a different kind of crazy (2min)
TITLE A Different Kind of Crazy 22/?
SUMMARY Taemin's never been one to care about what's right or wrong. He doesn't think about things like what's accepted and what's not. He wants what he wants, but it's not always a walk in the park.
CHARACTERS/PAIRINGS [SHINee] Minho/Taemin, Jonghyun/Key. (f(x) cameos)
RATING/WARNING R.
GENRE Real life/romance
1 2 3 4 5 6 ♥ 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 minholude 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 mlude 2 21
AN: Not beta'd. >o>;; Yerp de derp.
a different kind of crazy;
Taemin's anger seems untouchable, but he doesn't really mind it, or the way it makes him feel--invigorated, powerful even. At least, sort of. Maybe he should try being livid more often. Or not, not really, because angry people are scary. He's never really allowed anger to be a predominant trait in his life, but it's certainly out and about now and he has no desire to control it. It's easier not to. And that's the scary part.
Most of it isn't even because of Minho. It's because of his indecisive neediness, his impulsive abrasiveness, and all the bad habits he's been picking up without a care or second look back. Taemin recalls his mother's backwards chastising, always telling him that it's okay to take a break every now and then. That it's okay to be yourself. Well, thinking back on it only makes him realize she must have been pretty desperate when she said those things. Taemin's never really been a good listener.
It's his fault, he knows that already. He just doesn't want to believe it.
And because he denies it so vehemently, he has to put the blame on someone else. His dropping grades, lacklustre interest in school, young single and bipolar mother, his own sexuality--everything. So fuck everything. And more importantly, fuck Minho. Or don't fuck Minho and see how he likes that. Taemin ignores the fact that his logic is ill and perverse, after all, he's still pretty fucking gone.
He's bee-lined for the spacy balcony, blinds drawn and slitted to allow a play on privacy. There's a cigarette tucked behind his ear, stolen from a pack about to kamikaze out someone's butt pocket, and he scoots out onto the veranda through the thin opening of the sliding glass door. Fresh air cools his face and dampens his temper, but only the slightest bit.
Jonghyun's sitting on the railing in a dangerous way, carelessly balanced. "Where'd you disappear too?" is his choice of greeting, a little slurred.
"Are you okay up there?" Taemin responds frigidly, entertaining a worst case scenario involving Jonghyun's horrid, untimely death.
"I'm grand." Jonghyun's words float in the chilled air, and he looks quizzically at him. "You, on the other hand, seem a little off-kilter."
Taemin squats against the sliding glass door, closed now, and cups a hand over his cigarette as he lights it. "I'm always off-kilter. Maybe I like it better that way."
Jonghyun chuckles and shimmies off the railing to sit beside him. Safe. For now. "Are you as drunk as I am?" he asks.
"I don't know if that's humanly possible."
Jonghyun looks a tick confused. "Are you saying I'm not human?"
Taemin lets out a bit of a laugh. It's hard to be angry at someone like Jonghyun. "I don't know, are you?"
"Possibly. Though I have built up a tolerance that could rival the gods."
"I wouldn't tempt them." Taemin sighs in response. "You definitely aren't a god, and you definitely are wasted."
"All fault of Krystal, by the way." Jonghyun nods out at nothing. "So wait a minute. If you're off-kilter, what degree does the world spin for you?"
Taemin snorts. It sounds like something Kibum would say--he's starting to understand why he likes him so much. "Upside down, maybe?"
Jonghyun shakes his head. "There's no direction in space, try again." he flicks Taemin's forehead. "What's it like in Taemin's world?"
"Er," Jonghyun seems pretty resolute on getting a comprehensible answer, regardless of his negative level of sobriety. Taemin decides it would be easier to entertain him. "It's all jarred around and shaken up." he says, "It's fucked up, too, and really angry. It doesn't make any sense but still seems to keep on turning anyway."
"That's deep, man." Jonghyun replies, mulling over his answer for a moment. "How do you manage?"
