The beginning of this story came to me while I was on my way to work one day.  It was just particularly foggy and the fog was shifting so quickly.  I swear it was following me up the hill to the school.  Anyway, there was this spacey kind of ethereal feel to it and the first thing I did after booting up my computer was write down the first few lines of this story.   

This one is also something of a gift.  I usually dedicate a story to someone who has helped me come up with an idea.  This one however, I am dedicating out of sheer gratefulness.  This one is to the marvelous SilverKey.  She never fails to just “get it” in her reviews, which are usually lengthy, and she has been so incredibly nice enough to edit some of my longer pieces for me.  She finds many of my little errors, which means if you find one of those in my stories, it’s probably a chapter I didn’t ask her to edit or something I added after I received her edit, and gives me the feedback to make the story even better.  She had become a real friend to me and so I dedicate this one to her.  SilverKey – you are the best!

#75 – Coma

The dense fog rolled in. 

He watched it inch its way down the side of the mountain as he stood by the window, drinking his morning coffee.

Its ghostly tendrils crept through the trees, slowly closing in on the ground below that would soon be racked with flood lights as people tried to make their way through the dense cloud to go about their day.  

How fitting, he thought spitefully, finally turning away from the window and back towards his darkened living room.  His whole life had been in a fog it seemed.  Everything muddled and shrouded, bereft of bearing and swindling his senses.  Or at least that was how it had seemed anyway…

*****

Kibum sighed and rubbed at his temples.  He’d been at it since this morning and it was now mid-afternoon.

Taemin had spent odd moments over the past three years writing this book, his first foray into the realm of fiction. 

He had finally finished and now he wanted Kibum to be the first to read it, before he sent it off to an agent to try and pitch it to a publisher. 

It was good.  Even Kibum had to admit that it was a page turner, though he wasn’t usually the type to want to sit down and read for fun.  It was a mystery thriller that would be a mindless escape for many, with just enough clues and twists to keep even the most seasoned crime readers guessing until the end.

Taemin had handed over the pile of papers with a red pen sitting on top with the directive to, “Mark anything that you see.”

Kibum adjusted his shoulders, rolling them in the socket while moving his head around, wincing at the popping noises that escaped.  “I’m getting old…” he muttered to himself before jumping back into the work.

A few hours later Kibum straightened up, capping the red pen soundly and throwing it down on the table next to the last page of Taemin’s manuscript, content that he would never have to see it again. 

“Done!” He called, practically fleeing from the room, needing to see some part of the apartment other than Taemin’s office.

“Appa!” The eight-year-old Munhee called out.  “Papa was about to order dinner!  PIZZA!”  He cried, jumping in excitement.  It was his favorite. 

Kibum ruffled the boy’s hair affectionately and gave him a one armed hug as they both moved towards the kitchen where Taemin stood with a take-out menu in hand and the phone pressed to his ear, giving the address for delivery. 

After dinner, and the kids were holed up in their rooms doing the homework that they had neglected for the whole weekend, Taemin finally asked Kibum, “So what did you think?”

Kibum rubbed at his eyes, tired after all of the reading and eventual squinting he had been doing all day.  No wonder Taemin had needed to get glasses, spending his whole day looking at small type on computer screens. 

“It was good.  I think that the plot is solid and makes sense, but I found typos and stuff.  I marked all of that for you.”  Kibum fell gently into the hug that Taemin was offering. 

“Thanks Bummie,” Taemin whispered, kissing the top of Kibum’s head with an awkward twist to his neck to meet it where it lay on his shoulder.  “I’m so nervous about this, I haven’t written fiction since college…”

Kibum lightly patter Taemin’s back where his hands lay, “It’s great.  With all the reading you do you’d better be a good writer!”  And he lightly swatted at his husband’s behind in a playful manner. 

Taemin laughed and pulled his husband down on the couch next to where they had been standing. 

“Oh!” He suddenly breathed, remembering something.  “What were you laughing so hard at?  I don’t think that I wrote in anything that funny, especially towards the end…” he asked, looking to Kibum with a quizzical eye.

