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Suju Fic: "White Elephant" (Kangin/Eeteuk)
Title: White Elephant
Pairing: Kangin/Eeteuk
Rating: R
Summary: For![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mytigerhobbes for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
help_haiti, who requested a Kangteuk get together fic. I really hope that you enjoy this and thanks so much again for bidding! :)
Warnings: Rude language, rude content, slash, some angst.
The hardest thing about Super Junior is that there are so many of them. It's like being in class, only with people that you mostly love and want to be with. Thing is, there are no guarantees in Super Junior. Just endless division and the ground constantly shifting under their feet. They excuse one other their coping mechanisms, because at the heart of it they're just rats, rats in a cage that keeps getting smaller and smaller. They can only find ways to keep spinning their wheels.
It sometimes occurs to Kangin that this isn't the best way to regard an industry so hellbent on portraying happiness, capital H. Sometimes. Mostly, he just tries not to think about it. It's becoming a recurring theme in his life, hiding things.
The first time that Eeteuk rings him after eleven thirty at night, Kangin assumes that it's one of his coping mechanisms. In the last month, the two of them have been apart more than they have in the last two years. Kangin figures that if he's feeling weird about it, Eeteuk must be going totally ape. So, the first time his cell rings, lifting him out of his almost-sleep, he resolves not to get mad about it. There are more important things than dreaming, anyway.
*
“'Teuk,” he says, eventually, his voice dripping into a whisper like water running down the drain. “It's nearly two. Enough counselling. Go to sleep. Seriously.”
There's a laugh on the other end of the line, uncomfortably bright.
“You sound like me,” Eeteuk says. He's not kidding. Kangin wonders when he became sensible.
“You know – 'go to sleep, or you won't be fresh for tomorrow morning!' You're becoming the leader in my absence. I'm almost proud.”
“I have to get up at five,” Kangin says, grouchily. “You have to get up at, what, four, and-”
“Alright,” Eeteuk says. “Sorry – you know, for ringing. I just. It's strange not being with you. Not telling you to go to bed.”
“You can tell me to go to bed if you want,” Kangin yawns. “If you really have to go leader on my ass. Could've done it two hours ago, but-”
“Are you really mad?”
“Yeah,” Kangin says, but there's no weight in it. “Yeah, I'm really angry. I'm gonna take your head off, next time I see you.”
“That could be years,” Eeteuk says, wistfully. “We've been officially separated. I pine for the days of you taking my head off.”
“I feel like I'm in prison,” Kangin says, a part of his brain perking up. “And you're some jailbird pining for me and wishing I was back at home, uh, taking your head off? This is disturbing. Go to sleep. Don't call me anymore, you freak.”
Eeteuk laughs, light and inscrutable. “Alright,” he says, again. “I'll call you tomorrow. We can arrange visitation or something.”
“If you loved me,” Kangin says. “You'd cough up bail money and get me out of this godforsaken hellhole.”
“I don't love you that much,” Eeteuk says. “Tomorrow I'll even reverse the charges on the call. And you need to stop watching crappy American movies on the television.”
“I don't like you at all,” Kangin says.
“Goodnight,” Eeteuk says.
“'k.”
*
Kangin doesn't know what it all means. There are behaviours that can't begin to be explained to be excused. He tells people everything. If not Eeteuk, then somebody. And this, he wants to tell Eeteuk and he can't. He should tell somebody sensible. Somebody like Siwon, only – it'd end badly, so not Siwon. Kibum or Donghae or somebody. Only he isn't sure he wants it to be excused, this thing, and thinking about it all the time just gives him a pain in the back of his neck.
He palms his cell in his jeans pocket, chews on the thumbnail of his right hand. There's nothing wrong with calling Eeteuk. He does it all the time. Lots of people call Eeteuk. That's why they invented the cell phone – not for calling Eeteuk, obviously, for calling people – so, that should be that. He draws out his cell and looks at it, willing it to do something. Solve his problems. Cell phones can do everything nowadays, thanks to technological wizardry. It shouldn't be too much to ask that his sort out this stupid thing and his stupid life-
As if cued, it rings.
“Hey,” Kangin says. Probably a little too quickly, because Eeteuk's silence suggests that he's taken aback. “Er, I was just going to call you.”
“Ah,” Eeteuk says. “I was just calling to say hi. Guess where I am?”
Kangin thinks about this and then doesn't, because it leads his brain into things his brain doesn't – shouldn't – want to be. “The moon,” he says.
“How would my cell work on the moon?”
“I don't know,” he says. “Don't you think it should? Why are those geeks working so hard on making cell phones smaller than, like, hamster babies when they could be making technology work in space. Isn't that weird?”
“Right,” Eeteuk says. “But guess where I am.”
Kangin thinks about this, trying to pick up background noise. He can't hear anything but subdued pick-up of chatter. “Are you in the supermarket,” he says.
“Yep,” Eeteuk says. “Want anything?”
“I'm not gonna be seeing you,” Kangin points out. It makes his stomach lurch a little bit to the left.
“In spirit,” Eeteuk says. “I can give spirit-you chocolate, right?”
Not for the first time, Kangin recognises how truly bizarre they've both become. Separation makes the heart grow fonder and the brain go ass-backwards. “I guess,” he says. “Spirit-me might even leave you some.”
Eeteuk laughs. “Unlikely,” he says. “Even spirit-you's a greedy bastard.”
“Hey,” Kangin says. “I'm not missing you at all, you know that?”
“Yeah,” Eeteuk says. “That's why you were holding your cell, waiting for me to call.”
“I was gonna call you,” Kangin says.
“To say that you don't miss me?”
“Right!” Kangin says. “Uh, you know. Because I'm over this shit. I don't want you visiting me anyway. I have a new jailbird now.”
“Oh yeah,” Eeteuk says. “What's his name?”
The door opens behind him and Kangin looks around, a little too shifty for his own good.
“Siwon,” Kangin says.
“What?” Eeteuk says.
“What?” Siwon says.
Siwon, real and not in the least bit a jailbird, stands and looks at Kangin as if every effort is being exuded to keep his eyebrow on his face.
“Uh,” Kangin says. “Not you Siwon. Siwon Siwon. In front of me Siwon. Is here.”
“Yes?” Siwon says.
“Is this a new song?” Eeteuk asks, tartly. “It's catchy.”
“No,” Kangin says. “Siwon's here.”
“Oh,” Eeteuk says. “Can I speak to your new jailbird? I need to lay down some ground rules.”
