(no subject)
the kids are all right
taemin + kai, pg, 4005ⓦ
Note: Contains a reference to this. For Viva: your bullying is disproportionately effective given your effort, which more closely resembles off-hand suggestion; happy birthday.
THIS MODERN WORLD
THAT MOVES,
THAT MOVES.
I
The frame of each window shutters Taemin's face as the double doors close and the train starts to move, heaving away from the platform. He looks different in each one, each blurred angle pulling him out of one window and into another as the distance between them grows from a crawl to a chase.
For a moment, it's easier to see all the ways in which Taemin has changed; Jongin's memories, far and few in between since Taemin debuted, are like notches on a wall, measuring growth. "See you there," Taemin had said at the time, smiling, his cheeks still round and glowing. His features are sharper now, body moving with an assurance Jongin thinks can only come from those years in the spotlight, even though he's as pale and skinny as always, if the low collar of his denim shirt and the trim tuck of his skinny jeans are anything to go by.
Today, a young girl passes by Jongin without a second glance. The terminal trembles under the weight of an incoming train on the opposite track, still out of sight. Online, Kai's first teaser video is released. When Taemin raises a hand in farewell, Jongin reaches up, tugs the bill of his cap down, and walks away.
II
Taemin is sitting in the corner of the waiting area, kicking one foot absently as he reads. As Jongin draws closer, he pulls a pen away from his mouth to write a note in the margins of his book. May I have your attention please, a woman's voice says over the loudspeaker, her Mandarin brisk and unintelligible to Jongin, and he reaches out, flicking the spine of the book so that Taemin startles, fumbling the book and losing his place. Jongin huffs out a laugh and sits down, backpack crowding the seat so that he's leaning back on a precarious incline, legs stretched out to keep himself from slipping off.
Taemin's book has fallen back open to a finished page full of wobbly handwritten characters, swimming awkwardly in square boxes. "Stop pretending to study," Jongin says, sleepily, as Taemin rifles back to the right page, laboriously reading the dialogue. "Everyone knows all your Japanese comes from watching One Piece." On Taemin's other side, Jonghyun laughs under his breath without looking up from his phone.
"Arigatou gozaimasu, Kai-san," Taemin says seriously, enunciating each syllable, and kicks the heel of Jongin's foot so that he loses his balance. Jongin yelps and laughs as Taemin hauls him back up by the handle of his backpack, dropping him back in the seat gracelessly.
"Very nice, senpai," Jongin enthuses, dredging up the sparse Japanese he’d picked up from One Piece. Taemin beams, returning to his book. His hand still hasn’t left Jongin’s backpack: it rests innocuously at the back of his neck, like he thought Jongin might still fall if he were to let go, or, more likely, he’d just forgotten to take it away. When Jongin shifts, Taemin seems to remember it again, and he withdraws his hand to flip to the next page.
III
Jongin blinks, refocusing as Taemin shifts beside him, pulling his hand out of his pocket, and the camera beeps twice, the shutter snapping. Jongin tilts his head, finding the camera for the next shot and dropping his gaze for the next, before leaning forward. Once the camera snaps, Taemin's elbows settle on his back, pushing him down into a ninety-degree bow, and Jongin laughs.
The concept is young boys in spring, pomaded hair and light makeup, clothing racks filled with Marc Jacobs and Margaret Howell, Paul Smith shoes and Junghans watches; unfastened French sleeves with perfectly-buttoned collars indoors and rolled up trouser legs and sweaters tied across their shoulders outdoors. The grass itches against Jongin's calves, the earth soft and damp under his feet as he carries his shoes, camera following in their footsteps.
They look through the photos together afterward, light from a window patterned against Jongin's sports jacket, Taemin sprawled on a sofa and Jongin leaning against it, louche in their luxury. Taemin holding a tree branch like a sceptre, sticking dried, yellow leaves into Jongin's hair like an ancient Grecian laurel wreath, the resultant tussle captured in slow motion. The deep cerulean blue of the water by the pier, the smooth arch of their backs as they twist and splash like fish, laughing, wetting the hems of their clothes.
"Over here," Taemin says, waving an Instax camera with Vogue’s logo taped on it, and Jongin poses before sitting down next to him, right leg draped over Taemin's left. After four shots, he slides down until his head is resting on Taemin's shoulder, closing his eyes, and doesn't open them until Taemin shifts, none too subtly, to poke him, and he snaps at the finger playfully, teeth closing on air as he opens his eyes. It ruins the last shot, but Taemin lays it out with the others, fanned out across the table.
They sign each one carefully, picking them out one by one to write captions and autograph them. Jongin draws inquisitory faces embellished with eyelashes while Taemin scribbles stars over each of his autographs, and between them they muster up unimaginative captions, like to. Vogue followed by bagel-shaped hearts. Jongin finds the second to last one and draws a crescent moon and stars, nightcaps and a line of Zs next to their sleeping faces. On Jongin's solo shot, Taemin draws cramped sparkles and writes, Lee Taemin's older brother, fighting!
