Pepero Kiss 4/5
Title: Pepero Kiss
Pairing: Kaisoo
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 4.2K+ / 23.1K
Genre: Romance, humor, gen.
Summary: Popular actor Do Kyungsoo and super-idol Kai are the newest couple on We Got Married. Korea won't know what hit it.
AN: Cross-posted on tumblr.
AN2: You guys asked for it. Thanks for waiting.
Previous
“Left foot to red!”
“Right hand to yellow!”
This move gets a groan from Jongin who already has his left hand on green and his right foot on a red dot on the opposite side of the mat. When he places his right hand on the yellow patch beside his other hand, his body stretches across the mat in a trembly bridge that threatens to collapse at any moment.
Kyungsoo helpfully lends him a shoulder since he’s slightly underneath his onscreen husband, having been lucky enough to get relatively easier color combinations. He has his legs spread in a V, his feet squarely on the blue and green dots, and his hands are on consecutive yellow and blue so he's crouched in a slight hunch.
“How much longer do we have to do this?” Jongin grits out, breathing a little more heavily as he strains to keep himself from falling flat on his stomach.
“You’re doing splendidly well!” their yoga instructor gushes. “Extra gold stars for the both of you!”
Kyungsoo can’t see Jongin’s expression but he can guess well enough from the silence that follows that the boy is back to wondering viciously if they can’t somehow fire the yoga instructor even though he was hired by the show.
Kyungsoo mutters, “At least he stopped calling us children.” Which was condescending and confusing as both actor and idol are in their 20's.
“After the director told him not to,” Jongin replies in an equally hushed voice, mindful of the cameras trained on them. “I don’t want any damned gold stars, I feel like I’m in preschool!”
As Jongin grouses, his breath tickles Kyungsoo’s ear and lingers hotly, drifting down his neck and leaving a slight flush in its wake. Blinking quickly, Kyungsoo hopes that the cameras didn’t catch that, but to his alarm, when he glances up he finds the instructor smiling congenially at them.
Kyungsoo looks back down with a scowl.
The instructor trills, “Left foot to red!"
They both groan this time.
.
.
"Twister yoga, clothes-shopping with measurements, tango dancing, massage therapy," Kai lists off on his fingers, "Even face-painting with our fingers....It can't just be my imagination. Aren't there alot of skinship-focused episodes lately?"
The interviewer remarks that it sounds as if Kai dislikes it, and the idol promptly reddens.
"I don't dislike it," Kai says, looking embarrassed. He scratches the back of his messy blond hair. "I just thought we could do something a little more exciting. Didn't the "Cat Couple" Leo and Sojin sunbaes do couple sky-diving? Kyungsoo-hyung and I could do that...."
.
.
They try giving the suggestion to Kyungsoo and his reaction is immediate.
"I don't care what we do," Kyungsoo says adamantly. "As long as we never go sky-diving. Anything but that."
He doesn't explain himself, but beneath his determined face, the captions roll reads: It looks like our favorite actor has a secret weakness for heights!
"Never," Kyungsoo repeats.
.
.
"You've never considered it? Really?" Jongin's bit of rice flour mix lies forgotten in his hand as he scrutinizes Kyungsoo in disbelief. To Kyungsoo's bewilderment he actually looks him up and down.
"You have the right look for it though. And you can sing," Jongin adds like it's the cincher.
"Is that supposed to be a compliment?" Kyungsoo says. "And if you're not going to shape the songpyeon correctly just let me do it." Kyungsoo snatches the one in Jongin's hand.
"Come on, hyung," Jongin prods, "Don't tell me you've never been asked if you were an idol?"
"Well...."
"See?" Jongin insists, "You look a little like an idol you know. A bit more on the cute side, but I could see you in a idol group, easy." Jongin tilts his head to the side and squints a little like he's imagining Kyungsoo in a different place in different clothes.
Then he grins. "You would have been popular."
"You say that like I'm not popular now." Kyungsoo casts a beady eye on him.
Jongin blinks innocently at him and Kyungsoo throws the songpyeon at his head.
.
.
"Me. An idol," Kyungsoo says, looking mystified at the very idea of it. Question marks materialize around his head like evidence of his confusion.
"How could anyone see me in an idol group, in those stage costumes and smoky makeup, choreographed dance routines and doing aegyo...seriously, me?"
Kyungsoo motions frantically at himself as if to say, Do I really look like idol material?
"Jongin doesn't know what he's talking about," Kyungsoo concludes firmly, expecting that to be the end of the subject.
.
.
To Kyungsoo's chagrin, the topic doesn't die there. The viewers react positively the idea of Kyungsoo being an idol, and once a clever fan manages to dig up video evidence of Kyungsoo's participation in his high school choir, the idea of an idol Do Kyungsoo spreads like wildfire.
Radio and TV show hosts start to mention the actor as the next potential idol star, and Kyungsoo is bewildered when he starts to receive offers to sing OSTs for various dramas and films, including his own upcoming movie.
Some netizens even manage to find clips of a smaller, chubbier-cheeked Kyungsoo in singing competions from when he was younger. The footage becomes so popular that when someone cobbles the audio bits together to make a mashup of Kyungsoo's singing, a shrewd company CEO swiftly purchases the distributing rights and sells the resulting vocal cocktail of a song as a ringtone.
Kyungsoo doesn't actually think it's a big deal until he starts to hear his own voice, tinny and higher-pitched but most definitely his, everywhere he goes.
"Mom, not you too," Kyungsoo moans when instead of his mother's usual 4Men OST song he hears his own enthusiastic rendition of 'Billionaire', pre-pubescent squeakiness and all.
He sends the WGM camera facing him a squinty look because the viewers will see this later and he wants them to know that he completely blames them.
