeks into the job. The older ladies love him, falling for the same things that Changmin figures he fell for, the warm smiles and unwavering attention, not to mention the boyish laughs and at times shy persona. And the younger girls are attracted to his in-born charisma and easy-going attitude. All in all, Jung Yunho is, as Changmin already knows, really fuckable (opinion courtesy of Yoochun) but also patient and kind, someone he finds himself wishing were just his to hold and not all of theirs to share.
Yunho starts stopping by a few days during the week, following Yoochun and Changmin in after class ended with the excuse of being bored and having anything better to do. Jaejoong follows more often than not, telling them that, "Birds of a feather flock together and it ain't no fun being alone all the time."
Changmin finds that being near Yunho is calming and very much addictive, if only for an affectionate punch in the shoulder or one-armed hug that the older man gives on a regular basis.
It becomes clear to everyone but the two that they're getting increasingly closer, Changmin pillowing his head on Yunho's shoulder in class and Yunho getting containers of food with the time he's supposed to eat them written in large block letters on a daily basis.
Yunho finds himself uncharacteristically late to work Sunday morning, having overslept and run out of hot water in the shower before leaving. He's got the day marked down as a bad day when he steps foot into the laundromat to find the front counter empty and with no sign of the other two boys.
Stifling a yawn, he walks inside, dropping his bag off under the counter before making his way to the room where he hears the chatter of the other two coming from. He's got a hand on the door when he hears his name being mentioned, taking a step back, he releases his grip and brings his arm down to his side.
"Minnie, what do you think of Yunho-hyung?"
"He's great, why?"
"Su-ah was talking about a friend he thinks might suit hyung. That's all."
"What do you mean a friend?"
"Someone he's on the soccer team with. Nice guy, well built and he thinks they'd get along."
"I don't think hyung would like that much."
Yunho stares at the door blankly, wishing hard he had missed the bus to work.
"You mean you wouldn't like it too much."
"What are you talking about Yoochun? Have you been drinking again?"
"Stop joking."
"I'm not."
"You like him don't you?"
Yunho closes his eyes in the silence that follows the question, fingers digging tiny half moons into his skin.
"He's my hyung, of course I like him."
"Changmin, one of these days he's going to stop waiting and leave. And you'll be left wondering what you could've done."
"Don't be ridiculous, Yunho-hyung's said he loves working here."
"Changmin, that's not what I mean."
"Then you'll have to be clearer. I don't like Yunho-hyung like that, he's my hyung and I respect him, care for him but I don't want anything from him that he doesn't want from me."
Yunho licks his bottom of his lip and faintly registers the metallic taste of blood. He brushes it away with the back of his hand and turns around to walk away. Such coincidence that made it possible for him to hear their conversation, Yunho finds it ironic and he's more than a little bitter to have those words playing through his head. Especially when he finds himself in a locked room with a drunk and very horny Changmin less than a week later.
Yunho distinctively remembers drinking at the bar with them, a bottle of beer in hand, when he's suddenly dragged from the crowded room to private one, Changmin on his knees and hands fumbling on his belt buckle.
"Changmin-ah, what are you doing?" He slurs a bit, tongue suddenly thick with a numbness that has nothing to do with alcohol.
"Shh, hyung, just be quiet," the younger boy whispers, finally getting his buckle undone and pants down to his ankles.
"But-"
His words are cut off by the sudden wetness and warmth that envelopes his erection. Throwing his head back, arms coming out to brace the sudden fall, Yunho curses loudly.
"Fuck, fuck, Changmin, what are you-"
He looks down to find Changmin with his eyes shades darker and tongue lapping experimentally around the head of his erection.
"You taste good hyung," he says, mostly in awe, more than a little intoxicated with it as he dips his head, mouth wrapping around the head, hand tight around the base, "I like it."
Yunho groans, hands finding their own way to Changmin's hair, "God, Changmin-ah, Changmin," he murmurs feverishly.
Changmin takes the moans as an encouraging sign, taking in more of the older man than he can probably should, hollowing out his cheeks and sucking lightly and then harder.
Pulling away, Changmin drops a series of featherlight kisses from tip to base, hand occasionally brushing against the erection teasingly.
Yunho comes a minute later with Changmin swallowing as much as he can, the hot liquid hitting the back of his throat, musty and a little tangy.
Changmin crawls up to Yunho's side and kisses him hard, knees coming to rest on either side of him. Yunho reaches up with his hands to pull the younger man closer onto his lap, softening the kiss into one that has Changmin feeling more vulnerable than when he was down on his knees.
"I-I don't," Yunho whispers against Changmin's lips, hands still twisted in his hair, "What is it you want from me?"
Changmin stills, pulling back to pant hotly against Yunho's neck, "Let's just-"
"No, I can't-Changmin, I can't just anything."
Yunho pushes him to the side, hands gently untangling themselves, "Changmin-ah, what do you want?"
Changmin looks down at the carpeted floor, blinking away the tears of his uncertainty, very aware of the effects his answer would have, "Yunho, hyung, I-"
Yunho climbs up, reaching to drop a soft barely there kiss on Changmin's forehead, "I'm sorry too, but I can't."
Changmin get carried home that night, Yoochun entering the room moments after Yunho had left. Junsu waits for them outside, car key in hand, helping to carry their drunk and crying friend into the back seat. Nothing's said and the car ride back is silent except for Changmin's stifled sniffling that the other two pretend not to hear.
He wakes up the next morning with a raging headache, very much hungover and with Yunho's words and face imprinted deeply in his mind.
Life went on.
School continued as always, Changmin a close two seats away from the older man in most his classes and work at the laundromat became more of a bitch than it was before. The night at the club was never brought up between them again, Yunho constantly finding something to do and somewhere else to be when left alone with the younger man. For his part, Changmin ignored most everything, eating when given food and talked when spoken to. After three years of happiness, Changmin knew he should've seen the "shit hit the fan," as Jaejoong was fond of saying, he just never realized it'd be that much shit at once.
Three months after Changmin's almost breakup with Yunho, his dad dies, car rammed so hard by an oncoming truck, it had wrapped around the light pole twice.
The funeral takes place two days later, organized entirely by Yoochun and Jaejoong. Changmin doesn't remember much, a drink or two with the neighbors, a tearful speech by some of his father's friends and an open casket, his father laid out in his Sunday's best for all to see.
He gives the eulogy, a probably sentimental and touching piece written by Yoochun and memorized by Changmin in under five minutes. People cry and all Changmin can think of is his father and him, sitting in the kitchen the day his mother had died and of the insane amount of takeout they had eaten, "People die all the time, and there's nothing to do but move on son."
Yunho finds him in the laundromat, sprawled out over the washing machines with his head buried in the crook of his arm, eyes red from crying and heart mostly broken.
He doesn't say anything, climbing up the side to lean against the younger boy, arm reaching out to curl around his small waist.
"Changmin-ah," he whispers, pulling him close, quiet words barely audible over the roaring machinery.
Changmin lets out a sob, tired and so painful that it makes Yunho hurt. He's pulls him closer yet, nesting his head near his heart, and hand moving in a constant circle on his back.
"Changmin-ah," he says again, kissing him on the temple twice before nosing against the soft curls of hair.
Changmin closes his eyes, hands still fisted tightly in the older man's shirt and he shrinks, curling himself further in the comforting warmth.
He's aware of Yunho humming, tone low and infinitely gentle, and waits for it to push around the suffocating air to cushion his fall.
Yunho attempts to pull away later, finding it impossible with the tight grip Changmin has on him even in his sleep and gives in, loosening his own hold to wrap his arm around the boy's waist, hand warm on his hip and lips a moist mark on dry skin.
