Rhythm and blues
Title: Rhythm and blues
Pairing: Jonghyun/everybody, background Jonghyun/Sekyung, Minho/Onew
Rating: PG-13
Words: ~2400
Notes: For kipling, whom I love. This is Jonghyun-centric, because he's who she loves. I hope you can find a way to forgive my weakness of inserting a certain OTP into everything, and I'm sorry again for the marvelously late birthday wishes! Title is from American Pie, which I was going to have them sing at one point, but it didn't quite happen -- maybe in the next fic.
"It's not like I can just leave him," Jonghyun hisses into the mouthpiece. "What if he loses it? What if he gets lonely and goes out and misses the recording? And then what if he just plain loses?"
"Then at least be tactful and don't mention the game," Jinki suggests from somewhere behind Key's snort, trying to be nice, and Jonghyun smiles because like, nice try, even if it won't work.
"I don't know, I think he's gonna TiVo -- I gotta go," he says quickly, the sound of the door to the bathroom opening in the dorm. A rush of warm steam arrives a couple seconds later, some light eucalyptus cucumber whatever the crap that Kibum buys, that sweet-smelling stuff that no one can really disagree with. Eventually Minho drags himself into the living room, moping and missing draped over the slump of his shoulders, and Jonghyun pats the empty cushion next to him, smiles widely up at his bandmate.
"Sit," he orders. "Let's get friendly."
Minho flops down straight into his lap. Jonghyun curses.
"Why are you such a baby," he complains. He couldn't breathe, because Minho was two tons of solid muscle, like being hit with a small car. Not to mention his face, which was kind of like watching a star fall with increasing velocity, and for a few seconds you're totally enraptured only to realize that this is actually a huge flaming meteor coming your way and it's gonna hurt.
"You suck," he says, and Minho's head lolls back uncomfortably, pinning him with a laser-beam glare. "But you smell good," he quickly amends. "Using Kibum's stash?"
"He's in Spain," says Minho, voice sizzling with animosity. "He's too busy buying blood red cleats and flamenco castanets to hang from his neck and start a new fashion trend--"
"Hey, One Piece is on," Jonghyun interrupts, accidentally pressing his palm against the remote. "Have you seen this episode?"
They watch in silence for a few minutes. Then Minho lets out a sigh, reaching up to run his fingers through his hair, his muscle flexing noticeably. There's a hole in his shirt. Jonghyun pokes a finger through it.
"You don't have to prove anything, you know," he says quietly. "For tomorrow, I mean."
"I know," says Minho, no longer watching, though his eyes are still fixed on the screen. "But I wanted to stay for this." He shrugs. "So I gotta do something fantastic."
"Hey, I stayed too," Jonghyun protests. "For you." Minho's eyes crinkle and they finish the rest of the episode with his arm slung around Jonghyun's shoulders.
But as usual, the worry was for nothing. The next night Jonghyun decides to stay up, while Minho takes a quick shower before crashing, doesn't even bother. When they finally come through the door, Jinki's propping up a sleepy Taemin, while Key looks at him expectantly.
"Well?" he asks. "What happened here?"
"That asshole won a car," Jonghyun says, before slumping against his best friend.
They go shopping for Taemin's birthday present that weekend. Wandering around the mall, he has the Bee Gees stuck in his head.
"In the event of something happening to me," he'd sing while they rounded out another corner of the store. "There is something I would like you all to see. It's just a photograph of someone that I knew--"
"Shut up for a sec, I need to decide which color this sweater should be for Taemin," Key says absently, holding out two identical piles of gray and brown.
"It's only symbolic," Jonghyun says, then plucks the brown out of Key's hands because like Taemin would ever wear brown. He leans in close, and Key blinks. "Have you seen my wife, Mr. Jones?"
“Come on, you psycho,” Key says fondly, and they head out to pay.
Key was pretty good at gifts, though sometimes he fucked it up on purpose because Minho really deserved it, or Jinki was just too hard to buy for (it's like he never wanted things that cost money).
But Key has never needed to do anything with him, except to just, you know. Give.
"Here," he had said while unpacking from Spain, and handed him a stack of photos. "For your notebook."
