[oneshot] darling, you're still divine
Title: darling, you're still divine
Pairing: baekhyun/kai
Rating: pg13
Genre: slice-of-life, mild romance
Warnings: swearing, sexual themes
Author: gdgdbaby
Notes: predebut ridiculousness. jongin's almost too tsundere to function. apologies for any inconsistencies and inaccuracies herein, please direct any and all complaints to staygame. (literally. all of them.) 3,350 words.
"So I met the new guy today," Sehun says, elbowing his way into the dorm.
It's awfully transparent pretense for coming in to search for food, because he makes a beeline straight to the kitchen instead of elaborating further. Jongin dogs his heels and smacks the fridge door shut when Sehun attempts to prise it open. "Don't try it," he says, and laughs at Sehun's scowl. "Buy your own food."
"Fucking miser," Sehun grouses. He drifts back out into the living room without much protestation anyway, flops onto the couch with a loud whoosh of air.
"Chanyeol said he was a nut," Jongin prompts. "Is he any good?"
He shrugs listlessly, curled up on the sofa like a cat. "Joonmyun-hyung and I just saw him in passing on the way back."
"And?"
"He's very, uh, smiley."
"Smiley," Jongin repeats, unimpressed.
It isn't really the greatest adjective to be going off of, but it appears, for all intents and purposes, to be true. They get a formal introduction in the practice rooms the next morning: Byun Baekhyun, fresh out of high school, vocalist-in-training. Another hyung.
"It's nice to meet you all," he says, grinning so his teeth flash under the fluorescent lights and his eyes crinkle into slits.
Jongin gives him a brief nod and goes back to his routine. Chanyeol starts chattering up a storm behind him.
Baekhyun turns out to be pretty insufferable for all the reasons Jongin hates most. He's talented, to be sure, can hold a high note out with the best of them-but he acts like the road to debut is a color by numbers enterprise: practice till midnight here and sign your name there and you're guaranteed a spot in Exo, no questions asked. And for Baekhyun, it probably is like that. He'd been brought in just for debut, to round out the group with six. The way he pushes past every obstacle without a second glance just drives under Jongin's skin like nothing else. All it takes is three long days of rehearsal and he picks up most of the choreography with a sort of effortless grace, and Jongin feels something hot and ugly open up in his chest, a nasty voice in the back of his head that snarls, I've been here for five years, and where the fuck were you?
It's worse because Baekhyun seems largely oblivious to whatever dark thoughts Jongin might direct at the back of his head during practice. Smiley was right: the upturn of his lips still persists through Jongin's monosyllabic replies and half-hearted attempts at niceties.
"You're a terrible dongsaeng," Baekhyun remarks, voice light, wiping at his sweat after a particularly difficult routine one night.
Suck it, Jongin thinks dourly. He just stares down at the floor and bows his way out the door.
"This is the last straw," he complains to Kyungsoo in August, spread sluggishly on the couch with a jumbo bag of shrimp chips. "I went in this morning and he was there already. In the practice room! Nobody's ever there at five. Except me."
"Because no one else is crazy."
"I don't think you get it," Jongin murmurs into his hand. "It's encroachment. Trespassing."
"Maybe that just means he, you know, works hard," Kyungsoo says slowly, as if speaking to a very small child.
Jongin furrows his brow. Leave it to Kyungsoo to try and be fucking diplomatic about this when all Jongin wants to do is rant at someone without repercussion.
"We're going to be in the same group together," he continues, folding his legs pretzel-style and snatching the chips away before Jongin can react. Kyungsoo shakes a handful out and crams it into his mouth. "The least you can do is be civil."
Jongin doesn't want to be civil. He wants Moonkyu to still be debuting with them, he wants all the predawn hours in the practice rooms to himself, wants them quiet and serene. Baekhyun is loud and brash and fills every room he enters too much-with what, Jongin isn't quite sure. All he knows is that he can't concentrate with that kind of distraction. It doesn't help that Baekhyun has the kind of infectious charm Jongin has to actively fight not to get drawn into. He swaps dumb jokes with Chanyeol like it's breathing, a new one every minute, hangs off of Kris like he'll melt into a puddle of himself if he doesn't have something to hold onto.
"He's really fun," Sehun tells him a week later. "The other day we went to noraebang and he sang All I Want for Christmas is You with all the ad libs and everything."
"Sounds hilarious," Jongin says flatly. "Isn't it a little early for Christmas?"
