Arbitrage
exo // kai/kyungsoo (tiny sehun/lu han/kai) // nc-17 // 22,000 words
[street race AU... or is it.] There are three tracks to Do Kyungsoo's life. Track A, trader at an investment bank. Track B, new recruit of a race crew called EXO. Track C... track C involves someone named Kai and a whole lot of bad decisions.
<<
So apparently Kyungsoo is the kind of person who travels backwards in time, and he is the kind of person who travels forward. It takes Kai a while to draw a proper timeline in his head. "I always thought there was just one kind of time travel, huh. I never expected there would be a second type."
"I never expected there would be any type of time travel at all." Kyungsoo rolls his eyes. Kyungsoo draws him a chart on the back of some grocery receipt he dug out from his wallet. Kyungsoo is that kind of person who saves stacks of receipts in his wallet, everything sorted by stores and cards. He draws a chart with a piece of pencil - lines, loops, and sharp angles.
"The crash is the focal point. The loop always starts with a car crash. Doesn't matter if you crash into a concrete building or do a suicide dive with the car off the side of a mountain, as long as it's a fatal crash." Kyungsoo taps the pencil against the steering wheel of the BMW. They are huddled together under the warm orange interior light of the car, the top of the convert already pulled up. Kyungsoo is almost splayed against his side in an attempt to show the tiny chart to him.
"Same here," Kai nods, reaching out an arm to wrap around Kyungsoo's shoulders, pulling him closer. Kyungsoo barely reacts.
"Okay, so let's start from the point of the crash. When I crash a car, it sends me backwards in time to a point that's, well, about a week or so before my original point in time. A few days, a week, two weeks, it varies. I've never figured out how that works. During this period, from this point I got sent to - let's call it point A, to the point I originated from - let's call it point B... there are two versions of me." Kyungsoo furiously circles the two big dots A and B, then drawing two little stick figures. "Kyungsoo Prime who just got sent back in time, and Kyungsoo Double who's living normally in his normal timeline. Kyungsoo Prime has a second chance to change anything he wants during this period, because he has existing knowledge of the A-B period. Then when point B approaches again, Kyungsoo Double crashes the car and gets sent away," an arrow loops the Kyungsoo Double stick figure back to point A, "and Kyungsoo Prime continues to live as the only Kyungsoo in the timeline once again."
Kai stares at the tiny graph with little loops and squiggly stick figures. "Your drawing is horrible. A five-year-old child could probably do better." Kyungsoo reaches back to slap his shoulders. Kai laughs, then settles down to point at the black dot titled B in the graph. "But what if something happens and Kyungsoo Double doesn't crash the car so he doesn't get sent away? Does Kyungsoo Prime cease to exist?"
"...That has never happened before, and I don't want to see if it could happen. I plan these loops out. I always follow my plans." Kyungsoo's thick eyebrows furrow. Kai believes him, too.
"But Kyungsoo Prime changes things in the new timeline. Anything could happen."
"Kyungsoo Prime only changes small, unrelated things that have no consequences on the crash whatsoever." Kyungsoo intones, looking as serious as he's ever been. Kai feels the urge to poke him in the cheeks to make him smile, but his fingers only hover somewhere above Kyungsoo's head.
"Are you in a loop right now?"
"I'm only here hanging out with you because I'm in a loop right now." Kyungsoo throws him a quick smirk, pushing himself a little away from Kai as he's done explaining his chart.
"Am I talking to Kyungsoo Prime or Kyungsoo Double here?"
"Kyungsoo Double."
"So there's a Kyungsoo Prime running around somewhere in this city right now?" Kai grins. The thought of two Kyungsoo being in the same place at the same time is... intriguing.
"He's not running around. He's in my- our office right now, putting his knowledge of the period A-B into use." Kyungsoo slaps him in the shoulders again, as if he could read Kai's thoughts.
"So what do you do in a loop? Correct mistakes you made the first time around? Buy lottery tickets?"
"That, or taking advantage of opportunities. That's where my job comes in. Trading stocks, drafting deals. I accumulate these knowledge, then crash and go back in time to use them for my job. Or for my private account."
"So why exactly are you here hanging out with me if you have stock markets and trading contracts to deal with?"
"Kyungsoo Prime takes over my life the moment he appears in the loop. He's trader-at-an-investment-bank Kyungsoo, he lives in a two-bedroom apartment suite somewhere in Gangnam, he drives a BMW to work in the morning, he has hasty lunch dates on the glass towers overlooking the Han river in Yeouido. Meanwhile I get a vacation away from work to do whatever I want, just hanging around in a small private room somewhere on the other side of the city, checking on stock prices and market fluctuations, storing all this information until the time comes and I go out, pick up some cheap old car and crash it, getting sent back to a previous point in time to become Kyungsoo Prime and go back to work, back to my glass and steel office in Yeouido, utilising all this information from the future."
"Making money."
"Making big profit. Taking opportunities I couldn't have foreseen the first time around. Anticipating reactions and negotiating deals. Avoiding disasters." Of course Kyungsoo would figure out how to make money from time travel. Changing his own past. Carefully planning his own presence. Calculating his own future. Taking advantage of the predicted external factors. Except the predictions are things that have already happened... at some point in the future. "I just make small changes, going about my job with more... informed decisions. Just enough to get that next bonus. Or a promotion. Or a little extra something for my private account. It's all just good planning."
"So while you're on vacation, leaving Kyungsoo Prime to bring in the money for your bank account, you decide you might as well take up street racing as a hobby. Might as well join a race crew and hang out with a bunch of crazy guys at some random garage." His fingers are itching for a smoke, but Kyungsoo doesn't even let Kai touch his pack around him.
"Something like that. A little bit of fun, a little bit of thrill, why not? I like the speed and the adrenaline rush. This is not something investment-banker Kyungsoo would have a chance to do outside of the loop." Kyungsoo shrugs, smirking, his full lips tilted up, showing off a hint of white teeth. A childish-looking kind of smile. Kai has always thought Kyungsoo probably looks a lot younger than his age.
"It's funny, you know, how they say time is money. You really do make money out of time. Holy shit, your timeline is a mess." Kai laughs, smoothly taking the piece of receipt from under Kyungsoo's hand, fingers deliberately dragging against the other man's palm. Kyungsoo has small, short fingers, nails neatly trimmed. A childish-looking kind of hands.
"Not really, I told you, I plan these things out."
"Well, it's certainly more of a headache than mine." Kai grabs the pencil from Kyungsoo's grasp, drawing a quick straight line under Kyungsoo's squiggly chart, then intermittent little half-moon curves over that line.
"So you crash and go to the future."
"Yep, I crash, and when I wake up, it's one week later. Two weeks later. A month later. Four months later. It varies. I guess it depends on the force of the impact, but I'm not sure. I'm not exactly a physicist." He writes his name next to the chart of his own timeline.
"You just jump ahead. Your drawing is as horrible as mine. I can't even read your handwriting."
"Shut up, my line is straighter than yours. I press the fast forward button on my own life a lot. Skip, skip, skip. The presence get boring fast, why stay and wait? The unknown future should be more exciting. I have no plans, I don't plan anything. I just throw myself headfirst into the future. Very simple, very straightforward."
"That's... unsettling."
"Says you, Mr. Obsessive Compulsive Planner. I'd go crazy if I had to go about my life in loops, living certain points in the past over and over." He has never been good at planning. Kai contemplates hiring Kyungsoo to plan his life for him, then quickly rejects the idea.
"It gets easier. It makes life easier the second time."
They send the BMW convert to its death off a skyway later that evening. Kai leaves the key in the ignition lock and they watch it surge in the air before succumbing to gravity and crashing to the asphalt below together. No one jumps backwards or forwards in time that night. Kyungsoo asks him to come to a BBQ party as the cacophony of crashing metal and glass dies down.
Apparently there's a BBQ party at Suho's place on Saturday. Everyone and their aunt is invited, Kyungsoo says. Kai thinks it's a little ironic that his invitation has to be extended through Kyungsoo. He says yes anyway.
"I think this is the first time in... a very long while that the twelve of us can be all together in the same place at the same time!" Suho says, excitement clear in his voice as he makes them do the first cheer over a long table full of meat and salad in the backyard of his house. It takes all of them a long while to settle down to actually hear what Suho says, everyone squabbling and shouting over each other, arguing over food drinks car engines and all sorts of irrelevant things. Kyungsoo, Yixing, and Kris stand in a far corner to barbecue the meat. It's only until Kris finally puts down his grill tongs and frowns over the heads of the squabbling crowd that everyone settles down to their place.
