Super Junior AU; Various Pairings; Drabble 07
Title: Drabbles 07
Fandom: Super Junior AU (High School)
Pairing: Various (Hankyung/Heechul, Kibum/Donghae, Kangin/Eeteuk)
Word count: Between 500 and 1000
Rating: PG - PG-13
Summary: Super Junior AU Drabbles part 7
A/N: These suddenly turned really angsty at some point two nights ago and I haven't been able to get away from the angst. You can tell which ones were written while listening to Zhang Li Yin, and which were written listening to Busted, SNSD and Super Junior. Also, I write too much.
You guys, stop me from writing Disneyfiedfairytale!Hanchul. Please.
Shindong / Eunhyuk / odd ones out / PG / 633 words
They were fifteen minutes into the first bus journey of their week long school graduation trip when Donghae said, miserably, “I miss Kibum.”
“Oh my god!” shrieked Heechul, and turned around in his seat and threw a sweet wrapper at Donghae’s head. “If you’re going to mope and whine all week about missing Kibum, I cannot be held responsible for what I do!”
“I know what he means, though,” said Yehsung, slumped back in his chair next to Shindong. “I miss Ryeowook already, too.”
“Xiao Li, hit him,” ordered Heechul, and Xiao Li turned around and hit Yehsung on the arm, and then pretended that she didn’t understand what he was yelling.
“I agree with Heechul,” said Shindong, looking a little surprised at that occurrence. “I have to sit next to you for the next hour or so, and if you’re just going to sit there and whine, I’ll drug you or knock you out, anything to make you be quiet.”
“It’s stupid that you’re complaining,” said Eunhyuk, scowling. “About missing your boyfriends, I mean. At least you have boyfriends.” Everyone stared at him for a minute until he realised what he’d said. “Not that I want a boyfriend,” he said quickly, flushing red. “I meant that you aren’t allowed to complain about missing your boyfriends when some of us don’t have girlfriends.”
“Oh, get over yourself,” said Heechul loudly, staring at the front of the bus and so actually not looking at Eunhyuk sitting behind Hankyung as he spoke.
“Any girl on this bus would give their right leg to go out with you, so I think that you’re just scared of actually doing it. Perhaps you are gay,” said Xiao Li, but she said it in Chinese, so everyone just raised an eyebrow at her. She had this habit of saying things that she didn’t want to be heard in Chinese. She smiled brightly, Hankyung hid his laughter, and then the others returned to the conversation, those who hadn’t understood none the wiser.
“Why don’t you just ask someone out?” asked Siwon. “The girls are probably waiting for you to make the first move.”
“You can be quiet too,” said Shindong miserably. “It was obvious that Xiao Li liked you, so you didn’t have anything to worry about.”
“I wasn’t obvious, was I?” Xiao Li asked Heechul nervously.
“Only slightly,” said Heechul with a grin, ruffling her hair as she groaned and Siwon laughed.
“Right,” said Donghae. “We’re going to settle this once and for all.” He stood up and yelled to catch everyone’s attention. Eunhyuk tried to drag him back down, but Donghae pulled himself out of his grasp and stepped into the aisle, holding onto the back of Heechul’s chair to keep his balance in the moving vehicle. “Right,” he called. “Could anyone who would like to go out with Eunhyuk or Shindong please raise their hand now?”
There was a pause, and then, as one, every girl who wasn’t currently in a relationship raised her hand, all of them looking more than a little hopeful - a couple of girls who were going out with someone raised their hands slightly, looking nervous. Hankyung blinked at them all, Shindong blinked in much the same way, and Eunhyuk looked like someone had just hit him over the head with a baseball bat.
“Right,” said Donghae, and he grinned and sat back down and thumped Eunhyuk on the shoulder. “There you go. Both of you, take your pick and have a fun holiday where it doesn’t matter if Yehsung and I complain because you’re both too busy having fun with a multitude of beautiful girls.”
“I’m that popular?” Eunhyuk asked, astounded. “Really, I’m that popular? I’m like a god!”
“Oh, shut up,” said Heechul, and threw another sweet wrapper at his head.
Siwon / Heechul / the things you can't change / PG / 579 words
Siwon was there for it all, during the slow descent that Heechul took, through the tears and the pain and the strange moments of silence and heartbreak. Siwon was there when the sister moved away, and he was there when the grandfather died, and he was there when the hair grew longer and the outfits changed. He was there for it all.
