jewelledhours | [eunhyuk/donghae] kbs cool fm (Reply)

kbs cool fm by

catskilt
eunhyuk/donghae
g, 1644 words
there are reasons why donghae tunes in to sukira every single night, and he doesn't deceive himself about any of them.
written in the same verse as sharing a smoke.

KBS Cool FM

It's past ten p.m., and Donghae's twelve floors away from his bedroom. He'd miscalculated the time needed to run down to the nearest café to satisfy his sudden and overwhelming desire for matcha milk. His calculations had been precise - a minute to get to the ground floor, five minutes to walk across the road, another five minutes to buy the drink, a couple of minutes to get back home. Less than fifteen minutes in all. He'd completely forgotten that elevators don't immediately rush up to you when you press the button, nor do shop owners allow you to cut into some other customer's queue simply because you're in a rush, nor do fans who happen to be in the same store allow you to leave their vicinity without taking a picture with them and listening to how amazing they think you are.

It had been flattering, if he's to be honest, and Donghae had smiled his way through the entire encounter, but now, with the matcha milk perspiring all over his hands and the elevator stuck on the 10th floor when he just really, really needs it to take him up to the 12th floor, he's beginning to feel out of sorts with the world. Half an hour to buy matcha milk from across the street is not acceptable by any standards, and it'd better be at least an army of people getting into the elevator on the 10th floor because there is no other reason why it should be stuck for so long.

When it finally arrives, one girl – and one girl only – walks out. And Donghae's kind of upset by that.

Shindong barely raises his eyes from the magazine he's reading in the kitchen when Donghae rushes into the dorm in a clatter and drops his shoes all over places where they're not supposed to be. Ryeowook, lounging about in the living room engaged in serious conversation on the phone, does make a comment, but Donghae doesn't hear it. He goes into his bedroom, dumps the dripping matcha milk onto the table where it proceeds to leak water into his latest song compositions, and turns on the radio. A bunch of static hits him. Fucking radio technology. Trust Hyukjae not to move with the times.

But at least Hyukjae's talking now, and Leeteuk's laughing his weird laughter that Donghae's fairly sure he could recognise from two blocks away. He settles down on his bed and grabs his slightly damp music score sheet, locating his pencil under the pillow – when, and how, and why, had it gotten there? – and starts filling in lyrics. The matcha milk continues dripping all over his desk. Hyukjae drones on. Donghae has always liked Hyukjae's voice, even when they were kids and Hyukjae couldn't sing a high tone without his voice cracking apart like desert sand in high noon. Now his voice doesn't come apart at the seams as easily, flows easier from one word to the next, and most of the time Donghae wants to lie down in it, lose himself in its folds.

"There's this member in our group who does childish things like that," Hyukjae says, and the pencil falls slack in Donghae's fingers. "Our members live on the 11th and 12th floors…and when we're returning to the dorms, and we're very tired after our schedule, there's this member...I won't say his name but he's the one who involves himself most in KTR by phone calls and messages – the artiste who's most free between ten p.m. and midnight…"

Donghae feels the grin on his own face before he realises that he's grinning.

"…deactivates the 11th floor button so the members on the 11th floor have to go to the 12th and then back down again…really very childish…Donghae-sshi…ah!" Hyukjae makes a startled little sound, and Donghae wants to hug the radio and fling something at it at the same time, but instead he laughs along with Hyukjae because it's the easiest thing to do. "Sorry, Donghae-sshi…anyway, when I try to push the 11th floor button he'll pull at my clothes…he won't let me press the button…"

"That's because it's so fun seeing the way you struggle," Donghae tells the radio. He hears the smile in Hyukjae's voice. Hyukjae has always liked to say that all the trouble in his life is caused by Donghae. Donghae thinks, hell yes, I'll continue causing all that trouble in your life if it's what keeps your face turned towards me.

He doesn't deceive himself about it. He knows that there are reasons why he rushes back home every night before ten p.m. to sit in his room and listen to the radio, or why sometimes he goes on a drive around the city for the two hours between ten p.m. and midnight lazily looking out of the windscreen at the shuttered store fronts and trailing street lights with Hyukjae's voice filling his car. There are reasons why he has his own space in Hyukjae's closet where he keeps his clothes, shirts and jeans that Hyukjae tolerates and fraying shorts that Hyukjae does not tolerate, and nights where his own bed is untouched and Hyukjae is clinging to him via death grip because his single bed is too small for two grown men.

