ο
don't wanna if you're not
2514; g
minho/onew
written for shinee_replay secret santa | original post
it's easy to describe jinki. there's a pool of choice adjectives that work pretty well on radio and tv shows, words like hard-working caring clumsy leader considerate, but minho will always think of jinki as that one kid that randomly sits next to you on an empty bus even when the entire rest of the bus is empty. it's weird and a blatant trespass of personal space, but when bus lurches over pot holes and your shoulders knocks together, it isn't so bad.
-
the stylists touch and re-touch their hair and make-up countless times while waiting for the cue from on-stage. minho's stylist obsesses with a particular tendril of hair behind his left ear, pulling and wrapping it around the barrel of the ceramic curling iron in an endless struggle to attain the perfect proportions of bounce and shine. sometimes she holds the barrel too close to his scalp, but minho can't bring himself to do much more than grit his teeth.
it's usually him and jinki sitting facing one side of the vanity mirrors and the other three across them, backs to each other.
jinki used to joke around a lot with his stylist before, but now he's mostly quiet and fiddles with hairdryer cords until she tells him to sit up in the chair and hold his head straight. minho thinks jinki's newfound silence might have something to do with what kibum liked to call 'clueless observations of the truly fashion unconscious'.
-
jinki nods and smiles along to the main stylist's enthusiastic preaching of the merits of matte clay texturizer over water-based pomade when he teases his fingers through his own hair, "i guess we're going for the electrocuted look for this concept?" there's no edge of maliciousness in his voice, but the damage is done, with the stylist's eyes darkening, neck stiffening slightly.
minho sees kibum's mouth drop in the opposite mirror and taemin starts smiling his usual deer in the headlights smile, his eyes darting to minho's then back down to his lap. and jinki had barely noticed the change in the atmosphere, rambling about how it was like those cartoons he saw, where the cat stuck his paws into the light socket and all his fur stuck up and his tail too! there was also this one time-
"hyung, don't you know anything about fashion? your hair-style is avant-garde." it's kibum who speaks up first, interrupting jinki the only way he knows how.
jinki looks confused, then glances sidelong at minho, helplessly, not sure what he's done wrong, but minho can only feel the lump in his throat because he doesn't know how to say, hyung it isn't about you, don't misunderstand.
jinki looks back up at the stylist, begins with "i'm sorry, i didn't mean to-"
"we're contemporary shining shinee, hyung. we're lucky our stylists are so cutting edge."
kibum interrupts him again-nothing else quite makes kibum more uncomfortable than jinki blindly apologizing, minho's noticed-but he's never been more grateful for kibum's big mouth than right at that very moment.
it does the trick, and the stylist visibly loosens, her credentials redeemed. minho watches as jonghyun thanks kibum with a meaningful glance.
jinki is quiet for the rest of make-up and wardrobe (he also makes sure to smile wider and happier and bow lower when he thanks the stylist, who is now kibum's new best friend). except for right before they went backstage, his routine 'SHINee fighting!' loud as everyone else's.
"jinki-hyung." minho whispers to jinki behind the rest of them, knowing they would be waiting at least a couple of more minutes for their cue. jinki raises his eyebrows in concern and shuffles over quietly to minho's side.
"are you okay?" jinki says.
minho leans down and whispers in his ear, "at least you don't look like a zombie geisha that has some kind of tick that makes you flip your hair every three seconds." jinki manages to clamp his hands over his mouth before he lets out most of his laughter, the other three turning to look at them with a mixture of stage butterflies and annoyance.
minho leans down one last time, "and i think you look very handsome, despite the tragic incident with the electrical circuits and all."
jinki smiles very large then, waving minho's ear towards his own mouth and whispers in reply, "never as handsome as you."
the stage manager yells at jinki to get back to his place.
-
jonghyun makes sure that both kibum and jinki have in their earphones in all the way and are breathing steady enough to be considered asleep before he stealthily imparts to minho on the van ride back to their dorm, "i heard what you said about key backstage."
