![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
meiface.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
chineseinkSuspicions of Surety - DVD Commentary (2/2)
Commentary Part 1
Leeteuk had known for some time now that he loved Kangin: the dreams were a bit hard to miss, and he wasn’t stupid. He had seen the signs in himself for weeks now. If even Heechul and Sungmin could recognize it, then Leeteuk knew that he wasn’t lost in some sort of delusion sparked by too much fanservice and too many weeks with a head cold.
But Leeteuk didn’t know what to do with the information that he’d always loved Kangin. He didn’t know when it’d started, but surely back when they were trainees. Even then, it had been obvious that Jungsu had cared just a little bit more for Youngwoon—but it had been excusable, because everyone knew what good friends they were. And Leeteuk had cared for everyone, so it wasn’t like Youngwoon had stood out as an anomaly.
I don’t know if I’ve actually seen much from their trainee days, but I’ve heard a lot and I’ve been well-educated by other fics!
To look back now and realize that he’d been partial for almost the entirety of their acquaintance—it was kind of like realizing, at the end of a dream, that you’d spent the entire dream stark naked. And whether or not anyone else in your dream had noticed or said anything, it was still a sort of horrific revelation, one that left your skin crawling with embarrassment and your heart thumping in fear.
Super Junior was family. They had been together for seven years now, more or less: Leeteuk saw them more than his parents, had spent more time worrying about them than about aunts or cousins he hadn’t seen in years. He played surrogate mother and older brother to these boys when they were homesick, angry, exhausted, worried, afraid. He depended on them to make him smile, to remind him that he didn’t regret joining the show business, to support him in their own ways when sometimes everything was too much.
I emphasized Teukie’s leader role extensively throughout this fic, but here I wanted to make a point that he depended heavily on the other members as well. It’s a system of mutual support and, honestly, I don’t think Teukie is one of the stronger ones. I think everyone relies on each other to some extent, but I think Teukie relies more heavily than some—but he gives back just as much.
Super Junior was a family, and everyone had a role, a niche into which they fit. They fought and they got jealous and they didn’t like each other sometimes, but they would never let each other go, because everything was better when they were all together. Everything worked.
One of my favorite paragraphs, because I really do think Super Junior is a family. And they don’t always get along or like each other (trust me, I know something about families and surrogate families alike), but it doesn’t change the fact that they still love each other and would still choose to be together. EHB8 cemented this fact for me even more.
What Leeteuk feared, more than being rejected, more than losing Kangin’s friendship, or even jeopardizing his career, was wrecking his family.
But when he realized that he’d loved Kangin all along, throughout the years, and it hadn’t ruined the Super Junior family—Leeteuk felt a small flare of hope.
--
Leeteuk dove for the shower as soon as he and Eunhyuk came back to the dorms from Sukira. Eunhyuk had gotten off the elevator at the eleventh floor, bidding Leeteuk a good night. Normally, Leeteuk might have invited him up to the dorm he shared with Heechul, Shindong, Donghae, and Hankyung, because the other members tended to wander in and out at will, visiting. Tonight, however, Leeteuk waved him off, got off at the twelfth floor, and proceeded to ignore the loud group in the living room as he kicked off his shoes and practically ran for the shower, shouting, “I’ll be quick,” as he locked the door behind him.
Oh yes, I got anal again and googled for the current dorm situations because I wanted to be as accurate as possible. It’s amazing what Google will yield—and what fans know, because what Google yielded was another soompi thread. If you’re curious, the current dorm situation is:
11th floor
Room 1: Sungming, Kyuhyun
Room 2: Yesung, Ryeowook, Kangin
Room 3: Eunhyuk
12th floor
Room 1: Leeteuk, Heechul
Room 2: Shindong, Donghae
Room 3: Hankyung
Kibum lives by himself in an officetel and Siwon lives with his parents.
Make a note for future fic-writing references!
He turned his head up into the water, eyes squeezed shut as he slid a slick palm across his chest. He shouldn’t, not with four of his bandmates only a thin wall and a hallway away—but with so many people living in one small dorm, if he didn’t take his chance in the shower, he wouldn’t have many others. There was little privacy when there were this many guys around.
So Leeteuk stroked himself, pretending that the fingers curling around his erection were larger and rougher. He fingered a nipple and pretended that someone mouth was there instead. He pictured a laugh and a smirk and a whisper in his ear by a warm, familiar voice made unfamiliar by huskiness.
Leeteuk swallowed his moans, biting his lip hard as he came into his hand, into the hot water swirling down the drain. He blinked the water from his eyes and let out a shaky breath. Kangin. All the time, Kangin. There was no escaping from this. He reached for the shampoo.
Five minutes later, Leeteuk secured the towel around his waist and darted out of the bathroom into his and Heechul’s room, where he pulled on a pair of loose gym shorts and a T-shirt. Then he pulled on an oversized beige sweater and padded out to the living room, a little ill at ease.
Many mentions of Teukie’s giant blankets/potato sacks/sweaters! I’ve actually grown to like them.
Heechul was there, spread out on the couch with his feet in a visiting Siwon’s lap. Hankyung was sitting on the floor, talking to Kangin, and the late-night news blared from the TV, though no one seemed to be watching it.
“You look like you’re drowning in that thing,” Heechul greeted him.
“Hi, welcome back, how was Sukira?” Leeteuk shot back, grabbing one of the unopened beers from the table.
“Hi, welcome back, how was Sukira?” Hankyung asked dutifully, laughing as Heechul stretched out a foot and kicked him in the shoulder.
Leeteuk found it a little hard to look at Kangin after he’d just jerked himself off to his face in the shower. He sat down in one of the chairs at the table and opened his beer, pretending he wasn’t avoiding looking in Kangin’s direction.
“Anyway,” said Heechul, “I think we should have a party for New Year’s. It’d be totally lame not to have a party.”
Considering that this fic is set roughly in early-to-mid-December, it’s probably still a little too early to be talking about New Year’s parties. But I wrote this write before New Year and that’s what was on my mind, sad to say. I suppose Heechul could just be the type to plan early.
I also feel supremely awkward about this entire scene—or just the dialogue. Probably because Heechul was so predominant in it and we all know how I feel about writing Heechul. ::cringes::
“And of course we can’t lame,” Kangin put in, because he could always be counted on for supporting parties, “since we’re idols.”
“Isn’t SM holding one?” Leeteuk asked, rubbing at his neck with his free hand. He rolled his head back, trying to work out the crick.
“We should have our own,” Heechul insisted. He nudged Siwon with his feet. “Go over there and give leader-sshi a massage.”
Siwon looked confused but got off the couch and went to stand behind Leeteuk, placing large hands on his shoulders. “Here, let me, hyung,” he said. Leeteuk shot Heechul a glare—what did he think he was doing?—and received a pointed arch of the eyebrow in return. But Siwon dug his thumbs into a knot in his back and Leeteuk stopped caring, a moan escaping as he let his head drop forward.
“Ohh,” he sighed.
He lost himself in the sensation of Siwon’s hands, pressing through his sweater into tense muscles and working them until Leeteuk was tempted to just slide off his chair. He closed his eyes and focused on relaxing as the others discussed Heechul’s hypothetical party and proclivity for drinking. It was nice, times like these, especially when he could just pretend that there was nothing weird going on. It could be like it used to be, back when things were easy and comfortable.
