Happy Birthday, To Us
It all starts because of the fan who asks if they read fanfiction. The question is directed at Kris, but Kai has nothing better to do than tune into M’s leader’s answer. Kris acts rather out of character, stuttering in his response that yeah, sometimes he does. Kai’s curiosity piques as he elaborates further, even mentioning a few Chinese and English sites that he frequents while skilfully avoiding answering the next part of the question that the fan screams out, something about preferred pairings and ships. One word from her question sticks in Kai's mind and he makes a mental note to type it into Google rather than Naver when he gets home.
--
Kaisoo, he finds out ten clicked links and a Google image search later, is the name given to the pairing consisting of him and Kyungsoo. Local fans tend to go for Kaido (he remembers seeing a fansign with the word on it once, accompanied by two black and white smiley faces that he had assumed were before and after pics of Michael Jackson but now realises were maybe an inaccurate description of him and Kyungsoo), while international ones go for Kaisoo. He tests the two out on his tongue and decides he likes Kaisoo better. He knows that Kai is a way cooler name than Jongin but Kyungsoo is much nicer than D.O. It also gives the pairing a more personal touch. The search goes straight into his bookmarks.
He discovers that there is a Kaisoo ‘tag’ on a website called tumblr and it’s filled with pictures and photoshopped manips of him and of Kyungsoo, some really cute and others downright disturbing. He gets his first taste of fanart later that night when he comes across a tumblr called kaisooart and he spends the rest of his time online searching for lightening creams because damn is he really that dark? (It also helps to distract him from the severely inappropriate pictures, still open on another tab, that are making him a little too hot and bothered for his liking).
--
He comes across Baekyeol by accident. He’s minding his own business in the Kaisoo tag, browsing through the latest fanarts and edits when he scrolls down and his eyes land on a very large smiling face that isn’t Kyungsoo’s and most definitely isn’t his own. Chanyeol? A few seconds later the picture dissolves and turns into a smiling Baekhyun instead, and Kai releases rather bitterly that ‘Kaisoo’ isn’t the only exo couple that the fans fantasize about.
The Baekyeol tag is full of sunshines and rainbows, all smiley Chanyeol and cute Baekhyun and posts that analyse their friendship right down to the last second of Baekyeol screen time. He comes across the same Ivy Club Baekyeol Cut video so many times that he literally knows the exact second at which Baekhyun will stop singing and turn to Chanyeol with an embarrassed laugh after he forgets the words. The comments are all about how cute and perfect and real Baekyeol are and how they’re the ‘best otp ever!!1’ One of them has a link to a fanfic which they claim is written about a similar situation and Kai’s not entirely sure what possesses him to click it but he does so anyway.
Five minutes later he comes to regret his decision because not only has he just been subjected to 685 Korean words of pure, vomit-inducing Baekyeol cuteness, he’s also started down a dark, fic-filled path that there’s no coming back from.
--
G-rated means clean, innocent and in PG-13 and up fics, the main characters kiss. There’s a rating marked NC-17 but whenever he tries finding the posts tagged with it, nothing comes up. He struggles through word after English word, dictionaries and Google translate and the occasional text to Kris helping him through at a painfully slow pace. When he asks Kris for the definition of ‘twink’, the elder calls him and demands to know what he’s doing.
“I’m reading fanfics hyung,” he says, as if it’s the most natural thing in the world. Kris is silent for a long time and just when Kai is about to hang up, the dialling tone sounds, meaning Kris has done it for him. As he continues to read about just how ‘twinky’ Luhan is, his phone buzzes again and he checks the notification to find that Kris has texted him a website.
yourmanwufan.livejournal.com, you can find many translated-to-Korean fics on here
He clicks the link and is immediately blinded by a shiny, silver background with various pictures of Kris lining the sides. The text is almost unreadable but Kai’s learnt a thing or two and after enabling reader mode, he scrolls through the inoffensive black-and-white entries. There’s a post called ‘masterlist’ and after clicking it, he realises that the person who owns the page has an obvious ‘Baekris’ bias. But right underneath there is a paragraph titled ‘kai-fics’ and Kai’s eyes light up at the numerous pairing tags associated with his name. He thought that all the fans shipped him (Wikipedia tells him that shipping is the phrase used for pairing two people up together, stemming from the word relationship) with Kyungsoo, but there are stories about him with Chanyeol, with Yixing, with Sehun, with Luhan, and even ‘ot3’ fics that pair him, Luhan and Sehun all together.
