Babe-raham Lincoln
ʚ Title: Babe-raham Lincoln for saranghaedyo ♡
ʚ Pairing(s): kaisoo
ʚ Rating: pg13
ʚ Warnings: some homophobia
ʚ Word Count: ~2,200
ʚ Summary: and maybe do kyungsoo, the president's son, did like history pick-up lines.
Three weeks before junior prom, the President’s son was standing on the far side of the cafeteria. He was the kind of boy who walked with such grace that the shitty school linoleum looked like polished granite when he passed over it. Looking at him, you’d think he was the tallest person in the world; 173cm of pure glory and genius and goodness and good hair (gelled up, so that maybe he’d reach 176cm or so) and also maybe sex. Jongin always berated himself for thinking that last part, but then he’d look at the President’s son again, in Canali or Gucci or Armani or whatever-other-i he was wearing, and comfort himself with the idea that if only he’d come down from heaven, Jesus Christ would think exactly the same thing.
That was one thing he had in common with Jesus Christ. The other was that even Jesus Christ would not be able to touch the President’s son.
“Maybe you should try math pick-up lines,” Chanyeol said, elbowing Jongin in the middle of the cafeteria line. His styrofoam soup bowl slid over a little too quickly in the attempt because he was too stupid to let go of his tray and an inedible-looking slop sloshed over the side. “Or maybe history. He seems like a history guy. ‘Are you Lee Seungman, because I want you to be my first.’”
“Right,” Jongin said, nodding like he’d been listening. They’d always made fun of him since the first day of high school, but there was something different this time. His arms were crossed over the table, between him and the scratched, dull-red plastic of his food tray. “I totally agree.”
“I can’t believe you, honestly,” Baekhyun said, throwing an ice cube from his water at Jongin’s face, and then two more once Jongin finally turned to face him, scowling.
“Will you stop making that face at me?”
Jongin continued to make that face at Baekhyun for several seconds before another cube of ice hit his forehead. He proceeded to groan and slump over, with his face in his arms. When he tilted his head to the side, peeking at the President’s son through his bangs, he saw that he’d sat down alone. For some reason, Jongin’s heart felt that this was a good reason to crawl up into his throat and sit there for a while. He turned his head back into his arms and whined, resisting the urge to stomp his feet on the floor. Baekhyun rubbed his back, which didn’t make him feel much better because he probably had ketchup on his fingers.
“If you were an American,” Chanyeol said after some time, “you’d be Babe-raham Lincoln.”
“Shut up,” Jongin said. “I’m going to cry.”
☆☆☆
The President’s son’s name was Do Kyungsoo. Jongin knew this because freshman year was the year after the election, and the President had been in office for less than a month. He was primarily a literature student and didn’t pay attention to much of anything outside of his books. During the first math class, Jongin had looked up from his book just in time to see Kyungsoo walk in. There were no seats left but the one next to him, so Kyungsoo sat down next to him and smiled.
“Hope you don’t mind,” he’d said, tilting his head to the side.
He still remembered what Kyungsoo had been wearing: a light blue, longsleeve button-up, tucked into his khakis, still smooth under a crisp navy suit; the four-in-hand knot of his dark red tie centered perfectly between the folds of his collar; the brown leather belt threaded neatly through the loops of his pants. His hair had been gelled up in the front at a slight angle to the side, so that when you first looked, it was messy enough to seem natural, leaning over like the way waves were often painted. The rest was gelled down to the side, although he had staggered carefully over the hairline so that you couldn’t see it. Chanyeol had been angry about it because he insisted that Kyungsoo had to have used a ton of gel to have hair that perfect, but under the light you couldn’t see the slightest hint of a reflection from that uniform black hair.
The point was, Jongin knew the President’s son’s name because he’d been taking all of this in while waiting for the teacher to call him for attendance. When he put his hand up and said, “here,” Jongin would know his name. Only after class, when Baekhyun smacked him upside the head and said, “Dude, can you make your staring a little less obvious? I’m sure the prez’s son already knows he’s hot without your rude googly-eyes,” did he realize that he had been sitting next to the President’s son, staring at him for probably ten straight minutes.
“Oh my God,” Jongin had said. “But.”
“But what?” Chanyeol said.
