SHINee Duets 2015: feixing & lucentic (Part Three)
He’s gotten into the habit of getting together with Kibum these days, the elder always planning something for them to do while he’s at it.He’s even set a different ring tone to ring for Kibum, so that he knows to pick up the call from reflex. Kibum doesn’t like to be kept waiting very much, despite his patience towards him in the beginning. If Minho doesn’t want to come over to play with his food (he always does), Kibum’ll finish it up himself.
It takes more than two calls for Minho to be reached tonight, however. But to be fair, he wasn’t expecting anything, having told Kibum that he’d be out for a house party with Krystal in tow that evening. He’s feeling really good with alcohol in his system, though a little sweaty around the collar of his dress shirt, but nonetheless he excuses himself from his group of new friends, choking back laughter at something he doesn’t even remember.
He settles himself down by the fence near Woohyun’s luxury backyard pool, waiting for his call to go through. It does within a couple of seconds.
“You called?”
“Yes.” Kibum’s voice is still as smooth as ever, but Minho strains to see if he can find a strand of irritation in the banker’s voice. He doesn’t really come up with anything. “Are you free tonight?”
“I’m always expensive,” Minho retorts, and cracks up on his own for a bit until he can visualise Kibum rolling his eyes expressively at him before he stops. “But no, seriously. House party, remember?”
“Hmm. My mistake. But I was hoping for you to leave this- gathering- earlier, so we may indulge in a little fun. I brought extra for tonight.”
“Kibum, I’d love to, but I really can’t go tonight. I’m with a couple of new friends and it’d be awkward if I just left them in the middle of our game.”
“Well, the night is still young. May I suggest that you take another hour or so to spend at this party, and then-”
And then what, Minho doesn’t really get to hear. His phone is knocked out of his hands, onto the damp grass because a couple of wet, cold arms lock themselves around his shoulders, and from the way his head whips back to see who it is, the unexpected force slams his assailant’s nose into the back of his head.
“Ow,” the stranger gasps, and Minho suddenly registers that the person all over him right now is Krystal, sporting a bruised nose and cheeks a few shades darker than they usually are.
“You’re going to catch your death,” he says by means of an apology, pulling her down to sit beside him, which she does, willingly, leaning into him slightly for warmth. Fresh out of the pool, she is shivering, clad in nothing but her swim suit, which Minho positively glares at her for.
Not that she really listens to him. She spies his phone on the ground, and reaches out clumsily to pass it to him. Minho remembers with a start that he’s still on the phone with Kibum, and hurriedly presses it to his ear.
“Hey, sorry, I’ll get back to you la-”
“Is that your banker boyfriend again?” Krystal says loudly, blinking heavily at him and trying to lunge for the phone. ”God, just make him leave you alone for tonight, you haven’t even had fun with me yet-”
Krystal’s force is unexpected, and Minho’s fingers unexpectedly cancel the call. He’s thrown into panic for a couple of seconds, but Krystal is determined to erase that out of him, making a loud fuss for him to stand up with her and go look for more drinks. Conflicted, he goes, but it only takes two burning shots for him to forget that he’d hung up on Kibum without saying goodbye.
♔
The buzzing of his phone against his face is what wakes Minho up. Blearily, he gropes for it.
"'Lo."
"Did I wake you up, pup?"
"I- not really." He almost knocks over a glass of water by his bedside as he reaches up to fumble for the light.
"Liar." Kibum's voice is lower, silkier than usual, and it brings heat to the college boy's cheeks.
"Why- why did you call at this time of night?"
Kibum laughs, a noise that drags out from the base of his throat. He sounds almost high. "I've been thinking. About you. Quite a lot recently, pup."
Minho stills.
"Are you embarrassed?" continues Kibum pleasantly, and there is a faint sound of poured liquid, followed by the gentle chink of glass on the table. "Don't worry pup, it's not like that."
"Oh."
And then, "Come over."
"I- have school tomorrow."
"You can do without another day. You and I know exactly how much you pay attention anyway."
Minho swallows thickly, looking for something to say, but he knows that the businessman is right.
♔
Kibum is dressed up in his own apartment, and he smells really good, when he leans in to ruffle at Minho's (unsuccessfully tamed) bedhead. He is in a pair of midnight jeans rolled up at the hems to reveal smooth, sharp ankles, and layered his top with varying shades of deep red and steel gray.
