(no subject)
Title: Talking Shadows Were Never Creepy (2/?)
Author: minhocchio
Rating: PG
Pairing/Focus: Myungjong
The silhouette behind the curtains moved, and brushed the curtains aside. It was no longer a mystery, no longer something Sungjong was trying to figure out. He had put a name to a face - this was Kim Myungsoo, for sure - a boy he had spent his entire childhood trying to figure out. The two boys looked at each other, face to face, taking in each other’s presence.
“I- I don’t believe it,” Sungjong manages to stutter.
Myungsoo smirks, then hops off the window sill onto the floor of the bedroom. “Neither do I, honestly.” He settles himself on the floor, grabs sungjong’s teddy bear and hugs it close to him. “Wasn’t this the teddy bear I got you?”
Sungjong wants so much to shush him, because Myungsoo wasn’t trying to keep his volume down at all, and who knows what Hoya and Sungyeol might do to him if they saw a stranger suddenly making conversation in their bedroom. But he resists, because he misses hearing Myungsoo’s voice - the color, the tone, how it sounded; basically the way it made him feel inside.
Sungjong sits next to myungsoo, and grabs one of the bear’s paws, pretending to shake its hand. “You still remember? It was so long ago. Do you remember that we called it -“
“- Myungjong. I didn’t forget. Myung for me, Jong for you. It was the perfect name, honestly.” Myungsoo sits the teddy bear in between the two of them, and starts running his fingers through its fur. A subtle smile starts spreading on his face, and it doesn’t go unnoticed by Sungjong. The latter looks on curiously, unable to look away from the boy’s face.
“Stop staring at me, you dork,” myungsoo gently hits Sungjong’s shoulder, and they both laugh. This time sungjong doesn’t bother to muffle his laugh, and lets it ring throughout the room. He glanced nervously over to Sungyeol, who was a light sleeper, but all he did was roll over in bed then continue snoring.
“You haven’t told me what you’re doing here yet,” Sungjong immediately feels comfortable around the boy. It had been so long since they had last seen each other, and sungjong always worried that when they met again, things between them would have changed. But they didn’t, and for this he was glad.
Myungsoo doesn’t answer straight away, and instead gets up and starts walking around the room. He walks over to a shelf at the corner of the room, and looks through row after row of CDs stored there. His fingers brush past Usher, Shakira, SNSD, Big Bang, and finally stops at Infinite. He struggles to pull the album out; one wrong move and the entire CD collection would have spilled on the floor. Leaning against the wall, Myungsoo flips through the pages of the photo/lyric booklet, stopping at the one with Sungjong’s pictures.
He eyes them with curiousity, scrutinizing every feature of Sungjong. The intensity of his eyes, the way his hair is styled, the way he poses for the cameraman. Sungjong grows shy at his actions, and starts to wish that a hole would open up in the ground and swallow him up whole. He hated it when people stared at his pictures like this; now that it was myungsoo, the embarrassment grew tenfold.
“What happened to you here?” Myungsoo says softly, still looking at sungjong’s pictures. It was their Over the Top album, and everyone looked pretty intense in their getups and gazes. Sungjong feels a lump in his throat, not quite sure how to respond. It takes a lot of courage, but even then, all he could muster up was an “I don’t know.”
Myungsoo nods, somehow fully understanding that between the last time they saw each other - at the airport when myungsoo left for daegu - and now, something had shifted. Sungjong was no longer just the old sungjong he knew. Now he was also the public Lee Sungjong, the one who danced and sang all day, everyday; the one who went wild on variety shows to grab people’s attention; the one who greeted strangers with a smile.
Sungjong grabs the booklet from myungsoo’s hands, his uneasiness getting the better of him. He silently places the album back onto the shelf, and pretends to neaten out the other albums, just to buy time. He didn’t know what to say to myungsoo now.
Myungsoo helps Sungjong tidy up the shelf, and at the same time takes out albums that interest him. “An autographed G.Na album? Damn, where did you get this from?” Sungjong glances up and replies coolly, “she gave it to me. We’re close friends.” Myungsoo was taken aback. He doesn’t respond to sungjong’s statement, and continues to look at the other albums.
Sungjong tries hard to make things less awkward. “Have you listened to our music before?” He hopes Myungsoo has, just so he can hear what he thinks about their music. But then he hopes he hasn’t, because what if myungsoo had greater expectations of sungjong, ones that he couldn’t live up to?
“I have, actually. My friends back in daegu were obsessed with kpop, and they never let me off the hook.” Sungjong doesn’t know if it’s a good thing, that myungsoo had to be coerced into listening to the kind of music he made. “Um, so what do you think of it?”
