[EXO] [PD7] Play Date 2/2
Title: Play Date 2/2
Fandom: EXO (sort of fused with Final Fantasy VII)
Series: Phoenix Down (#7)
Pairing: Lu Han/Jongin
Rating: PG-13
Genre: AU, crossover (sort of)
Word count: 14,397
Disclaimer: Not mine, damnit. Especially not the lines from the play scene of FFVII.
Part 1
Play Date 2/2
"Lu Han? Where'd you go?" Jongin scans the room frantically, hoping the weird vegetable thing hasn't killed Lu Han in a single move. There's no corpse on the ground, no burning body, no scent of smoke. What if it's sent him back to his orb? What if it's wiped out all the Lu Hans in this world? What if in that other world there's a bookshop owner lying dead on his bedroom floor right now?
Jongin takes a deep breath, tries to get a grip on himself. He reaches for the gauntlets hanging from his belt, half-expecting to see Lu Han's materia missing, or cracked, or dulled, but it's still there, shining brighter than any of the lights in the Gold Saucer. He dons the gauntlets more to comfort himself than for any practical reason. Although there's nothing to fight here, they hold his only physical link to Lu Han. Lu Han can't be dead, right? Or Jongin would know, he's certain of it.
The attendant's busy with another patron and his first instinct is to call across to her and ask her what the items in the bag were supposed to do. It's too crowded and noisy for her to hear him, however; there's nothing for it but to approach her in person.
He bends down to retrieve his bag of prizes when Lu Han's voice in his head says, "Don't step on me!"
Jongin freezes instantly, afraid to move as long as he can't see his Summon. "Where are you?"
"I can see you talking but I can't hear you clearly from down here! Look down!" says the voice in his head.
Slowly, Jongin crouches down, careful not to move his feet. He only sees the bag, and the pink chocobo plushie Lu Han had kept tucked under his arm while Jongin played the G Bike game. There's...something on the chocobo, clinging to its back. A bug?
A closer look reveals that far from being a bug, the plushie is being ridden by Lu Han. A very tiny Lu Han.
"Why are you the size of my thumb!" Jongin exclaims, and little Lu Han claps his hands over his ears with a grimace.
"Too close!" he says in Jongin's head. "Don't shout from that distance."
Okay, Lu Han's probably going to be deafened if Jongin tries anything more than a whisper, but in this racket, will he be able to make out any words at all? Jongin sighs, resigning himself to thinking at Lu Han instead. He tries to avoid it, because he has extremely mixed feelings about what Lu Han can pick up from inside his mind, but this time it's the most efficient way for them to communicate.
"Are you all right?" he asks, doing his best to shape the words clearly, and Lu Han nods his tiny little head.
"I'm not hurt. Just...smaller than I should be. Lift me up?"
They can't stay here, of course. Someone could step on Lu Han at any moment. Jongin picks up the bag with one hand and the chocobo with the other, being sure to move slow enough for Lu Han to maintain his grip on the plushie's neck. Even so, it's a dicey couple of minutes, Jongin's heart in his mouth as he lifts the chocobo inch by careful inch. He doesn't breathe until the plushie's against his chest, and Lu Han swings himself up and over into Jongin's shirt pocket. There. It's a little ticklish, but not unbearable.
"I think that was a Shrivel," Lu Han says. "I've never seen one before, but I've heard about them from Kyungsoo."
"Can you..." Jongin stares helplessly around the arcade. "Can you disappear? You said injuries didn't last for you."
Lu Han shakes his head, unfortunately against Jongin's chest. It feels like someone's taken a feather to him. "Already tried. It's the first time I've been hit by a status ailment; I usually kill things before they can attack me. It looks like I'm not going anywhere until it's removed, though. We need a Remedy."
Even though Lu Han's voice is coming from inside Jongin's mind, Jongin instinctively looks down at his own breast pocket, where a small blond head is staring up at him. This is a crisis of major - or technically, minor - proportions, but Lu Han seems more amused than anything else, like he's not been reduced to a three-inch pipsqueak in his master's pocket.
The urgency is all Jongin's, and he wants out of Wonder Square as soon as possible. Satisfied that Lu Han's secure, he walks as quickly as he dares down the two flights of stairs, back out into the square proper, where he parks himself on a bench. It's quieter out here, allowing them to hear each other if Lu Han speaks up and Jongin keeps his voice down. It's also still uncomfortably warm, or perhaps that's just Jongin's discomfort with the whole situation. He quickly mops the sweat beading under his chin before it can fall on Lu Han. At his new size, it would seem like a downpour. They need to resolve this fast.
Healing items are Yixing's department, now, and Jongin's not sure they've got Remedies. If not, there has to be a pharmacy around here somewhere. "Can you ask Minseok if Yixing's still in his room?"
There's a pause, and then Lu Han says, "He's not. They're both in the station now."
"Going where?"
"Nowhere. You'll see." Lu Han grins up at Jongin, an expression that loses none of its playfulness for being a fraction of its normal size. "Try not to bounce me around too much, okay?"
"Or you'll make me pay for it later?" Jongin grumbles.
"Exactly."
That's almost an incentive. Nevertheless, Jongin makes slow progress back through the portal, each step as smooth and even as he can make it. It's a relief to get back to the cool, air-conditioned station, after the heat outside the arcade. He thinks perhaps the crowd of people standing around inside are feeling the same way, enjoying the chill before they move on, but a pair of familiar voices reach his ears.
Yixing and Minseok. Singing. Somewhere in the middle of the crowd.
Disgruntled sounds float up from Jongin's pocket as he picks his way through the people; he apologises under his breath for jarring Lu Han, but nobody seems inclined to move without a nudge. When he reaches the centre, he sees Yixing sitting on a folded blanket, strumming the guitar in his lap while Minseok sings by his side, sweet voice rising over the rustling clothes and shuffling of feet from the audience. Everything's lazy; everything's mellow. If everyone in the station suddenly lies down for a nap, Jongin won't be surprised one bit.
Yixing looks more content and relaxed than he has for some time now, losing himself in the music, fingers sure and steady on the strings. Minseok sways alongside, tapping out a beat on his thigh with black-painted nails. He, too, is at ease. They've clearly been here a while. There's a small pile of gil building up in what Jongin recognises as one of Minseok's caps, and more is tossed in as he watches. He'd be tempted to throw in some of his own, except that it would all go back into their collective funds anyway.
Besides, as the tiny dancing Summon in his pocket reminds him, he's not here for the music.
When the buskers take a break and the crowd begins to disperse, Jongin gently drops down beside Yixing, tapping his fingertips together in the hopes that such soft applause won't deafen Lu Han. Yixing looks surprised to see him.
"I enjoyed the music," Jongin says. "I thought you were going to stay in the hotel and make Potions?"
"I thought I should at least see what the Gold Saucer's like, since I'm finally here," Yixing says.
"He means he got lonely and called me out to play," Minseok says with a fond grin in Yixing's direction. "Where's Lu Han? I thought he was with you."
"Um..." Jongin leans forward, so the others can see Lu Han's screwed up little face and hands clapped over his tiny ears. Oops. Jongin's been forgetting to keep his voice down.
Minseok reaches out with one hand and gently tickles Lu Han under the chin with the tip of his pinky. Lu Han's eyes fly open immediately; he grabs for the finger but Minseok's too fast, withdrawing before he acquires a neat set of teeth marks in the skin.
"He's very cute like this," Yixing says. "You should leave him that way."
Lu Han pulls a face and shouts up at him, "You're supposed to be a healer!"
"We need a Remedy." Jongin carefully pets the top of Lu Han's head with his fingertip. The tiny shock of hair is fluffy to the touch. "Do we have any?"
"There's a shop in the hotel that sells some of the supplies we need." Yixing hands Minseok his guitar and pulls out a bag from behind the case. "Lucky for you I picked some up on my way out here."
He rummages around in the bag until he pulls out a purple bottle. Jongin takes it, about to thank him when he realises that the bottle is actually bigger than Lu Han. Nonplussed, he gives Yixing a beseeching look. Yixing merely shakes his head, faintly amused, and Jongin knows they're on their own.
"Try not to let him drown in it," Minseok advises. "I've never actually seen what happens when one of us dies in this world, and I don't want to find out tonight. Even if he does deserve it for using up all the hot water this morning."
Lu Han doesn't look remotely apologetic. "That was Zitao after his workout. I just used up what was left."
"You could've at least shared with me!"
"I don't share showers," Lu Han says, and Jongin marvels over how someone so minuscule can exude such a powerful icy aura.
Minseok, whose power is Ice-based, is not cowed in the slightest. "You can't take one by yourself like this; you'll slide down the drain."
What a horrific thought. Jongin reacts by clutching a hand protectively over his pocket, until he realises that Lu Han probably can't breathe like that. He lets go, Lu Han jabbing at his fingers as he uncurls them. He really needs to watch his step.
"Sorry," he murmurs down to his chest, hoping he hasn't flattened his Summon.
Lu Han's still breathing, if not overly happy, and Jongin figures they'd best get moving. He wants to use the Remedy as soon as possible to restore Lu Han to his proper size.
"You should go," Minseok says. "Before his tiny little head explodes."
Yixing nods. "I'll be out here a while longer if you need me. It's very relaxing."
Jongin's glad someone's finding some peace tonight. It's a fair bet Kris isn't, what with the pressure of tomorrow's race, and his own evening has taken a turn for the bizarre. At least this is something Lu Han clearly hadn't planned, which in a way is quite a pleasant surprise - in the novelty, at least, if not the event itself. The fact remains, however, that Lu Han is terribly vulnerable at his current size, and all Jongin would have to do is trip...
He's extra careful as he makes his way back through the graveyard towards the hotel, and then up the stairs to his room. The bed's still mussed from his nap earlier. He sinks down on the edge of the mattress, Remedy in hand, and contemplates how best to go about feeding it to Lu Han. Even a straw would be too big.
"How about the bottle cap?" Lu Han suggests, now sitting comfortably on Jongin's knee, but when Jongin pours a little of the liquid into the cap, it's still too big for Lu Han to hold, never mind keep steady long enough to drink from.