The others find them hours later, wake long since over and guests gone. Yoochun climbs up first, snuggling on the other side of Changmin, hand gripping tightly onto Junsu's behind him. Jaejoong sneaks in, wrapping himself around Yunho, reaching up with his hand to nestle into Changmin's hair.
For the weeks to follow, Changmin allows himself to be coddled by his hyungs, Yoochun driving him to and from class, Junsu cracking jokes that almost make him laugh, Jaejoong staying over for days at a time to feed him and Yunho, letting him kiss and hug and fall asleep in arms that never ceased to love.
Nearly two months after the funeral, Changmin finds himself unable to go anything without Yunho by his side. Food becomes unappetizing with the older man's smile to accompany it while sleeping is impossible unless he's there to murmur a warm good night and hum a familiar lullaby.
He's taken aside by Jaejoong one day for a lunch that turns out to be less of a meal and more of a talking to.
"Yoochunnie wants me to ask, 'What the fuck's wrong with you?"
"My mom died when I was twelve and my dad died months ago. What's wrong with him?"
"Changmin, let me rephrase on his behalf. What the fuck do you think you're doing with Yunho-yah?"
A blank look, "Nothing."
"You make him spoon feed you, make him hug you everyday and you sleep in the same bed with him."
"And...?"
Jaejoong screams inside and he thinks it shows because Changmin takes a few steps away to stand behind the table.
"Don't you fuck with him Changmin. I won't let you."
"I'm not."
"Then either get on with it and let him love you properly, you're only screwing him up like this."
Changmin blinks at him and Jaejoong slaps him on the head, "Am I getting through to you?"
"You haven't said a single cliche."
Jaejoong screams out loud this time, lunging across the table to grab at Changmin, "I'm going to open up a can of whoop ass so big you're going to-"
"Do people still say 'can of whoop ass' these days?"
Changmin finds a pair of smooth hands around his neck, choking him with a semi-tight hold.
Yunho comes home to a somewhat bruised Changmin sitting on the couch with a bag of frozen peas on his lip.
"What the-"
"Jaejoong, uh, Jae hyung opened up a can of whoop ass so big-"
"A can of whoop ass? Really?"
"I don't know. He just kind of kicked my ass, it's embarrassing."
"Oh. Why?"
"Cos I was fucking around."
"With whom can I ask?"
"You?"
"..."
"Yeah."
"So, did we fuck and I just slept through it or something?"
Changmin sighs, walking over to Yunho and reaching out to entwine their hands together.
"I'm still not sure what I want."
"Okay I-"
"And I'm not sure I'll ever know. I'm twenty-one and nothing seems final yet," Changmin breathes out, pulling Yunho with him to the couch and wrapping the older man's arms around himself.
Yunho mumbles something incoherently into his hair and Changmin pulls back just enough to look him in the eye, "Can you say that louder?"
"I'm not going to push you. Just-I just love you Changmin-ah."
Changmin sighs and shimmies up Yunho's body to kiss him, long and hard, nibbling patiently at his bottom lip until he's allowed entrance into the older man's mouth.
"I don't really know what I want now or later but I do know that everything seems so much less without you around Yunho. Yoochun says, 'That's because it's love, fucking retard," and I think he's right, not about the retard part but the love part."
Yunho's quiet for a second too long and it makes Changmin nervous, sweaty and more than a little crazy from the wait.
Yunho sits up, pulling the younger boy along with him and stares him in the eye, a little too serious for Changmin's liking.
"That's corny, cornier than Jaejoongie's 'Nobody puts Baby in a corner' or that super lame and overused, 'You had me at hello' he likes to quote all the time."
"Yunho I-"
He cuts him off with a squeeze of the hand and an innocent smile that would fool no one, "Good thing you're really hot Min-ah, and totally fuckable. Can we just get on with it? I've been wanting in your pants for a while now."
Changmin finds Yunho freaking adorable despite the almost as greasy as Yoochun grin he's got on and that's really an offer he can't refuse.
The following semester starts and Changmin finds that not much has changed. He's taken over the shop, along with Yoochun and while the laundromat hasn't expanded much or made enough money for them to pay off all the debts, they get by well enough.
Junsu's two months from graduating with a degree in marketing, something he never plans on using. He's already told his father he'd be more than happy to inherit the bookshop, as long as his father learns to accept that his only son isn't going to marry a nice Korean girl and have dozens of kids, but will live with another man, Yoochun, in an apartment not too far from the family.
Jaejoong opens his own cafe and bread shop, refusing to admit it's a bakery because bakeries are overdone and so passe. He calls it his baby and no one's surprise but his own, it's a huge hit. Jaejoong, who finds it silly that success could be measured by monthly incomes and net grosses, discovers that for the first time in a long time, while he's not rich, he's also no longer poor.
As for Yunho, Changmin gathers that the older man should be happy, if not completely and overwhelmingly content with his life. After all, he lives with Shim Changmin, eats with Shim Changmin and sleeps with Shim Changmin. Yunho would tell him that he's full of himself again, but he can't find it in his heart to disagree with his lover, wishing that life could only always be this simple.
Changmin wakes up one morning just as the Sun's rising, the first pink rays of light hitting their bedroom and peeking through from under the shades. He's much too warm under the mountain of quilts and comforters but he doesn't leave, snuggling closer instead to the older man with small movements lest he wake him.
Because despite the death-like grip Yunho's got him wrapped in and the warm puffs of his morning breath that hit his neck, Changmin's comfortable and more than a little in love.
pairing : changmin-centric, changmin/yunho, gen-DBSK
author :
binmusic rating : r
words : 9741
summary : changmin discovers that life outside of the laundromat might be worth living.
a/n : a long overdue fic for the person i am useless to,
yuxo , i'll try to be better i swear. i should warn against the weirdness of this fic, it's a bit cracky, a little serious and really just a lot ridiculous. apologizing ahead of time for any occ because i'm still experimenting with their characters. comments/concrit welcomed :DThe first position Changmin holds at the laundromat is that of the errand boy. He's two months shy of eleven and his mother's just been hospitalized, heart problems of some sort is all he's told. Too young to man the counter and too old to just sit and look cute for the customers, his father makes up the job title, scrawling it onto faded memo paper and in the end all he does is stay in the back matching dull yellow order tickets to the number on the clothes.
He's fifteen when he meets Yoochun for the first time. Four years since his mother's death but the rumors never die. It's gossip that follows him around like a shadow, persistent and stubbornly attached to his surname. He begs his father to let him start in a new school, two miles farther and in another town altogether, it would cost almost double the price in transportation so Changmin walks. He wakes at five o'clock every morning and leaves by six, always getting there a handful of minutes before the big clock in the hall strikes seven-fifteen.
His second week at school and he comes in contact with the class bullies. Changmin's tall for his age, but he's lean and pale, a classic example of what his grandmother calls "skin and bones." He supposes it gives him the meek aura of someone who'd take the humiliation quietly. Lunches get thrown out the sixth floor window, vinegar mixed into his water bottle and regular appointments with the toilet bowl are what he has to look forward to these days. He doesn't attempt to fight back, doesn't want the principal to call his father in and doesn't want his father to have to explain again, so he takes it.
His fifth month at the school and he comes home bruised and shirt torn. They've started using him as aiming target now, three points for contact with the face, two if it hits a limb and ten if it nails his crotch. Changmin can't pee for two days afterwards and spends three hours in the hospital while the doctors stick a tube in him to draw out the urine.
He returns to school the next day and tells them he's had enough, "Father can't pay for the medical bills." They laugh and instead of empty coke cans, it is the large beer canisters they've taken out now.
Changmin closes his eyes, it's not fear, just acceptance and he waits for the dull thwack of the cold metal against his skin with slumped shoulders and resignation.
