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maayacolabackupWinter is much colder in Seoul, South Korea. Still, there’s a strange chill in the air that’s almost unexpected, after all the humidity and heat. It’s cool enough that Tao disappears into the mountains in long sleeves in the early morning, and Jongdae can feel the wind through his sweatshirt.
Even though it’s only ten degrees Celsius outside, and Jongdae has survived much colder winters, the wind seems to reach him through the walls.
Tao still goes out every day, even as winter comes in earnest, coming back with windswept hair and the pink flush of winter-chill on his cheeks, and Jongdae’s gotten into the habit of making him tea, so when he comes to the kitchen for lunch he can hold it between his palms to warm his hands.
Tao always rewards with him with the kind of grin Jongdae thinks should be saved for like, people who cure cancer or something, but Jongdae’s selfishly glad ordinary people like him get to see it too.
Sometimes Tao sits across from him, studying from a book that he’s covered with a black book-cover, and makes little notes in it as Jongdae writes. Jongdae asks him, once, what the book's about, but Tao just gives him a little smug smile he must have learned from Yixing, and says “secret,” and it’s so cute that Jongdae doesn’t really feel left out. Tao chews on his pen as he reads.
Jongdae likes those afternoons the best.
Today it’s raining again; cold winter rain that stings Jongdae’s face and makes him want to cower inside all day, even if the rooms are all drafty.
Jongdae’s just put the water on to boil when Tao comes running into the kitchen, clutching something in his arms. His bare arms.
“It’s too cold!” Jongdae says in alarm, and then he sees that Tao’s got his shirt balled up in his arms, and his shirt is moving. “What is it?”
“Cat,” Tao says, and then he leans forward, and Jongdae sees a drenched cat with big brownish-yellow eyes staring up at him from the circle of Tao’s arms.
Lu Han confiscates the cat from Tao’s arms as Jongdae grabs a towel from under the sink and hands it to Tao to dry off. The cat is actually more of a kitten, Jongdae thinks, young and a little bit mewly, and Tao can’t take his eyes off of it.
“What’s going on?” Kris asks, coming in, maybe due to the commotion. “What is that?” He looks mildly disturbed by the kitten, like its wet adorableness is poisonous to him. “Why is it in the kitchen?”
Tao wipes his face off, and now Jongdae can see his eyes are a bit glassy, like he’s about to cry. Jongdae pats his shoulder awkwardly, and Tao swipes at his eyes and tries to hide his face. “I found him,” Tao says. He says a bunch of other stuff, too, but Jongdae only picks up the word for mother and the word for dead and he can fill in the rest.
“Well,” Kris says. “It’s up to Jongdae, since he’s the only one with time to take care of a kitten.”
Tao turns to look at him, tears leaking from his eyes, and Jongdae maybe sees what Lu Han meant by ‘the crying type’, now.
Jongdae’s not sure how anyone could expect him to say no to that face.
“It’s okay,” Jongdae says, and Tao lights up, and Jongdae has to look away just to protect himself from the brightness of it. He looks down at the kitten, and walks over to the small refrigerator, pulling out the milk. He puts some in a cup, and grabs a clean napkin. “I saw this… in a movie once,” Jongdae says, and he’s startled when he realizes he’s said it in Mandarin.
He takes the napkin and dips it in the milk, then squeezes the napkin into the scrawny kitten’s mouth. Tao watches with wide, mesmerized eyes as Jongdae manages to feed the kitten half the glass before it doesn’t want more, and he looks at Jongdae like Jongdae’s done something great, when all Jongdae’s done is feed a kitten.
“Name?” Tao asks Jongdae, after Lu Han has taken over, and Jongdae looks at the cat-kitten sprawled out indulgently across Lu Han’s lap, black fur finally dry, like Lu Han’s sole purpose in life is to rub his belly.
Jongdae knows a person a little like that. Jongin had gone by a nickname, in college, that Jongdae thinks will be easy enough for Tao to say. “Kai,” Jongdae says. “Because he’s a brat.” He says the second bit in Korean, and Lu Han laughs and translates, and Tao chuckles and moves so he’s standing behind Jongdae, and rests his chin on Jongdae’s shoulder, hands resting on the edge of the table. Jongdae can feel Tao’s chest against his back.
