Bum Like You (Amber/Henry)

[warmboys]

Bum Like You
Amber/Henry & an assortment of tagalongs
~4000 words
PG-13
Birthday fic for starlitbright!! Tricked you didn't I ;D





BUM LIKE YOU

“Rule one-”

“There are no rules,” Amber guessed.

“No,” Heechul said sternly, flinging his free arm, the one unarmed with an Absolut bottle, around her in a way that didn’t seem invasive or lecherous. “Rule one: you can pregame anything.”

She was sixteen. He must’ve read her mind, because the next rule was, “Age is just a fascist concept. What is time? Do I look twenty-three to you?” He was twenty-five.

“Never mind. Let’s blow this joint.”

After three hours of sipping tequila sunrises in the dark while trying not to notice Heechul or anyone else she sort-of knew bump and grind against other people she sort-of knew, she stood up unsteadily in heels plucked from Victoria’s closet (too high and not roomy enough to hold all her fat toes) and was overwhelmed by all the blood suddenly rushing to her head, little bursts of light spotting her vision. She limped her way to the exit, realized too late that she’d forgotten her coat, and was greeted by a friendly blast of subzero South Korea January wind. “Holy-” but even her tongue wasn’t cooperating, and then something heavy and thick fell over her shoulders, like a curtain or blanket of death-

“You’re gonna need this.”

It took moments for the eyes to come into focus, then the nose, the lips, the PlayDoh cheeks. He carried the smell of the club with him, the questionable mix of booze awakening her gag reflex. “Thanks,” she said, twisting the jacket around her neck, and tripped forward to empty out her stomach. He held her at the elbow and looked the other way, toward the brighter lights and waiting taxis parked at the curb, one after another, their drivers either warm and asleep or smoking a leisurely cigarette.

“Thanks,” she said again, this time in English. “How do I get home?”

“Do you have your phone?” Henry asked.

“Yeah. It’s in my pocket.” But her pants didn’t have pockets because they weren’t pants but some sequined black mini she couldn’t remember putting on, and from this dizzy angle the black fishnets looked like ugly rhombuses tattooed all over her legs.

The cold air must have helped, or the convenient store bottled water. Amber didn’t remember going in, only Henry counting out coins at the register, the teenage cashier’s apathetic gaze shifting from one to the other, as if he mildly suspected that Henry had roofied this poor girl’s drink and was now interested in whether the night would play out in his favor. The glare of florescent lighting gave her a new headache, and so she wandered to the bathroom to puke it out, but found with a shockingly sober horror that her eyeliner had migrated a couple millimeters from her water line and in an act of mad desperation tried to fix it with spit because the faucet wasn’t working.

“Are you alive?”

“Just a sec!” But she’d only made it worse and now had only her asymmetrical mess of hair to cover it up.

He laughed when he saw her face and led her out of the store by the wrist, his fingers kind of clammy like a bad nervous habit. They sat down on the edge of the sidewalk, dodging the gaps between gutter bars and she drank the water in loud, open-mouthed gulps.

“Did you have fun?” He asked, though it was obviously a stupid question.

Amber wiped her mouth against the back of her arm. “Ask me again tomorrow.”

“Heechul-hyung is so crazy. He’s way out there.”

“Ugh, I know.”

“You’re close to eighteen, right?” She didn’t correct him. “He did the same thing to me when I was eighteen. I had like five shots and I was out. Simon D had to carry me back.”

Amber frowned, trying to recall. Simon D was the one who kept slapping his own ass and getting low-low-low-low on the dance floor. “So embarrassing.”

“But it’s nice. He tries to break us in.”

“Heechul?”

“Yeah.”

“That sounds painful.”

“It is, sorta.”

After some time the cold settled in, sending a bristle down the back of Amber’s dress and Henry’s arm quickly draping over the part of her shoulder that his jacket, having slipped a little, had left uncovered, their skin touching where his sleeve rode up, the tender underside of the arm. A taxi pulled up at their feet, Amber struggling to find balance in a vertical position with the help of Henry’s hand for support, and then she was inside, safe and windproof.

He rapped his knuckles against the window and as she rolled down the glass the cold slipped in again, along with a piece of chewing gum wrapper he folded into her palm. “Call me when you’re home, okay?” She nodded groggily. In the dark of the car she couldn’t make out the digits on the back of the wrapper.