"Ah, Kyungsoo dear," his mother greets him cheerily. In the background he hears sink water running and the steady chop-chop-chopping of a knife.
"Did you have to buy the ringtone? Don't you hear my voice enough?" Kyungsoo laments. "I told you not to buy it."
"Yah, Do Kyungsoo!" his mother snaps, making him wince. "How could I ever get enough of hearing my darling son's voice? Your voice is one to be shared with the world, I keep telling you over and over again but you never listen."
"I'm sick of hearing it everywhere. I don't even sound that good...." Kyungsoo can't help the edge of whine that leaks into his voice.
"Well, I did not spend 14 hours in labor for you to disregard the talents you were born with," his mother says brusquely, the chopping sound of her knife getting heavier and faster in the background, "Why when I was your age--"
Kyungsoo rolls his eyes. "Mom."
"--would go on and on about how talented I was on the piano even though I only had a few--"
"Mom," Kyungsoo repeats, more panicked this time.
"But did I let that go to my head? Of course not! I would smile and say--"
"Mom."
"Why your grandfather would take me aside and tell me, Jung Ah, you don't have to stre--"
"Mom!!"
"What, what is it, Kyungsoo?"
"Could you not lecture me right now please? I'm filming right now." Kyungsoo screws his eyes shut, knowing the WGM camera is trained on his face.
"Then why did you call me? Go finish working so you can get home at a reasonable time for once."
"No, I mean I'm filming for We Got Married. You're on speaker phone."
Predictably, his mother erupts into a scolding rant and Kyungsoo has to hurriedly scramble to take the phone off speaker-mode. The last thing he needs is for the viewers to hear him get dressed down by his mother like a kid.
.
.
"I used to watch my mom cook, so it came kind of naturally to me when I tried to do it." Kyungsoo gives a humble little shrug. "They weren't difficult recipes. Just stuff like rolled eggs and scallion pancakes."
His eyes suddenly shine with nostalgia. "I used to make chocolate cookies for my friends on Black Day when they didn't get any chocolates from anyone. My mom showed me once and then I did all the other batches on my own."
When Kyungsoo is asked if he'll make anything for Kai on Valentine's Day next year the actor looks dumbly at the interviewer for a few seconds, as if he hadn't thought that far forward.
He blinks, and then slowly, a small, shy but happy light starts to move over his face.
"I think I will," says Kyungsoo at his hands.
.
.
Kyungsoo's recent and immense popularity from WGM makes it so that he can no longer hide among Jongin's fans as one of the crowd like he did in simpler times. So the staff sneaks him into the fan meeting from the back, behind the row of tables where the band is diligently seeing a line of kneeling fangirls.
Their backs are facing Kyungsoo so group doesn't realize he's there, but some of the fans do and Kyungsoo practically sprints around the table so he can reach the line before the screaming starts.
The fangirl he cuts in front of doesn't even seem to care that he took her place to go next, and just starts stuttering, "Ka-ka-ka-kaisoo!" when Kyungsoo whispers an apology and gives her a grateful look. The mass of fans is shifting as they start to pinpoint his plain hoodie-covered figure, and the murmuring gets louder. Camera flashes go off against his back in rapid-fire symphony, making the actor cringe into himself.
So much for surprising Jongin, Kyungsoo thinks.
But to the actor's pleasant surprise, after he gets his sheet of paper, taken off Yixing's desk and stained with a pale green ring near the middle where his manager thoughtlessly placed his mug of tea, signed by a giggling Jongdae, a manically grinning Chanyeol and a smirking Baekhyun, with the lattermost having written a loud KAISOO IS REAL across the entire paper, underlined twice, Jongin doesn't immediately realize that it's Kyungsoo.
"Hey, what's up. How's your day going?" Jongin says automatically, looking first at the piece of paper handed to him. His brow furrows as he tries to find a space to write not already taken up by Baekhyun's autograph, though his lips quirk up automatically when he sees the word Kaisoo.
At Jongin's right, Joonmyun chokes on his bottle of water and starts coughing and wheezing as Minseok slaps his back roughly. At the other end of the table, Jongdae starts outright cackling.
"So you're a Kaisoo fan," Jongin says brightly, finally raising his head. "That's--"
Jongin goes slack-jawed.
Since the idol's bent forward with his elbows on the table, Kyungsoo, kneeling, gets a fantastic view of Jongin's eyes spreading so wide the mocha-brown of his eyes complete in perfect circles. There's a small heart sharpied on his cheek, probably by one of his bandmates, and a vague line smeared across his jugular where he must have accidentally messed up the bb cream.
Kyungsoo laughs at the look on his face. "Surprise," Kyungsoo says, pulling off his hood so that a flood of camera flashes go off at his back. The fans start screaming, and if anything, Jongin looks even more confused.
"But--you--here--hyung--what???"
"You're not going to properly greet your husband with a kiss?" Chanyeol calls from down the line, making Jongdae whoop in agreement. The screams of the fans jump up a full three octaves.
Jongin sputters and yells, "Shut up, Chanyeol-hyung!" and then curls over from the shock overload, his hands over his face. Kyungsoo, flushed with triumph, realizes now that he's smiling so hard that his cheeks are starting to ache.
.
.
Kai is hiding his face in his hands, the same position he was in at the fan-meet, but when he lowers them his white teeth are bared widely, and even as he licks his lips in embarrassment, he can't stop smiling.
The entire screen is awash with pink sparkles. Kai tries to say something and just laughs at himself when he can't get it out, shaking his head. The recorded audience swoons sound when his curved eyes meet the camera.
There's no need for words. The scene cuts out on Kai laughing breathlessly at himself.
.
.
Everything is going well until the fans start chanting for a kiss.
