[oneshot] Canvas. (part 1)
Title: Canvas
Pairings: female!Sehun/female!Chanyeol, female!Sehun/Kai
Rating: R
Length: 23,058 words
Summary: Sehun is a perfect white canvas, a surface for other people to paint over. Slowly, but surely, her blank surface starts to peel off.
Warning: Brief mentions of general homophobia.
A/N: written for joonmyeon as part of the ohunlimnited fic exchange.
Being a model isn’t about being skinny.
Not exclusively, at least. It’s about being tall, too, of course. Lean and elegant.
And more than just lean, or chic, or even pretty - it’s about being perfectly pliant. Shapeless, vague, carefully blank. Being a model is being a white canvas, over which people can paint, draw, project, imprint - and then erase it all and start over from nothing, with not a smudge of anything else left to be seen.
When the casting agent told Sehun, all those years ago, that she was perfect for modeling, she had been boundlessly happy. Nowadays, when admiring her own figure in the mirror, she wonders if she should’ve been offended instead. After all, being a model is being bland - void of any personal colors that might interfere in the artist’s work. Maybe she should’ve refused the agent’s attention then. Who knows what path she’d have followed instead…
Regardless, now is now, and Oh Sehun is a rising star. It’s been three years since she signed the contract with her agency, and barely one year since she exploded all over the magazines and TV commercials, and she’s been doing nothing but work, work, and work. Photoshoots, runways, numerous endorsements, even a TV drama - she’s doing it all, and all at once.
“Give me sweetness! Smile more! Sunshine and summer!” One photographer instructs.
“Power! Fierceness! Challenge the camera!” Another one insists.
But all of them agree on one thing.
“You’re gorgeous!”
“Beautiful!”
“Perfect!”
“Flawless!”
For a model, that’s more than enough.
Sehun knows who Kai is, obviously. She’s not blind; she’s seen him on TV, in magazine covers, in ads at the train station when she still took the train. She has heard all sorts of comments regarding his upcoming CD debut, happy ones, ecstatic ones, skeptic ones, neutral ones. He might’ve been no one when Sehun was still a junior high student, swooning over Liz Liza accessories and fashion magazines, but, nowadays, he’s undeniably a Big Deal.
So, when her manager tells her that she’ll be in a photoshoot with him for the day, she can’t help but be a little wide-eyed.
“Kai?” She blinks in surprise. “Like… that Kai?”
“That Kai,” Lu Han’s eyes are on the road, but there’s a smug grin on his lips. “We worked hard to bring the two of you together for this one. How’s that?” He gives her a quick glance through the rear mirror. “Do you like him?”
Sehun has no opinion about him. She merely shrugs. “He’s really popular these days.”
“He is,” Lu Han admits. “Originally, this endorsement was just his, but we got your name in the deal as well. The company wants the two of you to collab tons from now on.”
Sehun snickers silently at the slang. In front of the people they work with, his Korean is very straight-laced, but when it’s just the two of them, his speech turns funny.
“Sounds nice,” she says vaguely, looking out the car’s window. From inside, the outside world seems dark and undefined, thanks to the tinted glass that prevents outsiders from catching a glimpse of her face. She still remembers the day her section director called her to his office - “from now on your manager will pick you up for your schedules” - after months of commotion and sightings from fans and non-fans alike. Since then, the most she has seen of the streets is the occasional open-air photoshoot in Gangnam and this; a poorly defined scenery, as if watched in a television that doesn’t work all that well. No shopping for groceries, no walk to the park…
“… the same age, so I think you’ll like him. Yah, Oh Sehun, are you listening?” Lu Han snatches her out from her reverie with a call. She blinks, brushing her long hair away from her face.
“Sorry,” she offers half-heartedly. Lu Han brushes it off, rolling his eyes. It probably wasn’t important. He was just trying to entertain her.
“Anyway-let’s try to make a good impression,” he says as they approach the studio. “This could be a turning point for your career.”
Sehun hears that one a lot. Deep inside, she feels a little dizzy, wondering where else her career is left to turn to.
Kai is tall, tanned, and has sharp, dark eyes. When he and Sehun greet each other, he’s quiet and polite; during the photoshoot, he’s professional and charismatic. Sehun is fairly impressed at how good he is: quick to follow the photographer’s exigencies, quick to mold his personality to the clothes he’s wearing, to the hair and make-up assigned to him. As a model, he’s spotless.
They’re being photographed for a traditional brand of chocolate, one that Sehun remembers looking at with amazement during her school days, seductive in its sleek packaging, but too expensive for Sehun’s limited allowance. They’re supposed to represent the new flavors coming out that autumn; Kai is the cayenne pepper dark chocolate bar, while Sehun is the white chocolate raspberry truffles. As the staff apply her make-up, Sehun catches sight of her recently-dyed blonde hair with pastel pink highlights in the mirror, and wonders for how long the company has known about this endorsement.
Not that it makes any difference, of course. It’s just a silly thought.
As a representative of the new truffle, Sehun’s character is sweet, tranquil, but with a dash of spice to her. Under the creative director’s commands, she smiles kindly to the camera, the honey brown color lenses making her eyes sparkle under the ring lights. It’s the first time in a while they’ve tied her hair in a bun, giving her more mobility, since she’s free from having to make her hair seem endlessly long; all she has to take care with is her body’s angle.
When Kai has his solo pictures taken, she stays to watch. Lu Han is beside her babbling about whatever it is, and the staff surrounds her like bees, retouching her hair and make-up, so it’s a bit hard to concentrate, but she manages to anyway. Kai is definitely eye-drawing, unconventionally handsome, sharp and precise in his poses. He’s aware of what his best angle is, of what each one of the instructions shouted at him means. Sehun sympathizes with that side of him.
“The two of you should talk a little afterwards,” Lu Han says, indicating Kai with a discreet gesture. “I’m sort of befriending his manager already. Cool guy. Maybe we can have a coffee afterwards, you know, the four of us.”
Sehun hums in agreement, careful not to let the make-up assistant poke her eye out with the eye pencil. Make-up retouched, hair fixed, and the staff crew is gone just like it had come; unannounced, in all but a second. Sehun is let alone with her manager near a table of props, so she can narrow her eyes at him and whisper, “You’re up to something.”
“Hm?” Lu han blinks innocently at her, but he can’t lie. He has never been able to lie to Sehun, not once in three years of working for her. “Why would you say that?”
“You’re being insistent,” she points out, crossing her arms, making use of her taller frame to corner Lu Han a little. “Did the company tell you to make sure I befriend Kai?”
“Huh? Ah, well,” Lu Han pointedly looks away. “Well, it’d definitely be a good thing if you guys were friends, right? I mean, the two of you are so popular right now! And you’re even doing, you know,” he signalizes the set vaguely. The anxiety brought by lying made him forget the Korean word for what they’re doing; that’s another effect Sehun is used to, and she narrows her eyes at him, but sighs and backs away, so to signalize she has dropped the subject. Lu Han relaxes visibly.
Well, it’s true. Kai and herself are both ascending quickly to the top of the showbiz world, possibly at the same speed, even if taking different paths. Associating her image with his could lead some of his fans, which were part of a similar demographic to her own fans, to start supporting her as well. The same could happen with him. From the business point-of-view, it was a win-win situation.
“Actress Oh Sehun,” one of the director’s assistants called, and Sehun used that as an excuse to unceremoniously dump her coat onto Lu Han, glaring at him a bit. But then, on a second thought…
“Treat the three of us to coffee, then,” Sehun asks. “Invite them out in my behalf.”
And she gives him no chance to respond before she turns around and leaves, but she has no doubt that the response would’ve been enthusiastic.
When they do go out for coffee, Sehun gets distracted for long enough for Lu Han and Kai’s manager - a pale, short man named Kim Junmyeon - to go off together to the counter, ‘we can get your orders, wait for us here’, and there she is, left alone with Kai at the table. That was Lu Han’s plan since the beginning, Sehun is completely sure - and worse, she fell for it like a duckling.