"I've been hosting my own party, and when it was time for everyone to leave I decided that I hadn't drunk enough," says Kibum, picking his way down the hallways and motioning for Minho to come with him. "And I thought about you and- decided to get you to come here for a little game."
"It's three in the morning."
Kibum shrugs. "Relax. I just brought her in, not too long ago."
He tosses the keys to Minho, who unlocks the door of the basement for the both of them. It takes some getting used to, the dimness of the familiar space, but just as he is able to make out vague outlines of the furniture, Kibum flips the switch, so that the centre of the space is filled with light, powerful enough to make Minho shield his eyes.
"Like what you see?"
When Minho is finally able to adjust again, and moves closer to see what kind of meat Kibum brought in today, he gapes. And gapes, blood pumping in his veins, and he wheels around, "What the fuck do you mean by if I like what I-"
He doesn't see it coming, the blow. Minho is on the floor in an instant, his vision pricking and threatening to go black, so intense is the pain in his temples that he doesn't even notice Kibum coming over to lift him up by his shirt, eyes colder than he has ever seen them.
"Manners, pup. I believe I taught you that one."
"But why her-" MInho doesn't get to finish this sentence either, the wind squeezed out of him by KIbum's scarily strong hands, wrapped around his throat. Out of the corner of his distorted visionary angle, Kibum's capture stirs.
"Why her," sneers Kibum, still applying more pressure to the point that Minho's vision actually starts to swim, his grip clammy and scrabbling for purchase on the elder's skin, "Why her? Why her when I told you not to fuck around?"
“I fucked around-?”
“I,” Kibum seethes, “don’t like to be waiting on people. I don’t like people telling me what to do when I’ve made plans. And what did you tell me that night at the party?”
Minho honestly doesn’t know, his brain whirling at a thousand miles per hour trying ot figure out what the fuck the fuss is all about. And then-
“Because I hung up on you? Jesus Kibum that was an accident, I didn’t mean to-”
Apparently that answer is not good enough for the banker, for Minho gets another slam in the gut, one that makes him cough in hacking gasps. “You could have called back. But what did you do?”
Minho tastes blood in his mouth, from the way the elder slams his head to the floor, missing direct concrete by a couple of inches too right. “Hang up on me because that little girl told you to.”
“You’re crazy-”
There is a knife under his throat, the same one that was held near his jugular, sharp and ready to slice from all those months back. Minho, pulled back by his hair, is forced to look into Kibum's stony face, and for the life of him he cannot understand how such an expressionless face could look so livid.
And Krystal is crying, waist and hips and legs shackled to the wall, her fist stuffed into her mouth to prevent her from sobbing out loud. She's looking directly at him, and there is so much fear and desperation in her eyes that Minho closes his own so that he doesn't have to deal with her just yet. Please.
"What will it be, pup?" Kibum's voice still streams like liquid gold, smooth and uninterrupted even though his hands on Minho are anything but, and it makes Minho so heady, so overwhelmed. "Are you going to kill her for me to show me that you're sorry, or will I have to do it myself and end you, too?"
As if to prove a point, he is hit again in the face, this time with a glass sitting on the edge of the table near Kibum. It hurts.
"It wouldn't hurt me one bit, you know."
“What the fuck Kibum please don’t make me-”
Pleasedonthurthimpleasepleasepleasedonthurtmeplease-
A sister. Krystal had broken down his walls during his sophomore year in high school, a riot of colour when she was still in her punk-emo phase and all voice. For a long while, she was most everything in his life - and for some of the time, a lover. Someone he experimented and shared all the first milestones of adulthood with. She'd held him when he cried two summers ago, when he missed the championship game by one deciding match. She nursed his mother back to health when he was an idiot who didn't know what to do. Krystal was- is a lot of things.
And then there is Kibum. A killer. Someone he met in the cold opening months of his first college year, smooth, enigmatic, moody. Rich and handsome, someone who showered Minho with gifts and soft, luring temptations. He was material, compared to Krystal, who was- is love and friendship more than anything else. But he had the power to show him things that Krystal would never have been able to- would never have been able to understand.
He gets another blow. It makes him sink to his knees, a thud that wrenches another cry from Krystal, strung up and so, so far away. So tiny.
Are you going to kill her for me to show that you're sorry, or will I have to do it myself and end you, too?
