Round 05: The chase(er)
Title: The chase(er)
Team: Future
Rating: PG
Fandom: Super Junior
Pairing: (Sungmin)/Eunhyuk/Donghae love triangle, Sungmin-centric
Summary: Before, During, After. Sungmin’s playing the long game.
Prompt: Infinite - The Chaser
Sungmin remembers a joke from the dorms, from Before.
that if you wanted to call Donghae you should call Hyukjae instead, that they should be named HyukjaeandDonghae, DonghaeandHyukjae. He remembers giving messages to Donghae meant for Hyukjae, Junsu adding Donghae’s number into his phone just to send more texts to Hyukjae.
//
Sungmin is scheduled to host a radio show, dedicated to boybands. He’s first call on the sheet, gets to pick his own sets outside the designated top five top ten playlists, gets the evening slot syndicated during the morning rush hour. He checks his sheets and finds Hyukjae’s name typed, Eunhyuk. He smiles, briefly, despite himself, and then frowns. His phone buzzes; Ryeowook asks him about meeting for lunch.
“I’m hosting the show with Eunhyuk,” he says an hour and a half later. Ryeowook draws figure eights in the broth of his ramen, blowing at the steam that billows up. When Sungmin shifts his weight the wicker of the restaurant chair creaks.
“Mm,” Ryeowook says. Sungmin snaps his chopsticks apart and chews on the wood splinters of one end. Ryeowook looks up; his hands still. “Hyung?”
“It’s good,” Sungmin says abruptly, “it’s fine. It’s always good to see each other again, you know? So it’ll be fun, we’ll catch up.”
“Ye-es,” Ryeowook says, dragging it out. “Why are you being weird?”
“It’s not weird,” Sungmin says. He taps the chopstick tip against the table, rattatatatrattatat. “But it is, right?”
“You’re being pretty weird,” Ryeowook says. He reaches out a hand and stills Sungmin’s nervous tapping. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” Sungmin says. He busies himself with eating, and Ryeowook tells him about his solo album coming up, writing songs with Jongwoon, oh he saw Teukie-hyung at the building the other day, one of the younger kids from Ze:a has enlisted this past week. “Hey,” Sungmin interrupts, trying for casual, “is he still living with Donghae?”
“Yeah,” Ryeowook says, brightening, and starts talking about the last time he saw them. Sungmin’s knee jiggles under the table, bouncing higher and higher until it smacks the underside of the table. The plates and bowls jump up two centimeters and clatter back down to the tabletop. Ryeowook sends him a judging look and changes the subject to the proper care of potted plants.
//
Sungmin remembers the Super Junior M dorm in China, During.
“I like the shopping in Taiwan,” Sungmin says in Chinese. He takes a deep breath and says it again, slower. His tongue feels too big in his mouth, clumsy. “My name is--” he falters; he’s forgotten his Chinese name.
Eunhyuk throws a tennis ball at the ceiling and catches it as it falls back down. “Just say it in Korean,” he says, “the fans don’t care.”
Sungmin rolls his eyes. “I’m very happy to be here in China,” he murmurs, “I love all the fans.”
Eunhyuk perks up. “I love you!” he shouts in Chinese, the phrase he can pick out of sentences and fan chants. The tennis ball thumps against the ceiling.
Sungmin closes his Chinese notebook with a snap and flops over to lie next to Eunhyuk on the skinny couch, their shoulders smashed against each other, the outside points of their hips jabbing against each other. Eunhyuk’s ribcage feels bony against his side, his breath smells like sesame candies.
Sungmin snorts. “Still can’t find anything to eat?”
Eunhyuk sighs, a full body press against Sungmin, in and then out. He draws in air from Sungmin’s lungs and breathes it back out again. “I’m so hungry,” he bemoans. Sungmin tucks his head into the junction of Eunhyuk’s neck and shoulder and wiggles a little. When Eunhyuk exhales he can feel it ruffle warm through his hair.
Eunhyuk throws the ball, not hard enough to hit the ceiling, and Sungmin watches it rise and rise until, just for a fraction of a second, it hovers weightless and still before coming down.
//
Sungmin greets Eunhyuk with a hug, their hands thumping on each other’s back. Eunhyuk’s wearing some hideously coloured knitted thing that makes Sungmin’s eyes bleed but feels soft against his fingers. His grin is the same, gummy and goofy, and there are lines under his eyes that Sungmin doesn’t remember. Sungmin takes a deep breath and steps back.