Sehun snorts and shakes his head. So maybe Jongin's a contrary asshole. He can't help how he is; the more they gush about him the further he wants to retreat.
Baekhyun finally broaches the subject at the end of September, when they start rehearsing the new MAMA choreography in earnest. He doesn't do it head-on as such, like Jongin had expected him to in some far-off future. He just pops in at 5AM like clockwork, as Jongin's doing ballet stretches by the mirror, and asks him to help him out.
"With what?" Jongin says, blinking down at him.
Baekhyun shrugs, the motion lax and comfortable. He's wearing a loose shirt that says BORN TO DIE in big block letters today, and worn sneakers that look like they've seen better days. Jongin's gaze traces the trajectory of Baekhyun's fingertips along the edge of his shirt for a moment before he snaps himself out of it. "The intro sequence is tripping me up."
Jongin flips up off the floor and does a series of tricep stretches. "Did you ask Jaewon-hyung?"
Baekhyun makes a big show of looking around the empty room. "You're the only one who's ever here this early." He tilts his head to the side. "Plus, you're the best at it."
"Uh, thanks," Jongin says, trying not to look too pleased. He's pretty sure he fails, because Baekhyun has this knowing grin on his face, the ass. Whatever. "Run your part for me."
Baekhyun isn't terrible at dancing, which is a start. Jongin hasn't really given it much thought-as long as nobody was getting in his way, he didn't pay attention to the people around him in the middle of a routine. It wasn't worth the effort. Baekhyun's pretty good at it, actually, if Jongin wants to admit it to himself. He's impossibly fluid, all smooth transitions and delicate flourishes. His problem is lack of conviction, so to speak-every move needs more oomph. He gets too caught up in the in-betweens. There isn't enough dedication to each locked step until he's moving on to the next one.
Jongin explains it to him, and Baekhyun tries, but he still stumbles a bit over the step-step-twist-hand combinations. "No, like this," Jongin snaps, and he steps in close to grab Baekhyun's wrists. Baekhyun shifts on the balls of his feet and then they're plastered hip to shoulder against each other, Baekhyun's spine curving in against Jongin's chest as he turns. When Jongin inhales sharply, he catches a faint whiff of floral shampoo.
He sees the motion through to the end before stepping away, palms itching.
"Got it?" he asks, voice admirably level. "Okay, let's do it a couple more times."
Baekhyun's gold, of course, by the next week. Somehow he'd wheedled more reluctant practice time out of Jongin; an annoying hyung pestering the fuck out of him all the time wouldn't do him any favors, and at least Baekhyun's quieter when he's focused on something. "You've improved a lot," Jaewon says with vague surprise on Friday morning, when they're doing a group run. "Good job."
"Jongin helped me," Baekhyun chirps, beaming. Sehun throws Jongin an incredulous look that he studiously ignores.
"It was for the greater good, alright?" Jongin mumbles later, at lunch. "Try not to think too much, I know it hurts."
Sehun smacks him on the shoulder. "The lady doth protest too much, methinks," he quips, raising his eyebrows.
Jongin waves a hand and knocks over Sehun's coke. "Oops," he says as Sehun yelps and dives for a wad of napkins. "Sorry."
After the cold snap in October, Baekhyun starts wearing fingerless gloves to practice. Jongin, for reasons beyond him, becomes infuriatingly aware of his hands. At first it's just a glance here and there during water breaks, but it gets much worse when they move into choreography for Angel. There's something about the way they wrap around an unplugged microphone or ripple through the air that engenders a visceral pull in Jongin's chest, like his stomach's decided to float up and hang out there instead of where it's supposed to be.
"Hey-" Chanyeol snaps his fingers in Jongin's face. "Earth to spacehead. Come in, repeat, come in."
Jongin rolls his eyes and pushes his hand away. "What do you want?"
"We're starting over from the top," Baekhyun says, thumbing the fringe beneath his beanie and chewing on the nail of the index finger on his other hand. Jongin swallows, throat clicking drily.
He keeps catching flashes of Baekhyun's hands in the mirror during the run-through, and he's hopelessly out of breath by the end of it. Jaewon takes a look at his face and lets them out of practice early. Chanyeol whoops excitedly and Baekhyun whacks him in the side, laughing. Kyungsoo slings an arm over Jongin's neck and pulls him out the door.
