Part 6: May 28, 2014
28 May 2014, Anaheim, 1:43 PM
"Okay. Okayokayokay."
They swerve through some more cars on Highway 5 as they head back into the Los Angeles area, though Yoochun guesses he's still bad at making smooth swerves if the pointed glance Jaejoong shoots him is anything to go by. He apologizes - again - while Jaejoong peels his cheek off the window and picks up the brochures that had fallen to his feet. "You were saying," Yoochun coughs lightly.
"I was saying," Jaejoong repeats emphatically. "Do you want to stay at the Disneyland Hotel, Grand Californian Hotel, or the Paradise Pier?"
To Yoochun, Jaejoong might as well have been speaking alien. "What?" Jaejoong lists off some things again. "... I have no idea what you're saying." This time, Jaejoong waves the brochures in his face and he yelps, smacking Jaejoong's arm away. "Okay, number, number - what number are we on? 112?"
"113," Jaejoong replies calmly, trying to fold another brochure back up and failing miserably.
"Right." Yoochun points a finger in Jaejoong's direction as he keeps his eyes on the road. "Number 113 on the list of things you should not do while I'm driving: smack Disney brochures against my face."
"I was hoping you could read it by touch. You know. Feel the letters through your intimate bond with the English language."
Yoochun snickers. "Is that what you were trying to speak?" Another smack resounds through the car.
"Whatever, Mr. 'So you're from California?'," Jaejoong retorts, imitating Yoochun's conversation with the rental car girl for the 500th time since they got the car.
"Hey, I thought you said you were going to stop. And she giggled at it! Meaning, she thought it was cute. I was cute. Am cute."
"The only thing you are is delusional." Jaejoong glances sideways at him. "She was paid to giggle, Park. Note the lack of lay-age you received."
"Whatever." Yoochun flicks the turn signal and exits off the highway. "Where are we going? I think the park is right up ahead. I see roller coasters."
"Choose a number from one to three," Jaejoong says, in a way like he's been deluded into believing he's making perfect sense when he's in a completely different solar system from making perfect sense.
Yoochun goes ahead and humors him. "Three?"
Yoochun's good behind the wheel, and he's looking out for the welfare of wild South Californian deer and everything, but Jaejoong's next look of wait-I-forgot-to-assign-the-numbers-to-anything is distracting enough to make him swerve again, and piss off a healthy number of wild South Californian drivers. Yoochun changes his mind. Jaejoong is strapped to a comet speeding 20,000 mph away from the solar system of making perfect sense.
"You forgot to assign the numbers to anything, didn't you," Yoochun says.
"Shut up," Jaejoong says diplomatically, rubbing the new cheek print off the window. "Choose again."
Yoochun rolls his eyes. "Three."
"That's Paradise Pier. We're staying at Paradise Pier."
"How do we get to Paradise Pier?"
Jaejoong waves carelessly at the GPS. "Ask your disembodied lady robot friend."
"Her name's Candy."
"Maybe if you'd named her something secretary instead of stripper, she wouldn't keep leading us off-course and into dead ends."
"I said her name's Candy, not Jaejoong."
Jaejoong opens his mouth for a heated protest, then apparently decides that the better course of action is to violate Rule #59 and play It's Raining Men on the car stereo. On full volume. Yoochun has grown kind of attached to Candy, along with his own body, which is why he only spends a maximum of seven seconds thinking about actually carrying out his loud threat to drive their rental off a cliff. Instead, he breaks Rule #13 on his own and initiates a wild, one-handed battle for control over the sound system. A minute later, they've shot four more rules to hell, a squirrel mother has lost its child, and the stereo's crooning if you like Pina Coladas.
28 May 2014, Paradise Pier, 2:25 PM
The drive from freeway exit to hotel entrance is filled with as many wrong turns and near one-way entrances from the wrong direction as their drive down from San Francisco. The turn into the hotel, despite its large sign, is passed by twice and Jaejoong uses a few choice words with Yoochun while they loop around for the third time. Yoochun wonders if he's imagining that Candy actually sounds irritated having to say 'please make a legal U-turn at your soonest convenience' again.
"It would just make more sense if they put the big arrow before the turn and not after it, okay?" Yoochun defends, finally pulling into the correct lot.
"It's the only turn on this block!"
Yoochun blushes. "Shut up."
