Drift (Chapter 3)
Pairing: JongKey
Rating: PG
Genre: Drama, Angst
Disclaimer: A girl can dream.
Summary: Jonghyun’s ankle was fine - it was something else that kept him visiting the hospital.
(Inspired by SHINee’s 4-membered situation throughout January/February as well as their trip to Australia)
Prologue ~ 1 ~ 2 ~ 3 ~ 4 ~ 5
______________
Drift - Chapter 3
When they woke up, they didn’t say anything, instead contenting themselves with simply enjoying the other’s comforting warmth. Kibum vaguely remembered having something scheduled with the rest of the group that day, but his mind was still foggy with sleep - too cloudy for rational decisions or even for sensible conversations.
They listened to each other’s even breaths and when Kibum opened his eyes for the first time that day, he was surprised to see Jonghyun’s uncannily round ones already staring at him. He let a small smile break across his lips, but took it back when he noticed the dark shadows beneath the vocalist’s eyes. His lifted his arm that had been resting on the shorter boy’s side to trace at those shadows, as though he could will them away with a simple touch. Jonghyun’s eyes never left Kibum’s.
“Why did you come back?” Jonghyun then whispered suddenly, his voice a little rough from sleep.
“I couldn’t sleep.”
The older boy’s lips curled upwards but his eyes told a different story: his gaze deepened, searching his friend’s face for something more.
Jonghyun was about to say something but the white door opened and a nurse walked in; she stopped in her steps in surprise when she noticed Jonghyun wasn’t alone in the bed. The boys let go of each other and Kibum tried to straighten out his clothes, which he noticed didn’t match.
“You should go, Key,” Jonghyun said after clearing his throat. He sat up so that the nurse could take his pulse, obviously accustomed to the morning routine. “You’re already late.”
Kibum rolled over and suppressed a groan at the twitching stiffness in his shoulder - hospital beds really were uncomfortable. He patted his hands over his pockets, only to squeeze them inside the tight material and realize that his pockets were empty.
“Um, Jjong,” Kibum said after a while, “I forgot my phone.”
Kibum heard what sounded like both a breathy chuckle and a low sigh, and the nurse had to start her count all over again, the cold stethoscope placed right above Jonghyun’s beating heart.
“Jacket on the chair, left pocket,” was all Jonghyun needed to say. The nurses scolded the vocalist, telling him to stay still and quiet and honestly it had annoyed Kibum more than it had his elder.
Kibum picked up the navy blue jacket and reached for Jonghyun’s cell phone, wondering who he should call first. He had settled on Jinki but was distracted by the flashing words: “3 New Messages” and “2 New Voice Mails”.
The first message, time-stamped an hour ago, was from their leader: Is Kibum with you?
The second was again from Onew: Tell Key I cancelled for him today. Tell him he owes me, too, and don’t let him tire you out.
Kibum felt a wave of relief wash over him and typed in his reply, thanking the elder and promising he would pay up.
The third text was from Jonghyun’s manager, informing the idol that he would pass by in the afternoon with a change of clothes.
Kibum tried listening to the voice mails but couldn’t because the device was requesting a four digit pass code to access them. He punched in 2008, the year of their debut because Jonghyun was sentimental like that, and when that didn’t work he tried 1990, the vocalist’s birth year. His attempt was again rejected.
“Hey Jjong what’s the code?” Kibum asked while looking up from the small screen and was glad to notice that the nurse he disliked had left already.
The older boy only looked at him with a small smirk hooked at the corner of his mouth.
“You know it,” he spoke mysteriously.
“I tried already, what is it?” Kibum asked again, now slightly annoyed at his elder’s expression. Really, it was too early for this sort of game.
“Try again.”
“Jjooong,” Kibum complained, stepping closer to the bed and dropping down onto it beside Jonghyun, who rolled his eyes and tried to hide his now amused smirk.
“One,” the eldest said, waiting for Kibum to have typed the number in before proceeding with the next: “Nine. Nine. One.”
Kibum’s eyes became rounder when he noticed the sequence the digits made.
“For me or Minho?”
“Idiot,” was Jonghyun’s answer.
***
Unlike most people, Kibum did not hate hospitals. His mother was a nurse after all, so he had spent part of his childhood in these tall bleak buildings. He disliked the lack of colour - all white and the occasional baby blue - he disliked the antiseptic smell, he disliked the harsh lighting, but he didn’t hate it. He liked to think of it as a place for hope, although finding hope had been unexpectedly hard as of late.
