Tucked away inside your sleeves -- 2.4 part 2
Sixty-two miles; Jinki/Taemin; PG-13
note: "The other half. For keywhysohawt." This is the note I attached to this draft back in 2013. It is now four years later, yikes.
1.1 | 1.2 | 1.3 | 1.4 | 1.5 | int. i | 2.1 | 2.2 | 2.3 | 2.4 i | part 2.4 ii
Ten -- brûlant
The girls were sitting side by side on Joohyo's bed with a blanket draped over their laps and a book between them when Taemin found himself standing a little awkwardly in the doorway. Haerim had her finger slipped in between the next two pages and Joohyo was holding onto the bookmark.
Taemin wrung his hands behind his back, eyes darting around.
"Do you need help?"
Haerim blinked at him. "What?"
He couldn't take back what he'd blurted out so he gestured at the workbooks. "Your friends have been bringing over your homework and stuff. Do you need help?"
The girls' gaze followed his pointing to what had been sitting on their desks untouched.
"I'm-I'm good at math." He sucked in a breath, squaring his shoulders and straightening his back. "I'm good at math! Honest. I can help you guys with math homework. Physics too. I-I can help, really."
It wasn't that he thought his help was necessary. Or even that his help would be welcome.
After all, what had happened had cleaved their lives into a before and an after. And in this devastatingly unfamiliar after, it was much too soon for things like homework. In the shadows of cloying grief, what did functions and their limits matter? They were but the relics of a foreign time, a spillover from the other side of the discontinuity.
Heck, this discontinuity wasn't even his and yet he had, just moments ago, tried to argue that his midterm was trivial, hadn't he?
The realization bowed Taemin's head.
He had wished that he could prove himself useful, but right there and then, he was only being selfish.
......
Coming out of their shared room with pajamas tucked under his arm and a toothbrush dangling from his lips, Taemin saw Jinki in front of his parents’ bedroom, one hand resting on the knob of the slightly open door. Say something, say something-they hadn't spoken since Taemin ran off-but he couldn’t find the right words, so he ducked into the bathroom to take his shower. When he emerged once more into the hallway, a towel around his neck, he was surprised to find that the only other light on in the apartment was in their room.
He found Jinki sorting through the contents of his closet and drawers, spread over every flat surface except for the bed. There was a stack of old boxes balanced on the chair and two more, one on either side of the older boy. Into each went about half of his things, half to keep, half to throw away.
Oh.
Packing was like playing Tetris.
Taemin was good.
Jinki was better.
Had always been better.
Taemin noticed belatedly that his hair was dripping onto a pile of pastel-covered workbooks resting by his feet, the one on top declaring ‘Math. Lee Jinki. Grade 2 Class A’. Stepping away, he murmured an apology. Jinki heard him and turned around, looking first at Taemin and then at the notebooks. He didn’t say anything but came over and grabbed the bunch, tossing them into the beat-up box before pulling Taemin over to the bed.
Not giving the younger boy time to object, he took the towel - now wet in patches - and draped it over Taemin’s head. Taemin closed his eyes on instinct. He could feel the warmth of those large palms as Jinki worked the fabric over his scalp. For a moment, the gentle solidity of those hands reminded him of his dad.
“Why are you…?” Taemin left the question unfinished.
“I haven’t found a place we can move to yet and I don't know when we're going to move, but we’re going to have to move. If I can get all the stuff that we don’t need regularly packed, it’ll be easier once I have everything sorted out.” He sounded a lot calmer than he did the last time the topic came up. “Haerim probably still doesn’t like the idea and Joohyo’s on her side, but they'll come around eventually. So in the meantime, I'm getting a head start.”
Taemin tugged on his pant leg.
“What? I’m okay.” Jinki hurried to say.
“Hyung, I think…I think you should talk to Haerim. About...about…”
The hands paused for a moment before carrying on.
"I do talk to her. She's the one who doesn't really want to talk to me."
"No I mean she's worried about you."
"...I know."
"So maybe...maybe you should tell her about how you feel and stuff. She gets mad and talks back to you sometimes but she-"
"I know she means well."
"She wants to help and I think you should let her. You care about her and about Joohyo so you're trying to do everything for them, but you can't do everything and they don't want you to do everything. Hyung, let them take care of you too."
