chimera (1/2)
title: chimera
pairing: mark/jackson
rating: pg-15
summary: (canon) you're going to conquer the world with your music and his smile.
warnings: second person, lapslock
notes: for paintingdragons and bloodyrose2442 :)
he's waiting up in your bedroom when you get back to the dorm after the award ceremony. you let yourself into the room soundlessly, loosening the noose of your tie and unbuttoning your shirt wearily. you don't know what to expect - it's been more nights than you can count on your fingers since the last time you slept here, but his eyes in the dark are conciliatory, wordlessly understanding.
while the other five dream in their rooms, he stands up and pads towards you in his bare feet. his eyelids are drowsy, his skin warm with sleep as he helps you out of your jacket. "i'm so proud of you," he says, eyes shining like stars as he presses his lips sloppily against the side of your neck. "my jackson."
there is something about those words in his voice that breaks you down. no one has ever said your name so softly, so lovingly, and he has no right to. he's not allowed. but you can't find the strength to say the words as he gently helps you undress, fumbling with the buttons of your dress shirt and pushing it off your shoulders. he doesn't bother finding you a shirt to change into because this is routine, it's normal for you to sleep in the nude, especially when it's not winter. instead, he just leads you shirtless to your bed and climbs in beside you, nuzzling easily into your side and closing his eyes. his tank is sliding off his shoulder and you want to pull it up. you close your eyes instead.
you are so tired. so exhausted and drained. you wonder how all of this happened to you. did you ever want it? it's so long ago and far away now, you've forgotten. the only thing that remains the same is the metronome rhythm of his breaths, the evening heartbeat through the layer of his thin singlet as he slips out of consciousness next to you.
you close your eyes and dream.
* * *
it's the 15th of january, 2014. you're nineteen and he's twenty, just another two teenage boys at a beach in seoul at midnight. but tomorrow, everything will change. this simple freedom will become a luxury. tomorrow, you're signing away yourself.
you wonder if you know what you're giving up, what you've given up since you came to this foreign land two and a half years ago and met him, quiet, driven, formidably skilled. what you're giving up together.
he looks over at you, and you recognize the same hunger that is in your soul, reflected in his eyes. at that moment, you know with absolute clarity that you both share the same dream. his hand tightens around yours, cold, sweaty. don't let go.
never.
you lie on the shore and listen to the ebb and flow of the tides and the rhythm of his breathing next to you as the first morning stars glimmer faintly in the gray-blue predawn sky. it's long past curfew and you should be in the dorm, getting the rest you need to be a hundred percent on stage this evening. but for some reason, you don't really care about the eyebags the stylist noonas will be frantically trying to hide later, the exhaustion that will hit like a tidal wave and drag down your choreography like chains. what is more important is not missing every last, startling second of this final night, taking away that last bit of lingering uncertainty in the curve of his smile.
(for the briefest fleeting heartbeat you think of doing it with your own pressed against his, but quickly banish the traitorous thought.)
you wonder why he can't see what's so plain to you, to everybody. he was born to be a superstar. even with no makeup and in unflattering loose sweats, he still manages to stand out, turning heads wherever he goes. his is the kind of beauty that stops traffic, that shines from the inside and you can't even find it in yourself to be jealous because he doesn't possess a single bit of guile, is totally unaware of it.
you want to tell him this, but the words are stuck in your throat and you can't spit them out. you're both boys, teenagers and at this very moment, these two facts seem like the greatest barriers to communication. instead, when he murmurs, his voice ridden with self-doubt, "but i'm so ordinary. i'm not good enough," you shake your head vehemently.
"you're extraordinary."
at the english word, he breaks into a shy, unchecked smile, lowering his eyes in embarrassment, and you know you've said the right thing.
he has way too many teeth and never bothered to fix his slightly crooked canines, so when he smiles they crowd together, fanglike. it's mesmerizing and you think that you're going to conquer the world with your music and his smile.
he's going to take korean pop by storm, you think. there's never been an idol quite like mark tuan, as awkward, as laidback, as four-dimensional, as eccentric, as hardworking, as mysterious, as charming. you think of his infectious, goofy smile, white as a toothpaste commercial and too big for his small face; the way he looks when he's just woken up, freshly-washed face glimmering with morning dew. he makes perfection look effortless and you feel hopelessly normal next to him.
you think of the perfect imperfections that lie beneath that perfection, his offbeat humour and the stutter that comes out when he's nervous. the love he shares with you of punching holes into your body. he's deceptively spacey and childish, but surprisingly mature and dependable when needed. as a friend, he's loyal to a fault. as a hyung, he's delightfully indulgent and soft-hearted, generously burning a hole in his wallet to treat the younger members to food.
you think of him rapping his heart out on stage, in the recording studio, in the practice room, on radio shows; the both of you freestyling as scruffy trainees competing alongside each other on win. just like him, his rap is easygoing, unassuming, but providing the essential and indispensable bassline for all your performances.
from the very first day, you had already respected him deeply, admired his individualistic style and stringent principles, how he managed to stay true to himself despite all the temptations and makeovers.
he might not be arrogant, but he's astonishingly self-possessed, his eyes always placid dark lakes no matter the crisis. he might not be confident, but he's always professional, switching instantly into a seasoned performer the moment he steps onstage, with no hint of the painfully shy awkwardness he reveals in private. you think of him staying back in the studio after practice, perfecting backflips and cartwheels alone in the stifling dim, him whispering that he's fine to his parents on the phone when he thinks no one is listening, him breaking down later in a bathroom stall, noiseless sobs racking his slender frame. he works harder than any sunbae you know and smiles harder and cries harder too, and has a heart bigger than he knows what to do with.
the first weak rays of the rising sun bathe his cheekbones with a blush of coral pink, and you look sideways at him in the encroaching dawn. something is growing in your chest, something warm and unidentifiable. "it's the end," you murmur, watching the day of reckoning break on the horizon.
his laugh is airy, musical and his fingertips play invisible notes along yours. "it's just the beginning."
it's five seconds to your debut stage on m countdown and you're standing in formation, the stage pitch black. your mic is bothering you, blocking your mouth and grating on your already frayed nerves and you mess with it, hands shaking. gentle fingers still your own and you feel his warm breath on your neck as he leans forward to adjust the position of the mic until it's comfortable.
he doesn't say anything, but the gesture leads you through the opening lyrics as the stage lights dance over you, through your lines as you try not to blink against the painful glare, to his rap as the cadence of his mellow voice washes over you like sandpaper satin, calming you immeasurably. the floodlights splash over him like sunlight, illuminating his eyes rimmed by eyeliner, making him look immortal.
since you moved into the dorm and became roommates, you've learnt to live back to back, breathing the same air, to share a confined space without invading each other's personal space. unconsciously, you've become attuned to each other like a sunflower intuitively senses the direction of the sun, aligning yourselves together like planets sharing the same orbit. you've learnt that he enjoys solitude and can entertain himself for hours with just his ipod and good music. he's learnt that you have way too many clothes, usually strewn haphazardly over the floor.
whenever your eyes meet onstage, the bone-shaking music seems to fade away. the faces you pull at each other and the smiles you exchange off-camera are a language upon themselves, one only decipherable to the two of you. you think of his deceptively casual rap, flowing off his tongue like honey as sweat pours down his back and soaks his threadbare shirt; the slick movements of his tricking achieved at the cost of countless hidden bruises; his surprisingly melodic singing and the unique, loose moves of his dancing. he is always pushing himself beyond his limits, always working so hard to please the fans at the expense of himself, seeming to carry the weight of the world on his narrow shoulders, even more so than the leader.
every time he defies gravity, you think of the price he will have to pay in future in the form of injuries that flare up at the slightest provocation and aches that recur when it rains. because humans aren't made to fly. not even those who look like angels.
you fall asleep to the lullaby of his bass and wake up to see him lounging lazily on his bed, scrolling across his ipad and swallowed by baggy sweats, the hood of his hoodie pulled over a beanie to hide his bed hair. he breathes a gravelly laugh when you tug the cap off his head. "morning, roomie," he says, hair in adorable disarray. even makeupless and disheveled, he's more beautiful than he has any right to be.
you think of his public smile, the one that has made millions of fans around the world fall in love with got7, and how it's nothing compared to his private one, sweet-eyed and unfurling slowly as a dream. it's a smile that could start wars and end cities, the most deadly weapon in this battlefield you're in.
"what are you thinking?" he asks, interrupting your thoughts.
you laugh, rolling onto his bed and leaning in towards him, so close that your bangs catch together with static. "just... about how remarkable your smile is."
he drops his eyes away from your gaze, cheeks pinkening. "are you teasing me?" he whines, and you deny innocently. somehow this leads to a pillow fight and the maknaes barging into your room without knocking, drawn by the noise and promise of fun. kunpimook backs you up immediately, loyal as always, and yugyeom and youngjae join his team. by the time the score is evened, there are feathers flying all over the room and you lie spread-eagled on your bed, panting in symphony with everyone else, pretending the way your heart is racing is only from exertion.
"there he goes," jinyoung sighs. "smiling his jackson smile again."
"jackson smile?" you repeat, befuddled.
jinyoung laughs. "didn't you know? he has a special smile for you. look."
you do, looking over to where he's standing with jaebum and watching you from across the room. his eyes rove past jinyoung with a congenial, close-lipped smile before they land on you and light up, his smile widening till almost all his teeth are visible and his gums show.