That's how he misses the entrance of one Park Yoochun.
"Dudes, what's happening? Oh fuck, are you guys-SHIT that ain't right I'm-"
Changmin opens his eyes to find a boy around his age with spikey black hair running out of the empty courtyard. He watches as the others drop their ammunition and chase after him, dragging him back in by the ears.
An hour later they're sitting side by side, nursing identical black and blue bruises on their shoulders and backs.
"Name's Park Yoochun, my friends called me Micky, like the mouse except not so much."
Changmin grabs the hand and they release simultaneously with groans, Yoochun's a octave lower than Changmin's.
"Shim Changmin. My dad calls me Changmin."
Yoochun hands him a piece of gum, "Minnie, like the mouse except-"
"Not so much?"
"Exactly."
They bond over straight from America gum that's more than a little melted from being left in Yoochun's back ass pocket the whole plane ride over from New York. Changmin shows him the other scars he's accumulated, and tells him about his secret homemade recipe that'll speed up the healing process. And when Changmin slathers on a generous amount of the paste, Yoochun refrains from complaining about the odor that frankly, reminds him too much of the subways in the city.
Years later he remembers to ask Changmin about it and the younger boy smirks and tells him to wait, disappearing into the bathroom and coming back minutes later with a suspicious container of what smells like pee. "It's simply hyung, all you need is fresh urine and some potting soil. Urine has some fantastic healing abilities." Yoochun's sure, that's why he ends up throwing the "fresh and magical" urine back at Changmin and running for protection he finds in Yunho's arms.
Yoochun ends up becoming Changmin's new and really only friend. He's somewhat of a hot commodity, fresh off the plane from America, and drops random English words that impresses the girls and teachers alike. Changmin has his doubts about the coolness of Yoochun's "Yeah yeah yeah!," "Holler at yo boy," and "What's cookin' good lookin'," and he's further unconvinced of Yoochun's mastery of the English language when he confuses a "he" for "she". Three times.
Despite all this, Changmin likes Yoochun. Three weeks after they meet, he brings him home to the laundromat where Yoochun promptly tells him he's the "coolest person ever, love you hard," in English, slang and all. It's silly but it makes him smile, wide and a bit embarrassed.
And so it becomes that more often than not, Yoochun and Changmin spend their weekends at the laundromat, picking lint clumps out of the dryers and sleeping atop rows of washing machines on Sunday nights. Yoochun gets customers with his spiffy English, adding a fancy foreign sound word here and there in a sentence with a bright smile and wink. Changmin waits behind the counter, garment already in hand, ready for customer retrieval.
He learns at eighteen that his uncanny knack for matching the customer to their garments isn't just a coincidence but something Yoochun tells him is "Photographic memory you lucky bastard." No longer the same shy and belittled boy he once was, Changmin builds up a sarcastic demeanor, all snark and bite.
He's also spent enough time with Yoochun to learn a few English words, mainly curses and pick-up lines, and so when he hears, "Fucking hell, would you check out the ass on him," he's not entirely surprised to look up and find a smiley teen, not much older than him with deep dimples and a rather confused look on his face.
"I'm sorry?" He asks, glancing at his yellow ticket still folded neatly in a square on the counter.
Changmin reaches under the counter for a bright turquoise bag and hands it over to him, "Thank you Kim-sshi, come again soon."
The boy smiles in return, still puzzled, and walks away, bag already overturned in his hand, no doubt creasing the perfectly folded clothes Changmin's spent most of last night on.
"Stop checking him out, he's definitely got a girlfriend," Changmin tells him pointedly.
"Doesn't mean I can't appreciate his assets," Yoochun says with an appreciative grin, or leer, opinion changes depending on who you ask.
"I doubt he'd be happy to find you staring at his derriere, no matter how fine it may be."
"Just say ass. How often does he come?"
"Twice a month, his father's the owner of that bookstore three streets down."
"The one with the giant purple Barney-like thing in the front?"
"If you mean the giant purple dinosaur, then yes."
"Hmm..."
"No."
"No what?"
"No, we are not going over there after work today."
"Tomorrow?"
"Never and stop pouting."
Yoochun flips him off and finds a pair or take-out chopsticks flung into his face a beat later, "How the hell do you do that?"
"What?"
"ESPN."
"ESP and the answer is still no."
"Fine, I'll go myself."
Five days later, Yoochun comes in an hour late and with a highly satisfied grin on his face that reminds Changmin of the orange tabby cat down the block after it finds a particularly satisfying meal of dead rats or the like.
"What'd you do?"
"Don't know what you're talking about."
The Kim boy with the very fine backside chooses to walk in then, face a nice shade of scarlet and voice raised a few pitches higher than expected of a normal boy, "I've got a girlfriend!!" he screams in the general direction of Yoochun, carefully keeping his eyes on the clock above their heads.
Yoochun beckons him forward with a finger that Changmin immediately hooks with his index and pulls hard on, "Sorry Kim-sshi, is there something I can do for you?"
"He-he's-he's a-"
"Horny bastard? I'm sorry, he's sick."
The boy falters, eyes lowering and suddenly more sympathetic, "Oh, er, it's okay then, nevermind."
"Hey Su-ah, I LIKE BIG BUTTS AND I CANNOT-"
Changmin kicks him in the shin and Yoochun ends it with an incredibly off-pitched note, two octaves out of his range.
"Once again, he's sick. There's not much hope he'll be cured."
The boy eyes them suspiciously and bites the bottom on his lip, "Is this a real disease or..."
"It's not in the books yet but I assure you it's very real."
Changmin's surprised by the tinkle of laughter that the boy emits, a loud laugh that rises and falls in a rhythm he finds himself liking.
"I'm Junsu, you can stop calling me Kim-sshi, that's my dad."
"Shim Changmin and sicko is-"
"Oh, you're Changmin? He told me that was his name."
Changmin glares at Yoochun and kicks him again, this time a little higher and in an area he knows to be much more painful. "He's Park Yoochun."
Junsu laughs again at Yoochun's hunched figure, twitching dramatically on the floor complete with hearty half-dead moaning.
"Dramatic," Changmin scoffs under his breath, "Get up, I wasn't even aiming."
Changmin's not sure how what kind of friendship could form under those circumstances but one does and soon the duo of Micky and Minnie Mouse becomes a trio of Micky, Minnie and honorary mouse Su-ah.
Junsu, despite the fact that he's rich, so loaded that Changmin imagines if cash could really grow on trees, it would grow in Junsu's backyard, ends up hanging around the laundromat more than at his own store. The real Kim-sshi ends up calling the laundromat to ask for his son and after about a month of phonecalls, Changmin finds himself with a dinner invite and a new Auntie that complains of talking to him more than her own son.
"Couldn't fucking keep it in your pants, now we've got to go to dinner at the most expensive restaurant-"
Yoochun laughs, pulling at Changmin to slow down, "I'm not with Junsu like that. And it's just dinner, stop freaking out Minnie."
"I'm not some stuffed Disney toy, stop calling me that. And it's dinner with the most influential family in town. Why aren't you freaking out? Isn't this that you meeting the parents shit?"
"Su-ah's my friend, I'm not having sex with him and we're not dating."
"Right, and your hand just automatically sits on his ass because it's comfortable there."
"...Well it kind of is."
"Stop thinking about it! Come help me find a suit that isn't going to cost me my entire life savings."
"Kind of hard considering your entire life savings is shit."
An hour later Changmin realizes Yoochun's pretty much right and that his life savings would probably buy him two pairs of socks or maybe a tie if he's really smart with his money. Yoochun drags Changmin back to the laundromat where they spend another hour and half searching through the lost and found clothes ("Always lost and never found again," Yoochun calls them. "For a fucking valid reason," Changmin curses back at his friend) before they find a navy blue blazer and khaki slacks that didn't look three inches too short ("I'm TALL," Changmin nearly screams. "Just wear longer socks," Yoochun patiently tells him).