Donghae knows all about the mugs they share and his signature on Hyukjae's underwear and the strawberry milk cartons in the fridge that only he is allowed to touch, and the word 'babo' that he'd written in thick black ink across Hyukjae's cast when he'd been dumb enough to bash his hand into a wall because his girlfriend had been cheating on him. He knows the anger that he'd felt then, anger stinging like cactus running its spikes into his hand, anger that one could go out on the streets and kill for, because Hyukjae had felt strongly enough about someone to do that to himself. And it'd felt a little like a breaking of a contract, a violation of terms, a this wasn't what we agreed on with each other.

But he knows, too, that he has violated the terms himself many times, far more times than Hyukjae, and he's seen the look on Hyukjae's face each time he came back to the dorm crying about her and her and her. He wouldn't say that Hyukjae was angry during each of those times – Hyukjae would never feel strongly enough about Donghae's relationships to run his hand into a wall – but there had been something there, a heartaching something, a slow burning pain like the cool blue of a flame, and each time Donghae had pulled on a pair of fraying shorts and crawled into bed with him just to feel the shape of Hyukjae's body against his.

He doesn't ask himself if that's enough, because he knows it isn't, it'll never be, but it'll do. Hyukjae will go away some day, and they won't have this anymore, but they're stretching the for the present as long as they can. Even if they've never put it into words, not exactly, not specific words that have love or wait or stay with me in them, they know it anyway, and Donghae doesn't deceive himself. And that's why he pulls Hyukjae's clothes in the elevator because it turns Hyukjae's face to him. Pigtail-pulling. Even kids in kindergarten know that aspect of human psychology.

He's lying on his stomach in Hyukjae's bed by the time Hyukjae comes back home, concealer smudging on the huge dark rings under his eyes. "Oh, not tonight," Hyukjae grouses when he sees him.

"Be nice, Hyukjae," Donghae says, patting the quilt. "I changed your bedsheets for you."

Hyukjae collapses beside him and kind of really crams him against the wall. "Need t'sleep," he murmurs, his eyes already half-closed.

Donghae chucks the One Piece manga on the foot of the bed and pulls Hyukjae's shoulders up, balancing the mass of Hyukjae on his knees while he divests him of his shirt. It's a bit of a struggle to get one of Hyukjae's yucky pyjama shirts over his head but he manages it after a few tugs.

"Jeans," Hyukjae murmurs.

"When did I become your servant?" Donghae asks, but he obliges by pulling off Hyukjae's jeans – it comes off way too easily, the damn bastard has been losing weight again, as if he has any more conceivable body mass to lose – and slides one of his own fraying shorts over Hyukjae's hips. Hyukjae perceives that he's dressed appropriately for bed and instantly snuggles down into the quilt.

"G'night."

"Your make-up, Hyuk."

"Leave it."

"You're disgusting."

"Whatever." Hyukjae goes straight to sleep.

Donghae does, eventually, rub away the foundation and powder on Hyukjae's face with the branded make-up remover that he uses. He does, eventually, turn off the lights and get into bed with Hyukjae, manoeuvring them around so that they fit more comfortably together – not that it's much of a difficulty, since Hyukjae's mind might protest but his body has long since grown used to accommodating Donghae's intruding limbs in the squeezy space. He does, eventually, sleep.

But before all those eventuallys, he bends his head and brushes Hyukjae's forehead very softly, very quickly, with his lips. There have been nights when he'd considered brushing his lips over Hyukjae's mouth instead, but it wouldn't have been fair to steal a kiss from him. It would have violated so many terms of their unwritten contract that he'd have felt guilty every time he looked at Hyukjae after that. So he kisses Hyukjae on the forehead instead, because that isn't forbidden territory, and he wishes very hard, or maybe just a little, but in the end he goes to sleep. Tomorrow night he'll be listening to KBS Cool FM at ten p.m. again, laughing along with Hyukjae on the radio. And maybe that's all the intimacy he really needs.

---
Because I just really wanted to write a fic about how Donghae always listens to Sukira.