fic: ask, receive (3/3)
Title: ask, receive (3/3)
Rating: PG-13
Pairings: Jonghyun/Key, background '91-line, EXO maknae-line
Notes: I'M DONE I'M DONE. I'm so so so sorry for the wait (for those of you who were waiting ;; all of you are too kind) - finals and sbb thoroughly kicked my butt this past month (and in the case of sbb, is still in the process of kicking my butt). Thank you for all the support, this is the longest fic I've ever written - it is 24,104 words in all (HOW). Thanks especially to the inimitable herocountry. I hope this last part wraps it all up satisfactorily, but any and all crit is, as always, welcomed.
Kim Kibum wins a date with pop idol Kim Jonghyun. This is not a rom-com. AU.
part 1
part 2
part 3
Kibum is an adult, but he’s not above lying in bed for a dreamy, lazy half an hour the next morning, thinking about the solidness of Jonghyun’s shoulders under his hands. He’s in the middle of brushing his teeth when Nicole calls and he picks up, managing a gargled Hello? around the toothbrush in his mouth.
“Kibum,” Nicole says, a note of reproach in her voice. “It’s noon.”
He spits out the toothpaste in his mouth, and points out, “It’s Saturday. And you don’t have kids yet, Nicole, don’t nag.”
Nicole’s sputter through the phone is nowhere near as vehement as it usually is, so Kibum knows something’s wrong. “What’s up?” he asks as he walks from his bathroom to his kitchen, balancing the phone between his ear and shoulder as he opens the cupboard for a glass, filling it from the sink.
“Nothing,” she says, but she sounds miffed. Kibum waits for her to fold, taking a sip of his water. “It’s nothing, just Jinwoon.”
“Ah,” Kibum says, setting his glass down. “My good friend, the idiot. Want to come over?”
“Yes please,” Nicole responds. “See you in fifteen?”
He throws together a soup that is still simmering by the time Nicole shows up. She’s over in thirteen, exactly the amount of time it takes to get from her and Jinwoon’s apartment to Kibum’s at a brisk pace, and one look at Nicole’s face makes Kibum open his arms, collecting her in them.
“Come here,” he says soothingly. “What’s wrong?”
He feeds her bites of soup in between her fuming retelling of Jinwoon’s latest transgression, a case of miscommunication that was, okay, particularly stupid on Jinwoon’s part, but Kibum also knows well Nicole’s temper. He coaxes her back from the angry edge of her indignation and, by the time Jinwoon sends a cutesy apology picture text that Kibum rolls his eyes at, she’s more chagrinned than anything.
“Thanks, Kibum,” she sighs, burrowing her face into his shoulder. “Sorry. I just freaked out because, well, you know.”
He did know, he thinks, a little bit-Jinwoon and Nicole complemented each other so well no one seemed to know what to do when they fought. “What are friends for,” he hums, rubbing her arm soothingly and a bit distractedly. Nicole flicks her eyes up at him; he usually never hesitates to pass up a chance to ream on Jinwoon. He loves Jinwoon, of course, but Nicole came first. He hesitates, mulling over what happened last night in his mind and whether or not he should tell Nicole. It might be unfair to Jonghyun, he decides, but it’d be unfair to him, too, and he doesn’t owe Jonghyun anything, not yet.
“Actually,” he begins.
Nicole perks up, blinking up at him, and he remembers the time Nicole told him he always starts off like that when he needs to make a confession and how he’s tried every time since then to break himself of the habit, to no avail. This trips him up, that he’s still, after all, predictable.
“Uh,” he continues, fumbling over his words. “Uh. Jonghyun and I-last night-“
He stops, flushing, but thankfully Nicole gets the hint.
“What?” she asks, eyes round as she sits up and away from him. “You mean you-“
“No!” Kibum half-shouts, when he realizes what she’s thinking. “Oh God, no, not that, we just-you know-made out a little,” he finishes lamely, embarrassment crawling up his face.
Kibum’s not too sure what exactly he was expecting by way of an expression, but he’s pretty sure Nicole’s face falling before she catches herself is far from what he was looking for.
“What?” he asks, and it comes out defensive before he can stop himself.
She just shakes her head in response, palming his cheek before pressing her nose to it. “Just be careful,” she murmurs close to his ear.
“What-” he says, indignant, but she cuts him off.
“Jonghyun is really, really famous, Kibum,” she says, lacing their fingers together. “And I know you know that, and I know he likes you. But I know you, and I’m just saying you should be careful.”
--
As if to prove her point, she sends him an article Sunday morning while he’s still in bed from some sleazy gossip mag, which includes a few blurry cellphone pictures of him and Jonghyun outside the movie theater. In the first one, Jonghyun is signing autographs, looking sheepish, Kibum harried as he waves for a cab. What Kibum doesn’t remember-but it must be true, he supposes, if he’s looking at it-is the way he’s standing, body curved protectively, possessively towards Jonghyun’s. The second, him ducking his head slightly so that Jonghyun can whisper in his ear, the two of them too close for just a secret between friends. The third, just the tips of Jonghyun’s fingers pressing low on Kibum’s back as he ushers him into the cab, throwing an apologetic smile over his shoulder at his fans.
It’s not particularly damning, but laid out like that in front of him, suddenly all Kibum can remember is the confident, unhurried way Jonghyun had kissed him. How blindingly pleased he’d looked afterwards with himself, with Kibum. The intimate, playful way he’d tugged on the end of Kibum’s shirt right before he left. This isn’t at all how he wants this, Kibum realizes, bitter feeling in his throat. He spends the better part of twenty minutes just clicking through the pictures, blowing them up to their grainiest, looking for something that will absolve him.
Unsurprisingly, it is a text from Jonghyun that breaks him out of his reverie, some short, emoticon-riddled message with a silly selca attached. Grateful for the distraction, for the return to a dynamic Kibum understands, he rolls over onto his stomach, snickering.
It only takes a few exchanges, however, until Jonghyun texts back, straightforward and abrupt, do you have time tonight? can I see you?
It is one week after Jonghyun’s comeback and Kibum doesn’t live under a rock; he’s seen the news, knows how well-received his single has been. He knows Jonghyun had swept all of the weekly awards the week he’d come back and has been projected to stay on top of the charts for at least a few weeks more. For a 27-year-old solo singer in an industry of boybands and girl groups, it is startling and, more than anything, a true testament to Jonghyun’s talent. And even if Kibum didn’t know anything about pop culture, he would still remember the absent weeks leading up to Jonghyun’s comeback, and all the late nights Jonghyun, usually playful, though never when it came to his career, had pulled. The bruises under his eyes had been even darker than they usually were, and Kibum doubted if anyone but his managers, trainers, and stylist team saw him at all for two weeks.
The last time Kibum had seen him-his stomach clenches at the memory, unbidden, of the way Jonghyun’s fingers had tangled in his hair, and he shakes the feeling away.
By all means, Jonghyun is the one who shouldn’t have time to see Kibum, and Kibum hates feeling uncertain, hates feeling second best, even when he understands why he is and even when he knows he would do the same.
Of course, Kibum responds, second-guessing every word, just let me know when you’re free. He hits ‘send’ before he can think too much more about it, rolling over again only to see the paparazzi pictures of him and Jonghyun pulled up on his computer still.
--
It is nine when Jonghyun finally comes over that night, making light apologies for the late hour. They spend a slightly tense two hours together watching an American basketball game on Kibum’s couch, Kibum careful to keep a friendly, polite distance between them. At one point, right around halftime, Jonghyun shifts imperceptibly closer to press his shoulder, hesitant, against Kibum’s. It takes all of Kibum’s best efforts not to jump and pull away. He keeps his eyes on the screen, though just barely, even when he can hear his voice, explaining some tedious detail about conference planning, grow louder and just slightly higher-pitched, much as it always does when he is nervous.
By the end of the game, Jonghyun’s arm is thrown casually around the back of the couch, enough so that Kibum is pretty sure he could swear without lying too much that Jonghyun most adamantly did not have his arm around his shoulders. By the time the sportscasters are covering the game highlights, Kibum’s mind feels as if it’s been buzzing for the past two hours with the tension.
Jonghyun cuts into Kibum’s slightly frenetic dialogue about banquet centerpieces with a laugh, sliding closer. “Can I kiss you?” he asks, eyes frank as he ducks his head to peer into Kibum’s.
Kibum’s mouth claps shut, blush already warming the tips of his ears. “Not if you interrupt me like that,” he mutters waspishly. If pressed, he would admit that he maybe-okay, he did-leaned into Jonghyun’s arm behind him, turning his face towards Jonghyun to look at him.
“You were talking about centerpieces,” Jonghyun points out, though his tone is only half-heartedly chiding. He drops his gaze to Kibum’s mouth, sliding a hand over Kibum’s knee and thoroughly startling him. The warm, physical weight of Jonghyun’s fingers anchors him, and brings back, suddenly, all the little things Kibum had been trying not to remember about Thursday night.
“I thought you were going to kiss me. Or was that just a ploy to make me stop,” Kibum says accusingly, voice overly loud over the din of the highlights reel, turning slightly away as he feels the flush start to creep over his nose.
The hand on his chin turns him back towards Jonghyun, who murmurs a soft both before his mouth is on his again. This, unlike the lead-up, is easy, so easy, and Kibum feels something in his stomach unclench. He opens his mouth under Jonghyun’s, blood rushing in his ears.
This time, unlike Thursday night, is much more frantic, and before long Jonghyun’s fingers are insistent at the hem of Kibum’s shirt, pushing it up and away, blunt and well-manicured nails digging into his shoulders. Kibum presses him into the back of his couch, feeling giddy and reckless as he nips at his mouth, making a low, undignified sound in the back of his throat when Jonghyun’s tongue swipes at his lip.
“Don’t,” Jonghyun says softly when Kibum bites at the soft skin under his chin. Kibum jerks away like he’s been burned, feeling embarrassed and combative, fingers reflexively curling around his shirt on the couch next to them and ready to throw Jonghyun out if he has to. Jonghyun notices, and is apologetic when he pulls Kibum’s wrist away from the shirt, bringing Kibum’s hand up to kiss at his wrist. “Sorry, it’s just-” he mumbles, teeth scraping gently at Kibum’s pulse.
“No, no, I know.” Kibum, quick to reassure, bobs his head, though he still feels self-conscious. Jonghyun, who mistakes the action as Kibum trying to kiss him, crashes his nose on the upswing into the downswing of Kibum’s chin, and Kibum bursts out laughing.
