Fix the Clank
(PG-13) ~2,300
Author: Jjonghoeing
Pairing: Jonghyun x Minho
Summary: Jonghyun's conflicts; angst
This is an idea I came up with after a really sad day I had. It's really quite a personal fic to me and it was kind of hard to put into words. It's kind of crappy because I suck at writing angst or anything non-crack, so. Yeah. Here goes.
The echo of hard metal clanking and scraping against the big, white ceramic plates on the table in the kitchen of his spacious and lonely house practically drove Jonghyun insane. The sound of only chewing, forks and knives moving, the occasional grunts of food gratuity…it was all so incredibly unbelievable that there were four people in the room. They were supposed to be a family. Yes, they all lived together in what most people would call a happy manner. Yes, they ate dinner together every night. Yes, they all said, “I love you,” to each other on a daily basis without the usual teenage drone of sarcasm or reluctance. They all really loved each other. But why didn’t it seem like it? Why didn’t it feel like he was part of this so-called loving family?
It was too silent. It was always too silent. Their house, big and nice and expensive…it was a place he grew up in; a place he was supposed to love with all his heart. But, he didn’t. He hated it, actually. He hated the lonely white walls surrounding his perfect little room. He hated the loud sound of his feet whenever he walked down the hall-he wasn’t even particularly heavily built and yet his steps sounded like an elephants’. He hated the darkness of the house, the creepy and eerie feeling he got when he came home and no one was there to turn the light on for him. Most of all, he hated the silence; the sound of nothing. He missed the sounds of voices, the sounds of happiness. He missed the laughter, the fun, the memories. He wanted the silence to end. He wanted to speak up, to be loud, to say something.
But he couldn’t.
He never could.
Jonghyun sighed and put his fork in his mouth, chewing on what seemed to be a quite wonderfully seasoned filet mignon. It was a spectacular meal, prepared by their chef. It looked amazing on the plate. Meat was always good, right? He could see the little specks of pepper on his plate; he could smell the aroma of freshly cut green beans and a tasteful garlic sauce. He used his fork to stab another piece of meat. He raised it to his mouth and tasted it again. As did the last bite of food, it tasted like a piece of plastic and had the consistency of rubber.
It wasn’t really a surprise at all.
Jonghyun looked up from his plate, inspecting his family members. They were all in some kind of daze. Whether it was because the food was delicious or that they were just incredibly bored, he did not know. He would never find out.
He swallowed the supposedly scrumptious cut of filet in his mouth and cleared his throat. When no response from either one of the human beings sitting across from him responded, he coughed.
Successfully gaining a questioning glance from his father, Jonghyun decided to proceed with what he’d wanted to say the entire week. “Mom, Dad…” he started, suddenly losing confidence. “I, uh…I have something I need to tell you.”
Jonghyun’s mother looked up at him, clear concern on her face, eyes shining almonds that could only be the original copy of his own. She put down her fork and folded her hands together, somehow making them fit as perfectly as two puzzle pieces.
It was funny how his father’s hand never seemed to fit like that.
His father looked up as well, but first taking his time and stuffing his face with the last nine or so bites of his filet mignon and then downing an entire glass of soju. When he looked up again, his wife was giving him a look of what could only be annoyance.
His sister gave him her full attention.
He gulped and cleared his throat again, sweat starting to accumulate on his brow. What was happening? He never sweat. Kim Jonghyun didn’t sweat. Kim Jonghyun didn’t get nervous.
As much as he tried telling himself this over and over in his mind, it didn’t help. It was such an untrue statement that he wanted to throw up. He wanted to just get up and run to the bathroom. Maybe that was what he was going to do. Yeah! He could just get up and-
“Jonghyun?” his mother asked, raising an eyebrow. “You, erm, had something to tell us?” she said, awkwardly fiddling with a loose string on the hem of her sleeve.
Jonghyun did nothing but stare blankly at them. After all this time, after all this preparation, he still couldn’t tell them. It’d been weeks-no-months since it’d first happened. He’d written an outline of how he’d wanted to say it. He’d thought this over a billion times. He’d said to the mirror in his bathroom so many times that he’d lost count.
Jonghyun closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He had to get this out some time.
“I’m gay.” Jonghyun said quietly, looking down at the table’s somewhat interesting pattern of smooth wood-work.
His sister looked unimpressed. She was picking at her fingernails.
His mother’s mouth was open, her almond eyes wide with shock. The deep brown color in her eyes looked as if it was fading to grey.
