Super Junior AU; Kangteuk; Knight in Black Jeans
Title: Knight in Black Jeans
Fandom: Super Junior AU (High School)
Pairing: Kangin/Eeteuk
Word count: 4,151
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Kangteuk back story - He’s thin was all Kangin thought when he first met Eeteuk.
A/N: I think (and I’m not sure) that I have stolen that title from the Princess Diaries. IDK. I also don’t know why this back story proved to be really easy to write and the others are ridiculously hard.
And if the tenses are weird in this, that’s because my fingers kept trying to write this in the present tense, when I actually wanted it in the past tense.
He’s thin was all Kangin thought when he first met Eeteuk, but then he was only five years old, and as such had more important things to do on his first day at nursery, such as play with the sand or finger paint, and so he didn’t really give much attention to the boy who preferred to sit in the corner and read.
He’s weird was Kangin’s next thought, when he asked Eeteuk if he wanted to play together, and Eeteuk just gave him a wide eyed look of confusion. He had a book again, and Kangin thought that it was a very weird thing for a five year old to have, considering Kangin himself still relied on his mother to read to him every night, but his idea that Eeteuk was just pretending to understand the words was proven wrong when the boy started reading aloud. Kangin only asked him to play because no one else would play with the water with him, and he didn’t want to do it by himself.
Unfortunately, Eeteuk took this offer as something that it wasn’t, and refused to leave Kangin alone for the rest of the week. He followed him everywhere, never actually speaking, but just there, and it was enough to completely annoy Kangin, who was not a patient child. No one else wanted to play with Eeteuk because he didn’t talk, and soon Kangin didn’t want to play with Eeteuk. After the end of the week, he pushed Eeteuk over. Kangin, when he remembers it now, still feels guilty about it - Eeteuk did not give him the look of expected shock and anger, but instead the shock turned into hurt, with an element of acceptance, and he left Kangin alone, as Kangin wandered off to ask another boy to play football, and didn’t give it a second thought.
Even in elementary school, Eeteuk did not have friends. He was so quiet that no one quite wanted to speak to him; the girls thought he was snobby, the boys thought he was just plain simple. Kangin still didn’t give him a second glance - he still had more important things to think about, such as playing football at break time, or interesting food shapes in his lunch packed by his mother.
Still, he was sat next to Eeteuk for lessons, and it was hard to not become friends with a person who you were in close proximity for a year. To begin with, nothing changed. Eeteuk was quiet even in lessons; he did not join in when the other children laughed or misbehaved. He sat and watched it all with wide eyes, and he jumped whenever the teacher yelled. The first time he laughed, it was through Kangin’s doing; a comment about the teacher that was supposed to remain unheard was heard by Eeteuk’s impeccable hearing, and the boy started to laugh quietly. It was a weird laugh, but infectious, and Kangin laughed on hearing it, and Eeteuk laughed at him laughing, until they were practically weeping with laughter, and the teacher was asking them to calm down or she would be forced to make them leave the room. They did, eventually, grinning at each other, and Kangin didn’t mind Eeteuk so much after that.
Kangin had a homemade lunch every day, put there by his mother, and sometimes she cut the carrots and fruit into stars or other shapes, just because Kangin liked them like that. He always seemed to have too much, and before long he shared it with Eeteuk, who never asked for any but Kangin caught the furtive glances sent in his direction. Kangin does not like to waste things, and it made sense to give his leftovers to Eeteuk, who seemed to only ever have pieces of bread put together to make a sandwich, or shop-bought rice balls and crisps.
“You don’t eat enough,” said Kangin one day, when Eeteuk had absolutely nothing to eat, hands and lunch box empty when he walked into school. “That’s why you’re so thin.”
“I had a big breakfast,” said Eeteuk, with a red tint to his cheeks. “I wasn’t hungry enough to make a lunch,” but he accepted the half a sandwich that Kangin offered him, and didn’t say anything when Kangin placed the entire bag of crisps in his hands.
One day they did painting in their art lesson, and Eeteuk was given a tray of paint to carry over to the spot he shared with Kangin. Someone left their bag in the gap between the tables, and Eeteuk tripped over it, and the paint went flying, the lids not fastened properly, and the floor in front of the boy was splashed quite liberally with yellow and red and green. His own hands were covered in it, and he looked so shocked that Kangin almost got up to comfort him. The teacher didn’t spot that; she only saw the mess and colour, and she yelled at Eeteuk for being so careless.
Eeteuk didn’t like it when people yelled anyway: when the teacher yelled at him, he burst into silent tears, cowering on the floor, a truly pathetic sight that caused even the teacher to stop and stare, as he sobbed out apology after apology, terrified and holding his hands over his head. It took him seconds to calm down when the teacher told him to, and he just stared at her with scared eyes and he jumped whenever she spoke for the rest of the day, and he sat next to Kangin and didn’t join in the painting. The rest of the class poked fun at him for being a cry-baby; Kangin, somehow, became protective of him.