Kyungsoo makes the first round of wraps for everyone, calmly distributing the food like a true mother duck. He stays close to Kyungsoo for the rest of the meal, until everyone moves on from demolishing the towers of food to other fun activities, such as drenching the host with the garden hose. It's been a while since he last hung out with the guys, and Kai finds himself laughing and joking around with everyone more than he thought he would. It's easy to fall back into the good old times, his stealing Yixing's food when he isn't looking, running around knocking paper cups out of Jongdae's hands for fun, or fanboying over the latest Motor Show with Kris and Chanyeol.
It still takes a lot out of him though. The noisy crowd gets draining after a while, and he quietly wanders off towards a deserted corner, watching the commotion from afar. He's just sitting on the steps to the main house like that, blank-faced and sipping on a beer, when someone nudges him on the back. When he looks up, it isn't Kyungsoo, but Lu Han hovering over him. Lu Han nudges him over again, and settles down next to him on the steps. He glances at the sharp lines of Lu Han's face from around the outline of his bottle. They haven't seen each other up close like this for... a long while. Lu Han looks... more gaunt, more grown-up. There's still that baby face, but he also looks more adult-like - the way he moves, his mannerisms. The difference is suddenly startling to Kai.
"I'm glad you came. You haven't been around much." Lu Han smiles, holding out his own beer for an easy cheer. "Well, at least not until lately. I've been seeing more of you after the Incheon track a few months back. After you nearly rammed my Skyline off the road."
"Yeah, sorry about that I guess." He chuckles, shifting a little until Lu Han's arm doesn't brush against his anymore.
"Will you stay for long this time? Sehun still worries about you. Where you disappear off to for months at a time."
"I'm not a kid anymore, Lu Han." He closes his eyes briefly. He could still see Sehun surreptitiously staring at them from afar. "And Sehun could quit using you as the messenger any time now. He could talk to me if he wanted to. I'm not mad at him. Or you. Or anyone, really. It's been a long time."
Lu Han is quiet for a while. "We were really worried, that first time you disappeared. Five months, Kai. Five months of no news, no message, no goodbye, nothing. They found your car a broken wreck down the side of a mountain, the driver's side mashed in. No body in the area. We looked for you all over all the hospitals in the city. By the end of the third month, everyone was prepared for the worst. Sehun stopped talking to me for weeks. He felt guilty. I did, too."
"It was no one's fault."
"You stormed out on us that night, Kai. You were angry. I could have handled that better. I could have stopped you."
"For what? I just went away and came back five months later, still perfectly fine. I just needed some time to myself. I could have told you, yeah, but like you said, I was mad. I was young and stupid. Young people do stupid shit all the time."
"It's impossible for me not to feel like I'm the one who keeps you away from everyone else."
"Lu Han," he sighs, downing the rest of his beer, "it's no one's fault that Sehun and you are meant to be or all that cheesy crap. I was young and stupid, but I got over it. I've got my own life now, I've got a job, I'm busy. These things happen, Lu Han. People drift apart. It's been a long time." He stands up, patting the other man on the shoulders. "Nice talking to you."
All of them come down together to the Sowon-gil track for the race that night, soaking up the party and the adrenaline. He hangs back with Jongdae and Suho, watching Kyungsoo, Kris, Chanyeol, Sehun, and the rest of the guys one by one rake in the money from the betting pools. It's a good night for all of them, everyone high on the steady hum of engines and the heavy summer heat. Kyungsoo's new Genesis does an excellent test run.
He says goodbye to everyone halfway through the night, waving and hugging. He ignores the way Kyungsoo's wide eyes stare at him, oddly solemn. Kai fondles his round cheeks, pushing them up in imitation of a smile, before climbing into a titanium silver Lexus LS and speeding off into the night. The race is good, but nothing is as satisfying as the familiar feeling of adrenaline rushing in his veins when he slams headfirst into the side of a tunnel at top speed, hearing the screeching sounds of breaking metal and glass and then-
Everything goes black.
-
He has probably come to expect the sight of Kai sitting on his doorstep like a lost poodle every once in a while. Kai smiles up at him from under his bangs when he unlocks the door. Kai looks tired, shadows dark under his eyes. There's crusted blood on the edge his upper lip, probably remnants of another nosebleed.
"How long has it been this time?" Kai trails after him into the kitchen, hovering over his shoulders as he puts down the grocery bag.
"I don't know, why don't you check yourself?" He shoves Kai towards the direction of the kitchen table where he left the morning newspapers.
"Hmm... nearly one whole month. That's a bit longer than I expected." Kai's fingers trace over the headlines.
"Do you really care about lost time?" Kyungsoo pulls out the small bag of rice cake and some large green onions, waving it in Kai's direction.
"Not really. There's nothing keeping me down around this place anyway. So what's for lunch? Is that spicy ddukbokki you're making?"
"You're here a lot. Start being useful and help with making the food." He has Kai on green onion chopping duty. Kai's knifework is terrible. The green onion turns out uneven and scraggly, but at least Kai is not bleeding over them.
"I see you've started buying more food for me. Hey, put more chili paste in. And more cheese on top of it later okay?" Kai nudges his shoulders, his body swaying against Kyungsoo's, brushing his back. The heat of his body is familiar. Kyungsoo rolls his eyes, but doesn't shrug off the intrusive presence.
"You would be the worst kind of backseat driver."
Kai smiles, his eyes light up, facial muscles pulling up, showing off white teeth. Kyungsoo thinks he's cute like this, the smile making him look young and naive. No trace of the half-smirk behind tinted car windows.
"How old are you?" He asks, "Your real age. You've been skipping months and years of your life, so you must be younger than what everyone else thinks, right?"
Kai's full lips purse, a finger reaching up to touch his bottom lip. "I don't know, I don't remember. I don't count the missing time." The years blur together after a while. Time starts to lose its meaning.
"What year were you born then?"
It takes Kai a while to answer him, eyebrows furrowed in concentration as he tries to remember. "1994. January, maybe? I remember I kept trying to tell the neighbour kids that they should call me hyung even if we were born in the same year. How old are you?"
"Early 1993. I'm definitely your hyung." He stirs the large pot of red hot ddukbokki, then dropping two packs of ramen in. Kai excitedly pokes them with a chopstick, swirling them around. He grabs a handful of the scraggly green onions and sprinkles them on top of the pot.
"I bet. And you've been repeating months and years of your life, right? So you have to add all that extra time on top of your original age. You're gonna be an old man before all your friends. Anyway, it depends on whose frame of reference we're looking at, doesn't it? Other people see us as 28, 29 only because that much time has passed for them. But for you, you're probably lived for like thirty-something years now, haven't you?" Kai is at least decent at table setting duty now. They bring the large pot to the middle of the table together.
"And you're probably a few years younger than everyone thinks you are. I don't know my real age, I don't count my looped time either." Kyungsoo dutifully spoons the rice cake and the soup into two small matching bowls for them. Kai brings two glasses of water to the table. Everything in double sets.
"The more the two of us travel in time, the further our age difference would be, funny that. Maybe when I keep skipping ahead, one day you'll be one of those obnoxious filthy rich middle-aged men who's going to hire me to crash your precious Ferrari Enzo." Kai hisses over a piping hot piece of rice cake, dropping it back into the bowl.
"Or maybe both of us are outside of the normal time stream and we don't age anymore. How would I know? People keep telling me I have an age-defying face." Kyungsoo shrugs, carefully blowing on his ramen. He pauses while holding up a big piece of rice cake, waiting for it to cool down. "Why don't you do it then? Why don't you just skip ahead until the end of time? Do you think you could do that? Yet you keep staying around here, around this point in time."
They go quiet for a while, busy slurping on their soup and noodles.
"I think you're not ready to let go of the people around you. You have a life here, don't you? If you kept skipping ahead and everyone you knew died, you wouldn't have a life anymore. You'd cease to exist in the stream. You'd be outside of time, isolated. No one to come back to. I think you hold on to your friends more than you know."
Kai hums around his chopsticks. His ankles brush against Kyungsoo's legs under the table.
They finish their meal and clean up. Kyungsoo is putting the last pot up to dry when Kai presses him against the kitchen counter and kisses him, full lips brushing against his, soft but insistent. His hands automatically come up to push at Kai's shoulders, but Kai is not budging, and he ends up grasping at the shirt on Kai's shoulders, fingers curling around lithe muscles. Kai pulls away for a brief moment, the two of them staring at each other. He opens his mouth to say something, but Kai is already leaning in again, his lips mouthing against the curve of Kyungsoo's mouth, a hint of tongue wet on his bottom lip. He shoves Kai away this time, the force making both of them stumble backwards.
