Exo: ride down the line
fandom: Exo M
pairings/ratings: kris/tao, pg13
summary: Wu Fan, pre and post debut.
Wu Fan learns Cantonese first, his mother’s language, the sing-song harshness and drawn out sounds that make his English rough and clunky, make the white girls in the pink dresses in his classes snicker, make the boys on the basketball court grin and sling their arms around his shoulders. They play the underground Hong Kong rappers on the boombox with the sound turned all the way up, and the Spanish kids prowl on the edges of the court in a mock rivalry. He learns Mandarin from his father, from Chinese school on Sunday instead of church, fingers cramped and sweat-slipping on number two pencils, tracing characters over and over. Korean comes last, slouched in desks in Seoul memorizing vocabulary and seated in the back because he’s too damn fucking tall to sit anywhere else. His legs don’t quite fit under the desk, and he kicks the kid in front of them everytime he tries to stretch out.
Wu Fan learns Cantonese first, and Kris learns Korean last.
//
Wu Fan meets Henry and Amber on the same day, or more accurately they accost him in the cafeteria while he’s trying to identify the vegetables in the cheap noodle fry.
“Him,” a boy declares, and a girl with hair cut short slings over the bench across from him.
“Hey,” she says in English, and the familiarity makes his head jerk up. “I’m Amber,” she says cheerfully, and jerks a thumb at the boy behind her, “Henry.”
Henry offers him a fist, and Wu Fan cautiously bumps their knuckles together. Amber slides off the bench, saying something quick in Korean that Wu Fan can’t quite catch. Henry props his elbows on the table and starts chattering in English, about his bandmates and differences and things he misses about Canada. Wu Fan doesn’t miss anything about Canada.
“Amber is cool,” Henry says cheerfully, and then more, about who else speaks English. He switches to Mandarin to talk about his bandmates and Wu Fan thinks at least his Chinese is better than Henry’s. He thinks the company let Henry keep his name.
“They’ll pick you,” Henry says certainly, “you speak all the right languages, and you’re gorgeous.” He winks and Wu Fan smiles a little. Henry is nice and bubbly and he speaks in rhythms Wu Fan recognizes, offers to help him dance. Amber comes back, balancing two trays on one arm, and the noodles slide around in discoloured puddles of grease. Henry flicks a crescent sliced vegetable at Amber’s shirt and laughs with his mouth open when Amber licks it off her wrist and pulls a face. Amber bumps against Wu Fan and tells him a story about the CEO trying to pronounce something in English. Wu Fan thinks that his friends back home would call Amber dyke/, lift their lips in a sneer at Henry’s offer of face cream.
Wu Fan takes the cream with a grin and programmes Amber’s number into his phone.
//
Wu Fan practices faces in the mirror. He’s watched interviews and variety shows, and he wants to know what he’ll look like when he’s asked to do something ridiculous no one would ask him to do back west. He ruffles fingers through his hair and thinks about going with a couple of other trainees to dye their hair. His phone buzzes with a text from Jongdae and he smiles one way, then another.
“This one,” he says aloud, and twists his lips in a way that makes him look casually aloof. He turns from the mirror and reaches for his phone.
//
Amber takes Wu Fan for his first piercing. “Not the lobes,” she says, “boring, dude.”
“Here,” Wu Fan says, pinching a place on his lower cartilage, and she nods. The guy at the parlour babbles in Korean, and Wu Fan answers him before he realizes that he’s understood every syllable.
The needle punches through his ear with almost no resistance, and it doesn’t hurt until the jewelry is pushed through the hole, but it’s more of a hot burn than sharp pain, and afterwards he twists his head to look at the glint of silver against his skin.
“Nice,” Amber says, and Wu Fan smiles the way he’d practiced in the mirror.
//
“Hey,” Henry says in English, spinning a wide baseball cap on his palm, “there’s a kid watching you over there.” Wu Fan smoothes his hair behind his ears and pinches at the helix of his right ear with the tips of his nails, tries to think about how much the piercing would hurt.
“What kid,” he says absently, and digs his nails a little deeper.
“Dunno,” Henry says, and Wu Fan notices there’s a shark fin on the top of the hat. He tries not to judge Henry too hard. “Some kid. Over there.”
