Antonym (ii)
Title: Antonym (ii)
Pairing: Minho/Onew
Rating: R (language and shenanigans)
Words: ~10,650 (combined)
Summary: Antonyms are sometimes complementary....
Notes: :Part One, but I don't plan on making this some sort of sweeping narrative fiction. I'm just going to keep writing until it's out of my head. Three shots? Here's to hoping!
Minho waited until he was down by the streetlamps to let how a howl of frustration. Okay, Jinki was right.
He’d been looking for…a way out of Blaire’s clutches for weeks now, but when she dropped the not so subtle hint about marriage, Minho froze. He had not one iota worth of courage to marry her, family obligation or not. Not one. It had been what, months since he met her? There’s was no way.
The answer to why he couldn’t be a sacrificial lamb even when he wasn’t all that particular about romance in the first place, came when he found himself wanting to stay in with Jinki, doing nothing, arguing maybe about silly things, or important things -it didn’t matter - than to be out on the town with her.
There’s was nothing wrong with Blaire. She was pretty…beautiful, smart and yeah, rich. He just didn’t…feel for her.
And because he had been angry he’d insulted Jinki. Jesus Christ, not just insulted him about something small but something large and all encompassing; his dreams. Diluted and hidden in a small dark bunker shoved under his bed, yeah, but still it was his dream and Minho had stomped all over it because of a temper tantrum. Damn it. Minho scrubbed his face and turned back towards their apartment.
He slid the key back, jingled it, and slid it forward. The door opened silently, and Minho could see Jinki still at the card table. His head was cushioned across his arm and his other lay across his lap. His plate still looked the same as it had when he left -he’d been watching, hoping that Jinki would like his cooking.
“Okay, let’s not make this difficult. I was wrong,” he said gruffly from the doorway. He stood there with his hands out and his head tilted like he expected Jinki to accept the apology with open arms.
He didn’t.
“Jinki?” He took a step closer. “Oh, come on! I said I was wrong. Not every day you get that out of me. I’ll even sit here while you use that stupid “I told you so voice,” just…c’mon. Please? Talk to me?”
More silence. Minho huffed and walked the rest of the way from the foyer and right up to the card table. “Jinki,” he said, pleadingly as he shook his shoulder. His arm fell from his lap limply and his head lolled to the side. He was unconscious.
Instant panic.
His first thought, which should have been to call for an ambulance, miraculously was Kim Kibum. It was a deadly twenty seconds before Kibum picked up, annoyed. “Look, I’m not your personal chef! If you want food, cook it your-“
“Jinki passed out!” Minho blurted out. “He passed out and his tongue is turning colors and his cheeks look patchy and red and ohymgod!” Minho danced a frantic jig in the living room with one hand carded in his hair. “Can you come over here and fix this? I’m good with paintbrushes, not defibrillator machines… is he going to die?! He can’t die, man. He can’t. ”
“Minho. Calm. Down.” Kibum was silent for a second before he answered. “He isn’t going to die. Did he eat anything that had almonds in it in the last few hours?”
“Almonds?” Minho wracked his brain thinking if he’d seen Jinki eating out of any packaging with the word Almond on it. Then it hit him. Almond oil. He’d used Almond oil in his cooking. “Yes, oil. Almond oil, I used it on the peppers.”
Kibum sounded slightly more alert, as if he were sloughing off layers of sleep. “His body reacts to his allergies in weird ways, like it shuts down to slow the allergen from spreading. He should have an epi-pen in his bathroom.” Kibum paused. “Oh, shit he doesn’t. We’re waiting for his next shipment to come in. Yes, hospital. NOW.”
When Jinki woke up, he heard the hiss of a ventilator as it pumped air in and out. He felt the nasal cannula strapped to his head and in one annoyed movement pulled it away from his face. As a testament to how many times he’d been in the hospital because of his food allergy, his hands flew to his face to see if it was as grotesquely swollen as last time. Oh, thank God. It wasn’t.
“As I was saying to Baekie downstairs, if you want to join the hospital band, all you have to do is audition and then pay the fee. Don’t look at me like that, we’re a band not a charity-oh, you’re awake!”
Jinki turned to the door as a male nurse in a pair of scrubs that might have had an arm hole ratio that was too small to handle the thick circumference of his stocky arms, walked in pushing a medicine cart. Behind him was a taller man in a white coat, probably a doctor, who was listening to him quick-fire off directions to the audition site. The doctor bowed, did a small fist bump and walked off in the opposite direction.
“How are you feeling, dude? Headache, nausea?” he said as the door closed. The nurse reached for his wrist, and at the same time held up his own to look down at a watch. “Heart rate’s not shitting itself anymore. You hungry? I can get some food up here in a flash. We wouldn’t want you to take this on an empty stomach.”
Jinki sat up in his bed and rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m actually feeling a lot better this time.” The nurse raised a brow at the ‘this time’ and Jinki ducked his head. “I have an affinity for falling victim to my allergies. You weren’t here last time I came.”
