His Own Shadow
Title: His Own Shadow - part V
Author: pins_and_wheels
Rating: PG-13 to NC-17
Warning: AU, dark, non-con, beta-less
Length: 40k and growing, part V is 9k-ish
Pairing: Kai/Taemin (main), Key/Taemin, one-sided Minho/Taemin, Jinki/Taemin
Summary: Taemin loses a part of himself he doesn't know how to hold on to.
part IV
“So,” Taemin huffs, stretching his arms up as high as they would go, “when you invited me over to keep you company while you set up for your party - with the promise of food, no less - what you really meant was-”
“A bit higher on the right.”
The interruption causes Taemin to lose his grip on the banner and the tissue papper flutters down onto his head, painting a pink stripe across his sour expression.
He hears Kibum behind him snort, un-muffled, followed by the sound of noisy crunching.
“Hyung!” Taemin turns, furious but twisting cautiously on the trembling coffee table he was using as leverage, “You’re not even pretending to help!...You aren’t even standing!”
Kibum was sprawled across the couch, having slouched into the position at some point while Taemin struggled to edge his living room in pastels and silver. His head hung over the armrest, monitoring the blonde’s progress upside-down - Taemin watches him roll his eyes before grunting to his feet.
“There. Happy?”
He points with a stick of celery, “Keep going - you’re almost done.”
It took all of Taemin’s self-restraint not to stamp his foot. The wavering surface beneath his feet and the idea of Key laughing his ass off at him after he inevitably toppled to the floor was helpful.
“Come here - let me strangle you with these stupid streamers.” Taemin weaves them over each hand, like piano wire.
“That would be a sight.”
“Shut up.”
“I mean, only you could sissify a murder threat.”
“Shut up. Seriously, anyway, who uses streamers for parties anymore? Where did you even find these - a pedophile’s basement?”
Taemin’s glaring at the mess of party decorations at his feet, he doesn’t need to look to see Kibum flick his fringe and straighten the shoulders of his shirt.
“They’re ironic. Obviously.”
“They’re dumb.”
“They’re ironic, they’re true to theme. And they’re not going to stream themselves.”
Kibum’s eyes dip to the stranglehold his younger friend has on the paper ribbons in his hands, and chooses wisely to add, “I have a present for when you’ve finished.”
Taemin sighs but finds himself turning around obediently all the same, “Better be a good one. I can’t believe you misled me.” His next attempt to stick the streamer is a success. “And I was napping.”
He reaches the corner of the last side and carefully disembarks the table back down to the floor. It didn’t look so bad - a twisting double scalloped border, well matched to the ocean of helium balloons Kibum had preordered, that drifted to and fro across the ceiling as though the were mingling with friends.
“I believe what I said was that I was setting up for my party, I missed looking at your pretty face and by the way I had just stocked the frige. Facts all of which were true. Not my fault if you jumped to conclusions.” He stuffs floret of cauliflower in his mouth, cheeks bugling, appearing rather miserable as he chewed.
Taemin, head cocked, watches the older boy struggle to swallow.
“Why is that happening?”
“I’m on a diet. I don’t want to talk about it.”
“That’s,” Taemin blinks, taking a moment as he pulls a strip of tape off the back of his arm, wiggling his fingers until it flutters into a trash bin, “That’s, like, Olympic-level stupidity. You do not need to diet, hyung.”
“Of course I don’t need to diet.”
“Then why-?”
“Listen, not all of us were born with our collarbones on the outside of our skin.” Taemin pressed a hand self-consciously to his sternum. “I just bought these new jeans - rag & bone, super-skinny destroyed denim in ivory - Taemin, they’re fucking epic. But they make my thighs look chunky. White is in this season - do you know how hard it is to look slimming in white? So,” he sighs, and tells a tiny carrot stick held aloft before him, “a diet.”
Taemin waits for Kibum to swallow, which he does again as though he has a mouthful of sawdust.
“Careful there, hyung. Your vagina’s showing.”
“Fuck off,” Key’s once over of the room earns it a single nod of approval. “Do you want your reward or not?”
A bi-toned head of hair bobbing around his pelvis flashes through Taemin’s eyes. Usually he wouldn’t be one to turn down anything from Kibum, but after the last time he was wary. “Depends on what it is.”
“Just a little something to wear tonight.”
“Uh-huh." Taemin knew this game. "How little?”
The twinkle in Key’s eye is confirmation enough.
“What’s wrong with what I’ve got on?”
The older boy takes a step back and considers Taemin’s attire seriously.
“So…you mean aside from everything?”
“You’re an asshole. My mom just got me this shirt - it's cool, it's got snaps for buttons-"
“Jesus, Taemin, listen to yourself. Here. Take this,” Kibum shoves his bowl of vegetables into Taemin’s chest, “Do yourself a favor and don’t eat the cauliflower - it tastes like how feet smell. I’ll be right back.”
Taemin dumps the rejected vegetables in the sink, jamming a few down the disposal - he can hear Key’s heavy feet thump across the ceiling just above him. He admires the work on the rooms they had done (or he had done, rather). In addition to the streamers and thin plastic boas, there was a nauseating amount of glitter, colored lightsticks laid out and ready to be cracked, slinkies posed strategically all along the first floor to start walking as soon as they were nudged. Good, eye-catching, but not Kibum’s best work. It was a sort of confused retro theme - hard to set a particular decade, floating between the 80s and 90s. Guests had been told to dress accordingly, “think ‘before we could remember’” the instructions on the facebook invitation had read. Taemin anticipated a lot of ill-formed midriffs and overly styled hair in his future, but he supposed everything would look its best once they all had been doused in an adequate amount of alcohol. Changmin was providing, and on that front the boy never failed to deliver.
Aimlessly, Taemin wanders over to a table topped with a half dozen empty glass bowls, soon to be filled with junk food and adult punch. Looking at them made his thoughts run on fast-forward; to sucking crumbs and greasy bits off fingers, residue that would cling to the corners of noisy lips - how Cheetos look half-digested and up-chucked, how they would become neon paste between the cushions of a doubtlessly light-colored couch.
He flattens a wrinkle on the tablecloth. A fun night, to be sure.
One bowl, though, the only one to have been filled, was already brimming with party poppers. Taemin plucks a string, dangling the glittered cardboard before his face, like he was a child inspecting an ornament for cracks.
“Remember playing with these when we were little?” His hyung spoke low and close from behind - Taemin was impressed at how quickly he had made it back down the stairs.
The blonde hmmms a yes, leaning back into his hyung’s warm, solid chest. “Mmhmm. I never got any toy dinosaurs or jacks or rubber balls. I always got the ones stuffed with plastic necklaces - every single time.”
He takes hold of either end of the party favor, not quite tugging, not quite in the mood to receive another handful of plastic jewelry. Two palms come to cup the bend of his elbows.
“We,” a whisper, “We always got the ones with plastic necklaces.”
Taemin’s fingers tense and the popper sets off, the explosion sounding like live-fire the way it cracks against his eardrums.
He spins around.
Kibum’s not in the room - the room is empty.
There is still another’s breath wrapped collar-like around his neck, his back is still warm, his elbows still finger-painted with the tingle of someone else’s touch.
Yet the room, still, is empty.
“Fuck me-”
“Yah,” his hyung’s voice bellows from upstairs. “Save those for the party!”
.
~ * ~
Taemin was listening circles around the first floor, trying to match names to voices and voices to scenes. They all seemed pitifully teenage. Everything was fluid; young and dumb and drunk - even sudden a commotion; stumbling and the mighty crash of what might have been a vase or decorative plate, seemed practiced. As if everyone had checked the same script before coming.
“Yesung, you ass! Get off that table!
I’ve seen Ferbies crunk better, seriously.”
“Shit, did I do that?”
“What?”
“The rug, man. Look.”
“Oh, fuck.”
“It’s got red on it like’s in my drink.”
“Yeah, you totally did.”
“Kibum’s gonna skin me. What’re these things called? Persias?”
“Uh-huh. Expensive, foreign shit.”
“…Parisians? Pairshans?”
“Whatever, dude. You gotta put a lamp over that stain, quick.”
“You can’t ignore me.”
“No - try again! Try again! You’ve got to tip your head back more - just open your throat so it falls into your stomach, no swallowing. One more time. Come on.”
“You aren’t even trying. You’re making it worse.”
“Your turn, Suji.”
“Okay, uhm. Uh, I’ve never-”
“It’s ‘never have I ever.’”
“Yeah, right. Never have I everrr…had unprotected sex.”
“Suji!”
“Yah! You’ve had sex-protected sex!??!”
“No. Actually, I haven’t. I just wanted to find out which of you were real sluts. Who’s drinking?”
“You need to realize - please.
You need me.”
“Wouldn’t that be sort of antisocial?”
“Spending time with me would be antisocial?”
“No - I just. I came with friends.”
“I’m your friend, aren’t I?”
“You know what I mean.”
“Don’t be so…whatever.”
“I just don’t think we should.”
“Come on.”
“Uhm…”
“Come on.”
“Alright. But nothing like…just for a little while, okay?”
“Please. Okay? Please.”
“Is it true Chanyeol brought X?”
“Yeah. I mean no. I heard it was Kyuhyun and it was shrooms.”
“Oh. Cool. So, anyway - you know where they’re at?”
“Out back, I think.”
The party sounded full of memorized lines, a bit, and Taemin felt, a bit, as though his had been forgotten.
He had forgotten something.
The earth shifts around Taemin - or the cushions beneath him, rather - and he’s joined by the warm press of another person’s body on either of his sides. He keeps his eyes shut for a while but then someone pets his head and kisses him on the temple. It’s warm, familiar; his skin knew those lips. Taemin feels compelled to check to see who it is because maybe, maybe - because what if it’s his mum?
For a second he thinks he might have drunk too much too fast on too empty a stomach, and that he’s already soused himself into seeing double.
But, no. It’s just Jonghyun and Amber, draping themselves around him and looking especially twin-like in the dim lighting.
“Hey, baby,” One of them greets, in a sexy, low hum that flows seamlessly into the atmosphere of the rest of the room.
Amber (he decides, after noting the lack of body hair) shifts in her seat on the side of the chaise, sliding her arm behind him. Taemin takes note of their proximity and presses his face into her thigh, dazedly nuzzling the frayed denim of her cut-off shorts.
Amber is his favorite noona.
“Looks like Twinkle Toes has helped himself to Kibum’s punch.” She’s laughing and a bubble of pride swells in Taemin’s throat; he’s made her laugh.
There’s a short lull when someone fiddles with the sound system, then a new song picks up where the old one left off and Taemin yanks his head back.
“Oh!”
He wants to dance - the beat was perfect for dirty, flirty grinding with a just-a-friend, an electronic pulse and some nonsense Nordic language. He wants to shout - This! I love this song. Somebody dance with me! But instead he has to bite his tongue, grunting as both his feet seize up simultaneously with vicious muscle cramps.
“Uh-ohh, ow.”
It was not the first time it had happened. It was becoming another one of his recent, unhappy routines; hear a song, get the urge to move the way he used to and thenpain, in the form of searing charley horses.
Now he limped between tripping.
“Taemin?”
Jonghyun pulls at Taemin’s arm, rolling him back so the younger boy can see his sleazy grin.
“Hey, Taemin. Hey.”
Taemin blinks, flinching in slow motion when Jonghyun’s face drifts in near to his. The younger boy feels threatened by his hyung’s sharp canines, and lost in his wide, dark nostrils.
“I can see your nipples through that shirt.”
Taemin smooshes his chin into his chest and looks for himself. He could see them as well. The shirt Key forced on him offered about as much modesty as a morning fog.
“It’s nice. You look nice. It’s nice when you dress all slutty.”