They’re all these artistic conveyances of Barcelona cobblestones, pier and port cities, flowerbeds and fiestas, the beach on top of the sea. It was motorcycles and salt air neatly framed in the white border of a Polaroid. It was perfect. Jonghyun thinks he'll enjoy the photobook when it comes out, pictures of Key taking pictures for him.
"Thanks," he said gratefully, and Key had reached into his pocket, unfolded a crumpled piece of paper.
"Some words too, while on the train," he said, and Jonghyun had looked up, their eyes meeting.
"I'd jump in front of a traaaain, for ya," they both sang at the same time, and it was just so funny. Fucking Bruno Mars.
"But it was very inspired," Key had insisted, sobering. "Very The Sun Also Rises."
One time, the strap of Key's tank top had slipped off his shoulder, and Jonghyun had thought, man he's so pretty. It was a curiously distinct memory, the way that strip of fabric had seemed to fall along the curved smoothness of his skin, like something sharp and sparkling -- a diamond memory, precious and privately hoarded.
"I want to know if you're right about that," Jonghyun had replied, and, ignoring Key's squawk of protest, downloaded a copy of Hemingway onto both their e-readers.
"Have you read this?" Sekyung asks when he arrives.
He's ten minutes late. She's already picking apart a caprese salad and has a book, Dune, he can make out the title upside down as it hangs loosely in her hand when she had gotten out of her chair to hug him.
"Man, I love basil so much right now," she says, after they sit down. "In soup, in sandwiches. Pizza and Thai curry. What about you, what do you love right now?"
"Uh," he balks. "Postcards. Do you want one? I'm going to Sydney next month."
Just because he's no longer her boyfriend doesn't mean he can't keep in touch.
"I haven't read Dune, by the way," he adds awkwardly. "Is it any good?"
"It's okay," says Sekyung.
It was awkward as fuck, but for some reason they made themselves go through it at least once a month, in order to prove, prove something. Prove that all that media hoopla wasn't for nothing, that they had had something real and tangible to put on the table.
Jonghyun is suddenly reminded of those electrical sockets, the ones that give you two options, Test or Reset. Test is probably better than Reset. Reset sounds kind of depressing (unlike, say, Replay, which more implied that you liked it so much you'd do it all over again). As Minho would say, there's always some room to win, even just a little bit.
After dinner, they go to a nearby café for some live music and coffee. She ends up devouring half a loaf of cranberry bread.
"Hey," Jonghyun says, surprised. "I wanted to try some."
"Next time," she tells him, then reaches over to squeeze his hand, her fingers still sticky with crumbs.
When he gets back, Taemin's the only one in the dorm.
"Yo, hyung," he greets him, and Jonghyun winces.
"American slang does not sound cool coming from you," he says, and Taemin gives him this, like, full facial pout, all these lines appearing from nowhere, his bottom lip pulled out, glistening with saliva.
He suddenly feels hungry again.
"What are you making?" Taemin calls from the living room, and then when Jonghyun rustles the ramen packaging, asks, "Can I have some?"
He adds some egg, garlic, green onion, then carefully carries the two steaming bowls over to where, coincidentally, Taemin is watching Ponyo.
That is, Ponyo in the original Japanese with no Korean subtitles, the overachieving little shit.
"I'm going through them all," he says later, his feet tucked between the couch cushion and Jonghyun's ass. "Spirited Away's next -- a lot more dialogue though, might put the subs up then."
"I like that one," says Jonghyun, and Taemin nods.
"Me too. But Mononoke's my favorite."
"We know," Jonghyun groans, squashing his toes on purpose, until Taemin kicks out in retaliation. He has an 'oh fuck' moment a few seconds later when they're wrestling and he's stuck with a mouthful of Taemin's hair -- that's what they should've gotten him for his birthday.
Going out with Jinki is usually a mistake, but one that he's committed to because sometimes it's fun to see how much the guy can drink.
Going out with Minho is a mistake, period.
So naturally, going out with both of them at the same time is pure catastrophe. At some point, Citizen Choi is chugging away at some other guy's face in the middle of the dance floor, right at the hook to Pictures of You. It was like watching a movie, the two attractive leads attractively making out to the rising swell of music that punctuates the attractiveness of this spontaneous moment.
Barring the two who remain in the booth, one looking skeptical, the other left struggling.
"Man," says Jonghyun, after a while. "Just tell him already."
