(no subject)
Title: take me to your best friend’s house (2/??)
Author: achtling
Pairing: Jongin/Taemin
Rating: PG-15
Summary: Taemin takes Jongin to the city. Or, Jongin takes Taemin to the city. Or, neither of them know what they’re doing, but they sure are together. Like... together? No. [country boys au]
<<<<<
Less than ten minutes pass before Taemin comes running back with Jongin’s depleted wallet and a plastic bag banging off his leg. He slides onto the bench.
“You didn’t call anybody, did you?”
His breath brushes against Jongin’s ear. Jongin shakes his head, and then Taemin’s pushing his wallet back into his hands. “Great,” he says, and then, “We’re gonna do busking.”
“What?”
“You know, street performing?” He drops the plastic bag on Jongin’s lap. Inside is a sleek portable stereo, the kind that hooks up to a phone. “We spend our week here dancing for money, save up, buy the train tickets home on Sunday. It’ll be fun and nobody will know anything went wrong. And we should probably work off all the food we ate today.”
Jongin cannot believe Taemin’s bringing up weight loss. He usually can’t believe it, because Taemin fucking doesn’t need to lose any weight, but especially now he can’t believe it. “Can we really make money from street performing?”
“I mean, it’s you and me,” Taemin shrugs as if that’s obvious. “Believe in me, Jongin.”
“Shut up,” Jongin replies, embarrassed at the saccharine throwback, as it precludes him from saying, wholeheartedly, I do.
If doubts do occur to Taemin, they never last for long. He hauls the bag up and unpockets his cell, lip caught between his teeth. He reties his hair, sets out his jacket, thumbs through his mp3 library.
“Stretch first,” Jongin says.
“Yes, Mom.”
Of course Taemin is rearing to go. They need only the slightest reason to dance. And needing money with very few marketable skills is possibly their best excuse yet. Other than, you know, following their dreams. But that didn’t turn out so well.
Sometimes Jongin’s afraid that what he sees in Taemin isn’t even real. Like he’s the stupid one to have this much implicit faith in him, to let it take his breath away when Taemin moves on beat-conscious feet.
They’re older and it still feels, somehow, like Taemin can do all the things he can’t.
He really does shine.
City sorts notice. Anybody with eyes would notice. Taemin doesn’t even have anything set out to collect money, and Jongin wonders if that’s because he knows they’ll watch to the end of the set. A good number of them do. A decent number of them actually reach for their wallet or at least their pocket change.
Taemin looks pleasantly surprised as the bag he brings around is weighed down with, perhaps, enough won for a dozen fishcakes. He hands Jongin the bag as if it’s a trophy. “It’ll add up. That’s only from ten minutes.”
Jongin isn’t sure what he looks like or he’s thinking when he nods. It’s maybe something about how Taemin’s dancing makes minutes seem like either flashes or hours and that’s so fucking cliché but he’ll allow this shit idea for something along that stupid reason.
Sucking his bottom lip into his mouth, Taemin scans over all the tracks he could dance to. Most of his focus is elsewhere. “If we make around 500 won every minute, then in seven days…?”
Starstruck effect receding now that Taemin is attempting math, Jongin raises an eyebrow. "You're acting like this is a tiny drawback. Taemin, that was all our money."
"...200,000 won for a one-way ticket... oh, wait, we need two of them, so 400,000..."
“Okay, okay, let me help.”
All their junk, measly earnings included, is set down where Jongin can see it. He stands up, patting at his thighs.
Taemin side-eyes him. His lips curve. “I thought you were tired?” A city breeze, smoggy and metallic, whips his hair around.
Jongin shrugs. The music plays. He forgets to stretch.
“Where are we going to sleep?”
Taemin, stride unbroken, looks over his shoulder at Jongin’s visible heartbreak. The older boy’s shirt is baggy and low-cut. Drifting headlights and overhanging neon signs tint his collarbones in red light and make his face rosy but no less tired.
“Jongin, come onnn.”
