For choigabs! They Stumble That Run Fast (f(x), SHINee, Krystal, Minho, PG)
Title: they stumble that run fast
Recipient: choigabs
Group(s)/Artist(s): f(x), shinee
Pairing(s)/Character(s): Minho + Krystal, Krystal/Sulli, Minho/Taemin
Rating: PG
Warning(s):
Summary: Soojung is the president of the drama club, and she’s not sure exactly what to do with the club’s new members.
Note(s): Hi, choigabs! I know I got kind of...creative with the pairings here, I hope it’s still along the lines of what you wanted. :)
ACT I
“Cut,” Soojung said. She massaged her forehead with two fingers, making slow circles above her eyebrow. Looking down, she pretended to write notes on her copy of the script, but instead wrote “kill me” in the margins with purple glitter gel pen.
“Was that better?” Taemin called from the stage. It wasn’t better, and Soojung was thinking of how to phrase “you have less charisma than the stage props” in a more constructive way when Jinri spoke first.
“It might help if you looked at me while saying your lines,” she said. The bell rang then, echoing in the cavernous auditorium, and everybody on stage seemed to bolt for the exit. Taemin dove for his backpack, Minho practically leaped into the orchestra pit, and the lighting crew stampeded out of the control booth. Jinri stayed to remove her wig. The wig was medium-length, with the bottom grazing the small of Jinri’s back, but the real hair underneath was cropped to her ears and slightly matted from sweat. She noticed Soojung watching her and raised her eyebrows.
“I did okay, right?” Jinri said, scratching the back of her neck with one long, delicate finger.
Jinri always did well.
“Yeah,” Soojung said, fighting a stutter. “As usual.” Jinri smiled and walked backstage, and Soojung took a moment to resume breathing before throwing her backpack over her shoulder.
On the first day of the new semester, it had become clear to Soojung that the drama club membership had increased. When she flung open the familiar door, all four seats at the bean-shaped table were occupied. She had expected the room to be empty, since all the seniors had graduated in the spring. It smelled like steam, and she noticed the rice cooker purring on the counter; the tiny room doubled as a lunchroom for the janitors. Soojung surveyed the new recruits. Previously populated only by rich kids, the club now represented a wider variety of tropes: the Pretty Boy, Lee Taemin; the Jock, Choi Minho; and the Babe Who Takes This Shit Seriously, Choi Jinri.
Soojung pulled up an extra chair, the legs screeching across the dirty linoleum. The room was quiet, except for Lee Taemin tapping his knuckles against the table, and she wondered what, as club president, she was supposed to do with these people.
“Have any of you acted before?” she asked. Choi Jinri’s hand was the only one raised, and Soojung noticed how clean her fingernails looked.
“Okay. Cool. Well, we need to decide on what we’re performing for the fall festival. Write what you want to do on a piece of paper and put it in the center.”
Once the votes were counted, Soojung stared at the peeling wallpaper in frustration: four votes for Romeo and Juliet, one vote for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.
“This is so high school cliché,” Soojung said.
“Virginia Woolf is three hours long,” Jinri said, her eyebrows furrowed. Soojung made a mental note not to underestimate Jinri: Soojung had tried to pick something that would make herself seem like the most cultured person in the room.
“Just give the audience what they want,” Jinri said.
“But everybody knows how Romeo and Juliet goes.”
“Because it’s a classic,” Taemin protested. “In high school, we can relate to the story of the Capulets and Manatees.”
“Montagues,” Jinri said, looking appalled.
“Yeah,” Taemin said. He gave a short laugh and pulled on his earlobe.
Soojung raised her eyes to the asbestos-infested ceiling for guidance. There was a fat spider hovering in one of the corners.
“You voted for this because you want to be Romeo, don’t you?” Soojung said, looking at Taemin. Taemin averted his eyes.
Soojung turned to Minho, who had been staring at his hands. “You want to be Romeo, too?” Minho shook his head and laughed cryptically.
“And you’re our Juliet, obviously?”
Jinri smiled and rested her chin on her palm. “Only if you want me to be, Director.”
Soojung was speechless for a full beat. The timer on the rice cooker went off with a cheery ding!
