SHINee {various pairings ; Footsteps (4/13)}
Title: Footsteps (4/13)
Fandom: SHINee; f(x), Super Junior
Pairing: Onew/Taemin, Jonghyun/Key, Minho/BoA, Amber/Victoria, Hankyung/Heechul, Siwon/Sungmin
Word count: 3,907
Rating: PG-13
Summary: As the son of two of the most famous mutant rights activists of the past decade, Taemin knows he's under a lot of pressure to live up to his legacy. Unfortunately for him, there's one problem: as far as he can tell, he doesn't have any powers.
A/N: 8DDDDDD I have nothing to say about this chapter except that I have clean forgotten like, half of my plot points so uh. yeah. 8DDD
Footsteps (4/13)
Taemin sent an email home requesting a new textbook, claiming to have dropped his in a puddle, and recieved a terse one back from Heechul which lectured him on taking better care of his belongings. It was a familiar lecture, seeing as Taemin lost an average of one belonging a week, but that didn't stop it from making him feel bad every time. "But yes," Heechul finished, "I will send you a new book. Tell your sister that I want to hear from her by the end of the week."
Taemin switched off the computer that he'd used in the library and went to find Amber to relay the message, a heavy lump settling in his stomach. He didn't like making his parents disappointed. Heechul often got irritated but that was easy enough to deal with, especially if you'd grown up knowing the right words to say. His disappointment was a far more cutting thing; he was able to inject his words with just the right amount of sarcasm to make Taemin flinch sometimes. Hankyung tended to go very quiet when he was disappointed, and Taemin almost preferred that, but sometimes it was so much more worse.
Being the weekend, Amber was lazing in one of the small common rooms in the dorm building, lying in a chair with her legs slung over the arm. She looked up from her book when he walked in. "Is he sending a new one?"
"Yeah," Taemin muttered. "He says that you need to talk to him before the end of the week." She groaned; that usually meant a lecture of some sort.
He took a seat at one of the tables, where Onew was writing an essay. Over on the other side of the room, Luna, Minho and Key were playing some card game that looked like it would end up coming to blows on Minho and Key's parts, while Jonghyun was asleep with his head in Key's lap. Taemin watched as Key poked Minho in the chest and then looked at Onew's pen flying across the page. A guilty twinge in his stomach reminded him that he'd yet to even start his homework for the weekend, a task that would definitely take up at least most of the day. No one else was taking their chance for an early start but Taemin knew that they would regret it tomorrow when the entire day was taken up with it. He'd regretted it last weekend, and tomorrow was supposed to be relatively pleasant. He was hoping to go down to the lake.
He sighed and reached down into his bag for his biology textbook. He flipped it open to the relevant page with another sigh. He read about five words, sighed for a third time, then slumped in his chair. Onew had stopped writing and was watching him, amused.
"Biology isn't your best subject, huh?" he asked.
"Science is like another language," Taemin admitted. Homework for biology, chemistry and physics always took him a couple of hours at least, but he preferred to do them first because then he flew through the rest and that made him feel better about himself. That didn't mean he had to be happy about it, though.
Onew grinned. "Feel for me, who has to actually learn another language," he said. Taemin managed a weak smile. It was true that he didn't have to sign up for a foreign language until next year, but he already knew that he was going to take Chinese. What was the point in having a Chinese father otherwise? Amber, of course, had taken English, mainly because she could sit in the class and not pay the slightest bit of attention.
"Why don't we help each other out?" Onew asked, pushing his glasses further up his nose and looking at Taemin with an earnest expression. "My best subjects are the sciences," -- Taemin thought that was a little redundant, since Onew was a A grade student in everything -- "and I could use someone to practise my Chinese skills on."
"But," Taemin protested, "I'm not fluent or anything, I only know what I managed to pick up from Hankyung. Besides," he added, struck with inspiration after Jonghyun shifted in his sleep and almost fell off Key's lap, "why can't you just use Jonghyun, he's more at your level."
"Jonghyun's good when he wants to be but he considers practising outside of the classroom too close to studying." Onew gave a little shrug but he still looked earnest. "It's a doubly good deal for you, Taemin, since it'll help your Chinese and you'll be miles ahead when you take it next year."
Taemin contemplated his biology homework. "Well, okay," he said slowly, and still a little reluctantly. "It's just, they don't explain things well. There's all this jargon and I don't understand any of it."
Onew span the textbook towards him and scanned the page. "First year osmosis," he said musingly. "Not too difficult. What's the problem?"
Feeling stupid, Taemin asked, "What's a membrane?"
"It's like a barrier that separates the inside of a cell from the outside environment."
"What's it made out of?"
Onew cocked his head to the side. "That's not important."
