SHINee Duets 2015: heteroshinee & unbirthdaydance (Part Four)
The next month passed in a busy swirl of activity, as Jonghyun had to pack and sort his life out in advance for his move to Austria. Taemin spent as much time with him as he could, but it was difficult, because all of Jonghyun’s other friends were trying to do exactly the same thing.
He at least got a private good-bye with his boyfriend. The night before Jonghyun was scheduled to depart for the airport, his roommates held a large party in his apartment to celebrate his last night here. Midway through the music and drunken yelling, Jonghyun managed to slip away from the crowd of friends (aided somewhat by the deliberate distraction of Kibum climbing atop the living room coffee table and loudly singing the lyrics of SNSD’s Gee to the tune of Hakuna Matata), and pulled Taemin with him into the privacy of his own bedroom, which was now empty and bare save for the suitcases stacked against the far wall.
“I’ll miss you,” Jonghyun said, a tad tipsily, as he swayed forward to cling to Taemin. “I’ll week you five times a Skype, and kiss you a lot in the air. With a video. Do you like schnitzel?”
“Do I like what?” said Taemin, laughing. He stumbled towards the bed, then fell onto it with Jonghyun still snuggled in his arms. “You’re smashed, hyung.”
“Am not,” Jonghyun argued, and nipped at Taemin’s jawline to emphasize the point. “Gonna miss you.”
Taemin’s eyes softened. “I’ll miss you too,” he said, and patted Jonghyun’s back. “You’re the best boyfriend I’ve ever had.”
Jonghyun all but purred with smugness at this compliment, which made Taemin chuckle again and playfully tickle him. Jonghyun yelped and flailed and they went rolling around on the bed for a minute or two, until they collapsed in a heap, panting and exhausted, at which point Jonghyun yawned and promptly fell asleep cuddled comfortably up against Taemin’s side.
Taemin himself lay there for quite a while, a painful ache constricting his chest at the thought that this was the last night he’d get to spend with his boyfriend for a very long time. Then, despite the raucous noise of the party still going on outside, he too fell asleep.
~
The party wound down around two in the morning, despite the fact that Jonghyun, the person they were celebrating it for, had fallen asleep long since. Kibum went home alone that night, knowing that Taemin would want to spend one last morning with Jonghyun.
He should have gone back to his own place to sleep, but for some reason found himself wandering over to Taemin’s instead. He felt cold and lonely and jealous, and annoyed at this jealous loneliness. He liked Jonghyun, and he liked the idea of Jonghyun and Taemin together. They were adorable, and good for each other. They made each other so incredibly happy, and anything that made Taemin happy ought to have made Kibum happy too.
But somehow, walking home alone with the drunken memory of Taemin and Jonghyun curled up together and sleeping peacefully… happiness was the last thing he felt.
He shucked his shoes and jacket, then climbed onto Taemin’s bed, wanting the comfort of being wrapped up in Taemin’s sheets to ease this irritating maudlin mood. The pillow was soft beneath his head, and the green sheets were warm and soothing all around him. Hopefully when he woke up, his emotions would stop fucking with him and he could be a good friend again, one entirely supportive of Taemin’s relationship with someone else.
The last thing he saw before he closed his eyes was that that weird plant in the corner had sprouted a single black rose.
~
Dating long-distance went just fine for the first few months, despite how nervous that black rose (a symbol of tragic love) made Taemin feel. He and Jonghyun Skyped nearly every day, and tweeted pictures at each other, and it was almost (almost) as if Jonghyun had never left.
Then, things began to go… not so well.
It wasn’t Jonghyun’s fault. Despite how busy he was with classes and music practice and extra language lessons, Jonghyun continued to be the model boyfriend and kept in contact with Taemin just as much as he always had. He would compose love songs for Taemin and sing them to him over Skype dates, tweet him endless pictures of himself sight-seeing awesome Viennese cathedrals, and even once or twice mailed Taemin a small gift box full of European candies and trinkets, despite how expensive the international shipping must’ve been. He seemed to think that their separation was romantic, and that pining for a faraway lover lent itself well to dramatic song lyrics.
