Flying over Bus Stops
Flying Over Bus Stops
Donghae/Eunhyuk/Kyuhyun, Donghae/Eunhyuk
pg-13
6300 wrds.
Hyukjae doesn’t fit in. Donghae and Kyuhyun choose not to.
flying over bus stops
“And I don’t want to see you in here for the rest of the week. Next time I won’t let you off so easy.”
Donghae smiles and bows his head, a quick nodding movement because they both know he’s lying and next time won’t be any different than today.
Kyuhyun, chewing off his fingernails like he’s about to bite his hand off, goes slack against the wall when Donghae stolls out of the principal’s office.
“You were worried?” Donghae raises an eyebrow, both smug and slightly offended.
“Whatever. Next time, just listen to me when I tell you we are in over our heads.”
Laughing, Donghae throws his arm around Kyuhyun and gives the nearly empty hall a once over. He pulls a folded paper from his back pocket, smiles at the awed look Kyuhyun dawns, and slips it into Kyuhyun’s pocket.
“Good luck on your test. You can thank me later,” Donghae says and he’s still laughing halfway down the hall. He’ll make fun of Kyuhyun’s face for days.
-
No one really hangs out behind the school. The place to be is out front, right at the school gates. Anyone-everyone- who wants to be seen, on display, show off that they can talk the talk or walk the walk, look no further. Donghae talks the talk and walks the walk, but he also thinks everyone is made out of shit.
The wall is white, dirtied over the years by fist fight imprints made of dried blood and sharpie carved Jonghyun loves Sooyoung and Hwang Hara is a frigid bitch. The view is a parking lot. The air smells like cafeteria food and dumpster, but there’s a nice breeze if you sit on the left side of the wall by the library and if you place your back at the right angle, you can feel the air conditioning seeping through the wall through your shirt.
Sometimes there are a few students, sometimes there’s only one.
Today, there are two kids, a girl sitting against the metal fence blubbering into her phone and a boy against the wall. Donghae’s seen him around, thinks his name is Yong or Eun… something. It’s lunch period, the girl has a half-eaten noodle cup on her lap but the boy is just drinking a soda, fizzing away next to erratic fingertips walking like a marching band on a field of white.
Donghae sits a few feet from him, takes out his lighter, and flicks it open and closed, hypnotized by the bluish of the flame.
“If you’re going to smoke, do it somewhere else. It’s against the rules anyways.”
The boy doesn’t waver beneath Donghae’s scrutiny, looks back at Donghae with boredom instead.
Donghae smiles, almost, one corner of his mouth upturning while the other twitches. “Why? You gonna tell on me?”
“No. I can’t stand the smell.”
Donghae rolls his thumb over the lighter and pockets it. “I don’t smoke.” To the guy’s furrowed brows, he adds, “I found it. Carry it around ever since. Comes in handy since my friend is a walking ashtray. What’s your name?” he finishes, the words strung together neatly without skipping a beat.
“Eunhyuk,” he says and Donghae can place him better now.
“You’re that dancer boy, right?”
Fingers stop, the pinky flared out like the final note of a trumpet. Eunhyuk’s jaw, abnormally sharp and razor like, tenses. “If you’re going to beat me up because I offend you somehow,”
“No,” Donghae says. “I could care less. A guy has a right to cut off his circulation by wearing a leopard print speedo and pummeling another guy to the ground as much as he does to wear a tutu and dance around like a fairy.”
It doesn’t sound like an insult, not really meant to be one, but Eunhyuk catches the mockery anyways. At least he’s not getting his face smashed against the school fence.
“I thought you said you didn’t smoke.”
Donghae shrugs as he takes out the cigarette he’d pocketed that Kyuhyun had dropped in homeroom. “And I don’t. But today is one of those days.”
Despite his apparent hatred for the smell, Eunhyuk doesn’t move away, sipping his soda and trying to not stare too obviously at the girl whose blubbering has raised to hiccuping cries.
“How much longer do you think she’ll keep it up?” Donghae puffs out. He doesn’t understand how Kyuhyun can do this everyday, a few inhales and already he feels his lungs shrinking to the size of raisins.
“She does this a couple times a week. Apparently, her boyfriend just got drafted for service.” Eunhyuk speaks lightly, like that’s not them in a few years, ripped away from life and turned into just another piece of a faceless sea of bodies trained to serve and protect and destroy. “I don’t get girls. Where’s your shadow anyways?”
Donghae smiles. “We’re not attached at the hip.” Disbelief crosses Eunhyuk’s face because he and Kyuhyun kind of are, but Donghae just takes a drag, lets it out slow. “Finish your coke.”
“Why?”
“So I can put this out.”
Eunhyuk puts his soda on his other side, crosses his arms, and stares. “Don’t light it up if you don’t have the balls to finish it.”
Staring at the burning tip, over half the cigarette between his index and thumb, Donghae weighs out whether to take the challenge or shrug it off. His lungs have had enough. He stubs it out on the ground and flings it over the fence and into the parking lot, rolling a good couple of centimeters from the fence.
“Problem solved.”
Eunhyuk returns his smirk, sips his soda slowly even though it’s probably warm and stale. He can’t be sure, but Donghae thinks Eunhyuk isn’t made out of shit. Either way, he likes him already.
-
Because Eunhyuk isn’t made out of shit, Donghae decides he’s okay enough to hang with them. Eunhyuk doesn’t really have friends to hang out with, so what the hell. Kyuhyun obviously doesn’t like Eunhyuk but Kyuhyun doesn’t like anyone, so that’s okay too.
“This is what you guys do on Friday afternoons?”
Donghae rolls his eyes and forces Eunhyuk to sit which sends him stumbling and knocking over Kyuhyun’s bottle of carbonated tea. Donghae still doesn’t get how Eunhyuk can be known as the “dancing boy” when he’s such a klutz.
“Because pirrouetting in pink lace is so much better,” Kyuhyun snaps, kicking his now empty bottle into the knocked over trashcan on the curb.
“I would bet it is. At least it’s not salivating over Bundang High’s girl swim team.”
Donghae swigs down half his soda and passes it to Kyuhyun telling him to keep it. “We come here for Kyuhyun. Gives him something to visualize while he’s in the shower.”
“And you?” Eunhyuk asks, propping his feet up and away from the puddle of spilt tea.
Kyuhyun snorts and pulls out a cigarette causing Eunhyuk to wrinkle his nose in disgust. “Definitely not. Donghae likes cock. Pretty. The boys the cocks are attached to, not the cocks.”
Donghae shrugs like it’s no big deal. To him, it isn’t. “Girls are too much work. Complicated. Boys are easy,” he adds, watching the way Eunhyuk’s expression remains calculatingly neutral.
“What about you?” Kyuhyun jabs his cigarette in Eunhyuk’s direction. “You like the challenge or are you easy?”
Eunhyuk purses his lips like he has to think about it. The answer is written all over his face but he feels the need to say, “I haven’t decided yet.”
They stay long after blue spandex have dried from chlorine water, enough for Kyuhyun to smoke two more cigarettes, for Eunhyuk to go through three more cans of orange soda, and for Donghae to sweet talk the pretty boy who works the register into making out against the wall at the back entrance of the mini mart.
-
“You’re actually doing homework? Kyuhyun and me are not enough of a bad influence on you.”
Eunhyuk doesn’t look up from Donghae’s desk, covered in his calculus textbook and chemistry notes. “When’s he coming anyways?”
“After his shrink is done psychoanalyzing him or whatever. “
Eventually, Donghae does some semblance of homework after Eunhyuk flat out refused to let him take a look at his but homework is boring and Donghae hates being bored so he lures Eunhyuk away from his history notes with the promise of lemonade and some cold japache in the kitchen. Serving is not Donghae’s forte and Eunhyuk laughs at how he can miss spooning into a bowl by such a wide margin, noodles sticking to the countertop and dangling off the side to drop onto the floor.
“You don’t eat much,” Donghae observes, half his bowl gone and Eunhyuk still picking at a practically full bowl. He’s noticed. How Eunhyuk doesn’t have more than a soda for lunch, rarely a bag of chips or some gummy bears. Most boys their age are still gawky and awkward in outstretched limbs and not enough muscle to fill it out. But Eunhyuk takes it a step further, going beyond teenage lankiness and delving into too hollow cheeks and a stick thin waist.
Eunhyuk shakes his head, mouth drawn tight, so Donghae doesn’t push it.
