[eunhyuk/donghae] sharing a smoke
sharing a smoke by catskilt
eunhyuk/donghae
pg, 2506 words
it's raining, and they share a smoke together under an umbrella. and probably talk about some things, and think other things, and ask one thing. but mostly they share a smoke together.
Sharing A Smoke
"We can't go on like this forever, right?" says Donghae, tipping his head back. The raindrops catch onto him, tangle in his hair, fall to the ground in an almost continuous line. He grins, and Hyukjae grins along with him.
"If you can get that cigarette to light, we possibly might."
"Lighters don't like me," Donghae says, flicking his thumb against the lever once again in a futile attempt to maintain a flame long enough to light the cigarette he's holding between his middle and index fingers.
"Just admit it, you don't know how to do this."
Donghae slides his head back down on the lawn chair, sending drops of rainwater rolling through the gaps. "Why should I have to learn when I have you to do it for me?"
Hyukjae snorts as he grabs the lighter and cigarette and has it alight within two seconds. "Why should you ever have to learn anything when you have me to do it for you?"
"Precisely." Donghae winks.
Hyukjae takes a long drag and blows the smoke out, slowly, between his lips. It seems to drown in the rain, he thinks, passing the cigarette to Donghae. "No," he says. "You're right. We can't pilfer cigarettes from Seunghwan hyung forever. Sooner or later we'll have to quit. Or risk buying our own."
"But it's so fun to sneak them from him," Donghae says, wrapping his lips around the tip. Hyukjae drags his fascinated gaze away.
They sit under the umbrella for a long quiet moment, watching the rain beat almost violently against the balcony railings. They know that the city lies ahead of them, shrouding the sky with tall buildings that never seem to go to sleep, and they can hear, faintly, the sounds of the city below them, cars honking and people splashing through the puddles on the sidewalks, but right now everything's obscured. Right now, it's just them, Hyukjae thinks, him and Donghae. Beautiful Donghae, he muses, watching Donghae clasp the cigarette between his thumb and index finger as he leans back to sigh smoke out. Veteran idol of six years, desired by thousands of girls around the globe, tempestuous and warm and affectionate, Donghae, sitting under an umbrella in the hazy city rain smoking a cigarette pilfered from their manager. Hyukjae laughs.
"Was that at me," Donghae says.
"Yes."
"Asshole," Donghae says, and passes him the cigarette. He stretches his legs out on the lawn chair. "Say, Hyuk."
Hyukjae makes a little sound through his lips, turning back to the whitewashed city.
"No," Donghae says. "Over here."
He leans his elbows on the little table between them, and Hyukjae obligingly leans on it too. Their faces are close. He blows smoke into Donghae's face.
Donghae jumps back as if scalded. "Asshole!"
"Hey, you were the one who wanted to get all close and personal."
Donghae bats the remnants of the smoke away and leans in again. Hyukjae sees the perfect roundness of his eyes, the tiny wrinkles at the sides of his double lids. Once, long ago, he had brushed his fingertip against those lids, had wished that he could have Donghae's eyes that looked straight into people's hearts and made them do whatever he wanted them to. Now, he settles for simple admiration.
"Just think," Donghae says. "Very soon, all this will be over."
"Well, I wouldn't say all this," Hyukjae says. "We're still going to be doing what we do, it just won't be as Super Junior."
"That's all this to me," Donghae says, and takes the cigarette from him. "I was thinking last night about everything that we've done, from the Twins days to now. It's weird. Seems like all I can remember is your back."
"My back?"
"Dancing behind you," Donghae clarifies. "Have you noticed that I'm always just behind you? I think I basically learned dances by seeing the way you move from the back."
"Well, obviously," Hyukjae says. "I plan a lot of the choreography. I always put you behind me."
Donghae grins, and pretends to flick his arm. "Why am I still friends with you?"
"Because you know that your life would be dull without me."
"Much as I hate to admit it," Donghae says, "it's true."
He leans back on the chair, and Hyukjae follows suit. The rain is beginning to lighten, and they see the shapes of the buildings emerging from the mist. He'll be here all his life, he thinks, in this city of ten million people who will forget him in the next decade, who will move on to newer pursuits, newer interests, because it's too much to expect people to stay. And Donghae will move too, out of this city back to Mokpo where the radio stations are different and it'll take more than a short climb on the staircase to see him.
