multiversallogs | come on be alive again

Entry tags:

come on be alive again

Who: Sunny & Jae.
What: Post-horrors decompressing, and some words.
Where: Sunny's apartment.
When: After they escape the disastrous fashion show. (So.. A WHILE AGO we do what we want.)
Warnings: Discussion of traumatic events, EMBARRASSING CRYING, feelings.

It never occurs to Jae to go to his apartment and not Sunny's. His own place is bigger, has more of his things - the material, cosmetic objects he drowns himself in as a ritual to manage his anxiety. Whether his nerves are too raw for his routine to have any impact on or if he just plain thinks this will work better, he doesn't know or consciously inspect. He wants (needs) to be at Sunny's because it's Sunny's and for that fact alone it's the safest place; his things are there, it smells like him, it's his domain and responsibility and all Jae has to do is take a shower and then hide behind him. It's impossibly selfish.

He's in the bathroom, in yoga pants and an oversized Baedal Ifrits shirt (his; he has enough of his stuff at Sunny's to get by, and vice versa), and his hands keep shaking and making it impossible to close the cap on the mouth wash he's trying to put away. The same thing happened with the hand soap, and the towel earlier. He doesn't make an issue out of it, he stills all movement when it happens, carefully making sure Sunny isn't looking directly at him. His desperation is well-acted, but there despite it; he's hiding something. He wants it go to away, he wants to ask Sunny a hundred things, and he wants his ability to communicate like a normal person (like Sunny is used to him being) to come back and for his nervous system not to be in shock.

He gets the cap back on, and sets the bottle back with a brittle sort of care. Like it might break.

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There's a couple of corners in Baedal where tastes and smells and memories of Korea are sold in bottles and jars. Sunny has taken the time to explore some of these, going through word of mouth, a tea shop someone's been to, a liquor store, a food outlet. Collecting items from these places have as much to do with Jae as they do please Sunny -- he wants to share them and reminisce fondly about things they can still taste, cutting through senses of lost with flavours of tea flowers or rice liquor or familiar spices or honey.

This seems like a good time for that too, even if they never say a word on the topic. The kitchen has taken on a cloying gardeny smell since Sunny was in there last, the whir of a boiling kettle dimming to readiness, dropping out of hearing from the bathroom. The bathroom smells, now, of mint and water and soap, and Sunny hasn't said anything yet about this new way that Jae carries himself.

He waits until the other man places down what he's holding, before he winds his arms around Jae's skinny waist from behind and buries his nose between shoulderblades, breathing in him, before sharp chin finds a resting place on shoulder.

Jae doesn't startle, but there's a tiny reaction in the pit of his stomach that notes his minor dismay at having been observed after all. He wants so badly to be normal, not to worry Sunny, or inspire him to look at him like he's - what he is, someone's escaped science project. He watched a video once, this coded DVD being passed around through the community as charity and as a warning, beings victimized by Prometheus; tales of abuse and loss and triumph but there was one. A woman, smoking a cigarette in someone's back room, defiant, furious, but so obviously resigned. No one wants that frog from high school after it's been cut up. She pressed the ash off her cigarette with her forefinger. Dogs will eat it, but that's all.

It's never mattered before now.

He places his hands over Sunny's and lets his eyes fall shut. Quietly: "I like this." Mint, tea, being held. It reminds him of Manhattan sometimes - Korean food and Korean language in an island of otherness. He wonders what he'd be like if he never left.

Squeeze, a sign of affirmation. Good. There is an instinct Sunny hasn't ever been able to shake (and in humans, this would be otherwise identified as a personality trait instead of a compulsion) which is the urge to heal or erase identified hurt in a sort of Labrador zeal, if Labradors were the size of dragons. It's a lot of feeling, almost a dangerous amount, and it's a good thing that Jae doesn't want to leave right now.

Also a good thing that all of this is contained and restricted to a human shape, human sensibilities. Hugs. Tea.

"Good," he says, muffled a bit against the back of Jae's shoulder. "I think being horizontal would be awesome, too. I made some tea with chrysanthemum."