"No, I'm good," Jinki says, and looks blankly down at his drink. "Hey, how do you spell 'prevaricate' in English?"
"Like this," Jonghyun says, smoothing out a napkin. He writes COWARD in all caps, and Jinki scowls.
"You're right, television broadcast confessions are really so much braver," he says snippily, but by now it's water off a duck's back.
"I don't get why you're so afraid. It's Minho. He's a loser. You really think he'll say no to you?"
"That's the problem. He doesn't say no to anyone."
Jonghyun pauses, because okay, that was the truth. "Well, he's afraid of you too. You might be the only person in the whole world, actually, who scares him."
Jinki gives him this look like, great, and Jonghyun makes an impatient noise because this was important. "What I really don't get is how you're not afraid of anything except taking a risk. Seriously, hyung. Isn't he worth it?"
Jinki doesn't answer, and Jonghyun sighs, leans over to put his pen back into his bag. When he straightens back up, Jinki has disappeared, and he looks over just in time to see the other man heading straight into the crowd on the dance floor, the strobe lights outlining in almost comic-book clarity the rigid tension in his shoulders, the nervous purpose of his wide strides.
Jonghyun hopes it's not the last he'll see of him.
A few days later, after Jonghyun's been not so subtly arranged into the space between the wall and the edge of Key's mattress, Minho and Jinki finally emerge from their bedroom, hands clasped tightly like a new world discovered, Jinki's knuckles still bruised from punching that guy in the face.
He and Kibum had laughed for days.
"It's nice to have porn star ambitions," he tells them while rinsing his mug in the sink. "But next time, can't you just order a pizza? I don't like making tea for you guys and when you open the door all I hear is this crying, you know what I mean?"
"We were just talking," Minho says, and the instinctive way Jonghyun wants to eyeroll at his smile means he's probably telling the truth.
It's only when Jinki edges over, maybe just two centimeters closer, and the way Minho blinks in reaction, almost in slow-motion, that makes Jonghyun realize -- and simultaneously feel -- everything, all at once.
"I want to find love too," he whines at Kibum in the car later, then kicks the back of Minho's seat for good measure.
"These young people," Key reassures him, talking over Jinki and Taemin's laughter from the back. "It won't last."
But he's not so sure. A couple weeks later they meet Minho for a late dinner after one of his MC gigs, their last full meal before two days worth of jet hopping and foreign airports. Minho had arrived ahead of them, pre-ordered drinks and dishes. The way he glances at Jinki as he tells them this sets off warning bells inside Jonghyun's head.
"I know what you did, you skeaze," he cries, glaring. "You ordered all-chicken entrees!"
"You jealous?" Minho barks defensively, while Jinki beams.
So they endure that for the rest of the year. It's definitely one of the grosser things he's seen, like, ever. But then his birthday rolls around, and about an hour into dinner -- they had organized a little party between staff and close friends, it was pretty cute -- Minho hands him a piece of paper.
"Happy birthday, hyung," he says.
"What is this?" Jonghyun opens it, revealing a list, numbered 1 to 10. It went something like this:
1. I like your diplomatic skills with pizza toppings, you are a master of compromise
2. You are awful at guitar and it's funny
3. When I'm falling asleep on the plane and I hear your voice in the seat next to mine and it's reassuring somehow
4. How I will get my license before you do
5. Don't make me laugh so much or I'll get frown lines
6. The pencils I steal from your bag are always full of lead; you are surprisingly careful about these things
7. I want to work as a carny with hyung one summer in booths right next to each other so we can get free cotton candy and orchestrate short-term romances between the other employees
8. The colors you picked out for my labels when you set up my Gmail account match perfectly
9. I actually convinced you not to wear any clothes to bed
10. The way your lips sweetly caress the long-drawn syllables of Korean-style ballads
There were four different sets of handwriting there, though it's the same colored pen. "What is this?" Jonghyun asks again.
"Ten things we like about you," Minho says. "Because, you know -- if you can name ten things you like about someone, then it's for keeps."
There's a familiar prickling behind his eyes, and Jonghyun finds himself blinking rapidly, again (it was the same story when they had brought out the cake). "Does this really count though? It's only like, two each."
"Of course it does," replies Minho, and tucks a tissue into his hand, just in case.
