[ exo ] exposition
title: exposition
pairing: kyungsoo / junmyeon (sudo)
rating: pg-15
warnings: hints of sex.
summary: kyungsoo isn't the main character of his story, but he thinks junmyeon just might be.
length: ~4.1k
a/n: originally posted at sooheaven, written for donawhalee. ♥ moved it here too.
Kyungsoo has long come to accept the fact that he’s not the main character of the story he’s a part of.
He’s the boy in the back of the café with his nose buried into the bend of a book, the one with softly toned natural brown hair and features not quite attractive enough to catch attention. His smile is sometimes too small and sometimes too big and his teeth are crooked, but both are not the faults that authors pinprick to keep a character level headed. He doesn’t get angry easily, but at the same time he’s not passive enough to let everyone push him around all the time.
He’s a mere background character to the people around him, from the too loud Chanyeols to the less than averagely intelligent Sehuns, the self conscious Baekhyuns and the obsessively sporty Luhans, the godly adhered Jongins and the deftly cute Yixings. They could all star in a novel of their own lives, having obvious ups and downs and plot twists and problems that influence their moods and decisions.
If he were to draw a plot graph of their lives it would be easy to pinpoint the rising action, the climax, the falling, the solution. The fights leading up to the break up, the sulking until they find someone new to crush on. From the increasing pain in the bending of an injured knee, to the kneecap dislocation and weeks off playing season, to the recovery, and the first rocky game back on the field. He’s the mellow out for each of them, the buffer friend that they use for moral support and maybe he’s a bit of fun sometimes, but he’s never the first pick or the first thought of the guy to call up.
A visual representation of his own life would flatline, Kyungsoo knows. He’s sat down sometimes and tried to draw one when there’s not much else to do, but there’s no interest in his life besides the worlds that he can’t call his own but absorbs into anyways.
He spends his nights with his phone on his nightstand, picking it up as it buzzes occasionally just to see snapchats or facebook updates of his friends getting shitfaced and laughing and having fun with their lives and all Kyungsoo can do is smile to himself, because he sees the development in their characters with every new thing they do.
A rejected hookup and an angry tweet about it is a rethought to a clothing choice or a hairstyle or a flirting method or even a step closer to reconsidering a lifestyle; a visually crippling hangover in a selca on instagram leading to that small ‘that’s enough for me’ as one drink too many is offered and turned down at the next party.
Kyungsoo analyzes and picks apart everyone’s lives around him and he offers the best advice and the best ears for stories to fall upon, mind sucking up every bit of information it can to fill the void the lack of excitement in his own life leaves. He leeches off of his friend’s successes, leading his own happiness vicariously through their own.
Although sometimes, losing himself among the love stories printed across worn out pages that have suffered more wear and tear than he has himself isn’t quite enough company for Kyungsoo; sometimes he does get lonely.
---
The library at his college is like a second home to Kyungsoo; there are plush leather couches that he’s learned to shift into just right so they cradle his frame perfectly, lighting just right for comfortable reading, and the librarian keeps the murmur of noise at a tone just comfortable enough to not be distracting but not quiet enough to be eerie.
A copy of ‘The Age of Miracles’ is spread open in his palms, the texture of the freshly printed paper cool against his calloused fingertips. He’d bought it a few days before and although there had been a few minutes before bed where he’d been able to crack into it and get a decent ways into knowing the characters, it wasn’t until then that he was really able to make a dent into its plot.
Wound up in Julia’s thoughts over the dark morning at the bus stop and her infatuation with Seth, Kyungsoo doesn’t notice as lightly tread footsteps bring someone to come and sink into the cushions beside him. It’s only the smooth voice that breaks into his story, peels his eyes away from the words draped over the page.
“Isn’t that the one about the earth slowing down, or something?” he asks, and the smile on his face is so blindingly genuine the other boy doesn’t have enough heart to tap his ear and turn back to his book as he usually would. (Feigning deafness is an easy way to get out of a conversation, he’s found, no matter how much of an asshole he might be when he does it. Talking to people isn’t something he’s usually good at.)
And besides -- god, if he doesn’t find a man who knows a thing or two about good books to be that much more attractive. And who in their right mind doesn’t want an intelligent conversation about an intelligently written book, especially with a guy who looked like he’d walked straight out of a magazine with the blazer and slacks he has on?
So instead of blatantly ignoring him Kyungsoo just nods dumbly, dog-earing the corner of the page he’s on and closing the book to hold it out to the stranger, lips shaping words before his mind can catch up to bite them back. “You can read the blurb and the first few pages, if you’d like to.”
The man looks pleasantly surprised, the dazzling smile on his face not faltering at all but somehow growing as he takes the book with hands so delicate Kyungsoo has to wonder what they’re like when he holds hands. He wonders if the man gets nervous -- wonders if he’d have clammy palms, wonders if his fingers would fumble before threading their way into the spaces between whoever was lucky enough to grasp them.