“Isn’t your mom going to be mad about the mess?” Eunhyuk swiftly changes the subject but it ends up backfiring when Donghae laughs startling Eunhyuk, causing him to simultaneously knock over his glass and the empty vase on the table. Donghae grabs his hand in a gesture of telling him not to stress over it when Eunhyuk tries to clean up his mess.
Eunhyuk’s face contorts at the contact, Donghae’s fingers pressing on the lightly purplish bruise on his wrist.
Donghae inhales sharply and lets go. “Still?”
“It’s gotten better since I started hanging out with you guys, but. Sometimes. On my way home.” Uselessly dabbing at the mess with a napkin, Eunhyuk stares at his wrist. The look in his eyes isn’t of sadness, or resentment, or why me, why can’t they just leave me alone, I’m not hurting them, I’m not hurting anyone. Another bruise is just another mark, one of many marring skin and blood and the person beneath it.
Donghae wants to ask but he already knows. Eunhyuk’s parents aren’t really around, much like Donghae’s, so Eunhyuk knows they probaly wouldn’t care just like Donghae knows his mother won’t care about the mess in her kitchen. The quiet is broken by Kyuhyun slipping in through the back door making a ruckus of tossing his bag on the floor and asking for dinner. Donghae’s not sure what he would have said otherwise.
That night, they transport themselves to alternate realities trying to see who can kill, blow up or stab each other the quickest. Kyuhyun takes over the bed because as master of every galaxy and motocross track it is his right while Donghae and Eunhyuk are forced to share the sleeping bag. When Kyuhyun’s snoring reaches obnoxious, they crawl onto the bed and roll Kyuhyun off who’s too asleep to care and simply keeps snoring his head off. Donghae smothers a pillow in his ear and Eunhyuk laughs, leaning a foot down near Kyuhyun’s face. This is when Kyuhyun wakes up, yelling who the fuck is being so fucking loud and who the hell farted.
-
Kyuhyun turns sixteen and gets a gift card worth twenty-five dollars at Game Expo. Three months later, he arrives home from school and his dad is waiting in the garage with a brand new car. Red bow and everything. He goes out for his first drive with Donghae sans Eunhyuk who’s stuck in dance practice, and they almost crash exiting the McDonald’s by pulling an illegal U-turn and running a yellow light. They tell Eunhyuk about it later with exhilarated laughter and Eunhyuk is both thankful and a little bummed he missed it.
Donghae would be lying of he said he wasn’t jealous. He’s a year older than Kyuhyun and he doesn’t have rich parents with guilt trip complexes, but Donghae likes being an optimist searching for that silver lining and he greatly enjoys having his own personal chauffer. Eunhyuk doesn’t really care. He likes to walk. Walk and walk. That doesn’t stop Kyuhyun and Donghae from picking him up from practice often. It’s not a big deal. It’s what friends do. It helps that it’s another excuse to stay out longer and they drive for hours, even if it’s a school night. Eunhyuk always falls asleep but he never complains about coming home at two and to a soundlessly sleeping house.
Lunch is spent overlapping the smell of new car with take-out containers they manage to get thanks to the passes to go off campus Donghae gets the secretary into singing for him which Kyuhyun makes mass copies of. They roll down the windows a block from the school and Eunhyuk slips his shoes off and rests them on the car door. Kyuhyun complains about the smell but Donghae argues that it doesn’t smell that bad, only when you breathe. Eunhyuk spills his drink over and Kyuhyun sends Donghae crashing against the dashboard in his haste to clobber Eunhyuk upside the head. His attacks are futile. Nothing trumps Eunhyuk’s feet.
-
“Why are we here again?”
Donghae plops down into the aisle seat forcing Kyuhyun to flail over him, trip and have to support himself on the girl sitting in the next seat. Arm rests, who needs them when you’ve got soft curvy life to support you.
“Because, Kyu, this is what friends do. Support each other and. Stuff.”
“If you get a boner from all the hot guys on stage, I’m not helping you.”
Donghae makes a face, willing the flashbacks away. That’s an experience neither wants to relive. Ever.
“Definitely not pirouettes in frilly lace,” Kyuhyun tells Eunhyuk once they meet him backstage after the performance is over and Eunhyuk positively beams.
He’s still sweaty, skin pulled taut beneath a black wife beater but Donghae remembers how he looked on stage. The lights burning over every sharp angle of Eunhyuk’s body, turning all his edges into skin slicing knives concealed beneath a soft facade. The way his body moved as if his bones were liquid, flowing like a wave Donghae half expected to evaporate into air. All the performers were good and while Donghae isn’t an expert, Eunhyuk stood out the most.
Eunhyuk wasn’t the only one to stand out, or up, but no one pays attention to the audience anyways. Boners aside, Eunhyuk was awesome.
“We have to celebrate this,” Donghae announces. Kyuhyun already has the keys dangling in his hand.
-
Streets are limitless at night. Never ending lamp posts lighting the way, and they feel like they can drive and drive and reach the end of the world. The radio is stuck on some lame station that only plays eighties music because Donghae broke the dial last week so Donghae hums along to spaced out guitar riffs and synthesized vocals while Kyuhyun tries to not crash. Safely, somehow, Kyuhyun halts in front of a taco joint and Eunhyuk wolfs down three fish tacos and half the nachos. It’s the most he’s eaten in front of them and Donghae guesses he must be happy, the adrenaline left over from performing vibrating in his body so loud it hums over the stereo. Through the rearview mirror, he sees Eunhyuk’s smiling mouth, the corner smeared with sour cream, and smiles back.
“Not a good idea,” Eunhyuk mumbles but takes the beer Kyuhyun tosses him outside the convenience store. Donghae is still talking to the guy he convinced to buy the beer for them, smiling and gesturing for him to keep the change.
“Get his number?” Kyuhyun, already half his bottle gone, asks when Donghae comes back.
Donghae rubs the back of his neck, his feet shuffling awkwardly as he approaches. “Nah. What am I going to do with some dumb frat guy? Even I have standards. Hand me a beer.”
Eunhyuk does and shares a look with Kyuhyun, both unnerved by Donghae’s attitude. Maybe the beer will help, Kyuhyun blinks. Let’s hope not, Eunhyuk’s eyes roll.
It both does and doesn’t.
Donghae cranks up the stereo, as loud as it can go and jumps on top of the hood of the car. He won’t take no for an answer, hands reaching for Eunhyuk and not letting go once he’s up there with him. I want to dance, he tells Eunhyuk. With you, his hold says and Eunhyuk gives in and dances too. They jump up and down, shimmy and shake and twist and laugh and laugh, it bubbles up from somewhere hidden inside them and fizzes out of their mouths. Kyuhyun lounges on the roof of the car, smoke swirling lazily around his head, watching them and smiling. He lets them drag him down by his feet, lets himself slide down the front mirror and land on the pavement on his ass. Their laughter, all three, free and young, harmonize together until the pudgy old man who runs the convenience store threatens to call the cops on them.
-
Eunhyuk has to bleach his hair for his dance company’s recital.
Two days later, he shows up to school with a black eye.
“You should see the other guy,” he smirks when Donghae and Kyuhyun gawk at him.
Donghae sees red. It intensifies and burns inside him the entire day until he has a run in with some idiot jock running his mouth off about something or the other. Donghae takes offense. He has a busted lip to match Eunhyuk’s black eye.
He’s not let off easy. No amount of sweet talk or running stringed words rolling off his tongue make a difference, he’s got detention for a week. Nowhere near enough to make up for all the ones he got away with, and even the principal looks a little disappointed.
“You should see the other guy,” Donghae echoes when he slides into the back seat of Kyuhyun’s car after his first detention, Kyuhyun and Eunhyuk mirroring the gawking from this morning.
-
Kyuhyun’s foot presses on the gas lightly, the engine roaring back at him. It recieves a roar in return, just as angry, just as threatening. Kyuhyun smirks, answers back.
“Kyuhyun.”
The guy’s eyes are challenging. Laughing. Taunting. Donghae knows he’s not staring at him and a part of him is glad he isn’t. Behind him, he can feel Eunhyuk shaking, feel the nerves curling and clenching of fear inside Eunhyuk inside himself. All he does is smile at him through rear view mirror. Everything will be okay, he smiles. Eunhyuk’s eyes tell him he doesn’t belive him. Donghae doesn’t blame him.
The light turns green, bright and blinding like the color of Kyuhyun's father’s favorite tie.