"you did?" minho hadn't even considered the consequences of anyone else hearing.
jonghyun nods and continues, "you know- how he gets. how they both get. so yeah, thank you. also can you try and not break up the group before we get big in japan. that's kind of my life-long dream."
minho smiles at jonghyun before turning to look out the window and answering, "there's still no explanation for that much eyeliner."
jonghyun pokes him in the arm with his elbow, before sinking back into his seat, grinning. "it's fashion, minho. avant-garde. cutting-edge. stick to sports."
minho drifts back and forth between sleep to jonghyun's breathy little half-snores next to him, chuckling a little at how both kibum's and jinki's heads have gravitated towards each other in their sleep, so close that even the ends of jinki's spiky electrocution hair poke through a couple of smooth strands of kibum's black hair.
the last thing minho remembers before arriving home is kibum sleep-wiping his right eye, smudging kohl all across his cheek, like the greasy eye black of american football players. minho thinks it was a pretty good overall display of avant-garde and rugged manliness, and even decides to keep his clever quip about kibum looking like the losing end of a domestic violence throwdown to himself.
-
large eyes and jaw lines and the ridge of noses are the things that make people beautiful, minho knows this. he knows it like knows grade-school arithmetic, that 1 and 1 make 2 and not 11. he knows it like the bathroom mirror knows when he notices his new profile after the swelling on his face goes down, so he tries to keep his ideal type as loosely defined as possible.
minho likes jinki's answers to those kinds of questions best because his philosophy of attraction very much in the spirit of an even-playing field. not everyone can have pretty pink lips and skin that doesn't need to be agonized over before leaving the house, minho thinks. kibum calls them willy-nilly, one-size-fits-all, out one ear and out the other answers,
"really, hyung-" kibum challenges, finally, after the fifth or sixth time jinki's given the same reply, the red on-air sign goes dark and the deejay leaves for the vending machines, "there have to be some parameters to attraction. even taeminnie's got a type. just make up something."
jinki laughs. "i don't have a type, i have a feeling and i know. it's just a feeling!"
"i don't know even know what that means." says kibum.
"it means," jinki takes a deep breath. "it means my ideal type is you when you shave in the morning and always miss some shaving cream behind your ear and my ideal type is minho when he falls asleep in his bunk with a book still on his chest and my ideal type is taemin when he listens to music and dances a little bit in his chair and sometimes my ideal type is jonghyun when he hums too loud and thinks everyone is still asleep."
jonghyun clears his throat awkwardly and kibum stares. taemin giggles.
"hyung, don't you think maybe- don't you think you have too many ideal types?" jonghyun attempts.
"not at all." jinki's smile doesn't falter, and minho can feel the grin on his own face growing wider too, like he's just been confessed to by someone he didn't know he liked.
"but do they have to be us?"
before jinki can respond, a faint bell tells them a word from their sponsors is coming to an end, and minho is a little disappointed that he wasn't able to hear the answer. the dj rushes back in the room and apologizes for the delay, unloading an armful of fizzy drinks up on top of the middle of the table before heading over to the console to get the next track queued up.
minho takes advantage of the last couple seconds of shellshock from their leader's kamikaze confession of inter-band polyamory by reaching across the table and grabbing the only can of diet orange soda. once the dj goes to fiddle with the vu meter and is out of earshot, kibum advises jinki in a slow, controlled whisper to please never think of even saying those kinds of things anywhere remotely public, and to also please keep in mind that taemin doesn't need to be exposed to whatever weird sexual perversions he might or might not happen to have.
"does this mean i can keep my original answer!" jinki replies, victorious.
-
they're between takes on the set, and apparently, from the various flustered exchanges between the head production assistant and the gaffer, minho can gather there's something wrong with the aligator grips stage left. it's also apparently a very big deal, because no less than three grips are dispatched onto the scene and the rest of the pa's assure them that there's going to be at least half an hour of downtime.
everyone on stage deflates from their best on-tv posturing and the sound of light chatter fills the set. minho notices that taemin is snapped up pretty quickly by an adjacent noona that'd been eyeing him all throughout the first half of shooting, jonghyun and key already well into their little games of public slap and tickle.
jinki's not next to him, so minho cranes his neck and sees him pull out a crumpled piece of paper from his back pocket and a golf pencil. he looks deep in thought, eyebrows knitted and his back hunched over the paper in his lap. minho watches him for a few minutes and tries to figure out what he's doing, before getting up and standing behind him.