Taemin grabbed onto Jinki's wrists, forcing him to stop.
"Or...or if not them then someone at least? If you don't want to talk to Haerim, maybe you can find someone else to talk to? Someone whom you think would understand better? Maybe your old homeroom teacher? The one that you said...or, or if not her, maybe Doctor Shin? He'd be willing to listen, right? And he seems really nice. If you're having a hard time, maybe y-"
Taemin was caught off guard when Jinki suddenly shoved him onto his back. He could feel the older boy's fingers digging too forcefully into his scalp, the muscles of his forearms taut. The moist towel draped over his face made it a little hard to breathe, but there was this small part of him that was glad he couldn't see Jinki's expression.
"Don't."
The word came low and gratingly hoarse, through gritted teeth.
"Is...is something wrong?"
"I'm not going to talk to Doctor Shin."
"Hyung?"
"...I'm fine. I'm just fine."
Taemin had an inkling that he couldn't quite make sense of. "Did something happen? Today? You wouldn't tell Haerim when she asked you. What did he say to you?"
He struggled to sit up but Jinki kept him pinned down. He tried pulling the towel from his face but Jinki wouldn't allow that either. He pushed and pushed but Jinki refused to budge.
"Is it auntie? But you said she is breathing better now."
Jinki gave him no reply.
Inside his head, Taemin replayed the entirety of the day, combing through it for some clue as to what was making the other boy act like this. Breakfast, groceries, lunch, the hospital, the talk Jinki had with the doctor, dinner, the balcony, money was hard and he was spending it on cigarettes. Money. Was that it?
"...Is it...is it money? Is it the..."
"He's not going to change my mind."
The whisper was too soft for Taemin to catch it the first time.
"Wh-what?"
"He's not going to change my mind!"
The vehemence in that declaration made the hairs on the back of Taemin's neck stand on end. By the time he realized that the weight was off him and scrambled onto his feet, he was left only with a towel in his hand and a glimpse of Jinki's heel, disappearing around the corner.
Taemin blinked, once, twice, but the heat prickling his eyes didn't go away. No one ever told him conversation was this hard.
He didn't understand. He really didn't.
......
Jinki was not in bed the next morning when the alarm pulled Taemin out of a dreamless sleep. After he washed up and brought his things - not much more than two changes of clothing - out to the living room, it was still rather dark outside. Just as he was yawning into his hand, wondering about breakfast, Jinki came in through the front door with a copy of the newspaper under one arm and a heavy plastic bag in his other hand.
"Morning." Taemin tugged his shirt back down over his stomach, trying to sound normal.
"Morning." The corner of Jinki's mouth tugged a little.
"Where did you go?"
"Deliveries." The older boy tossed the newspaper at him.
"Newspaper?"
"And milk. Same route I was on throughout junior high and high school, so I still know it like the back of my hand. Here, food." The older boy ushered him to a seat at the table and set what he'd been holding down in front of him. He smelled faintly of morning and wet pavement, but it was soon overwhelmed by the aroma of hoppang. "Auntie Baek was just opening up her store when I passed by. She gave me these, fresh out of the steamer."
Jinki pulled two brown paper bags out of the plastic one.
"Pork and mushrooms, or if you like sweet ones, danpatso."
Following the paper bags were small cartons of milk. Add everything together and there was enough to feed a whole family. So when Jinki didn't sit down to eat with him, he looked up from huffing over a mouthful of hot dough and filling, confused. The other boy kept his eyes down and opened the spout of a carton, pushing it over.
Taemin cooled his tongue with a swig of milk.
"Aren't you going to eat, hyung?"
"I ate before I went out." He rubbed at his nose.
Taemin's eyes followed Jinki's hand as it disappeared inside the pocket of the jacket that he hadn't taken off. Liar.
Stuffing the rest of the hoppang inside his mouth, he reached into the same bag for another. This one he didn't eat but instead offered to the older boy with an emphatic shove. Slightly surprised eyes flicked from the bun to his face, but that hand did not reappear.
"What? I told you, I ate-"
"It's piping hot and absolutely delicious." Taemin didn't let his arm waver as he enunciated each syllable. "Won't you have one, hyung?"
He waited.
He stared and stared and stared. Until finally, Jinki must have found something in his upturned face, in his wide unblinking eyes, and his stance softened.