His vivid gaze wanders along the back of the book and Kyungsoo’s own wanders the features of his face while he’s not looking. His brows are bushy and his nose is sloped, the thinnest layer of kohl along his waterline and faintest visible coating of foundation on the surface of his skin that makes the latter think that maybe this guy isn’t so sure of himself as he’d thought originally. (Not to mention that his eyes are stunning -- the kohl makes them stand out and he finds it hard to look away.)
His hair is styled up and it looks gelled -- not slick and gross gelled, just smooth and almost natural looking. He absently wonders how expensive such a good styling cream must have been after admiring the chocolate brown shade to his hair for a few moments.
“I’m Joonmyun,” he says out of nowhere, sparkling coal black eyes flickering up to Kyungsoo again to shoot him another small smile before he peels the pages open, nimble fingers tracing down along the words printed across the first few intro pages with delicacy; the dedication, the title, the copyright.
“Kyungsoo,” mumbles said boy in return, hands wringing each other out in his lap for a few moments before he follows up his words with another tentative few, “why are you talking to me?”
Joonmyun laughs at that, brilliantly white teeth bright against the pale pink of his lips as they tug up at the corners into a grin, all attention back on Kyungsoo. “You looked lonely and sorta lost, Kyungsoo, and I didn’t want that. Your eyes are too pretty to be looking so adrift, so I wanted to bring you back to reality.”
It sounds like a line straight out of a book, but Kyungsoo has read nearly every obscure and popular story out there and he can’t place it. He wonders if maybe it’s not a pickup line, and something warm bubbles up in his stomach.
Not showing his pleasure, Joonmyun receives a sort of shocked and wary stare in return instead, which only has him chuckling further as he continues, “I have a sort of thing for picking up strays, sorry. I have way too many friends for my own good and about four cats at home.”
That cracks a smile out of Kyungsoo, the itching feeling at the back of his mind that Joonmyun was maybe trying to flirt with him washing away with the thought that this guy probably doesn’t even swing that way anyways; he’s probably just too nice for his own good. There have never actually been as many gay boys out in the real world as the books he’d read had led him to believe. And even so -- there were quite a few people in the library, so why would he pick Kyungsoo of all of them, definitely not the creme of the crop, anyways?
“Hey, uh--” Joonmyun lifts a wrist from his lap to glance at the watch wound around his wrist (Kyungsoo isn’t sure, but he’s about eighty percent sure that it’s a Rolex -- he must be rich, too), lips twisting into something that resembles distaste before he looks back up at Kyungsoo. “I’m really really sorry to cut the conversation so short, but I really have to go, I’m late for something.”
Kyungsoo nods, heart falling the slightest bit that Joonmyun was only around for such a short time, masking the disappointment with a smile he hopes will rival the other’s vivacity. He opens his mouth to ask for Joonmyun’s number, or insta, or his twitter or even his LINE or Kakao or something to keep in contact, but his book is being set back in his hands and the other is standing up before he can get a word out.
“I’ll catch you later, Kyungsoo!”
He’s out the door before Kyungsoo says anything, words dying on the tip of his tongue and leaving a sour and disappointed taste behind as he watches Joonmyun disappear through the automatic doors of the library.
(Not to mention the inexplicable attraction that lingers and thrums through his body even after the other leaves. A good looking guy who has good taste in books -- what more could he ask to fantasize about?)
---
Kyungsoo is in college for songwriting. He’s been told more than once that he has a voice himself that’s great enough to make it, but he prefers to take the backseat, to work on the lyrics and the tune instead of the actual presentation itself.
He specializes in empty songs, ones that may be filled to the brim with heartbreak and loss and want but still feel barren of any real meaning at the same time. He has talent, he knows he does; he had been lucky enough to be accepted into school on a composition based off of ‘The Fault In Our Stars’ that had taken months to perfect.
But his teachers are asking for more. They want the happy songs, complete and packed with love and joy and spirit, the kind of stuff he finds a little bit harder to pick out of the books he loves so dearly. He’s not failing his classes (yet) but he’s close, and when he tries to reach into his own life he can’t find anything but mediocrity; but his professors don’t want his mediocrity. They want his love, his friendship, his happiness -- but how can he give them the intensity a song deserves when he can’t even find the words to describe something he’s never experienced fully enough to tell in detail?
He knows he needs to find some sort of inspiration soon -- even if he has to ask Baekhyun to explain the crush he's had on Yifan for years, or has to plead with Jongin to tell him about how it feels to be wanted by nearly the entire university.
Kyungsoo needs something real, something strong, soon, or everything he's worked for will soon fall apart and he'll have nothing left but his stories and an inexplicable feeling of loss.