Jongin's about to pour the Remedy back into the bottle when he has an idea. It might be a bit...embarrassing, but it's not as if they have any witnesses. He's done this before, back at the Honey Bee Inn - only that was with honey, and both participants were full-size. He's safe enough to touch the Remedy himself, since he's not afflicted with any status ailments. The capful of liquid is on the small bedside table, next to the bottle and the gauntlets he's just removed; Jongin dips his left pinky finger in the cap, plunging it as deep as it will go, then quickly positions his dripping finger within Lu Han's reach.
It takes Lu Han a second to catch on; by then, the first drop is sliding down Jongin's skin, ready to fall. There's no knowing how much of the Remedy will be necessary to restore Lu Han to normal. They might have to keep this up for hours.
Jongin hopes not. Not that he minds it when Lu Han clutches his finger and sucks greedily at the drops of Remedy until there's no more to be had. It's a weird sensation, the suction from a tiny mouth, Lu Han's teeth pressing against his skin because there's not enough room, but it's not an unpleasant one by any means. Jongin dips his finger in the cap again for a second round and this time Lu Han licks the drops from it, ticklish swipe after ticklish swipe, wet and warm and utterly wonderful.
There's no noticeable difference yet, not that Jongin can see, so he continues to feed him the Remedy a few drops at a time. It takes another four rounds before Lu Han's tiny form has taken in enough of the stuff to undo the effects of the Shrivel, and there's no slow, gradual expansion - it's a matter of seconds.
Which mean's Jongin's left with his pinky in the now full-size mouth of a bright-eyed Lu Han, who's straddling him on the edge of the bed and showing no signs of relinquishing it.
"Uh..." Jongin's very, very conscious of Lu Han's thighs bracketing his own, Lu Han's arms snaking around his back for balance, Lu Han's tongue laving the length of his finger. They're enough of a distraction that forming words is a greater challenge than usual. "Welcome back?" he tries. "Kind of?"
Whatever Lu Han's trying to say in response is lost around Jongin's pinky, emerging as a satisfied hum, and Jongin can't help but laugh at him for it. Lu Han grins back, relinquishing his hold; Jongin slides his finger free, now well and truly cleaned of traces of Remedy.
"Your pocket's quite comfortable," Lu Han says, "but I think I could do without going through that again. If Baekhyun finds out I'll never hear the end of it."
Baekhyun's definitely finding out, because Minseok will tell him. But Jongin doesn't want to think about Baekhyun, or Minseok, or anyone other than Lu Han right now - and Lu Han's doing his best to ensure that anything else is an impossibility, sliding his fingers up under Jongin's shirt, nails lightly scoring the skin beneath. Jongin exhales in a sharp hiss. Maybe this is their last stop for the night. He thinks he wouldn't mind, if that were the case.
"I like you better like this," he says. "I was afraid I was going to crush you by accident."
"I'd have come back to you anyway. There's more than twenty of me running around in your world somewhere; I think I can spare one for you."
"Even one who's equipped by someone else?"
"Didn't stop me before, did it?" Lu Han says, and Jongin wonders about that other Lu Han he met in Wonder Square, if he'd simply tell his master to hand over the materia to Jongin, or perhaps trick her into it. There's not much he won't do to get what he wants.
But it's what Jongin wants too, so he's in no position to complain. No position to do much of anything, in fact, beyond looping his arms over Lu Han's shoulders and drawing him nearer for a kiss. When he's comfortable with someone, Jongin allows himself to touch them at will - a gentle hand on the back of the neck, a light shoulder massage, leaning on them as he drifts off to sleep. With someone else, all of these things would be platonic. With Lu Han...not so much.
It's a struggle to maintain his balance when he's practically pulling Lu Han down on top of him, so Jongin lets himself fall back onto the mattress, slowly so Lu Han has time to keep his hands from being crushed. His feet are still flat on the floor; the mattress cuts into the backs of his knees. Lu Han's laughing helplessly into the crook between his neck and his shoulder and the puffs of warm air have Jongin wriggling beneath him.
The hotel keeps the air-conditioning on high, but as far as Jongin's concerned it might as well be broken, because his clothes are sticking to his skin and his hair clings damply to the back of his neck. Everything's too warm, where Lu Han's touching him. Warm, and heavy, but not yet sleepy, not after resting in the afternoon, and there's no way he wants to fall asleep like this.
Lu Han's clearly not here to sleep either - not with the way his fingers are tracing a line across Jongin's stomach, dipping below the waistband of his trousers - but after a few extremely intense minutes, he starts to pull back. Jongin whines in confusion.
"We have to go," Lu Han says, although he doesn't sound totally convinced, willing to stay if Jongin will just give him one good reason. Jongin would give him ten. "I have other plans for tonight, and one of them starts soon. We'll miss it if we don't leave now."
"But-"
"Jongin," Lu Han says, and Jongin forgets to protest. Lu Han's said his name all of once so far, in his mind, on the cargo ship from Junon when he'd learned it in a dream.
It's still so new to him, after months of nothing at all, or a vaguely amused 'Master' (which Jongin feels is completely misleading given how their relationship tends to work, whatever Lu Han says). He's known all his life who he isn't. He's known for less than a day who he is. It feels right, discarding 'Kai', and being 'Jongin' doesn't feel wrong, but it's one thing to know, intellectually, that 'Jongin' is his real name, and to hear it from Yixing and the others. It's quite another to hear it from Lu Han.
"How long have you known?" he asks; Lu Han blanks for a moment, so he clarifies with, "My name?"
"Less than a year. I started seeing your face in dreams long before that, though." Lu Han brushes Jongin's damp bangs away from his eyes, fingers trailing tenderly across the skin. "I was so happy when I found out who you were."
Jongin catches his hand. "You could've told me."
"I could've," Lu Han agrees, "but you needed to find out for yourself. I didn't want you to have to take my word for it - not when I was sure you'd all learn the truth eventually. I thought it would be easier to believe."
"You still could've called me 'Kai' until I found out?"
Lu Han shakes his head. "We all made an agreement not to call you guys by any names we hadn't heard in our dreams, because if they weren't the same, then they weren't real."
"Even so-"
"Jongin," Lu Han says again, and Jongin shuts up. "I didn't want you to get used to me calling you by any name but yours, okay?"
This is quite okay with Jongin. Letting Lu Han drag him back off the bed and down through the graveyard, not so much, though he's promised a continuation later. His mind's still enveloped in that warm, fuzzy haze, which he hopes will last until they return to the hotel.
And yet there's a tiny spark of an idea flaring in the middle of that haze - too obscured by fog to see clearly now, but burning still, waiting for him to feed it with attention. Something Lu Han's just said about names...
Jongin consigns it to the back of his mind for the moment as they arrive at Event Square. Whatever it is, it can wait until later. He's not about to ruin the first proper date of his life with something that might turn out to be nothing at all.
"There's a play on tonight," Lu Han informs him. "I thought it might be fun to watch?"
Watching is not on the cards, however, as they're greeted with congratulations at the entrance to the theatre.
"Thanks," Jongin says warily, "but for what?"
"You are our hundredth couple today!" the usher says. "You two will be the leads in tonight's show!"
This has to be some kind of joke. No way is Jongin going up on the stage to perform in a play. If all has to do is dance, maybe, but he's no actor. He turns to glare at Lu Han.
"What?" Lu Han seems equally surprised. Either it's genuine, or his acting's good enough that performing in a play will be a piece of cake for him. Jongin's leaning towards the former, but with Lu Han, it's hard to tell. "This wasn't what I had planned, I swear!"
"Oh, now, it's not hard," Jongin's new worst enemy says. "Just play it however you want to and the rest of the cast will cover up for you. Some of them are volunteers, too."
"How is this volunteering?" Jongin demands to know, but his protests fall on deaf ears as Lu Han - the traitor! - insists that they go get into costume.
When they're led backstage, they're handed the costumes and given a choice. One of them has to play the hero, Alfred. The other plays his lady love, Princess Rosa. Jongin's torn between wanting to escape the dress, and wanting the part with the least acting involved.
"I'll be nice," Lu Han says. "The choice is yours. But I have to warn you, I don't look nearly as cute in a dress as you do."
Various staff hovering around them look at Jongin with sudden interest. They all turn away again when he says, "It was for an assassination job."
In the end, Jongin decides to risk playing the hero. Who doesn't want to be a hero, after all? Lu Han can wear the dress this time. Jongin gets a tight black doublet, which he pulls on over his shirt, and a big plastic sword for his costume; Lu Han gets a long pink wig and an oversized cream dress for his. The dress is loose enough that Lu Han can wear his own clothes underneath too, and is of sufficient length to cover the fact that the costume department don't have women's shoes large enough to fit him.
He doesn't think much of the sword. "Mine's much bigger," he says to Jongin, and a nearby wardrobe assistant blushes.
Jongin just wants to get this over with. The rest of the cast are waiting in the wings; he doesn't even know who they are, or what he's supposed to say, or what his character's supposed to be like, or-
"Relax," Lu Han murmurs by his ear, hugging him from behind - or trying to, but the dress is quite puffy. "The other actors will cue you when you need to speak, and they'll work with whatever you give them. This is my third time doing it; it's not exactly a complicated play."
"That's easy for you to say," Jongin says miserably. "All you have to do is wait to be rescued."
"I rescue you all the time," Lu Han says. "It's your turn now. Just be yourself."
"Being myself isn't going to help. I have to be a hero."
Lu Han gives him a firm smack between the shoulderblades. "You already are."
Oh. Well. That's...kind of true, isn't it? Defeating an evil dragon king isn't something Jongin's done personally, but he's done plenty of other things that probably qualify as heroic. And without a plastic sword, too. He can do this.
That's what he has to keep telling himself, as he listens from the wings to the narrator explaining that the Princess Rosa has just been kidnapped by the evil dragon king, Valvados. When the narrator says, "Just then, the legendary hero, Alfred, appears!", there's a shove from behind and Jongin finds himself stumbling forward onto the stage.