That might be okay - that intensity. Maybe it'd be nice to be overwhelmed by something good. As it is, Jae knows that he could summon up a spell and get himself high, euphoric, but he just doesn't want to; this is better, Sunny and coherency are better, even if sobriety sacrifices his nerves.

Jae tilts his head back, turns a little, nose against the shorter man's face. "Okay." A murmur. He sounds pleased, though still quiet. He wiggles around in the embrace so that he can press his forehead to Sunny's before drifting to the bedroom (if he meant the sofa, oh well, Jae's still a bit dazed) and plopping down. Despite his height, he feels the strange existential sensation of being very small, right now. He blinks at his fingernails, thinking about what he's going to say to Sunny when he walks back in.

Sunny disappears from view, but Jae can hear him -- foot steps, the opening of drawers and doors. He isn't very long, and he's fine with this -- the bedroom is a relaxed place to be, with a low bed, a basic instalment of furniture, reachable lamps and a window that faces the direction of the ocean even if you can't see it from here. Sunny's knees fold against the edge of the bed at a precarious kneel, reaching to place down mugs of watery, herby tea.

He's dressed in soft things for an evening's retirement, his feet bare and lifting off the ground as he comes to sit, his hip against Jae's, a stapling into the mattress on the taller man's other side, bracketing him in.

"You're quiet." It's a verbal prod, a cue, as opposed to complaint or whine or accusation.

Jae's fingers curl around the mug and it's only thoughts of spilling hot liquid that prevent him from leaning his head on Sunny's shoulder. (He's too tall for it, but he likes it anyway.)

It takes him a long moment to respond, during which he stares at his tea and the air fills with the sense that he's struggling with something.

Finally, "Being taken like that in the dark really spooked me."

Which is one hell of an understatement, but the sad, apologetic tone of his voice isn't one of finality. He means to continue - or to at least try to. He tells himself that no matter what happens or how he'll react, Sunny deserves to know; he tells himself that if Sunny looks even a little bit like he's disgusted that he'll pull the plug himself. He doesn't believe someone so sweet would ever outwardly react that way, but Jae won't be able to stand being pitied.

He should really take a sip of his tea.

Sunny takes back his own tea once settled and no longer in danger of spilling hot liquid on anyone. It would be unwise and untrue to assure Jae that hey, everyone freaks out sometimes, it's a freaky thing to have happen, but instead he bites down on reassurance and fills is mouth with honeyish tea. He said in the dark, too.

He is warm against Jae, maybe too close, too vividly present, but so far it's worked out. At this stage, he listens.

Jae feels like he's trying to untie a very constrictive knot inside himself. Under normal circumstances, he doesn't mind being the center of attention from time to time - no performer regardless of their context does, no matter the motive - but now he feels guilty. He wants to turn the attention away from himself, both because he doesn't want to feel so exposed and because he doesn't want to be this dysfunctional child, needing such immediate pandering when Sunny's probably just as tired as he is.

An internal sigh. He finally takes a drink of his tea, trying to will the heat and scent to calm him. He's just making excuses to himself.

"I was born in Japan," he says eventually. "Both sides of my family were there from conscription. I grew up in a communist community in Osaka." He presses his thumbnail against the side of his cup, trying not to fidget. There's a resigned slump to his shoulders, and he doesn't look at Sunny. "When I was still a kid... my parents decided it was enough. They didn't want my sister to go through what I did in the Chongryon school, and didn't want us to have to deal with Japanese society away from our community. We immigrated to America, and lived in New York. It was..." He trails off for a bit, struggling to find some what to express the experience of that kind of culture clash, the intensity of the contrast between the rigidity and cold hate of his childhood to Manhattan. "..it was all right."

"When my magic started to get more than my parents could deal with, they sent me to live with my uncle in Seoul. He's - he was - the only other one with any kind of ability like that. But he was always trying to get passage to Pyongyang." Jae sounds bitter at that, and why wouldn't he? But then he smiles a bit to himself, his tone becoming less brittle, more bittersweet. "It didn't matter after a while. I loved it there. It was like.. I was finally home, I guess."

