there is a light (1/?)
“Are you going out with anyone?”
“Yes, mother.”
“Since when?”
A dainty fork circles the pastry on a far too large plate, prodding it the way most medical students would prod a cadaver; that is, with a forced smile and the growing urge to throw up the contents of their last meal.
“A year. Something like that.”
Suddenly, the apple pie on his plate seems to hold the answers to the world’s deepest secrets and from the way Jaejoong studies it with such intensity, one would think he had a problem deciphering whether it was the crumbling, half baked pastry or the overdone, more-than-a-day-old-but-really-let’s-not-go-there apple filling that held the solution to depleting natural sources.
“Wonderful, wonderful. And you’ve never brought her to see me?”
Maybe he got the wrong pie, maybe it was the one with blueberry filling that would tell one what one should do in the untimely event that one’s mother enquire about one’s non-existent girlfriend. Yes. Blueberry filling. The rest of the world can have their goddamned apple pie with the answers to the universe encrusted inside for all he cared, it wasn’t like that was going to save him from the little old lady across the table who currently, was stirring a third lump of sugar into her tea.
Lumps, for the love of all things beautiful and pure! Who made sugar in lumps anymore?
“Well?”
“No, mother.”
He spoons a little of the pie into his mouth. There goes the secret to world peace, disappearing into the dark fathoms of his gullet. Oh well.
“So tell me about this new catch of yours, your new beau.”
Beau? Jaejoong almost chokes on the answer to international harmony, thinking of Changmin’s face when he gets up in the morning. Beau? More like overgrown Chihuahua with an attitude problem.
“She’s...”
The unfamiliar pronoun rolls off his lips with a tinge of discomfort lingering on the end. Mother dearest watches with a kind of anticipation one less well versed in the many facial expressions of little old ladies might misinterpret as deranged.
“Pretty. Intelligent.”
Well now, he’s on a roll, isn’t he? The adjectives keep coming
“A good cook.”
And coming
“Witty.”
And coming
“Tall.”
And-
“Tall?! Taller than you, boojae?”
Somewhere in the crevasses of his heart, a part of Jaejoong’s manliness dies a withering death.
“Yes,” he snaps without a pause for thought and instantly regrets it, dear mother’s walking stick banging against his shin in a protest for too violent for a woman of 74.
“How many times have I told you, boo? How many times? Never go out with someone taller than you, imagine how unbecoming it is for a man! Think, why don’t you ever do that? And my grandchildren! Giraffes? I’ll go to the zoo if I want giraffes!”
“Yes mother.”
“Don’t you yes mother me!”
He doesn’t and on top of that, doesn’t tell her that the probability of him producing grandchildren slash giraffes with Changmin is somewhere in the negative figures, seeing that they’re both men, but he can see it now, of course, see her raise her trusty walking stick the moment he says those three magical words (I. Am. Gay.) and stick it though his eye socket until it pokes out the back of his head.
(“Will you ever get hitched?”
“Are you proposing to me?”
“Answer me, you bastard.”
“You’re insane. That’s a no, fyi.”)
Giraffes and imaginary girlfriends over a slow, painful death, please and thank you.
-------
If there’s one thing Changmin’s good for (sex isn’t counted), it’s the fact that he has a soft...maybe medium soft, the kind of soft you find in overbaked chocolate chip cookies sort of soft spot for invalids, even if they be temporary, moody ones.
“I’m not going to ask if you’re okay because you’re obviously not.”
“Mmpgh.”
Jaejoong rolls over in bed, face an a shade of sea-green that would have looked nice on a couch, perhaps, or maybe a tea coaster but Jaejoong is unfortunately neither, thus rendering himself unable to carry off said look with much style.
“You well enough to tell me how today went?”
“Urngffh.”
“Wonderful, two answers in one, I thought as much.”
Jaejoong rolls his eyes and aims a weak kick at his sniggering boyfriend. Damn it all to hell and back, he knew he should have taken that blueberry pie instead.
“She thinks you’re a woman,” he croaks with a bit of difficulty, anything more than 7 words in a sentence making him reach for the bucket Changmin has so thoughtfully (aejoong thinks it’s only to stop him from making a mess on the carpet, it’s not like Changmin gives more than a half-arsed crap. He’s right.) provided.
“Oh does she now? And that would mean you haven’t told her.”
Jaejoong shoots him his trademark I’m-too-young-and-beautiful-to-die look and it goes flying over Changmin’s head, as does most of his looks and words.
“And you intend to lie for how much longer, exactly?”
There is an as-long-as-I-can,-bitch look that Jaejoong’s working on but Changmin rolls his eyes and Jaejoong sums up that he needs more practice on that one.