“Feel better?” Siwon asked finally, the smile evident in his voice. He slid his arms around Leeteuk from the back, trapping him in a hug as he propped his chin on Leeteuk’s shoulder and beamed.
Siwon, king of skinship and totally adorable about it, too.
Leeteuk blinked and turned his head to smile at him. “God, yes. Thanks.”
Kangin noisily knocked some of the empty beer bottles over, expression sullen when everyone turned to look at him. “Sorry,” he said unrepentantly. He knocked back the last of his beer and stood up, sliding his hands in his pockets. “I’m going for a smoke.”
Hi, Mei has a thing for Kangin smoking, sorry. I don’t smoke and I don’t think people should and I don’t think it’s attractive or anything—but it’s part of Kangin’s bad boy image which I, strangely, do find attractive. Like a lot. Korea knows how to package and sell its stars, okay? I am a willing victim to it.
“Kangin,” said Leeteuk before he could stop himself, his protests against Kangin’s smoking too instinctual a habit to break. He flinched when Kangin looked at him and tried not to remember the heat of his shower or his fantasies. “Um, not too long, okay?” he said. “It’s cold out and you don’t want to get sick again.”
He might have imagined it but he thought he saw Kangin’s expression soften. But his words were dismissive: “Yeah, whatever. Good night.” He nodded at the room at large and let himself out, still looking annoyed.
Leeteuk watched him go, his heart sinking for some reason. He turned in time to catch the pillow Heechul threw at him.
“What was that for?”
Heechul didn’t answer, just making a gesture of giant exasperation, and told Hankyung to change the channel, he was tired of the fucking news. Later that night, when Siwon had gone home and Hankyung had disappeared into his room, Heechul shut the door to their room and said, “You fail so much as a person! I was helping.”
Leeteuk stared at him, bemused. “I thought you told me I should give up on him.”
“No,” Heechul said with disgust, “I said you should confess so he could reject you so we could all move on.”
“Then how are you helping?” Leeteuk demanded, stripping off his sweater as he climbed into bed.
“I changed my mind.” Heechul’s expression shifted and his eyes were dark when he looked at Leeteuk, almost as if weighing what he saw. “He keeps looking at you. And he was so jealous tonight he might have written it on his face with permanent marker. God, you’d think he’d be a better actor after all this time.”
Leeteuk sputtered. “You’re so retarded.” He pulled up his covers as Heechul slapped at the light switch, thrusting the room into darkness. But he couldn’t help staring at the ceiling for almost an hour, his mind frantic with maybes and what-ifs and impossible possibilities.
--
Talking was a skill Leeteuk had developed almost as self-defense, because he knew he wasn’t as good as some peopl;e at sports, or at making people laugh, or at dancing. But if he could talk his way around people, make them believe that what they actually wanted did not include him displaying his poor hand-eye coordination, then he was all right. He’d honed the skill as the leader of Super Junior, because the leader always had to know the right things to say at awards shows or on interviews. DJing had been further practice, part of his happy-go-lucky, cheerful stage persona who could charm the pants off anyone just by talking. And if he happened to fail despite all his words, it was only funnier, more endearing. Leeteuk had learned how to make words work for him.
Teukie is a beautiful talker, which I confirmed as fact after watching the first 3 or 4 episodes of Adonis Camp. He and Kangin make a terrifying tag-team and abuse their hyung power relentlessly. I wonder why I find that so funny. Oh, Adonis Camp also confirmed to me that Teukie fails at sports.
But he didn’t know what to say when Kangin called him at 3AM the night after a long music festival. Especially not when he started off with a plaintive, “Hyung, we’re really not that close, are we?”
Again, from soompi, someone mentioned translated a part of Sukira where Teuk and Hyuk were talking about jealousy within SuJu. Leeteuk said a lot of members got jealous over the time he spent with Eunhyuk and complained that he should pay attention to them more (I’m pretty sure Donghae and Siwon were mentioned specifically). Teukie said he once got a call from Siwon at 3AM, and once he got another call from a drunk Kangin saying, “Hyung, we’re really not that close, are we?” I took the liberty of combining the two incidents—Kangin would probably call at an obscene hour anyway.
It was a familiar phrase, one Leeteuk had heard before in a similar situation—a late night phone call from an obviously drunk Kangin. Last time, it had been about all the time Leeteuk had spent with Eunhyuk, partly due to Sukira. This time…this time, Leeteuk had no idea. Kangin helped clarify, in a roundabout way.
“You spend all your time with Hyukjae,” Kangin complained into his ear. “I hardly ever see you. You let Yesung and Siwon hang off you and touch you all the time, but you move away when I try to give you a hug. You baby Kyuhyun and Donghae but you don’t even text me to see if I’ve eaten. It’s not fair, hyung.”
EHB8 has a lot of Yesung touching Teukie.
Leeteuk had sleepily padded out of his room into the living room, dragging his comforter behind him, trying to keep his voice low so he didn’t wake the others. “That’s not true.”
“You haven’t looked me in the eye in days! You keep avoiding me! You hate me, don’t you, hyung?”
Just the opposite, in fact. “Of course I don’t hate you,” Leeteuk said, curling onto the couch, wondering if his anxiety was audible through the phone. “If I hated you, I wouldn’t have answered the phone. Where are you?”
“Out,” was the evasive answer. Then Kangin named some of his friends and Leeteuk relaxed a little bit; they’d gone out with Kangin before. They would take care of him, especially when he was drunk like this. Leeteuk rubbed at his eyes wearily and hoped that Kangin would be okay in a few hours’ time, ready for another day of endless events.
This is a vague and heavily veiled reference to the friends Kangin called on the SuJu Phone Parts from Idol World; I couldn’t remember who they were and was too lazy to go check, so I let them be nameless, faceless friends. They weren’t important enough for names, anyway, being a passing detail.
“Hyung,” said Kangin, trying to get his attention. “Teukie. Teukie, I thought we were close. I thought we were the best. You know—you know fans call us umma and appa? It’s like we’re married, you know.” His plaintive tone turned into an angry one. “You can’t just let other people touch you all the time when you won’t even look at me! I’m the one who loves you best.”
Leeteuk thought his heart stopped. “W-what?” he stammered. No, he told himself, he just means—not that kind of love. He was just being a petulant child, like the kids who competed with their siblings for their mother’s attention.
Har, har, see the irony, since Teukie is band umma and all. I’m so clever, I know.
“Didn’t you know? I love you, hyung. Like, I really, really…think I should be sober when I tell you this. I love you. I—”
“Kangin-ah, you’re drunk,” Leeteuk said firmly, more as a reminder to himself than to Kangin.
“I know. But I—think about, you know. When I—”
Images of all the times he’d fucked his own fist flashed through Leeteuk’s mind, intermingled with the dream images of Kangin sliding slow against him, gripping him, kissing him, holding him. Leeteuk drew in a long, sharp breath, his fingers fisting in his blankets. It couldn’t be. It couldn’t be. He must be having some sort of dream, or maybe it was a hallucination from working too much with not enough sleep, because this was just too— Too coincidental. Too unbelievable. Too fucking good to be true.
His ability to talk circles around people didn’t help him here, tonight. “You’re drunk,” he whispered into the phone. “I’ll talk to you in five hours, when you’re sober.”
