Robin's Eggs [1/2]
Title: Robin’s Eggs
Pairing: Onew/Jessica
Genre: Romance, slice of life
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: ~4300
Disclaimer: Same old.
Summary: And they have at it, and they try, and they go and breathe the air and live.
A/N: Dude, so inspiration fell out of the sky and gave me a concussion. So I wrote this. Continuation of Powder Blue.
===
Jonghyun, predictably, is the first to cry. Key follows, and Onew fondly remembers the time Minho draped his monkey-long arms around them both at their first concert.
“It’s not like this is shocking news,” he says, taking both of them around the necks and pressing one to each shoulder, tears wetting his shirt (he feels awkward because it’ll end up looking like baby spots on his clothes--oh well). “I’ve been kind of thinking about this for a while, now.”
This only makes them wail louder, and Onew sighs as he curses his sangtae to the ends of the Earth, and sighs heavily when he sees Taemin rubbing a little too fiercely at his eyes in the foreground. Minho goes over to hug him, too.
“I can tell her we should stay,” Onew says tiredly, and Key shakes his head adamantly like a child.
“That’s not fair for you guys,” he manages to get out around sobs. “You guys deserve”--he pauses to swallow another sob--“deserve to be--we shouldn’t tie you down anymore, hyung.”
Onew wants to tell them that they never tied him down, that it was the name SHINee that did, but he decides not to, leaning his head against Jonghyun’s and sniffling a little himself, because in truth, he’d never thought about what would happen when this day came.
It’s hard, to say the least. He remembers when he was twenty-one and still only at the start of the road in respect to SHINee and SM, when Jessica handed him that Mountain Dew so many nights ago and said what she’d really have wanted if she wasn’t in SM. Onew never really could imagine what it’d be like, without the weight of the words upon his shoulders.
And now, as reality is dancing in front of him, enticing him to go along, he’s not too sure if he wants to.
“Okay, quit the waterworks, guys,” Onew says, peeling Jonghyun and Key off (both who promptly burst into more tears). “I’ll feel like I’m abandoning you all at an orphanage if you keep this up.”
Taemin is the one who bites his lip and forces the sobs down, and Onew smiles at the way a few whimpers escape and he starts crying again, because really, even at twenty-five, Taemin is still Onew’s baby brother.
“You’ll be brilliant,” Onew says. “You’ll go places.”
“I’ll be alone,” Taemin says.
“You won’t be,” Minho replies, putting an arm around Taemin’s ever-skinny shoulders.
And then Jonghyun crouches down, crying into his knees, and Onew sighs all over again and leans down to hug him, and Key hugs Onew, and next they’re dog piling in the middle of the bare living room of their old dorm, laughing through tears just like when they’d won for Replay.
===
“They cried, didn’t they?”
Jessica doesn’t let much slip her notice. Onew tried to let his shirt dry as much as possible until he absolutely had to leave (another round of crying ensued when that time came), but the dampness is still present on each shoulder.
“Yeah, they did,” Onew said, flipping a page of the catalog he found in the pocket of the seat in front of him. He hates economy class, and sure, he’s a former idol, but money was going to be tight.
“Let me guess,” Jessica says, lifting her head off his shoulder. “Jonghyun,” she says, pointing at the shoulder she’d just vacated, “and Kibum,” she says, reaching over Onew’s collarbone to pat his opposite shoulder.
“You’re good,” Onew says, smiling.
“This shoulder’s wetter,” Jessica said. “So, there you go.”
Onew scoffs at her logic.
“Ah, Jonghyun,” she says, putting her head back down on Onew’s shoulder and closing her eyes (she feels airsick). “What a cutie pie.”
“Hey, don’t make me suspect you of infidelity,” Onew jokes, still half serious.
“Please, Jinki,” Jessica says. “I’m more into taller men, anyway.”
“Ouch, that hurts,” Onew mutters, turning another page. “I guess I need to kill Siwon hyung, then.”
Jessica just laughs and curls her pinky around two of Jinki’s fingers on the armrest and falls asleep. Onew pulls down the window shade and when the flight attendant comes, he orders Jessica some bibimbap and lets it sit untouched on the empty seat next to him.
Jessica spasms in her sleep halfway through the flight, when Onew is trying to sleep, and she flails in her blankets momentarily before lifting her head off Onew’s shoulder.
“Wow,” Onew said. “Impressive bedhead you’ve got there, Jess.”
“Uhm--what?” she says. Her eyes are puffy, blonde hair cracking with static and Onew laughs, reaching forward and smoothing it down. She blinks, disoriented, and then her eyes widen.
“How long was I asleep?”
“You were out for a good three hours,” Onew said, yawning and rubbing his eyes. “How’s your stomach?”
“Better,” Jessica says, grimacing, and the blanket falls off her shoulders. “You should go to sleep.”
Onew yawns again, sinking down in his seat and letting sleep take over him. He thinks he imagines Jessica pushing his head down into her lap, but her smell surrounds him, so he thinks that is that.
===
LA is hot. It’s much hotter than he expected and remembered, because when they came for SMTown eight years ago, it definitely was not hot enough to bake cookies on the asphalt.
LAX is packed, and Onew thinks that it’s probably because it’s summer and traveling is in. To be honest, he and Jessica and pretty much every other person on their flight is unsure in footing and tired, and the ground feels like it’s undulating under his feet.
Jessica’s best friend from before SM picks them up. She’s some kind of Hispanic, Onew thinks, because her skin is the color of toasted almonds, and her hair is the same color as Jonghyun’s--a sun-kissed brown. Jessica says her name is Isabelle.