---
He doesn't think too hard about Joonmyun for a while, aside from the small daydreams about him being the lovely prince that Kyungsoo’s been waiting for to come and save him from his boring life that happen ever so often. (He’s lame, and cheesy, he knows.). It isn't until a few weeks later when he's in the library again, nose buried into a tattered library copy of "If I Fall", that he even sees him again.
Joonmyun's footfalls are as soft as ever, yet this time Kyungsoo's able to notice when the cushions dip with the added weight to his left, and he glances up from the third Friday to see the almost-stranger smiling just as wide as before. He doesn’t hesitate to curl his lips up into the friendliest grin that he can muster up to rival Joonmyun’s, head ducking in greeting.
“Do you come here every day?” He asks after giving the standard ‘hello’’s and ‘how are you’’s, the angle of his lips crooked in such a subtle way that Kyungsoo thinks it’s quite endearing.
“I’m not going to read in the bathroom,” he replies with a small teasing lilt to his own mouth, and it’s a horribly lame attempt at a joke but Joonmyun laughs anyways, the sound tinkling and echoing in his ears long after it’s fizzled out. His head swims with the light feeling the sound gives him, and though he fights to try and pick a word from his immense vocabulary to describe it, he can’t.
It’s peculiar, but it only strikes something hot in Kyungsoo’s belly, a desire to put a label on Joonmyun. (And maybe to find a fault in him, because looking and listening to him now he really can’t.)
He can see Joonmyun’s said something judging by the expectant expression he has on; but Kyungsoo hadn’t heard, too absorbed in trying to figure out what he’s feeling and more importantly, why he’d felt it to notice. He politely asks the other to repeat, apologizing with a sheepish smile.
“I asked if I could have your number?” Kyungsoo’s heartbeat all but ceases. “I mean, you have really good taste in literature and I’ve been slacking myself on gathering recs, so I figured..” Joonmyun’s smile is shy but somehow still just as vibrant as always.
Maybe his nod is a little too quick to be normal, hands a little too fumbly to hide his nervous attraction as he reaches out to take Joonmyun’s phone from him, but he’s much too anxious to get his number into the other’s phone as quick as he can to conceal himself. Their fingers brush when he takes the device and it takes all Kyungsoo’s got to keep the flush from creeping up his neck.
His rational side is telling him that it’s way too early to be so flustered over somebody he’s just met, but the side of him that’s fantasized and dreamt of his One True Love for so long eggs the beating of his heart, the sweatiness of his palms. Kyungsoo’s a mess and he knows it, is unable to calm himself down. (But he wills the moisture in his skin to please, please not get onto Joonmyun’s really expensive looking phone because if it does he doesn’t think he’ll be able to face him again.) He notices that Joonmyun looks shy too, maybe a little nervous, and wonders if maybe he’s not the only one feeling this way.
In the name field he inputs a simple “Kyungsoo”, hesitating a moment before daring to add a kissing emoji right after, clicking save and handing the phone back over before he can chicken out and delete it. His heart hammers nervously and flits around his ribcage until he sees Joonmyun double check the contact and grin widely, heart rate speeding up for an entirely different reason.
“Forward, aren’t you?” His voice is teasing and Kyungsoo’s ears heat up beneath the words, thankful that they’re hidden by his more-than-plain hair.
“I, I just--”
“It’s okay, Kyungsoo,” his smile is as blinding as ever, Kyungsoo finding himself wondering when he’s going to wake up and find out that this is all a dream, because nobody can be this gorgeous in real life -- can’t look like an idol when there’s no photoshop in real life to fix all the flaws even the celebrities have in the flesh. “It’s cute.”
You’re cute, are the underlying words, hidden between the lines Kyungsoo’s almost trained himself to read into. He tries to stop himself, but he can feel the heat flaring his ears even hotter into a deeper red, successfully resisting the urge to reach up and cover them.
They spend an hour or so talking about the book he’d had in his palms last week (Joonmyun had bought a copy for himself), Kyungsoo perhaps a bit too enthusiastic about the storyline and how much effort had gone into getting everything scientifically right though Joonmyun takes it in complete stride and he can’t help but appreciate that. Whenever he starts on a rant about a book, most of his friends’ eyes will either glaze over in boredom, or they’ll stop paying attention entirely. Joonmyun’s attention is a breath of fresh air.
Talking to the elder (he finds out his age by asking -- it was ridiculously simple, and Kyungsoo finds himself wondering why conversation had never felt this easy with anyone else before), he doesn’t feel like a background character. He doesn’t notice all the protagonists around him, the girl getting hit on and checked out by every guy she passes, the guy with bubblegum blue hair in the corner being swooned over by a fumbly library assistant -- for once, he feels like he’s the centre of attention, feels like he’s interesting enough to be around, to talk to and about.
It’s an exhilarating, natural high Kyungsoo’s completely leeching off of, and he doesn’t want it to end.
