Shakespeare In Braille
Title: Shakespeare In Braille.
Author: thankyouandyou
Rating: PG13
Summary: This strange new language.
Note: Did I just write fluff? Did I just- *faints*
The first kiss happens at midnight, a fairytale, but only in its timing. It happens over an empty pizzabox they’ll have to burn in the morning before the manager comes in. Minho buzzed and laughing, Jonghyun staring, sort of stupid, sort of mesmerized. They are tilting towards eachother and it’s just gravity, that’s the truth, it is just circumstance, but hear hear, for honest mistakes, hear hear for seeing destiny in the eyes of a boy half-drunk on warm beer and exhaustion.
So the first kiss happens in the dark because of gravity and magic, and Minho holds fistfuls of carpet and Jonghyun holds his breath. When they bump into eachother in the bathroom the next morning their height difference by the sink seems monumental and irreparable, and Jonhyun thinks, it’s not like it was going to work in the first place. Minho thinks hyung, like a tiny animal’s yelp, but doesn’t say anything.
The next kiss takes months, but it’s enough that it happens. They push and shove at each other afterwards, under a baking summer sun, elated and oh-so-scared, high on adrenaline and butterscotch chapstick, little fucker, about time, got your balls back didn't ya. They laugh like they didn’t spend the last months counting pulses, like this doesn’t change everything, and they smile to the camera like they want to melt the lens, they dance to the beat like hungry cannibals. Kibum says they’re mental, but Minho agrees to run down eight blocks to get him his favorite flavored water, so he doesn’t complain.
When the sun turns red and Jonghyun says roof, the city spreads orange and glowing under their feet. Minho wants to walk to the edge and see the tips of his shoes balancing above suicide, wants to say don’t you feel so small, the universe’s one big bowl of soup and we’re the noodles swimming on the surface, hey, I watched Titanic with Key last night because he threatened to gut me, and do you know what they said about love? You have to die for it, hyung. Something big and heavy, something to fill in the spaces, you know. Fend off this tiny fear that now they did this they’ve run out of words and he’s lost a friend and a brother, all for the taste of his pallet, the barest tint of love, Manhattan for beads.
Only Jonghyun leans against the gray wall squinting against the sun, looking scared shitless again, hunted by something internal and heathen like confusion or want, and Minho moves, presses him against the wall and speaks to him slow in this strange new language, like calming down a wild horse. Or in this case a short legged pony.
Darker shadows find him on his knees with his small hyung bending over him, physics reversed and balance questionable, the way they keep passing breath back and forth. Minho pauses, clears his throat and tries to move away, but Jonghyun just goes “nuh-uh, no way” and wraps an arm around his neck with eyes closed, nose bumping on nose.
“I’ve never done this before,” Minho whispers into his lips like it’s some secret password shared only mouth to mouth, a key to his treasure chest of weakness and Jonghyun just swallows it up and lies, “me neither.” Minho laughs nervously, you don’t fool me, but hands find their way into his hair, “no I mean it, I mean it, I do,” like Minho didn’t even hear the right thing, like he got lost in translation.
(We’ll try hard to learn this new language, so we can keep being your Shining Shinee. Minna-san, arigato!)
How do you learn a foreign language when there are no books.
Linguistics- he thinks, catching the shape of a smile with this mouth. Fingers under his jaw, tilting it up, up- or sign language. A thumb skating across his eyelashes, down the side of his neck, fingers threading in his hair and holding on.
Braille.
Braille, because they stumble blind for a while, sort of bumping shoulders and tripping over eachother’s shoelaces, whoops and this way and sorry I didn’t. Jonghyun is a natural, of course, having the time of his life figuring this out slowly between showers and shared granola bars, quiet whispers next to the water cooler. But Minho wants fluency, and he wants it now, wants the mechanics of this laid out plain in front of him, like dance steps marked on polished wood with white and blue tape. He resents the element of surprise, hates losing control, when his hands freeze, when his pulse quickens or when he gets that little itch between his fingers when the other talks to bouncing girls with bouncing curls.
He asks Kibum one night. Jonghyun, sitting on the kitchen sink, sighs without bitterness, just this complicated sort of frustrated affection that comes from sharing a bedroom too long. “Right, yeah, ask Kibum, Kibum knows everything.”
Kibum certainly doesn’t know everything -leave him alone by the door and he won’t find his way back home-, but he acts like he does, and perhaps sometimes that’s enough. “Love,” he hums going through their poor DVD collection. “If someone knows what love is, it’s this guy.”
He pronounces Shakespeare’s name wrong, but the other two will never know, and they’ll always be amazed.
He makes them watch Romeo + Juliet three times that night, perched smug between them, delicate white hands on their knees. It’s because he wants to watch, because he finds the music strangely alluring, because sometimes he fills the tub up and goes under, waits patiently for a kiss until his lungs protest. Kibum doesn’t know what love is, but he puts his feet up on Jonghyun’s lap and thinks it might be, something like that. He falls asleep as Minho learns scattered lines by heart, as Jonghyun’s eyes drift to the cracks on the ceiling, at the soda bottles on the floor smeared with five different sets of fingertips.
Minho carries Kibum’s light bones to bed just as the sun is peeking through the rooftops. He kisses Jonghyun’s eyelids in a strip of sunlight in the hallway, his forehead and his nose, his stubborn mouth, whispers goodnight goodnight, a thousand times goodnight and then pulls him to the kitchen to make coffee strong enough to qualify as a health code violation.
