A Million Ways to be Cruel (2/4)
There’s a game that Jongin likes to play called Guess What Sehun is Feeling, in which Sehun storms into Jongin’s bedroom with a new expression everytime and Jongin has to guess what it means. Sehun doesn’t know that Jongin has made a game out of it, but Jongin makes games out of anything. He needs them; they keep him from dying of boredom.
So, today is game day, and Sehun storms into the bedroom with his chin raised and his eyebrows scrunched together.
“Someone piss you off?”
“Someone needs to die a cruel, violent, fiery death,” Sehun corrects, plopping into a chair across from Jongin with a well-practiced pout. Even when trying to look angry, Sehun still managed to look dainty. “Krystal totally ditched me! I’ve lost my hamster.”
“You mean your fag hag?”
“I mean my hamster.” Because only in Sehun’s world, would one go further on the insulting terms of endearment scale and call Krystal a hamster instead of a minion. “She’s got a ‘boyfriend’ now, so she’s spending all her time being an idiot with that pixie fairy faced Luhan.”
"Luhan? Our Pixie Fairy Luhan?" Jongin asks.
"My Pixie Fairy Luhan. Thursdays at 6 p.m. Yes"
Sehun took extra English lessons over the summer with another one of St. Joseph's seniors, Luhan, who has somehow convinced everyone in the world except the Kim-Oh brothers, and Krystal, that he was straight. He looked like he belonged in one of those flowery boy bands that covered the streets of Seoul. Luhan's girly looks had been the butt to many of the nicknames Sehun gave him; Pixie Fairy Prince, and Princess Lulu were the ones he used most.
Jongin knows that Sehun's rant will take a while, because Sehun loves the sound of his own voice, especially while complaining. To distract himself, and keep from falling asleep, Jongin looks at the mirror across from where he's sitting and fixes his hair, giving it the look of being effortless.
"He serenaded her at a bubble tea cafe with one of his friends playing a guitar. How cliché is that? How fucking desperate is she? God. Morons."
"If you're asking me to fuck your ex-BFF, no can do," Jongin says. "I've already filled my quota of Girls I Need to Fuck for the next hundred centuries."
"Not her. Him." Sehun bats his eyes.
"You want me to fuck Luhan?"
"I want you to destroy him" Sehun says a little too calmly. "Poor Krystal, imagine how heartbroken she'd be when she finds out that her sweet, fairy faced boyfriend swings for the other team."
Jongin turns his attention back to sexting some random cute guy he found on kaokaotalk. "I'm busy remember? The thing with Baekhyun?"
"Oh, because that’s going so well. Remember that time I found him strolling though the halls buck-naked, only later that night, to my surprise, did I find out that you didn't so much as touch him? Oh wait that was yesterday wasn't it?"
"Was he big?" Jongin asks, still refusing to look away from the screen of his phone.
"You're such a pussy."
Jongin sighs. "Can't you just, I don't know, bitchslap Krystal like a normal person?"
"Don't call me 'normal', Jongin, eww." Sehun holds his hands up in disgust. "Anyway, if the attack is done on Luhan instead of Krystal, no one would even think to trace it back to little 'ol me. Everybody loves me and I intend to keep it that way. I'm not…you" Sehun gestures to Jongin's entire being.
"Not human? Yeah, I'll co-sign to that" Jongin looks up and grins.
"Not a whore" Sehun deadpans.
"Funny coming from you, or have I mistaken you for another student body president of St. Josephs School for Boys who blew the headmaster's secretary so he could 'correct' his B-pluses to A's?"
"When I fuck people, there's always a purpose in mind. I don't just give my body away freely. I'm selective"
"I'm sure whores 'select' who they have sex with based on what they get for it too, S." Jongin finishes typing out the end of a text message, are you touching yourself?, and puts his phone back in his pocket. "I do it for fun, like biology dictates. You should try it sometimes, S; let off a little steam, you're always so tense." Jongin walks behind Sehun and squeezes his shoulders.
