kpopvalentines mixed goodie bag

[warmboys]

PROMPT: shinee, jonghyun/onew, something about onew's weird finger sock puppet glove thingy, any rating
for itachibana13 here

Home Experiments

“Fill them with milk.”

“All of them?”

“No, just the pinky finger.” Jonghyun rolls his eyes so that for a moment all Jinki sees is a pair of big white mocking marbles. “Duh, all of them.”

“Okay,” Jinki says, because it’s his turn to get frustrated. “You want me to fill in the entire glove or not?”

Jonghyun stares at him. Usually when he does this long enough, Jinki’s poker face eventually morphs into an enormous unabashed grin-like the kind one might find drawn in ketchup on Japanese omelets-but today the other boy’s gritted his teeth and steeled his nerves. Which is a tragedy, because, don’t tell anyone but sometimes that grin is one of the best parts of Jonghyun’s day. And oftentimes Jonghyun’s day is already pretty awesome.

Jinki’s still watching him, carefully, holding the glove up in his left hand and the milk carton in his right. Jonghyun closes his eyes to think about the situation. “Okay,” he says, opening his eyes. “I was being sarcastic. Please fill the entire glove with milk.”

Jinki slowly starts tilting the milk carton toward the glove. He stops at thirty degrees. “Remind me why we’re doing this again.”

“It’s an experiment.”

“To test how awesome this glove is.”

“To see if it’ll hold.”

“My mom used to make soy milk this way,” Jinki says. “She blends the soy beans and then filters them through a bag. Which is kind of like a glove.”

“Without fingers,” Jonghyun points out.

“Well, okay, if you’re gonna be like that,” Jinki says, but he doesn’t even look fake-frustrated. “On the count of one.”

Jonghyun waits. “Oh. Two.”

“Three!” Jinki yells and tilts the carton to ninety degrees. Jonghyun reaches out his hands to hold up the glove for him. Goggle-eyed, they watch the frothy white liquid funnel into the five individual fingers and then fill up to the wrist. Jinki tips the carton back to leave a one-centimeter leeway.

Now Jonghyun is holding the glove, and Jinki is holding the half-empty carton of milk.

“Which finger do you think it’ll drip from first?”

“Mr. Piggy,” Jinki says. “Because it’s the longest and gravity will suck the milk down towards the ground.”

Jonghyun isn’t able to come up with a witty response because he can’t remember how gravity works. “I’m going with Mr. Monkey, because it’s, uh, the shortest. So the milk has less to travel through.”

It takes about fifteen seconds for Jonghyun to realize he’s holding a soggy glove and they just wasted a half-carton of milk. He hopes that it’ll take Jinki a lot longer. But the frown rapidly altering the landscape of Jinki’s face says otherwise.

“Wow,” Jinki says, low and mirthlessly.

“Yeah,” Jonghyun agrees, in the same tone.

Neither looks at the other, but if they did they’d see the same mildly shame-faced expression. The worst part is probably that this isn’t the first time this kind of thing has happened. And it almost always happens when the two of them are the only ones left at home.

“D’you think we could, maybe-“ Jinki starts.

“Salvage the-“ Jonghyun interjects, suddenly excited again.

“…Milk?” And slowly they turn heads to look at each other with mirroring evil glints in their respective eyes (Jinki’s right, Jonghyun’s left). If this were an anime, they’d be fucking sparkling. If this were a variety show, they’d Photoshop Jonghyun’s head onto Sauron or something.

So they pour it all back, not leaving a drip or squeeze, all the while feeling like the terrible and triumphant geniuses they are.

“I’m so thirsty,” is the first thing Taemin says when he gets home, before his sneakers have even left his feet, and Jinki hears it first, nudges Jonghyun, half-asleep on the couch, in the side. Jonghyun opens his eyes and is immediately blinded by a string of goofy-looking pearls. Jinki’s. Then he makes out the widely stretched apart lips encasing them and then the rest of the face. “Taemin says he’s thirsty,” Jinki’s smiling mouth tells Jonghyun. “He’s thir-“ he begins to repeat, but half-asleep Jonghyun can only grasp images, not words, and right now he just sees Jinki looking characteristically happy and feels the happiness contagion threatening to infect and give life to his own lethargic body.

