sj leave your bones on the alabaster stones
title: leave your bones on the alabaster stones
summary: before, during, after the lawsuit, Not in chronological order.
pairing/rating: hankyung/heechul, pg15
a/n: i don't think i've ever hated something so much. also written under extreme exhaustion and substance abuse \o//. not betaed.
I was away for a while
Heechul sits at his computer thinking he should post something light and happy and Obviously Avoiding the issues at hand, but his fingers are frozen and his head is pounding and there is pressure radiating from his heart down his arms and through the internet all the way to China, bearing down on Hankyung with every video comment and gossip article and news leak. And he changes it to black, slaps enter with a fingertip and thinks of stones pressing down on the chests of witches until they cry out in false confession.
His mobile starts to dance on the desktop, the only Chinese characters Heechul knows flashing neon and sparkly across the screen. He waits for the soft tones that indicate a new message before calling Youngwoon, the clatter of gifted red charms on a plastic case in his ear a fading judgment.
but I'm hoping someday you'll forgive me
Heechul lies in a hospital bed, feeling puffs of air in his nose and the weight and warmth of the iv in his elbow, and drifts in his mind, from the old dorms during his training days and the mirrored rooms of the dance studio, dark and quiet at night, shadows across Hankyung’s face when he dances, no hard stops or popping muscles but smooth lines and flowing movements, long hair across his face as he breathes hard through his mouth.
He thinks of his family and his childhood and he dreams nonsense dreams but it always comes back to Hankyung’s voice, gentle syllables that are rounder and softer than they should be and the brush of fingers over his wrist, up to the tube in his arm and down around the clip on his fingertip, lyrical humming in the spaces between the beeps and the trills and the pain.
though I don't deserve it
Heechul fixes his shirt, hands shaking, wipes at his eyes and his nose and turns away, I don’t think I can do this.
I'll cherish it well if you give me one of your new starts
They decide to call it drowning their sorrows, because like that it’s not sad and depressing, it’s pretty and poetic, and they wear beanies and hooded sweatshirts and dark pants and sunglasses and avoid the lights of the streetlamps, pretending it’s to not be recognized and not because they are hiding from what they are doing and who they are.
They stumble into Heechul’s bed as the sky lightens because no matter how hard and fast your life is falling down around your ears, the world keeps turning and the sun keeps shining,. Youngwoon passes out, muttering about alarms clocks and appointments and drooling into Heechul’s pillow while Heechul watches the sun from behind his eyelids and thinks about burning hydrogen and spinning nebulas, white dwarves at his fingertips.
just one more last chance
Heechul feels fingers slide across his ankle bone again and then skitter away, awkward and hopeful and trying. It’s not enough he thinks, and reaches for his socks.
I swear that I'll earn it
Heechul is snarling and snapping in his grip, and Hankyung pins him against the wall, fumbling with his boxers as he slides in, minimal lube and preparation, and Heechul screams into his own palm against the burn. Hankyung thrusts him hard against the wall, knocking Heechul’s spine against the tasteful wallpaper and bruising his knuckles with each hit. Heechul bites his neck hard enough to draw blood and drags his teeth across Hankyung’s neck to hurt, digs his hands into Hankyung’s forearms until the skin breaks and wetness colours his fingertips red, dripping from his nails to fall under their bodies rippling into each other and stain the carpet, the faintest of scarlet tides.
if you front me for now
Heechul is laughing drunk in his ear and the warm rush of the soju roars up Hankyung’s body to fog his senses and flood his brain and he smiles even though he missed the joke, because Heechul is leaning on his side and gesturing with his hands while he rockets on, words and dialect and phrases and Hankyung watches him and thinks about the way Korean is hard stops and whiny tones and pursed lips against Chinese, harsh tones and guttural anger and slick syllables. He wonders what they would sound like together.
I'm good for it I swear
Hankyung has won, kind of, and he doesn’t quite feel like sounding a victory cheer, he’s not quite sure where to go from this moment, sitting in a kitchen he has known all his life.
He reaches for his mobile and dials a number that will be ingrained in his muscle memory for as long as his mind is sound.
I'm better now I swear
Heechul is sleeping when the news breaks, dozing off on the couch and curled into the upholstery, Heebum purring in his lap, and then Sungmin is talking fast into his ear, looking shaken and asking over and over did you know did he tell you
Heechul gets online, he haunts fan-boards and forums and slogs through search engine results, and he reads everything he can find. The other members gather in the living room, he can hear the low rumble of their murmurs through the walls of his room, but he keeps the door latched and turns up the volume on his speakers when the raps come hesitant at his door.
in earlier days, they'd persecute people
Hankyung looks at the ceiling and wiggles his fingers over the carpet until they curl around Heechul’s ankle l love you he says and Heechul pulls away.