Taemin sighs. "That's the best part." he says, though what does he know? "I'm magical." he gets up, leaving Jonghyun to ponder his own spinning world and flicking his dwindling cigarette over the railing. He treks back inside, back into the crescendo of blinking lights and sounds and bustling and bass and drinks and the sound Fucked Up probably makes.
Speaking of fucked up, Krystal intercepts him on his quest to locate Kibum, her typical bubblesome self. "Right on time." she chimes.
Taemin is led along by his wrist, the anger in his system still idling like an engine low on quality fuel: unsure, anxious, unprepared. He's starting to feel sick.
They're in the small bathroom, and he's looking down at a mirror lined with perfect stripes of cocaine. Not that he's at all surprised, because he really isn't. Though he still asks, "What is this?"
"A party." Krystal shrugs, pilfering the powder around with her ID card. "I think the rest is self explanatory, hmm?"
Taemin considers the snowy conundrum sitting prepared and patient before him, breaking his reflection into lines just as sparkly and enticing. Why, he muses fleetingly, does he always look so thoroughly distressed? He really hates his damn reflection sometimes.
Krystal's perched on the toilet, fishnet at a crossroads, hooked at the knees. Her manicured nails click against the porcelain, an unnoticed and uncared for habit. She simply says, "The choice is up to you, really. I'm not into peer pressure." she grins. "Instead, I choose to live by example."
Taemin's not too sure Krystal's influence has ever been good, but he won't lie and say it hasn't been curious. Too curious, even.
"Is this your vice?" he asks her.
"Of choice." she leans over the prepared drug, hair cascading like a dropped curtain as she completes a line, calm and collected. She's pleased that he's watching her, Taemin can tell, and she offers him the cut-off straw without any go aheads.
Taemin does not consider what's right or wrong, just his desire for everything to not be so off-kilter as Jonghyun had aptly put it. He's balancing dangerously close to an edge from which he can't return.
There's a loud knock on the bathroom door.
"Who is it?" Krystal choruses loudly, drawing out her syllables.
"Could you just hurry the fuck up please?"
Krystal moues at the door. "Well, business will be business. You're interested, for some reason. Aren't you?"
Taemin hesitates, hand on the doorknob. "Does Minho do this too?"
Krystal's manic smile softens. "A word of misplaced advice--the best I give! You gotta stir things up a little sometimes." she reaches past him and unlatches the lock. "Because sometimes it's the only way to keep the world going round."
Taemin hears the answer in her tone, sees it in her body language. A simple yes would have sufficed, Taemin's life is already thoroughly stirred--and quite shaken. "I don't think addiction quite cuts it." he replies.
The person behind the door complains loudly again, interrupting him.
Krystal shrugs. "Addiction is a mental habit." she says, oddly austere. "And addiction does not just apply to drugs."
"Are you an addict, Krystal?" Taemin asks.
Krystal looses a tinkling laugh, one Taemin vaguely remembers, back when he first met her, pegging as quite fake. "Are you?" she shoots back.
Taemin doesn't have an answer for her, and she pulls open the door, gesturing his freedom. For the first time, Taemin sees a daft look about her, scatty and unpleasant. It's a tiny bit offputting.
So Taemin puts the thought out of his mind and hopes this is a night he'll barely remember. He navigates through cliques of people--at some point, their numbers seem to have doubled, or maybe he's just seeing double--and locates Kibum dancing with a girl in a suggestive matter that Jonghyun would probably not condone had he seen it. Taemin interrupts them, yanking Kibum out of the overcrowded living room.
"You," Taemin says, "Are asking for trouble."
"You've no right to say that to me." Kibum sniffs in response. "And this is a party and I am drunk. Excuse justified."
"This is this, that is that." Taemin remarks impatiently. "I'm going home."
Kibum drops his act, looking Taemin directly in the eye. "Because?"
"Because I'm going home," Taemin repeats. "Are you coming with me?"
"I told Jjong I'd go home with him tonight." Kibum shoves his hands in his pockets, somehow, skintight as his pants are. "But if there's something wrong--"
"Nothing's wrong." Taemin's pretty sure he's just told the biggest lie in his life.
And of course Kibum doesn't fall for it, but he knows when not to pry. "You are a horrible liar. That's another lap around the lake of fire for you."
