fic: Samaritan -1/4-
Title: Samaritan -1/4-
Author: dria1029
Pairing: Jongtae (eventual)
Rating: R (for this chapter)
Warnings: (overall) Domestic violence, language, sexual content.
Summary: Taemin learns that sometimes it takes a special person to make a difference, but in doing so, will learn that no one has to like it.
Word Count: 4,438
a/n: None
The next time he’s able to see her, there is a nasty, fading ring of violet under her right eye that she tries to hide with a combed over bang. A scratch on her cheek.
There’s no surprise, no jumping reaction to patch her up or take her into his arms. In its place is only a three day build-up of tormenting frustration. Towards her.
“I’m sorry you had to miss Kyu’s birthday,” she states as characteristically casual as she’s prone to do. They’re loading their clothes into the machines side by side. “So I’m thinking for yours we can do something extra special…”
Hardly a big deal, he can sass. There was a gift wrapped something something under Taemin’s bed with the boy’s name (literally) all over it and he still planned on giving it to him. Besides, he was turning twenty next year. Whatever she had in mind that had nothing to do with boobs and beer, he could do without.
Alternately, he chooses to brood in silence; let her stew in what she thinks is a friendly quiet. The hum of the machines are better than him exploding at her. The tropical warmth of the laundromat beading the sweat down his temples is partial release…because so help him, she was becoming the bane of his not-so-lengthy existence and it wasn’t right that his heart still wanted her to see it his way when she preferred to be blind.
“I can bake you your favorite cake and we can go skating, just me you and the kids,” she rattles on. “I might have some coupons left over from when me and the kids went last time. Hope they didn’t expire-oh, you’re taking that off? Here, let me, I still need to fill this up.”
After he wordlessly pulls the white t-shirt over his head, she takes it and throws it in the wash with a maternal grin. That stupid, gorgeous smile a certain someone didn’t deserve-one Taemin doubted he even got see at all, considering how fucked up of an individual he was. Ignorance doesn’t prevent him from thinking that once upon a time he saw that smile often.
Standing there in his greasy tank top, watching her wobble in terrible rhythm to the Korean trot playing from the speakers, he can only wonder when’s the last time Jonghyun saw that smile.
The last time Jonghyun has ever smiled at her. Or the children.
“No sense, Noona…no sense.”
She cocks her head at him in concern. “Pardon?”
“I said it doesn’t make any sense, In Suk.” Either his stronger tone, drop of honorific or both do the trick of stilling her, cranking her eyes open to maximum capacity. “Look at you. Hani and Kyu, look at them.”
“Tae don’t…calm down-
“No, don’t touch me.” He swerves away from her gentle palm, glaring bullets at her. “You should be in school. Damn him and just go to school, you should be there. Not slaving in a fucking kitchen and inhibiting your growth. Not sheltering your skill just for the sake of that son of a bitch.”
Her head falls into her chest, lips mashing together. A wilting flower should obstruct him from going any further, but Taemin can’t stop.
“You’re limiting yourself for someone who doesn’t give a damn! You let that fucking monster around those children! Children that are his but you wouldn’t even know that from the way he treats them! Children that are both of yours but you wouldn’t even see that from the way he treats you! How dare you…fucking just...”
He’s turns, fuming, about to flee and leave smoke in his wake when a soft croak tugs at the back of his neck.
“I promised I would do whatever it took to keep this family together, Taemin…”
Yet that’s all there is to it. For whatever cockamamie reason, he was expecting more, perhaps an excuse that would render him a callous, naïve asshole for not fully understanding her motives. A reason to put him in his place, make him wrong, make him the bad guy…
She doesn’t linger there. The laundry is not going to do itself, and she’ll just have to make do without her folding mate if he didn’t feel up to speed.
His chest crunching, he watches her turn her back on him. It takes for a lone sniffle to prompt him to stalk off at last.
She’d be given the liberty to break without his presence.
<><><>
Jonghyun has been supporting her for a long time, Taemin knows. It on a late night where the two sat on his balcony drinking soju, talking mostly about Hani and Kyu and saving the really juicy topics for when they were really smashed. Not that talking about Jonghyun was one of those topics…he doesn’t know when that subject was conjured, but tis the way of a drunken conversation.
In hindsight, he could say it had to do with an experiment of intimacy failed-because this was also the same night they found out they could go no further than an implied, marginally incestuous siblingship-and her guilt of the whole venture probably, appropriately, reminded her of her boyfriend.
She and Jonghyun had been foster children; their lives similar and far from similar to Taemin’s status as a ward of the state since he had no family to speak of from the beginning and would be entitled to government benefits for the rest of his life. On a bizarre account, they were raised in the same foster home and ended up becoming close like their foster parents dreamed. Only, apparently, it was a bit over their expectations once they found out from the fifteen year olds that In Suk was pregnant. Of course the teens had been hesitant to reveal themselves, and when Jonghyun caught wind that their parents were planning to separate them-keep In Suk, send Jonghyun away-they packed and hopped on the next train to Seoul.
It seemed to be problem solved for their foster parents however, since they didn’t receive any heat from the police and never spotted a missing children’s flyer. In Suk gave birth to their daughter, and ever since then, Jonghyun has been out busting his ass for a scrap here and scrap there besides what he earned at work-which was more like a temp wheel. Just like In Suk, he missed out on so much of his youth that he could never reclaim. In Suk eventually got her GED online but Jonghyun…well, who had time for class when you had mouths to feed? Growing mouths, at that?