Kyuhyun steps on the gas until his foot almost pushes through the floor board and slides against the road.
It feels like a millisecond. Or maybe it’s more like a million seconds speeding by so fast, it’s all one big flash of time. All Donghae remembers is little particles, bits and pieces of street road and light, the sun, Kyuhyun’s white knuckles and someone laughing. Himself most definitely.
He feels more than sees Kyuhyun stopping the car. Somewhere, there’s a lot of green and maybe someone’s singing, but that’s probably just the radio. Someone is breathing too loud, chest heaving, tiny gasps as he tries to suck in more air. It’s not Eunhyuk, who’s slumped forward with his forehead against Kyuhyun’s head rest. It’s Kyuhyun, his knuckles ghost white on the steering wheel.
Donghae isn’t sure when he gets out of the car, his feet wobbly on stable ground after going what felt like a million years per hour, but by the time he is, Kyuhyun’s breathing is louder. Eunhyuk stands in front of him, face twisted so many ways it’s all knives and no soft skin, fist made out of Kyuhyun’s cigarettes and Kyuhyun looks about ready to punch him. But his knees give out on him and he’s slumped in the grass, face dry and shoulders shaking. The grass seems to engulf him, his clothes swallow him whole with barely a face and hands and feet sticking out and he looks like a little boy playing dress up. Eunhyuk sits next to him, their shoulders fitting together, cigarettes forgotten in favor of crushing the grass between his fingers and threading his hand with Kyuhyun’s. They both look so small to Donghae, so small, he wants to spread his arms out like wings and cradle them in his arms. He knows he’s not any bigger than either of them, probably smaller still. Letting the grass stain his old jeans, Donghae burries his head in Kyuhyun’s chest and tries to wrap them both up in his short arms anyways.
-
“Why are we at Kyuhyun’s place? He’s out of town this weekend.”
“Exactly.”
The small window at the side of the garage pushes open with a shake of the frame, Donghae shimmies through despite Eunhyuk’s protests. Garage door open, Eunhyuk scowls, threatening to gag Donghae with his sock. Donghae laughs because if he goes down, Eunhyuk’s coming with him. He was the lookout after all.
“Relax. If I know Kyu like I know he knows me, he expected this,” Donghae says like he isn’t shoving a wire down the slightly ajar window and unlocking the car door. He smiles triumphant when he reaches in, and sure enough, the key is in the glove compartement.
Donghae drives out to the beach, buildings morphing into trees then to nothing and then, mountains of sand. The radio dial is working again but they don’t turn it on, filling the silence with their own voices in the form of secrets and bad jokes and pauses for breath. Eunhyuk sticks his hand out the window, just a little, fingers dancing on air, imaginary piano keys playing a melody so softly the car motor blocks it out no matter how hard Donghae tries to listen.
They buy fried fish turnovers from a stand on the beach and eat them with countless napkins soaking up all the fat. Eunhyuk doesn’t eat all of his, says his stomach feels a little twisted in knots, and for once, Donghae believes him. Little bald seagulls dust the sand, entertainment for hours in scaring them away and crouching down when they fly too low. Running, run, run, beat up sneakers leaving shoeprints in the sand but Donghae wants to leave a mark, even if it wont last. They take off their sneakers and socks, leave them by the vending shack and run, run, run, breathless and light, they just might spread wings and fly off into the horizon, reach uncharted lands and never have to come back.
Their feet always land on sand and the waves wash away their footprints no matter how deep they press into the muddy sand.
Eunhyuk lays himself flat on his back, the tip of the waves colliding with his toes. He looks like he might drift away, get carried by a wave or the wind and float off to another place. The wind picks up so Donghae stretches the few seashells between them and wraps his hand around Eunhyuk’s. Two waves crash at their feet and drag themselves back to sea. Eunhyuk holds back, lacing their fingers together.
Inside the car, it is warm, a shivering contrast with the rain pouring outside. Eunhyuk sits in the driver’s seat, the brake digging into his hip as they both check in the back seat for something to dry off with. They make do with Kyuhyun’s jacket, laughter fogging up the windows. It is Donghae who pushes Eunhyuk’s hair off his forehead, but it is Eunhyuk who leans over and kisses Donghae. Mouths meet awkwardly, trembling lips from the cold, the faint taste of fish and lemons on their breaths, and Eunhyuk’s hip is really starting to hurt. None of it matters. Not when they’re both warmth somehow keeping away the cold. Not when Eunhyuk gets up on his knees, pushes Donghae against the window and warms his wrinkled hands in Donghae’s wet hair, Donghae gripping Eunhyuk’s arms and opening up against the warmth of their mouths, tasting the melody of Eunhyuk’s fingers on his tongue.
Eunhyuk drives back to the city, Donghae flipping on the radio to an instrumental station. The ride back is quiet as they leave behind sand and sea and never to be found lands.
-
Waiting for Eunhyuk to finish practice, Donghae and Kyuhyun eat popsicles in the front seat of Kyuhyun’s car. Kyuhyun’s been dropping hints all day, how his seat is arranged weird, the rear-view mirror is angled too low for him, but Donghae doesn’t bite and the day is sweltering so he occupies his mouth with other things. Kyuhyun uses his schoolbag to catch drops of juice; Donghae makes a show of licking and sucking, trying to not choke while laughing at Kyuhyun’s annoyed face.
“Why are you so disgusting? At least wait till Eunhyuk gets here. That way someone can enjoy your show,” Kyuhyun snickers, lips painted grape, but stops when Donghae says nothing back, cheeks looking oddly pinkish.
“Dude. What the fuck?”
“Shut up,” Donghae grumbles, trying to disappear into his seat.
“What the fuck. Donghae. What the fuck.”
The back door opens, Eunhyuk’s head popping in, the rest of his body following. “Hey. What’s up?”
“Nothing. Just that Donghae likes your co-” Kyuhyun is cut off by Donghae shoving the entirety of his popsicle in Kyuhyun’s open mouth resulting in immediate brain freeze and choking.
“Your shirt. I like your shirt.”
Eunhyuk looks down at his white t-shirt but shrugs, quickly distracted by the possibility of strawberry flavored ice. Finally, popsicle out of his mouth and flung out the window, Kyuhyun puts the car in drive muttering how he hopes Donghae has fun walking from now on.
He’ll be parked in front of Donghae’s house at a quarter to eight tomorrow morning.
-
Donghae’s house is five blocks from Eunhyuk’s, a bus ride and a four minute walk from Kyuhyun’s. It is a street up from the playground they drink at some times, at midnight when all the preschoolers are tucked away in their beds safe except from imaginary monsters and the tooth fairy. Kyuhyun hangs off from the monkey bars while Eunhyuk sits at the bottom of the slide and digs his toes in the sand. Donghae watches as Kyuhyun taunts Eunhyuk to make his ancestors proud until Eunhyuk gets up and knocks him off with his feet and Donghae laughs at them. They always go back to his house because it’s closer and because his parents never hear the noise they make as they trek up the stairs. Donghae knows Kyuhyun’s parents would be awaken by the alarm and kick them out. He rather not think about what Eunhyuk’s parents might do.
They play games until one of them falls asleep and winner takes the bed unless they’re too tired to crawl up on it and just stay on the sleeping bags. Most nights, Donghae falls asleep first, always after thinking about kissing Eunhyuk’s cheek or maybe the nape of his neck, but he never does. He kicks Kyuhyun’s leg instead and rolls away when he punches Donghae back. He always thinks Kyuhyun probably keeps playing until his eyes are dry scratchy pebbles and Eunhyuk draws dance choreographies on his arms, both half asleep and deep in it, but sometimes, in those moments of lucidness, he hears them.
Their voices are like static over the radio when Donghae switches stations too fast. Jumbled murmurs until Kyuhyun snaps at him to pick one and it always ends up on trot or Lee Hyori but he doesn’t tell Donghae to change it. When he focuses enough to listen, Donghae hears songs he already knows, all the words and even the breaths in right before the next verse or a soaring high note. He just didn’t know they knew the words to all the songs as well. Sometimes, it’s something he’s never heard, only seen and sometimes it’s about him and Donghae always feels oddly pleased but like he shouldn’t be listening. Or maybe it's a new hit he had no idea came out this week and it leaves Donghae with this odd feeling in his stomach.
Tonight, Kyuhyun’s voice is lighter than normal.
“If you could have any super power, what would it be?”
Donghae pictures Eunhyuk’s mouth pursed in concentration. “To fly. I want to fly.”