Sehun pushes Jongin's hands off himself and turns to face the elder. "With someone who lacks the finesse to take advantage of the countryside puppy? Who can't even go after someone as easy as Deer eyed Luhan?"
'Oh that was a new one' Jongin says in his head
"Yeah, no thank you. I'm se-lec-tive." Sehun finishes off before he walks through the door into the hallway.
Jongin was so not fucking Luhan. He could be selective, too.
Jongin admits that he loves going to clubs. He admits this yes, but not for the reason everyone thinks. Jongin loves going to clubs only because he loves to dance. He come because when he dances he feels like nothing else in the world matters, and no matter how many eyes are staring at him in either envy or lust, he can’t feel them.
Tonight however was different. Sehun insisted that they all go to the newest, hottest club in town to welcome Baekhyun to the Kim-Oh household.
Jongin was sitting by the bar, eyeing the crowd. He spotted a cute, wide-eyed guy, with a nice set of lips, who’s been making eye contact with him all night, and Jongin can’t remember the last time he’d gone for a satisfying quickie in the back room. Sehun’s 17th, probably?
He grins at the cutie and raises his beer. The guy smiles back and Jongin is all set for the night.
Baekhyun on the other hand, was not doing so well. Sehun, who dragged everyone along, had disappeared, probably into the VIP room, and his other guest, Pixie Fairy Luhan, was dancing a little too close to his hot, Chinese, English tutor on the other side of the club. That meant that Baekhyun was stranded somewhere in the sea of hard bodies, pulling uncomfortably at the tight, fitted, silk shirt that Sehun bought him.
Jongin spots him stuck between to guys whose dancing slips past the PG-13 line in minutes. Baekhyun tries to fit in, tries to have fun with it…oh GOD is he actually doing the tecktonik?
“For fuck sakes,” Jongin groans, taking another swig of his beer. The liquid burns hot down his throat and gives him the ability to slightly forgive Baekhyun for breaking out into the ridiculous dance that is the tecktonik.
But only slightly, because suddenly things become worse when Jongin sees Baekhyun continuing to do the tecktonik, to, dear lord, Benny Benassi’s Satisfaction. And it’s not like Baekhyun is doing the tecktonik accidentally, he’s doing because he’s trying to dance like a normal person, when really he can’t dance at all.
Jongin is on the verge of saving the poor soul, by pulling him out of the crowd and then out of the club. But on one hand, there’s still that cute, wide eyed guy, who’d definitely promised a fun evening. And on the other hand, there’s Baekhyun, who’s really no fun at all, doesn’t drink, and cannot dance to save his life. Jongin takes the latter.
Jongin finishes off his beer and gets up to begin wading though the crowd to get Baekhyun.
Despite his not-dancing misery, the poor thing actually smiles when he sees Jongin. Like, a real smile. In the middle of his sad, sad, tecktonik dancing. “Oh, hi Jongin!”
Jongin grabs him by the wrist and drags him out of the club, because if he has to watch that ridiculous tecktonik dance for two more seconds he is seriously going to have to choke a bitch, and bitch-choking was really more Sehun’s thing than Jongin’s.
“You do know we passed by like ten of these on the way here right?”
The two were in a quiet café far off from the busy area where they lived. They’ve been there half an hour now and Jongin is still glancing left and right every five minutes. “This is the nearest one where I can be relatively sure I won’t run into anyone from St. Joseph’s, and the coffee here is better than the other café’s around.”
“You take yourself way too seriously.” Baekhyun laughs
“Hey, you owe me one okay? I just took you to my personal happy place, and I don’t do that with anybody. This is the very table where I have my monthly high-calorie shame spiral, and I always do this ritual alone, but God, it actually hurt me looking at you dancing.”
Baekhyun was staring at his bubble tea, mixing around the boba pearls with his straw. “It…it was fun. Your stepbrother got me some really nice clothes too.”
“There’s a such as thing as being too nice for your own good, Baekhyun.”
