SBB 2010 Entry #2 - Color Theory (1/2)
Title: Color Theory
Pairing/Focus: Taemin focus, former Key/Taemin
Rating: R
Word Count: 12,539
A/N: I am ultimately very happy with this fic and how it turned out and ended. Also, throughout the course of writing this I read both Invisible Man and The Great Gatsby in school, so the color association and narrative styles were inspired from the discussions we had.
He clearly remembers seeing a teal blue matchbook at the bottom of the car, reading The Violet Hour. Taemin looks that up at home on the computer and finds out it had been the name of some Broadway play, remembers, oh he likes the arts, he told me that. But the matchbook had little black squiggles of address underneath the bold letters, Taemin remembers distantly, squiggles he didn’t read, didn’t see so doesn’t know. But that tells him that it is a place. A place where Key might be and so he’s finding it.
Taemin will teach Key to leave him on the side of the road with nothing but shattered pride. Doesn’t care if Key is drawing his little invisible lines, barriers to keep Taemin out. Taemin will find him, Taemin will wiggle his way in under Key’s defenses and once he’s there he’ll stay, stuck under Key’s skin, wedged and permanent and safe forever.
Just watch.
-----
He remembers a lot of things through color association. Amber for Key’s hair when he dyed it, done at that one fancy salon in the city; deep green for the paint job of his car; gray for the warehouse they met at. He’d head for that warehouse, except he doesn’t think anything is waiting for him there but sentimentality. It wouldn’t be helpful, not at all, and Taemin has a better lead to spend his time on.
“Ever heard of the Violet Hour? Know what it is?” He asks Jonghyun casually during break, pretending there aren’t ulterior motives, that that is not a loaded question.
Jonghyun is busy, texting his latest girlfriend, a pen between his teeth and his school-issued tie loosened. He raises an eyebrow in a way that makes Taemin feel young and stupid in his own uniform.
“Yeah,” Jonghyun answers eventually, “it’s a club. A real deal club, y’know what I’m saying? I hear it’s gay, but you know.” He smirks, and that says more than anything, “On the down low since protesting families with petitions would probably get a place like that closed in a heartbeat. Stay away from there. They don’t play high school kid games there.” Then he grins and ruffles Taemin’s hair. “And those gays, they’d eat you alive, you cutie.”
Ignoring everything in him saying stop, don’t, Taemin pushes just a little bit more. “Well…where is it?”
Jonghyun stops and looks long and hard at Taemin. Taemin stares back resolutely, stubborn. Jonghyun recognizes this stubbornness and he, moving in slow motion, tries to avoid it. Tucks his phone in his pocket and chews away on his pen, pulls it out to flick the dripping ink drawn out by the soft suction between the flesh of his tongue and inside of his cheek off the tip. He’s stalling. He’s analyzing Taemin’s motives, too.
Taemin grabs Jonghyun’s wrist and tugs. “Jonghyun, tell me. I’m…curious. I know someone who goes there.” Jonghyun has a soft spot for Taemin and his pleading stares. Everyone seems to.
The persistence pays off and Jonghyun relents, huffing. “Fine - shit, who - ah never mind. It’s way up north. Like, up in or near Cyan, that kind of north. You’d have to go on the highway, take a bunch of exits…forget it if you’re thinking of going. It’s miles away. You can’t walk that far and the buses only go so far before it gets expensive.”
Taemin laughs, if only to at Jonghyun’s assumption that he’d be willing to listen to such mild warnings, but by immediately bowing his head meekly with a soft, “Oh, okay. Just wondering, anyway,” he lets Jonghyun believe he is heeding those words while really calculating, precise and deliberate in his head.
-----
Taemin isn’t stupid, he’s not going to drop everything and go on a wild goose chase for Key. He’s found out where Key might be, but it is far away and Taemin is barely seventeen. Can’t drive, doesn’t have a car anyway, has schoolwork and college preparations sneaking up on him. If he doesn’t do this right his mom will kill him, his dad and older brother will find out and follow his trail and force him back home if he leaves careless tracks behind.
He tests it out, how far he can get on foot in an hour, who stops for the held out thumb of a teenager who looks like a little kid at seventy miles per hour, how to not get stopped and pulled into his homeroom teacher’s car ten minutes out.
“Really Taemin, what are you thinking? If you need to go to uptown to the metro area you should just wait until someone you know can drive you,” she lectures, “Hitchhiking is dangerous, especially into the city.”
She thinks suburbia, with its pastel and cream colored houses and neighborhoods filled with everyone knowing everyone, has softened his logic, made him dim-witted when it comes to what is safe in the real world. “Next time, don’t walk on the side of the road, you could get hit or kidnapped or worse.”
“Yes ma’am.” Taemin says dutifully as she drives them back the way he came, undoing his work step by step.
-----
Taemin doesn’t do homework. He knows he should, it’s not like he’s doing anything else holed up in his room after dinner. He isn’t like the other boys his age and he’s not watching porn or browsing the Internet, not joining Ivy and Hyori and Dambi fanclubs or commenting on a forum thread about how hot the latest female idol looks in an ice cream commercial. He is sitting at his desk tonight, dragging his pencil across the paper, doodling and thinking, drawing out the nonlinear swirl of his thoughts.
Key is not his real name - a swoop of thin gray.
But it is a well-used nickname - dot dot dot, darker.
He knows because Key told him - there is shading for pause in thought.
But what if Key lied?
Taemin drops his pencil and stares at the scrawl of nothing on his paper. He absently realizes it is a worksheet for trigonometry. That realization dwarfs and shrinks behind the growing presence of facts, hard and true, in Taemin’s mind. He is shuffling through every memory, every thought and daydream that has anything to do with Key. Was he lying? How does he look when he lies? There is only the smell of tangerine-grapefruit blend, pungent to the point of suffocating, from the gum Key is chewing that one Sunday, that one Sunday they go to a museum and it ends in the backseat of Key’s car, Key kissing and taking and Taemin squirming endlessly breathless at Key, Key’s fingers. Dancing, little patterns along Taemin’s flesh.
“So silly.” Key murmurs, citrus scent wafting across everything Taemin, the end and the beginning and it fills his nostrils, his senses, his mind, and a flash of orange bursts behind Taemin’s eyelids and he is left damp and awkward and panting.
That same flash of orange is bursting again behind his eyelids, déjà vu, bam. Taemin is blinking the color away to see in the now and present and he is on his back staring up at his bedroom ceiling. The chair has fallen backwards with him in it and his mom is at the door knocking softly as she opens it up and looks in.
He grins at her apologetically. “Sorry.”
-----
The Violet Hour is maddening to Taemin, a double imprint in the creases of his mind: the name, the teal color of the matchbook, the color in the name - of the name. It is driving Taemin insane, making him go in little circles over and over and over.
“Wanna go do noraebang?” A classmate asks and Taemin says yes.
But once there he sits in the lobby after excusing himself to go to the bathroom, all because he is really stupid. There is no other reason, no heart wrenching emotion or memory, no flashes of color and reminiscing that are keeping him from having fun. He simply just does not want to do noraebang tonight and if he had been focused on what he wants and not on how to act normal, he would have said no.
Because what he’s focusing on is not hinting at the act of absurd and epic stupidity - absurdity - of all the impulsive selfish crap he’s done this just takes the whole freaking cake - that he’s thinking about, planning on, going to do because he has to or he’ll just. Wither away and die or. Or burst from too many emotions. Or learn to deal with it and keep living, but that is a last resort.
“You okay?” A girl who might be in Taemin’s homeroom asks when she finds him sitting there hunched over thinking - Minji is her name, maybe? She has scabbed knees that peek from under the edge of her skirt and she blinks, skin pale like porcelain and hair flames of dyed red.
“Ah. Stomachache,” he responds nonchalantly, “I don’t know. Maybe I ate too much at lunch.” She smiles a little, the pity is there, and sits next to him and rubs his back. Minji’s breaking codes of personal space, they don’t even know each other that well.
“Sorry you don’t feel well.” She looks genuinely concerned and okay now Taemin is having those heart wrenches. It’s a contrast, he’s thinking of those times when Key looks at him completely differently, like he’s nothing more than -
“Do you want us to chip in for a cab to take you home? I wouldn’t want you walking if you don’t feel well.”
