[FIC] Playground

Title: Playground
Characters: Heechul, Leeteuk
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 707
Summary: If life were a playground, things might have been different.
A/N: Ahh.. The last one.. This one has a flashback/retelling of the past in there. It should be noticeable, but just saying it again so you don't get confused. ^.^ I like this one. <3 It seems I enjoy writing Leechul/Heeteuk. ^.^

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“If you and I had met on the playground.” Leeteuk had said, making Heechul look up in surprise at the interruption of the silence. “I would have been the shy kid and you would have been the bully stealing my lunch money, right?” The image had made Heechul laugh, before nodding a bit in agreement. There had been more silence and Heechul had gone back to texting until the other had broken the silence again. “Then why do you listen to me now?” Heechul had looked up again and, seeing the utter loss in his friend’s eyes, had frowned.

“What kind of question is that?” he had asked with a little laugh, putting down his phone to concentrate on the conversation. “Why did you come up with something silly as that? I listen to you because you are my leader and you know best what’s right and wrong. I listen to you because I trust you and believe that you are worthy to be listened to. I listen to you because at a certain point in time I decided and promised to do so, so now I do.”

And now here he is, arms wrapped around Leeteuk’s body, head resting against the elder’s and the realisation that life isn’t always fair. Leeteuk’s even breathing reveals the fact that he is asleep and Heechul guesses that’s probably the first time in weeks that the elder is getting some undisturbed rest. He sighs and starts to gently rub his friend’s back in a mindless way of keeping his hands occupied. He smiles when Leeteuk scoots closer in his sleep and chuckles when he feels the arms around his waist tighten their grip. Then he remembers that his hyung wasn’t so calm earlier and his smile fades away.

“How did we become like this, Hee?” Leeteuk had whispered, as his eyes had darted away from the other to stare at the walls, the ceiling, the ground, merely anything but his friend. Heechul had sighed, gotten up and gone to sit on the couch next to Leeteuk. He had wrapped his arms around Leeteuk’s body, and had pulled the elder towards himself, muzzling his cheek against Leeteuk’s. He had enjoyed the cosy closeness for a while, feeling more like he was holding his good old friend Jungsoo than his band leader Leeteuk.

“We did not become like anything, Jung.” he had therefore replied, using a nickname that was long forgotten in the trail of stage names, heavy concerts and busy schedules. “We were always like this, we just changed environments.” There had been silence following his words. Leeteuk’s chest had risen and fallen with his soft breathing, but after a while the breaths had come more slowly and more forced, and when a soft drop of moisture wet his cheek, Heechul had realised that the other was crying.

There had been no hesitation in him, no ‘Should I?’s and ‘Oh God..’s, only a set feeling to hold and cradle and comfort. He had smiled softly because of that, yet at the same time had stroked Leeteuk’s back in a calming gesture. He had pressed a soft kiss on Leeteuk’s hair, had wiped the tears away, had pulled a tissue out of the box on the living room table not far from them and had cleaned his friend’s face. Throughout all that he had kept on mumbling cheesy nonsense to the elder, trying to calm him down like that.

In the end the tears had stopped running and Leeteuk had grabbed another tissue himself to blow his nose. Before Heechul had been able to put some distance in between them, however, Leeteuk had simply wrapped his arms around Heechul’s waist again and had rested his head against the other one’s chest, looking more like a little kid than a famous leader of a thirteen people band, and Heechul had smiled and held and above all loved until the other one had finally fallen asleep, more relaxed than he had looked in months.

“If you and I had met on the playground.” Heechul murmurs, running his finger through the blonde hair of his only hyung. “You would have been the shy, generous kid and I would have been the bully secretly looking up to you.”