Super Junior AU; Kihae; Utterly Illogical
Title: Utterly Illogical
Fandom: Super Junior AU (High School)
Pairing: Kibum/Donghae
Word count: 4,601
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Kihae back story - Donghae was strange - this was a universal fact, and everyone accepted it.
A/N: I thought this was going to be incredibly difficult to write, and yet it was as easy as the Kangteuk one. I pretty much wrote the entire thing in a single day O_o
I hate having things written but being unable to post them.
Donghae was strange - this was a universal fact, and everyone accepted it, just like everyone accepted that Sungmin and Heechul had a slightly unhealthy fixation with the colour pink, and Eeteuk should not be allowed anywhere near anything with a motor. Donghae was eccentric and slightly mad - he was like that uncle that you loved the most when you were younger, and Kibum was fascinated when he was very young.
He had grown out of that, but only as far as he no longer wanted to copy everything that the older boy did. There was something decidedly brilliant about Donghae - he was a paradox. Everything that Kibum wasn’t, Donghae was - everything that Donghae wasn’t, Kibum was. To Kibum’s analytical mind, they probably shouldn’t have worked together, but Donghae’s always managed to throw him slight off kilter.
Kibum can’t remember when they first met; childhood friends always seem to have been there, Heechul and Siwon and Donghae, accepting him even though he was a year younger than them, playing with him even though they were able to go to the park by themselves when he wasn’t, talking to him even though they had their own friends at school that he didn’t know. He owes Heechul a lot, and Donghae and Siwon probably just as much. He knows now that he was not an easy child to get along with - they managed it.
Part of his personality as a child was an insistence that he was always right. He never cried or screamed or threw fits; he was perfectly calm about it, just sat there and repeated that you were wrong and he was right. He knew he was, you see, because he was obviously smarter than you. It wasn’t your fault, of course, but it was true nonetheless, and you should just accept that. Most of the other children his age hated him for this. Heechul just laughed snidely at him.
“Did you know there are aliens living on Mars?” Donghae asked brightly, looking at him earnestly.
“No there aren’t,” said Kibum scornfully. He might have only been four at the time, it’s hard to remember, but he does remember thinking that this boy must be completely dumb for thinking so. Kibum did not have time for stupid people back then.
“There are,” insisted Donghae, and no matter how many times Kibum told him that there weren’t, Donghae just smiled happily and chirped that there were. A turning point, perhaps, because here was someone who wasn’t going to back down either. Kibum had got his own way for so long that it was almost refreshing to be denied that right, to be told that he was wrong. The fact was that to Donghae, Kibum couldn’t be proven to be right, and therefore Donghae was right about the whole thing. Donghae’s logic made a lot more sense sometimes than Kibum’s own logic.
Donghae was the one that made Kibum laugh for the first time. Such a serious child, and then suddenly, he wasn’t - he laughed at something stupid that Donghae did, bright and happy, a strange sound even to his own ears. It had shocked him, almost, that bubble of emotion that couldn’t be clamped down no matter how hard he tried.
“Six years old and hasn’t even laughed,” sighed Heechul dramatically. “How absolutely tragic.” And Donghae just grinned at him, and spent the rest of the day coming up with new ways to make Kibum smile and laugh, and after a while it became a normal thing around Donghae - happiness made Donghae’s world continue turning, and who was Kibum to change that?
When Kibum was eight, he went away to America for a month with his family, to visit his aunt and uncle who had moved there. All he could think about while he was there was how boring it was without his friends; without them there to make him laugh, or to play with, days spent with his cousins who kept talking in English to each other, so that he couldn’t understand them whatsoever. It made him want to learn English, that scientific side of him figuring that that was the only way to have fun with them, the childish side of him just wanting to be accepted, anything to get revenge. Everything in America made him home-sick for Korea, so much so that the journey back made him excited in a way that his parents had never seen before, their usually calm son bouncing in his seat. Perhaps that was when they realised what his friends had done to him.
They all came to meet him, the entire group, minus Kyuhyun at that point of time, Heechul hanging back, acting as though he was totally uninterested in it all, while Eeteuk jokingly asked if he’d been fed at all in America, and Sungmin bounded around asking for his present. Donghae hugged him tightly, saying loudly that they had all missed him so much, especially him, and he should never, ever go away again. Kibum had happily gone to the park with them; allowed Donghae to hug him and pull him around, glad to just finally be home.
Just before Kyuhyun arrived at their school, Kibum decided that he wanted to be a doctor, after watching various television shows about hospitals. His parents encouraged him in his choice (he rather felt they simply wanted to be able to say their son was in the medical profession), and his friends laughed at him, good naturally, and told him to try his best.
“How like Kibum,” said Heechul with a smirk. “Ten years old and already he knows what he’s going to do as an adult.”
It was just like Kibum, he knew that. His mind didn’t allow him any rest, making and breaking a thousand things every second, analysing everything that he saw, putting people into categories and sections to make it easier to deal with them. The only people he couldn’t do that to were his group of friends; Heechul changed too much, Shindong jumped from point to point, Siwon remained too constantly in between everything to be anything. Donghae was the worst one of all - he wasn’t insane, like that man he saw on the subway, but neither was he normal, like the tall boy in his class. He wasn’t anything remotely like stupid, like that girl, but neither was he anything remotely like clever like that girl. He confused Kibum too much, happy and hyper and impossible.
And so Kibum gave up on him, and just accepted Donghae for what he was, an anomaly in a world of precise data. He never studied, but he got good grades. He liked to dance, but he liked to play football too. He encouraged Kibum in learning English, but he forbade him from ever going to another country ever again. He insisted that he didn’t like skin ship, but he touched everyone constantly. He was everything that Kibum shouldn’t have liked, but he made him laugh like no one else did.