“You really never change, Jess,” she says, hugging Jessica, who smiles tiredly. “And this is Jinki?”
“She’s a fan,” Jessica mumbles on the corner of her mouth in Korean, and though Onew understands English just fine, it takes him a while to formulate a sentence--and that’s when he’s awake and has his sense about him.
“Yeah,” he finally settles on saying. “Nice to meet you.”
“You’re in luck, because one of my friends just graduated earlier this year,” she says, leading them away from the arrivals terminal, and Onew can feel curious and stunned eyes on them. “So his apartment’s for sale. You two can start there, and then it’s all up to you.”
It’s in the middle of Koreatown, and Onew can say he’s somewhat relieved. Isabelle leaves them to it and when the door swings open, the best thing Onew can say about it is that it at least doesn’t reek of anything bad.
It’s small and cramped, and the floor squeaks when they step on it, as if there is invisible sticky residue in the hardwood. Dust motes dance in the air, and there’s writing on the wall of the kitchen that says “Dustin get in my pants” in obscene red Sharpie.
All in all, Onew is just thankful that Isabelle’s friend left a bed, because the next thing they do is fall on it and pass out for a while, Jessica’s head on Onew’s chest and her arm around his waist.
He wakes up to see Jessica staring down at him. The room is so hot and stuffy that Onew feels like he took a swim in syrup, and reached up to rub his hand across his face.
“What time is it,” he asks, voice hoarse, and Jessica smiles. She’s on her stomach, and reaches up to brush away sticky strand of hair. Onew was notorious for being sweaty.
“Almost seven thirty PM,” she says. “You hungry?”
“I’m hot,” Onew says, wiping his mouth, and Jessica sat up. She’d pulled her hair back into a knot.
“I am too,” she says. “The AC doesn’t work until we start paying the electric bill. But I opened the window, it’s cooler outside.” She looks at it, bare save for the dusty skirt that rims the top of the window, and Onew thinks that at this angle, she’s the most beautiful--striped tank top and blue shorts, sitting cross-legged, slouching. He leans forward and breathes onto her cheek until she turns her heads and he kisses her for a long moment.
She pushes him away, wrinkling her nose and saying, “Go take a shower, you smell all sweaty.”
“You like it,” Onew says, getting off the mattress and stretching, padding down the hallway in search of the bathroom. When he finds it, he deems it so tiny it could pass as a Port-a-Potty.
“It is rather small,” Jessica says, peering in and assessing the extent of Onew’s dismay. “How’s the tap?”
It turns out that the tap is cold and stays cold. The water is icy to the touch and comes out of the showerhead so strong it stings the skin, and Onew turns to look at Jessica with a grimace on his lips. She only looks back helplessly and opens her mouth to say something, but Onew is already pulling her forward into the bathroom with him.
(“Cold showers aren’t too bad,” Jessica muses later as she towels off her wet hair.
“No, not with me they’re not,” Onew says cockily, and Jessica throws her wet towel at his head.
“Who am I supposed to be living with, Lee Jinki or Kim Jonghyun?”)
Dinner is at the Pho downstairs, and Onew thanks the Lord once again that Jessica is a California girl and at least has some money for them to not starve for a month. His stomach has woken up, and it’s screaming for food.
“How’re we going to do this, then?” Jessica asks, resting her chin on her folded hands as they wait for their food to come. “This life, I mean.”
“We need work,” Onew says mimicking her position. “You and I both, we need money to support ourselves, to pay the bills, to pay living fees. That’s a given.”
“Jinki,” Jessica says, “you know what would be awesome?”
There’s a fiery glint in Jessica’s eyes, and he blinks, staring at her for a moment before bringing his hands down to rest on the table.
“What?”
“Going back to school,” Jessica says.
“School, huh,” Jinki says. “Aren’t you a bit old to be going back to school, noona?
“Shut up,” she says. “I want to.”
“Where, though?”
“Don’t know,” she says, and their food comes. She breaks basil into her bowl of noodles and looks thoughtful. “Night school, maybe, I’ll have to work during the day.”
“Whatever you say, noona,” Onew says, laughing when Jessica pouts.
===
Jessica goes out the very next day in search of work; she and Onew separate early in the morning on the agreement to meet back in front of their apartment at noon. Onew hopes his English skills will get him somewhere.
LA is big, he concludes a few hours later. The managers of all sorts of stores nodded and said they might have open spaces, but they didn’t need any employees right now. He tries not to feel disheartened, but fails.
“Hey,” Jessica says, and he sees her coming up to him in her denim shorts and flip-flops. It’s wickedly hot. “Any luck?”
Onew shakes his head, and she shrugs.
“Me neither,” she says. “But a restaurant owner says that one of his waitresses Is going on maternity leave soon, so he put me down for consideration.”
They eat lunch, and then Onew goes out once again to look for work, and he feels jet lag settling into his blood as he trudges down the sidewalk into a Safeway. It has the lowest concentration of Koreans he’s seen today.
When he finally finds the manager and talks to him, the man nods slowly and looks him up and down--does he know him?--and finally says, “We could use another deli worker.”
It’s not brilliant, but Onew accepts it with a grin.
When he finds Jessica again, she tells him with a huge grin she’s found night school.
“It’s a trade school,” she admits. “Computer tech, but that industry is pretty big, so it’ll be useful, I think.”
“You, computers?” Onew says, genuinely surprised. “Really?”
“Don’t judge me,” Jessica says. “Did you find anything?”
