“Aaaaah!!” Jongin slammed the door of his locker.

“Woa, what did that locker ever do to you?” Taemin's eyes grew two sizes. “Tell me, so I can avoid ever doing anything like it.” he smirked, acting out the scene from the perspective of the innocent locker door.

“I can't live with that guy anymore, I just can't!!” he put his T-shirt on so forcefully, taking all his irritation out on it, that it split at the seams as he punched his arm through the arm-hole.

“Mm okay, you want to talk about it before you won't have any clothes left and will be forced to walk home ?” Taemin chuckled feebly, clearly concerned.

They got dressed and went to the wending machine for drinks. Jongin let himself plomp down on a bench nearby, feeling like the world was out to get him by forcing him to marry that demon and ruin his life.

“What's up? He's not treating you badly, is he?” Taemin said in a tone that indicated that he was ready to hunt that guy down and take the necessary measures if he had to.

“No, not exactly. He's just... he's a total robot. It's like living with a psycho cyborg that's obsessed with keeping the place spotless. I feel like I'm living in a science fiction movie where suddenly the helper robots revolt and take over, and there's nothing you can do, but wait until the robot snaps and kills you because you put your glass on the shelf with the wrong color glasses.” he crossed his arms dramatically, trying to signal to the universe just how frustrated and unhappy he was.

“It can't be that bad, can it? I mean, just take advantage of him doing all the housework, and ignore the rest.” Taemin suggested. He didn't know. He couldn't understand the feeling of coming home and hardly being able to breathe, the suffocating air too thick to enter his lungs.

There had been a point when he thought this wasn't going to be half bad. He kept the house clean, cooked for him, it was almost like having a stay at home wife. But then everything kicked into gear with Kyungsoo's restaurant plans, and the stress of it all had made him into a full time, excruciatingly nag-bag, except the nagging was usually silent, but deadly. He had never experienced anyone before who could shout so loudly without saying anything. Nothing was good enough for him.

At times he had felt they were getting closer, but when the stress got to him, Kyungsoo completely shut him out, rarely speaking to him, and if he left a sticky note, it was always to scold him for not cleaning up after himself, or doing it wrong. The sweet little messages he used to treasure so dearly were a thing of the past.

Jongin had tried everything. He had tried helping out around the house, but nothing he did was good enough. He had tried doing nothing, but then Kyungsoo very passive aggressively made sure he felt guilty every second he spent at home. He couldn't win, and it made him miserable and lonely. It wasn't like Kyungsoo was the only one who was stressed out. His show's opening night was drawing closer at a dangerous pace and he spent most of his waking hours at practice.

So now he was done being Mr. Nice Guy. This meant war. The most passive aggressive war that had ever been waged.

Jongin had developed a liking to a small, red bowl which he used every day for breakfast. It looked cute and cheerful, and made him feel better about starting the day. The problem was that Kyungsoo had organized the kitchen cabinets in the most inconvenient way, where the colored bowls were separate from the clear, the white and the silver bowls. The mundane looking bowls got prime seats in the VIP box in the center cabinet, right in front of their noses. The colored bowls however got the cheap seats on the top floor, sitting on the top shelf in the top cabinet, so there was no way to get to them without either jumping up after them, or reaching up while standing on the edge of his toes, stretching his body to its limits and using the table to push for that extra inch. If that didn't work, he was forced to get a chair to climb up on. All of the choices were annoying and exhausting, and not something he liked doing every morning, when he needed all his energy put into his dancing. He didn't even get how Kyungsoo got them all up there, since he was way shorter than him. But it was clear that he didn't like the colored bowls and wanted them out of sight.

Some days Jongin felt like that red bowl.

So he revolted. He put the red bowl with the white bowls that were so conveniently located right in front of him. Like a true rebel. But that evening he came home to a sticky note storm and the red bowl back in exile. That only made him more determined. Every time he was finished using it, instead of putting it in the dishwasher, where Kyungsoo would then eventually get to it and make it disappear, he washed it himself and put it right back with the white bowls, sometimes front and center so it would catch his attention, and sometimes hiding it behind a row of white ones, lying in wait, like a wolf in sheep's clothing. But every single time, Kyungsoo moved it. He was driving him insane. He didn't know how much more of this he could take.