Taemin had been startled about an hour before Kibum emerged to hear the man break out into peals of laughter.

Kibum furrowed his brows before realization clicked.  He laughed again and said, “Oh…that.”

“What?”  Taemin wanted to know.  “What was ‘that?’” 

Kibum snorted, “It was a typo, but it was very funny.”

Taemin pouted like he was one of their children, “But what did I write?”  He almost wanted to stomp his feet for emphasis but knew that that would only entertain Kibum more.

Kibum rolled his lips together and seemed to center himself before beginning, fighting a smile that threatened to break out over his face.  “It was when the main guy and girl are fighting after they’ve been caught by the big baddie.”

Taemin rolled his eyes at Kibum’s descriptions.  They had names you know?!

“And they start talking about the hospital and what they mean to each other…”

Taemin nodded telling the man to keep going, knowing exactly where in the plot Kibum was talking about. 

“And he shouts, ‘I came out of a coma for you!’”

Taemin nodded once more, wondering where anything of this was funny so far.  “Okay, and…?”

Kibum snorted, “Instead of ‘coma’ you wrote ‘comma.’”  Kibum turned his head and Taemin could see his laughing eyes.  “The whole big dramatic building and tension shattered completely when I read, ‘I came out of a comma for you!’”

Taemin silently mashed his lips together, trying to fight off his laughter.  Okay…that was a good one…

Managing to stifle himself, he instead just shook his head and laid it back against the back of the couch. 

“That was about us,” Kibum said quietly, tucking his head in under Taemin’s chin and wrapping his long arms around the man’s still svelte torso.  Reading that scene, Kibum had known instantly that this was more than just plot and characters, Taemin, like many authors before him, had inserted a part of his own life into the story, a discussion of his own unique history that would only be noticed by someone who actually knows him. 

Taemin just nodded after a moment, knowing that his husband could feel the motion in his body. 

“Do you really think of it that way?  That you came out of it for me?”  Kibum asked, his voice small.  It was a hell of a declaration, to say that you fought hard enough to be released from a coma, all for one person.

Taemin smiled and twisted in Kibum’s hold, facing him and pulling him in close to whisper in his ear.  “I could feel you.  I could hear you.  I dreamed of you and thought of you.  I thought of you all alone sitting by my bed, knowing that even if I never woke you would still be there.  I couldn’t let you suffer like that…”

Kibum bit his lip, determined to keep the happy tears away.  “Oh…” was all his voice could manage in response.

After a few moments of companionable silence the two finally pulled back and Key’s feline eyes caught Taemin’s.  He smiled and leaned forward, planting a kiss directly on Taemin’s lips. 

“You can come out of a comma for me any day.”

The pair was lost laughing, utterly confusing their two children who came out to see what was so loud to find their fathers lost in laughter, leaning on each other just to stay vertical.  

“Dads are weird…” Munhee stated as they turned to go back to their rooms.

“No kidding…” Jinae agreed.

Okay – the inspiration for this one came from a Korean movie that I once watched.  So, now you need to know that the copy of this movie that I was watching was a legitimate copy.  I did not stream this online, it was not a fansub.  I was watching the legal, licensed copy of I Married a Mobster that I had checked out from my University Library. 

To start with, the plot wasn’t exactly great, but I was watching it for a mindless escape so that was alright with me…but the subtitles were awful!  They were riddled with spelling errors and words and entire sentences were run together instead of spaced out, but the funniest one was when one of the character’s declares his love for another character and shouts “I came out of a coma for you!”  Because that has to be the line, but the subtitles read that he had come out of a comma for her. 

I lost it!  I was laughing so hard that my RA came down the hallway to ask me to quiet down (it was finals week…).  It was ridiculous and it has stuck with me ever since.  So when I saw the prompt for coma I thought – hey, I can make this funny instead of serious and angsty and I went with it. 

I hope you enjoyed!