“A job at Safeway,” Onew says, grimacing. “Behind the deli counter, but okay, it’s a job, right?”
“Yeah, it’s a job,” she says, lacing her fingers through his. “And now, we must go grocery shopping.”
“I’m sleepy,” he complains.
“Groceries first.”
Onew enjoys cream-of-broccoli soup from the plastic container that night, and it’s honestly not that bad. He scrapes the sides clean, anyway.
“You sure have a large appetite for someone who was complaining about jet lag earlier,” Jessica observes.
“It passed,” Onew says, yawning. “When it sees food, at least.”
“We should get to bed, work starts tomorrow morning for you,” she says, prodding Onew out of his chair, “and I have school tomorrow night.”
“Fine, fine,” Onew growls, and goes down the hallway to take a shower. He falls onto the mattress and is instantly asleep; later, he wakes up a moment when Jessica slides in next to him.
===
Deli work isn’t a walk in the park, Onew learns soon enough.
He wears a bright red apron and a khaki linen shirt and an old pair of his skinnies, and he feels more out of place than he’s felt since walking into SM auditions. His colleague keeps eyeing him with an unfathomable look and he bites down accusatory phrases.
He learns to work in the back, to keep stock food cool and to check the freezers and refrigerators and if help the cooks. He has to help orders at the counter and the menu and how to smile and nod even when the customer is being beyond obnoxious.
He finally breaks during a lull after the lunch rush and he turns and asks his coworker, “Why are you staring at me like that?”
Judging from the way she jumps a little, she wasn’t expecting him to speak, never mind speak English. “Uh,” she says, fidgeting, “are you seriously Lee Jinki of SHINee?”
Onew straightens up from the mop and bucket and raises his eyebrows. “Uhm…yeah, I am,” he said awkwardly, running a hand across the back of his neck. “Yeah, I’m Lee Jinki.” He’s surprised she says in last-to-first name, the Korean way.
She tugs on her braid--it’s long and blonde, real blonde, and hangs in a straight rope down her back. Onew originally thought her eyes are blue, but under the fluorescence, he sees they’re green, or kind of turquoise--the color makes a pang run through him.
“Wow,” she says. “Wow, that’s…”
Onew waits for her to finish, and she says, “I can’t believe I’m working with you.”
“What do you mean?” Onew says, hoping his accent isn’t too thick.
“I’ve heard things about you,” she says. “My friends, they’re huge fans. Do you know how much they cried when you guys broke up?”
Onew laughs a little, and says, “Don’t tell them you work with me, they’ll kill you to come after me.”
“Oh, I won’t,” she says, nodding. “You can trust me on that.”
Working with her is a lot less awkward after that. He learns that her name is Rachel, she has two brothers, and she’s attending UCLA in the fall. Onew finds it extremely funny to watch her eyes widen when he sings during break.
“Man, you’re really good,” she says, taking a swig of Pepsi and stretching. “Why are you here, of all places?”
“It feels like familiar ground, you know,” Onew says. “It--it is easier for us to…interact with everyone.”
“Us?” she asks. “Are the others here, too?”
“No,” Onew says. “Me and my…” He doesn’t know what to call Jessica. Girlfriend? He never really thought about it, but she always seemed to be more than just a ‘girlfriend.’
“Girlfriend?” Rachel asks, predictably. “Who?”
“Uh,” Onew says, weighing whether or not he should tell. “Her name is Jessica.”
Her cell phone beeps then, signaling the end of break, and they go back to work. It’s interesting, Onew thinks as he hands a mother with two babies in a stroller a box of rotisserie chicken, to live like this.
When Onew trips back to his apartment (jet lag has just hit, and it’s doing its worst), he opens the door and almost groans at how stuffy it is. There’s a note taped to the fridge, though, and his heart flutters a little when he sees Jessica’s messy handwriting.
There’s some food in the fridge, hope you like microwavable spaghetti >.< Sorry about that! I’ll get home around eleven, so don’t wait up for me. -Jess
Onew pulls open the fridge door then, peering in and pulling on the Lean Cuisine on the top shelf. He stabs a couple of holes in it and settles down on the couch in front of the TV, secretly thankful again that Isabelle’s friend had left most of the furniture and the TV; it felt almost like an awkward mix between a dorm, home, and a hotel.
Onew watches something called Glee (which, to his general interest, contains a considerable amount of singing) as he eats his dinner. It’s somewhat lonely by himself, and he suddenly is able to picture Minho sitting next to him, Jonghyun and Taemin causing general ruckus and Key shouting from the kitchen over the running faucet.
He misses it, he won’t lie. But he has Jessica, and that’s all he really asks for.
Onew determinedly stays awake till about ten thirty and around that time he’s holding his eyelids open with his thumbs, chanting at himself to stay awake until Jessica got home. When she finally does, she looks so tired that her entire being seems a little smaller.
“Jess,” Onew says, standing up immediately to help her relieve a burden of books. “You look like hell, just go to bed.”
“I told you not to wait up,” she says, and promptly passes out right on the doormat. Onew clumsily catches and supports her around his armload of books, which he decides to dump on the floor.
Jessica is light, and she feels even lighter nowadays, as he carries her to their bed and sets her down. Her hair is plastered to her forehead with sweat, and Onew inwardly curses his inability to find a better paying job so they can start paying the electric bill already. But they’ve been here for all of two--three?--days, so he can’t do much anyway.