“Hey, don’t break my nose,” Jonghyun pouts, and reaches up to push Kibum’s hair away from his face.
Kibum turns his head to mouth at Jonghyun’s palm, then grins down at him. “You could probably use a little more work on it anyway,” he says, ducking his head before Jonghyun can pull at his hair.
Jonghyun opens his mouth in false shock, and pinches the back of his neck. “What are you trying to say? You’re lucky you’re hot.” His voice drops, tone rough, before he pulls Kibum down for a kiss, arching up into him.
Kibum, desperate for the feeling of warm skin against his, only murmurs a vague agreement as he tugs at the collar of Jonghyun’s shirt. He spreads his palms wide over Jonghyun’s stomach under his shirt, marveling at the way Jonghyun’s breath hitches, and at the way he can feel it against his throat.
“Up, up, come on,” Kibum breathes, breaking away and pulling at Jonghyun’s shirt insistently.
Jonghyun laughs even as he allows himself to be manhandled out of his shirt, emerging with his hair tousled and his mouth swollen. “So impatient,” he teases, but as his hands are currently tugging at Kibum’s belt, Kibum feels that this is a rather unfair assessment.
“Excuse me,” Kibum manages to get out in between kisses, which at this point are more him and Jonghyun pressing their open mouths hurriedly together as they work at each other’s belts. By the time Jonghyun’s sliding Kibum’s belt out of his belt loops, Kibum feels like his insides are humming with the anticipation.
“Do you,” he gets out haltingly, sitting up so he is straddling Jonghyun. He gestures vaguely in the general area of his bedroom, feeling an embarrassed flush crawl up his chest. “You know, do you want to-”
Jonghyun thumbs at the dip of Kibum’s hipbones before undoing just the top button of Kibum’s jeans. Kibum’s mind goes deliciously blank for a second as Jonghyun rubs his knuckle over the second button, pursing his lips as if he’s thinking it through.
“I guess,” is the final, sly verdict, smile sunny as he looks up at Kibum.
“Right,” Kibum says, and doesn’t move. “Okay, great,” he repeats, and almost falls off the couch when Jonghyun moves to sit up. “Sorry,” he mutters as Jonghyun snickers, mentally berating himself-it’s not like he’s back in high school with an uncontrollable libido going at it for the first time, for crying out loud, he’s almost twenty-six. He hops around for a second to regain his balance, looking for the remote so he can turn off the TV and so that when he remembers this later, it isn’t with a background soundtrack of late-night infomercials. The sudden silence when he turns it off is startling in his living room, but before Kibum can have second thoughts or think too hard about what’s about to happen, Jonghyun tugs at his wrist.
When Kibum looks at him, Jonghyun has both their shirts crumpled in one hand and is looking at him warmly, expectantly. “Lead the way,” he says when he catches Kibum’s gaze, grinning lazily with just a touch of a leer at the end.
Kibum finds his voice just in time to manage a rough, “Right.”
--
Kibum pushes his palms into his eyes, feeling stars explode behind his eyes. He groans, feeling a deep, deep sense of self-pity. He leans against the break room counter, massaging his temples.
Taemin steps into the break room in the middle of one of Kibum’s deep-breathing exercises and fixes himself a cup of coffee before turning to him. “What’s wrong with you?” Taemin asks curiously, in lieu of a hello. “You look awful.”
Kibum takes a second out of his self-indulgent wallowing to glare at him. “Thanks, Taemin,” he says. “Hello to you too. I had a-long night, thank you for asking.”
Taemin blows at the steam rising above his coffee. “Oh, I see,” he says, voice mockingly deliberate. “A long night. And on a Sunday, too, wow.” He whistles and steps quickly out of the break room before Kibum can snap at him, wiggling his fingers in good-bye.
Kibum thinks longingly of the days when Taemin had been a shy, bright-eyed freshman who doted on him, and throws back the ibuprofen he’d found in the cupboard, willing the dull throb of his mind away. He curses Jonghyun, who’d woken up this morning at 6:30 after four hours of sleep, looking fresh-faced and well-rested. He should’ve known that even the dreaded morning after would be easy with Jonghyun, who had been a gregarious sleeper, throwing an arm around Kibum’s waist and burying his head in the crook of his neck.
“I want to die,” Kibum had muttered into his pillow after shutting off the last of the three alarms he’d set for himself last night, even as Jonghyun shook his shoulder. “Go away. How can you even function?”
“Years of practice, baby,” Jonghyun had said, obnoxiously cheerful, though the hand now stroking through Kibum’s hair was gentle. “Come on, I’ll put on some coffee.” He’d swung his legs out of bed then, hopping a little on one foot as he pulled on his underwear. Kibum rolled over just as Jonghyun was pulling on the shirt Kibum had been wearing the night before, and he unexpectedly felt warm and suddenly affectionate, remembering the way Jonghyun had said his name. Jonghyun stuck his tongue out at Kibum once he saw him looking, and flicked the soles of his feet as he walked by. The sound of Jonghyun puttering around his kitchen came a minute or two after, and Kibum reluctantly dragged himself out of bed, padding to the bathroom.
A ten-minute lukewarm shower, his daily twenty-minute morning face ritual, and a cup of coffee later, Kibum was feeling a bit more like a real person again. In the kitchen, Jonghyun hummed absentmindedly as he took bites out of a banana, a tune Kibum had recognized as the debut single of the most recent girl group sensation.
He really had looked remarkably well-rested, and happy too-Kibum’s shirt was just the tiniest bit too big for him, the neck revealing the firm line of his collarbone. His feet were bare on Kibum’s kitchen tiles, and he shifted a little as he bit into the banana. This image of Jonghyun-sweet voice, bare feet, soft hair and all-struck Kibum as he’d looked at him, lodging itself low somewhere in his throat. Again, he was seized by the thought of how impossible the situation was, and the sense of reality looming not far beyond them. He pushed Jonghyun back against his kitchen counter, setting his cup down behind him, and leaned down to kiss him until Jonghyun pushed him away, both of them breathless.
Jonghyun had left a little after that, coming into Kibum’s bedroom just as he was changing.
“I have to go,” he’d said, though the way he leaned against the wall like he belonged right there in Kibum’s bedroom seemed like he was only getting ready to settle in. And just looking at him, Kibum wanted him to-wanted to carve out a week to spend time with Jonghyun obligation-free, to pin him down and explore that lush, expressive mouth, to eat breakfast and roll around in bed, to compress months of possibility into, at the very least, one week.
Kibum turned away slightly, feeling heavy and already melancholy because he knew none of it would ever come to pass. Jonghyun grinned at him, tilting his head. There were a lot of things he’d wanted to ask, but the only thing he could think of was, “Are you taking that shirt?”
Jonghyun looked down, pulling at the hem of the shirt-an old one of Kibum’s, from his water-skiing days. “Yeah,” he said, smiling, and Kibum could tell he wasn’t going to see that shirt back anytime soon. “Is that a problem?”
Kibum sighed loudly, turning away and pretending to think about it. “Fine,” he finally said, half-begrudgingly drawing out the syllables.
The hand at his waist was a surprise, and so was the nose Jonghyun tucked into the curve of his neck, breath a warm ghost of a kiss as he said, a little teasingly, “Don’t worry. I’ll take good care of it.”
When Kibum rubs the back of his neck, working out the cricks, he wonders if maybe he should’ve asked for the shirt back then, shouldn’t have given it away so easily. At any rate, he supposes, it is too late now.
--
Promotions keep Jonghyun busy for weeks after that, and Kibum alternates between guilt for feeling relieved for the reprieve from having to confront the evolution their relationship is undergoing, and embarrassment from the edge of attachment that manifests itself mostly in the late-night texts they send while Jonghyun goes from one commitment to another. Nicole hesitates every time they hang out, as if she wants to ask, but he is grateful she never did after that first time. How could he explain it to her, when he doesn’t even understand it? Every time Jonghyun shows up on his doorstep at two in the morning, circles deep and dark under his eyes, Kibum feels so much helpless affection he just wants to clench his teeth.
He’s only good at the chase, has never been good at being caught, and ‘caught’ is the only way he can describe the slow burn in his throat every time Jonghyun sighs into his shoulder. It leaves him both melancholy and satisfied, like he’s perpetually at two glasses of wine after a long night, just enough to unwind but not enough to stave away the impending headache. Jonghyun never stays past six in the morning, sometimes sneaking out at five, his hand warm on Kibum’s neck as he bends over him for a slow, reluctant kiss.
Thankfully, the conference on refugee rights they host annually falls this year in August, which means Kibum spends all of July stressing out over the last-minute details that always seem to pop up no matter how much time they spent preparing in the months before and not thinking about the uneasy precipice his and Jonghyun’s relationship is teetering on.
The closer they get to the official date of conference, ‘after conference’ becomes, as it always does, a mantra for their office, everyone invoking it in turn so much it’s become a contest to see who has the grandest post-conference plans.
“After conference,” Sulli says dreamily, pillowing her cheek on the stack of last-minute registration forms on her desk, “I’m going to take a day off, go to Myeongdong, and spend an entire paycheck on snacks.”
“After conference,” Taemin chimes in, clutching his clipboard to his chest, “I’m going to buy a whole pig and spend a whole day eating it.”
They sigh in unison, wistfully, until a paper ball flies over the wall dividing Sulli’s desk from Accounting, bouncing off Taemin’s shoulder.
“You’re not going to make it to ‘after conference’ if you keep talking,” Sehun says, voice muffled but crabby.
Taemin smoothes out the sheet of paper, then stands up from where he’d been crouching by Sulli’s chair. “Sehun,” he says, voice dangerously sweet. “I told you to file this receipt last week.”
The silence that follows from behind the wall divide is profoundly guilty. The grin on Taemin’s face spreads feral. “Sehun-ah,” he trills, rounding the corner.
“Don’t leave bruises where people can see them,” Kibum calls out from the break room, where he’d been hiding from the mountain of last-minute work that was currently the bane of his existence.
“I never do,” Taemin calls back over Sehun’s muffled shouts of, mercy! Mercy! I’ll never forget again!
