moon heechul. (bich) wrote in kaelstrom, @ 2016-11-16 19:37:00 |
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Entry tags: | ! log, daero, heechul |
your soul is where i made my home.
who: moon heechul and cha daero
what: two boys wander at night, find a place to be alone.
when: winter, a little before the show started but after the new rookie announcement.
where: a little house in haeundae.
warnings: n/a
It was not winter yet, but Heechul’s breath came out in little puffs as he got ready, proof that it was just around the corner. He hadn’t planned on staying up late, but now was as good a time as any - who knew how busy they would be in the upcoming months, what with training and the show? He could feel his stomach get wriggly with excitement and pride. He hadn’t even had a chance to speak to his parents yet. He’d have to do that tomorrow morning. He was excited to see Daero too. He always was. Even if it was something small, like eating lunch together. Seeing Daero just brought a certain peace, a point of centeredness for him. Everything around them was always changing, always crazy. Routine was a prized possession, to be treasured. That Daero was part of certain routines was something special indeed. Which was why Heechul always doublechecked his appearance before leaving his room, making sure he looked neat and presentable. “Are you going out on a date?” Sora had teased when she caught Heechul in the hall. He’d sheepishly shook his head, cheeks burning. “Just going to hang out with a friend,” he explained, to which she scoffed. He only arrived five minutes late to their meeting spot. Heechul’s cheeks were still bright, but now it was from physical exertion, not embarrassment. He’d run most of the way there. He could see the moonlight hitting Daero from the back, a thin halo of light. “Sorry,” he said, “I got held up trying to find these,” he tossed a hot pack to his friend, “thought your hands might get cold.” Daero caught the hot pack deftly; it was warm in his hand, and he smiled gratefully at Heechul, taking in his flushed cheeks, his neat appearance. Daero glanced away for a moment, feeling a tiny twinge in his abdomen. “Thanks,” he said; his voice was always quiet. He tucked the hot pack into his pocket safely. He ran a hand up the back of his neck, swiping his tongue over his dry lips semi-nervously; the reserve selection had made things just a little bit awkward. Still -- here he was, and there Heechul was, out in the evening air together. He stepped a little closer, meeting him halfway. “Hi,” he said. “Do you know where you want to go?” “Not really.” Heechul looked past Daero’s shoulder. Hooked a finger around his collar and cleared his throat. Suddenly he felt a little warmer than he had originally anticipated. “Maybe we could just walk? I think the convenience store is still open…” He trailed off, shrugging. “We don’t need to go anywhere specifically. Just - the night air feels good, right?” Daero nodded. He turned his steps toward the convenience store. “Maybe we can pick up some beer,” he smiled crookedly. He shoved his hands into his pockets; the night air was chilly, the breeze from the water blowing between buildings. He glanced sidelong at Heechul’s profile underneath the dim street lights. “And triangle kimbap.” “Yeah.” Heechul was grinning now. He’d shoved his hands into pockets too, mimicking without thinking, stepping in line with Daero. Now two boys, walking down the path and onto the sidewalk, mirrors in the ways they held their bodies. But Heechul lifted his chin up and out, a show of boyish confidence. His eyes were clear and bright, and the lights of the streetlights shone in the dark discs of his irises. “I’m kind of hungry, actually. I don’t think I ate today.” He hadn’t. Too excited. He wasn’t even sure he could eat now, but having a destination was desirable. “Did you?” He turned his head to glance at his companion, his question not one of courtesy but genuine interest. It was important that Daero had ate, for some reason. It was important to have friends with healthy appetites, Heechul told himself, and didn’t dive into it deeper than that. Daero nodded his head slightly; he had “eaten”, just picked at food, really, which was par for the course for Daero on high-pressure days. Unlike Heechul, Daero’s shoulders often hunched, his chin tucked downward against his chest, reluctant to pick up his gaze. He glanced surreptitiously at Heechul’s face once more, his eyebrows creeping up on his forehead with concern that his friend hadn’t eaten. It wasn’t like Heechul to not eat well. “Do you want to