Out of the corner of his eye, Jongin sees him write it, and when Taemin slides it across the table, marker twirling nonchalantly in his fingers, Jongin doesn't move to acknowledge it. But he offers Taemin a small smile, half-hidden in shadow and the tilt of his head, before he resumes drawing, and he slides it into his pocket when he gets up to leave.
IV
He's sitting with his legs hanging off the edge of the stage when Taemin, crouching down to sit next to him, jostles his elbow by accident. He slings an arm across Taemin's shoulders, leaning back and ignoring the twinge of his waist. Taemin’s shirt is slightly damp at the back of his neck, and it clings to Jongin’s arm. He is holding a half-empty water bottle, tossing it back and forth in his hands, and Jongin feels each shift of muscle, solid and familiar, heat rising from his body.
He's dimly aware of Taemin talking, and he nods along, humming and laughing at intervals as Taemin rambles along comfortably, jumping from one story to another without finishing any of them properly. He’s talking about some embarrassing incident during one of his rehearsals with Soojung when Jongin draws his arm back, leaning forward again and reaching for Taemin's wrist. He tugs it across his lap to play with Taemin’s tangled assortment of bracelets, pushing them between his forefingers and thumbs, pulling at them and rotating them aimlessly.
They don't talk about it, how the stage stitches them together and makes them real, whole, how it takes away just as much as it gives. They never do, except in the way they deliver choreography, like a one-two punch - a little less conversation, a little more action, please. Jongin, who had been too young the first and second time around, had watched the A class thin out and leave him behind, only to fill with the same people he’d once left behind; and Taemin, on the fringes of adulthood, realising that being good for his age wouldn't last, even if the world still only saw him as a child. Both of them defiant and eager to prove, to say, I’ll show you all, this is what I can do.
When their names are called, Taemin stands up first, bouncing onto his toes and stretching out a hand for Jongin to take. "Nice shoelifts," Taemin says, grinning, when he's pulled Jongin to his feet. He leans back to assess their new height difference.
"Thanks," Jongin says, ruffling Taemin's hair and effectively ruining it. "Yours aren't bad either."
V
They announce plans for a joint stage, this time just the two of them, after a dozen SM project groups and dance battles where they had almost, but not quite, properly danced together. In the practise room, they run through a quick warm-up before Jaewon arrives, stretching together on the floor, and Taemin holds out his hands, legs extended in front of him, for Jongin to pull.
He thinks about their editorial, just published, with their fingers wrapped around each other’s wrists - Jongin’s on bare skin, Taemin’s clutching the thick, bunched-up sleeves of Jongin’s hoodie. There hadn’t been an interview, just a short introduction:
YOUNG & RICH / WILD & FREE
We met with hallyu idol SHINee’s Taemin and rising star EXO-K’s Kai on a bright spring day. Same-age friends who met for the first time in the practise room, and were reunited as the lead dancers of their respective groups, they met again for this issue of Vogue Korea. As expected, they were professional, charismatic, and full of allure, but throughout the day, we also glimpsed another side of them - as the two youths who grew up together through dance, who joked with the familiarity of old friends and knew each others’ bodies better than lovers. Whether it is art that imitates life, or life that imitates art, then, becomes the question. ■
The dance is dynamic, playing on the mirror image of their bodies, fluid and reflecting each other like a Rorschach, so that every step is paired, forming one, singular motion. The song hasn’t been recorded yet, but the guide song is catchy, fast-paced, and Jongin likes it, thinks they could make it really good. When they’re given a break, Jongin still feels energetic, too amped-up to rest, pushing up onto his toes and dropping back down. In front of him, Taemin is still frowning at his reflection, body frozen in the pose where, coming into the second stanza, the snap of his leg is a little slow to match Jongin’s.
“Hey,” Jongin says, winding one of his hoodie strings around his finger. He watches Taemin’s body come out of the pose slowly, like it was still lingering somewhere in his mind, even as he shifted his attention to Jongin. “Teach me one of your dances.”
Taemin tries to teach him “Sherlock” before they unanimously agree that it wasn’t nearly as - or at all - dramatic with just two people, and when Jaewon comes back, Taemin is tripping over himself to “My Lady” while Jongin laughs, just barely catching Taemin in a ballroom dip. Then Taemin bats his eyelashes, and Jongin laughs so hard that he drops him.
VI
"So, Kai-sshi," Taemin says, with the air of an extremely intrepid reporter, leaning against the side of his chair with a thump. Jongin jumps, pulling his headphones off, and scowls belatedly at the “Kai-sshi,” which Taemin routinely forgets to use in front of the cameras, but always remembers when they're off-stage, because he likes to tease Jongin whenever he doesn't respond to it.
I’m not Kai, he had tried to say, once. He didn’t know how to explain: it was nothing like the way Taemin was who he was, in everything, and a terrible actor when asked to be anything else. Taemin was Taemin, but Kai was like the centre of a Venn diagram, part of him Jongin, and part of him something completely separate, individual, organic. How much of Kai was him was easy to differentiate, but how much of him was Kai was a much more difficult question: he wore Kai’s smirk, Kai’s gestures like they fit him, but there was also the him who stood in front of the mirror after a shower and practised each of them, trying not to let the uncertainty show. For weeks he had told his reflection, “Hello, I’m Kai,” and watched the lack of conviction bloom on his own face.