"I'll race you then." Taemin goodbyes, splitting paths with Kibum and slipping unnoticed out the front door. It's easy to feel separated from reality in a state like this. Late night, inebriated, afflicted, angry, and all the synonyms in the world for not okay. Such is his life these days, it seems.
The pristine, silver elevator is a smooth ride down, quiet in the early morning hours. Taemin's not sure where he is, and he's not too sure about how he's going to get home. The buses have stopped running by now and he has to find a busier street to hail a cab. All of that is pointless anyway. Taemin doesn't understand why such mundane things take so much energy. He's exhausted.
The streets are narrow and dark in this part of the city, closed in by high fencelines, downhill alleys, and historical housing. Moths circle dim streetlights, a stray dog wines and scratches at a closed door. Taemin idles by the first bus stop he passes, finds a wallet sitting askew on the grassy median. He picks it up, curious, but there's only a railpass and a few hundred won inside. Carelessly, Taemin shoves it into his pocket. He is definitely one unlucky bastard.
He continues his way down the vapid sidestreet, tripping over his own feet. His head is reeling and not too lucid when he turns onto a poorly lit road, trailing off into a dirty, abandoned courtyard. Right turn, wrong universe.
It looks like something out of an old American Western, for all the time it takes Taemin to realize just where his luck has brought him. Two familiar people are facing off, anticipating the other's next move. Quickdraw. Flickering lamplight. Gunshot. Ears ringing. Loud voices. Taemin sees it all in shutter-vision, and then the shutter breaks. Darkness, and the distant feeling of how much of a total idiot he is.
Taemin wakes to the smell of mildewy cotton. A dim room with a small, pristine bed under a black-sheeted window, it looks different, in strange lighting. One bookcase half empty by a closed, wood door. Posterless walls, a desk with notebooks askew, pens teetering on the edge, and a slim, firm back bent over the table, organizing jewelery bags filled with illegal things.
It's not Minho's room.
But it's Minho's voice, over the loud box fan cycling in the barren corner by the closet, that says, "What do you remember?"
Taemin doesn't want to move, there seems to be no need to. He's silent.
Minho's voice is hard to hear over the creaking fan. "Did you follow me?"
Follow? Taemin thinks in a rush, backtracking. He had seen Minho and Junho fighting, and he had heard threats and curses and snaps and bruising, but it was too dark to see clearly, way too dark to make it out through his twisted vision. "I didn't follow you. I was trying to find a main street."
Minho shakes his head. "You're a very star-crossed individual."
"I'm slowly coming to terms with the fact that I might die before my time." Taemin replies groggily. "Where are we?"
"My father's room." Minho pulls the pen from behind his ear and makes a few marks on the notebook beside the bags before placing them back into the safebox by his feet. "He launders coke," adds sarcastically, "I hope you don't mind."
Taemin sits up and blinks in a haze at him. He remembers his anger, and the feeling returns, only it's a big deal weaker. "No," he says belatedly. "You got into another fight, didn't you? With Junho?"
"I don't play well with others." is Minho's offered response. He's turned around on his chair to face Taemin, leaning back against the cluttered desk and the larger bags of cocaine, a little too professional, loitering behind him. "Can you be honest with me about just this one thing?"
"I'm always honest with you." Taemin shoots back, but even that feels like a lie. "The reason I'm not, which is never, is because--" he halts himself, trips over his thoughts, and ends up saying it anyway. "--I feel like I don't know you."
"That's what dating is for, isn't it?"
"We can't date." Taemin flat out denies, expression paling. "We're both guys, you're kkangpae, my mom would die if she found out I was gay--"
"Then, is that your answer?"
Taemin sits back, affronted. Minho's not the one waiting for an answer here. "Why does everything have to be so black and white for you?"
"When you grow up with a lifestyle like mine you learn to get used to it. Eventually it becomes a part of you."
"It's not that simple." Taemin doesn't push Minho away when he gets up and moves to sit beside Taemin, leaned over, elbows resting on his knees. If Taemin knew any better, he'd say it's a look of disgrace.