"you see," jinyoung says smugly, vindicated and you just blink.
you celebrate your twentieth birthday with the members, at night after returning from schedules with a bakery cake slightly squished from where yugyeom had accidentally sat on it in the van. it's late and none of you have had time to change or remove your makeup. his eyes are smudged with eyeliner in the orange light of the flickering candles as jaebum carries the cake out and the members sing a hushed, off-tune rendition of happy birthday so as not to wake the neighbours. he joins in, clapping and mouthing the words, looking as happy as if it's his own birthday.
as you blow out the candles, you wish for love, and when you open your eyes he's looking at you, like it's the first time he's seeing you. like you're beautiful.
you're twenty, twenty and confused. you jerk awake in the morning at the beeping of the alarm clock with a sleepy erection and this is nothing that hasn't happened before but you panic because what you had been dreaming of last night, what is still lingering like fading remnants of smoke behind your eyelids is the creamy silk of his skin, his gazelle-like grace and willowy figure.
he sits up too, rubbing his heavy eyelids and offering you a drowsy smile. without a stitch of makeup, his face is puffy and pale, impossibly young, his hair dry and strawlike from one too many bleachings. his oversized sweatshirt swallows his slender frame and slides off one of his narrow shoulders. he drifts to the bathroom and you hear the sound of a hushed bartering with bambam over who to use the toilet first; predict his reluctant giving in even before it drifts to your ears. you lean your head against the wall and close your eyes, feeling your lips tug up into a smile. why - why is he so unfailingly soft-hearted, so impossible to hate?
you hear the tap running and a few minutes later he shuffles back into the room, his hair sticking up at the back, towelling his face dry. "bathroom's free," he mumbles, muffled by the towel, and you get to your feet and try not to notice how his scrubbed skin shimmers with a flushed glow.
you thank heaven for his denseness and overcompensate the rest of the day by checking out various female idols you pass by loudly and cracking tasteless jokes about the adult videos you hint that you have been watching. jaebum and jinyoung seem to be pretty interested in borrowing them, but when you sneak a peek at the rearview mirror of the van he's just sitting in a corner of the backseat, scrolling down his ipod with his eyes impenetrable and far away, broodingly handsome. he's always so calm and steady and unruffled in a way you find reassuring. but today, it's inexplicably disappointing.
he's your ally among the seven, the one you can always count on to back you up. he's the only one in the world who doesn't take your bullshit, who can see through you in one glance. on stage, your synchronicity is unrivalled as he continues on from your rap without missing a beat. sometimes you think that if you had been given a chance like jaebum and jinyoung, the two of you would have been an equally unbeatable duo. because you complement each other perfectly, bringing out the best sides of each other.
it's a kind of serendipity, you think, the fact that you're both chinese boys who are better at english, born in neighbouring countries but blown by the winds of fate on a trainspotting journey across the globe before finally meeting each other at the end of your teenagehood. instead of meeting each other in your homeland, your paths converged in the unlikely exotic city of seoul, south korea, where you had arrived not speaking a single word of korean and never in a million years expecting to find a home away from home in the comfort of his companionship. you often wonder, would you ever have met if you had remained in hong kong, and he in california? when the arbitrariness of it all dawns on you, you can't stop shaking in relief.
because he has become such an enormous, essential part of your life, you can no longer imagine what kind of person you would be without him. a very different person, maybe. a less happy person, definitely.
don't pretend to be nice, you snark to him on igot7, but really you mean don't be nice to anyone except me. he's so annoyingly, ridiculously wholesome, as perfect as if he just stepped out of the pages of a prep school catalogue. if you're the bad boy the girls can't resist, he's the mr nice guy who gets them in the end. but just when you make the mistake of thinking he's predictable, he surprises you by not being afraid to destroy his image, making a buck-toothed hamster face on weekly idol and laughing so widely at your antics you can see the back of his throat.
although the two of you are polar opposites in many ways, you fit together with startling perfection. he's like the ice to your fire, mellowing you out, the only one who can tame you. likewise, being with you has an uninhibiting effect on him. you're like yin and he's yang, the light that counters your darkness.
there's no one who gets you like he does, there never has been. sometimes you think there will never be.
you think of his teddy-bear eyes and carefully demure smile, his laconic grin and timid uncertainty; the treble of his laugh and bass of his voice; the way it softens when he calls you gaga; the elegaic, sweeping strokes of his autograph. his tremendous kindness.
you think of him grabbing his jacket onstage as he raps i'm so mad; him opening his jacket and tracing an invisible heart into his chest as he raps magnetic, repeating the same gesture with a different look back in your room as he pulls you into his firm chest.
you like everything about him, from his cringingly cute aegyo and incomprehensible quirks to the ridiculously long shirts he wears too much, his untainted smile and teardrop-shaped eyes. he's cripplingly self-conscious and uncomfortable with attention, blushing too much and tripping over the ends of his own words, but then again his humility is his charm.
beneath the harsh brilliance of the stage lights washing him with gold and the throbbing music pounding through your skin, he looks too insubstantial to be your entire world.
but he is.
when he turns and catches you watching, he lowers his eyes, a faint blush dusting over his cheeks as he breaks into a seraphic, endearing smile. you'd always felt he was too passive, but in the end, even when you had given up on the both of you, he had turned out to be the one who persisted, steadfast, uncompromising. from the first day, your feelings continued piling up like snow, imperceptibly but steadily. and one day, you realized that one snowflake had become an avalanche. you realized that all along, he had been your personal angel.
you strip off your shirt despite being exhausted and shivering and scramble to prop your feet on the wall as footsteps scuffle outside the door. he's coming. by the time he walks in, you've arranged your body in an impressively casual pose that shows off your upper arm and abdominal muscles in their full glory and do a few ostentatious push-ups to make them ripple in slow motion, but he doesn't seem to notice as he shuts the door and drifts absently to his bed. dismayed, you make a few masculine grunting noises that sounded much more attractive in your head, and finally feel his eyes landing on you. his gaze warms your body like an electric blanket.
he throws one of his shirts over your bare back. "it's freezing," he says, his laugh tinkling like wind chimes. you stumble to your feet ungracefully and pull the shirt on, trying not to inhale too deeply. it's warm.
you like listening to him speak english, the soft-spoken, slightly slurred vowels flowing smoothly off his tongue in his brisk american accent; his halting, disjointed chinese littered with pauses as he fumbles for the right words to express himself; his charmingly broken but surprisingly fluent korean. you love listening to every language in his deep, mellifluous voice, because you can't get enough of its soothing warmth. for the last four years, his voice has been the soundtrack of your life, but strangely enough, you think you wouldn't mind continuing to listen to it for the rest of forever.
when he lays his hand on your shoulder, gentle but firm, you feel your galloping pace slow, like a horse whose reins he is holding. but oddly, you don't mind this power he has over you. maybe you've always, in some deep untapped part of you, longed to be broken in by him. because he's the only one who can keep you calm when you're freaking out, keep you grounded when the ground feels like it's been pulled out from beneath your feet. you're like fire and he's ice, extinguishing your flames.
because the way he looks at you when you rap, makes you think you might have a reason to rap for the rest of your life.
there are countless people in the world who have told you they love your voice. but he's the only one who has really listened to you, carefully, patiently, without judging. he's listened to you ramble deep into the night about your problems, insecurities and trivialities, everything and nothing at all, before offering thoughtful, wise words of advice. so when he says those four simple words - i love your voice - it feels like a miracle.
you know why he takes on the most challenging stunts, the most dangerous tricks - not because he's an adrenaline junkie, but because he doesn't want you to take the risk. if he could, he would singlehandedly take over all the tricking in your choreography, just to ensure that you won't get hurt, just to protect your body. his own body is battered black and blue, constantly sporting new injuries and unexplained scars, but he never allows himself the luxury of pain or the relief of complaint. he seems to be under the impression that he's invincible, infallible, but you know that he is just as capable of getting hurt as anyone else. even more.
he looks like a manga character come to life in a simple black wifebeater that shows off his sinewy arms as he leans over your shoulder to monitor the footage you've just filmed in the studio; stupidly handsome in a cable-knit turtleneck before a press conference, the breadth of his shoulders filling out the rich fabric breathtakingly. his ankles are thinner, peeking out of the skinny-fit slacks but his smile is still like a flashbulb and you're back at debut, when his hair was red and windswept as autumnal leaves, his smile bright as a fall afternoon; when his careless touches were scorching and his skin was dangerously soft, the tiny hairs on his arm rising under your fingertips.
you're at another fansign and his queue is the longest as he beams up sunnily at every single fan, the charcoal of his suit jacket bringing out the silver in his smoke grey hair, backlit by the powder blue sky. you wish he'd stop smiling so ridiculously - not at the fans but at you, sitting beside him, your heart palpitating.
(you wish he'll never stop smiling.)
you're too proud to say look at me, but you're always trying tirelessly to get his attention, to coax that rare but infectious laugh out of him, that laugh when he opens his mouth wide and forgets about his image for a second. just for a glimpse of that laugh, you're willing to make an ass of yourself clowning around shamelessly.
brat, he teases you, and you swell under his fond eyes. he doesn't know that you act like a kid on purpose because you know it brings out all his older brother instincts. you love playing didi to the gege in him, love how taken care of you feel when he gets overprotective and indulgent.
it started out as a dare of sorts, to see who could take it further with the kissing and touching, who could make the fanservice look more real. you were seeking cheap thrills and temporary adrenaline rushes, but sometime along the way you'd gotten lost in the labyrinth of his smile.
his eyes are wide as they look at you, wary and soulful and beseeching like a wounded puppy's. there's something about the way his nails are bitten to the quick that cuts you to the quick. his smile is like a chimera, evanescent and transient as it flits across his hopeful face. you want to memorize the shape of his eyes and the curve of his smile, engraving them into your memory and burning them behind your eyelids.
shit, you think, this isn't funny. i could seriously fall in love with you.
he's changed in indefinable ways since you debuted a year ago, learning how to use makeup to hide his flaws and play up his best features, contouring his cheekbones to ski-slope sharpness. he knows his best angle to the camera and how to smile so that his eyes crinkle into perfect crescents. he has lost the chubbiness from his cheeks, his skin stretching over his delicately wrought bones, translucent as rice paper. you can see the faint blue of his veins beneath, the pulse thumping in his wrist. his frame is so slight, he looks like could be blown away by a gust of wind.
the fans are worried, but you know firsthand that he eats like a horse, and that it's only his natural sky-high metabolism and your overworked schedules that are taking a toll on him. still, you can't help watching him like a hawk, wishing he wouldn't look so achingly weightless and winged as he rides the wind and surfs the breeze, wishing he would stay on the ground just a second longer.
when his posture slackens into a gawky slouch and his shoulders hunch into himself, he looks like he did the first day you met as trainees, like he wanted to disappear into himself, to fade away unnoticed. at times like these, you can't resist drawing him out of his shell, with a subtle hand around his shoulder steering him to the front or an obnoxious booming of his name. you like seeing the way he fidgets uncomfortably when suddenly thrust into the spotlight, the way he shines despite every effort not to, like the light of a star visible from galaxies away. he's like a chameleon who attempts to blend into the background but is always one beat too slow at changing its shade.