Taemin holds his head in his hands because he’s got a headache from stress and late night cram sessions. And Key is staring at him and Taemin feels like he’s disappointed him, proven that he’s not ready for this kind of stuff, and all Key cares about is how he is not a toy that Key can pick up and play with whenever he wants and, and Key is annoyed by that notion. “Ugh,” Key’s voice is in his ear, “Well shit man, now what do we do?”
“Ah.” Taemin stutters out to Minji. “Ah, no. No that’s. Fine.”
-----
Jonghyun is annoyed with Taemin, but Taemin needs this tutoring session. He’s trying his best, but his mind is just not taking in anything from school lately. He is so preoccupied and he shouldn’t be.
“Oh my god,” Jonghyun whines, “Do you not know your polyatomic compounds? What the hell can I do with you if you don’t?”
Jonghyun is a senior and so above the hardships of chemistry, he took the class forever ago after all. Worrying about classes is so last year, Key’s said once. And then, with a start, Taemin realizes that oh, Key is the same age as Jonghyun - maybe a little younger, but.
He squashes the sudden urge to ask Jonghyun about the secrets of being one year older, having that edge, that extra year of wisdom in life and - and love, a traitorous little desperate part of him whispers. But he squashes it by slouching in his seat and taking into account that Jonghyun is staring incredulously at him.
“I could have sworn that you looked like you were paying attention for a second there. Taemin? You have a test and you don’t know anything about this subject. Pathetically so, actually.”
Taemin blinks - you don’t know anything - I’ll make you feel good, promise - a strip of black across his vision.
“Taemin?”
Taemin blinks again and he’s slipped out of his chair, he’s on his knees on the floor, he’s half hard and he won’t let Jonghyun see that, tugs on the edge of his sweater to cover up and hide that detail.
Jonghyun sounds worried, understandably so because normal people don’t just, don’t act like Taemin is acting, he is a mess. “Taemin are you okay?”
Taemin won’t say he is seeing Key in Jonghyun (because they are the same age - !) and he won’t tell Jonghyun what he is seeing at all, because he won’t let anyone say what he knows they’ll say.
“I’m fine.” He mutters, blinking the deer-stuck-in-headlights look out of his eyes, “Just. It hit me. I don’t even - don’t even - ” he’s struggling with excuses and words as he gets back into his chair avoiding Jonghyun’s eyes, grasping for something that doesn’t hit anywhere near the house where his mind, his heart too it seems, always live. That subject is private, no prying eyes or curious bodies allowed.
“Stoichiometry?” he finally settles on, the word foreign and distant even in his mouth as he says it, “Chapter five I think? Never got it, can we go over it? It might help.”
Jonghyun reaches for the book and his old notes, uncertain. “Um sure. Slacker, you guys are in chapter eleven now.” He’s trying to laugh it off, breathe normalcy and good humor into the situation.
Taemin lets him. He won’t let anyone say what they’ll want to at first glance: the awkward half tent of denim in his lap says otherwise.
-----
Not love not love not love, Taemin drills into himself. If he shows up and says the word love one time, just once, Key will dismiss him, it’ll be the same sob story all over again and Taemin will die from shame. Key will laugh at him, call him a little boy - “My son,” it is sometimes when he is in a good, playful mood and they are having a good day, a good date.
Not love, Taemin tells himself, just desperation. Taemin wants because he wants, nothing deeper, it is that shallow. Is that wanton and coquettish of him? Too bad, then so be it. He wants, just on principle, and he is stubborn. And because Key is also stubborn and wants what he wants, they are butting heads. Taemin just wants a little bit, just a piece of what Key doesn’t want at all, and it’s a fight to the end.
I will take like you take from me, Taemin thinks he will say when they meet after all of this, instead of I love you. Because it is not love, Taemin is not so young, so foolish, so stupid and blind and ready to let fantasies and half-baked wishes take hold over him, to believe and say and trust that this is love.
-----
It is clearly an act of god or something. Taemin wakes up late on Wednesday and it is an act of god because he never would have thought to do this otherwise.
His mother has a dentist appointment today, cavity filling or something, some sort of oral cleaning that makes her leave early and will make her come home later in the afternoon after errand running. She has told them over and over again, don’t forget, I won’t be there to make breakfast and get you to school on time, Taesun make sure your little brother gets up.
So Taesun does what he is told, bears his big brother responsibilities in stride and pokes Taemin in the back right between the shoulder blades, says, “Get up.”
And Taemin goes through the motions, rolls out of bed and mumbles, “Leave without me, I might be late,” around his toothbrush. Taesun waits around, but five minutes later Taemin is still brushing his teeth as slow as he possibly can and Taesun listens to him (of course he does, a little prideful part of Taemin insists, it only makes sense) and leaves for the bus.
An act of god, Taemin is convinced, because on what other day would Taesun actually really listen to him, hear logic in what he says and give in, leave him to his own devices, leave for school and leave him to blink blearily at his reflection (tired, he thinks bitterly, and pale and just look at you trying to be grown up, it’s worn you out) before making the decision to rinse, spit, burrow back under the covers. He is not thinking about what he is going to say to his mom when she comes home and finds him, not about his brother confused and uncertain and lost for words when his homeroom teacher takes Taesun aside and asks where he is, not about his father strict and angry over skipping school and slacking off, not about Key like he’s some lovesick girl or a worried Jonghyun or anyone. He’s not thinking about anything really.
When he wakes up, he snaps into consciousness suddenly, a clean and neat transition from asleep to awake and aware. There is no fuzziness to his thoughts; his mind is racing as he stares at the bright green numbers of his clock. Eight o’clock. He is wasting time, he thinks immediately and it is like that extra hour of sleep has solved the world’s biggest mystery. Taemin swings his feet over the edge of his bed and leaps into action, grabs a pair of jeans and his sneakers and is out the door.
He just walks. Walks and walks and walks and walks and then he is on the side of the highway, walking his way to the city. There is no plan, there is nothing there in the space between his ears. Just determination in his heart, anxiousness and the need to move and act and do something that matters.
And maybe he would have just kept going if he hadn’t tripped and fallen and scrapped his hands. The physicality of the injury ties him into the experience, plugs him in so he isn’t moving on autopilot anymore. He trips and scrapes up the skin of his palms and suddenly he is here, on the side of a busy freeway blinking into the dusky light of late evening. Suddenly he is thinking logically and fact by fact, not rashly and stupidly.
Here he is, on the side of a busy highway, and it is getting dark, he seriously could get hit by a car. His mother and father and brother - his friends, everyone actually - do not know where he is and his phone is not in his pocket. He left it on his dresser, he remembers suddenly, because he was moving through a haze this morning, thought it was an epiphany and it really actually wasn’t.
“I am beyond stupid.” Taemin says out loud because maybe hearing his own voice say it will drive the point home and shake him out of this sleepwalk he keeps using to get through each day. “It is not the end of the world, just forget Key.” He’s forgotten you, Taemin thinks, He’s forgotten you with his maturity intact, his integrity and life in one piece, his car and club and dyed hair assuring that.
With a sigh, with all the common sense he has to spare, Taemin gets up and turns around, ready to head back home. Not today, he resigns, not today with no plans or preparations.
Soon, he promises himself, just not today.
-----
“Where have you been!” Mom screeches, worry lines creased at the edges of her eyes and across her forehead. “You weren’t at school, they called, I was worried sick - ”
Taesun is glowering from behind his bowl, slouched in his chair at the table. He has probably gotten in a lot of trouble for Taemin’s stunt.
Taemin doesn’t really tune in to the scene, hear his mother rambling off the play by play of what happened after they found out he was gone, feel affected by the situation, until his father stands from the table and hovers over Taemin, drawn up to full height in silent fury. Until this, it is like he’s been watching in on the scene from somewhere else, half paying attention and looking down from some secret safe place that no one knows he’s at. But his father glares stonily over the rims of his glasses, anger bleeding out from every bit of him and Taemin is lost for breath.
“I.” he squeaks, not feeling as self important, all knowing or unstoppable as he has in the little world in his head, in his little schemes. Take those away and he is nothing, he just feels little, like he’s been so caught up in something so unimportant and everyone else knows it but him. “I.”
