Birds of a Feather

Musk and lavender, a rich clean scent, at once masculine and delicate. Junmyeon breathes it keenly in, holds it in his lungs, reluctantly releases it. The fragrance is the fusion of them both – a marriage of aromas now entering its fourth year. Slowly he unlocks his eyes and faintly sighs. The face that meets his is peaceful in its sleep, a stark contrast to its waking restiveness. Junmyeon observes it carefully, as ever, awed at the uncommonness of the composition. He thought it rare at first sight, when it was still half undefined – the eyes, the nose, the lips, the curves and angles all seamlessly aligned – but the seven years that have since elapsed have honed it into such refinement as daily baffles him. If I had my face to choose, Sehunnie, I’d have yours, he reflects, as gently he brushes back to place the loose lock of raven hair from the sleeping boy’s brow. His skin is smooth and fair, though not as fair as Junmyeon’s, his eyebrows long and sculpted, his nose high-bridged and level, his lips as ripe as plums – Junmyeon’s will invariably part in longing if he stares at them at length. With feathered fingers he traces their outline, his fangs pressing hungrily down on his own. He swallows audibly, then quickly retracts his hand and tucks it under the coverlet, anxious of the sudden noise’s waking the younger man. Pull yourself together, Kim Junmyeon; that was much too close for comfort. He works to normalise his breathing, the hasty thudding of his heart. I guess that’s it for cardio; I’ll just do a few sets of push-ups and my morning workout’s done. He chuckles mutedly, amused by his own witlessness.

The elder’s stifled laughter at last stirs Sehun. Sluggishly he opens his eyes and softly smiles. “Good morning,” he mutters groggily. “Sleep well?”

Junmyeon’s newly settled pulse reaccelerates at the sight. “Mm. You?” is all the eloquence he can muster.

Sehun puckers and purses his lips in tandem. “Not bad.”

“Ly,” Junmeyon amends mechanically, “badly – you should use an adverb when describing manner, not an adjective.”

“A grammar lesson at the crack of dawn,” Sehun sniffs and rolls his eyes. “Yeokshi Kim Junmyeon, the consummate professor’s son.”

“What can I say? Runs in the blood,” Junmyeon concedes, his beam a blend of smugness and self-consciousness.

Sehun’s turns duly dry. “It,” he retorts, “it runs in the blood – a proper sentence requires a subject, remember?”

Thwarted, Junmyeon hangs his head, crinkles his nose and laughs. “Touches.”

“Oho, is it French lesson next?!” Sehun pursues, forever defiant of Confucius in his treatment of the elder.

It’s always been this way between them. Kim Junmyeon, professor’s son and idol-aspirant, was seventeen and in his fourth year of training under SM when Oh Sehun, then fourteen and freshly fetched into the fold, first met him – a short, slight boy, with pasty skin and nervous eyes, as awkward in his gait as he was in his speech. The other trainees had gossiped to Sehun about Junmyeon’s father having bought him his place in the company’s training program – how else could one explain the inclusion of so lacklustre a character in so brilliant a business? Sehun had smiled at their censure, but inwardly could naught but sneer at their small-mindedness. An ugly little duckling, you say? But I see a swan in the making. He’ll change his feathers soon enough and spread his wings so far, you’ll never be able to catch up to him if you flap your short ones till you drop.

“Don’t stick your neck out when you laugh; it makes you look like a chicken – a scrawny one,” were the first words Sehun ever said to Junmyeon. Unheard of! A novice, a junior in both age and rank addressing his senior with so little regard. Had the elder smacked him right there and then none would have faulted him for it. Yet Kim Junmyeon, thusly slighted, observed Sehun considerately and said, “I’m sure you have a point. I’ll remember not to do it next time.”

That’s a different kind of coolness, Sehun had decided, at the same time resolving to cling as dearly to this swan-in-training as convention would allow. “Good. I’ll make sure you do – that and about twenty other things as well.”