One day, when they were changing for a gym lesson, Kangin noticed a large bruise on Eeteuk’s leg, vivid and purple. He thought nothing of it, because Eeteuk had taken to joining in their games of football on a break time, although he fell down a lot and kicked the ball in the wrong direction, and no one quite wanted him on their team. Kangin accepted him every time, even though it meant that he invariably ended up losing. The next time they changed, there was a bruise on Eeteuk’s stomach, and Kangin pointed it out casually.
“You should be more careful,” he said. “We’ll have to work on your balance if you’re going to get hurt like that every time you play.”
Eeteuk laughed nervously, and quickly pulled on his t-shirt, and it wasn’t mentioned again.
When he invited Eeteuk over to his house for the first time, his mother had made cake for them, and bought the spicy noodles that Kangin had said that Eeteuk liked (Eeteuk did like them, but in reality Kangin had just said that so he could have them), and Eeteuk seemed to fall in love with her at first sight, staring after her with such wide-eyed wonder that she ended up forgiving him for anything, such as when the door slammed, announcing his father’s arrival home, and Eeteuk jumped and knocked a glass of orange juice over.
He said sorry over and over again, while Kangin’s mother just laughed at him and fetched a cloth to wipe it up, but he went strangely silent when Kangin’s father entered the room, a large man who ruffled Kangin’s hair with a laugh as a greeting, and tried to do the same to Eeteuk, who flinched away from him. Kangin’s father was rather put out by that, until his wife laughed at him, and handed Eeteuk a new glass of orange juice. Eeteuk ended up being polite almost to a fault to Kangin’s father, calling him sir and not looking him in the eyes, but every time he came over to Kangin’s, he followed his mother around like a little lost puppy. Kangin found it cute.
Eeteuk became a regular fixture at Kangin’s house, almost one with the family. Kangin’s little brother adored the boy because he would do things with him that Kangin wouldn’t - Eeteuk had no qualms about sitting down and watching baby television with the two year old, while Kangin sat at the kitchen table and moaned about losing his best friend to his brother. Eeteuk began to call Kangin’s mother, ‘mum’, and slowly he opened up to Kangin’s father.
Kangin never met Eeteuk’s father.
Although they made other friends over the years (Heechul is first, pulling Donghae, Kibum and Siwon along with him), the two remained best friends, there through thick and thin, as Eeteuk kept falling over and banging himself on the corner of tables and beds. He never seemed to put any weight on, even though he ate like it was his last meal whenever he came over to Kangin’s house - at first, his mother found it funny and cute, then she began to get worried. She never said anything to Kangin, but he didn’t miss the glances she gave Eeteuk when the two boys lay in front of the television together, snacking on biscuits and pieces of cut fruit, and she always made sure he had a large portion of food at any meal times.
By the time they went to Junior High, they were notorious, because Eeteuk is so nice that you could run circles around him if you could only get past his body guard Kangin. Plenty try it - Kangin is hauled in front of the head master plenty of times for hitting the people who try it. Eeteuk jumped whenever Kangin yelled at people for taking advantage, and before long Kangin stopped yelling and developed a quiet, angry tone of voice that is much scarier, but doesn’t seem to effect Eeteuk all that much. Soon, they stop taking advantage, partly because of Kangin, and partly because Eeteuk proves to be so nice that they ended up feeling guilty if they said something vaguely insulting when he couldn’t even hear it. Everyone ended up liking Eeteuk, but Eeteuk flinched away from touching anyone other than his group of trusted friends, and only let Kangin hang off his shoulders; no one commented on it. They figured that it was just another thing to add the long list of eccentric things that the eldest one did.
The truth came out eventually, as it is wont to do, one night in September when they were twelve, when the rain was hammering on the window and Kangin was very glad to be inside, even if it did mean that he had to do homework rather than kick a ball around. I wish Eeteuk could come over he thought as he chewed on the end of a pencil, and just then the door bell rang.
He used it as an excuse to get up; anything to distract himself from maths equations and things that hurt his head, and he peeped out from behind his mother as she opened the door to reveal a soaked Eeteuk, slumped in on himself as he hugged his arm close to his chest, bent at a funny angle, and Kangin realised that his shoulders were shaking from the force of tears that he can’t make out through the rain running down his face.
“I’m sorry,” sobbed Eeteuk, as the rain thundered down around him and his hair stuck to his face. “I didn’t know where else to go.”
“Good Lord,” said his mother, and pulled Eeteuk into the house, where he stood on the mat in the front porch and shivered, and dripped water onto the carpet, still holding his arm close. Kangin went up to him cautiously, and tried to put his arm around him, and he jolted the injured arm, and Eeteuk screamed and sobbed harder, and that brought Kangin’s father running, while his little brother stood with his head poking around the corner, asking a multitude of questions.
Kangin’s mother made Eeteuk sit down on the sofa while his father fetched some clothes of Kangin’s for him to change into, and Kangin sat down next to him and looked on, helpless, as the boy’s tears came harder, getting confused between hiccups of breath and apologies for just turning up. Kangin’s mother pulled him close to her chest and made soothing noises that didn’t do anything much except make Eeteuk cry even harder, until Kangin felt like he was about to start crying. His little brother is sent out of the room.