At least there's nothing for him to crash into. The boards are bare; there's no set except a blue sky backdrop of a house, a tree, and a very fat mama chocobo surrounded by her babies. For a theme park that appears to spend so much money elsewhere, it's surprisingly cheap when it comes to the theatre. Perhaps that's why there are so few people in the audience. Jongin feels somewhat better now he can see his epic humiliation will only have a few dozen witnesses, at most. The first ninety-nine couples must've been spread across the whole day's performances.
When he straightens up, a knight in full armour spins his way onto the stage. Jongin can't see the face beneath the helm, and it's an unfamiliar voice who says: "Oh...you must be the legendary hero...Alfred!"
Jongin continues to stare straight ahead, waiting for his cue. The knight extends a hand to him and mutters, "Hey, it's your line." Startled, Jongin turns and points to himself. The knight nods and says, "Yeah, you."
Great. They've only just started and he's screwed up already. Jongin fumbles around for something to say and hopes his face isn't as red as he thinks it is. Fortunately, the knight, who is clearly used to working with hopeless amateurs, glosses over that part altogether and tells 'Alfred' that he must rescue Princess Rosa.
But first he has to talk to the king, and that's when Jongin almost falls off the stage in shock.
"The crown suits me, don't you think?" Baekhyun says to him, sotto voce. He's wearing blue and white robes, and there's a (probably fake) gold crown perched atop his head. "I'm thinking of throwing it to that girl in the front row at the end of the show."
Jongin looks, but there are several girls in the front row and all of them are watching him, rather than Baekhyun, so it's impossible to tell which one he means. "Can't you settle for hitting on girls in your own world?" he hisses back.
Baekhyun ignores him, spreading his arms wide and projecting his voice as far as it will go (which is pretty far). "Oh...legendary hero, Alfred. You have come to save my beloved Rosa..."
Jongin wonders if Lu Han knows that Baekhyun's playing his dad, and vice versa. He's not sure which of them will be least amused by this. He assumes Baekhyun's also a 'volunteer' drafted in for the night, which would explain the total lack of subtlety in his acting when he explains to Jongin how Valvados lives on a mountain peak, and how Jongin can't beat him as he is now, he has to talk to someone first. There's obviously some kind of script, but maybe only the first few volunteers get to see it.
Jongin's pretty sure he'd find it easier to kill an evil dragon king (maybe not with a plastic sword) than talk to yet another stranger, as a wizard dances his way onto the stage. Much to his relief, the wizard is no one he recognises, which probably means he knows what he's doing. Maybe. The knight's still there too. Jongin has to decide which of them to talk to.
He opts for the wizard, because the knight already thinks he's a moron. The 'great wizard, Vorman', as he introduces himself, gives him the choice of two pieces of information: the evil dragon king's weakness...or the princess's measurements. There's no way anyone's even going to be able to guess at Lu Han's measurements in that voluminous dress, and frankly, Jongin doesn't want to hear them in front of an audience. It's obvious which choice he's supposed to make.
The evil dragon king's weakness, surprise surprise, is true love, which is the only force that can withstand the fangs of the dragon king. Jongin's not too sure about that, especially when the evil dragon king himself thunders onto the stage, carrying Lu Han in his arms. King Baekhyun tries desperately to hide his giggles behind his hands as Evil Dragon King Kris, his face mostly hidden in a winged, all over green dragon costume, roars a ferocious greeting and dumps Princess Lu Han unceremoniously on the ground. The princess reaches behind himself and smacks the evil dragon king on the ankle, prompting a second - wholly unscripted - roar.
"I am the Evil Dragon King...Valvados!" Kris booms out, with a pause that suggests he's having trouble remembering his character's name. He and Baekhyun must've had more prep time than Jongin and Lu Han, but that doesn't explain what they're doing here. "I have not harmed the princess. I have been expecting...you!"
Still on the floor, Lu Han gazes up at Jongin with an all-too-feigned - and alarmingly cute - vulnerability that makes it hard to remember he spends most of his time in this world slicing monsters into tiny pieces. "Please help me...legendary hero!"
Baekhyun's also on the floor, though in his case it's due to excessive laughter and the wizard keeps shooting him dirty looks. Still, none of the audience members have walked out yet, which says a lot about the play's usual standards.
Kris looks like he wants to sink through the floor, from what Jongin can see of his face. He's clearly been set up, too. He roars again. "Here I come, Legendary hero...Alfred!"
The wizard elbows the knight to make him haul Baekhyun to his feet, before telling Jongin that he must kiss someone and in doing so, invoke the power of true love, the only force that can stop the evil dragon king.
Jongin tends to do his kissing behind closed doors, and never on a stage. He looks around at his potential options, ruling out the two actors because his days of kissing strangers are over and nobody's paying him for this. Baekhyun's making 'X' signs with his hands. There's not enough of Kris visible inside the costume to kiss, and he likely wouldn't be too keen on the idea anyway. Lu Han it is.
Lu Han's still sitting on the floor, twirling the ends of his wig. Jongin offers him a hand up; when he's standing, Jongin decides to get his own back for that time in Don Corneo's mansion and drops to one knee, mouthing "my lady" up at him before pressing a kiss to the back of his hand. Lu Han explodes with very unprincess-like laughter, earning himself a glare from the wizard. A wire attached to the back of Kris's costume lifts him up into the rafters; if Jongin looks up he can just see the dragon being reeled in like a fish. Of course, it's not like Kris could transform into a dragon here and use his own wings to fly away...
Baekhyun eventually remembers that he has a line, though he struggles to get the words out, still cracking up over the ridiculousness of the play. "Oh...look! Love has...triumphed!" He goes on to suggest that they all return and celebrate.
The wizard mutters something about it being high time for a drink; the knight nods vigorously and follows him off the stage. Baekhyun shuffles after them, clutching his ribs.
Jongin's left alone on the stage with Lu Han, the narrator droning on in the background about the power of true love.
"Take a bow and let's go," Lu Han says. "I need to make sure Baekhyun doesn't get drunk at the afterparty."
Jongin finds it hard to believe that a production on this scale would have any kind of afterparty, but he's relieved to be leaving the stage. He bows a full ninety degrees and comes up waving with both hands, smiling as if he's just won a beauty pageant. The girls in the front row start screaming.
"You should've been the princess," Lu Han says. He bobs his head, gives a quick wave with one hand, then uses it to grab Jongin and haul him off the stage.
They find Baekhyun trying to help Kris out of his dragon costume in the dressing room. The real actors are nowhere in sight, but Jongin can hear the clink of bottles from the room next door. He can't say he's surprised.
"One of his wings got caught in the zip," Baekhyun says, tugging half-heartedly at it. "Someone else can have a go; I can't stay out much longer."
"You did better than I thought you would," Lu Han says. "Were you the one who set it up so we'd have to be in the play too?"
Baekhyun smiles radiantly at him. "If you can volunteer us, we can volunteer you. Fair's fair, Princess."
He vanishes back into his orb, leaving Lu Han vowing to give him nothing but morning shifts for a week. "No more college girls for him! I should have him in the back, taking inventory..."
"Don't let me interrupt your hypocrisy or anything," Kris says, "but can I get a little help here?"
"I'll do it." Jongin manages to free the trapped wing and open the costume, releasing a much-relieved Kris.
Lu Han tosses the wig aside and steps out of his dress; Kris stares at his jeans and multicoloured shirt. "What?" Lu Han says. "Did I leave threads on my shirt?"
"You changed again," Kris says. "You were wearing that at the hotel, then you were wearing shorts when you found me on my way back from the track."
"Oh, that wasn't me. I mean, not this me. There's another one of my orbs here at the moment. Multitasking's great." Kris groans; Lu Han adds, "At least it's not two Baekhyuns?"
"I think I'd prefer that."
"Trust me, you wouldn't. I live with the guy, I should know."
Jongin's brain is slowly processing the situation. "So that you from Wonder Square, he - I mean, you - persuaded Kris to be in the play?"
"And to call out Baekhyun again so he could be in it too," Lu Han says. "We were just supposed to be in the audience, though. Part of the cast is always made up of people who get drafted in to do the show - that's half the fun!"
"I don't know about 'fun'," Kris says. Jongin looks at him quizzically, wondering why he even agreed to do it in the first place. "I just thought it would take my mind off the race."
"I'll assume it worked," Lu Han says. "But now you'll have to keep yourself distracted for the rest of the evening, because we have other plans."
"This morning, I woke up on a cargo ship," Kris says. "Since then, I've ridden through the mountains, done four laps on a racetrack, and made my stage debut. I don't know about you guys, but I'm going to bed."
"So are we," Lu Han says sweetly, "but not for a little while yet."
Mortified, Jongin keeps his eyes on the floor until Kris has left. It's no secret, his relationship with Lu Han, but it still embarrasses him to have attention drawn to it like that. It's bad enough when Yixing comments on it.
Lu Han pats his hand. "He'll be asleep by the time we get back to the hotel. Don't worry about it."
"I hope so." Hotel walls are thin; Jongin would rather his companions didn't get an earful. "Where to now?"
"One last stop. No audience involved, I promise."
The final part of the plan involves a trip to the oddly-named Round Square, which houses a ticket booth with world's fattest chocobo on its roof. Jongin wonders if there's a problem with chocobo obesity on this continent.
"Two, please," Lu Han says to the lady in the booth. She hands him two tickets. It's not apparent what they're for until an empty wooden gondola swings into position by the gap in the safety barrier. While clearly well-used, the gondola's in better shape than the North Corel cable car. It's mostly windows all around, with benches at both ends and a large square light in the ceiling.
Jongin goes first. Lu Han sits down beside him on the bench as the door slides shut and the gondola begins to move. Neither have the words for more than a few exclamations as the glittering gold has them bedazzled through the window.
The Gold Saucer lives up to its name, gleaming gold discs stacked in the desert, hiding the ruins of Old Corel with layers of shining lights. The ride takes them in loops around the park, past bright towers and the wonders inside, past the chocobo tracks and the massive coloured spotlights that pierce the night sky. It's like nothing Jongin's ever seen before. Midgar has a giant disc too, but that's an entire world away from something this beautiful, where people come to enjoy themselves, not to trudge away in misery until death sets them free.