Years later, when he watches Heechul kiss Hankyung with soft hands and gentle noises, he smiles, because he remembers times - so many of them, too many to count - when he cried for Heechul, fearing the worst, fearing that this time, after this event or that event, that Heechul wouldn’t be able to get over it, that it would snap him, taking him over the breaking point that seemed so close.
He remembers a boy with empty eyes sitting in his bedroom with the clothes that his sister left behind spread out around him, asking his parents over and over again, when will she be coming back?, and his parents couldn’t answer that, because he was young and unsure, and concepts of marriage were foreign to him. Siwon remembers being unable to do anything to help, because he was just as young, just as naïve, and beyond making his sister move back, he didn’t know what to do.
He remembers a taller boy, with silent tears running down a face which has, somehow, been schooled into complete blankness, complete disinterest. A boy of fourteen, unable to cope with his grief other than by pretending that he feels nothing, that he can brush away his tears and return to his normal life without missing a man who he may not have needed but who he wanted to be around. It was grief for what he could not change, and this time Siwon knew what he had to do, somehow, gathering Heechul into his arms when the others leave, when only Donghae and Kibum had stayed with them to comfort, and allowing Heechul to allow the façade to break, for the mask to slip away and for him to sob. There are only a few people that Heechul is able to let witness that.
He remembers joining high school and waiting for Heechul outside the school gates on that first day, and a girl with shoulder black hair walking up to him, confidently and assured, and he had realised that’s Heechul, and it hadn’t made sense, and even know, he accepts it, but he doesn’t understand it. He supposes that it doesn’t matter, he doesn’t understand a lot about Heechul, but he loves him, and accepts him for what he is.
Siwon was there for the rejection and the hurt and the name calling and the bullying, and the inevitable crushes and the inevitable realisation that it was impossible. The world doesn’t understand Heechul, but the world doesn’t accept Heechul either, and there was nothing Siwon was able to do to change that, nothing he could do to help Heechul other than by supporting him, during the period of years that affected him and changed him.
So now, when he watches Heechul kiss Hankyung, he smiles, because Hankyung looks like he accepts it, and he also looks like he understands it, like he understands why Heechul has his hair so long and why he wears skirts and dresses which flair out around his knees, and why Heechul is what he is. Hankyung looks like he understands; that’s enough for Siwon.
Siwon / Hankyung / why do you have so many pictures of him in your locker? / PG / 595 words
“I don’t know why Xiao Li wants you to grow your hair so she can plait it for you,” said Hankyung, a little exasperated, to Siwon. “Why don’t you ask Heechul, he’s probably got something to do with it.” And with that he pulled open the door to his locker, and out spilled around twenty A4 colour printouts of Heechul’s face.
“Wow,” said Siwon, staring a little. “Why do you have colour pictures of Heechul’s face in your locker?”
“I don’t know,” said Hankyung very slowly, and picked a couple up. “Don’t look at me like that, I didn’t do it,” he snapped when Siwon raised an eyebrow at him and a couple of other people noticed and started laughting. He snatched the rest up, thrust all but one back into his locker, and then stormed off to find Heechul, leaving Siwon laughing at him.
Heechul was sitting at one of the picnic benches with Xiao Li, laughing over something, and Hankyung had an idea that he knew what it was, as he walked up to them, put the picture down in front of them, and said “Do you mind explaining why this was in my locker?”
Heechul glanced down at the paper, and then looked at Hankyung like he was crazy. “How would I know?” he asked, rolling his eyes. “Because you have a fetish for my face, I’d imagine.”
Hankyung faltered slightly. “You mean you didn’t stuff twenty A4 pictures of your face into my locker to embarrass me?” he asked, aware that it had gotten to a point in his life where this sort of stuff didn’t really faze him that much anymore; he was pretty much accustomed to it.
“No,” said Heechul. “If I was going to stuff things in your locker to embarrass you, I’d pick something much better than pictures of my face. Soft toys work much better.”
“Don’t do it,” said Hankyung in a low tone of voice.
“Damn it,” said Xiao Li in Chinese. “Soft toys are much better, why didn’t I think of that?”