The arrival of Kyuhyun managed to shake everything up - the orderly world that Kibum had fooled himself into believing existed became different, a new one to add to the mix, a new one to learn to adapt to - a new one that didn’t fit any moulds, his father bad but the boy good, an angelic face but sarcastic humour. Kibum had liked him. Donghae had liked him. Everyone had liked him.
The problem was that as the years passed, Sungmin fell in love, everyone saw that, and although Kyuhyun guarded his emotions much better, it was obvious that he felt the same way. In Kibum’s mind, boys did not fall in love with other boys. Heechul may wear skirts, and Sungmin might like fluffy animals, but that was just them. He was to grow up, get a job, marry a girl and have children; his parents had, why shouldn’t everyone else? It wasn’t homophobia that drove him to his thoughts, but thirteen year old ignorance and a belief in what was right. Sungmin wasn’t right, he thought.
He quickly got over that, watching as the two flirted with each other and fit together well. It was almost cute, he felt, watching as neither realised that the other liked them, watching as they darted past the issue and avoided the questions fired at them.
“I don’t like Kyuhyun,” said Sungmin with a blush.
“I don’t like Sungmin,” said Kyuhyun, a faint hint of sarcasm in his voice.
“I don’t like skin ship,” said Donghae, no matter how much the opposite was pointed out.
Kibum pretended to believe him, just like everyone else did, and so Donghae was able to hang all over everyone without being aware that it was just a little bit weird. Kibum wasn’t too keen on it, though, honestly and seriously, but he allowed Donghae to do whatever he wanted - he had known him for so long that it just seemed weird to not have Donghae there, arms hugging him close. It wasn’t strange, and it shouldn’t have caused his parents to look at him like that, but they did. Once, they sat him down and told him that he could talk to them about anything, his mother nodding encouragingly, his father apprehensive, and Kibum had sat there, totally confused. There wasn’t anything going on between him and Donghae. It was stupid to believe so.
Sometimes he hated his scientific approach to life, reading about things in text books and being interested in everything that he could learn. He read about puberty, read about hormones and urges and things like that, and couldn’t handle it when it came over him, slowly and surely. No book could prepare him for real life, no matter how much he tried. It became too much, Donghae’s arm over his shoulders, hands holding his own, hugs and innocent touches. By the time he was fourteen he pushed Donghae away and stopped him from doing anything. No more touching, no more anything, just awkward friendship and strange looks.
“Is something bothering you?” Siwon asked him once, as Donghae looked at him with puppy dog eyes, and Kibum had just looked at him like he was crazy and shook his head and avoided his eyes.
It wasn’t bothering him - it absolutely terrified him, that rush of blood to his face and other places as Donghae’s hand brushed over his chest and stomach and held him close. Sexual attraction sounded too clinical and cold; lust was too much, a word for adults, not teenagers. Love was stupid, a thing that didn’t exist in Kibum’s world of fact and theories; it was a word created to explain away desire and passion, not something real and concrete. You could not hold love; you could not prove something like that to be real. He believed in family ties and loyalty between friends, but not love between a man and a woman, or any variation thereof.
He clung to this even as Sungmin and Kyuhyun got together; he had clung to it when Eeteuk and Kangin had got together. He clung to it as Donghae threatened to turn it upside down, unwilling to take Kibum’s rejection lying down; more determined than ever to display his dislike for skin ship around him. He avoided Donghae; Donghae tried to hang around him that bit more and it became a vicious circle in which neither won.
Grow up, get married, have kids became the mantra that he chanted at night, when the feel of Donghae’s hand and the vision of his smile became too much, his hand slipping under the sheets to strip away another level of his childhood. It was perfectly normal, his text books told him, to have homosexual fantasies, but he knew differently, knew that it wasn’t normal to fantasise about one of his best friends like that. He was grown up for his age, but like a child when it came to this, like a kid who said he didn’t like girls - why would I like Donghae, that’s yucky. I don’t like Donghae.
“You’re in denial,” diagnosed Heechul, and frowned at him. “Though quite why, I’m unsure.”
“I’m not in denial,” said Kibum, pushing his glasses up his nose. “I really don’t like him like that.”
“Whenever you’re together, it’s unbelievable,” said Heechul, unable to let it go. “It’s like you’re oozing sexual tension.”
“Don’t you think you’re over exaggerating?” Kibum frowned at the older boy.
“No, he’s not,” said Sungmin. “It gets hard to breathe.”
“I think it’s cute,” said Eeteuk dreamily.
“Whatever, Romeo,” said Kangin, rolling his eyes.
“I don’t like Donghae,” said Kibum firmly, and Eunhyuk had looked at him closely and then grinned.
Kibum knew that they didn’t believe him at all, for all that he was fantastic at lying, so he threw himself into his studies, spent night after night in his room reading, anything to distract himself from the emotion that could possibly have been love, but he didn’t believe in that. He made great progress, the margin between him and the second in the class became that much bigger, until his parents were beaming at him and Kibum took their praise and returned to studying. He knew he didn’t have to do it, he knew that his natural inquisitive personality and intelligence meant he hardly ever needed to study, and he hated every second of it, but he hated that unsure rush of feelings for Donghae more.
Heechul made him go to Eeteuk’s place the March of his second year of middle school, when he was fifteen, when Donghae was set to leave for high school in the April. Kibum felt a perverse satisfaction from that thought, that soon he wouldn’t have to pretend, and he wouldn’t have to be around Donghae every day for so many hours. With time, it should wane. Emotions were in the here and now - absence makes the heart grow fonder was wrong, no matter what Ryeowook claimed. In a single month, he wouldn’t have to see Donghae very much for another year (excuses are easily made up) and he hated himself for feeling that way.
