Song Fic – though with a prompt like Music I pretty much had to I think…

A youtube link for the song used here can be found at the end of the story.  Some people like to play the song as the soundtrack for the piece while they are reading, so feel free to do that here if you wish. 

The idea for this one came to me when I was still in the states and I was driving home from work one night and the song came on the radio – I have parodied the song here.  Most of the lyrics are still the same but I’ve tweaked them a little here and there.  They may not entirely make sense…but somehow that still makes sense in this story…

Anyway, enjoy!

#78 – Music

Music is the heartbeat of their lives.

Music was the foundation of their childhoods.  The net that always caught them at the end of the day.  When their days were good, it was the celebration.  When their days were bad, it was the commiseration. 

It was how they met. 

If it hadn’t been for their love of music – singing and dancing – they would never have auditioned for SM in the first place.  This wasn’t a career that someone took on just for giggles.  There was too much work, too much sacrifice, too much suffering, for someone who didn’t have quarter notes practically embedded in their DNA to be willing to take on. 

Their first confession of love was a serenade. 

While Taemin was in a coma, Kibum sang to him.

As Taemin focused on his recovery, the need to get back to performing his music drove him on and helped him to endure the pain on the bad days and allowed him to shoot forward on the good days.

Music was as essential to their lives as eating or breathing.

So it can be no surprise that it followed them well into their relationship.

Taemin, living in America as he was for college, became inundated with English-language music and he was sharing this with Kibum.  So Kibum had started to listen to the groups that Taemin was listening to – something to help them keep together despite the thousands of miles between them. 

It was April and the college school year was almost over.  The end of Taemin’s third year away at UCLA.  But despite them being used to the distance now, it was never easy for Kibum.  And for whatever reason, the longing for Taemin was becoming ridiculously strong for Kibum right now.  And he knew that these next few weeks would be torture as he tried to wait for Taemin’s return. 

And music would help him through it.

*****

Taemin wrangled his keys out of his bag and unlocked the door to his apartment.  He had moved off campus after his freshman year and lived in a small apartment near campus. 

He sighed, dropping his bag onto the couch and walking through his living room towards the kitchen and leaning over to look through the fridge.  He grabbed a can of Dr. Pepper and shut the door, briefly holding the cool can against his forehead before walking back to his living room and plopping down on the couch.  His television sat on the other side of the narrow room with a short coffee table between.  His laptop was resting on the coffee table, there from the night before when Taemin had finished working on a paper and called it a night. 

Taemin the TV, intending to watch something mindless and booted up his computer to check his email.

He needed to unwind from the day.  Every class today had either had an exam or some kind of big presentation and it had been exhausting to make it through everything and now he just wanted to think of anything other than school. 

He quickly deleted all the junk mail that filled his inbox before realizing that Kibum had sent him an email. 

Taemin quickly clicked on it and it opened up to a message that simply said: Open it.

At first Taemin was confused but then he realized that there was an attachment to the email which he anxiously waited to download.  Why does it seem like the internet speed is always inverse to your need.  If you need it to move quickly, it’s practically going backward.  If you have nothing important to worry about, it zooms on by. 

It was a video file.

Taemin opened the file and suddenly Kibum’s face filled the screen.

“Hey Minnie!” The man screeched and Taemin could tell that he was mildly tipsy…possibly even drunk.

“Hey Maknae!” Someone yelled in the background and Kibum turned the camera so that Taemin could see Jonghyun sitting on the couch, still in army fatigues with an acoustic guitar laying across his lap. 

Empty soju bottles littered the table and Taemin knew that the pair had been celebrating a leave for Jonghyun. 

The camera jostled as Kibum seemingly flung himself down on the couch next to the inebriated singer. 

“We were talking about you and decided that we missed you and wanted to send you a present.” Kibum explained.

Taemin let the smile creep up his face.  Kibum could be so damn adorable when he was drinking and the aegyo was in full swing right now.

“So we wrote you a song!” Jonghyun cheered, “Well…kinda…okay, so we RE-wrote you a song!” 

“You’ll love it!”  Kibum cheered, picking up an empty soju bottle and holding it like a mic, “It’s called ‘Hey there Taeminnie!’”