"I want this to last forever," Donghae says. "I want to perform on stage, I want to be in front of a camera, I want to make phone calls into your radio show. I want you to keep talking about me."
"You want to keep dancing behind me, too," Hyukjae says.
"Or to see you destroy more shirts on stage than you have in your closet," Donghae says. "What was that ugly purple thing you bought yesterday anyway - I don't even want to steal it."
"That was the reason I bought it."
"I want to take all those plane rides all over the world," Donghae says. "I want to come out to an airport full of fans waiting for me, I want to memorise scripts, I want to see my name on search engine results. Just, fuck, Hyukjae, I want to keep doing this - keep owning a portion of the world."
And then Hyukjae is suffused with a strange, yearning sort of feeling, the same kind of yearning that he'd felt years ago when they'd been kids and Donghae had said almost the exact same words, that he wanted to own the world. Wanted to walk on a red carpet, be the subject of photographs, stand under a spotlight before a hundred thousand people. Donghae who'd been so young then with his enthusiasm and exuberant innocence, Donghae who was so much older now, innocence gone, chart-topping albums and starring roles under his belt, still saying the same thing. Maybe Donghae wouldn't go to Mokpo. Maybe Donghae would go to America, New York City, that land of towering skyscrapers and lauded singers who sang, New York, New Yooork!. And he would be watching him in Seoul, thinking of the boy with the perfect round eyes.
"Idiot," he says, more to himself than to Donghae, and smiles. "You still have it all. You'll have it all for a while yet."
The cigarette is smothering almost to his fingertips, and so he stubs it out on the ashtray. Donghae sighs. "I should have taken more than one. He wouldn't notice."
"Can't have the smell of smoke on us. You know that."
"Tell you what, Hyukjae," says Donghae, curling his toes contentedly and watching the city take shape before them, "more than anything, I want to just sit here with you forever. With our pilfered cigarettes and everything."
"Yeah?" Hyukjae says. "Wouldn't that be boring."
"We'd be bored together then." Donghae flashes him a bright smile, and Hyukjae has to clear his throat.
"You wouldn't get all those kids you want," he says. "Your football team."
"Oh yes." Donghae frowns. "It would be so nice to have them just come up to me now and be like, 'hi dad'."
"What?" Hyukjae says. "Magically appearing children? How could you bypass the sex needed to conceive them?"
"Oh, fuck," says Donghae. "Guess I'll have to leave once in a while, then. Just for the sex."
"Hey, don't say it as though I wouldn't have to leave once in a while for it, too," says Hyukjae, mildly offended.
He looks at Donghae and knows that he's thinking of his long line of ex-girlfriends, mostly attractive girls who'd come into his life for rapturous months and then left because they couldn't deal with the price of his fame. Donghae had loved every single one of them, had been shattered when each one of them left. He'd said one miserable night that he was cursed, condemned to be alone for a lifetime, never to conceive his football team. But there'll be a girl eventually, Hyukjae thinks. Or, actually, a woman. A woman who'll keep him. Take care of him. And then he won't need me anymore.
"Can I come over?" Donghae asks.
He isn't surprised by the request. Donghae gets lonely whenever he thinks about the multiple failures in his love life, and whenever Donghae gets lonely he seeks contact with the nearest person available - usually Hyukjae. So he scoots over and makes some space on the lawn chair for Donghae, always so needy, who smells of Polo Ralph Lauren and whose hair tickles the base of his chin. Donghae who loves blindingly and quickly, who moves with such speed through life that sometimes Hyukjae has to grip his wrist to keep up. I learned how to live life by seeing the way you move from the back.
"Could fall asleep like this," Donghae says. Hyukjae can feel the movements of his jaw pressing through his chest.
"Don't," he says. "You didn't pull me out of bed in the middle of a nice afternoon nap just to fall asleep on my chest."
"Maybe I did."
"No, you didn't." He puts his arms around Donghae anyway.
"Hyukjae," Donghae says after a beat, "did I ever tell you that you're good-looking?"
"Not as many times as you should."
