ideaylic

[ideaylic]

chctshire:

 “aren’t you too tired for all this work, anyway? you’re on break. go on vacation or something.” everyone knows WAR is finally on break, it’s about the first time in four years that they had time to chill without having to drag cameras along. and maybe she’s still registered in their fancafe, a show of solidarity from the past. her toe shifts, nudges his calf lightly, spins him towards her in the plush desk chair. “i liked your old recording studios more. i felt less out of place.” this is code for : they were more run down and that was familiar to me. everything about jaekyu’s life has upgraded now. he’s probably upgrading past her, too. she tries not to think about that, when he’s not even hers.

“fuckin’ look like you have.” jaekyu tells her, because he’s a particular brand of charming. a lopsided smile stretching across his face, puppy-dog sweet in a way that doesn’t quite match up with the image he’s selling. it’s funny how it works, sometimes. funny with what it allows him to get away with. he probably shouldn’t still be in the group. probably shouldn’t have made the lineup in the first place. probably shouldn’t be riding this tidal wave of fame. it nearly feels undeserved. like he’ll fall, drown in the fury of it. choke on his own faulty hubris. he doesn’t know what to do with it, himself, his thoughts.but to be fair, he’d never really known what to do with those. just lets them fester inside of his head. until they would eventually rot, leave him. in theory that was how it was supposed to work at least.

it didn’t, but jaekyu doesn’t bother to share that either. it’s easier that way. he’s entirely convinced that it is. and nothing much will stop it. not even noah with his pointedly worried leader-ly gaze, like jaekyu isn’t supposed to notice he feels awkward wearing it. like it doesn’t fit quite right. maybe it’s because jaekyu feels like he can’t quite fit in his constructed life either that he can spot it. but he doesn’t rat noah out. just plays along for the cameras when they’re pointed at him.

they’re gone now, of course, but there’s still an audience. always an audience to perform to. he’s all but a master entertainer at this point, multiple levels of it. jaekyu hums when she continues, kicks a heel at the floor and sends himself spinning around in lazy circles. they blur at the edges of the world around him. is halfway to dizzy. kicks off again just to reach that point. runs headfirst into regret. that’s how jaekyu does most everything. it’s not that he doesn’t think -- that’s what most everyone chides him for, blames it on. jaekyu, you don’t think. stop being so impulsive. and, granted, he can be. but not all the time. sometimes he’s just a complete fucking idiot on purpose.

“maybe if you go suck their dicks they’ll donate a better song to you.” jaekyu says this to the ceiling as he watches it spin. his chair’s stopped but the world hasn’t. not yet. he looks lackadaisical as he says it, and it all sounds carefree enough. but that’s part of their game, and neither one of them is left out of the rules. jaekyu’s not really sure who’s the better player. he’s not really sure why they started it all up to begin with. but he’s not one to quit.

“i dunno, where would i go?” he asks. it’s rhetorical. he doesn’t share the real reason, because that sounds mostly pathetic. he could barely open up in that sort of way when they’d been dating, let alone now. so he doesn’t, keeps that steel-trap closed. open it up and it might bite down hard on his ankle, leave him maimed and useless. “yeah, well. at least it’s heated.” he notes, lifts his arms to tuck his hands back behind his head, lets out a huff of a sigh. 

he doesn’t mention that he feels out of place, either. 

magnetic.

#muse.jaekyu #jaekyu&loren #.para #p.magnetic

[ideaylic]

chctshire:

so she drops the remains of the cigarette to the ground, grinds it out beneath her sneaker and heads back inside, pops a stick of mint gum as she half-jogs up the stairs, and up and up, gives a halfhearted knock and slips inside with a smile as if she’s not late to the recording for her own song. its good for his ego, anyway, he probably needs to be humbled a little. “hey producer-nim.” she bounces out, the words bobbing into the air with a playful disregard for formality that sharply belies the title and honorifics she’s using, but what kind of korean would she be if she didn’t make the formal sound horribly insincere when she needed too? “hope you weren’t waiting long. should we get started? go ahead, lemme see what you’ve got.” she chatters out, eager to steamroll over his likely scolding.

he’s never been the type to wear his heart on his sleeve. he hides. but in that convoluted way. a disorganized stack of a personality, some of it borrowed. some of it sculpted under the hands of the people who decide what could make for a better you. branding, or whatever the fuck. an almost-jaekyu molded for the public’s consumption. hey, maybe they’ll like you now. that’s what it feels like. and then everyone sinks under the rush of panic that breaks out when he goes and does something real stupid, acts like the fucked up human he really is. oh no, a tattoo. oh no, another tattoo. what will we do now. go back to smiling, just enough vacant-behind-the eyes that they won’t notice. nice. now he slaps band-aids over his skin when they’re on camera. hide away. it’s an easy lesson to learn when it’s necessitated so often.