By the time the time his next class begins to draw nearer and nearer, Kyungsoo is seriously debating skipping for the first time ever just to spend more time with Joonmyun. Thankfully(?), the elder takes a small breath and huffs when he sees the time, button nose pulling into a wrinkle so cute he has to try not to squeal out loud. (Because that’s a Zitao thing. Zitao is the fangirl -- boy, whatever. Not him. He refuses to stoop to that.)
(At least not until he’s at home, into the safety of his pillow -- something so cliché in every girly fairy tale love story that he inwardly cringes.)
“I hate to cut our talk short -- but I really do have to go,” he says and Joonmyun sounds politely reluctant, lips tugging into a pout equally as adorable as the scrunch to his nose. “Could I call you later, maybe? If you don’t have work, or plans or something -- maybe we could Skype tonight and you could show me your novel collection and your favorites?”
Kyungsoo hasn’t used Skype in months -- other than a classmate messaging for a quick homework question or a friend calling for outfit advice -- and the thought of using it to discuss something he’s so passionate about stirs something similar to butterflies in his stomach. He resists the urge to flatten a palm to the area to will them away, though the wide smile that spreads over his face isn’t something he can stifle.
“I’d love to,” he replies with an ease that surprises even himself, “text me your id later, yeah? I’ll add you when I get home.” The brunette doesn’t think he’s ever had this much ease with conversation in his life.
“Sounds great.” Joonmyun stands up from the couch, handing Kyungsoo’s book back to him and ducking his head just slightly in thanks. His hair is just as perfectly styled and gelled as it had been before he’d bowed, and the brunette can’t help but reach up self consciously to adjust his own messy fringe into something he hopes is a bit more dignified.
The elder’s smile is just as imperfectly perfect and lopsided as before. “I’ll see you later, then?”
“Later,” he agrees, nodding and smiling so wide his cheeks twitch with a tinge of irritation.
A quick goodbye after, Joonmyun is gone again out the door, leaving a sort of shell shocked and breathless Kyungsoo behind, nerves tingling pleasantly all over.
He thinks this has to be the start of something, because this is the turning point from character development to plotline that he’s seen over and over in the beginning of every story he’s ever read.
The excitement that thrums through his body doesn’t stop for the rest of the day.
---
Sitting down in front of a plot graph months later and thinking about his life, things seem to flow easier now.
Kyungsoo is happier, more involved with his life, with his friends -- instead of waiting for snaps to reply to he sends them himself, takes a shot when he ‘accidentally’ makes too much food and invites everyone over for a feast a la kimchi spaghetti. Whenever he hears his friends talk about a killer party, he asks when it is or was and if he can come with to the next one. (Although after a couple tries, Kyungsoo sort of finds that parties aren’t his scene anyways and politely declines other invitations.)
There’s less free time in his days but it’s not hard for Kyungsoo to still find time to read, to finish all of his schoolwork -- especially as his writing has began to come to him much easier now.
He writes about crooked smiles, soft footsteps, careful fingertips, and the cutest nose he’s ever seen. A laugh that bubbles up in his own stomach into a swarm of butterflies and a gaze that’s so genuinely attentive it makes him feel like the centre of the universe. He writes about teeth whiter than the moon, skin so smooth it doesn’t need concealer to be perfect.
Kyungsoo writes about his late-night Skype calls with Joonmyun that run far into the hours of the morning, library dates where they end up in the back aisles of non-fiction sections sharing kisses and soft laughter, and trips to cafés where they sit in the back and stand out from the crowd only by how close they sit together, how murmur-loud their voices get when they argue about characterization and motivation passionately in a way that only they can.
Sometimes, when he doesn’t flush too much thinking about the words he has to use to get the message and feeling across, he’ll write about how it feels when Joonmyun makes love to him.
He’ll write about the cheesy pickup lines that Joonmyun steals from books and whispers into his ear to make him giggle when he’s unsure or feeling shy to ease him up; he’ll write about how it feels when Joonmyun finally touches him and the searing heat of desire each press of skin against skin leaves in its wake. Sometimes the rest falls flat, because he finds there aren’t enough words to describe everything that overwhelms him during times like that. (Not in his language, at least.)
He writes about everything and anything Joonmyun because it’s all so real and vivid and true and easy. He doesn’t have to hunt for feeling through pages, has to simply think back to hours before, days before, and pick the meaning and words in his heart to spill out onto paper to hand into his teacher.
Joonmyun is the exposition, the rising action, the climax, the falling action, the resolution, and if Kyungsoo has any say in it, he wants Joonmyun to be part of his conclusion too.
Of course -- love stories still interest him, as he’ll sit down and read for at least an hour each day no matter what, but Kyungsoo thinks that he doesn’t need them as much as he had before. He has one of his own to unfold bit by bit, a choose-your-own-adventure with unlimited options and excitement that’s so much better than anything he’s ever read before.
