Up & Down
Pairing: Minho/Key (Gwiboon)
Rating: NC-17 (overall)
Length: 8/9
Summary: Gwiboon is having a horrible day. It’s snowing (she hates snow), it’s cold (she hates the cold), and she forgot her scraper for her frozen block of ice that is posing as a car. When a handsome stranger saves her sanity (and her designer boots), she starts to question everything she knows.
[ Previous]
“I can’t believe you talked me into this.” Gwiboon grumbled, smoothing out her dress, the ruffles refusing to behave around the knees as she tried to fix them as they drove to Daegu to go visit her mother.
“You talked yourself into it,” Minho said, checking over his shoulder before merging onto the freeway.
She stuck her tongue out maturely at him as she adjusted the seatbelt on her chest and went back to work on her ruffles, “Ugh I should have brought my straightener…”
“To do your hair in the car?” Minho asked.
“No, to tame these ruffles, they’re being a bitch,” she grumbled, huffing and kicking her feet in a mini-tantrum before huffing and sinking down in her chair.
“I have a straightener in my bag, we can fix them at a rest stop,” Eunsook piped up from the back seat, her voice sweet and always helpful.
“Thanks unnie,” Gwiboon smiled gratefully, turning around in her seat to thank the older girl.
“Yeah, thanks unnie~” Jonghyun mocked Gwiboon from his seat behind Minho, and Gwiboon reached out to punch him in the knee, making him cringe and whine, reaching out to punch her in the shoulder, which made her howl and unbuckle herself so she could launch herself between the two front seats and into the back.
Jonghyun shrieked girlishly and Eunsook bumped her head on the Oh Shit handle in her attempt to get out of Gwiboon’s way and Minho swerved onto the rumble strip - he grabbed Gwiboon by the belt under her bust and yanked her back, seating her properly and buckling her with the practiced ease of a man that might have been a babysitter at one time, as he focused on the road and got into the middle lane. Gwiboon crossed her arms over her chest and glowered while looking out the window, wondering how on Earth she let Minho not only got her to let him meet her mom - but how he managed to get it to become a family trip and let Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dumb come along as well she had no idea. Being stuck in a car with these three was going to make her go insane.
She started clawing pathetically at the window, “Can we go home yet?”
“Don’t do that you’ll scratch the glass,” Minho said as he cautiously changed lanes to pass a slow driver.
“You drive like a grandpa! We’ll never get to Daegu by dinner!”
“It’s noon you retard we’ll be there before dinner,” Jonghyun rolled his eyes from the backseat.
“You shut your mouth you ass wad or else I will come back there!” Gwiboon said, taking off her shoe and waving it threateningly, making Jonghyun shrink a bit and hold up Eunsook’s purse in lieu of a shield.
“Gwiboon,” Minho put his hand on Gwiboon’s thigh and she sent him a murderous glare - he retracted his hand and looked into the rear view mirror to get Jonghyun’s attention. “Hyung. Guys, just behave for a few hours ok? You have the rest of the weekend to fight but please don’t cause a car accident.”
“Oh great now she’ll just burn down mom’s house,” Jonghyun grumbled.
“You started the fire last time!” Gwiboon shrieked.
Minho rubbed at his temples and Eunsook did her best to not suggest the license plate game.
--
They made it to the Kim residence with time to kill before dinner, like Jonghyun had said, much to Gwiboon’s chagrin. She had wanted to get there, have dinner and get out as quickly as possible - she had wanted to dump off Jonghyun and Eunsook so her and Minho could drive all the way back to Seoul but nope, now they had to stay and chit chat. When Gwiboon had told her mother the other day that she was bringing over someone for her to meet her mother had been ecstatic, she had instantly said dinner and a weekend and this and that and bring photo albums and a camera and is he handsome and blah blah blah and God Gwiboon really hoped that she could pull this off without her mother picking up anything weird.
Because in all actuality, her mother was weird enough.
Gwiboon paced back and forth on the sidewalk in front of the house as Jonghyun and Eunsook took their luggage inside the house, not even waiting for the newlyweds. Minho got out and grabbed his bag and Gwiboon’s suitcase, setting them on the sidewalk and licking his lips, looking a bit unsure, and Gwiboon huffed and stomped her foot, wringing her hands.
“Say something comforting!” she snapped.
“You look great?” he hazarded.
