Chapter 11: My Body's Broken, Yours is Bent

ALL KILL! Congratulations hyung! Shining SHINee forever :) Our next coffee is on me.

The text comes from an unrecognised number, and Jonghyun first thinks that the most dreadful thing has happened and a sasaeng has managed to get hold of his phone number.

Upon rereading the text, though, he realises that it doesn’t sound like anything like a fangirl, and more like a congratulatory text from an acquaintance. It could be one of the many, many hoobaes they meet at the music shows, and whose names Jonghyun cannot always remember. 

Who is this?

A reply comes almost immediately.

I’m not falling for that again. Seriously, when are you free? Or do you want to come over to my place for dinner?

Jonghyun grins despite himself. If this person is inviting whoever she’s texting over for dinner by text, the member to whom this text must be directed to would be quite familiar with her. He ruled Minho out immediately, since the sportiest member usually spent his days playing football or with the legion of hyungs he’s managed to collect.

That leaves Kibum and Jinki. It’s not one of Kibum’s usual circle, because he has their number as well. He doesn’t know Jinki’s circle half as well, but he cannot imagine how one of Jinki’s friends might have come across his number.

He decides to find out. 

That depends. What will you cook?

It’s a silly question, but Jonghyun figures that if the person replies with something exotic or western, it’s probably Kibum’s friend, and if the answer is something like kimchi stew, it’s probably Jinki’s friend.

Cook? Milk and honey ramyeon, I guess :P

The laugh dies in his throat.

Milk and honey ramyeon.

There is only one person in relation to whom that abominable snack bears any meaning, and that person is Taemin.

He wonders, for a brief moment, how Taemin got his number and what gives him the guts to text him after the bloody mouth he gave him the last time they met, but he finds the answer to his question by himself.

Kibum.

That he had the cheek to give Jonghyun’s number to Taemin is unimaginable. Did he really think that the two of them could ever reconcile?

Check your contacts, you little . And if you text me again, I’ll hunt you down and kill you.

The phone is silent after that.

~

Kibum is just settling down for a nap, in between their pre-recording for Inkigayo earlier in the morning and an appearance on Gag Concert later on, when his room door is thrown open loudly.

Jonghyun is the culprit, and murder is written on his face. Kibum can’t help the instinctive way he backs up on the bed, but he’s pretty sure he’s not done anything worthy of this glare.

“Who the hell gave you the right to give my number to Taemin?”

“I…”

Before he can come up with a coherent excuse, his attention occupied with the reason why Taemin’s called Jjong out of the blue, Jjong points the phone at him and says “Tell him to delete it.”

“Okay.”

Jjong stills for a moment, taken aback by his quiet acquiescence, but it is obvious that he’s still fuming. The veins in his neck stand out, corded, and his fingers are clenched so tightly around the phone that the case distends.  

“I can’t believe…you know, I’m sort of glad we broke up, because I would not have been able to put up with this .”

Such a dramatic proclamation requires an equally dramatic closing, and Jjong gives him that by slamming the door on his way out. Kibum doesn’t move, waiting for his heartbeats to slow and the adrenaline to leave his bloodstream. He knows better than to wait for the hurt caused by Jjong’s harsh words to disappear.

~

Shin Sekyung.

Kibum has never met her, but right now there isn’t a person in the world he hates more than her; with her s and softly curved face and gentle eyes, she’s everything Kibum can never be.

They’re all gathered around the meeting table in Lee Soo Man’s office, looking at the photos that some news site or another had sent in earlier that evening, with the warning that the photos would be published with or without SM’s commentary on the same.

Jinki is sitting between him and Jjong, a small mercy for which he is grateful, looking grave as if he’s at a hanging. Maybe he is.

“What exactly is your relationship with Sekyung?” The question is asked by one of the PR people, a woman with blonde streaks in her long black hair. On another day, he’d have appreciated the quality of her highlights.

Jjong swallows, and when he speaks his voice is timid. “We’re not…it’s casual.”

“Is this the only time you’ve seen her?”

“Uh…we’ve hung out a couple of times.”