For a wrinkle in time, Taemin did sympathize with him. The alcohol buzzing in his system might have attributed to this some, yes, yet the sincerity and the realness of it all would bring upon these feelings anyway. He didn’t have kids-he did know what it meant to be hungry and booted for being impoverished, and that’s probably all he needed to know. Living like that made you angry. You hated the world, you hated yourself, sometimes you even hated the food you ate just for it being so unattainable or so cheaply made-hating it even as you scarfed it down.
Then the dusky-haired boy had to look back on the unmerited, swollen cheek of Jonghyun’s first born, the dehumanization of his second, the countless injustices done to his first love, his childhood sweetheart, that even a lifetime of excuses couldn’t make up for. It didn’t take long for all of his sympathy for Jonghyun to be sucked out of the man and totally invested in In Suk, Hani and Kyu. No, Taemin hotly ruled, no. No one could be that bitter. There was no such thing as insurmountable bitterness to the point where you became someone’s personal nightmare and them, your personal punching bag. Taemin knows poverty is heavily variable in that it can either bond people together even more or completely tear them apart-and while Jonghyun didn’t have to adhere to the close-knit bonding if it wasn’t in him, he also didn’t have a right to label himself as a home wrecker. He had the right to be a good father, spouse, person. It was the least he could do, and if his least was his best, then so be it.
Later on, during a fleeting run in on the stairs one morning, a daunting, tell-tale glaze in Jonghyun’s mean eyes gave reason for Taemin to speculate that something else had to factor into the man’s unacceptable behavior. Right on time, within a week In Suk snuck over after the children were tucked in, sobbing as she produced the baggies and needles. As she gritted her teeth into his chest, a total wretch, and beat her small fist, Taemin fought his demon, along with the innate urge to comfort her with the false hope that Jonghyun may have been selling more than using; to better their financial rut. How he wished he could tell her, and how badly he wanted to kiss her and make love to her-anything to show that he cared, that he truly hated to see her cry.
But, for someone who didn’t partake in it himself, Taemin could teach a course on how much revenue the drug business pulled in, especially for stimulants and opioids. At those kinds of rates and that kind of demand, Jonghyun would have been made enough to pull he and his family out of the slums-and like, three other families. Move to the ‘berbs and be set with that kind of penny.
No mistake, it was because of his recreational use that money was tighter than ever before.
And the culprit behind Jonghyun’s growing, untamed viciousness.
As Taemin and his neighbors would know the extent of sooner than not, wholly unprepared
<><><>
Many voices made him beware. Don’t interfere, they cried.
“Stay out of it,” Minho, his new basketball mate and friend, advised. “More trouble than its worth. Move, if you can.”
Jinki, the senior mechanic at the shop, whistled low. “Sounds like this guy needs a good whopping, but don’t you go trying to give it to him, kid. Gotta let karma catch up to ‘em.”
“Don’t get involved, Taemin-ah. Put down the phone and leave. Its going to be okay-we’re going to be okay, I promise you. The kids are at my sister-in-law’s. They’re okay Taemin, you have to go.”
His own rationale thundered at him, chorused with self-preservation.
It was sound advice at its finest.
Through it all, nonetheless, Taemin knew in his heart there was only a matter of time before shit really hit the fan…with no pillow spared. Cinema inspired him to want to be a Won Bin, or the black man in Enough who taught JLo to go ham. “Love” and all the dysfunction that came with it would destroy them, and destroy him in the process since he was so attached. Society would deem him too young to understand that already, which is precisely why Taemin flipped them the permanent finger and kept it movin’.
Boys became men by different standards, experiences, and morals.
For Taemin, a real man didn’t sit back while the weak were preyed upon. A defined “man” didn’t listen to consequence and misinterpret the “save me”s screaming at him from a child’s innocent eyes. Under these circumstances, a man wasn’t a real man unless he said to hell with all of the standards, experiences, and morals, and just did what was right.
And a man damn sure didn’t ignore a sobbing phone call from a son pleading on behalf of his mother.
He was in the early stages of fixing an oil leak when the call came through. Once Kyu finished sniveling to him that Jonghyun wouldn’t let In Suk out of their bedroom, there was absolutely no time for Taemin to register how Kyu even got a hold of his number or why the boy was home during a school day. Mind, heart, soul askew with uncharted fear, he replied as calmly as he could, “Hyung is on his way, just hang on. Stay on the line for me,” and barely had enough breath to yell to Jinki that he was on an emergency call as he took off out of the garage. Not wanting to upset or disorient the boy further, he kept his questions to a minimum, only asking for an update every five minutes. He tried to keep his voice soothing in spite of the cruise-turning-jetski of his sanity; it was loud on the subway, yet he could still hear some of the distressed, female whimpers from beyond the door.
Reaching the sixth floor of the building, Taemin’s feet are just about to fall off and lungs about to implode, but he’d live and he was there. Already he could see the door was wide open, noon sun casting a high yellow rectangle on the dirty hallway carpet. He bolted inside stuffing his phone in his pocket and immediately scooped up the weeping boy, who instinctively dropped the house phone and buried himself into Taemin’s aching chest. In the seconds that he rocked Kyu, he didn’t remember ever asking aloud why the boy didn’t call the police instead, yet there was a gurgled, “Omma says never to tattle to the police. She didn’t say I couldn’t call you” that hit him so hard, he nearly doubled over from his angst.
That day was the day Taemin learned it probably was better not to take matters into his own hands. On the flip side, it was also the day where it was all she wrote.
