[infinite] Cell[ular Distinction]s and Iron Bar[ometer]s
Title: Cell[ular Distinction]s and Iron Bar[ometer]s
Rating: pg-13
Word count: 1344
Summary: Myungsoo still wants to escape, but this time the prison is self-constructed. A remix of yunho's Morning Escape.
Cell[ular Distinction]s and Iron Bar[ometer]s
The universe is transformation; our life is what our thoughts make it.
marcus aurelius
∞
Woohyun is the only one who agrees to play along. They set the rules when they were trainees, picking grass out of the Han riverbank, staining the seats of their pants. I will be L, Myungsoo had said then, and you will be-
Woohyun. Just Woohyun.
It’s a script they carefully puzzle out in between long sessions at the studio and cramped, shared showers in the morning. Myungsoo is training to be an actor, Woohyun is training to be an idol, and they live in an grotty apartment that’s far too small for thirteen. There are iron bars over the windows and Woohyun’s not sure whether they’ve been built to keep them in or the world out.
Regardless of intent, it’s effective.
∞
Myungsoo leans over the balcony in the hotel and looks down at the intersections of brilliant lights. They’d been to Tokyo and Taipei, but somehow, New York feels a bit different; New York is suffocating. Woohyun’s not sure if it’s because they’re so desperately far from anything recognizable, because they haven’t slept properly in three days, because Dongwoo’s slow repetition of English verbs is sending pinpricked shivers down his spine, or if it’s because Myungsoo looks far more easily unhinged, far closer to the unreality of L, of fiction. Myungsoo’s hair is spiked in all the wrong places and he’s sitting with his toes curled over the bottom of chairs, knees close to his chest.
L pinches his fingers around a shard of air and Woohyun steps back and blinks into formation.
He starts: “You’re disgusting. Why the hell do you smoke that stuff?”
The sky bleeds a dim black. Light pollution. At least in Korea, sometimes Woohyun can see the stars. Once upon time, he knew enough to name the major seven, the constellations, the avenues of motions. “I have a plan,” L says.
“You always have a plan.” The dialogue is too easy.
“Hear me out, would you? I’ve got it this time.”
Sunggyu slams a door in the background. Dongwoo throws his index cards across the room and Sungyeol glares at Woohyun through the glass. For a moment, he considers tossing Sungyeol a smile. Instead Woohyun glances over at L, at a long lean torso lying flush against the balcony’s railing, eyes sharp, hands paling in the darkness. L looks almost two-dimensional, a caricature of himself. It’s a beautiful image; Woohyun can understand why their audience loves it so much.
At night, Myungsoo and Sungyeol fight bitterly. Woohyun hears their door shake, errant slips of conversation leak between the walls. You promised you’d fucking stop with him and what’s wrong with you and why aren’t you happy and i am, you just can’t understand that.
Myungsoo is quiet with Woohyun. A shallow, unsteady quietude that even Woohyun doesn’t quite know what to do with.
“Don’t you ever give it a rest? We’re stuck here.” Sixty stories above the ground.
“You’ll like this one.” L speaks softly and carries a wealth of bitterness, but only with Woohyun. Only ever like this, on balconies across the world, when it’s the two of them playing a game neither of them really understand. When the conversation is the same. When the intonation is totally different. When connotation is transformative. “You ready?”
I’m always ready. “What?” The ground is thousands of meters away, and the clouds feel frighteningly nearby.
“Just follow-” and L look back. Woohyun’s gotten a bit too close, the air is thick, and there’s something in L’s face and eyes and voice that feels desperate, that mirrors everything Woohyun wants. Woohyun wants-“Behind me.”
Woohyun turns to face the long lines of L’s back, and places a hand over a shoulder, and one of the flat of his hip. There’s something incredibly unsettling about finding out that L is as solid as the rest of them. That they’re so incredibly close to an edge of making a decision neither of them are really comfortable with. But Myungsoo’s lie is seductive, and Woohyun has always pictured his happy ending bittersweetly.
Myungsoo knows how to adapt.
“If my plan works, we should be out of here before night.” Woohyun feels L’s ribcage expand.
“If?”
“Yeah. If.”