Dinner ends up being completely casual, Junsu and family showing up in baggy shorts and summer colored polo shirts. Yoochun tries not to laugh at the look on Changmin's face but finds it hard when the younger boy accidentally speaks his mind again, half-shouting, "Fuck me, my life is hard."
Junsu's eyebrow twitches, as does his father's and mother's before the three burst out in laughter, loud and frighteningly more alike than Changmin ever thought possible. He blushes a bit and takes off his blazer, throwing it at Yoochun's guffawing face and rolls up his sleeves with a heated glare at Junsu that shuts him up immediately.
Changmin thinks it really isn't fair for Junsu to be rich and happy. It's not fair, especially when he's poor and mostly miserable. He doesn't fault Junsu for it though, and it's not like he really can. Not when Junsu's laughing and poking him at his sides, eyes bright and warm with obvious affection.
Not when the older boy's hugging him tightly and stuffing him with a constant supply of Pocky, the expensive dark chocolate only-for-men kind. Not when he's cracking those awfully un-funny jokes of his and certainly not when he voluntarily makes himself the butt (no pun intended) of their insults with a cheerful grin and unabashed smile, just to get Changmin out of his "I want to eat kittens for dinner" mood.
He loves Junsu, just like he loves Yoochun and for the first time in his nineteen years, Changmin thinks he could be happy.
He doesn't however, think this luck will last him long, but like most of his life, he's wrong and it does. He enters into college that Fall, a small local community college since he can't afford any better and despite the fact that Yoochun certainly can, he tags along anyway, telling him, "What the hell, Micky and Minnie together forever!! Besides, I'll get an easy A just copying off you."
Junsu, having spent most of his summer in cram sessions (when he wasn't being sneaked out by Changmin or cutting entirely due to family emergency aka Yoochun's crank from lack of dolphin), easily gets accepted into his University of choice, a top-ranked one in all of Asia. Changmin calculates, entirely for Yoochun's benefit, that it's only forty-six minutes away by car, if you drive over a hundred and ten at all times and if said car was in good condition, i.e., not the beat-up red Toyota Changmin owns.
Their first semester at college passes by seamlessly, Changmin earning himself an A because he can't help but be gifted with a photographic memory that enables him to pass with little effort while Yoochun manages a solid B due mostly to the combined efforts of Changmin and Junsu, both taking turns to make sure he attended class. Junsu offered a kiss per class attended until Yoochun realized that meant he was suddenly allowed kisses when butt-touching had at first been frowned upon. And despite all the constant food bribery, by withholding his homework from the older man, Changmin ensured that he did all his own work and handed it in on time, or at least in the same month.
By his second semester, Changmin's already got college down as the number one most dull and mundane place in existence. He imagines if there was such a thing as hell, it would be like this. Waking up every morning before the Sun rose and running to take the bus for eighty minutes just to sit through intensely boring lectures and dodge saliva spray from Professors that have problems talking without spitting.
And just as he's about ready to write off this educational institution as another mistake, life delivers him a punch, and as Yoochun would put it, "Fucker's got quite a left hook."
In their sophomore year, Yoochun signs them up for Creative Writing, a payback of sorts for the previous semester when Changmin had them enrolled into a Statistics class that Yoochun likens to "Infuriatingly bad and slow sex with an inexperienced fucker who doesn't know where to put his hands or worse, his dick."
Changmin tells him with eloquence like that, he shouldn't be wasting time in Creative Writing, might as well just publish a damn memoir.
Years later Yoochun will still bring it up, telling anyone willing to listen (and those not so willing), how with a simple "Let's take Creative Writing," he had helped Changmin find his prince charming and happily ever after.
Changmin doesn't refute the happily ever after part, after all it's not something he can lie about, but he's more than willing to slap the other man in the head to remind him he's as much a man as his prince charming is.
Normally speaking, Changmin would've been the first to drop kick you and call you names even MTV would've beeped out, had you told him that he'd fall head over heels for a tall and dashing young man while in college. It's exactly the worst kind of stereotypical and hackneyed shit he wouldn't put up with. But then again, tall, dashing and fucking gorgeous aren't qualities one is supposed to fight against.
No, Changmin muses, he'd been doomed from the start.
He meets the bff, the Micky to his Minnie first, a very shocking blonde Korean man two years his elder, who if he were to be honest, is really just batshit insane and definitely the kind of weird that even aliens wouldn't be interested in beaming up. And as Changmin later learns, he's also got the most annoying habit of speaking in cliches or popular movie quotes.
Changmin gets partnered with him for a writing assignment when Yoochun shows up too late for class one Tuesday morning, leaving Changmin alone to fend for himself. He's told to go sit next to a Kim Jaejoong who immediately raises his hand and gestures for him to take the empty seat on his right with a charming smile that threatens to blind Changmin.
He takes the seat with a mumble of mostly unpleasant words, already in a bad mood, complaining to himself that it's entirely unfair and plain creepy for anyone to have teeth that bright.
They don't exchange typical pleasantries, nor does either of them actually introduce themselves to one another. Months of sitting in a class with barely twenty people in it makes it hard for Changmin to pretend he doesn't know his senior's name or that he hasn't noticed him before.
Kim Jaejoong, twenty-two years of age, a used-to-be raven haired young man who appears to have a penchant for dying his hair different shades of the color spectrum to suit his changing moods. He goes from brick red on Monday to chocolatey brown on Friday and now on Tuesday, he's the lightest shade of yellow possible, vibrant and pale as could be.
He constantly taps his pencil against the edge of the desk, eraser mostly chewed down to the rim, beating out a tune that Changmin knows but can never place.
An hour of tap-taptap-tap and half-way through class, Jaejoong leans close and whispers, "Cheer up, beggars can't be choosers," with a shy smile and a curiously endearing tilt of his head.
Changmin fights the urge to snap the pencil in half and shove it somewhere Jaejoong would have difficulty removing without surgical help. He bites hard on his lip instead and grimaces in reply, lifting his head up in time to see Yoochun entering class with his customarily large cup of coffee in hand.
He's ready to grab at the older man and yell him something nasty when he hears a soft and polite "Excuse me," directed towards him from the other side.
Looking up he finds a tall young man in a pair of black framed glasses staring down at him, "You're in my seat," he continues, eyes directed mostly towards Jaejoong on the left.
Changmin swallows and thinks that he rather hates tall people with ebony soft shoulder length hair who tower over others like that looking gorgeous and so fine.
"Mine, he's mine."
It isn't until the words are out of his mouth that he realizes how stupid and nonsensical he's sounding and by then it's too late to take them back.
"Yunho-yah, better late than never I guess. But Changmin and I are doing a project together. Sorry," the other man says, a laugh present somewhere in his voice to match the amused look Yunho is currently sending them.
Yoochun pushes Changmin's arm out of the way and smiles at Yunho, "I'm not taken," he says brightly, ignoring the daggers his best friend sends at him, "Come sit next to me hyung."
"Not taken my ass, what's that you're doing every night with Junsu then?" He snaps under his breath, refusing to stare as Yunho walks through the aisle to settle into the seat nearest him and next to Yoochun.
Yoochun pointedly ignores the comeback and takes a sip of his coffee instead, "Want to go get some lunch later hyung?"
Instead of Yunho, Jaejoong answers, leaning over completely into Changmin's space to dive into the conversation, "Let's eat, drink and be merry!"
Yunho laughs, face brightened by the confusion Jaejoong's eccentricity causes in the other boys, "That's a yes in Jaejoongie speak."
