Half Acre (1/?)
Title: Half Acre
Author: peigurrrl
Pairing: TaeKey, minor Jongho
Rating: ~PG-15
Genre: Romance
Summary: Lee Taemin is unknown in the social web that is high school and Kim Kibum is likely the most well known. But the world is a bigger place than that, it's a place where anything is justifiable to protect that which is precious. Taemin is more than aware of this and the last thing he wants is to be the one teaching Kibum this.
Disclaimer: The other day, SHINee walked up to me and said, 'So hey, do you want to own us?' and obviously I said, 'Hell to the yes!' but then I woke up. I don't own the song, either. Half Acre belongs to Hem.
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“-And oh my God, Jonghyun, would you stop sucking face with Minho for one second and listen to what I have to say?” Kim Kibum huffed out angrily, drumming his fingers in an angry manner as he glared at his supposed best friend who seemed to be doing his best to vacuum the life out of his boyfriend's face despite the two of them having only been together for little more than three days. When the school soccer star's hands moved to grope Jonghyun's butt in full view of everyone, Kibum threw his hands in the air and gave up on regaling them with his tragic tale of buying the wrong flavored chapstick at the convenience store the other day.
It was maybe five minutes later of Kibum sadly doodling on his notebook in bright glittery pink gel pens that the bell rang and the two of them had to resurface for air.
“You said Jinki was going to join us for lunch today, right, Minho?” Jonghyun asked as the three of them walked towards the high school cafeteria. The high school cafeteria where two once separate tables had been melded into one, via the magical fusion of Jonghyun and Minho's new found love. This is not to say the cafeteria only had two tables, it is more to say the cafeteria only had two tables of any amount of significance. One table belonged to the school president and the school's athletic super star, Lee Jinki and Choi Minho, known also as chicken-addict and flaming charisma to the rest of the school. The second table belonged to the school's resident diva and the music department's pride and joy, Kim Kibum and Kim Jonghyun, best friends since diapers. Many people were under the misconception that the two were getting it on, but ever since the beginning of Kibum's junior year and Jonghyun's senior year, which was approximately one week ago, Jonghyun had finally acted upon his long time crush on the flaming charisma and as of three days ago, the world knew that if anybody was getting it on, it was JongHo, not JongKey, because there was no getting in between the new couple. Literally, it was impossible to physically get in between the two.
Although according to Jonghyun, the two of them had yet to actually get it on. But that was beside the point.
At the moment, however, Kibum couldn't really bring himself to care because he was far more interested in the fact that they were going to lunch, and Lee Jinki was going to be sitting with them and as Minho's best friend, surely he would be able to share in Kibum's frustration with the two.
Upon laying eyes on the student body president, though, Kibum didn't care whether or not he could share frustrations with him. Or, he did, but it was a whole different kind of frustration entirely.
Because Kibum was smitten. Instantly. Lee Jinki was just- so polite, so kind, so adorable, so good-looking. Yes, he did manage to wrangle all that from knowing the man for five minutes. And then the prettiest girl in school came by their lunch table to confess for some strange unknown reason and was promptly turned down in favor of chicken. Apparently, he turned down everyone in favor of chicken. And seeing the way Jinki could put away that chicken- Kibum believed it. There was no room in this Adonis's life for anything beyond chicken.
Thus died Kibum's passionate five minute long crush.
-
He moodily flung an empty bottle of Perrier into the recycle bin, as the last bell of the day rung, already out of his seat and walking much to the dismay of his teacher. He'd only been doing this for a week already, somebody clue the woman in, okay? Kim Kibum was out the door when the bell rang and that was the end of it. He'd be damned to fight a crowd of underclassmen trying to get to their lockers first and out the parking lot when his day was already going so badly.
But his phone buzzed and flipping open the pink casing to read the text, Kibum felt a slow grin curling the corner of his mouth.
To: Kibummie
From: Jinwoonie
party @ nicole's!
she sed youd better
show up so plz show
up! I dont wanna die!
This was one way to brighten a person's day. Jung Nicole, his childhood friend Jinwoon's girlfriend, was probably the only reason Kibum kept in contact with his giant of a friend. The girl knew how to party, and she always did it right. Sure, the parties tended to end when the police arrived at four in the morning due to complaints from the neighbors, but the alcohol always got hidden away and so, nothing terrible had yet to truly happen.
He'd be damned to bring Jonghyun though, since nowadays, where Jonghyun went, Minho went and really, he'd had enough tonsil hockey television to last him a life time.