“What are you going to do after conference, sunbae?” Sulli asks. It’s her first conference, and Kibum knew it was taking its toll on her when she came into work with her right eyebrow a shade just slightly darker brown than her left. With great reluctance, she pulls up the blank Excel spreadsheet she’d been battling with for the better part of the morning and starts entering names, hitting the keys with more force than perhaps necessary.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Kibum says, surprised to find that it’s true. His hand comes up to pat self-consciously at his hair, which he hadn’t had time to style this morning, as he thinks. “Go somewhere, maybe?”
Sulli hums in response, satisfied.
Kibum finds himself coming back to the question as the day drags on. The elusive after conference is a game they all play around this time of the year. Last year, they’d all gone out for drinks the minute they were done, which had concluded, of course, with an amused Nicole and a somewhat-irate Jinwoon collecting an incoherent Kibum from noraebang at three in the morning. They’d made up horror stories about it for weeks afterwards, and Kibum had genuinely thought he’d tried to make out with Jinwoon while blackout drunk until Nicole finally broke down and almost cried with laughter when she showed him pictures of the state they’d found him in. Incriminating, but at least none of them featured him mouth to mouth with-he shudders at the very thought-Jinwoon.
“So I didn’t make out with Jinwoon, right?” Kibum had demanded just to be sure.
Nicole stopped laughing. “God, no,” she’d said, wrinkling her nose. “I would’ve punched you if you’d tried.”
Jinwoon, deeply impressed, pressed a kiss to her temple. Kibum had just sighed in relief; he knew they were best friends for a reason.
In any case, ‘after conference’ has, at this point, become a dream of almost mythical proportions. Kibum is determined, this time around, to do it right.
“Want to go somewhere together? After conference?” Kibum asks that night when he’s in bed, and hates the way the static of the phone makes his voice sound overly loud, too eager in the night. He stares up at his bedroom ceiling and knows, almost immediately, that he did it wrong.
The hesitance on the other end is answer enough, and he feels the panic rise up inside of him. He curls up, fisting a handful of his sheets. Just kidding, he wants to say, but it’d be too late at this point.
“I can’t,” Jonghyun finally says, pitching his voice low, and Kibum imagines him rubbing his temples in the backseat of his manager’s car-they’d stopped letting him drive after midnight after an accident put him out of commission for a whole month last year and raised rumors of an alcohol addiction Jonghyun, who worried constantly about his health, was still trying to shake off. “I won’t have the time. I thought you’d realized-I thought you knew.”
Kibum sets his jaw, pulling the phone a bit away from his ear so Jonghyun won’t hear the unhappy click of his teeth. When he’s finally wrestled the unwieldy feeling in his throat down, he brings the phone back to his ear, and just listens to Jonghyun’s deep breathing exercises for a few moments. “I do know,” he says lightly, grateful that his voice sounds natural. “Don’t worry about it; forget I asked.”
Jonghyun lets out his breath on the other end in a rush of static. “Listen,” he says, sounding relieved and grateful. “I have to go. Sleep well, okay? I’ll try to see you soon.”
--
The second week before conference, Kibum wastes half a day with Taemin worrying about how they’re going to fit all their sponsors’ names onto the brochure mockup without going over onto a second page before Sehun, with a pinched, long-suffering look on his face, shoos them away from the computer and calls them back twenty minutes later to show them a pdf of a perfectly formatted copy.
“Ah, Sehun, this is why we hired you,” Taemin murmurs, exhaustion making him cross-eyed even as he beams, ruffling Sehun’s hair. “Your inimitable word processing skills.”
“I thought it was my charm,” Sehun responds, swatting at Taemin’s hand.
“That’s just a bonus,” Taemin says around his yawn. This is the second week of overtime they’ve pulled together, and it’s taking its toll on even Taemin, who is, for all of his faults, usually the hardest working of them all.
“No fraternizing with the intern.” Kibum flaps his hand vaguely in the direction of Taemin and Sehun, both of whom look back at him, Sehun grossed out and Taemin mildly offended at Sehun’s reaction. “But thank you, Sehun.”
“Whatever,” Sehun says grumpily, and storms away for no reason.
“Such a pleasant young man,” Kibum muses, stretching his arms above his head. “Come on, let’s get out of here. I’ll explode if I have to think about any of this anymore.” He follows Taemin to his office, where the younger man grabs his suit jacket from the hook on his wall.
“Drinks?” Taemin asks, the question muffled around the sheaf of papers he has in his mouth as he pulls on the jacket.
Kibum, distracted, tugs at the corner of the papers. “Is this the keynote speaker’s itinerary?” he demands.
The look Taemin gives him is a cheerful rendition of Sehun’s signature ‘I could fill an entire spreadsheet with all the ways that question was stupid’ look. “Drinks,” he says decidedly. “Come on, you’ve got the first round.”
They bicker lightly all the way to the elevator and onto the street, where the late summer heat pulls the sweat right up to the edge of Kibum’s hairline, seeping into his carefully-constructed hairdo. They run with different friend groups even though they both did dance team in college and still work together, so Kibum doesn’t hang out with Taemin much-and always forgets how much he likes it until they do. Taemin’s age made everyone want to mother him in college and all the years on an educational fast track made him seem particularly young in certain situations. For Kibum, that moment had come when he invited Taemin over for dinner and Taemin, upon being asked to cook the rice, bypassed the pot completely and dumped water and rice directly into the cooker. Kibum still doesn’t like to think about what could’ve happened if he hadn’t happened to look over just before Taemin plugged it in. Taemin had been wholly unconcerned then, much as he continued to be now.
The bar they settle for is the only one near their office anyone at SHINE could stand. It was admittedly a little too full of yuppies and expats for either of their tastes, but at eight p.m. on a sweltering Thursday, beggars couldn’t be choosers. Kibum leans against the bar, credit card in hand, and remembers fondly the two weeks he courted alcoholism in the form of lunchtime Long Island Iced Teas here after he and Hyungseop broke up two years ago.
“Two Coronas,” he says when he finally gets the bartender’s attention, wrangling a dish of lime slices out of her as well with a bat of his eyelashes.
Taemin cheers when Kibum retreats back to the booth they’d claimed. “Jongin’s coming,” he says around the mouth of his beer after a long, satisfied pull. “He was going to go back to the office and answer some emails, but I told him that if he went back I would fire him.”
“You can’t do that anymore,” Kibum points out, not ungently.
“He doesn’t know that,” Taemin hums, satisfied. Jongin probably does, Kibum thinks, even if Taemin has made a routine out of threatening Jongin with unemployment if he doesn’t run all the errands Taemin tells him to do because he doesn’t want to himself.
His phone buzzes in the middle of their second beer, just as Kibum cracks up at Taemin pulling his face in an imitation of their mailman, Minho, who had a big crush on their legal aid Krystal, not knowing about the star-crossed inter-building romance she had with Amber from the accounting firm upstairs even though he carried all their perfume-scented notes back and forth.
“Hello?” he says without looking at the caller ID, still snickering.
“Hey!” Jonghyun’s voice crackles to life on the other end, and Kibum fumbles the wedge of lime in his free hand. It’s been a few days since they’ve been able to talk, and probably a week since they’ve seen each other-Jonghyun doesn’t, by any means, owe anything to Kibum, but Kibum didn’t think he was wrong in thinking that their relationship was still too much in limbo, too easily hurt by prolonged periods of no communication.
The lead up to conference, for better or for worse, just happened to coincide with preparations for Jonghyun’s second comeback cycle, and each time Kibum got to see him was an oasis of relief in their mutual trying situations. Jonghyun’s most recent album was advertised as being released in two parts-the first part had been released in early June, and had been upbeat and club-ready, from what Kibum remembered, and then the second the first week of August, a slower R&B mix.
“It mirrors the trajectory of a summer fling,” Jonghyun had tried to explain the last time they got to hang out, the first time in two weeks either of them caught a break. Kibum had just stared at Jonghyun until he deflated and just sang a few bars from the first and last songs on the album in demonstration. Kibum’s laughter, and the muttered shut up followed by Jonghyun’s hand knotted in his hair pulled him back, as it always did, from the edge of doubt.
Jonghyun, over the phone, continues, “Uh, listen, my schedule ended early today. I really wanted to see you! Do you want to come over? I can get takeout, or something.”
“Hey,” Kibum says, hand coming up to hold back the grin he can feel threatening to break out over his face at the combination of really, want, and you. “Yeah-yeah, I’d love to. That sounds great. See you in a bit.”
“I’m still on my way home.” Jonghyun’s voice on the other end is teasing. “Give me forty five minutes. See you soon.” And then, soft right before he hangs up, like a ding-dong-ditch on Kibum’s heart-“Can’t wait.”
“Who was that?” Taemin asks when Kibum hangs up, raising his eyebrows at him.
“Just Jonghyun,” Kibum says, and Taemin’s eyebrows shoot up even higher. “Listen, I gotta go. Sorry.”
“Oh okay,” he says, clasping his hands together, “just Jonghyun. I see.” Then he leans in, just as Jongin walks in through the door, spots them, and makes a beeline for their table. “Are you ditching us for him?” he demands. “What happened to the code, hyung?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Kibum says breezily, scooting out of the booth just as Jongin nears. “I’m heading out. Sorry, Jongin. Here.” He presents Jongin with his half-full beer with a flourish, and Jongin takes it after a suspicious pause, as if Kibum would waste his time trying to prank Jongin.
“Traitor,” Taemin calls after him, sounding miffed but amused.
Kibum, ears still ringing from the bright burst of Jonghyun’s laughter, just wiggles his fingers over his shoulder in response.
--
Jonghyun gets into a mild scandal towards the tail end of his second promotion cycle, when some pictures of him and darling young actress Shin Sekyung at the wedding of a mutual industry friend are leaked. Kibum knows it’s nothing, really, or at least not anymore. Three years earlier, from what Kibum could gather, it might’ve been cause for concern. But now they’re merely good friends with a touch of just the right kind of history, compelling enough to send Jonghyun’s name to the top of search engine lists for a solid two days and Kibum into one of his moods.
Maybe it is his biggest shortcoming, maybe it could be worse, but there is nothing Kibum can stand less than the idea of being second best, of being someone’s secret fuck behind the scenes. Jonghyun doesn’t mean to make him feel that way, he knows, and had once after a fight bit out a what do you want me to do?, hands tightening imperceptibly around Kibum’s waist. The question had meant more than the answer, and they’d both known it-Kibum rolled over afterwards, sighing and smoothing a hand through Jonghyun’s hair. It was selfish on both parts, Jonghyun for offering something he didn’t mean and Kibum for wanting it anyway. Either way, it was a fight neither of them wanted to have, knowing what they did about the other’s character. Kibum dropped it after that, and Jonghyun took care to be extra kind to him-it was a truce more than a resolution, and the knot in Kibum’s chest loosened but never completely came undone.