“I guess we’re doing Romeo and Juliet,” she said.
Rehearsals were awful from the start, with everyone playing too many roles and Minho over-emoting and Taemin stuttering and blinking too much whenever the stage lights went on and the curve of Jinri’s wrists being very distracting.
“Okay, are you guys even trying?” Soojung said on day five, after Minho had read somebody else’s lines for half a page and then tripped over a floorboard.
In fact, Soojung still wasn’t sure how or why they had all ended up in drama club. Taemin was polite and seemed to take feedback well, yet never actually improved. She suspected it might be a focus problem, but he definitely didn’t join because he loved acting. Minho looked helpless, his eyes wide and his arms stiff, and he would glance eagerly at Soojung after each take, like a dog attempting to learn a new trick. He seemed huge and out of place on the small stage, his lanky body more suited to the open area of the football field. Jinri was an actress, but she still didn’t belong here either; Soojung had seen her on TV the other day, in a soda commercial. Soojung had nearly done a spit take when she’d seen Jinri smiling on the screen, wearing something pastel, pulling the tab off a can. She was a little over-qualified for the high school drama club.
Part of the puzzle seemed to come together, though, when Soojung noticed the way Minho looked at Taemin right before the lights went down.
ACT II
Soojung looked both ways down the hallway. She stepped out quickly and shoved the drama club office door open, the wood grain rough against her palms.
The broken A/C vents rattled overhead as she sat at the bean-shaped table, careful not to let the tops of her knees touch the gum stuck underneath. Her lunch was packed in transparent pink boxes and a tiny spoon was nestled in with her hard-boiled egg. She chewed on a strip of seaweed. It was difficult to keep her eyes open in the comfortable, warm room. She could’ve curled up on the floor and just slept there until the bell rang.
She was writing a play in her head, part of a work in progress. The cast was herself and Jinri. The setting was behind the tenth row of seats in the auditorium. Costumes were minimal. She was only at the third scene when the door opened and she almost jumped out of the chair.
“You’re eating in here?” Minho said. His voice was muffled because there was part of a bread bun in his mouth. The front of his shirt was speckled with crumbs.
She shrugged. "Do you want an egg?"
He sat down across from her. His legs were too long and he banged her shin with his sandal.
“Are you being bullied? Need me to beat somebody up?” he asked. He was struggling to swallow too much bread.
“I just hate my classmates,” Soojung said. Just as she began to wonder if she should perform the Heimlich, he gulped and exhaled.
“They know you like girls?” he asked, holding a fist to his chest. Soojung felt her fingers go numb.
“No. That’s still a secret,” she said, her voicing dipping lower. The A/C shut off with a rumble and there was somebody yelling song lyrics a few rooms over.
“It’s okay, I won’t tell anybody,” he said. He leaned forward in his chair. “And I swear I’m not blackmailing you, but I need your help with something.”
“How could you tell?” she said. The numbness had travelled to her face.
“You stare at Jinri like you want to eat her.”
The next day, on the way to school, Minho ran to catch up with Soojung. He didn’t even break a sweat, taking long strides across the pavement.
“Did you think about it?” he said. His school bag seemed heavy; the strap dug into his shoulder.
“You’re asking me to rewrite everything,” she said, looking ahead. “And recast everything, only a week before we have to perform.”
“You don’t have to, but I would really like it if you did.” He was grinning, giving her those weird, huge, needy eyes again.
He found her again at lunch, on the ground against the shoe lockers. He sat down next to her with a thud, the back of his head banging against a locker. He put a milk carton down next to her feet.
“For you.”
“Thanks.”
“Do you think we’re the only gay kids at this school?” he said. His legs were stretched out in front of him and he rocked his socked feet back and forth.
“Who even knows. It doesn’t mean we have to be friends, though.”
Minho went quiet and Soojung knew that she had hurt him. He shifted, pulled his legs underneath him, but didn’t stand up.
“Sorry. I just thought we would make good friends. Since we’re both afraid of our classmates.”
“Hey,” Soojung said. “I’ll change the play for you.”
“Yeah? Don’t do it just ‘cause I’m pathetic.”
She looked down at her knees and pushed the hair out of her face. She grabbed the milk carton and focused on the delicate task of bending the spout open.