“Cat is okay?” Tao asks, and Jongdae quivers at the whisper of Tao’s breath in his ear. He rests his own hands on Tao’s cold, bare arms, unconsciously rubbing them up and down, trying to return the warmth. The skin is soft beneath Jongdae’s fingertips.
“Yeah,” Jongdae says. “Cat is okay.”
“Number three,” Tao says. “Make a new friend.”
When Jongdae goes back to his room, he crosses it off the list with his fat red marker.
The Yellow Emperor, Huangdi, is the god who, according to myth, is said to have given the earliest form of martial arts to China. Huangdi, I have discovered, is also the god in charge of all for seasons and directions. Therefore, I can only assume that it is Huangdi who has blessed Hunan with it’s coldest winter in many years as my companions continue to train, in harsh weather conditions, for the international wushu competition…
The rain turns to ice. It’s colder, Yixing tells him over a hot pot dinner, than it’s been in years.
“Lucky me,” Jongdae says, and Yixing elbows him.
“Maybe you brought the cold with you from Seoul,” Yixing says, and Jongdae grins.
“My friends have a joke,” he says, as he drops more meat into the boiling broth, “that when I’m mad I make it lightening.”
“So you do cause bad weather, then,” Kris says, and Tao reaches over him to get a piece of lettuce. Jongdae doesn’t like the way his gut twists when Tao and Kris’s arms brush. He doesn’t like it at all.
He distracts himself by getting absorbed into a conversation with Lu Han, who starts telling Jongdae a story about one time Yixing got himself lost in a Lotte Mart in Korea by not paying attention, and Xiumin interrupts to tell Jongdae about Lu Han’s tendency to run into glass doors, which doesn’t surprise Jongdae any more than Yixing spacing out in a canned food aisle and realizing he has no idea how to get out.
And they laugh and chat and Jongdae almost forgets about the way the accidental touch had made him feel until he looks up and catches Tao’s eyes. Tao is looking straight at him, a tiny frown on his face, and Jongdae doesn’t know what to make of it.
The cold that night makes it impossible to sleep. Yixing had dug up tiny portable convection heaters, the gas powered kind, and Jongdae and Tao are wrapped up in all their blankets, heaters on the highest setting as the night gets even darker and colder.
Jongdae curls himself into a ball, but it doesn’t help. The buildings, here, just aren’t built for the cold, as Hunan, he’d read, is accustomed to ten degree winters, and this is much colder than that. He can feel the chill sinking into his bones, and he tries to stop his teeth from chattering.
Kai meows every once in a while, as Jongdae shifts, burrowing himself into Jongdae’s belly, and Jongdae hopes at least he’s warm.
“Chen,” Tao says, voice low. “Are you cold?”
Jongdae opens his eyes and tries to make out Tao’s figure in the dark. He can’t see much, but the heater casts a bit of light on Tao’s face, so he can see that Tao is looking in his direction. “Just a little,” Jongdae jokes, and he laughs but it turns into a shiver.
Tao sits up, pushing his blankets aside, and then moves, picking up his heater and carrying it carefully to Jongdae’s side of the room. He turns it toward Jongdae, and Jongdae feels immediately warmer, the power of two heaters blasting on his face as he sits up.
“What are you doing?” Kai mewls in protest as Jongdae moves.
Tao doesn’t answer, just goes back over to his bedding and grabs all of his blankets, dropping them on top of Jongdae’s legs, and then he sits down next to Jongdae. Jongdae scoots over, making space without thinking, and Tao fusses with the blankets, smoothing them out on top of both of their legs.
When he’s satisfied, he lies down on his side, facing toward Jongdae, who looks down at him. “Share?” he says, and Jongdae nods dumbly, lying down next to him.
Tao immediately folds Jongdae into his arms, the same way he does with his pillow when he sleeps, and Jongdae’s face fits perfectly into the space between Tao’s neck and shoulder, Jongdae’s lips pressed to the skin of Tao’s throat.
