The Yellow Letters (5/9)
TITLE : THE YELLOW LETTERS (5/9)
PAIRING : KRISHAN
RATING : PG/ PG-13
WORD COUNT : 24K
“A little more deeper, but maybe a little softer.”
Kris stares at Luhan in confusion. He doesn’t know how to work his voice that way, softer but deeper. He is used to fast raps and words that tumble over each other to a strong beat - not soft lines that need each word enunciated carefully with so many meanings to be conveyed.
“hmm.. look …. See that last line in the first verse- Ai yu tong zai wo xin li jiu chan- you are trying to say that you are left not only with hurt but the love as well right? So it has to be soft, to show how much you hurt and deep to make people understand that love is still there, still strong. ”
Kris thinks that he would have thought the opposite. Soft to show the love and deep to show the pain. But of course, Kris thinks, of course Luhan would think this way. To Kris who has learnt to feel pain more than he feels love, pain would be the deepest. But Luhan… Luhan looks at the world through his shinny eyes not as if he has never felt pain but as if he has learnt how to love people through that very pain.
“Maybe my voice can’t handle this. Maybe Kyungsoo should have given this to Jongdae or Kyuhyun, like he wanted to at first. They have better training and better practice with songs like this. And better voices, I guess.”
He is not fishing for compliments, he really isn’t. If he wanted those he just has to type his name on Weibo or Naver and he’d see a hundred posts waxing eloquent about his perfection. But sometimes he feels like he needs something more solid to hold on to, to believe. You are special, he remembers, but he wants someone to tell that to him in soft syllables and warm lips rather than with splotches of ink. Maybe he is starting to get greedy. Love can do that to you, make you want too much.
Luhan shrugs. “It’s true, there are some voices that suit certain types of songs more. But in your case I don’t think so. You just think that rapping is all you are good at because that’s what they told you all this time, that’s what they trained you for, that’s what the fan girls go crazy for. They should have told you that you can sing ballads too, they should have told you that it’s hard only because you have to feel heartbreak first before you can sing it.”
Kris thinks that it would be futile not to be awed. “You have such a way with words.”
“Mmmm-hmmm, one of my many talents.”
“No. really. I mean it. I really mean it. I-” Kris lifts his hand intending to pat Luhan’s cheek, something he often does to Sehun or Jongin, but he ends up cupping Luhan’s face in his palm instead -startling both Luhan and himself. His skin feels soft and fragile, bleeding warmth into his hand. He can’t think straight because the mirror is reflecting the way their breath mingle together and Luhan is staring up at him with wide, wondrous eyes, a blush staining his face. Sketched alpacas, Rubik’s cubes, you are special, Shoulder twists, Floofy, coffee, mediocre, yellow, careful you are letting the gay show.
Kris takes his hand back and turns away, his palm burns at the loss. “I think I better get some sleep, I have an early schedule to get to tomorrow.” Kris throws his towel and phone haphazardly into his bag and zips it up.
“I know. I’m supposed to be there with you too.” His face is carefully blank.
“Oh. See you tomorrow then, or later today. Goodnight.”
“Goodnight.” Luhan doesn’t look at him and Kris lets the door scrape eerily across the floor as it closes on Luhan’s back.
That night he sees that his coffee table is stacked high with fan mail and gifts again- EunHyuk hyung must have finally had time to pick them up from the company. A cursory glance through it leaves Kris in possession of a new yellow letter.
But that night, for the first time ever, he does not trace the alpaca drawn in a corner with his fingertip and eagerly rip it apart to read its content. Instead, he falls asleep with it clutched tightly in his hand, sleeping fitfully.
He dreams of holding a yellow letter in his hand and feeling Luhan’s darkened, sad gaze burning into his back and he dreams of leaning a little too close when Luhan smiles at him and thinking that somebody, somewhere, writing a yellow letter will be feeling betrayed.
I think I like Christmas times the best. There is something so magical and open about all that snow. Four more months to go!
I think I might be a little bit in love with you. I’m sorry.
Getting out of the Swarnabhumi airport is a little harder than usual this time. It’s not just Kris they are after anymore, now they struggle to sink their fingers into Luhan too. They have found out his Weibo account, his name, his high school and there are blogs named ‘the Dragon and the Deer’ flooding the web. Luhan takes it all in stride, sternly telling the girls to back off, quite unlike Kris who lets it all happen and just hope for the best. When he sees Luhan’s thin wrist tense as he pries off another girl who is trying to rip open his MCM backpack to see the contents of it (Kris has lost many a bag the same way, which is why he has learned to travel only with things that are cheap and things that he is not attached to) he feels like he wants to apologize to Luhan for dragging him into this mess. But he is pretty sure any words he could say right now will just be drowned out in the sea of girls around them, so he silently pulls Luhan close with a hand around his shoulders and walks out. It’s not that hard when it’s two people fighting against the crowd than just one.