They finish the show easy, dropping into teasing patterns, familiarity. Like a riding a bike, Sungmin thinks, which is funny because he doesn’t know how to ride a bike. Eunhyuk’s laugh is how he remembers it, his face flushes the same way it used to when Sungmin makes fun of him.
“I’m so glad it’s you,” Eunhyuk says, his bag bumping against his leg as they walk to the parking lot. They stop by a modest four door Sungmin assumes is Eunhyuk’s, and Sungmin pushes lightly at his shoulder to turn him around and hitches the bag off Eunhyuk’s shoulder.
“Your strap is too long,” he says, and pulls it through the plastic buckle until it’s the right length. “It’s supposed to ride against your hip,” he says, and slides it back onto Eunhyuk’s shoulder. He smoothes the front of the terrible knitted thing, and little bits of fuzz stick to his fingernails.
“You should come over,” Eunhyuk says. “Dinner.”
“Chinese?” Sungmin teases, and Eunhyuk laughs.
//
Sungmin remembers the first day, After.
There’s a stillness in the kitchen, a quiet in the hall. Sungmin half packs a box before thinking there’s no reason for them all to move out, not yet. They’ve been disbanded, not disowned. He finds a tennis ball under his bed and thinks of China, the warm press of Eunhyuk against his side. He goes to find Eunhyuk, his feet padding on the hallway carpet, and stops just before the river of the hallway flares into the mouth of the living room. Donghae and Eunhyuk are pressed together on the couch, the wires of their controllers tangled in their laps and the television screen blinking game over. The colours of the game are washed out by the light coming in the windows, Donghae and Eunhyuk kissing in a sunbeam.
It looks like a first kiss, Sungmin thinks suddenly, absurdly, like they haven’t figured out which way to turn their heads so their noses don’t bump, like they’re not sure where to put their hands, like they haven’t done it enough to realize they don’t have to hold their breath, like if they breathe it’ll turn out to be a dream. Sungmin swallows hard, once, and is careful to walk back to his room in a way that keeps the floor from creaking.
//
Eunhyuk lets him in, the beepbeep of the door sharp enough to make Sungmin wince and Eunhyuk grin apologetically. He slips his shoes off in the entryway and follows him into the kitchen, where Donghae is looking down at a bed of rice on seaweed and eating a strip of imitation crab with two fingers, strings of cooked egg dangling from his other hand. When he looks up he smiles and it’s like all the years between them are gone and Sungmin remembers that he smiled that way, that same twist of lips and flash of teeth and crinkles around the eyes and mouth when they met, skinny with undyed hair in the trainee classrooms.
“I meant to have it done before you came,” he says, sheepish, absent minded in a familiar way, and Sungmin bumps him with his hip to take his place above the sushi mat. He rolls his sleeves to his elbows and starts to lay rows on the rice, egg crab yellow radish. Eunhyuk takes something off a counter--a package pork belly cut into long strips, and Donghae hands him a pan before disappearing behind the door of the fridge. Sungmin starts to roll the kimbap, roll and press with the bamboo mat and then press again. Donghae hums something, a snatch of a song Sungmin doesn’t know, and there’s a hiss from his left as Eunhyuk tosses pork onto a hot skillet with two fingers, the oil popping up and the smell of meat cooking filling the small kitchen.
Donghae reappears with a bottle of wine in one hand--the kind with a aluminum twist top, Sungmin notes in horror--and glasses in the other. Sungmin pulls a knife from a wooden block on the counter and hefts it in his hand. It’s a good knife, he thinks, balanced with good weight, sharpened to an edge that slices through the roll without smashing it flat. He sees Eunhyuk turn the meat easily with one hand as he adds seasoning with the other, Donghae pouring wine into the glasses without glugging or splashing and feels a fleeting flash of painregretloss, that they’ve all grown up and around each other. For an instant, he wishes that Donghae was pouring cheap liquor into chipped coffee mugs, Eunhyuk leaning against a wall calling in for delivery while Sungmin rummages in the cupboards for cereal to eat dry while they wait. But it’s just a second, just a passing thought. He wouldn’t trade what they have now, they way they’ve settled into themselves. He doesn’t think he could go back and do it all again, but it was familiar and this... this is a reminder. They’re growing old as they grow up.
