SSS 2014: For lucentric
For: lucentic
From: Your Secret Santa
Title: the burden of memory
Pairing: Minho/Kibum
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: None.
Authors’ Notes: Thank you for the beautiful prompts! I sort of mix and matched the feel of a few of them. I hope this is at least somewhat close to what you were looking for! Summary text from Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead.
Like most relationships, it is never all bad, no matter how it seems at its worst. In the immediate, messy aftermath, though, Minho can only feel how heavy the burden of memory can be.
It is the night they decide with more or less mutual consent that it would be for the better for them to stop it all, being together, this, as Kibum called it, gesturing between the two of them. Surprisingly, it is not a decision made during a low point, of which there had been many. In fact, they had been doing quite well-but, Minho supposes, the fuse on the time bomb of their relationship had been running short.
Perhaps it would’ve been less devastating had the timing been more fortuitous. It is an agreement made with stifling finality during a ten-minute dance practice break, both of them standing under SM’s searing hallway lights next to the snack machine where anyone could walk out and witness it. Minho excuses himself to go home first upon returning to practice, citing an upset stomach from dinner. Jonghyun, most familiar with the iron constitution of Minho’s stomach, sends him off with a strange look. Neither Taemin, walking Jinki through a particularly difficult sequence, nor Jinki, patiently waiting for Taemin to turn his attention elsewhere so he can go back to muddling the steps, notices. Kibum, always poor at taking responsibility, busies himself with rolling the cuff of his sweatpants up, resolutely not looking. Minho plays hooky so rarely that Gyungshik-hyung lets him go after a quick scrutiny.
Minho spends the car ride home in silence, remembering to feign illness only when Gyungshik-hyung asks how he’s doing. It’s pretty lackluster, but Gyungshik-hyung must be in a generous mood tonight. A good thing, too. As Kibum never fails to remind him, Minho’s never been a particularly good actor, and even less so under duress. They make it home just after midnight. Before Minho is sent off, he is asked to make three distinct promises to: (1) go to sleep immediately (2) call the doctor if he feels worse and (3) just get better before they have to go to Japan next week, please. Seven days is a more than adequate mourning period. Minho promises. The hard brace of a timeline gives him some comfort.
The first thing Minho sees when he steps through the door is the living room couch. Usually a fairly innocuous couch but in the light of recent trauma, just the sight of it triggers in Minho the memory of a kiss; his and Kibum’s first. He had been playing FIFA. Kibum had been checking his phone and complaining about Minho’s FIFA. Words were exchanged, a challenge was possibly issued, the phrase oh yeah? Prove it was likely uttered. In any case, the details are unimportant now.
Standing in their apartment doorway, one shoe toed off, Minho looks at their living room couch and can’t stop remembering the feeling of split second indecision when Kibum had laughed against his mouth before turning serious, or the way Kibum scratched a hand through the hair at the nape of Minho’s neck, as if proximity and years of friendship translated somehow into a familiarity with all the little things Minho likes. His throat tightens for one inconvenient moment, feeling with it the tug of nostalgia that accompanies knowing something important is finally over.
But the human survival instinct is strong. The moment passes. Minho kicks off the other shoe, taking a grim satisfaction in the way it knocks into the neat line of Kibum’s shoes.
He showers, quick and hot. He brushes his teeth. He goes to bed. He tries to forget.
-
Minho wakes up three times in the night, each time fingers reaching to his right for an arm that is no longer there. The second time he wakes up, he almost hits his bed in frustration. This is what he has dreamed:
No matter the occasion for which he’s dressing, Kibum always finds the time in the morning to run through at least two outfit changes, never satisfied until he’s made himself over at least once before the day’s begun. After years of doing the same, he’s got it down to a science-the entire process never takes more than nine minutes, never less than five.
Minho’s favorite part always came right after outfit change number two, right before outfit change number too many: Kibum tumbling out of his room harried, half-dressed, and holding a different shirt in either hand, one barely distinguishable from the other.
Which do you like better?