They'd carry them off, and hobble their legs
There were roommates at the dance school and at the SM dormitories and the Super Junior apartments and the hotel room and the Super Junior M apartments and hotel rooms and even all their dressing rooms and it was awful. It’s never easy having a roommate, because you are cramped into tight quarters with your quirks and your flaws and your pet peeves, all doubled or even quadrupled.
Kibum is calm and quiet and meticulous and respectful, light burning long into the night, the clatter of his keyboard and the glow of his screen.
Jay is busy and easygoing and gullible and sweet, in and out as he travels with his band and learns his lyrics and practices, always practices.
Heechul is non linear and loud and crazy and fluid, irritating and maddening and addicting, dangerous temper and mood swings, flowing like quicksilver until he saturates Hankyung’s side, his bed and his possessions and his soul.
for lesser offenses, than how I have harmed you
When he comes around, when the fog clears and his brain shakes the dust off and his eyes blink the grit away, he’s alone in the room and there is dull radiating pain everywhere, body aches and pins and needles racing up his leg like nettles, sharp and stinging and he gasps in pain, hand fumbling for a grip in the sheets.
Hankyung leans over him and pushes him back down, presses the call button and speaks softly, except the words get twisted in the air between his mouth and Heechul’s ear, and all he can hear is the tone, gentle and easy and Hankyung, and he won’t take Hankyung’s hand, he won’t, but Hankyung pulls blotting paper from a pocket and cleans his face, still murmuring scrambled words Heechul can’t understand. Heechul watches Hankyung’s face, eyes screwed against the pain, watches his mouth move and feels the pressure of his fingertips through thin paper and thinks of baby chicks who break out of eggs and imprint on humans, relationships that shouldn’t exist but do, wonders how long it takes ducks and chickens to forget.
and still you allow me to walk free of pain
Heechul ignores a lot of things about Hankyung. He ignored Hankyung’s tears about his parents and his homeland, he ignores Hankyung’s awful puns he learnt from Donghae, he ignores Hankyung’s requests for him to be quiet, he ignores Hankyung’s awkward attempts to take care of him.
Hankyung doesn’t ignore anything about Heechul. He certainly doesn’t care about everything, but he will always say so a rough just do whatever or a noncommittal noise or a laugh or a smile. He likes to rile Heechul up, poking him or hitting him or touching him until Heechul rounds on him with a snarl on his face and a smile in his eyes.
Heechul sits in a conference room with his manager, his band and his contract, Hankyung a thousand miles in distance away and throws his support to him, all the while trying to remember why he’s never ignored Hankyung himself, and wondering if it’s possible to start now.
though I punish myself
When he finally breaks down and calls Hankyung, it goes straight to voicemail, the automated robot speaking quick Chinese and then the sound of the tone. Heechul doesn’t leave a message, he knows Hankyung will understand from the caller history. Well, he would have thought Hankyung would understand, but he can feel uncertainty sucking him into a vortex of second guessing and reassessment, and he decides he should curl in bed with a mp3 player rather than fall into the abyss.
I will never settle
Heechul pushes him away and slides down the wall, shoulders shaking and chest heaving, still trembling from his orgasm, and Hankyung reaches for him, tugs his own pants up and tries to hold him. Heechul slaps his hands away. I hate you he chokes, I just fucking hate you and Hankyung sits beside him, back to the wall with their shoulders touching and feels the distance between them stretch into the horizon.
the debts I've incurred for scorning the face
Once Hankyung had touched Heechul’s tongue with no subtext, no consequences, so sexual overtones or undertones. Heechul was dozing, drugged from his surgery, but kept jerking awake and staring at Hankyung, big eyes vague and unfocused, and he kept reaching to touch his tongue, eyes crossing to try and peer at the stitches.
Hankyung knocks his hand down, scolding him lightly, but Heechul keeps moving his hands to his mouth, looking distressed and young and tired, and finally Hankyung puts his fingers to Heechul’s mouth and Heechul opens trustingly, tongue sliding out to rest on Hankyung’s fingers, a small warm wet weight, pink with ugly black lines up the side, bright and angry red around them, and he whines in his throat, still unable to look at it.
Hankyung makes eye contact, murmurs okay okay at him in Korean and then in Chinese hou hou and Heechul eases back against his pillows, looks up at Hankyung, smiling around Hankyung’s fingers, face a grimace of faint bruises and tongue inflamed and swollen around the metal and thread holding him together, picked up and stitched together from the pieces lying by the side of the road.
of absolute beauty, and measureless grace
The nurse is scowling, dark frown on a pretty face and jerky moments, and Hankyung steps to the side to allow her to pass. She tries to smile at him, grimacing over a full tray of hospital fare, and tells Hankyung in an angered mutter that Heechul is refusing to eat. She doesn’t seem worried, just pissed, so Hankyung wanders in and settles into the chair propped by the bed. Heechul is flicking through a magazine, looking bored, and smiles at him tiredly.