Hankyung gaped at her, and she flushed red as she remembered that he could understand everything she said in Chinese - Heechul looked between the two of them in confusion. “You did this?” Hankyung yelled, brandishing the picture, and Xiao Li gave a little yelp, shot from her seat, and was across the field towards the school before Hankyung could even think about reacting.
“Keep this,” he said to Heechul, handed him his bag, and then took off after Xiao Li: she had had a head start, but he had longer legs and could run faster, and so he caught up with her just as she was heading past the locker units. She spotted him taking his shoes off, screamed, and then barrelled straight into Siwon, who caught her before she fell over. Quickly, she hid behind him, screaming, “Save me, save me!”, and Siwon glared at him.
“What are you doing to my girlfriend?” he asked, scowling and folding his arms, and he took a step to the side as Hankyung tried to get past him to get to Xiao Li.
“She’s the one who put the pictures in my locker.” Hankyung told him, and Siwon looked down as Xiao Li, who was clutching at his shirt and peering up at him with wide, fake-frightened eyes. He started to laugh, which was exactly what Hankyung had not wanted him to do.
“That’s brilliant,” said Siwon. “You’re brilliant.” Xiao Li beamed at him.
“Oh my god, I hate you all,” said Hankyung.
Donghae / Kibum / those summer nights / PG / 931 words
During Donghae’s last summer at high school, Kibum’s parents take him away to America to see his family there again - Kibum hasn’t been since that disastrous trip when he was eight, but now he is older and more experienced and practically fluent in English - and it doesn’t make a difference to Donghae, because his parents book the trip for when Donghae is away, one week on the graduation trip, and then one week in Mokpo to visit his family there, so the trip isn’t cutting into any time that he could have been spending with Donghae, but he doesn’t mention this to his parents, because the whole point of it is to get him away from the corruptive influence that is, apparently, Donghae.
America is much like he remembers it being, big and strange, though he has a sense of perspective now that he isn’t quite so small himself. His cousins also don’t seem quite so intimidating, now that he understands them, and he’s just as worldly as they seemed back then. They seem to like him now, teasing him good-naturedly over his slight accent, the small inflection on his ‘r’s and ‘l’s that he can’t seem to get rid of, no matter how hard he tries. But he doesn’t mind so much now.
One night near the end of the two week holiday, he goes out onto the veranda with the two cousins he is living with, a boy who is two years older than him, and a girl his own age. There are crickets chirping, the noise loud and musical in the silence of the night which otherwise is only broken by the car or two which drives down the suburban road on the other side of the house. The sound makes him smile, makes him remember sneaking out of the house to meet the group at the park the night before he flew off, sitting on the grass with Donghae’s hand playing in his hair and the rest of the group boisterous and loud, the last night before the third years went off on their trip, and Kibum flew out to America, and Kyuhyun went to his grandmother's country estate for a few days. It was the first time in a while that they’d all been together like that, and it makes him smile, now, remembering it.
“Aha,” says the girl loudly, laughing and pointing at him. “I know that look - you’re thinking about someone that you like.”
Kibum doesn’t answer her, and just takes a swig from the can of Cola that he has carried out with him. The girl seems to take that as confirmation and leans in, looking interested in the way that affects all teenage girls when they think that there is good gossip about. Kibum avoids her eyes and glances at his male cousin, but he looks just as interested.
“Do you have someone?” asks the girl, lying down on her front on the grass and kicking her legs up in the air, head resting on her chin - it is something similar to what Sungmin will do when he is forced to lie on the ground, and Kibum just nods wordlessly, but he smiles slightly when she makes a noise of excitement.
“Oh,” she says, looking at him with wide eyes. “Come on, tell me about her.”
His parents forbid him from talking about Donghae on the plane over, said that they didn’t want to hear anything about that boy, but he figures that what his parents don’t know won’t hurt them, so he says, “Not a girl.”
“A boy then,” said the girl, and if anything she looks a little more interested. He chances another look at his male cousin, but he doesn’t look particularly bothered by it either, and Kibum is once again struck with the difference between Korea and America.
“Yeah,” he says.
“Tell me about him,” says the girl. She looks honestly interested, like she honestly wants to know about Donghae. Kibum has never come across that before. His acquaintances already know Donghae, and his parents don’t want to know about someone that they are determined to hate. He struggles to put his thoughts into words, first trying to work out what he wants to say in Korean, almost giving up, and then translating it into English so that the girl who has such a strange request will understand him.