Minho squints at him from the kitchen counter, where he is just barely awake and nursing a cup of hot water. Usually, Kibum is shirtless. At most, he might have a wifebeater on. The flush of his face is just reaching the pale of his shoulders, spreading to his skinny chest. There is a vulnerability shuttering in and out of his face as he asks, twisting the vain pout of his mouth. In the early morning haze, it makes Minho feel like he is looking at every Kibum he has ever known, all boiled down to his lowest common denominator.
That one, Minho answers, purposefully vaguely. Sometimes, just to be difficult, he says, the one you like better.
The annoyance in Kibum’s face is quickly chased away by affection. You’re no help, he declares, pulling on a shirt as he turns away. It’s true. Minho is no help; he has no eye for this kind of thing, a fact Kibum knows well. Still, he always asks.
Minho pulls his comforter up over his face, allowing himself the moment. A muscle twitches in his hand, a physical reminder of absence. Kibum, fresh-faced and scowling. Kibum at his least made up, and willing to share it with Minho.
He counts backwards from fifty in his head. Before he drifts off to sleep, Minho decides: some things can be saved. This, he wants to remember.
-
In the morning, Minho assures Gyungshik-hyung over breakfast that he’s better, that he’ll be alright, especially in time for Japan. The bite of his double-edged assurance leads Kibum to wince imperceptibly around the lip of his cup, a motion so minute Minho wouldn’t have noticed had he not been looking.
Kibum’s discomfort is new. Minho’s seen him uncomfortable before, but rarely at his expense. He almost commits it to memory before he remembers that is the opposite of what he is trying to do. For a moment, he is sad again. But then it is time for filming at MBC and Gyungshik-hyung herds him out with a sudden quickness, the sharpness of his excellent manager reflexes not quite understanding the full situation but choosing, as always, flight over fight.
At the breakfast table, Kibum eats on, head bent over his bowl. His only schedule of the day is a vocal lesson at ten, but he’d come out of his room at eight, fully dressed. Minho had felt it like a finger against a new bruise, wondered briefly if Kibum could’ve possibly known the nature of his dreams last night, if he was being deliberately cruel and taunting him-stop.
Minho is bitter, but he doesn’t want to ruin the good things for himself, too. He has six days, and he is determined to do the best he can with them.
-
Not that Minho’s had much practice, but-as difficult as it is dealing with a break up from afar, a break up with one’s bandmate, with one’s roommate, requires a herculean effort of self-control. Minho ends up finding that he deals with disappointment not nearly as well as he would’ve hoped.
Kibum intercepts him in the bathroom on his way out one morning. Unwilling to touch him, Minho steps back when Kibum steps towards him, watching with a pounding heart as Kibum locks the door firmly behind himself and crosses his arms.
“I hate this,” he starts without preamble, the words spitting out of his tense throat. “This is why this was a bad idea to start with.” Kibum got dressed with little fuss again this morning, Minho notes. “We just shouldn’t have even-”
Kibum ducks his head, voice faltering. He is talking about the relationship, the storm of the half-year they had together (was it really only six months? In Minho’s memory, it had become giant, completely unmanageable). Or he is talking about the awkward three days they’ve had, both of them trying their best to be normal but detached, each dealing with the aftermath in their own ways. To this end, Kibum has been spending a lot of time out, not coming home until it’s late and no one is awake, risking lectures from management. Minho, on the other hand, has been spending a lot of time in public, shared spaces like the living room and the kitchen, his constant presence daring a confrontation. It’s not nice-not to Kibum, and not to himself either.
Minho reaches for the lock behind Kibum, turning it back. Kibum steps out of the way, flattening himself against the wall to avoid physical contact with Minho. Conscious or unconscious, the ease of the movement makes Minho clench his left hand around the doorknob. “It happened,” he says lightly. He doesn’t trust himself to look back. “Whether you like it or not. I’m dealing with it. You should, too.”
This isn’t exactly true, and they both know it.
