Work Text:
There were goats in the carrot patch and strange chickens burbling around among the spinach.
Which was weird, because they didn’t own any goats, and while they did have chickens, those birds were tucked up in their enclosure for the night.
One of the goats yanked her head and ripped a too-small carrot out of the soil, then crunched it down.
“KYUNGSOO!” Jongdae roared, and waded in among the fray.
By the time Soo had made his way outside, Jongdae had managed via the sacrifice of the protein bar in his pocket to coax all 8 goats close enough to thread a rope through their collars and tie them securely to a tree.
Soo was wiping flour off his hands – the nearest goat strained against the rope, tongue hanging out in an obvious play to lick it off. Jongdae shuddered. Mud he could deal with. Spit was something else entirely. But Kyungsoo held out his hand and let it get slimed while he stared over at the spinach.
“They won’t hurt anything, I guess,” he said eventually.
“Not the point,” Jongdae said.
“No. But if you know how to round up and catch chickens without wasting half the day, please patent your method so we can be millionaires.”
Jongdae grumbled under his breath. Soo had a terrible habit of being right. The chickens wouldn’t hurt anything among the spinach, and they’d go home eventually to whatever stupid (ineffective, insecure) setup their neighbor had.
It was the principle of the thing. And the goats. And just the plain arrogant stupidity of spending all this money just to skive off and leave these poor creatures, whose fault it definitely was not -
“You’re pontificating out loud,” Kyungsoo said.
Jongdae sighed. Kyungsoo wrapped an arm around his waist and, in a demonstration of deep love, held his spit-covered hand away from Jongdae’s body, even clothed as it was in a muddy coverall.
“He’s an idiot, and the goats deserve better,” Soo said.
“We’re still not adopting them,” Jongdae said.
So. Jongdae wasn’t going to waste half the day chasing chickens around, just an hour rounding up goats and taking them home. They followed him docilely enough as Jongdae tromped first through their own radish field, then crossed the flimsy excuse for a fence (goat hole on full display) between that and their neighbor’s milo field and into his manicured, professionally landscaped lawn with a picture-book farmhouse perched in the middle of it.
And the luxury SUV parked beside it.
Well. Certainly their wonderful neighbor had interrupted their sleep several dozen times in the past 6 months, with his loud, weekend-long parties and 3 a.m. whatever the hell that was with the drumming or the electric guitar, the same little short bursts of noise over and over and over until Jongdae was ready to take up shamanism just the curse the guy.
So he didn’t really have any hesitation at all in pounding steadily on the door for the entire time it took for said door to open.
Another thing Jongdae hated about their neighbor was how he had the audacity to be extremely hot, which shouldn’t be allowed in someone so obnoxious. Chanyeol stood blinking in the doorway, dark red hair standing up, looking messy and attractive instead of just normally messy, wearing only a pair of – oh, for pity's sake – pink and yellow Hello Kitty pajama pants, the tattoos that covered his stupidly muscled arms and torso on full display.
Jongdae shoved the rope full of goats into Chanyeol’s hand and went back to work. Maybe Chanyeol shouted an apology behind him, eventually, but Jongdae didn’t listen.
At least when Chanyeol showed up at their back door that evening, he was wearing a shirt. And bearing several bottles of wine.
“I’m really sorry,” he said, holding out the bottles.
He was lucky: Kyungsoo had been the one to answer the door. Jongdae probably would’ve slammed it in his face. Eight times those damn goats had gotten loose. Eight.
“Come in,” Kyungsoo said, then rolled his eyes at one glare and one startle. “Sit down, Chanyeol.”
Jongdae watched Chanyeol’s face go pink at the sound of Kyungsoo’s command voice and felt his first brief spark of kinship with their dumb neighbor. And it was fun to watch him squirm while Soo calmly opened one of the wine bottles and set out three glasses. Several times, Chanyeol tried to speak, only to be met each time with that way Soo had of going still and glancing up that let a person know that he was thinking, and they needed to keep their face shut until he was done.