Hankyung frowns, and tilts his head at him, because Heechul is gaunt and skinny and grey, limp hair and bones showing, and Hankyung makes Heechul eat the three peppermints he digs out of his pockets, tries to wheedle him into eating the next provided meal. Heechul laughs at him and turns up his nose and talks about diets and weight-loss, and Hankyung’s frown grows.
The next time he visits the nurse catches him with a paper bag smelling of sheepishness and grease and lectures him about nutrition and balanced meals and Heechul gets peppermints again, but the time after that he sneaks in an iced coffee and two sandwiches and sits there staring at Heechul until it’s all gone. Heechul shifts in his bed, full and sleepy and dozes off, gaze unreadable and eyes fixed on Hankyung’s hands flexing around the aluminum rail, bag crinkling in his lap until Heechul’s eyes flutter shut and don’t reopen.
and though I once mocked you
Heechul plays stories in his mind before he sleeps, usually nonsense or from a drama or little situations he thinks are funny, remembering when his dream had been a writer or an artist, little comics and homespun stories.
Sometimes he likes to think he’s rising through the atmosphere, extending a fingertip to cover a sparkle in the sky, touching stars, he imagines, and sometimes he takes Hankyung with him, burning in impossibly hot gases and freezing solid in the vacuum, spinning weightlessly out into the black.
I'm dying to pay for it now
Heechul’s mobile trills and vibrates and sings on his bed, on his desk, on his skin.
I’m dying to pay for it now
Hankyung is rolling his wrists and his hips and popping his chest and twisting his head, the music is statically loud from the cheap stereo and there are three Hankyungs moving in the mirrors, but Heechul focuses on the blue paint and the white clouds and lets Hankyung’s movements jump out at him like the puzzles you have to stare out until you suddenly understand.
so hand me the rocks to help weigh me down
Hankyung signs the papers with a hand that feels alien to his body and bows to the company executive, stumbles forward with the slap on the back his lawyer gives him and is numb all the way home.
He sits at his kitchen table and eats the lunch his mother makes for him, her hand a rough caress across his face before she leaves quietly. He sits there for a long time after he finishes eating, and then drags his own hand across his face, imagines longer fingers and manicured nails.
and tether my legs with a cord tightly bound
Hankyung likes to think prayers not reserved for the religious, that they are wishes you can’t control, things you want to badly but are helpless to change, things that are up to someone else.
He’d prayed once, moved from hard plastic chairs smelling of bleach and sickness to rough wooden benches and murmured desperately for good news and a swift recovery, and Heechul had sat with him, hand warm on his thigh and asked him why. prayers are wishes you don’t truly believe will come true he says, and they sit under cheap stained glass in the quiet candlelight and hope instead.
to the end of an anchor thrown into the sound
76 missed calls, 77, 78. Seventy six blows on their hearts, seventy seven olive branches and seventy eight times Heechul wants Hankyung to hurt. The phone falls silent before Heechul can feel seventy nine instances of regret.
and test me to see if I will rise against the worst that it can get
Hankyung convinces the company man in charge, convinces Eeteuk, to let him into Heechul’s hotel room and sits, back to the bathroom door and talks until his voice rasps dry in his throat and his head leans on his knees as he dozes off, exhausted. He likes to think he can feel the warmth from Heechul’s back seeping through the wood from the other side of the door, but when he pushes his hand to the paneling it’s cold and unyielding against his palm.
I wasn't well for a while
Hankyung is bent over the toilet bowl, retching vomit and tears and snot, cramping into knots and throat burning from bile. Heechul slides through the door and flips the fan on, wets his fingers to draw across his neck and wipes his face with toilet paper. He massages Hankyung’s ribcage until it stops heaving, and Hankyung passes out in his lap, fuzzy cartoon pajama pants against his cheek and cold tile warming under his arms.
Hankyung is slumped on the bathroom rug, hands on his stomach, feeling pain in his intestines and his sides and his back, so tired he cannot sleep. Zhou Mi and Siwon come in and fuss at him, put washcloths on his forehead and hover until he drags to his feet and ushers them to their rooms. He falls into a restless doze, cotton threads scratchy all down his skin.
I savored the things that I knew were sure to destroy me
Heechul kisses him five minutes before he leaves for the airport, morning breath and fuzzy tongue and half asleep, tugs Hankyung down to his mouth when Hankyung leans over to shake him and whisper goodbye, takes Hankyung by surprise. He leans automatically into the kiss, responds enthusiastically, tumbles onto the bed and slides his hands down the sheets that drape over Heechul’s body, burrows into the blanket.