They manage to drag him out to dinner with them after Chinese lessons, Sehun's hand clamped around his arm and Kyungsoo going on about the virtues of some late night barbeque place in the city. It's packed when they get there so they opt for a smaller table, Baekhyun and Chanyeol squeezed in so tight on either side of him that he loses the feeling in his legs. The food's good, though. He and Sehun fight over the last piece of samgyupsal, and Baekhyun ninjas his way in and snatches it out from underneath both their noses, pops it into his mouth with a swig of ice water.
"You're a terrible hyung," Jongin tells him, very dry, and Baekhyun beams.
"We should change the end of the chorus," someone says the next day-maybe Greg. "It doesn't fit the lyrics."
"I like it," Jongin says, blinking through the sweat dripping down his face. "It's powerful."
"It should be something you slide into," Jaewon counters. "The angel loses its eternal life to be with the one he loves."
Chanyeol leans back on the floor, arms propping him up. "Can we just lie down, then? Give me a chance to rest for a bit in the middle of the song?"
Baekhyun snorts and kicks his leg.
"Run it again and see what comes naturally," Greg says.
Jongin stands and cracks his neck, shakes his arms out. The music starts and he breathes into every pull and release. He still likes the wild pop-lock flourish of the end because it's dynamic, exciting, a heady rush of blood to the head every time he does it. This time, though, he sees Baekhyun do a little inward pulling motion along his chest out of the corner of his eye. Jaewon cuts the music off before they can continue and pulls him up to the front.
"Do that again," he commands, putting the chorus on again. There's a sinking feeling in Jongin's stomach, then. What's about to happen is all too clear to him, and it's childish and stupid but it makes him feel territorial, this foreign intrusion onto what's supposed to be his.
They end up liking Baekhyun's new thing enough to change the choreography at the end to suit it. Jongin goes through it all tight-lipped, nearly upends himself every time he gets to his own extended dance sequence, and slams out of the practice room without a word when Jaewon dismisses them for the day.
He hops into the shower back at the dorm and scrubs his skin hard enough to burn. An image of Baekhyun's index finger pressed to his lips crashes full-force to the front of Jongin's mind and he turns the temperature knob savagely to freezing.
Joonmyun's waiting for him in the living room when he comes out toweling his hair. "Don't even start, hyung," Jongin says darkly, turning on his heel and going into his bedroom. "Gonna be a good leader, now?"
"Baekhyun really likes you, you know," comes Joonmyun's voice from behind him.
"Yeah?" Jongin mumbles. He tosses the towel on the floor and climbs into bed. "He should stick to singing about it."
His body clock has him up at five in the morning again, tracing familiar footsteps to the practice rooms. There's nowhere else for Jongin to go, really, and he'd been absolute shit yesterday.
Baekhyun, of course, is already there when he arrives. He looks up from his iPod and tries to give Jongin a smile, which just makes him even angrier.
"Why do you keep coming here?" Jongin blurts out, tossing his bag onto the floor. "There are other places you can go. Stop trying to steal my shit."
"I'm not trying to steal anything," Baekhyun says tiredly. "I just want to practice more."
"Why?" he asks, frowning. "Everything comes easy to you, doesn't it?"
Baekhyun doesn't say anything.
"Self-entitled shit," Jongin mutters. "Thinking you deserve to debut with us just because some scout picked you up off the streets-"
"Hey!" comes the interjection, so close to Jongin's ear that he recoils a little bit. Baekhyun grabs him by the shoulder, fingers curling in the thin material of his shirt. "I don't think I deserve anything," he snaps, staring up at him. It makes Jongin want to punch him because he knows Baekhyun's telling the truth. Through the thin veneer of make up, he can see the dark circles beneath Baekhyun's eyes, the pallor of his skin. "You think I come in before the crack of dawn for shits and giggles? I do it because I want to deserve it." He wilts for a minute, fists clenching tighter in his shirt. Jongin's heart jumps. "Your temper tantrums aren't helping anyone, so stop being such a fucking child."
Jongin rears back and Baekhyun pushes past him, a deep frown marring his features. He disappears out the door in a whirlwind of motion and leaves behind the smell of shampoo.
A few days later, Taemin returns from jet setting all over the globe with SHINee, thinner and somehow perpetually windswept. A bunch of sunbaes come by with him to see all twelve of them rehearse together-management keeps saying that the teasers will start being filmed and released soon. "Get ready," Taemin says in the cafeteria, around the rim of his cup of coffee. "It's going to be absolutely ballistic, and you're the face."