It's hard to put into words, but maybe Sunny will understand. The way Jae speaks, the way he keeps his accent naturalized and turns a blind eye to all things Japanese, the way he keeps his frame of reference wholly on South Korea - it's important to him, his Koreanness. His parents had never petitioned for citizenship in Japan, too fatigued with bigotry, and in America he'd been a lost soul of a child. Korea is home.

But he was living in England, despite it.

Edited 2012-07-28 19:28 (UTC)

The good news is: Sunny isn't tired. It's just not a thing that happens. However, he is pretty good at pretend, and unconsciously sinks into the lazy bones recline that would be expected of someone who has been through what they've been through. But his attention doesn't wander, and a small knitting of tension at his brow shows concentration.

Some of this he knows already, they've discussed it, but he supposes also that some stories require the framing reiteration. Jae does not watch him as he speaks, but he watches Jae.

"Did it help?"

"Sort of." Sometimes, he likes these memories. The moments in between finding himself and when it went dark. He holds them between his hands like something precious; tonight, they feel alien. A bridge to the thing he doesn't want to say. "At first, I mean. But I was a poor student and I just wanted to go clubbing. I fell in love with it."

With music. With everything. With color, sound, people.

"My uncle hated it. I don't think he hated me, but he didn't know what to do. He wanted to keep me in line and he couldn't."

Jae's hands feel like lead. He sets the cup on the windowsill, and it's a small miracle that he doesn't shake. "He found a military academy for people who weren't normal." He pushes the cup by the handle, aligning it aesthetically. "I remember he was so pleased with having found it."

He touches the cup again, moving it by a fraction of a fraction. He's looking at it, or maybe out the window. He's quiet for a while.

"Do you know what Prometheus is?"

It takes a lot of effort on Sunny's part to say: "Yes."

They are being honest with each other, after all, as people in a relationship should strive to be. It helps to be preoccupied, too, with the sudden realisation at having missed something so important. It takes a lot for Sunny to question himself, to berate himself, but he feels this should not have been a surprise, and he feels about as small and stupid as his human frame ought to. It passes, of course, it always does, pushed aside in an effortless tide of a mistake that's been and gone, and here they are now, with a puzzle almost completed that he had not consciously known about.

He doesn't give Jae space, his chin finding a place at his shoulder in doggish companionship, but he suppresses the urge, for now, to reach for Jae's hand.

The relief he feels at knowing he won't have to explain is like a consolation prize, but he takes it gladly. He isn't surprised that Sunny knows - many of them know, involved in the underground or not, and with all that Sunny is capable of, it seems appropriate. And then he leans on him and Jae feels a surge of emotion that's half gratefulness and half guilt at every doubting him in the first place. He closes his eyes and breathes, leaning against his boyfriend just a little.

"I don't know how long it had been open for," he continues, voice hushed. "There were about twenty of us, usually. Mostly my age. A few older and a few were-" he voice breaks there a bit, eyes still closed. His hand clenches at his knee. He doesn't want to remember the kids. "I was there for a little over a year."

He knows how long, specifically, down to the day - he didn't at first, he thought he'd been there for a lifetime. He'd been so horrified to find out how little time had past, compared to how it felt. Jae has to stop again, letting himself breathe. His head's swimming, and he feels detached, a little nauseous.

"It was uhm - I guess they weren't very good at it, it was a test facility. They didn't have to be very good at anything."

Without realizing it, Jae is uncovering a mystery that's plagued both Numen and the forces that combat it for years: no one has ever managed to piece together what happened at that facility, with all the surviving prisoners in hiding and surviving staff permanently mentally warped. Maybe if he could stand to talk about it in any detail, it could be useful; he'd probably force himself, if he knew, even though his voice is starting to give out from the weight of drudging this up.

He can hear it, in Jae's tone, like weights attached to each word, coming heavy and reluctant, which is why Sunny isn't interrupting. His hand, now, does find Jae's in a sort of gentle creeper-vine progression that knits them together, the back of his hand against Jae's palm and his attention on the tangle of knuckles that add gentle pressure.

