february advent, day 4 for laurenbaggy
title: vegmorph hindrance and the obstacles that must be overcome forthwith
rating: g
focus: yixing
word count: 3586
warning(s): body horror because his hands are no longer hands but in fact other things
a/n: THIS IS FOUR DAYS LATE AND I WROTE MOST OF IT TODAY I'M SO SORRY I THOUGHT I W AS GOING TO BE PUNCTUAL
(based on this)
vegmorph hindrance and the obstacles that must be overcome forthwith
‘i’m calling it vegmorph,’ lu han declares, rolling over in his bed and hugging his pillow. his eyes are closed already. ‘you know, instead of animorph.'
(yifan had said fruitmorph was more scientifically accurate; but nobody really cares about scientific accuracy these days, and lu han’s brand of humor tends to be more fetching.)
it’s how he became christened with this. how this became christened with him. how...
-
there is something that should be terrifying about this situation. like how his fingers have turned into bananas. like how his hands are bananas. and yet everyone has decided to take it in stride, like how everyone took baekhyun attempting to drunkenly ‘phone sex’ with taeyeon at 5am a month after they broke up, or how minseok announced at dinner the other night that he was thinking of looking into nihilism as a philosophy of life. whatever that meant. and well, perhaps the concept of minseok and nihilism was easy to take into stride anyway.
but he has bananas for hands.
‘my sisters say,’ jongin tells him seriously, ‘that if you have enough confidence, you can pull anything off.’
‘yes,’ yixing stares at his hands. ‘i would like to pull these bananas right off my wrists, but then i’m afraid i wouldn’t have any hands left.’
‘no no,’ jongin says, ‘i didn’t mean literally pull off. i meant like, carry. the way you carry yourself depends on your confidence.’
maybe it’s the stress or the lack of sleep (or both) getting to him, but yixing can’t really wrap his head around carrying himself, either. it’s not like he’s walking on his hands. god forbid. he tried carrying his phone and that didn’t go very well - it fell in the toilet, in fact. to be fair, baekhyun had been calling him and yixing had just stepped out of the shower stall. curse their close quarters.
‘...hyung?’
back to the point. ‘no, jongin,’ yixing says, sadly. ‘i don’t think that’ll work. but thank you for trying to help.’
-
lu han tries to make a joke out of it, which isn’t surprising; lu han tries to make a joke out of everything. he’s saying something right now with that grin, but with the lag he’ll only hear him after fifteen seconds. yixing attempts to rub his forehead out of exhaustion and gets scratched by banana ends for his efforts.
oh boy.
the lag screw up with electromagnetic waves or something, because most of the words get jumbled but yixing gets the general gist of lu han saying falling for you and slipping on banana peels.
'the only thing you’re falling for,' yixing groans into his bananas (great. was this a thing now? his bananas?) is pneumonia, and bad voodoo.'
'got that covered,' lu han says, internet connection apparently back to normal. 'your beautiful eyes will heal --'
yixing doesn’t hear the rest of it, because lu han’s place gets a power outage right then, and the call drops.
painstakingly, with his bananas (yes, that is in fact a thing now) making various mistakes and sending him to various apps, yixing calls zitao next. he can’t help it, he needs reassurance, and he needs it in fluent, born-and-bred mandarin.
zitao is as sympathetic as can be expected: really worried at first, then sidetracked by asking after everyone else, then trying to cheer him up with bad banana jokes before hanging up with a promise of checking up on him later.
yixing doesn’t even bother with yifan. he knows the bastard will do the humor move and try to laugh it off. yixing’s starting to lose faith in humanity, so he attempts to turn his tv on, looking for temporary release. emphasis on attempt, because that’s all it is. an effort to go to completion, that does not necessarily have a one hundred percent probability of occurring.
yixing ends up bashing his head on the remote, and that’s what gets the screen to snap on. 'finally.' he mumbles, and looks up at the screen hazily.
there’s a commercial on, about a kid and his dog. yixing settles down to watch.
he doesn’t really understand the plot, because the dog suddenly turns into a stuffed toy and the kid starts crying. CALL 800-1200-FIXIT! the next fame says, trumpet blaring in the distance. cut to the kid laughing his dog restored. GOT A PROBLEM? WE’LL FIX IT!
there are more supposed success stories - a girl who loses her cat in a cave, GOT A PROBLEM? WE’LL FIX IT!, girl gets her cat back; a boy who burns his oven in attempts to bake a cake, GOT A - ? WE’LL FIX - !, the oven gets refurbished, a cake emerges from the ashes; a man tries to dance tango with his partner on a highway and accidentally throws her over the railing, GOTAPROBLEMWE’LLFIXIT!
