KPop: Allegro (SeKai) [1/2]
Jul. 11th, 2012 06:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
maayacolabackupIt’s sort of like waking up one day and realizing you haven’t lost your mind. You’ve just gained another one.
“You’re so quiet,” Junmyeon says, as Jongin stretches, loosening his muscles before rehearsal. “Everything okay?”
“I’m a quiet person,” Jongin says, fingers grasping easily at his toes. “I always have been.”
Jongin tenses and releases the muscles in his thighs. Ballet has taught him the importance of stretching. Many of the others could stand to learn, Jongin thinks.
Kyungsoo, for example, never stretches; he’s sitting down now, texting a friend, round eyes concentrating on the screen. After rehearsal, Kyungsoo will be sore, and Jongin will rub his shoulders as Kyungsoo washes the rice for dinner.
Jongin crosses his legs, right over left, toes pointed outward, almost like fourth position, and enjoys the burn of the stretch.
“Right,” Junmyeon says. “Quiet. Shy, too.” He wriggles his eyebrows, and Chanyeol laughs, and Jongin studies his knees, ignoring them. “Wouldn’t think that, what with the way you perform.”
Sehun, who has been doing his own stretches, comes to stand next to Jongin. He rests his hand on the small of Jongin’s back, and Jongin can feel the line of his long, thin fingers through the fabric of his tank shirt.
“I like that you’re quiet,” Sehun says, and Jongin looks up at him through the curtain of his hair. He needs a cut.
“Yeah?”
Sehun’s mouth is soft at the edges, and his bangs fall into his dark brown eyes. “Peace and quiet is hard to come by around here.” He gestures teasingly around the room, and Jongin knows what he means; they’re a noisy group as six, and even noisier as twelve, and one of their leaders is just as silly as the rest of them.
Jongin doesn’t really have a response for Sehun, though, beyond a hum of agreement. He’s too distracted by the warmth of Sehun’s hand, and the way he can never seem to look away from Sehun’s perfectly bowed lips.
Jongin's heart beats like a drum, a sharp, quick, staccato rhythm that doesn’t match the languid movements of either of them right now, and betrays the strength of Jongin’s want.
Jongin straightens, and Sehun’s hand falls from its position, dragging across the stripe of bare skin between Jongin’s sweats and tank, and Jongin shivers. “You’re all right, too,” Jongin says, and doesn’t meet Sehun’s curving, smiling eyes. “I guess.”
Sehun elbows him playfully, and a grin tugs at Jongin’s lips at the familiar nudge. “That’s all you’ve got to say, after four years?” Sehun teases, and Jongin shrugs, turning away from him.
“I am shy,” Jongin says, more in Junmyeon’s direction, and Junmyeon gives him a peace sign. Chanyeol’s already lost interest in the conversation, and wandered off to bother Baekhyun, who’s talking quietly with Kyungsoo in the corner as Kyungsoo continues to fiddle with his phone. “Not all of us are, you know, championship selca-takers.”
“I’ve had seven years to find my good angles,” Junmyeon says. “Don’t be jealous.”
“I’m not jealous, I’m just not that into that.”
“We’re idols. We get into this business because we’re into that.” He sounds like a veteran, instead of someone who’s only been debuted as long as Jongin.
Jongin raises an eyebrow. “Is that a grey hair?” Jongin says, teasing lilt to his voice. “Stop talking like you’re an old hand at this.”
“I’m just saying,” Junmyeon replies with a shrug. “If you don’t like attention, what are you doing here?”
“You and Chanyeol play the narcissist game enough for all of us,” Jongin says. He straightens his toes. Lifts his ribcage. Attitude. He feels each disc of his spine, piled perfectly one on top of the other. Aplomb. “And don’t get me started on Zitao.”
“Sorry,” Junmyeon says, “but I can’t hear you over the sound of female screams as you pull up your shirt for the millionth time.”
Jongin relaxes, letting his posture slip, and gives Junmyeon a half-hearted glare.
“That’s Kai,” Jongin says, and Sehun shifts next to him, and Jongin swallows at the press of Sehun’s bare arm against his own. Sehun’s skin is always like silk, and the brush of it raises the fine, invisible hairs on his forearm.
“Yo, Earth to Jongin,” Chanyeol half-shouts from across the room, waving his arms back and forth like he’s drunkenly hailing a taxi cab in Hongdae. “You are Kai!!”
Jongin offers him a tiny smile, and stretches his arms up, shifting into fifth position.
You are Kai rings in his head, but Jongin focuses on the pull as he turns his shoulders and hips out, shifting into an artless, stiff croisé.
Fact: Jongin is not Kai, and Kai is not Jongin.
Kai is kind of like a stranger who moves into Jongin’s house; a roommate Jongin finds in the want-ads, who then shows up on Jongin’s doorstep with the full month’s rent in cash. Kai does all the horrible chores Jongin can’t bring himself to do, too, with a smile on his face, and Jongin’s so grateful he doesn’t really question where Kai came from or what he wants.
Kind of like that, but not quite.
Jongin feels Kai slip into his skin and take control, and Jongin hides behind his own eyes, free from the flashing lights and screaming girls and people who want pieces of him he isn’t sure he can spare.
Jongin loves to dance, the thrill of a perfectly executed hip roll just as consuming as a flawless grande jété, but he doesn’t love the rest of it. Jongin definitely doesn’t like not knowing what to say or how to say it.
Kai saves him, in a lot of ways, and Jongin doesn’t question where he’s come from and why. It’s easier, anyway, to let someone else take the wheel, and ride in the passenger seat. To be an observer in his own body, the only glimpses of Jongin in reflections when he walks past glass doors.
Jongin just loves to dance, but Kai… Kai loves everything else that comes along with that, and Kai makes Jongin feel safe when everything feels dangerous, because he bears a burden that Jongin could never handle.
the dancer stands with hips turned out, heels touching to create as straight a line as possible.