Jonghyun is trying, but Kibum, for as much as he truly likes Jonghyun, is tired of investing in men who can’t-or won’t-choose him. There were a lot of good-looking men he slept with and a lot more he didn’t sleep with in college, men who hid their sexual preferences behind business degrees and multiple girlfriends, who sought out Kibum because they were shallow and scared and curious and he was, okay, attractive in a way most people understood, and so unabashed about his sexuality that it stripped all the antagonism out of his detractors, leaving them looking foolish. They’d heard-who knows where from, probably the same club that gave them all high-powered jobs after graduation in the same five companies-that he kept secrets well and that he was good in bed, that he was scathingly honest but fair.
And he was generous with himself, for a while at least, until he got tired of emails from soccer players or macho underclassmen whose playboy reputations preceded them, saying they’d heard he ‘was a good person to talk to’ or telling him they had something ‘sensitive’ to discuss. They’d even cried, a few of them and, because Kibum was a romantic beneath the cynicism, he thought more than a few times that maybe it’d work, but there was no point when they were all so self-absorbed and so self-hating that they just dragged Kibum down with it.
He’d settled down, relatively, sometime around his third year, got a boyfriend in the form of Lee Jinki, a senior psychology major who was smart but quiet, a little goofy, but clearly adored Kibum and wasn’t afraid of showing it, a welcome change after all the men who put their pride before their humanity. He was cute, too, in a different way than Kibum was used to, but he knew how good they looked together if only because all his friends told him so. It was so refreshing that Kibum threw himself into the relationship enthusiastically, tried hard to make it work despite a tense last two months, when the silences finally caught up between them, leaving them with nothing more to say to each other. They’d parted mostly amicably and, while Kibum could never say it had been love, or even that he’d tried very hard to keep in touch after college, he was well-aware of the value of the intangible things Jinki had given him over the course of their relationship.
That is why it is so frustrating with Jonghyun-because he does try, and he lets know Kibum he adores him in all the small ways Kibum likes, like the absentminded hand on his knee or the way Jonghyun never lets up but is also never cruel in his teasing when Kibum does something embarrassing. In this way, even the romantic in him is practical-they got along so well, were such fast and easy friends, and although Kibum always liked the idea of self-destructive love, he realized he preferred comfort and stability in actuality. The rebellion in him had been disappointed to learn that about himself, but the adult Kibum now thanked his younger self for the foresight. Apparently it didn’t make him any less stupid, though, and with Jonghyun, Kibum finds himself feeling wistful and hopefully, gritting his teeth more often than not.
--
Planning for conference eats up so much of their time Kibum is always left feeling a bit bereft once it’s over, when two solid months of planning culminate in just one tightly-wound weekend. It comes together, as it always does, and the biggest hiccup in the proceedings ends up being Kibum wearing socks that are two slightly different shades of blue, which is really only distressing for him. But every conference after the first year is more or less just as he remembered it from the year previous-somewhat of an anxious and rather anticlimactic blur, and then suddenly it’s the Sunday night banquet and Kibum is making faces at Taemin to keep awake over the world’s ugliest centerpieces.
Sulli makes good on her post-conference goals, though she morosely informs Kibum the next day that she couldn’t make it all the way through her paycheck. Kibum had ended up going to late-night barbecue with Taemin and his determined group of followers. Kibum, unused to gorging, felt like he ate half his weight in meat that night, but the laughter, the camaraderie, and, yes, the copious amounts of soju, more than made up for the smell of meat he’ll probably have to spend weeks getting out of his hair.
Amber from upstairs accounting firm fame shows up halfway through the meal to take Krystal home. When Krystal flashes them all a V-sign and a wink behind Amber’s back, Kibum and Taemin high-five while Jongin groans, taking out his wallet.
I’m going to bed. If I get a call saying I have to drag your ass home at 3am again, I’m uninviting you from my wedding, Jinwoon texts him around one in the morning, terrifying photo of Nicole in a mud mask attached.
Nicole already threatened me with that. You two have become so unoriginal~ is all Kibum texts back in response, and laughs at the well-deserved middle finger he gets back.
The soju is a welcome, warm weight in his bloodstream by the time they all claim defeat, even as Taemin, eyelids drooping, calls them all sissies and misses his mouth entirely as he tries to cram another slice of meat into his mouth. After making sure Taemin will get home safely, Kibum hails a cab for himself, grimacing apologetically at the driver when he wrinkles his nose at the smell.
Sleepy and sated, Kibum texts Jonghyun on his taxi ride home-Jonghyun had sent him a quick ‘congratulations! you’ve worked had~ ^^ text just a few hours ago that he’d gotten during the banquet, the buzzing in his pocket a welcome distraction from the long thank you list their executive director was making her way through-and can’t help but heave a sigh that makes the driver shoot him a concerned sideways look when Jonghyun sends him his overnight schedule and five different crying emoticons in a row.
It’s not fair to Jonghyun, probably, but Kibum starts feeling, again, the slow burn of upkeep. He sends back a sympathetic platitude he only half-means, and wishes Jonghyun a quick good night before he lets the mean, petty side of him slip out.
Whatever their relationship could be is marred by what it isn’t, even as he tries to will himself to be better. A few nights ago, with the sting of the scandal with Sekyung still fresh, he’d almost snapped at Jonghyun for the lingering hug he’d given him after dinner in the face of Nicole’s pointed pity, and it was only the hurt flashing across Jonghyun’s face that stopped him.
“I’m trying,” Jonghyun had hissed at him later. He’d looked frustrated and Kibum was sorry, mostly because Jonghyun never took that tone with Kibum. After all the initial charm had worn off for both of them, Kibum had discovered Jonghyun could be irritating and grating, too, but he still indulged Kibum at almost every turn. In some ways, it was because Kibum was, okay, just a bit difficult, and the kind of man who demanded it, but in a lot of ways it was because Jonghyun liked Kibum and, no matter what, Kibum never doubted the veracity of that.
After setting an alarm for the morning, Kibum quickly switches off his phone, not wanting to see the usual string of good night texts from Jonghyun, each progressively softer and sillier than the last. It was a frankly embarrassing quirk of Jonghyun’s Kibum hated to admit he adored, the same way he adored Jonghyun’s casual, careless way of affection.
He over tips his driver by at least 40%, but anyone who has to cart home a grumpy twenty-something who smells like meat probably deserves it. When he opens the door to his apartment, he is greeted by the jacket Jonghyun had thrown carelessly over his coat rack weeks ago that he kept swearing and forgetting to pick up.
Kibum kicks his shoes off, and knocks Jonghyun’s jacket to the floor-petty, he knows, but it makes him feel just the tiniest bit better.
He makes it all the way through a quick shower and halfway through his nightly facial routine before he comes back, almost guiltily, to hang it up again.
--
By the time the scandal with Sekyung dies down, Jonghyun’s promotional activities are over, and he settles into an easy and comfortable temporary MC slot on a popular variety show. In comparison to his frantic summer, the amount of free time he has seems in comparison downright luxurious. Kibum, without the stress of conference eating away at his time and his patience, feels the pressure ease off him as well.
They fall back into the easy familiarity that Kibum had liked best about their friendship, and the storm in Nicole’s face that seemed to brew every time she looked at Kibum gradually passes. It’s annoying to know that all it took was a little less sunshine-the summer heat has never treated Kibum well, and fall fashion was so much cuter-and two effortless dates with Jonghyun for the worst of the doubt to recede.
It’s so easy again, so full of possibilities, that Kibum feels like he’s been sucker-punched in the gut when Jonghyun tells him, the week before Kibum’s twenty-seventh birthday, that he’s off to Japan in a few weeks for an arena tour.
“I’ll be gone a few months, but I’ll be able to come back every once in a while,” Jonghyun tells his ceiling, exhaustion making his words slur a little. They are in Jonghyun’s spacious bed, and Jonghyun has an arm curled under Kibum that must be asleep by now, though if it is, he doesn’t give any indication of discomfort.
“Oh,” Kibum says, a neat, curt response. He rolls over, and something cold and sharp-edged clenches inside of him. Jonghyun flinches from the sudden movement, and the fingers of the arm that was under Kibum catch a corner of his shirt. Kibum pulls away, just out of arm’s reach.
They lie there, Kibum facing away from Jonghyun, feeling small and angry at Jonghyun, and then angry at himself for feeling angry, and Jonghyun doing deep-breathing exercises at his ceiling. “Come on, Kibum,” Jonghyun says after a pause, running a hand over the tired stubble on his chin. There’s a cajoling, almost laughing note in his voice-Jonghyun, even at the expense of himself, always does his best to be accommodating in difficult situations. He tries to smooth a hand down Kibum’s back, but Kibum just bristles, curling in on himself, even when he knows it’s not fair. “Let’s not do this anymore.”
“Jonghyun,” Kibum says. He hates the way he sounds accusatory and vulnerable all at once, but he hates also the way he scoots closer to Jonghyun, eager for the warmth. The uncertainty is taking its toll on him, but even at his most ornery Kibum knows the relationship is far from having run its course. “I don’t get it. What is it even worth to you?”
Jonghyun lets Kibum shift closer, doesn’t push but presses his arm, a warm anchor, against Kibum’s back. “I like you,” he says, and the frankness, the easiness of the statement makes Kibum turn around, pulling the sheet of Jonghyun’s comforter tight around him. Jonghyun lets him have it, and then reaches across the distance between them to grip Kibum’s elbow. “I really like you. None of this is easy, I know, and I’m sorry. But, Kibum-you make me so happy.”
Jonghyun’s fingers, warm and steady around Kibum’s elbow, are startlingly honest. Kibum realizes that he wants to trust him, wants to believe, like Jonghyun does, that patient self-satisfaction is more than enough, that there is no need to force themselves to a preemptive conclusion just because Kibum is terrified of difficult truths. He presses his palms into his eyes, the negative afterimage of Jonghyun waiting, as he has always been, for Kibum to forgo his reservations.
Kibum makes up his mind then, and turns to press his face into the soft, worn fabric of Jonghyun’s shoulder, searching for purchase. “Okay,” he whispers into the warmth he finds there. “Okay.”