“I,” he said, scratching the side of his head, “I think I’m in love.”
Baekhyun smacked him upside the head. “That’s, literally, so gay.”
“And Kyungsoo is probably so not,” Chanyeol added.
Jongin shook his head. That wasn’t even the worst part. Most people weren’t gay and he would probably marry a girl anyway to make his mother happy, which he’d accepted a long time ago. The worst part was that Jongin never fell in love with him because he was the President’s son, like the cluster of girls who always followed him wherever he went. He fell in love with him because of fate and because he was hot, but now that he knew, he could never think, “Kyungsoo,” without thinking right after it, “the President’s son.”
“Kyungsoo,” Jongin said, trying out the name on his own lips, “the President’s son.”
Baekhyun snickered. “If you call him that in bed, I swear.”
The President’s son, Jongin thought. Who cannot possibly be gay or marry a man or even anyone in this school and probably already has five girlfriends lined up for his hand in marriage because he’s the President’s son.
“Oh, Jongin,” Chanyeol said, patting him on the back. “Don’t cry. Anyone who gels their hair like that must be gay.”
☆☆☆
“Are you Lee Seungman,” Jongin blurted out, three weeks before junior prom when he passed Kyungsoo in the halls. “Because you’re Babe-raham Lincoln.”
Someone had told the nasty head of the school tabloid club, Kim Jongdae, that the President’s son was bisexual. Not only had he/she told him that the President’s son was bisexual but he/she had told him in equally as nasty detail about this “threesome thing with a girl and a boy” that he/she saw the President’s son doing in the locker room after school hours. Most of the school thought the President’s son was much too smart to be bisexual, let alone in public, let alone do a threesome in the locker room, but everyone was avoiding him anyway, and that was why he was sitting alone that day in the cafeteria. And he still walked like a God.
Do Kyungsoo, the President’s son, furrowed his eyebrows quizzically but laughed a little, one of those quick exhales from his nose, accompanied by a small smile. “Jongin, right?”
“I’m sorry,” Jongin said, horrified. “I messed up.”
“Messed up what?”
“My friends, um, told me to try some history pick-up lines. And I didn’t mean to but I saw your face and they sort of just came out. Because of your face.”
Kyungsoo paused for a moment. The smile was completely off his face now, and he was pursing his lips. “Is this about that rumor? Because it’s not true, you know. I’m straight.”
“Oh. I mean, yeah, I knew that. I knew you were, I mean, are, straight. But actually I really have liked your face” no “for a very long time and so I wanted to use some pick-up lines anyway even if you are straight because you’re” stop, stop now, STOP “really hot, and my friend said you probably already know that but, I mean I’m not, I’m straight, totally-”
“Hey, Jongin, calm down.”
The President’s son was wearing a light grey button up today, tucked into his khakis, with a navy tie striped with sky blue and no suit. His hair was the way waves were often painted and he really liked Kyungsoo’s eyes, he thought, they were so deceiving. They made him look so innocent but it was just like his hair, that if you looked closely enough you would see how deep the dark brown of his irises went, just how incredible of a person he was, how bottomless his heart was, how restless his brain was, how perfect, how perfect, how perfect. Jongin wanted to fall into them forever, because even if Kyungsoo was straight there was no bottom to his heart and no need to be caught.
“There’s nothing wrong with being gay, or bisexual, if that’s what you are. I’m just saying,” there was a peculiar emphasis on the saying, which Jongin just took for his own wishful thinking, “I’m not. And if you’re trying to tell me that you like my face and think I’m hot and want to use pick-up lines on me because of that, that’s cool.”
“Okay,” Jongin said, still trying to see how deep the dark brown of Kyungsoo’s irises went. “Then, are you Lee Seungman?”
Kyungsoo laughed.
“Because I want you to be my first.”
“That’s horrible,” he said, and they were walking to class together now. “I’m going to tell my father.”
☆☆☆
The President’s son, as it turned out, was a sucker for history pick-up lines, and also didn’t have very many friends. Especially after the tabloid incident. Jongin was sure he’d still have some remnant of the large crowds of girls constantly flocking around him (surely some of them had to be okay with bisexuality, since it meant he might still date them) had it not been for the threesome thing written in nasty detail spanning four pages of the publication. It was like one of those porn-without-plot type fanfictions that Baekhyun wrote about what he liked to call the Chinese Swag Duo, made up of that really tall guy from Guangzhou and the not-as-tall-but-pretty-tall pretty boy from Beijing, filled with kinks from the farthest reaches of the universe. He was now the only friend to the President’s son, and people were beginning to suspect things.
