(no subject)
refracting
sungmin-centric.
pg-13; 1,967 words.
R E F R A C T I N G
(by Becs)
You can't paint sunlight, you can only paint what it does with shadows on a wall. If you examine a life... do you really examine a life, or do you examine the shadows it casts on other lives? Entity or relationships? Objective reality or the vanishing point of a multiple perspective exercise? Prism or the rainbows it refracts? And what if you're the wall? What if you never cast a shadow or rainbow of your own, but have only caught those cast by others?
--Wallace Stegner
Sungmin likes to claim he has seen a million movies; in reality, it's probably less than a thousand, but still enough for Sungmin to know how everything is supposed to go: shy smiles and coy looks and, sometimes, laughing in the rain. He doesn't know how love feels but he knows how it looks, and how it acts, and that a confession can be a tearful murmur or a jubilant shout from rooftops, or anything in between. Sometimes, he whispers to his ceiling in a clumsy jumble of clichés and movie lines, tasting them on his tongue and wondering if they'll feel different when he means them.
He practices in the mirror: eyes downcast, then flickering up to peer through long lashes. Eyes wide, mouth circling into a perfect oh of surprise. Eyes curving to match a slow, curling smile--a raise of eyebrows, questioning or suggestive. He learns to say I like you and I'll miss you and I want you with nothing but shifts of eyes and quirks of lips, but he can never quite perfect I love you. He figures that one will come when he needs it, and until then, he'll be ready for everything else.
Things are different on camera, Sungmin thinks. If something is worth recording, worth watching over again and showing to other people, then it is more important to people than the long days and little happenings that go unsaved except for in fleeting memories. Ever since Sungmin was little, he has wanted to spend his life onstage, in front of cameras--not because he wants to show off, but because he wants to be important to people, and he has learned that if people like to watch you then they will come to love you.
He doesn't have the patience to live his father's way, with long hours scraping for ways to be a little more valuable than the man in the next office over, or his mother's way: everything behind the scenes until there's a scraped knee or an upset tummy, unobtrusive until she sets out the rice and kimchee and chapche, and then the smells of meat and spices soak into the corners of the house so that he doesn't miss them until he moves away.
In all of Sungmin's movies, love is not a question of value or worth, but Sungmin thinks that's because there is always already something worth loving in characters written into life for the sake of being loved. He studies himself in the mirror and decides that he'll have to prove that there are enough reasons for people to love him, and his first week away from home, he makes chapche five times. He can't finish it all, so he boxes it up and gives it to Lee Hyukjae.
(This is how things are, and everyone knows it:
Lee Hyukjae is best friends with Kim Junsu, and Kim Junsu is better than Sungmin at everything except making chapche.
Sungmin has seen Titanic four times before, but when Junsu asks if he wants to come watch it with him and Hyukjae, he says yes anyway, because it's the first time another trainee has asked him to do anything.
Hyukjae will tell Sungmin, a few years later, when they run into Junsu's face plastered larger-than-life in the window of the record store, that the difference between Sungmin and Junsu is that Junsu expects people to like him, and Sungmin thinks he has to convince people that he's worth liking. Sungmin will lift an eyebrow at Hyukjae and say that he can't see why anyone would dislike Junsu, anyway.
"Besides," he'll add, "you didn't like me until you knew I made good chapche."
He won't say that he thinks, if TVXQ hadn't been so successful, that Hyukjae would not hang out with him nearly as much; he won't say that in his mind he calls Hyukjae his best friend, but doesn't say it out loud because everyone knows that Lee Hyukjae is best friends with Kim Junsu.)
Sungmin makes more friends at SM than he thought he would. After a month or so, he can tick them off quickly on his fingers, saying to himself, these are the people I love, and they love me back.
