cock envy. sehun/kai. one.
name: cock envy
rate: positively full of cock
k-i-s-s-i-n-g: sehun/kai (nerdtp)
this is about: Jongin is jealous of all those cocks Sehun has, especially since Jongin’s the one that brought them home.
Or, conversely:
Sehun never thought he’d have this problem.
counting the words: 21.6k
doodles: Apple Bottom jeans and boots with the fur.
*
“I think that third one kind of looks like Sehun.”
“Yeah,” Jongin says. “The fluff kinda looks like his hair--”
“In the face,” Jongdae says. “I think it looks like Sehun in the face.”
“Excuse you,” Sehun says. “I was an Abercrombie model in high school.”
“If that doesn’t explain everything about you, I don’t know what could,” replies Jongdae. “I guess avian was In in 2009.” Jongdae laughs. “Like Abercrombie.” He pauses. “Wait, were you really an Abercrombie model?”
“I was scouted,” Sehun says, as Jongdae’s face collapses in amusement.
As far as comparisons go, Sehun resents the implication that he looks anything like Jongin’s chicks. Chicks as in baby chickens, not as in women, because Jongin can’t handle being around more than one female at a time that isn’t one of his sisters without breaking out into a stress rash.
There are five baby chicks, though, and Jongin loves being around them so much that he had passed up their nightly marathon of Dead or Alive Beach Volleyball 3 to sit with them and adjust the sunlamp he’d brought home with him from work as he coos at them softly, mumble-singing the theme song from Gossip Girl.
Sehun doesn’t look anything like that baby chicken, and hanging out with him is definitely more interesting than watching the chicks sleep. Jongin is a terrible roommate and friend.
“I don’t understand why you had to get them so much stuff,” Sehun says, prodding at the cardboard box Jongin had poked holes through for ventilation. Inside it was a weird water dish thing that Jongin had made by emptying out an old can of parmesan cheese (Sehun had totally been saving that for… something, but whatever) and poking a hole in it and a bunch of layers of newspapers, and there’s a gigantic bag of chick starter feed is sitting on the table nearby. “Why did you pick the most needy baby animal on the planet to bring back to the apartment? Wasn’t there a box of ants or baby lizards sitting by the road or something? Or even better, a box of rocks.”
“Jongin’s always liked things that are high maintenance,” Jongdae says, smirking at Sehun with a knowing glint in his eyes, that for some reason makes Sehun want to blush.
Oblivious to Jongdae, Jongin puffs out his cheeks and reaches down to rearrange some of the newspapers he’d layered in the bottom of the chicks new cardboard home. “It was raining! I couldn’t just leave them there.” He looks up at them both beseechingly, like he and Jongdae are going to make him throw the chicks out into the chilly spring air. “The pound won’t keep farm animals, and I just…”
“We know, we know,” Jongdae reassures Jongin, ruffling his hair. “Man, vet school turned you into such a bleeding heart.”
“Turned?” Sehun asks, sarcastically, rolling his eyes.
Sehun remembers when Jongin’s family had moved into the apartment next door when he was eight and Jongin had spent his weekends out on the fire escape, trying to take care of the city’s pigeons, who clearly didn’t want anything to do with him.
Jongin is the type of person that works as a resident at a veterinary office, volunteers at the animal shelter down the street during his free time, and takes in any stray or sad-looking animal that he crosses paths with. Jongin is the definition of the term “bleeding heart” in the Oxford English Dictionary, but Sehun’s gotten used to his knee-jerk acts of altruism. He understands that Jongin honestly can’t help himself.
Jongdae’s phone goes off, Shakira’s “She Wolf” blasting through the kitchen and making Jongin jump like an actual wolf is trying to attack the chicks.
“Come let me the fuck in, you little bitch,” the earpiece screeches when Jongdae picks up, the cry of a harpie.
He hangs up again without answering, walking over to the door with a spring in his step that Sehun thinks is totally unwarranted for someone who just got screamed at. “That’ll be Baekhyun.”
Jongdae’s boyfriend is wearing one of his seemingly endless supply of plaid Sean John shirts and construction-worker style boots that clunk loudly as he walks into the apartment.
Sehun turns and stares down at the box full of chicks so he doesn’t have to see Baekhyun stick his tongue down Jongdae’s throat for the nth time, but his ignorant bliss is ruined by a soft slapping sound and Baekhyun saying admonishingly, “stop being such a grabass in front of the children.”
“They don’t mind,” Jongdae says, which totally isn’t true because Sehun definitely minds and Jongin looks like he might cry as Baekhyun tromps further into the apartment toward them both.
“So,” he says, leaning up against the kitchen table and staring Sehun and Jongin down, “have you guys fucked yet?”
There’s a loud noise that sounds like Jongin almost falling off his stool onto the floor and Sehun scoffs back at Baekhyun. “Yeah, haha, really funny, Baekhyun.”
“Haha,” Jongin says weakly, chewing on his lower lip and looking rather red. “You know we’re just friends and that Sehun is straight.”
Sehun is not straight, but it’s just too much effort to correct Jongin. He’d tried once, but Jongin had seemed so disbelieving that Sehun had given up. Not like he was planning on dating anyone anyway. Too much work. You have to go out. And see them. And pretend to care about their life and stuff. Sehun’s over it.
Jongin’s neck is even red now. “Jongin, you’re so red. I think you’re starting to get sunburn from that sunlamp,” Sehun says, and Jongdae looks at Sehun in disbelief. Sehun doesn’t know why. It’s obvious that a sunlamp could result in sunburn.
Baekhyun smirks, that way he always does when he’s mentally patting himself on the back, and Sehun crosses his arms. “Why are you here.”
“My little bitch and I have a date at the Icecapades,” Baekhyun says. “Thrills and chills.”
“That better not be a euphemism.” Sehun used to like the Icecapades.
The box on the table cheeps, and Baekhyun startles. “I knew Jongin liked his chicken, but damn, this organic lifestyle shit has gone too far.” He moves closer, and Jongin’s arms shoot out protectively to wrap around the box. “Raising baby chicks and then killing them. Brutal. I didn’t know Jongin had it in him to kill his own food.” He looks at Sehun. “You, on the other hand.”
“I had nothing to do with bringing the little monsters into our no pets allowed apartment.”
“It was raining!” Jongin yells plaintively, as Jongdae snickers.
“Don’t worry,” Jongdae says conspiratorially to Jongin. “Some first time mothers get intimidated by the responsibility. Sehun will come around eventually and you can be happily chick married with your happy chick family.”
“Aww, that’s so cute,” Baekhyun says, adjusting his snapback. “They won’t even sleep together but they’re already raising kids. An immaculate chick conception. It’s like they skipped all the fun parts of starting a family.”
Jongdae laughs as Sehun rubs at his temples, a Baekhyun-migraine developing. “You need to leave now.”
Jongin seems to be trying to melt into a puddle, and while Sehun normally wouldn’t care, he doesn’t know how to take care of chicks and he fucking hates mopping. His best bet is to get Baekhyun out of the apartment. He never would have agreed to living with Jongdae if he’d known Baekhyun was part of the deal.
“Man, that could be some kinky farm roleplay,” Baekhyun muses as Sehun’s mind uncomfortably imagines Jongin backlit in a stable, pieces of hay in his mussed hair-- No. Sexual Jongin Thoughts are off limits. Unfortunately, Baekhyun seems to be on the same wavelength. “Jongin the hot stable boy and Sehun is the milk maid.”
“Sehun likes milk,” Jongin mumbles.
“Don’t speak, Jongin,” Sehun hisses. “You’ll only make it worse.”
Baekhyun’s eyes light up with the vindictive glee of a medieval executioner. “The chicks even fit into the barn theme. But you guys are probably too vanilla for that.”
“Yeah,” Jongdae says, “too vanilla to actually have sex.”
“It’s not like that!” Jongin insists. “We’re best friends. And Sehun likes women!”
Baekhyun chortles at him. “You’re awfully invested in that, aren’t you? Trust me, I know way more about vaginas than Sehun ever will.”
“Why do you breathe?” Sehun asks, and Baekhyun jams his hands into the pockets of his jeans.
“Because if I didn’t, the world would miss me.”
Sehun has never missed Baekhyun. Ever. “Bye.”
“We should head out,” Jongdae says, and Sehun almost sends him a thankful look until he continues with “We wouldn’t want to get in the way of family bonding time.”
“I hope you both die at the Icecapades,” Sehun says, and Baekhyun’s horrible cackles echo as they leave.
Jongin heaves a sigh of relief, deflating as the door to the apartment closes. “You’re not mad, right?”
“I’m always mad at Baekhyun,” Sehun says, watching Jongin stroke a chick’s head with the back of his index finger. Jongin is so gentle with animals. Sehun’s facial muscles try to trick him into smiling but he holds out. “His very existence upsets me. I should get a restraining order.”
“I mean about the chicks,” Jongin says. “I know I shouldn’t have brought them home without asking you and Jongdae, but I couldn’t…”
Sehun sighs. “I’ve known you since we were little,” Sehun says. “I knew what I was getting into when I agreed to move in with you. At least it’s not a racoon this time.” He shrugs, like it doesn’t matter, even though it does, because if they get busted Sehun’s name is also on the lease. “As long as you take care of them, I don’t care.”
Jongin grins, smiling so wide that Sehun blinks. He feels uncomfortably hot. Maybe he’s getting sunburn from the sunlamp too. His skin has always been fragile. That’s why he loved his Abercrombie job. All that darkness. “You’re the best, Sehun, don’t sweat it, I promise I’ll do everything, and they won’t bother you at all. You won’t even know they’re here.” One of them, the biggest, yellowest one, squawks far louder than its tiny body should allow, and Sehun sincerely doubts that.
“Sure,” Sehun says. “Whatever.”
“What should we name them?” Jongin asks, and Sehun backs away quickly.
“No, no, no,” Sehun says. “I want nothing to do with this. You can keep the monsters but I’m not giving them names or getting attached. You know we’ll have to find them homes somewhere else before we have five big chickens running around our apartment, right? This is not ‘Friends’ and you are not Joey.”