“Well you what?” His father asks dryly, voice booming to Taemin even in its quiet deadliness. “Where have you been all day? Why did you not go to school.” That is not a question. That is an accusation, a threat.
Taemin looks at his father’s tie, dark blue and silky, instead of at his face twisting from dangerously placid to bloodthirsty. It is safer, Taemin can hide his gaze and fear in the endless solidarity of the color. “I don’t know.”
He doesn’t. Doesn’t know anything, like why he did what he did, does what he does. And how is he supposed to say that to his parents without sounding like a stupid teenager who is withholding information and trying to find an easy way out of punishment?
He is actually a little afraid his father with do something drastic, like pick him up and throw him across the room, the look on his face is that murderous. His mom cuts in, maybe sensing this too, “Ah, Taemin go to your room. We’ll, we’ll talk later, after we’ve had dinner. You can go hungry since you…” She trails off, looking so bewildered by Taemin’s actions (you and me both mom, he thinks), before shaking her head and waving him off. “Ah, just go.”
Taemin goes without a word, closes his door quietly behind him, sits down on his bed and picks up his phone. Sees all the missed calls and texts and voicemail and deletes them. Starts going through all of everything and deleting. Key’s texts, mainly, are what he is looking for, because what kind of idiot leaves that much evidence in such an obvious place?
Key is a secret, Key is something that his parents would be horrified to find out about, and even if Key has only left short terse messages, clean of anything incriminating, even if Taemin wants them for memories and bitter smiles and flashes of feelings, they must go.
One catches his eye. The sent date chronicles it as the first one, the first time after they bumped into each other -
Meet me at that old warehouse, the one by the exit off of Cerise? Yeah.
That had been the first invitation and Taemin, like a fool, not lovestruck yet can’t blame it on that, had gone. Went and got sucked in and a load of good it’s done him since.
He puts his phone back on the nightstand and lies down. He thinks about alternatives, rakes his mind and finds none that are satisfactory. So he’s going to the Violet Hour, one way or another.
-----
“Help with the dance,” the instructor says to him and Taemin does his best.
He demonstrates to Haeseong and it’s really easy for Taemin, fluid motions that just click in his head. Haeseong is stumbling, behind in count and he’s not feeling it. “Ah.” Taemin murmurs the twentieth time through, “Um, not quite.”
Haeseong is red in the face from exertion and embarrassment, glaring and Taemin is just helping, doing what he was told, no need to - “Shut up faggot.” He hisses and Taemin’s heart stops for a second.
“What?” He asks after a moment of silence. Faggot? That must be baseless, pointless, adolescent anger venting in rude words. Taemin is younger than him and obviously more talented, people in general do not take kindly to that. Do not, he warns himself, of all things, do not read into that. That’s how you accidentally tell people things they didn’t know, and that’s just retarded. “I - I’m sorry, but - ”
“I’ve heard things about you,” he keeps going, “People’ve seen you and - and - ”
“Dude, chill.” Taemin says, even though his insides are compressing, his head is spinning, what? “Just calm down, I’m not trying to make you look bad, the instructor said to help.” He tries to act normal, places a very soft hand on Haeseong’s arm, “I’m - ”
Haeseong snatches away and glares and it is all of Taemin’s fears condensed into one solid moment - he imagines this but with his father, his brother, Jonghyun, and can’t understand why it’s just the way it has to be. But he understands enough to know that the world raises people to be like this and he’s a freak for turning out gay. He took the worst thing possible way too far but what is he going to do about it?
“Fag.” Haeseong hisses out, like he can’t believe, can’t believe the fag touched him and exists right here in front of him, and then he storms away, right out of class.
Taemin shrugs at the instructor when he looks at Taemin, confused. No one storms out of lessons and no, Taemin sure doesn’t know what Haeseong, the talentless idiot who barely made it into the advanced class, is thinking.
It’s easiest if he pretends he’s certain that Haeseong won’t tell anyone. Pretends no one would believe it anyway.
-----
“Taemin!” Jonghyun’s voice finally cuts in and Taemin blinks.
It is lunch. He’s kind of sick of the days colliding and sliding into each other, it’s hard to keep track of everything when time won’t stand still and let him think. “Hm, yeah Jjong?”
Jonghyun is looking at him very seriously and very gravely and Taemin wipes at his face. “What? Am I drooling, why the long face?”
Jonghyun sighs and Taemin looks around to check for the fundamentals. No one’s staring, nothing’s out of the ordinary, no teacher is around snooping or asking some pointless question, so what? “What?”
Jonghyun bites at his lip and scratches absently at his hair. Taemin watches the ruffles of his fauxhawk deflate a little from the jostling. “I was just talking to you and you nod off? Taemin where’s your head lately, really?”
Taemin doesn’t know where, just not here, okay isn’t a valid answer, so he starts stretching, rolling his shoulders first, to avoid answering at all. Looks at the gray of the clouds out the window. It might rain soon.
“I just. I was asking, you know? What’s up with you? I haven’t been, like, an awesome best friend or anything lately, I’ll admit it, but you’ve been so fucking weird lately and. Just. It’s been for the past while. And at first, I didn’t really…like. Okay.” He’s shifting to sit cross-legged, sort of, in his chair with one leg bent and pressed to his chest and the other leg, left, crossed half-calf across the right foot. He’s getting comfortable, that’s casual Jonghyun body language.
And sometimes Taemin dissects it, it is really manly when Jonghyun does it, muscles of his arms visible as he folds them over the one knee and taps silent beats of made up songs on the dark material of his pants. Sometimes Taemin obsesses over manliness because he knows he’s little and feminine in the right light, from the right angle, and isn’t that the perfect type to be gay? Always the girl in the relationship in movies and late night television and for someone to stare at him and put two and two together would be too easy. So sometimes Taemin tries to be contradicting, unexpectedly masculine. But when he copies the pose in the mirror at home, he just looks like a little kid and it is aggravating.
“Taemin, listen.” Jonghyun hisses and Jonghyun doesn’t normally hiss, so Taemin tunes in. Jonghyun likes to be loud and obnoxious and lunch time is a perfect place for him to be just that.
“At first you were happy and so what if you were running around doing who the fuck knows what? I do that shit all the time,” his voice is so low that Taemin has to lean in to hear him clearly, “I figured you got yourself a girlfriend or another hobby or whatever. I’m not your mom, not gonna stop you.” Taemin blinks - he’s realizing it’s a nervous habit for him - and tries to look unaware of where this is more than likely going.
“But now you’re all.” Jonghyun bites his lip again, for longer this time as he tries to figure out the words best for the situation. “Absent and sad and your grades are going horrible and you’re a smart kid. Taesun’s looking pissed all the time and when I ask why he’s just all ‘my little brother’ and you’re never a problem. And then I hear some weird rumors from some of the more out there kids and. Just. I’m worried.”
His lip is turning from pink to white to vaguely blue. Taemin stares and stares and stares. “So. I’m your friend, talk to me when things are rough. What’s wrong.” Not a question. Never was a question to begin with, really.
Taemin thinks long and hard. He could tell Jonghyun, like, he could really tell Jonghyun, promise long stories and torrid details after school in a secret place no one else will ever overhear. But Jonghyun would stop him from going. Jonghyun might tell Taesun or his mom. Jonghyun loves him too much to let him do the stupid, teenager thing he wants to do. But Taemin loves too much and too hard to let anything stop him.
He could keep it a secret and lose Jonghyun a little bit more as a friend. But one day he’ll tell Jonghyun, or Jonghyun will find out and know, but by then Taemin will have done everything in his power about everything. By then, Taemin is convinced he will be tired and weary and drop dead over everything life has to offer. In Taemin’s mind, he’s willing to sacrifice that much. He’s got that much to give, after all.
“Nothing, I’m just tired.” Taemin lies and Jonghyun is not convinced but at least stops biting his lip.
-----
That day he goes home and decides he’s cutting it too close.
Jonghyun will find out or someone will find out something and then he’ll never get away. And he is not letting indecision and uncertainty undo him. So he packs his bag and plans for tomorrow or next week or sometime close. When the time is right, when the weather’s right, when the feeling’s right. He’ll unpack and re-pack again and again until that time comes in the near future.
