now I lay you down to rest... WIP dump (suho and company)

[warmboys]

scrub scrub scrub

- suchen

I grew up watching my brother put lotion on himself every night. When I say “grew up” I mean past the age of twelve, which is roughly when my memories begin. The opening shot is of Joonmyun knuckling a quarter of Vaseline onto his palm and smoothing it down his bare calf, the short leg hairs bristling like wet grass. He rubs it unevenly all over the front and back of his calf, rolls up the other pant leg, and shucks off the excess by chafing both legs together. It looks like he’s doing the romp at a school dance, or the electric eel. I don’t laugh. I extend my own legs out on the bed so that my toes hit him mid-thigh and demand, “Do me too,” when he looks up.

- suho (/kai, /chen, /sehun, /kyuhyun), recovering addict

“Embrace the wave. Think of it as an arm, a great majestic arm ready to wrap you in a big hug.”

“I’m gonna drown, aren’t I.”

“You’re not gonna drown, man. Chillax. Want some melatonin? I think I have some in the back.”

“No,” Joonmyun holds up a hand. “I’m cool. And what the fuck, wouldn’t that put me to sleep?”

The Chinese kid behind the counter shrugs. The skin on his neck is goosepimply, right where the bristly crew cut begins. He looks kind of sallow and sun-damaged, like a seasoned carp hung out to dry for way too long. He could’ve been good-looking once, Joonmyun decides, had life not guided him down the path of drugs and destruction. That’s what he calls it now, D&D. Some people say the first D is for death. Joonmyun isn’t a fan of the morbid. Plus he likes specificity. Drugs and destruction. He’s been clean for two years now.

It wasn’t like he’d been a huge addict to begin with. It’d started at a college seonbae’s fishing trip, a longwinded conversation about the state of their current lives eventually concluding with the both of them passing a joint back and forth. Joonmyun’s fingers shook like a virgin. They reeled in a giant trout and then collapsed on top of each other. Inside the tent there might’ve been some making out. Kyuhyun kept saying, “shh,” like the bears could hear them. The idea of them being cockblocked by bears was enough to make Joonmyun start giggling all over again. In the morning the inside of his mouth smelled like a mix of animal carcass and Kyuhyun. He felt for the ring on his finger, which he still wore even though it’d been five years since her death. It was still there. Kyuhyun woke up and the first thing he said was, “ah.” Half of his hair stuck to his face and the other half away from his face. The both of them were in their underwear. Joonmyun’s had little pink bows, Sejin had picked it out for Father’s Day last year. It was a joke present but a snug, happy fit, so he wore it quite often actually.

They agreed to never bring it up again. The next weekend Joonmyun found his own dealer, a lanky twentysomething still working on his undergrad degree. “Sometimes life throws you a curveball,” Sehun explained with a deep sigh, counting the bills Joonmyun handed him under the dim light of the street lamp. For some reason he had no qualms making the exchange in the open where people could see. “Reverse psychology. We look so suspicious no one’s actually gonna suspect us.”

Joonmyun darted nervous glances at the car parked at the corner. The man leering at them was likely a plainclothes cop. “You sure about this?”

“Trust me, I’ve been doing this for ages. I’ve got two kids to feed at home.”

Sehun had two poodles: Eva Longoria and Taylor Swift. His tastes leaned toward the mainstream. Taylor Swift was constantly peeing on his furniture, he complained, lighting a cigarette.

“Menthol,” he said. “I like the kick.”

“I see,” Joonmyun said, stuffing the package into his backpack as surreptitiously as possible while the maybe-undercover-cop continued to stare at them. Were those binoculars?

“How much an hour?” the on-second-thought maybe-not-undercover-cop asked him as he walked by the car five minutes later. Joonmyun felt the tips of his ears redden as he whispered back, “Not for sale!” He should’ve known the leather pants were a bad idea. Another joke present from Sejin but he couldn’t resist. The mirror in their house was a skinny one and Sejin had shrieked in her excited ten year old voice, “Lookin’ good, daddy!!” before breaking into a fit of crazed giggles.