“What happened, dear?” His mother murmured, as Eeteuk showed no signs of calming down, even though now he was dry and dressed, and Kangin’s father was getting the car out for them to drive to the nearest doctors to get the arm looked at. “What happened?”
“Dad,” gasped Eeteuk, as Kangin took hold of his sleeve in an attempt at comforting him. “Dad did it.”
The arm was broken, and put into a cast that everyone in the school wanted to sign, but which Kangin got to draw on first, and then only the members of the group were allowed after that. Eeteuk said that he’d fallen off one of the swings while he was out with Kangin, and neither talked about what had actually happened. Eeteuk didn’t like to talk about it, and he’d shouted at Kangin when he tried to ask; no one was more shocked at Eeteuk for that, and he’d apologised immediately for it, and Kangin forgave him immediately and took the hint.
If it had been up to Kangin’s mother, she would not have allowed Eeteuk to return home, but Eeteuk just smiled sadly at her, said goodbye, and left, after promising to pay her for the hospital bills. She had cried herself at that; told her husband that they need to do something for the ‘poor boy’, and Kangin had slid down the wall outside and thought hard about it.
Over the years, Eeteuk returned again and again to Kangin’s house, sometimes through the day, sometimes at night, and each time Kangin’s mother made some hot chocolate and they drank it together, sitting at the kitchen bench, and when they went to bed, at some point Eeteuk climbed into Kangin’s bed with him, and Kangin hugged him close and Eeteuk buried his head in Kangin’s neck and slept with snuffling snores.
The secret was revealed in time, when it became too difficult to explain away all the bruises and various fractures, because Heechul just said dismissively Eeteuk’s clumsy but he’s not that clumsy, and Eeteuk had told everyone as Kangin put his arm around his shoulder comfortingly, and while everyone looked shocked, it was Ryeowook’s reaction that was most surprising. The boy burst into tears, and, unable to speak to explain why, he just lifted his shirt and revealed a sizeable bruise on his stomach, yellowing with age, and while everyone reeled from that, Eeteuk stood up and walked over and put his arms around the younger boy, and that was when Eeteuk became the mother of the group.
“We have to do something,” said Kangin’s mother late one night when they were sixteen, as Kangin listened outside the door while Eeteuk slept in his bed, recovering from a disjointed shoulder blade. “We can’t let him go on like this.”
“There’s nothing we can do,” said Kangin’s father, resigned. “We can’t go to the police without Eeteuk’s permission, and he won’t give it.”
“I’m going to move out,” said Kangin, pushing the door open and stepping into the room, much to the shock of his parents. “I’m going to move out and rent a flat and work and make Eeteuk move in with me.”
“Oh, Kangin,” said his mother, and hugged him close to her chest like he was still young enough to do that, but he didn’t struggle against it. “You’re too young,” she said. “What will you do for money?”
“I can get a job,” he told her, his fingers playing with the material of her shirt. “I want to work at Uncle’s garage. I can use my own bank account if things get desperate.”
It took three months for him to convince his parents to allow him to do it, and his mother didn’t cave until Eeteuk sprained his wrist trying to escape the house, and then caught such a bad cold on his way over that he was forced to spend three days out of school. It took another two weeks for Kangin to get Eeteuk to agree to it; Eeteuk had no sense of loyalty to his father like Ryeowook had, and he was more worried about money and food. They got a cheap flat, rented from a family friend of Kangin’s, and while it wasn’t (and still isn’t) the biggest or best flat in all of Seoul, Eeteuk liked to believe that it is. For Eeteuk, it was a safe house, which Kangin was all too happy to provide.
He liked to believe that he was being gallant when he let Eeteuk have the large room in their flat, but in reality it was just that he prefers to do his homework at the dining table anyway with music playing, and Eeteuk liked to do his homework privately. Kangin liked his small room anyway, for the short time that he used it, because it was filled with pictures of his family and he felt, sometimes, like he was still with them, and that helped to stop any feelings of being homesick. The sight of Eeteuk wearing an apron and attempting to learn to cook stopped him from being homesick too, because he was struck sometimes, as Eeteuk coughed and turned off the stove to stop whatever it was this time from being burnt, that he was, sort of, in a way, already home.
They had been there for a week when Eeteuk first crawled into Kangin’s bed with him, murmuring something about a nightmare, and Kangin knew that that was just an excuse, an excuse to have something to cuddle up to and comfort him. Eeteuk comforts everyone else in the group; Kangin comforts Eeteuk still. Eeteuk never did grow any bigger, was as bony then as he is now, as he was when Kangin first lay eyes on him, but Kangin never noticed the way Eeteuk’s elbows dug into his ribs, or the way the points of his hips poke into his stomach; all Kangin ever noticed was the breath against his neck and the hands that tangle in his hair and in his top and in his.