Donghae giggles, and it tickles Hyukjae's chest enough for him to squirm. "Fine, you are. You're gorgeous. Like a fallen angel, or Mr. Universe, or Won Bin. When you walk on the sidewalk, you leave flowers dangling in the air. Perfume. Sequins."
"I'm practically a fairy-tale prince," says Hyukjae. "All I need is a white horse."
"I'm serious," Donghae says, though he sounds like he's laughing. "Look at me, Hyuk."
Hyukjae looks down, straight into Donghae's eyes that look right into your soul. The rain drums against the umbrella and hits the railings, but in this little cocoon they're safe.
"You're beautiful," says Donghae.
The city materialises in greys and browns, and maybe they won't ever leave it. Not him, not Donghae. No Mokpo and no New York City. They'll stay here, and they'll be a short staircase climb away from each other, and they'll have families and grow old side by side and sit here in the rain when they're eighty sharing a cigarette. And they'll think that with all the people around them and all the things they've done, all the love they've made with beloved women and drinks they've shared with trusted friends, sunshine that they've laid under and night skies that they've sung into, concerts with a hundred thousand people and cameras that have paid homage to them, nothing has ever felt as good as sitting beside each other sharing a cigarette in the middle of a raining city.
He lets out a breath.
"Hyukjae," says Donghae, "I know that this is a terrible question to ask, and you really don't have to answer it, or even to think about it after it's been asked and it's out there, but just because you've been thinking all those great thoughts that I can see passing through your mind right now, about us being together and having this moment - and there are so many moments, Hyuk, that we've shared and I think I'll never forget them, even after all this is over - and I lied earlier on, Super Junior isn't the only thing that is all this to me, you are, too, and…"
"And you're getting to the point," Hyukjae says. "I hope."
"If I were to kiss you now," Donghae says, "will you kiss me back?"
Hyukjae doesn't say anything. He lets his fingers tangle in Donghae's hair, allows himself a rapt moment of imagining their mouths together, their tongues touching, their smoke mingling. It would be good; of that he has no doubt. They would kiss, and then perhaps they'd kiss again, and then again, more deeply; and he would unleash the passion that has been hidden in him all these years, a passion that he can only give to Donghae. They'll kiss and Donghae will throw a leg across his, and they'll think of all those wasted times in the past when they could have been doing this - and they'll want more, and more, and more, until it consumes them. And they'll never get to do all the things that lie ahead of them, because if the passion stays, they'll lose the world; and if the passion goes away, if they live their lives as charted and manage to find the beloved women and the football teams, they will move out of each other's lives to forget that one rapt moment when they'd given in to the thought of having it all.
"I would," he says, and he's almost surprised at how his voice practically aches with tenderness, "you know that I would. You've always known it. But you aren't going to kiss me."
Donghae watches him, eyes dark, and Hyukjae reaches out and turns his head away, positions it back against his chest. "There," he says.
Donghae doesn't move, but Hyukjae feels his hand sliding around his waist, holding him in a tight grip. The rain has disintegrated into a drizzle, the mist has lifted, and they're once again in contact with the world. And if he feels a heaviness pressing against him, a sort of suffocating thickness as though he's lying under a truck, he doesn't mention it.
"Could go to sleep like this," Donghae says.
"So sleep," says Hyukjae. "We've got lots of time anyway."
"Just promise that you'll be here with me for all those times," says Donghae. "Even if all we do is…this."
"And this isn't enough?" Hyukjae asks, and once again he hears that note of aching tenderness in his voice.
"Not really," says Donghae. "But it's better than not having you at all."
"You'll always have me," says Hyukjae.
It feels like a promise.
Donghae smiles against his chest, and Hyukjae lifts his hand from Donghae's wet hair, settles it on the curve of his shoulder. "Go to sleep."
"Good night," Donghae says a little teasingly.
Hyukjae knows that he's asleep when his head droops a little. He strokes Donghae's shoulder, slowly, softly, and doesn't think of anything at all but the feeling of being so close to Donghae, of having him like this always.