“I know, I know,” Jongin says. “But in the meantime, I’ll have to call them something. I can’t just call them all ‘hey you’.”
That’s what Sehun did for every single member of his graduating class in high school except for Jongin, and it worked out just fine, but Jongin’s always been sentimental. “Call them whatever you want. We’re never getting chick-married, Jongin. I’m too young and handsome to settle down.”
Jongin’s smile slips a little, but then he looks at the chicks and his smile gets all glowy again and Sehun should leave before he starts feeling things about baby animals or something. Too much exposure to Jongin’s nature-man attitude always leads to Sehun getting scratched by feral animals in alleyways. It’s best to nip any potential attachment to Jongin’s latest pet project in the bud.
“I’m gonna go take a nap,” Sehun mumbles. “Don’t name any of them after me.”
*
Jongin blearily answers his phone at one AM to a frantic Chanyeol. “Something’s wrong with Tao’s cat,” Chanyeol says, and Jongin groans. “It’s a cat-mergency!”
“What?” He sounds kind of like a frog, which sucks, but it’s not like Chanyeol is someone he needs to impress. He’s already got the job, right?
“I need you to come in right now, and pack a change of clothes, because we have three other surgeries lined up today, and you probably won’t have time to go home between them.”
Now Jongin is awake. “Okay,” he says, casting about for the tshirt he’d somehow lost between falling asleep and now. “Okay, give me like twenty minutes.”
“Tao will be here in an hour,” Chanyeol says. “He’s very wound up. Expect tears.”
“Yours or his?” Jongin mumbles, as he hangs up, crawling out of bed and not bothering to change out of his sweatpants before pulling on another sweatshirt. He doesn’t bother with socks, because ew, and pads out into the living room to find his sneakers. He looks quickly at his phone. There’ll be a C-train in about ten minutes, so if Jongin runs to the subway he can just make--
His thoughts are interrupted by an angry chorus of cheeps, and with a sinking stomach, Jongin remembers his chicks. “Oh no,” he says, and he just stands there for a minute, with no idea what to do.
Chicks need pretty much around the clock care, and Jongin had kind of been hoping that after a week of Jongin exposing Sehun to the chicks, he’d start to like them enough that he could check up on them when Jongin was at work. Sehun is like that: He pretends that he doesn’t care about anything but he’s almost as much of a sucker as Jongin is for cute things.
But it’s been barely twelve hours since he’d brought them home, and Sehun won’t even go near the box, skirting it with a wary eye every time he has to walk in the general vicinity. He’s also taken to wearing his oversized noise-cancelling headphones to drown out the incessant chirping, so Jongin doubts that Sehun has ‘warmed up’ enough to take care of them all day while Jongin is gone for a double shift at the vet office.
There really isn’t a choice, though. Jongdae never came back from the Icecapades. Maybe it’s a two day ice extravaganza? Either way, there’s only Sehun or certain death for his kids. Jongin swallows and looks hesitantly at the box and then back at Sehun’s closed door.
He takes a deep breath and opens it, walking into Sehun’s bedroom, eyes adjusting easily to the dark. “What do you want?” he says, and Jongin knows just because Sehun is speaking, it doesn’t mean he’s awake.
“Tao’s cat is sick,” Jongin says. “It’s a cat-mergency. I have to go into work.”
“So?” Sehun turns in bed, and his sheet slips down. He’s not wearing a shirt, and the soft light from outside that filters into the room makes his skin glow. Jongin gulps, and forces himself to look away. So what if Sehun is really handsome and Jongin’s been totally in love with him since he was like, thirteen? He’s here for a reason. He can stay focused. It’s cool. Everything’s fine? Probably. Sehun’s really handsome, though, no matter how much Jongin tries not to notice because bffs and Sehun’s whole straight thing.
“The chicks,” Jongin says, clenching his hands and trying to make out Sehun’s face.
Sehun rolls onto his back and sighs. He’s definitely awake now. “Never.”
“Please?” Jongin lets all of his desperation seep into his voice. “Jongdae didn’t come home and they’ll die, Sehun.”
“Then you can eat them. The take out budget for next week will have a surplus.”
“They’re babies, Sehun,” Jongin whispers. He walks in closer and sits on the edge of Sehun’s bed, making sure to keep a little space between them, because Sehun is always warm and it always… kinda… makes Jongin hard? when he thinks about Sehun’s soft skin and what it might feel like if-- Focused. Jongin is focused. “You know I wouldn’t ask you if there was any other way.”
Sehun makes this frustrated groaning sound that… totally… doesn’t… make Jongin… harder…? “Jongin Kim, I fucking hate you. Go to work. I’ll try not to let any of them die, since you look stupid when you cry.”
Jongin can’t help himself. He pounces on Sehun and gives him a hug, catching a whiff of Sehun’s flowery shampoo, and then he remembers Sehun isn’t wearing a shirt, he’s got a semi in his sweatpants and that his train leaves in probably way less than ten minutes now. “Thank you, Sehun, thank you, thank you.” Even as he retreats, he tries to remember everything. “Make sure to clean the feeder, and to change their newspaper. And they’ll eat a lot, so don’t let them go hungry, and if they make noise apparently you can sing to them--”
Sehun throws a pillow, and it hits Jongin square in the face. “I’m not singing to your damn birds, Jongin,” he says, and Jongin heads out before Sehun can change his mind about helping him altogether.
Jongin gets to work in thirty minutes, not twenty, but Chanyeol doesn’t seem to notice, fluttering about the office with all the grace of an orangutan as he preps for emergency surgery.
“What’s wrong with Tao’s cat?” Jongin asks, setting up the back room as Chanyeol pouts and looks at charts.
“Bleeding inside,” Chanyeol says. “A real cat-tastrophe, but nothing we can’t fix, if we operate immediately. Sorry to wake you up. I know you like your sleep.”
“It’s fine,” Jongin says, and it is, because Jongin likes his job even more than he likes his sleep. “I was just worried about my chicks.”
Chanyeol stops and looks at him. “Your chicks? I’m assuming you mean baby birds and not women, considering that you’re in gross puppy-love with your slack-faced roommate.”
Jongin flushes. “Sehun’s not slack-faced, he’s just… you know, reserved.” Jongin scratches at his uncombed hair. “And I’m not--”
“I’m not even going to let you finish that sentence,” Chanyeol says. “Because everyone except Sehun knows that you’re all up on him like a dog on a fire-hydrant.”
“Do you have to say it like that?” Jongin asks, miserably. “The only thing worse than everyone knowing is everyone knowing and making horrible jokes about it.”
“I’m a veterinarian, Jongin. I think in animal terminology.” Chanyeol laughs, way too loud for two AM. He sets down his charts. “And on the bright side, no matter how many jokes we make, he never seems to take them seriously.”
“What if he does, and his total non-reaction has been his way of subtly rejecting me for years?” Jongin thinks about Sehun’s warm skin and Sehun’s cute smiles when he forgets he’s not supposed to show human emotion, and he starts to spiral. No Jongin, he tells himself. You’re focused. There’s a cat-mergency, after all.
“Or he’s just oblivious and self-centered and has no idea,” Chanyeol says. “Plus, knowing Sehun, I’m inclined to believe that’s a more probable explanation. What you should do is take Kyungsoo’s advice and tell him--”
They’re interrupted by a hysterical Tao, cradling a terrifyingly still Pamela Anderson, her usually luxurious fur matted. Tao’s persian is one of Jongin’s favorite patients, and he hopes she’ll be all right.
Chanyeol takes the cat from Tao’s arms and Tao continues sobbing into Jongin’s shoulder. “We’ll take care of her,” Jongin says, patting Tao’s arm as he hopefully looks around for Tao’s boyfriend, Yixing, but no luck. “Don’t worry, Chanyeol is an expert with cat-tastrophes.”
Tao gives Jongin a watery smile, and Jongin forgets all about his chicks and Sehun’s… skin… in favor of helping Chanyeol save Pamela Anderson’s life.
*
“Wowza, this is disgustingly domestic,” Jongdae says as he walks into the apartment for the first time in three days, wearing a hot pink Icecapades sweatshirt and a pair of jeans that definitely aren’t his. “I thought you were better than this.”
“I was hoping you’d died,” Sehun says, but not too loudly, because the chicks have finally quieted, nestled into his lap and in the crooks of both elbows, sucking up Sehun’s body heat and tickling him with every squirm. “But instead it looks like you’ve come back from Mardi Gras. Also shut up, they’re asleep. And Jongin is too, I guess, but I hate him right now, so go wake him up if you want.”
“How’d you get landed with baby-sitting?” Jongdae eyes Sehun’s accessories. “Or should I say chick-sitting?”
“Well,” Sehun says, with forced pleasantness, “apparently there was some emergency with some Baywatch cat at fuck-all o’clock two days ago, and Jongin just came home about three hours ago. Unfortunately, it’s too late.”
“Too late… for what?” Jongdae asks, peeling of his sweatshirt and revealing far more bruises and bites than Sehun’s ever seen outside of that bar fight he’d witnessed sophomore year of college during hockey season. “Too late… for you to put them all back in the box, or…?”
“Did you know,” Sehun says, feeling the rage creep into his tone, “that baby chicks imprint on their mothers?”
Jongdae stares at him blankly. “And?”
Sehun stares back.
“Wait.” Jongdae’s grin grows slowly as realization dawns. “Do they think you’re their mom?”
“They scream when I go to the bathroom,” Sehun says. “If I let them scream, we’ll get a noise complaint and get evicted. Nowhere is safe.”
“This is the best thing out of all the things that have ever happened in my whole life,” Jongdae whispers gleefully. “Of all the things.”
“If I wasn’t covered with baby chicks right now,” Sehun says. “I would skin you and give your hide to Kris for one of his weird experimental art shows.”
“My skin is art,” Jongdae says. “But that’s not setting a good example for the kids, Sehun. Mothers need to think about their babies. They’re at an impressionable age.” He laughs. “Get it? Impressionable? Cause they imprinted? On you? Their mom.”
