Lost and Found
lost and found
dbsk/snsd - changmin/yoona - pg
2017w~
there is a fine line between noticeable and insignificant, and that might have been where she would have categorized them.
a/n: okay i started writing this inspired by you-know-who if you follow me on twitter but then it just spiraled out of control and what the hell did i just write
a/n: you guys probably stopped reading after the first line but just in case dedicated to my forever flawless bbs douc and aoza please forgive me for this mess and i love you both ♥
"I don't know what we're doing."
Her hands are dry. She rubs them together, hoping to do what, exactly, she doesn't know, but she keeps rubbing; they're heating up now and he's staring at her with a longing gaze. She feels it burning through her clothes, into her skin, but she doesn't look up. She doesn't ever look up.
"Did we ever?"
She cracks a smile at that, loose and meaningless. "I guess not."
She leaves, after the exchange. There was never knowing what they were. She decides it's probably useless to find out.
Yuri wants to know what they are, Jessica wants to know what they will be, and Sooyoung doesn't even know what they were. "Nothing," is her answer to them all. Changmin was never anything to her and Yoona thinks she's okay with that. There is a fine line between noticeable and insignificant, and that might have been where she would have categorized them.
But he loves her, he says. Yoona pretends not to hear the words that come along with that.
It starts during trainee days.
That's where it all starts, if they're honest to themselves, trainee days that they all thought would become meaningless after ages of fame and fortune.
(during trainee days jessica is jung sooyeon and the bitch of all female trainees, and tiffany is hwang miyoung, side kick in training. sunny isn't aegyo-filled and taeyeon loses her voice after two rehearsals, yuri is the little boy and sooyoung is better than everyone else training away in japan. seohyun isn't all that innocent and hyoyeon has no friends in the practice room. yoona watches them all and these are the girls they grow out of.)
Changmin starts in trainee days, too, a year before he debuts.
He's flawless, all sorts of flawless, and the way it happens is like Prince Charming and Cinderella, peanut butter and jelly, the stupid cliche lines that were so beautiful once upon a time.
Then debut days come and maybe the saying was true, that trainee days don't matter, because Changmin forgets about them after that. Yoona pretends not to notice the ignored texts and left voicemails and the lack of eye contact through SM Entertainment buildings. There's a transition, from the trainees to the idols. The postures are straighter and the skin clear of imperfections, hair more glossy and colored depending on the day of the week.
Their eyes lose the liveliness, too, but Yoona doesn't remember that being on the contract.
Changmin's eyes are a dead black and they pierce through her lifelessly. He stares right past her and she feels limp, and that must be the reason why.
Skip a few years and Girl's Generation is the next big thing.
Yoona's the lucky one, out of all of them. She's got music video gigs and acting debuts and commercial filming left and right, the face of the group without an actual talent.
She's overworked, if anything. The girls arrive home after a day of schedule, four in the morning to one later that night, and they file room by room, passing out as they hit the bed. The manager reminds them "interview seven in the morning, variety show at three, photo shoot at seven and meeting at nine", meaningless numbers because clocks count by the 24 instead of by the 12 now, and Taeyeon mumbles a response because she's lost her voice again.
This time it was after four concert performances in a row. It's a new record..
Yoona goes to the bathroom to wash up the next morning and her skin is pale, purple and green veins visible on the dark circles under colorless eyes.
She throws up, the second time heaving dry nothingness, and doesn't get to skip schedules.
"We're tired sometimes, but we receive energy from all the fans. Thank you, Cassiopeia!"
Yunho is still bright as he says those words, always the admired leader. Changmin is the silent one of the group and Yoona goes through countless interviews and stages as DBSK is the biggest thing on the market, sitting somewhere up there with Super Junior and Big Bang and the solos, SE7EN and Rain and whatever the rest of their names are.
She tries to remember what their relation was and when she thinks about it, his hands were always cold in hers. Maybe that was their first sign.
The first time they talk, her heart is breaking all over again and this time she's the one on top.