Hankyung texts him five minutes after Super Girl is released, watching it on Ryeowook’s laptop and exchanging high-fives, says he will take Heechul out to the most expensive restaurant Heechul can find when he gets back.
Hankyung calls him five minutes before his lawyer leaves and asks Heechul to talk to him, just talk. Heechul pauses for a second, concerned, but then babbles about the members and his cats and his schedule until he says softly that he has to go, and Hankyung thanks him, quietly, listens to the volumes spoken in the hesitation before Heechul says goodbye and stays on the line to listen to the click of Heechul severing their connection.
Heechul pulls him aside five minutes into the farewell party and wordlessly presses a hotel card key into his hand, eyes flat and cold and achingly distant.
and that seemed to hold me
Hankyung has always been able to read between Heechul’s lines, in Korean or in silence over the phone and the lines of his body I will make it enough he says, and Heechul hesitates with his laces wrapped around his fingers.
that seemed to carry me where I couldn't go
His muscles are sore and his joints creaky and his voice rough for the concert, but none of the fans care, they scream until they cry and know every lyric, wave banners, buy the merchandise super junior: the final concert.
Heechul hangs over Donghae and makes Siwon give him a piggyback ride for old posterity’s sake and then just at the end, turns and hugs Hankyung and it’s so familiar Hankyung feels it like a deep breath after rising above water, he misses it like he would miss oxygen. Heechul is bony and thin and wiry strong, long fingers and slender hands and his head fits into Hankyung’s chest like it always has. The fans are screaming and the music is roaring and Hankyung remembers the flush of air against his face and the clatter of a mask on his foot, Heechul’s arms around his waist and his voice steel-strong against the clamour of the crowd it’s okay it’s okay.
on the strength of my own
Heechul took Hankyung to Disneyland, once. Well, no he didn’t, he took Hankyung to an cheap knock off amusement park and they were forced to leave before they could do anything. Heechul posts their pictures online and pulls Hankyung over to get his okay, slides a finger across his screen don’t we look good, kyungie and flinches and squawks at the hit he gets for the nickname, fingers immediately rubbing at where they’d just hit.
And Hankyung wears the wristband until it wears through and falls off, and then he keeps it in a desk drawer, lying across a picture of his mother and curling around the corner of a pack of cigarettes.
well, I should've known
Hankyung arrives on set of the new music video and is immediately whisked away by stylists, makeup and hair and clothes.
Heechul kisses him against the prop car when the rest file out for lunch, quick and hard and desperate, pulling away too quickly and looking sideways at the doorway, and Hankyung pulls him behind a sound shell so he can kiss him properly, eyes open to watch Heechul’s close.
that gets me nowhere
Hankyung lies in his bed, in his bedroom that he has spent less time in than his shared rooms in China than his dorm rooms at the dance academy, than his home in Korea, and thinks of Super Junior. He thinks of his manager and he thinks of Zhou Mi and Henry and Eeteuk and Kibum, but mostly he thinks of Heechul at the Super Show, his arm hooked in Hankyung’s and his weight leaned on Hankyung’s shoulders.
And he thinks of Heechul in his bed, smiling and stretching and yawning, a soft sleepy ball that curls into Hankyung’s side and fits itself to Hankyung’s back and sprawls across Hankyung’s front and emits affectionate grumbles and slow lazy kisses.
I've learned that now I swear
By the time they leave the hole-in-the-wall bar, Hankyung is calling persistently, hanging up on the third ring and dialing again, and Heechul pulls Youngwoon into a convenience mart and buys them beer, drinks it sitting on the curb and watching headlights wrap around corners and fade into the night.
They go to the discount store, stumbling through aisles and reaching clumsily for whatever catches their eye, piling it onto the register and moving sideways to avoid the cameras as they leave, leaning heavily and giggling.
Youngwoon presents him with an Oscar statue, for all your acting work and there is something Heechul can hear in his tone, or maybe he is imagining in his tone, but as Youngwoon laughs and stumbles away down the road Heechul smashes the statue on the sidewalk just to hear cheap gold plastic snap and shatter on concrete as his phone buzzes once more against his hip and falls silent.
well, I wasn't sure that I could
“I don’t think I can do this,” Heechul says, and Hankyung closes his eyes against the edges of his words.
well I wasn’t sure that I could
“But we can,” he says, and Heechul looks at him with shadowed lashes and sharp teeth and a wounded heart.
well I wasn’t sure that I could
“We can,” says Hankyung, and he says it like a prayer.
well I wasn't sure that I could
Heechul thinks the abyss wouldn't be so bad if Hankyung was falling with him.