They pull up to the valet and really, Yoochun was going to help unload the luggage except Jaejoong yells "Oh my god!" first and grabs his wrist the second he steps out of the car, dragging him away. Somewhere.
Somewhere that happens to be the hotel's sign. "Look, rising sun!" Jaejoong exclaims much too happily, pointing at what Yoochun thinks is a damn ugly personification of a sun.
"Uh, hyun--"
"--Let's take a picture with it."
While Jaejoong runs off to harass another poor tourist into playing photographer, Yoochun's face is much like how it might be if someone had just told him he has to teach quantum physics naked: embarrassed with a hint of 'oh my god kill me now'. But he guesses everyone here is a Jaejoong-level tourist though and they all share an understanding that everything is worth taking a picture of, because the guy Jaejoong finds is way too enthusiastic about being asked to undertake such a simple task.
Yoochun makes the required victory symbol and grins anyway as his presence beside the bronze sun with circles for cheeks is immortalized forever. Though the latter may have more to do with the pseudo-photographer's American flag fanny pack more than anything else.
"Yunho-hyung hasn't said anything about the fanny pack, right?" Yoochun asks after Jaejoong's thanked the tourist in repetitive English and has the camera back.
"No, why?"
"Nothing," he replies. "Don't wear it ever."
Jaejoong laughs. "The one Yunho packed doesn't have an American flag on it," he says, like that's Yoochun's problem. It's not.
"The Korean flag isn't any better!"
28 May 2014, Disneyland, 4:54 PM
"Come on," says Jaejoong.
"No," says Yoochun.
"Come on," says Jaejoong again, tugging at Yoochun's hand for emphasis. "Just trust me, okay?"
"Yeah, trust you to give me tea-cup-phobia for the rest of my life."
"I won't even look at the wheel, promise."
"You're crossing your fingers behind your back."
Jaejoong uncrosses his fingers. "Whatever. I'll just ride with Yunho and Changmin and Junsu." He sweeps his arm out to motion at the three-person-wide space they've been hauling around with themselves the whole day, and apologizes in quick, sloppy English to the passing lady who he almost smacks in the face.
Yoochun's eyes crinkle and his mouth widens, which means he's about to laugh. "They don't want to ride with you either, hyung. They want to ditch you to get sick on cotton candy with me."
Jaejoong starts listing on his fingers stubbornly: "Yunho'll ride it with me cause he's Yunho and Changmin'll ride it with me cause he's attracted to things of pure evil and Junsu'll ride it with me just to upstage you."
They're standing in line, five feet away from the Mad Tea Party, and Jaejoong stops chatterbox-ing to stare after the giant spinning tea cups. Just watching them kind of makes him dizzy; it's great. Yoochun's eyes shift and his mouth scrunches to the side, which means he thinks Jaejoong is weird.
"Time for a bargain," Yoochun decides, elbowing him.
Jaejoong elbows back. "You ride with me, I'll get sick on cotton candy with you." He hates cotton candy, and he's pretty sure Yoochun knows that. It's why Yoochun lights up right after Jaejoong finishes saying it.
"We have to ride the pink tea cup," Yoochun still says.
"You have to let me film it."
"Then your cotton candy has to be the radioactive blue kind."
"You suck," finishes Jaejoong.
They do a super secret handshake to seal the deal.
28 May 2014, Disneyland, 4:59 PM
"I hate you," Yoochun chants. "I am never going to forgive you. You are going to die without my forgiveness."
Somehow, he's the one holding the camera and Jaejoong has taken control of the wheel. Trap, Yoochun realizes. 'Hey, Yoochun-ah, show me where the zoom button is' his ass. Jaejoong spins their tea cup even faster, seven years old again, and Yoochun's reminded of why he doesn't let Jaejoong drive.
"Just lie back and think of cotton candy," Jaejoong shouts cheerfully.
Yoochun can't pin Jaejoong with a blank look very well when they're going around in the amusement park equivalent of a blender set on purée, so instead he yells back, "Are you trying to compare this to sex?"
Jaejoong's answer is simply to wave into the camera. The footage is two and a half minutes long so far, 20% Yoochun pretending to do deep breathing exercises, 35% the two of them chatting and making faces as they wait for the ride to start, 15% Yoochun turning the wheel in a way that would shame snails, and 30% Jaejoong moving in and out of the frame, having the time of his life while Yoochun, off-camera, uses Disney-unfriendly language.