“Do I look that bad?” Baekhyun looks down at himself, thumbing the light-colored silk shirt.
“You look great, actually.” Jongin’s lips curl up at the ends as he studies Baekhyun’s discomfort. “You don’t like it, do you?”
Baekhyun shrugs, “It’s pretty.”
“Yeah, too nice,” Jongin declares. “Speaking of which, I heard your award-winning speech.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. It’s very nicely written B.S.”
The thing is, if you can’t win them over with flattery, you just have to provoke them until they want to shove you into a bathroom stall for fifteen minutes of hate sex. And for all the vanilla vibes he oozes, Baekhyun looks like he’d be surprisingly good at hate sex, especially if he’s wearing that eyeliner that Sehun put on him.
“That’s weird.” Baekhyun frowns. “Most people liked it.”
“Most people you talk to don’t live in the real world. It’s 2012, nobody gets married for love anymore.”
“I would.”
“Have you ever even had a girlfriend?”
Baekhyun nods. “One. But seeing my ex-best friend’s tongue down her throat at my birthday party was kind of a mood-killer.”
“Oh, sorry,” Jongin says. But he still wants to push this envelop until it breaks. “Ever had a boyfriend?”
“I’m pretty sure I’m straight, Jongin.”
He smirks, “Pretty sure.”
“Not that I’ve had much of an opportunity where I came from, but yeah, pretty sure.”
“We could test it.” Jongin tries to sound as innocuous as possible. “I could kiss you. If you don’t feel anything, then yeah, you’re unquestionably straight.”
Baekhyun narrows his gaze at him in suspicion.
“…What? It’s just one innocent kiss, and we live in Korea for goodness sakes. Have you seen what boybands have been doing on TV?”
Baekhyun nodded slowly, agreeing with Jongin’s reasoning. “…Just one kiss?”
“Just one, promise. Though you have every reason not to trust me, if I really wanted to get in your pants, Baekhyun, I would’ve at least taken you someplace nicer than this.”
Baekhyun moves across to the seat next to Jongin. He looks up and tries to smile like it doesn’t matter.
Jongin kisses him right then because if this went on any longer, Baekhyun would probably vomit, and Jongin’s wearing new Armani.
Baekhyun definitely kisses like a devout, chaste Catholic boy from wherever he’s from, but at least he’s kissing back. There’s barely any tongue, which is a nice change from the insatiable St. Joseph boys who want everything all at once, as fast as they can.
Jongin doesn’t realize his hand is that far up Baekhyun’s thigh until the other recoils and shoves it away. “Jesus, Jongin, do you have to ruin everything?”
This is how Jongin ends up alone in some unknown café at 1:34 in the morning.
Jongin pulls his phone out of his pocket to find something to do. He decides that a game of sudoku seems nice.
It’s well after 2AM, with five numbers successfully placed on the board (Jongin swears he hates this game so much), when he looks up to see Baekhyun standing by the table. Baekhyun’s eyes are fixed firmly on his Chuck Taylors that are subconsciously shifting back and forth.
“You didn’t leave,” he says.
“And let you get lost in the city this late at night?” Jongin leaves a tip on the table and stands up. “Come on, let’s get home.” He walks towards the exit, but Baekhyun’s feet stay planted in the same place. Jongin hold his hands up in surrender. “I’ll keep my grubby hands glued to the steering wheel, and my eyes on the road. No bullshit.”
“Okay.” Baekhyun catches up to Jongin so that they’re walking side by side to where Jongin’s Beemer (as if Jongin would risk taking the Aston to some seedy club, or to some random café in the middle of the night) is parked. “Thanks for tonight. I haven’t really been out with a friend since I came here.”
“Yeah, yeah, just don’t tell anyone that I go to these girly little cafés.”
When Baekhyun smiles, it takes all Jongin has to pretend he doesn’t want to kiss him again.
“Your secret’s safe with me.” Baekhyun says when he enters the car.