Her phone, though, was back at the club, lost on an unassuming couch next to a drunk couple making out like they were due for a long separation or an apocalypse. Instead she punched his number into Sulli’s phone as the magnae snored into the pillow. Her fingers felt too big for the phone.

im home. thx for everything. She backspaced and deleted “for everything.” night.

A minute later the phone flashed and made a ding sound. Sulli moaned unintelligibly and rolled onto her back. Amber stared at the side of her head carefully for moments before checking the phone.

goodnight Puking Beauty :)

Before coming to Korea she’d heard a lot of rumors about SM Ent. “They’re going to give you a new face,” said Eunju, double-dipping her nacho.

“But they said they liked my face.”

“Still,” Eunju insisted. Her mouth was covered in cheese. “My sister’s friend’s cousin is a coordi there and she’s seen the before and afters. Oh, can you take a photo with Sooyoung-unnie for me?”

“Everyone there is cursed,” said Brian, the half-Korean math tutor she’d had a two-day crush on before seeing him walking on the dock holding hands with another equally heart-stoppingly attractive guy.

“What do you mean by ‘cursed’?”

“Horrible stuff happens to them. You know how Kim Heechul got into a car accident, and U-Know Yunho was almost poisoned by an antifan.”

Amber gulped. Brian saw, and continued, more gently: “My aunt told Lee Soo Man’s fortune once-apparently everything he touches turns to gold and then . . .”

“And then what?”

He balled up his hand into a fist and then released all five fingers at once. “Poof.”

Jackie was the most optimistic. She pinched Amber’s cheek and said to her younger sister’s reflection, “Maybe you’ll fall in love.”

The first thing they did was cut her hair. And then they cut it again, and again, and again.

In preparation for “Pinocchio” their manager oppa deemed it necessary that they all watch some groundbreaking expose on the food industry-”Amber, you translate,” he ordered, because it was in English, but within fifteen minutes it was clear that the explicit images of dead chickens and pigs were pretty self-explanatory. Victoria easily shaved off ten pounds in the following three weeks.

“The worst part was when they showed the chickens standing among other chicken carcasses and, also, this was in the dark because these chickens never get to see light.”

“That sounds really sick,” Henry agreed.

“Yeah . . . but guess what, my only task for the next month is to gain muscle.”

“Is that why you’re at home instead of out like the rest of the girls?”

“No, Sulli and Krystal are at a magazine shoot. Victoria’s filming with appa. I think Luna has her day off today.” Amber scratched her stomach. “You know what I’m craving?”

“A hot dog.”

“No-oh my god, shut up.”

“What? I was craving one yesterday.”

“Oh. I thought you were . . . never mind.”

“. . . hahahahaha, Amber.”

“Shut up. I’m craving, like, really greasy, greasy, deep-fried chicken with bacon on the side-”

“I’m still on the hot dog.”

“-dripping-oil-over-your-fingers greasy-”

“I had no idea you were so dirty.”

Amber wanted to chuck the phone at the wall, but this was the third phone she’d gone through since debut. “Oh my God, shut up, you know I’m not.”

“Whatever,” he was still laughing, like a jerk. “Wanna go to McD’s?”

“Um, yeah?”

There was a pause. When his voice came back on the phone, it sounded further away. “Hold on, I’m changing. Put you on speaker phone.”

Amber tried not to think about him shirtless.

“I have a six-pack,” Henry called from wherever he was putting on or taking off a shirt.

She forced out a snort. “Yeah, in the fridge.”

“Wow, Amber, wow. The lack of trust here.” Pause. “Alright, done. Where do you want to meet?”

An innocent trip to the nearby McDonald’s quickly turned into an all-day affair. “You know what I really wanna do, is go to an arcade,” Amber drawled over her straw and Henry’s eyes lit up at the same time hers did and they carried out a perfect execution of their elaborate brofive while a couple middle-aged women at the next table looked on disapprovingly.

“Hey, check this out,” Henry said, grabbing her arm and pointing at the half-eaten crispy chicken sandwich they were passing back and forth.

All Amber saw was a layering of pickles maimed from Henry’s last bite, slathered in mayo and surrounded by a couple floppy tomato slices.

Henry shoved the whole thing in Amber’s face, as if telling her to look closer.

“It’s a Henberger.”

Amber opened her mouth to say something horrible and mean, or as horrible and mean as she could ever pull off, but the snappy insult remained plugged in her throat when she noticed that three of his fingers were touching the inside of her wrist and that if she had twisted her hand at just the right angle he could’ve maybe felt her heart beating through her skin.

