(no subject)
█ ✫ CHERRIES ··· ( oneshot )
█ pairing: Jongkey
█ rating: NC-17 (WARNING: Adult Content)
█ genre: AU, PWP, Fluff, Smut
█ summary:
Jonghyun discovers that he is an idiot. Key has a craving for cherries.
✫ ··· author's note:
90% of this was written at 3AM after reading too many raunchy submissions from Texts From Last Night. This one makes a cameo in the ending. It is purely a crackfic, and I wash my hands of it.
··· ✫ ···
It feels like they have been friends for the better part of a really fucking long time. The sort of friendship where one can show up on the doorstep of the other unannounced, and the reason for the visit can immediately be determined by what shoes the uninvited guest is wearing; where, without even making eye contact, the two of them will sing at the top of their lungs whenever Love Like This is played on the radio, regardless of where they are and how inappropriate it may seem. The kind where when one is heartbroken, the other feels it doubly so - once because one is hurting, and again because the other knows nothing he can do or say will make the pain go away.
They soak up beer and shots of tequila like dry sponges on Saturday nights, and bring each other empty waste paper bins and pairs of aspirin on Sunday mornings.
Key can still remember the day they find out they've been accepted in to the same university. Different majors, in different buildings, but at the same campus; he cries, and Jonghyun laughs at him and takes him for ice cream when his nose stops running. They immediately start looking for apartments together, and once they've found one they troll second-hand shops and flea markets for the cheapest, ugliest furniture they can find. They spend the summer refinishing and upholstering their finds in Jonghyun's uncle's backyard, until Key stops complaining about clashing coordinates and Feng Shui.
They paint their living room the same colour as the sky, their kitchen the colour of coffee, and the one bedroom they share white. After their first semester they decide the white is too boring, and take half a dozen cans of coloured spray paint to the walls until they decide their room is certifiably swag, at least according to Jonghyun. They sleep on the living room floor for three days until the fumes dissipate. Key finds it tacky at first, but after finding a new comforter and an array of throw pillows the exact colours of the paint they'd used for his bed, he decides it isn't so bad.
Eventually, their mutual friends joke that they were born married. The first time it is mentioned, the two of them laugh so hard they cry, clinging to each other, Jonghyun's elbow jammed in his rice bowl, because it explains everything so perfectly. Now, such a proclamation normally leads to one of the two demanding to be made a sandwich, which makes the other cry out But Ricky! in the most obnoxious English he can muster.
For the massive alcohol-infused party they host at the end of their first year they even get themselves a wedding cake, complete with bride-and-groom topper. Key bedazzles the plastic bride's dress with tacky bargain store scrapbooking charms shaped like roses, and paints her hair pink. Jonghyun uses a nub of black licorice to give the groom a little candy boner.
When Key loses at Pictionary, he smashes a handful of their cake in Jonghyun's face, which leads to an incredibly inebriated food fight.
The first time he thinks about it is completely accidental, but it leaves him searching for the similarities in all past occurrences. Somewhere between sharing a text book on their first day of high school and watching Key scrub stale wedding cake frosting out of his hair the next morning, Jonghyun discovers a pre-existing pattern. All of the women he's dated are ever-so slightly taller than he is. Each one has feline eyes, high cheekbones, or full lips; wears clothes by obscure designers, or worships vintage accessories; and all have a flair for the creative. It finally dawns on Jonghyun - similar to the way a nuclear reaction dawns on an atom mid-split - that he has been attempting to date the female version of Key since they met.
This realization comes with two very stupid worries, compounded by his tendency to over-think coincidence in an effort to come up with a method for proving fate. The first is that he has been harbouring an unacknowledged romantic longing for his best friend for God knows how long, and has been trying to get it out of his system by sleeping with women that look even vaguely like him. Second, since Key is much sharper than he is and enjoys pointing out asinine things Jonghyun does that make him feel awkward, there is a very good chance that the object of his unspoken affections has already noticed this trend.
··· ✫ ···
Despite his worries, no matter how strangely Jonghyun acts around Key for the next week, the taller boy makes absolutely no mention of doppelgänger women. Instead, he asks if Jonghyun is planning to go home for the summer. Both he and Jonghyun have part-time jobs not far from campus, and since they don't want to lose their apartment, they'll be paying rent on the space over the break anyhow - it makes sense to stay, so both do.
