Warning: Written in the dead of the night and thoroughly unbeta-ed. Kindly switch on your auto-correction mechanism when coming across gross grammatical errors (or you can just tell me about it and I will fix it so as to save the next reader the trouble).

Onew took in the pleading eyes and the pouty pair of lips. Sighing gently, he shook his head and returned both the glass and bottle back to Jonghyun, “Oh alright, just another drink. But give me your keys and address before you get knocked out. We wouldn’t want the same incident at Shangri-La replaying.”

“Why not? It’s not as if we have anything more to lose. I mean, you did strip me after all,” the moment the words were out of Jonghyun’s mouth, he could feel his face heating up. Yes, they were good friends, but even then they had only met for 3 months. This was far too forward of Jonghyun and frankly speaking, a pretty embarrassing statement.

Just when Jonghyun felt that the silence was entering the realms of suffocative and he was debating the merits of curling up into a foetal position, Onew laughed. The awkward atmosphere was dispelled immediately and Jonghyun peeked from the glass of beer he was (sort of) hiding behind. Onew simply shook his head as his shoulders trembled from the laughter.

“I can’t believe you just said that,” Onew was still chuckling, “Oh gosh, that sounded so wrong.”

Jonghyun managed a bashful expression. “Sorry.”

“It’s alright, it’s alright. If that’s what you want, you can stay over at my place for the night,” Onew smiled, “Although, fair warning, the bed in my spare room hasn’t had its bedspread changed for 5 months.”

The jaws of Jonghyun fell and he simply stared at Onew in shock for the next few seconds as the words processed in his mind. Onew looked at him in amusement and tapped his chin in a playful attempt to get it to close. He was rewarded by an embarrassed Jonghyun jumping from the contact and hurriedly snapping shut his mouth. Mustering up the last bits of composure his inebriated brain could spare, Jonghyun said slowly, still slightly flabbergasted, “Did you just invite me over to your house?”

“Yea?” Onew said, “I did.”

Jonghyun’s brains ran a thousand miles a second as he raced to grasp the meaning behind the statement. During his early investigation into this character known as Onew, when they still weren’t friends and Kibum was making a (unnecessarily) huge fuss over a (really dumb) mistake, Jonghyun had also unearthed the fact that most people in the political scene considered Onew a really private person. Not in the sense that he was unfriendly and aloof, but rather, that he did not let anyone come close to him easily despite his amiable exterior, and was an enigma to most. And the physical incarnation of this facet of his personality was apparently his apartment, which had been compared by the occasional dramatic gossiper to a holy sanctuary which no one had ever set foot in.

Not even his one-night stands or his grandparents, they whispered to him behind cupped hands, not even his closest friends or colleagues.

“What?” Jonghyun sounded intelligently.

Onew gently pried away the glass of beer from Jonghyun’s loose fingers. He said worriedly, “I think you should stop drinking. It’s getting to you already.”

Jonghyun blinked, unaware of the missing glass, “Did you just offer to let me stay in your apartment?”

“Yes,” Onew replied distractedly as he went through the numerous cards in his wallet, searching for the one that could give him a 10% discount off his bill tonight, “Do you not want to?”

“I want to. But why?” Jonghyun asked, mystified, “People say that you don’t allow anyone in, period. Not even your one-night—grandparents, I mean grandparents.” He hastily corrected. He was not about to make the same blunder in a single night.

“What are you talking about? Of course my grandparents had been to my place. They even gave me a mixer for my housewarming gift,” Onew said before grimacing slightly, “I think it’s gathering dust in a corner of my storeroom now.”

A brief silence elapsed as Onew busied himself with catching the attention of an assistant while Jonghyun’s mind churned through the recently acquired information.

“So it’s not true that you are an incredibly private person?” Jonghyun asked.

Onew drew a rectangle box in the air and mouthed the word ‘bill’ to the waitress. “I am sorry, but what did you say?” he said to Jonghyun once he was satisfied that the waitress got his message.