But I can
summary: before, during, after the lawsuit, Not in chronological order.
pairing/rating: hankyung/heechul, pg15
a/n: i don't think i've ever hated something so much. also written under extreme exhaustion and substance abuse \o//. not betaed.
I was away for a while
Heechul sits at his computer thinking he should post something light and happy and Obviously Avoiding the issues at hand, but his fingers are frozen and his head is pounding and there is pressure radiating from his heart down his arms and through the internet all the way to China, bearing down on Hankyung with every video comment and gossip article and news leak. And he changes it to black, slaps enter with a fingertip and thinks of stones pressing down on the chests of witches until they cry out in false confession.
His mobile starts to dance on the desktop, the only Chinese characters Heechul knows flashing neon and sparkly across the screen. He waits for the soft tones that indicate a new message before calling Youngwoon, the clatter of gifted red charms on a plastic case in his ear a fading judgment.
but I'm hoping someday you'll forgive me
Heechul lies in a hospital bed, feeling puffs of air in his nose and the weight and warmth of the iv in his elbow, and drifts in his mind, from the old dorms during his training days and the mirrored rooms of the dance studio, dark and quiet at night, shadows across Hankyung’s face when he dances, no hard stops or popping muscles but smooth lines and flowing movements, long hair across his face as he breathes hard through his mouth.
He thinks of his family and his childhood and he dreams nonsense dreams but it always comes back to Hankyung’s voice, gentle syllables that are rounder and softer than they should be and the brush of fingers over his wrist, up to the tube in his arm and down around the clip on his fingertip, lyrical humming in the spaces between the beeps and the trills and the pain.
though I don't deserve it
Heechul fixes his shirt, hands shaking, wipes at his eyes and his nose and turns away, I don’t think I can do this.
I'll cherish it well if you give me one of your new starts
They decide to call it drowning their sorrows, because like that it’s not sad and depressing, it’s pretty and poetic, and they wear beanies and hooded sweatshirts and dark pants and sunglasses and avoid the lights of the streetlamps, pretending it’s to not be recognized and not because they are hiding from what they are doing and who they are.
They stumble into Heechul’s bed as the sky lightens because no matter how hard and fast your life is falling down around your ears, the world keeps turning and the sun keeps shining,. Youngwoon passes out, muttering about alarms clocks and appointments and drooling into Heechul’s pillow while Heechul watches the sun from behind his eyelids and thinks about burning hydrogen and spinning nebulas, white dwarves at his fingertips.
just one more last chance
Heechul feels fingers slide across his ankle bone again and then skitter away, awkward and hopeful and trying. It’s not enough he thinks, and reaches for his socks.
I swear that I'll earn it
Heechul is snarling and snapping in his grip, and Hankyung pins him against the wall, fumbling with his boxers as he slides in, minimal lube and preparation, and Heechul screams into his own palm against the burn. Hankyung thrusts him hard against the wall, knocking Heechul’s spine against the tasteful wallpaper and bruising his knuckles with each hit. Heechul bites his neck hard enough to draw blood and drags his teeth across Hankyung’s neck to hurt, digs his hands into Hankyung’s forearms until the skin breaks and wetness colours his fingertips red, dripping from his nails to fall under their bodies rippling into each other and stain the carpet, the faintest of scarlet tides.
if you front me for now
Heechul is laughing drunk in his ear and the warm rush of the soju roars up Hankyung’s body to fog his senses and flood his brain and he smiles even though he missed the joke, because Heechul is leaning on his side and gesturing with his hands while he rockets on, words and dialect and phrases and Hankyung watches him and thinks about the way Korean is hard stops and whiny tones and pursed lips against Chinese, harsh tones and guttural anger and slick syllables. He wonders what they would sound like together.
I'm good for it I swear
Hankyung has won, kind of, and he doesn’t quite feel like sounding a victory cheer, he’s not quite sure where to go from this moment, sitting in a kitchen he has known all his life.
He reaches for his mobile and dials a number that will be ingrained in his muscle memory for as long as his mind is sound.
I'm better now I swear
Heechul is sleeping when the news breaks, dozing off on the couch and curled into the upholstery, Heebum purring in his lap, and then Sungmin is talking fast into his ear, looking shaken and asking over and over did you know did he tell you
Heechul gets online, he haunts fan-boards and forums and slogs through search engine results, and he reads everything he can find. The other members gather in the living room, he can hear the low rumble of their murmurs through the walls of his room, but he keeps the door latched and turns up the volume on his speakers when the raps come hesitant at his door.
in earlier days, they'd persecute people
Hankyung looks at the ceiling and wiggles his fingers over the carpet until they curl around Heechul’s ankle l love you he says and Heechul pulls away.
