(no subject)
shadow of the giant
g-dragon/tao, r, 3135ⓦ
Note: Remix of gdgdbaby's drabble for kpop_ficmix ( original post); significantly edited. Thank you for the help, Viva.
“You’re a gamble,” they tell Zitao, bluntly, when he’s first offered the contract. YG has no infrastructure for Chinese trainees, isn’t particularly concerned with developing any: not an inch of slack if he doesn’t understand what the dance instructor barks at him, or shows up late because he’s unfamiliar with the bus route or Seoul at rush hour. There are no second chances. “You decide the outcome.”
His days drag themselves through a cycle, rinse wash repeat: he doesn’t learn the words morning, afternoon, evening, knows them by the names vocal practise, dance practise, Korean lessons. His tongue tangles itself around the complexities of Korean grammar, struggling to read deceptively simple characters and to sing the notes being played at him on a keyboard, throat opening up to release an awkward fledgling of sound. “Do you deserve to be here?” his vocal coach says, and Zitao, prepared for harsh words, tries not to flinch, nods mutely. “Then sing like it.”
The language barrier is relatively easier to ignore at dance practise, years of martial arts and yoga lending itself to fluidity and grace; his body knows itself, its exact weight and give, quick to break down choreography without instruction, assimilate each routine to muscle memory.
The hardest part he tries not to think about, as winding down after an hour of practise, the other trainees gather on the other side of the room, backs turned as they speak in rapid-fire Korean. He stretches out his leg, calf muscle twinging, and practises counting in time with the clock, hana, dul, set, net, until the dance instructor returns.
The YG trainee rumour mill is a solid fifty-fifty: fifty percent gossip, fifty percent bullshit. From snatches of overheard conversation, he pieces together the latest: G-Dragon is featuring a trainee on his next solo album. Maybe the girl with the sweet contralto who had won a street singing competition recently, or the seventeen-year-old rap prodigy, Zitao thinks, scuffing the rubber on his sneakers as he paces, trying to memorise the song he’s been assigned for the week.
His Korean is accented at best, at times unintelligible. It’s less noticeable when he sings, easier to mimic the sounds, words that are put and not produced in his mouth. He borrows CDs from his Korean teacher and falls asleep every night to the repetition, hello, my name is, nice to meet you.
Back in Qingdao, he’d drafted the application in secret, holed up in his bedroom with the door locked as he filled out his name, date of birth, nationality; recorded a tape of him performing a wushu routine in the empty gym of his high school after hours, shoes loud as they scraped across the shining finish; set his camera on top of books stacked on a chair in a makeshift tripod, sorted through the blurry shots of his attempt to set up the auto-timer, the pictures of himself blinking and unprepared, for one that highlights his jawline and his eyes.
He thinks about his mother’s wet eyes, asking, “Is this what you really want?” as he flipped over his paperwork for Beijing Dance Academy to makes notes on visa procedures, flights to Incheon. Separated only by the Yellow Sea, Seoul was the furthest thing from Qingdao, and Zitao, sitting by the Han River past midnight, could only think of bigger bodies of water, the moon pulling the tide home in its yearning.
He’s staying late for the third day in a row, running through the latest choreography; he keeps missing the instep on the sixty-fourth beat, more than a few moves not as sharp as they could be. Alone, he’s stripped down to his inner shirt, sweat soaking the cotton so that it clings to his back, hair matted under his hat. The lights are dimmed, but the music is still loud, echoing through the room on a loop, consuming his focus; he mouths along to the chorus, punctuating each word with the snap of his leg or the swing of his arm.
He’s nearly through the coda when a sharp blade of light reflected in a corner of the mirror catches his eye, light spilling in from the open door, interrupted by a silhouette. It’s the audience that startles him, makes him stumble over the last of the choreography, until he’s standing dumbly while the song starts over, still staring at the familiar profile: mussed hair and a sharp chin, leaning in the doorway with a self-possession that made it graceful, natural, as if he belonged there.
Zitao half-expects to be spoken to, but he just leaves, letting the door close behind him. But for a moment, the light shines onto his withdrawing face, and Zitao recognises Jiyong.