What he hadn’t said was, around you, I just want to be Jongin. That time, Taemin had held him out at arm’s length and peered at him, brow furrowed, and then his face had cleared suddenly. “Oh. It’s just you, Jonginnie. I thought you were somebody famous,” he said, and then, without skipping a beat - “Hey, let’s get jajangmyun.” Jongin punched him in spite of himself, fist landing square on his shoulder. Taemin rubbed at it and said, “What? I’m hungry.” Jongin snorted, waiting until his head was turned to mouth a snide as always at the back of his head.
Right now, Taemin looks almost diabolical, wicked with unhinged glee, and Jongin is entirely sure that it is at his expense. But the supreme unattractiveness of it reminds him, for a moment, of Lu Han’s laugh, and he feels better, if only for a brief second, because then Taemin finishes: "I hear you're in charge of being sexy.”
Jongin’s face crumples in mortification. "Someone has to do it," he says feebly, and Taemin grins as if to say, oh, I've seen that thing you call a body wave. He slides down to sit on the chair arm Jongin has vacated, bringing himself nearer to eye-level, and Jongin puts his elbow on Taemin’s thigh absently. The faint strain of "MAMA" issuing from his headphones is tinny, buzzing against his neck, and Jongin pauses it before saying casually, "Anyway, I've seen your aegyo, it's only the most horrifying thing I've ever-"
"One plus one," Taemin starts, in a mock baby voice, and he has pink and yellow clips in his half-styled hair, so Jongin has to pick up a magazine from the table and beat him out of the dressing room. Taemin growls out a "Krong!" just before he disappears, in a blur of pastel clips and brown hair, and the door swings shut in Jongin's face before he can kick it closed.
"Too bad, I kind of wanted to see that," Baekhyun remarks, when Jongin sits back down, dropping the battered magazine back on the table. When Jongin looks incredulous, he adds, cavalier: "for blackmail purposes," and flashes Jongin a wide, brilliantly cheeky smile before returning his attention to the mirror.
VII
Once, in the practise rooms, Jongin had reached out, grabbed Taemin's hand so that they were side by side in front of the mirror, and scrutinised the hairline, the stippled brow, the smooth curve of his cheek, nose, lips. "What," Taemin laughed, and his smile destroyed the reflection. "What?"
"People say we look alike," Jongin said, and slowly the mirrored image returned, Taemin's face smoothing out again to contemplate their reflection. Taemin's fingers were strong, wiry and indelicate, the spidered hands of a pianist. The cold metal of Taemin's bracelet raised the hair on his forearm. For months they had danced together, synchronised like divers, so that Jongin, meaning to track his own reflection, would find himself looking at Taemin's. He remembered, suddenly, Taemin's debut, the resulting revelry over how talented he was, at such a young age, and watching Taemin's debut stage alone in his room, the thoughts that stuttered, unfinished: it could be- I could be-
But this was Taemin. As he watched, Taemin tilted his head, gaze lingering at the same places - eyes, nose, mouth - but with a familiarity that Jongin relaxed into without thought. "Maybe," Taemin said. When Jongin turned toward him, Taemin's hand kept him anchored in place. After a moment, Taemin's mouth quirked, and he looked at Jongin. "I'm better-looking, though."
VIII
There were people that SM liked: people like Kyuhyun, who debuted so quickly that he'd almost never been a trainee, here one day and gone the next; and people like Moonkyu, who kept saying he was done waiting, who they kept telling, stay. People like him, people like Taemin: he thought he knew where each of them fit in. Swaying on the brink of change, he thought it would make it easier.
They walked the streets at night, like three alley cats, taking turns to step up onto planters, swing in lazy half-circles around a telephone pole or street sign, listening to music swell and fade, the welcome bloom of air conditioning, bursting softly in their faces, as they passed by each establishment. It was almost summer, the air sluggish and finally turning cool, the lights of the city winking, bathed in an interminable ocean of dark blue.
Taemin was holding an empty container of banana milk, tapping the straw so that it hit the thin bottom repeatedly, like a tiny drum. The candy in Jongin’s mouth, once peach-flavoured, was a little milky and bitter from the stolen sips he'd had of Moonkyu's coffee as they walked, leaning over while Moonkyu held it out for him. Whenever other people appeared, the street became too narrow for them to walk shoulder to shoulder, so they kept shifting, someone stepping forward or hanging back, weaving in and out of formation, braided back together.
These were the moments that he wanted to seize, wanted to plunge his fingers into the thick air and hold it firm in his memories. Whenever he remembered it, he knew, he would forget the uncomfortable stickiness of sweat drying on his skin, how gruelling the rest of the day had been. What would be left was the feeling of wandering, sleepless, like vagabonds and good-for-nothings, walking with nowhere left to go. The feeling of contentment in his bones, the movement of his body lax, spent and worthless.