'this is crap,' yixing says with disapproval.
five minutes later, he’s in joonmyun’s room, calling out to the mountain of trash that is joonmyun’s bed. 'siri! dial eight, zero, zero…'
-
'got a problem?' a pleasant voice starts, and yixing blinks. that’s a bit abrupt.
'er, yes,' he tries. 'you see, i’ve -'
'we’ll fix it!' the voice reassures him. 'what’s the problem?'
'i hope you can,' yixing says. 'it’s about my hands, they’ve turned into bananas.'
the pleasant voice turns a little less pleasant. 'we don’t take kindly to prank callers.'
'i’m not pranking, these are my hands on the line here, they’ve turned into -'
'we’re sorry,' the voice says, not sounding sorry at all, 'but without further proof of your case we cannot extend our services. i’m sure you understand.'
the line drops. yixing hangs his head, staring at the various edible yellow appendages clustered at his wrists.
'siri?' yixing says, 'can you please call jongdae?'
'that contact doesn’t exist.'
dammit. what did jongdae change his name to now?
'call pussyslayer,' yixing says. chanyeol had changed baekhyun’s name on everyone’s contacts to that. and nicknames tend to get around between those four.
'hey, hyung,' kyungsoo says, 'how’s the fruit bowls?'
see. the nickname did get around.
'can you take a picture of my hands?'
there’s a pause.
'i know this sounds weird,' yixing adds, 'but i need photographic evidence.'
'i’m on set,' kyungsoo says apologetically, 'can’t really take a picture right now.'
crushing disappointment descends over yixing. how will he get his problem fixed? he thinks fleetingly of calling 800-1200-FIXIT again, this time to get a photo taken, but it seems a bit too trivial.
'siri, call canlie.'
'that contact does not exist.'
now what’s chanyeol under?
-
chanyeol has made himself a huge pain in the anus by making his contact name a fire emoji. yixing makes a mental note to put him on speed dial 8, and ends up pressing call with his tongue.
'tiddly tums,' chanyeol says, at the first ring. 'however may i be of service to your fine little photosynthetic self?'
'stop being disgusting and take a picture of my banana hands!' yixing yells, very much at his wit's end. it's taken him twenty minutes to reach chanyeol, and now he's faced with this freshness, this cheek!
'righto, fruity.'
'i said stop.'
'no can do, banani,' and chanyeol hangs up.
-
'did you know your fans are called xingmis?' chanyeol shouts half an hour later, entering the dorms. 'i should make a post! wait, where are you.'
yixing raises his head from sehun's pillow. 'here i am,' yixing whispers, spirit broken. somewhere out there, someone's playing bryan adams and yixing isn't there to hear it. yixing is glad. here i am by bryan adams is an extremely optimistic song about youth and love and finally being together, which would not really match his feelings very well.
chanyeol has magical hearing and pops his head in joonmyun's room at once. 'there you are,' he says. 'rise and shine. i'm going to make a post on weibo, and i won't show your arms, just the bananas.'
'please don't.'
'and i'll caption it, "from yixing ge to his fans." do you think they'll realize they're being encouraged into cannibalism? because let's face it, they'll probably be like i'll eat well, ge with stars and hearts.'
'you're terrible.'
'yes,' chanyeol pauses, rifling in his pocket for his phone, 'i suppose i am. but i don't mean it personally. if i was your fan i'd comment i'll eat well, ge with stars and hearts, too.'
yixing sits up and raises his hand bananas. 'please take a picture.'
but chanyeol's still thinking along his primary lines of thought. 'will the xingmis change their name to banmis? xingbans. banaxings.' then he actually looks at yixing, and his eyebrows shoot up. 'hyung. seriously? on sehun's bed, with no pants?'
'i can't put any pants on with these!' yixing waves his bananands around wildly.
'i'll put them on for you,' chanyeol offers. 'if nobody's gonna be your PR team, i will definitely have to step up.'
famous last words, yixing thinks, sad and grateful, and steps off the bed. the problem with movement in general is that each bananand/hanana is around two kilograms heavy, and his body isn't used to the constant, attached weight at the ends of his arms. he overbalances and almost lands on his face. so much for carrying himself. with all due respect, jongin's sisters have no expertise in this area.
'gotcha,' chanyeol croaks, strained. 'this might be worse than i thought.' what do you know, chanyeol's the one pulling off the carrying bit. bridal style, too.
yixing stares at chanyeol's shoulders and quietly wishes he was a little taller himself. 'might be,' yixing repeats, deadpan. 'haha.'
-
'you have to make a good impression,' chanyeol tells him. 'being honest and genuine is a good thing, but that doesn't mean you have to tell them you wear other people's boxers for weeks without changing them.'