Amber reaches across to take the older boy’s entire face in one hand and gives it a shove, nearly sending him off the couch.
“Jonghyun, put your tongue back in your mouth and your dick back in your pants.”
Jonghyun’s pout makes him look like a kicked puppy, Taemin decides, nearly patting the older boy on his sullen head. He’s impressed at his hyung’s ability to go so quickly from predatory to endearing.
“Just paying him a compliment - sheesh. He’s asking for it wearing his tits out like that.”
Then, in a flash, back to predatory.
With some difficulty, Taemin reorganizes his limbs so that his twiggy legs are stacked beneath his bum, hands on his knees. He’s too drunk - he should feel more vulnerable. Three days ago and he’d been almost choked to death by thin air; he had all the reason in the world and beyond to be vigilant. Rather than slow down, though, he swipes Jonghyun’s red plastic cup, guzzling whatever’s in it in one go. He’s almost had enough alcohol to forget; he’s knows a few drinks more and the memory won’t be there to worry over any longer.
Amber is trying to pull Taemin into conversation about some school gossip - a gym teacher caught in the locker room with a second year student - but Taemin’s having a hard time following. He wishes Kibum was there to nudge him subtle cues when to nod and laugh. The older boy had vanished not an hour into his own party, in precisely the way he swore he wouldn't. Taemin was pretty sure he was smoking in the backyard with Kyuhyun and the other potheads, but the prospect of having to navigate around ten or so half-baked conversations just to pull Kibum from their grasp was not appealing enough motivation.
The mellow roll of Amber’s voice comes to a halt. Taemin looks back at her, absentmindedly batting Jonghyun’s hand away from his crotch.
Her smoky make-up was very becoming. She was so oddly handsome - he thought they complimented each other nicely, with their converse gender ambiguity. He takes a few minutes to try to figure out how to tell her this without it sounding offensive.
She was smiling at him, an eyebrow raised.
“Have you noticed? He’s staring at you.”
He doesn’t mean for it to happen, but suddenly he’s got two hands around her wrists and he’s gripping them, tight. His ghost - it’s the only thing his muddled brain can come up with. It’s appeared. She sees it too.
“Where?”
Amber gives him an odd look, then points.
Taemin follows her finger to the other side of the room, his heart racing and his mind staggering along behind to catch up. He knew this would happen, he should’ve stayed home, he should never have let Kibum convince him-
Taemin sags, overcome.
He knows the sensation must be relief, even though it was doing a great job of disguising itself as disappointment. He felt relieved, he insists to no one, he feels relieved - not forgotten and deflated like a leftover birthday balloon.
It is a boy but not the boy. Not his Shadow.
Just Lee Jinki in his nerdy-chic glasses, a hypnotic graphic tee and acid wash jeans that show off the strength in his thighs.
He was staring, but he didn’t really seem to be aware he was doing so. A friend - Joon, Taemin’s pretty sure is his name - is whispering something in his ear as Jinki nods along, expression pleased and neutral. His eyes are pinned somewhere between Taemin face and lap, and self-consciously Taemin hikes up the neck of his shirt.
When the older boy licks his lips it lights a blush across Taemin’s cheeks.
“You see?”
He shrugs.
Lee Jinki’s gaze drifts up and finally meets Taemin’s. He smiles, maybe a little bit uncomfortably, and turns so he’s no longer facing the blonde.
“I think he’s taken a shine to you, Minnie.”
Taemin pulls Amber from her place on the couch armrest so that she’s squished up next to him, wiggling so he can lie across her lap. She plays with his bangs, which makes him hum low in his chest like a cat.
“Would you go for it?” He peels back an eyelid back and she rests a hand on his forehead, “Well?”
“There’s no way Lee Jinki is bent, Amber. You’ve spent too much time at our dance studio.” He tries to add something about heteronormativity, but the word fumbles out of his lips.
“I heard him talk about you in trig. Pitifully moaning about you legging around in gym class - do you seriously wear the girls’ uniform?”
Taemin shuts both eyes again, refusing to answer until Amber dribbles beer on his face. It makes Jonghyun (whose presence Taemin had forgotten) guffaw gaspingly, like a donkey. Taemin is torn between telling to older boy he looks dreadful in tie-dye and defending his gym wear.
“Kibum-hyung switched mine with one as a joke. But then he lost his and now he won’t give my shorts back.”
Taemin fiddles with the hem of the shorts he’s wearing now - stitched together by Key during his I’m-going-to-be-the-next-Andre-Kim phase. The material baffled him. They looked like they were made from crinkled up aluminum foil, despite being rather comfortable, and the left leg was adorned by an explosion of what might have been real tinsel.
Privately, Taemin liked them. On the surface though, he maintained being bitter about all the ridiculous get-ups people forced him to wear.
“So you do use the girl’s uniform?”
“…Not happily.”
“The sports bra chafes something awful, doesn’t it?”
“Noona.”
Eventually, Lee Jinki and his friend drift over to them. The other boy’s name is Joon, Jonghyun confirms, when he bellows it out and pulls said senior into a headlock. Their wrestling upsets Taemin drink.
“Fuck! Oh, lovely.”
He pouts down at his damp thighs until, like magic, a handkerchief materializes under his nose.
“…Thanks.”
Lee Jinki’s smile is the stuff toothpaste commercials are made of, dazzling and pearly and mind-bogglingly genuine; Taemin is almost tempted to tell him if all else fails career-wise, he has his lips and teeth to fall back on. Amber whispers something in his ear, which he can hear but doesn’t really listen to; your hero.
After mopping himself up, he hands the cloth napkin back, smirking a little, commenting, “I didn’t know people actually still used those things.”
Lee Jinki shrugs. “They make me feel fancy.” He gives the dangling kerchief a little shake with his pinky out.
The delicate cloth looks silly in the older boy’s hand; it makes Taemin giggle against the back of his palm. He has a sudden urge to grab onto a few of the thick fingers and lead the boy by them down a darkened hall to a darkened room to put them to better use.
Maybe the senior knows what he’s thinking, because he tucks both hands into his pocket and then they take a moment to grin at each other bashfully.
“How is it,” Amber suddenly squawks, directly into Taemin’s ear, “that I’m surrounded by four, drunk teenage boys, and not one of you has noticed I’m not wearing a bra?”
Taemin casts her breasts a side glance, wondering how he’s supposed to tell anyway, and gives what he hopes is an appreciative nod.
“Sorry, noona. Very nice.”
“Shut up.”
Jonghyun and Joon continue their hushed, snorted conversation without pause, and Taemin can feel that Jinki’s eyes are still stuck to his face.
“The nicest?”
Fortunately, he was spared from having to elaborate when he hears his name screeched from across the room.
“Taeminnie!”
“Oh, look. Tae-baby! There you are!”
He steals a look around Jinki’s legs and sees a gaggle of girls moving toward them - the few in front; Yoona, Sunny, Tiffany brandishing a caramel colored wig - he’s seen enough.
“Uhm, noona. I’m gonna--”
“Go ahead,” Amber nods toward the hallway, “Make a run for it. Jjong and I will play interference.”
Jinki helps him off the couch, “Do you want--?”
“Yeah. Come along.”
~
Kibum would be sore if he knew Taemin was hiding out in his parent’s bedroom; he feels a bit guilty pulling Jinki over the threshold. But his hyung’s room had been locked and the guest bedroom was occupied by a moaning, writhing mass that had split only to curse Taemin when he peeked inside.
The older boy doesn’t question him when he closes the closet door (bothered by the full-length mirror) or tosses a towel over the vanity-style bureau, effectively covering up all reflective surfaces. Taemin throws himself across the mattress after, wriggling onto his side when the senior joins him.
“Lee Jinki.” He starts.
Said boy smiles indulgently, “That’s me,” and taps the younger on the nose. “Lee Taemin.”
His is voice warm. So warm. Taemin thinks if he closed his eyes, he might be tricked to think they were hugging.
The blonde is struck simultaneously by the wish that this boy lived with him in his house, like a brother, and the urge to see him without clothes.
He offers a milder confession instead.
“I feel like we’ve been friends longer than we have. Or…I feel like we are friends already.” They make twisted eye contact, upside-down and sideways, “You know? It’s the Shadow-secret, probably. I wanna call you ‘hyung.’”
Lee Jinki props him up, tells him to go ahead with the informality and asks him how much he’s had to drink.
“Just enough, I think.” He holds up his pointer finger and thumb, indicating the tiniest breath of space between them. His lips are numb, but he still manages, “It’s medicinal. A medicinal amount. I was feeling bad, but now I feel…not a lot. Pretty much nothing.”
His fingers close in a pinch.
The chocolate gaze is probing and Taemin senses it’s his turn to be the one mentally undressed. Or dissected, more like. Fingers unwound, chest cracked open to prod cramped feelings inside, unmasked (was there something to mask - was he masking things?); mask removed.
He squirms beside Jinki.
Pointlessly, he smoothes the crinkles in his shorts.
Tokkinhyung, on his stomach at their feet before them, rolls over. His bleary eyes make contact somewhere around Taemin’s forehead and then he turns his gaze up to the ceiling. Taemin takes the moment to notice his malformed neck - at least a foot long, wrapped in gray chicken skin, with the appearance of being broken in the middle. His stiff, oblong ears shiver; Taemin takes it as his cue to look away.
He’s envious of Jinki.
Even if Tokkinhyung is all parts terrifying, at the very least he’s loyal.
“So, he hasn’t come back, then?”
Sooner or later, Taemin supposed, one of them was going to mention the elephant in the room.
Or, rather, the elephant distinctly absent from the room.
“Nope. He hates me. I don’t think he’ll ever be back.”
“He doesn’t hate you. He couldn’t hate you.”
“You don’t understand.” Taemin slouches all the way forward, so he’s staring at his feet and his chest is pressed into his thighs. “I think…he’s trying to kill me.”
Hearing the words said aloud brings his surreality down to earth in a way inebriated-Taemin is not really equipped to deal with. He rolls around in them, my shadow wants to kill me, making a mess of his messy thinking, my SHAHdow is a thing, and that thing wants me dead. The thoughts are dim, as is his ability to recognize how the twist in his belly when he thinks them isn’t completely appropriate.
It takes Taemin awhile to recognize the warmth at the base of his back, drifting from one side to the other in tandem with his breathing is not just a manifestation of all the alcohol in his bloodstream but Jinki’s big, gentle hand. It’s innocent, but Taemin finds the touch oddly arousing.
“How do you mean?”
He’s almost forgotten what they’re supposed to be discussing. The dancer slips a hand out from between his knee and chin, and replaces it on one of Jinki’s thighs.
He feels safe with the older boy. He doesn’t really want to spoil the mood.
“I don’t know. I don’t want to talk about it.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault, hyung.” He hauls himself upright and tucks his head in the crook of Jinki’s neck, speaking against his skin when he continues, “If it wasn’t for you I would still think it was my sanity I was missing, not some, stupid…capital-S shadow.”
Jinki’s gulp is so loud and close; Taemin practically feels it run through his own throat, like passing on a yawn. He then sighs over Taemin’s head.
“He’ll be back.”
“Maybe.”
“He will. And you’ll feel good again.”
“Maybe.”
“You will. But we…I probably won’t be able to talk to you anymore.”
“Maybe - what?”
Taemin pulls away so that they can face each other properly, glaring at Jinki’s remorseful shrug.
“Why?”
“I told you. They,” he points to Tokkinhyung, who looks a bit dead with his arms crisscrossed over his chest, “do not get along.”
“But…”
“I know, it sucks. I wanted to talk to you before, like, a lot. But it’s hard for them to be in the same room.”
“Why?”
