the agony of your fumbled organs

quid @ 2014-06-25T23:07:00

2014-06-26T06:07:15Z

(dead wip) i fought the law (and the law won)
g-dragon/top, g-dragon/seungri, pg-13, 1540ⓦ

Note: Jesse James AU. Poem by Arkaye Kierulf.

IN THIS ROOM I WAS BORN.
AND I KNEW I WAS IN THE WRONG PLACE: THE WORLD.
I KNEW PAIN WAS TO COME.
I KNEW IT BY THE PERSISTENCE OF THE BLADE THAT CUT ME OUT.

I KNEW IT AS EVERY BABY BORN TO THE WORLD KNOWS IT: I CAME HERE TO DIE.

They would only ever remember him as the one who killed Kwon Jiyong, he realised. He would always recall it with the kind of cold, gripping miasma of an illness, the warmth of his gun and the fresh, point-blank splatter of Jiyong’s blood. The realisation made the satisfaction slip from it, the same way Jiyong’s inert form had crumpled to the floor effortlessly. Each time he relived it, which was often, he failed to notice that Jiyong’s eyes were already closed. Two months from now he would look down the barrel of Seunghyun’s gun and feel the same kind of acceptance, tinged with regret. And years from now, they would only remember Jiyong’s name. Forget, even, how he died. But before that—

The train shuddered along the path of the track, a freight of metal and steam, in the moonlight. The sound of the engine upset a murder of crows that alighted, noisily, amongst the trees.

Inside the train: the stifled sound of a baby crying; hushed, alarmed voices. A gunshot brooks silence, broken only by the harsh, frightened sobbing of a woman.

Jiyong sweeps in behind his gang, heading straight for the conductor’s carriage, affording only a glance by a young boy who gasps, “Kwon Jiyong,” before his father covers his mouth with a shaking hand, cradles the boy’s head to his chest. The links of his watch bite into his round, hairless cheek. He looks, despite himself, at the door Jiyong kicks open, slams shut.

Through the opaque window, stamped with the word “CONDUCTOR,” there are the shadowy figures of two men standing: Kwon Jiyong and Choi Seunghyun. These are familiar names, spoken in whispers and written in headlines, important names, wanted names. A clipping:

Kwon Jiyong, younger, is slight and pretty enough to be a girl. Jiyong is reckless, devil-may-care, and his voice is sharp and twanging. Choi Seunghyun, the elder of the two, is tall, imposing, and reticent. He has strong features, a sharp jaw and a deep, commanding voice. Neither of them are ever unarmed.

Between them kneels a third man, hands behind his head. The smoked glass makes the scene oneiric: silent, all three of them unmoving – and then the conductor is shot, and he hurries to drop his gaze. His hand has instinctively moved to cover his son’s eyes, his large hand clutching protectively, so that the boy whispers, father, I can’t breathe. With both hands, the child pulls his father’s fingers down, does what no one else on the train dares to, and watches the last train robbery of the Kwon gang.

He watched Jiyong watch the snake wind around his wrist, the dark emerald sinuous against the pale inside of his wrist, criss-crossed with blue veins.

When Seunghyun appeared, the crooked back door slamming back onto its frame, he could feel himself disappear. Jiyong didn’t react with either a smile or a word, and Seunghyun didn’t do anything except stand there, wood creaking when he leaned against the rail of the porch, lighter spitting and hissing to life. But Jiyong’s body responded to his presence with an alertness that no one else could wake up in him: with everyone else—with him, little Seunghyun, Jiyong was careless enough to be cruel. Liked to see him jealous, bitter, see his face contorted in pain and humiliation.

Two Seunghyuns, and Jiyong loved the one that wasn’t him. But therein lay the illusion: that Jiyong, standing over him, the heel of his boot digging into the soft, vulnerable concave of his stomach, would suddenly smile. As if to say, here is what you could have. Here I am.

“Little Seunghyun,” Jiyong said, suddenly, and he started, tried to pretend he hadn’t. Jiyong was still watching the snake, letting it wind through his middle and ring finger. “Tell the others to pack their bags.”

He shifted, glanced back at the figure on the porch. His face was obscured by smoke. “Me too?”

Jiyong looked at him then, a slow, considering gaze. “No,” he said. “No, you can stay.”

When he was almost at the house, Seunghyun stepped off the porch, moving toward Jiyong.

“Jiyong said—” he started, lifting his gaze.

“Whatever Jiyong has to say, he can say to me,” Seunghyun said, putting out his cigarette. He felt himself flush with resentment, watched through the screen door as Jiyong looked up at Seunghyun and started to speak.

In the end it was the last anyone saw of Seunghyun. Daesung and Youngbae were heading north in a day, but Seunghyun left Jiyong cradling his cigarette in the backyard and went upstairs to the room he and Jiyong shared. Jiyong stayed outside, lifting his eyes to the upper floor windows, and went in for dinner when called. When Seunghyun appeared with his suitcase, neither of them looked at the other, as if it were not a goodbye. When asked what he would do next, Seunghyun said, “Maybe I’ll sell furniture.”

Daesung and Youngbae left in the morning. In the afternoon, Jiyong, fixing a window, said, “Help me with this, Seunghyun.” No prefix, casual, as if he’d made a choice, and little Seunghyun – Seunghyun, now – went to him.

There was something people loved about Jiyong, potent as a drug, that made people forgive his sharp tongue, forget the ugly sides of him. That took a criminal and remade him in reverence, took a skinny boy from a nowhere town and made him a king. Children knew the stories about Kwon Jiyong, how he could kill a man with his bare hands, could shoot a moving target from ten metres away. After he died, people would make pilgrimages to the house he grew up in, stand in the room he was killed in, and would swear they could still feel his presence, a foreboding chill in the air. Jiyong believed in a lot of things – money, loyalty, and a shotgun – but he didn’t believe in sentiment, didn’t love anyone or anything the way he loved what he was, what he’d become.

Hyunseung was the snake in Eden, deceptively harmless until he had you clamped between his teeth. The bounty, Hyunseung kept saying, but he wasn’t listening. The idea of Jiyong caught, more than the idea of payoff, was what gripped him. Jiyong was like a wild animal – once bitten, twice violent, all teeth, savage and beautiful and fucking invincible. Jiyong dead he couldn’t even begin to imagine, and felt the beginnings of an itch. The glassy eyes and still mouth, fingers that couldn’t play with a knife, lips that wouldn’t make him want promises from. “We could do it,” Hyunseung said, and Seunghyun thought: no—but I could.

He watched Jiyong punch Hyunseung in the mouth, the blood and spit flecking on Jiyong’s knuckles and Hyunseung’s pale skin. The black spiral of Jiyong’s earring, curving out from the back of his earlobe in a loop, ended in a point near Jiyong’s jaw. Eventually Hyunseung stopped fighting back, each of Jiyong’s blows finding home the only sound. Another minute, two, and then he let go, sat back and looked at Hyunseung’s face with a tender, almost helpless expression, fingers touching his cooling, bloody mouth. As if he knew how to regret.

Then Jiyong looked up and stared at him. For months he would dream of this: looking down, afraid to meet Jiyong’s eye, and all the while Jiyong saw him like a mirror, looked into him and saw a lifeless reflection of himself, tangled with conflicting desires – Jiyong dead, Jiyong alive, Jiyong.

Jiyong laughed.

He’d studied the Kwon gang, could name each of its members and identify most of them before he’d met them, had collected news clippings and the short serials on their famous train robberies, knew which rumours were true and which weren’t. Knew that Youngbae came from Jiyong’s hometown, like something resurrected out of a past life; that Daesung always kept a battered copy of the Bible with him. Heard the rumours about Jiyong and Choi Seunghyun, seen that lingering, considerate gaze.

At the police department, it took ten minutes for someone to notice him. Boy, they called him, with a casual derision that made him straighten up, tear his eyes away from the window. “My name is Lee Seunghyun,” he said, paused deliberately, then: “I can give you the Kwon gang.”

For thirty minutes, he made explanations, furnished descriptions, drew maps, and abhorred the glass windows. Then the inspector leaned back in his chair and said pleasantly, “All right, kid.”

He learned of the capture of two members of the Kwon gang from Jiyong, who picked up the newspaper and said, casually, “Do you know anything about this?”

Seunghyun widened his eyes, scanning the headlines. Inspector credits capture to excellent work of Pinkertons, he read, with mingled relief and offence. “No,” he said, jaw twitching, and set the newspaper back down. He ducked into the inspector’s office again two days later, took off his hat and tipped his head back, waiting.

What Seunghyun didn’t expect was for him to laugh. “Did you think I was going to thank you?” He tapped out a cigarette, lit it, and continued. “I want Jiyong, and you’re going to give him to me.”

quid @ 2014-02-24T14:50:00

2014-02-24T22:50:03Z

kpopv fills

rap's black cat
g-dragon/tao, pg-13, 610ⓦ

Note: Underground hip-hop AU; takes place in the early 2000s (but everyone is legal). For hakkais_shadow for kpopv (original post).

Darkness and sound envelop Zitao like water, closing over his head the minute he ducks into Slugger. He’s early: it’s barely dark outside, but open mic nights always draw an early crowd. The lights drench everyone’s faces in a blooming fuchsia. They’re in between performers when he gets to the sign-ups – a single sheet, unlined, so that a dozen messy scrawls slant over the page. He takes the pen, etches out a hwang jitao at the bottom of the page, and is giving the list a once-over when he hears a familiar melody and looks up.

The person on stage is skinny, eyes mostly hidden over a shock of white-blond hair, rapping to “This Love,” voice distinctly sharp and nasal on his As. He’s almost vibrating with energy, barely stands still for more than a minute on the break before he’s leaping back into motion. The white stage lights arc over the crown of his head when he throws his head back, shouts into the microphone. That kind of stage presence fills the stage. He only tears his eyes away when someone jostles his elbow, whirls around to come face to face with a lanky stranger. “Are you done with that?” he repeats, at Zitao’s blank face, and points to the sign-up sheet.

The performance ends as he’s fumbling to hand it off, and Zitao almost misses him stepping down off the stage, handing the microphone off to the MC, who says, “Give it up for G-Dragon—” Zitao loses him in the crowd, the subsequent chaos of set-up. It isn’t until Zitao’s on stage, that he catches sight of him, in a corner with two other guys. G-Dragon, Zitao thinks, sounding out the words clumsily, as “Do Dat” starts to play. Almost as if on cue, G-Dragon looks up, and Zitao almost stutters on his opening verse.

It’s the first time he’s been eager to leave the stage. G-Dragon’s gone when he reaches the table, but when he scans the room again, he catches a flash of white hair, nearly at the door, and immediately starts to push forward, edging sideways between bodies until he’s through, breathless. The cool summer air feels like a balm, and when he looks around, he’s there: passing around a cigarette, still flanked by his friends, both of them are a good head taller than him.

“Hey,” Zitao offers. Then, “I’m Zitao,” a little doggedly. “I saw you performing earlier; you were really good.”

One of them – long nose, narrow face – laughs a little, though not unkindly. Zitao feels his face heat anyway, but then he nudges G-Dragon, who nods at Zitao. “Thanks. I’m GD.”

“Are you performing anywhere else this week?” Zitao asks.

GD looks at him for a moment, like he’s sizing him up. “I’ll be at Master Plan on Sunday,” he says, finally, mouth turning up in a faint smile when he sees Zitao’s expression change. Holy shit, he thinks, barely manages not to say it aloud.

“I’ll see you there, then.” Zitao fumbles a little. “I mean—I’ll go see you.”

“Sure,” he says. Zitao stands still, hesitating, before he turns to head back into the club. “Hey,” GD calls, when he’s a few steps away. His expression is halfway between pleased and amused at Zitao’s abrupt about-face. “You weren’t half bad, either.”

Zitao’s grin is immediate, ear-splitting, as he turns back around. “Oppa, I’m your fan too,” his friend’s mimicking, as he walks away, and the last thing he hears before he’s back inside is GD, voice rising in a laugh as he says, “Shut up, Seunghyun—”

venn diagram
minho/key, g, 770ⓦ

Note: Takes place during Minho's drama filming and Key's musical. For nautisch for kpopv (original post).

Jonghyun is already sitting through commercials, curled up with his phone nested in his lap, when Kibum wanders into the kitchen. He pours himself a cup of water with what’s left in the boiler, already lukewarm, then sidles into the living room. There’s a leg’s length of space left on the couch. Kibum settles in next to him, tunnelling a foot under Jonghyun’s legs for warmth.

For the most part, Minho’s parts alternate between rattling off tongue-twisting medical terms and close-ups of his face, long lashes and big brown fawn eyes: the money shot, Kibum thinks, then pulls out his phone. Kim Sungwoo, you don’t look too ugly today?

It takes Minho nearly the rest of the show to reply. Thanks, he says – no pretence, all sincerity. Kibum snorts, thumbs the screen when it fades. He erases his first attempt at a reply, settles on: what are you doing?

On break from filming, rehearsing now is Minho’s reply, followed by a picture of him in the ER. It’s one of Minho’s more sterile pictures – just him in his scrubs, hovering on the edge of the frame, a few staff standing around in thick puffy jackets behind him. The shapeless blue clothes don’t do him any favours, but his smile’s always the same: wide and beguilingly simple.

He looks at home: fatigued but unflaggingly cheerful. Content. His collar of his shirt is slightly askew, the kind of thing Kibum would normally reach out and fix. Kibum closes the picture after a long minute, types brusquely: don’t come back so late today, you woke me up last time.

Okay, Minho replies, amicably. A pause, and then a quick sorry, like he knew Kibum didn’t want him to apologise. The next two texts come in one after another, crowding out the apology: I have to go, see you later.

Next to him, Jonghyun laughs abruptly, still watching. Bye, Kibum types, then drops his phone to tap Jonghyun on the shoulder repeatedly, demanding, “Wait, I missed it, what happened—”

Jonghyun flips through channels half-heartedly after the episode is over, then turns off the TV. He smells faintly of hanyak when he leans over, tossing the remote onto the table and leaning back to face Kibum, cheek pillowed against the couch. “Need to go over lines?” Jonghyun says.

Kibum looks down at Jonghyun, contemplating for a moment. Jonghyun probably wasn’t sleeping anytime soon, but his voice sounded hoarse. “No,” he says, finally. “I’m fine, go home.”

He watches Jonghyun gather his things – phone, keys, wallet. “Jacket,” Kibum reminds him, out of habit, and Jonghyun grins sheepishly as he snags it, waves with two fingers. The auto-lock clicks as the door closes, and the house settles into silence.

He picks his phone back up, unlocks it. His conversation with Minho’s still open, and on impulse he opens up the photo again, taps save.

He doesn’t see Minho until early afternoon the next day, when he comes out of his room looking like he’s been recently exhumed. So that’s still the same, he thinks. “You’re up early,” he remarks, as Minho sits down. Minho turns around, squinting at the microwave to read the time. “It’s 1,” he adds, helpfully, when Minho doesn’t turn back around.

“Oh.” Minho frowns a little, still groggy. He combs his fingers through his hair. “Is it time?” he asks, then tries to clarify: “For—your?”

Kibum takes pity on him. “Yeah, soon. Friday matinee.” He pushes his glasses up, sliding his iPad onto the table to look at Minho properly. He looks like he could sleep for days still, his shirt and sweats equally worn. His gaze slides down to the ridge of his Adam’s apple, then away. It feels like his throat’s closed up when he speaks. “You want coffee?”

“That’s okay.” Minho seems on the verge of falling into a stupor, watching dumbly as Kibum fiddles with the tag of his tea sachet. They both startle when Kibum’s phone goes off, the kitschy little jingle he’s set for the managers.

Minho gets up when he does. “Good luck,” he says, stifling a yawn, then bumps Kibum’s shoulder. “One for all and all for one, and all that, D’Artagnan.”

Kibum laughs despite himself, knocking his elbow against Minho’s. “Go back to sleep,” he says, and Minho throws him a salute, leaning against the door of his room as Kibum puts on his shoes. In the doorway, he turns back, hand on the door handle. “See you later?” he asks.

“You might have to wake me up,” Minho says, then tilts him a smile. “But yeah, I will.”

one for the road
leo/hyuk, pg-13, 855ⓦ

Note: For the_resolver for kpopv (original post).

“Last chance,” Sanghyuk says, dropping heavily onto the frame of the open passenger window. He flashes his teeth, waving, when Taekwoon startles.

“For what?” Taekwoon asks, only because Sanghyuk, leaning into the car and grinning wide, thrumming with excitement, wants him to.

“For you to tell me if you’re a serial killer,” he says cheerfully. He opens the door, sliding in as Taekwoon reaches for his keys, turning the ignition. Sanghyuk leans through the window again, waving to his mother, and Taekwoon bobs his head in a bow before he grabs the back of Sanghyuk’s jacket and yanks him back into the seat.

“Be good,” Taekwoon says, eyes fixed on the road. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Sanghyuk still with the kind of earnest obedience that means he’ll be squirming out of his seat in another ten minutes. It makes it easier to default to the familiar. He clears his throat, reaching over to punch open the glove compartment. The jewel cases rattle with the movement. “You can pick the music.”

He hasn’t, strictly speaking, spent a lot of time with Sanghyuk. In first year, Hakyeon, his roommate, had introduced him as a family friend. At seventeen, Sanghyuk was gangly and shy, with the standard high school haircut and, when he let it loose, a startlingly roguish grin. “Stop scaring him,” Hakyeon chastised, when Sanghyuk had left the room. “He likes you.”

Now Sanghyuk’s rifling through his CDs, offering commentary – “This is old,” he says, laughing, when he finds Soul Tree, then pulls another out. “Hyung’s favourite,” Sanghyuk says cheerfully, opening the case.

It doesn’t strike Taekwoon as odd until Trey Songz starts playing. He glances over at Sanghyuk, who notices, looking up from where he’s replacing the case. “What?” he asks. “It is, right?”

“No,” Taekwoon mumbles. “I forgot I told you that.”

Sanghyuk had a habit of texting him erratically – sometimes in between school and hagwon, other times when he was playing or eating. Hyung, I watched that movie you told me about! I liked it! he’d send while Taekwoon was in class, or: hyung, are you awake? I’m studying still ㅠㅠㅠㅠ and responded to all of Taekwoon’s texts with puppyish enthusiasm. “Cute kid,” Hakyeon sighed wistfully, hooking his chin over Taekwoon’s shoulder. “Never calls.”

So when Sanghyuk mentioned going to Seoul, it felt natural to offer – I’m driving up to visit family that weekend, he texted. Do you need a ride? Sanghyuk’s house was an hour away, in Daejeon. When he pressed the buzzer, Sanghyuk barely chirped a hello before he was tugging him in by the sleeve. It felt weirdly familiar to see Sanghyuk’s house – the piano, his school uniform hung up haphazardly on his door and a scuffed football in the corner of his room. In the kitchen, he greeted Sanghyuk’s mother, who stopped packing kimbap long enough to show him Sanghyuk’s baby pictures. “Mom,” Sanghyuk groaned, but otherwise didn’t protest, too busy stealing food.

Sanghyuk’s talkative once he’s settled in, comfortable. For the first hour, he rambles on about school, his friends. “Did you get taller?” Taekwoon blurts, suddenly, just as Sanghyuk’s finished an anecdote, and Sanghyuk laughs.

“Yeah, I guess,” he says, sounding shy but pleased. He tugs at the sleeve of his jumper, pulling it down over his palm. “I had to get a new uniform.” He shifts in his seat so that he’s facing Taekwoon properly. “What about you?”

“I’m the same height,” Taekwoon deadpans, and Sanghyuk’s silent for a moment before he bursts into laughter, shoving Taekwoon’s shoulder. “I’m driving,” Taekwoon reminds him, but Sanghyuk’s laughing too hard to notice.

“Was that a joke?” he says, in between giggles. “Wow, Jung Taekwoon.”

Sanghyuk’s laughter is infectious, bubbling over. Taekwoon bites his lip and buries his smile in the back of his hand. “I’m okay,” Taekwoon says, once Sanghyuk’s calmed down, leaning back in his seat. “Busy.” He flicks on the blinker, changes lanes. “Hakyeon said he misses you.”

Sanghyuk grins, self-satisfied. “Tell him I don’t miss him at all.” He starts unpacking his kimbap.

“Tell him yourself,” Taekwoon chides, but takes the kimbap Sanghyuk hands him. “Thanks,” he says.

“You’re welcome,” Sanghyuk says, then adds: “I made them myself,” the kind of innocuous lie that was part and parcel of Sanghyuk’s humour. When the song changes, he barely skips a beat before he throws a hand up, shouting the lyrics: “I wouldn’t be me if I ain’t get a little nasty—”

They reach Seoul in another hour and a half. “Here’s fine,” Sanghyuk says, when the GPS takes Taekwoon down a side street. He leans over the back of his seat to grab his duffel, hitches his backpack over his shoulder. “Thanks, hyung,” he says, but doesn’t move to get out.

“Sure,” Taekwoon says, and then he’s dealt an armful of Sanghyuk, crashing into him in a violent hug before Sanghyuk’s leaping out of the car, yanking his duffel bag along with him. Dazed, Taekwoon watches Sanghyuk find the right house, press the buzzer. He only turns back around when the door swings open, catching Taekwoon’s eye. He grins and waves.

quid @ 2014-01-07T00:31:00

2014-01-07T08:31:52Z

melt your cold, cold heart
baekhyun/d.o, g, 335ⓦ

Note: For Lily; thank you.

“I can’t go back out there,” Baekhyun says, blowing on his fingers for warmth. “It’s like, a hundred degrees below zero.”

There’s a loud crash, a distant yell. “One of us should,” Kyungsoo says, watching the ice on the streets splinter slightly, like a line on a Richter scale. He cranes his neck, looking past the corner of the building to where a bank of sludge and ice is building up in the middle of greater Gangnam.

“Just because Frosty the Snowman decided to show up—”

“Is that what they’re calling him,” Kyungsoo says, absently. A current sweeps through again, and Baekhyun reaches forward, pulling Kyungsoo back by the crook of his elbow so that their shoulders bump back together.

“My point is, let Chanyeol handle it,” Baekhyun says, teeth chattering. “We’re not dressed for this.” Their suits were designed to be fire-resistant, bulletproof, not even susceptible to static cling, let alone pilling, and now they’re crouched in an alley behind a restaurant – the driest place in Seocho-gu ever since The Abominable Snowman swept through – cold, wet, and shivering. Not exactly their finest moment, Kyungsoo thinks wryly, rubbing a palm over his knee.

Baekhyun reaches out with the arm he has linked with Kyungsoo’s, grabbing at a bit of light and focusing it in his palm. Kyungsoo watches for a moment, then sidles closer. Baekhyun tilts his hand in offering, and Kyungsoo takes it.

Baekhyun’s palm radiates heat, thawing out his fingers. His body heat percolates through to Kyungsoo’s side, who tries to lean into it discreetly. Baekhyun grins when he notices. “You’re lucky you have me,” he says, a little smug. His breath puffs out in a cloud.

“Hmm,” Kyungsoo says, unconvinced. He looks away, watching the ice creep in, and rubs his nose with the back of his free hand. Warmth blooms in his chest at the way Baekhyun’s eyes light up in the love of a good fight. With Baekhyun watching, he taps his foot and cracks the ice.

quid @ 2013-12-31T00:40:00

2013-12-31T08:40:07Z

works in progress

Note: Current WIPs. Anonymous feedback meme

pacific rim au, kris/lay/lu han

When he opens his eyes, he’s staring at a nearly-identical version of himself: the gangly arms and brute jaw, the same shell-shocked expression, a few centimetres short. Behind him, a swath of inky black, a skyline carved out like the teeth of a graveyard: late April in Vancouver. The predilection of an imminent storm. Something in his chest seizes, a three-year ache, rooting itself like a spine. “Jesus,” he mutters, nearly brings a hand up to scrub over his face before he remembers the glass of his helmet. “Lu Han—”

The ground beneath them shudders again, the worst kind of déjà vu. “Lu Han,” he shouts, barely hearing himself over the sudden explosion of sound: the Kaiju surging up out of English Bay, sending a cascade of water crashing down past the barrier of sand and trees; slim red fingers hooking into the thick of the West End, tearing into the earth like it’s digging for a warm, molten core. Over the clash of sound, a roar that sets his teeth on edge and the shatter of glass, he sees himself start to run and follows, breathing harsh and loud inside his Drivesuit.

He never remembers how long he stays running, but when his younger self stops, he does too. Hears the shriek, deafening, of the Kaiju as it falls in a spray of royal blue, crippling what’s left of East Pender Street. When he looks up, he sees it: the ugly grey head rearing back up to blink, electric blue, at the Jaeger that looms over it. Against the backdrop of a city in flames, smoke dusting the sky, the Jaeger reaches out, lifts the Kaiju, and drives a giant, bayonetted fist between its eyes.

contemporary dance au, taemin/kai

In his head, Taemin can play out the choreography: sweeping moves across the stage, the dramatic grand allegro. Taemin, chasing after his own shadow, his own fantasy. “You’re my muse,” Taemin bluffs, the first time he shows Jongin the sketch.

Jongin rolls his eyes. “Right, this isn’t about your narcissism.” But Taemin could tell he liked the idea: loved doing lyrical, adopting imperfect characters that he could show to an audience like the pale vein of a wrist, exposed. The role was made for him: Narcissus’ shadow, a mad obsession, masquerading as love. As if the force of want could make him real.

Jongin, halfway through the notation, clears his throat and laughs. Taemin shifts, rolling off Jongin’s back to look at him. “You think you can lift me?” Jongin says, sceptical.

“Sure,” Taemin grins, all bravado, and flexes a bicep.

Jongin has a shit poker face. For a moment, he’s silent, fighting all expression off his face, and then he splutters out a sound, halfway between a cough and a sneeze. Taemin, eyes narrowed, punches him, launching himself after him so that Jongin’s knocked back against the floor, pinned under him. “What was that?” Taemin says, grabbing him by the collar, while Jongin laughs, loud and unrestrained. “Say that again—”

band au, chanyeol/tao

Their first, real band practise together, Chanyeol vanishes once Kris calls five. The room feels too hot, leadened by exertion; he feels thrown off, like he’s trying to make room for something he doesn’t have space for. They’d spent the past week in the same room, mostly Kris and Zitao playing simple riffs together, getting a feel for each other, roping Chanyeol in whenever they went unplugged. “Chanyeol records second guitar and backing vocals, too,” explained Baekhyun, who was mostly there for band solidarity and to fill Zitao in.

Chanyeol was sitting on the floor, tuning up. He unclamped his clip to thumb an E, fingers warming at the first touch of steel. Even without looking up he could tell Zitao was looking at him as Baekhyun said it, as if filing it to memory, paired with an image. In front of him, the tuner veered left towards Zitao and stuttered.

Outside, he taps out a cigarette, frowning distantly. The wind forces him to stand with the sun in his eyes, smoke spilling out into the street. He watches the cars passing by, but mostly he’s keeping time: adagio, 4/4 for convenience. He’s less than halfway through his cigarette when time’s up. He only notices Zitao standing at the top of the stairs when he turns to head back inside, sun-flooded eyes going cool with relief. His vision swarms back on the dark silhouette cut against the blinding whitewash, burning itself into a lingering negative when he blinks. Zitao doesn’t look up from his phone until Chanyeol’s shadow is floating over him in a momentary eclipse, but by then, Chanyeol is already walking past him, the smell of smoke chasing his heels.

chew au, lu han + tao

Fact number one: two months ago, Lu Han was assigned a new partner.

At a glance, Zitao was the definition of green, fresh out of the Academy, cute ideas about fighting crime for the good of society. When Director Jung introduced them, Lu Han took one look at him and protested, “Sir—”

He quailed under the look Director Jung gave him – his face remained smiling, but broadcasted your pay grade is in my hands – but once they’d left his office, Lu Han said encouragingly, “Are you sure you want to work Homicide? I think you’d do well in the Undercover Division.”

Zitao just smiled. “Since we’re going to be working together, there are some things you should know about me,” he said.

Great, Lu Han thought, Kumbaya, which is when Zitao dropped the bomb.

jesse james au, g-dragon/seungri + g-dragon/top

Hyunseung was the snake in Eden, deceptively harmless until he had you clamped between his teeth. But the idea of Jiyong caught, more than the idea of payoff, was what gripped him. Jiyong was like a wild animal – once bitten, twice violent, all teeth, savage and beautiful and fucking invincible. Jiyong dead he couldn’t even begin to imagine, and felt the beginnings of an itch. The glassy eyes and still mouth, fingers that couldn’t play with a knife, lips that wouldn’t make him want promises from. The bounty, Hyunseung kept saying, but he wasn’t listening.