“Good morning!” Luna chirped the next morning.

Amber squinted at her, groaned, and rolled out of bed holding her stomach. “Not so loud, please. I can’t . . .”

Luna immediately transformed into a worried bandmate. “What’s wrong? You look horrible.” A fact that Amber easily confirmed once she hopped over to the mirror. Her eye circles were twice as dark as usual, and there was no way anyone would mistake them for aegyo-fat at this point. Even her skin seemed to sag.

“I drank.” Amber rolled down her pajama pants and quickly closed the door. “Get out, I need to, um, relieve myself.”

“Do what you have to do,” Luna said wisely. “Don’t tell me this was Heechul-oppa’s fault again.”

“No,” Amber called through gritted teeth. Memories of last night stopped after a certain point. They’d hit up a restaurant for dinner, then drank outside a GS25 next to a bicycle rack, Henry saying something about how he secretly wanted to get a motorcycle and then Amber replying that he’d always be overcompensating for his Canadian lameness and some playful shoving while she tried to get him to say words like “house” and “about” and the fruity cocktail-in-a-can warmed her insides and she thought, looking at the darkening sky, how much she loved spring, and then they’d walked to the park in Hongdae where some people were tap-dancing and they sat and watched, and she grew lighter and lighter until she was floating, her head fitting perfectly into the nook of his neck and shoulder and naturally he moved to tuck his arm around her waist and anyone watching would’ve thought they were a couple if from the back she didn’t look so uncannily like a teenage boy.

“Crap crap crap crap crap crap crap nuts.” She couldn’t remember the rest of it.

“Do you need help?” Luna asked, opening the door a crack.




Paris was serious bonding time for the groups, but Amber found herself roaming the streets with SHINee more than enjoying the hotel facilities with Krystal, who had always tired easily, and Victoria, delegated to keep her company. Maybe it was the fact that she and Jonghyun were twins according to 100% of all facial recognition devices, but hanging out with the boys meant being privy to all their secret boytalk, which, she noticed, wasn’t too different from the usual f(x) dorm conversation.

“I want to live here. It’s actually upsetting to me that I don’t,” Kibum said, angrily mashing his raspberry sorbet. He’d scoop up some into his mouth and then, thoughtfully, as though letting it melt on his tongue, stop talking, only to continue mashing after a couple seconds. Amber watched, entranced, but Jonghyun was nonplussed.

“Sometimes,” Amber said slowly. “You remind me of 2NE1’s CL.”

Kibum dropped his spoon. Jonghyun gaped and subsequently, as though in slow motion, collapsed into a fit of giggles.

“I’m going to take that as a compliment,” Kibum told her over Jonghyun’s sniggling.

It might’ve been Victoria who said to her, back when they first met, during all those initial icebreaker conversations (favorite movie? Why are you here? What do you think you were in a past life? First love? to which Amber had smiled nervously and said, “I don’t know if it’s ever happened to me,” and Krystal and Sulli exchanged horrified glances, but Victoria put on her best leaderly face and explained, carefully), “I think you know when you’re-” and it was like words couldn’t contain the thoughts behind them, language wasn’t enough, “-when you’re, just, say, walking down the street, and suddenly you start thinking about that person . . . taking a picture with your cameraphone of . . . a flower that’s growing in the cracks of concrete-to show that person.”

“That’s very poetic,” Luna had nodded in agreement. “I think so too. When you’re always thinking of that person, even in unusual circumstances.”

Right now Amber was looking at the rose macaroon she just purchased and there was only one person in the world she could think of that she wanted to share it with.

“Quick,” she gasped, gripping the arm of the nearest person, who happened to be Jonghyun, innocently waiting in line to choose his dessert, “How much is an international call to Korea?”

“-Hello?”

“Hey. Hey! This is Amber.”

“Oh-Amber? Aren’t you-”

“In Paris? Yeah, yeah, I am. It’s great. So, see, right now I’ve got this pastry-”

“Hey, can you hold?”

Several microscopic beats that seemed to stretch out into eons, galaxies, worlds building upon worlds.

“Sorry. Hey, let’s talk when you’re back? I’m kinda-” he lowered his voice, “-busy right now.”

“Oh. Yeah, sure, no prob, let’s talk--”

“You look happy.”

Kibum took the stool next to hers at the bar, where she sat slumped over the counter, allowing the faint background jazz dance in one ear and out the other while not pondering how the knot in her stomach got there, who put it there, etc.