Jongdae remembered how long he had squirmed in chairs like Chanyeol was doing, until he learned to let Soo have his time.
He took a very petty satisfaction in watching Chanyeol squirm. What with those damned goats. And his stupid face.
Kyungsoo filled the glasses and sat.
“We have to figure this out, Chanyeol, between the time we spend rounding those goats up and the destruction they cause, this cannot happen again,” he said.
It was way nicer than the “fix your damn nonsense” that Jongdae would’ve gone for. Chanyeol flapped his hands around.
“I’m really sorry,” he said again. “I don’t know how this keeps happening, I went to the fence guy and everything, I don’t understand how they keep getting out, but of course I’ll pay for any damages.”
Jongdae and Kyungsoo frowned at each other.
“Fence. Guy?” Jongdae asked.
“Yeah, old Mr. Kang up the road. He said that fence was what I needed, I mean, it looks so flimsy, but he’s the expert, I don’t know what I’m doing wrong.”
To Jongdae’s knowledge, the only “Mr. Kang up the road” was much better known for wandering around drunk and pantless on his own property for the week or so after his pension check came in every month.
“How much did he charge you?” Jongdae asked.
“He gave me a discount, only six million won,” Chanyeol said.
Oh no.
Kyungsoo smacked the kitchen table with his palm.
“Let me guess. Guy at the hardware store told you to call him.”
“That’s right,” Chanyeol said from his cringe. “He’s really great, I don’t know what I’d do without him, he knows everybody, and – you look really angry still, please tell me what I can do to apologize.”
Kyungsoo rubbed his nose under the bridge of his glasses. Jongdae could see where this was going, like a terrible road winding out toward the horizon.
“How many experts has the guy at the hardware store put you in touch with?” Soo asked.
“Oh, lots,” Chanyeol said. “The roof guy, the seed guy, the fence guy, the goat lady, and I’m really excited about the pig guy, I have this tiny little pig coming next week, she’s so cute you won’t believe it! I bought like a little dog bed, and a bathtub for babies, you guys have to come over and see, I can almost hold her in one hand, I’m so in love already.”
Jongdae buried his face in his wineglass to forestall howling like some kind of werewolf. It helped that the wine was delicious.
“Did he say how big the piglet will grow to be?” Kyungsoo asked in the very gentle voice that meant he was imagining someone’s slow death in his bare hands.
“No, but I mean, ‘teacup’ is right there in the name, so I figured like the size of a little dog, right?”
Soo took a minute to fortify himself with wine too. The time gave Jongdae the opportunity to feel like a jerk for making Soo do all the heavy lifting.
“It’ll be over fifty kilograms easy when it’s grown,” Jongdae said.
“How does that qualify as teacup?” Chanyeol shouted.
“Lots of pigs get over three hundred kilos.”
Chanyeol stared back and forth between the two of them, the fingers of one hand playing with the earrings dangling from his left ear. Jongdae wondered briefly how many times the goats had tried to eat those things.
“Mr. Kim at the hardware store isn’t my friend, is he,” Chanyeol said in a flat tone.
“I’m afraid he isn’t,” Soo said softly.
Chanyeol frowned into the distance for several minutes.
“I’m really sorry about the goats,” he said. “I’m gonna go.”
Kyungsoo was so annoyed by that whole conversation that Jongdae brought out the heavy ammunition and filled the soaking tub in the back room, despite the rule that whoever filled it had to scrub it out the next day. Worth it, though, to hand Soo into the stinging hot water and watch his frown smooth out to the point that Jongdae slid into his lap for a whole slippery thing of mouths and hands and cocks that left them both with better things to think about than their gullible neighbor.
Chanyeol was back the next day – thankfully, his goats were not.
“Who do I really need to ask about a fence?” he asked. “And, I guess, about pigs.”
