BLACK DAY 13: difficult loves
Title: difficult loves
Written by: Anonymous
A remix of " if x, then y (but not y only if x)" by tigersharks
Pairing: Jongin/Lu Han
Rating: PG
Warnings: none
Summary: A rewriting in progress.
A/N: With apologies to " asemia."
In the corridor, on the fourteenth floor of the Ritz-Carlton, that's where Jongin first kisses Lu Han. It's nothing special or exceptional, almost too quick to be registered, and Lu Han's mouth is soft and he smells like the soap in the hotel bathroom, and if it must happen, you think, it should happen like this: something akin to a goodnight kiss, inconsequential, like the wisp of a feeling, once felt, then gone.
What happens next: Jongin goes back to his room and goes to sleep. The next morning he wakes up, Sehun eats eggs, they leave the hotel, and Lu Han doesn't talk about it. They fly to another country, and another. They never bring it up again. The silence is like distance, then a wall, then unbreachable. Jongin remembers the way ice collapses, like a crack of an avalanche before being swallowed by the roar. Finally, melting, splitting, and leaving nothing.
That's not what happens, he tells you.
What?
Sometimes stories take on the quality of dreams. Everything is indeterminate. You are not in full control, but from you, everything else: a series of ever-expanding, ever vaguer concentric ripples. So, you are imagining his steps: he walks out to the corridor, he stops in front of a vending machine, he bends down to retrieve a can of Diet Coke. It is a few months after their debut, so his hair is blond, but his roots are growing out, like the dark undergrowth in a field of grass. You think that the coordi noonas would have been all over that at least two days ago, but you can see it - apparently they haven't. When he straightens back up, his hair flops back into position, and the roots aren't visible anymore.
You are imagining his steps: he leans forward, he braces himself, the can of Diet Coke is freezing cold, the kiss is nothing special or exceptional, there is a scar that runs along his bottom lip, his eyes are wide with surprise.
He says, "Don't do that again."
He says, "This joke is in bad taste."
He says, "I'm going back."
You are imagining his steps: he makes a beeline for where Sehun and Yixing are, engaged in a staring contest. You linger at the edge of the stage. Next to you, Chanyeol, Baekhyun and Jongdae are making a huge din playing some game that involves a serious amount of gesturing. You make a note to yourself: charades. Jongin sits down next to you. His face is blank, his outline soft. You haven't written the rest yet.
No, he says.
It's how this story goes, you say.
No, he insists. Tell me what happens.
This is what happens.
What really happens.
Okay.
What really happens:
In the corridor on the fourteenth floor of the Ritz-Carlton, that's where Jongin first kisses a boy. More specifically, that's where he first kisses Kyungsoo.
Jongin snorts. It can't be Kyungsoo. Because after I kiss Lu Han, I stumble back to the front of my room and stick the key card into the slot and Kyungsoo asks me where I went.
Jongin's image wavers as he inspects the ice-dispensing machine. There is no reflection, because he's not yet there (but if you wrote It is three a.m. and Jongin goes to use the ice machine he would be-). Despite that, defiance hums in the air around him. He has taken you back to the beginning, to the opening, two people in a corridor of an American hotel. His future is as blank as untouched paper. You are filling in the cavernous emptiness, fat as the excesses of imagination. You could write Jongin has authority issues but wants Lu Han to acknowledge him. You could delete It might be enough to close the distance. Your hand is the sound of one hand clapping.
Your hands are the only sound, typing.
But typing what?
The possibilities paralyze you. Each word is a doorway to a new opportunity. If this, then that, but not that only if this. Jongin and Lu Han kiss, Jongin is disgusted. Jongin and Lu Han kiss, Lu Han is disgusted. Jongin and Kyungsoo kiss, Lu Han is disgusted, but Lu Han is the one that Jongin actually wants to kiss. They are in EXO, Jongin is in EXO and Lu Han is just a fanboy, Jongin is in Lu Han's baidu and stalks him into the Ritz-Carlton, it is all a delusion, Lu Han is a ghost, Jongin is a ghost, they are both ghosts, they are both ice machines. A story in which the plane to Nanjing crashes and Jongin is left forever unfulfilled by the kiss in the Ritz-Carlton. A story in which Jongin has perpetual sleep deprivation and has to see a therapist about his mental breakdown and his therapist tells him to ground himself and Jongin does, through Lu Han. A story about Jongin's authority problems. A story about Lu Han's authority problems. It'll end with two people trying to reach out to each other through the cold, and failing.
