contest entry #2!
Title: This is Not a Love Song
Pairing: HyukjaexDonghae
Rating: PG-13
Notes: ~1,800 words.
Tap on my window knock on my door
I want to make you feel beautiful
I know I tend to get so insecure
It doesn't matter anymore
It's not always rainbows and butterflies
It's compromise that moves us along
My heart is full and my door's always open
You can come anytime you want
-Maroon 5 “She Will Be Loved”
I like keeping the doors open in the apartment. A closed door means secrecy. It keeps all the bad things inside and doesn’t let any of the good in, and I hate that. It’s all so counterproductive.
I tend to open all the doors I pass that are closed, although past experiences have made me a wiser man and I tend to listen for a moment for suspicious noises on the other side before pushing my way through. I don’t want to accidentally walk into the middle of something I’m not a part of, figuratively and literally speaking.
When you’ve lived with a group of eleven-turned-twelve boys like I have, you get used to essentially everything. The only thing missing is a pair of bubbly breasts (to Kangin and Shindong’s extreme disappointment) and influxes of estrogen once a month (though Sungmin is hitting it close).
I want to tell you a story about a boy named Donghae. His birthday is October 15th, 1986. His father passed away just a few months ago.
And actually, he’s me.
-
Closed doors annoy me like a lady running her shopping cart over my foot and not apologizing. They’re more menacing than holiday bell-ringers and more insufferable than your best friend not admitting he’s gay even after you find a stash of gay porn stuffed between his mattresses. This is only figuratively speaking, of course.
Anyway, about six months along the line after our debut as a group, I got so annoyed of Hankyung’s incessantly closed door that I got up from my lazy slouch on the couch and stormed into his room.
“Just because you’re Chinese doesn’t mean you get special privileg-” was all I was able to say before my tongue got stuck to the roof of my mouth.
Kibum stared back at me, eyes wide, crouched somewhere between Hankyung’s spread legs. I quickly did a 180 before I was subject to more eye-scourging images.
I kept all this information to myself for a grand total of twelve minutes and fourteen seconds (I was staring at the clock in shock; that’s how I know), before the weight in my soul bade too much for my innards to contain and I poured out my findings to an unimpressed Hyukjae’s ear.
He continued to type happily on his laptop throughout the entire duration of my confession, barely noting how distressed I, his best-friend-after-Junsu, was. When I was done, he turned he me and gave me a look over his reading glasses.
“Are you done?” was all he asked.
Here I was, practically hyperventilating into a brown paper bag, and Hyukjae was practically implying that I should leave and deal with my own problems myself. Well, so much for second-to-best-friend.
So I left Hyukjae to his typing and found myself in Heechul’s (thankfully clean and empty, save for the person in question) room. After I told him a more condensed version, still stinging from Hyukjae’s obvious rebuttal, Heechul smirked.
“Please don’t tell me you’re surprised!” he declared, hand pressed to his chest, diva-esque.
“I’m surprised,” I deadpan. So sick of being coddled was I that I missed the sparkling glint of mischief in Heechul’s eye.
“Donghae,” he said slowly, as if addressing a simpleton, “Kibum is a growing boy with raging hormones. He’s willing to stick essentially anything and everything into that pretty little mouth of his.”
After a moment of shell-shocked silence, Heechul cracked.
“Oh stop your wibbling, you idiot!” he snapped at me, giving me an offending view of his back. “I was just kidding of course. That Chinese boy and Kibum have been going at it for weeks - don’t you notice anything?”
And then Shiwon appeared at the doorway, a lopsided sultry smile gracing his lips, and Heechul was out the door and simpering in about two seconds flat, leaving me and my whirling mind alone in blessed peace.
-
That’s about when I decided that you really just shouldn’t be allowed to keep your door closed, especially when living with a score of other people you’re supposed to confide in.
Apparently Shiwon, Heechul, Hankyung, and Kibum had all been having their secret flights of fancy behind everyone’s backs. Well, not everyone, since some people seemed to know (like Hyukjae, who I still can’t believe didn’t tell me).
This is why, when, two months later, Hyukjae kissed me for the first time, I couldn’t believe he told me not to tell anyone.
And when he kissed me for the second time, a mesh of probing tongues and chipped nails and “God would you please shut the fuck up”s, I felt annoyed.
The third time, I told him this had to stop, with his hands down the back of my pants. So I bit his lip to ward off further kisses, but he somehow managed to stick his unwanted tongue in my mouth anyway.