“Why?”
“So I could go anywhere I want.”
Fabric rustles and Donghae feels Kyuhyun rolling onto his side next to him. “Would you fly away from here?”
“Yes.” Kyuhyun stiffens a little and Donghae tries to keep as still as he can, tries not to breathe too loud or clutch onto Kyuhyun’s hand. Or Eunhyuk’s. Or maybe both. “But I’d take you both with me.”
Kyuhyun snorts a laugh and lies back again. “As if your skinny ass could carry us there.”
Donghaee relaxes when he hears Eunhyuk laugh quietly. A moment passes and Kyuhyun says,
“Hyung?”
“Yeah?” Donghae feels the surprise in Eunhyuk’s voice like his own.
“If I could fly, I’d fly the three of us away too.”
Kyuhyun snuggles into his pillow, his leg knocks against Donghae’s foot and Donghae tries to not smile too obviously when Eunhyuk’s hand brushes his and clings.
-
Donghae calls Eunhyuk around midnight.
“Meet me.”
Eunhyuk hangs up. Donghae calls, calls and calls until Eunhyuk picks up even though they both know he could have turned it off and thrown his cellphone across the room. Donghae demands, and yells, making his case, pleading, says he already called Kyuhyun who hadn’t bothered to pick up the phone. He doesn’t use sweet laced words or run on sentences. They never work on Eunhyuk anyways.
“Fine,” Eunhyuk gives in, already out of bed and pulling on his jeans.
He can hear Donghae’s smirk over the line. “See you in ten.” Donghae then hangs up without telling Eunhyuk where to meet him. A minute or so later, Eunhyuk gets a text with the address and an emoticon that’s supposed to tell Eunhyuk that Donghae is nauseous or angry or hungry.
The convenience store is three blocks away, small and bright at close to one in the morning. Donghae smiles at Eunhyuk, grabs a box of cheap red hair coloring and some gummy bears.
Eunhyuk left his window open so they go back to his house, climbing soundlessly up the tree and through the window. Donghae sheds his jacket as Eunhyuk takes his shirt off, like he’s shedding a layer of skin and bearing his bones or his soul, skin so transparent.
The bathroom light flickers. Eunhyuk tosses a towel on the floor and sits on it, Donghae kneeling behind him and mixing the contents of the box. Donghae pieces out Eunhyuk’s paper colored hair, drenches the paper in red ink, writing onto Eunhyuk’s scalp, letting the words seep into his skull. Not bothering with the latex gloves, Donghae’s fingers are quickly smeared in red, the guilty culprit with his hands full of the evidence as Eunhyuk watches him through the mirror, his witness, his accomplice. Donghae runs his hands in Eunhyuk’s hair a final time once he’s finished, nails digging into his scalp. He presses his forehead against Eunhyuk’s shoulder, his breath coming out in strangely loud pants. He can feel Eunhyuk’s chest rising and falling, quick and unsteady so Donghae holds on for a while, hair strands sticky cool in his fingers. For far too long, longer than the box says to and even though Eunhyuk starts feeling his head on fire, one of his hands finds Donghae’s knee and grips.
With a deep breath, Donghae lets go and watches quietly as Eunhyuk steps out of his jeans, boxers going tight down his thighs, and gets into the shower.
Donghae washes his hands, rubs with soap and peroxide but his hands are still red. He hears the water running and imagines the red water swirling down Eunhyuk’s spine, Donghae’s handprints imprinted on his shoulderblades and the small of his back.
Jeans left on the floor, he lies down on Eunhyuk’s sheets, smiles at Eunhyuk when he comes in towel drying his hair and sits at the foot of the bed. Their voices are quiet, decreasing when new sounds fill the house. Glass breaking followed by shattered high notes competing with nails on a chalkboard.
Are they always like that, Donghae almost asks. He knows the answer so he saves his breath using his energy instead to tug Eunhyuk over to lie next to him. This might as well be Donghae’s room, Donghae’s parents in the other room, the glass shattering on the floor he played on as a kid.
Shifting to get beneath the covers, a hushed fight over the blankets ends in silent laughter and a kick to someone’s stomach. Donghae touches Eunhyuk’s hair, still damp, while Eunhyuk slowly plays a melody on Donghae’s jaw, fingers slowing as they lose tempo and they both fall asleep to the only lullaby they know all the words too.
-
Don’t stare directly at the sun Donghae knows Kyuhyun almost says but doesn’t. Simply watches Eunhyuk blink at the rising sun, his eyelashes fluttering every few seconds. Donghae tries to look too, but it hurts, the glare causing him to shy away and see black spots instead. They don’t know what time it is, cellphones turned off and watches lost some time ago. Donghae likes how the sun flitters between the leaves of the trees over their heads. He picked today’s sopt, tomorrow is Eunhyuk’s turn and they’ve been doing this for a while now. Drive and drive and drive until someone says stop and waiting for the sunrise.
Today is Saturday so they have the whole day. For anything.
Anything is that Kyuhyun will let Eunhyuk take the wheel, slide in the back seat and say he wants to be chauefferd around. Donghae will crank up the stereo and Eunhyuk will drive them to Seoul or Tokyo or all the way to New York, stopping in Belgium along the way so Donghae can taste authentic Belgium waffles and say he likes the ones served in the dumpy diner a block from the school more. They’ll watch some old movie in a cineplex, black and white characters and scratchy voices. The girl behind the counter will smile at Eunhyuk and he’ll grin back because maybe he’s not so sure he doesn’t like the challenge, but it’s Kyuhyun she’ll kiss during her break and let slip his hand beneath her work shirt, the softness of her skin against the rough lace of her bra on Kyuhyun’s fingertips. Eunhyuk will smile at Donghae, press his mouth to his jaw during the first fifteen minutes of the film, kiss him halfway through and undo his fly and fist Donghae’s cock by the climax. Donghae will grip red between his fingers and tug and tug until the armrest along with everything else between them dissapears.
Anything, really, is them staying where they are. They must have gone somewhere but all Donghae remembers is the smoke and staring up until the sun fell from the sky and Eunhyuk blinking up at the moon.
-
The bus stop is deserted. Close to midnight, Eunhyuk pulls his collar closer around his neck. Kyuhyun fidgets next to him, a hand in his pocket, the other holding a cigarette he takes paused drags from. His car is sitting in his garage, right behind his father’s Audi convertible and the keys feel heavy in his pocket.
Donghae shows up a minute before the bus arrives, his bag thrown over his shoulder, a comforting smile on his lips. The lamp post he stands beneath reflects the light in his eyes and turns his lashes blond.
They sit in the back of the bus, Kyuhyun leaning against the window and propping his feet up, ignoring the no smoking sign, Eunhyuk and Donghae behind him, their fingers fluttering nervously around each other’s.
“Graduation ceremony was a drag,” Kyuhyun breathes out through his nose as he speaks. “I didn’t bust my ass racking up credits to graduate early to listen to the principal drawl on for hours.”
Eunhyuk says something back, about how funny it was when that guy fell off the stage or something, Donghae isn’t listening. He’s watching their reflection in the window, making out three shapes in bright lights. They look small, like they’ll disappear into thin air at any moment. The sign at the front of the bus flashes stops as the wheels turn, going over rough patches of asphalt and invisible remanents of flesh and fur and bones and dreams. The conversation grows and lessens, a bump will jerk Eunhyuk to the side sending a yelp through his lips, a long drag will keep Kyuhyun’s voice at bay. Donghae catches syllables of their sentences, strings them together and digests the sound of Eunhyuk’s voice talking about how promising the dance company is, the roll of Kyuhyun’s tongue singing praises over his scholarship and how he hopes his dad goes insane looking for the key to his car so he won’t be late for work tomorrow. Silently, Donghae wonders if his parents will miss him, if they’ll notice he’s gone. Tells Eunhyuk and Kyuhyun as much by the way he tilts his head against the window, by the way he inhales the smoke like it’s the freshest sea air. He hears more than feels Eunhyuk’s hand slipping firmly into his, the graze of his fingers on his jeans, smoothing over the vinyl of the seat beneath them, the muted slide of their fingers before they hook and hold.
Donghae watches their reflection, almost waiting for them to disappear. Or maybe for Kyuhyun’s cigarette smoke to fog up the mirror and erase them from the picture so all that’s left are a million pretty lights. They’re just boys, easy to love almost as easy as they are to forget.
After all, boys are easy.