Pairing: Jonghyun/everybody, background Jonghyun/Sekyung, Minho/Onew
Rating: PG-13
Words: ~2400
Notes: For kipling, whom I love. This is Jonghyun-centric, because he's who she loves. I hope you can find a way to forgive my weakness of inserting a certain OTP into everything, and I'm sorry again for the marvelously late birthday wishes! Title is from American Pie, which I was going to have them sing at one point, but it didn't quite happen -- maybe in the next fic.
"It's not like I can just leave him," Jonghyun hisses into the mouthpiece. "What if he loses it? What if he gets lonely and goes out and misses the recording? And then what if he just plain loses?"
"Then at least be tactful and don't mention the game," Jinki suggests from somewhere behind Key's snort, trying to be nice, and Jonghyun smiles because like, nice try, even if it won't work.
"I don't know, I think he's gonna TiVo -- I gotta go," he says quickly, the sound of the door to the bathroom opening in the dorm. A rush of warm steam arrives a couple seconds later, some light eucalyptus cucumber whatever the crap that Kibum buys, that sweet-smelling stuff that no one can really disagree with. Eventually Minho drags himself into the living room, moping and missing draped over the slump of his shoulders, and Jonghyun pats the empty cushion next to him, smiles widely up at his bandmate.
"Sit," he orders. "Let's get friendly."
Minho flops down straight into his lap. Jonghyun curses.
"Why are you such a baby," he complains. He couldn't breathe, because Minho was two tons of solid muscle, like being hit with a small car. Not to mention his face, which was kind of like watching a star fall with increasing velocity, and for a few seconds you're totally enraptured only to realize that this is actually a huge flaming meteor coming your way and it's gonna hurt.
"You suck," he says, and Minho's head lolls back uncomfortably, pinning him with a laser-beam glare. "But you smell good," he quickly amends. "Using Kibum's stash?"
"He's in Spain," says Minho, voice sizzling with animosity. "He's too busy buying blood red cleats and flamenco castanets to hang from his neck and start a new fashion trend--"
"Hey, One Piece is on," Jonghyun interrupts, accidentally pressing his palm against the remote. "Have you seen this episode?"
They watch in silence for a few minutes. Then Minho lets out a sigh, reaching up to run his fingers through his hair, his muscle flexing noticeably. There's a hole in his shirt. Jonghyun pokes a finger through it.
"You don't have to prove anything, you know," he says quietly. "For tomorrow, I mean."
"I know," says Minho, no longer watching, though his eyes are still fixed on the screen. "But I wanted to stay for this." He shrugs. "So I gotta do something fantastic."
"Hey, I stayed too," Jonghyun protests. "For you." Minho's eyes crinkle and they finish the rest of the episode with his arm slung around Jonghyun's shoulders.
But as usual, the worry was for nothing. The next night Jonghyun decides to stay up, while Minho takes a quick shower before crashing, doesn't even bother. When they finally come through the door, Jinki's propping up a sleepy Taemin, while Key looks at him expectantly.
"Well?" he asks. "What happened here?"
"That asshole won a car," Jonghyun says, before slumping against his best friend.
They go shopping for Taemin's birthday present that weekend. Wandering around the mall, he has the Bee Gees stuck in his head.
"In the event of something happening to me," he'd sing while they rounded out another corner of the store. "There is something I would like you all to see. It's just a photograph of someone that I knew--"
"Shut up for a sec, I need to decide which color this sweater should be for Taemin," Key says absently, holding out two identical piles of gray and brown.
"It's only symbolic," Jonghyun says, then plucks the brown out of Key's hands because like Taemin would ever wear brown. He leans in close, and Key blinks. "Have you seen my wife, Mr. Jones?"
“Come on, you psycho,” Key says fondly, and they head out to pay.
Key was pretty good at gifts, though sometimes he fucked it up on purpose because Minho really deserved it, or Jinki was just too hard to buy for (it's like he never wanted things that cost money).
But Key has never needed to do anything with him, except to just, you know. Give.
"Here," he had said while unpacking from Spain, and handed him a stack of photos. "For your notebook."
