and we’ve got to find other ways

to make it alone

“Yah! Why are you crying?!”

“I’m n-not crying! Shut up!” Taemin rubs at his eyes and turns away. But he doesn’t make to leave his spot by the window. He enjoys this, this banter and this teasing, and it’d be a waste if he left. He keeps his bruised wrist away from sight, though, as he rubs at it with his other hand in hopes of soothing the dull pain.

“I know what can cheer you up.” And Minho leaves, out of sight from where Taemin sits. And Taemin panics.

“H-hey!” He jolts from his stool, consequently pushing the chair down onto the ground, “Where are you—”

Minho comes back moments later with a book in hand, yellow and bright by the cover page. The other boy only grins at Taemin as he settles back onto his own seat, leaning forward on his windowsill. Taemin feels embarrassed.

“Miss me?”

“Do that again and I’m never opening this window again,” Taemin grumbles, picking his seat off the ground and setting himself down. It’s not like he can actually live up to the threat, but he felt like saying it.

“Y-yah!” Minho raises his hands, the book flapping along with them as he nervously laughs, deep and low and oddly pleasing to Taemin’s burning ears. “I was kidding I was kidding! I just went to get this,” He declares, fashioning the book on top of his palm to present the cover to Taemin’s still-red eyes.

“Are you serious?” Taemin is thoroughly unimpressed. “'1001 Jokes’? Are you ing kidding me—”

“Taemin! Language!”

“I hear my parents talk like this all the time.” He swats away the butterfly that flutters by his window. “I’m allowed to do the same.”

When Taemin meets gazes with Minho, he sees that the other boy has his arms crossed, his mouth set in a straight line. He probably wasn’t looking at Taemin like that for swatting the butterfly away. Minho always hated it whenever he talked like that.

He lowers his gaze to his lap, watching as the outline of a handprint on his wrist begins to look even more defined, contrasting against his white skin. “Just- go on and tell me a joke or something.”

Minho grins and nods his head before flipping to a random page of the book. He’s yapping and grinning and chuckling again. It was always so easy to subtly ask for the other boy to forgive him, and that is one of the things Taemin realizes he really, really appreciates.

Minho makes an ‘A-ha!’ noise that pulls Taemin from his thoughts. The other looks absolutely excited, practically bouncing on his seat as he holds the book out to Taemin and points at a picture of what looked to be a bird-like thing crossing a river. Taemin leans closer (a bit useless, because Minho is still a meter away at the least, but he tries), and realizes that atop the picture, there was a caption of, ‘Why did the chicken cross the road?’

Taemin rolls his eyes. Crickets were literally chirping around them as it was their time of the evening to be making noise under the moonlight, and Taemin found it mildly amusing that the chirping sounds would eventually contribute to the corniness that Minho’s joke will provide, once the punch line is given.

“Why did the chicken cross the road.” Taemin asks, flat and attempting to sound unamused, but failing miserably— because Minho’s expression makes it so much more amusing than it actually is.

The other boy grins, “Because…” He flips the page, and then frowns. “Huh.”

“Huh?”

“The page isn’t here.”

“It’s not?”

Minho scratches his head, messing his hair up even more than it already was. “It’s not. And I forgot why the chicken did cross the road, so.”

Taemin cannot help the snort that escapes him. “You are horrible at this.”

“Am not!” Minho bursts from his seat then, appearing thoroughly insulted as he slams his hands on the windowsill and s his head out the window. He hits his head on the window frame though, and although he has failed in making Taemin laugh by using the godforsaken book of hackneyed jokes, Taemin releases a hearty laugh when he winces and groans in pain.

“You little-” He keeps rubbing at his head, and groaning for more than necessary because it seems that Taemin gets into even more hysterics when he does so. “You like seeing me in pain, don’t you?”

Taemin stops laughing then, abrupt and sudden. His eyes are still watery, from his wild laughter moments ago. He shakes his head, suddenly straight-faced and serious.

“Never.” He yawns, not even covering his mouth as he does. Minho doesn’t have the mind to remind him this time, because Taemin is taking him too much by surprise. “I’d hate myself if I ever did.”

Minho can only shake his head in response; what could he possibly say to that?

“You should go to bed, Taemin.”

Taemin rubs at his eyes, his lips being slowly pulled downward at Minho’s suggestion. His father will be back and he might get hurt again and he might just want to cry again and Minho might not be there to stupidly hit his head on the window frame and make him feel something akin to happiness again.