you see the gratitude in his eyes for always sensing his unease and reaching out to him, thinking you do it out of kindness and friendship. so you're careful to keep the worship out of yours, content to let him go on thinking that you're shining your light on him, instead of the other way round.
but more and more, there's an inexplicable reverence in the eyes that follow you, a hushed awe. you don't know why he looks at you like the sun rises and sets behind your back, but you wish he wouldn't because it brings you to your knees. when he catches you watching, he quickly snatches his gaze away, swallowing guiltily like he's been caught looking at something he wasn't supposed to, like his retinas have been burned from staring directly into the sun.
his furtive, stolen glances and his tongue slipping out unconsciously, running over his lips draw your eyes to how plush and full they are, softened by the peach lip gloss you shared, slapped on by the stylist's capable hands in the dressing room. you wonder if that's how he would taste, like artificial peach flavoring and manufactured sugar, the breathmints you had offered him and the 3-in-1 coffee you both drank in the morning. you want to trail your fingers over the smooth, shaven slope of his jaw, the neatly combed bristles of his sideburns, learning the classically handsome lines of his face like braille and messing up his perfectly slicked and immaculately coiffed hair.
instead, you reach down to find his hand, grabbing it and locking your fingers together tentatively. his hand is warm and callused but smooth, stiff with surprise before relaxing in yours. his eyes are twinkling, his smile intoxicating, a snapshot framed by lavender sky that you want to cherish.
the first time you kiss is cliche, accidental, a stupid mistake under the influence of liquor. your bodies are hopelessly tangled up in his bed like a mythical beast with two heads and eight limbs, until you don't know where one of you begins and the other ends. you'd crawled in beside him in the middle of the night, restless and needy and he had rolled over, eyes half-lidded and stroked away your incoherent snuffles with a soothing hand on your back.
when you had blinked open your eyes again it was later, but still dark and he was tossing feverishly, his arms locked uncomfortably around your shoulders and your knee pressing against something foreign and hard. you felt a chill ripple down your spine as you struggled to maneuvre away but only suceeded in rubbing your leg against his crotch, which intensified in hardness at the contact.
you felt a heat pooling in your stomach, a pressure building deep inside you like a dormant volcano coming to life. he was still sleeping like a log, out like a light and blissfully oblivious of the occuring nightmare. his eyelashes fanned across his cheekbones, casting butterfly shadows and in that nameless place between dreams and reality you leaned in as if drawn by an invisible gravitational pull and touched your lips to his, just for a millisecond but it was long enough to find out how he tasted, like the soju you had both had a little too much of at dinner and everything you had ever imagined he tasted like. long enough for his eyes to snap open, widening with shock and a fathomless emotion that was probably a combination of horror and revulsion.
luckily, you gathered your wits quickly, your damage control mechanism kicking into action as you mumbled flippantly, "i'm drunk."
mercifully, he seemed to accept your answer, his eyes glazing over again and fluttering drowsily. if he noticed that your voice was shaking or that your half-hard cock was digging into his thigh, he didn't say anything. the words were self-explanatory and your reputation for being overly affectionate and flirtatious worked in your favour.
you scrambled gracelessly out of his bed and awkwardly tripped back to your own, holding a pillow in front of you to hide your tented sweatpants, but he didn't even notice, already back in dreamland.
his eyes find yours in the space between songs, over bambam's head as he explains the origin of amerithaikong, cramped in the backseat of the van after music bank, over the other five's heads drooping onto each other's shoulders. he smiles. i miss you, even when you're right beside me.
you like to throw childish tantrums, to pout and whine and do aegyo to him, like it when he shakes his head and ruffles your hair, looking at you with fond exasperation.
but then he knows exactly how to push your buttons, too. he knows with crystal clarity that he's your weakness, and isn't above using it to manipulate you.
so you go on trapped in a pleasurable stalemate in your emotional tug-of-war, neither of you willing to give in first and admit that you can't live without the other. but sometimes you think that maybe it's okay, that maybe there are some things that don't have to be put into words to be understood.
he beams that crowded smile at you at isac, on sukira, on weekly idol, in shanghai, in japan, in the dorm, and you want to hide him in your pocket so no one else can see that beguiling vision. you find his stoicness and nervous tics inexplicably adorable, his reactions when you unabashedly steal a kiss endlessly entertaining. there's just something about him that makes you want to tease him, to ruffle his unflappable calm and make him laugh and blush and... look at you.
the raindrops on the windowpane cast shadows on the wall as the percussive rhythm of the autumn rain seeps into your room. it's one of your favourite times, making music together on a rare day without schedules when you can forget about everything except the universe encompassed in your room.
you look at him sitting opposite you in his bed, knees pulled up to his chest and forehead creased delicately, head swallowed by your oversized headphones as he listens to the demo you've just recorded. you think of his eclectic taste and his fierce passion for music, and feel an enormous hunger welling up inside you. he's all you've ever wanted, every dream you've ever dreamt, what you'd always needed, even before you knew what needing meant.
you could write a million love songs about him and it still wouldn't be enough, because the temperature of his skin against yours is the realest thing you've ever felt in this fabricated world. even before you were old enough to know what love meant, you were already incurably in love with him.
you watch him lope across the room with his loose-limbed confidence, capturing and breaking hearts without even being aware, so beautifully cruel, so merciless in his oblivion. you want to say, i know how he cries out when he comes. you want to say, i know how he looks with that cocky grin wiped off his face and his lips stretched around my dick. but you don't because he turns and god dammit, his smile is like a halo, so pristine, so unspoilt that it shames your ugly thoughts. he stretches out an impatient hand towards you, always waiting, never leaving you behind. he has no idea how beautiful he is and you swear there and then that you will never tell him.
you're irrationally jealous of everyone he interacts with, even your own members. you're jealous of jaebum calling him his best friend, jinyoung calling him his favourite hyung, youngjae laughing with him, bambam being paired the most with him by the thai fans and yugyeom going home with him during the holidays. you're jealous of everyone he unleashes that smile at, because you know better than anyone how deadly it is. you want to tell him to stop but you can't because he might be everything to you, but you're no one to him. you want to tell him to stop being so dazzling, but you can't because he's not. he's just being himself.
you know that he's undemonstrative and not used to public displays of affection, and you don't mind always being the one reaching out. you don't feel tired at all. the only thing you can't understand is why then he's the most adept at aegyo in the group, why he finds fanservice with jinyoung so effortless. you know that you're not as cute and endearing as jinyoung, as tall and good-looking. you're snarky and prickly and don't make people want to keep you in their pocket.
you hate the way he bites his lip more often than necessary, in your opinion, but what you hate even more is that even when he does that it doesn't look like he's trying too hard.
his eyes are unfathomable as he clings to jinyoung like a limpet to a rock at another fansign, disregarding you and you think oh. it's one of the games you sometimes unconsciously find yourself in, comparing who can ignore the other longer as you turn your attention on jaebum who looks surprised but not unwilling. you don't know why you're doing this, what the stakes are but when jaebum slings a heavy arm around your shoulder and pinches your cheek his eyes slide towards you, narrowing. in a millisecond, he's pretending not to notice again, but you feel a frisson of truimph at the way his jaw is clenched and his smile grows forced.
for the next few days he's aloof and standoffish, looking sulky and petulant, ungracious in a way that is at odds with his usual magnanimity. but then you're the same - he brings out a selfish, calculating side in you that you never knew you had, urges that scare you with their brutality.
how many times more do you have to pretend to be drunk so you can lean into him, grabbing the collar of his shirt sloppily and tug him into a bruising kiss? it's fucked up and disastrous, heinous. the feeling of his lips moving against yours, hot and needy, is so filthy that you don't think you can ever wash it off.
he straddles your lap, looking down at you through heavy lashes, his eyes so drugged and hungry as he locks his hands behind your neck and kisses you fiercely like he means it, like this is your last kiss. you place shaking hands on his hips and tighten your grip, opening your mouth to the gentle probings of his tongue. your faces are shrouded in shadows, with only the moonlight as your silent witness. he smells intoxicatingly of vanilla and you want to rub your body against his until you smell exactly the same.
later, you both curl up in a blanket fort made with the blanket from yugyeom's mother, cuddling, spooning. you've never felt so unencumbered in a long time and you wish you could stay in this hour between night and dawn forever, this place between awake and dreaming.
the moonbeams shadowed across his pearl white skin look poignantly like bars caging him in as he chases your lips with his. he kisses the way he does everything - generous and clumsy, with way too much feeling. just a breath apart, your senses are saturated with his intoxicating scent - vanilla mingled with traces of designer cologne. in the moonlight, his blue-gray hair glows flaxen. his doe eyes smoulder beneath lashes fine as dandelion fluff. you trail your hands down his wiry arms, caressing his scraped elbows with your fingers and settle your hands on his hips as if you can hold him there with just brute force. if you could, you would. you would leave no stone unturned in your quest to possess him. but you're afraid to push him too hard because he's like a tentatively advancing kitten who will bolt at the slightest alarm, because this unnamed thing between you feels like it might burst upon definition.
he's indifferent and not verbose, his true feelings a mystery to decipher. sometimes you wish he'd just throw you a bone, even the slightest hint to tell you that he's not being pushed into this, just going with the flow. he's always been overly obliging, far too susceptible and unguarded for his own good. he hates confrontations and never says no to anyone. you know he thinks you're too immature to risk everything, that you haven't thought of the consequences. but the truth is that you're just too in love to care.
you try to seek confirmation, reaffirmation by counting the spaces between his heartbeats, in the way his usually rhythmic breathing changes as you slide your hand beneath the hem of his shirt and splay it against his warm stomach.
your feelings of insecurity grow every time you take in his disarming awkwardness and prince charming smile, because a boy like him deserves a perfect girl. you're neither perfect nor female, all rough edges and sharp angles and you don't know how to be good enough for him. when he grows up, he's going to marry a nice chinese girl who his parents will approve of and have a picture-perfect family with her. you don't feature at all in this scheme of things. but you can't help insinuating yourself in forcefully, prisoning him by your side until the last minute when you can no longer do so.