It’s easier to walk with the crowds dispersed, and almost like home were they not boxed in on the streets. It’s a bit eerie, though. Seeing Taemin has no intentions of stopping to discuss this, Jongin half-jogs to catch up with him, wary of the shadows at every corner.
“You can sleep anywhere,” Taemin says once he feels Jongin at his side. Like it’s a fact.
Jongin frowns. “I like beds.” Also a fact. An important fact.
“You can sleep in a bed for the rest of your life when you inherit your dad’s farm and adopt 30 small dogs, okay? This is an experience.”
Taemin says experience with more reverence than Jongin’s ever heard. He’s too carefree for post-midnight in a distant place. Not for the first time, Jongin thinks he’s a psycho.
He shakes his head fondly. “Why are you happy you got all that won stolen?”
Taemin shrugs and bumps shoulders with him, same as always, with a light and crisp sense of confidence. “We're gonna be fine.”
They end up entering a subway station. The stairwell to it is dirtied with spots of gum, crumpled cigarettes, burger wrappers, you name it, and on the sidewalk it looks like a dark, gaping mouth. Taemin threatens to push if Jongin doesn’t stop gawking, is he tired or not? and Jongin grumbles, “I’ll kill you,” but begins the grudging trek down instead.
They find concrete benches slotted against the tiled walls, in between trash cans redolent with coffee and piss. Jongin doesn’t need to remind himself that he’s burned all the oil of his four hours of sleep and then some. He yanks his sweater off, balls it up, and drops his head onto it with a sigh he is hoping bats at Taemin’s eardrums. His feet hang over the bench.
“Aren’t you glad you can sleep anywhere?” Taemin asks, tucking his stuff away under the bench. It makes it even clearer that this is their life now, which drives Jongin’s fatigue and misery through the roof. As for his ability to sleep anywhere, now he has reason to doubt it.
A grazing pasture, or the barn loft, or even his desk at the back of class, are incomparable to a hard, subterranean block of concrete, but that’s not worth mentioning. He makes a grabby hand motion as Taemin pulls out their night’s revenue, an unsorted mess in a street stall baggie. It’s mostly coins. “Let me hold onto that.”
“No,” Taemin says with a tight smile. “I’ll take care of it.”
There’s a moment where they both know Jongin wants to scream bull shit. But what a quandary, like this morning, he just wants to sleep. And in that moment, blearily, he could see it: Taemin wanting to prove something, so irrepressible it was almost a need.
Taemin knows how to twist his arm without even trying.
Jongin tries to relax. They're basically banking on the fact that they look too homeless to steal from or interact with at all. At least if something else went wrong, they could call home. Taemin had promised as much.
Well, it was more like Jongin had asked and Taemin said mmm and jumped full-throttle into the next routine, just as he had with this plan. Giving up, Jongin turns towards the wall.
Taemin snuggles into his back. He drapes his big jacket over both their bodies. The station is empty. There are other places to sleep. “Gotta huddle for warmth,” Taemin explains, throwing an arm over Jongin’s abdomen.
No, the word for what they’re doing is definitely “spooning.” Jongin scrubs at his face, internally melting a bit.
“If you get morning wood, I swear to God,” he warns around a less-than-threatening yawn.
Taemin knocks his forehead between Jongin’s shoulderblades, squeezes closer and doesn’t answer. Jongin can grouse and fake decorum all he likes. They sleep like this often, side by side in strange places, and it's never stopped feeling fine.
-|-
For a while, their favorite place was the barn loft. Jongin’s room got too stuffy and his family was loud. Plus it was fun to sit around in an elevated, lightless place, holding flashlights to the undersides of their faces as they exchanged scary stories about ghosts, werewolves, Taemin’s older brothers.
The loft had an air of privacy which made it perfect to exchange secrets, too. They would lie amongst the hay and splinters, unspooling their thoughts on important matters of life, like, “Taemin, is it just me, or is it totally Sehun’s fault we can’t make it to the semi-finals of the competition?”
“No. Yeah. He sucks.”