Jongin stands timidly in the middle of the room as Sehun looks him up and down. “I like the top-hat,” Sehun says. “Very… eighteen-hundreds.”
“Thanks,” Jongin says wryly, and wipes his sweaty palms on his trousers. “Why am I going first?” Sehun steps closer, and straightens the white scarf Jongin’s wearing around his neck, pulling at the left until the two ends are even.
“Because you’re the one with the cool teleportation powers,” Sehun says, patting Jongin’s chest and stepping back. Jongin misses the warmth.
“Can’t I have the power of camouflage?” Jongin mumbles, and Sehun laughs quietly, the laugh Jongin likes because it whistles through Sehun’s teeth.
“Relax,” Sehun says, like this isn’t their first real time on camera. Like this isn’t the first impression Kim Jongin will ever make. “It’s time to introduce Kai.”
Jongin fusses with his cape. Not quite big enough to disappear under, he thinks, so instead he just fiddles with the watch that hangs from a chain attached to his vest.
Kai. He rolls the name around on his tongue. It doesn’t sound anything like Kim Jongin. It’s a strong name. Jongin likes it; he’d liked it from the minute they’d told him it would be his.
The PD’s assistant looks into the dressing room, eyes landing easily on Jongin in his elaborate ensemble. “Ready for you,” he says, and Jongin swallows and nods, but not enough to unbalance the hat that the stylists had carefully perched on his head, fitting it over his brow in a way that wouldn’t destroy the carefully tousled hair underneath.
Jongin turns to follow, but Sehun tugs gently on the cuff of his jacket, demanding attention. His face, in contrast to Jongin's, is clean and clear, the only glow Sehun’s natural one. “Good luck,” Sehun says, and Jongin likes the way Sehun’s finger scratches oh-so-lightly at the skin of his wrist on accident as he lets go.
“Easy for you to say,” Jongin says, but then he flashes Sehun a smile; a real one, because Sehun always makes him smile, even when his stomach is tied up in knots like this.
Sehun claps his hands, adorably, like a performing seal, at Jongin’s sincere grin, and Jongin shakes his head at him, still smiling.
Sehun is claimed by a make-up woman as Jongin leaves the room, and the last thing he hears is Sehun’s sweet, patient sigh.
Out on the set, Leeteuk is watching. He stands with his arms crossed, wearing a casual beige blazer, and Chanyeol is standing next to him, bouncing excitedly back and forth on the balls of his feet as he chatters, fluffy hair bouncing to and fro. Leeteuk seems amused by whatever Chanyeol is saying, and Jongin wishes he could hear it because maybe it would cheer him up.
There’s an expensive car parked on the set, and a gigantic green screen. This will be Jongin’s dark road in the teaser, he guesses. The ground is slick, puddles of water splashing beneath Jongin’s shoes as he walks over to the car.
“Do you remember what you’re supposed to do?” the PD asks, peering at him carefully, and Jongin wonders if he looks as green as the giant wall covering behind him.
“Y-yes,” Jongin says, and Chanyeol offers him a peace sign that Jongin catches with the corner of his eyes, and Jongin flexes his fingers on both hands, mouthing 'crong' back at him.
He wonders where the others are. He knows Sehun is in make-up, and he’d seen Baekhyun wandering around with Taeyeon earlier, hanging onto her every word as she gave him tips on how one should look at the camera when filming CFs. He knows Kyungsoo and Minseok won’t even come out here until after lunch, because they’d talked about it at breakfast, but he’s pretty sure another van is supposed to have arrived by now. It had just been Jongin, Sehun, Baekhyun and Chanyeol in theirs; the first to film for the teasers.
The PD toys with the camera focus, maybe, and a stylist rushes over to push his hair to one side, and Jongin doesn’t think it feels any different when she’s done, but she seems satisfied so he licks his lips and goes with it. Jongin gets into position. He’s scared, even though it’s just a video camera and a bunch of people who know he’s rather shy, and he’s mildly worried he might throw up.
“Okay, I’m going to give you a countdown. When I get to ‘one’, step out of the car. Then we’ll cut and switch angles.”
Just get out of the car, Jongin says to himself. That’s easy enough. It’s like falling into first position at the barre. A beginning step that’s simple to master.
“Three,” the PD says, starting the countdown, and that’s when Jongin is pulled out of his own skin.
It’s strange. One minute, he’d held his cane tightly in his right hand, and had his other hand resting on the door handle.
The next minute, Jongin is not in control. At first, it’s like the world’s gone hazy. Jongin thinks maybe he’s done something embarrassing, like faint, because it’s almost like a dream, the way he’s looking through his own eyes but everything seems wavering and distant. He tries to bring his hand to his face, but it won’t move. It stays resting on the door handle.
“Two.” Jongin feels himself swallow, but he hasn’t made himself swallow. His hand shifts grip on the cane; Jongin hasn’t made himself do that either.
Maybe pulled out of his skin is the wrong way to describe it. It’s more like he’s been pulled deeper inside of himself, and something, someone else, has filled in the space between.
He feels a bit like a marionette, one of the dolls on strings made of straw, or like he's performing ‘Pétrouchka’ to the tune of a Stravinsky libretto, controlled by someone else as he watches from behind his own eyes.
“One,” says the PD, and Jongin is moving, standing, gracefully easing out of the car. The camera zooms closer, and Jongin can feel the pull of his mouth as it stretches into a smirk, and his eyebrows tilt. It’s everything Jongin is supposed to be doing, Jongin thinks with wonder. It’s everything Jongin is supposed to be doing, but Jongin isn’t doing it.
Or he is, in a way, but it’s not up to Jongin to pretend a confidence he doesn’t feel. It’s the puller of strings who makes Jongin move to the tune of two oboes and three clarinets in B-flat.
Jongin’s body moves in all the right ways, and the PD praises him, sounding faintly surprised, as Jongin smiles and smolders his way to perfect take after perfect take. When it’s over, and Jongin is sweaty and in need of a costume change, he feels himself slip back into control of his own body in a single sudden rush; his floating impulses suddenly resulting in a movement, his fingers curling to his own commands.