They'd carry them off, and hobble their legs
There were roommates at the dance school and at the SM dormitories and the Super Junior apartments and the hotel room and the Super Junior M apartments and hotel rooms and even all their dressing rooms and it was awful. It’s never easy having a roommate, because you are cramped into tight quarters with your quirks and your flaws and your pet peeves, all doubled or even quadrupled.
Kibum is calm and quiet and meticulous and respectful, light burning long into the night, the clatter of his keyboard and the glow of his screen.
Jay is busy and easygoing and gullible and sweet, in and out as he travels with his band and learns his lyrics and practices, always practices.
Heechul is non linear and loud and crazy and fluid, irritating and maddening and addicting, dangerous temper and mood swings, flowing like quicksilver until he saturates Hankyung’s side, his bed and his possessions and his soul.
for lesser offenses, than how I have harmed you
When he comes around, when the fog clears and his brain shakes the dust off and his eyes blink the grit away, he’s alone in the room and there is dull radiating pain everywhere, body aches and pins and needles racing up his leg like nettles, sharp and stinging and he gasps in pain, hand fumbling for a grip in the sheets.
Hankyung leans over him and pushes him back down, presses the call button and speaks softly, except the words get twisted in the air between his mouth and Heechul’s ear, and all he can hear is the tone, gentle and easy and Hankyung, and he won’t take Hankyung’s hand, he won’t, but Hankyung pulls blotting paper from a pocket and cleans his face, still murmuring scrambled words Heechul can’t understand. Heechul watches Hankyung’s face, eyes screwed against the pain, watches his mouth move and feels the pressure of his fingertips through thin paper and thinks of baby chicks who break out of eggs and imprint on humans, relationships that shouldn’t exist but do, wonders how long it takes ducks and chickens to forget.
and still you allow me to walk free of pain
Heechul ignores a lot of things about Hankyung. He ignored Hankyung’s tears about his parents and his homeland, he ignores Hankyung’s awful puns he learnt from Donghae, he ignores Hankyung’s requests for him to be quiet, he ignores Hankyung’s awkward attempts to take care of him.
Hankyung doesn’t ignore anything about Heechul. He certainly doesn’t care about everything, but he will always say so a rough just do whatever or a noncommittal noise or a laugh or a smile. He likes to rile Heechul up, poking him or hitting him or touching him until Heechul rounds on him with a snarl on his face and a smile in his eyes.
Heechul sits in a conference room with his manager, his band and his contract, Hankyung a thousand miles in distance away and throws his support to him, all the while trying to remember why he’s never ignored Hankyung himself, and wondering if it’s possible to start now.
though I punish myself
When he finally breaks down and calls Hankyung, it goes straight to voicemail, the automated robot speaking quick Chinese and then the sound of the tone. Heechul doesn’t leave a message, he knows Hankyung will understand from the caller history. Well, he would have thought Hankyung would understand, but he can feel uncertainty sucking him into a vortex of second guessing and reassessment, and he decides he should curl in bed with a mp3 player rather than fall into the abyss.
I will never settle
Heechul pushes him away and slides down the wall, shoulders shaking and chest heaving, still trembling from his orgasm, and Hankyung reaches for him, tugs his own pants up and tries to hold him. Heechul slaps his hands away. I hate you he chokes, I just fucking hate you and Hankyung sits beside him, back to the wall with their shoulders touching and feels the distance between them stretch into the horizon.
the debts I've incurred for scorning the face
Once Hankyung had touched Heechul’s tongue with no subtext, no consequences, so sexual overtones or undertones. Heechul was dozing, drugged from his surgery, but kept jerking awake and staring at Hankyung, big eyes vague and unfocused, and he kept reaching to touch his tongue, eyes crossing to try and peer at the stitches.
Hankyung knocks his hand down, scolding him lightly, but Heechul keeps moving his hands to his mouth, looking distressed and young and tired, and finally Hankyung puts his fingers to Heechul’s mouth and Heechul opens trustingly, tongue sliding out to rest on Hankyung’s fingers, a small warm wet weight, pink with ugly black lines up the side, bright and angry red around them, and he whines in his throat, still unable to look at it.
Hankyung makes eye contact, murmurs okay okay at him in Korean and then in Chinese hou hou and Heechul eases back against his pillows, looks up at Hankyung, smiling around Hankyung’s fingers, face a grimace of faint bruises and tongue inflamed and swollen around the metal and thread holding him together, picked up and stitched together from the pieces lying by the side of the road.
of absolute beauty, and measureless grace
The nurse is scowling, dark frown on a pretty face and jerky moments, and Hankyung steps to the side to allow her to pass. She tries to smile at him, grimacing over a full tray of hospital fare, and tells Hankyung in an angered mutter that Heechul is refusing to eat. She doesn’t seem worried, just pissed, so Hankyung wanders in and settles into the chair propped by the bed. Heechul is flicking through a magazine, looking bored, and smiles at him tiredly.
