55
Title: Still Fighting It
Fandom: Super Junior
Pairing: KyuMin
Rating: R? Maybe?
Disclaimer: I don't own.
Summary: It's not working.
Notes: 2,015 words. Second and third POV, both. Angst? Sort of? AU.
It’s not working.
It’s not working, but you’re caught in him, lost in him and you’re not sure you can get free and you’re not sure you want to. He’s full of quicksilver grins and mercurial moods, sweetness and anger and petulance, and you’re not sure which face will be showing when you wake up in the morning, and you’re not sure how he’ll take your greeting at breakfast, and you learn to judge your day based on his moods. You know by your cold sheets to dread the day. You know by flashing teeth to shut the fuck up. You know by the hands pressing you back against the wet shower tiles that you can’t leave.
*
Kyuhyun wakes up and rolls over, tensing when his arm hits cold, empty bed, automatically awake and alert. He sits up, and relaxes when he hears the shower going in the bathroom. He yawns, then, stretches, stands, scratching his bare stomach and brushing a hand through his hair. When he opens the door to the bathroom, he peers around the doorframe carefully, almost hesitantly, and tries to see through the fogged up glass shower doors.
“Sungmin?” his voice is rusty, still half clogged with the thick remnants of sleep, and when there’s no answer he clears his throat and calls a second time, slightly louder. “Sungmin? Can you hear me?”
“Yeah? Sup?” Sungmin’s voice is muffled by glass and water and Kyuhyun can’t tell what his expression is like. It makes him wary, and he wishes that it didn’t.
“What do you want for breakfast?” A safe topic, for starters. He doesn’t ask how are you feeling today or what’s the threat level this morning because it’s early, and he’s rather not have deal with that yet. Kyuhyun enters the bathroom to brush his teeth, wiping away at the condensation on the mirror mounted on the wall. He doesn’t look up when the shower turns off, busy spitting into the sink, so he’s not ready when the wet arms wrap around his bare torso, chest pressed to his back.
“Watch the cold water, man, you made my show turn all hot.” The arms tighten, and Kyuhyun can feel Sungmin’s breath on the back of his neck. He does nothing, but he smiles, and that’s apparently enough.
Sungmin releases him and turns to leave the bathroom, pulling his towel off of the wall and wrapping it around his waist.
“And no breakfast,” he says, “I’ll pick something up on my way into the office.”
Kyuhyun nods and doesn’t look, feeling the water from Sungmin’s body dripping down his back, not entirely comfortable with it. But he’s not as uncomfortable as he thinks he should be.
*
The day Kyuhyun meets Sungmin is the day he unwittingly witnesses the break up between Sungmin and his boyfriend.
He’s worked at Bibelot, a local bookstore chain, for closing in on eight months, and he’s learned to ignore the customers unless they come to him for questions or he’s working at the café. He minds his own business and they assume that he’s doing something important and that is all good with him. He is quiet, normally, and being forced into too many conversations a day makes him uncomfortable. His boss, Eeteuk, had quickly noticed this, and leaves him mostly to stock shelves and reorganize the various stacks. He’s patient and he’s a good worker; he does what he’s told, and he gets paid for it, and that’ alright with him.
The day Sungmin walks through the doors, Kyuhyun is behind the information desk, filling in for Kibum who’d called out sick. He’s playing solitaire on the computer and leaning his head on his palm, bored out of his mind, and when the doors slam he looks up more out of boredom than even curiosity.
Sungmin’s face is blotchy with anger and tears and his boyfriend looks guilty and worried, but not guilty enough, and it’s right then that Kyuhyun knows - he cheated. The boyfriend cheated and he doesn’t feel as bad about it as he should. Kyuhyun spends more time observing people than talking to them, but he’s pretty sure he isn’t wrong, and the ensuing argument proves him right almost immediately.
