Did You Hear of the Story About the Tornado? There Is a Twist at the End. (for infadel_x)

[defpepimod]

Title: Did You Hear of the Story About the Tornado? There Is a Twist at the End.
Recipient: infadel_x
Rating: PG
Word Count: 5.5k
Warning(s): none
Summary: They say it is supposed to be red. Red as an apple. Red as blood. Red as the cheeks of a shy first love. It isn’t supposed to be pink, so when someone asks Jaebum nods and says. “Of course I see it. Of course it’s red.”
A/N: Dear recipient, I hope you like this, because I had fun with your prompt (maybe a little too much fun?). Life caught up with me a little while writing, but I did my best!! Please enjoy!!
Thank you M. for being the usual crutch to my wavering inspiration. ILU.



They say it is supposed to be red. Red as an apple. Red as blood. Red as the cheeks of a shy first love. It isn’t supposed to be pink, so when someone asks Jaebum nods and says. “Of course I see it. Of course it’s red.”

Maybe his is defective. Maybe his love isn’t going to be strong and bold and daring, maybe his love will be soft, soft like a plum. He doesn’t like to think about it, so he really doesn’t pay much attention to the dangling string of true love tightly wound around his pinkie, but sometimes it seems to be glaring at him with am eyeless, wordless fierceness, Jaebum cannot think about anything else for a long while.

When that happens, and it’s not everyday mind you - just about every other month… or maybe week - he walks. It is like playing hide and seek with a total stranger who apparently doesn’t really wish to be found. These walks usually end when his end of the string ends up… well nowhere. Sometimes he just loses sight of it, other times he just stops looking.

The house on the lake goes on sale the spring of Jaebum’s twentieth birthday. It is just a little off town and the owners are an elderly couple who has decided that they’d rather spend whatever they have left together on a sunny beach rather than a humid lake. Two stories and a terrace are a little too big, not to mention to pricey, for Jaebum to afford, but it stays there, at the back of Jaebum’s mind pushing him stubbornly towards all those ‘might be’s and ‘could be’s that seem to come with that pinkish strip tied around his finger.

All his savings, though, now go in a deposit for a ratty one bedroom apartment one city over, where he moves on a burning hot day in July. Despite all premises the place looks nice inside, far from being new, but the inside isn’t as worn as the outside might suggest. He is hauling the last box up the stairs when he hears, more than sees, the squeaky sound of a door opening.

“New tenant?” a male voice inquires and Jaebum jostles the box a little so that he can see the head of brown hair and round eyes coming out of the door on top of the stairs.

Jackson was the ‘new tenant’ before Jaebum, and he seems to be taking this passing the torch very seriously as he explains over beers and pizza on the floor of Jaebum’s very naked apartment, everything that Jaebum needs to keep in mind. By the third beer, Jackson is listing the top three loudest couples that go at it in the building and Jaebum is so full of pizza he doesn’t even feel that much homesick.

“Oh god, it’s late,” Jackson says, jumping on his feet and clutching his wrist near his watch. “I need to go feed Amanda.”

Something must show on Jaebum’s face because Jackson smiles sheepishly. “The cat,” he explains, no possessive, just the article. Jaebum stands and waves Jackson out of his door.

Once Jackson has left, Jaebum tackles the first box. Unpacking doesn’t take long, for one because Jaebum really hasn’t that many things and for two because he really hasn’t got that much space to put his stuff away. He goes through his clothes and the ‘basic kitchenware’ his mother packed him in the two, heaviest, boxes, before deciding to wash up and go to bed. With the bathroom window open he can faintly hear Jackson speaking in a hushed voice a few mewols in between.

Before leaving his parent’s house, Jaebum did his math and gave himself a week - two if he were to be really careful with his expenses - to find a job. Never been picky, in a week Jaebum goes through more than half of the ads he has found in the paper, taking interview after interview, with a dwindling enthusiasm. He is not a virgin when it comes to get his hands dirty, but apparently everyone in town requires certificates and references, and diplomas and a list of things Jaebum never thought he needed to wash dishes in the corner of a restaurant.