After a bit, he takes the cigarette from the ashtray and stashes it carefully in his back pocket so that nobody will ever find out. He has been throwing cigarettes away surreptitiously for years, ever since Donghae pilfered the very first one and lured him into trying it out too. But maybe he'll keep this one.
eunhyuk/donghae
pg, 2506 words
it's raining, and they share a smoke together under an umbrella. and probably talk about some things, and think other things, and ask one thing. but mostly they share a smoke together.
Sharing A Smoke
"We can't go on like this forever, right?" says Donghae, tipping his head back. The raindrops catch onto him, tangle in his hair, fall to the ground in an almost continuous line. He grins, and Hyukjae grins along with him.
"If you can get that cigarette to light, we possibly might."
"Lighters don't like me," Donghae says, flicking his thumb against the lever once again in a futile attempt to maintain a flame long enough to light the cigarette he's holding between his middle and index fingers.
"Just admit it, you don't know how to do this."
Donghae slides his head back down on the lawn chair, sending drops of rainwater rolling through the gaps. "Why should I have to learn when I have you to do it for me?"
Hyukjae snorts as he grabs the lighter and cigarette and has it alight within two seconds. "Why should you ever have to learn anything when you have me to do it for you?"
"Precisely." Donghae winks.
Hyukjae takes a long drag and blows the smoke out, slowly, between his lips. It seems to drown in the rain, he thinks, passing the cigarette to Donghae. "No," he says. "You're right. We can't pilfer cigarettes from Seunghwan hyung forever. Sooner or later we'll have to quit. Or risk buying our own."
"But it's so fun to sneak them from him," Donghae says, wrapping his lips around the tip. Hyukjae drags his fascinated gaze away.
They sit under the umbrella for a long quiet moment, watching the rain beat almost violently against the balcony railings. They know that the city lies ahead of them, shrouding the sky with tall buildings that never seem to go to sleep, and they can hear, faintly, the sounds of the city below them, cars honking and people splashing through the puddles on the sidewalks, but right now everything's obscured. Right now, it's just them, Hyukjae thinks, him and Donghae. Beautiful Donghae, he muses, watching Donghae clasp the cigarette between his thumb and index finger as he leans back to sigh smoke out. Veteran idol of six years, desired by thousands of girls around the globe, tempestuous and warm and affectionate, Donghae, sitting under an umbrella in the hazy city rain smoking a cigarette pilfered from their manager. Hyukjae laughs.
"Was that at me," Donghae says.
"Yes."
"Asshole," Donghae says, and passes him the cigarette. He stretches his legs out on the lawn chair. "Say, Hyuk."
Hyukjae makes a little sound through his lips, turning back to the whitewashed city.
"No," Donghae says. "Over here."
He leans his elbows on the little table between them, and Hyukjae obligingly leans on it too. Their faces are close. He blows smoke into Donghae's face.
Donghae jumps back as if scalded. "Asshole!"
"Hey, you were the one who wanted to get all close and personal."
Donghae bats the remnants of the smoke away and leans in again. Hyukjae sees the perfect roundness of his eyes, the tiny wrinkles at the sides of his double lids. Once, long ago, he had brushed his fingertip against those lids, had wished that he could have Donghae's eyes that looked straight into people's hearts and made them do whatever he wanted them to. Now, he settles for simple admiration.
"Just think," Donghae says. "Very soon, all this will be over."
"Well, I wouldn't say all this," Hyukjae says. "We're still going to be doing what we do, it just won't be as Super Junior."
"That's all this to me," Donghae says, and takes the cigarette from him. "I was thinking last night about everything that we've done, from the Twins days to now. It's weird. Seems like all I can remember is your back."
"My back?"
"Dancing behind you," Donghae clarifies. "Have you noticed that I'm always just behind you? I think I basically learned dances by seeing the way you move from the back."
"Well, obviously," Hyukjae says. "I plan a lot of the choreography. I always put you behind me."
Donghae grins, and pretends to flick his arm. "Why am I still friends with you?"
"Because you know that your life would be dull without me."
"Much as I hate to admit it," Donghae says, "it's true."
He leans back on the chair, and Hyukjae follows suit. The rain is beginning to lighten, and they see the shapes of the buildings emerging from the mist. He'll be here all his life, he thinks, in this city of ten million people who will forget him in the next decade, who will move on to newer pursuits, newer interests, because it's too much to expect people to stay. And Donghae will move too, out of this city back to Mokpo where the radio stations are different and it'll take more than a short climb on the staircase to see him.