“You’re an okay person,” she said.
ACT III
Soojung had spent so much time trying to figure out the motives of the other drama club members that she hadn’t thought to question her own. She realized, as she watched the audience begin to file into the seats, that maybe she just liked the control. Maybe she didn’t care for acting after all, and had wanted to direct people all along. She walked backstage to give the ten-minute call. There were people running everywhere, their feet stomping rhythms on the hollow wooden stage. Ever since rumors had started circulated over the “changes” they had made to Romeo and Juliet, other students had volunteered to play the minor roles.
When Minho passed Soojung he gave her a hug, and there weren’t any fireworks and her heart didn’t beat faster and she didn’t want to kiss him or have his babies, but there was something to be said for holding another human body, for the sturdiness of his back under her hand. She found it hard to let him go.
Taemin was standing in front of a mirror and putting on the Juliet wig, the one Jinri had worn before. He scratched his scalp feverishly through the wig cap.
“You okay there, Juliet?” Soojung asked. He made a small noise of affirmation.
“Thanks for being cool about this,” she said.
“It’s okay. It’s good. I’ll definitely get more followers after this.”
The Pretty Boy’s motive.
Soojung watched from wings. Jinri, who had been relegated to the role of Mercutio, joined Soojung after her stabbing had been completed.
Minho knelt at the bottom of the “balcony”, which was just a step ladder they’d stolen from a utility closet. Taemin gesticulated wildly, the blonde wig bouncing on his shoulders, and a group of girls in the audience giggled in unison.
“He’s almost prettier than me,” Jinri said, shaking her head.
“Almost,” Soojung said before she could stop herself. Soojung couldn’t tell, but she suspected that her cheeks were turning an ugly color. She was thankful that Jinri just laughed, her laugh less subdued than she’d heard before, loud and deep and Soojung was torn between wanting to remind Jinri that there was a performance happening a few feet away and wanting to make her laugh harder.
“Why’d you join this stupid club, anyway?” Soojung asked, finally.
“The people in it looked interesting,” Jinri said, and the way her mouth curved at the corners made Soojung want to write a thousand plays in her head.
Recipient: choigabs
Group(s)/Artist(s): f(x), shinee
Pairing(s)/Character(s): Minho + Krystal, Krystal/Sulli, Minho/Taemin
Rating: PG
Warning(s):
Summary: Soojung is the president of the drama club, and she’s not sure exactly what to do with the club’s new members.
Note(s): Hi, choigabs! I know I got kind of...creative with the pairings here, I hope it’s still along the lines of what you wanted. :)
ACT I
“Cut,” Soojung said. She massaged her forehead with two fingers, making slow circles above her eyebrow. Looking down, she pretended to write notes on her copy of the script, but instead wrote “kill me” in the margins with purple glitter gel pen.
“Was that better?” Taemin called from the stage. It wasn’t better, and Soojung was thinking of how to phrase “you have less charisma than the stage props” in a more constructive way when Jinri spoke first.
“It might help if you looked at me while saying your lines,” she said. The bell rang then, echoing in the cavernous auditorium, and everybody on stage seemed to bolt for the exit. Taemin dove for his backpack, Minho practically leaped into the orchestra pit, and the lighting crew stampeded out of the control booth. Jinri stayed to remove her wig. The wig was medium-length, with the bottom grazing the small of Jinri’s back, but the real hair underneath was cropped to her ears and slightly matted from sweat. She noticed Soojung watching her and raised her eyebrows.
“I did okay, right?” Jinri said, scratching the back of her neck with one long, delicate finger.
Jinri always did well.
“Yeah,” Soojung said, fighting a stutter. “As usual.” Jinri smiled and walked backstage, and Soojung took a moment to resume breathing before throwing her backpack over her shoulder.
On the first day of the new semester, it had become clear to Soojung that the drama club membership had increased. When she flung open the familiar door, all four seats at the bean-shaped table were occupied. She had expected the room to be empty, since all the seniors had graduated in the spring. It smelled like steam, and she noticed the rice cooker purring on the counter; the tiny room doubled as a lunchroom for the janitors. Soojung surveyed the new recruits. Previously populated only by rich kids, the club now represented a wider variety of tropes: the Pretty Boy, Lee Taemin; the Jock, Choi Minho; and the Babe Who Takes This Shit Seriously, Choi Jinri.