“Whatcha doin’ squirt?” Taesun asks when he comes in to change out of his uniform. “Why’s your side of the room a mess?”
“Looking for something.” Taemin answers simply, digging through his underwear drawer for socks.
Taesun watches him, then very deliberately sits on his bed on his side of the room and Taemin can tell from the way he’s holding his body stiff and straight that he is fighting with himself whether to say something or not. A lot of the times, ever since this thing started, Taemin feels a lot like Taesun’s weird little brother, the freak of the family. Which can’t be entirely in his own head, judging by the way Taesun is looking at him.
“What?” Taesun finally settles on, “What are you looking for? And why?”
That makes Taemin stop his riffling. That sounds like a legitimate question. And when was the last time the two of them actually had a real, heartfelt conversation? “Wow,” Taemin says, because he has a one track mind all the time it seems, give him a controversy in his life and he’ll focus on it until the end of time, “Cutting the bullshit, I see.” Maybe he just really doesn’t want to have a heartfelt conversation, it would make him feel too much to handle a secret this big. He’d spill over, messy and wet with sobbing and he won’t have that if he doesn’t have to.
“Taemin.” It is a sigh, not a reprimand, like Taesun can’t take his strange younger brother.
And that’s still too much for Taemin, but in a whole different way. “Oh fuck you.” Maybe too harsh, but really, fuck him.
Taesun stares at him, past him, so still it hurts and Taemin thinks about apologizing before the whack to the back of the head explains why.
“Never,” He father growls, “Ever use that sort of language in this house. And never talk to your older brother like that. Apologize.”
Taemin mumbles out the “sorry,” before his father casts a troubled and questioning look over their room and leaves.
There’s silence as Taesun probably tries to figure out if Taemin’s mad over the incident (he’s not). Taemin goes back to his underwear drawer in earnest and Taesun stands noisily. “Clean up when you’re done,” he warns and he’s gone.
And Taemin’s gone too.
-----
Taemin is walking again, determined and this time is it. This is the real deal, he’s got his backpack shouldered, his mind made up. He will make it or he will throw himself in front of a car. He will get what he wants or he will fade and die, commit suicide, will do something so drastic that no one will doubt - no one will doubt him if - !
He calms down from that dangerous self-imploding state half an hour later, a good thing because he can’t think straight enough, well enough, to do what he needs to do. Right now he needs to weigh the pros and cons of hitchhiking. Figure out how his next meal will be obtained. Make sure this is worth it.
Later, Taemin stares out the window in the backseat of some kind commuter’s car, resolute the whole way.
-----
He feels so stupid, how could he not have thought of this part?
“Sorry kid,” the bouncer tells him, “No ID? I’m not letting a thirteen year old in.”
“I’m in high school,” he stresses, because they’ve already gone down the road of discovering he’s obviously not twenty one and also not eighteen, but close enough - close enough to not be let in but want to be. “I’m seventeen,” leaves off the ‘barely’, “I’m looking for someone, named Key, do you - ”
“Kid,” the bouncer says, not at all interested in Taemin or his story or all the work that has been invested in this up to this point, “Leave. Come back in a year. Meet your friend somewhere else.”
Taemin briefly entertains the idea of dropping to his knees and offering a blow job, a quick and dirty lay in the back, something, anything, to get in. But the bouncer has been doing his job longer than Taemin has been doing guys (not a hard feat, a year and some months grant that to anyone), and he’s ahead of Taemin. It is with practiced ease, so many times said that it is habit, that he reveals his trump card against silly teenagers’ advances. “I’m a man’s man, gotta look like me to be with me, screw around somewhere else kid.”
Taemin takes in the bouncer one last time, all brawn and height and a shiny shaved down head and he is so masculine that Taemin has a hard time imagining him with another man. His father must have been surprised. He stares at the flesh color of his scalp and is thinking furiously. He does not have enough money to bribe anyone to do anything. His last resort was his body, in the back of his mind he knew he was ready for that step, and this man won’t even look at him properly unless he is over six feet and has the muscles of a body builder.
But it can’t end here, he won’t let it.
“Scram, kid.”
Taemin swallows and re-shoulders his bag, trudges off in the opposite direction. Maybe he can wait across the street or nearby in some café - there must be one here - or maybe even in an alleyway or… Just.
He can wait and see if Key shows up. If he can get to Key before he goes in the club that will work. Or if he sees Key leave…even if Key is drunk or high or going home with some guy, whatever it is Key goes to these clubs looking for, if Taemin sees Key he will pounce. This has gone on far enough, Taemin likes to tell himself, and he has a pride that is starting to suffer.
He finds a coffee shop a block down and figures it’s there or the porn shop directly across the street from the Violet Hour and there’s only so long you can sit in a porn shop without someone getting suspicious. He’ll get a window seat, he plans deftly. He’ll order a drink and sip on it while he peers in both directions up and down the street, then an hour later he’ll order a pastry, a sandwich an hour after that, then another drink. He’ll fiddle with his phone to make it look like he’s waiting for someone and then distracted. He’ll buy a book if they sell any and pretend to read it. He will fuck an employee if he has to, this is too too close to taste failure now. He can almost actually see Key strolling down the street in all black, his favorite club attire. Or maybe he’s playing it ‘slutty’, he called it, and wearing shiny tight leather pants and a ridiculously bright shirt.
In sudden hindsight Taemin realizes how much more careful he should have been, should have brought the condoms when Key forgot to, maybe should have gotten tested after it was over. But he’s fine, luckily, didn’t get anything itchy or deadly from a guy who frequents clubs and sometimes is a self proclaimed slut.
Key had always offered to bring Taemin along with him to a club and he’d just never had any interest. Now Taemin is thinking he should have gone. Seen what it was about and why the hell Key likes clubs enough to swipe their matchboxes and leave them around his car for in case he or anyone else in his car wants to smoke. In case he ever picks up the habit from the friends Taemin didn’t know.
All Taemin knows is that Key does not like the adverse effects of smoking and so never really got into it. All Taemin knows is that Key goes to clubs like it is a religious thing for him. All Taemin knows is that Key has to come back here at some point, has to come back or else Taemin’s all out of ideas.
-----
Eventually, the coffee shop closes and Taemin hasn’t spotted Key. Calls it a night and starts walking for the hotel he looked up, closest one to the club he could find. It wasn’t online, only in a phone book, so Taemin isn’t surprised by the seediness of the place when he gets there, forty minutes later.
The desk attendant is a thirty something year old woman, graying hair, wary eyes. When she realizes how young he is she hands him the room key with less reluctance and more curiosity, raises an eyebrow and says, “Rather late, ah? Enjoy your stay.” Taemin nods and shuffles off, backpack in tow.
He gets to his room and turns on the light, looks around at the bed and little table with a phone. He checks out the bathroom, a square cubicle room with a toilet with cracked porcelain and a sliver of a bathtub with a showerhead. Taemin thinks of taking a shower, washing his face, brushing his teeth, all the responsible things. He shuts off the lights instead, opens the blinds - the city offers twinkling lights from people pulling all-nighters at work, from all-night businesses, people who are just up and awake, cars passing by, lights on buildings, billboards…the number of sources are endless, endless and pointless to think about. But yeah, he thinks as he sets his bag down and sits on the edge of the bed. Yeah, this isn’t half bad.
The skin on his foot looks grey and wane in the mishmash of light as it dangles just above the carpet. Taemin stares and can’t stand the fragility of the color, of the bones poking out to make the shape of his foot. He is strong, he thinks, and he folds into himself, pulls both legs all the way up to his chest and buries his nose between the ridges of his kneecaps, not weak at all. He got himself here, didn’t he?
Taemin will not think of Key, he will think of everything but the blinding failure of tonight. He will think of money and numbers - how many nights can he afford staying here and eating out - and alternative plans. These include: going home, staying here, staying and still never meeting Key again. And then there is staying here until he makes sure that doesn’t happen. There is staying and waiting out for a shift in the wind, a change in anything, scoping out the entrances and figuring out which ones he can sneak into. There’s waiting for someone who will let a just-barely-seventeen-but-looks-much-younger boy into a gay club if he pays his way in cock sucking.