love’s no different. this hazy iteration that their schedules allow for, anyway. sometimes it feels fake. nearly as play-pretend as the gimmicky shows they create about it. except with more fucking. so he loved her. a jammed movie-reel of a thing. all stutter stops and shreds of dark between stolen moments and too many cigarettes. so he loved her, with hair so blonde it was sometimes a frizzy, cracked halo in the right light. so he loved her, with her slow-deciding smiles (made jaekyu feel like he needed to earn that affection, a test he’d run enough to be confident about). so he loved her. but then the film had run its course. a grinding halt. a cough of mechanical abandonment, because it would be like them to break the damn machine while they were at it. even in stupid analogies. 

jaekyu jerks his head up when the handle of the door thumps against the wall. spies her from under the brim of his hat. she’s twenty-seven minutes late. what a bitch.

so he still loves her.

not like he’d say it.

just like he doesn’t point out that he was waiting for twenty-seven minutes. because jaekyu’s not the type of person who complains about things like that. he ignores the timestamps on his phone, clatters off into too loud, too stupid, too obnoxious, too much of everything. until people eventually wriggle away for a break. it’s like a loophole, a way to weasel out time for yourself without anyone noticing that sometimes you ache a little bit, too. that you get stressed out, too. that you lash out at a brick wall because making a mixtape seems ten times harder for you than everyone else in your fucking group, and why’s he really there, anyway? that sort of thing. he prefers being a goddamn tool to letting anyone figure out the latter.

“if you were drinking soju and smoking all night it’s gonna sound like shit no matter what i do.” it’s a greeting on a technicality, since those were the words that he greeted her with. but aside from timing, there isn’t a whole lot else going for it. but that’s fine. she seems to be in a mood to prod at buttons, and so he’ll prod right back. he was never one for sympathetic, empathetic, a lot of things that end in -tic, really. including romantic. maybe that was why they fell apart.

still, he jabs a thumb against a space bar and lets music fill the room.

magnetic.

#muse.jaekyu #jaekyu&loren #.para #p.magnetic #chctshire

[ideaylic]

chctshire:

he doesn’t expect the offer of pills, raises his brows slightly. “pills and whiskey.” he corrects, because this goes beyond soju- it went beyond soju somewhere in his late teens. he slicks his tongue over his lips, bites down in the wake of his own uncertain gesture. “i should keep working.” he mumbles, but its a reluctant sound even to him. “its just not…coming together right. and there’s a lot… at stake right now, you know?’ he pushes his hand through his hair and tousles the strands even further into disarray than they had been already, bites his lips closed and shuts his eyes in turn. “where would we go, if we went?” he settles on after a prolonged silence, peeks one eye open to glance at the other.

noah’s fingers feel rough against his own. still calloused, like his hands are stubbornly retreating from the promise of manicures and smooth skin that the companies always try to usher in. kitae’s have succumbed, though his feet are spared. bruised and broken-nailed from too much dancing, but that’s okay, tucked away inside his shoes. a hidden secret bearing the weight of hard work, fans don’t need to see that. they need pretty, nice, perfect. only sometimes you don’t feel that way. maybe that’s what makes it all worse. it’s supposed to be off limits, feeling like noah is, at least according to most companies. but it’s inescapable. he wants to tell him that, but he doesn’t think noah will care. not right now. so he seals it away for later, envelopes it somewhere in his chest.

kitae hums when noah answers him, eyes tracing the curves of their fingers as they fit together. strokes his thumb idly over the edge of noah’s hand as he sits. eventually lets his thoughts spin out between them, a paltry offering, maybe. but an attempt to help. in the ways kitae knows how anyway. he realizes they’re not great, but it’s all he can really give him. “pills and whiskey.” kitae agrees, glances sidelong at noah, something questioning in his eyes -- is that a correction, or do you want it? he lets his head roll back into place when noah catches his eyes, squeezes his fingers around noah’s hand when he speaks again. he hopes it conveys the sentiment of don’t you dare, you fuck, but in the more heartfelt way he’d intended.

“there’s always a lot at stake. but you won’t do much to make it better if you just pretend you’re busy while you’re slamming your head against the wall.” kitae mumbles back, though presses his lips together when noah tugs tentatively at the loose-stringed end of his offer. “i don’t know, away. i can just drive, if you want. we could disappear for a bit. just get lost.” he sweeps his thumb in a slow drag across the ridges of noah’s knuckles, bites at his own lip before he looks back toward him. 

radio silence.

#muse.kitae #kitae & noah #para. #radio silence.