Taemin liked Jinki. He felt as though they had formed - or were forming, at least - one of those rare and immediate connections that you sometimes hear about but are almost never lucky enough to experience firsthand. Already, after only a week into knowing him, being close to Jinki, really close, seemed like the logical next step for them to take. He’d rather act naturally with the older boy, at ease; the way he felt. Whisper their conversations in an empty master bedroom. He’d rather lean on him like it was nothing, hang a leg between Jinki’s thighs as if they were the ledge of a chair with the other spread somewhere out behind them. Drag his fingers up Jinki’s broad back, toy with his toffee hair.
And he’d certainly rather all that to being haunted or choked or shadowed by some tall and dark and menacing punk, who just so happened to have a claim on Taemin’s wake.
“Like I said before. It’s jealousy, or something. Your Shadow doesn’t like to share, mine doesn’t like to be pushed around.”
“Well, maybe…” When he looks down he must appear sad, because his hair is carefully tucked behind an ear to uncover his face. His mother’s same habit whenever he was upset.
Jinki wouldn’t mind his tiny waist, his ridged sternum, or his hipbones, sharp enough to take out eyes. As Taemin tells himself this, he tells Jinki, “Maybe I just won’t invite him back.”
For some reason, the older boy finds this funny.
“It isn’t up to you, unfortunately.”
“It should be.” He is ruffled by Jinki’s easy acceptance of such injustice.
“You’re probably right, but that’s just not how it works. They come and go as they please, and we can only flap around like clipped loons until they decide to return. Like I said, it sucks but…” He pulls away from Taemin, as though imparting wisdom reminded him he was supposed to be the responsible one between the two of them. And some might call the distance between their mouths and the stirring in his pants irresponsible. “You really should be focusing on how to get him back. Figure out what he wants. Your life will be a lot easier then, I promise.”
Taemin can still too easily feel the press of phantom fingers around his neck. “Doubt that.”
“You’ve just forgotten what you’re missing.”
Taemin mulls over his words, ignoring Jinki as he shifts about, trying and failing to get comfortable.
“Isn’t it supposed to be the other way around? You don’t know how much you’ll miss something ‘til it’s gone? It is gone.” He holds up his hands, as if to show that they were empty, “And I don’t miss it.”
The older boy - drunk as well, maybe, his cheeks were flushed - collapses back onto the mattress as Taemin had done earlier, and flops an arm over his eyes.
“I’m not going to argue with you. It’s too late, I’m too tired.”
Taemin checks his phone reflexively, “It’s 11 p.m.”
“An hour past my bedtime already!” He mock gasps.
The cutest part about it, Taemin thinks as he inches closer, was that what the older boy said was probably true. He blows a stream of air at Jinki’s jutting adam’s apple until he’s being blinked at dazedly from beneath the boy’s wrist.
Taemin looms on his knees, pinning Jinki with his weight and his biggest pair of eyes. He was admittedly trying to appear, as Kibum had once described, like a sugarcoated slut - the look had worked pretty well for him in the past. Taemin wasn’t sure why he was so turned on - why it was twisting in his stomach, needy; like hunger - but he felt suddenly compelled to get the ache to stop.
He drops his head to the side, as though his right ear had spontaneously filled with lead.
“Should I leave you to sleep, hyung?”
Taemin can practically read the older boy’s mind. He knows what he is thinking.
“Uhm…”
The way he’s looking at Taemin - his eyes drooping from his face to his collar, then his chest then his thighs; it’s behavior Taemin is used to.
He’s thinking no - Taemin just had to get him to say it.
“Uh.”
“You seem…”
“Huh?”
“You seem a bit…”
“What?”
“Tired, hyung. Or something.”
“No.” There it was.
Jinki swallows and the knob in his throat bobs again - Taemin has to wonder how high it would hang if his neck were arched, if he was releasing a deep, ringing moan.
“I’m not…nothing.”
“Okay, good.” He hopes the older boy doesn’t have any hang-ups about his sexuality. He didn’t seem the type, but Taemin scooches forward until his shorts are pulled tight across his lap, just so there’s no confusion. “Nothing?”
Then there isn’t any more to it; Jinki eases back onto his elbows and tilts his chin invitingly.
It’s slower than he’s used to and together they taste an odd mix; Jinki’s illegally procured cheap maekju to Taemin’s hard liquor, cut with whatever fruit drink Kibum could find in his frige. But Taemin doesn’t care, because there’s this big, shovel-like hand sliding up his back, and he feels held entirely just by the press of one of them.
He can hear Kibum’s voice from countless times before, making out - the older boy would break their kiss to comment so fucking fat, and would eye Taemin’s lips as though he’d done something remarkable to achieve them. It’s not until now, as Jinki drags his fleshy mouth from under Taemin’s ear to his chin, then kisses him again, that Taemin realizes how exactly his hyung’s words are a meant to flatter him.
He doesn’t bite Taemin to get him to part his lips, and he doesn’t yank on his hair and or shove his tongue passed them sloppily, so that Taemin is left struggling to not be rude and wipe spit off his chin.
Instead, Jinki hums, with that pure, perfect pitch of his and Taemin’s jaw pops unlocked like the little sound is a little key. And then his tongue is inside Taemin’s mouth, warm and smooth and fat, filling it in a way his own smaller one never could.
He rolls his hips, finding it difficult to distinguish heat of friction from heat of arousal, and one of them whimpers in the backs of both their throats.
It’s slower, yes. Maybe less illicit feeling - maybe less edgy. But it’s also probably the best kiss Taemin’s ever been given - probably one he’d use to compare many, many future experiences, which is something he can recognize even drunk as he his.
It’s probably pretty perfect.
Skrrrrrr
It’s odd, Taemin thinks, that even though Jinki has freed his lips and moved on down his neck; he still can’t catch his breath. It’s completely unreasonable for someone to be able to make his body feel so raw and buzzing, as if parts of it; his pulse point, the sharp turn of his jaw, the spot behind his ear, had never been touched before. When the older boy uses his grip on Taemin hair to tilt his head, scraping his top teeth against the delicate skin beneath his jaw, Taemin moans like he’s being gnawed on.
Jinki misinterprets the noise.
“Should,” Jinki pulls his head back, breaking his connection with Taemin’s skin and the young dancer has to stop himself from filling the new space between them with curses, “should I stop?”
Taemin pushes him until his elbows give out, hovering close enough so that their noses brush, “What, is that like a joke?”
“Uhm, it could be. I guess.”
“Oh,” Taemin lifts himself and resettles directly on Jinki’s crotch, so that he groans over Taemin’s next words, “Yeah, I’d heard you weren’t funny, hyung.”
Skkkrrrrrreh
He might have lost his ability to dance, but grinding his hips down onto another boy’s did not require music. Taemin reveled in his ability to move in a way that was actually fluid, for the first time in so long, and he reveled twice as much in the two-handed grip on his ass.
Jinki was hard - thank god, Taemin thought, because it would be embarrassing to be the only one so turned on after just some sloppy mouth work. The size of what Taemin could feel inside of Jinki’s pants was a little ridiculous. He is half tempted to ask the older boy stuffed a bottle of soju down there for safe keeping but - his own erection throbbed in reminder - he really didn’t want to kill their moment.
Jinki, it seemed, was ready to do that for him.
The older boy pulls back, small eyes strapped open wide, panting, already sweaty.
Taemin hisses in protest.
“Again?”
Jinki stops him when he tries to reattach their lips, gripping Taemin around the neck and forcing the skinny body to bend back. He clutches the front of Taemin’s shirt, pushes it up past his nipples, then pulls it down again. The older boy brings him in close, moving both his hands so that they held firm around Taemin’s biceps, keeping him still as he looks him over.
Taemin could only blink, smoosh his heavy lips together and try to appear patient.
“You’re so fucking,” fingers massage his lips free of their purse, glide over his sloping nose, settle under his eyes. Taemin’s hears the words before they’re spoken, and shakes his head.
You’re so beautiful.
It was intended as a compliment, Taemin knew, when people took a moment to tell him what they thought of his face, his body; all long thin limbs, willowy, and delicate, porcelain skin. Unfortunately, years ago the sentiment had lost its punch. Hearing the words didn’t make him feel any better or at all special - and they certainly didn’t make him feel beautiful.
“Don’t.” Jinki took the hint.
“I’ve just,” his broad hands surround Taemin’s waist, a perfect fit, and Taemin forgives him the cliché, “I’ve really wanted to do this for a really fucking long time.”
“Really? Is that right? How ‘fucking long?’” Taemin smiles, a grin that twists the light on his face, possibly revealing a glint of something devilish, a glimpse of horns. He sighs into Jinki’s mouth, softening the bones in his spine so that his chest melts against the older boy’s. “You should have told me, hyung. I would’ve let you.”
“Fuck-”
Skrr- a tinkering but sudden and clear and therefore shocking crash breaks through the room; the boys separate a sparse few centimeters to peer over at the source of the interruption.
A perfume bottle of Kibum’s mother's, once seated securely in the center of her bureau, had found its way to the floor. Delicate slivers of glass glitter back at Taemin from the hardwood, the other half lost in the darkly ornate pattern of the room’s oriental area rug.
Taemin’s eyes fix themselves to the floor, his body braces for alarm bells. Before they can trigger, a heady, floral scent envelops the bed. It’s old-fashioned and stifling, just like the clothes Key’s mom tended to wear, and it makes the air in the room thicker; more confused. Had it not been so strong, either might have realized that perfume bottles, no matter how sorry smelling their spray, could not manage to hurl themselves over ledges on their own.
Jinki, after glancing over at the bureau, thinks nothing more of it. He goes back to his work on the pointy bones that breeched the blonde’s shoulder every time he moved, like the backs of tiny white whales. Taemin - tipsy, uninhibited - chooses to think nothing of it as well. His mind is off and away - “Where’re your hands? Why aren’t they-?” - and when Jinki finally introduces himself to the front of Taemin’s shorts, he tosses his head, throwing the shattered bits of perfume bottle directly out of it.
“Touch me.”
Jinki has the gall to snort over Taemin’s plea. “What do you think I’m doing?” He cups Taemin, pressing his cock into his stomach, rubbing the material of his shorts against him. They feel like warm velvet water.
“I mean for real. Hyung.”
Jinki shakes when he whines, shivering right along with the word.
“Okay. Okay.”
Jinki rolls them over so Taemin is on his back beneath him. At first he’s careful not to crush the skinny boy, but Taemin won’t have it. Being handled with kid gloves reminds him of his condition - his shadowless state - and makes him feel like an invalid. He’s not interested in being treated as though he’s some brittle, cracked shell ready to burst into dust; the idea of it makes his stomach churn.
He pulls Jinki in close with his thighs, showing off his talented rubber bones by dragging his feet all the way up the older boy’s broad back without help, and then twisting further, to nestle one in the dip beneath Jinki’s shoulder blade, keeping him close, the other lounging against his pillows.
Taemin could put pretzels to shame.
Jinki blinks at the repositioning, surprised, but takes opportunity to grip Taemin’s ankle and shove it farther back behind him, testing the limits of the dancer’s taut muscle. When the older boy grinds into him it’s almost painful, hard cock wrapped in rough denim scrapes his skin, punishing. He opens his mouth, fully intending to complain ow, it’s hurting, to order Jinki ow, please move, but when he hears himself the words sound very different; the sound more like more more moremove more and so he can hardly blame the older boy for only rutting harder.
His mouth is filled with fingers - three, it feels like - and he sucks them down, happy to have anything to shut him up. He can see through his wince that Jinki is wetting his own hand, sucking each finger and spiting into his palm, and it makes Taemin blink the blur out of his eyes to be sure he was seeing right. That was a lot of fingers.
