sailing (kangin/yesung)
Pairing: (lightly implied) Kangin/Yesung, Kangin-centric
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Oppa hates you.
A/N: DON'T EVEN ASK ABOUT THIS it's disjointed and weird I know I'm sorry. It's the first thing I've been able to write at all in a few months so um. TO BIGGER AND BETTER THINGS
After he is discharged, Kangin is supposed to trot back to the dorm, where they’ll welcome him with open arms and without judgement, and start talking about a sixth album, a seventh album, because if he could still be a success story with everything he’d messed up and tried to patch together (in a whirlwind of counsellors and managers and friends and family members who seemed to make a lot of decisions on his behalf while he sat in the middle of them all and watched it happen like a film he had no role in) then, heck, the sky was the limit.
After he is discharged, Kangin calls Leeteuk from a payphone and grits his teeth against Leeteuk’s voice, the genuine joy and warmth and unspoken possibilities in it, and tells him he’s not coming back.
There is a pause and he wonders if Leeteuk is trying to figure out whether or not he’s joking. For a split second he considers saying he is joking but then Leeteuk says “for how long?”
“I don’t…” He looks at the advertisements for bars and clubs stuck to the inside of the phone booth and trails off without realising it.
“Are you still there?”
“I guess I don’t know.”
- - -
On his first flight he spends a lot of time thinking about snow, and cigarettes.
- - -
“Hey,” Heechul says. Leeteuk is just staring into space and quite frankly this isn’t acceptable given the circumstances, so Heechul hits him with a magazine. Leeteuk blinks rapidly once, twice, as though coming out of a trance, he’d been distracted a lot more often recently when he couldn’t afford to be but…
Heechul sighs. “Look, what angle are we going to take with this? We can’t just go with the “oppa hates you and has in fact fled the fucking country--”
“I know,” Leeteuk says, “I know.” And that’s all he says and Heechul sort of wants to hit him but he also wants to hug him because this really wasn’t supposed to happen, and members were dropping like flies and though it wasn’t the leader’s fault at all, of course it all ended up being the leader’s fault.
Ryeowook is opening and closing cupboards, either looking for something or just trying to make a lot of noise so that the only sound in the room wasn’t the ticking of a clock, and without turning round he says, “why don’t we just tell the truth?”
“I just said--” Heechul starts, but Ryeowook cuts him off.
“Obviously not your version of the truth. Just that… he’s gone to… find himself?”
Heechul snorts and walks out of the kitchen, muttering something about tofu burgers and sweaters knitted from yak wool.
- - -
China is as much like home as it is nothing like home, and for the first six hours he thinks about going to the countryside and dropping off the radar, spending the rest of his days as a farmhand.
He goes to a noodle bar instead and flips his phone open and closed without actually turning it on. He’s not sure whether he’s less looking forward to reading the angry texts or the concerned ones. Maybe he should throw the phone away.
That’s stupid.
But so is everything.
- - -
They’d fallen together quite naturally, back then.
That’s not why he left.
He left because he wasn’t great at accepting forgiveness, and smiling for the press was one thing but smiling for your friends of years that had seemed longer than they were… well, your friends could tell you were faking it.
So no, that’s not why he left at all.
But it sort of was.
- - -
It’s only been two months so they’ve managed to do a decent job of damage control. Most of the others have cranked up the musicals or variety show appearances lately, so they may have been sleeping for a few hours less but they were also distracting people, at least a little, from wondering why their newest missing member seemed so determined to stay missing.
“If he’d only email us some pictures of him looking happy on a beach or something, they’d eat that right up.” Heechul wrings his hands, does what he thinks is a good impression of someone who is angry and feels slighted by thoughtless behaviour.
“You’re worried about him,” Sungmin says matter-of-factly. “Join the club.”
“Well, if he’d email us anything…”
- - -
In a text Yesung sends, he asks, what if you stay away for so long that they forget you were here?
When his phone buzzes a day or two later, he reads then it’s my fault.
He doesn’t answer this one, not straight away, but he thinks isn’t that your biggest problem, everything’s always your fault.
- - -
(He may have dreamt it but when Kangin comes back he is wearing a strange brown prickly sweater and Heechul tries to hit him with a spatula.)
