[super junior] paper dolls | one
paper dolls | qmi | nc17 | angst, au
it might have been surprising, considering his past, that Kyuhyun had only ever had one celebrity client.
warnings: allusions to sexual assault
***
Paper Dolls
There were times when Kyuhyun could almost remember a face.
The man was a canvas of gold skin, shaded carelessly with primary colors that shouldn’t have fit. His outline was sharp and dark, but the filling seemed to bleed out somehow, like the scribbles of a colored pencil. The shadows were blue, purple, the highlights green and orange against the background, stripes of sunlight illuminating skin.
The sweep of eyelashes across a cheek, the careful, curving slope of a shoulder down into a bicep, jutting hipbones, the long, sharp line of a leg reaching down to its ankle -
- he could remember the details, but never a whole, like a frame missing its picture, a jigsaw with pieces left out, a sentence only partly overheard.
It must have been from a dream he never could recall having, because the person in his head was somehow half a drawing, an animated sketch, and half a living, breathing man - a walking piece of art.
***
It might have been kind of surprising, considering his past, that Kyuhyun had only ever had one celebrity client.
Of course, those types of cases usually brought in more money and as a businessman, perhaps Kyuhyun ought to have sought out those kinds of clients, but really, working with a celebrity, or even anyone in the entertainment business at all, was the last thing he wanted.
Still, he was a professional, and so he hadn’t intended on being late into the office that morning, no matter how he resented the favor that had been called in by his former employer. Unfortunately, Seoul morning traffic had other plans and so when he finally rushed into the conference room, tie and glasses askew and sweat making his dress shirt stick to the small of his back, he wasn’t really surprised when one of the two men waiting for him looked him up and down and said:
“You’re Cho Kyuhyun?”
That was the tall, business-looking man that Kyuhyun knew must be his client’s manager, Choi Siwon, and his client, a thinner man, was slouching in a chair, still wearing his sunglasses even though he was inside.
“Attorney at law.” Kyuhyun sighed and ran a hand through his hair, hoping to flatten it a bit. “Sorry I’m late. How can I help you?”
The manager held out his hand. “I’m Choi Siwon - “
“I know who you are.” Kyuhyun waved the handshake away and continued, “Don’t you guys already have a lawyer? Isn’t Kim Kibum with the company?”
“Mr. Park suggested - we thought, with your… background, you might be a little more understanding about his busy schedule. And also about our wish to keep this out of the press at all costs.”
He ignored the turning of his stomach at the mention of the company’s CEO and considered the other man in the room intently. That meant they didn’t want this case connected with the company at all, which was only to be expected. The alleyways behind every entertainment company were always littered with black market deals and the skeletons of old scandals.
Some part of him had always wondered how long it would be before they called in a favor.
“Does he speak at all?” He tried not to let the sarcasm seep into his voice at all, and failed. “I didn’t realize idols were still doing that sunglasses inside thing. It’s such a bad cliche.”
His client straightened in his chair, finally giving Kyuhyun a better look at him. He had seen him several times on TV and on billboards: Zhou Mi, the wildly popular pop idol import from China. He was tall, very tall, legs stretching out endlessly underneath the conference table, and, like Kyuhyun remembered all idols did, he looked a lot thinner in person than he did on camera. His limbs had hard outlines underneath his clothes and he was kind of gangly, skinny almost, but still unbelievably graceful-looking.
He took off his sunglasses and shook out his bangs. “I flew in from China early this morning and had to go straight to an interview, so I apologize if I’m not very talkative.”
There were deep, dark circles under his eyes, bare from any stage makeup and catching purple and blue in the light, and his face seemed shadowed and hollow, tired.
Kyuhyun remembered that, being so tired you could feel it in your bones, as if you were creaking every time you moved like an antique chair, but still going to rehearsals and interviews and smiling at fans because it wasn’t your job to be tired. It was your job to be a star and this is what you had always wanted.
“We just thought that perhaps someone who had once been a part of the business might be more willing to work with us,” Siwon said, and then added, his voice dropping a bit, “You also might better understand what’s at stake here.”
“Well,” Kyuhyun sat down at the conference table and opened his notepad, “Why don’t you lay it all out for me and I’ll see what I can do.”
***
The scandal itself wasn’t very unusual.
A woman claimed she had met Zhou Mi at a night club and then he had taken her back to his hotel, attempting to force himself on her, and was threatening to go to the press and police with the story if she didn’t receive an apology and compensation.
Disgustingly, Kyuhyun would have needed at least two hands to be able to count how many times he had heard of this kind of thing being covered up back when he was in the industry and he felt a chill settle in his stomach at the realization that he was being asked to help with such a thing. It seemed like even though he was out of their control, the company’s goal was to make him feel as filthy and awful as possible.
Zhou Mi didn’t seem like the type, though. He was so thin and delicate-looking Kyuhyun found himself doubting whether he could hold down a fly, but under the clothes, he was sure Zhou Mi was sculpted - they all were. And looks were deceiving in this type of situation. It was pointless to try and pass a judgement based on them.
Pushing the musings out of his mind, Kyuhyun laid out a clear plan of action after he had heard the story from Siwon.
“We can approach her with a settlement that she’ll have to think more than twice about before turning down. The company wouldn’t have sent you here if they weren’t willing to pay out the nose to get it done quietly, so I’m sure the amount won’t be an issue - “
“That’s the thing,” Zhou Mi cut in, speaking again at last. “I don’t want to do a settlement.”
Kyuhyun was taken aback and he was sure it showed on his face. “What? Why not?”
“Because I didn’t do it. She came on to me and I turned her down politely, several times, and now she’s trying to get back at me for it. I’m not going to pay her off like I’ve done something to be ashamed of.” Zhou Mi’s eyes flashed a bit behind his tired facade and Kyuhyun finally saw a little scrap of personality behind that passive face, a scribble of pink across his cheekbones. “Besides, if I had done something like this, do I really seem like the kind of person that would try to hush it up and keep it quiet? I would hope you’d think I would take responsibility for my actions.”
Kyuhyun didn’t know what kind of person Zhou Mi seemed like, but he had seen people do terrible things for the sake of their careers.
He had almost been one of them.
Kyuhyun swallowed, willing away the sick feeling again and tasting the faint tang of bile in his throat. “Well, do you have any proof, at least?”