“I’m not impressing your parents,” she whined.
“… I look great?” he tried again.
She punched him in the arm, “You are seriously such a jerk sometimes, I just can’t take it.”
He chuckled and rubbed his arm, “Come on, we can’t keep her waiting forever.”
“Alright, just,” she sighed and hitched her purse up higher on her shoulder, tossing her hair over her back before pulling it back to her front before tossing it again and repeating the process before deciding on something in the middle. “Just… I don’t know. Expect the unexpected, ok?”
“Ok,” Minho said, leaning over and kissing Gwiboon’s cheek gently.
“And don’t do that! It’s weird,” she said, wrinkling her nose and pushing at Minho, trying to hide her smile as she skipped up the cement sidewalk to the porch steps and up into the tiny house that she had once called home a long, long time ago.
There was already commotion inside when they entered, Jonghyun being loudly accosted for tasting the food before it was put on the table, Eunsook’s laughter ringing out along with Mrs. Kim’s yelling that had its own chorus of laughter that followed. Gwiboon motioned for Minho to put their bags down in the entryway, and she took a deep breath before turning to smooth out Minho’s sweater, her palms running over his chest and her fingers spreading, looking up at him through her lashes, their eyes meeting as she gave him a small, reassuring smile.
“What a hunk!”
Gwiboon leapt away from Minho like he was on fire and folded her hands behind her back and Minho straightened up as Mrs. Kim entered the area. She was… short. And very beautiful for an older woman. Her and Gwiboon shared eyes and cheekbones but their personalities must have been like fire and ice because Mrs. Kim waltzed right up to Minho and started molesting his body, feeling him all over before pulling him down by his ear to look at both eyes, in his ears and up his nose.
“Wow! I didn’t think you had such good taste, Key,” her mother said, clucking her tongue in approval as she let Minho go.
Minho straightened himself out awkwardly, clearing his throat and arching a brow at Gwiboon, who looked like she wanted the banister of the staircase to wrap her up and carry her upstairs and away from her mom.
“Yeah, thanks mom,” Gwiboon said, sounding strung out. “Is dinner ready? We drove for forever.”
“Oh right! Your brother can’t keep his fat fingers out of it, so hurry up.”
“I’m not fat!”
Everyone shuffled into the kitchen and Gwiboon mouthed ‘sorry’ to Minho as they sat down at the cozy round table, a traditional Korean dinner all made and still steaming hot as they helped themselves. Jonghyun started eating right away and Eunsook politely started eating as well, and Mrs. Kim eyed Minho, who was seated directly across from her.
“So Minho, you must be busy with soccer,” Mrs. Kim said as she took a sip of her coffee.
Gwiboon choked a bit, “How did you know he’s a soccer player?”
Mrs. Kim rolled her eyes, “I watch sports Key, do you forget what your mother’s hobbies are? Your beau is the top player in Korea right now, I’m surprised he even has time to come out.”
“The league gave me time off for-” Minho started speaking, but Gwiboon’s heel on his toes made him stop talking abruptly as he coughed violently and cleared his throat, pounding his chest idly and smiling. “- I just have vacation time racked up.”
Gwiboon was counting her lucky stars that her mom didn’t keep up on the tabloids as well as she kept up on her sports.
“I didn’t know soccer worked like that.” Mrs. Kim blinked a few times, before shrugging and returning to eating, redirecting her attention to instead settle on the other couple in the room, pestering Jonghyun about when he was going to pop the question, making Jonghyun whine and Eunsook blush brightly.
The rest of the dinner went rather seamlessly and by the time Gwiboon and Eunsook assigned themselves to dish duty while Jonghyun and Minho offered to shovel Mrs. Kim’s driveway, things were settling down. Mrs. Kim didn’t seem overly suspicious of the sudden relationship and Jonghyun was doing a decent job of keeping his mouth shut, so Gwiboon didn’t have to threaten him every two minutes like she feared she might have to.
“You’re not gonna tell her that you’re married?” Eunsook asked softly as her and Gwiboon set up a routine for dishes in the kitchen.
Gwiboon shook her head, “I have no idea how she’d respond to that.”
“But she likes him!” Eunsook persisted. “I don’t think she’d react badly at all.”
“Unnie,” Gwiboon whined as she handed over a cleaned plate, “I just don’t want to tell her, ok?”