He is afraid to leave his spot by the window, but he does.

Later that night, his father comes back, bursts into his room reeking of alcohol and cheap women. Taemin had almost screamed for someone, anyone, Minho— but realized in his panicky haze that he did not have to because at the doorway were his mother and his non-intoxicated brother, and maybe finally, something remotely good would come of the four of them being together in the same room.

His father is forced to leave that same evening, his brother is close to bloodied, and his mother is crying, sobbing- we’re safer now. We’ll get better- I promise.

Taemin is shaken.

Minho is a patient guy. Everyone says so. The pranks his classmates pull on him have no effect on him, and while that may be frustrating to anyone who wanted to get a rise out of Minho, at the end of the day, they appreciated it. Minho’s nice! He never gets angry! , people would often say.

But as Minho clutches his tray tighter in his hands, he wonders what people would think if they were to find out about the thoughts currently racing in his mind. Jonghyun is asking him what the hell is wrong with him while simultaneously trying to pull him to their table- but Minho does not budge.

What the hell does he think he’s doing?

Taemin is eating at the canteen— and while that was already strange enough in itself, he was eating with a girl. Not even with his posse, but with a girl. She has long hair, and from the distance, Minho sees that she is pretty. Really pretty. People are staring at them as the girl shuffles even closer to Taemin’s side. Taemin doesn’t smile (he never does), but he puts his arm around her waist.

Jonghyun is only left to splutter uselessly at the mess Minho leaves behind: a tray snapped in half and a canteen full of gaping students.

When Taemin gets back home that day, he knows that he doesn’t have to be as cautious anymore as he approaches his doorstep, hearing no loud noises or crashing anythings. Muscle memory forces him to act just as cautiously, anyway, as he quietly opens the front door and looks left and right for anyone’s presence. When he feels safe enough,  he races up the staircase, dropping his backpack on the floor just as he always does and plops himself down on the familiar material of the stool by his bedroom window.

He lets out a little ‘oh’ when he is greeted by the sight of Minho’s already opened window, the boy’s eyes bored and staring forward. It catches him by surprise, because he was always the one to wait for Minho to open, never the other way around.

“Hey,” He nervously starts, when the silence between them had begun to feel unbearable. Minho isn’t saying or doing anything, and it makes Taemin tilt his head curiously. “You’re acting weird.”

Minho taps his fingers once, twice, then slowly props his chin on his hand.

“You like her?”

The question is terribly out of the blue, but oddly enough, Taemin understands. It’s never been difficult to understand Minho, so sometimes he does not get why his peers ask him on so many occasions how he manages to snag conversations with the Choi Minho, the mothering king of everything, as one of his classmates had so tactlessly put it. They never actually talk in school, but when they do, people can only stare in awe. (at least that’s what his classmates tell him)

He shakes his head, “No.”

“Then why’d you accept her.” Minho sounds upset. Taemin figures it’s because he hated it when people play with other people’s feelings. But he couldn’t care less about the girl’s feelings right now, because he thinks he deserves to be unkind, because the bruises and the screaming and the ed up state of it all give him enough reason to act as such.

He shrugs. “Does it matter if I do? It’s not going to work out anyway. Might as well have some fun while I’m at it.”

“You-” His head snaps up at the sound of Minho’s rough, lowered voice. “You dense idiot.”

He jolts in his seat when Minho’s window is slammed shut, the curtains following soon after. He can still vaguely make out the shape of Minho’s moving silhouette behind the curtains. Minho was leaving- if the sound of the loud footsteps and the slamming door were anything to go by. The bruises across his arms are beginning to throb again.

Can I ask you to come back?

Please?

Minho angrily runs a hand through his hair as he makes his way downstairs, cursing at whoever was banging at their front door at— he blearily looks for their wall clock’s red, blinking numbers— 3 in the morning. Whoever the bastard was, he was lucky his parents were out of town and that Minho was too sleepy to bother calling for the cops and to report a public disturbance.

“I’M COMING, JESUS!”

He yanks open the door, and before his sleep-muddled mind could register anything, he was being pushed into his own home, his rumpled shirt caught by the collar. When the smell of alcohol wafts up his nose and as his head hits a wall behind him, he doesn’t have to think twice about who it is.