Taemin frowns, feeling awkward, and looks up at the ceiling. Honesty would be the best policy, he supposes. But there's a challenge in honesty. If it was easy, nobody would lie.
"Is it fucked up that I want to be with you?" he says quietly.
Minho chuckles. "It's been fucked up from the start."
"I know, that's what scares me." Taemin replies.
Minho puts his head on Taemin's shoulder, and it's extremely out of character--how lethargic he seems. "I've seen scarier." Minho parries just as softly.
"Yeah?" Taemin's a little concerned. He's about to ask, "Like what?", when he sees the bloody state of his side, the pink stain creeping past bandages and onto his shirt. "Were you stabbed, holy shit!"
Minho sighs when Taemin leaps away from him, in panic mode and looking everywhere for his cell phone. "What happened after I blacked out? What!"
"Rewards of officially canning Junho." Minho says calmly. "I lost some bad blood, that's all. It's not like I'm going to die. Junho might, though."
"Bad blood?" Taemin quips, not amused. "You should go to the hospital."
"You should have told me that he was threatening you."
Taemin's on one knee on the floor, looking for his cellphone which he had dropped and shimmied under the bed with his rushed feet, and Minho's lying limply atop the unmade covers, watching him vacantly. Taemin tenses.
"I," he looks away. "Didn't think that by not telling you, you'd be the one to get hurt."
"That's the way of the world." sighs Minho.
"Make a promise with me then." Taemin says, holding up his pinky. "We don't keep anything from each other. And I'm taking you to the hospital."
Minho stares at Taemin's childish contract measure and rolls over, wincing and letting out a loud rush of annoyed breath.
Taemin scoffs right back at him. "What's with you? You want to be with me, but you don't love me. You say you don't lie, but you won't promise to tell the truth--"
"If you were me, you'd understand."
"Well, I'm definitely not you. And I definitely don't get you. Do you even listen to yourself?"
"Sometimes." Minho's tone signals disinterest, he's just playing along. "When I'm feeling particularly lucid."
"Oh fuck you." Taemin's tone lacks venom. "I'm calling the hospital." He flips open his phone to dial for an ambulance, but Minho's suddenly smothering his back, leaning over him and slapping the mobile shut.
"I'm fine. Don't let this get to you, it's not the first or last time."
Taemin's hangover is creeping up on him, and he feels shitty and imbalanced. Last night had been a hoopla of insanity and drugs and sex and violence and all the things he never thought would be a part of his life, let alone all at once.
"I'm going." he says, gathering his coat and scarf and heading for the door. "Call me if you're about to die."
"Only if I'm about to die?"
Taemin looks at him, half hidden by the doorframe. "Don't do that." his voice comes out sounding pained. "Don't say shit like that to me."
Taemin shuts the door loudly behind him and lets out another huge sigh, jogging down the stairs and into the small guest bathroom to check his reflection. Zombie, that's what he thinks. Gaunt and tired and distressed. Always distressed.
His stomach growls loudly, but Taemin ignores it and leaves the quiet house even quieter. The air outside is fresh and freezing. The sky is a thick blue. It's the morning of Christmas Eve and Taemin's finally starting to realize that he's losing it. There's got to be something wrong with him. The best part is he doesn't have the heart to give a flying fuck; it's too busy beating for another reason entirely.
previous | next
note; "Are you as drunk as I am?" is what I say when I'm wasted. So if I'm ever out drinking with you, and I ask you that, I'm not allowed to drink ANYMORE. And I don't even LIKE drinking, I really don't. I have a high tolerance, think all of it tastes like shit, and do not enjoy having to imbibe grossness in order to "lose inhibitions"--which I actually never unconsciously lose because I am a bit of an out of control control freak. Sucks and makes no sense. It's cuz I'm a crazy fatass. Anyways.
This is one chapter I just did NOT want to write, but ofc it had to be written. So it's not my best, and I despise it greatly. I spent two horribly blocked months on this chapter, and now, I give up. This is as good as it gets. Hopefully after this, I'll be back on track.
For info on why I disappeared and LTTW, check this post out.