Soojung pulled up an extra chair, the legs screeching across the dirty linoleum. The room was quiet, except for Lee Taemin tapping his knuckles against the table, and she wondered what, as club president, she was supposed to do with these people.
“Have any of you acted before?” she asked. Choi Jinri’s hand was the only one raised, and Soojung noticed how clean her fingernails looked.
“Okay. Cool. Well, we need to decide on what we’re performing for the fall festival. Write what you want to do on a piece of paper and put it in the center.”
Once the votes were counted, Soojung stared at the peeling wallpaper in frustration: four votes for Romeo and Juliet, one vote for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.
“This is so high school cliché,” Soojung said.
“Virginia Woolf is three hours long,” Jinri said, her eyebrows furrowed. Soojung made a mental note not to underestimate Jinri: Soojung had tried to pick something that would make herself seem like the most cultured person in the room.
“Just give the audience what they want,” Jinri said.
“But everybody knows how Romeo and Juliet goes.”
“Because it’s a classic,” Taemin protested. “In high school, we can relate to the story of the Capulets and Manatees.”
“Montagues,” Jinri said, looking appalled.
“Yeah,” Taemin said. He gave a short laugh and pulled on his earlobe.
Soojung raised her eyes to the asbestos-infested ceiling for guidance. There was a fat spider hovering in one of the corners.
“You voted for this because you want to be Romeo, don’t you?” Soojung said, looking at Taemin. Taemin averted his eyes.
Soojung turned to Minho, who had been staring at his hands. “You want to be Romeo, too?” Minho shook his head and laughed cryptically.
“And you’re our Juliet, obviously?”
Jinri smiled and rested her chin on her palm. “Only if you want me to be, Director.”
Soojung was speechless for a full beat. The timer on the rice cooker went off with a cheery ding!
“I guess we’re doing Romeo and Juliet,” she said.
Rehearsals were awful from the start, with everyone playing too many roles and Minho over-emoting and Taemin stuttering and blinking too much whenever the stage lights went on and the curve of Jinri’s wrists being very distracting.
“Okay, are you guys even trying?” Soojung said on day five, after Minho had read somebody else’s lines for half a page and then tripped over a floorboard.
In fact, Soojung still wasn’t sure how or why they had all ended up in drama club. Taemin was polite and seemed to take feedback well, yet never actually improved. She suspected it might be a focus problem, but he definitely didn’t join because he loved acting. Minho looked helpless, his eyes wide and his arms stiff, and he would glance eagerly at Soojung after each take, like a dog attempting to learn a new trick. He seemed huge and out of place on the small stage, his lanky body more suited to the open area of the football field. Jinri was an actress, but she still didn’t belong here either; Soojung had seen her on TV the other day, in a soda commercial. Soojung had nearly done a spit take when she’d seen Jinri smiling on the screen, wearing something pastel, pulling the tab off a can. She was a little over-qualified for the high school drama club.
Part of the puzzle seemed to come together, though, when Soojung noticed the way Minho looked at Taemin right before the lights went down.
ACT II
Soojung looked both ways down the hallway. She stepped out quickly and shoved the drama club office door open, the wood grain rough against her palms.
The broken A/C vents rattled overhead as she sat at the bean-shaped table, careful not to let the tops of her knees touch the gum stuck underneath. Her lunch was packed in transparent pink boxes and a tiny spoon was nestled in with her hard-boiled egg. She chewed on a strip of seaweed. It was difficult to keep her eyes open in the comfortable, warm room. She could’ve curled up on the floor and just slept there until the bell rang.
She was writing a play in her head, part of a work in progress. The cast was herself and Jinri. The setting was behind the tenth row of seats in the auditorium. Costumes were minimal. She was only at the third scene when the door opened and she almost jumped out of the chair.
“You’re eating in here?” Minho said. His voice was muffled because there was part of a bread bun in his mouth. The front of his shirt was speckled with crumbs.
She shrugged. "Do you want an egg?"