“Probably not, I work on the PEDS floor. The name’s Jonghyun,” he stated as he poured him a cup of water and held it out. “I’m only where because of special demand.”
“Demand?”
He gestured to the far corner with a nod of his head. Snuggled under a hospital blanket was Minho with his long lean legs folded awkwardly across a chair.
“He kind of ran in here with you slumped over his back and screamed enough threats in regards to your personal treatment that I’m surprised he’s not in jail. Just my luck I ran into him on my way up. Our friendship is probably how you got booked into the luxury suite in the middle of the night and not thrown across a gurney in a hallway unattended to.”
“He did that? For me?”
Jonghyun smirked. “He’s a sucker for a pretty face.”
“I heard that.”
“Oh, look! Sleeping beauty is awake. Time for me to go!” Jonghyun promptly backed the cart and himself out of the room. He stuck his head back in before the door shut. “I’ll have some food right up, dude. Don’t take that medicine until it’s here.”
Jinki watched Minho unfold himself from the chair, his joints complaining right along with him. “If this is the luxury suite then they should have gotten me that rollaway bed I asked for hours ago.”
Jinki looked down at his own wristwatch. It was four in the morning. He gasped. “Holy crap! We’ve been here since nine?”
“Nine twenty-nine to be exact. It took me a minute to run you to the hospital.”
“Why?” Jinki asked quietly. “I mean not the getting me to the hospital, well the running part but staying…getting me this room…”
Minho sighed. “It’s not that big of a deal.”
“It is,” Jinki insisted.
“No…not really.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Plus, Blaire paid for it.”
Jinki didn’t or better yet couldn’t explain the disappointment he felt. He also chose to ignore the pang of jealousy.
“You don’t have to do this.”
Minho rolled his eyes. “If you say that one more time, I’m going to drop you. On purpose. Hopefully on your head.”
Jinki sighed, exasperated. “You’re carrying me up a flight of stairs like I’m an invalid. I had an allergic reaction, I didn’t break my spine.”
“Shut up, we’re almost there.”
“Okay, so according to Kibum’s instructions…” Minho flipped the sheet from the front to the back. “Well there is only one thing on here. ‘Don’t kill him.’” Minho scoffed. “It wasn’t like I tried to kill you on purpose. I mean…I didn’t try to kill you….you’re not dead, so I’m off the hook”
Jinki rolled his eyes. “Before you get into that very long list, I want you to know I also have my own bed.”
“Shut up. How am I supposed to watch over you if you’re in your own room? Two birds, one dutiful stone. I can get some work done and I can also make sure I don’t kill you in the process.”
Jinki moved to sit up and get out of Minho’s bed. “No, really, I’m fine. Plus I have some work at the office that needs to be done.”
“Three days, the doctor said. Off your feet for three days, so, for the love of everything, you workaholic psychopath, rest.”
Minho kept to his word. For a man who didn’t watch much television to begin with, Minho moved the television into the bedroom, stockpiled DVD after DVD and shoved them down Jinki’s throat. Eight hours into the first day, Jinki had unplugged the player and hid it under the bed. Still he needed entertainment, so Minho brought in three heavy books from Jinki’s personal library in the living room and laid them by his bed. They spent the rest of the night in comfortable silence, Minho hunched over his easel and Jinki relaxed in the bed laughing softly over Beatrice and Benedict.
The second day brought Kibum and all of his salient glory. He peered past the front door -having made himself a key months ago- seeing Minho on the couch and Jinki just through the crack of Minho’s bedroom door. He waited until he was comfortably on the other side of the door before he cracked his mouth open and yelled, “RISE AND SHINE MY LOVELIES! Time to eat!”
Minho shot to sitting, looking around like someone was trying to race him to consciousness. Jinki groaned from the other side of the bedroom door. “Don’t you take that tone of groan with me young man! Get your debilitated ass out here and enjoy my delicious food.”
It took Kibum roughly an additional hour to prepare the food, which Jinki muttered “I could have been sleep.” To which Kibum replied, “I cook better when I’m in your company, Jinki-boo.”
Suddenly, there was a knock at the door. Minho looked at Jinki, Jinki looked at Minho, and Kibum looked at them both. “Whoever that is, I hope they aren’t hungry. I only prepared enough food for three.”
Minho shrugged. He stood and in big lumbering steps made his way to the door. Without it being all the way open, and without Minho being out of the way, Jonghyun shoved past him and made a beeline for the bedroom. He skid to a stop when he noticed everyone on the opposite side of the bedroom door.
“Family meeting?” he said with a raised brow. He took a look around. “What’s up with the blue tape? Do you guys know you have two living room sets?”
Jonghyun walked closer and took a seat at the bar in between Minho and Jinki. “Do you guys have anything to drink? Strong, preferably. Very strong. That was the longest shift of my -Hello.” Jonghyun peered over the counter and into the kitchen, seeing the strawberry blond man for the first time.
“Hello,” Kibum parroted slowly.
“And who is this,” he said to Minho while gazing at Kibum with a grin.
Minho shook his head. “No.”