Jongin fumbles the pen in his hands and Kyungsoo's eyes pop in panic. To make it worse, the chinguline trio at the other end of the table picks up the chant in unison. Junmyeon smiles awkwardly at the cameras and Minseok continues to autograph fan signs like nothing's wrong.
Jongin and Kyungsoo look at each other, and Kyungsoo's mouth drops when he realizes Jongin looks like he's contemplating it, lips a little pursed. Flustered, he freezes in place, unable to do anything but watch as Jongin slowly leans in, hands flat on the table.
He pauses, just for a second or two, only inches away, and it's as if the whole world holds its breath when their audience hushes at once. Then a titter comes from the audience, breaking the spell, and Kyungsoo sees the exact moment Jongin loses his nerve.
The idol changes direction, moves up and Kyungsoo's eyes instinctively flutter shut when he feels lips press warmly to his forehead.
He breathes out, hears Jongin do the same, before it's drowned out by the cacophony of both disappointed moans and delighted shrieks from the fans. The WGM couple laugh bashfully at each other, and their happy bubble must be too much for Baekhyun because he throws his camera phone at Jongin to break it.
They end the fan-meeting with a shared Kaisoo selca and the sea of fangirls as a background, and the fans erupt with loud glee when the blond idol wraps his arm around Kyungsoo's narrow shoulders and raises his other arm high in the air to take their picture. Kyungsoo feels Jongin's head lean on his and barely remembers not to blink.
They get two good pictures before Chanyeol starts trolling in the back, all glittery makeup and victory signs.
.
.
Kyungsoo coughs, unaware of the pink triangle cat ears and matching swirls on his cheeks the editors have crudely drawn on. They bounce slightly everytime he speaks, and everyone from the 12-24 age demographic will be hooked on the trend for the rest of the year.
"After that," Kyungsoo continues, "The group manager took us to the backrooms where we had lunch and Jongin tried my homemade lunchbox. He seemed to like it, especially the daktoritang which I had to bring in a separate container so it wouldn't spill. I don't know why but Luhan-hyung insisted I make something with chicken. Maybe it's because Jongin's a chicken maniac like that one member from Shinee...."
Kyungsoo trails off in bemusement, leaving the captions to question how Kyungsoo's idol research touched on another idol group's eating habits but not on his own husband's.
"The only mistake I made was bringing too little." The actor nods thoughtfully. "Chanyeol-ssi has a bottomless stomach and the rest of the group is hardly better. They demolished the lunchbox while Jongin was focused on the chicken."
.
.
"Kyungsoo-hyung can seriously cook," Kai says, looking dreamy-eyed at the memory of it. "Man, if I could eat his cooking every day...."
Kai seems to realize then that he's still filming because he quickly straightens up with a low cough. "Anyways, I felt bad since I promised I would go to one of his filmings with lunch and he showed up at one of my fan-meetings before I could. So I asked my hyungs to help me make something for Kyungsoo-hyung."
Kai's face goes grave as he confesses, point-blank, "It was a disaster."
.
.
Somehow the group manages to utterly scorch beyond repair half of the studio's usable pots and pans before the director decides to give up. Staff members have been sent to retrieve several ingredients four times already after the group ran out of them from their botched recipes, and nearly everyone from the tiredly wheezing underlings to the anxious cameramen is now red-faced and sweaty.
The director himself is mindlessly swabbing sweat off his brow with a handkerchief the idol group's manager handed him as they stand side by side observing the burn marks left on the ceiling above the stove.
Burn marks. On the ceiling.
"How about we make a deal," the group's manager starts carefully, side-eyeing the speechless director. "I let you reveal some of the cooking footage in the show's behind-the-scenes portion if you keep the rest of it--preferably this business--" he waves at the ruined kitchen just as a splat of something soft and yellow hits the floor, "--off air. What do you say?"
It's not much of a deal, but even so, the manager turns an innocently expectant look on the director. It's one inspired by the face Baekhyun wore when he lost Chanyeol in Bulgaria last year and told the manager he just went to the bathroom.
Fun times.
The director garbles something and then makes a hopeless gesture at the burnt ceiling as he starts moaning lowly under his breath, a litany that sounds mostly like, "Why, why, why me, why this group, why...."
The staff glance warily at each other and make themselves look busy.
.
.
"I don't think I'm supposed to be saying this...." Kyungsoo breaks off into a nervous laugh and leans off his stool to ask someone beyond the camera, "Can I tell them, really? This isn't spoilers? ...No? Oh...okay then."
Kyungsoo sits back down even though he still looks skeptical that his director won't call Yixing later, screaming about spoiled plot lines and rebellious junior actors that don't know how to keep their mouths shut.
Kyungsoo sighs and starts explaining, eyeing the camera the whole time like he expects it to bite.
.
.
As the youngest actor in the production, Kyungsoo has to stick to several rules of actors' etiquette even though he's been in the business for a substantial number of years.
Today for example, he only has one scene to shoot, but he's expected to show up hours early and stay for the rest of the day to watch his sunbaes work. This is to show his respect for them, while being ready for when the director finally needs him.
Kyungsoo won't ever admit that he secretly thinks it's a huge waste of time. Yixing's not so quiet.
Yixing's normally cheerful demeaner is soured, the edges of his lips bent down like they were pressed into the creases. It's remarkable how his prominent dimples appear even when he's frowning.
"You only have one scene and it needs to be shot at dusk. So why were we called to report in at noon?" Yixing throws the script copy down on the table, making heads turn in their direction.
"Hyung," Kyungsoo hisses frantically. "Not so loud!"