He carried Kyu to his and Hani’s bedroom, instructed him through his teeth to stay put and keep the door closed. Furiously, he made splinters of the master bedroom door within seconds with his foot, and immediately charged the pissed off, ascending Jonghyun. Pants half down the shorter man’s ass and all.
A sharp, “Fuck this” channeled through the boy’s brain prior to him blacking out. From then on it was him, Jonghyun and the mercy of the divine. In Suk, caught in a game of trying to break them apart and whizzing back to avoid getting hit, screams for them to stop. She’d tugged on her robe to preserve what little dignity she could, though unfortunately the hobble in her steps and the blood trickling down her thigh doesn’t seem to rightly register at the top of her list of priorities. At a point where she gives up trying to stop them, she does redeem herself temporarily by running into the children’s room and balling up with her son until the worst is over.
When it will be over? That’s the tricky part. It’s hard to estimate time if you’re wailing on someone with everything you’ve got. Unfeeling to the blows both given and received, crashing on every square inch of an apartment so small, you might as well be in a pinball machine.
It’s a fight Jonghyun has an upper hand in due to just a natural, brute strength, a fight he’s winning. He’s used to taking out his anger on other people while Taemin is not. Peering at the other side of the scale, it’s clearly marked that Taemin has a drive, a reason, an honor to fulfill. So it makes him just as lethal. A relentless danger to contend with; an unseen, ticking danger to himself.
All that unspoken for in eating up Jonghyun’s licks, smiling even through bloody teeth in a nanosecond of madness. He knows why he cares, why he’s doing this, and why it matters. In Suk deserved better and Jonghyun deserved a second car wash of hell in his afterlife for what he did to his family.
The voices were right though.
This here, this damn near foreplay of a mutual ass whooping-he’d have to turn over that terminology in his mind later-was right too. Both were right as rain.
Taemin would have no regrets. In Suk would never speak to him again, and while he can’t say he’d be fine with that, he also wouldn’t second guess or second rate himself for siccing his demon on the one currently on top of him atop the split coffee table. The tiring, bare chested 24-year-old condensed to yanking up Taemin’s bangs by the roots and…well…did some heavy duty staring Taemin hoped didn’t attribute to what he thought it was-not like the boy had been deliberately keeping his (already too long) hair in his face to hide his abnormally long lashes and delicately shaped eyes for nothing.
He groans inward and outwardly, wishing Jonghyun would keep hitting him so he can pass out.
Which, rather unfairly, doesn’t happen. Jonghyun blithely climbs up off him eventually while Taemin is sickeningly forced to watch In Suk scurry into the room and worry over her boyfriend’s “hurts.” She worries over his too (more so than Jonghyun’s, none too shockingly) He glares at the other man in curt disbelief. Stuck on if he should trust his imagination or his gut, but really unsure about the brown-haired guy’s hard-on, hard-off, then hard-on once more by the time Jonghyun is off him.
Fuck you, the boy hisses in his head sourly, tying up loose ends from the previous swear he’d thought before he started the fight. Venom could spray from the peep holes of his clenched teeth, foam could form at his gums. He’s so inconceivably livid he can’t bring himself to speak. Fuck you, you sick fuck.
All heart and no sense respectively, In Suk manages to take them both in to the emergency room, explaining in off-color amusement that they’d had a little too much to drink. Medics buy it either because they don’t care to check details or they are horrified with bloodied body parts that are “not supposed to bend like that.” Traumatized Kyu silently hovers by his mother’s side the entire time, wanting to burst into tears at seeing the only two consistent males in his life looking like they’d come straight out of a horror flick; holding back the flood even then, in fear of disgusting or disappointing his father.
“Did he hurt you.”
She can’t believe it. He looks as if he’d shatter on that hospital bed and yet…
In Suk clasps his hand as gently as she can. Shaking her head in a way, Taemin reads, as if to tell him he’s too injured to be talking.
“Did he hurt you?”
“I’m okay T-
“Lie to me again and I will leave this fucking hospital. I will never speak to you again.” Well how about that. He’d beat her to the punch if necessary. Taemin clamps his eyes shut, tethering himself to her impending answer. I know he hits you but damn Noona….damn. Not that too…
“I…well.” She swallows meekly, lifting his hand to her face. Her voice is deathly soft. “I don’t know how real you want it said…it hurt this time because I struggled more than usual. I shouldn’t have resisted, like he warned-
“Stop.”
She’s blinking down at him tearfully as his bruised eyes turn to unreadable slits.
“Take care of the kids…and see to him.” He speaks emptily, rasping like the dying man he isn’t. Or maybe he is… “You know you want…you know you need to.”
“He’s f…” She trails off uncertainty, in contrast from how fact she started to reply.
Causing him to snort derisively. “It’s okay, go ahead. Damper my male pride. Really no harm done.”
“You’re not joking.”
“No. I’m not.” A small shrug follows, one the elicits a wince.
“Shit, Taemin…God. You’re so disappointed in me and I…” The young woman’s pretty face blotches up, pinching into a mask of hurt and shame. She clings to his hand harder. “You’re so disappointed in me a-and…my fucking…I was…I had the nerve to be mad at you for fighting him…when all you…you were just trying to protect m-me…my stupid, stupid, stupid ass…”
It goes against every “Noona” meter going haywire inside of him, but he can only look away from her quiet crumble. In his thoughtful stare at the fitfully napping Kyu, Taemin contemplates. The situation had them all mortified. Action was taken. No heart was spared, except maybe Jonghyun’s and Hani’s-and for the little girl, living in the macabre circus she called a home, that was only for the time being.