"This is fun, right?" Jaejoong laughs wildly.
Yoochun turns the camera around and tells it pointedly, "The cotton candy better be orgasmic."
"Hi Yunho, hi Changmin, hi Junsu," Jaejoong reaches out to turn the camera back and get up close (Yoochun lets him, because it means five seconds of reprieve from spinning, twirly death). "Remember that time my electric mixer went haywire and everyone thought Changmin'd reprogrammed it into a bomb? This is kind of like that time."
Yoochun steals back the camera spotlight. "Meaning Jaejoong-hyung's the mixer and I'm the cake batter that ended up half on the floor and half on the ceiling and half in his hair."
But Jaejoong's still got this huge smile on his face as he shouts for their home viewers, "Don't worry, I'm taking great care of him," and Yoochun figures that if Jaejoong's really enjoying this that much, he's okay with becoming temporary cake batter. There's only about fifteen more seconds left in the ride, anyway.
"Oh," Jaejoong says, like he's just thought of something brilliant, "can we spin the other way too?"
Yoochun lies back and thinks of cotton candy.
28 May 2014, Disneyland, 5:18 PM
They find Minnie Mouse promenading around Mickey's Toontown, and Jaejoong smacks Yoochun's arm to get his attention, pointing with his half-finished radioactive blue cotton candy. "Hey, it's your girlfriend."
"But you're my girlfriend, hyung," Yoochun answers easily.
"I'm your better half," Jaejoong says sweetly, without missing a beat. "Go say hi!"
Yoochun says hi (he has to race a couple five-year-olds to it) and lets Jaejoong proudly introduce him as Micky. Minnie looks amused, though it's hard to tell since her range of expressions is kind of limited, and her giggle when Jaejoong puts his thumbs and index fingers together to form a camera frame could mean anything from 'you two are very cute and handsome' to 'Jesus Christ, deliver me from this hellhole that is my job'.
"I have my own, uh, Minnie at home," Yoochun starts to say in English as Jaejoong's whipping out his cellphone, and Minnie seems to understand because the pose she chooses is one where she plants a big sort-of kiss (her range of facial movement is limited too) on Yoochun's cheek. It was the 'you two are very cute and handsome' giggle, Yoochun decides, and sidles closer, giving all the waiting five-year-olds his winning 'Minnie Mouse totally wants me' smile. Jaejoong doesn't understand the meaning of subtlety, and snickers the entire time he's snapping the picture.
They send it to Changmin captioned with you two look really good together :) after Yoochun kisses Minnie's hand goodbye, just to have Jaejoong smack his arm again and insult his greasy hygiene.
"It's okay," Yoochun soothes, slinging his non-abused arm around Jaejoong's shoulders as they walk off, "you're still my favorite."
28 May 2014, Disneyland, 5:59 PM
The line for Big Thunder Mountain Railroad is painfully long, so Jaejoong retreats to his safe haven of text messaging. Yoochun rolls his eyes.
Jaejoong likes to mumble what he's typing outloud at the same pace he's typing it in, and yeah, he's faster at it than anyone else Yoochun knows, but there's always the inevitable drawn out syllable when Jaejoong's fingers stumble while his mouth has to keep going.
"We miss you," Jaejoong's mumbling. "We miss yooou a lot. Yoochun misses Junsu a whooo-- oops, delete, delete, a whole lot."
"You lie," Yoochun says. "You lie, Kim Jaejoong."
"Exclamation mark, smilie face, send," Jaejoong says.
"Who're you texting?"
"Yunho."
Yoochun takes out his cellphone and texts to Yunho: Jaejoong-hyung's a liar and his tongue is radioactive blue. By the time he's finished, Jaejoong's already mumbling, "Yoochun misses you like the sky misses the sun at night. Send. He misses you like non-alcoholic cocktails miss alco--shit--alcohol. Heart. Send."
In retaliation, Yoochun texts Changmin with the exact location in the apartment where Jaejoong hid the very last bag of Hello Kitty Marshmallows.
The line moves a few inches forward. Yoochun gets a text saying: I need a picture for proof, and takes one of Jaejoong sticking out his tongue to taunt a three-year-old.