Sitting right in front of her, Kai seems to be busy with his phone, or toying with it to avoid talking to Sehun. It’s a bit rude of him, but Sehun understands the feeling, as she had felt compelled to do the same when in similar situations in the past. Perhaps because Kai was a man, his company let him off easily in things like that. Sehun decides not to push it, and looks out of the café’s window, admiring the streets from behind the fogged glass.
“Sorry for that,” it catches Sehun by surprise, and she looks back at Kai, who has unexpectedly put his phone away. He’s sheepishly looking down at the table, as if analyzing the dessert menu. “I was replying to a text. Sorry.”
“Oh!” Sehun widens her eyes in surprise. So he’s apologizing for not talking to her right away! “Don’t worry. Thank you for having me over today,” she makes a small bow.
“Huh?” At that, Kai blinks, clearly confused.
“Kai sshi, you’ve been endorsing this brand for a year already, right?” Sehun points out, smiling. “So, to me, you’re a sunbae figure.”
“Ah-oh,” the male model seems to finally understand, and lowers his eyes again, embarrassed. He’s surprisingly clumsy for someone so sleek when in front of a camera. “It was nothing. Thank you for working with me today. You looked really pretty.”
A beat. Sehun halts completely still, unsure of what to do, trying to fight down the hot flush climbing up her neck. The only people who called her pretty were the photographers, the press, and her fans. She had never had a colleague call her pretty so straight-forwardly. Specially not a male one.
“Uh… thank you? You were very handsome too,” she replies, avoiding his glance, browsing the counter for their managers instead. The two of them are chatting happily with the cashier, who steals star-struck glances at Sehun and Kai once in a while. Sehun sighs.
“Thank you,” Kai replies offhandedly. “They make really good chocolate. I mean, I’m not much of a chocolate person, but I really liked theirs when I tried it. Their Christmas peppermint truffles from last year were really delicious.”
“Huh, I see,” now that her embarrassment is subsided, Sehun can bring herself to look at him in the eye again. “I haven’t tried their chocolate yet. Dieting and all.”
“Oh,” Kai scrunches his nose in distaste. Sehun can’t help but chuckle. “You don’t look like you need dieting though…?”
“That’s what I diet for,” Sehun points out, grinning. Kai concedes, making a face.
“Next time you have a meal off from your diet, you should try it,” he says nonetheless. “I’ll bring you some, they gave me a lot of samples some weeks ago. Which one do you prefer; dark chocolate, milk chocolate or white chocolate?”
“Milk chocolate.” This leads Kai to crosses his arms and nod solemnly.
“Wise choice,” he says in an austere voice, and Sehun ends up laughing louder than she probably should. “Then, I’ll bring you a marzipan bar. Also, their burnt cappuccino candy bar is pretty good! Do you like coffee-flavored things?”
Sehun made a face. “I prefer bubble tea. Coffee stains the enamel, you know.”
“The what…?”
“The tooth enamel. Your teeth,” Sehun explains, pointing to her own - pristine white - teeth. Kai raises an eyebrow in disdain, and shrugs.
“Marzipan bar, then. It’s pretty good,” he emphasizes. “Probably better than the cayenne pepper one.” At that, he scrunches his nose again, and of course, it’s very unprofessional, but Sehun chuckles. “I’ve never tried chocolate with pepper in it. Have you? I wonder if it’s good.”
“It sounds really fancy,” Sehun comments vaguely, shrugging. “But I think raspberry truffles sound even better.”
Kai clicks his tongue angrily, and Sehun laughs when he shoots her a sulking glance. It’s a joke, obviously, and soon enough he’s laughing again. It’s pleasant, to be able to talk to someone in this kind of easy-going atmosphere. Accepting Lu Han’s invitation for coffee had been a good idea, after all.
Speaking of Lu Han, he and Kai’s manager seem to have finally gotten the orders, and are walking back to the table with the drinks in hand, still chatting cheerfully. Lu Han has an espresso - his - and milk tea - Sehun’s, while Junmyeon has two cappuccinos in hands. The subject of their enthusiastic chatter seems to be idols.
“… and the drama she’s in is not bad either!” Sehun could hear Lu Han say, to what Junmyeon answers with, “she’s an all-around star. Even in ten years she won’t have deteriorated”. Sehun turns to Kai and raises her brows in mock surprise.
“Seems like we’re not big enough to make it into our own managers’ talk,” she says, allowing herself the joke, and it’s a good idea, because it makes Kai laugh.
“Traitors. Staff members are all the same,” Kai says, shaking his head as the managers finally arrive at the table.
“Huh? What? What are you saying?” Junmyeon immediately picks up Kai’s comment, and halts the conversation to look at him in surprise. Kai says nothing, but grins slyly to Sehun. “What? What did I do? Did I get the wrong order?”
The models refuse to say a single word, giggling secretively to each other, occasionally shooting Junmyeon an analytic glance. Even after they pay the bill, he’s still asking Kai what he had been talking about at that moment.
“You seem to have liked Kai, huh?” Lu Han chirps while driving her home, so obviously satisfied that Sehun wants to roll her eyes at him. “It usually takes you some time to loosen up around people, but you were all smiley and chitty-chatty with him today.”
True enough. It has been a while since Sehun had talked to a celebrity her age, and perhaps even longer since she had felt comfortable with someone she didn’t know yet. She doesn’t think of it as something so special, but Lu Han, apparently, does.
“We have a lot in common,” she answers off-handedly, looking through the tinted glass.
The answer seems to intensify Lu Han’s joy, and he chats nonstop all the way to Sehun’s apartment. For now, Sehun doesn’t fear what he might make of her answer, but she knows he won’t put it aside. And she lets herself go with the flow.
Next time her and Kai meet - this time to record a video commercial, much more tiresome than a simple photoshoot - he keeps his world, and brings Sehun a marzipan milk chocolate bar, wrapped prettily in golden and white.
“For me?” Sehun puts on a coquettish act. “Thank you, sunbaenim. You shouldn’t have.”
Kai rolls his eyes, but smiles shyly. “Remember to take a break from your diet. Endorsing a product you haven’t tried isn’t right.”
“Yes, sunbaenim. Will do that,” Sehun accepts the bar, bowing politely, laughing when Kai clicks his tongue in annoyance at her. She’s sure there are staff member watching them, whispering to each other about it, and at that moment she knows that the marzipan bar has started a rumour.
“So you exchanged numbers with him!” Lu Han widens his eyes when Sehun tells him that Kai sent a text saying hi.
“Yeah. We’re friends now,” Sehun comments, too busy texting a reply to pay her manager attention. They’re at Sehun’s apartment, and Lu Han is washing some peaches he bought for her, while Sehun is sitting at the counter, waiting patiently till it’s time for them to head to a magazine shoot.
“Huh,” Lu Han makes a vague sound, finishing his task. Sehun and Kai are engaged in a complex word game, one Kai is particularly bad at, and Sehun is making a crude joke about male models and reduced intelligence when Lu Han materializes next to her, grinning. “Just friends?”
Ah.
So that’s the point, after all.
“For now,” Sehun answers vaguely, expression neutral. It seems to be enough for Lu Han, though, and he steals a peek at her phone screen before slipping away, reciting her schedule for the day.
She should have seen it coming. She really should, and it shames her that she didn’t, that she got too immersed in her comfortable friendship with Kai to remember that she was still in showbiz, and that every word, every step, every decision was strategically planned to help her ascend as a celebrity. And, of course, just friendship wouldn’t be enough for her to enjoy the push of having her image associated to Kai’s. When it comes to a man and a woman, it rarely is.
On Friday, right as Sehun is about to shower and go to bed after an exhaustive day of filming for the her TV drama, her phone rings, vibrating loudly against the kitchen counter. Tired, sleepy, and still a bit in character, Sehun considers not answering it, but the small thought of rebellion doesn’t go through and she picks it up after the fourth ring.