Of course, Sunny's hands could do stronger things. Idle thought. A year is a long time. "I know Prometheus because that's why I was in Russia," he says, in a sort of light monotone as if he weren't just casually unveiling truths he kept tightly guarded, including an actual specified place that he'd always dismissed as somewhere vaguely not in South Korea. "I was looking for them.

"You got out and moved away."

He should notice Russia but instead it just washes over him and he accepts it too easily; maybe he'll remember tomorrow, but it doesn't register now, it just makes sense. He leans into Sunny more, his eyes still closed.

"We burned it down. I don't remember it. And I ran, I. My family still thinks I'm dead."

The hand that's not in Sunny's comes up to Jae's face, covering it, a childish compulsion he's reverting to from the effort he's putting out. "When I see what's going on I'm okay, it's when I can't see - you'd wake up, because of the drugs, somewhere else every day, and you could never see. If I know it's fine but when it's dark and I'm trapped I just - like I can feel it, being there."

He's sounding a bit worked up at that so he stops himself, hand still over his face, forcing himself to breathe slower.

Puts an eerie slant on it, doesn't it? When they've talked about things like how their moms and dads cooked, food from home. He frowns but doesn't say anything, lacking the jurisdiction but knowing fer sher that if he ever gets out of here and he returns to a world spinning in approximately the same fashion as it did when he left, Sunny would go to London, as Aja, as himself.

No, that's only a lukewarm speculation. He wouldn't be surprised if he was wrong. Lots of things aren't very romantic ever. This is nice, though, even if Jae is currently trying not to trigger himself into a spiral. Sunny is silent as he tries to consider what words he can use to latch on and rescue him.

Stops trying when it takes too long. "I'm sorry that happened to you. It won't, again."

Jae squeezes Sunny's hand, though he's quiet for a long time - maybe not so long. But it feels like it, to him.

When he's finally feeling less like he's going to fall apart at any moment, Jae sits up, moving enough so that he can face Sunny somewhat. He's still clinging to his hand, and looking down at their entwined fingers.

"When we got out, I did things I don't remember. I know I did something that - it helped us, but I just.. don't remember. The woman who did most of it, Chaerin, told me afterwords that it was beautiful." He squeezes Sunny's hand more. "I thought it was so terrible that she'd say something like that but now I--"

He stalls a bit. Finally looks up, and his voice is quieter. "When I first saw you fighting, and when I see you now, I understand what she meant.

"I never thought I'd trust anyone again."

He isn't altogether sure what a good response is to that, because Jae's words please him in a fundamental kind of way, both in frivolous flattery as well as something stronger and hungrier. This final part, however, rewards Jae with Sunny's giving into compulsion; he smiles in a mellow gladness, hand gripping tighter again before deciding that's not enough, or quite right.

Sits smoothly and deliberately, a hand up to urge Jae's face closer to his so that he might kiss him with a sort of gentle firmness. Mumbled against Jae's mouth, there is humour in it even if Sunny means what he says with; "Same." For all that he hasn't suffered as Jae has, hasn't feared for the consequence of trusting, but putting investment in a single person is new and exciting, and trust is mutual.

It's too fast, especially for someone who's never been in a relationship before (not even one of those little fleeting fake ones as a kid), but Jae feels like he can't help himself. He was so unsure at first, as if there was some kind of betrayal happening, but - Sunny.

Jae wraps his arms around his shoulders, presses their foreheads together. He still feels unsettled and shaken in his core, emotionally exhausted from having to unload all of that, but now he feels - tritely, probably - that it's all going to be okay. He's never had the experience of comfort and support after something traumatic. He doesn't know if he can put how much he appreciates it into words.

Instead he gently tackles him back down against the mattress, and buries his face against Sunny's shoulder. Clinging a bit, affectionately, comfortably.

It gets a laugh, as it never really fails to, Sunny comfortable with flinging his arms around Jae and letting both cups of tea go cold. Maybe someone turns off the lamp before they sleep, maybe not, conversation dwindling into longer pauses in between.