Eeteuk’s father died, and he was never mentioned in the flat by Eeteuk or Kangin, and still isn’t, and it’s only at Christmas that they venture down to the graves of Eeteuk’s father and mother and pay their respects. Eeteuk never grieved; or at least, he never grieved in public, but sometimes as Kangin wrapped his arms around his thin waist at night, there was a wet patch on his shoulder that Eeteuk never apologised for and that Kangin never spoke about; just pulled him closer and blinked back tears of his own.
“You’re avoiding me,” said Kangin one night when they had lived together for a month, as Eeteuk sat on the sofa, his eyes focused on the television. Kangin had been sitting next to him, but when he went to put his arm around his shoulders like they always used to do, Eeteuk had flinched and pulled away, backed into the corner of the chair like Kangin was some sort of monster. He’d been doing that a lot lately, and he barely spoke or looked at Kangin, and he locked himself in his room a lot, and always took showers after Kangin had, long showers that meant that when he came out, Kangin was already in bed. It worried Kangin - it seemed like that easy friendship that they had was gone, replaced by Eeteuk being fucking weird, and although Eeteuk was always fucking weird, this was weirder still.
He never came to Kangin’s bed anymore, and though Kangin wasn’t too sure as to why that was, he’d known that he hated it. He knew that much, at least. He missed the way that Eeteuk’s body was thin against his own, like it would break if he held it too hard, but like it would slip out of his grasp if he didn’t hold it hard enough; he liked the way Eeteuk buried his head in Kangin’s shoulder as he slept; he needed the sound of Eeteuk sleeping to be able to drift off to sleep himself. He wanted Eeteuk in his arms, and he didn’t know why.
“Scared of me?” He asked, as he sat back down and looked at Eeteuk hard, and the older boy looked back with a sad expression. “Or just annoyed at me?”
“Neither,” said Eeteuk softly, and placed his hand on Kangin’s cheek, cold and bony and fantastic. “In love with you.”
“Oh,” said Kangin in shock, and Eeteuk leant in and kissed him, his lips as soft as his voice, and something broke in the back of Kangin’s mind, and he kissed back, harder and needier, until suddenly Eeteuk was blinking up at him, pushed down on the sofa, arms around Kangin’s neck and Kangin’s hand sliding his shirt up.
Kangin moved into Eeteuk’s bedroom that very night and he thought it was lucky that he was given the bigger room anyway.
Eeteuk ended up being just as thin underneath his clothes; his legs were bony and tangled in Kangin’s confidently; his arms were long and skinny, and pulled Kangin close without hesitation; his mouth was rough and hot, and kissed Kangin like there was nothing else in the world. Kangin wrapped an arm around his waist tentatively - he is not so thin, not so sure of his own strength, and Eeteuk laughed against his mouth and whispered that he wasn’t going to break, you can hold harder, and Kangin did, until he bruised Eeteuk’s skin at the hips.
They got a regular visitor in the form of Ryeowook, who took the flat as exactly what it was meant to be: an escape, and while Eeteuk wore pants and slept with his back to Kangin when Ryeowook slept over, Kangin didn’t really mind, because Eeteuk still never wore a shirt, and it meant that Kangin could slip an arm over his hips and pull him close in a way that he couldn’t normally, when it was Eeteuk who had his arms over Kangin and his legs thrown over Kangin’s. He liked it.
They never shouted their relationship from the rooftops, because Eeteuk said that that would be stupid and if people worked it out then they worked it out. The group knew, the group who have been nicknamed the Flower Boys at school, and perhaps Kangin’s parents knew, knew by the way Eeteuk smiled and laughed and rested his head against Kangin’s shoulder whenever they went over, but Kangin never told them, because his mother smiled at him and that was enough.
They have been together longer than any of the others, so it’s not surprising that they’re called the mother and father of the group, and have been even before Heechul and Hankyung came up with all the nicknames. Still, Eeteuk has his moments, when he’s more of a child that anyone else; you don’t have to look far to find such moments. He interfered completely in the relationships of the others, imagining himself as a match-maker, and he was the one who told Eunhyuk that it would be a good idea to lock Kibum and Donghae in that cupboard together. Although Kangin never mentioned it, because he was likely to be hit by Heechul, Yehsung and Eeteuk, he still thinks that Eeteuk is incredibly hot whenever he acts like the child that he never really got to be - a prankster and a teaser and a dimpled smile that Kangin sees everyday and a unique laugh that is infectious and is heard more and more often.
“I wonder what the new boy will be like,” said Eeteuk the night before the boy was scheduled to arrive, as they lay in bed and tried to catch their breath (Kangin was having trouble, Eeteuk never struggled to find enough to talk).
“I don’t know,” said Kangin after a couple of minutes, when his breath had returned to something resembling normal, and Eeteuk muttered something about his heart being really, really fast as he rested his head on Kangin’s chest. “You just want something else to mother, that’s all, isn’t it?”
Eeteuk murmured something under his breath that Kangin couldn’t hear, and he felt Eeteuk smile against the skin of his chest, and he moved up and kissed him again, hard and strong and grinning, as his hand trailed a path down his stomach, and the last thing Kangin thought before oblivion was that Eeteuk would make a really good mother, and that he should never stop doing that.