The news of their lead vocalist’s illness had hit them all hard, but it had hit Kibum the hardest. After Jonghyun had been hospitalized the first time, returning to his daily schedules was a seemingly impossible task for Key. Kibum didn’t like to lie and to pretend that everything was fine when it so clearly wasn’t was straining to him. But, almighty as he was, he pulled through the weeks with the help of the others and their gentle smiles. Really, he thought, he couldn’t have picked better people to share his dream with.
One night, when he had been in bed, body exhausted from their live performance earlier, his mind drifted back to how he had sung Jonghyun’s opening lines to “Lucifer”. He wondered for how long he would have to sing them, and immediately wished he hadn’t let his thoughts go that far because it was a possibility that he wouldn’t have to sing them because somebody else would be filling in.
Nobody knew when Jonghyun would be able to resume his activities with the members and the doctors’ prognostics varied from “a few months” to “two years”. An absence of two years in the unforgiving business that was the K-Pop entertainment industry would most likely rule Jonghyun - and SHINee as it was - off the map. SM hadn’t wasted time in putting together meetings to decide the boy band’s fate: the consensus was that if Jonghyun was unable to join the group within the next year, they would find a replacement. Most likely permanent.
Besides, they had said, he can always go solo once he’s recovered.
The thought of his best friend as a solo artist scared Kibum, for reasons he couldn’t quite figure out at first. But now he knew why: if Jonghyun was a soloist, Kibum would no longer share an important part of his life. That wasn’t a reality Kibum wanted.
***
The phone vibrated in Jonghyun’s palm.
You better pay up were the words that flashed on the screen, white against black.
“Do I owe Jinki money?” Jonghyun pondered out loud, a bit confused by the short sentence he had just received.
Kibum grabbed the cell phone from his elder’s hand without asking and laughed at the words he saw, causing Jonghyun to become even more puzzled.
“No, I owe Jinki because he freed me from schedules,” the younger boy explained after his fit of laughter.
Jonghyun’s eyes widened and a spontaneous smile appeared on his lips at the thought of having Kibum to himself for the day. He had missed him, too.
“How are you going to repay him?” the vocalist asked, now amused at the thought of Kibum owing something to their clumsy leader. Key would rarely let himself be indebted to anyone.
“Chicken.” Kibum shrugged. “What else?”
Jonghyun chuckled; what else, indeed.
“So, you’re free for the day?” Jonghyun asked his friend to make sure.
“Apparently,” Kibum sighed, probably still thinking about purchasing all that chicken.
“So, you’re mine for the day?”
Kibum’s eyes shot up to meet Jonghyun’s round, honest ones: they were so big he thought he could lose himself in them. It was a cliché thought, but Kibum wasn’t embarrassed by it because he knew Jonghyun was a thousand times more cheesy on the inside.
A split second later, Jonghyun’s eyes became expectant and the younger boy was sure he caught a glimpse of insecurity in them.
“Yeah.”
Jonghyun smiled, and Kibum smiled, and it got so corny the rapper had to resist the urge to roll his eyes at his best friend’s romanticism.
“What do you want to do?” Kibum asked instead.
“Hmm,” Jonghyun mused for a few second, his smile becoming more playful and Kibum wasn’t sure he appreciated that, “I have an idea. Follow me.”
The eldest pushed himself off the stark hospital bed and grabbed Kibum by the arm, forcing him to follow. The rapper had half a mind to remind Jonghyun that the latter was still in his pyjamas, but didn’t because he obviously didn’t care. Jonghyun wrapped his coat around his shoulders and Kibum did the same before letting himself be dragged out of the room and into the corridors by his friend, because as petty or silly as this sounded, he had missed being dragged around by him.
“Shouldn’t you tell the nurse...?” Kibum began, only to have Jonghyun shake his head from side to side, a simple gesture telling the younger to leave it.
They had been climbing stairs for a minute or so when they reached the top and pushed through a grey door with a warning sign plastered onto it. Jonghyun pulled Kibum to the other side and the taller boy watched, perplexed, as Jonghyun reached for a rock lying on the floor and jammed in the doorway, preventing the door from closing on them and, Kibum assumed, from locking them out. They were on the roof.