Until next time ~ TATA.
SUMMARY Taemin's never been one to care about what's right or wrong. He doesn't think about things like what's accepted and what's not. He wants what he wants, but it's not always a walk in the park.
CHARACTERS/PAIRINGS [SHINee] Minho/Taemin, Jonghyun/Key. (f(x) cameos)
RATING/WARNING R.
GENRE Real life/romance
1 2 3 4 5 6 ♥ 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 minholude 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 mlude 2 21
AN: Not beta'd. >o>;; Yerp de derp.
a different kind of crazy;
Taemin's anger seems untouchable, but he doesn't really mind it, or the way it makes him feel--invigorated, powerful even. At least, sort of. Maybe he should try being livid more often. Or not, not really, because angry people are scary. He's never really allowed anger to be a predominant trait in his life, but it's certainly out and about now and he has no desire to control it. It's easier not to. And that's the scary part.
Most of it isn't even because of Minho. It's because of his indecisive neediness, his impulsive abrasiveness, and all the bad habits he's been picking up without a care or second look back. Taemin recalls his mother's backwards chastising, always telling him that it's okay to take a break every now and then. That it's okay to be yourself. Well, thinking back on it only makes him realize she must have been pretty desperate when she said those things. Taemin's never really been a good listener.
It's his fault, he knows that already. He just doesn't want to believe it.
And because he denies it so vehemently, he has to put the blame on someone else. His dropping grades, lacklustre interest in school, young single and bipolar mother, his own sexuality--everything. So fuck everything. And more importantly, fuck Minho. Or don't fuck Minho and see how he likes that. Taemin ignores the fact that his logic is ill and perverse, after all, he's still pretty fucking gone.
He's bee-lined for the spacy balcony, blinds drawn and slitted to allow a play on privacy. There's a cigarette tucked behind his ear, stolen from a pack about to kamikaze out someone's butt pocket, and he scoots out onto the veranda through the thin opening of the sliding glass door. Fresh air cools his face and dampens his temper, but only the slightest bit.
Jonghyun's sitting on the railing in a dangerous way, carelessly balanced. "Where'd you disappear too?" is his choice of greeting, a little slurred.
"Are you okay up there?" Taemin responds frigidly, entertaining a worst case scenario involving Jonghyun's horrid, untimely death.
"I'm grand." Jonghyun's words float in the chilled air, and he looks quizzically at him. "You, on the other hand, seem a little off-kilter."
Taemin squats against the sliding glass door, closed now, and cups a hand over his cigarette as he lights it. "I'm always off-kilter. Maybe I like it better that way."
Jonghyun chuckles and shimmies off the railing to sit beside him. Safe. For now. "Are you as drunk as I am?" he asks.
"I don't know if that's humanly possible."
Jonghyun looks a tick confused. "Are you saying I'm not human?"
Taemin lets out a bit of a laugh. It's hard to be angry at someone like Jonghyun. "I don't know, are you?"
"Possibly. Though I have built up a tolerance that could rival the gods."
"I wouldn't tempt them." Taemin sighs in response. "You definitely aren't a god, and you definitely are wasted."
"All fault of Krystal, by the way." Jonghyun nods out at nothing. "So wait a minute. If you're off-kilter, what degree does the world spin for you?"
Taemin snorts. It sounds like something Kibum would say--he's starting to understand why he likes him so much. "Upside down, maybe?"
Jonghyun shakes his head. "There's no direction in space, try again." he flicks Taemin's forehead. "What's it like in Taemin's world?"
"Er," Jonghyun seems pretty resolute on getting a comprehensible answer, regardless of his negative level of sobriety. Taemin decides it would be easier to entertain him. "It's all jarred around and shaken up." he says, "It's fucked up, too, and really angry. It doesn't make any sense but still seems to keep on turning anyway."
"That's deep, man." Jonghyun replies, mulling over his answer for a moment. "How do you manage?"
Taemin sighs. "That's the best part." he says, though what does he know? "I'm magical." he gets up, leaving Jonghyun to ponder his own spinning world and flicking his dwindling cigarette over the railing. He treks back inside, back into the crescendo of blinking lights and sounds and bustling and bass and drinks and the sound Fucked Up probably makes.