“Hey there Taeminnie
What's it like in L.A. City?
I'm six thousand miles away
But boy, tonight you look so pretty
Yes you do
UCLA can't shine as bright as you
I swear it's true”

Taemin laughed outright.  Jonghyun played mis-matched chords on his guitar as Kibum stared seriously into the camera was slurring ‘UCLA’ to fit into the song.  He could tell that the pair were proud of themselves by the happy looks they shared before moving onto the next verse.

“Hey there Taeminnine
Don't you worry about the distance
I'm right there if you get lonely
Give this song another listen
Close your eyes
Listen to my voice, it's my disguise
I'm by your side”

Kibum just looked so damn serious as he drunkenly sang to his lover.  He was doing a strong impersonation of Jonghyun it seemed just them, bending and twisting with the words like he was performing to a crowd of thousands.

“Oh it's what you do to me
Oh it's what you do to me
Oh it's what you do to me
Oh it's what you do to me
What you do to me”

Taemin almost spat on his screen he was laughing so hard as Kibum crooned out, “OOooooohhhh,” and Jonghyun added a discordant harmony. 

“Hey there Taeminnie
I know times are getting hard
But just believe me, boy
Someday he’ll pay his bills with this guitar
We'll have it good
We'll have the life we knew we would
My word is good”

Even Kibum was laughing now, jerking his thumb towards Jonghyun when he said, “he’ll pay his bills.”

Suddenly Kibum darted forward, getting real close to the camera as he sang the next part.

“Hey there Taeminnie
I've got so much left to say
If every simple song I wrote to you
Would take your breath away
I'd write it all
Even more in love with me you'd fall
We'd have it all”

For a moment the drunkenness seemed to have left the older man’s eyes and Taemin could swear that he could feel Kibum’s hand in his if only for that moment.

And dammit the man was right, he took Taemin’s breath right away.

But the moment was shot again as Kibum returned to crooning, though Jonghyun’s harmony appeared to have improved.

“Oh it's what you do to me
Oh it's what you do to me
Oh it's what you do to me
Oh it's what you do to me”

Kibum, for some inexplicable reason, began to jump around the living room like he was some kind of rock god, totally incongruous with the acoustic chords and words he was relaying.

“Six thousand miles seems pretty far
But they've got planes and trains and cars
I'd walk to you if I had no other way
Our friends they all make fun of us
and we'll just laugh along because we know
That none of them have felt this way
Taeminnie I can promise you
That by the time we get through
The world will never ever be the same
And you're to blame”

Kibum point one long, thin finger at the camera as he told Taemin he was to blame.

“Hey there Taeminnie
You be good and don't you miss me
Two more years and you'll be done with school
And I'll be making history like I do
You'll know it's all because of you
We can do whatever we want to
Hey there Taeminnie here's to you
This one's for you”

Kibum dragged out the ‘u’ of you, raising the pitch and leading into his last crowing of:

“Oh it's what you do to me
Oh it's what you do to me
Oh it's what you do to me
Oh it's what you do to me
What you do to me.”

Taemin sat in wonder at how the two drunken men had managed to find this utterly perfect song in their present state.  Even their changes weren’t that bad (but really…L.A. City?) and Taemin found himself getting drawn in by the song.

“So there Taeminnie! A song just for you!” Jonghyun quipped as Kibum fell back onto the couch again.

“I love you Tae!” He practically screamed making Taemin wonder at what the neighbors thought of his boyfriend at the moment.

“I love you too Bummie,” he whispered as Kibum stumbled over to the camera and turned it off.

He thought that they must have loaded it onto the computer and sent it immediately, because a sober Kibum would never have actually sent that in the first place.  In fact, a sober Kibum would have deleted it and threatened Jonghyun within an inch of his life to never reveal the incident to Taemin at all. 

Taemin went back into the email and clicked ‘reply.’

I know that you are going to regret sending this in the morning. 

Don’t.

It was exactly what I needed to day, and I will most definitely ‘give this song another listen.’

I love you Bummie and I hope that you and Jonghyun feel alright in the morning!

Your Tae

“Hey There Taeminnie~” (hey there Delilah by the Plain White Ts)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_m-BjrxmgI&ob=av2n

This one was fun – what do you think?

By the way, after I post this one up that would make it 6 posts in less than 24 hours.  Can I just say – damn!