The first time he saw Jiyong in person, it was in a packed arena, G-Dragon commanding the stage like it was his birthright, microphone solid in his grip. The second time, Zitao was lost in the YG building, and the elevator doors had slid open to the sight of Jiyong talking to someone that Zitao had only recognised as Sean long after the doors had shut again.
The latest encounter seems too surreal to count, too much like the fleeting fantasies he’d had back in Qingdao, of meeting Jiyong, the same half-shuttered expression he’d conjured up for Jiyong when he’d laid in bed, stripped, and licked his palm. He gathers his things in a daze, pulling on his spare shirt and trudging to the bus stop, and by the time he’s home, he’s sure he imagined it: a combination of fatigue and stress and wishful thinking.
By the third month in YG he’d learnt the magic trick: get good enough. A dream was common, immaterial: it didn’t matter if it was something genuine, I want to sing, or wanting to meet the subject of every sexual fantasy he’d had at - or since - seventeen. He said “thank you” to every criticism, eyes stinging but dry, tried twice as hard as he let on, and when he crawled into bed at night, he was too tired to hold a thought, let alone move, to do anything but sleep, wake up, and do it all over again.
He’s convinced until he arrives at vocal practise a few days later to find Jiyong there, waiting for him. He’s not entirely sure that Jiyong could possibly miss the look on his face, biting his lip to try and school his expression into something that isn’t wonderstruck and completely uncomprehending, but Jiyong, having waved him into a chair, just delivers his pitch, only looking faintly amused when he says afterward, “Got all that?”
Zitao’s throat is dry. “Yes,” he manages, unconvincingly, and then he remembers the rumour, Jiyong’s words finally stringing themselves together into something that makes sense. Before he can stop himself, he blurts: “Me?”
Jiyong laughs. “Yeah,” he says, after a moment, like Zitao’s bewilderment is assuring, somehow, but the affirmation makes him sit up straight. “You in?”
It isn’t really a question. Jiyong twists the ring on his thumb, waits for the only answer Zitao could give. It doesn’t take Zitao more than a second to nod, firm, and Jiyong says, “Great.” He pulls the door open, pausing in the doorway to look at Zitao again, who, unsure of the proper reaction to make, hastily bows. When he hazards a glance, Jiyong’s mouth is curved into a faint smile. “Looking forward to it, Zitao,” he says, and then he’s gone.
His sessions with Jiyong start a few days later, Jiyong sweeping into the studio with sunglasses and a five o’clock shadow, sometimes late, sometimes bringing with him the acrid smell of cigarettes, and still the Jiyong of his idolatry and imagination pales. In his dreams, Jiyong is always painted in fluorescents, bold colours. Black for the roots growing out of his once-blond hair, white for the flash of straight teeth when he smiles, dressed in reds and golds like a symbol. But it’s nothing like the real Jiyong, who laughingly corrects Zitao when he mispronounces a word, and who fumbles with the only Mandarin he knows, accent atrocious - “I love you, thank you, we are Big Bang” - for the way Zitao lights up in recognition, this Jiyong, infinitely vibrant and alive.
All of it is unfamiliar territory, the small recording booth and a map of sound waves reflected on every display, but Jiyong moves through it with ease, trailing his fingers over the tabletop as he passes by. Zitao tries not to look as wide-eyed and out-of-place as he feels, anchors his gaze to Jiyong to keep it from wandering.
Zitao’s parts are divided into several singing parts and a rap. The singing parts are fairly simple, and Jiyong starts him off easy, handing him sheet music and running him through it a capella, humming the melody bar by bar for Zitao to follow. He makes a noise, low in his throat, whenever Zitao gets it wrong, finger tracing along an invisible stave as he sings the line, motions for Zitao to try again.
It’s easily within Zitao’s range, meant to play up on the slight huskiness of his voice in its lower register, build up a contrast to Jiyong’s voice. The parts aren’t particularly complex, but Zitao’s voice is pitchy, audibly nervous and tenser with every repetition. “Loosen up,” Jiyong says, not unkindly, after a few failed attempts leaves Zitao frowning, trying to bury his embarrassment under his frustration. The bracelets on Jiyong’s wrist jangle as he reaches forward, squeezing Zitao’s shoulder briefly. “We’re just practising; no one’s asking you to be perfect.”