"Yeah," Jongin says numbly, and takes a sip of his vitamin water to stop his hands from shaking.
Baekhyun's slid back into placid politeness. Jongin's dancing still feels oddly stiff, and he still can't stop thinking about Baekhyun's fingers when they slide over his jacket in Angel or point out in front of him in MAMA. Sometimes he'll turn away and Jongin won't be able to stop staring at the sweat dripping down the line of his neck, the way the cords stands out in stark relief as they rise from the hollow of his collarbone. It makes Jongin want to bury his face in a pillow and yell himself hoarse-which he does, at length, when he's trying to get off to porn and all he can think about is Baekhyun's hands on his dick, Baekhyun laughing into his neck, Baekhyun's fingers twisting into his own asshole. Jongin comes at that last one and stares up at the ceiling for a long moment, a heavy sense of betrayal spreading out from the pleasant throb in his abdomen.
"You should just apologize," Sehun tells him over a late lunch in the cafeteria, after some vocal instruction that probably did more harm for Jongin than good. "It's awkward for us, too, you know."
"What makes you think it's something I did?" Jongin asks indignantly.
Sehun sends him a pointed glance, like, please, dude, do I look like an idiot, a question Jongin's pretty sure Sehun would never want him to answer seriously. Jongin swipes the last roll out of Sehun's hand and crams it into his mouth. "Hey!"
"Carbs make you fat," Jongin says thickly, and rises to leave.
He nearly runs into Baekhyun at the exit. He shoots Jongin an unreadable look, a hand brushing against Jongin's arm as he moves to catch the handle of the door, and Jongin's entire body gives this long shudder. He almost chokes on the last bit of bread in his mouth before he swallows hard around it.
Baekhyun lets out a little yelp when Jongin grabs his wrist and pulls him away. The tiny closet off the end of the hallway's deserted. He drags Baekhyun inside and heaves the door shut behind him. "This needs to stop," Jongin says, and Baekhyun's brow furrows.
"I don't know what you mean." He folds his arms across his chest. "Unless you're here to beg for forgiveness, of course."
Jongin makes a noise of tremendous irritation. "Look-"
"That doesn't sound like the beginning of an apology," Baekhyun interrupts, trying to slide around him.
Jongin blocks the door with an arm. "I was a dick," he says in a rush, the words tripping over each other as they fall out of his mouth, "and I will most likely continue to be a dick, because that is my modus operandi and I'm not so good with personal change. But I guess you're okay, and-I mean, you're talented, and deserve to be here, and I like you, I just don't really know how to-"
Baekhyun puts a finger to Jongin's lips to shut him up. It works quite nicely because Jongin's cock stirs in his pants despite himself and he clenches his teeth hard, throat going tight with arousal. "That's good enough," Baekhyun says, laughing a little, and then he leans up and replaces the finger with his mouth, tongue licking into Jongin's when it drops open.
Baekhyun's a fucking handful, and he's also a guy, so the proportions are all out of whack-shoulders too broad, jaw cut too sharp, hair only just long enough to pull at-but Jongin likes it. He likes that Baekhyun tastes of mint toothpaste and vitamin water. He breaks the first kiss and presses a second one into Baekhyun's neck and likes the way he jumps at the contact, tries to shy away. Jongin holds him there and sucks. Baekhyun's hands spasm beneath Jongin's shirt and his nails scrape hard against his skin. He exhales with a high whine.
Jongin pulls back, breathing hard. He must look kind of stunned because Baekhyun flicks his nose and laughs again, eyes curved into half-circles. "I really need to eat," he says, "but this talk was nice. Illuminating." He adjusts the collar of his shirt. "You're still a terrible dongsaeng."
"What the hell," Jongin says, tilting back on his heels, brushing his thumb against his bottom lip. "You're the terrible hyung."
"Untrue," Baekhyun says, grinning. "Ask anyone else." He finally manages to squeeze to the door and pulls it open, almost brains Jongin in the process. He looks back and considers Jongin from the other side of the threshold, thin fingers coming up to rearrange Jongin's fringe. "I like you too, for the record."
And then he's gone, vanishing into the cafeteria for lunch, the sly smile on his face a hazy afterimage in the air like something out of fucking Alice in Wonderland. Jongin's not sure if it's the reciprocation or Baekhyun's hands in his hair that sends the spiral of latent heat up his spine, but he finds that it's a distinction he doesn't much care about.
fin
A/N: title from you're so damn hot by ok go.