He watched Jiyong punch Hyunseung in the mouth, instead, the blood and spit flecking on Jiyong’s knuckles and Hyunseung’s pale skin. The black spiral of Jiyong’s earring, curving out from the back of his earlobe in a loop, ended in a point near Jiyong’s jaw. Eventually Hyunseung stopped fighting back, each of Jiyong’s blows finding home the only sound. Another minute, two, and then he let go, sat back and looked at Hyunseung’s face with a tender, almost helpless expression, fingers touching his cooling, bloody mouth. As if he knew how to regret.

Then Jiyong looked up and stared at him. For months he would dream of this: looking down, afraid to meet Jiyong’s eye, and all the while Jiyong saw him like a mirror, looked into him and saw a lifeless reflection of himself, tangled with conflicting desires – Jiyong dead, Jiyong alive, Jiyong.

Jiyong laughed.

virgin suicides au, sulli/victoria

Victoria was the one who kept things: a string of fake pearls, the plastic tiara from ten-year-old Sulli’s Halloween costume, an empty tube of lipstick that they’d shared, giggling as they fought for the mirror and blew kisses at their reflections, lips red. Scraps of notes they’d passed during French lessons and photographs of the two of them as children, holding their father’s hands or hands cupped in a docile V under their chins, one of Sulli’s socks slipping down to her shin.

Sixteen years old and Sulli didn’t want to be the princess anymore, wore black and teased her hair on Halloween and waited by the door for trick-o-treaters. “It’s poisoned,” she said, tongue red from the lollipops she’d been eating, and held out her basket of candy.

After the incident, their father unlocked Sulli’s diary with a luggage key, looking for signs, running his finger down the seams where she’d ripped pages out. Two days prior, she’d taken a half-used matchbook from the kitchen, the one they used to light votive candles and birthday cakes. She brought a sandwich on a dish to her room, finished the sandwich, and burned the pages in the china plate. Then she opened the window and dumped the ashes onto the rosebushes below.

age regression, taemin/kai

When Taemin wakes up, it’s to Jongin shifting under the arm he has slung over his waist. His eyes still feel heavy, dead, and he lets Jongin wriggle ineffectually, making a low sound in this throat. It comes out congested with sleep, barely anything more than a quiet, discomfited groan. At the sound, Jongin stills, leaving Taemin to drift back towards sleep, but after a minute, he can feel Jongin’s gaze on him, oddly alert.

“What,” Taemin mumbles, lifting his head to pillow it a little higher. He peels an eye open blearily and jolts at the eyes that blink back at him, wide and curious.

He’s seen enough baby pictures of Jongin to recognise him, after the shock wears off: by the mouth turning down with petulance, if nothing else, when Taemin says, hoarsely, “Jongin?” In a sleep daze, he tries to remember yesterday night – Jongin, lashes still wet from the water he’d splashed over his face, burrowing under the covers, knocking knees with him. Half-asleep, Jongin had slid a hand to the back of Taemin’s neck, dragging him closer for warmth – adult, twenty-year old Jongin. He rubs his eyes, squinting until his vision swims back, clear, and looks at Jongin again.

quid @ 2013-10-14T20:03:00

2013-10-15T03:03:50Z

our kiss is a secret handshake
hongbin/hyuk, pg-13, 3440ⓦ

Note: Konbini is "convenience store" in Japanese.

Their first kiss happens on camera.

Hongbin’s hands are still on his shoulders, but between them, Jaehwan’s hands are cupped, waiting. Hongbin pulls away first, voicing assurances – “It didn’t touch,” he’s telling the others – and the note of insistence strikes some chord of dissonance in Sanghyuk. He bites down on what’s left of the Pepero stick, dry biscuit crumbling, and draws back to his seat. Someone, probably Wonshik, lets out a low whistle as it’s measured. “2.3cm,” Hakyeon reads aloud, laughing. “Congratulations.”

They switch teams when Wonshik snaps his Pepero stick laughing and Taekwoon intentionally disqualifies himself. Hongbin worries vaguely at his bottom lip for the rest of filming, quiet, breaking into smiles a beat late, while Sanghyuk tries not to look at him until he’s turned away. Back in the car, they sit side by side. Hongbin looks out the window, staring at something beyond his reflection, and every time the car makes a left turn, his thigh shifts away from the contact, comes back to a careful, deceptively casual equilibrium.

In reality, the kiss is the barest of touches, a brief moment of pressure, of contact. Already he is forgetting what it felt like. When the show broadcasts, the first round is cut. Sanghyuk spends the ride awake, staring at Hongbin’s hands, empty and still in his lap, and feels oddly bereft.

He rises in time with his alarm, moving silently through the still-dark room to Wonshik.  He’s still sleeping, laid out in a sprawl, mouth ajar, one leg hanging half off his bed. He leans over, giving him a rough shake. “Hyung, wake up,” he whispers, and gets a muffled groan in return.

In the morning, the bathroom light is always particularly bleak, casting shadows on his face. The routine nature of it acclimates him to morning, being awake: walking out to the kitchen, taking the cereal out, the quiet clink of his spoon against the bowl as Wonshik appears, yawning. He makes room without being asked, blinking a few times to stir himself into a greater wakefulness so that Wonshik isn’t lulled back to sleep. “Yeah,” he raps, waving his spoon in a vague swag movement. “I left the Special K on the counter, yo.” Wonshik kind of snorts out a laugh, shuffling past, which Sanghyuk counts as a win.

In class, he takes increasingly detailed notes to stave off the sleepiness that crawls over him like a blanket. Next to him, his friend stretches out and kicks the leg of Sanghyuk’s table every time he starts blinking too slowly. “Thanks,” he mouths, after a particularly hard jolt, rubbing at the crick in his neck. By the time the van rolls up to the school gates, he’s stumbling over his steps, dropping into the backseat like a weight, and forgets to find his neck pillow before his head is drooping.

He wakes of his own accord, the sound of Jaehwan yanking open the van door rousing him. When he lifts his head, peeling himself away from a sticky collarbone, Hongbin’s watching him. Dazed and warm with sleep, he almost leans up. Then he registers the hand he has cradled up against Hongbin’s side, body habitually curled into the nearest warm body. He pulls back abruptly. “Sorry,” Sanghyuk mumbles thickly, embarrassed, but Hongbin shakes his head, flashes him a tiny smile.

“I don’t mind,” he says, just before they alight to the sound of scattered screams. Sanghyuk steps down and squints, recognises the KBS building. “You looked uncomfortable, before,” he continues, and then turns around abruptly, hanging back to wave to the group of girls gathered alongside the van. The fresh wave of screams cuts the conversation short, and Sanghyuk forces his gaze from the back of Hongbin’s head to a neutral point, raises his hand and waves.

Filming for the concert VCRs starts in August. Behind the cameras, Sanghyuk narrates: “N hyung suffers from excessive drooling due to his overbite.”

“As a result, he's forced to wear a bib,” Hongbin continues, with a shaky attempt at a straight face. He bursts out laughing the instant Sanghyuk does, ducking his head away.

“It's a cravat,” Hakyeon yells, mock cross, and ruins the take. He makes a threatening face, aiming a neck chop at each of their necks, which only makes Sanghyuk laugh harder. Hakyeon glares, crawling back into his coffin.

In the final edit, his canines will be elongated, sharp. There will be dramatic music, an eerie haze of fog. On the set, Hakyeon’s arm pushes open the lid of his coffin with a creak. “Bib,” Hongbin whispers, so only he can hear, and Sanghyuk presses his mouth against Hongbin’s shoulder in an attempt not to laugh. He can feel Hongbin shaking. When their eyes meet, Hongbin cracks. Laughs like it’s the first time.

In the waiting room, he hooks his foot around Hongbin’s ankle, kicks up so that their legs come up together. “What?” Hongbin says, amused. He doesn’t disentangle himself, the weight of his leg settling on Sanghyuk’s. It takes him a moment to look up from his iPod, but he’s smiling when he does.

Most days, he doesn’t think about it. Hongbin is a fixed presence, always a casual arm’s length away to borrow a drink of water or whisper a joke, there to meet his eye when he glances over. He doesn’t second-guess the way he gravitates.

Only sometimes, watching him lift up the back of his shirt to adjust his mic pack, or slide him a glance through a smile, does he remember. “Nothing,” Sanghyuk says, dropping his leg. He stands, faking a stretch, and finds Hakyeon instead.

“You’re cute,” Hakyeon says by way of greeting, when Sanghyuk bobs up from behind his chair. He’s sitting in front of the dressing room table, fiddling with the array of rings. “What’s up?”

Sanghyuk shrugs, one-shouldered, and drops down into the other chair. He prods the ring on Hakyeon’s finger. “Hi.”

“Ow,” Hakyeon says, voice pitched high and reproachful. “Ow,” he repeats, when Sanghyuk prods the ring again, more bluntly. He wiggles his finger to make the ring move. “Why are you doing this to me?” Sanghyuk laughs, and then they’re called up.

Performing shakes him out of it, just as much as the sight of Hongbin’s face when a hundred cheer slogans unfurl at once, at the end of “G.R.8.U.” “Happy birthday, Kong,” Hakyeon yells, over the fans’ screaming, and swipes a sticky, caked finger down Hongbin’s face. Hongbin’s laughing too hard to protest, breathless as he dodges Wonshik’s finger, getting cream in his hair. Taekwoon licks his fingers, disinterested, as Sanghyuk plunges both hands into the cake he’s holding.

He bobs up in front of Hongbin, tongue peeping out as he slaps a messy handful of cake against Hongbin’s cheeks with both hands. “Artwork,” Sanghyuk says, with relish, and Hongbin grabs him by the wrists before he gets a look over Sanghyuk’s shoulder, eyes going round.

“Wait, wait,” Hongbin yelps, as Taekwoon approaches, holding up what’s left of the cake. Hongbin ducks at the last minute, swinging Sanghyuk around with him. The wet smack of impact makes him cringe, cream and cake sliding down his neck and into the collar of his shirt. The screams are deafening. “You deserved it,” Hongbin whispers into his other ear, grinning and unapologetic, and lets go.

They make a convenience store run the first night in Tokyo. “Hurry up,” Wonshik says in a loud whisper, waving them over from halfway down the hall. “I’ve been holding this elevator for like five minutes.”

Sanghyuk shivers when he steps out of the hotel, the cold seeping through two layers of jackets to his skin. He sticks his hands in his pockets, stamping his feet to get warm, then catches up. “Konbini-san,” he trills, plucking at Hongbin’s sleeve.

“Yes,” Hongbin lilts in reply, and Sanghyuk grins.

At the convenience store, Sanghyuk grabs a bag of wasabi peas and sidles into the next aisle to bury it in the handful of ramen Hongbin hands him out of Wonshik’s overladen arms. “They’re for Taekwoon hyung,” Sanghyuk says blithely, when the bag spills into sight at the register.

“Did he specifically ask for those,” Wonshik starts, but the cashier’s already scanning it with the rest of the items, and Sanghyuk widens his eyes in a shrug, dancing out of reach when Wonshik starts to reach for his hood. “Wait,” Wonshik says to Hongbin, tugging hastily at his elbow, but it’s too late: Hongbin’s pocketing Shinwoo hyung’s credit card again already.

“What?” Hongbin says, then eyes Sanghyuk, who’s shoving the wasabi peas into his hoodie pocket.

“Nothing,” Sanghyuk says, cheerfully, picking up drinks. “Winning our bet.”

Hongbin reaches over in response, tugging it back out by the corner. The logo appears before Sanghyuk shoves it back in his pocket, taking Hongbin’s hand with it. Hongbin wiggles free, grinning. “That’s not going to work.”

“I don’t know anything about this,” Wonshik says, defeated, and tucks packs of ramen under his arm.

The others are still watching the same nature documentary when they get back, Jaehwan and Hakyeon on one bed, Taekwoon on the other. When Sanghyuk tries to cross the room, Taekwoon hauls him down by the waist without breaking his gaze. Sanghyuk follows it to the television, then looks to Jaehwan, who mouths, help. Sanghyuk points to Taekwoon’s arm, still barred across his stomach, and then at Hakyeon: busy, ask our deposed leader. Baby ducklings march across the screen as Wonshik stoops down into a squat to avoid blocking the television, waddling over to the other bed with everyone’s drinks, and Sanghyuk stifles a laugh.

He wriggles under Taekwoon’s grip to get his attention, holds out the wasabi peas like a bargaining chip. Taekwoon considers for a moment before letting go, taking the bag. Sanghyuk holds his breath as Taekwoon pops a handful in his mouth. Three handfuls later, he crunches serenely and swallows. “They’re good, thanks,” he says.

“Unbelievable,” Wonshik mutters, to no one, and Sanghyuk makes an aborted shut up gesture. “I’m glad you like them,” he informs Taekwoon, pillowing his head on Taekwoon’s thigh. Hongbin coughs.

“So sincere,” Taekwoon says, looking down at him. For a moment, he looks fond. Then he gently pushes Sanghyuk’s head off so that it thumps down onto the bed.

At the commercial break, Taekwoon, still holding the remote, moves over to supervise, taking the chopsticks from Hongbin. Sanghyuk takes the opportunity to grab a pillow, hitch himself up higher. The bed dips at his hip, and a moment later Hongbin’s tumbling down on his other side. He smells faintly of laundry detergent and smoggy air. “Told you,” he says, in an undertone.

Sanghyuk laughs, drums his fingers on the pillow. “I’m starting to think he really does like everything.”

Hongbin leans back. “Well,” he says, grinning over at him, and Sanghyuk feels something lodge in his throat. “It’s my turn.”

On stage, Rovix’s mouth opens with a pneumatic hiss, billows of steam as they’re raised up in silhouette, released into a sea of people. Light sticks illuminate the darkness like starlight. Listening to his name being chanted, thunderous and incredible, the anxiety vanishes, replaced by a pure shot of epinephrine. The sound of Real V, V.I.X.X, VIXX! echoed by a thousand voices, and then the introduction to “Rock Your Body” floods the arena.

Wonshik shouting, microphone raised in the air, Let’s go, Seoul! as Jaehwan lays down a beat. Hakyeon, lit up by a single spotlight, dancing to his own choreography. Backstage, Sanghyuk listens to Taekwoon’s voice soaring up and up, tugging on a new jacket, checking his mic. Next to him, Hongbin flashes him a smile, sweet and nervous. “Ready?”

“Cherry Blossom Ending,” Sanghyuk had said, when they were brainstorming, and laughed immediately afterward. The list included Bruno Mars, Justin Timberlake, and Sanghyuk crossdressing. Next to the last idea, Sanghyuk had written an adamant NO in English.

“Shower songs are off-limits,” Hongbin said defensively, distracted from where he’d been writing a discreet YES. They were in one of the individual practise rooms at Jellyfish, sitting opposite each other, Hongbin’s right leg lined up against Sanghyuk’s left. When Sanghyuk reached forward for the list, his foot nudged Hongbin’s hip. The room was too cramped to play keep-away. Hongbin watched him write it down, then took the list back and said: “Then I’m putting IU’s ‘Good Day’ down.”

The opening chords set off a frenzy of screams. When the lights come on, it’s to Hongbin laughing a little as Sanghyuk, on impulse, plucks one of the fake pink flowers off the stage. He drops down to one knee and offers it to Hongbin, throwing him a wink for full effect.

Hongbin sings the first line to Sanghyuk, fingers sliding down the neck of his guitar, then takes the flower, tucking it behind his ear. He leaves it there for the rest of the performance, slipping it into his pocket during the ending talk, and when they take their final bow, Sanghyuk reaches for Hongbin’s hand and finds it already halfway to his.

Sanghyuk turns the lights on, then cringes, flipping them off again hastily. “It’s bad,” Sanghyuk says.

“He might not notice,” Hongbin says unconvincingly, fiddling with the elastic on his party hat. Sanghyuk gives him a look that he can’t see. “Ow, that was my foot.”

“Sorry.” Sanghyuk shifts away from the direction of Hongbin’s voice, flicks the lighter and gets a flash of Hongbin and Jaehwan’s faces, illuminated in orange. He gets enough light to find the light switch again, turning it back on. “What now?”

“We still have five minutes.” Jaehwan turns the cake around, inspecting the damage. It’s mostly the piping, one side slightly flat. “Give me a fork,” he says, and Sanghyuk leans over, pulling one out of a drawer to hand to him. He hovers a little, mirrored by Hongbin, as Jaehwan combs the tines through the cream, mending the scrape.

He leans back a little when he’s finished. “Operation complete,” he announces, overtly pleased, and then there’s a series of beeps at the door, the muffled sound of voices. Sanghyuk leaps into action, lighting the candles hastily as Hongbin picks up the cake – “Two hands,” Jaehwan whispers, sternly, just before he cuts the lights.

Taekwoon doesn’t bother acting surprised, but he ducks his head in a smile when they appear, Hakyeon simultaneously wrapping his arms around Taekwoon from behind, each of them singing different renditions of happy birthday: Sanghyuk in a fluttery falsetto, Wonshik in a Gregorian chant, Jaehwan outlasting them all in an operatic version that makes Taekwoon’s mouth twitch as he socks him in the shoulder. “Thanks,” he says. “It’s pretty.”

Jaehwan, out of Taekwoon’s line of sight, flashes them an exaggerated wink. Sanghyuk grins at him. Then Hongbin ducks his head to mutter a thank god in a low undertone, and it sends his pulse jumping into his throat, laughing a little to offset the sudden rush of warmth in his ears. “Yeah,” he says. His voice sounds hollow, shocked. “Right.”

They celebrate New Year’s in the dorms, Wonshik and Jaehwan piling in with six-packs of Hite sometime in the afternoon, clamouring at the entrance as they stamp their feet, hands clumsy in their gloves. He can hear Hakyeon calling softly to someone in the other room. Taekwoon, who is bracing the ladder he’s standing on, says, “A little to the left.”

He adjusts the garland, and at Taekwoon’s nod of approval, reaches for the tape dispenser, fixing it in place. He’s shifting the ladder to put up the last of the decorations when Hongbin comes into the living room, blowing up a balloon, an arm looped around Jaehwan’s. Jaehwan’s holding a half-empty bag of deflated balloons, which Sanghyuk recognises as the one Hongbin’s been working on for the past hour. Hongbin’s face is flushed when he pulls the balloon away from his mouth to knot off the end, laughing breathlessly when Jaehwan dangles another flat balloon in front of his face. “You do one,” Hongbin says, shaking his head and batting Jaehwan’s hand away. “I’m dizzy.”

“I only blow bubbles,” Jaehwan’s insisting, as Sanghyuk clambers down. Taekwoon waits until he has both feet on the floor before he retreats back into the kitchen, where Hakyeon is cooking. By the time he’s returned the ladder to the security guard on the first floor, the sun is going down.

The dorm goes quiet a while after the countdown ends. Wonshik falls asleep first, mouth slightly open against the pillow Hakyeon had slipped under his head, an apology for the unibrow he and Jaehwan had given him earlier, hissing over his prone figure, laid out on the floor, “I could only find a brown marker—”

Jaehwan lies beside Wonshik to take selcas afterward, startling every time Wonshik’s snoring went irregular. The door to Taekwoon’s room closes sometime after 1 a.m. When Sanghyuk goes to the kitchen, Hongbin’s there, standing at the sink, where he’s stacking up dishes. Sanghyuk sidesteps him to open up a cabinet, pulling out a clean glass to pour himself a cup of water.

Hongbin bumps against him a little, rests his chin on Sanghyuk’s shoulder. Sanghyuk offers him the glass, and he takes it, finishes what’s left. “Going to sleep soon?” Hongbin says, pulling away to put the glass in the sink. Sanghyuk’s buzz is starting to fade, but everything still feels soft, vague, and when he leans into Hongbin, moving with him, Hongbin looks a little startled.

He’s reminded, suddenly, of the MyDol PD, drawing the two of them aside to say, Sanghyuk, sit further away from him. How the scripted tension had worked itself between them, so that when he talked to Hongbin, he felt his face heat, suddenly aware of the uselessness of his hands. How they’d manufactured a distance to breach, breaking down bridges, so that later, in the car, with the cameras off, Hongbin had started to slide in next to him, then stopped and reversed.

It feels the same now, hesitant to look up for fear of the honesty he might see there, conscious of their proximity, feeling it cut through the haze. He starts to pull back, and when Hongbin reaches out, puts a hand on his forearm, his first instinct is to flinch. Hongbin lets go almost as quickly, and Sanghyuk says, a little desperately, “Wait, no, sorry—”

Something in Hongbin’s face flickers. He’s quiet for a moment, and then he reaches out, slowly. This time, when Hongbin’s hand circles around his wrist, Sanghyuk lets it. Opens his mouth to the press of Hongbin’s, warm and tentative. Sanghyuk is less careful. He’s breathing hard when Hongbin pulls away, his hand still on Sanghyuk’s wrist. Some part of Hongbin’s mouth is red, and Sanghyuk thinks, with a sudden clarity of want, yes.

For a moment he sees it reflected back at him. Then somebody in the living room makes a sound and Hongbin startles, stepping back.

It’s been months since they came even close to talking about it, even longer since he’s wanted to. “Hyung,” Sanghyuk says. His voice wavers a little. He clenches his hand in a fist to stop himself from reaching out.

Hongbin hesitates, then says, “The first time, it wasn’t an accident.”

It takes Sanghyuk a minute to get what he means, to remember the kiss. “You could have said—”

“I know,” Hongbin interrupts, awkward. “I’m saying it now.” He shoves his hands in his pockets, shoulders hunching a little. His voice goes a little soft. “I didn’t think you—”

Sanghyuk laughs a little, self-conscious as he digs a socked toe into the floor. “Are you kidding?” He glances back up, catching sight of Hongbin’s expression, and flashes him a grin, sweet and nervous.

This time, he reaches out first. Pulls them close and brings his mouth down to Hongbin’s.

He’s splashing water over his face when Hongbin comes in, exhausted, to press a handful of paper towels against his sweaty hairline. Hakyeon had only called five when Jaehwan had mixed up his steps, crashing into Wonshik when he went right instead of left. “Hi,” Sanghyuk says, and pats his face dry.

“Hey,” Hongbin says, through the paper. Sanghyuk dabs at the stray water droplets on his shirt, waiting for Hongbin to finish. When Hongbin reaches the door, Sanghyuk hooks his pinky finger with Hongbin’s, leading the way back to the practise room. He doesn’t have to look back to know Hongbin’s mirroring his smile.

quid @ 2013-10-06T23:37:00

2013-10-07T06:37:54Z

shadow of the giant
g-dragon/tao, r, 3135ⓦ

Note: Remix of gdgdbaby's drabble for kpop_ficmix (original post); significantly edited. Thank you for the help, Viva.

“You’re a gamble,” they tell Zitao, bluntly, when he’s first offered the contract. YG has no infrastructure for Chinese trainees, isn’t particularly concerned with developing any: not an inch of slack if he doesn’t understand what the dance instructor barks at him, or shows up late because he’s unfamiliar with the bus route or Seoul at rush hour. There are no second chances. “You decide the outcome.”

His days drag themselves through a cycle, rinse wash repeat: he doesn’t learn the words morning, afternoon, evening, knows them by the names vocal practise, dance practise, Korean lessons. His tongue tangles itself around the complexities of Korean grammar, struggling to read deceptively simple characters and to sing the notes being played at him on a keyboard, throat opening up to release an awkward fledgling of sound. “Do you deserve to be here?” his vocal coach says, and Zitao, prepared for harsh words, tries not to flinch, nods mutely. “Then sing like it.”

The language barrier is relatively easier to ignore at dance practise, years of martial arts and yoga lending itself to fluidity and grace; his body knows itself, its exact weight and give, quick to break down choreography without instruction, assimilate each routine to muscle memory.

The hardest part he tries not to think about, as winding down after an hour of practise, the other trainees gather on the other side of the room, backs turned as they speak in rapid-fire Korean. He stretches out his leg, calf muscle twinging, and practises counting in time with the clock, hana, dul, set, net, until the dance instructor returns.

The YG trainee rumour mill is a solid fifty-fifty: fifty percent gossip, fifty percent bullshit. From snatches of overheard conversation, he pieces together the latest: G-Dragon is featuring a trainee on his next solo album. Maybe the girl with the sweet contralto who had won a street singing competition recently, or the seventeen-year-old rap prodigy, Zitao thinks, scuffing the rubber on his sneakers as he paces, trying to memorise the song he’s been assigned for the week.

His Korean is accented at best, at times unintelligible. It’s less noticeable when he sings, easier to mimic the sounds, words that are put and not produced in his mouth. He borrows CDs from his Korean teacher and falls asleep every night to the repetition, hello, my name is, nice to meet you.

Back in Qingdao, he’d drafted the application in secret, holed up in his bedroom with the door locked as he filled out his name, date of birth, nationality; recorded a tape of him performing a wushu routine in the empty gym of his high school after hours, shoes loud as they scraped across the shining finish; set his camera on top of books stacked on a chair in a makeshift tripod, sorted through the blurry shots of his attempt to set up the auto-timer, the pictures of himself blinking and unprepared, for one that highlights his jawline and his eyes.

He thinks about his mother’s wet eyes, asking, “Is this what you really want?” as he flipped over his paperwork for Beijing Dance Academy to makes notes on visa procedures, flights to Incheon. Separated only by the Yellow Sea, Seoul was the furthest thing from Qingdao, and Zitao, sitting by the Han River past midnight, could only think of bigger bodies of water, the moon pulling the tide home in its yearning.

He’s staying late for the third day in a row, running through the latest choreography; he keeps missing the instep on the sixty-fourth beat, more than a few moves not as sharp as they could be. Alone, he’s stripped down to his inner shirt, sweat soaking the cotton so that it clings to his back, hair matted under his hat. The lights are dimmed, but the music is still loud, echoing through the room on a loop, consuming his focus; he mouths along to the chorus, punctuating each word with the snap of his leg or the swing of his arm.

He’s nearly through the coda when a sharp blade of light reflected in a corner of the mirror catches his eye, light spilling in from the open door, interrupted by a silhouette. It’s the audience that startles him, makes him stumble over the last of the choreography, until he’s standing dumbly while the song starts over, still staring at the familiar profile: mussed hair and a sharp chin, leaning in the doorway with a self-possession that made it graceful, natural, as if he belonged there.

Zitao half-expects to be spoken to, but he just leaves, letting the door close behind him. But for a moment, the light shines onto his withdrawing face, and Zitao recognises Jiyong.

The first time he saw Jiyong in person, it was in a packed arena, G-Dragon commanding the stage like it was his birthright, microphone solid in his grip. The second time, Zitao was lost in the YG building, and the elevator doors had slid open to the sight of Jiyong talking to someone that Zitao had only recognised as Sean long after the doors had shut again.

The latest encounter seems too surreal to count, too much like the fleeting fantasies he’d had back in Qingdao, of meeting Jiyong, the same half-shuttered expression he’d conjured up for Jiyong when he’d laid in bed, stripped, and licked his palm. He gathers his things in a daze, pulling on his spare shirt and trudging to the bus stop, and by the time he’s home, he’s sure he imagined it: a combination of fatigue and stress and wishful thinking.

By the third month in YG he’d learnt the magic trick: get good enough. A dream was common, immaterial: it didn’t matter if it was something genuine, I want to sing, or wanting to meet the subject of every sexual fantasy he’d had at – or since – seventeen. He said “thank you” to every criticism, eyes stinging but dry, tried twice as hard as he let on, and when he crawled into bed at night, he was too tired to hold a thought, let alone move, to do anything but sleep, wake up, and do it all over again.

He’s convinced until he arrives at vocal practise a few days later to find Jiyong there, waiting for him. He’s not entirely sure that Jiyong could possibly miss the look on his face, biting his lip to try and school his expression into something that isn’t wonderstruck and completely uncomprehending, but Jiyong, having waved him into a chair, just delivers his pitch, only looking faintly amused when he says afterward, “Got all that?”

Zitao’s throat is dry. “Yes,” he manages, unconvincingly, and then he remembers the rumour, Jiyong’s words finally stringing themselves together into something that makes sense. Before he can stop himself, he blurts: “Me?”

Jiyong laughs. “Yeah,” he says, after a moment, like Zitao’s bewilderment is assuring, somehow, but the affirmation makes him sit up straight. “You in?”

It isn’t really a question. Jiyong twists the ring on his thumb, waits for the only answer Zitao could give. It doesn’t take Zitao more than a second to nod, firm, and Jiyong says, “Great.” He pulls the door open, pausing in the doorway to look at Zitao again, who, unsure of the proper reaction to make, hastily bows. When he hazards a glance, Jiyong’s mouth is curved into a faint smile. “Looking forward to it, Zitao,” he says, and then he’s gone.