Sehun is watching him with a mystified look on his face, lower lip jutting out with curiosity, and Jongin walks, of his own volition, over to where Sehun is standing.
“You were amazing,” Sehun says. “I’ve never seen you like that before.” He throws his arm over Jongin’s shoulder, and Jongin hopes Sehun can’t feel the tremble of it.
“Like what?” Jongin says, and the tingle in his arms and legs is eerie and foreign and terrifying.
“So… certain,” Sehun says. “Like all the nerves were gone.”
“I-“ Jongin doesn’t know what to say, because he’s still reeling.
“Welcome to show business, Kai,” Sehun says, leaning his shoulder against Jongin’s in the way they’ve been doing for a while now, when they want to offer each other support. He smells like hairspray and liquid foundation and reality. Jongin presses back to ground himself.
“I’m here,” Jongin says, as the tingle fades, and all that’s left is the sweat cooling on his neck from the set-lights.
This is the first time Jongin meets Kai. It is definitely not the last.
the dancer stands turned out similar to first position but the heel of the front foot touching the arch of the back foot.
Kim Jongin is not crazy.
He does not think Kai is crazy, either.
Jongin suspects that if people knew about Kai, though, they would think that Kim Jongin is crazy, because Kim Jongin, no matter how real Kai feels, has no proof that Kai exists beyond the confines of his own mind.
A position of the foot in which your heel is held up, your big toe is stretched down toward the ground, your leg is turned out, and your foot is in line with your leg.
“I don’t know if you’re idol material,” Taemin says, when Heechul tries to take a picture and Jongin dives behind Chanyeol, who looks down with amusement. Sehun looks over also, quietly observing the situation. “You’re supposed to smile.”
“No one makes duizhang smile,” Jongin mumbles, but it’s drowned in the noise of the room. It’s true though. Wu Fan sees a camera and his face pulls into a tight frown, eyes narrowed and hair falling across his brow.
“That’s his camera face,” Heechul says. “What’s yours going to be?”
“Kyungsoo’s already got ‘deer in the headlights’, remember, so you’ll have to think of something else.” Chanyeol scrunches his nose. “Cameras are Jongin’s kryptonite,” he says, to Heechul and Taemin. “He sees the lens and he’s back inside his tortoise shell faster than you can say ‘social skills.’”
“Shut up,” Jongin says, and Taemin laughs and kicks him, and Jongin sits up, shoving Chanyeol to the side, and frowns at his friend. He crosses his arms self-consciously in front of his chest, letting fingertips dig into his skin. “I’ll… get better about it.” He feels put on the spot, an anxious flush creeping up his neck, and the aftertaste of terrifying expectation lingers on the back of his tongue.
There’s a faint touch to Jongin’s wrist, and Jongin follows fingers to an arm to a neck, and Sehun is looking at him with steady eyes. It’s calming, and Jongin’s stomach ceases its revoltades and settles into balance. He grins his thanks, and Sehun’s cheeks dust with a faint pink.
“It’s not like ballet, Jongin,” Taemin says, and he’s smiling but there are shadows in his eyes. “You can’t just practice and practice until you learn the connection—“
“What do you know about ballet?” Jongin jokes, and Taemin grins.
“How long have we been friends, now? I know enough about ballet, just from talking to you.” Taemin throws his arm around Jongin’s neck.
“Think I can take the photo now?” Heechul asks, and Jongin smiles and smiles and smiles, and Kai bubbles beneath the surface, and Jongin wishes he’d come out and take over, and let Jongin watch things go right.
Jongin likes Sehun the moment he sees him. Just likes the way his hair falls into his eyes and the way his shoulders shake slightly when he laughs and the understated way he smiles. He likes the way Sehun’s tongue struggles to curl around ‘s’ and the way Sehun’s eyes curve when he’s amused.
Jongin just really likes the way Sehun is quiet. Not reserved or withdrawn, just… Chanyeol and Baekhyun are loud, all flailing limbs and loud volume speech, and Kyungsoo and Junmyeon are worriers who poke and prod and ask if Jongin “is really okay,” and if he’s sure he doesn’t “want to talk to someone older about it,” and while Jongin appreciates the noise, and the care, it’s Sehun who is comfortable.
Sehun is like a classical piece that swells from grave to moderato, quickening at just the right places for Jongin to keep his balance or change his leading foot, and Jongin loves the way he fits so easily into Sehun’s tempo.
“We’ll have to stick together,” Sehun says, twenty minutes after they meet for the first time, and Jongin notices, weirdly, how cute Sehun looks with his face stretched into a full smile. It makes him blush and look away.
“Yeah,” Jongin says, and the twisting in his gut is almost painful. “Just you and me against the hyungs, right?”
Sehun’s got veins in his hands, a dark blue beneath pale peach skin, and Jongin’s eyes trace them up the inside of Sehun’s arm. His mouth is dry.
“Right,” Sehun says, and Jongin is afraid. Jongin is always afraid, but at least this is a new type of fear.
He wants to shift closer, but he doesn’t. Jongin is only fifteen, but his heart skips a beat, breaking time.
the holding of your body in a stable position.
Kai has a habit of touching himself; dragging his shirt up from the hem or down from the collar, revealing stretches of skin that heighten screams to a fever pitch. Kai plays it all up—the lip biting that Jongin does as habit becomes seduction, and Kai makes it work. He makes everything work, and when Jongin is back in control, muscles screaming from exertion and the glare of camera phones still making spots in his eyes, Jongin wonders how Kai does it.
Jongin can stand on his toes, one leg extended, hips opened in an almost perfect turnout, but Jongin can’t answer questions about his favorite color or food, if a stranger asks those questions.
Jongin just makes tiny hearts with his hands, and smiles hesitantly, and hopes it’s enough.
This is another way in which Kai bears Jongin’s burdens, and another way Jongin wonders if he’d even survive without Kai.
the lining up of parts of your body to make a balanced and graceful line.
the position and carriage of the body.
carriage of the arms.