28 May 2014, Disneyland, 7:38 PM
Jaejoong feeds Yoochun a French fry and asks, "Hey, are you homesick yet?"
It's a pretty stupid question, because Yoochun is Yoochun, and Yoochun has probably been homesick since hour one on the plane.
Yoochun says, "You know I've been homesick since hour one on the plane," as he battles a packet of ketchup. Jaejoong bites a second French fry in half fiercely to cover up a laugh. For a second he feels a flood of thick relief that Yoochun's here with him, eating greasy food and wearing cutely dumb and dumbly cute Mickey Mouse ears and getting lost on their way to everywhere and freaking out about rides that aren't even that scary, come on.
To show his honest affection, Jaejoong offers Yoochun another fry, then pulls it back and pops it into his own mouth just as Yoochun leans in to take it. Yoochun throws a fry at him in revenge. Jaejoong has to throw three back out of principle.
"Are you?" Yoochun picks up the thread of conversation again, after one of Jaejoong's fries misses its target and almost hits a cute little girl walking by on the nose.
"Uh huh," Jaejoong says, using a fry to doodle carelessly on a napkin. "But this is good, right? A once in a lifetime for-the-history-books kind of thing. Shit, I can't believe we're actually doing this."
Yoochun leans forward to study Jaejoong's napkin. "Yeah, your ketchup portrait of E.T. boggles my mind too."
"Shut up, that's not what I meant," Jaejoong laughs. "And this is Donald Duck, okay? Get it right."
Yoochun adopts Donald Duck's lisp and says, "We're really doing this, hyung."
Jaejoong laughs again, louder, and throws the fry in his hand. This one does hit a cute little girl walking by on the nose. Jaejoong cycles rapidly through Korean and Japanese and Thai and French before he finally lands on "sorry!" in English. The cute little girl flips him off. Yoochun cracks up, and then even harder when Jaejoong throws another fry at the cute little girl's retreating back.
"I'm really glad you're here with me, you know," Yoochun says brightly, once he's caught his breath.
Jaejoong throws a fry at the next cute little girl to walk by and, when she turns around, immediately points at Yoochun.
28 May 2014, Disneyland, 9:25 PM
They rode Splash Mountain a second time in the evening (it was one of the only rides where Yoochun had any advantage over Jaejoong, so naturally he had to milk it for all it was worth), and Jaejoong's hair and shorts are still a little damp. He bounces restlessly on the bench to fight off the chilliness as they wait near Sleeping Beauty's Castle, getting jostled into each other by hordes of passing strangers.
Yoochun swats lightly at Jaejoong's knee. "Sit still, people are looking at us weird."
"I'm cold and people have been looking at us weird all day," Jaejoong protests, but sits still anyway because his butt's getting sore. He glances over. "Hey, stay awake or you'll miss the fireworks."
"You've been dragging me around all day like a cocker spaniel on Ritalin," Yoochun replies, muffling a yawn against the back of his hand. "I know you think I have a body of steel, hyung, but it's actually more under the soft, shiny metal category."
"Weaksauce," Jaejoong says, and slides an arm around Yoochun's waist, because he's cold and because if he doesn't let Yoochun use him as a pillow, Yoochun's going to end up using the scruffy middle-aged man sitting on his right as one instead, and Jaejoong really doesn't think his English is ready for that conversation. "Seriously, stay awake. Disneyland already has a Sleepy Beauty."
"I'm not going to fall asleep," Yoochun says, and yawns again. Jaejoong makes a face. He's going to fall asleep.
But Yoochun's still awake when the castle lights up and the music and narration start. He offers halfhearted translations that Jaejoong suspects are at least a little wrong, because Cinderella would never say, "shit, I'm tired." Jaejoong sings along to a few of the Disney songs under his breath, and shuts up once the fireworks really get going.
They're loud and pretty to watch, and Jaejoong gets a little lost in them, his attention easily commanded by shiny things. Yoochun falls asleep during the finale; Jaejoong feels the sudden weight of Yoochun's head against his shoulder, Yoochun's hair tickling his neck, and knows he's a lost cause. "You're such a liar, Park Yoochun," he accuses under the sound of flaring light, but makes an effort not to move too much. He'll brainstorm fun ways to wake Yoochun up later. For now Jaejoong just stares at the streams of smoke and color above them, and the last bright sputter of fireworks before the sky goes black.