There was no winning this game, is there?
And he takes the next blows, the next cuts, until Kibum's eyes are alight and sweat beads on his skin in his agitation, and the alcohol is so hot and sticky when breathed on his face that he cracks. He caves into himself, MInho. Kibum only lets go when he's prayed and cried enough blood from his eyes to stagger forward.
Krystal only ever keeps her eyes on him.
It is easier to sin when you cannot tell left from right, or the sounds of the creaking wheels from the cracking of bones. The delighted squeal of a man who has shown you the world from the scream of the girl who has walked with you down the path of adulthood.
They - He doesn't kill Krystal slowly. She deserved more than just a quick, boring stabbing, or a fast strangulation. If he was going to do something like this to please Kibum, he was at least going to make sure that Krystal got an elaborate ritual. Kibum makes him take the rein for this, makes him draw first blood. He sees the betrayal sharp in her eyes, the fear, and it makes him guilty, but at the same time, gives him a sickening, heady sense of power. Kibum watches him impassively from a corner, arms folded. Adrenaline starts its journey along Minho's veins, and he starts to not see Krystal as a friend, a sister. Instead, she almost became just another plaything for the both of them.
"Join me," he urges Kibum, hand reached out, holding a silver knife slicked with blood.
The approval that lights up in Kibum's normally steely eyes makes him even headier. Krystal's soft, broken pleads have long faded into the background, and Minho almost groans when Kibum takes the knife from him and traces it parallel to a cut he has done along Krystal's thigh.
What the fuck was happening to him?
"You're getting better, pup," Kibum praises, and Minho knows, he should know that Kibum is stringing him along, but Kibum's words just make him even more pleased. He thinks he can feel himself grinning.
♔
It takes hours for the last of light to leave Krystal's eyes, and by then, the sun had started to rise in the sky. The adrenaline is still pumping along Minho's veins, and he feels awake, even crazed. Kibum is as poised as ever, but Minho thinks he sees something like warmth directed at him in the older man's gaze.
The water from the shower does nothing to calm him down. He is practically hopping off the balls of his feet, lost in thought, and he doesn't notice when the door opens and Kibum steps in. Kibum is still dressed in his bloodied clothes, and his presence catches Minho completely off guard.
"Wha-" but he does not get to finish his sentence, because Kibum has backed him into the wall and kissed him.
Minho reciprocates, and nothing about this kiss is soft or slow. It's hard, rough, Kibum's hand tangled and pulling on Minho's wet hair, controlling where he wants Minho to be. Minho is still naked and Kibum is in wet clothes, and the disparity makes him moan as Kibum noses against his neck, teeth sharp on his collarbones. Nothing about this is sweet, not when Kibum keeps a grip around Minho's neck as he unbuttons his own jeans.
Kibum shoves him hard to his knees and the impact of the tile against his knees hurt. Minho has never been with another guy before, but it does not matter, not when Kibum just shoves his cock into Minho's surprised mouth and fucks his throat.
"Keep your teeth away. If I feel even a hint of them, you're going to regret it," Kibum warns, giving Minho a split second to calibrate before shoving his way down Minho's throat again. It burns, and Minho does not know quite how to breathe, but he tries.
"You're doing so well for me, pup," Kibum praises, "good boy," and even though Kibum's cock burns as it violates his throat, Minho can't help but look up at Kibum against the water from the shower. The look in Kibum's eyes, delirious with power, makes him giddy with lust.
♔
Noon arrives faster than they expect. Minho lies, spent in the corner of Kibum’s abused room, sporting bruised hips and lips and pretty much everything else. Everything is kind of hazy, but he can feel his cracked lips splitting into a grin every now and then.
Oh, Minho does mourn. He mourns for the girl he used to think of as the rock in his life, patient, immovable, sometimes too hard on him and herself. He mourns for her family, people that he's met but never really got to know, but doted on him just the same and just once or twice, laughed about the two of them getting married in the future so they would stop causing trouble all the time, with added responsibility on their shoulders. He mourns for the girl whose bright, indelible spirit was to be reduced to the fine print on a section of the news in the coming week. Print so small college students would have to squint to get the words right, to read the methodical plea for help, for remembrance. It depends where Kibum decides she would go - the obituary, or the missing persons list.