Jongin’s first pair of ballet shoes are made of leather. His mom thinks the leather’ll be more sturdy than the canvas, but Jongin’s just enraptured with the way it feels beneath his fingertips; soft and smooth but still strong. The sole is split, and Jongin can bend the shoe in half. The elastic is pre-sown. He pulls them on, and they fit perfectly, molding to his foot. They’re the most comfortable shoes he’s ever worn.
Even when he graduates to a full-sole shoe, (he wears canvas shoes these days, and he has to sew the elastic on himself) Jongin still remembers that very first pair. He realizes, in hindsight, that they hadn’t fit perfectly at all, and that it had just been the thrill of standing at the barre for the first time wearing the right thing, but he clings to the memory of the way the leather had caressed the arch of his foot, and it inspires the same joy as his memory of his first landed entrechat.
Jongin wears sneakers to dance, now. He laces up high-tops and does pops and locks to hard-hitting beats, pulling his body in instead of stretching it out. The type of experience he’s helping to create for the people who watch is different now, and Jongin knows that as well as he knows how to elucidate the difference with the curve of his hand or the bend in his knee.
But Jongin keeps one single pair of ballet shoes: clean, canvas, better for vinyl floors even though Jongin dances on wooden ones. He takes them to a rehearsal room; one of the quiet ones in the back, with mirrors on every wall and a single barre on the far side of the room, and practices. He shifts from first to second to third with the ease of long-drilled muscle-memory, and lets the fluidity of his first love echo all the way down into his bones.
Jongin doesn’t need Kai, like this. This is all Jongin, languid movement with hidden sharpness. Jongin doesn’t feel lost and awkward in the midst of his basic exercises; he feels like he’s exactly where he’s supposed to be, comfortable in his own skin.
“It’s beautiful,” Sehun says, and Jongin looks up to see Sehun, bangs tied back with a rubber band and face scrubbed free of make-up, standing in the doorway of the rehearsal room. “The way you look when you’re dancing.”
Jongin looks for words but the search is fruitless. Instead he sucks his lower lip into his mouth, trapping it between his teeth, and watches as Sehun walks all the way into the room.
“You’re lucky I’m not Baekhyun,” Sehun says, and lets his hand hover by the light switch. “Or I’d be leaving you in the dark.”
“Or giving me a seizure by flicking them on and off,” Jongin says, and Sehun tilts his head to the side, studying Jongin’s face. It makes him feel exposed, because Sehun is looking at him like he can see straight through him.
“I wish I’d learned,” Sehun says, and gestures to the way Jongin’s leg is stretched out to the side in effortless extension. “To be that graceful.”
Jongin laughs, and Sehun raises both brows in confusion.
“What?”
“Everything you do is graceful,” Jongin says, and thinks about Sehun’s hands pushing back through his hair, or the casual turn of Sehun’s body as he leans over to whisper in Lu Han’s ear.
There’s a beat of silence. Jongin can feel the pull in his hip, and the weight of his leg as he keeps his position. It gets heavier and heavier.
“I could show you, a little,” Jongin says, and Sehun steps closer; close enough that Jongin can smell the rose hints in his soap and the winter-mint of freshly brushed teeth.
“I’d like that,” Sehun says, and Jongin falls onto the flats of his feet. “If I’m not bothering you.”
“You’re not bothering me,” Jongin says. “I’m not doing anything specific.” He tentatively pokes at Sehun’s arm, and nods toward the barre, and Sehun grabs it with both hands, facing the mirror. Kai is there, in Jongin’s reflection, and he’s far more self-assured than Jongin. Jongin tries to borrow a little of his nerve.
“Is this right?”
“Yeah,” Jongin says, and he steps behind Sehun, hesitantly dropping his hands onto Sehun’s waist.
Sehun’s lean and taunt beneath his hands, and Jongin’s heart is beating too fast. “Let’s try an elevé,” Jongin says carefully, because he doesn’t exactly speak French and probably never will. Still, the word is as natural to him as breathing, because he’s known it since he was seven.
Sehun’s never heard it, though, and he can see the newness of it in the set of Sehun’s brows in the mirror, catching Jongin’s in reflection, and Jongin swallows around the tightness in his throat. “What does that mean?”
“Up onto the balls of your feet,” Jongin says, and he lifts, and Sehun easily lifts with him. Jongin can feel the muscles in Sehun’s torso rise beneath his hands. “Good,” Jongin says, voice cracking as he slowly pulls down. Sehun’s back rubs against his chest, and Jongin wants to pull Sehun in closer.
“Am I a ballet dancer, now?” Sehun asks, laughter tickling at the edges of the question, and Jongin can’t catch his breath.
“Not quite,” Jongin says, and Sehun sticks out his tongue before following it up with a grin.
“Guess I’ll have to keep trying,” Sehun says, and Jongin can almost feel Kai, even if he refuses to look at him, telling him to press a little closer; rest his chin on Sehun’s shoulder and…
But this is Jongin, and Jongin isn’t Kai, and Jongin lets his hands fall, stepping back as Sehun turns around at the barre to face him. “Guess so,” Jongin whispers, but it’s loud in the empty music, where no music is playing.
Kai would have been braver, Jongin thinks.
But it’s Jongin who finds the courage to go out and buy a pair of leather shoes with a split sole, and leave them in the center of Sehun’s bed, with a note advising that they’ll sew the elastic on together later.
And it’s Jongin that Sehun smiles at later, over dinner, and Jongin who looks down at his rice feeling warm and pleased.
the dancer stands on the supporting leg while the working leg is lifted, bent at a 90 degree angle.
Fact: It’s not as easy or as simple as on-stage or off.
Kai also steps in when things are hard elsewhere, like when Jongin has to go home and face his parents. It’s not that they’re mad at Jongin, for what he does. It’s more that they just don’t care beyond whether his actions make them look bad or good, and maybe that hurts worse. Kai doesn’t care either, though, Jongin thinks. Or Kai is better at pretending he doesn’t care.