--
Leeteuk had certain reservations about alcohol. They didn’t stem from his Christianity, as with Siwon, or from any promises of abstinence made to his parents, as with Donghae—Leeteuk’s reservations about alcohol stemmed solely from personal experience. He had a few distinct memories about doing stupid things while drunk, and altogether many more hazy memories that consisted mostly of a feeling of embarrassment and a deluge of ribbing from those who had been present and sober. Leeteuk had also witnessed firsthand many of the stupid things alcohol induced other people to. He had stories he could blackmail people in his company with, if he were ever inclined.
Siwon, I am making assumptions about, and Donghae—I’m pretty sure I saw the fact in a translated interview.
When Leeteuk had said on Golden Fishery, “I’ve known Kangin for seven years. I’ve even seen things I shouldn’t have seen,” he hadn’t just been kidding around for the sake of the show.
This clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRlAZtL7P2Y
It made him wary of alcohol to an extent. He didn’t refuse it, of course, because it was one of the best ways to relax and grow closer to people. He and Heechul wouldn’t be nearly the friends they were now if they hadn’t spent nights drinking and talking about life, the entertainment industry, their bandmates, everything. It fostered a sense of camaraderie that even spending nearly twenty-four hours a day together couldn’t, not when most of those hours were spent running around filming, rehearsing, styling, dancing, recording, working. So Leeteuk drank, but he drank more moderately now, because he didn’t trust himself when he had too much.
He knew others drank more. Hankyung and Heechul were always up for a beer or some soju, nothing excessive but at a more frequent rate than Leeteuk; Shindong and Kibum would enjoy a night out or two, as well. And Kangin. Well, Kangin was known for his drinking and his smoking and his womanizing: it was part of his bad boy reputation, one that management let leak into his idol image, just to make him a little more interesting. The truth was that Kangin didn’t drink nearly as often or as much as it sometimes sounded on talk shows—but of all the members, he still topped the list of drinkers.
Leeteuk wished, now, that he knew how much Kangin could handle. He wished he knew when to write him off as totally wasted, and to ignore everything he said, and when to realize that Kangin had had just enough to loosen his tongue to honesty. It’s not fair, Kangin had complained, meaning the way Leeteuk let other members touch him but shied away from Kangin now, afraid that his confused want could be read off his skin. Leeteuk agreed that it wasn’t fair, but he meant the uncertainty and fluttering of hope in his stomach, treacherous and consuming.
Alcohol was a wonderful and terrible thing, Leeteuk concluded.
--
Six hours after the phone call that kept Leeteuk up for the rest of the night found four members of Super Junior on the set of a game show, trying to keep warm as the staff poked at the faulty thermostat. Sungmin and Donghae huddled together for warmth, one talking to Leeteuk on one side and the other trying to make conversation with Kangin, to little success. Kangin was in an exceptionally bad mood due to his lack of sleep, coupled with a pounding hangover, and he kept snapping at people, much to everyone’s chagrin. No one liked working with an angry Kangin.
The show I am not-so-secretly referencing here is Brain King Einstein, which aired on 12/23. Hm, same as EHB7, meaning they would have filmed it around the same time. Maybe my timeline is not completely shot to hell.
Leeteuk’s cough had returned with a vengeance after a mostly sleepless night. He wore a mask over his nose and mouth and had dark circles under his eyes that made the make-up artists cluck their tongues. He didn’t really care, because Sungmin was prying with his eyes and Kangin hadn’t looked at him since they’d met in front of the dorms an hour and a half ago to climb into the car that would bring them to the studio.
He wondered if this was how Kangin had felt in the past few weeks.
“Let me know if you need to sit down, okay?” Sungmin had left Donghae to talk to Leeteuk, rubbing at the leader’s arm—that is, he rubbed at the giant parka in which Leeteuk was encased. “Did something happen?” he asked under his breath.
See my many references to Teuk’s giant parkas! They swallow him up, I swear, but I love them. He’s adorable in them. Oh, and see my mention of the Asian Cold Mask. I never see them anywhere else—is it just an Asian thing, then?
“No!” Leeteuk tried to keep his voice down. His eyes darted frantically to where Kangin was harassing the staff for a bottle of water, expression pained as the film crew adjusted the bright studio lights. “Maybe, I don’t know,” Leeteuk admitted, his voice muffled by his mask. He smoothed his fingers over the taper of hair that fell in front of his ears: a nervous habit.
Sungmin looked at him, expectant.
“He told me he loved me.”
Sungmin’s eyes widened.
“But he was drunk,” Leeteuk hissed, eyes darting around again to make sure no one had heard. Donghae was slumped in a chair behind the lights, half-asleep, and Kangin was getting his water. Leeteuk rubbed at his eyes and gave Sungmin a somewhat desperate look. “I don’t know what he meant.”
“I would guess he meant that he loves you.” Sungmin squeezed his arm in a hard grip. “Go talk to him, hyung, or I’ll tell Heechul-hyung and he’ll kill you.”
“Oh God,” Leeteuk muttered, looking appalled, “have you two been collaborating?” Meddling bandmates were much like meddling family: too concerned for their own good and entirely unnecessary. He supposed he should be grateful. Probably. Meaning that he should go talk to Kangin now, before Sungmin carried through on his threat; Leeteuk wasn’t afraid that Heechul would actually kill him, per se, but he couldn’t say he was looking forward to what Heechul might pull in the future, if the massage-by-Siwon two nights ago was an indication of the way he schemed.
Leeteuk decided he was too tired to think and said, “He’s probably going to bite my head off.” But at Sungmin’s glare, he dutifully wandered off in Kangin’s direction. He bit his lip when he caught sight of Kangin tilting his head back for a long swallow from his water bottle, his throat exposed. Leeteuk was struck with the irony of the situation, remembering the mini-drama they’d filmed last year where their situations had been exactly reversed. He was still lost in bitterness when Kangin looked at him and said in a low voice, “Hyung.”
A reference to the mini-drama LT, KI, EH, and DH wrote and acted in, with gay, gay KangTeuk and EunHae. It was a brilliant mini-drama, except for the ending. ;D
“Um, well,” Leeteuk said pathetically, suddenly at a loss. “You look tired.” When Kangin didn’t say anything, Leeteuk started fiddling with the sleeves of his coat, heart thumping wildly. How was he supposed to do this? “You probably shouldn’t have gone out last night,” he said at last, looking at the ground.
Kangin made a sound that was a cross between a grunt and a scoff. Leeteuk decided it was a sound of acknowledgement.
“We should probably talk,” he said hesitantly, flicking his eyes up towards Kangin’s face.
Kangin screwed the cap back on his water bottle and grabbed Leeteuk’s arm without a word. He pulled them past a number of stylists and tech crew and one of the assistant managers of the set. “We’ll be back in ten minutes,” he said with a smile and a nod, because he knew how to get what he wanted when it mattered, and it didn’t involve short tempers. The woman nodded in return, because the crew was still setting up, the thermostat was still too cold, and she had other things to take care of.
Leeteuk found himself outside of the filming studio in one of the back hallways of the building, crowded with boxes and electrical cords. “Kangin-ah,” he said, pulling his arm free and trying not to let the fear show on his face. This was it.
“What did I say to you last night?” Kangin asked, his expression unreadable.