There are a lot of people that Sungmin loves: he loves Hyukjae, because Hyukjae was his first friend when he came to SM; he loves Junsu, because Junsu is bright and warm and he can't not. Donghae, because Donghae loves everybody, which includes Sungmin and Sungmin will never not love someone who loves him. He loves Jungsu, because Jungsu is soft and has tender hands and a little dimple when he smiles, and he loves Youngoon, because Youngoon is brazen and strong and he isn't afraid to touch people, and he makes Sungmin feel like if he can be a little more daring, everyone will like him as much as they like Youngoon.
He takes little bits of each of them and puts them into himself--tries to smile like Junsu, bright and innocent. When Donghae and Hyukjae dance around to giggle-filled renditions of old H.O.T songs, he joins in even though he is nowhere near as good with his feet as they are. Youngoon whispers in his ear you're so cute, Sungminnie; Jungsu bites his lip and asks what he's giggling about.
He thinks, maybe, that if he can be everything that he loves, then maybe one day he'll be the person someone loves best.
Donghae kisses him once, between laughs and smiles and twirls on Christmas Eve, before the drinks but after the presents. Sungmin thinks for too long about maybe kissing him back, so Kim Heechul arrives and draws Donghae to him like a magnet (or maybe like a moth to flame); Sungmin decides to climb into Youngoon's lap instead, and he gets three more kisses that night.
"I'm going to stay a virgin until marriage," Hyukjae tells Sungmin proudly one day at dance practice when Youngoon is swapping stories with Kim Heechul and Kim Jaejoong about who's done whom, and when, and where. Sungmin giggles, and Hyukjae frowns at him, but Jungsu sits down between them with a hand on Hyukjae's shoulder before an argument can start.
"He just means he wants to wait for someone he loves," Jungsu says, ruffling Sungmin's hair. "That's not so funny, Sungminnie. I'm doing the same thing."
"But what if the person you love doesn't love you back?" Sungmin asks.
Jungsu doesn't have an answer.
Sungmin's first time is with Youngoon, six months and fifteen days after he comes to SM, in the bedroom that the older boy is sharing with Jungsu and Jongoon; the door is locked but the lights are on, and Sungmin kind of wishes it was the other way around: he's not worried about anyone walking in on them, but he is worried about the look on his face when Youngoon presses him into the mattress and the little sounds that escape from his throat that he's always thought would be swallowed by darkness.
"I've never done this before," he murmurs, eyes cast down; for a fleeting moment he half-expects tender fingers on his face and warm murmurs (that's okay, I'll be gentle) like in a romance movie, but instead Youngoon just pauses, frowning a little.
"But you want to," he says--asking for permission, in a way, so Sungmin nods.
It's not romantic, but it's sensual in its own raw kind of way, all jerks and grunts and moans, Youngoon pressing kisses to his collarbone and laying him down gently afterward, running fingers through Sungmin's hair while he catches his breath.
While Youngoon is in the shower, Sungmin counts the spots of blood on the bedsheet (there's five: three tiny specks and two about the size of his fingertip). He wonders how long it will take before everyone knows, and if they'll look at him differently, but it turns out that only Jungsu doesn't look at him the same.
(Sungmin's first kiss was in the fourth grade, when Kim Soojin cornered him on the way home and then ran away giggling before he could stop gaping. She was the second-cutest girl in his class, according to the boys who were suddenly his friends, so he brought her a flower the next day--a pink tulip, cut from his mother's garden; he got in trouble for that later--but she had already decided that she liked Lee Jinseung better. Instead, he gave the flower to Kim Hyesun, because none of the boys had ever said she was cute, but Sungmin kind of thought she was.
Later, he decided that it didn't really didn't count as his first kiss, because it wasn't special enough (it was nothing like the movies--no sudden breeze or swirling music or anything), but he never forgot that it happened.)
The second time is easier, not just because the lights are off but because he has learned to tell the difference between a touch and a feeling. Sungmin has always known that he doesn't love Youngoon the way that he's supposed to, to let the older boy touch him like he does--not like his mom loves his dad or like Rose loved Jack--but in the tender moments between jerks and moans, Sungmin thinks that maybe he can almost tell what it's supposed to feel like.