"But Kyungsoo, it's not pragmatic. I don't understand even after this many years spent in Korea...." For both their sakes, Yixing switches to Mandarin to continue, but still Kyungsoo glances around for listeners because Jung Hee-sunbae was casted in a long historical drama that included Mandarin and who knows who else might also understand.
Kyungsoo manages to calm Yixing down so that he stews quietly while Kyungsoo practices his lines alone. Then after a few minutes, Yixing leaves and comes back with some strong Americanos, cream but no sugar for Yixing, and sugar but no cream for Kyungsoo.
He breaks out his smartphone and they spend the hours remaining as they've always done, snacking on shrimp chips, listening to mp3 songs and playing Angry Birds while Yixing draws comparisons between the birds and Kyungsoo's thick eyebrows.
The makeup noonas call the actor in around half past four and make Kyungsoo shrivel from the inside out when they coo over his large cheeks and pale skin and call him baby-faced. They lament loudly at having to cover it up with the fake blood but they slap it on anyways, and when they're done Kyungsoo looks like a horror movie extra.
Kyungsoo bares his teeth briefly at the mirror, watches his purple-black lip spread grotesquely and stares, awed by the effect.
"Waoh," says Yixing and gives him two thumbs up.
.
.
"We actually already shot this scene but the lighting for it was apparently too dark the last time and the director wanted it shot again. It's the scene where my character gets slapped in the face over and over again by his mini-mart employer."
Kyungsoo pauses as if he knows there's a recorded audience sound expressing its surprised dismay in a long Ohhhh.
"It's not as if I'm actually getting hurt though. The angle and the way we move together just makes it look like I'm getting hit really hard," Kyungsoo divulges, and then he rolls his eyes. "Of course then Jongin, with his spectacular timing, comes by just as we're filming that one scene and thinks I'm getting beat up on-site."
The interviewer tells him that the clip of Kai disrupting the filming by shouting Kyungsoo's name has been exceedingly popular, and Kyungsoo scowls.
"My director is still mad at me about that."
.
.
"I still don't understand why they didn't use a stunt-double for that scene!" Kai angrily huffs a strand of hair out of his face.
"Acting or not, what if they missed and really slapped hyung?" Kai folds his arms and scowls deeply enough to match his husband's expression. "I feel bad I got Kyungsoo-hyung in trouble but honestly, I don't regret a thing."
Recorded audience effect repeats Ohhhh.
.
.
After hearing the interviewer relay what Kai said about not regretting his disruption of filming, Kyungsoo's face goes black.
"See if I cook him anything ever again," the actor says archly.
.
.
With fake blood still flecking the side of his face, Kyungsoo is persuaded into taking a score of selcas with Jongin to commemorate his first visit to Kyungsoo's filming. He's wiping off the dark makeup bruising his eye when the first flash goes off, and he hits Jongin in the arm.
"I'm not ready yet!"
Jongin laughs undeterred and reels Kyungsoo in for the next shot despite his protests. "Say ki~mchi!"
"Oh my god, how old are you," Kyungsoo says after the flash goes off and then just as quickly snaps, "Take another one. I think I blinked in the last."
Jongin obliges him and they take a string of pictures like that, Jongin's arm tight over Kyungsoo's shoulder like he's scared he'll pull away, Kyungsoo stuck to Jongin's side after he initially fell into him and reluctant to move even with the idol's sharp hip bone nudging into the side of his soft lower stomach.
Yixing left earlier to give them some privacy, which is ridiculous when you consider the three unblinking camera fish eyes locked on them now.
A shiver runs up Kyungsoo's back, one that Jongin feels.
"What's wrong, hyung?" Jongin whispers, making Kyungsoo's ear heat up at his proximity.
"Nothing," Kyungsoo mumbles, and the next picture taken shows Kyungsoo looking down at his feet as Jongin glances at him, their expressions unreadable.
.
.
Three weeks until Christmas and the filming for the prime episode is scheduled in a little over a week when the news hits. Kyungsoo finds out when Yixing phones him and tells him to stay inside, to not leave his house at any cost, and to wait for Yixing to confirm with Jongin's management before he decides to say anything.
When Kyungsoo asks what's wrong, Yixing sighs heavily and tells him to check the news. Kyungsoo doesn't understand until he opens his laptop and finds Jongin's face frontlining the Naver website.
His eyes catch on the bolded words first: Kai, date, caught, girl group, secret, hug, WGM, kaisoo, cheater.
Scandal.
The accompanying blurry, hastily-taken pictures show Jongin, messy white strands distinguishable even under his beanie, with a girl, long-haired and small, walking side by side, touching hands and grinning at each other. They look like any pair of lovers enjoying a late night date.
Kyungsoo's phone is vibrating to life with a string of text messages and calls. The actor gives it a long look before he turns around and goes back to bed.
.
.
Kai's statement sounds rehearsed.
"First off, I would like to apologize to the WGM producers, directors and staff for causing so much trouble for them," Kai starts. His hands are folded contritely, his clothes bland and his hair combed in a neat part.
There are no effects; no captions. There is only the idol, looking as dour and repetant as any angel fallen from grace, and the silence is damning.
"...And to the fans, I'd like to say, I hope you continue to support me and Kyungsoo-hyung. I would hate it if this incident affected him in any way because I never meant to trouble him, or the fans. I hope this doesn't change how you feel about Kaisoo because--because--Kaisoo is real."
This is the mantra Kaisoo fans everywhere have taken up in support of the WGM couple, but coming out of the idol's mouth, rushed and unsteady, it sounds like a joke.
The look Kai gives the camera then is bleak like he knows the futility of his own words.
"Please be understanding."
and that is me casually breaking all your hearts like the evil egg i am.
AN: Part 5 + Epilogue is coming out next week, Sunday, at exactly the same time.