His sessions with Jiyong start a few days later, Jiyong sweeping into the studio with sunglasses and a five o’clock shadow, sometimes late, sometimes bringing with him the acrid smell of cigarettes, and still the Jiyong of his idolatry and imagination pales. In his dreams, Jiyong is always painted in fluorescents, bold colours. Black for the roots growing out of his once-blond hair, white for the flash of straight teeth when he smiles, dressed in reds and golds like a symbol. But it’s nothing like the real Jiyong, who laughingly corrects Zitao when he mispronounces a word, and who fumbles with the only Mandarin he knows, accent atrocious – “I love you, thank you, we are Big Bang” – for the way Zitao lights up in recognition, this Jiyong, infinitely vibrant and alive.

All of it is unfamiliar territory, the small recording booth and a map of sound waves reflected on every display, but Jiyong moves through it with ease, trailing his fingers over the tabletop as he passes by. Zitao tries not to look as wide-eyed and out-of-place as he feels, anchors his gaze to Jiyong to keep it from wandering.

Zitao’s parts are divided into several singing parts and a rap. The singing parts are fairly simple, and Jiyong starts him off easy, handing him sheet music and running him through it a capella, humming the melody bar by bar for Zitao to follow. He makes a noise, low in his throat, whenever Zitao gets it wrong, finger tracing along an invisible stave as he sings the line, motions for Zitao to try again.

It’s easily within Zitao’s range, meant to play up on the slight huskiness of his voice in its lower register, build up a contrast to Jiyong’s voice. The parts aren’t particularly complex, but Zitao’s voice is pitchy, audibly nervous and tenser with every repetition. “Loosen up,” Jiyong says, not unkindly, after a few failed attempts leaves Zitao frowning, trying to bury his embarrassment under his frustration. The bracelets on Jiyong’s wrist jangle as he reaches forward, squeezing Zitao’s shoulder briefly. “We’re just practising; no one’s asking you to be perfect.”

Zitao nods, looking down. “Take a breath, and try again,” Jiyong says, and Zitao does.

He buries himself in the second verse for a week, singing it under his breath during breaks, on the bus, in the shower. “It sounds better,” Jiyong says, the next time they meet. Then, catching sight of the grin that breaks over Zitao’s face, bright and immediate: “Keep practising.”

“Okay,” Zitao says, but he’s still smiling, so wide it hurts, and Jiyong lets him have it.

He forgets about the rap until Jiyong’s playing through the track, in full for the first time since they started. Jiyong’s vocals are already attached, and when the rap comes up, he motions to the screen. “The rap’s something like this.”

His Korean’s improved, but not that much. “I can’t even read that fast,” Zitao pouts, slumping in his seat. Jiyong laughs, lets Zitao butt his shoulder and then stay there. His hand reaches up between them to ruffle Zitao’s hair.

Zitao can feel Jiyong breathing, warm over the top of his head. “We’ll work on it, kid,” Jiyong says. His hand is still in Zitao’s hair.

Jiyong’s version of “working on it” is running him through drill after drill, surveying him while tilted back on the hind legs of his chair, snapback pulled down low. He watches Jiyong over the edge of the lyric sheets, the clench of his hands that preclude a lurch every time he tips too far back. The curl of his mouth, love me hate me supercilious or something much more simple, content, depending on where he was and who he was supposed to be; right now, Jiyong’s mouth curves upward a little every time he meets Zitao’s gaze. It makes it better.

He spends an entire day on pronunciation, reading the lyrics without any cadence, another on enunciation, then flow. “Again, clearer,” Jiyong says, for the third time, and Zitao fits the pen back in his mouth, recaptures his rhythm, and starts rapping again.

His jaw aches by the time Jiyong lets up, saying, “Here, give me your phone.” He finds the camera application, switches it to video and focusing it on his face. “This is your homework,” he says, absently, before he’s rapping, the same few lines Zitao had stumbled over for the better part of an hour unrecognisable in their fluency, the easy, effortless way it tumbles out of Jiyong’s mouth.

Jiyong holds out Zitao’s phone when he’s done, but when Zitao holds out his hand, Jiyong doesn’t let go. “This is just so you have an idea of what it should sound like,” Jiyong says. “If I wanted it to sound like me, I’d do it myself. It has to be you.” Zitao nods, swallowing, and this time, when he reaches for his phone, Jiyong gives it to him.

The lighting in the video is off, Jiyong’s face perpetually blurred by pixels, but the audio is mostly clear. He watches it twice. In the middle of the third replay, he rolls over onto his stomach, so that when he gets a hand down his pants, he’s boxed in by heat, hair sticking to his face, pushing into his grip with Jiyong’s voice talking him through it. He sweats it out like a fever, trembling, face pressed into his pillow so that when he comes, he chokes down on the sound.

“Let’s hear it,” Jiyong says, crossing his legs and leaning back. He has a copy of the lyrics in hand, pen at the ready. He’s wearing sunglasses again, which both relieves Zitao and makes him feel bare in comparison, exposed. Zitao clears his throat, rolls his shoulders back, and runs it through.

Jiyong nods when he’s done, without looking up. He’s annotating the lyrics, circling a few words, and Zitao tries not to look too much. “The video helped?” Jiyong says, finally, handing the lyrics sheet back to him.

“Um,” Zitao says. He takes the paper, shifts it to one hand to rub a sweaty palm down his thigh. Jiyong’s gaze follows his hand down, and Zitao, embarrassed by the attention, clears his throat. “Yes?”

Jiyong’s silent for a moment, seemingly lost in thought. Then Zitao shifts a little, and Jiyong rouses himself. “I can still hear a bit of hesitation,” he says, slowly, eyes flicking up to Zitao’s again. “I think you should memorise it.”

“Memorise it?” Zitao repeats. He tries not to look put-out: even after dedicating a week to the rap, it was vaguely familiar at best.

Still, Jiyong catches some sliver of his expression and shakes his head. “You’ll still have the lyrics in front of you when you record, but it helps with the delivery, makes it more natural.”

Zitao’s only halfway convinced, still processing the idea, but Jiyong just nods at the paper in Zitao’s hand. “Take a few minutes to look it over, then I want you to say it back to me, okay?”

Zitao takes thirty. His first recitation is full of pauses, stop-starts as he finishes a line, exhales as he tries to recall the next. Two solid hours later, Zitao’s barely glancing at the paper as he raps, Jiyong nodding along, heel tapping out a beat for Zitao to follow. When he drops into his chair, exhausted, Jiyong hands him his own water bottle. Zitao takes it, looks expectantly at Jiyong over the mouth of the bottle as he downs half of it in one go.

Jiyong watches him wipe his mouth with the back of his hand, waits a little before he can’t help the corners of his mouth tugging up and gives it to him: “You did good, kid.”

“Focus,” Jiyong says, sounding amused, and Zitao startles, flushing. His gaze snaps back down to the pages in front of him, adjusting the microphone to his height. Through the thick glass and the headphones, Jiyong’s voice is muted as he calls out, “Ready?”

Zitao swallows around a mouthful of water and gives him a thumbs up, screwing the cap back on the bottle. He scans the sheet music, lands easily on the highlighted start point. When music fills the tiny booth, Zitao counts down the beats in his head, opens his mouth, and sings.

When they’re done for the day, he leaves the booth to watch Jiyong layer the tracks together on the chorus, playing it out loud in short fragments. Jiyong doesn’t move when Zitao approaches, taking the empty chair next to him. He’s fascinated by the sound of Jiyong’s voice coming together with his, even more so by Jiyong’s expression, lined by concentration as he listens intently, absently rubbing at his lower lip with a hand that then drops to tap at the keyboard. Jiyong hums a little when he finishes, leaning back in his chair. He glances sideways to Zitao, flashes him a soft, crooked smile. “What do you think?”

“It’s good,” Zitao says. He grins back, a little shy as he ducks his head. When he looks up, Jiyong holds his gaze, even and unblinking. “I mean, I like it.”

“That’s good,” Jiyong says.

He runs through the rap four times, warming up, until Jiyong steers him into the recording booth, hands on Zitao’s shoulders. “Just try it,” Jiyong’s saying, when Zitao turns around and pulls him in after him. Jiyong stumbles a bit, but when Zitao catches a glance of his expression, Jiyong’s not quite surprised, a hint of something that is suddenly familiar, decipherable, and Zitao feels a flash of – triumph, maybe, sure enough to lean down and press their mouths together.

He loses track of everything else until Jiyong pulls back, putting up a hand to stop him when he automatically follows. It’s not a no. “You’re recording it today,” Jiyong says, carding his fingers through Zitao’s hair, at once tender and immutable, and Zitao nods, distracted enough to agree.

“Okay.” He lets go of Jiyong’s wrist, reeling him in by the waist instead. This close, he can smell Jiyong’s cologne, skin-warmed and tantalising. He finds Jiyong’s mouth again, mumbles against it, “Later.”

Later, they both know, his voice will be too raspy, hoarse. For now, Jiyong’s mouth is soft and yielding, leaning into the hands Zitao has poised over his belt like a question. Jiyong’s breath is hot, fanning across his cheek when he pulls away, pushing Jiyong into the chair.

“Later,” Jiyong repeats, and twists his fingers into one of Zitao’s belt loops. Pulls, hard, and Zitao, jerked to his knees, leans forward and loses track of the conversation.

—

“I need one of those,” Seunghyun says, lifting an eyebrow, and Zitao, startled, lifts his head. Jiyong’s fingers slide out of his hair with the movement. Seunghyun’s standing in the doorway, holding a bag of chips. Jiyong brushes his fingers against the small of Zitao’s back before he turns, leaning back in his chair like a lazy house cat.

Zitao settles back down complacently, the papers under his arm crinkling as he props his chin back on his arm. The conversation eludes him, but even he can hear the smirk in Jiyong’s voice when he says, “This one’s mine.”

Seunghyun just snorts.

quid @ 2013-09-18T09:45:00

2013-09-18T01:45:59Z

mono/stereo
jonghyun & baekhyun, pg-13, 1150ⓦ

Note: Thank you for the help, Dane. For intoaclub.

There are already students streaming out of the double doors when Baekhyun arrives at the Performance Centre, a few minutes past two. He rubs his palms against his jeans, and watches the ritual glance of sun off the glass doors as they swing from hand to hand. There's a bead of sweat tickling the back of his neck from the walk over, and he’s reaching back to wipe it off when a hand taps his shoulder. He jumps, almost decking the guy with his elbow, and ducks into an half bow on reflex.

“Baekhyun, right?” he says, unruffled. Jonghyun is only a little taller than he is, holding a worn A4 pad and his bag in the same hand. Baekhyun glances at the notepad, making out “tenderly, warmly, quietly, silently” amongst the scribbles before Jonghyun manages to cram it into his bag.

“You got me,” Baekhyun grins, a little sheepish. He’s thrown by the catalogue of differences, abruptly morphed from the distinctly first-year photograph of Jonghyun on the student listings – brown, sideswept hair and polo replaced by a white-blond, multiple piercings, and a swimmer’s physique.

His voice, though, is the same. “Thanks for meeting me here,” Jonghyun says, hitching his bag on his shoulder, phone in hand. He automatically leads the way, walking down the stairs. “So how do you feel?”

“Honestly?” Baekhyun says, falling into step beside Jonghyun. “Nervous.”

They didn’t exactly flyer for the campus radio. Joonmyun, his Music Theory II TA, had only mentioned the radio station in passing. “A friend of mine’s looking for a co-host, if you're interested,” he said.

He’d offered to introduce them, but Baekhyun, sitting back in his chair, shrugged and pushed his gum into his cheek with his tongue. “Nah,” he said, taking out his phone. “Give me his number, I’ll shoot him a text.”

The rest, once it was in motion, was mostly Baekhyun tuning in as Jonghyun sang songs off a list of listener requests and talked about upcoming performances by student groups. On the listings, recordings of Jonghyun’s shows went back almost two full years, the majority of them labelled “Co-hosted by Wheesung and Jonghyun.” In his e-mails, Jonghyun sounded friendly, asking about Baekhyun's music preferences and launching with equal eagerness into a discussion on Park Hyoshin’s vocal techniques and embarrassing stories about Joonmyun, whom he’d roomed with in freshman year.

“Kim Jonghyun?” Chanyeol had said once, leaning over the back of his chair. His breath hit the back of Baekhyun’s neck, and Baekhyun twisted away on reflex. Chanyeol grinned and leaned in a little more, then wheezed a little when Baekhyun landed a punch square to his chest.

In the background, Jonghyun was still talking, reading out an advertisement for Code Name Blue’s latest guerrilla concert, as Chanyeol clutched his heart, massaging it reproachfully, and said, “Baby, don’t hurt me.”

Kyungsoo had chosen that precise moment to walk in. “Are you having a domestic?” he said, hand still on the doorknob. “Should I come back later?”

“No,” Chanyeol said, brightening as he turned around. “You should stay.” Behind him, Baekhyun pointed to Chanyeol with frantic jabs and mouthed: MAKE-UP SEX KINK.

“I think I’ll leave,” Kyungsoo said, eyeing them both, and made a smart reverse-turn, pulling the door shut behind him.

“You were saying,” Baekhyun reminded Chanyeol, who was still looking forlornly at the door.

“What?”

Baekhyun rolled his eyes. “Kim Jonghyun?”

“Oh,” Chanyeol said, and leered. “I heard his nickname’s ‘30cm’—”

Baekhyun’s phone buzzed while he was still sitting on Chanyeol, watching him eat carpet. He leaned back, eased it off the table to read it. Underneath him, Chanyeol made a muffled noise of discomfort. Are you free tmr at three? Jonghyun said. I’m filling in for someone, we could make it your test run.

Sure, Baekhyun texted back, then Chanyeol heaved and Baekhyun capsized.

“There’s not much to it,” Jonghyun says, as they pull up outside KNUA Hall, automatic doors sliding open. “About forty minutes out of the sixty is music. We take song requests, and those play for the last ten minutes, so generally playlists are a half hour. A request for a song that we don’t have in the studio, we sing.” He pauses to punch the button for the elevator. “Oh, and we have to keep it PG-13.”

“Shame,” Baekhyun comments, absently, and Jonghyun laughs, bright and a little surprised. He leads the way, still humming the song from the elevator as he swipes his ID card and punches in a key code. He presses a finger to his lips when he opens the door, and bossa nova filters in a moment later. There are two girls in the studio, on air, and Jonghyun waves animatedly through the glass before he motions Baekhyun toward a side room.

When Jonghyun flicks on the light, they’re surrounded by CDs – shelves, boxes, stacks of them. Jonghyun starts rifling through the papers on the table, so Baekhyun flips through the CDs in the nearest box, pulls one labelled “Kim Jonghyun” out. “I bring in a lot of my own CDs,” Jonghyun says, at Baekhyun’s questioning wave. “I started labelling them, but I keep losing them anyway.” He grins, a little ruefully, and taps the side of the box, where someone’s written in neat print: JONGHYUN OPPA’S LOST AND FOUND.

Jonghyun’s phone pings, and he picks it up, looking at it briefly before he says, “Kyuhyun hyung says we’re on in ten minutes; we should head over.”

“Right,” Baekhyun says, drumming his fingers on the table. He takes the script Jonghyun hands him, flips it open just as they’re settled in the studio. The page is nearly blank, just the setlist with a couple of announcements in between. “Wait, is this the right—”

“Just have a conversation with me,” Jonghyun says, cheerfully, and then the signal countdown lights up. “This is Kim Jonghyun, filling in for Yang Seungho on K-ARTS Radio. Guesting with me today is—”

“Byun Baekhyun,” he fills in, smoothly, and they’re off.

“—frontman Kim Jongdae of B⚡LT. Their first performance is this Thursday night, 8 p.m. at the Lounge.” Jonghyun half-turns in his chair. “We’re closing the show tonight with our last song request. Are you ready, Baekhyun-ah?”

“Are you sure you don't want to take this one,” Baekhyun half-laughs, in lieu of a reply. He adjusts his grip on the microphone again, reaching forward for the lyrics sheet Jonghyun hands him.

“All yours,” Jonghyun says, flashing him an invigorating smile. “Number #2036’s request, Kim Dongwook’s ‘Confession.’”

“I think I can retire my voice,” Jonghyun says, once they're off air.

“I thought you were looking for a co-host,” Baekhyun laughs, around the mouth of his water bottle.

“I’ve found one,” Jonghyun grins, and holds up his hand. Baekhyun steps down, leans forward, and high-fives it.

quid @ 2013-09-06T09:56:00

2013-09-06T01:57:00Z

dead on arrival
g-dragon/top, pg-13, 2100ⓦ

Note: Set in an AU where there is no Big Bang, only GD&TOP and zombies.

“Shit,” Jiyong says, ducking as the soldier snarls and lurches toward him. He gets him with a bullet under the chin. His head explodes, bits of bone fragment and brain matter flying, and the body falls at his feet with the wet, sepulchral sound of grey flesh. “Breakfast,” he calls.

“Don't be disgusting,” Seunghyun calls back, but he laughs. He nudges a body aside with a boot and grimaces a little when the toe comes away dirtied. Underfoot, the shattered glass crunches. He ducks warily into the gas station’s tiny convenience store, but it’s quiet, the hollowed-out silence of a bomb shelter. The cabinet behind the counter is open, door wrenched half out of its hinges: the alcohol’s predictably all gone, but there’s a decent array of cigarettes, and Seunghyun considers for a moment before he thinks, might as well, and grabs a pack of Lucky Sevens, Marlboros for Jiyong, jams them both in his pocket and gets to work.

Jiyong appears in the doorway a while later, scrubbing a hand through his hair. He smells like adrenaline and motor oil. “Half a tank in the Mazda, and Sgt. Hungry had some ammo and a grenade. Not bad.” Seunghyun looks up and grins: paydirt. Jiyong hums as he walks up and down the aisles, surveying the meagre offerings. He grabs a pack of gum, unwraps one and folds it into his mouth. He’d stopped feeling bad about this part a long time ago. He moves onto the next aisle, looks into Seunghyun’s bag. “That’s not food,” he says.

Seunghyun, testing the water taps, mumbles something like semantics. A couple raids and people stopped being nice, stopped leaving money on the counter, stopped working under the assumption that anyone else was alive to leave supplies for. The first aid section is gone. Seunghyun had scrounged up a crushed cup of Jagabee, a dusty bottle of unsweetened black tea, and a three-pack of laver seaweed. Fresh was out, preservatives were in.

The sun is full and high by the time they’re done. His stomach is empty. There’s a body laid out beside the Mazda, face blank but for an echo of thirst. The flies, buzzing for a taste, have descended. “Hey,” Seunghyun says, and tosses him the Marlboros. The pads of Jiyong’s fingers are dirty, blackened. He holds the cigarette between a forefinger and a thumb, close to the filter, and nurses the flame from the lit end of Seunghyun’s cigarette.

Five months ago, a scientist working on recombinant DNA for animal viruses had gone home with a violent fever, numbness in his extremities. He’d returned to work the next day, died during the lunch hour and clocked back in along with everyone else.

The government’s response had been predictably military, with the result that most of what they called the first wave were soldiers. It’s a good thing, Seunghyun had grunted, heel crunching through nose bone, they don’t retain any of their tactical training. Instead, they were slow, vicious but uncoordinated, scenting out the weakest targets. Maybe I just taste better, Jiyong said, a little bit affronted. Don’t be jealous.

You probably taste like squirrel, Seunghyun got out, before he had to clamp his mouth shut to avoid a spray of blood.

These days, more of them were civilians. Ammo was getting scarce. The president of South Korea had gone into hiding. The virus had gone global. GD&TOP had been in the middle of a tour after their third album. For weeks, they’d travelled around in their tour bus. For the second concert in Seoul, their biggest fansites had held a support project, with the result that their mini-fridge was crammed with little fruit parfaits and water bottles with custom labels, chocolate croissants and madeleines, a three-tier cake with their fondant likenesses. One side of the bus was crammed with clothes racks, boxes of accessories and a tumult of shoes. “I feel a little bad,” Seunghyun had said, tearing open a bag of gummy bears. The black and gold sticker flashed as Jiyong made a haphazard turn. “For never holding that concert.”

The venue had been sold out, but the curtains never rose. Backstage, a girl had burst through security, looked up at Seunghyun, and said, “Oppa.” When her jaws widened like a hinge, Chaerin had grabbed a shoehorn, swung hard at her head, and said, “The concert’s off.”

It would be the third time they’d tried to run from a schedule and the first time they succeeded. Jiyong, going over last-minute logistics with a pyrotechnics specialist across the room, hadn’t seen it happen, but it was hard to miss the crack of metal against bone. When he got to Seunghyun afterward, Seunghyun was still staring at the body, the unnaturally bent arm and crushed skull, eyes still human enough to express something more tender than hunger.

The show had been sold out for weeks, fans streaming into the venue even as they’d ducked out the back door, but Jiyong knew it wasn’t them Seunghyun was really sorry to. When he looked over, gave Seunghyun a careful once-over, he was spearing the gummy bears with a fork, eating them tine by tine. It felt oddly cannibalistic to watch, even stranger to feel reassured by it. “Give me a white one,” he said, at last.

Once most of the food was gone, they’d gone for his Audi, parked in his parents’ villa. Seunghyun had argued the admittedly-significant benefit of having what amounted to a moving house, but shrugged and deferred without hearing out Jiyong’s reasoning. The tour bus ate up gas faster than they could get it; when they reached Pucheon, he pulled into park and watched the fuel indicator swing down past the E and die. After that, he started tapping unleaded, any grade, from every car they could get to, draining every gas station pump that still had something left to give.

He hasn’t showered in an age. He keeps his face and his hands clean when he can, but everything else mostly stays in a permanent state of grime and sweat so thick he could feel it on him like a second skin. He avoids mirrors. At any given time, Jiyong is a pretty good approximation of what he must look like: the dirty fingernails, the matted hair, the same haunted look Jiyong gets when he’s startled awake – which is pretty easy, these days, shying away from noise and movement, one hand tight on his crowbar, the other reaching out for Seunghyun before he’s cracked open an eye.

Jiyong’s best with a knife, going from nought to sixty, opening up a sickle curve on a throat, angled so that the blood sprays away from him. The carotid artery spills fast, like something wild, trapped under all those layers of skin. Seunghyun’s still holding onto the baseball bat he’d picked off some dead kid in Suwon. Between the two of them, they have a semi-automatic each and a pistol neither of them use. He’s the better shot of the two, but Jiyong had shrugged, said, better save the ammo. For emergencies was the implication: Jiyong, after all, always adjusted faster. It was Seunghyun who kept forgetting, had to keep waking up and remembering, we’re not in goddamned Kansas anymore. Holding onto an antiquated idea of normalcy like a grudge.

Things go to shit around Cheongju. It’s impossible to get into the city, cars backed up like a fleet, everyone trying to get a flight out. The exit ramp is a mass grave: bodies fighting to get in, bodies fighting to get out. There are walkers all over the place, swelling out past the barricade of cars. Jiyong makes a U-turn in the middle of the road and pulls off at a rest stop.

Seunghyun watches him walk out, shaking out the stiffness of the drive, then tries to get some shut-eye. He’s still in the car when he hears Jiyong shout, eyes snapping open as a body slams against the passenger window, snarling. “Jesus,” he curses, his elbow slamming into the door hard as he shoves it open, knocking the body off, and drives his machete into it. There are four of them, starting to swarm around Jiyong, who drives his knife into an eye socket, jerking away when a hand clamps down on his arm. “Ji.”

He drops another one, machete snug in its skull, in time to see Jiyong stab one in the throat and go down under another, its head ducking to clamp down on his neck. It takes two steps to reach him, yank the body away from him and pull out his semi-automatic. It tumbles down next to Jiyong, and Seunghyun pins it down with a foot across its protruding collarbones, leaning over it so that the shot meets its face point-blank.

For a moment he feels as wild as anything else out there, narrowed down to one purpose, breath heaving, seeking out flesh and bone: Jiyong’s palm warm and clammy against his, his pulse jumping frantically under his grip. Like he could smell the fear, the adrenaline, how alive Jiyong is. He pulls Jiyong to his feet.

They had one rule: stay fucking alive. “Sorry,” Jiyong says, quietly. He’s shaking. Seunghyun’s thumb brushes over the inside of Jiyong’s wrist again, unconsciously. His heart is still hammering in his chest, so loud he can’t hear properly; he feels like he’s been cut open, laid out and raw. Then Jiyong shakes free, crouching back down to retrieve his knife, fingers slippery with thick, viscous blood, and the moment passes.

They meet some kid gunning it alone in Daejeon, brass and mouthy, rifle slung over his shoulder. They cut a path through city central, dealing with strays. They’re halfway through when he appears on the other end of the street, swinging a hatchet casually as he calls out, “Everyone all right? Anyone need a mercy killing?”

“Bite me,” Jiyong says, baring his teeth, and Seunghyun flips him off.

The kid throws his hands up in a gesture of peace. “Hey, it’s my city, gotta look out for her.”

Daejeon had evacuated early. Parents dragging their crying children out the door, the commotion of a thousand bodies huddled together and waiting. Anyone who refused to leave, or couldn’t, was put down. One shot, clean through the head. In the city’s main hospital, nurses administered sleeping pills in bulk and locked the exits. The smell of rot carried out into the city, where cars were still parked at schools, newspaper stands half-empty, “open” signs hung over shop windows.

Kid has a perfect bird’s eye from the roof. At eye level, the tranquility is almost believable. Like the city was asleep, and the monsters were the dream, something out of a Goya painting. “Don’t look down,” Jiyong says, drawing up next to him, and Seunghyun kind of laughs, turning away from the edge.

Turns out the kid is also packing all kinds of heat. Seunghyun whistles, low and impressed, and picks up one of the shotguns. “You the fail-safe or something?”

“Or something.” He points out the gas stations and safe – “clean” is the word he uses – streets to Jiyong, finishes talking him through back-end alley routes and Plan Bs and reverts to the weather: post-apocalyptic small talk. “Gwangju’s a clusterfuck, if that’s where you’re headed,” he says.

Neither of them ask if that’s where he’s from. Instead, Jiyong tips out a cigarette, holding out the carton to the kid after a moment’s consideration, and just shrugs when he declines.

At some point, the motorway empties out. A couple hundred kilometres after the last lone car, Jiyong pulls over, gets out. Through the backseat window, Seunghyun watches Jiyong slam the door shut, open the adjacent rear door. He starts to draw his legs up to make room, but Jiyong gets an arm bracketed on either side of the seats, knocking knees with Seunghyun, and yanks the door shut with a foot.

When he gets to it, Jiyong’s mouth is warm, unhurried. “Been thinking about this,” Jiyong admits, doesn’t say how long. Seunghyun has his thumbs pressed into the naked dip of Jiyong’s hipbones when Jiyong leans back, punches the lock on the door. The open fly of his jeans makes a wide V, cast in the hazy shadow of the car interior. The sun is coming in low, eclipsed by Jiyong’s shoulder, the line of his neck: the illusion of time.

quid @ 2013-07-17T15:30:00

2013-07-17T07:30:49Z

flick your cigarette then kiss me
kai/sehun/lu han & kai/taemin, r, 2500ⓦ

Note: Not the model AU anyone but Viva and I wanted; related reading. Warning for brief mention of eating disorders.

The mattress that Jongin pushes Sehun into still doesn’t have proper sheets, still left on the floor like an afterthought in their tiny one-person flat. “Welcome home,” Jongin says, maybe laughs it, as he crawls over him, and the sound is thrilling, Sehun reeling Jongin in to unwind the flutter in his chest, Jongin’s teeth sharp against Sehun’s throat like he wants to draw blood.

Jongin sits at the edge of the mattress and smokes afterward, without bothering to open the window. Sehun, still lying down, trails his gaze to the fire alarm on the opposite wall. It’s duct taped, which makes Sehun laugh, propping himself up with an arm and leaning into Jongin’s right elbow. Jongin holds the cigarette to Sehun’s lips with his left hand, lets him take a long drag before pulling it away for himself, tipping the ashes into an empty beer bottle, the movement lazy and graceful.

Things get moved around, but nothing ever seems to change; to some extent, they’re all transients, “home” just an interim between calls, the place you kind of hated seeing because it meant you didn’t have any bookings – but the closest thing they have to a home is still bare, stripped down, housing the perpetual paranoia of failing to make rent like a fourth tenant. The closest thing to a personality the place has is the thrifted copy of Fahrenheit 451 splayed open on the table and the unwashed bowl next to it, the wall so splintered they could practically see their next door neighbours through the drywall, damage unmentioned on the listing because even then it was practically four-star for the LES.