it's his fault, you think. he's cunning, breaking down all your walls with the weight of his breath. you had erected an indestructible fortress around yourself but it had crumbled uselessly as he walked through all your barriers without even seeing them.
sometimes you start feeling like you're in a pressure cooker, like the world is pressing in on you from all sides and it's hard to remember how to breathe. sometimes the invasiveness and the complete lack of privacy gets too hard to handle. you've always thrived on attention, but as the years go by the novelty is gradually waning and now it's just trying not to fall asleep while you're still singing, to collapse while you're dancing. this exhaustion is bone-deep and you're running out of steam. you wonder if you would be happier today, if you had taken a different turn at the crossroads.
but then you think of him stumbling over korean vowels deep into the night, practicing his rap over and over again behind the rush of water from the faucet, his tenacity and perseverance, and think that there's no one you'd rather be stuck with in the shackles of fame than him. you might wish you'd done some things differently, but the one thing you will never regret is meeting him.
he's there when you feel like a rubber band stretched to breaking point, when all you want is to hear your mother's voice and feel your father's strong arms on your back. he's there, his voice quiet as your mother's and his arms steady as your father's as he teases softly, "you crybaby."
but the fingers brushing your tears away are so gentle that it only makes you cry harder, choking on your own breath. he tucks you into bed and strokes your damp, feverish forehead until you fall asleep, his voice washing over you like the tide breaking over the shore, eroding it gradually, breaking you down until you're exposed and unguarded.
when he comes back to your room, you notice his eyes are red-rimmed. you bite your tongue to stop yourself from asking the question you usually do: "who made you cry?" because you're afraid this time he will reply, honest and unresentful: "you."
it never ends. even after all these years, this is how it goes: he looks at you with those eyes and that smile and suddenly, you're asphyxiating. it has to be illegal to be this breathtaking in some part of the world, a felony that would get him locked up for life, hopefully in someplace that no one can see him except you. only then, could you finally breathe again. only then, could you stop feeling like your heart is walking around outside your body, like he has stolen a part of you.
"you've changed," your old friends tell you, and your heart stops at the words you dread hearing most. but then they add, smiling with surprise, "for the better."
you're relieved. is it true that you're more mature now, less self-centred? maybe, you realize, it's because now you have something you want to protect. someone you care for more than yourself. loving him has altered you in unimaginable ways, intangible to yourself but immediately obvious to the people around you.
on the plane back to seoul, you think of his strong hands and gentle touch, the warmth of his fingertips. you think of the way he calls you mandu and his squeaky, gleeful laugh. all of a sudden, you're filled with an intense missing. you wonder when your home had changed from hong kong to korea, from korea to him.
and you think that the best way to describe him would be your shadow, because that is exactly what he has become to you: unobtrusive, sometimes unnoticed, but necessary in a way that you'd feel something missing if you couldn't see his reassuring presence behind you, trailing at your heels. no human being would be truly human without their shadow, and that goes the same for you.
wo ai ni, you say to him in taiwan after the two of you finish singing a chinese duet, and he looks down in wordless embarrassment. at first, you feel foolish and vulnerable that he hasn't said it back, wishing you'd kept your mouth shut, but then you see his bashful smile like a streak of light, flickering in the dim and you know you've said the right thing.
idolhood is a minefield, a sea of hostile, steel-eyed dslrs and the scrutiny of a million eyes trained on you waiting to catch your every slip, waiting to pounce. it's lonely at the top, increasingly restrictive as your name spreads like wildfire. fame is a double-edged sword and you crave and fear the spotlight with equal intensity. sometimes, you feel like the only person you can be yourself in front of is him.
you're perfect, the fans tell you, their eyes filled with tears and crazed adulation, but you wonder if they'd still be this enamored if they saw the you beneath all the trappings, without the rose-tinted glasses of worship.
he's the only one who sees the real you, who knows all your flaws and sees someone worth staying for anyway.
they say that people who have been through near-death experiences together often confuse their feelings of adrenaline with romance. you wonder. is that all this is, a trick of addled senses, an illusion of heightened vertigo? but the him that is before you, eyes curiously hopeful and bright as you both cajole the maknaes to sleep, stroking their hair tenderly, is too real to be an apparition. the disco lights backlighting him are halogens, not hallucinogens.
"i want you," you whisper honestly, back in your room later, into the pitch dark of your room as you lie in your bunks. "more than i've ever wanted anything in my life."
silence is your only answer, and an inseparable mixture of relief and disappointment permeates you. until his voice pipes up, soft and low in the hushed night. "more than that olympic medal?"
his voice is light and carefully free of inflection, but you can tell that he's testing you. your heart races.
"ten times more," you reply swiftly, and hear his sharp intake of breath. "a million."
and you're not afraid or ashamed because it's true. it's illogical and impossible, but you want this flighty, awkward boy in his long shirts with a hunger that consumes you.
he doesn't reply anymore. but he doesn't say anything else either.
for the first time, he doesn't run away or reject you.
"what do you like about me?" he asks, and you just laugh.
he looks hurt, but you wonder what kind of face he'll make if you say if i started counting the reasons, i wouldn't be able to stop for a lifetime.
and you think that the seven of you are like a band of superheroes, making up for each other's weaknesses with your strengths, covering up each other's shortcomings, like organs of a body, only able to function perfectly as a whole. you're like seven comets whose paths had coincidentally crossed in the night sky for a brief second, gathering in a collision which had produced a supernova explosion that was just as brilliant as it was fleeting.
you've come so far from the days when you were rookies, greenhorns really, outfitted in gimmicky matching jerseys spelling got7 across the back. now, you've each carved out your own identity and defined your individual style, easily distinguishable. but occasionally, oddly, you miss those halcyon days when you felt like peas in a pod and part of a greater whole.
you feel a surge of pride as you realize that there's never been a korean pop group as diversified as got7, both in ethnicity and personalities. it was music that had brought all of you together and held you in a tight, unbreakable unit for the past decade. no matter how different you were as people, it was the same melody that your hearts beat in tune to. music was the language you were all fluent in, and it was the only form of communication you needed.
the ocean of lightsticks is like a kaleidoscopic sea of stars falling at your feet. he looks divine tonight, wearing the smile you fell incorrigibly in love with ten years ago and holding your right hand with the clammy hand that had unfailingly caught you when you fell too many times to count. you feel jaebum's rough, strong grip close around your left hand, and turn to see the seven of you strung together like a chainlink necklace, the bond between you invisible but solid as steel, inextricable and inexorable. you feel the tug of their arms dragging you downwards as they bow deeply, the glistening droplets that drip off your skin and scatter on the ground unidentifiable as tears or sweat.
and he - he had been the glue that held the group together, the six of you's surrogate older brother. like glue, he was invisible from the outside, never drawing attention to himself, but without him the seven of you would have fallen apart like broken pieces. if jaebum was the soul of the group, then he was the beating heart, the softest spot, the one all the members respected and wanted to protect and emulate as he led by example.
the first time you met him, you thought he was pure as a sheet of white paper. you had the overpowering urge to decorate him with colour, to leave your mark on the blank canvas of him.
now, you just want to keep him pristine.
no matter what happens in future, you'll never forget him. he'll always be your first love, the person who taught you how to love, bravely, unselfishly, with your whole heart. he'll always be your best friend, the only one who can make you laugh and smile effortlessly.
as an athlete from childhood, you'd always taken pride in not having any weaknesses. people said that all sportsmen had their achilles' heels, but you thought you were the exception. until you met him and you realized that your blind spot wasn't a part of your body. it was a person.
he's the axis upon which your world revolves, the direction you will always reorient yourself to when you lose your way. he's your rock and your wings, keeping you tethered to the ground and raising you up with the same careful hands.
you are aware that the shelf life of a boyband is tragically short-lived, and so for now, you don't want to think too much or analyze things too deeply. you just want to enjoy the present; and it's true - every moment beside him is a gift.
you know that the choice you're making is unthinkable, unspeakable, something others will find hard to approve or understand; that the road ahead you is an unblazed trail, unchartered and uneven and strewn with obstacles. people will say you are young and stupid and reckless, that you are making a mistake.
and maybe it's true. maybe this is doomed to end in disaster and you will end up damaging each other beyond repair. you can't be certain of the future. the only thing you know for sure is that you rely on him, the way a child relies on a shoulder and dolphins rely on the ocean to live. it's a reliance that has become as necessary as breathing.
you only know that this choice should have been difficult, but instead it was effortless.
perhaps someday you will have to pay dearly for this, and innocent people will be hurt by your selfish actions. but then you look at his terrified, tremendous smile, and you don't know how to let go.
"hello, i'm the flying member of got7, mark!" he introduces himself to the other five's supportive cheers, and the interviewer smiles warmly, moving on to you.
"i'm jackson, the sky," you blurt out, deviating from your script, and the others hoot on cue, thinking that your gag reflex is making its entrance again.
only he doesn't laugh, meeting your eyes with a questioning twitch of his lips. your sky, you mouth, and as if by magic the room is a few degrees brighter, illuminated by the battery of his megawatt grin.
you've spent your entire life chasing after the elusive mirage of fame. but now, you realize that somewhere along the way, it had become secondary. you realize that what you had been searching high and low for might have been right beside you all this time.
when this is over, you promise him, when this is over, you'll go to a place where no one knows you, a backwater town in the outskirts of california (hong kong). there, you'll be happy. you'll be together.
one day, you promise yourself, one day you will take all the time in the world to love him slowly, dragging the pleasure out excruciatingly. you'll be able to love him without guilt, without it feeling like a crime. but for now, all you have is rushed kisses and clandestine touches, and it's far from enough but you'll take what you can get.
you don't know what the future holds, and the road that lies ahead is shrouded in uncertainty. but you have a feeling that as long as you never let go of this hand, you won't be afraid of anything.
so maybe you're not going to get a happily ever after. but it's okay, because you'd trade a thousand happily ever afters for one sadly ever after, if it's with him.