He watches her sleep for a second, then straightens up to go clean up the mess in the living room when Jessica grabs the hem of his shirt and tugs on it. Onew gets the message and eases down onto the bed next to her. She snuggles up to him and hugs him around his waist. Even now, eight years after Onew kissed her cheek backstage, he still feels his heart trip over itself in his chest.
And they live like that, for a while.
===
It happens sometime at the end of August, for the most stupid reason.
Onew comes home to see Jessica standing in the kitchen, looking almost manic with an expression he can’t quite figure out, and the first she does, or says, when he steps in is,
“Why didn’t you answer your phone?”
Onew has a very good reason for not answering his phone, because his manager was telling him off for leaving a fridge open by accident and damaging a good portion of the stored dough. Picking up his phone would not have been advisable when a man probably twice Onew’s weight was yelling at him. He’d felt it, though, he’d definitely felt his phone vibrating against his back pocket.
“I was busy,” Onew mumbles, and Jessica lets out an exasperated sigh.
“Do you have any idea how worried I was?” she half-screams. “I waited here until you got home! That means I miss class tonight, and my finals for the summer session start next week!”
“I was trying not to lose my job!” Onew shouts back. “What was I supposed to do, say ‘Oh hey boss hold up, let me talk on the phone for a sec’? I can’t lose this job, what else could I do?”
“Oh, and you couldn’t call me after he was done--why was he yelling at you anyway?”
“Did something wrong,” Onew said aside. “It’s not important, I was just trying to keep my job to keep us supported!”
“I realize that, but you could have called me after he was done with you,” Jessica says, voice icy. “You don’t think about others’ feelings, do you? You never do!”
“You’re fucking kidding!” Onew shouts. He knows she’s worn out thin and her stress levels are off the charts, because she’s been bitching about finals and not being able to get enough sleep before she has to take off for morning shift at the restaurant, he knows, but his mouth works before his brain can think and he’s shouting louder than she is. “I always put you first! Before anything, I never go to sleep before you come home, I always wait!”
“And that amounts to something?” she says, voice dripping with sarcasm so stinging Onew cringes. “And what does that do?”
“It’s not supposed to do anything except show that I care!” Onew shouts, wanting to throw something at her. Jessica screams in frustration and storms out, swinging ponytail of fading blonde disappearing behind their bedroom door with a slam.
Onew groans and crouches to the floor on the balls of his feet, digging his fists into his eyes as he cusses under his breath. Never, really, has he gotten this mad at Jessica (he has gotten this mad, however, at something really stupid in the SHINee dorms, which resulted in him and Key destroying the bedroom as they threw every object they could pick up).
So Onew does what any guy would do, really--he stand up, wipes his mouth, and walks right back out. Maybe that other coworker-friend of his, that somewhat awkwardly tall but muscular Chinese boy named Alec, would be a good person to talk to. He hopes that Alec is good at relationship advice, but he somewhat doubts that a boy obsessed with Call of Duty would be.
But he can’t call Key or Jonghyun or any of the others, even if it is, already about ten AM over in Korea--he doesn’t know their schedules, and he doesn’t even know if his phone works here (mental note: go down to that T-Mobile store tomorrow). He wants to, though, more than anything, but he can’t go running back into the arms of safety whenever something difficult came his way. He has to remind himself that he can’t depend on Key or Jonghyun or Minho anymore, and he has to be the one Jessica depends on. He’s not big into the whole alpha male thing, because Jessica isn’t Ice Princess for nothing, but right now, she needs someone to lean on, too.
But Onew is quite, quite sure he’s not welcome right now, so he makes sure to lock the door behind him before he steps back out into the hallway. For a while, he stands there, feeling sweat bead on his forehead before he finally screws the rules and goes back into Safeway.
“Jinki,” Rachel says, raising her eyebrows when she sees him coming back. “What’s up?”
“Can I use your cell phone?”
The question catches her off guard, but she pulls it out of her back pocket. “Why?”
“You don’t mind if I make an international call on this, right?” he asks without answering her first question.
“Yeah, I suppose…” she says warily. “Did something happen? You look kind of--”
“I’m fine,” he says quickly, and steps back out with her Samsung and pushes it open. Her wallpaper is a picture of a Rottweiler, maybe her own. Onew prays to the Lord he remembers the number correctly as he punches it in.
“Hello?”
For a second, Onew is so stunned that there was an answer, he says nothing. Only when there’s another irritated “Hello?” on the other end that he says, “Jonghyun?”
“Hyung!” Jonghyun says, and he hears something fall in the background, Jonghyun cussing. “Hyung, what’s wrong? Where are you? Why are you calling?”
“Jessica and I…”
“Got into an argument,” Jonghyun says all-too-knowingly, and Onew makes a face at the cockiness in his voice. “Ah, young love--”
“Jonghyun, if you’re going to tease me, I’m going to hang up now,” Onew says flatly.
“No, don’t! Oh man, okay, uhm, what went on?”
So Onew sits down on the bench next to the exit and rants into the receiver in rapid-fire Korean, and when Jonghyun advises him, laughs at him, teases and insults and makes fun of him, Onew almost smiles because it’s just like the old days.
“Shit, gotta bounce,” Jonghyun said. “Talk to you later, hyung!”
Onew hangs up and returns the phone back to Rachel, thanking her and walking back out. Jonghyun may have been an over-emotional kid half the time Onew knew him, but he knew something when it came to relationships, he had to give Jonghyun that much.
Although he was probably going to skip the make-up sex part tonight.
===
A/N: Split up into two parts because I’m too lazy to write it all tonight. Which also means this isn’t beta’d, nyeeeeh.