"What?" Kai asks him, all dark eyes and hooded lids. His hands are brushing against Kyungsoo's hips, the grip loose but exploring. "You want this, don't you?" Kai's fingers brush against the front of his pants, and Kyungsoo bites down on his lip, closing his eyes. He belatedly shoves the hand away maybe a moment too late. "How long has it been for you? You're so sensitive..."
Kai's body is flush against his, the heat warm and familiar. His thigh nudges in between Kyungsoo, their difference in height make him rest his weight on Kai. Kyungsoo's thighs instinctively squeeze around Kai, the heat making his skin tingle underneath the fabric of his pants.
"You're always so tightly wound, so proper... The only time you let go is when you race. You keep every moment of your life so structured, so carefully planned, except for that crash. But that isn't enough, is it?" Kai is whispering against his skin, lips trailing the underline of his jaw. Kyungsoo feels the shivers running underneath his skin, his breath shaky and hot. This is not how it is supposed to go, but he can never seem to say no to Kai. "You need to lose control... a little." Kai's thigh nudges up under him, and Kyungsoo gasps, falling forward.
He shoves Kai away when deft fingers reach the button of his pants. Kai stares at him for a long moment before all the tension goes out of his body and his shoulders sag, his lips twitching up slightly. Kyungsoo turns away, sighing. He bites down on his bottom lip, eyes tracing the sinuous lines of Kai's neck going all the way up to his sharp jaw line. He wants to apologise, but what comes out of his mouth is, "You have that look."
"That look?" Kai turns to look at him again, but he's already shifted away, moving away from the kitchen counter. The hard marble top is still digging into Kyungsoo's palms.
"Like one of those people that everyone fucks on the side once or twice and then drops like hot potato. Everyone wants you, but no one thinks they can tie you down, so they just don't try."
"A trophy fuck. Huh." Kai tilts his head, his lips twitching up into a half smile. "I guess that does sound like me. So what, you don't want to fuck me?"
"Not really. Why should I?" Kyungsoo mutters, turning away to hide the half-hard tent in his pants. He could hear Kai chuckle from behind his back.
"Maybe you need a little time to think about that. What if I went out right now and crashed another car then re-appeared a few weeks later your time? Would you change your mind by then?"
"You're ridiculous." Kyungsoo glances back. He laughs, but the sound is awkward in the air.
"I'm an impatient person. I'm always skipping ahead."
"It sounds more like you're running away from the present."
-
It's the Sowon-gil track again. Kyungsoo has been going out to the midnight races more often with the guys lately, everyone telling him to get more practice in. It's good fun anyway, hanging out with them when he has the time, even when sometimes all he does all night is joining an impromptu rubik's cube solving class taught by Lu Han with Minseok and Baekhyun. Kyungsoo pretends his heart doesn't nearly jump out of his chest when he catches sight of Kai across the crowd. The younger man is walking towards them, no car in sight. If everyone else is surprised by Kai suddenly showing up at a race track out of nowhere, no one shows it. Kyungsoo's eyes trace after him when Kai walks over to Tao. They hug, Kai's hand pulling on Tao's neck, and Kyungsoo tries his best to pretend he isn't trying to overhear the conversation.
"What's the date?"
"September 3rd. Why?"
"Can I borrow your car tonight?" Kai is smiling now, his smile deceptively sweet and genuine as he looks straight into Tao's eyes. "Please? I promise it'll remain pristine and flawless by the end of the night." Tao doesn't stand a chance, even if he hesitate for a split second, probably thinking about all the damage Kai could do to a car. Kai gracefully takes the key from his hand anyway.
"Are you racing tonight?" Kris frowns at him, suspiciously eyeing the car key in Kai's hand. "And I mean actual racing, not being a cockblocking asshole for K team."
"Sure!" Kai grins, suddenly turning towards him. Kyungsoo's eyes widen when he catches his gaze. "Hey Kyungsoo, let's go!"
"Kai, you lay off Kyungsoo's Genesis this time! He actually needs it for Race War after all the work I've put into it, okay?" Kris shouts after them, and Kai just laughs, waving his hand high in the air as he makes his way to Tao's car.
"Yeah, yeah, I promise Kyungsoo's everything will remain pristine and flawless by the end of tonight, too!"
Kyungsoo fumbles with his key on the way to his own car. It's a drag race this time, only four cars - him, Kai, and two other drivers. His car is next to Kai's on the starting line, and Kai is smirking at him across their lowered car windows, his eyes dark and heated. It's already early autumn, but somehow Kyungsoo feels his face getting warmer even in the slightly chilled night air.
Then the flag goes down, and they leap forward.
Kai tears forward with all his cocksure attitude and concentrated ferocity, just like he expected. This is where they let go, this is where they forget everything but the dizzying speed and the rush of adrenaline in their veins, the road stretching ahead endlessly for those very brief seconds of nothingness. Out of time, out of space.
They are seconds away from the finish line when Kyungsoo realizes Kai has no intention of stopping. He laughs, the sound bubbling up from his chest when he keeps pressing down on the gas, and the two of them fly past the bewildered faces of onlookers on the two sides of the track.
They drive side by side, Kyungsoo calmly keeping up with the younger man, their cars tearing through the night down the highway and then going all the way down to Han River. They're not looking at each other, but it seems like they both know where they're going. The twin Genesis's skid to a stop down a deserted spot on the Han River bank. Kai kicks the door open and jumps out of his car. Kyungsoo is barely stepping out of the driver's seat when Kai surges up to him, grabbing his arm and pulling him out. He barely gets a word in before Kai yanks open the back door of the black Genesis and shoves him inside again, his body sprawling all over the backseat. Then Kai climbs in after him, lithe body pressing flush against his. Kai has his arms braced on both sides of his head, and Kyungsoo can't look away even if he wants to.
"So it's been a little over one week, have you changed your mind?" Kai is not smiling, not really, his eyes dark and oddly solemn in the enclosed space of the car.
"What?" He croaks out, the heat making his head dizzy. He can't even form a half-coherent thought at the moment. Then Kai leans down, and they're kissing, hot lips brushing against each other over and over, then a hint of wet tongue, and there's Kai licking between his lips, parting them open. Kyungsoo gasps brokenly when Kai's tongue touches his own. They're licking deep into each other's mouth, hot and wet and filthy, the sounds of their kissing and panting breath loud and obscene in the back of the car. Kai rolls his hips down, and Kyungsoo almost chokes, throwing his head back.
Kai's fingers flick open the buttons of his pants, and before long, they're wrapping around his hot hard cock, stroking and pulling with a solid touch. Kai's thumb flicks over the head of his cock with every stroke, making his hips jerk and writhe. When he looks up, Kai is breathing hard over him, drops of sweat slowly rolling down his jaw line, dipping into the edge of his collarbone hidden underneath his shirt. Kyungsoo groans, reaching out to touch the hot dark skin, but Kai suddenly pulls away, yanking his pants down his thighs and pushing his legs up.
Kyungsoo bites down hard on his knuckles when Kai shuffles down and take the head of his cock into his mouth. Kai's tongue is flicking against the slit over and over, full swollen lips wrapped hot and wet around his cock, and Kyungsoo can't stop shaking, his hands reaching down to claw against the leather seats. His hips can't help twitching up, and Kai graciously, slowly takes everything in, lips pulled tight around the hardness of his cock. It's slow and torturous and absolutely maddening. Kyungsoo comes in spurts into that sinful mouth when he realizes Kai is jerking himself off while sucking him, hand shoved down the open fly of his pants.
He groans loudly when he realizes Kai swallows it all down, tongue licking and smearing come across red swollen lips while he brings himself to completion, coming all over the black leather seats.
"Fuck," Kai huffs out a breathless laugh when he half-collapses over Kyungsoo's legs, "I guess your car just can't stay pristine tonight after all."
Ten minutes later, they're still lying all over each other in the backseat, and Kyungsoo is finding it increasingly hard to push Kai off his legs, their bodies languid and sated after the release. His fingers unconsciously curl around the dark locks of Kai's hair, stroking and petting. It's quiet in the dead of night, nothing else but their rhythmic breathing inside this enclosed space. It's oddly calming, he thinks, after all that frenzy and adrenaline rush.
"Tell me about your most memorable crash."
Kai is silent for a long while, his fingers tracing lines around Kyungsoo's wrist. He looks contemplative. "It was... well, it was my second time. I was really angry that night over some stupid shit... got into an argument with my two closest friends. They didn't exactly lie to me, but- well, in retrospect it didn't matter at all, but I was really mad at everything then. So I went out, and I really wasn't sure, I'd only done it once before, but I thought, why the hell not? So I drove up a mountain. That was the most satisfying crash ever in my life. It was a little like flying, that moment before the crash. It was the longest jump, too. Five whole months."