“Well, I might have something for you,” Jackson says looking very pleased with himself as he does. They are sitting on top of the stairs where they first met, with an empty carton of pizza and a soda each. The weather has already taken a nicer turn as spring blends into summer, the kind of nice that would call for picnics and nice walks for those who have time to spare. Back in his town, Jaebum would be out in the sun delivering flowers and swimming in the freezing water of the lake, and only thinking about his beat old truck makes his inside churn with an unpleasant feeling of nostalgia he suppresses with another gulp of his cold drink.

“You might?” he really doesn’t get his hopes up after all those disappointments, but still, Jackson looks sort of hopeful for the both of them.

“They are looking for extra hands where I work, it’s mostly moving stuff around, like boxes, and lights… sometimes racks of clothes… and the occasional coffee run… but it is fun!” Jackson looks at him expectantly, waiting for any kind of response, but what choice does Jaebum really have?

“I guess I could… ” He begins, but Jackson is already whooping away, rising his soda in a toast and spilling half of it all over them both.

“Sorry, hyung, I’m sorry,” he mumbles pitifully, trying to clean Jaebum’s arm with the hem of his shirt. Jaebum swats him away and Jackson grins sheepishly, like the naughty child he insist on being sometimes.

“I should call it a night,” Jaebum lets out with a huff. He has been fighting a slight headache since morning and it’s only getting worse with each passing minute. The railgun of the stairs creaks when he gets up, he can relate to the sound a little when he straightens his back and feels a distinctive pop.

They clean up after themselves, Jackson offering to run down to the recycling bins to throw away what is left of their shared dinner, while Jaebum runs inside to take something for his headache before falling into his bed like a deadweight. For the time being his first aid kit is stashed in a Pororo lunch box he used in elementary school, and as he searches through it he feels a sudden pull and his eyes dart to the thin pink strip of thread looped around his finger. Under Jaebum’s incredulous eyes it flashes red for a second, a vivid, pulsating red, constricting almost painfully around his pinkie. Never, since Jaebum was old enough to understand what the thread meant, never had it ever shown any kind of reaction, remaining stubbornly silent and infuriatingly pink. Helpless, he waits. Are they near? Is that what it meant? Are they hurt? Are they thinking about him for the first time? But the more minutes pass the more is clear that nothing else is going to happen, and the thread is back to its dull pink.

When Jaebum follows with his eyes, the thread disappears under his bed and doesn’t come out.

Jackson works at a local TV network. Between its most followed programs it lists ‘The Bald and the Dreadful’, daily running soap-opera that involves too many characters and whose storyline is more intricate than an ant farm.

Jackson, though, tells that him they just move stuff out of the way and where they are told, and the job comes with a decent pay, lots of fresh air and health insurance, really nothing more they could ask for.

The morning Jackson comes kicking on his door at seven a.m, Jaebum is still sleepy, but ready to go, dressed down in comfortable sweats like Jackson suggested and a warm and fluffy sweater. Jackson has a beanie hiding his ‘wild and sexy’ hair and a scarf, maybe Jaebum should bring one too, but  Jackson is already dragging him down the stairs towards the bus stop.

The morning is still slightly chilly, but the sun promises a warm afternoon and Jaebum basks under the sun rays while they wait for their bus to get there.

“Boss says you can take a look around today and then decide if you want to start a trial period.” Jackson says, sniffling a little. “Everyone is nice, you’ll like it.”

Jaebum is not sure, but smiles anyway and spends the bus ride taking five seconds long power naps. In the last few days the thread that had always been silent and peaceful has become restless, sometimes jostling Jaebum awake in the middle of the night, making it especially hard to fall back asleep. It’s like dreaming of falling, but the feeling of emptiness and dismay clings to Jaebum’s skin for far longer. Now that he has seen how vibrant his thread can be, the pale pink that it takes on most of the time is even duller, making it even harder not to wish for things that are way beyond Jaebum’s control.