His father, well…the look on his face was hard to describe. At first, he was indifferent. But then, as he realized what his only son had just said, the blood slowly rushed to his face and the alcohol started kicking into gear. His nose crinkled, his eyebrows pointed downwards. His eyes lit on fire, and his grip tightened around the empty soju bottle in his hand.
“I’m gay,” Jonghyun repeated, with more confidence this time, “and I have a boyfriend. His name is Minho. He’s a couple years younger than me, but he has a full scholarship to Harvard and he’s in-”
Choi Minho made his entrance into the Kim family’s kitchen the moment Mr. Kim’s fist connected with his son’s lower jaw.
Jonghyun collapsed onto the ground, the chair he was sitting on toppling over and falling onto his legs. He groaned, his hands quickly moving towards his face to clutch his soon-to-be bruised jaw. Minho, his partner in crime, rushed to his aid and turned to glare at the father.
“YOU WANT ME TO HIT YOU TOO?” Jonghyun’s father bellowed, his face turning even redder with the strained effort of yelling.
Minho glanced at his beloved and stroked his cheek lovingly before getting up and dusting himself off. He stood about 6-7 inches above the old man, towering over him and intimidating him no questions asked.
Jonghyun had definitely inherited his father’s genes.
“Go ahead and punch me. You can do whatever you want, so long as it earns your approval.” Minho said, his deep voice ricocheting off the walls.
Jonghyun’s dad looked up at the young boy with a look of what could have been fear and sorrow. In a blink of an eye, though, that look was replaced with anger and his face had yet again turned red. He picked up a stool and raised it above his head, using all his strength in order to-
“WAIT!” Jonghyun’s mother screamed, her almond eyes filled up to the brim with tears. She ran to her husband and pulled his arms down, yanking the stool out of his hands. “We can,” she began, sobbing, “we can fix this…” she managed to choke out.
Her husband looked at her for a second before realizing what she meant. “Right, we can fix this!” The look of anger and despair on his face turned into hope. “We can just send Jonghyun to a little hospital and send him to Japan for a couple years and in no time, he’ll be cured!”
“He won’t have this…this sickness anymore…” Jonghyun’s mother said, slightly smiling. “You don’t have to punch that young man, honey. He’s just confused too.”
Jonghyun’s father nodded and put his hand on Minho’s shoulder, “We can't risk sending you to the same hospital, but we can pay for your therapy if you want.”
The two parents nodded together and happily smiled at each other with their new-found idea, their son on the floor in a mess and his boyfriend standing next to them with his mouth open wide with as much shock as they had owned a few minutes ago.
Jonghyun’s sister ran up to her room. At least she was sane.
Jonghyun groaned, louder than the first time he had. He pushed himself off the ground using all his might. Minho bent over to get the chair off him. He did it mostly to shrug off the disgusting man’s arm off of his shoulders.
“Mom, Dad, I don’t have a disease,” Jonghyun spat as he got up.
His parents froze in place, staring at him.
“But honey, being gay isn’t normal.” His mother said slowly, as if he couldn’t understand.
Jonghyun took a step towards his mother. Then, he took a step back and turned away, grabbing Minho’s elbow. He pulled Minho all the way to the front door of their house, his parents quickly padding after them.
“I’M NOT GETTING FIXED. THERE’S NOTHING TO FIX.” He yelled, yanking a fedora off of the hat rack near the door. “I HAVE NO DISEASE, WE’RE NOT GOING TO THERAPY, AND I’M NEVER COMING BACK TO THIS SHITHOLE EVER AGAIN.” he screamed, tears blurring his vision as he tried to put on his shoes. He stomped his foot, frustrated, deciding in the end to just slip them on and walk on his toes. He opened the door clumsily, making a note not to remember to get a key for his return. Minho silently followed suit. Jonghyun took note that he was silent.
“He’ll be back. He’ll be back without that fucking boyfriend of his,” was the last thing he heard from his role model of a father before he shut the door and stepped out into the cold, lonely road of the neighborhood he’d grown up in.
He shivered and reached for Minho’s hand. “I can stay at your place, right?”
Jonghyun shook those ideas out of his mind as he opened his eyes, his family members staring back at him with concerned looks on their faces.
“You had something to tell us, Jonghyun?” his mother repeated for a second time, speaking a little slower-as if he couldn’t comprehend.
Jonghyun blinked. He didn’t want what he’d pictured in his head to happen. He took a deep breath for the second time in that minute. “I’m…uh…I’m going to sleepover at a friend’s house tonight.” He choked out.