It’s Kai.
“Hello?” She tries not to sound too tired.
“Hi! Hello. It’s me,” it’s the first time they’re talking on the phone; till now, they have only exchanged text messages. It’s a bit awkward. “How are you? Am I interrupting anything?”
“No, I just got home,” Sehun lets herself fall butt-first on the couch, reaching for a fashion magazine she had been reading that morning. On the cover, one of Sehun’s lesser known rivals smiled brightly, round face framed by light brown curls. Sehun envied her smile, as well as how good she looked in her floral dress. They never put Sehun in floral. “And you?”
“I’m on my break right now. It’s almost over, though,” he replies. He must be in his dressing room, or maybe at a fire exit, because Sehun can’t hear anything else but his voice, and sets tend to be quite noisy during breaks. “Uh, listen. Um. When is your day off? I mean, do you even have a day off? Since you’re a rising star and all.”
Sehun laughs, turning the pages of the magazine absent-mindedly. She spots herself in an ad, turns the page without looking twice. “I have Sunday off. How about you? Do you have a day off, Mr. All-Around Star?”
“Ew. Don’t ever call me that again. It sounds nice when hyung says it, but you made it sound gross,” Kai whines childishly, and Sehun laughs again, shaking her head. “Ah, anyway. Hm, since you’re off, do you want to go somewhere? Grab some bubble tea, since you don’t drink coffee and all.”
Oh. Interesting. That conversation is actually much more important than Sehun had initially thought. She glazes over the accessory page, flirting briefly with a cute white beanie, and turns the page again.
“You’re trying to ruin me, aren’t you? Giving me chocolate, taking me out for bubble tea,” she complains in a sweet voice, putting on a cute act. “If I don’t have my waistline, I don’t have anything, you know.”
“Don’t be stupid. It’s just one time,” Kai whines again. Sehun is quite sure he’s the first person to call her stupid - to her face, at least - since elementary school. “So, do you want to go? I’ll treat you. And then we can hang out somewhere! Like, maybe the movies?”
Sehun snorts. It’ll be Sunday, the movies will be packed with the kind of people that would recognize both of them from just the tip of their fingers. He obviously didn’t think that through. “Are you asking me out on a date?” She asks straightforwardly, knowing that beating around the bush will bring them no good.
As expected, it’s too straightforward, and it renders Kai silent for a full second. “No!” He answers defensively. “I mean, yes? Technically. Um, yeah, I guess yes. Don’t think anything weird of it!”
“I want to ask you a question.” She hopes she hasn’t read him wrong. If she has, this could be the end of their easy-going relationship. “It might sound a bit mean. Is it okay?”
“… yeah. What is it?” He sounds hesitant. Sehun really hopes she hasn’t read him wrong…
“Did…” maybe she shouldn’t, but… “Sorry if I assumed it wrong, okay?”
“Ask it already,” Kai urges her brashly. “You’re making me nervous for nothing.”
“Aish, calm down,” Sehun shuts the magazine closed, throwing it back onto her coffee table. She backs off from the rebellion, backs off from the want to know. “Is it okay for you? I mean, won’t you get in trouble with your management?”
“It’s just a date! I’m not proposing to you!” Kai objects, and Sehun grins.
“Not yet.”
“Not anytime soon. And by soon I mean in a hundred years.”
She doesn’t need to know. She probably shouldn’t know. It doesn’t matter.
One date turns into two, two into three, three dates turns into good-morning calls and goodnight texts, and it all turns into Lu Han side-eyeing her when her phone chimes for the tenth time in the last fifteen minutes right as she’s getting ready for filming.
From: jonginnie
21:47
i’m not asking for a spoiler
if you give me one i’ll never forgive you!!!!! ヾ(`Д´*)ノ
i’m just asking for a hint: is the culprit a man or a woman?
Narrowing his eyes, Lu Han gets up from where he’s sitting and slides close to Sehun, right up her personal space, scrutinizing her phone. Sehun doesn’t like it, and would’ve tried to hide it if there was any point in doing it by now.
Lu Han looks around, as if to certify that the staff had left. The only ones remaining were the two hairstylists, who were chatting to each other, too focused on their own conversation to notice them. Deeming it enough, Lu Han turned back to Sehun, squinting even harder, and mouthed - “Who’s ‘jonginnie’?”
Sehun blinks, feigning innocence. “It’s Kai. His real name is Kim Jongin,” she explained briefly, going back to typing a cheeky reply to him.
Lu Han squints impossibly harder. “So you’re on real-name basis with Kai.”
“Yep,” Sehun is torn between giving him the wrong answer and telling him absolutely nothing. At first, Kai-Jongin only watched the drama to seem like a good boyfriend, but after just one episode he has already gotten completely hooked. Sehun sometimes wonders if she should tell him that his favorite character is going to die soon.
“Sehun,” Lu Han calls out in his Serious Business voice. It’s time. Time for the next move. “I’m going to make you a question, and you’re going to answer me sincerely, okay?”
“Sure,” Sehun nods, trying to look slightly alarmed so he wouldn’t think - wouldn’t know - that she has been expecting for that.
“Are you and Kai dating?” His voice sounds so serious that it’s almost comic. But then, that’s probably a big deal, isn’t it? It’s probably a career-changing movement, right? Like everything else Sehun does.
“Yes,” she answers also seriously, putting the phone down for a moment. “We’ve been going out for a while.”
Lu Han gasps as if Sehun had stabbed him. “You brat!” He then explodes in unexpected laughter, hitting Sehun’s shoulder with unnecessary force and making the model wince. “When were you planning to tell me? I’m your manager, you know!”
“I figured out you’d find out about it soon,” Sehun replies a bit sulkily, rubbing the attacked spot on her shoulder as if it hurt much more than it does. “You know more about me than I do myself. I wouldn’t be able to hide it from you even if I tried to.”
“Still! Ugh,” Lu Han throws his hands in the air in frustration. “You know what… forget about it. At least I found out before the tabloids.”
Sehun nods, already pulling her phone up again. Kai-Jongin was waiting for a reply.
As soon as filming is over, Sehun excuses herself to the fire exit and pulls out her phone to call Jongin. One ring; two rings; three rings, and Sehun frowns to herself. After the fifth ring, he finally picks up.
“Mm’rning,” he mutters, voice gruffy and low. “Sehun ah? Why’re you up so early…?”
Ah, true. It’s probably nearing six in the morning now. She forgot to check the time before calling.
“Sorry for calling. I was filming for the drama,” is how she apologizes. “Do you want to know what scene I filmed today?”
“Yah, is this what you called me for? To spoil me? At this hour?!” Jongin’s voice cracks in outrage, and Sehun laughs. “I’m going back to bed then!!”
“Don’t, aish, I was joking.” The sky is starting to lighten up, signalizing the start of sunrise - and yet, Sehun doesn’t feel the slightest bit tired. Instead, she feels energetic, glad to have finished a particularly straining day of filming. “Are you free today?”
“Mm,” there’s no way to tell whether that’s a yes or a no. Maybe it had been neither. “I have a meeting at six, but till then, nothing. Wanna go out?”
“Can you come over?” Sehun asks without thinking twice, flushing pink when she realizes how weird that sounds. “I mean-”
“To the set?!”
At that, Sehun chuckles quietly. Jongin is too sleepy to process things properly. “To my house,” she clarifies, forcing the warmth off her cheeks. “I want to play games.”
“Right now!?” Jongin is starting to sound increasingly alarmed.
“Yep. I’ll pick you up in half an hour or so.” Then, after a second of thought, “Where do you live?”
Jongin isn’t even surprised when Sehun pulls out Battlefield for them to play.
“You’re all fucked up inside, aren’t you,” he mutters, taking care so Lu Han, who’s at the kitchen preparing snacks, wouldn’t hear him. In response, Sehun simply grins. “I bet you don’t even read fashion magazines. You probably read stuff about cars or sports.”