Speaking of fucked up, Krystal intercepts him on his quest to locate Kibum, her typical bubblesome self. "Right on time." she chimes.
Taemin is led along by his wrist, the anger in his system still idling like an engine low on quality fuel: unsure, anxious, unprepared. He's starting to feel sick.
They're in the small bathroom, and he's looking down at a mirror lined with perfect stripes of cocaine. Not that he's at all surprised, because he really isn't. Though he still asks, "What is this?"
"A party." Krystal shrugs, pilfering the powder around with her ID card. "I think the rest is self explanatory, hmm?"
Taemin considers the snowy conundrum sitting prepared and patient before him, breaking his reflection into lines just as sparkly and enticing. Why, he muses fleetingly, does he always look so thoroughly distressed? He really hates his damn reflection sometimes.
Krystal's perched on the toilet, fishnet at a crossroads, hooked at the knees. Her manicured nails click against the porcelain, an unnoticed and uncared for habit. She simply says, "The choice is up to you, really. I'm not into peer pressure." she grins. "Instead, I choose to live by example."
Taemin's not too sure Krystal's influence has ever been good, but he won't lie and say it hasn't been curious. Too curious, even.
"Is this your vice?" he asks her.
"Of choice." she leans over the prepared drug, hair cascading like a dropped curtain as she completes a line, calm and collected. She's pleased that he's watching her, Taemin can tell, and she offers him the cut-off straw without any go aheads.
Taemin does not consider what's right or wrong, just his desire for everything to not be so off-kilter as Jonghyun had aptly put it. He's balancing dangerously close to an edge from which he can't return.
There's a loud knock on the bathroom door.
"Who is it?" Krystal choruses loudly, drawing out her syllables.
"Could you just hurry the fuck up please?"
Krystal moues at the door. "Well, business will be business. You're interested, for some reason. Aren't you?"
Taemin hesitates, hand on the doorknob. "Does Minho do this too?"
Krystal's manic smile softens. "A word of misplaced advice--the best I give! You gotta stir things up a little sometimes." she reaches past him and unlatches the lock. "Because sometimes it's the only way to keep the world going round."
Taemin hears the answer in her tone, sees it in her body language. A simple yes would have sufficed, Taemin's life is already thoroughly stirred--and quite shaken. "I don't think addiction quite cuts it." he replies.
The person behind the door complains loudly again, interrupting him.
Krystal shrugs. "Addiction is a mental habit." she says, oddly austere. "And addiction does not just apply to drugs."
"Are you an addict, Krystal?" Taemin asks.
Krystal looses a tinkling laugh, one Taemin vaguely remembers, back when he first met her, pegging as quite fake. "Are you?" she shoots back.
Taemin doesn't have an answer for her, and she pulls open the door, gesturing his freedom. For the first time, Taemin sees a daft look about her, scatty and unpleasant. It's a tiny bit offputting.
So Taemin puts the thought out of his mind and hopes this is a night he'll barely remember. He navigates through cliques of people--at some point, their numbers seem to have doubled, or maybe he's just seeing double--and locates Kibum dancing with a girl in a suggestive matter that Jonghyun would probably not condone had he seen it. Taemin interrupts them, yanking Kibum out of the overcrowded living room.
"You," Taemin says, "Are asking for trouble."
"You've no right to say that to me." Kibum sniffs in response. "And this is a party and I am drunk. Excuse justified."
"This is this, that is that." Taemin remarks impatiently. "I'm going home."
Kibum drops his act, looking Taemin directly in the eye. "Because?"
"Because I'm going home," Taemin repeats. "Are you coming with me?"
"I told Jjong I'd go home with him tonight." Kibum shoves his hands in his pockets, somehow, skintight as his pants are. "But if there's something wrong--"
"Nothing's wrong." Taemin's pretty sure he's just told the biggest lie in his life.
And of course Kibum doesn't fall for it, but he knows when not to pry. "You are a horrible liar. That's another lap around the lake of fire for you."