Taemin can feel the silver drawstring on his shorts loosen, tickling his thighs when Jinki tugs them down.
"You're..." Jinki's face is suddenly back in his range, licking his open lips and biting the bottom one, "not wearing anything under."
Taemin glances down to, sure enough, his naked dick and balls. One of Jinki's hands is lightly caressing the dip at the joint of his thigh; he was still looking at Taemin for a response.
"Kibum-" Taemin gasps, Jinki chooses that inopportune moment to wrap his moist fingers around Taemin's hard on, squeeze and jerk. Taemin can't remember the words to the rest of the sentence.
"It's Jinki, actually."
"No no no, I know, fuck. But Kibum-hyung said," Taemin tries to arch but the shorts are restricting, "he told me my briefs would bunch."
As if that were a decent explanation.
Jinki's confused - it's clear on his face - but he doesn't ask, distracting himself by testing various angles to hold his arm that would give him the best hold on Taemin's cock. The younger boy is too taken with the sensation to notice Jinki's other hand weaseling down between them until he's brought to attention by two fingers at his entrance. Their press is gentle, but suddenly it's all Taemin can feel.
He rips away, panting, sort of stunned.
“What are you…oh.”
Taemin thought it was pretty bold of Jinki to finger his younger partner their first time hooking up, but Taemin was used to bold so, arching, he takes it in stride. He clenches down in show, also trying to force his body to adjust to the intrusion and Jinki tightens his grip on Taemin's cock in response.
“Need…” Jinki mutters suddenly, pulling back and leaning across Taemin to the bedside table. Craning up, he frowns at the contents of the first drawer, which Taemin tries but can’t make out from where he’s pinned. The second, though, earns an Aha!
“Everyone’s the same.”
Jinki’s hand comes back slick and messy - the slide is ten times as smooth as it had been when he grips Taemin’s cock, rolls his balls, and with the added lubrication he doesn’t hesitate to cram two fingers inside the dancer.
“This okay?”
Taemin laughs, gasps, and scoffs all at once - it comes out a breathy groan, like he’s been punched in the gut.
“A little late to be-” he grasps at an inhale, “asking - asking th-” and another, “that - yeah, it’s okay it’s great, fuck.”
Two fingers become three and the grip on his cock doesn’t ease up. Jinki’s strokes are slower and more even than how Taemin usually treats himself, but they match perfectly with the thrusting fullness inside Taemin’s ass. Their eyes meet - it’s the first time Taemin has seen Lee Jinki wear an expression at all resembling a smirk - and they look down between their bodies together.
Taemin’s shorts are still bunched around his thighs enough so that his erection is bared, flushed rosily, dripping precum onto his stomach. Jinki thumb swipes the tip of it deliberately slow, his calluses creating a sensation unlike anything Taemin’s own compulsively moisturized hands had ever been able to.
At one point he has to open his eyes, just to check that he is still gripping Jinki by the hair, because the older boy’s floppy mane is so bloody soft that Taemin’s fingers can barely register it between them. Twisting his head to the side, his heart jumps into his throat.
The sight should have been a splash of ice water; Tokkinhyung, crouched, peeking over the edge of the mattress - sloppily mouthing a fistful of sheets. The Shadow is visibly shaking, and the lighting brings out the disproportions in his face, one hand fluttering over the sheet like a massive, fleshy moth - too nervous to land, too nervous to remain still.
Taemin moans gutturally when Jinki twists his fingers inside him, deep enough for Taemin to feel that electric surge, gut wrenching pleasure that came from a properly abused prostate, alongside perfectly timed tightening of his fist around Taemin cock. Triggered by the noise, it seemed, the figure at the side of the bed’s free hand drifts toward Taemin; his movements are jerky and hesitant, as if he wanted to join in but wasn’t sure he would be welcomed.
Before Taemin can do anything in response; scorn his partner’s monstrous other half or somehow invite him in along with them, Jinki stops thrusting and starts pressing, incessantly, directly into Taemin’s prostate. Everything else fades out in white, his ears echo - a high, ringing hummmm and Taemin comes along with it, his orgasm suddenly wrenched right out of him.
His climax rises and falls with the sound - vibration - whatever it was, as long as it lasts. He can only feel; his balls seizing, his cock shooting hot streams across his chest, a cloud of Jinki’s breath collecting at his neck.
Taemin’s hearing returns in time to catch himself pant-pant-panting with a throat gone ragged, coming down in pitchy whimpers. His hands flop boneless on the bed, moving independent of his body and he peeks down at them just in time to see Tokkinhyung slump over with a grunt to the floor.
Taemin couldn’t remember the last time he had come so ferociously. He nearly mutters a stunned little, “woah,” but doesn’t, thankfully, or else he would’ve had to punch himself in the face.
Jinki kisses him. He does his best to keep up, to kiss back a thanks, but his brain is still running in circles around his orgasm. He tries to play it cool (or kind of cool), as if the older boy hadn’t just electrified his very insides into soup. Taemin nuzzles Jinki’s neck, which is soft and firm. His hand bumbles over the older boy’s chest down to his lap, intending to return the favor in some way before he passed out completely.
The intimidating hardness that had been there last time he had sense to notice it, though, is gone, warm, dampness there instead. Jinki jerks the front of his pants, squirming his fingers between the waistband and scrunching his nose in a very distinct way.
“You…?” Taemin looks up at the other boy, bemused.
“You’re hot when you come.”
Taemin rolls so that he’s flat on his back again, so that his legs can un-cramp, so that cool air can begin to dry the sweat on his thighs.
So that Jinki doesn’t have to look directly at his smirk.
“Wish it were always that easy.”
Moments before he knows they will both be asleep, Taemin makes a suggestion.
“Monday is Buddha’s birthday.”
“Mm, sure is.” Jinki worms closer, hoisting Taemin up a little so he can mouth his shoulder sleepily. “Love 'at guy.”
“Maybe we could do something.”
Jinki squints “You mean, like…a party? I usually just sleep in, to be honest. Not that - I mean, Buddha - I totally respect the whole inner peace, contemplation, meditation thing. You're into that? I could get into that."
A hand's width apart, the two stare at each other blankly.
“Uhm, no,” Taemin eventually manages. This was going to be difficult, he realized, “No, I didn’t mean to celebrate, hyung.”
He wriggles back down, watching the older boy’s sharp adam’s apple bob next to him. He’d forgot to look for it when he came.
Next time.
“You meant like, hang out or something. That’s what you meant.”
Taemin snorts but doesn’t answer.
“Go to sleep.”
~ * ~
At some point, very early in the morning before the sun has even begun to haul itself onto the horizon, Taemin wakes up. He’s just conscious enough to realize it’s still dark and that he still should be asleep. There are two arms around his waist; they feel safe. Whose they are doesn’t even occur to him to question; for all he cares, more unconscious than not, for all he cares they’re just floating limbs attached to what could’ve been a furnace cuddling his back.
He doesn’t move. He doesn’t want to jog his brain around, rouse himself or his partner. He closes his eyes and tries to forget that he ever woke up.
But he can’t turn off his ears. They pick up a sound, very softly reaching him from the other side of the room. From the closet.
Snnnss-hhh. Snnnss.
Sniffing.
It’s sniffing.
Snnnsss. Hhhh-hhhh-hhh.
Like a dog on a hunt, trailing prey. Snnnnnnsss. Hhh-hhh-hhh.
Or muffled sobs.
Sniss. Uh-hhhuh. Huhh-huhh-huh-hh-hh.
It’s soothing - the sound soothes him.
He lulls back into sleep.
~ * ~
Taemin rises with a jerk, shooting upright and hopping into the middle of the room before he even has time enough to process it isn’t his own. His former pillow groans softly on the bed where he’d left it and Taemin’s eyes muddle over the form, sprawled, spread-eagle across the covers.
Right. Kibum, alcohol and bodies, some fuzziness…Lee Jinki.
Right, Kibum’s parent's bedroom.
“Crap.”
Stumbling back over to the side of the mattress, Taemin gives Jinki’s leg a quick squeeze and slap, “Hyung, wake up.”
“Two mer’ min’iss.”
“No.” Taemin finds his phone while searching for his shirt on the floor and checks - 9:24a.m.. “This is not a drill, hyung. Gotta get up now.”
“Taemin.”
He’s blinking a lot, tiny eyes squished up adorably, but Taemin doesn’t really have time to find it cute.
“Hole in one. Stand, with your legs. Come on now.” He spies his shirt behind Jinki in the spot he’d just heaved himself out of, curled up in the impression of the older boy. “Ah ha!”
“Hey,” Jinki watches Taemin whip the shirt over his head, “why are you undressed? I didn’t do that.”
“Shh, you’ve got to be quiet. We should leave now - we should’ve already left.”
“Where? Kibum’s?
“Yes, and if we don’t get out before he gets up he’ll work us like a drill sergeant to get this place cleaned. Trust me.” He spoke rapidly and with experience, “A half drunk Kibum is not someone you want to take orders from. Stick to the sides of the stairs when you’re going down, the middle of the boards creak.”
Taemin finishes straightening the bedsheets, points to the door, then lifts the finger slowly up to his lips, shhhh.
“You’re making me nervous,” Jinki whispers as follows, catching hold of Taemin’s wrist.
“Don’t be,” Taemin turns the knob, “Just be quiet-”
“Who the fuck,” they both freeze at Kibum’s voice, seemingly booming out at them from the very floorboards, “What fucking cock sucking motherfucker took a shit in my mother’s ficus?!!”
Taemin throws wide eyes over his shoulder; he notes Jinki looks properly terrified now.
“The window. Out the window.”
“Seriously?”
“Did that not sound serious to you?”
After some not-so-delicate coaxing (“I’ll push you. I will push you”), Taemin talks Jinki onto the ledge of the window and then out into the tree branches that stretched beside the house. He tries to follow the dancer’s direction as best he can, but Jinki is uncoordinated even when not in a complete panic. The sound of crashing now accompanies the shouts from the first floor, Kibum's shrill standing out amongst them.
“I’m going to break my neck!”
“Shut up - you won’t. Two more braches and you can swing down - oh shit. Are you okay?”
When Jinki’s foot looses its hold on the bottom branch, Taemin laughs in gasps watching the older boy flap his arms uselessly, eventually flopping to the ground on his ass.
It’s less amusing, he finds, when he does the exact same thing not a minute later.
Alternately shoving each other and handholding, they race out the back gate, giggling down the quiet neighborhood hill. Their feet move too fast to stop and their hearts, engorge with adrenaline, feel distended.
At he bottom, having reached a major street from which Kibum’s house is no longer in view, they trade numbers. Afterward, Jinki hails a cab and stuffs five thousand won into Taemin’s hand.
“For last night,” he jokes, before Taemin can accuse him of being some sort of gentleman.
Taemin’s shocked and, again, charmed - always so damn charming - when Lee Jinki swoops down and kisses him; a peck, another and then long and languid, unrushed even against the soundtrack of the taxi driver’s disgusted hissing.
“I’ll call you, then.”
“Yeah okay. Cool.”
Taemin watches out the back window of the cab as the older boy bounces away down the street, clutching the headrest so his fingers aren’t able to grope his lips like some pathetic little girl.
The driver hisses again when he gives the man his address - all of a five minute walk away - and Taemin lets himself out.