Three is usually the lucky number, but maybe four is mine. So the fourth time around, I put my foot down.
“I hate secrets,” I say honestly, glaring at his side.
The way he says, “Well that’s great,” tells me he’s not listening to me at all. That bastard.
After a moments pause in which I pick at my fraying cuticles, I finally blurt, “Why can’t we just tell everyone!”
The way Hyukjae’s fingers still on his keyboard tells me I said the wrong thing. Slowly - so slow that I feel as if I’m a part of some melodramatic love film - he turns in his swirly chair and gives me a look. “And what is there to tell?”
I’m outraged by this comment. What is there to tell! So much! That… that…. that…
Oh god.
He smiles, satisfied. “Once you can answer that question without gaping at me like a fish out of water, then come back here and talk to me about telling people things.”
He promptly turns back to his laptop and leaves me hanging. I, being a person who hates to be ignored, stand up loudly and stomp into my room, slamming the door behind me. Then I curl up on my bed and nearly shriek at myself for feeling a small twinge of pain somewhere near the proximity of my heart.
-
We fuck four days after our confrontation. Three days of no touching that was outside of the norm, and then on the fourth day I somehow find myself on my back on the thickly carpeted floor, with my pants somewhere on the other side of the room and my shirt pushed up around my shoulders.
When we’re done, he rolls away from me as if I’m a disease he doesn’t want carrying, runs a sweat-slicked hand across his face, and groans out, “Fuck…”
I’m offended. “Well, no one forced you to fuck me, goddamn.”
Then I gather my clothing with clumsy hands and nearly collide, head-first, with the door on my way out because I can barely see anything through my tears.
I hate doors.
-
The following weeks are spent very normally. Hyukjae and I interact like we always do, because we’re still, no matter what, second-to-best-friends.
November 4th, the day before Super Junior’s one year anniversary, finds me with my head in Hyukjae’s lap. Every so often, he threads his fingers through my hair and tidies out the knots.
“Maybe you were right, Donghae,” he muses. For a moment my heart stops.
I can barely utter my next words: “Right about what?”
“About stopping,” he takes his hands away from my hair, ignoring my groans of disapproval, and makes wild gestures. “This. Whatever this is.”
I feel as if my heart has dropped to the bottom of my chest. So I just turn so my head is pressed into his stomach and nod my head slowly, giving off an air that I’m tired and not completely and utterly crushed.
“Because, I mean, one day we’re both going to get married to women and this would just be a weird thing to think back to, don’t you think? And it’s not like we’re in love. We just can’t, with our status, have sex with other women because of what a scandal that would be.”
I wonder if he knows how cruel he’s being. While I would say that Hyukjae is my best friend (though I know I’m only his second-to-best-friend-after-Junsu), sometimes I wonder about him. I hate physical doors, and I also hate it when people shut the door to their heart, while I wear mine on my sleeve.
So, before I can ruin anything more, I quickly get up and rub my eyes as if I’m tired, but really I’m checking for unwanted moisture. I make my way towards the closed door my of room, flippantly telling Hyukjae that he’s completely right, and that I’m feeling tired. Once I get to the door, grasping the handle is hard - so, so, so hard. Once I’m inside, I curl up on the floor and press my forehead into the wooden stands of my bed, unsure whether to scream out in anger or to cry in frustration.
I never should have let Hyukjae kiss me, that first time. At least then I would be saved from a broken heart.
-
November 5th, and it’s our one year anniversary. Kangin somehow manages to sneak in booze (although most of us are legal so it’s no big deal), and Heechul is already hiccupping two hours into the party.
I’ll admit that I’m having fun. There are more things to life than just love, and some things are just temporary compromises to keep our bodily forms happy.
I’ve thought about it a lot. And I don’t really care if Hyukjae loves me or not. Or even if I love him.
What matters now is now, and right now I’m going to enjoy myself.
Nearing midnight, Hyukjae and I are two of the four left still awake. For some odd reason, Hyukjae’s arm is around my middle and my head is somewhere on his chest when the clock strikes midnight, and Hyukjae doesn’t even seem to care that other people (though intoxicated) are present and watching.
I press against his chest so I’m levitated away from him, and I stare intently at his face. He surprises me by staring back, for the first time in a moment, eyes completely unguarded. I don’t know what to think of it, or what to think about the emotions swimming in those dark chocolate eyes, so I just don’t think.
Here’s to another year, I congratulate, and he kisses the pounding away.
