UPLOAD: HIM

+ for: senpai

            Perched against the rusty, metal railing that is anything but kind to his rough skin, he glances over the concrete platform he stands upon and at the ground below, estimating at least a three story drop that very few people survive a jump off from. Jaebum likes to think he fits into that bracket of people, especially as he climbs over the railing and lets a foot dangle over the height of death like it’s nothing. He loves the thrill, the sensation of adrenaline coursing through his veins as he maps out his jump at the back of his mind. He loves taking flight, even just temporarily, wind lashing against his skin and tossing his dark locks everywhere. Above all else, he loves surviving his jumps, perhaps getting away with a small battle scar to tell stories of.

            He doesn’t plan on dying, at least not when his parkour channel has a measly four-thousand subscriber count.

            Jaebum in a breath, and with a light boost to his knees, he hurls himself off the daunting platform. The world spins around him; he shifts his weight to perform a couple somersaults in the air and quickly calculates his distance to another railing on the ground. By complete chance, he narrowly catches the railing with his hands and tosses himself onto the grass nearby.

            He lies there for a second to catch breath, only sitting up when he’s certain the sky has stopped spinning. Although he’s completed what is probably the neighborhood’s hardest jump safely, it’s far from a perfect trick; if he missed that second railing by a mere inch, then his head would probably get split open. And what’s worse, he didn’t record the evidence properly because he finds his camera a couple feet away, in the grass and out of battery.

            Jaebum’s lifelong dream of becoming a YouTube parkour star is hampered only by his aching body and his incompetence on using a camera.

--

            He’s not sure where to start when he’s on his laptop later that night, fancy neon buttons of this unfamiliar video-editing program staring back at him. Unfortunately, even as a ‘rising’ internet star Jaebum’s not exactly techno-savvy, and most of his videos consist of blurry one-takes with really distorted background music. It’s a wonder why he keeps losing subscribers with every upload. Is this it, then? Is his YouTube career over before it even starts?

            Frustrated, Jaebum closes the application and starts scrolling through his channel (aptly named ‘JB_Jumps’), picking up a couple comments off his videos before he notices the email notification in the corner of his browser. He gets somewhat excited because he hasn’t gotten an email in ages, but deflates when he remembers it could be one of those scam letters.

            That doesn’t happen to be the case though; the email’s from another YouTuber and he skims it over a couple times to make sure it isn’t anything suspicious. ‘Hello, my name is Park Jinyoung,’ it reads, ‘I have seen a couple of your videos on YouTube and would like to know if you were interested in doing a collaboration. My contacts are as follows, do let me know.’

            The first thing he assumes is that this ‘Park Jinyoung’ must be some old creep, generally because of the formality of the letter and the fact that he ends it off with a pretentious ‘yours truly’ at the bottom. Then he reconsiders, because maybe that’s exactly what he needs right now; another parkour person to bounce ideas off of. Perhaps along the way he could learn new tricks as well, and if he’s really lucky, this guy could help him with his shotty videos.

            Nevertheless, he scrolls through this guy’s videos and expects a couple of outdoor montages filled with running and jumping, but finds none; instead, the featured item is a lengthy tutorial on how to make crème brûlée and under it, the first of a three part series about different ways to cook a fish. There are no parkour stunts anywhere—and something tells him that the username ‘ChefJunior’ might just say something about his videos.

            Jaebum is mortified; he’s confused as to why a guy who runs damn cooking channel would want to do anything with him, a guy who just jumps. It’s a completely different world, videos filled with delightful music and soft, fade-away transitions, as opposed to his dubstep and hard cuts. It’s absolutely foreign and Jaebum hasn’t the slightest idea of what anything’s about, but he finds himself scrolling through the channel anyway, intrigued less by the content and more by the elements.

            He’d noticed that the guy doesn’t make an appearance in any of his videos, and it’s mostly his (really soft-looking) hands that get all the screen time. That, and his voice.

            What a voice. It’s soothing, almost, and Jaebum could probably loop the way he says ‘caramelized onions’ over and over again until—

            He snaps out of it and gets back to the situation at hand. What does a food guru want with him? What sort of ‘collaboration’ could they possibly have? Who is this guy, anyway?