He turns to share his delight with Lu Han, but Lu Han's gripping the edges of the bench so hard his knuckles have turned white, and is resolutely not looking out any of the windows. That only leaves the floor and the ceiling as safe options, and Jongin knows Lu Han's running shoes cannot possibly be as interesting as the scenery outside.
"Hey." He reaches for clenched fingers, gives Lu Han a little poke. "I thought you wanted to see the sights?"
Lu Han doesn't unbend in the slightest, voice as tight as his body when he replies, "I didn't realise we were going to see them from above."
Jongin gets it then. The gondola's no longer skimming just over the ground - they're actually up in the air now, swooping through trails of coloured lights as they circle up, down, and around, headed for the moon. And Lu Han hates heights. Really, really hates heights. Jongin hasn't seen his face this green since that time on the roof of Junon's City Hall, when they were both so out of it neither of them could think clearly enough to remember that an injured Jongin could simply have teleported down to safety.
He covers Lu Han's hand with his own, hoping simple human contact will help. "It can't last that long," he says, aiming for reassurance, but a sudden upward spiral around a tower has the gondola lurching most unpleasantly. It knocks them together, pressing them close at shoulders and thighs, the climb unsettling even Jongin's stomach.
Lu Han screws up his eyes and clenches his teeth; Jongin hopes it's not a sign he's about to throw up. There's no emergency stop button inside the gondola and while there are a lot of windows, vomiting out of them while they're moving at this speed is bound to be problematic, not to mention messy. There are probably people below who wouldn't appreciate it much, either.
As much as Jongin dislikes the idea, he has to suggest it. "If it's that bad, you could just...disappear and come back out later?"
The faint grunt that emerges from Lu Han's throat suggests he's not keen on the idea. It takes him a minute and a few heavy duty swallows to unclench enough to elaborate, and his voice catches with tiny hiccups, a sign of nervousness he can't quite control. "That's not how this date is supposed to go."
"But if it's better-"
"I'm not," Lu Han swallows again, hard, "going to leave you on the ride by yourself."
They've stopped rising, now; the gondola sails straight and smooth across the wire, desert sands shifting beneath and catching Jongin's eye through the window. They're over the desert right now, not the park, and if something were to happen to the wire...
Jongin lowers his eyelids against the sight and leans closer to Lu Han. "You won't," he says, free hand patting the glowing Summon materia in his gauntlets. "Not while I have this. You're always with me."
"You're a romantic," Lu Han says, a trifle shaky but sincere. "How cute."
Hearing that from Lu Han makes Jongin feel like a favourite puppy, or perhaps a pet bunny rabbit. Which isn't to say he doesn't like it, though it does somewhat tarnish the 'hero' status he acquired during the play (heroic bunnies, he feels, are probably few and far between). He casts about for a distraction. If Lu Han's talking, he's not thinking about how high up they are.
It's too bad conversation has never been Jongin's strong point. He's much better at putting his thoughts in writing than trying to force them out his mouth, where they emerge in blunt, plain language that endears him to some people, but not so much to others. (Most of his customers at the Honey Bee Inn preferred him to be doing other things with his mouth.)
His fingers are still playing across his gauntlets, and when they encounter a second Summon materia, that gives him an idea for a topic. "Um...you know I've got Kyungsoo now too, right? Can he hear us?"
That works - and Jongin would actually like to know, if only so he doesn't feel paranoid about it. Lu Han looks up from the floor long enough to give him a disbelieving stare (because who says that kind of thing on a date, anyway?). "Not likely. And if he could, he'd ignore us."
"Oh." Jongin doesn't know much about Kyungsoo, only what he's heard from Lu Han, and their one meeting so far hasn't exactly given them time to get to know each other. There's a massive discrepancy between his original impression of Summons, and what he knows about them now, and Kyungsoo's just a normal guy, in his own world. "Does he...not like me?"
"He doesn't know you." Lu Han sets a hand down on Jongin's thigh and squeezes - thankfully, with a lighter grip than he'd had on the bench. "Don't take it personally. I think he's just annoyed with the universe for leaving him at the beck and call of the sixteen or so people who have his materia orbs. They're not always the kind of people he's happy to spend time with."
"But do you think I am?"
"You won't need to call on him much because you've got me," Lu Han says sweetly. "He'll like that."
Jongin can't argue there. He's the only one of them with two Summons, and the odds are good that if they're in so much trouble that they need to call on all four, they might already be dead by the time he gets to summon Kyungsoo. As long as they're all together, he doesn't suppose it matters much who's equipped by whom, but he's definitely keeping Lu Han for himself. He doesn't want to be with anyone else like this. He doesn't want Lu Han to be with anyone else like this, either.
"You can always pass him back to the professor when you find him?" Lu Han suggests. "I don't imagine he intended to leave Kyungsoo behind."
"Do you know who he is? Professor Suho?" That's the nagging little spark that's been burning in the back of Jongin's mind since before the play. Lu Han had said the Summons had agreed not to call any of them by names they hadn't heard in dreams - and Kyungsoo had refused to say the professor's name, which meant...
Lu Han shakes his head. "Kyungsoo saw him in a dream a few nights ago, using the power of water. He didn't hear any names but I doubt the professor's is actually 'Suho'. It's a shame he didn't have that dream earlier - his orb appeared at Fort Condor a couple of years ago. We could have been working on him already."
The gondola picks up speed again, circling back around the Gold Saucer; Lu Han's fingers tighten around Jongin's thigh, nails digging in as the reality of their location becomes unavoidable. It feels like Lu Han's trying to slice his way through Jongin's trousers, through his skin and the layers beneath until he scrapes bone, but Jongin can't bring himself to mind the bruises he knows are on their way. Lu Han's inflicted far worse on others to protect him; the least Jongin can do is support him through this.
It's an odd partnership. It's not practical, with Lu Han being physically present in this world less than half the time, and Jongin still finds it hard to believe that after the life he's led so far, he's managed to find someone who makes him feel happier when they're together than when they're apart. Not that he's not happy being with Yixing and the others, because he is, but he's never wanted, for instance, Kris's large hands working their way up the inside of his thighs, or to discover whether or not Yixing's expression changes when he comes. He's becoming closer to all of them, but it's very, very different with Lu Han.
If it were one of the others up here with him, afraid of the way they're suspended in mid-air, terrified of plummeting to the ground below, would they still sit like this, huddled together, grabbing at each other when the gondola makes a sudden turn? Jongin suspects not. Sometimes Lu Han's a master at concealing himself behind a smiling mask, so determined and focused and sharp. And then there are the times when he's surprised or startled, when something else shows through, and Jongin files away those pieces of new information in his memory.
A scared Lu Han is a relatively rare Lu Han, though he's doing his best not to show it. He stares at the floor rather than the bright lights and gleaming gold outside, until Jongin draws him in with a hand on the back of his neck, and then his view is limited to Jongin's shirt. He's muttering something now, words lost in the fabric where it's safe to say such things. Jongin figures he doesn't need to hear them.
Perhaps they can make it through the rest of the ride like this, and when they arrive back at the platform Lu Han will straighten up, and smile at the lady in the ticket booth when she asks if they enjoyed it, and they can spend the remainder of the evening on solid ground. (Or as close as anything in Ghost Square gets to 'solid ground', anyway.) Jongin strokes Lu Han's back in large, slow circles and tries to think of comforting things to say.
He doesn't get very far before an explosion outside has them jerking violently apart on the bench, staring out of different windows in an attempt to find the source of the noise. They're still in the air, and the gondola's not rocking...
"Fireworks!" Lu Han shouts, pointing at the green and pink stars exploding in the sky.
Jongin's relieved not to have to duck for cover. He doesn't think he can fit under the bench. He stares out in wonder at the marvellous patterns outside, at multicoloured flowers and rockets and spiders in the air, in red and yellow and blue, showering sparks over the theme park. There's nowhere to let off fireworks in Midgar, not down in the slums under the plate; he's only seen them once before, back in Junon with Lu Han, during a festival when they'd danced in the streets with the rest of the city. Jongin had been badly startled by the first explosion, and Lu Han had had to explain them to him. He knows how to appreciate them now, though.
It's hard for them to talk with all the whistles and bangs, so they don't try. The dazzling display lasts almost until the gondola finishes making its way slowly back to the platform. Lu Han's so entranced by it that he either forgets or manages to ignore their altitude, and when the gondola comes to a halt, he hops out, revitalised, not looking at all like he's just spent most of the ride as a nervous wreck. Only a slight unsteadiness in his gait gives him away. He crouches down next to the ticket booth for a minute, leaning against the wall and facing away from the gondola.
It's not something he's ever going to try again, he assures Jongin afterwards. Once was enough.
"But I liked the fireworks," he adds, and Jongin loves seeing him smile again.
As first dates go, things have worked out pretty well. Oh, sure, there's the small matter of Lu Han being accidentally shrunk, and then ending up on a ride that terrified him, out of a desire to show Jongin the sights. And so what if Jongin had embarrassed himself on the stage by flubbing lines he hadn't even known he had? They've danced, and played games, and watched the fireworks together. Jongin has a new pink chocobo plushie (which he is not letting Kris steal), and he's had his first happy memory of the two of them from before. All in all, he thinks they've come out ahead.
The crowds are much thinner now as they walk back to the hotel. Everyone with a home within reach has already left on the cable cars, and only the staff and overnight guests remain. Yixing and Minseok are no longer busking at the station; Minseok's probably back in his orb, and Yixing's likely asleep. So Jongin hopes, anyway. The last thing he wants is Yixing popping his head around the bedroom door to find out if Lu Han's been restored to his proper size.
No one's waiting up for them in the lobby and the door to Yixing and Kris's room is shut. Jongin keeps his voice down when he asks, "How much longer can you stay?"
The answer he wants is forever but that's not going to happen. "I'm not tired yet," Lu Han says. "Shall we find out?"