'but nobody knows they're other people's boxers,' yixing protests.
'well,' chanyeol says. 'still. boxers in general. are not good. we must choose a shirt that does not resemble a cardboard box, and pants that are flattering. and good lighting.'
'yes,' yixing sighs. 'never forget the good lighting.'
'cheer up, hyung,' chanyeol says, cheerfully and yet very uncheeringly. 'everyone loved you with normal hands, now they'll love you with banana ones.'
'THAT'S NOT THE POINT,' yixing wants to cry out despairingly, but nods his head. 'yes,' he says. 'i see.'
chanyeol, true to his word, puts a pair of pants on him.
'i thought we were changing my boxers,' yixing says.
'with pants on, we don't need to.'
it's straightforward reasoning, but chanyeol's slightly pink about the tips of his ears. yixing doesn't have time to dwell on this because chanyeol plops him down on a table and sets his bananands in front of him. then he turns on the chandelier above yixing's head and takes out his phone again.
yixing waits for the telltale click, but chanyeol frowns, hesitating.
'you're an idol,' chanyeol reminds him. 'carry it off with bravado.'
'i'm not carrying anything,' yixing tells him flatly. 'and i'm not in the mood for this bravado you speak of.'
'you will be,' chanyeol warns, 'when dispatch somehow gets a wind of this, the way they do with all our down moments.'
yixing sits up straight and gives a wink for the camera.
'perfect.'
-
'hello,' yixing says, as chanyeol patiently holds the phone up for him. 'i'd like to send you a picture of my...'
'circumstances,' chanyeol fills in.
'our email address is fixitasap at hot dash shot dot com.'
'i'm sorry?' yixing asks.
the pleasant voice sighs, and it sounds like static. 'we will take note of the number you are calling from and send you a message via kakaotalk,' it says. 'thank you for calling.' the line goes dead.
'i feel sad,' yixing confides. 'everyone keeps hanging up before me. it's like i'm being left behind.'
'well,' chanyeol says. 'i guess it's because you're slowly evolving into a plant. aren't plants slow at growth?'
'listen,' yixing says, and topples himself into the bathroom. then he comes back out. 'how will i pee?' he whispers.
chanyeol looks like he's about to come as close to fainting as he ever has.
-
'well,' chanyeol clears his throat as they leave the bathroom. 'these past few minutes haven't really happened. glad to help you out, but they really didn't happen. now i will check the phone.'
'yes,' yixing says, with sympathy, 'the phone does need to be checked.'
-
there is a generic text awaiting on the phone. thank you for contacting fix-it.
'send it! send my photo!'
'yes,' chanyeol says, placing a placating and very human hand on yixing's shoulder. 'i'm sending it.'
perhaps there really was something to being an idol. he'd realized this several times over the past few years, but seeing himself winking with - chanyeol had a point - bravado as his fruit fingers rested on the table really took the cake so far with the realization moments. he looked good on the screen, like it's some kind of .
'see,' chanyeol says, proudly. 'look how bright you shine with the right people relations manager.'
'it's public relations,' yixing corrects him. 'but yes, thank you.'
we appreciate your correspondence. an agent will call you shortly.
'that seems professional,' chanyeol observes, steepling his fingers under his chin in that way yixing knows means chanyeol's actually experiencing heavy doubt.
'there aren't many choices here,' yixing tells him.
chanyeol accedes.
-
at this point, yixing is sure someone has somehow managed to inconspicuously slip cannabis into his gullet. this can only really be a very bad hallucination and everything he thinks is real is a lie.
he's in a taxi, meandering in a very shady looking area on the outskirts of seoul, and he's been in it for hours. he may have been in this backseat since before new year's, but he's not sure. he had definitely spotted fireworks earlier. maybe that had been downtown? yixing would call chanyeol or yifan or his grandfather if he could, right now, but he can't, because hands.
yixing thunks his head against the window and stares out. he can feel his eyes literally glazing over. cannabis for sure.
he wishes someone were here, but the cabbie's all he got.
'hello,' he says, to the cab driver, but the cab driver is glances at his hands in the rearview and gives him a suspicious look.
'where did you say you were going, again?' the driver says.
yixing repeats the address, only to have the drive cough up a big glob of sputum into the paper cup next to the gearbox. presumably that's what the paper cup is for. yixing feels sick and sad and looks back out the window. the world does not look back in. yixing is abandoned by the world. he'd put on sad music, but banands.
-
yixing does manage to snag his shirt sleeve on the door handle, tug his sleeve away forcefully, and thereby open the car door. chanyeol had paid in advance, so that's convenient. nothing else is. he doesn't know how to ring the doorbell. he stands around for a good minute before deciding to smash his forehead against it.
he smashes his forehead against it.
it hurts, but a bell rings inside the apartment, and someone opens the door at once.