Leeteuk knew this tactic: never give away more than you had to. It was completely possible that Kangin had thought he’d admitted something to Leeteuk that he hadn’t actually done so. But Leeteuk didn’t know what else there could have been to admit that would have trumped last night’s confession. “You told me you loved me,” he said, sticking his hands in his coat pockets so Kangin wouldn’t see the way they fisted in nervousness.
A look flickered in Kangin’s eyes, guarded. Ah, he thought maybe he could still play this off as platonic, stemming from a case of childish jealousy, maybe. Leeteuk took away that option, because he had to know.
“You said you thought about me when you masturbated,” he added, holding his breath.
Kangin’s face became carefully even blanker. Then he sighed and his brows knit and he said, voice rough with worry, “Hyung, fuck. Please don’t hate me. I know I should’ve just kept my damned mouth shut, but I’m not going to let this ruin us, okay? I won’t let anyone know and we, we can make it work somehow, you know? I won’t risk Super Junior for this, you know how much it means to all of us. We’ve all worked so hard for it and—”
The blood rushed to Leeteuk’s ears and he could hear a faint ringing sound as he said, “Oh my God.” His head spun and it was hard to breathe through his mask, suddenly. “Oh my God,” he repeated and Kangin stopped talking to give him a worried look.
“Hyung?” he asked, reaching out to steady Leeteuk.
“You…love me,” Leeteuk said stupidly, looking up at the face of the man he’d known for seven years and had been in love with for…who knew how long. He felt numb with shock.
I am iffy about the entire scene between my last comment and this comment. Too bad it also happens to be the vital confession scene, right?
Kangin tightened his hold on Leeteuk’s shoulder. “Yeah. But we can—”
“Shut up,” said Leeteuk. He thought me might be crying a little. “I think I’ve been in love with you for years.”
Kangin was still for a long moment. Then he grabbed Leeteuk by both shoulders and turned him to face Kangin properly. “Seriously, hyung? Are you fucking serious? Park Jungsu, if you’re kidding, I’m going to hit you.”
I love a violent Kangin. It is part of his character.
“I’m serious, you idiot,” said Leeteuk, and then he knew he was crying because Kangin's thumb was on his face, brushing away the tears. He buried his face into Kangin’s hoodie when the other man wrapped his arms around him in a bone-crushing hug, its desperation speaking to his own. He shuddered.
“We have to get back to the set,” Kangin said into his hair.
“We’ll talk about this later,” Leeteuk said into his chest, voice muffled.
Kangin pressed a kiss into hair and took his hand as they went back. Leeteuk wiped away the remainders of his tears and told the noona in charge of make-up that his red eyes were due to his lack of sleep, making sure he looked properly sheepish and abashed as he did so. She fussed over him and sent him off to have his hair done. His seat put him next to Sungmin, who once again had questions in his eyes, almost as bright as the silver crosses dangling from his ears. Leeteuk smiled a little self-consciously, not daring to move his head but—breathless with pleasure, choked with hope, edging near some indescribable joy—happy.
The grin that spread out on Sungmin’s face warmed Leeteuk almost as much as Kangin’s arms. He turned on the charm for the show, talking the talk like he always did, laughing and smiling and charming the audience. The MCs joked with him, familiar with his routine, but spent much more time distracted by Kangin, who dominated the show with his Santa hat and his laugh. Leeteuk didn’t mind, because Kangin would sit by him during the filming breaks and squeeze his hand. Once, on camera, he walked around the MCs to Leeteuk’s seat, talking and gesturing and brushing a gentle hand through Leeteuk’s hair before he returned to his own seat.
I forget what part of Brain King Einstein had it, but Kangin definitely went over to Teuk’s seat and brushed his hair before returning to his own seat. Trust me, I sat through 50 minutes of a show that was impossible to understand without knowing Korean just for the KangTeuk—and I was rewarded for my obsessiveness, woo.
It wasn’t anything he hadn’t done in the past, but it had a thousand more meanings now.
Or really, Leeteuk realized, it had just one meaning. A meaning that had been there all along.
--
“You can buy me dinner,” Heechul said sweetly when he heard, “to thank me for my support and my incalculable help.”
Leeteuk laughed until he started coughing at the smug expression on Heechul’s face. “Thank you,” he said after his shoulders stopped shaking, and he meant it.
--
Those who said love was all you needed were truly romantic—and stupid. Leeteuk knew love didn’t solve all the world’s problems, or even just his. He still had to tell the other members and face inevitable censure, disappointment, resentment, and hurt. Not everyone would be as accepting as Heechul and Sungmin, and he knew that. Even Kangin and Heechul couldn’t browbeat everyone into acceptance, as much as they’d like to try. Leeteuk worried, and he fretted, but he knew he would tell them eventually, because he wouldn’t keep something this important, this wonderful, and this dangerous from them. They deserved to know.
As much as I love fics where everyone is happy and gay (or supportive and taking bets), I tried to keep the trend of realism going here. You can’t avoid the fact that SuJu has a number of pretty religious members, who would not be A-OK with homosexuality. I think and hope that they would be able to love and support each other no matter what, to stick together through everything, after seven years—and I think EHB8 supports that. So I’m going to try convey that in the epilogue (which is pretty much the other members’ reactions).
Then, Leeteuk still had to worry about management, about his career, about everyone else’s career. He didn’t know yet if he would let their manager know, or if he were willing to stumble along, trying his best to keep a secret in an industry that didn’t allow for many secrets. Leeteuk didn’t look forward to the daunting task of trying to hide one of the biggest secrets in the business, a business that made no promises about fame and was bitterly fickle. On top of that, he still had to talk to his parents. He had a world of worry and new obstacles facing him, and love wasn’t going to solve all that.
I don’t know nearly enough about Teuk’s actual family but, yeah, family is a big thing in Asia. So is filial duty—a big part of which is having kids, continuing the family name, and setting an example for posterity. S. Korea is pretty Confucian (the parts that aren’t now Christian, um), so for a son (especially the eldest or only) to condemn the family line by not marrying is one of the worst, most unforgivable things he can do to his parents.
But when Leeteuk kissed Kangin for the first time—properly, none of that almost-there business for the cameras or the odd pressure with the sharp edges of a playing card between their lips—he tasted hints of Kangin’s last cigarette and the mint he’d sucked on afterwards. He felt his spine tingle with pleasure in the way of the most clichéd romantic drama, and he thought with a certain surety that had taken weeks to build: maybe love didn’t solve all his problems, but it might make them worth it.
Especially when he discovered that Kangin wasn’t half-bad with his tongue.
But I’m a sap and I need a happy ending to my KangTeuk, and because it is my KangTeuk, they get to have a happy ending. I’m also happy by all the KangTeuk I’ve seen recently on shows—not the blatant fanservice of Marry U proposals but the casual talking and hugging and hand-on-shoulder and sitting-next-to-each-other that speaks of a close, easy friendship. Oh, they’re so important to each other, so necessary. They’re so, so cute. <3
--
So now you've gotten some insight into how I write--with anal retentive research on small details and a contradictory laziness in matching up my timeline. And mostly linearly: I wrote this entire thing from beginning to end as is, switching only two sections around (the one about dreams and the one where Kangin brings Teuk water backstage). Other than that, how you read it is how I wrote it--but with pretty heavy editing, thank God.