Jongin’s Alex Turner poster is coming off on its top right corner again, Scotch tape flecked with the paint it’d peeled off the wall, curling like a leaf next to a post-it on which Lu Han had scribbled, Oh Sehun, you owe me $5! and which Sehun had taken the liberty of crossing out once he’d paid him back, without it occurring to him to take it down – as if forgetfulness were a stand-in for decor.

And then there are traces of Taemin, stale and lingering: a CD booklet for some rock band or other, whose name Lu Han had laughed at, saying, what if I started a band called Ten Inch Nails, broken earphones hiding under a stack of junk mail. A month after he’d had moved out and it was his absence that festered and rankled: the only knife left was plastic, from some junk food chain, and Jongin sometimes still looked like he was trying not to say come back to the person walking out the door.

“I’m hungry,” Sehun says, stretching his arms over his head when Jongin’s down to the end of his cigarette. He leans over the side of the mattress to find his shirt, half buried under his letterman.

“Breakfast of champions,” Jongin says, flicking his lighter, but acquiesces when Sehun rolls his eyes, finishing off his cigarette and cramming it through the bottleneck. It’s close enough to noon for a first meal; Jongin stands to tug his clothes back on, black jeans and a thin white T-shirt, foals scrawled across the front.

It’s a block and a half’s walk to the nearest bodega, manholes disgorging steam in large, menacing billows and fleets of cars running yellow lights, zigzagging over the crosswalk. There’s an issue of Nylon amongst the array of publications displayed outside, Choi Jinri on the back cover advertisement in a Marchesa dress, long black hair spilling over her shoulders, skin pale and lips blooming red, cat-eyes drawn in thick and heavy. “Shit,” Jongin says, voice full of wonder, picking it up to look at it. “She looks like the fucking devil.”

People said she got into the industry too early, editorials lined up at her feet before she’d even hit puberty. It’d caused a storm of controversy, at the time, inadvertently skyrocketed her straight to her first show. They said the same thing about Jongin, too, but while they were probably right about Jinri, with Jongin it was just that he’d been in it for too long; he wore the arrogance, the sex, “mannequin” like a second skin, so that Sehun always had to dig for anything real, anything that wasn’t meant to be sold but just there, just Jongin.

Because once, Jongin, drunk at a PFW afterparty and lost in what might have been the 9th Arrondissement, had pulled Sehun to sit on the stairs leading to the subway, a sprawling fire hazard, and whispered in his ear, the only time I feel like my body is mine is when I have sex. This, Sehun remembers thinking, is why they say he got into the industry too early, but it was partly also just Jongin refusing to admit he’d had his heart broken.

It was a bad idea to sleep with Jongin, but it was infinitely worse to say no to him, somehow, when he said please, even if he didn’t remember it the next morning; he sunk into Jongin while under them, the sea drank the city in a siren song, a romance and a tragedy.

And he could see it, too, the way Jongin during sex was real, even vulnerable, giving his body up to something only he could own, every little death. The infinitesimal moment where Jongin, stripped of glamour and self-destructiveness, would reach out, brutally laid open, without façade.

Sehun slings an arm around Jongin’s shoulder, relaxed and easy. It is as close as they get to intimacy, any kind of depth of feeling: Jongin leans into the touch for a moment. Then he puts the magazine back so that the metal rack runs across her neck.

Jongin was scouted on the streets when he was fifteen, for the ligne that he would eventually sell to a cadenced walk, a graceful turn. He’d mistaken the business card for a flyer or a scam at first, shoulders hunched as he tried unsuccessfully to dodge past the agency recruiter, mumbling, “Not interested.”

Different company, same tactics: Sehun, at seventeen, had run from what he’d thought was a particularly aggressive come-on, and was unflaggingly chased for four blocks before, out of breath and his breakfast, which he’d dropped turning a corner and was probably already lost to the carrion birds of Midtown, he took the card and shoved it into his pocket without looking. The city had perfected his look of testy disinterest, and he nodded, not really listening as she said something about Chinese, interested in ethnic models, and forgot about it until the card shook out of his jeans along with $0.43 in change on laundry day.

Lu Han was picked up an amateur, opted for a life of international flights and sleeplessness, trading the terror of being shot sky-high and the wax and wane of the shadows under his eyes for the chance to be paid in currency instead of clothes; was picked up in turn by Sehun, who had let Lu Han grip his hand so hard on a rocky descent into PEK that he left marks that stung when touched, who had let Lu Han apologise later with the same hands, whose name was the only one on the lease.

Just something to do, Sehun had told himself. Until he got things figured out. But the industry didn’t work that way: it took something from you, left you with your fingers down your throat or picking your poisons, always perpetuating the glamour that got you trapped in the first place. By the time he was nineteen he’d been to every major international airport, gotten lost in the endless cobblestone streets of Milan and dragged himself through onslaughts of London weather in a dreadnought, coughed up smog and alcohol in Los Angeles and felt Beijing, Tokyo, Seoul buzzing and swarming around him; and even before then, he’d learnt that it was the cracks that they could fill with gold. “Male model” was an occupation you let use you and break you and leave you for dead by the time your age could be rounded to thirty: he’d learnt that it was the people who didn’t hate it that you felt sorry for.

He wasn’t Lu Han, who sang as he salvaged his toast from the jaws of the crumb-choked toaster, pretty little ballads in Mandarin, each and every one of them about heartbreak; or Jongin, who he’d never seen dance but knew he must, still, from the way he carried the grace, like a shadow or a secret. He’d had nothing to take away when he signed on, but when it was over, there was nothing that would take him back. But to only end up in proverbial wasteland, stuck cultivating distant dreams – artist, musician, actor, writer, each of them as unlikely as the next – trying to be more than a face and clinging to it like a lifeline anyway, rapidly approaching expiry all the while: it was something to be grateful for.

⎯

Lu Han is one of the last minute additions to Jongin’s final booking in Seoul, filling in for one of the models who’d been caught with marijuana – the industry’s fluctuating morals at play, again. Jongin sees him after his own walk, stripped down to his briefs and stepping into a different pair of trousers, dropping what is probably several thousand dollars onto the floor like trash. It takes him less than a minute, outstripping military in its clockwork, before he’s dressed again, hair and makeup intact, filing into his place in line. The only thing that surprises him is that a replacement would walk twice.

Seoul Fashion Week is always wildly experimental; Jongin spends ten minutes scrubbing the circus paint off his face with a grimace while the backstage area is swarmed with what looks like Halloween come early. He hangs around afterwards, waiting for Lu Han, and when he appears, Jongin lets him pilfer a couple drags off his cigarette, fresh out of one of the cartons he’d bought coming through duty-free.

Someone detaches from the commotion of the next imminent show, approaching Lu Han with a camera, and it takes a while for Jongin to separate his voice from the rest of the multilingual chatter, realise he’s speaking in Mandarin. Lu Han makes a brief reply before tugging on Jongin’s elbow, muttering by way of explanation, “Blogger.”

Jongin’s shifting into a pose before Blogger has his camera ready, dropping the cigarette and snuffing it out with his boot. Neither of them are wearing anything even remotely Sartorialist-worthy – Blogger, with a gauzy scarf and multiple piercings, looks more the part they do. When they’re left alone again, Lu Han just looks down at the flattened cigarette and says, “Waste of a smoke.”

Jongin’s milling on the sidewalk, closing his eyes to feel the thump of the bass in the club as he leans against the side of the building. The wind is cool, teasing the loose collar of his shirt; his mouth is still sweet with the tequila and salt he’d licked off Lu Han’s wrist, tongue chasing it down the valley of his palm, revelling in the press of Lu Han’s fingers on the inside of his cheek before Lu Han had laughed, pushed him away gently, and said, you’re drunk.

Isn’t everyone? Jongin said, but went outside anyway, sending Sehun a pointless text he knew Sehun would ignore, too busy watching some film and probably getting high, some kind of girl’s night affair with some models he’d met off his last shoot for some Made in U.S.A. brand with a casting call that had basically said, eating disorders preferred, wire coat hanger girls.

He pulls from the cigarette between his fingers, exhaling slowly and opening his eyes. He’s startled to see Taemin, but thankfully drunk enough that he doesn’t do anything but look fixedly at him as he approaches. His hair is shorter, but he looks the same, otherwise, blinking before he smiles, says, “Hey, haven't seen you in a while.”

The last shoot they’d done together was early in the fall/winter campaign, with two European models and a vintage car in a neighbourhood in Logan Square, foliage ablaze with light. By then, Taemin had already been dating Jinri for a month, and Jongin didn’t look at him once, didn’t have to, as he wound an arm around one of the models’ waists, stepped in close, and pressed his body to hers for the camera that swooped in like a voyeur.

Something warm and solid bumps against his shoulder, then, a voice in his ear saying, “Thank me later,” right before Lu Han slides a hand into his back pocket, looks at Taemin coolly, and calls a cab.

—it smells sharply of vodka, a hiss caught between Jongin’s teeth as the needle leaves his skin, Taemin leaning back to admire his handiwork. The letters are stark, slanted against his hipbone, the skin around it red and painful. “You’re so good,” Taemin breathes, leaning up to kiss him, and when his fingers dig into the skin just under the fresh ink, Jongin whines, shuddering. Taemin says his name back to him as if trying to make him remember, Jongin, Jongin, Jongin, and Jongin is drowning, insensate to everything but Taemin, hot under his skin—

It’s Lu Han who’s running a thumb over the letters now, as if only just seeing them for the first time, while Jongin frowns, twists impatiently. Lu Han’s hands frame the concave of his hipbones as he says wryly, “Caveat emptor, huh?”

The ink is starting to fade, as ephemeral as the pain, as everything else. As if they weren’t all damaged goods, one way or another; his body is a canvas – here is the place your fingernails bit, here is the place where you left the angry kiss of a bruise, here is where you whispered lies into my skin. Every inch of him is mapped, meticulous as a science. Jongin leans up, runs a hand through Lu Han’s hair. “Shut up,” he says, and crashes their mouths together.

When Jongin is alone, he flicks the lights off, the floor creaking as he walks across it barefoot. He’s memorised the exact dimensions, all the little irregularities, with his steps, the slight uneven sag in the right corner and the dip in the centre from a flooding. He used to watch himself in the cracked reflection of Taemin’s tiny television set, but now there is only a pockmarked wall, another space, another thing he is learning to reclaim. He closes his eyes, lifts his arms and his head, feels his spine straighten, toes pointed. In his head, he hears the music crescendo in a swell of strings, the gilded grandeur of the Palais Garnier, and he dances.

quid @ 2013-07-08T14:23:00

2013-07-08T06:23:21Z

victory's within the mile
kris/baekhyun, pg-13, 4080ⓦ

Note: How to write about politics without actually writing about politics (or anything of consequence): Kris runs for president, and Baekhyun is his running mate.

“Please, student council elections are just a glorified popularity contest,” Baekhyun said, and then held up his fingers, counting off. “No competition, you don’t actually do anything as president, it looks great on college apps, and,” he smiled. “I’d be on your ticket. It’ll be easy.”

At the last one, Kris laughed, which Baekhyun knew was as good as a concession, but all he said was, “I’ll think about it.” They had walked all the way to the gymnasium now, where the rest of the basketball team was clustered next to the bus, in the suits that signalled an away game. Kris hefted his duffel bag a little more securely on his shoulder. “You should probably get back.”

“I’m good for a few more minutes,” Baekhyun said. In actual point of fact he had four: at 2:50 p.m. he’d leaned back in his chair, held up his hand, and asked to go to the bathroom. It gave Kris a five minute head start from when the basketball team had been let out at quarter to three for their game, and Baekhyun had stepped out of sixth period English just in time to catch Kris turning the corner.

He gestured for Kris to come closer and tucked his hall pass under his arm. When Kris leaned in, Baekhyun loosened his tie, tugging the tail down straight before cinching the knot again. “Knock ‘em dead, tiger,” he grinned, patting Kris’ chest on the flimsy pretext of smoothing down his tie.

Kris laughed again, tipping him a salute, and by the time class was over, Baekhyun had a new text: okay, it’s worth a shot, it said. In choir, he dropped into place on the risers and said, “Operation: Kris for President is a go,” reaching over his shoulder for a high five. At the slap of palms he curled his fingers up and Jongdae bumped his fist, other hand already busy texting Chanyeol behind his sheet music. Kyungsoo slid into place just as the bell rang, and flashed him a wide smile when Baekhyun answered his mouthed how’d it go? with a thumbs up.

“It’s all about strategy,” Jongdae said the next day, gesticulating with the french fry he’d stolen from Chanyeol’s lunch tray.

“You mean candy,” Kyungsoo said, droll. His assigned Lit reading was in front of him and he was only half-listening, eating almost absently as he read.

“Exactly,” Jongdae said, dipping the french fry into his pool of ketchup. “Between Kris and Baekhyun that’s the entire female population settled, including the cheerleaders, plus the basketball team, drama and choir, and all associated friends and fans. The swing voters, we glut. It’ll be an all-kill,” he concluded, with relish, and ate the fry with a snap of teeth.

“Posters, speech, candy,” Chanyeol read off, tearing the checklist out of the back of his gridded math notebook. “Anything else?”

“Success,” Baekhyun said, and Chanyeol wrote it down with satisfaction.

“Remind me how this was a good idea,” Kris said, several hours later. It was 2 a.m. on what was now officially Sunday, and the floor of Kris’ living room was still littered with candy and slips of thick card stock that said ☆ KRIS FOR PRESIDENT | BAEKHYUN FOR VP ☆ in various colours. There was paint on his nose, from making posters all afternoon; Baekhyun was trying to find the right moment to tell him. Or to sneak a picture.

“Slumber party with the captain of the basketball team,” Baekhyun said thoughtfully, holding up a finger with tape on it. “I think I’m the envy of every girl in school. And Chanyeol.” Kris reached over, unstuck it from his finger, and labelled another candy bar.

“Yeah, but what’s in it for me?” He could hear Kris smiling, and he busied himself with the tape dispenser, so that the next time Kris reached over, he waved a hand at him, tape fluttering from each finger like a grass skirt. Kris raised an eyebrow, nicking part of his skirt and ignoring Baekhyun’s scandalised look, and continued. “Seeing as I’m doing all the work here, I’m expecting some pretty heavy compensation.”

Baekhyun chose to respond to the safer half of that statement, lurching up out of his slouch. “Hey,” he said, all mock affront. “You’d be nowhere without me.” To prove his point, he pulled his hand away when Kris reached for another piece of tape. He dodged when Kris tried again, scrambling backwards, and Kris narrowed his eyes, which was the only warning he had before Kris tackled him.

He landed on his back, breath knocked out of him, and Kris leaned over him, hands coming down on either side of him. Very deliberately, without breaking eye contact, he unstuck a piece of tape from Baekhyun’s finger. His hand came back down, holding the tape between a forefinger and a thumb; his arms tensed briefly as if he was about to push up onto his feet, and then he leaned down the rest of the way and kissed Baekhyun.

When he pulled away, Baekhyun reached out, grabbed the front of his shirt, and pulled him back in. He was aware of the silence, suddenly, their soft breathing, as his fingers went slack on Kris’ shirt, relaxing into the spill of his body, the slide of their mouths. Kris’ body was warm, his fingers brushing Baekhyun’s stomach through his shirt as he slipped his tongue into Baekhyun’s mouth. The noise Baekhyun made was quiet, swallowed.

He was about to slide his hand into Kris’ hair when he heard the crinkle of tape. At the sound, Kris pulled away to look, and Baekhyun laughed, wiggling his taped fingers a little ruefully. “Call it a night?” he said. He dug an elbow underneath him to prop himself up, detaching the lines of tape onto the edge of the table.

Kris leaned over, sticking his piece of tape next to Baekhyun’s, and said, “Okay.” He kissed Baekhyun again, soft, and got up, pulling Baekhyun to his feet after him.

“I love your mom,” Baekhyun said, fervently. “I love you,” he added, as Kris’ mother walked out of the kitchen with more pancakes. She laughed indulgently, put the plate on the table, and left. Baekhyun rolled the sleeves of his shirt further up – Kris had lent him one of his old, too-small tees to sleep in, and it still ballooned a little comically in places – and forked another pancake onto his plate, drowning it in syrup.

“Easy, Romeo,” Kris laughed.

Baekhyun couldn’t tell if he was referring to his mother, the pancakes, or the syrup, so he ignored him, pointing with his fork instead. “I’m Mercutio, thanks very much. Unless you want to be Juliet.” He mimed long hair and threw Kris a coquettish look.

“Who am I, then?” Kris grinned. He had his chin propped up in one hand, eyebrows raised in interest.

“Benvolio,” Baekhyun said, waggling his eyebrows. “The other, lesser known, sordid tryst of Montagues and Capulets—” He burst into laughter, ducking as Kris balled up his napkin and threw it at him.

“I’ll give you sordid,” he growled, mouth twitching, and Baekhyun winked salaciously at him over the rim of his plate.

He had just gotten out of the shower, steam making his shirt cling, when Kris looked up from where he’d been comparing answers on their Econ homework and said, “Your phone’s been going off.”

He didn’t sound annoyed, so Baekhyun didn’t bother to apologise. “Thanks.” He grabbed his phone off the desk, still towelling his hair dry with one hand, and flashed Kris a startled smile when he caught him looking still. He dropped back onto the bed to scroll through the new texts. A few minutes later, he sat up. “We’ve got trouble.”

Kyungsoo (10:34a)
Jongin’s running for president.

Chanyeol (10:38a)
really? how do you know

Kyungsoo (10:40a)
He told me.

Baekhyun (10:41a)
how big a problem is it?

Chanyeol (10:43a)
he dances, chicks dig that shit

Kyungsoo (10:44a)
He won the talent show last year.
And he’s pretty good-looking.

Jongdae (10:48a)
Smear campaign!

“Plans to destroy Justin Timberlake,” Jongdae said, snapping his fingers at Kyungsoo. “Go.”

“I don’t know, I kind of like him,” Kyungsoo said. “Seeing as he’s, you know, my friend.”

“So you should know all his weaknesses,” Jongdae fired back, in a tone that clearly said, your point?

“Bad news,” Baekhyun said, amused. He tossed his backpack at the foot of the stairs and ducked through the arched entrance of the playground watchtower, crawling over Kyungsoo to sit next to Chanyeol, who still looked asleep. “Kris says we should play nice.”

Jongdae rolled his eyes even as he helped pull Baekhyun down. They were getting too old and too big for this place, the fit getting tighter every time. “Of course he would say that. That’s because Kris is a good person. With morals.” He sounded equally fond and scathing.

“Hey,” Chanyeol protested. His head came out of his hood, revealing a shock of sleep-mussed hair, crushed under a hat. “I’ve got morals.”

“Molars,” Baekhyun corrected. “You’ve got molars.”

“All the better to eat you with,” Chanyeol said, sweetly, and leered.

The posters went up several days later, after their list of slogans, most of them Chanyeol’s invention, was officially approved by administration. They’d fast-tracked it through the red tape together, Baekhyun flashing the secretary a winning smile and Chanyeol putting on his model student act. Kris and Baekhyun arrived an hour before school to put them up, Baekhyun stifling yawns in his hand as Kris reached over him to tape down the top corners of a poster that began, DOUBLE OR NOTHING. By the fourth poster, Baekhyun was shivering, his hoodie riding up every time he held up a poster or stretched up to tape down a corner. “Sorry,” Kris said, breath clouding into white in front of him. “Almost done.”

“It’s okay,” Baekhyun said. In spite of the cold, he was starting to doze off again when Kris’ arm wound around his waist. The sleepiness and the chill of the morning snap made his reflexes sluggish, and all he did was lean back into it, cocooned in warmth.

When he opened his eyes, all Kris said was, “Come on, three more.” He picked up the stack of posters, and Baekhyun put the roll of masking tape back around his wrist, where it nestled in the bunched-up fabric of his sleeve.

“I still think I got shafted with these,” Baekhyun remarked, when they had left behind HEAD AND SHOULDERS ABOVE THE REST: KRIS FOR PRESIDENT.

Kris grinned down at him. “Take it up with Chanyeol.”

“I did!” Baekhyun grimaced as Kris tucked SHORT & SWEET: BAEKHYUN FOR VP under his arm. “The other ones were even worse.” He’d firmly vetoed at least a dozen, but Chanyeol had an endless arsenal of height jokes, each of them worse than the last; they’d become size jokes by the time Baekhyun gave up, saying, you’re a useless best friend. Kris laughed. “Can’t we put this one up somewhere nobody can see?” he tried, frowning up at Kris and tugging at the corner of his poster.

“Nope,” Kris said, happily.

The campus was still deserted when they finished, staff only starting to trickle in. When they reached the car, Baekhyun slid into the backseat and dumped the tape. Leaning over the centre console, Kris cranked up the heat, so that the windows, already opaque with steam, clouded over. Baekhyun kicked off his shoes and pulled Kris back by his clothes, crawling into his lap. “We only have twenty minutes,” Kris reminded him, but his hand was already moving to Baekhyun’s hip.

“I know,” Baekhyun said, and leaned in.

There was a formula, of sorts, to popularity: a system of weights for each characteristic, implicitly understood by everyone in the school, down to the last tier. Kris was the captain of the basketball team, tall, and good-looking, the holy trinity of high school popularity. Baekhyun, by contrast, was the school darling: the lead role in every play since his sophomore year debut in Peter Pan, friendly with everyone, honour roll regular, and a look-twice kind of attractive.

People like Jongin were effortlessly popular. Cruising on his talent and his looks, he managed to stay well-liked despite uneventfully sleeping through every class and mostly keeping to himself and the Dance Club. His popularity peaked twice each year: around the annual talent show and the homecoming skit, after which the Dance Club would receive a slew of new members, mostly giggling girls who just wanted to watch Jongin practise. There was a good month before either of those events, but Club Day was coming up, and the Dance Club always put on a performance, of which Jongin would inevitably be the star.

Public Enemy Number Two arrived in the form of a mass text from Kyungsoo. It was a single photograph, of a poster that blared, in pristine, printed letters: KIM & KIM. There were approximately a million Kims in their year, between first and last names, but the glossy print gave it away – Junmyeon Kim. One of the names on the shortlist for salutatorian, far too many extracurriculars for anyone to remember – at the moment, Baekhyun could only remember his being on Model UN and the golf team, thankfully the two things the rest of the school barely even knew existed – and rich. It explained, he realised, why someone like Jongin would run for president: Jongin was the face, and Junmyeon pulled the strings, foot the bill, and played politician with his beauty pageant smile. It wasn’t entirely unlike what they were marketing.

“Only,” Jongdae said, when Baekhyun called him, still five minutes away from school. He sounded like he was chewing, and swallowed before he continued. “Kris is pretty capable in his own right. And Junmyeon’s smile is like, a Miss Teen USA at best. Their entire campaign is like, deep V-necks and Junmyeon’s credit card.” He could hear Jongdae rolling his eyes. “They’re gonna tank. Look, I gotta go, I’m supposed to to be supervising the freshmen in the workshop, they’ll probably saw off their own fingers without me—” His voice went indistinct, through another mouthful of food. “—get this chassis built by Friday.”

Kris arrived ten minutes afterward, and Baekhyun, across the courtyard, watched him out of the corner of his eye as he talked. Kris, looking over his friend’s shoulder, found Baekhyun, and when Baekhyun glanced in the direction of one of the KIM & KIM posters and back, Kris made a tiny, barely perceptible nod. “Don’t worry,” Kyungsoo said, following his gaze, and Baekhyun’s attention snapped back to Kyungsoo like a rubber band. “Your speeches are going to be brilliant. I know because I’m writing them.” His voice dropped a little. “And Junmyeon’s in AP Chem, I’ve graded his lab reports. His writing is just okay; I can do better.”

Baekhyun opened his mouth, closed it. “Is that,” he started.

Kyungsoo widened his eyes innocently. It made him look a bit owlish, as if his head were about to turn 180 degrees to spy, unblinkingly, on the people behind him. “What?”

“I’m glad you’re on my side,” he settled on, and Kyungsoo smiled.

“This is awful,” Jongdae moaned. “Can’t he break his leg?”

Kyungsoo, eyes riveted to the stage, said, “And become a martyr for it?”

“Wouldn’t that make him dead—”

Someone elbows Baekhyun on accident, who flinches and knocks into Chanyeol. “Well, thanks, now it’s premeditated—”

A wave of screams as Jongin drags a thumb across his mouth and smirks. “This is awful.”

Jongdae’s idea of a failsafe was Kris and Baekhyun tag-teaming the cheerleaders’ table before school, Jessica looking extremely unimpressed and uninterested as she blatantly texted, while next to her, Tiffany blew a large pink bubble with her gum. Baekhyun kept getting distracted by the bobble of the pink, feathery pom-pom of her pen as she wrote.

“So we just hand all of this out?” Taeyeon said, sounding almost sceptical. She tilted one of the paper bags to look inside. Her fingernails were painted apple green, with tiny white polka dots. “And ask people to vote for you?”

Baekhyun nodded, and Kris said, “Yeah,” a little lamely. Baekhyun couldn’t tell if Taeyeon had that effect on everyone, or just everyone he knew. Her hair was a tumble of honey blonde curls, and when she pushed them over her shoulder, he could smell her perfume – Daisy by Marc Jacobs, Chanyeol had informed him once, with a knowledgeable air, and when Baekhyun looked at him incredulously, he said loftily, connections, Baekhyun, connections.

“Okay,” she said, amicably, and Baekhyun tried not to die of relief as Kris chorused his thanks with unnecessary hand gestures. “We can eat some, too, right?” she said, immediately afterward, already rooting around in the bag, and Baekhyun laughed.

“It was, what’s the word?” Chanyeol said, and made an expansive gesture. “A blood bath.” His face looked flushed, all lit up as if he’d just sprinted a mile, and his voice radiated awe. “I hope Yearbook got pictures. I hope somebody got pictures.”

The way he heard it, all nine senior cheerleaders had stationed themselves in the quad, in their cheer uniforms, and within ten minutes, it was practically a riot: Seohyun kept having to interrupt her own earnest campaigning to pick up the megaphone and ask people to form a line, while next to her, Sunny kept pouting and asking people to absolutely promise before giving up her candy.

They’d also decorated the girls’ locker rooms with Tiffany’s pink heart-shaped post-its, most of them variations on “Vote for Kris” and “Vote for Baekhyun,” the handwriting on each of them distinctive. Chanyeol was currently in an Ebay bidding war for one of Taeyeon’s.

“Thanks again,” Baekhyun said, the next time he saw her. She saluted firmly in response, eyebrows knitted together and mouth flattened in mock seriousness, and then burst into a laugh that was halfway between a giggle and a snort. “No pressure, but you have to win now,” she informed him, and waved brightly as she left.

“As president, I will ensure that the voice of the student body is heard?” Kris recited, voice lilting into a question. Baekhyun nodded, without looking up from the script in his hand. “Is heard,” Kris repeated, more firmly, resuming his pacing. “And that the opinions and concerns of the students, conflicting or otherwise, are represented equally in decision-making processes…”

Sitting on Kris’ bed, Baekhyun hummed, tapping his knee with a finger, and said, “Are equally and uniformly represented.”

Kris let out a breath, walking forward and slumping onto the bed next to Baekhyun. “This is a lot harder than, ‘Vote for me and I’ll bring back Nacho Tuesday,’” he told the ceiling.

Baekhyun leaned over, ignoring Kris’ grunt when his elbows dug into Kris’ ribcage. “Well, all most people are going to hear is, ‘Vote for me because I’m really hot and authoritative,’ so…”

“Is that so,” Kris said, nudging Baekhyun’s elbow so that he slid further down.

“That’s all I hear when you talk,” Baekhyun grinned, and scrambled to cling to Kris when he moved to throw him off.

Jongdae was determined that they should wear suits on D-Day: black tie, white shirt, and under no condition, Chanyeol said, dutifully relaying the message, were they to take their jackets off, because it would supposedly defeat the purpose. Kris and Chanyeol were taking a break from their one-on-one, and Chanyeol was losing, a miserable 2 to Kris’ 5. Between that and the way Chanyeol was leaning back on the bleachers and panting, he reminded Baekhyun of a pathetically overheated mastiff. Baekhyun took pity on him, fanning him with his marked up Midsummer’s script.

He’d lost track of their game, the squeak of sneakers fading out of earshot as he became absorbed in memorising the blocking for Act II. He’d feigned interest in basketball for approximately two weeks, making Chanyeol sign up for tryouts and attending each trial, on the pretext of cheering for his best friend, whilst staring shamelessly at Kris from the bleachers. Chanyeol had accidentally made it onto the team, but by then, Baekhyun already had Kris’ number.