Kai doesn’t know many English words, but threesome is one that he understands pretty well.
--
Selukai soon becomes the bane of his existence. When Kai’s not cast as a cheating bastard, he’s the pathetic friend that Sehun and Luhan hide their relationship from in order not to hurt him. When that fails, he’s the awkward third wheel, happily playing off by himself while Sehun and Luhan make-out in the house that all three of them conveniently share. The fics in which the three have a healthy, loving three-way relationship are few and far between; the crux of Selukai fics are ones in which Kai is nothing but a plot device.
Whether it’s set in a school where Sehun and Kai are classmates, or in a club where Kai and Luhan are the exotic dancers, Kai’s always the one that gets pushed to the sidelines when Sehun and Luhan’s characters meet, and he’s always the one who’s nursing a broken heart and hiding it so that his friends don’t feel guilty. Kai knows what ooc means now and he’s sorely tempted to make a post addressed to the entire fandom telling them that nice guy Kai is as ooc as it gets.
For one thing, if he really had a ‘hopeless crush’ on Sehun, he would barge right into the magnae’s shared room with Suho and kiss him until Sehun was begging for more. And if he really wanted Luhan while Sehun wanted Luhan too, Kai would win, hands down.
He ragequits out of a fic in which he’s - once again, surprise surprise - shoved aside while Selu take centre stage. and storms into the living room where the K and M members are talking. Sehun is sitting on the floor with his head leaning back on Zitao’s knees, eyes crinkling up as he laughs at something that was said before Kai entered. Kai follows his line of sight and, just like a moment out of one of the various fanfics he’s read, he comes face-to-face with a smiling Luhan, source of all of Sehun’s happiness.
“Jongin!” the older looks up and beckons him over and for a second the name sounds a little alien to his ears because he’s been called Kai by fic-Luhan so many times. He walks over and shoves Tao out of his seat, claiming the spot behind Sehun’s head. Long fingers begin to run through his blonde hair and the soft purring sound Sehun makes excites him a lot more than it normally would. Luhan is grinning at them and in a normal situation, Kai would grin back and move a little closer, but now it puts him at edge and makes him double his efforts in stealing Sehun’s attention.
“We should head over to the dance studio later and practice,” he says, moving his head close to Sehun’s ear so that the words stay between them. Sehun closes his eyes and lets out a sigh and Kai thinks that now is about the time that fic-world Kai would lean in and press a kiss to his lips, claiming the magnae as his one and only. Instead he flings an arm over Sehun’s chest and hopes it’s just as effective in invoking jealousy in Luhan, though a quick look at his hyung tells him that’s not really the case. He lets his arm drop down and twines his fingers through Sehun’s, waiting for the deep pang that’s supposed to occur within his heart and let him know that he’s found his soul mate.
“Magnae line are the best,” he says with a smile that feels too wide. He meets gazes with Luhan and gestures to himself and Sehun. “We look cute together, right, Luhan hyung?”
Luhan’s face looks way too happy for someone who should, at this point, be ‘crushed’, ‘devastated’ and whole other array of words that do not translate into the big gummy smile the elder is giving to them. “Of course,” he squeals, and Kai notes that his voice is not ‘one of a broken man’ at all. Maybe the reason they were called fanfiction was because they really were just fiction. Kai can’t help but feel a little disappointed. He still ships himself with Sehun or Luhan over Sehun/Luhan any day though. “Sekai forever,” Luhan continues, oblivious to Kai’s inner turmoil. “You guys are the cutest!”
Sekai. It takes a long time after the word has been said for Kai to realise that there's a whole, new, unexplored world waiting for him.
--
The Sekai and Lukai tags are perfect and even more perfect respectively. Where Kai is often the one to initiate the relationship with Sehun, in Lukai fics Luhan takes the lead, and Kai finds that he prefers fics in which he’s the depicted as a clueless little kid as opposed to being the manipulative elder taking advantage of his younger bandmate. He learns that Selu are known internationally as Hunhan and whenever there is a pairing: hunhan tag, he’s destined to end up alone.
He reads one labelled Sekai, broken!Hunhan in which Sehun leaves Luhan to be with him and from then on, those are the only types he reads. Broken!hunhan, onesided!hunhan, unrequited!hunhan; if there’s anything in the story to indicate that Sehun and Luhan won’t end up together, Kai will happily read it. He ends up together with either Sehun or Luhan more times than he can count but the pairings have long lost their appeal. When the real life Sehun and Luhan do nothing to excite him, there’s not much their fic versions can do.