'do you have a problem,' the little boy says, sounding so bored that it almost sounds rude. 'we can fix it if you do.'
'yes. my hands are bananas,' he recites.
kid doesn't even blink. 'right this way, if you please.'
-
'welcome,' the stooped old lady says. 'we will fix your problem.'
there's smoke everywhere; if there wasn't weed in his system before, there sure will be now.
'so everyone keeps saying,' yixing comments, as polite as possible. there's a chair in the middle of the room, squashy and ripped at the seams. he steps over a puddle of suspicious liquid and sits in it.
'now look at this little watch,' she goes on, unfolding a pocket watch on a chain. 'and count to ten.'
'are you trying to hypnotize me?' yixing asks incredulously.
'count to ten,' she repeats, stern.
'you're trying to hypnotize me,' yixing answers his own question, and then gives up, because what else is there to do really? he's alone in this world, and this specimen of homo sapien is his only hope left.
'one,' he counts, 'two. three. four.'
-
yixing opens his eyes.
a monkey decked in all of chanyeol's snapbacks at once swings by on a tassel that hangs from one of yifan's jacket sleeves.
'yo,' it says, in lu han's voice.
yixing opens his eyes.
he's deep in a jungle with david guetta playing from the depths of the pond.
yixing opens his eyes.
he is a banana.
-
yixing opens his eyes.
the pocket watch had said five p.m., and now it says eight. the old lady has the sense to look sheepish.
'free of charge,' she says, 'it didn't work.'
'that's alright,' he says, happily. 'i don't mind.'
but he does mind when he raises his hand to open the door and finds out, again, that it's a bunch of bananas. all happiness evaporates.
yixing makes it a point not to storm off no matter how badly he wants to, and he stands by this point now. but buddha, drukpa and ganden tripa, his hands, look at his piss-pure excuses for hands. he comes the closest he's even been to banging the door shut behind him. he’s so angry he doesn’t even know he managed to open the door. probably snagged his sleeves again. he doesn’t care.
-
jongdae is very sympathetic when yixing comes back to the dorms. chanyeol's already gone somewhere to some premier or other and kyungsoo is still filming on set. joonmyun's in the shower and baekhyun and jongin are busy playing against each other in a video game. minseok's snores float out from the farthest room.
'sehun's disappeared,' jongdae says. 'let's watch a movie.'
jongdae's taste in movies had been eclectic before he became better friends with kyungsoo. yixing can't pinpoint what exactly changed in the dvds that jongdae started collecting after 2013, but something definitely has.
jongdae squints at his shelf and takes out holes.
'it's pretty good,' he sighs, sitting down on the bed next to yixing. 'makes me cry when i watch it after a while.'
it does make them cry. sam keeps saying i can fix that and yixing feels half in love, half exasperated from his recent failed experience of a self-advertised fix-it-all. yixing falls asleep crying in jongdae's lap, both of them bawling into tissues.
-
when yixing wakes up, he's alone and tucked into his bed, pillow over his arm and hand clutching the sheet. he blinks at the clock, a shining green two forty two a.m.
'ugh,' yixing says, and turns over, pulling the blanket higher over his head. then he sits up with a start, staring into the dark at his hands. he can't see anything, so he tentatively drags his arm over the sheets. he can feel them. he can feel things happening under his hands. his hands. his dearly beloved, soft, human hands.
i can fix that, yixing remembers sam saying, and starts tearing up. 'you fixed it,' he whispers to the darkness, and imagines the character's smile.
in an ecstasy of touch perception and feeling, yixing scratches his armpit, wiggles his fingers, gets out of bed and finds baekhyun in the kitchen and runs his hands through the guy's hair, starts slapping the refrigerator in fascination and, upon baekhyun's look of confusion, softly coddles his face. 'your face is so beautiful,' yixing whispers, and baekhyun smiles sleepily.
'thanks, hyung,' he rasps, and his mouth stinks of two forty two a.m. morning breath, but that's okay, because his face really is beautiful.
yixing starts crying again and walks back to his bed, asleep before he hits the pillow.
-
the next day, joonmyun wakes up screaming with cherry tomatoes for toes.
'i dunno, joonmyun,' lu han yawns over facetime, when joonmyun had called him for comfort. 'i told yixing i'd fall for him when he had banana hands, but it's not going to work with cherry tomatoes.'
fin.