He was a coward. He already knew. Why he couldn’t tell them about Minho…he didn’t really know. He was just so incredibly afraid and the worst case scenarios always popped up into his head. He wanted to tell them about how he slowly fell in love with Minho…how he didn’t plan it. He wanted to tell them how his girlfriend hated him for months and Minho was there to comfort him. He wanted to tell them everything. Like how on their first kiss, Minho tasted like green tea-which Jonghyun hated. He wanted to tell them that even though their kiss was weird and gay and incredibly full of the hatred of green tea, he still kissed back. He wanted to tell them that their first date consisted of wrestling as they watched Breaking Dawn and making fun of vampires and drawing on each other with sharpie. He wanted to tell them how when Minho got accepted to Harvard, he said he wouldn’t leave without Jonghyun by his side. He wanted to. He really wanted to. But he couldn’t. He couldn’t because gay feelings were never right in his house. They were rich, successful, and incredibly famous as entrepreneurs around Seoul. He didn’t want to ruin anything; he didn’t want them to give up anything. He wanted them to be happy. But his most selfish reason was that he just didn’t want to give up Minho; he only wanted to be happy with Minho. It was the only way he could be happy.
“Oh, have fun then, honey.” His mother replied, going back to putting a green bean in her mouth.
His father and his sister resumed eating. The sound of metal clanking against metal filled the room yet again. It was the only thing disturbing the silence as Jonghyun politely excused himself. He walked down the hallway, passing Minho on the way. He nodded slightly towards his boyfriend and grabbed a coat off of the coat rack. It was snowing outside. It was going to be cold.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t tell them, Minho. Sorry I made you wait here.” He said softly, trying to keep his volume down as he opened the front door. He grabbed a key from the side table near the door. The keychain made a jangling sound inside his pocket.
“It’s okay, hyung. You can try again next time,” Minho said softly, kissing the older man’s forehead and putting his arm around his shoulder as they stepped outside.
Jonghyun turned around to close to door, and then buried his head into the nape of Minho’s neck as they walked to his car. “There won’t be a next time.”
“Why not?” Minho asked, confused. They’d both wanted approval ever since they’d first started dating.
“I just…I just don’t want to break anything. If I don’t break anything, then nothing will need to be fixed.”
Minho nodded, even though he did not quite fully understand what Jonghyun was saying.
“Even though I’m not happy, I’m happy with you. And that’s enough,” Jonghyun whispered so quietly that Minho did not hear him over the crunch of snow underneath their feet.
They got into the car and drove away, away from the lonely house on the end of the street; away from unhappiness, silence, and despair.
Author: Jjonghoeing
Pairing: Jonghyun x Minho
Summary: Jonghyun's conflicts; angst
This is an idea I came up with after a really sad day I had. It's really quite a personal fic to me and it was kind of hard to put into words. It's kind of crappy because I suck at writing angst or anything non-crack, so. Yeah. Here goes.
The echo of hard metal clanking and scraping against the big, white ceramic plates on the table in the kitchen of his spacious and lonely house practically drove Jonghyun insane. The sound of only chewing, forks and knives moving, the occasional grunts of food gratuity…it was all so incredibly unbelievable that there were four people in the room. They were supposed to be a family. Yes, they all lived together in what most people would call a happy manner. Yes, they ate dinner together every night. Yes, they all said, “I love you,” to each other on a daily basis without the usual teenage drone of sarcasm or reluctance. They all really loved each other. But why didn’t it seem like it? Why didn’t it feel like he was part of this so-called loving family?
It was too silent. It was always too silent. Their house, big and nice and expensive…it was a place he grew up in; a place he was supposed to love with all his heart. But, he didn’t. He hated it, actually. He hated the lonely white walls surrounding his perfect little room. He hated the loud sound of his feet whenever he walked down the hall-he wasn’t even particularly heavily built and yet his steps sounded like an elephants’. He hated the darkness of the house, the creepy and eerie feeling he got when he came home and no one was there to turn the light on for him. Most of all, he hated the silence; the sound of nothing. He missed the sounds of voices, the sounds of happiness. He missed the laughter, the fun, the memories. He wanted the silence to end. He wanted to speak up, to be loud, to say something.
But he couldn’t.
He never could.
Jonghyun sighed and put his fork in his mouth, chewing on what seemed to be a quite wonderfully seasoned filet mignon. It was a spectacular meal, prepared by their chef. It looked amazing on the plate. Meat was always good, right? He could see the little specks of pepper on his plate; he could smell the aroma of freshly cut green beans and a tasteful garlic sauce. He used his fork to stab another piece of meat. He raised it to his mouth and tasted it again. As did the last bite of food, it tasted like a piece of plastic and had the consistency of rubber.
It wasn’t really a surprise at all.
Jonghyun looked up from his plate, inspecting his family members. They were all in some kind of daze. Whether it was because the food was delicious or that they were just incredibly bored, he did not know. He would never find out.