Soulmates are not something one could simply find by looking, it is more of a stumble and fall process, and not always a fortunate one. Yet, all this has to mean something, Jaebum thinks to himself, hand nervously tapping on the metal bar he’s leaning on, all this has to mean something.

They get off on a street of tall buildings and where the crowd on the sidewalk is not as thick as it is downtown. Jackson steers him around by the elbow, pointing to small eateries tucked into corners between buildings, and random people Jaebum doesn’t even bother turning to look at, and soon enough they duck inside a tall glass building like many others.

“Fifteenth floor is the office,” Jackson whispers, maybe more to himself than to anyone in particular.

The elevator doors on a crowded hallway, filled with racks of clothes, shoes, heels and set props, while on his left there are three make up stations, two of which are occupied by exceedingly handsome people.

He is not given much time to ponder on the whole chaos in front of him though, because Jackson is quick to pull him along the corridor towards a glass door and past that into what looks a little like a conference room, which is actually not because half of it has been turned into a cafeteria, “Which is not real so don’t try to eat the donuts,” Jackson supplies frowning at the display of fake pastries.

“This is the set?” Jaebum asks when they finally reach their destination, and anonymous looking door at the end of a deserted corridor. “They film here?”

Jackson grins shaking his head. “No, just the office scenes. Boss said he really didn’t need a fancy office and we could use the space, save the money. Top floor is administration, which is where we collect our checks!”

The door opens on a cramped space that probably used to be a janitor’s closet, but now, hosts a small desk stacked with documents, a PC, an obnoxiously purple phone and a desk lamp shaped like a palm tree. Behind the desk sits a man with small eyes and thin lips that stretch ominously when he spots Jackson at the door.

“Boss, this is Jaebum, the guy I told you about,” Jackson says and Jaebum is relieved to see a flicker of recognition in ‘Boss’’ eyes.

“Right, right,” he shuffles around some papers and finds a small blue post-it. “Im Jaebum?”

Jaebum nods, making a quick bow. “Yes, that would be me.”

Jackson drags him around set first, there is a scene being shot in the conference room, someone is being slapped very hard for some stock drop, but Jackson drags him away before he can actually try to grasp what is going on.

They go up and down the elevator, though clothes and stage props and work schedules, until Jackson is called for actual work and Jaebum is left to fend for himself in the hallway they first stepped in. There is a small camp stove set in a corner and a short guy is stirring something in a pan, humming a tune to himself. When he notices Jaebum standing like there like a lamp, the guy smiles and waves.

“New?” he asks, tilting his head to the side. “I’m Kunpimook! Nice to meet you.”

“Im Jaebum,” he introduces himself taking the few steps that separate them to peek at what is sizzling inside the pan. Stir fried rice, apparently. “Are you from the staff?”

“No, I’m an actor! The cleaning guy, who catches Kim In Jung’s sister doing the deed in the laundry room with So Seungho, her brother’s business rival!” then he goes slack jawed and puts a hand over his chest, in what Jaebum supposes should be a look of utter shock. “Like that,” he says giggling to himself.

“But I could be promoted to Mistress’ boy toy soon!”

Jaebum laughs at that, but the guys doesn’t seem to take it at heart. Much.

Three weeks into the job, Jaebum has eased into it quite nicely, especially liking the way it leaves him exhausted at the end of the day, so much that he falls right into the bed without much fuss. His string hasn’t stopped with the petty act, and if Jaebum had been close to indifferent before now he is starting to hate the damn thing. It tugs and pinches and burns, keeping him awake for hours on end, staring at his ceiling with a deep ache in his bones that goes way beyond the exhaustion. He is tired of waking up feeling like he is perpetually on the brink of something, a continuous feeling of ‘any time now’ as he waits for a now that never comes, because after the burning, the pinching and the tugging nothing ever comes and he is very much tired of it all.