Kai also helps with Sehun. Jongin doesn’t know what to do with those feelings, at all, and it seems easier, somehow, that Kai takes the responsibility out of his hands.
It’s cowardly, but Jongin doesn’t know what he can do about it anyway. It’s not like he has a choice.
the foot is turned out as in first position, but the toes close in to the heels of the other foot.
Kim Jongin is not crazy.
Kim Jongin is not crazy. Kim Jongin. Is not crazy.
steps executed in a circle
“You’re still here,” Sehun says, and Jongin looks up through a sweat-soaked curtain of hair. “You should rest.”
“I have to practice,” Jongin says. “For the showcase.”
“We’ve practiced enough,” Sehun says, arms crossed over his chest. “You’re going to hurt yourself.”
“I’m fine,” Jongin says, but now that he’s stopped, he can feel his knees preparing to give out. He collapses to the ground, chest heaving. The floor his cool through the wet back of his t-shirt, and as he looks up at the ceiling, he feels a little dizzy.
“You’re fine now,” Sehun says. “But you won’t be fine when you wake up too sore to move tomorrow.”
“I don’t,” Jongin says, and the ceiling has stopped moving, and his lungs don’t burn on the inhale, “want to let you guys down.”
“Jongin,” Sehun says, and he sits down next to Jongin, wrapping his arms around his long, thin legs. There’s a flash of ankle where his pants are just a bit too short, and Jongin peruses the strip of revealed skin lazily, resting his hands on his belly. “You’re not going to disappoint anyone.”
“I’m in the front. I’m the one who’s known as the lead dancer. If Chanyeol messes up, no one expected him to be the best dancer, anyway. He’s the rapper. Me? This is my job.” This is Jongin’s job. Not anyone else’s. Especially not Kai’s. Kai has to do everything else, but Jongin can do this. Has to do at least this.
“No one’s telling you not to take it seriously,” Sehun says. “But you’ve been here for five hours. Kyungsoo’s pacing the kitchen and muttering to himself, and Chanyeol is in your room reading your Beyblade comics.” Sehun puts one of his hands on top of Jongin’s. “So come home and sleep. We have rehearsal tomorrow.”
Sehun’s hand is reassuring and warm. “Okay,” Jongin says. He stands, and when he looks in the mirror, his face appears feverish, and he can see Kai, too. Just… waiting.
opened.
Sungmin corners Kai after ‘Kiss the Radio’, hands on his hips and shoulders stiff with disapproval. “You’re too young to be in charge of anything involving ‘sexy’,” Sungmin says, and Kai laughs.
“I was just joking,” Kai says flippantly, and twists the cuff on his wrist.
“It’s the wrong kind of joke,” Sungmin says patiently, and Kai scoffs.
“Is it?” Kai twists a bit of the hem of his shirt in his left hand. “Isn’t that what everyone wants from me?”
“You’re just supposed to be yourself,” Sungmin says, after a moment, but he doesn’t meet Kai’s eyes. Jongin can see the discomfort written in the lines of his forehead.
Kai laughs. The bitterness in it is foreign and dark; the spooky woods at night in a horror film Jongin might watch through his fingers. “Be myself,” he says, and then he slips his hands in his pockets, tilting his head to the side. “No one wants that.”
“That’s exactly what the fans want,” Sungmin says. “They want to feel like they know you.” He tugs on his vest. Kai closes his eyes, and Jongin is in the dark.
“If I was supposed to be myself,” Kai says, slowly, “it wouldn’t be like this.”
“Like what?” Sungmin asks, but Kai doesn’t have an answer, because Kai and Jongin are two people but no one else knows that.
a dancer executes a periodic, rapid rotation of the head that serves to fix the dancer's gaze on a single spot.
Fact: Kai and Jongin are not very alike.
Jongin is patient, and Kai’s temper is quick and violent. Jongin is retiring and Kai wants to be noticed. Jongin loves to dance, and Kai likes to make other people dance with him.
Kai is like the repetitive, driving churn of a synthesizer. He’s focused on rhythm, or on groove, instead of melody; heavy bottom beats and bass kicks and 80hz valleys that sit deep in your bones. Kai is a quick contracting of the muscles to jerk the body, flashy freezes and energetic pops and sultry hips that drag you in even when you’d rather look anywhere else. Kai is sparkle and show and so naughty it’s nice, and that’s how he catches you; how he catches everyone. Kai is the Teaser King, and the Dancing Machine, and the one who licks his lips and wipes them clean with his thumb, and expects you to like it.
Jongin is nothing like that. Jongin is a slow build with crescendos and moments of single strand melodies played by a sole piano. Jongin is Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps, full of constantly fluctuating time signatures and a rhythm that is off-beat at best and dissonant at worst. Jongin is long lines and fully extended arms and a trembling form balanced on a single foot, all the weight on the ball as he lifts his carriage and aims for perfect lines. It’s easier, then, to make Jongin fall, as balances precariously there on the stage, arms in fourth and leg in coupé, straining and shivering under a single spotlight.
Kai is strong, and Jongin is strong too, but Kai is louder and simpler and exactly what everyone wants, and Jongin is counting his steps and just trying his best not to lose himself in the swell.
He keeps his eyes locked on Sehun, and tries not to get dizzy as he spins.
standing erect and with back straight, the dancer moves down and up with the bend of the knees.
“I don’t know what happened to you,” Taemin says to Jongin after EXO’s first performance on Inkigayo. He’s here, with Onew, to support SM’s rookies. “But you’ve got so much charisma these days.” Taemin laughs, and Jongin’s fingers shakes as he reties the laces of his shiny silver sneakers, adrenaline still coursing through his veins as Kai leaves him and Jongin’s left to live his own life.
“I don’t know about that,” Jongin says. “Kim Jongin doesn’t really have charisma.”
“Well, right now, yeah,” Taemin agrees. “But up there… It was like you were reveling in the spotlight.”
