Title: My List of Favorite Things
Author: juliangmaxis
Disclaimer: Only the plot and food is mine.
Pairings: Changmin (foodMin?), YunJae
Genre: Fluff, Crack
Rating: PG-13
Warning: Language, Hints of smex, a very, very slight hint of m-preg.
Summary: I have a list of favorite things. And it all started with a house.
Well, there's the sun and there's the clouds.
Very angry, big dark clouds.
Where the hell is that silver lining everyone is talking about?
Oh, there it is. There. That.
Love's the word,
Expressed, declared, shouted, whispered
From him to her, him to him, her to her,
It matters not.
Every cloud has a silver lining, they say.
Well, my cloudy sky is streaked with them.
Keep an eye on them for me, will you?
While I tell you my list of favorite things.
~|~|~|~|~|~|~|~|~|~
It all started with a house. A three-storeyed house to be exact.Young and just married, no prizes for guessing that they wanted to raise a family. A big family. So, twenty three years ago, they had the house built, with a sprawling back yard complete with a big oak tree. It made sense to have so much space if you wanted to have many children but surprise, surprise, I'm an only child. Life sure works in funny ways. All I remembered was the sad look in their eyes when they sat me down and answered a 7 year old's pestering questions, gently telling me that I wasn't going to have any brothers or sisters to play with.
So all that space wasn't really wasted. The first floor became sort of like my parents' private hangout place. Or really just a place where my dad takes his nap or tinkers around in his workshop and where my mum has a mini library. And a special room where she goes crazy with flower arrangement and sometimes poor dad gets dragged along for her 'home-decorating plans'. There's the master bedroom, a bathroom and a store-room where my dad's half-hearted attempts at all those DIY projects end up.
And another store room on the second floor; more space for my dad's junk and flowers and vases my mum say are pure evil and ugly. A small living room in the open space, a piano room and there's my bedroom.
I hope I'm not making you fall asleep reading my story, you're probably wondering right now when the heck is this fellow gonna talk about her favorite things. Here's a hint. People don't ask me anymore how I feel as an only child. There, happy? Alright, alright, I'll get on with it.
When I was 15, my mum's sister had passed away, so my uncle had lost a wife and my cousin had lost a mother (in a literal sense) and a father (in a figurative sense).
Cutting a sad long story short, my cousin whom I had never seen since I was five, was coming to live with me. I was very excited and a little apprehensive to have somebody my age come live with me. Sharing wasn’t exactly in my list of things-i-do-everyday.
The last time I saw my cousin was when we both very young; I think it was when we were six or younger and when ice-cream was the answer for every complain. Well, goodbye chubby legs, hello mile-long legs and many other complimentary thoughts flashed through my mind as I saw Changmin on the day he moved in. It was a literal jaw-dropping sight and I almost had to use my hand to shut my large gaping mouth. Of course all coherent thoughts had left my mind and all the polite greetings I had rehearsed had left me and I stood there staring.
Staring and silently muttering gibberish words of thanks and gratitude to the gods, Lady Fortune, Lady Luck and all divine beings in this world for this wonderful addition to the family.
Did you know that when he smiles mismatched eyes and all, his brown eyes have a chocolatey feel to it?
I could have continued staring and have a sudden craving for some dark chocolate until he spoke, “I remember you. You decided you didn’t like your strawberry ice-cream midway through and ate my mango ice-cream after we had our vaccination shots. And you hogged the only functional swing in the playground. And I had to push you when I could have played the slides.”
As my mind switched from chocolate to ice-cream, still reeling from the image of a cute little boy transformed to tall Mr. Snarky, he effectively left me speechless with his next words.
“You owe me a mango ice-cream cone. Make that two since it’s been so long. Oh, even better, every time we have ice-cream, I get to eat your share too. I really like ice-cream.”
Needless to say, I didn’t spend my remaining teenage years (and all that angst and drama and hullabaloo) alone.
In the beginning, it was awkward. Since neither of us ever had siblings we didn’t actually know how to behave like one. And then there was the matter of addressing each other. Should he call me noona or do I have to call him oppa? He pointed out that he was fine calling me mango-ice-cream-stealer or Mango for short. I smacked him on the arm after that. We both froze in silence, staring at each other, trying to gauge the other’s reaction and then after a minute, we broke out laughing.
I’m his long-lost brother that somehow ended up in a girl’s body because according to Changmin, I hit nothing like a girl. He says to call him hyung because his birthday is in February and mine is in December.
“Clearly, I’m the more mature one, so have some respect and call me hyung,” Mr.-I’m-technically-older-than-you commands me. To which I reply with a matching bruise on his other arm and cue more laughter and insults. I love having a brother living punching bag in my life.
