Three
The Lifetime KidsYou still awake?
-Old man, 03:25
-Old man, 03:25
Yeah
-Taeminnie, 03:24
Everything okay?
-Taeminnie, 03:24
Can't sleep
-Old man, 03:25
Why not?
-Taeminnie, 03:25
Minho's snoring again
-Old man 03:25
Then wake him up
-Taeminnie, 03:25
Wouldn't that make me a bad leader?
-Old man, 03:26
You'll be a worse leader in the morning if you don't sleep
-Taeminnie, 03:26
Plus Minho slept during the flight
-Taeminnie, 03:26
Oh he always has been able to sleep on flights
-Old man, 03:26
Unlike me -.-
-Taeminnie, 03:27
Aw
-Old man, 03:27
You should go to sleep then
-Old man, 03:27
Why are you awake anyway?
-Old man, 03:27
It's late
-Old man, 03:27
Yeah
-Taeminnie, 03:27
You should sleep too! Old men need sleep
-Taeminnie, 03:27
Hey, I'm your leader, don't ignore my question!!!
-Old man, 03:28
ㅠㅠ
-Taeminnie, 03:28
Sleep
-Taeminnie, 03:28
Maybe I should ignore you
-Taeminnie, 03:28
No
-Old man, 03:28
Are you ignoring me? Your leader???
-Old man, 03:40
Taemin?
-Old man, 03:41
What?
-Taeminnie, 03:41
Don't ignore me!
-Old man, 03:41
I only did it so you might sleep hyung
-Taeminnie, 03:42
That doesn't stop Minho from snoring~
-Old man, 03:42
Listen to some music then
-Taeminnie, 03:42
Recommendations?
-Old man, 03:43
Ace
-Taeminnie, 03:43
Just kidding but
-Taeminnie, 03:43
I thought you hated my music tastes
-Taeminnie, 03:43
Ace, then
-Old man, 03:43
You're really listening to it?
-Taeminnie, 03:44
You did tell me to
-Old man, 03:44
And I guess your voice is very comforting
-Old man, 03:44
It is nice to hear at night
-Old man, 03:44
Taemin? Are you still there?
-Old man, 03:46
Yeah
-Taeminnie, 03:47
I was just thinking
-Taeminnie, 03:47
Hyung?
-Taeminnie, 03:48
Did you fall asleep listening to my voice?
-Taeminnie, 03:49
Goodnight, then
-Taeminnie, 03:50
Sleep well
-Taeminnie, 03:51
I did
-Old man, 7:43
•••
Roses;
Petals, heads and flowers bloom,
Your words do love my weary sloom.
I saw it not, for as we rested,
I forgot the signs of forms so blessed.
Your words do love my weary sloom.
I saw it not, for as we rested,
I forgot the signs of forms so blessed.
Branches, thorn and fickle stalk,
Wrap around us as we talk,
But I forget this flowered kiss,
Your love and care are roses snipped.
Wrap around us as we talk,
But I forget this flowered kiss,
Your love and care are roses snipped.
•••
“Yah, yah, yah,” Kibum droned, massaging the sides of his temples as he sat. His elbows dug into the table-cloth whilst he winced, using his fingers to trace circles and caress the interceding pulse of a headache. Taemin watched him, unknowing what to do; given his nature and his unalterable care, Minho had already exhausted the limits of human intervention – ensure Kibum was hydrated, hugged and swallowed by as many pain killers as was healthy to take.
“Kibum…” Taemin tried, wanting to rest a hand on the elder’s shoulder but not wanting to stir him. The dancer figured even the slightest of movements could knock Kibum’s affliction into further ambiguity; he was a fine antiquity to not be moved, a blade of grass to not be trampled.
“Sorry,” Kibum mumbled, resting his head in his hands. “Sorry.”
Taemin sighed, pursing his lips. They were alone, the morning so early the hotel’s other guests weren’t yet keen to make use of the dining area for breakfast. The sunlight grew fast with the room’s ardent cadence; things were elegant and thing were fine, sewn into cloth of the sweetest embroidery. Golden colours created a cascade of mellifluous delicacy, the tables, the walls and even the carpeted flooring reflective of a colour scheme suitable for both day and night. The round tables were dotted across the room delicately, the large windows invitational and refreshing. It seemed a country manor of sorts, given the luxurious self-service of the breakfast materials by the display cabinet, and not at all like the city retreat that it was.
“Why is he apologising?” asked a dulcet voice, and almost instantly, Taemin stiffened. He didn’t mind stiffening, however, for this voice instantly soothed his posture back into relaxation. He would have forgotten his surroundings were they not so starkly compelling.
“His head hurts,” Taemin explained, and then Jonghyun moved to his line of sight, and Taemin simply smiled.