∞
Eventually Myungsoo slips out of Woohyun’s fingers, away from his chest and thighs and arms, and returns to poking fun at Sungyeol’s piles of scripts and screenplays. He bleeds into Sungyeol’s lap and laughs without covering his mouth and snorts milk out of his nose when Dongwoo tries to translate the captions on the pornographic magazine they’d surreptitiously bought from a street vendor. Myungsoo is different with every single member of Infinite. Woohyun curls fingers around the abstraction.
Woohyun looks down at a word of intersecting futures and feels Sunggyu creep up behind him.
“Did you speak to him? Tell him to come inside?”
Woohyun nods curtly. Sunggyu runs a hand through his hair. “He’s better off in there. He looks happier. You make everyone so fucking miserable.”
Woohyun shrugs. It’s true. but not exactly the point. He’s more honest than any of them. Sunggyu’s fierce rigidity doesn’t quite translate into marketable material anymore. Not five years into popularity, not when they’re cusping on world renown. Sunggyu bleeds regret and dissatisfaction.
“You’re terrible for each other,” Sunggyu says again, looking up and into the skyline. “You’re terrible for all of us.”
∞
They spend three days in New York, four in Chicago, and twenty in San Francisco before returning to New York CIty for their final set of promotions. Woohyun watches Myungsoo wear himself into unreality, blurring around the edges, and bites his tongue. Sunggyu elbows him and Woohyun remembers to smile, to curl his fingers into hearts, to laugh and throw an arm around Sungyeol and nuzzle his face into Sunggyu’s chest.
They’re hurried back to the hotel after their final concert, arms heavy with gifts they don’t plan on opening and food they’re not allowed to eat, and then Sunggyu lets them out to sightsee.
“I have a plan,” L says against his ear. They’re the last ones to leave. In their excitement, the others have forgotten that Myungsoo and Woohyun are not allowed to be alone together.
Woohyun’s stomach curdles. “You always have a plan.”
“Hear me out, would you? I got it this time.”
“Don’t you ever give it a rest? We’re stuck here.” Woohyun turns around. The lights are off, L’s face is dark and pale, and his hands are creeping around Woohyun’s hips, sliding under Woohyun’s shirt.
“You’ll like this one,” and Woohyun shakes. The tips of L’s left hand are covered in callouses. “You ready?”
“What?”
“Just,” and L is edging a knee between Woohyun’s legs, pressing all too closely, mouth contorted into something that looks like the half-smile of pre-debut, the honest helplessness Woohyun thinks their CEO found so alluring, “follow me.”
L is rougher than he looks. Woohyun finds that it’s the perfect excuse to give in, to press just as roughly back, to remember the aggression he can’t quite bury, the fierceness he’s not allowed.
“If my plan works, we should be out of here before night.”
It’s already night, Woohyun says. We missed our fucking chance. And: but you’re happy, aren’t you? And: I am. Woohyun claws at Myungsoo’s face and chest and kisses him, mouth hot and sloppy and dry. “If?”
The reply is late. But it comes.“Yeah. If.”
∞
“What took you so long?”
“Nothing.” It’s always easier to face Sunggyu afterwards. The words come more easily. Myungsoo flashes him a smile and Woohyun feels more comfortable in his own skin. He readjusts his sweatshirt. “Helping Myungsoo find his camera.”
Sunggyu worries at a fingernail. “Alright,” he says emptily.
Sungjong takes photographs of everything in sight, Dongwoo can’t stop pointing at people and storefronts and lights, and Hoya pinches Dongwoo’s arm a few times before giving up and helping him navigate the crowds. Myungsoo skips down the sidewalk and laughs easily into the curve of Sungyeol’s collarbone.
L, as always, has vanished entirely. But Woohyun-
Woohyun squints into the sky and searches for stars. Sunggyu’s fingers tighten over his arm when Woohyun stops walking.
“We can enjoy ourselves later. Let’s just watch for now, hmm?”
It’s not a question. It’s a reminder.
-Woohyun can’t quite escape. Sunggyu’s grip is imprisoning.
“Yes. Yeah. Sure. Whatever.”
∞
a/n: as always, thank you, reifica. and thank you to she who will not be named.
this story was originally posted here as entry #18 and written for the 2011 kpop_ficmix exchange.