Kangin doesn't want to think about Eeteuk laying down anything. On anything. By anything. Anything. He wordlessly hands Siwon the cell. Siwon takes it and gracefully greets Eeteuk, as if the whole scenario isn't totally mental. Kangin takes a moment's pause and marvels at how sweet Eeteuk's voice sounds when he's not talking to him.
*
Sometimes (usually) Eeteuk rings when Kangin is busy doing something else. It's an annoying tendency, leading to burnt food and falling over the vacuum cleaner and having to stand and drip dry, just out the shower. The latter incidents are the worst, obviously, because then Kangin's not just talking to Eeteuk but talking to him naked.
April 18th is one such day and Kangin just can't take it any more – the bite in Eeteuk's voice and the crawling feeling of every individual drop of water running down his body.
“'Teuk,” he says. “I'm in the middle of something, okay – I'll call you back later.”
He doesn't, but it'll be alright. Eeteuk is too cheerful when he rings off to suspect anything and when it comes to broken promises he's all too forgiving. Or uncaring. Or both.
*
On April 19th, Kangin's cell goes off in his pocket. He rolls his eyes, about to answer with a chewed apology for not calling back when he notices that the caller isn't Eeteuk. Isn't anything like Eeteuk – not chirpily vindictive at all but clinical, sympathetically detached.
All the heft drops out of his voice as he asks the questions he supposes he should be asking – none of the answers impacting at all. He feels as though all the fluid has drained out of his body. Unsteadily, he tries to arrange the words in a way that makes sense. It doesn't work.
“I'll come down,” he says. “I'll – will you tell him that I'm coming down?”
“When he wakes up, sir,” they say, without any understanding of what it means for Eeteuk to not to be awake, what it means for Eeteuk not to know. This isn't their world. Shouldn't be Kangin's, either. The band seems altogether a fabrication of life, a pointless waste of potential for the pair of them. Spending their days singing about happiness, all the while pushing it away.
“Please tell him then,” he says, before he rings off.
Calls like this happen in the middle of the night, he thinks. That's why it doesn't seem real. Calls telling you the person that you – that person, the person – telling you that they're hurt, those calls happen in the middle of the night. Not in the middle of the day, with the sun so bright and the air so clean with spring. Those calls wake you from sleep so that you have a reason not to feel their impact. Grogginess is a shield that's necessary. Without it, Kangin feels naked. He can't begin to imagine what Eeteuk feels like.
*
Hospitals are everything people say they are. Kangin tries to avoid them as much as possible, the distinct scents of dispassionate caring and tragedy lurking in every corner. As much as he hates the places, he knows that Eeteuk hates them even more. Walking into the building day after day, he reminds himself that this is what he was made to do. Look after those dearest to him. Beyond the bullshit and the politics and the moments where he's not sure whose life, exactly, he's living – this is real. This is what's important.
He doesn't bring Eeteuk flowers, a card, something stuffed or something fruity and sweet. He brings Eeteuk himself, day after day after day.
“Siwon says you're cruel,” Eeteuk says.
“Tell him the Pope is Catholic,” Kangin says. “Har har, that's especially hilarious, y'know, given-”
Eeteuk laughs, which only makes him look tiny and washed out amidst the starched bedsheets. Kangin tries to ignore it. Taking the gold paper crown that Heechul gave him as a get well gift, Kangin places it on Eeteuk's head. It helps a little.
“Your wit pierces me,” Eeteuk says. “Anyway, he says you're cruel. For not providing a get well card.”
Kangin looks at him, arms folded. “'Teuk,” he says. “You have about two million get well cards. And this crown thing. Think of the trees.”
“You don't care about trees,” Eeteuk says. “I don't want another card, anyway. I'm just passing the message on.”
“We all want you to get well,” Kangin says. “I'm here in person to help, you know. I'm your own personal get well card. I sing and everything. I'm much better than a bit of cardboard or a...paper fucking crown, what the fuck.”
“I'm just saying,” Eeteuk says. “Your jailbird doesn't seem very supportive.”
Kangin eyes him. “Yeah, well, we broke it off,” he says. “With me breaking out of jail, it seems unsustainable. You know how it is.”
“You making jokes about violence is going to be inappropriate, given the context,” Eeteuk says, dryly. “Just an advance warning.”
“Dammit,” Kangin says. “Why did you have to go get in an accident? You ruined the punchline. Get it? Punchline?”
Eeteuk looks at him.
“Alright,” Kangin says, droops. “Not funny.”
“A bit funny,” Eeteuk says. “Marginal improvement. God, I hurt.”
Kangin looks at him and wants, in a rush that's beyond uncomfortable, to do all sorts of things to make Eeteuk not-hurt. Things Eeteuk's hypothetical girlfriend should be doing. Not even dirty things, necessarily, just comforting things. Things that don't come naturally to him, haven't – since.
“Do you want me to play with your pillows?” he asks.
“Depends,” Eeteuk says. “Is it gonna be as dirty as it sounds?”
Kangin looks up, momentarily started. His tongue makes an entire lap around his dry, dry mouth before the silence breaks with another one of their coping mechanisms. Eeteuk deflects and once again, Kangin swallows down feeling.
*
The thing about time is that it can expand into slow breathing or condense into a rapid heartbeat. Time has no rules. Two years of nothing can pass by in a flash or in a mind-numbing crawl. Two years of unfinished sentences and unspoken thoughts. Kangin wonders if there's an anniversary card for that kind of thing.
And then there's the other kind of time, the kind that springs out at you, armed, when you least expect it. Kangin wraps his fingers around the steering wheel and doesn't breathe, doesn't think, doesn't blink – even when he can barely see the road for the water in his eyes. He drives as though he can leave the scene and the image behind, as if by driving he can make everything go away. He drives solidly, for hours, until he can no longer remember how it happened.
That's when he knows that he has to turn himself in.
*
Eeteuk doesn't remember the accident. Still, two years on. He can't remember what he saw just before the impact, what he felt, whether his life flashed before his eyes. He doesn't know what his last thought would have been. Kyuhun has talked about it with him, though he refuses to give Eeteuk details that he's lucky enough not to remember. It doesn't feel real, any of it. He's encouraged to talk about it, because it makes the fans feel soft about him, but he never knows what to say. He's too used to living in the public eye. Too used to the practiced gesture, the art of acting out living.
He doesn't sleep during the night of October 16th, which doesn't strike him as odd because insomnia plagues them at the best of times. It's only when the band gets together for rehearsals the next day that he recognises that something is wrong. Kangin isn't late. He's elsewhere. He's not coming. Eeteuk doesn't know how he knows the difference between these states – he just knows.