"come and get it, got7!" jaebum's confident voice rings out on the concert arena of the last stop of your second world tour. a sweaty hand closes around yours, lacing your fingers together with ease polished by years and dragging you down. you look up.
it's him, conquering the world with his smile even as you bow.
part 2
pairing: mark/jackson
rating: pg-15
summary: (canon) you're going to conquer the world with your music and his smile.
warnings: second person, lapslock
notes: for paintingdragons and bloodyrose2442 :)
he's waiting up in your bedroom when you get back to the dorm after the award ceremony. you let yourself into the room soundlessly, loosening the noose of your tie and unbuttoning your shirt wearily. you don't know what to expect - it's been more nights than you can count on your fingers since the last time you slept here, but his eyes in the dark are conciliatory, wordlessly understanding.
while the other five dream in their rooms, he stands up and pads towards you in his bare feet. his eyelids are drowsy, his skin warm with sleep as he helps you out of your jacket. "i'm so proud of you," he says, eyes shining like stars as he presses his lips sloppily against the side of your neck. "my jackson."
there is something about those words in his voice that breaks you down. no one has ever said your name so softly, so lovingly, and he has no right to. he's not allowed. but you can't find the strength to say the words as he gently helps you undress, fumbling with the buttons of your dress shirt and pushing it off your shoulders. he doesn't bother finding you a shirt to change into because this is routine, it's normal for you to sleep in the nude, especially when it's not winter. instead, he just leads you shirtless to your bed and climbs in beside you, nuzzling easily into your side and closing his eyes. his tank is sliding off his shoulder and you want to pull it up. you close your eyes instead.
you are so tired. so exhausted and drained. you wonder how all of this happened to you. did you ever want it? it's so long ago and far away now, you've forgotten. the only thing that remains the same is the metronome rhythm of his breaths, the evening heartbeat through the layer of his thin singlet as he slips out of consciousness next to you.
you close your eyes and dream.
* * *
it's the 15th of january, 2014. you're nineteen and he's twenty, just another two teenage boys at a beach in seoul at midnight. but tomorrow, everything will change. this simple freedom will become a luxury. tomorrow, you're signing away yourself.
you wonder if you know what you're giving up, what you've given up since you came to this foreign land two and a half years ago and met him, quiet, driven, formidably skilled. what you're giving up together.
he looks over at you, and you recognize the same hunger that is in your soul, reflected in his eyes. at that moment, you know with absolute clarity that you both share the same dream. his hand tightens around yours, cold, sweaty. don't let go.
never.
you lie on the shore and listen to the ebb and flow of the tides and the rhythm of his breathing next to you as the first morning stars glimmer faintly in the gray-blue predawn sky. it's long past curfew and you should be in the dorm, getting the rest you need to be a hundred percent on stage this evening. but for some reason, you don't really care about the eyebags the stylist noonas will be frantically trying to hide later, the exhaustion that will hit like a tidal wave and drag down your choreography like chains. what is more important is not missing every last, startling second of this final night, taking away that last bit of lingering uncertainty in the curve of his smile.
(for the briefest fleeting heartbeat you think of doing it with your own pressed against his, but quickly banish the traitorous thought.)
you wonder why he can't see what's so plain to you, to everybody. he was born to be a superstar. even with no makeup and in unflattering loose sweats, he still manages to stand out, turning heads wherever he goes. his is the kind of beauty that stops traffic, that shines from the inside and you can't even find it in yourself to be jealous because he doesn't possess a single bit of guile, is totally unaware of it.
you want to tell him this, but the words are stuck in your throat and you can't spit them out. you're both boys, teenagers and at this very moment, these two facts seem like the greatest barriers to communication. instead, when he murmurs, his voice ridden with self-doubt, "but i'm so ordinary. i'm not good enough," you shake your head vehemently.
"you're extraordinary."
at the english word, he breaks into a shy, unchecked smile, lowering his eyes in embarrassment, and you know you've said the right thing.
he has way too many teeth and never bothered to fix his slightly crooked canines, so when he smiles they crowd together, fanglike. it's mesmerizing and you think that you're going to conquer the world with your music and his smile.
he's going to take korean pop by storm, you think. there's never been an idol quite like mark tuan, as awkward, as laidback, as four-dimensional, as eccentric, as hardworking, as mysterious, as charming. you think of his infectious, goofy smile, white as a toothpaste commercial and too big for his small face; the way he looks when he's just woken up, freshly-washed face glimmering with morning dew. he makes perfection look effortless and you feel hopelessly normal next to him.
you think of the perfect imperfections that lie beneath that perfection, his offbeat humour and the stutter that comes out when he's nervous. the love he shares with you of punching holes into your body. he's deceptively spacey and childish, but surprisingly mature and dependable when needed. as a friend, he's loyal to a fault. as a hyung, he's delightfully indulgent and soft-hearted, generously burning a hole in his wallet to treat the younger members to food.
you think of him rapping his heart out on stage, in the recording studio, in the practice room, on radio shows; the both of you freestyling as scruffy trainees competing alongside each other on win. just like him, his rap is easygoing, unassuming, but providing the essential and indispensable bassline for all your performances.
from the very first day, you had already respected him deeply, admired his individualistic style and stringent principles, how he managed to stay true to himself despite all the temptations and makeovers.
he might not be arrogant, but he's astonishingly self-possessed, his eyes always placid dark lakes no matter the crisis. he might not be confident, but he's always professional, switching instantly into a seasoned performer the moment he steps onstage, with no hint of the painfully shy awkwardness he reveals in private. you think of him staying back in the studio after practice, perfecting backflips and cartwheels alone in the stifling dim, him whispering that he's fine to his parents on the phone when he thinks no one is listening, him breaking down later in a bathroom stall, noiseless sobs racking his slender frame. he works harder than any sunbae you know and smiles harder and cries harder too, and has a heart bigger than he knows what to do with.
the first weak rays of the rising sun bathe his cheekbones with a blush of coral pink, and you look sideways at him in the encroaching dawn. something is growing in your chest, something warm and unidentifiable. "it's the end," you murmur, watching the day of reckoning break on the horizon.
his laugh is airy, musical and his fingertips play invisible notes along yours. "it's just the beginning."
it's five seconds to your debut stage on m countdown and you're standing in formation, the stage pitch black. your mic is bothering you, blocking your mouth and grating on your already frayed nerves and you mess with it, hands shaking. gentle fingers still your own and you feel his warm breath on your neck as he leans forward to adjust the position of the mic until it's comfortable.
he doesn't say anything, but the gesture leads you through the opening lyrics as the stage lights dance over you, through your lines as you try not to blink against the painful glare, to his rap as the cadence of his mellow voice washes over you like sandpaper satin, calming you immeasurably. the floodlights splash over him like sunlight, illuminating his eyes rimmed by eyeliner, making him look immortal.
since you moved into the dorm and became roommates, you've learnt to live back to back, breathing the same air, to share a confined space without invading each other's personal space. unconsciously, you've become attuned to each other like a sunflower intuitively senses the direction of the sun, aligning yourselves together like planets sharing the same orbit. you've learnt that he enjoys solitude and can entertain himself for hours with just his ipod and good music. he's learnt that you have way too many clothes, usually strewn haphazardly over the floor.
whenever your eyes meet onstage, the bone-shaking music seems to fade away. the faces you pull at each other and the smiles you exchange off-camera are a language upon themselves, one only decipherable to the two of you. you think of his deceptively casual rap, flowing off his tongue like honey as sweat pours down his back and soaks his threadbare shirt; the slick movements of his tricking achieved at the cost of countless hidden bruises; his surprisingly melodic singing and the unique, loose moves of his dancing. he is always pushing himself beyond his limits, always working so hard to please the fans at the expense of himself, seeming to carry the weight of the world on his narrow shoulders, even more so than the leader.
every time he defies gravity, you think of the price he will have to pay in future in the form of injuries that flare up at the slightest provocation and aches that recur when it rains. because humans aren't made to fly. not even those who look like angels.
you fall asleep to the lullaby of his bass and wake up to see him lounging lazily on his bed, scrolling across his ipad and swallowed by baggy sweats, the hood of his hoodie pulled over a beanie to hide his bed hair. he breathes a gravelly laugh when you tug the cap off his head. "morning, roomie," he says, hair in adorable disarray. even makeupless and disheveled, he's more beautiful than he has any right to be.
you think of his public smile, the one that has made millions of fans around the world fall in love with got7, and how it's nothing compared to his private one, sweet-eyed and unfurling slowly as a dream. it's a smile that could start wars and end cities, the most deadly weapon in this battlefield you're in.
"what are you thinking?" he asks, interrupting your thoughts.
you laugh, rolling onto his bed and leaning in towards him, so close that your bangs catch together with static. "just... about how remarkable your smile is."
he drops his eyes away from your gaze, cheeks pinkening. "are you teasing me?" he whines, and you deny innocently. somehow this leads to a pillow fight and the maknaes barging into your room without knocking, drawn by the noise and promise of fun. kunpimook backs you up immediately, loyal as always, and yugyeom and youngjae join his team. by the time the score is evened, there are feathers flying all over the room and you lie spread-eagled on your bed, panting in symphony with everyone else, pretending the way your heart is racing is only from exertion.
"there he goes," jinyoung sighs. "smiling his jackson smile again."
"jackson smile?" you repeat, befuddled.
jinyoung laughs. "didn't you know? he has a special smile for you. look."
you do, looking over to where he's standing with jaebum and watching you from across the room. his eyes rove past jinyoung with a congenial, close-lipped smile before they land on you and light up, his smile widening till almost all his teeth are visible and his gums show.