“Well you could at least take off that rock,” Eunsook gestured towards the wedding ring on Gwiboon’s finger and the fashionista blinked and then balked, surprised that no one had said anything as she set down the sponge and went to take it off.
“Ugh why didn’t anyone tell me I was still wearing it?”
“I thought you knew,” Eunsook said, drying off the plate; the towel slipped in her hands and the dish slipped as well and went crashing to the floor, the sound of the porcelain breaking scaring Gwiboon as she lost her slippery grip on the ring and watched with wide-eyed horror as the expensive wedding ring sailed through the air and then went right down the sink drain with a horrifying clanging sound.
Both women stared at the drain for two seconds.
“OH MY GOD!!” Gwiboon screamed and instantly tried to fit her hand down into the drain frantically, cussing under her breath. “No no no no no no no no!”
Eunsook flailed her hands and did a little dance in her slippers, “Watch your feet, there’s broken shards everywhere!”
“Eunsook I just - that ring probably cost like a million dollars and I just dropped it in the drain oh my God oh my God!” Gwiboon was on the verge of tears as Eunsook danced around and finally got a broom and dust pan, Mrs. Kim entering the kitchen.
“What’s going on?” Mrs. Kim asked, clad in a fuzzy robe and matching slippers, her hair up in curlers.
“I lost - my ring - the drain - oh my God mom!! When did you get a garbage disposal in this sink!!” Gwiboon cried, pulling out her hand and flailing her arms, wailing at the top of her lungs.
“I got it installed a few years ago, why are you freaking out? Just get one of those men in here to get it out-”
“NO!” Gwiboon turned around and grabbed her mother’s robes by the lapels, their noses inches apart, “Minho can not know that I dropped that ring in the drain!”
Mrs. Kim and Eunsook both blinked, “Why?”
“Because he’ll make fun of me, that’s why!” Gwiboon shrieked, flailing her arms again and turning around, throwing her hair up in a ponytail. “Eunsook go get me the toolbox! I’m cutting this fish open.”
Eunsook edged along the wall slowly, carefully, before ducking into the garage, while Mrs. Kim lit a cigarette and moved into the living room.
“My life was easier when all you brats were out of my house.”
--
Minho and Jonghyun walked in from the cold, ready for steaming mugs of cocoa and affectionate girlfriends and maybe a waiting movie. Instead, they were greeted with Gwiboon underneath the sink, the kitchen half-flooded with water, a leak spraying from one of the pipes under the sink, and Eunsook holding an umbrella.
“… Where’s mom,” Jonghyun asked.
“In the living room,” Eunsook pointed and smiled lightly.
Jonghyun sighed and trudged into the living room, and Minho moved into the kitchen, leaving his boots on as he crouched next to Gwiboon, who was getting soaked by all of the water that was flooding out of the leak that she was trying to fix with the monkey wrench. Her pretty floral print, ruffly dress was soaked and not so ruffly anymore, clinging to her awkwardly, her hair sticking to her neck and her mascara smeared a bit to run down her cheeks, as she tried to ignore Minho’s existence.
“What are you doing?” Minho asked, just out of range from the spurts of water.
“Fixing a leak,” Gwiboon answered, talking like the whole kitchen wasn’t flooded.
“This leak wasn’t here when we first went outside,” Minho said.
“Well you see I went and got a monkey wrench and when I twisted the pipe here, it disconnected and started to leak.” Gwiboon said, grunting as she turned the pipe clockwise, tightening it up and stopping the water flow.
“Leaks tend to happen when you mess with water lines before, you know, turning the water off first,” Minho said, standing up and getting out of the way as Gwiboon threw the monkey wrench into the tool box as she sat up, her bare feet slapping lightly on the floor as she stood and sighed at the sink.
“I’m sorry…” she said, feeling every ounce of fight leave her.
“For what?” Minho said with a small smile.
She held up her left hand.
Minho looked at it with an arched brow.
She wiggled her fingers.
He stared.
She wrinkled her nose and rolled her eyes before sticking her ring finger up his nose, “I dropped our wedding ring down the fucking drain!”
“What?”
“WHAT?!”
Minho’s question was drowned out by Gwiboon’s mother entering the kitchen, Jonghyun holding her arm so she didn’t slip on the mess. Gwiboon and Minho both turned, shocked and a bit stunned, trying to figure out if they could cover up what Gwiboon had just said but they both knew that she had yelled it pretty loud.