“Fine,” Kibum says, already halfway to angry. His proximity, the mint of his breath, and the quicksilver turn of his mood are more qualities Minho will have to unlearn. He hadn’t realized how much of Kibum he’d committed to memory, so worried he had once been of forgetting.
-
The night before they fly to Tokyo for Japanese promotions, Minho is in his room packing, having, of course, left it to the last minute. In the living room, he can hear Jonghyun and Taemin watching the latest episode of One Piece, claiming as always that it’s language practice. The obnoxious pitch of their giggling combined with generic anime sound effects provides a familiar backtrack to Minho’s haphazard folding. It is so familiar it blends into the collective memory of every last night before a Japanese promotion.
Minho doesn’t even think about it until he spots the shirt tucked between his bed and the wall. He reaches across his bed to tug at it, not recognizing the pattern of the fabric. It’s not until he holds it out in front of him that he realizes it’s one from the rotation of Kibum’s favorite sleep shirts, all of them loose-necked and well-worn.
The reaction it inspires in him is instant and unforgiving-an unbidden image of Kibum in the morning, cheek creased with sleep. Minho is not a morning person, never has been, and rarely woke up earlier than Kibum, but on the days he did, there was something about the twitch of Kibum’s nose as he slept that always seemed to soften the hard edge of the early morning sunlight. No wonder mornings have seemed more difficult lately.
He pushes the heels of his hands into his eyes. By chance, the fabric of Kibum’s shirt meets his nose. This is it. It is the last night of his self-imposed mourning. He was able to look Kibum in the face earlier today, even had a whole conversation with him at dinner-stilted, yes, but still something. Kibum had looked surprised, then defensive, before finally relaxing into the default snark he uses with people he doesn’t know very well. It had annoyed Minho at first, before he remembered: he is young, and they are in a less-than-ideal situation. In a different world, he might even call it unfair. As it is, he has little room to complain.
Kibum’s shirt is soft in his traitorous left hand and against his equally traitorous left cheek, both of which take to the feel of it against his skin with an eagerness Minho has been trying to forget. Against his better judgment, he breathes in.
This, he finds, he still remembers.
From: Your Secret Santa
Title: the burden of memory
Pairing: Minho/Kibum
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: None.
Authors’ Notes: Thank you for the beautiful prompts! I sort of mix and matched the feel of a few of them. I hope this is at least somewhat close to what you were looking for! Summary text from Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead.
Like most relationships, it is never all bad, no matter how it seems at its worst. In the immediate, messy aftermath, though, Minho can only feel how heavy the burden of memory can be.
It is the night they decide with more or less mutual consent that it would be for the better for them to stop it all, being together, this, as Kibum called it, gesturing between the two of them. Surprisingly, it is not a decision made during a low point, of which there had been many. In fact, they had been doing quite well-but, Minho supposes, the fuse on the time bomb of their relationship had been running short.
Perhaps it would’ve been less devastating had the timing been more fortuitous. It is an agreement made with stifling finality during a ten-minute dance practice break, both of them standing under SM’s searing hallway lights next to the snack machine where anyone could walk out and witness it. Minho excuses himself to go home first upon returning to practice, citing an upset stomach from dinner. Jonghyun, most familiar with the iron constitution of Minho’s stomach, sends him off with a strange look. Neither Taemin, walking Jinki through a particularly difficult sequence, nor Jinki, patiently waiting for Taemin to turn his attention elsewhere so he can go back to muddling the steps, notices. Kibum, always poor at taking responsibility, busies himself with rolling the cuff of his sweatpants up, resolutely not looking. Minho plays hooky so rarely that Gyungshik-hyung lets him go after a quick scrutiny.
Minho spends the car ride home in silence, remembering to feign illness only when Gyungshik-hyung asks how he’s doing. It’s pretty lackluster, but Gyungshik-hyung must be in a generous mood tonight. A good thing, too. As Kibum never fails to remind him, Minho’s never been a particularly good actor, and even less so under duress. They make it home just after midnight. Before Minho is sent off, he is asked to make three distinct promises to: (1) go to sleep immediately (2) call the doctor if he feels worse and (3) just get better before they have to go to Japan next week, please. Seven days is a more than adequate mourning period. Minho promises. The hard brace of a timeline gives him some comfort.