#1 WELL MY FRIENDS THERE IT IS YOU MAY THROW THE EGGS AND CABBAGES NOW I ACCEPT THEM WITH OPEN ARMS
#2 THANKS TIDDLES FOR THE SPRINTING
rating: g
focus: yixing
word count: 3586
warning(s): body horror because his hands are no longer hands but in fact other things
a/n: THIS IS FOUR DAYS LATE AND I WROTE MOST OF IT TODAY I'M SO SORRY I THOUGHT I W AS GOING TO BE PUNCTUAL
(based on this)
vegmorph hindrance and the obstacles that must be overcome forthwith
‘i’m calling it vegmorph,’ lu han declares, rolling over in his bed and hugging his pillow. his eyes are closed already. ‘you know, instead of animorph.'
(yifan had said fruitmorph was more scientifically accurate; but nobody really cares about scientific accuracy these days, and lu han’s brand of humor tends to be more fetching.)
it’s how he became christened with this. how this became christened with him. how...
-
there is something that should be terrifying about this situation. like how his fingers have turned into bananas. like how his hands are bananas. and yet everyone has decided to take it in stride, like how everyone took baekhyun attempting to drunkenly ‘phone sex’ with taeyeon at 5am a month after they broke up, or how minseok announced at dinner the other night that he was thinking of looking into nihilism as a philosophy of life. whatever that meant. and well, perhaps the concept of minseok and nihilism was easy to take into stride anyway.
but he has bananas for hands.
‘my sisters say,’ jongin tells him seriously, ‘that if you have enough confidence, you can pull anything off.’
‘yes,’ yixing stares at his hands. ‘i would like to pull these bananas right off my wrists, but then i’m afraid i wouldn’t have any hands left.’
‘no no,’ jongin says, ‘i didn’t mean literally pull off. i meant like, carry. the way you carry yourself depends on your confidence.’
maybe it’s the stress or the lack of sleep (or both) getting to him, but yixing can’t really wrap his head around carrying himself, either. it’s not like he’s walking on his hands. god forbid. he tried carrying his phone and that didn’t go very well - it fell in the toilet, in fact. to be fair, baekhyun had been calling him and yixing had just stepped out of the shower stall. curse their close quarters.
‘...hyung?’
back to the point. ‘no, jongin,’ yixing says, sadly. ‘i don’t think that’ll work. but thank you for trying to help.’
-
lu han tries to make a joke out of it, which isn’t surprising; lu han tries to make a joke out of everything. he’s saying something right now with that grin, but with the lag he’ll only hear him after fifteen seconds. yixing attempts to rub his forehead out of exhaustion and gets scratched by banana ends for his efforts.
oh boy.
the lag screw up with electromagnetic waves or something, because most of the words get jumbled but yixing gets the general gist of lu han saying falling for you and slipping on banana peels.
'the only thing you’re falling for,' yixing groans into his bananas (great. was this a thing now? his bananas?) is pneumonia, and bad voodoo.'
'got that covered,' lu han says, internet connection apparently back to normal. 'your beautiful eyes will heal --'
yixing doesn’t hear the rest of it, because lu han’s place gets a power outage right then, and the call drops.
painstakingly, with his bananas (yes, that is in fact a thing now) making various mistakes and sending him to various apps, yixing calls zitao next. he can’t help it, he needs reassurance, and he needs it in fluent, born-and-bred mandarin.
zitao is as sympathetic as can be expected: really worried at first, then sidetracked by asking after everyone else, then trying to cheer him up with bad banana jokes before hanging up with a promise of checking up on him later.
yixing doesn’t even bother with yifan. he knows the bastard will do the humor move and try to laugh it off. yixing’s starting to lose faith in humanity, so he attempts to turn his tv on, looking for temporary release. emphasis on attempt, because that’s all it is. an effort to go to completion, that does not necessarily have a one hundred percent probability of occurring.
yixing ends up bashing his head on the remote, and that’s what gets the screen to snap on. 'finally.' he mumbles, and looks up at the screen hazily.
there’s a commercial on, about a kid and his dog. yixing settles down to watch.
he doesn’t really understand the plot, because the dog suddenly turns into a stuffed toy and the kid starts crying. CALL 800-1200-FIXIT! the next fame says, trumpet blaring in the distance. cut to the kid laughing his dog restored. GOT A PROBLEM? WE’LL FIX IT!
there are more supposed success stories - a girl who loses her cat in a cave, GOT A PROBLEM? WE’LL FIX IT!, girl gets her cat back; a boy who burns his oven in attempts to bake a cake, GOT A - ? WE’LL FIX - !, the oven gets refurbished, a cake emerges from the ashes; a man tries to dance tango with his partner on a highway and accidentally throws her over the railing, GOTAPROBLEMWE’LLFIXIT!