Now what?
Were they all destined to roll downhill? Pick up hiking sticks and start an optimistic climb-a fruitless one, if you looked at the glass half empty?
“I’m so sorry baby, so sorry…I love you, I love you I love you, you mean so much to me, I love you …”
Not enough to listen to me, he muses despondently, heatedly. Closing his eyes again, Taemin settles back, letting her kiss all over him, grieve over him like she should grieve for and pity herself. Those kids…
Not enough to listen to me
Love him more than anyone…over me, over them…over yourself
Love someone who has forgotten how to love you…
You love him more than he would ever know how to love you
How dare you…
From his peripheral he spots Jonghyun walking by his room with a nurse, gnashing his teeth together and glaring back at him just as antagonistically.
<><><>
He was young, he was attractive, he was on his merry way. Tittering between a job and a few classes was a piece of cake for him, unlike it is for most people. The women who brought their cars into the shop dropped hints that fell slower than their panties would, intentionally wearing tight, short skirts that revealed string and lace, and “accidently” letting their car keys slip just to bend over in front of him. As he was ought to do, he’d taken some of them-quite a variety- up on their offers, snickering is dismissal whenever a bubble eyed Jinki asked him “how he did it.”
“I should grow out my hair too, get it nice and candy like yours.” He chuckles, tossing his favorite, grinning grease monkey an oil dipstick and raking his blackened fingers through his cropped crown. “Probably grow it out before I start receding like my father.” He shivers.
Taemin had so much going on for him that others in his herd didn’t ever dream of the chance of accomplishing, it should have been outlawed.
Morally unfit towards people like Jonghyun, who were always seeking a way out and losing themselves in a funhouse of despair the unhappier they got with searching.
Why did he choose to sink on this ship?
Like he didn’t even have a choice, Taemin reflected on his web of decisions pensively as his body recovered, his Christmas spirit traded in for woe. The pain meds speaking for him wouldn’t shut up about why he would chose the SS Sava a Ho, and the meds mixed with the booze chattered with an even more unfiltered tongue. In betwixt those lovely moments of playing patient for Hani and Kyu who were out of school for winter break, gratefully slurping up the homemade soup In Suk made from their colorful spoons and praising the drawings they drew on his arm cast…in betwixt basking with the little family in Jonghyun’s more frequent absences…Taemin failed to understand why he was so different. Who was he to sully his hands like so? People on this side of town, in this ditch of doom, they’d rather turn an eye blinder than In Suk’s than turn the other cheek. Everyone was on their own. No packs here, just adrift dogs who sometimes latch onto something of common interest or gain and end up squabbling amongst themselves. He held his head up high while everyone else sauntered around walking and quaking like ducks-living as a slum in the slums. Mugged, raped, killed-still not a stir from your landlord or a compassionate peep from other tenants. Taemin, just like the next person, appreciated that people minded their own business and respected his privacy settings, but really?
Honestly, “really?” to which? That he couldn’t follow status quo? Or that status quo was a bunch of horse shit?
“I’m pregnant Tae…”
The coats he’s been viewing stop sliding on the rack instantaneously. For a very long time, enough for her to shift impatiently, he coolly memorizes the stitching in a leather number that’s three sizes too big. He can’t move.
“I don’t know how it happened. I’ve been on the pill and… damn it, I don’t know how I’m going to tell him… Taemin please say something.”
His lips defy her. They compress into a hard, jagged line. A minute ticks by, the store’s holiday carols distorting in his ears, Hani and Kyu’s shrieks of laughter in the children’s section hammering joylessly in his head.
“I don’t know what to do,” she whispers like baby sparrow feathers, slowly lying her head on his broad shoulder and linking her hand around his good arm.
His burning eyes flutter closed.
All there is to do is adjust himself to his therapy, try not to shit his stomach. Bit by bit he wills his demon to dissipate, his budding stress to yield. He was young, too young. He was young, he was attractive, and he was on his way.
So was she. So could she.
Rotating at the pace of the elderly, Taemin soundlessly pulls her into him and nuzzles into her hair, lashes fanning out over his paled cheeks. The sting of his squished, casted arm is welcomed with conviction.
She goes to hiccup: “Tae I-
“Put your arms around me and don’t say anything else,” he pleads huskily.
Once she does, Taemin’s hooded vision cracks open just to see as Hani runs by, excitedly engrossed in her game with Kyu to notice mommy and oppa’s vulnerable union.
Jonghyun’s devious gaze, the one he bestowed on the boy as their brawl wound down-it flits through Taemin’s stuffed head. Igniting every cell and molecule of his anatomy.
“Noona please promise me…”
“Mhm?” The acknowledgment muffles into his heart cavity fittingly.
His fixes his jaw savagely, stare forever locked on the playful ten-year-old girl with eyes just as enticingly delicate as his own, if not more. Much more dolly than her mother’s, and terribly so.
“Watch out for Hani, Noona. Keep your eye on her at all times if Jonghyun is around. Watch her, okay?”
“Okay, I promise,” In Suk doesn’t hesitate. “Anything you ask, I promise you…”
“Good,” he whispers. Smiling less than half-heartedly, Taemin pulls up to ogle her blotched face, cups the back of her head and molds his lips to her forehead lingeringly. The gesture also meant for, and hopefully sending a hopeful message to, the more-or-less Christmas miracle materializing behind the belly pressed to his.