Jae won't quite wake up alone. Sunny is intent on waiting for him to stir, having not... actually slept, perhaps a bit creepily. He is patient in that way, content to just lie unmoving for the duration of Jae to sleep off his exhaustion and let his own mind wander about what they haven't talked about. He thinks, maybe, he ought to tell Jae what exactly it is he finds beautiful, how much he knows about Prometheus and what happened and is happening in Russia. It's a wild rush of feeling, the urge to truth-tell, although only in the way water rapids are while the landscape remains unmoving beneath it. That part of him that was named Seo-Jin and likes Starcraft and likes being tackled to bed.

When Jae wakes up, Sunny is moving while he's still caught in the daze in between, his hand beneath Sunny's back as the smaller of the two rolls off bed to clear away stale tea, and investigate breakfast. It will be elaborate. Maybe. Or just indulgent.

He sleeps well, like he almost always seems to with Sunny - though maybe it's just because he's so wiped out. Sometimes he still has nightmares even when he goes to sleep feeling safe, but tonight he doesn't; out like a light, sticking to Sunny like a security blanket. Jae isn't aware that Sunny doesn't really sleep, though he does sense on some level that the other man isn't as involved with the hands-on grime-and-sweat mortal life like he is. He doesn't mind.

In the initial swimmy-headed moments of consciousness come morning, Jae attempts to prevent Sunny from fleeing the bed, making a monosyllabic noise of protest and clinging to his arm as he moves - but it's a failure, and he flops his hand back down after. A few more moments of warmth-seeking languish, and Jae decides that, yeah, he should probably at least brush his teeth before he attempts seduction this early in the morning. So he sits up, bed sheet over his shoulders like a cape, hair sticking up every which-way, eyes bleary. Sexy.

He yawns and rubs at his hair, listening to the noises from the kitchen and gathering a blanket around his shoulders, wrapped up. Screw moving. He says, "Good morning" through another yawn, and half-flops back down. "I hope you don't have work today." Because I'm going to make the saddest face in the world until you call in otherwise, his tone says. Jae sits for a while more, then something catches his eye; he knows Sunny's apartment pretty well, and most of the nick-knacks therein. Maybe it's just the morning light and this angle that makes it look different.

The mattress creaks a bit as Jae leans over, pressing it at an unusual diagonal, so that he can reach and pry something with slim fingers out from under a book in the nightstand. It's a quiet process, but not a silent one. When he sits back how he was, there's a tiny electronic beep. When he asks his question, his voice is still muddy, foggy, his brain not quite having shaken off sleep yet. Auto-pilot, innocent of the dots waiting to be connected.

"Where'd you find my phone?"

"I do not have work today," is in an automated 'yes dear' tone, a light joke by way of good morning. Sunny has the pan on, because he will make bacon, because he knows that Jae is an insane meat eater and he can't complain himself. Currently slicing some tomatoes to fry as well, to have on toast, and he twists a look over his shoulder to add, "Mainly to make sure you'll do the dishes for me."

Bright, exaggerated grin follows, before Sunny is back to his task. A new day ought to begin well, he thinks, because last night had a lot of-- gore, and then a lot of feelings. It's probably enough to drive a wedge in between two people as much as it might bring them closer together, conversely. He is pitching for one of those two things. By way of feeding his boyfriend.

But then there's that question. Where'd you find my phone?

Sunny goes still, mind already charging ahead to bypass the 'huh?' and the 'what phone?' part of the exchange, the fork he'd been using to navigate food partially raised even as he turns around to just look at Jae, marvelling as everything fits so neatly into place. He's happy, in response -- he wants to laugh, and Jae can probably see that, light firelight dancing behind Sunny's eyes.

"St. Kelley's," he says.

Even as he asks, the sleep-addled wheels are turning; Jae's still emotionally wrung-out from last night, and he feels like there's gum in the mechanisms of his thought process - but not enough to leave him clueless.

The look on his face is probably amazing, going from confusion to puzzlement to something like shock and wonder and then - panic, a little?! Uh.

Jae's phone isn't - wasn't - in Baedal. It didn't come with him, he remembers complaining about it, even if the initial sight of it (an unusual and kitschy designer case, dinged in familiar ways) lulled him into a false sense of security, an old habit of normalcy long-gone back on Earth. Sunny had his phone, his phone that's in London.