It is not the best decision Jonghyun has ever made, in retrospect. He is suddenly hyper-aware of every single thing Key does and doesn't do. It starts to fray the edges of his sanity when he realizes that Key handing him the sugar for his coffee makes his palms sweat and his ears ring. They unravel completely when he realizes that he even finds Key's toes sexy, feeling his mouth go dry as he watches them wriggle against the couch cushions while they watch recorded re-runs of Music Core on their PVR. Even so, he manages to hold on to the last threads of his reason, though he has to clutch at them with desperate fingers like kite strings in a hurricane every time Key laughs or smiles or blinks or breathes.
··· ✫ ···
The day Key brings home a small green plastic crate full of cherries after his shift at the local grocer, Jonghyun lets those threads slip from his fingers and tells common sense to go fuck itself.
As he brings each individual morsel of fruit to his lips, slow and deliberate, Jonghyun swears that Key knows how closely he is being watched. The expression on his face is neutral and unchanging, eyes glued with modest interest to the film they're watching, the bowl of cherries nestled in the crook of his crossed legs. He keeps offering it to Jonghyun, who only shakes his head and mutters a negative at the invitation, swallowing hard. It is all he can do to keep from chucking the dish across the room each time Key's mouth opens, little pink tongue darting out to draw a cherry inside and pluck it from the stem. After a few seconds - in which the dialogue of the cheesy action flick is drowned out by yet another explosion, and rain taps out an nonsensical message in Morse code against the window behind them - the tongue is back, cradling a cherry pit against his teeth so he can drop it in the dish on the arm of the couch with the rest of them.
By the time the bowl is half empty, Key's tongue and lips are stained scarlet, and the tips of his fingers are tinted translucent maroon from the skins. He is obviously full, but regards the inside of the bowl as if he feels sorry for the remaining fruit. Smacking his lips, he once again offers the dish to Jonghyun, jostling the contents as he does so. His eyes are wide and innocent, but they glitter in the silky glow of the television screen. “You sure you don't want some?”
Jonghyun's eyes are too focused on Key's mouth to do anything but take that sentence out of context, so that in his mind Key is not talking about cherries. When he speaks his voice comes out in a low, rumbling whisper, and his heart plays Beethoven's 5th against the polished white keys of his ribs. “I'd love some.”
The bowl falls from shock-stiff hands as Jonghyun grasps the hairs at the back of Key's neck in his fingers, tugging him forward and smothering a startled gasp with his lips. He is forceful and careless, skewing the black frames perched on the bridge of Key's nose. Jonghyun had once asked why Key bothered wearing glasses without lenses, to which the other had replied that they suited his face. Jonghyun now finds he agrees with that logic whole-heartedly. Still, they are currently in the way, and the hand not pressing their mouths together slips them gently from his face.
For a moment Key is too shocked to do anything but allow the kiss to happen, frozen and rigid at the contact. Once that moment passes, though, Jonghyun finds himself groaning as Key crawls in to his lap, pinning him to the back of the couch with the press of his thighs. It should surprise him that Key is the one to flick his tongue across the crease of his lips, begging for access, but he is too consumed with touching as much of Key as he can to care. He does little more than register the taste of cherries and Diet Coke when their tongues tangle, and decides that he will never taste anything as delicious again in his life.
When Key's oversized t-shirt ends up strewn amongst the cherries on the hardwood, Jonghyun's brain takes a deep breath, ready to scream at him about how wrong it is to be half way to fucking his best friend in the living room of their apartment. Before it can get a word in edgewise, Key is palming the crotch of his sweatpants and all the blood in his body rushes south, leaving it gasping for oxygen instead. Heat flares in his abdomen, scorching the bottoms of his lungs and he feels like he can't breathe.
Once he remembers how to inhale all he smells is vanilla and lilacs, a combination of the scents of Key's favourite soap and his preferred shampoo. He could drown in that perfume, addle his senses with it like it was hundred-dollar brandy, wake up drunk on this moment every day for the remainder of his existence. It scares him for a moment, how certain he is that Key is an addiction he will never shake off, and the welling fear of it drives him to pull back from marking the skin on Key's neck to groan out, “Key, wait -”
“I have been waiting for the better part of four years for you to finally open your eyes and look at me; to see me the way I see you.” Key's voice is hot and breathy against his earlobe. It hitches when Jonghyun's hands slide down his hips to cup the curve of his backside through his jeans; the reaction to his touch is electric, and Jonghyun bites harder at the pulse point under Key's jaw. Swallowing a needy purr, Key gasps, “There is no way I'm waiting any more than I already have.”