"you see," jinyoung says smugly, vindicated and you just blink.
you celebrate your twentieth birthday with the members, at night after returning from schedules with a bakery cake slightly squished from where yugyeom had accidentally sat on it in the van. it's late and none of you have had time to change or remove your makeup. his eyes are smudged with eyeliner in the orange light of the flickering candles as jaebum carries the cake out and the members sing a hushed, off-tune rendition of happy birthday so as not to wake the neighbours. he joins in, clapping and mouthing the words, looking as happy as if it's his own birthday.
as you blow out the candles, you wish for love, and when you open your eyes he's looking at you, like it's the first time he's seeing you. like you're beautiful.
you're twenty, twenty and confused. you jerk awake in the morning at the beeping of the alarm clock with a sleepy erection and this is nothing that hasn't happened before but you panic because what you had been dreaming of last night, what is still lingering like fading remnants of smoke behind your eyelids is the creamy silk of his skin, his gazelle-like grace and willowy figure.
he sits up too, rubbing his heavy eyelids and offering you a drowsy smile. without a stitch of makeup, his face is puffy and pale, impossibly young, his hair dry and strawlike from one too many bleachings. his oversized sweatshirt swallows his slender frame and slides off one of his narrow shoulders. he drifts to the bathroom and you hear the sound of a hushed bartering with bambam over who to use the toilet first; predict his reluctant giving in even before it drifts to your ears. you lean your head against the wall and close your eyes, feeling your lips tug up into a smile. why - why is he so unfailingly soft-hearted, so impossible to hate?
you hear the tap running and a few minutes later he shuffles back into the room, his hair sticking up at the back, towelling his face dry. "bathroom's free," he mumbles, muffled by the towel, and you get to your feet and try not to notice how his scrubbed skin shimmers with a flushed glow.
you thank heaven for his denseness and overcompensate the rest of the day by checking out various female idols you pass by loudly and cracking tasteless jokes about the adult videos you hint that you have been watching. jaebum and jinyoung seem to be pretty interested in borrowing them, but when you sneak a peek at the rearview mirror of the van he's just sitting in a corner of the backseat, scrolling down his ipod with his eyes impenetrable and far away, broodingly handsome. he's always so calm and steady and unruffled in a way you find reassuring. but today, it's inexplicably disappointing.
he's your ally among the seven, the one you can always count on to back you up. he's the only one in the world who doesn't take your bullshit, who can see through you in one glance. on stage, your synchronicity is unrivalled as he continues on from your rap without missing a beat. sometimes you think that if you had been given a chance like jaebum and jinyoung, the two of you would have been an equally unbeatable duo. because you complement each other perfectly, bringing out the best sides of each other.
it's a kind of serendipity, you think, the fact that you're both chinese boys who are better at english, born in neighbouring countries but blown by the winds of fate on a trainspotting journey across the globe before finally meeting each other at the end of your teenagehood. instead of meeting each other in your homeland, your paths converged in the unlikely exotic city of seoul, south korea, where you had arrived not speaking a single word of korean and never in a million years expecting to find a home away from home in the comfort of his companionship. you often wonder, would you ever have met if you had remained in hong kong, and he in california? when the arbitrariness of it all dawns on you, you can't stop shaking in relief.
because he has become such an enormous, essential part of your life, you can no longer imagine what kind of person you would be without him. a very different person, maybe. a less happy person, definitely.
don't pretend to be nice, you snark to him on igot7, but really you mean don't be nice to anyone except me. he's so annoyingly, ridiculously wholesome, as perfect as if he just stepped out of the pages of a prep school catalogue. if you're the bad boy the girls can't resist, he's the mr nice guy who gets them in the end. but just when you make the mistake of thinking he's predictable, he surprises you by not being afraid to destroy his image, making a buck-toothed hamster face on weekly idol and laughing so widely at your antics you can see the back of his throat.
although the two of you are polar opposites in many ways, you fit together with startling perfection. he's like the ice to your fire, mellowing you out, the only one who can tame you. likewise, being with you has an uninhibiting effect on him. you're like yin and he's yang, the light that counters your darkness.
there's no one who gets you like he does, there never has been. sometimes you think there will never be.
you think of his teddy-bear eyes and carefully demure smile, his laconic grin and timid uncertainty; the treble of his laugh and bass of his voice; the way it softens when he calls you gaga; the elegaic, sweeping strokes of his autograph. his tremendous kindness.
you think of him grabbing his jacket onstage as he raps i'm so mad; him opening his jacket and tracing an invisible heart into his chest as he raps magnetic, repeating the same gesture with a different look back in your room as he pulls you into his firm chest.
you like everything about him, from his cringingly cute aegyo and incomprehensible quirks to the ridiculously long shirts he wears too much, his untainted smile and teardrop-shaped eyes. he's cripplingly self-conscious and uncomfortable with attention, blushing too much and tripping over the ends of his own words, but then again his humility is his charm.
beneath the harsh brilliance of the stage lights washing him with gold and the throbbing music pounding through your skin, he looks too insubstantial to be your entire world.
but he is.
when he turns and catches you watching, he lowers his eyes, a faint blush dusting over his cheeks as he breaks into a seraphic, endearing smile. you'd always felt he was too passive, but in the end, even when you had given up on the both of you, he had turned out to be the one who persisted, steadfast, uncompromising. from the first day, your feelings continued piling up like snow, imperceptibly but steadily. and one day, you realized that one snowflake had become an avalanche. you realized that all along, he had been your personal angel.
you strip off your shirt despite being exhausted and shivering and scramble to prop your feet on the wall as footsteps scuffle outside the door. he's coming. by the time he walks in, you've arranged your body in an impressively casual pose that shows off your upper arm and abdominal muscles in their full glory and do a few ostentatious push-ups to make them ripple in slow motion, but he doesn't seem to notice as he shuts the door and drifts absently to his bed. dismayed, you make a few masculine grunting noises that sounded much more attractive in your head, and finally feel his eyes landing on you. his gaze warms your body like an electric blanket.
he throws one of his shirts over your bare back. "it's freezing," he says, his laugh tinkling like wind chimes. you stumble to your feet ungracefully and pull the shirt on, trying not to inhale too deeply. it's warm.
you like listening to him speak english, the soft-spoken, slightly slurred vowels flowing smoothly off his tongue in his brisk american accent; his halting, disjointed chinese littered with pauses as he fumbles for the right words to express himself; his charmingly broken but surprisingly fluent korean. you love listening to every language in his deep, mellifluous voice, because you can't get enough of its soothing warmth. for the last four years, his voice has been the soundtrack of your life, but strangely enough, you think you wouldn't mind continuing to listen to it for the rest of forever.
when he lays his hand on your shoulder, gentle but firm, you feel your galloping pace slow, like a horse whose reins he is holding. but oddly, you don't mind this power he has over you. maybe you've always, in some deep untapped part of you, longed to be broken in by him. because he's the only one who can keep you calm when you're freaking out, keep you grounded when the ground feels like it's been pulled out from beneath your feet. you're like fire and he's ice, extinguishing your flames.
because the way he looks at you when you rap, makes you think you might have a reason to rap for the rest of your life.
there are countless people in the world who have told you they love your voice. but he's the only one who has really listened to you, carefully, patiently, without judging. he's listened to you ramble deep into the night about your problems, insecurities and trivialities, everything and nothing at all, before offering thoughtful, wise words of advice. so when he says those four simple words - i love your voice - it feels like a miracle.
you know why he takes on the most challenging stunts, the most dangerous tricks - not because he's an adrenaline junkie, but because he doesn't want you to take the risk. if he could, he would singlehandedly take over all the tricking in your choreography, just to ensure that you won't get hurt, just to protect your body. his own body is battered black and blue, constantly sporting new injuries and unexplained scars, but he never allows himself the luxury of pain or the relief of complaint. he seems to be under the impression that he's invincible, infallible, but you know that he is just as capable of getting hurt as anyone else. even more.
he looks like a manga character come to life in a simple black wifebeater that shows off his sinewy arms as he leans over your shoulder to monitor the footage you've just filmed in the studio; stupidly handsome in a cable-knit turtleneck before a press conference, the breadth of his shoulders filling out the rich fabric breathtakingly. his ankles are thinner, peeking out of the skinny-fit slacks but his smile is still like a flashbulb and you're back at debut, when his hair was red and windswept as autumnal leaves, his smile bright as a fall afternoon; when his careless touches were scorching and his skin was dangerously soft, the tiny hairs on his arm rising under your fingertips.
you're at another fansign and his queue is the longest as he beams up sunnily at every single fan, the charcoal of his suit jacket bringing out the silver in his smoke grey hair, backlit by the powder blue sky. you wish he'd stop smiling so ridiculously - not at the fans but at you, sitting beside him, your heart palpitating.
(you wish he'll never stop smiling.)
you're too proud to say look at me, but you're always trying tirelessly to get his attention, to coax that rare but infectious laugh out of him, that laugh when he opens his mouth wide and forgets about his image for a second. just for a glimpse of that laugh, you're willing to make an ass of yourself clowning around shamelessly.
brat, he teases you, and you swell under his fond eyes. he doesn't know that you act like a kid on purpose because you know it brings out all his older brother instincts. you love playing didi to the gege in him, love how taken care of you feel when he gets overprotective and indulgent.
it started out as a dare of sorts, to see who could take it further with the kissing and touching, who could make the fanservice look more real. you were seeking cheap thrills and temporary adrenaline rushes, but sometime along the way you'd gotten lost in the labyrinth of his smile.
his eyes are wide as they look at you, wary and soulful and beseeching like a wounded puppy's. there's something about the way his nails are bitten to the quick that cuts you to the quick. his smile is like a chimera, evanescent and transient as it flits across his hopeful face. you want to memorize the shape of his eyes and the curve of his smile, engraving them into your memory and burning them behind your eyelids.
shit, you think, this isn't funny. i could seriously fall in love with you.
he's changed in indefinable ways since you debuted a year ago, learning how to use makeup to hide his flaws and play up his best features, contouring his cheekbones to ski-slope sharpness. he knows his best angle to the camera and how to smile so that his eyes crinkle into perfect crescents. he has lost the chubbiness from his cheeks, his skin stretching over his delicately wrought bones, translucent as rice paper. you can see the faint blue of his veins beneath, the pulse thumping in his wrist. his frame is so slight, he looks like could be blown away by a gust of wind.
the fans are worried, but you know firsthand that he eats like a horse, and that it's only his natural sky-high metabolism and your overworked schedules that are taking a toll on him. still, you can't help watching him like a hawk, wishing he wouldn't look so achingly weightless and winged as he rides the wind and surfs the breeze, wishing he would stay on the ground just a second longer.
when his posture slackens into a gawky slouch and his shoulders hunch into himself, he looks like he did the first day you met as trainees, like he wanted to disappear into himself, to fade away unnoticed. at times like these, you can't resist drawing him out of his shell, with a subtle hand around his shoulder steering him to the front or an obnoxious booming of his name. you like seeing the way he fidgets uncomfortably when suddenly thrust into the spotlight, the way he shines despite every effort not to, like the light of a star visible from galaxies away. he's like a chameleon who attempts to blend into the background but is always one beat too slow at changing its shade.