-
“LOOK at me, hyung. Here I am, seventeen, the most attractive and desirable piece of man on this side of the UNIVERSE and alone, all alone. By myself. Do you see how incredibly WRONG this picture is?” Kibum lamented loudly, nursing his fruity, colorful drink in one hand as he sat at the mini-bar in the basement.
“Uh, I don't know, Kibummie. You do have people kinda sorta throwing themselves at you left and right,” Jinwoon replied from behind the bar, playing bartender, and eying the girl on Kibum's left and the boy on Kibum's right before giving Kibum a meaningful look.
Kibum snorted, “Please, I have standards, okay?” he said with a disgusted little sneer and flip of his hair, like the diva he was.
“Your standards are too high. Who was the last person you liked?”
“Lee Jinki,” came the automatic answer.
“And for how long?”
“...Damn you for knowing me so well. Five minutes- but only because I found out he was already taken!”
“What, he is?”
“Yeah, by chicken.”
“...I thought your alcohol tolerance was higher than this.”
“Shut up, Jinwoon, I'm serious!” Kibum yelled, glaring at the taller man, “The only thing in that boy's heart is chicken. Chicken chicken chicken. Oh my god, I've been defeated by tryptophan saturated, deep fried poultry. My life is over, OVER!”
“Did you even confess to him?” Jinwoon asked, amused at the smaller teen's antics as he slid the finished cocktail down the bar to whomever had requested it.
“No, but look, he turned down Jung Jessica, Lee Joon, and Woo Kevin, all right after each other. And I know what you're thinking, that I'm a conglomeration of only their best traits and then some more awesomeness but Jinki didn't even LOOK at them to turn them down. He was eating chicken the entire damn time! Like, I'm pretty sure if he did accept someone's feelings, he'd do so WHILE EATING CHICKEN. I'll be damned to be treated so disrespectfully, because I am Kim Kibum, okay? Kim Kibum is to be treated with utmost reverence at ALL TIMES.”
“Man, you are going to die alone, alone and unloved.”
“...I hope you fall off a cliff.” Kibum snarked, before tossing down the last of his cosmopolitan and pushing the glass back at Jinwoon for another, glaring the entire time while Jinwoon laughed uproariously at his newest variation on death threats. With a frustrated sigh, Kibum spun around in the barstool, about to go dance until Jinwoon got on his knees and prostrated but was prevented from doing so by a skinny little body that knocked him backwards into the bar.
The bony mass of limbs and soft skin and bright red hair was off him in a flash and throwing the person who had pushed said mass at Kibum onto the ground with a flurry of angry curses. Kibum gaped, because the voice he could barely make out over the heavy music and screams of the crowd sounded positively angelic. In fact, if Kibum didn't know without at doubt that fuck, shithead, asshole, and go to hell was nothing short of profanity, he might have even been convinced that the little redhead was angrily blessing the curled body on the ground. That is, in addition to ignoring the converse-clad feet slamming into the torso a few more times before a bottom wrapped in tight, tight pants slid into the vacated seat beside Kibum and the angelic voice requested that bottle of tequila, the entire thing? did I fucking stutter? and lit a cigarette with thin hands that looked far too young to be smoking or drinking for that matter but damn if he couldn't drag his eyes away from the way those puffy pink lips pursed to blow a cloud of smoke right into Kibum's face.
Coughing, he waved the smoke away, furiously blinking stinging tears away as he frowned at the boy sitting next to him with a wicked grin that strangely suited the angelic face.
“Sorry about that. Can I have your name? Just so I know what to scream in bed later tonight,” purred said boy, voice suddenly taking on husky undertones that overrode any semblance of angelic innocence Kibum had imagined previous. It brought blood rushing to the surface, burning Kibum's cheeks with bright red at the insinuation coming from this- kid, with hair-raising blue eyes thanks to color contacts.
“Ki-Ki-” was about as much as he could stutter out, as the boy leaned in closer to him and he could smell the redhead's scent, something intoxicating and dangerous mixed with sweat and cigarette smoke and a sweet alcohol smell.
“Key? Your name is Key?” Pretty laughter sang from a throat paler than Kibum's own, even.
“His name is Kibum, actually, Kim Kibum.” Jinwoon had returned from where he had been tending to a gaggle of girls to smirk at the speechless Kibum.
“I like Key, though. You don't mind if I call you that, do you Kibum? Key. It's so... trendy. Key,” the boy declared, leaning closer with a mischievous smirk.
“Who are you?” The words burst forth like a drowning man's last gasp of air turned lungful of water. Meant to relieve him and instead only resulted in digging himself deeper it seemed, as the artificially blue eyes gained a dangerous gleam to them.