“Kibum, could you go get me a packet of paper towels, please?” Eeteuk was innocent in his request, asking for something not unusual, completely normal. “They’re in the cupboard in the hall.”
“Fine,” said Kibum and pushed himself up from the floor on the opposite side of the room from Donghae, and didn’t think anything of what he’d been asked to do, even as he was standing on his tip-toes in order to see if the strangely missing paper towels were on one of the uppermost shelves.
“Hey,” said Donghae, coming into the small cupboard, around the size of a toilet cubicle. Kibum froze, his back to him. “Eunhyuk wants a can of lemonade, can you see one up there?”
“No,” said Kibum, and winced at the harsh tone of his voice. He hadn’t meant for it to sound like that, and he knew that Donghae would be frowning, hurt, behind him, and so he didn’t turn around; screwed his eyes closed instead.
“Oh,” said Donghae lightly. “Oh, okay.” And then the door slammed shut, and there was the unmistakable click of the lock turning.
“What the - Eunhyuk?” Kibum turned around just as Donghae began to bang on the door loudly, trying to catch the attention of whoever was on the opposite side, and then he stopped as they heard laughter.
“Nice and cosy in there, I hope.” Heechul’s voice floated through the wood of the door, amused, as they heard Siwon protesting against something.
“Heechul? Come on, this isn’t funny,” protested Donghae. “Let us out.”
“No,” came Eunhyuk’s voice, laughter evident in it. “We won’t let you out until you make out.”
“That’s - that’s not funny, Eunhyuk,” shouted Donghae, sending a fearful glance over his shoulder at a confused Kibum. “You know I don’t - come on, Eunhyuk! He doesn’t - Eunhyuk!” But there was no reply, and after a minute of banging violently against the door, Donghae seemed to give up.
Donghae leant back against the door, as Kibum flattened himself into the corner, as far away as he could get. Donghae looked at him curiously in the darkness of the room, the light switch on the outside, not having been pressed. “Are you okay?” He asked. “I didn’t think you were claustrophobic or anything.”
“I’m not,” said Kibum bluntly. Donghae looked more closely.
“Hey,” he said after a minute, shoving his hands in his pockets and slumping down, “have I done something to upset you? You’ve been really weird lately. Like, I didn’t notice at first, but then…”
“You haven’t done anything,” said Kibum, still in that blunt tone of voice. Donghae tutted playfully.
“That’s what I mean,” he said. “You keep snapping at me.”
Kibum stayed silent. He wasn’t going to spill his feelings to anyone, least of all to the one that they were centered around. He would grow out of this, out of wanting to kiss Donghae, touch Donghae, out of being out of his mind with things that he didn’t want to understand. He needed Donghae away from him.
“Come on,” said Donghae, his voice soft in the gloom, Kibum just about able to make out of the line of his jaw. “We’re supposed to be friends, you can tell me.”
“I can’t be your friend,” said Kibum before he could stop himself. He closed his fists and dug his fingernails into his palm to keep himself focused, as Donghae stood up straight.
“Why?” He asked, and this was the first time that Kibum had ever heard him angry. “Why can’t you be my friend? What kind of a stupid thing is that to say?”
“I can’t be your friend,” repeated Kibum. “Not like this.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
It was the first time Donghae had ever sworn in front of him; gone was the easy going nature, gone were the grins and laughter, replaced by a tense jaw and folded arms. Kibum didn’t shrink away from it, but faced it head on instead. This was his punishment, this was his atonement for everything that he had done.
“I didn’t notice at first,” said Donghae, his voice too loud. “But you’re been really weird for absolutely ages. Just with me. Only me. And I don’t know what I’ve done. I don’t like that you’re pushing me away.” He took a step forward, and then another and another, until he was standing directly in front of Kibum. “You need to stop it. We’re friends,” and the way he said it suggested something more, something more akin to brothers.
Kibum would never know why he said it; perhaps the atmosphere got to him, made his mouth run away before his brain could filter what he said. He lost his head for a moment, Donghae standing so close in the darkness, only able to see the curve of his lips and angle of his shoulder.
“Hard to be friends with someone,” he said in a sarcastic voice, “when all you want to do is fuck them against a wall.”
“Oh.” Donghae’s exclamation of surprise was little more than a breath, but it made Kibum screw his eyes up and think fuck fuck fuck, as he realised what he had said and that there was no way he could take it back. It was out in the open now, much worse than as a secret, much worse to have nothing this way than through his own doing. There was no going back now, no laughing it off and saying that is not what I meant, at all, like in a poem that he had read for school, books failing him once again.
“Oh,” said Donghae again, and Kibum opened his eyes reluctantly. He had never been so happy to see that smile; that stupid smile that almost made him smile back, but he was unable to, holding his breath for whatever was about to come.
“Can you even have sex against a wall?” Donghae asked, reaching up and removing his glasses gently, as Kibum stared at him. “I mean, I imagine it would be pretty difficult. You’d keep losing your balance.”
“I really wouldn’t know,” said Kibum, stuttering slightly as Donghae’s fingers brushed his hair from his face, finger tips pushing into the sides of his hair, as he stepped up close and grinned at him.
