Thresholds
Thresholds
PG13; SHINee-Jongkey; Angst; oldfloors
The little kid looks up from his cranberry juice at them and looks back down again, and Jonghyun feels a little funny.
note no idea why i wrote jongkey, but i hope it did it justice! more about friendship than anything else. the ending is a little wtf though. this took me forever to finish WHERE ARE MY MUSES
Thresholds
This door, I daren’t unlock
for fear of what I leave behind while I enter.
Jonghyun's never had to consider it. Kibum has always been his best friend, even if he sometimes thinks they are far too alike-but mostly he prefers it that way. "I love you, okay?" He looks at Kibum and scoffs. "I love your mom." He gets smacked upside the head and he can't help but laugh and laugh and love.
"I’m daring you," he says. Being a sport in front of Kibum has always been a challenge for Jonghyun, because the boy’s always been vivacious (some people say he’s obnoxious, and sometimes Jonghyun agrees). "It’s stupid. I’m not doing it," Kibum rolls his eyes and mouths ‘chicken’ over and over until Jonghyun finally cracks and asks, "alright, fine you win. Which one?"
Kibum points to two people, and Jonghyun thinks he probably means the little kid who’s sitting with this tall kid.
Jonghyun saunters over to their table in the most epicene manner it’s ridiculous, he feels like a clown. Kibum’s laughing so hard he can’t breathe in the back and Jonghyun tries not to think of how he’s going to live this down. He lets all his dignity fall away when he asks for a number armed with a pen and a coffee stained napkin and a pleading look (he’s not sure why he has that look on, but whatever to prove himself). The little kid shakes his head, his eyes a little wide and his lips pink and the tall one looking at him like he’s got a disease.
"Nevermind," Jonghyun turns around sharply and tries not to crumble in embarrassment, seats himself beside Kibum who’s red faced with laughter and waits for the ten that Kibum now owes him.
Jonghyun lifts an eyebrow at Kibum who insists that they return to the exact same Starbucks they visited the day before. "No more dares, okay?" Kibum shakes his head and pulls Jonghyun along past the heavy glass doors and makes to sit besides those two again. The little kid looks up from his cranberry juice at them and looks back down again, and Jonghyun feels a little funny.
Okay, maybe a lot funny.
Funny.
It takes a while, far too long in fact, for Jonghyun to finally realise how blind he's been. Five days of returning to the same Starbucks and sitting at the same table and Kibum insisting that he gets the seat that's closest to their table. Kibum's eyes, once he bothers to look, are always darting to the tall guy and back again, watching-waiting for something. Jonghyun spells it out to Kibum on his phone. "You like him, don't you?" Kibum gives him this look and asks who like it isn't obvious. "The tall one, of course. Don't act like you don't know what I'm talking about, Kibum." He continues to give Jonghyun this look and he doesn't understand.
Kibum rolls his eyes. "Don't be ridiculous Jonghyun. And stop texting me. We're right across each other."
A few days later it hits him. It's the little kid. That little kid with enough life in his eyes to cause two grown boys the same amount of queasiness.
The little kid makes Kibum feel funny too.
"His name is Taemin," Kibum tells him one day while they're on the bus home from school. Jonghyun bites his lip, just in case the truth slips that he thinks Kibum knows too much and he wants Kibum to stop trying-wants Kibum to stop feeling exactly what he's feeling, even if he isn't so sure what that feeling is himself. "How'd you get that out of him?" Kibum blushes (and since when does that brazen cheek blush, Jonghyun wonders) and tells him that he overheard that tall guy calling for him before they left.
"I know you like him, so i hung back to get his name at least." Jonghyun doesn't think himself that clueless, and he knows Kibum doesn't really care about his love life enough to do him a favour like that. And the only other explanation is that he's trying to cover up.
"Why are you doing this, Kim Kibum?"
"Don't be ridiculous. I want to see you happy."