Jongdae isn’t cold anymore. He feels like he’s burning up as Tao shifts, making himself comfortable, sliding one leg between Jongdae’s and turning them both so Jongdae is half lying on top of Tao’s chest, stomach against Tao’s ribs.
“Sleep,” Tao whispers, and it ruffles Jongdae’s hair, and Jongdae’s hand fists into the fabric of Tao’s shirt, knuckles brushing the rock hard abs underneath. He takes a deep breath. He smells cedar.
Jongdae listens, as Tao’s breathing evens out, chest rising and falling and Jongdae rising and falling with it, and that feeling… the one from Wulingyuan, stretches out in his belly, pushing at the edges and making him feel like he might explode.
Kai creeps up to snuggle against his knee, and maybe Tao’s knee too.
It takes Jongdae a long time to fall asleep.
“You sound bummed. Ready to come home?” Kyungsoo leans too close to the webcam, so all Jongdae can see is one of his eyes, looking terrified like he’s an extra in a slasher film.
“Move away from the webcam,” Jongdae says. “You look like a manhwa character; all eyes and no face.” He shrinks the video-feed. “I’m not homesick, surprisingly. It’s not that.”
“Then what is it?”
“Nothing,” Jongdae says. He sucks his lower lip into his mouth and looks out into the snow. Tao’s footprints have disappeared under the unrelenting rain. The ground looks more like a lake than land. Jongdae wonders if Tao is okay, or if he’s too cold. It doesn’t make sense that Tao would go out, in this weather, but Jongdae knows he’s determined to win this year.
Kai is watching for Tao, from beneath the corner of Jongdae’s blanket,
“Don’t ‘nothing’ me,” Kyungsoo says. “I’ve been promoted at work. I deal with interns now.”
“And they called it a promotion?” Jongdae muses, and Kyungsoo chuckles.
“Chanyeol made the same joke. Congratulations, you’ve regressed.”
“Damn,” Jongdae says. “So the interns…”
“Yes,” Kyungsoo says. “I work with interns all day, and all they do is lie about going on Facebook.”
“They’re probably on Twitter, these days-“
“Kim Jongdae, stop trying to distract me, and tell me why you look so… distraught.”
“Distraught?” Jongdae asks. “Is that even-“ Kyungsoo gives him an arch look. “It’s very cold.”
“I thought you’d mentioned portable heaters, in your last email?” Now Kyungsoo looks worried. “Are you getting sick? Do you need me to mail you blankets, or-“
“Kyungsoo,” Jongdae says. “It’s fine.”
“If you say so,” Kyungsoo says. “So what’s the cold got to do with it, if it’s not the main problem?”
“I couldn’t stop shivering, last night.” Jongdae taps his fingers along the table, careful not to jostle is laptop. “So Tao…”
“What? Gave you one of his blankets? Is he sick? Does he need me to mail him blankets? I bet I could-“
“He got into bed with me,” Jongdae says, and Kyungsoo pauses, like he’s not sure he’s heard correctly.
“I’m sorry, were you speaking Mandarin just now, because-“ Jongdae can see the pink of his gums as he smiles, and this would be an easier story to tell if Jongdae weren’t feeling so stressed and confused and Kyungsoo didn’t look so entertained.
“He got out of his bedding, grabbed his quilt, and got into mine.”
Kyungsoo leans forward on his desk, resting his face in between his palms. “So you guys slept together,” he says, and Jongdae sighs.
“Only in the strictest sense of the word,” he says. “We slept.” He peeks his fingers out from beneath the blanket he’s got draped over his shoulders to scratch at his neck. “Well, he slept.”
“Oh, you didn’t sleep?” Kyungsoo asks, and Jongdae narrows his eyes.
“If I wanted to be teased I could have chatted with Jongin. He and Sehun, and maybe Chanyeol, would have made me feel ridiculous a lot faster; saved me the time.”
Kyungsoo goes on as if Jongdae hasn’t spoken. “Did his warm, muscular arms wrap around your waist, pulling you into his heat, until all you could smell was his natural, manly scent, like oil and a spent fire-“
“What are you even talking about,” Jongdae asks, and Kyungsoo coughs into his hand.