“It’s okay, I guess. The music sounds a little too cheerful for me sometimes, but that scorpion dance was the coolest thing ever.” He shoots a smile at Sungjong. Sungjong grins back. “It is pretty cool, isn’t it? We took forever to perfect that part of the dance. Want me to show you how?” Myungsoo agrees, then gestures at the two sleeping bodies.
“If you do this correctly, you shouldn’t make a sound at all.” Sungjong gets into position on the ground, then walks myungsoo through the steps. Myungsoo tries to get out of doing it at first; “really, I can’t dance. I have to left feet.” But Lee Sungjong wasn’t Lee Sungjong for nothing, so with a little whining and pulling, he finally managed to get myungsoo to give it a shot.
The first time, myungsoo nearly falls backwards into the shelf full of albums. Sungjong quickly reach out to catch him, and guffaws. “No kidding, you really do have two left feet.” Myungsoo glares at him, and this time it has no effect on Sungjong. “Your glares don’t work on me anymore, just so you know.” Myungsoo sighs, the straightens himself up. “Let’s try this again.” Sungjong is surprised with his determination, and doesn’t know whether he actually wants him to try it again, but relents.
“Just try not to fall into anything this time.”
So the two boys dance (or rather, one boy dances perfectly while the other struggles to catch up) for the next few minutes. When myungsoo nearly gets the dance, they both cheer. Sungjong has a huge grin on his face. No particular reason why. He just felt so happy, the happiest he had felt in a long time, and it showed.
They’re both physically drained; it’s now past 2am, and any person would be tired. So they sit on the floor once again, and this time Sungjong grips Myungsoo’s wrists.
“You’re not going anywhere until you tell me what you’re doing here.” He’s afraid he’s coming on too strong, almost aggressive, but he pushes on. “I’m not letting you escape until you ‘fess up.”
Myungsoo hunches over, staring at Sungjong’s hands around his. “I don’t even know where to begin. Everything and nothing led to me coming here. I don’t know… I really don’t.” His hazel eyes look into Sungjong’s, and just then they share a moment. Sungjong relaxes his grip a little. “Just start from… what made you want to find me in the first place. And how did you even find my dorm?”
Myungsoo shifts uneasily on the ground.
“My family moved back to Seoul about a month ago, and I didn’t want to tell you, because I wanted to surprise you. I wasn’t kidding when I told you years ago that I would take whichever airplane that leads me to you. So anyway, we’ve been here for some time now, and something in me told me that it wasn’t the right time to surprise you yet.
So I waited and waited, and finally I couldn’t take it anymore, so I told my parents I was going out with some friends of mine to get some ddeokbbokki to eat, as my midnight snack. They’re either playing dumb or are really ignorant - it’s like they’ve forgotten that I don’t mix well with people. Remember in kindergarten, when you were my only friend?” Sungjong nodded.
“That hasn’t changed. The only friends I had in Daegu were my classmates, and we were kind of forced to be friends, since the class had a size of 7, and there was no one else our age in the neighbourhood to play with. Even then I wouldn’t call them my friends. They were more acquaintances.” Sungjong nods again, prompting myungsoo to continue his story.
“So I lied to my parents, walked to the nearest subway station, and took the subway down to here. It wasn’t difficult finding your dorm from there onwards. I just wandered onto the streets, and asked some teenaged girls that walked past. They all knew where your house was, giving me the street and the house number. So I tried my best to get here without getting lost. Things got a lot easier then, because if you didn’t already know, there were two girls camping outside just now, and they told me that ‘yes this is infinite oppa’s dorm!’.”
“There were girls outside our dorm?” Sungjong asked, incredulous. “Really?”
“Yes, really. Don’t you guys know? You should really look out your windows more often. That’s what they’re for, right?” Sungjong stands up and peers over the window, but all that greets him is an empty street. “They’re gone.”
“Of course they are. When I spoke to them it was nearly three hours ago. Even though they love you, no one in their right mind would sacrifice their sleep for you. I’m sorry, just saying,” Myungsoo lights up. “Except, apparently, me. I wonder why I’m stupid enough to find you now, when I could be sleeping in my bed back home.”
Sungjong slaps myungsoo’s thigh, and the loud smack stirs Hoya from his slumber. It wasn’t soon that he fell back asleep, so the two boys who were still awake weren’t exactly worried. “It’s not called stupidity. It’s called friendship.”