He takes a glass from Donghae and falls back into the present, stacking kimbap in neat rows on a plate Donghae clinks down beside him. He makes a joke about the quality of the wine and Donghae snaps a towel at him, playful, while Eunhyuk laughs. Donghae says he wants to buy a motorcycle, Eunhyuk rolls his eyes. Eunhyuk tells a story, gestures with a wooden spoon, hits the skinny fluorescent bulb hard enough it flickers. The rice timer dings; the kitchen smells like a home.
Donghae brushes a hand across the back of Sungmin’s neck as they hug goodbye, his fingers scrubbing through the short hairs. “I miss you,” he says, his eyes gone a little vacant, a little misty.
“I know,” Sungmin murmurs, and he does. Eunhyuk walks him to his car, and Sungmin stops with one hand wrapped loosely around the handle. He looks back. Eunhyuk is standing slightly slouched in on himself, his hands jammed into his pockets, and Sungmin suddenly places something that’s been drifted around in his head ever since Donghae hugged him goodbye--Donghae smelled like Eunhyuk smells, or rather they smell like each other. “DonghaeandHyukjae,” he mumbles, “HyukjaeandDonghae.”
Eunhyuk blinks at him “What?”
Sungmin lets his hand drop from the door. “I love you,” he says, and it’s a weird mix of affection of Before, puppy crush During, and this, now, After. “I want to be with you.” Sungmin isn’t used to speaking honestly, raw honesty, and it feels freeing, like all the weight’s gone from where’s its been pressing against his chest. He feels like the tennis ball, its millisecond of defiance against gravity as it stays, motionless in the air, before it falls.
“I’m with Donghae,” Eunhyuk says. He looks shocked, startled. Sungmin thinks his ears must be red under his knit cap. Sungmin’s stomach leaps the way it does on roller coasters and jumpy elevators. He takes a deep breath, waiting, but the pressure doesn’t return. He’s still weightless.
“I know,” Sungmin says, and inexplicably, smiles. “I’m playing the long game, Hyukjae-ah. I’m not trying to break you up, I’m just... here. I’ll always be here.” He gets in the car, and Eunhyuk stares at him through the glass of the window. Sungmin waves jauntily, turning the engine over, and Eunhyuk’s hand rises automatically, waving in a sort of confused twitching motion, awkward.
Sungmin watches him disappear in the rearview mirror. On the radio, a Super Junior song comes on, and Sungmin laughs. He sings along all the way home.
Poll Round 05: The chase(er)
Team: Future
Rating: PG
Fandom: Super Junior
Pairing: (Sungmin)/Eunhyuk/Donghae love triangle, Sungmin-centric
Summary: Before, During, After. Sungmin’s playing the long game.
Prompt: Infinite - The Chaser
Sungmin remembers a joke from the dorms, from Before.
that if you wanted to call Donghae you should call Hyukjae instead, that they should be named HyukjaeandDonghae, DonghaeandHyukjae. He remembers giving messages to Donghae meant for Hyukjae, Junsu adding Donghae’s number into his phone just to send more texts to Hyukjae.
//
Sungmin is scheduled to host a radio show, dedicated to boybands. He’s first call on the sheet, gets to pick his own sets outside the designated top five top ten playlists, gets the evening slot syndicated during the morning rush hour. He checks his sheets and finds Hyukjae’s name typed, Eunhyuk. He smiles, briefly, despite himself, and then frowns. His phone buzzes; Ryeowook asks him about meeting for lunch.
“I’m hosting the show with Eunhyuk,” he says an hour and a half later. Ryeowook draws figure eights in the broth of his ramen, blowing at the steam that billows up. When Sungmin shifts his weight the wicker of the restaurant chair creaks.
“Mm,” Ryeowook says. Sungmin snaps his chopsticks apart and chews on the wood splinters of one end. Ryeowook looks up; his hands still. “Hyung?”
“It’s good,” Sungmin says abruptly, “it’s fine. It’s always good to see each other again, you know? So it’ll be fun, we’ll catch up.”
“Ye-es,” Ryeowook says, dragging it out. “Why are you being weird?”
“It’s not weird,” Sungmin says. He taps the chopstick tip against the table, rattatatatrattatat. “But it is, right?”
“You’re being pretty weird,” Ryeowook says. He reaches out a hand and stills Sungmin’s nervous tapping. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” Sungmin says. He busies himself with eating, and Ryeowook tells him about his solo album coming up, writing songs with Jongwoon, oh he saw Teukie-hyung at the building the other day, one of the younger kids from Ze:a has enlisted this past week. “Hey,” Sungmin interrupts, trying for casual, “is he still living with Donghae?”