A few more days (two to be exact) is what it takes for the two pairs of best friends to finally get talking. The tall one, named Minho, is usually the only one with his head straight on during their brief, trivial conversations about the weather and school and how the butter in the packets that Starbucks provides is slowly diminishing. Both Kibum and Jonghyun talk with forced laughs and nervous throat clearings and the little kid, named Taemin talks with his eyes at the bottom of his daily cup of cranberry juice.
"Odd how we've never bumped into each other, being in the same school and all," Kibum spins his half empty cup of coffee in his hands as he tries to fill in the empty gaps in the conversation. "You'd think I'd notice Taemin or something-somewhere." Jonghyun cuts through the awkwardness with "or Minho, you know, because he's so tall. Right, Kibum?"
"Sure," Jonghyun wants to cry at how obvious it is that Kibum's trying to hide how he stares and stares at Taemin, but he doesn't say anything because Kibum probably thinks the same thing about him.
Jonghyun wonders who decided it would be funny to give best friends parallel frequencies.
"So, truth or dare, huh," Minho taps his chin.
"Yea."
"I dare one of you,"-Jonghyun gulps-"to kiss Taemin."
Jonghyun thinks it's maybe a little too early for them to be playing truth or dare, because Minho doesn't really know them all that well, but perhaps Minho has unusually thick skin. Either that or Minho's just in it for the entertainment, because he can see the heat that's brewing in both their chests-the blood that swells their lips at the mere thought.
And before he knows it lips meet, teeth clash, tongues dart and dash and slide and it's all pretty fucking horrible because well, it's not everyday you watch your best friend making out with the person of your current affection. The person who tells you things about himself like the fact that he loves to dance (and suddenly so do you). The person Kibum's got his arms around right now, right in the middle of the coffeehouse with Minho watching and egging them on and Jonghyun feels strangely like he's about to cry.
He clears his throat-"Kibum, this is a public place, remember?"
"Right,"-Kibum wipes the slippery Taemin off the corner of his mouth-"what a dare, Minho. What a dare."
Jonghyun takes it outside with Kibum, and while he's shoving him and asking him what the fuck was that about and he's got hot tears in his eyes and Kibum defiantly tells him it's his own fault for being too slow and that it was only a dare-somewhere between all that he wonders when he started loving a little kid more than he loves his best friend.
Jonghyun steps into the school's one and only dance studio where he's certain he'll find Taemin. It's cold and the mirrors are wide, and Taemin is lying on the floor, music blaring from his radio. The bass shakes the floorboards as the song continues, and Jonghyun watches as Taemin rolls over and meets his eyes.
He starts to say Kibum Hyung!, but then his eyes turn shy again when he realises it's not Kibum but his twin, Jonghyun, in a sweat shirt and jeans and a guarded smile.
"Yea, it's just me."
Taemin's lips brim with contained happiness, and Jonghyun for the life of him can't figure out why-"Hello Hyung."
Jonghyun moves closer and sits beside Taemin who's just sat up and they lean against the mirrors and sigh. Taemin turns the music down and looks at Jonghyun.
"Do you want to play again?"
Jonghyun thinks this little kid is much too bold-"Sure."
"Is Kibum Hyung your best friend?"
At first, the question doesn't seem like much. Of course, Kibum is his best friend. Of course, they need each other to survive. Of course they'll start talking again.
And then the weight of the question seems a little too much to bear.
Taemin pulls Jonghyun in for a kiss. His lips are supple and pink like that very first day, and Jonghyun's head feels heavy and light at the same time, hands cold but sweaty, grabbing the sides of Taemin's face and the only apt word to describe himself is melting.
It's nothing like his first kiss at all.
(Kibum makes a suggestion, and Jonghyun can't see how it'll hurt. The best part about it is that even if someone finds out, they can blame it on being young and stupid and curious. Which, Kibum reminds him, actually is the truth anyways. The nervousness comes in waves, the first wave when they're holding hands in the tiny closet. The second when they're inches apart.
And third when their lips meet. The last wave is tidal.
"This is wrong."-Jonghyun falls to the floor and cries.)