"Okay. Okayokayokay."
They swerve through some more cars on Highway 5 as they head back into the Los Angeles area, though Yoochun guesses he's still bad at making smooth swerves if the pointed glance Jaejoong shoots him is anything to go by. He apologizes - again - while Jaejoong peels his cheek off the window and picks up the brochures that had fallen to his feet. "You were saying," Yoochun coughs lightly.
"I was saying," Jaejoong repeats emphatically. "Do you want to stay at the Disneyland Hotel, Grand Californian Hotel, or the Paradise Pier?"
To Yoochun, Jaejoong might as well have been speaking alien. "What?" Jaejoong lists off some things again. "... I have no idea what you're saying." This time, Jaejoong waves the brochures in his face and he yelps, smacking Jaejoong's arm away. "Okay, number, number - what number are we on? 112?"
"113," Jaejoong replies calmly, trying to fold another brochure back up and failing miserably.
"Right." Yoochun points a finger in Jaejoong's direction as he keeps his eyes on the road. "Number 113 on the list of things you should not do while I'm driving: smack Disney brochures against my face."
"I was hoping you could read it by touch. You know. Feel the letters through your intimate bond with the English language."
Yoochun snickers. "Is that what you were trying to speak?" Another smack resounds through the car.
"Whatever, Mr. 'So you're from California?'," Jaejoong retorts, imitating Yoochun's conversation with the rental car girl for the 500th time since they got the car.
"Hey, I thought you said you were going to stop. And she giggled at it! Meaning, she thought it was cute. I was cute. Am cute."
"The only thing you are is delusional." Jaejoong glances sideways at him. "She was paid to giggle, Park. Note the lack of lay-age you received."
"Whatever." Yoochun flicks the turn signal and exits off the highway. "Where are we going? I think the park is right up ahead. I see roller coasters."
"Choose a number from one to three," Jaejoong says, in a way like he's been deluded into believing he's making perfect sense when he's in a completely different solar system from making perfect sense.
Yoochun goes ahead and humors him. "Three?"
Yoochun's good behind the wheel, and he's looking out for the welfare of wild South Californian deer and everything, but Jaejoong's next look of wait-I-forgot-to-assign-the-numbers-to-anything is distracting enough to make him swerve again, and piss off a healthy number of wild South Californian drivers. Yoochun changes his mind. Jaejoong is strapped to a comet speeding 20,000 mph away from the solar system of making perfect sense.
"You forgot to assign the numbers to anything, didn't you," Yoochun says.
"Shut up," Jaejoong says diplomatically, rubbing the new cheek print off the window. "Choose again."
Yoochun rolls his eyes. "Three."
"That's Paradise Pier. We're staying at Paradise Pier."
"How do we get to Paradise Pier?"
Jaejoong waves carelessly at the GPS. "Ask your disembodied lady robot friend."
"Her name's Candy."
"Maybe if you'd named her something secretary instead of stripper, she wouldn't keep leading us off-course and into dead ends."
"I said her name's Candy, not Jaejoong."
Jaejoong opens his mouth for a heated protest, then apparently decides that the better course of action is to violate Rule #59 and play It's Raining Men on the car stereo. On full volume. Yoochun has grown kind of attached to Candy, along with his own body, which is why he only spends a maximum of seven seconds thinking about actually carrying out his loud threat to drive their rental off a cliff. Instead, he breaks Rule #13 on his own and initiates a wild, one-handed battle for control over the sound system. A minute later, they've shot four more rules to hell, a squirrel mother has lost its child, and the stereo's crooning if you like Pina Coladas.
28 May 2014, Paradise Pier, 2:25 PM
The drive from freeway exit to hotel entrance is filled with as many wrong turns and near one-way entrances from the wrong direction as their drive down from San Francisco. The turn into the hotel, despite its large sign, is passed by twice and Jaejoong uses a few choice words with Yoochun while they loop around for the third time. Yoochun wonders if he's imagining that Candy actually sounds irritated having to say 'please make a legal U-turn at your soonest convenience' again.
"It would just make more sense if they put the big arrow before the turn and not after it, okay?" Yoochun defends, finally pulling into the correct lot.
"It's the only turn on this block!"
Yoochun blushes. "Shut up."