“We should try it sometime,” he murmured, and then kissed him, softly to begin with, deepening as Kibum failed to grasp what was happening but figuring that he should go along with it anyway; his fingers twisting the hem of Donghae’s t-shirt; moaning as Donghae’s tongue slipped between his lips; his first kiss showing him that sexual attraction and lust and words written down couldn’t describe it. He didn’t know what he was doing; he didn’t care that Donghae didn’t know what he was doing either. It was sloppy and wet and he couldn’t see, a mixture of lost glasses and closed eyes.
“Can we - I don’t know,” mumbled Donghae against his lips, his hands sliding under his shirt and flattening against his stomach, cold and sudden and making Kibum gasp. “Is this too much? Just say if it is, I just really love you and I can’t-”
“Would you shut up?” Kibum kissed him again, shivering as Donghae’s fingertips pushed down under the waistband of his jeans, and then the door was being pulled open and he couldn’t deny it any longer; he couldn’t say I don’t like Donghae like that. He didn’t want to. Donghae held his hand throughout the inevitable taunts and insinuating comments. Kibum brushed them off with a few well placed sarcastic remarks; Donghae just grinned.
Their relationship was always sexual - they did not move as slow as Kyuhyun and Sungmin, or as carefully as Yehsung and Ryeowook. What was the point? Kibum had wasted a year already trying to ignore that consuming feeling, he didn’t want to wait any longer, and Donghae was happy to oblige. More than happy, in fact, taking it further when Kibum stopped, taking it further than Kibum had ever imagined.
But just because they slept together didn’t make it any less real, any more trivial than what the others shared. They simply knew what they wanted, and they were willing to get it. They went out on dates together, and sometimes they didn’t, and they talked about things, and sometimes they didn’t. They were friends first, lovers second.
Kibum’s parents realised at some point, without him having to say anything, and although they’d said he could talk about anything, Donghae was a mute point: they would not accept him. For his mother, it was because he was distracting him from his studies. For his father, it was because his son was gay. Grow up, get married and have kids, but now that was no longer in his grasp, the idea shoved away from him. He didn’t want that anymore.
In fact, Donghae didn’t distract him from his studies. Donghae encouraged him to do well, but made sure that he knew when to relax too. Kibum remained at the top of his class, as he always would do, through intelligence alone; he didn’t need to study to do that, and so if he goes out a bit more now, and if Donghae comes over a bit more now, well, that doesn’t make a difference, because his grades aren’t slipping, and he hasn’t lost touch of his dreams - there’s just something else to include in them now.
Once he’d claimed that he didn’t believe in love, different to Heechul who didn’t want it. A made up thing that didn’t exist he’d claimed, but Donghae was a mistake, an irregularity in his otherwise normal life, and so perhaps it made sense that he also broke the walls that Kibum had built up. He had broken down everything else, his heart was merely the last one, and unlike the sledgehammer approach that he had taken with everything else (smiling and laughing and crying), he slipped in slowly over the years, through a crack that he created for himself. His theories had never worked when it came to Donghae; how could he claim that all his felt was desire and things like that, when sometimes the urge to simply be around Donghae physically hurt? When kissing him was like breathing pure oxygen, freeing him from the chains that constricted over his chest whenever he thought, a million revisions of what he saw and heard passing through his mind?
He never allowed himself to rest; he was constantly moving, constantly thinking, always looking and watching and thinking, and then Donghae would take his hand and grin at him, and wasn’t that enough? It was enough for Kibum, because it was enough to still his mind and deliver him from the thinking that threatened to consume him one day. Donghae kept him there, kept him grounded - kept him sane.
“New boy tomorrow,” trilled Donghae as he let himself into Kibum’s bedroom where he was reading a text book on the human body. He threw himself down onto Kibum’s bed as Kibum glanced over at him with his eyebrows raised.
“Who let you in?” he asked, as Donghae rolled onto his stomach to look up at him.
“No one,” said Donghae with a grin. “The door was open.”
“So you just came in,” stated Kibum, only a hint of a question in his tone.
“Of course,” said Donghae. “Don’t worry, I did it quietly, I don’t think your parents realised.”
“Fine,” said Kibum, and turned back to his book.
There was a pause; Donghae’s mouth began to kiss his neck, fingers sliding between the buttons of his school shirt. Kibum smiled and sat back and let him have his way for a few seconds, as Donghae’s lips moved up near his ear.
“I have a plan,” said Donghae softly, as his hand found Kibum’s. “I think we should find someone for Heechul to have.”
“Why not Siwon? He deserves someone too.” Kibum pushed his chair back slightly, and Donghae swung himself around and straddled him, un-tucking Kibum’s shirt with nimble fingers.
“That’s too easy,” said Donghae, now starting on the buttons of the shirt. “Siwon could get anyone he wanted, poor Heechul is too misunderstood to get anyone.”
“Always so blunt,” muttered Kibum, placing his hands on Donghae’s waist and rubbing his thumbs in circular movements over his hip bones. “Who did you have in mind?”
“I’m not sure,” said Donghae, but this didn’t seem to be a set back to him. “I was hoping the new boy would do.”
“So specific,” said Kibum with a laugh. He fell silent as Donghae kissed him, his fingers unbuttoning his trousers with lazy, languid movements. “I don’t suppose,” he said, as Donghae grinned at him with swollen lips, making to stand up to move to the bed, “that you’re going to give either of them a choice in the matter.”
“You’ll see,” said Donghae, taking him by the hand and pulling him up. “I have this feeling that they won’t even need us to interfere. I know they’ll like each other, just wait and see. Gut instinct. Anyway, we’d have managed well enough without the others doing anything.”
“You don’t know that,” said Kibum, laughing, as Donghae pushed him down onto the bed.
“No one will ever be able to prove me wrong though,” said Donghae, smiling at him, and with logic like that, how could Kibum disagree?