“’DA HELL DIDJA DO TO TAEMIN, HUH?!” Taesun’s voice is loud and slurred in Minho’s ears, the smell of beer and a lot of other things terribly unpleasant for Minho’s nose. He is grateful when, after a few tense moments, the man’s grip on his shirt slowly stops choking him, when the man calms down considerably and doesn’t shout anymore. He still has Minho harshly pushed up against the cold wall, though. “Basterd what didja do I’m gunna kill you he’s sulkin’ and he’s even en worse than his usual y self—”

Minho can’t think of a reply. He doesn’t quite understand. Taesun isn’t pushing him against the wall anymore. It’s more like he’s leaning against Minho for support. The alcohol was probably catching up to him.

And then he drunkenly mutters against Minho’s shoulder. “Take care uv Taemin. Don’t make ‘im cry.”

“in’ take care of him ‘cuz if you don’t I will murder you I swear to god-” Taesun unsteadily pulls away, holds him by the shoulders at arm’s length. He smiles, sad and bitter and Minho kind of sees Taemin in him— but he can’t say for sure because he’s never seen Taemin’s lips lilted upwards, ever.

 “Take care uv him. Yer the only one he’d let in anyway, so.” Minho receives a quick shove to his shoulders before Taesun slowly turns around, grumbling to himself.

He unsteadily wobbles out of Minho’s house as abruptly as he had entered. When Minho finally makes sense of the drunken man’s sudden appearance and his gibberish just moments ago, he bounds up his staircase, almost tripping over himself in his hurry. Drowsiness had left him the moment Taesun had launched himself on him.

He yanks the pale curtains aside and pulls his window open. He almost shouts for Taemin, but he knew Taemin wouldn’t very much appreciate that. He settles for throwing something, anything, at the glass of Taemin’s window, but he gets no response. Taemin was awake, Minho was sure of it. He could see the other’s shaking silhouette past the closed curtains, hunched over, probably on his bed. He would have run over to Taemin’s room if only Mrs. Lee weren’t there. He wasn’t too sure if Taesun had gone back there, though.

Huffing in frustration, he shuffles through his desk and pulls out a paper and a marker. This would have to do.

When Taemin wakes the next morning for school, his eyes are swollen and his nose is red and he feels horrible. He hadn’t realized how much he had been crying last night. He vaguely remembers Taesun banging on his door to open up and his mother asking him if he wanted to talk about it. Was he that loud?

He sits up on his bed, still in his school uniform from the day before. When his eyes land on his closed curtains and his closed window, last night comes hurtling back in his mind and he frowns- but he doesn’t cry. His eyes would hurt even more if he did. It had been a while since he had last cried like he did hours ago. But it doesn’t surprise him that he did. Minho never spoke to him like that. Before he knew it, his eyes were becoming watery as he stayed hunched on his window sill, waiting for Minho.

He had given up sometime when the aching in his back and his bruises had started to become unbearable. Instead of sitting by the window, he had sat down on his bed, waiting for something, anyone. Perhaps someone who opens up their window just for him on days after school and talks to him and listens and is simply there.

Wincing as he shifts to stand from his bed, he stretches his arms over his head and pulls the window’s curtain aside. He hadn’t slept in a very good position last night. There was a dull throbbing at his neck and his left leg feels numb.

Groaning quietly, he chances a peek at the window opposite his. Would it be ridiculous for him to hope that Minho was waiting for him on the other side?

It was, apparently.

But Minho, as always, does not disappoint. The other boy was upset, and Taemin was certain of that. But Taemin realizes then and there, as his eyes skim over the large scrawled letters on the weirdly-shaped piece of scratch paper stuck on the opposite window, that Minho won’t be going anywhere, no matter how angry, no matter how upset.

‘SORRY. YOU’RE NOT AN IDIOT. I AM.’ And then there’s the messy drawing of what looked to be a frog with its webbed feet clasped together as it begs for forgiveness, drawn in painfully neon green ink.

Taemin feels something like a smile coming on. It doesn’t reach him— no, not just yet— but he thinks it’ll be soon when it finally does.

He grabs his own piece of random paper and searches under his bed for the marker he remembered throwing under there. Before he leaves for school, he makes sure that when he places the paper on his window, it is unobstructed, seen clearly from the window opposite his.

‘PABO.

WE BOTH ARE.’

Thank you for subscribing and for the kind comments! :) The votes took me by surprise as well, so thank you thank you thank you sooo much! :) One more part to go!

(jimenew, you've practically got the plot down, haha!)