”Oh, come on!” Minho shook his head and Jonghyun threw his hands up “But I haven’t even done anything! I’m just -“
“You’ve got enough soldiers in your gay glitter conglomerate, you’re not adding another,” Minho said as he eyed Kibum.
Kibum scoffed. “I’m hardly gay gay. I’ve experimented, yes. “Jonghyun took that with a leer. “But Jinki’s the only like…gay man here, unless you now count this guy.”
“He is?”
“Oh course he is.” Kibum spun slowly, his attention leaving the squash pancakes and over to Jonghyun and Minho. “What you didn’t…know?”
Kibum looked in between the two and then over to Jinki who was rubbing the bridge of his nose and wincing. Kibum dropped his spatula. “Jinki,” Kibum breathed, “I didn’t mean… Oh! My big fat stupid mouth!”
Jinki laughed weakly. “It’s okay Kibum. Really. Wasn’t long before the cat was out of the bag…closet…whatever.”
“So~.”
“So.”
Hours later, after Jonghyun had somehow managed to convinced Kibum to follow him down to the café for coffee, Jinki and Minho were back in his room, Jinki in the bed, covers up to his neck, and Minho staring at his video game like he’d lost the ability to blink.
“It’s not like I care or anything. It’s not a big deal. You know…the whole gay thing.”
Jinki scoffed. “Gee, thanks.”
“No I’m serious! I think it’s admirable, to own up to your identity like that. Even if you kept it a secret, you didn’t deny it either.”
“I don’t think it’s something you should deny. And I didn’t hide it, I just didn’t flaunt it.”
Minho nodded. “Sometimes denying is easier.” His voice dropped off and he looked at his hands.
“This is boring,” Minho said as he placed his controller down. He stood and walked to his easel by the large window facing the street. There was a small festival down on the street and the bright lights flashed in between the blinds. Smiling, he sat down and grabbed his paint board, smoothly squeezing out a dollop from a few paint tubes and began to mix. His spatula paused. “Jinki, do you know how to paint?”
“Of course, I don’t know how to paint,” Jinki deadpanned from the other side of the room. “Not really the artsy type, you know.”
“You’re more artistic that you want me to believe, Mozart.” He took the canvas that he was working on off the easel and slid it into a totefolio. From that same tote, he pulled out a thinner, blank canvas and set it up. “Come here.”
Jinki looked up and balked. “Oh, no. I’m not doing that.”
“If you don’t come here, I’m going to come over there and carry you.” When Jinki didn’t move, he stood to make good on his threat. Jinki slid from the bed.
“Alright, alright.’
He watched Jinki waddle towards him. He’d stopped wearing the matching blue pajamas awhile back. They were still in his bathroom, hanging up under his robe. The slippers stayed, little beige “LJ”’s across the deep navy surface. Jinki’s had taken to wearing Minho’s baggy sweats around the house. They looked good on him.
When Jinki was close enough, Minho patted his knee.
“I don’t think that’s -“
Minho deflated. “I have to show you how to do this and I can’t do it properly standing behind you.” He patted his knee again. “C’mon. I’m not going to bite you.”
Jinki sighed though his nose, his nostrils flaring as he jutted from foot to foot in indecision. Minho rolled his eyes, grabbed his wrist and yanked him down into his lap. “See, easy.”
“Yeah. Easy,“ Jinki muttered.
Minho started off with something fundamental, like trees. “Trees are an extension of the earth. When you think of them, you think of calm, serenity, strength, protection. You use those feelings, allowing them to flow from the edge of your brain to the edge of your fingertips, like this.” He wrapped his hand around
Jinki’s and dipped the brush into a mix of amber yellow and a dark brown. “Make sure your hand is angled just right and, “he guided Jinki’s hand into smoothly making the line of one tree. “Good. Try it again.”
Minho eased his guidance just a bit, giving Jinki more control over the brush. After he’d dipped his brush into more paint, his hand hovered over the canvas, nervous. Noticing this, Minho moved closer to his ear and whispered out his instructions. “Slowly, now. Let your wrist do all the work.” His hand snaked around Jinki’s middle in an effort to correct his posture. He felt Jinki suck in his stomach and his spine aligned automatically.
“It’s okay to mess up as long as you complete the line.” Smoothly, as Minho had done before, Jinki swept the brush down, finishing the other side of the tree. Before Minho could drop a congratulatory message, Jinki shot to standing, almost upending the paint board.
“Okay! So that was fun. Time for bed.” He turned on his heels, marched back to Minho’s bed and threw the covers over his head without staying another word.
Jinki counted under his breath until the light switch turned off. He decided then he would to hold his breath until he heard Minho walk out and close the door. Instead he felt the bed dip beside him. His breath seeped out between his lips.
Peeling the covers back, Jinki looked around the room like he was lost until his gaze centered on Minho. The taller man was pulling his socks off and shrugging out of his cardigan. When the cardigan slid down Minho’s arms, and Jinki got an extremely delicious view of Minho’s chiseled arms, he froze.
All systems panic! I repeat! All systems panic!
“W-www-what do you think you’re doing?”