“Hasn’t it crossed your mind that it would be far, far worse if she finds out instead of having you tell her?”
Stoic silence as Jaejoong contemplates this, flits between having his life ended in a sunny restaurant with fellow diners ooh-ing as a 74-year-old clobbers her son to death with a very solid, very painful (of course he should know) walking stick or waking up (or maybe not waking up, if you see it that way) with a paid assassin leaving a dagger in his throat.
“No.”
“Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t empty that bucket over your head right now.”
“You love me.”
“And you’re so sure of that? What I don’t get is why you can’t just tell her? Is it because this is an embarrassment to you?”
Fantastic, just like Changmin to turn the all too simple wish of not wanting to die at the hands of one’s own mother into something far more complicated.
“It’s not that.”
Jaejoong sits up, promptly loses a staring match between him and a slightly ruffled, more than slightly angry Changmin.
“Then tell me what it really is, because that fear you have of being murdered in cold blood is as ridiculous as you actually growing a backbone to stand up and be what you really are.”
“Oh, so it’s a question of gay rights, is it now? Perhaps you think I should stand on the highest rooftop and scream to the world that I’m living with you and yes we’re both men and yes we fuck each other is that problem no I thought not. ”
Over the 7 word limit. Nausea rising but Jaejoong beats it down with a large stick labeled I Will Not Lose This Fight.
“No, it’s a question of you not being able to tell the truth when you’re supposed to? Like that time in-...”
“Beating a dead horse again? Grow up, Changmin.”
The door slams on Changmin’s way out and Jaejoong sinks back onto his pillow, pissed at himself for not telling, at Changmin for dragging this up all over again. What did have to do with that time in *insert place here* anyway? And it wasn’t the first time this week either, damn the man, maybe they’re not cut out for something like this. One year, 12 months, 52 weeks. 52 or more arguments.
The room feels unnaturally cold and Jaejoong draws the sheets around him closer, purposely bunching it up on his side so the bastard will freeze to death tonight when he comes back. If he comes back.
------
“And you say things have been flying off the shelves? Lights being turned on and off repeatedly for no apparent reason? Sounds like a poltergeist to me.
Jung Yunho is a picture of calm and all things serene, decked out in a pair of half framed glasses he doesn’t really need but it makes him look bloody professional so to zonks with that, black suit even though it’s sometime near one in the morning.
“P-p-poltergist?”
“Relatively harmless, the most they do is throw things, that sort of stuff.”
“And you can help us?”
“Of course I can,” he says soothingly and the harried members of tonight’s unfortunate household part to let him inspect their dwelling, tagging after him like overeager puppies. Dogs. He hates dogs. Nasty, foul smelling, drooling creatures. Anyway.
“And this...presence, is it okay if I call it that?”
Enthusiastic nods all around, beautiful. No one likes to admit to having something you can put an actual name to floating around in your house.
“This presence, where does it usually manifest?”
It’s all in the words, really. Presence. Manifest. Much more professional sounding than ghost busting.
“We think it’s my old man trying to stir up something, he wasn’t too happy about us moving here without him before he...he...died.”
Yunho masks an exasperated breath with all the skill of someone who’s been around enough dimwits to know what to do with them.
“Ah, I see. But it would be really helpful if you could pinpoint where he causes trouble.”
“The back room, we don’t use it much, just a place to store old junk and all that, it’s really-...”
“I see. Now if you could just take me there...”
The head of the family, a balding man with a beer belly about the size of a small country, shakes his head in what Yunho guesses is fear. Yunho thinks he looks like one of those bobble-head dolls you find at dollar shops, albeit one with a paunch that would shame even the largest, most overfed Sumo wrestler known to mankind.
“You really, really don’t want to-...”
“That’s what I’m here for.”
A calm, casual smile, a comforting hand on a shoulder (that very same hand will pocket a nice amount of cash in payment later) and Yunho even has the tack to waggle his fingers in a mock goodbye at his oogling clients before he steps into the supposedly bewitched room.
“I’ll only take a moment.”
------
Changmin is angry, angry to the point that his vision is playing mind games with him, fading at the edges and eh, what’s this? Perspective tipping over and oh, there’s the night sky and buildings towering over him, the asphalt warm and how odd is this?
“Oh my god oh my god oh my-...”
There’s a mild irritation building at the panicky voices that seem to flood from all places at once and what’re they staring at anyway? It’s not like they haven’t seen a man on a street before...
“Someone help him!”
Blood pooling in a dark ring around him.
“No, wait, don’t move him!”
Limbs at odd angles.
“Call an ambulance!”