The car ride is quiet. Jongin does as promised and keeps his hands on the steering wheel. He almost lets go to change the station but somehow Baekhyun reads his mind and does so for him by clicking all of the preset buttons until he settles with something he likes, and Jongin hums in agreement. When they reach home, they meet a smirking Sehun sitting on the couch in the living room.
“Well, well, look who the cat brought in.” Sehun says as he stands up. “If you excuse me Baekhyun, I have something urgent to discuss with Jongin here.”
And with that, Sehun is pulling Jongin towards his bedroom, leaving a tired Baekhyun to deal with himself.
“So, did you fuck him yet?” Sehun hooks his arms behind Jongin’s neck after closing the door to his room.
“Not…yet” Jongin moves his head into the crook of Sehun’s neck and takes a deep breath of Sehun’s favorite summer cologne, Acqua Di Gio Pour Homme by Giorgio Armani. Jongin had all of Sehun’s scents memorized and charted out in his mind. He’d also made it a game to guess what cologne Sehun was wearing when they were younger, but when he’d gotten all the scents memorized it wasn’t as fun.
“Well,” Sehun tilts his head to the side to give Jongin more access to the pale expanse of his neck, “when you do,” Sehun pulls Jongin closer so that their hips meet, “tell me.”
Before Sehun pulls away he whispers a quiet,”I’ll be waiting,” In Jongin’s ear.
Once Jongin’s mind is clear enough to process what just happened, Sehun is already out the door.
In any game, one always has to keep score. Jongin does this in the cream-colored pages of a leather-bound diary; a gift from Sehun’s mom, back when Jongin was 16 and convinced everyone that he was a literature geek just for kicks (and because library blowjobs were a fun new discovery). He’d reminded her a few times over the past years that dancing was more his thing, but she either never heard him or never remembered.
The afternoon is full of crisp air and the clouds cover the sky in a blanket of grey threatening rain. Jongin decides that it’s a perfect day to unlock his drawer and take out his journal. He’s supposed to start a new page about his latest and biggest challenge, Byun Baekhyun, anyways, but he doesn’t know where to start. He doesn’t know if he wants to write about it before he’s won, and to be honest, he doesn’t even know if he can win with Baekhyun, after so many wrong turns. He wouldn’t want to waste paper on a defeat and ruin his successful track record.
Jongin flips through the filled pages: Park Hyun Ah, his first and only female conquest, and he really only did it because his shrink was a bitch who overcharged; The camp counselor, a real tight-ass in more ways than one; Lee Taemin, because Taemin was sad and Jongin was bored and somewhere there was beer and weed involved; the headmaster’s assistant, because Jongin wanted to know what it would be like being fucked by someone who’d fucked Sehun (Sehun still doesn’t know. No one does.); and Shim Changmin, because it isn’t high school until you’ve blown a football player in the locker room while his oblivious cheerleader girlfriend wait’s outside. Wildly overrated as far as those things go, but if anyone of those dramas set in high school ever featured a story line like that, Jongin might actually want to watch one.
(Byun Baekhyun would be a very interesting addition, Jongin thinks. Fuck one city boy, you’ve fucked them all, and he hasn’t added any new pages since July for that very reason, but with Baekhyun it’s a whole new angle. Jongin’s never faced the “principles/virtues” obstacle before; they go an all boys private school, after all. The only challenges he’d ever had to deal with were “girlfriends,” “paparazzi,” and “alleged heterosexuality”.)
Jongin continues to flip through the pages filled with faces and names and dicks he doesn’t remember, and at the very beginning, a brown haired, twenty-something named Jung Yunho. This one, Jongin remembers very clearly. Jongin was 15 and miserable, fresh off a nasty breakup with his first-ever boyfriend, and the deceptively charming son of his dad’s cute girlfriend proposed the following, verbatim: “Let’s play a game.”
And also, “your ex-boyfriend’s a loser,” but it’s the first part that sticks out in Jongin’s mind. The game was to see who could nail Sehun’s mother’s hotter-than-hot PA first. At first, Jongin thought it was a retarded idea, because Jongin was a very different person three years ago, but he was lethargic and bummed out and hated his ex, and he honestly had nothing better to do, so he took Sehun up on that first challenge.