[ideaylic]

chctshire:

he admits, offers an awkward half attempted smile, something close lipped and uncomfortable, like his muscles don’t remember the way they’re supposed to move. kitae reads him like a book though, blurts it out and tugs at his hoodie and noah deflates in half a second, a balloon popped as he slouches in place against the chair. “yeah i don’t know. i just get in these…funks. and its hard to pull myself out.” he admits, moves a hand somewhat listlessly to trap the other’s fingers with it own, like he knows he might have wanted to do that on another day but can’t remember why.

maybe the only reason kitae can spot it, that nebulous storm of something listless and melancholy is because it shows up in his own personal weather forecasts on occasion too. not the same, probably. not exactly. he figures it’s hard to feel the same about these sorts of things, exactly. but you can relate your fragmented bits and pieces. yeah, yeah, i get it. i want to tell my friends to fuck off and melt into my mattress. morph into metal springs and compacted fluff and be shipped off to some landfill, left to rot. yeah. so he gets it, gets it enough to know that he can’t really handle fixing it. he’s not really sure it can be fixed. it just looms. you cant shout away a storm. you can’t make it leave by forcibly having a picnic and glaring angrily at the rain, just like you would when the sun was out, swallowing up the sky.

he tugs at noah’s hoodie string with careful fingers, eventually drops it on his own. “i’m not saying you should have. i just wanted to see you.” kitae mumbles out, presses his lips together, corrects, slightly, “make sure you were okay.” it’s not the entire, all-encompassing detailed truth. a simplified version. the palatable sort that he thinks noah will be able to stomach. a stale-cracker of an offering. 

kitae spins his hand when noah’s drops his own on top of his, heavy and lethargic. kitae presses their palms together and lets their fingers interlock, something loose as he balances his knuckles against the arm of the chair, lets himself slide down into a slump. head resting on the back of the chair as he trains his eyes to the ceiling. weighs what sort of helpful he should be. what sort of helpful he can be. opens his mouth and closes it twice before he finally forces some words out. “i have pills.” he tell him, an offering and admission all at once. but he doesn’t think noah will bother focusing on that right now, so it doesn’t really matter. “i’ll buy you something too, if you want. soju?” he adds on, lists off his own terrible coping mechanisms that are more a bandaid patchwork of solutions. promised time of momentary relief anywhere from null to a handful of hours. mileage may vary. 

“we can go somewhere if you want.” kitae adds on, “i have my car. we can get out of here, away from the songs.”

radio silence.

#muse.kitae #kitae & noah #para. #radio silence.

[ideaylic]

chctshire:

“all my songs are just…fucking trash lately.” he admits, with a forced laugh that sounds bitter, grating, mirthless even to his own ears, and he has to wince, slightly. he clears his throat like that might cover it up, shakes his head, “no, you can, you can stay. yeah. sorry i - “ he flaps a hand around the little room, “it’s not exactly huge.” he mumbles, clears his throat. it’s a step up from the veritable closet he’d started out in, though, at least. “are you - uh, how’ve you been?” he fidgets, finally flips his phone over, opens the messages and winces when he sees how long its been - when did that happen. “i didn’t - realize. how long since i’d responded.”

kitae rocks back and forth like a ship unmoored. unsure of a destination, unsure of what direction he should steer himself toward. words float between them. bobbing between stutter-stops, half-drowning in hesitance. he wishes he were better at these sorts of things. or maybe people in general. the sort of person that can come armed with a raft, can pull people up from beneath the depths of the ocean. deflate saltwater-lungs and make it feel like you have land solid underneath your feet. but he’s not that sort of person, so he settles on trying to tread the water closer to noah. like maybe he could let noah cling to him, push him down so he can breathe above the surface for a few minutes. maybe they could trade off back and forth. traded happiness. 

“yeah, of course.” kitae says, like that’s completely sensible. he thing of it is, it’s not. but he can sort of understand. that doesn’t make it okay though. it doesn’t untangled the knot of worry he’s had lodged in his gut. he’s just worried that there’s more under the surface that noah’s hiding, clinging with sticky adhesive-taped desperation the same way kitae is. and he’s a complete hypocrite, because he doesn’t want to share, but he doesn’t want to let noah sit in a similar shade of darkness he’s made a home of throughout patches of his career. 

he decides to let himself drift closer when noah doesn’t tell him to leave, hooks a foot into a chair nearby and kicks it close so that he can drop down next to him, shoulders brushing, the arms of the chairs clashing together in an angry sort of sound.”you’ve just listened to them too many times. i bet i’d like them.” he knocks his toes together as he speaks, hesitant on the amount of praise he wants to give, even if it’s true. because he hates it, when he feels like shit, sometimes he hates when people tell him he’s crazy. that he danced it perfectly. because he didn’t. because he knows he can do better. and he knows he’s completely psychotic, but you can’t just erase away thoughts, feelings because you know they’re not right.

“it’s fine. i’m fine.” kitae assures him, reaches out with hesitant fingers to tug at the string of noah’s sweatshirt. winds it around his finger and watches the tip of it turn white. “something’s wrong.” he decides, though it’s not exactly matter-of-fact. just one of those things you feel in your gut. and he means it as something more. more than busy awards shows and writers block. “you don’t wanna talk about it?” kitae guesses, tugs once more on noah’s hoodie string before he lets it unravel, lets his arm thump down against the barrier of chair limbs between them. 

radio silence.

#muse.kitae #kitae & noah #para. #radio silence.