While Sunny was in - Russia.

Oh. Oh.

"It's a black Android," he says, though he's still staring at the rainbow polka dot iPhone clutched in his hand, expression tremulous. He's not holding an Android, it's back at his apartment, in a slim fabric cover underneath the book he arrived with, all in a box under his bed; he put it there after he got it for sending a note out on a little boat, which he'd lied about doing. Repeatedly.

Jae curls in on himself like he's been stung, one hand holding the phone against his chest like a lifeline and the other over his face - he still hasn't looked up. "Are you serious?"

Edited 2012-08-10 09:34 (UTC)

The fork in hand turns between creeping fingers, a show of nervousness, although-- if this inspires some sort of fall out for Jae, Sunny is reasonably sure he can wait it out. There can come a point where enough emotions kind of cancel one another out into a generic kind of white noise that's, well, unpleasant. He keeps smiling because--

He can't stop, actually, even if Jae is experiencing some alarm. "You got a black Android?" he asks, pointing with utensil, a peal of laughter following -- delighted, too, that there is a balance to it, and he hadn't seen that part coming.

"You're Kasu in England."

It's not unpleasant. It's just - so much. Jae feels at once like his chest is tightening so much he might not be able to breathe, and like he's coming apart at the seams; he'd never be able to articulate it even in his head and the boiled-over emotional sensation comes to be too much and -

- he leaves the phone on the bed and then he's up and across to the kitchen doorway Sunny's standing in (quick, faster than he should be able to move, but that's the furthest thing from his mind at present) and he nearly bowls him over with sudden, clinging contact. That coming-apart-inside feeling manifests in his magic, not wholly unlike how he was bleeding somewhere unseen when Sunny first met him in a beach-side dinner, but the difference is this doesn't hurt: his manipulative magic is sympathetic, now, the overflow of it surely something that Sunny can feel. He's happy, overjoyed even, shocked, overwhelmed. Jae's emotional batteries are so far past drained it's a wonder he can even be coherent.

"I'm Kasu on the internet," he corrects, and though his face is mashed against Sunny's shoulder, his choked-up voice and the fact that he's shaking a little betrays that he's actually crying (not while they were being attacked by a nightmarish monster, not while he was telling him about being a science experiment, this). "Only with-- Aja."

Everything makes so much sense now.

Eee. Sunny is swift to return embrace with as much zeal as if Kasu and Aja had just met IRL and in more normal circumstances, he'd imagined -- because he didn't worry too much about being a weird creepy daydream stalker about his Internet boyfriend -- they'd hug like this. Just as strongly, too, and Kasu would wonder why that was, but Jae knows better.

"We're the dorkiest dorks," he proclaims, happiness zippering tense and wavering in his voice, squeezed out through compulsive grin. A hand grips the back of Jae's head and he turns his own to place a kiss at the other man's temple.

Breakfast just sort of patiently cooks itself for a while.

"I figured the phone had to be yours. I mean, Kasu's. I really missed you." Which is super weird, in this context.

God help him, all he wants to do is hold Sunny and cry for an hour. He's unbelievably happy, but now he's shell shocked in the complete opposite direction of the night before - and part of him is panicking at the coincidence. This place that kidnapped him, traumatized him, has done this, proving beyond a shadow of a doubt - beyond familiar faces and apocalypses - that he's supposed to be here, guided by a fateful force whose only actions in the past have left him trapped or near death. A cell phone and someone smiling at him is turning his entire reality inside out.

Still, he's trying to reel it in, because he doesn't actively want to come off like some crazy emotional wreck, even though he doesn't really... understand... what his feelings are doing, right now. Jae's always been repressed, always kept it to himself; this is just hitting too many vulnerable places in him at once, and now his insides are in an avalanche. He rubs at his face with one hand and keeps the other arm around Sunny's shoulders, protective and sheltered at once.

"I kept worrying about being a traitor," he says, still choked up and not-quite looking at him, torn between wanting to meet his eyes finally and being embarrassed about having suddenly burst into tears. "But I liked you too much. I never like anybody, I should have known."