I also found out quickly enough that Changmin is always hungry, much to the delight of my parents. My mum now can cook more and not have leftovers anymore; they are a thing of the past now since that food monster moved in. My dad finally has an eager and competent partner in setting up the grill, no more danger of setting the back porch in flames (lighter fluid and I do not get along). The two of them wannabe-chefs are perfectly content discussing the finer points of charcoal and its temperature and grilled steaks and how exactly potatoes should be wrapped in foil.
We used to go to the supermarket twice a month for groceries but not anymore. I’m now accustomed to the fact to making grocery trips twice a week, Changmin cheerfully helping my mum with the shopping list. It’s two pages long of foolscape paper, written on both sides. I’ve never seen such joyous intensity on a person’s face when deciding to buy peanut butter: crunchy or smooth.
The piano room on the second floor became Changmin’s room. He has an ear for music and I like listening to him play; when we’re not fighting like cat and dogs or having a punching match.
That’s right. When we aren’t being nice to each other (which is rare), we fight. Not just a war of words but a war of fists or/and feet too. It would always occur along these lines:
Changmin: I would hit you harder if you were a boy.
Me: You hit like a girl, Minnie-poo.
And then Minnie-poo would hit me again just to prove me wrong right.
Don’t get me wrong, this is no physical abuse or any of that serious shit. Of course I have more bruises than I would like but at least I’m not the only one. We love getting on each other’s nerves for no particular reason other than we can. YES WE CAN!
My parents have long learnt to ignore the loud noises that ensure from our frequent quarrels.
“Somehow we have the fraternal twins and I’m just saying we didn’t have the good pair,” my dad said to my mum, to which me and my twin would promptly roll our eyes and continue fighting.
My mum could only sigh, “Just don’t break anything in the house, especially my vases.”
I’m hoping you are still with me on this story. Changmin is definitely an entry on my list of favorite things. He’s not number one on the list but a very very close second. He’s my favourite person but shhh…don’t tell him because he would tease me mercilessly and I think he knows but if he knows I know that he knows he would only have more ammo for his insults…and we wouldn’t want that now, would we?
I’ll get right on the first spot of my list, then.
I remembered the day we had new next-door neighbors. I was bored shitless because homework was done (one of those very rare days) and Changmin was studying for his exams; he’s taking some advanced subjects so he has exams earlier than me, and I was banned from disturbing/provoking/picking a fight with him by my parents. At least until he’s done with his finals.
So, bored out of my mind and too lazy to do something useful, I decided to watchspy the new neighbors moving in. There were two trucks of furniture and stuff and I thought maybe we would have a big family moving in. But then there were a lot of fancy pieces of furniture that looked fragile and expensive and I knew no parents in their right mind would buy such home-deco only to have them wrecked by little children.
There were also suitcases, mountains of them piled up by the doorway. I counted six of them before I lost interest and decided to hide all the junkfood in mum’s pottery room.
Changmin has an abnormal appetite when he’s stressed from studying. Last year during year-end exams, Changmin demolished a jumbo bag of chips in half an hour and a whole cake that was supposed to be for breakfast and started on making a hot chocolate concoction with obscene amounts of whipped cream and marshmellows . . . that was when the grocery list became three pages long, both sides written of course. And that food-deprived genius (or so he claims) never gets fat, damn that monster digestive metabolism of his. Life can be so unfair.
Anyway, so it was when Minnie-poo…ooops Changmin discovered the non-existence of junk food and immediately threatened bodily harm on innocent ol’ me(of course I had to defend myself…hey, mum and dad said I shouldn’t pick a fight with him but they never said what I should or should not do when he picked a fight with me. So win-win situation?) when the doorbell rang.
“Go get it, Mango.”
A push of the shoulders.
A smack on the head.
“You go get it, poo-face.”
“No, you go. I’m hungry. I need my junk food. Give it back.”
Another not-so-light shove of the shoulders.
Another not-so-light smack on the head.
“Both of you idiots go get the damn door, already!”
Apparently, since we’re 18 and legal and stuff, Dad clearly thinks the no-swearing policy has been lifted or when Mum is out of hearing range.
Grumbling under our breath, under a temporary truce, we trudged to the door. I opened the front door and stared. And stared some more. Poo-face was doing an impression of a gaping, bulging-eyed gold fish and I knew I had a carbon-copy expression.
The two young men standing by the doorway stared back amusedly. After what seemed like a lifetime of staring, the taller man cleared his throat nervously and smiled.
“I’m Yunho and this is my Jaejoong. We’re your next door neighbors.”
It was a deep timbre, pleasant voice and I had to stop myself from swooning. Changmin was still staring. I nudged him in the ribs and Changmin blinked and broke out in a shit-eating grin on his face.