The occasional monthly joint turned into a weekly thing. At work he found himself more listless and antsy than usual. He slept through his first meeting, much to the horror of his secretary Jongdae who for reasons unknown had always made no pretense of his gigantic crush on his boss. Once Joonmyun had returned to his office from the bathroom to find Jongdae sipping coffee from the same Styrofoam cup he’d left on his desk. Jongdae dropped the cup and scurried out of the room. Around the rim of the cup was imprinted only one brown stain-Jongdae had angled his mouth over the exact location where Joonmyun had placed his lips earlier.

He was becoming a pothead, he realized with horror one night after waking up naked in a bed that wasn’t his own. “Go back to sleep,” came Kyuhyun’s drowsy voice from beside him. Joonmyun shyly looked over. Kyuhyun was naked too, the branches of his stomach scar shining under the moonlight. Kyuhyun liked to sleep with the blinds open.

Sejin, he thought, with a sick twist in his belly. She was with her grandparents that weekend. He wasn’t so irresponsible as to leave her alone but still. It was time for an intervention. Joonmyun the Good Dad vs Joonmyun the Waylaid Devil.

He started jogging. The inside of his lungs felt like they were ripping apart from the unusual physical exertion. After two weeks he was able to circle the block five times without breaking a sweat. In another twelve he felt ready to sign up for a half marathon.

- inconvenient sekai, past kaisoo

Sehun met Jongin at a bad time in his life. The email exchanges had been innocuous--“hey is your room still available?” “yeah u interested?” “yeah can i come by sometime next week?” “anytime mon-fri after 5” “how about mon 8” “sounds good” “cool”-and Sehun had been relieved, because Jongin’s apartment was an eight-minute walk to the university and most other sophomores had finalized their housing plans already.

“Water?” Jongin offered after Sehun slipped out of his sneakers and almost stepped into a Styrofoam bowl of unfinished ramyun by the door. The squiggles of reddening noodle looked like ringlets of hair drawn in a western cartoon.

Jongin pulled a bottle of water out of the fridge. Sehun squinted at a perforated sheet of paper stuck to the door. 5/31 To-Do:

Sort mail

Laundry or buy new underwear

Fold clothes after

Vacuum

Buy food

Eat

Pay electric

Pay gas

Take out trash

Dishes

Shower (*important)

Sehun leaned in. Jongin’s hair smelled like ramyun.

“So when can you move in?” Jongin was asking. He had his arms crossed but his smile was unexpectedly gentle, guileless.

Sehun normally didn’t have trouble saying no. But he knew a troubled soul when he saw one. Also, he’d already been kicked out of Chanyeol’s as of this morning.

“Actually, my stuff is downstairs.”

Jongin’s life split into two eras: pre- and post-Do Kyungsoo. Technically there was a third, just prefix-less “Do Kyungsoo,” but it was the apple core, the inedible but necessary cluster of seeds around which the flesh is constructed. From which new flesh springs, if you give it time. They didn’t, Jongin said. Sehun nodded his head against the arm of the couch. In reality he was nodding off.

Once upon a time, the apple core might have been a yolk.

The best part of an egg, Sehun chimed in, happy he could contribute. Yeah, Jongin breathed. The best of the best.

Back when Jongin lived in a peaceful yolk,

- one of your french girls

Zitao finds it suspicious when he walks into Kris’ room one day and the duizhang is slumped over his laptop, expelling deep hearty guffaws into his fist. No one is watching and the blinds are drawn shut. Zitao doesn’t know why the fist is necessary.

“What’s so funny?” Zitao asks.

Kris jumps, and that makes two consecutive emotions Zitao has never seen him express until today. Two more to add to Zitao’s shrine. Ha ha. That was a joke. Zitao can make funnies in his head, too. But Kris says, “Nothing,” dismissively, and snaps his laptop shut. There are tears in his eyes. He brushes off whatever imaginary dust had fallen on him during his solitary snort-fest and ruffles Zitao’s hair before leaving the room.

Zitao makes himself comfortable in the chair that Kris warmed up for him and pulls up the Windows screen. It’s not his fault Kris uses the same password for everything.