[ideaylic]

chctshire:

he was lost in these voices when kitae showed up, left his head spinning and surprise written openly on his features. “worried?” he repeats, and then it clicks. a yeah, he’s been avoiding those. avoiding his whole phone. he looks over at it with an obvious unease, a guilt that plays on his features. “yeah, yeah, shit, sorry about that.” he mumbles, pinches at the bridge of his nose, tugs at the tip of it lightly, “i just - yeah, i’ve been busy i guess.’ he mumbles, but how long has it been since he stopped responding - a week? two? he’s scared to look now. “trying to get the mix tape ready, and the awards ceremonies and all..” he trails off, spins his hand in a distracted circle. “are you pissed?”

now that he’s there standing in the room he feels out of place. it happens a lot, more than most people would probably think. but kitae’s never been particularly suave. when his stage persona’s dropped he’s left standing awkward, balancing on the outsides of his heels, chewing his lip, tapping his fingers, half-glancing at strangers like a wary alley cat and not a pop star. more so when the focus is pulled to him, when he’s not sure what to do. or what he wants to do. so with noah staring at him now, he feels a little out of place. like he doesn’t belong here. the wrong setting, no script, but some invisible director yelling at him to start his line. because he should have one. he’s the one who showed up. but even if something was wrong, should he be there? noah has his members. he sees his members. what could kitae offer him, and why would noah want to take it? everything snowballs, it always snowballs. he needs a shovel.

he hums when noah finally pulls out an answer, unwrinkles it like old laundry that needs to be aired out. he sounds tired. kitae isn’t sure what to say, wonders if he’s being intrusive. “no.” kitae answers him when noah finally lands on a question. a yes or a no and even kitae can manage that one. “i just was worried. that something happened. or, i don’t know.” 

he stops there, collides with a wall. because he isn’t sure how to let everything flow free, easy. isn’t sure how he can piece things together -- because one time my best friend remi was having a panic attack and she did the same thing. and you know, she needed someone, so i wanted to check if you needed someone too. because people are fucking vicious. because i don’t think you’re as strong as you’re trying to make people believe you are. because i’m here if you need to lean on me. because i’m worried. because i care about you. but kitae and words aren’t the best of friends and he doesn’t know how to make that sound anything but fucking ridiculous. so he looks at him instead, lower lip trapped between his teeth and something anxious caught in his expression.

“are you? okay?” he starts, and then stops. shoulders colliding back with the door as he rocks on his heels. “i can go. if you want.” he adds on, stuffs his hands into the front pouch of his hoodie and presses don’t the urge he has to wander his way closer and smooth down the worried patch of skin between noah’s eyes.

radio silence.

#muse.kitae #para. #kitae & noah #radio silence.

[ideaylic]

chctshire:

he’s so lost in the vortex of work eat sleep - and eat is a suggestion, a muttered order from his manager as he gruffly shoves triangle kimbap at him and noah realizes an hour too late he’s starving - that he doesn’t notice the door open behind him, doesn’t notice the boy standing there until a voice clears in the quiet and he startles, a full bodied straightening like someone’s shocked him down his spine. his eyes are a little wild as he spins in his chair, focuses his gaze distractedly on the other. “oh, shit, kitae, hey, “ he mumbles, blinks hard at him because, “what’re you doin here?”

kitae isn’t really sure what to expect. there’s doubt circling his head. vulture shaped, cackling out until his head aches with the noise of it. ready to swoop down and ingest whatever dark thoughts roll their way into what he’d consider a problem. he does that for a lot of things. he works himself up under the surface. he lets it collect there. his head, his body, locks it up, bottles it up. that’s what he’s supposed to do. he knows that. that’s what everyone wants him to do, so he does. he’ll choke on it, suffocate in the private of his own apartment, cloacked underneath too many blankets. but not in front of people. a blank-slated face. a smile devoid of activity behind shuttered-off eyes. he’s not the worlds best actor, but he can do that at least.

so those thoughts are buzzing around in his head, half-convinced noah’s done with him. or them. or whatever the fuck. the other half of him is worried about those unread texts. worried that something’s happened. his company’s small, and maybe they don’t have enough to push him forward financially. maybe he’s sick. maybe he’s-- and there’s really too many options, so kitae tries to cut those sorts of things off, before they snowball. before they bury him. shows up so that he can puzzle things out, make sure he’s okay. find closure, or answers, or whatever.the hell he can get from doing what he is.

finds noah hunched up in e recording studio, hair wild. like he’d been tugging it up in chunks over the span of too many hours. but he stays frozen long enough that kitae eventually lets his voice croak out between them, a little hoarse from singing earlier. he startles, like he’d been touched by lightning. turns toward him wild-eyed, jaw slack with surprise. kitae stares, tries to make sense of his reaction. if he can mind-read his way into figuring shit out. maybe he should’ve just texted daeul. pressed him for information. he’d considered it, but he didn’t want to come across as a complete fucking desperate tool to his friend. because he doesn’t think he is. he thinks too much, really.