He finds that he misses the fics he read in the beginning, ones where the main characters were often him and Kyungsoo and he used to squeal whenever the word kiss came up because it was one of the few English words he knew. The Kaisoo tag on yourmanwufan has dozens of Korean entries and he reads through them one after another, smiling over the little details that the authors put in like how Kai’s tanned skin-tone perfectly complements Kyungsoo’s pale one (he doesn’t really know why every single writer has to point that little fact out but he learns to let go as long as it makes him sound sexy), and how their lips are perfectly suited to one another. He’s always thought that Kyungsoo has the nicest pair of his lips he’s ever seen on a guy but the writers like complimenting his ones too, saying that they’re perfectly-shaped and thick and taste like the sweetest candy Kyungsoo’s ever had the pleasure of tasting.
He comes to find that there are certain trends to Kaisoo fics. One of these is making Kyungsoo out to be younger than he is. It doesn’t matter that Kyungsoo is his hyung by a whole year; Kai will be the one who protects Kyungsoo and fights bullies off for him and takes incoming bullets for him and shelters Kyungsoo from all the dangers of the world because he’s like a fragile doll that Kai feels responsible for. It’s kind of funny, he thinks as he reads a scene in which he’s nursing Kyungsoo back to health from a fever, because in reality, that’s as far from the truth as can be.
Kaisoo fic writers like to portray him as an overconfident, cocky guy who’s not above using deceit and manipulation to get what (or who) he wants. Kai is the Kai they’ve seen in the teasers, the charismatic young man who dances with a blind passion and holds a mysterious aura about him. Kai is always out of touch with his feelings; more often than not he’s out of touch with sanity too. There’s no trace of Jongin, the boy underneath that persona who’s shy and awkward and has never even had his first kiss. He smokes in almost every fic he reads and begins wondering why he ever quit in the first place when the fic-version of him freely smokes up to fifty a day.
G turns to PG-13 turns to R and he finally gets a taste of NC-17 when he reads a fic about time-travel, car races and romance. He knows he should probably be mortified at the fact that at some point in the story he’s sucking Kyungsoo off against an automobile but all he feels is a sense of lingering emptiness that intensifies as the story goes on and leaves him completely devastated when at the end a crash separates him from the best thing in his miserable life (he doesn’t miss the little selukai back-story that the author’s put in and he curses the person who came up with the idea of shipping them as a trio). He notices for the first time that there are tags for story genres and promises himself to avoid those tagged character death because he doesn’t think he can handle reading about himself dying again.
--
It turns out there are words that indicate character death without actually using the term death but it’s only when he’s bawling his eyes out as a fic-version of him stands looking over Kyungsoo’s lifeless body that he realises this. He slams the lid of his MacBook down and runs out into the kitchen where he knows Kyungsoo is preparing tonight’s dinner. Kyungsoo acknowledges him with a smile but it’s not enough and Kai almost knocks the pan off the stove as he envelops Kyungsoo in a suffocating hug, burying his nose deep into Kyungsoo’s cherry-scented hair. Even when Kyungsoo begins to push at his chest, he doesn’t let go. Even when the pan begins to boil over, he doesn’t let go. Even when their oven begins to smoke up, he doesn’t let go and Chanyeol has to literally pry Kyungsoo out of Kai’s grip as the fire alarm goes off above them. Kyungsoo’s red in the face and stuttering as he tells them all that dinner will be severely delayed. He tries to give Kai a glare but Kai’s doing that smile he does, the one where the left side of his face is pulled higher than the right, and it causes Kyungsoo’s eyes to widen instead.
“I love you so much, Do Kyungsoo,” Kai says as he leans forward to press a kiss to Kyungsoo’s cheek. “I think your eyes are beautiful and not creepy at all.” The fire alarm goes off again as Kai walks out and Kyungsoo thinks the heat from his face is maybe what set it off.
--
One self-character death and a clueless, unable-to-remember Kyungsoo later, Kai has had it with fanfiction. He deletes all of his bookmarks, clears his browser history, removes yourmanwufan from his favourites, and puts Kris' number on his phone's block-list to stop his hourly fic recs. But even that isn't enough to offset the feeling of utter despair going through his veins. Kyungsoo didn't remember. Kyungsoo couldn't remember. Suddenly, genius strikes and Kai finds himself running down the street at 8pm to buy a cake with more calories than their yearly allowances.