The conflict is painful and public and Kyuhyun doesn’t look away and doesn’t feel guilty for observing. It’s full of exclamations like “Min, do we really have to do this here?” and “fuck you, you arrogant asshole, I can’t fucking believe you’d do this to me” and “You just don’t understand, do you? I had to find someone who was fucking normal, someone who wouldn’t freak out about ever little thing, someone who could stay calm! You’re fucking suffocating, you know that?” and “Fuck you, Hae, fuck you! You said you’d be there, that you’d help me. Big help you’ve been, asshole! I - I - I can’t believe you! I hope you’re happy with him, and I hope he breaks your fucking heart.”
At the end, Sungmin cries and Hae leaves him standing there and Kyuhyun abandons his post at the information desk.
“Want some coffee?” Kyuhyun asks, and there’s no pity in his voice. “It’s on me; I get free stuff from the café, anyway.” Kyuhyun waits patiently until Sungmin nods, and that’s that. The beginning. It hadn’t gotten them very far, but that’s never mattered.
*
You deal with his fear and his rages and his leftover love while he tries not to deal with the fact that you don’t know what you’re doing. That you probably don’t want to. He’s not okay with that, and he doesn’t pretend to be. He pushes and pushes and pushes and you take it because you don’t know what else to do.
You don’t want him, not immediately, not like he wants you, and so the first time he kisses you, you push him away. He doesn’t take it personally, and you think it’s because he senses the pause in your words and the unsure set of your hands on his shoulders.
You need him, you know you do, but he needs you more. He needs you so much so hard that you don’t know where it came from, or when. He’s wrapped around you, inside you, and so you deal with him. His unprovoked rages, his selfish desires, his hands on your face, his lips below your ear, his mumbles in his sleep, his need to touch you when you don’t want to be touched.
You are not perfect and neither is he and together you are even more imperfect but it’s you and it’s him and you don’t know what you’d do without him anymore.
The thought doesn’t scare you as much as you’d like it to.
*
Sungmin goes home with Kyuhyun for lack of anywhere else to go. He’s shy and he’s wary and Kyuhyun doesn’t mind, because if he wasn’t, then Kyuhyun would be wondering the reasons. Kyuhyun lends him a nightshirt, shows him the couch. Gives him an extra toothbrush. He’s not really wondering what led him to take in a stray. He doesn’t care, not yet, and by the time he does, it doesn’t matter anymore.
Kyuhyun’s not a light sleeper, so when he wakes up in the middle of the night, he’s not sure why it’s happened. When he turns over and sees the light in the hallway, he sits up, realizing his door’s open where it wasn’t before. He waits.
When Sungmin enters the room, his feet are soft against the carpet and his face is pale in the half-light. Sungmin opens his mouth to say something, but Kyuhyun just shakes his head and slides over. He doesn’t want to know, he doesn’t care. Sungmin slips in next to him, sitting gingerly on the edge of the mattress and Kyuhyun turns over, closes his eyes. He feels Sungmin settling in, hears the rustling of the covers.
Sometimes he wonders, if he’d let Sungmin talk, then, what would he have said? Would it have mattered? And now, there’s no way of knowing.
*
When he kissed you, that first time, his lips were insistent against yours, firm, needy, and his fingernails dug into your shoulders.
When he kisses you, you think of that, of the way you wiped your lips when you pushed him away. When he bites hard enough to draw blood, when your fingers grab his hips just that little bit too hard, when he digs into your back with his nail, when you sink into him to fast. You remember that kiss, then, and it drives you harder, but you don’t know why.
It’s not always rough, and it’s not always that mix of painful and pleasurable, even if that’s most of what you remember. Sometimes, though, he kisses you when he hands you your coffee in the morning, and sometimes his fingers brush through your hair when you’re lying in bed together, and sometimes he looks at you and slides his arms around your neck, pulls you against him, swaying to music that you don’t hear, but wish that you did.
If it was just like that, if it was always like that, you might not wonder so much. You might not be so uncertain. You might not have to think about leaving, even if you know you can’t. But you’re not sure.
*
Kyuhyun walks in, and he’s knows that something is wrong. There’s glass on the floor and the chair in the corner of the living room is overturned. When he gets to the kitchen, the cupboard is open and empty, but when he walks through, he finds the dishes. They’re shattered on the tile, broken into thousands of pieces. His only thought is that if only he’d been here, he could’ve - could’ve - but he knows that he couldn’t.