So Nyuh Shi Dae is the big thing, the nine flawless girls, and DBSK has gone and broken into three and two and the odd number is a bit depressing, how they fall apart. Odd numbers are always the worst. Thirteen dwindling to ten, nine, ugly numbers, and five into threes and twos and how the stage is too big for such small people.
She's practicing cutesy movements in the mirror in the practice room. Oh! is only one of their many songs written by the lyricists from hell.
"You're not doing it right."
Yoona turns to look at the side and he's leaning against the mirror, his most likely sweaty clothes staining the glass reflection. "You don't look cute, you look try-hard."
"And I'm sure you'd know what cute is, right? Those countless girls flocking to your side?"
"Yoona-"
She loses the pucker in her lips and the way that he looks at her is when she hears the crack, the tearing of two, the way it hurts so much, his heartbroken expression. "I don't want to hear your apologies." The tone of her voice is bitter, and so is the rest of her. When she brushes past him, the tingle is so vibrant it stings. "I'm the new artist on top, Shim Changmin. I don't need you now."
It's so funny how the simple things can become so complicated. How a relationship can spiral so much out of control and look so desirable anyways.
Yoona can't bring herself to laugh at the irony of it all.
Their first kiss is how Yoona likes to remember him.
"Where are we actually gonna get with this, do you know?"
"What do you mean?"
Changmin shrugs. It's like he's unsure of his own question, and he was always like that - tedious and careful. "I don't know. It just feels like we're selling off our bodies for entertainment. We're not really doing anything of use, if you think about it."
"It's what people live off, Changmin. They live off of the fame they don't have."
"Is that what we're doing?"
Yoona turns to look at him and his side profile in the shadows is beautiful, right there. His whole being is beautiful and the way he thinks, the way he breathes, the way his eyelashes barely brush the skin underside his eyes as he blinks, the way his lips turn up and his nose curves and his skin glistens in the sweat, all of it is beautiful. "Yeah," and the word leaves her lips loosely.
She stops breathing when he looks at her. "Let's make the most of it, then," he whispers. Her eyes close involuntarily at the sound and his lips press against hers like they were made for each other.
(yoona relives the kiss every night, each word leading to the action, each movement and single breath. she hates him and the love is unearthly, overwhelming. the words are the same now.)
She skips a variety show attendance with the rest of the girls for an advertisement photo shoot, in attendance another one of those top actors that she's been partnered up with countless numbers of times.
"Pretty faces compliment pretty faces, don't you think?" the director says.
That's all she ever had. "Of course," is her only response.
Weeks later, Yoona catches him crying in the practice room.
She doesn't approach him, doesn't wipe his tears or comfort an unfamiliar emotion.
She just stares at his fetal crouched position on the opposite end of the room, watching the burnt tears rolling down his cheeks and listening to the the music that keeps playing, obnoxious pop songs that they were all made to rehearse to.
Yoona stands at the door for three minutes, the clock ticking, and when he stops moving, his breathing light again, Yoona leaves and pretends like she saw nothing.
"You think two broken people can make one fixed person?"
The line is silent on the other side.
Ten seconds pass, and then twenty, and when it hits thirty Yoona regrets making the call.
Her finger hovers over the red button (danger zone, when one of them is mad and listening will only make it worse - danger zone, when she can't stand it anymore - danger zone, always danger zone) and then finally he sighs.
"They can try."
Changmin passes by her in the entertainment building, looking tired and lost, Yunho following behind him with their manager. The latter are talking amongst themselves when he meets eyes with her, and Yoona loses the jolt in her step.
They stare at each other, and she lets herself go. Yoona smiles (it's broken but it is a smile, an upturn of publicized white teeth and pink lips). Changmin blinks and though there is no change of expression, his hand brushes her, lingering too long when they finally pass.
The memories that flood back are achingly familiar.
She's on the other end of the call next time.
"You think two fixed people apart are really fixed?"
Her response is much quicker.