Fandom: EXO (sort of fused with Final Fantasy VII)
Series: Phoenix Down (#7)
Pairing: Lu Han/Jongin
Rating: PG-13
Genre: AU, crossover (sort of)
Word count: 14,397
Disclaimer: Not mine, damnit. Especially not the lines from the play scene of FFVII.
Part 1
Play Date 2/2
"Lu Han? Where'd you go?" Jongin scans the room frantically, hoping the weird vegetable thing hasn't killed Lu Han in a single move. There's no corpse on the ground, no burning body, no scent of smoke. What if it's sent him back to his orb? What if it's wiped out all the Lu Hans in this world? What if in that other world there's a bookshop owner lying dead on his bedroom floor right now?
Jongin takes a deep breath, tries to get a grip on himself. He reaches for the gauntlets hanging from his belt, half-expecting to see Lu Han's materia missing, or cracked, or dulled, but it's still there, shining brighter than any of the lights in the Gold Saucer. He dons the gauntlets more to comfort himself than for any practical reason. Although there's nothing to fight here, they hold his only physical link to Lu Han. Lu Han can't be dead, right? Or Jongin would know, he's certain of it.
The attendant's busy with another patron and his first instinct is to call across to her and ask her what the items in the bag were supposed to do. It's too crowded and noisy for her to hear him, however; there's nothing for it but to approach her in person.
He bends down to retrieve his bag of prizes when Lu Han's voice in his head says, "Don't step on me!"
Jongin freezes instantly, afraid to move as long as he can't see his Summon. "Where are you?"
"I can see you talking but I can't hear you clearly from down here! Look down!" says the voice in his head.
Slowly, Jongin crouches down, careful not to move his feet. He only sees the bag, and the pink chocobo plushie Lu Han had kept tucked under his arm while Jongin played the G Bike game. There's...something on the chocobo, clinging to its back. A bug?
A closer look reveals that far from being a bug, the plushie is being ridden by Lu Han. A very tiny Lu Han.
"Why are you the size of my thumb!" Jongin exclaims, and little Lu Han claps his hands over his ears with a grimace.
"Too close!" he says in Jongin's head. "Don't shout from that distance."
Okay, Lu Han's probably going to be deafened if Jongin tries anything more than a whisper, but in this racket, will he be able to make out any words at all? Jongin sighs, resigning himself to thinking at Lu Han instead. He tries to avoid it, because he has extremely mixed feelings about what Lu Han can pick up from inside his mind, but this time it's the most efficient way for them to communicate.
"Are you all right?" he asks, doing his best to shape the words clearly, and Lu Han nods his tiny little head.
"I'm not hurt. Just...smaller than I should be. Lift me up?"
They can't stay here, of course. Someone could step on Lu Han at any moment. Jongin picks up the bag with one hand and the chocobo with the other, being sure to move slow enough for Lu Han to maintain his grip on the plushie's neck. Even so, it's a dicey couple of minutes, Jongin's heart in his mouth as he lifts the chocobo inch by careful inch. He doesn't breathe until the plushie's against his chest, and Lu Han swings himself up and over into Jongin's shirt pocket. There. It's a little ticklish, but not unbearable.
"I think that was a Shrivel," Lu Han says. "I've never seen one before, but I've heard about them from Kyungsoo."
"Can you..." Jongin stares helplessly around the arcade. "Can you disappear? You said injuries didn't last for you."
Lu Han shakes his head, unfortunately against Jongin's chest. It feels like someone's taken a feather to him. "Already tried. It's the first time I've been hit by a status ailment; I usually kill things before they can attack me. It looks like I'm not going anywhere until it's removed, though. We need a Remedy."
Even though Lu Han's voice is coming from inside Jongin's mind, Jongin instinctively looks down at his own breast pocket, where a small blond head is staring up at him. This is a crisis of major - or technically, minor - proportions, but Lu Han seems more amused than anything else, like he's not been reduced to a three-inch pipsqueak in his master's pocket.
The urgency is all Jongin's, and he wants out of Wonder Square as soon as possible. Satisfied that Lu Han's secure, he walks as quickly as he dares down the two flights of stairs, back out into the square proper, where he parks himself on a bench. It's quieter out here, allowing them to hear each other if Lu Han speaks up and Jongin keeps his voice down. It's also still uncomfortably warm, or perhaps that's just Jongin's discomfort with the whole situation. He quickly mops the sweat beading under his chin before it can fall on Lu Han. At his new size, it would seem like a downpour. They need to resolve this fast.
Healing items are Yixing's department, now, and Jongin's not sure they've got Remedies. If not, there has to be a pharmacy around here somewhere. "Can you ask Minseok if Yixing's still in his room?"
There's a pause, and then Lu Han says, "He's not. They're both in the station now."
"Going where?"
"Nowhere. You'll see." Lu Han grins up at Jongin, an expression that loses none of its playfulness for being a fraction of its normal size. "Try not to bounce me around too much, okay?"
"Or you'll make me pay for it later?" Jongin grumbles.
"Exactly."
That's almost an incentive. Nevertheless, Jongin makes slow progress back through the portal, each step as smooth and even as he can make it. It's a relief to get back to the cool, air-conditioned station, after the heat outside the arcade. He thinks perhaps the crowd of people standing around inside are feeling the same way, enjoying the chill before they move on, but a pair of familiar voices reach his ears.
Yixing and Minseok. Singing. Somewhere in the middle of the crowd.
Disgruntled sounds float up from Jongin's pocket as he picks his way through the people; he apologises under his breath for jarring Lu Han, but nobody seems inclined to move without a nudge. When he reaches the centre, he sees Yixing sitting on a folded blanket, strumming the guitar in his lap while Minseok sings by his side, sweet voice rising over the rustling clothes and shuffling of feet from the audience. Everything's lazy; everything's mellow. If everyone in the station suddenly lies down for a nap, Jongin won't be surprised one bit.
Yixing looks more content and relaxed than he has for some time now, losing himself in the music, fingers sure and steady on the strings. Minseok sways alongside, tapping out a beat on his thigh with black-painted nails. He, too, is at ease. They've clearly been here a while. There's a small pile of gil building up in what Jongin recognises as one of Minseok's caps, and more is tossed in as he watches. He'd be tempted to throw in some of his own, except that it would all go back into their collective funds anyway.
Besides, as the tiny dancing Summon in his pocket reminds him, he's not here for the music.
When the buskers take a break and the crowd begins to disperse, Jongin gently drops down beside Yixing, tapping his fingertips together in the hopes that such soft applause won't deafen Lu Han. Yixing looks surprised to see him.
"I enjoyed the music," Jongin says. "I thought you were going to stay in the hotel and make Potions?"
"I thought I should at least see what the Gold Saucer's like, since I'm finally here," Yixing says.
"He means he got lonely and called me out to play," Minseok says with a fond grin in Yixing's direction. "Where's Lu Han? I thought he was with you."
"Um..." Jongin leans forward, so the others can see Lu Han's screwed up little face and hands clapped over his tiny ears. Oops. Jongin's been forgetting to keep his voice down.
Minseok reaches out with one hand and gently tickles Lu Han under the chin with the tip of his pinky. Lu Han's eyes fly open immediately; he grabs for the finger but Minseok's too fast, withdrawing before he acquires a neat set of teeth marks in the skin.
"He's very cute like this," Yixing says. "You should leave him that way."
Lu Han pulls a face and shouts up at him, "You're supposed to be a healer!"
"We need a Remedy." Jongin carefully pets the top of Lu Han's head with his fingertip. The tiny shock of hair is fluffy to the touch. "Do we have any?"
"There's a shop in the hotel that sells some of the supplies we need." Yixing hands Minseok his guitar and pulls out a bag from behind the case. "Lucky for you I picked some up on my way out here."
He rummages around in the bag until he pulls out a purple bottle. Jongin takes it, about to thank him when he realises that the bottle is actually bigger than Lu Han. Nonplussed, he gives Yixing a beseeching look. Yixing merely shakes his head, faintly amused, and Jongin knows they're on their own.
"Try not to let him drown in it," Minseok advises. "I've never actually seen what happens when one of us dies in this world, and I don't want to find out tonight. Even if he does deserve it for using up all the hot water this morning."
Lu Han doesn't look remotely apologetic. "That was Zitao after his workout. I just used up what was left."
"You could've at least shared with me!"
"I don't share showers," Lu Han says, and Jongin marvels over how someone so minuscule can exude such a powerful icy aura.
Minseok, whose power is Ice-based, is not cowed in the slightest. "You can't take one by yourself like this; you'll slide down the drain."
What a horrific thought. Jongin reacts by clutching a hand protectively over his pocket, until he realises that Lu Han probably can't breathe like that. He lets go, Lu Han jabbing at his fingers as he uncurls them. He really needs to watch his step.
"Sorry," he murmurs down to his chest, hoping he hasn't flattened his Summon.
Lu Han's still breathing, if not overly happy, and Jongin figures they'd best get moving. He wants to use the Remedy as soon as possible to restore Lu Han to his proper size.
"You should go," Minseok says. "Before his tiny little head explodes."
Yixing nods. "I'll be out here a while longer if you need me. It's very relaxing."
Jongin's glad someone's finding some peace tonight. It's a fair bet Kris isn't, what with the pressure of tomorrow's race, and his own evening has taken a turn for the bizarre. At least this is something Lu Han clearly hadn't planned, which in a way is quite a pleasant surprise - in the novelty, at least, if not the event itself. The fact remains, however, that Lu Han is terribly vulnerable at his current size, and all Jongin would have to do is trip...
He's extra careful as he makes his way back through the graveyard towards the hotel, and then up the stairs to his room. The bed's still mussed from his nap earlier. He sinks down on the edge of the mattress, Remedy in hand, and contemplates how best to go about feeding it to Lu Han. Even a straw would be too big.
"How about the bottle cap?" Lu Han suggests, now sitting comfortably on Jongin's knee, but when Jongin pours a little of the liquid into the cap, it's still too big for Lu Han to hold, never mind keep steady long enough to drink from.