“I’m going to beat him up.”
“Don’t.”
Or more confessional: “Jongin-ah, whoops, it was actually me who broke the vase in your living room last month.” Jongin had nothing to say to that because his whole family had already suspected. Whenever something went wrong Jongin’s father made a joke of blaming Taemin whether he was present or not, as if he was the family poltergeist. “Must be Magic Hands again,” he’d say discerningly. Four out of five times he was right, so Jongin stopped being defensive about it.
The loft was the only place thirteen year old Taemin trusted to hide them from prying eyes when he wanted to show Jongin a surprise. Which ended up being a porn magazine he found under his brother’s mattress. Hooray.
“Jonghyun-hyung’s?” Jongin asked.
Taemin joined him on the hay-littered floor, grinning. “What do you think?”
Jonghyun ended up having aggressively heterosexual tastes, not that Jongin knew what that meant back then. He just remembers adolescently expecting some kind of near-mystical response to all the tits and feeling… nothing, really. He anticipated something from Taemin, at least, but he was even more disinterested outside of awkward giggling at particularly ridiculous pictures.
They had more fun that way. By the end Taemin flicked off the flashlight and laid back, hands laced behind his fanning black hair, and Jongin blurted, “I don’t think I’m interested in boobs?”
Taemin peered at him, unfazed. “But you touch them all the time?”
“What-“
“You know,” Taemin said on a giggle, making the appropriate motions with his hands, “milking cows?” He cracked up as if that was the most hilarious thing. “Those are technically breasts, right. Haha.”
“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” Jongin sighed. He was glad for the cover of darkness; his face was absolutely red to the ears. “You are the stupidest thing-“
-|-
“You’re not sleeping yet, are you?”
Jongin would say it’s nearing 2 a.m. now. In asking after Jongin, isn’t Taemin just diverting focus from how he’s not asleep?
Giving up on disapproval, too, Jongin flips so he’s faced with Taemin’s mussed hair, like fine wires of copper. He gulps, slow to respond. “I’m actually having some trouble falling asleep, yeah.”
“Your back hurt again?”
“I’m lying on a slab of concrete.”
Taemin chuckles and shifts his arm to rub circles into Jongin’s waist. It’s not super soothing, but it’s better than nothing. Jongin’s lips curve gratefully even though Taemin’s eyes are still shut. But he’s awake, so.
“What kind of piercing do you want?”
“Piercing?” Taemin repeats, warm vibrations to Jongin’s collar. A fluorescent light flickers overhead. “Just on the earlobe. Anything else might hurt...”
Jongin snorts, halting mid-laughter as Taemin slides his hand down his back. It’s a nice sensation. He tries not to think about Taemin touching him under his shirt. Shit. That’s not a platonic thought.
Rebounding from that, Jongin shakes his head the slightest. “Edgy. While you're at it you can get a tramp stamp that reads I Love Mom.”
“My mom is an enchanting wonderful lady.”
“She is.” Jongin agrees, thinking of her cooking. Then of kitchen knives. “Also, she’d murder you if she knew we were doing this.”
“Go to sleep. You’re good at that.” Jongin curbs a whine as Taemin’s hand pulls away, but is unsurprised to feel it swooping down a moment later to pat at his butt in the dark. Taemin yawns. “You’re gonna need it.”
“You’re such a slavedriver, Taemin,” Jongin mumbles to the crown of his head, and any tension in his words is drawn purely from how much he wants to feel his friend thin and strong in his arms. It’s dumb to want more than what he gets-his arms are around Taemin all the time. That’s what gets him inside-out, being this close and this far.
This trip, too: he’s not sure if it’s bringing them closer or highlighting irreconcilable differences, because Taemin loves the glossy storefronts, the skyline congested by concrete, the endless possibilities. Jongin just doesn’t want to let him out of sight, literally, figuratively.
Taemin falls asleep before Jongin does. That’s a first. Honestly, Jongin hasn’t recovered from his less-than-platonic thought, and the tight, dark space is reminding him of other firsts he’d rather not revisit.