“dunno. was worried, i guess.” he answers, and it sounds lame to his own ears. drags his heel across the ground and lets his eyes drift down to follow the motion as he drops his hand and leans his weight back against the door. “you hadn’t like, read shit. messages or whatever. i just wanted to check that you were, like...” he trails off, unsure of how to shape the words in a way to accurately construe what’s going on in his head. in a way that doesn’t sound completely ridiculous. “maybe i should’ve just asked daeul. i don’t know. how’re you though?” he asks him, because he looks tired, a crease between his brows, like it might’ve gotten frozen there.

radio silence.

#muse.kitae #kitae & noah #para. #radio silence.

[ideaylic]

radio silence.

@chctshire l kitae & noah, DAYZ media recording studio.

a fuzzy jump of static that ran through friendships wasn’t something new to kitae. it happened. he knew it, they all knew it. sometimes you got busy, real busy. where you forgot to do things like sleep or eat and all relationships fell to the wayside. so when kitae had finished up with a handful of rehearsals and performances that came tied to awards season he wasn’t worried that noah was avoiding him when he didn’t hear back. not at first. it happened, and so kitae threw himself into his work too, planning remixes and carving dance breaks into a rehashed song.

he didn’t really let the unease take root in his gut until the end of the second week when noah hadn’t even managed to throw back a ‘hey, i’m good, busy.’ to one of kitae’s occasional messages. let it vine its way slow around his ribcage in the following days, up his throat, eventually flowering into something twisted and ugly. but kitae had a way about that, getting into his own head. worrying. he was a pessimist through and through. so maybe noah had seen some rumor, some article that had rubbed him the wrong way. maybe he’d heard something whispered behind the hands of the people in the industry.. maybe he’d just gotten sick of him. peeled away enough of kitae’s shell to realize that past the stardom and generically pretty face there wasn’t much else there to want. that sort of thing happened. it sucked, but it happened. 

but kitae didn’t really have anything to go on. just a quick string of six messages he’d sent to him over the course of three weeks. they were unread. and so yeah, it maybe meant he wanted out. wanted to ghost him. maybe if he’d actually opened them up and read them kitae would’ve taken the hint. but he hadn’t, and so a fractional part of him was worried about it. that something had happened. because kitae liked him, he really fucking liked him. it was a hard sort of feeling to shake. so he’d gotten his manager to covertly message noah’s manager to figure out his recording schedule. 

turns up outside of his company’s tiny building when the sky had been colored over in grays and blacks. shoulders his way in, clears it with the receptionist who points him in the right direction. shuffles his way into a tiny recording studio, chews at his lower lip as he waits for noah to finish fiddling around with whatever song he’s working on to turn and look. finally he gets tired of waiting, rasps out a hoarse-sounding “hey.” he sort of expects a ‘fuck off, kitae’ which maybe explains why his hand it still glued to the handle of the door he’d clicked shut behind him.

#muse.kitae #kitae & noah #para. #radio silence.

[ideaylic]

#aes.kitae

[ideaylic]

Can you remember who you were, before the world told you who you should be?

Ophelia to Hamlet, Act III, Scene II or, Hamlet to Ophelia, Act V, Scene I   (via ronaldwearsley)

#aes.kitae

[ideaylic]

chctshire:

“mm, really? i mean, you don’t wanna hang out or anything?” he questions half-teasing as he shifts, presses the other back to the door once more, hips settling forward to cage him there as he leans in to kiss him again, slow and sweet. he takes his time, lingers as his eyes slide closed, because he’d missed this, missed him, even if it had only been a week, and what kind of a sap was he now, to be thinking that? “missed you.” he notes with a grin, content as he pulls back slightly.

they wander deeper backstage, into a tiny room where noah can mop the sweat off his face. combs down his hair and prods kitae for questions as he does it. he’s happy enough to share, trades thoughts on songs, on equipment, on how half the crowd seemed to be at the club solely for his stage. until he’s shedding layers and kitae stops him halfway through his quick change to draw him closer. tucks a kiss behind his ear before noah turns and they’re nose to nose, then kissing again in something more earnest. noah’s fingers curling in at his neck setting off a slow roll of goosebumps that shiver their way down his spine. wonders if noah feels it, wonders if noah realizes he’s holding a match to a slow burning fuse. a bomb about to go off in his gut. all want and need and half-realized emotions. 

“well maybe you’re like. i don’t know.” kitae tosses back, smacks a hand at noah’s thigh in retaliation as noah sneaks in closer. bodies fit flush together, skin hot as he loops his arms more securely around noah’s waist and holds him in place.

“missed you too,” kitae says, wishes he was the same sort of brave as noah, where he could say it first. say it so easily. it’s one of those things that doesn’t even seem like it should really be hard. not to a boy that climbs onstage to greet thousands of fans. who’s had his face splashed across a tv screen, personality judged like it might’ve been equivalent to an outfit. but it’s different, a different sort of bravery. kitae’s hesitant to give away the pieces of himself that other’s haven’t yet bothered to take. hesitant in ways he doesn’t necessarily want to be. “do you though?” he asks him, one hand tucking into the back pocket of noah’s jeans, “have plans?”

electric.