Cross posted to 19_blue_roses
Pairing: Onew/Jessica
Genre: Romance, slice of life
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: ~4300
Disclaimer: Same old.
Summary: And they have at it, and they try, and they go and breathe the air and live.
A/N: Dude, so inspiration fell out of the sky and gave me a concussion. So I wrote this. Continuation of Powder Blue.
===
Jonghyun, predictably, is the first to cry. Key follows, and Onew fondly remembers the time Minho draped his monkey-long arms around them both at their first concert.
“It’s not like this is shocking news,” he says, taking both of them around the necks and pressing one to each shoulder, tears wetting his shirt (he feels awkward because it’ll end up looking like baby spots on his clothes--oh well). “I’ve been kind of thinking about this for a while, now.”
This only makes them wail louder, and Onew sighs as he curses his sangtae to the ends of the Earth, and sighs heavily when he sees Taemin rubbing a little too fiercely at his eyes in the foreground. Minho goes over to hug him, too.
“I can tell her we should stay,” Onew says tiredly, and Key shakes his head adamantly like a child.
“That’s not fair for you guys,” he manages to get out around sobs. “You guys deserve”--he pauses to swallow another sob--“deserve to be--we shouldn’t tie you down anymore, hyung.”
Onew wants to tell them that they never tied him down, that it was the name SHINee that did, but he decides not to, leaning his head against Jonghyun’s and sniffling a little himself, because in truth, he’d never thought about what would happen when this day came.
It’s hard, to say the least. He remembers when he was twenty-one and still only at the start of the road in respect to SHINee and SM, when Jessica handed him that Mountain Dew so many nights ago and said what she’d really have wanted if she wasn’t in SM. Onew never really could imagine what it’d be like, without the weight of the words upon his shoulders.
And now, as reality is dancing in front of him, enticing him to go along, he’s not too sure if he wants to.
“Okay, quit the waterworks, guys,” Onew says, peeling Jonghyun and Key off (both who promptly burst into more tears). “I’ll feel like I’m abandoning you all at an orphanage if you keep this up.”
Taemin is the one who bites his lip and forces the sobs down, and Onew smiles at the way a few whimpers escape and he starts crying again, because really, even at twenty-five, Taemin is still Onew’s baby brother.
“You’ll be brilliant,” Onew says. “You’ll go places.”
“I’ll be alone,” Taemin says.
“You won’t be,” Minho replies, putting an arm around Taemin’s ever-skinny shoulders.
And then Jonghyun crouches down, crying into his knees, and Onew sighs all over again and leans down to hug him, and Key hugs Onew, and next they’re dog piling in the middle of the bare living room of their old dorm, laughing through tears just like when they’d won for Replay.
===
“They cried, didn’t they?”
Jessica doesn’t let much slip her notice. Onew tried to let his shirt dry as much as possible until he absolutely had to leave (another round of crying ensued when that time came), but the dampness is still present on each shoulder.
“Yeah, they did,” Onew said, flipping a page of the catalog he found in the pocket of the seat in front of him. He hates economy class, and sure, he’s a former idol, but money was going to be tight.
“Let me guess,” Jessica says, lifting her head off his shoulder. “Jonghyun,” she says, pointing at the shoulder she’d just vacated, “and Kibum,” she says, reaching over Onew’s collarbone to pat his opposite shoulder.
“You’re good,” Onew says, smiling.
“This shoulder’s wetter,” Jessica said. “So, there you go.”
Onew scoffs at her logic.
“Ah, Jonghyun,” she says, putting her head back down on Onew’s shoulder and closing her eyes (she feels airsick). “What a cutie pie.”
“Hey, don’t make me suspect you of infidelity,” Onew jokes, still half serious.
“Please, Jinki,” Jessica says. “I’m more into taller men, anyway.”
“Ouch, that hurts,” Onew mutters, turning another page. “I guess I need to kill Siwon hyung, then.”
Jessica just laughs and curls her pinky around two of Jinki’s fingers on the armrest and falls asleep. Onew pulls down the window shade and when the flight attendant comes, he orders Jessica some bibimbap and lets it sit untouched on the empty seat next to him.
Jessica spasms in her sleep halfway through the flight, when Onew is trying to sleep, and she flails in her blankets momentarily before lifting her head off Onew’s shoulder.
“Wow,” Onew said. “Impressive bedhead you’ve got there, Jess.”
“Uhm--what?” she says. Her eyes are puffy, blonde hair cracking with static and Onew laughs, reaching forward and smoothing it down. She blinks, disoriented, and then her eyes widen.
“How long was I asleep?”
“You were out for a good three hours,” Onew said, yawning and rubbing his eyes. “How’s your stomach?”
“Better,” Jessica says, grimacing, and the blanket falls off her shoulders. “You should go to sleep.”
Onew yawns again, sinking down in his seat and letting sleep take over him. He thinks he imagines Jessica pushing his head down into her lap, but her smell surrounds him, so he thinks that is that.
===
LA is hot. It’s much hotter than he expected and remembered, because when they came for SMTown eight years ago, it definitely was not hot enough to bake cookies on the asphalt.
LAX is packed, and Onew thinks that it’s probably because it’s summer and traveling is in. To be honest, he and Jessica and pretty much every other person on their flight is unsure in footing and tired, and the ground feels like it’s undulating under his feet.
Jessica’s best friend from before SM picks them up. She’s some kind of Hispanic, Onew thinks, because her skin is the color of toasted almonds, and her hair is the same color as Jonghyun’s--a sun-kissed brown. Jessica says her name is Isabelle.