They pull up to the valet and really, Yoochun was going to help unload the luggage except Jaejoong yells "Oh my god!" first and grabs his wrist the second he steps out of the car, dragging him away. Somewhere.
Somewhere that happens to be the hotel's sign. "Look, rising sun!" Jaejoong exclaims much too happily, pointing at what Yoochun thinks is a damn ugly personification of a sun.
"Uh, hyun--"
"--Let's take a picture with it."
While Jaejoong runs off to harass another poor tourist into playing photographer, Yoochun's face is much like how it might be if someone had just told him he has to teach quantum physics naked: embarrassed with a hint of 'oh my god kill me now'. But he guesses everyone here is a Jaejoong-level tourist though and they all share an understanding that everything is worth taking a picture of, because the guy Jaejoong finds is way too enthusiastic about being asked to undertake such a simple task.
Yoochun makes the required victory symbol and grins anyway as his presence beside the bronze sun with circles for cheeks is immortalized forever. Though the latter may have more to do with the pseudo-photographer's American flag fanny pack more than anything else.
"Yunho-hyung hasn't said anything about the fanny pack, right?" Yoochun asks after Jaejoong's thanked the tourist in repetitive English and has the camera back.
"No, why?"
"Nothing," he replies. "Don't wear it ever."
Jaejoong laughs. "The one Yunho packed doesn't have an American flag on it," he says, like that's Yoochun's problem. It's not.
"The Korean flag isn't any better!"
28 May 2014, Disneyland, 4:54 PM
"Come on," says Jaejoong.
"No," says Yoochun.
"Come on," says Jaejoong again, tugging at Yoochun's hand for emphasis. "Just trust me, okay?"
"Yeah, trust you to give me tea-cup-phobia for the rest of my life."
"I won't even look at the wheel, promise."
"You're crossing your fingers behind your back."
Jaejoong uncrosses his fingers. "Whatever. I'll just ride with Yunho and Changmin and Junsu." He sweeps his arm out to motion at the three-person-wide space they've been hauling around with themselves the whole day, and apologizes in quick, sloppy English to the passing lady who he almost smacks in the face.
Yoochun's eyes crinkle and his mouth widens, which means he's about to laugh. "They don't want to ride with you either, hyung. They want to ditch you to get sick on cotton candy with me."
Jaejoong starts listing on his fingers stubbornly: "Yunho'll ride it with me cause he's Yunho and Changmin'll ride it with me cause he's attracted to things of pure evil and Junsu'll ride it with me just to upstage you."
They're standing in line, five feet away from the Mad Tea Party, and Jaejoong stops chatterbox-ing to stare after the giant spinning tea cups. Just watching them kind of makes him dizzy; it's great. Yoochun's eyes shift and his mouth scrunches to the side, which means he thinks Jaejoong is weird.
"Time for a bargain," Yoochun decides, elbowing him.
Jaejoong elbows back. "You ride with me, I'll get sick on cotton candy with you." He hates cotton candy, and he's pretty sure Yoochun knows that. It's why Yoochun lights up right after Jaejoong finishes saying it.
"We have to ride the pink tea cup," Yoochun still says.
"You have to let me film it."
"Then your cotton candy has to be the radioactive blue kind."
"You suck," finishes Jaejoong.
They do a super secret handshake to seal the deal.
28 May 2014, Disneyland, 4:59 PM
"I hate you," Yoochun chants. "I am never going to forgive you. You are going to die without my forgiveness."
Somehow, he's the one holding the camera and Jaejoong has taken control of the wheel. Trap, Yoochun realizes. 'Hey, Yoochun-ah, show me where the zoom button is' his ass. Jaejoong spins their tea cup even faster, seven years old again, and Yoochun's reminded of why he doesn't let Jaejoong drive.
"Just lie back and think of cotton candy," Jaejoong shouts cheerfully.
Yoochun can't pin Jaejoong with a blank look very well when they're going around in the amusement park equivalent of a blender set on purée, so instead he yells back, "Are you trying to compare this to sex?"
Jaejoong's answer is simply to wave into the camera. The footage is two and a half minutes long so far, 20% Yoochun pretending to do deep breathing exercises, 35% the two of them chatting and making faces as they wait for the ride to start, 15% Yoochun turning the wheel in a way that would shame snails, and 30% Jaejoong moving in and out of the frame, having the time of his life while Yoochun, off-camera, uses Disney-unfriendly language.