#muse.kitae #kitae & noah #para. #electric.

[ideaylic]

chctshire:

“i’m so sweaty, i gotta like, peel these clothes off, “ he tacks on in sudden realization, come down just enough to realize he’s pretty fucking disgusting, all things considered, grins over at the other and grabs his wrist. “c’mon.” he prompts, drags him towards his dressing room. “of course i saw you. i could find you anywhere, any crowd. i’m just glad you came. i left it there hoping you would.” he admits, “i got the idea before, on the roof. i was plotting.” he tells him this conspiratorially, obviously seeking praise for his brilliant little plan, beams toothily at the other as he wrenches the doorknob open, stumbles into the still dark room.

noah looks ten different kinds of ecstatic, and kitae thinks he wears it well. a collision of bodies, his own tugged forward briefly until noah thinks better of it and stops trying. trades him out for a water bottle and has kitae grinning at him wide. “ha,” he shoots out, but doesn’t argue the point, just combs down noah’s damp hair when he shoves a hand through it and leaves it wild. rearranges the mess with careful fingers until he finally lets his hands drop. eyes meeting like a spark of connection, lost words they both can’t find when they’re yanked away from music and asked to speak like normal people should.

he wanders along after noah, the sleeve of his sweatshirt caught up in his grip, to a door that has noah’s name scrawled messy across a piece of paper taped to it. a tiny square of a room, but out of the way, hidden from view when noah swings the door shut behind him. fits himself back against the thin wood to keep himself out of the way as noah tugs at layers of sweat-soaked clothes. he looks, of course he does, with a shameless sort of abandon.

“you’re terrible,” he tells him, it comes out sounding like he means the opposite at noah’s shared secret. matches noah’s grin with one of his own. can appreciate that somehow noah managed to arrange a collaboration stage when it hadn’t even occurred to him without putting in a request to his company and maybe getting slotted in on some show some months in the future. maybe. he catches noah with an arm slung around his waist on his way to find a dryer shirt, presses a kiss behind his ear, finds his mouth soon after when noah turns to face him. he’d called him once, in japan, during a run-through rehearsal. it lasted two minutes while he’d gulped down mouthfuls of lemon tea they kept handing him so he wouldn’t lose his voice. it hadn’t really measured up, in a way he’d been too busy to fully appreciate until he found him again. “i basically invited myself, so if you’re supposed to go out and, like, do shit with your friends go for it.” kitae tells him, fingers winding around noah’s hips, a body trying to convince him otherwise.

electric.

#muse.kitae #kitae & noah #para. #electric.

[ideaylic]

chctshire:

but he doesn’t say those things, just pushes his hand through th eother’s hair to tousle it up wild, grabs a water bottle from a stage hand and downs it in two huge mouthfuls, enough to make his chest hurt, and he winces, pushes sweaty bangs back out of his eyes. 

watching noah on stage is an experience in and of itself; and kitae is a murky swamp of emotions. something proud, that’s the nice part. sitting lily-pad-delicate on top of the surface. noah’s all raw emotions. something real, despite how he hides behind the name ghoul. it’s noah. bared for the masses, scrubbed down to the soul. and kitae is jealous of that. a bracken jealousy, swirls near the bottom. but it’s outweighed, it really is, by the awe that strikes him as he watches. is content to drown in it. be devoured. would probably have stood, swaying dazed in the half-dance of the crowd that surrounded him for the entirety of it if noah hadn’t spotted him and yanked him up, fingers tangled tight around his wrist. an electric spark of missed you when kitae had grabbed him back. and skin-to-skin contact wasn’t supposed to feel like that. not to kitae. but it did.

and he wasn’t chased away with voices that wanted kitae wiped from the stage, they just continued the same clashing cheers that fought over the bass thrumming loud and bone-fracturing through the room. even when kitae didn’t really know what to do with himself, even when he dropped into dance, a quick stutter of feet, roll of his hips in a knee jerk reaction. even when he prodded noah to do it too, when that probably wasn’t what they wanted to see. but it finished with the same happy cheer, with noah looking lit up from the inside out by a thousand different suns. kitae skittering off backstage while he finished talking to the crowd, promoting his song, whatever it was.

met up with him again backstage, noah’s face still flooded with sunshine, paired with sweat-damp hair and huffs of air when he got close enough for kitae to hear him. he expected noah to stop five, two, one foot from him. but instead he continued forward like a steam train, bodies colliding together, and kitae caught them both with arms tossed haphazard around noah’s waist. “of course they loved it, your songs are great.” kitae points out, because that’s the truth of it. because his voice drapes over him sweet, and kitae isn’t sure how to handle that. laughs instead when noah shoves a hand through his hair. “you have eagle eyes, i didn’t even tell you i was coming.” kitae decides when noah quiets to take greedy gulps of water, shifts to let his back thump against the wall.

electric.

#muse.kitae #kitae & noah #para. #electric.

[ideaylic]

electric.