I am so sorry this was so long. I never shut up, it's a fact.
Commentary Part 1
Leeteuk had known for some time now that he loved Kangin: the dreams were a bit hard to miss, and he wasn’t stupid. He had seen the signs in himself for weeks now. If even Heechul and Sungmin could recognize it, then Leeteuk knew that he wasn’t lost in some sort of delusion sparked by too much fanservice and too many weeks with a head cold.
But Leeteuk didn’t know what to do with the information that he’d always loved Kangin. He didn’t know when it’d started, but surely back when they were trainees. Even then, it had been obvious that Jungsu had cared just a little bit more for Youngwoon—but it had been excusable, because everyone knew what good friends they were. And Leeteuk had cared for everyone, so it wasn’t like Youngwoon had stood out as an anomaly.
I don’t know if I’ve actually seen much from their trainee days, but I’ve heard a lot and I’ve been well-educated by other fics!
To look back now and realize that he’d been partial for almost the entirety of their acquaintance—it was kind of like realizing, at the end of a dream, that you’d spent the entire dream stark naked. And whether or not anyone else in your dream had noticed or said anything, it was still a sort of horrific revelation, one that left your skin crawling with embarrassment and your heart thumping in fear.
Super Junior was family. They had been together for seven years now, more or less: Leeteuk saw them more than his parents, had spent more time worrying about them than about aunts or cousins he hadn’t seen in years. He played surrogate mother and older brother to these boys when they were homesick, angry, exhausted, worried, afraid. He depended on them to make him smile, to remind him that he didn’t regret joining the show business, to support him in their own ways when sometimes everything was too much.
I emphasized Teukie’s leader role extensively throughout this fic, but here I wanted to make a point that he depended heavily on the other members as well. It’s a system of mutual support and, honestly, I don’t think Teukie is one of the stronger ones. I think everyone relies on each other to some extent, but I think Teukie relies more heavily than some—but he gives back just as much.
Super Junior was a family, and everyone had a role, a niche into which they fit. They fought and they got jealous and they didn’t like each other sometimes, but they would never let each other go, because everything was better when they were all together. Everything worked.
One of my favorite paragraphs, because I really do think Super Junior is a family. And they don’t always get along or like each other (trust me, I know something about families and surrogate families alike), but it doesn’t change the fact that they still love each other and would still choose to be together. EHB8 cemented this fact for me even more.
What Leeteuk feared, more than being rejected, more than losing Kangin’s friendship, or even jeopardizing his career, was wrecking his family.
But when he realized that he’d loved Kangin all along, throughout the years, and it hadn’t ruined the Super Junior family—Leeteuk felt a small flare of hope.
--
Leeteuk dove for the shower as soon as he and Eunhyuk came back to the dorms from Sukira. Eunhyuk had gotten off the elevator at the eleventh floor, bidding Leeteuk a good night. Normally, Leeteuk might have invited him up to the dorm he shared with Heechul, Shindong, Donghae, and Hankyung, because the other members tended to wander in and out at will, visiting. Tonight, however, Leeteuk waved him off, got off at the twelfth floor, and proceeded to ignore the loud group in the living room as he kicked off his shoes and practically ran for the shower, shouting, “I’ll be quick,” as he locked the door behind him.
Oh yes, I got anal again and googled for the current dorm situations because I wanted to be as accurate as possible. It’s amazing what Google will yield—and what fans know, because what Google yielded was another soompi thread. If you’re curious, the current dorm situation is:
11th floor
Room 1: Sungming, Kyuhyun
Room 2: Yesung, Ryeowook, Kangin
Room 3: Eunhyuk
12th floor
Room 1: Leeteuk, Heechul
Room 2: Shindong, Donghae
Room 3: Hankyung
Kibum lives by himself in an officetel and Siwon lives with his parents.
Make a note for future fic-writing references!
He turned his head up into the water, eyes squeezed shut as he slid a slick palm across his chest. He shouldn’t, not with four of his bandmates only a thin wall and a hallway away—but with so many people living in one small dorm, if he didn’t take his chance in the shower, he wouldn’t have many others. There was little privacy when there were this many guys around.
So Leeteuk stroked himself, pretending that the fingers curling around his erection were larger and rougher. He fingered a nipple and pretended that someone mouth was there instead. He pictured a laugh and a smirk and a whisper in his ear by a warm, familiar voice made unfamiliar by huskiness.
Leeteuk swallowed his moans, biting his lip hard as he came into his hand, into the hot water swirling down the drain. He blinked the water from his eyes and let out a shaky breath. Kangin. All the time, Kangin. There was no escaping from this. He reached for the shampoo.
Five minutes later, Leeteuk secured the towel around his waist and darted out of the bathroom into his and Heechul’s room, where he pulled on a pair of loose gym shorts and a T-shirt. Then he pulled on an oversized beige sweater and padded out to the living room, a little ill at ease.
Many mentions of Teukie’s giant blankets/potato sacks/sweaters! I’ve actually grown to like them.
Heechul was there, spread out on the couch with his feet in a visiting Siwon’s lap. Hankyung was sitting on the floor, talking to Kangin, and the late-night news blared from the TV, though no one seemed to be watching it.
“You look like you’re drowning in that thing,” Heechul greeted him.
“Hi, welcome back, how was Sukira?” Leeteuk shot back, grabbing one of the unopened beers from the table.
“Hi, welcome back, how was Sukira?” Hankyung asked dutifully, laughing as Heechul stretched out a foot and kicked him in the shoulder.
Leeteuk found it a little hard to look at Kangin after he’d just jerked himself off to his face in the shower. He sat down in one of the chairs at the table and opened his beer, pretending he wasn’t avoiding looking in Kangin’s direction.
“Anyway,” said Heechul, “I think we should have a party for New Year’s. It’d be totally lame not to have a party.”
Considering that this fic is set roughly in early-to-mid-December, it’s probably still a little too early to be talking about New Year’s parties. But I wrote this write before New Year and that’s what was on my mind, sad to say. I suppose Heechul could just be the type to plan early.
I also feel supremely awkward about this entire scene—or just the dialogue. Probably because Heechul was so predominant in it and we all know how I feel about writing Heechul. ::cringes::
“And of course we can’t lame,” Kangin put in, because he could always be counted on for supporting parties, “since we’re idols.”
“Isn’t SM holding one?” Leeteuk asked, rubbing at his neck with his free hand. He rolled his head back, trying to work out the crick.
“We should have our own,” Heechul insisted. He nudged Siwon with his feet. “Go over there and give leader-sshi a massage.”
Siwon looked confused but got off the couch and went to stand behind Leeteuk, placing large hands on his shoulders. “Here, let me, hyung,” he said. Leeteuk shot Heechul a glare—what did he think he was doing?—and received a pointed arch of the eyebrow in return. But Siwon dug his thumbs into a knot in his back and Leeteuk stopped caring, a moan escaping as he let his head drop forward.
“Ohh,” he sighed.
He lost himself in the sensation of Siwon’s hands, pressing through his sweater into tense muscles and working them until Leeteuk was tempted to just slide off his chair. He closed his eyes and focused on relaxing as the others discussed Heechul’s hypothetical party and proclivity for drinking. It was nice, times like these, especially when he could just pretend that there was nothing weird going on. It could be like it used to be, back when things were easy and comfortable.