Jonghyun took Kibum’s hand instead of his arm this time and brought him closer to the parapet. There were snow-covered trees surrounding the tall building and the distant silhouettes of skyscrapers could be seen in the distance through the clouds of smog. An icy breeze ruffled the boys’ dyed hair.
The view was not breathtaking, nor was the sun shining but it was a peaceful place. Peaceful without being secluded because one could still see far away amidst the fog hanging over the city. Kibum thought he felt Jonghyun tighten his grip on his hand, but he might have imagined it.
“I come here to write,” the elder confessed in a breathy voice because they had had to climb a fair few steps and because his heart wasn’t all that strong these days. The small realization made Kibum’s own heart twitch within his chest.
Jonghyun was rather particular when it came to lyrics and inspiration. He wasn’t your conventional lyricist or poet, if such a thing even existed. He wouldn’t concern himself so much with the words themselves, but more with the picture they painted or the emotions they evoked as a whole. Truly, words didn’t really matter to the vocalist, which was a bit ironic but made sense to Kibum.
“About what?” the younger boy asked, raising a hand to fix his bangs from habit.
“I don’t know yet,” was Jonghyun’s simple answer, and Kibum understood.
Silence fell upon the pair as their gazes swept across the white and grey landscape. The distinct screeching of tires on ice could be heard in the distance.
***
He had never wanted to worry the others. He had never wanted to be weak, to be a burden to his band mates. Apparently, fate had other plans.
Ask him if he was fine, and Jonghyun would always say yes. Always. Having grown up as a trainee and now an idol, he had long ago learnt and perfected the art of faking smiles, faking happiness for the sake of fan service. An unhappy idol wasn’t a productive or lucrative idol, and the boys had all been made aware of that over their two-almost-three years as SHINee.
But a few months ago, the lead vocalist had been finding it harder and harder to smile convincingly. He had been having a hard time finding the energy to give good, strong performances. He had stopped going to the gym not because he wanted to stop, but because he had to. He wasn’t strong anymore. He had truly realized this after their SHINee World concerts: waking up the morning after had been brutal. His muscles ached and his head spun with every sudden movement. He could barely eat. His exhausted body and tired mind longed for more hours of sleep but his schedule couldn’t allow that. He had known something was wrong, then, he had known for quite some time actually but had decided to keep mute because he didn’t want to worry the others. He wanted to be strong. He wanted to be strong -
like Kibum.
***
Jonghyun was fidgeting, and if Kibum hadn’t known his ticks and habits like he did, he would have thought it was from anxiousness. But even though the elder was drumming his fingers over the short stone wall, his eyes were still, fixed on the foggy horizon, his lips drawn into a taut line. It was plain to Kibum that the elder had something on his mind, something that preoccupied him enough to keep that usually big mouth of his shut. Yet that was as far as the rapper’s insight went, since despite popular belief, he couldn’t read his best friend’s mind.
“You know you can tell me everything, Jjong,” Kibum said, not able to handle the other’s restlessness anymore. He turned his body and leaned his hip against the short wall, facing the elder’s profile.
“Hmm?” Jonghyun hummed, all too distracted by his thoughts.
“Tell me what’s wrong.”
A lot of things.
“It’s just... I’ve been thinking a lot lately. Too much,” Jonghyun answered, his gaze still far away, eyes as hazy as the winter sky.
“About?” Kibum pressed, studying the way his friend’s jaw suddenly tensed.
You.
“What’s going to happen,” the boy answered mysteriously, still refusing to turn and meet Kibum’s frank gaze.
“What do you mean?” Kibum asked again, his eyes slanting a bit more as he frowned. He hated it: he hated fishing for answers, prompting the other with pointless questions for it only reminded him of a time when they had been able to talk freely to one another. Of course, a lot had happened since then and now, they were where they were: on a cold rooftop, listening to the distant sounds of the city because no one could say anything anymore. Because suddenly every weighed word implied so many more.
“I hate watching you guys on TV and knowing that I should be there, too,” Jonghyun explained, not quite answering the question at hand. There was an undertone of frustration in his voice that felt misplaced to Kibum.
“Everyone gets sick, Jjong, it’s not your fault,” the younger boy reasoned, trying his best to make his voice soft, folding his arms across his chest when a cold shiver ran through his body.
“Still, it feels like it’s always me. Swine flu, my ankle, now this,” Jonghyun complained and a tiny part of Kibum wanted to agree with his friend, but he didn’t let himself.
“So? Minho injured his leg right before our comeback. We still had our comeback.”