"I want this to last forever," Donghae says. "I want to perform on stage, I want to be in front of a camera, I want to make phone calls into your radio show. I want you to keep talking about me."
"You want to keep dancing behind me, too," Hyukjae says.
"Or to see you destroy more shirts on stage than you have in your closet," Donghae says. "What was that ugly purple thing you bought yesterday anyway - I don't even want to steal it."
"That was the reason I bought it."
"I want to take all those plane rides all over the world," Donghae says. "I want to come out to an airport full of fans waiting for me, I want to memorise scripts, I want to see my name on search engine results. Just, fuck, Hyukjae, I want to keep doing this - keep owning a portion of the world."
And then Hyukjae is suffused with a strange, yearning sort of feeling, the same kind of yearning that he'd felt years ago when they'd been kids and Donghae had said almost the exact same words, that he wanted to own the world. Wanted to walk on a red carpet, be the subject of photographs, stand under a spotlight before a hundred thousand people. Donghae who'd been so young then with his enthusiasm and exuberant innocence, Donghae who was so much older now, innocence gone, chart-topping albums and starring roles under his belt, still saying the same thing. Maybe Donghae wouldn't go to Mokpo. Maybe Donghae would go to America, New York City, that land of towering skyscrapers and lauded singers who sang, New York, New Yooork!. And he would be watching him in Seoul, thinking of the boy with the perfect round eyes.
"Idiot," he says, more to himself than to Donghae, and smiles. "You still have it all. You'll have it all for a while yet."
The cigarette is smothering almost to his fingertips, and so he stubs it out on the ashtray. Donghae sighs. "I should have taken more than one. He wouldn't notice."
"Can't have the smell of smoke on us. You know that."
"Tell you what, Hyukjae," says Donghae, curling his toes contentedly and watching the city take shape before them, "more than anything, I want to just sit here with you forever. With our pilfered cigarettes and everything."
"Yeah?" Hyukjae says. "Wouldn't that be boring."
"We'd be bored together then." Donghae flashes him a bright smile, and Hyukjae has to clear his throat.
"You wouldn't get all those kids you want," he says. "Your football team."
"Oh yes." Donghae frowns. "It would be so nice to have them just come up to me now and be like, 'hi dad'."
"What?" Hyukjae says. "Magically appearing children? How could you bypass the sex needed to conceive them?"
"Oh, fuck," says Donghae. "Guess I'll have to leave once in a while, then. Just for the sex."
"Hey, don't say it as though I wouldn't have to leave once in a while for it, too," says Hyukjae, mildly offended.
He looks at Donghae and knows that he's thinking of his long line of ex-girlfriends, mostly attractive girls who'd come into his life for rapturous months and then left because they couldn't deal with the price of his fame. Donghae had loved every single one of them, had been shattered when each one of them left. He'd said one miserable night that he was cursed, condemned to be alone for a lifetime, never to conceive his football team. But there'll be a girl eventually, Hyukjae thinks. Or, actually, a woman. A woman who'll keep him. Take care of him. And then he won't need me anymore.
"Can I come over?" Donghae asks.
He isn't surprised by the request. Donghae gets lonely whenever he thinks about the multiple failures in his love life, and whenever Donghae gets lonely he seeks contact with the nearest person available - usually Hyukjae. So he scoots over and makes some space on the lawn chair for Donghae, always so needy, who smells of Polo Ralph Lauren and whose hair tickles the base of his chin. Donghae who loves blindingly and quickly, who moves with such speed through life that sometimes Hyukjae has to grip his wrist to keep up. I learned how to live life by seeing the way you move from the back.
"Could fall asleep like this," Donghae says. Hyukjae can feel the movements of his jaw pressing through his chest.
"Don't," he says. "You didn't pull me out of bed in the middle of a nice afternoon nap just to fall asleep on my chest."
"Maybe I did."
"No, you didn't." He puts his arms around Donghae anyway.
"Hyukjae," Donghae says after a beat, "did I ever tell you that you're good-looking?"
"Not as many times as you should."