AN2: Thanks to the lovely Stef for helping beta this part! Couldn't have done it without you~
Next
Pairing: Kaisoo
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 4.2K+ / 23.1K
Genre: Romance, humor, gen.
Summary: Popular actor Do Kyungsoo and super-idol Kai are the newest couple on We Got Married. Korea won't know what hit it.
AN: Cross-posted on tumblr.
AN2: You guys asked for it. Thanks for waiting.
Previous
“Left foot to red!”
“Right hand to yellow!”
This move gets a groan from Jongin who already has his left hand on green and his right foot on a red dot on the opposite side of the mat. When he places his right hand on the yellow patch beside his other hand, his body stretches across the mat in a trembly bridge that threatens to collapse at any moment.
Kyungsoo helpfully lends him a shoulder since he’s slightly underneath his onscreen husband, having been lucky enough to get relatively easier color combinations. He has his legs spread in a V, his feet squarely on the blue and green dots, and his hands are on consecutive yellow and blue so he's crouched in a slight hunch.
“How much longer do we have to do this?” Jongin grits out, breathing a little more heavily as he strains to keep himself from falling flat on his stomach.
“You’re doing splendidly well!” their yoga instructor gushes. “Extra gold stars for the both of you!”
Kyungsoo can’t see Jongin’s expression but he can guess well enough from the silence that follows that the boy is back to wondering viciously if they can’t somehow fire the yoga instructor even though he was hired by the show.
Kyungsoo mutters, “At least he stopped calling us children.” Which was condescending and confusing as both actor and idol are in their 20's.
“After the director told him not to,” Jongin replies in an equally hushed voice, mindful of the cameras trained on them. “I don’t want any damned gold stars, I feel like I’m in preschool!”
As Jongin grouses, his breath tickles Kyungsoo’s ear and lingers hotly, drifting down his neck and leaving a slight flush in its wake. Blinking quickly, Kyungsoo hopes that the cameras didn’t catch that, but to his alarm, when he glances up he finds the instructor smiling congenially at them.
Kyungsoo looks back down with a scowl.
The instructor trills, “Left foot to red!"
They both groan this time.
.
.
"Twister yoga, clothes-shopping with measurements, tango dancing, massage therapy," Kai lists off on his fingers, "Even face-painting with our fingers....It can't just be my imagination. Aren't there alot of skinship-focused episodes lately?"
The interviewer remarks that it sounds as if Kai dislikes it, and the idol promptly reddens.
"I don't dislike it," Kai says, looking embarrassed. He scratches the back of his messy blond hair. "I just thought we could do something a little more exciting. Didn't the "Cat Couple" Leo and Sojin sunbaes do couple sky-diving? Kyungsoo-hyung and I could do that...."
.
.
They try giving the suggestion to Kyungsoo and his reaction is immediate.
"I don't care what we do," Kyungsoo says adamantly. "As long as we never go sky-diving. Anything but that."
He doesn't explain himself, but beneath his determined face, the captions roll reads: It looks like our favorite actor has a secret weakness for heights!
"Never," Kyungsoo repeats.
.
.
"You've never considered it? Really?" Jongin's bit of rice flour mix lies forgotten in his hand as he scrutinizes Kyungsoo in disbelief. To Kyungsoo's bewilderment he actually looks him up and down.
"You have the right look for it though. And you can sing," Jongin adds like it's the cincher.
"Is that supposed to be a compliment?" Kyungsoo says. "And if you're not going to shape the songpyeon correctly just let me do it." Kyungsoo snatches the one in Jongin's hand.
"Come on, hyung," Jongin prods, "Don't tell me you've never been asked if you were an idol?"
"Well...."
"See?" Jongin insists, "You look a little like an idol you know. A bit more on the cute side, but I could see you in a idol group, easy." Jongin tilts his head to the side and squints a little like he's imagining Kyungsoo in a different place in different clothes.
Then he grins. "You would have been popular."
"You say that like I'm not popular now." Kyungsoo casts a beady eye on him.
Jongin blinks innocently at him and Kyungsoo throws the songpyeon at his head.
.
.
"Me. An idol," Kyungsoo says, looking mystified at the very idea of it. Question marks materialize around his head like evidence of his confusion.
"How could anyone see me in an idol group, in those stage costumes and smoky makeup, choreographed dance routines and doing aegyo...seriously, me?"
Kyungsoo motions frantically at himself as if to say, Do I really look like idol material?
"Jongin doesn't know what he's talking about," Kyungsoo concludes firmly, expecting that to be the end of the subject.
.
.
To Kyungsoo's chagrin, the topic doesn't die there. The viewers react positively the idea of Kyungsoo being an idol, and once a clever fan manages to dig up video evidence of Kyungsoo's participation in his high school choir, the idea of an idol Do Kyungsoo spreads like wildfire.
Radio and TV show hosts start to mention the actor as the next potential idol star, and Kyungsoo is bewildered when he starts to receive offers to sing OSTs for various dramas and films, including his own upcoming movie.
Some netizens even manage to find clips of a smaller, chubbier-cheeked Kyungsoo in singing competions from when he was younger. The footage becomes so popular that when someone cobbles the audio bits together to make a mashup of Kyungsoo's singing, a shrewd company CEO swiftly purchases the distributing rights and sells the resulting vocal cocktail of a song as a ringtone.
Kyungsoo doesn't actually think it's a big deal until he starts to hear his own voice, tinny and higher-pitched but most definitely his, everywhere he goes.
"Mom, not you too," Kyungsoo moans when instead of his mother's usual 4Men OST song he hears his own enthusiastic rendition of 'Billionaire', pre-pubescent squeakiness and all.
He sends the WGM camera facing him a squinty look because the viewers will see this later and he wants them to know that he completely blames them.