This comes as a surprise. Kibum knows he’s been going to the gym frequently, but he’s never imagined that Jjong has been dating as well. He can’t tell whether Jjong is lying to the PR people or whether he’s been lying to him – not that Kibum’s ever asked whether he’s been out sleeping around, not after everything that’s happened – and he realises that he doesn’t trust any of the words that spill from Jjong’s pretty lips anymore.

“We’ll say that they have been dating,” Soo Man says, after not having spoken a word during their entire meeting.

“But, songsaenim-” Jin protests, looking smaller than Kibum’s ever seen him, “That will ruin the entire band. The photos are not even that incriminating.”

“It won’t. How many sasaengs are outside the dorm gates? Barely any. SHINee’s fans just aren’t as enthusiastic about the members as the rest of my bands, and this will work in Jonghyun’s favour. It’ll show a more mature side of the band, fitting with their Lucifer image. And when he finally breaks up with her, maybe six months down the road, he can write a sad song and say it’s about her, and the fans will lap it up. More importantly, it should distract people from the other scandal.”

He’s taking a gamble, Kibum realises. SHINee is being used to test the fandom’s acceptance of idols dating, and they are being used as lab rats because they’ve been tarred by the Taemin scandal.

Their careers are on the line, again.

When Kibum looks at the pictures, though – those pictures of Jjong smiling broadly with his arm slung around Sekyung’s shoulders as they exit the hotel they must have ed in – he couldn’t care less about his career.

It scares him.

“You can leave. I don’t think I have to warn anyone else about the consequences of failing to be careful about things like this.” Soo Man dismisses them with the wave of a hand, and he follows Jinki’s lead when the elder bows before leaving the table. “Jin, Gyeongshik, I want a word with you two.”

Kibum keeps his thoughts to himself until he’s back in the room he shares with Jjong. He doesn’t know what to say, or what he wants.

They’re not together, they never have been.

All those glances, those secret touches, the proclamations of never letting Kibum go, they meant nothing to Jjong. They were never supposed to mean anything. It’s only Kibum, with his susceptible, easily fooled heart, who gave those meaningless little gestures more significance than they deserved.

Jjong shuffles the clothes in his drawer, and his silence kills Kibum as much as those pictures did. He’ll never forget them, he thinks, nor this pain that makes him want to claw his chest open and exchange his bleeding, crippled heart with something that won’t break as easily.

He climbs into his bed and draws the covers over his head.

He hasn’t slept alone since before Taemin left, but tonight he does.

~

He calls Taemin, and is answered on the second ring; Taemin must have had his phone out.

“Taemin?”

“Hello?”

“It’s me.”

“Hyung, I…” Taemin sounds short of breath, like he’s afraid. “I accidentally texted Jonghyun, I didn’t know-”

“Yeah, he told me. Don’t worry about it.”

“He…I didn’t mean it, really. J is just above K, and I don’t have any other contacts between the two of you, and he responded to the first text nicely, so I didn’t even check to see if it was you before replying.”

“I know, Taemin-ah. What did you want to tell me?”

“It’s…you have an all kill. And it’s only been two days, but I hear Dream Girl everywhere I go. So, congratulations!” Taemin sounds about as happy as Kibum feels, but his heart warms nonetheless. “Coffee’s on me the next time.”

“It better not be instant coffee from some shopping mall food court,” he says, but the truth is that Taemin could serve him raw unroasted coffee beans and he’d still be happy.

Taemin laughs, genuinely this time. “Ani, I know what your tastes are like.”

“I don’t think I can come out anytime soon, though.”

“I know what it’s like, remember? Don’t worry, the offer’s open forever.”

They chat for a few minutes more, and Kibum learns more about the fandom’s reaction to Dream Girl in that brief time than he does in meetings with SM’s PR team. He only hangs up when he hears Jin’s voice outside the door, the manager no doubt coming in to summon him to their next schedule.

It isn’t until midnight, until they’re all back at the dorm with instructions to be at the salon at 6.00am tomorrow, that he gets the chance to talk to Jjong alone. The vocalist won’t sleep, Kibum knows, because he’s gotten used to sleeping at home during the extended break his injury gave them. 

He knocks before entering Jjong’s room, something he wouldn’t have done yesterday.