***
a/n: Title taken from a song by Athlete.
Donghae/Eunhyuk/Kyuhyun, Donghae/Eunhyuk
pg-13
6300 wrds.
Hyukjae doesn’t fit in. Donghae and Kyuhyun choose not to.
flying over bus stops
“And I don’t want to see you in here for the rest of the week. Next time I won’t let you off so easy.”
Donghae smiles and bows his head, a quick nodding movement because they both know he’s lying and next time won’t be any different than today.
Kyuhyun, chewing off his fingernails like he’s about to bite his hand off, goes slack against the wall when Donghae stolls out of the principal’s office.
“You were worried?” Donghae raises an eyebrow, both smug and slightly offended.
“Whatever. Next time, just listen to me when I tell you we are in over our heads.”
Laughing, Donghae throws his arm around Kyuhyun and gives the nearly empty hall a once over. He pulls a folded paper from his back pocket, smiles at the awed look Kyuhyun dawns, and slips it into Kyuhyun’s pocket.
“Good luck on your test. You can thank me later,” Donghae says and he’s still laughing halfway down the hall. He’ll make fun of Kyuhyun’s face for days.
-
No one really hangs out behind the school. The place to be is out front, right at the school gates. Anyone-everyone- who wants to be seen, on display, show off that they can talk the talk or walk the walk, look no further. Donghae talks the talk and walks the walk, but he also thinks everyone is made out of shit.
The wall is white, dirtied over the years by fist fight imprints made of dried blood and sharpie carved Jonghyun loves Sooyoung and Hwang Hara is a frigid bitch. The view is a parking lot. The air smells like cafeteria food and dumpster, but there’s a nice breeze if you sit on the left side of the wall by the library and if you place your back at the right angle, you can feel the air conditioning seeping through the wall through your shirt.
Sometimes there are a few students, sometimes there’s only one.
Today, there are two kids, a girl sitting against the metal fence blubbering into her phone and a boy against the wall. Donghae’s seen him around, thinks his name is Yong or Eun… something. It’s lunch period, the girl has a half-eaten noodle cup on her lap but the boy is just drinking a soda, fizzing away next to erratic fingertips walking like a marching band on a field of white.
Donghae sits a few feet from him, takes out his lighter, and flicks it open and closed, hypnotized by the bluish of the flame.
“If you’re going to smoke, do it somewhere else. It’s against the rules anyways.”
The boy doesn’t waver beneath Donghae’s scrutiny, looks back at Donghae with boredom instead.
Donghae smiles, almost, one corner of his mouth upturning while the other twitches. “Why? You gonna tell on me?”
“No. I can’t stand the smell.”
Donghae rolls his thumb over the lighter and pockets it. “I don’t smoke.” To the guy’s furrowed brows, he adds, “I found it. Carry it around ever since. Comes in handy since my friend is a walking ashtray. What’s your name?” he finishes, the words strung together neatly without skipping a beat.
“Eunhyuk,” he says and Donghae can place him better now.
“You’re that dancer boy, right?”
Fingers stop, the pinky flared out like the final note of a trumpet. Eunhyuk’s jaw, abnormally sharp and razor like, tenses. “If you’re going to beat me up because I offend you somehow,”
“No,” Donghae says. “I could care less. A guy has a right to cut off his circulation by wearing a leopard print speedo and pummeling another guy to the ground as much as he does to wear a tutu and dance around like a fairy.”
It doesn’t sound like an insult, not really meant to be one, but Eunhyuk catches the mockery anyways. At least he’s not getting his face smashed against the school fence.
“I thought you said you didn’t smoke.”
Donghae shrugs as he takes out the cigarette he’d pocketed that Kyuhyun had dropped in homeroom. “And I don’t. But today is one of those days.”
Despite his apparent hatred for the smell, Eunhyuk doesn’t move away, sipping his soda and trying to not stare too obviously at the girl whose blubbering has raised to hiccuping cries.
“How much longer do you think she’ll keep it up?” Donghae puffs out. He doesn’t understand how Kyuhyun can do this everyday, a few inhales and already he feels his lungs shrinking to the size of raisins.
“She does this a couple times a week. Apparently, her boyfriend just got drafted for service.” Eunhyuk speaks lightly, like that’s not them in a few years, ripped away from life and turned into just another piece of a faceless sea of bodies trained to serve and protect and destroy. “I don’t get girls. Where’s your shadow anyways?”
Donghae smiles. “We’re not attached at the hip.” Disbelief crosses Eunhyuk’s face because he and Kyuhyun kind of are, but Donghae just takes a drag, lets it out slow. “Finish your coke.”
“Why?”
“So I can put this out.”
Eunhyuk puts his soda on his other side, crosses his arms, and stares. “Don’t light it up if you don’t have the balls to finish it.”
Staring at the burning tip, over half the cigarette between his index and thumb, Donghae weighs out whether to take the challenge or shrug it off. His lungs have had enough. He stubs it out on the ground and flings it over the fence and into the parking lot, rolling a good couple of centimeters from the fence.
“Problem solved.”
Eunhyuk returns his smirk, sips his soda slowly even though it’s probably warm and stale. He can’t be sure, but Donghae thinks Eunhyuk isn’t made out of shit. Either way, he likes him already.
-
Because Eunhyuk isn’t made out of shit, Donghae decides he’s okay enough to hang with them. Eunhyuk doesn’t really have friends to hang out with, so what the hell. Kyuhyun obviously doesn’t like Eunhyuk but Kyuhyun doesn’t like anyone, so that’s okay too.
“This is what you guys do on Friday afternoons?”
Donghae rolls his eyes and forces Eunhyuk to sit which sends him stumbling and knocking over Kyuhyun’s bottle of carbonated tea. Donghae still doesn’t get how Eunhyuk can be known as the “dancing boy” when he’s such a klutz.
“Because pirrouetting in pink lace is so much better,” Kyuhyun snaps, kicking his now empty bottle into the knocked over trashcan on the curb.
“I would bet it is. At least it’s not salivating over Bundang High’s girl swim team.”
Donghae swigs down half his soda and passes it to Kyuhyun telling him to keep it. “We come here for Kyuhyun. Gives him something to visualize while he’s in the shower.”
“And you?” Eunhyuk asks, propping his feet up and away from the puddle of spilt tea.
Kyuhyun snorts and pulls out a cigarette causing Eunhyuk to wrinkle his nose in disgust. “Definitely not. Donghae likes cock. Pretty. The boys the cocks are attached to, not the cocks.”
Donghae shrugs like it’s no big deal. To him, it isn’t. “Girls are too much work. Complicated. Boys are easy,” he adds, watching the way Eunhyuk’s expression remains calculatingly neutral.
“What about you?” Kyuhyun jabs his cigarette in Eunhyuk’s direction. “You like the challenge or are you easy?”
Eunhyuk purses his lips like he has to think about it. The answer is written all over his face but he feels the need to say, “I haven’t decided yet.”
They stay long after blue spandex have dried from chlorine water, enough for Kyuhyun to smoke two more cigarettes, for Eunhyuk to go through three more cans of orange soda, and for Donghae to sweet talk the pretty boy who works the register into making out against the wall at the back entrance of the mini mart.
-
“You’re actually doing homework? Kyuhyun and me are not enough of a bad influence on you.”
Eunhyuk doesn’t look up from Donghae’s desk, covered in his calculus textbook and chemistry notes. “When’s he coming anyways?”
“After his shrink is done psychoanalyzing him or whatever. “
Eventually, Donghae does some semblance of homework after Eunhyuk flat out refused to let him take a look at his but homework is boring and Donghae hates being bored so he lures Eunhyuk away from his history notes with the promise of lemonade and some cold japache in the kitchen. Serving is not Donghae’s forte and Eunhyuk laughs at how he can miss spooning into a bowl by such a wide margin, noodles sticking to the countertop and dangling off the side to drop onto the floor.
“You don’t eat much,” Donghae observes, half his bowl gone and Eunhyuk still picking at a practically full bowl. He’s noticed. How Eunhyuk doesn’t have more than a soda for lunch, rarely a bag of chips or some gummy bears. Most boys their age are still gawky and awkward in outstretched limbs and not enough muscle to fill it out. But Eunhyuk takes it a step further, going beyond teenage lankiness and delving into too hollow cheeks and a stick thin waist.
Eunhyuk shakes his head, mouth drawn tight, so Donghae doesn’t push it.