"This is fun, right?" Jaejoong laughs wildly.
Yoochun turns the camera around and tells it pointedly, "The cotton candy better be orgasmic."
"Hi Yunho, hi Changmin, hi Junsu," Jaejoong reaches out to turn the camera back and get up close (Yoochun lets him, because it means five seconds of reprieve from spinning, twirly death). "Remember that time my electric mixer went haywire and everyone thought Changmin'd reprogrammed it into a bomb? This is kind of like that time."
Yoochun steals back the camera spotlight. "Meaning Jaejoong-hyung's the mixer and I'm the cake batter that ended up half on the floor and half on the ceiling and half in his hair."
But Jaejoong's still got this huge smile on his face as he shouts for their home viewers, "Don't worry, I'm taking great care of him," and Yoochun figures that if Jaejoong's really enjoying this that much, he's okay with becoming temporary cake batter. There's only about fifteen more seconds left in the ride, anyway.
"Oh," Jaejoong says, like he's just thought of something brilliant, "can we spin the other way too?"
Yoochun lies back and thinks of cotton candy.
28 May 2014, Disneyland, 5:18 PM
They find Minnie Mouse promenading around Mickey's Toontown, and Jaejoong smacks Yoochun's arm to get his attention, pointing with his half-finished radioactive blue cotton candy. "Hey, it's your girlfriend."
"But you're my girlfriend, hyung," Yoochun answers easily.
"I'm your better half," Jaejoong says sweetly, without missing a beat. "Go say hi!"
Yoochun says hi (he has to race a couple five-year-olds to it) and lets Jaejoong proudly introduce him as Micky. Minnie looks amused, though it's hard to tell since her range of expressions is kind of limited, and her giggle when Jaejoong puts his thumbs and index fingers together to form a camera frame could mean anything from 'you two are very cute and handsome' to 'Jesus Christ, deliver me from this hellhole that is my job'.
"I have my own, uh, Minnie at home," Yoochun starts to say in English as Jaejoong's whipping out his cellphone, and Minnie seems to understand because the pose she chooses is one where she plants a big sort-of kiss (her range of facial movement is limited too) on Yoochun's cheek. It was the 'you two are very cute and handsome' giggle, Yoochun decides, and sidles closer, giving all the waiting five-year-olds his winning 'Minnie Mouse totally wants me' smile. Jaejoong doesn't understand the meaning of subtlety, and snickers the entire time he's snapping the picture.
They send it to Changmin captioned with you two look really good together :) after Yoochun kisses Minnie's hand goodbye, just to have Jaejoong smack his arm again and insult his greasy hygiene.
"It's okay," Yoochun soothes, slinging his non-abused arm around Jaejoong's shoulders as they walk off, "you're still my favorite."
28 May 2014, Disneyland, 5:59 PM
The line for Big Thunder Mountain Railroad is painfully long, so Jaejoong retreats to his safe haven of text messaging. Yoochun rolls his eyes.
Jaejoong likes to mumble what he's typing outloud at the same pace he's typing it in, and yeah, he's faster at it than anyone else Yoochun knows, but there's always the inevitable drawn out syllable when Jaejoong's fingers stumble while his mouth has to keep going.
"We miss you," Jaejoong's mumbling. "We miss yooou a lot. Yoochun misses Junsu a whooo-- oops, delete, delete, a whole lot."
"You lie," Yoochun says. "You lie, Kim Jaejoong."
"Exclamation mark, smilie face, send," Jaejoong says.
"Who're you texting?"
"Yunho."
Yoochun takes out his cellphone and texts to Yunho: Jaejoong-hyung's a liar and his tongue is radioactive blue. By the time he's finished, Jaejoong's already mumbling, "Yoochun misses you like the sky misses the sun at night. Send. He misses you like non-alcoholic cocktails miss alco--shit--alcohol. Heart. Send."
In retaliation, Yoochun texts Changmin with the exact location in the apartment where Jaejoong hid the very last bag of Hello Kitty Marshmallows.
The line moves a few inches forward. Yoochun gets a text saying: I need a picture for proof, and takes one of Jaejoong sticking out his tongue to taunt a three-year-old.