Rating: PG-13
Pairings: Jonghyun/Key, background '91-line, EXO maknae-line
Notes: I'M DONE I'M DONE. I'm so so so sorry for the wait (for those of you who were waiting ;; all of you are too kind) - finals and sbb thoroughly kicked my butt this past month (and in the case of sbb, is still in the process of kicking my butt). Thank you for all the support, this is the longest fic I've ever written - it is 24,104 words in all (HOW). Thanks especially to the inimitable herocountry. I hope this last part wraps it all up satisfactorily, but any and all crit is, as always, welcomed.
Kim Kibum wins a date with pop idol Kim Jonghyun. This is not a rom-com. AU.
part 1
part 2
part 3
Kibum is an adult, but he’s not above lying in bed for a dreamy, lazy half an hour the next morning, thinking about the solidness of Jonghyun’s shoulders under his hands. He’s in the middle of brushing his teeth when Nicole calls and he picks up, managing a gargled Hello? around the toothbrush in his mouth.
“Kibum,” Nicole says, a note of reproach in her voice. “It’s noon.”
He spits out the toothpaste in his mouth, and points out, “It’s Saturday. And you don’t have kids yet, Nicole, don’t nag.”
Nicole’s sputter through the phone is nowhere near as vehement as it usually is, so Kibum knows something’s wrong. “What’s up?” he asks as he walks from his bathroom to his kitchen, balancing the phone between his ear and shoulder as he opens the cupboard for a glass, filling it from the sink.
“Nothing,” she says, but she sounds miffed. Kibum waits for her to fold, taking a sip of his water. “It’s nothing, just Jinwoon.”
“Ah,” Kibum says, setting his glass down. “My good friend, the idiot. Want to come over?”
“Yes please,” Nicole responds. “See you in fifteen?”
He throws together a soup that is still simmering by the time Nicole shows up. She’s over in thirteen, exactly the amount of time it takes to get from her and Jinwoon’s apartment to Kibum’s at a brisk pace, and one look at Nicole’s face makes Kibum open his arms, collecting her in them.
“Come here,” he says soothingly. “What’s wrong?”
He feeds her bites of soup in between her fuming retelling of Jinwoon’s latest transgression, a case of miscommunication that was, okay, particularly stupid on Jinwoon’s part, but Kibum also knows well Nicole’s temper. He coaxes her back from the angry edge of her indignation and, by the time Jinwoon sends a cutesy apology picture text that Kibum rolls his eyes at, she’s more chagrinned than anything.
“Thanks, Kibum,” she sighs, burrowing her face into his shoulder. “Sorry. I just freaked out because, well, you know.”
He did know, he thinks, a little bit-Jinwoon and Nicole complemented each other so well no one seemed to know what to do when they fought. “What are friends for,” he hums, rubbing her arm soothingly and a bit distractedly. Nicole flicks her eyes up at him; he usually never hesitates to pass up a chance to ream on Jinwoon. He loves Jinwoon, of course, but Nicole came first. He hesitates, mulling over what happened last night in his mind and whether or not he should tell Nicole. It might be unfair to Jonghyun, he decides, but it’d be unfair to him, too, and he doesn’t owe Jonghyun anything, not yet.
“Actually,” he begins.
Nicole perks up, blinking up at him, and he remembers the time Nicole told him he always starts off like that when he needs to make a confession and how he’s tried every time since then to break himself of the habit, to no avail. This trips him up, that he’s still, after all, predictable.
“Uh,” he continues, fumbling over his words. “Uh. Jonghyun and I-last night-“
He stops, flushing, but thankfully Nicole gets the hint.
“What?” she asks, eyes round as she sits up and away from him. “You mean you-“
“No!” Kibum half-shouts, when he realizes what she’s thinking. “Oh God, no, not that, we just-you know-made out a little,” he finishes lamely, embarrassment crawling up his face.
Kibum’s not too sure what exactly he was expecting by way of an expression, but he’s pretty sure Nicole’s face falling before she catches herself is far from what he was looking for.
“What?” he asks, and it comes out defensive before he can stop himself.
She just shakes her head in response, palming his cheek before pressing her nose to it. “Just be careful,” she murmurs close to his ear.
“What-” he says, indignant, but she cuts him off.
“Jonghyun is really, really famous, Kibum,” she says, lacing their fingers together. “And I know you know that, and I know he likes you. But I know you, and I’m just saying you should be careful.”
--
As if to prove her point, she sends him an article Sunday morning while he’s still in bed from some sleazy gossip mag, which includes a few blurry cellphone pictures of him and Jonghyun outside the movie theater. In the first one, Jonghyun is signing autographs, looking sheepish, Kibum harried as he waves for a cab. What Kibum doesn’t remember-but it must be true, he supposes, if he’s looking at it-is the way he’s standing, body curved protectively, possessively towards Jonghyun’s. The second, him ducking his head slightly so that Jonghyun can whisper in his ear, the two of them too close for just a secret between friends. The third, just the tips of Jonghyun’s fingers pressing low on Kibum’s back as he ushers him into the cab, throwing an apologetic smile over his shoulder at his fans.
It’s not particularly damning, but laid out like that in front of him, suddenly all Kibum can remember is the confident, unhurried way Jonghyun had kissed him. How blindingly pleased he’d looked afterwards with himself, with Kibum. The intimate, playful way he’d tugged on the end of Kibum’s shirt right before he left. This isn’t at all how he wants this, Kibum realizes, bitter feeling in his throat. He spends the better part of twenty minutes just clicking through the pictures, blowing them up to their grainiest, looking for something that will absolve him.
Unsurprisingly, it is a text from Jonghyun that breaks him out of his reverie, some short, emoticon-riddled message with a silly selca attached. Grateful for the distraction, for the return to a dynamic Kibum understands, he rolls over onto his stomach, snickering.
It only takes a few exchanges, however, until Jonghyun texts back, straightforward and abrupt, do you have time tonight? can I see you?
It is one week after Jonghyun’s comeback and Kibum doesn’t live under a rock; he’s seen the news, knows how well-received his single has been. He knows Jonghyun had swept all of the weekly awards the week he’d come back and has been projected to stay on top of the charts for at least a few weeks more. For a 27-year-old solo singer in an industry of boybands and girl groups, it is startling and, more than anything, a true testament to Jonghyun’s talent. And even if Kibum didn’t know anything about pop culture, he would still remember the absent weeks leading up to Jonghyun’s comeback, and all the late nights Jonghyun, usually playful, though never when it came to his career, had pulled. The bruises under his eyes had been even darker than they usually were, and Kibum doubted if anyone but his managers, trainers, and stylist team saw him at all for two weeks.
The last time Kibum had seen him-his stomach clenches at the memory, unbidden, of the way Jonghyun’s fingers had tangled in his hair, and he shakes the feeling away.
By all means, Jonghyun is the one who shouldn’t have time to see Kibum, and Kibum hates feeling uncertain, hates feeling second best, even when he understands why he is and even when he knows he would do the same.
Of course, Kibum responds, second-guessing every word, just let me know when you’re free. He hits ‘send’ before he can think too much more about it, rolling over again only to see the paparazzi pictures of him and Jonghyun pulled up on his computer still.
--
It is nine when Jonghyun finally comes over that night, making light apologies for the late hour. They spend a slightly tense two hours together watching an American basketball game on Kibum’s couch, Kibum careful to keep a friendly, polite distance between them. At one point, right around halftime, Jonghyun shifts imperceptibly closer to press his shoulder, hesitant, against Kibum’s. It takes all of Kibum’s best efforts not to jump and pull away. He keeps his eyes on the screen, though just barely, even when he can hear his voice, explaining some tedious detail about conference planning, grow louder and just slightly higher-pitched, much as it always does when he is nervous.
By the end of the game, Jonghyun’s arm is thrown casually around the back of the couch, enough so that Kibum is pretty sure he could swear without lying too much that Jonghyun most adamantly did not have his arm around his shoulders. By the time the sportscasters are covering the game highlights, Kibum’s mind feels as if it’s been buzzing for the past two hours with the tension.
Jonghyun cuts into Kibum’s slightly frenetic dialogue about banquet centerpieces with a laugh, sliding closer. “Can I kiss you?” he asks, eyes frank as he ducks his head to peer into Kibum’s.
Kibum’s mouth claps shut, blush already warming the tips of his ears. “Not if you interrupt me like that,” he mutters waspishly. If pressed, he would admit that he maybe-okay, he did-leaned into Jonghyun’s arm behind him, turning his face towards Jonghyun to look at him.
“You were talking about centerpieces,” Jonghyun points out, though his tone is only half-heartedly chiding. He drops his gaze to Kibum’s mouth, sliding a hand over Kibum’s knee and thoroughly startling him. The warm, physical weight of Jonghyun’s fingers anchors him, and brings back, suddenly, all the little things Kibum had been trying not to remember about Thursday night.
“I thought you were going to kiss me. Or was that just a ploy to make me stop,” Kibum says accusingly, voice overly loud over the din of the highlights reel, turning slightly away as he feels the flush start to creep over his nose.
The hand on his chin turns him back towards Jonghyun, who murmurs a soft both before his mouth is on his again. This, unlike the lead-up, is easy, so easy, and Kibum feels something in his stomach unclench. He opens his mouth under Jonghyun’s, blood rushing in his ears.
This time, unlike Thursday night, is much more frantic, and before long Jonghyun’s fingers are insistent at the hem of Kibum’s shirt, pushing it up and away, blunt and well-manicured nails digging into his shoulders. Kibum presses him into the back of his couch, feeling giddy and reckless as he nips at his mouth, making a low, undignified sound in the back of his throat when Jonghyun’s tongue swipes at his lip.
“Don’t,” Jonghyun says softly when Kibum bites at the soft skin under his chin. Kibum jerks away like he’s been burned, feeling embarrassed and combative, fingers reflexively curling around his shirt on the couch next to them and ready to throw Jonghyun out if he has to. Jonghyun notices, and is apologetic when he pulls Kibum’s wrist away from the shirt, bringing Kibum’s hand up to kiss at his wrist. “Sorry, it’s just-” he mumbles, teeth scraping gently at Kibum’s pulse.
“No, no, I know.” Kibum, quick to reassure, bobs his head, though he still feels self-conscious. Jonghyun, who mistakes the action as Kibum trying to kiss him, crashes his nose on the upswing into the downswing of Kibum’s chin, and Kibum bursts out laughing.
