fic: [hanchul] ten steps to getting out of an SM 'slave contract' without really trying
title: ten steps to getting out of an SM 'slave contract' without really trying (this is the downfall of kim heechul)
author: briy
pairing: broken hanchul
rating: R (cursing, non-explicit sex)
genre: how-to stories, angst
summary: heechul is like paris hilton in one very important way.
step one: fall in love with your chinese bandmate.
this is easier than you might think, because one, there is now a foreign member of seemingly every group, and two, they're fucking sex, look at them.
don't get ahead of yourself. first become best friends with him: teach him dirty words in korean, mock him cruelly on variety shows, take him under your wing, let him cook for you. then one night, get totally shit-faced and kiss him. this next step is very important: proceed to also kiss everyone else in the band, because, well, then no one will ever suspect (or if they do, they cannot pin you down.)
then fall in love with him, with his country boy solidity and almost inconceivable fluid grace. begrudgingly respect his hard work, act disgusted by his eagerness to please. wonder to yourself if perhaps you have fallen in love primarily with your own advantage, with the way your native tongue always gives you the upper hand.
slowly, so slowly, soften yourself. because when you're you, when you want to be loved but you do not want to be someone else, the only way to keep yourself is to make everything else an act. but if this, he, is the one, if you're going to go all in like lee byung-hun, then you've got to give it up. give him the hard insides, the peach pit, the ball of sand that your antics have been crushing and eroding into a hidden pearl all these years. give it to him with a sneer, with a snick of the hips, with a drunken confession, but give it up.
step two: ignore all the warning signs.
this is also easier than you can imagine. sit with him in hospital waiting rooms and watch stress draw lines on his face, the set of his lips. grow colder. deal somehow with the unbelievable burden of being the only one he allows to see him break. hate him for it, if you still have it in you.
fuck him (if he asks). give him a different sort of pain to distract him from all the rest: the dull steady homesickness, the stabbing breathlessness of his vital organs in revolt. you would give him your own kidney, if necessary, in return for his famous rice. collapse on top of him, or behind him, anywhere so that you cannot see his face. press yourself against his back so that there is not an inch between you, pretend that you do not hear the distance growing in his fake-sleep breathing, in his utterly foreign heart.
when you catch yourselves alone and you aren't fucking, when he's had too much to drink and you can see it in his eyes that he's about to say it, don't let him. because if he never asks, then you can't answer, you can't deny. if he tries to tell you, kiss him. fuck him again. say something meaningless, or don't say anything at all.
step three: pretend to sleep.
when he goes the last time (and you know it is the last time, though you will not admit it), pretend to be asleep. let him stand there as long as he needs staring, memorizing you. hope that he notices the 5 kilograms you have lost in the past two weeks, hope that he feels guilty, sick, worried enough to distract him from all the pretty things that will no doubt flit around him like butterflies. like gnats. (like pretty young gnats, younger than you). they will buzz and buzz, and all he will have is this memory, of your milky-white skin in the semi-darkness, to sustain what you built. let him break, all by himself, like glass. if not, he will not go, and then he will hate you for it.
when the door closes then, and only then, should you start to wish you had been nicer to him.
step four: act surprised. stay out of it.
they will not believe it, of course. they will assume you knew, and let them assume whatever they want, because you always have. hide yourself away, mourn in the most stereotypical ways possible. get drunk (though not with kangin) and let yesung come pick you up, or better yet, sungmin. let him drag you home. savor it when he undresses you, but do not touch. do not eat for days, until ryeowook is so flustered that he speaks impolitely to you and threatens to force-feed you. read kyuhyun's angry words and feel them as an attack on you personally, feel them like needles under your fingernails, in the quick. then just as quickly, forgive it, because kyuhyun has been blindsided and sent reeling one too many times already.
have idiotic fairy tale dreams of running away. maybe even pack your bags until donghae finds you and immediately starts to cry. know that you will stay, that mostly you want to stay, that you will not give up your kingdom for a horse or a chinaman.
consider cutting yourself, imagine the scandal, realize that you do not have the energy for it. settle for making cryptic emotional cyworld entries.
mourn in unstereotypical ways as well, ways that only you and your cats know about. this can go on as long as it needs to. the years you have spent crafting this personality will come in handy now, and this stage may flow into the next one.
step five: stalk unrelentingly.
he is not dead, but sometimes you wish he was. if so, you would not be perpetually subjected to him, on every channel, every fansite, every social media outlet. if he was dead, even people outside the inner circle would be sensitive to your suffering, would tiptoe around you. but he is very much alive, rehearsing and releasing new music and doing everything without you.