They’re all these artistic conveyances of Barcelona cobblestones, pier and port cities, flowerbeds and fiestas, the beach on top of the sea. It was motorcycles and salt air neatly framed in the white border of a Polaroid. It was perfect. Jonghyun thinks he'll enjoy the photobook when it comes out, pictures of Key taking pictures for him.
"Thanks," he said gratefully, and Key had reached into his pocket, unfolded a crumpled piece of paper.
"Some words too, while on the train," he said, and Jonghyun had looked up, their eyes meeting.
"I'd jump in front of a traaaain, for ya," they both sang at the same time, and it was just so funny. Fucking Bruno Mars.
"But it was very inspired," Key had insisted, sobering. "Very The Sun Also Rises."
One time, the strap of Key's tank top had slipped off his shoulder, and Jonghyun had thought, man he's so pretty. It was a curiously distinct memory, the way that strip of fabric had seemed to fall along the curved smoothness of his skin, like something sharp and sparkling -- a diamond memory, precious and privately hoarded.
"I want to know if you're right about that," Jonghyun had replied, and, ignoring Key's squawk of protest, downloaded a copy of Hemingway onto both their e-readers.
"Have you read this?" Sekyung asks when he arrives.
He's ten minutes late. She's already picking apart a caprese salad and has a book, Dune, he can make out the title upside down as it hangs loosely in her hand when she had gotten out of her chair to hug him.
"Man, I love basil so much right now," she says, after they sit down. "In soup, in sandwiches. Pizza and Thai curry. What about you, what do you love right now?"
"Uh," he balks. "Postcards. Do you want one? I'm going to Sydney next month."
Just because he's no longer her boyfriend doesn't mean he can't keep in touch.
"I haven't read Dune, by the way," he adds awkwardly. "Is it any good?"
"It's okay," says Sekyung.
It was awkward as fuck, but for some reason they made themselves go through it at least once a month, in order to prove, prove something. Prove that all that media hoopla wasn't for nothing, that they had had something real and tangible to put on the table.
Jonghyun is suddenly reminded of those electrical sockets, the ones that give you two options, Test or Reset. Test is probably better than Reset. Reset sounds kind of depressing (unlike, say, Replay, which more implied that you liked it so much you'd do it all over again). As Minho would say, there's always some room to win, even just a little bit.
After dinner, they go to a nearby café for some live music and coffee. She ends up devouring half a loaf of cranberry bread.
"Hey," Jonghyun says, surprised. "I wanted to try some."
"Next time," she tells him, then reaches over to squeeze his hand, her fingers still sticky with crumbs.
When he gets back, Taemin's the only one in the dorm.
"Yo, hyung," he greets him, and Jonghyun winces.
"American slang does not sound cool coming from you," he says, and Taemin gives him this, like, full facial pout, all these lines appearing from nowhere, his bottom lip pulled out, glistening with saliva.
He suddenly feels hungry again.
"What are you making?" Taemin calls from the living room, and then when Jonghyun rustles the ramen packaging, asks, "Can I have some?"
He adds some egg, garlic, green onion, then carefully carries the two steaming bowls over to where, coincidentally, Taemin is watching Ponyo.
That is, Ponyo in the original Japanese with no Korean subtitles, the overachieving little shit.
"I'm going through them all," he says later, his feet tucked between the couch cushion and Jonghyun's ass. "Spirited Away's next -- a lot more dialogue though, might put the subs up then."
"I like that one," says Jonghyun, and Taemin nods.
"Me too. But Mononoke's my favorite."
"We know," Jonghyun groans, squashing his toes on purpose, until Taemin kicks out in retaliation. He has an 'oh fuck' moment a few seconds later when they're wrestling and he's stuck with a mouthful of Taemin's hair -- that's what they should've gotten him for his birthday.
Going out with Jinki is usually a mistake, but one that he's committed to because sometimes it's fun to see how much the guy can drink.
Going out with Minho is a mistake, period.
So naturally, going out with both of them at the same time is pure catastrophe. At some point, Citizen Choi is chugging away at some other guy's face in the middle of the dance floor, right at the hook to Pictures of You. It was like watching a movie, the two attractive leads attractively making out to the rising swell of music that punctuates the attractiveness of this spontaneous moment.
Barring the two who remain in the booth, one looking skeptical, the other left struggling.
"Man," says Jonghyun, after a while. "Just tell him already."
