Sutures
Title: Sutures
Pairing(s): Minho/Key, Taemin/Key, Jonghyun/Key, Onew/Key
Rating: PG-13
Summary: "Jinki was the earth, air and sea below. He was the beginning and the end, sunrise and sunset, and he turned Kibum’s blood into molten gold."
Warnings: hints towards multiple personality disorder
The first time he met Minho he had wondered whether the flicker in his eyes was a trick of the light, or if the boy was bathed luminescent, if his skin was lapped by seas of little flames, engulfed in a roaring glory. Their eyes had met, briefly, as Kibum sat at the bar, fiddling with the loose fabric on the side of his stool, fraying it with his fingers, and Minho had strode across the room like a predator - ‘another scotch on the rocks’.
They talked about everything and nothing, flirty eyes warming to a hinting touch, and they caught eyes again: Kibum’s somewhat clouded from several gin and tonics, Minho’s less so despite having had more. Minho footed the bill and dragged Kibum behind him, hurried footsteps to an apartment that Kibum would spend far too much time in for the rest of the year.
Minho’s apartment was a mystery and it conflicted itself so often that it would give Kibum a migraine. He’d walk into one room, prestigiously clean and ordered, football magazines stacked in decreasing order of size, DVDs in the bookshelf ordered categorically by name, director, genre. Then he’d take a stroll into the next room, Minho’s oversized football shirt skirting around his thighs as he walked, and the next room would greet him with chaos and disorder and above anything, confusion.
Kibum could never find fault in Minho, even with his inability to care for anything but his own issues and how many notes were in his wallet. He never spoke of the monsters in his head or the fears that would paralyse the flutter of hope in his stomach. But they were good together, for months in fact - two, three, four? Kibum couldn’t tell you. They were good until The Snap and suddenly it was like Kibum had sprayed an aerosol into a naked flame.
Sometimes Minho left the room, a shadow passing over his face like a storm cloud and his eyes would flutter open, and Kibum would know that Minho was gone, and Minho was here. Minho was different and he would look at Kibum like he was nothing but air, skin and bone. He regaled stories of his youth, wore the past love of others like rusting medals, told Kibum he had known the moment he saw him - of course you fell for me, I’m more than anything you could ever be. Minho would press hot irons to his heart with his twisted words and he'd brand him with burns that would last for days, or weeks, or months.
Kibum never fought with Minho, but he fought enough with Minho to more than make up for it. He would always leave as a canvas sprayed with black and blue, and no idea how or why it had got there. Minho said it was Kibum's fault, spat words in flames, said that Kibum he was the kindling, the gunpowder, the lighter, the one that had always done something irrevocable. Kibum always believed him.
But to Kibum the most important thing was permanence: he sought the reassurance that the space beside him would never be emptied, that something was there to fill it to the brim 24/7, and Minho did that. Minho and Minho, together as one or separate, filled it, and that was enough for Kibum to weather through the blaze.
In the mornings after Minho came, Minho would sit by his bed at dawn and sob. Kibum would always pretend he was sleeping as warm finger pads traced the bruises on his arms, his thighs, his hips, as if touching them could burn them away, could turn back time. The softness would light a flame in his belly that would ignite him for days. Minho would stroke and believe that everything could be fixed, everything that Minho had done could be erased like chalk from a blackboard, because Minho lived in this black and white world where everything was ordered and he was the board, Minho the dirtying chalk branding chaos into his life.
Kibum would always forgive him because that kind of flame was something that Kibum may never find again. That kind of flame was something he thought could never deserve, but it felt so right and it lit him up in his heart and his mind and his limbs.
But it was never meant to last and underneath Kibum's hardened skin the burns were still warm.
Taemin had eyes wider than the sea and his vision was clouded with heady anticipation, his mind designed for things far greater than gravity could contain. He was simultaneously at one and apart from the world, and his expectations greatly outweighed the hand he was given.
He was younger than Kibum, not drastically so, but enough for it to matter, and Kibum clung to his youth like a limpet to a boat. He let the waves soak him and wash away sins of adulthood, but would always find himself frowning at the naïvety that youth brought, nestled in Taemin and his ocean wide eyes.
Taemin was tiny, all skin and bone as if he’d done a deal with the Skeleton King, and Kibum envied the planes of his body. He was a powerful and hungry tsunami of a boy and it shocked Kibum that the time between them, as short as it was in the grand schemes of things, killed dreams so easily, washing them into murky depths of ‘what could have been’. Taemin lived to dance and Kibum lived to watch him in the time that they were together, and he’d skip lectures and cut class to watch and envy the bones of the boy he loved.
Kibum had always been conscious of the inches on his waist, the space between his thighs, the numbers on the chart. He’d trace the ripple of ribs beneath his skin and wonder if he was sick for putting all of his self worth on brittle bones and skin that shone in the moonlight, as if aesthetics were the only thing he lent to the world. But he’d sigh and brush it under the rug, before shifting to rearrange his hair in the nearest mirror.
Falling for Taemin felt like drowning, like his limbs were lead and they were pulling him down into deep depths because Taemin had fickle fancies and his eyes flitted at every opportunity, and Kibum knew that Taemin would soon be washed away - washed out to the ocean where he’d dance with the mermaids and sing with the gulls.
The not knowing killed Kibum, because Taemin was too young to love, too young to feel the swell of waves in his heart like Kibum could, and he couldn’t explain it to him either. They had laid out on the beach one day, Taemin’s head on Kibum’s stomach, his blond hair falling like a halo, and Taemin had asked - hyung, what does true love feel like? And Kibum thought back to the times he had loved (and lost) - it feels like an open flame, like a forest fire, it feels like a glass filled to the top, overflowing. Taemin had nodded but Kibum knew that he couldn’t yet understand. After Taemin had gone, he sighed when his ‘he loves me, he loves me not’ ended on a not as he dropped the petals one by one into the frothing sea waves.
He tried his best to be there as Taemin spurted fountains of excitement about auditions, call-backs, but his lips would purse to a frown and his eyes would glaze over like a static television screen. Taemin would falter, the light in his eyes dimming and he’d turn them all down until he couldn’t take it anymore and his dreams felt so much heavier in his heart than whatever he felt for Kibum.