Minho shrugged idly. “I got a damn crick in my neck from sleeping on that overpriced stuffed piece of shit last night. So I said, ‘It’s a big bed, we’re both grown adults. How hard can it be to share one bed for one night?”
If Jinki could punch his face off his face, he would. “I don’t think that’s a -“
“Stop thinking so much, then. Californian King bed. There is almost two bed’s width in between us. You won’t even notice I’m here.”
Jinki smiled weakly. The problem was, he would.
His sexuality wasn’t a new thing to him. It was something he’d known as a child, molded as a teenager, and now as a man, owned. It was an easy thing to accept because it was who he was. On rare occasions a woman tickled his fancy, but lust? That belong solely to the XY chromosome.
So in that light, whoever controlled all the things on this earth -the funny bastard- had decided to pair him up for seven months - eternity - with an artistic soulchild trapped in the body of a highly attractive person made up completely of XY chromosomes. How long had Jinki been attracted to him? Days, minutes, weeks, hours, seconds? Months? He would be lying to himself if he didn’t say from the first night he found a stranger in his bed.
Minho twisted awake, the bed feeling too hot and too cold at the same time. He pulled his hands over his face tiredly and tried to sit up, but ended up rolling onto his side. He was slowly losing his mind.
Kibum had dropped a bombshell on him this afternoon and although he had no right to believe that Jinki was automatically attracted to him because of his sexuality, he’d hoped somehow that he was. Which was, admittedly, stupid. Not when he was with Blaire, not when he had carved out a hundred feet moat around his heart with Blaire’s money. But shit. It was still there, that subtle pull of attraction that he’d picked up on at the hospital, with his chair pulled up to Jinki’s unconscious form and his hands wrapped around his. Staring down on him as he fought off whatever the hell was plaguing his body. He felt it and it scared him.
And then it wouldn’t go away. It manifested itself in extreme levels of overprotectiveness, watching over and doting over him like it would answer all of the questions he had about his feelings. Jinki was an enigma. Questions like where had he come from? How had he crept in, slowly, and changed Minho’s perception of everything? Blue became azure. Red became passion, yellow was golden.
He was the emotional muse that made Minho wake up and realize that, yes, you stupid son of a bitch, real attraction lies in real places, that it can be tangible and made of sparkly stuff that eats at your heart, replaces it with sunshine and makes you smile like an idiot whenever your roommate asks you how your day was over a glass of wine.
So as he gazed across this giant ocean of his feelings and white sheets, he found himself being pulled to Jinki like he was the center of gravity. He just wanted to be close. He didn’t understand it but he understood his body moving across the bed, silently, softly.
Jinki’s hair was splayed out over the pillow in a haphazard mess and Minho had never seen anything so beautiful. Jinki was his most beautiful when everything in his perfect world was slightly off kilter. When his hair was mussed, when he had food on his face, when he walked around wearing a burnt orange Stafford with the top button missing, a bleach stain under the collar, and a bright multicolored streak across the chest like it was still the best shirt in the world.
He lay still beside his sleeping form, gazing down as his chest rose and fell. His hand found its way there, counting Jinki’s inhalations and exhales, trying to find out if Jinki’s hand would fit into his.
Jinki snorted in his sleep, turned and tucked himself into Minho and Minho felt his breath leave in a whoosh. He didn’t have much time, he couldn’t. So he’d enjoy this, being this close to Jinki without feeling like he was shit for doing it.
Jinki was dreaming. This time his dream man wasn’t made up of ambiguous body parts and throwaway characteristics. He was made up of realistic body parts and very lovable characteristics, even the ones where he heated his socks in the oven because he liked his toes warm.
He was Minho.
They were sitting in a field, well it looked like a field, or maybe they were the field. Dreams were weird places.
Just like last time, a hand was wrapped around his waist and words were being whispered in his ear. The only difference was one of Minho’s hand had slinked into his pants. The other around his waist was to keep him close, and the words whispered in his ear were heated and feral. All were aimed at bringing him this much closer to climax.
His eyes shot open.
No…it couldn’t be.
There was no hand down his pants, but Minho had moved from the far edge of the bed and curled himself around Jinki. One hand was splayed across his back and the other cushioning his head. He looked up from the line of muscles exposed right above Minho’s tank, up his neck, past his chin, to find two brown eyes gazing down at him.
“What are you doing?
Minho licked his lips. “I don’t know.”
Jinki didn’t retreat, he didn’t come closer. He just froze.
“Is this okay?” Minho inched closer, his nose just shy of Jinki’s.” That I don’t know what I’m doing?”
“What’s gotten into you? I don’t understand.”
Minho inched closer. “That’s what I’m telling you. I don’t understand, either. I just…feel.”
Jinki gulped, just as he felt the heat of Minho’s breath on his lips. “This isn’t a game,” he whispered, his eyes dipping.
Minho moved, blurring the lines between sudden fascination and true attraction, bridging the gap between impossibilities and possibilities, with a flush of his lips against Jinki.
He pulled back. “You are not a game to me.”