“Feel better?” Siwon asked finally, the smile evident in his voice. He slid his arms around Leeteuk from the back, trapping him in a hug as he propped his chin on Leeteuk’s shoulder and beamed.
Siwon, king of skinship and totally adorable about it, too.
Leeteuk blinked and turned his head to smile at him. “God, yes. Thanks.”
Kangin noisily knocked some of the empty beer bottles over, expression sullen when everyone turned to look at him. “Sorry,” he said unrepentantly. He knocked back the last of his beer and stood up, sliding his hands in his pockets. “I’m going for a smoke.”
Hi, Mei has a thing for Kangin smoking, sorry. I don’t smoke and I don’t think people should and I don’t think it’s attractive or anything—but it’s part of Kangin’s bad boy image which I, strangely, do find attractive. Like a lot. Korea knows how to package and sell its stars, okay? I am a willing victim to it.
“Kangin,” said Leeteuk before he could stop himself, his protests against Kangin’s smoking too instinctual a habit to break. He flinched when Kangin looked at him and tried not to remember the heat of his shower or his fantasies. “Um, not too long, okay?” he said. “It’s cold out and you don’t want to get sick again.”
He might have imagined it but he thought he saw Kangin’s expression soften. But his words were dismissive: “Yeah, whatever. Good night.” He nodded at the room at large and let himself out, still looking annoyed.
Leeteuk watched him go, his heart sinking for some reason. He turned in time to catch the pillow Heechul threw at him.
“What was that for?”
Heechul didn’t answer, just making a gesture of giant exasperation, and told Hankyung to change the channel, he was tired of the fucking news. Later that night, when Siwon had gone home and Hankyung had disappeared into his room, Heechul shut the door to their room and said, “You fail so much as a person! I was helping.”
Leeteuk stared at him, bemused. “I thought you told me I should give up on him.”
“No,” Heechul said with disgust, “I said you should confess so he could reject you so we could all move on.”
“Then how are you helping?” Leeteuk demanded, stripping off his sweater as he climbed into bed.
“I changed my mind.” Heechul’s expression shifted and his eyes were dark when he looked at Leeteuk, almost as if weighing what he saw. “He keeps looking at you. And he was so jealous tonight he might have written it on his face with permanent marker. God, you’d think he’d be a better actor after all this time.”
Leeteuk sputtered. “You’re so retarded.” He pulled up his covers as Heechul slapped at the light switch, thrusting the room into darkness. But he couldn’t help staring at the ceiling for almost an hour, his mind frantic with maybes and what-ifs and impossible possibilities.
--
Talking was a skill Leeteuk had developed almost as self-defense, because he knew he wasn’t as good as some peopl;e at sports, or at making people laugh, or at dancing. But if he could talk his way around people, make them believe that what they actually wanted did not include him displaying his poor hand-eye coordination, then he was all right. He’d honed the skill as the leader of Super Junior, because the leader always had to know the right things to say at awards shows or on interviews. DJing had been further practice, part of his happy-go-lucky, cheerful stage persona who could charm the pants off anyone just by talking. And if he happened to fail despite all his words, it was only funnier, more endearing. Leeteuk had learned how to make words work for him.
Teukie is a beautiful talker, which I confirmed as fact after watching the first 3 or 4 episodes of Adonis Camp. He and Kangin make a terrifying tag-team and abuse their hyung power relentlessly. I wonder why I find that so funny. Oh, Adonis Camp also confirmed to me that Teukie fails at sports.
But he didn’t know what to say when Kangin called him at 3AM the night after a long music festival. Especially not when he started off with a plaintive, “Hyung, we’re really not that close, are we?”
Again, from soompi, someone mentioned translated a part of Sukira where Teuk and Hyuk were talking about jealousy within SuJu. Leeteuk said a lot of members got jealous over the time he spent with Eunhyuk and complained that he should pay attention to them more (I’m pretty sure Donghae and Siwon were mentioned specifically). Teukie said he once got a call from Siwon at 3AM, and once he got another call from a drunk Kangin saying, “Hyung, we’re really not that close, are we?” I took the liberty of combining the two incidents—Kangin would probably call at an obscene hour anyway.
It was a familiar phrase, one Leeteuk had heard before in a similar situation—a late night phone call from an obviously drunk Kangin. Last time, it had been about all the time Leeteuk had spent with Eunhyuk, partly due to Sukira. This time…this time, Leeteuk had no idea. Kangin helped clarify, in a roundabout way.
“You spend all your time with Hyukjae,” Kangin complained into his ear. “I hardly ever see you. You let Yesung and Siwon hang off you and touch you all the time, but you move away when I try to give you a hug. You baby Kyuhyun and Donghae but you don’t even text me to see if I’ve eaten. It’s not fair, hyung.”
EHB8 has a lot of Yesung touching Teukie.
Leeteuk had sleepily padded out of his room into the living room, dragging his comforter behind him, trying to keep his voice low so he didn’t wake the others. “That’s not true.”
“You haven’t looked me in the eye in days! You keep avoiding me! You hate me, don’t you, hyung?”
Just the opposite, in fact. “Of course I don’t hate you,” Leeteuk said, curling onto the couch, wondering if his anxiety was audible through the phone. “If I hated you, I wouldn’t have answered the phone. Where are you?”
“Out,” was the evasive answer. Then Kangin named some of his friends and Leeteuk relaxed a little bit; they’d gone out with Kangin before. They would take care of him, especially when he was drunk like this. Leeteuk rubbed at his eyes wearily and hoped that Kangin would be okay in a few hours’ time, ready for another day of endless events.
This is a vague and heavily veiled reference to the friends Kangin called on the SuJu Phone Parts from Idol World; I couldn’t remember who they were and was too lazy to go check, so I let them be nameless, faceless friends. They weren’t important enough for names, anyway, being a passing detail.
“Hyung,” said Kangin, trying to get his attention. “Teukie. Teukie, I thought we were close. I thought we were the best. You know—you know fans call us umma and appa? It’s like we’re married, you know.” His plaintive tone turned into an angry one. “You can’t just let other people touch you all the time when you won’t even look at me! I’m the one who loves you best.”
Leeteuk thought his heart stopped. “W-what?” he stammered. No, he told himself, he just means—not that kind of love. He was just being a petulant child, like the kids who competed with their siblings for their mother’s attention.
Har, har, see the irony, since Teukie is band umma and all. I’m so clever, I know.
“Didn’t you know? I love you, hyung. Like, I really, really…think I should be sober when I tell you this. I love you. I—”
“Kangin-ah, you’re drunk,” Leeteuk said firmly, more as a reminder to himself than to Kangin.
“I know. But I—think about, you know. When I—”
Images of all the times he’d fucked his own fist flashed through Leeteuk’s mind, intermingled with the dream images of Kangin sliding slow against him, gripping him, kissing him, holding him. Leeteuk drew in a long, sharp breath, his fingers fisting in his blankets. It couldn’t be. It couldn’t be. He must be having some sort of dream, or maybe it was a hallucination from working too much with not enough sleep, because this was just too— Too coincidental. Too unbelievable. Too fucking good to be true.
His ability to talk circles around people didn’t help him here, tonight. “You’re drunk,” he whispered into the phone. “I’ll talk to you in five hours, when you’re sober.”