“You can probably sue for that nasty tabloid thing, right?” Jongin said, after the ex-President of Do Kyungsoo’s fanclub made a snide remark about Jongin being the boy whose name was redacted in the article. There was apparently now also a rumor that Do Kyungsoo had paid to have the names of the other two redacted because he was in love with both of them. “It’s obviously untrue and you’re a public figure so this is all sorts of lies and slander.”
Kyungsoo shrugged. “My dad could probably take care of it. If I wanted it to be taken care of. I just think it’s silly.”
“Silly?”
“Honestly, Jongin. Who is going to believe I’m into mucophilia?”
“What-o-philia?”
“Did you even read it? I read it. It was horrifying. They were like, ‘HEADLINE: THE PRESIDENT’S SON LIKES SUCKING SNOT!’ Honestly. Honestly, I don’t even eat the cafeteria food. My dad has it prepared for me. What makes anyone think I’d suck snot?”
Jongin thought for a moment, just a moment, about Kyungsoo sucking snot. “That’s gross.”
“The point is that I don’t really mind what people think of me. I’m the President’s son and I have an established reputation at this school for fitting into a Good President’s Son role, and if people want to go believing things left and right about me, then they aren’t the right kind of people.” Kyungsoo slung his arm around Jongin’s shoulder, and then tensed almost immediately. “Hey, can I do this?”
“Sure,” Jongin said. Kyungsoo’s arm relaxed around his shoulders. It hurt a little but he smiled anyway. “We’re friends. I don’t mind.”
Kyungsoo paused for a moment, glancing at Jongin like he was missing something. Then, he said, “Oh, okay. Great.”
☆☆☆
A week before junior prom, it was established that Chanyeol was going to prom with his dog and Baekhyun was going steady with his laptop, which meant that Jongin would be the only one of his friends at prom alone. Meonggu and Jianggu weren’t big fans of this kind of thing. Which meant he could do only one thing.
“Hey, Kyungsoo,” Jongin said, tapping the President’s son on the shoulder as he stood in front of his locker. “Are you Cuba, because you’re putting my missile in a crisis.”
“Jesus, Jongin. Don’t nuke me, though.”
“Only if you go to prom with me?”
Kyungsoo turned around and eyed Jongin. “Like, as dates?”
“Friend-dates?”
“Jongin,” Kyungsoo said. “I think we need to talk for a little bit.”
They went to the roof to talk. The air was cold. The slight breeze picked up the edges of Kyungsoo’s suit and pushed his hair around. It was a little funny if you looked hard enough because his hair was gelled, so it looked like all of it was moving as one, like it was about to leap off his head and fly away. They went to the edge, leaning against the concrete wall, and then Kyungsoo turned to look at Jongin. Afraid to look back, Jongin stared out across the street, picking out the details of Seoul’s corporate buildings and apartment complexes and counting the birds on the telephone wires.
“The thing is, I know who leaked that to the tabloid. It didn’t actually happen, but I know who leaked it. I had a friend in middle school who I kissed once, on a dare, a boy, and neither of us was really entirely against it. But I’m the President’s son, you know, and he wanted to start a thing and I said I couldn’t. At least, I thought I couldn’t, because if I weighed it in my head he didn’t matter more than keeping up my dad’s reputation. It's been, what, three years already and he hasn't stopped bothering me about it. Sometimes we went out for coffee but I wasn’t into much more. Anyway, I told him straight up the other day that I couldn’t and that I wasn’t into guys at all and I was just confused and middle school was a mistake but obviously,” he bumped his elbow against Jongin’s here, “hopefully, obviously, I was lying.”
Jongin turned to face Kyungsoo. “Oh.”
“So he did this because he figured, if I’m already outed, it wouldn’t look bad to have a boyfriend. You know? And then I wouldn’t be able to use that as an excuse anymore.”
“Oh.”