Kyungsoo may have gone twenty one years waiting and waiting for his book to begin, but he thinks the wait is definitely worth the content of the release.
pairing: kyungsoo / junmyeon (sudo)
rating: pg-15
warnings: hints of sex.
summary: kyungsoo isn't the main character of his story, but he thinks junmyeon just might be.
length: ~4.1k
a/n: originally posted at sooheaven, written for donawhalee. ♥ moved it here too.
Kyungsoo has long come to accept the fact that he’s not the main character of the story he’s a part of.
He’s the boy in the back of the café with his nose buried into the bend of a book, the one with softly toned natural brown hair and features not quite attractive enough to catch attention. His smile is sometimes too small and sometimes too big and his teeth are crooked, but both are not the faults that authors pinprick to keep a character level headed. He doesn’t get angry easily, but at the same time he’s not passive enough to let everyone push him around all the time.
He’s a mere background character to the people around him, from the too loud Chanyeols to the less than averagely intelligent Sehuns, the self conscious Baekhyuns and the obsessively sporty Luhans, the godly adhered Jongins and the deftly cute Yixings. They could all star in a novel of their own lives, having obvious ups and downs and plot twists and problems that influence their moods and decisions.
If he were to draw a plot graph of their lives it would be easy to pinpoint the rising action, the climax, the falling, the solution. The fights leading up to the break up, the sulking until they find someone new to crush on. From the increasing pain in the bending of an injured knee, to the kneecap dislocation and weeks off playing season, to the recovery, and the first rocky game back on the field. He’s the mellow out for each of them, the buffer friend that they use for moral support and maybe he’s a bit of fun sometimes, but he’s never the first pick or the first thought of the guy to call up.
A visual representation of his own life would flatline, Kyungsoo knows. He’s sat down sometimes and tried to draw one when there’s not much else to do, but there’s no interest in his life besides the worlds that he can’t call his own but absorbs into anyways.
He spends his nights with his phone on his nightstand, picking it up as it buzzes occasionally just to see snapchats or facebook updates of his friends getting shitfaced and laughing and having fun with their lives and all Kyungsoo can do is smile to himself, because he sees the development in their characters with every new thing they do.
A rejected hookup and an angry tweet about it is a rethought to a clothing choice or a hairstyle or a flirting method or even a step closer to reconsidering a lifestyle; a visually crippling hangover in a selca on instagram leading to that small ‘that’s enough for me’ as one drink too many is offered and turned down at the next party.
Kyungsoo analyzes and picks apart everyone’s lives around him and he offers the best advice and the best ears for stories to fall upon, mind sucking up every bit of information it can to fill the void the lack of excitement in his own life leaves. He leeches off of his friend’s successes, leading his own happiness vicariously through their own.
Although sometimes, losing himself among the love stories printed across worn out pages that have suffered more wear and tear than he has himself isn’t quite enough company for Kyungsoo; sometimes he does get lonely.
---
The library at his college is like a second home to Kyungsoo; there are plush leather couches that he’s learned to shift into just right so they cradle his frame perfectly, lighting just right for comfortable reading, and the librarian keeps the murmur of noise at a tone just comfortable enough to not be distracting but not quiet enough to be eerie.
A copy of ‘The Age of Miracles’ is spread open in his palms, the texture of the freshly printed paper cool against his calloused fingertips. He’d bought it a few days before and although there had been a few minutes before bed where he’d been able to crack into it and get a decent ways into knowing the characters, it wasn’t until then that he was really able to make a dent into its plot.
Wound up in Julia’s thoughts over the dark morning at the bus stop and her infatuation with Seth, Kyungsoo doesn’t notice as lightly tread footsteps bring someone to come and sink into the cushions beside him. It’s only the smooth voice that breaks into his story, peels his eyes away from the words draped over the page.
“Isn’t that the one about the earth slowing down, or something?” he asks, and the smile on his face is so blindingly genuine the other boy doesn’t have enough heart to tap his ear and turn back to his book as he usually would. (Feigning deafness is an easy way to get out of a conversation, he’s found, no matter how much of an asshole he might be when he does it. Talking to people isn’t something he’s usually good at.)
And besides -- god, if he doesn’t find a man who knows a thing or two about good books to be that much more attractive. And who in their right mind doesn’t want an intelligent conversation about an intelligently written book, especially with a guy who looked like he’d walked straight out of a magazine with the blazer and slacks he has on?
So instead of blatantly ignoring him Kyungsoo just nods dumbly, dog-earing the corner of the page he’s on and closing the book to hold it out to the stranger, lips shaping words before his mind can catch up to bite them back. “You can read the blurb and the first few pages, if you’d like to.”
The man looks pleasantly surprised, the dazzling smile on his face not faltering at all but somehow growing as he takes the book with hands so delicate Kyungsoo has to wonder what they’re like when he holds hands. He wonders if the man gets nervous -- wonders if he’d have clammy palms, wonders if his fingers would fumble before threading their way into the spaces between whoever was lucky enough to grasp them.