--
Leeteuk had certain reservations about alcohol. They didn’t stem from his Christianity, as with Siwon, or from any promises of abstinence made to his parents, as with Donghae—Leeteuk’s reservations about alcohol stemmed solely from personal experience. He had a few distinct memories about doing stupid things while drunk, and altogether many more hazy memories that consisted mostly of a feeling of embarrassment and a deluge of ribbing from those who had been present and sober. Leeteuk had also witnessed firsthand many of the stupid things alcohol induced other people to. He had stories he could blackmail people in his company with, if he were ever inclined.
Siwon, I am making assumptions about, and Donghae—I’m pretty sure I saw the fact in a translated interview.
When Leeteuk had said on Golden Fishery, “I’ve known Kangin for seven years. I’ve even seen things I shouldn’t have seen,” he hadn’t just been kidding around for the sake of the show.
This clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRlAZtL7P2Y
It made him wary of alcohol to an extent. He didn’t refuse it, of course, because it was one of the best ways to relax and grow closer to people. He and Heechul wouldn’t be nearly the friends they were now if they hadn’t spent nights drinking and talking about life, the entertainment industry, their bandmates, everything. It fostered a sense of camaraderie that even spending nearly twenty-four hours a day together couldn’t, not when most of those hours were spent running around filming, rehearsing, styling, dancing, recording, working. So Leeteuk drank, but he drank more moderately now, because he didn’t trust himself when he had too much.
He knew others drank more. Hankyung and Heechul were always up for a beer or some soju, nothing excessive but at a more frequent rate than Leeteuk; Shindong and Kibum would enjoy a night out or two, as well. And Kangin. Well, Kangin was known for his drinking and his smoking and his womanizing: it was part of his bad boy reputation, one that management let leak into his idol image, just to make him a little more interesting. The truth was that Kangin didn’t drink nearly as often or as much as it sometimes sounded on talk shows—but of all the members, he still topped the list of drinkers.
Leeteuk wished, now, that he knew how much Kangin could handle. He wished he knew when to write him off as totally wasted, and to ignore everything he said, and when to realize that Kangin had had just enough to loosen his tongue to honesty. It’s not fair, Kangin had complained, meaning the way Leeteuk let other members touch him but shied away from Kangin now, afraid that his confused want could be read off his skin. Leeteuk agreed that it wasn’t fair, but he meant the uncertainty and fluttering of hope in his stomach, treacherous and consuming.
Alcohol was a wonderful and terrible thing, Leeteuk concluded.
--
Six hours after the phone call that kept Leeteuk up for the rest of the night found four members of Super Junior on the set of a game show, trying to keep warm as the staff poked at the faulty thermostat. Sungmin and Donghae huddled together for warmth, one talking to Leeteuk on one side and the other trying to make conversation with Kangin, to little success. Kangin was in an exceptionally bad mood due to his lack of sleep, coupled with a pounding hangover, and he kept snapping at people, much to everyone’s chagrin. No one liked working with an angry Kangin.
The show I am not-so-secretly referencing here is Brain King Einstein, which aired on 12/23. Hm, same as EHB7, meaning they would have filmed it around the same time. Maybe my timeline is not completely shot to hell.
Leeteuk’s cough had returned with a vengeance after a mostly sleepless night. He wore a mask over his nose and mouth and had dark circles under his eyes that made the make-up artists cluck their tongues. He didn’t really care, because Sungmin was prying with his eyes and Kangin hadn’t looked at him since they’d met in front of the dorms an hour and a half ago to climb into the car that would bring them to the studio.
He wondered if this was how Kangin had felt in the past few weeks.
“Let me know if you need to sit down, okay?” Sungmin had left Donghae to talk to Leeteuk, rubbing at the leader’s arm—that is, he rubbed at the giant parka in which Leeteuk was encased. “Did something happen?” he asked under his breath.
See my many references to Teuk’s giant parkas! They swallow him up, I swear, but I love them. He’s adorable in them. Oh, and see my mention of the Asian Cold Mask. I never see them anywhere else—is it just an Asian thing, then?
“No!” Leeteuk tried to keep his voice down. His eyes darted frantically to where Kangin was harassing the staff for a bottle of water, expression pained as the film crew adjusted the bright studio lights. “Maybe, I don’t know,” Leeteuk admitted, his voice muffled by his mask. He smoothed his fingers over the taper of hair that fell in front of his ears: a nervous habit.
Sungmin looked at him, expectant.
“He told me he loved me.”
Sungmin’s eyes widened.
“But he was drunk,” Leeteuk hissed, eyes darting around again to make sure no one had heard. Donghae was slumped in a chair behind the lights, half-asleep, and Kangin was getting his water. Leeteuk rubbed at his eyes and gave Sungmin a somewhat desperate look. “I don’t know what he meant.”
“I would guess he meant that he loves you.” Sungmin squeezed his arm in a hard grip. “Go talk to him, hyung, or I’ll tell Heechul-hyung and he’ll kill you.”
“Oh God,” Leeteuk muttered, looking appalled, “have you two been collaborating?” Meddling bandmates were much like meddling family: too concerned for their own good and entirely unnecessary. He supposed he should be grateful. Probably. Meaning that he should go talk to Kangin now, before Sungmin carried through on his threat; Leeteuk wasn’t afraid that Heechul would actually kill him, per se, but he couldn’t say he was looking forward to what Heechul might pull in the future, if the massage-by-Siwon two nights ago was an indication of the way he schemed.
Leeteuk decided he was too tired to think and said, “He’s probably going to bite my head off.” But at Sungmin’s glare, he dutifully wandered off in Kangin’s direction. He bit his lip when he caught sight of Kangin tilting his head back for a long swallow from his water bottle, his throat exposed. Leeteuk was struck with the irony of the situation, remembering the mini-drama they’d filmed last year where their situations had been exactly reversed. He was still lost in bitterness when Kangin looked at him and said in a low voice, “Hyung.”
A reference to the mini-drama LT, KI, EH, and DH wrote and acted in, with gay, gay KangTeuk and EunHae. It was a brilliant mini-drama, except for the ending. ;D
“Um, well,” Leeteuk said pathetically, suddenly at a loss. “You look tired.” When Kangin didn’t say anything, Leeteuk started fiddling with the sleeves of his coat, heart thumping wildly. How was he supposed to do this? “You probably shouldn’t have gone out last night,” he said at last, looking at the ground.
Kangin made a sound that was a cross between a grunt and a scoff. Leeteuk decided it was a sound of acknowledgement.
“We should probably talk,” he said hesitantly, flicking his eyes up towards Kangin’s face.
Kangin screwed the cap back on his water bottle and grabbed Leeteuk’s arm without a word. He pulled them past a number of stylists and tech crew and one of the assistant managers of the set. “We’ll be back in ten minutes,” he said with a smile and a nod, because he knew how to get what he wanted when it mattered, and it didn’t involve short tempers. The woman nodded in return, because the crew was still setting up, the thermostat was still too cold, and she had other things to take care of.
Leeteuk found himself outside of the filming studio in one of the back hallways of the building, crowded with boxes and electrical cords. “Kangin-ah,” he said, pulling his arm free and trying not to let the fear show on his face. This was it.
“What did I say to you last night?” Kangin asked, his expression unreadable.