He walks down the hallway and finds Sungmin sitting on the edge of the bed, staring at his hands. They’re bleeding, Kyuhyun notices, and he goes to the bathroom to get some bandages and a wet cloth. When he gets back, Sungmin is still holding his hands in front of him, but his looking at Kyuhyun, and his face isn’t angry anymore. Kyuhyun is relieved, somewhat, but he doesn’t much like the look of intense guilt, either.
“What set you off?” he asks. He doesn’t know if it’s the right thing to say, but he needs to distract Sungmin. He inspects his hands for pieces of glass and, finding none, starts to gently clean Sungmin’s hands.
“I’m so fucking screwed up,” Sungmin say. “I don’t know. I don’t know.” His voice is thick, and Kyuhyun doesn’t look up, just starts to bandage his hands.
“Yeah, you are,” he says, still looking at the white gauze over lacerated flesh.
“I’m sorry, Kyu, I’m sorry. Please don’t leave?” His voice is tentative, and Kyuhyun rarely gets to see him like this. Usually it’s confident and together or angry and out of control, and it’s times like this that Kyuhyun knows he can’t leave.
“I won’t,” he says, and kisses the covered palms of both Sungmin’s hands. “Take a nap. I’ll go clean the kitchen.”
*
You think that he didn’t trust you for the first month and a half, but you think that he wanted you from the moment he saw you. You think that his living in your apartment was a trial run, a test to see how you’d deal with him, and that by the time he kissed you, he trusted you enough to risk it, and wanted you enough to work for it.
He never told you this, but you’re observant enough to guess.
You think that half the reason you gave in is because he wouldn’t take no for an answer.
You think the other half is that you wanted him back, and that, maybe more than that, you wanted to help him.
You’ll buy new plates and you’ll fix the chair and you’ll take him into bed with you, and if that’s all you can do, you just have to hope it will be enough.
End Notes: Yeah, so. I fucked with Sungmin. Um. La. I have such mixed feelings about this one. I like the sections, I'm just not sure that they fit together in any real way. So, tell me what you think, please. I'd appreciate it a lot.
Fandom: Super Junior
Pairing: KyuMin
Rating: R? Maybe?
Disclaimer: I don't own.
Summary: It's not working.
Notes: 2,015 words. Second and third POV, both. Angst? Sort of? AU.
It’s not working.
It’s not working, but you’re caught in him, lost in him and you’re not sure you can get free and you’re not sure you want to. He’s full of quicksilver grins and mercurial moods, sweetness and anger and petulance, and you’re not sure which face will be showing when you wake up in the morning, and you’re not sure how he’ll take your greeting at breakfast, and you learn to judge your day based on his moods. You know by your cold sheets to dread the day. You know by flashing teeth to shut the fuck up. You know by the hands pressing you back against the wet shower tiles that you can’t leave.
*
Kyuhyun wakes up and rolls over, tensing when his arm hits cold, empty bed, automatically awake and alert. He sits up, and relaxes when he hears the shower going in the bathroom. He yawns, then, stretches, stands, scratching his bare stomach and brushing a hand through his hair. When he opens the door to the bathroom, he peers around the doorframe carefully, almost hesitantly, and tries to see through the fogged up glass shower doors.
“Sungmin?” his voice is rusty, still half clogged with the thick remnants of sleep, and when there’s no answer he clears his throat and calls a second time, slightly louder. “Sungmin? Can you hear me?”
“Yeah? Sup?” Sungmin’s voice is muffled by glass and water and Kyuhyun can’t tell what his expression is like. It makes him wary, and he wishes that it didn’t.
“What do you want for breakfast?” A safe topic, for starters. He doesn’t ask how are you feeling today or what’s the threat level this morning because it’s early, and he’s rather not have deal with that yet. Kyuhyun enters the bathroom to brush his teeth, wiping away at the condensation on the mirror mounted on the wall. He doesn’t look up when the shower turns off, busy spitting into the sink, so he’s not ready when the wet arms wrap around his bare torso, chest pressed to his back.
“Watch the cold water, man, you made my show turn all hot.” The arms tighten, and Kyuhyun can feel Sungmin’s breath on the back of his neck. He does nothing, but he smiles, and that’s apparently enough.