“People skin chickens all the time,” Sehun says, with the ruthlessness of one of those TV stage parents on Toddlers and Tiaras. “I’d be showing them the real world.”
Sehun does not watch Toddlers and Tiaras. But Jongin does, religiously, and often Sehun is just In The Room for it.
“You’re so pleasant.” Jongdae snickers, disappearing behind the door of his room, and Sehun glowers after him, like that will make Jongdae feel his wrath viscerally.
It’s not so bad now that the chirping has stopped, at least. Sehun had woken up two mornings ago, wondering about what the strange sense of foreboding in the pit of his stomach was from, until he caught sight of the sunlamp shining brightly down into the cardboard box in the living room on his way to take his morning piss.
The next two days had been spent either glaring down at the box full of chicks, on google looking up how to care for the box full of chicks, or on the phone with Jongin when he called home (every two hours) to ask about the box full of chicks.
Sehun is a college graduate. He was meant for more than this.
His boss, the director at the Museum of Sex, had been nice enough to give Sehun some time off when he called to explain.
“Of course!” Minseok said. “We’ll call it maternity leave!”
“I’m not having a baby,” Sehun had said as he tried to shush the chicks by patting them each on the head gingerly as they cheeped up at him adoringly. “I’m not anyone’s mom.It’s not maternity leave.”
Minseok had laughed. “I know how chicks are. I grew up on a farm, you know, out in western Pennsylvania. You just have to give them lots of love and hugs and twenty-four hour care, and they’ll be growing up before you know it.” Then he sighed, sounding wistful. “I wish I had some cute chicks to take care of instead of working on ‘Lasting Longer than the Crusades: Tantric Sex in the High Middle Ages’. That would be the Best Day Job Ever.”
It is not the Best Day Job Ever.
Even though Sehun is only working at the notorious MoSex while he waits for his eventual position at the Museum of Modern Art, promised to him by an alum already on staff, he likes his job curating exhibits involving two-hundred-year-old dildos way more than cleaning chick poop out of a water feeder.
Sehun is just starting to calm down about the imprinting thing again when Jongin comes stumbling out of his room, eyes bleary with sleep and hair sticking out in all directions.
“Hey,” Jongin yawns, scratching his belly through the sweatshirt he must have thrown on, because Sehun knows that Jongin can’t sleep with a shirt on without feeling suffocated. Jongin stops and squints at Sehun for a few seconds. “Do you know that you have chicks… all over you?”
Sehun is not angry. He feels nothing. He is placid, like a hidden mountain lake. He’s practically Buddha, that’s how zen he is. “I do.”
The sweatshirt Jongin is wearing is actually Sehun’s NYU one that his mom had bought for him when he was accepted to make him feel like he should be proud to go there, and not just that he was attending because he’d gotten a rejection letter from his dream school. Jongin is a Cornell graduate, but the school merchandise is all carnelian, which Sehun refuses to acknowledge is a real color, and so, in order to prevent an ‘Emperor’s New Clothes’ situation, he’d given Jongin his own sweatshirt instead.
The purple of the sweatshirt had washed Sehun out, because Sehun’s skin is as pale and delicate as the petals of a daisy -- or, as Kyungsoo says, Sehun’s as pasty white as the Abercrombie bags his face was printed on in 2009. Jongdae says Sehun looks like a blank piece of newspaper. (“your eyes are the personal ads, though,” which Sehun chooses to take as a compliment.) But it makes Jongin look perfectly tan, like he’s just come back from a leisurely vacation on the French Riviera, and his hair even looks darker somehow, shinier, even when he’s got horrible bed head. It is completely unfair that Jongin manages to make unhygenically disheveled look alluring.
Sehun quickly strangles his Sexual Jongin Thought.
Jongin rubs at his eyes with a fist. “So you’ve warmed up to them, then?”
“More like they’ve warmed up to me,” Sehun mutters, but Jongin is stretching, his arms reaching above his head and his toned stomach showing beneath the purple hem of the sweatshirt. “Or warmed up on me.”
He watches the flex of Jongin’s abs and there’s a churning on his gut. It might be jealousy, or possibly that Sehun hasn’t eaten in hours because of Jongin’s stupid pets.
But everything’s okay now, because Jongin is back and Sehun is free. “Here,” he says, carefully scooping up the chicks huddled in the corners of his elbows with the opposite hands and holding them out to Jongin. “These belong to you. There are still five, as you can see.”
Jongin cups them in his hands gently, and there’s not enough room for the other three so Sehun sets them on one of the couch cushions, getting up to go raid the kitchen so he doesn’t die of starvation.
There’s a chorus of chirping behind him, and a startled yelp from Jongin. Sehun is almost afraid to turn around, but when he gets to the door of the kitchen, he can’t help looking over his shoulder.
The three chicks on the sofa have wandered too close to the edge trying to toddle after him, while the two in Jongin’s hold are making distressed noises, straining to get away.
“What’s--” Jongin says, “What did you do to them?” His eyes are accusing.
“Me??” Sehun wheels around, and the sofa-chicks stop trying to base-jump off the couch, chirping over at him. “What did I do? I only took care of them well enough that they fucking imprinted on me!”
Jongin looks crestfallen. “On you?” He looks down at the two still-squirming chicks in his hands and then the other three on the cushion, and his expression becomes more and more upset. “Why would they do that? It was supposed to be me! Not--”
“Well, maybe if you hadn’t abandoned me here with them for two days--”
“I had no control over that!” Jongin says impatiently. “We had emergencies and scheduled surgeries and appointments, and last night I was so tired I just slept in the office.”
“I didn’t sleep last night,” Sehun says. “You know why? Because your chicks-- the ones that I wasn’t even supposed to know were here, if I recall correctly-- don’t sleep through the night yet. No, what they do instead is cheep cheep cheep through the night. And poop. I had to take off work to look after your pets, so if you’re going to throw a temper tantrum now that they like me more than they like you, you can go fuck yourself.”
“Mommy, Daddy, don’t fight,” Jongdae says, leaning against the door of his room with crossed arms and an amused smirk. “You’re upsetting your chicks.” The two chicks are still wriggling in Jongin’s hands to get back to Sehun, so he sets them down on the couch with the other three so they won’t hurt themselves.
“Who cares?” Sehun walks toward the bathroom instead of the kitchen, because Jongin is so stupid that he’s not hungry anymore, and tries not to let his heart clench as the smallest chick, a dark brown one with wispy feathers and the weakest chirp, tumbles off the couch as it tries to follow him, making desperate sounds of abandonment as Sehun walks far too fast to keep up with. It’s a lost cause, though, because he’s worried it might be hurt, so he spins around and walks back over to the couch, squatting down to glare at the chick on the floor. “Ugh, fine,” he says discretely scanning his chick for injuries as picks it up, taking it with him to the shower. “But don’t get used to this. You don’t get to just hang out while I shower, perv.”
“Are you talking to it?” Jongdae asks. “This is great. Baekhyun will be so pleased.”
“I’d rather talk to this chick than either of you right now,” Sehun says, mustering all his dignity. He pretends not to hear the shrill complaints of all the other chicks as he closes the door, or care that Jongin looked totally miserable, either.
*
Kyungsoo always looks a little out of place in their apartment, but that might be because Kyungsoo only looks in place at the hotels his dad runs, which all have gold-leafed everything, or possibly just the fact that his suit costs more than their apartment.
Sehun is out on errands, whatever that might mean, and the chicks are making enough noise that Kyungsoo’s usually implacable expression is tinged with annoyance. He might just be annoyed with Jongin, though? Jongin doesn’t think there’s anything he can do, really.
“And then all the kids imprinted on Sehun,” Jongin whines, wrapping up the tale of his miserable weekend. “Sehun’s mad at me, too, and he’s really hot when he’s mad? But I feel sad about it anyway. Everyone is mad at me. I feel like the absent father in a CW drama.”
“Your taste in everything is honestly deplorable,” Kyungsoo says. “I don’t know what’s most upsetting about this story. That you still harbor a crush on Sehun after ten years of assuming incorrectly that he’s heterosexual, that you’re upset that the chicks-- I’m sorry, the kids-- imprinted on Sehun and you no longer have the daunting responsibility of their twenty-four hour care, or that you used the term ‘chick-married’ to describe this whole situation--”
“Baekhyun used chick-married first,” Jongin says.
“The fact that you even speak to Baekhyun when you know he wears those horrible shoes--”
“Do you mean those boots? With the fur?” Jongin doesn’t think they’re that bad? They look kind of warm. They’re the same brand as his favorite summer shoes.
“Those were an abomination. That whole story was an abomination. I need a drink. Where Sehun’s flavored vodka?”
“He drank most of it last night, when Heart made a nest in his hair.”
Kyungsoo gives Jongin a very solemn look. “Heart?” Kyungsoo taps his foot impatiently. “Did you name them all after your favorite Sehun body parts? Is there one named Ass roaming around here somewhere?”
Sehun does have kind of an amazing ass? And a great heart to go with it, even though Sehun tries his hardest not to show people, but that’s not the point. Jongin is getting off topic.
“No, I named them after all the powers from Captain Planet.” Kyungsoo stares at him, and Jongin hurries to explain. “See, a lot of chicks don’t live to adulthood, so I thought, you know, with their powers combined…” He trails off, trying to decide if Kyungsoo looks disappointed in him, or just ill. “So yeah. Earth, Wind, Water, Fire, and the power of Heart. Heart’s the cute little brown one that loves Sehun the most.” Actually, Jongin can hear Heart’s mournful whimpers the loudest through the blanket he’s put over the chick house to dampen the sound so the neighbors won’t complain. “They’re gender-neutral names, too, since it’s kinda hard to tell if they’re boys or girls. Sehun just calls them all boys, which is okay, I guess, but I hope none of them grow up thinking we won’t love them if they’re not.”
“I can’t stay here with you,” Kyungsoo says. “Your idiocy is probably contagious and I have a successful business to run. There are millions counting on me.”
He stands and Jongin grasps at his arm helplessly. “But I need your help!”