To Oh Sehun’s undisclosed delight, the older boy proceeded to straighten his neck and shoulders obediently and then, and only then, permitted himself to laugh. “What’s your name?”

“Oh Sehun.”

“Oh Sehun…that’s a good name; they won’t change it. How old are you?”

“Fourteen.”

“Fourteen?” Junmeyon’s thick, ill-defined eyebrows had knitted together in doubt. “Aren’t you a bit too short for your age?”

Arching his own tapered ones criticially, Sehun had riposted, “You’re one to talk!” but then grudgingly added, “Hyung.”

This impudent deference or deferential impudence has been the bed on which they’ve built their brotherhood.  Sehun will tease and banter, testing his boundaries without fully overstepping them, while Junmyeon gradually and deftly shapes the younger’s being through a mixture of indulgence and prevention. 

“Pardonne-moi,” Junmyeon persists, his face aglow with puckishness.

An imp with the face of an angel, Sehun reflects affectionately as he studies Junmyeon’s cheerful visage. I was right; you really did turn into a swan…a somewhat awkward one, but a swan nonetheless. They’ve been waking up to each other for four years now, and in four years Sehun has never once failed to marvel at the elder’s transformation, even having foretold it.  His complexion that once was sickly pale has since acquired a healthy rosiness, the correctness and delicacy of his features that was hidden by uncertainty made clearly visible, his body that was small and stooping worked into vigour and shapeliness. I wouldn’t trade my face for yours, but always waking up to it doesn’t sound that bad.  “Joe-song-ham-ni-da – that’s Korean for ‘forgive me’, sound familiar?”

“Don’t I always? No matter how cheeky you get.”

Sehun takes his phone from the bedside table, flicks open the screen and points it at Junmyeon. “Mm, that’s why you’re my Most Beloved Suho Hyung,” he says, playing at petulance, as he states the heading under which the elder’s number appears in his contacts. 

“Joesonghamnida,” Junmyeon pleads, fighting tooth and nail to keep from chortling.

Sehun replaces the phone on the bedside table, his head on the pillow and exhales aloud. The roommates stare at each other in silence a moment, appraisingly, appreciatively.

“What?” the elder speaks at length, no longer able to bear the strain of silence.  

Sehun shakes his head and lets out a low sigh. “One day, when I open my eyes in the morning, you won’t be there. I sometimes try to imagine that day, but I can’t.”

Junmyeon shifts uncomfortably under the coverlet, flinching as his foot inadvertently brushes Sehun’s. “Can’t…or don’t want to?”

“Can’t and don’t want to,” Sehun replies without reserve, his expression growing graver by the syllable.

With as much of coolness as he can command, Junmyeon returns: “Some things we do whether we want to or not.”

“I know, Hyung; I’ve done enough of them over the years, haven’t I?”

At these words and the memories that prompt them, at Sehun’s sudden air of adulthood, the elder’s chest convulses. I know you have…I’m sorry. As he’s often been made to do in the past and will surely be forced to do in future, Junmyeon sets aside personal sympathies for the sake of collective survival, reducing their shared history and the boy’s residual suffering to fodder for farce. “Aww…uri aegi, you sound like a man when you talk like that.”

Still Sehun does not relent. “I am a man…isn’t that the problem?”

A duel, is it? Alright then: en guard! Junmyeon’s chest tenses, but his face retains its playful mien. “Nope. You’re a good-looking man, but I don’t think you’d make much of a woman.”

“Not as much as you, I’m sure,” Sehun darts back, his expression as smug as a cream-fed cat's.

Coquettishly the elder arches his brows. “You like it?”

“No. I like you as you are – a man,” Sehun replies with seeming earnestness, but then relapses into ridicule, “man of men, ssang namja Suho!”

“Alright, alright, stop teasing your elder,” Junmyeon scolds indulgently.

 “I’m taller, so I get to tease.”