Zhou Mi fidgeted before answering, something he filed away to think about later because it struck him as odd. “No.”
“It’s going to be kind of hard to build a case off of a man’s word in this kind of situation… That’s how this works, you see. The victim’s claim is going to hold a lot more weight.”
His chin jutted out stubbornly. “I agree that that’s how it should work, but I won’t reward lying, especially when it’s something as awful as this. And if someone ever found out we paid her off, regardless of what really happened, it would ruin me.”
“With all do respect, sir,” Kyuhyun barely stopped himself from snapping, “she might be able to wreck your career, but if you did this, you might have ruined her life, so you’ll have to excuse me if I’m not very sympathetic.”
Zhou Mi stayed quiet, looking cowed, and Kyuhyun resigned himself to the case, feeling coerced into it in the worst way, but what was one more thing to hate himself for? Maybe he would have a chance to talk to the girl and see if she was okay at least. Make sure she had someone to talk to and arrange for it if she didn’t.
“We would have her sign a contract - “
Siwon cut in, the tips of his ears pink probably with embarrassment at Kyuhyun’s comment, “Suing her after she breaks it wouldn’t salvage his reputation, though.”
Zhou Mi leaned forward slightly, looking Kyuhyun directly in the eye, and there was a spot, right near the base of his spine, that suddenly started to heat up, little pinpricks under his skin. “I understand that her well-being is more important than my career - of course it is - but I didn’t do what she said. I never laid a hand on her or took her back to that hotel with me. And even if she had come with me, I understand that no means no. I would never do anything like that to another person.”
Kyuhyun sighed and looked down at the papers in front of him to break the eye-contact. “Okay. You didn’t do it. How are you going to prove it?”
Almost impossibly, the stubbornness instantly dropped away, only to be replaced by a rather shy turn to the corners of Zhou Mi’s mouth, the blush on his cheeks turning a shade darker. “I was hoping you might be able to figure that out?”
“Mr. Zhou, I’m a lawyer, not a private detective.”
“If you can’t figure out this case,” Siwon cut in, “you’re not worth what the company is paying you for this. I’ve seen your rates.”
Kyuhyun bit his tongue to stop from arguing that the company wasn’t paying him a dime for this (in fact, he was busy paying them back what he still owed), and sighed.
“Fine. I’ll see what I can do.”
***
As with most things he didn’t want to deal with, the first thing Kyuhyun did was pass the case off on Henry.
Henry was, for lack of a better title, a case manager. He was a friend of Heechul’s from somewhere (Kyuhyun never knew where Heechul found his friends anyway) who had needed a job because he had moved to Korea for his (now ex-) girlfriend even though his Korean was conversational at best. Fortunately, what had started out as Heechul taking pity on his friend had turned into one of the best employees their firm had ever hired.
Perhaps the most baffling part about Henry was probably the fact that, regardless of the language barrier, he could find out almost anything about anyone. So whenever Kyuhyun needed information about a particular client, he let Henry know and usually by the end of the week, there was a nice thick file on his desk, filled with information, pictures and Henry’s messy scribbles in Pinyin, English and Korean in the margins.
The victim for this case, or rather, as Zhou Mi insisted, the supposed victim, was pretty average, as far as Kyuhyun could tell from Henry’s notes. She wasn’t a groupie or a sasaeng fan, or a model or an aspiring singer or actress, or even someone Zhou Mi had known in the past. She was an ordinary person that had been good friends with an idol before they debuted, and when their friend became famous, she had been brought along for the ride a bit, meeting other celebrities at parties and events. This kind of thing wasn’t incredibly unusual, in Kyuhyun’s experience.
In any other situation, Kyuhyun would have taken this as a ploy for Zhou Mi’s attention. It wasn’t unheard of for a crazed fan to do something like this, regardless of the effect that it would have on their target’s reputation and career. But the woman worked at a bank, seemingly harmless, with a dependable income. She didn’t seem to want to be famous.
(Only that was a lie, because everyone wanted to be famous even if they only knew it deep down in their inky black insides, were you never let to the light go.)
Rather, it didn’t seem like she was doing it for the fame. If she was, she would have gone to the press first and then asked for money later, rather than the other way around.
But still, there was something, though Kyuhyun couldn’t quite pinpoint what, that didn’t sit right about the whole situation.
***
For some reason, possibly because he used to be in the entertainment business, Zhou Mi seemed to think that he and Kyuhyun were some kind of friends, and so whenever he came by (Kyuhyun didn’t even know why half the time, but he suspected that Henry or Heechul had something to do with it), he popped in to chat with Kyuhyun with a certain familiarity that he didn’t quite feel comfortable with, both because of the nature of his case and the fact that he was an idol.
Maybe, he tried to convince himself uneasily, Zhou Mi was just like that with everyone.
“So. How.. is it?”
“How is what?”
Zhou Mi was leaning against the doorframe of his office, his collar bones jutting out too sharply from underneath his sweater to be healthy, causing the fluorescent light to collect in the hollow of his throat and turn his skin from golden to eggshell, and his legs were encased in some impossibly tight pants that made Kyuhyun stare down at the papers in front of him as if they held the answers to the universe.
He could still hear the sly smile though. “You know, being retired. Not being an idol anymore.”
Kyuhyun scoffed. “I was hardly an idol. I was just a ballad singer. And it’s just the same as it is being anything else. It’s amazing how quickly people forget you when reporters aren’t constantly reminding everyone that you exist.”
“Well, if you’re so sure you’ve been forgotten, then you won’t mind signing this.” Zhou Mi’s long fingers pulled something out of the bag at his side, a plastic case catching the light. “I found it the other day on my CD rack.”
Kyuhyun took the album gingerly in his hands. This was the last one he had put out, hardly more than a few months before he had left the business. The plastic felt strange in his hand, lighter than he remembered it being. “Were you even in Korea when this came out?”
“I’m actually older than you, you know. Besides, I had been a trainee for nearly a year when you left.” Kyuhyun carefully opened the case and Zhou Mi looked at him strangely. “Did you not keep any copies for yourself or something?”
The boxes from his old life had been gathering dust for the last five years in a storage container Kyuhyun had never even set foot in.
“No, I have some, in… storage. I think. I don’t really remember.”