“Rude! I love fashion magazines,” Sehun objects, pointing at the basket beside the couch, full to the brim with said fashion magazines of all kinds. “This and this,” she points at the game’s opening screen, “are completely unrelated.”
Their skills on gaming are pretty much at the same level, but that doesn’t stop them from criticizing each other’s skills rather fiercely when something goes wrong. Lu Han leaves at nine, telling them to behave, and both of them dismiss him in unison, too focused on shooting the game’s AI to actually pay attention to him. Eventually, however, Sehun’s condition starts deteriorating, sleep finally catching up with her after over thirty hours of wakefulness, and she finds herself unable to concentrate in the game anymore.
“Switch to single-player mode,” she requests, stiffening a yawn.
“Now?” Jongin sounds a bit desperate, since there are about ten enemies trying to kill him.
“I want to sleep,” as a form to force him to do as told, Sehun lets go of the controller, and Jongin immediately takes action, cursing. “Can I borrow your lap?”
“Sure,” Jongin agrees absent-mindedly, fumbling around the menu for the single-player option. When Sehun does lie down on his lap, he jumps in startle, proving that he wasn’t paying attention to her after all. “You’re gonna sleep?” Sehun nods, already closing her eyes. “You invite me over and then you fall asleep?! Yah!”
“You’re annoying,” Sehun whines, sitting up to grab a magazine from her basket. “There, I’m gonna read.” She repositions herself on Jongin’s lap. As a reply, Jongin snorts; then, he steals a glance at Sehun, just as she’s turning the first pages, and smiles.
“It unexpectedly matches you,” he comments, resuming the game.
“Of course it does. I’m a model,” Sehun retorts offhandedly. The accessories for that issue looked so good… the bracelets, specially. “I became a model because I liked fashion magazines, actually.”
Jongin mutters a distracted ‘huh’ in response, attention back to the game. Despite all the gunshots and explosions serving as background music, Sehun finds herself falling asleep very quickly, regardless of how much she tries to concentrate in the magazine.
She’s pretty…, Sehun drowsily thinks as she admires a tall, elegant model pose in her street-meets-preppy coordinate. Sehun wants her jacket. Actually, Sehun just wants to have a figure like hers, so she can wear that jacket as well as she does. Is that what she wants? With sleep clogging her mind like that, she’s gradually less sure.
Sehun falls asleep on Jongin’s lap, magazine fallen over her face. It’s a wonder that she doesn’t suffocate. She wakes up several hours later, way past lunch time, to find out that Jongin, too, has fallen asleep, controller in hands even though the TV and the console are off. Sehun chuckles silently, considering kissing him awake just for the kicks and giggles, but that’s not how she wants her first kiss with her first boyfriend to be, so she lets him sleep.
Groggily, she gets on her feet, putting the magazine back into the basket with care. For a moment, a very brief moment, she just stays still, knelt near the basket, admiring her collection; CeCi, Nylon, ViVi, Seventeen… Sehun sure looks too mature to be reading Seventeen, or Nicola for that matter, but she has yet to turn twenty, so she doesn’t care. Those magazines are her most prized possession - more than her cosmetics, her clothes, her expensive apartment in Gangnam. Not more than her face, though. Her appearance is her entire life.
Sighing silently, Sehun gets on her feet and goes to the kitchen, craving for the strawberries Lu Han bought for her the other day. It has been ages since her kitchen had housed anything resembling carbohydrates, so she has long settled for snacking on fruits or vegetables instead of chips and popcorn like she did during middle school. The change did wonders to her skin.
Jongin wakes up when Sehun’s halfway through the small strawberries basket. It’s an absolutely hilarious process, and she watches it in its entirety from where she’s sitting at the kitchen counter. At first, he just stirs like a normal person, humming and stretching his limbs. This process lasts almost a whole minute. Then, he literally bolts awake, jumping to his feet as if pulled up by a supernatural force. Sehun almost chokes in startle.
“What time is it?!” He quacks, and Sehun can’t help but to laugh hysterically. “Oh Sehun!! What time is it?! I have a meeting at six!”
“Calm down,” Sehun says amidst laughter, wheezing as she tries to free her airways from the strawberry she choked on. “It’s four in the afternoon. Seriously, calm down.”
Jongin halts still midways his movements, which only makes Sehun more hysterical. “What the hell,” he sighs, finally relaxing and slumping back onto the floor. “I thought I was going to die. Why didn’t you tell me earlier?”
“I told you as soon as I could!” Sehun objects, still laughing in bouts. Jongin clicks his tongue, but, when he glances at her, a smile graces his lips. “Come here, eat some too,” she offers, and Jongin lazily complies, stretching once again as he walks over to the counter. The band of his boxers is black, and he has a very thin trail of hair under his bellybutton. It’s manly of him; surprisingly like his model self, rather than his off-screen self.
As they finish off the strawberries together, Sehun brings out the salad Lu Han prepared for them earlier. Sehun eats it without dressing, munching apathetically, but Jongin drowns it in honey mustard sauce.
“That’s a lot of sugar for a bowl of salad,” Sehun jokes out of bitterness, struggling to swallow her lettuce.
“You only live once,” Jongin replies mercilessly, digging in. Sehun feels sorry for his poor manager.
They finish the meal with a cup of green tea and talks about foreign movies, which quickly travels to current idols they like, don’t like, and would like to work with. Then, it somehow transfers to their own careers, and they end up talking about their plans for the future.
“My singing debut is pretty much-no, it has been decided already,” Jongin tells Sehun, toying with his cup a little. “Recording starts next week.”
“Oh?” Sehun raises her eyebrows and grins. “I didn’t know you could sing. Can you?”
Sehun expected him to bite back, but, instead he just laughs nervously. “I’m not a disaster at it, but…” he trails off with a sigh, leaning forward to prop his chin on the table. Sehun figures she accidentally hit a soft spot of his.
“Hey,” she calls out softly, extending a foot below the counter to nudge his leg gently. “I’m sorry. I was just joking. I’m sure you can sing just fine.”
Jongin sighs again, pouting like a child. “My producer keeps telling that I’m great at it, but it only makes me more nervous,” he confesses, fully faceplanting the table. “You know when photographers keep shouting at you that you’re doing everything right, but it only makes you really nervous?”
Sehun frowns. “You get nervous when photographers shout at you?”
“You don’t?” Jongin frowns back. Sehun shrugs in response, and his pout protrudes even more. “It’s distressing. Sometimes I feel like I’m about to run away from the shoot.”
“Aw,” Sehun coos sympathetically, but also a bit jestingly. Jongin catches on the jest, and narrows his eyes at her. “Do you want me to go to the studio with you? So I can hold your hand when the big mean producer shouts at you?”
“Actually,” the disdain vanishes from Jongin’s face. “I was thinking of inviting you to the studio next week. What do you say? It’ll be my first recording session.”
That catches Sehun completely by surprise. She halts midway a sip of her tea, raising her eyebrows in surprise, but her reaction doesn’t erase the expectant, curious, slightly dejected look on Jongin’s face. It certainly makes sense, though, since they’re dating. And it could be a good opportunity for Sehun too…
“Sure,” she consents eventually, and Jongin looks like he just got rid of a particularly heavy backpack. “I’ve never been to a recording studio before. Have you?”
“Once, last week. Had a meeting with the producing team there,” he sounds much chirpier now, drinking half of his still hot tea in one gulp. Sehun smiles tenderly at him, finding his mood switch endearing. “Sehun ah?”
“Hm?” The smile on her lips is only slightly coquettish.
“Thank you,” Jongin mumbles in a soft voice, avoiding her gaze, but smiling shyly to himself. “Thank you for helping me with this.”
He’s sort of cute, after all. He’s also fun to talk with, and good at modeling, and a nice gaming companion, even though he insults all things between heaven and hell when something goes wrong. Sehun likes him. She definitely likes him.
