Greeting Cards
Title: Greeting Cards
Author: frolickings
Pairing: Junseung
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Junhyung thinks there's a card for everything and Hyunseung thinks he's charming.
Author's Notes: Because I love stupid greeting cards and because I just found out I love Junseung. First Junseung/B2ST fanfiction.
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Junhyung likes cards because, no matter how completely ridiculous one’s problem seems to be, there is always one for the occasion. As fantastic as the idea of cheating on one’s girlfriend with their step-mother or having a great-uncle die in a tragic bar fight accident is, the semblance of wandering through the drug store aisles a few minutes after midnight, snow melting against his scalp and under his nails, and finding a card for it is almost comforting. It is a therapy for the insomnia, humming under the fluorescent lighting and peeling away soggy mittens to file through greeting cards, plucking out the most obscure.
Truthfully, he never knows when he will need a card for the death of a beloved family pet but he tucks it away, snug in its envelope, against the warmth of his chest. But they pile up, like unused perfume samples, in the back drawer of his dresser and he never looks at them unless he can’t sleep. Which is, to say, often.
His breath shivers, reaches forward to pluck out a card -- We’re sorry for your loss. The death of a second twice removed cousin is one of great sorrow. -- and doesn’t notice, underneath the glare of artificial light, the shop assistant with the sweep of soft, dark hair and the stupid maroon apron who leans against the shelves of female hygiene products.
“Are you going to buy that?”
“Shit.” Junhyung mutters, drops the card with shaking fingers and reaches over, feeling fat in his winter coat with his scarf riding up and getting wool in his mouth. “I just -- I...”
The boy raises an eyebrow, pinches his mouth together and turns away. “Whatever. I was just wondering. I mean, you’re always here buying them anyway.”
He checks out later, the same card in its shimmery lavender envelope and a few more -- Congrats on your Caesarean section! -- and his hands picking for his gloves. The boy is quiet, but in that way where Junhyung can tell the boy is picking and choosing his words with silent judgment, thin eyebrows tucked together with a wrinkle of thought. When everything is bagged in crinkling plastic, he pushes it across the counter and tugs on the sleeve of Junhyung’s jacket.
“Hey, you... buying all these cards...” The boy fiddles with his name tag -- Hyunseung, simple and pretty -- before tucking his hair back a few times, “...it’s super weird.”
Junhyung’s face squishes into a frown.
Then he sees Hyunseung’s number, scratched across the bottom of the receipt and his shy little smile and those long, thin fingers tucking -- untucking -- tucking his hair behind his ear.
“But it’s really cute.”
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For their first anniversary, Junhyung figures that it would be a bit, per say, predictable if he gave a card. They are living in his little apartment, stacked up upon other lives on other floors and encased within old brick. It is warmer and alive with the presence of Hyunseung, who drapes his apron on the couch after work and curls against his body with a needy little whine and makes the kitchen bright because he can actually cook, unlike Junhyung’s “cooking” (heating noodles in a pot -- bon appétit).
They wake up in the middle of the night, although it’s mostly Hyunseung since Junhyung does not sleep easily, even with the presence of warm, soft skin next to him. His fingers fumble around in the dark, trying to find the light switch but eventually giving up and settling for tracing the soft lines of Junhyung’s jaw, prodding sharply.
“Hey.”
He turns on his side, catches Hyunseung’s eyes glinting tiredly in between the moonlight that filters in between the window shades and smoothes his boyfriend’s hair down gently, softly. “Hi.”
“It’s our anniversary.”
“Huh.” Junhyung falls back on the pillow, looks up at the ceiling, feels breath warm against his chest -- slow and labored. “You remember the exact time?”
“It was printed on the receipt.” Hyunseung protests weakly but slumps back down again. It’s silent, the kind of silence that is made of blaring sirens and drunken laughter and a horn screeching from a few streets away, but it’s white noise to them. He feels him shift in his arms, plants a kiss at the side of his mouth, and murmurs a breezy little you didn’t even get me a card before coiling up tightly.
It never occurred that Hyunseung might want the predictable, or that perhaps he was being absolutely unpredictable by being predictable. It makes his head ache for a second but he realizes that for years, he has seen him buy cards and has never gotten one, not even for Christmas, Valentine’s Day, even Kwanza. That’s pitiful, he realizes, to have a whole dresser full of them and not even spare one. He is like a stingy old man, huddled over his belongings and not sharing a thing and it makes him a little sad.
So Hyunseung is a little surprised when he pads across the carpet to the kitchen, bathed in clear, white early morning light and finds a card tucked neatly on the counter. Junhyung is off to work, a free lance little thing that he pretends to call a job but it’s really just time spent scribbling music.
He peels back the envelope, lets the thick cardstock crinkle under his fingers, and pulls it back.
The card is rich and chocolate brown with elegant little hearts and would be lovingly romantic if it didn’t read To a girl I consider my own on her birthday -- your step-father is proud to see you grow into a beautiful young woman across the front.
He laughs until he hurts a bit to laugh but then he still does because as stoic as Junhyung pretends to be, Hyunseung realizes he has captured a sarcastic fuck for a boyfriend.
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The storm arrives in the form of Junhyung’s parents, who leave as fast as they come and leave a brewing mess of fucking gays and a burning, aching faggot tattooed against Hyunseung’s chest. Everything seems quieter then it should, a heavy fog that makes them swirl around the house, blindly performing chores but never talking, never whispering, never collecting each other up into a protective hold they will never release.
Hyunseung shakes a bit, feels his body cracking through and he can still hear the slam of the door, Junhyung pleading with his parents under his breath to please, try to understand me and the cutting hiss of don’t you dare talk about him that way. It seems to hang itself up proudly on the refrigerator with their little poetry magnets, cheerfully arranged in the pattern of shameful -- homewrecking -- family-ruining -- whore, whore, whore. It haunts quietly, in between the nervous lacing of his fingers and whispers in his ear with those tucks of hair and in the swish of his shirt across his midriff.