Taemin, on the other hand, found it much harder to remember to keep in contact as the months wore on, and definitely did not find their separation at all romantic. He began to forget their Skype dates, made up a care package from home to send Jonghyun but never got around to actually mailing it, and the frequency of his tweets slowed as well.
It wasn’t that his feelings for Jonghyun were fading, because Taemin still missed him fiercely, still loved getting messages from him, still adored everything about him. But it was incredibly difficult to remember to show that adoration when Jonghyun was so much out of sight, and thus out of mind.
(He refused to let himself think about the profusion of new flowers on the bush - wormwood, corchorus, zinnia, ash-leaved trumpet flowers - all symbolizing things like absence and separation. This wasn’t a bad omen, simply an affirmation of reality; or so he told himself, anyway.)
~
Taemin woke one day to the shrill of his alarm clock. He yawned and, not remembering why he had set it, flicked it off and went back to sleep. It was a Saturday; no point in getting up before noon without good reason, after all.
Three hours later, he woke again and shuffled off to the bathroom to relieve himself. When he returned to his room, he found that he had several Twitter notifications on his phone, which was odd since almost no one was following him. He picked up the phone and checked to see who it was, only to feel a sudden sick drop in his stomach at what the messages said.
There were fourteen of them, all from Jonghyun, all variations of hey you missed our skype date this morning, are you ok? i wouldnt ask except it’s the fourth time this week so…hope ur okay!! love you babe <3 <3 <3
Taemin bit his lip hard enough to bruise it, and sat down on the edge of his bed, guilt churning thick within him. He’d put off Skyping Jonghyun on Monday in favor of going out to eat with some friends, and had avoided it on Wednesday because he’d just been too tired to bother, and then on Thursday, Kibum had asked if he was free to go to a movie, and Taemin had felt more like doing that than Skyping some guy in Austria he didn’t really have anything to say to…
Except that Jonghyun wasn’t just ‘some guy in Austria’, but Taemin’s boyfriend. Whom he liked talking to very much indeed.
Had liked talking to. Taemin found himself suddenly forced to admit that as the months had gone by, his interest in his boyfriend had slowly dwindled away. He still liked Jonghyun as a friend, but the romantic spark of attraction had gradually diminished until now it did not even exist.
Taemin closed his eyes, the sick feeling worsening. Jonghyun was so sweet, so kind, such a forgiving, caring, wonderful person whose romantic feelings had not faded in the slightest despite the distance between them. He deserved someone who would love him back with the same loyal intensity, not someone like Taemin who had done exactly what he’d hated Minho doing to him; continuously ignoring his boyfriend in favor of something else..
It was time, he thought, to make a very difficult decision.
He tweeted Jonghyun back asking if he was still free to Skype and received a reply in the affirmative. Then he set up his computer, feeling nervous and miserable and still guilty as hell.
“Hey, what’s up?” Jonghyun said delightedly, as soon as the pixelated screen focused somewhat. “Busy week, huh? You doing okay?”
“I’m fine,” Taemin lied. He drew in a deep breath, and wished that he was better at talking to people, so that he could make this conversation at least slightly less awful than it was bound to be. “I have something I need to tell you.”
“What is it?” Jonghyun frowned at him through the screen, concerned. “Is something really wrong, then?”
“Er, sort of.” Taemin bit his lip and looked down at his mousepad, unable to meet Jonghyun’s worried eyes. “I think - I think we should break up.”
A moment of stunned silence. Then-
“You what?”
“I think we should break up,” Taemin repeated. His voice cracked with nerves. “I’m really sorry, and it isn’t anything to do with you. It’s just that, for me, it’s hard to keep feeling feelings for you when you’re so far away. I’ve tried, but it isn’t working. Not anymore. I don’t feel the same way about you that I used to, and I’m really, really sorry.”