It's only because he badgers their manager that the truth comes out and even then, they've allowed only the briefest digestion of the facts. Their manager turns his mouth upwards when Donghae starts to voice what they're all thinking – that Kangin has been in too much trouble already. He swears that he doesn't know what will happen next, that kind of decision is above him and above the band. It's only when he says, 'I know that you all had the best time together and I hope that it will continue on' that Eeteuk really starts to worry. He knows this kind of double-speak far too well.
Still. The hit-and-run. It's not a thing that he can reasonably associate with Kangin. The culpability involved makes aligning his sympathies difficult. Everyone else wishes aloud that Kangin had been the innocent party, or if not, that he had just stepped forward when it happened. It would've been easier to measure out compassion without condoning his actions. Still, the forgiveness is heavy in the air. For Eeteuk, it's different. It isn't real. He can't begin to forgive what he can't understand – and he's not sure it's his responsibility to forgive this, anyway.
The band talks about support and showing Kangin that he isn't alone. Eeteuk knows that Kangin is alone, whether he wants to be or not. No amount of support is going to make him feel anything else.
*
About a week later, once Kangin has been hung, drawn and quartered at three separate meetings and the hysteria seems to have eased slightly, Eeteuk goes over to see him. They haven't spoken in just under a fortnight, which is the longest time there's ever been silence between them. Everybody else has contacted Kangin but Eeteuk doesn't know what to say. He's updated his blog, of course, but found even that a challenge. So much weight in such a small word, idiot, and he's not even sure he's talking about the accident at all.
When Kangin opens the door, he's pale and withdrawn. He doesn't even have the guilty hangdog look that used to make Eeteuk feel reassured. He looks like SM have drained most of his blood and used it to paint the office walls. Maybe they have.
“Can I come in?” Eeteuk asks.
Kangin shrugs, once, and stands out of the doorway. Eeteuk follows through, wanting to say a million things but knowing that he can only choose one.
“I'm sorry I haven't been there,” he says, carefully, as Kangin shuts the door and leans back against it. He regards him with slightly narrowed eyes, though Eeteuk can't tell if this is exhaustion or fury. He's never found Kangin hard to read before.
“I didn't deserve it anyway,” Kangin says, after a long pause. “People keep sending me stuff and I don't – I don't deserve that. I deserved silence. It's fine. People try to make it better and they can't. At least you were honest.”
“No,” Eeteuk says. “You don't deserve silence. I mean – you don't deserve gifts, either, but. They're trying, okay? They don't know how to do this.”
“Yeah,” Kangin says. “I guess not.”
“But you didn't deserve to feel like I wasn't your friend anymore,” Eeteuk says. “I'm not angry with you. It's not my place. So I'm sorry, for that. I'm guessing that's how you felt.”
“Honestly,” Kangin says. “I hadn't thought about it. I've been – you know. Elsewhere. This doesn't feel real. None of it. The accident feels more real than the consequences. How fucked up is that?”
Eeteuk regards him and his voice, so thin and so broken and so honest. “No,” he says. “It isn't. I mean – we lead this crazy life. I don't think it ever feels that real.”
“I know that you're my friend,” Kangin says. “Because you don't talk to me sometimes. When I've done something, you don't...treat me like I need kid gloves. Like I'm the victim. I needed you but you weren't there and you shouldn't have been. I can't explain why that's a good thing, it just. I don't know, 'Teuk. I don't know.”
“I'd have tried to placate you, I think,” Eeteuk says. “I didn't want to try to make it better. It doesn't, shouldn't – be better. That's not life. That's not how life works.”
“No,” Kangin says. “True. Fuck. Fuck, I don't. I don't know what's going to happen. I...they haven't made any decisions. I don't know if I care, 'Teuk. Honestly. That's the scariest thing.”
He sits down against the door, as much because he looks shot to hell as because he needs to analyse the words that are coming out of his mouth.
“It isn't real,” he says. “And if it isn't real – how can I start caring? What is real is the accident, is you and me just sitting here and you looking at me like that. Like, I don't know like what. You know. I can't care about the band when everything else is so fucked up.”
“Me looking at you is fucked up?”
Kangin looks at him and there are a few beats of time, quick and fluid and terrifying. “Yeah,” he says. “Because you're not looking at me like a friend right now.”
“Have I ever?” Eeteuk says. He's trying to make his voice a lot stronger than it is, but in the air it's as feeble as a bee's wings.
Kangin starts to chew on the fingernail of his right hand. “I don't know,” he says.
“Mm,” Eeteuk says. “I don't know, either. But it's not the point, is it. It's all about right now.”
Kangin looks at him and for a moment, time moves slowly, dark and wet. “And right now, what? What are you saying?”
“I'm saying that you need a friend right now,” Eeteuk says. “But when you need more than that, I want to be more than that. It's what I've wanted to say since, well, ages. It's just – things got in the way. Life got in the way.”
“No,” Kangin says. “This isn't life – the band, that. Isn't life. This is life. Right now. It was in the hospital. You remember that? That was life, too, only it was fucking horrible so we both chickened out of it. I don't want to chicken out anymore.”
“Then don't,” Eeteuk says, simply. He scoots over and presses his side against Kangin's side, until Kangin's head slowly drops down onto his shoulder. Then, he closes his eyes.
*
Eeteuk stays with him for the week after. It's not easy to do because Kangin keeps being summoned for things and when Eeteuk has to go to rehearsals it's difficult to leave Kangin behind. But the small things – the glass of wine at the end of the day, the stories about their childhood and about the things that have passed between them all these years – those are real and they help. Eeteuk feels more a part of his life than he has in a long time and, he suspects, so does Kangin.
The only problem is that Kangin doesn't sleep. Eeteuk knows it because he hears him wandering around the apartment at all hours and so, four nights in, he gets up at 3 in the morning and follows him into the living room.
“Can't sleep?” he asks, though it's patently obvious from Kangin's pacing that it isn't happiness keeping him awake.
“Mm,” Kangin says. “You either?”
“You woke me,” Eeteuk says, though entirely without weight, and Kangin hasn't the energy to be suitably sorry anyway. He just looks at Eeteuk without a hint of sleep in his eyes, just the kind of courage that darkness gives.
They sit together on Kangin's windowsill, sharing a blanket and a bottle of something stronger than Eeteuk thinks is probably appropriate. He doesn't comment, just wraps his hands around Kangin's foot and watching him shift with ticklishness.