But what about the beginning?
You don't know how to begin.
Then how about just starting with what's already there?
In the corridor-
No.
Maybe, then, from the final scene instead. Jongin stands near the crossing all by himself while everyone else crowds around manager-hyung like a motley crew of birds. He watches other vehicles screech past him. Someone taps him on the shoulder - it's Lu Han, holding a boarding pass.
"This is yours," he says. Then, "Listen."
It's winter. The air outside the airport is cold. Jongin forgot to wear gloves, and Sehun, the brat, wouldn't lend him any. His sweater doesn't have any pockets, and with all the fans around, he can't risk looking uncool and wrapping his scarf around his hands for warmth. He shoves the ticket between two random pages in his passport, head down so he doesn't have to look at Lu Han's face.
"About what happened," Lu Han says.
"What?"
"At the hotel," Lu Han suggests slowly. "Last night. Don't take it to heart or anything, okay? I was just playing around."
They are side-by-side, and Lu Han bumps his elbow cheerfully, as if they're back at the dorms and Baekhyun has just made a particularly amusing joke about Chanyeol's hair being the color of dehydrated urine. When Jongin finally looks up, he'll notice, most of all, how Lu Han isn't wearing any makeup, and in the stark light, Lu Han's skin will still be nearly flawless, though a little thin under the eyes. He'll see that there are shadows of all sorts of weird wrinkles across Lu han's face, and smile lines around his mouth. He'll think about Lu Han's mouth, the soft full pressure of Lu Han's lips against his, how it felt so serious, like maybe Lu Han has long wanted or waited to try it, and above all how it didn't feel like a joke.
Tell him I'm not playing around.
No.
Tell him that we're going to go back to Korea and I'm going to kiss him, and this time I'll tell him I've waited to do it for a long time. Tell him something about how I want to know him better, how I want to figure him out.
Yours is the sound of two hands typing.
Jongin says nothing at all.
Sometimes the quality of rewriting takes on the form of a dream, and when you try to internalise it, cut down on the confusion, you end up lost in the cycle of cause and causation. Lu Han smells like hotel soap and sweat because he already did, they kiss in the corridor of the SM basement because they already did. Yet you can write out all the details, white out all the endings, leave yourself with the possibilities of who they were before they existed in the story that didn't come before. Jongin comes to you, full-formed by the hands of a stranger, and you unmold him in the presence of a Lu Han he's never met. Jongin blinks, trying to recall everything that happened in the last five iterations. Lu Han ebbs and flows, plays charades with Jongdae, is practicing dance moves with Minseok, chats with Yixing in the corner. Kyungsoo is asking Jongin if he and Lu Han had a fight. Kyungsoo is asking Jongin why he and Lu Han have been so close lately. Kyungsoo is asking Jongin where he went.
From across the empty space of deleted paragraphs and rewritten sentences, the snap of aluminum and the hiss of carbon dioxide.
Something like this has happened before.
But this is not how it happened before.
Somewhere in the middle, that memory of EXO-M leaving the dorm in the feeble light of early morning. Chanyeol is hovering over Jongdae like a specter of death, Sehun waving happy new year from the couch. You stand by Jongin's side, waving as well, though no one knows you are there. It is 600 miles from Seoul to Nanjing. To Jongin, that is 1000 kilometers. You wonder, and then know, what Jongin is thinking about. He is good at spatial reasoning, and sees his relationship with Lu Han like a map with great distances to cross. It is a journey marked by imaginary creatures, hidden depths, and Jongin only needs the courage and determination to carry through. You want to tell him that Lu Han doesn't see maps. To him, Jongin is terra incognito. No, that's not right (you hit the delete button). To Lu Han, Jongin is his own kind of forbidden city, a walled palace no one, not even Lu Han, is allowed to enter. Lu Han has already locked Jongin up, hidden him away. Lu Han's heart is his own barbarian, and he keeps himself at bay.
"Come back soon," Jongin says.
Come back to what? you ask. Come back to where?
If you wanted to talk about relational significance-
If you wanted to talk about spatial relations-
If you wanted to talk about relationships-
There's one part of the choreography in MAMA that you're particularly fond of. That one part only takes place when EXO is performing as twelve, the part during the last chorus when both groups are facing each other. Jongin, tireless in his pleading, raises his arms to the ceiling, his chin thrown back. He falls to his knees. When he gets back up, he and Lu Han are facing each other. With hands outstretched, they break apart. Lu Han echoes Jongin's moves without smiling. Every twitch is Jongin's, and he gives nothing of his own. Then they both turn away, turn towards you, in the audience.