Jonghyun was Jonghyun, and no other word could describe it. Taemin had uncovered his beauty to be the indefinite kind – one that shaped and cultivated with time, ticking as life’s metronome did, constant and perpetual. His hair was light, soft, a beautiful blonde that Taemin preferred to many darker shades. At a time, when he was more muscular, more toned, the brunette hair was Jonghyun’s vice; but now he was smaller, and the bright hair gave him an excitable edge, an innocent glint, a handsome warmth. Taemin basked in it like he would a summer’s day: Wholly, completely and unashamedly. This morning, Jonghyun wore a large red sweater that drowned his narrow frame, and a pair of ripped black jeans. His cheeks were somewhat flushed and his eyes rimmed with joviality, and had Taemin not shared a room with him the night prior, he would have assumed the elder to have slept for days, and not mere hours.
“Kibum-ah,” Jonghyun cooed warmly, sinking into a seat that was opposite Taemin, yet beside Kibum. The dancer caught the scent of Jonghyun’s homely fragrance drift subtly – a fragrance of strawberry, an unusual one for a man, but one nonetheless as attractive to Taemin as the composer’s crooked smile.
“Tsk,” Kibum managed, refusing to look at Jonghyun, like an upset adolescent. Jonghyun glanced over at Taemin with those wide, hazel eyes of his, and silently laughed. Returning the smile with one of his own, Taemin watched tentatively as Jonghyun rested a soft hand on Kibum’s broad shoulder and squeezed it comfortably.
“Didn’t you sleep last night?” Jonghyun investigated, and whilst Taemin observed, he couldn’t help but feel his heart sadly swell. With age, he'd figured his affections to wither, to dwindle, to dissipate, but they'd only strengthened marrow in the bone. There was no escaping such infatuation, no deterring such emotion. He didn’t want to feel it, but God, he felt it, swaying through him like a drunken dancer performing a moonlight waltz. Just as the drunkard would sober, however, as had his need to tell. Nobody would ever know, and nobody ever had to, and Taemin would grow old with his secrets, for it was his duty. He had to omit a love that was nothing but one-sided, and nothing but a detriment.
“I slept,” Kibum grumbled back, “a bit. It'll pass in a minute.”
“Well, then, I'll wait here a minute.”
They waited the minute in quiescence. Occasionally, Taemin’s eyes would helplessly snag onto Jonghyun, but they spoke mere soliloquies, lonesome and distressed. Jonghyun was always distracted by his surroundings, the blissful chandeliers above or the winsome paintings on the walls, and although Taemin supposed it was for the best that their eyes didn’t meet, he couldn't help but want them to.
“Where are the others?” he pondered, and when Jonghyun glimpsed his way, Taemin was caught-out, isolated, a sculpture in a gallery for the composer to study.
“No clue,” Jonghyun responded, “somewhere around here. Probably back in bed.” He chuckled at his own joke, before, drearily, Kibum removed the hands from his head and lightly brushed away Jonghyun’s grip. The composer raised an eyebrow, expression coy, as Kibum twisted his lips into an upset grimace.
“That hurt,” he mumbled, voice emitted to its usual flamboyancy. His skin was near-flawless and his hair styled handsomely, a deep brunette that contrasted well with his pale complexion. As he squinted tiredly, he patted his lips to stifle an oppressive yawn, before slumping on his seat and resting his cheeks on his hands.
“I'm hungry,” he complained.
“Well, then, get some food,” Jonghyun replied pointedly, albeit kindly.
“But…” Kibum trailed off, head elapsing into his arms across the table. He was so tired that Taemin wondered whether he would actually last the rest of the hour, never-mind an entire day.
“So lazy,” Jonghyun mumbled jokingly, before standing to retrieve some food for his dongsaeng. Taemin watched him, overwhelmed, as often was the case, by his perceived kindness of the older man.
“Taeminnie,” Kibum croaked from behind his arm-fortress, ing out a hand and grappling Taemin’s sleeve with it, “what if I die?”
“Then I get your breakfast,” Taemin jibed playfully. Kibum's rebuttal was an exaggerated scowl.
“I'm serious,” Kibum muffled, and so, immaturely, Taemin rested the flat of his hand on Kibum’s neck and pressed his fingers in gently. The touch was a wry consolation to Kibum as he lay, enthralled by his own limpidness.
“If Jinki-hyung sees you like this, he'll give you lecture,” Taemin warned.
“It's not Jinki-hyung I'm worried about,” Kibum retorted, as Taemin removed the hand and rested it atop the table.
“Yunkyung won't care if your head hurts,” Taemin offered, a nip of cynicism framing his otherwise-joyous words, “he'll just care that you're actually there."
