How Dumb People Do It
Eye Contact
A/N
I know it has been ages but somehow inspiration had completely left me and I was unable to sit down and write for almost 3 months.
The good news: I am slowly getting back into it and even if this chapter is not THAT long, I have the next two chapters already in drafts so updates shouldn't be to far apart for the next weeks!
Enjoy and say hi if you are still here I miss y'all
20:36
“So… When will I be able to visit your room?” Taemin asked one Friday night as they were laying next to each other, an arm length between them but the blanket shared. He popped himself up on one elbow, looking at Minho who was staring at the ceiling.
“Why do you want to visit my room?” Minho asked and Taemin watched his lips moving as he spoke. Minho had beautiful lips, so soft, so round, so kissable.
“You have seen mine, so isn’t it only fair that I see yours?”
“I don’t see how it is necessary. We are comfortable here and your grandmother is kind enough to give us the space we desire.” Minho answered, his gaze never moving away from the small black spot on the white ceiling.
Taemin sighed. He had to come up with a reason to visit that wasn’t just curiosity because it waesn’t something the older understood. Despite being with Minho for several years, the constant challenges never disappeared. He got more used to Minho’s body language and he knew what to do when he had a breakdown. He knew how to handle sensual overload and he was able to communicate with his boyfriend on most days. The situations where he had to come up with other reasoning than his own to explain something never diminished though.
“I want to take a look at your books! You could show me some I don’t know yet.” Taemin tried and immediately knew this was a better approach: Minho pulled away his eyes from the spot he had been focusing on, the eyeballs now moving rapidly as he was thinking about what Taemin said.
“If you want me to recommend some books it would be more beneficial to go to the library, I can show you a lot more there.”
Taemin rolled his eyes before trying again.
“I want to see how you organise your books. You can’t show me how you organise them in the library.”
“Oh!” Minho exclaimed and turned to his side, now facing Taemin – eyes focused on the latter’s lips as he kept speaking. “Why didn’t you say so from the start. In fact, I have developed a very innovative way of storing and organising them, so I am sure you are going to be quite startled. I didn’t show it to anyone yet so you will be the first person! The thing is I have books both in Korean and English so I tried to arrange them within an alphabet but that wouldn’t properly work for a very obvious reason that is the difference in the writing system and the corresponding letters. Which is why -”
“I said you should show me, not tell me.” Taemin said, chuckling at Minho’s sudden chattiness.
“I don’t see a difference. You want to know about the way I organise my books. It is faster if I explain it to you.”
“Not everyone has such a bright, vivid mind Minho. I don’t think I’ll be able to follow if I don’t see it.” Taemin said, mostly to make the older shut up but also because he partly believed it to be true.
“Sorry. I forgot. It is quite rare for people to understand me… since you manage to understand, I might have given your brain too much credit. I won’t do it again.”
“So you are calling me dumb?” Taemin asked, moving closer to his boyfriend who his back immediately.
“What are you doing?” Minho asked when Taemin was moving on top of him.
“You just said I lacked intelligence so how about I do something dumb?” the younger whispered, lowering his head until he could feel Minho’s breath on his chin.
“You can’t, we didn’t agree on terms.” the autistic male said while covering his mouth with his hand.
“That’s how dumb people do it. We don’t think that much, we just do what feels right. Can I be foolish for once?” Taemin asked as he pecked Minho’s palm lovingly, registering that Minho wasn’t showing any signs of discomfort – for now.
“I don’t see why being foolish is something desirable.” Minho mumbled against his hand with closed eyes.
“And I don’t see why being a little foolish would hurt.” Taemin said, smiling against the warmth of Minho’s skin.
There was a short silence between them before he spoke up again: “So can I kiss you?”
“What kind of kiss?” Minho asked and Taemin knew that he had won.
“Let me surprise you.”
“I don’t like surprises.”
“But I do.”
“Will you listen to me when I explain my self-developed system for the categorising of my books if I let you kiss me the way you want to?” Minho asked, removing his hand to speak.
“Abso-freaking-lutely.” Taemin said, making sure not to curse as he knew it was something the autistic man was sensitive about. “You can tell me about it all night.” He whispered into Minho’s ear before kissing him passionately, always making sure to look out for signs of displeasure and distress in the way Minho reacted to his touch.
Today had been a good day from the very moment they met at the coffee shop so Taemin wasn’t surprised that there weren’t any complaints from his boyfriend when he deepened the kiss.