Both arms around Sunny's shoulders again, and Jae ducks his head close, feeling like they're on an island of - something, something where everything else is far away, every noise, every smell. Dreamlike. He pulls back enough to look at him at last. "This is - I'm not asleep - I mean this is real?" Pleading, too earnest to let his embarrassment smother the childish question; he realizes as he contemplates the surreal feeling that he must have dreamed this, before, the focused memory of it melting away in the morning but the feeling remaining coiled in his head. Sunny being Aja, every part of everything he wanted out of a companion existing as one person right in front of him. It shouldn't be real. It's too good to be real.

But it has to be. (The way his hands tighten, fingers curl, at the back of Sunny's neck, say just how badly he needs it to be.)

Edited 2012-08-11 19:56 (UTC)

Sunny isn't crying, but he keeps wanting to laugh; sometimes he does, small expressions of giddiness, like when Jae says he was worried, because Sunny was worried too, in his own way. His hands settle on Jae's shoulders when the other man eventually pulls back, remaining close.

"Really real, that's why it's awesome. Wait. I can't believe I was Internet stalking you in like two ways already," he says, suddenly, slightly alarmed as his hands lift off Jae's shoulders to plant on his own face (as if he were capable of feeling shame). "I was chatting to DJ Kim the whole time, that's so weird."

--which he knows is the shallow and lulzy end of the spectrum in comparison to having everything he liked about Kasu and got out of that interaction transplanted into Baedal just for him somehow, but it really needed to be said. And maybe Jae could stand to laugh too.

And Jae does laugh, a little, one of those genuine but still a little hypersensitive ones - but the somewhat pathetically wet look in his eyes is more obviously happy tears!! now. Jae lays his hands flat against Sunny's chest, tugging slightly at his shirt in an almost teasing motion at his sudden faux-embarrassment.

"You were so cute," he says, hands moving to his hips (a sign that he's calming down, not clinging so literally). "On the network." When he showed up, when they spoke for the first time, his gleeful flailing and demand for a do-over.

(You had him at hello!!)

"I-Oh, shit." Bacon is transforming itself into slightly burnt bacon, Jae leans over to see what he's distracted Sunny from doing.

His hands come up to take Jae's face between his palms which has at least three purposes; 1) he greases away any shed tears, smearing their tracks into indefinite dampness, 2) he steers Jae's attention away from his failed attempt at breakfast, and 3) he can kiss him again like so, brief but intense and insistent.

"It got me lunch," Sunny says. On being cute. "And I'm going to save the house from being set on fire, hold all of those thoughts."

Finally, he breaks away, turns off the heat of the stove top, waves a hand to dismiss some of the collected smoke.

Edited 2012-08-12 22:24 (UTC)

Jae takes a moment when Sunny turns, first merely hovering then leaning forward, pressing a kiss to the back of his neck and then resting his forehead against the back of his shoulder for a moment, hands still at his hips but backwards, now. "M'gonna brush my teeth," he says, unusual in that it's in English and they converse almost exclusively in Korea; he really is tired, floating about between languages like that without realizing it. (Sometimes, if he's stressed and can't think of a word, he'll default to one in Japanese in his head and end up furious; why he looks so mad when he stumbles over his words is a mystery, to most people.)

Taking a minute to collect himself is probably A Good Idea, so he does, even though he doesn't really want to leave Sunny (his hands part last, when he steps away). Jae looks in the mirror and oh, yes, he looks like an absolute wreck, awesome. So he puts himself together, breathes, runs the water for a bit longer than he needs to, staring at himself until he looks less like he's going to shatter into a million pieces (he doesn't have any closets left to crack open, surely he has to start coming back around, now).

It's a minor victory that he doesn't come out of the bathroom expecting the world to have reverted to how it was before Sunny-is-Aja (he looks - briefly, stealthily, but he does - to make sure his phone still exists where he left it).

Jae doesn't say anything and watches Sunny in the kitchen, not sure what he should be thinking, but-

-He feels pretty good.

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