Jongin's about to pour the Remedy back into the bottle when he has an idea. It might be a bit...embarrassing, but it's not as if they have any witnesses. He's done this before, back at the Honey Bee Inn - only that was with honey, and both participants were full-size. He's safe enough to touch the Remedy himself, since he's not afflicted with any status ailments. The capful of liquid is on the small bedside table, next to the bottle and the gauntlets he's just removed; Jongin dips his left pinky finger in the cap, plunging it as deep as it will go, then quickly positions his dripping finger within Lu Han's reach.
It takes Lu Han a second to catch on; by then, the first drop is sliding down Jongin's skin, ready to fall. There's no knowing how much of the Remedy will be necessary to restore Lu Han to normal. They might have to keep this up for hours.
Jongin hopes not. Not that he minds it when Lu Han clutches his finger and sucks greedily at the drops of Remedy until there's no more to be had. It's a weird sensation, the suction from a tiny mouth, Lu Han's teeth pressing against his skin because there's not enough room, but it's not an unpleasant one by any means. Jongin dips his finger in the cap again for a second round and this time Lu Han licks the drops from it, ticklish swipe after ticklish swipe, wet and warm and utterly wonderful.
There's no noticeable difference yet, not that Jongin can see, so he continues to feed him the Remedy a few drops at a time. It takes another four rounds before Lu Han's tiny form has taken in enough of the stuff to undo the effects of the Shrivel, and there's no slow, gradual expansion - it's a matter of seconds.
Which mean's Jongin's left with his pinky in the now full-size mouth of a bright-eyed Lu Han, who's straddling him on the edge of the bed and showing no signs of relinquishing it.
"Uh..." Jongin's very, very conscious of Lu Han's thighs bracketing his own, Lu Han's arms snaking around his back for balance, Lu Han's tongue laving the length of his finger. They're enough of a distraction that forming words is a greater challenge than usual. "Welcome back?" he tries. "Kind of?"
Whatever Lu Han's trying to say in response is lost around Jongin's pinky, emerging as a satisfied hum, and Jongin can't help but laugh at him for it. Lu Han grins back, relinquishing his hold; Jongin slides his finger free, now well and truly cleaned of traces of Remedy.
"Your pocket's quite comfortable," Lu Han says, "but I think I could do without going through that again. If Baekhyun finds out I'll never hear the end of it."
Baekhyun's definitely finding out, because Minseok will tell him. But Jongin doesn't want to think about Baekhyun, or Minseok, or anyone other than Lu Han right now - and Lu Han's doing his best to ensure that anything else is an impossibility, sliding his fingers up under Jongin's shirt, nails lightly scoring the skin beneath. Jongin exhales in a sharp hiss. Maybe this is their last stop for the night. He thinks he wouldn't mind, if that were the case.
"I like you better like this," he says. "I was afraid I was going to crush you by accident."
"I'd have come back to you anyway. There's more than twenty of me running around in your world somewhere; I think I can spare one for you."
"Even one who's equipped by someone else?"
"Didn't stop me before, did it?" Lu Han says, and Jongin wonders about that other Lu Han he met in Wonder Square, if he'd simply tell his master to hand over the materia to Jongin, or perhaps trick her into it. There's not much he won't do to get what he wants.
But it's what Jongin wants too, so he's in no position to complain. No position to do much of anything, in fact, beyond looping his arms over Lu Han's shoulders and drawing him nearer for a kiss. When he's comfortable with someone, Jongin allows himself to touch them at will - a gentle hand on the back of the neck, a light shoulder massage, leaning on them as he drifts off to sleep. With someone else, all of these things would be platonic. With Lu Han...not so much.
It's a struggle to maintain his balance when he's practically pulling Lu Han down on top of him, so Jongin lets himself fall back onto the mattress, slowly so Lu Han has time to keep his hands from being crushed. His feet are still flat on the floor; the mattress cuts into the backs of his knees. Lu Han's laughing helplessly into the crook between his neck and his shoulder and the puffs of warm air have Jongin wriggling beneath him.
The hotel keeps the air-conditioning on high, but as far as Jongin's concerned it might as well be broken, because his clothes are sticking to his skin and his hair clings damply to the back of his neck. Everything's too warm, where Lu Han's touching him. Warm, and heavy, but not yet sleepy, not after resting in the afternoon, and there's no way he wants to fall asleep like this.
Lu Han's clearly not here to sleep either - not with the way his fingers are tracing a line across Jongin's stomach, dipping below the waistband of his trousers - but after a few extremely intense minutes, he starts to pull back. Jongin whines in confusion.
"We have to go," Lu Han says, although he doesn't sound totally convinced, willing to stay if Jongin will just give him one good reason. Jongin would give him ten. "I have other plans for tonight, and one of them starts soon. We'll miss it if we don't leave now."
"But-"
"Jongin," Lu Han says, and Jongin forgets to protest. Lu Han's said his name all of once so far, in his mind, on the cargo ship from Junon when he'd learned it in a dream.
It's still so new to him, after months of nothing at all, or a vaguely amused 'Master' (which Jongin feels is completely misleading given how their relationship tends to work, whatever Lu Han says). He's known all his life who he isn't. He's known for less than a day who he is. It feels right, discarding 'Kai', and being 'Jongin' doesn't feel wrong, but it's one thing to know, intellectually, that 'Jongin' is his real name, and to hear it from Yixing and the others. It's quite another to hear it from Lu Han.
"How long have you known?" he asks; Lu Han blanks for a moment, so he clarifies with, "My name?"
"Less than a year. I started seeing your face in dreams long before that, though." Lu Han brushes Jongin's damp bangs away from his eyes, fingers trailing tenderly across the skin. "I was so happy when I found out who you were."
Jongin catches his hand. "You could've told me."
"I could've," Lu Han agrees, "but you needed to find out for yourself. I didn't want you to have to take my word for it - not when I was sure you'd all learn the truth eventually. I thought it would be easier to believe."
"You still could've called me 'Kai' until I found out?"
Lu Han shakes his head. "We all made an agreement not to call you guys by any names we hadn't heard in our dreams, because if they weren't the same, then they weren't real."
"Even so-"
"Jongin," Lu Han says again, and Jongin shuts up. "I didn't want you to get used to me calling you by any name but yours, okay?"
This is quite okay with Jongin. Letting Lu Han drag him back off the bed and down through the graveyard, not so much, though he's promised a continuation later. His mind's still enveloped in that warm, fuzzy haze, which he hopes will last until they return to the hotel.
And yet there's a tiny spark of an idea flaring in the middle of that haze - too obscured by fog to see clearly now, but burning still, waiting for him to feed it with attention. Something Lu Han's just said about names...
Jongin consigns it to the back of his mind for the moment as they arrive at Event Square. Whatever it is, it can wait until later. He's not about to ruin the first proper date of his life with something that might turn out to be nothing at all.
"There's a play on tonight," Lu Han informs him. "I thought it might be fun to watch?"
Watching is not on the cards, however, as they're greeted with congratulations at the entrance to the theatre.
"Thanks," Jongin says warily, "but for what?"
"You are our hundredth couple today!" the usher says. "You two will be the leads in tonight's show!"
This has to be some kind of joke. No way is Jongin going up on the stage to perform in a play. If all has to do is dance, maybe, but he's no actor. He turns to glare at Lu Han.
"What?" Lu Han seems equally surprised. Either it's genuine, or his acting's good enough that performing in a play will be a piece of cake for him. Jongin's leaning towards the former, but with Lu Han, it's hard to tell. "This wasn't what I had planned, I swear!"
"Oh, now, it's not hard," Jongin's new worst enemy says. "Just play it however you want to and the rest of the cast will cover up for you. Some of them are volunteers, too."
"How is this volunteering?" Jongin demands to know, but his protests fall on deaf ears as Lu Han - the traitor! - insists that they go get into costume.
When they're led backstage, they're handed the costumes and given a choice. One of them has to play the hero, Alfred. The other plays his lady love, Princess Rosa. Jongin's torn between wanting to escape the dress, and wanting the part with the least acting involved.
"I'll be nice," Lu Han says. "The choice is yours. But I have to warn you, I don't look nearly as cute in a dress as you do."
Various staff hovering around them look at Jongin with sudden interest. They all turn away again when he says, "It was for an assassination job."
In the end, Jongin decides to risk playing the hero. Who doesn't want to be a hero, after all? Lu Han can wear the dress this time. Jongin gets a tight black doublet, which he pulls on over his shirt, and a big plastic sword for his costume; Lu Han gets a long pink wig and an oversized cream dress for his. The dress is loose enough that Lu Han can wear his own clothes underneath too, and is of sufficient length to cover the fact that the costume department don't have women's shoes large enough to fit him.
He doesn't think much of the sword. "Mine's much bigger," he says to Jongin, and a nearby wardrobe assistant blushes.
Jongin just wants to get this over with. The rest of the cast are waiting in the wings; he doesn't even know who they are, or what he's supposed to say, or what his character's supposed to be like, or-
"Relax," Lu Han murmurs by his ear, hugging him from behind - or trying to, but the dress is quite puffy. "The other actors will cue you when you need to speak, and they'll work with whatever you give them. This is my third time doing it; it's not exactly a complicated play."
"That's easy for you to say," Jongin says miserably. "All you have to do is wait to be rescued."
"I rescue you all the time," Lu Han says. "It's your turn now. Just be yourself."
"Being myself isn't going to help. I have to be a hero."
Lu Han gives him a firm smack between the shoulderblades. "You already are."
Oh. Well. That's...kind of true, isn't it? Defeating an evil dragon king isn't something Jongin's done personally, but he's done plenty of other things that probably qualify as heroic. And without a plastic sword, too. He can do this.
That's what he has to keep telling himself, as he listens from the wings to the narrator explaining that the Princess Rosa has just been kidnapped by the evil dragon king, Valvados. When the narrator says, "Just then, the legendary hero, Alfred, appears!", there's a shove from behind and Jongin finds himself stumbling forward onto the stage.