Kyungsoo sighs. “Here’s my advice. Since I know you won’t pay attention to it, I won’t spend too much time elaborating. One, apologize to Sehun for accusing him of stealing your chicks after you left them with him for two days. Two, never speak to Baekhyun again. Three, accept the that the chicks have imprinted on Sehun and help as much as you can until you find them a new home. And last, but not least, four, confess to Sehun before the sexual repression ruptures something, and save everyone else a lot of trouble.”
“Sehun is straight, though,” Jongin wails. Kyungsoo looks very displeased that Jongin is getting his hand-sweat all over the arm of his expensive suit, but they’re friends, and isn’t that what friends are for? Absorbing hand-sweat? Jongin needs to think about that one. Later.
“Jongin,” Kyungsoo says, slowly, “listen to me very carefully. Has Sehun ever actually said the words “I’m straight” to you?”
“Well. No? He told me he was gay one time in high school, but that was just him trying to make me feel better because I had just come out of the closet to him. That’s what friends do, isn’t it? They help cushion the blow.” Jongin has a lot of ideas about what friends are for. Unfortunately, they sometimes don’t match up to what his subconscious thinks Sehun is for, like sex and kissing on the mouth and holding hands, so Jongin is trying to work on that. He’s actually been trying to work on it for about ten years, but Kris, Jongin’s “freelance artist” friend, is always saying life is a constant process of finding yourself, so Jongin has been living with hope that he’ll find the self that doesn’t want to know what Sehun’s mouth would feel like around his dick sometime soon.
“Have you ever actually met Sehun?” Kyungsoo asks, shaking Jongin’s hand off his arm and sighing. “That doesn’t make any sense. People lie about all kinds of things, but Sehun has no reason to lie about that to you.” He puts his hands on his hips as he edges toward the door. “In my opinion, you’re just afraid that if Sehun is gay, you’ll have to actually take the chance and tell him your feelings.”
“That’s…” Ridiculous? Right? Jongin knows Sehun will never like him the way he likes Sehun, so what’s there to be afraid of? Except, maybe, you know, that Sehun will never talk him again or think that Jongin is even more of a loser than Sehun had already thought. And then Jongin will be alone forever and even his kids will leave him because they like Sehun more than Jongin anyway. Jongdae probably likes Sehun better than him, too. “Not remotely true.”
“Okay, well I’ve slummed enough for the day,” Kyungsoo says. “I’m off to play golf with gold-plated golf clubs, or go swimming in some money, or something. See you later, alligator.” His phone rings, and after a cursory glance at the caller ID he answers. “I’ll be at my office in thirty,” he purrs in a voice that has to be at least two octaves lower than the tone he was using with Jongin. “And if everything goes well, I might… reward you.”
“I’m sorry,” Jongin says, scratching behind his ear. “I shouldn’t call you when I know you’re… working?”
“That’s fine,” Kyungsoo says. “But now, duty calls.” He gives grin that reminds Jongin kinda of that one time someone brought in their pet wolf and it had reacted negatively to strangers in vicinity. Or like it was very… hungry? Kyungsoo looks hungry, Jongin decides.
“You should get some lunch,” Jongin adds, and Kyungsoo laughs.
“Oh I will,” Kyungsoo says. “Delicious delicious lunch to discuss what I can contribute financially to this fine city’s art community.”
Jongin nods. Kyungsoo has been been very dedicated to the community. And art? Community art.
*
Sehun heads back to work for the first time in a week with dark circles under his eyes. Jongin had said he could watch the chicks, but after six days of them being pretty much solely in Sehun’s care, he hadn’t been able to really go back to sleep after they’d started cheeping at around four in the morning, and Sehun had forced himself to stay in bed when he heard Fire wailing just a little louder than the rest. Jongin, after all, might not know that Fire always eats too much and then gets a belly ache, but he’d figure it out, just like Sehun had.
He forces himself not to look over at the cardboard box as he prepares to leave, even though the chicks are being uncustomarily quiet. Finally, Jongin will have to look after his own pets.
Sehun thinks that is a good thing.
He puts in his headphones, synthetic pop music blaring in his ears so he won’t worry about the odd silence, and grabs his bag from where it sits next to the cardboard chick house, and heads out into the spring morning. It’s chilly, so he wraps his scarf around his neck an extra time and then walks down into the subway.
A little girl in her school uniform stares at him almost his entire subway ride, and Sehun narrows his eyes and makes what Kyungsoo refers to as his ‘constipated Edward Cullen face’ at her as she glances between him and his bag until her stop comes up. When she’s gone, he pulls out his phone and checks his appearance with his phone camera, and sure, he looks tired, but it’s not like he’s got Fruity Pebbles stuck to his face or pulled a Lu Han and forgotten to shave half of his face. It’s not like she can see the word SEX emblazoned across his chest in hot pink on the uniform shirt he’s wearing beneath his sweatshirt, and if even if she could it’s not like kids these days don’t have the Discovery Channel. Jongin’s nephew knows an awful lot about turtle mating habits.
Kids are just weird, Sehun decides, more convinced than ever that he will never have them, and he grimaces the rest of the way to work as more people look at him.
He should be used to this kind of thing, since he used to model for Abercrombie, but when people stare at you too long on the street in New York City, it usually means they’re a crazy person.
It’s with relief that he lets himself into the museum through the back door, walking past the gift shop volunteers with a nod that passes for friendly. He slumps down into his chair, rubbing at his eyes, and then pats at his pockets, looking for his pen. Maybe he’d left it in his bag. He takes out his headphones and frowns, leaning over to grab his bag.
Sehun did not leave his pen in his bag.
However, Sehun almost cries with frustration when he opens up his bag and Heart cheeps agitatedly at him, fluffy brown chick fluff matted to his head. So that’s why the little girl had been staring. She’d probably thought he was some evil chicken kidnapper, which is unfair, because Sehun looks nothing like an Evil Chicken Kidnapper, but everything like an Abercrombie model, which means he is too attractive to steal baby chickens. If anything, the chickens flock to him.
Heart’s shivering, and panicked, Sehun remembers that chicks need to be kept at a constant ninety-five degrees, and Sehun knows he’s hot, but he’s certainly not hot enough to keep his bag warm on the subway just sitting next to him. He holds out his hands and picks the baby up, cupping his palms carefully to make sure he doesn’t crush him, and brings him up to his chest. Heart immediately pushes his head into Sehun’s neck, and the suffocating rush of affection makes Sehun feel rather queasy.
“Stupid bird,” Sehun whispers. “Jongin’ll kill me if you die of chick-pneumonia or whatever.”
“You. Make. Me. Feel like I’m livin’ a--” Sehun fumbles for his phone and looks around furtively. He never should have let Jongin pick out his own ring tone.
“What?” Sehun hisses. Heart is snuggling into a ticklish place on Sehun’s neck, but it doesn’t bug him like it normally would. It… tickles, and makes him almost laugh.
Sehun doesn’t really want to laugh right now.
Jongin sounds frantic on the other end of the line. “One of the chicks is missing!??” he cries and Sehun tries to cradle the phone between his ear and his shoulder so he can hold Heart with two hands. The little chick is getting kind of frisky, trying to get down the back of his work uniform and that is not a good idea.
“Yeah,” Sehun says. “He went missing right into my bag and he came with me to the MoSex.”
“Heart is at the Museum of Sex!!@?!?” Sehun almost lets the phone drop to the floor in his hurry to distance his eardrum from Jongin’s shriek. “He can’t be there! He’s just a baby!”
“He’s a baby chicken. It’s not like he’s going to know what he’s seeing.” Heart has stopped trying to investigate underneath Sehun’s clothes, and has gone back to contentedly nuzzling under Sehun’s chin. It would feel kind of nice if Sehun wasn’t maybe half-deaf from Jongin screaming in his ear about accidentally taking a chick to a sex museum. “I don’t know why you’re always so weird about where I work anyway.” Sehun sniffs. “It’s like you’ve never had sex before, or something.”
Jongin goes very quiet all of a sudden, before he mumbles, “I haven’t.”
“You haven’t what?”
“I haven’t had sex before, okay!”
“What?”
Sehun is sure that Jongin never told him that he’s a still a virgin.
Sehun would remember something like that. Then again, Jongin has never told Sehun he’s had sex, either, and he probably would have told Sehun that, too.
He tries again. “Really??”
Jongin sounds flustered and truly embarrassed. “Yes, really. I’m -- it’s. Complicated.”
“You know what? Whatever,” Sehun says, shaking his head to clear it. “Can you come pick up Heart?”
“I can’t go there!” Jongin says, panicked. “I mean, um, I can’t leave the other four chicks alone. Because that would be bad?”
“Fine. But if Heart dies, then it’s your fault.” Sehun doesn’t really mean that. He doesn’t want Heart to die, especially not when he’s sleeping so peacefully in Sehun’s hands, but he’s just fighting without rules, like Junmyeon raised him to.
Sehun hangs up, because he doesn’t know what else to say, and he hates Jongin right now, even if he pulled the surprise virgin card. Sehun dedicates the next five minutes to figuring out how someone as devastatingly beautiful as Jongin is still a virgin in New York City, where even someone like Baekhyun can have a regular boyfriend.
He wonders if that means no one’s ever seen Jongin’s dick. Jongin’s whole body is nice, and Sehun would bet good money that his dick is nice too. If no one else has ever seen it, then Jongin’s penis is like some of those glaciers up in Alaska. Sehun has always thought Alaska sounded interesting.
But the difference between Jongin and those Alaskan glaciers is that Jongin is hot, and his skin is probably hot too, especially the smooth patch of belly that Sehun can see when Jongin stretches and --
Heart cheeps lazily and Sehun stop himself, feeling guilty for thinking those kinds of things in front of Heart.
Those Sexual Jongin Thoughts are one giant nope.
Minseok knocks on the door to his office. “Hey, Sehun, welcome back-- Is that a baby chick?!” His eyes go bright as he sets down the folder with ‘Rubbers: The Life, History, and Struggle of the Condom’ written across it in almost illegible black sharpie. Next month’s visiting exhibit. Sehun had almost forgot.