minho looks over his shoulder, and-
"hyung, is that tic-tac-toe?"
jinki hastily covers the paper with his hands and the tiny pencil goes rolling across the floor. minho jogs after it, and offers it back to jinki, palms extended. after he takes it back with a quiet and obviously embarassed thank you, minho turns back to go back to his seat before he says, "you know, that game is only fun with two people."
jinki smiles up and him and shuffles over in his chair to make room for minho to sit, giving him two-thirds of the seat rather than the customary half, practically falling off the end. minho sits down and leaves space between their thighs, wraps his arm around jinki's shoulders and pushes him back onto his respective half of the chair. minho wants to say something like stop short-changing yourself, but it sounds stupid and cheesy in his head so he imagines it would sound worse coming out of his mouth. instead, minho takes the pencil and paper, turns it over to the clean side and draws a small tic-tac-toe board near the corner.
"what do you want to be?" minho asks.
"what do you want to be?" jinki echoes.
minho's never really thought about it.
"i think you're an x," jinki nods. "you seem like an x." minho nods after a second. he thinks he'd make a pretty good x. an o seems to suit jinki too.
"who goes first?"
"x."
minho draws an x in the upper left corner. he hands the pencil to jinki, who leans over his lap and almost hits minho's nose with his head in the process. minho tries to ignore how jinki's braces himself by holding onto the upper part of his thigh, imagines that their respective positions would look compromising at first glance. he can feel the pencil pressing down through the fabric of his jeans and jinki's concentration in drawing a perfect circle freehand.
o, bottom right.
minho takes the pencil from his hand, puts an x in the center right. the middle should be for hyung, he thinks.
jinki doesn't take the middle, puts his o in the top right corner. minho puts his x in the bottom center. the middle should still be for hyung, he thinks.
jinki still doesn't take the center, puts his o on the bottom left. if minho puts his x in the middle, he'd win, but he puts it in the top center. hyung could take the middle and win.
but jinki still doesn't take the middle, and minho wants to yell at him, because the square is right there and why wouldn't he take it
"they're...drawing hugs and kisses. meant for each other." minho hears kibum incredulous voice behind him.
"hi guys!" jinki smiles and waves at the rest of them.
"we thought you were plotting world domination, the way you were all close and whispery and- wait what," jonghyun snatches up the paper from minho's lap and stares at it, "do you even know how to play this game? it's get three in a row and win, not avoid the middle square for as long as possible." minho chooses to ignore him.
taemin looks at the paper in jonghyun's hands and asks him if x means kiss or hug.
"x means kiss duh." kibum says. "x stands for sexy and kisses are sexier than hugs."
"i think my hugs are pretty sexy." jinki protests.
"sure they are." jonghyun pats him sympathetically on the shoulder.
-
jinki forces himself into minho's bunk and wraps himself around minho's arms, pinning them to his side, squeezing.
"hyung, what is this."
"this is my sexy hug. kibum was wrong."
"hyung, i can't breathe."
"oh, sorry!" jinki lets go and giggles a little and his warm breath ghosts over minho's lips, and it's only then that minho realizes just how close they are, face to face and squeezed together in a tiny bunk that barely fit one. jinki's hands are clenched together underneath his chin like he's about to recite some sort of bedtime prayer, and minho notices that he's shivering.
jinki keeps on smiling, waiting for something. minho feels his brow furrow and thinks hard for something smart to say, the right thing to do, but all that comes out is, "hyung, are you- are you cold?"
"no." jinki wiggles his toes in his socks and minho can feel it through the blanket. "are you?" jinki asks.
minho thinks he hears a twinge of sadness in the question but he disregards it as a slip of his imagination. minho shakes his head. he remembers that cold air sinks because it's heavier, even opens his mouth to say so, because it seems like an appropriate observation for being on the bottom bunk. but jinki's already clambered over the gap between their mattresses, pulled the covers up to his nose.
"gghnughhmmmho." says jinki, his voice muffled.
"goodnight, hyung."
minho watches as jinki falls asleep with his right arm outstretched off the side of the bed, in a way that minho is pretty sure will be sore the next day.