Neither has enough patience left to walk the twenty or so steps to the bedroom. Their desperation leads them to the refinished floors of the apartment, reclaimed from an old traditional Korean house being torn down across town and installed on hands and knees that past August. Somehow Key has enough pomp left to refuse to screw on their couch; it's black, he argues, and some stains will just never come out of the upholstery. Although what he is insinuating should be obvious, the thought of what could possibly stain a black couch still sends a thrill across the vertebrae of Jonghyun's spine, playing the ridges like a xylophone.
He lays out the leopard-print fleece throw Key hides underneath when they watch scary movies, pressing the other's shoulder blades against it as he works across Key's chest with his mouth. Key calls him an idiot, but all Jonghyun can do is smile against his collarbone as he tugs at the fly of his bluejeans, wanting nothing more than to press his fingers in to the naked flesh of his alabaster thighs. With a soft moan, Key lifts his hips to let Jonghyun tug them free of his legs. He tosses them somewhere unimportant.
Across the room, Key's cellphone buzzes against the top of the dining table, and the chorus of Genie plays once; twice; three times, before the call is redirected to his voice mail. The end credits of the movie fade from the television screen, and the menu of the DVD loops endlessly as Key tattoos his name across Jonghyun's back with the crescents of his fingernails. They melt together as a summer storm rattles the glass in the windowpanes in earnest, the lights flickering with each crack of lightning. Thunder rumbles across the floor beneath them, transferring the vibrations to their bones; each wave has Key tensing, crying out in surprise at the sensation, then in pleasure when Jonghyun matches his rhythm to the crescendo of the clouds.
The storm outside is relentless, unending, as they are. Key loses count of the number of times they climax, can't bring himself to care about the hard press of the floor against his back after the second, forgets what his legs feel like after the fourth. Both of them are so sensitive it hurts, but neither can stop now that they've started. It isn't until Jonghyun's arms give out and he collapses on top of him that Key realizes his voice is completely gone, throat raw and swollen with overuse, Jonghyun's name etched across his vocal chords and trapped on the tip of his tongue - a secret begging to be told.
It takes them more than twenty minutes to catch their breath, chests heaving, muscles too numb to ache. The room reeks of sweat and sex, but underneath is the distinct fragrance of cherries. When he notices it, the paradox of aromas makes Key giggle hoarsely, his throat too abused for his laughter to chime as sweetly as it normally does. The wheezing whistle that escapes his lips sets Jonghyun chuckling at the absurdity of the sound, and they discover that his voice is no better off. Suddenly they are on their sides, curled into each other as their rasping laughter escalates past the point of modest hilarity. It leaves them clutching at the stitches in their sides, eyes pooled with tears as they face each other, howling like loons at their own stupidity.
Sometime before the storm ends and after they are too exhausted to laugh any more they fall asleep, naked as newborns, fingers wound together like corset laces between them. The DVD player still repeats the thirty-second home screen music, skipping hopelessly, a broken record lullaby in the darkness.
··· ✫ ···
The next day they wake up well after noon. They have coffee and instant noodles for breakfast, and every time their eyes meet, they cackle like comic book villains. Key sweeps the abandoned cherries into a dustpan, and Jonghyun puts the leopard throw in the wash.
They shower together to save time, but end up taking twice as long as they should have when Jonghyun presses Key against the tile. Once they finally get to washing the water is sub-Arctic across their flushed skin, and their teeth chatter though their laughter as they swipe shampoo out of their eyes.
··· ✫ ···
Every time Jonghyun tries to pull on a pair of pants, Key peels them off again.
Eventually, he stops trying.
··· ✫ ···
Key insists they buy an area rug for the living room; Lord knows why, but Jonghyun can't refuse his pouting. They browse stack after stack of carpets, Key pressing his hands in the pile of each one with a frown of concentration on his face. They are both tired and sore, and Jonghyun sighs and insists Key just pick one and be done with it. The salesman following them chokes when Key responds, “If it's not soft enough to fuck on, we're not buying it.”
They go home with an eight-by-six rug made of simulated sheepskin, high pile, bleached white. It tickles the small of Key's back when they test it out, but he doesn't mind the feeling.