“You really never change, Jess,” she says, hugging Jessica, who smiles tiredly. “And this is Jinki?”
“She’s a fan,” Jessica mumbles on the corner of her mouth in Korean, and though Onew understands English just fine, it takes him a while to formulate a sentence--and that’s when he’s awake and has his sense about him.
“Yeah,” he finally settles on saying. “Nice to meet you.”
“You’re in luck, because one of my friends just graduated earlier this year,” she says, leading them away from the arrivals terminal, and Onew can feel curious and stunned eyes on them. “So his apartment’s for sale. You two can start there, and then it’s all up to you.”
It’s in the middle of Koreatown, and Onew can say he’s somewhat relieved. Isabelle leaves them to it and when the door swings open, the best thing Onew can say about it is that it at least doesn’t reek of anything bad.
It’s small and cramped, and the floor squeaks when they step on it, as if there is invisible sticky residue in the hardwood. Dust motes dance in the air, and there’s writing on the wall of the kitchen that says “Dustin get in my pants” in obscene red Sharpie.
All in all, Onew is just thankful that Isabelle’s friend left a bed, because the next thing they do is fall on it and pass out for a while, Jessica’s head on Onew’s chest and her arm around his waist.
He wakes up to see Jessica staring down at him. The room is so hot and stuffy that Onew feels like he took a swim in syrup, and reached up to rub his hand across his face.
“What time is it,” he asks, voice hoarse, and Jessica smiles. She’s on her stomach, and reaches up to brush away sticky strand of hair. Onew was notorious for being sweaty.
“Almost seven thirty PM,” she says. “You hungry?”
“I’m hot,” Onew says, wiping his mouth, and Jessica sat up. She’d pulled her hair back into a knot.
“I am too,” she says. “The AC doesn’t work until we start paying the electric bill. But I opened the window, it’s cooler outside.” She looks at it, bare save for the dusty skirt that rims the top of the window, and Onew thinks that at this angle, she’s the most beautiful--striped tank top and blue shorts, sitting cross-legged, slouching. He leans forward and breathes onto her cheek until she turns her heads and he kisses her for a long moment.
She pushes him away, wrinkling her nose and saying, “Go take a shower, you smell all sweaty.”
“You like it,” Onew says, getting off the mattress and stretching, padding down the hallway in search of the bathroom. When he finds it, he deems it so tiny it could pass as a Port-a-Potty.
“It is rather small,” Jessica says, peering in and assessing the extent of Onew’s dismay. “How’s the tap?”
It turns out that the tap is cold and stays cold. The water is icy to the touch and comes out of the showerhead so strong it stings the skin, and Onew turns to look at Jessica with a grimace on his lips. She only looks back helplessly and opens her mouth to say something, but Onew is already pulling her forward into the bathroom with him.
(“Cold showers aren’t too bad,” Jessica muses later as she towels off her wet hair.
“No, not with me they’re not,” Onew says cockily, and Jessica throws her wet towel at his head.
“Who am I supposed to be living with, Lee Jinki or Kim Jonghyun?”)
Dinner is at the Pho downstairs, and Onew thanks the Lord once again that Jessica is a California girl and at least has some money for them to not starve for a month. His stomach has woken up, and it’s screaming for food.
“How’re we going to do this, then?” Jessica asks, resting her chin on her folded hands as they wait for their food to come. “This life, I mean.”
“We need work,” Onew says mimicking her position. “You and I both, we need money to support ourselves, to pay the bills, to pay living fees. That’s a given.”
“Jinki,” Jessica says, “you know what would be awesome?”
There’s a fiery glint in Jessica’s eyes, and he blinks, staring at her for a moment before bringing his hands down to rest on the table.
“What?”
“Going back to school,” Jessica says.
“School, huh,” Jinki says. “Aren’t you a bit old to be going back to school, noona?
“Shut up,” she says. “I want to.”
“Where, though?”
“Don’t know,” she says, and their food comes. She breaks basil into her bowl of noodles and looks thoughtful. “Night school, maybe, I’ll have to work during the day.”
“Whatever you say, noona,” Onew says, laughing when Jessica pouts.
===
Jessica goes out the very next day in search of work; she and Onew separate early in the morning on the agreement to meet back in front of their apartment at noon. Onew hopes his English skills will get him somewhere.
LA is big, he concludes a few hours later. The managers of all sorts of stores nodded and said they might have open spaces, but they didn’t need any employees right now. He tries not to feel disheartened, but fails.
“Hey,” Jessica says, and he sees her coming up to him in her denim shorts and flip-flops. It’s wickedly hot. “Any luck?”
Onew shakes his head, and she shrugs.
“Me neither,” she says. “But a restaurant owner says that one of his waitresses Is going on maternity leave soon, so he put me down for consideration.”
They eat lunch, and then Onew goes out once again to look for work, and he feels jet lag settling into his blood as he trudges down the sidewalk into a Safeway. It has the lowest concentration of Koreans he’s seen today.
When he finally finds the manager and talks to him, the man nods slowly and looks him up and down--does he know him?--and finally says, “We could use another deli worker.”
It’s not brilliant, but Onew accepts it with a grin.
When he finds Jessica again, she tells him with a huge grin she’s found night school.
“It’s a trade school,” she admits. “Computer tech, but that industry is pretty big, so it’ll be useful, I think.”
“You, computers?” Onew says, genuinely surprised. “Really?”
“Don’t judge me,” Jessica says. “Did you find anything?”