“He’s drinking it now,” Jinki narrates, lowering his voice to a whisper now, and Jonghyun wonders how he can talk through that grin. He looks like a ventriloquist.

“Mm,” Jonghyun says, like he’s yawning or groaning, and then when Jinki makes his question mark face, he props himself up on the arm of the couch and leans over to kiss him on the mouth.

He falls back on the couch and promptly launches into an obnoxious snore.

“I think I taste like, fur, in this,” Taemin says from the kitchen.

Jonghyun cracks open an eye to check if Jinki’s laughing. He is.

PROMPT: f(x), amber/krystal, http://30.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l6r8tn4zXQ1qzr04eo1_500.jpg, no porn
for maltmilk here

Never

There’s a lot of cake. Lots of it ends up on Amber’s face, which is fine, because she likes cake, even when she needs to lick it out of her own nostrils. It’s not as gross as it sounds.

“It’s gross.” Krystal sounds strangled from trying not to laugh too hard. “You look like Randy McDonald.”

“Ronald,” Amber says, trying to get her tongue further past her upper lip. “Yum. Is that kiwi?”

Krystal squints. “Oh yeah. There’s a chunk coming out of your nose.”

“Sweet.”

“We didn’t really know what kind of fruits you liked, so we got everything,” Krystal explains.

“I like everything.”

“Kind of like how we didn’t really know if you were coming back or not,” Krystal adds.

“I-“ Amber starts, but stops at the expression on Krystal’s face, the switch in her voice. It’s too - raw. “Really?”

“Victoria ate herself into a coma," Krystal says in the same voice. "And Luna basically went the opposite route. I mean, you’ve noticed.”

“Ah,” Amber says. “Yeah.”

It’s awkward. She should’ve seen this coming. Maybe she did. But a part of her had hoped they could seamlessly pick up where they left off. A couple of months is nothing compared to, say, an eon. It’s like comparing a speck of dust to the universe. That’s what her absence was, really. Just a speck in the grand scheme of things, like their taking over the world.

That’s what she wants to say. What she ends up saying, though, is, “What about you?”

For a moment Amber is afraid Krystal’s going to slap her, and consequently, all the frosting off her face.

“I knew you hadn’t forgotten,” Krystal says at last, and suddenly she looks more tired and beautiful than Amber ever remembered. All those times, the Krystals she conjured up while back at home, none of them looked this haggard or fragile. They were strong and happy, always teasing. The f(x) that Amber closed her eyes and saw before she went to sleep every night was not the same f(x) that-that must have waited for her, waited patiently while chipping away at themselves, striving to be whole in her absence.

And now, words are not enough.

“You know I wouldn’t,” Amber says, pulling Krystal into a hug. It’s the only way she knows how. “I mean, come on, you guys? Not in a million years.”

The Krystal in her arms feels the same. Sharp but not brittle. Her fist slowly uncurls until it’s palm flat against Amber’s back. Then she says, laughing a little, “There’s cake on your collar.”

PROMPT: 2pm, taecjay, "what do you normally do when i'm gone?" | "wait for you to get back", any rating
for pause here

The Invisible Us

Before he moved to a new school, with its dull autumn colors and generic plaid uniform, he and Taecyeon were best friends. Looking back now, Taecyeon wouldn’t call them best friends, but at the time he might’ve been surer. Time probably beat that out of him, as it was wont to do. But that was its job, and Taecyeon didn’t begrudge it anything he wouldn’t begrudge himself.

Before Jay moved, long before, once upon a time, Taecyeon had been the new kid. He walked into the classroom, carrying his legs like they were newly formed, and smiling through his awkward teeth. He was nervous only in the temporary sense, because he knew it would soon dissipate and then this school would just be another activity he was really good at. Knowing, though, didn’t dry his slightly sweaty palms or make that rehearsed self-introduction any easier. Still, he didn’t stumble over any of the words or flinch when the teacher explained to everyone that he’d skipped a year to join them. He didn’t mind people knowing he was smart, because denying who he was would cause more trouble in the long run, and he didn’t want to do that to the future himself.

“Can you teach me that trick?” The spiky-haired kid next to him asked one day.

It was the first time anyone had spoken to him in class. “What trick?”