“It is a baby chick,” he says. “Would you like to hold it… forever?”
cheep cheep
rate: positively full of cock
k-i-s-s-i-n-g: sehun/kai (nerdtp)
this is about: Jongin is jealous of all those cocks Sehun has, especially since Jongin’s the one that brought them home.
Or, conversely:
Sehun never thought he’d have this problem.
counting the words: 21.6k
doodles: Apple Bottom jeans and boots with the fur.
*
“I think that third one kind of looks like Sehun.”
“Yeah,” Jongin says. “The fluff kinda looks like his hair--”
“In the face,” Jongdae says. “I think it looks like Sehun in the face.”
“Excuse you,” Sehun says. “I was an Abercrombie model in high school.”
“If that doesn’t explain everything about you, I don’t know what could,” replies Jongdae. “I guess avian was In in 2009.” Jongdae laughs. “Like Abercrombie.” He pauses. “Wait, were you really an Abercrombie model?”
“I was scouted,” Sehun says, as Jongdae’s face collapses in amusement.
As far as comparisons go, Sehun resents the implication that he looks anything like Jongin’s chicks. Chicks as in baby chickens, not as in women, because Jongin can’t handle being around more than one female at a time that isn’t one of his sisters without breaking out into a stress rash.
There are five baby chicks, though, and Jongin loves being around them so much that he had passed up their nightly marathon of Dead or Alive Beach Volleyball 3 to sit with them and adjust the sunlamp he’d brought home with him from work as he coos at them softly, mumble-singing the theme song from Gossip Girl.
Sehun doesn’t look anything like that baby chicken, and hanging out with him is definitely more interesting than watching the chicks sleep. Jongin is a terrible roommate and friend.
“I don’t understand why you had to get them so much stuff,” Sehun says, prodding at the cardboard box Jongin had poked holes through for ventilation. Inside it was a weird water dish thing that Jongin had made by emptying out an old can of parmesan cheese (Sehun had totally been saving that for… something, but whatever) and poking a hole in it and a bunch of layers of newspapers, and there’s a gigantic bag of chick starter feed is sitting on the table nearby. “Why did you pick the most needy baby animal on the planet to bring back to the apartment? Wasn’t there a box of ants or baby lizards sitting by the road or something? Or even better, a box of rocks.”
“Jongin’s always liked things that are high maintenance,” Jongdae says, smirking at Sehun with a knowing glint in his eyes, that for some reason makes Sehun want to blush.
Oblivious to Jongdae, Jongin puffs out his cheeks and reaches down to rearrange some of the newspapers he’d layered in the bottom of the chicks new cardboard home. “It was raining! I couldn’t just leave them there.” He looks up at them both beseechingly, like he and Jongdae are going to make him throw the chicks out into the chilly spring air. “The pound won’t keep farm animals, and I just…”
“We know, we know,” Jongdae reassures Jongin, ruffling his hair. “Man, vet school turned you into such a bleeding heart.”
“Turned?” Sehun asks, sarcastically, rolling his eyes.
Sehun remembers when Jongin’s family had moved into the apartment next door when he was eight and Jongin had spent his weekends out on the fire escape, trying to take care of the city’s pigeons, who clearly didn’t want anything to do with him.
Jongin is the type of person that works as a resident at a veterinary office, volunteers at the animal shelter down the street during his free time, and takes in any stray or sad-looking animal that he crosses paths with. Jongin is the definition of the term “bleeding heart” in the Oxford English Dictionary, but Sehun’s gotten used to his knee-jerk acts of altruism. He understands that Jongin honestly can’t help himself.
Jongdae’s phone goes off, Shakira’s “She Wolf” blasting through the kitchen and making Jongin jump like an actual wolf is trying to attack the chicks.
“Come let me the fuck in, you little bitch,” the earpiece screeches when Jongdae picks up, the cry of a harpie.
He hangs up again without answering, walking over to the door with a spring in his step that Sehun thinks is totally unwarranted for someone who just got screamed at. “That’ll be Baekhyun.”
Jongdae’s boyfriend is wearing one of his seemingly endless supply of plaid Sean John shirts and construction-worker style boots that clunk loudly as he walks into the apartment.
Sehun turns and stares down at the box full of chicks so he doesn’t have to see Baekhyun stick his tongue down Jongdae’s throat for the nth time, but his ignorant bliss is ruined by a soft slapping sound and Baekhyun saying admonishingly, “stop being such a grabass in front of the children.”
“They don’t mind,” Jongdae says, which totally isn’t true because Sehun definitely minds and Jongin looks like he might cry as Baekhyun tromps further into the apartment toward them both.
“So,” he says, leaning up against the kitchen table and staring Sehun and Jongin down, “have you guys fucked yet?”
There’s a loud noise that sounds like Jongin almost falling off his stool onto the floor and Sehun scoffs back at Baekhyun. “Yeah, haha, really funny, Baekhyun.”
“Haha,” Jongin says weakly, chewing on his lower lip and looking rather red. “You know we’re just friends and that Sehun is straight.”
Sehun is not straight, but it’s just too much effort to correct Jongin. He’d tried once, but Jongin had seemed so disbelieving that Sehun had given up. Not like he was planning on dating anyone anyway. Too much work. You have to go out. And see them. And pretend to care about their life and stuff. Sehun’s over it.
Jongin’s neck is even red now. “Jongin, you’re so red. I think you’re starting to get sunburn from that sunlamp,” Sehun says, and Jongdae looks at Sehun in disbelief. Sehun doesn’t know why. It’s obvious that a sunlamp could result in sunburn.
Baekhyun smirks, that way he always does when he’s mentally patting himself on the back, and Sehun crosses his arms. “Why are you here.”
“My little bitch and I have a date at the Icecapades,” Baekhyun says. “Thrills and chills.”
“That better not be a euphemism.” Sehun used to like the Icecapades.
The box on the table cheeps, and Baekhyun startles. “I knew Jongin liked his chicken, but damn, this organic lifestyle shit has gone too far.” He moves closer, and Jongin’s arms shoot out protectively to wrap around the box. “Raising baby chicks and then killing them. Brutal. I didn’t know Jongin had it in him to kill his own food.” He looks at Sehun. “You, on the other hand.”
“I had nothing to do with bringing the little monsters into our no pets allowed apartment.”
“It was raining!” Jongin yells plaintively, as Jongdae snickers.
“Don’t worry,” Jongdae says conspiratorially to Jongin. “Some first time mothers get intimidated by the responsibility. Sehun will come around eventually and you can be happily chick married with your happy chick family.”
“Aww, that’s so cute,” Baekhyun says, adjusting his snapback. “They won’t even sleep together but they’re already raising kids. An immaculate chick conception. It’s like they skipped all the fun parts of starting a family.”
Jongdae laughs as Sehun rubs at his temples, a Baekhyun-migraine developing. “You need to leave now.”
Jongin seems to be trying to melt into a puddle, and while Sehun normally wouldn’t care, he doesn’t know how to take care of chicks and he fucking hates mopping. His best bet is to get Baekhyun out of the apartment. He never would have agreed to living with Jongdae if he’d known Baekhyun was part of the deal.
“Man, that could be some kinky farm roleplay,” Baekhyun muses as Sehun’s mind uncomfortably imagines Jongin backlit in a stable, pieces of hay in his mussed hair-- No. Sexual Jongin Thoughts are off limits. Unfortunately, Baekhyun seems to be on the same wavelength. “Jongin the hot stable boy and Sehun is the milk maid.”
“Sehun likes milk,” Jongin mumbles.
“Don’t speak, Jongin,” Sehun hisses. “You’ll only make it worse.”
Baekhyun’s eyes light up with the vindictive glee of a medieval executioner. “The chicks even fit into the barn theme. But you guys are probably too vanilla for that.”
“Yeah,” Jongdae says, “too vanilla to actually have sex.”
“It’s not like that!” Jongin insists. “We’re best friends. And Sehun likes women!”
Baekhyun chortles at him. “You’re awfully invested in that, aren’t you? Trust me, I know way more about vaginas than Sehun ever will.”
“Why do you breathe?” Sehun asks, and Baekhyun jams his hands into the pockets of his jeans.
“Because if I didn’t, the world would miss me.”
Sehun has never missed Baekhyun. Ever. “Bye.”
“We should head out,” Jongdae says, and Sehun almost sends him a thankful look until he continues with “We wouldn’t want to get in the way of family bonding time.”
“I hope you both die at the Icecapades,” Sehun says, and Baekhyun’s horrible cackles echo as they leave.
Jongin heaves a sigh of relief, deflating as the door to the apartment closes. “You’re not mad, right?”
“I’m always mad at Baekhyun,” Sehun says, watching Jongin stroke a chick’s head with the back of his index finger. Jongin is so gentle with animals. Sehun’s facial muscles try to trick him into smiling but he holds out. “His very existence upsets me. I should get a restraining order.”
“I mean about the chicks,” Jongin says. “I know I shouldn’t have brought them home without asking you and Jongdae, but I couldn’t…”
Sehun sighs. “I’ve known you since we were little,” Sehun says. “I knew what I was getting into when I agreed to move in with you. At least it’s not a racoon this time.” He shrugs, like it doesn’t matter, even though it does, because if they get busted Sehun’s name is also on the lease. “As long as you take care of them, I don’t care.”
Jongin grins, smiling so wide that Sehun blinks. He feels uncomfortably hot. Maybe he’s getting sunburn from the sunlamp too. His skin has always been fragile. That’s why he loved his Abercrombie job. All that darkness. “You’re the best, Sehun, don’t sweat it, I promise I’ll do everything, and they won’t bother you at all. You won’t even know they’re here.” One of them, the biggest, yellowest one, squawks far louder than its tiny body should allow, and Sehun sincerely doubts that.
“Sure,” Sehun says. “Whatever.”
“What should we name them?” Jongin asks, and Sehun backs away quickly.
“No, no, no,” Sehun says. “I want nothing to do with this. You can keep the monsters but I’m not giving them names or getting attached. You know we’ll have to find them homes somewhere else before we have five big chickens running around our apartment, right? This is not ‘Friends’ and you are not Joey.”