“Isn’t your mom going to be mad about the mess?” Eunhyuk swiftly changes the subject but it ends up backfiring when Donghae laughs startling Eunhyuk, causing him to simultaneously knock over his glass and the empty vase on the table. Donghae grabs his hand in a gesture of telling him not to stress over it when Eunhyuk tries to clean up his mess.
Eunhyuk’s face contorts at the contact, Donghae’s fingers pressing on the lightly purplish bruise on his wrist.
Donghae inhales sharply and lets go. “Still?”
“It’s gotten better since I started hanging out with you guys, but. Sometimes. On my way home.” Uselessly dabbing at the mess with a napkin, Eunhyuk stares at his wrist. The look in his eyes isn’t of sadness, or resentment, or why me, why can’t they just leave me alone, I’m not hurting them, I’m not hurting anyone. Another bruise is just another mark, one of many marring skin and blood and the person beneath it.
Donghae wants to ask but he already knows. Eunhyuk’s parents aren’t really around, much like Donghae’s, so Eunhyuk knows they probaly wouldn’t care just like Donghae knows his mother won’t care about the mess in her kitchen. The quiet is broken by Kyuhyun slipping in through the back door making a ruckus of tossing his bag on the floor and asking for dinner. Donghae’s not sure what he would have said otherwise.
That night, they transport themselves to alternate realities trying to see who can kill, blow up or stab each other the quickest. Kyuhyun takes over the bed because as master of every galaxy and motocross track it is his right while Donghae and Eunhyuk are forced to share the sleeping bag. When Kyuhyun’s snoring reaches obnoxious, they crawl onto the bed and roll Kyuhyun off who’s too asleep to care and simply keeps snoring his head off. Donghae smothers a pillow in his ear and Eunhyuk laughs, leaning a foot down near Kyuhyun’s face. This is when Kyuhyun wakes up, yelling who the fuck is being so fucking loud and who the hell farted.
-
Kyuhyun turns sixteen and gets a gift card worth twenty-five dollars at Game Expo. Three months later, he arrives home from school and his dad is waiting in the garage with a brand new car. Red bow and everything. He goes out for his first drive with Donghae sans Eunhyuk who’s stuck in dance practice, and they almost crash exiting the McDonald’s by pulling an illegal U-turn and running a yellow light. They tell Eunhyuk about it later with exhilarated laughter and Eunhyuk is both thankful and a little bummed he missed it.
Donghae would be lying of he said he wasn’t jealous. He’s a year older than Kyuhyun and he doesn’t have rich parents with guilt trip complexes, but Donghae likes being an optimist searching for that silver lining and he greatly enjoys having his own personal chauffer. Eunhyuk doesn’t really care. He likes to walk. Walk and walk. That doesn’t stop Kyuhyun and Donghae from picking him up from practice often. It’s not a big deal. It’s what friends do. It helps that it’s another excuse to stay out longer and they drive for hours, even if it’s a school night. Eunhyuk always falls asleep but he never complains about coming home at two and to a soundlessly sleeping house.
Lunch is spent overlapping the smell of new car with take-out containers they manage to get thanks to the passes to go off campus Donghae gets the secretary into singing for him which Kyuhyun makes mass copies of. They roll down the windows a block from the school and Eunhyuk slips his shoes off and rests them on the car door. Kyuhyun complains about the smell but Donghae argues that it doesn’t smell that bad, only when you breathe. Eunhyuk spills his drink over and Kyuhyun sends Donghae crashing against the dashboard in his haste to clobber Eunhyuk upside the head. His attacks are futile. Nothing trumps Eunhyuk’s feet.
-
“Why are we here again?”
Donghae plops down into the aisle seat forcing Kyuhyun to flail over him, trip and have to support himself on the girl sitting in the next seat. Arm rests, who needs them when you’ve got soft curvy life to support you.
“Because, Kyu, this is what friends do. Support each other and. Stuff.”
“If you get a boner from all the hot guys on stage, I’m not helping you.”
Donghae makes a face, willing the flashbacks away. That’s an experience neither wants to relive. Ever.
“Definitely not pirouettes in frilly lace,” Kyuhyun tells Eunhyuk once they meet him backstage after the performance is over and Eunhyuk positively beams.
He’s still sweaty, skin pulled taut beneath a black wife beater but Donghae remembers how he looked on stage. The lights burning over every sharp angle of Eunhyuk’s body, turning all his edges into skin slicing knives concealed beneath a soft facade. The way his body moved as if his bones were liquid, flowing like a wave Donghae half expected to evaporate into air. All the performers were good and while Donghae isn’t an expert, Eunhyuk stood out the most.
Eunhyuk wasn’t the only one to stand out, or up, but no one pays attention to the audience anyways. Boners aside, Eunhyuk was awesome.
“We have to celebrate this,” Donghae announces. Kyuhyun already has the keys dangling in his hand.
-
Streets are limitless at night. Never ending lamp posts lighting the way, and they feel like they can drive and drive and reach the end of the world. The radio is stuck on some lame station that only plays eighties music because Donghae broke the dial last week so Donghae hums along to spaced out guitar riffs and synthesized vocals while Kyuhyun tries to not crash. Safely, somehow, Kyuhyun halts in front of a taco joint and Eunhyuk wolfs down three fish tacos and half the nachos. It’s the most he’s eaten in front of them and Donghae guesses he must be happy, the adrenaline left over from performing vibrating in his body so loud it hums over the stereo. Through the rearview mirror, he sees Eunhyuk’s smiling mouth, the corner smeared with sour cream, and smiles back.
“Not a good idea,” Eunhyuk mumbles but takes the beer Kyuhyun tosses him outside the convenience store. Donghae is still talking to the guy he convinced to buy the beer for them, smiling and gesturing for him to keep the change.
“Get his number?” Kyuhyun, already half his bottle gone, asks when Donghae comes back.
Donghae rubs the back of his neck, his feet shuffling awkwardly as he approaches. “Nah. What am I going to do with some dumb frat guy? Even I have standards. Hand me a beer.”
Eunhyuk does and shares a look with Kyuhyun, both unnerved by Donghae’s attitude. Maybe the beer will help, Kyuhyun blinks. Let’s hope not, Eunhyuk’s eyes roll.
It both does and doesn’t.
Donghae cranks up the stereo, as loud as it can go and jumps on top of the hood of the car. He won’t take no for an answer, hands reaching for Eunhyuk and not letting go once he’s up there with him. I want to dance, he tells Eunhyuk. With you, his hold says and Eunhyuk gives in and dances too. They jump up and down, shimmy and shake and twist and laugh and laugh, it bubbles up from somewhere hidden inside them and fizzes out of their mouths. Kyuhyun lounges on the roof of the car, smoke swirling lazily around his head, watching them and smiling. He lets them drag him down by his feet, lets himself slide down the front mirror and land on the pavement on his ass. Their laughter, all three, free and young, harmonize together until the pudgy old man who runs the convenience store threatens to call the cops on them.
-
Eunhyuk has to bleach his hair for his dance company’s recital.
Two days later, he shows up to school with a black eye.
“You should see the other guy,” he smirks when Donghae and Kyuhyun gawk at him.
Donghae sees red. It intensifies and burns inside him the entire day until he has a run in with some idiot jock running his mouth off about something or the other. Donghae takes offense. He has a busted lip to match Eunhyuk’s black eye.
He’s not let off easy. No amount of sweet talk or running stringed words rolling off his tongue make a difference, he’s got detention for a week. Nowhere near enough to make up for all the ones he got away with, and even the principal looks a little disappointed.
“You should see the other guy,” Donghae echoes when he slides into the back seat of Kyuhyun’s car after his first detention, Kyuhyun and Eunhyuk mirroring the gawking from this morning.
-
Kyuhyun’s foot presses on the gas lightly, the engine roaring back at him. It recieves a roar in return, just as angry, just as threatening. Kyuhyun smirks, answers back.
“Kyuhyun.”
The guy’s eyes are challenging. Laughing. Taunting. Donghae knows he’s not staring at him and a part of him is glad he isn’t. Behind him, he can feel Eunhyuk shaking, feel the nerves curling and clenching of fear inside Eunhyuk inside himself. All he does is smile at him through rear view mirror. Everything will be okay, he smiles. Eunhyuk’s eyes tell him he doesn’t belive him. Donghae doesn’t blame him.
The light turns green, bright and blinding like the color of Kyuhyun's father’s favorite tie.
Kyuhyun steps on the gas until his foot almost pushes through the floor board and slides against the road.