You watch the reruns, waiting for something to change.
It's a video, so nothing does.
Here is what you both know will has won't happen:
In the corridor of the Ritz-Carlton Lu Han kisses Jongin. There is a bit of linger that Lu Han puts into it, a soft, full pressure that feels like maybe he's long wanted or waited to try it. Jongin is right; he has. The next morning they leave. Jongin sleeps on Chanyeol's shoulder during the flight; Yixing has Lu Han's neck pillow. When they get back to Korea, Lu Han says nothing. They face each other at dance practice, and Jongin's eyes try to bore holes into Lu Han, drill deep and see what's inside. He is nervous, shy, too aggressive; Lu Han, chilly and teasing. In the basement hallway Jongin makes the mistake of kissing Lu Han again. Lu Han pulls away. The silence is like distance, then a wall. Together they wait backstage at the Gayo Daejun, and Jongin thinks how Lu Han looks unbreachable. When it is time, Lu Han suddenly ducks in close enough to almost touch Jongin. His face is flawless under the makeup. Jongin sees it turn away from him as they dance on stage. He knows it will be forever turning away. Time, wedged between them, passes. Lu Han doesn't come out, makes out with Sehun after their third comeback, gets caught, reflects, leaves Jongin far behind. Jongin thinks about kissing Lu Han. Thinks about it for a long time.
Eventually, you think, they'll both die.
Don't you want happiness? you ask him. I could give it to you. Let me write you another ending. The one where you grow old with Kyungsoo. The one where you get to know Chanyeol. The one where you teach Baekhyun to dance. The one where you dance with Yixing.
Don't carelessly change my life, he says. It's not up to you to make my choices for me.
Fine, you tell him. Then I won't be responsible for-
-what happens next:
Like two hands imperfectly matched, thumb to shorter thumb, pressed together trying to touch, they don't quite fit. There is something between them: air, possibility, fear, difference, age, silence, love love love.
Lu Han goes.
Jongin stays.
Some distances can't be closed.
"Every story tells a story that has already been told."
Umberto Eco, "Postscript to The Name of the Rose"
Written by: Anonymous
A remix of " if x, then y (but not y only if x)" by tigersharks
Pairing: Jongin/Lu Han
Rating: PG
Warnings: none
Summary: A rewriting in progress.
A/N: With apologies to " asemia."
In the corridor, on the fourteenth floor of the Ritz-Carlton, that's where Jongin first kisses Lu Han. It's nothing special or exceptional, almost too quick to be registered, and Lu Han's mouth is soft and he smells like the soap in the hotel bathroom, and if it must happen, you think, it should happen like this: something akin to a goodnight kiss, inconsequential, like the wisp of a feeling, once felt, then gone.
What happens next: Jongin goes back to his room and goes to sleep. The next morning he wakes up, Sehun eats eggs, they leave the hotel, and Lu Han doesn't talk about it. They fly to another country, and another. They never bring it up again. The silence is like distance, then a wall, then unbreachable. Jongin remembers the way ice collapses, like a crack of an avalanche before being swallowed by the roar. Finally, melting, splitting, and leaving nothing.
That's not what happens, he tells you.
What?
Sometimes stories take on the quality of dreams. Everything is indeterminate. You are not in full control, but from you, everything else: a series of ever-expanding, ever vaguer concentric ripples. So, you are imagining his steps: he walks out to the corridor, he stops in front of a vending machine, he bends down to retrieve a can of Diet Coke. It is a few months after their debut, so his hair is blond, but his roots are growing out, like the dark undergrowth in a field of grass. You think that the coordi noonas would have been all over that at least two days ago, but you can see it - apparently they haven't. When he straightens back up, his hair flops back into position, and the roots aren't visible anymore.
You are imagining his steps: he leans forward, he braces himself, the can of Diet Coke is freezing cold, the kiss is nothing special or exceptional, there is a scar that runs along his bottom lip, his eyes are wide with surprise.
He says, "Don't do that again."
He says, "This joke is in bad taste."
He says, "I'm going back."
You are imagining his steps: he makes a beeline for where Sehun and Yixing are, engaged in a staring contest. You linger at the edge of the stage. Next to you, Chanyeol, Baekhyun and Jongdae are making a huge din playing some game that involves a serious amount of gesturing. You make a note to yourself: charades. Jongin sits down next to you. His face is blank, his outline soft. You haven't written the rest yet.
