The JongKey Code (Oneshot)
The JongKey Code
Pairings: best friends!JongKey, ninja!OnHo
Genre: fail!humour, slight!angst, fluff
Rating: PG
Warning: Onew sangtae
Disclaimer: A girl can dream.
Summary: JongKey have their own code, and it baffles Onew.
A/N: First fanfic in the SHINee verse. Just an idea that plopped up in my head and that had to be dealt with :) This is sort of from Onew’s POV.
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Jinki sighed.
The five boys were having breakfast, all crammed around the relatively small kitchen table, trying to wake up before the day’s schedules. Minho had kindly volunteered to cook them up some food - why was the boy always so kind? - which they all appreciated. The tired leader made a point of pushing his kimchi around in his bowl while he mentally praised his dongsaeng. Really, Minho almost never got mad at anyone, and when he did it was for a valid reason. He was polite, neat and would grant people favours without them even having to ask. Most importantly, he would always answer questions honestly - in few words, granted, but at least he would answer...
Observe.
“Sleep well?” Jinki asked to no one in particular before shoving kimchi into his mouth.
“Deh,” Minho replied after a two second pause, not lifting his tired eyes from his plate. “Not long enough, though.”
“Same here,” Taemin added, his voice still a bit rough from just waking up.
Unknowingly, the maknae had just earned himself major brownie points. Jinki was even considering helping him out with his homework as a reward. The vocalist distracted himself with that thought for a while, but not enough for the subsequent silence to go unnoticed. It would have been foolish of him to expect otherwise. Cue the second sigh of the day.
With their gazes pointedly directed towards the table and burning holes in its faux-wood, Jonghyun and Kibum remained mute. Admittedly, they had stopped talking to each other for almost a week now, and needed much coaxing to so much as utter a string of words in the other’s presence, even though said words weren’t directed to the other. Elaborate and shameless coaxing was also necessary when wanting either of them to answer questions pertaining to what exactly had happened. So far, Jinki had concluded this much: Jonghyun had lost (according to the rapper) or misplaced (according to the lead vocalist) a pair of Kibum’s sunglasses (his favourite, according to the rapper, or “just a pair” according to the vocalist). Jinki silently agreed with Jonghyun on that last point: Kibum did own a bazillion other pairs. Anyway, the point was that Jonghyun and Kibum were now mad at each other for a reason that Jinki couldn’t help but find childish and somewhat stupid. But that was just how the pair of boys worked.
What the leader didn’t know was that even though he was blindly taking Jonghyun’s side (because who needs that many shades anyway?), Kibum was right: they really were his favourite in the whole world. Rather, had been. Jonghyun had once bought them on a whim for him, not because he couldn’t stand Kibum going on about them, but because they were best friends and that’s what best friends did. Jonghyun knew how much the ridiculously-priced item meant to him, he knew exactly what it meant to him and yet, the older boy had still “borrowed” them for a day while he went to promote SMB and had managed to lose them.
Now, even if Jinki had known this, he probably would have continued to sympathize with Jonghyun. Of all people, Jinki understood that people could be clumsy and momentarily forget things. He didn’t, however, understand why the pair of teenagers-barely-adults had gotten so worked up because neither was particularly articulate about it. Sure, they had quarrelled and given each other the silent treatment before, but it had never lasted this long - a week was really pushing it, or so the leader thought. He would have to put his foot down sooner than later, because the next few days were packed with schedules and pretending to smile wouldn’t cut it anymore. Besides, Jinki was worried that fans would be able to tell there was something up with the usually dynamic duo.
But Key was stubborn and - although he hated to admit it - hurt. He hadn’t even bothered trying to explain the real situation to their leader because it was useless, because the only person it concerned was his best friend and because that person already knew how he felt.
Kibum was hurt; he had genuinely thought the shades had been a sweet gift. He hadn’t thought that Jonghyun had bought them for himself using Key as an excuse.
It hadn’t taken long for Jonghyun to confess that he’d lost the precious item and apologize. Needless to say it had taken even less time for Kibum to shove it all back in Jonghyun’s face. The elder nevertheless continued to follow Kibum everywhere that day, much like a lost puppy, apologizing profusely and assuring the other that he had never thought of it like that, thought of him like that, with big round apologetic eyes and all. But Kibum wouldn’t hear any of it, leaving Jonghyun to return his silent treatment and to sulk in the midst of their misunderstanding.
Almost a week had passed since the incident and even Jinki could tell that no progress had been made.
The five SHINee boys spent the rest of their morning and a good part of their afternoon at a radio station. The eldest was thankful for it being radio and not television, considering two of their members were blatantly ignoring each other and generally just being moody. Still, whether it was vocal or physical, the usual interactions between the two were lacking. Jinki had long ago stopped counting his sighs.
Jinki was absent-mindedly listening to Jonghyun’s rendition of Wheesung’s “Insomnia” while thinking that the song was sort of strangely, not to mention dramatically, fitting in a sense. He was lost in thought when Minho discretely leaned over to him after having made sure their microphones were off.
“Should we do something?” the doe-eyed boy asked, gesturing towards a most sullen looking Kibum who was looking everywhere but at the singing boy in front of him.
Although caught off guard, Jinki had enough sense to reply: “Yeah.”
“I could talk to them if you want,” Minho suggested.
Why was this boy so kind? Jinki sighed silently, again. Minho would always unconsciously make the rest of them look bad - have you seen Hello Baby?
“No, I’ll do it,” Jinki quickly replied, taking on his role as the leader. “Tonight,” he added, more for himself than for Minho.
The tall rapper simply nodded; it may not always look like it on camera, but Jinki took his position in the group very seriously, and all the members knew this. Then again, they also all knew about his unfortunate “condition” and would never hesitate to tease him about it.