“Hey, don’t break my nose,” Jonghyun pouts, and reaches up to push Kibum’s hair away from his face.
Kibum turns his head to mouth at Jonghyun’s palm, then grins down at him. “You could probably use a little more work on it anyway,” he says, ducking his head before Jonghyun can pull at his hair.
Jonghyun opens his mouth in false shock, and pinches the back of his neck. “What are you trying to say? You’re lucky you’re hot.” His voice drops, tone rough, before he pulls Kibum down for a kiss, arching up into him.
Kibum, desperate for the feeling of warm skin against his, only murmurs a vague agreement as he tugs at the collar of Jonghyun’s shirt. He spreads his palms wide over Jonghyun’s stomach under his shirt, marveling at the way Jonghyun’s breath hitches, and at the way he can feel it against his throat.
“Up, up, come on,” Kibum breathes, breaking away and pulling at Jonghyun’s shirt insistently.
Jonghyun laughs even as he allows himself to be manhandled out of his shirt, emerging with his hair tousled and his mouth swollen. “So impatient,” he teases, but as his hands are currently tugging at Kibum’s belt, Kibum feels that this is a rather unfair assessment.
“Excuse me,” Kibum manages to get out in between kisses, which at this point are more him and Jonghyun pressing their open mouths hurriedly together as they work at each other’s belts. By the time Jonghyun’s sliding Kibum’s belt out of his belt loops, Kibum feels like his insides are humming with the anticipation.
“Do you,” he gets out haltingly, sitting up so he is straddling Jonghyun. He gestures vaguely in the general area of his bedroom, feeling an embarrassed flush crawl up his chest. “You know, do you want to-”
Jonghyun thumbs at the dip of Kibum’s hipbones before undoing just the top button of Kibum’s jeans. Kibum’s mind goes deliciously blank for a second as Jonghyun rubs his knuckle over the second button, pursing his lips as if he’s thinking it through.
“I guess,” is the final, sly verdict, smile sunny as he looks up at Kibum.
“Right,” Kibum says, and doesn’t move. “Okay, great,” he repeats, and almost falls off the couch when Jonghyun moves to sit up. “Sorry,” he mutters as Jonghyun snickers, mentally berating himself-it’s not like he’s back in high school with an uncontrollable libido going at it for the first time, for crying out loud, he’s almost twenty-six. He hops around for a second to regain his balance, looking for the remote so he can turn off the TV and so that when he remembers this later, it isn’t with a background soundtrack of late-night infomercials. The sudden silence when he turns it off is startling in his living room, but before Kibum can have second thoughts or think too hard about what’s about to happen, Jonghyun tugs at his wrist.
When Kibum looks at him, Jonghyun has both their shirts crumpled in one hand and is looking at him warmly, expectantly. “Lead the way,” he says when he catches Kibum’s gaze, grinning lazily with just a touch of a leer at the end.
Kibum finds his voice just in time to manage a rough, “Right.”
--
Kibum pushes his palms into his eyes, feeling stars explode behind his eyes. He groans, feeling a deep, deep sense of self-pity. He leans against the break room counter, massaging his temples.
Taemin steps into the break room in the middle of one of Kibum’s deep-breathing exercises and fixes himself a cup of coffee before turning to him. “What’s wrong with you?” Taemin asks curiously, in lieu of a hello. “You look awful.”
Kibum takes a second out of his self-indulgent wallowing to glare at him. “Thanks, Taemin,” he says. “Hello to you too. I had a-long night, thank you for asking.”
Taemin blows at the steam rising above his coffee. “Oh, I see,” he says, voice mockingly deliberate. “A long night. And on a Sunday, too, wow.” He whistles and steps quickly out of the break room before Kibum can snap at him, wiggling his fingers in good-bye.
Kibum thinks longingly of the days when Taemin had been a shy, bright-eyed freshman who doted on him, and throws back the ibuprofen he’d found in the cupboard, willing the dull throb of his mind away. He curses Jonghyun, who’d woken up this morning at 6:30 after four hours of sleep, looking fresh-faced and well-rested. He should’ve known that even the dreaded morning after would be easy with Jonghyun, who had been a gregarious sleeper, throwing an arm around Kibum’s waist and burying his head in the crook of his neck.
“I want to die,” Kibum had muttered into his pillow after shutting off the last of the three alarms he’d set for himself last night, even as Jonghyun shook his shoulder. “Go away. How can you even function?”
“Years of practice, baby,” Jonghyun had said, obnoxiously cheerful, though the hand now stroking through Kibum’s hair was gentle. “Come on, I’ll put on some coffee.” He’d swung his legs out of bed then, hopping a little on one foot as he pulled on his underwear. Kibum rolled over just as Jonghyun was pulling on the shirt Kibum had been wearing the night before, and he unexpectedly felt warm and suddenly affectionate, remembering the way Jonghyun had said his name. Jonghyun stuck his tongue out at Kibum once he saw him looking, and flicked the soles of his feet as he walked by. The sound of Jonghyun puttering around his kitchen came a minute or two after, and Kibum reluctantly dragged himself out of bed, padding to the bathroom.
A ten-minute lukewarm shower, his daily twenty-minute morning face ritual, and a cup of coffee later, Kibum was feeling a bit more like a real person again. In the kitchen, Jonghyun hummed absentmindedly as he took bites out of a banana, a tune Kibum had recognized as the debut single of the most recent girl group sensation.
He really had looked remarkably well-rested, and happy too-Kibum’s shirt was just the tiniest bit too big for him, the neck revealing the firm line of his collarbone. His feet were bare on Kibum’s kitchen tiles, and he shifted a little as he bit into the banana. This image of Jonghyun-sweet voice, bare feet, soft hair and all-struck Kibum as he’d looked at him, lodging itself low somewhere in his throat. Again, he was seized by the thought of how impossible the situation was, and the sense of reality looming not far beyond them. He pushed Jonghyun back against his kitchen counter, setting his cup down behind him, and leaned down to kiss him until Jonghyun pushed him away, both of them breathless.
Jonghyun had left a little after that, coming into Kibum’s bedroom just as he was changing.
“I have to go,” he’d said, though the way he leaned against the wall like he belonged right there in Kibum’s bedroom seemed like he was only getting ready to settle in. And just looking at him, Kibum wanted him to-wanted to carve out a week to spend time with Jonghyun obligation-free, to pin him down and explore that lush, expressive mouth, to eat breakfast and roll around in bed, to compress months of possibility into, at the very least, one week.
Kibum turned away slightly, feeling heavy and already melancholy because he knew none of it would ever come to pass. Jonghyun grinned at him, tilting his head. There were a lot of things he’d wanted to ask, but the only thing he could think of was, “Are you taking that shirt?”
Jonghyun looked down, pulling at the hem of the shirt-an old one of Kibum’s, from his water-skiing days. “Yeah,” he said, smiling, and Kibum could tell he wasn’t going to see that shirt back anytime soon. “Is that a problem?”
Kibum sighed loudly, turning away and pretending to think about it. “Fine,” he finally said, half-begrudgingly drawing out the syllables.
The hand at his waist was a surprise, and so was the nose Jonghyun tucked into the curve of his neck, breath a warm ghost of a kiss as he said, a little teasingly, “Don’t worry. I’ll take good care of it.”
When Kibum rubs the back of his neck, working out the cricks, he wonders if maybe he should’ve asked for the shirt back then, shouldn’t have given it away so easily. At any rate, he supposes, it is too late now.
--
Promotions keep Jonghyun busy for weeks after that, and Kibum alternates between guilt for feeling relieved for the reprieve from having to confront the evolution their relationship is undergoing, and embarrassment from the edge of attachment that manifests itself mostly in the late-night texts they send while Jonghyun goes from one commitment to another. Nicole hesitates every time they hang out, as if she wants to ask, but he is grateful she never did after that first time. How could he explain it to her, when he doesn’t even understand it? Every time Jonghyun shows up on his doorstep at two in the morning, circles deep and dark under his eyes, Kibum feels so much helpless affection he just wants to clench his teeth.
He’s only good at the chase, has never been good at being caught, and ‘caught’ is the only way he can describe the slow burn in his throat every time Jonghyun sighs into his shoulder. It leaves him both melancholy and satisfied, like he’s perpetually at two glasses of wine after a long night, just enough to unwind but not enough to stave away the impending headache. Jonghyun never stays past six in the morning, sometimes sneaking out at five, his hand warm on Kibum’s neck as he bends over him for a slow, reluctant kiss.
Thankfully, the conference on refugee rights they host annually falls this year in August, which means Kibum spends all of July stressing out over the last-minute details that always seem to pop up no matter how much time they spent preparing in the months before and not thinking about the uneasy precipice his and Jonghyun’s relationship is teetering on.
The closer they get to the official date of conference, ‘after conference’ becomes, as it always does, a mantra for their office, everyone invoking it in turn so much it’s become a contest to see who has the grandest post-conference plans.
“After conference,” Sulli says dreamily, pillowing her cheek on the stack of last-minute registration forms on her desk, “I’m going to take a day off, go to Myeongdong, and spend an entire paycheck on snacks.”
“After conference,” Taemin chimes in, clutching his clipboard to his chest, “I’m going to buy a whole pig and spend a whole day eating it.”
They sigh in unison, wistfully, until a paper ball flies over the wall dividing Sulli’s desk from Accounting, bouncing off Taemin’s shoulder.
“You’re not going to make it to ‘after conference’ if you keep talking,” Sehun says, voice muffled but crabby.
Taemin smoothes out the sheet of paper, then stands up from where he’d been crouching by Sulli’s chair. “Sehun,” he says, voice dangerously sweet. “I told you to file this receipt last week.”
The silence that follows from behind the wall divide is profoundly guilty. The grin on Taemin’s face spreads feral. “Sehun-ah,” he trills, rounding the corner.
“Don’t leave bruises where people can see them,” Kibum calls out from the break room, where he’d been hiding from the mountain of last-minute work that was currently the bane of his existence.
“I never do,” Taemin calls back over Sehun’s muffled shouts of, mercy! Mercy! I’ll never forget again!