“So Kris tell me you secret?”
“My secret?”
“yes.” The host turns back to the audience. “see guys I met Kris for the first time today back stage and I couldn’t believe it was really him. Is he or is he not the most awkward human being in person?” he needles the crowd, who responds with laughter well. Kris smiles back indulgently. “but on stage he has such charm, such charisma, it’s hard to believe he trips over props backstage.” More laughter. “Maybe because you are more comfortable on stage? Do you really love performing that much?”
Kris thinks of the adrenaline rush of being on stage, the rushing noise in his ears that drowns out the repeated echoes of ‘mediocre’, he thinks of the fans who have to stand a safe distance away, where they can’t touch him, touch Luhan, their faces blurring into one adoring mass in the darkened hall.
Kris looks off to a corner of the audience where manager hyung and Luhan is standing with a couple of coordi noonas. Luhan wiggles his eyebrows and makes a pig face at him, EunHyuk hyung slaps the back of his head for this and a couple of fan girls frantically snap pictures of the way Luhan’s smile bursts out of him.
Kris looks back at the host and takes a deep breath. “I was born to be on that stage, of course I’m comfortable on it.” He smirks at the camera and the fan girls shriek their approval at this. A coordi noona is rolling her eyes at this comment, but Luhan is mouthing “Believe it,” so that only Kris can see. So he does and he does everything the host demands of him, whether it is aegyo or dance moves or singing demonstrations.
For the first time since he debuted he feels comfortable in his own skin, under the harsh glare of the studio lights.
“I don’t understand how you do this. You are so good at it. Why do you have to be so good at everything?” he whines.
“I’m not good at everything, not really.”
“Oh, yeah? name one thing then?”
“I’m not that good at communicating.”
“Are you fricking kidding me? How many times do I even tell you that you have such a way with words?”
“Knowing my way around words is not the same as…same as being able to tell someone what I want to tell them directly, clearly, without fear, without regret.”
Kris snorts at this answer. “Yeah, right. Like that’s a big deal- try being a rhythmically challenged kpop idol”
“Hah! True! That would be a pretty terrible thing right?”
Kris reaches out and pokes Luhan in the side. (the little things like this makes Kris feels amazed about just how comfortable he has gotten with Luhan.)Luhan giggles and lifts himself up to take a sip from his coffee cup. Half lying down while trying to drink coffee never really works for the anybody and Luhan ends up with the hot liquid sloshing onto his white T-Shirt, sending Kris in to peals of laughter.
“There you go, one more thing I’m not good at- drinking hot coffee without bathing in it.”
“That’s ok, I understand. Little children have poor hand-to-eye coordination.”
Luhan sticks his tongue out at him. “says the guy who tried to do the wave dance yesterday and slapped Lee Sooman sonseangnim across the face!”
Kris shudders at the memory. “he didn’t look like he was ever going to forgive me for that.”
“Nope. I can already see the million different ways he will try to take revenge from you.”
“But he wasn’t even supposed to be there!”
“And you were not supposed to demonstrate your dance moves in the security camera room.”
Luhan settles down on the worn wooden floor beside him. He now sits close than ever before, breathing the same air, his laughter setting off vibrations that Kris can feel thunder through his own body.
“I’m not really good at everything. I just work hard at the things I want in life.” Luhan says on a more serious note.
“A lot of people in this work hard. But you, I don’t know but things come a little easy to you, I think.” Kris shrugs. “Like the way you handle the fans. I have been at this for years and I’m still stumbling, still a little out of my depth every time they shout my name, still a bit of a coward when they reach out for me.”
“I’m more scared of it all than you think. It’s not really a nice feeling to have so many hands on your body that you don’t know where your own wits are. But it’s easier for me- I don’t have a thing to worry about. I don’t have an image to maintain, album sales to care about. I don’t have to worry about anti-fan cafés or hate comments online if I push somebody away from my bag. Someday I get to leave all this behind.”
Kris counts the cracks on the ceiling as he feels Luhan turn his head towards him slightly.
“The only thing I have to care about, worry about is the way your shoulders tense when they grab you, about how defeated you look when they snatch away your backpack and how haunted your eyes look when you struggle to smile at the them even as somebody nearly pokes your eyes out with their camera.”
Kris doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t think that he needs to. Instead he reaches across the space that separates them to clutch Luhan’s hand tightly in his. Luhan’s palm is sweaty and small in his and it trembles slightly before curling his fingers around Kris’s in return.
He thinks he can stay just like this, breathing in and out, counting the cracks in the ceiling, having a yellow letter to read and a blue one to write when he goes home, holding a warm hand, forever -but he doesn’t think that all this might come to an end, all too soon.