Sungjong immediately slaps his head for how cheesy that sounded, and myungsoo laughed. “Don’t hit yourself, you’ll get bruises in the morning.” Sungjong gasps, quickly starting to rub his forehead. “You shouldn’t do that either; the more you rub it, the redder it’ll become.”
Sungjong draws his hand away from his forehead.
“Since when did you become such a smarty pants?”
“It’s not smarts, Sungjong. It’s common sense.”
In that instance they both start laughing again, and Sungjong lost count of how much he had last in the past few hours. He was probably going to regret even staying up this late to catch up with his friend the next morning, but sets the thought aside, wishing this conversation would never end.
A buzzing sound escapes from Myungsoo’s back pocket, and he quickly presses a button on his cell phone. “It’s the alarm I set. I’d better go, my parents will be up soon.”
“It’s only four thirty in the morning! Who gets up this early?” Sungjong sounds furious, because he was. Deep down he was worried, that if he let myungsoo go again, he wouldn’t get to see him for another decade or so. He didn’t want to risk it; if he could, he would tuck myungsoo into his bagpack and lug him around everywhere. He’d have great company then, better company than all his hyungs could offer him.
“It takes me an hour to get back, and my parents are early risers. They take walks around the neighbourhood at six. If I don’t rush back now, I’ll probably meet them at the door and get grounded for, well, ever.” Sungjong remembers how strict Myungsoo’s parents were with him in the past. At least something hasn’t changed since then.
“When will I see you again?” Sungjong asks, plain and simple. But to Myungsoo, it feels like the most difficult question he ever had to answer.
“No promises when, but I’ll be back for sure.” He turns towards the window sill, then turns back to face Sungjong.
“Mind if I use your front door instead? The sill’s still wet from the rain, and I don’t want to risk falling.” Sungjong rolls his eyes, then walks Myungsoo to their front door.
“Okay, no promises, but you have to swear that you’ll come back. And come back soon; I’ve missed talking to you.” Sungjong hugs Myungsoo quickly, and Myungsoo pats his back.
“Cross my heart and hope to croak, drop a toenail in my coke. I promise.” With that, Myungsoo walks out onto the dimly lit street, and looks both ways, momentarily lost.
“Turn left and go straight!” Sungjong calls out, and Myungsoo waves. “Thanks,” the latter mouths. Sungjong waves back, and shuts the front door.
That morning, Sungjong falls asleep happier than he has been for a long time.
Author: minhocchio
Rating: PG
Pairing/Focus: Myungjong
The silhouette behind the curtains moved, and brushed the curtains aside. It was no longer a mystery, no longer something Sungjong was trying to figure out. He had put a name to a face - this was Kim Myungsoo, for sure - a boy he had spent his entire childhood trying to figure out. The two boys looked at each other, face to face, taking in each other’s presence.
“I- I don’t believe it,” Sungjong manages to stutter.
Myungsoo smirks, then hops off the window sill onto the floor of the bedroom. “Neither do I, honestly.” He settles himself on the floor, grabs sungjong’s teddy bear and hugs it close to him. “Wasn’t this the teddy bear I got you?”
Sungjong wants so much to shush him, because Myungsoo wasn’t trying to keep his volume down at all, and who knows what Hoya and Sungyeol might do to him if they saw a stranger suddenly making conversation in their bedroom. But he resists, because he misses hearing Myungsoo’s voice - the color, the tone, how it sounded; basically the way it made him feel inside.
Sungjong sits next to myungsoo, and grabs one of the bear’s paws, pretending to shake its hand. “You still remember? It was so long ago. Do you remember that we called it -“
“- Myungjong. I didn’t forget. Myung for me, Jong for you. It was the perfect name, honestly.” Myungsoo sits the teddy bear in between the two of them, and starts running his fingers through its fur. A subtle smile starts spreading on his face, and it doesn’t go unnoticed by Sungjong. The latter looks on curiously, unable to look away from the boy’s face.
“Stop staring at me, you dork,” myungsoo gently hits Sungjong’s shoulder, and they both laugh. This time sungjong doesn’t bother to muffle his laugh, and lets it ring throughout the room. He glanced nervously over to Sungyeol, who was a light sleeper, but all he did was roll over in bed then continue snoring.
“You haven’t told me what you’re doing here yet,” Sungjong immediately feels comfortable around the boy. It had been so long since they had last seen each other, and sungjong always worried that when they met again, things between them would have changed. But they didn’t, and for this he was glad.