"Were you-" Kyungsoo starts, then stops himself. "So that's how you do heartbreak."
Kai scoffs against his hips. "What? I don't think I even know what heartbreak means."
"You should look it up in the dictionary." Kyungsoo's voice is dry. "For someone who claims ignorance of feelings, you sure are dramatic about expressing them. You drove a car off a cliff because of them."
"Only to resurface five months later, good as new. And not even five minutes had passed for me."
"But you weren't sure at the time."
"...No, I was not."
"It was fifty-fifty, wasn't it? You could have either come out of it good as new a few months later, or you could have died, crushed under the metal wreckage at the bottom of that cliff. What if the universe was split into two at that moment, and there's a universe in which you died after that crash running in parallel with this universe we're in right now?"
"So what? It's not like the stuff in that other alternate universe matters to me here. I'm still alive." Kai's heartbeat strong against his thigh.
"What if someday it's the you in this universe the one who dies in the crash?"
"You're such a ray of sunshine today, Kyungsoo. Anyway, it wouldn't matter either, because I'd be dead and there would be another me living happily and obliviously in yet another alternate universe." Kai shifts up, looking down at him. "...That's a lot of alternate universes."
"The tree-branch theory of the universe. Every person's worldline splits off into trillions of branches with every decision we make. Maybe we don't really travel through time, we just travel between alternate universes. Maybe in some alternate universe we are all K-pop idols in the same group with Chanyeol, Suho, Baekhyun, or even Sehun. Who knows?"
"I really did audition for SM Entertainment when I was a kid. Maybe that alternate universe has some basis after all. What if, right?"
"It didn't work out?"
"It didn't work out. Trainee life is difficult, you know? All that time and effort year after year, not knowing whether you'll ever make it. Even as a kid, I was too impatient to wait around."
"I joined a lot of singing competitions when I was in school, too. But I guess I realized singing wouldn't actually make a practical career or make that much money. It's all about the fame game. I'm good without the fame. I'm okay with this universe I'm in right now. Gangnam apartment suite, skyscraper office, slick black BMW." He waves towards the glittery skyline outside of the car window.
"Drag racing at night. Time traveling by car crashes."
"Time traveling by car crashes. But imagine that, us as singing dancing national idols, all BB cream and sequin stage outfits. Maybe we'd even get stuck with some ridiculous aliens from outerspace concept."
"I feel better about this universe already." Kai grins, running a hand through his hair. Kai looks like he could really be a celebrity, Kyungsoo thinks. All mysterious charm and intense charisma, smooth dark skin splayed across magazine spreads, oozing sensuality and seduction. "Maybe there really is just one reality though. Say, there are two possible parallel outcomes, but maybe our decision makes them collapse into one reality. Apparently you can change this timeline over and over, but the final revision is what counts. You writing your own reality. Maybe you even end up rewriting someone else' reality."
"I'm okay with this theory, too. But you know what, I don't want to change other people's lives. I don't want to think about the possible paradoxes. I still think time travel is a dangerous thing. Do you think it's just me who can do this? Do you think there are other people who can travel in time like us? What if we're all revising our own history? What do we call them - Car Crashers?"
"Crashers has a nice ring to it. I don't know, I guess there must be. You're the first one I meet though. It must be fate." Kai grins, taking Kyungsoo's hand in his, fingers deftly tracing the lines in his palm. "Sometimes I think it must be nice, knowing the future before it happens."
"I don't know the future, not really. Time is a curious thing. The definitions of past, present, and future get a little muddy for us." Maybe our life is just a series of events on a line, and all our past, present, and future exist at the same time on this line. "What you call the future is already a past for me. Something that has already happened. Yet I use it in my present to create changes in new events, creating a new future, and that previous version of the 'future' is not quite all true anymore. Maybe we can't use past, present, and future to describe our life anymore."
Maybe there's no past, present, or future. There is no passage of time. Just us jumping from one point to another in a growing block universe.
"Maybe what we use to measure time - clocks, calendars - is just as arbitrary as using a ruler to measure space. How much space is in a meter? How much time is in an hour? Whose frame of reference are we talking about? Some people use feet instead of meters, we use something else to measure our time instead of hours or days. Your and my timeline started roughly one year apart, yet here we are, and much more time has passed for me than it has for you."
"Maybe we just don't measure our time at all. Maybe we're outside of time." Kai is still holding his hands, fingers curling warm around his. "We could be outside of time together."
-
He fucks Kyungsoo on top of a cherry red Chevy Corvette the next night, Kyungsoo sprawled face-down across the shiny hood of the car. Kyungsoo helplessly tries to claw and grasp at something, but there's nothing he can do as Kai fucks into him, pushing him up the smooth surface of the car with every thrust, nothing he can do but mouth soundless cries and gasping breaths against the metal frame with red swollen lips. His grip on Kyungsoo's hips tightens with every in-out stroke, and Kyungsoo comes all over the red hood of the car when Kai bites down on his shoulder, tender thighs trembling against metal, buttocks still weakly pushing against his cock.
They fuck in the back of Mercedes and Porsche, against Maybach and Maserati, metal frame digging bruises into skin. There's also that one time he shoves Kyungsoo against the passenger seat of a large racing green Jaguar, the space in front large enough for him to climb over Kyungsoo's thighs and let Kyungsoo's cock slide inside him, the slide in smooth and unbearably hot. They can't stop kissing as he bounces on in Kyungsoo's lap, his thighs flexing and trembling on both sides of Kyungsoo's hips, Kyungsoo's sweet mouth open in breathless gasps.
He thinks this must be what it feels like to be really getting out of control.
They always drive the car to its death afterwards, silently getting out of the car after he leaves the key in the ignition lock, watching it go down over a mountain or skyway.
"Sometimes i think we appreciate the crash more than its actual purpose. This is what we leave behind, a wreckage of metal rubber glass. Trading it for time. How dramatic."
Sometimes Kyungsoo drives them back to the city in his Genesis, sometimes they walk.
"When did you start the time traveling by car crashes?"
"A long time ago. Whose frame of reference are you looking at?" Kyungsoo laughs when Kai shoves him. "Yeah, okay, going by normal people's calendar, I'd say... six years ago?"
"But how did it happen? You don't just randomly decide to crash a car one day and see if you come out of it alive a few months later. ...Ago?"
"Yeah, no. There was an accident. I was driving back to Seoul one night when some Hyundai coming from the opposite direction crashed into me in the middle of the highway. Head-on collision. I remember feeling paralysed with numb terror with the headlights blinding in my face. I even felt the impact, metal crushing together. When I opened my eyes again, I was lying on the side of the road, only it was one week earlier than I remembered, and I was perfectly fine. Physically. I thought I was supposed to stop the accident, but then I really thought about it... if I saved my body double from the car accident, what would become of me in that timeline? Would I cease to exist? Would I be stuck there with a body double forever? I was scared, so eventually I did nothing. It turned out all right. My body double got into the accident, he got sent away to a previous point in time, and I was once again the only Kyungsoo around."
Kai goes quiet for a long moment. "What was the other car?"
"Hm? Some old Hyundai. Black, I think?" Kyungsoo pauses. "Now that I remember... they never found any body in that car crash. Not mine, of course. But not the other driver either. I don't remember reading about him, dead or alive."
"I think that other driver was me."
"Oh."
"That makes sense, doesn't it? That... that was my first time, too. It was an accident. I'd been drinking - stupid young people doing stupid shit. When I woke up, it was one week later. No one else noticed I'd just disappeared for a week, but I thought it was strange."
"I suppose... that makes sense. Then what, you just started crashing to see if it would work again?"
"No... I thought maybe it was a one-off... some fluke. Some crazy time hole. I don't know. I wasn't sure until a year or so later. That second time... I told you, I crashed because I wanted to. Being angry, not thinking straight, you know? So I thought, why not? Maybe I'd be able to skip forward and leave all that shit behind, or worst case scenario: I'd die and no longer give a damn either." He closes his eyes briefly. "So yeah, I drove my car off a cliff and disappeared for five months straight. Everyone noticed that time. After that, I knew. Some acquaintance hooked me up with the car job, and I was good to go."
Kyungsoo is silent for a long moment. "I only started doing it after I read the news articles. Series of car crashes in remote locations around Seoul, no dead body ever found. It was just a small pointless article, but something kept pulling me back to it. I thought - maybe. That was you, wasn't it?"
"Yeah. Probably."
First time is an accident. Second time is an experiment. Third time is addiction.