Leeteuk knew this tactic: never give away more than you had to. It was completely possible that Kangin had thought he’d admitted something to Leeteuk that he hadn’t actually done so. But Leeteuk didn’t know what else there could have been to admit that would have trumped last night’s confession. “You told me you loved me,” he said, sticking his hands in his coat pockets so Kangin wouldn’t see the way they fisted in nervousness.
A look flickered in Kangin’s eyes, guarded. Ah, he thought maybe he could still play this off as platonic, stemming from a case of childish jealousy, maybe. Leeteuk took away that option, because he had to know.
“You said you thought about me when you masturbated,” he added, holding his breath.
Kangin’s face became carefully even blanker. Then he sighed and his brows knit and he said, voice rough with worry, “Hyung, fuck. Please don’t hate me. I know I should’ve just kept my damned mouth shut, but I’m not going to let this ruin us, okay? I won’t let anyone know and we, we can make it work somehow, you know? I won’t risk Super Junior for this, you know how much it means to all of us. We’ve all worked so hard for it and—”
The blood rushed to Leeteuk’s ears and he could hear a faint ringing sound as he said, “Oh my God.” His head spun and it was hard to breathe through his mask, suddenly. “Oh my God,” he repeated and Kangin stopped talking to give him a worried look.
“Hyung?” he asked, reaching out to steady Leeteuk.
“You…love me,” Leeteuk said stupidly, looking up at the face of the man he’d known for seven years and had been in love with for…who knew how long. He felt numb with shock.
I am iffy about the entire scene between my last comment and this comment. Too bad it also happens to be the vital confession scene, right?
Kangin tightened his hold on Leeteuk’s shoulder. “Yeah. But we can—”
“Shut up,” said Leeteuk. He thought me might be crying a little. “I think I’ve been in love with you for years.”
Kangin was still for a long moment. Then he grabbed Leeteuk by both shoulders and turned him to face Kangin properly. “Seriously, hyung? Are you fucking serious? Park Jungsu, if you’re kidding, I’m going to hit you.”
I love a violent Kangin. It is part of his character.
“I’m serious, you idiot,” said Leeteuk, and then he knew he was crying because Kangin's thumb was on his face, brushing away the tears. He buried his face into Kangin’s hoodie when the other man wrapped his arms around him in a bone-crushing hug, its desperation speaking to his own. He shuddered.
“We have to get back to the set,” Kangin said into his hair.
“We’ll talk about this later,” Leeteuk said into his chest, voice muffled.
Kangin pressed a kiss into hair and took his hand as they went back. Leeteuk wiped away the remainders of his tears and told the noona in charge of make-up that his red eyes were due to his lack of sleep, making sure he looked properly sheepish and abashed as he did so. She fussed over him and sent him off to have his hair done. His seat put him next to Sungmin, who once again had questions in his eyes, almost as bright as the silver crosses dangling from his ears. Leeteuk smiled a little self-consciously, not daring to move his head but—breathless with pleasure, choked with hope, edging near some indescribable joy—happy.
The grin that spread out on Sungmin’s face warmed Leeteuk almost as much as Kangin’s arms. He turned on the charm for the show, talking the talk like he always did, laughing and smiling and charming the audience. The MCs joked with him, familiar with his routine, but spent much more time distracted by Kangin, who dominated the show with his Santa hat and his laugh. Leeteuk didn’t mind, because Kangin would sit by him during the filming breaks and squeeze his hand. Once, on camera, he walked around the MCs to Leeteuk’s seat, talking and gesturing and brushing a gentle hand through Leeteuk’s hair before he returned to his own seat.
I forget what part of Brain King Einstein had it, but Kangin definitely went over to Teuk’s seat and brushed his hair before returning to his own seat. Trust me, I sat through 50 minutes of a show that was impossible to understand without knowing Korean just for the KangTeuk—and I was rewarded for my obsessiveness, woo.
It wasn’t anything he hadn’t done in the past, but it had a thousand more meanings now.
Or really, Leeteuk realized, it had just one meaning. A meaning that had been there all along.
--
“You can buy me dinner,” Heechul said sweetly when he heard, “to thank me for my support and my incalculable help.”
Leeteuk laughed until he started coughing at the smug expression on Heechul’s face. “Thank you,” he said after his shoulders stopped shaking, and he meant it.
--
Those who said love was all you needed were truly romantic—and stupid. Leeteuk knew love didn’t solve all the world’s problems, or even just his. He still had to tell the other members and face inevitable censure, disappointment, resentment, and hurt. Not everyone would be as accepting as Heechul and Sungmin, and he knew that. Even Kangin and Heechul couldn’t browbeat everyone into acceptance, as much as they’d like to try. Leeteuk worried, and he fretted, but he knew he would tell them eventually, because he wouldn’t keep something this important, this wonderful, and this dangerous from them. They deserved to know.
As much as I love fics where everyone is happy and gay (or supportive and taking bets), I tried to keep the trend of realism going here. You can’t avoid the fact that SuJu has a number of pretty religious members, who would not be A-OK with homosexuality. I think and hope that they would be able to love and support each other no matter what, to stick together through everything, after seven years—and I think EHB8 supports that. So I’m going to try convey that in the epilogue (which is pretty much the other members’ reactions).
Then, Leeteuk still had to worry about management, about his career, about everyone else’s career. He didn’t know yet if he would let their manager know, or if he were willing to stumble along, trying his best to keep a secret in an industry that didn’t allow for many secrets. Leeteuk didn’t look forward to the daunting task of trying to hide one of the biggest secrets in the business, a business that made no promises about fame and was bitterly fickle. On top of that, he still had to talk to his parents. He had a world of worry and new obstacles facing him, and love wasn’t going to solve all that.
I don’t know nearly enough about Teuk’s actual family but, yeah, family is a big thing in Asia. So is filial duty—a big part of which is having kids, continuing the family name, and setting an example for posterity. S. Korea is pretty Confucian (the parts that aren’t now Christian, um), so for a son (especially the eldest or only) to condemn the family line by not marrying is one of the worst, most unforgivable things he can do to his parents.
But when Leeteuk kissed Kangin for the first time—properly, none of that almost-there business for the cameras or the odd pressure with the sharp edges of a playing card between their lips—he tasted hints of Kangin’s last cigarette and the mint he’d sucked on afterwards. He felt his spine tingle with pleasure in the way of the most clichéd romantic drama, and he thought with a certain surety that had taken weeks to build: maybe love didn’t solve all his problems, but it might make them worth it.
Especially when he discovered that Kangin wasn’t half-bad with his tongue.
But I’m a sap and I need a happy ending to my KangTeuk, and because it is my KangTeuk, they get to have a happy ending. I’m also happy by all the KangTeuk I’ve seen recently on shows—not the blatant fanservice of Marry U proposals but the casual talking and hugging and hand-on-shoulder and sitting-next-to-each-other that speaks of a close, easy friendship. Oh, they’re so important to each other, so necessary. They’re so, so cute. <3
--
So now you've gotten some insight into how I write--with anal retentive research on small details and a contradictory laziness in matching up my timeline. And mostly linearly: I wrote this entire thing from beginning to end as is, switching only two sections around (the one about dreams and the one where Kangin brings Teuk water backstage). Other than that, how you read it is how I wrote it--but with pretty heavy editing, thank God.
I am so sorry this was so long. I never shut up, it's a fact.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}