“Taemin. Call me Taemin, Key. And come find me later, okay?” Taemin slid off his seat and left with a backwards wink, his cigarette having gone out and a half empty bottle of tequila in hand while Kibum was preoccupied with the way that mouth had said his new nickname.
“Dude, I didn't know you liked eighth-graders.”
“Fuck you sideways, Jinwoon.”
-
The party was even more packed than two hours ago, if it were possible, and Kibum was maybe a little more sloshed than he preferred. The upside to that was how people annoyed him so much less when he was drunk and they were drunk.
Stumbling through the pulsing crowd of bodies, he somehow made it to the pool area, where people were diving from the balcony on the third floor into the pool below. And that was when Kibum saw it. The thing that changed his life.
A muscle-bound student, maybe college age, was standing on the railing of the balcony, about to jump with people above and below cheering him on. Kibum's eyes were more focused on the bright red shock of hair, however and the pale hands that reached out to push and pull at the body that had been launched with reckless abandon off the edge. Kibum was drunk but it didn't stop him from making eye contact with the small teenager's eyes, horrified understanding hitting Kibum like a three ton elephant as people began to scream at the blooming red cloud in the water and the way the student face down in the water wasn't getting out.
Dead blue eyes narrowed and plush lips thinned. A cold sweat broke out over Kibum's body as the angel-like face with its blank expression was marred with a very, very dangerous expression.
Kibum broke eye contact first, whirling around, his every instinct screaming at him to run, run Kibum, you're going to fucking die. He was going to be killed, and all because he couldn't keep his eyes off a piece of jailbait. His soles of his feet hit the ground hard, as he tried to run and maybe get help and maybe not vomit all at once because who the hell would do something lik-
In retrospect, running away from the crowd had probably been a bad idea as he soon found himself with a hand over his mouth and a bony hand pulling him into the hedge maze in Nicole's garden, and years of tae kwon do kicked in as he successfully broke his attacker's grip but failed to actually incapacitate said attacker. Instead, being drunk and really more shocked than he cared to admit knocked him well and off balance when his punch didn't connect, and his assailant took the opportunity to throw a knee into his chest, knocking him both onto the ground and into the shadows of the maze where people were unlikely to see the pair. Trying to get back up and failing miserably when bony knees pinned his legs, a cold hand secured both his wrists over his head while a cold, hard metal barrel dug into his jawbone.
Shit.
Kibum stopped struggling immediately, not wanting to get shot, and instead looked up with wide, fearful eyes into the inky darkness and could barely make out a soft silhouette. The situation he was in, surmised his barely sober mind, was bad. Whoever it was that was holding him down was stronger than an inebriated him, had a gun ready to paint the grass with his brains, and was unnaturally calm while Kibum's breath heaved his chest up and down, adrenaline amplifying the sound of his gasps in his ears to drown out the sounds of sirens and the like in the background.
"This is a pity," murmured a voice, devoid of childish lilt and merriment. "I'm usually much better about this but you caught me. I can't say I want to kill you, Key, but it would be so bad to leave witnesses, you know?"
Kibum found himself unable to reply to this Taemin, for entirely different reasons than his earlier tongue-tiedness. It might have had something to do with the way the gun was ever so gently digging into the bottom of his jaw, just daring him to scream for help. It might have had something to do with the way Kibum couldn't recognize the boy on top of him and he had to add one more facet to the strange creature that was Taemin. It might have had something to do with the way he became paralyzed every time that nickname dropped onto his ears. And it might have had something to do with how utterly blank the words are and Kibum couldn't believe somebody could actually speak in such a way because how incredibly dead to the world would a person have to be to have a voice like that?
He parted his lips to try and convince the person on top of him to let him go, except Kim Kibum did not beg, even when he was one twitch of a skinny finger away from becoming fertilizer but said person had different plans as the gun was moved up and shoved in between his lips, past his teeth, and Kibum grimaced at the taste of gunpowder- he's used this thing recently- and metal.
"Ah, ah. Not a word. You and I, we're going somewhere nicer to have a little chit-chat, okay?" Soft hair tickled his face and the barrel of the firearm was pushed a little deeper as the boy leaned down to whisper in his ear, "Because, I mean, I haven't even had a chance to scream your name yet, hyung."
The last thing Kibum felt was the prick of a needle and the sting of cold chemicals in his blood stream before darkness engulfed him into its warm embrace.
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A/N: Annnnnd- I'm ending it there. Because it is approximately three in the morning and because I feel like it. That is all. I don't care if it's short. No more updates until I finish my homework and college applications. Have fun waiting.