“Thank you, Master Detective,” Wu Fan says, and turns . He catches a glimpse of flat black hair before a producer pops up in front of him.
“Fifteen minute warning,” he says in Korean, and Wu Fan hates that sometimes it takes a minute for his brain to translate back and forth and back again.
“Thank you,” Wu Fan says again, and winces a little more at the accent that clings to his syllables and not to Henry’s.
“Fifteen minutes,” the guy says warningly.
“Got it,” Wu Fan says, sickly-sweet, and goes back to the mirror before his eyes fall out from the strain of not rolling them. He hooks his pinky nail higher and presses until there are sharp red crescents in his upper cartilage. He can see Henry wearing his blue sharkfin hat in the mirror behind him.
“Maybe an industrial,” Wu Fan says thoughtfully.
“That kid was fucking creepy,” Henry says. His hat falls over his eyes and the fin flops against Wu Fan’s shoulder.
//
Wu Fan’s roommate peaces out a week later. Wu Fan allows himself one walk around the tiny room in nothing but boxer shorts and extra fluffy socks before cleaning the floor with rough paper towels wet lukewarm from the tap and exactly five minutes with his head pressed against the floor flipping his shit thinking about the day they tell him to pack his things in his duffel bags, mended twice over with thin black thread. He takes a deep breath and goes to hang up the last of the t-shirts on the drying racks. The closet rattles on its track when he opens it and the chipped rubber edge pricks his under his nails.
“Ow,” he says, jerking back reflexively, and shakes his hand out.
“Annyeong,” says the boy with the flat black hair.
“Motherfucking son of a whore’s cunt,” Wu Fan shrieks, falling backwards. His tailbone lands heavily on the fake hardwood floors and he makes a pained noise.
“Annyeong,” the boy says again, and bounces on his toes a little. He’s wearing a tanktop and soft grey sweatpants that hang low on his hipbones. A tiny tuft of a ponytail shakes with every movement of his head.
“What are you doing in my closet,” Wu Fan shouts, barely forcing himself to slow down enough to make his Korean understandable.
“Annyeong, oppa,” the boy says, and Wu Fan realizes for the first time there’s an accent wrapped around his carefully parroted Korean.
“What are you doing in my closet?” Wu Fan tries again, in Chinese. The boy bounces delightedly.
“I thought you spoke Chinese,” he says softly. His smile transforms his face. “My name is Zitao.” He bows with hands out and one foot behind the other, a sudden graceful movement.
“I’m Wu Fan,” Wu Fan says stupidly.
“Your roommate moved out,” Zitao says, upright again. His spine is very straight. Wu Fan can see the veins running in and out of the crook of his elbow. “Can I stay here?” His voice goes a little softer, a little higher. His fingers brush the edge of his bangs his eyelashes flutter dark on his skin.
“Yes,” Wu Fan says without pause. Zitao makes the smallest of cheering noises and leaves in a flurry, tiny ponytail swishing jauntily.
Wu Fan blinks. He scratches at a spot on his scalp behind his ear. “What just happened?” he asks aloud.
//
Wu Fan takes Zitao to the piercing place Amber had showed him, and Zitao looks at the displays with wide eyes. He touches a finger to a jangly linked piece that dangled.
“Pretty,” he mumbles in Mandarin, and Wu Fan grins.
“That one,” he says in Korean to the employee hovering awkwardly at his elbow, and then digs in a pocket for money. He knows Zitao sends little envelopes to China, crumpled bills and tiny checks wrapped in blank paper. Wu Fan’s parents don’t expect him to send anything home.
Zitao gets packages once in a while, little ones in cheap parcel packaging, filled with dry snackfood that he shares with Wu Fan, overbearingly salty squid jerky and overly sweet crackers. Zitao wraps them in sheets of nori and hand feeds Wu Fan, laughs when he gags and swats at him.
//
“I want to go shopping,” Zitao says. Wu Fan rolls his head the tiniest of fractions towards Zitao, his pillow rustling quietly. He gives Zitao his cold eye stare. Zitao kneels by the edge of Wu Fan’s bed. “I want to go shopping,” he says again, that way he does. Wu Fan flicks his hair out of his face with a single finger and sighs.