The image on the inside of the album was of him walking down a street at dusk, lit by the orange light of the street lamps, his body half turned towards the camera with an expression on his face that Kyuhyun could only describe as lost. There was something so sad about his eyes, dark and sunken like his cheekbones, and the sharp, unhappy line of his jaw. God, Kyuhyun thought, had he really ever been that thin?
Zhou Mi looked over his shoulder at the picture. “You don’t look much different, you know.”
And here he had been thinking just the opposite.
“I mean, you’re less ‘wandering ballad singer’ and more ‘overworked businessman’ now, but otherwise you haven’t changed much.”
He studied the picture again. Did he still look so incredibly unhappy?
This was why it was never good to look back, Kyuhyun reminded himself. It was like climbing a mountain and just when you think you’ve made some progress, you look back down to find yourself in the same place you started.
“Do you still sing?” Zhou Mi asked.
He almost asked him if the shower counted, and then remembered that that had been the official explanation for his retirement. His voice, medical reasons, exhaustion that had triggered leftover trauma from an old voice injury. Kyuhyun recalled scoffing at how easily people had believed the lie. If it had really been his voice, he would have just stopped performing and been locked away by the company to write songs and coach the idols of the future until his contract was up.
Kyuhyun had ended things at the top of his career. His star had never burned brighter than at that moment, and he had wondered at the way no one seemed to notice, amid all the grieved fans and media attention, that he wasn’t ill. Instead, he had been cast out like a disobedient child.
But Zhou Mi was asking because he wondered if Kyuhyun had ever recovered enough to sing again. What he had needed to recover from wasn’t really important. “No, I don’t. And here.”
He handed him back the album and Zhou Mi protested, “But you didn’t sign it!”
Kyuhyun shrugged with one shoulder. “I’ve forgotten my signature.”
***
When Heechul had started dating someone seriously, a first since Kyuhyun had known him, he had rolled his eyes at Heechul’s private smiles and and scathingly called his boyfriend “the wife”.
“You’d better watch it, Cho Kyuhyun,” Heechul had finally snarled one day after he had made one comment too many, “because you’re exactly the type of person who will fall in love with some perfect guy and then not have the spine to follow through with it. You’re the kind of man that can never hold onto anything that makes you happy.”
Kyuhyun had scoffed at the comment, but that didn’t explain why he still heard it in the back of his mind sometimes, like sound trying to pass through water.
***
Other times, Zhou Mi tried to talk to him and the anger would hit Kyuhyun like a semi-truck. Suddenly, he was furious, because having Zhou Mi around brought up so many things and they left a bitter taste in his mouth, like bile, like poison, like that horrible cottonmouth feeling that came after a night of heavy drinking, and he would bite back, words as cruel as possible, because if there was one thing he had once been famous for, other than his voice, it had been his sharp tongue.
Finally one day, Zhou Mi, who was only ever cheerful, or at the very least, carefully blank, had snapped, “I don’t know what happened to you to make you so angry, but not everyone is out to hurt you. I’m sure nobody meant for those things to happen.”
Kyuhyun used to think everyone meant well, but then he grew up.
Life was something you decided on, worked for, chose. Every good and bad thing had been somebody’s choice at some point. Things didn’t just happen.
“Funny how people keep getting hurt then, when nobody means it.”
***
Perhaps it should have been strange that the image, the scraps and snatches of that man, drawn in chalk and charcoal and dust that drifted through colors and shadows, came to mind so often, but the more it happened, the more he ignored it, and soon it flashed through his brain like a single frame in a movie, too quickly to be seen, but still unsettling, jarring, like a jostle in the middle of a crowd.
He couldn’t remember when it had started, and maybe it had always been this way, maybe this is where something had gone so wrong inside of him. Fleeting but constant - maybe it was this creation of his, a man made of flesh and blood, painted on creased origami paper, that had ruined everything.
***
It had been years since he had been backstage during a concert - or a music show, in this case - but some things never changed.
Getting backstage hadn’t taken a whole lot, just a quick call to the company to get his name put on the security list, and while the studio had undergone some renovations in the past five years, the basic layout was the same, and so Kyuhyun found the main backstage area without too much trouble. After asking the first person he saw that wasn’t in leather or sequins, Kyuhyun learned that Zhou Mi was just finishing up the final take for his prerecording on the main stage.
Weaving his way through the maze of people, boy bands being oiled and adding extra shoe lifts and girl groups clouded in hairspray and the loud click of high heels, all surrounded by makeup artists and coordinators and endless managers, Kyuhyun went to stand in the edge of the wings, just out of sight of the audience, but still able to see onstage. Once he turned the corner from the big ready room, the noise hit him full force - the music, bass vibrating somewhere deep inside his ribcage, the screaming of the fans - and suddenly, it was as though he had just rewound the last five years of his life.
Zhou Mi was onstage along with several dancers, dressed in all black with the stage lights reflecting off the silver studs of his jacket and his earring sharply, hair falling across his face as he moved through the steps. The song was clearly nearing its end, bass thumping away as Zhou Mi sang, and the lights flashed wildly, only letting him catch snapshots, snatches of Zhou Mi’s body, never allowing Kyuhyun see him all at once:
His fingers, the outline of his shoulder, the smirking, moving line of his mouth, the naked strip of skin that was exposed every time he raised his arms, all stained with indigo and heliotrope and green bleeding inside the hard outline of the man himself.
The crowd erupted into cheers when the music ended and Zhou Mi flashed them a blinding smile as he walked offstage, tall boots dragging Kyuhyun’s eyes all the way down the line of his leg.
When Zhou Mi stepped backstage, he was radiant. The skin of his neck was covered with an opalescent sheen of sweat and his fingerless black gloves made his wrists seem even more delicate as he flicked his hair out of his eyes and handed his sunglasses to a waiting assistant. Written all over his clear-featured face was the glow of success, shining so brightly it almost hurt to look at him.
He was dabbing at his neck with a towel and taking a sip of water when Kyuhyun finally started to approach him, mostly because it was either that or close his eyes to stop himself from tracing lines of Zhou Mi’s inner thighs over and over.
Zhou Mi swiped at his face with the towel, making his shirt ride up a bit and Kyuhyun thought fleetingly of how the stage lights had turned the little sliver of skin blue and violet and felt his throat dry up.
“Mr. Zhou,” he croaked, taking a step forward, but before he could catch Zhou Mi’s attention, his way was blocked by a bulky man in a black jacket.