He meandered in between them and bumped shoulders with both of them, wordlessly. He thought they'd know what he meant by it, and he was right: Moonkyu's smile was soft and crooked, Taemin's bright and wide, like it had been startled out of him with the push, both of them the same as always. He ducked his head when he smiled back. This, Jongin thought. Just this.
IX
The sky is bright in Incheon, a blinding light blue that nearly swallows up the white of the planes lined up outside the terminal. Jongin raises his arm, slowly, fingers pinching around the belly of the first plane, and flies it out like a paper airplane, the second, the third, until they are all gone, spiralling in the sky.
On the terminal board, each incoming flight reads, on time, on time, on time, reflected in the glass. Jongin reaches out to touch the edge of it, fingerprints smudging the words. He remembers the wonder, the streak of pride that would flash through him when, walking down the street, he was recognised as EXO's Kai; the disbelief at the audience amassed at their showcases. Today, on the window, Jongin's face is one long shadow, the outline of his features barely distinguishable, so that for a moment, he is nobody, just another instance of come and go.
His phone buzzes with a text from Sehun. Come back, is all it says. He looks at it until the screen dims and turns off, and then he looks down at his scuffed shoes and thinks about running, the muscles of his legs tensing as he pitches forward onto the balls of his feet, ready, set-
They shuffle, one by one, down the line to the boarding gate. When Jongin pulls his passport back out of his backpack, the boarding pass tucked in it a little worse for the wear, a photograph flutters out. It lands, upside down, at his heels. Behind him, Kyungsoo bends down, picking it up off the floor and handing it back to him. He smiles, brief and perfunctory, when Jongin takes it, mumbling his thanks. Jongin grabs his backpack and shakes it, looking for a place to put the photograph, and nearly loses his grip on it again. When he fumbles it, it flips over, and he see his own face, smiling back at him. He recalls the words before he reads them, his fingernails biting the edge of the photograph: Lee Taemin's older brother, fighting!
X
Jongin steps out toward the centre of an empty stage and turns into dust. When the particles coalesce, he is Kai.
He is Kai, fluidity and grace coiled into his bones, ready to spring into life, until cold fingers reach for his in a touch that only skims his fingertips, and it is Jongin whose fingers close for just an instant, a quick, reflexive cinch. Overhead, the lights turn on, heat radiating on his back and shoulders. Next to him, Taemin is perfectly poised, face shadowed by the stage lights, and Jongin hears his voice echoing in his head: five, six, seven, eight-
At the beginning, Taemin's dancing was prose, rising action and climax and denouement. And for Jongin, it was poetry, staccato line breaks and abrupt turns of phrase. What they were now, Jongin couldn’t tell: Taemin was there when he danced, in the untucked wrist and flourish of fingers, and he found himself, too, in Taemin's sharpest moves, the snap of his arm.
The music is mercury in his veins, his heart beating in time with the bass, and the screams pull him sharply to the present, to each movement, to the knowledge of Taemin, moving with him and beside him, as sure of his every movement as he was of his own. When the song ends, he laughs without meaning to, crashes unchoreographed into Taemin, and stumbles off stage, full enough to burst and lighter than air.
XI
The ending stage is hectic, confetti coming down in cascades, and Jongin idles on one side, smiling and waving with half-curled fingers when he sees one of his fansites, before ducking towards the back, weaving upstream between bows and polite greetings. Taemin passes by, and he reaches out for Jongin's hand. Their hands miss the first time, still too far away, and when Taemin tries again, Jongin's ring slides off into his fingers. Taemin only has enough time to blink at him before he is swept up to the front, where he holds it for a moment, then slips it on, flashing peace signs and impudent smiles with it and waving with both hands outstretched.
When Jongin looks down, there are red lines across his fingers where his ring had dug in, in the tiny points of a triangle. He flexes his fingers, watching them fade. On his other hand, his EXO ring still glitters, each letter catching the light like a kaleidoscope. A lock of hair has come loose from his slick pompadour, and it falls back in his face, like an errant cowlick, when he looks down. He pushes it back, and his fingers come away a little sticky. When Zitao finds him for a hug, it transfers onto the back of Zitao's shirt.
Taemin finds him in time for the last bow, edging his way down the line and slipping in next to Jongin neatly. He clasps Jongin's right hand in his left, so that his rings are back to back in their hands, and this time, he doesn't let go.
XII
Nobody ever said what this was, said: leaving nothing unsaid while never saying anything important, a terminal inability to hold hands, borrowing things on accident and giving yourself back, “better than lovers”: diagnose.
Today, he walks down a red carpet, faces a sea of white flashes and greets it. Sitting next to him, Chanyeol bounces his leg, rapid-fire, Junmyeon’s pearly smile like a plaster cast, and when the female host opens the envelope and says, “EXO-K, congratulations,” it feels like a dam breaking, relief and joy and pride and disbelief flooding through him, crashing against the cell of his body so that when he stands, he is unsteady, no longer sure of his footing.