“The rumours say that you don’t allow anyone into your house easily.”

“Well, I don’t invite in any Tom, or Harry if that’s what you are implying.”

“No, as in, you know,” Jonghyun searched for the right words in frustration, “Even people whom you are really close to aren’t invited in.”

Onew tapped the table thoughtfully, “That’s true to a certain extent. I don’t really like having people in my house.” He said by way of explanation, “It’s as if they are intruding on the only place in this world that I can truly be myself, without any pretension.”

“What about me then?”

“You are different, I guess,” Onew shrugged, “Now that you mentioned it, I don’t exactly know why I offered to let you stay over.”

The waitress arrived with the bill and Onew checked through the receipt, being the one out of the two who could still read without having the numbers swim in his vision. The conversation paused for a moment and Jonghyun rolled Onew’s explanation in his brain, tasting the flavor and finding it quite palatable. He was different.

He decided he quite liked it, being different.

“You can’t retract it,” Jonghyun said warningly after the card was taken away, “The offer.”

“Not going to unless you don’t offer me the same now.” A teasing twinkle danced in Onew’s eyes.

Jonghyun blinked once, twice, before a wide smile cracked across his face. “Feel free to crash at my place anytime you want, Onew.”

-

Jonghyun decided he wasn’t exactly drunk as he climbed up the stairs, leaning shamelessly on a struggling Onew as he climbed up the floors. But then again, he wasn’t exactly sober either as his legs didn’t quite felt like his at the moment and the edges of the lines blurred in his vision. It was a weird in-between he was in, some sort of strange limbo between the city of the sober sane and the town of the drunk deadbeats.

He wasn’t too sure if this was a good state to be in, but at least there were the warm hands of Onew’s supporting him from his sides.

“We need more technicians in this country,” Onew’s breathing was labored, “I can’t believe the elevators haven’t been fixed yet.”

“How long have they been spoilt?”

“Since the morning,” Onew said, “I had to climb down sixteen flights of stairs this morning.”

“That’s long. More than twelve hours, I think?”

“Twenty hours. It’s reaching 3am,” Onew decided to keep his responses short to conserve energy. It was already tiring enough climbing up sixteen flights of stairs at a go. But sixteen flights with the added weight of a healthy, young and impressively muscular man on him made it felt as if there were 20kg weights tied to each of his limbs.

Oh gosh, he was a reporter for goodness sake, he wasn’t made for this type of workout.

Still, Onew couldn’t resist the urge to complain as he huffed and puffed his way up the building, wishing for once that he had taken Kyunglim’s advice of going to the gym, “We really need more engineers.”

A long pause sounded and the journey was momentarily silent except for the sound of heavy footsteps and loud breaths. However, Jonghyun piped up minutes later, just when Onew thought Jonghyun had managed to fall asleep while climbing, “That’s why President Yoo is introducing the education bill.”

Onew spared him an amused glance, “Doing PR for your bill even at this time?”

“With the newly introduced education bill, the standards of teaching in America can be raised exponentially as we bring to the children a 100,000 new teachers and standardized testing, ensuring that no one is left behind and no one would be judged unfairly,” Jonghyun’s words took on a more formal tone as he continued, “A child would no longer have to clamour for attention among 40 others and would get stronger support from his teacher, while at the same time, being subjected to the same rigorous tests as hundred thousands across the states are.”

“Nice speech,” Onew complimented, “A bit more polish here and there, and you can dump it in the annual gala.”

“You don’t agree?”

“What?”

“Do you support the bill?”

“It looks nice enough.”

“But do you support it?”

“It’s well-intentioned,” Onew shrugged, “But I think you guys could have come up with a better one.”

“What do you mean? It’s hard enough pushing the Republicans for a 100,000 new teachers and to get ourselves a set of standardized tests. What more can we do?”

“Well,” Onew begun hesitantly, “For one, you could stop attaching amendments to it.”