“Mr. Zhou would appreciate it if you respected his personal space.”
Must be a bodyguard then, Kyuhyun decided, judging by the man’s size. That might not be too uncommon these days, with increasingly fearless fans and increasingly hostile antis. He remembered hearing from Heechul in passing about some idol that had recently been poisoned, thankfully not fatally, and shuddered a little.
Zhou Mi looked up then and his eyes widened when he saw Kyuhyun over the man’s shoulder. Waving the guard off, he handed his towel and water bottle off to someone before walking over. “It’s fine, Kangin. Um, can you excuse us for a moment?”
The man, Kangin, stepped aside immediately with a slight bow. “Of course, sir.”
Zhou Mi lead Kyuhyun down a hallway, smiling at several of the idols as they passed with familiarity, and a few of them took double-takes at Kyuhyun as though they might have recognized him. They reached a dressing room with Zhou Mi’s name on it and luckily, it was empty when they stepped inside.
Kyuhyun watched him slip off the leather jacket, hanging it up carefully on the clothes rack by the far mirror, before he turned and began undoing the wrists of his gloves. “What is it, Mr. Cho?”
The shirt he had on underneath the jacket was short-sleeved, leaving Zhou Mi’s arms open and bare to the cold air of the room.
“I just got off the phone with Jang Yoonsun’s lawyer and he - “ He cleared his throat quietly, “The man’s a real hardass, if you’ll pardon the expression, and he’s pushing for a settlement proposal by the end of the week.”
Zhou Mi paused in setting his gloves down on the makeup table. “That’s… soon. I thought we would have more time to come up with something.”
“Come up with something? So you lied?”
“No! Of course not! I would never - “
“Your alibi, you have to tell me.” Zhou Mi shut his lips tightly and Kyuhyun pressed, “If you don’t, I don’t know what else I can do with this and it’ll get out. You said she didn’t come home with you. Can you prove it?”
“Well, I - “
“Were you with anyone else? Did maybe the doorman see you? Any of the hotel staff?”
“I - she didn’t come home with me because someone else did.”
“Who? I’ll go talk to her, bring her in. We can get a statement and that’ll get this woman off our backs, show her we know she’s lying and she can call off her lawyer.”
“I can’t.”
There was something about this moment, something bitter and tangible in Zhou Mi’s voice that reminded Kyuhyun of five years ago, right before he’d said the wrong thing. He had replayed that moment for so long, had wished a thousand, a million times that there had been someone there to stop him.
“This is your career, Mr. Mi. If there’s anyone that would know what’s at stake for you right now, it’s me. You can’t just give it up for the sake of a little bit of privacy. You let that go a long time ago - you and I both know that’s just part of the job.”
Because he didn’t resent the freedom he had gained, but he had never ever forgiven himself for feeling trapped in the first place, for having secrets to keep, for those fleeting glimpses in his head of a man instead of a woman. For being different, wrong.
The look on Zhou Mi’s face, his features drawn grey in the backstage light - he knew that look. It was the face of someone who was caged in with no way out. A cold feeling stole over Kyuhyun and he was starting to think that maybe he didn’t want to hear this after all. “The reason I know she’s lying - I can’t have brought her home with me, I never would - is because the person I was with, it was a man.”
“What?”
Zhou Mi’s lips had gone white and he seemed to almost be trembling with the secret, his usual hard outline blurring slightly to Kyuhyun’s eyes. “It was another guy. I’m gay, Kyuhyun.”
Kyuhyun could feel his heartbeat in his throat, blood loudly pumping away for a long moment as he tried to think of what to say.
“Does Siwon know?”
Zhou Mi looked a little surprised at the question, but answered, “Yes. He - he doesn’t like it, but I think he just hoped that if we brought in a good lawyer that knew about this business, it wouldn’t get out. I don’t - don’t know what would happen if people found out.”
Kyuhyun did.
He knew about the leers and the mutters and that first cold moment when you realized that someone had figured it out.
And Kyuhyun remembered, above all, those last press conferences. Walking in and wanting more than anything to stop his manager as he lied smoothly and say that it wasn't his voice or that he was tired or that his goals had changed or family problems; it was just that he was gay and he couldn't take it anymore. Shouldn't have to take it anymore.
The whole moment seemed a bit unreal actually, the space too big, colors weirdly faded and worn like an old photo, his ears empty of sound as Zhou Mi watched him almost tentatively, waiting for him to say something else.
Kyuhyun didn’t want to think of how much it must have taken him to actually speak the words out loud. He had only ever said them in the loneliness of his bedroom, mouthing the words in the dark where no one could see.
He licked his dry lips and opened his mouth, but before he could speak, the door of the dressing room burst open and some woman from wardrobe came in, scolding Zhou Mi for running off before she had had a chance to collect his outfit. After her came more people, and Kyuhyun shut his lips again, bowing slightly and showing himself out of the studio.
***
Kyuhyun’s father had always disliked the idea of him having a singing career. He had been proud of his son’s success in school, but that wasn’t the reason he had opposed it so much. What he hadn’t liked was the thought of Kyuhyun, and by extension his family, being so exposed, so naked to the public eye.
A person’s life was meant to be a private affair, he had said, not something to be splashed across the pages of the tabloids.
But it had been Kyuhyun’s dream, something he had truly wanted, and so he had done it anyway, bringing home every album and award proudly, hoping to show his dad that it had been worth it. That being on display for people wasn’t such a bad thing after all.
But in the end, his dad had been right, hadn’t he?
And sometimes Kyuhyun was glad he wasn’t around anymore to say so.
***
The next morning at work, Kyuhyun calmly called Siwon and broke the news:
“My caseload has gotten very large recently, and I’m going to have to pass this one on to my partner Heechul instead. He’s a very good lawyer - much better than I am, if I’m being honest - and I’ll be sure to fill him in. I know he’ll be very understanding about scheduling and … other things.” He added, “His boyfriend is a dancer for DBSK.”
There was a pause and Kyuhyun assumed Siwon had put two and two together and was probably quietly freaking out, wondering how he knew about Zhou Mi.
“So thank you for your cooperation and I hope it all works out!”
He barely gave Siwon a chance to give a reply before he hung up, sinking back into his chair and trying to catch his breath. His insides felt raw, overexposed like a film negative, and he just wanted to put this all behind him.