Reality, weird place.
Pairing: Minho/Onew
Rating: R (language and shenanigans)
Words: ~10,650 (combined)
Summary: Antonyms are sometimes complementary....
Notes: :Part One, but I don't plan on making this some sort of sweeping narrative fiction. I'm just going to keep writing until it's out of my head. Three shots? Here's to hoping!
Minho waited until he was down by the streetlamps to let how a howl of frustration. Okay, Jinki was right.
He’d been looking for…a way out of Blaire’s clutches for weeks now, but when she dropped the not so subtle hint about marriage, Minho froze. He had not one iota worth of courage to marry her, family obligation or not. Not one. It had been what, months since he met her? There’s was no way.
The answer to why he couldn’t be a sacrificial lamb even when he wasn’t all that particular about romance in the first place, came when he found himself wanting to stay in with Jinki, doing nothing, arguing maybe about silly things, or important things -it didn’t matter - than to be out on the town with her.
There’s was nothing wrong with Blaire. She was pretty…beautiful, smart and yeah, rich. He just didn’t…feel for her.
And because he had been angry he’d insulted Jinki. Jesus Christ, not just insulted him about something small but something large and all encompassing; his dreams. Diluted and hidden in a small dark bunker shoved under his bed, yeah, but still it was his dream and Minho had stomped all over it because of a temper tantrum. Damn it. Minho scrubbed his face and turned back towards their apartment.
He slid the key back, jingled it, and slid it forward. The door opened silently, and Minho could see Jinki still at the card table. His head was cushioned across his arm and his other lay across his lap. His plate still looked the same as it had when he left -he’d been watching, hoping that Jinki would like his cooking.
“Okay, let’s not make this difficult. I was wrong,” he said gruffly from the doorway. He stood there with his hands out and his head tilted like he expected Jinki to accept the apology with open arms.
He didn’t.
“Jinki?” He took a step closer. “Oh, come on! I said I was wrong. Not every day you get that out of me. I’ll even sit here while you use that stupid “I told you so voice,” just…c’mon. Please? Talk to me?”
More silence. Minho huffed and walked the rest of the way from the foyer and right up to the card table. “Jinki,” he said, pleadingly as he shook his shoulder. His arm fell from his lap limply and his head lolled to the side. He was unconscious.
Instant panic.
His first thought, which should have been to call for an ambulance, miraculously was Kim Kibum. It was a deadly twenty seconds before Kibum picked up, annoyed. “Look, I’m not your personal chef! If you want food, cook it your-“
“Jinki passed out!” Minho blurted out. “He passed out and his tongue is turning colors and his cheeks look patchy and red and ohymgod!” Minho danced a frantic jig in the living room with one hand carded in his hair. “Can you come over here and fix this? I’m good with paintbrushes, not defibrillator machines… is he going to die?! He can’t die, man. He can’t. ”
“Minho. Calm. Down.” Kibum was silent for a second before he answered. “He isn’t going to die. Did he eat anything that had almonds in it in the last few hours?”
“Almonds?” Minho wracked his brain thinking if he’d seen Jinki eating out of any packaging with the word Almond on it. Then it hit him. Almond oil. He’d used Almond oil in his cooking. “Yes, oil. Almond oil, I used it on the peppers.”
Kibum sounded slightly more alert, as if he were sloughing off layers of sleep. “His body reacts to his allergies in weird ways, like it shuts down to slow the allergen from spreading. He should have an epi-pen in his bathroom.” Kibum paused. “Oh, shit he doesn’t. We’re waiting for his next shipment to come in. Yes, hospital. NOW.”
When Jinki woke up, he heard the hiss of a ventilator as it pumped air in and out. He felt the nasal cannula strapped to his head and in one annoyed movement pulled it away from his face. As a testament to how many times he’d been in the hospital because of his food allergy, his hands flew to his face to see if it was as grotesquely swollen as last time. Oh, thank God. It wasn’t.
“As I was saying to Baekie downstairs, if you want to join the hospital band, all you have to do is audition and then pay the fee. Don’t look at me like that, we’re a band not a charity-oh, you’re awake!”
Jinki turned to the door as a male nurse in a pair of scrubs that might have had an arm hole ratio that was too small to handle the thick circumference of his stocky arms, walked in pushing a medicine cart. Behind him was a taller man in a white coat, probably a doctor, who was listening to him quick-fire off directions to the audition site. The doctor bowed, did a small fist bump and walked off in the opposite direction.
“How are you feeling, dude? Headache, nausea?” he said as the door closed. The nurse reached for his wrist, and at the same time held up his own to look down at a watch. “Heart rate’s not shitting itself anymore. You hungry? I can get some food up here in a flash. We wouldn’t want you to take this on an empty stomach.”
Jinki sat up in his bed and rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m actually feeling a lot better this time.” The nurse raised a brow at the ‘this time’ and Jinki ducked his head. “I have an affinity for falling victim to my allergies. You weren’t here last time I came.”
“Probably not, I work on the PEDS floor. The name’s Jonghyun,” he stated as he poured him a cup of water and held it out. “I’m only where because of special demand.”
