old hollywood frostbites
Title: Cryogenics
Pairing: Jonghyun/Minho
Note: Written for shawol_haven's twenty-first challenge, for both prompts. Even though I'm not really sure it counts as an AU. It does, in my book, but most my books are weird.
Cryogenics
They called it a surprise and they called it the reunion of the century, there even was confetti in the hall, and they mean well, you know?
I for one can’t bring myself to blame them.
Our mess is ours, and your little stunt just shows that you agree. For the record, I didn’t think I’d find you here, thought you’d be off somewhere else having your identity crisis, in the pantry or the parking lot, I thought that rooftops were my thing.
Ha, ha, yeah, you can stuff it, I’ve had twenty years worth of height jokes, they don’t even graze the surface anymore.
Let me look at you.
And have some mercy, don’t smile with your eyes.
You remind me of all my mistakes.
You look the way I thought you would, with that light blue shirt, sleeves rolled up at the elbow, long gray coat. I should have guessed you’d pick up smoking. I hate how it suits you.
Don’t pretend like you can’t tell I don’t smoke. You must have come- did you?
Yes you did. Of course you did. Fuck.
Don’t worry. No, I don’t mind. In fact, it makes me happy. A sickly kind of happy, like too many painkillers, too much chocolate, red wine. Things dangerous in high doses.
Did you like it- you know what, fuck it, I’ll have one. For old times’ sake. Remember how off limits those things were? Smokes, Sweets and Sex, the triple S, this used to be an inside joke, were we constantly high, the things we’d laugh at.
Fire me up.
Thanks.
So, did you like it?
The singing, obviously. I know the lighting was bad.
Yes is too short, give me something here. You know I love raving reviews. Tell me-
That’s more like it. Yeah, I know I sounded better back then. I’m old now.
We are old now.
Time’s been kind to us. And you are still such a criminal, such a criminal, fuck you, don’t be modest, I was betting on some gray at the temples by now. Like Jinki, he doesn’t dye it, so it shows.
Well, yeah. You were the only one I didn’t keep in touch with.
Why?
Because you’re insignificant.
Fuck you for making me smile, and fuck you for that little pause, it’s a thing that lovers do.
You still stare so hard, don’t you. One can mistake oneself for an item of importance. That’s where I went wrong. I was never vain, remember, not really. You had to slide your hands on my shoulders, gliding on cashmere, line.
I never really believed you, that’s why I tried so much, if you should know.
Don’t turn this into a joke, yes I tried, you won’t believe the things I did. Sexy tips for sexy lips, you won’t remember. Glossy pages. A stylist noona’s Cosmo and you read it out loud, laughing on a backstage carpet, do girls really go through all that trouble? But that night I rubbed my lips raw with a wet towel and dabbed them with oil and honey and the next morning you rubbed your mouth against mine like a blind thing trying to find its way around.
Yes, I do remember all those nights you waited alone under streetlamps. In my mind they’re old Hollywood, sepia, rain so heavy it looks fake and a lonely violin playing in the background. You look sad and gorgeous and defeated.
I’ve idealized you. You didn’t own a trench coat back then.
(do you own one now)
It’s the nature of killing things but never laying them to rest.
God it’s so cold up here. I’ve been stupid, there’s a party downstairs, a couple of wives sipping champagne and a new year a few minutes away. Do you think they’re looking for us.
(do you have a trench coat?)
Why do my fingers go numb at the thought of belt buckles and concrete. Why would I still want to be the phalanges between your phalanges, your hands were always cold.
There was so much crystal in that dining room, did you see, everything was white in there and I want to laugh because out here the cold is turning your ears red and your lips blue and I can see the colors, suddenly, all of them.
Don’t laugh. God, please, don’t laugh, I’ll never see straight again.
I never got over you, if that’s what you want to hear. Damn right it’s what I want to say. The sky is gray and I want to bleed out. I need colors, I had forgotten- don’t you get it, don’t you feel it too, isn’t the world in monochrome for you without me?
Am I pushing?
Eight years living in blacks and whites.
I don’t want to go back to their white dining room, I was colorblind until you walked in.
Yes, we can stay here. Yes, if you want. I haven’t seen light blue in ages.
But hey, if we’re gonna do this, turn up your collar against the wind, button up, I want to do it myself but I do not think I am allowed.
I am not putting my coat on because it will not help. I feel our cold again under my bones. I am not being poetic, don’t say it’s the wind, don’t say it’s the Winter. I am not stupid, I remember how everything worked. I remember everything. Oh god I knew I shouldn’t have come here.
(Kiss me, just kiss me, please please.)
I am so weak. I am so tired, I am dying, one day at a time, and I miss it, I miss dying for a purpose, for the smell of someone else’s money and those trembling electrical lanterns. I miss the anger and the laughing fits and your hands wrapped around tin kettles to warm them up, because we burnt cold, didn’t we baby, liquid ice.
The kind magicians use in children’s parties.
No-
-no, I’m not, I never did, I never said we were a sham. Don’t ask which one was chains and which one was water, we weren’t an escape act to show that we could do it, you were never spiteful so don’t do it now. Just look at this, look here, we were both drowning, both picking locks, and we got ourselves out, didn’t we?
Don’t cry.
The past has passed.
I waited too long to ask you back.
But they say you freeze things to keep them alive, and I buried you in the snow.
(There’s an eternal winter inside your coat.