Jjong is on the bed, laptop open, with his headphones plugged into his ears. He looks up curiously, but that open expression hardens when his gaze falls on Kibum.

“What?”

If only Jjong could see how he’s trembling inside. Kibum has always been good as masking his emotions, but there was a time when Jjong would have seen through his defiant gaze and straightened shoulders.

“Are you going to tell the managers about me seeing Taemin?”

“I should.”

He knows better than to leap for joy at this statement, because it merely means that Jjong has something to hold over him for the foreseeable future.

“So, are you going to or not?”

Jjong shrugs, playing hard to get, but there is an iciness to his demeanour that Kibum’s never dealt with before. He cannot understand why Jjong is so angry about something that has never and will never affect him, so he cannot react in a way that will mollify the elder’s anger.

Kibum still has one card up his sleeve, but he had hoped not to play it. Now, it appears that he has no choice.

“I would rather get kicked out of the band than to stop talking to Taemin,” he says, parroting a line he had practiced saying in front of his mirror until the tremor in his voice had disappeared. “Do you really think the band can deal with losing another member? With losing me?”

Jjong’s lips have thinned into a white line, and his hands are balled into fists. Then, just as Kibum fears that this argument will descend into a physical fight, Jjong’s face goes blank.

“Do whatever you like, see whoever you want,” he says. “I honestly don’t care. I’m busy, so are we done?”

A victory is a victory, however pyrrhic, and having gotten what he came for, Kibum leaves. The rest of the house is silent, save for Jin’s snoring, and he goes into the kitchen for water. Comme des and Garcons are there in their pen, awake but quiet, and Kibum cuddles the dogs in search of some comfort. He’s not in love with Jjong anymore, so why is his rejection so painful?

~~~

It never stops hurting, watching Kibum walk away from him.

When Kibum had walked into the room, Jonghyun had looked up and seen the fear in his eyes that he’d tried to mask with his stiff, squared shoulders and uncaring stance. Where did they go so wrong, he had wondered then, that Kibum could see him as an enemy, as someone to be feared, instead of a friend and confidante?

~

“I love you,” he says, extending the bunch of fake roses to Kibum, who looks stunning even though he’s been forced to wear what looks like a giant pink plastic bag. It’s a joke, a spur-of-the-moment thing, but as he says the words he realises that he means them. This mean rich man he’s supposed to be playing is less of a role than it is a reflection of the person really is now; Kibum’s other half who’ll stick by him no matter what nonsense they get up to. Kibum’s lips are moving, but the words fly by too fast for Jonghyun to catch them, and before he knows it he’s being enveloped in a hug. He hopes that Kibum cannot feel how fast his heart is beating, or that the cameras don’t record the blush that must be colouring his face.

They finish filming for the day at about four in the afternoon, and Jjong is so worn out by the baby that he decides to take a well-deserved nap. He’s just spread his tatami out – and he ing hates tatamis, he decides, because it’s unspeakably stupid to have to roll and unroll your ing bed every ing day – and crawled under the covers when someone pokes his side. He doesn’t have to turn over to know that it is Kibum.

“What?”

“What are we doing?” he asks softly, a question for a question. He knows, Jonghyun realises. He didn’t miss it the way Jonghyun hoped he would.

Jonghyun chooses to feign ignorance. “Huh? I was napping, at least until-”

“That’s not…how are you so stupid? What are we, Jjong? What was that earlier?”

I want you, Jonghyun thinks sleepily, I want you to always be there when I look up, babbling something I don’t understand. I want this stupid show to never end, so that I can give you flowers and tell you I love you every single day.

But he knows well enough that he can never have that.

“It…Kibum-ah,” Jonghyun turns around then, and looks him in the eye. Kibum’s eyes are guarded, but he knows him well enough by now to know that Kibum is as afraid of whatever is between them as he is. “We…as the only son, I have duties to my family. I can’t-”

Kibum pushes him then, hard enough that the tatami is knocked askew, and despite having to catch his balance, enough of his attention is trained on Kibum that he can see that impenetrable mask that he hates so much come up. “God, are we even speaking the same language? I asked you what you thought you were doing, giving me roses on camera, when you know well enough that we agreed to tone it down. We’re…” he stutters then, voice hitching, mask blurring, and Jonghyun can’t breathe because this is Kibum making a bonfire of his heart, “we’re just…”

“Friends. Best friends.” He can give Kibum this, at least. “And that won’t change when all of this is over.”

“Yeah, friends,” Kibum says, voice still a bit wobbly. “You remember that the next time you pull those ing stunts on camera.” 

But it wasn’t a stunt, Jonghyun protests in his mind. When he picked up the bouqeut, he hadn’t thought he was going to confess; he just intended to make Kibum happy by giving him flowers. He gets up to leave, this strong, beautiful boy he’s hurt so much, and Jonghyun sighs because he knows that there is no way he’s going to sleep after this. “Wait, Kibum-ah. Let’s go walk around town for a bit, I’m sick of being stuck in this house.”

“I…weren’t you napping?”

“I’m not tired anymore. Come on, I’ll buy you jjukkumi bokkeum from that place near the bus stop.”

“Fine.”

They walk around town for hours, until the sun goes down and the chill reaches their bones even through their thick winter coats. They talk about simple things; the relative quietness of this town compared to Seoul, the nose-picking habit of one of the cameramen, the papercut on Jinki’s hand that hasn’t healed yet. Kibum is just as reluctant to return as he is, although Jonghyun cannot understand why. It takes a lot of work to understand Kibum.

When they get on the bus, tired of walking, Kibum slips his glove off to lace his fingers with Jonghyun’s. He doesn’t say anything for the entire ride, but their hands remain twined on his lap.

This is their truce, Jonghyun knows then. They’re too addicted to each other to let go and too uncertain of the future to risk commitment, so they’ll stay here in this purgatory known as friends-with-benefits.  

~

Come White Day, Jonghyun finds himself more lonely and depressed than he can ever remember being. He had hoped that this thing with Seop would be a passing fancy, but Kibum appears to actually be serious about this relationship. He doesn’t know what the usually aloof boy sees in Seop, but it’s clear that he’s nowhere near tired of the model.

Kibum laughs at some text Seop has sent him, and Jonghyun feels his damaged heart break just a little more. There was a time when only he could make Kibum laugh like that; there was a time when Kibum was only his. 

So when they win for an unprecedented fourth time, he locks his arms around Kibum and stares into the camera, hoping that Seop is watching the live broadcast. You may have him for the moment, he thinks, but you will never be able to make your relationship public. And sooner or later, the same thing that broke us up will break you apart too.