He sat down across from her. His legs were too long and he banged her shin with his sandal.
“Are you being bullied? Need me to beat somebody up?” he asked. He was struggling to swallow too much bread.
“I just hate my classmates,” Soojung said. Just as she began to wonder if she should perform the Heimlich, he gulped and exhaled.
“They know you like girls?” he asked, holding a fist to his chest. Soojung felt her fingers go numb.
“No. That’s still a secret,” she said, her voicing dipping lower. The A/C shut off with a rumble and there was somebody yelling song lyrics a few rooms over.
“It’s okay, I won’t tell anybody,” he said. He leaned forward in his chair. “And I swear I’m not blackmailing you, but I need your help with something.”
“How could you tell?” she said. The numbness had travelled to her face.
“You stare at Jinri like you want to eat her.”
The next day, on the way to school, Minho ran to catch up with Soojung. He didn’t even break a sweat, taking long strides across the pavement.
“Did you think about it?” he said. His school bag seemed heavy; the strap dug into his shoulder.
“You’re asking me to rewrite everything,” she said, looking ahead. “And recast everything, only a week before we have to perform.”
“You don’t have to, but I would really like it if you did.” He was grinning, giving her those weird, huge, needy eyes again.
He found her again at lunch, on the ground against the shoe lockers. He sat down next to her with a thud, the back of his head banging against a locker. He put a milk carton down next to her feet.
“For you.”
“Thanks.”
“Do you think we’re the only gay kids at this school?” he said. His legs were stretched out in front of him and he rocked his socked feet back and forth.
“Who even knows. It doesn’t mean we have to be friends, though.”
Minho went quiet and Soojung knew that she had hurt him. He shifted, pulled his legs underneath him, but didn’t stand up.
“Sorry. I just thought we would make good friends. Since we’re both afraid of our classmates.”
“Hey,” Soojung said. “I’ll change the play for you.”
“Yeah? Don’t do it just ‘cause I’m pathetic.”
She looked down at her knees and pushed the hair out of her face. She grabbed the milk carton and focused on the delicate task of bending the spout open.
“You’re an okay person,” she said.
ACT III
Soojung had spent so much time trying to figure out the motives of the other drama club members that she hadn’t thought to question her own. She realized, as she watched the audience begin to file into the seats, that maybe she just liked the control. Maybe she didn’t care for acting after all, and had wanted to direct people all along. She walked backstage to give the ten-minute call. There were people running everywhere, their feet stomping rhythms on the hollow wooden stage. Ever since rumors had started circulated over the “changes” they had made to Romeo and Juliet, other students had volunteered to play the minor roles.
When Minho passed Soojung he gave her a hug, and there weren’t any fireworks and her heart didn’t beat faster and she didn’t want to kiss him or have his babies, but there was something to be said for holding another human body, for the sturdiness of his back under her hand. She found it hard to let him go.
Taemin was standing in front of a mirror and putting on the Juliet wig, the one Jinri had worn before. He scratched his scalp feverishly through the wig cap.
“You okay there, Juliet?” Soojung asked. He made a small noise of affirmation.
“Thanks for being cool about this,” she said.
“It’s okay. It’s good. I’ll definitely get more followers after this.”
The Pretty Boy’s motive.
Soojung watched from wings. Jinri, who had been relegated to the role of Mercutio, joined Soojung after her stabbing had been completed.
Minho knelt at the bottom of the “balcony”, which was just a step ladder they’d stolen from a utility closet. Taemin gesticulated wildly, the blonde wig bouncing on his shoulders, and a group of girls in the audience giggled in unison.
“He’s almost prettier than me,” Jinri said, shaking her head.
“Almost,” Soojung said before she could stop herself. Soojung couldn’t tell, but she suspected that her cheeks were turning an ugly color. She was thankful that Jinri just laughed, her laugh less subdued than she’d heard before, loud and deep and Soojung was torn between wanting to remind Jinri that there was a performance happening a few feet away and wanting to make her laugh harder.
“Why’d you join this stupid club, anyway?” Soojung asked, finally.
“The people in it looked interesting,” Jinri said, and the way her mouth curved at the corners made Soojung want to write a thousand plays in her head.