@chctshire l kitae & noah. a week and a half later at a club in hongdae. 

kitae had wandered into the club with a cap pulled low, hood layered on top of it. to take away some of noah’s apparent eagle-eyed intensity, he had pushed his way toward the front of the crowd that was clumped around the stage, pogo-stick-bodied as they jumped to the beat that noah was paving words over. but it was still a little ridiculous that noah had spotted him, hidden as he was in dark fabric. it was a little ridiculous that he first instinct was to lift a hand and flip him off when noah beckoned him onstage, a little ridiculous that he’d given up and done just that simply because he wasn’t allowed to flip noah off. because noah was right, he had a wholesome sort of image. one that didn’t allow for blurry cellphone taken videos to capture that sort of thing.

so he’d done it, had accepted a microphone some frazzled soul backstage had passed him when the song had started. had forced noah into awkward dancing when he’d started it up next to him in a small-scale revenge act somewhere in the middle of the song. he was mildly glad daeul had been too busy to come, he probably would’ve laughed at him the entire time. it was at least the last surprise song of his set list, and so kitae was allowed to scurry toward the promised safety of backstage immediately after, adrenaline jumping in his gut the same way it always did when he climbed on stage. usually they didn’t seem as personal as this, boxed into a tiny room instead of sprawling across thousand-seat stadiums, where people turned into blurs from the lights pointed at him.

“fucker,” kitae insults, in a way that doesn’t manage to sound very insulting when he finally rids himself of the mic. because he had sort of wanted to perform with him, had liked it, even if he wasn’t really given a chance to prepare for it. map out steps and lines and footwork. an itemized list that ends with him slinking across stage cat-eyed, body precise. not dropping into a quick loop of footwork and poking at noah’s hip until he dances with him. not laughing out the ends of a line when noah finally flaps a hand at him. it feels like shoes that don’t fit quite right, but he wants to wear them anyway. “your shit was amazing,” he admits when they wander further away from the stage when noah’s follow-up sneaks on.

#muse.kitae #kitae & noah #para. #electric.

[ideaylic]

chctshire:

“well, in that case, yes, i am pretty great, you’re right.” noah agrees amicably, chuckling at the other’s statement, residual amusement registering a beat late, thanks to alcohol, thanks to lethargy. “two days?” he whines, tilts his head to snuffle at the other’s temple, quiet sounds tickling at the other’s cheek. “will you be away long?” he adds, doesn’t know the concert tour protocols, tightens his grip on the other because he knows he can’t ask him to stay, it’d be silly, but he wants to convey the fact he’d like it a lot if he did. it seems to get the job done, he figures. “yeah, some, around gangnam and hongdae. nothing really huge, but a few steps up from where i’d have gotten booked a few months ago.”

kitae often feels like he’s caught up in a whirlwind. or maybe that it’s trapped up inside of him, spinning him dizzy. dizzy thoughts, dizzy limbs. driving him forward, full of reasons, or reason-less. it doesn’t matter. he always needs to be going. there aren’t enough hours in the day, has to take some out on loan from sleep. chases away his debt with caffeine pills, or other pills. a cocktail collection so he can continue the path he’s pushed toward. it’s not that he doesn’t like sitting still, he just often finds he can’t. until his schedule has miraculously cleared for a day, maybe two. a stretch of clear skies that kitae has no clue what to do with. a stumble of feet as the debtor catches up to him and he sprawls out underneath quilts and the heavy weight of sleep deprivation for too many hours, takeout food containers piled up around him. 

that’s how he considers moments of sitting still, of peace. it’s a little bit fabricated, he knows. knows it better now that he’s slotted against noah with the regret that he’s not three floors down still dancing a dulled whisper in the back of his brain. a real sort of still, not even the manic kind where kitae’s drank enough to forget and feels like he’s slipped into an alternate reality. it’s stupid, he blames it on hormones he’s constantly trying to repress, because he doesn’t have time for those either. or he does, maybe. if he lets himself. it’s a sticky-bottomed trap kitae doesn’t know how to pull himself free from. pretends it’s like a personality trait at this point. i’m a workaholic, i don’t like sitting still. he says like he doesn’t dream of vacations floating lost in the middle of an ocean. stupid.

“good boy,” kitae murmurs out when noah agrees with him, pats at the side of his cheek with a blind hand, refuses to pick up his head and add direction to the mix. “a little while, i guess. two concerts. maybe a week?” he guesses, factors in travel and fansigns and events that also come packaged in. “message me when, maybe i can come to something.” kitae decides, and it’s a possibility, especially when he’s scheduled late. maybe he can drag daeul along with him. maybe daeul will shake some sense into him.

reprise.

#muse.kitae #kitae & noah #para. #reprise.