Pairing: HyukjaexDonghae
Rating: PG-13
Notes: ~1,800 words.
Tap on my window knock on my door
I want to make you feel beautiful
I know I tend to get so insecure
It doesn't matter anymore
It's not always rainbows and butterflies
It's compromise that moves us along
My heart is full and my door's always open
You can come anytime you want
-Maroon 5 “She Will Be Loved”
I like keeping the doors open in the apartment. A closed door means secrecy. It keeps all the bad things inside and doesn’t let any of the good in, and I hate that. It’s all so counterproductive.
I tend to open all the doors I pass that are closed, although past experiences have made me a wiser man and I tend to listen for a moment for suspicious noises on the other side before pushing my way through. I don’t want to accidentally walk into the middle of something I’m not a part of, figuratively and literally speaking.
When you’ve lived with a group of eleven-turned-twelve boys like I have, you get used to essentially everything. The only thing missing is a pair of bubbly breasts (to Kangin and Shindong’s extreme disappointment) and influxes of estrogen once a month (though Sungmin is hitting it close).
I want to tell you a story about a boy named Donghae. His birthday is October 15th, 1986. His father passed away just a few months ago.
And actually, he’s me.
-
Closed doors annoy me like a lady running her shopping cart over my foot and not apologizing. They’re more menacing than holiday bell-ringers and more insufferable than your best friend not admitting he’s gay even after you find a stash of gay porn stuffed between his mattresses. This is only figuratively speaking, of course.
Anyway, about six months along the line after our debut as a group, I got so annoyed of Hankyung’s incessantly closed door that I got up from my lazy slouch on the couch and stormed into his room.
“Just because you’re Chinese doesn’t mean you get special privileg-” was all I was able to say before my tongue got stuck to the roof of my mouth.
Kibum stared back at me, eyes wide, crouched somewhere between Hankyung’s spread legs. I quickly did a 180 before I was subject to more eye-scourging images.
I kept all this information to myself for a grand total of twelve minutes and fourteen seconds (I was staring at the clock in shock; that’s how I know), before the weight in my soul bade too much for my innards to contain and I poured out my findings to an unimpressed Hyukjae’s ear.
He continued to type happily on his laptop throughout the entire duration of my confession, barely noting how distressed I, his best-friend-after-Junsu, was. When I was done, he turned he me and gave me a look over his reading glasses.
“Are you done?” was all he asked.
Here I was, practically hyperventilating into a brown paper bag, and Hyukjae was practically implying that I should leave and deal with my own problems myself. Well, so much for second-to-best-friend.
So I left Hyukjae to his typing and found myself in Heechul’s (thankfully clean and empty, save for the person in question) room. After I told him a more condensed version, still stinging from Hyukjae’s obvious rebuttal, Heechul smirked.
“Please don’t tell me you’re surprised!” he declared, hand pressed to his chest, diva-esque.
“I’m surprised,” I deadpan. So sick of being coddled was I that I missed the sparkling glint of mischief in Heechul’s eye.
“Donghae,” he said slowly, as if addressing a simpleton, “Kibum is a growing boy with raging hormones. He’s willing to stick essentially anything and everything into that pretty little mouth of his.”
After a moment of shell-shocked silence, Heechul cracked.
“Oh stop your wibbling, you idiot!” he snapped at me, giving me an offending view of his back. “I was just kidding of course. That Chinese boy and Kibum have been going at it for weeks - don’t you notice anything?”
And then Shiwon appeared at the doorway, a lopsided sultry smile gracing his lips, and Heechul was out the door and simpering in about two seconds flat, leaving me and my whirling mind alone in blessed peace.
-
That’s about when I decided that you really just shouldn’t be allowed to keep your door closed, especially when living with a score of other people you’re supposed to confide in.
Apparently Shiwon, Heechul, Hankyung, and Kibum had all been having their secret flights of fancy behind everyone’s backs. Well, not everyone, since some people seemed to know (like Hyukjae, who I still can’t believe didn’t tell me).
This is why, when, two months later, Hyukjae kissed me for the first time, I couldn’t believe he told me not to tell anyone.
And when he kissed me for the second time, a mesh of probing tongues and chipped nails and “God would you please shut the fuck up”s, I felt annoyed.
The third time, I told him this had to stop, with his hands down the back of my pants. So I bit his lip to ward off further kisses, but he somehow managed to stick his unwanted tongue in my mouth anyway.