Jongin’s throat is dry, and his breath is still coming quick from exertion. He hears the opening strains of ‘MAMA’ in his head like it’s still playing, and the sweat is cooling on his back. “You know I don’t,” Jongin says. “Revel in the spotlight, I mean.”
“Well, it sure looked like it,” Taemin says, clapping him on the shoulder as Sehun creeps up and joins them. Sehun tugs on the hem of Jongin’s shirt, and Jongin moves a little, making room for Sehun at his side. “It’s not an insult, Jongin. It’s supposed to look like that.”
“Taemin!” Onew calls, and Taemin drops his hand, pushing his hair back away from his face where it’s stuck with sweat.
“Looks like you’ll make an okay idol, after all,” Taemin says, and Jongin finds a smile somewhere, and it feels strange stretching across his face.
“Thanks,” he says sarcastically, feigning a comfort he doesn’t feel. It seems wrong, to thank Taemin for something that doesn’t have much to do with Jongin. It’s Kai, Jongin thinks, who will make an okay idol. Jongin is just a boy playing dress-up in another boy’s clothes.
“You were good,” Sehun says, and his hair is frizzy and a mess, which only makes his cheekbones look more sharp, and his mouth an even more inviting treat for Jongin’s gaze. Jongin wants to kiss him, but he never will. “Just like in the teasers. Just like at the showcase.”
“Was I good?” Jongin asks, and in his head, it sounds like he’s speaking through a walkie-talkie; distant even to himself.
“Yes,” Sehun says, and his hand twines with Jongin’s, lacing through Jongin’s fingers in spaces that seem meant for Sehun’s thin veined ones. Their palms press against each other, and this is just as frightening, Jongin thinks, as stage-lights and cheers, but Jongin doesn’t want to shy away at all.
Jongin wonders if Kai is watching now, the way Jongin watches through his own eyes as Kai performs. He pushes the thought away as Sehun’s tightly gripping hand sends Jongin’s heart into perfectly executed pirouttes, finishing in an arabesque as Sehun smiles.
And maybe Sehun lets go again, a few moments later, and Jongin’s not daring enough to grab hold again, but he holds the memory of that touch long after the dorm goes quiet that night, staring up at his hand in the dark and recalling with perfect clarity the feel of Sehun’s fingers between his own.
It’s not that Kai is a better singer, or a better dancer, or a better rapper than Kim Jongin. He isn’t.
It’s that Kai is a better entertainer, on stage and off, and Jongin is hiding from monsters under his blankets in the dark.
a full knee-bend with heels off the floor.
Sehun likes a little bit of coffee with his milk, and Jongin always stirs in two spoonfuls of sugar for him, too, when he pours them each a mug-full in the morning.
Jongin thinks sugar in coffee is nasty, but it’s what Sehun likes. “It’s too bitter without it,” Sehun says. “Like dishwater.”
“What do you know about the taste of dishwater,” Jongin replies, and Sehun scrunches his face up at him, and Jongin taps Sehun’s nose with the rounded side of the spoon and tries not to melt.
This morning, they have to leave early for a performance and fansign in Yeongdeungpo, and Kyungsoo had started the coffee before disappearing for a shower.
“Morning,” Sehun mumbles to Jongin, shuffling into the kitchen with sleepy eyes and collapsing into a chair.
Jongin’s sleepy too. He drowsily sets Sehun’s coffee in front of him and takes the seat across. The coffee is too hot, and it burns his throat. He swears, setting it down, as Junmyeon walks into the kitchen.
“Too young to be drinking coffee, anyway,” Junmyeon mumbles. “And definitely too young to curse like that.”
There’s no warning, just the fade-out, like taking a dive into a swimming pool and opening his eyes while he’s underwater. It’s kind of just like that, only Jongin can’t swim to the surface, because his body belongs, right now, to Kai, and not to Jongin.
All Jongin can do is watch, through the rippling blue, as he moves.
“Since when am I too young to do anything?” Kai asks, and when Junmyeon looks up he waggles his eyebrows seductively, letting his tongue show and his eyes narrow. “Everyone keeps saying that, these days. Too young. Like it means I don’t have the same job.”
“Don’t do that,” Junmyeon says, looking at Kai like he’s grossed out. “That’s creepy, kid.” He pushes a hand through his hair, scowling and yawning at the same time. “Save that drama for the stage. No one wants to look at your skank-face this early in the morning. I see it enough on performance playbacks.”
“Who’s a kid? You’re not that much older than I am,” Kai says, and stands, taking his coffee cup back over to the counter. Jongin notices that Sehun is staring at him; he’s not sure if Kai notices, because Kai doesn’t acknowledge it. Kai just sets his coffee down, and adds a bit of sugar.
“Whatever, the years between us are a lifetime,” Junmyeon says. “You’re still wearing diapers, as far as I’m concerned.”
Sehun’s still watching him, quiet, mouth drawn tight, and Kai takes the seat next to him this time, close enough that Jongin can see the slightly chapped skin of Sehun’s lips.
“Don’t frown like that,” Kai says, reaching up and smoothing Sehun’s mouth with his thumb. Sehun shivers, breath hitching, and Kai’s heart, or Jongin’s, maybe, skips a beat; brisé. Sehun looks down, at his coffee or at the table. “You’ll start to look old like our leader.”
“Jongin!” Junmyeon leans his body across the table and pinches Kai’s cheek, and then it’s shifting again, and Jongin is breaking surface, and taking a giant lungful of air.
“Just kidding,” Jongin mumbles, and he scoots a little away from Sehun. He can still feel the scratch of Sehun’s dry lips on his thumb.
When Jongin looks up, later, over the rim of his mug, he sees Sehun, staring at him intently with doe-eyes, and now he’s wide awake.
Kai trembles beneath Jongin’s skin as Jongin returns Sehun’s stare. And yes, in this, Jongin and Kai are alike.
the dancer rises up high on to the balls of his feet.
Fact: Jongin can’t control when Kai comes and when Kai goes.