He had dark circles under his eyes and a definite sag about the shoulders. Jongdae couldn’t really work up any irritation. He wrote out the number of the family-owned company two towns over that were the only people he and Soo trusted for construction jobs, and the number of the lesbian couple who ran the only non-gross pig farm Jongdae had ever seen.
The next day, when Jongdae was setting up the chicken tractor for the ladies’ daily work in the future onion patch, the sound of hammers made him look up to see that Mrs. Jung and 2 of her 4 sons were already at work on Chanyeol’s property, replacing that dumb netting with something hopefully electrified and goat-proof.
A week later, Chanyeol showed up on their back porch in the evening with a bright grin and a piglet on a leash.
“Come see the fence!” he said.
It was market day, so Kyungsoo had been gone half the day, and Jongdae had had an extended argument with the tractor regarding rusty lug nuts and a flat tire for most of the afternoon, but Chanyeol’s enthusiasm was force enough that they looked at one another, sighed, and followed him across the fields, the piglet tiptoeing along in front of him.
The piglet was, apparently, named Spork.
Kyungsoo didn’t crack up that often, and Jongdae had a policy to like anybody who made his boyfriend laugh hard enough to put both hands over his mouth and bend over. Chanyeol also stared at that display with a soft smile of surprise on his face. Jongdae resigned himself to his new fate of no longer being able to curse his neighbor at every available opportunity.
“I was afraid you’d think that name was too dorky,” Chanyeol said when Kyungsoo straightened his back and his glasses.
“Soo doesn’t believe in too dorky,” Jongdae said.
“As evidenced by my choice of true love,” Kyungsoo said.
Chanyeol laughed when Jongdae stuck his tongue out.
The Jungs knew their way around a goat-proof fence, and had built a little enclosure for Spork with a doghouse that had a carpeted ramp and a bright pink water bowl out front.
“Assuming I’ll ever let her out of my sight,” Chanyeol said, cuddling the piglet despite her wriggling protest.
Kyungsoo flirted with the goats, totally contaminating both his hands. Introductions were required, of course.
“That’s Baby Goat, and Naughty Goat, Beautiful Goat, Brown-Skin Goat, Broken-Hearted Goat, Single Goat, Goat Up, and Goat 4 Eva,” Chanyeol said.
Jongdae couldn’t quite put his finger on the pattern.
“Those are …" he said.
“Beyonce songs,” Chanyeol said.
Jongdae watched “oh no, he’s so cute” break out across Kyungsoo’s face. To be fair, it was probably breaking out across his own as well.
“I took a whole class on how to milk them and stuff, but they never seem to need it,” Chanyeol said.
Jongdae adjusted his affliction to “oh no, cute and helpless.”
“You have to breed them first,” he said gently. “They don’t make milk without babies.”
Chanyeol’s already large eyes went even wider.
“Baby goats!” he whispered, and clutched Spork to his chest.
She squealed.
Kyungsoo pushed his glasses up.
“Look, if you want them to be a dairy herd, I’ll happily make cheese from the milk and we can come to an agreement about the proceeds.”
Chanyeol began to vibrate.
“But you have to think about how you’ll manage your herd,” Jongdae butted in before a cheese empire could get started.
“What do you mean?”
“More goats means more care. You can’t get away with just hiring some kid to come by and feed them when you go away. They’ll have to be milked daily, if not twice, eventually. Soo can't make cheese all day every day, so you can’t just keep increasing each year. And what do you do with the boys?”
“Let them run around in the field?” Chanyeol said.
“And jump the fence to mess up your bloodlines by breeding their own moms every time one comes in season?”
Jongdae looked at Kyungsoo, who shrugged while Chanyeol frowned at his goats.
“What do people usually do with the boys?” Chanyeol asked eventually.
“Eat them, mostly,” Jongdae said.
Chanyeol’s horror was acute enough that he took a few steps away from Jongdae.