Changmin groans, pushing slightly at Jaejoong until the older man leans back into his seat, bangs flopping a bit and Changmin swears he hears the entire row of girls in the back sighing in unison, "Freaks," he mumbles under his breath, startled when he finds Yunho frowning at him with an almost angry purse of his lips.
Changmin opens his mouth and then closes it, cursing inwardly at his own inability to keep it shut at the right times. Except he discovers he's no longer got control of his motor skills either and cursing inwardly is now code for cursing outwardly, loud and very clear in public for them to hear, "What the fuck self, shut up," he mumbles and slaps himself mentally when Yoochun sends him the "Talking out loud again, idiot" look that he's used so many times it should be patented by now.
"Fucking hell," he breathes out again, mindful of Yoochun's, "Still doing it" look, "I, um-"
Yunho looks at him, mostly unimpressed and shrugs, "So what's for lunch?"
Changmin learns over lunch that Jaejoong and Yunho are best friends, the kind that come two in a pack, like twinkies or dingdongs, and they've known each other since the start of time practically, having spent all of their educational years together and lived ten minutes apart all their lives.
The affection and love Jaejoong and Yunho have for one another is what Changmin decides to be blatantly in your face obvious. He watches Jaejoong pick the chili peppers out of a bowl of noodles and push it towards Yunho, a pair of chopsticks and glass of water along with it. And when a trio, of basically horny idiots, constantly send catcalls and suggestive winks towards their table, Yunho gets up to kick their asses, a jumble of accented Korean spilling from his mouth that Changmin finds oddly attractive.
Jaejoong laughs it off, a hand on Yunho's arm that settles the younger male down back into his seat with a frustrated glare.
Like a mama dog and its pup, Changmin thinks to himself, eyes grazing thoughtfully over the duo seated across from him.
Yoochun clears his throat and jabs Changmin with his spork. Changmin glares at him and picks up his own chopstick to do the same, except somewhere that'd hurt more and possibly draw blood if he's lucky.
"You should get that checked," Yunho says while munching on a bag of potato chips.
"What?" Changmin snaps automatically, unused to talking in a nice tone to anyone really.
"You keep thinking out loud, it's a problem. I'm sure they've got a shot of some kind for that sort of thing."
Changmin looks at Yoochun who confirms he's been doing it again and he knocks his head on the edge of the table, "God just-"
"Gag me with a spoon!" Jaejoong says loudly, cutting off Changmin with a wide grin.
"You're weird," Changmin blurts out, eyes wide at the oddity that is Kim Jaejoong.
"And you're not?" Yunho fires back readily, a challenge in his eyes.
"Not as weird as him," Changmin replies somewhat defensively, mostly just being honest.
Yunho stares at Changmin for a few seconds before he chuckles, a warm grin that has the youngest softening in response. "Don't think it's possible for anyone to be weirder than Jaejoongie."
"True fact," Jaejoong adds, stuffing a piece of his sushi into Changmin's mouth as he opens it to say something, "Eat your heart out."
Changmin doesn't argue, for one Yunho's big in the muscular sense and more than a little intimidating and for two, Jaejoong's sushi might just be the best he's ever tasted.
And like that, Changmin learns how easy it is to love. Or want someone as much as he does Yunho.
Lunch together ends up being a regular thing, the four of them meeting up outside of college gates to grab some takeout or if Changmin's lucky, eat Jaejoong's delicious home-cooked food. Two weeks after they meet, Changmin decides his hyung is most likely a cooking god, and decides to treat him as such, buying him inordinate amounts of vegetables and cuts of meat so he'd be able to cook as much as possible.
Yunho comes home one day to find Changmin, Yoochun and Junsu spread out in his living room, the Wii out and all three going crazy over an insane level of Guitar Hero : World Tour.
"Huh," he says mostly to himself as he watches the three fight over who'd get to play the bass, undeniably the easiest out of the three instruments available.
"Get off! Your fingers are too fat and your hands aren't big enough to cover all the buttons," Changmin hisses at the other two, triumphantly holding the bass over his head with a cheeky grin.
He turns around to find Yunho stripping off his hoodie and dies appropriately, dropping the plastic instrument to the floor with a crash and collapsing into the couch face first, hands immediately reaching for a pillow to cover his reaction to the older man.
Yoochun leans over and blows into his ear, "Getting excited now are we?" he leers with a greasy grin.
Changmin shoves him away with a hard push, "Shut up and give me the damn sticks."
"Thought you hated the drums," Junsu says as he reaches into his back pockets for the sticks.
"I'm sexually frustrated, what's it to you?!" Changmin snaps, grabbing the sticks and banging harder than necessary onto the color coded pads.
"Jaejoongie?" Yunho calls out, mostly oblivious to the rowdy trio in his apartment.
"Kitchen!" a voice calls out from behind the counter and Yunho waves absentmindedly at the boys, walking into the kitchen.
"Cooking?" He asks, coming behind Jaejoong to grab a piece of watermelon off the serving plate.
"Yunho-yah! Keep your hands to yourself! That's for them!"
He escapes unscathed and with a giant plate of neatly cut and irresistibly sweet watermelon that he drops onto the living room table, grabbing the guitar away from Junsu with a toothy grin.
"You guys suck," he teases, hands automatically lining up with the appropriate colors.
Yoochun restarts the game and Changmin find the sight of a serious and focused Yunho to be more attractive than one of him with a tank top on, and that's saying a lot. Changmin predictably loses the round for them, finding it impossible to focus on the right colors and step on the pedal at the same time.
He mutters to himself, an unconscious pout of frustration on his face that has Yunho smiling and dumping the guitar back into Junsu's lap.
Changmin feels a hand in his hair and hits it hard with a stick, "Yah get your greasy hand out of my-"
He's surprised to find Yoochun giving him an amused look from the couch and Junsu laughing loudly, the guitar tightly gripped in his hand.
Process of elimination. He looks up to find Yunho clutching his hand and jumping in the air animatedly, "Geez Changmin-ah, who pissed you off?"
"Yunho-hyung, oh God, I-I'm so sorry. I thought you were Tweedledee and Tweedledum."
He gets a half-hearted glare that's soon replaced with an easy grin that sends his heart beating in double time, "Ah that's okay, didn't hurt much anyway."
Changmin sighs, relieved and leans back into the seat, "Is there something you wanted?"
Yunho blinks and scratches his head in an incredibly adorable way that makes Changmin want to squirm ridiculously like a girl, it's embarrassing.
"I did but..."
Changmin nods encouragingly and waits, catching the exchange of looks between the two on the couch and reminds himself to kick their asses for it later.
"Oh right!" Yunho exclaims, bending down to grab the pedal from underneath Changmin's socked right foot, "I can do the purple part for you, it's much easier this way," he says with a wide smile, a hand still on Changmin's ankle.
All Changmin can do is smile in return at the warm touch on his foot and wiggle his toes as an absurd response to it.
"Yah, Yunho-sshi caught red-handed! Stop making moves on the youngest," Jaejoong calls out from the kitchen, head popping over the counter with a disapproving smirk.
Yunho drops his foot immediately, blubbering incoherently at Jaejoong and apologizing to Changmin at the same time. He takes the pedal with him as far as the extension will allow and sits on the opposite corner of the couch, legs drawn up and pedal resting on top with his chin dropped despondently over it.
Changmin can't help but smile at him and wonders how it is possible that this hyung of his, three years older, could be more adorable than most kids and even some babies. Because despite his serious attitude and intense focus in school, outside of it he's nothing more than a giant kid, living and loving life harder than anyone Changmin knows.
Yunho smiles larger than most, laughs louder than Junsu and leaves a piece of himself in everything he does.