"I'll race you then." Taemin goodbyes, splitting paths with Kibum and slipping unnoticed out the front door. It's easy to feel separated from reality in a state like this. Late night, inebriated, afflicted, angry, and all the synonyms in the world for not okay. Such is his life these days, it seems.
The pristine, silver elevator is a smooth ride down, quiet in the early morning hours. Taemin's not sure where he is, and he's not too sure about how he's going to get home. The buses have stopped running by now and he has to find a busier street to hail a cab. All of that is pointless anyway. Taemin doesn't understand why such mundane things take so much energy. He's exhausted.
The streets are narrow and dark in this part of the city, closed in by high fencelines, downhill alleys, and historical housing. Moths circle dim streetlights, a stray dog wines and scratches at a closed door. Taemin idles by the first bus stop he passes, finds a wallet sitting askew on the grassy median. He picks it up, curious, but there's only a railpass and a few hundred won inside. Carelessly, Taemin shoves it into his pocket. He is definitely one unlucky bastard.
He continues his way down the vapid sidestreet, tripping over his own feet. His head is reeling and not too lucid when he turns onto a poorly lit road, trailing off into a dirty, abandoned courtyard. Right turn, wrong universe.
It looks like something out of an old American Western, for all the time it takes Taemin to realize just where his luck has brought him. Two familiar people are facing off, anticipating the other's next move. Quickdraw. Flickering lamplight. Gunshot. Ears ringing. Loud voices. Taemin sees it all in shutter-vision, and then the shutter breaks. Darkness, and the distant feeling of how much of a total idiot he is.
Taemin wakes to the smell of mildewy cotton. A dim room with a small, pristine bed under a black-sheeted window, it looks different, in strange lighting. One bookcase half empty by a closed, wood door. Posterless walls, a desk with notebooks askew, pens teetering on the edge, and a slim, firm back bent over the table, organizing jewelery bags filled with illegal things.
It's not Minho's room.
But it's Minho's voice, over the loud box fan cycling in the barren corner by the closet, that says, "What do you remember?"
Taemin doesn't want to move, there seems to be no need to. He's silent.
Minho's voice is hard to hear over the creaking fan. "Did you follow me?"
Follow? Taemin thinks in a rush, backtracking. He had seen Minho and Junho fighting, and he had heard threats and curses and snaps and bruising, but it was too dark to see clearly, way too dark to make it out through his twisted vision. "I didn't follow you. I was trying to find a main street."
Minho shakes his head. "You're a very star-crossed individual."
"I'm slowly coming to terms with the fact that I might die before my time." Taemin replies groggily. "Where are we?"
"My father's room." Minho pulls the pen from behind his ear and makes a few marks on the notebook beside the bags before placing them back into the safebox by his feet. "He launders coke," adds sarcastically, "I hope you don't mind."
Taemin sits up and blinks in a haze at him. He remembers his anger, and the feeling returns, only it's a big deal weaker. "No," he says belatedly. "You got into another fight, didn't you? With Junho?"
"I don't play well with others." is Minho's offered response. He's turned around on his chair to face Taemin, leaning back against the cluttered desk and the larger bags of cocaine, a little too professional, loitering behind him. "Can you be honest with me about just this one thing?"
"I'm always honest with you." Taemin shoots back, but even that feels like a lie. "The reason I'm not, which is never, is because--" he halts himself, trips over his thoughts, and ends up saying it anyway. "--I feel like I don't know you."
"That's what dating is for, isn't it?"
"We can't date." Taemin flat out denies, expression paling. "We're both guys, you're kkangpae, my mom would die if she found out I was gay--"
"Then, is that your answer?"
Taemin sits back, affronted. Minho's not the one waiting for an answer here. "Why does everything have to be so black and white for you?"
"When you grow up with a lifestyle like mine you learn to get used to it. Eventually it becomes a part of you."
"It's not that simple." Taemin doesn't push Minho away when he gets up and moves to sit beside Taemin, leaned over, elbows resting on his knees. If Taemin knew any better, he'd say it's a look of disgrace.