“What are you going to do after conference, sunbae?” Sulli asks. It’s her first conference, and Kibum knew it was taking its toll on her when she came into work with her right eyebrow a shade just slightly darker brown than her left. With great reluctance, she pulls up the blank Excel spreadsheet she’d been battling with for the better part of the morning and starts entering names, hitting the keys with more force than perhaps necessary.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Kibum says, surprised to find that it’s true. His hand comes up to pat self-consciously at his hair, which he hadn’t had time to style this morning, as he thinks. “Go somewhere, maybe?”
Sulli hums in response, satisfied.
Kibum finds himself coming back to the question as the day drags on. The elusive after conference is a game they all play around this time of the year. Last year, they’d all gone out for drinks the minute they were done, which had concluded, of course, with an amused Nicole and a somewhat-irate Jinwoon collecting an incoherent Kibum from noraebang at three in the morning. They’d made up horror stories about it for weeks afterwards, and Kibum had genuinely thought he’d tried to make out with Jinwoon while blackout drunk until Nicole finally broke down and almost cried with laughter when she showed him pictures of the state they’d found him in. Incriminating, but at least none of them featured him mouth to mouth with-he shudders at the very thought-Jinwoon.
“So I didn’t make out with Jinwoon, right?” Kibum had demanded just to be sure.
Nicole stopped laughing. “God, no,” she’d said, wrinkling her nose. “I would’ve punched you if you’d tried.”
Jinwoon, deeply impressed, pressed a kiss to her temple. Kibum had just sighed in relief; he knew they were best friends for a reason.
In any case, ‘after conference’ has, at this point, become a dream of almost mythical proportions. Kibum is determined, this time around, to do it right.
“Want to go somewhere together? After conference?” Kibum asks that night when he’s in bed, and hates the way the static of the phone makes his voice sound overly loud, too eager in the night. He stares up at his bedroom ceiling and knows, almost immediately, that he did it wrong.
The hesitance on the other end is answer enough, and he feels the panic rise up inside of him. He curls up, fisting a handful of his sheets. Just kidding, he wants to say, but it’d be too late at this point.
“I can’t,” Jonghyun finally says, pitching his voice low, and Kibum imagines him rubbing his temples in the backseat of his manager’s car-they’d stopped letting him drive after midnight after an accident put him out of commission for a whole month last year and raised rumors of an alcohol addiction Jonghyun, who worried constantly about his health, was still trying to shake off. “I won’t have the time. I thought you’d realized-I thought you knew.”
Kibum sets his jaw, pulling the phone a bit away from his ear so Jonghyun won’t hear the unhappy click of his teeth. When he’s finally wrestled the unwieldy feeling in his throat down, he brings the phone back to his ear, and just listens to Jonghyun’s deep breathing exercises for a few moments. “I do know,” he says lightly, grateful that his voice sounds natural. “Don’t worry about it; forget I asked.”
Jonghyun lets out his breath on the other end in a rush of static. “Listen,” he says, sounding relieved and grateful. “I have to go. Sleep well, okay? I’ll try to see you soon.”
--
The second week before conference, Kibum wastes half a day with Taemin worrying about how they’re going to fit all their sponsors’ names onto the brochure mockup without going over onto a second page before Sehun, with a pinched, long-suffering look on his face, shoos them away from the computer and calls them back twenty minutes later to show them a pdf of a perfectly formatted copy.
“Ah, Sehun, this is why we hired you,” Taemin murmurs, exhaustion making him cross-eyed even as he beams, ruffling Sehun’s hair. “Your inimitable word processing skills.”
“I thought it was my charm,” Sehun responds, swatting at Taemin’s hand.
“That’s just a bonus,” Taemin says around his yawn. This is the second week of overtime they’ve pulled together, and it’s taking its toll on even Taemin, who is, for all of his faults, usually the hardest working of them all.
“No fraternizing with the intern.” Kibum flaps his hand vaguely in the direction of Taemin and Sehun, both of whom look back at him, Sehun grossed out and Taemin mildly offended at Sehun’s reaction. “But thank you, Sehun.”
“Whatever,” Sehun says grumpily, and storms away for no reason.
“Such a pleasant young man,” Kibum muses, stretching his arms above his head. “Come on, let’s get out of here. I’ll explode if I have to think about any of this anymore.” He follows Taemin to his office, where the younger man grabs his suit jacket from the hook on his wall.
“Drinks?” Taemin asks, the question muffled around the sheaf of papers he has in his mouth as he pulls on the jacket.
Kibum, distracted, tugs at the corner of the papers. “Is this the keynote speaker’s itinerary?” he demands.
The look Taemin gives him is a cheerful rendition of Sehun’s signature ‘I could fill an entire spreadsheet with all the ways that question was stupid’ look. “Drinks,” he says decidedly. “Come on, you’ve got the first round.”
They bicker lightly all the way to the elevator and onto the street, where the late summer heat pulls the sweat right up to the edge of Kibum’s hairline, seeping into his carefully-constructed hairdo. They run with different friend groups even though they both did dance team in college and still work together, so Kibum doesn’t hang out with Taemin much-and always forgets how much he likes it until they do. Taemin’s age made everyone want to mother him in college and all the years on an educational fast track made him seem particularly young in certain situations. For Kibum, that moment had come when he invited Taemin over for dinner and Taemin, upon being asked to cook the rice, bypassed the pot completely and dumped water and rice directly into the cooker. Kibum still doesn’t like to think about what could’ve happened if he hadn’t happened to look over just before Taemin plugged it in. Taemin had been wholly unconcerned then, much as he continued to be now.
The bar they settle for is the only one near their office anyone at SHINE could stand. It was admittedly a little too full of yuppies and expats for either of their tastes, but at eight p.m. on a sweltering Thursday, beggars couldn’t be choosers. Kibum leans against the bar, credit card in hand, and remembers fondly the two weeks he courted alcoholism in the form of lunchtime Long Island Iced Teas here after he and Hyungseop broke up two years ago.
“Two Coronas,” he says when he finally gets the bartender’s attention, wrangling a dish of lime slices out of her as well with a bat of his eyelashes.
Taemin cheers when Kibum retreats back to the booth they’d claimed. “Jongin’s coming,” he says around the mouth of his beer after a long, satisfied pull. “He was going to go back to the office and answer some emails, but I told him that if he went back I would fire him.”
“You can’t do that anymore,” Kibum points out, not ungently.
“He doesn’t know that,” Taemin hums, satisfied. Jongin probably does, Kibum thinks, even if Taemin has made a routine out of threatening Jongin with unemployment if he doesn’t run all the errands Taemin tells him to do because he doesn’t want to himself.
His phone buzzes in the middle of their second beer, just as Kibum cracks up at Taemin pulling his face in an imitation of their mailman, Minho, who had a big crush on their legal aid Krystal, not knowing about the star-crossed inter-building romance she had with Amber from the accounting firm upstairs even though he carried all their perfume-scented notes back and forth.
“Hello?” he says without looking at the caller ID, still snickering.
“Hey!” Jonghyun’s voice crackles to life on the other end, and Kibum fumbles the wedge of lime in his free hand. It’s been a few days since they’ve been able to talk, and probably a week since they’ve seen each other-Jonghyun doesn’t, by any means, owe anything to Kibum, but Kibum didn’t think he was wrong in thinking that their relationship was still too much in limbo, too easily hurt by prolonged periods of no communication.
The lead up to conference, for better or for worse, just happened to coincide with preparations for Jonghyun’s second comeback cycle, and each time Kibum got to see him was an oasis of relief in their mutual trying situations. Jonghyun’s most recent album was advertised as being released in two parts-the first part had been released in early June, and had been upbeat and club-ready, from what Kibum remembered, and then the second the first week of August, a slower R&B mix.
“It mirrors the trajectory of a summer fling,” Jonghyun had tried to explain the last time they got to hang out, the first time in two weeks either of them caught a break. Kibum had just stared at Jonghyun until he deflated and just sang a few bars from the first and last songs on the album in demonstration. Kibum’s laughter, and the muttered shut up followed by Jonghyun’s hand knotted in his hair pulled him back, as it always did, from the edge of doubt.
Jonghyun, over the phone, continues, “Uh, listen, my schedule ended early today. I really wanted to see you! Do you want to come over? I can get takeout, or something.”
“Hey,” Kibum says, hand coming up to hold back the grin he can feel threatening to break out over his face at the combination of really, want, and you. “Yeah-yeah, I’d love to. That sounds great. See you in a bit.”
“I’m still on my way home.” Jonghyun’s voice on the other end is teasing. “Give me forty five minutes. See you soon.” And then, soft right before he hangs up, like a ding-dong-ditch on Kibum’s heart-“Can’t wait.”
“Who was that?” Taemin asks when Kibum hangs up, raising his eyebrows at him.
“Just Jonghyun,” Kibum says, and Taemin’s eyebrows shoot up even higher. “Listen, I gotta go. Sorry.”
“Oh okay,” he says, clasping his hands together, “just Jonghyun. I see.” Then he leans in, just as Jongin walks in through the door, spots them, and makes a beeline for their table. “Are you ditching us for him?” he demands. “What happened to the code, hyung?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Kibum says breezily, scooting out of the booth just as Jongin nears. “I’m heading out. Sorry, Jongin. Here.” He presents Jongin with his half-full beer with a flourish, and Jongin takes it after a suspicious pause, as if Kibum would waste his time trying to prank Jongin.
“Traitor,” Taemin calls after him, sounding miffed but amused.
Kibum, ears still ringing from the bright burst of Jonghyun’s laughter, just wiggles his fingers over his shoulder in response.
--
Jonghyun gets into a mild scandal towards the tail end of his second promotion cycle, when some pictures of him and darling young actress Shin Sekyung at the wedding of a mutual industry friend are leaked. Kibum knows it’s nothing, really, or at least not anymore. Three years earlier, from what Kibum could gather, it might’ve been cause for concern. But now they’re merely good friends with a touch of just the right kind of history, compelling enough to send Jonghyun’s name to the top of search engine lists for a solid two days and Kibum into one of his moods.
Maybe it is his biggest shortcoming, maybe it could be worse, but there is nothing Kibum can stand less than the idea of being second best, of being someone’s secret fuck behind the scenes. Jonghyun doesn’t mean to make him feel that way, he knows, and had once after a fight bit out a what do you want me to do?, hands tightening imperceptibly around Kibum’s waist. The question had meant more than the answer, and they’d both known it-Kibum rolled over afterwards, sighing and smoothing a hand through Jonghyun’s hair. It was selfish on both parts, Jonghyun for offering something he didn’t mean and Kibum for wanting it anyway. Either way, it was a fight neither of them wanted to have, knowing what they did about the other’s character. Kibum dropped it after that, and Jonghyun took care to be extra kind to him-it was a truce more than a resolution, and the knot in Kibum’s chest loosened but never completely came undone.