Pairing: baekhyun/kai
Rating: pg13
Genre: slice-of-life, mild romance
Warnings: swearing, sexual themes
Author: gdgdbaby
Notes: predebut ridiculousness. jongin's almost too tsundere to function. apologies for any inconsistencies and inaccuracies herein, please direct any and all complaints to staygame. (literally. all of them.) 3,350 words.
"So I met the new guy today," Sehun says, elbowing his way into the dorm.
It's awfully transparent pretense for coming in to search for food, because he makes a beeline straight to the kitchen instead of elaborating further. Jongin dogs his heels and smacks the fridge door shut when Sehun attempts to prise it open. "Don't try it," he says, and laughs at Sehun's scowl. "Buy your own food."
"Fucking miser," Sehun grouses. He drifts back out into the living room without much protestation anyway, flops onto the couch with a loud whoosh of air.
"Chanyeol said he was a nut," Jongin prompts. "Is he any good?"
He shrugs listlessly, curled up on the sofa like a cat. "Joonmyun-hyung and I just saw him in passing on the way back."
"And?"
"He's very, uh, smiley."
"Smiley," Jongin repeats, unimpressed.
It isn't really the greatest adjective to be going off of, but it appears, for all intents and purposes, to be true. They get a formal introduction in the practice rooms the next morning: Byun Baekhyun, fresh out of high school, vocalist-in-training. Another hyung.
"It's nice to meet you all," he says, grinning so his teeth flash under the fluorescent lights and his eyes crinkle into slits.
Jongin gives him a brief nod and goes back to his routine. Chanyeol starts chattering up a storm behind him.
Baekhyun turns out to be pretty insufferable for all the reasons Jongin hates most. He's talented, to be sure, can hold a high note out with the best of them-but he acts like the road to debut is a color by numbers enterprise: practice till midnight here and sign your name there and you're guaranteed a spot in Exo, no questions asked. And for Baekhyun, it probably is like that. He'd been brought in just for debut, to round out the group with six. The way he pushes past every obstacle without a second glance just drives under Jongin's skin like nothing else. All it takes is three long days of rehearsal and he picks up most of the choreography with a sort of effortless grace, and Jongin feels something hot and ugly open up in his chest, a nasty voice in the back of his head that snarls, I've been here for five years, and where the fuck were you?
It's worse because Baekhyun seems largely oblivious to whatever dark thoughts Jongin might direct at the back of his head during practice. Smiley was right: the upturn of his lips still persists through Jongin's monosyllabic replies and half-hearted attempts at niceties.
"You're a terrible dongsaeng," Baekhyun remarks, voice light, wiping at his sweat after a particularly difficult routine one night.
Suck it, Jongin thinks dourly. He just stares down at the floor and bows his way out the door.
"This is the last straw," he complains to Kyungsoo in August, spread sluggishly on the couch with a jumbo bag of shrimp chips. "I went in this morning and he was there already. In the practice room! Nobody's ever there at five. Except me."
"Because no one else is crazy."
"I don't think you get it," Jongin murmurs into his hand. "It's encroachment. Trespassing."
"Maybe that just means he, you know, works hard," Kyungsoo says slowly, as if speaking to a very small child.
Jongin furrows his brow. Leave it to Kyungsoo to try and be fucking diplomatic about this when all Jongin wants to do is rant at someone without repercussion.
"We're going to be in the same group together," he continues, folding his legs pretzel-style and snatching the chips away before Jongin can react. Kyungsoo shakes a handful out and crams it into his mouth. "The least you can do is be civil."
Jongin doesn't want to be civil. He wants Moonkyu to still be debuting with them, he wants all the predawn hours in the practice rooms to himself, wants them quiet and serene. Baekhyun is loud and brash and fills every room he enters too much-with what, Jongin isn't quite sure. All he knows is that he can't concentrate with that kind of distraction. It doesn't help that Baekhyun has the kind of infectious charm Jongin has to actively fight not to get drawn into. He swaps dumb jokes with Chanyeol like it's breathing, a new one every minute, hangs off of Kris like he'll melt into a puddle of himself if he doesn't have something to hold onto.
"He's really fun," Sehun tells him a week later. "The other day we went to noraebang and he sang All I Want for Christmas is You with all the ad libs and everything."
"Sounds hilarious," Jongin says flatly. "Isn't it a little early for Christmas?"