***
| two |
it might have been surprising, considering his past, that Kyuhyun had only ever had one celebrity client.
warnings: allusions to sexual assault
***
Paper Dolls
There were times when Kyuhyun could almost remember a face.
The man was a canvas of gold skin, shaded carelessly with primary colors that shouldn’t have fit. His outline was sharp and dark, but the filling seemed to bleed out somehow, like the scribbles of a colored pencil. The shadows were blue, purple, the highlights green and orange against the background, stripes of sunlight illuminating skin.
The sweep of eyelashes across a cheek, the careful, curving slope of a shoulder down into a bicep, jutting hipbones, the long, sharp line of a leg reaching down to its ankle -
- he could remember the details, but never a whole, like a frame missing its picture, a jigsaw with pieces left out, a sentence only partly overheard.
It must have been from a dream he never could recall having, because the person in his head was somehow half a drawing, an animated sketch, and half a living, breathing man - a walking piece of art.
***
It might have been kind of surprising, considering his past, that Kyuhyun had only ever had one celebrity client.
Of course, those types of cases usually brought in more money and as a businessman, perhaps Kyuhyun ought to have sought out those kinds of clients, but really, working with a celebrity, or even anyone in the entertainment business at all, was the last thing he wanted.
Still, he was a professional, and so he hadn’t intended on being late into the office that morning, no matter how he resented the favor that had been called in by his former employer. Unfortunately, Seoul morning traffic had other plans and so when he finally rushed into the conference room, tie and glasses askew and sweat making his dress shirt stick to the small of his back, he wasn’t really surprised when one of the two men waiting for him looked him up and down and said:
“You’re Cho Kyuhyun?”
That was the tall, business-looking man that Kyuhyun knew must be his client’s manager, Choi Siwon, and his client, a thinner man, was slouching in a chair, still wearing his sunglasses even though he was inside.
“Attorney at law.” Kyuhyun sighed and ran a hand through his hair, hoping to flatten it a bit. “Sorry I’m late. How can I help you?”
The manager held out his hand. “I’m Choi Siwon - “
“I know who you are.” Kyuhyun waved the handshake away and continued, “Don’t you guys already have a lawyer? Isn’t Kim Kibum with the company?”
“Mr. Park suggested - we thought, with your… background, you might be a little more understanding about his busy schedule. And also about our wish to keep this out of the press at all costs.”
He ignored the turning of his stomach at the mention of the company’s CEO and considered the other man in the room intently. That meant they didn’t want this case connected with the company at all, which was only to be expected. The alleyways behind every entertainment company were always littered with black market deals and the skeletons of old scandals.
Some part of him had always wondered how long it would be before they called in a favor.
“Does he speak at all?” He tried not to let the sarcasm seep into his voice at all, and failed. “I didn’t realize idols were still doing that sunglasses inside thing. It’s such a bad cliche.”
His client straightened in his chair, finally giving Kyuhyun a better look at him. He had seen him several times on TV and on billboards: Zhou Mi, the wildly popular pop idol import from China. He was tall, very tall, legs stretching out endlessly underneath the conference table, and, like Kyuhyun remembered all idols did, he looked a lot thinner in person than he did on camera. His limbs had hard outlines underneath his clothes and he was kind of gangly, skinny almost, but still unbelievably graceful-looking.
He took off his sunglasses and shook out his bangs. “I flew in from China early this morning and had to go straight to an interview, so I apologize if I’m not very talkative.”
There were deep, dark circles under his eyes, bare from any stage makeup and catching purple and blue in the light, and his face seemed shadowed and hollow, tired.
Kyuhyun remembered that, being so tired you could feel it in your bones, as if you were creaking every time you moved like an antique chair, but still going to rehearsals and interviews and smiling at fans because it wasn’t your job to be tired. It was your job to be a star and this is what you had always wanted.
“We just thought that perhaps someone who had once been a part of the business might be more willing to work with us,” Siwon said, and then added, his voice dropping a bit, “You also might better understand what’s at stake here.”
“Well,” Kyuhyun sat down at the conference table and opened his notepad, “Why don’t you lay it all out for me and I’ll see what I can do.”
***
The scandal itself wasn’t very unusual.
A woman claimed she had met Zhou Mi at a night club and then he had taken her back to his hotel, attempting to force himself on her, and was threatening to go to the press and police with the story if she didn’t receive an apology and compensation.
Disgustingly, Kyuhyun would have needed at least two hands to be able to count how many times he had heard of this kind of thing being covered up back when he was in the industry and he felt a chill settle in his stomach at the realization that he was being asked to help with such a thing. It seemed like even though he was out of their control, the company’s goal was to make him feel as filthy and awful as possible.
Zhou Mi didn’t seem like the type, though. He was so thin and delicate-looking Kyuhyun found himself doubting whether he could hold down a fly, but under the clothes, he was sure Zhou Mi was sculpted - they all were. And looks were deceiving in this type of situation. It was pointless to try and pass a judgement based on them.
Pushing the musings out of his mind, Kyuhyun laid out a clear plan of action after he had heard the story from Siwon.
“We can approach her with a settlement that she’ll have to think more than twice about before turning down. The company wouldn’t have sent you here if they weren’t willing to pay out the nose to get it done quietly, so I’m sure the amount won’t be an issue - “
“That’s the thing,” Zhou Mi cut in, speaking again at last. “I don’t want to do a settlement.”
Kyuhyun was taken aback and he was sure it showed on his face. “What? Why not?”
“Because I didn’t do it. She came on to me and I turned her down politely, several times, and now she’s trying to get back at me for it. I’m not going to pay her off like I’ve done something to be ashamed of.” Zhou Mi’s eyes flashed a bit behind his tired facade and Kyuhyun finally saw a little scrap of personality behind that passive face, a scribble of pink across his cheekbones. “Besides, if I had done something like this, do I really seem like the kind of person that would try to hush it up and keep it quiet? I would hope you’d think I would take responsibility for my actions.”
Kyuhyun didn’t know what kind of person Zhou Mi seemed like, but he had seen people do terrible things for the sake of their careers.
He had almost been one of them.
Kyuhyun swallowed, willing away the sick feeling again and tasting the faint tang of bile in his throat. “Well, do you have any proof, at least?”