Author: thankyouandyou
Rating: PG13
Summary: This strange new language.
Note: Did I just write fluff? Did I just- *faints*
The first kiss happens at midnight, a fairytale, but only in its timing. It happens over an empty pizzabox they’ll have to burn in the morning before the manager comes in. Minho buzzed and laughing, Jonghyun staring, sort of stupid, sort of mesmerized. They are tilting towards eachother and it’s just gravity, that’s the truth, it is just circumstance, but hear hear, for honest mistakes, hear hear for seeing destiny in the eyes of a boy half-drunk on warm beer and exhaustion.
So the first kiss happens in the dark because of gravity and magic, and Minho holds fistfuls of carpet and Jonghyun holds his breath. When they bump into eachother in the bathroom the next morning their height difference by the sink seems monumental and irreparable, and Jonhyun thinks, it’s not like it was going to work in the first place. Minho thinks hyung, like a tiny animal’s yelp, but doesn’t say anything.
The next kiss takes months, but it’s enough that it happens. They push and shove at each other afterwards, under a baking summer sun, elated and oh-so-scared, high on adrenaline and butterscotch chapstick, little fucker, about time, got your balls back didn't ya. They laugh like they didn’t spend the last months counting pulses, like this doesn’t change everything, and they smile to the camera like they want to melt the lens, they dance to the beat like hungry cannibals. Kibum says they’re mental, but Minho agrees to run down eight blocks to get him his favorite flavored water, so he doesn’t complain.
When the sun turns red and Jonghyun says roof, the city spreads orange and glowing under their feet. Minho wants to walk to the edge and see the tips of his shoes balancing above suicide, wants to say don’t you feel so small, the universe’s one big bowl of soup and we’re the noodles swimming on the surface, hey, I watched Titanic with Key last night because he threatened to gut me, and do you know what they said about love? You have to die for it, hyung. Something big and heavy, something to fill in the spaces, you know. Fend off this tiny fear that now they did this they’ve run out of words and he’s lost a friend and a brother, all for the taste of his pallet, the barest tint of love, Manhattan for beads.
Only Jonghyun leans against the gray wall squinting against the sun, looking scared shitless again, hunted by something internal and heathen like confusion or want, and Minho moves, presses him against the wall and speaks to him slow in this strange new language, like calming down a wild horse. Or in this case a short legged pony.
Darker shadows find him on his knees with his small hyung bending over him, physics reversed and balance questionable, the way they keep passing breath back and forth. Minho pauses, clears his throat and tries to move away, but Jonghyun just goes “nuh-uh, no way” and wraps an arm around his neck with eyes closed, nose bumping on nose.
“I’ve never done this before,” Minho whispers into his lips like it’s some secret password shared only mouth to mouth, a key to his treasure chest of weakness and Jonghyun just swallows it up and lies, “me neither.” Minho laughs nervously, you don’t fool me, but hands find their way into his hair, “no I mean it, I mean it, I do,” like Minho didn’t even hear the right thing, like he got lost in translation.
(We’ll try hard to learn this new language, so we can keep being your Shining Shinee. Minna-san, arigato!)
How do you learn a foreign language when there are no books.
Linguistics- he thinks, catching the shape of a smile with this mouth. Fingers under his jaw, tilting it up, up- or sign language. A thumb skating across his eyelashes, down the side of his neck, fingers threading in his hair and holding on.
Braille.
Braille, because they stumble blind for a while, sort of bumping shoulders and tripping over eachother’s shoelaces, whoops and this way and sorry I didn’t. Jonghyun is a natural, of course, having the time of his life figuring this out slowly between showers and shared granola bars, quiet whispers next to the water cooler. But Minho wants fluency, and he wants it now, wants the mechanics of this laid out plain in front of him, like dance steps marked on polished wood with white and blue tape. He resents the element of surprise, hates losing control, when his hands freeze, when his pulse quickens or when he gets that little itch between his fingers when the other talks to bouncing girls with bouncing curls.
He asks Kibum one night. Jonghyun, sitting on the kitchen sink, sighs without bitterness, just this complicated sort of frustrated affection that comes from sharing a bedroom too long. “Right, yeah, ask Kibum, Kibum knows everything.”
Kibum certainly doesn’t know everything -leave him alone by the door and he won’t find his way back home-, but he acts like he does, and perhaps sometimes that’s enough. “Love,” he hums going through their poor DVD collection. “If someone knows what love is, it’s this guy.”
He pronounces Shakespeare’s name wrong, but the other two will never know, and they’ll always be amazed.
He makes them watch Romeo + Juliet three times that night, perched smug between them, delicate white hands on their knees. It’s because he wants to watch, because he finds the music strangely alluring, because sometimes he fills the tub up and goes under, waits patiently for a kiss until his lungs protest. Kibum doesn’t know what love is, but he puts his feet up on Jonghyun’s lap and thinks it might be, something like that. He falls asleep as Minho learns scattered lines by heart, as Jonghyun’s eyes drift to the cracks on the ceiling, at the soda bottles on the floor smeared with five different sets of fingertips.
Minho carries Kibum’s light bones to bed just as the sun is peeking through the rooftops. He kisses Jonghyun’s eyelids in a strip of sunlight in the hallway, his forehead and his nose, his stubborn mouth, whispers goodnight goodnight, a thousand times goodnight and then pulls him to the kitchen to make coffee strong enough to qualify as a health code violation.