Sehun snorts and shakes his head. So maybe Jongin's a contrary asshole. He can't help how he is; the more they gush about him the further he wants to retreat.
Baekhyun finally broaches the subject at the end of September, when they start rehearsing the new MAMA choreography in earnest. He doesn't do it head-on as such, like Jongin had expected him to in some far-off future. He just pops in at 5AM like clockwork, as Jongin's doing ballet stretches by the mirror, and asks him to help him out.
"With what?" Jongin says, blinking down at him.
Baekhyun shrugs, the motion lax and comfortable. He's wearing a loose shirt that says BORN TO DIE in big block letters today, and worn sneakers that look like they've seen better days. Jongin's gaze traces the trajectory of Baekhyun's fingertips along the edge of his shirt for a moment before he snaps himself out of it. "The intro sequence is tripping me up."
Jongin flips up off the floor and does a series of tricep stretches. "Did you ask Jaewon-hyung?"
Baekhyun makes a big show of looking around the empty room. "You're the only one who's ever here this early." He tilts his head to the side. "Plus, you're the best at it."
"Uh, thanks," Jongin says, trying not to look too pleased. He's pretty sure he fails, because Baekhyun has this knowing grin on his face, the ass. Whatever. "Run your part for me."
Baekhyun isn't terrible at dancing, which is a start. Jongin hasn't really given it much thought-as long as nobody was getting in his way, he didn't pay attention to the people around him in the middle of a routine. It wasn't worth the effort. Baekhyun's pretty good at it, actually, if Jongin wants to admit it to himself. He's impossibly fluid, all smooth transitions and delicate flourishes. His problem is lack of conviction, so to speak-every move needs more oomph. He gets too caught up in the in-betweens. There isn't enough dedication to each locked step until he's moving on to the next one.
Jongin explains it to him, and Baekhyun tries, but he still stumbles a bit over the step-step-twist-hand combinations. "No, like this," Jongin snaps, and he steps in close to grab Baekhyun's wrists. Baekhyun shifts on the balls of his feet and then they're plastered hip to shoulder against each other, Baekhyun's spine curving in against Jongin's chest as he turns. When Jongin inhales sharply, he catches a faint whiff of floral shampoo.
He sees the motion through to the end before stepping away, palms itching.
"Got it?" he asks, voice admirably level. "Okay, let's do it a couple more times."
Baekhyun's gold, of course, by the next week. Somehow he'd wheedled more reluctant practice time out of Jongin; an annoying hyung pestering the fuck out of him all the time wouldn't do him any favors, and at least Baekhyun's quieter when he's focused on something. "You've improved a lot," Jaewon says with vague surprise on Friday morning, when they're doing a group run. "Good job."
"Jongin helped me," Baekhyun chirps, beaming. Sehun throws Jongin an incredulous look that he studiously ignores.
"It was for the greater good, alright?" Jongin mumbles later, at lunch. "Try not to think too much, I know it hurts."
Sehun smacks him on the shoulder. "The lady doth protest too much, methinks," he quips, raising his eyebrows.
Jongin waves a hand and knocks over Sehun's coke. "Oops," he says as Sehun yelps and dives for a wad of napkins. "Sorry."
After the cold snap in October, Baekhyun starts wearing fingerless gloves to practice. Jongin, for reasons beyond him, becomes infuriatingly aware of his hands. At first it's just a glance here and there during water breaks, but it gets much worse when they move into choreography for Angel. There's something about the way they wrap around an unplugged microphone or ripple through the air that engenders a visceral pull in Jongin's chest, like his stomach's decided to float up and hang out there instead of where it's supposed to be.
"Hey-" Chanyeol snaps his fingers in Jongin's face. "Earth to spacehead. Come in, repeat, come in."
Jongin rolls his eyes and pushes his hand away. "What do you want?"
"We're starting over from the top," Baekhyun says, thumbing the fringe beneath his beanie and chewing on the nail of the index finger on his other hand. Jongin swallows, throat clicking drily.
He keeps catching flashes of Baekhyun's hands in the mirror during the run-through, and he's hopelessly out of breath by the end of it. Jaewon takes a look at his face and lets them out of practice early. Chanyeol whoops excitedly and Baekhyun whacks him in the side, laughing. Kyungsoo slings an arm over Jongin's neck and pulls him out the door.