“It’s nothing,” she dismisses it cheekily, prodding at his leg with her toes. “What are lovers for, after all?”
part 1 → part 2 → part 3 → part 4
Pairings: female!Sehun/female!Chanyeol, female!Sehun/Kai
Rating: R
Length: 23,058 words
Summary: Sehun is a perfect white canvas, a surface for other people to paint over. Slowly, but surely, her blank surface starts to peel off.
Warning: Brief mentions of general homophobia.
A/N: written for joonmyeon as part of the ohunlimnited fic exchange.
Being a model isn’t about being skinny.
Not exclusively, at least. It’s about being tall, too, of course. Lean and elegant.
And more than just lean, or chic, or even pretty - it’s about being perfectly pliant. Shapeless, vague, carefully blank. Being a model is being a white canvas, over which people can paint, draw, project, imprint - and then erase it all and start over from nothing, with not a smudge of anything else left to be seen.
When the casting agent told Sehun, all those years ago, that she was perfect for modeling, she had been boundlessly happy. Nowadays, when admiring her own figure in the mirror, she wonders if she should’ve been offended instead. After all, being a model is being bland - void of any personal colors that might interfere in the artist’s work. Maybe she should’ve refused the agent’s attention then. Who knows what path she’d have followed instead…
Regardless, now is now, and Oh Sehun is a rising star. It’s been three years since she signed the contract with her agency, and barely one year since she exploded all over the magazines and TV commercials, and she’s been doing nothing but work, work, and work. Photoshoots, runways, numerous endorsements, even a TV drama - she’s doing it all, and all at once.
“Give me sweetness! Smile more! Sunshine and summer!” One photographer instructs.
“Power! Fierceness! Challenge the camera!” Another one insists.
But all of them agree on one thing.
“You’re gorgeous!”
“Beautiful!”
“Perfect!”
“Flawless!”
For a model, that’s more than enough.
Sehun knows who Kai is, obviously. She’s not blind; she’s seen him on TV, in magazine covers, in ads at the train station when she still took the train. She has heard all sorts of comments regarding his upcoming CD debut, happy ones, ecstatic ones, skeptic ones, neutral ones. He might’ve been no one when Sehun was still a junior high student, swooning over Liz Liza accessories and fashion magazines, but, nowadays, he’s undeniably a Big Deal.
So, when her manager tells her that she’ll be in a photoshoot with him for the day, she can’t help but be a little wide-eyed.
“Kai?” She blinks in surprise. “Like… that Kai?”
“That Kai,” Lu Han’s eyes are on the road, but there’s a smug grin on his lips. “We worked hard to bring the two of you together for this one. How’s that?” He gives her a quick glance through the rear mirror. “Do you like him?”
Sehun has no opinion about him. She merely shrugs. “He’s really popular these days.”
“He is,” Lu Han admits. “Originally, this endorsement was just his, but we got your name in the deal as well. The company wants the two of you to collab tons from now on.”
Sehun snickers silently at the slang. In front of the people they work with, his Korean is very straight-laced, but when it’s just the two of them, his speech turns funny.
“Sounds nice,” she says vaguely, looking out the car’s window. From inside, the outside world seems dark and undefined, thanks to the tinted glass that prevents outsiders from catching a glimpse of her face. She still remembers the day her section director called her to his office - “from now on your manager will pick you up for your schedules” - after months of commotion and sightings from fans and non-fans alike. Since then, the most she has seen of the streets is the occasional open-air photoshoot in Gangnam and this; a poorly defined scenery, as if watched in a television that doesn’t work all that well. No shopping for groceries, no walk to the park…
“… the same age, so I think you’ll like him. Yah, Oh Sehun, are you listening?” Lu Han snatches her out from her reverie with a call. She blinks, brushing her long hair away from her face.
“Sorry,” she offers half-heartedly. Lu Han brushes it off, rolling his eyes. It probably wasn’t important. He was just trying to entertain her.
“Anyway-let’s try to make a good impression,” he says as they approach the studio. “This could be a turning point for your career.”
Sehun hears that one a lot. Deep inside, she feels a little dizzy, wondering where else her career is left to turn to.
Kai is tall, tanned, and has sharp, dark eyes. When he and Sehun greet each other, he’s quiet and polite; during the photoshoot, he’s professional and charismatic. Sehun is fairly impressed at how good he is: quick to follow the photographer’s exigencies, quick to mold his personality to the clothes he’s wearing, to the hair and make-up assigned to him. As a model, he’s spotless.
They’re being photographed for a traditional brand of chocolate, one that Sehun remembers looking at with amazement during her school days, seductive in its sleek packaging, but too expensive for Sehun’s limited allowance. They’re supposed to represent the new flavors coming out that autumn; Kai is the cayenne pepper dark chocolate bar, while Sehun is the white chocolate raspberry truffles. As the staff apply her make-up, Sehun catches sight of her recently-dyed blonde hair with pastel pink highlights in the mirror, and wonders for how long the company has known about this endorsement.
Not that it makes any difference, of course. It’s just a silly thought.
As a representative of the new truffle, Sehun’s character is sweet, tranquil, but with a dash of spice to her. Under the creative director’s commands, she smiles kindly to the camera, the honey brown color lenses making her eyes sparkle under the ring lights. It’s the first time in a while they’ve tied her hair in a bun, giving her more mobility, since she’s free from having to make her hair seem endlessly long; all she has to take care with is her body’s angle.
When Kai has his solo pictures taken, she stays to watch. Lu Han is beside her babbling about whatever it is, and the staff surrounds her like bees, retouching her hair and make-up, so it’s a bit hard to concentrate, but she manages to anyway. Kai is definitely eye-drawing, unconventionally handsome, sharp and precise in his poses. He’s aware of what his best angle is, of what each one of the instructions shouted at him means. Sehun sympathizes with that side of him.
“The two of you should talk a little afterwards,” Lu Han says, indicating Kai with a discreet gesture. “I’m sort of befriending his manager already. Cool guy. Maybe we can have a coffee afterwards, you know, the four of us.”
Sehun hums in agreement, careful not to let the make-up assistant poke her eye out with the eye pencil. Make-up retouched, hair fixed, and the staff crew is gone just like it had come; unannounced, in all but a second. Sehun is let alone with her manager near a table of props, so she can narrow her eyes at him and whisper, “You’re up to something.”
“Hm?” Lu han blinks innocently at her, but he can’t lie. He has never been able to lie to Sehun, not once in three years of working for her. “Why would you say that?”
“You’re being insistent,” she points out, crossing her arms, making use of her taller frame to corner Lu Han a little. “Did the company tell you to make sure I befriend Kai?”
“Huh? Ah, well,” Lu Han pointedly looks away. “Well, it’d definitely be a good thing if you guys were friends, right? I mean, the two of you are so popular right now! And you’re even doing, you know,” he signalizes the set vaguely. The anxiety brought by lying made him forget the Korean word for what they’re doing; that’s another effect Sehun is used to, and she narrows her eyes at him, but sighs and backs away, so to signalize she has dropped the subject. Lu Han relaxes visibly.
Well, it’s true. Kai and herself are both ascending quickly to the top of the showbiz world, possibly at the same speed, even if taking different paths. Associating her image with his could lead some of his fans, which were part of a similar demographic to her own fans, to start supporting her as well. The same could happen with him. From the business point-of-view, it was a win-win situation.
“Actress Oh Sehun,” one of the director’s assistants called, and Sehun used that as an excuse to unceremoniously dump her coat onto Lu Han, glaring at him a bit. But then, on a second thought…
“Treat the three of us to coffee, then,” Sehun asks. “Invite them out in my behalf.”
And she gives him no chance to respond before she turns around and leaves, but she has no doubt that the response would’ve been enthusiastic.
When they do go out for coffee, Sehun gets distracted for long enough for Lu Han and Kai’s manager - a pale, short man named Kim Junmyeon - to go off together to the counter, ‘we can get your orders, wait for us here’, and there she is, left alone with Kai at the table. That was Lu Han’s plan since the beginning, Sehun is completely sure - and worse, she fell for it like a duckling.