"I know you made out with Taemin, Jonghyun,"-Kibum isn't exactly angry, but he doesn't seem particularly happy, either. Jonghyun looks down and doesn't say anything because it isn't a lie-all that escapes him is a strangled sound of yea, kinda. "Why? God, Jonghyun. Why?"
"Well why did you give me painfully high hopes in the first place only to shoot them down when you knew very well how I felt about him?"
"You snooze you"-Jonghyun's captured his lips mid-sentence and it takes all of him to grab Kibum against the wall and continue. He pulls away before Kibum can taste the bile in his mouth.
"Changed your mind, then?"-the thing about Kibum is that he enjoys any sort of attention, even attention from someone like Jonghyun who is pretty much his brother. Without a glance back, Jonghyun starts the trip to his next class and ignores Kibum as he calls after him.
Jonghyun decides to talk to Kibum again about a week later. Kibum's got the day off school, and Jonghyun's decided that friendship is way more important that school.
Maybe even more important than a crush.
They meet at starbucks.
"Shall we talk?"
"Sure, what's on your mind?"
"I was just thinking, we should put all this shit behind us. We're better than that, right?" Kibum looks up at him, smiling weakly. Jonghyun knows him well enough to know that he's sorry, so he tries to look apologetic as well, just to be fair. It's a little sad that Jonghyun has to keep his distance this time. He wants more than anything to give Kibum a hug.
"We were never supposed to get so tangled, you know," Kibum laughs softly and taps his cup gently against the table. "I've missed you."
"Of course I know," Jonghyun averts his eyes.
"And?"
"And I've missed you too?"
They warm up to each other again quickly, and Jonghyun doesn't hesitate when Kibum invites him over for lunch. They discuss Taemin like mature adults over caramel toffees, and Jonghyun secretly knows that Kibum doesn't have to heart to give Taemin up (but he'll keep that a secret, just to try and spare Jonghyun's feelings).
Then they decide, for now at least, to hell with boys, you're the only boy for me.
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PG13; SHINee-Jongkey; Angst; oldfloors
The little kid looks up from his cranberry juice at them and looks back down again, and Jonghyun feels a little funny.
note no idea why i wrote jongkey, but i hope it did it justice! more about friendship than anything else. the ending is a little wtf though. this took me forever to finish WHERE ARE MY MUSES
Thresholds
This door, I daren’t unlock
for fear of what I leave behind while I enter.
Jonghyun's never had to consider it. Kibum has always been his best friend, even if he sometimes thinks they are far too alike-but mostly he prefers it that way. "I love you, okay?" He looks at Kibum and scoffs. "I love your mom." He gets smacked upside the head and he can't help but laugh and laugh and love.
"I’m daring you," he says. Being a sport in front of Kibum has always been a challenge for Jonghyun, because the boy’s always been vivacious (some people say he’s obnoxious, and sometimes Jonghyun agrees). "It’s stupid. I’m not doing it," Kibum rolls his eyes and mouths ‘chicken’ over and over until Jonghyun finally cracks and asks, "alright, fine you win. Which one?"
Kibum points to two people, and Jonghyun thinks he probably means the little kid who’s sitting with this tall kid.
Jonghyun saunters over to their table in the most epicene manner it’s ridiculous, he feels like a clown. Kibum’s laughing so hard he can’t breathe in the back and Jonghyun tries not to think of how he’s going to live this down. He lets all his dignity fall away when he asks for a number armed with a pen and a coffee stained napkin and a pleading look (he’s not sure why he has that look on, but whatever to prove himself). The little kid shakes his head, his eyes a little wide and his lips pink and the tall one looking at him like he’s got a disease.
"Nevermind," Jonghyun turns around sharply and tries not to crumble in embarrassment, seats himself beside Kibum who’s red faced with laughter and waits for the ten that Kibum now owes him.