The first thing Minho sees when he steps through the door is the living room couch. Usually a fairly innocuous couch but in the light of recent trauma, just the sight of it triggers in Minho the memory of a kiss; his and Kibum’s first. He had been playing FIFA. Kibum had been checking his phone and complaining about Minho’s FIFA. Words were exchanged, a challenge was possibly issued, the phrase oh yeah? Prove it was likely uttered. In any case, the details are unimportant now.
Standing in their apartment doorway, one shoe toed off, Minho looks at their living room couch and can’t stop remembering the feeling of split second indecision when Kibum had laughed against his mouth before turning serious, or the way Kibum scratched a hand through the hair at the nape of Minho’s neck, as if proximity and years of friendship translated somehow into a familiarity with all the little things Minho likes. His throat tightens for one inconvenient moment, feeling with it the tug of nostalgia that accompanies knowing something important is finally over.
But the human survival instinct is strong. The moment passes. Minho kicks off the other shoe, taking a grim satisfaction in the way it knocks into the neat line of Kibum’s shoes.
He showers, quick and hot. He brushes his teeth. He goes to bed. He tries to forget.
-
Minho wakes up three times in the night, each time fingers reaching to his right for an arm that is no longer there. The second time he wakes up, he almost hits his bed in frustration. This is what he has dreamed:
No matter the occasion for which he’s dressing, Kibum always finds the time in the morning to run through at least two outfit changes, never satisfied until he’s made himself over at least once before the day’s begun. After years of doing the same, he’s got it down to a science-the entire process never takes more than nine minutes, never less than five.
Minho’s favorite part always came right after outfit change number two, right before outfit change number too many: Kibum tumbling out of his room harried, half-dressed, and holding a different shirt in either hand, one barely distinguishable from the other.
Which do you like better?
Minho squints at him from the kitchen counter, where he is just barely awake and nursing a cup of hot water. Usually, Kibum is shirtless. At most, he might have a wifebeater on. The flush of his face is just reaching the pale of his shoulders, spreading to his skinny chest. There is a vulnerability shuttering in and out of his face as he asks, twisting the vain pout of his mouth. In the early morning haze, it makes Minho feel like he is looking at every Kibum he has ever known, all boiled down to his lowest common denominator.
That one, Minho answers, purposefully vaguely. Sometimes, just to be difficult, he says, the one you like better.
The annoyance in Kibum’s face is quickly chased away by affection. You’re no help, he declares, pulling on a shirt as he turns away. It’s true. Minho is no help; he has no eye for this kind of thing, a fact Kibum knows well. Still, he always asks.
Minho pulls his comforter up over his face, allowing himself the moment. A muscle twitches in his hand, a physical reminder of absence. Kibum, fresh-faced and scowling. Kibum at his least made up, and willing to share it with Minho.
He counts backwards from fifty in his head. Before he drifts off to sleep, Minho decides: some things can be saved. This, he wants to remember.
-
In the morning, Minho assures Gyungshik-hyung over breakfast that he’s better, that he’ll be alright, especially in time for Japan. The bite of his double-edged assurance leads Kibum to wince imperceptibly around the lip of his cup, a motion so minute Minho wouldn’t have noticed had he not been looking.
Kibum’s discomfort is new. Minho’s seen him uncomfortable before, but rarely at his expense. He almost commits it to memory before he remembers that is the opposite of what he is trying to do. For a moment, he is sad again. But then it is time for filming at MBC and Gyungshik-hyung herds him out with a sudden quickness, the sharpness of his excellent manager reflexes not quite understanding the full situation but choosing, as always, flight over fight.
At the breakfast table, Kibum eats on, head bent over his bowl. His only schedule of the day is a vocal lesson at ten, but he’d come out of his room at eight, fully dressed. Minho had felt it like a finger against a new bruise, wondered briefly if Kibum could’ve possibly known the nature of his dreams last night, if he was being deliberately cruel and taunting him-stop.