When he returns, Kyungsoo is sitting by himself at the kitchen table, and Kai thinks that it has to be fate that's brought them together, alone, like this.
"Hyung," he calls out lovingly. Kyungsoo looks up from his DS, nods, then goes back to whatever game he's playing. Kai sets the cake box down and goes to find a knife, maybe some candles. Kyungsoo gets up from his seat without him knowing, so when Kai turns back around, the knife he's holding comes inches away from Kyungsoo's face.
"Jesus, Jongin, are you trying to kill me?" he screams. Kai sets the knife down and can't help the retort that's on the tip of his tongue from slipping out.
"That's rich coming from someone who killed so many people, killed Chanyeol, and then put the blame all on me!" he shouts back.
"What?" Kyungsoo squeals. Kai just shakes his head and gestures over to the box.
"It's our birthday, hyung," he says, opening it. Thick, brown chocolate spells out his name and Kyungsoo's, a small heart on the i in Kai. Underneath it says, Happy Birthday, To Us. Kai thinks it's the most touching thing in the world. Kyungsoo seems extremely underwhelmed.
"It's for us, hyung, me and you," Kai clarifies. Kyungsoo looks up with his famous wide-eyed expression.
"It's the middle of December, Jongin," he says. Kai has to bite his tongue from spitting out a harsh reply.
"Pretend it's today," he says instead, the smile on his face becoming more and more difficult to maintain.
"But why?"
"Because it's fucking adorable!" someone cuts in before Kai has the chance to show off his colourful vocabulary. Kris is standing in the doorway, tears glistening in his eyes as he walks over and throws an arm over them both. "You guys are so precious together," he sobs, actually saying the word sobs out loud.
"You guys are weird," Kyungsoo says with an eye-roll, "but let's cut this cake so we can eat it." Kai claps in victory and moves over to stand behind him, threading his arms through the loops of Kyungsoo's and positioning the knife so that they both have a hold of it.
"I'll see you tomorrow, hyung, don't forget," he whispers.
“Creep,” Kyungsoo whispers back.
-stories used/mentioned: anterograde tomorrow (for title and ending), arbitrage, jinxed (holy shit i literally gave up on life after reading this fic), killer. (tbc)
-no permission acquired, my apologies to all the writers for not asking before referencing their work.
-sorry for poor quality writing MY EXCUSE IS THAT THIS IS OVER SIX MONTHS OLD.
--
Kaisoo, he finds out ten clicked links and a Google image search later, is the name given to the pairing consisting of him and Kyungsoo. Local fans tend to go for Kaido (he remembers seeing a fansign with the word on it once, accompanied by two black and white smiley faces that he had assumed were before and after pics of Michael Jackson but now realises were maybe an inaccurate description of him and Kyungsoo), while international ones go for Kaisoo. He tests the two out on his tongue and decides he likes Kaisoo better. He knows that Kai is a way cooler name than Jongin but Kyungsoo is much nicer than D.O. It also gives the pairing a more personal touch. The search goes straight into his bookmarks.
He discovers that there is a Kaisoo ‘tag’ on a website called tumblr and it’s filled with pictures and photoshopped manips of him and of Kyungsoo, some really cute and others downright disturbing. He gets his first taste of fanart later that night when he comes across a tumblr called kaisooart and he spends the rest of his time online searching for lightening creams because damn is he really that dark? (It also helps to distract him from the severely inappropriate pictures, still open on another tab, that are making him a little too hot and bothered for his liking).
--
He comes across Baekyeol by accident. He’s minding his own business in the Kaisoo tag, browsing through the latest fanarts and edits when he scrolls down and his eyes land on a very large smiling face that isn’t Kyungsoo’s and most definitely isn’t his own. Chanyeol? A few seconds later the picture dissolves and turns into a smiling Baekhyun instead, and Kai releases rather bitterly that ‘Kaisoo’ isn’t the only exo couple that the fans fantasize about.
The Baekyeol tag is full of sunshines and rainbows, all smiley Chanyeol and cute Baekhyun and posts that analyse their friendship right down to the last second of Baekyeol screen time. He comes across the same Ivy Club Baekyeol Cut video so many times that he literally knows the exact second at which Baekhyun will stop singing and turn to Chanyeol with an embarrassed laugh after he forgets the words. The comments are all about how cute and perfect and real Baekyeol are and how they’re the ‘best otp ever!!1’ One of them has a link to a fanfic which they claim is written about a similar situation and Kai’s not entirely sure what possesses him to click it but he does so anyway.