“Think about it,” Kyungsoo said. “We can talk about it later, maybe come up with a plan and see if it sounds workable.”
“He’s so hapless,” Kyungsoo groaned later, lying face-down on their bed. “On a farm. How are they all going to survive?”
“This was easier when I could hate him for being inattentive, now I feel like we have to educate him,” Jongdae said while he rubbed Kyungsoo’s back.
Taking a class to milk goats that didn’t even point out the basics. Did he get that information from the crook at the hardware store too?
Kyungsoo turned over to get his tummy rubbed, and that turned into a whole thing with Jongdae on his back that required a shower and a change of sheets afterward, so at least the day ended on a good note.
Chanyeol gave them a few days before he showed up again, this time at 8:00 p.m. and bearing pizza boxes.
“Hi, can we talk about goats? I brought dinner,” he said with that grin that seemed to take up half his face.
Kyungsoo let him in and set the pizza boxes on the table, with another one of those “oh no” glances at Jongdae.
“We can talk for a little bit, sure,” he said. “We already ate, though, you’ve caught us as we were winding down for bed.”
“What, really?”
“We get up before dawn, Chanyeol,” Jongdae said. “There’s a lot of work to do, and it all requires light.”
“Wow! You guys must really love the weekend!” Chanyeol laughed.
“Work still has to get done no matter what day it is.”
Ultimately, Jongdae was glad he’d never gone storming over in the middle of the night during one of Chanyeol’s parties, because he watched understanding bloom on Chanyeol’s face, guilt following it, and knew that their neighbor wouldn’t blow this conversation off like he might a screaming match at 3:00 a.m.
“Oh my god,” Chanyeol said. “All my parties.”
“Yes,” Kyungsoo said.
Chanyeol dropped into a kitchen chair and buried his face in his arms.
“Oh no,” he moaned. “And I never had my practice room soundproofed, please don’t tell me.”
“Afraid so,” Soo said.
Chanyeol’s overly large hands tugged at his hair to the point that Jongdae was moved to pat him gingerly on the shoulder. Chanyeol looked up at the touch.
“You must hate me,” he said.
He grasped Jongdae’s hand. Jongdae was surprised that a musician’s hand would be almost as callused as his own.
“Why didn’t you say anything? You must think I’m such an ignorant asshole, I’ve done everything wrong, I’m so, so sorry.”
“I will grant you on the ignorant part,” Jongdae said.
He couldn’t hold back his smile.
“I’ve kind of come around on the asshole part.”
“God, you’re too nice to me,” Chanyeol said. “I don’t deserve it, I just – I'll go. You said you were headed to bed, I’m really sorry, no more parties, I promise.”
There was a bit of a tussle – Kyungsoo tried to tell Chanyeol not to worry, but they didn’t push him to stay too hard, since they were both ready to drop. They did eventually get him to promise to come back during the day some time to talk goats. And to take the pizzas back with him.
“Jeez, he’s like a lost puppy,” Jongdae said while they were brushing your teeth. “It brings out all my protective instincts. You’re lucky I love you, or I’d be tempted to go after that.”
“Same,” Kyungsoo said.
Jongdae couldn’t tell whether his dick twitched in response to that because it was interested or concerned.
The goat conversation was had one afternoon while Soo baked and Jongdae tied bunches of greens into bundles for market. Chanyeol wanted to know every detail in Kyungsoo’s brain about cheese-making and tried really hard to avoid any talk of surplus goats.
“You have to know what you’re getting into, though,” Kyungsoo said as he folded and kneaded dough.
Jongdae could watch that all day, there was nothing more relaxing.
“Birthing season’s hard too, somebody has to be ready to jump in around the clock, and it’s a messy, loud process. And you have to be prepared, because goats die, Chanyeol. Sometimes you just can’t prevent it.”
“Would you help me?”
Kyungsoo sighed – Jongdae knew that sigh and smiled over the bundle of chard in his hands.