Even he and Taemin have their unmentionable shit. Jongin closes his eyes and counts sheep. Taemin's lips are right there, pink and unaware. If they make an appearance in Jongin’s dreams, well-it wouldn’t be the first time.
-|-
The barn loft was also the place where, three years ago, Jongin admitted he wasn’t sure he was interested in girls at all. It was a big maybe. He followed this up with, “Taemin I need to know,” and he struggled to articulate what it was he wanted to say.
Taemin was patient with him, which just made Jongin feel worse when he babbled, “Could you maybekissmesoIcouldseeifI’mgay?”
“What?”
“Nevermind.”
“No way, I heard you.” His face twisted a little. “You want to kiss?”
He knows he should have asked Sehun or Moonkyu, to be honest, if he really wanted to test the limits of his interest in guys. This would be his first kiss, and Taemin’s too, if you didn’t count the time he open-mouth smooched one of Jongin’s sheep on a dare. But he was nine. And that was a sheep.
But Jongin was a boy. And also his best friend, which is supposed to be a deterrent, but isn’t enough of one for Jongin. Just a source of torment. No, that’s Taemin in general.
That’s not enough of a deterrent either.
Jongin took a deep breath. There was no backing out now. “I want to-just to see what it’s like. If I like guys. You don’t have to. But-”
“But you want me to?”
“Not in a weird way.”
“Okay.” He sat up. Jongin sat up. He wet his lips. Neither of them moved.
Then, slowly, he leaned forward. He could hear Taemin mutter, “You owe me,” just a second before he was mashing their lips together, trying to get something to click.
They didn’t know what to do with their mouths. Keeping them very still, pushed up against each other and just parted enough was their best bet. Taemin’s eyes were closed and Jongin’s flipped around in a tizzy before squeezing shut. Maybe 15 seconds passed. There was no epiphany, only the foreseeable knowledge that Taemin’s mouth was soft and warm. And wet. Jongin pulled away much quicker than he’d leaned in, breathless.
In the dim light Taemin’s mouth was slick with some saliva and Jongin couldn’t tell whose it was, which was kind of gross. Taemin laughed. There was something to the sound that Jongin was scared to identify.
In that moment, and Jongin still does not know why, he made a face and exaggerated a shudder. “Nevermind. Shit idea.”
“The sheep was better,” Taemin agreed. Their laughter followed seamlessly, but Jongin’s chest felt fluttering and heavier than he could carry.
-|-
Jongin sleeps through every early, booming arrival of the subway train. It’s Taemin who wakes him. Rise and shine, he says. Jongin squints past his out-of-focus face at the cracked eggshell ceiling. Nothing’s shining. Where’s the sun. Oh yeah. The events of last night come rushing back.
“I have no words for how much I want to hit you right now,” Jongin says. His fingers flex and unflex as if considering themselves.
Taemin sputters and tugs him up into a sitting position, tiny lines of tension appearing on his forehead. “I thought we decided last night it wasn’t my fault!” Jongin doesn’t respond. Taemin relents, palms out turned and open. “Alright, you can hit me once if you get up.”
“I can’t,” Jongin says blankly, as if this practicality is a grim and heavy thing. “We’re going to need your face in its prime to seem appealing, so don’t tempt me.” He hands Taemin the jacket they were using as a blanket, and dips for his backpack and a change of clothes.
After brushing their teeth and dressing in a public bathroom, which is ten different kinds of disgusting, they rejoin the surface world and head to a convenience store. They buy water bottles and muffins and count their cash very seriously in low voices. Jongin makes the executive decision to buy a marker, too. “Necessary expenses,” he says, and is very pleased when he finds discarded cardboard on the roadside while Taemin’s eying a street map.
“What should I write?” he calls, holding up his canvas and uncapped marker.
Taemin really doesn’t know, trying to navigate for a few more moments before glancing over. “’Donations Appreciated’?” he tries.