Sitting right in front of her, Kai seems to be busy with his phone, or toying with it to avoid talking to Sehun. It’s a bit rude of him, but Sehun understands the feeling, as she had felt compelled to do the same when in similar situations in the past. Perhaps because Kai was a man, his company let him off easily in things like that. Sehun decides not to push it, and looks out of the café’s window, admiring the streets from behind the fogged glass.
“Sorry for that,” it catches Sehun by surprise, and she looks back at Kai, who has unexpectedly put his phone away. He’s sheepishly looking down at the table, as if analyzing the dessert menu. “I was replying to a text. Sorry.”
“Oh!” Sehun widens her eyes in surprise. So he’s apologizing for not talking to her right away! “Don’t worry. Thank you for having me over today,” she makes a small bow.
“Huh?” At that, Kai blinks, clearly confused.
“Kai sshi, you’ve been endorsing this brand for a year already, right?” Sehun points out, smiling. “So, to me, you’re a sunbae figure.”
“Ah-oh,” the male model seems to finally understand, and lowers his eyes again, embarrassed. He’s surprisingly clumsy for someone so sleek when in front of a camera. “It was nothing. Thank you for working with me today. You looked really pretty.”
A beat. Sehun halts completely still, unsure of what to do, trying to fight down the hot flush climbing up her neck. The only people who called her pretty were the photographers, the press, and her fans. She had never had a colleague call her pretty so straight-forwardly. Specially not a male one.
“Uh… thank you? You were very handsome too,” she replies, avoiding his glance, browsing the counter for their managers instead. The two of them are chatting happily with the cashier, who steals star-struck glances at Sehun and Kai once in a while. Sehun sighs.
“Thank you,” Kai replies offhandedly. “They make really good chocolate. I mean, I’m not much of a chocolate person, but I really liked theirs when I tried it. Their Christmas peppermint truffles from last year were really delicious.”
“Huh, I see,” now that her embarrassment is subsided, Sehun can bring herself to look at him in the eye again. “I haven’t tried their chocolate yet. Dieting and all.”
“Oh,” Kai scrunches his nose in distaste. Sehun can’t help but chuckle. “You don’t look like you need dieting though…?”
“That’s what I diet for,” Sehun points out, grinning. Kai concedes, making a face.
“Next time you have a meal off from your diet, you should try it,” he says nonetheless. “I’ll bring you some, they gave me a lot of samples some weeks ago. Which one do you prefer; dark chocolate, milk chocolate or white chocolate?”
“Milk chocolate.” This leads Kai to crosses his arms and nod solemnly.
“Wise choice,” he says in an austere voice, and Sehun ends up laughing louder than she probably should. “Then, I’ll bring you a marzipan bar. Also, their burnt cappuccino candy bar is pretty good! Do you like coffee-flavored things?”
Sehun made a face. “I prefer bubble tea. Coffee stains the enamel, you know.”
“The what…?”
“The tooth enamel. Your teeth,” Sehun explains, pointing to her own - pristine white - teeth. Kai raises an eyebrow in disdain, and shrugs.
“Marzipan bar, then. It’s pretty good,” he emphasizes. “Probably better than the cayenne pepper one.” At that, he scrunches his nose again, and of course, it’s very unprofessional, but Sehun chuckles. “I’ve never tried chocolate with pepper in it. Have you? I wonder if it’s good.”
“It sounds really fancy,” Sehun comments vaguely, shrugging. “But I think raspberry truffles sound even better.”
Kai clicks his tongue angrily, and Sehun laughs when he shoots her a sulking glance. It’s a joke, obviously, and soon enough he’s laughing again. It’s pleasant, to be able to talk to someone in this kind of easy-going atmosphere. Accepting Lu Han’s invitation for coffee had been a good idea, after all.
Speaking of Lu Han, he and Kai’s manager seem to have finally gotten the orders, and are walking back to the table with the drinks in hand, still chatting cheerfully. Lu Han has an espresso - his - and milk tea - Sehun’s, while Junmyeon has two cappuccinos in hands. The subject of their enthusiastic chatter seems to be idols.
“… and the drama she’s in is not bad either!” Sehun could hear Lu Han say, to what Junmyeon answers with, “she’s an all-around star. Even in ten years she won’t have deteriorated”. Sehun turns to Kai and raises her brows in mock surprise.
“Seems like we’re not big enough to make it into our own managers’ talk,” she says, allowing herself the joke, and it’s a good idea, because it makes Kai laugh.
“Traitors. Staff members are all the same,” Kai says, shaking his head as the managers finally arrive at the table.
“Huh? What? What are you saying?” Junmyeon immediately picks up Kai’s comment, and halts the conversation to look at him in surprise. Kai says nothing, but grins slyly to Sehun. “What? What did I do? Did I get the wrong order?”
The models refuse to say a single word, giggling secretively to each other, occasionally shooting Junmyeon an analytic glance. Even after they pay the bill, he’s still asking Kai what he had been talking about at that moment.
“You seem to have liked Kai, huh?” Lu Han chirps while driving her home, so obviously satisfied that Sehun wants to roll her eyes at him. “It usually takes you some time to loosen up around people, but you were all smiley and chitty-chatty with him today.”
True enough. It has been a while since Sehun had talked to a celebrity her age, and perhaps even longer since she had felt comfortable with someone she didn’t know yet. She doesn’t think of it as something so special, but Lu Han, apparently, does.
“We have a lot in common,” she answers off-handedly, looking through the tinted glass.
The answer seems to intensify Lu Han’s joy, and he chats nonstop all the way to Sehun’s apartment. For now, Sehun doesn’t fear what he might make of her answer, but she knows he won’t put it aside. And she lets herself go with the flow.
Next time her and Kai meet - this time to record a video commercial, much more tiresome than a simple photoshoot - he keeps his world, and brings Sehun a marzipan milk chocolate bar, wrapped prettily in golden and white.
“For me?” Sehun puts on a coquettish act. “Thank you, sunbaenim. You shouldn’t have.”
Kai rolls his eyes, but smiles shyly. “Remember to take a break from your diet. Endorsing a product you haven’t tried isn’t right.”
“Yes, sunbaenim. Will do that,” Sehun accepts the bar, bowing politely, laughing when Kai clicks his tongue in annoyance at her. She’s sure there are staff member watching them, whispering to each other about it, and at that moment she knows that the marzipan bar has started a rumour.
“So you exchanged numbers with him!” Lu Han widens his eyes when Sehun tells him that Kai sent a text saying hi.
“Yeah. We’re friends now,” Sehun comments, too busy texting a reply to pay her manager attention. They’re at Sehun’s apartment, and Lu Han is washing some peaches he bought for her, while Sehun is sitting at the counter, waiting patiently till it’s time for them to head to a magazine shoot.
“Huh,” Lu Han makes a vague sound, finishing his task. Sehun and Kai are engaged in a complex word game, one Kai is particularly bad at, and Sehun is making a crude joke about male models and reduced intelligence when Lu Han materializes next to her, grinning. “Just friends?”
Ah.
So that’s the point, after all.
“For now,” Sehun answers vaguely, expression neutral. It seems to be enough for Lu Han, though, and he steals a peek at her phone screen before slipping away, reciting her schedule for the day.
She should have seen it coming. She really should, and it shames her that she didn’t, that she got too immersed in her comfortable friendship with Kai to remember that she was still in showbiz, and that every word, every step, every decision was strategically planned to help her ascend as a celebrity. And, of course, just friendship wouldn’t be enough for her to enjoy the push of having her image associated to Kai’s. When it comes to a man and a woman, it rarely is.
On Friday, right as Sehun is about to shower and go to bed after an exhaustive day of filming for the her TV drama, her phone rings, vibrating loudly against the kitchen counter. Tired, sleepy, and still a bit in character, Sehun considers not answering it, but the small thought of rebellion doesn’t go through and she picks it up after the fourth ring.
It’s Kai.