The older boy mumbled something in response, but the wind caught it before Kibum could hear anything. He was growing weary of beating around the bush: Jonghyun was usually so straight forward.
“What are you saying, Jjong? What are you worried about?” Kibum asked outright, hoping it would lead him to a clearer answer. His patience was wearing thin.
Jonghyun took a moment to mull the question over in his head. What exactly was he worried about? It wasn’t that he was worried, per say, more saddened. It saddened him to have to watch from the sidelines when he’d spent his teenage years singing his heart out on a stage. It saddened him to spend his days alone in a hospital. It saddened him to be so easily disposed of - rather, dismissed. Sure, the fans all told him they missed him, get well soon oppa, but sometimes he wondered if the people he cared about missed him as much as he liked to think they did. Of course the members had all been repeating “we missed you's” but sometimes he honestly thought the others were kept so busy that they didn’t even have the time to feel his loss. It was a selfish thought, but Jonghyun couldn’t help it.
“I just feel like shit, Kibum.” Perhaps that summed it all up.
“You’re not answering the question, hyung.” There was a hint of irritation in the younger boy’s voice: he really couldn’t stand it when others were being cryptic.
Jonghyun sighed, but smiled a bit against his will at his friend’s all-too familiar anger. He could perfectly see how his eyes were slanted almost dangerously, how his lips were slightly pouted and how his cheekbones were more defined even though he wasn’t even looking at the boy.
“I’m not really worried, more... sad, I guess,” Jonghyun spoke at last, the truth.
“I don’t believe you,” Kibum retorted, and at that the older boy finally turned around to meet his dark brown eyes. “How can you not be worried?”
“It’s your job to worry,” Jonghyun teased, trying his best to smirk but failing, and Kibum couldn’t help but think that never had there been a more inappropriate moment to crack a lame joke.
“It’s not funny, Jjong,” because really, it wasn’t. “Do you have any idea how scared I was when the manager’s phone rang?”
“ ‘Bum...” Jonghyun tried to interrupt his friend’s rising tone.
“I thought you’d die, Jjong.” Somewhere deep inside of his mind, Kibum knew that getting angry wouldn’t solve anything but damn it sometimes Jonghyun could annoy the hell out of him.
“I’m not dying, Key,” the older boy said, all trace of playfulness gone from his eyes as they became rounder, genuine in their reassurance.
“Feels like it sometimes,” Kibum mumbled more to himself, but the wind had stilled and Jonghyun, who had stepped slightly closer, had heard the words very well.
Jonghyun gently reached for the other’s thin wrist, wrapping it in his cold fingers. The sight of a worried Kibum - worried about him of all things - was not one he wished to witness.
“Is this why you came back?”
“Obviously.”
Kibum wore a defeated, sad smile. Jonghyun tugged him closer, leaning his forehead on the taller boy’s shoulder in an almost-embrace. Despite the warmth creeping up his shoulder, the younger boy could still feel the distance between them. He silently wondered what it would take for them to go back to the way they were before, carefree, young and lively, but realized after a while that he had no answer, that he didn’t know. Faced with this desperate urge to fix it, whatever “it” was, but not having the means to do so, he felt powerless. Jonghyun was right there, right in front of him and leaning on him, less than an arm’s length away, but still something kept Kibum from reaching out. He felt powerless, his arms strength-less because nothing he could do would change anything. Because nothing he could do would turn back time or miraculously heal Jonghyun. Miraculously mend their drifting friendship.
“If I could, I’d fix this,” Kibum suddenly said, his voice low and solemn.
Jonghyun raised his head from its place on the other’s shoulder, trying to read the other’s eyes since his voice wasn’t giving anything away. Still, he saw nothing.
“I know, Key.”
“Just tell me what to do, I’ll do it,” the young boy offered and although it might have seemed like a strange request to others, Jonghyun knew it was only his friend being as befuddled by the world as he himself was. Kibum was a man of action, always had been, and after all this silence it was reassuring to see that the person he called his best friend still existed.
“Hug me?” There was nothing cute about the way Jonghyun had spoken the two words, nothing sweet or even mildly sentimental: simply his need to be comforted.
Suddenly, the strength in Kibum’s arms returned and he was able to lift them and tighten them around the shorter boy’s frame. Jonghyun wound his own arms around Kibum, clutching at his narrow back, the simple gesture screaming
I need you.