Jonghyun went quiet again, for long enough that Taemin looked up, unnerved, frightened of what he might see. Then he saw that Jonghyun’s face was scrunched up, just a little, and his eyes were shiny and wet with tears, his lips wobbling, his shoulders trembling.
“Shit, I’m so sorry,” said Taemin again, more desperately this time. “Please don’t cry! It’s just that you deserve someone better than me, someone who can return your feelings properly, because I can’t.”
Jonghyun put his head in his hands then, and actually, truly cried. Taemin felt worse than ever, and didn’t know what to say, didn’t know how to make things hurt less, for either of them.
“I’m sorry,” he kept saying, uselessly patting his computer screen. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry… We can still be friends! Please don’t cry; I’m sorry…”
He turned his head away after a moment, unable to bear the sight of Jonghyun still crying for a second longer, only to find himself staring at his mysterious plant, which had dropped all its flowers and leaves save for a scattered pattern of black roses, making the thing look like it belonged in a gothic haunted house.
“I- I think we need to hang up now,” Jonghyun said finally, voice choked and shaky from a throat still thick with tears. “I can’t - I need some time to - to - yeah.”
Taemin opened his mouth to say something, anything, but by then Jonghyun had already ended the call and quit Skype.
Taemin slammed his laptop shut, and tried and failed not to feel as if he had just violently kicked a very small and fragile puppy.
~
Kibum wandered into Taemin’s dorm that afternoon, bored and wanting to hang out with his best friend. He had some vague idea of making Taemin put on nice clothes for once on a Saturday, and maybe going out to wander through some of the local shops, eat dinner out, have fun…
Instead, he found Taemin sitting hunched on his bed in the dark, with the shades drawn and lights off.
“Dude, you look creepy as fuck,” Kibum informed him upon entering. He turned the lights on, and frowned when he noticed Taemin’s flinch. “What’s wrong?”
“Doesn’t matter,” said Taemin. “Go away.”
His voice was weirdly hoarse, as if he had just been crying, which made no sense, since Taemin almost never cried. Kibum ignored the directive to go away, and instead went over to sit next to Taemin on the bed.
“C’mon,” he said, nudging Taemin’s shoulder with his own. “Talk to me.”
Taemin just curled up tighter on the bed, face buried between his knees.
“I broke up with Jonghyun,” he said, muffled. “I told him that he should find someone better to date instead of me, because I don’t care about him that much anymore. Then he cried a lot, and hung up on me.”
“Well, perhaps that wasn’t the best way to put things,” Kibum said tactfully. He settled an arm around Taemin’s shoulders and squeezed him in a one-armed hug. “But you did the right thing, if you really feel that way about him now.”
“I still like him,” said Taemin, tense and miserable. “Just not romantically. Why couldn’t I keep liking him?” He had clearly reached the point that bothered him most, for his voice had risen unhappily. “He still liked me just as much as he did before he left. But I couldn’t keep - even Minho had soccer to distract him, and I didn’t have anything - I mean, who just forgets about their boyfriend - ”
“Long-distance relationships are hard; not everyone is cut out for them.” Kibum rubbed Taemin’s arm, trying to soothe him at least a little. “It’s perfectly understandable that you couldn’t sustain your feelings with him gone so long. Don’t compare yourself to anyone else; you’re you”
“I didn’t deserve him,” Taemin said, completey ignoring this and steamrolling on. “He was always so nice to me, and he wrote me songs, and sent me things and talked to me and helped me, and I forgot to care about him! Who does that?”
“It’s not your fault - ” Kibum tried again, but Taemin wasn’t listening.
“There’s just something fucking wrong with me! I’ve had to end every single relationship I’ve ever been in; even when I date someone as perfect as Jonghyun, I still fuck it up, surely that means there’s something wrong with me - ”
“Shut up,” said Kibum, cutting off this rant by shaking Taemin sharply from side to side. “You are worth it. It’s not your fault that you’ve had bad relationship luck. It’s not anyone’s fault. These things just happen sometimes, that’s all.”