After the third time, he stands in front of the mirror in Youngoon's bathroom and tries again--tries to get his eyes to shine in that way that makes three little words mean so much, but he always just looks a little too sad or a little too desperate to believe himself. He doesn't understand why until the next day when he sees the same look on Jungsu's face when the older boy's eyes slide past him to rest on Youngoon, the words painted across his face in a quiet sigh.
It's not I love you, it's I wish you loved me.
There is no fourth time. Sungmin gives Youngoon a kiss goodbye and instead he cries on Hyukjae's shoulder for an hour, not because he's lost something but because he knows he's never had it. Hyukjae doesn't ask questions, just strokes fingers through his hair and asks if he wants some tea or anything. They watch Titanic, again, and sing along with Celine Dion, and by the time the boat sinks Sungmin doesn't have any tears left.
Sungmin is jealous of Jungsu, because even though have the same look on their faces, Jungsu's is at least aimed at just one person, not the world.
When they become Super Junior, Sungmin stands onstage like he's always wanted to, tips winks to the cameras and listens to the screams and cheers from the crowd.
"They love us!" Donghae exclaims, clinging to Heechul's arm as he bounces backstage, and Sungmin grins at him even though he knows by now that this isn't the kind of love he's been wanting all this time. He can smile and pose and belt out songs about love, and it's true--he wouldn't want to be doing anything else, but when there are eleven other voices around him singing you are the one, you are my love, sometimes he has to stop to take a breath when he remembers that he only understands those words for what they're not.
Love, Sungmin thinks, can be seen in eyes and felt in fingertips and captured, just for a moment, in a sweeping crescendo of con brio!, but only if you hit the notes just right. He used to wonder how you could sing love songs if you weren't in love, but now he thinks that he will never feel more passion than when he sings about what he wants but doesn't have.
(end)
sungmin-centric.
pg-13; 1,967 words.
R E F R A C T I N G
(by Becs)
You can't paint sunlight, you can only paint what it does with shadows on a wall. If you examine a life... do you really examine a life, or do you examine the shadows it casts on other lives? Entity or relationships? Objective reality or the vanishing point of a multiple perspective exercise? Prism or the rainbows it refracts? And what if you're the wall? What if you never cast a shadow or rainbow of your own, but have only caught those cast by others?
--Wallace Stegner
Sungmin likes to claim he has seen a million movies; in reality, it's probably less than a thousand, but still enough for Sungmin to know how everything is supposed to go: shy smiles and coy looks and, sometimes, laughing in the rain. He doesn't know how love feels but he knows how it looks, and how it acts, and that a confession can be a tearful murmur or a jubilant shout from rooftops, or anything in between. Sometimes, he whispers to his ceiling in a clumsy jumble of clichés and movie lines, tasting them on his tongue and wondering if they'll feel different when he means them.
He practices in the mirror: eyes downcast, then flickering up to peer through long lashes. Eyes wide, mouth circling into a perfect oh of surprise. Eyes curving to match a slow, curling smile--a raise of eyebrows, questioning or suggestive. He learns to say I like you and I'll miss you and I want you with nothing but shifts of eyes and quirks of lips, but he can never quite perfect I love you. He figures that one will come when he needs it, and until then, he'll be ready for everything else.
Things are different on camera, Sungmin thinks. If something is worth recording, worth watching over again and showing to other people, then it is more important to people than the long days and little happenings that go unsaved except for in fleeting memories. Ever since Sungmin was little, he has wanted to spend his life onstage, in front of cameras--not because he wants to show off, but because he wants to be important to people, and he has learned that if people like to watch you then they will come to love you.