No, he says.
It's how this story goes, you say.
No, he insists. Tell me what happens.
This is what happens.
What really happens.
Okay.
What really happens:
In the corridor on the fourteenth floor of the Ritz-Carlton, that's where Jongin first kisses a boy. More specifically, that's where he first kisses Kyungsoo.
Jongin snorts. It can't be Kyungsoo. Because after I kiss Lu Han, I stumble back to the front of my room and stick the key card into the slot and Kyungsoo asks me where I went.
Jongin's image wavers as he inspects the ice-dispensing machine. There is no reflection, because he's not yet there (but if you wrote It is three a.m. and Jongin goes to use the ice machine he would be-). Despite that, defiance hums in the air around him. He has taken you back to the beginning, to the opening, two people in a corridor of an American hotel. His future is as blank as untouched paper. You are filling in the cavernous emptiness, fat as the excesses of imagination. You could write Jongin has authority issues but wants Lu Han to acknowledge him. You could delete It might be enough to close the distance. Your hand is the sound of one hand clapping.
Your hands are the only sound, typing.
But typing what?
The possibilities paralyze you. Each word is a doorway to a new opportunity. If this, then that, but not that only if this. Jongin and Lu Han kiss, Jongin is disgusted. Jongin and Lu Han kiss, Lu Han is disgusted. Jongin and Kyungsoo kiss, Lu Han is disgusted, but Lu Han is the one that Jongin actually wants to kiss. They are in EXO, Jongin is in EXO and Lu Han is just a fanboy, Jongin is in Lu Han's baidu and stalks him into the Ritz-Carlton, it is all a delusion, Lu Han is a ghost, Jongin is a ghost, they are both ghosts, they are both ice machines. A story in which the plane to Nanjing crashes and Jongin is left forever unfulfilled by the kiss in the Ritz-Carlton. A story in which Jongin has perpetual sleep deprivation and has to see a therapist about his mental breakdown and his therapist tells him to ground himself and Jongin does, through Lu Han. A story about Jongin's authority problems. A story about Lu Han's authority problems. It'll end with two people trying to reach out to each other through the cold, and failing.
But what about the beginning?
You don't know how to begin.
Then how about just starting with what's already there?
In the corridor-
No.
Maybe, then, from the final scene instead. Jongin stands near the crossing all by himself while everyone else crowds around manager-hyung like a motley crew of birds. He watches other vehicles screech past him. Someone taps him on the shoulder - it's Lu Han, holding a boarding pass.
"This is yours," he says. Then, "Listen."
It's winter. The air outside the airport is cold. Jongin forgot to wear gloves, and Sehun, the brat, wouldn't lend him any. His sweater doesn't have any pockets, and with all the fans around, he can't risk looking uncool and wrapping his scarf around his hands for warmth. He shoves the ticket between two random pages in his passport, head down so he doesn't have to look at Lu Han's face.
"About what happened," Lu Han says.
"What?"
"At the hotel," Lu Han suggests slowly. "Last night. Don't take it to heart or anything, okay? I was just playing around."
They are side-by-side, and Lu Han bumps his elbow cheerfully, as if they're back at the dorms and Baekhyun has just made a particularly amusing joke about Chanyeol's hair being the color of dehydrated urine. When Jongin finally looks up, he'll notice, most of all, how Lu Han isn't wearing any makeup, and in the stark light, Lu Han's skin will still be nearly flawless, though a little thin under the eyes. He'll see that there are shadows of all sorts of weird wrinkles across Lu han's face, and smile lines around his mouth. He'll think about Lu Han's mouth, the soft full pressure of Lu Han's lips against his, how it felt so serious, like maybe Lu Han has long wanted or waited to try it, and above all how it didn't feel like a joke.
Tell him I'm not playing around.
No.
Tell him that we're going to go back to Korea and I'm going to kiss him, and this time I'll tell him I've waited to do it for a long time. Tell him something about how I want to know him better, how I want to figure him out.
Yours is the sound of two hands typing.
Jongin says nothing at all.