The elder’s expression turns abruptly parental. “That’s true. I still don’t know how it happened, though. You were such a shorty when I met you.”

Sehun purses his lips as if to muzzle himself, but in the end succumbs: “I partied till the sun down.”

“Yah, Oh Sehun!”

 “Sorry, that was stupid,” Sehun concedes with a sheepish chuckle.

 “Yes, it wa –“ The strident cry of the alarm-clock startles Junmyeon to momentary muteness. He scrambles to locate the switch and turn the damned thing off before it rouses the entire house an hour earlier than their schedule demands. “Some things we do whether we want to or not,” he mutters to himself, his unwillingness to leave the warmth of their bed for the steam and sweat of the exercise room increasing by the tick of the dial. “I should get up. Don’t want to miss my morning workout, especially when I don’t know if we’ll be home in time for me to do it tonight.” He props himself on his elbows and starts to get out of bed, but Sehun grabs his arm.

Babyishly he entreats: “Five more minutes, OK? It’s freezing here.”

The elder shakes his ruffled head in mock reprimand, “Am I your hot water bottle?” then promptly cringes at the realisation of the amunition he's provided the younger with and duly warns, “Do not answer that!”

Sehun merely smirk and draws Junmyeon back to his side. Another intermezzo, too loud a silence. They gaze at one another, the younger fixedly, the elder with fluttering eyes. Too close. Too close, Sehun…you’re always too close.

“I wonder what she’ll be like,” Sehun says suddenly, snapping Junmyeon’s stream of consciousness.

“Who?” Junmyeon returns, intrigued by the unexpected introduction of a she into the equation.

“Your wife,” Sehun replies, his face contorting slightly at the title and the future it implies. “Prim and proper and petite, just like you, probably. A good girl from a good family, well-read and elegant. You’ll walk around looking like a CF for healthy living and have three peach-and-cream-coloured babies named JunDae, JunSoo and JunHyun in honour of the members…and a Collie, definitely a Collie.”

Briefly Junmyeon considers scolding Sehun for having crossed a line they’ve never bothered drawing in the first place, but the latent sorrow in the younger man’s speech and manner and his own swelling frustration prevent him, so that, at last, it all comes spewing out of him in fits and bouts: “Maybe she’ll be tall, taller than me, and have a sharp chin and pink pouty lips and cunning cat-eyes that always seem to see something the rest of us don’t and sneer at our stupidity. Maybe she’ll be a spoilt brat, with overly expensive tastes, who always needs cossetting and uses up all the shampoo and soap in one go because ‘personal hygiene is very important, you know’. Maybe she’ll be a terrible cook, with horrible table manners, who always chides me for being messy while using my messiness as an excuse for never cleaning up herself. Maybe she’ll be annoyingly cool without even trying and look annoyingly good first thing in the morning, while the rest of us wake up looking like blowfish. Maybe she’ll stick to me like a tick, but then bite off my fingers the minute I try to reach out to her, just for the fun of seeing me flustered.”

“And if she is?” Sehun pursues, deathly serious.

Junmyeon looks him dead in eye. “She’d be perfect for me. If she were. Alright, I should really get up now – it’s getting late.”

Well done. You finally said it. Took you long enough, too. If she were…that’s what it all boils down to. Two men living together, sleeping together, calling each other 'Baby' and wearing couple shirts – what a farce! Kim Junmyeon, professor’s son, our soaring swan could never stoop so low, not for Your Sehunnie, not for anyone. It’s better to stare at me and touch my face when you think I’m sleeping…you’re such a bloody fraud, always were. The first time you saw me, do you even know how obvious you were, how obvious you’ve been, how obvious you are every time you look at me with those pretty pleading eyes? You aren’t an angel or an imp, Leader-ssi, you’re just a man who wants another man and doesn’t have the guts to do anything about it. You’re a coward and for seven years you’ve been trying your damnedest to turn me into one as well. Do you think you know me? Do you think you control me? You’re a mouse; I’m a cat, a very patient one, but a cat nonetheless. Perfect for you if she were…we’ll see about that. “Well, if you’re getting up, at least tuck me in. I’m cold.”