“As much as I can, sure. But we have our own farm to run, you have to have a plan. And Jongdae’s not going to help, he’s opposed to gooey substances.”
“Unless they come from a well-known source,” Jongdae said, and winked at Soo.
Aw, they both turned red. Cute.
“That’s why we don’t grow okra,” he said to Chanyeol, who nodded as if he knew what that meant.
“I don’t know,” Chanyeol said eventually. “I like cheese, and I’m really excited about the thought of baby goats, but it all sounds really hard.”
“It is!” Soo laughed. “That’s why Jongdae and I go to bed so early, it’s all hard work for your hands and your brain and sometimes your heart.”
“Then why do it?”
Kyungsoo shrugged.
“We get to be in charge of ourselves and feed people. So it feels worth it.”
“And we pretty much get to spend the entire month of February doing nothing but sitting around on our butts,” Jongdae added.
“I hope you’re not threatened by the fact that I have a little crush on our neighbor,” Soo said after Chanyeol had left.
“Nah, I’m pretty much in the same boat.”
Kyungsoo was at market when Jongdae looked up from weeding to spot Chanyeol walking toward him. The sun was behind him, so Jongdae couldn’t really see, but something about Chanyeol’s posture made him worry. He stood up out of his crouch and went to meet his neighbor.
Chanyeol had about 70% of a chicken in his hands and tears on his face.
“June Carter Cluck,” he said in a choked-up voice.
Because of course Chanyeol had named his chickens after country music stars.
“Looks like a fox got her,” Jongdae said.
He curled his fingers over Chanyeol’s wrist, and Chanyeol’s breath wasn’t far off from a sob.
“Come on, let’s give her back to the earth,” Jongdae said.
He scrounged up a paper bag and dug a little hole. Chanyeol laid the wrapped-up chicken in it gently and patted her. He had to turn away while Jongdae covered her up.
Oh boy, nobody had any business being so sweet. Jongdae took Chanyeol back to the house and made a pot of tea while Chanyeol washed his face.
“What do I do about a fox?”
He sounded so defeated that Jongdae almost hugged him.
“That one’s easy, you just need a chicken coop. The Jungs can set you up in an afternoon.”
“I wanted them to be free range, though,” Chanyeol said. “So they’ll be happy.”
“Chanyeol. Did you do any research at all before you bought a working farm?”
“A little. Not enough, obviously. A bunch of stuff about organic farming and animal welfare that doesn’t seem very useful.”
“There’s a lot of nonsense out there about both topics,” Jongdae said. “Soo and I can definitely put a list together of books and sites that aren’t nonsense, if you want. We care about the same things.”
Chanyeol nodded at his mug.
“It sucks. But if you have livestock, you had deadstock. It just happens.”
“Even with a chicken coop?”
“Of course even with a chicken coop. They get old, they get sick. Sometimes they just don’t wake up in the morning. You’ve got to have the coop, though. Let them run around during the day and it’s rare that a hawk or a dog will get one. But at night, it's your job to help them be safe.”
“I should’ve known that,” Chanyeol said.
“You'll learn,” Jongdae said. “God knows Soo and I had one disaster after another our first couple of years.”
He was about halfway through the story of how they both quit their jobs to move out in the country and start a new, muddier life, when Jongdae realized that he was just trying to make Chanyeol smile. Kyungsoo, walking through the door a couple of minutes later to catch them both laughing, cottoned on immediately. He patted Chanyeol on the shoulder and made a little display of a lingering hello kiss to Jongdae that left Chanyeol red-faced and Jongdae defying gravity a bit below the waist. Soo settled in at the table next to him and made Jongdae continue the story.
It was gone 11:00 before Chanyeol left, one of their big flashlights in hand and a smile on his face.
“Nice work,” Kyungsoo said. “You wouldn’t let me adopt the goats, so now I guess we’re adopting the farmer.”