get something more substantial?” “Maybe instant ramyun,” Heechul replied. He wasn’t usually too concerned about food, so long as he had it. He wasn’t a picky eater. There were few foods he didn’t like - most sodas, that was it. Something about the carbonation really bugged him when it fizzed in his mouth. He didn’t like how it felt like something was popping against the sides of his cheeks. “Seafood flavor or chicken?” Daero was contemplating his choices quietly. Seafood, he decided privately, but refrained from answering. “Which do you want?” he asked instead, wondering if Heechul would pick the same, if that indicated anything about them and their relationship. “Probably chicken,” Heechul replied, not even thinking about it. Chicken was his favorite flavor anything, really. Daero’s mouth thinned to a line involuntarily before he could catch himself. It meant nothing, he reminded himself. He liked seafood flavor while Heechul preferred chicken, that was all. Still, he added it silently to a list in his head of little differences -- differences between the two of them that balanced out to a blunt truth: Heechul was moving forward and he was not. Daero fell a half-step behind. The convenience store was close now, just down the hill. Heechul was relieved to see the lights were on. Sometimes they weren’t. Just past here, the neighborhood was only tipping, crumbly houses and broken fences. It was hard to get much foot traffic from an abandoned area. Most of the customers for the convenience store had to be pilots and other staff from the base. Heechul had heard it was a kaiju attack from before he started training, but it was hard to imagine there had been people living in those houses. He always thought of it like every house had always been empty. The light inside the convenience store was blue-white overhead lighting. Daero caught a glimpse of himself in a security mirror and frowned at how it washed him out, bringing into sharp focus the dark bags underneath his eyes. He fixed his hair anxiously; he used to hardly notice his own appearances but these days, half the time it was all anyone around them talked about. It made him more painfully aware, made him feel weirdly unsightly. Heechul caught him fussing and smiled briefly to himself. He felt that familiar urge to reach out and place his hands in Daero's hair, feel the soft threads between his fingers - and then it slipped past him, ignored. As it should be. The noona behind the counter had long hair and wore a Guardian Angel shirt with Daesung hyung's face on it. Daero pretended not to notice as he picked out triangle kimbap and iced coffee cans. He filled a new thermos with boiling water for the cup ramens, putting two styrofoam cups in his basket: one chicken, one seafood. Heechul counted coins and bills out of his pocket - he never had a wallet, just stuffed everything loose in his pocket - and paid for both of them. He didn't ask. He didn't think he had to. Heechul leaned across the counter and grinned. "I'm a Guardian Angel fan," he said, "I like your shirt." The lights above them hummed a blurry agreement. Inside, Heechul felt his heart humming too. "You're the new rookie, aren't you? I saw the trailer for your new reality show. Both of you," the cashier's eyes darted between them, curious, and the humming inside him grew louder, shaking his ribs. His grin faltered with the tremors. "Maybe," he replied, which was always a yes for these kinds of questions, and then he looked back to Daero, "We should go." He wasn't ready to be recognized. Daero glanced over at the cashier; she had that look on her face, like she was trying to figure it out, like it was on the tip of her tongue. He could tell that she spotted the resemblance between him and the smiling face on her shirt. He glanced away, eyes meeting Heechul's. The corner of his lips turned up slightly -- a reflex when it came to looking at his friend -- before he nodded his head, their purchases gathered up into a plastic bag. They ducked out into the night air. "So where to now?" Daero said. His body already pointed away from the direction they came, away from the shatterdome, but he waited for Heechul to lead the way. "There." He pointed suddenly down an alleyway, turning to grin at Daero before quickening his steps. He didn't know where it went. Heechul wasn't sure that really mattered, where they ended up - the important thing was that Daero was never too far behind him. He reached his hand back to grab Daero's wrist and tug him forward, so that they moved forward together in a line, the beat of his heart matching their feet