“It'll be okay,” he says, slowly.
“Ah, shut up,” Kangin grouches. “Don't talk to me like that, okay. And get off my foot.”
“Okay, grumpy,” Eeteuk says, taking a swig of whiskey. “So stop feeling sorry for yourself, already. It's not like you're actually going to be jailed.”
Kangin looks at him, almost incredulously, until a smile steals the corner of his mouth. “I can't believe you,” he says.
“Yeah,” Eeteuk says. “You would've actually had me as a jailbird, too.”
“Urgh,” Kangin says. “You would've made the worst jailbird. You wouldn't have sent me long letters or dirty photographs or anything.”
“Want to bet?” Eeteuk says.
“Mm,” Kangin says, regarding him. “Maybe you're going up in my estimation.”
“I hope so,” Eeteuk says. “Because eventually, I'm going to want to jump you. So. That's a pretty positive sign.”
Kangin laughs at that, though slightly nervously, and Eeteuk wonders whether this honesty schtick is working for them any better than the silences.
“You could have anybody,” Kangin says. “That's what gets me. Like...anybody. Anyone. And this is. You're sitting under a fucking crotchet blanket with me like some geriatric alcoholic. Drowning my sorrows. It's fucking – it's worse than jail, is what it is.”
“Shut up,” Eeteuk says. “And your feet smell.”
“I hate you,” Kangin says.
“It's not worse than jail,” Eeteuk says.
“How is this not worse than jail?”
“Because,” Eeteuk says. “In jail you'd just have the dirty photographs.”
*
A week on, Kangin opens his eyes to the sunlight blazing. It's autumnal sun, hard and unforgiving. Unexpected. Welcome. He turns over and stares at the ceiling, waiting for the inevitable gloom to set in. He's been told that he's banned from participating in the band until the new decade. That doesn't make him feel as sad as he expected it to, because he probably needs a break and to work out exactly what the hell he's doing in the industry. But it's hard watching Eeteuk walk out every day.
He stretches, raising his arms above his head and feeling his bones shift contentedly. The inevitable gloom seems to be having a day off, which gives him pause and a small scrap of hope. It's the first time in ages that he's felt as though things may turn out alright. As he lowers his arms, the sensitive inside of his elbow catches on a sharp corner. Feeling across the pillow with his hand, he picks up a small, thin square object and blinks to look at it.
A feeling pools in his stomach – but it isn't gloom.
It's a Polaroid. And not an innocent one, at that. Turning it over, he reads the scrawled handwriting.
Here's to waiting. I'll be here, like this, whenever you want to come home.
Jailbird.
PS – Come home soon, though, because it's fucking cold here without clothes on.
Slowly, his senses start to come back to him and he hears the click of the front door. Suspended in animation for a moment, he tangles himself up in the bedsheets and tumbles out onto the floor. Shouting Eeteuk's name in a way that he's sure can't be dignified, he tries to save himself from the mess of his bed and skids out into the living room. He's in luck – the click he heard was the door being pulled out of its hinge, not it closing altogether.
Eeteuk is standing and looking startled, like it's too early for shouting and tangled bedsheets and Kangin's face, all urgent like that. Startled, as though it'd never occur to him to give Kangin a dirty photograph. That bastard.
“You,” he says. “You – you. And your. Yes. Photographs. You. Okay.”
It's not the smoothest move Kangin's ever pulled, but slowly Eeteuk starts to smile.
“Right,” Eeteuk says. “Want to put that into some kind of sentence, or?”
And Kangin looks at him, really looks at him – and realises that he's fed up of words, sentences, thoughts, hopes, dreams, the whole fucking lot of it. So he walks across the room and palms the door back shut. With the other hand, he touches Eeteuk's face and taking every word, every sentence, every unspent breath of the last two years, he kisses it all into Eeteuk's lips. The slow ascent of Eeteuk's hands around the back of his neck makes him breathless, more urgent, until there's nothing else in the world but this moment.
And when Eeteuk draws back there's a world in the expression on his face.
“It's about fucking time,” he says, and the words are triangular with smiling.
Kangin nods, because he's lost all powers of speech, lost everything except being in this room and kissing Eeteuk and being kissed back.
“I have to go,” Eeteuk says, pained, watching Kangin for some kind of reason not to. And Kangin, even though sometimes he hates the job and what it represents and that it nearly lost him this chance – he can't bring himself to make it a choice. He wouldn't know Eeteuk without Super Junior. He wouldn't ever have even met him.
“Go,” he says. “Visiting time is finished. Go and be happy happy. And come back, and be fuc-”
“No,” Eeteuk says, slightly shrill. “Not allowed. No. Close mouth. Desist. I'll be back later. You'll be alright?”
“Fine,” Kangin says. “I'll be unkissed and everything, but don't worry about me.”
The sulking is back. He knows it and Eeteuk knows it. The sense of relief is better than anything he's ever felt before.
“Shut up,” Eeteuk says. “I'm going. Don't e-mail me with filth, okay?”
“You left me a filthy picture on my pillow,” Kangin says. “It's on now.”
“I'll put you in solitary confinement,” Eeteuk warns, prising open the door with all the enthusiasm of a child at the dentist.
“You don't want to know what I'll do in there,” Kangin says. “Or what I'll be thinking about dur-”
“Kangin,” Eeteuk says.
“Yeah,” Kangin says.
“Just. Just,” Eeteuk looks at him, as if daring him to laugh in a serious word-choosing situation.
“Want to put that into some kind of sentence, or?” Kangin says.
“Just. Just - fuck you!” Eeteuk finishes, helplessly.
“Fine,” Kangin says. “But I'd rather you did.”
*
E-mail to Eeteuk's cellphone, sent October 27th, 14:23pm.
Guess what I'm doing now.
Pairing: Kangin/Eeteuk
Rating: R
Summary: For
mytigerhobbes for help_haiti, who requested a Kangteuk get together fic. I really hope that you enjoy this and thanks so much again for bidding! :)Warnings: Rude language, rude content, slash, some angst.
The hardest thing about Super Junior is that there are so many of them. It's like being in class, only with people that you mostly love and want to be with. Thing is, there are no guarantees in Super Junior. Just endless division and the ground constantly shifting under their feet. They excuse one other their coping mechanisms, because at the heart of it they're just rats, rats in a cage that keeps getting smaller and smaller. They can only find ways to keep spinning their wheels.