Fandom: Super Junior AU (High School)
Pairing: Kibum/Donghae
Word count: 4,601
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Kihae back story - Donghae was strange - this was a universal fact, and everyone accepted it.
A/N: I thought this was going to be incredibly difficult to write, and yet it was as easy as the Kangteuk one. I pretty much wrote the entire thing in a single day O_o
I hate having things written but being unable to post them.
Donghae was strange - this was a universal fact, and everyone accepted it, just like everyone accepted that Sungmin and Heechul had a slightly unhealthy fixation with the colour pink, and Eeteuk should not be allowed anywhere near anything with a motor. Donghae was eccentric and slightly mad - he was like that uncle that you loved the most when you were younger, and Kibum was fascinated when he was very young.
He had grown out of that, but only as far as he no longer wanted to copy everything that the older boy did. There was something decidedly brilliant about Donghae - he was a paradox. Everything that Kibum wasn’t, Donghae was - everything that Donghae wasn’t, Kibum was. To Kibum’s analytical mind, they probably shouldn’t have worked together, but Donghae’s always managed to throw him slight off kilter.
Kibum can’t remember when they first met; childhood friends always seem to have been there, Heechul and Siwon and Donghae, accepting him even though he was a year younger than them, playing with him even though they were able to go to the park by themselves when he wasn’t, talking to him even though they had their own friends at school that he didn’t know. He owes Heechul a lot, and Donghae and Siwon probably just as much. He knows now that he was not an easy child to get along with - they managed it.
Part of his personality as a child was an insistence that he was always right. He never cried or screamed or threw fits; he was perfectly calm about it, just sat there and repeated that you were wrong and he was right. He knew he was, you see, because he was obviously smarter than you. It wasn’t your fault, of course, but it was true nonetheless, and you should just accept that. Most of the other children his age hated him for this. Heechul just laughed snidely at him.
“Did you know there are aliens living on Mars?” Donghae asked brightly, looking at him earnestly.
“No there aren’t,” said Kibum scornfully. He might have only been four at the time, it’s hard to remember, but he does remember thinking that this boy must be completely dumb for thinking so. Kibum did not have time for stupid people back then.
“There are,” insisted Donghae, and no matter how many times Kibum told him that there weren’t, Donghae just smiled happily and chirped that there were. A turning point, perhaps, because here was someone who wasn’t going to back down either. Kibum had got his own way for so long that it was almost refreshing to be denied that right, to be told that he was wrong. The fact was that to Donghae, Kibum couldn’t be proven to be right, and therefore Donghae was right about the whole thing. Donghae’s logic made a lot more sense sometimes than Kibum’s own logic.
Donghae was the one that made Kibum laugh for the first time. Such a serious child, and then suddenly, he wasn’t - he laughed at something stupid that Donghae did, bright and happy, a strange sound even to his own ears. It had shocked him, almost, that bubble of emotion that couldn’t be clamped down no matter how hard he tried.
“Six years old and hasn’t even laughed,” sighed Heechul dramatically. “How absolutely tragic.” And Donghae just grinned at him, and spent the rest of the day coming up with new ways to make Kibum smile and laugh, and after a while it became a normal thing around Donghae - happiness made Donghae’s world continue turning, and who was Kibum to change that?
When Kibum was eight, he went away to America for a month with his family, to visit his aunt and uncle who had moved there. All he could think about while he was there was how boring it was without his friends; without them there to make him laugh, or to play with, days spent with his cousins who kept talking in English to each other, so that he couldn’t understand them whatsoever. It made him want to learn English, that scientific side of him figuring that that was the only way to have fun with them, the childish side of him just wanting to be accepted, anything to get revenge. Everything in America made him home-sick for Korea, so much so that the journey back made him excited in a way that his parents had never seen before, their usually calm son bouncing in his seat. Perhaps that was when they realised what his friends had done to him.
They all came to meet him, the entire group, minus Kyuhyun at that point of time, Heechul hanging back, acting as though he was totally uninterested in it all, while Eeteuk jokingly asked if he’d been fed at all in America, and Sungmin bounded around asking for his present. Donghae hugged him tightly, saying loudly that they had all missed him so much, especially him, and he should never, ever go away again. Kibum had happily gone to the park with them; allowed Donghae to hug him and pull him around, glad to just finally be home.
Just before Kyuhyun arrived at their school, Kibum decided that he wanted to be a doctor, after watching various television shows about hospitals. His parents encouraged him in his choice (he rather felt they simply wanted to be able to say their son was in the medical profession), and his friends laughed at him, good naturally, and told him to try his best.
“How like Kibum,” said Heechul with a smirk. “Ten years old and already he knows what he’s going to do as an adult.”
It was just like Kibum, he knew that. His mind didn’t allow him any rest, making and breaking a thousand things every second, analysing everything that he saw, putting people into categories and sections to make it easier to deal with them. The only people he couldn’t do that to were his group of friends; Heechul changed too much, Shindong jumped from point to point, Siwon remained too constantly in between everything to be anything. Donghae was the worst one of all - he wasn’t insane, like that man he saw on the subway, but neither was he normal, like the tall boy in his class. He wasn’t anything remotely like stupid, like that girl, but neither was he anything remotely like clever like that girl. He confused Kibum too much, happy and hyper and impossible.
And so Kibum gave up on him, and just accepted Donghae for what he was, an anomaly in a world of precise data. He never studied, but he got good grades. He liked to dance, but he liked to play football too. He encouraged Kibum in learning English, but he forbade him from ever going to another country ever again. He insisted that he didn’t like skin ship, but he touched everyone constantly. He was everything that Kibum shouldn’t have liked, but he made him laugh like no one else did.