“Of course that just made me kinda mad that he would do that so I told him the he couldn’t do that, and he got mad too and made up that whole text-porn mess to get back at me instead of just outing me to my school, which by itself is bad enough.” He paused, then laughed and shook his head. “I still can’t believe anyone believes that thing about the snot.”
“I’m sorry your first kiss was an asshole,” Jongin said.
“Nah. It doesn’t matter. It was fun when it happened.”
“Hey, Jongin,” Kyungsoo said, and Jongin wasn’t so sure when his face had gotten so close. “Are you Yun Boseon, because I want you to be my second.”
“Okay,” Jongin said, listening to the way the word sounded at the end, cut off, lost in something bigger than itself, because Kyungsoo was kissing him.
☆☆☆
Do Kyungsoo, the President’s son, went to junior prom with Kim Jongin, a middle-class boy who lived in a second-tier apartment complex across from the school campus. Despite all the tabloid bullshit, the way he turned the linoleum to granite beneath his feet was enough to convince the majority of the class that even if he and Jongin were dating, even if he was bisexual, or gay, or into sucking snot, that there was nothing at all wrong with it. You couldn’t walk like that if something was wrong with you, anyway. So they were voted, somehow, Prom King and Queen, and because Kyungsoo had had enough drama for the year, Jongin bit his tongue and sat down in the Queen’s spot while Kyungsoo snickered at him. And, because he felt like it, Kyungsoo told everyone that he didn’t know what his sexuality was, really, but he liked Jongin, and this was his coming out. Just that he liked Jongin.
And at the end of his speech, which had Chanyeol and Baekhyun in tears (a funny sight, really, because Chanyeol was holding his dog so close to his face that you could compare the sizes of their ears and realize you couldn’t tell whose were bigger, and Baekhyun had put a bowtie on his laptop and was holding it to his cheek), he asked Jongin to tell another history pickup line. Chanyeol’s eyebrows shot out of his face and he yelled across the whole dance floor, “IF YOU WERE AN AMERICAN! IF YOU WERE AN AMERICAN!”
Jongin laughed and took Kyungsoo’s hand. He put the microphone to his mouth as he leaned in and said, “You’d be Babe-raham Lincoln.”
ʚ Pairing(s): kaisoo
ʚ Rating: pg13
ʚ Warnings: some homophobia
ʚ Word Count: ~2,200
ʚ Summary: and maybe do kyungsoo, the president's son, did like history pick-up lines.
Three weeks before junior prom, the President’s son was standing on the far side of the cafeteria. He was the kind of boy who walked with such grace that the shitty school linoleum looked like polished granite when he passed over it. Looking at him, you’d think he was the tallest person in the world; 173cm of pure glory and genius and goodness and good hair (gelled up, so that maybe he’d reach 176cm or so) and also maybe sex. Jongin always berated himself for thinking that last part, but then he’d look at the President’s son again, in Canali or Gucci or Armani or whatever-other-i he was wearing, and comfort himself with the idea that if only he’d come down from heaven, Jesus Christ would think exactly the same thing.
That was one thing he had in common with Jesus Christ. The other was that even Jesus Christ would not be able to touch the President’s son.
“Maybe you should try math pick-up lines,” Chanyeol said, elbowing Jongin in the middle of the cafeteria line. His styrofoam soup bowl slid over a little too quickly in the attempt because he was too stupid to let go of his tray and an inedible-looking slop sloshed over the side. “Or maybe history. He seems like a history guy. ‘Are you Lee Seungman, because I want you to be my first.’”
“Right,” Jongin said, nodding like he’d been listening. They’d always made fun of him since the first day of high school, but there was something different this time. His arms were crossed over the table, between him and the scratched, dull-red plastic of his food tray. “I totally agree.”
“I can’t believe you, honestly,” Baekhyun said, throwing an ice cube from his water at Jongin’s face, and then two more once Jongin finally turned to face him, scowling.
“Will you stop making that face at me?”
Jongin continued to make that face at Baekhyun for several seconds before another cube of ice hit his forehead. He proceeded to groan and slump over, with his face in his arms. When he tilted his head to the side, peeking at the President’s son through his bangs, he saw that he’d sat down alone. For some reason, Jongin’s heart felt that this was a good reason to crawl up into his throat and sit there for a while. He turned his head back into his arms and whined, resisting the urge to stomp his feet on the floor. Baekhyun rubbed his back, which didn’t make him feel much better because he probably had ketchup on his fingers.