Taemin is not weak.
[Part Two]
Pairing/Focus: Taemin focus, former Key/Taemin
Rating: R
Word Count: 12,539
A/N: I am ultimately very happy with this fic and how it turned out and ended. Also, throughout the course of writing this I read both Invisible Man and The Great Gatsby in school, so the color association and narrative styles were inspired from the discussions we had.
He clearly remembers seeing a teal blue matchbook at the bottom of the car, reading The Violet Hour. Taemin looks that up at home on the computer and finds out it had been the name of some Broadway play, remembers, oh he likes the arts, he told me that. But the matchbook had little black squiggles of address underneath the bold letters, Taemin remembers distantly, squiggles he didn’t read, didn’t see so doesn’t know. But that tells him that it is a place. A place where Key might be and so he’s finding it.
Taemin will teach Key to leave him on the side of the road with nothing but shattered pride. Doesn’t care if Key is drawing his little invisible lines, barriers to keep Taemin out. Taemin will find him, Taemin will wiggle his way in under Key’s defenses and once he’s there he’ll stay, stuck under Key’s skin, wedged and permanent and safe forever.
Just watch.
-----
He remembers a lot of things through color association. Amber for Key’s hair when he dyed it, done at that one fancy salon in the city; deep green for the paint job of his car; gray for the warehouse they met at. He’d head for that warehouse, except he doesn’t think anything is waiting for him there but sentimentality. It wouldn’t be helpful, not at all, and Taemin has a better lead to spend his time on.
“Ever heard of the Violet Hour? Know what it is?” He asks Jonghyun casually during break, pretending there aren’t ulterior motives, that that is not a loaded question.
Jonghyun is busy, texting his latest girlfriend, a pen between his teeth and his school-issued tie loosened. He raises an eyebrow in a way that makes Taemin feel young and stupid in his own uniform.
“Yeah,” Jonghyun answers eventually, “it’s a club. A real deal club, y’know what I’m saying? I hear it’s gay, but you know.” He smirks, and that says more than anything, “On the down low since protesting families with petitions would probably get a place like that closed in a heartbeat. Stay away from there. They don’t play high school kid games there.” Then he grins and ruffles Taemin’s hair. “And those gays, they’d eat you alive, you cutie.”
Ignoring everything in him saying stop, don’t, Taemin pushes just a little bit more. “Well…where is it?”
Jonghyun stops and looks long and hard at Taemin. Taemin stares back resolutely, stubborn. Jonghyun recognizes this stubbornness and he, moving in slow motion, tries to avoid it. Tucks his phone in his pocket and chews away on his pen, pulls it out to flick the dripping ink drawn out by the soft suction between the flesh of his tongue and inside of his cheek off the tip. He’s stalling. He’s analyzing Taemin’s motives, too.
Taemin grabs Jonghyun’s wrist and tugs. “Jonghyun, tell me. I’m…curious. I know someone who goes there.” Jonghyun has a soft spot for Taemin and his pleading stares. Everyone seems to.
The persistence pays off and Jonghyun relents, huffing. “Fine - shit, who - ah never mind. It’s way up north. Like, up in or near Cyan, that kind of north. You’d have to go on the highway, take a bunch of exits…forget it if you’re thinking of going. It’s miles away. You can’t walk that far and the buses only go so far before it gets expensive.”
Taemin laughs, if only to at Jonghyun’s assumption that he’d be willing to listen to such mild warnings, but by immediately bowing his head meekly with a soft, “Oh, okay. Just wondering, anyway,” he lets Jonghyun believe he is heeding those words while really calculating, precise and deliberate in his head.
-----
Taemin isn’t stupid, he’s not going to drop everything and go on a wild goose chase for Key. He’s found out where Key might be, but it is far away and Taemin is barely seventeen. Can’t drive, doesn’t have a car anyway, has schoolwork and college preparations sneaking up on him. If he doesn’t do this right his mom will kill him, his dad and older brother will find out and follow his trail and force him back home if he leaves careless tracks behind.
He tests it out, how far he can get on foot in an hour, who stops for the held out thumb of a teenager who looks like a little kid at seventy miles per hour, how to not get stopped and pulled into his homeroom teacher’s car ten minutes out.
“Really Taemin, what are you thinking? If you need to go to uptown to the metro area you should just wait until someone you know can drive you,” she lectures, “Hitchhiking is dangerous, especially into the city.”
She thinks suburbia, with its pastel and cream colored houses and neighborhoods filled with everyone knowing everyone, has softened his logic, made him dim-witted when it comes to what is safe in the real world. “Next time, don’t walk on the side of the road, you could get hit or kidnapped or worse.”
“Yes ma’am.” Taemin says dutifully as she drives them back the way he came, undoing his work step by step.
-----
Taemin doesn’t do homework. He knows he should, it’s not like he’s doing anything else holed up in his room after dinner. He isn’t like the other boys his age and he’s not watching porn or browsing the Internet, not joining Ivy and Hyori and Dambi fanclubs or commenting on a forum thread about how hot the latest female idol looks in an ice cream commercial. He is sitting at his desk tonight, dragging his pencil across the paper, doodling and thinking, drawing out the nonlinear swirl of his thoughts.
Key is not his real name - a swoop of thin gray.
But it is a well-used nickname - dot dot dot, darker.
He knows because Key told him - there is shading for pause in thought.
But what if Key lied?
Taemin drops his pencil and stares at the scrawl of nothing on his paper. He absently realizes it is a worksheet for trigonometry. That realization dwarfs and shrinks behind the growing presence of facts, hard and true, in Taemin’s mind. He is shuffling through every memory, every thought and daydream that has anything to do with Key. Was he lying? How does he look when he lies? There is only the smell of tangerine-grapefruit blend, pungent to the point of suffocating, from the gum Key is chewing that one Sunday, that one Sunday they go to a museum and it ends in the backseat of Key’s car, Key kissing and taking and Taemin squirming endlessly breathless at Key, Key’s fingers. Dancing, little patterns along Taemin’s flesh.
“So silly.” Key murmurs, citrus scent wafting across everything Taemin, the end and the beginning and it fills his nostrils, his senses, his mind, and a flash of orange bursts behind Taemin’s eyelids and he is left damp and awkward and panting.
That same flash of orange is bursting again behind his eyelids, déjà vu, bam. Taemin is blinking the color away to see in the now and present and he is on his back staring up at his bedroom ceiling. The chair has fallen backwards with him in it and his mom is at the door knocking softly as she opens it up and looks in.
He grins at her apologetically. “Sorry.”
-----
The Violet Hour is maddening to Taemin, a double imprint in the creases of his mind: the name, the teal color of the matchbook, the color in the name - of the name. It is driving Taemin insane, making him go in little circles over and over and over.
“Wanna go do noraebang?” A classmate asks and Taemin says yes.
But once there he sits in the lobby after excusing himself to go to the bathroom, all because he is really stupid. There is no other reason, no heart wrenching emotion or memory, no flashes of color and reminiscing that are keeping him from having fun. He simply just does not want to do noraebang tonight and if he had been focused on what he wants and not on how to act normal, he would have said no.
Because what he’s focusing on is not hinting at the act of absurd and epic stupidity - absurdity - of all the impulsive selfish crap he’s done this just takes the whole freaking cake - that he’s thinking about, planning on, going to do because he has to or he’ll just. Wither away and die or. Or burst from too many emotions. Or learn to deal with it and keep living, but that is a last resort.
“You okay?” A girl who might be in Taemin’s homeroom asks when she finds him sitting there hunched over thinking - Minji is her name, maybe? She has scabbed knees that peek from under the edge of her skirt and she blinks, skin pale like porcelain and hair flames of dyed red.
“Ah. Stomachache,” he responds nonchalantly, “I don’t know. Maybe I ate too much at lunch.” She smiles a little, the pity is there, and sits next to him and rubs his back. Minji’s breaking codes of personal space, they don’t even know each other that well.
“Sorry you don’t feel well.” She looks genuinely concerned and okay now Taemin is having those heart wrenches. It’s a contrast, he’s thinking of those times when Key looks at him completely differently, like he’s nothing more than -
“Do you want us to chip in for a cab to take you home? I wouldn’t want you walking if you don’t feel well.”