He doesn't have the patience to live his father's way, with long hours scraping for ways to be a little more valuable than the man in the next office over, or his mother's way: everything behind the scenes until there's a scraped knee or an upset tummy, unobtrusive until she sets out the rice and kimchee and chapche, and then the smells of meat and spices soak into the corners of the house so that he doesn't miss them until he moves away.
In all of Sungmin's movies, love is not a question of value or worth, but Sungmin thinks that's because there is always already something worth loving in characters written into life for the sake of being loved. He studies himself in the mirror and decides that he'll have to prove that there are enough reasons for people to love him, and his first week away from home, he makes chapche five times. He can't finish it all, so he boxes it up and gives it to Lee Hyukjae.
(This is how things are, and everyone knows it:
Lee Hyukjae is best friends with Kim Junsu, and Kim Junsu is better than Sungmin at everything except making chapche.
Sungmin has seen Titanic four times before, but when Junsu asks if he wants to come watch it with him and Hyukjae, he says yes anyway, because it's the first time another trainee has asked him to do anything.
Hyukjae will tell Sungmin, a few years later, when they run into Junsu's face plastered larger-than-life in the window of the record store, that the difference between Sungmin and Junsu is that Junsu expects people to like him, and Sungmin thinks he has to convince people that he's worth liking. Sungmin will lift an eyebrow at Hyukjae and say that he can't see why anyone would dislike Junsu, anyway.
"Besides," he'll add, "you didn't like me until you knew I made good chapche."
He won't say that he thinks, if TVXQ hadn't been so successful, that Hyukjae would not hang out with him nearly as much; he won't say that in his mind he calls Hyukjae his best friend, but doesn't say it out loud because everyone knows that Lee Hyukjae is best friends with Kim Junsu.)
Sungmin makes more friends at SM than he thought he would. After a month or so, he can tick them off quickly on his fingers, saying to himself, these are the people I love, and they love me back.
There are a lot of people that Sungmin loves: he loves Hyukjae, because Hyukjae was his first friend when he came to SM; he loves Junsu, because Junsu is bright and warm and he can't not. Donghae, because Donghae loves everybody, which includes Sungmin and Sungmin will never not love someone who loves him. He loves Jungsu, because Jungsu is soft and has tender hands and a little dimple when he smiles, and he loves Youngoon, because Youngoon is brazen and strong and he isn't afraid to touch people, and he makes Sungmin feel like if he can be a little more daring, everyone will like him as much as they like Youngoon.
He takes little bits of each of them and puts them into himself--tries to smile like Junsu, bright and innocent. When Donghae and Hyukjae dance around to giggle-filled renditions of old H.O.T songs, he joins in even though he is nowhere near as good with his feet as they are. Youngoon whispers in his ear you're so cute, Sungminnie; Jungsu bites his lip and asks what he's giggling about.
He thinks, maybe, that if he can be everything that he loves, then maybe one day he'll be the person someone loves best.
Donghae kisses him once, between laughs and smiles and twirls on Christmas Eve, before the drinks but after the presents. Sungmin thinks for too long about maybe kissing him back, so Kim Heechul arrives and draws Donghae to him like a magnet (or maybe like a moth to flame); Sungmin decides to climb into Youngoon's lap instead, and he gets three more kisses that night.
"I'm going to stay a virgin until marriage," Hyukjae tells Sungmin proudly one day at dance practice when Youngoon is swapping stories with Kim Heechul and Kim Jaejoong about who's done whom, and when, and where. Sungmin giggles, and Hyukjae frowns at him, but Jungsu sits down between them with a hand on Hyukjae's shoulder before an argument can start.
"He just means he wants to wait for someone he loves," Jungsu says, ruffling Sungmin's hair. "That's not so funny, Sungminnie. I'm doing the same thing."
"But what if the person you love doesn't love you back?" Sungmin asks.
Jungsu doesn't have an answer.
