The Yellow Letters (3/9)
TITLE : THE YELLOW LETTERS (3/9)
PAIRING : KRISHAN
RATING : PG/ PG-13
WORD COUNT : 24K
“…but I hope you understand : you are special.”
Even after Kris has neatly folded away the letter the words stay with him. Every time Kyungsoo snaps at him in frustration, every time the vocal instructor reminds him to work harder to make up for his mediocrity, every time he slips on stage and messes up a choreography routine and has to read the derisive comments of anti-fans online for days he thinks of those words. You are special. They settle over him warm and brilliant, shrouding him from the rest of the world and its million opinions.
It’s 11.50pm on Friday night. Kris is lying on the ground of a practice room, spread-eagled and panting comically. Jongin and Sehun are lying down next to him, Henry is plopped headfirst on Yixing’s lap and Taemin is having a secret, whispered conversation on the phone in the other corner of the room. (Only it’s not so secret because these rooms amplify sound well and Kris hears something about handcuffs and thinks that he’d rather not know.) Together they are SM’s favourite sub-unit.
“Hyung.” Jongin says turning to face him, his eyes spell fatigue. “Hyung, I think I’m dying.”
“No you are not,” Kris replies in a soothing voice. He reaches over awkwardly with his right hand to pat Jongin’s hair because Sehun is currently using his left as his personal pillow. Sehun grumbles when this movement jostles his head and Kris stills again. His arm is going numb.
“No, I think he is dying too. Only not his body but is brain. That’s why he gets dumber by the day.”
Jongin’s head snaps up at this comment and he stares accusingly at Sehun. Sehun giggles at this and curls up into Kris’ side like a lazy cat. “Look hyung, he making dumb faces again.”
Jongin reaches across Kris and flicks Sehun in the forehead who retaliates with a kick that hurts Kris more than it does Jongin.
“I don’t look dumb. I’m like god’s gift to all women kind, ok. I bet even Kris hyung thinks so.” Jongin defends his bronze skin and sexy smirks.
“Right. Suuure. I think you are forgetting about that time you tried to throw your tshirt at a fan girl and the stylist team had to cut it off you because you managed to get it tangled up in your ear piercings. I was there. Kris hyung was there. He laughed so hard that he accidently slapped himself across the face.”
“Shut up. Shut up.” Jongin pokes at Sehun, curling into Kris mimicking Sehun’s posture. It’s too hot and Kris’s whole body hurts but he lets them hold on to him like little koalas and bicker because he knows that they are only comfortable enough to do this with him. Because he knows that they like it when he is in the middle like this: an indulgent father, stopping their bickering before it crosses too many lines, , occasionally coming up with a comment that they will find stupidly hilarious for no reason at all and gently patting away the exhaustion from the taut lines of their bodies.
It’s 1.45am on Friday night (or Saturday morning) and Yixing stops the music for the umpteenth time because Kris was off beat again and this puts the whole group off the next set of steps.
Yixing doesn’t say anything; harsh words were never his thing no matter how exhausted or frustrated he is. This makes something in Kris’ chest hurt because he knows how tired Yixing is, how tired they all are, and yet they don’t so much as look at him angrily. They merely move back into the starting positions and it’s a testament to their love for him that they don’t complain, not even Sehun who is spoiled as spoiled can be. Kris’ eyes sting and he looks at them gratefully through the mirror and Yixing displays his dimples, good-humouredly starting the music again.
“From the top then. And one, two, one, two, three, four.”
It’s 3am on Saturday morning and Kris is feels aches and pains in muscles he never knew even existed. It’s 3am on Saturday morning and Kris is determined to get it all right, practicing even long after the others had left.
He is taking a water break and replaying the video of their practice that Yixing recoded when the door opens and Luhan’s head pops in.
“What are you doing here up so late?” kris asks, surprised. Unless Kris has a schedule that runs a little late Luhan usually gets to leave by 5.30 in the evening.
“SNSD is coming back with a Chinese album. I was helping Kyungsoo out with the lyrics.”
“Oh, ok.” Kris eyes the two tall cups of Coffee in Luhan’s hand. The smell is starting to make him salivate.
“I was walking past before. Saw you guys practicing. The growl remix version, right?” Kris nods. “Yixing left though. But- but I didn’t see you leave. Figured you were still here.” Luhan’s voice sounds hesitant, uncertain.
Kris blinks, not sure where he is going with this.
“SoIfiguredthatifyouwerearoundyouwouldlikesomecoffee.” Luhan spews out in one breath and Kris gapes at him.
“Say what?”
“Um.. I mean,would you like some coffee?”