Jonghyun lifts an eyebrow at Kibum who insists that they return to the exact same Starbucks they visited the day before. "No more dares, okay?" Kibum shakes his head and pulls Jonghyun along past the heavy glass doors and makes to sit besides those two again. The little kid looks up from his cranberry juice at them and looks back down again, and Jonghyun feels a little funny.
Okay, maybe a lot funny.
Funny.
It takes a while, far too long in fact, for Jonghyun to finally realise how blind he's been. Five days of returning to the same Starbucks and sitting at the same table and Kibum insisting that he gets the seat that's closest to their table. Kibum's eyes, once he bothers to look, are always darting to the tall guy and back again, watching-waiting for something. Jonghyun spells it out to Kibum on his phone. "You like him, don't you?" Kibum gives him this look and asks who like it isn't obvious. "The tall one, of course. Don't act like you don't know what I'm talking about, Kibum." He continues to give Jonghyun this look and he doesn't understand.
Kibum rolls his eyes. "Don't be ridiculous Jonghyun. And stop texting me. We're right across each other."
A few days later it hits him. It's the little kid. That little kid with enough life in his eyes to cause two grown boys the same amount of queasiness.
The little kid makes Kibum feel funny too.
"His name is Taemin," Kibum tells him one day while they're on the bus home from school. Jonghyun bites his lip, just in case the truth slips that he thinks Kibum knows too much and he wants Kibum to stop trying-wants Kibum to stop feeling exactly what he's feeling, even if he isn't so sure what that feeling is himself. "How'd you get that out of him?" Kibum blushes (and since when does that brazen cheek blush, Jonghyun wonders) and tells him that he overheard that tall guy calling for him before they left.
"I know you like him, so i hung back to get his name at least." Jonghyun doesn't think himself that clueless, and he knows Kibum doesn't really care about his love life enough to do him a favour like that. And the only other explanation is that he's trying to cover up.
"Why are you doing this, Kim Kibum?"
"Don't be ridiculous. I want to see you happy."
A few more days (two to be exact) is what it takes for the two pairs of best friends to finally get talking. The tall one, named Minho, is usually the only one with his head straight on during their brief, trivial conversations about the weather and school and how the butter in the packets that Starbucks provides is slowly diminishing. Both Kibum and Jonghyun talk with forced laughs and nervous throat clearings and the little kid, named Taemin talks with his eyes at the bottom of his daily cup of cranberry juice.
"Odd how we've never bumped into each other, being in the same school and all," Kibum spins his half empty cup of coffee in his hands as he tries to fill in the empty gaps in the conversation. "You'd think I'd notice Taemin or something-somewhere." Jonghyun cuts through the awkwardness with "or Minho, you know, because he's so tall. Right, Kibum?"
"Sure," Jonghyun wants to cry at how obvious it is that Kibum's trying to hide how he stares and stares at Taemin, but he doesn't say anything because Kibum probably thinks the same thing about him.
Jonghyun wonders who decided it would be funny to give best friends parallel frequencies.
"So, truth or dare, huh," Minho taps his chin.
"Yea."
"I dare one of you,"-Jonghyun gulps-"to kiss Taemin."
Jonghyun thinks it's maybe a little too early for them to be playing truth or dare, because Minho doesn't really know them all that well, but perhaps Minho has unusually thick skin. Either that or Minho's just in it for the entertainment, because he can see the heat that's brewing in both their chests-the blood that swells their lips at the mere thought.
And before he knows it lips meet, teeth clash, tongues dart and dash and slide and it's all pretty fucking horrible because well, it's not everyday you watch your best friend making out with the person of your current affection. The person who tells you things about himself like the fact that he loves to dance (and suddenly so do you). The person Kibum's got his arms around right now, right in the middle of the coffeehouse with Minho watching and egging them on and Jonghyun feels strangely like he's about to cry.
He clears his throat-"Kibum, this is a public place, remember?"
"Right,"-Kibum wipes the slippery Taemin off the corner of his mouth-"what a dare, Minho. What a dare."