Zitao nods, looking down. “Take a breath, and try again,” Jiyong says, and Zitao does.
He buries himself in the second verse for a week, singing it under his breath during breaks, on the bus, in the shower. “It sounds better,” Jiyong says, the next time they meet. Then, catching sight of the grin that breaks over Zitao’s face, bright and immediate: “Keep practising.”
“Okay,” Zitao says, but he’s still smiling, so wide it hurts, and Jiyong lets him have it.
He forgets about the rap until Jiyong’s playing through the track, in full for the first time since they started. Jiyong’s vocals are already attached, and when the rap comes up, he motions to the screen. “The rap’s something like this.”
His Korean’s improved, but not that much. “I can’t even read that fast,” Zitao pouts, slumping in his seat. Jiyong laughs, lets Zitao butt his shoulder and then stay there. His hand reaches up between them to ruffle Zitao’s hair.
Zitao can feel Jiyong breathing, warm over the top of his head. “We’ll work on it, kid,” Jiyong says. His hand is still in Zitao’s hair.
Jiyong’s version of “working on it” is running him through drill after drill, surveying him while tilted back on the hind legs of his chair, snapback pulled down low. He watches Jiyong over the edge of the lyric sheets, the clench of his hands that preclude a lurch every time he tips too far back. The curl of his mouth, love me hate me supercilious or something much more simple, content, depending on where he was and who he was supposed to be; right now, Jiyong’s mouth curves upward a little every time he meets Zitao’s gaze. It makes it better.
He spends an entire day on pronunciation, reading the lyrics without any cadence, another on enunciation, then flow. “Again, clearer,” Jiyong says, for the third time, and Zitao fits the pen back in his mouth, recaptures his rhythm, and starts rapping again.
His jaw aches by the time Jiyong lets up, saying, “Here, give me your phone.” He finds the camera application, switches it to video and focusing it on his face. “This is your homework,” he says, absently, before he’s rapping, the same few lines Zitao had stumbled over for the better part of an hour unrecognisable in their fluency, the easy, effortless way it tumbles out of Jiyong’s mouth.
Jiyong holds out Zitao’s phone when he’s done, but when Zitao holds out his hand, Jiyong doesn’t let go. “This is just so you have an idea of what it should sound like,” Jiyong says. “If I wanted it to sound like me, I’d do it myself. It has to be you.” Zitao nods, swallowing, and this time, when he reaches for his phone, Jiyong gives it to him.
The lighting in the video is off, Jiyong’s face perpetually blurred by pixels, but the audio is mostly clear. He watches it twice. In the middle of the third replay, he rolls over onto his stomach, so that when he gets a hand down his pants, he’s boxed in by heat, hair sticking to his face, pushing into his grip with Jiyong’s voice talking him through it. He sweats it out like a fever, trembling, face pressed into his pillow so that when he comes, he chokes down on the sound.
“Let’s hear it,” Jiyong says, crossing his legs and leaning back. He has a copy of the lyrics in hand, pen at the ready. He’s wearing sunglasses again, which both relieves Zitao and makes him feel bare in comparison, exposed. Zitao clears his throat, rolls his shoulders back, and runs it through.
Jiyong nods when he’s done, without looking up. He’s annotating the lyrics, circling a few words, and Zitao tries not to look too much. “The video helped?” Jiyong says, finally, handing the lyrics sheet back to him.
“Um,” Zitao says. He takes the paper, shifts it to one hand to rub a sweaty palm down his thigh. Jiyong’s gaze follows his hand down, and Zitao, embarrassed by the attention, clears his throat. “Yes?”
Jiyong’s silent for a moment, seemingly lost in thought. Then Zitao shifts a little, and Jiyong rouses himself. “I can still hear a bit of hesitation,” he says, slowly, eyes flicking up to Zitao’s again. “I think you should memorise it.”
“Memorise it?” Zitao repeats. He tries not to look put-out: even after dedicating a week to the rap, it was vaguely familiar at best.