“Can't I just come live with you.” Jongin forced a smile.

“Sure! You're either going to have to bunk with Sehun, who's been kind of lonely lately, if you know what I mean... or with me and Minho... but you're welcome anytime!” Taemin gave him a teasing wink, patting him on the shoulder as if to say 'hang in there'.

“Hehh...” he sighed.

When Jongin got home, he was beyond exhausted. He was just going to swallow a bowl of rice real quick and crash into his bed. This had been the worst day. Everything he had tried at rehearsals had failed and he felt like the more he practiced, the worse he got. He had almost no time left, and everything was a mess. There was not a nanometer of his body that didn't ache. It felt like he had just been in multiple car accidents, and then a huge truck had run over him for good measure, and his body was functioning on his stubbornness alone.

He opened the cabinet, and low and behold, the red bowl was missing, like it was every single day. That jerk did not know how to let things go. This was not the day. He knew he could just put the rice in any of the many bowls that were right there in front of him, but he wanted the red one. Was that really too much to ask? He sighed out of frustration, grumbling under his breath. He was too tired to jump or fetch a chair, so he stretched as far as he could, his back and calf muscles feeling like they had caught fire, the tips of his fingers barely reaching the rim of the bowl. He tried to nudge it to the edge of the shelf, but lost balance and the bowl flew out of the cupboard as he stumbled, hitting the floor at full speed, smashing into a trillion pieces.

It was the last straw.

It was the dot over the i.

It was the grain that tipped the scale.

Jongin saw red. He stormed over to Kyungsoo's bedroom, barging in without even knocking. He had been too mad to watch where he was going, the stinging sensation under his foot indicating that he had stepped on a piece of the broken bowl. He ignored it. He had bigger fish to fry.

“This is not just YOUR home, it's mine too!! I'm not just a guest at a hotel! You can't just decide for yourself how everything is going to be, if I want to have my red bowl where the white bowls are, I DAMN WELL CAN!!!” he shouted at the top of his lungs. His entire body was shaking with rage.

He was so angry the room was spinning. He started seeing spots, and then everything turned black.

Jongin opened his eyes with difficulty. He was kind of groggy.

“You fainted.” Kyungsoo said in a low voice, exchanging the cold cloth on his forehead.

“How long was I out?” he asked shyly, trying to sit up but his body wouldn't listen. He could feel a bandage wound tightly around his foot.

“Almost four hours.” Kyungsoo glanced at the clock, making him do the same. It was late, it was night out already. Wow, he had really done a number on his body with the enhanced rehearsal schedule, to the point that it just gave up, took control and shut itself off.

Kyungsoo stood up, preparing to leave, but Jongin used all his remaining energy to grab his wrist.

“Don't go...” he whispered. He didn't want to be alone.

And Kyungsoo stayed.

“Say something...” Jongin pleaded after they had just sat there in silence, for ten whole minutes. “Everything hurts.. I don't want to just lay here in the silence, distract me.”.

Kyungsoo looked uncomfortable. He bit his lip, looking around the room. Finally he picked up a book that had sat on Jongin's nightstand since he moved in. And he started reading. Page 1, first sentence.

His voice. He had always known he had a beautiful voice, even though he seldom used it, but he hadn't known the half of it. Kyungsoo read in a low, steady tone that filled his ears with warmth. He was only using the deepest part of his voice, it was soft yet slightly hoarse. It had this entrancing quality about it. It felt kind of strange, as if he was being put under a spell. He was too tired to fight it. He closed his eyes and surrendered to its enchantment. It expelled all hurt and loneliness from his soul, replacing it with calm and sereneness.

“Oh!” Kyungsoo quietly exclaimed, stopping mid-sentence.

“Don't stop.” he pleaded, for the moment Kyungsoo stopped, he was transported back to reality. A wave of nausea washed over him. Kyungsoo's voice had made him forget how poorly he was feeling. He needed him to keep reading.

“Uh...” Kyungsoo glanced furtively at his phone, and then back at him. “I .. eh.. have to leave.”.