Previous ~ Next
______________
A/N: Thank you for reading!
Rating: PG
Genre: Drama, Angst
Disclaimer: A girl can dream.
Summary: Jonghyun’s ankle was fine - it was something else that kept him visiting the hospital.
(Inspired by SHINee’s 4-membered situation throughout January/February as well as their trip to Australia)
Prologue ~ 1 ~ 2 ~ 3 ~ 4 ~ 5
______________
Drift - Chapter 3
When they woke up, they didn’t say anything, instead contenting themselves with simply enjoying the other’s comforting warmth. Kibum vaguely remembered having something scheduled with the rest of the group that day, but his mind was still foggy with sleep - too cloudy for rational decisions or even for sensible conversations.
They listened to each other’s even breaths and when Kibum opened his eyes for the first time that day, he was surprised to see Jonghyun’s uncannily round ones already staring at him. He let a small smile break across his lips, but took it back when he noticed the dark shadows beneath the vocalist’s eyes. His lifted his arm that had been resting on the shorter boy’s side to trace at those shadows, as though he could will them away with a simple touch. Jonghyun’s eyes never left Kibum’s.
“Why did you come back?” Jonghyun then whispered suddenly, his voice a little rough from sleep.
“I couldn’t sleep.”
The older boy’s lips curled upwards but his eyes told a different story: his gaze deepened, searching his friend’s face for something more.
Jonghyun was about to say something but the white door opened and a nurse walked in; she stopped in her steps in surprise when she noticed Jonghyun wasn’t alone in the bed. The boys let go of each other and Kibum tried to straighten out his clothes, which he noticed didn’t match.
“You should go, Key,” Jonghyun said after clearing his throat. He sat up so that the nurse could take his pulse, obviously accustomed to the morning routine. “You’re already late.”
Kibum rolled over and suppressed a groan at the twitching stiffness in his shoulder - hospital beds really were uncomfortable. He patted his hands over his pockets, only to squeeze them inside the tight material and realize that his pockets were empty.
“Um, Jjong,” Kibum said after a while, “I forgot my phone.”
Kibum heard what sounded like both a breathy chuckle and a low sigh, and the nurse had to start her count all over again, the cold stethoscope placed right above Jonghyun’s beating heart.
“Jacket on the chair, left pocket,” was all Jonghyun needed to say. The nurses scolded the vocalist, telling him to stay still and quiet and honestly it had annoyed Kibum more than it had his elder.
Kibum picked up the navy blue jacket and reached for Jonghyun’s cell phone, wondering who he should call first. He had settled on Jinki but was distracted by the flashing words: “3 New Messages” and “2 New Voice Mails”.
The first message, time-stamped an hour ago, was from their leader: Is Kibum with you?
The second was again from Onew: Tell Key I cancelled for him today. Tell him he owes me, too, and don’t let him tire you out.
Kibum felt a wave of relief wash over him and typed in his reply, thanking the elder and promising he would pay up.
The third text was from Jonghyun’s manager, informing the idol that he would pass by in the afternoon with a change of clothes.
Kibum tried listening to the voice mails but couldn’t because the device was requesting a four digit pass code to access them. He punched in 2008, the year of their debut because Jonghyun was sentimental like that, and when that didn’t work he tried 1990, the vocalist’s birth year. His attempt was again rejected.
“Hey Jjong what’s the code?” Kibum asked while looking up from the small screen and was glad to notice that the nurse he disliked had left already.
The older boy only looked at him with a small smirk hooked at the corner of his mouth.
“You know it,” he spoke mysteriously.
“I tried already, what is it?” Kibum asked again, now slightly annoyed at his elder’s expression. Really, it was too early for this sort of game.
“Try again.”
“Jjooong,” Kibum complained, stepping closer to the bed and dropping down onto it beside Jonghyun, who rolled his eyes and tried to hide his now amused smirk.
“One,” the eldest said, waiting for Kibum to have typed the number in before proceeding with the next: “Nine. Nine. One.”
Kibum’s eyes became rounder when he noticed the sequence the digits made.
“For me or Minho?”
“Idiot,” was Jonghyun’s answer.
***
Unlike most people, Kibum did not hate hospitals. His mother was a nurse after all, so he had spent part of his childhood in these tall bleak buildings. He disliked the lack of colour - all white and the occasional baby blue - he disliked the antiseptic smell, he disliked the harsh lighting, but he didn’t hate it. He liked to think of it as a place for hope, although finding hope had been unexpectedly hard as of late.
