Flow (1/?)
Title: Flow
Author ixiao
Rating: PG-13
Pairing/Focus: Key/Amber, Henry/Amber, Taemin/Krystal
Summary: Going with the flow, that’s what you’re supposed to do, right? That’s what you do, go with the flow. There can’t be anything wrong with that.
It takes all of ten minutes for Amber Liu to realize three things:
One, going to a party when she’s clearly under drinking age is a stupid thing to do.
Two, it is fucking boring to be at a party when she can’t break the stupid hold her mother’s rules have on her conscience.
Three, Kim Heechul is the biggest fucking liar in the world and the next time she sees him she is going to laugh in his face and then punch it.
It doesn’t make her feel better at all, not even after she imagins what Heechul’s face would look like with a bloody nose. It would be worth the trouble to fly all the way to another country just to do that. But Amber isn’t going to do that. She has principles. She also has to pay for school.
A man wearing a drunk, hysterical smile on his face passes her and glances her way briefly. The flashing strobe lights hit her at just the right angle as she glared at his face and turned away. She’s not in the mood for anything - except going home. No. Not home. Dorm. Why wasn’t she there right now? Oh right, because Krystal has the card key and Krystal - Amber cranes her neck to see the flash of turquoise sequins in the squirming mass of bodies - is dancing - can that even be called dancing, whatever she’s doing with her hips? - with some fair skinned boy who looks not a day past fifteen.
Stupid prepubescent Korean boys, Amber frowns as she props her legs on the raggedy cushions in front of her. Krystal is definitely going to get caught being a pedophile one day.
A whiff of perfume. Sweet. Sickly. Unfamiliar. Amber barely turns before finding herself face to face with someone, someone with thick eyeliner and high cheekbones. Maybe it’s the lights or the alcohol fumes, but she finds that the clear intrusion on her personal space isn’t all that unnerving. Not yet.
“Hey,” it said. Not it, she thinks, it should be a guy. Probably. How could she tell anyway, with the amount of makeup on his face?
“Hello.” She replied. It is polite to speak. Even at parties when speaking isn’t nearly as important as getting drunk and finding yourself naked in an unfamiliar room come morning.
“You going to drink that?”
It takes a moment for her to understand. She looks down. Her half finished Diet Coke is in her hand.
“It’s warm,” Amber replies. It’s been four hours, she wants to add. Four hours of boredom and sometimes disgust. She couldn’t even remember what the drink tastes like, save for the sticky sweetness in her mouth when she swallows without thinking.
“Whatever.” He reachesover and takes the drink, downing it one gulp. “Ugh. Diet.”
“Sorry.” The word is out of her mouth before she can stop herself. He gives her a curious look. Then his sharp face somehow twists itself into a smile, and for some reason she notices that his lashes are longer than her’s.
“Key.” He says, eyes crinkling. His cheeks are pink; he’s slightly drunk, definitely. She can smell the alcohol somehow, even through his heavy cologne - perfume?
“Amber.” She doesn’t really know what she’s doing. It’s alright.
He opens his mouth, like he is going to say something. Somehow Amber knows, knows what he was going to say, because too many have said the same.
“I’m a girl.” The words are out of her mouth again, before she really even thinks about it.
There it is. The slight loss of spark. The slight downward curve of his smile. Inconsequential things that tell Amber what she doesn’t want to hear and what they don’t want to say.
“Okay,” he says after a moment, looking as if he was about to start something longer. Amber doesn’t care at this point. The conversation is over. The song switches and somehow the rhythm changes the party with it. He is saying something, but the crooning of some 80s band fills her ears and she sees Krystal stagger towards the exit, half dragging, half propelling the same blonde boy with her. Time to leave.
“Bye.” Amber kicks her feet up and stands, feeling a rush of warm air as she did. The flashy turquoise sequins are just barely there; find and follow. Making her way past the squirming bodies and tangled limbs isn’t difficult, just annoying.
The air outside is colder, and smells better. She looks around, eyes readjusting to the darkness. It had been barely twilight when Krystal first dragged her to this “get-together.”
Krystal is under a street lamp, teeth glinting and eyes flashing as she giggles and presses her body closer to the boy’s. He looks a bit older in the darkness and away from the party. Amber would give him sixteen.