on the ground. "Do you think anyone lives around here still?" That look on Heechul's face. Daero laughed softly, his breath hitting the air in a blue-white puff, his pulse rising in time with their footfalls until he was certain Heechul could feel it racing beneath his fingers wrapped around Daero's wrist. He thought briefly that this was probably why he loved to sneak out of the shatterdome with Heechul. Because it shook his heart awake and reminded him that they were alive. The streets in this area were all but abandoned. Some of them were torn apart and ripped down to the foundation from Kaiju attacks, though there were still a few standing -- four of them in a row, all abandoned. The houses were framed by cracking concrete walls. Wooden gate doors were swelling from moisture. Daero slowed, pulling Heechul back in front of a house with a green gate. He rested his palm against the front gate gently. "I don't think anyone's lived in these houses for a long time. Probably not since the first coastal evacuations." "Let's go inside." Heechul's hold loosened until it was just quick-fading warmth in his fingers. He peered in through a broken window into the dark, excited but also looking for a distraction. He did not approach it with the gentleness Daero did. It was an invasion, a move of conquering so that it might become theirs. "It could be interesting, seeing an abandoned house. There was one back home…" He trailed off. "I never went inside though. I wasn't brave enough. They said it was haunted." Daero didn't believe in ghosts, though it felt strange entering a house uninvited as he hesitantly crossed the threshold into the interior of the house. It wasn't very large; perhaps enough for a small family. A couple. He tried a light switch to no avail, and reached into his pocket for his phone for a light. He expected it to be eerie; instead, it was more cozy than he expected, though a bit dusty and undisturbed, most of the furniture still resting where they were last used. The closet still had blankets folded and stacked neatly. Photographs of a smiling man and woman lined the walls here and there. There was something -- Daero couldn't quite put his finger on it -- perhaps it was a little bit sad. It was a house without occupants. No longer someone's home. "Maybe I can find a fusebox or something…" he suggested. His voice was soft, as if he was afraid to disturb the quiet of the house. Heechul was busy looking around, taking mark of every sign of previous life lived. Dust coated every surface, like a fine grey satin sheet. He could swipe his finger and comic-like, see the silt collected in the grooves of his fingerprints. "It is pretty dark in here," he agreed, glancing but not seeing much but the vague shadowy outlines of abandoned furniture. He said abandoned because he could not consider the other option. But it wasn't like they were intruding. Heechul didn't feel that way at all. In fact, he felt as if it were held up for appraisal. He was scrutinizing leftover details, passing judgment. It wasn't like it was his to judge. But there was something novel about this, something he liked that he couldn't quite extricate from the current experience. "She was pretty," he remarked emptily, passing a thumb over one dusty picture frame. A wedding photo. "They look young." Daero leaned a little bit into Heechul, his chin nearly grazing his shoulder to catch a glimpse of the photograph he was looking at. He wondered where they were. "They probably evacuated inland. Somewhere safe." He pulled away from the faint warmth of Heechul's back slowly. He wondered if anywhere was safe anymore. And left all their things behind? Heechul thought but didn't say anything out loud. Daero wandered and found a boiler room with a fusebox. He tried flicking some of the switches. One corner of the house lit up dimly -- a single lamp in the bedroom, casting a yellowish glow -- though the rest didn't seem to work. He pulled out a blanket from the closet, neatly unfolding it on the ground, kicking up a swirl of dust. Carefully, he sat, remembering their snacks. He laid them out one by one: cup ramens, triangle kimbap, coffee cans. "We should eat this probably. While the water in the thermos is still hot." Heechul nodded and reached for the coffee, popping open the tab to take a sip. It was exciting, all of this. Being out late with Daero, being out without permission with Daero. Being with Daero. The coffee tasted bitter but sweet, which was like a lot of things Heechul knew. He lifted the paper seal off of the seafood ramen and reached for the hot water thermos. He