Taemin frowns, feeling awkward, and looks up at the ceiling. Honesty would be the best policy, he supposes. But there's a challenge in honesty. If it was easy, nobody would lie.
"Is it fucked up that I want to be with you?" he says quietly.
Minho chuckles. "It's been fucked up from the start."
"I know, that's what scares me." Taemin replies.
Minho puts his head on Taemin's shoulder, and it's extremely out of character--how lethargic he seems. "I've seen scarier." Minho parries just as softly.
"Yeah?" Taemin's a little concerned. He's about to ask, "Like what?", when he sees the bloody state of his side, the pink stain creeping past bandages and onto his shirt. "Were you stabbed, holy shit!"
Minho sighs when Taemin leaps away from him, in panic mode and looking everywhere for his cell phone. "What happened after I blacked out? What!"
"Rewards of officially canning Junho." Minho says calmly. "I lost some bad blood, that's all. It's not like I'm going to die. Junho might, though."
"Bad blood?" Taemin quips, not amused. "You should go to the hospital."
"You should have told me that he was threatening you."
Taemin's on one knee on the floor, looking for his cellphone which he had dropped and shimmied under the bed with his rushed feet, and Minho's lying limply atop the unmade covers, watching him vacantly. Taemin tenses.
"I," he looks away. "Didn't think that by not telling you, you'd be the one to get hurt."
"That's the way of the world." sighs Minho.
"Make a promise with me then." Taemin says, holding up his pinky. "We don't keep anything from each other. And I'm taking you to the hospital."
Minho stares at Taemin's childish contract measure and rolls over, wincing and letting out a loud rush of annoyed breath.
Taemin scoffs right back at him. "What's with you? You want to be with me, but you don't love me. You say you don't lie, but you won't promise to tell the truth--"
"If you were me, you'd understand."
"Well, I'm definitely not you. And I definitely don't get you. Do you even listen to yourself?"
"Sometimes." Minho's tone signals disinterest, he's just playing along. "When I'm feeling particularly lucid."
"Oh fuck you." Taemin's tone lacks venom. "I'm calling the hospital." He flips open his phone to dial for an ambulance, but Minho's suddenly smothering his back, leaning over him and slapping the mobile shut.
"I'm fine. Don't let this get to you, it's not the first or last time."
Taemin's hangover is creeping up on him, and he feels shitty and imbalanced. Last night had been a hoopla of insanity and drugs and sex and violence and all the things he never thought would be a part of his life, let alone all at once.
"I'm going." he says, gathering his coat and scarf and heading for the door. "Call me if you're about to die."
"Only if I'm about to die?"
Taemin looks at him, half hidden by the doorframe. "Don't do that." his voice comes out sounding pained. "Don't say shit like that to me."
Taemin shuts the door loudly behind him and lets out another huge sigh, jogging down the stairs and into the small guest bathroom to check his reflection. Zombie, that's what he thinks. Gaunt and tired and distressed. Always distressed.
His stomach growls loudly, but Taemin ignores it and leaves the quiet house even quieter. The air outside is fresh and freezing. The sky is a thick blue. It's the morning of Christmas Eve and Taemin's finally starting to realize that he's losing it. There's got to be something wrong with him. The best part is he doesn't have the heart to give a flying fuck; it's too busy beating for another reason entirely.
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note; "Are you as drunk as I am?" is what I say when I'm wasted. So if I'm ever out drinking with you, and I ask you that, I'm not allowed to drink ANYMORE. And I don't even LIKE drinking, I really don't. I have a high tolerance, think all of it tastes like shit, and do not enjoy having to imbibe grossness in order to "lose inhibitions"--which I actually never unconsciously lose because I am a bit of an out of control control freak. Sucks and makes no sense. It's cuz I'm a crazy fatass. Anyways.
This is one chapter I just did NOT want to write, but ofc it had to be written. So it's not my best, and I despise it greatly. I spent two horribly blocked months on this chapter, and now, I give up. This is as good as it gets. Hopefully after this, I'll be back on track.
For info on why I disappeared and LTTW, check this post out.
Until next time ~ TATA.