“I know, I know,” Jongin says. “But in the meantime, I’ll have to call them something. I can’t just call them all ‘hey you’.”
That’s what Sehun did for every single member of his graduating class in high school except for Jongin, and it worked out just fine, but Jongin’s always been sentimental. “Call them whatever you want. We’re never getting chick-married, Jongin. I’m too young and handsome to settle down.”
Jongin’s smile slips a little, but then he looks at the chicks and his smile gets all glowy again and Sehun should leave before he starts feeling things about baby animals or something. Too much exposure to Jongin’s nature-man attitude always leads to Sehun getting scratched by feral animals in alleyways. It’s best to nip any potential attachment to Jongin’s latest pet project in the bud.
“I’m gonna go take a nap,” Sehun mumbles. “Don’t name any of them after me.”
*
Jongin blearily answers his phone at one AM to a frantic Chanyeol. “Something’s wrong with Tao’s cat,” Chanyeol says, and Jongin groans. “It’s a cat-mergency!”
“What?” He sounds kind of like a frog, which sucks, but it’s not like Chanyeol is someone he needs to impress. He’s already got the job, right?
“I need you to come in right now, and pack a change of clothes, because we have three other surgeries lined up today, and you probably won’t have time to go home between them.”
Now Jongin is awake. “Okay,” he says, casting about for the tshirt he’d somehow lost between falling asleep and now. “Okay, give me like twenty minutes.”
“Tao will be here in an hour,” Chanyeol says. “He’s very wound up. Expect tears.”
“Yours or his?” Jongin mumbles, as he hangs up, crawling out of bed and not bothering to change out of his sweatpants before pulling on another sweatshirt. He doesn’t bother with socks, because ew, and pads out into the living room to find his sneakers. He looks quickly at his phone. There’ll be a C-train in about ten minutes, so if Jongin runs to the subway he can just make--
His thoughts are interrupted by an angry chorus of cheeps, and with a sinking stomach, Jongin remembers his chicks. “Oh no,” he says, and he just stands there for a minute, with no idea what to do.
Chicks need pretty much around the clock care, and Jongin had kind of been hoping that after a week of Jongin exposing Sehun to the chicks, he’d start to like them enough that he could check up on them when Jongin was at work. Sehun is like that: He pretends that he doesn’t care about anything but he’s almost as much of a sucker as Jongin is for cute things.
But it’s been barely twelve hours since he’d brought them home, and Sehun won’t even go near the box, skirting it with a wary eye every time he has to walk in the general vicinity. He’s also taken to wearing his oversized noise-cancelling headphones to drown out the incessant chirping, so Jongin doubts that Sehun has ‘warmed up’ enough to take care of them all day while Jongin is gone for a double shift at the vet office.
There really isn’t a choice, though. Jongdae never came back from the Icecapades. Maybe it’s a two day ice extravaganza? Either way, there’s only Sehun or certain death for his kids. Jongin swallows and looks hesitantly at the box and then back at Sehun’s closed door.
He takes a deep breath and opens it, walking into Sehun’s bedroom, eyes adjusting easily to the dark. “What do you want?” he says, and Jongin knows just because Sehun is speaking, it doesn’t mean he’s awake.
“Tao’s cat is sick,” Jongin says. “It’s a cat-mergency. I have to go into work.”
“So?” Sehun turns in bed, and his sheet slips down. He’s not wearing a shirt, and the soft light from outside that filters into the room makes his skin glow. Jongin gulps, and forces himself to look away. So what if Sehun is really handsome and Jongin’s been totally in love with him since he was like, thirteen? He’s here for a reason. He can stay focused. It’s cool. Everything’s fine? Probably. Sehun’s really handsome, though, no matter how much Jongin tries not to notice because bffs and Sehun’s whole straight thing.
“The chicks,” Jongin says, clenching his hands and trying to make out Sehun’s face.
Sehun rolls onto his back and sighs. He’s definitely awake now. “Never.”
“Please?” Jongin lets all of his desperation seep into his voice. “Jongdae didn’t come home and they’ll die, Sehun.”
“Then you can eat them. The take out budget for next week will have a surplus.”
“They’re babies, Sehun,” Jongin whispers. He walks in closer and sits on the edge of Sehun’s bed, making sure to keep a little space between them, because Sehun is always warm and it always… kinda… makes Jongin hard? when he thinks about Sehun’s soft skin and what it might feel like if-- Focused. Jongin is focused. “You know I wouldn’t ask you if there was any other way.”
Sehun makes this frustrated groaning sound that… totally… doesn’t… make Jongin… harder…? “Jongin Kim, I fucking hate you. Go to work. I’ll try not to let any of them die, since you look stupid when you cry.”
Jongin can’t help himself. He pounces on Sehun and gives him a hug, catching a whiff of Sehun’s flowery shampoo, and then he remembers Sehun isn’t wearing a shirt, he’s got a semi in his sweatpants and that his train leaves in probably way less than ten minutes now. “Thank you, Sehun, thank you, thank you.” Even as he retreats, he tries to remember everything. “Make sure to clean the feeder, and to change their newspaper. And they’ll eat a lot, so don’t let them go hungry, and if they make noise apparently you can sing to them--”
Sehun throws a pillow, and it hits Jongin square in the face. “I’m not singing to your damn birds, Jongin,” he says, and Jongin heads out before Sehun can change his mind about helping him altogether.
Jongin gets to work in thirty minutes, not twenty, but Chanyeol doesn’t seem to notice, fluttering about the office with all the grace of an orangutan as he preps for emergency surgery.
“What’s wrong with Tao’s cat?” Jongin asks, setting up the back room as Chanyeol pouts and looks at charts.
“Bleeding inside,” Chanyeol says. “A real cat-tastrophe, but nothing we can’t fix, if we operate immediately. Sorry to wake you up. I know you like your sleep.”
“It’s fine,” Jongin says, and it is, because Jongin likes his job even more than he likes his sleep. “I was just worried about my chicks.”
Chanyeol stops and looks at him. “Your chicks? I’m assuming you mean baby birds and not women, considering that you’re in gross puppy-love with your slack-faced roommate.”
Jongin flushes. “Sehun’s not slack-faced, he’s just… you know, reserved.” Jongin scratches at his uncombed hair. “And I’m not--”
“I’m not even going to let you finish that sentence,” Chanyeol says. “Because everyone except Sehun knows that you’re all up on him like a dog on a fire-hydrant.”
“Do you have to say it like that?” Jongin asks, miserably. “The only thing worse than everyone knowing is everyone knowing and making horrible jokes about it.”
“I’m a veterinarian, Jongin. I think in animal terminology.” Chanyeol laughs, way too loud for two AM. He sets down his charts. “And on the bright side, no matter how many jokes we make, he never seems to take them seriously.”
“What if he does, and his total non-reaction has been his way of subtly rejecting me for years?” Jongin thinks about Sehun’s warm skin and Sehun’s cute smiles when he forgets he’s not supposed to show human emotion, and he starts to spiral. No Jongin, he tells himself. You’re focused. There’s a cat-mergency, after all.
“Or he’s just oblivious and self-centered and has no idea,” Chanyeol says. “Plus, knowing Sehun, I’m inclined to believe that’s a more probable explanation. What you should do is take Kyungsoo’s advice and tell him--”
They’re interrupted by a hysterical Tao, cradling a terrifyingly still Pamela Anderson, her usually luxurious fur matted. Tao’s persian is one of Jongin’s favorite patients, and he hopes she’ll be all right.
Chanyeol takes the cat from Tao’s arms and Tao continues sobbing into Jongin’s shoulder. “We’ll take care of her,” Jongin says, patting Tao’s arm as he hopefully looks around for Tao’s boyfriend, Yixing, but no luck. “Don’t worry, Chanyeol is an expert with cat-tastrophes.”
Tao gives Jongin a watery smile, and Jongin forgets all about his chicks and Sehun’s… skin… in favor of helping Chanyeol save Pamela Anderson’s life.
*
“Wowza, this is disgustingly domestic,” Jongdae says as he walks into the apartment for the first time in three days, wearing a hot pink Icecapades sweatshirt and a pair of jeans that definitely aren’t his. “I thought you were better than this.”
“I was hoping you’d died,” Sehun says, but not too loudly, because the chicks have finally quieted, nestled into his lap and in the crooks of both elbows, sucking up Sehun’s body heat and tickling him with every squirm. “But instead it looks like you’ve come back from Mardi Gras. Also shut up, they’re asleep. And Jongin is too, I guess, but I hate him right now, so go wake him up if you want.”
“How’d you get landed with baby-sitting?” Jongdae eyes Sehun’s accessories. “Or should I say chick-sitting?”
“Well,” Sehun says, with forced pleasantness, “apparently there was some emergency with some Baywatch cat at fuck-all o’clock two days ago, and Jongin just came home about three hours ago. Unfortunately, it’s too late.”
“Too late… for what?” Jongdae asks, peeling of his sweatshirt and revealing far more bruises and bites than Sehun’s ever seen outside of that bar fight he’d witnessed sophomore year of college during hockey season. “Too late… for you to put them all back in the box, or…?”
“Did you know,” Sehun says, feeling the rage creep into his tone, “that baby chicks imprint on their mothers?”
Jongdae stares at him blankly. “And?”
Sehun stares back.
“Wait.” Jongdae’s grin grows slowly as realization dawns. “Do they think you’re their mom?”
“They scream when I go to the bathroom,” Sehun says. “If I let them scream, we’ll get a noise complaint and get evicted. Nowhere is safe.”
“This is the best thing out of all the things that have ever happened in my whole life,” Jongdae whispers gleefully. “Of all the things.”
“If I wasn’t covered with baby chicks right now,” Sehun says. “I would skin you and give your hide to Kris for one of his weird experimental art shows.”
“My skin is art,” Jongdae says. “But that’s not setting a good example for the kids, Sehun. Mothers need to think about their babies. They’re at an impressionable age.” He laughs. “Get it? Impressionable? Cause they imprinted? On you? Their mom.”