“Nooo... uhu... I don't want to be alone....” Jongin pouted, feeling terribly sorry for himself.

“I.. uh... have an important meeting...” Kyungsoo looked really conflicted. He was probably the type who had a hard time saying no in person.

“Wait, what?! It's morning already? And you haven't even slept a wink!” he gasped. He forgot about his own misery for a second, not believing that Kyungsoo had spent an entire night reading to him, especially when he had an important meeting to prepare for.

“Go.. go!! Your restaurant is important! The world deserves to know your genius. You make people happy with your food.. I know, I've experienced it.” he blushed after that impromptu mini-confession. It was not something he had ever planned to tell him. “The world needs more happy! Go!” he urged him.

Kyungsoo looked at him for a moment, X-raying him with concerned eyes. He nodded slightly and left. Jongin wanted him to go, he wanted him to succeed, yet his heart sank a bit seeing him leave. He hated being alone when he was sick. The fever made him hyper sensitive and vulnerable. And he was frequently visited by unwanted thoughts. Kyungsoo's voice had filled his head as well as his heart, keeping all the ghosts away.

The door creaked. It was Kyungsoo. He was back? But it felt like he had only been gone a moment. Was he losing his sense of time? Or maybe he had out without realizing it.

“The meeting just got canceled.” Kyungsoo waved his phone. If Jongin didn't know better, he would have sworn he saw the beginning of a smile.

“Wow, what a lucky coincidence.” Jongin attempted a smile but was too weak for anything more than a slight smirk.

“He he.. yeah.” Kyungsoo's eyes turned furtive, avoiding eye contact. Then again, Kyungsoo had never cared much for eye contact.

“I'll make you some chicken soup for breakfast.” Kyungsoo decided and left for the kitchen.

It took Jongin a few days to recover, and Kyungsoo was there, nursing him every step of the way, reading him to sleep every night. He had missed out on a lot of valuable practice time, but opening night came and went, and Jongin got praises all around. It hadn't been as perfect as he had wanted it to be, and he had had to dig himself out of a mountain of regrets, but he couldn't really complain. He had also decided to go easier on Kyungsoo as a thank you for taking care of him. If Kyungsoo needed the house to be super organized, he was going to try and respect that.

When he got home from the premiere's after party, he realized that he was famished. There had been plenty of food at the party, but it had been so hectic, that between all the interviews and the congratulations, he hadn't had one bite to eat. Practicing what he preached, letting go of the war between them, he fetched a chair to get his red bowl out of the top cabinet, but suddenly realized it was broken. He could feel the disappointment sink in. It was silly, to mourn a bowl, but he kind of felt like it had been his only ally in this hostile territory behind enemy lines. And he didn't know why, but It just always made him happier to eat out of it, bringing a little bit of color to the gray mundaneness of every day life.

Settling on a dull, white bowl instead, he opened the cupboard. He did a double take, blinking profusely to check if his eyes were working right. On the shelf, up front and center, surrounded by white bowls, was a shiny new red one. Jongin just stared at it, forgetting all about his hunger. He had listened to him. Kyungsoo had listened to him. And he knew it must have been hard for him to put it in there, where it didn't belong, but he did it anyway. His heart melted into a puddle of goo. He was probably overinterpreting the situation, but he couldn't help but feel like Kyungsoo had finally accepted him. Now it was his home too.

Jongin got ready for bed and knocked lightly on Kyungsoo's bedroom door. “I'm ready.” he informed him, waving the book.

“Uhm... you're all better now.” Kyungsoo wrinkled his forehead.

“But I'm so curious how it ends!!” Jongin insisted.

“Then read it yourself!” Kyungsoo retorted, letting out a shy chuckle.

Jongin put up the biggest pout ever attempted and hung his head.

“Okay, fine, give it here.” Kyungsoo shook his head at his silly, five year old tactics, following him to his room and sitting down in the chair next to it.

Jongin closed his eyes and let Kyungsoo's soothing voice envelop him, like an invisible hug. He was getting seriously hooked on his voice. He couldn't sleep without it. So beautiful and captivating. He was completely bewitched by it.