I’m learning. I’m learning every day to tell you the things I really need to tell you.
PAIRING : KRISHAN
RATING : PG/ PG-13
WORD COUNT : 24K
“A little more deeper, but maybe a little softer.”
Kris stares at Luhan in confusion. He doesn’t know how to work his voice that way, softer but deeper. He is used to fast raps and words that tumble over each other to a strong beat - not soft lines that need each word enunciated carefully with so many meanings to be conveyed.
“hmm.. look …. See that last line in the first verse- Ai yu tong zai wo xin li jiu chan- you are trying to say that you are left not only with hurt but the love as well right? So it has to be soft, to show how much you hurt and deep to make people understand that love is still there, still strong. ”
Kris thinks that he would have thought the opposite. Soft to show the love and deep to show the pain. But of course, Kris thinks, of course Luhan would think this way. To Kris who has learnt to feel pain more than he feels love, pain would be the deepest. But Luhan… Luhan looks at the world through his shinny eyes not as if he has never felt pain but as if he has learnt how to love people through that very pain.
“Maybe my voice can’t handle this. Maybe Kyungsoo should have given this to Jongdae or Kyuhyun, like he wanted to at first. They have better training and better practice with songs like this. And better voices, I guess.”
He is not fishing for compliments, he really isn’t. If he wanted those he just has to type his name on Weibo or Naver and he’d see a hundred posts waxing eloquent about his perfection. But sometimes he feels like he needs something more solid to hold on to, to believe. You are special, he remembers, but he wants someone to tell that to him in soft syllables and warm lips rather than with splotches of ink. Maybe he is starting to get greedy. Love can do that to you, make you want too much.
Luhan shrugs. “It’s true, there are some voices that suit certain types of songs more. But in your case I don’t think so. You just think that rapping is all you are good at because that’s what they told you all this time, that’s what they trained you for, that’s what the fan girls go crazy for. They should have told you that you can sing ballads too, they should have told you that it’s hard only because you have to feel heartbreak first before you can sing it.”
Kris thinks that it would be futile not to be awed. “You have such a way with words.”
“Mmmm-hmmm, one of my many talents.”
“No. really. I mean it. I really mean it. I-” Kris lifts his hand intending to pat Luhan’s cheek, something he often does to Sehun or Jongin, but he ends up cupping Luhan’s face in his palm instead -startling both Luhan and himself. His skin feels soft and fragile, bleeding warmth into his hand. He can’t think straight because the mirror is reflecting the way their breath mingle together and Luhan is staring up at him with wide, wondrous eyes, a blush staining his face. Sketched alpacas, Rubik’s cubes, you are special, Shoulder twists, Floofy, coffee, mediocre, yellow, careful you are letting the gay show.
Kris takes his hand back and turns away, his palm burns at the loss. “I think I better get some sleep, I have an early schedule to get to tomorrow.” Kris throws his towel and phone haphazardly into his bag and zips it up.
“I know. I’m supposed to be there with you too.” His face is carefully blank.
“Oh. See you tomorrow then, or later today. Goodnight.”
“Goodnight.” Luhan doesn’t look at him and Kris lets the door scrape eerily across the floor as it closes on Luhan’s back.
That night he sees that his coffee table is stacked high with fan mail and gifts again- EunHyuk hyung must have finally had time to pick them up from the company. A cursory glance through it leaves Kris in possession of a new yellow letter.
But that night, for the first time ever, he does not trace the alpaca drawn in a corner with his fingertip and eagerly rip it apart to read its content. Instead, he falls asleep with it clutched tightly in his hand, sleeping fitfully.
He dreams of holding a yellow letter in his hand and feeling Luhan’s darkened, sad gaze burning into his back and he dreams of leaning a little too close when Luhan smiles at him and thinking that somebody, somewhere, writing a yellow letter will be feeling betrayed.
I think I like Christmas times the best. There is something so magical and open about all that snow. Four more months to go!
I think I might be a little bit in love with you. I’m sorry.
Getting out of the Swarnabhumi airport is a little harder than usual this time. It’s not just Kris they are after anymore, now they struggle to sink their fingers into Luhan too. They have found out his Weibo account, his name, his high school and there are blogs named ‘the Dragon and the Deer’ flooding the web. Luhan takes it all in stride, sternly telling the girls to back off, quite unlike Kris who lets it all happen and just hope for the best. When he sees Luhan’s thin wrist tense as he pries off another girl who is trying to rip open his MCM backpack to see the contents of it (Kris has lost many a bag the same way, which is why he has learned to travel only with things that are cheap and things that he is not attached to) he feels like he wants to apologize to Luhan for dragging him into this mess. But he is pretty sure any words he could say right now will just be drowned out in the sea of girls around them, so he silently pulls Luhan close with a hand around his shoulders and walks out. It’s not that hard when it’s two people fighting against the crowd than just one.