“He'll care if I can't keep my head up,” was Kibum’s spiteful response, and as he lifted his head slightly, Taemin could see just how harrowed with darkness his eyes were, a man deeply endowed to the vow of tiredness. Unlike Jonghyun, and unlike Taemin himself, Kibum was a man who required sleep like the dawn required sun – without it, he would not rise, and it was a struggle for any coherency the further the day derailed.
“Well, then, keep it up,” Taemin responded gently, with an air of encouragement. There was no condescension in his voice, for he knew Kibum wasn’t one to respond well to such qualms; there was a simple need to address and motivate, to allow the idol vision that he'd done this before, and definitely could again.
“I'll keep it up,” Kibum resigned begrudgingly, straightening slightly and grumbling, “ing pain.”
Taemin smirked, well-used to Kibum’s explicit uses of language by now. It could be humorous, at times, executed exactly when the fashionable rapper needed to unleash the parry of anger that subdued him.
“Food!” Jonghyun cooed vibrantly, returning to the table and sliding a plate across to Kibum. Kibum blinked at it.
“Food,” Jonghyun reiterated, with an encouraging nod. This time, he sat beside Taemin, so that he could watch the rapper in their midst eat, to ensure his health and prosperity. Kibum crinkled his nose and narrowed his eyelids.
“Don't you like it?” pressed the composer, almost dejected. Resisting the urge to turn and face the man by his side, Taemin continued to watch Kibum, almost fascinated, as if the situation were an epoch he'd recount in the years to come.
“I do, it's just- I mean… Are we feeding a hundred people, or…?” Kibum trailed off, holding a hand out in questioning, like a caustic detective. Jonghyun glanced down at the plate sceptically, then back at Kibum.
“I just didn't know what you would like,” he mumbled, “there's a lot of food over there.”
“And there's a lot of food here, too,” Kibum noted, eyeing the copious helpings on his plate. “Did you bring, like, one of everything?”
“Well, nobody says you have to eat it all,” Jonghyun explained, “I'm just giving you variety!”
“Trying to sabotage my diet, more like,” Kibum elicited with a smile. Nonetheless, he lifted one of the grapes from his plate and popped it into his mouth, unconditionally grinning at the fresh pang of sweetness that overcame him.
“Feel better?” Jonghyun asked, proud as an expectant mother.
Rolling his eyes, Kibum lifted another grape and chucked it at Jonghyun. It rebounded from the composer’s forehead and elapsed upon the table, and before Jonghyun could so much as register the onslaught, Taemin and Kibum were tittering happily, two immature school children caught menacing in the playground.
“Aish…” Jonghyun breathed, picking up the grape and glaring at it accusatively, “the youth of today.” Finishing his over-analysis, Jonghyun placed the piece of fruit in his mouth.
“I feel a bit better, I suppose,” Kibum extended, prodding curiously at a small pastry on his plate, “but I wouldn’t say I'm up for today.”
“Is anybody?” Taemin poised rhetorically, leaning back on his seat and stretching out an arm, to play with a fork on the table-top. His posture was so irreversibly casual that one would never have been able to tell that the man by his side made him feel anything but calm.
“Minho,” Kibum revoked, “always Minho.”
“Yeah, but Minho could run a marathon if he was crippled by the flu,” Jonghyun countered, “he's so…”
“So full of life,” finished Taemin.
“Even after all these years,” Kibum murmured, nibbling on the edge of his pastry. An odd tress of nostalgia ridged itself between the men as they continued the comment, but none had time to peruse it thoroughly, for before they could a phone rang shrilly. It was Jonghyun’s.
“Jinki-hyung,” he uncovered, before answering the call. As Kibum and Taemin awaited the news only their leader could bring, they listened to a string of half-hearted responses from Jonghyun – yes and okay and sure, hyung – until the eldest of the three hung up and left them once again to silence's utopia. A second later, the utopia was conflicted.
“Jinki and Minho went out for breakfast,” Jonghyun explained, “and, uh- They didn’t tell Yunkyung.”
“So?” Kibum expressed, using his hands for gestures.
“So… They're lost,” Jonghyun grimaced, “like, two grown men, a few streets from here, and they're lost, and they think they'll miss our schedule, miss the taxi.”
“Oh my God, of course, of course…” Kibum sighed wearily, dropping the pastry on his plate and raising his hands to his head again. “We have to cover for them, don’t we?”
“Yeah.”
“Idiots,” Kibum breathed.
“Don’t worry,” soothed the composer, lifting Kibum’s half-finished pastry and taking a bite from it, “I've got this under control.”
“What are you going to say?” Taemin queried, intrigued.
“Nothing,” Jonghyun mumbled, “and by the time the staff start looking for them, they’ll be back, they always are.”
“I hope you're right, hyung,” Kibum worried, rubbing an eye.
“Oh, trust me,” Jonghyun nodded confidently. “It'll be just fine.”
i got a sudden burst of inspiration for this story... i really hope it lasts long enough that i can update Dx
Comments