They manage to drag him out to dinner with them after Chinese lessons, Sehun's hand clamped around his arm and Kyungsoo going on about the virtues of some late night barbeque place in the city. It's packed when they get there so they opt for a smaller table, Baekhyun and Chanyeol squeezed in so tight on either side of him that he loses the feeling in his legs. The food's good, though. He and Sehun fight over the last piece of samgyupsal, and Baekhyun ninjas his way in and snatches it out from underneath both their noses, pops it into his mouth with a swig of ice water.
"You're a terrible hyung," Jongin tells him, very dry, and Baekhyun beams.
"We should change the end of the chorus," someone says the next day-maybe Greg. "It doesn't fit the lyrics."
"I like it," Jongin says, blinking through the sweat dripping down his face. "It's powerful."
"It should be something you slide into," Jaewon counters. "The angel loses its eternal life to be with the one he loves."
Chanyeol leans back on the floor, arms propping him up. "Can we just lie down, then? Give me a chance to rest for a bit in the middle of the song?"
Baekhyun snorts and kicks his leg.
"Run it again and see what comes naturally," Greg says.
Jongin stands and cracks his neck, shakes his arms out. The music starts and he breathes into every pull and release. He still likes the wild pop-lock flourish of the end because it's dynamic, exciting, a heady rush of blood to the head every time he does it. This time, though, he sees Baekhyun do a little inward pulling motion along his chest out of the corner of his eye. Jaewon cuts the music off before they can continue and pulls him up to the front.
"Do that again," he commands, putting the chorus on again. There's a sinking feeling in Jongin's stomach, then. What's about to happen is all too clear to him, and it's childish and stupid but it makes him feel territorial, this foreign intrusion onto what's supposed to be his.
They end up liking Baekhyun's new thing enough to change the choreography at the end to suit it. Jongin goes through it all tight-lipped, nearly upends himself every time he gets to his own extended dance sequence, and slams out of the practice room without a word when Jaewon dismisses them for the day.
He hops into the shower back at the dorm and scrubs his skin hard enough to burn. An image of Baekhyun's index finger pressed to his lips crashes full-force to the front of Jongin's mind and he turns the temperature knob savagely to freezing.
Joonmyun's waiting for him in the living room when he comes out toweling his hair. "Don't even start, hyung," Jongin says darkly, turning on his heel and going into his bedroom. "Gonna be a good leader, now?"
"Baekhyun really likes you, you know," comes Joonmyun's voice from behind him.
"Yeah?" Jongin mumbles. He tosses the towel on the floor and climbs into bed. "He should stick to singing about it."
His body clock has him up at five in the morning again, tracing familiar footsteps to the practice rooms. There's nowhere else for Jongin to go, really, and he'd been absolute shit yesterday.
Baekhyun, of course, is already there when he arrives. He looks up from his iPod and tries to give Jongin a smile, which just makes him even angrier.
"Why do you keep coming here?" Jongin blurts out, tossing his bag onto the floor. "There are other places you can go. Stop trying to steal my shit."
"I'm not trying to steal anything," Baekhyun says tiredly. "I just want to practice more."
"Why?" he asks, frowning. "Everything comes easy to you, doesn't it?"
Baekhyun doesn't say anything.
"Self-entitled shit," Jongin mutters. "Thinking you deserve to debut with us just because some scout picked you up off the streets-"
"Hey!" comes the interjection, so close to Jongin's ear that he recoils a little bit. Baekhyun grabs him by the shoulder, fingers curling in the thin material of his shirt. "I don't think I deserve anything," he snaps, staring up at him. It makes Jongin want to punch him because he knows Baekhyun's telling the truth. Through the thin veneer of make up, he can see the dark circles beneath Baekhyun's eyes, the pallor of his skin. "You think I come in before the crack of dawn for shits and giggles? I do it because I want to deserve it." He wilts for a minute, fists clenching tighter in his shirt. Jongin's heart jumps. "Your temper tantrums aren't helping anyone, so stop being such a fucking child."
Jongin rears back and Baekhyun pushes past him, a deep frown marring his features. He disappears out the door in a whirlwind of motion and leaves behind the smell of shampoo.
A few days later, Taemin returns from jet setting all over the globe with SHINee, thinner and somehow perpetually windswept. A bunch of sunbaes come by with him to see all twelve of them rehearse together-management keeps saying that the teasers will start being filmed and released soon. "Get ready," Taemin says in the cafeteria, around the rim of his cup of coffee. "It's going to be absolutely ballistic, and you're the face."