“If you were an American,” Chanyeol said after some time, “you’d be Babe-raham Lincoln.”
“Shut up,” Jongin said. “I’m going to cry.”
☆☆☆
The President’s son’s name was Do Kyungsoo. Jongin knew this because freshman year was the year after the election, and the President had been in office for less than a month. He was primarily a literature student and didn’t pay attention to much of anything outside of his books. During the first math class, Jongin had looked up from his book just in time to see Kyungsoo walk in. There were no seats left but the one next to him, so Kyungsoo sat down next to him and smiled.
“Hope you don’t mind,” he’d said, tilting his head to the side.
He still remembered what Kyungsoo had been wearing: a light blue, longsleeve button-up, tucked into his khakis, still smooth under a crisp navy suit; the four-in-hand knot of his dark red tie centered perfectly between the folds of his collar; the brown leather belt threaded neatly through the loops of his pants. His hair had been gelled up in the front at a slight angle to the side, so that when you first looked, it was messy enough to seem natural, leaning over like the way waves were often painted. The rest was gelled down to the side, although he had staggered carefully over the hairline so that you couldn’t see it. Chanyeol had been angry about it because he insisted that Kyungsoo had to have used a ton of gel to have hair that perfect, but under the light you couldn’t see the slightest hint of a reflection from that uniform black hair.
The point was, Jongin knew the President’s son’s name because he’d been taking all of this in while waiting for the teacher to call him for attendance. When he put his hand up and said, “here,” Jongin would know his name. Only after class, when Baekhyun smacked him upside the head and said, “Dude, can you make your staring a little less obvious? I’m sure the prez’s son already knows he’s hot without your rude googly-eyes,” did he realize that he had been sitting next to the President’s son, staring at him for probably ten straight minutes.
“Oh my God,” Jongin had said. “But.”
“But what?” Chanyeol said.
“I,” he said, scratching the side of his head, “I think I’m in love.”
Baekhyun smacked him upside the head. “That’s, literally, so gay.”
“And Kyungsoo is probably so not,” Chanyeol added.
Jongin shook his head. That wasn’t even the worst part. Most people weren’t gay and he would probably marry a girl anyway to make his mother happy, which he’d accepted a long time ago. The worst part was that Jongin never fell in love with him because he was the President’s son, like the cluster of girls who always followed him wherever he went. He fell in love with him because of fate and because he was hot, but now that he knew, he could never think, “Kyungsoo,” without thinking right after it, “the President’s son.”
“Kyungsoo,” Jongin said, trying out the name on his own lips, “the President’s son.”
Baekhyun snickered. “If you call him that in bed, I swear.”
The President’s son, Jongin thought. Who cannot possibly be gay or marry a man or even anyone in this school and probably already has five girlfriends lined up for his hand in marriage because he’s the President’s son.
“Oh, Jongin,” Chanyeol said, patting him on the back. “Don’t cry. Anyone who gels their hair like that must be gay.”
☆☆☆
“Are you Lee Seungman,” Jongin blurted out, three weeks before junior prom when he passed Kyungsoo in the halls. “Because you’re Babe-raham Lincoln.”
Someone had told the nasty head of the school tabloid club, Kim Jongdae, that the President’s son was bisexual. Not only had he/she told him that the President’s son was bisexual but he/she had told him in equally as nasty detail about this “threesome thing with a girl and a boy” that he/she saw the President’s son doing in the locker room after school hours. Most of the school thought the President’s son was much too smart to be bisexual, let alone in public, let alone do a threesome in the locker room, but everyone was avoiding him anyway, and that was why he was sitting alone that day in the cafeteria. And he still walked like a God.
Do Kyungsoo, the President’s son, furrowed his eyebrows quizzically but laughed a little, one of those quick exhales from his nose, accompanied by a small smile. “Jongin, right?”
“I’m sorry,” Jongin said, horrified. “I messed up.”
“Messed up what?”
“My friends, um, told me to try some history pick-up lines. And I didn’t mean to but I saw your face and they sort of just came out. Because of your face.”