[ideaylic]

chctshire:

“they like that you’re in it, most of them.” he pauses, a grin tilting over his lips, “but like, its a good song. its a really good song. better with your voice.” this is true as far as he’s concerned- kitae brought it to a level he hadn’t anticipated, layered more into it than noah would have been able to convey on his own. the importance of a skillful collaboration, he thinks. “when do you leave for japan?”

he whines out in complaint. dramatic, his disdain staining the sky with fog as he tilts his head back to do it. but he doesn’t stop him, an embarrassment released when kitae was seventeen and he’d grown mostly used to it, even if it’s terrible. so he listens again to a voice that sounds a little too robotic to be human, a pitch higher than kitae can sing in comfortably now. noah joins in once he gets the hang of the chorus, and that has kitae laughing. a jumbled out noise that clashes with already chaotic song. a mess of noise that’s lost on the rooftop, eyes creasing up happy, one heel knocking against the edge of the bench every time he swings a foot to the beat. 

his fits in against noah’s sides, digs past the thick cotton of his sweatshirt to dance his fingers across his ribs. until noah’s shivering with laughter between kitae’s palms. can feel the frantic swell-collapse of his ribs every time he gulps down a breath of air. eventually noah grabs at his wrists and tugs his hands up, lets it all even out. the smile lingers though. like he might’ve really been happy, past the forced reaction he’d pushed him into. noah kisses at his palm, and then draws him closer. and kitae isn’t quite sure what to do with him, or them. it feels too nice, it has to be dangerous. an rms titanic of an experience, too enchanting to be anything but tragic at the end of things. but kitae’s a secretly pessimistic person. he should stop, he always feels like he casts curses on things that ultimately end up true. a cyclical pattern of blame that he compulsively winds himself in.

“take a compliment, i’m trying to call you talented. i don’t want to share it.” kitae tells him with a laugh when noah drags it back to the both of them, drops his head to noah’s shoulder and curls into him. a languid drape of arms and legs as he breathes in some generic sort of flower his detergent had been promised to smell like. “two days.” he murmurs back, “what about you, playing any clubs?”

reprise.

#muse.kitae #kitae & noah #para. #reprise.

[ideaylic]

chctshire:

they fit together in a kiss that’s lazy and warm, like a blanket drawn tight around them, cloaking them against the rapidly cooling night. he feels suspended here, in warmth and contentment, like time has slowed to a lethargic crawl and the only thing he notices is the press of lips and the way he smells, the way he tastes, the way he feels beneath layers and layers of cotton, shifting on his lap. lips part in a throaty chuckle as the other continues, brows lifting. “greedy,” he notes sweetly, before he leans up to nip at the other’s lowerlip. “i like you,” he promises easily, lets his lips spread wide into a grin, “i like you a lot.” he tacks on, peppers it between languid kisses. “like, i really like you.” by the time they part, kitae has another question to ask and noah offers an answer, “really well. people love it. you have that effect it seems like.” 

“i don’t know. it’s hard to pick a favorite. i think it changes. but i like everything after i resigned a little more. i got to work more creative freedom into my contract.” he admits, and it’s easy to pick up on if you know it. kitae testing out his boundaries in baby steps, experimenting in a way the company never really bothered to before. not that his music was ever terrible. just, perhaps, not what he would’ve picked, created if given the option. “‘course. a bunch of useless b-sides. i think i got one song that was an old reject just because they bought it seven years ago and needed to use it before it got really outdated.” kitae admits, a eclectic-sounding song that tried to, perhaps, encapsulate edm while elevating it was something almost like 80′s synth pop that really just fell flat. thankfully he’s never had to perform it live. ever. nobody would probably want that. 

more songs too, some cluttered over with hazy storm-clouds of memories. that spill out of him unbidden when his album loops around to it. music is often linked to nostalgia, but kitae thinks that’s mostly because you don’t seek out the songs that make you reminisce on the bad. but he doesn’t admit that to noah. he just wants him to tease him about his shitty 80′s synth pop song where he’s comparing first love to cotton candy (somehow), and not pry affectionately further toward sharp-toothed demons.

kitae seems happy enough with noah’s answer, and he likes that. likes that he helped boost him up just a little bit. that his fans will stream noah’s music in the name of support. that maybe it’ll get some people talking. catch on with the right crowds. push noah toward something higher. he figures he deserves it. “ha, ha, ha.” kitae drops it out sarcastic and mechanical as he twists his fingers in at noah’s ribs to tickle him. it’s one of those statements that digs in a little deep, in a way that noah could never really comprehend. in a way that reminds him he’s got secrets still shoved over those thick, artfully draped rugs. the rotting sort that he should share. to be fair. or something. he can’t figure it out. so he doesn’t. just listened to the loud crack of noah’s laughter when he finds a ticklish patch of skin.

“infinitely.” kitae agrees at the accusation, lips meeting, breaking. like the constant push-pull of the ocean as it rocks toward the moon. he’s smiling at him by the time noah finishes placating him with mirrored words. “your song. they love your song.” kitae corrects him, like a reminder. clicks on his phone briefly to check the time, make sure there are no sos messages that he’d missed from his manager. switches to noah’s soundcloud profile inconspicuously enough to type out a ‘needs more 80′s synth vibe’ under a guest profile, just in case he ever bothers to check the comments one day.

reprise.

#muse.kitae #kitae & noah #para. #reprise.