“Yeah,” Ryeowook says, brightening, and starts talking about the last time he saw them. Sungmin’s knee jiggles under the table, bouncing higher and higher until it smacks the underside of the table. The plates and bowls jump up two centimeters and clatter back down to the tabletop. Ryeowook sends him a judging look and changes the subject to the proper care of potted plants.
//
Sungmin remembers the Super Junior M dorm in China, During.
“I like the shopping in Taiwan,” Sungmin says in Chinese. He takes a deep breath and says it again, slower. His tongue feels too big in his mouth, clumsy. “My name is--” he falters; he’s forgotten his Chinese name.
Eunhyuk throws a tennis ball at the ceiling and catches it as it falls back down. “Just say it in Korean,” he says, “the fans don’t care.”
Sungmin rolls his eyes. “I’m very happy to be here in China,” he murmurs, “I love all the fans.”
Eunhyuk perks up. “I love you!” he shouts in Chinese, the phrase he can pick out of sentences and fan chants. The tennis ball thumps against the ceiling.
Sungmin closes his Chinese notebook with a snap and flops over to lie next to Eunhyuk on the skinny couch, their shoulders smashed against each other, the outside points of their hips jabbing against each other. Eunhyuk’s ribcage feels bony against his side, his breath smells like sesame candies.
Sungmin snorts. “Still can’t find anything to eat?”
Eunhyuk sighs, a full body press against Sungmin, in and then out. He draws in air from Sungmin’s lungs and breathes it back out again. “I’m so hungry,” he bemoans. Sungmin tucks his head into the junction of Eunhyuk’s neck and shoulder and wiggles a little. When Eunhyuk exhales he can feel it ruffle warm through his hair.
Eunhyuk throws the ball, not hard enough to hit the ceiling, and Sungmin watches it rise and rise until, just for a fraction of a second, it hovers weightless and still before coming down.
//
Sungmin greets Eunhyuk with a hug, their hands thumping on each other’s back. Eunhyuk’s wearing some hideously coloured knitted thing that makes Sungmin’s eyes bleed but feels soft against his fingers. His grin is the same, gummy and goofy, and there are lines under his eyes that Sungmin doesn’t remember. Sungmin takes a deep breath and steps back.
They finish the show easy, dropping into teasing patterns, familiarity. Like a riding a bike, Sungmin thinks, which is funny because he doesn’t know how to ride a bike. Eunhyuk’s laugh is how he remembers it, his face flushes the same way it used to when Sungmin makes fun of him.
“I’m so glad it’s you,” Eunhyuk says, his bag bumping against his leg as they walk to the parking lot. They stop by a modest four door Sungmin assumes is Eunhyuk’s, and Sungmin pushes lightly at his shoulder to turn him around and hitches the bag off Eunhyuk’s shoulder.
“Your strap is too long,” he says, and pulls it through the plastic buckle until it’s the right length. “It’s supposed to ride against your hip,” he says, and slides it back onto Eunhyuk’s shoulder. He smoothes the front of the terrible knitted thing, and little bits of fuzz stick to his fingernails.
“You should come over,” Eunhyuk says. “Dinner.”
“Chinese?” Sungmin teases, and Eunhyuk laughs.
//
Sungmin remembers the first day, After.
There’s a stillness in the kitchen, a quiet in the hall. Sungmin half packs a box before thinking there’s no reason for them all to move out, not yet. They’ve been disbanded, not disowned. He finds a tennis ball under his bed and thinks of China, the warm press of Eunhyuk against his side. He goes to find Eunhyuk, his feet padding on the hallway carpet, and stops just before the river of the hallway flares into the mouth of the living room. Donghae and Eunhyuk are pressed together on the couch, the wires of their controllers tangled in their laps and the television screen blinking game over. The colours of the game are washed out by the light coming in the windows, Donghae and Eunhyuk kissing in a sunbeam.
It looks like a first kiss, Sungmin thinks suddenly, absurdly, like they haven’t figured out which way to turn their heads so their noses don’t bump, like they’re not sure where to put their hands, like they haven’t done it enough to realize they don’t have to hold their breath, like if they breathe it’ll turn out to be a dream. Sungmin swallows hard, once, and is careful to walk back to his room in a way that keeps the floor from creaking.