Rating: pg-13
Word count: 1344
Summary: Myungsoo still wants to escape, but this time the prison is self-constructed. A remix of yunho's Morning Escape.
Cell[ular Distinction]s and Iron Bar[ometer]s
The universe is transformation; our life is what our thoughts make it.
marcus aurelius
∞
Woohyun is the only one who agrees to play along. They set the rules when they were trainees, picking grass out of the Han riverbank, staining the seats of their pants. I will be L, Myungsoo had said then, and you will be-
Woohyun. Just Woohyun.
It’s a script they carefully puzzle out in between long sessions at the studio and cramped, shared showers in the morning. Myungsoo is training to be an actor, Woohyun is training to be an idol, and they live in an grotty apartment that’s far too small for thirteen. There are iron bars over the windows and Woohyun’s not sure whether they’ve been built to keep them in or the world out.
Regardless of intent, it’s effective.
∞
Myungsoo leans over the balcony in the hotel and looks down at the intersections of brilliant lights. They’d been to Tokyo and Taipei, but somehow, New York feels a bit different; New York is suffocating. Woohyun’s not sure if it’s because they’re so desperately far from anything recognizable, because they haven’t slept properly in three days, because Dongwoo’s slow repetition of English verbs is sending pinpricked shivers down his spine, or if it’s because Myungsoo looks far more easily unhinged, far closer to the unreality of L, of fiction. Myungsoo’s hair is spiked in all the wrong places and he’s sitting with his toes curled over the bottom of chairs, knees close to his chest.
L pinches his fingers around a shard of air and Woohyun steps back and blinks into formation.
He starts: “You’re disgusting. Why the hell do you smoke that stuff?”
The sky bleeds a dim black. Light pollution. At least in Korea, sometimes Woohyun can see the stars. Once upon time, he knew enough to name the major seven, the constellations, the avenues of motions. “I have a plan,” L says.
“You always have a plan.” The dialogue is too easy.
“Hear me out, would you? I’ve got it this time.”
Sunggyu slams a door in the background. Dongwoo throws his index cards across the room and Sungyeol glares at Woohyun through the glass. For a moment, he considers tossing Sungyeol a smile. Instead Woohyun glances over at L, at a long lean torso lying flush against the balcony’s railing, eyes sharp, hands paling in the darkness. L looks almost two-dimensional, a caricature of himself. It’s a beautiful image; Woohyun can understand why their audience loves it so much.
At night, Myungsoo and Sungyeol fight bitterly. Woohyun hears their door shake, errant slips of conversation leak between the walls. You promised you’d fucking stop with him and what’s wrong with you and why aren’t you happy and i am, you just can’t understand that.
Myungsoo is quiet with Woohyun. A shallow, unsteady quietude that even Woohyun doesn’t quite know what to do with.
“Don’t you ever give it a rest? We’re stuck here.” Sixty stories above the ground.
“You’ll like this one.” L speaks softly and carries a wealth of bitterness, but only with Woohyun. Only ever like this, on balconies across the world, when it’s the two of them playing a game neither of them really understand. When the conversation is the same. When the intonation is totally different. When connotation is transformative. “You ready?”
I’m always ready. “What?” The ground is thousands of meters away, and the clouds feel frighteningly nearby.
“Just follow-” and L look back. Woohyun’s gotten a bit too close, the air is thick, and there’s something in L’s face and eyes and voice that feels desperate, that mirrors everything Woohyun wants. Woohyun wants-“Behind me.”
Woohyun turns to face the long lines of L’s back, and places a hand over a shoulder, and one of the flat of his hip. There’s something incredibly unsettling about finding out that L is as solid as the rest of them. That they’re so incredibly close to an edge of making a decision neither of them are really comfortable with. But Myungsoo’s lie is seductive, and Woohyun has always pictured his happy ending bittersweetly.
Myungsoo knows how to adapt.
“If my plan works, we should be out of here before night.” Woohyun feels L’s ribcage expand.
“If?”
“Yeah. If.”