Myungsoo doesn’t answer straight away, and instead gets up and starts walking around the room. He walks over to a shelf at the corner of the room, and looks through row after row of CDs stored there. His fingers brush past Usher, Shakira, SNSD, Big Bang, and finally stops at Infinite. He struggles to pull the album out; one wrong move and the entire CD collection would have spilled on the floor. Leaning against the wall, Myungsoo flips through the pages of the photo/lyric booklet, stopping at the one with Sungjong’s pictures.
He eyes them with curiousity, scrutinizing every feature of Sungjong. The intensity of his eyes, the way his hair is styled, the way he poses for the cameraman. Sungjong grows shy at his actions, and starts to wish that a hole would open up in the ground and swallow him up whole. He hated it when people stared at his pictures like this; now that it was myungsoo, the embarrassment grew tenfold.
“What happened to you here?” Myungsoo says softly, still looking at sungjong’s pictures. It was their Over the Top album, and everyone looked pretty intense in their getups and gazes. Sungjong feels a lump in his throat, not quite sure how to respond. It takes a lot of courage, but even then, all he could muster up was an “I don’t know.”
Myungsoo nods, somehow fully understanding that between the last time they saw each other - at the airport when myungsoo left for daegu - and now, something had shifted. Sungjong was no longer just the old sungjong he knew. Now he was also the public Lee Sungjong, the one who danced and sang all day, everyday; the one who went wild on variety shows to grab people’s attention; the one who greeted strangers with a smile.
Sungjong grabs the booklet from myungsoo’s hands, his uneasiness getting the better of him. He silently places the album back onto the shelf, and pretends to neaten out the other albums, just to buy time. He didn’t know what to say to myungsoo now.
Myungsoo helps Sungjong tidy up the shelf, and at the same time takes out albums that interest him. “An autographed G.Na album? Damn, where did you get this from?” Sungjong glances up and replies coolly, “she gave it to me. We’re close friends.” Myungsoo was taken aback. He doesn’t respond to sungjong’s statement, and continues to look at the other albums.
Sungjong tries hard to make things less awkward. “Have you listened to our music before?” He hopes Myungsoo has, just so he can hear what he thinks about their music. But then he hopes he hasn’t, because what if myungsoo had greater expectations of sungjong, ones that he couldn’t live up to?
“I have, actually. My friends back in daegu were obsessed with kpop, and they never let me off the hook.” Sungjong doesn’t know if it’s a good thing, that myungsoo had to be coerced into listening to the kind of music he made. “Um, so what do you think of it?”
“It’s okay, I guess. The music sounds a little too cheerful for me sometimes, but that scorpion dance was the coolest thing ever.” He shoots a smile at Sungjong. Sungjong grins back. “It is pretty cool, isn’t it? We took forever to perfect that part of the dance. Want me to show you how?” Myungsoo agrees, then gestures at the two sleeping bodies.
“If you do this correctly, you shouldn’t make a sound at all.” Sungjong gets into position on the ground, then walks myungsoo through the steps. Myungsoo tries to get out of doing it at first; “really, I can’t dance. I have to left feet.” But Lee Sungjong wasn’t Lee Sungjong for nothing, so with a little whining and pulling, he finally managed to get myungsoo to give it a shot.
The first time, myungsoo nearly falls backwards into the shelf full of albums. Sungjong quickly reach out to catch him, and guffaws. “No kidding, you really do have two left feet.” Myungsoo glares at him, and this time it has no effect on Sungjong. “Your glares don’t work on me anymore, just so you know.” Myungsoo sighs, the straightens himself up. “Let’s try this again.” Sungjong is surprised with his determination, and doesn’t know whether he actually wants him to try it again, but relents.
“Just try not to fall into anything this time.”
So the two boys dance (or rather, one boy dances perfectly while the other struggles to catch up) for the next few minutes. When myungsoo nearly gets the dance, they both cheer. Sungjong has a huge grin on his face. No particular reason why. He just felt so happy, the happiest he had felt in a long time, and it showed.
They’re both physically drained; it’s now past 2am, and any person would be tired. So they sit on the floor once again, and this time Sungjong grips Myungsoo’s wrists.
“You’re not going anywhere until you tell me what you’re doing here.” He’s afraid he’s coming on too strong, almost aggressive, but he pushes on. “I’m not letting you escape until you ‘fess up.”
Myungsoo hunches over, staring at Sungjong’s hands around his. “I don’t even know where to begin. Everything and nothing led to me coming here. I don’t know… I really don’t.” His hazel eyes look into Sungjong’s, and just then they share a moment. Sungjong relaxes his grip a little. “Just start from… what made you want to find me in the first place. And how did you even find my dorm?”
Myungsoo shifts uneasily on the ground.