“The factoring trick. I saw you do it on the board. It wasn’t like what we got taught. You did it faster,” the kid explained. Taecyeon looked at him blankly. “Oh yeah, I’m Jay,” he added as an afterthought.

“You know,” Jay went on. “You wrote the numbers out in two columns, and did something in your head, and then you got the answer mad fast. Tell me how to do that. I’m failing math.”

“You’re not failing,” Taecyeon said. “No way.”

Jay gave him a look, like no, really. “Okay, not failing failing, but Asian failing. You’re Korean too, right? You know how it is. A B’s like failing.”

Taecyeon had never gotten a B before, but he laughed and said, “Yeah. Sure.”

“So teach me that thing. I need all the help I can get.”

So Taecyeon helped him. And at that age, helping someone with their homework was a natural step towards becoming friends with them. So, naturally, they became friends. Not only the kind of friends who ate lunch together and sat next to each other on the bus during field trips but the kind that waited up for the other when one got out of a test early, the kind of friend that you’d brought home so many times your mom would set an extra plate at dinner without asking. “Is Taecyeon coming? I’m making his favorite,” Jay would mimic his mom saying. “And I was like, what about my favorite? I’m a growing boy, too.”

“I don’t think you’re gonna grow much,” Taecyeon said, and then ducked out of harm’s way.

“You’re a freak of nature,” Jay said, putting his hands in his pockets. “I’m gonna take growth hormones and then shoot up like a rocket. You’ll be looking up at me, where I’ll be chillin’ with the sun.”

“I think you just contradicted yourself, man,” Taecyeon said. “You’d be fried.”

Jay stared at him like he did when he didn’t think something was funny, and the look itself was always enough to make Taecyeon laugh, just by himself, kind of moronically. “Wow. Sometimes I don’t get why we’re friends.”

Taecyeon was still laughing at his face.

The thing was, at the time Jay wasn’t that important. He was a friend, a good friend, maybe, who made Taecyeon laugh, often unintentionally, and they had fun together. But he wasn’t indispensable or anything. He was like-like a common Pokemon card, rather than a special holographic one. Taecyeon didn’t have any holographs in his collection of friendships.

The realization came later, as realizations were wont to do.

“I’m changing schools, man,” Jay said. “I wanted to tell you before the news got out.”

Taecyeon was in the middle of slurping a coke, but he set it down on the sticky cafeteria table. “What?”

“My dad got a new job. We visited over break. This new school, they have a sick dance program. Sick. They asked me to join them already, and I was like, I thought about it, why not?” Jay stopped, and for a moment Taecyeon thought the question was directed at him. Why not? There were a thousand why nots, but none of them transferred themselves into audible words.

“That sounds great,” Taecyeon said. “Maybe you won’t need math in this new school.”

“C’mon,” Jay laughed. The bitterness escaped him entirely. That was something Taecyeon liked about him. He realized it now, that there were many things he liked about Jay, and all of these things would soon disappear with Jay disappearing from the school.

This was how Jay Park extricated himself from Taecyeon’s life. They fist-bumped goodbye, and then Taecyeon watched the car drive away until it was just a dot above the endless stretch of pavement. He had the feeling that they’d be resigned to just another postcard friendship, maybe once every Christmas, if lucky, and Jay would write a paragraph about his new school and new friends, and Taecyeon would scribble a sentence back if he wrote back at all. He suspected that he wouldn’t write back much at all, because writing would make him think, and thinking would make him sad, and sad meant that something had gone wrong. But nothing had gone wrong. It wasn’t like no one could replace him. There was nothing to replace, because nothing had gone missing.

When he got home, he sat on his bed for a long time, feeling awful without knowing why. Then he told himself he felt better, and eventually he did.

PROMPT: suju, kangin/leeteuk, in the middle of nowhere, any rating (friendship)
for mammothcock here

A Little Bit Longer

Leeteuk was sure, not in the radio MC deep rumble kind of way, but in the trembling in his bones, naked in front of God, cross his heart and hope to die, childish kind of way, that this wasn’t the end. He knew that he wasn’t just crying for fun, and while tears weren’t always the byproduct of long-lasting emotions, he trusted this sadness to be real. But also temporary (this one was. The one that would come later, much later, would also hit harder. That one wouldn’t ever go away). They would be together again soon.

Together had a way of coming sooner than he thought.