Jonghyun is trying, but Kibum, for as much as he truly likes Jonghyun, is tired of investing in men who can’t-or won’t-choose him. There were a lot of good-looking men he slept with and a lot more he didn’t sleep with in college, men who hid their sexual preferences behind business degrees and multiple girlfriends, who sought out Kibum because they were shallow and scared and curious and he was, okay, attractive in a way most people understood, and so unabashed about his sexuality that it stripped all the antagonism out of his detractors, leaving them looking foolish. They’d heard-who knows where from, probably the same club that gave them all high-powered jobs after graduation in the same five companies-that he kept secrets well and that he was good in bed, that he was scathingly honest but fair.
And he was generous with himself, for a while at least, until he got tired of emails from soccer players or macho underclassmen whose playboy reputations preceded them, saying they’d heard he ‘was a good person to talk to’ or telling him they had something ‘sensitive’ to discuss. They’d even cried, a few of them and, because Kibum was a romantic beneath the cynicism, he thought more than a few times that maybe it’d work, but there was no point when they were all so self-absorbed and so self-hating that they just dragged Kibum down with it.
He’d settled down, relatively, sometime around his third year, got a boyfriend in the form of Lee Jinki, a senior psychology major who was smart but quiet, a little goofy, but clearly adored Kibum and wasn’t afraid of showing it, a welcome change after all the men who put their pride before their humanity. He was cute, too, in a different way than Kibum was used to, but he knew how good they looked together if only because all his friends told him so. It was so refreshing that Kibum threw himself into the relationship enthusiastically, tried hard to make it work despite a tense last two months, when the silences finally caught up between them, leaving them with nothing more to say to each other. They’d parted mostly amicably and, while Kibum could never say it had been love, or even that he’d tried very hard to keep in touch after college, he was well-aware of the value of the intangible things Jinki had given him over the course of their relationship.
That is why it is so frustrating with Jonghyun-because he does try, and he lets know Kibum he adores him in all the small ways Kibum likes, like the absentminded hand on his knee or the way Jonghyun never lets up but is also never cruel in his teasing when Kibum does something embarrassing. In this way, even the romantic in him is practical-they got along so well, were such fast and easy friends, and although Kibum always liked the idea of self-destructive love, he realized he preferred comfort and stability in actuality. The rebellion in him had been disappointed to learn that about himself, but the adult Kibum now thanked his younger self for the foresight. Apparently it didn’t make him any less stupid, though, and with Jonghyun, Kibum finds himself feeling wistful and hopefully, gritting his teeth more often than not.
--
Planning for conference eats up so much of their time Kibum is always left feeling a bit bereft once it’s over, when two solid months of planning culminate in just one tightly-wound weekend. It comes together, as it always does, and the biggest hiccup in the proceedings ends up being Kibum wearing socks that are two slightly different shades of blue, which is really only distressing for him. But every conference after the first year is more or less just as he remembered it from the year previous-somewhat of an anxious and rather anticlimactic blur, and then suddenly it’s the Sunday night banquet and Kibum is making faces at Taemin to keep awake over the world’s ugliest centerpieces.
Sulli makes good on her post-conference goals, though she morosely informs Kibum the next day that she couldn’t make it all the way through her paycheck. Kibum had ended up going to late-night barbecue with Taemin and his determined group of followers. Kibum, unused to gorging, felt like he ate half his weight in meat that night, but the laughter, the camaraderie, and, yes, the copious amounts of soju, more than made up for the smell of meat he’ll probably have to spend weeks getting out of his hair.
Amber from upstairs accounting firm fame shows up halfway through the meal to take Krystal home. When Krystal flashes them all a V-sign and a wink behind Amber’s back, Kibum and Taemin high-five while Jongin groans, taking out his wallet.
I’m going to bed. If I get a call saying I have to drag your ass home at 3am again, I’m uninviting you from my wedding, Jinwoon texts him around one in the morning, terrifying photo of Nicole in a mud mask attached.
Nicole already threatened me with that. You two have become so unoriginal~ is all Kibum texts back in response, and laughs at the well-deserved middle finger he gets back.
The soju is a welcome, warm weight in his bloodstream by the time they all claim defeat, even as Taemin, eyelids drooping, calls them all sissies and misses his mouth entirely as he tries to cram another slice of meat into his mouth. After making sure Taemin will get home safely, Kibum hails a cab for himself, grimacing apologetically at the driver when he wrinkles his nose at the smell.
Sleepy and sated, Kibum texts Jonghyun on his taxi ride home-Jonghyun had sent him a quick ‘congratulations! you’ve worked had~ ^^ text just a few hours ago that he’d gotten during the banquet, the buzzing in his pocket a welcome distraction from the long thank you list their executive director was making her way through-and can’t help but heave a sigh that makes the driver shoot him a concerned sideways look when Jonghyun sends him his overnight schedule and five different crying emoticons in a row.
It’s not fair to Jonghyun, probably, but Kibum starts feeling, again, the slow burn of upkeep. He sends back a sympathetic platitude he only half-means, and wishes Jonghyun a quick good night before he lets the mean, petty side of him slip out.
Whatever their relationship could be is marred by what it isn’t, even as he tries to will himself to be better. A few nights ago, with the sting of the scandal with Sekyung still fresh, he’d almost snapped at Jonghyun for the lingering hug he’d given him after dinner in the face of Nicole’s pointed pity, and it was only the hurt flashing across Jonghyun’s face that stopped him.
“I’m trying,” Jonghyun had hissed at him later. He’d looked frustrated and Kibum was sorry, mostly because Jonghyun never took that tone with Kibum. After all the initial charm had worn off for both of them, Kibum had discovered Jonghyun could be irritating and grating, too, but he still indulged Kibum at almost every turn. In some ways, it was because Kibum was, okay, just a bit difficult, and the kind of man who demanded it, but in a lot of ways it was because Jonghyun liked Kibum and, no matter what, Kibum never doubted the veracity of that.
After setting an alarm for the morning, Kibum quickly switches off his phone, not wanting to see the usual string of good night texts from Jonghyun, each progressively softer and sillier than the last. It was a frankly embarrassing quirk of Jonghyun’s Kibum hated to admit he adored, the same way he adored Jonghyun’s casual, careless way of affection.
He over tips his driver by at least 40%, but anyone who has to cart home a grumpy twenty-something who smells like meat probably deserves it. When he opens the door to his apartment, he is greeted by the jacket Jonghyun had thrown carelessly over his coat rack weeks ago that he kept swearing and forgetting to pick up.
Kibum kicks his shoes off, and knocks Jonghyun’s jacket to the floor-petty, he knows, but it makes him feel just the tiniest bit better.
He makes it all the way through a quick shower and halfway through his nightly facial routine before he comes back, almost guiltily, to hang it up again.
--
By the time the scandal with Sekyung dies down, Jonghyun’s promotional activities are over, and he settles into an easy and comfortable temporary MC slot on a popular variety show. In comparison to his frantic summer, the amount of free time he has seems in comparison downright luxurious. Kibum, without the stress of conference eating away at his time and his patience, feels the pressure ease off him as well.
They fall back into the easy familiarity that Kibum had liked best about their friendship, and the storm in Nicole’s face that seemed to brew every time she looked at Kibum gradually passes. It’s annoying to know that all it took was a little less sunshine-the summer heat has never treated Kibum well, and fall fashion was so much cuter-and two effortless dates with Jonghyun for the worst of the doubt to recede.
It’s so easy again, so full of possibilities, that Kibum feels like he’s been sucker-punched in the gut when Jonghyun tells him, the week before Kibum’s twenty-seventh birthday, that he’s off to Japan in a few weeks for an arena tour.
“I’ll be gone a few months, but I’ll be able to come back every once in a while,” Jonghyun tells his ceiling, exhaustion making his words slur a little. They are in Jonghyun’s spacious bed, and Jonghyun has an arm curled under Kibum that must be asleep by now, though if it is, he doesn’t give any indication of discomfort.
“Oh,” Kibum says, a neat, curt response. He rolls over, and something cold and sharp-edged clenches inside of him. Jonghyun flinches from the sudden movement, and the fingers of the arm that was under Kibum catch a corner of his shirt. Kibum pulls away, just out of arm’s reach.
They lie there, Kibum facing away from Jonghyun, feeling small and angry at Jonghyun, and then angry at himself for feeling angry, and Jonghyun doing deep-breathing exercises at his ceiling. “Come on, Kibum,” Jonghyun says after a pause, running a hand over the tired stubble on his chin. There’s a cajoling, almost laughing note in his voice-Jonghyun, even at the expense of himself, always does his best to be accommodating in difficult situations. He tries to smooth a hand down Kibum’s back, but Kibum just bristles, curling in on himself, even when he knows it’s not fair. “Let’s not do this anymore.”
“Jonghyun,” Kibum says. He hates the way he sounds accusatory and vulnerable all at once, but he hates also the way he scoots closer to Jonghyun, eager for the warmth. The uncertainty is taking its toll on him, but even at his most ornery Kibum knows the relationship is far from having run its course. “I don’t get it. What is it even worth to you?”
Jonghyun lets Kibum shift closer, doesn’t push but presses his arm, a warm anchor, against Kibum’s back. “I like you,” he says, and the frankness, the easiness of the statement makes Kibum turn around, pulling the sheet of Jonghyun’s comforter tight around him. Jonghyun lets him have it, and then reaches across the distance between them to grip Kibum’s elbow. “I really like you. None of this is easy, I know, and I’m sorry. But, Kibum-you make me so happy.”
Jonghyun’s fingers, warm and steady around Kibum’s elbow, are startlingly honest. Kibum realizes that he wants to trust him, wants to believe, like Jonghyun does, that patient self-satisfaction is more than enough, that there is no need to force themselves to a preemptive conclusion just because Kibum is terrified of difficult truths. He presses his palms into his eyes, the negative afterimage of Jonghyun waiting, as he has always been, for Kibum to forgo his reservations.
Kibum makes up his mind then, and turns to press his face into the soft, worn fabric of Jonghyun’s shoulder, searching for purchase. “Okay,” he whispers into the warmth he finds there. “Okay.”