            He spends a moment (fifteen and a half minutes) thinking of a reply and sends an email back that reads something along the lines of ‘uh ok’. Jaebum barely gets a breath in before this Jinyoung guy writes back, just shy of a couple minutes later. ‘We can discuss the rest in person! I’ll be at the park tomorrow afternoon, if you want to meet up. I’m not creepy, I swear. I’ll be wearing a pink cap. Yours Truly, Jinyoung/Junior.’

            And that was that; Jaebum had to go to sleep with the fact he has to meet up with a stranger whose voice he happened to like.

--

            He’s not sure what to expect when he finds himself in the park the next afternoon, except maybe for an old grouch under the alleged pink hat standing next to a suspicious van, ready to take him away. It’s the least of his problems at the moment, because as he wanders aimlessly around the field, he finds himself gazing at the concrete platform he’d jumped off of and starts wondering how he could perfect the jump. Maybe another somersault? Maybe shift his weight differently?

            As he’s dazing about, he doesn’t completely register another presence in his immediate surroundings until a hand latches itself onto his shoulder; it’d be an exaggeration to say he didn’t scream like a five-year-old girl.

            He turns around to lay his eyes on the most dainty creature he’s ever seen. A soft, startled face under the baby pink cap as they stare each other down; they’re probably not far apart in age, and he gets the idea that they’re both at that young and stupid stage of their lives. It was Jinyoung who broke into a grin first, offering a small bow as he introduced himself as the ‘guy from the internet’.

            “So I saw some of your videos,” he says, reaching up to scratch his nape. It’s the same voice he heard, doing nothing short of shaking his heart. “And I just wanted to do a collab.”

            “But you cook,” Jaebum replies rather abruptly, and he feels bad as soon as the words leave his mouth. “You have nothing to do with me, a guy who does parkour.”

            The guy just shrugs with a lighthearted laugh. “You can’t judge a book by its cover, y’know? Can’t judge me based on what I have on my YouTube channel.”

            He raises an eyebrow at him. “So… you do parkour?”

            “Of course not,” he laughs again and Jaebum can feel the patience slowly melt away from his body. “I’m just your average chef slash baker, nothing more. But,” he says, moving his hand away from his neck to perch it against his waist (Jaebum is creeping himself out by how much he’s staring at those soft paws). “Maybe I can help you film something. I’m not too bad with a camera myself, if you’ve seen my videos.”

            Jaebum wants to say that no, he hasn’t watched any of his videos, when in reality he was up all night replaying all twenty two episodes of a fried chicken series plus a cupcake montage. He’s not about to admit he lost sleep over the other male’s hands, so he mumbles something along the lines of “forget it,” and turns to walk away.

            The next thing he registers is the same hand grabbling onto his shoulder, but with a harder grip that’s enough to make him wince. He glances back and shivers abruptly, for Jinyoung has completely dropped the toothy smile and is instead glaring at him like he’d murdered a man. “Listen here, ‘JB’,” he growls. “Your videos . What I’m trying to do here is help you, alright? If you wanna get popular on YouTube then it up and grow the up. Let me film your goddamn material, you incompetent excuse for a YouTuber.”

            Jaebum, on the premise of not wanting to die, offers a curt nod. He didn’t expect to spend the next five hours running around the park while Jinyoung follows him diligently with a handheld camera, and he certainly didn’t expect to be doing it the next day as well.

--

            Despite having met him recently, Jinyoung offered to edit the video because of his ‘superior prowess’ and Jaebum wasn’t really in a position to refuse. He does wonder though, why would some guy off the internet have the patience to deal with him anyway? Why would anyone go out of their way just to help out some obscure user who can’t even use a camera? Why does Jinyoung bother?

            Jaebum receives a reasonably large MOV file later that week, and Jaebum is reasonably anxious to see how it turns out. When he opens the video, he’s greeted with a decent EDM track over shots of him running around. It’s not half bad, and after watching it three or four times, he figures it’s actually pretty good. The cuts are smooth, and the angles are absolutely beautiful. It brings out his cool side, almost like a mystical creature constantly in a cycle of flight; definitely better than what he could’ve done on his own.

            So he contacts Jinyoung again.