“A job at Safeway,” Onew says, grimacing. “Behind the deli counter, but okay, it’s a job, right?”
“Yeah, it’s a job,” she says, lacing her fingers through his. “And now, we must go grocery shopping.”
“I’m sleepy,” he complains.
“Groceries first.”
Onew enjoys cream-of-broccoli soup from the plastic container that night, and it’s honestly not that bad. He scrapes the sides clean, anyway.
“You sure have a large appetite for someone who was complaining about jet lag earlier,” Jessica observes.
“It passed,” Onew says, yawning. “When it sees food, at least.”
“We should get to bed, work starts tomorrow morning for you,” she says, prodding Onew out of his chair, “and I have school tomorrow night.”
“Fine, fine,” Onew growls, and goes down the hallway to take a shower. He falls onto the mattress and is instantly asleep; later, he wakes up a moment when Jessica slides in next to him.
===
Deli work isn’t a walk in the park, Onew learns soon enough.
He wears a bright red apron and a khaki linen shirt and an old pair of his skinnies, and he feels more out of place than he’s felt since walking into SM auditions. His colleague keeps eyeing him with an unfathomable look and he bites down accusatory phrases.
He learns to work in the back, to keep stock food cool and to check the freezers and refrigerators and if help the cooks. He has to help orders at the counter and the menu and how to smile and nod even when the customer is being beyond obnoxious.
He finally breaks during a lull after the lunch rush and he turns and asks his coworker, “Why are you staring at me like that?”
Judging from the way she jumps a little, she wasn’t expecting him to speak, never mind speak English. “Uh,” she says, fidgeting, “are you seriously Lee Jinki of SHINee?”
Onew straightens up from the mop and bucket and raises his eyebrows. “Uhm…yeah, I am,” he said awkwardly, running a hand across the back of his neck. “Yeah, I’m Lee Jinki.” He’s surprised she says in last-to-first name, the Korean way.
She tugs on her braid--it’s long and blonde, real blonde, and hangs in a straight rope down her back. Onew originally thought her eyes are blue, but under the fluorescence, he sees they’re green, or kind of turquoise--the color makes a pang run through him.
“Wow,” she says. “Wow, that’s…”
Onew waits for her to finish, and she says, “I can’t believe I’m working with you.”
“What do you mean?” Onew says, hoping his accent isn’t too thick.
“I’ve heard things about you,” she says. “My friends, they’re huge fans. Do you know how much they cried when you guys broke up?”
Onew laughs a little, and says, “Don’t tell them you work with me, they’ll kill you to come after me.”
“Oh, I won’t,” she says, nodding. “You can trust me on that.”
Working with her is a lot less awkward after that. He learns that her name is Rachel, she has two brothers, and she’s attending UCLA in the fall. Onew finds it extremely funny to watch her eyes widen when he sings during break.
“Man, you’re really good,” she says, taking a swig of Pepsi and stretching. “Why are you here, of all places?”
“It feels like familiar ground, you know,” Onew says. “It--it is easier for us to…interact with everyone.”
“Us?” she asks. “Are the others here, too?”
“No,” Onew says. “Me and my…” He doesn’t know what to call Jessica. Girlfriend? He never really thought about it, but she always seemed to be more than just a ‘girlfriend.’
“Girlfriend?” Rachel asks, predictably. “Who?”
“Uh,” Onew says, weighing whether or not he should tell. “Her name is Jessica.”
Her cell phone beeps then, signaling the end of break, and they go back to work. It’s interesting, Onew thinks as he hands a mother with two babies in a stroller a box of rotisserie chicken, to live like this.
When Onew trips back to his apartment (jet lag has just hit, and it’s doing its worst), he opens the door and almost groans at how stuffy it is. There’s a note taped to the fridge, though, and his heart flutters a little when he sees Jessica’s messy handwriting.
There’s some food in the fridge, hope you like microwavable spaghetti >.< Sorry about that! I’ll get home around eleven, so don’t wait up for me. -Jess
Onew pulls open the fridge door then, peering in and pulling on the Lean Cuisine on the top shelf. He stabs a couple of holes in it and settles down on the couch in front of the TV, secretly thankful again that Isabelle’s friend had left most of the furniture and the TV; it felt almost like an awkward mix between a dorm, home, and a hotel.
Onew watches something called Glee (which, to his general interest, contains a considerable amount of singing) as he eats his dinner. It’s somewhat lonely by himself, and he suddenly is able to picture Minho sitting next to him, Jonghyun and Taemin causing general ruckus and Key shouting from the kitchen over the running faucet.
He misses it, he won’t lie. But he has Jessica, and that’s all he really asks for.
Onew determinedly stays awake till about ten thirty and around that time he’s holding his eyelids open with his thumbs, chanting at himself to stay awake until Jessica got home. When she finally does, she looks so tired that her entire being seems a little smaller.
“Jess,” Onew says, standing up immediately to help her relieve a burden of books. “You look like hell, just go to bed.”
“I told you not to wait up,” she says, and promptly passes out right on the doormat. Onew clumsily catches and supports her around his armload of books, which he decides to dump on the floor.
Jessica is light, and she feels even lighter nowadays, as he carries her to their bed and sets her down. Her hair is plastered to her forehead with sweat, and Onew inwardly curses his inability to find a better paying job so they can start paying the electric bill already. But they’ve been here for all of two--three?--days, so he can’t do much anyway.