Taemin didn’t say anything after that, just stayed there in a hunched ball of guilt and despair. Kibum looked at him and sighed, heart aching for his friend. He wanted, more than anything, to kiss the exposed nape of Taemin’s neck and say: it’s all right, it’s okay. you can date me. i’ll love you no matter what, and i won’t leave you, not ever. But there had never been a worse moment than this for confessing his feelings, and so Kibum firmly tamped the urge back down, and said nothing of the sort.
Instead, he grabbed Taemin’s laptop from where it was lying at the end of the bed, and turned it on. There was an anime Taemin liked available from a good streaming site; Kibum set that to play, then leaned back against the large pillows at the head of the bed, resting an arm over Taemin’s back so that he could play with Taemin’s hair as the show began.
It was a long time before Taemin relaxed enough to uncurl and watch the show, and longer still before he began to smile and laugh at it, but it did happen eventually, and for that Kibum was grateful.
~
The plant remained withered and dying for the next three weeks, only ever perking up when Kibum determinedly plucked the shriveled black roses off of it. By the end of that third week, it was nowhere near back to its usual bushy self, but it did at least have leaves on it once more.
Taemin was standing in front of it on a random Thursday, leafing through a thick book of rare plants in an attempt to determine its classification - which, after years of owning it, he still hadn’t been able to do - and also complaining to Kibum about nothing in particular.
“It’s not as if I think this chapter will be any help,” he said, frowning down at the dense rows of text and occasional tiny captioned pictures of leaves and roots and stems. “This is all water plants, and we know that this thing isn’t that.”
“Correction,” Kibum said lazily, from where he was lounging in Taemin’s desk chair and reapplying eyeliner because he had nothing else better to do. “You know that, plant geek. I know absolutely nothing about anything botanical.”
“Oh c’mon, you identified a Hemerocallis fulva from a Hemerocallis minor the other day. That’s not bad!”
“I identified a what from a what?”
“A tiger-lily from a grassleaf lily, hyung.”
“Oh.” Taemin heard the chair scrape as Kibum got to his feet. “That’s because they’re different colors, that’s all.”
Taemin tossed the useless book onto the floor and turned around to beam happily at Kibum.
“I’m still proud of you,” he said, smiling as Kibum came to stand in front of him and gaze down at him with an amused sparkle in his eyes. “You’ll be an honorary botanist yet!”
“If I have to listen to you yammer on about plants twenty-four hours a day, then yeah, I bet I will.” Kibum’s mouth quirked into a grin. “I’m surprised it hasn’t happened already.”
Taemin snorted and shoved Kibum playfully in the chest. Kibum stumbled back a step, then smirked, stepped forward and shoved Taemin back. A shoving war promptly ensued, both of them laughing as they tried to topple each other other onto the floor, until at last Taemin lost his balance and teetered backwards, arms windmilling wildly in an attempt to keep himself from crashing down onto the plant behind him.
Kibum fortunately caught him before that could happen, and for a moment, they froze together in a position oddly like that from a cheesy romance movie, Taemin resting off-balance in the safety of Kibum’s arms. Taemin noticed that Kibum’s eyes were strangely intense, and that he didn’t relinquish Taemin immediately, the way he should have.
Then Kibum’s phone rang, and with a groan, he set Taemin back on his feet and went over to go answer it. Taemin blinked at him, confused by whatever had just happened between them, then dismissed it from his mind and went back to studying his mysterious plant (and how oddly, vibrantly green it had just become), wondering if maybe he ought to try looking in a different book instead.
~
Kibum frowned down at his morning coffee, and tried not to panic.
This was something of a useless endeavour, since all he’d been doing for the past several weeks was, mostly, panicking. And he had good reason for doing so, for despite the fact that Taemin was now free and single again, Kibum still wasn’t sure if it was a good idea to ask him out. He didn’t want to be just a rebound, or accidentally hurt Taemin somehow if he still wasn’t completely over Jonghyun.