--

            Over the course of the following month, the two of them spend their afternoons at the park, yelling at each other while running around amok with nothing but a camera and their feral passion for online subscribers. Together, they manage to record quality footage and with each upload Jinyoung pushes towards his channel, Jaebum’s sub count goes up by the hundreds. It’s assuredly a miracle of the internet; though as much as he hated to admit it, Jaebum wouldn’t have gotten this far without Jinyoung’s help. He definitely learned more than he expected, and at this point he’s ready to try anything.

            That’s when he tells Jinyoung about the jump.

            “Are you crazy?” is his initial response when Jaebum shows him the concrete platform and its height from the ground. “No, ing no. You’re going to die, you nut. What the .”

            “I’ve done it before,” Jaebum replies blankly, gazing at the high railing. “Safe and sound. You just need to record me doing it this time.”

            Jinyoung just stares at him in disbelief, shifting the camera in his hands. “I mean… Damn, , okay, fine. Just—Just don’t die. Okay?”

            “No promises.” He tosses him a cheeky grin (Jinyoung just flips him off) as he climbs towards the platform. A familiar wind brushes against his arms as he nears the top, sun glaring onto his frame. As he stands on the platform, he glances onto the ground below and for once, it’s not defaced purely with dusty gravel. Jinyoung stands there, looking up at him through the lens of his camera. It gives him some reassurance, that this moment will be captured on tape for all to see, and that someone supports him enough to standby while he does something completely and utterly stupid.

            Jaebum in a breath, and with a light boost to his knees, he hurls himself off the daunting platform. The world spins around him; he shifts his weight to perform a couple somersaults in the air and quickly calculates his distance to another railing on the ground—

            It’s too far away.

            His hands miss the railing completely and he instead rams his shoulder into it, collapsing onto the concrete afterwards. He winces; the pain is resounding through his body and for a moment, he can’t move.

            “HEY, HEY!” Jinyoung’s voice doesn’t sound very nice when it’s squeaky and distressed, and his hands don’t look nearly as good when they’re clamped against his face in worry. “Hey, don’t die on me! Are you okay?!”

            Jaebum is just peachy.

--

            Since he gave him such a scare with the ‘jump’, Jinyoung insisted that Jaebum help him out with one of his cooking videos instead, as severe punishment for not listening to him. “You got yourself hurt, ,” he’d griped, “where else am I supposed to find another cute parkour star?”

            Said cute parkour star didn’t really know how to respond to that, so he just accepts the invitation to the latter’s apartment on a Sunday where it’s raining too hard to film anything; though Jaebum had suggested they film a special ‘rain’ video but Jinyoung just smacked him upside the head, audibly wondering if he was dropped as a baby.

            When he arrives at Jinyoung’s place, the guy already has his filming equipment  prepared and is ready to film the making of macaroni-bacon-bombs or something equally as greasy. Jaebum’s quite amazed at the setup itself, with the lights positioned in ways that render Jinyoung’s figure dazzling beyond belief. He looks fitting behind that kitchen counter, in his own elements.

            “Well?” Jinyoung says with an expectant lift of his eyebrows. “What do you think?”

            Jaebum breathes, “nice.”

            “Then hit that record button,” he replies, gesturing to the camera standing nearby. “Watch how a pro does it.”

            The whole session consisted of Jinyoung speaking animatedly about cheese and frying and egg wash with Jaebum assisting once every couple minutes, handing him a whisk or adjusting a light. The highlight, however, is when he grabs Jaebum’s hand and waggles it in front of the camera. “Today’s episode was brought to you by JB, owner of the parkour channel ‘JBJumps’! Go and subscribe.”

            The little promotion does anything but settle his heart.

            As soon as they turn off the camera, Jaebum asks if he did okay. “You did fine,” Jinyoung says, offering him a bacon-wrapped morsel of macaroni. “You did better than I thought you would, anyway. You didn’t it up.”

            Jaebum decides to go out on his neck for the next question, because life is all about risks and he’s pretty much risked everything to what he loves, anyway. This isn’t all that different from that; he’d argue it’s pretty much the same thing.

            Jaebum asks if they can be partners.

            Jinyoung, with grease speckling his soft hands and his voice laced with honey as he lets out a soft laugh, says yes. It’s not really up for either of them to decide if Jaebum meant anything more than that, because they’re content enough with both their sub count and the fleeting, rapturous company of each other.