The news of their lead vocalist’s illness had hit them all hard, but it had hit Kibum the hardest. After Jonghyun had been hospitalized the first time, returning to his daily schedules was a seemingly impossible task for Key. Kibum didn’t like to lie and to pretend that everything was fine when it so clearly wasn’t was straining to him. But, almighty as he was, he pulled through the weeks with the help of the others and their gentle smiles. Really, he thought, he couldn’t have picked better people to share his dream with.
One night, when he had been in bed, body exhausted from their live performance earlier, his mind drifted back to how he had sung Jonghyun’s opening lines to “Lucifer”. He wondered for how long he would have to sing them, and immediately wished he hadn’t let his thoughts go that far because it was a possibility that he wouldn’t have to sing them because somebody else would be filling in.
Nobody knew when Jonghyun would be able to resume his activities with the members and the doctors’ prognostics varied from “a few months” to “two years”. An absence of two years in the unforgiving business that was the K-Pop entertainment industry would most likely rule Jonghyun - and SHINee as it was - off the map. SM hadn’t wasted time in putting together meetings to decide the boy band’s fate: the consensus was that if Jonghyun was unable to join the group within the next year, they would find a replacement. Most likely permanent.
Besides, they had said, he can always go solo once he’s recovered.
The thought of his best friend as a solo artist scared Kibum, for reasons he couldn’t quite figure out at first. But now he knew why: if Jonghyun was a soloist, Kibum would no longer share an important part of his life. That wasn’t a reality Kibum wanted.
***
The phone vibrated in Jonghyun’s palm.
You better pay up were the words that flashed on the screen, white against black.
“Do I owe Jinki money?” Jonghyun pondered out loud, a bit confused by the short sentence he had just received.
Kibum grabbed the cell phone from his elder’s hand without asking and laughed at the words he saw, causing Jonghyun to become even more puzzled.
“No, I owe Jinki because he freed me from schedules,” the younger boy explained after his fit of laughter.
Jonghyun’s eyes widened and a spontaneous smile appeared on his lips at the thought of having Kibum to himself for the day. He had missed him, too.
“How are you going to repay him?” the vocalist asked, now amused at the thought of Kibum owing something to their clumsy leader. Key would rarely let himself be indebted to anyone.
“Chicken.” Kibum shrugged. “What else?”
Jonghyun chuckled; what else, indeed.
“So, you’re free for the day?” Jonghyun asked his friend to make sure.
“Apparently,” Kibum sighed, probably still thinking about purchasing all that chicken.
“So, you’re mine for the day?”
Kibum’s eyes shot up to meet Jonghyun’s round, honest ones: they were so big he thought he could lose himself in them. It was a cliché thought, but Kibum wasn’t embarrassed by it because he knew Jonghyun was a thousand times more cheesy on the inside.
A split second later, Jonghyun’s eyes became expectant and the younger boy was sure he caught a glimpse of insecurity in them.
“Yeah.”
Jonghyun smiled, and Kibum smiled, and it got so corny the rapper had to resist the urge to roll his eyes at his best friend’s romanticism.
“What do you want to do?” Kibum asked instead.
“Hmm,” Jonghyun mused for a few second, his smile becoming more playful and Kibum wasn’t sure he appreciated that, “I have an idea. Follow me.”
The eldest pushed himself off the stark hospital bed and grabbed Kibum by the arm, forcing him to follow. The rapper had half a mind to remind Jonghyun that the latter was still in his pyjamas, but didn’t because he obviously didn’t care. Jonghyun wrapped his coat around his shoulders and Kibum did the same before letting himself be dragged out of the room and into the corridors by his friend, because as petty or silly as this sounded, he had missed being dragged around by him.
“Shouldn’t you tell the nurse...?” Kibum began, only to have Jonghyun shake his head from side to side, a simple gesture telling the younger to leave it.
They had been climbing stairs for a minute or so when they reached the top and pushed through a grey door with a warning sign plastered onto it. Jonghyun pulled Kibum to the other side and the taller boy watched, perplexed, as Jonghyun reached for a rock lying on the floor and jammed in the doorway, preventing the door from closing on them and, Kibum assumed, from locking them out. They were on the roof.