"We can find out."
Yoona runs into him at the recording studio, practicing alone a song that she hasn't heard and can't understand. Maybe a new Japanese single, since that's all of what DBSK is now. He doesn't notice her enter, and she just sits on the rolling chair at the machine end, listening to his voice and admiring the change of facial expressions from note to note.
When his voice falters at a high note, she forces herself off of the seat and enters the recording area.
Changmin's eyes widen and he stops singing, the music still audible from the headphones hanging around his neck. "What are you... What are you doing here?"
"That's not how you do it," she says. "You sound like a try-hard."
His face turns from blank, to confused, and then to amused. Yoona lets herself smile. "I'm sure you would know, Miss. Main Vocalist." She drops her arms folded across her chest and takes a step towards him. "Wouldn't you?"
"Just because I'm not the best singer doesn't mean I don't know bad singing when I hear it."
Changmin's face falls and he starts again, "Wait, Yoona, that isn't what I meant-" but now she's too close for him to finish. Her hands find themselves naturally on his chest and she looks up at his black eyes, colorless and so beautiful anyways. She can feel his heart beating under her touch and Yoona knows this isn't right.
He kisses her first, and his hands run through her hair, permanently placed at the back of her head. Changmin pushes her to the wall and they can't get enough of each other, hands searching and not finding and lips pressed together furiously. The music is still playing and their loud breathing between each other is echoing across the recording studio. The noise is deafening and Yoona is blind, deaf to everything but him.
When they pull apart, he's flushed. Yoona feels light-headed.
Changmin's forehead is still pressed against hers and she can still taste his lips that are barely skimming hers. "Should we be doing this?"
Yoona can hear the murmurs of the other trainees outside, waiting to rehearse but forced to wait for prized Shim Changmin and Im Yoona, two artists that have long passed that innocent stage. Yoona wonders how many of them are going to travel the same path she just did. "No." Then she leans into him, finding his lips again, wrapping her arms around him and promising herself to never let go.
But we can try anyways.
dbsk/snsd - changmin/yoona - pg
2017w~
there is a fine line between noticeable and insignificant, and that might have been where she would have categorized them.
a/n: okay i started writing this inspired by you-know-who if you follow me on twitter but then it just spiraled out of control and what the hell did i just write
a/n: you guys probably stopped reading after the first line but just in case dedicated to my forever flawless bbs douc and aoza please forgive me for this mess and i love you both ♥
"I don't know what we're doing."
Her hands are dry. She rubs them together, hoping to do what, exactly, she doesn't know, but she keeps rubbing; they're heating up now and he's staring at her with a longing gaze. She feels it burning through her clothes, into her skin, but she doesn't look up. She doesn't ever look up.
"Did we ever?"
She cracks a smile at that, loose and meaningless. "I guess not."
She leaves, after the exchange. There was never knowing what they were. She decides it's probably useless to find out.
Yuri wants to know what they are, Jessica wants to know what they will be, and Sooyoung doesn't even know what they were. "Nothing," is her answer to them all. Changmin was never anything to her and Yoona thinks she's okay with that. There is a fine line between noticeable and insignificant, and that might have been where she would have categorized them.
But he loves her, he says. Yoona pretends not to hear the words that come along with that.
It starts during trainee days.
That's where it all starts, if they're honest to themselves, trainee days that they all thought would become meaningless after ages of fame and fortune.
(during trainee days jessica is jung sooyeon and the bitch of all female trainees, and tiffany is hwang miyoung, side kick in training. sunny isn't aegyo-filled and taeyeon loses her voice after two rehearsals, yuri is the little boy and sooyoung is better than everyone else training away in japan. seohyun isn't all that innocent and hyoyeon has no friends in the practice room. yoona watches them all and these are the girls they grow out of.)
Changmin starts in trainee days, too, a year before he debuts.
He's flawless, all sorts of flawless, and the way it happens is like Prince Charming and Cinderella, peanut butter and jelly, the stupid cliche lines that were so beautiful once upon a time.