“Sorry,” he says, looking torn between sheepishness and amusement. “I got carried away.”
Jongdae looks at him incredulously, and now Kyungsoo is laughing in earnest. “Like, seriously? That’s the scenario that came to mind?”
“Well,” Kyungsoo says, after a few moments, “I did tell you that all the literature I read is erotic.”
“I knew you weren’t joking,” Jongdae says fervently. Then he pulls the blanket up higher. Kai screeches at the sudden cold.
“What in the world was that?”
Jongdae picks up the kitten and holds him up to the camera on his laptop. “Meet Kai. Tao found him and cried so he could keep him.”
“Kai? Why would you name your cat after Jongin? And excuse me, he cried?”
“Because the cat’s a self-indulgent prick, just like whom he was named after.” Jongdae lets Kai lick at his face once, before dropping him back to the ground to find a new home in the blankets. “And Tao is… he’s sensitive.”
“Okay,” Kyungsoo says. “Jongin is going to be pissed when he hears you named your kitten after him because it’s high-maintenance.”
“You should phrase it ‘an attention-whore’ when you tell him,” Jongdae says, and Kyungsoo rolls his eyes. “And it’s cedar.”
“What?”
“He smells like cedar. Tao does. Not oil and spent fire, or whatever. Cedar.”
“Oh,” Kyungsoo says, and now his eyebrows are drawn together, examining Jongdae’s face as best as he can through the webcam. “I see.”
“Help,” Jongdae says. “Just… help.”
“I can’t help you,” Kyungsoo says. “You can only help yourself at this point.”
“We can barely talk to each other,” Jongdae says. “And I’m, you know, a man.”
“That doesn’t seem to be a problem for you…?” Kyungsoo teases, and Jongdae wishes he could scream. “Does he know you like men?”
“I don’t know,” Jongdae says. “He knows I don’t have a girlfriend?”
“Wow, okay,” Kyungsoo says. “From that fact, he should be able to surmise that you are exclusively attracted to men.” Kyungsoo rubs his fingers in a small circle on his temple. “Except not.”
“I know that,” Jongdae says. “It really hasn’t mattered, before.”
“Okay,” Kyungsoo says. “But seriously, it’ll be easier if you’re just honest.”
“Easier for who?” Jongdae asks, and he thinks about the way Tao’s breath had stirred Jongdae’s hair as he slept, chin pressed to the top of Jongdae’s head and arm heavy and warm across Jongdae’s belly. Jongdae hadn’t felt the cold at all. “This is all so complicated.”
“Everything is always more complicated than it has to be with you, Jongdae. You’re like a walking example of how to be smart, funny, attractive, and yet still emotionally stunted.” Kyungsoo pouts, lips pursed and eyes even wider than usual. “Just tell him you like him in whatever language you think he’ll understand, and then you can either be rejected, or you guys can make out.”
“You make it sound so simple,” Jongdae whines. “I’m not even sure I want to like him, yet.”
Kyungsoo looks at him blankly, blinking only after a few moments. “Well,” Kyungsoo says. “When you figure it out, you should do something.” Kyungsoo points at the screen, and Jongdae leans back and away on instinct, almost forgetting that Kyungsoo is in another country and can’t actually poke him in the eye. “This year is your adventure, Jongdae. You have to take chances, in an adventure.”
“Right,” Jongdae says, and he closes his eyes.
It’s not like Jongdae’s never liked someone before. He definitely has.
He’d had a crush on a girl in high school. She’d been four centimeters taller than him, and that had ended after four awkward not-quite-dates and one kiss, and they’d totally been caught by another girl on the volleyball team, who told the whole school, and they’d been too embarrassed to look at each other after that.
He’d had a crush on a guy in college; a third year science student that had been a friend of Kyungsoo’s. Jongdae hadn’t realized, until then, that he didn’t much like girls at all, but Kyuhyun had definitely made things a lot clearer, pressing Jongdae up against the lab tables and kissing him senseless before Jongdae’d had to leave for a newspaper meeting. That hadn’t worked out either, and Jongdae had always been too busy to really look out for something else.