“Demand?”
He gestured to the far corner with a nod of his head. Snuggled under a hospital blanket was Minho with his long lean legs folded awkwardly across a chair.
“He kind of ran in here with you slumped over his back and screamed enough threats in regards to your personal treatment that I’m surprised he’s not in jail. Just my luck I ran into him on my way up. Our friendship is probably how you got booked into the luxury suite in the middle of the night and not thrown across a gurney in a hallway unattended to.”
“He did that? For me?”
Jonghyun smirked. “He’s a sucker for a pretty face.”
“I heard that.”
“Oh, look! Sleeping beauty is awake. Time for me to go!” Jonghyun promptly backed the cart and himself out of the room. He stuck his head back in before the door shut. “I’ll have some food right up, dude. Don’t take that medicine until it’s here.”
Jinki watched Minho unfold himself from the chair, his joints complaining right along with him. “If this is the luxury suite then they should have gotten me that rollaway bed I asked for hours ago.”
Jinki looked down at his own wristwatch. It was four in the morning. He gasped. “Holy crap! We’ve been here since nine?”
“Nine twenty-nine to be exact. It took me a minute to run you to the hospital.”
“Why?” Jinki asked quietly. “I mean not the getting me to the hospital, well the running part but staying…getting me this room…”
Minho sighed. “It’s not that big of a deal.”
“It is,” Jinki insisted.
“No…not really.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Plus, Blaire paid for it.”
Jinki didn’t or better yet couldn’t explain the disappointment he felt. He also chose to ignore the pang of jealousy.
“You don’t have to do this.”
Minho rolled his eyes. “If you say that one more time, I’m going to drop you. On purpose. Hopefully on your head.”
Jinki sighed, exasperated. “You’re carrying me up a flight of stairs like I’m an invalid. I had an allergic reaction, I didn’t break my spine.”
“Shut up, we’re almost there.”
“Okay, so according to Kibum’s instructions…” Minho flipped the sheet from the front to the back. “Well there is only one thing on here. ‘Don’t kill him.’” Minho scoffed. “It wasn’t like I tried to kill you on purpose. I mean…I didn’t try to kill you….you’re not dead, so I’m off the hook”
Jinki rolled his eyes. “Before you get into that very long list, I want you to know I also have my own bed.”
“Shut up. How am I supposed to watch over you if you’re in your own room? Two birds, one dutiful stone. I can get some work done and I can also make sure I don’t kill you in the process.”
Jinki moved to sit up and get out of Minho’s bed. “No, really, I’m fine. Plus I have some work at the office that needs to be done.”
“Three days, the doctor said. Off your feet for three days, so, for the love of everything, you workaholic psychopath, rest.”
Minho kept to his word. For a man who didn’t watch much television to begin with, Minho moved the television into the bedroom, stockpiled DVD after DVD and shoved them down Jinki’s throat. Eight hours into the first day, Jinki had unplugged the player and hid it under the bed. Still he needed entertainment, so Minho brought in three heavy books from Jinki’s personal library in the living room and laid them by his bed. They spent the rest of the night in comfortable silence, Minho hunched over his easel and Jinki relaxed in the bed laughing softly over Beatrice and Benedict.
The second day brought Kibum and all of his salient glory. He peered past the front door -having made himself a key months ago- seeing Minho on the couch and Jinki just through the crack of Minho’s bedroom door. He waited until he was comfortably on the other side of the door before he cracked his mouth open and yelled, “RISE AND SHINE MY LOVELIES! Time to eat!”
Minho shot to sitting, looking around like someone was trying to race him to consciousness. Jinki groaned from the other side of the bedroom door. “Don’t you take that tone of groan with me young man! Get your debilitated ass out here and enjoy my delicious food.”
It took Kibum roughly an additional hour to prepare the food, which Jinki muttered “I could have been sleep.” To which Kibum replied, “I cook better when I’m in your company, Jinki-boo.”
Suddenly, there was a knock at the door. Minho looked at Jinki, Jinki looked at Minho, and Kibum looked at them both. “Whoever that is, I hope they aren’t hungry. I only prepared enough food for three.”
Minho shrugged. He stood and in big lumbering steps made his way to the door. Without it being all the way open, and without Minho being out of the way, Jonghyun shoved past him and made a beeline for the bedroom. He skid to a stop when he noticed everyone on the opposite side of the bedroom door.
“Family meeting?” he said with a raised brow. He took a look around. “What’s up with the blue tape? Do you guys know you have two living room sets?”
Jonghyun walked closer and took a seat at the bar in between Minho and Jinki. “Do you guys have anything to drink? Strong, preferably. Very strong. That was the longest shift of my -Hello.” Jonghyun peered over the counter and into the kitchen, seeing the strawberry blond man for the first time.
“Hello,” Kibum parroted slowly.
“And who is this,” he said to Minho while gazing at Kibum with a grin.
Minho shook his head. “No.”