watch the new video. scrutinize his face for a sign of the person you once knew, a hidden message. love or at least desire. spend even more time scrutinizing the backup dancers, the entourage. predict which one will be the first, which should be easy, because you spent at least as much time discussing ideal types as anything else. it will be her, you have no doubt, the curvy one with the pixie cut and the big lips, not because she looks like you, but because she looks nothing like you at all. imagine it in every gruesome detail, extrapolate from their on-stage gyrations how well they would fit together in the sheets (or on the floor, or in a bathroom stall, or on a park bench). hate him for what he hasn't even done (yet).
look at every picture. stop short of asking mutual friends, because you do not really care, not that much.
step six: for god's sake, whatever you do, don't call.
this is not the time to play the hero. you were perfectly willing to let him walk out, wouldn't let him make you an offer that you couldn't accept, so now is not the time to break down. if he wants to hear you broken, wants to know what he meant to you, don't show him. if, on the other hand, he does not care, neither do you.
keep losing weight, even though shindong is offering you his snacks, which is a sure sign of your personal apocalypse. don't quit until every edge is sharp enough, until you are a veritable fucking porcupine, a cactus, to warn off any who would dare get close. you do not want to take anyone down with you, but you will, if you have to.
when he calls, do not answer. do not take calls from any unknown numbers. when he texts or emails, have a trusted friend delete them. if he is suffering, and you know he is, it is his burden. consider the times in your past when you made an irreversible decision that you regretted, a decision that hurt others. remember how you militantly stuck to it so as not to admit you were wrong, so as not to invalidate their suffering. believe he should do the same.
step seven: get drunk and have sex with a dubiously legal chinese teenager.
presumably this was not what you intended for your trip to china. you broke step six, just like everyone knew you would, so do not act surprised when he goes to mongolia. go shopping with zhou mi and purchase as many things as necessary. act some. teach villagers the sorry sorry dance, wondering why they do not already know it, if the song was actually as popular as eeteuk tells people it was on television.
lose zhou mi one night, lose the managers, lose everyone. find a club. drink liquor until you reach that elusive sweet spot: incoherent enough that you have (almost) no idea what is going on, but able to remain upright for brief periods of time and not vomit copiously on nearby dancers. choose one, sinewy and dark. pretend to black out long enough to get back to the seedy motel.
your chinese is rusty, but the language of hands is universal. question his age but let him do it anyway, like an olympic official. refrain from telling him he is only the second person you have ever been with, not that you have the vocabulary to do it anyway. fall asleep praying that he will be gone in the morning.
when the incessant buzzing of your phone (39 missed calls) wakes you up, forget to thank whoever you prayed to last night that the room is empty. then start vomiting.
step eight: have regrets. resolve to get over him. go back to your regularly scheduled programming.
vow to be a better person. talk about it on the radio. talk about him ad nauseam, until you can do it without choking up.
notice other people, for the first time in half a year. watch your face in recent performances and try to remember what you were thinking. realize that eunhyuk has gotten ludicrously sexy, and hate him for it a little. tell him to put a fucking shirt on. congratulate shindong. call kangin. take sungmin under your wing, and vow to turn the baby chick into a variety star like yourself. tell eeteuk what he's always meant to you.
step nine: find out about your sex tape from lee soo man himself.
start to think that things are getting better, until your door slams open one morning before dawn and you find the namesake of your company in your dorm room. watch the video on the state of the art laptop an underling has produced, still blinking yourself awake. take a solid fifteen seconds to recognize the shuddering, hitching creature splayed on the bed. recognize the keening sound you make when you come, the way your fingers clutch the edges of the bed. notice, belatedly, the motel television in the background, the chinese news. be so busy wondering if he has seen it, how it made him feel, that you do not hear what the CEO of the company is saying to you. a man you once respected.
look away when he asks you if it is you. feel your mind wander again when he curses you, vows to find one hundred flat-chested whores to swear that it was them. in a moment of integrity that surprises even you, refuse to say it is not you.
let him curse you, let the man you once proudly tweeted a picture with, the man who made you, slap you across the face. continue to refuse to say it is not you until he tells you to get the fuck out of his dorm, out of his sight, out of his company.
step ten: disappear. hasten the inevitable demise of super junior.
wait a few days until the integrity stage wears off. take the money and run. korea's a bit hot now, and china may want to extradite you. california was nice, in your skewed memories. call kibum.
don't worry about KRY, because they can sing. eunhyuk and eeteuk are funny. donghae will get by on solid heart, and sungmin can do anything. siwon has his good looks and god. regret that you will not be able to attend shindong's wedding, or kangin's coming out party. hope that the taint of your immorality will not ruin them forever.
finally text him back.