Sometimes the quality of rewriting takes on the form of a dream, and when you try to internalise it, cut down on the confusion, you end up lost in the cycle of cause and causation. Lu Han smells like hotel soap and sweat because he already did, they kiss in the corridor of the SM basement because they already did. Yet you can write out all the details, white out all the endings, leave yourself with the possibilities of who they were before they existed in the story that didn't come before. Jongin comes to you, full-formed by the hands of a stranger, and you unmold him in the presence of a Lu Han he's never met. Jongin blinks, trying to recall everything that happened in the last five iterations. Lu Han ebbs and flows, plays charades with Jongdae, is practicing dance moves with Minseok, chats with Yixing in the corner. Kyungsoo is asking Jongin if he and Lu Han had a fight. Kyungsoo is asking Jongin why he and Lu Han have been so close lately. Kyungsoo is asking Jongin where he went.
From across the empty space of deleted paragraphs and rewritten sentences, the snap of aluminum and the hiss of carbon dioxide.
Something like this has happened before.
But this is not how it happened before.
Somewhere in the middle, that memory of EXO-M leaving the dorm in the feeble light of early morning. Chanyeol is hovering over Jongdae like a specter of death, Sehun waving happy new year from the couch. You stand by Jongin's side, waving as well, though no one knows you are there. It is 600 miles from Seoul to Nanjing. To Jongin, that is 1000 kilometers. You wonder, and then know, what Jongin is thinking about. He is good at spatial reasoning, and sees his relationship with Lu Han like a map with great distances to cross. It is a journey marked by imaginary creatures, hidden depths, and Jongin only needs the courage and determination to carry through. You want to tell him that Lu Han doesn't see maps. To him, Jongin is terra incognito. No, that's not right (you hit the delete button). To Lu Han, Jongin is his own kind of forbidden city, a walled palace no one, not even Lu Han, is allowed to enter. Lu Han has already locked Jongin up, hidden him away. Lu Han's heart is his own barbarian, and he keeps himself at bay.
"Come back soon," Jongin says.
Come back to what? you ask. Come back to where?
If you wanted to talk about relational significance-
If you wanted to talk about spatial relations-
If you wanted to talk about relationships-
There's one part of the choreography in MAMA that you're particularly fond of. That one part only takes place when EXO is performing as twelve, the part during the last chorus when both groups are facing each other. Jongin, tireless in his pleading, raises his arms to the ceiling, his chin thrown back. He falls to his knees. When he gets back up, he and Lu Han are facing each other. With hands outstretched, they break apart. Lu Han echoes Jongin's moves without smiling. Every twitch is Jongin's, and he gives nothing of his own. Then they both turn away, turn towards you, in the audience.
You watch the reruns, waiting for something to change.
It's a video, so nothing does.
Here is what you both know will has won't happen:
In the corridor of the Ritz-Carlton Lu Han kisses Jongin. There is a bit of linger that Lu Han puts into it, a soft, full pressure that feels like maybe he's long wanted or waited to try it. Jongin is right; he has. The next morning they leave. Jongin sleeps on Chanyeol's shoulder during the flight; Yixing has Lu Han's neck pillow. When they get back to Korea, Lu Han says nothing. They face each other at dance practice, and Jongin's eyes try to bore holes into Lu Han, drill deep and see what's inside. He is nervous, shy, too aggressive; Lu Han, chilly and teasing. In the basement hallway Jongin makes the mistake of kissing Lu Han again. Lu Han pulls away. The silence is like distance, then a wall. Together they wait backstage at the Gayo Daejun, and Jongin thinks how Lu Han looks unbreachable. When it is time, Lu Han suddenly ducks in close enough to almost touch Jongin. His face is flawless under the makeup. Jongin sees it turn away from him as they dance on stage. He knows it will be forever turning away. Time, wedged between them, passes. Lu Han doesn't come out, makes out with Sehun after their third comeback, gets caught, reflects, leaves Jongin far behind. Jongin thinks about kissing Lu Han. Thinks about it for a long time.
Eventually, you think, they'll both die.
Don't you want happiness? you ask him. I could give it to you. Let me write you another ending. The one where you grow old with Kyungsoo. The one where you get to know Chanyeol. The one where you teach Baekhyun to dance. The one where you dance with Yixing.
Don't carelessly change my life, he says. It's not up to you to make my choices for me.
Fine, you tell him. Then I won't be responsible for-
-what happens next:
Like two hands imperfectly matched, thumb to shorter thumb, pressed together trying to touch, they don't quite fit. There is something between them: air, possibility, fear, difference, age, silence, love love love.
Lu Han goes.
Jongin stays.
Some distances can't be closed.
"Every story tells a story that has already been told."
Umberto Eco, "Postscript to The Name of the Rose"