2514; g
minho/onew
written for shinee_replay secret santa | original post
it's easy to describe jinki. there's a pool of choice adjectives that work pretty well on radio and tv shows, words like hard-working caring clumsy leader considerate, but minho will always think of jinki as that one kid that randomly sits next to you on an empty bus even when the entire rest of the bus is empty. it's weird and a blatant trespass of personal space, but when bus lurches over pot holes and your shoulders knocks together, it isn't so bad.
-
the stylists touch and re-touch their hair and make-up countless times while waiting for the cue from on-stage. minho's stylist obsesses with a particular tendril of hair behind his left ear, pulling and wrapping it around the barrel of the ceramic curling iron in an endless struggle to attain the perfect proportions of bounce and shine. sometimes she holds the barrel too close to his scalp, but minho can't bring himself to do much more than grit his teeth.
it's usually him and jinki sitting facing one side of the vanity mirrors and the other three across them, backs to each other.
jinki used to joke around a lot with his stylist before, but now he's mostly quiet and fiddles with hairdryer cords until she tells him to sit up in the chair and hold his head straight. minho thinks jinki's newfound silence might have something to do with what kibum liked to call 'clueless observations of the truly fashion unconscious'.
-
jinki nods and smiles along to the main stylist's enthusiastic preaching of the merits of matte clay texturizer over water-based pomade when he teases his fingers through his own hair, "i guess we're going for the electrocuted look for this concept?" there's no edge of maliciousness in his voice, but the damage is done, with the stylist's eyes darkening, neck stiffening slightly.
minho sees kibum's mouth drop in the opposite mirror and taemin starts smiling his usual deer in the headlights smile, his eyes darting to minho's then back down to his lap. and jinki had barely noticed the change in the atmosphere, rambling about how it was like those cartoons he saw, where the cat stuck his paws into the light socket and all his fur stuck up and his tail too! there was also this one time-
"hyung, don't you know anything about fashion? your hair-style is avant-garde." it's kibum who speaks up first, interrupting jinki the only way he knows how.
jinki looks confused, then glances sidelong at minho, helplessly, not sure what he's done wrong, but minho can only feel the lump in his throat because he doesn't know how to say, hyung it isn't about you, don't misunderstand.
jinki looks back up at the stylist, begins with "i'm sorry, i didn't mean to-"
"we're contemporary shining shinee, hyung. we're lucky our stylists are so cutting edge."
kibum interrupts him again-nothing else quite makes kibum more uncomfortable than jinki blindly apologizing, minho's noticed-but he's never been more grateful for kibum's big mouth than right at that very moment.
it does the trick, and the stylist visibly loosens, her credentials redeemed. minho watches as jonghyun thanks kibum with a meaningful glance.
jinki is quiet for the rest of make-up and wardrobe (he also makes sure to smile wider and happier and bow lower when he thanks the stylist, who is now kibum's new best friend). except for right before they went backstage, his routine 'SHINee fighting!' loud as everyone else's.
"jinki-hyung." minho whispers to jinki behind the rest of them, knowing they would be waiting at least a couple of more minutes for their cue. jinki raises his eyebrows in concern and shuffles over quietly to minho's side.
"are you okay?" jinki says.
minho leans down and whispers in his ear, "at least you don't look like a zombie geisha that has some kind of tick that makes you flip your hair every three seconds." jinki manages to clamp his hands over his mouth before he lets out most of his laughter, the other three turning to look at them with a mixture of stage butterflies and annoyance.
minho leans down one last time, "and i think you look very handsome, despite the tragic incident with the electrical circuits and all."
jinki smiles very large then, waving minho's ear towards his own mouth and whispers in reply, "never as handsome as you."
the stage manager yells at jinki to get back to his place.
-
jonghyun makes sure that both kibum and jinki have in their earphones in all the way and are breathing steady enough to be considered asleep before he stealthily imparts to minho on the van ride back to their dorm, "i heard what you said about key backstage."