Changmin watches as Yunho punches down on the pedal with gusto, bopping his head along to the beat he probably hears in his head because God knows they're all failing miserably, Junsu's three notes behind on the guitar, all that's heard from Yoochun is the twang of his misses and Changmin hasn't lifted his sticks since they song started.
Yunho looks up at him and smiles, eyes crinkling at the corners and sends him a questioning look when he notices his hands are still at his sides.
Changmin picks his arm up obediently and blindly hits a note so hard he misses, falling to the floor. It sends Yoochun into a fit of giggles, literally dying of laughter. He pulls Junsu down with him, a string of Eu Kyang Kyangs that Yunho soon joins in with his rich baritone laughs.
It's the scene that Jaejoong walks into, Changmin furiously batting at the howling trio in futile attempts to stop them. It isn't until Yoochun's got his hands under Changmin's arms and Yunho's gripping onto his legs tightly to lift Changmin up that Jaejoong steps in. Brandishing a pair of long chopsticks, he pokes Yunho on the head, Junsu in the right butt cheek and Yoochun in the chest, "You're all off your rockers. Dinner's ready, and wash your hands before you even think of eating," he says as he breezes pass them.
The four of them exchange looks before jumping off the floor, pushing and pulling at one another to get to the bathroom the quickest. By default of having longer legs, Changmin and Yunho reach first, the older man pushing open the door and Changmin slamming it close and locking it with a mismatched smile at his hyung.
"It's good to be tall sometimes," Yunho laughs, turning on the faucet and handing Changmin the soap, brushing his fingers across Changmin's open palm in the process.
And really, Changmin surmises as his entire body freezes from the touch, a simple brushing of skin, dead skin at that, shouldn't illicit such a response from him. He must really be wanting some sex. Changmin frowns inwardly, are virgins even supposed to be this horny all the time?
He realizes Yunho's stopped moving, hands motionless under the still running warm water and groans, "I said that out loud again didn't I?"
Yunho chuckles oddly, his voice cracking a few times as he tries to form a sentence, "You know what? I-I er, I can just wash my hands outside in the kitchen with Jaejoongie. Take your time in here."
He walks around Changmin to get to the door, taking special care not to touch him this time, pressing as close as he can to the wall before reaching for the doorknob and ducking his head to avoid Changmin's gaze, "See you outside."
Changmin hears the rush of Junsu's and Yoochun's voices, "Hyung what took you two so long?" and "Why are you so red Hyung? Are you okay?" before the door closes again, leaving him alone in a bathroom that's suddenly a bit bigger than before.
He takes his sweet time inside, counting slowly from one to twenty while washing his hands, making sure he's scrubbing every last speck of dirt, visible or not. The duo outside knock and complain loudly, at times kicking the door until Jaejoong's snapping at them, "You break it, you buy it!"
Changmin sits on the toilet seat and moans again, how much more stupid can one get, he thinks, slapping himself a few times. Mortification he thinks, it'd be nice if he could find a hole large and deep enough to crawl into now.
"Are you jacking off in there Minnie? We can hear you moaning you know," Yoochun inquires, following it up with an appreciative whistle.
Changmin hears the loud clattering of dishes and a crash followed by Jaejoong's voice, "Yunho-yah! Watch what you're doing butterfingers!"
Changmin flings the door open just in time to hear Junsu ask if Yunho was okay and hear the oldest reply, "He's just choking, don't mind him. The mental image is overwhelming for his small brain."
"Jaejoong!"
Changmin walks in to find Yunho on the floor, spazzing if he were to be technical about it, and clutching onto Jaejoong's pants, hands holding on so tightly the pants looked to be slipping.
"Uh, wow, talk about compromising positions," Changmin says, oddly aware that everyone is suddenly staring at him.
Yunho scrambles up, clawing at Jaejoong and almost taking out Junsu's eye in the process.
Dinner is quiet, mostly filled with mindless chatter about school and work. It isn't until Jaejoong brings up that both he and Yunho have been searching for jobs and Yoochun chimes in to say Changmin's laundromat is hiring that he starts to pay attention.
"Changminnie's hiring, or well his dad is. We need another person to help out at the store during the weekends," Yoochun says in between mouthfuls of rice.
"Don't chew and talk at the same time," Jaejoong lectures, picking up a piece of fish with his chopsticks and dropping them into Yunho's half empty bowl. "Now tell us more," he continues, waiting until Yoochun finishes chewing to give him some chicken.
"It's nothing much, he just needs someone to come in Saturday and Sunday to clean around the laundromat. We've finally persuaded him to take the weekend off."
Changmin drinks his soup, keeping an eye on Yunho out of the corner of his eye, watching as he scoops the rice into his mouth with large movements.
"Huh, what do you think Yunho-yah?"
Yunho shrugs, coughing as he hurries in swallowing his food. "Just one position right? Doesn't sound like hard work, you take it Jaejoongie."
Junsu coughs, "Actually, my dad's hiring too. Someone to stack books and basically hang around and keep an eye on the place."
Jaejoong perks up and wiggles in his seat, "What a perfect fit! I love reading."
"No, you don't," Yunho says with a laugh, "You don't even own a book."
Jaejoong narrows his eyes, "I look better in glasses."
"I'm the one that needs glasses."
"Yunho-yah, I think you should work at the laundromat."
"Eh? Why?"
"Yunho-yah."
"Jaejoongie?"
"Stupid is as stupid does."
"That makes no sense in this context."
"Just do as I say!"
Yunho shrugs, reaching for some of the fried egg, "Why didn't you just say so then? Sure."
And that's how Changmin finds himself waking up two hours before opening time on Saturday just to show Yunho the ropes. He points out the broken machines, "That one's problematic, you've got to kick it three times and then jam the coin slot in a few times before it'll work," and tells Yunho about the customers, "There's one that comes in every Sunday night claiming to have left something here. Don't worry about it though, she always comes back the next day to tell us she found it at home or in the car somewhere."
Yunho sits behind the counter on the stool next to Changmin, hand absentmindedly twirling a pencil in the air, "So, when does it get busy around here?"
"Never does," Yoochun says from the doorway with a bag of doughnuts and coffee in hand. "Hungry?"
Changmin grabs for the jelly doughnuts before glancing up at Yunho and offering it to him, "Hyung, you want?"
Yoochun swoons dramatically, dropping into the plastic chairs that line the side, "The world must be falling! Our Changminnie's just offered food to someone else and was polite at it."
Changmin throws a powdered doughnut at the older man, sending him diving onto just cloroxed floor for it. He smirks before turning back to face Yunho, "Hyung?"
Yunho smiles at him, raising a hand to affectionately ruffle his hair, "No, thanks Changmin-ah, I'm not hungry, maybe later."
Changmin frowns but lets it go, opting to bite into a chocolate covered doughnut instead, packing away two of them for Yunho to eat later.
Yunho forgets about food, weekends are easily the laundromat's busiest days and despite what Yoochun's told him, Yunho finds it difficult to find time to sit and rest, much less eat.
It's nearing five by the time Yunho finds himself seated way in the back, behind the rows of machines and in the dimly lit staff room that really used to be Changmin's bedroom. There's still some clothes to be folded and packed, not to mention some to iron and hang up but he's been ordered by Changmin to go back and take a thirty minute break, "Mandatory and definitely not up for argument."
Yunho walks around the small room that barely takes him ten steps to reach from one side to the other. It's not hard for him to picture the younger boy in here, lanky overgrown limbs tucked into a bed too small, sleeping in a room that he should've long moved out of. He sits at the edge of the bed and falls down into it with a light oomph that rustles up the dust in the hardly ever used sheets.
Sneezing twice, Yunho shifts about to find a comfortable spot, finally settling onto his side and facing the faded yellow wallpaper across from the door. He's not too tired and probably a bit hungry if he were being honest, but he's more than a little lazy to get off the thin mattress and get his lunch from the tiny miniature fridge.