Donghae giggles, and it tickles Hyukjae's chest enough for him to squirm. "Fine, you are. You're gorgeous. Like a fallen angel, or Mr. Universe, or Won Bin. When you walk on the sidewalk, you leave flowers dangling in the air. Perfume. Sequins."
"I'm practically a fairy-tale prince," says Hyukjae. "All I need is a white horse."
"I'm serious," Donghae says, though he sounds like he's laughing. "Look at me, Hyuk."
Hyukjae looks down, straight into Donghae's eyes that look right into your soul. The rain drums against the umbrella and hits the railings, but in this little cocoon they're safe.
"You're beautiful," says Donghae.
The city materialises in greys and browns, and maybe they won't ever leave it. Not him, not Donghae. No Mokpo and no New York City. They'll stay here, and they'll be a short staircase climb away from each other, and they'll have families and grow old side by side and sit here in the rain when they're eighty sharing a cigarette. And they'll think that with all the people around them and all the things they've done, all the love they've made with beloved women and drinks they've shared with trusted friends, sunshine that they've laid under and night skies that they've sung into, concerts with a hundred thousand people and cameras that have paid homage to them, nothing has ever felt as good as sitting beside each other sharing a cigarette in the middle of a raining city.
He lets out a breath.
"Hyukjae," says Donghae, "I know that this is a terrible question to ask, and you really don't have to answer it, or even to think about it after it's been asked and it's out there, but just because you've been thinking all those great thoughts that I can see passing through your mind right now, about us being together and having this moment - and there are so many moments, Hyuk, that we've shared and I think I'll never forget them, even after all this is over - and I lied earlier on, Super Junior isn't the only thing that is all this to me, you are, too, and…"
"And you're getting to the point," Hyukjae says. "I hope."
"If I were to kiss you now," Donghae says, "will you kiss me back?"
Hyukjae doesn't say anything. He lets his fingers tangle in Donghae's hair, allows himself a rapt moment of imagining their mouths together, their tongues touching, their smoke mingling. It would be good; of that he has no doubt. They would kiss, and then perhaps they'd kiss again, and then again, more deeply; and he would unleash the passion that has been hidden in him all these years, a passion that he can only give to Donghae. They'll kiss and Donghae will throw a leg across his, and they'll think of all those wasted times in the past when they could have been doing this - and they'll want more, and more, and more, until it consumes them. And they'll never get to do all the things that lie ahead of them, because if the passion stays, they'll lose the world; and if the passion goes away, if they live their lives as charted and manage to find the beloved women and the football teams, they will move out of each other's lives to forget that one rapt moment when they'd given in to the thought of having it all.
"I would," he says, and he's almost surprised at how his voice practically aches with tenderness, "you know that I would. You've always known it. But you aren't going to kiss me."
Donghae watches him, eyes dark, and Hyukjae reaches out and turns his head away, positions it back against his chest. "There," he says.
Donghae doesn't move, but Hyukjae feels his hand sliding around his waist, holding him in a tight grip. The rain has disintegrated into a drizzle, the mist has lifted, and they're once again in contact with the world. And if he feels a heaviness pressing against him, a sort of suffocating thickness as though he's lying under a truck, he doesn't mention it.
"Could go to sleep like this," Donghae says.
"So sleep," says Hyukjae. "We've got lots of time anyway."
"Just promise that you'll be here with me for all those times," says Donghae. "Even if all we do is…this."
"And this isn't enough?" Hyukjae asks, and once again he hears that note of aching tenderness in his voice.
"Not really," says Donghae. "But it's better than not having you at all."
"You'll always have me," says Hyukjae.
It feels like a promise.
Donghae smiles against his chest, and Hyukjae lifts his hand from Donghae's wet hair, settles it on the curve of his shoulder. "Go to sleep."
"Good night," Donghae says a little teasingly.
Hyukjae knows that he's asleep when his head droops a little. He strokes Donghae's shoulder, slowly, softly, and doesn't think of anything at all but the feeling of being so close to Donghae, of having him like this always.
After a bit, he takes the cigarette from the ashtray and stashes it carefully in his back pocket so that nobody will ever find out. He has been throwing cigarettes away surreptitiously for years, ever since Donghae pilfered the very first one and lured him into trying it out too. But maybe he'll keep this one.