Taemin was destined for greatness but Kibum was not. When the tide broke and swept him away Kibum was left stranded on an island surrounded by unnavigable seas, and he couldn't swim for the lost hope dragging him down like an anchor in his abdomen.
Jonghyun was made of feathers, he fluttered with the wind and Kibum held him way too high above the ground.
They met in the coffee shop Kibum had worked at: a temporary job to sooth the temporary lag in his social life because when Taemin left so did his friends and he’d found himself so personally invested in a relationship that there were few to call ‘friend’ anymore. Jonghyun always ordered differently, eyes swooping across the menu before he’d close them and point, leaving it all to the winds of change and grinning widely as he ordered. The first time their eyes met, he'd left Kibum gasping for air.
They lasted longer than the others, he lacked the fire of Minho (and Minho), and the whimsicality of Taemin, so they settled into friendliness and then courtship and then love. Kibum fell too easily, he knew he did, but the whoosh of his breath from his lungs was something he could not control (and with Jonghyun he wasn’t sure that he would ever want to). Jonghyun fell easily too, and he’d sit and stare at Kibum for hours as Kibum would sketch, drawing out the lines of Jonghyun’s face, watching the wind play with the strands of his platinum hair.
Jonghyun was a romantic, he wrote verse as easily as he took his breaths, he strummed melodies and symphonies into Kibum's heart. But Kibum expected too much from Jonghyun, locked away his love in his tiny rib cage and kissed his hopes into sculpted limbs then watched them blow away in the gust of a summer breeze.
She was his junior at the company and they would stay up at nights with a pencil and a score sheet. They say glass-cut wounds got their red from her lips and the rolling hills of the valley envied the shape of her hips. If Kibum closed his eyes he could imagine their hushed voices, her fluttering lashes, his cocky smile, in the dark of the studio with the microphones turned off.
He left Kibum on a Friday but it felt like a Sunday and Kibum wasn’t surprised that it never crashed like a crescendo, simply fluttered down to the ground like the ash from a fizzled-out firework. With a wailing sense of predictability it sucked the hope from Kibum’s stomach like a vacuum cleaner and left him empty and breathless.
Jonghyun was made of feathers and he fluttered with the wind. He left Kibum gasping for air and choking on disbelief.
Kibum had started his final year of university with the rain clouds blocking his vision and whatever had shone brightly with Minho and Taemin and Jonghyun had lost its glow. Defeated, the emptiness screamed and for once in his life the space beside wasn’t full and he felt lost. He presumed it would be a good thing for him, hoped so, at least that’s what his friends would say, what they would mutter into his ear as they held him close when the darkness sunk into his bones.
He met Jinki in a lecture. He was the teaching assistant with the coffee-coloured eyes and he sat a few rows ahead of Kibum in the first lecture of the year. Kibum's eyes drifted to his shirt, admiring the cut and fit as he absentmindedly debated over who had designed it, then appraisingly over coiffed red locks, curiously over his covered arms and back. Then, as the other turned in his seat to wave to the class as the lecturer introduced him, Kibum was struck by harmonious features and a smile like sunshine. The moment had passed however, as the lecturer started the lesson and Kibum didn't find himself looking for Jinki in following lectures.
It was his favourite module by far, he'd learnt very soon, half for the content and half for the people in it - Mir, Jaejin, Nicole, Dongwoon, there were so many names to learn as his social life whizzed from zero to sixty miles an hour in a few weeks. It provided solace, the alcohol, from the ache in his heart and his limbs, and he knew it was wrong to put so much effort into forgetting but it worked so well that he couldn't avoid it.
One night after a particularly heavy night his head felt like a dead weight and he knew he probably didn't look much better. He wandered onto campus, taking pills to soothe the ache in his head before a weight nudged into his shoulder and he was sent flying onto the tiled floor, books smashing down beneath him.
"I'm sorry," he heard from his position laid out on the floor, his head pounding and vision blurred. He shifted and hissed as he sat, eyes fixed on a piece of stray glass now stuck in his arm. The sight made him queasy.
Kibum glanced up to see Jinki stacking his books up again. He tried to stand but Jinki stopped him, fingers fumbling in his pockets to pull out pens, a pile of change, a library card and a little red notebook. He finally found disinfectant wipes and Kibum realised that he probably wasn't the first of Jinki's victims. Jinki knelt beside Kibum, fingers gently holding the elbow as he pulled out the glass, wiping up the blood. They caught eyes, Jinki smiled and to Kibum it felt like wildfire dancing through his veins.
"Hang on," he said again as he let go of Kibum's arm to pull out his wallet from his back pocket, fingers shifting through, face serious until he lit up to a grin as he found what he was looking for. Kibum bit his lip as Jinki took his arm back, sticking an Iron Man plaster firmly in place before his eyes caught sight of the time on Kibum's watch and he hastily made his exit, apologising repeatedly as he did so. Kibum found himself smiling every time he saw it, and though he wouldn't admit it he kept the plaster on far past the wound healing.
"Have you started your essay yet?" Nicole had asked him in the last week's lecture, and he'd faltered slightly because he was stumped, completely stumped, on what to write it on and how to do it and his confidence in his own ability was dwindling with every passing day.
"I'm sure you'll think of something soon," she'd soothed and he'd sighed.
The library was fairly quiet on the Sunday when he arrived, the majority of the other students all asleep, and he found it was even quieter down the economics section as his fingers scanned the shelves for the books on the reading list. He found one, eyes glancing back down to make sure it was the right one, before he felt someone else lean over and grab it and his eyes snapped up to see the coffee-eyed teaching assistant glancing inside the front cover.
"Ah," he let out a little sound subconsciously and Jinki's eyes snapped up from the book.
"Oh, did you..."
"Yeah..."
"I was just checking how many students had checked it out," he smiled as he handed the book over to Kibum, "I'm a TA for one of the modules it's used in," he looked at Kibum somewhat expectantly, "... Economic Data Analysis."
"Yeah, I know," Kibum nodded, "I, er... I take Economic Data Analysis." He nodded to the book and muttered a quick thanks before turning around to head to one of the work stations, blood pounding uncomfortably in his ears.