His vivid gaze wanders along the back of the book and Kyungsoo’s own wanders the features of his face while he’s not looking. His brows are bushy and his nose is sloped, the thinnest layer of kohl along his waterline and faintest visible coating of foundation on the surface of his skin that makes the latter think that maybe this guy isn’t so sure of himself as he’d thought originally. (Not to mention that his eyes are stunning -- the kohl makes them stand out and he finds it hard to look away.)
His hair is styled up and it looks gelled -- not slick and gross gelled, just smooth and almost natural looking. He absently wonders how expensive such a good styling cream must have been after admiring the chocolate brown shade to his hair for a few moments.
“I’m Joonmyun,” he says out of nowhere, sparkling coal black eyes flickering up to Kyungsoo again to shoot him another small smile before he peels the pages open, nimble fingers tracing down along the words printed across the first few intro pages with delicacy; the dedication, the title, the copyright.
“Kyungsoo,” mumbles said boy in return, hands wringing each other out in his lap for a few moments before he follows up his words with another tentative few, “why are you talking to me?”
Joonmyun laughs at that, brilliantly white teeth bright against the pale pink of his lips as they tug up at the corners into a grin, all attention back on Kyungsoo. “You looked lonely and sorta lost, Kyungsoo, and I didn’t want that. Your eyes are too pretty to be looking so adrift, so I wanted to bring you back to reality.”
It sounds like a line straight out of a book, but Kyungsoo has read nearly every obscure and popular story out there and he can’t place it. He wonders if maybe it’s not a pickup line, and something warm bubbles up in his stomach.
Not showing his pleasure, Joonmyun receives a sort of shocked and wary stare in return instead, which only has him chuckling further as he continues, “I have a sort of thing for picking up strays, sorry. I have way too many friends for my own good and about four cats at home.”
That cracks a smile out of Kyungsoo, the itching feeling at the back of his mind that Joonmyun was maybe trying to flirt with him washing away with the thought that this guy probably doesn’t even swing that way anyways; he’s probably just too nice for his own good. There have never actually been as many gay boys out in the real world as the books he’d read had led him to believe. And even so -- there were quite a few people in the library, so why would he pick Kyungsoo of all of them, definitely not the creme of the crop, anyways?
“Hey, uh--” Joonmyun lifts a wrist from his lap to glance at the watch wound around his wrist (Kyungsoo isn’t sure, but he’s about eighty percent sure that it’s a Rolex -- he must be rich, too), lips twisting into something that resembles distaste before he looks back up at Kyungsoo. “I’m really really sorry to cut the conversation so short, but I really have to go, I’m late for something.”
Kyungsoo nods, heart falling the slightest bit that Joonmyun was only around for such a short time, masking the disappointment with a smile he hopes will rival the other’s vivacity. He opens his mouth to ask for Joonmyun’s number, or insta, or his twitter or even his LINE or Kakao or something to keep in contact, but his book is being set back in his hands and the other is standing up before he can get a word out.
“I’ll catch you later, Kyungsoo!”
He’s out the door before Kyungsoo says anything, words dying on the tip of his tongue and leaving a sour and disappointed taste behind as he watches Joonmyun disappear through the automatic doors of the library.
(Not to mention the inexplicable attraction that lingers and thrums through his body even after the other leaves. A good looking guy who has good taste in books -- what more could he ask to fantasize about?)
---
Kyungsoo is in college for songwriting. He’s been told more than once that he has a voice himself that’s great enough to make it, but he prefers to take the backseat, to work on the lyrics and the tune instead of the actual presentation itself.
He specializes in empty songs, ones that may be filled to the brim with heartbreak and loss and want but still feel barren of any real meaning at the same time. He has talent, he knows he does; he had been lucky enough to be accepted into school on a composition based off of ‘The Fault In Our Stars’ that had taken months to perfect.
But his teachers are asking for more. They want the happy songs, complete and packed with love and joy and spirit, the kind of stuff he finds a little bit harder to pick out of the books he loves so dearly. He’s not failing his classes (yet) but he’s close, and when he tries to reach into his own life he can’t find anything but mediocrity; but his professors don’t want his mediocrity. They want his love, his friendship, his happiness -- but how can he give them the intensity a song deserves when he can’t even find the words to describe something he’s never experienced fully enough to tell in detail?
He knows he needs to find some sort of inspiration soon -- even if he has to ask Baekhyun to explain the crush he's had on Yifan for years, or has to plead with Jongin to tell him about how it feels to be wanted by nearly the entire university.
Kyungsoo needs something real, something strong, soon, or everything he's worked for will soon fall apart and he'll have nothing left but his stories and an inexplicable feeling of loss.