Kyungsoo paused for a moment. The smile was completely off his face now, and he was pursing his lips. “Is this about that rumor? Because it’s not true, you know. I’m straight.”
“Oh. I mean, yeah, I knew that. I knew you were, I mean, are, straight. But actually I really have liked your face” no “for a very long time and so I wanted to use some pick-up lines anyway even if you are straight because you’re” stop, stop now, STOP “really hot, and my friend said you probably already know that but, I mean I’m not, I’m straight, totally-”
“Hey, Jongin, calm down.”
The President’s son was wearing a light grey button up today, tucked into his khakis, with a navy tie striped with sky blue and no suit. His hair was the way waves were often painted and he really liked Kyungsoo’s eyes, he thought, they were so deceiving. They made him look so innocent but it was just like his hair, that if you looked closely enough you would see how deep the dark brown of his irises went, just how incredible of a person he was, how bottomless his heart was, how restless his brain was, how perfect, how perfect, how perfect. Jongin wanted to fall into them forever, because even if Kyungsoo was straight there was no bottom to his heart and no need to be caught.
“There’s nothing wrong with being gay, or bisexual, if that’s what you are. I’m just saying,” there was a peculiar emphasis on the saying, which Jongin just took for his own wishful thinking, “I’m not. And if you’re trying to tell me that you like my face and think I’m hot and want to use pick-up lines on me because of that, that’s cool.”
“Okay,” Jongin said, still trying to see how deep the dark brown of Kyungsoo’s irises went. “Then, are you Lee Seungman?”
Kyungsoo laughed.
“Because I want you to be my first.”
“That’s horrible,” he said, and they were walking to class together now. “I’m going to tell my father.”
☆☆☆
The President’s son, as it turned out, was a sucker for history pick-up lines, and also didn’t have very many friends. Especially after the tabloid incident. Jongin was sure he’d still have some remnant of the large crowds of girls constantly flocking around him (surely some of them had to be okay with bisexuality, since it meant he might still date them) had it not been for the threesome thing written in nasty detail spanning four pages of the publication. It was like one of those porn-without-plot type fanfictions that Baekhyun wrote about what he liked to call the Chinese Swag Duo, made up of that really tall guy from Guangzhou and the not-as-tall-but-pretty-tall pretty boy from Beijing, filled with kinks from the farthest reaches of the universe. He was now the only friend to the President’s son, and people were beginning to suspect things.
“You can probably sue for that nasty tabloid thing, right?” Jongin said, after the ex-President of Do Kyungsoo’s fanclub made a snide remark about Jongin being the boy whose name was redacted in the article. There was apparently now also a rumor that Do Kyungsoo had paid to have the names of the other two redacted because he was in love with both of them. “It’s obviously untrue and you’re a public figure so this is all sorts of lies and slander.”
Kyungsoo shrugged. “My dad could probably take care of it. If I wanted it to be taken care of. I just think it’s silly.”
“Silly?”
“Honestly, Jongin. Who is going to believe I’m into mucophilia?”
“What-o-philia?”
“Did you even read it? I read it. It was horrifying. They were like, ‘HEADLINE: THE PRESIDENT’S SON LIKES SUCKING SNOT!’ Honestly. Honestly, I don’t even eat the cafeteria food. My dad has it prepared for me. What makes anyone think I’d suck snot?”
Jongin thought for a moment, just a moment, about Kyungsoo sucking snot. “That’s gross.”
“The point is that I don’t really mind what people think of me. I’m the President’s son and I have an established reputation at this school for fitting into a Good President’s Son role, and if people want to go believing things left and right about me, then they aren’t the right kind of people.” Kyungsoo slung his arm around Jongin’s shoulder, and then tensed almost immediately. “Hey, can I do this?”
“Sure,” Jongin said. Kyungsoo’s arm relaxed around his shoulders. It hurt a little but he smiled anyway. “We’re friends. I don’t mind.”
Kyungsoo paused for a moment, glancing at Jongin like he was missing something. Then, he said, “Oh, okay. Great.”
☆☆☆
A week before junior prom, it was established that Chanyeol was going to prom with his dog and Baekhyun was going steady with his laptop, which meant that Jongin would be the only one of his friends at prom alone. Meonggu and Jianggu weren’t big fans of this kind of thing. Which meant he could do only one thing.