Hankyung frowns, and tilts his head at him, because Heechul is gaunt and skinny and grey, limp hair and bones showing, and Hankyung makes Heechul eat the three peppermints he digs out of his pockets, tries to wheedle him into eating the next provided meal. Heechul laughs at him and turns up his nose and talks about diets and weight-loss, and Hankyung’s frown grows.
The next time he visits the nurse catches him with a paper bag smelling of sheepishness and grease and lectures him about nutrition and balanced meals and Heechul gets peppermints again, but the time after that he sneaks in an iced coffee and two sandwiches and sits there staring at Heechul until it’s all gone. Heechul shifts in his bed, full and sleepy and dozes off, gaze unreadable and eyes fixed on Hankyung’s hands flexing around the aluminum rail, bag crinkling in his lap until Heechul’s eyes flutter shut and don’t reopen.
and though I once mocked you
Heechul plays stories in his mind before he sleeps, usually nonsense or from a drama or little situations he thinks are funny, remembering when his dream had been a writer or an artist, little comics and homespun stories.
Sometimes he likes to think he’s rising through the atmosphere, extending a fingertip to cover a sparkle in the sky, touching stars, he imagines, and sometimes he takes Hankyung with him, burning in impossibly hot gases and freezing solid in the vacuum, spinning weightlessly out into the black.
I'm dying to pay for it now
Heechul’s mobile trills and vibrates and sings on his bed, on his desk, on his skin.
I’m dying to pay for it now
Hankyung is rolling his wrists and his hips and popping his chest and twisting his head, the music is statically loud from the cheap stereo and there are three Hankyungs moving in the mirrors, but Heechul focuses on the blue paint and the white clouds and lets Hankyung’s movements jump out at him like the puzzles you have to stare out until you suddenly understand.
so hand me the rocks to help weigh me down
Hankyung signs the papers with a hand that feels alien to his body and bows to the company executive, stumbles forward with the slap on the back his lawyer gives him and is numb all the way home.
He sits at his kitchen table and eats the lunch his mother makes for him, her hand a rough caress across his face before she leaves quietly. He sits there for a long time after he finishes eating, and then drags his own hand across his face, imagines longer fingers and manicured nails.
and tether my legs with a cord tightly bound
Hankyung likes to think prayers not reserved for the religious, that they are wishes you can’t control, things you want to badly but are helpless to change, things that are up to someone else.
He’d prayed once, moved from hard plastic chairs smelling of bleach and sickness to rough wooden benches and murmured desperately for good news and a swift recovery, and Heechul had sat with him, hand warm on his thigh and asked him why. prayers are wishes you don’t truly believe will come true he says, and they sit under cheap stained glass in the quiet candlelight and hope instead.
to the end of an anchor thrown into the sound
76 missed calls, 77, 78. Seventy six blows on their hearts, seventy seven olive branches and seventy eight times Heechul wants Hankyung to hurt. The phone falls silent before Heechul can feel seventy nine instances of regret.
and test me to see if I will rise against the worst that it can get
Hankyung convinces the company man in charge, convinces Eeteuk, to let him into Heechul’s hotel room and sits, back to the bathroom door and talks until his voice rasps dry in his throat and his head leans on his knees as he dozes off, exhausted. He likes to think he can feel the warmth from Heechul’s back seeping through the wood from the other side of the door, but when he pushes his hand to the paneling it’s cold and unyielding against his palm.
I wasn't well for a while
Hankyung is bent over the toilet bowl, retching vomit and tears and snot, cramping into knots and throat burning from bile. Heechul slides through the door and flips the fan on, wets his fingers to draw across his neck and wipes his face with toilet paper. He massages Hankyung’s ribcage until it stops heaving, and Hankyung passes out in his lap, fuzzy cartoon pajama pants against his cheek and cold tile warming under his arms.
Hankyung is slumped on the bathroom rug, hands on his stomach, feeling pain in his intestines and his sides and his back, so tired he cannot sleep. Zhou Mi and Siwon come in and fuss at him, put washcloths on his forehead and hover until he drags to his feet and ushers them to their rooms. He falls into a restless doze, cotton threads scratchy all down his skin.
I savored the things that I knew were sure to destroy me
Heechul kisses him five minutes before he leaves for the airport, morning breath and fuzzy tongue and half asleep, tugs Hankyung down to his mouth when Hankyung leans over to shake him and whisper goodbye, takes Hankyung by surprise. He leans automatically into the kiss, responds enthusiastically, tumbles onto the bed and slides his hands down the sheets that drape over Heechul’s body, burrows into the blanket.