Jonghyun turned silent. “It’s politics. We got to play the game of gift and take.”

“I know, I know,” Onew ran a tired hand through his hair, “But watching you guys… Sometimes it feels as if you are so resigned to the fact you have to barter that you guys don’t even try. And watching you guys trade with the policies that would affect the lives of millions of Americans frivolously leave a bad aftertaste.”

He stopped and started again, “I mean, don’t get me wrong. I really appreciate what you have done and your administration is probably trying its best. But it would be great if you could sign on a policy without having to sell away the storefront. I mean… What does re-pavement for 40km stretch of road in Arizona has anything to do with education? Or building a new dam in Mississippi, you tell me?”

Jonghyun pursed his lips, “You dug that out?”

“Yea.”

“If I say the re-pavement is to facilitate schoolbuses’ ferrying of students and the dam for generation of electricity in schools, would you believe me?”

“No, not really.”

“Well. Now. We were hoping that the 100,000 new teachers and standardized tests would generate enough noise to distract from the rest of the bill.”

“I guess it wasn’t enough,” Onew said, “And just a warning, my editor is picking up some signs from the education community that they aren’t too happy with the main parts of the bill itself because—“

“They are afraid that once the 100,000 new teachers have finished serving their bonds, they would ditch the children and leave for fairer grounds. And that standardized tests might just perpetuate greater inequality despite the fact it is introduced precisely with the aim to end that.”

“So, you know,” Onew sounded surprised.

“It’s our bill, we did plenty of research,” Jonghyun heaved a heavy sigh, “We agonized over it for ages and worked with it for so long, that the only a hint of the original incarnation of the bill could be seen, distorted as it is by the countless amendments. The days I spent hammering out this bill with the Republicans, with the Office of Educational Research and Improvement and with the staffers themselves… it’s countless.”

“But this is the best we can come up with,” Jonghyun held out his hands helplessly, “It stinks of pork barrel and limps under its own weight. It flounders about ike a one-legged pirate bloated on his own largesse and drunk on unrealistic fantasies. It's a terrible policy and we aren't proud of it, but it’s the best we can offer to America with politics being the way it is.”

The remaining journey up to Onew’s apartment was silent. Onew was not too sure how to respond, how he could help, too used as he was to merely analyzing and criticizing, his job’s main responsibilities. There were many times when he had gathered with his fellow political correspondents from other agencies. And sometimes, their conversation took a turn for the harsh and mean as they spent their time mocking the latest politician who fell short of the public’s expectations and jeering at the efforts of Congress to improve the country.

It was so easy, they always said, Congress just didn’t try hard enough.

But perhaps it wasn’t so easy after all. Onew began to revise his position on politicians. They faced their own set of troubles and not everything in this world was as clear cut as people thought it was. Opposition was stiff, and public judgment swift; politics was a hazardous ground to tread. And there were many people in there with conflicting interests, who wanted different things and demanded different solutions.

And when a concession was finally cobbled out, people from both sides always found it lacking, either too much or too little. It didn’t really matter, just that no one was ever really happy with the results. And the public would be dissatisfied and the newspapers would tear it apart, feeding the shark-infested waters with even more meat and fresher blood.

That was the way things worked, and Onew was beginning to wish it didn’t. He gripped Jonghyun’s waist a bit tighter and pulled him closer in.

Here was a brilliant, precious man who did his best to better the world. Onew was not going to let him fall.

“We can push harder,” Jonghyun said miserably, “But that would be like pushing molasses up a sandhill.” 

I don't know what I have written. I started out with the intention of criticising pork barrel policies and harping on the importance of education, but somehow it meandered its way into this confusing theme in which... I don't know, am I sympathising with politicians or something?

But at least it's done, so that's saying something. And yay for more Jongyu moments :)

EDIT: Oh yea, the standardised testing is to reflect the recent education reform. Although the same can't be said about the 100,000 new teachers or amendments--these two are purely fictional.