Author: dria1029
Pairing: Jongtae (eventual)
Rating: R (for this chapter)
Warnings: (overall) Domestic violence, language, sexual content.
Summary: Taemin learns that sometimes it takes a special person to make a difference, but in doing so, will learn that no one has to like it.
Word Count: 4,438
a/n: None
The next time he’s able to see her, there is a nasty, fading ring of violet under her right eye that she tries to hide with a combed over bang. A scratch on her cheek.
There’s no surprise, no jumping reaction to patch her up or take her into his arms. In its place is only a three day build-up of tormenting frustration. Towards her.
“I’m sorry you had to miss Kyu’s birthday,” she states as characteristically casual as she’s prone to do. They’re loading their clothes into the machines side by side. “So I’m thinking for yours we can do something extra special…”
Hardly a big deal, he can sass. There was a gift wrapped something something under Taemin’s bed with the boy’s name (literally) all over it and he still planned on giving it to him. Besides, he was turning twenty next year. Whatever she had in mind that had nothing to do with boobs and beer, he could do without.
Alternately, he chooses to brood in silence; let her stew in what she thinks is a friendly quiet. The hum of the machines are better than him exploding at her. The tropical warmth of the laundromat beading the sweat down his temples is partial release…because so help him, she was becoming the bane of his not-so-lengthy existence and it wasn’t right that his heart still wanted her to see it his way when she preferred to be blind.
“I can bake you your favorite cake and we can go skating, just me you and the kids,” she rattles on. “I might have some coupons left over from when me and the kids went last time. Hope they didn’t expire-oh, you’re taking that off? Here, let me, I still need to fill this up.”
After he wordlessly pulls the white t-shirt over his head, she takes it and throws it in the wash with a maternal grin. That stupid, gorgeous smile a certain someone didn’t deserve-one Taemin doubted he even got see at all, considering how fucked up of an individual he was. Ignorance doesn’t prevent him from thinking that once upon a time he saw that smile often.
Standing there in his greasy tank top, watching her wobble in terrible rhythm to the Korean trot playing from the speakers, he can only wonder when’s the last time Jonghyun saw that smile.
The last time Jonghyun has ever smiled at her. Or the children.
“No sense, Noona…no sense.”
She cocks her head at him in concern. “Pardon?”
“I said it doesn’t make any sense, In Suk.” Either his stronger tone, drop of honorific or both do the trick of stilling her, cranking her eyes open to maximum capacity. “Look at you. Hani and Kyu, look at them.”
“Tae don’t…calm down-
“No, don’t touch me.” He swerves away from her gentle palm, glaring bullets at her. “You should be in school. Damn him and just go to school, you should be there. Not slaving in a fucking kitchen and inhibiting your growth. Not sheltering your skill just for the sake of that son of a bitch.”
Her head falls into her chest, lips mashing together. A wilting flower should obstruct him from going any further, but Taemin can’t stop.
“You’re limiting yourself for someone who doesn’t give a damn! You let that fucking monster around those children! Children that are his but you wouldn’t even know that from the way he treats them! Children that are both of yours but you wouldn’t even see that from the way he treats you! How dare you…fucking just...”
He’s turns, fuming, about to flee and leave smoke in his wake when a soft croak tugs at the back of his neck.
“I promised I would do whatever it took to keep this family together, Taemin…”
Yet that’s all there is to it. For whatever cockamamie reason, he was expecting more, perhaps an excuse that would render him a callous, naïve asshole for not fully understanding her motives. A reason to put him in his place, make him wrong, make him the bad guy…
She doesn’t linger there. The laundry is not going to do itself, and she’ll just have to make do without her folding mate if he didn’t feel up to speed.
His chest crunching, he watches her turn her back on him. It takes for a lone sniffle to prompt him to stalk off at last.
She’d be given the liberty to break without his presence.
<><><>
Jonghyun has been supporting her for a long time, Taemin knows. It on a late night where the two sat on his balcony drinking soju, talking mostly about Hani and Kyu and saving the really juicy topics for when they were really smashed. Not that talking about Jonghyun was one of those topics…he doesn’t know when that subject was conjured, but tis the way of a drunken conversation.
In hindsight, he could say it had to do with an experiment of intimacy failed-because this was also the same night they found out they could go no further than an implied, marginally incestuous siblingship-and her guilt of the whole venture probably, appropriately, reminded her of her boyfriend.
She and Jonghyun had been foster children; their lives similar and far from similar to Taemin’s status as a ward of the state since he had no family to speak of from the beginning and would be entitled to government benefits for the rest of his life. On a bizarre account, they were raised in the same foster home and ended up becoming close like their foster parents dreamed. Only, apparently, it was a bit over their expectations once they found out from the fifteen year olds that In Suk was pregnant. Of course the teens had been hesitant to reveal themselves, and when Jonghyun caught wind that their parents were planning to separate them-keep In Suk, send Jonghyun away-they packed and hopped on the next train to Seoul.
It seemed to be problem solved for their foster parents however, since they didn’t receive any heat from the police and never spotted a missing children’s flyer. In Suk gave birth to their daughter, and ever since then, Jonghyun has been out busting his ass for a scrap here and scrap there besides what he earned at work-which was more like a temp wheel. Just like In Suk, he missed out on so much of his youth that he could never reclaim. In Suk eventually got her GED online but Jonghyun…well, who had time for class when you had mouths to feed? Growing mouths, at that?