So Jongdae knows what attraction feels like, for sure. But it’s never really been like this; the toe-curling anticipation of wanting to know more and more about Tao, or to see Tao smile in that way that thins his top lip to nothing and creates those adorable wrinkles around his eyes. Jongdae thinks about Tao all the time, no matter what he’s doing, and it makes his heart beat faster and it makes him smile and look really stupid, and Jongdae’s not used to feeling this way about anyone.
Jongdae also has no idea what to do about any of it. Even if there were some way that Tao felt anything at all in return, there’d still be the competition, which Tao devotes more and more time to training for as the weeks dwindle, and the fact that he and Tao are divided by language and culture and a looming deadline on Jongdae’s departure.
Jongdae’s halfway through with his stay in China, after all, and there are more than enough reasons to stay silent and hope the feeling goes away.
When Tao comes back a few hours later, Jongdae realizes Tao’s lips are blue. “Come here,” he says immediately, pushing aside the awkwardness he had felt this morning, and the feelings he’d poured out to Kyungsoo over webcam. “Just come.”
Tao nods, and pulls off two of his shirts, wet with the still lightly falling snow, and throws them onto the ground carelessly. Jongdae sees a flash of skin, at his belly, and there are goosebumps. Tao sheds his shoes, too, and one pair of socks.
After he’s made sure he’s not wearing anything wet, Tao immediately sits down beside him, curling into Jongdae’s warm cocoon of blankets, where he’d set the heater to face his bedding so his fingers would be warm enough to type. Tao’s skin is like ice, and Jongdae quickly puts his blanket around Tao, sharing.
Tao sighs happily, and leans his head down, resting it on Jongdae’s shoulder. His cheek is cool too, but it quickly warms against Jongdae’s skin. “Chen is so warm,” Tao says, and Jongdae smiles even as he trembles, resting his hand with much trepidation on Tao’s thigh.
Tao swallows, and licks his lips, eyes dark as he gazes up at Jongdae through his soot-dark lashes. Then Tao moves, his arm snaking around Jongdae’s waist. Jongdae gasps, and he’s not sure if it’s because Tao’s arm is like ice, or if because now he’s so tight up against Tao that he can feel every muscle in Tao’s torso, shifting as he seems to melt into Jongdae’s side.
“Why did you go out?”
“Chen doesn’t understand,” Tao replies. “Wushu is important to me. More important than other things.”
Jongdae doesn’t respond. He just leans back against Tao, resting his head on Tao’s soft, damp hair.
“You were warm,” Jongdae says. “Yesterday.” Tao exhales, and it tickles at Jongdae’s chin. “Thank you.”
Tao smiles, and Jongdae can’t see it, but he feels it, even through his thermal shirt. “Thank you for now,” Tao says, and as Jongdae’s heart does the traitorous flips in his chest, slamming against his ribs and making so much noise he can’t hear anything else, he’s not sure he’s got much left to figure out.
Kai curls up around their feet, and Jongdae’s heart breaks, just a little.
Kyungsoo,
Watching Tao train, like this, in the rain and the cold, makes me realize that maybe I’ve never really wanted something enough.
I’m not going to say anything.
Spring strikes with a vengeance. Jongdae wakes up one morning to sprouting flowers and insects and earthworms that crawl up out of the ground, much to Kai’s terror.
Tao starts spending longer hours training outside, practicing forms. Now everyone is working together, and Jongdae has to pretend that he isn’t pining; missing Tao’s quiet company as he attempts to write in the kitchen, sitting at the table with Kai in his lap and an idle pen in his hand.
Jongdae liked looking up and seeing Tao’s concentrating face, scribbling little silly drawings or studying from his mysterious book.
But Jongdae understands, sort of, as best as he can, anyway, that this is incredibly important to Tao… to all of his housemates, really. That this is the way of life they’ve followed, and it’s amazing to him just as much as it’s unfathomable.
One month before the competition, Jongdae sends his editors his eighth essay, a four-thousand-word treatise on the written literature that exists documenting the development of wushu; a product from a trip with Kris that Jongdae swears almost cost him his life.