Jonghyun took Kibum’s hand instead of his arm this time and brought him closer to the parapet. There were snow-covered trees surrounding the tall building and the distant silhouettes of skyscrapers could be seen in the distance through the clouds of smog. An icy breeze ruffled the boys’ dyed hair.
The view was not breathtaking, nor was the sun shining but it was a peaceful place. Peaceful without being secluded because one could still see far away amidst the fog hanging over the city. Kibum thought he felt Jonghyun tighten his grip on his hand, but he might have imagined it.
“I come here to write,” the elder confessed in a breathy voice because they had had to climb a fair few steps and because his heart wasn’t all that strong these days. The small realization made Kibum’s own heart twitch within his chest.
Jonghyun was rather particular when it came to lyrics and inspiration. He wasn’t your conventional lyricist or poet, if such a thing even existed. He wouldn’t concern himself so much with the words themselves, but more with the picture they painted or the emotions they evoked as a whole. Truly, words didn’t really matter to the vocalist, which was a bit ironic but made sense to Kibum.
“About what?” the younger boy asked, raising a hand to fix his bangs from habit.
“I don’t know yet,” was Jonghyun’s simple answer, and Kibum understood.
Silence fell upon the pair as their gazes swept across the white and grey landscape. The distinct screeching of tires on ice could be heard in the distance.
***
He had never wanted to worry the others. He had never wanted to be weak, to be a burden to his band mates. Apparently, fate had other plans.
Ask him if he was fine, and Jonghyun would always say yes. Always. Having grown up as a trainee and now an idol, he had long ago learnt and perfected the art of faking smiles, faking happiness for the sake of fan service. An unhappy idol wasn’t a productive or lucrative idol, and the boys had all been made aware of that over their two-almost-three years as SHINee.
But a few months ago, the lead vocalist had been finding it harder and harder to smile convincingly. He had been having a hard time finding the energy to give good, strong performances. He had stopped going to the gym not because he wanted to stop, but because he had to. He wasn’t strong anymore. He had truly realized this after their SHINee World concerts: waking up the morning after had been brutal. His muscles ached and his head spun with every sudden movement. He could barely eat. His exhausted body and tired mind longed for more hours of sleep but his schedule couldn’t allow that. He had known something was wrong, then, he had known for quite some time actually but had decided to keep mute because he didn’t want to worry the others. He wanted to be strong. He wanted to be strong -
like Kibum.
***
Jonghyun was fidgeting, and if Kibum hadn’t known his ticks and habits like he did, he would have thought it was from anxiousness. But even though the elder was drumming his fingers over the short stone wall, his eyes were still, fixed on the foggy horizon, his lips drawn into a taut line. It was plain to Kibum that the elder had something on his mind, something that preoccupied him enough to keep that usually big mouth of his shut. Yet that was as far as the rapper’s insight went, since despite popular belief, he couldn’t read his best friend’s mind.
“You know you can tell me everything, Jjong,” Kibum said, not able to handle the other’s restlessness anymore. He turned his body and leaned his hip against the short wall, facing the elder’s profile.
“Hmm?” Jonghyun hummed, all too distracted by his thoughts.
“Tell me what’s wrong.”
A lot of things.
“It’s just... I’ve been thinking a lot lately. Too much,” Jonghyun answered, his gaze still far away, eyes as hazy as the winter sky.
“About?” Kibum pressed, studying the way his friend’s jaw suddenly tensed.
You.
“What’s going to happen,” the boy answered mysteriously, still refusing to turn and meet Kibum’s frank gaze.
“What do you mean?” Kibum asked again, his eyes slanting a bit more as he frowned. He hated it: he hated fishing for answers, prompting the other with pointless questions for it only reminded him of a time when they had been able to talk freely to one another. Of course, a lot had happened since then and now, they were where they were: on a cold rooftop, listening to the distant sounds of the city because no one could say anything anymore. Because suddenly every weighed word implied so many more.
“I hate watching you guys on TV and knowing that I should be there, too,” Jonghyun explained, not quite answering the question at hand. There was an undertone of frustration in his voice that felt misplaced to Kibum.
“Everyone gets sick, Jjong, it’s not your fault,” the younger boy reasoned, trying his best to make his voice soft, folding his arms across his chest when a cold shiver ran through his body.
“Still, it feels like it’s always me. Swine flu, my ankle, now this,” Jonghyun complained and a tiny part of Kibum wanted to agree with his friend, but he didn’t let himself.
“So? Minho injured his leg right before our comeback. We still had our comeback.”