Sometimes he’s just going through life, bumbling through conversation, and then suddenly he’s watching, and Kai is moving Jongin’s arms and legs and mouth and eyelashes and everything else. Most of the time, it’s a relief; like a sip of cool water on a thirty-five degree afternoon in late June, and Jongin relaxes into the freedom of someone else doing the hard part.
Sometimes it happens in the middle of a fansigning event, or the middle of a dance move, or even the middle of a sentence, and then there’s the rush of disconnect, and Jongin is nothing more than a powerless observer.
Jongin wonders if this happens to anyone else. He thinks, vaguely, as Kai licks his lips and smolders at an audience of girls about as fresh out of puberty as he is, that he should probably be worried. But the distance between Jongin and everyone else’s expectations, when Kai is in control, is more exalting than fouetté jeté and Jongin can trick himself into thinking the benefits are worth the costs.
Then Sehun looks at him from across the stage, and Jongin wonders if he’s lying to himself.
the dancer, after a demi-plié, jumps in the air and then lands with the feet in the same position as they started.
It is Jongin, not Kai, who takes Sehun to the ballet.
They see Spartacus at the Seoul Arts Center. Jongin manages to convince their manager to use EXO funds to buy them 100,000W VIP tickets, much to Junmyeon’s incredulity, and the seats are excellent.
“This,” Jongin says triumphantly, as Spartacus incites the gladiators to revolt with exciting bravura leaps and floor crossing glissades, “is ballet.”
“I see,” Sehun says, and he rests his hand on Jongin’s knee. Jongin’s breath catches, trapped all the way down in his chest, as Sehun draws small patterns with his pinkie on the inside of Jongin’s knee. “You’re like a kid in a candy store.”
“I’ve got six months on you, and don’t you forget it, maknae,” Jongin manages, somehow, through his closing throat. Sehun snorts.
Kai would reciprocate, Jongin thinks. Kai would find a way to clutch hold of Sehun’s hand and slide it a little higher up the thigh. Kai would lean his head on Sehun’s shoulder and…
But Kai is strangely silent. Sehun withdraws his hand to bring both of them to his mouth in shock as Spartacus is crucified by the spears of the Roman soldiers, and dies. Jongin thinks he’s crying as Phrygia appeals to the heavens that Spartacus be remembered, and Jongin loves that Sehun is so wrapped up in it, because Jongin is ballet is Jongin.
“I’m sorry it was a sad one,” Jongin says, when they get home to the dorms. The living room is dark, and Jongin guesses everyone else is already tucked into bed. The show had started late, and ended later, and it’s long after midnight.
“I kind of thought they mostly ended sadly,” Sehun whispers, and his bowtie is crooked. Jongin subconsciously reaches up to straighten it. His fingertips brush the skin of Sehun’s neck, and he feels the bob of Sehun’s adam’s apple, and the hushed shiver of Sehun’s skin reminds Jongin that he’s too close.
“No,” Jongin says, as he takes a step back. “Lots of ballets tell stories of love that end in happily ever after.”
Sehun brings his hand up to his neck , caressing where Jongin’s fingers had touched. “I like happy endings,” Sehun says, voice hoarse.
“Me too,” Jongin says, then walks into his bedroom, closing the door quietly behind him. “Sometimes.”
the dancer’s feet do not leave the ground.
Fact: Kim Jongin likes ballets with sad endings just as much as ballets with happy endings.
One of Kim Jongin’s favorite ballets is ‘Le Sacre du Printemps’.
He likes it because it’s the story of a young girl who gives herself to spring. She sacrifices her life, literally killing herself through dance. It’s gritty and macabre. Jongin thinks to himself, a bit melodramatically, he can admit, that it’s a lot like being an idol. Sweating and bleeding and crying and throwing yourself down on an altar until there’s nothing of you left to give, and then you wash away and a new sacrifice takes your place. In the end, it’s worth it, because at least, as you went down in flames, you were doing something you loved.
Some days, Jongin thinks that this, EXO, is something he loves enough that when spring takes the last piece of him, he’ll still be happy.
But Kim Jongin’s other favorite ballet is the Tchaikovsky scored ‘The Sleeping Beauty’. When the Prince wakes Sleeping Beauty, at the very end, and they are married to the triumphant swell of a string orchestra, Jongin remembers that sometimes there are happily ever afters.
It’s easy to forget, sometimes, that there is an after, especially when Jongin is so tied up in trying to hold on to all the grains of sand that make up his everyday life.
It’s hard to think about ‘after’ when Kai has reality slipping through Jongin’s fingertips.
He’d like, he thinks idly, to show Sehun ‘The Sleeping Beauty’, someday. He’d probably giggle all the way through, and Jongin wouldn’t be able to think about anything but afters.
a traveling step, springing like a cat.
Lu Han likes weird indie movies filmed with shaky hand-cams, where the awkward, hopeless protagonist always falls in love with some girl or guy with more problems than solutions and at the end there’s some weird inconclusive ending that leaves Jongin feeling a little like he’s just taken a freefall jump from a plane with no parachute and the ground is looming awfully close. Lu Han always gets teary-eyed but Jongin just gets frustrated, and feels a little bit sick to his stomach, and tries not to look at Sehun.
Jongin guesses that’s what it must be like for Kai, when Jongin is in control. Jongin doesn’t know if Kai exists in the same way that he exists, watching from behind the same eyes as things happen out of his control, feeling every touch but unable to react.
A part of Jongin thinks he does, just like Jongin does, and he hates what he’s watching as much as Jongin hates Lu Han’s stupid movies. That’s why, in a lot of ways, he’s not surprised when Kai does the things Jongin cannot, when it’s his turn to run the show.
Like rest his head on Sehun’s shoulder as they sit on the couch, pressing his cheek, Jongin’s cheek but not, to Sehun’s shoulder, and linking their pinky fingers together as they watch television late at night, long after the other guys have gone to bed.