Still, Jiyong catches some sliver of his expression and shakes his head. “You’ll still have the lyrics in front of you when you record, but it helps with the delivery, makes it more natural.”
Zitao’s only halfway convinced, still processing the idea, but Jiyong just nods at the paper in Zitao’s hand. “Take a few minutes to look it over, then I want you to say it back to me, okay?”
Zitao takes thirty. His first recitation is full of pauses, stop-starts as he finishes a line, exhales as he tries to recall the next. Two solid hours later, Zitao’s barely glancing at the paper as he raps, Jiyong nodding along, heel tapping out a beat for Zitao to follow. When he drops into his chair, exhausted, Jiyong hands him his own water bottle. Zitao takes it, looks expectantly at Jiyong over the mouth of the bottle as he downs half of it in one go.
Jiyong watches him wipe his mouth with the back of his hand, waits a little before he can’t help the corners of his mouth tugging up and gives it to him: “You did good, kid.”
“Focus,” Jiyong says, sounding amused, and Zitao startles, flushing. His gaze snaps back down to the pages in front of him, adjusting the microphone to his height. Through the thick glass and the headphones, Jiyong’s voice is muted as he calls out, “Ready?”
Zitao swallows around a mouthful of water and gives him a thumbs up, screwing the cap back on the bottle. He scans the sheet music, lands easily on the highlighted start point. When music fills the tiny booth, Zitao counts down the beats in his head, opens his mouth, and sings.
When they’re done for the day, he leaves the booth to watch Jiyong layer the tracks together on the chorus, playing it out loud in short fragments. Jiyong doesn’t move when Zitao approaches, taking the empty chair next to him. He’s fascinated by the sound of Jiyong’s voice coming together with his, even more so by Jiyong’s expression, lined by concentration as he listens intently, absently rubbing at his lower lip with a hand that then drops to tap at the keyboard. Jiyong hums a little when he finishes, leaning back in his chair. He glances sideways to Zitao, flashes him a soft, crooked smile. “What do you think?”
“It’s good,” Zitao says. He grins back, a little shy as he ducks his head. When he looks up, Jiyong holds his gaze, even and unblinking. “I mean, I like it.”
“That’s good,” Jiyong says.
He runs through the rap four times, warming up, until Jiyong steers him into the recording booth, hands on Zitao’s shoulders. “Just try it,” Jiyong’s saying, when Zitao turns around and pulls him in after him. Jiyong stumbles a bit, but when Zitao catches a glance of his expression, Jiyong’s not quite surprised, a hint of something that is suddenly familiar, decipherable, and Zitao feels a flash of - triumph, maybe, sure enough to lean down and press their mouths together.
He loses track of everything else until Jiyong pulls back, putting up a hand to stop him when he automatically follows. It’s not a no. “You’re recording it today,” Jiyong says, carding his fingers through Zitao’s hair, at once tender and immutable, and Zitao nods, distracted enough to agree.
“Okay.” He lets go of Jiyong’s wrist, reeling him in by the waist instead. This close, he can smell Jiyong’s cologne, skin-warmed and tantalising. He finds Jiyong’s mouth again, mumbles against it, “Later.”
Later, they both know, his voice will be too raspy, hoarse. For now, Jiyong’s mouth is soft and yielding, leaning into the hands Zitao has poised over his belt like a question. Jiyong’s breath is hot, fanning across his cheek when he pulls away, pushing Jiyong into the chair.
“Later,” Jiyong repeats, and twists his fingers into one of Zitao’s belt loops. Pulls, hard, and Zitao, jerked to his knees, leans forward and loses track of the conversation.
-
“I need one of those,” Seunghyun says, lifting an eyebrow, and Zitao, startled, lifts his head. Jiyong’s fingers slide out of his hair with the movement. Seunghyun’s standing in the doorway, holding a bag of chips. Jiyong brushes his fingers against the small of Zitao’s back before he turns, leaning back in his chair like a lazy house cat.
Zitao settles back down complacently, the papers under his arm crinkling as he props his chin back on his arm. The conversation eludes him, but even he can hear the smirk in Jiyong’s voice when he says, “This one’s mine.”