“Donghae - that’s his name, Donghae - he’s brilliant.” And Kibum is slightly shocked to find that he means that. “He’s stupid and smart and silly and sometimes he’s ridiculously mature, and he cares about his friends like no one else I’ve ever met before, and he’s kind to everything and everyone who crosses his path, and he gets things so easily but he can be so dense, and he has this smile that makes me - it’s like there’s nothing else in the world other than Donghae smiling.” He takes a quick drink, because his hands are trembling, from the force of the emotion that has been yanked up from his chest by his words; he misses Donghae so much.
“You love him,” says the girl, a little shocked.
“He doesn’t seem to make much sense,” says the boy.
“He doesn’t make sense,” admits Kibum, but he smiles. “We don’t make much sense.” He leans back on his elbows on the grass and looks at the sky, stars marred by the streetlights, the same the world around. “I think,” he says softly, as his mother calls them back in, “that you’d have to meet Donghae to be able to understand him.”
Kangin / Eeteuk / escape / PG-13 / 760 words
Eeteuk, sometimes, worries about whether Kangin honestly knows how much he appreciates everything that he has done for him, for providing him with an escape route. Sometimes he is able to brush off these fears as stupid, think that Kangin must know, or else Kangin wouldn’t smile at him like that or hold his hand like that, but most of the time the fear that Kangin thinks that he is ungrateful, that he wouldn’t thank him with everything he had if only he could work out how, grips him around the heart and make it difficult for him to breathe.
He has not been left unscathed by the years of abuse; he knows that he has managed to get off relatively well, but he worries sometimes that at some point in the future a previously unknown mental trauma will surface, that the mental scars run so deep that he won’t be able to escape them. They will be different from the physical scars - he has a long thin one on his upper left arm from where his father pushed onto the glass coffee table when he was ten, one on his leg where he fell against the stove when he was thirteen, a small circular one on his shoulder that he doesn’t remember getting - because physical scars can heal, or be treated with creams, and those which will not fade can be covered up and forgotten about until the next time he steps out of the shower and sees it in the mirror. The mental scars will be different because he will not be able to ignore them.
He suffers from night terrors sometimes, men with faces which are grotesque parodies of his father’s stalking towards him, but he runs just that bit faster, so that he is always a step ahead, just out of reach but never escaping, never truly, until one breaks away from the pack and they pull him down and rip at him, and he wakes screaming, Kangin trying to pull his flailing limbs in, trying to hold him close so that he can hear his heartbeat and know that, somehow, he is awake and safe and he has escaped from the man who won’t let him go, even now. Kangin doesn’t care that he cries, doesn’t care that he clutches at him with frantic fingers, and he doesn’t care that it’s three am, and that they sit on the threadbare sofa of their flat, Eeteuk curled up against his chest, a cup of hot chocolate cooling in his hands. Eeteuk will not sleep that night, and they have school in the morning, but Kangin stays awake with him. He fears that the night terrors are just the beginning.
Eeteuk can’t work out how to show Kangin how much he loves him, and he fears that Kangin doesn’t know that he does so, with every fibre of his being, so much that it hurt sometimes. Kangin is an escape from everything: he was an escape from the horrific loneliness of his early childhood; he provided an escape in the form of the flat; Eeteuk can escape from night terrors and memories and every day life by hugging him and feeling his heart beat against his ear. Kangin doesn’t rely on Eeteuk for anything, and Eeteuk relies on Kangin for everything, so he feels like the only thing he can give back is his love, and he still can’t work out how he is supposed to do that, other than by telling him so.
Eeteuk fears for Ryeowook, going through the same thing as him. He fears for Heechul, who doesn’t seem to be able to deal with what life is throwing at him. He fears for Kyuhyun, caught in a life that doesn’t suit him. He fears for Siwon and Kibum and Eunhyuk and Sungmin and Yehsung and Shindong and Donghae for reasons that he can’t quite place, and when Hankyung arrives, he fears for him too. He fears that Kangin doesn’t know the importance, the sheer value, which he represents to Eeteuk, an escape from his fears about everyone other than Kangin. His fears for Kangin are always stronger in his arms. He fears that Kangin will become sick of putting up with screaming and horror and trauma, and walk away, and with each night that he wakes up in a sweat and with a throat that burns, he clutches at Kangin that little bit harder, and for that little bit longer.