-
>>
exo // kai/kyungsoo (tiny sehun/lu han/kai) // nc-17 // 22,000 words
[street race AU... or is it.] There are three tracks to Do Kyungsoo's life. Track A, trader at an investment bank. Track B, new recruit of a race crew called EXO. Track C... track C involves someone named Kai and a whole lot of bad decisions.
So apparently Kyungsoo is the kind of person who travels backwards in time, and he is the kind of person who travels forward. It takes Kai a while to draw a proper timeline in his head. "I always thought there was just one kind of time travel, huh. I never expected there would be a second type."
"I never expected there would be any type of time travel at all." Kyungsoo rolls his eyes. Kyungsoo draws him a chart on the back of some grocery receipt he dug out from his wallet. Kyungsoo is that kind of person who saves stacks of receipts in his wallet, everything sorted by stores and cards. He draws a chart with a piece of pencil - lines, loops, and sharp angles.
"The crash is the focal point. The loop always starts with a car crash. Doesn't matter if you crash into a concrete building or do a suicide dive with the car off the side of a mountain, as long as it's a fatal crash." Kyungsoo taps the pencil against the steering wheel of the BMW. They are huddled together under the warm orange interior light of the car, the top of the convert already pulled up. Kyungsoo is almost splayed against his side in an attempt to show the tiny chart to him.
"Same here," Kai nods, reaching out an arm to wrap around Kyungsoo's shoulders, pulling him closer. Kyungsoo barely reacts.
"Okay, so let's start from the point of the crash. When I crash a car, it sends me backwards in time to a point that's, well, about a week or so before my original point in time. A few days, a week, two weeks, it varies. I've never figured out how that works. During this period, from this point I got sent to - let's call it point A, to the point I originated from - let's call it point B... there are two versions of me." Kyungsoo furiously circles the two big dots A and B, then drawing two little stick figures. "Kyungsoo Prime who just got sent back in time, and Kyungsoo Double who's living normally in his normal timeline. Kyungsoo Prime has a second chance to change anything he wants during this period, because he has existing knowledge of the A-B period. Then when point B approaches again, Kyungsoo Double crashes the car and gets sent away," an arrow loops the Kyungsoo Double stick figure back to point A, "and Kyungsoo Prime continues to live as the only Kyungsoo in the timeline once again."
Kai stares at the tiny graph with little loops and squiggly stick figures. "Your drawing is horrible. A five-year-old child could probably do better." Kyungsoo reaches back to slap his shoulders. Kai laughs, then settles down to point at the black dot titled B in the graph. "But what if something happens and Kyungsoo Double doesn't crash the car so he doesn't get sent away? Does Kyungsoo Prime cease to exist?"
"...That has never happened before, and I don't want to see if it could happen. I plan these loops out. I always follow my plans." Kyungsoo's thick eyebrows furrow. Kai believes him, too.
"But Kyungsoo Prime changes things in the new timeline. Anything could happen."
"Kyungsoo Prime only changes small, unrelated things that have no consequences on the crash whatsoever." Kyungsoo intones, looking as serious as he's ever been. Kai feels the urge to poke him in the cheeks to make him smile, but his fingers only hover somewhere above Kyungsoo's head.
"Are you in a loop right now?"
"I'm only here hanging out with you because I'm in a loop right now." Kyungsoo throws him a quick smirk, pushing himself a little away from Kai as he's done explaining his chart.
"Am I talking to Kyungsoo Prime or Kyungsoo Double here?"
"Kyungsoo Double."
"So there's a Kyungsoo Prime running around somewhere in this city right now?" Kai grins. The thought of two Kyungsoo being in the same place at the same time is... intriguing.
"He's not running around. He's in my- our office right now, putting his knowledge of the period A-B into use." Kyungsoo slaps him in the shoulders again, as if he could read Kai's thoughts.
"So what do you do in a loop? Correct mistakes you made the first time around? Buy lottery tickets?"
"That, or taking advantage of opportunities. That's where my job comes in. Trading stocks, drafting deals. I accumulate these knowledge, then crash and go back in time to use them for my job. Or for my private account."
"So why exactly are you here hanging out with me if you have stock markets and trading contracts to deal with?"
"Kyungsoo Prime takes over my life the moment he appears in the loop. He's trader-at-an-investment-bank Kyungsoo, he lives in a two-bedroom apartment suite somewhere in Gangnam, he drives a BMW to work in the morning, he has hasty lunch dates on the glass towers overlooking the Han river in Yeouido. Meanwhile I get a vacation away from work to do whatever I want, just hanging around in a small private room somewhere on the other side of the city, checking on stock prices and market fluctuations, storing all this information until the time comes and I go out, pick up some cheap old car and crash it, getting sent back to a previous point in time to become Kyungsoo Prime and go back to work, back to my glass and steel office in Yeouido, utilising all this information from the future."
"Making money."
"Making big profit. Taking opportunities I couldn't have foreseen the first time around. Anticipating reactions and negotiating deals. Avoiding disasters." Of course Kyungsoo would figure out how to make money from time travel. Changing his own past. Carefully planning his own presence. Calculating his own future. Taking advantage of the predicted external factors. Except the predictions are things that have already happened... at some point in the future. "I just make small changes, going about my job with more... informed decisions. Just enough to get that next bonus. Or a promotion. Or a little extra something for my private account. It's all just good planning."
"So while you're on vacation, leaving Kyungsoo Prime to bring in the money for your bank account, you decide you might as well take up street racing as a hobby. Might as well join a race crew and hang out with a bunch of crazy guys at some random garage." His fingers are itching for a smoke, but Kyungsoo doesn't even let Kai touch his pack around him.
"Something like that. A little bit of fun, a little bit of thrill, why not? I like the speed and the adrenaline rush. This is not something investment-banker Kyungsoo would have a chance to do outside of the loop." Kyungsoo shrugs, smirking, his full lips tilted up, showing off a hint of white teeth. A childish-looking kind of smile. Kai has always thought Kyungsoo probably looks a lot younger than his age.
"It's funny, you know, how they say time is money. You really do make money out of time. Holy shit, your timeline is a mess." Kai laughs, smoothly taking the piece of receipt from under Kyungsoo's hand, fingers deliberately dragging against the other man's palm. Kyungsoo has small, short fingers, nails neatly trimmed. A childish-looking kind of hands.
"Not really, I told you, I plan these things out."
"Well, it's certainly more of a headache than mine." Kai grabs the pencil from Kyungsoo's grasp, drawing a quick straight line under Kyungsoo's squiggly chart, then intermittent little half-moon curves over that line.
"So you crash and go to the future."
"Yep, I crash, and when I wake up, it's one week later. Two weeks later. A month later. Four months later. It varies. I guess it depends on the force of the impact, but I'm not sure. I'm not exactly a physicist." He writes his name next to the chart of his own timeline.
"You just jump ahead. Your drawing is as horrible as mine. I can't even read your handwriting."
"Shut up, my line is straighter than yours. I press the fast forward button on my own life a lot. Skip, skip, skip. The presence get boring fast, why stay and wait? The unknown future should be more exciting. I have no plans, I don't plan anything. I just throw myself headfirst into the future. Very simple, very straightforward."
"That's... unsettling."
"Says you, Mr. Obsessive Compulsive Planner. I'd go crazy if I had to go about my life in loops, living certain points in the past over and over." He has never been good at planning. Kai contemplates hiring Kyungsoo to plan his life for him, then quickly rejects the idea.
"It gets easier. It makes life easier the second time."
They send the BMW convert to its death off a skyway later that evening. Kai leaves the key in the ignition lock and they watch it surge in the air before succumbing to gravity and crashing to the asphalt below together. No one jumps backwards or forwards in time that night. Kyungsoo asks him to come to a BBQ party as the cacophony of crashing metal and glass dies down.
Apparently there's a BBQ party at Suho's place on Saturday. Everyone and their aunt is invited, Kyungsoo says. Kai thinks it's a little ironic that his invitation has to be extended through Kyungsoo. He says yes anyway.
"I think this is the first time in... a very long while that the twelve of us can be all together in the same place at the same time!" Suho says, excitement clear in his voice as he makes them do the first cheer over a long table full of meat and salad in the backyard of his house. It takes all of them a long while to settle down to actually hear what Suho says, everyone squabbling and shouting over each other, arguing over food drinks car engines and all sorts of irrelevant things. Kyungsoo, Yixing, and Kris stand in a far corner to barbecue the meat. It's only until Kris finally puts down his grill tongs and frowns over the heads of the squabbling crowd that everyone settles down to their place.