"How am I supposed to visualise it if I don't know what it's made out of?"
"Because it's made of phospholipids, glycolipids, and cholesterols, and you," he added, after Taemin stared at him, "don't know what those are."
"I hate biology," Taemin muttered.
The trail to the lake was well-trodden and wide, most of the bumps now leveled out by years of feet walking on it. Heechul had said that the branches of the trees used to get on the way when they walked through it, but someone had clearly cut all the trees back at some point because Onew and Taemin's progress was unhindered. The trail was so good that it could probably have been pathed over. Taemin walked a little ahead, his pace just short of a jog. To hear his parents talk about it, the lake was the place that they'd had their best memories when they were at the school and it was the only place that Taemin could think of that would make his time here bearable. Onew followed more sedately, clearly used to the walk.
Taemin burst out at the end of the trail, let out a whoop, and sprinted down to the edge of the water. The lake was large, but still a good enough size to allow you to walk the entire perimeter of it in less than an hour. The late spring sunshine was warm and made the surface shimmer, and Taemin thought wistfully that at some point he should come and swim here. He'd probably have to ditch the head boy first though.
"This is amazing," he said breathlessly. He bent down and put his hand in the water. It was freezing. He began to have second thoughts about the swimming idea.
"Is it how you expected?" Onew asked, stopping beside him.
Taemin straightened and looked over the lake once more. A couple of birds swooped down and snatched up some water with their open beaks before flying off again, one of them a metre or two above Taemin's head.
"Better," Taemin said emphatically.
"Why don't you go explore?" Onew suggested, as he sat down on a nearby rock. "I've still got some reading for class to finish and I'm sure you don't want to have to deal with me tripping over all the rocks."
Taemin was torn between reassuring Onew that he felt no such thing and being joyous over his independent freedom. In the end, the joy won, and he took off, running along the rocks and sand at the edges of the lake, aiming for the other side of the water.
"Come back in an hour!" Onew shouted after him. Taemin acknowledged that with a wave.
Forty minutes later though, he'd almost forgotten his time limit completely. He'd spent a good ten minutes at the small pier that had been built into the water, and wondered if any of the small wooden boats tethered there belonged to the school and whether he use them. The fish there were tiny and swam away in a panic whenever he dipped his hands in next to them. From there he had walked to the other side of the lake and waved at Onew, who had waved back enthusiastically and almost fallen off his rock into the water. Now Taemin was exploring the woods, pressing through the trees. In his mind, he was playing explorer, but he took great care to show none of it. Even by himself, it was embarrassing at fifteen years of age.
A sharp noise from his left made him stop still, straightening his back and going quiet to see if he could think of what could have caused it. He couldn't see anything. He realised suddenly that he didn't actually know what lived in these woods and whether they could hurt him. He imagined that foxes and the like were things he could chase off, but what if there were bears? Don't be silly, he told himself. They wouldn't allow us to come down here if there anything dangerous.
There was another sound, the obvious sound of a twig breaking underfoot. He turned towards it, straining his eyes to see through the darkness. He could just make out some shape, possibly a human. He heard a whisper, then a laugh.
"Who's there?" he called, his heart thudding in his chest. When there was no answer, he took a step back. There was the sound of footsteps behind him and he turned, almost lashing out in fear, only to find that it was only Onew, his eyes narrowed and his face dark. "Hyung, what--"
Onew grabbed his hand. In the next second something hit the back of Taemin's head and then fell trickling down down his neck. He lifted a hand and touched it; it was some sort of slime, cold to the touch. It didn't seem to have done anything, however. Was it tree sap?
A muffled curse of frustration from behind him seemed to suggest it wasn't. "Sungjoon," Onew said, his voice hard. Taemin had never heard Onew sound like that. "Why don't you and your cohorts just come out here?" There were muffled sounds of movement. "I know exactly who it is," Onew added. "If you don't come and face me here, I'll just get you later on."
The branches of the trees opened and Sungjoon stepped out, followed by two other boys from Taemin's class. They were all giving Taemin filthy looks, as if it was his fault that they'd been caught trying to torment him. Taemin looked at the ground. Onew shifted his hold from his hand to his wrist but still didn't let go.
"So after you paralysed Taemin, what were you planning to do?" Onew asked tensely. There was silence. "Answer me. I'm sure what I'm imagining is far worse than reality, right?"
"Just have some fun," Sungjoon said sullenly.
“And what might fun entail?”
Sungjoon glanced at his friends and then shrugged, glaring at Taemin. "Maybe rough him up a bit. He's too high and mighty, he needs to be taken down a peg or two--"
"High and mighty?" Taemin burst out, unable to take that over everything else. "I have never--"
"Your parents are the goddamned darlings of the entire world, your sister has all the girls hanging from her little finger, half the teachers are best friends with your parents, and you have friends even though you're a freak and shouldn't even be here!"