'this is crap,' yixing says with disapproval.
five minutes later, he’s in joonmyun’s room, calling out to the mountain of trash that is joonmyun’s bed. 'siri! dial eight, zero, zero…'
-
'got a problem?' a pleasant voice starts, and yixing blinks. that’s a bit abrupt.
'er, yes,' he tries. 'you see, i’ve -'
'we’ll fix it!' the voice reassures him. 'what’s the problem?'
'i hope you can,' yixing says. 'it’s about my hands, they’ve turned into bananas.'
the pleasant voice turns a little less pleasant. 'we don’t take kindly to prank callers.'
'i’m not pranking, these are my hands on the line here, they’ve turned into -'
'we’re sorry,' the voice says, not sounding sorry at all, 'but without further proof of your case we cannot extend our services. i’m sure you understand.'
the line drops. yixing hangs his head, staring at the various edible yellow appendages clustered at his wrists.
'siri?' yixing says, 'can you please call jongdae?'
'that contact doesn’t exist.'
dammit. what did jongdae change his name to now?
'call pussyslayer,' yixing says. chanyeol had changed baekhyun’s name on everyone’s contacts to that. and nicknames tend to get around between those four.
'hey, hyung,' kyungsoo says, 'how’s the fruit bowls?'
see. the nickname did get around.
'can you take a picture of my hands?'
there’s a pause.
'i know this sounds weird,' yixing adds, 'but i need photographic evidence.'
'i’m on set,' kyungsoo says apologetically, 'can’t really take a picture right now.'
crushing disappointment descends over yixing. how will he get his problem fixed? he thinks fleetingly of calling 800-1200-FIXIT again, this time to get a photo taken, but it seems a bit too trivial.
'siri, call canlie.'
'that contact does not exist.'
now what’s chanyeol under?
-
chanyeol has made himself a huge pain in the anus by making his contact name a fire emoji. yixing makes a mental note to put him on speed dial 8, and ends up pressing call with his tongue.
'tiddly tums,' chanyeol says, at the first ring. 'however may i be of service to your fine little photosynthetic self?'
'stop being disgusting and take a picture of my banana hands!' yixing yells, very much at his wit's end. it's taken him twenty minutes to reach chanyeol, and now he's faced with this freshness, this cheek!
'righto, fruity.'
'i said stop.'
'no can do, banani,' and chanyeol hangs up.
-
'did you know your fans are called xingmis?' chanyeol shouts half an hour later, entering the dorms. 'i should make a post! wait, where are you.'
yixing raises his head from sehun's pillow. 'here i am,' yixing whispers, spirit broken. somewhere out there, someone's playing bryan adams and yixing isn't there to hear it. yixing is glad. here i am by bryan adams is an extremely optimistic song about youth and love and finally being together, which would not really match his feelings very well.
chanyeol has magical hearing and pops his head in joonmyun's room at once. 'there you are,' he says. 'rise and shine. i'm going to make a post on weibo, and i won't show your arms, just the bananas.'
'please don't.'
'and i'll caption it, "from yixing ge to his fans." do you think they'll realize they're being encouraged into cannibalism? because let's face it, they'll probably be like i'll eat well, ge with stars and hearts.'
'you're terrible.'
'yes,' chanyeol pauses, rifling in his pocket for his phone, 'i suppose i am. but i don't mean it personally. if i was your fan i'd comment i'll eat well, ge with stars and hearts, too.'
yixing sits up and raises his hand bananas. 'please take a picture.'
but chanyeol's still thinking along his primary lines of thought. 'will the xingmis change their name to banmis? xingbans. banaxings.' then he actually looks at yixing, and his eyebrows shoot up. 'hyung. seriously? on sehun's bed, with no pants?'
'i can't put any pants on with these!' yixing waves his bananands around wildly.
'i'll put them on for you,' chanyeol offers. 'if nobody's gonna be your PR team, i will definitely have to step up.'
famous last words, yixing thinks, sad and grateful, and steps off the bed. the problem with movement in general is that each bananand/hanana is around two kilograms heavy, and his body isn't used to the constant, attached weight at the ends of his arms. he overbalances and almost lands on his face. so much for carrying himself. with all due respect, jongin's sisters have no expertise in this area.
'gotcha,' chanyeol croaks, strained. 'this might be worse than i thought.' what do you know, chanyeol's the one pulling off the carrying bit. bridal style, too.
yixing stares at chanyeol's shoulders and quietly wishes he was a little taller himself. 'might be,' yixing repeats, deadpan. 'haha.'
-
'you have to make a good impression,' chanyeol tells him. 'being honest and genuine is a good thing, but that doesn't mean you have to tell them you wear other people's boxers for weeks without changing them.'