“Krys,” Amber calls when she gets closer. She’s ignored. Normal. She says it again, louder this time.
The other girl looks up, her lashes fluttering and her smile flickering and her cheeks glowing.
“Card?”
With a whispered apology and some slow shuffling, Krystal manages to extricate herself from the boy’s gangly arms and dig around in her jeans pocket for a scratched, white card key. Amber took it, and tries to mumble something about getting home early and responsibility.
With a murmur and a stroke, Krystal tugs the boy away again, in the direction of what Amber takes to be his dorm. The boy’s arms were on her hips, and Amber knows that Krystal isn’t coming back tonight - morning?
“Have fun,” she mutters. Krystal probably carries condoms in her wallet, and there was always Plan B when she forgets.
Amber turns around and shoves her hands in her pocket. Another thought, unbidden came into her head.
It was the blonde boy’s fault. Amber hates blonde hair.
She kicks the street lamp, cursing when flesh meets metal and hot pain ripples through her. Pain is good, though. It stopps the chanting in her head.
There is probably only a few hours before she has to get up for her first class. Amber decides that she had better limp her way back to her dorm before the sun comes up and its another sleepless night.
-
When Amber meets Krystal, it’s probably hate at first sight.
Amber is everything Krystal hates. Clumsy, awkward. Boyish. She doesn’t know Gucci from McQueen and really couldn’t care less. She has a host of scars on her legs and she seems proud of them. It grates on Krystal’s nerves, knowing that she has to spend at least one entire semester with her.
She doesn’t talk much, which Krystal can’t decide is a relief or infuriating.
Amber is also messy. Krystal wants to burn her stupid, stinky Nikes every time one of them (it’s always the left shoe) somehow worms its way into her precious purse collection.
Amber smells like a boy. And as much as Krystal likes boys, she doesn’t want to come home and find that everything smells like a teenage boy has been living and eating there. Considering what Amber looks and acts like, that was probably correct.
She can’t even change with Amber watching. It just feels. Odd. Strange. Disturbing. Like she’s breaking a rule.
A nice smile, the kind she shows to her parents and the alumni interviewer, gets her by and an unpretentious and unassuming “Hello” starts and ends their interaction for the first three weeks.
Krystal is busy. She has parties, friends, and connections. Amber sits in the dorm and does something all day, Krystal doesn’t really care. The tomboy can go and do anything she wants, as long as she doesn’t drag Krystal into it.
When the sky falls in little bits and Krystal is stuck outside in her short tube top, she finds herself somehow lugged back in her bed, aching and crying. The microwaved ramen is too salty and has way too many calories, but Krystal finds that she doesn’t care.
She finds, that Amber moved from California (like her) just a few months ago and her Korean isn’t all that great. She likes the color red and thinks the 80s had the best music.
It’s a start, Krystal thinks.
-
A few days and Amber knows the name of Krystal’s new accomplishment. His name is Lee Taemin, and he is actually only a few days younger than Amber - not sixteen, nor fifteen, like she thought. Good. At least Krystal wouldn’t be arrested any time soon.
He calls Krystal “unnie” despite the fact that Amber can hear the muffled moans and squeaking bed frame every night.
Lunch is a boring affair. Amber chews and Taemin feeds Krystal, and vice versa, and somehow, it turns into a makeout session that she does not feel comfortable watching. The pooled oil and kimchi shreds in her half empty bowl aren’t a pretty sight but Amber really doesn’t feel like lifting her eyes.
On Wednesday, she tries to tell Krystal to lay off on the PDA.
On Thursday, she manages to get through a paragraph of Norwegian Wood before the table starts shaking.
On Friday, she considers eating lunch alone for a while.
The day is cloudy and slightly above freezing temperatures. She finds a clean nook in the corner of an on-campus café. The card key pokes her stomach as she settles down on a chair on the far side of the room. It’s a bit dark where she sits, but the atmosphere is calm and the low rumble of talk and laughter is relaxing.
She doesn’t have a class for two more hours, and the essay due then is itching to be written. The music is nice and the lights are dim and her kimbap is digesting in her stomach. Her fingers are hovering over the keyboard to her laptop and her head is spinning on empty.