Dragging himself up the stairs he thinks about the laundry he needs to do, the growing grocery list pinned on the fridge and the alarm set for 5 a.m. tomorrow morning. The light at the top of the stair flickers and Jaebum makes a mental not to tell the landlady, he is staring at his feet as he makes his way up, one step at a time when he notices the hitching, the unnervingly low thrumming coming from his pinkie finger. It is vibrating, red as it has never been, pulling Jaebum up the stairs.

He is so fucking tired of it that when he makes sure to stomp all over it as he makes his way up, it does little to soothe the thrumming, instead it seems to make the thread angrier, building momentum, until Jaebum reaches the top of the stairs and everything ceases, at once.

“Hi,” the stranger at Jaebum’s door says, with a strained smile on his lips. “You must be Jaebum.” He says with a flick of his wrist indicating what is definitely not a loose thread anymore, not even close, with its pretty apple red that goes from finger to finger without disappearing, not even once.

Jaebum stunted silence is met with a quite laugh. “I’m Jr”

The light flicks again, making Jaebum blink, he waits for Jr to disappear every time his eyes open again, but Jr stays stubbornly solid, stubbornly there, looking at the blinking light with something close to annoyance before snapping his fingers. The light stops blinking and so does Jaebum.
Eyes as wide as they go, Jaebum stumbles up the last few steps until the tip of his sneakers meet the edge of his doormat.

“What… ”

Jr smiles, he looks young under the light, young and weirdly familiar, so familiar. “It’s… ” he begins to say, but there is sound of steps coming up the stairs and Jaebum recognizes Jackson humming ‘The eye of the tiger’.

“Inside,” Jaebum says, pointing at the door that gives when Jr pushes it opens, despite Jaebum distinctly remembering locking it this morning before work after the landlady warned them about some break-ins in the neighborhood. Maybe Jr is the thief. Well, Jaebum scoffs to himself, if that’s the case he’ll be more than happy to help Jr look for anything valuable inside the apartment. Jaebum turns on the light and takes a few steps inside, waiting for Jr to do the same, but he still by the door, standing there and with an unreadable expression on his face

“I’m sorry I… fell on you like this, I tried before, but this is the only time I managed to stay long enough… ” Jr rambles in in front of Jaebum’s neatly arrange shoes, still not making a move to get inside.

“What are you talking about?” Jaebum asks, clearly he is missing whatever Jr is trying to say, or is not saying, really.

There is a moment of silence, Jr stares far behind Jaebum’s shoulder with his brows furrowed. “I’ll be back,” he whispers, and just like that, as he came, he disappears and Jaebum is left there, staring at the empty space, feeling sick as if he has just gotten off of the worst roller-coaster ride of history. Dizzy and unsteady, Jaebum manages not to break anything as he makes his way towards the bed, falling on it with a humpf. What the hell just happened?

When Jaebum comes back from work, in the middle of the afternoon, Jr is there again, sitting in front of his door with his legs crossed, looking particularly bored. It doesn’t come as a surprise, since the thread was restless on the way home, red and restless, urging his steps, pulling him forward.

“Hi,” Jr says. Jaebum has to resist the urge to flip him off. “I come bearing gifts,” he adds with a strained smile, probably able to clearly read Jaebum’s sour mood. He slept fitfully, barely catching any rest before his early shift and this time the thread didn’t even have anything to do with it. It had been silent and dead, washed out as always all night, but its silence had been just as loud.

“You disappeared,” Jaebum says, maybe more accusingly than he mean to, “You fucking vanished into thin air.”

“Ah… that… ” Jr says, chuckling. He looks embarrassed as he fiddles with a loose thread in his plain white t-shirt. “I can do that, yes, and also other things.”