∞
Eventually Myungsoo slips out of Woohyun’s fingers, away from his chest and thighs and arms, and returns to poking fun at Sungyeol’s piles of scripts and screenplays. He bleeds into Sungyeol’s lap and laughs without covering his mouth and snorts milk out of his nose when Dongwoo tries to translate the captions on the pornographic magazine they’d surreptitiously bought from a street vendor. Myungsoo is different with every single member of Infinite. Woohyun curls fingers around the abstraction.
Woohyun looks down at a word of intersecting futures and feels Sunggyu creep up behind him.
“Did you speak to him? Tell him to come inside?”
Woohyun nods curtly. Sunggyu runs a hand through his hair. “He’s better off in there. He looks happier. You make everyone so fucking miserable.”
Woohyun shrugs. It’s true. but not exactly the point. He’s more honest than any of them. Sunggyu’s fierce rigidity doesn’t quite translate into marketable material anymore. Not five years into popularity, not when they’re cusping on world renown. Sunggyu bleeds regret and dissatisfaction.
“You’re terrible for each other,” Sunggyu says again, looking up and into the skyline. “You’re terrible for all of us.”
∞
They spend three days in New York, four in Chicago, and twenty in San Francisco before returning to New York CIty for their final set of promotions. Woohyun watches Myungsoo wear himself into unreality, blurring around the edges, and bites his tongue. Sunggyu elbows him and Woohyun remembers to smile, to curl his fingers into hearts, to laugh and throw an arm around Sungyeol and nuzzle his face into Sunggyu’s chest.
They’re hurried back to the hotel after their final concert, arms heavy with gifts they don’t plan on opening and food they’re not allowed to eat, and then Sunggyu lets them out to sightsee.
“I have a plan,” L says against his ear. They’re the last ones to leave. In their excitement, the others have forgotten that Myungsoo and Woohyun are not allowed to be alone together.
Woohyun’s stomach curdles. “You always have a plan.”
“Hear me out, would you? I got it this time.”
“Don’t you ever give it a rest? We’re stuck here.” Woohyun turns around. The lights are off, L’s face is dark and pale, and his hands are creeping around Woohyun’s hips, sliding under Woohyun’s shirt.
“You’ll like this one,” and Woohyun shakes. The tips of L’s left hand are covered in callouses. “You ready?”
“What?”
“Just,” and L is edging a knee between Woohyun’s legs, pressing all too closely, mouth contorted into something that looks like the half-smile of pre-debut, the honest helplessness Woohyun thinks their CEO found so alluring, “follow me.”
L is rougher than he looks. Woohyun finds that it’s the perfect excuse to give in, to press just as roughly back, to remember the aggression he can’t quite bury, the fierceness he’s not allowed.
“If my plan works, we should be out of here before night.”
It’s already night, Woohyun says. We missed our fucking chance. And: but you’re happy, aren’t you? And: I am. Woohyun claws at Myungsoo’s face and chest and kisses him, mouth hot and sloppy and dry. “If?”
The reply is late. But it comes.“Yeah. If.”
∞
“What took you so long?”
“Nothing.” It’s always easier to face Sunggyu afterwards. The words come more easily. Myungsoo flashes him a smile and Woohyun feels more comfortable in his own skin. He readjusts his sweatshirt. “Helping Myungsoo find his camera.”
Sunggyu worries at a fingernail. “Alright,” he says emptily.
Sungjong takes photographs of everything in sight, Dongwoo can’t stop pointing at people and storefronts and lights, and Hoya pinches Dongwoo’s arm a few times before giving up and helping him navigate the crowds. Myungsoo skips down the sidewalk and laughs easily into the curve of Sungyeol’s collarbone.
L, as always, has vanished entirely. But Woohyun-
Woohyun squints into the sky and searches for stars. Sunggyu’s fingers tighten over his arm when Woohyun stops walking.
“We can enjoy ourselves later. Let’s just watch for now, hmm?”
It’s not a question. It’s a reminder.
-Woohyun can’t quite escape. Sunggyu’s grip is imprisoning.
“Yes. Yeah. Sure. Whatever.”
∞
a/n: as always, thank you, reifica. and thank you to she who will not be named.
this story was originally posted here as entry #18 and written for the 2011 kpop_ficmix exchange.