Fandom: Super Junior AU (High School)
Pairing: Kangin/Eeteuk
Word count: 4,151
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Kangteuk back story - He’s thin was all Kangin thought when he first met Eeteuk.
A/N: I think (and I’m not sure) that I have stolen that title from the Princess Diaries. IDK. I also don’t know why this back story proved to be really easy to write and the others are ridiculously hard.
And if the tenses are weird in this, that’s because my fingers kept trying to write this in the present tense, when I actually wanted it in the past tense.
He’s thin was all Kangin thought when he first met Eeteuk, but then he was only five years old, and as such had more important things to do on his first day at nursery, such as play with the sand or finger paint, and so he didn’t really give much attention to the boy who preferred to sit in the corner and read.
He’s weird was Kangin’s next thought, when he asked Eeteuk if he wanted to play together, and Eeteuk just gave him a wide eyed look of confusion. He had a book again, and Kangin thought that it was a very weird thing for a five year old to have, considering Kangin himself still relied on his mother to read to him every night, but his idea that Eeteuk was just pretending to understand the words was proven wrong when the boy started reading aloud. Kangin only asked him to play because no one else would play with the water with him, and he didn’t want to do it by himself.
Unfortunately, Eeteuk took this offer as something that it wasn’t, and refused to leave Kangin alone for the rest of the week. He followed him everywhere, never actually speaking, but just there, and it was enough to completely annoy Kangin, who was not a patient child. No one else wanted to play with Eeteuk because he didn’t talk, and soon Kangin didn’t want to play with Eeteuk. After the end of the week, he pushed Eeteuk over. Kangin, when he remembers it now, still feels guilty about it - Eeteuk did not give him the look of expected shock and anger, but instead the shock turned into hurt, with an element of acceptance, and he left Kangin alone, as Kangin wandered off to ask another boy to play football, and didn’t give it a second thought.
Even in elementary school, Eeteuk did not have friends. He was so quiet that no one quite wanted to speak to him; the girls thought he was snobby, the boys thought he was just plain simple. Kangin still didn’t give him a second glance - he still had more important things to think about, such as playing football at break time, or interesting food shapes in his lunch packed by his mother.
Still, he was sat next to Eeteuk for lessons, and it was hard to not become friends with a person who you were in close proximity for a year. To begin with, nothing changed. Eeteuk was quiet even in lessons; he did not join in when the other children laughed or misbehaved. He sat and watched it all with wide eyes, and he jumped whenever the teacher yelled. The first time he laughed, it was through Kangin’s doing; a comment about the teacher that was supposed to remain unheard was heard by Eeteuk’s impeccable hearing, and the boy started to laugh quietly. It was a weird laugh, but infectious, and Kangin laughed on hearing it, and Eeteuk laughed at him laughing, until they were practically weeping with laughter, and the teacher was asking them to calm down or she would be forced to make them leave the room. They did, eventually, grinning at each other, and Kangin didn’t mind Eeteuk so much after that.
Kangin had a homemade lunch every day, put there by his mother, and sometimes she cut the carrots and fruit into stars or other shapes, just because Kangin liked them like that. He always seemed to have too much, and before long he shared it with Eeteuk, who never asked for any but Kangin caught the furtive glances sent in his direction. Kangin does not like to waste things, and it made sense to give his leftovers to Eeteuk, who seemed to only ever have pieces of bread put together to make a sandwich, or shop-bought rice balls and crisps.
“You don’t eat enough,” said Kangin one day, when Eeteuk had absolutely nothing to eat, hands and lunch box empty when he walked into school. “That’s why you’re so thin.”
“I had a big breakfast,” said Eeteuk, with a red tint to his cheeks. “I wasn’t hungry enough to make a lunch,” but he accepted the half a sandwich that Kangin offered him, and didn’t say anything when Kangin placed the entire bag of crisps in his hands.
One day they did painting in their art lesson, and Eeteuk was given a tray of paint to carry over to the spot he shared with Kangin. Someone left their bag in the gap between the tables, and Eeteuk tripped over it, and the paint went flying, the lids not fastened properly, and the floor in front of the boy was splashed quite liberally with yellow and red and green. His own hands were covered in it, and he looked so shocked that Kangin almost got up to comfort him. The teacher didn’t spot that; she only saw the mess and colour, and she yelled at Eeteuk for being so careless.
Eeteuk didn’t like it when people yelled anyway: when the teacher yelled at him, he burst into silent tears, cowering on the floor, a truly pathetic sight that caused even the teacher to stop and stare, as he sobbed out apology after apology, terrified and holding his hands over his head. It took him seconds to calm down when the teacher told him to, and he just stared at her with scared eyes and he jumped whenever she spoke for the rest of the day, and he sat next to Kangin and didn’t join in the painting. The rest of the class poked fun at him for being a cry-baby; Kangin, somehow, became protective of him.