Luhan, confident, playful Luhan, is the one Kris is used to. Not the timid, undecided, stumbling-all-over-his-words Luhan. Kris thinks about a sasaeng fan’s arm around his neck and Luhan’s warm one on his arm, he thinks of a heart stuttering with an effort to calm down and a voice explaining to him the mysteries of solving a Rubik’s cube until it does. He thinks of witty comments and shinning eyes and the colour yellow. And he smiles.
“I would kill for some coffee.”
Luhan settles down next to him on the ground and they watch the recording while sipping at their coffee. Luhan is silent at first but soon enough he is laughing and teasing Kris about the sexy expressions he tries to make during dancing while bumbling around awkwardly. Kris laughs along because with Luhan, that mistake he makes during the dance break between the 2nd verse and the last looks funny and not like something he should chalk up to another one of his many failures.
“Oh, god. Look see there!” Luhan is like a excitable little child when he has the remote controller in his hand. “Right there. See you are trying to do that shake while trying to make a ‘come at me’ face at the camera. Oh god. This-ahahahaha-this is funnier than Mushu and I never say anything is funnier than Mulan.”
“You watch Disney movies made for children?” Kris asks, his lips twitching, he thinks this is funny too- only not the way he manages to crash face first to the floor on the screen when he tries to do a small spin but the way Luhan is banging his hands on the ground, his laughter coming out in highly unattractive bursts and snorts. “And you get annoyed with me when I question your age?”
“Ahahahaa-Shut-hahaaa-up.the DVD says ages 5 and above ok. And I’m definitely over 5 years.”
“Sometime I find myself doubting that.”
Luhan grins and kicks at him from where he is sprawled across the floor, tired from his laughing fit. “Jealous of my baby face, aren’t you?”
“You mean fetus-face.”
“Hey! I was the guy who got the most of love letters in senior year ok.”
“They let 5 year olds graduate from High school?” Kris makes a horrified expression.
“Give that back. You don’t deserve my coffee.” Luhan crawls up to him and snatched away his half-finished cup.
“Noooooooo.” Kris moans at his loss. “I want my coffee back. You didn’t make this. Starbucks did!”
“but I bought it. And I don’t think you should have it anymore. God giveth, god taketh away.” Luhan intones solemnly while holding the cup out of reach.
Kris snorts at this and leans over balancing on his left hand to grab the cup. But of course grace has never been Kris’ number one best friend and balancing on a shiny, wooden floor with a sweaty palm is never a good idea. One second Kris is laughing and trying to reclaim his coffee and the next second he falls flat on his face on- oh, my god, what- oh my god my face is right on his-
Kris struggles to scramble up, falls on his face twice more, before he manages to get his face off Luhan’s lap.
“Umm..soryy. I- I didn’t mean to…” Kris studiously avoids looking at Luhan’s face.
“Yeah… umm…ok.”
A few discomfited minutes pass by in silence while Kris counts the number of scratches on the floor. Then Luhan pushes the coffee cup back at him, poking it with his finger until it bumps again Kris’ thigh. Kris picks it up and for the lack of something to do takes a large gulp of it- and the promptly splutters and flails around because hot, hot, scalding hot.
The silence is immediately shatters by peals of Luhan’s laughter. “You really are an idiot sometimes.”
“No, I’m noth. I’m Krithuth, the sexth god. And altho I fink I burnth my thongue.”
It takes a long time for Luhan to recover from the laughing fit he is reduced to after hearing this and by the time he does Kris is eying the Tv screen seriously because no matter how much he likes all of this he also wants to master the dance before sunrise.
Luhan looks between the screen and Kris’ face a few times before he nods to himself like he is confirming something. Then he is dragging himself across the space that separates them till he is sitting inches away and presses ‘Play’.
Kris doesn’t even have time to get distracted by the proximity before Luhan is slowing down the video and taking him trough a breakdown of the part where he messes up. Instead he gets caught up in the slow, methodical way Luhan explains the little extra twists and turns and pauses Kris should be doing to keep up with the beat.
“Right there - you are working so hard to make sure that you are looking at the camera just right so you forget to take that little turn. I know how big a part the whole ‘camera expressions’ thing play in this but… sexiness doesn’t start in the face. If you can work on getting your body to move just right, to show sharpness and preciseness in your movements you will look the part naturally.”
Kris nods in understanding and thinks that he has a gift for words: it would be so easy to get lost in those carefully emphasized sounds.
“Like this.” Luhan stands up. “Jump, jump, shoulder twist, step, step, pause.”
“Do that again” Kris demands, scrambling to his feet.