you see the gratitude in his eyes for always sensing his unease and reaching out to him, thinking you do it out of kindness and friendship. so you're careful to keep the worship out of yours, content to let him go on thinking that you're shining your light on him, instead of the other way round.
but more and more, there's an inexplicable reverence in the eyes that follow you, a hushed awe. you don't know why he looks at you like the sun rises and sets behind your back, but you wish he wouldn't because it brings you to your knees. when he catches you watching, he quickly snatches his gaze away, swallowing guiltily like he's been caught looking at something he wasn't supposed to, like his retinas have been burned from staring directly into the sun.
his furtive, stolen glances and his tongue slipping out unconsciously, running over his lips draw your eyes to how plush and full they are, softened by the peach lip gloss you shared, slapped on by the stylist's capable hands in the dressing room. you wonder if that's how he would taste, like artificial peach flavoring and manufactured sugar, the breathmints you had offered him and the 3-in-1 coffee you both drank in the morning. you want to trail your fingers over the smooth, shaven slope of his jaw, the neatly combed bristles of his sideburns, learning the classically handsome lines of his face like braille and messing up his perfectly slicked and immaculately coiffed hair.
instead, you reach down to find his hand, grabbing it and locking your fingers together tentatively. his hand is warm and callused but smooth, stiff with surprise before relaxing in yours. his eyes are twinkling, his smile intoxicating, a snapshot framed by lavender sky that you want to cherish.
the first time you kiss is cliche, accidental, a stupid mistake under the influence of liquor. your bodies are hopelessly tangled up in his bed like a mythical beast with two heads and eight limbs, until you don't know where one of you begins and the other ends. you'd crawled in beside him in the middle of the night, restless and needy and he had rolled over, eyes half-lidded and stroked away your incoherent snuffles with a soothing hand on your back.
when you had blinked open your eyes again it was later, but still dark and he was tossing feverishly, his arms locked uncomfortably around your shoulders and your knee pressing against something foreign and hard. you felt a chill ripple down your spine as you struggled to maneuvre away but only suceeded in rubbing your leg against his crotch, which intensified in hardness at the contact.
you felt a heat pooling in your stomach, a pressure building deep inside you like a dormant volcano coming to life. he was still sleeping like a log, out like a light and blissfully oblivious of the occuring nightmare. his eyelashes fanned across his cheekbones, casting butterfly shadows and in that nameless place between dreams and reality you leaned in as if drawn by an invisible gravitational pull and touched your lips to his, just for a millisecond but it was long enough to find out how he tasted, like the soju you had both had a little too much of at dinner and everything you had ever imagined he tasted like. long enough for his eyes to snap open, widening with shock and a fathomless emotion that was probably a combination of horror and revulsion.
luckily, you gathered your wits quickly, your damage control mechanism kicking into action as you mumbled flippantly, "i'm drunk."
mercifully, he seemed to accept your answer, his eyes glazing over again and fluttering drowsily. if he noticed that your voice was shaking or that your half-hard cock was digging into his thigh, he didn't say anything. the words were self-explanatory and your reputation for being overly affectionate and flirtatious worked in your favour.
you scrambled gracelessly out of his bed and awkwardly tripped back to your own, holding a pillow in front of you to hide your tented sweatpants, but he didn't even notice, already back in dreamland.
his eyes find yours in the space between songs, over bambam's head as he explains the origin of amerithaikong, cramped in the backseat of the van after music bank, over the other five's heads drooping onto each other's shoulders. he smiles. i miss you, even when you're right beside me.
you like to throw childish tantrums, to pout and whine and do aegyo to him, like it when he shakes his head and ruffles your hair, looking at you with fond exasperation.
but then he knows exactly how to push your buttons, too. he knows with crystal clarity that he's your weakness, and isn't above using it to manipulate you.
so you go on trapped in a pleasurable stalemate in your emotional tug-of-war, neither of you willing to give in first and admit that you can't live without the other. but sometimes you think that maybe it's okay, that maybe there are some things that don't have to be put into words to be understood.
he beams that crowded smile at you at isac, on sukira, on weekly idol, in shanghai, in japan, in the dorm, and you want to hide him in your pocket so no one else can see that beguiling vision. you find his stoicness and nervous tics inexplicably adorable, his reactions when you unabashedly steal a kiss endlessly entertaining. there's just something about him that makes you want to tease him, to ruffle his unflappable calm and make him laugh and blush and... look at you.
the raindrops on the windowpane cast shadows on the wall as the percussive rhythm of the autumn rain seeps into your room. it's one of your favourite times, making music together on a rare day without schedules when you can forget about everything except the universe encompassed in your room.
you look at him sitting opposite you in his bed, knees pulled up to his chest and forehead creased delicately, head swallowed by your oversized headphones as he listens to the demo you've just recorded. you think of his eclectic taste and his fierce passion for music, and feel an enormous hunger welling up inside you. he's all you've ever wanted, every dream you've ever dreamt, what you'd always needed, even before you knew what needing meant.
you could write a million love songs about him and it still wouldn't be enough, because the temperature of his skin against yours is the realest thing you've ever felt in this fabricated world. even before you were old enough to know what love meant, you were already incurably in love with him.
you watch him lope across the room with his loose-limbed confidence, capturing and breaking hearts without even being aware, so beautifully cruel, so merciless in his oblivion. you want to say, i know how he cries out when he comes. you want to say, i know how he looks with that cocky grin wiped off his face and his lips stretched around my dick. but you don't because he turns and god dammit, his smile is like a halo, so pristine, so unspoilt that it shames your ugly thoughts. he stretches out an impatient hand towards you, always waiting, never leaving you behind. he has no idea how beautiful he is and you swear there and then that you will never tell him.
you're irrationally jealous of everyone he interacts with, even your own members. you're jealous of jaebum calling him his best friend, jinyoung calling him his favourite hyung, youngjae laughing with him, bambam being paired the most with him by the thai fans and yugyeom going home with him during the holidays. you're jealous of everyone he unleashes that smile at, because you know better than anyone how deadly it is. you want to tell him to stop but you can't because he might be everything to you, but you're no one to him. you want to tell him to stop being so dazzling, but you can't because he's not. he's just being himself.
you know that he's undemonstrative and not used to public displays of affection, and you don't mind always being the one reaching out. you don't feel tired at all. the only thing you can't understand is why then he's the most adept at aegyo in the group, why he finds fanservice with jinyoung so effortless. you know that you're not as cute and endearing as jinyoung, as tall and good-looking. you're snarky and prickly and don't make people want to keep you in their pocket.
you hate the way he bites his lip more often than necessary, in your opinion, but what you hate even more is that even when he does that it doesn't look like he's trying too hard.
his eyes are unfathomable as he clings to jinyoung like a limpet to a rock at another fansign, disregarding you and you think oh. it's one of the games you sometimes unconsciously find yourself in, comparing who can ignore the other longer as you turn your attention on jaebum who looks surprised but not unwilling. you don't know why you're doing this, what the stakes are but when jaebum slings a heavy arm around your shoulder and pinches your cheek his eyes slide towards you, narrowing. in a millisecond, he's pretending not to notice again, but you feel a frisson of truimph at the way his jaw is clenched and his smile grows forced.
for the next few days he's aloof and standoffish, looking sulky and petulant, ungracious in a way that is at odds with his usual magnanimity. but then you're the same - he brings out a selfish, calculating side in you that you never knew you had, urges that scare you with their brutality.
how many times more do you have to pretend to be drunk so you can lean into him, grabbing the collar of his shirt sloppily and tug him into a bruising kiss? it's fucked up and disastrous, heinous. the feeling of his lips moving against yours, hot and needy, is so filthy that you don't think you can ever wash it off.
he straddles your lap, looking down at you through heavy lashes, his eyes so drugged and hungry as he locks his hands behind your neck and kisses you fiercely like he means it, like this is your last kiss. you place shaking hands on his hips and tighten your grip, opening your mouth to the gentle probings of his tongue. your faces are shrouded in shadows, with only the moonlight as your silent witness. he smells intoxicatingly of vanilla and you want to rub your body against his until you smell exactly the same.
later, you both curl up in a blanket fort made with the blanket from yugyeom's mother, cuddling, spooning. you've never felt so unencumbered in a long time and you wish you could stay in this hour between night and dawn forever, this place between awake and dreaming.
the moonbeams shadowed across his pearl white skin look poignantly like bars caging him in as he chases your lips with his. he kisses the way he does everything - generous and clumsy, with way too much feeling. just a breath apart, your senses are saturated with his intoxicating scent - vanilla mingled with traces of designer cologne. in the moonlight, his blue-gray hair glows flaxen. his doe eyes smoulder beneath lashes fine as dandelion fluff. you trail your hands down his wiry arms, caressing his scraped elbows with your fingers and settle your hands on his hips as if you can hold him there with just brute force. if you could, you would. you would leave no stone unturned in your quest to possess him. but you're afraid to push him too hard because he's like a tentatively advancing kitten who will bolt at the slightest alarm, because this unnamed thing between you feels like it might burst upon definition.
he's indifferent and not verbose, his true feelings a mystery to decipher. sometimes you wish he'd just throw you a bone, even the slightest hint to tell you that he's not being pushed into this, just going with the flow. he's always been overly obliging, far too susceptible and unguarded for his own good. he hates confrontations and never says no to anyone. you know he thinks you're too immature to risk everything, that you haven't thought of the consequences. but the truth is that you're just too in love to care.
you try to seek confirmation, reaffirmation by counting the spaces between his heartbeats, in the way his usually rhythmic breathing changes as you slide your hand beneath the hem of his shirt and splay it against his warm stomach.
your feelings of insecurity grow every time you take in his disarming awkwardness and prince charming smile, because a boy like him deserves a perfect girl. you're neither perfect nor female, all rough edges and sharp angles and you don't know how to be good enough for him. when he grows up, he's going to marry a nice chinese girl who his parents will approve of and have a picture-perfect family with her. you don't feature at all in this scheme of things. but you can't help insinuating yourself in forcefully, prisoning him by your side until the last minute when you can no longer do so.