//
Eunhyuk lets him in, the beepbeep of the door sharp enough to make Sungmin wince and Eunhyuk grin apologetically. He slips his shoes off in the entryway and follows him into the kitchen, where Donghae is looking down at a bed of rice on seaweed and eating a strip of imitation crab with two fingers, strings of cooked egg dangling from his other hand. When he looks up he smiles and it’s like all the years between them are gone and Sungmin remembers that he smiled that way, that same twist of lips and flash of teeth and crinkles around the eyes and mouth when they met, skinny with undyed hair in the trainee classrooms.
“I meant to have it done before you came,” he says, sheepish, absent minded in a familiar way, and Sungmin bumps him with his hip to take his place above the sushi mat. He rolls his sleeves to his elbows and starts to lay rows on the rice, egg crab yellow radish. Eunhyuk takes something off a counter--a package pork belly cut into long strips, and Donghae hands him a pan before disappearing behind the door of the fridge. Sungmin starts to roll the kimbap, roll and press with the bamboo mat and then press again. Donghae hums something, a snatch of a song Sungmin doesn’t know, and there’s a hiss from his left as Eunhyuk tosses pork onto a hot skillet with two fingers, the oil popping up and the smell of meat cooking filling the small kitchen.
Donghae reappears with a bottle of wine in one hand--the kind with a aluminum twist top, Sungmin notes in horror--and glasses in the other. Sungmin pulls a knife from a wooden block on the counter and hefts it in his hand. It’s a good knife, he thinks, balanced with good weight, sharpened to an edge that slices through the roll without smashing it flat. He sees Eunhyuk turn the meat easily with one hand as he adds seasoning with the other, Donghae pouring wine into the glasses without glugging or splashing and feels a fleeting flash of painregretloss, that they’ve all grown up and around each other. For an instant, he wishes that Donghae was pouring cheap liquor into chipped coffee mugs, Eunhyuk leaning against a wall calling in for delivery while Sungmin rummages in the cupboards for cereal to eat dry while they wait. But it’s just a second, just a passing thought. He wouldn’t trade what they have now, they way they’ve settled into themselves. He doesn’t think he could go back and do it all again, but it was familiar and this... this is a reminder. They’re growing old as they grow up.
He takes a glass from Donghae and falls back into the present, stacking kimbap in neat rows on a plate Donghae clinks down beside him. He makes a joke about the quality of the wine and Donghae snaps a towel at him, playful, while Eunhyuk laughs. Donghae says he wants to buy a motorcycle, Eunhyuk rolls his eyes. Eunhyuk tells a story, gestures with a wooden spoon, hits the skinny fluorescent bulb hard enough it flickers. The rice timer dings; the kitchen smells like a home.
Donghae brushes a hand across the back of Sungmin’s neck as they hug goodbye, his fingers scrubbing through the short hairs. “I miss you,” he says, his eyes gone a little vacant, a little misty.
“I know,” Sungmin murmurs, and he does. Eunhyuk walks him to his car, and Sungmin stops with one hand wrapped loosely around the handle. He looks back. Eunhyuk is standing slightly slouched in on himself, his hands jammed into his pockets, and Sungmin suddenly places something that’s been drifted around in his head ever since Donghae hugged him goodbye--Donghae smelled like Eunhyuk smells, or rather they smell like each other. “DonghaeandHyukjae,” he mumbles, “HyukjaeandDonghae.”
Eunhyuk blinks at him “What?”
Sungmin lets his hand drop from the door. “I love you,” he says, and it’s a weird mix of affection of Before, puppy crush During, and this, now, After. “I want to be with you.” Sungmin isn’t used to speaking honestly, raw honesty, and it feels freeing, like all the weight’s gone from where’s its been pressing against his chest. He feels like the tennis ball, its millisecond of defiance against gravity as it stays, motionless in the air, before it falls.
“I’m with Donghae,” Eunhyuk says. He looks shocked, startled. Sungmin thinks his ears must be red under his knit cap. Sungmin’s stomach leaps the way it does on roller coasters and jumpy elevators. He takes a deep breath, waiting, but the pressure doesn’t return. He’s still weightless.
“I know,” Sungmin says, and inexplicably, smiles. “I’m playing the long game, Hyukjae-ah. I’m not trying to break you up, I’m just... here. I’ll always be here.” He gets in the car, and Eunhyuk stares at him through the glass of the window. Sungmin waves jauntily, turning the engine over, and Eunhyuk’s hand rises automatically, waving in a sort of confused twitching motion, awkward.
Sungmin watches him disappear in the rearview mirror. On the radio, a Super Junior song comes on, and Sungmin laughs. He sings along all the way home.
Poll Round 05: The chase(er)