“’My girlfriend lost all our money, please help us get home’?” Jongin says it without emotion but giggles at Taemin’s scandalized look and laughs even more when he ties his hair up with a decisive snap, as if that makes all the difference.
Taemin joins him in thoughtfully regarding the blank piece of cardboard. More likely he couldn’t figure out the map. He steadies Jongin’s elbow as he suggests, “’Help two cute guys get home’?”
“Yeah, okay.”
Jongin draws pictures of them, too. He’s midway through Taemin’s sparkly eyes when he realizes Taemin called him cute. It’s gross, really, the way it makes him overaware of Taemin squared in at his side, admiring his marker strokes.
When is Taemin not within two inches of contact? This is so stupid. He tries to digest the butterflies in his stomach effective immediately.
Once he’s done with the cartoons, Taemin takes the cardboard sign in hand and obliviously scribbles himself an earring.
Jongin rolls his eyes. What a kid. What a baby. Jongin loves him.
Why even lie to himself. It’s hard enough to keep up appearances for everyone else. A few times now he’s been a bit too enthusiastic in joking that Taemin’s his girlfriend, garnering suspicious glances from close friends, but he can’t seem to stop. It just makes Taemin too mad and he can’t pass that shit up.
While they were brushing their teeth that morning, Taemin actually thought up a decent schedule to maximize income. He’s weirdly good with things like that. They’ll perform off to the side in a busy station during lunch hour and returning rush, cool down at Hangang in the early evening when lots of people are out with friends. Then they sleep in a subway station again. Repeat.
“What about showers?” Jongin had asked. He already knew the answer so Taemin didn’t bother giving him one outside of flicking faucet water at him.
It goes about as well as it can. Jongin didn’t know what to expect from the city prior to coming. It definitely wasn’t spending most of their time underground. But there’s something about this sort of hard work that’s pretty fun. They reach real far back into the partnered routines they know, and take turns freestyling while the other boy panhandles with a snapback. It’s not like work at all. And Taemin was right, the change adds up. Jongin counts it.
“This is actually going to work,” he says, wiping his forehead free of sweat. “Wow.”
Taemin is repeatedly pulling at his shirtfront to air out his chest. He plucks the jingling bag out of Jongin’s hands. “I know,” he responds, gingerly zipping it up in his backpack. Then he holds the backpack in his arms like it’s a child. It looks stupid and he’s said so, but he also looked very serious about not getting stolen from again. Jongin’s gotta encourage good behavior.
At Hangang the sky is a blazing orange color, dazzling on the water front. As expected, it’s properly cool out and there’s no shortage of people. Ooh-ing and aah-ing, the boys walk the trail parallel to the riverbank. Once they find a good spot, Jongin tinkers with the stereo on a bench, crouching under a streetlamp.
Taemin wanders to the edge of the park overlooking the Han, lit by distant lights and the sinking sun. His feet are poised on the lowest rung of the railing. He looks really peaceful, only moving to sip from a water bottle. Nearly dazed, Jongin would say. He can’t help but hate it when he doesn’t know what Taemin’s thinking.
He calls out to him and gets nothing in response. Ten seconds later Taemin shouts, flailing, as Jongin pushes him towards the water from behind. He yanks him back by the shirt at the last second and wrinkles his nose. “Taemin-ah, you need a bath.” He bursts into high-pitched laughter at his own joke.
“Who’s been complaining about wanting one all day!” Taemin throws back an elbow, narrowly dodged.
“You first,” Jongin answers, devolving into more giggles as he pushes Taemin towards the water over and over. He’s barely able to hear Taemin’s shouts of protest.
"You gave me a heart attack-fuckface- cut it out!"
A small crowd gathers. Jongin doesn’t know what about them attracts attention like this. He tends towards blaming Taemin.
Taemin has other ideas. “I should tell them you’re bullying me,” he deadpans.
Jongin turns to tell concerned onlookers that no, he’s not beating the shit out of this effeminate kid, they’re only messing around. This effeminate kid weasels out of his grasp long enough to upend his water bottle over Jongin’s head.