It sometimes occurs to Kangin that this isn't the best way to regard an industry so hellbent on portraying happiness, capital H. Sometimes. Mostly, he just tries not to think about it. It's becoming a recurring theme in his life, hiding things.
The first time that Eeteuk rings him after eleven thirty at night, Kangin assumes that it's one of his coping mechanisms. In the last month, the two of them have been apart more than they have in the last two years. Kangin figures that if he's feeling weird about it, Eeteuk must be going totally ape. So, the first time his cell rings, lifting him out of his almost-sleep, he resolves not to get mad about it. There are more important things than dreaming, anyway.
“'Teuk,” he says, eventually, his voice dripping into a whisper like water running down the drain. “It's nearly two. Enough counselling. Go to sleep. Seriously.”
There's a laugh on the other end of the line, uncomfortably bright.
“You sound like me,” Eeteuk says. He's not kidding. Kangin wonders when he became sensible.
“You know – 'go to sleep, or you won't be fresh for tomorrow morning!' You're becoming the leader in my absence. I'm almost proud.”
“I have to get up at five,” Kangin says, grouchily. “You have to get up at, what, four, and-”
“Alright,” Eeteuk says. “Sorry – you know, for ringing. I just. It's strange not being with you. Not telling you to go to bed.”
“You can tell me to go to bed if you want,” Kangin yawns. “If you really have to go leader on my ass. Could've done it two hours ago, but-”
“Are you really mad?”
“Yeah,” Kangin says, but there's no weight in it. “Yeah, I'm really angry. I'm gonna take your head off, next time I see you.”
“That could be years,” Eeteuk says, wistfully. “We've been officially separated. I pine for the days of you taking my head off.”
“I feel like I'm in prison,” Kangin says, a part of his brain perking up. “And you're some jailbird pining for me and wishing I was back at home, uh, taking your head off? This is disturbing. Go to sleep. Don't call me anymore, you freak.”
Eeteuk laughs, light and inscrutable. “Alright,” he says, again. “I'll call you tomorrow. We can arrange visitation or something.”
“If you loved me,” Kangin says. “You'd cough up bail money and get me out of this godforsaken hellhole.”
“I don't love you that much,” Eeteuk says. “Tomorrow I'll even reverse the charges on the call. And you need to stop watching crappy American movies on the television.”
“I don't like you at all,” Kangin says.
“Goodnight,” Eeteuk says.
“'k.”
Kangin doesn't know what it all means. There are behaviours that can't begin to be explained to be excused. He tells people everything. If not Eeteuk, then somebody. And this, he wants to tell Eeteuk and he can't. He should tell somebody sensible. Somebody like Siwon, only – it'd end badly, so not Siwon. Kibum or Donghae or somebody. Only he isn't sure he wants it to be excused, this thing, and thinking about it all the time just gives him a pain in the back of his neck.
He palms his cell in his jeans pocket, chews on the thumbnail of his right hand. There's nothing wrong with calling Eeteuk. He does it all the time. Lots of people call Eeteuk. That's why they invented the cell phone – not for calling Eeteuk, obviously, for calling people – so, that should be that. He draws out his cell and looks at it, willing it to do something. Solve his problems. Cell phones can do everything nowadays, thanks to technological wizardry. It shouldn't be too much to ask that his sort out this stupid thing and his stupid life-
As if cued, it rings.
“Hey,” Kangin says. Probably a little too quickly, because Eeteuk's silence suggests that he's taken aback. “Er, I was just going to call you.”
“Ah,” Eeteuk says. “I was just calling to say hi. Guess where I am?”
Kangin thinks about this and then doesn't, because it leads his brain into things his brain doesn't – shouldn't – want to be. “The moon,” he says.
“How would my cell work on the moon?”
“I don't know,” he says. “Don't you think it should? Why are those geeks working so hard on making cell phones smaller than, like, hamster babies when they could be making technology work in space. Isn't that weird?”
“Right,” Eeteuk says. “But guess where I am.”
Kangin thinks about this, trying to pick up background noise. He can't hear anything but subdued pick-up of chatter. “Are you in the supermarket,” he says.
“Yep,” Eeteuk says. “Want anything?”
“I'm not gonna be seeing you,” Kangin points out. It makes his stomach lurch a little bit to the left.
“In spirit,” Eeteuk says. “I can give spirit-you chocolate, right?”
Not for the first time, Kangin recognises how truly bizarre they've both become. Separation makes the heart grow fonder and the brain go ass-backwards. “I guess,” he says. “Spirit-me might even leave you some.”
Eeteuk laughs. “Unlikely,” he says. “Even spirit-you's a greedy bastard.”
“Hey,” Kangin says. “I'm not missing you at all, you know that?”
“Yeah,” Eeteuk says. “That's why you were holding your cell, waiting for me to call.”
“I was gonna call you,” Kangin says.
“To say that you don't miss me?”
“Right!” Kangin says. “Uh, you know. Because I'm over this shit. I don't want you visiting me anyway. I have a new jailbird now.”
“Oh yeah,” Eeteuk says. “What's his name?”
The door opens behind him and Kangin looks around, a little too shifty for his own good.
“Siwon,” Kangin says.
“What?” Eeteuk says.
“What?” Siwon says.
Siwon, real and not in the least bit a jailbird, stands and looks at Kangin as if every effort is being exuded to keep his eyebrow on his face.
“Uh,” Kangin says. “Not you Siwon. Siwon Siwon. In front of me Siwon. Is here.”
“Yes?” Siwon says.
“Is this a new song?” Eeteuk asks, tartly. “It's catchy.”
“No,” Kangin says. “Siwon's here.”
“Oh,” Eeteuk says. “Can I speak to your new jailbird? I need to lay down some ground rules.”
Kangin doesn't want to think about Eeteuk laying down anything. On anything. By anything. Anything. He wordlessly hands Siwon the cell. Siwon takes it and gracefully greets Eeteuk, as if the whole scenario isn't totally mental. Kangin takes a moment's pause and marvels at how sweet Eeteuk's voice sounds when he's not talking to him.
Sometimes (usually) Eeteuk rings when Kangin is busy doing something else. It's an annoying tendency, leading to burnt food and falling over the vacuum cleaner and having to stand and drip dry, just out the shower. The latter incidents are the worst, obviously, because then Kangin's not just talking to Eeteuk but talking to him naked.
April 18th is one such day and Kangin just can't take it any more – the bite in Eeteuk's voice and the crawling feeling of every individual drop of water running down his body.