“You’re in a bathrobe.”

Kangin was also smoking a cigar. “Yes, and I got the sequins hand-sewn in Italy.”

“They let you watch TV in the army?” Leeteuk asked. “I’m so jealous.”

“You’re working too hard,” Kangin chided, just a thin layer of seriousness under the playful tone. “How will you last another year and half without me?”

“Didn’t I tell you? I’m retiring this year. Heechul’s taking over as leader.”

“Does that mean Super Junior’s going coed? When’s Sohee moving into the dorm?” Kangin grinned showing teeth. “Hey. Sit down.”

A chair suddenly appeared beside Leeteuk. He considered it. “I can’t. I have to go in a minute.”

Kangin sighed. “You never stay long.”

“I have to wake up early. You know our tight schedules.”

“I miss them,” Kangin said.

“Soon you won’t have to,” Leeteuk said. “What’s a year and a half?”

“Too long.” His face was getting dimmer. The light behind him seemed to swallow him whole. “Alright, you should go.”

“I won’t be long,” Leeteuk said, and woke up.

PROMPT: dream high, hyemi/pilsook, 200 days in which hyemi helped pilsook lose weight, any rating
for mammothcock here

In Tandem

"You're pretty," Hyemi had said. "I wonder why I never saw it before."

Pilsook wondered what had gotten into her, because of all the things she knew she was, that was not one of them.

But Hyemi's forehead was cool under her palm. Pilsook thought, and then she thought again. Maybe she didn't know herself as well as she'd thought.

Hyemi watched with narrowed eyes as Pilsook waddled up to her seat. Her blazer was still tight. She shuffled her feet, head down. Hyemi sighed and held out her palm.

"Hand it over."

Pilsook looked up, alarmed. Grudgingly she reached into her blazer and pulled out a lollipop tucked into the waistband of her skirt.

"How did you know?"

Hyemi shrugged. She made a big show of snapping it in half in front of the other girl, whose eyes were on the verge of watering now, though it took more strength than she'd expected. Both her palms hurt afterwards, but that was something friends did for each other, she supposed.

Any more and her legs were going to fall off. Simply detach themselves from her body like fallaway phantom limbs. But just to be sure, she asked Hyemi.

"Five hundred more," Hyemi said as she flipped a page.

Pilsook gasped, partly out of surprise and partly because she needed any excuse to inhale oxygen right now. "But--" another gasp, "You said that five minutes ago!"

"Really?" Hyemi looked at her vacantly. "Did I?"

"I swear you said five hundred when I asked five minutes ago!"

"Oops," Hyemi said. "It doesn't hurt you to do more. Stop being so lazy."

Pilsook huffed her chest and thought of retorting, Who's the one sitting on the swing while I'm jumproping to my death? But thankfully she didn't have the strength to speak any more, so she twisted the rope in her hands and took another heavy breath. One, two,...

The night before she weighed in at 60, she fell asleep clutching a picture of Jason--giving the camera his most charismatic wink--to her chest, legs aching from the five kilometers she ran at the track while Hyemi did her homework on the bleachers. She'd sneak peeks at Hyemi to make sure she wasn't watching before slackening the pace, but Hyemi must've had a secret third eye or something, because just as she slowed down the tiniest bit she'd hear that shrill whistle blow and there Hyemi would be, smiling demurely against a backdrop of red plastic seats before her expression changed and she barked, "Seven more laps."

Those nights her dreams saw Jason's handsome face taking on a girlish charm, his eyes growing larger, his hair longer, until he was recognizable not as himself but as someone else, someone just as familiar, but before Pilsook figured out who she'd shudder herself awake, her forehead soaked in a fresh sheen of sweat.

When the scale finally read 49, Hyemi bought her a cake and proceeded to eat it in front of her, by herself. Pilsook was too happy to cry. Hyemi's cheeks smudged with frosting as she plowed through the fluffy layers. Even Samdong watched in awe.

The only thing left uneaten was a small Maraschino cherry. When Pilsook reached for it, Hyemi slapped her hand away.

"From now on, whenever you have a craving, tell me and I'll eat it in front of you."

"Hyemi," Pilsook said, her eyes actually welling up with tears now. She didn't know if she was crying at the idea of Hyemi eating all of her favorite things or the fact that someone could be as nice as Hyemi, in her own twisted, sadistic way.