Sometimes, he can brush his fears off. Most of the time, he can’t.
Fandom: Super Junior AU (High School)
Pairing: Various (Hankyung/Heechul, Kibum/Donghae, Kangin/Eeteuk)
Word count: Between 500 and 1000
Rating: PG - PG-13
Summary: Super Junior AU Drabbles part 7
A/N: These suddenly turned really angsty at some point two nights ago and I haven't been able to get away from the angst. You can tell which ones were written while listening to Zhang Li Yin, and which were written listening to Busted, SNSD and Super Junior. Also, I write too much.
You guys, stop me from writing Disneyfiedfairytale!Hanchul. Please.
Shindong / Eunhyuk / odd ones out / PG / 633 words
They were fifteen minutes into the first bus journey of their week long school graduation trip when Donghae said, miserably, “I miss Kibum.”
“Oh my god!” shrieked Heechul, and turned around in his seat and threw a sweet wrapper at Donghae’s head. “If you’re going to mope and whine all week about missing Kibum, I cannot be held responsible for what I do!”
“I know what he means, though,” said Yehsung, slumped back in his chair next to Shindong. “I miss Ryeowook already, too.”
“Xiao Li, hit him,” ordered Heechul, and Xiao Li turned around and hit Yehsung on the arm, and then pretended that she didn’t understand what he was yelling.
“I agree with Heechul,” said Shindong, looking a little surprised at that occurrence. “I have to sit next to you for the next hour or so, and if you’re just going to sit there and whine, I’ll drug you or knock you out, anything to make you be quiet.”
“It’s stupid that you’re complaining,” said Eunhyuk, scowling. “About missing your boyfriends, I mean. At least you have boyfriends.” Everyone stared at him for a minute until he realised what he’d said. “Not that I want a boyfriend,” he said quickly, flushing red. “I meant that you aren’t allowed to complain about missing your boyfriends when some of us don’t have girlfriends.”
“Oh, get over yourself,” said Heechul loudly, staring at the front of the bus and so actually not looking at Eunhyuk sitting behind Hankyung as he spoke.
“Any girl on this bus would give their right leg to go out with you, so I think that you’re just scared of actually doing it. Perhaps you are gay,” said Xiao Li, but she said it in Chinese, so everyone just raised an eyebrow at her. She had this habit of saying things that she didn’t want to be heard in Chinese. She smiled brightly, Hankyung hid his laughter, and then the others returned to the conversation, those who hadn’t understood none the wiser.
“Why don’t you just ask someone out?” asked Siwon. “The girls are probably waiting for you to make the first move.”
“You can be quiet too,” said Shindong miserably. “It was obvious that Xiao Li liked you, so you didn’t have anything to worry about.”
“I wasn’t obvious, was I?” Xiao Li asked Heechul nervously.
“Only slightly,” said Heechul with a grin, ruffling her hair as she groaned and Siwon laughed.
“Right,” said Donghae. “We’re going to settle this once and for all.” He stood up and yelled to catch everyone’s attention. Eunhyuk tried to drag him back down, but Donghae pulled himself out of his grasp and stepped into the aisle, holding onto the back of Heechul’s chair to keep his balance in the moving vehicle. “Right,” he called. “Could anyone who would like to go out with Eunhyuk or Shindong please raise their hand now?”
There was a pause, and then, as one, every girl who wasn’t currently in a relationship raised her hand, all of them looking more than a little hopeful - a couple of girls who were going out with someone raised their hands slightly, looking nervous. Hankyung blinked at them all, Shindong blinked in much the same way, and Eunhyuk looked like someone had just hit him over the head with a baseball bat.
“Right,” said Donghae, and he grinned and sat back down and thumped Eunhyuk on the shoulder. “There you go. Both of you, take your pick and have a fun holiday where it doesn’t matter if Yehsung and I complain because you’re both too busy having fun with a multitude of beautiful girls.”
“I’m that popular?” Eunhyuk asked, astounded. “Really, I’m that popular? I’m like a god!”
“Oh, shut up,” said Heechul, and threw another sweet wrapper at his head.
Siwon / Heechul / the things you can't change / PG / 579 words
Siwon was there for it all, during the slow descent that Heechul took, through the tears and the pain and the strange moments of silence and heartbreak. Siwon was there when the sister moved away, and he was there when the grandfather died, and he was there when the hair grew longer and the outfits changed. He was there for it all.