Title: THE OPPOSITE OF DAWN
Pairings: Krisward WullenxLaylla Swan, Laylla SwanxLuhacob Black
Rating: NC-17!!! YAOI SEX.
Summary: Laylla Swan is the new boy in school and everyone wants to be his friend, especially his hot lab partner, Krisward Wullen, with the smoldering glare and great hair. Will he choose Krisward or his childhood friend Luhacob? Little does he know, Luhacob has a secret of his own…
Disclaimer: I *DO NOT* OWN ANY OF THESE CHARACTERS, THEY BELONG TO SM ENTERTAINMENT AND THE GENIUS THAT IS STEPHANIE MEYERS.

Chapter 1: A Fateful Encounter…

Zitao skims the first chapter with mild interest. The more he reads, the angrier he gets. He doesn’t come across himself until five thousand words in. By the end of it his eyes have narrowed into slits. Why isn’t he a main character? Who the hell is “Taosper,” and why does he have a southern accent? Is he Shanghainese or something?

He sits there with his hands balled into fists for a good ten minutes until Jongdae sticks his head in the door and says they’re going out for dinner.

“Huo guo huo guo,” Jongdae repeats gleefully until he realizes Zitao isn’t going to say it back at him.

Everyone spends dinner feeding Yixing. It’s like a flock of mother birds tending to their little hairless baby bird, but without the regurgitating back into his mouth part. Kris scoops up a spoon of broth filled with glass noodles and blows on it before saying, “Aaah.” Yixing opens his mouth. Luhan leaves one, two, three fishballs on Yixing’s plate. Jongdae is shoveling food into his face so quickly Minseok has to keep slapping him on the back to help it go down. So maybe there are two baby birds at the table. Zitao is gripping his knees below the table, completely unable to process his own irrational rage.

Back at the hotel, when Kris is in the shower, Zitao changes his weibo header to a picture of a bloody samurai sword. Rose-red and evocative. Everything else is black. An accurate reflection of his current emotional state. Within seconds he is flooded with questions of concern.

IS OUR TAOZI OK???

TAOZI 55555

TAO AH~~~JIEJIE WILL DRY YOUR TEARS~~

“Who says I’m crying??” he roars at the computer screen. That was a mistake. Immediately his eyes begin welling up, and now he feels like an even bigger loser than before. Maybe he is the biggest baby bird after all. But who is there to feed him? No one, that’s who.

“Shower’s all yours,” Kris says smoothly, with a towel slung around his neck, a mist of heat trailing behind like a great dragon tail. It’s negative five hundred degrees Celsius outside, and he isn’t even wearing an undershirt. Under the light his broad chest glistens with fine droplets of water. Krisward Wullen doesn’t know how to properly use a towel.

Zitao curls up into a fetal position against the wall, away from him, and says, “I’m going to bed.”

Kris, ever the taciturn hero, doesn’t ask questions.

Zitao remembers thinking, “Wow,” the first time they met. Duizhang wasn’t duizhang back then; he was just a really tall kid with hair as dark as the bottom of a well.

“You’re pretty tall yourself,” Kris said, measuring the difference between them with his hand held parallel to Zitao’s head. “How old are you, sixteen?”

“I’m seventeen,” Zitao said, because the extra year counted. But it was too late, because Kris was already getting that look on his face, all soft and pitying and weirdly parental. It lasted for a shade of a moment before he reverted back to a stony coolness.

Sometimes Zitao misses seventeen, the sloppy selcas and backhugs and Luhan’s mane like a free-spirited reject from Lion King: The Broadway Musical. Back then it was okay for his voice to break, to beg until he got what he wanted. Back then he’d tug at the corners of sleeves and hemlines, and they’d lead him places. He didn’t know any better. He was happy just to stand in the shadows of certain people he admired, to feel the warmth emanating from their backs.

Now it was all a guessing game. He couldn’t spell things out anymore. Too bad certain people were shit at guessing.

Zitao’s phone buzzes in his pocket. We have good news, reads the message from Kris, just as manager-hyung Hyunkyun bursts through the door with his arms up in a BANZAI, BAN, BANZAI stance. “Great news!” he says to the four blank faces in the kitchen. Jongdae just woke up from his nap and his hair is all curly.