“People skin chickens all the time,” Sehun says, with the ruthlessness of one of those TV stage parents on Toddlers and Tiaras. “I’d be showing them the real world.”
Sehun does not watch Toddlers and Tiaras. But Jongin does, religiously, and often Sehun is just In The Room for it.
“You’re so pleasant.” Jongdae snickers, disappearing behind the door of his room, and Sehun glowers after him, like that will make Jongdae feel his wrath viscerally.
It’s not so bad now that the chirping has stopped, at least. Sehun had woken up two mornings ago, wondering about what the strange sense of foreboding in the pit of his stomach was from, until he caught sight of the sunlamp shining brightly down into the cardboard box in the living room on his way to take his morning piss.
The next two days had been spent either glaring down at the box full of chicks, on google looking up how to care for the box full of chicks, or on the phone with Jongin when he called home (every two hours) to ask about the box full of chicks.
Sehun is a college graduate. He was meant for more than this.
His boss, the director at the Museum of Sex, had been nice enough to give Sehun some time off when he called to explain.
“Of course!” Minseok said. “We’ll call it maternity leave!”
“I’m not having a baby,” Sehun had said as he tried to shush the chicks by patting them each on the head gingerly as they cheeped up at him adoringly. “I’m not anyone’s mom.It’s not maternity leave.”
Minseok had laughed. “I know how chicks are. I grew up on a farm, you know, out in western Pennsylvania. You just have to give them lots of love and hugs and twenty-four hour care, and they’ll be growing up before you know it.” Then he sighed, sounding wistful. “I wish I had some cute chicks to take care of instead of working on ‘Lasting Longer than the Crusades: Tantric Sex in the High Middle Ages’. That would be the Best Day Job Ever.”
It is not the Best Day Job Ever.
Even though Sehun is only working at the notorious MoSex while he waits for his eventual position at the Museum of Modern Art, promised to him by an alum already on staff, he likes his job curating exhibits involving two-hundred-year-old dildos way more than cleaning chick poop out of a water feeder.
Sehun is just starting to calm down about the imprinting thing again when Jongin comes stumbling out of his room, eyes bleary with sleep and hair sticking out in all directions.
“Hey,” Jongin yawns, scratching his belly through the sweatshirt he must have thrown on, because Sehun knows that Jongin can’t sleep with a shirt on without feeling suffocated. Jongin stops and squints at Sehun for a few seconds. “Do you know that you have chicks… all over you?”
Sehun is not angry. He feels nothing. He is placid, like a hidden mountain lake. He’s practically Buddha, that’s how zen he is. “I do.”
The sweatshirt Jongin is wearing is actually Sehun’s NYU one that his mom had bought for him when he was accepted to make him feel like he should be proud to go there, and not just that he was attending because he’d gotten a rejection letter from his dream school. Jongin is a Cornell graduate, but the school merchandise is all carnelian, which Sehun refuses to acknowledge is a real color, and so, in order to prevent an ‘Emperor’s New Clothes’ situation, he’d given Jongin his own sweatshirt instead.
The purple of the sweatshirt had washed Sehun out, because Sehun’s skin is as pale and delicate as the petals of a daisy -- or, as Kyungsoo says, Sehun’s as pasty white as the Abercrombie bags his face was printed on in 2009. Jongdae says Sehun looks like a blank piece of newspaper. (“your eyes are the personal ads, though,” which Sehun chooses to take as a compliment.) But it makes Jongin look perfectly tan, like he’s just come back from a leisurely vacation on the French Riviera, and his hair even looks darker somehow, shinier, even when he’s got horrible bed head. It is completely unfair that Jongin manages to make unhygenically disheveled look alluring.
Sehun quickly strangles his Sexual Jongin Thought.
Jongin rubs at his eyes with a fist. “So you’ve warmed up to them, then?”
“More like they’ve warmed up to me,” Sehun mutters, but Jongin is stretching, his arms reaching above his head and his toned stomach showing beneath the purple hem of the sweatshirt. “Or warmed up on me.”
He watches the flex of Jongin’s abs and there’s a churning on his gut. It might be jealousy, or possibly that Sehun hasn’t eaten in hours because of Jongin’s stupid pets.
But everything’s okay now, because Jongin is back and Sehun is free. “Here,” he says, carefully scooping up the chicks huddled in the corners of his elbows with the opposite hands and holding them out to Jongin. “These belong to you. There are still five, as you can see.”
Jongin cups them in his hands gently, and there’s not enough room for the other three so Sehun sets them on one of the couch cushions, getting up to go raid the kitchen so he doesn’t die of starvation.
There’s a chorus of chirping behind him, and a startled yelp from Jongin. Sehun is almost afraid to turn around, but when he gets to the door of the kitchen, he can’t help looking over his shoulder.
The three chicks on the sofa have wandered too close to the edge trying to toddle after him, while the two in Jongin’s hold are making distressed noises, straining to get away.
“What’s--” Jongin says, “What did you do to them?” His eyes are accusing.
“Me??” Sehun wheels around, and the sofa-chicks stop trying to base-jump off the couch, chirping over at him. “What did I do? I only took care of them well enough that they fucking imprinted on me!”
Jongin looks crestfallen. “On you?” He looks down at the two still-squirming chicks in his hands and then the other three on the cushion, and his expression becomes more and more upset. “Why would they do that? It was supposed to be me! Not--”
“Well, maybe if you hadn’t abandoned me here with them for two days--”
“I had no control over that!” Jongin says impatiently. “We had emergencies and scheduled surgeries and appointments, and last night I was so tired I just slept in the office.”
“I didn’t sleep last night,” Sehun says. “You know why? Because your chicks-- the ones that I wasn’t even supposed to know were here, if I recall correctly-- don’t sleep through the night yet. No, what they do instead is cheep cheep cheep through the night. And poop. I had to take off work to look after your pets, so if you’re going to throw a temper tantrum now that they like me more than they like you, you can go fuck yourself.”
“Mommy, Daddy, don’t fight,” Jongdae says, leaning against the door of his room with crossed arms and an amused smirk. “You’re upsetting your chicks.” The two chicks are still wriggling in Jongin’s hands to get back to Sehun, so he sets them down on the couch with the other three so they won’t hurt themselves.
“Who cares?” Sehun walks toward the bathroom instead of the kitchen, because Jongin is so stupid that he’s not hungry anymore, and tries not to let his heart clench as the smallest chick, a dark brown one with wispy feathers and the weakest chirp, tumbles off the couch as it tries to follow him, making desperate sounds of abandonment as Sehun walks far too fast to keep up with. It’s a lost cause, though, because he’s worried it might be hurt, so he spins around and walks back over to the couch, squatting down to glare at the chick on the floor. “Ugh, fine,” he says discretely scanning his chick for injuries as picks it up, taking it with him to the shower. “But don’t get used to this. You don’t get to just hang out while I shower, perv.”
“Are you talking to it?” Jongdae asks. “This is great. Baekhyun will be so pleased.”
“I’d rather talk to this chick than either of you right now,” Sehun says, mustering all his dignity. He pretends not to hear the shrill complaints of all the other chicks as he closes the door, or care that Jongin looked totally miserable, either.
*
Kyungsoo always looks a little out of place in their apartment, but that might be because Kyungsoo only looks in place at the hotels his dad runs, which all have gold-leafed everything, or possibly just the fact that his suit costs more than their apartment.
Sehun is out on errands, whatever that might mean, and the chicks are making enough noise that Kyungsoo’s usually implacable expression is tinged with annoyance. He might just be annoyed with Jongin, though? Jongin doesn’t think there’s anything he can do, really.
“And then all the kids imprinted on Sehun,” Jongin whines, wrapping up the tale of his miserable weekend. “Sehun’s mad at me, too, and he’s really hot when he’s mad? But I feel sad about it anyway. Everyone is mad at me. I feel like the absent father in a CW drama.”
“Your taste in everything is honestly deplorable,” Kyungsoo says. “I don’t know what’s most upsetting about this story. That you still harbor a crush on Sehun after ten years of assuming incorrectly that he’s heterosexual, that you’re upset that the chicks-- I’m sorry, the kids-- imprinted on Sehun and you no longer have the daunting responsibility of their twenty-four hour care, or that you used the term ‘chick-married’ to describe this whole situation--”
“Baekhyun used chick-married first,” Jongin says.
“The fact that you even speak to Baekhyun when you know he wears those horrible shoes--”
“Do you mean those boots? With the fur?” Jongin doesn’t think they’re that bad? They look kind of warm. They’re the same brand as his favorite summer shoes.
“Those were an abomination. That whole story was an abomination. I need a drink. Where Sehun’s flavored vodka?”
“He drank most of it last night, when Heart made a nest in his hair.”
Kyungsoo gives Jongin a very solemn look. “Heart?” Kyungsoo taps his foot impatiently. “Did you name them all after your favorite Sehun body parts? Is there one named Ass roaming around here somewhere?”
Sehun does have kind of an amazing ass? And a great heart to go with it, even though Sehun tries his hardest not to show people, but that’s not the point. Jongin is getting off topic.
“No, I named them after all the powers from Captain Planet.” Kyungsoo stares at him, and Jongin hurries to explain. “See, a lot of chicks don’t live to adulthood, so I thought, you know, with their powers combined…” He trails off, trying to decide if Kyungsoo looks disappointed in him, or just ill. “So yeah. Earth, Wind, Water, Fire, and the power of Heart. Heart’s the cute little brown one that loves Sehun the most.” Actually, Jongin can hear Heart’s mournful whimpers the loudest through the blanket he’s put over the chick house to dampen the sound so the neighbors won’t complain. “They’re gender-neutral names, too, since it’s kinda hard to tell if they’re boys or girls. Sehun just calls them all boys, which is okay, I guess, but I hope none of them grow up thinking we won’t love them if they’re not.”
“I can’t stay here with you,” Kyungsoo says. “Your idiocy is probably contagious and I have a successful business to run. There are millions counting on me.”
He stands and Jongin grasps at his arm helplessly. “But I need your help!”