Luhan does and Kris finally sees a subtle pause and a hidden step that he failed to notice when Yixing demonstrated, the pause and step that always puts him off beat.
“You….” His voice is awed. “You can dance. Like dance dance. You are so good at this.”
A blush stains Luhan’s cheeks as he shrugs. “High school hobby. I needed stuff to pad my college applications.”
“So you really did graduate from high school.”
“Funny. Hilarious.” Luhan’s tone indicates the age jokes are anything but, and still he smiles. “Just come here.”
Luhan counts down and hums the beat for Kris to test his newfound insight into the Growl choreography. He misses the first two times and the third time Luhan is standing directly behind him, guiding his movements. Kris’ ears feel like they are on fire. Luhan’s hands are soft and sure as his fingers dig into his hipbones and his breath fans the back of Kris’ neck. Kris stumbles once but then he is so entranced by the way they look together in the mirror dancing, back to front, mere inches apart, that by the fifth run he gets it all right.
Luhan, who has already memorized the routine by watching the video, takes him through the steps of the newly added choreography with sarcastic comments, wrinkly-eyed laughter and warm hands on his hips. Kris forgets to worry about constantly screwing up and about having the right expression on his face and instead focuses on the way Luhan’s body undulates with the beat and the way his voice rises and falls with each one of Kris’ victories over the elusive choreography.
That night when he gets home he stares at the neat pile of yellow paper on his table before reaching for the pile of blue paper next to it. He starts writing and there are aches in his body that won’t go away and a smile on his face that won’t die down.
The chorus is coming to an end Kris feels himself tensing up with the knowledge of the fact that there is a 99% chance that he will mess up the next few steps and they will have to repeat the whole thing from the beginning. He can feel a tangible rise of something in the air of the room and he knows that the rest of the dancers are expecting it too. But then he remembers a body running solely on a coffee high, a pressure on his hips and a soft voice telling him to ‘twist, hop, shoulder twist, step, step, pause and now follow through with your hips’ and so he does.
The song comes to an end -it’s their first perfect run through the whole song. Yixing is looking at him with raised eyebrows and a deep dimple as Sehun and Jongin elatedly high-fives him again and again. Luhan sits in a corner alone, marking something on a paper with a pencil and when he looks up and their eyes meet across the room Kris feels something warm and yellow and delightful explode in the bottom of his stomach. Luhan looks back down at his paper, his smile small but pleased.
PAIRING : KRISHAN
RATING : PG/ PG-13
WORD COUNT : 24K
“…but I hope you understand : you are special.”
Even after Kris has neatly folded away the letter the words stay with him. Every time Kyungsoo snaps at him in frustration, every time the vocal instructor reminds him to work harder to make up for his mediocrity, every time he slips on stage and messes up a choreography routine and has to read the derisive comments of anti-fans online for days he thinks of those words. You are special. They settle over him warm and brilliant, shrouding him from the rest of the world and its million opinions.
It’s 11.50pm on Friday night. Kris is lying on the ground of a practice room, spread-eagled and panting comically. Jongin and Sehun are lying down next to him, Henry is plopped headfirst on Yixing’s lap and Taemin is having a secret, whispered conversation on the phone in the other corner of the room. (Only it’s not so secret because these rooms amplify sound well and Kris hears something about handcuffs and thinks that he’d rather not know.) Together they are SM’s favourite sub-unit.
“Hyung.” Jongin says turning to face him, his eyes spell fatigue. “Hyung, I think I’m dying.”
“No you are not,” Kris replies in a soothing voice. He reaches over awkwardly with his right hand to pat Jongin’s hair because Sehun is currently using his left as his personal pillow. Sehun grumbles when this movement jostles his head and Kris stills again. His arm is going numb.
“No, I think he is dying too. Only not his body but is brain. That’s why he gets dumber by the day.”
Jongin’s head snaps up at this comment and he stares accusingly at Sehun. Sehun giggles at this and curls up into Kris’ side like a lazy cat. “Look hyung, he making dumb faces again.”
Jongin reaches across Kris and flicks Sehun in the forehead who retaliates with a kick that hurts Kris more than it does Jongin.
“I don’t look dumb. I’m like god’s gift to all women kind, ok. I bet even Kris hyung thinks so.” Jongin defends his bronze skin and sexy smirks.
“Right. Suuure. I think you are forgetting about that time you tried to throw your tshirt at a fan girl and the stylist team had to cut it off you because you managed to get it tangled up in your ear piercings. I was there. Kris hyung was there. He laughed so hard that he accidently slapped himself across the face.”