"you did?" minho hadn't even considered the consequences of anyone else hearing.
jonghyun nods and continues, "you know- how he gets. how they both get. so yeah, thank you. also can you try and not break up the group before we get big in japan. that's kind of my life-long dream."
minho smiles at jonghyun before turning to look out the window and answering, "there's still no explanation for that much eyeliner."
jonghyun pokes him in the arm with his elbow, before sinking back into his seat, grinning. "it's fashion, minho. avant-garde. cutting-edge. stick to sports."
minho drifts back and forth between sleep to jonghyun's breathy little half-snores next to him, chuckling a little at how both kibum's and jinki's heads have gravitated towards each other in their sleep, so close that even the ends of jinki's spiky electrocution hair poke through a couple of smooth strands of kibum's black hair.
the last thing minho remembers before arriving home is kibum sleep-wiping his right eye, smudging kohl all across his cheek, like the greasy eye black of american football players. minho thinks it was a pretty good overall display of avant-garde and rugged manliness, and even decides to keep his clever quip about kibum looking like the losing end of a domestic violence throwdown to himself.
-
large eyes and jaw lines and the ridge of noses are the things that make people beautiful, minho knows this. he knows it like knows grade-school arithmetic, that 1 and 1 make 2 and not 11. he knows it like the bathroom mirror knows when he notices his new profile after the swelling on his face goes down, so he tries to keep his ideal type as loosely defined as possible.
minho likes jinki's answers to those kinds of questions best because his philosophy of attraction very much in the spirit of an even-playing field. not everyone can have pretty pink lips and skin that doesn't need to be agonized over before leaving the house, minho thinks. kibum calls them willy-nilly, one-size-fits-all, out one ear and out the other answers,
"really, hyung-" kibum challenges, finally, after the fifth or sixth time jinki's given the same reply, the red on-air sign goes dark and the deejay leaves for the vending machines, "there have to be some parameters to attraction. even taeminnie's got a type. just make up something."
jinki laughs. "i don't have a type, i have a feeling and i know. it's just a feeling!"
"i don't know even know what that means." says kibum.
"it means," jinki takes a deep breath. "it means my ideal type is you when you shave in the morning and always miss some shaving cream behind your ear and my ideal type is minho when he falls asleep in his bunk with a book still on his chest and my ideal type is taemin when he listens to music and dances a little bit in his chair and sometimes my ideal type is jonghyun when he hums too loud and thinks everyone is still asleep."
jonghyun clears his throat awkwardly and kibum stares. taemin giggles.
"hyung, don't you think maybe- don't you think you have too many ideal types?" jonghyun attempts.
"not at all." jinki's smile doesn't falter, and minho can feel the grin on his own face growing wider too, like he's just been confessed to by someone he didn't know he liked.
"but do they have to be us?"
before jinki can respond, a faint bell tells them a word from their sponsors is coming to an end, and minho is a little disappointed that he wasn't able to hear the answer. the dj rushes back in the room and apologizes for the delay, unloading an armful of fizzy drinks up on top of the middle of the table before heading over to the console to get the next track queued up.
minho takes advantage of the last couple seconds of shellshock from their leader's kamikaze confession of inter-band polyamory by reaching across the table and grabbing the only can of diet orange soda. once the dj goes to fiddle with the vu meter and is out of earshot, kibum advises jinki in a slow, controlled whisper to please never think of even saying those kinds of things anywhere remotely public, and to also please keep in mind that taemin doesn't need to be exposed to whatever weird sexual perversions he might or might not happen to have.
"does this mean i can keep my original answer!" jinki replies, victorious.
-
they're between takes on the set, and apparently, from the various flustered exchanges between the head production assistant and the gaffer, minho can gather there's something wrong with the aligator grips stage left. it's also apparently a very big deal, because no less than three grips are dispatched onto the scene and the rest of the pa's assure them that there's going to be at least half an hour of downtime.
everyone on stage deflates from their best on-tv posturing and the sound of light chatter fills the set. minho notices that taemin is snapped up pretty quickly by an adjacent noona that'd been eyeing him all throughout the first half of shooting, jonghyun and key already well into their little games of public slap and tickle.
jinki's not next to him, so minho cranes his neck and sees him pull out a crumpled piece of paper from his back pocket and a golf pencil. he looks deep in thought, eyebrows knitted and his back hunched over the paper in his lap. minho watches him for a few minutes and tries to figure out what he's doing, before getting up and standing behind him.