~~~

February and most of March fly by in a blur for Seop; he’s so busy preparing for Seoul Fashion Week that he doesn’t really have the time to regret not being able to meet Key as often as he did in December and January. He watches all of his stages, of course, and texts him various encouraging comments and reviews Key’s airport fashion, but they don’t actually meet face to face.

Now that he’s got a moment to breathe between fittings, he takes the opportunity to call Key. They both prefer to text, but he’s gone so long without hearing Key’s voice that he cannot really remember what it sounds like outside of Dream Girl.

“Seop?”

“Hey, how are you?”

“Fine, I guess. Busy. I’m sure you are, too.”

“Actually, that’s what I was calling about. Will you guys be coming to Fashion Week this year? Maybe we can hang out after?”

Key sighs. “I…we have Music Bank on that day, I think. And a couple of interviews and stuff. I tried, Seop, I really did, but-”

“Hey, don’t worry about it.” He’s disappointed, of course, but he had known from the beginning that dating an idol would come with these sorts of drawbacks. “I guess I’ll catch you some other time?”

“Yeah. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s fine, really. Wish me luck.”

“Ganbatte!” Key yells, loud enough that Seop holds the phone away from his ear. “Fighting! And, good luck, yeobo.” Key hangs up immediately after, and Seop can’t help laughing. He should thank Taemin, really, because they’ve gotten a lot closer after he turned into Key’s confidante about all things Taemin.

A voice behind him snaps Seop out of his daydreams.

“Let me guess, the idol boyfriend said something funny?”

Kwan Woo is a bit like Key in his disdain for sentimentality, and Seop gifts him with a generous smile. He doesn’t smile very often, because he needs to stay wrinkle-free, but he’s in a good mood.