“Hey, Kyungsoo,” Jongin said, tapping the President’s son on the shoulder as he stood in front of his locker. “Are you Cuba, because you’re putting my missile in a crisis.”
“Jesus, Jongin. Don’t nuke me, though.”
“Only if you go to prom with me?”
Kyungsoo turned around and eyed Jongin. “Like, as dates?”
“Friend-dates?”
“Jongin,” Kyungsoo said. “I think we need to talk for a little bit.”
They went to the roof to talk. The air was cold. The slight breeze picked up the edges of Kyungsoo’s suit and pushed his hair around. It was a little funny if you looked hard enough because his hair was gelled, so it looked like all of it was moving as one, like it was about to leap off his head and fly away. They went to the edge, leaning against the concrete wall, and then Kyungsoo turned to look at Jongin. Afraid to look back, Jongin stared out across the street, picking out the details of Seoul’s corporate buildings and apartment complexes and counting the birds on the telephone wires.
“The thing is, I know who leaked that to the tabloid. It didn’t actually happen, but I know who leaked it. I had a friend in middle school who I kissed once, on a dare, a boy, and neither of us was really entirely against it. But I’m the President’s son, you know, and he wanted to start a thing and I said I couldn’t. At least, I thought I couldn’t, because if I weighed it in my head he didn’t matter more than keeping up my dad’s reputation. It's been, what, three years already and he hasn't stopped bothering me about it. Sometimes we went out for coffee but I wasn’t into much more. Anyway, I told him straight up the other day that I couldn’t and that I wasn’t into guys at all and I was just confused and middle school was a mistake but obviously,” he bumped his elbow against Jongin’s here, “hopefully, obviously, I was lying.”
Jongin turned to face Kyungsoo. “Oh.”
“So he did this because he figured, if I’m already outed, it wouldn’t look bad to have a boyfriend. You know? And then I wouldn’t be able to use that as an excuse anymore.”
“Oh.”
“Of course that just made me kinda mad that he would do that so I told him the he couldn’t do that, and he got mad too and made up that whole text-porn mess to get back at me instead of just outing me to my school, which by itself is bad enough.” He paused, then laughed and shook his head. “I still can’t believe anyone believes that thing about the snot.”
“I’m sorry your first kiss was an asshole,” Jongin said.
“Nah. It doesn’t matter. It was fun when it happened.”
“Hey, Jongin,” Kyungsoo said, and Jongin wasn’t so sure when his face had gotten so close. “Are you Yun Boseon, because I want you to be my second.”
“Okay,” Jongin said, listening to the way the word sounded at the end, cut off, lost in something bigger than itself, because Kyungsoo was kissing him.
☆☆☆
Do Kyungsoo, the President’s son, went to junior prom with Kim Jongin, a middle-class boy who lived in a second-tier apartment complex across from the school campus. Despite all the tabloid bullshit, the way he turned the linoleum to granite beneath his feet was enough to convince the majority of the class that even if he and Jongin were dating, even if he was bisexual, or gay, or into sucking snot, that there was nothing at all wrong with it. You couldn’t walk like that if something was wrong with you, anyway. So they were voted, somehow, Prom King and Queen, and because Kyungsoo had had enough drama for the year, Jongin bit his tongue and sat down in the Queen’s spot while Kyungsoo snickered at him. And, because he felt like it, Kyungsoo told everyone that he didn’t know what his sexuality was, really, but he liked Jongin, and this was his coming out. Just that he liked Jongin.
And at the end of his speech, which had Chanyeol and Baekhyun in tears (a funny sight, really, because Chanyeol was holding his dog so close to his face that you could compare the sizes of their ears and realize you couldn’t tell whose were bigger, and Baekhyun had put a bowtie on his laptop and was holding it to his cheek), he asked Jongin to tell another history pickup line. Chanyeol’s eyebrows shot out of his face and he yelled across the whole dance floor, “IF YOU WERE AN AMERICAN! IF YOU WERE AN AMERICAN!”
Jongin laughed and took Kyungsoo’s hand. He put the microphone to his mouth as he leaned in and said, “You’d be Babe-raham Lincoln.”