“Thought we’d come over and say hi. Wanted to do so earlier but the moving company missed out one of my suitcases and I had to go settle it and they almost broke the piano while moving in and I clearly wanted the wine cabinet on the other side of the room but no, they had to put it in on the other other side of the room and then they had to move the -” Yunho cleared his throat again and Jaejoong blushed. The tip of the shorter man’s tongue flicked out as he bit his lower lip and I felt my breath hitch at the sight. I could see Changmin staring at those plump lips out of the corner of my eye and inwardly sniggered. Knew there was a reason (it is most definitely more than curiosity) for all those gay porno mags hidden under his bed.
Yunho smiled apologetically and I swear his pearly whites and that mole above his bow-shaped lips were winking at me.
“Jae talks too much when he’s excited,” Yunho explained at which Jaejoong pouted and I felt Changmin float above the ground beside me. I would know, since I was floating right beside him. Changmin and I must have had lead a very good life, helping the needy and saving the world, to deserve such beautiful neighbors in this life.
Oblivious to the effect he and his Jaejoong had on us, Yunho continued, “So, nice to meet you, neighbors. You are . . .” Yunho stretched his right hand and Jaejoong did the same.
There was a flurry of hands as Dumb and Dumberer grabbed onto Yunho AND Jaejoong’s outstretched hands and everyone was tangling fingers, trying to shake everyone’s hand, all at the same time, at which after a lot of hand-groping, the new neighbors’ hands were properly shaken. Dumb and Dumberer had identical expressions of ripe-red tomatoes, I’m sure of that.
Mum and Dad saved us from further embarrassment when they joined us at very crowded doorway. Introductions and pleasantries were exchanged as my twin and I melted into the background, waving goodbye while grinning away like silly buffoons.
Jung Yunho and Kim Jaejoong were newly-weds and had just returned from their month-long honeymoon in Bora Bora. Yunho was a businessman and Jaejoong was an artist who has an art gallery downtown. They’re settling into the married life and looking forward to raising a family.
I couldn’t contain the glee as I did a victory dance in the living room.
I am the perfect candidate to be their baby-sitter.
Their babies will be oh-so-beautiful, just look at the parents.
Nothing but superior genes.
Changmin gave me a weird look and proceeded to break the temporary truce.
“You’re so weird.”
A hit on the arm.
“Am not. You are weirder, dumberer.”
A hit on the other arm.
“Is that even a proper word? Hey, does that mean you are Dumb?”
A pinch on the arm.
“It is a proper word. There’s a movie with the same title. Of course you’re Dumberer.”
A kick to the shin.
“I can’t believe we’re arguing who’s dumb and dumberer. I’m a genius. It’s been certified.”
A kick to the other shin.
“Oh, yeah? By whom exactly? The Ministry of Certifying Dumb People?”
“By Mensa, nimwit. Ouch that hurt. Why you little -”
“Take that, you six feet of dumb.”
“I’m six feet two inches, you five feet midget of dumb.”
"I'm five feet five inches, tall Dumberer tower of dumbness."
“Stop fighting before I give you stupid idiots up for adoption!”Dad kindly informed us.
Cue silent fighting with lots of hitting and punching and hair-pulling and funny and rude hand gestures and face expressions.
And so concludes the happiest day of my life.
My List Of Favourite Things.
3. The color grey. Grey clothes. Grey underwear. Grey earrings. Grey nail-polish. Oooo.. Shiny! I.Love.Grey. Heck, I’d dye my hair grey if it didn’t make me look like a 100000 years old. I wanted to paint my bedroom wall grey but nooo…Mum thinks it’s too dreary and I had to settle for Lavender Blush. If I dimmed the lights, it looks like grey..almost. At least the bedroom door is grey. And so is the cat. Hah.
2. Changmin. Well, he’s not a thing, he’s in fact my favorite person in the world but since I live to insult him, he shall be a thing on this list. I know he’s only my cousin but I treat him like the brother I never had. Because he treats me like the sister he never had. He cares for me as I do for him, although he does have a weird way of showing it a.k.a. questioning my intelligence every chance he gets. But he does pay attention to me, listening to my whining and putting up with my crap in his own special brotherly way. Plus we’re each other’s punching bag and how can you find one that willingly puts up with pain and love at the same time?
1. Watching YunJae live porn. With popcorn and tidbits and whatever Changmin can get his hands on. Watching YunJae live porn alone is awesome as it is but to watch it with your favorite person/thing is a whole different experience. It is amazing. EPIC. Because Changmin gives a running commentary the whole time YunJae get it on and it’s kinda like the Animal Planet documentary where lions and tigers mate and there’s a narrator in the background. Of course since we’re watching spying from the second floor store room window (which so happens to look directly into YunJae’s bedroom), we have the perfect vantage point. Minus the sound/noises of course. Hence, the helpful commentary. And boy, does Changmin know a lot. So does YunJae too, judging from the various poses they engage in. As for me, I’m just enjoying my daily late-night sex-ed which is visually entertaining to say the least.
Comments left are like mango ice-cream to Changmin.
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