He gets twenty-three emails in response to the article from SM Geographic company emails. Twenty of them are from Junmyeon with follow up questions he ’just has to know’ and one is from Sehun talking about how attractive Lu Han is in the photo that had accompanied the article.
Changmin sends him the last one; a passive aggressive email that’s mainly complaining about Jongdae’s in-office replacement as fact-checker doing a shitty job, and Jongdae guesses that’s Changmin’s way of saying he misses him and ‘good job’.
“What’s wrong?” Tao is carrying his black book in his hand again, and Jongdae wonders if he’s going to stay and read while Jongdae cooks. He hopes so.
Tao grabs a cinnamon candy from the bowl on the table as Jongdae prepares to answer, popping it into is mouth.
“I make dinner, tonight,” Jongdae says. He winces, because two of the words are out of order. He corrects himself, quickly, and Tao doesn’t seem to notice, crossing his arms thoughtfully. “I don’t know what to cook.”
“It’s spring now. Not so cold,” Tao says, surveying the vegetables Jongdae’s already selected. There’s a larger variety than there’d been even just last week. “Me… I don’t cook well. But I can make one thing.”
“Teach me?” Jongdae asks, and Tao nods, already walking around the kitchen
Tao gives directions quietly. Kai weaves between their legs as Jongdae slices vegetables, trying to do it like Xiumin had shown him.
“Shandong food,” Tao says, and he purses his lips as he searches for simpler words, “is famous. I’m from Shandong.”
“Famous?”
“Most delicious,” Tao says, and he winks at Jongdae, in an obvious joking imitation of Kris. Jongdae laughs and throws a towel at him, that Tao catches easily, and Kai scurries out of the way of Tao’s shifting feet.
Tao carefully cuts the legs from the chicken, holding the knife in a practiced grip. He pulls the breast away, whole, leaving the skin on, setting it aside.
“Now, sauce,” Tao says, and Jongdae mixes the ingredients into a bowl as Tao hands them to him.
“No, no,” Tao says, adding a bit more cumin before stepping back. “Like this.”
Tao moves to stand behind him, wrapping his arms around so that his hands rest on top of Jongdae’s, guiding Jongdae’s stirring.
“Right,” Jongdae says, voice cracking. He can smell cinnamon on Tao’s breath, from earlier, and Tao’s arms are warm against the outsides of Jongdae’s.
“Good,” Tao says, and Jongdae closes his eyes and relishes the feeling of Tao’s strong chest against his own.
Jongdae shouldn’t feel like melting every time is happens. He shouldn’t, but he does, and his hands, gripping the wooden spoon, are shaking just a little.
Tao doesn’t mention it, though. He just silently keeps helping, and when Jongdae’s fried the meat and vegetables, and added the sauce and noodles, Tao grabs a pair of chopsticks and fishes out a thin strip of carrot. He tastes, eyes closing, and he gives a tiny moan of pleasure that makes Jongdae nervously wipe his hands on his jeans as his heart skips a beat.
“Hao chi?” Jongdae asks. Does it taste good?
Tao’s tongue peeks out and licks a bit of sauce from his lips. “Hao chi,” Tao assures him, and then he dips his chopsticks back into the wok, pulling out another tiny slice of vegetable.
The sauce is sweeter than Jongdae had expected, an edge of sugar on his tongue when the saltiness of the soy sauce fades.
“Do you like it?” Tao asks, still holding the chopsticks loosely in his hand near Jongdae’s mouth.
“Yes,” Jongdae says. “I do.”
“Number one,” Tao says. “Learn to cook a traditional Chinese dish.”
Kai purrs, and Tao leans down, cupping her small face in his large hand, and Jongdae can’t seem to catch his breath.
As he crosses it off the list, before bed, he thinks about the way Tao’s eyes had sparkled as he offered some to Jongdae to taste. His sleep is restless.
Sometimes, learning to cook the food of another culture teaches us something else about that culture: the methods of preparation reveal old superstitions, and the food itself often has a story. Last week, I learned how to make a traditional Shandong dish…
Two weeks before the competition, Jongdae is sitting outside on the edge of the walkway of the main building with his camera, snapping photos as Tao runs through his sword forms. Kris is sitting next to him, offering critique, and Tao swallows and starts over whenever Kris mentions something about his hands, or his fingers, that Jongdae doesn’t understand.