"Enough," Onew said, but Taemin interrupted; "You mean you've been doing all this because you're jealous of me?"
"My parents did stuff! My dad was a mutant too and he was killed in one of the marches your perfect parents organized! Why is it fair that your parents get all the credit and he gets nothing!"
Taemin had nothing to say to that. He turned his back on Sungjoon, eyes burning with tears. It wasn't fair, he thought furiously. He was always going to be stuck in the shadow of his parents and his sister. They were the impressive ones: Heechul the force of nature and Hankyung the quiet, behind the scenes player; Amber with her one of a kind power that no one really fully understood; Taemin was left to stand in the background, without a power but with the dislike of the family's enemies pressing down on him.
Onew gave his wrist a squeeze. "Sungjoon, go back to the school. I'm going to deal with you later. If I ever see you using your powers against another student, I'll make sure you're expelled. As it is, you and your friends are going to spend the next two months in detention. Go away."
Sungjoon and his cohorts left, looking as though they were glad to get away. In an attempt at composing himself a little, Taemin wiped the rest of the slime from his neck and tried to wipe it on the leaves on the ground. "Leave it," Onew said, voice far more kindly. "You're going to have to wash it off."
Taemin tried to pull his hand out of Onew's grip but Onew held on. "This is the only thing that's stopping you from being a paralysed lump on the floor," he said, and he began pulling Taemin down to the water's edge. Taemin tried to ignore the rather disconcerting way he could feel his pulse, strong and a little fast against Taemin's skin.
Onew held him wash the slime from the back of his neck, conducting a thorough inspection to make sure that there wasn't nothing left. Taemin put up with it, fighting the urge to blush and mostly succeeding as Onew peered down the back of his shirt. When Onew stood back look satisfied, Taemin asked quietly, "You can transfer your power?"
"Only through skin to skin contact," Onew said with a modest shrug. "Not really all that impressive. I can't go through a battle holding someone's hand, can I?"
"Why would you be in a battle?" Taemin asked, nonplussed.
Onew paused. "I don't entirely know," he admitted.
Taemin laughed, though his hand was still feeling the back of his neck where he couldn't quite shake off the cold feeling of the slime. "How did you know what was happening? Did you see them heading my way?"
Onew gave him a strange look. "No," he said, looking at though he was struggling with himself. "Actually, Krystal told me."
"How did she..."
"She had a vision about it."
"Why didn't she just tell me about it then?" Taemin asked crossly.
"Because she recognised that someone needed to tell you what an idiot you're being," Onew said, suddenly serious. He gripped Taemin's shoulders and looked him in the eye. "All this time, you've never said a word to anyone. I can understand not telling Key or Amber -- well, actually, I can't understand, but if you'd wanted to keep it quiet, then I'm in the best position to do something discreetly for you."
"I didn't want to worry people," Taemin said, aware of how pathetic that sounded now.
"I'm far more worried about the fact that you didn't talk to anyone about being bullied. You don't have to deal with this on your own."
Taemin bit his lip. "I always did," he said.
"Why didn't you tell your parents or your sister?"
"I didn't want them to worry!" Taemin cried. "They've got enough to worry about without being some sort of--" His voice dropped as he twisted his fingers in the hem of his t-shirt. "The fact that I have no powers is enough of a worry. Besides, mostly it's because of them."
"You're bullied because of them so you don't tell them?"
Taemin shrugged him off, aware of how nonsensical such a stance appeared to everyone but him. "You won't understand," he said. "It's my family. You don't need to get involved."
"Maybe not," Onew said, "but as head boy, it's my responsibility to stamp out any bullying that happens. If anything else happens, I expect you to tell me about it."
They walked back to the dorm in silence, Taemin angry at being told what to do in this case. He could handle bullies by himself. He didn't need someone hovering over him, trying to fix things. People who tried to fix things just made the bullying gravitate to smaller corners, darker alleys. Sungjoon wasn't going to leave him alone just because Onew told him to. He'd just take greater care to avoid being caught now, and it would be harder for Taemin to avoid him in turn.
They parted at the door, Onew looking thoughtful. Taemin headed straight up the stairs, ignoring the rule which stated that boys weren't allowed in the girl's section and vice versa. He was practically stomping by the time he arrived on Krystal's floor, and his knock was rather harder than it should have been. He gathered himself up for a confrontation and then it was Amber who pulled the door open. She looked down at Taemin coolly. "You shouldn't be here," she said.
"I know," said Taemin, shoulders slumping. "Is Krystal here? I need to talk to her."
"She's hanging out with Sulli," Amber said. She held the door open. "You'd better come in, I have something I want to talk to you about."