He’s soaked. He shakes his hair out precisely like Monggu would, and even looks like a sodden puppy dog, he’s sure. For a long moment he just stands there, dripping.
Taemin gives him the you started this look, eyebrows raised in challenge. He also looks ready to roll into a battle stance should Jongin make any sudden movements. Can’t blame him there. Jongin is a competitve asshole extraordinaire, after all. He can even feel the girls’ curious eyes on him, so it’s weird that he does what he does next so casually.
He strips off his shirt, laying it to dry over the nearest bench. He doesn’t get a new one. “Taemin, stop fooling around, let’s start,” he calls, bending into some stretches. Taemin comes away from the railing, eyebrows raised even higher. The girls haven’t moved from their spot, dumbstruck, admiring.
Jongin knows he has a nice body and would even say he knows a thing or two about sex appeal. You never get to show these things off living in a small town where everyone’s known you since the cradle.
So he kind of has fun with it. And he learns another important principle of making money on the street: it’s way easier when you’re half-naked, provided you look good. He’s kind of scared that Taemin’s going to call him on being such a blatant exhibitionist, but he doesn’t do anything besides clap him on the back between sets. Oh, right, that’s what it feels like to touch him without layers. Jongin shrinks away, crossing his arms over his chest to the disappointment of their female audience.
They rake in the cash and adoring stares. Since it’s a leisurely park at a leisurely hour, girls come and go. A few of them stick around even when Taemin and Jongin stop for a break. Taemin observes them exchanging tittering whispers out of the corner of his eye. He jerks a thumb back at them. Jongin’s gaze obediently follows.
Loud enough for all to hear, Taemin remarks, “You could get a girlfriend here.” A wry grin splits his face, as if he’s done Jongin some big favor.
Jongin tries not to choke on the water he’s drinking. When is Taemin going to get that Jongin is one boy removed from heterosexuality? But-being that very boy, it’s better that he doesn’t.
Yet Jongin fingers the ends of Taemin’s hair and it comes out before he knows it, equally loud and nearly tender: “But, Taemin-ah, you’re already my girlfriend.”
In the moment he’s glad he said it, because Taemin’s mouth drops into an “o” shape, befuddled, then indignant. But between those things there’s a certain question. Jongin wonders if he’s thinking about being fourteen and bumping faces in the clandestine dark. He swears he can see the memory flit across Taemin’s face. His mouth begins to move.
Again, not thinking, Jongin pours the remainder of his water bottle out on him. Jongin laughs and expects to hear Taemin at least chuckle-he’s trying to say it’s just a joke.
Silent, Taemin smooths his hair back. His hand stills in place. “If you call me that again, I’ll cut it. I’ll cut it all off if I have to, I swear to God.”
“Haha,” Jongin peeps at this very real threat. He has a pressing urge to run his fingers through Taemin’s soft, wet hair right that second.
It’s kind of like how when he sees a dog he wants to pet the dog immediately, but also not like that at all. It’s never a bad time to pet a dog, whereas this would be a really bad time for gay bullshit.
Jongin is usually thickly aware of those lines as well as when it’s acceptable to toe over them. He keeps it balanced like that. Usually. He’s only human. Taemin still looks-miffed?-and it’s probably not because Jongin got his watery vengeance.
Glowering, he continues: “If you want a girlfriend that much, Jongin, why don’t you-“
“Okay, I get it,” Jongin interrupts, red-hot embarrassed and turning away.
They're not going to talk about this. In some ways, that's great, because Jongin doesn't want to explain I'm a frustrated grade school boy with a crush and I keep wanting to pull your pigtails. Holy fuck. That's a terrible, kinky thought, and it's also exactly what he's doing, being petty.
So he wants to apologize, because for all his thickheadedness Taemin deserves better than a best friend with a petty, frustrated school boy crush.
They don't do apologies. And so Jongin hands his friend a dry shirt, because he knows Taemin will want to change behind a tree, and when he comes back he'll act like nothing ever threw him off.
>>>>>