Yunho closes his eyes, waiting for his own breath to even out and his heart to slow down. He creates an image in his head of sixteen year old Changmin, legs already miles long and frame too skinny for his liking. A sixteen year old with a mind too sharp for his classes and a personality shunned by his classmates, Yunho imagines Changmin to be shy and introverted, hiding himself away in this room, his self-created haven of sorts.
He's filled with a sudden, overwhelming want to protect this boy who hides under the covers at night during thunderstorms, saves food in clear plastic containers for the next day and smiles as though his heart had already been broken.
Yunho wonders if Changmin knows that he's already been falling for him and that it might be too late to stop.
Changmin waits a full hour before going into the room after the older man, figuring he's probably fallen asleep or lost track of the time. He finds Yunho curled up on his bed, old worn blanket loosely fisted in his hands and mouth open, a line of clear drool leading to the damp lake on the pillow.
He bites his lip to hold in the laughter and moves forward to cover his hyung with the blanket, taking care not to wake him with any sudden movements. Changmin bends down, leaving him face to face with the other man and gently pushes back some of his longer bangs. He leans forward, close enough for him to breathe in Yunho's aftershave and inhales deeply, taking a bit of the older man with him as he leaves the room.
Yunho wakes up much later to Yoochun's poking and it isn't until he gets home that he finds the bag of doughnuts in his backpack, taped with a green sticky that read, "Yummy, eat me Hyung!"
A few days later, Yunho meets Shim-sshi in the laundromat, accidentally bumping into the much older but still handsome man while he's sweeping the floors.
There were many apologies given and accepted before Yunho finally stopped bowing, mostly due in part to Changmin and Yoochun holding him up on either side and refusing to let him go down again.
"My dad's not a dictator," Changmin huffs, telling him the only thing his dad is mad at is the fact Yunho had kneeled down and apologized for twenty-three times.
Yunho gets used to life working at the laundromat, the constant inability to breathe in fresh air, the fact that he'll most likely only hear about seventy percent of what anyone is saying at anytime inside the store and he even convinces himself that spending two full days a week with Changmin mean nothing more to him than if he had spent them with Junsu or anyone else.
He's also somewhat of a charmer, as Changmin learns only three weeks into the job. The older ladies love him, falling for the same things that Changmin figures he fell for, the warm smiles and unwavering attention, not to mention the boyish laughs and at times shy persona. And the younger girls are attracted to his in-born charisma and easy-going attitude. All in all, Jung Yunho is, as Changmin already knows, really fuckable (opinion courtesy of Yoochun) but also patient and kind, someone he finds himself wishing were just his to hold and not all of theirs to share.
Yunho starts stopping by a few days during the week, following Yoochun and Changmin in after class ended with the excuse of being bored and having anything better to do. Jaejoong follows more often than not, telling them that, "Birds of a feather flock together and it ain't no fun being alone all the time."
Changmin finds that being near Yunho is calming and very much addictive, if only for an affectionate punch in the shoulder or one-armed hug that the older man gives on a regular basis.
It becomes clear to everyone but the two that they're getting increasingly closer, Changmin pillowing his head on Yunho's shoulder in class and Yunho getting containers of food with the time he's supposed to eat them written in large block letters on a daily basis.
Yunho finds himself uncharacteristically late to work Sunday morning, having overslept and run out of hot water in the shower before leaving. He's got the day marked down as a bad day when he steps foot into the laundromat to find the front counter empty and with no sign of the other two boys.
Stifling a yawn, he walks inside, dropping his bag off under the counter before making his way to the room where he hears the chatter of the other two coming from. He's got a hand on the door when he hears his name being mentioned, taking a step back, he releases his grip and brings his arm down to his side.
"Minnie, what do you think of Yunho-hyung?"
"He's great, why?"
"Su-ah was talking about a friend he thinks might suit hyung. That's all."
"What do you mean a friend?"
"Someone he's on the soccer team with. Nice guy, well built and he thinks they'd get along."
"I don't think hyung would like that much."
Yunho stares at the door blankly, wishing hard he had missed the bus to work.
"You mean you wouldn't like it too much."
"What are you talking about Yoochun? Have you been drinking again?"
"Stop joking."
"I'm not."
"You like him don't you?"
Yunho closes his eyes in the silence that follows the question, fingers digging tiny half moons into his skin.
"He's my hyung, of course I like him."
"Changmin, one of these days he's going to stop waiting and leave. And you'll be left wondering what you could've done."
"Don't be ridiculous, Yunho-hyung's said he loves working here."
"Changmin, that's not what I mean."
"Then you'll have to be clearer. I don't like Yunho-hyung like that, he's my hyung and I respect him, care for him but I don't want anything from him that he doesn't want from me."
Yunho licks his bottom of his lip and faintly registers the metallic taste of blood. He brushes it away with the back of his hand and turns around to walk away. Such coincidence that made it possible for him to hear their conversation, Yunho finds it ironic and he's more than a little bitter to have those words playing through his head. Especially when he finds himself in a locked room with a drunk and very horny Changmin less than a week later.
Yunho distinctively remembers drinking at the bar with them, a bottle of beer in hand, when he's suddenly dragged from the crowded room to private one, Changmin on his knees and hands fumbling on his belt buckle.
"Changmin-ah, what are you doing?" He slurs a bit, tongue suddenly thick with a numbness that has nothing to do with alcohol.
"Shh, hyung, just be quiet," the younger boy whispers, finally getting his buckle undone and pants down to his ankles.
"But-"
His words are cut off by the sudden wetness and warmth that envelopes his erection. Throwing his head back, arms coming out to brace the sudden fall, Yunho curses loudly.
"Fuck, fuck, Changmin, what are you-"
He looks down to find Changmin with his eyes shades darker and tongue lapping experimentally around the head of his erection.
"You taste good hyung," he says, mostly in awe, more than a little intoxicated with it as he dips his head, mouth wrapping around the head, hand tight around the base, "I like it."
Yunho groans, hands finding their own way to Changmin's hair, "God, Changmin-ah, Changmin," he murmurs feverishly.
Changmin takes the moans as an encouraging sign, taking in more of the older man than he can probably should, hollowing out his cheeks and sucking lightly and then harder.
Pulling away, Changmin drops a series of featherlight kisses from tip to base, hand occasionally brushing against the erection teasingly.
Yunho comes a minute later with Changmin swallowing as much as he can, the hot liquid hitting the back of his throat, musty and a little tangy.
Changmin crawls up to Yunho's side and kisses him hard, knees coming to rest on either side of him. Yunho reaches up with his hands to pull the younger man closer onto his lap, softening the kiss into one that has Changmin feeling more vulnerable than when he was down on his knees.
"I-I don't," Yunho whispers against Changmin's lips, hands still twisted in his hair, "What is it you want from me?"
Changmin stills, pulling back to pant hotly against Yunho's neck, "Let's just-"
"No, I can't-Changmin, I can't just anything."
Yunho pushes him to the side, hands gently untangling themselves, "Changmin-ah, what do you want?"
Changmin looks down at the carpeted floor, blinking away the tears of his uncertainty, very aware of the effects his answer would have, "Yunho, hyung, I-"
Yunho climbs up, reaching to drop a soft barely there kiss on Changmin's forehead, "I'm sorry too, but I can't."
Changmin get carried home that night, Yoochun entering the room moments after Yunho had left. Junsu waits for them outside, car key in hand, helping to carry their drunk and crying friend into the back seat. Nothing's said and the car ride back is silent except for Changmin's stifled sniffling that the other two pretend not to hear.