Then debut days come and maybe the saying was true, that trainee days don't matter, because Changmin forgets about them after that. Yoona pretends not to notice the ignored texts and left voicemails and the lack of eye contact through SM Entertainment buildings. There's a transition, from the trainees to the idols. The postures are straighter and the skin clear of imperfections, hair more glossy and colored depending on the day of the week.
Their eyes lose the liveliness, too, but Yoona doesn't remember that being on the contract.
Changmin's eyes are a dead black and they pierce through her lifelessly. He stares right past her and she feels limp, and that must be the reason why.
Skip a few years and Girl's Generation is the next big thing.
Yoona's the lucky one, out of all of them. She's got music video gigs and acting debuts and commercial filming left and right, the face of the group without an actual talent.
She's overworked, if anything. The girls arrive home after a day of schedule, four in the morning to one later that night, and they file room by room, passing out as they hit the bed. The manager reminds them "interview seven in the morning, variety show at three, photo shoot at seven and meeting at nine", meaningless numbers because clocks count by the 24 instead of by the 12 now, and Taeyeon mumbles a response because she's lost her voice again.
This time it was after four concert performances in a row. It's a new record..
Yoona goes to the bathroom to wash up the next morning and her skin is pale, purple and green veins visible on the dark circles under colorless eyes.
She throws up, the second time heaving dry nothingness, and doesn't get to skip schedules.
"We're tired sometimes, but we receive energy from all the fans. Thank you, Cassiopeia!"
Yunho is still bright as he says those words, always the admired leader. Changmin is the silent one of the group and Yoona goes through countless interviews and stages as DBSK is the biggest thing on the market, sitting somewhere up there with Super Junior and Big Bang and the solos, SE7EN and Rain and whatever the rest of their names are.
She tries to remember what their relation was and when she thinks about it, his hands were always cold in hers. Maybe that was their first sign.
The first time they talk, her heart is breaking all over again and this time she's the one on top.
So Nyuh Shi Dae is the big thing, the nine flawless girls, and DBSK has gone and broken into three and two and the odd number is a bit depressing, how they fall apart. Odd numbers are always the worst. Thirteen dwindling to ten, nine, ugly numbers, and five into threes and twos and how the stage is too big for such small people.
She's practicing cutesy movements in the mirror in the practice room. Oh! is only one of their many songs written by the lyricists from hell.
"You're not doing it right."
Yoona turns to look at the side and he's leaning against the mirror, his most likely sweaty clothes staining the glass reflection. "You don't look cute, you look try-hard."
"And I'm sure you'd know what cute is, right? Those countless girls flocking to your side?"
"Yoona-"
She loses the pucker in her lips and the way that he looks at her is when she hears the crack, the tearing of two, the way it hurts so much, his heartbroken expression. "I don't want to hear your apologies." The tone of her voice is bitter, and so is the rest of her. When she brushes past him, the tingle is so vibrant it stings. "I'm the new artist on top, Shim Changmin. I don't need you now."
It's so funny how the simple things can become so complicated. How a relationship can spiral so much out of control and look so desirable anyways.
Yoona can't bring herself to laugh at the irony of it all.
Their first kiss is how Yoona likes to remember him.
"Where are we actually gonna get with this, do you know?"
"What do you mean?"
Changmin shrugs. It's like he's unsure of his own question, and he was always like that - tedious and careful. "I don't know. It just feels like we're selling off our bodies for entertainment. We're not really doing anything of use, if you think about it."
"It's what people live off, Changmin. They live off of the fame they don't have."
"Is that what we're doing?"
Yoona turns to look at him and his side profile in the shadows is beautiful, right there. His whole being is beautiful and the way he thinks, the way he breathes, the way his eyelashes barely brush the skin underside his eyes as he blinks, the way his lips turn up and his nose curves and his skin glistens in the sweat, all of it is beautiful. "Yeah," and the word leaves her lips loosely.