"Is your arm okay?" He heard and turned to see Jinki directly behind him and the proximity made him leap and yell in shock. Jinki grinned and stilled him with a hand on his shoulder so that he wouldn't fall, weighting him down like an anchor, the soft fabric of his sweatshirt grazing Kibum's exposed shoulder and almost making him jump again.
"Yeah it's fine, it's completely healed now. But ... thanks for asking." Jinki nodded and let go of Kibum's shoulder, and they just stood in silence for a few seconds, Jinki fiddling with the little red notebook in his hands, Kibum's eyes clinging to Jinki's exposed collar bones subconsciously before dropping down to the book in his hand.
"You should get to your books," Jinki grinned again and Kibum felt struck blind, "if you need any help just ask and I'll ... help."
Kibum found it odd, the difference between Jinki and the other boys he had dated. This was slower, for a start, a pull like gravity that filled him with both fear and joy. Kibum felt enthralled, felt his bones vibrate when he saw him, so he kept away. He kept a distance because falling for another perfect boy with perfect flaws was too much for his trodden heart to take.
A summer storm hit one evening as Kibum started his walk back to his dorm, and he took the quick route past the gym, already drenched, and his eyes caught Jinki just as he was leaving. He was joking about with one of the teaching assistants from the dance department as he was pushed under the rain, hair scruffy and a previously unseen pair of glasses perched on his nose. He was wearing only sweatpants, a vest top and a hoody. Kibum felt embarrassed, unbelievably so, and almost as if he was committing an offense, because Jinki looked so raw at that moment that he almost felt like he didn't even deserve to see it. He stood and watched as they joked together and disappeared down the path in front, and as much as he tried to he knew that Jinki couldn’t be pinned down - untamed like a fire, slippery like the sea, wispy like the air, Kibum would never be able to get his head around him.
Jinki made the darkness ebb back, make the tempest of shadow dwindle to a light shower and Kibum thanked him for that. They never really talked nor had Kibum ever had the intention of them talking, because Jinki was an enigma and he knew he’d only be disappointed if he let himself fall in.
He knew now, knew what he’d feared and the knowledge hugged him close like a mother with a newborn baby. He was a river that had all dried up, he was a preacher with no pulpit, and a fugitive with no legs to run. He knew that love was fake, at least for him, and it haunted him every waking moment that it was something so untouchable.
The first time they talked was in the café again, and Kibum was filled with painful nostalgia as Jinki took Jonghyun’s seat. Fear spiked in his stomach as a flicker of hope appeared, instantly squashed by the shadowy tempest. Fear spiked because he hoped, despite hating that he hoped, that Jinki would fill the hole in his heart just as he had the hole in Jonghyun’s seat. But Jinki hadn’t recognised him as he mumbled over his order, stubby fingers rustling through his wallet to find the right change. It clattered when he dropped it on the counter, still warm from the heat of his fingers.
“You’re Jinki right?” Kibum asked, biting his lip slightly as he fastened the lid on the older’s coffee and their fingers brushed as he handed it over. He watched as Jinki’s eyes widened in shock, from confusion to recognition and then realisation.
“Kibum,” he smiled and his fingers curled around the paper cup, “it’s good to see you.”
“It’s good to see you too,” he replied and a smile played on his lips, one like before - before the storm and the fire and the floods. Jinki looked dazed before he mumbled under his breath, his fingers twitching to pull his red notebook from his shirt pocket, and Kibum’s eyebrows almost knitted together as the angles in his face formed confusion.
“Pardon?”
“I said - like lightening in the darkness.” Kibum frowned as Jinki left, and the air smelt like cologne and fresh air.
It became habit after that for Jinki to come into the shop, ordering the same coffee with a smile on his lips and Kibum would feel alive for a moment, until Jinki left with a parting phrase and Kibum would hasten to write in down in his pocket notebook, handwriting hurried and scratchy. He never searched for the words, though he knew they were poetry. He refused to look for hope in fanciful phrases.
"What are you doing after you finish your PhD?" Kibum had asked at the café one day after his shift as they sat in the corner in the big comfy armchairs.
"No idea," Jinki had replied, taking a sip of his green tea, "I only really did a PhD because I had no idea what I wanted to do."
"That's a dumb reason to do a PhD," Kibum scoffed and Jinki shrugged, eyes stuck on the hot liquid in his mug.
"Well what do you want to do then?" Jinki had asked, quirking his eyebrow, and it was Kibum's turn to shrug.
It was refreshing, Kibum found, to meet a man without such lofty aspirations as the boys he had dated in the past, without the whirlwind of lawyer to dancer to musician that he was used to. All of his exes had had their heads in the clouds and Kibum had got so caught up in it all, but with Jinki it was so much easier, freer, he could be who he wanted without pressure to be something extraordinary. And Jinki respected that, as Kibum's friend and mentor, he wanted Kibum to be the best that he could be whilst being truly himself.
The tempest had dwindled to an ebb and he could sometimes feel the shadows pulsating in his rib cage, humming through his bloodstream to the tips of his fingers and his toes. Jonghyun had left campus and he knew that helped, helped to heal his heart as he learnt to frame it, to love it, to protect it like a child in a cage made of glass. Occasionally he saw Minho, strung out and weary, the medication pumped into his bloodstream turning him into a zombie. A frail, frail frame, sunken cheekbones, bony fingers shaking, eyes opaque and dead. Kibum didn't know what was worse, a zombie or a wildfire, and in all honesty he never wanted to find out, he didn't want to get stuck in that web again. As the winds blew they swept away the ash in his heart, soothed the burns on his skin, and he felt lighter as he walked. He felt like the winds could carry him and he wanted to fly again.
On a Thursday as he left the café when the sun was still blistering in the sky, he glanced up, letting the rays warm his cheeks and his nose. The park was a sweet kind of relief, and the clouds were kept at bay as he became one with the ferns and the trees and the flora. He sat down by an oak and he felt the urge to sketch, an urge he hadn’t had since Jonghyun and the nostalgia settled in his stomach like a warm ache instead of the stab it had once brought. He smiled, eyes flicking up to the patches of sky between the branches, and he heard a rustle beside him.