”Oh, come on!” Minho shook his head and Jonghyun threw his hands up “But I haven’t even done anything! I’m just -“
“You’ve got enough soldiers in your gay glitter conglomerate, you’re not adding another,” Minho said as he eyed Kibum.
Kibum scoffed. “I’m hardly gay gay. I’ve experimented, yes. “Jonghyun took that with a leer. “But Jinki’s the only like…gay man here, unless you now count this guy.”
“He is?”
“Oh course he is.” Kibum spun slowly, his attention leaving the squash pancakes and over to Jonghyun and Minho. “What you didn’t…know?”
Kibum looked in between the two and then over to Jinki who was rubbing the bridge of his nose and wincing. Kibum dropped his spatula. “Jinki,” Kibum breathed, “I didn’t mean… Oh! My big fat stupid mouth!”
Jinki laughed weakly. “It’s okay Kibum. Really. Wasn’t long before the cat was out of the bag…closet…whatever.”
“So~.”
“So.”
Hours later, after Jonghyun had somehow managed to convinced Kibum to follow him down to the café for coffee, Jinki and Minho were back in his room, Jinki in the bed, covers up to his neck, and Minho staring at his video game like he’d lost the ability to blink.
“It’s not like I care or anything. It’s not a big deal. You know…the whole gay thing.”
Jinki scoffed. “Gee, thanks.”
“No I’m serious! I think it’s admirable, to own up to your identity like that. Even if you kept it a secret, you didn’t deny it either.”
“I don’t think it’s something you should deny. And I didn’t hide it, I just didn’t flaunt it.”
Minho nodded. “Sometimes denying is easier.” His voice dropped off and he looked at his hands.
“This is boring,” Minho said as he placed his controller down. He stood and walked to his easel by the large window facing the street. There was a small festival down on the street and the bright lights flashed in between the blinds. Smiling, he sat down and grabbed his paint board, smoothly squeezing out a dollop from a few paint tubes and began to mix. His spatula paused. “Jinki, do you know how to paint?”
“Of course, I don’t know how to paint,” Jinki deadpanned from the other side of the room. “Not really the artsy type, you know.”
“You’re more artistic that you want me to believe, Mozart.” He took the canvas that he was working on off the easel and slid it into a totefolio. From that same tote, he pulled out a thinner, blank canvas and set it up. “Come here.”
Jinki looked up and balked. “Oh, no. I’m not doing that.”
“If you don’t come here, I’m going to come over there and carry you.” When Jinki didn’t move, he stood to make good on his threat. Jinki slid from the bed.
“Alright, alright.’
He watched Jinki waddle towards him. He’d stopped wearing the matching blue pajamas awhile back. They were still in his bathroom, hanging up under his robe. The slippers stayed, little beige “LJ”’s across the deep navy surface. Jinki’s had taken to wearing Minho’s baggy sweats around the house. They looked good on him.
When Jinki was close enough, Minho patted his knee.
“I don’t think that’s -“
Minho deflated. “I have to show you how to do this and I can’t do it properly standing behind you.” He patted his knee again. “C’mon. I’m not going to bite you.”
Jinki sighed though his nose, his nostrils flaring as he jutted from foot to foot in indecision. Minho rolled his eyes, grabbed his wrist and yanked him down into his lap. “See, easy.”
“Yeah. Easy,“ Jinki muttered.
Minho started off with something fundamental, like trees. “Trees are an extension of the earth. When you think of them, you think of calm, serenity, strength, protection. You use those feelings, allowing them to flow from the edge of your brain to the edge of your fingertips, like this.” He wrapped his hand around
Jinki’s and dipped the brush into a mix of amber yellow and a dark brown. “Make sure your hand is angled just right and, “he guided Jinki’s hand into smoothly making the line of one tree. “Good. Try it again.”
Minho eased his guidance just a bit, giving Jinki more control over the brush. After he’d dipped his brush into more paint, his hand hovered over the canvas, nervous. Noticing this, Minho moved closer to his ear and whispered out his instructions. “Slowly, now. Let your wrist do all the work.” His hand snaked around Jinki’s middle in an effort to correct his posture. He felt Jinki suck in his stomach and his spine aligned automatically.
“It’s okay to mess up as long as you complete the line.” Smoothly, as Minho had done before, Jinki swept the brush down, finishing the other side of the tree. Before Minho could drop a congratulatory message, Jinki shot to standing, almost upending the paint board.
“Okay! So that was fun. Time for bed.” He turned on his heels, marched back to Minho’s bed and threw the covers over his head without staying another word.
Jinki counted under his breath until the light switch turned off. He decided then he would to hold his breath until he heard Minho walk out and close the door. Instead he felt the bed dip beside him. His breath seeped out between his lips.
Peeling the covers back, Jinki looked around the room like he was lost until his gaze centered on Minho. The taller man was pulling his socks off and shrugging out of his cardigan. When the cardigan slid down Minho’s arms, and Jinki got an extremely delicious view of Minho’s chiseled arms, he froze.
All systems panic! I repeat! All systems panic!
“W-www-what do you think you’re doing?”