it's his fault, you think. he's cunning, breaking down all your walls with the weight of his breath. you had erected an indestructible fortress around yourself but it had crumbled uselessly as he walked through all your barriers without even seeing them.
sometimes you start feeling like you're in a pressure cooker, like the world is pressing in on you from all sides and it's hard to remember how to breathe. sometimes the invasiveness and the complete lack of privacy gets too hard to handle. you've always thrived on attention, but as the years go by the novelty is gradually waning and now it's just trying not to fall asleep while you're still singing, to collapse while you're dancing. this exhaustion is bone-deep and you're running out of steam. you wonder if you would be happier today, if you had taken a different turn at the crossroads.
but then you think of him stumbling over korean vowels deep into the night, practicing his rap over and over again behind the rush of water from the faucet, his tenacity and perseverance, and think that there's no one you'd rather be stuck with in the shackles of fame than him. you might wish you'd done some things differently, but the one thing you will never regret is meeting him.
he's there when you feel like a rubber band stretched to breaking point, when all you want is to hear your mother's voice and feel your father's strong arms on your back. he's there, his voice quiet as your mother's and his arms steady as your father's as he teases softly, "you crybaby."
but the fingers brushing your tears away are so gentle that it only makes you cry harder, choking on your own breath. he tucks you into bed and strokes your damp, feverish forehead until you fall asleep, his voice washing over you like the tide breaking over the shore, eroding it gradually, breaking you down until you're exposed and unguarded.
when he comes back to your room, you notice his eyes are red-rimmed. you bite your tongue to stop yourself from asking the question you usually do: "who made you cry?" because you're afraid this time he will reply, honest and unresentful: "you."
it never ends. even after all these years, this is how it goes: he looks at you with those eyes and that smile and suddenly, you're asphyxiating. it has to be illegal to be this breathtaking in some part of the world, a felony that would get him locked up for life, hopefully in someplace that no one can see him except you. only then, could you finally breathe again. only then, could you stop feeling like your heart is walking around outside your body, like he has stolen a part of you.
"you've changed," your old friends tell you, and your heart stops at the words you dread hearing most. but then they add, smiling with surprise, "for the better."
you're relieved. is it true that you're more mature now, less self-centred? maybe, you realize, it's because now you have something you want to protect. someone you care for more than yourself. loving him has altered you in unimaginable ways, intangible to yourself but immediately obvious to the people around you.
on the plane back to seoul, you think of his strong hands and gentle touch, the warmth of his fingertips. you think of the way he calls you mandu and his squeaky, gleeful laugh. all of a sudden, you're filled with an intense missing. you wonder when your home had changed from hong kong to korea, from korea to him.
and you think that the best way to describe him would be your shadow, because that is exactly what he has become to you: unobtrusive, sometimes unnoticed, but necessary in a way that you'd feel something missing if you couldn't see his reassuring presence behind you, trailing at your heels. no human being would be truly human without their shadow, and that goes the same for you.
wo ai ni, you say to him in taiwan after the two of you finish singing a chinese duet, and he looks down in wordless embarrassment. at first, you feel foolish and vulnerable that he hasn't said it back, wishing you'd kept your mouth shut, but then you see his bashful smile like a streak of light, flickering in the dim and you know you've said the right thing.
idolhood is a minefield, a sea of hostile, steel-eyed dslrs and the scrutiny of a million eyes trained on you waiting to catch your every slip, waiting to pounce. it's lonely at the top, increasingly restrictive as your name spreads like wildfire. fame is a double-edged sword and you crave and fear the spotlight with equal intensity. sometimes, you feel like the only person you can be yourself in front of is him.
you're perfect, the fans tell you, their eyes filled with tears and crazed adulation, but you wonder if they'd still be this enamored if they saw the you beneath all the trappings, without the rose-tinted glasses of worship.
he's the only one who sees the real you, who knows all your flaws and sees someone worth staying for anyway.
they say that people who have been through near-death experiences together often confuse their feelings of adrenaline with romance. you wonder. is that all this is, a trick of addled senses, an illusion of heightened vertigo? but the him that is before you, eyes curiously hopeful and bright as you both cajole the maknaes to sleep, stroking their hair tenderly, is too real to be an apparition. the disco lights backlighting him are halogens, not hallucinogens.
"i want you," you whisper honestly, back in your room later, into the pitch dark of your room as you lie in your bunks. "more than i've ever wanted anything in my life."
silence is your only answer, and an inseparable mixture of relief and disappointment permeates you. until his voice pipes up, soft and low in the hushed night. "more than that olympic medal?"
his voice is light and carefully free of inflection, but you can tell that he's testing you. your heart races.
"ten times more," you reply swiftly, and hear his sharp intake of breath. "a million."
and you're not afraid or ashamed because it's true. it's illogical and impossible, but you want this flighty, awkward boy in his long shirts with a hunger that consumes you.
he doesn't reply anymore. but he doesn't say anything else either.
for the first time, he doesn't run away or reject you.
"what do you like about me?" he asks, and you just laugh.
he looks hurt, but you wonder what kind of face he'll make if you say if i started counting the reasons, i wouldn't be able to stop for a lifetime.
and you think that the seven of you are like a band of superheroes, making up for each other's weaknesses with your strengths, covering up each other's shortcomings, like organs of a body, only able to function perfectly as a whole. you're like seven comets whose paths had coincidentally crossed in the night sky for a brief second, gathering in a collision which had produced a supernova explosion that was just as brilliant as it was fleeting.
you've come so far from the days when you were rookies, greenhorns really, outfitted in gimmicky matching jerseys spelling got7 across the back. now, you've each carved out your own identity and defined your individual style, easily distinguishable. but occasionally, oddly, you miss those halcyon days when you felt like peas in a pod and part of a greater whole.
you feel a surge of pride as you realize that there's never been a korean pop group as diversified as got7, both in ethnicity and personalities. it was music that had brought all of you together and held you in a tight, unbreakable unit for the past decade. no matter how different you were as people, it was the same melody that your hearts beat in tune to. music was the language you were all fluent in, and it was the only form of communication you needed.
the ocean of lightsticks is like a kaleidoscopic sea of stars falling at your feet. he looks divine tonight, wearing the smile you fell incorrigibly in love with ten years ago and holding your right hand with the clammy hand that had unfailingly caught you when you fell too many times to count. you feel jaebum's rough, strong grip close around your left hand, and turn to see the seven of you strung together like a chainlink necklace, the bond between you invisible but solid as steel, inextricable and inexorable. you feel the tug of their arms dragging you downwards as they bow deeply, the glistening droplets that drip off your skin and scatter on the ground unidentifiable as tears or sweat.
and he - he had been the glue that held the group together, the six of you's surrogate older brother. like glue, he was invisible from the outside, never drawing attention to himself, but without him the seven of you would have fallen apart like broken pieces. if jaebum was the soul of the group, then he was the beating heart, the softest spot, the one all the members respected and wanted to protect and emulate as he led by example.
the first time you met him, you thought he was pure as a sheet of white paper. you had the overpowering urge to decorate him with colour, to leave your mark on the blank canvas of him.
now, you just want to keep him pristine.
no matter what happens in future, you'll never forget him. he'll always be your first love, the person who taught you how to love, bravely, unselfishly, with your whole heart. he'll always be your best friend, the only one who can make you laugh and smile effortlessly.
as an athlete from childhood, you'd always taken pride in not having any weaknesses. people said that all sportsmen had their achilles' heels, but you thought you were the exception. until you met him and you realized that your blind spot wasn't a part of your body. it was a person.
he's the axis upon which your world revolves, the direction you will always reorient yourself to when you lose your way. he's your rock and your wings, keeping you tethered to the ground and raising you up with the same careful hands.
you are aware that the shelf life of a boyband is tragically short-lived, and so for now, you don't want to think too much or analyze things too deeply. you just want to enjoy the present; and it's true - every moment beside him is a gift.
you know that the choice you're making is unthinkable, unspeakable, something others will find hard to approve or understand; that the road ahead you is an unblazed trail, unchartered and uneven and strewn with obstacles. people will say you are young and stupid and reckless, that you are making a mistake.
and maybe it's true. maybe this is doomed to end in disaster and you will end up damaging each other beyond repair. you can't be certain of the future. the only thing you know for sure is that you rely on him, the way a child relies on a shoulder and dolphins rely on the ocean to live. it's a reliance that has become as necessary as breathing.
you only know that this choice should have been difficult, but instead it was effortless.
perhaps someday you will have to pay dearly for this, and innocent people will be hurt by your selfish actions. but then you look at his terrified, tremendous smile, and you don't know how to let go.
"hello, i'm the flying member of got7, mark!" he introduces himself to the other five's supportive cheers, and the interviewer smiles warmly, moving on to you.
"i'm jackson, the sky," you blurt out, deviating from your script, and the others hoot on cue, thinking that your gag reflex is making its entrance again.
only he doesn't laugh, meeting your eyes with a questioning twitch of his lips. your sky, you mouth, and as if by magic the room is a few degrees brighter, illuminated by the battery of his megawatt grin.
you've spent your entire life chasing after the elusive mirage of fame. but now, you realize that somewhere along the way, it had become secondary. you realize that what you had been searching high and low for might have been right beside you all this time.
when this is over, you promise him, when this is over, you'll go to a place where no one knows you, a backwater town in the outskirts of california (hong kong). there, you'll be happy. you'll be together.
one day, you promise yourself, one day you will take all the time in the world to love him slowly, dragging the pleasure out excruciatingly. you'll be able to love him without guilt, without it feeling like a crime. but for now, all you have is rushed kisses and clandestine touches, and it's far from enough but you'll take what you can get.
you don't know what the future holds, and the road that lies ahead is shrouded in uncertainty. but you have a feeling that as long as you never let go of this hand, you won't be afraid of anything.
so maybe you're not going to get a happily ever after. but it's okay, because you'd trade a thousand happily ever afters for one sadly ever after, if it's with him.
"come and get it, got7!" jaebum's confident voice rings out on the concert arena of the last stop of your second world tour. a sweaty hand closes around yours, lacing your fingers together with ease polished by years and dragging you down. you look up.
it's him, conquering the world with his smile even as you bow.
part 2