Or whispering into Sehun’s ear how much he likes the smell of his soap, making Sehun flush a dark pink across his clear translucent skin. Kai lets his lips linger on the skin of Sehun’s cheek, and Jongin wonders if he could do that too.
“Jongin,” Sehun says, one afternoon, and Kai looks up and meets his stare, which is something Jongin can’t do anymore, because he’s afraid Sehun will see all the want in his eyes. “Teach me something.”
And it’s Kai who takes Sehun to that empty rehearsal room and teaches Sehun how to hold his arms in third position, and Kai who slides his hands down the bare skin of Sehun’s arms and elicits that sweet shiver as Sehun moves to Kai’s slightest touch.
“Like this?” he asks, and Jongin’s never heard something so lovely. He can see himself in the mirror, a wavering image, like a ghost superimposed on top of Kai’s confident form, and in the mirror, it is Jongin who is holding Sehun, so calm and sure.
“Just like that,” Kai says, and Jongin watches and feels and loves.
At the end of the kinds of films Lu Han likes to watch, the main guy never gets the girl, and maybe that’s just another reason Jongin can’t bring himself to regret Kai.
the feet are turned out with the front foot about one foot away from the back.
Kim Jongin is not crazy. Mostly.
the leg makes a beating motion.
Kyungsoo stuffs a dumpling into Jongin’s mouth, and Jongin almost chokes. “What?” he tries to say, around the oil-slick pastry, but it comes out as more of a sound between a squeak and a cough, and Kyungsoo laughs, revealing his gums.
“Don’t what me,” Kyungsoo says. “What’s wrong?” He sits across the table from Jongin. There’s s bit of rice-flour on his cheeks.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jongin says, catching a piece of filling with the tip of his tongue. “There’s nothing wrong.”
“Kim Jongin,” Kyungsoo says. “Don’t make me force-feed you dumplings all night.”
“They’re good, though,” Jongin says with a tiny grin, and Kyungsoo flicks him in the forehead. Jongin swats his hand away.
“Jongin.”
“Okay,” Jongin says. “I’ll play. What do you think is wrong?”
“You seem… unsettled,” Kyungsoo says. “Like you don’t quite fit into your own skin.”
“Have I ever?” Jongin asks, and he takes another dumpling from the plate on Kyungsoo’s lap.
“When you’re dancing,” Kyungsoo says quietly, and Jongin imagines wooden floors and chasse after chasse.
“On stage?” Jongin asks, a little sullenly, and Kyungsoo shakes his head, eyes wide.
“No,” Kyungsoo says. “Like even in rehearsal. When it’s just you and the music.” Jongin’s fingers tap out the leitmotif of Delibes’s ‘Sylvia’ on the tabletop, and he wonders what that means.
Later, Sehun rests his palm on the back of Jongin’s neck, and his hand is cool.
“Am I different? When I dance?”
Sehun’s hand curves, fingers working their way into the hair at the nape, and Jongin closes his eyes and relishes the contact. “Of course,” Sehun says. “It’s…” Sehun inhales. “Well, beautiful.” Sehun laughs, a little. “I dunno how you can be so awkward and then so… Well, you know.” He tugs at the hair, a bit. “Anyway, it’s beautiful.”
You’re beautiful, too, Jongin thinks, but Jongin is not Kai, and he says nothing at all. He can feel Kai, though, lurking just there, begging Jongin to turn around and look into Sehun’s eyes.
a jump in which the feet meet in mid-air, and then land at the same time.
There is a section, in Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, when the evil Von Rothbart makes his entrance with a brisé, introducing his daughter Odile to Prince Siegfried in a plot to separate Odette from love and from freedom.
To the naked eye, there is no difference between Odile and Odette, save for Odile’s black tutu in contrast to Odette’s white. The prince, enraptured by Odile, and thinking she is Odette, invites Odile to dance, and asks for her hand in marriage. As the music swells, allegro molto, Siegfried realizes his mistake only fractions of a moment too late, seeing Odette’s visage as if through a veil of fog, and he reaches toward her but is unable to touch.
Sometimes, when Sehun reaches his hand down, palm up and inviting Kai to dance, Jongin wonders if he can see just a little bit of Jongin peeking out through Kai’s eyes, dressed all in white.
It’s not Kai, really.
It’s Oh Sehun, with his half-moon smiling eyes and underbite and weirdly excited hands that make Jongin feel like he’s in spinning out of position, or falling from an arabesque held penché to a crumpled heap on the studio floor.
Kim Jongin is not crazy, though. Yet.
the act of falling.
It’s Jongin who curls up on the floor of the bathroom backstage, arms wrapped around his middle and teeth clenched at the pain. The tile is cool against his cheek, but his back burns, throbs, and no matter what position Jongin lies in, he can’t alleviate the hurt. The pain stretches its arms around to his front, a clinging back-hug that doesn’t release.
“Jongin?” Junmyeon says, when he finds him ten minutes later. Jongin remembers that he was supposed to go back to the dressing room, but it had seemed so far and Jongin hadn’t wanted anyone to see him fall. “Jongin!”
“Sorry,” Jongin says. “I thought it was fine, but-“ His words come out strange, and Jongin realizes he’s bitten his tongue.
“I knew we shouldn’t have put that part back in,” Kyungsoo frets, when they get back to the dorm. Baekhyun’s eyes are dark and serious. “You’re just going to make it worse and-“ Jongin is a dancer. He knows the dangers of injury.
“I’ll be okay,” Jongin says. Sehun perches next to him on the bed.
“I told you you’d hurt yourself,” Sehun says after everyone else has left the room.
“Did you see the playback? Did it look good?”
“It looked great,” Sehun says. “You looked great. But-“ Sehun stops, worrying at his lip.
“But what?”
“Jongin is important, too,” Sehun says. “You’re important.”
“I know,” Jongin says, and Sehun leans down and presses a kiss to Jongin’s forehead. His lips are sticky with gloss, and cool.
“I’m not sure you do,” Sehun says, and there’s something Jongin can’t quite read in his eyes.
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