Zhou Mi fidgeted before answering, something he filed away to think about later because it struck him as odd. “No.”
“It’s going to be kind of hard to build a case off of a man’s word in this kind of situation… That’s how this works, you see. The victim’s claim is going to hold a lot more weight.”
His chin jutted out stubbornly. “I agree that that’s how it should work, but I won’t reward lying, especially when it’s something as awful as this. And if someone ever found out we paid her off, regardless of what really happened, it would ruin me.”
“With all do respect, sir,” Kyuhyun barely stopped himself from snapping, “she might be able to wreck your career, but if you did this, you might have ruined her life, so you’ll have to excuse me if I’m not very sympathetic.”
Zhou Mi stayed quiet, looking cowed, and Kyuhyun resigned himself to the case, feeling coerced into it in the worst way, but what was one more thing to hate himself for? Maybe he would have a chance to talk to the girl and see if she was okay at least. Make sure she had someone to talk to and arrange for it if she didn’t.
“We would have her sign a contract - “
Siwon cut in, the tips of his ears pink probably with embarrassment at Kyuhyun’s comment, “Suing her after she breaks it wouldn’t salvage his reputation, though.”
Zhou Mi leaned forward slightly, looking Kyuhyun directly in the eye, and there was a spot, right near the base of his spine, that suddenly started to heat up, little pinpricks under his skin. “I understand that her well-being is more important than my career - of course it is - but I didn’t do what she said. I never laid a hand on her or took her back to that hotel with me. And even if she had come with me, I understand that no means no. I would never do anything like that to another person.”
Kyuhyun sighed and looked down at the papers in front of him to break the eye-contact. “Okay. You didn’t do it. How are you going to prove it?”
Almost impossibly, the stubbornness instantly dropped away, only to be replaced by a rather shy turn to the corners of Zhou Mi’s mouth, the blush on his cheeks turning a shade darker. “I was hoping you might be able to figure that out?”
“Mr. Zhou, I’m a lawyer, not a private detective.”
“If you can’t figure out this case,” Siwon cut in, “you’re not worth what the company is paying you for this. I’ve seen your rates.”
Kyuhyun bit his tongue to stop from arguing that the company wasn’t paying him a dime for this (in fact, he was busy paying them back what he still owed), and sighed.
“Fine. I’ll see what I can do.”
***
As with most things he didn’t want to deal with, the first thing Kyuhyun did was pass the case off on Henry.
Henry was, for lack of a better title, a case manager. He was a friend of Heechul’s from somewhere (Kyuhyun never knew where Heechul found his friends anyway) who had needed a job because he had moved to Korea for his (now ex-) girlfriend even though his Korean was conversational at best. Fortunately, what had started out as Heechul taking pity on his friend had turned into one of the best employees their firm had ever hired.
Perhaps the most baffling part about Henry was probably the fact that, regardless of the language barrier, he could find out almost anything about anyone. So whenever Kyuhyun needed information about a particular client, he let Henry know and usually by the end of the week, there was a nice thick file on his desk, filled with information, pictures and Henry’s messy scribbles in Pinyin, English and Korean in the margins.
The victim for this case, or rather, as Zhou Mi insisted, the supposed victim, was pretty average, as far as Kyuhyun could tell from Henry’s notes. She wasn’t a groupie or a sasaeng fan, or a model or an aspiring singer or actress, or even someone Zhou Mi had known in the past. She was an ordinary person that had been good friends with an idol before they debuted, and when their friend became famous, she had been brought along for the ride a bit, meeting other celebrities at parties and events. This kind of thing wasn’t incredibly unusual, in Kyuhyun’s experience.
In any other situation, Kyuhyun would have taken this as a ploy for Zhou Mi’s attention. It wasn’t unheard of for a crazed fan to do something like this, regardless of the effect that it would have on their target’s reputation and career. But the woman worked at a bank, seemingly harmless, with a dependable income. She didn’t seem to want to be famous.
(Only that was a lie, because everyone wanted to be famous even if they only knew it deep down in their inky black insides, were you never let to the light go.)
Rather, it didn’t seem like she was doing it for the fame. If she was, she would have gone to the press first and then asked for money later, rather than the other way around.
But still, there was something, though Kyuhyun couldn’t quite pinpoint what, that didn’t sit right about the whole situation.
***
For some reason, possibly because he used to be in the entertainment business, Zhou Mi seemed to think that he and Kyuhyun were some kind of friends, and so whenever he came by (Kyuhyun didn’t even know why half the time, but he suspected that Henry or Heechul had something to do with it), he popped in to chat with Kyuhyun with a certain familiarity that he didn’t quite feel comfortable with, both because of the nature of his case and the fact that he was an idol.
Maybe, he tried to convince himself uneasily, Zhou Mi was just like that with everyone.
“So. How.. is it?”
“How is what?”
Zhou Mi was leaning against the doorframe of his office, his collar bones jutting out too sharply from underneath his sweater to be healthy, causing the fluorescent light to collect in the hollow of his throat and turn his skin from golden to eggshell, and his legs were encased in some impossibly tight pants that made Kyuhyun stare down at the papers in front of him as if they held the answers to the universe.
He could still hear the sly smile though. “You know, being retired. Not being an idol anymore.”
Kyuhyun scoffed. “I was hardly an idol. I was just a ballad singer. And it’s just the same as it is being anything else. It’s amazing how quickly people forget you when reporters aren’t constantly reminding everyone that you exist.”
“Well, if you’re so sure you’ve been forgotten, then you won’t mind signing this.” Zhou Mi’s long fingers pulled something out of the bag at his side, a plastic case catching the light. “I found it the other day on my CD rack.”
Kyuhyun took the album gingerly in his hands. This was the last one he had put out, hardly more than a few months before he had left the business. The plastic felt strange in his hand, lighter than he remembered it being. “Were you even in Korea when this came out?”
“I’m actually older than you, you know. Besides, I had been a trainee for nearly a year when you left.” Kyuhyun carefully opened the case and Zhou Mi looked at him strangely. “Did you not keep any copies for yourself or something?”
The boxes from his old life had been gathering dust for the last five years in a storage container Kyuhyun had never even set foot in.
“No, I have some, in… storage. I think. I don’t really remember.”