Jongin won, because Yunho didn’t know he was 15. And it’s been a string of games ever since. Men are easily won, Jongin found; all he had to do was accentuate the curve of his hips, which he gained from years of dance, and show a little more of his tanned skin than necessary. Anyone could fall victim to his lithe dancer figure and his glowing skin.
Scattered between the write-ups of these boys (and girl) are various journal entries about Sehun - his habit’s, his conversations with Jongin, his less-than-honorable efforts to get into Seoul National University, and Jongin’s multiple failed attempts to seduce him. Jongin knows that a poker face is required when dealing with Sehun; if he’d shown his hand, let Sehun know that, maybe, fucking him was actually worth risking his Aston Martin V8 Vantage Roadster on, then Sehun would have all the leverage.
Sehun is really the only reason Jongin still cares about the bet. While Byun Baekyun would be a lovely new trophy, and entry in his journal, Jongin couldn’t give a flying fuck about the boy himself, whose name he’d forget in a few months’ time. Nailing Sehun would truly be his greatest victory.
Jongin’s train of thought is interrupted by a loud sigh. “Really, Jongin, if I weren’t already calling you a fag on a regular basis…”
“Still not letting you read it,” Jongin replies cheerfully. “Isn’t it Thursday?”
“I told them I had laryngitis.” Sehun taps his foot impatiently while waiting for Jongin to lock his journal away in the drawer. “Surveillance room. Now.
Jongin wiggles his eyebrows. “Kinky.”
“Look, I already know you have a hot English tutor, why do you think I keep conveniently forgetting things in the den on Thursdays? Now, if the camera were angled at his crotch, then I would’ve been impressed.”
“Shh!” Sehun swats him. “Just watch.”
“That’s one unfortunate fedora.”
“Well, yeah.”
They turn to the large flat screen, with a clear shot of the den. Luhan bangs his fist down on the desk. “I don’t get it! Fuck all these different tenses.”
“It’s okay,” Hot Chinese English Tutor assures him. “We’ll take it one step at a time.” He slides his chair right next to Luhan’s.
Their faces are dangerously close, though Hot Chinese English Tutor seems oblivious. He’s expertly going through the list of verbs and how to change them from past to present tense, and Luhan is paying close attention, just…not to what his tutor is saying.
Half a minute passes before English Tutor is aware of it. His eyes meet Luhan’s for a silent, tense moment, and then he slowly takes off Luhan’s fedora.
“Oh, thank GOD, I thought that thing would never go away!” Sehun lets out a sigh of relief.
Luhan inches closer to English Tutor, parting his lips, when his cell phone rings. “Shit, it’s my mom. I have to go.”
Sehun shuts off the monitor. “Mrs. Han was always a boner-killer.”
“So, I don’t see how this has anything to do with me,” Jongin says. “Other than that it’s going to be slightly harder to get your English tutor on his knees for me.”
“The point is that Pixie Fairy Prince Luhan screams homogay, and therefore you can totally do him. Please? For me? You know I don’t ask for favors unless it’s important.”
Jongin nearly knocks his chair over with how quickly he stands up. “You condescending little shit!” he barks as he slams Sehun back onto the nearest wall. “You think I would go for this because it’s easy? How fucking dickless do you think I am?”
“It’s not that -“
Jongin backs off of Sehun and walks towards the door. “I am not taking you up on Homogay Luhan, okay? I am busy making Byun Baekhyun beg for my cock, and then I’m coming for you. I hope you like handcuffs, sweetie!” Are the last words Jongin says before he slams the door.
Jongin leans against the wall, breathing heavily. He’s a little bit turned on.
Across him, the security guy in charge of surveillance is smoking a cigarette. He looks exactly like it’s nothing out of the ordinary to overhear Jongin scream about handcuffs; though it probably isn’t.