She was going to see Jason. She was going to see Jason today, and her hands didn't know how to stop folding and unfolding themselves. After the tenth time, Hyemi finally stood up and walked over to Pilsook's seat.

"You," slamming her fists down on the desk, Pilsook's rubber eraser jumping from the pencil case. Hyemi's eyes were big and scary. "You," she said again, lowering her voice this time, "are beautiful. Stop being so nervous."

"But what if--"

"Stop it," Hyemi repeated. "If Jason can't see what I see, then he doesn't deserve to see it."

Pilsook slumped in her chair at the thought of Jason not seeing whatever it was that Hyemi saw. What would she do? Would it all have been in vain? What if--

A hand slipped into hers. She looked up, and Hyemi was smiling. Hyemi's smile had always had a way of delivering strength, maybe because it showed up so infrequently.

Pilsook squeezed the hand, which was warm and firm. "Thanks, Hyemi." She straightened her posture and lifted her chin. She felt good.

PROMPT: YG Family, Teddy/CL, "these cookies taste like garbage", any rating
for cranperryjuice here

Tradition

"Wow." Teddy exaggerates the English. Ooh-ahhh-ooh. His head looks tiny inside the hoodie, but everything else about him quietly freaks her out. The way he easily switches from a smirk to a frown. The small fuzz of hair just under his knuckles. The elusive male scent he carries with him, most noticeable after an all-nighter at the studio. Chaerin discreetly drags her palms down the back of her jeans. "Again, huh?"

"Valentine's Day happens every year," Chaerin says. "So you don't want them? I'll give them to Seungri then."

"They're shaped like teddy bears," Teddy says.

"So? It's Seungri."

"Exactly," lips curling. "Naw, I'll take them."

He slowly unfurls the gold-trimmed pink ribbon which Minji helped pick out. "It's a girl," he says, laughing.

"What?"

"This is the color people use to congratulate couples for -- you know, if they just had a baby girl. You know what I'm saying? They use this exact pink," he explains, playing with the ribbon, lacing it through his fingers, around the hard knuckles. Chaerin is walking a thin line between kind of upset and really embarrassed.

"Minji picked it out," she says with her best-trained grin. "Make fun of me but spare the little one, okay?"

"The little ones are the funnest to pick on," he grins back. Dugeun dugeun. Her fucking heart.

Finally, after an eternity, he gets to the actual cookies. There are five of them, not entirely identical but carrying a general resemblance to some sort of bear. Maybe different species of bear. She really tried, though.

"You can sit, you know," Teddy says, his free hand gesturing towards the couch. The other hand is fondling cookie #1's burnt ear.

"No, I just dropped by to give you your--annual present," Chaerin says, foot propping the door open.

"Our tradition." And then without warning, he brings the cookie to his mouth and takes a hearty bite. Crumbs catch in his growing stubble. Chaerin laughs without meaning to. His eyes widen dramatically, and she thinks, oh God--

"Damn. These cookies taste like shit."

For a minute they look at each other. Chaerin doesn't know what to say, or whether she should start crying. She didn't think they were that bad. Bom said they were okay. She even liked the burnt bits, said that they gave the cookies a unique CL flavor. Maybe Teddy's having a bad day. Maybe he's already gotten a ton of other bear-shaped cookies, and his taste buds aren't really working anymore. Either way, her face is starting to heat up. She should leave now.

"The shit," he says, still chewing. "I mean they taste like the shit." He gives her a big thumbs up. "You've improved since last year, Chaerin."

If there ever was an cinematic moment of glory in Chaerin's life, underscored by the music of angels--Cupids!--and maybe a gospel choir, it would be now. It takes a while for the smile to fill up her face, but once it does she feels the funny, unbridled, ridiculous joy spreading, warming her to the toes. He thinks her cookies are the shit. He thinks they're the shit.

"Thanks," Teddy says, and then--the orchestra reaches a crescendo!--slowly pulls her into a hug. It only lasts a couple seconds but in that time she takes a deep breath and fills her lungs with that indescribable scent of--of him--so that it may stay with her a little longer than usual, even after he's shut the door behind her and she goes back to being CL and not this silly, slightly lovesick fool of a girl.