She looked and sounded so serious that Taemin was rather frightened when he followed her into the bedroom. It was easy to see which side belonged to Amber and which to Krystal; there was a distinct lack of pink on Amber's side, and a distinct lack of electronics on Krystal's bedside table. Amber sat down on her bed, legs crossed, and motioned for Taemin to join her. He mirrored her pose, bringing one of his feet up to rest on his thigh. "What's wrong?" he asked.
"I called Heechul this morning and--"
"Oh god," Taemin said, going white, "is everything okay?"
"They're fine," Amber said. "He was pissed that I hadn't called earlier but everything is fine back home." She fixed Taemin with a look that made him want to get into her wardrobe and sit hidden under all the clothes, like he'd done when he was a kid and was in trouble. "He wanted to talk about you, actually."
"Really?" Taemin asked, surprised. "What about?"
"Don't play dumb," Amber said. "You dropped your books in a puddle, really?"
"Yes," said Taemin, trying to hold her eyes before looking away at the pattern on the bedsheets. "I dropped them--"
"Cut the crap," Amber snapped. "You lose shit, Taemin, but you're not clumsy. You should have claimed to have lost all your books in an unknown black hole or something, not trying to claim you dropped them in a puddle when it hasn't rained here in a week and a half."
Taemin was quiet for a long minute, tracing a pattern out, finger following the stem of one of the silver flowers stitched on the covers. "Say something," Amber said eventually.
"I don't know what you expect me to say," Taemin admitted.
"I asked Krystal, you know, after I got off the phone. She says that a couple of guys in your class have been bullying you, but that you'd told her to not tell me. I want to know why you didn't tell me."
"Because you've got more important things to worry about," Taemin said. His voice was thick.
"Oh, Taemin, don't cry," Amber said, going from angry to helpless and exasperated in a matter of seconds. "What could be more important than my own brother?"
"I can handle it," Taemin said, pulling his wrist out of her grip. "I can do it on my own."
"Yes, but why do you need to do it on your own? Don't make yourself into such a martyr, Taemin."
She pulled him against him while he struggled to hold back his tears. "Sometimes," he said, after there had been silence for five minutes, "I just want to be normal."
She laughed. "Never going to happen," she said. "But so what if you don't have a power? We know very well that powers can be a burden more than anything else, don't we?" Taemin nodded, twisting his fingers in her sweatshirt. Once, when he was five, Hankyung had been cooking, one of the few times that he took his gloves off. Taemin, in his five year old wisdom, had secretly come up behind him and grabbed Hankyung's hand, just to see what would happen. Nothing had, because Hankyung's control was too well tuned by then, but the expression on Hankyung's face, the absolute terror, had certainly cured Taemin of any desire to attempt it again. Later that night, he had come downstairs to get a drink and found his parents curled on the sofa together talking quietly, Hankyung's head in Heechul's lap. The only thing he remembered hearing was Heechul saying, "It was an accident." Taemin and Amber hadn't been told about Hankyung's sister until a few years later.
"If you don't get a power, it doesn't mean that you can't be special," Amber said. "We still love you. Heechul still loves you," she added, getting to the crux of the matter.
"He wants me to have a power so badly," Taemin muttered.
"Yeah, and he wants a Harley Davidson so badly too, doesn't mean he should always be able to get whatever he wants, does it? Come on, Taemin, be reasonable. Our parent's love does not depend on whether we can make sparks come out of our fingers or whether we can speak Chinese without a horrible Korean accent."
"I don't want to disappoint them."
"Do you want me to call them?" Amber asked, sounding quite cross now. "Want me to call them right now and ask them if they'd be disappointed in you for something that is quite beyond your control?"
Taemin didn't say anything, not wanting to ruin this brief family time any further. It was hard enough to get Amber to be willing to act the older sister figure, and Taemin didn't want her to get so angry that she sent him away. Amber didn't understand, not really. She'd been cured of any willingness to please Heechul and Hankyung a couple of years back. Heechul called it "the rebellious teenager phase" and had seemed quite taken with the whole thing, though he seemed upset that she'd never tried to dye her hair pink. Hankyung called it "being a spoilt brat" and was fighting back by insisting, randomly, on family meals whenever they were all home. Taemin, for his part, saw it more as Amber simply growing up. He wished he didn't feel the need to ask his parents for permission at every corner.
"If you don't want to tell our parents about this stuff, then at least tell me. I'm in a position to kick some freshman ass, you know. Plus, Key is a sneaky bastard, I bet he knows fifty ways to get itching powder into the underwear of whoever is bullying you."
"We can't tell Key," Taemin said, alarmed.
"Oh, we have to tell Key," said Amber, delighted at the mere idea. "It'll be fabulous, just wait."