“Nope. The idol boyfriend called me yeobo, and I didn’t even have to ask him to do it this time.”

“Ugh. Come on, Dom wants to swap your blazer for one with shorter sleeves.”

“I swear, that man will tinker with the outfits until the minute I walk down the runway. He’ll take the sleeves in now, and in an hour he’ll want them long again. Half the people in the room won’t even notice that I have a blazer in the first place.”

“Yes, well, such is life. You’re here to be a clothes hanger, not to have opinions. Now get up.”

~

Imagine his surprise, then, Key walks in backstage looking like an angel descended from the heavens. His pale golden hair is parted in the centre and his bowed lips are just the right shade of , so much so that even the models do a double take when they see him. Kwan Woo gapes, mouth hanging open, as Key waves at him; Seop’s told him enough about his stylist for him recognise the other without being introduced.

Seop stands dumbstruck as Key walks up to him. His boyfriend looks smug, annoyingly so, but he cannot begrudge him that because having him here is truly the best thing that’s happened all year. Key poses for pictures next to him, looking very much like the cat that ate the canary; it’s a message, it seems, to the world. This is my boo, Key’s face says, and he’s cuter than yours.

This ends up being the most difficult show of Seop’s career, because of the sheer effort it takes not smile and dance his way down the runway.

~~~

Kibum is not even at home when he gets the call; he’s at Mama Miya with Seop, Andy Kang and a bunch of their model friends who are celebrating the successful completion of fashion week, and the first time he phone rings he lets it go to voicemail.

When the ringtone starts playing again, he answers. It’s Jin.

“Where are you?” his manager asks, sounding almost angry.

“Out having dinner. I know it’s late, but we don’t have anything on tomorrow.”

“Jonghyun’s been in an accident. I’m going to the hospital now. If anyone asks you anything on the way back to the dorm, your only answer is ‘no comment’. Do you understand?”

The only words that he can get a grasp on are Jonghyun and accident. The chatter of his friends suddenly sounds distant, as if he’s hearing it inside a tunnel. The edges of his vision blur, and Kibum realises distantly that he’s dancing on the edge of a panic attack.

“Wh...what-”

“I said, do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll call you as soon as I can.”

He hangs up and kicks his shoes off under the table, digging his toes into the cool parquet flooring of the restaurant. It’s a trick they were taught as trainees, a way to ground themselves whenever the bright lights and screaming fans become too much. Slowly, the room comes back into focus.

Seop leans in, looking concerned. “Was that work? I think you should stop drinking, you look a bit red.”

“Yeah,” he says, in answer to both. “That was Jin. I need to go.”

“Do you want a lift?”

“It’s fine, I’ll catch a cab. I doubt any one of us is fit to drive right now.” He wants to tell Seop what happened, but the words won’t leave his mouth; he needs time to himself to come to terms with this, and if he tells Seop he will have to deal with his boyfriend’s sympathy, which he doesn’t have the strength to do right now.

The cool air outside the restaurant is a relief; it dispels some of the fogginess caused by the soju.

Jjong.

They’ve not had the best relationship of late, but he’s never, not even in his angriest moments, wishes any sort of harm onto the older boy.

Accident could mean a million things, from tripping over a sidewalk to colliding with a truck – Kibum shakes his head to rid himself of the image of Jjong’s small, vulnerable body being pulped under a truck – and his short conversation with Jin was not enough for him to gauge the seriousness of the accident.

Kibum walks all the way back to the dorm, barely noticing the distance because he’s busy alternately cursing Jjong for being so accident-prone and offering prayers to gods he no longer believes in for Jjong’s safety. The sun is almost up now, and the sky framing their apartment block is a pinkish-orange that on other days he’d think of as hopeful, but that only scares him today. He doesn’t want the sun to come up on a world without Jjong.

The sound of the television reaches him before anything else. Minho and Jinki are both sitting in front of it, expressions unreadable. In this warmth of the house, his thick winter jacket becomes suffocating, and Kibum only realises how heavily he’s been sweating when he slips it off.

“Any news?” he asks.

Jinki looks surprised. “You don’t know? Didn’t Jin call you?”

He takes his phone out, and the battery is dead.

“I didn’t get his calls.”

“Jonghyun-hyung is fine,” Minho says then. “He rear-ended a cab. Jin said something about him breaking his nose, but he’s not injured otherwise and nobody else is either.”

Thank you, Kibum offers silently to whichever god granted his prayers, thank you so much.

“So he’s in the hospital?”

“Yeah. The managers want us to stay away for a while because there were apparently no reporters on the scene, and no reporters in the hospital, so they want to keep this quiet for as long as they can.”

That’s fine with Kibum, because he doesn’t know what he’ll say to Jjong. “Okay. I’m going to shower. Can you do me a favour and put my phone on the charger?”