“You look peaceful,” Jinki voiced and Kibum just nodded, eyes fluttering close because it felt so good to know he was through the eye of the storm and that Jinki was here, laid beside him, his hair tangled with the grass.
“Are you peaceful?”
“Yes.”
“Are you happy?”
“Yes.” Kibum opened his eyes and Jinki was bathed in light and they were both star-soaked. All he could see was coffee eyes, pillow lips, and he knew that as much as he fought it he couldn’t be saved from falling. As much as he tried, he was already over the edge and he would fall until impact, but he was okay with that. Crashing was fine because falling felt like flying, because his battle wounds had healed to scars and his heart felt whole again as it beat against the glass bars of its cage. It was reckless but it was so unbelievably Kibum, this never-ending pendulum swinging between careful fear and dead devotion.
“Well the heart never heals right if you keep tearing at the sutures,” Jinki muttered into the air and Kibum laughed aloud at his insight because he could have sworn that they had never discussed his heart, and he briefly wondered if Jinki knew about the fires, the wild winds and the storms that his heart had fought through.
“Another poem?” Kibum asked, his tone low because the soft breeze spoke much more wisdom than his voice ever could. Jinki was silent and the winds ruffled his hair. He seemed blissfully at peace with the world and Kibum envied that.
“It’s from a song,” Jinki smiled slowly and his eyes found Kibum’s, “I’ve got to go, I’ve got a lecture,” he stood, brushing invisible dirt from his trousers. “I’m glad you’re not hurting so much anymore.” His heavy hand ruffled at Kibum’s hair and he turned to leave, glancing back just as Kibum’s eyes fluttered to a close again.
Kibum found his own eyes in the mirror and frowned, eyes flicking between his hairline and the little pot in his hand, and he bit his lip before biting the bullet, fingers working in the dye like he used to, until it spiralled into soft pink curls at his forehead. He smiled as he walked to lectures, fingers running though it as the appreciation lit a candle of self love in heart.
“You’re amazing,” Jinki comments, though it's a week later when he first sees the change. They’re sat beneath the same tree, several inches closer, their bare arms brushing, fingers itching to tangle.
“Yeah?” Kibum found himself smirking as he leaned back into the tree, his knuckles dragging up the back of Jinki’s hand as he did so.
“Yeah,” Jinki replied and his fingers tickled Kibum’s palm.
Woohyun was smirking at him the next time they met, this time in the library because it was nearing exam time and there was a coffee shop there. Kibum knew that there was no use in hiding from Woohyun, because Woohyun had been there through Minho and Taemin and Jonghyun and he knew Kibum like the back of his own hand.
“What?” He asked as he sat down, a hand coming to push his pink fringe from his eyes, somewhat self-consciously.
“You’re happy again,” Woohyun grinned and Kibum shrugged, “I haven’t seen you this happy in years. Since before you got together with-”
Kibum felt the ache and sighed, and Woohyun clammed up instinctively, eyes apologetic.
“It’s okay,” Kibum smiled as he rifled through his bag for his wallet, “it still hurts but I’m getting there. I’m letting myself heal. Let me get you a coffee to say thanks for, you know, being there.” Woohyun tried to stop him but he had already gone, a spring in his step that Woohyun hoped in his heart wouldn’t lead to another disaster.
“It’s really good,” Jinki commented as he finished reading Kibum’s essay, their shoes knocking as they sat together under the tree, “I can’t think of anything you’d need to correct.” Kibum rolled his eyes and took the essay back, dropping it and hissing as the paper caught his skin. He frowned at his finger before a soft hand circled his wrist and his hand was rested on Jinki’s thigh. The older shuffled through his wallet before pulling out a little packet and opening it, smoothing the plaster over the cut before bringing it to his lips and kissing it softly. Kibum smiled and it turned to a grin when he realised that the plaster had Pororo on it.
“What are you? Five?” He smiled and Jinki just shrugged, shifting to push his wallet back into the pocket of his jeans.
Nothing was said for a few more weeks, Kibum being too wary of his glass heart and Jinki respecting that. They sat under the tree a lot though, or in Kibum’s café, and sometimes their fingers would find each other but sometimes they wouldn’t. Jinki would always carry a little red notebook and in the middle of conversations he would stop just to scribble, and Kibum would know better than to peek despite every cell in his body brimming with curiosity.
“What are you writing about?” He cracked as they sat under the tree. Jinki had gone silent over five minutes ago and the curiosity was tearing him apart.
“You,” came the chuckled response and his eyes flew open in shock.
“Me? Why?”
“That’s a dumb question, Kibum-ah.” He watched as the sides of Jinki’s mouth quirked up but he never stopped writing.
“Is it like … a diary?”
“Of sorts, I guess … it’s mostly poetry,” Jinki murmured, stopping writing to read through his latest piece, and Kibum resisted the urge to read over his shoulder.
“Poetry? About me?”
“I’ve always written poetry about you,” Jinki blushed and Kibum couldn’t help but join him.
“No one’s ever done that before,” he muttered under his breath, still somewhat shocked.
“I could write ten thousand poems about you and it wouldn’t scratch the surface,” Jinki was laid back against the tree again and he looked serene but his heart was pounding a thousand times a minute.
“Oh?” Kibum sat up, expecting some form of response, but Jinki just pulled him down so that his cheek was resting on his chest and he could feel the badoom, badoom of his heart in his ear.
They lay in silence for a while. Kibum listened to Jinki’s heart until it lulled him to sleep, and Jinki cradled him like a precious gem, arms strong but loose because he didn’t want to tie him down, and Kibum's heart swelled at that.
“I want to be there for you Kibum,” Jinki muttered into his hair as the sun started going down and the park was bathed in pink, and he felt fingers running through the strands and tangling with the curls. “I want to be there to hold you when you sleep, to wipe away the hurt that spills over, to kiss you and remind you that flaws aren’t always faults and that your beauty is worthy of a hundred million poems. I will tell you that until you believe it because it’s true.”
And Kibum smiled, the door on his glass cage still closed, but no longer locked, and he knew it would take time and trust and patience, but as his eyes caught the lines of Jinki's face bathed in milky pink he knew it was worth it.
Jinki was the earth, air and sea below. He was the beginning and the end, sunrise and sunset, and he turned Kibum’s blood into molten gold.