Tao reaches up with the sword, and he’s about to do a down-sweep; one Jongdae’s seen him do hundreds of times today, and suddenly Tao is leaning forward, dropping his sword carelessly to the ground as is arms wrap around his waist.
“Tao?” Jongdae asks, setting his camera down and half-standing.
“Zitao,” Kris says, walking over.
“My back,” Tao says. “From before.” He straightens, with a wince, gingerly picking up his sword. “It’s fine.”
Kris immediately takes the sword from him. “No. You have to-“ Jongdae doesn’t catch the rest, but Tao is nodding resignedly. There’s a spark in Tao’s eyes that tells Jongdae had it been Xiumin, Lu Han, or Yixing telling him… whatever Kris is telling him, he’d be arguing back, but Tao never argues with Kris.
Kris turns to Jongdae. “Will you help?”
“Anything,” Jongdae says quickly, and wonders if the for Tao is as heavily implied as he thinks it sounds in his head. It must be, because Kris raises an eyebrow in restrained amusement.
“Zitao must rest. Ice to his back, for fifteen to twenty minutes, every three hours.” Kris sighs. “I have to get a doctor.”
“Is this…” Jongdae’s stomach knots. “Is this going to keep him from competing?”
“Not if he’s careful,” Kris says. “But he’s stubborn, when he wants to be. Especially about this.”
“I’ll do my best,” Jongdae says, and he looks back over at Tao, who’s staring back at him, eyes half-lidded with pain.
Tao doesn’t take well to the ice, hissing and complaining when Jongdae lays the bag of it, wrapped in a damp towel, across his lower back. “Too cold,” he says, and Jongdae almost moves it, but instead, he hesitantly reaches out and brushes Tao’s hair out of his face.
Tao leans into the touch. “You’ll just have to bear it,” Jongdae says gently, in Korean, and Tao might not understand the words but he knows what Jongdae’s trying to say, because when it’s most important, Tao always understands. “Let me take care of you.”
“I want to practice,” Tao says, and Jongdae swallows. “I want to win.”
“I know,” Jongdae says. His fingers drag down the bridge of Tao’s nose, and explore the softness of the slightly dark skin under his eyes, and Tao sighs, breath tremulous.
Jongdae pulls back, planning to go across the room and write, but Tao reaches out and grabs his hand roughly; more roughly than Tao’s ever done anything. “Stay,” Tao says. “Just… stay.”
“Okay,” Jongdae says, and he bites his lip for a moment as he thinks. Tao lets go of him when it’s clear Jongdae isn’t going anywhere, and there’s a tinge to his cheeks. Jongdae stretches out and settles down on the edge of Tao’s bedding, lying next to Tao on his stomach, resting his chin on his folded right arm. He’s facing Tao, who is staring at him. There’s only about thirty centimeters between them, less than a foot of space, and Jongdae can feel Tao’s every exhale, and smell the cedar and the sweat.
But more than that, he can see the sadness and distress in Tao’s face, and Jongdae knows it’s got nothing to do with ice that’s too cold. “You’ll be fine,” Jongdae says, echoing Tao’s words from earlier. “It’s okay.”
Tao’s eyelashes flutter from Jongdae’s breath on his face, and he looks into Jongdae’s eyes and Jongdae aches with how much he wants to touch. How much he wants to crush their mouths together right now until Tao’s face is soft and dreamy, those lines of worry and tension disappearing from the corners of his lips.
Tao’s eyes widen, just a little, and Jongdae wonders if he can see it all of Jongdae’s face, because he suddenly looks nervous. Jongdae shifts away, just a little, and Tao breathes out.
Tao swallows, and closes his eyes, and Jongdae resists, just barely, pressing soft kisses to his eyelids.
The doctor confirms that it’s just a pulled muscle, and that Tao should be well enough to compete by competition time, but Jongdae can see by the look in everyone’s eyes that the lost training time is something to worry about.