Jaebum crosses his arms and stares. Jr hides another chuckle behind his hand and pulls himself up. “So, I’m Jr and… I’m not really from around here… ”

They don’t go inside. Jaebum isn’t letting Jr anywhere near inside his apartment, inside his life, until he knows exactly what is going on, and Jr seems to understand as he hands over the fresh grape soda he has brought over and makes himself comfortable against the railing of the stairs.

There were plenty like me where I come from, is how Jr decides to begin, which is questionable, since he should first clarify where he is from, how far is that and how much is that going to influence Jaebum’s life.

“You are very practical,” Jr smiles, taking a sip of his lemonade. “I was going to tell you a story, but well… I’d say where I come from is far enough, but not really, it doesn’t take longer than a second to get there, but it’s a completely different place all the same.”

“You are not making sense,” Jaebum tells him, bluntly, opening the grape soda. He takes a seat on the first step, still keeping a distance.

“Ah, they all tell me that,” it doesn’t look like it bothers Jr much, though. “Anyway, I can’t show you yet, but soon!”

Jaebum wriggles his fingers, watching as the thread sways, still undoubtedly connecting them. “What if I don’t want to see it?” he says in a small voice. The thread gives a pleased thrum before it pales, again turning pink and dead. When he rises his eyes, Jr is gone.

It goes like that. One minute Jr is there, smiling, telling jokes, sometimes he sits closer, sometimes he makes a show of dangling his legs outside the railing assuring Jaebum that he won’t fall. Sometimes he stays long enough for them to take a walk and sometimes barely enough time to hand over a treat and vanish. They talk and Jaebum finds himself saying more than he would be comfortable to share with someone he barely knows, barely sees, but Jr is unexpectedly fun and willing to fit himself wherever Jaebum makes room for him.

“You know,” they are in the communal garden of the condo. Jaebum also pays to maintain its green grass and water its flowers, but it’s the first time he has actually spent time in it and it is all because Jr saw Amanda rolling around the petunias and insisted on joining her. “You should get a cat.”

Jaebum rolls on his stomach and watches as Jr dangles a grass leaf in front of Amanda’s nose. “It could keep you company.”

“Do I look lonely?” Jaebum asks, trying to grab Amanda’s attention.

“No, it’s not that,” Jr says with a small smile. Amanda tries to claw at his finger and Jr smiles, the cat doesn’t look particularly satisfied with this turn of events and scurries away, disappearing behind the bushes.

“You think you’ll manage not to vanish until after dinner?” Jaebum asks, like he isn’t asking anything special, like he isn’t testing how much he can rely on whatever it is that they seem to be sharing. Forever in their case lasts a few hours at best, minutes at worse and changes like the weather, one day Jinyoung is all laughter and playful jabs as he drags Jaebum around, and some days, like today, he looks tired and far, far away.

Millions of people in the world live without ever meeting their soulmate and Jaebum was already lucky enough to know that what his looks like, he could live without a soulmate, and he could live without Jr. The thing is he is not sure if he wants to at this point, and that might be a problem.

“I don’t know,” Jinyoung answers, and his smile is one Jaebum really would rather forget.

Jaebum wakes up with a start one morning, the thread is warm around his finger, but the heat is already fading, the color already draining when he sits up. He scrubs away the remains of sleep from his eyes, but Jr is not there, the room is empty and outside is still dark.

The book sits at the end of the bed, Jaebum doesn’t notice it until he convinces himself he might as well get himself a glass of water since he is up and comes back from the kitchen corner. The cover is blue, filled with angry clouds and under the clouds there is a kid, curled on himself with his face hidden.