Maybe if she moves her fingers, something will come out. The resulting sentence comes out sounding like something a five year old would write. Well, there’s a reason Amber is a performing arts major.
“Hey look, it’s the cross dresser,” a low voice says from behind. Amber turns around only to find that the intruder has pulled out the chair in front of her and placed himself in it.
It’s rude, but she stares, and the first thing she notices in the god-awful curly mop of honey blonde on top of his head. Must everyone be blonde these days?
“What the fuck.” It’s not her fault, even if that was exceptionally rude. He called her a cross dresser, and she didn’t even know who he was.
A question is on the tip of her tongue before she remembers the high cheekbones and the familiar almond shaped eyes, hidden under makeup, eyeliner, and things that she can’t even name. Key.
Right.
“I’m Key, remember?” His eyebrows are waxed, she notes. Somehow that makes her a bit ashamed, as if the name-brand ensemble he has on (she only knows that because of Krystal) doesn’t announce his feminine tastes already.
“You’re Amber.” His smile is wide and somehow wonderful, she thinks, without the flashing lights and inebriated complexion.
“The girl,” he continues. “Amber the girl.”
All the warm feelings are gone and she feels nothing. Maybe it is the blonde hair. Maybe it’s the annoyingly self-sufficient air. Maybe it’s because he called her a cross dresser and then taunted her being a girl. Maybe she is just insane and he is there at the wrong place at the wrong moment.
Whatever it is, she bites back a laugh as her fist connects with his delicate, pretty face.
-
“Here,” she says as she presses a pack of iced peas against his cheek.
He snatches the pack away from her and pushes it against his cheek, a pale yellow-green bruise already blooming under the thin flesh. His shoulders slump from relief, and his perfectly manicured nails grip the icy bag tightly.
“Sorry.” They are outside a convenience store and the curb isn’t as dirty as it could be, so Amber sits down next to him. It’s cold, and there’s an unevenness to the wind that she doesn’t like.
He glances at her from the corner of her eyes and shifts away. Her knuckles throb and she keeps remembering the soft feeling of his cheek when she punched him.
“Really,” her tongue stumbles over the Korean because she knows, she can’t think anymore, “I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me.”
“Drama queen,” he mumbles with his mouth half closed. He winces as he moves the ice pack down his face. Amber bites back a retort - she punched him in the face. He called her a cross dresser, but so do a lot of people.
“Can I…” she searches for the right words; she is thinking now. “Can I get you any thing else?”
“A new face,” he mutters. “I think you broke mine.”
She isn’t clever nor amused enough to reply with anything but another apology. Her fingers are clammy and her palms are strangely dry and rough and cold. The wind picks up and suddenly she remembers that the class she had to finish the essay for probably started already.
It’s not important, really. She can picture it without even trying; Mr. Kim would frown at her seat and missing assignment and then just put it down as her being an arts major.
“Uh,” she licks her chapped lips and begins, “I…I like your shoes.” They had platforms, and they were laced up. She can’t remember the name of the brand, but Krystal had showed it to her once, in one of those magazines.
Key looks at her, and she can see the gears in his head working. She honestly wouldn’t mind having another reason to punch him again. Its strange how infuriating and interesting one person can be.
“Thanks,” he replies after too long of a moment. Another pause. “Do you even know the brand?”
“No,” she says truthfully and turns red. “But, but they’re nice anyway.”
He doesn’t smile but somehow his face softens, and Amber feels her shoulders relax a little.
“I don’t care, for the record.” It takes a second for her to realize that he’s talking about something else. “That’s what I was going to say. Girls are okay too.”
Amber opens her mouth and all that comes out is a flat sounding “Oh.”
He grins cheekily and Amber notes that his cheek is turning a shade of violet and dark blue. The air feels constricting and she tries to reason her way around what he’s saying, except she just notices how nice his cheekbones look and her brain whines that it can’t keep thinking all the time so she gives up.
“Uh, uhm,” she tries to say something so the silence doesn’t do it for her. Then he leans over and she notes that his lips are even softer than his cheek.
-
a/n: hello~ this is the first non-one shot story I’ve done (also the first non-SJ centric), so it would be great to know your thoughts and comments. I’m trying out a new writing style, so I’m sorry if it seems inconsistent and odd sometimes. Updates should be sporadic, unfortunately. New characters will come as they will.