For a wrinkle in time, Taemin did sympathize with him. The alcohol buzzing in his system might have attributed to this some, yes, yet the sincerity and the realness of it all would bring upon these feelings anyway. He didn’t have kids-he did know what it meant to be hungry and booted for being impoverished, and that’s probably all he needed to know. Living like that made you angry. You hated the world, you hated yourself, sometimes you even hated the food you ate just for it being so unattainable or so cheaply made-hating it even as you scarfed it down.
Then the dusky-haired boy had to look back on the unmerited, swollen cheek of Jonghyun’s first born, the dehumanization of his second, the countless injustices done to his first love, his childhood sweetheart, that even a lifetime of excuses couldn’t make up for. It didn’t take long for all of his sympathy for Jonghyun to be sucked out of the man and totally invested in In Suk, Hani and Kyu. No, Taemin hotly ruled, no. No one could be that bitter. There was no such thing as insurmountable bitterness to the point where you became someone’s personal nightmare and them, your personal punching bag. Taemin knows poverty is heavily variable in that it can either bond people together even more or completely tear them apart-and while Jonghyun didn’t have to adhere to the close-knit bonding if it wasn’t in him, he also didn’t have a right to label himself as a home wrecker. He had the right to be a good father, spouse, person. It was the least he could do, and if his least was his best, then so be it.
Later on, during a fleeting run in on the stairs one morning, a daunting, tell-tale glaze in Jonghyun’s mean eyes gave reason for Taemin to speculate that something else had to factor into the man’s unacceptable behavior. Right on time, within a week In Suk snuck over after the children were tucked in, sobbing as she produced the baggies and needles. As she gritted her teeth into his chest, a total wretch, and beat her small fist, Taemin fought his demon, along with the innate urge to comfort her with the false hope that Jonghyun may have been selling more than using; to better their financial rut. How he wished he could tell her, and how badly he wanted to kiss her and make love to her-anything to show that he cared, that he truly hated to see her cry.
But, for someone who didn’t partake in it himself, Taemin could teach a course on how much revenue the drug business pulled in, especially for stimulants and opioids. At those kinds of rates and that kind of demand, Jonghyun would have been made enough to pull he and his family out of the slums-and like, three other families. Move to the ‘berbs and be set with that kind of penny.
No mistake, it was because of his recreational use that money was tighter than ever before.
And the culprit behind Jonghyun’s growing, untamed viciousness.
As Taemin and his neighbors would know the extent of sooner than not, wholly unprepared
<><><>
Many voices made him beware. Don’t interfere, they cried.
“Stay out of it,” Minho, his new basketball mate and friend, advised. “More trouble than its worth. Move, if you can.”
Jinki, the senior mechanic at the shop, whistled low. “Sounds like this guy needs a good whopping, but don’t you go trying to give it to him, kid. Gotta let karma catch up to ‘em.”
“Don’t get involved, Taemin-ah. Put down the phone and leave. Its going to be okay-we’re going to be okay, I promise you. The kids are at my sister-in-law’s. They’re okay Taemin, you have to go.”
His own rationale thundered at him, chorused with self-preservation.
It was sound advice at its finest.
Through it all, nonetheless, Taemin knew in his heart there was only a matter of time before shit really hit the fan…with no pillow spared. Cinema inspired him to want to be a Won Bin, or the black man in Enough who taught JLo to go ham. “Love” and all the dysfunction that came with it would destroy them, and destroy him in the process since he was so attached. Society would deem him too young to understand that already, which is precisely why Taemin flipped them the permanent finger and kept it movin’.
Boys became men by different standards, experiences, and morals.
For Taemin, a real man didn’t sit back while the weak were preyed upon. A defined “man” didn’t listen to consequence and misinterpret the “save me”s screaming at him from a child’s innocent eyes. Under these circumstances, a man wasn’t a real man unless he said to hell with all of the standards, experiences, and morals, and just did what was right.
And a man damn sure didn’t ignore a sobbing phone call from a son pleading on behalf of his mother.
He was in the early stages of fixing an oil leak when the call came through. Once Kyu finished sniveling to him that Jonghyun wouldn’t let In Suk out of their bedroom, there was absolutely no time for Taemin to register how Kyu even got a hold of his number or why the boy was home during a school day. Mind, heart, soul askew with uncharted fear, he replied as calmly as he could, “Hyung is on his way, just hang on. Stay on the line for me,” and barely had enough breath to yell to Jinki that he was on an emergency call as he took off out of the garage. Not wanting to upset or disorient the boy further, he kept his questions to a minimum, only asking for an update every five minutes. He tried to keep his voice soothing in spite of the cruise-turning-jetski of his sanity; it was loud on the subway, yet he could still hear some of the distressed, female whimpers from beyond the door.
Reaching the sixth floor of the building, Taemin’s feet are just about to fall off and lungs about to implode, but he’d live and he was there. Already he could see the door was wide open, noon sun casting a high yellow rectangle on the dirty hallway carpet. He bolted inside stuffing his phone in his pocket and immediately scooped up the weeping boy, who instinctively dropped the house phone and buried himself into Taemin’s aching chest. In the seconds that he rocked Kyu, he didn’t remember ever asking aloud why the boy didn’t call the police instead, yet there was a gurgled, “Omma says never to tattle to the police. She didn’t say I couldn’t call you” that hit him so hard, he nearly doubled over from his angst.
That day was the day Taemin learned it probably was better not to take matters into his own hands. On the flip side, it was also the day where it was all she wrote.