Pairing(s): Minho/Key, Taemin/Key, Jonghyun/Key, Onew/Key
Rating: PG-13
Summary: "Jinki was the earth, air and sea below. He was the beginning and the end, sunrise and sunset, and he turned Kibum’s blood into molten gold."
Warnings: hints towards multiple personality disorder
The first time he met Minho he had wondered whether the flicker in his eyes was a trick of the light, or if the boy was bathed luminescent, if his skin was lapped by seas of little flames, engulfed in a roaring glory. Their eyes had met, briefly, as Kibum sat at the bar, fiddling with the loose fabric on the side of his stool, fraying it with his fingers, and Minho had strode across the room like a predator - ‘another scotch on the rocks’.
They talked about everything and nothing, flirty eyes warming to a hinting touch, and they caught eyes again: Kibum’s somewhat clouded from several gin and tonics, Minho’s less so despite having had more. Minho footed the bill and dragged Kibum behind him, hurried footsteps to an apartment that Kibum would spend far too much time in for the rest of the year.
Minho’s apartment was a mystery and it conflicted itself so often that it would give Kibum a migraine. He’d walk into one room, prestigiously clean and ordered, football magazines stacked in decreasing order of size, DVDs in the bookshelf ordered categorically by name, director, genre. Then he’d take a stroll into the next room, Minho’s oversized football shirt skirting around his thighs as he walked, and the next room would greet him with chaos and disorder and above anything, confusion.
Kibum could never find fault in Minho, even with his inability to care for anything but his own issues and how many notes were in his wallet. He never spoke of the monsters in his head or the fears that would paralyse the flutter of hope in his stomach. But they were good together, for months in fact - two, three, four? Kibum couldn’t tell you. They were good until The Snap and suddenly it was like Kibum had sprayed an aerosol into a naked flame.
Sometimes Minho left the room, a shadow passing over his face like a storm cloud and his eyes would flutter open, and Kibum would know that Minho was gone, and Minho was here. Minho was different and he would look at Kibum like he was nothing but air, skin and bone. He regaled stories of his youth, wore the past love of others like rusting medals, told Kibum he had known the moment he saw him - of course you fell for me, I’m more than anything you could ever be. Minho would press hot irons to his heart with his twisted words and he'd brand him with burns that would last for days, or weeks, or months.
Kibum never fought with Minho, but he fought enough with Minho to more than make up for it. He would always leave as a canvas sprayed with black and blue, and no idea how or why it had got there. Minho said it was Kibum's fault, spat words in flames, said that Kibum he was the kindling, the gunpowder, the lighter, the one that had always done something irrevocable. Kibum always believed him.
But to Kibum the most important thing was permanence: he sought the reassurance that the space beside him would never be emptied, that something was there to fill it to the brim 24/7, and Minho did that. Minho and Minho, together as one or separate, filled it, and that was enough for Kibum to weather through the blaze.
In the mornings after Minho came, Minho would sit by his bed at dawn and sob. Kibum would always pretend he was sleeping as warm finger pads traced the bruises on his arms, his thighs, his hips, as if touching them could burn them away, could turn back time. The softness would light a flame in his belly that would ignite him for days. Minho would stroke and believe that everything could be fixed, everything that Minho had done could be erased like chalk from a blackboard, because Minho lived in this black and white world where everything was ordered and he was the board, Minho the dirtying chalk branding chaos into his life.
Kibum would always forgive him because that kind of flame was something that Kibum may never find again. That kind of flame was something he thought could never deserve, but it felt so right and it lit him up in his heart and his mind and his limbs.
But it was never meant to last and underneath Kibum's hardened skin the burns were still warm.
Taemin had eyes wider than the sea and his vision was clouded with heady anticipation, his mind designed for things far greater than gravity could contain. He was simultaneously at one and apart from the world, and his expectations greatly outweighed the hand he was given.
He was younger than Kibum, not drastically so, but enough for it to matter, and Kibum clung to his youth like a limpet to a boat. He let the waves soak him and wash away sins of adulthood, but would always find himself frowning at the naïvety that youth brought, nestled in Taemin and his ocean wide eyes.
Taemin was tiny, all skin and bone as if he’d done a deal with the Skeleton King, and Kibum envied the planes of his body. He was a powerful and hungry tsunami of a boy and it shocked Kibum that the time between them, as short as it was in the grand schemes of things, killed dreams so easily, washing them into murky depths of ‘what could have been’. Taemin lived to dance and Kibum lived to watch him in the time that they were together, and he’d skip lectures and cut class to watch and envy the bones of the boy he loved.
Kibum had always been conscious of the inches on his waist, the space between his thighs, the numbers on the chart. He’d trace the ripple of ribs beneath his skin and wonder if he was sick for putting all of his self worth on brittle bones and skin that shone in the moonlight, as if aesthetics were the only thing he lent to the world. But he’d sigh and brush it under the rug, before shifting to rearrange his hair in the nearest mirror.
Falling for Taemin felt like drowning, like his limbs were lead and they were pulling him down into deep depths because Taemin had fickle fancies and his eyes flitted at every opportunity, and Kibum knew that Taemin would soon be washed away - washed out to the ocean where he’d dance with the mermaids and sing with the gulls.
The not knowing killed Kibum, because Taemin was too young to love, too young to feel the swell of waves in his heart like Kibum could, and he couldn’t explain it to him either. They had laid out on the beach one day, Taemin’s head on Kibum’s stomach, his blond hair falling like a halo, and Taemin had asked - hyung, what does true love feel like? And Kibum thought back to the times he had loved (and lost) - it feels like an open flame, like a forest fire, it feels like a glass filled to the top, overflowing. Taemin had nodded but Kibum knew that he couldn’t yet understand. After Taemin had gone, he sighed when his ‘he loves me, he loves me not’ ended on a not as he dropped the petals one by one into the frothing sea waves.
He tried his best to be there as Taemin spurted fountains of excitement about auditions, call-backs, but his lips would purse to a frown and his eyes would glaze over like a static television screen. Taemin would falter, the light in his eyes dimming and he’d turn them all down until he couldn’t take it anymore and his dreams felt so much heavier in his heart than whatever he felt for Kibum.
