„Hey Jonghyun,“ Jinki stood in the door that led from the kitchen to the living-room. “Wanna help me with dinner?”

Jonghyun pauseed his game and looked over, his eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Why?” He spat. “Because you’re the man in the house?” He made quotation marks with his fingers at the word man. “Because I still have a girl’s body and cooking is a women’s job?” He stared angrily at Jinki and he obviously would have gone on, had Jinki not interrupted him mid-breath.

“Nope, not at all.” He said calmly. He had been afraid of Jonghyun reacting like this. “Because Minho has to be home for lunch and coffee with his grand-parents visiting today and Taemin and Key are at the new doctor and I think all three of them would be very happy about a nice, homemade meal when they come home. And Jonghyun,” Jinki does his best to put force his look. “Are you really going to accuse me of thinking that conservatively? Gender roles? Really?”

Jonghyun flushed deeply and got up from the sofa. When it had gotten cold, he had started wearing huge, loose sweaters that were excellent in hiding his more feminine body shape. Jinki thought they also made him look incredibly adorable but he wouldn’t mention it. Jonghyun was insecure enough lately.

It was clear that Jonghyun had never cooked before. By what he knew about his mother and sister, Jinki assumed the two women were doing their best to treat Jonghyun as the boy he was – but maybe they were too ruled by gender norms. The mindset was probably (as far as Jinki could imagine) “the man in the house doesn’t have to do a woman’s work”. Jinki loved and admired Jonghyun’s family greatly and he was incredibly thankful that Jonghyun had a supporting and loving environment at home. But he also found it necessary that Jonghyun was prepared for the real world – and cutting onions and cooking pasta were definitely part of that.

Jonghyun looked at him with tears streaming over his face. “Jinki!” He wailed. “It BURNS!!”

Jinki could barely contain his snort. “Walk away from the onions for a bit.” He advised, biting his lip to keep from laughing out loud. Jonghyun obliged and sniffled in the corner next to fridge for a minutes until he gathered his courage to slice the rest of the onions.

Jonghyun was in the middle of telling a joke about a woman talking to her psychoanalysis, when Kibum, Minho and Taemin entered the kitchen. Jinki snuggled into the back-hug he received from his partner and pressed a kiss to Kibum’s jaw. “Welcome home Bummie.”

“Hey.” Kibum murmured back, just as comfortable. “Doctor was great.” He murmured quietly before exclaiming, in his normal voice, “Spaghetti Carbonara!! Jinki I might need to leave you for Jonghyun if he cooks me stuff like that!”  

Taemin’s arms around Jonghyun immediately tightened and he glared at Kibum. “Jongie, let’s go play video games while the old men” he emphasized the last two words. “Finish with dinner. We still need to beat Minho.”

Jinki laughed. “But first, Jonghyun needs to finish that joke. There is a certain psychology professor who I need to work with for a project and she’s quite annoying. Maybe I could tell her that joke.”

Kibum, Minho and Taemin looked intrigued as well and Jinki could sense that Jonghyun enjoyed all the attention being on him.

“Alright. So, a woman goes to her psychoanalyst for the last time. She’s been in therapy for the last 10 years and it helped her a lot. She’s really comfortable with herself, her work and her relationships so she decided she doesn’t need the therapy anymore. She goes into the room of the psychoanalyst and says ‘we’ve seen each other once every week for the last ten years and you helped me so much so for our last meeting I have a small request: could you just this once talk to me?’ The psychoanalyst is silent. She talks again, ‘please, just this once, I’m so thankful for everything you’ve done for me and I would love to hear your voice, just this once.’ He doesn’t say anything still. So she goes on and on about how very thankful she is and how much the request means to her until the psychoanalyst finally looks at her and says ‘sorry, no English’.”

(My pschology professor told us this joke last lecture and I absolutely loved it >///<) ❤