The strip restriction, as Chanyeol called it, turned out to be unnecessary: it was cold the next day, although thankfully without wind, because Baekhyun had let his sister attack his hair with Bumble & Bumble and her fingers for what felt like an age. She had let him do his eyeliner on his own: he’d done it enough times last year, when they’d done Dracula in the fall. When Kris picked him up, he took a long look at him and then said, abruptly, “Can you fix my tie?”

“It looks fine,” Baekhyun said, surprised.

“I think it’s crooked,” Kris insisted.

“It’s not,” Baekhyun said, leaning over to double-check. “I told you, it only gets mess—”

He was cut off by Kris’ mouth. “You look really good,” Kris said, when he pulled away, and Baekhyun had only managed a dazed “oh,” realisation dawning slowly in his mind, made kiss-stupid. He couldn’t believe that worked. “Seat belts on,” Kris said, sounding overly pleased with himself, and pulled out of park.

“You have the dumbest lines,” Baekhyun said, and looked out the window to hide the smile he couldn’t suppress.

“Go smile at people,” Jongdae hissed, turning Baekhyun around and pushing him away with both hands. Baekhyun’s head swivelled back to where Jongdae had stationed Kris at the end of the voting table, where he was all smiles and thanks as he handed people “I voted!” stickers, getting flustered whenever girls tossed their hair back and ask him to put it on their shirts for them. “Go!” Jongdae repeated. “Dazzle!”

“Okay, okay,” Baekhyun said, tearing his gaze away as Kris declined with an inane, “Maybe next time.” He spotted a face he remembered from his brief stint in track and field, halfway across the quad, and made a beeline for it. “Hey, Edison,” he called out, and smiled brightly when he turned to Baekhyun like a sunflower, face radiant. “Have you voted yet?”

He was edging toward a group of girls when Kyungsoo passed by him, herding all of his politically-apathetic friends to the voting booth with vocal promises to share his AP Physics study notes, and Baekhyun mouthed a fervent, I love you the most at him. Kyungsoo held up his left hand, pointing and looking supremely haughty: put a ring on it.

In fifth period, he glanced at Kris twice in two minutes before he thought, fuck it, and texted him.

Baekhyun (2:15p)
your face is going to get stuck like that

Kris made a ha ha, very funny face at him, but a moment later his eyebrows were knit up in vague consternation again.

Baekhyun (2:16p)
you know, it honestly isn’t a big deal if we win or lose

It clicked even before Kris responded, and when he did, Baekhyun made a noise he hastily turned into a cough, clearing his throat for good measure. The teacher continued talking blithely and Baekhyun propped an elbow on the table, feigning interest in the supply/demand graph on the board. He heard Kris laugh under his breath as he texted back surreptitiously.

Kris (2:17p)
It’s a big responsibility.

Baekhyun (2:17p)
sounds like a job for kris responsibility wu

When he looked at Kris again, he was smiling a bit, which was something. Baekhyun raised an eyebrow, mouthed: we good?

Kris’ response was interrupted by the crackle of the overhead speaker. Baekhyun’s head whipped around and out of the corner of his eye, he saw Kris go wooden. Baekhyun bounced a knee as the principal’s voice dragged over the underclassmen’s election results.

The class exploded before she’d finished saying Baekhyun’s name, and he didn’t hear Kris’ at all over someone’s loud whoop and whistle, busy getting jostled by people who punched his shoulder in congratulations, but when he looked over, Kris shrugged at Baekhyun, smile wide.

“Mr. President,” Baekhyun greeted, backpack slung over one shoulder as he leaned on the passenger door of Kris’ car and grinned.

“I’ve been thinking,” he said, as Kris reversed. “Since we have all this newfound power, we should use it for good.”

“Spare me,” Kris said, and drove.

Also posted a few drabbles recently.

quid @ 2013-06-29T14:40:00

2013-06-29T06:40:56Z

phone drabbles

a scene from public enemies, g-dragon/top.
note: warm-up (of sorts) for jesse james au.

They killed Seunghyun first, months before Jiyong.

It was a bad way to go, gunshot wound in the flare of his ribcage, blood so thick it looked black, and aggravated by the run through the woods: he’d fallen twice, and both times Jiyong had said, “Get up, goddamnit,” holding onto his hand. Jiyong was still holding his hand when they slipped, silent as a whisper, into the safehouse, the instant commotion culled short at the sight of Seunghyun. The walls were thin, everyone quiet, sombre, trying not to listen to the two of them in the next room.

“Leave me alone,” Seunghyun was saying, over Jiyong talking wildly about bandages, a compress, the sound of his boots tracking his pacing. And then, softly: “Come here.”

“Don’t,” Jiyong said, a moment later, sounding choked. A shuffle of movement.

“I know,” Seunghyun said. He sounded tired, then, heavy with conviction. The conversation wasn’t making sense: Seungri looked at Daesung, but he was looking down, his hands clenched in a cleaning rag.

wouldn't it be nice, baekhyun/chanyeol.
note: dead wip.

"You're such an idiot," Baekhyun says as he squats down with a cotton swab, unscrewing the bottle of iodine.

Chanyeol hisses as Baekhyun swipes efficiently along the scraped, bloody mess of his knee. "Easy, will you?" He leans forward to reassess the damage, his skateboard rolling forward into Baekhyun's when he pushes off it.

Baekhyun rolls his eyes, handing Chanyeol a bandage. "Do it yourself, then." He chucks the iodine back in his backpack and watches Chanyeol wince as he applies the bandage and rolls his trouser leg back down.

The fall air is crisp, the early breeze still chill. Baekhyun pulls his sleeves down absentmindedly, and Chanyeol puts one of his earphones back in, handing the other to Baekhyun.

"Kind of early, isn't it?" Baekhyun had only been half awake when Chanyeol called, asking if he had a first aid kit. Chet Faker drawls in his ear as he stifles a yawn with the back of his hand.

"School's starting soon," Chanyeol shrugs. "I wanted to, you know, make the most of it." Baekhyun nods, in time with the music. Summer had been mostly uneventful, two weeks in Busan with family and the occasional party or beach bonfire. Chanyeol working the bottle cap of his beer off on the hard cement edge of their fire pit, and then later: laughing breathlessly into Chanyeol's skin when Chanyeol hit his head on the roof of the car, his fingers, salty with seawater and sand, tangled in Baekhyun's hair.

red vs. blue, kai/lu han.
note: originally part of an au written for v.

"I told you it was bad luck," Lu Han says cheerfully, corralling the ball with him to the sidelines. He's up 5-0, cheeks flushed and hair wind-combed.

"It's not," Jongin insists, too winded for a proper comeback. His hand comes to rest on his jersey, as if to personally reassure Fernando Torres of his belief in him. Every week, Lu Han copies down the time on the counter on hastorresscoredforchelsea.com onto a post-it and sticks it in the most irritating place he can think of: on Jongin's pillow, the handle of Jongin's toothbrush, and once, on Jongin's forehead when he fell asleep at his desk.

He takes the Yakult Lu Han hands him, sipping sulkily at the straw. "I have the worst roommate ever," Jongin writes to Soojung later that night, who signs her e-mails as "Krystal" ever since she moved to the States. Before she'd left, she'd said, "Write me," in the bored, offhand kind of way that meant she meant it. "I'm going to shred his Rooney jersey into confetti. I'm going to draw all over his RVP poster with permanent marker."

"Can we talk about something else, Jongin," Krystal responds, a few days later. "This is boring."

quid @ 2013-04-07T11:49:00

2013-04-07T03:49:32Z

in the stillness of expired time
kris/lay/lu han, pg-13, 4060ⓦ
warning: character death

Note: Never Let Me Go AU — in which people are cloned to harvest their vital organs. Poem by Charles Bukowski; other notes footnoted (click to move back and forth).

If I never see you again
I will always carry you
inside
outside

on my fingertips
and at brain edges

and in centers
centers
of what I am of

what remains.

Yixing looks small, lying in the hospital bed, so pale that Lu Han can almost imagine the layers beneath the skin: the web of nerves, the blood, the muscle, the bone. The words on his file are clinical – first donation completed (kidney), bp low but stable – and they don't describe the bruises under Yixing's eyes, like inky thumbprints, or his wrists, thin as a reed, the bone jutting out above the donor bracelet; the sharp, cutting line of his cheekbones, always in bas-relief when he'd known him.

The moment their eyes meet, Lu Han realises that he hadn't thought it through – hadn't thought of what he would do next, what he would say to him, only seen Yixing’s name and gone blindly to him. Yixing's voice is hoarse but achingly familiar on the inflections of Lu Han's name. He closes his eyes, again, and Lu Han almost thinks he's drifted back to sleep when he speaks again. "I'm glad it's you."

I'm glad it's you. The fear, the trepidation dissolves so rapidly that Lu Han almost laughs in relief, throat tight, and he looks away. The top of Yixing's bureau is tidy: a glass of water, medicine, and the cassette. He picks it up, turning it over. The case is scratched so that the plastic is no longer clear in some places, a hairline crack on the back where Yixing must have dropped it once, and the front still frames the worn, red paper, slightly yellowed with age, that says, best of Peking opera, 1981-1989.

They all had something: for Lu Han, it was a photograph of Maggie Cheung in a red qipao, that he'd kept in a tin for egg rolls. He'd gotten them both in the Sales, the same place where Yixing got his cassette, borrowing half of Yifan's tokens to buy it. At the next Sale, he'd given all of his tokens – most of them earned through good behaviour and the music teacher's subtle favouritism – to Yifan to buy an alpaca toy, saying, "There's nothing I want."

It was the same year that Lu Han developed a fear of heights. That year, their last at Nanjiang¹, was spent like the others: lessons in Mandarin, mathematics, science, and so on. It was that year, in history, that their teacher said, "No one wants to be the one to tell you this, but you can't leave here not knowing what you are." Shortly afterward, Guo Jing killed himself, calmly stepping out of his sixth floor dormitory window after neatly arranging his possessions and making his bed, as a sign of his unimpaired sanity: they hadn’t heard of suicide notes, then. His body fell without resistance, without any sound, as if the heavens, too, had accepted his fate; or, perhaps, as a sign of his insignificance, the half-life he had lived and, in the only gesture of autonomy he could think of, extinguished. Lu Han bolted his window shut the same day, fingers stubborn and red on the metal lock as he pushed it as far as it would go, and kept pushing, until Yifan came and took his hands away.

It was the year he saw Yifan and Yixing hold hands, watched Yixing's fingertips brush the splay of Yifan's large hands, made to hold. His embarrassment at witnessing it lasted only as long as it took him to realise that they had kept secrets from him, and then he had been angry. The anger had been what had lasted, in a coolness toward Yifan's fumbling attempts at conversation, savage pleasure at Yixing's hurt over every closed-off expression, until they received their assignments. Only then did the relief of still having them overwhelm their betrayal.

The role of a carer is simple: to stay by a donor's side until they complete. It is a way of keeping their spirits up, to maximise the number of donations made before completion. They often assign Lu Han Nanjiang students, stating that having common ground with patients would help foster a bond, ultimately make the relationship more fruitful. It would, he supposes: they could swap stories about pranks they'd played on the matron, talk about how uncomfortable the seats in the auditorium were, compare honed and vetted imitations of the headmaster's nasal tone. He doesn't know because he never talks about Nanjiang to his patients.

In response to Lu Han's question, Yixing's carer says, both resigned and matter-of-fact, "You know the kind – he'll probably complete after the second donation." She makes a slight moue as she hands him Yixing's file, and Lu Han could tell she was thinking the same thing he was, at that moment: the average donor made at least three. He nods and takes the file.

Between carers, switching patients happened often, generally with difficult cases, and sometimes with personal ones. His last patient had completed several days ago, and he hadn't been reassigned yet. In his head, the facts knock against each other like driftwood, bulky, refusing coherency. When he doesn't open the file, still looking at her, she looks at him properly, considering him for a moment. "If you want him," she says, and Lu Han interrupts, "Yes—sorry, yes," rushed, before she can actually offer.

The drive to Youjing² was long, drawing them close to the outskirts of Beijing, and Yixing sat in the middle, between them, until Yifan, cramped by a recent growth spurt and Yixing's elbow, which dug into his side at every left turn, moved to the passenger seat during a pit stop. When the temperature dropped near nightfall, Lu Han traced his name on a corner of the window, finger smudging the finer strokes. "Write mine, too," Yixing whispered, turning his face into Lu Han's shoulder to watch him exhale on the glass, and in the end he wrote all three of their names, watching the fog recede and take them with it, vanishing: you must understand, none of you have a future.

In his mind the time they spent at Youjing was clearly divided into two periods: before Huang Zitao, and after Huang Zitao. The first period, before Zitao arrived, was the longer one, but it seemed to expire like an ellipsis, short and insignificant. Within a month of their arrival, the previous tenants, already whittled down to three, all took their leave, starting with Han Geng, who was given notice after two weeks; Zhou Mi and Song Qian, halfway through their carer training, departed shortly afterward. In their wake, they covered the house over with their footprints, until slowly it lost the feeling of emptiness and became theirs, mahjong tiles (Yifan) and longyan pits (Lu Han) and brittle peanut shells (Yixing) littered across the house like debris washing up with the tide.

When Zitao came, they had a hushed argument, shut up in Yixing's room, about what it meant, if one of them was about to be given notice. "Open your eyes, Zhang Yixing, don't be a fool," Lu Han snapped, and when Yixing flinched, Yifan tried to stop him, putting a hand on Lu Han's arm. Lu Han had jerked away from the touch, whirling on him in turn. "Just because you want control—" He could see it in both of their eyes, the two of them clearly thinking that Lu Han, as the oldest, would be the first to go.

For days, he saw impermanence wherever he looked: the living room table, knocked crooked from when he and Yifan had scuffled, laughing as they tumbled to the floor; the stove, blackened from the time Yixing had started to make noodles and forgotten about them; the flickering light in the bathroom next to Zitao’s room. All the signs of life, so easily erased, as if written in sand.

The tension was slow to ease, each of them waiting for the letter to arrive, and Zitao sat quietly amidst them, until one day he spoke up, without looking at any of them. "I'm sorry if I—" His throat worked, for a moment. "If you don't want me," he finished, voice thick. The tear that splashed involuntarily onto the table seemed repugnant to him, his face screwed up as he pushed his chair back with a loud scrape, and vanished into his room. Yifan got up first, following Zitao without looking at either of them, and when Yixing looked up at Lu Han, across the table, Lu Han's mouth formed the beginning of a sorry, the words stuck in his throat. Yixing saved him from finishing by nodding, me too.

"I'm sorry," Lu Han says, abruptly, and Yixing, in the middle of taking his medicine, looks at him over the rim of his cup. He doesn't look entirely taken aback, and it's worse than anything he could say or do.

"You could have been angry," Lu Han mumbles, not looking at him. His face feels hot, and he blinks to keep from crying. He hasn't cried in a long time, always dry-eyed as he watched his patients go under, knowing instinctively when they were going to complete, always anticipating it so that it couldn't take him by surprise. "You could have hated me, and I just—" He can't bring himself to say it. I went because I thought letting go was easier than waiting to be left behind. He's always been selfish, overtly so; self-preservation was his strongest suit, his best defence mechanism. Yixing, by contrast, didn't think about himself at all, always giving too much, opening himself up to the kind of hurt that Lu Han was best at inflicting on others, in equal proportion to his love of them. It was the easiest to hurt Yixing, and it also felt the worst. And Yifan—

"Hey," Yixing says, softly, as if his silence was easier to understand than his words. His tone says, stop thinking. When his hand covers Lu Han's, he has to resist the urge to flinch. Yixing had let him go, once. "I said I was glad you were here."

He couldn't change the past; he could only make a different choice here, now. Here, it meant staying; letting the fear grow roots in him. It meant watching Yixing tear away from him, slowly, so that the pain would always stay fresh. It meant letting Yixing steal into the cage of his ribs and break what was left there.

Yixing has always known this, he realises. Maybe he was the one who hadn't: had grown thorns, forgotten about the waterways, threaded through his body, knotted like a fist around his heart. This Yixing, older, like the soft, sweet flesh of a longyan that hoarded a stone – this Yixing, that looks at him and says, I love you; that says, with the same mouth, let me break you.

The summer months: Yifan learnt to drive a car, and Lu Han made tray after tray of ice cubes, feeding them one by one to Zitao, who laid on the floor, sweating. At night Yixing would watch Lu Han's collection of Wong Kar-Wai films with him, the stand fan slowly winnowing in a wide arc while, on screen, Tony Leung sat in Goldfinch and ate in tiny, neat mouthfuls. In each of their trips to the city he would spend an hour poring over shelves in a resale shop, slowly fingering the spine of each DVD case, mouthing the titles he was looking for to himself, until he would emerge with Chungking Express or Happy Together, waving it at Yixing, exuberant with triumph.

There was an ice cream parlour they frequented together, heads crowded over the glass so that their breath fanned across it, while Yifan hovered above them like a prefect and listened to them debate over flavours. They were both indecisive: Lu Han was determined to try them all, and Yixing's eye always wandered, but in the end, he always chose the same one, calling softly to the owner, whom they called yéye, grandfather, the words as sweet on their tongues as the ice cream.

Afterward, they would follow Yifan as he window-shopped, trying on clothes and examining himself in the mirror before putting them all back, fingers reverent as he shrugged the cloth back onto the hanger. "This one," Lu Han would say, holding out a jacket or a pair of shoes. He knew Yifan's measurements better than he did, looking appraisingly over the racks and pushing the right sizes into his hands. When Yifan put them on, he would just nod, good, because it didn't matter what Yifan wore; Yifan just thought it did.

On each trip, Zitao always vanished; to take walks on the beach, he said, even though they were plainly inland, and Yifan always dissuaded Lu Han from attempting to spy on him. The mystery was only solved when Zitao confided to Yifan one night, after they’d returned from a trip, that he might have seen his own possible. He wanted all of them to go with him, wanted to see if they thought he looked similar too. Yifan was hesitant, but in the end they went, buoyed as much by their own hope as Zitao's, their old childish pastime of looking through magazines and advertisements, scrutinising faces and looking for their own, trying to guess who each other's models were, if they were famous or important or rich.

They’d given it up at the same time that they realised that, walking down the street, no one recognised their faces, or even gave them a second glance. But the place Zitao led them to was a tattoo parlour, and from across the street they stared at the man at the end of Zitao's pointed finger, watching him lounge on the sidewalk, talking on his cell phone. It was too hard to see properly, and when the man disappeared, heading back inside, Lu Han was silent, feeling Yixing fidget next to him. "It could be, Taozi," Yifan said finally, speaking for all of them, and Zitao was content.

"Zitao cried when you left," Yixing says.

It makes Lu Han smile, a little fond, a little rueful. "I thought he might." The measurement of Zitao's growth was oddly figured: he was shrewd, introspective, and half of the things he said either sounded like a Confucian saying or was. At the same time, he was hopelessly young: he spoke in outbursts, was deceptively easy to hurt and just as easy to tease, and was quick to revert to childishness, pouting and whining even though it didn't suit him – tall and toned, with sharp features – but it was probably that disparity that made it so effective.

"I thought about being a carer," Yixing says, and for a moment it seems like another one of his non sequiturs, before he continues: "I thought I could be good at it, too. But seeing Taozi like that…"

"You promised him," Lu Han finishes for him, and the words sound ugly in his mouth, voice wavering. Zhang Yixing, you idiot, he wants to say, but he doesn't have any right. It was true that not everyone was inclined – or qualified – to be a carer, but most people, unlike Lu Han, wanted to be one for the same reason: it meant pushing back donations by several years. It meant that the only thing he wanted for Yixing was time, and he'd given it up.

Yixing shrugs, a one-shouldered movement. "Yifan was gone. And you—" His fingers curl in the blankets, a little. Staring in front of him, away from Lu Han, he looks briefly defiant. Yixing, after all, wasn't the kind of person to have regrets. A few years ago, Lu Han would have cut him off, voice shrill: forgive me or don't, just decide. Now, Lu Han waits, silent as he lets it hit home: "I’d stopped thinking about you."

Winter blended together for him, more night than day, his gaze lingering on Yixing's fingers on a fishbone, sucking each spine clean. Imagining the shape of Yixing's mouth, Yifan's long fingers pressed into flesh, as he listens to them, skin to skin, in next room. The heaviness of Zitao's head on his shoulder as the four of them sat together and listened to Yixing's cassette, Zitao's unabashed gaze as he watched Yifan and Yixing steal a kiss.

Later, Zitao always claimed to have seen the warning signs, the little fissures that led to the fracture of Yifan and Yixing's relationship. "There was always something between them," he said, and hesitated, looking at Lu Han, and then away. It ended as quietly as it started, so that Lu Han could never pinpoint exactly when the boundaries began reestablishing themselves, if it happened at all, the act of navigation, trying to learn the reconstruction of space.

Even later, Yifan would say, "Maybe we just aren't capable of love." Lu Han had said something like, you think we weren't built that way? To be able to? Yifan had hesitated before he said, slowly, "I don't know. You can't feel everything with the same mildness, and expect to love with intensity." Lu Han lifted his head, about to speak, when he realised that Yifan was talking about Yixing. Yifan, who had protected Yixing so quietly and naturally that he never noticed; who had watched over a Lu Han who’d refused to need looking after; who had done it so well that the only thing that hurt them would be each other.

It was at Youjing that he started thinking of his body as a vessel, remembering the headmaster carefully intoning: each of you is precious. The image of Zitao, smoking a contraband cigarette, viciously delighted at hurting the body that was and wasn't his; Yifan, by contrast, nursing his body into perfect health. He was walking in the garden when he started thinking about the sadness of bearing fruit: the joy of bringing them to ripeness, heavy and round with splendour, only to have them be plucked from you. He cried about it exactly once, and it was then, hot tears spilling down his cheeks, wetting the soft, brown earth that drank them, indifferent to the source, until Yixing found him and held him. That was it: none of them were meant to rescue each other.

"I dreamt that we went to the Great Wall," Yixing says. His voice runs like a fever, rambling and discontent, and lying side by side, they are close enough that his breath is still warm when it washes over Lu Han, like reaching the opposite shore. It makes the air feel thinner when he inhales, but he doesn't pull away. "We met Yifan in the middle, walking from the other end."

Lu Han inhales sharply. It doesn't work that way, he wants to say. You can't do that. He reaches for Yixing, instead, and when Lu Han touches his face, Yixing closes his eyes. Yixing's body feels like a lesson in geography, learning what has already been mapped out, nothing left to discover. He touches him with the ghost of Yifan's fingers, finding places that make Yixing arch up, cry out, places Yifan has already been, marked; places lost, places he has left for Lu Han to find. When Yixing's body opens up for him, it's Yifan who comes alive.

Yifan started reading self-help books, just before he was given notice. When the letter arrived, he read it calmly and then excused himself, taking it with him so that none of them could read it, but they knew what it was. Lu Han, suffocated by the sudden lack of air in the room, went back to his room and found Yifan in it, still holding the letter. He didn't take his eyes away from it when he said, hands shaking, "I always wanted—" He started when Lu Han took his hands in his, and the letter fell to the floor. Stepping closer, Lu Han deliberately put his foot on it, feeling it crumple and give way. He never knew who leaned in first, only that there was a kiss.

He wanted, desperately, to be angry: shout at him, you aren't supposed to leave me. To be angry at Yixing who had brought Yifan into his life, angry at Yixing for what he hadn't even done yet. But he looked at Zitao and could only feel guilt for what each of them, in turn, would do to him. He spent an afternoon staring at each of them instead, cataloguing every characteristic so that he could conjure them up in his mind, perfectly formed: every gesture, every habit, every sound.

The next day, he applied to be a carer without telling anyone, voice clear and firm as he turned in the forms and said, "I want to start immediately." In his head, he kept seeing Yifan's face, carrying the same expression it had had when Yixing had gotten lost on one of their first trips into the city: scared and refusing to be, at the same time. I kept thinking of it in terms of physics, expecting an equal but opposite reaction, Yifan had said, sounding hollow, mechanical. I couldn't understand why Yixing didn't change anything I felt for you, or why you didn't change anything I felt for Yixing. He realised, then, that he was the one hearing the past tense in Yifan's words³, and he lifted Yifan's arm and draped it over himself, face pressed against Yifan's bare chest, as if the cage of his arms would keep him safe, stop the floodwaters from rising.

When he returned, Yixing let him put his head on his shoulder, and he said in a low voice only Lu Han could hear, "What did you do?" Lu Han shook his head and didn't reply, and when Yifan came to sit beside them, Lu Han held his hand. He could tell the exact moment that Yixing noticed, suddenly stilling beside him, but none of them said anything. A few days later, his carer training began.

At the hospital he was sent to, news trickled in of Yifan being admitted to a hospital in central Beijing, making his first, second donation, recovering quickly after each one. He found himself thinking, Yifan was always brave – for others, if not himself. His last words to Lu Han were maybe next time, without a trace of facetiousness. On the third donation, he completed. By then, it had been almost a year since Lu Han left Youjing, afraid of what he had there, of being loved and left behind. "Zhang Yixing," Lu Han still asked, every time someone approached him with news of Nanjiang students. "Did you hear about anyone named Zhang Yixing?"

Lu Han is sitting by the window when Yixing wakes up. His slow shuffle into his hospital slippers makes Lu Han look up, and he holds out a hand to Yixing. When Yixing reaches him, Lu Han leans his head against him, and they watch the patients walking with their carers in the pavilion, the sunlight streaming across the courtyard. Somewhere, the bell of a clock tower begins to toll, and Lu Han speaks without looking up. "Do you miss him?"

It takes Yixing a while to answer, watching the people mill about outside as he searches for the right words. "With the same part of me that loves you," he says, finally. He looks down at Lu Han, who nods, resting his chin on his knees as he looks back outside.

In the time they had left, they had only come upon the verge of understanding; it was only in experiencing the incomplete that they had come to understand the whole, in degrees, like the dark that defined the light, the chiaroscuro of it. By then, Lu Han had left, in the closest thing he ever said to I love you, each of them learning love only through loss. Startled by the depth of his own feelings, Lu Han had let the water close over his head. He sunk, only to realise that he was looking at two faces of the same object and traversing the line in between, over and over again. That in his palm, his heart line splintered into two perfect halves.

Slowly, he curled his fingers inward, tucking his hands in between his chest and his knees, and let the thought drift: maybe next time.

前世五百次的回眸，才贏得今世的擦肩而過⁴

five hundred backward glances in our past reincarnations,
in exchange for walking by each other once in this life

—————
¹ 南江男與科學校, Nanjiang Preparatory School for Boys.
² 幽靜候獻院, Youjing Donation Waiting Centre.
³ Verbs in Mandarin do not inherently have tense, and Yifan's words are (can be) ambiguous.
⁴ Source

quid @ 2013-02-22T14:44:00

2013-02-22T06:44:56Z

the kids are all right
taemin + kai, pg, 4005ⓦ

Note: Contains a reference to this. For Viva: your bullying is disproportionately effective given your effort, which more closely resembles off-hand suggestion; happy birthday.

THIS MODERN WORLD
THAT MOVES,
THAT MOVES.

The frame of each window shutters Taemin's face as the double doors close and the train starts to move, heaving away from the platform. He looks different in each one, each blurred angle pulling him out of one window and into another as the distance between them grows from a crawl to a chase.

For a moment, it's easier to see all the ways in which Taemin has changed; Jongin's memories, far and few in between since Taemin debuted, are like notches on a wall, measuring growth. "See you there," Taemin had said at the time, smiling, his cheeks still round and glowing. His features are sharper now, body moving with an assurance Jongin thinks can only come from those years in the spotlight, even though he's as pale and skinny as always, if the low collar of his denim shirt and the trim tuck of his skinny jeans are anything to go by.

Today, a young girl passes by Jongin without a second glance. The terminal trembles under the weight of an incoming train on the opposite track, still out of sight. Online, Kai's first teaser video is released. When Taemin raises a hand in farewell, Jongin reaches up, tugs the bill of his cap down, and walks away.

Taemin is sitting in the corner of the waiting area, kicking one foot absently as he reads. As Jongin draws closer, he pulls a pen away from his mouth to write a note in the margins of his book. May I have your attention please, a woman's voice says over the loudspeaker, her Mandarin brisk and unintelligible to Jongin, and he reaches out, flicking the spine of the book so that Taemin startles, fumbling the book and losing his place. Jongin huffs out a laugh and sits down, backpack crowding the seat so that he's leaning back on a precarious incline, legs stretched out to keep himself from slipping off.

Taemin's book has fallen back open to a finished page full of wobbly handwritten characters, swimming awkwardly in square boxes. "Stop pretending to study," Jongin says, sleepily, as Taemin rifles back to the right page, laboriously reading the dialogue. "Everyone knows all your Japanese comes from watching One Piece." On Taemin's other side, Jonghyun laughs under his breath without looking up from his phone.