Years later, when he watches Heechul kiss Hankyung with soft hands and gentle noises, he smiles, because he remembers times - so many of them, too many to count - when he cried for Heechul, fearing the worst, fearing that this time, after this event or that event, that Heechul wouldn’t be able to get over it, that it would snap him, taking him over the breaking point that seemed so close.
He remembers a boy with empty eyes sitting in his bedroom with the clothes that his sister left behind spread out around him, asking his parents over and over again, when will she be coming back?, and his parents couldn’t answer that, because he was young and unsure, and concepts of marriage were foreign to him. Siwon remembers being unable to do anything to help, because he was just as young, just as naïve, and beyond making his sister move back, he didn’t know what to do.
He remembers a taller boy, with silent tears running down a face which has, somehow, been schooled into complete blankness, complete disinterest. A boy of fourteen, unable to cope with his grief other than by pretending that he feels nothing, that he can brush away his tears and return to his normal life without missing a man who he may not have needed but who he wanted to be around. It was grief for what he could not change, and this time Siwon knew what he had to do, somehow, gathering Heechul into his arms when the others leave, when only Donghae and Kibum had stayed with them to comfort, and allowing Heechul to allow the façade to break, for the mask to slip away and for him to sob. There are only a few people that Heechul is able to let witness that.
He remembers joining high school and waiting for Heechul outside the school gates on that first day, and a girl with shoulder black hair walking up to him, confidently and assured, and he had realised that’s Heechul, and it hadn’t made sense, and even know, he accepts it, but he doesn’t understand it. He supposes that it doesn’t matter, he doesn’t understand a lot about Heechul, but he loves him, and accepts him for what he is.
Siwon was there for the rejection and the hurt and the name calling and the bullying, and the inevitable crushes and the inevitable realisation that it was impossible. The world doesn’t understand Heechul, but the world doesn’t accept Heechul either, and there was nothing Siwon was able to do to change that, nothing he could do to help Heechul other than by supporting him, during the period of years that affected him and changed him.
So now, when he watches Heechul kiss Hankyung, he smiles, because Hankyung looks like he accepts it, and he also looks like he understands it, like he understands why Heechul has his hair so long and why he wears skirts and dresses which flair out around his knees, and why Heechul is what he is. Hankyung looks like he understands; that’s enough for Siwon.
Siwon / Hankyung / why do you have so many pictures of him in your locker? / PG / 595 words
“I don’t know why Xiao Li wants you to grow your hair so she can plait it for you,” said Hankyung, a little exasperated, to Siwon. “Why don’t you ask Heechul, he’s probably got something to do with it.” And with that he pulled open the door to his locker, and out spilled around twenty A4 colour printouts of Heechul’s face.
“Wow,” said Siwon, staring a little. “Why do you have colour pictures of Heechul’s face in your locker?”
“I don’t know,” said Hankyung very slowly, and picked a couple up. “Don’t look at me like that, I didn’t do it,” he snapped when Siwon raised an eyebrow at him and a couple of other people noticed and started laughting. He snatched the rest up, thrust all but one back into his locker, and then stormed off to find Heechul, leaving Siwon laughing at him.
Heechul was sitting at one of the picnic benches with Xiao Li, laughing over something, and Hankyung had an idea that he knew what it was, as he walked up to them, put the picture down in front of them, and said “Do you mind explaining why this was in my locker?”
Heechul glanced down at the paper, and then looked at Hankyung like he was crazy. “How would I know?” he asked, rolling his eyes. “Because you have a fetish for my face, I’d imagine.”
Hankyung faltered slightly. “You mean you didn’t stuff twenty A4 pictures of your face into my locker to embarrass me?” he asked, aware that it had gotten to a point in his life where this sort of stuff didn’t really faze him that much anymore; he was pretty much accustomed to it.
“No,” said Heechul. “If I was going to stuff things in your locker to embarrass you, I’d pick something much better than pictures of my face. Soft toys work much better.”
“Don’t do it,” said Hankyung in a low tone of voice.
“Damn it,” said Xiao Li in Chinese. “Soft toys are much better, why didn’t I think of that?”
Hankyung gaped at her, and she flushed red as she remembered that he could understand everything she said in Chinese - Heechul looked between the two of them in confusion. “You did this?” Hankyung yelled, brandishing the picture, and Xiao Li gave a little yelp, shot from her seat, and was across the field towards the school before Hankyung could even think about reacting.