poured it in quickly, splashing a few drops onto his hand. Small marks of pain that barely registered. After a few moments, he reached for his own. "I like it here," he decided aloud once he had filled his cup to the top. "It's quiet. Kind of remote. Definitely different from the shatterdome." Daero nodded in agreement, a small smile crossing his face once more as he glanced across their miniature feast at Heechul. "I'm glad we found it together," he said after a moment. He could feel himself flush a little. Hoping that it was dark enough not to be noticed, Daero stood to busy himself with finding a few errant utensils for their cup ramen. "So am I." He left it at that. There were the long, slender chopsticks that they needed and once Daero had found two slightly dirty pairs, Heechul would eat. He wiped them on the bottom of his shirt before using them. It was just quiet dirt and dark, accompanied by the slurping noises of two hungry boys. "I wish I wasn't dieting," Heechul said in between humongous bites, "I wish we could come here all the time." "We could…" Daero offered, looking into his cup of mostly finished noodles. His chest felt warm from the hot food and the good company. He unwrapped a triangle kimbap, holding it almost delicately. "I mean, not all the time, but… we could come back here." Interesting. Heechul paused mid-slurp, almost comical - his eyes were bright and wide. "We could," he said after a moment, his mouth full, "we could come back. Actually, we should." Somewhere along the way he had finished chewing and swallowed, and unrestricted his excitement began to bubble and grow. "We should make this our house. There's no cameras here, I don't think anybody comes in this neighborhood anymore." Their house - a perfect, attainable dream that had him imagining Daero scrubbing walls, Heechul tidying up messy corners. Lifting off the dust of another life and replacing it with the brand-new sheen of theirs. A house, just for the two of them. Suddenly it was all he wanted. Daero's lips split into a grin at Heechul's bubbly excitement, his mood infectious. He nodded, the words our house sending tiny ripples from his chest to his extremities. Their house. Their little hideaway from the intense pressures of their lives. Away from prying eyes. Brutal training. Pilot selection. Kaiju. Just a dim light, and the two of them. "Finish your ramen, stupid," he said fondly. "We can't take any of this back with us." Heechul was grinning now, uncontrollably. He wanted to reach out and take Daero's hands in his. He wanted to look at him and be like We can come here all the time. This can be our place. But those weren't things friends said or did. Not friends like them. "Okay, okay, don't be such a dad." But when Heechul began to eat again, he ate slowly. Soon they would have to go back to the shatterdome and leave their little house behind, returning back to cameras and being recognized when something so simple as a ramen run. He would do anything to keep it like this, where they could be the only two people in the world. He had said Daero was mysterious and maybe that wasn't always true, because he thought he knew Daero pretty well. But he would prefer it that way, if he was the only one who knew the hidden parts of Daero, like the soft curve of his mouth when he smiled and the tenderness he saw in him. His caring. These were Heechul's secrets to keep. And here, he could keep them to himself. As they finished up their little spread, Daero tucked containers and cans back into the plastic bag. He wasn't in much of a hurry to return to the shatterdome; he leaned back, lying down on the blanket with his arm tucked behind his head. Heechul fell into quiet. He did not lean back on the blanket with Daero but kept himself propped up on his elbows. He stared into the deep dusk of the alley, lined with dust. "Penny for your thoughts?" Heechul asked. "If you have any worth sharing." He had a habit of picking Daero apart visually, like he was a doll made of parts. Each piece a fragment his mind focused and chewed on. First the focus on the joints of his fingers, then the shade of his eyes. His arm a continuous line he wanted to follow with his mouth. Heechul had lots of thoughts, but none he wanted to say out loud. When Daero's mind was idle he thought of two things: the drift -- like a coiling tendril of smoke in his mind, never formed enough for him to grasp it even as it filled the space of his mind. And then he thought of Heechul. Solid, warm, and bright. Daero wondered sometimes if the skin on the inside of his wrist was as soft as it looked, and