"Ah, Kyungsoo dear," his mother greets him cheerily. In the background he hears sink water running and the steady chop-chop-chopping of a knife.
"Did you have to buy the ringtone? Don't you hear my voice enough?" Kyungsoo laments. "I told you not to buy it."
"Yah, Do Kyungsoo!" his mother snaps, making him wince. "How could I ever get enough of hearing my darling son's voice? Your voice is one to be shared with the world, I keep telling you over and over again but you never listen."
"I'm sick of hearing it everywhere. I don't even sound that good...." Kyungsoo can't help the edge of whine that leaks into his voice.
"Well, I did not spend 14 hours in labor for you to disregard the talents you were born with," his mother says brusquely, the chopping sound of her knife getting heavier and faster in the background, "Why when I was your age--"
Kyungsoo rolls his eyes. "Mom."
"--would go on and on about how talented I was on the piano even though I only had a few--"
"Mom," Kyungsoo repeats, more panicked this time.
"But did I let that go to my head? Of course not! I would smile and say--"
"Mom."
"Why your grandfather would take me aside and tell me, Jung Ah, you don't have to stre--"
"Mom!!"
"What, what is it, Kyungsoo?"
"Could you not lecture me right now please? I'm filming right now." Kyungsoo screws his eyes shut, knowing the WGM camera is trained on his face.
"Then why did you call me? Go finish working so you can get home at a reasonable time for once."
"No, I mean I'm filming for We Got Married. You're on speaker phone."
Predictably, his mother erupts into a scolding rant and Kyungsoo has to hurriedly scramble to take the phone off speaker-mode. The last thing he needs is for the viewers to hear him get dressed down by his mother like a kid.
.
.
"I used to watch my mom cook, so it came kind of naturally to me when I tried to do it." Kyungsoo gives a humble little shrug. "They weren't difficult recipes. Just stuff like rolled eggs and scallion pancakes."
His eyes suddenly shine with nostalgia. "I used to make chocolate cookies for my friends on Black Day when they didn't get any chocolates from anyone. My mom showed me once and then I did all the other batches on my own."
When Kyungsoo is asked if he'll make anything for Kai on Valentine's Day next year the actor looks dumbly at the interviewer for a few seconds, as if he hadn't thought that far forward.
He blinks, and then slowly, a small, shy but happy light starts to move over his face.
"I think I will," says Kyungsoo at his hands.
.
.
Kyungsoo's recent and immense popularity from WGM makes it so that he can no longer hide among Jongin's fans as one of the crowd like he did in simpler times. So the staff sneaks him into the fan meeting from the back, behind the row of tables where the band is diligently seeing a line of kneeling fangirls.
Their backs are facing Kyungsoo so group doesn't realize he's there, but some of the fans do and Kyungsoo practically sprints around the table so he can reach the line before the screaming starts.
The fangirl he cuts in front of doesn't even seem to care that he took her place to go next, and just starts stuttering, "Ka-ka-ka-kaisoo!" when Kyungsoo whispers an apology and gives her a grateful look. The mass of fans is shifting as they start to pinpoint his plain hoodie-covered figure, and the murmuring gets louder. Camera flashes go off against his back in rapid-fire symphony, making the actor cringe into himself.
So much for surprising Jongin, Kyungsoo thinks.
But to the actor's pleasant surprise, after he gets his sheet of paper, taken off Yixing's desk and stained with a pale green ring near the middle where his manager thoughtlessly placed his mug of tea, signed by a giggling Jongdae, a manically grinning Chanyeol and a smirking Baekhyun, with the lattermost having written a loud KAISOO IS REAL across the entire paper, underlined twice, Jongin doesn't immediately realize that it's Kyungsoo.
"Hey, what's up. How's your day going?" Jongin says automatically, looking first at the piece of paper handed to him. His brow furrows as he tries to find a space to write not already taken up by Baekhyun's autograph, though his lips quirk up automatically when he sees the word Kaisoo.
At Jongin's right, Joonmyun chokes on his bottle of water and starts coughing and wheezing as Minseok slaps his back roughly. At the other end of the table, Jongdae starts outright cackling.
"So you're a Kaisoo fan," Jongin says brightly, finally raising his head. "That's--"
Jongin goes slack-jawed.
Since the idol's bent forward with his elbows on the table, Kyungsoo, kneeling, gets a fantastic view of Jongin's eyes spreading so wide the mocha-brown of his eyes complete in perfect circles. There's a small heart sharpied on his cheek, probably by one of his bandmates, and a vague line smeared across his jugular where he must have accidentally messed up the bb cream.
Kyungsoo laughs at the look on his face. "Surprise," Kyungsoo says, pulling off his hood so that a flood of camera flashes go off at his back. The fans start screaming, and if anything, Jongin looks even more confused.
"But--you--here--hyung--what???"
"You're not going to properly greet your husband with a kiss?" Chanyeol calls from down the line, making Jongdae whoop in agreement. The screams of the fans jump up a full three octaves.
Jongin sputters and yells, "Shut up, Chanyeol-hyung!" and then curls over from the shock overload, his hands over his face. Kyungsoo, flushed with triumph, realizes now that he's smiling so hard that his cheeks are starting to ache.
.
.
Kai is hiding his face in his hands, the same position he was in at the fan-meet, but when he lowers them his white teeth are bared widely, and even as he licks his lips in embarrassment, he can't stop smiling.
The entire screen is awash with pink sparkles. Kai tries to say something and just laughs at himself when he can't get it out, shaking his head. The recorded audience swoons sound when his curved eyes meet the camera.
There's no need for words. The scene cuts out on Kai laughing breathlessly at himself.
.
.
Everything is going well until the fans start chanting for a kiss.
