SHINee Duets 2011: incessance & the_suit_case
Title: Kallisti (The Fairest)
Authors: incessance & the_suit_case
Pairing: onesided Onew/Minho
Rating: PG
Word Count: 3,015
Warnings: Strange Greek Mythology references!
Authors’ Notes: Originally, we were inspired by the Philophobia quote, but it quickly spiraled away from resembling it even remotely.
tragic hero |ˈtrajikˈhi(ə)rō|
a literary character who makes an error of judgment or has a fatal flaw that, combined with fate and external forces, brings on a tragedy.
You've been feeling kind of tragic ever since you met him, since you first looked in his eyes when he first showed up in the practice room. He's that effortless kind of beautiful that makes people weak around him, eager to drop their lives for him. It makes you weak, and you wish you could resent him but you can't do anything other than stare.
Minho's the kind of guy Greek epics were written about in his former lives, you realize it as soon as you speak to him. Paris, you think to yourself on rainy nights when you're alone in the dorms. Strong and witty and beautiful, arrows guided by the gods.
His eyes are just like his arrows were in another life: pointed, piercing, achingly true; you wonder why they mean so much to you, even as you're bleeding all over the rehearsal room. Can he see through you to the core, to where the Fates have everything written in precise penmanship down your spine?
The older trainees think it's cute, the way you follow him around with trails of blood seeping out of you, but you don't know how to tell them that no one but Minho could ever stitch you up.
*
synechdoche |ˈsɪnɪkˈdɒkɪk|
a figure of speech in which a part is used for the whole or the whole for a part, the special for the general or the general for the special.
You'll always have this memory of the beginning, before the glitter and the lights and the skinny jeans. They're making lists, right out in the open, in the middle of trainee practice, their clipboards full of profiles and red pens in their hands, like Zeus and Poseidon deciding who will be fed Ambrosia. The trainees are buzzing, dancing harder, singing louder, but he's sitting to the side, already golden, like he's Artemis, uninterested in everything except the hunt.
You have lists of your own in your head, written along the side of your wrist, who you think is going to be given wings, thunderbolts, immortality, but your own name isn't on it. The dancer, the singer, the beautiful, Hera and Athena and Aphrodite, of course. Maybe some of the titans who've been there longer than the sun; you're more like Hestia, always first in line, but forever looked over, so you're not expecting much.
When Poseidon calls him from the room, he stops at your side before leaving and lays his hand on your shoulder, like he knows you're about to be separated and he's sorry he's leaving you behind on earth. You notice, though, he doesn't look back when he goes through the arch to Olympias.
*
In medias res |ɪn ˈmɛdɪˌɑs ˈrɛs|
in or into the middle of events or a narrative.
Everyone else is a little muted, a little dull. Grey around the edges where they don't intersect with him. Maybe that's why you love Taemin a little more and Jonghyun a little less, all those points of contact meaning something to you even if they don't to Minho. Each one a spark of colour and interest, warped and reflected like Aphrodite’s golden apples.
You want to think of yourself as Hippomenes, constantly tripping over your own feet and running for love. Except Minho has never been anything close to Atalanta, even with eyelashes painting shadows on high cheekbones in his sleep, impossibly long legs and doe eyes. He doesn’t have the weakness to fall for such trifling charms, and you are left behind to pick up dusty wishes.
Meleager, maybe. You've always thought Minho will be the death of you.
*
kenosis |kɪˈnoʊsɪs|
an emptiness or depletion of life, to empty out.
There are times when you think he can't be as cold as he seems, forever locked in winter. He's warm on screen, in front of crowds, but only when he has to be, only when Jonghyun and Key and Taemin aren't shining. When he's done, it's like he sucks the warmth out of the air, until you're shivering just from looking at him.
You never wanted to be Persephone, but you’d eat the seeds without thought if he’d look at you with something other than an absent tug on the corner of his lips. Taemin makes him smile for real, eyes slanted into half-moons, life blooming in Minho's pale face, and that's something you can only wish for.
So no, not Persephone. Maybe Demeter: constantly waiting for something to come back, longing for someone you cannot wholly have.
*
hamartia |ˌhɑmɑrˈtiə|
the flaw in character which leads to the downfall of the protagonist in a tragedy
It's been years, but he still looks beautiful and mysterious on-stage with the lights streaming into his hair, his eyes hooded and traced in eyeliner. James Dean he says with a laugh, his pronunciation all wrong, but you can't help thinking Odysseus, bright and golden with a legion of warriors ready to follow him to the death.
You could be his soldier, if he wanted, loaded down with heavy armour and heavy javelins and a heavy heart, ready to follow him into war and beyond. But he doesn't even notice, his nose buried in his phone, paying attention to someone who's not you, someone who's not ready to give up everything for him. You wonder why he gives so much to people who care so little.