Taemin holds his head in his hands because he’s got a headache from stress and late night cram sessions. And Key is staring at him and Taemin feels like he’s disappointed him, proven that he’s not ready for this kind of stuff, and all Key cares about is how he is not a toy that Key can pick up and play with whenever he wants and, and Key is annoyed by that notion. “Ugh,” Key’s voice is in his ear, “Well shit man, now what do we do?”
“Ah.” Taemin stutters out to Minji. “Ah, no. No that’s. Fine.”
-----
Jonghyun is annoyed with Taemin, but Taemin needs this tutoring session. He’s trying his best, but his mind is just not taking in anything from school lately. He is so preoccupied and he shouldn’t be.
“Oh my god,” Jonghyun whines, “Do you not know your polyatomic compounds? What the hell can I do with you if you don’t?”
Jonghyun is a senior and so above the hardships of chemistry, he took the class forever ago after all. Worrying about classes is so last year, Key’s said once. And then, with a start, Taemin realizes that oh, Key is the same age as Jonghyun - maybe a little younger, but.
He squashes the sudden urge to ask Jonghyun about the secrets of being one year older, having that edge, that extra year of wisdom in life and - and love, a traitorous little desperate part of him whispers. But he squashes it by slouching in his seat and taking into account that Jonghyun is staring incredulously at him.
“I could have sworn that you looked like you were paying attention for a second there. Taemin? You have a test and you don’t know anything about this subject. Pathetically so, actually.”
Taemin blinks - you don’t know anything - I’ll make you feel good, promise - a strip of black across his vision.
“Taemin?”
Taemin blinks again and he’s slipped out of his chair, he’s on his knees on the floor, he’s half hard and he won’t let Jonghyun see that, tugs on the edge of his sweater to cover up and hide that detail.
Jonghyun sounds worried, understandably so because normal people don’t just, don’t act like Taemin is acting, he is a mess. “Taemin are you okay?”
Taemin won’t say he is seeing Key in Jonghyun (because they are the same age - !) and he won’t tell Jonghyun what he is seeing at all, because he won’t let anyone say what he knows they’ll say.
“I’m fine.” He mutters, blinking the deer-stuck-in-headlights look out of his eyes, “Just. It hit me. I don’t even - don’t even - ” he’s struggling with excuses and words as he gets back into his chair avoiding Jonghyun’s eyes, grasping for something that doesn’t hit anywhere near the house where his mind, his heart too it seems, always live. That subject is private, no prying eyes or curious bodies allowed.
“Stoichiometry?” he finally settles on, the word foreign and distant even in his mouth as he says it, “Chapter five I think? Never got it, can we go over it? It might help.”
Jonghyun reaches for the book and his old notes, uncertain. “Um sure. Slacker, you guys are in chapter eleven now.” He’s trying to laugh it off, breathe normalcy and good humor into the situation.
Taemin lets him. He won’t let anyone say what they’ll want to at first glance: the awkward half tent of denim in his lap says otherwise.
-----
Not love not love not love, Taemin drills into himself. If he shows up and says the word love one time, just once, Key will dismiss him, it’ll be the same sob story all over again and Taemin will die from shame. Key will laugh at him, call him a little boy - “My son,” it is sometimes when he is in a good, playful mood and they are having a good day, a good date.
Not love, Taemin tells himself, just desperation. Taemin wants because he wants, nothing deeper, it is that shallow. Is that wanton and coquettish of him? Too bad, then so be it. He wants, just on principle, and he is stubborn. And because Key is also stubborn and wants what he wants, they are butting heads. Taemin just wants a little bit, just a piece of what Key doesn’t want at all, and it’s a fight to the end.
I will take like you take from me, Taemin thinks he will say when they meet after all of this, instead of I love you. Because it is not love, Taemin is not so young, so foolish, so stupid and blind and ready to let fantasies and half-baked wishes take hold over him, to believe and say and trust that this is love.
-----
It is clearly an act of god or something. Taemin wakes up late on Wednesday and it is an act of god because he never would have thought to do this otherwise.
His mother has a dentist appointment today, cavity filling or something, some sort of oral cleaning that makes her leave early and will make her come home later in the afternoon after errand running. She has told them over and over again, don’t forget, I won’t be there to make breakfast and get you to school on time, Taesun make sure your little brother gets up.
So Taesun does what he is told, bears his big brother responsibilities in stride and pokes Taemin in the back right between the shoulder blades, says, “Get up.”
And Taemin goes through the motions, rolls out of bed and mumbles, “Leave without me, I might be late,” around his toothbrush. Taesun waits around, but five minutes later Taemin is still brushing his teeth as slow as he possibly can and Taesun listens to him (of course he does, a little prideful part of Taemin insists, it only makes sense) and leaves for the bus.
An act of god, Taemin is convinced, because on what other day would Taesun actually really listen to him, hear logic in what he says and give in, leave him to his own devices, leave for school and leave him to blink blearily at his reflection (tired, he thinks bitterly, and pale and just look at you trying to be grown up, it’s worn you out) before making the decision to rinse, spit, burrow back under the covers. He is not thinking about what he is going to say to his mom when she comes home and finds him, not about his brother confused and uncertain and lost for words when his homeroom teacher takes Taesun aside and asks where he is, not about his father strict and angry over skipping school and slacking off, not about Key like he’s some lovesick girl or a worried Jonghyun or anyone. He’s not thinking about anything really.
When he wakes up, he snaps into consciousness suddenly, a clean and neat transition from asleep to awake and aware. There is no fuzziness to his thoughts; his mind is racing as he stares at the bright green numbers of his clock. Eight o’clock. He is wasting time, he thinks immediately and it is like that extra hour of sleep has solved the world’s biggest mystery. Taemin swings his feet over the edge of his bed and leaps into action, grabs a pair of jeans and his sneakers and is out the door.
He just walks. Walks and walks and walks and walks and then he is on the side of the highway, walking his way to the city. There is no plan, there is nothing there in the space between his ears. Just determination in his heart, anxiousness and the need to move and act and do something that matters.
And maybe he would have just kept going if he hadn’t tripped and fallen and scrapped his hands. The physicality of the injury ties him into the experience, plugs him in so he isn’t moving on autopilot anymore. He trips and scrapes up the skin of his palms and suddenly he is here, on the side of a busy freeway blinking into the dusky light of late evening. Suddenly he is thinking logically and fact by fact, not rashly and stupidly.
Here he is, on the side of a busy highway, and it is getting dark, he seriously could get hit by a car. His mother and father and brother - his friends, everyone actually - do not know where he is and his phone is not in his pocket. He left it on his dresser, he remembers suddenly, because he was moving through a haze this morning, thought it was an epiphany and it really actually wasn’t.
“I am beyond stupid.” Taemin says out loud because maybe hearing his own voice say it will drive the point home and shake him out of this sleepwalk he keeps using to get through each day. “It is not the end of the world, just forget Key.” He’s forgotten you, Taemin thinks, He’s forgotten you with his maturity intact, his integrity and life in one piece, his car and club and dyed hair assuring that.
With a sigh, with all the common sense he has to spare, Taemin gets up and turns around, ready to head back home. Not today, he resigns, not today with no plans or preparations.
Soon, he promises himself, just not today.
-----
“Where have you been!” Mom screeches, worry lines creased at the edges of her eyes and across her forehead. “You weren’t at school, they called, I was worried sick - ”
Taesun is glowering from behind his bowl, slouched in his chair at the table. He has probably gotten in a lot of trouble for Taemin’s stunt.
Taemin doesn’t really tune in to the scene, hear his mother rambling off the play by play of what happened after they found out he was gone, feel affected by the situation, until his father stands from the table and hovers over Taemin, drawn up to full height in silent fury. Until this, it is like he’s been watching in on the scene from somewhere else, half paying attention and looking down from some secret safe place that no one knows he’s at. But his father glares stonily over the rims of his glasses, anger bleeding out from every bit of him and Taemin is lost for breath.
“I.” he squeaks, not feeling as self important, all knowing or unstoppable as he has in the little world in his head, in his little schemes. Take those away and he is nothing, he just feels little, like he’s been so caught up in something so unimportant and everyone else knows it but him. “I.”