“I know you know what you do,” he says, rolling over to grab at his shoes. Zitao peers at himself in the mirror and shakes his head vigorously. Wu Fan steps into shoes and snags his jacket, slipping one hand in a sleeve and using the other to tug the black elastic band out of Zitao’s hair. He hooks it over his thumb and index finger.
“That doesn’t make sense, hyung,” Zitao says. Wu Fan considers telling him there is no word for older brother in English. He thinks Zitao’s Korean is getting better.
“Bang,” Wu Fan says in English, hard start long stop, deep drawl in the middle, just like an American rapper. The hairband flies off his finger and bounces against Zitao’s cheek.
“Ge,” Zitao says with a sigh, and steals the extra elastic hanging loose on the bones of Wu Fan’s wrist. He snaps it once before slipping it off. Wu Fan lets his face fall into its neutral mask, the one that makes Onew move over in the SM hallways and drop his keys into the water fountain.
“Buoing buoing,” Zitao teases. Wu Fan feels the corners of his mouth jerk.
“Kisskiss~” he sings, knowing his aegyo is the worst of all time, and smacks his lips to Zitao’s cheek as they stumble out the door, one empty denim jacket sleeve flapping on the wall behind them.
//
Wu Fan falls into the room and stumbles into the closet, his head thunking hollowly against the wall. He can feel his heartbeat in his temples and cool sweat prickles along his spine.
“Hyung,” Zitao cries out behind him, and Wu Fan swings around to hug him so tightly his bones creak. He laughs so hard the muscles in his chest clench tight.
“Ge.” he corrects firmly, “you don’t have to call me hyung anymore.”
“Exo M,” Zitao says. He sounds a little starstruck. “You’ll make a good leader,” he says, shy again. His fingers crack when he rolls them into his fist. Wu Fan wants to tell Zitao that rappers in American don’t have leaders. He hums a little.
“What?” Zitao tilts his head. Wu Fan shrugs his shoulders rapidly and the thought leaves with a pop.
“Tao,” he says, trying it out, and slings an arm around Zitao’s shoulders. “Yeah yeah,” he says in English, “Exo M leader Kris Exo M visual dancer Taaaooooo.” He drags out the name until it swells in the back of his throat.
“Mm,” Zitao swings his arm up, leaning on his tiptoes to reach Wu Fan’s shoulder comfortably, “Yeah Krriiieees, Tao, Exoooooooooo.”
//
“Like this,” Zitao says, and steps up behind Wu Fan. His palms lie flat on the jut of Wu Fan’s hipbones. “One two three,” he counts, “turn, one two back step one. Good.” His hand slides around Wu Fan’s thigh and he hooks a finger through an empty beltloop. “Again.”
Wu Fan can smell Zitao’s body behind him. His bangs drip beads of sweat down his forehead. “One two three,” he says with Zitao, “turn, one two back ste--” His hand skates across the back of Zitao’s hand, slippery slick. There’s the slightest drag of Zitao’s rough knuckles on Wu Fan’s small calluses. They turn in opposite directions and Wu Fan’s knee digs sharply into the thick muscle of Zitao’s leg. He yelps and they tumble to the ground. Zitao’s knee ends up in Wu Fan’s stomach; Wu Fan accidentally throws an elbow at Zitao’s collarbone.
“Ow.” Zitao says pitifully, and throws his leg over Wu Fan’s. He kicks off his shoe and pokes socked toes into Wu Fan’s calf. Wu Fan taps the beat against the top of Zitao’s spine, one two three turn one two back step one. Zitao arches his back in a long stretch that leave his toes curling into the hollow of Wu Fan’s ankle. “Mhm,” he says. Wu Fan twines his fingers in Zitao’s hair, around his finger over and over, a corkscrew of coarse black strands. He cracks his other wrist and stops suddenly, catching sight of them in the practice mirror.