"Arigatou gozaimasu, Kai-san," Taemin says seriously, enunciating each syllable, and kicks the heel of Jongin's foot so that he loses his balance. Jongin yelps and laughs as Taemin hauls him back up by the handle of his backpack, dropping him back in the seat gracelessly.

"Very nice, senpai," Jongin enthuses, dredging up the sparse Japanese he’d picked up from One Piece. Taemin beams, returning to his book. His hand still hasn’t left Jongin’s backpack: it rests innocuously at the back of his neck, like he thought Jongin might still fall if he were to let go, or, more likely, he’d just forgotten to take it away. When Jongin shifts, Taemin seems to remember it again, and he withdraws his hand to flip to the next page.

III

Jongin blinks, refocusing as Taemin shifts beside him, pulling his hand out of his pocket, and the camera beeps twice, the shutter snapping. Jongin tilts his head, finding the camera for the next shot and dropping his gaze for the next, before leaning forward. Once the camera snaps, Taemin's elbows settle on his back, pushing him down into a ninety-degree bow, and Jongin laughs.

The concept is young boys in spring, pomaded hair and light makeup, clothing racks filled with Marc Jacobs and Margaret Howell, Paul Smith shoes and Junghans watches; unfastened French sleeves with perfectly-buttoned collars indoors and rolled up trouser legs and sweaters tied across their shoulders outdoors. The grass itches against Jongin's calves, the earth soft and damp under his feet as he carries his shoes, camera following in their footsteps.

They look through the photos together afterward, light from a window patterned against Jongin's sports jacket, Taemin sprawled on a sofa and Jongin leaning against it, louche in their luxury. Taemin holding a tree branch like a sceptre, sticking dried, yellow leaves into Jongin's hair like an ancient Grecian laurel wreath, the resultant tussle captured in slow motion. The deep cerulean blue of the water by the pier, the smooth arch of their backs as they twist and splash like fish, laughing, wetting the hems of their clothes.

"Over here," Taemin says, waving an Instax camera with Vogue’s logo taped on it, and Jongin poses before sitting down next to him, right leg draped over Taemin's left. After four shots, he slides down until his head is resting on Taemin's shoulder, closing his eyes, and doesn't open them until Taemin shifts, none too subtly, to poke him, and he snaps at the finger playfully, teeth closing on air as he opens his eyes. It ruins the last shot, but Taemin lays it out with the others, fanned out across the table.

They sign each one carefully, picking them out one by one to write captions and autograph them. Jongin draws inquisitory faces embellished with eyelashes while Taemin scribbles stars over each of his autographs, and between them they muster up unimaginative captions, like to. Vogue followed by bagel-shaped hearts. Jongin finds the second to last one and draws a crescent moon and stars, nightcaps and a line of Zs next to their sleeping faces. On Jongin's solo shot, Taemin draws cramped sparkles and writes, Lee Taemin's older brother, fighting!

Out of the corner of his eye, Jongin sees him write it, and when Taemin slides it across the table, marker twirling nonchalantly in his fingers, Jongin doesn't move to acknowledge it. But he offers Taemin a small smile, half-hidden in shadow and the tilt of his head, before he resumes drawing, and he slides it into his pocket when he gets up to leave.

He's sitting with his legs hanging off the edge of the stage when Taemin, crouching down to sit next to him, jostles his elbow by accident. He slings an arm across Taemin's shoulders, leaning back and ignoring the twinge of his waist. Taemin’s shirt is slightly damp at the back of his neck, and it clings to Jongin’s arm. He is holding a half-empty water bottle, tossing it back and forth in his hands, and Jongin feels each shift of muscle, solid and familiar, heat rising from his body.

He's dimly aware of Taemin talking, and he nods along, humming and laughing at intervals as Taemin rambles along comfortably, jumping from one story to another without finishing any of them properly. He’s talking about some embarrassing incident during one of his rehearsals with Soojung when Jongin draws his arm back, leaning forward again and reaching for Taemin's wrist. He tugs it across his lap to play with Taemin’s tangled assortment of bracelets, pushing them between his forefingers and thumbs, pulling at them and rotating them aimlessly.

They don't talk about it, how the stage stitches them together and makes them real, whole, how it takes away just as much as it gives. They never do, except in the way they deliver choreography, like a one-two punch – a little less conversation, a little more action, please. Jongin, who had been too young the first and second time around, had watched the A class thin out and leave him behind, only to fill with the same people he’d once left behind; and Taemin, on the fringes of adulthood, realising that being good for his age wouldn't last, even if the world still only saw him as a child. Both of them defiant and eager to prove, to say, I’ll show you all, this is what I can do.

When their names are called, Taemin stands up first, bouncing onto his toes and stretching out a hand for Jongin to take. "Nice shoelifts," Taemin says, grinning, when he's pulled Jongin to his feet. He leans back to assess their new height difference.

"Thanks," Jongin says, ruffling Taemin's hair and effectively ruining it. "Yours aren't bad either."

They announce plans for a joint stage, this time just the two of them, after a dozen SM project groups and dance battles where they had almost, but not quite, properly danced together. In the practise room, they run through a quick warm-up before Jaewon arrives, stretching together on the floor, and Taemin holds out his hands, legs extended in front of him, for Jongin to pull.

He thinks about their editorial, just published, with their fingers wrapped around each other’s wrists – Jongin’s on bare skin, Taemin’s clutching the thick, bunched-up sleeves of Jongin’s hoodie. There hadn’t been an interview, just a short introduction:

YOUNG & RICH / WILD & FREE

We met with hallyu idol SHINee’s Taemin and rising star EXO-K’s Kai on a bright spring day. Same-age friends who met for the first time in the practise room, and were reunited as the lead dancers of their respective groups, they met again for this issue of Vogue Korea. As expected, they were professional, charismatic, and full of allure, but throughout the day, we also glimpsed another side of them – as the two youths who grew up together through dance, who joked with the familiarity of old friends and knew each others’ bodies better than lovers. Whether it is art that imitates life, or life that imitates art, then, becomes the question. ■

The dance is dynamic, playing on the mirror image of their bodies, fluid and reflecting each other like a Rorschach, so that every step is paired, forming one, singular motion. The song hasn’t been recorded yet, but the guide song is catchy, fast-paced, and Jongin likes it, thinks they could make it really good. When they’re given a break, Jongin still feels energetic, too amped-up to rest, pushing up onto his toes and dropping back down. In front of him, Taemin is still frowning at his reflection, body frozen in the pose where, coming into the second stanza, the snap of his leg is a little slow to match Jongin’s.

“Hey,” Jongin says, winding one of his hoodie strings around his finger. He watches Taemin’s body come out of the pose slowly, like it was still lingering somewhere in his mind, even as he shifted his attention to Jongin. “Teach me one of your dances.”

Taemin tries to teach him “Sherlock” before they unanimously agree that it wasn’t nearly as – or at all – dramatic with just two people, and when Jaewon comes back, Taemin is tripping over himself to “My Lady” while Jongin laughs, just barely catching Taemin in a ballroom dip. Then Taemin bats his eyelashes, and Jongin laughs so hard that he drops him.

"So, Kai-sshi," Taemin says, with the air of an extremely intrepid reporter, leaning against the side of his chair with a thump. Jongin jumps, pulling his headphones off, and scowls belatedly at the “Kai-sshi,” which Taemin routinely forgets to use in front of the cameras, but always remembers when they're off-stage, because he likes to tease Jongin whenever he doesn't respond to it.

I’m not Kai, he had tried to say, once. He didn’t know how to explain: it was nothing like the way Taemin was who he was, in everything, and a terrible actor when asked to be anything else. Taemin was Taemin, but Kai was like the centre of a Venn diagram, part of him Jongin, and part of him something completely separate, individual, organic. How much of Kai was him was easy to differentiate, but how much of him was Kai was a much more difficult question: he wore Kai’s smirk, Kai’s gestures like they fit him, but there was also the him who stood in front of the mirror after a shower and practised each of them, trying not to let the uncertainty show. For weeks he had told his reflection, “Hello, I’m Kai,” and watched the lack of conviction bloom on his own face.

What he hadn’t said was, around you, I just want to be Jongin. That time, Taemin had held him out at arm’s length and peered at him, brow furrowed, and then his face had cleared suddenly. “Oh. It’s just you, Jonginnie. I thought you were somebody famous,” he said, and then, without skipping a beat – “Hey, let’s get jajangmyun.” Jongin punched him in spite of himself, fist landing square on his shoulder. Taemin rubbed at it and said, “What? I’m hungry.” Jongin snorted, waiting until his head was turned to mouth a snide as always at the back of his head.

Right now, Taemin looks almost diabolical, wicked with unhinged glee, and Jongin is entirely sure that it is at his expense. But the supreme unattractiveness of it reminds him, for a moment, of Lu Han’s laugh, and he feels better, if only for a brief second, because then Taemin finishes: "I hear you're in charge of being sexy.”

Jongin’s face crumples in mortification. "Someone has to do it," he says feebly, and Taemin grins as if to say, oh, I've seen that thing you call a body wave. He slides down to sit on the chair arm Jongin has vacated, bringing himself nearer to eye-level, and Jongin puts his elbow on Taemin’s thigh absently. The faint strain of "MAMA" issuing from his headphones is tinny, buzzing against his neck, and Jongin pauses it before saying casually, "Anyway, I've seen your aegyo, it's only the most horrifying thing I've ever—"

"One plus one," Taemin starts, in a mock baby voice, and he has pink and yellow clips in his half-styled hair, so Jongin has to pick up a magazine from the table and beat him out of the dressing room. Taemin growls out a "Krong!" just before he disappears, in a blur of pastel clips and brown hair, and the door swings shut in Jongin's face before he can kick it closed.

"Too bad, I kind of wanted to see that," Baekhyun remarks, when Jongin sits back down, dropping the battered magazine back on the table. When Jongin looks incredulous, he adds, cavalier: "for blackmail purposes," and flashes Jongin a wide, brilliantly cheeky smile before returning his attention to the mirror.

VII

Once, in the practise rooms, Jongin had reached out, grabbed Taemin's hand so that they were side by side in front of the mirror, and scrutinised the hairline, the stippled brow, the smooth curve of his cheek, nose, lips. "What," Taemin laughed, and his smile destroyed the reflection. "What?"

"People say we look alike," Jongin said, and slowly the mirrored image returned, Taemin's face smoothing out again to contemplate their reflection. Taemin's fingers were strong, wiry and indelicate, the spidered hands of a pianist. The cold metal of Taemin's bracelet raised the hair on his forearm. For months they had danced together, synchronised like divers, so that Jongin, meaning to track his own reflection, would find himself looking at Taemin's. He remembered, suddenly, Taemin's debut, the resulting revelry over how talented he was, at such a young age, and watching Taemin's debut stage alone in his room, the thoughts that stuttered, unfinished: it could be— I could be—

But this was Taemin. As he watched, Taemin tilted his head, gaze lingering at the same places – eyes, nose, mouth – but with a familiarity that Jongin relaxed into without thought. "Maybe," Taemin said. When Jongin turned toward him, Taemin's hand kept him anchored in place. After a moment, Taemin's mouth quirked, and he looked at Jongin. "I'm better-looking, though."

VIII

There were people that SM liked: people like Kyuhyun, who debuted so quickly that he'd almost never been a trainee, here one day and gone the next; and people like Moonkyu, who kept saying he was done waiting, who they kept telling, stay. People like him, people like Taemin: he thought he knew where each of them fit in. Swaying on the brink of change, he thought it would make it easier.

They walked the streets at night, like three alley cats, taking turns to step up onto planters, swing in lazy half-circles around a telephone pole or street sign, listening to music swell and fade, the welcome bloom of air conditioning, bursting softly in their faces, as they passed by each establishment. It was almost summer, the air sluggish and finally turning cool, the lights of the city winking, bathed in an interminable ocean of dark blue.

Taemin was holding an empty container of banana milk, tapping the straw so that it hit the thin bottom repeatedly, like a tiny drum. The candy in Jongin’s mouth, once peach-flavoured, was a little milky and bitter from the stolen sips he'd had of Moonkyu's coffee as they walked, leaning over while Moonkyu held it out for him. Whenever other people appeared, the street became too narrow for them to walk shoulder to shoulder, so they kept shifting, someone stepping forward or hanging back, weaving in and out of formation, braided back together.

These were the moments that he wanted to seize, wanted to plunge his fingers into the thick air and hold it firm in his memories. Whenever he remembered it, he knew, he would forget the uncomfortable stickiness of sweat drying on his skin, how gruelling the rest of the day had been. What would be left was the feeling of wandering, sleepless, like vagabonds and good-for-nothings, walking with nowhere left to go. The feeling of contentment in his bones, the movement of his body lax, spent and worthless.

He meandered in between them and bumped shoulders with both of them, wordlessly. He thought they'd know what he meant by it, and he was right: Moonkyu's smile was soft and crooked, Taemin's bright and wide, like it had been startled out of him with the push, both of them the same as always. He ducked his head when he smiled back. This, Jongin thought. Just this.

The sky is bright in Incheon, a blinding light blue that nearly swallows up the white of the planes lined up outside the terminal. Jongin raises his arm, slowly, fingers pinching around the belly of the first plane, and flies it out like a paper airplane, the second, the third, until they are all gone, spiralling in the sky.

On the terminal board, each incoming flight reads, on time, on time, on time, reflected in the glass. Jongin reaches out to touch the edge of it, fingerprints smudging the words. He remembers the wonder, the streak of pride that would flash through him when, walking down the street, he was recognised as EXO's Kai; the disbelief at the audience amassed at their showcases. Today, on the window, Jongin's face is one long shadow, the outline of his features barely distinguishable, so that for a moment, he is nobody, just another instance of come and go.

His phone buzzes with a text from Sehun. Come back, is all it says. He looks at it until the screen dims and turns off, and then he looks down at his scuffed shoes and thinks about running, the muscles of his legs tensing as he pitches forward onto the balls of his feet, ready, set—

They shuffle, one by one, down the line to the boarding gate. When Jongin pulls his passport back out of his backpack, the boarding pass tucked in it a little worse for the wear, a photograph flutters out. It lands, upside down, at his heels. Behind him, Kyungsoo bends down, picking it up off the floor and handing it back to him. He smiles, brief and perfunctory, when Jongin takes it, mumbling his thanks. Jongin grabs his backpack and shakes it, looking for a place to put the photograph, and nearly loses his grip on it again. When he fumbles it, it flips over, and he see his own face, smiling back at him. He recalls the words before he reads them, his fingernails biting the edge of the photograph: Lee Taemin's older brother, fighting!

Jongin steps out toward the centre of an empty stage and turns into dust. When the particles coalesce, he is Kai.

He is Kai, fluidity and grace coiled into his bones, ready to spring into life, until cold fingers reach for his in a touch that only skims his fingertips, and it is Jongin whose fingers close for just an instant, a quick, reflexive cinch. Overhead, the lights turn on, heat radiating on his back and shoulders. Next to him, Taemin is perfectly poised, face shadowed by the stage lights, and Jongin hears his voice echoing in his head: five, six, seven, eight—

At the beginning, Taemin's dancing was prose, rising action and climax and denouement. And for Jongin, it was poetry, staccato line breaks and abrupt turns of phrase. What they were now, Jongin couldn’t tell: Taemin was there when he danced, in the untucked wrist and flourish of fingers, and he found himself, too, in Taemin's sharpest moves, the snap of his arm.

The music is mercury in his veins, his heart beating in time with the bass, and the screams pull him sharply to the present, to each movement, to the knowledge of Taemin, moving with him and beside him, as sure of his every movement as he was of his own. When the song ends, he laughs without meaning to, crashes unchoreographed into Taemin, and stumbles off stage, full enough to burst and lighter than air.

The ending stage is hectic, confetti coming down in cascades, and Jongin idles on one side, smiling and waving with half-curled fingers when he sees one of his fansites, before ducking towards the back, weaving upstream between bows and polite greetings. Taemin passes by, and he reaches out for Jongin's hand. Their hands miss the first time, still too far away, and when Taemin tries again, Jongin's ring slides off into his fingers. Taemin only has enough time to blink at him before he is swept up to the front, where he holds it for a moment, then slips it on, flashing peace signs and impudent smiles with it and waving with both hands outstretched.

When Jongin looks down, there are red lines across his fingers where his ring had dug in, in the tiny points of a triangle. He flexes his fingers, watching them fade. On his other hand, his EXO ring still glitters, each letter catching the light like a kaleidoscope. A lock of hair has come loose from his slick pompadour, and it falls back in his face, like an errant cowlick, when he looks down. He pushes it back, and his fingers come away a little sticky. When Zitao finds him for a hug, it transfers onto the back of Zitao's shirt.

Taemin finds him in time for the last bow, edging his way down the line and slipping in next to Jongin neatly. He clasps Jongin's right hand in his left, so that his rings are back to back in their hands, and this time, he doesn't let go.

XII

Nobody ever said what this was, said: leaving nothing unsaid while never saying anything important, a terminal inability to hold hands, borrowing things on accident and giving yourself back, “better than lovers”: diagnose.

Today, he walks down a red carpet, faces a sea of white flashes and greets it. Sitting next to him, Chanyeol bounces his leg, rapid-fire, Junmyeon’s pearly smile like a plaster cast, and when the female host opens the envelope and says, “EXO-K, congratulations,” it feels like a dam breaking, relief and joy and pride and disbelief flooding through him, crashing against the cell of his body so that when he stands, he is unsteady, no longer sure of his footing.

He looks down at his feet and thinks to himself, I’m here. When he looks back up, Taemin catches his eye almost immediately. He smiles.

quid @ 2013-02-08T13:22:00

2013-02-08T05:22:06Z

thirty-minute writing exercises

your song, lay/lu han.
synopsis: yixing is a composer, lu han is the pianist who lives next door. G, 400W.

His next door neighbour, Yixing learns quickly, is a pianist. The walls are paper-thin in Yixing's new apartment, and already he can vaguely map out the intersections of their rooms, where they meet at the seams, his kitchen lined up with his neighbour's living room, their bathrooms back to back. Even as he moved in, he'd heard the piano, a light jazzy piece that seemed to mock his laborious trips up and down the stairs, heaving overweight boxes. The piano always lulls him to sleep, and he expects Debussy or Brahms, at that time of night, but it's always Clara Schumann, sweet and delicate, like a finely-penned love letter to the moon.

Today, his neighbour is playing what Yixing recognises, after a moment, as the first part of Chopin's piano sonata no. 3, unexpectedly gentle, so that the slow crescendo behind the main melody is almost forgotten until it bursts, violently, to the forefront, seeming to surprise the player as much as the listener. He pushes open a window at noon, and leans out to feel the breeze, listening to the scherzo interspersed with noise of the city below in a kind of 4'33".

Yifan had helped him label each box as he packed, so that his ugly scrawl litters the floor: bathroom/laundry things, sheet music #3, kitchen utensils/non-perishable food (phone charger is in here). He'd started with his bedroom the first night, fitting clean sheets over his mattress and unpacking his blankets so that when inevitably he gave up for the night, having accomplished little, he could sleep without doing any more work. Several days later, the bedroom was still the only thing he'd finished, and he couldn't find the rice anywhere.

He doesn't notice when the piano stops, absorbed in thought, until the window next to his is thrown open, and someone leans out. Yixing catches a glimpse of blond hair, a slightly snub nose, and two hands, pulling at either end of a White Rabbit, so that the wrapper twirls open efficiently, barely crinkling. The candy is halfway to his mouth when he sees Yixing, and for a moment his mouth stays open while he stares back at him. Then he smiles and says, "hello," before ducking away to put the White Rabbit in his mouth, as if Yixing hadn't just seen the entire inside of it.

"Hi," Yixing says, feeling stupid.

fade, (exo) generic.
synopsis: by the time they learn their powers are finite, it's too late. G, 400W.

In retrospect, Lu Han's headaches should have been the first clue.

Whenever he got them, each of them would do something: Jongdae would dim the lights, Kyungsoo would make the ground absorb the sound of their steps as he slept, Sehun would send small, gentle breezes puffing through his room, oddly tentative as he fed them through the crack under the door. Yixing would make tea: he'd tried using his powers on Lu Han, but the headaches weren't the same as a cut or a burn, even those caused by trying to touch Chanyeol when he was in a temper.

He had them all the time, but the timing of them was unpredictable, so it didn't faze them when a week passed without Lu Han complaining, still chasing bowls across the dinner table to steal the best cuts of meat, squabbling with Zitao, who would stop the bowls when they passed by him to steal the biggest, juiciest piece for himself. It was only when Minseok, threatening to sit down on Lu Han's bed and throwing himself teasingly over it, had actually dropped down onto it, that they'd started to realise something was wrong. Even then, Lu Han's mouth had fallen open, comically, as Minseok leapt up again, saying, "I didn't mean to," and he'd set his blanket, then his sheets on Minseok, wrapping him up so that he fell, mummified, as the pillow began to beat him ruthlessly. By the time they'd emerged, Lu Han flushed with rage and tele-frogmarching a tousle-haired and breathless Minseok to the laundry room with his bed covers, they'd almost forgotten about it.

It was only when Yifan stuck his head out and asked, "How did that happen?" that Lu Han remembered.

Living things were the last thing Lu Han had tried his powers on. He'd started with chopsticks, then his belongings, and culminated in sending a still-sleeping Yifan tumbling out of bed to see if Yifan would, under life-threatening situations, react by using his own powers. Yifan had gotten a bloody nose, instead, and told Lu Han off thickly with Yixing bent over him, fingers gentle on his face.

"Do not disturb sleeping dragons. Got it, duizhang," Lu Han said, and saluted, giving Yifan his most winning smile, which Yixing told him later, not unkindly, only made him look impish. It explained why Yifan had only scowled in response.

lolita, krystal-centric.
synopsis: krystal leaves home with an older boy she thinks she likes but becomes thoroughly disenchanted and ends up in the middle of nowhere with a person she doesn't really care about. cameos: minho (sorry, minho), jongin (sorry, jongin). PG-13, 330W.

Krystal stands at the edge of the pool, watching the water lap against the ten feet mark with her hands on her hips. She's wearing her new bikini, white with a halter neck, to match the retro sunglasses Minho had bought for her in Pacific Beach when he'd seen her looking at them. She'd written in her diary about it, drawing hearts over the cursive "I"s in "stupid idiot." They were thousands of miles away from California now, from her mother, her father, Jessica. The thought makes her toes curl against the wet, rounded edge, and she takes a deep breath, holds her nose, and jumps in.

It takes an eternity for her to bob back up to the surface, her legs slipping out of the cannonball at last, the water lapping at her throat when she surfaces. The lifeguard, extremely tan and extremely bored, doesn't spare her a second glance as she pushes her hair back over her shoulder, the water ruining the careful ringlets she'd made in the morning, standing over the sink with a curling iron.

She tries a few strokes, freestyle, before she floats onto her back, the water cupping her body like a chalice, and thinks about being dead.

After a few more minutes, she climbs out, sitting in the lawn chair she'd claimed with her towel and reaching for her handbag. It has four things in it: her sunglasses, the motel keycard, a compact mirror, and a tube of Jessica's favourite lipstick she'd stolen the night before she left. She takes out the lipstick first, then opens up the compact to apply it, sticking her finger in her mouth to get rid of the excess, and wipes it off on her towel. The lifeguard looks over, then away again when she's finished. Calmly, she decides to hate him, and to buy a Coca-Cola. She puts on the sunglasses and heads back upstairs to look in the pocket of Minho's jeans for change.

quid @ 2012-12-17T14:28:00

2012-12-17T22:28:14Z

the wanting comes in waves
g-dragon/seungri, pg, 1020ⓦ

Note: Remix of corpuscallos_m's Classified for kpop_ficmix (original post).

Seungri builds while Jiyong pillows his head in the crook of his arm next to him, lazily re-crossing out rhymes in a poor semblance of work. It’s cold, raindrops clinging to the window and blurring the moonlight, the wet glitter of Tokyo at night below them. The slow hum of the radiator layered over the soft rasp of rain makes Seungri feel drowsy, lethargic. Jiyong is quiet, but in the dim light Seungri can still feel his gaze, heavy and unsettling on Seungri’s skin, and Seungri’s breath shivers through his body.

"Maknae," Jiyong says, finally, voice a little hoarse on the vowels, and Seungri tries not to jump at the sound, tries not to feel sixteen again when he looks up at Jiyong. And Jiyong is very nearly ugly, unshaven and hair tousled, dressed in a plain white shirt that emphasises the flatness of his chest, the uncomfortable boniness of his elbows. The points of his face are unattractive, gaunt shadows elongating his features, too-long grey sweatpants dragging on his heels.

His mouth is dry. Jiyong's fingers are curled around Seungri's sleeve, demanding and a little petulant, so Seungri lets Jiyong drag him under the blankets with cold, wiry fingers, aligning sharp knees and skinny hips to Seungri's. "Good night," he mumbles, face buried into Seungri's shoulder, and Seungri's heartbeat works in frantic double-time to Jiyong's even breathing.

He tells himself he doesn't like it.

Seungri snaps two grey Lego pieces together, clinical under the heat of his desk lamp, as Jiyong stirs. "What are you making?" Jiyong mumbles sleepily, voice stifled by the creamy angora wool of his sweater, riding up his stomach.

Seungri makes the mistake of looking back. It paralyses him like a sting, the hurt so unexpected that for a moment he's almost dizzy with it, overwhelmed, Prometheus chained for stealing what wasn't his, to keep or behold. He turns back around quickly, fingers clumsy on the pieces scattered on the table.

"Armour," Seungri replies, a beat too late. The piece in his hand is the wrong colour, and he lets it drop with a clack. Behind him, he hears Jiyong get up, leaving the blankets shed like entrails, a scythe-like swath in the sheets.

"Don't do that," Jiyong says, close to his ear, and there it is, aperture winding down, until all Seungri can see and hear and breathe is Jiyong.

It doesn't matter, because Jiyong had slipped through Seungri's defences years ago, without so much as a smile or a second glance. None of the fondness, none of the touches that stutter across his skin, pregnant with meaning, but only for Seungri. It's not that I like Seungri, but that Seungri likes me. At the time Jiyong was only interested in the future, and Seungri was always running one step behind – out of sight, out of mind. But even then, Jiyong was Jiyong, magnetic and alluring, and even if Jiyong was nobody, or at least not yet G-Dragon, Seungri was starstruck.

They streak bright blue paint across Jiyong's mouth, his eyes smudged with kohl and cheekbones lined with gold and bronze. Look dazed, the director says, but Jiyong looks lost, beautiful and barely there. It scares Seungri a little, but when it's over, Jiyong just holds a tissue to his mouth, the neon blue like blood, and laughs.

A few hours later Jiyong's sitting on a table in the recording studio, tapping the bill of his cap with a pen, same as always. "Again," Jiyong repeats, and Seungri adjusts the headphones, nodding. He twists a finger in the fabric of his shirt, waiting for his cue, and Jiyong clears his throat, clicking the mouse next to him. "Stop ruining my shirt," he says absently, and Seungri blinks, startled just as the music crashes into life in his ears.

He’s a beat off, and Jiyong stops him. "Again," Jiyong says, unperturbed, but when Seungri says, yes, hyung, quietly, Jiyong smiles, a sliver of hope so small that Seungri can only subsist on it, helplessly.

In the beginning, he'd built aimless towers, up and up and up, until they had come crashing down, by accident or by necessity, Seungri packing up his belongings in a carry-on and two check-ins. The deconstruction was as natural as anything else, the flash of a reporter’s camera in his face and the sensation of pressure, building up in his ears as the city grows small under him. How every night he would pull the sheets straight and unfurl the duvet so that it lay flat again, erasing Jiyong's presence from spaces long gone cold.

"Build me a spaceship," Jiyong says, in New York, when he's tangled up in bed with Seungri next to him. Outside, the city trembles under them, the sounds of construction and rush hour traffic muted, the thrum of the B train and its passengers below ground inaudible. Jiyong’s fingers are curled loosely around Seungri's wrist to keep him close. There's ink smudged on Jiyong's fingers, coming off on Seungri's wrist, the dark blue like bruises blossoming under the vice of Jiyong's hold.

"Hyung can't leave," Seungri says, a little too quickly, and hates that he sounds so small. He feels exposed, on his back so that all he sees is Jiyong against the backdrop of a white wide ceiling. It's a relief when Jiyong shakes his head, ducking down so that Seungri's gaze is drawn to the dip of his back, the point of his shoulders a sharply angled peak. His profile catches the light of late afternoon, golden and brilliant, the long line of his nose and the bow of his lips familiar and untouchable.