“Keep this,” he said to Heechul, handed him his bag, and then took off after Xiao Li: she had had a head start, but he had longer legs and could run faster, and so he caught up with her just as she was heading past the locker units. She spotted him taking his shoes off, screamed, and then barrelled straight into Siwon, who caught her before she fell over. Quickly, she hid behind him, screaming, “Save me, save me!”, and Siwon glared at him.
“What are you doing to my girlfriend?” he asked, scowling and folding his arms, and he took a step to the side as Hankyung tried to get past him to get to Xiao Li.
“She’s the one who put the pictures in my locker.” Hankyung told him, and Siwon looked down as Xiao Li, who was clutching at his shirt and peering up at him with wide, fake-frightened eyes. He started to laugh, which was exactly what Hankyung had not wanted him to do.
“That’s brilliant,” said Siwon. “You’re brilliant.” Xiao Li beamed at him.
“Oh my god, I hate you all,” said Hankyung.
Donghae / Kibum / those summer nights / PG / 931 words
During Donghae’s last summer at high school, Kibum’s parents take him away to America to see his family there again - Kibum hasn’t been since that disastrous trip when he was eight, but now he is older and more experienced and practically fluent in English - and it doesn’t make a difference to Donghae, because his parents book the trip for when Donghae is away, one week on the graduation trip, and then one week in Mokpo to visit his family there, so the trip isn’t cutting into any time that he could have been spending with Donghae, but he doesn’t mention this to his parents, because the whole point of it is to get him away from the corruptive influence that is, apparently, Donghae.
America is much like he remembers it being, big and strange, though he has a sense of perspective now that he isn’t quite so small himself. His cousins also don’t seem quite so intimidating, now that he understands them, and he’s just as worldly as they seemed back then. They seem to like him now, teasing him good-naturedly over his slight accent, the small inflection on his ‘r’s and ‘l’s that he can’t seem to get rid of, no matter how hard he tries. But he doesn’t mind so much now.
One night near the end of the two week holiday, he goes out onto the veranda with the two cousins he is living with, a boy who is two years older than him, and a girl his own age. There are crickets chirping, the noise loud and musical in the silence of the night which otherwise is only broken by the car or two which drives down the suburban road on the other side of the house. The sound makes him smile, makes him remember sneaking out of the house to meet the group at the park the night before he flew off, sitting on the grass with Donghae’s hand playing in his hair and the rest of the group boisterous and loud, the last night before the third years went off on their trip, and Kibum flew out to America, and Kyuhyun went to his grandmother's country estate for a few days. It was the first time in a while that they’d all been together like that, and it makes him smile, now, remembering it.
“Aha,” says the girl loudly, laughing and pointing at him. “I know that look - you’re thinking about someone that you like.”
Kibum doesn’t answer her, and just takes a swig from the can of Cola that he has carried out with him. The girl seems to take that as confirmation and leans in, looking interested in the way that affects all teenage girls when they think that there is good gossip about. Kibum avoids her eyes and glances at his male cousin, but he looks just as interested.
“Do you have someone?” asks the girl, lying down on her front on the grass and kicking her legs up in the air, head resting on her chin - it is something similar to what Sungmin will do when he is forced to lie on the ground, and Kibum just nods wordlessly, but he smiles slightly when she makes a noise of excitement.
“Oh,” she says, looking at him with wide eyes. “Come on, tell me about her.”
His parents forbid him from talking about Donghae on the plane over, said that they didn’t want to hear anything about that boy, but he figures that what his parents don’t know won’t hurt them, so he says, “Not a girl.”
“A boy then,” said the girl, and if anything she looks a little more interested. He chances another look at his male cousin, but he doesn’t look particularly bothered by it either, and Kibum is once again struck with the difference between Korea and America.
“Yeah,” he says.
“Tell me about him,” says the girl. She looks honestly interested, like she honestly wants to know about Donghae. Kibum has never come across that before. His acquaintances already know Donghae, and his parents don’t want to know about someone that they are determined to hate. He struggles to put his thoughts into words, first trying to work out what he wants to say in Korean, almost giving up, and then translating it into English so that the girl who has such a strange request will understand him.