Five minutes later he comes to regret his decision because not only has he just been subjected to 685 Korean words of pure, vomit-inducing Baekyeol cuteness, he’s also started down a dark, fic-filled path that there’s no coming back from.
--
G-rated means clean, innocent and in PG-13 and up fics, the main characters kiss. There’s a rating marked NC-17 but whenever he tries finding the posts tagged with it, nothing comes up. He struggles through word after English word, dictionaries and Google translate and the occasional text to Kris helping him through at a painfully slow pace. When he asks Kris for the definition of ‘twink’, the elder calls him and demands to know what he’s doing.
“I’m reading fanfics hyung,” he says, as if it’s the most natural thing in the world. Kris is silent for a long time and just when Kai is about to hang up, the dialling tone sounds, meaning Kris has done it for him. As he continues to read about just how ‘twinky’ Luhan is, his phone buzzes again and he checks the notification to find that Kris has texted him a website.
yourmanwufan.livejournal.com, you can find many translated-to-Korean fics on here
He clicks the link and is immediately blinded by a shiny, silver background with various pictures of Kris lining the sides. The text is almost unreadable but Kai’s learnt a thing or two and after enabling reader mode, he scrolls through the inoffensive black-and-white entries. There’s a post called ‘masterlist’ and after clicking it, he realises that the person who owns the page has an obvious ‘Baekris’ bias. But right underneath there is a paragraph titled ‘kai-fics’ and Kai’s eyes light up at the numerous pairing tags associated with his name. He thought that all the fans shipped him (Wikipedia tells him that shipping is the phrase used for pairing two people up together, stemming from the word relationship) with Kyungsoo, but there are stories about him with Chanyeol, with Yixing, with Sehun, with Luhan, and even ‘ot3’ fics that pair him, Luhan and Sehun all together.
Kai doesn’t know many English words, but threesome is one that he understands pretty well.
--
Selukai soon becomes the bane of his existence. When Kai’s not cast as a cheating bastard, he’s the pathetic friend that Sehun and Luhan hide their relationship from in order not to hurt him. When that fails, he’s the awkward third wheel, happily playing off by himself while Sehun and Luhan make-out in the house that all three of them conveniently share. The fics in which the three have a healthy, loving three-way relationship are few and far between; the crux of Selukai fics are ones in which Kai is nothing but a plot device.
Whether it’s set in a school where Sehun and Kai are classmates, or in a club where Kai and Luhan are the exotic dancers, Kai’s always the one that gets pushed to the sidelines when Sehun and Luhan’s characters meet, and he’s always the one who’s nursing a broken heart and hiding it so that his friends don’t feel guilty. Kai knows what ooc means now and he’s sorely tempted to make a post addressed to the entire fandom telling them that nice guy Kai is as ooc as it gets.
For one thing, if he really had a ‘hopeless crush’ on Sehun, he would barge right into the magnae’s shared room with Suho and kiss him until Sehun was begging for more. And if he really wanted Luhan while Sehun wanted Luhan too, Kai would win, hands down.
He ragequits out of a fic in which he’s - once again, surprise surprise - shoved aside while Selu take centre stage. and storms into the living room where the K and M members are talking. Sehun is sitting on the floor with his head leaning back on Zitao’s knees, eyes crinkling up as he laughs at something that was said before Kai entered. Kai follows his line of sight and, just like a moment out of one of the various fanfics he’s read, he comes face-to-face with a smiling Luhan, source of all of Sehun’s happiness.
“Jongin!” the older looks up and beckons him over and for a second the name sounds a little alien to his ears because he’s been called Kai by fic-Luhan so many times. He walks over and shoves Tao out of his seat, claiming the spot behind Sehun’s head. Long fingers begin to run through his blonde hair and the soft purring sound Sehun makes excites him a lot more than it normally would. Luhan is grinning at them and in a normal situation, Kai would grin back and move a little closer, but now it puts him at edge and makes him double his efforts in stealing Sehun’s attention.