~ *** ~
A/N: you may have noticed whilst reading that this chapter is pretty much glued to poop, but for the life of me i don't know how to get it unstuck. It screams for a total rewrite but I am lazy and I would rather write the upcoming parts or take a break an pump out some oneshots, so for now you'll just have to deal with this crap, not hold this against me or the story (please). hopefully i'll have something semi-decent up soon.
sorry. apology a/ns are kind of annoying, i know. but i had to do it. feedback is appreciated~
part VI
Author: pins_and_wheels
Rating: PG-13 to NC-17
Warning: AU, dark, non-con, beta-less
Length: 40k and growing, part V is 9k-ish
Pairing: Kai/Taemin (main), Key/Taemin, one-sided Minho/Taemin, Jinki/Taemin
Summary: Taemin loses a part of himself he doesn't know how to hold on to.
part IV
“So,” Taemin huffs, stretching his arms up as high as they would go, “when you invited me over to keep you company while you set up for your party - with the promise of food, no less - what you really meant was-”
“A bit higher on the right.”
The interruption causes Taemin to lose his grip on the banner and the tissue papper flutters down onto his head, painting a pink stripe across his sour expression.
He hears Kibum behind him snort, un-muffled, followed by the sound of noisy crunching.
“Hyung!” Taemin turns, furious but twisting cautiously on the trembling coffee table he was using as leverage, “You’re not even pretending to help!...You aren’t even standing!”
Kibum was sprawled across the couch, having slouched into the position at some point while Taemin struggled to edge his living room in pastels and silver. His head hung over the armrest, monitoring the blonde’s progress upside-down - Taemin watches him roll his eyes before grunting to his feet.
“There. Happy?”
He points with a stick of celery, “Keep going - you’re almost done.”
It took all of Taemin’s self-restraint not to stamp his foot. The wavering surface beneath his feet and the idea of Key laughing his ass off at him after he inevitably toppled to the floor was helpful.
“Come here - let me strangle you with these stupid streamers.” Taemin weaves them over each hand, like piano wire.
“That would be a sight.”
“Shut up.”
“I mean, only you could sissify a murder threat.”
“Shut up. Seriously, anyway, who uses streamers for parties anymore? Where did you even find these - a pedophile’s basement?”
Taemin’s glaring at the mess of party decorations at his feet, he doesn’t need to look to see Kibum flick his fringe and straighten the shoulders of his shirt.
“They’re ironic. Obviously.”
“They’re dumb.”
“They’re ironic, they’re true to theme. And they’re not going to stream themselves.”
Kibum’s eyes dip to the stranglehold his younger friend has on the paper ribbons in his hands, and chooses wisely to add, “I have a present for when you’ve finished.”
Taemin sighs but finds himself turning around obediently all the same, “Better be a good one. I can’t believe you misled me.” His next attempt to stick the streamer is a success. “And I was napping.”
He reaches the corner of the last side and carefully disembarks the table back down to the floor. It didn’t look so bad - a twisting double scalloped border, well matched to the ocean of helium balloons Kibum had preordered, that drifted to and fro across the ceiling as though the were mingling with friends.
“I believe what I said was that I was setting up for my party, I missed looking at your pretty face and by the way I had just stocked the frige. Facts all of which were true. Not my fault if you jumped to conclusions.” He stuffs floret of cauliflower in his mouth, cheeks bugling, appearing rather miserable as he chewed.
Taemin, head cocked, watches the older boy struggle to swallow.
“Why is that happening?”
“I’m on a diet. I don’t want to talk about it.”
“That’s,” Taemin blinks, taking a moment as he pulls a strip of tape off the back of his arm, wiggling his fingers until it flutters into a trash bin, “That’s, like, Olympic-level stupidity. You do not need to diet, hyung.”
“Of course I don’t need to diet.”
“Then why-?”
“Listen, not all of us were born with our collarbones on the outside of our skin.” Taemin pressed a hand self-consciously to his sternum. “I just bought these new jeans - rag & bone, super-skinny destroyed denim in ivory - Taemin, they’re fucking epic. But they make my thighs look chunky. White is in this season - do you know how hard it is to look slimming in white? So,” he sighs, and tells a tiny carrot stick held aloft before him, “a diet.”
Taemin waits for Kibum to swallow, which he does again as though he has a mouthful of sawdust.
“Careful there, hyung. Your vagina’s showing.”
“Fuck off,” Key’s once over of the room earns it a single nod of approval. “Do you want your reward or not?”
A bi-toned head of hair bobbing around his pelvis flashes through Taemin’s eyes. Usually he wouldn’t be one to turn down anything from Kibum, but after the last time he was wary. “Depends on what it is.”
“Just a little something to wear tonight.”
“Uh-huh." Taemin knew this game. "How little?”
The twinkle in Key’s eye is confirmation enough.
“What’s wrong with what I’ve got on?”
The older boy takes a step back and considers Taemin’s attire seriously.
“So…you mean aside from everything?”
“You’re an asshole. My mom just got me this shirt - it's cool, it's got snaps for buttons-"
“Jesus, Taemin, listen to yourself. Here. Take this,” Kibum shoves his bowl of vegetables into Taemin’s chest, “Do yourself a favor and don’t eat the cauliflower - it tastes like how feet smell. I’ll be right back.”
Taemin dumps the rejected vegetables in the sink, jamming a few down the disposal - he can hear Key’s heavy feet thump across the ceiling just above him. He admires the work on the rooms they had done (or he had done, rather). In addition to the streamers and thin plastic boas, there was a nauseating amount of glitter, colored lightsticks laid out and ready to be cracked, slinkies posed strategically all along the first floor to start walking as soon as they were nudged. Good, eye-catching, but not Kibum’s best work. It was a sort of confused retro theme - hard to set a particular decade, floating between the 80s and 90s. Guests had been told to dress accordingly, “think ‘before we could remember’” the instructions on the facebook invitation had read. Taemin anticipated a lot of ill-formed midriffs and overly styled hair in his future, but he supposed everything would look its best once they all had been doused in an adequate amount of alcohol. Changmin was providing, and on that front the boy never failed to deliver.
Aimlessly, Taemin wanders over to a table topped with a half dozen empty glass bowls, soon to be filled with junk food and adult punch. Looking at them made his thoughts run on fast-forward; to sucking crumbs and greasy bits off fingers, residue that would cling to the corners of noisy lips - how Cheetos look half-digested and up-chucked, how they would become neon paste between the cushions of a doubtlessly light-colored couch.
He flattens a wrinkle on the tablecloth. A fun night, to be sure.
One bowl, though, the only one to have been filled, was already brimming with party poppers. Taemin plucks a string, dangling the glittered cardboard before his face, like he was a child inspecting an ornament for cracks.
“Remember playing with these when we were little?” His hyung spoke low and close from behind - Taemin was impressed at how quickly he had made it back down the stairs.
The blonde hmmms a yes, leaning back into his hyung’s warm, solid chest. “Mmhmm. I never got any toy dinosaurs or jacks or rubber balls. I always got the ones stuffed with plastic necklaces - every single time.”
He takes hold of either end of the party favor, not quite tugging, not quite in the mood to receive another handful of plastic jewelry. Two palms come to cup the bend of his elbows.
“We,” a whisper, “We always got the ones with plastic necklaces.”
Taemin’s fingers tense and the popper sets off, the explosion sounding like live-fire the way it cracks against his eardrums.
He spins around.
Kibum’s not in the room - the room is empty.
There is still another’s breath wrapped collar-like around his neck, his back is still warm, his elbows still finger-painted with the tingle of someone else’s touch.
Yet the room, still, is empty.
“Fuck me-”
“Yah,” his hyung’s voice bellows from upstairs. “Save those for the party!”
.
~ * ~
Taemin was listening circles around the first floor, trying to match names to voices and voices to scenes. They all seemed pitifully teenage. Everything was fluid; young and dumb and drunk - even sudden a commotion; stumbling and the mighty crash of what might have been a vase or decorative plate, seemed practiced. As if everyone had checked the same script before coming.
“Yesung, you ass! Get off that table!
I’ve seen Ferbies crunk better, seriously.”
“Shit, did I do that?”
“What?”
“The rug, man. Look.”
“Oh, fuck.”
“It’s got red on it like’s in my drink.”
“Yeah, you totally did.”
“Kibum’s gonna skin me. What’re these things called? Persias?”
“Uh-huh. Expensive, foreign shit.”
“…Parisians? Pairshans?”
“Whatever, dude. You gotta put a lamp over that stain, quick.”
“You can’t ignore me.”
“No - try again! Try again! You’ve got to tip your head back more - just open your throat so it falls into your stomach, no swallowing. One more time. Come on.”
“You aren’t even trying. You’re making it worse.”
“Your turn, Suji.”
“Okay, uhm. Uh, I’ve never-”
“It’s ‘never have I ever.’”
“Yeah, right. Never have I everrr…had unprotected sex.”
“Suji!”
“Yah! You’ve had sex-protected sex!??!”
“No. Actually, I haven’t. I just wanted to find out which of you were real sluts. Who’s drinking?”
“You need to realize - please.
You need me.”
“Wouldn’t that be sort of antisocial?”
“Spending time with me would be antisocial?”
“No - I just. I came with friends.”
“I’m your friend, aren’t I?”
“You know what I mean.”
“Don’t be so…whatever.”
“I just don’t think we should.”
“Come on.”
“Uhm…”
“Come on.”
“Alright. But nothing like…just for a little while, okay?”
“Please. Okay? Please.”
“Is it true Chanyeol brought X?”
“Yeah. I mean no. I heard it was Kyuhyun and it was shrooms.”
“Oh. Cool. So, anyway - you know where they’re at?”
“Out back, I think.”
The party sounded full of memorized lines, a bit, and Taemin felt, a bit, as though his had been forgotten.
He had forgotten something.
The earth shifts around Taemin - or the cushions beneath him, rather - and he’s joined by the warm press of another person’s body on either of his sides. He keeps his eyes shut for a while but then someone pets his head and kisses him on the temple. It’s warm, familiar; his skin knew those lips. Taemin feels compelled to check to see who it is because maybe, maybe - because what if it’s his mum?
For a second he thinks he might have drunk too much too fast on too empty a stomach, and that he’s already soused himself into seeing double.
But, no. It’s just Jonghyun and Amber, draping themselves around him and looking especially twin-like in the dim lighting.
“Hey, baby,” One of them greets, in a sexy, low hum that flows seamlessly into the atmosphere of the rest of the room.
Amber (he decides, after noting the lack of body hair) shifts in her seat on the side of the chaise, sliding her arm behind him. Taemin takes note of their proximity and presses his face into her thigh, dazedly nuzzling the frayed denim of her cut-off shorts.
Amber is his favorite noona.
“Looks like Twinkle Toes has helped himself to Kibum’s punch.” She’s laughing and a bubble of pride swells in Taemin’s throat; he’s made her laugh.
There’s a short lull when someone fiddles with the sound system, then a new song picks up where the old one left off and Taemin yanks his head back.
“Oh!”
He wants to dance - the beat was perfect for dirty, flirty grinding with a just-a-friend, an electronic pulse and some nonsense Nordic language. He wants to shout - This! I love this song. Somebody dance with me! But instead he has to bite his tongue, grunting as both his feet seize up simultaneously with vicious muscle cramps.
“Uh-ohh, ow.”
It was not the first time it had happened. It was becoming another one of his recent, unhappy routines; hear a song, get the urge to move the way he used to and thenpain, in the form of searing charley horses.
Now he limped between tripping.
“Taemin?”
Jonghyun pulls at Taemin’s arm, rolling him back so the younger boy can see his sleazy grin.
“Hey, Taemin. Hey.”
Taemin blinks, flinching in slow motion when Jonghyun’s face drifts in near to his. The younger boy feels threatened by his hyung’s sharp canines, and lost in his wide, dark nostrils.
“I can see your nipples through that shirt.”
Taemin smooshes his chin into his chest and looks for himself. He could see them as well. The shirt Key forced on him offered about as much modesty as a morning fog.
“It’s nice. You look nice. It’s nice when you dress all slutty.”