“Well you what?” His father asks dryly, voice booming to Taemin even in its quiet deadliness. “Where have you been all day? Why did you not go to school.” That is not a question. That is an accusation, a threat.
Taemin looks at his father’s tie, dark blue and silky, instead of at his face twisting from dangerously placid to bloodthirsty. It is safer, Taemin can hide his gaze and fear in the endless solidarity of the color. “I don’t know.”
He doesn’t. Doesn’t know anything, like why he did what he did, does what he does. And how is he supposed to say that to his parents without sounding like a stupid teenager who is withholding information and trying to find an easy way out of punishment?
He is actually a little afraid his father with do something drastic, like pick him up and throw him across the room, the look on his face is that murderous. His mom cuts in, maybe sensing this too, “Ah, Taemin go to your room. We’ll, we’ll talk later, after we’ve had dinner. You can go hungry since you…” She trails off, looking so bewildered by Taemin’s actions (you and me both mom, he thinks), before shaking her head and waving him off. “Ah, just go.”
Taemin goes without a word, closes his door quietly behind him, sits down on his bed and picks up his phone. Sees all the missed calls and texts and voicemail and deletes them. Starts going through all of everything and deleting. Key’s texts, mainly, are what he is looking for, because what kind of idiot leaves that much evidence in such an obvious place?
Key is a secret, Key is something that his parents would be horrified to find out about, and even if Key has only left short terse messages, clean of anything incriminating, even if Taemin wants them for memories and bitter smiles and flashes of feelings, they must go.
One catches his eye. The sent date chronicles it as the first one, the first time after they bumped into each other -
Meet me at that old warehouse, the one by the exit off of Cerise? Yeah.
That had been the first invitation and Taemin, like a fool, not lovestruck yet can’t blame it on that, had gone. Went and got sucked in and a load of good it’s done him since.
He puts his phone back on the nightstand and lies down. He thinks about alternatives, rakes his mind and finds none that are satisfactory. So he’s going to the Violet Hour, one way or another.
-----
“Help with the dance,” the instructor says to him and Taemin does his best.
He demonstrates to Haeseong and it’s really easy for Taemin, fluid motions that just click in his head. Haeseong is stumbling, behind in count and he’s not feeling it. “Ah.” Taemin murmurs the twentieth time through, “Um, not quite.”
Haeseong is red in the face from exertion and embarrassment, glaring and Taemin is just helping, doing what he was told, no need to - “Shut up faggot.” He hisses and Taemin’s heart stops for a second.
“What?” He asks after a moment of silence. Faggot? That must be baseless, pointless, adolescent anger venting in rude words. Taemin is younger than him and obviously more talented, people in general do not take kindly to that. Do not, he warns himself, of all things, do not read into that. That’s how you accidentally tell people things they didn’t know, and that’s just retarded. “I - I’m sorry, but - ”
“I’ve heard things about you,” he keeps going, “People’ve seen you and - and - ”
“Dude, chill.” Taemin says, even though his insides are compressing, his head is spinning, what? “Just calm down, I’m not trying to make you look bad, the instructor said to help.” He tries to act normal, places a very soft hand on Haeseong’s arm, “I’m - ”
Haeseong snatches away and glares and it is all of Taemin’s fears condensed into one solid moment - he imagines this but with his father, his brother, Jonghyun, and can’t understand why it’s just the way it has to be. But he understands enough to know that the world raises people to be like this and he’s a freak for turning out gay. He took the worst thing possible way too far but what is he going to do about it?
“Fag.” Haeseong hisses out, like he can’t believe, can’t believe the fag touched him and exists right here in front of him, and then he storms away, right out of class.
Taemin shrugs at the instructor when he looks at Taemin, confused. No one storms out of lessons and no, Taemin sure doesn’t know what Haeseong, the talentless idiot who barely made it into the advanced class, is thinking.
It’s easiest if he pretends he’s certain that Haeseong won’t tell anyone. Pretends no one would believe it anyway.
-----
“Taemin!” Jonghyun’s voice finally cuts in and Taemin blinks.
It is lunch. He’s kind of sick of the days colliding and sliding into each other, it’s hard to keep track of everything when time won’t stand still and let him think. “Hm, yeah Jjong?”
Jonghyun is looking at him very seriously and very gravely and Taemin wipes at his face. “What? Am I drooling, why the long face?”
Jonghyun sighs and Taemin looks around to check for the fundamentals. No one’s staring, nothing’s out of the ordinary, no teacher is around snooping or asking some pointless question, so what? “What?”
Jonghyun bites at his lip and scratches absently at his hair. Taemin watches the ruffles of his fauxhawk deflate a little from the jostling. “I was just talking to you and you nod off? Taemin where’s your head lately, really?”
Taemin doesn’t know where, just not here, okay isn’t a valid answer, so he starts stretching, rolling his shoulders first, to avoid answering at all. Looks at the gray of the clouds out the window. It might rain soon.
“I just. I was asking, you know? What’s up with you? I haven’t been, like, an awesome best friend or anything lately, I’ll admit it, but you’ve been so fucking weird lately and. Just. It’s been for the past while. And at first, I didn’t really…like. Okay.” He’s shifting to sit cross-legged, sort of, in his chair with one leg bent and pressed to his chest and the other leg, left, crossed half-calf across the right foot. He’s getting comfortable, that’s casual Jonghyun body language.
And sometimes Taemin dissects it, it is really manly when Jonghyun does it, muscles of his arms visible as he folds them over the one knee and taps silent beats of made up songs on the dark material of his pants. Sometimes Taemin obsesses over manliness because he knows he’s little and feminine in the right light, from the right angle, and isn’t that the perfect type to be gay? Always the girl in the relationship in movies and late night television and for someone to stare at him and put two and two together would be too easy. So sometimes Taemin tries to be contradicting, unexpectedly masculine. But when he copies the pose in the mirror at home, he just looks like a little kid and it is aggravating.
“Taemin, listen.” Jonghyun hisses and Jonghyun doesn’t normally hiss, so Taemin tunes in. Jonghyun likes to be loud and obnoxious and lunch time is a perfect place for him to be just that.
“At first you were happy and so what if you were running around doing who the fuck knows what? I do that shit all the time,” his voice is so low that Taemin has to lean in to hear him clearly, “I figured you got yourself a girlfriend or another hobby or whatever. I’m not your mom, not gonna stop you.” Taemin blinks - he’s realizing it’s a nervous habit for him - and tries to look unaware of where this is more than likely going.
“But now you’re all.” Jonghyun bites his lip again, for longer this time as he tries to figure out the words best for the situation. “Absent and sad and your grades are going horrible and you’re a smart kid. Taesun’s looking pissed all the time and when I ask why he’s just all ‘my little brother’ and you’re never a problem. And then I hear some weird rumors from some of the more out there kids and. Just. I’m worried.”
His lip is turning from pink to white to vaguely blue. Taemin stares and stares and stares. “So. I’m your friend, talk to me when things are rough. What’s wrong.” Not a question. Never was a question to begin with, really.
Taemin thinks long and hard. He could tell Jonghyun, like, he could really tell Jonghyun, promise long stories and torrid details after school in a secret place no one else will ever overhear. But Jonghyun would stop him from going. Jonghyun might tell Taesun or his mom. Jonghyun loves him too much to let him do the stupid, teenager thing he wants to do. But Taemin loves too much and too hard to let anything stop him.
He could keep it a secret and lose Jonghyun a little bit more as a friend. But one day he’ll tell Jonghyun, or Jonghyun will find out and know, but by then Taemin will have done everything in his power about everything. By then, Taemin is convinced he will be tired and weary and drop dead over everything life has to offer. In Taemin’s mind, he’s willing to sacrifice that much. He’s got that much to give, after all.
“Nothing, I’m just tired.” Taemin lies and Jonghyun is not convinced but at least stops biting his lip.
-----
That day he goes home and decides he’s cutting it too close.
Jonghyun will find out or someone will find out something and then he’ll never get away. And he is not letting indecision and uncertainty undo him. So he packs his bag and plans for tomorrow or next week or sometime close. When the time is right, when the weather’s right, when the feeling’s right. He’ll unpack and re-pack again and again until that time comes in the near future.