“'Teuk,” he says. “I'm in the middle of something, okay – I'll call you back later.”
He doesn't, but it'll be alright. Eeteuk is too cheerful when he rings off to suspect anything and when it comes to broken promises he's all too forgiving. Or uncaring. Or both.
On April 19th, Kangin's cell goes off in his pocket. He rolls his eyes, about to answer with a chewed apology for not calling back when he notices that the caller isn't Eeteuk. Isn't anything like Eeteuk – not chirpily vindictive at all but clinical, sympathetically detached.
All the heft drops out of his voice as he asks the questions he supposes he should be asking – none of the answers impacting at all. He feels as though all the fluid has drained out of his body. Unsteadily, he tries to arrange the words in a way that makes sense. It doesn't work.
“I'll come down,” he says. “I'll – will you tell him that I'm coming down?”
“When he wakes up, sir,” they say, without any understanding of what it means for Eeteuk to not to be awake, what it means for Eeteuk not to know. This isn't their world. Shouldn't be Kangin's, either. The band seems altogether a fabrication of life, a pointless waste of potential for the pair of them. Spending their days singing about happiness, all the while pushing it away.
“Please tell him then,” he says, before he rings off.
Calls like this happen in the middle of the night, he thinks. That's why it doesn't seem real. Calls telling you the person that you – that person, the person – telling you that they're hurt, those calls happen in the middle of the night. Not in the middle of the day, with the sun so bright and the air so clean with spring. Those calls wake you from sleep so that you have a reason not to feel their impact. Grogginess is a shield that's necessary. Without it, Kangin feels naked. He can't begin to imagine what Eeteuk feels like.
Hospitals are everything people say they are. Kangin tries to avoid them as much as possible, the distinct scents of dispassionate caring and tragedy lurking in every corner. As much as he hates the places, he knows that Eeteuk hates them even more. Walking into the building day after day, he reminds himself that this is what he was made to do. Look after those dearest to him. Beyond the bullshit and the politics and the moments where he's not sure whose life, exactly, he's living – this is real. This is what's important.
He doesn't bring Eeteuk flowers, a card, something stuffed or something fruity and sweet. He brings Eeteuk himself, day after day after day.
“Siwon says you're cruel,” Eeteuk says.
“Tell him the Pope is Catholic,” Kangin says. “Har har, that's especially hilarious, y'know, given-”
Eeteuk laughs, which only makes him look tiny and washed out amidst the starched bedsheets. Kangin tries to ignore it. Taking the gold paper crown that Heechul gave him as a get well gift, Kangin places it on Eeteuk's head. It helps a little.
“Your wit pierces me,” Eeteuk says. “Anyway, he says you're cruel. For not providing a get well card.”
Kangin looks at him, arms folded. “'Teuk,” he says. “You have about two million get well cards. And this crown thing. Think of the trees.”
“You don't care about trees,” Eeteuk says. “I don't want another card, anyway. I'm just passing the message on.”
“We all want you to get well,” Kangin says. “I'm here in person to help, you know. I'm your own personal get well card. I sing and everything. I'm much better than a bit of cardboard or a...paper fucking crown, what the fuck.”
“I'm just saying,” Eeteuk says. “Your jailbird doesn't seem very supportive.”
Kangin eyes him. “Yeah, well, we broke it off,” he says. “With me breaking out of jail, it seems unsustainable. You know how it is.”
“You making jokes about violence is going to be inappropriate, given the context,” Eeteuk says, dryly. “Just an advance warning.”
“Dammit,” Kangin says. “Why did you have to go get in an accident? You ruined the punchline. Get it? Punchline?”
Eeteuk looks at him.
“Alright,” Kangin says, droops. “Not funny.”
“A bit funny,” Eeteuk says. “Marginal improvement. God, I hurt.”
Kangin looks at him and wants, in a rush that's beyond uncomfortable, to do all sorts of things to make Eeteuk not-hurt. Things Eeteuk's hypothetical girlfriend should be doing. Not even dirty things, necessarily, just comforting things. Things that don't come naturally to him, haven't – since.
“Do you want me to play with your pillows?” he asks.
“Depends,” Eeteuk says. “Is it gonna be as dirty as it sounds?”
Kangin looks up, momentarily started. His tongue makes an entire lap around his dry, dry mouth before the silence breaks with another one of their coping mechanisms. Eeteuk deflects and once again, Kangin swallows down feeling.
The thing about time is that it can expand into slow breathing or condense into a rapid heartbeat. Time has no rules. Two years of nothing can pass by in a flash or in a mind-numbing crawl. Two years of unfinished sentences and unspoken thoughts. Kangin wonders if there's an anniversary card for that kind of thing.
And then there's the other kind of time, the kind that springs out at you, armed, when you least expect it. Kangin wraps his fingers around the steering wheel and doesn't breathe, doesn't think, doesn't blink – even when he can barely see the road for the water in his eyes. He drives as though he can leave the scene and the image behind, as if by driving he can make everything go away. He drives solidly, for hours, until he can no longer remember how it happened.
That's when he knows that he has to turn himself in.
Eeteuk doesn't remember the accident. Still, two years on. He can't remember what he saw just before the impact, what he felt, whether his life flashed before his eyes. He doesn't know what his last thought would have been. Kyuhun has talked about it with him, though he refuses to give Eeteuk details that he's lucky enough not to remember. It doesn't feel real, any of it. He's encouraged to talk about it, because it makes the fans feel soft about him, but he never knows what to say. He's too used to living in the public eye. Too used to the practiced gesture, the art of acting out living.
He doesn't sleep during the night of October 16th, which doesn't strike him as odd because insomnia plagues them at the best of times. It's only when the band gets together for rehearsals the next day that he recognises that something is wrong. Kangin isn't late. He's elsewhere. He's not coming. Eeteuk doesn't know how he knows the difference between these states – he just knows.
It's only because he badgers their manager that the truth comes out and even then, they've allowed only the briefest digestion of the facts. Their manager turns his mouth upwards when Donghae starts to voice what they're all thinking – that Kangin has been in too much trouble already. He swears that he doesn't know what will happen next, that kind of decision is above him and above the band. It's only when he says, 'I know that you all had the best time together and I hope that it will continue on' that Eeteuk really starts to worry. He knows this kind of double-speak far too well.