Taemin was destined for greatness but Kibum was not. When the tide broke and swept him away Kibum was left stranded on an island surrounded by unnavigable seas, and he couldn't swim for the lost hope dragging him down like an anchor in his abdomen.
Jonghyun was made of feathers, he fluttered with the wind and Kibum held him way too high above the ground.
They met in the coffee shop Kibum had worked at: a temporary job to sooth the temporary lag in his social life because when Taemin left so did his friends and he’d found himself so personally invested in a relationship that there were few to call ‘friend’ anymore. Jonghyun always ordered differently, eyes swooping across the menu before he’d close them and point, leaving it all to the winds of change and grinning widely as he ordered. The first time their eyes met, he'd left Kibum gasping for air.
They lasted longer than the others, he lacked the fire of Minho (and Minho), and the whimsicality of Taemin, so they settled into friendliness and then courtship and then love. Kibum fell too easily, he knew he did, but the whoosh of his breath from his lungs was something he could not control (and with Jonghyun he wasn’t sure that he would ever want to). Jonghyun fell easily too, and he’d sit and stare at Kibum for hours as Kibum would sketch, drawing out the lines of Jonghyun’s face, watching the wind play with the strands of his platinum hair.
Jonghyun was a romantic, he wrote verse as easily as he took his breaths, he strummed melodies and symphonies into Kibum's heart. But Kibum expected too much from Jonghyun, locked away his love in his tiny rib cage and kissed his hopes into sculpted limbs then watched them blow away in the gust of a summer breeze.
She was his junior at the company and they would stay up at nights with a pencil and a score sheet. They say glass-cut wounds got their red from her lips and the rolling hills of the valley envied the shape of her hips. If Kibum closed his eyes he could imagine their hushed voices, her fluttering lashes, his cocky smile, in the dark of the studio with the microphones turned off.
He left Kibum on a Friday but it felt like a Sunday and Kibum wasn’t surprised that it never crashed like a crescendo, simply fluttered down to the ground like the ash from a fizzled-out firework. With a wailing sense of predictability it sucked the hope from Kibum’s stomach like a vacuum cleaner and left him empty and breathless.
Jonghyun was made of feathers and he fluttered with the wind. He left Kibum gasping for air and choking on disbelief.
Kibum had started his final year of university with the rain clouds blocking his vision and whatever had shone brightly with Minho and Taemin and Jonghyun had lost its glow. Defeated, the emptiness screamed and for once in his life the space beside wasn’t full and he felt lost. He presumed it would be a good thing for him, hoped so, at least that’s what his friends would say, what they would mutter into his ear as they held him close when the darkness sunk into his bones.
He met Jinki in a lecture. He was the teaching assistant with the coffee-coloured eyes and he sat a few rows ahead of Kibum in the first lecture of the year. Kibum's eyes drifted to his shirt, admiring the cut and fit as he absentmindedly debated over who had designed it, then appraisingly over coiffed red locks, curiously over his covered arms and back. Then, as the other turned in his seat to wave to the class as the lecturer introduced him, Kibum was struck by harmonious features and a smile like sunshine. The moment had passed however, as the lecturer started the lesson and Kibum didn't find himself looking for Jinki in following lectures.
It was his favourite module by far, he'd learnt very soon, half for the content and half for the people in it - Mir, Jaejin, Nicole, Dongwoon, there were so many names to learn as his social life whizzed from zero to sixty miles an hour in a few weeks. It provided solace, the alcohol, from the ache in his heart and his limbs, and he knew it was wrong to put so much effort into forgetting but it worked so well that he couldn't avoid it.
One night after a particularly heavy night his head felt like a dead weight and he knew he probably didn't look much better. He wandered onto campus, taking pills to soothe the ache in his head before a weight nudged into his shoulder and he was sent flying onto the tiled floor, books smashing down beneath him.
"I'm sorry," he heard from his position laid out on the floor, his head pounding and vision blurred. He shifted and hissed as he sat, eyes fixed on a piece of stray glass now stuck in his arm. The sight made him queasy.
Kibum glanced up to see Jinki stacking his books up again. He tried to stand but Jinki stopped him, fingers fumbling in his pockets to pull out pens, a pile of change, a library card and a little red notebook. He finally found disinfectant wipes and Kibum realised that he probably wasn't the first of Jinki's victims. Jinki knelt beside Kibum, fingers gently holding the elbow as he pulled out the glass, wiping up the blood. They caught eyes, Jinki smiled and to Kibum it felt like wildfire dancing through his veins.
"Hang on," he said again as he let go of Kibum's arm to pull out his wallet from his back pocket, fingers shifting through, face serious until he lit up to a grin as he found what he was looking for. Kibum bit his lip as Jinki took his arm back, sticking an Iron Man plaster firmly in place before his eyes caught sight of the time on Kibum's watch and he hastily made his exit, apologising repeatedly as he did so. Kibum found himself smiling every time he saw it, and though he wouldn't admit it he kept the plaster on far past the wound healing.
"Have you started your essay yet?" Nicole had asked him in the last week's lecture, and he'd faltered slightly because he was stumped, completely stumped, on what to write it on and how to do it and his confidence in his own ability was dwindling with every passing day.
"I'm sure you'll think of something soon," she'd soothed and he'd sighed.
The library was fairly quiet on the Sunday when he arrived, the majority of the other students all asleep, and he found it was even quieter down the economics section as his fingers scanned the shelves for the books on the reading list. He found one, eyes glancing back down to make sure it was the right one, before he felt someone else lean over and grab it and his eyes snapped up to see the coffee-eyed teaching assistant glancing inside the front cover.
"Ah," he let out a little sound subconsciously and Jinki's eyes snapped up from the book.
"Oh, did you..."
"Yeah..."
"I was just checking how many students had checked it out," he smiled as he handed the book over to Kibum, "I'm a TA for one of the modules it's used in," he looked at Kibum somewhat expectantly, "... Economic Data Analysis."
"Yeah, I know," Kibum nodded, "I, er... I take Economic Data Analysis." He nodded to the book and muttered a quick thanks before turning around to head to one of the work stations, blood pounding uncomfortably in his ears.
