Plaid Baby
PLAID BABY;; PG -13
Changmin could have been the new guy in school or perhaps he was always there and had just gone unnoticed until he had gotten some summer makeover, it didn't really matter. What mattered was Changmin felt like his life had only begun his senior year, when he finally reached a height spurt and miraculously grew taller than most boys on the basketball team. His good looks came with the package too, his acne cleaning up and his jawline sinking in. He looked like a model, not the kind you'd see in a GAP commercial, but a runway model, those types with hairless abs, brooding eyebrows and who didn't know the definition of smile. So his mother, overbearing to a superfluous degree, asked around at the salons and found Changmin a top selling agent and booked Changmin for the high brow Seoul fashion runaway season before the beginning of his last school year.
Changmin, of course, being the aloof guy he had been all his life, didn't care so much about the modeling or the socializing aspect, but figured it was a good way to pay for his college tuition and make his mother temporarily happy before he told her of his true plans to study abroad in New York City, so he just went with it. He figured he was going to spend all his time secretly ogling at the naked female models or just leafing through his porn magazines backstage to kill time.
It was two months into the summer and into his new fledged career when they crossed paths backstage at the Alice & Olivia show. He was feeling sort of insecure because they had dressed him in grey khaki shorts that awkwardly sat atop of his knees and made him look extra lanky, which they called "chic" and had masked his face with too much bronzer. Naturally, he was wandering aimlessly backstage, trying to avoid talking to anyone, most especially the male models who bonded like a fraternity and tried to initiate him into their pact by making him do shots over the most flamboyant one's bare chest to which Changmin had politely declined upon his first night alone in the model dorm. She - long, tousled hair, pressing dolled up eyes, high cheekbones, killer legs, and a statement editorial body - had caught his attention through this all by stomping on his feet with her bright yellow ten inch stilettos, the point of it so sharp it cut into his skin and made Changmin's toenails bleed like Bloody Mary.
"FUCK!" he cried loudly, almost in actual tears and pretty soon the whole room of malnourished and powdered models and staff were looking at him, and suddenly Changmin hated that he wasn't that invisible kid that sat in the back corner of math class all by himself playing on his Nintendo secretly anymore. The girl snapped her head almost with an abrasion to face him eye to eye, but even with her steady high heels she wasn't at his new height level, at least not before he abruptly crashed down to the ground, resolutely taking off his tarnished Fendi loafers and let the blood soak in an ugly pool around his feet.
"That's disgusting," a girl with nothing on but nipple pasties said, hands recoiling to her mouth in horror as she ran to the bathroom to purge her celery.
"FUCK," Changmin screamed again when he pressed his fingers to his toes which only seemed to make the blood spurt in different ways.
"You're being a big ass baby about this," the girl with the yellow stilettos said, her cheekbones so angled they jutted when she moved her lips and she bent down with a Kleenex as if this would solve everything. After a moment however, she realized that more damage had been done and motioned for a staff to call medical, belatedly looking to Changmin with a hint of a genuine, "I'm sorry."
It might have been the first time in his life Changmin felt a surge of love, a resurrection of a heart beating, cheeks flushing, stars in the eyes, gleestruck love, aside from the times when he fell in love with the pinup model in his monthly porn calendar stashed underneath his bed and hidden from his mom. But this girl, with her apologetic stare and her expectant hair tosses as she waited for him to say something back, acknowledge him because she was not the kind of person to be ignored, kind of felt like the girl he was supposed to fall in love with at least once in his life. Too good for him, like the most popular girl in school, a cheerleader who got everything she wanted kind of love. Changmin thought this all for a good two seconds before he remembered the utter pain in his feet that was quickly spreading throughout the rest of his body and the good fact that he might have been crippled for the rest of his life. So that fleeting moment was over and he gave another once over and decided that she was nothing more than a spoiled entitled brat, just like the lot of them.
"What's your name?" he mustered in a calm voice, trying to sound as soothing as Won Bin in every blockbuster hit to name. She looked flattered almost, bangs falling perfectly into her eye frame as she leaned over him and grabbed his hand with gentle ease, the touch of smooth feathers as the staff members hovered by his feet and one of them appropriately fainted in the background.
"Sooyoung Choi. I'm a model."