“My family moved back to Seoul about a month ago, and I didn’t want to tell you, because I wanted to surprise you. I wasn’t kidding when I told you years ago that I would take whichever airplane that leads me to you. So anyway, we’ve been here for some time now, and something in me told me that it wasn’t the right time to surprise you yet.
So I waited and waited, and finally I couldn’t take it anymore, so I told my parents I was going out with some friends of mine to get some ddeokbbokki to eat, as my midnight snack. They’re either playing dumb or are really ignorant - it’s like they’ve forgotten that I don’t mix well with people. Remember in kindergarten, when you were my only friend?” Sungjong nodded.
“That hasn’t changed. The only friends I had in Daegu were my classmates, and we were kind of forced to be friends, since the class had a size of 7, and there was no one else our age in the neighbourhood to play with. Even then I wouldn’t call them my friends. They were more acquaintances.” Sungjong nods again, prompting myungsoo to continue his story.
“So I lied to my parents, walked to the nearest subway station, and took the subway down to here. It wasn’t difficult finding your dorm from there onwards. I just wandered onto the streets, and asked some teenaged girls that walked past. They all knew where your house was, giving me the street and the house number. So I tried my best to get here without getting lost. Things got a lot easier then, because if you didn’t already know, there were two girls camping outside just now, and they told me that ‘yes this is infinite oppa’s dorm!’.”
“There were girls outside our dorm?” Sungjong asked, incredulous. “Really?”
“Yes, really. Don’t you guys know? You should really look out your windows more often. That’s what they’re for, right?” Sungjong stands up and peers over the window, but all that greets him is an empty street. “They’re gone.”
“Of course they are. When I spoke to them it was nearly three hours ago. Even though they love you, no one in their right mind would sacrifice their sleep for you. I’m sorry, just saying,” Myungsoo lights up. “Except, apparently, me. I wonder why I’m stupid enough to find you now, when I could be sleeping in my bed back home.”
Sungjong slaps myungsoo’s thigh, and the loud smack stirs Hoya from his slumber. It wasn’t soon that he fell back asleep, so the two boys who were still awake weren’t exactly worried. “It’s not called stupidity. It’s called friendship.”
Sungjong immediately slaps his head for how cheesy that sounded, and myungsoo laughed. “Don’t hit yourself, you’ll get bruises in the morning.” Sungjong gasps, quickly starting to rub his forehead. “You shouldn’t do that either; the more you rub it, the redder it’ll become.”
Sungjong draws his hand away from his forehead.
“Since when did you become such a smarty pants?”
“It’s not smarts, Sungjong. It’s common sense.”
In that instance they both start laughing again, and Sungjong lost count of how much he had last in the past few hours. He was probably going to regret even staying up this late to catch up with his friend the next morning, but sets the thought aside, wishing this conversation would never end.
A buzzing sound escapes from Myungsoo’s back pocket, and he quickly presses a button on his cell phone. “It’s the alarm I set. I’d better go, my parents will be up soon.”
“It’s only four thirty in the morning! Who gets up this early?” Sungjong sounds furious, because he was. Deep down he was worried, that if he let myungsoo go again, he wouldn’t get to see him for another decade or so. He didn’t want to risk it; if he could, he would tuck myungsoo into his bagpack and lug him around everywhere. He’d have great company then, better company than all his hyungs could offer him.
“It takes me an hour to get back, and my parents are early risers. They take walks around the neighbourhood at six. If I don’t rush back now, I’ll probably meet them at the door and get grounded for, well, ever.” Sungjong remembers how strict Myungsoo’s parents were with him in the past. At least something hasn’t changed since then.
“When will I see you again?” Sungjong asks, plain and simple. But to Myungsoo, it feels like the most difficult question he ever had to answer.
“No promises when, but I’ll be back for sure.” He turns towards the window sill, then turns back to face Sungjong.
“Mind if I use your front door instead? The sill’s still wet from the rain, and I don’t want to risk falling.” Sungjong rolls his eyes, then walks Myungsoo to their front door.
“Okay, no promises, but you have to swear that you’ll come back. And come back soon; I’ve missed talking to you.” Sungjong hugs Myungsoo quickly, and Myungsoo pats his back.
“Cross my heart and hope to croak, drop a toenail in my coke. I promise.” With that, Myungsoo walks out onto the dimly lit street, and looks both ways, momentarily lost.
“Turn left and go straight!” Sungjong calls out, and Myungsoo waves. “Thanks,” the latter mouths. Sungjong waves back, and shuts the front door.
That morning, Sungjong falls asleep happier than he has been for a long time.