At least there's nothing for him to crash into. The boards are bare; there's no set except a blue sky backdrop of a house, a tree, and a very fat mama chocobo surrounded by her babies. For a theme park that appears to spend so much money elsewhere, it's surprisingly cheap when it comes to the theatre. Perhaps that's why there are so few people in the audience. Jongin feels somewhat better now he can see his epic humiliation will only have a few dozen witnesses, at most. The first ninety-nine couples must've been spread across the whole day's performances.
When he straightens up, a knight in full armour spins his way onto the stage. Jongin can't see the face beneath the helm, and it's an unfamiliar voice who says: "Oh...you must be the legendary hero...Alfred!"
Jongin continues to stare straight ahead, waiting for his cue. The knight extends a hand to him and mutters, "Hey, it's your line." Startled, Jongin turns and points to himself. The knight nods and says, "Yeah, you."
Great. They've only just started and he's screwed up already. Jongin fumbles around for something to say and hopes his face isn't as red as he thinks it is. Fortunately, the knight, who is clearly used to working with hopeless amateurs, glosses over that part altogether and tells 'Alfred' that he must rescue Princess Rosa.
But first he has to talk to the king, and that's when Jongin almost falls off the stage in shock.
"The crown suits me, don't you think?" Baekhyun says to him, sotto voce. He's wearing blue and white robes, and there's a (probably fake) gold crown perched atop his head. "I'm thinking of throwing it to that girl in the front row at the end of the show."
Jongin looks, but there are several girls in the front row and all of them are watching him, rather than Baekhyun, so it's impossible to tell which one he means. "Can't you settle for hitting on girls in your own world?" he hisses back.
Baekhyun ignores him, spreading his arms wide and projecting his voice as far as it will go (which is pretty far). "Oh...legendary hero, Alfred. You have come to save my beloved Rosa..."
Jongin wonders if Lu Han knows that Baekhyun's playing his dad, and vice versa. He's not sure which of them will be least amused by this. He assumes Baekhyun's also a 'volunteer' drafted in for the night, which would explain the total lack of subtlety in his acting when he explains to Jongin how Valvados lives on a mountain peak, and how Jongin can't beat him as he is now, he has to talk to someone first. There's obviously some kind of script, but maybe only the first few volunteers get to see it.
Jongin's pretty sure he'd find it easier to kill an evil dragon king (maybe not with a plastic sword) than talk to yet another stranger, as a wizard dances his way onto the stage. Much to his relief, the wizard is no one he recognises, which probably means he knows what he's doing. Maybe. The knight's still there too. Jongin has to decide which of them to talk to.
He opts for the wizard, because the knight already thinks he's a moron. The 'great wizard, Vorman', as he introduces himself, gives him the choice of two pieces of information: the evil dragon king's weakness...or the princess's measurements. There's no way anyone's even going to be able to guess at Lu Han's measurements in that voluminous dress, and frankly, Jongin doesn't want to hear them in front of an audience. It's obvious which choice he's supposed to make.
The evil dragon king's weakness, surprise surprise, is true love, which is the only force that can withstand the fangs of the dragon king. Jongin's not too sure about that, especially when the evil dragon king himself thunders onto the stage, carrying Lu Han in his arms. King Baekhyun tries desperately to hide his giggles behind his hands as Evil Dragon King Kris, his face mostly hidden in a winged, all over green dragon costume, roars a ferocious greeting and dumps Princess Lu Han unceremoniously on the ground. The princess reaches behind himself and smacks the evil dragon king on the ankle, prompting a second - wholly unscripted - roar.
"I am the Evil Dragon King...Valvados!" Kris booms out, with a pause that suggests he's having trouble remembering his character's name. He and Baekhyun must've had more prep time than Jongin and Lu Han, but that doesn't explain what they're doing here. "I have not harmed the princess. I have been expecting...you!"
Still on the floor, Lu Han gazes up at Jongin with an all-too-feigned - and alarmingly cute - vulnerability that makes it hard to remember he spends most of his time in this world slicing monsters into tiny pieces. "Please help me...legendary hero!"
Baekhyun's also on the floor, though in his case it's due to excessive laughter and the wizard keeps shooting him dirty looks. Still, none of the audience members have walked out yet, which says a lot about the play's usual standards.
Kris looks like he wants to sink through the floor, from what Jongin can see of his face. He's clearly been set up, too. He roars again. "Here I come, Legendary hero...Alfred!"
The wizard elbows the knight to make him haul Baekhyun to his feet, before telling Jongin that he must kiss someone and in doing so, invoke the power of true love, the only force that can stop the evil dragon king.
Jongin tends to do his kissing behind closed doors, and never on a stage. He looks around at his potential options, ruling out the two actors because his days of kissing strangers are over and nobody's paying him for this. Baekhyun's making 'X' signs with his hands. There's not enough of Kris visible inside the costume to kiss, and he likely wouldn't be too keen on the idea anyway. Lu Han it is.
Lu Han's still sitting on the floor, twirling the ends of his wig. Jongin offers him a hand up; when he's standing, Jongin decides to get his own back for that time in Don Corneo's mansion and drops to one knee, mouthing "my lady" up at him before pressing a kiss to the back of his hand. Lu Han explodes with very unprincess-like laughter, earning himself a glare from the wizard. A wire attached to the back of Kris's costume lifts him up into the rafters; if Jongin looks up he can just see the dragon being reeled in like a fish. Of course, it's not like Kris could transform into a dragon here and use his own wings to fly away...
Baekhyun eventually remembers that he has a line, though he struggles to get the words out, still cracking up over the ridiculousness of the play. "Oh...look! Love has...triumphed!" He goes on to suggest that they all return and celebrate.
The wizard mutters something about it being high time for a drink; the knight nods vigorously and follows him off the stage. Baekhyun shuffles after them, clutching his ribs.
Jongin's left alone on the stage with Lu Han, the narrator droning on in the background about the power of true love.
"Take a bow and let's go," Lu Han says. "I need to make sure Baekhyun doesn't get drunk at the afterparty."
Jongin finds it hard to believe that a production on this scale would have any kind of afterparty, but he's relieved to be leaving the stage. He bows a full ninety degrees and comes up waving with both hands, smiling as if he's just won a beauty pageant. The girls in the front row start screaming.
"You should've been the princess," Lu Han says. He bobs his head, gives a quick wave with one hand, then uses it to grab Jongin and haul him off the stage.
They find Baekhyun trying to help Kris out of his dragon costume in the dressing room. The real actors are nowhere in sight, but Jongin can hear the clink of bottles from the room next door. He can't say he's surprised.
"One of his wings got caught in the zip," Baekhyun says, tugging half-heartedly at it. "Someone else can have a go; I can't stay out much longer."
"You did better than I thought you would," Lu Han says. "Were you the one who set it up so we'd have to be in the play too?"
Baekhyun smiles radiantly at him. "If you can volunteer us, we can volunteer you. Fair's fair, Princess."
He vanishes back into his orb, leaving Lu Han vowing to give him nothing but morning shifts for a week. "No more college girls for him! I should have him in the back, taking inventory..."
"Don't let me interrupt your hypocrisy or anything," Kris says, "but can I get a little help here?"
"I'll do it." Jongin manages to free the trapped wing and open the costume, releasing a much-relieved Kris.
Lu Han tosses the wig aside and steps out of his dress; Kris stares at his jeans and multicoloured shirt. "What?" Lu Han says. "Did I leave threads on my shirt?"
"You changed again," Kris says. "You were wearing that at the hotel, then you were wearing shorts when you found me on my way back from the track."
"Oh, that wasn't me. I mean, not this me. There's another one of my orbs here at the moment. Multitasking's great." Kris groans; Lu Han adds, "At least it's not two Baekhyuns?"
"I think I'd prefer that."
"Trust me, you wouldn't. I live with the guy, I should know."
Jongin's brain is slowly processing the situation. "So that you from Wonder Square, he - I mean, you - persuaded Kris to be in the play?"
"And to call out Baekhyun again so he could be in it too," Lu Han says. "We were just supposed to be in the audience, though. Part of the cast is always made up of people who get drafted in to do the show - that's half the fun!"
"I don't know about 'fun'," Kris says. Jongin looks at him quizzically, wondering why he even agreed to do it in the first place. "I just thought it would take my mind off the race."
"I'll assume it worked," Lu Han says. "But now you'll have to keep yourself distracted for the rest of the evening, because we have other plans."
"This morning, I woke up on a cargo ship," Kris says. "Since then, I've ridden through the mountains, done four laps on a racetrack, and made my stage debut. I don't know about you guys, but I'm going to bed."
"So are we," Lu Han says sweetly, "but not for a little while yet."
Mortified, Jongin keeps his eyes on the floor until Kris has left. It's no secret, his relationship with Lu Han, but it still embarrasses him to have attention drawn to it like that. It's bad enough when Yixing comments on it.
Lu Han pats his hand. "He'll be asleep by the time we get back to the hotel. Don't worry about it."
"I hope so." Hotel walls are thin; Jongin would rather his companions didn't get an earful. "Where to now?"
"One last stop. No audience involved, I promise."
The final part of the plan involves a trip to the oddly-named Round Square, which houses a ticket booth with world's fattest chocobo on its roof. Jongin wonders if there's a problem with chocobo obesity on this continent.
"Two, please," Lu Han says to the lady in the booth. She hands him two tickets. It's not apparent what they're for until an empty wooden gondola swings into position by the gap in the safety barrier. While clearly well-used, the gondola's in better shape than the North Corel cable car. It's mostly windows all around, with benches at both ends and a large square light in the ceiling.
Jongin goes first. Lu Han sits down beside him on the bench as the door slides shut and the gondola begins to move. Neither have the words for more than a few exclamations as the glittering gold has them bedazzled through the window.
The Gold Saucer lives up to its name, gleaming gold discs stacked in the desert, hiding the ruins of Old Corel with layers of shining lights. The ride takes them in loops around the park, past bright towers and the wonders inside, past the chocobo tracks and the massive coloured spotlights that pierce the night sky. It's like nothing Jongin's ever seen before. Midgar has a giant disc too, but that's an entire world away from something this beautiful, where people come to enjoy themselves, not to trudge away in misery until death sets them free.