“Not feeling so hot from that macaroon?”

“No, I’m fine.”

“C’mon.”

She sat up, hoping it would get him to leave her alone. “You should be outside doing Paris-y things. You said you wanted to live here forever, right?”

“If you leave me alone with Jonghyun he’s going to start talking about his sex life.”

She cringed.

“Exactly.” He rested his elbow on the counter. “I don’t really have a plethora of options right now.”

“I see.”

“C’mon, Amber. Talk to me.”

Amber took a deep breath, and expelled it just as slowly. “Okay. Let’s say-” she paused. His gaze was deep and penetrating and caught her off-kilter. She cleared her throat. “Okay, be honest. What do you think of me?”

“You’re great.”

“Can you . . . elaborate?”

“You’re the most sensitive American I know.”

“Oh. Thanks.”

“Well,” Kibum amended, “You’re very honest and considerate, and everyone likes you.”

“Not everyone.”

“Is this about a boy?”

Amber didn’t say anything.

Kibum quirked an eyebrow. “A girl?”

Amber opened her mouth. “Which do you think?”

“It’s not Krystal, is it? Because great as you are, you probably don’t stand a chance.”

“I know,” Amber sighed, and Kibum’s eyes widened. “I mean, no! It isn’t her.”

“Was it ever her?” He probed, genuinely curious now.

Amber thought about it. “I don’t think so. There are a lot of girls-I see them, and there’s an instant . . .”

“Attraction.”

“Um, something. Like, with Victoria, she’s gorgeous. And I know that. But I don’t want to be her. I mean, she’s beautiful, but I’d rather just appreciate it from, from a third perspective or something.”

“Okay.”

“But Krystal’s kind of different. I get that she’s gorgeous, but there were times, too, when . . . I’ve wanted that kind of beauty for myself, too. I think.”

Kibum looked thoughtful. “It’s all an aesthetic.”

“I guess.”

“Sometimes it’s hard to know if you want to be someone or to be with them.”

“Yeah. That’s why boys are easy.”

Something in the air changed with those words. She didn’t know what it was, but something was different. Kibum felt it, too.

“This is the first time I’ve said this to anyone,” Amber admitted.

“Do you think that this boy, the one who’s got you feeling like shit, do you think you chose him because he’s ‘easy’?”

“No.”

She wished she had hesitated.

The OCCUPIED sign had just morphed into VACANT and as soon as Jonghyun unbuckled his seat belt to take a dump Amber pounced on his seat and curled up next to Kibum, who’d been pretending to be sleeping as to not have to talk with Jonghyun. They had a complicated friendship. Rich but complicated.

“I’m starting to feel like I should be dating, too,” Kibum whispered. “Practically half the hyungs are, and now even Taemin-even Henry-hyung-”

Amber froze. The OCCUPIED sign had gone back to VACANT and Jonghyun was about to return at any moment.

“I heard his American ex-girlfriend came to visit him recently, and they’ve been staying at the same hotel-shh, it’s top secret, though, I just heard Siwon-hyung talking about it.“

The plane experienced some turbulence but Amber remembered none of it. She was gone for the entire twelve hours.

WB to korea!! :) sorry bout last time. let’s catch up!! Mcd’s again?

I guess BK is ok too… :)

Hey did you get my txts?

Amber turned off her phone.

house about cow arouse

amberrrrrr

you have unlimited txting right? If you don’t reply i’ll take that as a yes

cmon i miss u puking beauty!

Finally, she wrote back, “Hi. I’m sorry to whoever has been sending these messages, but ‘puking beauty’ is no longer in possession of this phone. Your friend must have gotten a new number. Please stop harassing me on this line, or I will be forced to notify the police.”

Krystal read over the stilted message and proofread it to sound completely native Korean. It was too large to send as one single text and required being broken up into three separate files.

I apologize, Henry wrote back a few minutes later. He spelled the first character wrong.

Turning nineteen didn’t mark a landmark of any sort, not when she could’ve smoked a year’s worth of cigarettes back home or self-pleasured to a year’s worth of risque DVDs-not that she would’ve needed to buy them, with Hyukjae-oppa as an available nearby resource-but they threw a party anyway, made her put on a dress, dolled her up in shimmery makeup and called it a night on the town. “They” included Yuri, who said she’d been waiting forever to see Amber drunk, even if she herself had seen a sharp decline in tolerance since her diet so she would have to “sit out a couple--but it’s your night, and you need to get on your dancing shoes!”