··· ✫ ···
█ pairing: Jongkey
█ rating: NC-17 (WARNING: Adult Content)
█ genre: AU, PWP, Fluff, Smut
█ summary:
Jonghyun discovers that he is an idiot. Key has a craving for cherries.
✫ ··· author's note:
90% of this was written at 3AM after reading too many raunchy submissions from Texts From Last Night. This one makes a cameo in the ending. It is purely a crackfic, and I wash my hands of it.
··· ✫ ···
It feels like they have been friends for the better part of a really fucking long time. The sort of friendship where one can show up on the doorstep of the other unannounced, and the reason for the visit can immediately be determined by what shoes the uninvited guest is wearing; where, without even making eye contact, the two of them will sing at the top of their lungs whenever Love Like This is played on the radio, regardless of where they are and how inappropriate it may seem. The kind where when one is heartbroken, the other feels it doubly so - once because one is hurting, and again because the other knows nothing he can do or say will make the pain go away.
They soak up beer and shots of tequila like dry sponges on Saturday nights, and bring each other empty waste paper bins and pairs of aspirin on Sunday mornings.
Key can still remember the day they find out they've been accepted in to the same university. Different majors, in different buildings, but at the same campus; he cries, and Jonghyun laughs at him and takes him for ice cream when his nose stops running. They immediately start looking for apartments together, and once they've found one they troll second-hand shops and flea markets for the cheapest, ugliest furniture they can find. They spend the summer refinishing and upholstering their finds in Jonghyun's uncle's backyard, until Key stops complaining about clashing coordinates and Feng Shui.
They paint their living room the same colour as the sky, their kitchen the colour of coffee, and the one bedroom they share white. After their first semester they decide the white is too boring, and take half a dozen cans of coloured spray paint to the walls until they decide their room is certifiably swag, at least according to Jonghyun. They sleep on the living room floor for three days until the fumes dissipate. Key finds it tacky at first, but after finding a new comforter and an array of throw pillows the exact colours of the paint they'd used for his bed, he decides it isn't so bad.
Eventually, their mutual friends joke that they were born married. The first time it is mentioned, the two of them laugh so hard they cry, clinging to each other, Jonghyun's elbow jammed in his rice bowl, because it explains everything so perfectly. Now, such a proclamation normally leads to one of the two demanding to be made a sandwich, which makes the other cry out But Ricky! in the most obnoxious English he can muster.
For the massive alcohol-infused party they host at the end of their first year they even get themselves a wedding cake, complete with bride-and-groom topper. Key bedazzles the plastic bride's dress with tacky bargain store scrapbooking charms shaped like roses, and paints her hair pink. Jonghyun uses a nub of black licorice to give the groom a little candy boner.
When Key loses at Pictionary, he smashes a handful of their cake in Jonghyun's face, which leads to an incredibly inebriated food fight.
The first time he thinks about it is completely accidental, but it leaves him searching for the similarities in all past occurrences. Somewhere between sharing a text book on their first day of high school and watching Key scrub stale wedding cake frosting out of his hair the next morning, Jonghyun discovers a pre-existing pattern. All of the women he's dated are ever-so slightly taller than he is. Each one has feline eyes, high cheekbones, or full lips; wears clothes by obscure designers, or worships vintage accessories; and all have a flair for the creative. It finally dawns on Jonghyun - similar to the way a nuclear reaction dawns on an atom mid-split - that he has been attempting to date the female version of Key since they met.
This realization comes with two very stupid worries, compounded by his tendency to over-think coincidence in an effort to come up with a method for proving fate. The first is that he has been harbouring an unacknowledged romantic longing for his best friend for God knows how long, and has been trying to get it out of his system by sleeping with women that look even vaguely like him. Second, since Key is much sharper than he is and enjoys pointing out asinine things Jonghyun does that make him feel awkward, there is a very good chance that the object of his unspoken affections has already noticed this trend.
··· ✫ ···
Despite his worries, no matter how strangely Jonghyun acts around Key for the next week, the taller boy makes absolutely no mention of doppelgänger women. Instead, he asks if Jonghyun is planning to go home for the summer. Both he and Jonghyun have part-time jobs not far from campus, and since they don't want to lose their apartment, they'll be paying rent on the space over the break anyhow - it makes sense to stay, so both do.