“Shut up. Shut up.” Jongin pokes at Sehun, curling into Kris mimicking Sehun’s posture. It’s too hot and Kris’s whole body hurts but he lets them hold on to him like little koalas and bicker because he knows that they are only comfortable enough to do this with him. Because he knows that they like it when he is in the middle like this: an indulgent father, stopping their bickering before it crosses too many lines, , occasionally coming up with a comment that they will find stupidly hilarious for no reason at all and gently patting away the exhaustion from the taut lines of their bodies.
It’s 1.45am on Friday night (or Saturday morning) and Yixing stops the music for the umpteenth time because Kris was off beat again and this puts the whole group off the next set of steps.
Yixing doesn’t say anything; harsh words were never his thing no matter how exhausted or frustrated he is. This makes something in Kris’ chest hurt because he knows how tired Yixing is, how tired they all are, and yet they don’t so much as look at him angrily. They merely move back into the starting positions and it’s a testament to their love for him that they don’t complain, not even Sehun who is spoiled as spoiled can be. Kris’ eyes sting and he looks at them gratefully through the mirror and Yixing displays his dimples, good-humouredly starting the music again.
“From the top then. And one, two, one, two, three, four.”
It’s 3am on Saturday morning and Kris is feels aches and pains in muscles he never knew even existed. It’s 3am on Saturday morning and Kris is determined to get it all right, practicing even long after the others had left.
He is taking a water break and replaying the video of their practice that Yixing recoded when the door opens and Luhan’s head pops in.
“What are you doing here up so late?” kris asks, surprised. Unless Kris has a schedule that runs a little late Luhan usually gets to leave by 5.30 in the evening.
“SNSD is coming back with a Chinese album. I was helping Kyungsoo out with the lyrics.”
“Oh, ok.” Kris eyes the two tall cups of Coffee in Luhan’s hand. The smell is starting to make him salivate.
“I was walking past before. Saw you guys practicing. The growl remix version, right?” Kris nods. “Yixing left though. But- but I didn’t see you leave. Figured you were still here.” Luhan’s voice sounds hesitant, uncertain.
Kris blinks, not sure where he is going with this.
“SoIfiguredthatifyouwerearoundyouwouldlikesomecoffee.” Luhan spews out in one breath and Kris gapes at him.
“Say what?”
“Um.. I mean,would you like some coffee?”
Luhan, confident, playful Luhan, is the one Kris is used to. Not the timid, undecided, stumbling-all-over-his-words Luhan. Kris thinks about a sasaeng fan’s arm around his neck and Luhan’s warm one on his arm, he thinks of a heart stuttering with an effort to calm down and a voice explaining to him the mysteries of solving a Rubik’s cube until it does. He thinks of witty comments and shinning eyes and the colour yellow. And he smiles.
“I would kill for some coffee.”
Luhan settles down next to him on the ground and they watch the recording while sipping at their coffee. Luhan is silent at first but soon enough he is laughing and teasing Kris about the sexy expressions he tries to make during dancing while bumbling around awkwardly. Kris laughs along because with Luhan, that mistake he makes during the dance break between the 2nd verse and the last looks funny and not like something he should chalk up to another one of his many failures.
“Oh, god. Look see there!” Luhan is like a excitable little child when he has the remote controller in his hand. “Right there. See you are trying to do that shake while trying to make a ‘come at me’ face at the camera. Oh god. This-ahahahaha-this is funnier than Mushu and I never say anything is funnier than Mulan.”
“You watch Disney movies made for children?” Kris asks, his lips twitching, he thinks this is funny too- only not the way he manages to crash face first to the floor on the screen when he tries to do a small spin but the way Luhan is banging his hands on the ground, his laughter coming out in highly unattractive bursts and snorts. “And you get annoyed with me when I question your age?”
“Ahahahaa-Shut-hahaaa-up.the DVD says ages 5 and above ok. And I’m definitely over 5 years.”
“Sometime I find myself doubting that.”
Luhan grins and kicks at him from where he is sprawled across the floor, tired from his laughing fit. “Jealous of my baby face, aren’t you?”
“You mean fetus-face.”
“Hey! I was the guy who got the most of love letters in senior year ok.”
“They let 5 year olds graduate from High school?” Kris makes a horrified expression.
“Give that back. You don’t deserve my coffee.” Luhan crawls up to him and snatched away his half-finished cup.
“Noooooooo.” Kris moans at his loss. “I want my coffee back. You didn’t make this. Starbucks did!”
“but I bought it. And I don’t think you should have it anymore. God giveth, god taketh away.” Luhan intones solemnly while holding the cup out of reach.