"Yeah," Jongin says numbly, and takes a sip of his vitamin water to stop his hands from shaking.
Baekhyun's slid back into placid politeness. Jongin's dancing still feels oddly stiff, and he still can't stop thinking about Baekhyun's fingers when they slide over his jacket in Angel or point out in front of him in MAMA. Sometimes he'll turn away and Jongin won't be able to stop staring at the sweat dripping down the line of his neck, the way the cords stands out in stark relief as they rise from the hollow of his collarbone. It makes Jongin want to bury his face in a pillow and yell himself hoarse-which he does, at length, when he's trying to get off to porn and all he can think about is Baekhyun's hands on his dick, Baekhyun laughing into his neck, Baekhyun's fingers twisting into his own asshole. Jongin comes at that last one and stares up at the ceiling for a long moment, a heavy sense of betrayal spreading out from the pleasant throb in his abdomen.
"You should just apologize," Sehun tells him over a late lunch in the cafeteria, after some vocal instruction that probably did more harm for Jongin than good. "It's awkward for us, too, you know."
"What makes you think it's something I did?" Jongin asks indignantly.
Sehun sends him a pointed glance, like, please, dude, do I look like an idiot, a question Jongin's pretty sure Sehun would never want him to answer seriously. Jongin swipes the last roll out of Sehun's hand and crams it into his mouth. "Hey!"
"Carbs make you fat," Jongin says thickly, and rises to leave.
He nearly runs into Baekhyun at the exit. He shoots Jongin an unreadable look, a hand brushing against Jongin's arm as he moves to catch the handle of the door, and Jongin's entire body gives this long shudder. He almost chokes on the last bit of bread in his mouth before he swallows hard around it.
Baekhyun lets out a little yelp when Jongin grabs his wrist and pulls him away. The tiny closet off the end of the hallway's deserted. He drags Baekhyun inside and heaves the door shut behind him. "This needs to stop," Jongin says, and Baekhyun's brow furrows.
"I don't know what you mean." He folds his arms across his chest. "Unless you're here to beg for forgiveness, of course."
Jongin makes a noise of tremendous irritation. "Look-"
"That doesn't sound like the beginning of an apology," Baekhyun interrupts, trying to slide around him.
Jongin blocks the door with an arm. "I was a dick," he says in a rush, the words tripping over each other as they fall out of his mouth, "and I will most likely continue to be a dick, because that is my modus operandi and I'm not so good with personal change. But I guess you're okay, and-I mean, you're talented, and deserve to be here, and I like you, I just don't really know how to-"
Baekhyun puts a finger to Jongin's lips to shut him up. It works quite nicely because Jongin's cock stirs in his pants despite himself and he clenches his teeth hard, throat going tight with arousal. "That's good enough," Baekhyun says, laughing a little, and then he leans up and replaces the finger with his mouth, tongue licking into Jongin's when it drops open.
Baekhyun's a fucking handful, and he's also a guy, so the proportions are all out of whack-shoulders too broad, jaw cut too sharp, hair only just long enough to pull at-but Jongin likes it. He likes that Baekhyun tastes of mint toothpaste and vitamin water. He breaks the first kiss and presses a second one into Baekhyun's neck and likes the way he jumps at the contact, tries to shy away. Jongin holds him there and sucks. Baekhyun's hands spasm beneath Jongin's shirt and his nails scrape hard against his skin. He exhales with a high whine.
Jongin pulls back, breathing hard. He must look kind of stunned because Baekhyun flicks his nose and laughs again, eyes curved into half-circles. "I really need to eat," he says, "but this talk was nice. Illuminating." He adjusts the collar of his shirt. "You're still a terrible dongsaeng."
"What the hell," Jongin says, tilting back on his heels, brushing his thumb against his bottom lip. "You're the terrible hyung."
"Untrue," Baekhyun says, grinning. "Ask anyone else." He finally manages to squeeze to the door and pulls it open, almost brains Jongin in the process. He looks back and considers Jongin from the other side of the threshold, thin fingers coming up to rearrange Jongin's fringe. "I like you too, for the record."
And then he's gone, vanishing into the cafeteria for lunch, the sly smile on his face a hazy afterimage in the air like something out of fucking Alice in Wonderland. Jongin's not sure if it's the reciprocation or Baekhyun's hands in his hair that sends the spiral of latent heat up his spine, but he finds that it's a distinction he doesn't much care about.
fin
A/N: title from you're so damn hot by ok go.