“... If you do the laundry this week.”
“You wish,” the black-haired boy answered. He was trying to make an affronted expression, but a small, amused grin was tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Good luck, hyung.”
The rest of the day was uneventful - almost too uneventful - and surprisingly, they were back at the dorm in the early evening. Minho had told them he would be taking his manager out for dinner, all the while looking purposefully at Jinki. The tall boy had even gotten Taemin alone for a moment to ask him if he wanted to join them, but the maknae had declined saying he would use the time to catch up on school. Poor kid, Jinki thought (because even though he was nearing eighteen, he would always be a kid to Jinki). He sincerely hoped that the week of silence wouldn’t come to an end with a screaming match: teaching yourself calculus was hard enough without having to do it over the sound of your band mates yelling each other’s heads off. It had only happened once before, though, and Jinki had discovered that even though Key wasn’t the one who held a thirteen-second-long note in “Lucifer”, he still had very good lungs.
After Jonghyun had graciously - and wordlessly - cooked them up some ramen noodles, Taemin had immediately retreated to the bedroom to hide behind thick textbooks, leaving Jinki to believe that Minho had perhaps said more than he had originally thought. Jinki sighed: he had no choice but to really step up, now.
“Kibum-ah. Jonghyun-ah.” The elder spoke with a solemn tone that had both members looking up to him at once.
“As your leader and friend,” Jinki started, stressing the last word hoping it would help him, “I am asking you to just forgive and forget so that we can all please move on.”
Jinki noticed Jonghyun casting a glance towards Kibum while the latter continued to eye Jinki, frowning slightly.
“I’m serious, guys. I’m not letting you leave this room until you’ve made up.”
With those wise words, the leader stepped out of the kitchen before any of them had a chance to react and he plopped down onto the living room couch. All that was left to do was wait.
And wait, he did.
Jinki knew for a fact that the boys would pull through in time and resume teasing or bickering playfully at each other like they always did. But at that very moment, Jinki was impossibly glad he had fled the kitchen, because the silence that stretched on was long, long, long to the point where Jinki felt the need to turn on the T.V. just to provide him with some background noise.
The weatherman had gone through the entire week’s forecast - in detail - by the time the pair of boys had given any sign of life. Needless to say the sudden voice startled the unsuspecting leader.
“Key...” Jonghyun finally said, simply. They had been staring at each other for a while, and Jonghyun’s brow was furrowed and his eyes weren’t as big as usual because he truly was sorry. The older boy could practically see Kibum’s inner dilemma as various emotions flickered through his cat-like eyes. Kibum knew his best friend had meant the single word as an apology because years and years of being by his side had taught him how to decipher his tone and body language. Key recognized the simple word - his adopted name - as a sincere apology and he didn’t need to ask to know the older boy meant it. He knew that Jonghyun knew that he knew, and all of a sudden it all became just so corny as it dawned on Kibum how trivial all of this was, and how much he’d missed his Jjong, missed fooling around with him and teasing him; he gave in.
Kibum nodded.
Because Jonghyun was also attuned to Key’s way of expressing himself, he knew that the gesture was meant to show the younger boy accepted his apology. And suddenly, there was nothing else that needed to be said or done, despite the almost week-long silence.
Grins broke across their lips simultaneously and they stood up at the same time to find Jinki on the couch with the weather channel on, unabashedly gawking at the pair of them, mouth wide open in wonder. The younger boys snickered quietly and let their leader be, rather amused by his dumbfounded-ness.
No one but Jonghyun and Key could read the other so openly, so easily. While Jinki could only imagine what had happened in the kitchen, he still counted himself as a witness of this JongKey code language - language that didn’t even require words.
***
“I’m so sorry!” Jinki exclaimed for the n-th time, a week later, his voice now slightly raised as he took in the flustered young boy currently busying himself around the mess the leader’s sangtae had created. Kibum only sighed.
“S’okay. Leave it,” he mumbled back, not really caring whether or not Jinki heard him.
Jinki just stood there, watching Kibum soak up the liquid with a stack of paper towels while trying to avoid the broken glass. He would have wanted to help with the clean up but Kibum had forbidden him from touching anything else in the kitchen ever again (because the younger boy was dramatic like that). Jinki stayed still for a while, feeling bad and useless as Kibum shot him quick annoyed glances. For some reason, that took his mind back to the events of the previous week: how Jonghyun could resolve their argument and make Key smile again by uttering a single word was way beyond him. Perhaps it had been his tone...? Jinki decided it was worth a shot.
“Key...” the leader said, trying to mimic the exact tone Jonghyun had used. Personally, he thought he had nailed it.
His word was, like Jonghyun’s, met with silence, but it was a different kind of silence - even a stranger to the group would have noticed. It was a most uncomfortable silence, a hanging one.
“What!” Key snapped once he had figured Jinki wasn’t about to complete his thought, looking up from the mess to glare at the baffled leader.
“N-nothing,” he blurted out at once. Prompted by Key’s fiery gaze, he quickly left the room, having been made highly aware that his presence was no longer welcome.
He made a mental note as he crossed Jonghyun, who was scribbling what were probably lyrics into a notebook in their bedroom, to talk to the vocalist later. Perhaps he could give Jinki lessons: a real crash course in 101-How-To-Deal-With-Kim-Keybum.
Kim Jonghyun might have been good at a lot of things - notably singing - but one thing he excelled at beyond any doubt was knowing Key better than anyone. No more, no less.
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A/N: Cheesy end is cheesy. Please forgive.
Random info: I’m new around here ^^ and I have a few other ideas for some JongKey fics, the only thing missing, sadly, is time to actually write them ¬¬
Thank you for reading