how it would feel just to run the pad of his thumb across it. His fingers curled inward at his sides, scared for a moment that if he didn't make a fist he'd do something impulsive. "I don't know," he said quietly. "It's hard to put into words. Like -- there's a gap between my words and my thoughts and sometimes it's hard for them to line up perfectly." He turned his head toward Heechul, peering at him through the dim light. "What about you? What's on your mind?" "Everything." His answer was immediate. And true. Each thought swam right into the next. Becoming a reserve, the show, his family back home. Being here. Being with Daero, and just Daero himself, that thought that insistently tangled itself in everything. A snare that had caught him at the ankle and hadn't freed him yet. "I hope they like us. You know, everyone, with the show. I'm scared they'll find something to say. Something not good." "They will," Daero said with a quiet certainty. "They always do eventually." He glanced at Heechul; the corners of his lips turned downward slightly. "Or at least they will with me probably." Heechul frowned more deeply than Daero. "Shut up," he said, nudging Daero's hand with his knuckle. A breath of touch - then he pulled it away, firmly curled up in a fist on his own lap. "You're right. They do that with everyone. It doesn't matter how perfect we try to be, they always find something. Or they'll make it up." His throat was tight around his breath, a step away from a choke. The air was so dry, so cold. "I'll go on all your articles and report all the antis. I'll protect you." Heechul always wanted to protect everyone; the entire nation was going to fall in love with him -- of that, Daero was pretty certain. It was easy to, after all. Still, Daero didn't want to be another person for Heechul to protect. He wanted to fight alongside him. "You don't have to protect me," he said. "I know." He could feel the misstep like a loose tooth in his mouth, but he would not worry it. It was an admission he hadn't meant to say so casually, one that he hoped Daero wouldn't think was strange. Heero dreamed of it sometimes - spreading his arms and legs over the span of Daero's body, shielding him from something else that he couldn't see. Sometimes it was so real that he wasn't sure it hadn't happened, with Daero's forehead pressed into his shoulder. The tickle of his hair against the soft skin of his neck. But then he would wake up, panting and alone in his bed. Thinking about the dreams made him uncomfortable. Heechul stood up, brushing the seat of his pants. "You'll have fangirls to do that," he said lightly. "I think you have the kind of face," he hesitated. "The kind of face women like." Daero glanced up from his supine position. It felt strange looking up at Heechul; he felt far away, out of reach. He sat up, feeling weirdly self-conscious, eyes tearing away from his best friend. "I think you do more than me," he offered quietly, his cheeks unwittingly flushing. Heechul didn't know what to say to that, but it felt weird hearing it from Daero. Now he could put a name to the tightness in his throat. His adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed nervously, the tips of his ears pink. He wondered what kind of faces Daero liked. "It's getting late, isn't it," he said suddenly. "They might think we're missing if we don't head back." He turned his head to look at Daero, still laying down there, but the shadows in the abandoned house were a blanket that hid him. He could see only the shape of him, the soft round eyes. Daero blinked up at his friend. He didn't want to return, but he knew that Heechul was probably right. He nodded. Slowly, he got to his feet, picking up the plastic bag with their trash. "Alright," his steps shuffled heavily towards the exit. "Let's go back." Heechul could feel Daero's disappointment as if it had been draped around both of them, thick and dark as the night that surrounded them now. Again he felt his hand gravitate towards his friend's and he could not explain why. But like the first time, he did not take them or acknowledge the urge. He shoved his hands into his pockets, balled them into fists, and looked at his friend's back as they walked out. "Let's come back here soon," he called to Daero, a few steps behind, "This is our secret place now." Daero paused, turning his head, his torso just enough to look at Heechul. He gives his friend -- his best friend -- a small smile through the dim light. He hung back, waiting for him to catch up. He glanced around the little house, nodding. "Yeah, it's our place now." |