“Mom, I-”
“You two are married? And you didn’t tell me?” Mrs. Kim asked, looking between the newlyweds.
The couple hung their heads and exchanged glances, before looking down at the floor and bowing. Gwiboon started to bend to get down on her knees and properly apologize - she knew she had disgraced and disrespected her mother with this rash decision, she knew it was wrong, and -
“Jonghyun! Why can’t your lazy ass ask Eunsook to get married! She’s a perfectly good woman! Your bitch of a sister got married before you did! Do you think I’m going to let this slip by?”
Gwiboon almost fell over mid-bow, Minho catching her before she could, wet strands of her hair falling in her eyes as she watched her mom take a curler out of her hair and throw it at Jonghyun’s forehead.
“I thought you would get married before your sister! She beat you to the punch at yet another thing! First she graduated high school! Then she got a college degree! She’s the perfect child! You’re worthless! And fat!”
“Mom!” Jonghyun raised an arm up to block another curler. “I’m not fat!”
Eunsook sighed and folded up her umbrella, reaching under the sink into the opened garbage disposal to fish around for a second, pulling out Gwiboon’s ring and rinsing it off before handing it to her with a small smile.
“You guys are already out of town,” Eunsook said as Mrs. Kim continued to pelt Jonghyun in the background with more curlers, Jonghyun shrinking into a corner and fighting her off with a stool. “Why don’t you get a head start on that honey moon?”
Soaking wet from head to toe, Gwiboon took the ring from Eunsook and smiled as she took the dirtied ring and put it on her finger, somehow finding it prettier with less shine as she looked up at Minho. He took her left hand gently and leaned down to kiss her lips softly, before pulling her out of the kitchen and towards the entry way.
“Come on,” he said, as he picked up their bags and kicked Gwiboon’s shoes to her. “I owe you this.”
“No,” she said as she toed on her shoes, opening the door and shivering from the cold breeze on her damp body, tossing her wet hair over her shoulder and heading outside, nearly skipping to the car and turning around to walk backwards, calling out to Minho. “I owe you this~”
[ Next]
Rating: NC-17 (overall)
Length: 8/9
Summary: Gwiboon is having a horrible day. It’s snowing (she hates snow), it’s cold (she hates the cold), and she forgot her scraper for her frozen block of ice that is posing as a car. When a handsome stranger saves her sanity (and her designer boots), she starts to question everything she knows.
[ Previous]
“I can’t believe you talked me into this.” Gwiboon grumbled, smoothing out her dress, the ruffles refusing to behave around the knees as she tried to fix them as they drove to Daegu to go visit her mother.
“You talked yourself into it,” Minho said, checking over his shoulder before merging onto the freeway.
She stuck her tongue out maturely at him as she adjusted the seatbelt on her chest and went back to work on her ruffles, “Ugh I should have brought my straightener…”
“To do your hair in the car?” Minho asked.
“No, to tame these ruffles, they’re being a bitch,” she grumbled, huffing and kicking her feet in a mini-tantrum before huffing and sinking down in her chair.
“I have a straightener in my bag, we can fix them at a rest stop,” Eunsook piped up from the back seat, her voice sweet and always helpful.
“Thanks unnie,” Gwiboon smiled gratefully, turning around in her seat to thank the older girl.
“Yeah, thanks unnie~” Jonghyun mocked Gwiboon from his seat behind Minho, and Gwiboon reached out to punch him in the knee, making him cringe and whine, reaching out to punch her in the shoulder, which made her howl and unbuckle herself so she could launch herself between the two front seats and into the back.
Jonghyun shrieked girlishly and Eunsook bumped her head on the Oh Shit handle in her attempt to get out of Gwiboon’s way and Minho swerved onto the rumble strip - he grabbed Gwiboon by the belt under her bust and yanked her back, seating her properly and buckling her with the practiced ease of a man that might have been a babysitter at one time, as he focused on the road and got into the middle lane. Gwiboon crossed her arms over her chest and glowered while looking out the window, wondering how on Earth she let Minho not only got her to let him meet her mom - but how he managed to get it to become a family trip and let Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dumb come along as well she had no idea. Being stuck in a car with these three was going to make her go insane.