The image on the inside of the album was of him walking down a street at dusk, lit by the orange light of the street lamps, his body half turned towards the camera with an expression on his face that Kyuhyun could only describe as lost. There was something so sad about his eyes, dark and sunken like his cheekbones, and the sharp, unhappy line of his jaw. God, Kyuhyun thought, had he really ever been that thin?
Zhou Mi looked over his shoulder at the picture. “You don’t look much different, you know.”
And here he had been thinking just the opposite.
“I mean, you’re less ‘wandering ballad singer’ and more ‘overworked businessman’ now, but otherwise you haven’t changed much.”
He studied the picture again. Did he still look so incredibly unhappy?
This was why it was never good to look back, Kyuhyun reminded himself. It was like climbing a mountain and just when you think you’ve made some progress, you look back down to find yourself in the same place you started.
“Do you still sing?” Zhou Mi asked.
He almost asked him if the shower counted, and then remembered that that had been the official explanation for his retirement. His voice, medical reasons, exhaustion that had triggered leftover trauma from an old voice injury. Kyuhyun recalled scoffing at how easily people had believed the lie. If it had really been his voice, he would have just stopped performing and been locked away by the company to write songs and coach the idols of the future until his contract was up.
Kyuhyun had ended things at the top of his career. His star had never burned brighter than at that moment, and he had wondered at the way no one seemed to notice, amid all the grieved fans and media attention, that he wasn’t ill. Instead, he had been cast out like a disobedient child.
But Zhou Mi was asking because he wondered if Kyuhyun had ever recovered enough to sing again. What he had needed to recover from wasn’t really important. “No, I don’t. And here.”
He handed him back the album and Zhou Mi protested, “But you didn’t sign it!”
Kyuhyun shrugged with one shoulder. “I’ve forgotten my signature.”
***
When Heechul had started dating someone seriously, a first since Kyuhyun had known him, he had rolled his eyes at Heechul’s private smiles and and scathingly called his boyfriend “the wife”.
“You’d better watch it, Cho Kyuhyun,” Heechul had finally snarled one day after he had made one comment too many, “because you’re exactly the type of person who will fall in love with some perfect guy and then not have the spine to follow through with it. You’re the kind of man that can never hold onto anything that makes you happy.”
Kyuhyun had scoffed at the comment, but that didn’t explain why he still heard it in the back of his mind sometimes, like sound trying to pass through water.
***
Other times, Zhou Mi tried to talk to him and the anger would hit Kyuhyun like a semi-truck. Suddenly, he was furious, because having Zhou Mi around brought up so many things and they left a bitter taste in his mouth, like bile, like poison, like that horrible cottonmouth feeling that came after a night of heavy drinking, and he would bite back, words as cruel as possible, because if there was one thing he had once been famous for, other than his voice, it had been his sharp tongue.
Finally one day, Zhou Mi, who was only ever cheerful, or at the very least, carefully blank, had snapped, “I don’t know what happened to you to make you so angry, but not everyone is out to hurt you. I’m sure nobody meant for those things to happen.”
Kyuhyun used to think everyone meant well, but then he grew up.
Life was something you decided on, worked for, chose. Every good and bad thing had been somebody’s choice at some point. Things didn’t just happen.
“Funny how people keep getting hurt then, when nobody means it.”
***
Perhaps it should have been strange that the image, the scraps and snatches of that man, drawn in chalk and charcoal and dust that drifted through colors and shadows, came to mind so often, but the more it happened, the more he ignored it, and soon it flashed through his brain like a single frame in a movie, too quickly to be seen, but still unsettling, jarring, like a jostle in the middle of a crowd.
He couldn’t remember when it had started, and maybe it had always been this way, maybe this is where something had gone so wrong inside of him. Fleeting but constant - maybe it was this creation of his, a man made of flesh and blood, painted on creased origami paper, that had ruined everything.
***
It had been years since he had been backstage during a concert - or a music show, in this case - but some things never changed.
Getting backstage hadn’t taken a whole lot, just a quick call to the company to get his name put on the security list, and while the studio had undergone some renovations in the past five years, the basic layout was the same, and so Kyuhyun found the main backstage area without too much trouble. After asking the first person he saw that wasn’t in leather or sequins, Kyuhyun learned that Zhou Mi was just finishing up the final take for his prerecording on the main stage.
Weaving his way through the maze of people, boy bands being oiled and adding extra shoe lifts and girl groups clouded in hairspray and the loud click of high heels, all surrounded by makeup artists and coordinators and endless managers, Kyuhyun went to stand in the edge of the wings, just out of sight of the audience, but still able to see onstage. Once he turned the corner from the big ready room, the noise hit him full force - the music, bass vibrating somewhere deep inside his ribcage, the screaming of the fans - and suddenly, it was as though he had just rewound the last five years of his life.
Zhou Mi was onstage along with several dancers, dressed in all black with the stage lights reflecting off the silver studs of his jacket and his earring sharply, hair falling across his face as he moved through the steps. The song was clearly nearing its end, bass thumping away as Zhou Mi sang, and the lights flashed wildly, only letting him catch snapshots, snatches of Zhou Mi’s body, never allowing Kyuhyun see him all at once:
His fingers, the outline of his shoulder, the smirking, moving line of his mouth, the naked strip of skin that was exposed every time he raised his arms, all stained with indigo and heliotrope and green bleeding inside the hard outline of the man himself.
The crowd erupted into cheers when the music ended and Zhou Mi flashed them a blinding smile as he walked offstage, tall boots dragging Kyuhyun’s eyes all the way down the line of his leg.
When Zhou Mi stepped backstage, he was radiant. The skin of his neck was covered with an opalescent sheen of sweat and his fingerless black gloves made his wrists seem even more delicate as he flicked his hair out of his eyes and handed his sunglasses to a waiting assistant. Written all over his clear-featured face was the glow of success, shining so brightly it almost hurt to look at him.
He was dabbing at his neck with a towel and taking a sip of water when Kyuhyun finally started to approach him, mostly because it was either that or close his eyes to stop himself from tracing lines of Zhou Mi’s inner thighs over and over.
Zhou Mi swiped at his face with the towel, making his shirt ride up a bit and Kyuhyun thought fleetingly of how the stage lights had turned the little sliver of skin blue and violet and felt his throat dry up.
“Mr. Zhou,” he croaked, taking a step forward, but before he could catch Zhou Mi’s attention, his way was blocked by a bulky man in a black jacket.