Kyungsoo makes the first round of wraps for everyone, calmly distributing the food like a true mother duck. He stays close to Kyungsoo for the rest of the meal, until everyone moves on from demolishing the towers of food to other fun activities, such as drenching the host with the garden hose. It's been a while since he last hung out with the guys, and Kai finds himself laughing and joking around with everyone more than he thought he would. It's easy to fall back into the good old times, his stealing Yixing's food when he isn't looking, running around knocking paper cups out of Jongdae's hands for fun, or fanboying over the latest Motor Show with Kris and Chanyeol.
It still takes a lot out of him though. The noisy crowd gets draining after a while, and he quietly wanders off towards a deserted corner, watching the commotion from afar. He's just sitting on the steps to the main house like that, blank-faced and sipping on a beer, when someone nudges him on the back. When he looks up, it isn't Kyungsoo, but Lu Han hovering over him. Lu Han nudges him over again, and settles down next to him on the steps. He glances at the sharp lines of Lu Han's face from around the outline of his bottle. They haven't seen each other up close like this for... a long while. Lu Han looks... more gaunt, more grown-up. There's still that baby face, but he also looks more adult-like - the way he moves, his mannerisms. The difference is suddenly startling to Kai.
"I'm glad you came. You haven't been around much." Lu Han smiles, holding out his own beer for an easy cheer. "Well, at least not until lately. I've been seeing more of you after the Incheon track a few months back. After you nearly rammed my Skyline off the road."
"Yeah, sorry about that I guess." He chuckles, shifting a little until Lu Han's arm doesn't brush against his anymore.
"Will you stay for long this time? Sehun still worries about you. Where you disappear off to for months at a time."
"I'm not a kid anymore, Lu Han." He closes his eyes briefly. He could still see Sehun surreptitiously staring at them from afar. "And Sehun could quit using you as the messenger any time now. He could talk to me if he wanted to. I'm not mad at him. Or you. Or anyone, really. It's been a long time."
Lu Han is quiet for a while. "We were really worried, that first time you disappeared. Five months, Kai. Five months of no news, no message, no goodbye, nothing. They found your car a broken wreck down the side of a mountain, the driver's side mashed in. No body in the area. We looked for you all over all the hospitals in the city. By the end of the third month, everyone was prepared for the worst. Sehun stopped talking to me for weeks. He felt guilty. I did, too."
"It was no one's fault."
"You stormed out on us that night, Kai. You were angry. I could have handled that better. I could have stopped you."
"For what? I just went away and came back five months later, still perfectly fine. I just needed some time to myself. I could have told you, yeah, but like you said, I was mad. I was young and stupid. Young people do stupid shit all the time."
"It's impossible for me not to feel like I'm the one who keeps you away from everyone else."
"Lu Han," he sighs, downing the rest of his beer, "it's no one's fault that Sehun and you are meant to be or all that cheesy crap. I was young and stupid, but I got over it. I've got my own life now, I've got a job, I'm busy. These things happen, Lu Han. People drift apart. It's been a long time." He stands up, patting the other man on the shoulders. "Nice talking to you."
All of them come down together to the Sowon-gil track for the race that night, soaking up the party and the adrenaline. He hangs back with Jongdae and Suho, watching Kyungsoo, Kris, Chanyeol, Sehun, and the rest of the guys one by one rake in the money from the betting pools. It's a good night for all of them, everyone high on the steady hum of engines and the heavy summer heat. Kyungsoo's new Genesis does an excellent test run.
He says goodbye to everyone halfway through the night, waving and hugging. He ignores the way Kyungsoo's wide eyes stare at him, oddly solemn. Kai fondles his round cheeks, pushing them up in imitation of a smile, before climbing into a titanium silver Lexus LS and speeding off into the night. The race is good, but nothing is as satisfying as the familiar feeling of adrenaline rushing in his veins when he slams headfirst into the side of a tunnel at top speed, hearing the screeching sounds of breaking metal and glass and then-
Everything goes black.
He has probably come to expect the sight of Kai sitting on his doorstep like a lost poodle every once in a while. Kai smiles up at him from under his bangs when he unlocks the door. Kai looks tired, shadows dark under his eyes. There's crusted blood on the edge his upper lip, probably remnants of another nosebleed.
"How long has it been this time?" Kai trails after him into the kitchen, hovering over his shoulders as he puts down the grocery bag.
"I don't know, why don't you check yourself?" He shoves Kai towards the direction of the kitchen table where he left the morning newspapers.
"Hmm... nearly one whole month. That's a bit longer than I expected." Kai's fingers trace over the headlines.
"Do you really care about lost time?" Kyungsoo pulls out the small bag of rice cake and some large green onions, waving it in Kai's direction.
"Not really. There's nothing keeping me down around this place anyway. So what's for lunch? Is that spicy ddukbokki you're making?"
"You're here a lot. Start being useful and help with making the food." He has Kai on green onion chopping duty. Kai's knifework is terrible. The green onion turns out uneven and scraggly, but at least Kai is not bleeding over them.
"I see you've started buying more food for me. Hey, put more chili paste in. And more cheese on top of it later okay?" Kai nudges his shoulders, his body swaying against Kyungsoo's, brushing his back. The heat of his body is familiar. Kyungsoo rolls his eyes, but doesn't shrug off the intrusive presence.
"You would be the worst kind of backseat driver."
Kai smiles, his eyes light up, facial muscles pulling up, showing off white teeth. Kyungsoo thinks he's cute like this, the smile making him look young and naive. No trace of the half-smirk behind tinted car windows.
"How old are you?" He asks, "Your real age. You've been skipping months and years of your life, so you must be younger than what everyone else thinks, right?"
Kai's full lips purse, a finger reaching up to touch his bottom lip. "I don't know, I don't remember. I don't count the missing time." The years blur together after a while. Time starts to lose its meaning.
"What year were you born then?"
It takes Kai a while to answer him, eyebrows furrowed in concentration as he tries to remember. "1994. January, maybe? I remember I kept trying to tell the neighbour kids that they should call me hyung even if we were born in the same year. How old are you?"
"Early 1993. I'm definitely your hyung." He stirs the large pot of red hot ddukbokki, then dropping two packs of ramen in. Kai excitedly pokes them with a chopstick, swirling them around. He grabs a handful of the scraggly green onions and sprinkles them on top of the pot.
"I bet. And you've been repeating months and years of your life, right? So you have to add all that extra time on top of your original age. You're gonna be an old man before all your friends. Anyway, it depends on whose frame of reference we're looking at, doesn't it? Other people see us as 28, 29 only because that much time has passed for them. But for you, you're probably lived for like thirty-something years now, haven't you?" Kai is at least decent at table setting duty now. They bring the large pot to the middle of the table together.
"And you're probably a few years younger than everyone thinks you are. I don't know my real age, I don't count my looped time either." Kyungsoo dutifully spoons the rice cake and the soup into two small matching bowls for them. Kai brings two glasses of water to the table. Everything in double sets.
"The more the two of us travel in time, the further our age difference would be, funny that. Maybe when I keep skipping ahead, one day you'll be one of those obnoxious filthy rich middle-aged men who's going to hire me to crash your precious Ferrari Enzo." Kai hisses over a piping hot piece of rice cake, dropping it back into the bowl.
"Or maybe both of us are outside of the normal time stream and we don't age anymore. How would I know? People keep telling me I have an age-defying face." Kyungsoo shrugs, carefully blowing on his ramen. He pauses while holding up a big piece of rice cake, waiting for it to cool down. "Why don't you do it then? Why don't you just skip ahead until the end of time? Do you think you could do that? Yet you keep staying around here, around this point in time."
They go quiet for a while, busy slurping on their soup and noodles.
"I think you're not ready to let go of the people around you. You have a life here, don't you? If you kept skipping ahead and everyone you knew died, you wouldn't have a life anymore. You'd cease to exist in the stream. You'd be outside of time, isolated. No one to come back to. I think you hold on to your friends more than you know."
Kai hums around his chopsticks. His ankles brush against Kyungsoo's legs under the table.
They finish their meal and clean up. Kyungsoo is putting the last pot up to dry when Kai presses him against the kitchen counter and kisses him, full lips brushing against his, soft but insistent. His hands automatically come up to push at Kai's shoulders, but Kai is not budging, and he ends up grasping at the shirt on Kai's shoulders, fingers curling around lithe muscles. Kai pulls away for a brief moment, the two of them staring at each other. He opens his mouth to say something, but Kai is already leaning in again, his lips mouthing against the curve of Kyungsoo's mouth, a hint of tongue wet on his bottom lip. He shoves Kai away this time, the force making both of them stumble backwards.