He's obviously not concentrating, and Kibum can sense it too, for he shoves a glass of brandy under his nose, and tilts it so he drinks. He drinks until his throat burns and his eyes tear and all he can see is Kibum in front of him, and the elder advances, the black in his eyes alight once more.
It does not take more than a minute for Minho to immerse himself into all that is Kibum, hot and wet and victorious.
♔
They are- Minho’s not really sure what kind of label he should put on them, doesn’t know if he should. But he’s comfortable with this thing hanging over them, between them, comfortable with Kibum beckoning him over for deep, dirty kisses and sometimes, blowjobs. Minho thinks about having Kibum’s cock in his mouth a lot, the constant changes in the power that he holds exciting him, enticing him to stay and crave for more.
But it is not easy being Kibum’s something. The easy part is sexual gratification - this, Minho gives readily and easily, and Kibum doesn’t seem disgruntled with his performance. The hard part is knowing what kind of response and behavior Kibum wants from him, and sometimes knowing that he is to listen and to obey causes his muscles to twitch beneath his skin.
Like recently. Minho’s always been a little messy with his handiwork, not having had the luxury of the years of experience Kibum has over him, but the elder has always been okay with that. He hates blood on his shoes and more often than not puts MInho to deal with most of the elbow grease needed, but he usually gets nothing more than that. But recently, Kibum bunches up, voice cold and calculating as he leaves Minho to do the cleanup. When Minho apologises, he is sent out of the basement, and Kibum does everything himself, not resurfacing until hours later, when Minho has burnt through four cigarettes worrying.
Sometimes Kibum denies him the bed when he has to stay over, their kill ending too late in the night for Minho to get home and risk waking up his parents without a proper excuse. When Kibum is pissed, he is rigid, unpliable, and it takes a lot more than Minho’s usual efforts to get to touch him again, but even then.
It is not easy being something, whatever something is.
♔
Minho has his feet up the dashboard, singing to one of the pop medleys streaming out of Kibum’s car stereos when Kibum first explodes. His phone ring before that, and he leans over, fiddling with the knobs until the music becomes background noise, and picks it up, other hand sliding over to lace themselves with Kibum’s idle ones.
“Minho-ah.” It is his mother, and the college boy swallows a surge of irritation.
“Yeah?”
“Where are you right now?”
“With the soccer team,” Minho lies easily. They’re cruising out of town, almost thirty miles away now, to get to one on the other side of the country for dinner.
“I don’t like this, Minho,” his mother starts saying. “I don’t like not seeing your face around the house for the past week. You haven’t been home enough, and when your father asks about you I have no idea what to say. I want you to come home right now.”
“Can’t.”
“Why not? You’re either at Jinki’s or at the diner behind your school, don’t think I don’t know you enough. I want you to-”
“I’m out of fucking town,” Minho cuts over her, and before the woman can make another noise of protest, he cuts the call and turns off his phone.
The car slows. Minho turns to look questioningly at the other male, whose grip is suddenly loose in his. “What’s wrong?”
“Who was that?”
“My mother. Nothing important, I can still stay out tonight.”
He caught off guard when Kibum slides his hand out of his, quick and as if it’s been burnt, and unlocks the car as they park by the roadside, “Get out.”
“Kibum? What’s wrong? I can stay out for dinner-”
“Get out. I don’t like the way you speak to your mother.”
Minho is starting to get irritated, taking his feet off the dashboard and shifting to look at Kibum in the face “But she-”
And doesn’t get to complete his sentence, the way Kibum steps out of his car and bodily hauls him out of his seat, dumps him by the roadside, and getting back in.
And driving right off.
Later, five angry voice messages and three confused, apologetic ones later, Kibum relays his own apology too. Not after Minho gets a senseless whooping from an irate mother after he returns home two hours later, scuffled and angry beyond relief. She demands to know why, who, where, how dare you, but Minho can’t really give her any sort of coherent reply when he has his own questions, too.
He goes to sleep fuming, knowing that Kibum probably knocked himself out many hours ago.
♔
And there are time bombs, ones that Minho doesn’t know exist. And he blames himself entirely for this one, having been with Kibum for so long, knowing his routines and habits, but not knowing where his boundaries lay. But that makes him angry, too, for he thinks that being someone’s something should entitle him to more standing than whatever he has with Kibum at the moment.