“Hello?” She tries not to sound too tired.
“Hi! Hello. It’s me,” it’s the first time they’re talking on the phone; till now, they have only exchanged text messages. It’s a bit awkward. “How are you? Am I interrupting anything?”
“No, I just got home,” Sehun lets herself fall butt-first on the couch, reaching for a fashion magazine she had been reading that morning. On the cover, one of Sehun’s lesser known rivals smiled brightly, round face framed by light brown curls. Sehun envied her smile, as well as how good she looked in her floral dress. They never put Sehun in floral. “And you?”
“I’m on my break right now. It’s almost over, though,” he replies. He must be in his dressing room, or maybe at a fire exit, because Sehun can’t hear anything else but his voice, and sets tend to be quite noisy during breaks. “Uh, listen. Um. When is your day off? I mean, do you even have a day off? Since you’re a rising star and all.”
Sehun laughs, turning the pages of the magazine absent-mindedly. She spots herself in an ad, turns the page without looking twice. “I have Sunday off. How about you? Do you have a day off, Mr. All-Around Star?”
“Ew. Don’t ever call me that again. It sounds nice when hyung says it, but you made it sound gross,” Kai whines childishly, and Sehun laughs again, shaking her head. “Ah, anyway. Hm, since you’re off, do you want to go somewhere? Grab some bubble tea, since you don’t drink coffee and all.”
Oh. Interesting. That conversation is actually much more important than Sehun had initially thought. She glazes over the accessory page, flirting briefly with a cute white beanie, and turns the page again.
“You’re trying to ruin me, aren’t you? Giving me chocolate, taking me out for bubble tea,” she complains in a sweet voice, putting on a cute act. “If I don’t have my waistline, I don’t have anything, you know.”
“Don’t be stupid. It’s just one time,” Kai whines again. Sehun is quite sure he’s the first person to call her stupid - to her face, at least - since elementary school. “So, do you want to go? I’ll treat you. And then we can hang out somewhere! Like, maybe the movies?”
Sehun snorts. It’ll be Sunday, the movies will be packed with the kind of people that would recognize both of them from just the tip of their fingers. He obviously didn’t think that through. “Are you asking me out on a date?” She asks straightforwardly, knowing that beating around the bush will bring them no good.
As expected, it’s too straightforward, and it renders Kai silent for a full second. “No!” He answers defensively. “I mean, yes? Technically. Um, yeah, I guess yes. Don’t think anything weird of it!”
“I want to ask you a question.” She hopes she hasn’t read him wrong. If she has, this could be the end of their easy-going relationship. “It might sound a bit mean. Is it okay?”
“… yeah. What is it?” He sounds hesitant. Sehun really hopes she hasn’t read him wrong…
“Did…” maybe she shouldn’t, but… “Sorry if I assumed it wrong, okay?”
“Ask it already,” Kai urges her brashly. “You’re making me nervous for nothing.”
“Aish, calm down,” Sehun shuts the magazine closed, throwing it back onto her coffee table. She backs off from the rebellion, backs off from the want to know. “Is it okay for you? I mean, won’t you get in trouble with your management?”
“It’s just a date! I’m not proposing to you!” Kai objects, and Sehun grins.
“Not yet.”
“Not anytime soon. And by soon I mean in a hundred years.”
She doesn’t need to know. She probably shouldn’t know. It doesn’t matter.
One date turns into two, two into three, three dates turns into good-morning calls and goodnight texts, and it all turns into Lu Han side-eyeing her when her phone chimes for the tenth time in the last fifteen minutes right as she’s getting ready for filming.
From: jonginnie
21:47
i’m not asking for a spoiler
if you give me one i’ll never forgive you!!!!! ヾ(`Д´*)ノ
i’m just asking for a hint: is the culprit a man or a woman?
Narrowing his eyes, Lu Han gets up from where he’s sitting and slides close to Sehun, right up her personal space, scrutinizing her phone. Sehun doesn’t like it, and would’ve tried to hide it if there was any point in doing it by now.
Lu Han looks around, as if to certify that the staff had left. The only ones remaining were the two hairstylists, who were chatting to each other, too focused on their own conversation to notice them. Deeming it enough, Lu Han turned back to Sehun, squinting even harder, and mouthed - “Who’s ‘jonginnie’?”
Sehun blinks, feigning innocence. “It’s Kai. His real name is Kim Jongin,” she explained briefly, going back to typing a cheeky reply to him.
Lu Han squints impossibly harder. “So you’re on real-name basis with Kai.”
“Yep,” Sehun is torn between giving him the wrong answer and telling him absolutely nothing. At first, Kai-Jongin only watched the drama to seem like a good boyfriend, but after just one episode he has already gotten completely hooked. Sehun sometimes wonders if she should tell him that his favorite character is going to die soon.
“Sehun,” Lu Han calls out in his Serious Business voice. It’s time. Time for the next move. “I’m going to make you a question, and you’re going to answer me sincerely, okay?”
“Sure,” Sehun nods, trying to look slightly alarmed so he wouldn’t think - wouldn’t know - that she has been expecting for that.
“Are you and Kai dating?” His voice sounds so serious that it’s almost comic. But then, that’s probably a big deal, isn’t it? It’s probably a career-changing movement, right? Like everything else Sehun does.
“Yes,” she answers also seriously, putting the phone down for a moment. “We’ve been going out for a while.”
Lu Han gasps as if Sehun had stabbed him. “You brat!” He then explodes in unexpected laughter, hitting Sehun’s shoulder with unnecessary force and making the model wince. “When were you planning to tell me? I’m your manager, you know!”
“I figured out you’d find out about it soon,” Sehun replies a bit sulkily, rubbing the attacked spot on her shoulder as if it hurt much more than it does. “You know more about me than I do myself. I wouldn’t be able to hide it from you even if I tried to.”
“Still! Ugh,” Lu Han throws his hands in the air in frustration. “You know what… forget about it. At least I found out before the tabloids.”
Sehun nods, already pulling her phone up again. Kai-Jongin was waiting for a reply.
As soon as filming is over, Sehun excuses herself to the fire exit and pulls out her phone to call Jongin. One ring; two rings; three rings, and Sehun frowns to herself. After the fifth ring, he finally picks up.
“Mm’rning,” he mutters, voice gruffy and low. “Sehun ah? Why’re you up so early…?”
Ah, true. It’s probably nearing six in the morning now. She forgot to check the time before calling.
“Sorry for calling. I was filming for the drama,” is how she apologizes. “Do you want to know what scene I filmed today?”
“Yah, is this what you called me for? To spoil me? At this hour?!” Jongin’s voice cracks in outrage, and Sehun laughs. “I’m going back to bed then!!”
“Don’t, aish, I was joking.” The sky is starting to lighten up, signalizing the start of sunrise - and yet, Sehun doesn’t feel the slightest bit tired. Instead, she feels energetic, glad to have finished a particularly straining day of filming. “Are you free today?”
“Mm,” there’s no way to tell whether that’s a yes or a no. Maybe it had been neither. “I have a meeting at six, but till then, nothing. Wanna go out?”
“Can you come over?” Sehun asks without thinking twice, flushing pink when she realizes how weird that sounds. “I mean-”
“To the set?!”
At that, Sehun chuckles quietly. Jongin is too sleepy to process things properly. “To my house,” she clarifies, forcing the warmth off her cheeks. “I want to play games.”
“Right now!?” Jongin is starting to sound increasingly alarmed.
“Yep. I’ll pick you up in half an hour or so.” Then, after a second of thought, “Where do you live?”
Jongin isn’t even surprised when Sehun pulls out Battlefield for them to play.
“You’re all fucked up inside, aren’t you,” he mutters, taking care so Lu Han, who’s at the kitchen preparing snacks, wouldn’t hear him. In response, Sehun simply grins. “I bet you don’t even read fashion magazines. You probably read stuff about cars or sports.”