Amber reaches across to take the older boy’s entire face in one hand and gives it a shove, nearly sending him off the couch.
“Jonghyun, put your tongue back in your mouth and your dick back in your pants.”
Jonghyun’s pout makes him look like a kicked puppy, Taemin decides, nearly patting the older boy on his sullen head. He’s impressed at his hyung’s ability to go so quickly from predatory to endearing.
“Just paying him a compliment - sheesh. He’s asking for it wearing his tits out like that.”
Then, in a flash, back to predatory.
With some difficulty, Taemin reorganizes his limbs so that his twiggy legs are stacked beneath his bum, hands on his knees. He’s too drunk - he should feel more vulnerable. Three days ago and he’d been almost choked to death by thin air; he had all the reason in the world and beyond to be vigilant. Rather than slow down, though, he swipes Jonghyun’s red plastic cup, guzzling whatever’s in it in one go. He’s almost had enough alcohol to forget; he’s knows a few drinks more and the memory won’t be there to worry over any longer.
Amber is trying to pull Taemin into conversation about some school gossip - a gym teacher caught in the locker room with a second year student - but Taemin’s having a hard time following. He wishes Kibum was there to nudge him subtle cues when to nod and laugh. The older boy had vanished not an hour into his own party, in precisely the way he swore he wouldn't. Taemin was pretty sure he was smoking in the backyard with Kyuhyun and the other potheads, but the prospect of having to navigate around ten or so half-baked conversations just to pull Kibum from their grasp was not appealing enough motivation.
The mellow roll of Amber’s voice comes to a halt. Taemin looks back at her, absentmindedly batting Jonghyun’s hand away from his crotch.
Her smoky make-up was very becoming. She was so oddly handsome - he thought they complimented each other nicely, with their converse gender ambiguity. He takes a few minutes to try to figure out how to tell her this without it sounding offensive.
She was smiling at him, an eyebrow raised.
“Have you noticed? He’s staring at you.”
He doesn’t mean for it to happen, but suddenly he’s got two hands around her wrists and he’s gripping them, tight. His ghost - it’s the only thing his muddled brain can come up with. It’s appeared. She sees it too.
“Where?”
Amber gives him an odd look, then points.
Taemin follows her finger to the other side of the room, his heart racing and his mind staggering along behind to catch up. He knew this would happen, he should’ve stayed home, he should never have let Kibum convince him-
Taemin sags, overcome.
He knows the sensation must be relief, even though it was doing a great job of disguising itself as disappointment. He felt relieved, he insists to no one, he feels relieved - not forgotten and deflated like a leftover birthday balloon.
It is a boy but not the boy. Not his Shadow.
Just Lee Jinki in his nerdy-chic glasses, a hypnotic graphic tee and acid wash jeans that show off the strength in his thighs.
He was staring, but he didn’t really seem to be aware he was doing so. A friend - Joon, Taemin’s pretty sure is his name - is whispering something in his ear as Jinki nods along, expression pleased and neutral. His eyes are pinned somewhere between Taemin face and lap, and self-consciously Taemin hikes up the neck of his shirt.
When the older boy licks his lips it lights a blush across Taemin’s cheeks.
“You see?”
He shrugs.
Lee Jinki’s gaze drifts up and finally meets Taemin’s. He smiles, maybe a little bit uncomfortably, and turns so he’s no longer facing the blonde.
“I think he’s taken a shine to you, Minnie.”
Taemin pulls Amber from her place on the couch armrest so that she’s squished up next to him, wiggling so he can lie across her lap. She plays with his bangs, which makes him hum low in his chest like a cat.
“Would you go for it?” He peels back an eyelid back and she rests a hand on his forehead, “Well?”
“There’s no way Lee Jinki is bent, Amber. You’ve spent too much time at our dance studio.” He tries to add something about heteronormativity, but the word fumbles out of his lips.
“I heard him talk about you in trig. Pitifully moaning about you legging around in gym class - do you seriously wear the girls’ uniform?”
Taemin shuts both eyes again, refusing to answer until Amber dribbles beer on his face. It makes Jonghyun (whose presence Taemin had forgotten) guffaw gaspingly, like a donkey. Taemin is torn between telling to older boy he looks dreadful in tie-dye and defending his gym wear.
“Kibum-hyung switched mine with one as a joke. But then he lost his and now he won’t give my shorts back.”
Taemin fiddles with the hem of the shorts he’s wearing now - stitched together by Key during his I’m-going-to-be-the-next-Andre-Kim phase. The material baffled him. They looked like they were made from crinkled up aluminum foil, despite being rather comfortable, and the left leg was adorned by an explosion of what might have been real tinsel.
Privately, Taemin liked them. On the surface though, he maintained being bitter about all the ridiculous get-ups people forced him to wear.
“So you do use the girl’s uniform?”
“…Not happily.”
“The sports bra chafes something awful, doesn’t it?”
“Noona.”
Eventually, Lee Jinki and his friend drift over to them. The other boy’s name is Joon, Jonghyun confirms, when he bellows it out and pulls said senior into a headlock. Their wrestling upsets Taemin drink.
“Fuck! Oh, lovely.”
He pouts down at his damp thighs until, like magic, a handkerchief materializes under his nose.
“…Thanks.”
Lee Jinki’s smile is the stuff toothpaste commercials are made of, dazzling and pearly and mind-bogglingly genuine; Taemin is almost tempted to tell him if all else fails career-wise, he has his lips and teeth to fall back on. Amber whispers something in his ear, which he can hear but doesn’t really listen to; your hero.
After mopping himself up, he hands the cloth napkin back, smirking a little, commenting, “I didn’t know people actually still used those things.”
Lee Jinki shrugs. “They make me feel fancy.” He gives the dangling kerchief a little shake with his pinky out.
The delicate cloth looks silly in the older boy’s hand; it makes Taemin giggle against the back of his palm. He has a sudden urge to grab onto a few of the thick fingers and lead the boy by them down a darkened hall to a darkened room to put them to better use.
Maybe the senior knows what he’s thinking, because he tucks both hands into his pocket and then they take a moment to grin at each other bashfully.
“How is it,” Amber suddenly squawks, directly into Taemin’s ear, “that I’m surrounded by four, drunk teenage boys, and not one of you has noticed I’m not wearing a bra?”
Taemin casts her breasts a side glance, wondering how he’s supposed to tell anyway, and gives what he hopes is an appreciative nod.
“Sorry, noona. Very nice.”
“Shut up.”
Jonghyun and Joon continue their hushed, snorted conversation without pause, and Taemin can feel that Jinki’s eyes are still stuck to his face.
“The nicest?”
Fortunately, he was spared from having to elaborate when he hears his name screeched from across the room.
“Taeminnie!”
“Oh, look. Tae-baby! There you are!”
He steals a look around Jinki’s legs and sees a gaggle of girls moving toward them - the few in front; Yoona, Sunny, Tiffany brandishing a caramel colored wig - he’s seen enough.
“Uhm, noona. I’m gonna--”
“Go ahead,” Amber nods toward the hallway, “Make a run for it. Jjong and I will play interference.”
Jinki helps him off the couch, “Do you want--?”
“Yeah. Come along.”
~
Kibum would be sore if he knew Taemin was hiding out in his parent’s bedroom; he feels a bit guilty pulling Jinki over the threshold. But his hyung’s room had been locked and the guest bedroom was occupied by a moaning, writhing mass that had split only to curse Taemin when he peeked inside.
The older boy doesn’t question him when he closes the closet door (bothered by the full-length mirror) or tosses a towel over the vanity-style bureau, effectively covering up all reflective surfaces. Taemin throws himself across the mattress after, wriggling onto his side when the senior joins him.
“Lee Jinki.” He starts.
Said boy smiles indulgently, “That’s me,” and taps the younger on the nose. “Lee Taemin.”
His is voice warm. So warm. Taemin thinks if he closed his eyes, he might be tricked to think they were hugging.
The blonde is struck simultaneously by the wish that this boy lived with him in his house, like a brother, and the urge to see him without clothes.
He offers a milder confession instead.
“I feel like we’ve been friends longer than we have. Or…I feel like we are friends already.” They make twisted eye contact, upside-down and sideways, “You know? It’s the Shadow-secret, probably. I wanna call you ‘hyung.’”
Lee Jinki props him up, tells him to go ahead with the informality and asks him how much he’s had to drink.
“Just enough, I think.” He holds up his pointer finger and thumb, indicating the tiniest breath of space between them. His lips are numb, but he still manages, “It’s medicinal. A medicinal amount. I was feeling bad, but now I feel…not a lot. Pretty much nothing.”
His fingers close in a pinch.
The chocolate gaze is probing and Taemin senses it’s his turn to be the one mentally undressed. Or dissected, more like. Fingers unwound, chest cracked open to prod cramped feelings inside, unmasked (was there something to mask - was he masking things?); mask removed.
He squirms beside Jinki.
Pointlessly, he smoothes the crinkles in his shorts.
Tokkinhyung, on his stomach at their feet before them, rolls over. His bleary eyes make contact somewhere around Taemin’s forehead and then he turns his gaze up to the ceiling. Taemin takes the moment to notice his malformed neck - at least a foot long, wrapped in gray chicken skin, with the appearance of being broken in the middle. His stiff, oblong ears shiver; Taemin takes it as his cue to look away.
He’s envious of Jinki.
Even if Tokkinhyung is all parts terrifying, at the very least he’s loyal.
“So, he hasn’t come back, then?”
Sooner or later, Taemin supposed, one of them was going to mention the elephant in the room.
Or, rather, the elephant distinctly absent from the room.
“Nope. He hates me. I don’t think he’ll ever be back.”
“He doesn’t hate you. He couldn’t hate you.”
“You don’t understand.” Taemin slouches all the way forward, so he’s staring at his feet and his chest is pressed into his thighs. “I think…he’s trying to kill me.”
Hearing the words said aloud brings his surreality down to earth in a way inebriated-Taemin is not really equipped to deal with. He rolls around in them, my shadow wants to kill me, making a mess of his messy thinking, my SHAHdow is a thing, and that thing wants me dead. The thoughts are dim, as is his ability to recognize how the twist in his belly when he thinks them isn’t completely appropriate.
It takes Taemin awhile to recognize the warmth at the base of his back, drifting from one side to the other in tandem with his breathing is not just a manifestation of all the alcohol in his bloodstream but Jinki’s big, gentle hand. It’s innocent, but Taemin finds the touch oddly arousing.
“How do you mean?”
He’s almost forgotten what they’re supposed to be discussing. The dancer slips a hand out from between his knee and chin, and replaces it on one of Jinki’s thighs.
He feels safe with the older boy. He doesn’t really want to spoil the mood.
“I don’t know. I don’t want to talk about it.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault, hyung.” He hauls himself upright and tucks his head in the crook of Jinki’s neck, speaking against his skin when he continues, “If it wasn’t for you I would still think it was my sanity I was missing, not some, stupid…capital-S shadow.”
Jinki’s gulp is so loud and close; Taemin practically feels it run through his own throat, like passing on a yawn. He then sighs over Taemin’s head.
“He’ll be back.”
“Maybe.”
“He will. And you’ll feel good again.”
“Maybe.”
“You will. But we…I probably won’t be able to talk to you anymore.”
“Maybe - what?”
Taemin pulls away so that they can face each other properly, glaring at Jinki’s remorseful shrug.
“Why?”
“I told you. They,” he points to Tokkinhyung, who looks a bit dead with his arms crisscrossed over his chest, “do not get along.”
“But…”
“I know, it sucks. I wanted to talk to you before, like, a lot. But it’s hard for them to be in the same room.”
“Why?”