He watches her sleep for a second, then straightens up to go clean up the mess in the living room when Jessica grabs the hem of his shirt and tugs on it. Onew gets the message and eases down onto the bed next to her. She snuggles up to him and hugs him around his waist. Even now, eight years after Onew kissed her cheek backstage, he still feels his heart trip over itself in his chest.
And they live like that, for a while.
===
It happens sometime at the end of August, for the most stupid reason.
Onew comes home to see Jessica standing in the kitchen, looking almost manic with an expression he can’t quite figure out, and the first she does, or says, when he steps in is,
“Why didn’t you answer your phone?”
Onew has a very good reason for not answering his phone, because his manager was telling him off for leaving a fridge open by accident and damaging a good portion of the stored dough. Picking up his phone would not have been advisable when a man probably twice Onew’s weight was yelling at him. He’d felt it, though, he’d definitely felt his phone vibrating against his back pocket.
“I was busy,” Onew mumbles, and Jessica lets out an exasperated sigh.
“Do you have any idea how worried I was?” she half-screams. “I waited here until you got home! That means I miss class tonight, and my finals for the summer session start next week!”
“I was trying not to lose my job!” Onew shouts back. “What was I supposed to do, say ‘Oh hey boss hold up, let me talk on the phone for a sec’? I can’t lose this job, what else could I do?”
“Oh, and you couldn’t call me after he was done--why was he yelling at you anyway?”
“Did something wrong,” Onew said aside. “It’s not important, I was just trying to keep my job to keep us supported!”
“I realize that, but you could have called me after he was done with you,” Jessica says, voice icy. “You don’t think about others’ feelings, do you? You never do!”
“You’re fucking kidding!” Onew shouts. He knows she’s worn out thin and her stress levels are off the charts, because she’s been bitching about finals and not being able to get enough sleep before she has to take off for morning shift at the restaurant, he knows, but his mouth works before his brain can think and he’s shouting louder than she is. “I always put you first! Before anything, I never go to sleep before you come home, I always wait!”
“And that amounts to something?” she says, voice dripping with sarcasm so stinging Onew cringes. “And what does that do?”
“It’s not supposed to do anything except show that I care!” Onew shouts, wanting to throw something at her. Jessica screams in frustration and storms out, swinging ponytail of fading blonde disappearing behind their bedroom door with a slam.
Onew groans and crouches to the floor on the balls of his feet, digging his fists into his eyes as he cusses under his breath. Never, really, has he gotten this mad at Jessica (he has gotten this mad, however, at something really stupid in the SHINee dorms, which resulted in him and Key destroying the bedroom as they threw every object they could pick up).
So Onew does what any guy would do, really--he stand up, wipes his mouth, and walks right back out. Maybe that other coworker-friend of his, that somewhat awkwardly tall but muscular Chinese boy named Alec, would be a good person to talk to. He hopes that Alec is good at relationship advice, but he somewhat doubts that a boy obsessed with Call of Duty would be.
But he can’t call Key or Jonghyun or any of the others, even if it is, already about ten AM over in Korea--he doesn’t know their schedules, and he doesn’t even know if his phone works here (mental note: go down to that T-Mobile store tomorrow). He wants to, though, more than anything, but he can’t go running back into the arms of safety whenever something difficult came his way. He has to remind himself that he can’t depend on Key or Jonghyun or Minho anymore, and he has to be the one Jessica depends on. He’s not big into the whole alpha male thing, because Jessica isn’t Ice Princess for nothing, but right now, she needs someone to lean on, too.
But Onew is quite, quite sure he’s not welcome right now, so he makes sure to lock the door behind him before he steps back out into the hallway. For a while, he stands there, feeling sweat bead on his forehead before he finally screws the rules and goes back into Safeway.
“Jinki,” Rachel says, raising her eyebrows when she sees him coming back. “What’s up?”
“Can I use your cell phone?”
The question catches her off guard, but she pulls it out of her back pocket. “Why?”
“You don’t mind if I make an international call on this, right?” he asks without answering her first question.
“Yeah, I suppose…” she says warily. “Did something happen? You look kind of--”
“I’m fine,” he says quickly, and steps back out with her Samsung and pushes it open. Her wallpaper is a picture of a Rottweiler, maybe her own. Onew prays to the Lord he remembers the number correctly as he punches it in.
“Hello?”
For a second, Onew is so stunned that there was an answer, he says nothing. Only when there’s another irritated “Hello?” on the other end that he says, “Jonghyun?”
“Hyung!” Jonghyun says, and he hears something fall in the background, Jonghyun cussing. “Hyung, what’s wrong? Where are you? Why are you calling?”
“Jessica and I…”
“Got into an argument,” Jonghyun says all-too-knowingly, and Onew makes a face at the cockiness in his voice. “Ah, young love--”
“Jonghyun, if you’re going to tease me, I’m going to hang up now,” Onew says flatly.
“No, don’t! Oh man, okay, uhm, what went on?”
So Onew sits down on the bench next to the exit and rants into the receiver in rapid-fire Korean, and when Jonghyun advises him, laughs at him, teases and insults and makes fun of him, Onew almost smiles because it’s just like the old days.
“Shit, gotta bounce,” Jonghyun said. “Talk to you later, hyung!”
Onew hangs up and returns the phone back to Rachel, thanking her and walking back out. Jonghyun may have been an over-emotional kid half the time Onew knew him, but he knew something when it came to relationships, he had to give Jonghyun that much.
Although he was probably going to skip the make-up sex part tonight.
===
A/N: Split up into two parts because I’m too lazy to write it all tonight. Which also means this isn’t beta’d, nyeeeeh.
Cross posted to 19_blue_roses