One day, when they were changing for a gym lesson, Kangin noticed a large bruise on Eeteuk’s leg, vivid and purple. He thought nothing of it, because Eeteuk had taken to joining in their games of football on a break time, although he fell down a lot and kicked the ball in the wrong direction, and no one quite wanted him on their team. Kangin accepted him every time, even though it meant that he invariably ended up losing. The next time they changed, there was a bruise on Eeteuk’s stomach, and Kangin pointed it out casually.
“You should be more careful,” he said. “We’ll have to work on your balance if you’re going to get hurt like that every time you play.”
Eeteuk laughed nervously, and quickly pulled on his t-shirt, and it wasn’t mentioned again.
When he invited Eeteuk over to his house for the first time, his mother had made cake for them, and bought the spicy noodles that Kangin had said that Eeteuk liked (Eeteuk did like them, but in reality Kangin had just said that so he could have them), and Eeteuk seemed to fall in love with her at first sight, staring after her with such wide-eyed wonder that she ended up forgiving him for anything, such as when the door slammed, announcing his father’s arrival home, and Eeteuk jumped and knocked a glass of orange juice over.
He said sorry over and over again, while Kangin’s mother just laughed at him and fetched a cloth to wipe it up, but he went strangely silent when Kangin’s father entered the room, a large man who ruffled Kangin’s hair with a laugh as a greeting, and tried to do the same to Eeteuk, who flinched away from him. Kangin’s father was rather put out by that, until his wife laughed at him, and handed Eeteuk a new glass of orange juice. Eeteuk ended up being polite almost to a fault to Kangin’s father, calling him sir and not looking him in the eyes, but every time he came over to Kangin’s, he followed his mother around like a little lost puppy. Kangin found it cute.
Eeteuk became a regular fixture at Kangin’s house, almost one with the family. Kangin’s little brother adored the boy because he would do things with him that Kangin wouldn’t - Eeteuk had no qualms about sitting down and watching baby television with the two year old, while Kangin sat at the kitchen table and moaned about losing his best friend to his brother. Eeteuk began to call Kangin’s mother, ‘mum’, and slowly he opened up to Kangin’s father.
Kangin never met Eeteuk’s father.
Although they made other friends over the years (Heechul is first, pulling Donghae, Kibum and Siwon along with him), the two remained best friends, there through thick and thin, as Eeteuk kept falling over and banging himself on the corner of tables and beds. He never seemed to put any weight on, even though he ate like it was his last meal whenever he came over to Kangin’s house - at first, his mother found it funny and cute, then she began to get worried. She never said anything to Kangin, but he didn’t miss the glances she gave Eeteuk when the two boys lay in front of the television together, snacking on biscuits and pieces of cut fruit, and she always made sure he had a large portion of food at any meal times.
By the time they went to Junior High, they were notorious, because Eeteuk is so nice that you could run circles around him if you could only get past his body guard Kangin. Plenty try it - Kangin is hauled in front of the head master plenty of times for hitting the people who try it. Eeteuk jumped whenever Kangin yelled at people for taking advantage, and before long Kangin stopped yelling and developed a quiet, angry tone of voice that is much scarier, but doesn’t seem to effect Eeteuk all that much. Soon, they stop taking advantage, partly because of Kangin, and partly because Eeteuk proves to be so nice that they ended up feeling guilty if they said something vaguely insulting when he couldn’t even hear it. Everyone ended up liking Eeteuk, but Eeteuk flinched away from touching anyone other than his group of trusted friends, and only let Kangin hang off his shoulders; no one commented on it. They figured that it was just another thing to add the long list of eccentric things that the eldest one did.
The truth came out eventually, as it is wont to do, one night in September when they were twelve, when the rain was hammering on the window and Kangin was very glad to be inside, even if it did mean that he had to do homework rather than kick a ball around. I wish Eeteuk could come over he thought as he chewed on the end of a pencil, and just then the door bell rang.
He used it as an excuse to get up; anything to distract himself from maths equations and things that hurt his head, and he peeped out from behind his mother as she opened the door to reveal a soaked Eeteuk, slumped in on himself as he hugged his arm close to his chest, bent at a funny angle, and Kangin realised that his shoulders were shaking from the force of tears that he can’t make out through the rain running down his face.
“I’m sorry,” sobbed Eeteuk, as the rain thundered down around him and his hair stuck to his face. “I didn’t know where else to go.”
“Good Lord,” said his mother, and pulled Eeteuk into the house, where he stood on the mat in the front porch and shivered, and dripped water onto the carpet, still holding his arm close. Kangin went up to him cautiously, and tried to put his arm around him, and he jolted the injured arm, and Eeteuk screamed and sobbed harder, and that brought Kangin’s father running, while his little brother stood with his head poking around the corner, asking a multitude of questions.
Kangin’s mother made Eeteuk sit down on the sofa while his father fetched some clothes of Kangin’s for him to change into, and Kangin sat down next to him and looked on, helpless, as the boy’s tears came harder, getting confused between hiccups of breath and apologies for just turning up. Kangin’s mother pulled him close to her chest and made soothing noises that didn’t do anything much except make Eeteuk cry even harder, until Kangin felt like he was about to start crying. His little brother is sent out of the room.