Fandom: SHINee; f(x), Super Junior
Pairing: Onew/Taemin, Jonghyun/Key, Minho/BoA, Amber/Victoria, Hankyung/Heechul, Siwon/Sungmin
Word count: 3,907
Rating: PG-13
Summary: As the son of two of the most famous mutant rights activists of the past decade, Taemin knows he's under a lot of pressure to live up to his legacy. Unfortunately for him, there's one problem: as far as he can tell, he doesn't have any powers.
A/N: 8DDDDDD I have nothing to say about this chapter except that I have clean forgotten like, half of my plot points so uh. yeah. 8DDD
Footsteps (4/13)
Taemin sent an email home requesting a new textbook, claiming to have dropped his in a puddle, and recieved a terse one back from Heechul which lectured him on taking better care of his belongings. It was a familiar lecture, seeing as Taemin lost an average of one belonging a week, but that didn't stop it from making him feel bad every time. "But yes," Heechul finished, "I will send you a new book. Tell your sister that I want to hear from her by the end of the week."
Taemin switched off the computer that he'd used in the library and went to find Amber to relay the message, a heavy lump settling in his stomach. He didn't like making his parents disappointed. Heechul often got irritated but that was easy enough to deal with, especially if you'd grown up knowing the right words to say. His disappointment was a far more cutting thing; he was able to inject his words with just the right amount of sarcasm to make Taemin flinch sometimes. Hankyung tended to go very quiet when he was disappointed, and Taemin almost preferred that, but sometimes it was so much more worse.
Being the weekend, Amber was lazing in one of the small common rooms in the dorm building, lying in a chair with her legs slung over the arm. She looked up from her book when he walked in. "Is he sending a new one?"
"Yeah," Taemin muttered. "He says that you need to talk to him before the end of the week." She groaned; that usually meant a lecture of some sort.
He took a seat at one of the tables, where Onew was writing an essay. Over on the other side of the room, Luna, Minho and Key were playing some card game that looked like it would end up coming to blows on Minho and Key's parts, while Jonghyun was asleep with his head in Key's lap. Taemin watched as Key poked Minho in the chest and then looked at Onew's pen flying across the page. A guilty twinge in his stomach reminded him that he'd yet to even start his homework for the weekend, a task that would definitely take up at least most of the day. No one else was taking their chance for an early start but Taemin knew that they would regret it tomorrow when the entire day was taken up with it. He'd regretted it last weekend, and tomorrow was supposed to be relatively pleasant. He was hoping to go down to the lake.
He sighed and reached down into his bag for his biology textbook. He flipped it open to the relevant page with another sigh. He read about five words, sighed for a third time, then slumped in his chair. Onew had stopped writing and was watching him, amused.
"Biology isn't your best subject, huh?" he asked.
"Science is like another language," Taemin admitted. Homework for biology, chemistry and physics always took him a couple of hours at least, but he preferred to do them first because then he flew through the rest and that made him feel better about himself. That didn't mean he had to be happy about it, though.
Onew grinned. "Feel for me, who has to actually learn another language," he said. Taemin managed a weak smile. It was true that he didn't have to sign up for a foreign language until next year, but he already knew that he was going to take Chinese. What was the point in having a Chinese father otherwise? Amber, of course, had taken English, mainly because she could sit in the class and not pay the slightest bit of attention.
"Why don't we help each other out?" Onew asked, pushing his glasses further up his nose and looking at Taemin with an earnest expression. "My best subjects are the sciences," -- Taemin thought that was a little redundant, since Onew was a A grade student in everything -- "and I could use someone to practise my Chinese skills on."
"But," Taemin protested, "I'm not fluent or anything, I only know what I managed to pick up from Hankyung. Besides," he added, struck with inspiration after Jonghyun shifted in his sleep and almost fell off Key's lap, "why can't you just use Jonghyun, he's more at your level."
"Jonghyun's good when he wants to be but he considers practising outside of the classroom too close to studying." Onew gave a little shrug but he still looked earnest. "It's a doubly good deal for you, Taemin, since it'll help your Chinese and you'll be miles ahead when you take it next year."
Taemin contemplated his biology homework. "Well, okay," he said slowly, and still a little reluctantly. "It's just, they don't explain things well. There's all this jargon and I don't understand any of it."
Onew span the textbook towards him and scanned the page. "First year osmosis," he said musingly. "Not too difficult. What's the problem?"
Feeling stupid, Taemin asked, "What's a membrane?"
"It's like a barrier that separates the inside of a cell from the outside environment."
"What's it made out of?"
Onew cocked his head to the side. "That's not important."
"How am I supposed to visualise it if I don't know what it's made out of?"