“Ow, ge,” Zitao yelps. Wu Fan’s hand has gone painfully tight in his hair, eyes locked with his own reflection. Wu Fan stands up so fast he kicks himself in the knee, and half limps half staggers back. Zitao sits up and stares. Wu Fan rests a hand on his own throat and feels his own pulse flutter against his fingers like a hummingbird. Wu Fan wants to tell Zitao about the first time he kissed a boy, sixth grade behind the backstop with baseball field dirt in the lines of his skin, stolen-cigarette tongue.
“Manager-hyung has a space in his apartment,” he says in Korean, just fast enough that it takes Zitao a few seconds to parse each couple of words. “I’ll help you move in. It’s close to the dance studio, you’ll like it.” He catches the strap of his backpack and strides out without looking back or stopping to sling the bag over a shoulder until he’s banged through the door of the stairwell and heard it slam behind him.
//
Jongdae lifts Zitao into an exuberant hug after the performance. Suho slings a friendly arm around Wu Fan’s shoulder and Wu Fan gives him an answering smile. He can still see stage lightspots on the backs of his eyelids, and a little even when they’re open, when he blinks too fast. He angles his head until the biggest, most opaque silver circle covers Zitao’s hand in Jongdae’s.
Wu Fan wants to tell Zitao that he is beautiful in motion.
“Hey,” Henry says from behind him, with the tone of sudden realization, “that’s him, that stalker kid.”
//
Jongdae moves into Wu Fan’s room and spends ten minutes lining up his shoes against their closet. Wu Fan likes Jongdae, likes the easy way they hang out, likes the way Jongdae isn’t so different from Chen.
“Of course not,” Jongdae says absently, flicking through his shirts. “that on stage off stage stuff is bullshit.” He frowns at his closet and does something that resembles a foot stomp. “Duizhang!”
Wu Fan jumps at the title. Duizhang,” he thinks, Duizhang, Kris, Wu Fan, Jia Heng. “In the bathroom,” he says finally, and Jongdae emerges triumphantly with the shirt he’d wanted.
“Let’s go eat,” he says.
“Okay,” Wu Fan says, and spins his phone in his fingers.
//
Wu Fan rooms with Zitao in the hotel, and Zitao reverently touches the brand name towels in the bathroom like he wants to stack them on the ground and roll around in their ridiculous thread count. Wu Fan unpacks his small suitcase with extreme precision, making military folds in the clothing and storing everything in perfect stacks in the provided drawers. Zitao smoothes his hand over the bedspread and upends the basket of free gifts that was resting on the desk chair.
“Panda,” he says happily, and his smile makes the dark bags under his eyes puff up. Wu Fan pauses in reballing pairs of socks together and stares at the bright brass handles of the drawers. He can just make out Zitao’s reflection in the powered-down television. His knees creak when he stands up too fast.
“Hey!” Zitao says, but Wu Fan calmly attaches the panda hat to his head.
“You get the other one,” he says, digging for his phone, “let’s take a selca.” Zitao’s beams so hard his eyebags must be blocking his sight. He steps up to check himself in the mirror above the desk and Wu Fan catches him around the waist, wraps him up in a smothering hug. Wu Fan would like to ask Zitao how he would feel if Wu Fan pressed him into the soft pillows and mapped his mouth with Wu Fan’s tongue.
“Ge,” Zitao wheezes. Wu Fan lets him go and feels the tension in his temples and spine smooth out. He turns the camera in his phone on. “Wait,” Zitao says suddenly, “I want to wear the bathrobe.”
“Bathrobe?”
“It’s Tisseron Apres,” Zitao says, like that’s supposed to mean anything to Wu Fan.
“Go, go,” Wu Fan says. Zitao comes back in a bathrobe that looks exactly like every other bathrobe Wu Fan has ever seen ever, but he’s still smiling that beaming smile. When he leans in close Wu Fan can smell his facewash.
“There is no English word for older brother,” Wu Fan tells Zitao.
“What?” asks Zitao. His hair falls into his face.
“I’ll tell you later,” Wu Fan says, “I’ll tell you everything later,” and tilts his head until he can smell Zitao’s shampoo. “Smile,” he says, and the flash makes his eyes sting. Ziitao rests his head on Wu Fan’s shoulder, stretching against the mattress, and Wu Fan sets the picture as his wallpaper.