Seunghyun just snorts.
g-dragon/tao, r, 3135ⓦ
Note: Remix of gdgdbaby's drabble for kpop_ficmix ( original post); significantly edited. Thank you for the help, Viva.
“You’re a gamble,” they tell Zitao, bluntly, when he’s first offered the contract. YG has no infrastructure for Chinese trainees, isn’t particularly concerned with developing any: not an inch of slack if he doesn’t understand what the dance instructor barks at him, or shows up late because he’s unfamiliar with the bus route or Seoul at rush hour. There are no second chances. “You decide the outcome.”
His days drag themselves through a cycle, rinse wash repeat: he doesn’t learn the words morning, afternoon, evening, knows them by the names vocal practise, dance practise, Korean lessons. His tongue tangles itself around the complexities of Korean grammar, struggling to read deceptively simple characters and to sing the notes being played at him on a keyboard, throat opening up to release an awkward fledgling of sound. “Do you deserve to be here?” his vocal coach says, and Zitao, prepared for harsh words, tries not to flinch, nods mutely. “Then sing like it.”
The language barrier is relatively easier to ignore at dance practise, years of martial arts and yoga lending itself to fluidity and grace; his body knows itself, its exact weight and give, quick to break down choreography without instruction, assimilate each routine to muscle memory.
The hardest part he tries not to think about, as winding down after an hour of practise, the other trainees gather on the other side of the room, backs turned as they speak in rapid-fire Korean. He stretches out his leg, calf muscle twinging, and practises counting in time with the clock, hana, dul, set, net, until the dance instructor returns.
The YG trainee rumour mill is a solid fifty-fifty: fifty percent gossip, fifty percent bullshit. From snatches of overheard conversation, he pieces together the latest: G-Dragon is featuring a trainee on his next solo album. Maybe the girl with the sweet contralto who had won a street singing competition recently, or the seventeen-year-old rap prodigy, Zitao thinks, scuffing the rubber on his sneakers as he paces, trying to memorise the song he’s been assigned for the week.
His Korean is accented at best, at times unintelligible. It’s less noticeable when he sings, easier to mimic the sounds, words that are put and not produced in his mouth. He borrows CDs from his Korean teacher and falls asleep every night to the repetition, hello, my name is, nice to meet you.
Back in Qingdao, he’d drafted the application in secret, holed up in his bedroom with the door locked as he filled out his name, date of birth, nationality; recorded a tape of him performing a wushu routine in the empty gym of his high school after hours, shoes loud as they scraped across the shining finish; set his camera on top of books stacked on a chair in a makeshift tripod, sorted through the blurry shots of his attempt to set up the auto-timer, the pictures of himself blinking and unprepared, for one that highlights his jawline and his eyes.
He thinks about his mother’s wet eyes, asking, “Is this what you really want?” as he flipped over his paperwork for Beijing Dance Academy to makes notes on visa procedures, flights to Incheon. Separated only by the Yellow Sea, Seoul was the furthest thing from Qingdao, and Zitao, sitting by the Han River past midnight, could only think of bigger bodies of water, the moon pulling the tide home in its yearning.
He’s staying late for the third day in a row, running through the latest choreography; he keeps missing the instep on the sixty-fourth beat, more than a few moves not as sharp as they could be. Alone, he’s stripped down to his inner shirt, sweat soaking the cotton so that it clings to his back, hair matted under his hat. The lights are dimmed, but the music is still loud, echoing through the room on a loop, consuming his focus; he mouths along to the chorus, punctuating each word with the snap of his leg or the swing of his arm.
He’s nearly through the coda when a sharp blade of light reflected in a corner of the mirror catches his eye, light spilling in from the open door, interrupted by a silhouette. It’s the audience that startles him, makes him stumble over the last of the choreography, until he’s standing dumbly while the song starts over, still staring at the familiar profile: mussed hair and a sharp chin, leaning in the doorway with a self-possession that made it graceful, natural, as if he belonged there.
Zitao half-expects to be spoken to, but he just leaves, letting the door close behind him. But for a moment, the light shines onto his withdrawing face, and Zitao recognises Jiyong.