“You all done in there?” he rasps.
“Yeah. And you can’t smoke in here.” Jongin takes the cigarette out of the surveillance guy’s mouth and leaves, taking a long, slow drag himself once he knows the guy can’t see him.
The voices of some girl group blast from the speakers of the iPod dock in the indoor pool area. Baekhyun spends more time there than Jongin does, nowadays. Jongin’s not a fan of swimming pools - the chlorine dries out his hair, and what’s the point of swimming when you can’t tan at the same time. Jongin can’t afford to loose the beautiful golden hue of his skin.
Through the loud music, Jongin has to wave his hands and yell Baekhyun’s name a few times before Baekhyun breaks through the surface of the water.
“Hey, Jongin. What’s up?”
“I don’t want you to think that everybody from around here is a brash, insensitive asshole who’ll make you wear things you don’t want to and go places you don’t want to. …Or their sluttly stepbrother who’s trying to take advantage of you,” he says. “We’re really not that bad! I can prove it to you.”
Baekhyun tilts his head. “Keep talking.”
“Today, we’re doing anything you want. Anywhere you want to go, I’ll tag along and smile and talk to you about cute, non-threatening things.”
“…Anywhere?”
“Anywhere.”
Baekhyun smiles.
“Oh, you’ve have got to be kidding me,” Jongin groans as he pulls the Aston over to where Baekhyun points. Everything’s taupe and sienna through his sunglasses, including the sign out front. “A nursing home? This is your idea of fun?”
“No, but if you go inside I’ll show you why we’re here.” Baekhyun says as he gets out of the car and waits for Jongin to follow him. “Oh come on, going inside is not going to kill you.”
They enter the neutral colored building and Baekhyun is pulling Jongin towards a corner of main room.
“This, is my idea of fun,” Baekhyun is gesturing towards a baby grand piano on the side of the main living area. “But the helping-old-people part is fulfilling, too. This is the sister establishment of the one I had back home, and I used to go there once a month.”
“Charming”
Jongin wants to die. The inside of the nursing home smells like denture cream, and preparation-H and he feels allergic already. Plus he’s not exactly dressed decently enough to be around elders. So yeah, this should be interesting.
He nearly has a panic attack over the idea of having to spend the next few hours listening to some geriatric Alzheimer’s-stricken old lady’s tales of her wild, colorful youth, or whatever, over and over, and unless it’s really fucking interesting and contains car chases, explosions somewhere in the narrative, he’ll be this close to a massive killing spree by the end of it. But the nurse just leads him to one empty chair in the main area. Everybody else is gathered there; some smile vacantly at Jongin, while others keep their gazes fixed ahead. Jongin had no idea he was so wrinkle-phobic until today. It’s like immersion therapy or whatever Dr. Park had called it.
Baekhyun stands up in front of everyone, “Hey guys, my name’s Baekhyun. I usually volunteer at another home out in the countryside, but my dad and I moved to Seoul this month, so hopefully you won’t mind seeing more of me every once in a while. That’s my friend Jongin in the back corner,” he adds, pointing to Jongin. “I think he really likes it here.”
For once, Jongin isn’t free to flip him off, so he just flips off his shades and flashes a sarcastic smile.
“Anyway, I really like music, and um, this is for you guys.”
Baekhyun has been living at the mansion for two weeks now, and Jongin had no idea he could sing like that. But he does, and it’s new and kind of awesome, because sure, everyone sings along to songs around the halls at St. Josephs, but they only did it to get pussy. They’d sing something like “I feel you twist my soul” when all they mean is “I want to shove my hand up your hoo-hoo”. Baekhyun is different though. He sings I lost my mind, the moment I saw you and it’s still something that the guys at school would use to pick up girls, but with Baekhyun, the way he sings it is different. It’s like art. And Jongin didn’t know that Baekhyun liked EXO songs.
Apparently, the old people do too, because they’re grinning and some are nodding their head along. They’re looking at Baekhyun the way Jongin has always wanted his parents to look at him. Except that when he’d peeked through the side of the curtains during dance recitals, there were always two empty seats. So this is nice.