"I know who you are, I've seen you in magazines. Not porn ones though, my mom's Vogues that she leaves in the bathroom," he said, as his head grew light and he hoped he wasn't saying what he actually was saying before his head hit the ground with a final thud and he pointed her menacingly, "and now that I know your name I'll know where to send the lawsuit papers, bitch."
(It was around here that Changmin knocked out and fell into an unconscious sleep as the staff loomed above him and Sooyoung let go of his hand in an appalled state.)
"Things like this happen all the time in this industry," Changmin was sitting in the male dorm living room with the especially flamboyant model of the bunch, Zhoumi, who was giving him life advice while changing Changmin's daily bandages dotingly, "a thousand people running backstage trying to figure out the hierarchy of who is on top of who in ranking and you're bound to get a couple of toes stepped upon. I'm surprised it didn't happen to you the first week you started, to be honest."
"Good to know," Changmin retorted feebly, changing the channels super quickly when Zhoumi's head was down. Zhoumi always had the television stuck on the Fashion network and Changmin had been killing to see the Starcraft match his one and only friend from back home was raving about in text messages.
Zhoumi sighed and let Changmin change it and Changmin almost felt bad for a second. He had befriended Zhoumi in the past two weeks with no choice really; he was the only one willing to help Changmin get around the place and shower (probably for his own pleasure) as Changmin burned any other bridges he might have had during his short remainder there. Zhoumi wasn't all that bad though, aside from the fact that he was decked in up to date fashion and permanently smelled like three of Gucci's colognes combined, and despite that he only talked about fashion and drama relating to fashion, he made sure Changmin ate three meals a day and he always told Changmin to keep his feet up whenever Changmin got an itching to run away to his bedroom and read a dirty magazine. The company was nice, for the most part, Changmin supposed and he could live with it for just the next two days before he got sent back home to the other far side of Seoul where he would finally be invisible again and away from the oppressed situation which is known as modeling, he decided that wasn't for him after all.
"But yeah, you're the only one I know who's gotten their tendons massacred."
"Thanks for that."
"But you can't sue Sooyoung. Trust me, you can't."
"And why not?" Changmin sat up in his seat a little, not liking the way Zhoumi was shaking his head as he mended Changmin up.
"Because she's Sooyoung. She's got the repuatation you could only dream of hearing-" and when Changmin threw his head back, as if he knew nothing Zhoumi went on, "party girl. Real trashy too. Has a bad attitude and only does fittings when she's in the mood. Slept with half the guys in the mod-frat, even the gay ones. Not me of course, don't look at me like that. Real dope happy and she's gone to rehab twice. She's a drug dealer now, in with the bad crowd, part of the Myungdong mafia drug cartel, scary crowd those old white haired creeps that sit in the front row of every show we book. Heard she's their hooker worth $5 mil on a good year."
"Right." Changmin flipped the channel again when Zhoumi wasn't looking.
"I'm serious dude, suing her fiesty ass is serious trouble with your juju. And the worst part is she's not even legal yet."
"Neither am I. What's the big deal?"
And Zhoumi rolled his eyes impeccably muttering something about being overshadowed by the young ones these days when there was a knocking on the door and Sooyoung strutted in, eyes lined in a magnificent blue liner, her cheeks an impossibly rosy red - she must have just gotten off the stage or something and she made a headline for Zhoumi, kissing his cheeks with a "Bisoux! Bisoux!" before her eyes settled on Changmin on the sofa.
"Oh, you have company Zhoumi," she said, enunciating Zhoumi's name in exaggerated Chinese like she was born on the streets of Qiangdo.
"Oh, you mean you have company, Zhoumi," Changmin repeated, because this was his place too at least for the next forty eight hours and it didn't mean he was the guest.
"Yeah, he's not gay, I already asked." Zhoumi pouted sadly at Sooyoung as they both glanced over at Changmin and then laughed haughtily as if they were sharing an obnoxious secret.
"Are you ready for tonight?" she pulled on the tabs of her own shiny blazer, then pointed to Zhoumi's outfit in comparison. He was dressed to the nines too but not enough apparently, especially in comparison to her sparkly mini.
"Ugh, fine I'll go change into my new Proenza-Schouler overalls."
"You can come too, Changmin-sshi," she said with a curious quip to her after Zhoumi walked out of the room. She hesitated by the door for a bit before walking over to Changmin and taking a seat next to him, watching his toes to see if they would wiggle. "We're having a bash to celebrate the finale of the season over at the club down the street."