She started clawing pathetically at the window, “Can we go home yet?”
“Don’t do that you’ll scratch the glass,” Minho said as he cautiously changed lanes to pass a slow driver.
“You drive like a grandpa! We’ll never get to Daegu by dinner!”
“It’s noon you retard we’ll be there before dinner,” Jonghyun rolled his eyes from the backseat.
“You shut your mouth you ass wad or else I will come back there!” Gwiboon said, taking off her shoe and waving it threateningly, making Jonghyun shrink a bit and hold up Eunsook’s purse in lieu of a shield.
“Gwiboon,” Minho put his hand on Gwiboon’s thigh and she sent him a murderous glare - he retracted his hand and looked into the rear view mirror to get Jonghyun’s attention. “Hyung. Guys, just behave for a few hours ok? You have the rest of the weekend to fight but please don’t cause a car accident.”
“Oh great now she’ll just burn down mom’s house,” Jonghyun grumbled.
“You started the fire last time!” Gwiboon shrieked.
Minho rubbed at his temples and Eunsook did her best to not suggest the license plate game.
--
They made it to the Kim residence with time to kill before dinner, like Jonghyun had said, much to Gwiboon’s chagrin. She had wanted to get there, have dinner and get out as quickly as possible - she had wanted to dump off Jonghyun and Eunsook so her and Minho could drive all the way back to Seoul but nope, now they had to stay and chit chat. When Gwiboon had told her mother the other day that she was bringing over someone for her to meet her mother had been ecstatic, she had instantly said dinner and a weekend and this and that and bring photo albums and a camera and is he handsome and blah blah blah and God Gwiboon really hoped that she could pull this off without her mother picking up anything weird.
Because in all actuality, her mother was weird enough.
Gwiboon paced back and forth on the sidewalk in front of the house as Jonghyun and Eunsook took their luggage inside the house, not even waiting for the newlyweds. Minho got out and grabbed his bag and Gwiboon’s suitcase, setting them on the sidewalk and licking his lips, looking a bit unsure, and Gwiboon huffed and stomped her foot, wringing her hands.
“Say something comforting!” she snapped.
“You look great?” he hazarded.
“I’m not impressing your parents,” she whined.
“… I look great?” he tried again.
She punched him in the arm, “You are seriously such a jerk sometimes, I just can’t take it.”
He chuckled and rubbed his arm, “Come on, we can’t keep her waiting forever.”
“Alright, just,” she sighed and hitched her purse up higher on her shoulder, tossing her hair over her back before pulling it back to her front before tossing it again and repeating the process before deciding on something in the middle. “Just… I don’t know. Expect the unexpected, ok?”
“Ok,” Minho said, leaning over and kissing Gwiboon’s cheek gently.
“And don’t do that! It’s weird,” she said, wrinkling her nose and pushing at Minho, trying to hide her smile as she skipped up the cement sidewalk to the porch steps and up into the tiny house that she had once called home a long, long time ago.
There was already commotion inside when they entered, Jonghyun being loudly accosted for tasting the food before it was put on the table, Eunsook’s laughter ringing out along with Mrs. Kim’s yelling that had its own chorus of laughter that followed. Gwiboon motioned for Minho to put their bags down in the entryway, and she took a deep breath before turning to smooth out Minho’s sweater, her palms running over his chest and her fingers spreading, looking up at him through her lashes, their eyes meeting as she gave him a small, reassuring smile.
“What a hunk!”
Gwiboon leapt away from Minho like he was on fire and folded her hands behind her back and Minho straightened up as Mrs. Kim entered the area. She was… short. And very beautiful for an older woman. Her and Gwiboon shared eyes and cheekbones but their personalities must have been like fire and ice because Mrs. Kim waltzed right up to Minho and started molesting his body, feeling him all over before pulling him down by his ear to look at both eyes, in his ears and up his nose.
“Wow! I didn’t think you had such good taste, Key,” her mother said, clucking her tongue in approval as she let Minho go.
Minho straightened himself out awkwardly, clearing his throat and arching a brow at Gwiboon, who looked like she wanted the banister of the staircase to wrap her up and carry her upstairs and away from her mom.
“Yeah, thanks mom,” Gwiboon said, sounding strung out. “Is dinner ready? We drove for forever.”
“Oh right! Your brother can’t keep his fat fingers out of it, so hurry up.”