It is not the best decision Jonghyun has ever made, in retrospect. He is suddenly hyper-aware of every single thing Key does and doesn't do. It starts to fray the edges of his sanity when he realizes that Key handing him the sugar for his coffee makes his palms sweat and his ears ring. They unravel completely when he realizes that he even finds Key's toes sexy, feeling his mouth go dry as he watches them wriggle against the couch cushions while they watch recorded re-runs of Music Core on their PVR. Even so, he manages to hold on to the last threads of his reason, though he has to clutch at them with desperate fingers like kite strings in a hurricane every time Key laughs or smiles or blinks or breathes.
··· ✫ ···
The day Key brings home a small green plastic crate full of cherries after his shift at the local grocer, Jonghyun lets those threads slip from his fingers and tells common sense to go fuck itself.
As he brings each individual morsel of fruit to his lips, slow and deliberate, Jonghyun swears that Key knows how closely he is being watched. The expression on his face is neutral and unchanging, eyes glued with modest interest to the film they're watching, the bowl of cherries nestled in the crook of his crossed legs. He keeps offering it to Jonghyun, who only shakes his head and mutters a negative at the invitation, swallowing hard. It is all he can do to keep from chucking the dish across the room each time Key's mouth opens, little pink tongue darting out to draw a cherry inside and pluck it from the stem. After a few seconds - in which the dialogue of the cheesy action flick is drowned out by yet another explosion, and rain taps out an nonsensical message in Morse code against the window behind them - the tongue is back, cradling a cherry pit against his teeth so he can drop it in the dish on the arm of the couch with the rest of them.
By the time the bowl is half empty, Key's tongue and lips are stained scarlet, and the tips of his fingers are tinted translucent maroon from the skins. He is obviously full, but regards the inside of the bowl as if he feels sorry for the remaining fruit. Smacking his lips, he once again offers the dish to Jonghyun, jostling the contents as he does so. His eyes are wide and innocent, but they glitter in the silky glow of the television screen. “You sure you don't want some?”
Jonghyun's eyes are too focused on Key's mouth to do anything but take that sentence out of context, so that in his mind Key is not talking about cherries. When he speaks his voice comes out in a low, rumbling whisper, and his heart plays Beethoven's 5th against the polished white keys of his ribs. “I'd love some.”
The bowl falls from shock-stiff hands as Jonghyun grasps the hairs at the back of Key's neck in his fingers, tugging him forward and smothering a startled gasp with his lips. He is forceful and careless, skewing the black frames perched on the bridge of Key's nose. Jonghyun had once asked why Key bothered wearing glasses without lenses, to which the other had replied that they suited his face. Jonghyun now finds he agrees with that logic whole-heartedly. Still, they are currently in the way, and the hand not pressing their mouths together slips them gently from his face.
For a moment Key is too shocked to do anything but allow the kiss to happen, frozen and rigid at the contact. Once that moment passes, though, Jonghyun finds himself groaning as Key crawls in to his lap, pinning him to the back of the couch with the press of his thighs. It should surprise him that Key is the one to flick his tongue across the crease of his lips, begging for access, but he is too consumed with touching as much of Key as he can to care. He does little more than register the taste of cherries and Diet Coke when their tongues tangle, and decides that he will never taste anything as delicious again in his life.
When Key's oversized t-shirt ends up strewn amongst the cherries on the hardwood, Jonghyun's brain takes a deep breath, ready to scream at him about how wrong it is to be half way to fucking his best friend in the living room of their apartment. Before it can get a word in edgewise, Key is palming the crotch of his sweatpants and all the blood in his body rushes south, leaving it gasping for oxygen instead. Heat flares in his abdomen, scorching the bottoms of his lungs and he feels like he can't breathe.
Once he remembers how to inhale all he smells is vanilla and lilacs, a combination of the scents of Key's favourite soap and his preferred shampoo. He could drown in that perfume, addle his senses with it like it was hundred-dollar brandy, wake up drunk on this moment every day for the remainder of his existence. It scares him for a moment, how certain he is that Key is an addiction he will never shake off, and the welling fear of it drives him to pull back from marking the skin on Key's neck to groan out, “Key, wait -”
“I have been waiting for the better part of four years for you to finally open your eyes and look at me; to see me the way I see you.” Key's voice is hot and breathy against his earlobe. It hitches when Jonghyun's hands slide down his hips to cup the curve of his backside through his jeans; the reaction to his touch is electric, and Jonghyun bites harder at the pulse point under Key's jaw. Swallowing a needy purr, Key gasps, “There is no way I'm waiting any more than I already have.”