Because he does, maybe not in the ways other people do, but you watch him, you see how much each smile costs him, how much each lazy smirk makes you rethink who he is. It's strange, who he thinks deserves what, the fans getting less than you do even, but the coordi-noona gets such bright eyes every morning.
You don't pretend to understand how he works, his hands gentle against yours on screen but his eyes so cold, like he thinks you're Circe, eager to trap him.
*
anagnorisis |ænægˈnɔrəsɪs|
the critical moment of recognition or discovery, especially preceding peripeteia.
You write Prometheus on his back while he's sleeping in the green room of some nameless television show, slanted Roman letters that smudge together when he showers that evening. Taemin traces them out the next morning with wide eyes.
"But what's it mean, hyung?" he asks, but Minho doesn't say anything, can't say anything, because he has no idea what the smear says, what it could possibly mean to anyone at all, fire-bringer.
The night before, you had laid silently in your bed, back to the wall and gaze focused on Minho. He snored in short rumbles, faint and deep. There was no murmuring, no tossing and no war against the blankets. You wondered if he was aware of what he had done, what he had started. The entire night you were awake waiting for the gods to strike someone down, for the sins committed on your part.
There was no thunder. There was no lightning.
*
peripeteia |ˌpɛrəpɪˈtaɪə,-ˈti|
a sudden turn of events or an unexpected reversal, especially in a literary work. but in this case, only momentarily.
Sometimes, late at night, you like to go out on the roof and stare up at the sky. There's light pollution, Seoul is your backyard, so it's hard to make out the constellations that decide your path, but you can see Canis Major and the big dipper.
Minho knows the more obscure ones though, the Shield and the Dove and the Lyra. He points them out of nothing when he joins you on the roof, tracing out their shapes against the clouds. "If it were clear, this is where the Lion would be," and you wonder why he knows so much about Heracles, if Minho would have the strength to strangle you, crush you, blind you.
"What are you doing up so late?" you ask him instead.
He just shrugs. "Couldn't sleep."
You don't bother asking why he searched you out, because you don't want to hear his answer, don't think you can take him telling you that you're second-best, something to fill meaningless time with but nothing else.
You spend the rest of the night listening to him breathe, the quietest sleeper out of everyone in the dorm. Under Jonghyun's snoring and Key's teeth grinding and Taemin's tiny whimpers, you hear the whir of his breath, and it's enough to calm you. When you finally fall asleep at dawn, you dream that you're the Winged Horse, always trying to fly closer and closer to Heracles, but stopped by his Arrows.
*
pathos |peɪθɒs|
the quality or power, especially in literature or speech, of arousing feelings of pity, sorrow, etc.
Sometimes you feel a twinge in your chest, long-unrequited somethings pulling at your heartstrings. It’s then you dare to look up and across the stage, to him. You expect to see threads tangled, straining over muscle and silence. The Moirae weave paths into the same quest, so you crane your head, but remember that parallel lines never intersect. You stand on the same stage, looking the same way: out and up at the stars and Heracles, upon whom the Fates once depended. But you are left only with the tangle and coil of microphone wires, dull static hissing in your ears.
If this were ancient Greece, you would have clawed out your eyes and left the city a long time ago. Thou shalt not covet your brother, says Zeus, but the gods are hypocrites if they are as interrelated as they make themselves out to be. So yeah, you figure you're safe.
Minho's eyes, though, are like diamonds, and sometimes when he looks at you, you can feel them cutting against your skin, making scars against your soul. You like to pretend they're from Eros's arrows, and you're Psyche, soulmates against all odds, but no, Aphrodite is the one that's always jealous.
*
chorus |kɔrəs|
the group of actors that performed the chorus and served as major participants in, commentators on, or as a supplement to the main action of the drama.
You’re pretty sure that Jonghyun knows. He throws an arm around your shoulder, pulls you in too close to whisper sweet nothings into your ear. You want to laugh and sob and you wonder if you are truly that transparent. Then again, it’s hard to notice something if you never bother seeing it.
Today, you are tired of trying to be eternal. You close your eyes and lean into his shoulder; he stills and you wake up to vibrations, humming of a nameless tune. Something dark flashes past through your eyelids, he is calling out to someone, and the clamor of the hallway leaks into the room momentarily before fading again as the door slams. You consider going back to sleep, forever maybe.
Instead, you open one eye a crack to the curve of jawbone and stiff, spiky hair, let out your breath in a whoosh against Jonghyun’s collarbone. Somewhere between heartbreak and slumber your hands have become intertwined in his lap, warm and slightly sticky. You can hear tinny music blaring from his right earphone into your right ear, but his shoulder muffles everything in your left. It’s kind of comforting.