Tao is a terrible patient, but Jongdae is prepared for it. He distracts Tao with Mandarin questions from chapter eleven of his textbook, until Tao is too busy laughing at him to complain about the on-off of ice, and after a few days, heating pads in the ice’s stead. There’s still a bit of awkwardness between them. A tension Jongdae can’t quite figure out how to break.
That’s all right, though, because Tao has to concentrate on getting better.
After three days, Tao’s up to doing small torso stretches, carefully twisting and testing. When it’s clear it’s getting better, the dark shadows clear from his eyes, and Jongdae’s belly, which has been bubbling with anxiety, quiets.
Jongdae can see how much Tao wants this victory; how much Tao is focused on the competition.
It’s kind of inspiring, in a lot of ways. Jongdae’s always settled for paths of least resistance. He’s always taken Yunho’s folder, and then taken Changmin’s folder too, and done all of it without complaint because contentment has always been enough.
Tao’s not like that. He’s giving, and kind, and soft. Sometimes he cries, and he always wants to make people happy. But there’s a fire in Tao. Tao sees things he wants, and he takes them. Tao’s the kind of guy, Jongdae thinks, who wouldn’t have chickened out of trying for the football team, and made up reasonable excuses about why.
With four days left until they leave, Tao slowly eases back into form-work, slowly going through his straight-sword routine with even surety.
It’s still beautiful. “He’s working on precision,” Lu Han says, coming to stand next to Jongdae, who sits on the edge of the walkway with ice in his lap, just in case. “You can lose points even for the shape your palm makes.”
“I see,” Jongdae says, and then Tao is twisting and spinning and Jongdae gets lost in the elegance of his limbs. “He’s amazing.”
“You really like Zitao,” Lu Han says, and the way he says like is nuanced.
Jongdae clenches his jaw and stares straight ahead. “Yeah,” he says. “But it doesn’t matter.”
“Of course it does,” Lu Han says, and Jongdae looks up to ask what he’s trying to imply, but Lu Han is gone.
People who follow the path of wushu are amazing. Before ever seeing my companions compete, I know they are amazing. They dedicate their whole lives to the pursuit of an art form that most people will never understand; correcting the way they tilt their knees by the tiniest degree to attain a level of perfection that even the keenest eye can’t disregard. They work through injury and weather and countless other things. Athletes are amazing, in general, but right now, I’m living with martial artists, and…
Dear Junmyeon,
We’re going to competition tomorrow. I hope that I manage to get all of your questions answered. What do you think of this month’s article? I think I’ve gone from not having enough feelings to having far too many.
Your friend,
Jongdae
Dear Mom,
I wish I had tried out for the football team in high school.
Love,
Jongdae
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no subject
Date: 2012-08-11 12:45 pm (UTC)i always want one, the cat.
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"... Tao chuckles and moves so he’s standing behind Jongdae, and rests his chin on Jongdae’s shoulder, hands resting on the edge of the table. Jongdae can
feel Tao’s chest against his back.
“Cat is okay?” Tao asks, and Jongdae quivers at the whisper of Tao’s breath in his ear. He rests his own hands on Tao’s cold, bare arms, unconsciously rubbing them up and down, trying to return the warmth. The skin is soft beneath Jongdae’s fingertips." /yes
" Tao is looking straight at him, a
tiny frown on his face, and Jongdae doesn’t know what to make of it." /the jealousy, i see.
ah, and there's a part about kris joking of jongdae gift. ^^
" Tao immediately folds Jongdae into his arms, the same way he does with his pillow when he sleeps, and Jongdae’s face fits perfectly into the space between Tao’s neck and shoulder, Jongdae’s lips pressed to the skin of Tao’s throat." / asdfghjkp massive fluff *rlab
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kkkk, kyungsoo, the umma of the gank that reading erotic literature as a hobby. yes, look is deceiver.:D
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whaaat! pikachu couple! me gusta! i thought you wrote it kyungsoo, but then i red it agaon and kyaaa. that two is my ultimate bias. ^-^
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" “You were warm,” Jongdae says.
“Yesterday.” Tao exhales, and it tickles
at Jongdae’s chin. “Thank you.” "
/oh my. you two, just kiss already.
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0w0 this chapter spoil ne too much