Minho shrugged idly. “I got a damn crick in my neck from sleeping on that overpriced stuffed piece of shit last night. So I said, ‘It’s a big bed, we’re both grown adults. How hard can it be to share one bed for one night?”
If Jinki could punch his face off his face, he would. “I don’t think that’s a -“
“Stop thinking so much, then. Californian King bed. There is almost two bed’s width in between us. You won’t even notice I’m here.”
Jinki smiled weakly. The problem was, he would.
His sexuality wasn’t a new thing to him. It was something he’d known as a child, molded as a teenager, and now as a man, owned. It was an easy thing to accept because it was who he was. On rare occasions a woman tickled his fancy, but lust? That belong solely to the XY chromosome.
So in that light, whoever controlled all the things on this earth -the funny bastard- had decided to pair him up for seven months - eternity - with an artistic soulchild trapped in the body of a highly attractive person made up completely of XY chromosomes. How long had Jinki been attracted to him? Days, minutes, weeks, hours, seconds? Months? He would be lying to himself if he didn’t say from the first night he found a stranger in his bed.
Minho twisted awake, the bed feeling too hot and too cold at the same time. He pulled his hands over his face tiredly and tried to sit up, but ended up rolling onto his side. He was slowly losing his mind.
Kibum had dropped a bombshell on him this afternoon and although he had no right to believe that Jinki was automatically attracted to him because of his sexuality, he’d hoped somehow that he was. Which was, admittedly, stupid. Not when he was with Blaire, not when he had carved out a hundred feet moat around his heart with Blaire’s money. But shit. It was still there, that subtle pull of attraction that he’d picked up on at the hospital, with his chair pulled up to Jinki’s unconscious form and his hands wrapped around his. Staring down on him as he fought off whatever the hell was plaguing his body. He felt it and it scared him.
And then it wouldn’t go away. It manifested itself in extreme levels of overprotectiveness, watching over and doting over him like it would answer all of the questions he had about his feelings. Jinki was an enigma. Questions like where had he come from? How had he crept in, slowly, and changed Minho’s perception of everything? Blue became azure. Red became passion, yellow was golden.
He was the emotional muse that made Minho wake up and realize that, yes, you stupid son of a bitch, real attraction lies in real places, that it can be tangible and made of sparkly stuff that eats at your heart, replaces it with sunshine and makes you smile like an idiot whenever your roommate asks you how your day was over a glass of wine.
So as he gazed across this giant ocean of his feelings and white sheets, he found himself being pulled to Jinki like he was the center of gravity. He just wanted to be close. He didn’t understand it but he understood his body moving across the bed, silently, softly.
Jinki’s hair was splayed out over the pillow in a haphazard mess and Minho had never seen anything so beautiful. Jinki was his most beautiful when everything in his perfect world was slightly off kilter. When his hair was mussed, when he had food on his face, when he walked around wearing a burnt orange Stafford with the top button missing, a bleach stain under the collar, and a bright multicolored streak across the chest like it was still the best shirt in the world.
He lay still beside his sleeping form, gazing down as his chest rose and fell. His hand found its way there, counting Jinki’s inhalations and exhales, trying to find out if Jinki’s hand would fit into his.
Jinki snorted in his sleep, turned and tucked himself into Minho and Minho felt his breath leave in a whoosh. He didn’t have much time, he couldn’t. So he’d enjoy this, being this close to Jinki without feeling like he was shit for doing it.
Jinki was dreaming. This time his dream man wasn’t made up of ambiguous body parts and throwaway characteristics. He was made up of realistic body parts and very lovable characteristics, even the ones where he heated his socks in the oven because he liked his toes warm.
He was Minho.
They were sitting in a field, well it looked like a field, or maybe they were the field. Dreams were weird places.
Just like last time, a hand was wrapped around his waist and words were being whispered in his ear. The only difference was one of Minho’s hand had slinked into his pants. The other around his waist was to keep him close, and the words whispered in his ear were heated and feral. All were aimed at bringing him this much closer to climax.
His eyes shot open.
No…it couldn’t be.
There was no hand down his pants, but Minho had moved from the far edge of the bed and curled himself around Jinki. One hand was splayed across his back and the other cushioning his head. He looked up from the line of muscles exposed right above Minho’s tank, up his neck, past his chin, to find two brown eyes gazing down at him.
“What are you doing?
Minho licked his lips. “I don’t know.”
Jinki didn’t retreat, he didn’t come closer. He just froze.
“Is this okay?” Minho inched closer, his nose just shy of Jinki’s.” That I don’t know what I’m doing?”
“What’s gotten into you? I don’t understand.”
Minho inched closer. “That’s what I’m telling you. I don’t understand, either. I just…feel.”
Jinki gulped, just as he felt the heat of Minho’s breath on his lips. “This isn’t a game,” he whispered, his eyes dipping.
Minho moved, blurring the lines between sudden fascination and true attraction, bridging the gap between impossibilities and possibilities, with a flush of his lips against Jinki.
He pulled back. “You are not a game to me.”
Reality, weird place.