The arrival of Kyuhyun managed to shake everything up - the orderly world that Kibum had fooled himself into believing existed became different, a new one to add to the mix, a new one to learn to adapt to - a new one that didn’t fit any moulds, his father bad but the boy good, an angelic face but sarcastic humour. Kibum had liked him. Donghae had liked him. Everyone had liked him.
The problem was that as the years passed, Sungmin fell in love, everyone saw that, and although Kyuhyun guarded his emotions much better, it was obvious that he felt the same way. In Kibum’s mind, boys did not fall in love with other boys. Heechul may wear skirts, and Sungmin might like fluffy animals, but that was just them. He was to grow up, get a job, marry a girl and have children; his parents had, why shouldn’t everyone else? It wasn’t homophobia that drove him to his thoughts, but thirteen year old ignorance and a belief in what was right. Sungmin wasn’t right, he thought.
He quickly got over that, watching as the two flirted with each other and fit together well. It was almost cute, he felt, watching as neither realised that the other liked them, watching as they darted past the issue and avoided the questions fired at them.
“I don’t like Kyuhyun,” said Sungmin with a blush.
“I don’t like Sungmin,” said Kyuhyun, a faint hint of sarcasm in his voice.
“I don’t like skin ship,” said Donghae, no matter how much the opposite was pointed out.
Kibum pretended to believe him, just like everyone else did, and so Donghae was able to hang all over everyone without being aware that it was just a little bit weird. Kibum wasn’t too keen on it, though, honestly and seriously, but he allowed Donghae to do whatever he wanted - he had known him for so long that it just seemed weird to not have Donghae there, arms hugging him close. It wasn’t strange, and it shouldn’t have caused his parents to look at him like that, but they did. Once, they sat him down and told him that he could talk to them about anything, his mother nodding encouragingly, his father apprehensive, and Kibum had sat there, totally confused. There wasn’t anything going on between him and Donghae. It was stupid to believe so.
Sometimes he hated his scientific approach to life, reading about things in text books and being interested in everything that he could learn. He read about puberty, read about hormones and urges and things like that, and couldn’t handle it when it came over him, slowly and surely. No book could prepare him for real life, no matter how much he tried. It became too much, Donghae’s arm over his shoulders, hands holding his own, hugs and innocent touches. By the time he was fourteen he pushed Donghae away and stopped him from doing anything. No more touching, no more anything, just awkward friendship and strange looks.
“Is something bothering you?” Siwon asked him once, as Donghae looked at him with puppy dog eyes, and Kibum had just looked at him like he was crazy and shook his head and avoided his eyes.
It wasn’t bothering him - it absolutely terrified him, that rush of blood to his face and other places as Donghae’s hand brushed over his chest and stomach and held him close. Sexual attraction sounded too clinical and cold; lust was too much, a word for adults, not teenagers. Love was stupid, a thing that didn’t exist in Kibum’s world of fact and theories; it was a word created to explain away desire and passion, not something real and concrete. You could not hold love; you could not prove something like that to be real. He believed in family ties and loyalty between friends, but not love between a man and a woman, or any variation thereof.
He clung to this even as Sungmin and Kyuhyun got together; he had clung to it when Eeteuk and Kangin had got together. He clung to it as Donghae threatened to turn it upside down, unwilling to take Kibum’s rejection lying down; more determined than ever to display his dislike for skin ship around him. He avoided Donghae; Donghae tried to hang around him that bit more and it became a vicious circle in which neither won.
Grow up, get married, have kids became the mantra that he chanted at night, when the feel of Donghae’s hand and the vision of his smile became too much, his hand slipping under the sheets to strip away another level of his childhood. It was perfectly normal, his text books told him, to have homosexual fantasies, but he knew differently, knew that it wasn’t normal to fantasise about one of his best friends like that. He was grown up for his age, but like a child when it came to this, like a kid who said he didn’t like girls - why would I like Donghae, that’s yucky. I don’t like Donghae.
“You’re in denial,” diagnosed Heechul, and frowned at him. “Though quite why, I’m unsure.”
“I’m not in denial,” said Kibum, pushing his glasses up his nose. “I really don’t like him like that.”
“Whenever you’re together, it’s unbelievable,” said Heechul, unable to let it go. “It’s like you’re oozing sexual tension.”
“Don’t you think you’re over exaggerating?” Kibum frowned at the older boy.
“No, he’s not,” said Sungmin. “It gets hard to breathe.”
“I think it’s cute,” said Eeteuk dreamily.
“Whatever, Romeo,” said Kangin, rolling his eyes.
“I don’t like Donghae,” said Kibum firmly, and Eunhyuk had looked at him closely and then grinned.
Kibum knew that they didn’t believe him at all, for all that he was fantastic at lying, so he threw himself into his studies, spent night after night in his room reading, anything to distract himself from the emotion that could possibly have been love, but he didn’t believe in that. He made great progress, the margin between him and the second in the class became that much bigger, until his parents were beaming at him and Kibum took their praise and returned to studying. He knew he didn’t have to do it, he knew that his natural inquisitive personality and intelligence meant he hardly ever needed to study, and he hated every second of it, but he hated that unsure rush of feelings for Donghae more.
Heechul made him go to Eeteuk’s place the March of his second year of middle school, when he was fifteen, when Donghae was set to leave for high school in the April. Kibum felt a perverse satisfaction from that thought, that soon he wouldn’t have to pretend, and he wouldn’t have to be around Donghae every day for so many hours. With time, it should wane. Emotions were in the here and now - absence makes the heart grow fonder was wrong, no matter what Ryeowook claimed. In a single month, he wouldn’t have to see Donghae very much for another year (excuses are easily made up) and he hated himself for feeling that way.