Jongin fumbles the pen in his hands and Kyungsoo's eyes pop in panic. To make it worse, the chinguline trio at the other end of the table picks up the chant in unison. Junmyeon smiles awkwardly at the cameras and Minseok continues to autograph fan signs like nothing's wrong.
Jongin and Kyungsoo look at each other, and Kyungsoo's mouth drops when he realizes Jongin looks like he's contemplating it, lips a little pursed. Flustered, he freezes in place, unable to do anything but watch as Jongin slowly leans in, hands flat on the table.
He pauses, just for a second or two, only inches away, and it's as if the whole world holds its breath when their audience hushes at once. Then a titter comes from the audience, breaking the spell, and Kyungsoo sees the exact moment Jongin loses his nerve.
The idol changes direction, moves up and Kyungsoo's eyes instinctively flutter shut when he feels lips press warmly to his forehead.
He breathes out, hears Jongin do the same, before it's drowned out by the cacophony of both disappointed moans and delighted shrieks from the fans. The WGM couple laugh bashfully at each other, and their happy bubble must be too much for Baekhyun because he throws his camera phone at Jongin to break it.
They end the fan-meeting with a shared Kaisoo selca and the sea of fangirls as a background, and the fans erupt with loud glee when the blond idol wraps his arm around Kyungsoo's narrow shoulders and raises his other arm high in the air to take their picture. Kyungsoo feels Jongin's head lean on his and barely remembers not to blink.
They get two good pictures before Chanyeol starts trolling in the back, all glittery makeup and victory signs.
.
.
Kyungsoo coughs, unaware of the pink triangle cat ears and matching swirls on his cheeks the editors have crudely drawn on. They bounce slightly everytime he speaks, and everyone from the 12-24 age demographic will be hooked on the trend for the rest of the year.
"After that," Kyungsoo continues, "The group manager took us to the backrooms where we had lunch and Jongin tried my homemade lunchbox. He seemed to like it, especially the daktoritang which I had to bring in a separate container so it wouldn't spill. I don't know why but Luhan-hyung insisted I make something with chicken. Maybe it's because Jongin's a chicken maniac like that one member from Shinee...."
Kyungsoo trails off in bemusement, leaving the captions to question how Kyungsoo's idol research touched on another idol group's eating habits but not on his own husband's.
"The only mistake I made was bringing too little." The actor nods thoughtfully. "Chanyeol-ssi has a bottomless stomach and the rest of the group is hardly better. They demolished the lunchbox while Jongin was focused on the chicken."
.
.
"Kyungsoo-hyung can seriously cook," Kai says, looking dreamy-eyed at the memory of it. "Man, if I could eat his cooking every day...."
Kai seems to realize then that he's still filming because he quickly straightens up with a low cough. "Anyways, I felt bad since I promised I would go to one of his filmings with lunch and he showed up at one of my fan-meetings before I could. So I asked my hyungs to help me make something for Kyungsoo-hyung."
Kai's face goes grave as he confesses, point-blank, "It was a disaster."
.
.
Somehow the group manages to utterly scorch beyond repair half of the studio's usable pots and pans before the director decides to give up. Staff members have been sent to retrieve several ingredients four times already after the group ran out of them from their botched recipes, and nearly everyone from the tiredly wheezing underlings to the anxious cameramen is now red-faced and sweaty.
The director himself is mindlessly swabbing sweat off his brow with a handkerchief the idol group's manager handed him as they stand side by side observing the burn marks left on the ceiling above the stove.
Burn marks. On the ceiling.
"How about we make a deal," the group's manager starts carefully, side-eyeing the speechless director. "I let you reveal some of the cooking footage in the show's behind-the-scenes portion if you keep the rest of it--preferably this business--" he waves at the ruined kitchen just as a splat of something soft and yellow hits the floor, "--off air. What do you say?"
It's not much of a deal, but even so, the manager turns an innocently expectant look on the director. It's one inspired by the face Baekhyun wore when he lost Chanyeol in Bulgaria last year and told the manager he just went to the bathroom.
Fun times.
The director garbles something and then makes a hopeless gesture at the burnt ceiling as he starts moaning lowly under his breath, a litany that sounds mostly like, "Why, why, why me, why this group, why...."
The staff glance warily at each other and make themselves look busy.
.
.
"I don't think I'm supposed to be saying this...." Kyungsoo breaks off into a nervous laugh and leans off his stool to ask someone beyond the camera, "Can I tell them, really? This isn't spoilers? ...No? Oh...okay then."
Kyungsoo sits back down even though he still looks skeptical that his director won't call Yixing later, screaming about spoiled plot lines and rebellious junior actors that don't know how to keep their mouths shut.
Kyungsoo sighs and starts explaining, eyeing the camera the whole time like he expects it to bite.
.
.
As the youngest actor in the production, Kyungsoo has to stick to several rules of actors' etiquette even though he's been in the business for a substantial number of years.
Today for example, he only has one scene to shoot, but he's expected to show up hours early and stay for the rest of the day to watch his sunbaes work. This is to show his respect for them, while being ready for when the director finally needs him.
Kyungsoo won't ever admit that he secretly thinks it's a huge waste of time. Yixing's not so quiet.
Yixing's normally cheerful demeaner is soured, the edges of his lips bent down like they were pressed into the creases. It's remarkable how his prominent dimples appear even when he's frowning.
"You only have one scene and it needs to be shot at dusk. So why were we called to report in at noon?" Yixing throws the script copy down on the table, making heads turn in their direction.
"Hyung," Kyungsoo hisses frantically. "Not so loud!"
"But Kyungsoo, it's not pragmatic. I don't understand even after this many years spent in Korea...." For both their sakes, Yixing switches to Mandarin to continue, but still Kyungsoo glances around for listeners because Jung Hee-sunbae was casted in a long historical drama that included Mandarin and who knows who else might also understand.