“Donghae - that’s his name, Donghae - he’s brilliant.” And Kibum is slightly shocked to find that he means that. “He’s stupid and smart and silly and sometimes he’s ridiculously mature, and he cares about his friends like no one else I’ve ever met before, and he’s kind to everything and everyone who crosses his path, and he gets things so easily but he can be so dense, and he has this smile that makes me - it’s like there’s nothing else in the world other than Donghae smiling.” He takes a quick drink, because his hands are trembling, from the force of the emotion that has been yanked up from his chest by his words; he misses Donghae so much.
“You love him,” says the girl, a little shocked.
“He doesn’t seem to make much sense,” says the boy.
“He doesn’t make sense,” admits Kibum, but he smiles. “We don’t make much sense.” He leans back on his elbows on the grass and looks at the sky, stars marred by the streetlights, the same the world around. “I think,” he says softly, as his mother calls them back in, “that you’d have to meet Donghae to be able to understand him.”
Kangin / Eeteuk / escape / PG-13 / 760 words
Eeteuk, sometimes, worries about whether Kangin honestly knows how much he appreciates everything that he has done for him, for providing him with an escape route. Sometimes he is able to brush off these fears as stupid, think that Kangin must know, or else Kangin wouldn’t smile at him like that or hold his hand like that, but most of the time the fear that Kangin thinks that he is ungrateful, that he wouldn’t thank him with everything he had if only he could work out how, grips him around the heart and make it difficult for him to breathe.
He has not been left unscathed by the years of abuse; he knows that he has managed to get off relatively well, but he worries sometimes that at some point in the future a previously unknown mental trauma will surface, that the mental scars run so deep that he won’t be able to escape them. They will be different from the physical scars - he has a long thin one on his upper left arm from where his father pushed onto the glass coffee table when he was ten, one on his leg where he fell against the stove when he was thirteen, a small circular one on his shoulder that he doesn’t remember getting - because physical scars can heal, or be treated with creams, and those which will not fade can be covered up and forgotten about until the next time he steps out of the shower and sees it in the mirror. The mental scars will be different because he will not be able to ignore them.
He suffers from night terrors sometimes, men with faces which are grotesque parodies of his father’s stalking towards him, but he runs just that bit faster, so that he is always a step ahead, just out of reach but never escaping, never truly, until one breaks away from the pack and they pull him down and rip at him, and he wakes screaming, Kangin trying to pull his flailing limbs in, trying to hold him close so that he can hear his heartbeat and know that, somehow, he is awake and safe and he has escaped from the man who won’t let him go, even now. Kangin doesn’t care that he cries, doesn’t care that he clutches at him with frantic fingers, and he doesn’t care that it’s three am, and that they sit on the threadbare sofa of their flat, Eeteuk curled up against his chest, a cup of hot chocolate cooling in his hands. Eeteuk will not sleep that night, and they have school in the morning, but Kangin stays awake with him. He fears that the night terrors are just the beginning.
Eeteuk can’t work out how to show Kangin how much he loves him, and he fears that Kangin doesn’t know that he does so, with every fibre of his being, so much that it hurt sometimes. Kangin is an escape from everything: he was an escape from the horrific loneliness of his early childhood; he provided an escape in the form of the flat; Eeteuk can escape from night terrors and memories and every day life by hugging him and feeling his heart beat against his ear. Kangin doesn’t rely on Eeteuk for anything, and Eeteuk relies on Kangin for everything, so he feels like the only thing he can give back is his love, and he still can’t work out how he is supposed to do that, other than by telling him so.
Eeteuk fears for Ryeowook, going through the same thing as him. He fears for Heechul, who doesn’t seem to be able to deal with what life is throwing at him. He fears for Kyuhyun, caught in a life that doesn’t suit him. He fears for Siwon and Kibum and Eunhyuk and Sungmin and Yehsung and Shindong and Donghae for reasons that he can’t quite place, and when Hankyung arrives, he fears for him too. He fears that Kangin doesn’t know the importance, the sheer value, which he represents to Eeteuk, an escape from his fears about everyone other than Kangin. His fears for Kangin are always stronger in his arms. He fears that Kangin will become sick of putting up with screaming and horror and trauma, and walk away, and with each night that he wakes up in a sweat and with a throat that burns, he clutches at Kangin that little bit harder, and for that little bit longer.
Sometimes, he can brush his fears off. Most of the time, he can’t.