"No, I'm good," Jinki says, and looks blankly down at his drink. "Hey, how do you spell 'prevaricate' in English?"
"Like this," Jonghyun says, smoothing out a napkin. He writes COWARD in all caps, and Jinki scowls.
"You're right, television broadcast confessions are really so much braver," he says snippily, but by now it's water off a duck's back.
"I don't get why you're so afraid. It's Minho. He's a loser. You really think he'll say no to you?"
"That's the problem. He doesn't say no to anyone."
Jonghyun pauses, because okay, that was the truth. "Well, he's afraid of you too. You might be the only person in the whole world, actually, who scares him."
Jinki gives him this look like, great, and Jonghyun makes an impatient noise because this was important. "What I really don't get is how you're not afraid of anything except taking a risk. Seriously, hyung. Isn't he worth it?"
Jinki doesn't answer, and Jonghyun sighs, leans over to put his pen back into his bag. When he straightens back up, Jinki has disappeared, and he looks over just in time to see the other man heading straight into the crowd on the dance floor, the strobe lights outlining in almost comic-book clarity the rigid tension in his shoulders, the nervous purpose of his wide strides.
Jonghyun hopes it's not the last he'll see of him.
A few days later, after Jonghyun's been not so subtly arranged into the space between the wall and the edge of Key's mattress, Minho and Jinki finally emerge from their bedroom, hands clasped tightly like a new world discovered, Jinki's knuckles still bruised from punching that guy in the face.
He and Kibum had laughed for days.
"It's nice to have porn star ambitions," he tells them while rinsing his mug in the sink. "But next time, can't you just order a pizza? I don't like making tea for you guys and when you open the door all I hear is this crying, you know what I mean?"
"We were just talking," Minho says, and the instinctive way Jonghyun wants to eyeroll at his smile means he's probably telling the truth.
It's only when Jinki edges over, maybe just two centimeters closer, and the way Minho blinks in reaction, almost in slow-motion, that makes Jonghyun realize -- and simultaneously feel -- everything, all at once.
"I want to find love too," he whines at Kibum in the car later, then kicks the back of Minho's seat for good measure.
"These young people," Key reassures him, talking over Jinki and Taemin's laughter from the back. "It won't last."
But he's not so sure. A couple weeks later they meet Minho for a late dinner after one of his MC gigs, their last full meal before two days worth of jet hopping and foreign airports. Minho had arrived ahead of them, pre-ordered drinks and dishes. The way he glances at Jinki as he tells them this sets off warning bells inside Jonghyun's head.
"I know what you did, you skeaze," he cries, glaring. "You ordered all-chicken entrees!"
"You jealous?" Minho barks defensively, while Jinki beams.
So they endure that for the rest of the year. It's definitely one of the grosser things he's seen, like, ever. But then his birthday rolls around, and about an hour into dinner -- they had organized a little party between staff and close friends, it was pretty cute -- Minho hands him a piece of paper.
"Happy birthday, hyung," he says.
"What is this?" Jonghyun opens it, revealing a list, numbered 1 to 10. It went something like this:
1. I like your diplomatic skills with pizza toppings, you are a master of compromise
2. You are awful at guitar and it's funny
3. When I'm falling asleep on the plane and I hear your voice in the seat next to mine and it's reassuring somehow
4. How I will get my license before you do
5. Don't make me laugh so much or I'll get frown lines
6. The pencils I steal from your bag are always full of lead; you are surprisingly careful about these things
7. I want to work as a carny with hyung one summer in booths right next to each other so we can get free cotton candy and orchestrate short-term romances between the other employees
8. The colors you picked out for my labels when you set up my Gmail account match perfectly
9. I actually convinced you not to wear any clothes to bed
10. The way your lips sweetly caress the long-drawn syllables of Korean-style ballads
There were four different sets of handwriting there, though it's the same colored pen. "What is this?" Jonghyun asks again.
"Ten things we like about you," Minho says. "Because, you know -- if you can name ten things you like about someone, then it's for keeps."
There's a familiar prickling behind his eyes, and Jonghyun finds himself blinking rapidly, again (it was the same story when they had brought out the cake). "Does this really count though? It's only like, two each."
"Of course it does," replies Minho, and tucks a tissue into his hand, just in case.