Kyungsoo sighs. “Here’s my advice. Since I know you won’t pay attention to it, I won’t spend too much time elaborating. One, apologize to Sehun for accusing him of stealing your chicks after you left them with him for two days. Two, never speak to Baekhyun again. Three, accept the that the chicks have imprinted on Sehun and help as much as you can until you find them a new home. And last, but not least, four, confess to Sehun before the sexual repression ruptures something, and save everyone else a lot of trouble.”
“Sehun is straight, though,” Jongin wails. Kyungsoo looks very displeased that Jongin is getting his hand-sweat all over the arm of his expensive suit, but they’re friends, and isn’t that what friends are for? Absorbing hand-sweat? Jongin needs to think about that one. Later.
“Jongin,” Kyungsoo says, slowly, “listen to me very carefully. Has Sehun ever actually said the words “I’m straight” to you?”
“Well. No? He told me he was gay one time in high school, but that was just him trying to make me feel better because I had just come out of the closet to him. That’s what friends do, isn’t it? They help cushion the blow.” Jongin has a lot of ideas about what friends are for. Unfortunately, they sometimes don’t match up to what his subconscious thinks Sehun is for, like sex and kissing on the mouth and holding hands, so Jongin is trying to work on that. He’s actually been trying to work on it for about ten years, but Kris, Jongin’s “freelance artist” friend, is always saying life is a constant process of finding yourself, so Jongin has been living with hope that he’ll find the self that doesn’t want to know what Sehun’s mouth would feel like around his dick sometime soon.
“Have you ever actually met Sehun?” Kyungsoo asks, shaking Jongin’s hand off his arm and sighing. “That doesn’t make any sense. People lie about all kinds of things, but Sehun has no reason to lie about that to you.” He puts his hands on his hips as he edges toward the door. “In my opinion, you’re just afraid that if Sehun is gay, you’ll have to actually take the chance and tell him your feelings.”
“That’s…” Ridiculous? Right? Jongin knows Sehun will never like him the way he likes Sehun, so what’s there to be afraid of? Except, maybe, you know, that Sehun will never talk him again or think that Jongin is even more of a loser than Sehun had already thought. And then Jongin will be alone forever and even his kids will leave him because they like Sehun more than Jongin anyway. Jongdae probably likes Sehun better than him, too. “Not remotely true.”
“Okay, well I’ve slummed enough for the day,” Kyungsoo says. “I’m off to play golf with gold-plated golf clubs, or go swimming in some money, or something. See you later, alligator.” His phone rings, and after a cursory glance at the caller ID he answers. “I’ll be at my office in thirty,” he purrs in a voice that has to be at least two octaves lower than the tone he was using with Jongin. “And if everything goes well, I might… reward you.”
“I’m sorry,” Jongin says, scratching behind his ear. “I shouldn’t call you when I know you’re… working?”
“That’s fine,” Kyungsoo says. “But now, duty calls.” He gives grin that reminds Jongin kinda of that one time someone brought in their pet wolf and it had reacted negatively to strangers in vicinity. Or like it was very… hungry? Kyungsoo looks hungry, Jongin decides.
“You should get some lunch,” Jongin adds, and Kyungsoo laughs.
“Oh I will,” Kyungsoo says. “Delicious delicious lunch to discuss what I can contribute financially to this fine city’s art community.”
Jongin nods. Kyungsoo has been been very dedicated to the community. And art? Community art.
*
Sehun heads back to work for the first time in a week with dark circles under his eyes. Jongin had said he could watch the chicks, but after six days of them being pretty much solely in Sehun’s care, he hadn’t been able to really go back to sleep after they’d started cheeping at around four in the morning, and Sehun had forced himself to stay in bed when he heard Fire wailing just a little louder than the rest. Jongin, after all, might not know that Fire always eats too much and then gets a belly ache, but he’d figure it out, just like Sehun had.
He forces himself not to look over at the cardboard box as he prepares to leave, even though the chicks are being uncustomarily quiet. Finally, Jongin will have to look after his own pets.
Sehun thinks that is a good thing.
He puts in his headphones, synthetic pop music blaring in his ears so he won’t worry about the odd silence, and grabs his bag from where it sits next to the cardboard chick house, and heads out into the spring morning. It’s chilly, so he wraps his scarf around his neck an extra time and then walks down into the subway.
A little girl in her school uniform stares at him almost his entire subway ride, and Sehun narrows his eyes and makes what Kyungsoo refers to as his ‘constipated Edward Cullen face’ at her as she glances between him and his bag until her stop comes up. When she’s gone, he pulls out his phone and checks his appearance with his phone camera, and sure, he looks tired, but it’s not like he’s got Fruity Pebbles stuck to his face or pulled a Lu Han and forgotten to shave half of his face. It’s not like she can see the word SEX emblazoned across his chest in hot pink on the uniform shirt he’s wearing beneath his sweatshirt, and if even if she could it’s not like kids these days don’t have the Discovery Channel. Jongin’s nephew knows an awful lot about turtle mating habits.
Kids are just weird, Sehun decides, more convinced than ever that he will never have them, and he grimaces the rest of the way to work as more people look at him.
He should be used to this kind of thing, since he used to model for Abercrombie, but when people stare at you too long on the street in New York City, it usually means they’re a crazy person.
It’s with relief that he lets himself into the museum through the back door, walking past the gift shop volunteers with a nod that passes for friendly. He slumps down into his chair, rubbing at his eyes, and then pats at his pockets, looking for his pen. Maybe he’d left it in his bag. He takes out his headphones and frowns, leaning over to grab his bag.
Sehun did not leave his pen in his bag.
However, Sehun almost cries with frustration when he opens up his bag and Heart cheeps agitatedly at him, fluffy brown chick fluff matted to his head. So that’s why the little girl had been staring. She’d probably thought he was some evil chicken kidnapper, which is unfair, because Sehun looks nothing like an Evil Chicken Kidnapper, but everything like an Abercrombie model, which means he is too attractive to steal baby chickens. If anything, the chickens flock to him.
Heart’s shivering, and panicked, Sehun remembers that chicks need to be kept at a constant ninety-five degrees, and Sehun knows he’s hot, but he’s certainly not hot enough to keep his bag warm on the subway just sitting next to him. He holds out his hands and picks the baby up, cupping his palms carefully to make sure he doesn’t crush him, and brings him up to his chest. Heart immediately pushes his head into Sehun’s neck, and the suffocating rush of affection makes Sehun feel rather queasy.
“Stupid bird,” Sehun whispers. “Jongin’ll kill me if you die of chick-pneumonia or whatever.”
“You. Make. Me. Feel like I’m livin’ a--” Sehun fumbles for his phone and looks around furtively. He never should have let Jongin pick out his own ring tone.
“What?” Sehun hisses. Heart is snuggling into a ticklish place on Sehun’s neck, but it doesn’t bug him like it normally would. It… tickles, and makes him almost laugh.
Sehun doesn’t really want to laugh right now.
Jongin sounds frantic on the other end of the line. “One of the chicks is missing!??” he cries and Sehun tries to cradle the phone between his ear and his shoulder so he can hold Heart with two hands. The little chick is getting kind of frisky, trying to get down the back of his work uniform and that is not a good idea.
“Yeah,” Sehun says. “He went missing right into my bag and he came with me to the MoSex.”
“Heart is at the Museum of Sex!!@?!?” Sehun almost lets the phone drop to the floor in his hurry to distance his eardrum from Jongin’s shriek. “He can’t be there! He’s just a baby!”
“He’s a baby chicken. It’s not like he’s going to know what he’s seeing.” Heart has stopped trying to investigate underneath Sehun’s clothes, and has gone back to contentedly nuzzling under Sehun’s chin. It would feel kind of nice if Sehun wasn’t maybe half-deaf from Jongin screaming in his ear about accidentally taking a chick to a sex museum. “I don’t know why you’re always so weird about where I work anyway.” Sehun sniffs. “It’s like you’ve never had sex before, or something.”
Jongin goes very quiet all of a sudden, before he mumbles, “I haven’t.”
“You haven’t what?”
“I haven’t had sex before, okay!”
“What?”
Sehun is sure that Jongin never told him that he’s a still a virgin.
Sehun would remember something like that. Then again, Jongin has never told Sehun he’s had sex, either, and he probably would have told Sehun that, too.
He tries again. “Really??”
Jongin sounds flustered and truly embarrassed. “Yes, really. I’m -- it’s. Complicated.”
“You know what? Whatever,” Sehun says, shaking his head to clear it. “Can you come pick up Heart?”
“I can’t go there!” Jongin says, panicked. “I mean, um, I can’t leave the other four chicks alone. Because that would be bad?”
“Fine. But if Heart dies, then it’s your fault.” Sehun doesn’t really mean that. He doesn’t want Heart to die, especially not when he’s sleeping so peacefully in Sehun’s hands, but he’s just fighting without rules, like Junmyeon raised him to.
Sehun hangs up, because he doesn’t know what else to say, and he hates Jongin right now, even if he pulled the surprise virgin card. Sehun dedicates the next five minutes to figuring out how someone as devastatingly beautiful as Jongin is still a virgin in New York City, where even someone like Baekhyun can have a regular boyfriend.
He wonders if that means no one’s ever seen Jongin’s dick. Jongin’s whole body is nice, and Sehun would bet good money that his dick is nice too. If no one else has ever seen it, then Jongin’s penis is like some of those glaciers up in Alaska. Sehun has always thought Alaska sounded interesting.
But the difference between Jongin and those Alaskan glaciers is that Jongin is hot, and his skin is probably hot too, especially the smooth patch of belly that Sehun can see when Jongin stretches and --
Heart cheeps lazily and Sehun stop himself, feeling guilty for thinking those kinds of things in front of Heart.
Those Sexual Jongin Thoughts are one giant nope.
Minseok knocks on the door to his office. “Hey, Sehun, welcome back-- Is that a baby chick?!” His eyes go bright as he sets down the folder with ‘Rubbers: The Life, History, and Struggle of the Condom’ written across it in almost illegible black sharpie. Next month’s visiting exhibit. Sehun had almost forgot.
“It is a baby chick,” he says. “Would you like to hold it… forever?”
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