"Because when I look at you I can hear music," Jiyong whispers, and Seungri thinks about the swell of sound in an orchestra, the clean lines of dancers in motion, and the quick ink of Jiyong's pen on paper, verses and codas coming to life. In the bathroom, he looks at himself in the mirror clouded with the steam from his shower, and thinks, in the dead silence, that Jiyong is a liar.

quid @ 2012-07-22T13:27:00

2012-07-22T20:27:50Z

paralysis
g-dragon/mizuhara kiko, g-dragon/top, pg, 1190ⓦ

Love is neon-coloured, Jiyong said once, waving his hand so that the bracelets on his skinny wrist jangled. Love, for Jiyong, is bright like fireworks, with that same electric fervour with which he does everything. When Jiyong is in love, he is alive with it: he throws himself into life and demands everything from it, a melody perpetually on the tip of his tongue, a beat at his fingertips. Not everything about Jiyong could be bought, but everything about him could be sold: the birth of an artist, brilliant and half-mad, unraveling at people's feet. He's Peter Pan, young and invincible and haunted by shadows, and it makes him unpredictable, intriguing.

Jiyong is being difficult, today. He's having a fight with Kiko, Seunghyun can tell, because Jiyong is moody and irritable – more so than usual – and looks at his phone without touching it, toying restlessly with his rings or clinging to Seungri, oscillating between sullenness and derisive snorts that Seungri gently teases out of him with practised ease, brimming with jokes and lightly mocking impersonations and funny stories for Jiyong's approval. Jiyong lives almost entirely in the spotlight, but such straight lines never exist in nature, and here, today, he's entirely Kwon Jiyong. It's hard to hold him by the edges when even the edges are sharp, and at his most vicious, Jiyong likes to make people bleed.

Kiko is beautiful, the kind of girl you'd want to buy diamonds for. He'd seen her a few times, in the passenger seat of Jiyong's car with white 50s sunglasses, young and free-spirited; in clubs, the slight pout of her mouth nestled against the rim of a glass or Jiyong's neck while Jiyong glanced his way and smiled. When they were in Tokyo, she'd taken Jiyong to an Andy Warhol tribute exhibition, to Orange Street in Osaka and to the Mosaic ferris wheel in Kobe. Sometimes Seunghyun would lean over his shoulder and see a cellphone camera snapshot of contact sheets for her latest photoshoot, or the PV for a Japanese song from the 70s. "Kiko sent it to me," he would mumble, and they would laugh at the bad CG and dancing. She had what magazines called a "natural Garçonne aesthetic," and it fascinated Jiyong; he could pick out all the little things Jiyong liked about her, the baby hair at the nape of her neck, the curve of her smile hidden behind the fan of her hair, the clumsiness of her mouth when he taught her words in Korean.

Likes, he reminds himself, present tense. Truthfully, Kiko is a better fit for Jiyong than a lot of the other girls he's dated. She's a little obstinate and selfish, like Jiyong, and even though it makes them fight, it keeps him in check, and he's happy. Still, Seunghyun doesn't think he'll miss her, if she goes.

They run in tangential circles, on the covers of magazines at different times, different countries. Jiyong loses his appetite for two weeks after Daul's suicide, and Kiko had only ever seen her in editorials. She's hardly ever in Korea for work, now filming for a new movie, and with Jiyong working on Big Bang's comeback, it's difficult. Jiyong hates being alone when he doesn't want to be, always visiting the 2NE1 girls or Seungho's studio, and walking Gaho with Youngbae and Boss.

Jiyong doesn't like to hide, either; Seunghyun and Daesung and Youngbae and even Seungri will go out with disguises and eyes cast low, hoods pulled over their heads, but Jiyong is always recognisable, by his voice or skinny, lithe frame, or his conspicuous brick-patterned Ashish jacket, studded Balmain boots. Seunghyun's never been able to tell if it's entirely on purpose – the shock of dyed hair peeking out from under a hat, the only man on the street wearing a Hermès scarf around his neck.

There's a certain defiance in the way he holds her hand, because Kiko's meant to be something of a sunflower, a charming young girl becoming a lady, and Jiyong's a good leader, but he's never been a role model, scuffing his kicks in the back alley of clubs, littered with his cigarette stubs – "They told me you weren't good for me," Kiko had written to him, they being her management. "But I think I like you better for it."

Seungri slides out of Jiyong's embrace, looking apologetic as he's called away, leaving Jiyong limp in his seat. Youngbae's talking to Teddy still, and Jiyong sighs. Still flicking absently through songs on his iPod, Seunghyun slides down in his seat just enough to bump knees. Jiyong hooks his chin over Seunghyun's elbow, so Seunghyun tugs an earphone out of his ear and fits it into Jiyong's, gently.

Jiyong's fingers touch his when he takes the iPod, skimming through the playlist without comment before he skips to a song halfway down the list. Sounds good! the album art blares, in bright red. Jiyong closes his eyes and tilts his head, and with his hair cut short, Seunghyun can see the soft skin behind the delicate curve of Jiyong's ear, pale and demanding a kiss.

Jiyong, Seunghyun thinks, has always been greedy.

It's almost his birthday. Today his body is tense and sleepless, frenetic like a wind-up doll, G-Dragon, rattling about the set on unsteady legs. When they pause filming, an open tube of lipstick repainting the corner of his mouth in rough, clinging strokes, he closes his eyes, fingers drumming on a knee he has to concentrate to hold still.

There's a threshold none of them would cross, a divide between here, where Jiyong is, and there, where the staff and his small, faithful audience are amassed, watching and waiting. With his eyes closed, he can still remember with startling clarity the sight of Seunghyun sitting with his legs crossed, perfectly still, watching him. Seunghyun, who doesn't understand how soft his eyes can be, childlike and clumsy in his own body despite memorising his best angles, the alluring set of his jaw. He wants to reach out, pull Seunghyun in, crush the breath out of his chest under that familiar, warm weight.

In the silence of intermission, his song still thrums in his heart, every carefully crafted second of sound, the story of a man in a relationship who goes to sleep and falls in love with a person in his dreams, about forgetting to live, about night and day, falsehood and lies. The set is elaborate, full of trapdoors for him to step through, the lines between reality and the dream blurred even now, as the stylist steps away from him with a last brush of powder across his cheekbones.

The speakers come to life again in the middle of the chorus, I know a reality exists outside of you / but even if I can I don't want to see it. "Ready?" the director says, through the megaphone, and Jiyong takes a deep breath and nods, eyes still closed – but because outside the world keeps spinning madly round / I hold on.

He's scared to open his eyes and have the only thing he sees be Seunghyun, an incontrovertible truth.

quid @ 2012-07-07T13:53:00

2012-07-07T20:53:54Z

et nous donnons des chants
changmin/kyuhyun/victoria, pg-13, 1425ⓦ

Note: Lyrics by The Paper Kites.

Words are weak with longings
that I cannot speak to a heart
that it seems is out of reach.

Zhou Mi jerks awake when Kyuhyun elbows him sharply in the knee on accident, leaning over him and towards the car window to snap a photo with his phone. "Kyuhyun," he says, trying and failing to keep the sleepy whine out of his voice. They're in Taiwan, en route to an early morning variety show filming; already, the streets are busy, people clustered at stop lights, motorbikes slipping in between rows of cars.

"We're almost there anyway," Kyuhyun says absently, punching out words on his phone. Zhou Mi reaches out and pinches the skin of his knee. It doesn't hurt, but he jerks his knee away on reflex, jostling a sleeping Sungmin on his other side, who reaches out and punches his arm with deadly and rather detrimental accuracy.

"Go back to sleep," he grouses at Zhou Mi, as Sungmin emits a light snore. Zhou Mi, inexplicably, smiles and shuffles closer.

Changmin is in a dressing room, getting his hair touched up when his phone buzzes. He strains for it with two fingers, inching it off the table and into his hand. A blurry photo of a blue Volkswagen, framed by a car window, fills the screen. Underneath, the text reads punch buggy blue. Changmin laughs.

Kyuhyun catches Changmin next in the hallways of the company building, talking to Qian. One of the lights is broken, and it throws shadows over them both, an intimate dark. Changmin's back is turned, and as Kyuhyun draws closer, he watches the fabric of Changmin's shirt pull across his shoulders when he gestures, the upwards tug at the corners of Qian's mouth.

He's two feet away when his shoe squeaks, traitorously. "Oppa," Qian says brightly, looking over Changmin's shoulder, and Changmin turns, eyes lighting up in a familiar smile when he recognises Kyuhyun. Kyuhyun smiles back, and punches him.

He revels in Qian's shocked gasp for three gratifying seconds before Changmin opens his mouth. "Haven't you been exercising recently?" Changmin asks, innocently. He doesn't even give Kyuhyun the dignity of rubbing his arm. "I don't think it's working."

Kyuhyun's still scowling when Qian links arms with both of them, like a placating gesture from a twelve-year-old. "I'm hungry," she declares, matter-of-fact, and they let themselves be led away.

There's something about the way she moves, fluid and graceful regardless of what she is doing, an Uyghur dance or f(x) choreography or simply walking across the practice room for the bottle of water Kyuhyun holds out to her. Her hair, newly dyed a pale shade of brown, is piled together in a messy bun.

"Thank you," she says in Mandarin, sliding to the floor beside Kyuhyun. She picks up her towel and presses it to the sides of her face. He twists his shoelace around his finger as he looks away, leaning back against the mirror. He's always liked how she slipped into Mandarin with him – it didn't happen often, because she insisted on improving her Korean, but sometimes she'd let slip a phrase or two, as if she'd forgotten that distance between them existed.

It's silent, Kyuhyun realises, and glances back to see her looking at him. "What?" he says, lapsing into Korean on accident, and she shakes her head, smiling as glances down at her lap, busying her hands with the towel again.

Odd Song, he mouths at her, frowning, but she's already lifting herself up again, lithe and beautiful.

Kyuhyun and Changmin had kissed once, before Qian. They'd both been made warm and sated by alcohol; a little drunk, but not enough to forget the possessive curl of Kyuhyun's fingers on Changmin's sleeve, the way Changmin's tongue had traced a path along the curve of his lower lip, hot and wet. He'd felt it, all the way down to his fingertips like a shock or a tremor, and the ghost of hunger in Changmin's expression said the same.

They don't touch for weeks, afterward. There are a dozen explanations, and most of them boil down to drunk and convenient, all of them excuses. Kyuhyun goes to Taiwan and spends four days telling lies about Zhou Mi's sleeping habits on national broadcast, and when he comes back, Changmin smiles like it never happened.

But he remembers it – not all the time, but sometimes Changmin will press his lips together, or his fingers will just barely skim Kyuhyun's wrist, and the memory will jolt through him like a shot of adrenaline. It takes all of him, then, not to jerk, or shiver, or move at all, just let Changmin throw an arm over his shoulder and whisper into his ear, words lost to the screaming and the music.

Their shadows converge as they clatter down the stairs to the waiting rooms, into the sea of staff, sweaty and exhausted and an exhilaration in their chests, full and fit to burst. People swarm around them and for a moment Changmin's fingers are tight on his wrist, pulling him close and away, sliding down to his hand when a body crashes into them, nearly toppling them both. Qian flashes a smile at them as she passes by. Kyuhyun, with an armful of Minho, looks back to see Changmin looking at him, the intent in his expression familiar – and then his face clears and he lets go of Kyuhyun's hand, squeezing Minho's shoulder before slipping away.

"I kissed her," Changmin says, voice tight and confused, and Kyuhyun is instantly awake, pushing back the comforter twisted around his ankle. He can hear his own rustling through the phone, and when he flicks the light on in the living room, he winces and turns it off again.

"What?" Even through the thick fog of sleep, his voice sounds strange, tense in a way he doesn't quite understand. He already knows, recognises the paralysing burn of jealousy, spiderlike in his chest, but he'd asked, stupidly, so of course Changmin is going to—

"Song Qian," Changmin says.

It isn't curiosity that eats away at him, when they're side by side in Charles de Gaulle, both of them looking as tired as they feel. She'd smiled at him on the plane, the same as ever, and motioned for him to sit next to her, then fallen asleep just a few minutes after the turbulence of takeoff. He'd spent the flight talking to Ryeowook instead, hyperaware of the strands of her hair that cling to his clothes, like electricity.

It isn't curiosity, and it isn't hurt. They walk together in the streets of Paris, but they don't hold hands. He finds himself watching her – "I think Jinri would like this, don't you?" she says, holding up a charm – and Changmin, laughing when he swipes ice cream onto Kyuhyun's nose, in equal parts, and there's a swell and a strain in his chest.

"When in France," she says, when she leaves first, holding onto both of their wrists as she leans in for a faire la bise. The warmth of her cheek and the sound of the kiss startles him, her hair tickling Kyuhyun's nose as she pulls away, moving towards Changmin. Browsing wines with Changmin afterward, he remembers that she smelled faintly of flowers.

Later, she answers the door barefoot save herringbone stockings, still in the sundress she'd worn earlier. Changmin raises his hand, holding three glasses by the stem, and she lets out a laugh that ruffles her fringe, reaching for the bottle of wine in Kyuhyun's hands.

Her open carry-on and coat are strewn across the single chair, and she waves toward the bed, setting the bottle down on the bureau next to it. There's a half-unwrapped slab of dark chocolate next to the mussed up indent in the sheets where she'd been lying, surrounded by pillows. I Love Lucy is on television, the sound of studio laughter echoing as Lucille Ball stumbles onto a stage in a pillbox hat. There are French subtitles Kyuhyun can't read, lettered across the bottom of the screen. "Santé," he says, when they're all crowded on the bed, Qian reoccupying the centre, and they clink glasses.

He's drowsy and a little drunk, mouth sweet with chocolate and ice wine, when he feels a hand slipping into his, looking down and tracing it back up to Qian. Her other hand is already tight in Changmin's, and her eyes are closed. On screen, the credits are rolling, black and white hearts lit up on the screen. Oh, Kyuhyun thinks, eyes drifting shut, and he's seconds away from sleep when his fingers move to twine with hers.

quid @ 2012-06-03T16:59:00

2012-06-03T23:59:29Z

these days are for chasing light
jonghyun/minho, pg, 1810ⓦ

Note: For Diane. Songs mentioned are by Standing Egg, Urban Zakapa, and Dear Cloud; the album mentioned is by Brown Eyed Soul. Soundtrack.

"We could be like Thelma and Louise," Jonghyun says, tilting his head back, his heels propped up on the dashboard so that his knees are crowding into his face, an indelicate, flexible curl that makes his shirt ride up when he shifts.

"This is not a suicide pact," Minho says, dryly. His gaze keeps snagging on the accidental slip of skin, and then the bright, sharp curve of Jonghyun's grin.

"No," Jonghyun starts to say, sounding earnest, "It's about experiencing a kind of liberation, a transcendence of self—" He interrupts himself, straightening up with a jolt and leaning forward with one hand outstretched to change the channel on the radio. Minho intercepts him.

Under his fingers, Jonghyun's shirt is soft with too many washings. He feels like every time he touches Jonghyun is new, different – once for the time they'd fought, twice when Jonghyun had slung an arm over his shoulders, smiling and companionable; all the times he'd just felt like it, wanted to feel Jonghyun's warmth seep into his.

Jonghyun pulls away, unperturbed; Minho, suddenly embarrassed, is grateful for the green light, inching off the brake. He steals a furtive glance at Jonghyun only to find him looking at his phone again, mouth habitually pursed and wholly unaware: it exasperates him even as he feels a small rush of fondness and relief.

"Hand me my guitar," Jonghyun says, leaning down and reaching for it before Minho's even reacted. He's propped himself between two boughs, shoes scratching roughly against the bark. Minho leans up on his toes, Jonghyun grabbing the neck just as Minho's stretched up to his fingertips.

He's strumming gently when Minho climbs up with a shaker in hand, fitting himself gingerly into the nook where Jonghyun's left his frame drum. Jonghyun's singing "I hope happiness will fill my heart from today," knuckles rapping against the body of his guitar, but he trails off when Minho appears, shifting his guitar in his lap and letting it settle in the same place.

"Let's sing that song you like," Jonghyun says, thumbing the E string so that it hums, deep and low.

"What?" Minho asks, distracted; he sets the shaker down on Jonghyun's leg as he arranges the drum, and Jonghyun's eyes curve into a smile as he looks at it.

"I just wanna stay in your love, I just wanna feel your heart," Jonghyun sings. "That one. I memorised the chords for you."

It's a song that Minho had heard one rainy morning while sharing earphones and browsing through Jonghyun's iPod. Jonghyun hadn't said anything when he'd replayed it, just nodded along, scribbling on his notepad. Minho can't help the smile that floods his face. "On three, then."

"I've been working on a song," Jonghyun says, later, snapping his pick between his fingers. "It's something like—" He plays the melody, and Minho leans back, letting it and Jonghyun's voice, singing and pausing to mumble, "You come in here," wash over him. He almost doesn't realise when it's over, and when he opens his eyes, Jonghyun's face is in his.

He starts, and Jonghyun laughs at his reaction, pulling away. "I like it," Minho says, after a moment, and Jonghyun looks up at him, a little surprised and pleased. "Maybe the bridge could go…" he hums it, finger flicking up and down an imaginary stave.

Jonghyun lights up, nodding seriously. He unearths a pen from his pocket, and Minho remembers just before Jonghyun does that he'd left his notebook in the car. Jonghyun pauses, and Minho is about to offer to get it for him when he turns his wrist up and draws five lines down the inside of his forearm, filling in the notes without bar lines.

Although he's too far away to see, Minho can imagine the shine of the ink as it settles into his skin, another melody sinking into him. Jonghyun's humming, etching out the remainder of the song now, and Minho closes his eyes again, remembering Jonghyun back in the city, entire pages of his notebook crossed out, looking hopeless.

"You're really hard to wake up," Jonghyun's voice floats in from above, when Minho is jolted awake again, his heart leaping to attention before the rest of his body does. The scrawled words on Jonghyun's arm read, two people singing in the clouds. "If you're sleepy, I'll drive," Jonghyun says, and Minho nods, letting Jonghyun gather his things out of his lap and climb down nimbly.

He falls asleep again in the car, and it's fully dark when Minho blinks half-awake again for a moment, bleary and disoriented, and sees Jonghyun's profile by the glow of the dashboard. It's quiet except for the smooth rumble of the engine and the road, and Minho realises the radio is off. Instead, Jonghyun has earphones in, his iPod propped up near the parking brake, cycling through an album Minho dimly recognises as The Wind, The Sea, The Rain before his eyes are sliding shut again.

It's dusty and flat in the town they stop in next, and when Minho steps away from the car, crumpling the petrol receipt in his hand, Jonghyun's in front of the convenience store, leaning with his shoulders braced against the wall, balanced precariously on his heels. He's grinning, hair wind-tousled, and the sunlight glints off his sunglasses and the buckle of his belt.

He smells like summer, back in the passenger seat, the scent of his cologne so faint that it takes Minho a deep breath to catch it, leaning over to adjust the rearview mirror. "I bought strawberries," Jonghyun says around the fruit in his mouth, reaching into the bag at his feet and pulling a tiny fruit basket out. "Do you want one?"

"Sure," Minho says, dragging his gaze away from the road, but Jonghyun's already holding up a strawberry, leaves carefully pulled back.

"Eyes on the road," Jonghyun says, at the same time Minho opens his mouth and says, "I can feed myself." Jonghyun fixes him with a stubborn look, so Minho turns his head back just enough to see the road, and Jonghyun puts the strawberry to his lips again, holding it gingerly so that Minho can take a bite.

The fruit is cold and surprisingly sweet, for an early harvest. When Minho looks back, Jonghyun's fingers are red and stained, picking through the basket for another strawberry.

They'd fallen together easily, in a way entirely characteristic of Jonghyun. They had been walking leisurely along a small road, leaving behind Dongdaemun and the glimmer of street lights. Jonghyun performed there at least once a week, standing on apple crates with his guitar and singing on a street corner, crowded with ddeokboki stands and clothing stalls.

Today, Jonghyun was buried up to his nose in a thick scarf, guitar case slung over one shoulder. Minho could hear him sniffling in between words, fingers curled in the gloves Minho had wordlessly handed to him. "It gets kind of lonely," Jonghyun was saying, voice a little muffled. "On my own—"

He crouched down, tugging a glove off his hand, fingers outstretched to a cat lurking on the side of the street. Minho watched, his own hands firmly entrenched in his pockets, as Jonghyun let the cat sniff his fingers. "I like dogs," Jonghyun said as he stroked the cat's head, in such a matter-of-fact way that Minho laughed, the sound full and round.

Jonghyun was silent, and then he turned to look up at Minho suddenly, the cat slinking away under his still fingers. "Sing with me," Jonghyun said, eyes bright.

They end up at a motel, Jonghyun washing and wringing out his shirt in the sink while Minho flips through the television channels. When he walks out of the shower, Jonghyun is sitting cross-legged on the bed, singing, "Don't forget how in your warmth I breathed for such a long time."

When Minho slides in under the covers, Jonghyun taps his pen restlessly against the bump of Minho's leg. It's after dark, but Minho feels wide awake, skin scrubbed fresh with soap and the air conditioning cool against his still-damp hair. Lying there, he feels hyperaware of Jonghyun next to him, warm and restive; he doesn't know where to look besides at Jonghyun, the spill of the lamp's warm glow on his exposed shoulders and arms, the small dip and rise of his spine where the shirt pulls whenever Jonghyun leans forward.

"You're going to catch a cold," Minho says, finally, pushing himself upright again, hand dipping into the mattress near Jonghyun's hip. Jonghyun turns, mouth half open to reply, and registers the proximity of their faces with a sharp inhale.

Minho is about to pull away when Jonghyun's gaze drops, and the long shadow of his eyelashes fan across his cheekbone. Minho barely registers that he's holding his breath, reaching up to frame Jonghyun's face with a hand and pressing his lips to Jonghyun's.

Jonghyun likes rooftops and empty places, where the open air is infinite. They're parked on the side of the road, and it's dark except for the occasional flash of headlights from passing cars. When Minho finds Jonghyun in the grassy field, wrapped up in a blanket, Jonghyun doesn't notice him at first, still looking unblinkingly at the stars.

When he sits down, Jonghyun seems to become suddenly aware of him, blinking the glassy reflection of the starlight out of his eyes. "Come here," Jonghyun says, voice sleepy, unraveling the blanket, and when Minho shifts closer, he tucks the far end over Minho's shoulder.

"I finished the song," Jonghyun says, after a moment, sounding contemplative. Minho turns to look at Jonghyun, surprised, but Jonghyun's still looking up at the stars.

Minho clears his throat. "When were you going to tell me?"

Jonghyun shrugs, and it makes the blanket start to slip off. Minho reaches up to fix it, tugging it back up so that Jonghyun can tuck his chin over it again. "Now felt like the right time. Since…." He trails off, turning to look at Minho, his hair falling in his eyes.

It wasn't as if he hadn't known they would go back to Seoul, sooner or later. But on the road, time passed without any thought, and Minho had gotten caught up in it, had gotten caught up in Jonghyun. When he speaks, his voice is carefully neutral. "Do you want to go back?"

Jonghyun’s silent for a moment, expression blank. "I thought, if it didn't take too long, I could write another song," Jonghyun says, finally, and the smile that steals over Minho’s face is instant, brighter than a flash of light.

quid @ 2012-03-17T15:41:00

2012-03-17T22:47:00Z

cherish me to sleep
g-dragon/top, pg-13, 1050ⓦ

Note: Poem by T.S. Eliot. For Summer and whetstone; thank you.

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

Everything tastes like ash: food, water, his mouth, Seunghyun's. It's caked under his fingernails, a thick grey film heavy on his tongue. He's slicing an apple with little finesse, working around the bruises with a paring knife and slotting the slices into his mouth, one by one, expecting a burst of sweetness that doesn't come each time. It's midday, and the sun is relentless, the cracked earth dry and flat; he's crouched in the shade of a rusty blue car, Seunghyun dozing off next to him.

Jiyong traces the lines in the ground aimlessly, spider-thin fissures and hairline fractures splitting into crevices. As if someone had wrapped their fingers around the world and squeezed, broken it as easily as one would an egg. He lines up the apple seeds along a wide crack, nudging them with a finger until they are evenly spaced.

If he tries, he can almost forget, push the knowledge that it's a matter of time, they're only waiting to die, into some untouched recess of his mind. Seunghyun is slumped against him in sleep, the two of them having drifted toward each other without quite realising. Seunghyun's fingers are curled loosely around Jiyong's wrist, his head a warm, familiar weight against Jiyong's collarbone; he shifts to lace their fingers together, every heartbeat defiant.

Survivors are expected to last no more than—, the broadcaster had said, voice crackling with interference, before Jiyong had stood up and flung the radio as far away as he could, out of sight. "What the fuck, Jiyong," Seunghyun had burst out, eyes wide, staggering to his feet, and Jiyong's hands were shaking as he pressed them into his eyes, feeling himself sway, unsteady. His knees had knocked into each other as he sat back down clumsily, breathing one two three four five, and when he looked back up, Seunghyun was gone.

He'd bitten his lip almost raw, digging his heel into the ground, remembering every time Seunghyun had confessed, "There are times when I just want to run away." Earlier, Seunghyun had slid Jiyong's rings off, one by one, slipping them onto his own fingers, toying with them, pushing them into a pile before leaving them finally in a line, perfectly straight. The silver glinted in the dying sunlight and he'd thought, a little delirious, but I'm Kwon Jiyong.

Seunghyun hadn't returned until it was already dark, and Jiyong had jumped when Seunghyun had crouched down beside him. Seunghyun's mouth had twitched a little, like he'd been itching to say boo! but had settled for waiting for Jiyong's startled curse. His hands were empty. "I decided I didn't want to know the future," he said, quietly, later, his head in Jiyong's lap and Jiyong's fingers running through his hair.

When he wakes up, Seunghyun is smoking, stamping out the flecks of red-orange that alight with the heel of his boot. Black cigarette ash is peppered among the powder-grey. Jiyong laughs quietly, voice still rough with sleep and congestion. "Inviting the apocalypse now, huh?"

Seunghyun looks over, opening up his palm wordlessly when Jiyong reaches for the cigarette. "Might as well," he says, smiling like it's a private joke. Jiyong can feel his gaze, settling like dust on the fingers he wraps around the cigarette. The smoke blooms in his lungs, burning its way through his body like gunpowder.

"God," Jiyong chokes out, as Seunghyun slides fingers under Jiyong's to take the cigarette back, laughing a little. He kisses Jiyong once they're calm again, precise and careful, metering out each precious breath of air. Jiyong's lungs burn anyway; he presses forward, wanting Seunghyun to take, and he does, tugging Jiyong blindly into the backseat of the car.

He closes his eyes, and walks.

In the distance, there is a single shoe, fallen on its side. It is too far away to see, but Jiyong imagines it could be a woman's coral pink kitten heel, or a jogger's lucky left shoe, or a child's velcro-strapped sneaker, a name that could even be his written on the tongue with permanent marker.

He's nudging the shoe with the toe of his Louboutins when the snake slides out, like grain spilling out of a bag. It's small, dark scales a stark contrast against the grey, winding around his heel. In an instant Jiyong sees the snake headless, body twisting. His grip on the paring knife is slick, the taste of copper filling his mouth.

His neck, still craned, is beginning to hurt; he massages it with a hand, and his fingers come away dark with blood. He looks back down. The snake is gone; the shoe is his.

He gasps awake, like a drowning man breaching air. His vision whirls at the same time his head does, his fingers catching on the stiff olive-coloured fabric of Seunghyun's jacket and dragging it down toward him, just to have something solid under his skin.

"Jesus, Ji," Seunghyun breathes, mouth open over his. His eyes are wide, looking straight into Jiyong's, searching. There's a dusty grey smudge on Seunghyun's cheek, traced taut along his cheekbones, that ends at Jiyong's thumb. Seunghyun's heartbeat is like a butterfly, pinned under his shaking fingers. "I'm not going anywhere." His mouth pulls a little, embarrassed and worried and helplessly earnest, all at once.

"Good," Jiyong mumbles, face pressed into Seunghyun's chest so fiercely he can barely breathe. Slowly, Seunghyun reaches an arm around Jiyong, fingers curling around the back of Jiyong's shirt, and whispers it to him again, there's nowhere to go except to you curling into the warm shell of his ear.

He'd always imagined the world ending in the same way as ink in water: explosive, tendrils of black consuming everything in sight. He's lost track of the days now, time blurring into irregular cycles of sleep and wakefulness, barely-there hunger and Seunghyun, laughing at his own jokes or dragging a finger through the ash to write words and watch them disappear.