Hankyung texts him five minutes after Super Girl is released, watching it on Ryeowook’s laptop and exchanging high-fives, says he will take Heechul out to the most expensive restaurant Heechul can find when he gets back.
Hankyung calls him five minutes before his lawyer leaves and asks Heechul to talk to him, just talk. Heechul pauses for a second, concerned, but then babbles about the members and his cats and his schedule until he says softly that he has to go, and Hankyung thanks him, quietly, listens to the volumes spoken in the hesitation before Heechul says goodbye and stays on the line to listen to the click of Heechul severing their connection.
Heechul pulls him aside five minutes into the farewell party and wordlessly presses a hotel card key into his hand, eyes flat and cold and achingly distant.
and that seemed to hold me
Hankyung has always been able to read between Heechul’s lines, in Korean or in silence over the phone and the lines of his body I will make it enough he says, and Heechul hesitates with his laces wrapped around his fingers.
that seemed to carry me where I couldn't go
His muscles are sore and his joints creaky and his voice rough for the concert, but none of the fans care, they scream until they cry and know every lyric, wave banners, buy the merchandise super junior: the final concert.
Heechul hangs over Donghae and makes Siwon give him a piggyback ride for old posterity’s sake and then just at the end, turns and hugs Hankyung and it’s so familiar Hankyung feels it like a deep breath after rising above water, he misses it like he would miss oxygen. Heechul is bony and thin and wiry strong, long fingers and slender hands and his head fits into Hankyung’s chest like it always has. The fans are screaming and the music is roaring and Hankyung remembers the flush of air against his face and the clatter of a mask on his foot, Heechul’s arms around his waist and his voice steel-strong against the clamour of the crowd it’s okay it’s okay.
on the strength of my own
Heechul took Hankyung to Disneyland, once. Well, no he didn’t, he took Hankyung to an cheap knock off amusement park and they were forced to leave before they could do anything. Heechul posts their pictures online and pulls Hankyung over to get his okay, slides a finger across his screen don’t we look good, kyungie and flinches and squawks at the hit he gets for the nickname, fingers immediately rubbing at where they’d just hit.
And Hankyung wears the wristband until it wears through and falls off, and then he keeps it in a desk drawer, lying across a picture of his mother and curling around the corner of a pack of cigarettes.
well, I should've known
Hankyung arrives on set of the new music video and is immediately whisked away by stylists, makeup and hair and clothes.
Heechul kisses him against the prop car when the rest file out for lunch, quick and hard and desperate, pulling away too quickly and looking sideways at the doorway, and Hankyung pulls him behind a sound shell so he can kiss him properly, eyes open to watch Heechul’s close.
that gets me nowhere
Hankyung lies in his bed, in his bedroom that he has spent less time in than his shared rooms in China than his dorm rooms at the dance academy, than his home in Korea, and thinks of Super Junior. He thinks of his manager and he thinks of Zhou Mi and Henry and Eeteuk and Kibum, but mostly he thinks of Heechul at the Super Show, his arm hooked in Hankyung’s and his weight leaned on Hankyung’s shoulders.
And he thinks of Heechul in his bed, smiling and stretching and yawning, a soft sleepy ball that curls into Hankyung’s side and fits itself to Hankyung’s back and sprawls across Hankyung’s front and emits affectionate grumbles and slow lazy kisses.
I've learned that now I swear
By the time they leave the hole-in-the-wall bar, Hankyung is calling persistently, hanging up on the third ring and dialing again, and Heechul pulls Youngwoon into a convenience mart and buys them beer, drinks it sitting on the curb and watching headlights wrap around corners and fade into the night.
They go to the discount store, stumbling through aisles and reaching clumsily for whatever catches their eye, piling it onto the register and moving sideways to avoid the cameras as they leave, leaning heavily and giggling.
Youngwoon presents him with an Oscar statue, for all your acting work and there is something Heechul can hear in his tone, or maybe he is imagining in his tone, but as Youngwoon laughs and stumbles away down the road Heechul smashes the statue on the sidewalk just to hear cheap gold plastic snap and shatter on concrete as his phone buzzes once more against his hip and falls silent.
well, I wasn't sure that I could
“I don’t think I can do this,” Heechul says, and Hankyung closes his eyes against the edges of his words.
well I wasn’t sure that I could
“But we can,” he says, and Heechul looks at him with shadowed lashes and sharp teeth and a wounded heart.
well I wasn’t sure that I could
“We can,” says Hankyung, and he says it like a prayer.
well I wasn't sure that I could
Heechul thinks the abyss wouldn't be so bad if Hankyung was falling with him.
But I can