Dying.
chapter 2
“Yes, mother.”
“Since when?”
A dainty fork circles the pastry on a far too large plate, prodding it the way most medical students would prod a cadaver; that is, with a forced smile and the growing urge to throw up the contents of their last meal.
“A year. Something like that.”
Suddenly, the apple pie on his plate seems to hold the answers to the world’s deepest secrets and from the way Jaejoong studies it with such intensity, one would think he had a problem deciphering whether it was the crumbling, half baked pastry or the overdone, more-than-a-day-old-but-really-let’s-not-go-there apple filling that held the solution to depleting natural sources.
“Wonderful, wonderful. And you’ve never brought her to see me?”
Maybe he got the wrong pie, maybe it was the one with blueberry filling that would tell one what one should do in the untimely event that one’s mother enquire about one’s non-existent girlfriend. Yes. Blueberry filling. The rest of the world can have their goddamned apple pie with the answers to the universe encrusted inside for all he cared, it wasn’t like that was going to save him from the little old lady across the table who currently, was stirring a third lump of sugar into her tea.
Lumps, for the love of all things beautiful and pure! Who made sugar in lumps anymore?
“Well?”
“No, mother.”
He spoons a little of the pie into his mouth. There goes the secret to world peace, disappearing into the dark fathoms of his gullet. Oh well.
“So tell me about this new catch of yours, your new beau.”
Beau? Jaejoong almost chokes on the answer to international harmony, thinking of Changmin’s face when he gets up in the morning. Beau? More like overgrown Chihuahua with an attitude problem.
“She’s...”
The unfamiliar pronoun rolls off his lips with a tinge of discomfort lingering on the end. Mother dearest watches with a kind of anticipation one less well versed in the many facial expressions of little old ladies might misinterpret as deranged.
“Pretty. Intelligent.”
Well now, he’s on a roll, isn’t he? The adjectives keep coming
“A good cook.”
And coming
“Witty.”
And coming
“Tall.”
And-
“Tall?! Taller than you, boojae?”
Somewhere in the crevasses of his heart, a part of Jaejoong’s manliness dies a withering death.
“Yes,” he snaps without a pause for thought and instantly regrets it, dear mother’s walking stick banging against his shin in a protest for too violent for a woman of 74.
“How many times have I told you, boo? How many times? Never go out with someone taller than you, imagine how unbecoming it is for a man! Think, why don’t you ever do that? And my grandchildren! Giraffes? I’ll go to the zoo if I want giraffes!”
“Yes mother.”
“Don’t you yes mother me!”
He doesn’t and on top of that, doesn’t tell her that the probability of him producing grandchildren slash giraffes with Changmin is somewhere in the negative figures, seeing that they’re both men, but he can see it now, of course, see her raise her trusty walking stick the moment he says those three magical words (I. Am. Gay.) and stick it though his eye socket until it pokes out the back of his head.
(“Will you ever get hitched?”
“Are you proposing to me?”
“Answer me, you bastard.”
“You’re insane. That’s a no, fyi.”)
Giraffes and imaginary girlfriends over a slow, painful death, please and thank you.
-------
If there’s one thing Changmin’s good for (sex isn’t counted), it’s the fact that he has a soft...maybe medium soft, the kind of soft you find in overbaked chocolate chip cookies sort of soft spot for invalids, even if they be temporary, moody ones.
“I’m not going to ask if you’re okay because you’re obviously not.”
“Mmpgh.”
Jaejoong rolls over in bed, face an a shade of sea-green that would have looked nice on a couch, perhaps, or maybe a tea coaster but Jaejoong is unfortunately neither, thus rendering himself unable to carry off said look with much style.
“You well enough to tell me how today went?”
“Urngffh.”
“Wonderful, two answers in one, I thought as much.”
Jaejoong rolls his eyes and aims a weak kick at his sniggering boyfriend. Damn it all to hell and back, he knew he should have taken that blueberry pie instead.
“She thinks you’re a woman,” he croaks with a bit of difficulty, anything more than 7 words in a sentence making him reach for the bucket Changmin has so thoughtfully (aejoong thinks it’s only to stop him from making a mess on the carpet, it’s not like Changmin gives more than a half-arsed crap. He’s right.) provided.
“Oh does she now? And that would mean you haven’t told her.”
Jaejoong shoots him his trademark I’m-too-young-and-beautiful-to-die look and it goes flying over Changmin’s head, as does most of his looks and words.
“And you intend to lie for how much longer, exactly?”
There is an as-long-as-I-can,-bitch look that Jaejoong’s working on but Changmin rolls his eyes and Jaejoong sums up that he needs more practice on that one.