Junmyeon hangs his head in surrender and soundlessly laughs. “Oh my god, how old are you?!” he exclaims as he drags himself out of his side of the bed and over to Sehun’s. He starts to draw the coverlet over the younger man’s shoulders, but promptly loses his balance as Sehun’s long arms lock round his waist, pulling him into the bed, then pining him down.

“Not that old, but very, very cold,” Sehun hisses loudly as he grins at Junmyeon with the gleam of a predator. He squares his chin, his lips and sets them at Junmyeon’s.

This isn’t happening, the elder attempts at self-reassurance as the younger forces his mouth undone. Sehunnie…this isn’t happening…this isn’t you…it can’t be. His head begins to haze, his tongue to grow numb at the unremitting offensive from Sehun's. I can’t breathe. It’s too much. Now starved of air, he struggles to tear his face away from the younger's. But, denied his lips, Sehun simply moves on to his collar. Junmyeon shudders at the unfamiliar sensation of having his neck kissed, his torso fondled; his entire organism prickles at it, cold currents shocking his spine, while his lower body turns painfully hot. I have to stop this…while there’s still time, he tells himself, grasping at the remnants of his reason as a drowning man might at a floating piece of wood. “Oh Sehun,” he pants, “stop playing!”

Unexpectedly, Sehun withdraws his face from the elder’s neck at once. But instead takes Junmyeon’s hand and presses it to his groin. “Does it feel like I’m playing…Hyung?”

Junmyeon tries to retract his hand, but Sehun fixes it firmly in place, faintly groaning at the friction.

“We can’t,” Junmyeon insists, his words a plea where they ought to be a command.

Undeterred, Sehun counters: “Why not? You wanted to exercise, didn’t you? I think this qualifies.”

Please, please, please! We’ll ruin everything if we do this. It’s not as easy for me, Sehun, I have to work at it…endlessly, endlessly work at it. You crawl with the grace of a runner; I run with the clumsiness of a crawler. You don’t know how hard it is, how long it’s taken me to get this far. Please, just let me be. I’m not a swan, just a feathered mouse. I don’t have wings; I can’t fly away from you if you pin me down.  “Please…” He clenches his eyes to keep the tears from spilling out.

Sehun breathes out heavily, puts his mouth to the elder’s cheeks and gently kisses them dry. “Some things we do whether we want to or not,” he says in a soft, thoughtful voice, the likes of which he rarely employs. “Well, I want to do this, Hyung. But if you can look me in the eyes and tell me that you don’t, that you haven’t wanted to every day since the day we met, I’ll stop and make as though none of this had ever happened. Look me in the eyes and say it…if you can.”  

Slowly Junmyeon opens his eyes. The visage they encounter, though as familiar to him as his own, is to Junmyeon a constant source of wonderment – the eyes, the nose, the lips, the curves and angles all immaculately aligned. Yet staring at him now is not the boy of fourteen years or the youth of twenty-one; these lips, this nose, these eyes, these words, this heart are those of a man - the man he loves. For the first time in four years of furtive caresses, Junmyeon allows himself an open one. Slowly he sweeps his fingers over each of Sehun’s features, his chin, his neck, his chest. He loosens his shirt and frees him of it, then removes his own and tosses it aside.

 “They’ll all be up soon,” he says, more for his own sake than for Sehun's.

The younger parts his legs and deftly parks himself between them, pressing his hardened hips into Junmyeon’s. “I know,” he says as he studies the elder with eyes that seem to hold some secret knowledge, still indecipherable to Junmyeon. “We won’t get very far today, I’m afraid. But then, practice makes perfect, and this is just the dry run.”