'but nobody knows they're other people's boxers,' yixing protests.
'well,' chanyeol says. 'still. boxers in general. are not good. we must choose a shirt that does not resemble a cardboard box, and pants that are flattering. and good lighting.'
'yes,' yixing sighs. 'never forget the good lighting.'
'cheer up, hyung,' chanyeol says, cheerfully and yet very uncheeringly. 'everyone loved you with normal hands, now they'll love you with banana ones.'
'THAT'S NOT THE POINT,' yixing wants to cry out despairingly, but nods his head. 'yes,' he says. 'i see.'
chanyeol, true to his word, puts a pair of pants on him.
'i thought we were changing my boxers,' yixing says.
'with pants on, we don't need to.'
it's straightforward reasoning, but chanyeol's slightly pink about the tips of his ears. yixing doesn't have time to dwell on this because chanyeol plops him down on a table and sets his bananands in front of him. then he turns on the chandelier above yixing's head and takes out his phone again.
yixing waits for the telltale click, but chanyeol frowns, hesitating.
'you're an idol,' chanyeol reminds him. 'carry it off with bravado.'
'i'm not carrying anything,' yixing tells him flatly. 'and i'm not in the mood for this bravado you speak of.'
'you will be,' chanyeol warns, 'when dispatch somehow gets a wind of this, the way they do with all our down moments.'
yixing sits up straight and gives a wink for the camera.
'perfect.'
-
'hello,' yixing says, as chanyeol patiently holds the phone up for him. 'i'd like to send you a picture of my...'
'circumstances,' chanyeol fills in.
'our email address is fixitasap at hot dash shot dot com.'
'i'm sorry?' yixing asks.
the pleasant voice sighs, and it sounds like static. 'we will take note of the number you are calling from and send you a message via kakaotalk,' it says. 'thank you for calling.' the line goes dead.
'i feel sad,' yixing confides. 'everyone keeps hanging up before me. it's like i'm being left behind.'
'well,' chanyeol says. 'i guess it's because you're slowly evolving into a plant. aren't plants slow at growth?'
'listen,' yixing says, and topples himself into the bathroom. then he comes back out. 'how will i pee?' he whispers.
chanyeol looks like he's about to come as close to fainting as he ever has.
-
'well,' chanyeol clears his throat as they leave the bathroom. 'these past few minutes haven't really happened. glad to help you out, but they really didn't happen. now i will check the phone.'
'yes,' yixing says, with sympathy, 'the phone does need to be checked.'
-
there is a generic text awaiting on the phone. thank you for contacting fix-it.
'send it! send my photo!'
'yes,' chanyeol says, placing a placating and very human hand on yixing's shoulder. 'i'm sending it.'
perhaps there really was something to being an idol. he'd realized this several times over the past few years, but seeing himself winking with - chanyeol had a point - bravado as his fruit fingers rested on the table really took the cake so far with the realization moments. he looked good on the screen, like it's some kind of .
'see,' chanyeol says, proudly. 'look how bright you shine with the right people relations manager.'
'it's public relations,' yixing corrects him. 'but yes, thank you.'
we appreciate your correspondence. an agent will call you shortly.
'that seems professional,' chanyeol observes, steepling his fingers under his chin in that way yixing knows means chanyeol's actually experiencing heavy doubt.
'there aren't many choices here,' yixing tells him.
chanyeol accedes.
-
at this point, yixing is sure someone has somehow managed to inconspicuously slip cannabis into his gullet. this can only really be a very bad hallucination and everything he thinks is real is a lie.
he's in a taxi, meandering in a very shady looking area on the outskirts of seoul, and he's been in it for hours. he may have been in this backseat since before new year's, but he's not sure. he had definitely spotted fireworks earlier. maybe that had been downtown? yixing would call chanyeol or yifan or his grandfather if he could, right now, but he can't, because hands.
yixing thunks his head against the window and stares out. he can feel his eyes literally glazing over. cannabis for sure.
he wishes someone were here, but the cabbie's all he got.
'hello,' he says, to the cab driver, but the cab driver is glances at his hands in the rearview and gives him a suspicious look.
'where did you say you were going, again?' the driver says.
yixing repeats the address, only to have the drive cough up a big glob of sputum into the paper cup next to the gearbox. presumably that's what the paper cup is for. yixing feels sick and sad and looks back out the window. the world does not look back in. yixing is abandoned by the world. he'd put on sad music, but banands.
-
yixing does manage to snag his shirt sleeve on the door handle, tug his sleeve away forcefully, and thereby open the car door. chanyeol had paid in advance, so that's convenient. nothing else is. he doesn't know how to ring the doorbell. he stands around for a good minute before deciding to smash his forehead against it.
he smashes his forehead against it.
it hurts, but a bell rings inside the apartment, and someone opens the door at once.