minho looks over his shoulder, and-
"hyung, is that tic-tac-toe?"
jinki hastily covers the paper with his hands and the tiny pencil goes rolling across the floor. minho jogs after it, and offers it back to jinki, palms extended. after he takes it back with a quiet and obviously embarassed thank you, minho turns back to go back to his seat before he says, "you know, that game is only fun with two people."
jinki smiles up and him and shuffles over in his chair to make room for minho to sit, giving him two-thirds of the seat rather than the customary half, practically falling off the end. minho sits down and leaves space between their thighs, wraps his arm around jinki's shoulders and pushes him back onto his respective half of the chair. minho wants to say something like stop short-changing yourself, but it sounds stupid and cheesy in his head so he imagines it would sound worse coming out of his mouth. instead, minho takes the pencil and paper, turns it over to the clean side and draws a small tic-tac-toe board near the corner.
"what do you want to be?" minho asks.
"what do you want to be?" jinki echoes.
minho's never really thought about it.
"i think you're an x," jinki nods. "you seem like an x." minho nods after a second. he thinks he'd make a pretty good x. an o seems to suit jinki too.
"who goes first?"
"x."
minho draws an x in the upper left corner. he hands the pencil to jinki, who leans over his lap and almost hits minho's nose with his head in the process. minho tries to ignore how jinki's braces himself by holding onto the upper part of his thigh, imagines that their respective positions would look compromising at first glance. he can feel the pencil pressing down through the fabric of his jeans and jinki's concentration in drawing a perfect circle freehand.
o, bottom right.
minho takes the pencil from his hand, puts an x in the center right. the middle should be for hyung, he thinks.
jinki doesn't take the middle, puts his o in the top right corner. minho puts his x in the bottom center. the middle should still be for hyung, he thinks.
jinki still doesn't take the center, puts his o on the bottom left. if minho puts his x in the middle, he'd win, but he puts it in the top center. hyung could take the middle and win.
but jinki still doesn't take the middle, and minho wants to yell at him, because the square is right there and why wouldn't he take it
"they're...drawing hugs and kisses. meant for each other." minho hears kibum incredulous voice behind him.
"hi guys!" jinki smiles and waves at the rest of them.
"we thought you were plotting world domination, the way you were all close and whispery and- wait what," jonghyun snatches up the paper from minho's lap and stares at it, "do you even know how to play this game? it's get three in a row and win, not avoid the middle square for as long as possible." minho chooses to ignore him.
taemin looks at the paper in jonghyun's hands and asks him if x means kiss or hug.
"x means kiss duh." kibum says. "x stands for sexy and kisses are sexier than hugs."
"i think my hugs are pretty sexy." jinki protests.
"sure they are." jonghyun pats him sympathetically on the shoulder.
-
jinki forces himself into minho's bunk and wraps himself around minho's arms, pinning them to his side, squeezing.
"hyung, what is this."
"this is my sexy hug. kibum was wrong."
"hyung, i can't breathe."
"oh, sorry!" jinki lets go and giggles a little and his warm breath ghosts over minho's lips, and it's only then that minho realizes just how close they are, face to face and squeezed together in a tiny bunk that barely fit one. jinki's hands are clenched together underneath his chin like he's about to recite some sort of bedtime prayer, and minho notices that he's shivering.
jinki keeps on smiling, waiting for something. minho feels his brow furrow and thinks hard for something smart to say, the right thing to do, but all that comes out is, "hyung, are you- are you cold?"
"no." jinki wiggles his toes in his socks and minho can feel it through the blanket. "are you?" jinki asks.
minho thinks he hears a twinge of sadness in the question but he disregards it as a slip of his imagination. minho shakes his head. he remembers that cold air sinks because it's heavier, even opens his mouth to say so, because it seems like an appropriate observation for being on the bottom bunk. but jinki's already clambered over the gap between their mattresses, pulled the covers up to his nose.
"gghnughhmmmho." says jinki, his voice muffled.
"goodnight, hyung."
minho watches as jinki falls asleep with his right arm outstretched off the side of the bed, in a way that minho is pretty sure will be sore the next day.