“What happened, dear?” His mother murmured, as Eeteuk showed no signs of calming down, even though now he was dry and dressed, and Kangin’s father was getting the car out for them to drive to the nearest doctors to get the arm looked at. “What happened?”
“Dad,” gasped Eeteuk, as Kangin took hold of his sleeve in an attempt at comforting him. “Dad did it.”
The arm was broken, and put into a cast that everyone in the school wanted to sign, but which Kangin got to draw on first, and then only the members of the group were allowed after that. Eeteuk said that he’d fallen off one of the swings while he was out with Kangin, and neither talked about what had actually happened. Eeteuk didn’t like to talk about it, and he’d shouted at Kangin when he tried to ask; no one was more shocked at Eeteuk for that, and he’d apologised immediately for it, and Kangin forgave him immediately and took the hint.
If it had been up to Kangin’s mother, she would not have allowed Eeteuk to return home, but Eeteuk just smiled sadly at her, said goodbye, and left, after promising to pay her for the hospital bills. She had cried herself at that; told her husband that they need to do something for the ‘poor boy’, and Kangin had slid down the wall outside and thought hard about it.
Over the years, Eeteuk returned again and again to Kangin’s house, sometimes through the day, sometimes at night, and each time Kangin’s mother made some hot chocolate and they drank it together, sitting at the kitchen bench, and when they went to bed, at some point Eeteuk climbed into Kangin’s bed with him, and Kangin hugged him close and Eeteuk buried his head in Kangin’s neck and slept with snuffling snores.
The secret was revealed in time, when it became too difficult to explain away all the bruises and various fractures, because Heechul just said dismissively Eeteuk’s clumsy but he’s not that clumsy, and Eeteuk had told everyone as Kangin put his arm around his shoulder comfortingly, and while everyone looked shocked, it was Ryeowook’s reaction that was most surprising. The boy burst into tears, and, unable to speak to explain why, he just lifted his shirt and revealed a sizeable bruise on his stomach, yellowing with age, and while everyone reeled from that, Eeteuk stood up and walked over and put his arms around the younger boy, and that was when Eeteuk became the mother of the group.
“We have to do something,” said Kangin’s mother late one night when they were sixteen, as Kangin listened outside the door while Eeteuk slept in his bed, recovering from a disjointed shoulder blade. “We can’t let him go on like this.”
“There’s nothing we can do,” said Kangin’s father, resigned. “We can’t go to the police without Eeteuk’s permission, and he won’t give it.”
“I’m going to move out,” said Kangin, pushing the door open and stepping into the room, much to the shock of his parents. “I’m going to move out and rent a flat and work and make Eeteuk move in with me.”
“Oh, Kangin,” said his mother, and hugged him close to her chest like he was still young enough to do that, but he didn’t struggle against it. “You’re too young,” she said. “What will you do for money?”
“I can get a job,” he told her, his fingers playing with the material of her shirt. “I want to work at Uncle’s garage. I can use my own bank account if things get desperate.”
It took three months for him to convince his parents to allow him to do it, and his mother didn’t cave until Eeteuk sprained his wrist trying to escape the house, and then caught such a bad cold on his way over that he was forced to spend three days out of school. It took another two weeks for Kangin to get Eeteuk to agree to it; Eeteuk had no sense of loyalty to his father like Ryeowook had, and he was more worried about money and food. They got a cheap flat, rented from a family friend of Kangin’s, and while it wasn’t (and still isn’t) the biggest or best flat in all of Seoul, Eeteuk liked to believe that it is. For Eeteuk, it was a safe house, which Kangin was all too happy to provide.
He liked to believe that he was being gallant when he let Eeteuk have the large room in their flat, but in reality it was just that he prefers to do his homework at the dining table anyway with music playing, and Eeteuk liked to do his homework privately. Kangin liked his small room anyway, for the short time that he used it, because it was filled with pictures of his family and he felt, sometimes, like he was still with them, and that helped to stop any feelings of being homesick. The sight of Eeteuk wearing an apron and attempting to learn to cook stopped him from being homesick too, because he was struck sometimes, as Eeteuk coughed and turned off the stove to stop whatever it was this time from being burnt, that he was, sort of, in a way, already home.
They had been there for a week when Eeteuk first crawled into Kangin’s bed with him, murmuring something about a nightmare, and Kangin knew that that was just an excuse, an excuse to have something to cuddle up to and comfort him. Eeteuk comforts everyone else in the group; Kangin comforts Eeteuk still. Eeteuk never did grow any bigger, was as bony then as he is now, as he was when Kangin first lay eyes on him, but Kangin never noticed the way Eeteuk’s elbows dug into his ribs, or the way the points of his hips poke into his stomach; all Kangin ever noticed was the breath against his neck and the hands that tangle in his hair and in his top and in his.