“Thanks so much, everyone,” Baekhyun says to warm applause once the song ends. “Hey, how many of you wanna hear Jongin sing? Come on, Jongin. Any song you want.”
“Oh, I couldn’t, I’m shy,” Jongin lies, but the old farts are all looking at him now. Shit, some of them are smiling at him in a way that makes him want to cry. “Okay, one song.”
He reluctantly joins Baekhyun in front and gives the small crowd a once-over. It’s like an audience where everybody Is your proud parent. There’s this one man of about 75 in a Hawaiian shirt who Jongin thinks is probably gay; he sees the way Jongin and Baekhyun look at each other and smiles knowingly. “Listen, can you feel it? My heart is racing…”
“My heart be breakin’,” Baekhyun sings back with a smile, joining Jongin in the song’s dance.
Jongin is glad he gets to do this here, because if Sehun ever found out that Jongin kind of liked EXO sometimes, he’d probably disown him.
Dancing was the easy part; Jongin’s been doing it since he learned how to walk, and he’s got to be doing something right if he can bag more than one solo for competition season year after year without his parents paying off his dance teacher. The hard part is how to keep on singing and dancing and not burst into tears while all these people watch him like he’s their favorite son in the whole wide world.
He’s in a daze, and he’s not sure what happens after the song ends. All he knows is that he for some weird reason is walking toward Probably Gay Old Guy while Baekhyun starts on another kpop song. Jongin gingerly sits down on the empty chair next to the old man.
“So, what excuse have you been telling yourself?” the man asks nodding his head towards Jongin. “’Just a phase,’ or ‘It’s nothing serious’?”
“With who, Baekhyun? Nothing. He dragged me along for moral support.” Jongin picks at a piece of nonexistent lint on his jeans.
“Never would’ve pegged you for a ‘Not that kind of thing’ type. Interesting.”
“I mean it. He’s, like, locked at the knees, and we’re so not compatible on any lever at all.”
“Okay. We can both pretend that you believe that.” The man looks out the window. “Lovely weather we’re having.”
Jongin has never been this bad at keeping up conversations with strangers before. He twiddles his thumbs, listening to Baekhyun’s voice.
“I’m Heechul, by the way.”
“I’m Jongin.” He bites his lip. “And okay, I do have an excuse. I’m an ‘It’s never gonna go anywhere’ type.”
Heechul pats him on the back. Jongin can’t remember the last time anyone patted him on the back. “You’d be wrong, though.”
“How do you know?”
"I'm an old man. Old people know shit."
Jongin shakes his head. “Sorry. I’m a moron.”
“We all were, kid,” Heechul says simply. “You sick of hearing the phrase ‘I used to be just like you’ yet?”
“Most adults would be extremely embarrassed to admit that they used to be just like me.”
“You haven’t met enough adults.” He grins. “So, I used to be just like you, and despite my best efforts at being an asshole, I ended up staying with the same guy for 40 years.”
“How did that happen?”
"I got sick of making excuses. If you're struggling against something and you can only defend yourself with 'it's just the way I am,' then maybe you have to rethink that."
If all of Jongin’s teachers were more like Heechul, maybe he wouldn’t hate school so much.
"And man, I hope when you get to be my age, you'll look at pictures of yourself in this decade and go, 'Red hair? What the fuck was I thinking?'" Heechul laughs.
They’re drowned out by the applause. Baekhyun gets up from the bench and heads over to where Jongin and Heechul are.
“Any other advice for me?” Jongin asks quickly, desperate for a little more wisdom before he leaves.
“I don’t think you need advice, kid. You already know. It’s what you do with the knowledge that’s your problem.”
Jongin nods and stands up.
“Oh wait, one more thing,” Heechul says.
“Yeah?”
“Use a condom. And wash your balls.”
Heechul only barely misses Jongin’s attempt to smack his arm.