All he says with their latest project is “We should make him scream where nobody hears him but himself“. What he means is that he wants to rip out his vocal cords and then slowly simmer him to death, because it’s a lot more entertaining that way, but fuck whatever he means.
Kibum stops mindlessly twining the electrical cords around his fingers. Without looking at Minho, he points at the door.
To which, Minho stands firm. “Why?”
He doesn’t expect the banker to stalk toward him, a throwing knife clutched in his fist, held right above his heart. He doesn’t expect Kibum’s voice to be lyrically smooth when his hands are so suffocating and rough against his skin, aura so dark and furious that Minho loses his ability to respond.
“Get out,” is all Kibum says, and out is all Minho does, shaking legs and all.
It is close to three in the morning, too inappropriate a timing for Minho to go back to his own place. He is a dazed wreck when he arrives at Jinki’s by cab, an unresponsive and ungrateful friend when Jinki tentatively offers to sleep on the floor so Minho can have the bed.
Because he doesn’t need any fucking kindness, just an explanation.
♔
It is childishly easy to break him, really. Minho hates the way his fingers move to snatch up his phone, the way he doesn't look at anyone as he stalks out of the living room to answer the call. But right now, he doesn't care too much about being rude. It's been a whole fucking week, and then some since Kibum shut him out.
"Hello?" He should not be as breathless as he sounds, but the need for communication is so acute that his throat aches.
There is a silence, one that seems to stretch on forever, but then, "How have you been?" comes over the line. He is a wreck.
"Alive."
"I gathered that much." There is no noise in the background, and from the faint squeaking in the background, Minho supposes that the businessman is on his bed. It is an oddly intimate thought.
Not enough to tape his mouth shut. When Minho speaks next, what comes out of his mouth is a garbage flurry of I'm sorrys and please forgive me I didn't mean it. He has to physically bite down on his own tongue to stop the flood, and by the time he does so he is already regretting whatever he's said. Kibum is not a patient man who listens to apologies that happen time and time again without any real conviction, he knows that, but somehow it makes him want to apologise even more-
"It's alright." Kibum says, quietly, throwing his worry off-guard. Just like that. Minho silently curses him again for being able to control him with minimal effort.
"I won't do it again."
"I know." There is the sound of shuffling, and Minho thinks about Kibum leaving his room to wander about the large house. From experience, the other is probably heading toward the balcony, a place he likes to frequent when he needs to think. He's not disappointed, when he hears the flick of the wheel on the man's lighter, and then a long release of breath, soon after.
The sounds of video games resuming are faint in his background. "What are you thinking about?"
"Dinner."
"With- with me?"
"Mmm." Kibum's voice is always pitched slightly lower, scratchier, when he smokes, and it makes Minho curl his fingers around his phone a little tighter. "Your favorite restaurant, if you like."
"When?" Minho can hardly keep the trepidation out of his voice.
♔
When happens to be three nights later, in which Minho is decked out in a nice suit that Kibum had specially made for him (!) and highly polished shoes. Kibum is chivalrous as ever, pulling out a chair for Minho before taking a seat himself, and signalling for the masked waiter.
"I hope you don't mind me ordering ahead for the both of us?"
”No," Minho says, quickly, easily.
Kibum nods, and smiles at him a little. "I ordered your favorites, and a little extra here and there."
Conversation flows much easier after Minho's helped himself to a glass and a half of Kibum's favorite champagne. He's even offered to pour the elder some, but he declined, a lopsided smile accompanying the rejection. It is no matter, the way Kibum talks around his own food, cuts him a little bit of special sauce marinated intestines, watching him intently and letting Minho fill up the bits of his life he's missed out on.
"Jinki and I are on better terms now. We-" Minho hears himself saying, and the rest of the sentence comes out easily in his head, but for some reason his throat has sealed itself shut, and while his mouth gapes, nothing comes out. Minho's hands automatically go towards his throat, suddenly shaky, and there is a crash somewhere on his right and a cold feeling spreading on his thighs.
"We?" Kibum prompts, eyebrows raised. Minho wants to tell him that he's not really feeling very well, that he's tired and something's not right, but KIbum suddenly seems so far away, so distant.
So dark.
"Manners, Minho. I believe I taught you that one." He is drowning but instead of water, all he hears is Kibum's voice. "You should say-"
Thank you for the meal, for the full circle!
<< Part Two | The End.