He looks down at his feet and thinks to himself, I’m here. When he looks back up, Taemin catches his eye almost immediately. He smiles.
taemin + kai, pg, 4005ⓦ
Note: Contains a reference to this. For Viva: your bullying is disproportionately effective given your effort, which more closely resembles off-hand suggestion; happy birthday.
THIS MODERN WORLD
THAT MOVES,
THAT MOVES.
I
The frame of each window shutters Taemin's face as the double doors close and the train starts to move, heaving away from the platform. He looks different in each one, each blurred angle pulling him out of one window and into another as the distance between them grows from a crawl to a chase.
For a moment, it's easier to see all the ways in which Taemin has changed; Jongin's memories, far and few in between since Taemin debuted, are like notches on a wall, measuring growth. "See you there," Taemin had said at the time, smiling, his cheeks still round and glowing. His features are sharper now, body moving with an assurance Jongin thinks can only come from those years in the spotlight, even though he's as pale and skinny as always, if the low collar of his denim shirt and the trim tuck of his skinny jeans are anything to go by.
Today, a young girl passes by Jongin without a second glance. The terminal trembles under the weight of an incoming train on the opposite track, still out of sight. Online, Kai's first teaser video is released. When Taemin raises a hand in farewell, Jongin reaches up, tugs the bill of his cap down, and walks away.
II
Taemin is sitting in the corner of the waiting area, kicking one foot absently as he reads. As Jongin draws closer, he pulls a pen away from his mouth to write a note in the margins of his book. May I have your attention please, a woman's voice says over the loudspeaker, her Mandarin brisk and unintelligible to Jongin, and he reaches out, flicking the spine of the book so that Taemin startles, fumbling the book and losing his place. Jongin huffs out a laugh and sits down, backpack crowding the seat so that he's leaning back on a precarious incline, legs stretched out to keep himself from slipping off.
Taemin's book has fallen back open to a finished page full of wobbly handwritten characters, swimming awkwardly in square boxes. "Stop pretending to study," Jongin says, sleepily, as Taemin rifles back to the right page, laboriously reading the dialogue. "Everyone knows all your Japanese comes from watching One Piece." On Taemin's other side, Jonghyun laughs under his breath without looking up from his phone.
"Arigatou gozaimasu, Kai-san," Taemin says seriously, enunciating each syllable, and kicks the heel of Jongin's foot so that he loses his balance. Jongin yelps and laughs as Taemin hauls him back up by the handle of his backpack, dropping him back in the seat gracelessly.
"Very nice, senpai," Jongin enthuses, dredging up the sparse Japanese he’d picked up from One Piece. Taemin beams, returning to his book. His hand still hasn’t left Jongin’s backpack: it rests innocuously at the back of his neck, like he thought Jongin might still fall if he were to let go, or, more likely, he’d just forgotten to take it away. When Jongin shifts, Taemin seems to remember it again, and he withdraws his hand to flip to the next page.
III
Jongin blinks, refocusing as Taemin shifts beside him, pulling his hand out of his pocket, and the camera beeps twice, the shutter snapping. Jongin tilts his head, finding the camera for the next shot and dropping his gaze for the next, before leaning forward. Once the camera snaps, Taemin's elbows settle on his back, pushing him down into a ninety-degree bow, and Jongin laughs.
The concept is young boys in spring, pomaded hair and light makeup, clothing racks filled with Marc Jacobs and Margaret Howell, Paul Smith shoes and Junghans watches; unfastened French sleeves with perfectly-buttoned collars indoors and rolled up trouser legs and sweaters tied across their shoulders outdoors. The grass itches against Jongin's calves, the earth soft and damp under his feet as he carries his shoes, camera following in their footsteps.
They look through the photos together afterward, light from a window patterned against Jongin's sports jacket, Taemin sprawled on a sofa and Jongin leaning against it, louche in their luxury. Taemin holding a tree branch like a sceptre, sticking dried, yellow leaves into Jongin's hair like an ancient Grecian laurel wreath, the resultant tussle captured in slow motion. The deep cerulean blue of the water by the pier, the smooth arch of their backs as they twist and splash like fish, laughing, wetting the hems of their clothes.
"Over here," Taemin says, waving an Instax camera with Vogue’s logo taped on it, and Jongin poses before sitting down next to him, right leg draped over Taemin's left. After four shots, he slides down until his head is resting on Taemin's shoulder, closing his eyes, and doesn't open them until Taemin shifts, none too subtly, to poke him, and he snaps at the finger playfully, teeth closing on air as he opens his eyes. It ruins the last shot, but Taemin lays it out with the others, fanned out across the table.
They sign each one carefully, picking them out one by one to write captions and autograph them. Jongin draws inquisitory faces embellished with eyelashes while Taemin scribbles stars over each of his autographs, and between them they muster up unimaginative captions, like to. Vogue followed by bagel-shaped hearts. Jongin finds the second to last one and draws a crescent moon and stars, nightcaps and a line of Zs next to their sleeping faces. On Jongin's solo shot, Taemin draws cramped sparkles and writes, Lee Taemin's older brother, fighting!