He carried Kyu to his and Hani’s bedroom, instructed him through his teeth to stay put and keep the door closed. Furiously, he made splinters of the master bedroom door within seconds with his foot, and immediately charged the pissed off, ascending Jonghyun. Pants half down the shorter man’s ass and all.
A sharp, “Fuck this” channeled through the boy’s brain prior to him blacking out. From then on it was him, Jonghyun and the mercy of the divine. In Suk, caught in a game of trying to break them apart and whizzing back to avoid getting hit, screams for them to stop. She’d tugged on her robe to preserve what little dignity she could, though unfortunately the hobble in her steps and the blood trickling down her thigh doesn’t seem to rightly register at the top of her list of priorities. At a point where she gives up trying to stop them, she does redeem herself temporarily by running into the children’s room and balling up with her son until the worst is over.
When it will be over? That’s the tricky part. It’s hard to estimate time if you’re wailing on someone with everything you’ve got. Unfeeling to the blows both given and received, crashing on every square inch of an apartment so small, you might as well be in a pinball machine.
It’s a fight Jonghyun has an upper hand in due to just a natural, brute strength, a fight he’s winning. He’s used to taking out his anger on other people while Taemin is not. Peering at the other side of the scale, it’s clearly marked that Taemin has a drive, a reason, an honor to fulfill. So it makes him just as lethal. A relentless danger to contend with; an unseen, ticking danger to himself.
All that unspoken for in eating up Jonghyun’s licks, smiling even through bloody teeth in a nanosecond of madness. He knows why he cares, why he’s doing this, and why it matters. In Suk deserved better and Jonghyun deserved a second car wash of hell in his afterlife for what he did to his family.
The voices were right though.
This here, this damn near foreplay of a mutual ass whooping-he’d have to turn over that terminology in his mind later-was right too. Both were right as rain.
Taemin would have no regrets. In Suk would never speak to him again, and while he can’t say he’d be fine with that, he also wouldn’t second guess or second rate himself for siccing his demon on the one currently on top of him atop the split coffee table. The tiring, bare chested 24-year-old condensed to yanking up Taemin’s bangs by the roots and…well…did some heavy duty staring Taemin hoped didn’t attribute to what he thought it was-not like the boy had been deliberately keeping his (already too long) hair in his face to hide his abnormally long lashes and delicately shaped eyes for nothing.
He groans inward and outwardly, wishing Jonghyun would keep hitting him so he can pass out.
Which, rather unfairly, doesn’t happen. Jonghyun blithely climbs up off him eventually while Taemin is sickeningly forced to watch In Suk scurry into the room and worry over her boyfriend’s “hurts.” She worries over his too (more so than Jonghyun’s, none too shockingly) He glares at the other man in curt disbelief. Stuck on if he should trust his imagination or his gut, but really unsure about the brown-haired guy’s hard-on, hard-off, then hard-on once more by the time Jonghyun is off him.
Fuck you, the boy hisses in his head sourly, tying up loose ends from the previous swear he’d thought before he started the fight. Venom could spray from the peep holes of his clenched teeth, foam could form at his gums. He’s so inconceivably livid he can’t bring himself to speak. Fuck you, you sick fuck.
All heart and no sense respectively, In Suk manages to take them both in to the emergency room, explaining in off-color amusement that they’d had a little too much to drink. Medics buy it either because they don’t care to check details or they are horrified with bloodied body parts that are “not supposed to bend like that.” Traumatized Kyu silently hovers by his mother’s side the entire time, wanting to burst into tears at seeing the only two consistent males in his life looking like they’d come straight out of a horror flick; holding back the flood even then, in fear of disgusting or disappointing his father.
“Did he hurt you.”
She can’t believe it. He looks as if he’d shatter on that hospital bed and yet…
In Suk clasps his hand as gently as she can. Shaking her head in a way, Taemin reads, as if to tell him he’s too injured to be talking.
“Did he hurt you?”
“I’m okay T-
“Lie to me again and I will leave this fucking hospital. I will never speak to you again.” Well how about that. He’d beat her to the punch if necessary. Taemin clamps his eyes shut, tethering himself to her impending answer. I know he hits you but damn Noona….damn. Not that too…
“I…well.” She swallows meekly, lifting his hand to her face. Her voice is deathly soft. “I don’t know how real you want it said…it hurt this time because I struggled more than usual. I shouldn’t have resisted, like he warned-
“Stop.”
She’s blinking down at him tearfully as his bruised eyes turn to unreadable slits.
“Take care of the kids…and see to him.” He speaks emptily, rasping like the dying man he isn’t. Or maybe he is… “You know you want…you know you need to.”
“He’s f…” She trails off uncertainty, in contrast from how fact she started to reply.
Causing him to snort derisively. “It’s okay, go ahead. Damper my male pride. Really no harm done.”
“You’re not joking.”
“No. I’m not.” A small shrug follows, one the elicits a wince.
“Shit, Taemin…God. You’re so disappointed in me and I…” The young woman’s pretty face blotches up, pinching into a mask of hurt and shame. She clings to his hand harder. “You’re so disappointed in me a-and…my fucking…I was…I had the nerve to be mad at you for fighting him…when all you…you were just trying to protect m-me…my stupid, stupid, stupid ass…”
It goes against every “Noona” meter going haywire inside of him, but he can only look away from her quiet crumble. In his thoughtful stare at the fitfully napping Kyu, Taemin contemplates. The situation had them all mortified. Action was taken. No heart was spared, except maybe Jonghyun’s and Hani’s-and for the little girl, living in the macabre circus she called a home, that was only for the time being.