"What?" Kai asks him, all dark eyes and hooded lids. His hands are brushing against Kyungsoo's hips, the grip loose but exploring. "You want this, don't you?" Kai's fingers brush against the front of his pants, and Kyungsoo bites down on his lip, closing his eyes. He belatedly shoves the hand away maybe a moment too late. "How long has it been for you? You're so sensitive..."
Kai's body is flush against his, the heat warm and familiar. His thigh nudges in between Kyungsoo, their difference in height make him rest his weight on Kai. Kyungsoo's thighs instinctively squeeze around Kai, the heat making his skin tingle underneath the fabric of his pants.
"You're always so tightly wound, so proper... The only time you let go is when you race. You keep every moment of your life so structured, so carefully planned, except for that crash. But that isn't enough, is it?" Kai is whispering against his skin, lips trailing the underline of his jaw. Kyungsoo feels the shivers running underneath his skin, his breath shaky and hot. This is not how it is supposed to go, but he can never seem to say no to Kai. "You need to lose control... a little." Kai's thigh nudges up under him, and Kyungsoo gasps, falling forward.
He shoves Kai away when deft fingers reach the button of his pants. Kai stares at him for a long moment before all the tension goes out of his body and his shoulders sag, his lips twitching up slightly. Kyungsoo turns away, sighing. He bites down on his bottom lip, eyes tracing the sinuous lines of Kai's neck going all the way up to his sharp jaw line. He wants to apologise, but what comes out of his mouth is, "You have that look."
"That look?" Kai turns to look at him again, but he's already shifted away, moving away from the kitchen counter. The hard marble top is still digging into Kyungsoo's palms.
"Like one of those people that everyone fucks on the side once or twice and then drops like hot potato. Everyone wants you, but no one thinks they can tie you down, so they just don't try."
"A trophy fuck. Huh." Kai tilts his head, his lips twitching up into a half smile. "I guess that does sound like me. So what, you don't want to fuck me?"
"Not really. Why should I?" Kyungsoo mutters, turning away to hide the half-hard tent in his pants. He could hear Kai chuckle from behind his back.
"Maybe you need a little time to think about that. What if I went out right now and crashed another car then re-appeared a few weeks later your time? Would you change your mind by then?"
"You're ridiculous." Kyungsoo glances back. He laughs, but the sound is awkward in the air.
"I'm an impatient person. I'm always skipping ahead."
"It sounds more like you're running away from the present."
It's the Sowon-gil track again. Kyungsoo has been going out to the midnight races more often with the guys lately, everyone telling him to get more practice in. It's good fun anyway, hanging out with them when he has the time, even when sometimes all he does all night is joining an impromptu rubik's cube solving class taught by Lu Han with Minseok and Baekhyun. Kyungsoo pretends his heart doesn't nearly jump out of his chest when he catches sight of Kai across the crowd. The younger man is walking towards them, no car in sight. If everyone else is surprised by Kai suddenly showing up at a race track out of nowhere, no one shows it. Kyungsoo's eyes trace after him when Kai walks over to Tao. They hug, Kai's hand pulling on Tao's neck, and Kyungsoo tries his best to pretend he isn't trying to overhear the conversation.
"What's the date?"
"September 3rd. Why?"
"Can I borrow your car tonight?" Kai is smiling now, his smile deceptively sweet and genuine as he looks straight into Tao's eyes. "Please? I promise it'll remain pristine and flawless by the end of the night." Tao doesn't stand a chance, even if he hesitate for a split second, probably thinking about all the damage Kai could do to a car. Kai gracefully takes the key from his hand anyway.
"Are you racing tonight?" Kris frowns at him, suspiciously eyeing the car key in Kai's hand. "And I mean actual racing, not being a cockblocking asshole for K team."
"Sure!" Kai grins, suddenly turning towards him. Kyungsoo's eyes widen when he catches his gaze. "Hey Kyungsoo, let's go!"
"Kai, you lay off Kyungsoo's Genesis this time! He actually needs it for Race War after all the work I've put into it, okay?" Kris shouts after them, and Kai just laughs, waving his hand high in the air as he makes his way to Tao's car.
"Yeah, yeah, I promise Kyungsoo's everything will remain pristine and flawless by the end of tonight, too!"
Kyungsoo fumbles with his key on the way to his own car. It's a drag race this time, only four cars - him, Kai, and two other drivers. His car is next to Kai's on the starting line, and Kai is smirking at him across their lowered car windows, his eyes dark and heated. It's already early autumn, but somehow Kyungsoo feels his face getting warmer even in the slightly chilled night air.
Then the flag goes down, and they leap forward.
Kai tears forward with all his cocksure attitude and concentrated ferocity, just like he expected. This is where they let go, this is where they forget everything but the dizzying speed and the rush of adrenaline in their veins, the road stretching ahead endlessly for those very brief seconds of nothingness. Out of time, out of space.
They are seconds away from the finish line when Kyungsoo realizes Kai has no intention of stopping. He laughs, the sound bubbling up from his chest when he keeps pressing down on the gas, and the two of them fly past the bewildered faces of onlookers on the two sides of the track.
They drive side by side, Kyungsoo calmly keeping up with the younger man, their cars tearing through the night down the highway and then going all the way down to Han River. They're not looking at each other, but it seems like they both know where they're going. The twin Genesis's skid to a stop down a deserted spot on the Han River bank. Kai kicks the door open and jumps out of his car. Kyungsoo is barely stepping out of the driver's seat when Kai surges up to him, grabbing his arm and pulling him out. He barely gets a word in before Kai yanks open the back door of the black Genesis and shoves him inside again, his body sprawling all over the backseat. Then Kai climbs in after him, lithe body pressing flush against his. Kai has his arms braced on both sides of his head, and Kyungsoo can't look away even if he wants to.
"So it's been a little over one week, have you changed your mind?" Kai is not smiling, not really, his eyes dark and oddly solemn in the enclosed space of the car.
"What?" He croaks out, the heat making his head dizzy. He can't even form a half-coherent thought at the moment. Then Kai leans down, and they're kissing, hot lips brushing against each other over and over, then a hint of wet tongue, and there's Kai licking between his lips, parting them open. Kyungsoo gasps brokenly when Kai's tongue touches his own. They're licking deep into each other's mouth, hot and wet and filthy, the sounds of their kissing and panting breath loud and obscene in the back of the car. Kai rolls his hips down, and Kyungsoo almost chokes, throwing his head back.
Kai's fingers flick open the buttons of his pants, and before long, they're wrapping around his hot hard cock, stroking and pulling with a solid touch. Kai's thumb flicks over the head of his cock with every stroke, making his hips jerk and writhe. When he looks up, Kai is breathing hard over him, drops of sweat slowly rolling down his jaw line, dipping into the edge of his collarbone hidden underneath his shirt. Kyungsoo groans, reaching out to touch the hot dark skin, but Kai suddenly pulls away, yanking his pants down his thighs and pushing his legs up.
Kyungsoo bites down hard on his knuckles when Kai shuffles down and take the head of his cock into his mouth. Kai's tongue is flicking against the slit over and over, full swollen lips wrapped hot and wet around his cock, and Kyungsoo can't stop shaking, his hands reaching down to claw against the leather seats. His hips can't help twitching up, and Kai graciously, slowly takes everything in, lips pulled tight around the hardness of his cock. It's slow and torturous and absolutely maddening. Kyungsoo comes in spurts into that sinful mouth when he realizes Kai is jerking himself off while sucking him, hand shoved down the open fly of his pants.
He groans loudly when he realizes Kai swallows it all down, tongue licking and smearing come across red swollen lips while he brings himself to completion, coming all over the black leather seats.
"Fuck," Kai huffs out a breathless laugh when he half-collapses over Kyungsoo's legs, "I guess your car just can't stay pristine tonight after all."
Ten minutes later, they're still lying all over each other in the backseat, and Kyungsoo is finding it increasingly hard to push Kai off his legs, their bodies languid and sated after the release. His fingers unconsciously curl around the dark locks of Kai's hair, stroking and petting. It's quiet in the dead of night, nothing else but their rhythmic breathing inside this enclosed space. It's oddly calming, he thinks, after all that frenzy and adrenaline rush.
"Tell me about your most memorable crash."
Kai is silent for a long while, his fingers tracing lines around Kyungsoo's wrist. He looks contemplative. "It was... well, it was my second time. I was really angry that night over some stupid shit... got into an argument with my two closest friends. They didn't exactly lie to me, but- well, in retrospect it didn't matter at all, but I was really mad at everything then. So I went out, and I really wasn't sure, I'd only done it once before, but I thought, why the hell not? So I drove up a mountain. That was the most satisfying crash ever in my life. It was a little like flying, that moment before the crash. It was the longest jump, too. Five whole months."