“Whatcha doin’ squirt?” Taesun asks when he comes in to change out of his uniform. “Why’s your side of the room a mess?”
“Looking for something.” Taemin answers simply, digging through his underwear drawer for socks.
Taesun watches him, then very deliberately sits on his bed on his side of the room and Taemin can tell from the way he’s holding his body stiff and straight that he is fighting with himself whether to say something or not. A lot of the times, ever since this thing started, Taemin feels a lot like Taesun’s weird little brother, the freak of the family. Which can’t be entirely in his own head, judging by the way Taesun is looking at him.
“What?” Taesun finally settles on, “What are you looking for? And why?”
That makes Taemin stop his riffling. That sounds like a legitimate question. And when was the last time the two of them actually had a real, heartfelt conversation? “Wow,” Taemin says, because he has a one track mind all the time it seems, give him a controversy in his life and he’ll focus on it until the end of time, “Cutting the bullshit, I see.” Maybe he just really doesn’t want to have a heartfelt conversation, it would make him feel too much to handle a secret this big. He’d spill over, messy and wet with sobbing and he won’t have that if he doesn’t have to.
“Taemin.” It is a sigh, not a reprimand, like Taesun can’t take his strange younger brother.
And that’s still too much for Taemin, but in a whole different way. “Oh fuck you.” Maybe too harsh, but really, fuck him.
Taesun stares at him, past him, so still it hurts and Taemin thinks about apologizing before the whack to the back of the head explains why.
“Never,” He father growls, “Ever use that sort of language in this house. And never talk to your older brother like that. Apologize.”
Taemin mumbles out the “sorry,” before his father casts a troubled and questioning look over their room and leaves.
There’s silence as Taesun probably tries to figure out if Taemin’s mad over the incident (he’s not). Taemin goes back to his underwear drawer in earnest and Taesun stands noisily. “Clean up when you’re done,” he warns and he’s gone.
And Taemin’s gone too.
-----
Taemin is walking again, determined and this time is it. This is the real deal, he’s got his backpack shouldered, his mind made up. He will make it or he will throw himself in front of a car. He will get what he wants or he will fade and die, commit suicide, will do something so drastic that no one will doubt - no one will doubt him if - !
He calms down from that dangerous self-imploding state half an hour later, a good thing because he can’t think straight enough, well enough, to do what he needs to do. Right now he needs to weigh the pros and cons of hitchhiking. Figure out how his next meal will be obtained. Make sure this is worth it.
Later, Taemin stares out the window in the backseat of some kind commuter’s car, resolute the whole way.
-----
He feels so stupid, how could he not have thought of this part?
“Sorry kid,” the bouncer tells him, “No ID? I’m not letting a thirteen year old in.”
“I’m in high school,” he stresses, because they’ve already gone down the road of discovering he’s obviously not twenty one and also not eighteen, but close enough - close enough to not be let in but want to be. “I’m seventeen,” leaves off the ‘barely’, “I’m looking for someone, named Key, do you - ”
“Kid,” the bouncer says, not at all interested in Taemin or his story or all the work that has been invested in this up to this point, “Leave. Come back in a year. Meet your friend somewhere else.”
Taemin briefly entertains the idea of dropping to his knees and offering a blow job, a quick and dirty lay in the back, something, anything, to get in. But the bouncer has been doing his job longer than Taemin has been doing guys (not a hard feat, a year and some months grant that to anyone), and he’s ahead of Taemin. It is with practiced ease, so many times said that it is habit, that he reveals his trump card against silly teenagers’ advances. “I’m a man’s man, gotta look like me to be with me, screw around somewhere else kid.”
Taemin takes in the bouncer one last time, all brawn and height and a shiny shaved down head and he is so masculine that Taemin has a hard time imagining him with another man. His father must have been surprised. He stares at the flesh color of his scalp and is thinking furiously. He does not have enough money to bribe anyone to do anything. His last resort was his body, in the back of his mind he knew he was ready for that step, and this man won’t even look at him properly unless he is over six feet and has the muscles of a body builder.
But it can’t end here, he won’t let it.
“Scram, kid.”
Taemin swallows and re-shoulders his bag, trudges off in the opposite direction. Maybe he can wait across the street or nearby in some café - there must be one here - or maybe even in an alleyway or… Just.
He can wait and see if Key shows up. If he can get to Key before he goes in the club that will work. Or if he sees Key leave…even if Key is drunk or high or going home with some guy, whatever it is Key goes to these clubs looking for, if Taemin sees Key he will pounce. This has gone on far enough, Taemin likes to tell himself, and he has a pride that is starting to suffer.
He finds a coffee shop a block down and figures it’s there or the porn shop directly across the street from the Violet Hour and there’s only so long you can sit in a porn shop without someone getting suspicious. He’ll get a window seat, he plans deftly. He’ll order a drink and sip on it while he peers in both directions up and down the street, then an hour later he’ll order a pastry, a sandwich an hour after that, then another drink. He’ll fiddle with his phone to make it look like he’s waiting for someone and then distracted. He’ll buy a book if they sell any and pretend to read it. He will fuck an employee if he has to, this is too too close to taste failure now. He can almost actually see Key strolling down the street in all black, his favorite club attire. Or maybe he’s playing it ‘slutty’, he called it, and wearing shiny tight leather pants and a ridiculously bright shirt.
In sudden hindsight Taemin realizes how much more careful he should have been, should have brought the condoms when Key forgot to, maybe should have gotten tested after it was over. But he’s fine, luckily, didn’t get anything itchy or deadly from a guy who frequents clubs and sometimes is a self proclaimed slut.
Key had always offered to bring Taemin along with him to a club and he’d just never had any interest. Now Taemin is thinking he should have gone. Seen what it was about and why the hell Key likes clubs enough to swipe their matchboxes and leave them around his car for in case he or anyone else in his car wants to smoke. In case he ever picks up the habit from the friends Taemin didn’t know.
All Taemin knows is that Key does not like the adverse effects of smoking and so never really got into it. All Taemin knows is that Key goes to clubs like it is a religious thing for him. All Taemin knows is that Key has to come back here at some point, has to come back or else Taemin’s all out of ideas.
-----
Eventually, the coffee shop closes and Taemin hasn’t spotted Key. Calls it a night and starts walking for the hotel he looked up, closest one to the club he could find. It wasn’t online, only in a phone book, so Taemin isn’t surprised by the seediness of the place when he gets there, forty minutes later.
The desk attendant is a thirty something year old woman, graying hair, wary eyes. When she realizes how young he is she hands him the room key with less reluctance and more curiosity, raises an eyebrow and says, “Rather late, ah? Enjoy your stay.” Taemin nods and shuffles off, backpack in tow.
He gets to his room and turns on the light, looks around at the bed and little table with a phone. He checks out the bathroom, a square cubicle room with a toilet with cracked porcelain and a sliver of a bathtub with a showerhead. Taemin thinks of taking a shower, washing his face, brushing his teeth, all the responsible things. He shuts off the lights instead, opens the blinds - the city offers twinkling lights from people pulling all-nighters at work, from all-night businesses, people who are just up and awake, cars passing by, lights on buildings, billboards…the number of sources are endless, endless and pointless to think about. But yeah, he thinks as he sets his bag down and sits on the edge of the bed. Yeah, this isn’t half bad.
The skin on his foot looks grey and wane in the mishmash of light as it dangles just above the carpet. Taemin stares and can’t stand the fragility of the color, of the bones poking out to make the shape of his foot. He is strong, he thinks, and he folds into himself, pulls both legs all the way up to his chest and buries his nose between the ridges of his kneecaps, not weak at all. He got himself here, didn’t he?
Taemin will not think of Key, he will think of everything but the blinding failure of tonight. He will think of money and numbers - how many nights can he afford staying here and eating out - and alternative plans. These include: going home, staying here, staying and still never meeting Key again. And then there is staying here until he makes sure that doesn’t happen. There is staying and waiting out for a shift in the wind, a change in anything, scoping out the entrances and figuring out which ones he can sneak into. There’s waiting for someone who will let a just-barely-seventeen-but-looks-much-younger boy into a gay club if he pays his way in cock sucking.
Taemin is not weak.
[Part Two]