---
He doesn't think too hard about Joonmyun for a while, aside from the small daydreams about him being the lovely prince that Kyungsoo’s been waiting for to come and save him from his boring life that happen ever so often. (He’s lame, and cheesy, he knows.). It isn't until a few weeks later when he's in the library again, nose buried into a tattered library copy of "If I Fall", that he even sees him again.
Joonmyun's footfalls are as soft as ever, yet this time Kyungsoo's able to notice when the cushions dip with the added weight to his left, and he glances up from the third Friday to see the almost-stranger smiling just as wide as before. He doesn’t hesitate to curl his lips up into the friendliest grin that he can muster up to rival Joonmyun’s, head ducking in greeting.
“Do you come here every day?” He asks after giving the standard ‘hello’’s and ‘how are you’’s, the angle of his lips crooked in such a subtle way that Kyungsoo thinks it’s quite endearing.
“I’m not going to read in the bathroom,” he replies with a small teasing lilt to his own mouth, and it’s a horribly lame attempt at a joke but Joonmyun laughs anyways, the sound tinkling and echoing in his ears long after it’s fizzled out. His head swims with the light feeling the sound gives him, and though he fights to try and pick a word from his immense vocabulary to describe it, he can’t.
It’s peculiar, but it only strikes something hot in Kyungsoo’s belly, a desire to put a label on Joonmyun. (And maybe to find a fault in him, because looking and listening to him now he really can’t.)
He can see Joonmyun’s said something judging by the expectant expression he has on; but Kyungsoo hadn’t heard, too absorbed in trying to figure out what he’s feeling and more importantly, why he’d felt it to notice. He politely asks the other to repeat, apologizing with a sheepish smile.
“I asked if I could have your number?” Kyungsoo’s heartbeat all but ceases. “I mean, you have really good taste in literature and I’ve been slacking myself on gathering recs, so I figured..” Joonmyun’s smile is shy but somehow still just as vibrant as always.
Maybe his nod is a little too quick to be normal, hands a little too fumbly to hide his nervous attraction as he reaches out to take Joonmyun’s phone from him, but he’s much too anxious to get his number into the other’s phone as quick as he can to conceal himself. Their fingers brush when he takes the device and it takes all Kyungsoo’s got to keep the flush from creeping up his neck.
His rational side is telling him that it’s way too early to be so flustered over somebody he’s just met, but the side of him that’s fantasized and dreamt of his One True Love for so long eggs the beating of his heart, the sweatiness of his palms. Kyungsoo’s a mess and he knows it, is unable to calm himself down. (But he wills the moisture in his skin to please, please not get onto Joonmyun’s really expensive looking phone because if it does he doesn’t think he’ll be able to face him again.) He notices that Joonmyun looks shy too, maybe a little nervous, and wonders if maybe he’s not the only one feeling this way.
In the name field he inputs a simple “Kyungsoo”, hesitating a moment before daring to add a kissing emoji right after, clicking save and handing the phone back over before he can chicken out and delete it. His heart hammers nervously and flits around his ribcage until he sees Joonmyun double check the contact and grin widely, heart rate speeding up for an entirely different reason.
“Forward, aren’t you?” His voice is teasing and Kyungsoo’s ears heat up beneath the words, thankful that they’re hidden by his more-than-plain hair.
“I, I just--”
“It’s okay, Kyungsoo,” his smile is as blinding as ever, Kyungsoo finding himself wondering when he’s going to wake up and find out that this is all a dream, because nobody can be this gorgeous in real life -- can’t look like an idol when there’s no photoshop in real life to fix all the flaws even the celebrities have in the flesh. “It’s cute.”
You’re cute, are the underlying words, hidden between the lines Kyungsoo’s almost trained himself to read into. He tries to stop himself, but he can feel the heat flaring his ears even hotter into a deeper red, successfully resisting the urge to reach up and cover them.
They spend an hour or so talking about the book he’d had in his palms last week (Joonmyun had bought a copy for himself), Kyungsoo perhaps a bit too enthusiastic about the storyline and how much effort had gone into getting everything scientifically right though Joonmyun takes it in complete stride and he can’t help but appreciate that. Whenever he starts on a rant about a book, most of his friends’ eyes will either glaze over in boredom, or they’ll stop paying attention entirely. Joonmyun’s attention is a breath of fresh air.
Talking to the elder (he finds out his age by asking -- it was ridiculously simple, and Kyungsoo finds himself wondering why conversation had never felt this easy with anyone else before), he doesn’t feel like a background character. He doesn’t notice all the protagonists around him, the girl getting hit on and checked out by every guy she passes, the guy with bubblegum blue hair in the corner being swooned over by a fumbly library assistant -- for once, he feels like he’s the centre of attention, feels like he’s interesting enough to be around, to talk to and about.
It’s an exhilarating, natural high Kyungsoo’s completely leeching off of, and he doesn’t want it to end.