The first time he saw Jiyong in person, it was in a packed arena, G-Dragon commanding the stage like it was his birthright, microphone solid in his grip. The second time, Zitao was lost in the YG building, and the elevator doors had slid open to the sight of Jiyong talking to someone that Zitao had only recognised as Sean long after the doors had shut again.
The latest encounter seems too surreal to count, too much like the fleeting fantasies he’d had back in Qingdao, of meeting Jiyong, the same half-shuttered expression he’d conjured up for Jiyong when he’d laid in bed, stripped, and licked his palm. He gathers his things in a daze, pulling on his spare shirt and trudging to the bus stop, and by the time he’s home, he’s sure he imagined it: a combination of fatigue and stress and wishful thinking.
By the third month in YG he’d learnt the magic trick: get good enough. A dream was common, immaterial: it didn’t matter if it was something genuine, I want to sing, or wanting to meet the subject of every sexual fantasy he’d had at - or since - seventeen. He said “thank you” to every criticism, eyes stinging but dry, tried twice as hard as he let on, and when he crawled into bed at night, he was too tired to hold a thought, let alone move, to do anything but sleep, wake up, and do it all over again.
He’s convinced until he arrives at vocal practise a few days later to find Jiyong there, waiting for him. He’s not entirely sure that Jiyong could possibly miss the look on his face, biting his lip to try and school his expression into something that isn’t wonderstruck and completely uncomprehending, but Jiyong, having waved him into a chair, just delivers his pitch, only looking faintly amused when he says afterward, “Got all that?”
Zitao’s throat is dry. “Yes,” he manages, unconvincingly, and then he remembers the rumour, Jiyong’s words finally stringing themselves together into something that makes sense. Before he can stop himself, he blurts: “Me?”
Jiyong laughs. “Yeah,” he says, after a moment, like Zitao’s bewilderment is assuring, somehow, but the affirmation makes him sit up straight. “You in?”
It isn’t really a question. Jiyong twists the ring on his thumb, waits for the only answer Zitao could give. It doesn’t take Zitao more than a second to nod, firm, and Jiyong says, “Great.” He pulls the door open, pausing in the doorway to look at Zitao again, who, unsure of the proper reaction to make, hastily bows. When he hazards a glance, Jiyong’s mouth is curved into a faint smile. “Looking forward to it, Zitao,” he says, and then he’s gone.
His sessions with Jiyong start a few days later, Jiyong sweeping into the studio with sunglasses and a five o’clock shadow, sometimes late, sometimes bringing with him the acrid smell of cigarettes, and still the Jiyong of his idolatry and imagination pales. In his dreams, Jiyong is always painted in fluorescents, bold colours. Black for the roots growing out of his once-blond hair, white for the flash of straight teeth when he smiles, dressed in reds and golds like a symbol. But it’s nothing like the real Jiyong, who laughingly corrects Zitao when he mispronounces a word, and who fumbles with the only Mandarin he knows, accent atrocious - “I love you, thank you, we are Big Bang” - for the way Zitao lights up in recognition, this Jiyong, infinitely vibrant and alive.
All of it is unfamiliar territory, the small recording booth and a map of sound waves reflected on every display, but Jiyong moves through it with ease, trailing his fingers over the tabletop as he passes by. Zitao tries not to look as wide-eyed and out-of-place as he feels, anchors his gaze to Jiyong to keep it from wandering.
Zitao’s parts are divided into several singing parts and a rap. The singing parts are fairly simple, and Jiyong starts him off easy, handing him sheet music and running him through it a capella, humming the melody bar by bar for Zitao to follow. He makes a noise, low in his throat, whenever Zitao gets it wrong, finger tracing along an invisible stave as he sings the line, motions for Zitao to try again.
It’s easily within Zitao’s range, meant to play up on the slight huskiness of his voice in its lower register, build up a contrast to Jiyong’s voice. The parts aren’t particularly complex, but Zitao’s voice is pitchy, audibly nervous and tenser with every repetition. “Loosen up,” Jiyong says, not unkindly, after a few failed attempts leaves Zitao frowning, trying to bury his embarrassment under his frustration. The bracelets on Jiyong’s wrist jangle as he reaches forward, squeezing Zitao’s shoulder briefly. “We’re just practising; no one’s asking you to be perfect.”