It wasn’t often, but there have been a handful of instances when Minho let him kiss him the way Taemin wanted to, without previously discussing how it was supposed to go. The younger didn’t mind adjusting his own needs to Minho, he has even found some comfort in always knowing exactly what the other person expected from him and was supposed to do. Nevertheless, he did sometimes miss to just go with the flow, see where it takes him. In moments like these, where he was granted what regular people would call “normality” he forgot about the older’s disability even if it was just for a few minutes.
Over the years he had gotten used to it, but he was always aware, aware that Minho was different – different in a wonderful way.
Within a minute after they let go of each other he was pulled back into reality by Minho starting to explain how he assigned numbers to the letters of the respective alphabet to create a universal way of sorting his books within an alphabetical order that transcended two writing systems.
19:27
“This is the section for 23-9-12 which corresponds with the letters WIL in the Latin alphabet. It is where you will find “The Picture of Dorian Grey” If you ever look for it.” Minho said, pulling out the familiar hardcover book Taemin had spend so much time with.
“I think I am faster by just looking for it’s cover. By the time I have counted what number W stands for I am sure I could spot it.” Taemin said, chuckling because Minho looked so excited about his collection.
“That’s where you and I are different. I don’t need to count. I just know.” Minho said, putting the book back to where he pulled it out from.
“Yeah yeah. I know. I know that you know.” Taemin said subtly looking around the room he had entered five minutes ago. It wasn’t big and almost every wall was made up of shelves full of books, very few of them also sitting neatly at the top of the desk which was lit up by a red reading lamp.
“I am planning to expand the collection within the next years but that is going to require a lot more organization and I was thinking about creating a card index to also categorise them by theme or the year of publishment.” Minho kept speaking, the younger only partly listening to what he was saying as he was a lot more interested in the way the autistic male arranged his room.
There wasn’t a lot in it; A bed with two pillows and a white cover, a closed closet, the clean, well arranged desk including a chair, the bed and the shelves full of books. To Taemin’s surprise it didn’t need more to feel homy. Despite having never been to Minho’s room before, Taemin felt comfortable as the older’s personality was all over it.
After fifteen minutes of speaking without a break, Minho was getting exhausted and went to the kitchen to make tea for the two of them.
Suddenly alone in the unfamiliar room, Taemin awkwardly waited for Minho’s return.
The lamp on the desk was the only source of light he could make out, guessing that it was the place where Minho spent the majority of his time. Taking a closer look at the desk, he noticed a collection of notebooks that stood leaning against the wall, one of them being placed flat on the table with a pen put neatly next to it.
On a first look, the notebooks didn’t seem that special, but then, the one with the pen caught his attention. It was labelled as: “Lee Taemin VI”
Taemin swallowed hard, immediately making assumptions what was written in that notebook. It needed all his self-control not to take a look inside but he was absolutely set on not invading the older’s privacy. Instead he just stared at Minho’s gorgeous handwriting that was spelling out his name. One might expect him to be used to it by now, but he was in awe every single time he saw something that was written by his boyfriend’s big hands. There was just something about his way of writing that made every single piece of paper he wrote on seem like a historical artefact.
“I brought Tea.” Minho said, handing a startled Taemin the cup of steaming hot tea.
The younger had been so immersed in the notebook on Minho’s desk that he hadn’t heard the other enter the room at all. And before he understood what was happening, he was holding a painfully hot cup in his hand.
“ugh” He grunted, putting it on the desk to save his skin from burns.
“I don’t want you to put it on the desk.” Minho immediately said and Taemin grimaced as he took the cup back into his hands.
“Can I put it somewhere else?”
“No. It will spill.” Was Minho’s simple answer.
“It is to hot for me. Can you hold it for a little?” Taemin tried, knowing the other was a lot less sensitive to heat than he was.
“Sure.”
“Thank you.”
The cup was handed over easily and Taemin blew on his hands for a few seconds until the pulsing stopped.
“What are those notebooks?” He then asked, unable to hold back his curiousness.
“I use them to write down important things.”
Taemin’s heart sped up as he watched Minho’s eyes flutter open and close when he set his eyes on the notebook still laying on the table.
“What’s written in that one?” the younger asked, trying to tease the autistic male who was standing there with a cup of tea in each hand.
“Information about you and quotes I was thinking of giving to you.” Minho said nonchalantly, once more proving that he wasn’t a person who hid information or was ashamed of anything.
Taemin smiled. If there was something he was absolutely in love with, it was the way Minho never hid anything from him, telling him the truth no matter how embarrassed a neurotypical person would be when admitting to it.
“What kind of information?”
“You can read it. It is not interesting for you though as you know everything already. I need to write it down to arrange my thoughts. There are so many things I learn about you.”
So it came that while Minho was still holding their tea, Taemin was reaching for “Taemin VI” opening it with trembling hands, anticipation building by the second.
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