By the time the time his next class begins to draw nearer and nearer, Kyungsoo is seriously debating skipping for the first time ever just to spend more time with Joonmyun. Thankfully(?), the elder takes a small breath and huffs when he sees the time, button nose pulling into a wrinkle so cute he has to try not to squeal out loud. (Because that’s a Zitao thing. Zitao is the fangirl -- boy, whatever. Not him. He refuses to stoop to that.)
(At least not until he’s at home, into the safety of his pillow -- something so cliché in every girly fairy tale love story that he inwardly cringes.)
“I hate to cut our talk short -- but I really do have to go,” he says and Joonmyun sounds politely reluctant, lips tugging into a pout equally as adorable as the scrunch to his nose. “Could I call you later, maybe? If you don’t have work, or plans or something -- maybe we could Skype tonight and you could show me your novel collection and your favorites?”
Kyungsoo hasn’t used Skype in months -- other than a classmate messaging for a quick homework question or a friend calling for outfit advice -- and the thought of using it to discuss something he’s so passionate about stirs something similar to butterflies in his stomach. He resists the urge to flatten a palm to the area to will them away, though the wide smile that spreads over his face isn’t something he can stifle.
“I’d love to,” he replies with an ease that surprises even himself, “text me your id later, yeah? I’ll add you when I get home.” The brunette doesn’t think he’s ever had this much ease with conversation in his life.
“Sounds great.” Joonmyun stands up from the couch, handing Kyungsoo’s book back to him and ducking his head just slightly in thanks. His hair is just as perfectly styled and gelled as it had been before he’d bowed, and the brunette can’t help but reach up self consciously to adjust his own messy fringe into something he hopes is a bit more dignified.
The elder’s smile is just as imperfectly perfect and lopsided as before. “I’ll see you later, then?”
“Later,” he agrees, nodding and smiling so wide his cheeks twitch with a tinge of irritation.
A quick goodbye after, Joonmyun is gone again out the door, leaving a sort of shell shocked and breathless Kyungsoo behind, nerves tingling pleasantly all over.
He thinks this has to be the start of something, because this is the turning point from character development to plotline that he’s seen over and over in the beginning of every story he’s ever read.
The excitement that thrums through his body doesn’t stop for the rest of the day.
---
Sitting down in front of a plot graph months later and thinking about his life, things seem to flow easier now.
Kyungsoo is happier, more involved with his life, with his friends -- instead of waiting for snaps to reply to he sends them himself, takes a shot when he ‘accidentally’ makes too much food and invites everyone over for a feast a la kimchi spaghetti. Whenever he hears his friends talk about a killer party, he asks when it is or was and if he can come with to the next one. (Although after a couple tries, Kyungsoo sort of finds that parties aren’t his scene anyways and politely declines other invitations.)
There’s less free time in his days but it’s not hard for Kyungsoo to still find time to read, to finish all of his schoolwork -- especially as his writing has began to come to him much easier now.
He writes about crooked smiles, soft footsteps, careful fingertips, and the cutest nose he’s ever seen. A laugh that bubbles up in his own stomach into a swarm of butterflies and a gaze that’s so genuinely attentive it makes him feel like the centre of the universe. He writes about teeth whiter than the moon, skin so smooth it doesn’t need concealer to be perfect.
Kyungsoo writes about his late-night Skype calls with Joonmyun that run far into the hours of the morning, library dates where they end up in the back aisles of non-fiction sections sharing kisses and soft laughter, and trips to cafés where they sit in the back and stand out from the crowd only by how close they sit together, how murmur-loud their voices get when they argue about characterization and motivation passionately in a way that only they can.
Sometimes, when he doesn’t flush too much thinking about the words he has to use to get the message and feeling across, he’ll write about how it feels when Joonmyun makes love to him.
He’ll write about the cheesy pickup lines that Joonmyun steals from books and whispers into his ear to make him giggle when he’s unsure or feeling shy to ease him up; he’ll write about how it feels when Joonmyun finally touches him and the searing heat of desire each press of skin against skin leaves in its wake. Sometimes the rest falls flat, because he finds there aren’t enough words to describe everything that overwhelms him during times like that. (Not in his language, at least.)
He writes about everything and anything Joonmyun because it’s all so real and vivid and true and easy. He doesn’t have to hunt for feeling through pages, has to simply think back to hours before, days before, and pick the meaning and words in his heart to spill out onto paper to hand into his teacher.
Joonmyun is the exposition, the rising action, the climax, the falling action, the resolution, and if Kyungsoo has any say in it, he wants Joonmyun to be part of his conclusion too.
Of course -- love stories still interest him, as he’ll sit down and read for at least an hour each day no matter what, but Kyungsoo thinks that he doesn’t need them as much as he had before. He has one of his own to unfold bit by bit, a choose-your-own-adventure with unlimited options and excitement that’s so much better than anything he’s ever read before.
Kyungsoo may have gone twenty one years waiting and waiting for his book to begin, but he thinks the wait is definitely worth the content of the release.