Out of the corner of his eye, Jongin sees him write it, and when Taemin slides it across the table, marker twirling nonchalantly in his fingers, Jongin doesn't move to acknowledge it. But he offers Taemin a small smile, half-hidden in shadow and the tilt of his head, before he resumes drawing, and he slides it into his pocket when he gets up to leave.
IV
He's sitting with his legs hanging off the edge of the stage when Taemin, crouching down to sit next to him, jostles his elbow by accident. He slings an arm across Taemin's shoulders, leaning back and ignoring the twinge of his waist. Taemin’s shirt is slightly damp at the back of his neck, and it clings to Jongin’s arm. He is holding a half-empty water bottle, tossing it back and forth in his hands, and Jongin feels each shift of muscle, solid and familiar, heat rising from his body.
He's dimly aware of Taemin talking, and he nods along, humming and laughing at intervals as Taemin rambles along comfortably, jumping from one story to another without finishing any of them properly. He’s talking about some embarrassing incident during one of his rehearsals with Soojung when Jongin draws his arm back, leaning forward again and reaching for Taemin's wrist. He tugs it across his lap to play with Taemin’s tangled assortment of bracelets, pushing them between his forefingers and thumbs, pulling at them and rotating them aimlessly.
They don't talk about it, how the stage stitches them together and makes them real, whole, how it takes away just as much as it gives. They never do, except in the way they deliver choreography, like a one-two punch - a little less conversation, a little more action, please. Jongin, who had been too young the first and second time around, had watched the A class thin out and leave him behind, only to fill with the same people he’d once left behind; and Taemin, on the fringes of adulthood, realising that being good for his age wouldn't last, even if the world still only saw him as a child. Both of them defiant and eager to prove, to say, I’ll show you all, this is what I can do.
When their names are called, Taemin stands up first, bouncing onto his toes and stretching out a hand for Jongin to take. "Nice shoelifts," Taemin says, grinning, when he's pulled Jongin to his feet. He leans back to assess their new height difference.
"Thanks," Jongin says, ruffling Taemin's hair and effectively ruining it. "Yours aren't bad either."
V
They announce plans for a joint stage, this time just the two of them, after a dozen SM project groups and dance battles where they had almost, but not quite, properly danced together. In the practise room, they run through a quick warm-up before Jaewon arrives, stretching together on the floor, and Taemin holds out his hands, legs extended in front of him, for Jongin to pull.
He thinks about their editorial, just published, with their fingers wrapped around each other’s wrists - Jongin’s on bare skin, Taemin’s clutching the thick, bunched-up sleeves of Jongin’s hoodie. There hadn’t been an interview, just a short introduction:
YOUNG & RICH / WILD & FREE
We met with hallyu idol SHINee’s Taemin and rising star EXO-K’s Kai on a bright spring day. Same-age friends who met for the first time in the practise room, and were reunited as the lead dancers of their respective groups, they met again for this issue of Vogue Korea. As expected, they were professional, charismatic, and full of allure, but throughout the day, we also glimpsed another side of them - as the two youths who grew up together through dance, who joked with the familiarity of old friends and knew each others’ bodies better than lovers. Whether it is art that imitates life, or life that imitates art, then, becomes the question. ■
The dance is dynamic, playing on the mirror image of their bodies, fluid and reflecting each other like a Rorschach, so that every step is paired, forming one, singular motion. The song hasn’t been recorded yet, but the guide song is catchy, fast-paced, and Jongin likes it, thinks they could make it really good. When they’re given a break, Jongin still feels energetic, too amped-up to rest, pushing up onto his toes and dropping back down. In front of him, Taemin is still frowning at his reflection, body frozen in the pose where, coming into the second stanza, the snap of his leg is a little slow to match Jongin’s.
“Hey,” Jongin says, winding one of his hoodie strings around his finger. He watches Taemin’s body come out of the pose slowly, like it was still lingering somewhere in his mind, even as he shifted his attention to Jongin. “Teach me one of your dances.”
Taemin tries to teach him “Sherlock” before they unanimously agree that it wasn’t nearly as - or at all - dramatic with just two people, and when Jaewon comes back, Taemin is tripping over himself to “My Lady” while Jongin laughs, just barely catching Taemin in a ballroom dip. Then Taemin bats his eyelashes, and Jongin laughs so hard that he drops him.
VI
"So, Kai-sshi," Taemin says, with the air of an extremely intrepid reporter, leaning against the side of his chair with a thump. Jongin jumps, pulling his headphones off, and scowls belatedly at the “Kai-sshi,” which Taemin routinely forgets to use in front of the cameras, but always remembers when they're off-stage, because he likes to tease Jongin whenever he doesn't respond to it.
I’m not Kai, he had tried to say, once. He didn’t know how to explain: it was nothing like the way Taemin was who he was, in everything, and a terrible actor when asked to be anything else. Taemin was Taemin, but Kai was like the centre of a Venn diagram, part of him Jongin, and part of him something completely separate, individual, organic. How much of Kai was him was easy to differentiate, but how much of him was Kai was a much more difficult question: he wore Kai’s smirk, Kai’s gestures like they fit him, but there was also the him who stood in front of the mirror after a shower and practised each of them, trying not to let the uncertainty show. For weeks he had told his reflection, “Hello, I’m Kai,” and watched the lack of conviction bloom on his own face.