"Because it's made of phospholipids, glycolipids, and cholesterols, and you," he added, after Taemin stared at him, "don't know what those are."
"I hate biology," Taemin muttered.
The trail to the lake was well-trodden and wide, most of the bumps now leveled out by years of feet walking on it. Heechul had said that the branches of the trees used to get on the way when they walked through it, but someone had clearly cut all the trees back at some point because Onew and Taemin's progress was unhindered. The trail was so good that it could probably have been pathed over. Taemin walked a little ahead, his pace just short of a jog. To hear his parents talk about it, the lake was the place that they'd had their best memories when they were at the school and it was the only place that Taemin could think of that would make his time here bearable. Onew followed more sedately, clearly used to the walk.
Taemin burst out at the end of the trail, let out a whoop, and sprinted down to the edge of the water. The lake was large, but still a good enough size to allow you to walk the entire perimeter of it in less than an hour. The late spring sunshine was warm and made the surface shimmer, and Taemin thought wistfully that at some point he should come and swim here. He'd probably have to ditch the head boy first though.
"This is amazing," he said breathlessly. He bent down and put his hand in the water. It was freezing. He began to have second thoughts about the swimming idea.
"Is it how you expected?" Onew asked, stopping beside him.
Taemin straightened and looked over the lake once more. A couple of birds swooped down and snatched up some water with their open beaks before flying off again, one of them a metre or two above Taemin's head.
"Better," Taemin said emphatically.
"Why don't you go explore?" Onew suggested, as he sat down on a nearby rock. "I've still got some reading for class to finish and I'm sure you don't want to have to deal with me tripping over all the rocks."
Taemin was torn between reassuring Onew that he felt no such thing and being joyous over his independent freedom. In the end, the joy won, and he took off, running along the rocks and sand at the edges of the lake, aiming for the other side of the water.
"Come back in an hour!" Onew shouted after him. Taemin acknowledged that with a wave.
Forty minutes later though, he'd almost forgotten his time limit completely. He'd spent a good ten minutes at the small pier that had been built into the water, and wondered if any of the small wooden boats tethered there belonged to the school and whether he use them. The fish there were tiny and swam away in a panic whenever he dipped his hands in next to them. From there he had walked to the other side of the lake and waved at Onew, who had waved back enthusiastically and almost fallen off his rock into the water. Now Taemin was exploring the woods, pressing through the trees. In his mind, he was playing explorer, but he took great care to show none of it. Even by himself, it was embarrassing at fifteen years of age.
A sharp noise from his left made him stop still, straightening his back and going quiet to see if he could think of what could have caused it. He couldn't see anything. He realised suddenly that he didn't actually know what lived in these woods and whether they could hurt him. He imagined that foxes and the like were things he could chase off, but what if there were bears? Don't be silly, he told himself. They wouldn't allow us to come down here if there anything dangerous.
There was another sound, the obvious sound of a twig breaking underfoot. He turned towards it, straining his eyes to see through the darkness. He could just make out some shape, possibly a human. He heard a whisper, then a laugh.
"Who's there?" he called, his heart thudding in his chest. When there was no answer, he took a step back. There was the sound of footsteps behind him and he turned, almost lashing out in fear, only to find that it was only Onew, his eyes narrowed and his face dark. "Hyung, what--"
Onew grabbed his hand. In the next second something hit the back of Taemin's head and then fell trickling down down his neck. He lifted a hand and touched it; it was some sort of slime, cold to the touch. It didn't seem to have done anything, however. Was it tree sap?
A muffled curse of frustration from behind him seemed to suggest it wasn't. "Sungjoon," Onew said, his voice hard. Taemin had never heard Onew sound like that. "Why don't you and your cohorts just come out here?" There were muffled sounds of movement. "I know exactly who it is," Onew added. "If you don't come and face me here, I'll just get you later on."
The branches of the trees opened and Sungjoon stepped out, followed by two other boys from Taemin's class. They were all giving Taemin filthy looks, as if it was his fault that they'd been caught trying to torment him. Taemin looked at the ground. Onew shifted his hold from his hand to his wrist but still didn't let go.
"So after you paralysed Taemin, what were you planning to do?" Onew asked tensely. There was silence. "Answer me. I'm sure what I'm imagining is far worse than reality, right?"
"Just have some fun," Sungjoon said sullenly.
“And what might fun entail?”
Sungjoon glanced at his friends and then shrugged, glaring at Taemin. "Maybe rough him up a bit. He's too high and mighty, he needs to be taken down a peg or two--"
"High and mighty?" Taemin burst out, unable to take that over everything else. "I have never--"
"Your parents are the goddamned darlings of the entire world, your sister has all the girls hanging from her little finger, half the teachers are best friends with your parents, and you have friends even though you're a freak and shouldn't even be here!"