“I’m not fat!”
Everyone shuffled into the kitchen and Gwiboon mouthed ‘sorry’ to Minho as they sat down at the cozy round table, a traditional Korean dinner all made and still steaming hot as they helped themselves. Jonghyun started eating right away and Eunsook politely started eating as well, and Mrs. Kim eyed Minho, who was seated directly across from her.
“So Minho, you must be busy with soccer,” Mrs. Kim said as she took a sip of her coffee.
Gwiboon choked a bit, “How did you know he’s a soccer player?”
Mrs. Kim rolled her eyes, “I watch sports Key, do you forget what your mother’s hobbies are? Your beau is the top player in Korea right now, I’m surprised he even has time to come out.”
“The league gave me time off for-” Minho started speaking, but Gwiboon’s heel on his toes made him stop talking abruptly as he coughed violently and cleared his throat, pounding his chest idly and smiling. “- I just have vacation time racked up.”
Gwiboon was counting her lucky stars that her mom didn’t keep up on the tabloids as well as she kept up on her sports.
“I didn’t know soccer worked like that.” Mrs. Kim blinked a few times, before shrugging and returning to eating, redirecting her attention to instead settle on the other couple in the room, pestering Jonghyun about when he was going to pop the question, making Jonghyun whine and Eunsook blush brightly.
The rest of the dinner went rather seamlessly and by the time Gwiboon and Eunsook assigned themselves to dish duty while Jonghyun and Minho offered to shovel Mrs. Kim’s driveway, things were settling down. Mrs. Kim didn’t seem overly suspicious of the sudden relationship and Jonghyun was doing a decent job of keeping his mouth shut, so Gwiboon didn’t have to threaten him every two minutes like she feared she might have to.
“You’re not gonna tell her that you’re married?” Eunsook asked softly as her and Gwiboon set up a routine for dishes in the kitchen.
Gwiboon shook her head, “I have no idea how she’d respond to that.”
“But she likes him!” Eunsook persisted. “I don’t think she’d react badly at all.”
“Unnie,” Gwiboon whined as she handed over a cleaned plate, “I just don’t want to tell her, ok?”
“Well you could at least take off that rock,” Eunsook gestured towards the wedding ring on Gwiboon’s finger and the fashionista blinked and then balked, surprised that no one had said anything as she set down the sponge and went to take it off.
“Ugh why didn’t anyone tell me I was still wearing it?”
“I thought you knew,” Eunsook said, drying off the plate; the towel slipped in her hands and the dish slipped as well and went crashing to the floor, the sound of the porcelain breaking scaring Gwiboon as she lost her slippery grip on the ring and watched with wide-eyed horror as the expensive wedding ring sailed through the air and then went right down the sink drain with a horrifying clanging sound.
Both women stared at the drain for two seconds.
“OH MY GOD!!” Gwiboon screamed and instantly tried to fit her hand down into the drain frantically, cussing under her breath. “No no no no no no no no!”
Eunsook flailed her hands and did a little dance in her slippers, “Watch your feet, there’s broken shards everywhere!”
“Eunsook I just - that ring probably cost like a million dollars and I just dropped it in the drain oh my God oh my God!” Gwiboon was on the verge of tears as Eunsook danced around and finally got a broom and dust pan, Mrs. Kim entering the kitchen.
“What’s going on?” Mrs. Kim asked, clad in a fuzzy robe and matching slippers, her hair up in curlers.
“I lost - my ring - the drain - oh my God mom!! When did you get a garbage disposal in this sink!!” Gwiboon cried, pulling out her hand and flailing her arms, wailing at the top of her lungs.
“I got it installed a few years ago, why are you freaking out? Just get one of those men in here to get it out-”
“NO!” Gwiboon turned around and grabbed her mother’s robes by the lapels, their noses inches apart, “Minho can not know that I dropped that ring in the drain!”
Mrs. Kim and Eunsook both blinked, “Why?”
“Because he’ll make fun of me, that’s why!” Gwiboon shrieked, flailing her arms again and turning around, throwing her hair up in a ponytail. “Eunsook go get me the toolbox! I’m cutting this fish open.”
Eunsook edged along the wall slowly, carefully, before ducking into the garage, while Mrs. Kim lit a cigarette and moved into the living room.