Author ixiao
Rating: PG-13
Pairing/Focus: Key/Amber, Henry/Amber, Taemin/Krystal
Summary: Going with the flow, that’s what you’re supposed to do, right? That’s what you do, go with the flow. There can’t be anything wrong with that.
It takes all of ten minutes for Amber Liu to realize three things:
One, going to a party when she’s clearly under drinking age is a stupid thing to do.
Two, it is fucking boring to be at a party when she can’t break the stupid hold her mother’s rules have on her conscience.
Three, Kim Heechul is the biggest fucking liar in the world and the next time she sees him she is going to laugh in his face and then punch it.
It doesn’t make her feel better at all, not even after she imagins what Heechul’s face would look like with a bloody nose. It would be worth the trouble to fly all the way to another country just to do that. But Amber isn’t going to do that. She has principles. She also has to pay for school.
A man wearing a drunk, hysterical smile on his face passes her and glances her way briefly. The flashing strobe lights hit her at just the right angle as she glared at his face and turned away. She’s not in the mood for anything - except going home. No. Not home. Dorm. Why wasn’t she there right now? Oh right, because Krystal has the card key and Krystal - Amber cranes her neck to see the flash of turquoise sequins in the squirming mass of bodies - is dancing - can that even be called dancing, whatever she’s doing with her hips? - with some fair skinned boy who looks not a day past fifteen.
Stupid prepubescent Korean boys, Amber frowns as she props her legs on the raggedy cushions in front of her. Krystal is definitely going to get caught being a pedophile one day.
A whiff of perfume. Sweet. Sickly. Unfamiliar. Amber barely turns before finding herself face to face with someone, someone with thick eyeliner and high cheekbones. Maybe it’s the lights or the alcohol fumes, but she finds that the clear intrusion on her personal space isn’t all that unnerving. Not yet.
“Hey,” it said. Not it, she thinks, it should be a guy. Probably. How could she tell anyway, with the amount of makeup on his face?
“Hello.” She replied. It is polite to speak. Even at parties when speaking isn’t nearly as important as getting drunk and finding yourself naked in an unfamiliar room come morning.
“You going to drink that?”
It takes a moment for her to understand. She looks down. Her half finished Diet Coke is in her hand.
“It’s warm,” Amber replies. It’s been four hours, she wants to add. Four hours of boredom and sometimes disgust. She couldn’t even remember what the drink tastes like, save for the sticky sweetness in her mouth when she swallows without thinking.
“Whatever.” He reachesover and takes the drink, downing it one gulp. “Ugh. Diet.”
“Sorry.” The word is out of her mouth before she can stop herself. He gives her a curious look. Then his sharp face somehow twists itself into a smile, and for some reason she notices that his lashes are longer than her’s.
“Key.” He says, eyes crinkling. His cheeks are pink; he’s slightly drunk, definitely. She can smell the alcohol somehow, even through his heavy cologne - perfume?
“Amber.” She doesn’t really know what she’s doing. It’s alright.
He opens his mouth, like he is going to say something. Somehow Amber knows, knows what he was going to say, because too many have said the same.
“I’m a girl.” The words are out of her mouth again, before she really even thinks about it.
There it is. The slight loss of spark. The slight downward curve of his smile. Inconsequential things that tell Amber what she doesn’t want to hear and what they don’t want to say.
“Okay,” he says after a moment, looking as if he was about to start something longer. Amber doesn’t care at this point. The conversation is over. The song switches and somehow the rhythm changes the party with it. He is saying something, but the crooning of some 80s band fills her ears and she sees Krystal stagger towards the exit, half dragging, half propelling the same blonde boy with her. Time to leave.
“Bye.” Amber kicks her feet up and stands, feeling a rush of warm air as she did. The flashy turquoise sequins are just barely there; find and follow. Making her way past the squirming bodies and tangled limbs isn’t difficult, just annoying.
The air outside is colder, and smells better. She looks around, eyes readjusting to the darkness. It had been barely twilight when Krystal first dragged her to this “get-together.”
Krystal is under a street lamp, teeth glinting and eyes flashing as she giggles and presses her body closer to the boy’s. He looks a bit older in the darkness and away from the party. Amber would give him sixteen.