"Enough," Onew said, but Taemin interrupted; "You mean you've been doing all this because you're jealous of me?"
"My parents did stuff! My dad was a mutant too and he was killed in one of the marches your perfect parents organized! Why is it fair that your parents get all the credit and he gets nothing!"
Taemin had nothing to say to that. He turned his back on Sungjoon, eyes burning with tears. It wasn't fair, he thought furiously. He was always going to be stuck in the shadow of his parents and his sister. They were the impressive ones: Heechul the force of nature and Hankyung the quiet, behind the scenes player; Amber with her one of a kind power that no one really fully understood; Taemin was left to stand in the background, without a power but with the dislike of the family's enemies pressing down on him.
Onew gave his wrist a squeeze. "Sungjoon, go back to the school. I'm going to deal with you later. If I ever see you using your powers against another student, I'll make sure you're expelled. As it is, you and your friends are going to spend the next two months in detention. Go away."
Sungjoon and his cohorts left, looking as though they were glad to get away. In an attempt at composing himself a little, Taemin wiped the rest of the slime from his neck and tried to wipe it on the leaves on the ground. "Leave it," Onew said, voice far more kindly. "You're going to have to wash it off."
Taemin tried to pull his hand out of Onew's grip but Onew held on. "This is the only thing that's stopping you from being a paralysed lump on the floor," he said, and he began pulling Taemin down to the water's edge. Taemin tried to ignore the rather disconcerting way he could feel his pulse, strong and a little fast against Taemin's skin.
Onew held him wash the slime from the back of his neck, conducting a thorough inspection to make sure that there wasn't nothing left. Taemin put up with it, fighting the urge to blush and mostly succeeding as Onew peered down the back of his shirt. When Onew stood back look satisfied, Taemin asked quietly, "You can transfer your power?"
"Only through skin to skin contact," Onew said with a modest shrug. "Not really all that impressive. I can't go through a battle holding someone's hand, can I?"
"Why would you be in a battle?" Taemin asked, nonplussed.
Onew paused. "I don't entirely know," he admitted.
Taemin laughed, though his hand was still feeling the back of his neck where he couldn't quite shake off the cold feeling of the slime. "How did you know what was happening? Did you see them heading my way?"
Onew gave him a strange look. "No," he said, looking at though he was struggling with himself. "Actually, Krystal told me."
"How did she..."
"She had a vision about it."
"Why didn't she just tell me about it then?" Taemin asked crossly.
"Because she recognised that someone needed to tell you what an idiot you're being," Onew said, suddenly serious. He gripped Taemin's shoulders and looked him in the eye. "All this time, you've never said a word to anyone. I can understand not telling Key or Amber -- well, actually, I can't understand, but if you'd wanted to keep it quiet, then I'm in the best position to do something discreetly for you."
"I didn't want to worry people," Taemin said, aware of how pathetic that sounded now.
"I'm far more worried about the fact that you didn't talk to anyone about being bullied. You don't have to deal with this on your own."
Taemin bit his lip. "I always did," he said.
"Why didn't you tell your parents or your sister?"
"I didn't want them to worry!" Taemin cried. "They've got enough to worry about without being some sort of--" His voice dropped as he twisted his fingers in the hem of his t-shirt. "The fact that I have no powers is enough of a worry. Besides, mostly it's because of them."
"You're bullied because of them so you don't tell them?"
Taemin shrugged him off, aware of how nonsensical such a stance appeared to everyone but him. "You won't understand," he said. "It's my family. You don't need to get involved."
"Maybe not," Onew said, "but as head boy, it's my responsibility to stamp out any bullying that happens. If anything else happens, I expect you to tell me about it."
They walked back to the dorm in silence, Taemin angry at being told what to do in this case. He could handle bullies by himself. He didn't need someone hovering over him, trying to fix things. People who tried to fix things just made the bullying gravitate to smaller corners, darker alleys. Sungjoon wasn't going to leave him alone just because Onew told him to. He'd just take greater care to avoid being caught now, and it would be harder for Taemin to avoid him in turn.
They parted at the door, Onew looking thoughtful. Taemin headed straight up the stairs, ignoring the rule which stated that boys weren't allowed in the girl's section and vice versa. He was practically stomping by the time he arrived on Krystal's floor, and his knock was rather harder than it should have been. He gathered himself up for a confrontation and then it was Amber who pulled the door open. She looked down at Taemin coolly. "You shouldn't be here," she said.
"I know," said Taemin, shoulders slumping. "Is Krystal here? I need to talk to her."
"She's hanging out with Sulli," Amber said. She held the door open. "You'd better come in, I have something I want to talk to you about."