Sungmin releases him and turns to leave the bathroom, pulling his towel off of the wall and wrapping it around his waist.
“And no breakfast,” he says, “I’ll pick something up on my way into the office.”
Kyuhyun nods and doesn’t look, feeling the water from Sungmin’s body dripping down his back, not entirely comfortable with it. But he’s not as uncomfortable as he thinks he should be.
*
The day Kyuhyun meets Sungmin is the day he unwittingly witnesses the break up between Sungmin and his boyfriend.
He’s worked at Bibelot, a local bookstore chain, for closing in on eight months, and he’s learned to ignore the customers unless they come to him for questions or he’s working at the café. He minds his own business and they assume that he’s doing something important and that is all good with him. He is quiet, normally, and being forced into too many conversations a day makes him uncomfortable. His boss, Eeteuk, had quickly noticed this, and leaves him mostly to stock shelves and reorganize the various stacks. He’s patient and he’s a good worker; he does what he’s told, and he gets paid for it, and that’ alright with him.
The day Sungmin walks through the doors, Kyuhyun is behind the information desk, filling in for Kibum who’d called out sick. He’s playing solitaire on the computer and leaning his head on his palm, bored out of his mind, and when the doors slam he looks up more out of boredom than even curiosity.
Sungmin’s face is blotchy with anger and tears and his boyfriend looks guilty and worried, but not guilty enough, and it’s right then that Kyuhyun knows - he cheated. The boyfriend cheated and he doesn’t feel as bad about it as he should. Kyuhyun spends more time observing people than talking to them, but he’s pretty sure he isn’t wrong, and the ensuing argument proves him right almost immediately.
The conflict is painful and public and Kyuhyun doesn’t look away and doesn’t feel guilty for observing. It’s full of exclamations like “Min, do we really have to do this here?” and “fuck you, you arrogant asshole, I can’t fucking believe you’d do this to me” and “You just don’t understand, do you? I had to find someone who was fucking normal, someone who wouldn’t freak out about ever little thing, someone who could stay calm! You’re fucking suffocating, you know that?” and “Fuck you, Hae, fuck you! You said you’d be there, that you’d help me. Big help you’ve been, asshole! I - I - I can’t believe you! I hope you’re happy with him, and I hope he breaks your fucking heart.”
At the end, Sungmin cries and Hae leaves him standing there and Kyuhyun abandons his post at the information desk.
“Want some coffee?” Kyuhyun asks, and there’s no pity in his voice. “It’s on me; I get free stuff from the café, anyway.” Kyuhyun waits patiently until Sungmin nods, and that’s that. The beginning. It hadn’t gotten them very far, but that’s never mattered.
*
You deal with his fear and his rages and his leftover love while he tries not to deal with the fact that you don’t know what you’re doing. That you probably don’t want to. He’s not okay with that, and he doesn’t pretend to be. He pushes and pushes and pushes and you take it because you don’t know what else to do.
You don’t want him, not immediately, not like he wants you, and so the first time he kisses you, you push him away. He doesn’t take it personally, and you think it’s because he senses the pause in your words and the unsure set of your hands on his shoulders.
You need him, you know you do, but he needs you more. He needs you so much so hard that you don’t know where it came from, or when. He’s wrapped around you, inside you, and so you deal with him. His unprovoked rages, his selfish desires, his hands on your face, his lips below your ear, his mumbles in his sleep, his need to touch you when you don’t want to be touched.
You are not perfect and neither is he and together you are even more imperfect but it’s you and it’s him and you don’t know what you’d do without him anymore.
The thought doesn’t scare you as much as you’d like it to.
*
Sungmin goes home with Kyuhyun for lack of anywhere else to go. He’s shy and he’s wary and Kyuhyun doesn’t mind, because if he wasn’t, then Kyuhyun would be wondering the reasons. Kyuhyun lends him a nightshirt, shows him the couch. Gives him an extra toothbrush. He’s not really wondering what led him to take in a stray. He doesn’t care, not yet, and by the time he does, it doesn’t matter anymore.