He turns to share his delight with Lu Han, but Lu Han's gripping the edges of the bench so hard his knuckles have turned white, and is resolutely not looking out any of the windows. That only leaves the floor and the ceiling as safe options, and Jongin knows Lu Han's running shoes cannot possibly be as interesting as the scenery outside.
"Hey." He reaches for clenched fingers, gives Lu Han a little poke. "I thought you wanted to see the sights?"
Lu Han doesn't unbend in the slightest, voice as tight as his body when he replies, "I didn't realise we were going to see them from above."
Jongin gets it then. The gondola's no longer skimming just over the ground - they're actually up in the air now, swooping through trails of coloured lights as they circle up, down, and around, headed for the moon. And Lu Han hates heights. Really, really hates heights. Jongin hasn't seen his face this green since that time on the roof of Junon's City Hall, when they were both so out of it neither of them could think clearly enough to remember that an injured Jongin could simply have teleported down to safety.
He covers Lu Han's hand with his own, hoping simple human contact will help. "It can't last that long," he says, aiming for reassurance, but a sudden upward spiral around a tower has the gondola lurching most unpleasantly. It knocks them together, pressing them close at shoulders and thighs, the climb unsettling even Jongin's stomach.
Lu Han screws up his eyes and clenches his teeth; Jongin hopes it's not a sign he's about to throw up. There's no emergency stop button inside the gondola and while there are a lot of windows, vomiting out of them while they're moving at this speed is bound to be problematic, not to mention messy. There are probably people below who wouldn't appreciate it much, either.
As much as Jongin dislikes the idea, he has to suggest it. "If it's that bad, you could just...disappear and come back out later?"
The faint grunt that emerges from Lu Han's throat suggests he's not keen on the idea. It takes him a minute and a few heavy duty swallows to unclench enough to elaborate, and his voice catches with tiny hiccups, a sign of nervousness he can't quite control. "That's not how this date is supposed to go."
"But if it's better-"
"I'm not," Lu Han swallows again, hard, "going to leave you on the ride by yourself."
They've stopped rising, now; the gondola sails straight and smooth across the wire, desert sands shifting beneath and catching Jongin's eye through the window. They're over the desert right now, not the park, and if something were to happen to the wire...
Jongin lowers his eyelids against the sight and leans closer to Lu Han. "You won't," he says, free hand patting the glowing Summon materia in his gauntlets. "Not while I have this. You're always with me."
"You're a romantic," Lu Han says, a trifle shaky but sincere. "How cute."
Hearing that from Lu Han makes Jongin feel like a favourite puppy, or perhaps a pet bunny rabbit. Which isn't to say he doesn't like it, though it does somewhat tarnish the 'hero' status he acquired during the play (heroic bunnies, he feels, are probably few and far between). He casts about for a distraction. If Lu Han's talking, he's not thinking about how high up they are.
It's too bad conversation has never been Jongin's strong point. He's much better at putting his thoughts in writing than trying to force them out his mouth, where they emerge in blunt, plain language that endears him to some people, but not so much to others. (Most of his customers at the Honey Bee Inn preferred him to be doing other things with his mouth.)
His fingers are still playing across his gauntlets, and when they encounter a second Summon materia, that gives him an idea for a topic. "Um...you know I've got Kyungsoo now too, right? Can he hear us?"
That works - and Jongin would actually like to know, if only so he doesn't feel paranoid about it. Lu Han looks up from the floor long enough to give him a disbelieving stare (because who says that kind of thing on a date, anyway?). "Not likely. And if he could, he'd ignore us."
"Oh." Jongin doesn't know much about Kyungsoo, only what he's heard from Lu Han, and their one meeting so far hasn't exactly given them time to get to know each other. There's a massive discrepancy between his original impression of Summons, and what he knows about them now, and Kyungsoo's just a normal guy, in his own world. "Does he...not like me?"
"He doesn't know you." Lu Han sets a hand down on Jongin's thigh and squeezes - thankfully, with a lighter grip than he'd had on the bench. "Don't take it personally. I think he's just annoyed with the universe for leaving him at the beck and call of the sixteen or so people who have his materia orbs. They're not always the kind of people he's happy to spend time with."
"But do you think I am?"
"You won't need to call on him much because you've got me," Lu Han says sweetly. "He'll like that."
Jongin can't argue there. He's the only one of them with two Summons, and the odds are good that if they're in so much trouble that they need to call on all four, they might already be dead by the time he gets to summon Kyungsoo. As long as they're all together, he doesn't suppose it matters much who's equipped by whom, but he's definitely keeping Lu Han for himself. He doesn't want to be with anyone else like this. He doesn't want Lu Han to be with anyone else like this, either.
"You can always pass him back to the professor when you find him?" Lu Han suggests. "I don't imagine he intended to leave Kyungsoo behind."
"Do you know who he is? Professor Suho?" That's the nagging little spark that's been burning in the back of Jongin's mind since before the play. Lu Han had said the Summons had agreed not to call any of them by names they hadn't heard in dreams - and Kyungsoo had refused to say the professor's name, which meant...
Lu Han shakes his head. "Kyungsoo saw him in a dream a few nights ago, using the power of water. He didn't hear any names but I doubt the professor's is actually 'Suho'. It's a shame he didn't have that dream earlier - his orb appeared at Fort Condor a couple of years ago. We could have been working on him already."
The gondola picks up speed again, circling back around the Gold Saucer; Lu Han's fingers tighten around Jongin's thigh, nails digging in as the reality of their location becomes unavoidable. It feels like Lu Han's trying to slice his way through Jongin's trousers, through his skin and the layers beneath until he scrapes bone, but Jongin can't bring himself to mind the bruises he knows are on their way. Lu Han's inflicted far worse on others to protect him; the least Jongin can do is support him through this.
It's an odd partnership. It's not practical, with Lu Han being physically present in this world less than half the time, and Jongin still finds it hard to believe that after the life he's led so far, he's managed to find someone who makes him feel happier when they're together than when they're apart. Not that he's not happy being with Yixing and the others, because he is, but he's never wanted, for instance, Kris's large hands working their way up the inside of his thighs, or to discover whether or not Yixing's expression changes when he comes. He's becoming closer to all of them, but it's very, very different with Lu Han.
If it were one of the others up here with him, afraid of the way they're suspended in mid-air, terrified of plummeting to the ground below, would they still sit like this, huddled together, grabbing at each other when the gondola makes a sudden turn? Jongin suspects not. Sometimes Lu Han's a master at concealing himself behind a smiling mask, so determined and focused and sharp. And then there are the times when he's surprised or startled, when something else shows through, and Jongin files away those pieces of new information in his memory.
A scared Lu Han is a relatively rare Lu Han, though he's doing his best not to show it. He stares at the floor rather than the bright lights and gleaming gold outside, until Jongin draws him in with a hand on the back of his neck, and then his view is limited to Jongin's shirt. He's muttering something now, words lost in the fabric where it's safe to say such things. Jongin figures he doesn't need to hear them.
Perhaps they can make it through the rest of the ride like this, and when they arrive back at the platform Lu Han will straighten up, and smile at the lady in the ticket booth when she asks if they enjoyed it, and they can spend the remainder of the evening on solid ground. (Or as close as anything in Ghost Square gets to 'solid ground', anyway.) Jongin strokes Lu Han's back in large, slow circles and tries to think of comforting things to say.
He doesn't get very far before an explosion outside has them jerking violently apart on the bench, staring out of different windows in an attempt to find the source of the noise. They're still in the air, and the gondola's not rocking...
"Fireworks!" Lu Han shouts, pointing at the green and pink stars exploding in the sky.
Jongin's relieved not to have to duck for cover. He doesn't think he can fit under the bench. He stares out in wonder at the marvellous patterns outside, at multicoloured flowers and rockets and spiders in the air, in red and yellow and blue, showering sparks over the theme park. There's nowhere to let off fireworks in Midgar, not down in the slums under the plate; he's only seen them once before, back in Junon with Lu Han, during a festival when they'd danced in the streets with the rest of the city. Jongin had been badly startled by the first explosion, and Lu Han had had to explain them to him. He knows how to appreciate them now, though.
It's hard for them to talk with all the whistles and bangs, so they don't try. The dazzling display lasts almost until the gondola finishes making its way slowly back to the platform. Lu Han's so entranced by it that he either forgets or manages to ignore their altitude, and when the gondola comes to a halt, he hops out, revitalised, not looking at all like he's just spent most of the ride as a nervous wreck. Only a slight unsteadiness in his gait gives him away. He crouches down next to the ticket booth for a minute, leaning against the wall and facing away from the gondola.
It's not something he's ever going to try again, he assures Jongin afterwards. Once was enough.
"But I liked the fireworks," he adds, and Jongin loves seeing him smile again.
As first dates go, things have worked out pretty well. Oh, sure, there's the small matter of Lu Han being accidentally shrunk, and then ending up on a ride that terrified him, out of a desire to show Jongin the sights. And so what if Jongin had embarrassed himself on the stage by flubbing lines he hadn't even known he had? They've danced, and played games, and watched the fireworks together. Jongin has a new pink chocobo plushie (which he is not letting Kris steal), and he's had his first happy memory of the two of them from before. All in all, he thinks they've come out ahead.
The crowds are much thinner now as they walk back to the hotel. Everyone with a home within reach has already left on the cable cars, and only the staff and overnight guests remain. Yixing and Minseok are no longer busking at the station; Minseok's probably back in his orb, and Yixing's likely asleep. So Jongin hopes, anyway. The last thing he wants is Yixing popping his head around the bedroom door to find out if Lu Han's been restored to his proper size.
No one's waiting up for them in the lobby and the door to Yixing and Kris's room is shut. Jongin keeps his voice down when he asks, "How much longer can you stay?"
The answer he wants is forever but that's not going to happen. "I'm not tired yet," Lu Han says. "Shall we find out?"