Zitao nods, looking down. “Take a breath, and try again,” Jiyong says, and Zitao does.
He buries himself in the second verse for a week, singing it under his breath during breaks, on the bus, in the shower. “It sounds better,” Jiyong says, the next time they meet. Then, catching sight of the grin that breaks over Zitao’s face, bright and immediate: “Keep practising.”
“Okay,” Zitao says, but he’s still smiling, so wide it hurts, and Jiyong lets him have it.
He forgets about the rap until Jiyong’s playing through the track, in full for the first time since they started. Jiyong’s vocals are already attached, and when the rap comes up, he motions to the screen. “The rap’s something like this.”
His Korean’s improved, but not that much. “I can’t even read that fast,” Zitao pouts, slumping in his seat. Jiyong laughs, lets Zitao butt his shoulder and then stay there. His hand reaches up between them to ruffle Zitao’s hair.
Zitao can feel Jiyong breathing, warm over the top of his head. “We’ll work on it, kid,” Jiyong says. His hand is still in Zitao’s hair.
Jiyong’s version of “working on it” is running him through drill after drill, surveying him while tilted back on the hind legs of his chair, snapback pulled down low. He watches Jiyong over the edge of the lyric sheets, the clench of his hands that preclude a lurch every time he tips too far back. The curl of his mouth, love me hate me supercilious or something much more simple, content, depending on where he was and who he was supposed to be; right now, Jiyong’s mouth curves upward a little every time he meets Zitao’s gaze. It makes it better.
He spends an entire day on pronunciation, reading the lyrics without any cadence, another on enunciation, then flow. “Again, clearer,” Jiyong says, for the third time, and Zitao fits the pen back in his mouth, recaptures his rhythm, and starts rapping again.
His jaw aches by the time Jiyong lets up, saying, “Here, give me your phone.” He finds the camera application, switches it to video and focusing it on his face. “This is your homework,” he says, absently, before he’s rapping, the same few lines Zitao had stumbled over for the better part of an hour unrecognisable in their fluency, the easy, effortless way it tumbles out of Jiyong’s mouth.
Jiyong holds out Zitao’s phone when he’s done, but when Zitao holds out his hand, Jiyong doesn’t let go. “This is just so you have an idea of what it should sound like,” Jiyong says. “If I wanted it to sound like me, I’d do it myself. It has to be you.” Zitao nods, swallowing, and this time, when he reaches for his phone, Jiyong gives it to him.
The lighting in the video is off, Jiyong’s face perpetually blurred by pixels, but the audio is mostly clear. He watches it twice. In the middle of the third replay, he rolls over onto his stomach, so that when he gets a hand down his pants, he’s boxed in by heat, hair sticking to his face, pushing into his grip with Jiyong’s voice talking him through it. He sweats it out like a fever, trembling, face pressed into his pillow so that when he comes, he chokes down on the sound.
“Let’s hear it,” Jiyong says, crossing his legs and leaning back. He has a copy of the lyrics in hand, pen at the ready. He’s wearing sunglasses again, which both relieves Zitao and makes him feel bare in comparison, exposed. Zitao clears his throat, rolls his shoulders back, and runs it through.
Jiyong nods when he’s done, without looking up. He’s annotating the lyrics, circling a few words, and Zitao tries not to look too much. “The video helped?” Jiyong says, finally, handing the lyrics sheet back to him.
“Um,” Zitao says. He takes the paper, shifts it to one hand to rub a sweaty palm down his thigh. Jiyong’s gaze follows his hand down, and Zitao, embarrassed by the attention, clears his throat. “Yes?”
Jiyong’s silent for a moment, seemingly lost in thought. Then Zitao shifts a little, and Jiyong rouses himself. “I can still hear a bit of hesitation,” he says, slowly, eyes flicking up to Zitao’s again. “I think you should memorise it.”
“Memorise it?” Zitao repeats. He tries not to look put-out: even after dedicating a week to the rap, it was vaguely familiar at best.