'do you have a problem,' the little boy says, sounding so bored that it almost sounds rude. 'we can fix it if you do.'
'yes. my hands are bananas,' he recites.
kid doesn't even blink. 'right this way, if you please.'
-
'welcome,' the stooped old lady says. 'we will fix your problem.'
there's smoke everywhere; if there wasn't weed in his system before, there sure will be now.
'so everyone keeps saying,' yixing comments, as polite as possible. there's a chair in the middle of the room, squashy and ripped at the seams. he steps over a puddle of suspicious liquid and sits in it.
'now look at this little watch,' she goes on, unfolding a pocket watch on a chain. 'and count to ten.'
'are you trying to hypnotize me?' yixing asks incredulously.
'count to ten,' she repeats, stern.
'you're trying to hypnotize me,' yixing answers his own question, and then gives up, because what else is there to do really? he's alone in this world, and this specimen of homo sapien is his only hope left.
'one,' he counts, 'two. three. four.'
-
yixing opens his eyes.
a monkey decked in all of chanyeol's snapbacks at once swings by on a tassel that hangs from one of yifan's jacket sleeves.
'yo,' it says, in lu han's voice.
yixing opens his eyes.
he's deep in a jungle with david guetta playing from the depths of the pond.
yixing opens his eyes.
he is a banana.
-
yixing opens his eyes.
the pocket watch had said five p.m., and now it says eight. the old lady has the sense to look sheepish.
'free of charge,' she says, 'it didn't work.'
'that's alright,' he says, happily. 'i don't mind.'
but he does mind when he raises his hand to open the door and finds out, again, that it's a bunch of bananas. all happiness evaporates.
yixing makes it a point not to storm off no matter how badly he wants to, and he stands by this point now. but buddha, drukpa and ganden tripa, his hands, look at his piss-pure excuses for hands. he comes the closest he's even been to banging the door shut behind him. he’s so angry he doesn’t even know he managed to open the door. probably snagged his sleeves again. he doesn’t care.
-
jongdae is very sympathetic when yixing comes back to the dorms. chanyeol's already gone somewhere to some premier or other and kyungsoo is still filming on set. joonmyun's in the shower and baekhyun and jongin are busy playing against each other in a video game. minseok's snores float out from the farthest room.
'sehun's disappeared,' jongdae says. 'let's watch a movie.'
jongdae's taste in movies had been eclectic before he became better friends with kyungsoo. yixing can't pinpoint what exactly changed in the dvds that jongdae started collecting after 2013, but something definitely has.
jongdae squints at his shelf and takes out holes.
'it's pretty good,' he sighs, sitting down on the bed next to yixing. 'makes me cry when i watch it after a while.'
it does make them cry. sam keeps saying i can fix that and yixing feels half in love, half exasperated from his recent failed experience of a self-advertised fix-it-all. yixing falls asleep crying in jongdae's lap, both of them bawling into tissues.
-
when yixing wakes up, he's alone and tucked into his bed, pillow over his arm and hand clutching the sheet. he blinks at the clock, a shining green two forty two a.m.
'ugh,' yixing says, and turns over, pulling the blanket higher over his head. then he sits up with a start, staring into the dark at his hands. he can't see anything, so he tentatively drags his arm over the sheets. he can feel them. he can feel things happening under his hands. his hands. his dearly beloved, soft, human hands.
i can fix that, yixing remembers sam saying, and starts tearing up. 'you fixed it,' he whispers to the darkness, and imagines the character's smile.
in an ecstasy of touch perception and feeling, yixing scratches his armpit, wiggles his fingers, gets out of bed and finds baekhyun in the kitchen and runs his hands through the guy's hair, starts slapping the refrigerator in fascination and, upon baekhyun's look of confusion, softly coddles his face. 'your face is so beautiful,' yixing whispers, and baekhyun smiles sleepily.
'thanks, hyung,' he rasps, and his mouth stinks of two forty two a.m. morning breath, but that's okay, because his face really is beautiful.
yixing starts crying again and walks back to his bed, asleep before he hits the pillow.
-
the next day, joonmyun wakes up screaming with cherry tomatoes for toes.
'i dunno, joonmyun,' lu han yawns over facetime, when joonmyun had called him for comfort. 'i told yixing i'd fall for him when he had banana hands, but it's not going to work with cherry tomatoes.'
fin.
#1 WELL MY FRIENDS THERE IT IS YOU MAY THROW THE EGGS AND CABBAGES NOW I ACCEPT THEM WITH OPEN ARMS
#2 THANKS TIDDLES FOR THE SPRINTING