"Alright-" came the acquiescence, "-you eat that one. I'll wash my hands and take another."
Taemin only lowered his arm once Jinki had shrugged out of his jacket and entered the kitchen. This was something of a victory and it sang louder than the splash of tap water against the sink. Returning his attention to the hoppang held in his tingling fingers, he carefully took one earnest bite, and then another.
After days of main meals that tasted like unpalatable ash and homemade banchan heavy with bitter anguish, he had no doubt that Auntie Baek's hoppang was the most wonderful existence in the entire universe.
(The only thing to surpass it was, perhaps, Joohyo's face when she came upon the two of them finishing their breakfast.)
......
The meal sat warm in Taemin's belly, a welcome consolation as he bid the girls goodbye and made his way to the station with only Jinki for company. This thing, it diluted his restlessness, his helplessness. This thing that he would like to call hope.
While swaying along on the bus with Jinki's shoulder bumping into his, while watching the overhead cover of gray clouds break up, that was the name he had decided on.
Hope.
Climbing onboard the train, Taemin rushed to his seat and looked out the window. The familiar figure outside was already waiting, with one hand lifted in a wave. He smiled despite the pain in his throat, pressing his body against the glass, fingers splayed, like a child embarking on a trip by himself for the first time.
Hope was a small thing, he thought. And it can be found in the small things.
It wasn't a solution, much less the solution. It wasn't magic. It didn't repair all that was broken, didn't soothe all that was hurting, but... It was the but, a small word in and of itself, a suggestion that there was maybe something else to come. A bridge, a herald.
It burned, like heartache did, but it was a vivid buoyant fever.
Taemin carved this moment into the marrow of his bones.
Jinki, as he stood on the platform with the train pulling away, was bright in the sunlight, bright and a little blurry around the edges. He looked like he could disappear the very next second. But the striking red of the scarf Joohyo had wound around his neck remained, a brilliant spot of color against the washed out tones of the concrete and steel.
......
____a/n: ahem. cheese?
바람을 타고 쓸쓸히 춤추는 저 낙엽 위에도
뺨을 스치는 어느 저녁에 그 공기 속에도 »
......
part 2.5
note: "The other half. For keywhysohawt." This is the note I attached to this draft back in 2013. It is now four years later, yikes.
1.1 | 1.2 | 1.3 | 1.4 | 1.5 | int. i | 2.1 | 2.2 | 2.3 | 2.4 i | part 2.4 ii
Ten -- brûlant
The girls were sitting side by side on Joohyo's bed with a blanket draped over their laps and a book between them when Taemin found himself standing a little awkwardly in the doorway. Haerim had her finger slipped in between the next two pages and Joohyo was holding onto the bookmark.
Taemin wrung his hands behind his back, eyes darting around.
"Do you need help?"
Haerim blinked at him. "What?"
He couldn't take back what he'd blurted out so he gestured at the workbooks. "Your friends have been bringing over your homework and stuff. Do you need help?"
The girls' gaze followed his pointing to what had been sitting on their desks untouched.
"I'm-I'm good at math." He sucked in a breath, squaring his shoulders and straightening his back. "I'm good at math! Honest. I can help you guys with math homework. Physics too. I-I can help, really."
It wasn't that he thought his help was necessary. Or even that his help would be welcome.
After all, what had happened had cleaved their lives into a before and an after. And in this devastatingly unfamiliar after, it was much too soon for things like homework. In the shadows of cloying grief, what did functions and their limits matter? They were but the relics of a foreign time, a spillover from the other side of the discontinuity.
Heck, this discontinuity wasn't even his and yet he had, just moments ago, tried to argue that his midterm was trivial, hadn't he?
The realization bowed Taemin's head.
He had wished that he could prove himself useful, but right there and then, he was only being selfish.
......
Coming out of their shared room with pajamas tucked under his arm and a toothbrush dangling from his lips, Taemin saw Jinki in front of his parents’ bedroom, one hand resting on the knob of the slightly open door. Say something, say something-they hadn't spoken since Taemin ran off-but he couldn’t find the right words, so he ducked into the bathroom to take his shower. When he emerged once more into the hallway, a towel around his neck, he was surprised to find that the only other light on in the apartment was in their room.