But he was also afraid that the longer he waited, the more opportunity there was for Taemin to start dating someone else again. Kibum had chickened out of confessing his feelings far too many times in the past; he had to do it now, before Taemin found and fell in love with yet another person who was not Kim Kibum.
Even so, this was easier said than done. Kibum could not quite shake that old familiar fear of rejection, of telling Taemin his feelings, and being told in return: sorry, but i just don’t feel that way about you. After all, hadn’t Taemin broken up with his first boyfriend, Jongin, because they had felt that they were better as friends? What if he felt the same way about Kibum? It didn’t matter that he’d had these exact same worries for years; they were just as terrifying now as they had been when he’d first realized just how much he loved his best friend.
Kibum downed a huge gulp of coffee, and gave in to panic.
~
Taemin’s Wednesday afternoon class and lab were canceled, something that was especially exciting since he knew that Kibum also had that afternoon off from work. They agreed to spend the day watching movies and eating take-out in Taemin’s dorm room, while Taemin did his Thursday homework and Kibum caught up on his friends’ Instagram activities.
The first movie ended with no homework and no Instagramming done, however, because both of them were laughing too much at the bad acting and enjoying tossing snippets of broken plastic chopsticks at the TV screen. Once they ran out of chopstick pieces, Taemin reached over to playfully tug gently at one of Kibum’s earrings, teasing that he needed it to throw at the screen as well.
“Fuck off, you brat,” said Kibum, still laughing as he slapped Taemin’s hand aside, the streak of blond dyed into his hair glittering in the sunlight from the window. “Ow! I need that!”
Taemin pouted at him, using all the cute and adorable charm he knew would win him anything he wanted, for Kibum always had been a sucker for Taemin’s attempts to look cute. For a moment, this seemed to work, as Kibum’s eyes softened into the affectionate expression he only ever looked at Taemin with, and Taemin was hard-pressed to keep up the pout and not give into the temptation to smirk, certain that the earring would be his any moment now.
But then Kibum leaned forward and kissed him instead.
Taemin forgot all about the earring the moment Kibum’s lips met his. It was a very nice kiss, and Kibum was surprisingly good at it for someone who’d never done it much. Taemin felt all startled and fluttery inside, because this was Kibum, and he was kissing him, and something about that was making Taemin’s brain circuits fuse into a flustered, confused, very very pleasant mess. And it wasn’t just the warm sensation of Kibum’s mouth against his, or the sweet taste of Kibum’s flavoured chapstick. It was Kibum’s large palm cupping his cheek, the way Kibum’s eyes had fluttered closed, eyelashes a dark curve against smooth skin, the expressive, intense scrunch of Kibum’s face as they kissed, as if he were a drowning man drinking in life-giving water for the very first time…
Then Taemin noticed a sudden riot of color from the corner of one eye, and, curious, broke the kiss to turn and look at it. To his amazement, the bush was blooming flowers again, an explosion of more different types than it ever had before. Taemin recognized some by sight: primroses, violets, tulips, honeysuckle, forget-me-nots… but there were more, far more, than he knew by name. Every inch of the bush was crammed unscientifically full of them, a beautiful blossoming of scent and color more wondrous than anything Taemin had ever laid eyes on.
“Holy shit,” he said, springing to his feet and accidentally kicking a carton of uneaten noodles over onto Kibum’s lap. “I need my book - the encylopedia - look at this! What a plant!”
Kibum grumbled in a very annoyed manner at this, but Taemin didn’t bother listening to him. Instead, he eagerly ran to grab his book of flower language, and began flipping through it, fascinated.