He wakes up the next morning with a raging headache, very much hungover and with Yunho's words and face imprinted deeply in his mind.
Life went on.
School continued as always, Changmin a close two seats away from the older man in most his classes and work at the laundromat became more of a bitch than it was before. The night at the club was never brought up between them again, Yunho constantly finding something to do and somewhere else to be when left alone with the younger man. For his part, Changmin ignored most everything, eating when given food and talked when spoken to. After three years of happiness, Changmin knew he should've seen the "shit hit the fan," as Jaejoong was fond of saying, he just never realized it'd be that much shit at once.
Three months after Changmin's almost breakup with Yunho, his dad dies, car rammed so hard by an oncoming truck, it had wrapped around the light pole twice.
The funeral takes place two days later, organized entirely by Yoochun and Jaejoong. Changmin doesn't remember much, a drink or two with the neighbors, a tearful speech by some of his father's friends and an open casket, his father laid out in his Sunday's best for all to see.
He gives the eulogy, a probably sentimental and touching piece written by Yoochun and memorized by Changmin in under five minutes. People cry and all Changmin can think of is his father and him, sitting in the kitchen the day his mother had died and of the insane amount of takeout they had eaten, "People die all the time, and there's nothing to do but move on son."
Yunho finds him in the laundromat, sprawled out over the washing machines with his head buried in the crook of his arm, eyes red from crying and heart mostly broken.
He doesn't say anything, climbing up the side to lean against the younger boy, arm reaching out to curl around his small waist.
"Changmin-ah," he whispers, pulling him close, quiet words barely audible over the roaring machinery.
Changmin lets out a sob, tired and so painful that it makes Yunho hurt. He's pulls him closer yet, nesting his head near his heart, and hand moving in a constant circle on his back.
"Changmin-ah," he says again, kissing him on the temple twice before nosing against the soft curls of hair.
Changmin closes his eyes, hands still fisted tightly in the older man's shirt and he shrinks, curling himself further in the comforting warmth.
He's aware of Yunho humming, tone low and infinitely gentle, and waits for it to push around the suffocating air to cushion his fall.
Yunho attempts to pull away later, finding it impossible with the tight grip Changmin has on him even in his sleep and gives in, loosening his own hold to wrap his arm around the boy's waist, hand warm on his hip and lips a moist mark on dry skin.
The others find them hours later, wake long since over and guests gone. Yoochun climbs up first, snuggling on the other side of Changmin, hand gripping tightly onto Junsu's behind him. Jaejoong sneaks in, wrapping himself around Yunho, reaching up with his hand to nestle into Changmin's hair.
For the weeks to follow, Changmin allows himself to be coddled by his hyungs, Yoochun driving him to and from class, Junsu cracking jokes that almost make him laugh, Jaejoong staying over for days at a time to feed him and Yunho, letting him kiss and hug and fall asleep in arms that never ceased to love.
Nearly two months after the funeral, Changmin finds himself unable to go anything without Yunho by his side. Food becomes unappetizing with the older man's smile to accompany it while sleeping is impossible unless he's there to murmur a warm good night and hum a familiar lullaby.
He's taken aside by Jaejoong one day for a lunch that turns out to be less of a meal and more of a talking to.
"Yoochunnie wants me to ask, 'What the fuck's wrong with you?"
"My mom died when I was twelve and my dad died months ago. What's wrong with him?"
"Changmin, let me rephrase on his behalf. What the fuck do you think you're doing with Yunho-yah?"
A blank look, "Nothing."
"You make him spoon feed you, make him hug you everyday and you sleep in the same bed with him."
"And...?"
Jaejoong screams inside and he thinks it shows because Changmin takes a few steps away to stand behind the table.
"Don't you fuck with him Changmin. I won't let you."
"I'm not."
"Then either get on with it and let him love you properly, you're only screwing him up like this."
Changmin blinks at him and Jaejoong slaps him on the head, "Am I getting through to you?"
"You haven't said a single cliche."
Jaejoong screams out loud this time, lunging across the table to grab at Changmin, "I'm going to open up a can of whoop ass so big you're going to-"
"Do people still say 'can of whoop ass' these days?"
Changmin finds a pair of smooth hands around his neck, choking him with a semi-tight hold.
Yunho comes home to a somewhat bruised Changmin sitting on the couch with a bag of frozen peas on his lip.
"What the-"
"Jaejoong, uh, Jae hyung opened up a can of whoop ass so big-"
"A can of whoop ass? Really?"
"I don't know. He just kind of kicked my ass, it's embarrassing."
"Oh. Why?"
"Cos I was fucking around."
"With whom can I ask?"
"You?"
"..."
"Yeah."
"So, did we fuck and I just slept through it or something?"
Changmin sighs, walking over to Yunho and reaching out to entwine their hands together.
"I'm still not sure what I want."
"Okay I-"
"And I'm not sure I'll ever know. I'm twenty-one and nothing seems final yet," Changmin breathes out, pulling Yunho with him to the couch and wrapping the older man's arms around himself.
Yunho mumbles something incoherently into his hair and Changmin pulls back just enough to look him in the eye, "Can you say that louder?"
"I'm not going to push you. Just-I just love you Changmin-ah."
Changmin sighs and shimmies up Yunho's body to kiss him, long and hard, nibbling patiently at his bottom lip until he's allowed entrance into the older man's mouth.
"I don't really know what I want now or later but I do know that everything seems so much less without you around Yunho. Yoochun says, 'That's because it's love, fucking retard," and I think he's right, not about the retard part but the love part."
Yunho's quiet for a second too long and it makes Changmin nervous, sweaty and more than a little crazy from the wait.
Yunho sits up, pulling the younger boy along with him and stares him in the eye, a little too serious for Changmin's liking.
"That's corny, cornier than Jaejoongie's 'Nobody puts Baby in a corner' or that super lame and overused, 'You had me at hello' he likes to quote all the time."
"Yunho I-"
He cuts him off with a squeeze of the hand and an innocent smile that would fool no one, "Good thing you're really hot Min-ah, and totally fuckable. Can we just get on with it? I've been wanting in your pants for a while now."
Changmin finds Yunho freaking adorable despite the almost as greasy as Yoochun grin he's got on and that's really an offer he can't refuse.
The following semester starts and Changmin finds that not much has changed. He's taken over the shop, along with Yoochun and while the laundromat hasn't expanded much or made enough money for them to pay off all the debts, they get by well enough.
Junsu's two months from graduating with a degree in marketing, something he never plans on using. He's already told his father he'd be more than happy to inherit the bookshop, as long as his father learns to accept that his only son isn't going to marry a nice Korean girl and have dozens of kids, but will live with another man, Yoochun, in an apartment not too far from the family.
Jaejoong opens his own cafe and bread shop, refusing to admit it's a bakery because bakeries are overdone and so passe. He calls it his baby and no one's surprise but his own, it's a huge hit. Jaejoong, who finds it silly that success could be measured by monthly incomes and net grosses, discovers that for the first time in a long time, while he's not rich, he's also no longer poor.
As for Yunho, Changmin gathers that the older man should be happy, if not completely and overwhelmingly content with his life. After all, he lives with Shim Changmin, eats with Shim Changmin and sleeps with Shim Changmin. Yunho would tell him that he's full of himself again, but he can't find it in his heart to disagree with his lover, wishing that life could only always be this simple.
Changmin wakes up one morning just as the Sun's rising, the first pink rays of light hitting their bedroom and peeking through from under the shades. He's much too warm under the mountain of quilts and comforters but he doesn't leave, snuggling closer instead to the older man with small movements lest he wake him.
Because despite the death-like grip Yunho's got him wrapped in and the warm puffs of his morning breath that hit his neck, Changmin's comfortable and more than a little in love.
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