It feels like a millisecond. Or maybe it’s more like a million seconds speeding by so fast, it’s all one big flash of time. All Donghae remembers is little particles, bits and pieces of street road and light, the sun, Kyuhyun’s white knuckles and someone laughing. Himself most definitely.
He feels more than sees Kyuhyun stopping the car. Somewhere, there’s a lot of green and maybe someone’s singing, but that’s probably just the radio. Someone is breathing too loud, chest heaving, tiny gasps as he tries to suck in more air. It’s not Eunhyuk, who’s slumped forward with his forehead against Kyuhyun’s head rest. It’s Kyuhyun, his knuckles ghost white on the steering wheel.
Donghae isn’t sure when he gets out of the car, his feet wobbly on stable ground after going what felt like a million years per hour, but by the time he is, Kyuhyun’s breathing is louder. Eunhyuk stands in front of him, face twisted so many ways it’s all knives and no soft skin, fist made out of Kyuhyun’s cigarettes and Kyuhyun looks about ready to punch him. But his knees give out on him and he’s slumped in the grass, face dry and shoulders shaking. The grass seems to engulf him, his clothes swallow him whole with barely a face and hands and feet sticking out and he looks like a little boy playing dress up. Eunhyuk sits next to him, their shoulders fitting together, cigarettes forgotten in favor of crushing the grass between his fingers and threading his hand with Kyuhyun’s. They both look so small to Donghae, so small, he wants to spread his arms out like wings and cradle them in his arms. He knows he’s not any bigger than either of them, probably smaller still. Letting the grass stain his old jeans, Donghae burries his head in Kyuhyun’s chest and tries to wrap them both up in his short arms anyways.
-
“Why are we at Kyuhyun’s place? He’s out of town this weekend.”
“Exactly.”
The small window at the side of the garage pushes open with a shake of the frame, Donghae shimmies through despite Eunhyuk’s protests. Garage door open, Eunhyuk scowls, threatening to gag Donghae with his sock. Donghae laughs because if he goes down, Eunhyuk’s coming with him. He was the lookout after all.
“Relax. If I know Kyu like I know he knows me, he expected this,” Donghae says like he isn’t shoving a wire down the slightly ajar window and unlocking the car door. He smiles triumphant when he reaches in, and sure enough, the key is in the glove compartement.
Donghae drives out to the beach, buildings morphing into trees then to nothing and then, mountains of sand. The radio dial is working again but they don’t turn it on, filling the silence with their own voices in the form of secrets and bad jokes and pauses for breath. Eunhyuk sticks his hand out the window, just a little, fingers dancing on air, imaginary piano keys playing a melody so softly the car motor blocks it out no matter how hard Donghae tries to listen.
They buy fried fish turnovers from a stand on the beach and eat them with countless napkins soaking up all the fat. Eunhyuk doesn’t eat all of his, says his stomach feels a little twisted in knots, and for once, Donghae believes him. Little bald seagulls dust the sand, entertainment for hours in scaring them away and crouching down when they fly too low. Running, run, run, beat up sneakers leaving shoeprints in the sand but Donghae wants to leave a mark, even if it wont last. They take off their sneakers and socks, leave them by the vending shack and run, run, run, breathless and light, they just might spread wings and fly off into the horizon, reach uncharted lands and never have to come back.
Their feet always land on sand and the waves wash away their footprints no matter how deep they press into the muddy sand.
Eunhyuk lays himself flat on his back, the tip of the waves colliding with his toes. He looks like he might drift away, get carried by a wave or the wind and float off to another place. The wind picks up so Donghae stretches the few seashells between them and wraps his hand around Eunhyuk’s. Two waves crash at their feet and drag themselves back to sea. Eunhyuk holds back, lacing their fingers together.
Inside the car, it is warm, a shivering contrast with the rain pouring outside. Eunhyuk sits in the driver’s seat, the brake digging into his hip as they both check in the back seat for something to dry off with. They make do with Kyuhyun’s jacket, laughter fogging up the windows. It is Donghae who pushes Eunhyuk’s hair off his forehead, but it is Eunhyuk who leans over and kisses Donghae. Mouths meet awkwardly, trembling lips from the cold, the faint taste of fish and lemons on their breaths, and Eunhyuk’s hip is really starting to hurt. None of it matters. Not when they’re both warmth somehow keeping away the cold. Not when Eunhyuk gets up on his knees, pushes Donghae against the window and warms his wrinkled hands in Donghae’s wet hair, Donghae gripping Eunhyuk’s arms and opening up against the warmth of their mouths, tasting the melody of Eunhyuk’s fingers on his tongue.
Eunhyuk drives back to the city, Donghae flipping on the radio to an instrumental station. The ride back is quiet as they leave behind sand and sea and never to be found lands.
-
Waiting for Eunhyuk to finish practice, Donghae and Kyuhyun eat popsicles in the front seat of Kyuhyun’s car. Kyuhyun’s been dropping hints all day, how his seat is arranged weird, the rear-view mirror is angled too low for him, but Donghae doesn’t bite and the day is sweltering so he occupies his mouth with other things. Kyuhyun uses his schoolbag to catch drops of juice; Donghae makes a show of licking and sucking, trying to not choke while laughing at Kyuhyun’s annoyed face.
“Why are you so disgusting? At least wait till Eunhyuk gets here. That way someone can enjoy your show,” Kyuhyun snickers, lips painted grape, but stops when Donghae says nothing back, cheeks looking oddly pinkish.
“Dude. What the fuck?”
“Shut up,” Donghae grumbles, trying to disappear into his seat.
“What the fuck. Donghae. What the fuck.”
The back door opens, Eunhyuk’s head popping in, the rest of his body following. “Hey. What’s up?”
“Nothing. Just that Donghae likes your co-” Kyuhyun is cut off by Donghae shoving the entirety of his popsicle in Kyuhyun’s open mouth resulting in immediate brain freeze and choking.
“Your shirt. I like your shirt.”
Eunhyuk looks down at his white t-shirt but shrugs, quickly distracted by the possibility of strawberry flavored ice. Finally, popsicle out of his mouth and flung out the window, Kyuhyun puts the car in drive muttering how he hopes Donghae has fun walking from now on.
He’ll be parked in front of Donghae’s house at a quarter to eight tomorrow morning.
-
Donghae’s house is five blocks from Eunhyuk’s, a bus ride and a four minute walk from Kyuhyun’s. It is a street up from the playground they drink at some times, at midnight when all the preschoolers are tucked away in their beds safe except from imaginary monsters and the tooth fairy. Kyuhyun hangs off from the monkey bars while Eunhyuk sits at the bottom of the slide and digs his toes in the sand. Donghae watches as Kyuhyun taunts Eunhyuk to make his ancestors proud until Eunhyuk gets up and knocks him off with his feet and Donghae laughs at them. They always go back to his house because it’s closer and because his parents never hear the noise they make as they trek up the stairs. Donghae knows Kyuhyun’s parents would be awaken by the alarm and kick them out. He rather not think about what Eunhyuk’s parents might do.
They play games until one of them falls asleep and winner takes the bed unless they’re too tired to crawl up on it and just stay on the sleeping bags. Most nights, Donghae falls asleep first, always after thinking about kissing Eunhyuk’s cheek or maybe the nape of his neck, but he never does. He kicks Kyuhyun’s leg instead and rolls away when he punches Donghae back. He always thinks Kyuhyun probably keeps playing until his eyes are dry scratchy pebbles and Eunhyuk draws dance choreographies on his arms, both half asleep and deep in it, but sometimes, in those moments of lucidness, he hears them.
Their voices are like static over the radio when Donghae switches stations too fast. Jumbled murmurs until Kyuhyun snaps at him to pick one and it always ends up on trot or Lee Hyori but he doesn’t tell Donghae to change it. When he focuses enough to listen, Donghae hears songs he already knows, all the words and even the breaths in right before the next verse or a soaring high note. He just didn’t know they knew the words to all the songs as well. Sometimes, it’s something he’s never heard, only seen and sometimes it’s about him and Donghae always feels oddly pleased but like he shouldn’t be listening. Or maybe it's a new hit he had no idea came out this week and it leaves Donghae with this odd feeling in his stomach.
Tonight, Kyuhyun’s voice is lighter than normal.
“If you could have any super power, what would it be?”
Donghae pictures Eunhyuk’s mouth pursed in concentration. “To fly. I want to fly.”