Neither has enough patience left to walk the twenty or so steps to the bedroom. Their desperation leads them to the refinished floors of the apartment, reclaimed from an old traditional Korean house being torn down across town and installed on hands and knees that past August. Somehow Key has enough pomp left to refuse to screw on their couch; it's black, he argues, and some stains will just never come out of the upholstery. Although what he is insinuating should be obvious, the thought of what could possibly stain a black couch still sends a thrill across the vertebrae of Jonghyun's spine, playing the ridges like a xylophone.
He lays out the leopard-print fleece throw Key hides underneath when they watch scary movies, pressing the other's shoulder blades against it as he works across Key's chest with his mouth. Key calls him an idiot, but all Jonghyun can do is smile against his collarbone as he tugs at the fly of his bluejeans, wanting nothing more than to press his fingers in to the naked flesh of his alabaster thighs. With a soft moan, Key lifts his hips to let Jonghyun tug them free of his legs. He tosses them somewhere unimportant.
Across the room, Key's cellphone buzzes against the top of the dining table, and the chorus of Genie plays once; twice; three times, before the call is redirected to his voice mail. The end credits of the movie fade from the television screen, and the menu of the DVD loops endlessly as Key tattoos his name across Jonghyun's back with the crescents of his fingernails. They melt together as a summer storm rattles the glass in the windowpanes in earnest, the lights flickering with each crack of lightning. Thunder rumbles across the floor beneath them, transferring the vibrations to their bones; each wave has Key tensing, crying out in surprise at the sensation, then in pleasure when Jonghyun matches his rhythm to the crescendo of the clouds.
The storm outside is relentless, unending, as they are. Key loses count of the number of times they climax, can't bring himself to care about the hard press of the floor against his back after the second, forgets what his legs feel like after the fourth. Both of them are so sensitive it hurts, but neither can stop now that they've started. It isn't until Jonghyun's arms give out and he collapses on top of him that Key realizes his voice is completely gone, throat raw and swollen with overuse, Jonghyun's name etched across his vocal chords and trapped on the tip of his tongue - a secret begging to be told.
It takes them more than twenty minutes to catch their breath, chests heaving, muscles too numb to ache. The room reeks of sweat and sex, but underneath is the distinct fragrance of cherries. When he notices it, the paradox of aromas makes Key giggle hoarsely, his throat too abused for his laughter to chime as sweetly as it normally does. The wheezing whistle that escapes his lips sets Jonghyun chuckling at the absurdity of the sound, and they discover that his voice is no better off. Suddenly they are on their sides, curled into each other as their rasping laughter escalates past the point of modest hilarity. It leaves them clutching at the stitches in their sides, eyes pooled with tears as they face each other, howling like loons at their own stupidity.
Sometime before the storm ends and after they are too exhausted to laugh any more they fall asleep, naked as newborns, fingers wound together like corset laces between them. The DVD player still repeats the thirty-second home screen music, skipping hopelessly, a broken record lullaby in the darkness.
··· ✫ ···
The next day they wake up well after noon. They have coffee and instant noodles for breakfast, and every time their eyes meet, they cackle like comic book villains. Key sweeps the abandoned cherries into a dustpan, and Jonghyun puts the leopard throw in the wash.
They shower together to save time, but end up taking twice as long as they should have when Jonghyun presses Key against the tile. Once they finally get to washing the water is sub-Arctic across their flushed skin, and their teeth chatter though their laughter as they swipe shampoo out of their eyes.
··· ✫ ···
Every time Jonghyun tries to pull on a pair of pants, Key peels them off again.
Eventually, he stops trying.
··· ✫ ···
Key insists they buy an area rug for the living room; Lord knows why, but Jonghyun can't refuse his pouting. They browse stack after stack of carpets, Key pressing his hands in the pile of each one with a frown of concentration on his face. They are both tired and sore, and Jonghyun sighs and insists Key just pick one and be done with it. The salesman following them chokes when Key responds, “If it's not soft enough to fuck on, we're not buying it.”
They go home with an eight-by-six rug made of simulated sheepskin, high pile, bleached white. It tickles the small of Key's back when they test it out, but he doesn't mind the feeling.
··· ✫ ···