"Were you-" Kyungsoo starts, then stops himself. "So that's how you do heartbreak."
Kai scoffs against his hips. "What? I don't think I even know what heartbreak means."
"You should look it up in the dictionary." Kyungsoo's voice is dry. "For someone who claims ignorance of feelings, you sure are dramatic about expressing them. You drove a car off a cliff because of them."
"Only to resurface five months later, good as new. And not even five minutes had passed for me."
"But you weren't sure at the time."
"...No, I was not."
"It was fifty-fifty, wasn't it? You could have either come out of it good as new a few months later, or you could have died, crushed under the metal wreckage at the bottom of that cliff. What if the universe was split into two at that moment, and there's a universe in which you died after that crash running in parallel with this universe we're in right now?"
"So what? It's not like the stuff in that other alternate universe matters to me here. I'm still alive." Kai's heartbeat strong against his thigh.
"What if someday it's the you in this universe the one who dies in the crash?"
"You're such a ray of sunshine today, Kyungsoo. Anyway, it wouldn't matter either, because I'd be dead and there would be another me living happily and obliviously in yet another alternate universe." Kai shifts up, looking down at him. "...That's a lot of alternate universes."
"The tree-branch theory of the universe. Every person's worldline splits off into trillions of branches with every decision we make. Maybe we don't really travel through time, we just travel between alternate universes. Maybe in some alternate universe we are all K-pop idols in the same group with Chanyeol, Suho, Baekhyun, or even Sehun. Who knows?"
"I really did audition for SM Entertainment when I was a kid. Maybe that alternate universe has some basis after all. What if, right?"
"It didn't work out?"
"It didn't work out. Trainee life is difficult, you know? All that time and effort year after year, not knowing whether you'll ever make it. Even as a kid, I was too impatient to wait around."
"I joined a lot of singing competitions when I was in school, too. But I guess I realized singing wouldn't actually make a practical career or make that much money. It's all about the fame game. I'm good without the fame. I'm okay with this universe I'm in right now. Gangnam apartment suite, skyscraper office, slick black BMW." He waves towards the glittery skyline outside of the car window.
"Drag racing at night. Time traveling by car crashes."
"Time traveling by car crashes. But imagine that, us as singing dancing national idols, all BB cream and sequin stage outfits. Maybe we'd even get stuck with some ridiculous aliens from outerspace concept."
"I feel better about this universe already." Kai grins, running a hand through his hair. Kai looks like he could really be a celebrity, Kyungsoo thinks. All mysterious charm and intense charisma, smooth dark skin splayed across magazine spreads, oozing sensuality and seduction. "Maybe there really is just one reality though. Say, there are two possible parallel outcomes, but maybe our decision makes them collapse into one reality. Apparently you can change this timeline over and over, but the final revision is what counts. You writing your own reality. Maybe you even end up rewriting someone else' reality."
"I'm okay with this theory, too. But you know what, I don't want to change other people's lives. I don't want to think about the possible paradoxes. I still think time travel is a dangerous thing. Do you think it's just me who can do this? Do you think there are other people who can travel in time like us? What if we're all revising our own history? What do we call them - Car Crashers?"
"Crashers has a nice ring to it. I don't know, I guess there must be. You're the first one I meet though. It must be fate." Kai grins, taking Kyungsoo's hand in his, fingers deftly tracing the lines in his palm. "Sometimes I think it must be nice, knowing the future before it happens."
"I don't know the future, not really. Time is a curious thing. The definitions of past, present, and future get a little muddy for us." Maybe our life is just a series of events on a line, and all our past, present, and future exist at the same time on this line. "What you call the future is already a past for me. Something that has already happened. Yet I use it in my present to create changes in new events, creating a new future, and that previous version of the 'future' is not quite all true anymore. Maybe we can't use past, present, and future to describe our life anymore."
Maybe there's no past, present, or future. There is no passage of time. Just us jumping from one point to another in a growing block universe.
"Maybe what we use to measure time - clocks, calendars - is just as arbitrary as using a ruler to measure space. How much space is in a meter? How much time is in an hour? Whose frame of reference are we talking about? Some people use feet instead of meters, we use something else to measure our time instead of hours or days. Your and my timeline started roughly one year apart, yet here we are, and much more time has passed for me than it has for you."
"Maybe we just don't measure our time at all. Maybe we're outside of time." Kai is still holding his hands, fingers curling warm around his. "We could be outside of time together."
He fucks Kyungsoo on top of a cherry red Chevy Corvette the next night, Kyungsoo sprawled face-down across the shiny hood of the car. Kyungsoo helplessly tries to claw and grasp at something, but there's nothing he can do as Kai fucks into him, pushing him up the smooth surface of the car with every thrust, nothing he can do but mouth soundless cries and gasping breaths against the metal frame with red swollen lips. His grip on Kyungsoo's hips tightens with every in-out stroke, and Kyungsoo comes all over the red hood of the car when Kai bites down on his shoulder, tender thighs trembling against metal, buttocks still weakly pushing against his cock.
They fuck in the back of Mercedes and Porsche, against Maybach and Maserati, metal frame digging bruises into skin. There's also that one time he shoves Kyungsoo against the passenger seat of a large racing green Jaguar, the space in front large enough for him to climb over Kyungsoo's thighs and let Kyungsoo's cock slide inside him, the slide in smooth and unbearably hot. They can't stop kissing as he bounces on in Kyungsoo's lap, his thighs flexing and trembling on both sides of Kyungsoo's hips, Kyungsoo's sweet mouth open in breathless gasps.
He thinks this must be what it feels like to be really getting out of control.
They always drive the car to its death afterwards, silently getting out of the car after he leaves the key in the ignition lock, watching it go down over a mountain or skyway.
"Sometimes i think we appreciate the crash more than its actual purpose. This is what we leave behind, a wreckage of metal rubber glass. Trading it for time. How dramatic."
Sometimes Kyungsoo drives them back to the city in his Genesis, sometimes they walk.
"When did you start the time traveling by car crashes?"
"A long time ago. Whose frame of reference are you looking at?" Kyungsoo laughs when Kai shoves him. "Yeah, okay, going by normal people's calendar, I'd say... six years ago?"
"But how did it happen? You don't just randomly decide to crash a car one day and see if you come out of it alive a few months later. ...Ago?"
"Yeah, no. There was an accident. I was driving back to Seoul one night when some Hyundai coming from the opposite direction crashed into me in the middle of the highway. Head-on collision. I remember feeling paralysed with numb terror with the headlights blinding in my face. I even felt the impact, metal crushing together. When I opened my eyes again, I was lying on the side of the road, only it was one week earlier than I remembered, and I was perfectly fine. Physically. I thought I was supposed to stop the accident, but then I really thought about it... if I saved my body double from the car accident, what would become of me in that timeline? Would I cease to exist? Would I be stuck there with a body double forever? I was scared, so eventually I did nothing. It turned out all right. My body double got into the accident, he got sent away to a previous point in time, and I was once again the only Kyungsoo around."
Kai goes quiet for a long moment. "What was the other car?"
"Hm? Some old Hyundai. Black, I think?" Kyungsoo pauses. "Now that I remember... they never found any body in that car crash. Not mine, of course. But not the other driver either. I don't remember reading about him, dead or alive."
"I think that other driver was me."
"Oh."
"That makes sense, doesn't it? That... that was my first time, too. It was an accident. I'd been drinking - stupid young people doing stupid shit. When I woke up, it was one week later. No one else noticed I'd just disappeared for a week, but I thought it was strange."
"I suppose... that makes sense. Then what, you just started crashing to see if it would work again?"
"No... I thought maybe it was a one-off... some fluke. Some crazy time hole. I don't know. I wasn't sure until a year or so later. That second time... I told you, I crashed because I wanted to. Being angry, not thinking straight, you know? So I thought, why not? Maybe I'd be able to skip forward and leave all that shit behind, or worst case scenario: I'd die and no longer give a damn either." He closes his eyes briefly. "So yeah, I drove my car off a cliff and disappeared for five months straight. Everyone noticed that time. After that, I knew. Some acquaintance hooked me up with the car job, and I was good to go."
Kyungsoo is silent for a long moment. "I only started doing it after I read the news articles. Series of car crashes in remote locations around Seoul, no dead body ever found. It was just a small pointless article, but something kept pulling me back to it. I thought - maybe. That was you, wasn't it?"
"Yeah. Probably."
First time is an accident. Second time is an experiment. Third time is addiction.
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