“So Kris tell me you secret?”
“My secret?”
“yes.” The host turns back to the audience. “see guys I met Kris for the first time today back stage and I couldn’t believe it was really him. Is he or is he not the most awkward human being in person?” he needles the crowd, who responds with laughter well. Kris smiles back indulgently. “but on stage he has such charm, such charisma, it’s hard to believe he trips over props backstage.” More laughter. “Maybe because you are more comfortable on stage? Do you really love performing that much?”
Kris thinks of the adrenaline rush of being on stage, the rushing noise in his ears that drowns out the repeated echoes of ‘mediocre’, he thinks of the fans who have to stand a safe distance away, where they can’t touch him, touch Luhan, their faces blurring into one adoring mass in the darkened hall.
Kris looks off to a corner of the audience where manager hyung and Luhan is standing with a couple of coordi noonas. Luhan wiggles his eyebrows and makes a pig face at him, EunHyuk hyung slaps the back of his head for this and a couple of fan girls frantically snap pictures of the way Luhan’s smile bursts out of him.
Kris looks back at the host and takes a deep breath. “I was born to be on that stage, of course I’m comfortable on it.” He smirks at the camera and the fan girls shriek their approval at this. A coordi noona is rolling her eyes at this comment, but Luhan is mouthing “Believe it,” so that only Kris can see. So he does and he does everything the host demands of him, whether it is aegyo or dance moves or singing demonstrations.
For the first time since he debuted he feels comfortable in his own skin, under the harsh glare of the studio lights.
“I don’t understand how you do this. You are so good at it. Why do you have to be so good at everything?” he whines.
“I’m not good at everything, not really.”
“Oh, yeah? name one thing then?”
“I’m not that good at communicating.”
“Are you fricking kidding me? How many times do I even tell you that you have such a way with words?”
“Knowing my way around words is not the same as…same as being able to tell someone what I want to tell them directly, clearly, without fear, without regret.”
Kris snorts at this answer. “Yeah, right. Like that’s a big deal- try being a rhythmically challenged kpop idol”
“Hah! True! That would be a pretty terrible thing right?”
Kris reaches out and pokes Luhan in the side. (the little things like this makes Kris feels amazed about just how comfortable he has gotten with Luhan.)Luhan giggles and lifts himself up to take a sip from his coffee cup. Half lying down while trying to drink coffee never really works for the anybody and Luhan ends up with the hot liquid sloshing onto his white T-Shirt, sending Kris in to peals of laughter.
“There you go, one more thing I’m not good at- drinking hot coffee without bathing in it.”
“That’s ok, I understand. Little children have poor hand-to-eye coordination.”
Luhan sticks his tongue out at him. “says the guy who tried to do the wave dance yesterday and slapped Lee Sooman sonseangnim across the face!”
Kris shudders at the memory. “he didn’t look like he was ever going to forgive me for that.”
“Nope. I can already see the million different ways he will try to take revenge from you.”
“But he wasn’t even supposed to be there!”
“And you were not supposed to demonstrate your dance moves in the security camera room.”
Luhan settles down on the worn wooden floor beside him. He now sits close than ever before, breathing the same air, his laughter setting off vibrations that Kris can feel thunder through his own body.
“I’m not really good at everything. I just work hard at the things I want in life.” Luhan says on a more serious note.
“A lot of people in this work hard. But you, I don’t know but things come a little easy to you, I think.” Kris shrugs. “Like the way you handle the fans. I have been at this for years and I’m still stumbling, still a little out of my depth every time they shout my name, still a bit of a coward when they reach out for me.”
“I’m more scared of it all than you think. It’s not really a nice feeling to have so many hands on your body that you don’t know where your own wits are. But it’s easier for me- I don’t have a thing to worry about. I don’t have an image to maintain, album sales to care about. I don’t have to worry about anti-fan cafés or hate comments online if I push somebody away from my bag. Someday I get to leave all this behind.”
Kris counts the cracks on the ceiling as he feels Luhan turn his head towards him slightly.
“The only thing I have to care about, worry about is the way your shoulders tense when they grab you, about how defeated you look when they snatch away your backpack and how haunted your eyes look when you struggle to smile at the them even as somebody nearly pokes your eyes out with their camera.”
Kris doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t think that he needs to. Instead he reaches across the space that separates them to clutch Luhan’s hand tightly in his. Luhan’s palm is sweaty and small in his and it trembles slightly before curling his fingers around Kris’s in return.
He thinks he can stay just like this, breathing in and out, counting the cracks in the ceiling, having a yellow letter to read and a blue one to write when he goes home, holding a warm hand, forever -but he doesn’t think that all this might come to an end, all too soon.
I’m learning. I’m learning every day to tell you the things I really need to tell you.