“Krys,” Amber calls when she gets closer. She’s ignored. Normal. She says it again, louder this time.
The other girl looks up, her lashes fluttering and her smile flickering and her cheeks glowing.
“Card?”
With a whispered apology and some slow shuffling, Krystal manages to extricate herself from the boy’s gangly arms and dig around in her jeans pocket for a scratched, white card key. Amber took it, and tries to mumble something about getting home early and responsibility.
With a murmur and a stroke, Krystal tugs the boy away again, in the direction of what Amber takes to be his dorm. The boy’s arms were on her hips, and Amber knows that Krystal isn’t coming back tonight - morning?
“Have fun,” she mutters. Krystal probably carries condoms in her wallet, and there was always Plan B when she forgets.
Amber turns around and shoves her hands in her pocket. Another thought, unbidden came into her head.
It was the blonde boy’s fault. Amber hates blonde hair.
She kicks the street lamp, cursing when flesh meets metal and hot pain ripples through her. Pain is good, though. It stopps the chanting in her head.
There is probably only a few hours before she has to get up for her first class. Amber decides that she had better limp her way back to her dorm before the sun comes up and its another sleepless night.
-
When Amber meets Krystal, it’s probably hate at first sight.
Amber is everything Krystal hates. Clumsy, awkward. Boyish. She doesn’t know Gucci from McQueen and really couldn’t care less. She has a host of scars on her legs and she seems proud of them. It grates on Krystal’s nerves, knowing that she has to spend at least one entire semester with her.
She doesn’t talk much, which Krystal can’t decide is a relief or infuriating.
Amber is also messy. Krystal wants to burn her stupid, stinky Nikes every time one of them (it’s always the left shoe) somehow worms its way into her precious purse collection.
Amber smells like a boy. And as much as Krystal likes boys, she doesn’t want to come home and find that everything smells like a teenage boy has been living and eating there. Considering what Amber looks and acts like, that was probably correct.
She can’t even change with Amber watching. It just feels. Odd. Strange. Disturbing. Like she’s breaking a rule.
A nice smile, the kind she shows to her parents and the alumni interviewer, gets her by and an unpretentious and unassuming “Hello” starts and ends their interaction for the first three weeks.
Krystal is busy. She has parties, friends, and connections. Amber sits in the dorm and does something all day, Krystal doesn’t really care. The tomboy can go and do anything she wants, as long as she doesn’t drag Krystal into it.
When the sky falls in little bits and Krystal is stuck outside in her short tube top, she finds herself somehow lugged back in her bed, aching and crying. The microwaved ramen is too salty and has way too many calories, but Krystal finds that she doesn’t care.
She finds, that Amber moved from California (like her) just a few months ago and her Korean isn’t all that great. She likes the color red and thinks the 80s had the best music.
It’s a start, Krystal thinks.
-
A few days and Amber knows the name of Krystal’s new accomplishment. His name is Lee Taemin, and he is actually only a few days younger than Amber - not sixteen, nor fifteen, like she thought. Good. At least Krystal wouldn’t be arrested any time soon.
He calls Krystal “unnie” despite the fact that Amber can hear the muffled moans and squeaking bed frame every night.
Lunch is a boring affair. Amber chews and Taemin feeds Krystal, and vice versa, and somehow, it turns into a makeout session that she does not feel comfortable watching. The pooled oil and kimchi shreds in her half empty bowl aren’t a pretty sight but Amber really doesn’t feel like lifting her eyes.
On Wednesday, she tries to tell Krystal to lay off on the PDA.
On Thursday, she manages to get through a paragraph of Norwegian Wood before the table starts shaking.
On Friday, she considers eating lunch alone for a while.
The day is cloudy and slightly above freezing temperatures. She finds a clean nook in the corner of an on-campus café. The card key pokes her stomach as she settles down on a chair on the far side of the room. It’s a bit dark where she sits, but the atmosphere is calm and the low rumble of talk and laughter is relaxing.
She doesn’t have a class for two more hours, and the essay due then is itching to be written. The music is nice and the lights are dim and her kimbap is digesting in her stomach. Her fingers are hovering over the keyboard to her laptop and her head is spinning on empty.
Maybe if she moves her fingers, something will come out. The resulting sentence comes out sounding like something a five year old would write. Well, there’s a reason Amber is a performing arts major.