3K OF NOTHING HAPPENS orz
pairings/ratings: kris/tao, pg13
summary: Wu Fan, pre and post debut.
Wu Fan learns Cantonese first, his mother’s language, the sing-song harshness and drawn out sounds that make his English rough and clunky, make the white girls in the pink dresses in his classes snicker, make the boys on the basketball court grin and sling their arms around his shoulders. They play the underground Hong Kong rappers on the boombox with the sound turned all the way up, and the Spanish kids prowl on the edges of the court in a mock rivalry. He learns Mandarin from his father, from Chinese school on Sunday instead of church, fingers cramped and sweat-slipping on number two pencils, tracing characters over and over. Korean comes last, slouched in desks in Seoul memorizing vocabulary and seated in the back because he’s too damn fucking tall to sit anywhere else. His legs don’t quite fit under the desk, and he kicks the kid in front of them everytime he tries to stretch out.
Wu Fan learns Cantonese first, and Kris learns Korean last.
//
Wu Fan meets Henry and Amber on the same day, or more accurately they accost him in the cafeteria while he’s trying to identify the vegetables in the cheap noodle fry.
“Him,” a boy declares, and a girl with hair cut short slings over the bench across from him.
“Hey,” she says in English, and the familiarity makes his head jerk up. “I’m Amber,” she says cheerfully, and jerks a thumb at the boy behind her, “Henry.”
Henry offers him a fist, and Wu Fan cautiously bumps their knuckles together. Amber slides off the bench, saying something quick in Korean that Wu Fan can’t quite catch. Henry props his elbows on the table and starts chattering in English, about his bandmates and differences and things he misses about Canada. Wu Fan doesn’t miss anything about Canada.
“Amber is cool,” Henry says cheerfully, and then more, about who else speaks English. He switches to Mandarin to talk about his bandmates and Wu Fan thinks at least his Chinese is better than Henry’s. He thinks the company let Henry keep his name.
“They’ll pick you,” Henry says certainly, “you speak all the right languages, and you’re gorgeous.” He winks and Wu Fan smiles a little. Henry is nice and bubbly and he speaks in rhythms Wu Fan recognizes, offers to help him dance. Amber comes back, balancing two trays on one arm, and the noodles slide around in discoloured puddles of grease. Henry flicks a crescent sliced vegetable at Amber’s shirt and laughs with his mouth open when Amber licks it off her wrist and pulls a face. Amber bumps against Wu Fan and tells him a story about the CEO trying to pronounce something in English. Wu Fan thinks that his friends back home would call Amber dyke/, lift their lips in a sneer at Henry’s offer of face cream.
Wu Fan takes the cream with a grin and programmes Amber’s number into his phone.
//
Wu Fan practices faces in the mirror. He’s watched interviews and variety shows, and he wants to know what he’ll look like when he’s asked to do something ridiculous no one would ask him to do back west. He ruffles fingers through his hair and thinks about going with a couple of other trainees to dye their hair. His phone buzzes with a text from Jongdae and he smiles one way, then another.
“This one,” he says aloud, and twists his lips in a way that makes him look casually aloof. He turns from the mirror and reaches for his phone.
//
Amber takes Wu Fan for his first piercing. “Not the lobes,” she says, “boring, dude.”
“Here,” Wu Fan says, pinching a place on his lower cartilage, and she nods. The guy at the parlour babbles in Korean, and Wu Fan answers him before he realizes that he’s understood every syllable.
The needle punches through his ear with almost no resistance, and it doesn’t hurt until the jewelry is pushed through the hole, but it’s more of a hot burn than sharp pain, and afterwards he twists his head to look at the glint of silver against his skin.
“Nice,” Amber says, and Wu Fan smiles the way he’d practiced in the mirror.
//
“Hey,” Henry says in English, spinning a wide baseball cap on his palm, “there’s a kid watching you over there.” Wu Fan smoothes his hair behind his ears and pinches at the helix of his right ear with the tips of his nails, tries to think about how much the piercing would hurt.
“What kid,” he says absently, and digs his nails a little deeper.
“Dunno,” Henry says, and Wu Fan notices there’s a shark fin on the top of the hat. He tries not to judge Henry too hard. “Some kid. Over there.”