It took three of the other girls to wrestle Amber’s sneakers away from her.

This time was better. The bouncer didn’t even card, and within minutes Amber found herself holding a free drink, on the house, thanks to much “say hi to the birthday girl!!!” advertising from Yuri and Sunny. Naturally a horde of sweaty but passably good-looking guys swarmed around the unnies but before she knew it she was deep in conversation with an ABK expat with the softest black hair she’d ever seen.

“Do you want to dance?” she asked bravely, and he extended his hand like he’d watched too many old movies and wanted to prove that chivalry could be resuscitated, momentarily, at least for certain people’s birthdays, and she held him close as they moved together, close enough to feel how excited he was to be there with her, and it was the first time she knew for sure any guy was. It didn’t turn her off; on the contrary she felt exhilarated, empowered even by this awakening of whatever feminine charm had lay dormant in her this whole time, and she allowed herself to rub against him, felt him harden and his arms wrap even more tightly around her waist, like she was this small, fragile thing that could get him off and a whole lot more, too, a whole lot infinitely more, she thought, as he then spun her around so that they were dancing face to face, so he could lower his head, tilted, and gently suck on the spot on her neck that tickled the most-”Stop it,” she giggled, and the voice was disembodied as if it’d come from someone else, a younger, other girl, not her, but he wouldn’t stop, his tongue darting over rapidly sensitizing skin and suddenly it was all extremely, overwhelmingly wrong, “This is wrong,” she whispered, and said it again, louder, and when he couldn’t seem to hear her she broke free of that entrancing hold and found herself not unlike the same place she stood three years ago, cold, alone, on some sidewalk, except.

Her phone had been flashing unread message in her purse for the past hour.

I know this probably isn’t you, but . . . happy birthday.

She texted back with numb fingertips, “its me.”

If Amber had planned in her drunken state to be cold or unresponsive, all that resolve instantly drained out of her upon the sight of his brown-blackening hair from behind the glass of the taxi window. Before she could even begin to yell or be an embarrassed disoriented mess, he hugged her, and it felt so wonderful she couldn’t remember why she ever gave this up in the first place.

But-she pulled back abruptly, lowered her eyes. “I know about that girl.”

“What girl?”

“Your ex. The one that came to visit you.”

“Duoyi?” Henry started laughing but stopped as he saw how Amber looked. “She’s had a crush on me since forever.”

“So you stayed at her hotel.”

“What? Who told you that? Was it Shindong-hyung-we had dinner twice while she was in Seoul. She’s seeing someone now. God,” Henry carefully examined Amber. “Is this what you were upset about all this time?”

“I wasn’t upset.”

“I thought it was about the kiss.”

“What-kiss?”

“The time that I-we. . . that time in Hongdae, in the park, when I, I kind of kissed you and you pushed me away. . . and passed out.”

Oh my God.

“Are you serious?”

“Dude-do you think I would make this up? Does this look like the face of someone who’d make this elaborate story up?” (He was blushing.)

“I don’t know. I’m drunk.”

“Yeah, I can smell that.”

“Shut up.”

“Make me.”

“Okay.”

October was New York, which meant doing all the disgusting touristy stuff she’d meant to do and hadn’t been able to out of sheer stupidity-induced depression, except now with a partner-in-crime, and they roamed the fishy streets of Chinatown looking for Gucci knockoffs, “Convincing ones for Jackie,” Amber explained, “she’s become this huge diva since we debuted.’” Sometimes holding hands when they felt brave, most of the time just letting their fingers brush accidentally, a natural and unsuspicious consequence of walking that closely together. A ton of gelato-tasting in Little Italy, occasionally Henry would go nuts and chase after the pigeons and Amber would stand far away and pretend she didn’t know him, nope, never sucked his face before or fell asleep in the middle of a conversation with his chest rising and falling against her ear, his chin on the top of her hair, she was just so comfortable. On the way back to the hotel they stopped by a small Korean boutique, drawn to the allure of a pair of silver rings, “Perfect for couple,” said the quick-witted ahjumma, looking from Henry to Amber, who exchanged a meaningful look and then shook their heads at the same time. They were too shy for it, perhaps, but besides, they already shared something way more immediate between them. An entire fucking language. No, two. Two and a half. Practically three (badly).

“Whatever,” Amber said and, when she was sure no one was looking, licked the sweet gelato stain off the corner of his mouth.