Taemin liked Jinki. He felt as though they had formed - or were forming, at least - one of those rare and immediate connections that you sometimes hear about but are almost never lucky enough to experience firsthand. Already, after only a week into knowing him, being close to Jinki, really close, seemed like the logical next step for them to take. He’d rather act naturally with the older boy, at ease; the way he felt. Whisper their conversations in an empty master bedroom. He’d rather lean on him like it was nothing, hang a leg between Jinki’s thighs as if they were the ledge of a chair with the other spread somewhere out behind them. Drag his fingers up Jinki’s broad back, toy with his toffee hair.
And he’d certainly rather all that to being haunted or choked or shadowed by some tall and dark and menacing punk, who just so happened to have a claim on Taemin’s wake.
“Like I said before. It’s jealousy, or something. Your Shadow doesn’t like to share, mine doesn’t like to be pushed around.”
“Well, maybe…” When he looks down he must appear sad, because his hair is carefully tucked behind an ear to uncover his face. His mother’s same habit whenever he was upset.
Jinki wouldn’t mind his tiny waist, his ridged sternum, or his hipbones, sharp enough to take out eyes. As Taemin tells himself this, he tells Jinki, “Maybe I just won’t invite him back.”
For some reason, the older boy finds this funny.
“It isn’t up to you, unfortunately.”
“It should be.” He is ruffled by Jinki’s easy acceptance of such injustice.
“You’re probably right, but that’s just not how it works. They come and go as they please, and we can only flap around like clipped loons until they decide to return. Like I said, it sucks but…” He pulls away from Taemin, as though imparting wisdom reminded him he was supposed to be the responsible one between the two of them. And some might call the distance between their mouths and the stirring in his pants irresponsible. “You really should be focusing on how to get him back. Figure out what he wants. Your life will be a lot easier then, I promise.”
Taemin can still too easily feel the press of phantom fingers around his neck. “Doubt that.”
“You’ve just forgotten what you’re missing.”
Taemin mulls over his words, ignoring Jinki as he shifts about, trying and failing to get comfortable.
“Isn’t it supposed to be the other way around? You don’t know how much you’ll miss something ‘til it’s gone? It is gone.” He holds up his hands, as if to show that they were empty, “And I don’t miss it.”
The older boy - drunk as well, maybe, his cheeks were flushed - collapses back onto the mattress as Taemin had done earlier, and flops an arm over his eyes.
“I’m not going to argue with you. It’s too late, I’m too tired.”
Taemin checks his phone reflexively, “It’s 11 p.m.”
“An hour past my bedtime already!” He mock gasps.
The cutest part about it, Taemin thinks as he inches closer, was that what the older boy said was probably true. He blows a stream of air at Jinki’s jutting adam’s apple until he’s being blinked at dazedly from beneath the boy’s wrist.
Taemin looms on his knees, pinning Jinki with his weight and his biggest pair of eyes. He was admittedly trying to appear, as Kibum had once described, like a sugarcoated slut - the look had worked pretty well for him in the past. Taemin wasn’t sure why he was so turned on - why it was twisting in his stomach, needy; like hunger - but he felt suddenly compelled to get the ache to stop.
He drops his head to the side, as though his right ear had spontaneously filled with lead.
“Should I leave you to sleep, hyung?”
Taemin can practically read the older boy’s mind. He knows what he is thinking.
“Uhm…”
The way he’s looking at Taemin - his eyes drooping from his face to his collar, then his chest then his thighs; it’s behavior Taemin is used to.
He’s thinking no - Taemin just had to get him to say it.
“Uh.”
“You seem…”
“Huh?”
“You seem a bit…”
“What?”
“Tired, hyung. Or something.”
“No.” There it was.
Jinki swallows and the knob in his throat bobs again - Taemin has to wonder how high it would hang if his neck were arched, if he was releasing a deep, ringing moan.
“I’m not…nothing.”
“Okay, good.” He hopes the older boy doesn’t have any hang-ups about his sexuality. He didn’t seem the type, but Taemin scooches forward until his shorts are pulled tight across his lap, just so there’s no confusion. “Nothing?”
Then there isn’t any more to it; Jinki eases back onto his elbows and tilts his chin invitingly.
It’s slower than he’s used to and together they taste an odd mix; Jinki’s illegally procured cheap maekju to Taemin’s hard liquor, cut with whatever fruit drink Kibum could find in his frige. But Taemin doesn’t care, because there’s this big, shovel-like hand sliding up his back, and he feels held entirely just by the press of one of them.
He can hear Kibum’s voice from countless times before, making out - the older boy would break their kiss to comment so fucking fat, and would eye Taemin’s lips as though he’d done something remarkable to achieve them. It’s not until now, as Jinki drags his fleshy mouth from under Taemin’s ear to his chin, then kisses him again, that Taemin realizes how exactly his hyung’s words are a meant to flatter him.
He doesn’t bite Taemin to get him to part his lips, and he doesn’t yank on his hair and or shove his tongue passed them sloppily, so that Taemin is left struggling to not be rude and wipe spit off his chin.
Instead, Jinki hums, with that pure, perfect pitch of his and Taemin’s jaw pops unlocked like the little sound is a little key. And then his tongue is inside Taemin’s mouth, warm and smooth and fat, filling it in a way his own smaller one never could.
He rolls his hips, finding it difficult to distinguish heat of friction from heat of arousal, and one of them whimpers in the backs of both their throats.
It’s slower, yes. Maybe less illicit feeling - maybe less edgy. But it’s also probably the best kiss Taemin’s ever been given - probably one he’d use to compare many, many future experiences, which is something he can recognize even drunk as he his.
It’s probably pretty perfect.
Skrrrrrr
It’s odd, Taemin thinks, that even though Jinki has freed his lips and moved on down his neck; he still can’t catch his breath. It’s completely unreasonable for someone to be able to make his body feel so raw and buzzing, as if parts of it; his pulse point, the sharp turn of his jaw, the spot behind his ear, had never been touched before. When the older boy uses his grip on Taemin hair to tilt his head, scraping his top teeth against the delicate skin beneath his jaw, Taemin moans like he’s being gnawed on.
Jinki misinterprets the noise.
“Should,” Jinki pulls his head back, breaking his connection with Taemin’s skin and the young dancer has to stop himself from filling the new space between them with curses, “should I stop?”
Taemin pushes him until his elbows give out, hovering close enough so that their noses brush, “What, is that like a joke?”
“Uhm, it could be. I guess.”
“Oh,” Taemin lifts himself and resettles directly on Jinki’s crotch, so that he groans over Taemin’s next words, “Yeah, I’d heard you weren’t funny, hyung.”
Skkkrrrrrreh
He might have lost his ability to dance, but grinding his hips down onto another boy’s did not require music. Taemin reveled in his ability to move in a way that was actually fluid, for the first time in so long, and he reveled twice as much in the two-handed grip on his ass.
Jinki was hard - thank god, Taemin thought, because it would be embarrassing to be the only one so turned on after just some sloppy mouth work. The size of what Taemin could feel inside of Jinki’s pants was a little ridiculous. He is half tempted to ask the older boy stuffed a bottle of soju down there for safe keeping but - his own erection throbbed in reminder - he really didn’t want to kill their moment.
Jinki, it seemed, was ready to do that for him.
The older boy pulls back, small eyes strapped open wide, panting, already sweaty.
Taemin hisses in protest.
“Again?”
Jinki stops him when he tries to reattach their lips, gripping Taemin around the neck and forcing the skinny body to bend back. He clutches the front of Taemin’s shirt, pushes it up past his nipples, then pulls it down again. The older boy brings him in close, moving both his hands so that they held firm around Taemin’s biceps, keeping him still as he looks him over.
Taemin could only blink, smoosh his heavy lips together and try to appear patient.
“You’re so fucking,” fingers massage his lips free of their purse, glide over his sloping nose, settle under his eyes. Taemin’s hears the words before they’re spoken, and shakes his head.
You’re so beautiful.
It was intended as a compliment, Taemin knew, when people took a moment to tell him what they thought of his face, his body; all long thin limbs, willowy, and delicate, porcelain skin. Unfortunately, years ago the sentiment had lost its punch. Hearing the words didn’t make him feel any better or at all special - and they certainly didn’t make him feel beautiful.
“Don’t.” Jinki took the hint.
“I’ve just,” his broad hands surround Taemin’s waist, a perfect fit, and Taemin forgives him the cliché, “I’ve really wanted to do this for a really fucking long time.”
“Really? Is that right? How ‘fucking long?’” Taemin smiles, a grin that twists the light on his face, possibly revealing a glint of something devilish, a glimpse of horns. He sighs into Jinki’s mouth, softening the bones in his spine so that his chest melts against the older boy’s. “You should have told me, hyung. I would’ve let you.”
“Fuck-”
Skrr- a tinkering but sudden and clear and therefore shocking crash breaks through the room; the boys separate a sparse few centimeters to peer over at the source of the interruption.
A perfume bottle of Kibum’s mother's, once seated securely in the center of her bureau, had found its way to the floor. Delicate slivers of glass glitter back at Taemin from the hardwood, the other half lost in the darkly ornate pattern of the room’s oriental area rug.
Taemin’s eyes fix themselves to the floor, his body braces for alarm bells. Before they can trigger, a heady, floral scent envelops the bed. It’s old-fashioned and stifling, just like the clothes Key’s mom tended to wear, and it makes the air in the room thicker; more confused. Had it not been so strong, either might have realized that perfume bottles, no matter how sorry smelling their spray, could not manage to hurl themselves over ledges on their own.
Jinki, after glancing over at the bureau, thinks nothing more of it. He goes back to his work on the pointy bones that breeched the blonde’s shoulder every time he moved, like the backs of tiny white whales. Taemin - tipsy, uninhibited - chooses to think nothing of it as well. His mind is off and away - “Where’re your hands? Why aren’t they-?” - and when Jinki finally introduces himself to the front of Taemin’s shorts, he tosses his head, throwing the shattered bits of perfume bottle directly out of it.
“Touch me.”
Jinki has the gall to snort over Taemin’s plea. “What do you think I’m doing?” He cups Taemin, pressing his cock into his stomach, rubbing the material of his shorts against him. They feel like warm velvet water.
“I mean for real. Hyung.”
Jinki shakes when he whines, shivering right along with the word.
“Okay. Okay.”
Jinki rolls them over so Taemin is on his back beneath him. At first he’s careful not to crush the skinny boy, but Taemin won’t have it. Being handled with kid gloves reminds him of his condition - his shadowless state - and makes him feel like an invalid. He’s not interested in being treated as though he’s some brittle, cracked shell ready to burst into dust; the idea of it makes his stomach churn.
He pulls Jinki in close with his thighs, showing off his talented rubber bones by dragging his feet all the way up the older boy’s broad back without help, and then twisting further, to nestle one in the dip beneath Jinki’s shoulder blade, keeping him close, the other lounging against his pillows.
Taemin could put pretzels to shame.
Jinki blinks at the repositioning, surprised, but takes opportunity to grip Taemin’s ankle and shove it farther back behind him, testing the limits of the dancer’s taut muscle. When the older boy grinds into him it’s almost painful, hard cock wrapped in rough denim scrapes his skin, punishing. He opens his mouth, fully intending to complain ow, it’s hurting, to order Jinki ow, please move, but when he hears himself the words sound very different; the sound more like more more moremove more and so he can hardly blame the older boy for only rutting harder.
His mouth is filled with fingers - three, it feels like - and he sucks them down, happy to have anything to shut him up. He can see through his wince that Jinki is wetting his own hand, sucking each finger and spiting into his palm, and it makes Taemin blink the blur out of his eyes to be sure he was seeing right. That was a lot of fingers.
Taemin can feel the silver drawstring on his shorts loosen, tickling his thighs when Jinki tugs them down.