She stops breathing when he looks at her. "Let's make the most of it, then," he whispers. Her eyes close involuntarily at the sound and his lips press against hers like they were made for each other.
(yoona relives the kiss every night, each word leading to the action, each movement and single breath. she hates him and the love is unearthly, overwhelming. the words are the same now.)
She skips a variety show attendance with the rest of the girls for an advertisement photo shoot, in attendance another one of those top actors that she's been partnered up with countless numbers of times.
"Pretty faces compliment pretty faces, don't you think?" the director says.
That's all she ever had. "Of course," is her only response.
Weeks later, Yoona catches him crying in the practice room.
She doesn't approach him, doesn't wipe his tears or comfort an unfamiliar emotion.
She just stares at his fetal crouched position on the opposite end of the room, watching the burnt tears rolling down his cheeks and listening to the the music that keeps playing, obnoxious pop songs that they were all made to rehearse to.
Yoona stands at the door for three minutes, the clock ticking, and when he stops moving, his breathing light again, Yoona leaves and pretends like she saw nothing.
"You think two broken people can make one fixed person?"
The line is silent on the other side.
Ten seconds pass, and then twenty, and when it hits thirty Yoona regrets making the call.
Her finger hovers over the red button (danger zone, when one of them is mad and listening will only make it worse - danger zone, when she can't stand it anymore - danger zone, always danger zone) and then finally he sighs.
"They can try."
Changmin passes by her in the entertainment building, looking tired and lost, Yunho following behind him with their manager. The latter are talking amongst themselves when he meets eyes with her, and Yoona loses the jolt in her step.
They stare at each other, and she lets herself go. Yoona smiles (it's broken but it is a smile, an upturn of publicized white teeth and pink lips). Changmin blinks and though there is no change of expression, his hand brushes her, lingering too long when they finally pass.
The memories that flood back are achingly familiar.
She's on the other end of the call next time.
"You think two fixed people apart are really fixed?"
Her response is much quicker.
"We can find out."
Yoona runs into him at the recording studio, practicing alone a song that she hasn't heard and can't understand. Maybe a new Japanese single, since that's all of what DBSK is now. He doesn't notice her enter, and she just sits on the rolling chair at the machine end, listening to his voice and admiring the change of facial expressions from note to note.
When his voice falters at a high note, she forces herself off of the seat and enters the recording area.
Changmin's eyes widen and he stops singing, the music still audible from the headphones hanging around his neck. "What are you... What are you doing here?"
"That's not how you do it," she says. "You sound like a try-hard."
His face turns from blank, to confused, and then to amused. Yoona lets herself smile. "I'm sure you would know, Miss. Main Vocalist." She drops her arms folded across her chest and takes a step towards him. "Wouldn't you?"
"Just because I'm not the best singer doesn't mean I don't know bad singing when I hear it."
Changmin's face falls and he starts again, "Wait, Yoona, that isn't what I meant-" but now she's too close for him to finish. Her hands find themselves naturally on his chest and she looks up at his black eyes, colorless and so beautiful anyways. She can feel his heart beating under her touch and Yoona knows this isn't right.
He kisses her first, and his hands run through her hair, permanently placed at the back of her head. Changmin pushes her to the wall and they can't get enough of each other, hands searching and not finding and lips pressed together furiously. The music is still playing and their loud breathing between each other is echoing across the recording studio. The noise is deafening and Yoona is blind, deaf to everything but him.
When they pull apart, he's flushed. Yoona feels light-headed.
Changmin's forehead is still pressed against hers and she can still taste his lips that are barely skimming hers. "Should we be doing this?"
Yoona can hear the murmurs of the other trainees outside, waiting to rehearse but forced to wait for prized Shim Changmin and Im Yoona, two artists that have long passed that innocent stage. Yoona wonders how many of them are going to travel the same path she just did. "No." Then she leans into him, finding his lips again, wrapping her arms around him and promising herself to never let go.
But we can try anyways.