“Having fun?” Baekhyun asks once he reaches their corner.
“Good show, man,” Heechul says. “I like your friend here.”
“I do, too.” Baekhyun nods. Jongin thinks he can see his cheeks turn the slightest shade of pink.
“Aaaaaaaand we’re going now.” Jongin steers Baekhyun towards the exit before Heechul can say anything that might give him away. Over his shoulder, he sees Heechul mouth Wash your balls. Jongin makes sure the nurses aren’t looking before he flips him the bird.
“So that was cool. I like doing charity.”
Baekhyun laughs, pressing his forehead against the car window. “Just because I’m not from the city doesn’t mean I’m dumb and naïve. It only means that I’m not from the city.”
“What? I had fun! Older people are awesome.”
“Name one person you met there, aside from Heechul.”
Jongin bites his lip. “Fine, I still hate the smell of Preparation H in the morning,” Jongin sighs. “But it was pretty badass dancing to EXO for a crowd of fossils.”
“Badass is my middle name.” Baekhyun beams. “And you’ve gotta keep it fresh.” He glances sideways at Jongin. “I didn’t know you could sing and dance.”
“It didn’t come up? Everybody loves singing and dancing.”
“Yeah, but with you it’s really something. It’s like you became a different person, kind of. You looked happy.”
Jongin’s grip tightens on the steering wheel. “I’m perfectly happy.”
“You know what I mean.”
He does, but he can’t look Baekhyun in the eye. “If you know about Jongin’s Secret Life at small hidden cafes you might as well know everything,” he sighs, turning the volume down on the radio. “I dance competitively. Which is not a huge revelation, since I compete every year and even participate in the school plays, but I don’t think anyone ever cared enough to know that performing is the only thing I think about when I get up in the morning and before I go to bed. Maybe not so much the second part since I usually have, um, company, but you’ve probably figured that out by now.”=
“Why do you sound so sad when you talk about performing? You live in the city, your family is rolling in money, you’re amazing at dancing, your voice is really nice too, and you’re good looking on top of that. You’re all set.”
“Except for the fact that I have to finish studying at St. Joseph’s, get into Hanyang University, graduate, and work for my dad’s bank? I’m definitely all set, but not like that. Even if I pursued a career in dance, try to join a ballet company even, nobody would give a shit, least of all my parents. Ballet companies wouldn’t give a shit about me either; there are tons of guys younger, and more talented than I am. It’s a hobby. A huge hobby that I’m extremely passionate about, but that’s all it is.”
Baekhyun stares until Jongin is forced to look at him. Seoul afternoon traffic can be so inconvenient. “If you could see the way you looked - glowed - this afternoon while you were performing, I don’t know why you’d ever want to waste your time doing anything else.”
“Welcome to the real world,” Jongin says. “Where ‘living your dream’ only exists on reality TV.”
“The real world sucks,” Baekhyun declares.
“Tell me about it.”
“But I’d expect you more than anyone to stick it to the real world.” Baekhyun shakes his head. “Kim Jongin, conformist.”
“Byun Baekhyun, holier-than-thou special snowflake.”
“Hey, I call ‘em as I see ‘em. I’m telling you that you have a dream, Jongin, and unlike most people, you’re actually lucky enough to have everything you need to make it happen. If you want to ignore that, well. Your call. I’m sure the world of finance is very inspiring.” Baekhyun turns the volume back up.
The traffic clears once they’re past the intersection. They go almost a mile without talking, no sound except the hum of the engine and some new girl group on the radio.
“I could start small, I guess,” Jongin finally says, voice low and tentative. “Like I don’t know, performing at the nursing home once a month?”
Baekhyun nods. “Next time, we can do that one song…how does it go? Oh-oh-oh-oh Oppa Gangnam style”
It’s impossible for Jongin to hold the laughter down. “Oh my god, are you singing me a Psy hit? You do know the way to my heart”
Baekhyun bobs his head as he sings, grinning all the while. “Ehhhhhhhhh Sexy Ladyy~”
part three