“Hey look, it’s the cross dresser,” a low voice says from behind. Amber turns around only to find that the intruder has pulled out the chair in front of her and placed himself in it.
It’s rude, but she stares, and the first thing she notices in the god-awful curly mop of honey blonde on top of his head. Must everyone be blonde these days?
“What the fuck.” It’s not her fault, even if that was exceptionally rude. He called her a cross dresser, and she didn’t even know who he was.
A question is on the tip of her tongue before she remembers the high cheekbones and the familiar almond shaped eyes, hidden under makeup, eyeliner, and things that she can’t even name. Key.
Right.
“I’m Key, remember?” His eyebrows are waxed, she notes. Somehow that makes her a bit ashamed, as if the name-brand ensemble he has on (she only knows that because of Krystal) doesn’t announce his feminine tastes already.
“You’re Amber.” His smile is wide and somehow wonderful, she thinks, without the flashing lights and inebriated complexion.
“The girl,” he continues. “Amber the girl.”
All the warm feelings are gone and she feels nothing. Maybe it is the blonde hair. Maybe it’s the annoyingly self-sufficient air. Maybe it’s because he called her a cross dresser and then taunted her being a girl. Maybe she is just insane and he is there at the wrong place at the wrong moment.
Whatever it is, she bites back a laugh as her fist connects with his delicate, pretty face.
-
“Here,” she says as she presses a pack of iced peas against his cheek.
He snatches the pack away from her and pushes it against his cheek, a pale yellow-green bruise already blooming under the thin flesh. His shoulders slump from relief, and his perfectly manicured nails grip the icy bag tightly.
“Sorry.” They are outside a convenience store and the curb isn’t as dirty as it could be, so Amber sits down next to him. It’s cold, and there’s an unevenness to the wind that she doesn’t like.
He glances at her from the corner of her eyes and shifts away. Her knuckles throb and she keeps remembering the soft feeling of his cheek when she punched him.
“Really,” her tongue stumbles over the Korean because she knows, she can’t think anymore, “I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me.”
“Drama queen,” he mumbles with his mouth half closed. He winces as he moves the ice pack down his face. Amber bites back a retort - she punched him in the face. He called her a cross dresser, but so do a lot of people.
“Can I…” she searches for the right words; she is thinking now. “Can I get you any thing else?”
“A new face,” he mutters. “I think you broke mine.”
She isn’t clever nor amused enough to reply with anything but another apology. Her fingers are clammy and her palms are strangely dry and rough and cold. The wind picks up and suddenly she remembers that the class she had to finish the essay for probably started already.
It’s not important, really. She can picture it without even trying; Mr. Kim would frown at her seat and missing assignment and then just put it down as her being an arts major.
“Uh,” she licks her chapped lips and begins, “I…I like your shoes.” They had platforms, and they were laced up. She can’t remember the name of the brand, but Krystal had showed it to her once, in one of those magazines.
Key looks at her, and she can see the gears in his head working. She honestly wouldn’t mind having another reason to punch him again. Its strange how infuriating and interesting one person can be.
“Thanks,” he replies after too long of a moment. Another pause. “Do you even know the brand?”
“No,” she says truthfully and turns red. “But, but they’re nice anyway.”
He doesn’t smile but somehow his face softens, and Amber feels her shoulders relax a little.
“I don’t care, for the record.” It takes a second for her to realize that he’s talking about something else. “That’s what I was going to say. Girls are okay too.”
Amber opens her mouth and all that comes out is a flat sounding “Oh.”
He grins cheekily and Amber notes that his cheek is turning a shade of violet and dark blue. The air feels constricting and she tries to reason her way around what he’s saying, except she just notices how nice his cheekbones look and her brain whines that it can’t keep thinking all the time so she gives up.
“Uh, uhm,” she tries to say something so the silence doesn’t do it for her. Then he leans over and she notes that his lips are even softer than his cheek.
-
a/n: hello~ this is the first non-one shot story I’ve done (also the first non-SJ centric), so it would be great to know your thoughts and comments. I’m trying out a new writing style, so I’m sorry if it seems inconsistent and odd sometimes. Updates should be sporadic, unfortunately. New characters will come as they will.