Kris snorts at this and leans over balancing on his left hand to grab the cup. But of course grace has never been Kris’ number one best friend and balancing on a shiny, wooden floor with a sweaty palm is never a good idea. One second Kris is laughing and trying to reclaim his coffee and the next second he falls flat on his face on- oh, my god, what- oh my god my face is right on his-
Kris struggles to scramble up, falls on his face twice more, before he manages to get his face off Luhan’s lap.
“Umm..soryy. I- I didn’t mean to…” Kris studiously avoids looking at Luhan’s face.
“Yeah… umm…ok.”
A few discomfited minutes pass by in silence while Kris counts the number of scratches on the floor. Then Luhan pushes the coffee cup back at him, poking it with his finger until it bumps again Kris’ thigh. Kris picks it up and for the lack of something to do takes a large gulp of it- and the promptly splutters and flails around because hot, hot, scalding hot.
The silence is immediately shatters by peals of Luhan’s laughter. “You really are an idiot sometimes.”
“No, I’m noth. I’m Krithuth, the sexth god. And altho I fink I burnth my thongue.”
It takes a long time for Luhan to recover from the laughing fit he is reduced to after hearing this and by the time he does Kris is eying the Tv screen seriously because no matter how much he likes all of this he also wants to master the dance before sunrise.
Luhan looks between the screen and Kris’ face a few times before he nods to himself like he is confirming something. Then he is dragging himself across the space that separates them till he is sitting inches away and presses ‘Play’.
Kris doesn’t even have time to get distracted by the proximity before Luhan is slowing down the video and taking him trough a breakdown of the part where he messes up. Instead he gets caught up in the slow, methodical way Luhan explains the little extra twists and turns and pauses Kris should be doing to keep up with the beat.
“Right there - you are working so hard to make sure that you are looking at the camera just right so you forget to take that little turn. I know how big a part the whole ‘camera expressions’ thing play in this but… sexiness doesn’t start in the face. If you can work on getting your body to move just right, to show sharpness and preciseness in your movements you will look the part naturally.”
Kris nods in understanding and thinks that he has a gift for words: it would be so easy to get lost in those carefully emphasized sounds.
“Like this.” Luhan stands up. “Jump, jump, shoulder twist, step, step, pause.”
“Do that again” Kris demands, scrambling to his feet.
Luhan does and Kris finally sees a subtle pause and a hidden step that he failed to notice when Yixing demonstrated, the pause and step that always puts him off beat.
“You….” His voice is awed. “You can dance. Like dance dance. You are so good at this.”
A blush stains Luhan’s cheeks as he shrugs. “High school hobby. I needed stuff to pad my college applications.”
“So you really did graduate from high school.”
“Funny. Hilarious.” Luhan’s tone indicates the age jokes are anything but, and still he smiles. “Just come here.”
Luhan counts down and hums the beat for Kris to test his newfound insight into the Growl choreography. He misses the first two times and the third time Luhan is standing directly behind him, guiding his movements. Kris’ ears feel like they are on fire. Luhan’s hands are soft and sure as his fingers dig into his hipbones and his breath fans the back of Kris’ neck. Kris stumbles once but then he is so entranced by the way they look together in the mirror dancing, back to front, mere inches apart, that by the fifth run he gets it all right.
Luhan, who has already memorized the routine by watching the video, takes him through the steps of the newly added choreography with sarcastic comments, wrinkly-eyed laughter and warm hands on his hips. Kris forgets to worry about constantly screwing up and about having the right expression on his face and instead focuses on the way Luhan’s body undulates with the beat and the way his voice rises and falls with each one of Kris’ victories over the elusive choreography.
That night when he gets home he stares at the neat pile of yellow paper on his table before reaching for the pile of blue paper next to it. He starts writing and there are aches in his body that won’t go away and a smile on his face that won’t die down.
The chorus is coming to an end Kris feels himself tensing up with the knowledge of the fact that there is a 99% chance that he will mess up the next few steps and they will have to repeat the whole thing from the beginning. He can feel a tangible rise of something in the air of the room and he knows that the rest of the dancers are expecting it too. But then he remembers a body running solely on a coffee high, a pressure on his hips and a soft voice telling him to ‘twist, hop, shoulder twist, step, step, pause and now follow through with your hips’ and so he does.
The song comes to an end -it’s their first perfect run through the whole song. Yixing is looking at him with raised eyebrows and a deep dimple as Sehun and Jongin elatedly high-fives him again and again. Luhan sits in a corner alone, marking something on a paper with a pencil and when he looks up and their eyes meet across the room Kris feels something warm and yellow and delightful explode in the bottom of his stomach. Luhan looks back down at his paper, his smile small but pleased.