"Is your arm okay?" He heard and turned to see Jinki directly behind him and the proximity made him leap and yell in shock. Jinki grinned and stilled him with a hand on his shoulder so that he wouldn't fall, weighting him down like an anchor, the soft fabric of his sweatshirt grazing Kibum's exposed shoulder and almost making him jump again.
"Yeah it's fine, it's completely healed now. But ... thanks for asking." Jinki nodded and let go of Kibum's shoulder, and they just stood in silence for a few seconds, Jinki fiddling with the little red notebook in his hands, Kibum's eyes clinging to Jinki's exposed collar bones subconsciously before dropping down to the book in his hand.
"You should get to your books," Jinki grinned again and Kibum felt struck blind, "if you need any help just ask and I'll ... help."
Kibum found it odd, the difference between Jinki and the other boys he had dated. This was slower, for a start, a pull like gravity that filled him with both fear and joy. Kibum felt enthralled, felt his bones vibrate when he saw him, so he kept away. He kept a distance because falling for another perfect boy with perfect flaws was too much for his trodden heart to take.
A summer storm hit one evening as Kibum started his walk back to his dorm, and he took the quick route past the gym, already drenched, and his eyes caught Jinki just as he was leaving. He was joking about with one of the teaching assistants from the dance department as he was pushed under the rain, hair scruffy and a previously unseen pair of glasses perched on his nose. He was wearing only sweatpants, a vest top and a hoody. Kibum felt embarrassed, unbelievably so, and almost as if he was committing an offense, because Jinki looked so raw at that moment that he almost felt like he didn't even deserve to see it. He stood and watched as they joked together and disappeared down the path in front, and as much as he tried to he knew that Jinki couldn’t be pinned down - untamed like a fire, slippery like the sea, wispy like the air, Kibum would never be able to get his head around him.
Jinki made the darkness ebb back, make the tempest of shadow dwindle to a light shower and Kibum thanked him for that. They never really talked nor had Kibum ever had the intention of them talking, because Jinki was an enigma and he knew he’d only be disappointed if he let himself fall in.
He knew now, knew what he’d feared and the knowledge hugged him close like a mother with a newborn baby. He was a river that had all dried up, he was a preacher with no pulpit, and a fugitive with no legs to run. He knew that love was fake, at least for him, and it haunted him every waking moment that it was something so untouchable.
The first time they talked was in the café again, and Kibum was filled with painful nostalgia as Jinki took Jonghyun’s seat. Fear spiked in his stomach as a flicker of hope appeared, instantly squashed by the shadowy tempest. Fear spiked because he hoped, despite hating that he hoped, that Jinki would fill the hole in his heart just as he had the hole in Jonghyun’s seat. But Jinki hadn’t recognised him as he mumbled over his order, stubby fingers rustling through his wallet to find the right change. It clattered when he dropped it on the counter, still warm from the heat of his fingers.
“You’re Jinki right?” Kibum asked, biting his lip slightly as he fastened the lid on the older’s coffee and their fingers brushed as he handed it over. He watched as Jinki’s eyes widened in shock, from confusion to recognition and then realisation.
“Kibum,” he smiled and his fingers curled around the paper cup, “it’s good to see you.”
“It’s good to see you too,” he replied and a smile played on his lips, one like before - before the storm and the fire and the floods. Jinki looked dazed before he mumbled under his breath, his fingers twitching to pull his red notebook from his shirt pocket, and Kibum’s eyebrows almost knitted together as the angles in his face formed confusion.
“Pardon?”
“I said - like lightening in the darkness.” Kibum frowned as Jinki left, and the air smelt like cologne and fresh air.
It became habit after that for Jinki to come into the shop, ordering the same coffee with a smile on his lips and Kibum would feel alive for a moment, until Jinki left with a parting phrase and Kibum would hasten to write in down in his pocket notebook, handwriting hurried and scratchy. He never searched for the words, though he knew they were poetry. He refused to look for hope in fanciful phrases.
"What are you doing after you finish your PhD?" Kibum had asked at the café one day after his shift as they sat in the corner in the big comfy armchairs.
"No idea," Jinki had replied, taking a sip of his green tea, "I only really did a PhD because I had no idea what I wanted to do."
"That's a dumb reason to do a PhD," Kibum scoffed and Jinki shrugged, eyes stuck on the hot liquid in his mug.
"Well what do you want to do then?" Jinki had asked, quirking his eyebrow, and it was Kibum's turn to shrug.
It was refreshing, Kibum found, to meet a man without such lofty aspirations as the boys he had dated in the past, without the whirlwind of lawyer to dancer to musician that he was used to. All of his exes had had their heads in the clouds and Kibum had got so caught up in it all, but with Jinki it was so much easier, freer, he could be who he wanted without pressure to be something extraordinary. And Jinki respected that, as Kibum's friend and mentor, he wanted Kibum to be the best that he could be whilst being truly himself.
The tempest had dwindled to an ebb and he could sometimes feel the shadows pulsating in his rib cage, humming through his bloodstream to the tips of his fingers and his toes. Jonghyun had left campus and he knew that helped, helped to heal his heart as he learnt to frame it, to love it, to protect it like a child in a cage made of glass. Occasionally he saw Minho, strung out and weary, the medication pumped into his bloodstream turning him into a zombie. A frail, frail frame, sunken cheekbones, bony fingers shaking, eyes opaque and dead. Kibum didn't know what was worse, a zombie or a wildfire, and in all honesty he never wanted to find out, he didn't want to get stuck in that web again. As the winds blew they swept away the ash in his heart, soothed the burns on his skin, and he felt lighter as he walked. He felt like the winds could carry him and he wanted to fly again.
On a Thursday as he left the café when the sun was still blistering in the sky, he glanced up, letting the rays warm his cheeks and his nose. The park was a sweet kind of relief, and the clouds were kept at bay as he became one with the ferns and the trees and the flora. He sat down by an oak and he felt the urge to sketch, an urge he hadn’t had since Jonghyun and the nostalgia settled in his stomach like a warm ache instead of the stab it had once brought. He smiled, eyes flicking up to the patches of sky between the branches, and he heard a rustle beside him.