“Violets are for faithful love,” he read, starting with the back of the book before skimming to another randomly lettered entry. “Honeysuckle means ‘generous and devoted affection’, tulips are a declaration of love - or at least, some colors are - oh, here’s this one: ‘lily of the valley: return of happiness.’ And alstroemeria, for friendship and devotion, and honey flower for love ‘sweet and secret’, and primrose for ‘I can’t live without you’, and oh! Forget-me-nots mean true love…”
“While you recite the floral dictionary, I’m gonna go change into a new pair of pants, okay?” Taemin vaguely heard Kibum stand up and wander over to Taemin’s dresser. “Jesus Christ, of course your reaction to being kissed is to dump noodles on me and go babble at that fortune-telling plant. I should never have given you the damn thing, all you ever do is…”
Taemin went still, losing track of whatever Kibum was complaining about now, the words fortune-telling plant… ringing in his head. The plant had never yet been wrong at summarizing the state of Taemin’s relationships, and if it was displaying flowers that meant things like love sweet and secret, faithful love, true love, declaration of love, right after Kibum had kissed him…
“Hyung,” he said suddenly, closing the book and turning to frown over at where Kibum was pulling on a noodle-free pair of Taemin’s sweatpants. “Hyung, are you in love with me?”
Kibum froze, the pants hanging wide at his thighs. It was a startled, guilty look, the kind he always got whenever he’d done something he knew Taemin was going to yell at him for, and he was trying to decide how best to talk his way out of it.
“Um,” said Kibum. “Well. That’s a very… interesting question.” He yanked the pants on the rest of the way. “Can I borrow a shirt, too? This one has noodles on it, thanks very much.”
So that answered that, then; they’d been friends long enough for Taemin to see straight through this evasiveness. He tilted his head curiously to the side, and asked: “So, how long have you liked me for, then?”
“Well, if you must know, an embarrassingly long time.” Kibum fidgeted with the hem of his sauce-soaked shirt. “About that shirt - ”
“When were you gonna confess to me?”
“I dunno? Never, maybe?” Kibum pulled off the shirt, and glared at him, voice wobbly with nerves. “I shouldn’t even have kissed you, but you're not dating anyone right now, and I couldn’t resist, not with the way you were looking at me, so I panicked, and I shouldn’t have, and I won’t do it again, okay?”
Taemin considered this defensively garbled statement for moment while Kibum fished an overlarge T-shirt out of Taemin’s disorganized underwear drawer and wriggled into it. Then Taemin said:
“You should kiss me again. I liked it.”
Kibum stared at him. “You did?”
“Of course.” Taemin frowned at him, thoughtful. He’d never really thought about Kibum like this before, in a romantic light, but now that he was doing so, he found he rather liked the idea of him and Kibum being romantic together. After all, wasn’t Kibum the person he was closest to? Didn’t he trust Kibum with everything and enjoy their time spent together? Wasn’t it nice to cuddle with Kibum, or to wake up with the faint trace of Kibum’s scent lingering on his sheets? And it hadn’t felt weird to kiss him at all. Nothing ever felt weird with Kibum; it always just felt right.
And if all that wasn’t an excellent basis for trying out a relationship, Taemin didn’t know what was.
“You should date me,” he said brightly, logical conclusion reached. “Does this count as our first date, or should we do something nicer for that?”
“You - I - Taemin,” said Kibum, spluttering the words out, hands gesturing about helplessly. “Are you serious?”
“No, I’m Taemin,” said Taemin obnoxiously, and strutted forward, feeling very pleased at how flustered he was making his friend. Boyfriend. According to the plant: true love. “Once I remember my password, I can log in and make it Facebook official.”
“You’re such a loser,” said Kibum, the insult made completely ineffective by the shy dimpled smile blossoming on his face. “Are we really dating, then?”
“Yep.” Taemin came to a stop right in front of Kibum, and grinned happily up at him. “We’re boyfriends now, alright. I mean, the plant thinks it’s a great idea, and since when has it ever been wrong? The thing’s a scientific miracle - ”
“Oh, fuck the plant,” said Kibum, and seized Taemin by the front of his shirt to haul him in for their second very nice kiss. Taemin put his arms around Kibum’s neck and kissed him back, an intense happiness unfurling within him at how perfect it felt to finally share this intimacy with his most favourite person ever.
(and behind them, the plant extended its bushy brambles and branches, more and more flowers bursting forth, a garden of gorgeous color that would never shrivel up and wither away ever again.)
<< Part Three | The End.