Still. The hit-and-run. It's not a thing that he can reasonably associate with Kangin. The culpability involved makes aligning his sympathies difficult. Everyone else wishes aloud that Kangin had been the innocent party, or if not, that he had just stepped forward when it happened. It would've been easier to measure out compassion without condoning his actions. Still, the forgiveness is heavy in the air. For Eeteuk, it's different. It isn't real. He can't begin to forgive what he can't understand – and he's not sure it's his responsibility to forgive this, anyway.
The band talks about support and showing Kangin that he isn't alone. Eeteuk knows that Kangin is alone, whether he wants to be or not. No amount of support is going to make him feel anything else.
About a week later, once Kangin has been hung, drawn and quartered at three separate meetings and the hysteria seems to have eased slightly, Eeteuk goes over to see him. They haven't spoken in just under a fortnight, which is the longest time there's ever been silence between them. Everybody else has contacted Kangin but Eeteuk doesn't know what to say. He's updated his blog, of course, but found even that a challenge. So much weight in such a small word, idiot, and he's not even sure he's talking about the accident at all.
When Kangin opens the door, he's pale and withdrawn. He doesn't even have the guilty hangdog look that used to make Eeteuk feel reassured. He looks like SM have drained most of his blood and used it to paint the office walls. Maybe they have.
“Can I come in?” Eeteuk asks.
Kangin shrugs, once, and stands out of the doorway. Eeteuk follows through, wanting to say a million things but knowing that he can only choose one.
“I'm sorry I haven't been there,” he says, carefully, as Kangin shuts the door and leans back against it. He regards him with slightly narrowed eyes, though Eeteuk can't tell if this is exhaustion or fury. He's never found Kangin hard to read before.
“I didn't deserve it anyway,” Kangin says, after a long pause. “People keep sending me stuff and I don't – I don't deserve that. I deserved silence. It's fine. People try to make it better and they can't. At least you were honest.”
“No,” Eeteuk says. “You don't deserve silence. I mean – you don't deserve gifts, either, but. They're trying, okay? They don't know how to do this.”
“Yeah,” Kangin says. “I guess not.”
“But you didn't deserve to feel like I wasn't your friend anymore,” Eeteuk says. “I'm not angry with you. It's not my place. So I'm sorry, for that. I'm guessing that's how you felt.”
“Honestly,” Kangin says. “I hadn't thought about it. I've been – you know. Elsewhere. This doesn't feel real. None of it. The accident feels more real than the consequences. How fucked up is that?”
Eeteuk regards him and his voice, so thin and so broken and so honest. “No,” he says. “It isn't. I mean – we lead this crazy life. I don't think it ever feels that real.”
“I know that you're my friend,” Kangin says. “Because you don't talk to me sometimes. When I've done something, you don't...treat me like I need kid gloves. Like I'm the victim. I needed you but you weren't there and you shouldn't have been. I can't explain why that's a good thing, it just. I don't know, 'Teuk. I don't know.”
“I'd have tried to placate you, I think,” Eeteuk says. “I didn't want to try to make it better. It doesn't, shouldn't – be better. That's not life. That's not how life works.”
“No,” Kangin says. “True. Fuck. Fuck, I don't. I don't know what's going to happen. I...they haven't made any decisions. I don't know if I care, 'Teuk. Honestly. That's the scariest thing.”
He sits down against the door, as much because he looks shot to hell as because he needs to analyse the words that are coming out of his mouth.
“It isn't real,” he says. “And if it isn't real – how can I start caring? What is real is the accident, is you and me just sitting here and you looking at me like that. Like, I don't know like what. You know. I can't care about the band when everything else is so fucked up.”
“Me looking at you is fucked up?”
Kangin looks at him and there are a few beats of time, quick and fluid and terrifying. “Yeah,” he says. “Because you're not looking at me like a friend right now.”
“Have I ever?” Eeteuk says. He's trying to make his voice a lot stronger than it is, but in the air it's as feeble as a bee's wings.
Kangin starts to chew on the fingernail of his right hand. “I don't know,” he says.
“Mm,” Eeteuk says. “I don't know, either. But it's not the point, is it. It's all about right now.”
Kangin looks at him and for a moment, time moves slowly, dark and wet. “And right now, what? What are you saying?”
“I'm saying that you need a friend right now,” Eeteuk says. “But when you need more than that, I want to be more than that. It's what I've wanted to say since, well, ages. It's just – things got in the way. Life got in the way.”
“No,” Kangin says. “This isn't life – the band, that. Isn't life. This is life. Right now. It was in the hospital. You remember that? That was life, too, only it was fucking horrible so we both chickened out of it. I don't want to chicken out anymore.”
“Then don't,” Eeteuk says, simply. He scoots over and presses his side against Kangin's side, until Kangin's head slowly drops down onto his shoulder. Then, he closes his eyes.
Eeteuk stays with him for the week after. It's not easy to do because Kangin keeps being summoned for things and when Eeteuk has to go to rehearsals it's difficult to leave Kangin behind. But the small things – the glass of wine at the end of the day, the stories about their childhood and about the things that have passed between them all these years – those are real and they help. Eeteuk feels more a part of his life than he has in a long time and, he suspects, so does Kangin.
The only problem is that Kangin doesn't sleep. Eeteuk knows it because he hears him wandering around the apartment at all hours and so, four nights in, he gets up at 3 in the morning and follows him into the living room.
“Can't sleep?” he asks, though it's patently obvious from Kangin's pacing that it isn't happiness keeping him awake.
“Mm,” Kangin says. “You either?”
“You woke me,” Eeteuk says, though entirely without weight, and Kangin hasn't the energy to be suitably sorry anyway. He just looks at Eeteuk without a hint of sleep in his eyes, just the kind of courage that darkness gives.
They sit together on Kangin's windowsill, sharing a blanket and a bottle of something stronger than Eeteuk thinks is probably appropriate. He doesn't comment, just wraps his hands around Kangin's foot and watching him shift with ticklishness.
“It'll be okay,” he says, slowly.
“Ah, shut up,” Kangin grouches. “Don't talk to me like that, okay. And get off my foot.”
“Okay, grumpy,” Eeteuk says, taking a swig of whiskey. “So stop feeling sorry for yourself, already. It's not like you're actually going to be jailed.”
Kangin looks at him, almost incredulously, until a smile steals the corner of his mouth. “I can't believe you,” he says.
“Yeah,” Eeteuk says. “You would've actually had me as a jailbird, too.”
“Urgh,” Kangin says. “You would've made the worst jailbird. You wouldn't have sent me long letters or dirty photographs or anything.”
“Want to bet?” Eeteuk says.
“Mm,” Kangin says, regarding him. “Maybe you're going up in my estimation.”