Minho is bitter, but he doesn’t want to ruin the good things for himself, too. He has six days, and he is determined to do the best he can with them.
-
Not that Minho’s had much practice, but-as difficult as it is dealing with a break up from afar, a break up with one’s bandmate, with one’s roommate, requires a herculean effort of self-control. Minho ends up finding that he deals with disappointment not nearly as well as he would’ve hoped.
Kibum intercepts him in the bathroom on his way out one morning. Unwilling to touch him, Minho steps back when Kibum steps towards him, watching with a pounding heart as Kibum locks the door firmly behind himself and crosses his arms.
“I hate this,” he starts without preamble, the words spitting out of his tense throat. “This is why this was a bad idea to start with.” Kibum got dressed with little fuss again this morning, Minho notes. “We just shouldn’t have even-”
Kibum ducks his head, voice faltering. He is talking about the relationship, the storm of the half-year they had together (was it really only six months? In Minho’s memory, it had become giant, completely unmanageable). Or he is talking about the awkward three days they’ve had, both of them trying their best to be normal but detached, each dealing with the aftermath in their own ways. To this end, Kibum has been spending a lot of time out, not coming home until it’s late and no one is awake, risking lectures from management. Minho, on the other hand, has been spending a lot of time in public, shared spaces like the living room and the kitchen, his constant presence daring a confrontation. It’s not nice-not to Kibum, and not to himself either.
Minho reaches for the lock behind Kibum, turning it back. Kibum steps out of the way, flattening himself against the wall to avoid physical contact with Minho. Conscious or unconscious, the ease of the movement makes Minho clench his left hand around the doorknob. “It happened,” he says lightly. He doesn’t trust himself to look back. “Whether you like it or not. I’m dealing with it. You should, too.”
This isn’t exactly true, and they both know it.
“Fine,” Kibum says, already halfway to angry. His proximity, the mint of his breath, and the quicksilver turn of his mood are more qualities Minho will have to unlearn. He hadn’t realized how much of Kibum he’d committed to memory, so worried he had once been of forgetting.
-
The night before they fly to Tokyo for Japanese promotions, Minho is in his room packing, having, of course, left it to the last minute. In the living room, he can hear Jonghyun and Taemin watching the latest episode of One Piece, claiming as always that it’s language practice. The obnoxious pitch of their giggling combined with generic anime sound effects provides a familiar backtrack to Minho’s haphazard folding. It is so familiar it blends into the collective memory of every last night before a Japanese promotion.
Minho doesn’t even think about it until he spots the shirt tucked between his bed and the wall. He reaches across his bed to tug at it, not recognizing the pattern of the fabric. It’s not until he holds it out in front of him that he realizes it’s one from the rotation of Kibum’s favorite sleep shirts, all of them loose-necked and well-worn.
The reaction it inspires in him is instant and unforgiving-an unbidden image of Kibum in the morning, cheek creased with sleep. Minho is not a morning person, never has been, and rarely woke up earlier than Kibum, but on the days he did, there was something about the twitch of Kibum’s nose as he slept that always seemed to soften the hard edge of the early morning sunlight. No wonder mornings have seemed more difficult lately.
He pushes the heels of his hands into his eyes. By chance, the fabric of Kibum’s shirt meets his nose. This is it. It is the last night of his self-imposed mourning. He was able to look Kibum in the face earlier today, even had a whole conversation with him at dinner-stilted, yes, but still something. Kibum had looked surprised, then defensive, before finally relaxing into the default snark he uses with people he doesn’t know very well. It had annoyed Minho at first, before he remembered: he is young, and they are in a less-than-ideal situation. In a different world, he might even call it unfair. As it is, he has little room to complain.
Kibum’s shirt is soft in his traitorous left hand and against his equally traitorous left cheek, both of which take to the feel of it against his skin with an eagerness Minho has been trying to forget. Against his better judgment, he breathes in.
This, he finds, he still remembers.