"You're..." Jinki's face is suddenly back in his range, licking his open lips and biting the bottom one, "not wearing anything under."
Taemin glances down to, sure enough, his naked dick and balls. One of Jinki's hands is lightly caressing the dip at the joint of his thigh; he was still looking at Taemin for a response.
"Kibum-" Taemin gasps, Jinki chooses that inopportune moment to wrap his moist fingers around Taemin's hard on, squeeze and jerk. Taemin can't remember the words to the rest of the sentence.
"It's Jinki, actually."
"No no no, I know, fuck. But Kibum-hyung said," Taemin tries to arch but the shorts are restricting, "he told me my briefs would bunch."
As if that were a decent explanation.
Jinki's confused - it's clear on his face - but he doesn't ask, distracting himself by testing various angles to hold his arm that would give him the best hold on Taemin's cock. The younger boy is too taken with the sensation to notice Jinki's other hand weaseling down between them until he's brought to attention by two fingers at his entrance. Their press is gentle, but suddenly it's all Taemin can feel.
He rips away, panting, sort of stunned.
“What are you…oh.”
Taemin thought it was pretty bold of Jinki to finger his younger partner their first time hooking up, but Taemin was used to bold so, arching, he takes it in stride. He clenches down in show, also trying to force his body to adjust to the intrusion and Jinki tightens his grip on Taemin's cock in response.
“Need…” Jinki mutters suddenly, pulling back and leaning across Taemin to the bedside table. Craning up, he frowns at the contents of the first drawer, which Taemin tries but can’t make out from where he’s pinned. The second, though, earns an Aha!
“Everyone’s the same.”
Jinki’s hand comes back slick and messy - the slide is ten times as smooth as it had been when he grips Taemin’s cock, rolls his balls, and with the added lubrication he doesn’t hesitate to cram two fingers inside the dancer.
“This okay?”
Taemin laughs, gasps, and scoffs all at once - it comes out a breathy groan, like he’s been punched in the gut.
“A little late to be-” he grasps at an inhale, “asking - asking th-” and another, “that - yeah, it’s okay it’s great, fuck.”
Two fingers become three and the grip on his cock doesn’t ease up. Jinki’s strokes are slower and more even than how Taemin usually treats himself, but they match perfectly with the thrusting fullness inside Taemin’s ass. Their eyes meet - it’s the first time Taemin has seen Lee Jinki wear an expression at all resembling a smirk - and they look down between their bodies together.
Taemin’s shorts are still bunched around his thighs enough so that his erection is bared, flushed rosily, dripping precum onto his stomach. Jinki thumb swipes the tip of it deliberately slow, his calluses creating a sensation unlike anything Taemin’s own compulsively moisturized hands had ever been able to.
At one point he has to open his eyes, just to check that he is still gripping Jinki by the hair, because the older boy’s floppy mane is so bloody soft that Taemin’s fingers can barely register it between them. Twisting his head to the side, his heart jumps into his throat.
The sight should have been a splash of ice water; Tokkinhyung, crouched, peeking over the edge of the mattress - sloppily mouthing a fistful of sheets. The Shadow is visibly shaking, and the lighting brings out the disproportions in his face, one hand fluttering over the sheet like a massive, fleshy moth - too nervous to land, too nervous to remain still.
Taemin moans gutturally when Jinki twists his fingers inside him, deep enough for Taemin to feel that electric surge, gut wrenching pleasure that came from a properly abused prostate, alongside perfectly timed tightening of his fist around Taemin cock. Triggered by the noise, it seemed, the figure at the side of the bed’s free hand drifts toward Taemin; his movements are jerky and hesitant, as if he wanted to join in but wasn’t sure he would be welcomed.
Before Taemin can do anything in response; scorn his partner’s monstrous other half or somehow invite him in along with them, Jinki stops thrusting and starts pressing, incessantly, directly into Taemin’s prostate. Everything else fades out in white, his ears echo - a high, ringing hummmm and Taemin comes along with it, his orgasm suddenly wrenched right out of him.
His climax rises and falls with the sound - vibration - whatever it was, as long as it lasts. He can only feel; his balls seizing, his cock shooting hot streams across his chest, a cloud of Jinki’s breath collecting at his neck.
Taemin’s hearing returns in time to catch himself pant-pant-panting with a throat gone ragged, coming down in pitchy whimpers. His hands flop boneless on the bed, moving independent of his body and he peeks down at them just in time to see Tokkinhyung slump over with a grunt to the floor.
Taemin couldn’t remember the last time he had come so ferociously. He nearly mutters a stunned little, “woah,” but doesn’t, thankfully, or else he would’ve had to punch himself in the face.
Jinki kisses him. He does his best to keep up, to kiss back a thanks, but his brain is still running in circles around his orgasm. He tries to play it cool (or kind of cool), as if the older boy hadn’t just electrified his very insides into soup. Taemin nuzzles Jinki’s neck, which is soft and firm. His hand bumbles over the older boy’s chest down to his lap, intending to return the favor in some way before he passed out completely.
The intimidating hardness that had been there last time he had sense to notice it, though, is gone, warm, dampness there instead. Jinki jerks the front of his pants, squirming his fingers between the waistband and scrunching his nose in a very distinct way.
“You…?” Taemin looks up at the other boy, bemused.
“You’re hot when you come.”
Taemin rolls so that he’s flat on his back again, so that his legs can un-cramp, so that cool air can begin to dry the sweat on his thighs.
So that Jinki doesn’t have to look directly at his smirk.
“Wish it were always that easy.”
Moments before he knows they will both be asleep, Taemin makes a suggestion.
“Monday is Buddha’s birthday.”
“Mm, sure is.” Jinki worms closer, hoisting Taemin up a little so he can mouth his shoulder sleepily. “Love 'at guy.”
“Maybe we could do something.”
Jinki squints “You mean, like…a party? I usually just sleep in, to be honest. Not that - I mean, Buddha - I totally respect the whole inner peace, contemplation, meditation thing. You're into that? I could get into that."
A hand's width apart, the two stare at each other blankly.
“Uhm, no,” Taemin eventually manages. This was going to be difficult, he realized, “No, I didn’t mean to celebrate, hyung.”
He wriggles back down, watching the older boy’s sharp adam’s apple bob next to him. He’d forgot to look for it when he came.
Next time.
“You meant like, hang out or something. That’s what you meant.”
Taemin snorts but doesn’t answer.
“Go to sleep.”
~ * ~
At some point, very early in the morning before the sun has even begun to haul itself onto the horizon, Taemin wakes up. He’s just conscious enough to realize it’s still dark and that he still should be asleep. There are two arms around his waist; they feel safe. Whose they are doesn’t even occur to him to question; for all he cares, more unconscious than not, for all he cares they’re just floating limbs attached to what could’ve been a furnace cuddling his back.
He doesn’t move. He doesn’t want to jog his brain around, rouse himself or his partner. He closes his eyes and tries to forget that he ever woke up.
But he can’t turn off his ears. They pick up a sound, very softly reaching him from the other side of the room. From the closet.
Snnnss-hhh. Snnnss.
Sniffing.
It’s sniffing.
Snnnsss. Hhhh-hhhh-hhh.
Like a dog on a hunt, trailing prey. Snnnnnnsss. Hhh-hhh-hhh.
Or muffled sobs.
Sniss. Uh-hhhuh. Huhh-huhh-huh-hh-hh.
It’s soothing - the sound soothes him.
He lulls back into sleep.
~ * ~
Taemin rises with a jerk, shooting upright and hopping into the middle of the room before he even has time enough to process it isn’t his own. His former pillow groans softly on the bed where he’d left it and Taemin’s eyes muddle over the form, sprawled, spread-eagle across the covers.
Right. Kibum, alcohol and bodies, some fuzziness…Lee Jinki.
Right, Kibum’s parent's bedroom.
“Crap.”
Stumbling back over to the side of the mattress, Taemin gives Jinki’s leg a quick squeeze and slap, “Hyung, wake up.”
“Two mer’ min’iss.”
“No.” Taemin finds his phone while searching for his shirt on the floor and checks - 9:24a.m.. “This is not a drill, hyung. Gotta get up now.”
“Taemin.”
He’s blinking a lot, tiny eyes squished up adorably, but Taemin doesn’t really have time to find it cute.
“Hole in one. Stand, with your legs. Come on now.” He spies his shirt behind Jinki in the spot he’d just heaved himself out of, curled up in the impression of the older boy. “Ah ha!”
“Hey,” Jinki watches Taemin whip the shirt over his head, “why are you undressed? I didn’t do that.”
“Shh, you’ve got to be quiet. We should leave now - we should’ve already left.”
“Where? Kibum’s?
“Yes, and if we don’t get out before he gets up he’ll work us like a drill sergeant to get this place cleaned. Trust me.” He spoke rapidly and with experience, “A half drunk Kibum is not someone you want to take orders from. Stick to the sides of the stairs when you’re going down, the middle of the boards creak.”
Taemin finishes straightening the bedsheets, points to the door, then lifts the finger slowly up to his lips, shhhh.
“You’re making me nervous,” Jinki whispers as follows, catching hold of Taemin’s wrist.
“Don’t be,” Taemin turns the knob, “Just be quiet-”
“Who the fuck,” they both freeze at Kibum’s voice, seemingly booming out at them from the very floorboards, “What fucking cock sucking motherfucker took a shit in my mother’s ficus?!!”
Taemin throws wide eyes over his shoulder; he notes Jinki looks properly terrified now.
“The window. Out the window.”
“Seriously?”
“Did that not sound serious to you?”
After some not-so-delicate coaxing (“I’ll push you. I will push you”), Taemin talks Jinki onto the ledge of the window and then out into the tree branches that stretched beside the house. He tries to follow the dancer’s direction as best he can, but Jinki is uncoordinated even when not in a complete panic. The sound of crashing now accompanies the shouts from the first floor, Kibum's shrill standing out amongst them.
“I’m going to break my neck!”
“Shut up - you won’t. Two more braches and you can swing down - oh shit. Are you okay?”
When Jinki’s foot looses its hold on the bottom branch, Taemin laughs in gasps watching the older boy flap his arms uselessly, eventually flopping to the ground on his ass.
It’s less amusing, he finds, when he does the exact same thing not a minute later.
Alternately shoving each other and handholding, they race out the back gate, giggling down the quiet neighborhood hill. Their feet move too fast to stop and their hearts, engorge with adrenaline, feel distended.
At he bottom, having reached a major street from which Kibum’s house is no longer in view, they trade numbers. Afterward, Jinki hails a cab and stuffs five thousand won into Taemin’s hand.
“For last night,” he jokes, before Taemin can accuse him of being some sort of gentleman.
Taemin’s shocked and, again, charmed - always so damn charming - when Lee Jinki swoops down and kisses him; a peck, another and then long and languid, unrushed even against the soundtrack of the taxi driver’s disgusted hissing.
“I’ll call you, then.”
“Yeah okay. Cool.”
Taemin watches out the back window of the cab as the older boy bounces away down the street, clutching the headrest so his fingers aren’t able to grope his lips like some pathetic little girl.
The driver hisses again when he gives the man his address - all of a five minute walk away - and Taemin lets himself out.
~ *** ~
A/N: you may have noticed whilst reading that this chapter is pretty much glued to poop, but for the life of me i don't know how to get it unstuck. It screams for a total rewrite but I am lazy and I would rather write the upcoming parts or take a break an pump out some oneshots, so for now you'll just have to deal with this crap, not hold this against me or the story (please). hopefully i'll have something semi-decent up soon.
sorry. apology a/ns are kind of annoying, i know. but i had to do it. feedback is appreciated~
part VI