“Hasn’t it crossed your mind that it would be far, far worse if she finds out instead of having you tell her?”
Stoic silence as Jaejoong contemplates this, flits between having his life ended in a sunny restaurant with fellow diners ooh-ing as a 74-year-old clobbers her son to death with a very solid, very painful (of course he should know) walking stick or waking up (or maybe not waking up, if you see it that way) with a paid assassin leaving a dagger in his throat.
“No.”
“Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t empty that bucket over your head right now.”
“You love me.”
“And you’re so sure of that? What I don’t get is why you can’t just tell her? Is it because this is an embarrassment to you?”
Fantastic, just like Changmin to turn the all too simple wish of not wanting to die at the hands of one’s own mother into something far more complicated.
“It’s not that.”
Jaejoong sits up, promptly loses a staring match between him and a slightly ruffled, more than slightly angry Changmin.
“Then tell me what it really is, because that fear you have of being murdered in cold blood is as ridiculous as you actually growing a backbone to stand up and be what you really are.”
“Oh, so it’s a question of gay rights, is it now? Perhaps you think I should stand on the highest rooftop and scream to the world that I’m living with you and yes we’re both men and yes we fuck each other is that problem no I thought not. ”
Over the 7 word limit. Nausea rising but Jaejoong beats it down with a large stick labeled I Will Not Lose This Fight.
“No, it’s a question of you not being able to tell the truth when you’re supposed to? Like that time in-...”
“Beating a dead horse again? Grow up, Changmin.”
The door slams on Changmin’s way out and Jaejoong sinks back onto his pillow, pissed at himself for not telling, at Changmin for dragging this up all over again. What did have to do with that time in *insert place here* anyway? And it wasn’t the first time this week either, damn the man, maybe they’re not cut out for something like this. One year, 12 months, 52 weeks. 52 or more arguments.
The room feels unnaturally cold and Jaejoong draws the sheets around him closer, purposely bunching it up on his side so the bastard will freeze to death tonight when he comes back. If he comes back.
------
“And you say things have been flying off the shelves? Lights being turned on and off repeatedly for no apparent reason? Sounds like a poltergeist to me.
Jung Yunho is a picture of calm and all things serene, decked out in a pair of half framed glasses he doesn’t really need but it makes him look bloody professional so to zonks with that, black suit even though it’s sometime near one in the morning.
“P-p-poltergist?”
“Relatively harmless, the most they do is throw things, that sort of stuff.”
“And you can help us?”
“Of course I can,” he says soothingly and the harried members of tonight’s unfortunate household part to let him inspect their dwelling, tagging after him like overeager puppies. Dogs. He hates dogs. Nasty, foul smelling, drooling creatures. Anyway.
“And this...presence, is it okay if I call it that?”
Enthusiastic nods all around, beautiful. No one likes to admit to having something you can put an actual name to floating around in your house.
“This presence, where does it usually manifest?”
It’s all in the words, really. Presence. Manifest. Much more professional sounding than ghost busting.
“We think it’s my old man trying to stir up something, he wasn’t too happy about us moving here without him before he...he...died.”
Yunho masks an exasperated breath with all the skill of someone who’s been around enough dimwits to know what to do with them.
“Ah, I see. But it would be really helpful if you could pinpoint where he causes trouble.”
“The back room, we don’t use it much, just a place to store old junk and all that, it’s really-...”
“I see. Now if you could just take me there...”
The head of the family, a balding man with a beer belly about the size of a small country, shakes his head in what Yunho guesses is fear. Yunho thinks he looks like one of those bobble-head dolls you find at dollar shops, albeit one with a paunch that would shame even the largest, most overfed Sumo wrestler known to mankind.
“You really, really don’t want to-...”
“That’s what I’m here for.”
A calm, casual smile, a comforting hand on a shoulder (that very same hand will pocket a nice amount of cash in payment later) and Yunho even has the tack to waggle his fingers in a mock goodbye at his oogling clients before he steps into the supposedly bewitched room.
“I’ll only take a moment.”
------
Changmin is angry, angry to the point that his vision is playing mind games with him, fading at the edges and eh, what’s this? Perspective tipping over and oh, there’s the night sky and buildings towering over him, the asphalt warm and how odd is this?
“Oh my god oh my god oh my-...”
There’s a mild irritation building at the panicky voices that seem to flood from all places at once and what’re they staring at anyway? It’s not like they haven’t seen a man on a street before...
“Someone help him!”
Blood pooling in a dark ring around him.
“No, wait, don’t move him!”
Limbs at odd angles.
“Call an ambulance!”
Dying.
chapter 2