“You look peaceful,” Jinki voiced and Kibum just nodded, eyes fluttering close because it felt so good to know he was through the eye of the storm and that Jinki was here, laid beside him, his hair tangled with the grass.
“Are you peaceful?”
“Yes.”
“Are you happy?”
“Yes.” Kibum opened his eyes and Jinki was bathed in light and they were both star-soaked. All he could see was coffee eyes, pillow lips, and he knew that as much as he fought it he couldn’t be saved from falling. As much as he tried, he was already over the edge and he would fall until impact, but he was okay with that. Crashing was fine because falling felt like flying, because his battle wounds had healed to scars and his heart felt whole again as it beat against the glass bars of its cage. It was reckless but it was so unbelievably Kibum, this never-ending pendulum swinging between careful fear and dead devotion.
“Well the heart never heals right if you keep tearing at the sutures,” Jinki muttered into the air and Kibum laughed aloud at his insight because he could have sworn that they had never discussed his heart, and he briefly wondered if Jinki knew about the fires, the wild winds and the storms that his heart had fought through.
“Another poem?” Kibum asked, his tone low because the soft breeze spoke much more wisdom than his voice ever could. Jinki was silent and the winds ruffled his hair. He seemed blissfully at peace with the world and Kibum envied that.
“It’s from a song,” Jinki smiled slowly and his eyes found Kibum’s, “I’ve got to go, I’ve got a lecture,” he stood, brushing invisible dirt from his trousers. “I’m glad you’re not hurting so much anymore.” His heavy hand ruffled at Kibum’s hair and he turned to leave, glancing back just as Kibum’s eyes fluttered to a close again.
Kibum found his own eyes in the mirror and frowned, eyes flicking between his hairline and the little pot in his hand, and he bit his lip before biting the bullet, fingers working in the dye like he used to, until it spiralled into soft pink curls at his forehead. He smiled as he walked to lectures, fingers running though it as the appreciation lit a candle of self love in heart.
“You’re amazing,” Jinki comments, though it's a week later when he first sees the change. They’re sat beneath the same tree, several inches closer, their bare arms brushing, fingers itching to tangle.
“Yeah?” Kibum found himself smirking as he leaned back into the tree, his knuckles dragging up the back of Jinki’s hand as he did so.
“Yeah,” Jinki replied and his fingers tickled Kibum’s palm.
Woohyun was smirking at him the next time they met, this time in the library because it was nearing exam time and there was a coffee shop there. Kibum knew that there was no use in hiding from Woohyun, because Woohyun had been there through Minho and Taemin and Jonghyun and he knew Kibum like the back of his own hand.
“What?” He asked as he sat down, a hand coming to push his pink fringe from his eyes, somewhat self-consciously.
“You’re happy again,” Woohyun grinned and Kibum shrugged, “I haven’t seen you this happy in years. Since before you got together with-”
Kibum felt the ache and sighed, and Woohyun clammed up instinctively, eyes apologetic.
“It’s okay,” Kibum smiled as he rifled through his bag for his wallet, “it still hurts but I’m getting there. I’m letting myself heal. Let me get you a coffee to say thanks for, you know, being there.” Woohyun tried to stop him but he had already gone, a spring in his step that Woohyun hoped in his heart wouldn’t lead to another disaster.
“It’s really good,” Jinki commented as he finished reading Kibum’s essay, their shoes knocking as they sat together under the tree, “I can’t think of anything you’d need to correct.” Kibum rolled his eyes and took the essay back, dropping it and hissing as the paper caught his skin. He frowned at his finger before a soft hand circled his wrist and his hand was rested on Jinki’s thigh. The older shuffled through his wallet before pulling out a little packet and opening it, smoothing the plaster over the cut before bringing it to his lips and kissing it softly. Kibum smiled and it turned to a grin when he realised that the plaster had Pororo on it.
“What are you? Five?” He smiled and Jinki just shrugged, shifting to push his wallet back into the pocket of his jeans.
Nothing was said for a few more weeks, Kibum being too wary of his glass heart and Jinki respecting that. They sat under the tree a lot though, or in Kibum’s café, and sometimes their fingers would find each other but sometimes they wouldn’t. Jinki would always carry a little red notebook and in the middle of conversations he would stop just to scribble, and Kibum would know better than to peek despite every cell in his body brimming with curiosity.
“What are you writing about?” He cracked as they sat under the tree. Jinki had gone silent over five minutes ago and the curiosity was tearing him apart.
“You,” came the chuckled response and his eyes flew open in shock.
“Me? Why?”
“That’s a dumb question, Kibum-ah.” He watched as the sides of Jinki’s mouth quirked up but he never stopped writing.
“Is it like … a diary?”
“Of sorts, I guess … it’s mostly poetry,” Jinki murmured, stopping writing to read through his latest piece, and Kibum resisted the urge to read over his shoulder.
“Poetry? About me?”
“I’ve always written poetry about you,” Jinki blushed and Kibum couldn’t help but join him.
“No one’s ever done that before,” he muttered under his breath, still somewhat shocked.
“I could write ten thousand poems about you and it wouldn’t scratch the surface,” Jinki was laid back against the tree again and he looked serene but his heart was pounding a thousand times a minute.
“Oh?” Kibum sat up, expecting some form of response, but Jinki just pulled him down so that his cheek was resting on his chest and he could feel the badoom, badoom of his heart in his ear.
They lay in silence for a while. Kibum listened to Jinki’s heart until it lulled him to sleep, and Jinki cradled him like a precious gem, arms strong but loose because he didn’t want to tie him down, and Kibum's heart swelled at that.
“I want to be there for you Kibum,” Jinki muttered into his hair as the sun started going down and the park was bathed in pink, and he felt fingers running through the strands and tangling with the curls. “I want to be there to hold you when you sleep, to wipe away the hurt that spills over, to kiss you and remind you that flaws aren’t always faults and that your beauty is worthy of a hundred million poems. I will tell you that until you believe it because it’s true.”
And Kibum smiled, the door on his glass cage still closed, but no longer locked, and he knew it would take time and trust and patience, but as his eyes caught the lines of Jinki's face bathed in milky pink he knew it was worth it.
Jinki was the earth, air and sea below. He was the beginning and the end, sunrise and sunset, and he turned Kibum’s blood into molten gold.