“My life was easier when all you brats were out of my house.”
--
Minho and Jonghyun walked in from the cold, ready for steaming mugs of cocoa and affectionate girlfriends and maybe a waiting movie. Instead, they were greeted with Gwiboon underneath the sink, the kitchen half-flooded with water, a leak spraying from one of the pipes under the sink, and Eunsook holding an umbrella.
“… Where’s mom,” Jonghyun asked.
“In the living room,” Eunsook pointed and smiled lightly.
Jonghyun sighed and trudged into the living room, and Minho moved into the kitchen, leaving his boots on as he crouched next to Gwiboon, who was getting soaked by all of the water that was flooding out of the leak that she was trying to fix with the monkey wrench. Her pretty floral print, ruffly dress was soaked and not so ruffly anymore, clinging to her awkwardly, her hair sticking to her neck and her mascara smeared a bit to run down her cheeks, as she tried to ignore Minho’s existence.
“What are you doing?” Minho asked, just out of range from the spurts of water.
“Fixing a leak,” Gwiboon answered, talking like the whole kitchen wasn’t flooded.
“This leak wasn’t here when we first went outside,” Minho said.
“Well you see I went and got a monkey wrench and when I twisted the pipe here, it disconnected and started to leak.” Gwiboon said, grunting as she turned the pipe clockwise, tightening it up and stopping the water flow.
“Leaks tend to happen when you mess with water lines before, you know, turning the water off first,” Minho said, standing up and getting out of the way as Gwiboon threw the monkey wrench into the tool box as she sat up, her bare feet slapping lightly on the floor as she stood and sighed at the sink.
“I’m sorry…” she said, feeling every ounce of fight leave her.
“For what?” Minho said with a small smile.
She held up her left hand.
Minho looked at it with an arched brow.
She wiggled her fingers.
He stared.
She wrinkled her nose and rolled her eyes before sticking her ring finger up his nose, “I dropped our wedding ring down the fucking drain!”
“What?”
“WHAT?!”
Minho’s question was drowned out by Gwiboon’s mother entering the kitchen, Jonghyun holding her arm so she didn’t slip on the mess. Gwiboon and Minho both turned, shocked and a bit stunned, trying to figure out if they could cover up what Gwiboon had just said but they both knew that she had yelled it pretty loud.
“Mom, I-”
“You two are married? And you didn’t tell me?” Mrs. Kim asked, looking between the newlyweds.
The couple hung their heads and exchanged glances, before looking down at the floor and bowing. Gwiboon started to bend to get down on her knees and properly apologize - she knew she had disgraced and disrespected her mother with this rash decision, she knew it was wrong, and -
“Jonghyun! Why can’t your lazy ass ask Eunsook to get married! She’s a perfectly good woman! Your bitch of a sister got married before you did! Do you think I’m going to let this slip by?”
Gwiboon almost fell over mid-bow, Minho catching her before she could, wet strands of her hair falling in her eyes as she watched her mom take a curler out of her hair and throw it at Jonghyun’s forehead.
“I thought you would get married before your sister! She beat you to the punch at yet another thing! First she graduated high school! Then she got a college degree! She’s the perfect child! You’re worthless! And fat!”
“Mom!” Jonghyun raised an arm up to block another curler. “I’m not fat!”
Eunsook sighed and folded up her umbrella, reaching under the sink into the opened garbage disposal to fish around for a second, pulling out Gwiboon’s ring and rinsing it off before handing it to her with a small smile.
“You guys are already out of town,” Eunsook said as Mrs. Kim continued to pelt Jonghyun in the background with more curlers, Jonghyun shrinking into a corner and fighting her off with a stool. “Why don’t you get a head start on that honey moon?”
Soaking wet from head to toe, Gwiboon took the ring from Eunsook and smiled as she took the dirtied ring and put it on her finger, somehow finding it prettier with less shine as she looked up at Minho. He took her left hand gently and leaned down to kiss her lips softly, before pulling her out of the kitchen and towards the entry way.
“Come on,” he said, as he picked up their bags and kicked Gwiboon’s shoes to her. “I owe you this.”
“No,” she said as she toed on her shoes, opening the door and shivering from the cold breeze on her damp body, tossing her wet hair over her shoulder and heading outside, nearly skipping to the car and turning around to walk backwards, calling out to Minho. “I owe you this~”
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