Still, Jiyong catches some sliver of his expression and shakes his head. “You’ll still have the lyrics in front of you when you record, but it helps with the delivery, makes it more natural.”
Zitao’s only halfway convinced, still processing the idea, but Jiyong just nods at the paper in Zitao’s hand. “Take a few minutes to look it over, then I want you to say it back to me, okay?”
Zitao takes thirty. His first recitation is full of pauses, stop-starts as he finishes a line, exhales as he tries to recall the next. Two solid hours later, Zitao’s barely glancing at the paper as he raps, Jiyong nodding along, heel tapping out a beat for Zitao to follow. When he drops into his chair, exhausted, Jiyong hands him his own water bottle. Zitao takes it, looks expectantly at Jiyong over the mouth of the bottle as he downs half of it in one go.
Jiyong watches him wipe his mouth with the back of his hand, waits a little before he can’t help the corners of his mouth tugging up and gives it to him: “You did good, kid.”
“Focus,” Jiyong says, sounding amused, and Zitao startles, flushing. His gaze snaps back down to the pages in front of him, adjusting the microphone to his height. Through the thick glass and the headphones, Jiyong’s voice is muted as he calls out, “Ready?”
Zitao swallows around a mouthful of water and gives him a thumbs up, screwing the cap back on the bottle. He scans the sheet music, lands easily on the highlighted start point. When music fills the tiny booth, Zitao counts down the beats in his head, opens his mouth, and sings.
When they’re done for the day, he leaves the booth to watch Jiyong layer the tracks together on the chorus, playing it out loud in short fragments. Jiyong doesn’t move when Zitao approaches, taking the empty chair next to him. He’s fascinated by the sound of Jiyong’s voice coming together with his, even more so by Jiyong’s expression, lined by concentration as he listens intently, absently rubbing at his lower lip with a hand that then drops to tap at the keyboard. Jiyong hums a little when he finishes, leaning back in his chair. He glances sideways to Zitao, flashes him a soft, crooked smile. “What do you think?”
“It’s good,” Zitao says. He grins back, a little shy as he ducks his head. When he looks up, Jiyong holds his gaze, even and unblinking. “I mean, I like it.”
“That’s good,” Jiyong says.
He runs through the rap four times, warming up, until Jiyong steers him into the recording booth, hands on Zitao’s shoulders. “Just try it,” Jiyong’s saying, when Zitao turns around and pulls him in after him. Jiyong stumbles a bit, but when Zitao catches a glance of his expression, Jiyong’s not quite surprised, a hint of something that is suddenly familiar, decipherable, and Zitao feels a flash of - triumph, maybe, sure enough to lean down and press their mouths together.
He loses track of everything else until Jiyong pulls back, putting up a hand to stop him when he automatically follows. It’s not a no. “You’re recording it today,” Jiyong says, carding his fingers through Zitao’s hair, at once tender and immutable, and Zitao nods, distracted enough to agree.
“Okay.” He lets go of Jiyong’s wrist, reeling him in by the waist instead. This close, he can smell Jiyong’s cologne, skin-warmed and tantalising. He finds Jiyong’s mouth again, mumbles against it, “Later.”
Later, they both know, his voice will be too raspy, hoarse. For now, Jiyong’s mouth is soft and yielding, leaning into the hands Zitao has poised over his belt like a question. Jiyong’s breath is hot, fanning across his cheek when he pulls away, pushing Jiyong into the chair.
“Later,” Jiyong repeats, and twists his fingers into one of Zitao’s belt loops. Pulls, hard, and Zitao, jerked to his knees, leans forward and loses track of the conversation.
-
“I need one of those,” Seunghyun says, lifting an eyebrow, and Zitao, startled, lifts his head. Jiyong’s fingers slide out of his hair with the movement. Seunghyun’s standing in the doorway, holding a bag of chips. Jiyong brushes his fingers against the small of Zitao’s back before he turns, leaning back in his chair like a lazy house cat.
Zitao settles back down complacently, the papers under his arm crinkling as he props his chin back on his arm. The conversation eludes him, but even he can hear the smirk in Jiyong’s voice when he says, “This one’s mine.”
Seunghyun just snorts.