“Why?”
“So I could go anywhere I want.”
Fabric rustles and Donghae feels Kyuhyun rolling onto his side next to him. “Would you fly away from here?”
“Yes.” Kyuhyun stiffens a little and Donghae tries to keep as still as he can, tries not to breathe too loud or clutch onto Kyuhyun’s hand. Or Eunhyuk’s. Or maybe both. “But I’d take you both with me.”
Kyuhyun snorts a laugh and lies back again. “As if your skinny ass could carry us there.”
Donghaee relaxes when he hears Eunhyuk laugh quietly. A moment passes and Kyuhyun says,
“Hyung?”
“Yeah?” Donghae feels the surprise in Eunhyuk’s voice like his own.
“If I could fly, I’d fly the three of us away too.”
Kyuhyun snuggles into his pillow, his leg knocks against Donghae’s foot and Donghae tries to not smile too obviously when Eunhyuk’s hand brushes his and clings.
-
Donghae calls Eunhyuk around midnight.
“Meet me.”
Eunhyuk hangs up. Donghae calls, calls and calls until Eunhyuk picks up even though they both know he could have turned it off and thrown his cellphone across the room. Donghae demands, and yells, making his case, pleading, says he already called Kyuhyun who hadn’t bothered to pick up the phone. He doesn’t use sweet laced words or run on sentences. They never work on Eunhyuk anyways.
“Fine,” Eunhyuk gives in, already out of bed and pulling on his jeans.
He can hear Donghae’s smirk over the line. “See you in ten.” Donghae then hangs up without telling Eunhyuk where to meet him. A minute or so later, Eunhyuk gets a text with the address and an emoticon that’s supposed to tell Eunhyuk that Donghae is nauseous or angry or hungry.
The convenience store is three blocks away, small and bright at close to one in the morning. Donghae smiles at Eunhyuk, grabs a box of cheap red hair coloring and some gummy bears.
Eunhyuk left his window open so they go back to his house, climbing soundlessly up the tree and through the window. Donghae sheds his jacket as Eunhyuk takes his shirt off, like he’s shedding a layer of skin and bearing his bones or his soul, skin so transparent.
The bathroom light flickers. Eunhyuk tosses a towel on the floor and sits on it, Donghae kneeling behind him and mixing the contents of the box. Donghae pieces out Eunhyuk’s paper colored hair, drenches the paper in red ink, writing onto Eunhyuk’s scalp, letting the words seep into his skull. Not bothering with the latex gloves, Donghae’s fingers are quickly smeared in red, the guilty culprit with his hands full of the evidence as Eunhyuk watches him through the mirror, his witness, his accomplice. Donghae runs his hands in Eunhyuk’s hair a final time once he’s finished, nails digging into his scalp. He presses his forehead against Eunhyuk’s shoulder, his breath coming out in strangely loud pants. He can feel Eunhyuk’s chest rising and falling, quick and unsteady so Donghae holds on for a while, hair strands sticky cool in his fingers. For far too long, longer than the box says to and even though Eunhyuk starts feeling his head on fire, one of his hands finds Donghae’s knee and grips.
With a deep breath, Donghae lets go and watches quietly as Eunhyuk steps out of his jeans, boxers going tight down his thighs, and gets into the shower.
Donghae washes his hands, rubs with soap and peroxide but his hands are still red. He hears the water running and imagines the red water swirling down Eunhyuk’s spine, Donghae’s handprints imprinted on his shoulderblades and the small of his back.
Jeans left on the floor, he lies down on Eunhyuk’s sheets, smiles at Eunhyuk when he comes in towel drying his hair and sits at the foot of the bed. Their voices are quiet, decreasing when new sounds fill the house. Glass breaking followed by shattered high notes competing with nails on a chalkboard.
Are they always like that, Donghae almost asks. He knows the answer so he saves his breath using his energy instead to tug Eunhyuk over to lie next to him. This might as well be Donghae’s room, Donghae’s parents in the other room, the glass shattering on the floor he played on as a kid.
Shifting to get beneath the covers, a hushed fight over the blankets ends in silent laughter and a kick to someone’s stomach. Donghae touches Eunhyuk’s hair, still damp, while Eunhyuk slowly plays a melody on Donghae’s jaw, fingers slowing as they lose tempo and they both fall asleep to the only lullaby they know all the words too.
-
Don’t stare directly at the sun Donghae knows Kyuhyun almost says but doesn’t. Simply watches Eunhyuk blink at the rising sun, his eyelashes fluttering every few seconds. Donghae tries to look too, but it hurts, the glare causing him to shy away and see black spots instead. They don’t know what time it is, cellphones turned off and watches lost some time ago. Donghae likes how the sun flitters between the leaves of the trees over their heads. He picked today’s sopt, tomorrow is Eunhyuk’s turn and they’ve been doing this for a while now. Drive and drive and drive until someone says stop and waiting for the sunrise.
Today is Saturday so they have the whole day. For anything.
Anything is that Kyuhyun will let Eunhyuk take the wheel, slide in the back seat and say he wants to be chauefferd around. Donghae will crank up the stereo and Eunhyuk will drive them to Seoul or Tokyo or all the way to New York, stopping in Belgium along the way so Donghae can taste authentic Belgium waffles and say he likes the ones served in the dumpy diner a block from the school more. They’ll watch some old movie in a cineplex, black and white characters and scratchy voices. The girl behind the counter will smile at Eunhyuk and he’ll grin back because maybe he’s not so sure he doesn’t like the challenge, but it’s Kyuhyun she’ll kiss during her break and let slip his hand beneath her work shirt, the softness of her skin against the rough lace of her bra on Kyuhyun’s fingertips. Eunhyuk will smile at Donghae, press his mouth to his jaw during the first fifteen minutes of the film, kiss him halfway through and undo his fly and fist Donghae’s cock by the climax. Donghae will grip red between his fingers and tug and tug until the armrest along with everything else between them dissapears.
Anything, really, is them staying where they are. They must have gone somewhere but all Donghae remembers is the smoke and staring up until the sun fell from the sky and Eunhyuk blinking up at the moon.
-
The bus stop is deserted. Close to midnight, Eunhyuk pulls his collar closer around his neck. Kyuhyun fidgets next to him, a hand in his pocket, the other holding a cigarette he takes paused drags from. His car is sitting in his garage, right behind his father’s Audi convertible and the keys feel heavy in his pocket.
Donghae shows up a minute before the bus arrives, his bag thrown over his shoulder, a comforting smile on his lips. The lamp post he stands beneath reflects the light in his eyes and turns his lashes blond.
They sit in the back of the bus, Kyuhyun leaning against the window and propping his feet up, ignoring the no smoking sign, Eunhyuk and Donghae behind him, their fingers fluttering nervously around each other’s.
“Graduation ceremony was a drag,” Kyuhyun breathes out through his nose as he speaks. “I didn’t bust my ass racking up credits to graduate early to listen to the principal drawl on for hours.”
Eunhyuk says something back, about how funny it was when that guy fell off the stage or something, Donghae isn’t listening. He’s watching their reflection in the window, making out three shapes in bright lights. They look small, like they’ll disappear into thin air at any moment. The sign at the front of the bus flashes stops as the wheels turn, going over rough patches of asphalt and invisible remanents of flesh and fur and bones and dreams. The conversation grows and lessens, a bump will jerk Eunhyuk to the side sending a yelp through his lips, a long drag will keep Kyuhyun’s voice at bay. Donghae catches syllables of their sentences, strings them together and digests the sound of Eunhyuk’s voice talking about how promising the dance company is, the roll of Kyuhyun’s tongue singing praises over his scholarship and how he hopes his dad goes insane looking for the key to his car so he won’t be late for work tomorrow. Silently, Donghae wonders if his parents will miss him, if they’ll notice he’s gone. Tells Eunhyuk and Kyuhyun as much by the way he tilts his head against the window, by the way he inhales the smoke like it’s the freshest sea air. He hears more than feels Eunhyuk’s hand slipping firmly into his, the graze of his fingers on his jeans, smoothing over the vinyl of the seat beneath them, the muted slide of their fingers before they hook and hold.
Donghae watches their reflection, almost waiting for them to disappear. Or maybe for Kyuhyun’s cigarette smoke to fog up the mirror and erase them from the picture so all that’s left are a million pretty lights. They’re just boys, easy to love almost as easy as they are to forget.
After all, boys are easy.
***
a/n: Title taken from a song by Athlete.