What he hadn’t said was, around you, I just want to be Jongin. That time, Taemin had held him out at arm’s length and peered at him, brow furrowed, and then his face had cleared suddenly. “Oh. It’s just you, Jonginnie. I thought you were somebody famous,” he said, and then, without skipping a beat - “Hey, let’s get jajangmyun.” Jongin punched him in spite of himself, fist landing square on his shoulder. Taemin rubbed at it and said, “What? I’m hungry.” Jongin snorted, waiting until his head was turned to mouth a snide as always at the back of his head.
Right now, Taemin looks almost diabolical, wicked with unhinged glee, and Jongin is entirely sure that it is at his expense. But the supreme unattractiveness of it reminds him, for a moment, of Lu Han’s laugh, and he feels better, if only for a brief second, because then Taemin finishes: "I hear you're in charge of being sexy.”
Jongin’s face crumples in mortification. "Someone has to do it," he says feebly, and Taemin grins as if to say, oh, I've seen that thing you call a body wave. He slides down to sit on the chair arm Jongin has vacated, bringing himself nearer to eye-level, and Jongin puts his elbow on Taemin’s thigh absently. The faint strain of "MAMA" issuing from his headphones is tinny, buzzing against his neck, and Jongin pauses it before saying casually, "Anyway, I've seen your aegyo, it's only the most horrifying thing I've ever-"
"One plus one," Taemin starts, in a mock baby voice, and he has pink and yellow clips in his half-styled hair, so Jongin has to pick up a magazine from the table and beat him out of the dressing room. Taemin growls out a "Krong!" just before he disappears, in a blur of pastel clips and brown hair, and the door swings shut in Jongin's face before he can kick it closed.
"Too bad, I kind of wanted to see that," Baekhyun remarks, when Jongin sits back down, dropping the battered magazine back on the table. When Jongin looks incredulous, he adds, cavalier: "for blackmail purposes," and flashes Jongin a wide, brilliantly cheeky smile before returning his attention to the mirror.
VII
Once, in the practise rooms, Jongin had reached out, grabbed Taemin's hand so that they were side by side in front of the mirror, and scrutinised the hairline, the stippled brow, the smooth curve of his cheek, nose, lips. "What," Taemin laughed, and his smile destroyed the reflection. "What?"
"People say we look alike," Jongin said, and slowly the mirrored image returned, Taemin's face smoothing out again to contemplate their reflection. Taemin's fingers were strong, wiry and indelicate, the spidered hands of a pianist. The cold metal of Taemin's bracelet raised the hair on his forearm. For months they had danced together, synchronised like divers, so that Jongin, meaning to track his own reflection, would find himself looking at Taemin's. He remembered, suddenly, Taemin's debut, the resulting revelry over how talented he was, at such a young age, and watching Taemin's debut stage alone in his room, the thoughts that stuttered, unfinished: it could be- I could be-
But this was Taemin. As he watched, Taemin tilted his head, gaze lingering at the same places - eyes, nose, mouth - but with a familiarity that Jongin relaxed into without thought. "Maybe," Taemin said. When Jongin turned toward him, Taemin's hand kept him anchored in place. After a moment, Taemin's mouth quirked, and he looked at Jongin. "I'm better-looking, though."
VIII
There were people that SM liked: people like Kyuhyun, who debuted so quickly that he'd almost never been a trainee, here one day and gone the next; and people like Moonkyu, who kept saying he was done waiting, who they kept telling, stay. People like him, people like Taemin: he thought he knew where each of them fit in. Swaying on the brink of change, he thought it would make it easier.
They walked the streets at night, like three alley cats, taking turns to step up onto planters, swing in lazy half-circles around a telephone pole or street sign, listening to music swell and fade, the welcome bloom of air conditioning, bursting softly in their faces, as they passed by each establishment. It was almost summer, the air sluggish and finally turning cool, the lights of the city winking, bathed in an interminable ocean of dark blue.
Taemin was holding an empty container of banana milk, tapping the straw so that it hit the thin bottom repeatedly, like a tiny drum. The candy in Jongin’s mouth, once peach-flavoured, was a little milky and bitter from the stolen sips he'd had of Moonkyu's coffee as they walked, leaning over while Moonkyu held it out for him. Whenever other people appeared, the street became too narrow for them to walk shoulder to shoulder, so they kept shifting, someone stepping forward or hanging back, weaving in and out of formation, braided back together.
These were the moments that he wanted to seize, wanted to plunge his fingers into the thick air and hold it firm in his memories. Whenever he remembered it, he knew, he would forget the uncomfortable stickiness of sweat drying on his skin, how gruelling the rest of the day had been. What would be left was the feeling of wandering, sleepless, like vagabonds and good-for-nothings, walking with nowhere left to go. The feeling of contentment in his bones, the movement of his body lax, spent and worthless.