“We should head over to the dance studio later and practice,” he says, moving his head close to Sehun’s ear so that the words stay between them. Sehun closes his eyes and lets out a sigh and Kai thinks that now is about the time that fic-world Kai would lean in and press a kiss to his lips, claiming the magnae as his one and only. Instead he flings an arm over Sehun’s chest and hopes it’s just as effective in invoking jealousy in Luhan, though a quick look at his hyung tells him that’s not really the case. He lets his arm drop down and twines his fingers through Sehun’s, waiting for the deep pang that’s supposed to occur within his heart and let him know that he’s found his soul mate.
“Magnae line are the best,” he says with a smile that feels too wide. He meets gazes with Luhan and gestures to himself and Sehun. “We look cute together, right, Luhan hyung?”
Luhan’s face looks way too happy for someone who should, at this point, be ‘crushed’, ‘devastated’ and whole other array of words that do not translate into the big gummy smile the elder is giving to them. “Of course,” he squeals, and Kai notes that his voice is not ‘one of a broken man’ at all. Maybe the reason they were called fanfiction was because they really were just fiction. Kai can’t help but feel a little disappointed. He still ships himself with Sehun or Luhan over Sehun/Luhan any day though. “Sekai forever,” Luhan continues, oblivious to Kai’s inner turmoil. “You guys are the cutest!”
Sekai. It takes a long time after the word has been said for Kai to realise that there's a whole, new, unexplored world waiting for him.
--
The Sekai and Lukai tags are perfect and even more perfect respectively. Where Kai is often the one to initiate the relationship with Sehun, in Lukai fics Luhan takes the lead, and Kai finds that he prefers fics in which he’s the depicted as a clueless little kid as opposed to being the manipulative elder taking advantage of his younger bandmate. He learns that Selu are known internationally as Hunhan and whenever there is a pairing: hunhan tag, he’s destined to end up alone.
He reads one labelled Sekai, broken!Hunhan in which Sehun leaves Luhan to be with him and from then on, those are the only types he reads. Broken!hunhan, onesided!hunhan, unrequited!hunhan; if there’s anything in the story to indicate that Sehun and Luhan won’t end up together, Kai will happily read it. He ends up together with either Sehun or Luhan more times than he can count but the pairings have long lost their appeal. When the real life Sehun and Luhan do nothing to excite him, there’s not much their fic versions can do.
He finds that he misses the fics he read in the beginning, ones where the main characters were often him and Kyungsoo and he used to squeal whenever the word kiss came up because it was one of the few English words he knew. The Kaisoo tag on yourmanwufan has dozens of Korean entries and he reads through them one after another, smiling over the little details that the authors put in like how Kai’s tanned skin-tone perfectly complements Kyungsoo’s pale one (he doesn’t really know why every single writer has to point that little fact out but he learns to let go as long as it makes him sound sexy), and how their lips are perfectly suited to one another. He’s always thought that Kyungsoo has the nicest pair of his lips he’s ever seen on a guy but the writers like complimenting his ones too, saying that they’re perfectly-shaped and thick and taste like the sweetest candy Kyungsoo’s ever had the pleasure of tasting.
He comes to find that there are certain trends to Kaisoo fics. One of these is making Kyungsoo out to be younger than he is. It doesn’t matter that Kyungsoo is his hyung by a whole year; Kai will be the one who protects Kyungsoo and fights bullies off for him and takes incoming bullets for him and shelters Kyungsoo from all the dangers of the world because he’s like a fragile doll that Kai feels responsible for. It’s kind of funny, he thinks as he reads a scene in which he’s nursing Kyungsoo back to health from a fever, because in reality, that’s as far from the truth as can be.
Kaisoo fic writers like to portray him as an overconfident, cocky guy who’s not above using deceit and manipulation to get what (or who) he wants. Kai is the Kai they’ve seen in the teasers, the charismatic young man who dances with a blind passion and holds a mysterious aura about him. Kai is always out of touch with his feelings; more often than not he’s out of touch with sanity too. There’s no trace of Jongin, the boy underneath that persona who’s shy and awkward and has never even had his first kiss. He smokes in almost every fic he reads and begins wondering why he ever quit in the first place when the fic-version of him freely smokes up to fifty a day.
G turns to PG-13 turns to R and he finally gets a taste of NC-17 when he reads a fic about time-travel, car races and romance. He knows he should probably be mortified at the fact that at some point in the story he’s sucking Kyungsoo off against an automobile but all he feels is a sense of lingering emptiness that intensifies as the story goes on and leaves him completely devastated when at the end a crash separates him from the best thing in his miserable life (he doesn’t miss the little selukai back-story that the author’s put in and he curses the person who came up with the idea of shipping them as a trio). He notices for the first time that there are tags for story genres and promises himself to avoid those tagged character death because he doesn’t think he can handle reading about himself dying again.