“Thank you, Master Detective,” Wu Fan says, and turns . He catches a glimpse of flat black hair before a producer pops up in front of him.
“Fifteen minute warning,” he says in Korean, and Wu Fan hates that sometimes it takes a minute for his brain to translate back and forth and back again.
“Thank you,” Wu Fan says again, and winces a little more at the accent that clings to his syllables and not to Henry’s.
“Fifteen minutes,” the guy says warningly.
“Got it,” Wu Fan says, sickly-sweet, and goes back to the mirror before his eyes fall out from the strain of not rolling them. He hooks his pinky nail higher and presses until there are sharp red crescents in his upper cartilage. He can see Henry wearing his blue sharkfin hat in the mirror behind him.
“Maybe an industrial,” Wu Fan says thoughtfully.
“That kid was fucking creepy,” Henry says. His hat falls over his eyes and the fin flops against Wu Fan’s shoulder.
//
Wu Fan’s roommate peaces out a week later. Wu Fan allows himself one walk around the tiny room in nothing but boxer shorts and extra fluffy socks before cleaning the floor with rough paper towels wet lukewarm from the tap and exactly five minutes with his head pressed against the floor flipping his shit thinking about the day they tell him to pack his things in his duffel bags, mended twice over with thin black thread. He takes a deep breath and goes to hang up the last of the t-shirts on the drying racks. The closet rattles on its track when he opens it and the chipped rubber edge pricks his under his nails.
“Ow,” he says, jerking back reflexively, and shakes his hand out.
“Annyeong,” says the boy with the flat black hair.
“Motherfucking son of a whore’s cunt,” Wu Fan shrieks, falling backwards. His tailbone lands heavily on the fake hardwood floors and he makes a pained noise.
“Annyeong,” the boy says again, and bounces on his toes a little. He’s wearing a tanktop and soft grey sweatpants that hang low on his hipbones. A tiny tuft of a ponytail shakes with every movement of his head.
“What are you doing in my closet,” Wu Fan shouts, barely forcing himself to slow down enough to make his Korean understandable.
“Annyeong, oppa,” the boy says, and Wu Fan realizes for the first time there’s an accent wrapped around his carefully parroted Korean.
“What are you doing in my closet?” Wu Fan tries again, in Chinese. The boy bounces delightedly.
“I thought you spoke Chinese,” he says softly. His smile transforms his face. “My name is Zitao.” He bows with hands out and one foot behind the other, a sudden graceful movement.
“I’m Wu Fan,” Wu Fan says stupidly.
“Your roommate moved out,” Zitao says, upright again. His spine is very straight. Wu Fan can see the veins running in and out of the crook of his elbow. “Can I stay here?” His voice goes a little softer, a little higher. His fingers brush the edge of his bangs his eyelashes flutter dark on his skin.
“Yes,” Wu Fan says without pause. Zitao makes the smallest of cheering noises and leaves in a flurry, tiny ponytail swishing jauntily.
Wu Fan blinks. He scratches at a spot on his scalp behind his ear. “What just happened?” he asks aloud.
//
Wu Fan takes Zitao to the piercing place Amber had showed him, and Zitao looks at the displays with wide eyes. He touches a finger to a jangly linked piece that dangled.
“Pretty,” he mumbles in Mandarin, and Wu Fan grins.
“That one,” he says in Korean to the employee hovering awkwardly at his elbow, and then digs in a pocket for money. He knows Zitao sends little envelopes to China, crumpled bills and tiny checks wrapped in blank paper. Wu Fan’s parents don’t expect him to send anything home.
Zitao gets packages once in a while, little ones in cheap parcel packaging, filled with dry snackfood that he shares with Wu Fan, overbearingly salty squid jerky and overly sweet crackers. Zitao wraps them in sheets of nori and hand feeds Wu Fan, laughs when he gags and swats at him.
//
“I want to go shopping,” Zitao says. Wu Fan rolls his head the tiniest of fractions towards Zitao, his pillow rustling quietly. He gives Zitao his cold eye stare. Zitao kneels by the edge of Wu Fan’s bed. “I want to go shopping,” he says again, that way he does. Wu Fan flicks his hair out of his face with a single finger and sighs.