~~~

It’s just a fracture.

That’s what the doctor had said.

It’s just a fracture. We’ll operate as soon as the swelling goes down, and you’ll be fine in a week or two after that.

Which is great, because their comeback is a fortnight away and they really cannot afford another delayed comeback, but it’s not much of a comfort to him right now.

He’d fallen asleep while his parents and sister were still here, along with the manager and various other SM PR officials. He’d woken up, though, to a dark room and an excruciating pain in his face.

The bandages around his nose make it hard to breathe, and Jonghyun represses the urge to remove them. His nose is fractured, not just broken, and the doctor had impressed on him the importance of staying still so that the bones wouldn’t shift around too much.

“You wouldn’t want to be paying me for a nose job, too, eh?” he’d said.

His phone is on the table by his bedside, and Jonghyun reaches for it, hoping for some distraction.

And distraction is what he gets. The fans have apparently been informed, in very brief terms, of his accident. Thankfully, unlike Kibum’s trip to the hospital, no one has photos of him. His twitter is full of wishes for his good health and speedy recovery. There are too many text messages for him to even contemplate reading, although, he notes, not a single one from the one person he wants to hear from the most.

He misses Kibum.

Four years ago, Kibum would have called him until he answered, and scolded him and cried over the phone. Now, Jonghyun thinks miserably, he’s probably with Seop, laughing at him.

As if his nose needs any more breaking, he’d say, wine glass in hand.

True, Seop would agree as he swirled his own wine, his lopsided nostrils give me nightmares. As a model with a perfectly proportional face, I can’t imagine living with such a handicap.

Crying is painful, so Jonghyun stops that train of thought when he feels tears forming in his eyes.

He has long learnt how to sleep without Kibum by his side, but tonight his bed feels emptier than usual. Even without closing his eyes, he can imagine what Kibum looks like when he sleeps; curled slightly, with his arm under the pillow and his lips parted just enough to look kissable.

~

That night, as he does every night, Kibum puts Yoogeun to bed. They’re not allowed to be alone with the baby for legal reasons, and the side effect of that is that someone from the production team or one of their managers is always around. This time it is Jin, and he gets antsy when Kibum doesn’t come back after a quarter of an hour has passed. Jonghyun is tempted to tell him that putting a baby down is not the same as shoving it into a closet and telling it to go to sleep, but he holds his tongue. Instead, he volunteers to go and see what is taking so long.

The sight that greets him makes him laugh and choke at the same time. Kibum is curled up on Yoogeun’s tatami, snoring lightly, and Yoogeun is wide awake, using Kibum’s sleeping body as a track for his toy cars. It is so domestic, so beautiful, that he can’t help but think that his, this sleeping Kibum and a naughty child, could be his future.

Is it a future, he wonders, for which he is willing to give up the one currently shining at him?

  ~

He still doesn’t know, Jonghyun realises, the sheets on his bed in a futile attempt not to sob. He wants Kibum more than anything in the world, but not at the expense of the life he’s built for himself.

When the nurse walks in to find him weeping, she thinks it is because of the pain. He lets her dose him with morphine, longing for the relief that numbness will bring him.

If I had died today, he wishes he could ask Kibum, would you have cried at my grave?

XXXXX

A/N: Hello :) 

Yes, what a quick update! I felt particularly inspired over the weekend. 

Keep those comments coming! 

There's barely any Taemin in this, but he'll have his moment in the spotlight soon. There's also far too much Seop for my liking, but I need a voice of sanity in this fic and he's it.