“Kibum, could you go get me a packet of paper towels, please?” Eeteuk was innocent in his request, asking for something not unusual, completely normal. “They’re in the cupboard in the hall.”
“Fine,” said Kibum and pushed himself up from the floor on the opposite side of the room from Donghae, and didn’t think anything of what he’d been asked to do, even as he was standing on his tip-toes in order to see if the strangely missing paper towels were on one of the uppermost shelves.
“Hey,” said Donghae, coming into the small cupboard, around the size of a toilet cubicle. Kibum froze, his back to him. “Eunhyuk wants a can of lemonade, can you see one up there?”
“No,” said Kibum, and winced at the harsh tone of his voice. He hadn’t meant for it to sound like that, and he knew that Donghae would be frowning, hurt, behind him, and so he didn’t turn around; screwed his eyes closed instead.
“Oh,” said Donghae lightly. “Oh, okay.” And then the door slammed shut, and there was the unmistakable click of the lock turning.
“What the - Eunhyuk?” Kibum turned around just as Donghae began to bang on the door loudly, trying to catch the attention of whoever was on the opposite side, and then he stopped as they heard laughter.
“Nice and cosy in there, I hope.” Heechul’s voice floated through the wood of the door, amused, as they heard Siwon protesting against something.
“Heechul? Come on, this isn’t funny,” protested Donghae. “Let us out.”
“No,” came Eunhyuk’s voice, laughter evident in it. “We won’t let you out until you make out.”
“That’s - that’s not funny, Eunhyuk,” shouted Donghae, sending a fearful glance over his shoulder at a confused Kibum. “You know I don’t - come on, Eunhyuk! He doesn’t - Eunhyuk!” But there was no reply, and after a minute of banging violently against the door, Donghae seemed to give up.
Donghae leant back against the door, as Kibum flattened himself into the corner, as far away as he could get. Donghae looked at him curiously in the darkness of the room, the light switch on the outside, not having been pressed. “Are you okay?” He asked. “I didn’t think you were claustrophobic or anything.”
“I’m not,” said Kibum bluntly. Donghae looked more closely.
“Hey,” he said after a minute, shoving his hands in his pockets and slumping down, “have I done something to upset you? You’ve been really weird lately. Like, I didn’t notice at first, but then…”
“You haven’t done anything,” said Kibum, still in that blunt tone of voice. Donghae tutted playfully.
“That’s what I mean,” he said. “You keep snapping at me.”
Kibum stayed silent. He wasn’t going to spill his feelings to anyone, least of all to the one that they were centered around. He would grow out of this, out of wanting to kiss Donghae, touch Donghae, out of being out of his mind with things that he didn’t want to understand. He needed Donghae away from him.
“Come on,” said Donghae, his voice soft in the gloom, Kibum just about able to make out of the line of his jaw. “We’re supposed to be friends, you can tell me.”
“I can’t be your friend,” said Kibum before he could stop himself. He closed his fists and dug his fingernails into his palm to keep himself focused, as Donghae stood up straight.
“Why?” He asked, and this was the first time that Kibum had ever heard him angry. “Why can’t you be my friend? What kind of a stupid thing is that to say?”
“I can’t be your friend,” repeated Kibum. “Not like this.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
It was the first time Donghae had ever sworn in front of him; gone was the easy going nature, gone were the grins and laughter, replaced by a tense jaw and folded arms. Kibum didn’t shrink away from it, but faced it head on instead. This was his punishment, this was his atonement for everything that he had done.
“I didn’t notice at first,” said Donghae, his voice too loud. “But you’re been really weird for absolutely ages. Just with me. Only me. And I don’t know what I’ve done. I don’t like that you’re pushing me away.” He took a step forward, and then another and another, until he was standing directly in front of Kibum. “You need to stop it. We’re friends,” and the way he said it suggested something more, something more akin to brothers.
Kibum would never know why he said it; perhaps the atmosphere got to him, made his mouth run away before his brain could filter what he said. He lost his head for a moment, Donghae standing so close in the darkness, only able to see the curve of his lips and angle of his shoulder.
“Hard to be friends with someone,” he said in a sarcastic voice, “when all you want to do is fuck them against a wall.”
“Oh.” Donghae’s exclamation of surprise was little more than a breath, but it made Kibum screw his eyes up and think fuck fuck fuck, as he realised what he had said and that there was no way he could take it back. It was out in the open now, much worse than as a secret, much worse to have nothing this way than through his own doing. There was no going back now, no laughing it off and saying that is not what I meant, at all, like in a poem that he had read for school, books failing him once again.
“Oh,” said Donghae again, and Kibum opened his eyes reluctantly. He had never been so happy to see that smile; that stupid smile that almost made him smile back, but he was unable to, holding his breath for whatever was about to come.
“Can you even have sex against a wall?” Donghae asked, reaching up and removing his glasses gently, as Kibum stared at him. “I mean, I imagine it would be pretty difficult. You’d keep losing your balance.”
“I really wouldn’t know,” said Kibum, stuttering slightly as Donghae’s fingers brushed his hair from his face, finger tips pushing into the sides of his hair, as he stepped up close and grinned at him.