“I know you know what you do,” he says, rolling over to grab at his shoes. Zitao peers at himself in the mirror and shakes his head vigorously. Wu Fan steps into shoes and snags his jacket, slipping one hand in a sleeve and using the other to tug the black elastic band out of Zitao’s hair. He hooks it over his thumb and index finger.
“That doesn’t make sense, hyung,” Zitao says. Wu Fan considers telling him there is no word for older brother in English. He thinks Zitao’s Korean is getting better.
“Bang,” Wu Fan says in English, hard start long stop, deep drawl in the middle, just like an American rapper. The hairband flies off his finger and bounces against Zitao’s cheek.
“Ge,” Zitao says with a sigh, and steals the extra elastic hanging loose on the bones of Wu Fan’s wrist. He snaps it once before slipping it off. Wu Fan lets his face fall into its neutral mask, the one that makes Onew move over in the SM hallways and drop his keys into the water fountain.
“Buoing buoing,” Zitao teases. Wu Fan feels the corners of his mouth jerk.
“Kisskiss~” he sings, knowing his aegyo is the worst of all time, and smacks his lips to Zitao’s cheek as they stumble out the door, one empty denim jacket sleeve flapping on the wall behind them.
//
Wu Fan falls into the room and stumbles into the closet, his head thunking hollowly against the wall. He can feel his heartbeat in his temples and cool sweat prickles along his spine.
“Hyung,” Zitao cries out behind him, and Wu Fan swings around to hug him so tightly his bones creak. He laughs so hard the muscles in his chest clench tight.
“Ge.” he corrects firmly, “you don’t have to call me hyung anymore.”
“Exo M,” Zitao says. He sounds a little starstruck. “You’ll make a good leader,” he says, shy again. His fingers crack when he rolls them into his fist. Wu Fan wants to tell Zitao that rappers in American don’t have leaders. He hums a little.
“What?” Zitao tilts his head. Wu Fan shrugs his shoulders rapidly and the thought leaves with a pop.
“Tao,” he says, trying it out, and slings an arm around Zitao’s shoulders. “Yeah yeah,” he says in English, “Exo M leader Kris Exo M visual dancer Taaaooooo.” He drags out the name until it swells in the back of his throat.
“Mm,” Zitao swings his arm up, leaning on his tiptoes to reach Wu Fan’s shoulder comfortably, “Yeah Krriiieees, Tao, Exoooooooooo.”
//
“Like this,” Zitao says, and steps up behind Wu Fan. His palms lie flat on the jut of Wu Fan’s hipbones. “One two three,” he counts, “turn, one two back step one. Good.” His hand slides around Wu Fan’s thigh and he hooks a finger through an empty beltloop. “Again.”
Wu Fan can smell Zitao’s body behind him. His bangs drip beads of sweat down his forehead. “One two three,” he says with Zitao, “turn, one two back ste--” His hand skates across the back of Zitao’s hand, slippery slick. There’s the slightest drag of Zitao’s rough knuckles on Wu Fan’s small calluses. They turn in opposite directions and Wu Fan’s knee digs sharply into the thick muscle of Zitao’s leg. He yelps and they tumble to the ground. Zitao’s knee ends up in Wu Fan’s stomach; Wu Fan accidentally throws an elbow at Zitao’s collarbone.
“Ow.” Zitao says pitifully, and throws his leg over Wu Fan’s. He kicks off his shoe and pokes socked toes into Wu Fan’s calf. Wu Fan taps the beat against the top of Zitao’s spine, one two three turn one two back step one. Zitao arches his back in a long stretch that leave his toes curling into the hollow of Wu Fan’s ankle. “Mhm,” he says. Wu Fan twines his fingers in Zitao’s hair, around his finger over and over, a corkscrew of coarse black strands. He cracks his other wrist and stops suddenly, catching sight of them in the practice mirror.