Up this close and not feeling faint from a lack of blood Changmin was sort of mesmerized by how perfect her features sat, her teeth gleaming underneath the loads of glitter everywhere else. His left pinky toe wiggled on its own as if a kickstart from his adrenaline suddenly ran and she sighed pitifully, giving him a little pout. "I'm really sorry about that by the way, it was truly an accident."
"Don't worry, I'm not going to sue you." It was like an afterthought at this point, "I'm going back home on Friday so my model career was short lived regardless. Back to high school. Back to reality."
Sooyoung's mouth opened in surprise.
"Oh, I had no idea you were so young-
-not that you don't look it or anything-
-I'm younger than I look too -
- uhmm but yeah you should come tonight. There's going to be a lot of dancing...it should be wild." Sooyoung's lips were still shaped in the form of an O when she finished speaking, waiting casually for Changmin to say anything to null the silence. Changmin wondered if this was Sooyoung just being herself or this was her when she was caught off guard but she seemed to nip that idea in the bud when she stood straight up and looked around the room like he didn't exist again, "which way to your closet? Because you are not getting away with wearing that."
The thing was, Changmin had never said yes to the idea of going out and getting away from his recuperation time and going clubbing while on crutches (actually clubbing in general) wasn't his way of fun. He reminded himself this twenty times in the car ride after Zhoumi and Sooyoung ignored his reluctant "NO'S!" when dressing him up in some snazzy skinny pants that were too bright of a color and a small sweater that was probably taken out of the child's section in a clothing store. He lingered awkwardly in the back of the crowd, admist the haze and colors beaming off the walls from the lasers, trying hard not to inhale the scent of foreign cigars and oversprayed perfume everytime Zhoumi and Sooyoung saw someone they knew and turned it into a session of greetings and exaggerated chit chat.
His feet didn't hurt as much as he was letting it on to be, but he still felt all sorts of stupid for testing its patience instead of relaxing at home with a good movie and his game console and it showed in his face.
"Come on," Sooyoung said and she grabbed his hand, forcing him to follow her through the crowd limping with his crutches. It wasn't really so much of a hesitation to say no on his behalf because his eyes were focused on the sashaying of the beads on her skirt, as they bounced energetically upon her bum as she navigated them closer to the middle of the dance floor. "Let's dance."
Changmin looked around, briefly wondering where Zhoumi had went before deciding that he had probably gone upstairs with one of those sleazy European guys that had been sending them drinks all night to which they - Zhoumi - had never declined. Sooyoung was already moving her hips to the beat, hands up in a trance before she opened her eyes, grinning when she noticed Changmin hadn't moved a muscle. "You've got to move to dance, silly."
"I can't. Newsflash." and he pointed to his feet and the crutches in the most jackass of ways as if this explained everything but Sooyoung didn't falter, instead reaching again for one of his hands, not caring about the crutch and placing it on her hip. She moved in close, too close, close enough that Changmin could feel her thighs grind between his robotic legs as she swayed, close enough that Changmin could feel her heart beat if he pressed his body back to her. It didn't matter if he didn't reciprocate though, she was doing all the work, lost in the music with a free smile as she swung her hips low and waved her subtle curves high, and Changmin could feel her energy with a spark anytime she'd flutter her eyes momentarily at him, eyelashes heavy with mascara and lust.
"Dance for me," she said when they headed upstairs later to meet Zhoumi at the dimly lit lounge except that Zhoumi was nowhere to be found. They stayed there anyway, and Changmin was convinced that it was the alcohol that made her stay alone with him in the den where no one oddly intruded on them, and he pondered if it was his looks that made them crawl away in fear.
"You're beautiful," Sooyoung slurred as if she read his mind, cupping Changmin's chin after he finished a pathetic sitting dance for her. Someone from passing by handed her some more drinks and she downed some and then poured some down Changmin's throat, not giving him a chance to say no.
"I'm not," he choked out not really sure why he'd bother to put up any sort of verbal fight at this point, especially when he was too liquored up to think of anything worth banter talk and then he embarrassingly groaned.
"I'm a virgin. I think," he said it out loud when he remembered how to open his eyes and Sooyoung was somehow sexily and drunkenly sitting on top of him trying to learn how to take off his belt. Even drunk, he could register that this was an actual female trying to hump him in a public vicinity, a model nonetheless, and he sobered up for a slight second when he realized that her hands were going places it shouldn't and he had grown hard in record timing from just a mere touch to his zipper.