He found Jinki sorting through the contents of his closet and drawers, spread over every flat surface except for the bed. There was a stack of old boxes balanced on the chair and two more, one on either side of the older boy. Into each went about half of his things, half to keep, half to throw away.
Oh.
Packing was like playing Tetris.
Taemin was good.
Jinki was better.
Had always been better.
Taemin noticed belatedly that his hair was dripping onto a pile of pastel-covered workbooks resting by his feet, the one on top declaring ‘Math. Lee Jinki. Grade 2 Class A’. Stepping away, he murmured an apology. Jinki heard him and turned around, looking first at Taemin and then at the notebooks. He didn’t say anything but came over and grabbed the bunch, tossing them into the beat-up box before pulling Taemin over to the bed.
Not giving the younger boy time to object, he took the towel - now wet in patches - and draped it over Taemin’s head. Taemin closed his eyes on instinct. He could feel the warmth of those large palms as Jinki worked the fabric over his scalp. For a moment, the gentle solidity of those hands reminded him of his dad.
“Why are you…?” Taemin left the question unfinished.
“I haven’t found a place we can move to yet and I don't know when we're going to move, but we’re going to have to move. If I can get all the stuff that we don’t need regularly packed, it’ll be easier once I have everything sorted out.” He sounded a lot calmer than he did the last time the topic came up. “Haerim probably still doesn’t like the idea and Joohyo’s on her side, but they'll come around eventually. So in the meantime, I'm getting a head start.”
Taemin tugged on his pant leg.
“What? I’m okay.” Jinki hurried to say.
“Hyung, I think…I think you should talk to Haerim. About...about…”
The hands paused for a moment before carrying on.
"I do talk to her. She's the one who doesn't really want to talk to me."
"No I mean she's worried about you."
"...I know."
"So maybe...maybe you should tell her about how you feel and stuff. She gets mad and talks back to you sometimes but she-"
"I know she means well."
"She wants to help and I think you should let her. You care about her and about Joohyo so you're trying to do everything for them, but you can't do everything and they don't want you to do everything. Hyung, let them take care of you too."
Taemin grabbed onto Jinki's wrists, forcing him to stop.
"Or...or if not them then someone at least? If you don't want to talk to Haerim, maybe you can find someone else to talk to? Someone whom you think would understand better? Maybe your old homeroom teacher? The one that you said...or, or if not her, maybe Doctor Shin? He'd be willing to listen, right? And he seems really nice. If you're having a hard time, maybe y-"
Taemin was caught off guard when Jinki suddenly shoved him onto his back. He could feel the older boy's fingers digging too forcefully into his scalp, the muscles of his forearms taut. The moist towel draped over his face made it a little hard to breathe, but there was this small part of him that was glad he couldn't see Jinki's expression.
"Don't."
The word came low and gratingly hoarse, through gritted teeth.
"Is...is something wrong?"
"I'm not going to talk to Doctor Shin."
"Hyung?"
"...I'm fine. I'm just fine."
Taemin had an inkling that he couldn't quite make sense of. "Did something happen? Today? You wouldn't tell Haerim when she asked you. What did he say to you?"
He struggled to sit up but Jinki kept him pinned down. He tried pulling the towel from his face but Jinki wouldn't allow that either. He pushed and pushed but Jinki refused to budge.
"Is it auntie? But you said she is breathing better now."
Jinki gave him no reply.
Inside his head, Taemin replayed the entirety of the day, combing through it for some clue as to what was making the other boy act like this. Breakfast, groceries, lunch, the hospital, the talk Jinki had with the doctor, dinner, the balcony, money was hard and he was spending it on cigarettes. Money. Was that it?
"...Is it...is it money? Is it the..."
"He's not going to change my mind."
The whisper was too soft for Taemin to catch it the first time.
"Wh-what?"
"He's not going to change my mind!"
The vehemence in that declaration made the hairs on the back of Taemin's neck stand on end. By the time he realized that the weight was off him and scrambled onto his feet, he was left only with a towel in his hand and a glimpse of Jinki's heel, disappearing around the corner.
Taemin blinked, once, twice, but the heat prickling his eyes didn't go away. No one ever told him conversation was this hard.
He didn't understand. He really didn't.
......