He swallowed the supposedly scrumptious cut of filet in his mouth and cleared his throat. When no response from either one of the human beings sitting across from him responded, he coughed.
Successfully gaining a questioning glance from his father, Jonghyun decided to proceed with what he’d wanted to say the entire week. “Mom, Dad…” he started, suddenly losing confidence. “I, uh…I have something I need to tell you.”
Jonghyun’s mother looked up at him, clear concern on her face, eyes shining almonds that could only be the original copy of his own. She put down her fork and folded her hands together, somehow making them fit as perfectly as two puzzle pieces.
It was funny how his father’s hand never seemed to fit like that.
His father looked up as well, but first taking his time and stuffing his face with the last nine or so bites of his filet mignon and then downing an entire glass of soju. When he looked up again, his wife was giving him a look of what could only be annoyance.
His sister gave him her full attention.
He gulped and cleared his throat again, sweat starting to accumulate on his brow. What was happening? He never sweat. Kim Jonghyun didn’t sweat. Kim Jonghyun didn’t get nervous.
As much as he tried telling himself this over and over in his mind, it didn’t help. It was such an untrue statement that he wanted to throw up. He wanted to just get up and run to the bathroom. Maybe that was what he was going to do. Yeah! He could just get up and-
“Jonghyun?” his mother asked, raising an eyebrow. “You, erm, had something to tell us?” she said, awkwardly fiddling with a loose string on the hem of her sleeve.
Jonghyun did nothing but stare blankly at them. After all this time, after all this preparation, he still couldn’t tell them. It’d been weeks-no-months since it’d first happened. He’d written an outline of how he’d wanted to say it. He’d thought this over a billion times. He’d said to the mirror in his bathroom so many times that he’d lost count.
Jonghyun closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He had to get this out some time.
“I’m gay.” Jonghyun said quietly, looking down at the table’s somewhat interesting pattern of smooth wood-work.
His sister looked unimpressed. She was picking at her fingernails.
His mother’s mouth was open, her almond eyes wide with shock. The deep brown color in her eyes looked as if it was fading to grey.
His father, well…the look on his face was hard to describe. At first, he was indifferent. But then, as he realized what his only son had just said, the blood slowly rushed to his face and the alcohol started kicking into gear. His nose crinkled, his eyebrows pointed downwards. His eyes lit on fire, and his grip tightened around the empty soju bottle in his hand.
“I’m gay,” Jonghyun repeated, with more confidence this time, “and I have a boyfriend. His name is Minho. He’s a couple years younger than me, but he has a full scholarship to Harvard and he’s in-”
Choi Minho made his entrance into the Kim family’s kitchen the moment Mr. Kim’s fist connected with his son’s lower jaw.
Jonghyun collapsed onto the ground, the chair he was sitting on toppling over and falling onto his legs. He groaned, his hands quickly moving towards his face to clutch his soon-to-be bruised jaw. Minho, his partner in crime, rushed to his aid and turned to glare at the father.
“YOU WANT ME TO HIT YOU TOO?” Jonghyun’s father bellowed, his face turning even redder with the strained effort of yelling.
Minho glanced at his beloved and stroked his cheek lovingly before getting up and dusting himself off. He stood about 6-7 inches above the old man, towering over him and intimidating him no questions asked.
Jonghyun had definitely inherited his father’s genes.
“Go ahead and punch me. You can do whatever you want, so long as it earns your approval.” Minho said, his deep voice ricocheting off the walls.
Jonghyun’s dad looked up at the young boy with a look of what could have been fear and sorrow. In a blink of an eye, though, that look was replaced with anger and his face had yet again turned red. He picked up a stool and raised it above his head, using all his strength in order to-
“WAIT!” Jonghyun’s mother screamed, her almond eyes filled up to the brim with tears. She ran to her husband and pulled his arms down, yanking the stool out of his hands. “We can,” she began, sobbing, “we can fix this…” she managed to choke out.
Her husband looked at her for a second before realizing what she meant. “Right, we can fix this!” The look of anger and despair on his face turned into hope. “We can just send Jonghyun to a little hospital and send him to Japan for a couple years and in no time, he’ll be cured!”
“He won’t have this…this sickness anymore…” Jonghyun’s mother said, slightly smiling. “You don’t have to punch that young man, honey. He’s just confused too.”
Jonghyun’s father nodded and put his hand on Minho’s shoulder, “We can't risk sending you to the same hospital, but we can pay for your therapy if you want.”
The two parents nodded together and happily smiled at each other with their new-found idea, their son on the floor in a mess and his boyfriend standing next to them with his mouth open wide with as much shock as they had owned a few minutes ago.
