Chapter 9

He hadn’t meant to see anything.  Really he hadn’t!  But he had been shoved through the doors so quickly that he hadn’t noticed where exactly he was going. 

She hadn’t heard him coming in, which was a blessing really, because she might have killed him if she had known. 

Onew quickly ducked behind a discarded divider and held his breath, hoping that she hadn’t heard him.

He glanced through the slight gap created by the folding panes and couldn’t look away.

She really wasn’t what you would call beautiful in the traditional sens - and she had said so herself on many occasions.  She was normally kind of plain.  Not beautiful, but not ugly either.  If you passed by her on the street without knowing her, you probably wouldn’t give her a second glance.  But each time he was around her he found his eyes drawn to her.  He wanted to be around her, to be noticed.  He wanted her to smile at him, and laugh at his corny jokes.  There was something deeper, deeper than generic beauty, that showed through Lex with every smile and glance.  And even though by age he was only one year her junior, Onew couldn’t help but feel like a child simply because he didn’t know what to do saround her, he would always try just a little too hard. 

He knew he had a crush. 

He’d never had a crush on someone he actually knew before.

He’d had crushes on girls in school that he had never actually even said a word to.  He’d had crushes on fantasy characters in movies and on TV.  He’d had crushes on celebrities, beautiful woman who could hold the world as their stage.     

Lex couldn’t do that, least ways not with the power of her appearance alone.

She did have a way about her though.  Something about her that made you want to please her.  Not in any over the top way, but she was just so nice to everyone that you wanted to reciprocate that feeling.  She was a true friend who would drag themselves out of bed at three in the morning, when they had worked all day and only fell into bed an hour ago, needing to be back at work by eight, and get themselves all the way across the city because you were too drunk to get yourself home on your own - which he still felt bad about.  And when one of her frequent and easy smiles landed on you, you couldn’t help but smile back.

But when he was around her he just got tongue-tied, at least when the camera was off.  When the camera was on SHINee’s leader Onew would shine, just as he had been trained to do – well, most of the time.  But when the camera was off?  When the camera was off little Lee Jinki stumbled and stuttered and moved awkwardly – even more so than normal.  But God bless her, she never looked cross or anything.  She just smiled and joked around with him, holding the conversation completely on her own if need be. 

Onew bit his lip, watching as water dropped off of one of her wet curls to slide down her back.  Her pale skin was marked by only three small dark freckles dead in the middle of her back, in a straight row going up her spine for about an inch.  It was a small thing really, but if she had been a typical Korean star she would have had that taken care of a long time ago – a quick laser treatment removing any trace of it from existence.  It made Onew smile to see it there.  An imperfection, but one he loved to see, in the middle of a world that seemed to try way too hard to be perfect all the time. 

She pulled a shirt over her head and was once again fully clothed.  She turned and grabbed the towel that she had laid over the back of a chair and tried to rub some of the moisture out of her still dripping hair. 

He loved how it curled naturally on its own and fought whatever the hairdressers wanted it to do.  He loved that it was kind of wild and sometimes would fall nicely into place, but sometimes it was a mess of frizz and curls that refused to sit properly.  She always said that it wasn’t “pretty curly,” whatever that meant.  Some curls were tight and bouncy.  Others were loose and hung down lower than the rest of her hair – even though technically all of her hair was cut to the same length.  Onew always thought that it looked so soft when she would arrive to set.  She never put any product in her hair on her own – that was entirely the doing of the hairdressers.  And once she sat in their chair they attacked with a vengeance, making a stylized and hair-sprayed dome around her head, just like everyone else on these shows.  He’d felt her hair like that before, as the sticky mess of hair spray and gels just like his own, but just once he wanted to know what it felt like on it’s own.  He wanted to run his fingers through those curls and see them straighten out temporarily before bouncing back up again.  He wanted to see if it felt as soft and cloud-like as it looked.   

She ran a brush through her hair, wincing and in air through her teeth when she hit a tangle, and she hit many in her curly mane.  She made quick work of whipping the temporarily straight hair into a bun at the back of her head.  She bit her bottom lip and she looked about.

“Ahha!” she said triumphantly, spotting something among the mess of make-up on the counter left by her earlier stylists. 

Onew squinted and realized that it was just a small tube of Chapstick.  She quickly put it on; with the same ease the most girls apply lipstick and shoved the white tube into her right front pocket of the jeans that she had slipped into.

And she looked about, making sure that she wasn’t forgetting to grab anything that was hers before she left; Onew took the time to study her face.  It wasn’t often that you got to see TV stars without make up, and yet here Lex was.  Not a drop of foundation or eye liner or fake lashes, and she wasn’t even looking about the make-up counter to try and put some one. It was just Lex.  And Onew liked this better. 

If you would ask any fashion icon whether she looked better with or without make up, they would say with hands down.  But Onew liked the slight pink hue that he cheeks took on, rather than the pale mask that they made her wear.  He liked the dusting of freckles that lay across her cheekbones and the bridge of her nose.  He didn’t even mind the couple of dots of acne along her chin because that was probably from the layers of make up they all had to wear.  Lord knew that when he removed his make-up there were more than a few raised bumps. 

She tapped her lip with a finger, “I think that’s it…” she said quietly to herself before checking her pockets one last time and heading out the door.

As it closed behind her Onew sighed and leaned back against the wall.

He had it bad.

And he wasn’t sure how much longer he was going to be able to fight it.

Or if he even wanted to anymore.

Note: Chronologically, this was the first thing that was written for this story.  It was just something I typed out one day because it kept buzzing around my head.  There had been no intention of using it in a story, but then this evolved from there.