He meandered in between them and bumped shoulders with both of them, wordlessly. He thought they'd know what he meant by it, and he was right: Moonkyu's smile was soft and crooked, Taemin's bright and wide, like it had been startled out of him with the push, both of them the same as always. He ducked his head when he smiled back. This, Jongin thought. Just this.
IX
The sky is bright in Incheon, a blinding light blue that nearly swallows up the white of the planes lined up outside the terminal. Jongin raises his arm, slowly, fingers pinching around the belly of the first plane, and flies it out like a paper airplane, the second, the third, until they are all gone, spiralling in the sky.
On the terminal board, each incoming flight reads, on time, on time, on time, reflected in the glass. Jongin reaches out to touch the edge of it, fingerprints smudging the words. He remembers the wonder, the streak of pride that would flash through him when, walking down the street, he was recognised as EXO's Kai; the disbelief at the audience amassed at their showcases. Today, on the window, Jongin's face is one long shadow, the outline of his features barely distinguishable, so that for a moment, he is nobody, just another instance of come and go.
His phone buzzes with a text from Sehun. Come back, is all it says. He looks at it until the screen dims and turns off, and then he looks down at his scuffed shoes and thinks about running, the muscles of his legs tensing as he pitches forward onto the balls of his feet, ready, set-
They shuffle, one by one, down the line to the boarding gate. When Jongin pulls his passport back out of his backpack, the boarding pass tucked in it a little worse for the wear, a photograph flutters out. It lands, upside down, at his heels. Behind him, Kyungsoo bends down, picking it up off the floor and handing it back to him. He smiles, brief and perfunctory, when Jongin takes it, mumbling his thanks. Jongin grabs his backpack and shakes it, looking for a place to put the photograph, and nearly loses his grip on it again. When he fumbles it, it flips over, and he see his own face, smiling back at him. He recalls the words before he reads them, his fingernails biting the edge of the photograph: Lee Taemin's older brother, fighting!
X
Jongin steps out toward the centre of an empty stage and turns into dust. When the particles coalesce, he is Kai.
He is Kai, fluidity and grace coiled into his bones, ready to spring into life, until cold fingers reach for his in a touch that only skims his fingertips, and it is Jongin whose fingers close for just an instant, a quick, reflexive cinch. Overhead, the lights turn on, heat radiating on his back and shoulders. Next to him, Taemin is perfectly poised, face shadowed by the stage lights, and Jongin hears his voice echoing in his head: five, six, seven, eight-
At the beginning, Taemin's dancing was prose, rising action and climax and denouement. And for Jongin, it was poetry, staccato line breaks and abrupt turns of phrase. What they were now, Jongin couldn’t tell: Taemin was there when he danced, in the untucked wrist and flourish of fingers, and he found himself, too, in Taemin's sharpest moves, the snap of his arm.
The music is mercury in his veins, his heart beating in time with the bass, and the screams pull him sharply to the present, to each movement, to the knowledge of Taemin, moving with him and beside him, as sure of his every movement as he was of his own. When the song ends, he laughs without meaning to, crashes unchoreographed into Taemin, and stumbles off stage, full enough to burst and lighter than air.
XI
The ending stage is hectic, confetti coming down in cascades, and Jongin idles on one side, smiling and waving with half-curled fingers when he sees one of his fansites, before ducking towards the back, weaving upstream between bows and polite greetings. Taemin passes by, and he reaches out for Jongin's hand. Their hands miss the first time, still too far away, and when Taemin tries again, Jongin's ring slides off into his fingers. Taemin only has enough time to blink at him before he is swept up to the front, where he holds it for a moment, then slips it on, flashing peace signs and impudent smiles with it and waving with both hands outstretched.
When Jongin looks down, there are red lines across his fingers where his ring had dug in, in the tiny points of a triangle. He flexes his fingers, watching them fade. On his other hand, his EXO ring still glitters, each letter catching the light like a kaleidoscope. A lock of hair has come loose from his slick pompadour, and it falls back in his face, like an errant cowlick, when he looks down. He pushes it back, and his fingers come away a little sticky. When Zitao finds him for a hug, it transfers onto the back of Zitao's shirt.
Taemin finds him in time for the last bow, edging his way down the line and slipping in next to Jongin neatly. He clasps Jongin's right hand in his left, so that his rings are back to back in their hands, and this time, he doesn't let go.
XII
Nobody ever said what this was, said: leaving nothing unsaid while never saying anything important, a terminal inability to hold hands, borrowing things on accident and giving yourself back, “better than lovers”: diagnose.
Today, he walks down a red carpet, faces a sea of white flashes and greets it. Sitting next to him, Chanyeol bounces his leg, rapid-fire, Junmyeon’s pearly smile like a plaster cast, and when the female host opens the envelope and says, “EXO-K, congratulations,” it feels like a dam breaking, relief and joy and pride and disbelief flooding through him, crashing against the cell of his body so that when he stands, he is unsteady, no longer sure of his footing.
He looks down at his feet and thinks to himself, I’m here. When he looks back up, Taemin catches his eye almost immediately. He smiles.