“We landed a drama,” Hyunkyun continues. Behind him, Kris and Yixing make their way into the apartment. Kris looks awkwardly pleased with himself. Zitao can tell in the way he doesn’t seem to know where to look. Yixing smiles serenely with his hands in his coat pockets.

“We, like all of us?” Luhan is the first to ask. He’s just taken a big gulp of rice, and there are three kernels stuck to the corner of his mouth making a neat isosceles triangle. Minseok notices, catches Zitao’s eye, and they agree through subtle nonverbal cues that neither of them is going to bring it up.

“No,” Hyunkyun says, like that was a stupid question. “Kris here. And Yixing. It’s a Taiwanese drama called ‘Love Without a Cause.’ They’re going to play two rebels vying for Rainie Yang’s hand in marriage. Jerry Yan is playing Yixing’s dad.”

“Yixing?” Zitao repeats, and looks around the table. Everyone’s thinking the same thing. Kris might have been an obvious choice but the peace that has inhabited Yixing’s facial musculature has not been disturbed in a long time.

“We were going to go with Luhan but he has a few photoshoots lined up these next couple months, and Yixing’s already built up a bit of a fanbase…” Hyunkyun stops, noticing the apprehensive expressions around the room. Luhan has finished translating the news to Jongdae and Minseok, so now everyone looks worried. “What? This is great publicity for EXO-M. You guys might even have a few cameos here and there. The casting folks mentioned Zitao for Rainie’s stalker in the episode that drives her into Kris’ arms.”

“I know you guys are nervous about my acting,” Yixing says, meaning to comfort. “I’m nervous, too.”

No one can tell, which is even more worrying.

“You’ll be fine,” Kris says firmly, clasping a hand on his shoulder.

“I can’t wait to meet Jerry Yan,” Jongdae says, finally awake. Jongdae’s just like one of those parrots you teach to say one thing and can’t stop saying it, ever.

“You’ve got something there,” Yixing tells Luhan out of nowhere, and swipes away the trinity of rice kernels with his thumb.

“She’s mine,” Kris says.

“She’s mine,” Yixing says.

“I think that’s - that’s my line.”

“Sorry.” They both turn to Jongdae, who is squinting at the script.

“I think,” says Jongdae, “it is supposed to be raining. So you guys need to pretend you’re wet. And cold. And angry. Don’t forget about angry.”

“Maybe you’re angry because you’re wet and cold,” Minseok looks away from the soccer game long enough to suggest.

“Sh-she’s mine,” Kris improvises a stutter. Zitao catches it from where he’s sitting sullenly on the couch.

“Oh, I get it. It’s cold, and you’ve probably got water running into your nose.” Luhan sounds impressed. “Good job, keep going.”

“What’s my line again?” Yixing asks Jongdae. Jongdae stares at the script and holds up a hand. “Wait, I got this.”

Zitao doesn’t know how much more he can take. They’ve been doing this all afternoon. Without so much as a word he steps over Minseok’s extended legs and snatches the script away from Jongdae with more force than intended. Great, he thinks, now he must look like such an ass. Then, Fine. He’ll let himself ride the bad mood train to its final destination.

“I loved her first. Ever since that afternoon at the gas station, when my car broke down. She was wearing a soft pink sweater and a bow in her hair, paying for a bag of chips at the counter,” he reads aloud.

This drama is terrible. He hopes Rainie Yang has a shower scene to make up for it. But not with Kris. Not together. Just the idea makes him sick and tense, like a gutted fish. Like someone dug a hole in his stomach. With a ten-foot-long shovel. He tries to shake away the thought. They would probably slick Kris up like one of the 2PM guys in Cabi Cabi. He’d trail buttered up footprints all over the set. EXO-M would have to be changed to EXO-P for Perverted. And they had just concluded the final arc to their Sexy Concept.

Yixing repeats the line, word for word. It sounds like he’s talking about a corpse. Cast Yixing, and you have a drama about necrophilia.

Luhan claps his hands together. “Ooh, I’m getting chills,” he says.

They land in Taipei on a cloudy day. The sky speaks to Zitao’s heart. He buries the lower half of his face in his scarf, sinks deep into the sea of angry yellow skulls. It’s a good thing he’s stuck with Dark and Angsty. He doesn’t know what he’d do if he were Luhan.