Sungmin's first time is with Youngoon, six months and fifteen days after he comes to SM, in the bedroom that the older boy is sharing with Jungsu and Jongoon; the door is locked but the lights are on, and Sungmin kind of wishes it was the other way around: he's not worried about anyone walking in on them, but he is worried about the look on his face when Youngoon presses him into the mattress and the little sounds that escape from his throat that he's always thought would be swallowed by darkness.
"I've never done this before," he murmurs, eyes cast down; for a fleeting moment he half-expects tender fingers on his face and warm murmurs (that's okay, I'll be gentle) like in a romance movie, but instead Youngoon just pauses, frowning a little.
"But you want to," he says--asking for permission, in a way, so Sungmin nods.
It's not romantic, but it's sensual in its own raw kind of way, all jerks and grunts and moans, Youngoon pressing kisses to his collarbone and laying him down gently afterward, running fingers through Sungmin's hair while he catches his breath.
While Youngoon is in the shower, Sungmin counts the spots of blood on the bedsheet (there's five: three tiny specks and two about the size of his fingertip). He wonders how long it will take before everyone knows, and if they'll look at him differently, but it turns out that only Jungsu doesn't look at him the same.
(Sungmin's first kiss was in the fourth grade, when Kim Soojin cornered him on the way home and then ran away giggling before he could stop gaping. She was the second-cutest girl in his class, according to the boys who were suddenly his friends, so he brought her a flower the next day--a pink tulip, cut from his mother's garden; he got in trouble for that later--but she had already decided that she liked Lee Jinseung better. Instead, he gave the flower to Kim Hyesun, because none of the boys had ever said she was cute, but Sungmin kind of thought she was.
Later, he decided that it didn't really didn't count as his first kiss, because it wasn't special enough (it was nothing like the movies--no sudden breeze or swirling music or anything), but he never forgot that it happened.)
The second time is easier, not just because the lights are off but because he has learned to tell the difference between a touch and a feeling. Sungmin has always known that he doesn't love Youngoon the way that he's supposed to, to let the older boy touch him like he does--not like his mom loves his dad or like Rose loved Jack--but in the tender moments between jerks and moans, Sungmin thinks that maybe he can almost tell what it's supposed to feel like.
After the third time, he stands in front of the mirror in Youngoon's bathroom and tries again--tries to get his eyes to shine in that way that makes three little words mean so much, but he always just looks a little too sad or a little too desperate to believe himself. He doesn't understand why until the next day when he sees the same look on Jungsu's face when the older boy's eyes slide past him to rest on Youngoon, the words painted across his face in a quiet sigh.
It's not I love you, it's I wish you loved me.
There is no fourth time. Sungmin gives Youngoon a kiss goodbye and instead he cries on Hyukjae's shoulder for an hour, not because he's lost something but because he knows he's never had it. Hyukjae doesn't ask questions, just strokes fingers through his hair and asks if he wants some tea or anything. They watch Titanic, again, and sing along with Celine Dion, and by the time the boat sinks Sungmin doesn't have any tears left.
Sungmin is jealous of Jungsu, because even though have the same look on their faces, Jungsu's is at least aimed at just one person, not the world.
When they become Super Junior, Sungmin stands onstage like he's always wanted to, tips winks to the cameras and listens to the screams and cheers from the crowd.
"They love us!" Donghae exclaims, clinging to Heechul's arm as he bounces backstage, and Sungmin grins at him even though he knows by now that this isn't the kind of love he's been wanting all this time. He can smile and pose and belt out songs about love, and it's true--he wouldn't want to be doing anything else, but when there are eleven other voices around him singing you are the one, you are my love, sometimes he has to stop to take a breath when he remembers that he only understands those words for what they're not.
Love, Sungmin thinks, can be seen in eyes and felt in fingertips and captured, just for a moment, in a sweeping crescendo of con brio!, but only if you hit the notes just right. He used to wonder how you could sing love songs if you weren't in love, but now he thinks that he will never feel more passion than when he sings about what he wants but doesn't have.
(end)