Kyuhyun’s not a light sleeper, so when he wakes up in the middle of the night, he’s not sure why it’s happened. When he turns over and sees the light in the hallway, he sits up, realizing his door’s open where it wasn’t before. He waits.
When Sungmin enters the room, his feet are soft against the carpet and his face is pale in the half-light. Sungmin opens his mouth to say something, but Kyuhyun just shakes his head and slides over. He doesn’t want to know, he doesn’t care. Sungmin slips in next to him, sitting gingerly on the edge of the mattress and Kyuhyun turns over, closes his eyes. He feels Sungmin settling in, hears the rustling of the covers.
Sometimes he wonders, if he’d let Sungmin talk, then, what would he have said? Would it have mattered? And now, there’s no way of knowing.
*
When he kissed you, that first time, his lips were insistent against yours, firm, needy, and his fingernails dug into your shoulders.
When he kisses you, you think of that, of the way you wiped your lips when you pushed him away. When he bites hard enough to draw blood, when your fingers grab his hips just that little bit too hard, when he digs into your back with his nail, when you sink into him to fast. You remember that kiss, then, and it drives you harder, but you don’t know why.
It’s not always rough, and it’s not always that mix of painful and pleasurable, even if that’s most of what you remember. Sometimes, though, he kisses you when he hands you your coffee in the morning, and sometimes his fingers brush through your hair when you’re lying in bed together, and sometimes he looks at you and slides his arms around your neck, pulls you against him, swaying to music that you don’t hear, but wish that you did.
If it was just like that, if it was always like that, you might not wonder so much. You might not be so uncertain. You might not have to think about leaving, even if you know you can’t. But you’re not sure.
*
Kyuhyun walks in, and he’s knows that something is wrong. There’s glass on the floor and the chair in the corner of the living room is overturned. When he gets to the kitchen, the cupboard is open and empty, but when he walks through, he finds the dishes. They’re shattered on the tile, broken into thousands of pieces. His only thought is that if only he’d been here, he could’ve - could’ve - but he knows that he couldn’t.
He walks down the hallway and finds Sungmin sitting on the edge of the bed, staring at his hands. They’re bleeding, Kyuhyun notices, and he goes to the bathroom to get some bandages and a wet cloth. When he gets back, Sungmin is still holding his hands in front of him, but his looking at Kyuhyun, and his face isn’t angry anymore. Kyuhyun is relieved, somewhat, but he doesn’t much like the look of intense guilt, either.
“What set you off?” he asks. He doesn’t know if it’s the right thing to say, but he needs to distract Sungmin. He inspects his hands for pieces of glass and, finding none, starts to gently clean Sungmin’s hands.
“I’m so fucking screwed up,” Sungmin say. “I don’t know. I don’t know.” His voice is thick, and Kyuhyun doesn’t look up, just starts to bandage his hands.
“Yeah, you are,” he says, still looking at the white gauze over lacerated flesh.
“I’m sorry, Kyu, I’m sorry. Please don’t leave?” His voice is tentative, and Kyuhyun rarely gets to see him like this. Usually it’s confident and together or angry and out of control, and it’s times like this that Kyuhyun knows he can’t leave.
“I won’t,” he says, and kisses the covered palms of both Sungmin’s hands. “Take a nap. I’ll go clean the kitchen.”
*
You think that he didn’t trust you for the first month and a half, but you think that he wanted you from the moment he saw you. You think that his living in your apartment was a trial run, a test to see how you’d deal with him, and that by the time he kissed you, he trusted you enough to risk it, and wanted you enough to work for it.
He never told you this, but you’re observant enough to guess.
You think that half the reason you gave in is because he wouldn’t take no for an answer.
You think the other half is that you wanted him back, and that, maybe more than that, you wanted to help him.
You’ll buy new plates and you’ll fix the chair and you’ll take him into bed with you, and if that’s all you can do, you just have to hope it will be enough.
End Notes: Yeah, so. I fucked with Sungmin. Um. La. I have such mixed feelings about this one. I like the sections, I'm just not sure that they fit together in any real way. So, tell me what you think, please. I'd appreciate it a lot.