“I hope so,” Eeteuk says. “Because eventually, I'm going to want to jump you. So. That's a pretty positive sign.”
Kangin laughs at that, though slightly nervously, and Eeteuk wonders whether this honesty schtick is working for them any better than the silences.
“You could have anybody,” Kangin says. “That's what gets me. Like...anybody. Anyone. And this is. You're sitting under a fucking crotchet blanket with me like some geriatric alcoholic. Drowning my sorrows. It's fucking – it's worse than jail, is what it is.”
“Shut up,” Eeteuk says. “And your feet smell.”
“I hate you,” Kangin says.
“It's not worse than jail,” Eeteuk says.
“How is this not worse than jail?”
“Because,” Eeteuk says. “In jail you'd just have the dirty photographs.”
A week on, Kangin opens his eyes to the sunlight blazing. It's autumnal sun, hard and unforgiving. Unexpected. Welcome. He turns over and stares at the ceiling, waiting for the inevitable gloom to set in. He's been told that he's banned from participating in the band until the new decade. That doesn't make him feel as sad as he expected it to, because he probably needs a break and to work out exactly what the hell he's doing in the industry. But it's hard watching Eeteuk walk out every day.
He stretches, raising his arms above his head and feeling his bones shift contentedly. The inevitable gloom seems to be having a day off, which gives him pause and a small scrap of hope. It's the first time in ages that he's felt as though things may turn out alright. As he lowers his arms, the sensitive inside of his elbow catches on a sharp corner. Feeling across the pillow with his hand, he picks up a small, thin square object and blinks to look at it.
A feeling pools in his stomach – but it isn't gloom.
It's a Polaroid. And not an innocent one, at that. Turning it over, he reads the scrawled handwriting.
Here's to waiting. I'll be here, like this, whenever you want to come home.
Jailbird.
PS – Come home soon, though, because it's fucking cold here without clothes on.
Slowly, his senses start to come back to him and he hears the click of the front door. Suspended in animation for a moment, he tangles himself up in the bedsheets and tumbles out onto the floor. Shouting Eeteuk's name in a way that he's sure can't be dignified, he tries to save himself from the mess of his bed and skids out into the living room. He's in luck – the click he heard was the door being pulled out of its hinge, not it closing altogether.
Eeteuk is standing and looking startled, like it's too early for shouting and tangled bedsheets and Kangin's face, all urgent like that. Startled, as though it'd never occur to him to give Kangin a dirty photograph. That bastard.
“You,” he says. “You – you. And your. Yes. Photographs. You. Okay.”
It's not the smoothest move Kangin's ever pulled, but slowly Eeteuk starts to smile.
“Right,” Eeteuk says. “Want to put that into some kind of sentence, or?”
And Kangin looks at him, really looks at him – and realises that he's fed up of words, sentences, thoughts, hopes, dreams, the whole fucking lot of it. So he walks across the room and palms the door back shut. With the other hand, he touches Eeteuk's face and taking every word, every sentence, every unspent breath of the last two years, he kisses it all into Eeteuk's lips. The slow ascent of Eeteuk's hands around the back of his neck makes him breathless, more urgent, until there's nothing else in the world but this moment.
And when Eeteuk draws back there's a world in the expression on his face.
“It's about fucking time,” he says, and the words are triangular with smiling.
Kangin nods, because he's lost all powers of speech, lost everything except being in this room and kissing Eeteuk and being kissed back.
“I have to go,” Eeteuk says, pained, watching Kangin for some kind of reason not to. And Kangin, even though sometimes he hates the job and what it represents and that it nearly lost him this chance – he can't bring himself to make it a choice. He wouldn't know Eeteuk without Super Junior. He wouldn't ever have even met him.
“Go,” he says. “Visiting time is finished. Go and be happy happy. And come back, and be fuc-”
“No,” Eeteuk says, slightly shrill. “Not allowed. No. Close mouth. Desist. I'll be back later. You'll be alright?”
“Fine,” Kangin says. “I'll be unkissed and everything, but don't worry about me.”
The sulking is back. He knows it and Eeteuk knows it. The sense of relief is better than anything he's ever felt before.
“Shut up,” Eeteuk says. “I'm going. Don't e-mail me with filth, okay?”
“You left me a filthy picture on my pillow,” Kangin says. “It's on now.”
“I'll put you in solitary confinement,” Eeteuk warns, prising open the door with all the enthusiasm of a child at the dentist.
“You don't want to know what I'll do in there,” Kangin says. “Or what I'll be thinking about dur-”
“Kangin,” Eeteuk says.
“Yeah,” Kangin says.
“Just. Just,” Eeteuk looks at him, as if daring him to laugh in a serious word-choosing situation.
“Want to put that into some kind of sentence, or?” Kangin says.
“Just. Just - fuck you!” Eeteuk finishes, helplessly.
“Fine,” Kangin says. “But I'd rather you did.”
E-mail to Eeteuk's cellphone, sent October 27th, 14:23pm.
Guess what I'm doing now.
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the dialogue hurts, it's so good. i don't know, i loved everything, just know that, and thank you so much! ;__;
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Thank you again. :D
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MORE. PLEASE. I AM NOT AFRAID TO BEG.
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normally i'm not a fan of kangteuk because i don't see how they work and i don't like it much, but i really liked this! you showed me how kangteuk could work without kangin or leeteuk being out of character at all, and best of all, you worked in kangin's hit&run incident. i really like fics that deal with all the controversies of the real world, but this seems so, so real because of leeteuk's character and how he isn't forgiving at all, that he kind of judges kangin and kangin accepts that. that he knows that leeteuk would do that and accepts it because, well, that's what happens. best friends/more than friends aren't about forgiveness, always, but showing them that they're wrong sometimes and that they to accept it!
oh wow, long comment is long, but thank you for this! it's honestly beautiful, and definitely keeping this bookmarked. :)
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you're the best Kangteuk writer out there hands down i am in tears of JOY holy shit YES
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I'm sitting here in shock and awe, because you captured them absolutely perfectly. They are both just the right levels of dumb and incoherency, and it's just so real, what they're going through. Because I honestly believe Kangin has been through hell and back with the aftermath, and that Eeteuk has lost years of his life worrying, and... well, with things they way they are now, this becomes all the more poignant.
Thank you for writing this. They're still such a viable pairing, just... circumstances have changed, that's all.
(this is a stupid nearly 5am comment but i just really wanted to express how much i ♥ this :D)
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Perfect. Memming.