Three is usually the lucky number, but maybe four is mine. So the fourth time around, I put my foot down.
“I hate secrets,” I say honestly, glaring at his side.
The way he says, “Well that’s great,” tells me he’s not listening to me at all. That bastard.
After a moments pause in which I pick at my fraying cuticles, I finally blurt, “Why can’t we just tell everyone!”
The way Hyukjae’s fingers still on his keyboard tells me I said the wrong thing. Slowly - so slow that I feel as if I’m a part of some melodramatic love film - he turns in his swirly chair and gives me a look. “And what is there to tell?”
I’m outraged by this comment. What is there to tell! So much! That… that…. that…
Oh god.
He smiles, satisfied. “Once you can answer that question without gaping at me like a fish out of water, then come back here and talk to me about telling people things.”
He promptly turns back to his laptop and leaves me hanging. I, being a person who hates to be ignored, stand up loudly and stomp into my room, slamming the door behind me. Then I curl up on my bed and nearly shriek at myself for feeling a small twinge of pain somewhere near the proximity of my heart.
-
We fuck four days after our confrontation. Three days of no touching that was outside of the norm, and then on the fourth day I somehow find myself on my back on the thickly carpeted floor, with my pants somewhere on the other side of the room and my shirt pushed up around my shoulders.
When we’re done, he rolls away from me as if I’m a disease he doesn’t want carrying, runs a sweat-slicked hand across his face, and groans out, “Fuck…”
I’m offended. “Well, no one forced you to fuck me, goddamn.”
Then I gather my clothing with clumsy hands and nearly collide, head-first, with the door on my way out because I can barely see anything through my tears.
I hate doors.
-
The following weeks are spent very normally. Hyukjae and I interact like we always do, because we’re still, no matter what, second-to-best-friends.
November 4th, the day before Super Junior’s one year anniversary, finds me with my head in Hyukjae’s lap. Every so often, he threads his fingers through my hair and tidies out the knots.
“Maybe you were right, Donghae,” he muses. For a moment my heart stops.
I can barely utter my next words: “Right about what?”
“About stopping,” he takes his hands away from my hair, ignoring my groans of disapproval, and makes wild gestures. “This. Whatever this is.”
I feel as if my heart has dropped to the bottom of my chest. So I just turn so my head is pressed into his stomach and nod my head slowly, giving off an air that I’m tired and not completely and utterly crushed.
“Because, I mean, one day we’re both going to get married to women and this would just be a weird thing to think back to, don’t you think? And it’s not like we’re in love. We just can’t, with our status, have sex with other women because of what a scandal that would be.”
I wonder if he knows how cruel he’s being. While I would say that Hyukjae is my best friend (though I know I’m only his second-to-best-friend-after-Junsu), sometimes I wonder about him. I hate physical doors, and I also hate it when people shut the door to their heart, while I wear mine on my sleeve.
So, before I can ruin anything more, I quickly get up and rub my eyes as if I’m tired, but really I’m checking for unwanted moisture. I make my way towards the closed door my of room, flippantly telling Hyukjae that he’s completely right, and that I’m feeling tired. Once I get to the door, grasping the handle is hard - so, so, so hard. Once I’m inside, I curl up on the floor and press my forehead into the wooden stands of my bed, unsure whether to scream out in anger or to cry in frustration.
I never should have let Hyukjae kiss me, that first time. At least then I would be saved from a broken heart.
-
November 5th, and it’s our one year anniversary. Kangin somehow manages to sneak in booze (although most of us are legal so it’s no big deal), and Heechul is already hiccupping two hours into the party.
I’ll admit that I’m having fun. There are more things to life than just love, and some things are just temporary compromises to keep our bodily forms happy.
I’ve thought about it a lot. And I don’t really care if Hyukjae loves me or not. Or even if I love him.
What matters now is now, and right now I’m going to enjoy myself.
Nearing midnight, Hyukjae and I are two of the four left still awake. For some odd reason, Hyukjae’s arm is around my middle and my head is somewhere on his chest when the clock strikes midnight, and Hyukjae doesn’t even seem to care that other people (though intoxicated) are present and watching.
I press against his chest so I’m levitated away from him, and I stare intently at his face. He surprises me by staring back, for the first time in a moment, eyes completely unguarded. I don’t know what to think of it, or what to think about the emotions swimming in those dark chocolate eyes, so I just don’t think.
Here’s to another year, I congratulate, and he kisses the pounding away.