Now what?
Were they all destined to roll downhill? Pick up hiking sticks and start an optimistic climb-a fruitless one, if you looked at the glass half empty?
“I’m so sorry baby, so sorry…I love you, I love you I love you, you mean so much to me, I love you …”
Not enough to listen to me, he muses despondently, heatedly. Closing his eyes again, Taemin settles back, letting her kiss all over him, grieve over him like she should grieve for and pity herself. Those kids…
Not enough to listen to me
Love him more than anyone…over me, over them…over yourself
Love someone who has forgotten how to love you…
You love him more than he would ever know how to love you
How dare you…
From his peripheral he spots Jonghyun walking by his room with a nurse, gnashing his teeth together and glaring back at him just as antagonistically.
<><><>
He was young, he was attractive, he was on his merry way. Tittering between a job and a few classes was a piece of cake for him, unlike it is for most people. The women who brought their cars into the shop dropped hints that fell slower than their panties would, intentionally wearing tight, short skirts that revealed string and lace, and “accidently” letting their car keys slip just to bend over in front of him. As he was ought to do, he’d taken some of them-quite a variety- up on their offers, snickering is dismissal whenever a bubble eyed Jinki asked him “how he did it.”
“I should grow out my hair too, get it nice and candy like yours.” He chuckles, tossing his favorite, grinning grease monkey an oil dipstick and raking his blackened fingers through his cropped crown. “Probably grow it out before I start receding like my father.” He shivers.
Taemin had so much going on for him that others in his herd didn’t ever dream of the chance of accomplishing, it should have been outlawed.
Morally unfit towards people like Jonghyun, who were always seeking a way out and losing themselves in a funhouse of despair the unhappier they got with searching.
Why did he choose to sink on this ship?
Like he didn’t even have a choice, Taemin reflected on his web of decisions pensively as his body recovered, his Christmas spirit traded in for woe. The pain meds speaking for him wouldn’t shut up about why he would chose the SS Sava a Ho, and the meds mixed with the booze chattered with an even more unfiltered tongue. In betwixt those lovely moments of playing patient for Hani and Kyu who were out of school for winter break, gratefully slurping up the homemade soup In Suk made from their colorful spoons and praising the drawings they drew on his arm cast…in betwixt basking with the little family in Jonghyun’s more frequent absences…Taemin failed to understand why he was so different. Who was he to sully his hands like so? People on this side of town, in this ditch of doom, they’d rather turn an eye blinder than In Suk’s than turn the other cheek. Everyone was on their own. No packs here, just adrift dogs who sometimes latch onto something of common interest or gain and end up squabbling amongst themselves. He held his head up high while everyone else sauntered around walking and quaking like ducks-living as a slum in the slums. Mugged, raped, killed-still not a stir from your landlord or a compassionate peep from other tenants. Taemin, just like the next person, appreciated that people minded their own business and respected his privacy settings, but really?
Honestly, “really?” to which? That he couldn’t follow status quo? Or that status quo was a bunch of horse shit?
“I’m pregnant Tae…”
The coats he’s been viewing stop sliding on the rack instantaneously. For a very long time, enough for her to shift impatiently, he coolly memorizes the stitching in a leather number that’s three sizes too big. He can’t move.
“I don’t know how it happened. I’ve been on the pill and… damn it, I don’t know how I’m going to tell him… Taemin please say something.”
His lips defy her. They compress into a hard, jagged line. A minute ticks by, the store’s holiday carols distorting in his ears, Hani and Kyu’s shrieks of laughter in the children’s section hammering joylessly in his head.
“I don’t know what to do,” she whispers like baby sparrow feathers, slowly lying her head on his broad shoulder and linking her hand around his good arm.
His burning eyes flutter closed.
All there is to do is adjust himself to his therapy, try not to shit his stomach. Bit by bit he wills his demon to dissipate, his budding stress to yield. He was young, too young. He was young, he was attractive, and he was on his way.
So was she. So could she.
Rotating at the pace of the elderly, Taemin soundlessly pulls her into him and nuzzles into her hair, lashes fanning out over his paled cheeks. The sting of his squished, casted arm is welcomed with conviction.
She goes to hiccup: “Tae I-
“Put your arms around me and don’t say anything else,” he pleads huskily.
Once she does, Taemin’s hooded vision cracks open just to see as Hani runs by, excitedly engrossed in her game with Kyu to notice mommy and oppa’s vulnerable union.
Jonghyun’s devious gaze, the one he bestowed on the boy as their brawl wound down-it flits through Taemin’s stuffed head. Igniting every cell and molecule of his anatomy.
“Noona please promise me…”
“Mhm?” The acknowledgment muffles into his heart cavity fittingly.
His fixes his jaw savagely, stare forever locked on the playful ten-year-old girl with eyes just as enticingly delicate as his own, if not more. Much more dolly than her mother’s, and terribly so.
“Watch out for Hani, Noona. Keep your eye on her at all times if Jonghyun is around. Watch her, okay?”
“Okay, I promise,” In Suk doesn’t hesitate. “Anything you ask, I promise you…”
“Good,” he whispers. Smiling less than half-heartedly, Taemin pulls up to ogle her blotched face, cups the back of her head and molds his lips to her forehead lingeringly. The gesture also meant for, and hopefully sending a hopeful message to, the more-or-less Christmas miracle materializing behind the belly pressed to his.