Jaebum sits at the edge of the bed and takes a long sip of water before putting the glass on the floor to pick up the mysterious book. The wind blows and blows, what will be who knows. The book begins, its yellowed pages are thorn at the edges, and like it has been read countless times and maybe it has. It’s the story of an only child who was the son of the Goddess of the wind, but no one could know, no one, but his father who had loved the Goddess as much as she had come to hate her for leaving him with such a weak child. The child didn’t understand how his father could say something like that, when he could hear the voice of his mother, of the Goddess whispering her love for them with every gush of wind that caressed their house and with every rainy could she brought so that their land could always be fertile. The father was deaf to the words of the goddess, though, they didn’t share blood and flesh and their love had been fleeting like a summer shower, he could not understand.

Neither did everyone else, and when it was clear that the child shared more than flesh and blood with the Goddess than her storming grey eyes, they stripped him of his name, made him weak and made him kneel. A djinn.

…and his name was lost in the wind, the book ends.

Jr is back a week later. He brings sandwiches and grape soda for the both of them. By then Jaebum has read the book a thousand times and he is sure, he is almost positive, that Jr is the child and that Jr left the book for him to understand. Jr is sitting on top of the stairs, with the sandwiches and the cans at his side, and Jaebum stops when they are eye level, staring into Jr’s dark eyes with intent.

“What’s your name?” he asks.

Jr licks his lips, he doesn’t look nervous, not angry nor sad. He just looks tired. “It’s not mine to tell.”

There is something there, something in Jr’s eyes that sparks then, a challenge, a request, or maybe a plea, for Jaebum to find it.

“Ok,” he says and takes a seat beside Jr. “Ok.”

They eat on the stairs, pushing and shoving each other as Jaebum tells Jr about work, about Amanda sneaking into his house on Tuesday night to apparently stare at him creepily from his nightstand.

“Jackson says she is just trying to make friends,” he explains resignedly.

“If you had a cat of your own it would protect you from Amanda,” Jr looks amused, with his lips pulled up in a smile that doesn’t show his teeth, but makes his eyes crinkle all the same. Jaebum stares the wrinkles, stares into Jr’s eyes and a part of him whishes his name were written there, between the creases of his skin, on the curve of his lips, down the column of his neck, so that Jaebum could claim it, with his eyes, with his mouth with his teeth.

“Where are you when you are not here?” he whispers, and his fingers brushes away Jr’s fringe in a gesture that is more affectionate and intimate than anything they have ever shared.

“Nowhere important,” Jinyoung answers in a whisper. “Nowhere.”

Their first kiss is brief, barely lasts a second. When Jaebum opens his eyes, Jr is gone.

In between Jr’s visits Jaebum lets Jackson drag him out with some co-workers, sometimes too many sometimes just a few, and on one of those outings Jaebum ends up sitting beside Kunpimook, now a fixed member of the main cast. At the third beer Kunpimook tells him that the second cousin of the third male lead is tied to the fourth nephew of the disgraced witch from the poor side of the family. They won’t get together for another hundred episodes though, and will live happily ever after only until one of them is killed off or lost on a mountain, or something else. Even through the alcohol buzzing in his system, Jaebum thinks about Jr and if that is how they are going to end up, if one morning Jaebum will wake up with a lighter finger and no one to bring him disgustingly sweet drinks at the oddest of times. He wonders if it will hurt.
On the way back Jackson insists on buying them water and snacks to sober up. Jaebum lets him because he is far too drunk and Jackson is far too sober. While he waits outside he lets himself be lulled by the soft breeze that has picked up after they left the bar. It’s still too hot to be really comforting and Jaebum is not drunk enough to start undressing, but just about enough to consider it. The breeze grows stronger, ruffling Jaebum’s hair and making him slightly waver on his unsure feet.

You know…

Jaebum’s brows furrow. It’s a female voice, soft and echoing, and Jaebum is probably far more drunk than he though. “I know?” he asks, though he didn’t mean to ask out loud.

“You know what, hyung?” Jackson offers a bottle of water and pretzels, looking at Jaebum like nothing is wrong, like Jaebum wasn’t just talking to a voice in his head.

“That’s nothing,” he lies.