28 May 2014, Disneyland, 7:38 PM
Jaejoong feeds Yoochun a French fry and asks, "Hey, are you homesick yet?"
It's a pretty stupid question, because Yoochun is Yoochun, and Yoochun has probably been homesick since hour one on the plane.
Yoochun says, "You know I've been homesick since hour one on the plane," as he battles a packet of ketchup. Jaejoong bites a second French fry in half fiercely to cover up a laugh. For a second he feels a flood of thick relief that Yoochun's here with him, eating greasy food and wearing cutely dumb and dumbly cute Mickey Mouse ears and getting lost on their way to everywhere and freaking out about rides that aren't even that scary, come on.
To show his honest affection, Jaejoong offers Yoochun another fry, then pulls it back and pops it into his own mouth just as Yoochun leans in to take it. Yoochun throws a fry at him in revenge. Jaejoong has to throw three back out of principle.
"Are you?" Yoochun picks up the thread of conversation again, after one of Jaejoong's fries misses its target and almost hits a cute little girl walking by on the nose.
"Uh huh," Jaejoong says, using a fry to doodle carelessly on a napkin. "But this is good, right? A once in a lifetime for-the-history-books kind of thing. Shit, I can't believe we're actually doing this."
Yoochun leans forward to study Jaejoong's napkin. "Yeah, your ketchup portrait of E.T. boggles my mind too."
"Shut up, that's not what I meant," Jaejoong laughs. "And this is Donald Duck, okay? Get it right."
Yoochun adopts Donald Duck's lisp and says, "We're really doing this, hyung."
Jaejoong laughs again, louder, and throws the fry in his hand. This one does hit a cute little girl walking by on the nose. Jaejoong cycles rapidly through Korean and Japanese and Thai and French before he finally lands on "sorry!" in English. The cute little girl flips him off. Yoochun cracks up, and then even harder when Jaejoong throws another fry at the cute little girl's retreating back.
"I'm really glad you're here with me, you know," Yoochun says brightly, once he's caught his breath.
Jaejoong throws a fry at the next cute little girl to walk by and, when she turns around, immediately points at Yoochun.
28 May 2014, Disneyland, 9:25 PM
They rode Splash Mountain a second time in the evening (it was one of the only rides where Yoochun had any advantage over Jaejoong, so naturally he had to milk it for all it was worth), and Jaejoong's hair and shorts are still a little damp. He bounces restlessly on the bench to fight off the chilliness as they wait near Sleeping Beauty's Castle, getting jostled into each other by hordes of passing strangers.
Yoochun swats lightly at Jaejoong's knee. "Sit still, people are looking at us weird."
"I'm cold and people have been looking at us weird all day," Jaejoong protests, but sits still anyway because his butt's getting sore. He glances over. "Hey, stay awake or you'll miss the fireworks."
"You've been dragging me around all day like a cocker spaniel on Ritalin," Yoochun replies, muffling a yawn against the back of his hand. "I know you think I have a body of steel, hyung, but it's actually more under the soft, shiny metal category."
"Weaksauce," Jaejoong says, and slides an arm around Yoochun's waist, because he's cold and because if he doesn't let Yoochun use him as a pillow, Yoochun's going to end up using the scruffy middle-aged man sitting on his right as one instead, and Jaejoong really doesn't think his English is ready for that conversation. "Seriously, stay awake. Disneyland already has a Sleepy Beauty."
"I'm not going to fall asleep," Yoochun says, and yawns again. Jaejoong makes a face. He's going to fall asleep.
But Yoochun's still awake when the castle lights up and the music and narration start. He offers halfhearted translations that Jaejoong suspects are at least a little wrong, because Cinderella would never say, "shit, I'm tired." Jaejoong sings along to a few of the Disney songs under his breath, and shuts up once the fireworks really get going.
They're loud and pretty to watch, and Jaejoong gets a little lost in them, his attention easily commanded by shiny things. Yoochun falls asleep during the finale; Jaejoong feels the sudden weight of Yoochun's head against his shoulder, Yoochun's hair tickling his neck, and knows he's a lost cause. "You're such a liar, Park Yoochun," he accuses under the sound of flaring light, but makes an effort not to move too much. He'll brainstorm fun ways to wake Yoochun up later. For now Jaejoong just stares at the streams of smoke and color above them, and the last bright sputter of fireworks before the sky goes black.