Jinki was not in bed the next morning when the alarm pulled Taemin out of a dreamless sleep. After he washed up and brought his things - not much more than two changes of clothing - out to the living room, it was still rather dark outside. Just as he was yawning into his hand, wondering about breakfast, Jinki came in through the front door with a copy of the newspaper under one arm and a heavy plastic bag in his other hand.
"Morning." Taemin tugged his shirt back down over his stomach, trying to sound normal.
"Morning." The corner of Jinki's mouth tugged a little.
"Where did you go?"
"Deliveries." The older boy tossed the newspaper at him.
"Newspaper?"
"And milk. Same route I was on throughout junior high and high school, so I still know it like the back of my hand. Here, food." The older boy ushered him to a seat at the table and set what he'd been holding down in front of him. He smelled faintly of morning and wet pavement, but it was soon overwhelmed by the aroma of hoppang. "Auntie Baek was just opening up her store when I passed by. She gave me these, fresh out of the steamer."
Jinki pulled two brown paper bags out of the plastic one.
"Pork and mushrooms, or if you like sweet ones, danpatso."
Following the paper bags were small cartons of milk. Add everything together and there was enough to feed a whole family. So when Jinki didn't sit down to eat with him, he looked up from huffing over a mouthful of hot dough and filling, confused. The other boy kept his eyes down and opened the spout of a carton, pushing it over.
Taemin cooled his tongue with a swig of milk.
"Aren't you going to eat, hyung?"
"I ate before I went out." He rubbed at his nose.
Taemin's eyes followed Jinki's hand as it disappeared inside the pocket of the jacket that he hadn't taken off. Liar.
Stuffing the rest of the hoppang inside his mouth, he reached into the same bag for another. This one he didn't eat but instead offered to the older boy with an emphatic shove. Slightly surprised eyes flicked from the bun to his face, but that hand did not reappear.
"What? I told you, I ate-"
"It's piping hot and absolutely delicious." Taemin didn't let his arm waver as he enunciated each syllable. "Won't you have one, hyung?"
He waited.
He stared and stared and stared. Until finally, Jinki must have found something in his upturned face, in his wide unblinking eyes, and his stance softened.
"Alright-" came the acquiescence, "-you eat that one. I'll wash my hands and take another."
Taemin only lowered his arm once Jinki had shrugged out of his jacket and entered the kitchen. This was something of a victory and it sang louder than the splash of tap water against the sink. Returning his attention to the hoppang held in his tingling fingers, he carefully took one earnest bite, and then another.
After days of main meals that tasted like unpalatable ash and homemade banchan heavy with bitter anguish, he had no doubt that Auntie Baek's hoppang was the most wonderful existence in the entire universe.
(The only thing to surpass it was, perhaps, Joohyo's face when she came upon the two of them finishing their breakfast.)
......
The meal sat warm in Taemin's belly, a welcome consolation as he bid the girls goodbye and made his way to the station with only Jinki for company. This thing, it diluted his restlessness, his helplessness. This thing that he would like to call hope.
While swaying along on the bus with Jinki's shoulder bumping into his, while watching the overhead cover of gray clouds break up, that was the name he had decided on.
Hope.
Climbing onboard the train, Taemin rushed to his seat and looked out the window. The familiar figure outside was already waiting, with one hand lifted in a wave. He smiled despite the pain in his throat, pressing his body against the glass, fingers splayed, like a child embarking on a trip by himself for the first time.
Hope was a small thing, he thought. And it can be found in the small things.
It wasn't a solution, much less the solution. It wasn't magic. It didn't repair all that was broken, didn't soothe all that was hurting, but... It was the but, a small word in and of itself, a suggestion that there was maybe something else to come. A bridge, a herald.
It burned, like heartache did, but it was a vivid buoyant fever.
Taemin carved this moment into the marrow of his bones.
Jinki, as he stood on the platform with the train pulling away, was bright in the sunlight, bright and a little blurry around the edges. He looked like he could disappear the very next second. But the striking red of the scarf Joohyo had wound around his neck remained, a brilliant spot of color against the washed out tones of the concrete and steel.
......
____a/n: ahem. cheese?
바람을 타고 쓸쓸히 춤추는 저 낙엽 위에도
뺨을 스치는 어느 저녁에 그 공기 속에도 »
......
part 2.5