Jonghyun’s sister ran up to her room. At least she was sane.
Jonghyun groaned, louder than the first time he had. He pushed himself off the ground using all his might. Minho bent over to get the chair off him. He did it mostly to shrug off the disgusting man’s arm off of his shoulders.
“Mom, Dad, I don’t have a disease,” Jonghyun spat as he got up.
His parents froze in place, staring at him.
“But honey, being gay isn’t normal.” His mother said slowly, as if he couldn’t understand.
Jonghyun took a step towards his mother. Then, he took a step back and turned away, grabbing Minho’s elbow. He pulled Minho all the way to the front door of their house, his parents quickly padding after them.
“I’M NOT GETTING FIXED. THERE’S NOTHING TO FIX.” He yelled, yanking a fedora off of the hat rack near the door. “I HAVE NO DISEASE, WE’RE NOT GOING TO THERAPY, AND I’M NEVER COMING BACK TO THIS SHITHOLE EVER AGAIN.” he screamed, tears blurring his vision as he tried to put on his shoes. He stomped his foot, frustrated, deciding in the end to just slip them on and walk on his toes. He opened the door clumsily, making a note not to remember to get a key for his return. Minho silently followed suit. Jonghyun took note that he was silent.
“He’ll be back. He’ll be back without that fucking boyfriend of his,” was the last thing he heard from his role model of a father before he shut the door and stepped out into the cold, lonely road of the neighborhood he’d grown up in.
He shivered and reached for Minho’s hand. “I can stay at your place, right?”
Jonghyun shook those ideas out of his mind as he opened his eyes, his family members staring back at him with concerned looks on their faces.
“You had something to tell us, Jonghyun?” his mother repeated for a second time, speaking a little slower-as if he couldn’t comprehend.
Jonghyun blinked. He didn’t want what he’d pictured in his head to happen. He took a deep breath for the second time in that minute. “I’m…uh…I’m going to sleepover at a friend’s house tonight.” He choked out.
He was a coward. He already knew. Why he couldn’t tell them about Minho…he didn’t really know. He was just so incredibly afraid and the worst case scenarios always popped up into his head. He wanted to tell them about how he slowly fell in love with Minho…how he didn’t plan it. He wanted to tell them how his girlfriend hated him for months and Minho was there to comfort him. He wanted to tell them everything. Like how on their first kiss, Minho tasted like green tea-which Jonghyun hated. He wanted to tell them that even though their kiss was weird and gay and incredibly full of the hatred of green tea, he still kissed back. He wanted to tell them that their first date consisted of wrestling as they watched Breaking Dawn and making fun of vampires and drawing on each other with sharpie. He wanted to tell them how when Minho got accepted to Harvard, he said he wouldn’t leave without Jonghyun by his side. He wanted to. He really wanted to. But he couldn’t. He couldn’t because gay feelings were never right in his house. They were rich, successful, and incredibly famous as entrepreneurs around Seoul. He didn’t want to ruin anything; he didn’t want them to give up anything. He wanted them to be happy. But his most selfish reason was that he just didn’t want to give up Minho; he only wanted to be happy with Minho. It was the only way he could be happy.
“Oh, have fun then, honey.” His mother replied, going back to putting a green bean in her mouth.
His father and his sister resumed eating. The sound of metal clanking against metal filled the room yet again. It was the only thing disturbing the silence as Jonghyun politely excused himself. He walked down the hallway, passing Minho on the way. He nodded slightly towards his boyfriend and grabbed a coat off of the coat rack. It was snowing outside. It was going to be cold.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t tell them, Minho. Sorry I made you wait here.” He said softly, trying to keep his volume down as he opened the front door. He grabbed a key from the side table near the door. The keychain made a jangling sound inside his pocket.
“It’s okay, hyung. You can try again next time,” Minho said softly, kissing the older man’s forehead and putting his arm around his shoulder as they stepped outside.
Jonghyun turned around to close to door, and then buried his head into the nape of Minho’s neck as they walked to his car. “There won’t be a next time.”
“Why not?” Minho asked, confused. They’d both wanted approval ever since they’d first started dating.
“I just…I just don’t want to break anything. If I don’t break anything, then nothing will need to be fixed.”
Minho nodded, even though he did not quite fully understand what Jonghyun was saying.
“Even though I’m not happy, I’m happy with you. And that’s enough,” Jonghyun whispered so quietly that Minho did not hear him over the crunch of snow underneath their feet.
They got into the car and drove away, away from the lonely house on the end of the street; away from unhappiness, silence, and despair.