Eeteuk’s father died, and he was never mentioned in the flat by Eeteuk or Kangin, and still isn’t, and it’s only at Christmas that they venture down to the graves of Eeteuk’s father and mother and pay their respects. Eeteuk never grieved; or at least, he never grieved in public, but sometimes as Kangin wrapped his arms around his thin waist at night, there was a wet patch on his shoulder that Eeteuk never apologised for and that Kangin never spoke about; just pulled him closer and blinked back tears of his own.
“You’re avoiding me,” said Kangin one night when they had lived together for a month, as Eeteuk sat on the sofa, his eyes focused on the television. Kangin had been sitting next to him, but when he went to put his arm around his shoulders like they always used to do, Eeteuk had flinched and pulled away, backed into the corner of the chair like Kangin was some sort of monster. He’d been doing that a lot lately, and he barely spoke or looked at Kangin, and he locked himself in his room a lot, and always took showers after Kangin had, long showers that meant that when he came out, Kangin was already in bed. It worried Kangin - it seemed like that easy friendship that they had was gone, replaced by Eeteuk being fucking weird, and although Eeteuk was always fucking weird, this was weirder still.
He never came to Kangin’s bed anymore, and though Kangin wasn’t too sure as to why that was, he’d known that he hated it. He knew that much, at least. He missed the way that Eeteuk’s body was thin against his own, like it would break if he held it too hard, but like it would slip out of his grasp if he didn’t hold it hard enough; he liked the way Eeteuk buried his head in Kangin’s shoulder as he slept; he needed the sound of Eeteuk sleeping to be able to drift off to sleep himself. He wanted Eeteuk in his arms, and he didn’t know why.
“Scared of me?” He asked, as he sat back down and looked at Eeteuk hard, and the older boy looked back with a sad expression. “Or just annoyed at me?”
“Neither,” said Eeteuk softly, and placed his hand on Kangin’s cheek, cold and bony and fantastic. “In love with you.”
“Oh,” said Kangin in shock, and Eeteuk leant in and kissed him, his lips as soft as his voice, and something broke in the back of Kangin’s mind, and he kissed back, harder and needier, until suddenly Eeteuk was blinking up at him, pushed down on the sofa, arms around Kangin’s neck and Kangin’s hand sliding his shirt up.
Kangin moved into Eeteuk’s bedroom that very night and he thought it was lucky that he was given the bigger room anyway.
Eeteuk ended up being just as thin underneath his clothes; his legs were bony and tangled in Kangin’s confidently; his arms were long and skinny, and pulled Kangin close without hesitation; his mouth was rough and hot, and kissed Kangin like there was nothing else in the world. Kangin wrapped an arm around his waist tentatively - he is not so thin, not so sure of his own strength, and Eeteuk laughed against his mouth and whispered that he wasn’t going to break, you can hold harder, and Kangin did, until he bruised Eeteuk’s skin at the hips.
They got a regular visitor in the form of Ryeowook, who took the flat as exactly what it was meant to be: an escape, and while Eeteuk wore pants and slept with his back to Kangin when Ryeowook slept over, Kangin didn’t really mind, because Eeteuk still never wore a shirt, and it meant that Kangin could slip an arm over his hips and pull him close in a way that he couldn’t normally, when it was Eeteuk who had his arms over Kangin and his legs thrown over Kangin’s. He liked it.
They never shouted their relationship from the rooftops, because Eeteuk said that that would be stupid and if people worked it out then they worked it out. The group knew, the group who have been nicknamed the Flower Boys at school, and perhaps Kangin’s parents knew, knew by the way Eeteuk smiled and laughed and rested his head against Kangin’s shoulder whenever they went over, but Kangin never told them, because his mother smiled at him and that was enough.
They have been together longer than any of the others, so it’s not surprising that they’re called the mother and father of the group, and have been even before Heechul and Hankyung came up with all the nicknames. Still, Eeteuk has his moments, when he’s more of a child that anyone else; you don’t have to look far to find such moments. He interfered completely in the relationships of the others, imagining himself as a match-maker, and he was the one who told Eunhyuk that it would be a good idea to lock Kibum and Donghae in that cupboard together. Although Kangin never mentioned it, because he was likely to be hit by Heechul, Yehsung and Eeteuk, he still thinks that Eeteuk is incredibly hot whenever he acts like the child that he never really got to be - a prankster and a teaser and a dimpled smile that Kangin sees everyday and a unique laugh that is infectious and is heard more and more often.
“I wonder what the new boy will be like,” said Eeteuk the night before the boy was scheduled to arrive, as they lay in bed and tried to catch their breath (Kangin was having trouble, Eeteuk never struggled to find enough to talk).
“I don’t know,” said Kangin after a couple of minutes, when his breath had returned to something resembling normal, and Eeteuk muttered something about his heart being really, really fast as he rested his head on Kangin’s chest. “You just want something else to mother, that’s all, isn’t it?”
Eeteuk murmured something under his breath that Kangin couldn’t hear, and he felt Eeteuk smile against the skin of his chest, and he moved up and kissed him again, hard and strong and grinning, as his hand trailed a path down his stomach, and the last thing Kangin thought before oblivion was that Eeteuk would make a really good mother, and that he should never stop doing that.