“Mr. Zhou would appreciate it if you respected his personal space.”
Must be a bodyguard then, Kyuhyun decided, judging by the man’s size. That might not be too uncommon these days, with increasingly fearless fans and increasingly hostile antis. He remembered hearing from Heechul in passing about some idol that had recently been poisoned, thankfully not fatally, and shuddered a little.
Zhou Mi looked up then and his eyes widened when he saw Kyuhyun over the man’s shoulder. Waving the guard off, he handed his towel and water bottle off to someone before walking over. “It’s fine, Kangin. Um, can you excuse us for a moment?”
The man, Kangin, stepped aside immediately with a slight bow. “Of course, sir.”
Zhou Mi lead Kyuhyun down a hallway, smiling at several of the idols as they passed with familiarity, and a few of them took double-takes at Kyuhyun as though they might have recognized him. They reached a dressing room with Zhou Mi’s name on it and luckily, it was empty when they stepped inside.
Kyuhyun watched him slip off the leather jacket, hanging it up carefully on the clothes rack by the far mirror, before he turned and began undoing the wrists of his gloves. “What is it, Mr. Cho?”
The shirt he had on underneath the jacket was short-sleeved, leaving Zhou Mi’s arms open and bare to the cold air of the room.
“I just got off the phone with Jang Yoonsun’s lawyer and he - “ He cleared his throat quietly, “The man’s a real hardass, if you’ll pardon the expression, and he’s pushing for a settlement proposal by the end of the week.”
Zhou Mi paused in setting his gloves down on the makeup table. “That’s… soon. I thought we would have more time to come up with something.”
“Come up with something? So you lied?”
“No! Of course not! I would never - “
“Your alibi, you have to tell me.” Zhou Mi shut his lips tightly and Kyuhyun pressed, “If you don’t, I don’t know what else I can do with this and it’ll get out. You said she didn’t come home with you. Can you prove it?”
“Well, I - “
“Were you with anyone else? Did maybe the doorman see you? Any of the hotel staff?”
“I - she didn’t come home with me because someone else did.”
“Who? I’ll go talk to her, bring her in. We can get a statement and that’ll get this woman off our backs, show her we know she’s lying and she can call off her lawyer.”
“I can’t.”
There was something about this moment, something bitter and tangible in Zhou Mi’s voice that reminded Kyuhyun of five years ago, right before he’d said the wrong thing. He had replayed that moment for so long, had wished a thousand, a million times that there had been someone there to stop him.
“This is your career, Mr. Mi. If there’s anyone that would know what’s at stake for you right now, it’s me. You can’t just give it up for the sake of a little bit of privacy. You let that go a long time ago - you and I both know that’s just part of the job.”
Because he didn’t resent the freedom he had gained, but he had never ever forgiven himself for feeling trapped in the first place, for having secrets to keep, for those fleeting glimpses in his head of a man instead of a woman. For being different, wrong.
The look on Zhou Mi’s face, his features drawn grey in the backstage light - he knew that look. It was the face of someone who was caged in with no way out. A cold feeling stole over Kyuhyun and he was starting to think that maybe he didn’t want to hear this after all. “The reason I know she’s lying - I can’t have brought her home with me, I never would - is because the person I was with, it was a man.”
“What?”
Zhou Mi’s lips had gone white and he seemed to almost be trembling with the secret, his usual hard outline blurring slightly to Kyuhyun’s eyes. “It was another guy. I’m gay, Kyuhyun.”
Kyuhyun could feel his heartbeat in his throat, blood loudly pumping away for a long moment as he tried to think of what to say.
“Does Siwon know?”
Zhou Mi looked a little surprised at the question, but answered, “Yes. He - he doesn’t like it, but I think he just hoped that if we brought in a good lawyer that knew about this business, it wouldn’t get out. I don’t - don’t know what would happen if people found out.”
Kyuhyun did.
He knew about the leers and the mutters and that first cold moment when you realized that someone had figured it out.
And Kyuhyun remembered, above all, those last press conferences. Walking in and wanting more than anything to stop his manager as he lied smoothly and say that it wasn't his voice or that he was tired or that his goals had changed or family problems; it was just that he was gay and he couldn't take it anymore. Shouldn't have to take it anymore.
The whole moment seemed a bit unreal actually, the space too big, colors weirdly faded and worn like an old photo, his ears empty of sound as Zhou Mi watched him almost tentatively, waiting for him to say something else.
Kyuhyun didn’t want to think of how much it must have taken him to actually speak the words out loud. He had only ever said them in the loneliness of his bedroom, mouthing the words in the dark where no one could see.
He licked his dry lips and opened his mouth, but before he could speak, the door of the dressing room burst open and some woman from wardrobe came in, scolding Zhou Mi for running off before she had had a chance to collect his outfit. After her came more people, and Kyuhyun shut his lips again, bowing slightly and showing himself out of the studio.
***
Kyuhyun’s father had always disliked the idea of him having a singing career. He had been proud of his son’s success in school, but that wasn’t the reason he had opposed it so much. What he hadn’t liked was the thought of Kyuhyun, and by extension his family, being so exposed, so naked to the public eye.
A person’s life was meant to be a private affair, he had said, not something to be splashed across the pages of the tabloids.
But it had been Kyuhyun’s dream, something he had truly wanted, and so he had done it anyway, bringing home every album and award proudly, hoping to show his dad that it had been worth it. That being on display for people wasn’t such a bad thing after all.
But in the end, his dad had been right, hadn’t he?
And sometimes Kyuhyun was glad he wasn’t around anymore to say so.
***
The next morning at work, Kyuhyun calmly called Siwon and broke the news:
“My caseload has gotten very large recently, and I’m going to have to pass this one on to my partner Heechul instead. He’s a very good lawyer - much better than I am, if I’m being honest - and I’ll be sure to fill him in. I know he’ll be very understanding about scheduling and … other things.” He added, “His boyfriend is a dancer for DBSK.”
There was a pause and Kyuhyun assumed Siwon had put two and two together and was probably quietly freaking out, wondering how he knew about Zhou Mi.
“So thank you for your cooperation and I hope it all works out!”
He barely gave Siwon a chance to give a reply before he hung up, sinking back into his chair and trying to catch his breath. His insides felt raw, overexposed like a film negative, and he just wanted to put this all behind him.
***
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