"Hey, Rip van Winkle," Jiyong says, reaching over to brush ash out of Seunghyun's hair. Seunghyun's eyes flutter closed, docile, and Jiyong considers Seunghyun's face for a moment, young and peaceful, at odds with everything else. You're every love song, Jiyong thinks, and Seunghyun opens his eyes and smiles as if he'd said it aloud.

quid @ 2011-12-10T20:49:00

2011-12-11T05:02:08Z

vacancy signal
changmin-centric, pg-13, 1780ⓦ

Note: Based on Green Gloves by The National (explanation).

It’s more about trying to remember someone and sort of be them [...] You’re actually recreating them somehow in order to know them better. You miss them so much you have to become them.

– Matt Berninger

In the back of the closet, Changmin finds one of Jaejoong's old zip-up hoodies, with a tiny hole in the sleeve from moths. When he tugs it on, it's a little tight in all the familiar places, and he pulls the hood over his head with two hands.

It's raining outside, and the air is thick-knit with smog and clouds, drawing in close around Changmin. He ducks into the convenience store, the doorway rain-tracked and dirty. Inside his pockets, he plays with six 500 yen coins, picking them up and dropping them, over and over, scanning the display of beverages until he hears Junsu say, "I want strawberry milk."

The bottles leave a cold, damp spot on his jacket front when he carries them to the counter.

They fly back to Seoul, the next day. He fits earphones into his ears, so he doesn't have to hear the snap snap snap of paparazzi and the screaming fans, the flurry of hands. When they reach their apartment, Changmin drops his bags in the hallway, partly because he's tired, but mostly to be irritating, so that Yunho will say, yah, Changmin-ah, no vitriol behind it.

All of the rooms have the empty, un-lived in look they get when they've been away, too clean and untouched. When he skims a tabletop in passing, his fingers come away clean, but the television remote is still balanced on the arm of the couch, a cup still left out on the counter by accident, almost as if there is someone invisible at home.

The blanket on Yoochun's bed has been neatly tucked in with the sheets, like an army bunk. Changmin tugs them out, slides in under the blanket and turns his face into the pillow.

It's midday, but Changmin falls asleep in ten minutes. When he's shaken awake, Yunho's hand is on his shoulder, his body a vague outline in the dark. "You want dinner?" Yunho says. The rest of the apartment is quiet.

If you're buying, Changmin almost says, but there's a weariness around Yunho's eyes, different from the usual, that Changmin feels guilty for, as if he had something to do with it. He says out loud, "Sure." His voice almost cracks on the word, his throat dry and his jaw stiff.

He pushes himself out of bed, shrugs a coat onto his shoulders and lets Yunho hold the door open for him. There's a heavy, sour taste on his tongue, like metal. It reminds him of Charon's obol, like their brisk stride is a cut through the watery darkness. They stop at an intersection, the only people on the sidewalk. Next to him in the orange-yellow glow of a streetlight, Yunho's face looks almost ashen. He leans in for a moment, but then the light changes and Yunho shifts away, unaware.

There is a video on his phone that he watches, sometimes. It begins with fumbling, a flash of orange-yellow light, and Junsu's voice, saying in English, "Okay, okay, go." It focuses on Jaejoong, his face awash with the glow of candles, the rest of them in a circle around him. Jaejoong waves his hands like a conductor while they sing happy birthday to him, their faces wavering in and out of view.

Yoochun plants a sloppy kiss on Jaejoong's cheek when the song ends, and Junsu's disembodied hyena laugh sounds as Jaejoong makes a face of exaggerated disgust. He looks at Yunho while he does it, Changmin realises on the fourth or fifth replay, and slowly rewinds, replays, rewinds – Jaejoong's pout, the wrinkle of his nose, the way neither of them look away until a noise maker – his noise maker, he remembers with a start – makes a sharp, sudden sound.

There are other things he remembers, faintly, as he falls asleep, like slides on a carousel projector: Yoochun sneaking chocolate out of the cupboard, the peace that unfolds in Jaejoong when he plays the piano, Junsu's face, red and cramped with effort as he's arm wrestling Yunho.

He sleeps without dreaming.

He studies them all online, more than he used to. He watches the shadows underneath their eyes wax and wane, the thin sliver of a smile on Yunho's face captured by a news camera, Jaejoong's name splashed over headlines.

On stage, he sings with a voice sharper, more hoarse and nasal than usual; his throat burns with the effort. He watches the comments stack up online, and amid the flurry of oppa must not be feeling well, one reads, doesn't Changmin oppa sound like Junsu oppa? He shuts down his computer, leans back in his bed and stares at the ceiling. His stomach feels light, and he remembers suddenly that he hasn't eaten in six hours.

When they ask how he prepared for the new album in an interview, the recitation rolls off his tongue smoothly: "We worked hard to show a more mature side with a different image and vocals." It's only when Yunho's delivering his line that he remembers: Changmin oppa sounds like Junsu oppa.

Beside the stage, Changmin plays with the clasp of his necklace, singing his lines under his breath to his newly-shined shoes. He's metering out Junsu's lines in taps when he thinks, oh— and then it's time, he's climbing the steps up to the stage while the screen flashes to say, MAXIMUM.

They clamber into a club afterwards, pouring in like a flood, young and wild and free. Some time later, Kyuhyun has a brogue curled around Changmin's ankle, and he's smiling glassily across the booth at Jungmo, who has slid out into the thick of the club. Changmin presses the heel of his hand to one ear, his phone plastered to the other. "No," he laughs, as Kyuhyun pushes himself upright with a shoulder and reaches for his glass again. He doesn't remember hearing the phone ring, but he also doesn't remember which glass is his.

"I have to go, I'm babysitting Kyuhyunnie," Changmin says, after a pause; he reaches out and nudges Kyuhyun's knuckles away from his glass, punctuating it with a smirk. Kyuhyun attempts a scowl that looks suspiciously like a pout, and mouths, who is it? He reaches for the phone, touching cold glass for a moment before Changmin shifts away and laughs, jostling Kyuhyun with an elbow. Jaejoong, he mouths back, before he says out loud, "Yeah, I will. Bye."

Kyuhyun frowns minutely over the rim of his glass as Changmin pushes his phone back onto the table, screen dark. In the morning, his phone's battery is dead, and it flashes 5:42 p.m. at him for a brief moment when he plugs it into an empty socket on Yunho's side of the hotel room.

Changmin can hear the clock ticking, and he taps the blank page in front of him, tilting the chair back onto its back legs. He can hear the soft scratch of a pen on paper, Yoochun shifting, cocooned in layers of wool and cotton. The 2 a.m. chill is distracting; he uses the eraser of his pencil to puncture out a simple, unappealing melody on the keyboard. Yoochun sniffs, blows his nose: he's caught a cold again, sometime between their last two international flights.

They end up in the living room after another hour, falling asleep after a hushed, exhaustive argument over a muted television game show without captions. When Yunho wakes up, Changmin and Yoochun are lounging on the couch, sharing a bag of shrimp chips for breakfast. "I thought you didn't like those," he says.

Changmin shrugs. "I like them." Yoochun did, too. They always justified buying food on the housekeeping budget as long as two of them liked it. It's just past noon; on the television, a middle-aged woman is brewing ginger tea, toting it as a cure for stomachaches. He changes the channel, lands on a historical drama.

"Move over," Yunho says, patting at the haphazard sprawl of Changmin's legs, tangled up in a thin blanket.

"They're mine," Changmin says automatically, fingers closing like a vice around the neck of the bag. He doesn't look away from the television, still flicking through channels with obtuse stabs at the channel up button, but he draws his feet up anyway, and burrows them underneath Yunho after he's sunken into the couch cushions like a flagging ship.

In the bathroom, the last glass bottle of Jaejoong's cologne is nearly empty. Changmin wields it with a fragile economy, sprays twice and lets Jaejoong's scent descend on him like a cloud.

They're always paired off in the photoshoots like a diptych, all mirrored angles and long legs and lofty glances, Yunho always just a little softer, Changmin that slightest bit harder. Yunho's back is to the camera when Changmin steps closer, so that he can feel Yunho shifting inside his suit as Changmin reaches up, tucks his hands into the pockets of his trousers.

They've done this enough times that they know their angles, all the different permutations of poses. Yunho's meant to turn, give them his side profile, but Yunho, instead, breathes sharply and turns his head to look at Changmin.

He dissects the look for days afterwards, the bewildered yearning, wistful and helpless and beautiful, like the sun and the moon, a tragedy. In the glossy pages of the magazine, their faces are blank, arrogance mass-produced and stocked on shelves of 7-11s, no ephemera by which to remember that expression. It's his, to keep.

Sometimes Changmin thinks it can all be read in body language: two men in a room, one of whom loves the other, one of whom loves another. Sometimes his body carries it like a whisper, sometimes it carries it like a scream. Their lives are like two trains, travelling in opposite directions on the same track, every vis-à-vis like an accident: Yunho passing by a room where Changmin sits, reading; Changmin hearing the sounds of a murmured telephone conversation through the fourth wall of his bedroom. Crowded together in smaller spaces – a new flat, their manager's sedan – they're somehow less intimate, more like hollow men. On stage, they are watery images of each other, mirrored in imperfect symmetry.

Changmin can trace the years on Yunho's face, the child-like curves that have faded into sharpness, the smooth, unbroken lines that trace out his bone structure, interrupted by fear and worry and hurt. He could fit his mouth to the furrow in his brow, slick a wet thumb over the creases at the corner of his eyes.

"I worry about you," Yunho says, sitting across the kitchen table in the dim stove light. Oh, Changmin thinks, shakily, there. The crinkle of Yunho's features, for me, for me, for me.

quid @ 2011-10-05T22:49:00

2011-10-06T05:57:10Z

tongues that taste you back
sulli/victoria, pg-13, 480ⓦ

Note: Thirty minute exercise. Poem by Anne Sexton.

No matter what life you lead
the virgin is a lovely number:
cheeks as fragile as cigarette paper,
arms and legs made of Limoges,
lips like Vin Du Rhône,
rolling her china-blue doll eyes
open and shut.

Her skin is cold like porcelain, cheeks pale and stinging in the bitter cold. She brushes a stray strand of hair away from her face, curls tangled into her mouth by the wind.

It is dark, and the ground is like shadows before her, damp soft earth punctuated by the hard surface of a stone, the crackle of leaf and twig. The wind, howling between the barren arches of trees, sounds like wolves, lonely and hungry.

Turn left at the second fork in the road, her mother had said, or had it been turn right? She imagines the curve of her mother's mouth, sees her ashen and dry lips form the word left, a snakelike flick of the tongue.

Her home is a sleepy town, full of dust and simple folk. It is filled with warmth, cottages capped with brown like a permanent turn of autumn. The bread in her basket has turned cold, the crust hard under her knuckles. She looks back for a moment, but behind her is only auburn sky and brambles.

She curls her fingers into the bright wool of her cape, like a flame in the dark. She turns left. The flowers in her basket are beginning to turn limp, the stalks thin and bruised. Her boots sink into the ground where the rain has been, the earth like a mouth that opens to welcome her in, hello, hello. She sinks down further the faster she walks, overgrown branches scratching at her arms and face as if to say, we're so glad to see you, won't you stay a while?

She reaches a clearing abruptly, as through every living thing had been swallowed into the ground. Be brave, her mother had said in the morning, fixing the clasps of her cape with her seamstress hands. And sing if you're afraid.

There are footsteps, and she opens her mouth, but the song dies in her throat.

"Hello, my pretty," the woman says, and her mouth is red, red like the berries she'd been warned not to pick and never to eat; she remembers, inexplicably, the time she'd eavesdropped and heard her neighbour saying, cherchez la femme.

"Who are you?" she says, hurls it like a retaliation.

"Who am I?" the woman repeats, and smiles, like scarlet on the edge of a knife. "I'm the bad wolf."

Her home is a cottage, full of dust and spiders. The flowers in her basket are dry, white petals and lavender crisp and fragile. The red dye of her cape has faded, but her hair still spills out from under her hood in perfect curls, her skin still as white as dandelion milk. She is walking when she is stopped by a man chopping wood with an axe, who asks, "Are you lost?"

"Yes," she says, and smiles, all teeth. Underneath the white handkerchief, her basket is full of sweetbreads.

quid @ 2011-08-19T14:35:00

2011-08-19T21:36:50Z

my heart stood still
minho/onew, pg, 1082ⓦ

Note: Inspired by Rupert Brooke's The Hill. For Jeny; happy birthday.

05 Sit a while, and be still with me. We'll play Pachebel in the lazy afternoons, I'll run my fingers over the rough skin of your elbow. Hold still, and I will find all the ways to make you come alive.

The sun sets early in the countryside, shifting out of its high perch and setting alight the higher reaches of leaves. The songbirds are nesting, the dragonflies out and the squirrels in hiding. A wind chime tied to the leaning bough of a tree tinkles, the sound gentle and bright. At the foot of the bee hive, stems of canary grass are starting to grow.

Jinki's footsteps are soft, the heavy press of tall boots padded with the rush of grass and wind. He whistles the same two notes together like a bird call, re mi, mi re, mi re, as he cuts a path through the grass, movements clumsy but practised in a beekeeper’s suit. To the east, the daffodils Minho has planted have begun to bloom in earnest, in bright, sunny yellows.

Sugar crystals line the rim of the jar nestled in his hands, crumbling when he unscrews the lid to fill the feeder frame with rich, golden syrup. Inside the hive, honeybees buzz and hum to each other in a secret language, a swarm of tiny bodies and fragile wings; he holds his breath without meaning to, watching them until the sun overtakes the hill, bright in his eyes.

The walk downhill is easier, a winding path back to the little whitewashed house with its leaning eaves, where he hangs up his suit, like the mark of the end of a day. When he opens the door, Minho is there, smelling of hickory and earth; it makes Jinki smile.

Inside the house, there is a home, a rickety wooden table with an empty glass bottle on top, orange root beer label half torn off; a rabbit Minho had carved out of basswood for Jinki, the lines rough; a delft blue plate that had chipped like a tooth on the rim.

He can hear the drone of the oven, busy; there is a recipe for cherry and almond muffins lying on the counter next to the mail, along with a miscreant dash of flour. The sun splinters at the edge of the window and winks out of sight as he leans over the back of Minho's chair to say hello.

04 We're still twenty-two states away from finishing our state quarters collection, because I accidentally spent Arkansas on gas. (I’m still learning how to leave behind the warmth of your body's proximity.)

They're lying in the last refuge of shade, Minho's head resting against the side of Jinki's stomach. Jinki is reading a battered copy of Faulkner out loud. Minho shifts, the movement revealing a sliver of skin before Jinki reaches out and tugs his shirt back down, mid-sentence. Minho smiles; the grass tickles the back of his neck.

Jinki's English is precise and careful, different from the easy, soothing lilt of his Korean. The cadence is familiar, though, as is the way the tips of Jinki's fingers linger on the pages as he flips them from left to right, backwards instead of forwards.

Caddy smelled like trees, Jinki is saying. Minho turns, then, nose digging into Jinki's stomach, just under the rib. Jinki yelps, curling inwards in a clash of limbs. Minho laughs, narrowly avoiding a knee as Jinki regards him balefully, still clinging to the book as he unfurls, gingerly.

Jinki smells like springtime and clean laundry, something sweet and warm; comfort, even in the middle of June. Minho pulls himself up, and Jinki's expression changes at the intent on Minho's face, eyes no longer wide. He slides his fingers out from between the pages as Minho leans in.

When he kisses Jinki, he can taste Jinki's lip balm, lingering on his tongue. Jinki's curled a hand around the back of his neck, fingers in his hair. The shade has shifted, and Minho can feel the sun on his back, shining bright and relentless.

"Study break?" Jinki asks, and Minho's eyes curve into a smile.

03 White tuxedos, fine wine and shrimp cocktails – they say this is the life, but I know better.

Jinki is eyeing his glass of champagne like he's reading the meniscus, trying to decide if he should pipette another two millimetres out or if he's had enough. It'd be easier if they weren't on a cruise ship, but that's Minho's fault, not Jinki's.

"You hate it, don't you?" Minho says conversationally, having sidled up to him with his own flute sometime between now and Jinki's last covert glance. Minho's smiling; he looks completely at ease in Ozwald Boateng – whereas Jinki just wants to make a joke about boating in Boateng without returning looks that could persecute.

Christmas lights have been strung up around the ship, and people are dancing in pairs on the deck, swaying to the sounds of the jazz ensemble – Tony Bennett and Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra, all the classics. The piano reminds Jinki of silverware, the tinkle of china and polite conversation. "I liked the phyllo cups," Jinki says, finally. They really had been very nice – Swiss chard and two types of cheeses, still oven-warm.

"What about me?" Minho says, teasingly, and there are lights in his eyes that have nothing to do with Christmas.

"I'm only here because I like you," Jinki admits.

Minho throws his head back and laughs. "I'll drink to that."

02 I'm here, we're together, so hang up your winter coat.

Kibum moves for his hand and Minho takes it, glancing down the row – Taemin and Kibum's hands in either of Jonghyun's, Taemin's hold sliding down from Jinki's wrist to his hand.

When they bow, it hits Minho like vertigo, the adrenaline, the screams, the pride and joy and happiness and love. Minho straightens, tugs Kibum in by the hand until he's reached Jinki. Jinki's shirt is wet, his hair clinging to an up-do, eyes shining with tears he's trying to hold back. Minho sweeps him into a hug, and feels three pairs of arms encompass the two of them.

He can feel heat soaking though the damp fabric of his shirt; Jinki is crying. "We're going," Kibum laughs, voice shaky against the back of Minho's neck, and even if they're not in the right formation, they shout the rest, fingers tight: ultra SHINee transformation!

01 Love: perhaps there are better words, but I don't know them.

quid @ 2011-08-05T12:10:00

2011-08-05T19:11:01Z

tea for two
jonghyun/onew, pg-13, 440ⓦ

Note: To quote a friend, "Menthol cigarettes do not do the same for a sore throat as menthol cough drops."

When Jinki wakes up, the room is greyed with the light of late afternoon. Jonghyun is sitting by the balcony window, smoking a cigarette. His mouth is dry, body stiff with yesterday's aches as he flips the thin blanket off his legs.

"Hey," he says quietly, voice still rough with sleep, sitting down next to Jonghyun. Jonghyun turns toward him slightly in silent acknowledgement; their shoulders brush with the movement. Jonghyun is pale, the sickness throwing shadows across his face, his eyes; it reminds Jinki of rose petals, bruised and powder-soft.

They're quiet, for a while. The press of Jonghyun's mouth, in between drags, says he doesn't want to talk. Not yet. The sounds of the street are just barely audible from where they are, on the eighth floor in a hotel room for two. Their breathing is out of sync, Jonghyun's open-mouthed, smoke-hazy breaths washing over Jinki's quiet in and out like waves.

Jonghyun reaches forward, flicks ash onto the balcony floor. Jinki is drawn to the motion – the line of his wrist, the way Jonghyun's eyelashes drop. He watches the ashes shift toward the edge of the balcony, stirred by the air conditioning from inside. One of Jonghyun's sleeves is rucked up slightly. Jinki contemplates fixing it, but Jonghyun wouldn't mind either way.

"Should you be smoking?" Jonghyun's been trying not to talk; he's spent most of their time in transit and between performances sleeping or mouthing Japanese words out of the beginner's language books they've all been given. Saving his voice for when he needed it. So far, it hasn't helped.

"It's a menthol cigarette," Jonghyun says; it sounds like a sigh, soft and drowsy, but just the slightest bit petulant. It's reassuring, the obstinance; Jinki laughs a little, and Jonghyun smiles back with his fingers splayed across his mouth for a drag. It's a nice change from the sad, sotto voce boy; this is easy, Jinki thinks. Familiar, drawing the warmth back out of Jonghyun.

Jinki stretches his legs out, wiggling his toes. The color in his socks has faded in the wash, one now darker than the other. He leans forward, elbows on his knees in a half-hearted stretch. Jonghyun turns away to stub out the cigarette and his face is obscured by the curve of his shoulder, but the smile is lingering in his eyes.

The ashtray is on the table, Jinki remembers; he's starting to climb to his feet when Jonghyun reaches out and holds onto his hand. Stay, Jonghyun is saying.

When Jinki settles back down, their bodies align in parallels, a line of warmth all the way down to their hands.

quid @ 2011-05-01T10:53:00

2011-05-01T17:54:01Z

thirty-minute writing exercises

One is loved because one is loved. No reason is needed for loving.

a home for the heart, jonghyun/onew.
Quote by Paulo Coelho. PG, 251W.

There's Jinki when he's trying unsuccessfully to shake the hair out of his eyes; Jinki when he is Onew, all smiles and ninety-degree bows and please look after me, I'll work harder. Jinki, who still thinks collared shirts and sweater vests together equate high fashion (still better than Kibum, who insists they could make tartan pants the next contemporary fad); Jinki, who, in a last-ditch attempt to make them smile after another long day, says, What did Batman say when he caught the villains? Gotham.

But the Jinki Jonghyun likes best is the one that brushes his teeth in the morning in a sleepy daze, eyes closed to try and catch a few more moments of sleep, one hand gripping the edge of the sink for balance. The Jinki that scratches drowsily at the slip of stomach between the hem of his worn sweater and pajama pants and mumbles, "Morning, Jonghyun-ah," stifling a yawn.

There is no plot, Jonghyun likes to think. No rising action, no pivotal moment, no climax—just that sometime in between a casual threading of fingers over piano keys and shared lyrics sheets, he'd figured out the mathematics to Jinki's smile, like something else to be tucked into his notebook for safekeeping. Jonghyun stealing Jinki away from sleep for illicit vending machine endeavours; the two of them, reading side by side on Jinki's bed, Jinki's chin propped up with a pillow while Jonghyun flips the pages.

(And if sometimes they kiss in between chapters, Jonghyun doesn't tell.)

teeth, onew/yonghwa.
Based on the 하늘을달리다 performance, PG, 247W.

The moment Jinki steps onto the stage, he is a different person, the soft, brilliant smile Yonghwa had become accustomed to off-camera transformed into a smirk, bold and confident, consuming the space between them until Yonghwa can feel his face flare with heat. Jinki leans away the moment Yonghwa does, Yonghwa flustered, Jinki turning to the crowd with a million-watt smile.

Jonghyun flashes him a smile as he steps back into place on stage, a subtle one-two-three count before they start into the chorus. There are echoes of Drew Bowie, the I wanna rock! scream vibrating through Jinki's voice; when Jinki turns away from the sea of screams to mouth Yonghwa's lines to him, Yonghwa nearly stumbles on the chords, gaze catching on the shape of Jinki's mouth, forming silent syllables. They'd rehearsed this on ten different occasions, and Jinki had never smiled at him like he was dying to be kissed.

You did well is all Jinki says afterward, face still flushed and adrenaline-high. Jungshin's quick to reply when Yonghwa doesn't, and when Minhyuk prods him none-too-discreetly, Yonghwa stumbles over the formalities – what, oh, you too, thank you, well done – and watches Jinki trail off towards the rest of his group members, exchanging smiles and greetings and words of congratulations on the way back.

You were just a boy who laughed at my bad jokes, Yonghwa thinks, and then: maybe I just liked the way your mouth moved. He says the next part out loud: "Shit."

quid @ 2011-04-23T19:39:00

2011-04-24T02:43:04Z

south in summer
minho/key, pg-13, 1076ⓦ

Note: Poem by Tyler Knott Gregson. For vyplum for Replay4Japan.

Even in silence
with only glances and stares,
tell me you love me.

There is a blood orange on the kitchen counter. The discarded peels are lying in long, waxy curls and the flesh is torn, red and bleeding. It is six o'clock and the sun is barely starting to fade; summer is on the horizon and the heat of the days is getting longer.

Kibum is tooth and bone, a wild, insecure youth trying to claw its way out of the glassy exterior he's built for himself like a matryoshka doll.

Two months before their debut, Kibum dislocates his shoulder. There's only room for one on the ambulance, and Minho is about to move to give Jonghyun space to step forward when Kibum's fingers close on Minho's wrist. The entire ride, Kibum's fingers are pressed white against Minho's arm, every whorl burning into his skin. "Shit," Kibum says, over and over again, an angry, sibilant hiss.

Kibum had had his palm read, once. Fame and good health. A strong life line, but unlucky in love. "I don't believe you," he'd said, loudly, but the gypsy woman had only smiled enigmatically and lifted her callused fingers from the invisible map of his hand.

Afterwards, he had run his fingers over the lines of his left hand, the tiny fault lines: life, head, heart, little crooked mysteries. He'd curled his fingers in, blunt nails lined up against what she'd called the head line, closing his fist on love.

Love, Minho thinks, watching Kibum tilt his head back and make eyes at the Nylon cameras, is something you can never really escape. His wallet is bulky from all the photos he keeps tucked into the pockets: his family, his elementary school soccer team, a wide-eyed and newly-debuted SHINee, so on and so forth. Love, in past tense: he still remembers Jung Soyeon from year six, Kim Eunji from next door, Park Jihyun, et cetera. The shutter clicks, and the camera flashes – to the present.

The difference between hate and love is just one wrong turn, one nerve lighting up instead of another. Kibum hates Minho, perpetually calm and blasé Minho, hates his infuriating ability to make everyone feel inferior, hates that in a world of convenient labels – singer, leader, dancer, rapper – he is a free radical, left to fend for himself, to try to become Key, Almighty Key, Key who can do everything, anything you want, just say the word: scream for Key, Key, Key, Key.

"Say my name," Kibum whispers, bewildered, angry. His pulse is like an earthquake on Minho's skin, shaking. In the darkened hallway, he can still hear the echoes of a name that is not his.

"Kim," Minho says, slowly, like each word is a gesture, a touch, an affirmation. "Kibum."

When they kiss, their lips are dry.

They are lovers, and then they are strangers. When he's asked about his first kiss, Minho glances sidelong at Kibum, who is leaning by the door, looking bored, fingers toying absent-mindedly with his necklace. "I've never had a girlfriend," Minho says carefully, trailing off evasively.

There is a scar on Kibum's wrist that he has never explained, a white sickle shape curved over the bone. When Minho's fingers brush against it in the car, Kibum shivers, looks at him with wide Peter Pan eyes.

Minho thinks Kibum is probably the kind of person who thinks about dying. On a sleepless night, he lies in bed, staring up at the mattress above, imagines the way the muted moonlight coming in from the window would cast shadows onto Kibum's face, sharp lines in stark relief, as if cut by a knife.

Backstage, Kibum is thinking about empires. Castles with sharp spires you could prick your finger on; wars and crusades, old livered hands on a holy text, glory and the good die young. Versailles, crumbling.

There is a hand at the small of his back. "Hey," Minho says. In the dark, Kibum can just barely make out the bridge of his nose, the sharp line of his jaw. Kibum blinks at him, as if he is waking up from one dream to another.

What if this is all we ever are, Kibum wants to ask, once they are stepping onto the darkened stage. What if we say goodbye now and disappear. Wordlessly, Minho takes Kibum's hand in his, their fingers linking behind Taemin's back, hidden from view as the last first beats of "Replay" begin.

On New Year's Eve, everyone gets a little drunk waiting for midnight, Taemin red-cheeked and ruffled, Jinki leaning against an animated, laughing Jonghyun like a crutch. Minho finds Kibum on the balcony, curled up with his hair in an uncharacteristic disarray. He doesn't move when Minho sits down next to him, only pulls his knees closer to his chest.

Kibum had looked at him unapologetically after the kiss, he remembers. It had been short, Kibum's lips pressing against his like a brand, Kibum looking like he'd taken something from Minho when in reality he'd left fire in his wake. "I dream about you sometimes," Minho finds himself saying. His mouth twists afterward, like it's something he's guilty of.

Kibum glances at him, without turning his head. Behind them, the clamour reaches a crescendo; on the television, a smatter of fireworks explode. Minho takes a breath, hesitates, and Kibum looks away.

Jonghyun always writes about love, Kibum has noticed, things like to me, you're a playful fox and all I wanted was simply to give you an endless love. They've built an empire on romance, been taught all the right ways to make girls blush, and yet all he has of Minho are these little pieces, the way his eyes light up when someone mentions Thierry Henry and the flush of his cheeks when he'd had a fever last September; the subtle press of his lips when he doesn't want to talk to the camera abruptly pointed his way, and then when Kibum had put the pieces of himself into Minho's hands for a moment and said just this once, I want to be reckless.

Minho, in the end, is still that boy who hides his money in books and who doesn't know how to admit defeat, determination written all over his stubborn young face. Love, maybe, is a game, or at least something you can win or lose, where things happen in the blink of an eye, something that demands focus, concentration, a single-mindedness—

In the mirror, Kibum's eyes meet his.