Jonghyun takes it outside with Kibum, and while he's shoving him and asking him what the fuck was that about and he's got hot tears in his eyes and Kibum defiantly tells him it's his own fault for being too slow and that it was only a dare-somewhere between all that he wonders when he started loving a little kid more than he loves his best friend.
Jonghyun steps into the school's one and only dance studio where he's certain he'll find Taemin. It's cold and the mirrors are wide, and Taemin is lying on the floor, music blaring from his radio. The bass shakes the floorboards as the song continues, and Jonghyun watches as Taemin rolls over and meets his eyes.
He starts to say Kibum Hyung!, but then his eyes turn shy again when he realises it's not Kibum but his twin, Jonghyun, in a sweat shirt and jeans and a guarded smile.
"Yea, it's just me."
Taemin's lips brim with contained happiness, and Jonghyun for the life of him can't figure out why-"Hello Hyung."
Jonghyun moves closer and sits beside Taemin who's just sat up and they lean against the mirrors and sigh. Taemin turns the music down and looks at Jonghyun.
"Do you want to play again?"
Jonghyun thinks this little kid is much too bold-"Sure."
"Is Kibum Hyung your best friend?"
At first, the question doesn't seem like much. Of course, Kibum is his best friend. Of course, they need each other to survive. Of course they'll start talking again.
And then the weight of the question seems a little too much to bear.
Taemin pulls Jonghyun in for a kiss. His lips are supple and pink like that very first day, and Jonghyun's head feels heavy and light at the same time, hands cold but sweaty, grabbing the sides of Taemin's face and the only apt word to describe himself is melting.
It's nothing like his first kiss at all.
(Kibum makes a suggestion, and Jonghyun can't see how it'll hurt. The best part about it is that even if someone finds out, they can blame it on being young and stupid and curious. Which, Kibum reminds him, actually is the truth anyways. The nervousness comes in waves, the first wave when they're holding hands in the tiny closet. The second when they're inches apart.
And third when their lips meet. The last wave is tidal.
"This is wrong."-Jonghyun falls to the floor and cries.)
"I know you made out with Taemin, Jonghyun,"-Kibum isn't exactly angry, but he doesn't seem particularly happy, either. Jonghyun looks down and doesn't say anything because it isn't a lie-all that escapes him is a strangled sound of yea, kinda. "Why? God, Jonghyun. Why?"
"Well why did you give me painfully high hopes in the first place only to shoot them down when you knew very well how I felt about him?"
"You snooze you"-Jonghyun's captured his lips mid-sentence and it takes all of him to grab Kibum against the wall and continue. He pulls away before Kibum can taste the bile in his mouth.
"Changed your mind, then?"-the thing about Kibum is that he enjoys any sort of attention, even attention from someone like Jonghyun who is pretty much his brother. Without a glance back, Jonghyun starts the trip to his next class and ignores Kibum as he calls after him.
Jonghyun decides to talk to Kibum again about a week later. Kibum's got the day off school, and Jonghyun's decided that friendship is way more important that school.
Maybe even more important than a crush.
They meet at starbucks.
"Shall we talk?"
"Sure, what's on your mind?"
"I was just thinking, we should put all this shit behind us. We're better than that, right?" Kibum looks up at him, smiling weakly. Jonghyun knows him well enough to know that he's sorry, so he tries to look apologetic as well, just to be fair. It's a little sad that Jonghyun has to keep his distance this time. He wants more than anything to give Kibum a hug.
"We were never supposed to get so tangled, you know," Kibum laughs softly and taps his cup gently against the table. "I've missed you."
"Of course I know," Jonghyun averts his eyes.
"And?"
"And I've missed you too?"
They warm up to each other again quickly, and Jonghyun doesn't hesitate when Kibum invites him over for lunch. They discuss Taemin like mature adults over caramel toffees, and Jonghyun secretly knows that Kibum doesn't have to heart to give Taemin up (but he'll keep that a secret, just to try and spare Jonghyun's feelings).
Then they decide, for now at least, to hell with boys, you're the only boy for me.
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