She looked and sounded so serious that Taemin was rather frightened when he followed her into the bedroom. It was easy to see which side belonged to Amber and which to Krystal; there was a distinct lack of pink on Amber's side, and a distinct lack of electronics on Krystal's bedside table. Amber sat down on her bed, legs crossed, and motioned for Taemin to join her. He mirrored her pose, bringing one of his feet up to rest on his thigh. "What's wrong?" he asked.
"I called Heechul this morning and--"
"Oh god," Taemin said, going white, "is everything okay?"
"They're fine," Amber said. "He was pissed that I hadn't called earlier but everything is fine back home." She fixed Taemin with a look that made him want to get into her wardrobe and sit hidden under all the clothes, like he'd done when he was a kid and was in trouble. "He wanted to talk about you, actually."
"Really?" Taemin asked, surprised. "What about?"
"Don't play dumb," Amber said. "You dropped your books in a puddle, really?"
"Yes," said Taemin, trying to hold her eyes before looking away at the pattern on the bedsheets. "I dropped them--"
"Cut the crap," Amber snapped. "You lose shit, Taemin, but you're not clumsy. You should have claimed to have lost all your books in an unknown black hole or something, not trying to claim you dropped them in a puddle when it hasn't rained here in a week and a half."
Taemin was quiet for a long minute, tracing a pattern out, finger following the stem of one of the silver flowers stitched on the covers. "Say something," Amber said eventually.
"I don't know what you expect me to say," Taemin admitted.
"I asked Krystal, you know, after I got off the phone. She says that a couple of guys in your class have been bullying you, but that you'd told her to not tell me. I want to know why you didn't tell me."
"Because you've got more important things to worry about," Taemin said. His voice was thick.
"Oh, Taemin, don't cry," Amber said, going from angry to helpless and exasperated in a matter of seconds. "What could be more important than my own brother?"
"I can handle it," Taemin said, pulling his wrist out of her grip. "I can do it on my own."
"Yes, but why do you need to do it on your own? Don't make yourself into such a martyr, Taemin."
She pulled him against him while he struggled to hold back his tears. "Sometimes," he said, after there had been silence for five minutes, "I just want to be normal."
She laughed. "Never going to happen," she said. "But so what if you don't have a power? We know very well that powers can be a burden more than anything else, don't we?" Taemin nodded, twisting his fingers in her sweatshirt. Once, when he was five, Hankyung had been cooking, one of the few times that he took his gloves off. Taemin, in his five year old wisdom, had secretly come up behind him and grabbed Hankyung's hand, just to see what would happen. Nothing had, because Hankyung's control was too well tuned by then, but the expression on Hankyung's face, the absolute terror, had certainly cured Taemin of any desire to attempt it again. Later that night, he had come downstairs to get a drink and found his parents curled on the sofa together talking quietly, Hankyung's head in Heechul's lap. The only thing he remembered hearing was Heechul saying, "It was an accident." Taemin and Amber hadn't been told about Hankyung's sister until a few years later.
"If you don't get a power, it doesn't mean that you can't be special," Amber said. "We still love you. Heechul still loves you," she added, getting to the crux of the matter.
"He wants me to have a power so badly," Taemin muttered.
"Yeah, and he wants a Harley Davidson so badly too, doesn't mean he should always be able to get whatever he wants, does it? Come on, Taemin, be reasonable. Our parent's love does not depend on whether we can make sparks come out of our fingers or whether we can speak Chinese without a horrible Korean accent."
"I don't want to disappoint them."
"Do you want me to call them?" Amber asked, sounding quite cross now. "Want me to call them right now and ask them if they'd be disappointed in you for something that is quite beyond your control?"
Taemin didn't say anything, not wanting to ruin this brief family time any further. It was hard enough to get Amber to be willing to act the older sister figure, and Taemin didn't want her to get so angry that she sent him away. Amber didn't understand, not really. She'd been cured of any willingness to please Heechul and Hankyung a couple of years back. Heechul called it "the rebellious teenager phase" and had seemed quite taken with the whole thing, though he seemed upset that she'd never tried to dye her hair pink. Hankyung called it "being a spoilt brat" and was fighting back by insisting, randomly, on family meals whenever they were all home. Taemin, for his part, saw it more as Amber simply growing up. He wished he didn't feel the need to ask his parents for permission at every corner.
"If you don't want to tell our parents about this stuff, then at least tell me. I'm in a position to kick some freshman ass, you know. Plus, Key is a sneaky bastard, I bet he knows fifty ways to get itching powder into the underwear of whoever is bullying you."
"We can't tell Key," Taemin said, alarmed.
"Oh, we have to tell Key," said Amber, delighted at the mere idea. "It'll be fabulous, just wait."