They made him switch seats with Yixing on the plane. “Niu Tao and Lu Dan are over,” Luhan said with a thespian air, looping an arm through Zitao’s. “Here begins the reign of Lu Tao.”

In the row ahead Kris and Yixing were talking in inaudible whispers, heads leaning in so close they could’ve been making out. Zitao tried not to watch them through the gap between their seats and failed, multiple times. It was so stupid. They were probably just running lines. He was so stupid. He forced his gaze elsewhere-on the view through the window, the tip of the airplane wing.

“Sir, could you please pull down the window shade as we prepare for take-off?” said the flight attendant.

He blinks, and there are crowds of girls, girls with poster boards and professional cameras slung around their necks, screaming crowds of girls. Luhan is walking beside him with a placid expression, like a lake frozen over in the winter, and when he looks up, Kris and Yixing are right in front of them, in the first line of fire. Kris’s arm coils around Yixing’s waist, sealing them together in an invisible airtight jar.

“It’s good promotional material for the drama,” Hyunkyun had explained. “We have to let fans know that just because they’re playing rivals doesn’t mean they’re actually rivals in real life.”

And in that moment Zitao had wished foolishly, selfishly, impossibly that he’d been cast in Yixing’s stead.

- drabble prompt: kris' hands being able to wrap around lu han's ankles and wrists to the second knuckle
not-fic; more of fat verse aka my favorite verse

most kids like summer (swimming pools/popsicles/excuse to run around half-naked/flouncy skirts to look up) but for luhan it comes with a whole other slew of associations. hills. hills everywhere. heat rashes, and then scratching til they bleed. weekly weigh-ins. being able to recite the macronutrient makeup of a 200g chicken breast in his sleep. mosquitoes in the woods. kris' underpants on a flagpole (ok, venturing into happier territory). every summer's fat camp, the same resolutions and promises and if he's lucky, a sizable loss by the end of aug, some loose skin. stretch marks on his stomach that make him self-conscious in his swimming trunks.

"i wonder if we'll ever get there," yixing says. yixing's another veteran camper, flying in early june for eight weeks of itchy saggy torture. every aug he bids luhan goodbye several cubic cms tinier and every june he's puffed up into another teddy bear. winter looks good on him but he has a way of retreating into his shy corpulence. like a hesitant land reptile. luhan just wants him to come out and play.

"maybe. maybe not. who cares?" luhan borrows his irreverent tone from all the western tv he's been illegally streaming off joonmyun's laptop. he's a careful guy, he takes precautions. they can't do anything to joonmyun anyway, his dad owns like the world.

"who's 'they'?" zitao asks sometimes, this insufferable kid. "shut up and suck your creamsicle. the one i so selflessly swiped for you," luhan reminds him. he doesn't have the answers to everything. why is the sky blue? why does kris' mouth remind him of a glorified blowhole? why does luhan sometimes look at zhang yixing and think, fine, maybe summer isn't that bad? not that bad at all? why?

this goes on for years. new year's resolutions are hard to keep, especially when you're not all that set on keeping them. when you have reason to not keep them.

"i'm gay," luhan says his fifth consecutive year at camp. he has his hands balled into meaty fists like a loser.

kris stops in the middle of pulling out the measuring tape. "not interested."

kris is one of those kid counselors who sold their lives to the camp. some people run away to the circus; kris left home and joined a fat camp. he tells these sob stories to the new campers sometimes. fire crackling in the background as he gives them his fabricated history as a fat kid. he has his whole weight loss journey sketched out. luhan would call him out for his shit if it weren't so impressive. "ain't no thing as linear dieting," kris finishes, and everyone claps, some of the girls flicking away little teardrops with the back of their pinky nails.

it's no secret that luhan hates kris and kris hates him back. they acknowledge it like a silent fart. grudgingly. inescapably. "you know, you've gotten a lot thinner since the last time i saw you," kris is saying now. luhan feels a weak protest wriggling out of his tonsils. before he can open his mouth, kris has grabbed his arm, sliding his clammy fingers around the circumference of luhan's wrist. it's astonishing how kris makes everything look smaller. the tip of his middle finger touches the second knuckle on his thumb. luhan feels like fucking mulan right now, only a man in disguise. kris is not his general shang.