The older boy mumbled something in response, but the wind caught it before Kibum could hear anything. He was growing weary of beating around the bush: Jonghyun was usually so straight forward.
“What are you saying, Jjong? What are you worried about?” Kibum asked outright, hoping it would lead him to a clearer answer. His patience was wearing thin.
Jonghyun took a moment to mull the question over in his head. What exactly was he worried about? It wasn’t that he was worried, per say, more saddened. It saddened him to have to watch from the sidelines when he’d spent his teenage years singing his heart out on a stage. It saddened him to spend his days alone in a hospital. It saddened him to be so easily disposed of - rather, dismissed. Sure, the fans all told him they missed him, get well soon oppa, but sometimes he wondered if the people he cared about missed him as much as he liked to think they did. Of course the members had all been repeating “we missed you's” but sometimes he honestly thought the others were kept so busy that they didn’t even have the time to feel his loss. It was a selfish thought, but Jonghyun couldn’t help it.
“I just feel like shit, Kibum.” Perhaps that summed it all up.
“You’re not answering the question, hyung.” There was a hint of irritation in the younger boy’s voice: he really couldn’t stand it when others were being cryptic.
Jonghyun sighed, but smiled a bit against his will at his friend’s all-too familiar anger. He could perfectly see how his eyes were slanted almost dangerously, how his lips were slightly pouted and how his cheekbones were more defined even though he wasn’t even looking at the boy.
“I’m not really worried, more... sad, I guess,” Jonghyun spoke at last, the truth.
“I don’t believe you,” Kibum retorted, and at that the older boy finally turned around to meet his dark brown eyes. “How can you not be worried?”
“It’s your job to worry,” Jonghyun teased, trying his best to smirk but failing, and Kibum couldn’t help but think that never had there been a more inappropriate moment to crack a lame joke.
“It’s not funny, Jjong,” because really, it wasn’t. “Do you have any idea how scared I was when the manager’s phone rang?”
“ ‘Bum...” Jonghyun tried to interrupt his friend’s rising tone.
“I thought you’d die, Jjong.” Somewhere deep inside of his mind, Kibum knew that getting angry wouldn’t solve anything but damn it sometimes Jonghyun could annoy the hell out of him.
“I’m not dying, Key,” the older boy said, all trace of playfulness gone from his eyes as they became rounder, genuine in their reassurance.
“Feels like it sometimes,” Kibum mumbled more to himself, but the wind had stilled and Jonghyun, who had stepped slightly closer, had heard the words very well.
Jonghyun gently reached for the other’s thin wrist, wrapping it in his cold fingers. The sight of a worried Kibum - worried about him of all things - was not one he wished to witness.
“Is this why you came back?”
“Obviously.”
Kibum wore a defeated, sad smile. Jonghyun tugged him closer, leaning his forehead on the taller boy’s shoulder in an almost-embrace. Despite the warmth creeping up his shoulder, the younger boy could still feel the distance between them. He silently wondered what it would take for them to go back to the way they were before, carefree, young and lively, but realized after a while that he had no answer, that he didn’t know. Faced with this desperate urge to fix it, whatever “it” was, but not having the means to do so, he felt powerless. Jonghyun was right there, right in front of him and leaning on him, less than an arm’s length away, but still something kept Kibum from reaching out. He felt powerless, his arms strength-less because nothing he could do would change anything. Because nothing he could do would turn back time or miraculously heal Jonghyun. Miraculously mend their drifting friendship.
“If I could, I’d fix this,” Kibum suddenly said, his voice low and solemn.
Jonghyun raised his head from its place on the other’s shoulder, trying to read the other’s eyes since his voice wasn’t giving anything away. Still, he saw nothing.
“I know, Key.”
“Just tell me what to do, I’ll do it,” the young boy offered and although it might have seemed like a strange request to others, Jonghyun knew it was only his friend being as befuddled by the world as he himself was. Kibum was a man of action, always had been, and after all this silence it was reassuring to see that the person he called his best friend still existed.
“Hug me?” There was nothing cute about the way Jonghyun had spoken the two words, nothing sweet or even mildly sentimental: simply his need to be comforted.
Suddenly, the strength in Kibum’s arms returned and he was able to lift them and tighten them around the shorter boy’s frame. Jonghyun wound his own arms around Kibum, clutching at his narrow back, the simple gesture screaming
I need you.
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A/N: Thank you for reading!