"I'll teach you everything you need to know Changmin," she said only unbuttoning one button before getting too lazy.
"I like pillow talk."
"Didn't take you for much of a talker ever, Max. You told me your name was Max five minutes ago. You remember that right?"
"I think I'll need some painkiller," he really meant it for his feet but it sounded like he meant for the rendezvous he realized too late, but Sooyoung was leaning over with a strange pill in her mouth, kissing him softly before diving her tongue in at the first sight of a parting, slipping the ecstasy at the back of Changmin's tongue before she kissed he borders of his jawline with a ferocity Changmin didn't know existed in the non-feline world. He let the drug consume his body without much willpower, the last image the blurs of Sooyoung's soft lips and fingers caressing his face before his nerves lost potential control.
When Changmin woke up the next morning, he was back in the model dorm, fully clothed on his own bed, his suitcases perched at the edge of it, ready and waiting to be packed for his trip home. Up until Friday, he hadn't heard from Sooyoung again, and aside from the slight urge to pick up his phone and ask her how was she, he didn't question what happened again.
There was many things Changmin hated about college applications. Having to fill it out, having to fill it with good scores, good grades and good extracurricular activities, having to have extracurricular activities. He found himself hanging around the quad corridor again, perched upon the brick wall before school that Monday waiting for his new project to show up and consequently hating life. He might have been beautiful now but he was still treated like an outsider, and people had started to whisper in flocks anytime he passed by, questioning his existence and where he came from. A girl last Friday even had the audacity to timidly ask for his autograph and then run away as if he was a life changing experience. He wasn't.
There was an uproar from the stairs around the time Changmin got bored of waiting and sneaked on his pair of headphones and he curiously followed the crowd's gaze to the bottom of the stairs away from the quad. A female with an entourage of admiring freshman were making their way up the stairs, holding her satchel, holding her hands so she wouldn't trip in her unapproved platform boots. She was wearing the same uniform as the rest of them although she looked quite different in it, the plaid skirt sitting way too high up her slim legs, the bow-tie around her neck strewn carelessly to the side as if she didn't care for it, her hair unkempt and messy but magical looking and her huge oversized sunglasses hiding her from the existing world around. She didn't belong there and Changmin knew it, trying to piece where this poor soul from Gangnam came from just when she reached the top of the steps and gave him a lazy smile from afar, almost making Changmin knock himself overboard on the perch.
It was Sooyoung. In a school uniform.
Immediately he took out the folder that had sunken to the bottom of his backpack and examined the papers in it for a second time: Choi Sooyoung Summer. Senior. Deliquent. Transferring from Gangnam Private School of the Arts. Repeat offender on absences and violations. Must be watched at all times.
Suddenly Changmin felt invisible again when the bell rang and the awestruck overlookers mostly dispersed, a few lingering around Sooyoung waiting for her next move.
"Are you my tour guide?" her voice sounded more droll than he remembered from over the summer, and he sheepishly leapt from the perch to the ground below.
"Yeah, I'm Changmin Choikang. I'll be your guide for the next few months but this school is pretty easy to get around after a-"
"Are you seriously going to pretend like you don't know me?"
"What? No I uh- I just thought you didn't remember me because you ignored me right now in front of all these people-"
"I was trying to blend in. Be one of you." she crossed her arms and then let an eyebrow arch over the tip of her sunglasses. "Besides we slept together. How could I forget you? I gave you the best head you've ever had."
"Right," and Changmin awkwardly coughed for too long, trying to find something in his backpack that didn't exist. "I don't remember much of that at all to tell you the truth..."
"Whatever," she said not looking disappointed one bit which ended up making Changmin feeling slightly disappointed himself, "how's your feet?"
"Um, good. Not going to be running any triathlons or anything, but other than that fine."
Sooyoung simply nodded looking around the corridor, the oldness of it all, the strangeness of actually being back in school. Then she looked at Changmin again and he felt his insides recoil, it was like she was staring straight through him, straight through his soul like the grim reaper. "So you going to show me around or what, Maxxie?"
And this was where Changmin's reality got real interesting.
-this was supposed to be a longer fic in case you couldn't tell by the cut off but i didn't feel like finishing it however i did like some of what i wrote so i figured i should post it anw. sorry?