"you know i hate you, right," luhan whispers. it sounds like he's caught a frog in his throat. the admission is horrible, it means he's lost. kris doesn't even laugh though.

"the feeling," kris says, and brings the inside of luhan's wrist, the pale veiny most delicate part, to his pucked-up blowhole, "is completely mutual."

- All of the People and Places and Things, krishan
Kris steals Lu Han away from the band. (roadfic drabbles for colorfunk's krishan)

An hour into the drive Lu Han stirs in his seat and his face detaches from the window, leaving an oily smudge on the glass. His cheek is pressed flat and pink. His chin hits the other shoulder and then comes the blinking, the white gunk stuck to the corner of his eye when he squints at Kris and asks where are they and is it time for food.

There's a rest stop ten minutes away. Princess, Kris adds, testing it out. Lu Han's groggy enough that he'll nod at anything. Savor this, Kris thinks, rolling down their windows a crack to let in some wind. Not too chilly. The radio starts crackling the more trees they pass. Lu Han begins reading off the green signs in a booming MC voice which would be irritating if he weren't kind of convincing, like this is something Kris can see him doing a couple decades down the line, after some of the dust settles. It's not like they'll be ancient. "I can't even imagine you getting old," he says.

"What?"

"I said--never mind."

Under the McD's lighting Lu Han looks scary thin, his collarbones sticking out like bicycle handlebars. Like they could be pressed back into place. Kris gulps. Touching's out of the picture. He pushes his fries toward his skeletonizing friend, says he isn't that hungry. The whole meal goes down in about thirty seconds. Lu Han slurps his coke and asks Kris if he's interested in dessert. Apple pie's like a buck.

"If you're gonna kidnap me, you bet I'll be expecting food."

"I'm not--" Kris glances around the joint to be sure no one cares, "--kidnapping you."

Kris isn't good for one-liners, the witty extravagant shit. Lu Han has other people for that. He lets himself trail off, and Lu Han gets it.

"If you're going through an emotional crisis, I'm here for you." They're standing in the cosmetics section of a convenient store, a small rack of no-brand bottles in nineties packaging. Lu Han picks up a tube of sunblock and taps it against Kris' arm. "Okay?"

Kris pays for the beef jerky and water; Lu Han gets the sunblock. In the car Kris waits until his fingers stop jittering to answer, "Okay," and then find Lu Han's hand and squeeze it.

Lu Han's eyes widen for a second, but only that second, before he squeezes back.

By the time they stumble into the hotel room it’s dark out and some teenagers are drinking in the parking lot. They’re tan and barefoot, one girl in a denim skirt wears her long hair loose and down to her waist. Lu Han watches Kris watch her through the window and wrenches a bottle of beer open with the flat end of a nail clipper. His keychain is the niftiest thing, stringing together an assortment of miniature membership cards to supermarkets he’s only been once, some specific to his particular neighborhood in Beijing. From the back Kris’ silhouette holds the promise of a superhero, broad shoulders tapering into a cinched waist. His fingers tapping some nervous melody into the seam of his jeans. Lu Han sits back in the big chair and sets his feet up on the chipped coffeetable. It’s only fun to watch Kris when there’s nothing else to do. His phone’s out of battery, charger’s at the bottom of the duffel bag, folded into a t-shirt. The material of Kris’ shirt flexes as he breaks the reverie to turn around and ask Lu Han which side of the bed he wants.

“The better side,” Lu Han says easily, and means the side closest to the bathroom. Kris says, “fine” because he wants to be closer to the window, like he always needs a second escape plan. Door’s not good enough. Let’s try the ventilation system. Pipes? Lu Han cuts it off. His mind’s heading nowhere useful.

Or maybe Kris gives it to him because he’s older. Lu Han shrugs his way into the bathroom and closes the door.

It takes a moment to settle in-what the fuck have they done?

“Shit,” squeezing a bead of toothpaste onto his toothbrush and scrubbing violently. His reflection shows not only a coward but a stupid one. What kind of idiot runs away with his band member without asking for an explanation? Why me, he wants to demand, along with what the hell is wrong with you? But he has a feeling it’s a dumb question.