“Ow, ge,” Zitao yelps. Wu Fan’s hand has gone painfully tight in his hair, eyes locked with his own reflection. Wu Fan stands up so fast he kicks himself in the knee, and half limps half staggers back. Zitao sits up and stares. Wu Fan rests a hand on his own throat and feels his own pulse flutter against his fingers like a hummingbird. Wu Fan wants to tell Zitao about the first time he kissed a boy, sixth grade behind the backstop with baseball field dirt in the lines of his skin, stolen-cigarette tongue.
“Manager-hyung has a space in his apartment,” he says in Korean, just fast enough that it takes Zitao a few seconds to parse each couple of words. “I’ll help you move in. It’s close to the dance studio, you’ll like it.” He catches the strap of his backpack and strides out without looking back or stopping to sling the bag over a shoulder until he’s banged through the door of the stairwell and heard it slam behind him.
//
Jongdae lifts Zitao into an exuberant hug after the performance. Suho slings a friendly arm around Wu Fan’s shoulder and Wu Fan gives him an answering smile. He can still see stage lightspots on the backs of his eyelids, and a little even when they’re open, when he blinks too fast. He angles his head until the biggest, most opaque silver circle covers Zitao’s hand in Jongdae’s.
Wu Fan wants to tell Zitao that he is beautiful in motion.
“Hey,” Henry says from behind him, with the tone of sudden realization, “that’s him, that stalker kid.”
//
Jongdae moves into Wu Fan’s room and spends ten minutes lining up his shoes against their closet. Wu Fan likes Jongdae, likes the easy way they hang out, likes the way Jongdae isn’t so different from Chen.
“Of course not,” Jongdae says absently, flicking through his shirts. “that on stage off stage stuff is bullshit.” He frowns at his closet and does something that resembles a foot stomp. “Duizhang!”
Wu Fan jumps at the title. Duizhang,” he thinks, Duizhang, Kris, Wu Fan, Jia Heng. “In the bathroom,” he says finally, and Jongdae emerges triumphantly with the shirt he’d wanted.
“Let’s go eat,” he says.
“Okay,” Wu Fan says, and spins his phone in his fingers.
//
Wu Fan rooms with Zitao in the hotel, and Zitao reverently touches the brand name towels in the bathroom like he wants to stack them on the ground and roll around in their ridiculous thread count. Wu Fan unpacks his small suitcase with extreme precision, making military folds in the clothing and storing everything in perfect stacks in the provided drawers. Zitao smoothes his hand over the bedspread and upends the basket of free gifts that was resting on the desk chair.
“Panda,” he says happily, and his smile makes the dark bags under his eyes puff up. Wu Fan pauses in reballing pairs of socks together and stares at the bright brass handles of the drawers. He can just make out Zitao’s reflection in the powered-down television. His knees creak when he stands up too fast.
“Hey!” Zitao says, but Wu Fan calmly attaches the panda hat to his head.
“You get the other one,” he says, digging for his phone, “let’s take a selca.” Zitao’s beams so hard his eyebags must be blocking his sight. He steps up to check himself in the mirror above the desk and Wu Fan catches him around the waist, wraps him up in a smothering hug. Wu Fan would like to ask Zitao how he would feel if Wu Fan pressed him into the soft pillows and mapped his mouth with Wu Fan’s tongue.
“Ge,” Zitao wheezes. Wu Fan lets him go and feels the tension in his temples and spine smooth out. He turns the camera in his phone on. “Wait,” Zitao says suddenly, “I want to wear the bathrobe.”
“Bathrobe?”
“It’s Tisseron Apres,” Zitao says, like that’s supposed to mean anything to Wu Fan.
“Go, go,” Wu Fan says. Zitao comes back in a bathrobe that looks exactly like every other bathrobe Wu Fan has ever seen ever, but he’s still smiling that beaming smile. When he leans in close Wu Fan can smell his facewash.
“There is no English word for older brother,” Wu Fan tells Zitao.
“What?” asks Zitao. His hair falls into his face.
“I’ll tell you later,” Wu Fan says, “I’ll tell you everything later,” and tilts his head until he can smell Zitao’s shampoo. “Smile,” he says, and the flash makes his eyes sting. Ziitao rests his head on Wu Fan’s shoulder, stretching against the mattress, and Wu Fan sets the picture as his wallpaper.
3K OF NOTHING HAPPENS orz