Let me step inside.)
Pairing: Jonghyun/Minho
Note: Written for shawol_haven's twenty-first challenge, for both prompts. Even though I'm not really sure it counts as an AU. It does, in my book, but most my books are weird.
Cryogenics
They called it a surprise and they called it the reunion of the century, there even was confetti in the hall, and they mean well, you know?
I for one can’t bring myself to blame them.
Our mess is ours, and your little stunt just shows that you agree. For the record, I didn’t think I’d find you here, thought you’d be off somewhere else having your identity crisis, in the pantry or the parking lot, I thought that rooftops were my thing.
Ha, ha, yeah, you can stuff it, I’ve had twenty years worth of height jokes, they don’t even graze the surface anymore.
Let me look at you.
And have some mercy, don’t smile with your eyes.
You remind me of all my mistakes.
You look the way I thought you would, with that light blue shirt, sleeves rolled up at the elbow, long gray coat. I should have guessed you’d pick up smoking. I hate how it suits you.
Don’t pretend like you can’t tell I don’t smoke. You must have come- did you?
Yes you did. Of course you did. Fuck.
Don’t worry. No, I don’t mind. In fact, it makes me happy. A sickly kind of happy, like too many painkillers, too much chocolate, red wine. Things dangerous in high doses.
Did you like it- you know what, fuck it, I’ll have one. For old times’ sake. Remember how off limits those things were? Smokes, Sweets and Sex, the triple S, this used to be an inside joke, were we constantly high, the things we’d laugh at.
Fire me up.
Thanks.
So, did you like it?
The singing, obviously. I know the lighting was bad.
Yes is too short, give me something here. You know I love raving reviews. Tell me-
That’s more like it. Yeah, I know I sounded better back then. I’m old now.
We are old now.
Time’s been kind to us. And you are still such a criminal, such a criminal, fuck you, don’t be modest, I was betting on some gray at the temples by now. Like Jinki, he doesn’t dye it, so it shows.
Well, yeah. You were the only one I didn’t keep in touch with.
Why?
Because you’re insignificant.
Fuck you for making me smile, and fuck you for that little pause, it’s a thing that lovers do.
You still stare so hard, don’t you. One can mistake oneself for an item of importance. That’s where I went wrong. I was never vain, remember, not really. You had to slide your hands on my shoulders, gliding on cashmere, line.
I never really believed you, that’s why I tried so much, if you should know.
Don’t turn this into a joke, yes I tried, you won’t believe the things I did. Sexy tips for sexy lips, you won’t remember. Glossy pages. A stylist noona’s Cosmo and you read it out loud, laughing on a backstage carpet, do girls really go through all that trouble? But that night I rubbed my lips raw with a wet towel and dabbed them with oil and honey and the next morning you rubbed your mouth against mine like a blind thing trying to find its way around.
Yes, I do remember all those nights you waited alone under streetlamps. In my mind they’re old Hollywood, sepia, rain so heavy it looks fake and a lonely violin playing in the background. You look sad and gorgeous and defeated.
I’ve idealized you. You didn’t own a trench coat back then.
(do you own one now)
It’s the nature of killing things but never laying them to rest.
God it’s so cold up here. I’ve been stupid, there’s a party downstairs, a couple of wives sipping champagne and a new year a few minutes away. Do you think they’re looking for us.
(do you have a trench coat?)
Why do my fingers go numb at the thought of belt buckles and concrete. Why would I still want to be the phalanges between your phalanges, your hands were always cold.
There was so much crystal in that dining room, did you see, everything was white in there and I want to laugh because out here the cold is turning your ears red and your lips blue and I can see the colors, suddenly, all of them.
Don’t laugh. God, please, don’t laugh, I’ll never see straight again.
I never got over you, if that’s what you want to hear. Damn right it’s what I want to say. The sky is gray and I want to bleed out. I need colors, I had forgotten- don’t you get it, don’t you feel it too, isn’t the world in monochrome for you without me?
Am I pushing?
Eight years living in blacks and whites.
I don’t want to go back to their white dining room, I was colorblind until you walked in.
Yes, we can stay here. Yes, if you want. I haven’t seen light blue in ages.
But hey, if we’re gonna do this, turn up your collar against the wind, button up, I want to do it myself but I do not think I am allowed.
I am not putting my coat on because it will not help. I feel our cold again under my bones. I am not being poetic, don’t say it’s the wind, don’t say it’s the Winter. I am not stupid, I remember how everything worked. I remember everything. Oh god I knew I shouldn’t have come here.
(Kiss me, just kiss me, please please.)
I am so weak. I am so tired, I am dying, one day at a time, and I miss it, I miss dying for a purpose, for the smell of someone else’s money and those trembling electrical lanterns. I miss the anger and the laughing fits and your hands wrapped around tin kettles to warm them up, because we burnt cold, didn’t we baby, liquid ice.
The kind magicians use in children’s parties.
No-
-no, I’m not, I never did, I never said we were a sham. Don’t ask which one was chains and which one was water, we weren’t an escape act to show that we could do it, you were never spiteful so don’t do it now. Just look at this, look here, we were both drowning, both picking locks, and we got ourselves out, didn’t we?
Don’t cry.
The past has passed.
I waited too long to ask you back.
But they say you freeze things to keep them alive, and I buried you in the snow.
(There’s an eternal winter inside your coat.
Let me step inside.)