You will not be the Castor to his Pollux, you cannot, will not drag down him down to Styx. He’s worthy of more, he could become so much more if only he hadn’t gotten his voice so hopelessly tangled up in yours. There’s too much evidence to fool the gods, engravings in plastic and metal scattered beyond your reach. Jonghyun could sing from mountains up beyond the stars, but only for you; you who are in love with another boy.
*
thanatos |θæn|
the death instinct, a personification of death
You never say anything about the way your heart crumbles, each day a little more until it's unstable, kind of like ancient Roman columns. You just wait until it crashes, destroyed like the Circus Maximus.
One day, there will be archaeologists. This is the heart of Lee Jinki, the sino-atrial node that Lee Minho pierced causing palpitations at the best and worst of times, the vena cava where his blood runs blue when Minho laughed at him, hugged him round the shoulder and turned to Donghae without missing a beat.
You wonder if you could see Minho bleed at all. If he could do something so human. If the gods would sprout flowers from the ground each place Minho's hit, like he was Adonis or Hyacinthus.
*
excursus |ɛkˈskɜrsəs|
a digression or incidental excursion, as in a narrative.
It's easy to pretend there's no one else. That there's never been anyone else. Just you and him and thousands of lights. It's even easier to pretend he's Achilles, but you're no Patroclus; you're not even Troilus. You know if it wasn't for SHINee, if it wasn't for the lights and the fans and gilded fame, you'd mean nothing to him and he'd crush you like Achilles crushed Hector, Telephus, even Troilus, anyone in his way to immortality.
The immortality's not as important to you. The lights and fans and fame are second to his eyes and the way they shine. You know they don't see you, never have, not against a backdrop of civilizations older than time itself. You know when he blinks, he sees Polyxena, beautiful and strong and full of honor.
You would be Polyxena, if he'd let you, your throat slit at the foot of his tomb. You wouldn't be brave like she had been, but you would bleed if that is all he would allow you to do. If he asked you, you would even be Paris, steady the arrows that would send him back to his Patroclus's arms.
*
catharsis |kəˈθɑrsɪs|
to purify, to purge. a purging of emotions, thus releasing emotional tension.
You dream at night of silence and gold, and when you wake your mouth is tangy from the taste of obolos coins. Your face is mostly dry though, so when Key looks at you, you're able to claim it was just a regular nightmare, death and haunting the living, Charon refusing your offer, not Minho leaving you chained to rocks in the Caucasus.
But sometimes you're certain that Key knows more than Helios, with his wise eyes and careful glances. "It wouldn't be the end of the world, you telling him," he says after shaking you awake.
But it would, in a way. You don't think you could handle being turned away, like Tydeus from the gates of Olympias, or Eurydice snatched back into Hades in front of Orpheus. "He would hate me," you say instead, anything to lessen your world falling apart. Even if he didn't, it would be like Aphrodite and Hephaestus, more for pretend than anything.
Key's face is sad when he lays back in his bunk.
You turn over and find Minho with his eyes open, listening, catching words out of the air and weaving them together. He can't know what you were talking about, who, but his face is tight anyways. When Key's teeth are grinding into the silence, Minho sits up and your heart lodges in your throat.
When gods die, they die hard; Minho's always quiet, but he's never as quiet as when he's leaving, swept away from your side like Adonis was taken from Aphrodite and forced back to Persephone. When he shuts the door, he takes all your hope with him, tucked in back pocket.
*
hamartia |hɑmɑrˈtiə|
a fatal flaw, often leading to hero’s tragedy.
On the ride to the hospital, Minho squeezes half moons into the palms of his hands. Right now, they’re the only thing about him that looks anything near hurt.
The whites of his eyes are turning red. When the van rolls over a bump you catch him gritting his teeth by the twitch of muscle at his jaw, like Pygmalion’s marble statue coming to life. You would give him time to step off his pedestal, newly blown irises sliding to rest on him. You’ve not made him in your image though, and Aphrodite doesn’t care for the pale imitation.
If you had, he would love you.
*
sisyphus |sɪsəfəs|
a son of Aeolus and ruler of Corinth, noted for his trickery: he was punished in Tartarus by being compelled to roll a stone to the top of a slope, the stone always escaping him near the top and rolling down again.
It’s a task Daedalian in proportions, yet you think you’d rather skip straight to the part where you fall from the sun. The only difference is you’d be blinded for sake of love, not liberty. You haven’t been free since the day you met him.
Other times you think you’re waiting for Ariadne and her miraculous thread that will lead you out of this mess, to where he’s holding the other end. Tying up all the loose ends like the close-lipped smiles he gives out like nothings, an ending in every opening of his mouth.
Demophon, waiting in the fire to be made a god.
The story’s different every morning.