“We should try it sometime,” he murmured, and then kissed him, softly to begin with, deepening as Kibum failed to grasp what was happening but figuring that he should go along with it anyway; his fingers twisting the hem of Donghae’s t-shirt; moaning as Donghae’s tongue slipped between his lips; his first kiss showing him that sexual attraction and lust and words written down couldn’t describe it. He didn’t know what he was doing; he didn’t care that Donghae didn’t know what he was doing either. It was sloppy and wet and he couldn’t see, a mixture of lost glasses and closed eyes.
“Can we - I don’t know,” mumbled Donghae against his lips, his hands sliding under his shirt and flattening against his stomach, cold and sudden and making Kibum gasp. “Is this too much? Just say if it is, I just really love you and I can’t-”
“Would you shut up?” Kibum kissed him again, shivering as Donghae’s fingertips pushed down under the waistband of his jeans, and then the door was being pulled open and he couldn’t deny it any longer; he couldn’t say I don’t like Donghae like that. He didn’t want to. Donghae held his hand throughout the inevitable taunts and insinuating comments. Kibum brushed them off with a few well placed sarcastic remarks; Donghae just grinned.
Their relationship was always sexual - they did not move as slow as Kyuhyun and Sungmin, or as carefully as Yehsung and Ryeowook. What was the point? Kibum had wasted a year already trying to ignore that consuming feeling, he didn’t want to wait any longer, and Donghae was happy to oblige. More than happy, in fact, taking it further when Kibum stopped, taking it further than Kibum had ever imagined.
But just because they slept together didn’t make it any less real, any more trivial than what the others shared. They simply knew what they wanted, and they were willing to get it. They went out on dates together, and sometimes they didn’t, and they talked about things, and sometimes they didn’t. They were friends first, lovers second.
Kibum’s parents realised at some point, without him having to say anything, and although they’d said he could talk about anything, Donghae was a mute point: they would not accept him. For his mother, it was because he was distracting him from his studies. For his father, it was because his son was gay. Grow up, get married and have kids, but now that was no longer in his grasp, the idea shoved away from him. He didn’t want that anymore.
In fact, Donghae didn’t distract him from his studies. Donghae encouraged him to do well, but made sure that he knew when to relax too. Kibum remained at the top of his class, as he always would do, through intelligence alone; he didn’t need to study to do that, and so if he goes out a bit more now, and if Donghae comes over a bit more now, well, that doesn’t make a difference, because his grades aren’t slipping, and he hasn’t lost touch of his dreams - there’s just something else to include in them now.
Once he’d claimed that he didn’t believe in love, different to Heechul who didn’t want it. A made up thing that didn’t exist he’d claimed, but Donghae was a mistake, an irregularity in his otherwise normal life, and so perhaps it made sense that he also broke the walls that Kibum had built up. He had broken down everything else, his heart was merely the last one, and unlike the sledgehammer approach that he had taken with everything else (smiling and laughing and crying), he slipped in slowly over the years, through a crack that he created for himself. His theories had never worked when it came to Donghae; how could he claim that all his felt was desire and things like that, when sometimes the urge to simply be around Donghae physically hurt? When kissing him was like breathing pure oxygen, freeing him from the chains that constricted over his chest whenever he thought, a million revisions of what he saw and heard passing through his mind?
He never allowed himself to rest; he was constantly moving, constantly thinking, always looking and watching and thinking, and then Donghae would take his hand and grin at him, and wasn’t that enough? It was enough for Kibum, because it was enough to still his mind and deliver him from the thinking that threatened to consume him one day. Donghae kept him there, kept him grounded - kept him sane.
“New boy tomorrow,” trilled Donghae as he let himself into Kibum’s bedroom where he was reading a text book on the human body. He threw himself down onto Kibum’s bed as Kibum glanced over at him with his eyebrows raised.
“Who let you in?” he asked, as Donghae rolled onto his stomach to look up at him.
“No one,” said Donghae with a grin. “The door was open.”
“So you just came in,” stated Kibum, only a hint of a question in his tone.
“Of course,” said Donghae. “Don’t worry, I did it quietly, I don’t think your parents realised.”
“Fine,” said Kibum, and turned back to his book.
There was a pause; Donghae’s mouth began to kiss his neck, fingers sliding between the buttons of his school shirt. Kibum smiled and sat back and let him have his way for a few seconds, as Donghae’s lips moved up near his ear.
“I have a plan,” said Donghae softly, as his hand found Kibum’s. “I think we should find someone for Heechul to have.”
“Why not Siwon? He deserves someone too.” Kibum pushed his chair back slightly, and Donghae swung himself around and straddled him, un-tucking Kibum’s shirt with nimble fingers.
“That’s too easy,” said Donghae, now starting on the buttons of the shirt. “Siwon could get anyone he wanted, poor Heechul is too misunderstood to get anyone.”
“Always so blunt,” muttered Kibum, placing his hands on Donghae’s waist and rubbing his thumbs in circular movements over his hip bones. “Who did you have in mind?”
“I’m not sure,” said Donghae, but this didn’t seem to be a set back to him. “I was hoping the new boy would do.”
“So specific,” said Kibum with a laugh. He fell silent as Donghae kissed him, his fingers unbuttoning his trousers with lazy, languid movements. “I don’t suppose,” he said, as Donghae grinned at him with swollen lips, making to stand up to move to the bed, “that you’re going to give either of them a choice in the matter.”
“You’ll see,” said Donghae, taking him by the hand and pulling him up. “I have this feeling that they won’t even need us to interfere. I know they’ll like each other, just wait and see. Gut instinct. Anyway, we’d have managed well enough without the others doing anything.”
“You don’t know that,” said Kibum, laughing, as Donghae pushed him down onto the bed.
“No one will ever be able to prove me wrong though,” said Donghae, smiling at him, and with logic like that, how could Kibum disagree?