--
It turns out there are words that indicate character death without actually using the term death but it’s only when he’s bawling his eyes out as a fic-version of him stands looking over Kyungsoo’s lifeless body that he realises this. He slams the lid of his MacBook down and runs out into the kitchen where he knows Kyungsoo is preparing tonight’s dinner. Kyungsoo acknowledges him with a smile but it’s not enough and Kai almost knocks the pan off the stove as he envelops Kyungsoo in a suffocating hug, burying his nose deep into Kyungsoo’s cherry-scented hair. Even when Kyungsoo begins to push at his chest, he doesn’t let go. Even when the pan begins to boil over, he doesn’t let go. Even when their oven begins to smoke up, he doesn’t let go and Chanyeol has to literally pry Kyungsoo out of Kai’s grip as the fire alarm goes off above them. Kyungsoo’s red in the face and stuttering as he tells them all that dinner will be severely delayed. He tries to give Kai a glare but Kai’s doing that smile he does, the one where the left side of his face is pulled higher than the right, and it causes Kyungsoo’s eyes to widen instead.
“I love you so much, Do Kyungsoo,” Kai says as he leans forward to press a kiss to Kyungsoo’s cheek. “I think your eyes are beautiful and not creepy at all.” The fire alarm goes off again as Kai walks out and Kyungsoo thinks the heat from his face is maybe what set it off.
--
One self-character death and a clueless, unable-to-remember Kyungsoo later, Kai has had it with fanfiction. He deletes all of his bookmarks, clears his browser history, removes yourmanwufan from his favourites, and puts Kris' number on his phone's block-list to stop his hourly fic recs. But even that isn't enough to offset the feeling of utter despair going through his veins. Kyungsoo didn't remember. Kyungsoo couldn't remember. Suddenly, genius strikes and Kai finds himself running down the street at 8pm to buy a cake with more calories than their yearly allowances.
When he returns, Kyungsoo is sitting by himself at the kitchen table, and Kai thinks that it has to be fate that's brought them together, alone, like this.
"Hyung," he calls out lovingly. Kyungsoo looks up from his DS, nods, then goes back to whatever game he's playing. Kai sets the cake box down and goes to find a knife, maybe some candles. Kyungsoo gets up from his seat without him knowing, so when Kai turns back around, the knife he's holding comes inches away from Kyungsoo's face.
"Jesus, Jongin, are you trying to kill me?" he screams. Kai sets the knife down and can't help the retort that's on the tip of his tongue from slipping out.
"That's rich coming from someone who killed so many people, killed Chanyeol, and then put the blame all on me!" he shouts back.
"What?" Kyungsoo squeals. Kai just shakes his head and gestures over to the box.
"It's our birthday, hyung," he says, opening it. Thick, brown chocolate spells out his name and Kyungsoo's, a small heart on the i in Kai. Underneath it says, Happy Birthday, To Us. Kai thinks it's the most touching thing in the world. Kyungsoo seems extremely underwhelmed.
"It's for us, hyung, me and you," Kai clarifies. Kyungsoo looks up with his famous wide-eyed expression.
"It's the middle of December, Jongin," he says. Kai has to bite his tongue from spitting out a harsh reply.
"Pretend it's today," he says instead, the smile on his face becoming more and more difficult to maintain.
"But why?"
"Because it's fucking adorable!" someone cuts in before Kai has the chance to show off his colourful vocabulary. Kris is standing in the doorway, tears glistening in his eyes as he walks over and throws an arm over them both. "You guys are so precious together," he sobs, actually saying the word sobs out loud.
"You guys are weird," Kyungsoo says with an eye-roll, "but let's cut this cake so we can eat it." Kai claps in victory and moves over to stand behind him, threading his arms through the loops of Kyungsoo's and positioning the knife so that they both have a hold of it.
"I'll see you tomorrow, hyung, don't forget," he whispers.
“Creep,” Kyungsoo whispers back.
-stories used/mentioned: anterograde tomorrow (for title and ending), arbitrage, jinxed (holy shit i literally gave up on life after reading this fic), killer. (tbc)
-no permission acquired, my apologies to all the writers for not asking before referencing their work.
-sorry for poor quality writing MY EXCUSE IS THAT THIS IS OVER SIX MONTHS OLD.