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Oppa hates you.
A/N: DON'T EVEN ASK ABOUT THIS it's disjointed and weird I know I'm sorry. It's the first thing I've been able to write at all in a few months so um. TO BIGGER AND BETTER THINGS
After he is discharged, Kangin is supposed to trot back to the dorm, where they’ll welcome him with open arms and without judgement, and start talking about a sixth album, a seventh album, because if he could still be a success story with everything he’d messed up and tried to patch together (in a whirlwind of counsellors and managers and friends and family members who seemed to make a lot of decisions on his behalf while he sat in the middle of them all and watched it happen like a film he had no role in) then, heck, the sky was the limit.
After he is discharged, Kangin calls Leeteuk from a payphone and grits his teeth against Leeteuk’s voice, the genuine joy and warmth and unspoken possibilities in it, and tells him he’s not coming back.
There is a pause and he wonders if Leeteuk is trying to figure out whether or not he’s joking. For a split second he considers saying he is joking but then Leeteuk says “for how long?”
“I don’t…” He looks at the advertisements for bars and clubs stuck to the inside of the phone booth and trails off without realising it.
“Are you still there?”
“I guess I don’t know.”
- - -
On his first flight he spends a lot of time thinking about snow, and cigarettes.
- - -
“Hey,” Heechul says. Leeteuk is just staring into space and quite frankly this isn’t acceptable given the circumstances, so Heechul hits him with a magazine. Leeteuk blinks rapidly once, twice, as though coming out of a trance, he’d been distracted a lot more often recently when he couldn’t afford to be but…
Heechul sighs. “Look, what angle are we going to take with this? We can’t just go with the “oppa hates you and has in fact fled the fucking country--”
“I know,” Leeteuk says, “I know.” And that’s all he says and Heechul sort of wants to hit him but he also wants to hug him because this really wasn’t supposed to happen, and members were dropping like flies and though it wasn’t the leader’s fault at all, of course it all ended up being the leader’s fault.
Ryeowook is opening and closing cupboards, either looking for something or just trying to make a lot of noise so that the only sound in the room wasn’t the ticking of a clock, and without turning round he says, “why don’t we just tell the truth?”
“I just said--” Heechul starts, but Ryeowook cuts him off.
“Obviously not your version of the truth. Just that… he’s gone to… find himself?”
Heechul snorts and walks out of the kitchen, muttering something about tofu burgers and sweaters knitted from yak wool.
- - -
China is as much like home as it is nothing like home, and for the first six hours he thinks about going to the countryside and dropping off the radar, spending the rest of his days as a farmhand.
He goes to a noodle bar instead and flips his phone open and closed without actually turning it on. He’s not sure whether he’s less looking forward to reading the angry texts or the concerned ones. Maybe he should throw the phone away.
That’s stupid.
But so is everything.
- - -
They’d fallen together quite naturally, back then.
That’s not why he left.
He left because he wasn’t great at accepting forgiveness, and smiling for the press was one thing but smiling for your friends of years that had seemed longer than they were… well, your friends could tell you were faking it.
So no, that’s not why he left at all.
But it sort of was.
- - -
It’s only been two months so they’ve managed to do a decent job of damage control. Most of the others have cranked up the musicals or variety show appearances lately, so they may have been sleeping for a few hours less but they were also distracting people, at least a little, from wondering why their newest missing member seemed so determined to stay missing.
“If he’d only email us some pictures of him looking happy on a beach or something, they’d eat that right up.” Heechul wrings his hands, does what he thinks is a good impression of someone who is angry and feels slighted by thoughtless behaviour.
“You’re worried about him,” Sungmin says matter-of-factly. “Join the club.”
“Well, if he’d email us anything…”
- - -
In a text Yesung sends, he asks, what if you stay away for so long that they forget you were here?
When his phone buzzes a day or two later, he reads then it’s my fault.
He doesn’t answer this one, not straight away, but he thinks isn’t that your biggest problem, everything’s always your fault.
- - -
(He may have dreamt it but when Kangin comes back he is wearing a strange brown prickly sweater and Heechul tries to hit him with a spatula.)