Jaebum eats and drinks, with Jackson filling in the silence with pointless rambling, and when he locks the door behind himself he is definitely ready to crush into his bed and sleep until he is one with the mattress.

“Out late?” a familiar voice teases from somewhere inside the apartment. Jaebum flicks on the light and finds Jr sitting on his beanbag, he smiles in the face of Jaebum’s sleepiness and when he stands Jaebum sees it, the book, in Jr’s hand.

“You left that,” he says, rubbing at his eyes with the back of his hands. He is so tired and Jr makes it worse because when he is near the thread is happy and sated and calm and Jaebum is too.

“Let’s get you to bed,” is all Jr has to say about it.

Predictably, when he wakes up the next morning, Jr is not there.

“Is this how is it always going to be?” Jaebum asks when Jr comes back, looking worse for wear, with dark bruises under his eyes. He blinks to keep them open, while he leans against Jaebum’s side, to keep himself up.

“I don’t know,” Jr murmurs in the fabric of Jaebum’s sweatshirt.

“Weren’t djinn supposed to be holders of great knowledge?” Jaebum jokes. Jr’s laugh is hollow and cut short.

Something is wrong. Jaebum opens his eyes and finds himself immersed in complete darkness, he is not in his bed, nor in Jackson’s apartment, nor does he seem to have passed out on a street somewhere on the way back from work. There is darkness all around and then a small, flickering light appears seemingly far far ahead.

It feels like the beginning of a nightmare, the conscious ones you can’t wake up from despite knowing that it’s only a dream and you don’t have to be afraid. Jaebum isn’t scared, though, and he makes his way towards the light with careful steps. The light is a sphere, radiating light from its core, when he reaches a hand out to touch it Jaebum is surprised to find it cold, icy cold. He makes to retract his hands be he finds he can’t, the light grips his hand and pulls him closer.

“He brought the storm!” someone is shouting and Jaebum looks around before realizing that someone is shouting inside the light, and then he sees it, what it is that the light is pulling him to.

“He will turn on us! The hand that fed him!”

He squints, letting the light pull him closer, and sees a group of men and women sitting around a table. They are weirdly dressed and Jaebum can barely make out their faces under the light of the candles lit here and there inside the room, but the focus doesn’t stay on the room for long, soon it shifts, much too quickly, making Jaebum’s stomach churn unpleasantly, and then he spots him, sitting cross-legged inside a heavy iron cage, in the middle of what looks like a square. The ground is wet, it probably has just stopped raining, and Jr sits with his back against the bars and a silly smile on.

The wind picks up, making the surface of the puddles waver. Jaebum is so focused on Jr’s face, Jr’s smile that at first the wind only sounds like the wind, gushing and swishing, but it isn’t just that. The wind is speaking.

“Jinyoung!” Jaebum says, screams, as soon as he opens his eyes, covered in sweat and out of breath.

He is startled by the sound of the window slamming open, and a gush of wind rushes in. Jinyoung is there, suddenly, collapsing on Jaebum’s floor. He is heaving, shaking with every breath he takes. Jaebum rushes off the bed to his side, and Jinyoung whimpers when Jaebum touches his arm.

“Breath, in and out,” helping Jinyoung to seat. “Breath, Jinyoung.”

At the mention of his name, Jinyoung stiffens, but his breath is finally evening out. “Scared you, uh?” he wheezes out, chuckling. Jaebum resists the urge to hit him if only because he has just recovered from a near-death experience.

“I hate you so fucking much right now,” Jaebum grunts, falling beside Jinyoung. It’s still weird even in his head. Jinyoung.

“You are always so nice to me,” Jinyoung is grinning when he turns around, and his eyes shine bright bright bright. Bright and grey like a clouded sky.

- the thread is pink because it stretches through both worlds.
- about the djinn more than wiki and actual mythology I got the idea from ‘The Castle in the air’ (if you read the book I love you.) Sorry if that bothers you in any way.