“Rude! I love fashion magazines,” Sehun objects, pointing at the basket beside the couch, full to the brim with said fashion magazines of all kinds. “This and this,” she points at the game’s opening screen, “are completely unrelated.”
Their skills on gaming are pretty much at the same level, but that doesn’t stop them from criticizing each other’s skills rather fiercely when something goes wrong. Lu Han leaves at nine, telling them to behave, and both of them dismiss him in unison, too focused on shooting the game’s AI to actually pay attention to him. Eventually, however, Sehun’s condition starts deteriorating, sleep finally catching up with her after over thirty hours of wakefulness, and she finds herself unable to concentrate in the game anymore.
“Switch to single-player mode,” she requests, stiffening a yawn.
“Now?” Jongin sounds a bit desperate, since there are about ten enemies trying to kill him.
“I want to sleep,” as a form to force him to do as told, Sehun lets go of the controller, and Jongin immediately takes action, cursing. “Can I borrow your lap?”
“Sure,” Jongin agrees absent-mindedly, fumbling around the menu for the single-player option. When Sehun does lie down on his lap, he jumps in startle, proving that he wasn’t paying attention to her after all. “You’re gonna sleep?” Sehun nods, already closing her eyes. “You invite me over and then you fall asleep?! Yah!”
“You’re annoying,” Sehun whines, sitting up to grab a magazine from her basket. “There, I’m gonna read.” She repositions herself on Jongin’s lap. As a reply, Jongin snorts; then, he steals a glance at Sehun, just as she’s turning the first pages, and smiles.
“It unexpectedly matches you,” he comments, resuming the game.
“Of course it does. I’m a model,” Sehun retorts offhandedly. The accessories for that issue looked so good… the bracelets, specially. “I became a model because I liked fashion magazines, actually.”
Jongin mutters a distracted ‘huh’ in response, attention back to the game. Despite all the gunshots and explosions serving as background music, Sehun finds herself falling asleep very quickly, regardless of how much she tries to concentrate in the magazine.
She’s pretty…, Sehun drowsily thinks as she admires a tall, elegant model pose in her street-meets-preppy coordinate. Sehun wants her jacket. Actually, Sehun just wants to have a figure like hers, so she can wear that jacket as well as she does. Is that what she wants? With sleep clogging her mind like that, she’s gradually less sure.
Sehun falls asleep on Jongin’s lap, magazine fallen over her face. It’s a wonder that she doesn’t suffocate. She wakes up several hours later, way past lunch time, to find out that Jongin, too, has fallen asleep, controller in hands even though the TV and the console are off. Sehun chuckles silently, considering kissing him awake just for the kicks and giggles, but that’s not how she wants her first kiss with her first boyfriend to be, so she lets him sleep.
Groggily, she gets on her feet, putting the magazine back into the basket with care. For a moment, a very brief moment, she just stays still, knelt near the basket, admiring her collection; CeCi, Nylon, ViVi, Seventeen… Sehun sure looks too mature to be reading Seventeen, or Nicola for that matter, but she has yet to turn twenty, so she doesn’t care. Those magazines are her most prized possession - more than her cosmetics, her clothes, her expensive apartment in Gangnam. Not more than her face, though. Her appearance is her entire life.
Sighing silently, Sehun gets on her feet and goes to the kitchen, craving for the strawberries Lu Han bought for her the other day. It has been ages since her kitchen had housed anything resembling carbohydrates, so she has long settled for snacking on fruits or vegetables instead of chips and popcorn like she did during middle school. The change did wonders to her skin.
Jongin wakes up when Sehun’s halfway through the small strawberries basket. It’s an absolutely hilarious process, and she watches it in its entirety from where she’s sitting at the kitchen counter. At first, he just stirs like a normal person, humming and stretching his limbs. This process lasts almost a whole minute. Then, he literally bolts awake, jumping to his feet as if pulled up by a supernatural force. Sehun almost chokes in startle.
“What time is it?!” He quacks, and Sehun can’t help but to laugh hysterically. “Oh Sehun!! What time is it?! I have a meeting at six!”
“Calm down,” Sehun says amidst laughter, wheezing as she tries to free her airways from the strawberry she choked on. “It’s four in the afternoon. Seriously, calm down.”
Jongin halts still midways his movements, which only makes Sehun more hysterical. “What the hell,” he sighs, finally relaxing and slumping back onto the floor. “I thought I was going to die. Why didn’t you tell me earlier?”
“I told you as soon as I could!” Sehun objects, still laughing in bouts. Jongin clicks his tongue, but, when he glances at her, a smile graces his lips. “Come here, eat some too,” she offers, and Jongin lazily complies, stretching once again as he walks over to the counter. The band of his boxers is black, and he has a very thin trail of hair under his bellybutton. It’s manly of him; surprisingly like his model self, rather than his off-screen self.
As they finish off the strawberries together, Sehun brings out the salad Lu Han prepared for them earlier. Sehun eats it without dressing, munching apathetically, but Jongin drowns it in honey mustard sauce.
“That’s a lot of sugar for a bowl of salad,” Sehun jokes out of bitterness, struggling to swallow her lettuce.
“You only live once,” Jongin replies mercilessly, digging in. Sehun feels sorry for his poor manager.
They finish the meal with a cup of green tea and talks about foreign movies, which quickly travels to current idols they like, don’t like, and would like to work with. Then, it somehow transfers to their own careers, and they end up talking about their plans for the future.
“My singing debut is pretty much-no, it has been decided already,” Jongin tells Sehun, toying with his cup a little. “Recording starts next week.”
“Oh?” Sehun raises her eyebrows and grins. “I didn’t know you could sing. Can you?”
Sehun expected him to bite back, but, instead he just laughs nervously. “I’m not a disaster at it, but…” he trails off with a sigh, leaning forward to prop his chin on the table. Sehun figures she accidentally hit a soft spot of his.
“Hey,” she calls out softly, extending a foot below the counter to nudge his leg gently. “I’m sorry. I was just joking. I’m sure you can sing just fine.”
Jongin sighs again, pouting like a child. “My producer keeps telling that I’m great at it, but it only makes me more nervous,” he confesses, fully faceplanting the table. “You know when photographers keep shouting at you that you’re doing everything right, but it only makes you really nervous?”
Sehun frowns. “You get nervous when photographers shout at you?”
“You don’t?” Jongin frowns back. Sehun shrugs in response, and his pout protrudes even more. “It’s distressing. Sometimes I feel like I’m about to run away from the shoot.”
“Aw,” Sehun coos sympathetically, but also a bit jestingly. Jongin catches on the jest, and narrows his eyes at her. “Do you want me to go to the studio with you? So I can hold your hand when the big mean producer shouts at you?”
“Actually,” the disdain vanishes from Jongin’s face. “I was thinking of inviting you to the studio next week. What do you say? It’ll be my first recording session.”
That catches Sehun completely by surprise. She halts midway a sip of her tea, raising her eyebrows in surprise, but her reaction doesn’t erase the expectant, curious, slightly dejected look on Jongin’s face. It certainly makes sense, though, since they’re dating. And it could be a good opportunity for Sehun too…
“Sure,” she consents eventually, and Jongin looks like he just got rid of a particularly heavy backpack. “I’ve never been to a recording studio before. Have you?”
“Once, last week. Had a meeting with the producing team there,” he sounds much chirpier now, drinking half of his still hot tea in one gulp. Sehun smiles tenderly at him, finding his mood switch endearing. “Sehun ah?”
“Hm?” The smile on her lips is only slightly coquettish.
“Thank you,” Jongin mumbles in a soft voice, avoiding her gaze, but smiling shyly to himself. “Thank you for helping me with this.”
He’s sort of cute, after all. He’s also fun to talk with, and good at modeling, and a nice gaming companion, even though he insults all things between heaven and hell when something goes wrong. Sehun likes him. She definitely likes him.
“It’s nothing,” she dismisses it cheekily, prodding at his leg with her toes. “What are lovers for, after all?”
part 1 → part 2 → part 3 → part 4