“Hyunseung.” He used to relish the sound of his name through Junhyun’s teeth and tongue, musical as if it was a chorus of a bad love song. “Baby...”
He pulls the sheets over himself, swathes himself in protective fabric, ignores the explorative fingers of Junhyung who tries to pry him out of the warm, stuffy cocoon he’s disappeared into. It replays itself like tangled video tape, the fuzzy images of his parents with their red faces and the way Junhyung’s father holds his arm too tightly, squeezes his soft skin between his gnarled fingers -- the force behind it makes him know that they want to throw him across the room, knock him against the wall, beat the nasty feelings out of him and scare him away from their son.
It’s not until late at night, when the background music of crime and punishment and homelessness filters in through the open screen, that he unfurls his limbs from the blanket, finds his boyfriend turned on his side with his chest falling slowly and his clenched eyes red around the edges. He kisses his sleeping mouth, trails it up his jaw line, cries into the crook of his shoulder until Junhyung wakes up and shifts him easily into his arm.
“I’m sorry.” He knows. “I’m so sorry.”
Then he can feel it, the sharp edges of a paper card being passed to him from Junhyung’s warm palms and he doesn’t open it, lets it weigh heavily in his fingers before pushing it back carefully.
His voice is detached from his mind, eyes loll up to the ceiling and words wooden and he just can’t smile like he used to, doesn’t think he can for a long time. “There are some things a card can’t fix, Junhyung.”
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It is springtime and Junhyung’s parents don’t call anymore and Hyunseung comes in one day to find a trash bag with a few jagged holes poking through that sits inconspicuously in the middle of the living room. He unties the top, sifts through them and lets them fall through his fingers, swears under his breath when he hears a rustle of paper from the bedroom.
“Junhyung.” There are cards scattered across the ground like little blood puddles and it almost feels as if a murder has happened in their own home, the breaking and tearing of cardstock like the ripping and slicing of flesh. “What are you doing?”
He looks up, pale blonde hair ghosting over his face and shoving another handful of them, falls and falls of cards that tumble from his fingers in a flash of pastels, jewel tones, glittered patches. His lips are a bit dry and his t-shirt hangs off his frame as he heaves the next bag over his shoulder, wants to push past Hyunseung and erase all the dirty marks on the walls, splattered with the words -- so many terrible words -- that spilled from his parent’s mouth and from everybody’s mouth. He figures his work will begin at getting rid of all these goddamn cards because who was he honestly fooling?
It had started out to curve the insomnia, slowly faded into a little thing that they shared, a little blossom of amusement -- one of those ridiculous, silly couple traditions that every good boyfriend should be ashamed of in his future -- and now it made him sick. He had deluded himself that there was a card for anything but there was not a card for the shame that had plagued them like illness, for things that made Hyunseung sit up and cry in the middle of the night, words that made their touches grow cold and harbored, curdled within their body.
“Junhyung, stop.” His little fingers are on his larger wrists, wrapped around like intimate bracelets, “...why are you...”
“There’s not a card.” His voice breaks slightly. “I looked and I looked and there’s no card for what they did to you and how they made you hurt like that. If there’s not a card, I don’t want them.”
There's a choked laugh, one that garbles with so many emotions that it's a ridiculous clump of feeling and Hyunseung covers his mouth before it can drain away some more.
“Idiot.”
Junhyung forces their eyes to meet, eyebrows wrinkling and Hyunseung pops a kiss on his mouth, letting out a little laugh. “I said, you’re an idiot.”
He digs into the trash bag, pulls out the first one he can find -- a shimmery little mess of pink glitter that laces with almost unreadable swirling typography Happy First Missing Tooth, Great-Grand Niece! -- and shoves into the space between their palms.
“There’s not a card for how stupid I think you are and how dumb and cute your little hobby is and how you don’t even have a real job but I don’t even fucking care. And there’s not one for me expressing how I feel when you throw your clothes on the ground instead of putting them into the hamper and how you always take too much food on your plate but you never eat it. And there’s not one for how much I love you or... how stupid I think you are. And, fuck, why do you always take so much food when you don’t eat it all?” Hyunseung looks a bit taken aback by his own words. “Did I say that already? Well, I meant it. But since there’s not a card, this one will just have to deal.”
He can feel silence, taste it and for once in his life, he is unsure of Junhyung. Junhyung is a predictable boy, a wonderful predictable one, but everything seems tossed up in the air at the most timid of moments. He wishes, once again, that everything about his boyfriend was in concrete and that he would never have to doubt, never have to fumble and his fingers would never shake and his chest would heave with fright. But love is about being a little unpredictable, he supposes, and this is how unpredictable it gets: two boys, paper corpses everywhere, a singlestupid, stupid card.
Junhyung’s eyebrows furrow in the silence, turns the card over a few times in his hands. “Does it really bother you when I take that much food? Do they really not have a card for that?”
Hyunseung suckers him in for another kiss in the sheer joy of the moment (he doesn't hate me and we're not crazy and we're putting pieces back together), pushes him down on the bed and arches his back slightly to dip down, pressing their lips together feather-light. “No, so we’ll just celebrate you missing your first tooth. Take it as a metaphor for my immense love for you.”
He snorts, cups Hyunseung’s chins and leads the kiss this time, rough and demanding and for the first time in months, everything is simply okay. “I promise you, I’ll find a card for it.”
end
A/N: this makes me super nervous to post, but, first... public fanfiction. ;___; cries i hope i did okay, even if it's a dumb little one shot.
Posted via LiveJournal app for iPhone.