Kyungsoo manages to calm Yixing down so that he stews quietly while Kyungsoo practices his lines alone. Then after a few minutes, Yixing leaves and comes back with some strong Americanos, cream but no sugar for Yixing, and sugar but no cream for Kyungsoo.
He breaks out his smartphone and they spend the hours remaining as they've always done, snacking on shrimp chips, listening to mp3 songs and playing Angry Birds while Yixing draws comparisons between the birds and Kyungsoo's thick eyebrows.
The makeup noonas call the actor in around half past four and make Kyungsoo shrivel from the inside out when they coo over his large cheeks and pale skin and call him baby-faced. They lament loudly at having to cover it up with the fake blood but they slap it on anyways, and when they're done Kyungsoo looks like a horror movie extra.
Kyungsoo bares his teeth briefly at the mirror, watches his purple-black lip spread grotesquely and stares, awed by the effect.
"Waoh," says Yixing and gives him two thumbs up.
.
.
"We actually already shot this scene but the lighting for it was apparently too dark the last time and the director wanted it shot again. It's the scene where my character gets slapped in the face over and over again by his mini-mart employer."
Kyungsoo pauses as if he knows there's a recorded audience sound expressing its surprised dismay in a long Ohhhh.
"It's not as if I'm actually getting hurt though. The angle and the way we move together just makes it look like I'm getting hit really hard," Kyungsoo divulges, and then he rolls his eyes. "Of course then Jongin, with his spectacular timing, comes by just as we're filming that one scene and thinks I'm getting beat up on-site."
The interviewer tells him that the clip of Kai disrupting the filming by shouting Kyungsoo's name has been exceedingly popular, and Kyungsoo scowls.
"My director is still mad at me about that."
.
.
"I still don't understand why they didn't use a stunt-double for that scene!" Kai angrily huffs a strand of hair out of his face.
"Acting or not, what if they missed and really slapped hyung?" Kai folds his arms and scowls deeply enough to match his husband's expression. "I feel bad I got Kyungsoo-hyung in trouble but honestly, I don't regret a thing."
Recorded audience effect repeats Ohhhh.
.
.
After hearing the interviewer relay what Kai said about not regretting his disruption of filming, Kyungsoo's face goes black.
"See if I cook him anything ever again," the actor says archly.
.
.
With fake blood still flecking the side of his face, Kyungsoo is persuaded into taking a score of selcas with Jongin to commemorate his first visit to Kyungsoo's filming. He's wiping off the dark makeup bruising his eye when the first flash goes off, and he hits Jongin in the arm.
"I'm not ready yet!"
Jongin laughs undeterred and reels Kyungsoo in for the next shot despite his protests. "Say ki~mchi!"
"Oh my god, how old are you," Kyungsoo says after the flash goes off and then just as quickly snaps, "Take another one. I think I blinked in the last."
Jongin obliges him and they take a string of pictures like that, Jongin's arm tight over Kyungsoo's shoulder like he's scared he'll pull away, Kyungsoo stuck to Jongin's side after he initially fell into him and reluctant to move even with the idol's sharp hip bone nudging into the side of his soft lower stomach.
Yixing left earlier to give them some privacy, which is ridiculous when you consider the three unblinking camera fish eyes locked on them now.
A shiver runs up Kyungsoo's back, one that Jongin feels.
"What's wrong, hyung?" Jongin whispers, making Kyungsoo's ear heat up at his proximity.
"Nothing," Kyungsoo mumbles, and the next picture taken shows Kyungsoo looking down at his feet as Jongin glances at him, their expressions unreadable.
.
.
Three weeks until Christmas and the filming for the prime episode is scheduled in a little over a week when the news hits. Kyungsoo finds out when Yixing phones him and tells him to stay inside, to not leave his house at any cost, and to wait for Yixing to confirm with Jongin's management before he decides to say anything.
When Kyungsoo asks what's wrong, Yixing sighs heavily and tells him to check the news. Kyungsoo doesn't understand until he opens his laptop and finds Jongin's face frontlining the Naver website.
His eyes catch on the bolded words first: Kai, date, caught, girl group, secret, hug, WGM, kaisoo, cheater.
Scandal.
The accompanying blurry, hastily-taken pictures show Jongin, messy white strands distinguishable even under his beanie, with a girl, long-haired and small, walking side by side, touching hands and grinning at each other. They look like any pair of lovers enjoying a late night date.
Kyungsoo's phone is vibrating to life with a string of text messages and calls. The actor gives it a long look before he turns around and goes back to bed.
.
.
Kai's statement sounds rehearsed.
"First off, I would like to apologize to the WGM producers, directors and staff for causing so much trouble for them," Kai starts. His hands are folded contritely, his clothes bland and his hair combed in a neat part.
There are no effects; no captions. There is only the idol, looking as dour and repetant as any angel fallen from grace, and the silence is damning.
"...And to the fans, I'd like to say, I hope you continue to support me and Kyungsoo-hyung. I would hate it if this incident affected him in any way because I never meant to trouble him, or the fans. I hope this doesn't change how you feel about Kaisoo because--because--Kaisoo is real."
This is the mantra Kaisoo fans everywhere have taken up in support of the WGM couple, but coming out of the idol's mouth, rushed and unsteady, it sounds like a joke.
The look Kai gives the camera then is bleak like he knows the futility of his own words.
"Please be understanding."
and that is me casually breaking all your hearts like the evil egg i am.
AN: Part 5 + Epilogue is coming out next week, Sunday, at exactly the same time.
AN2: Thanks to the lovely Stef for helping beta this part! Couldn't have done it without you~
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