Work Text:
The sigh of relief that Taemin lets out when he closes his front door behind him is, as always, his favorite breath of the day. He leans back against the door for a minute, rubbing his hands over his face. Finally. Finally he gets to pretend the entire rest of the world doesn't exist until he has to go back to work tomorrow morning.
He rubs his hands over his face, through his hair, drops his work bag next to the door and tosses his wallet on top of it. Then he bends down and digs inside of it for a moment to pull out the leftover fries he got from the drive-thru on the way home. Munching them on the way to the fridge, he gets himself a soda and then makes his way to the living room.
There, like he expected, is Jonghyun in his usual spot on the arm of the couch. The single patch of a quilt that Taemin cut out for him is wrapped around his shoulders, the earbuds that Taemin fashioned into a tiny set of headphones are over his ears, and Taemin’s tablet is resting in front of him. He uses his whole hand on the touchscreen , pressing and swiping around the surface. When Taemin walks in, he looks up, golden eyes big in his small face.
"Welcome home," he says quietly. It's not anything new from the past couple of months that he's lived here, but it brings a smile to Taemin anyway. There's nothing more comforting to him than his little star friend.
"Thanks," he says. He sits himself down on the couch and grabs his laptop from the coffee table. With one hand he opens it up and with the other hand he offers his carton of fries to Jonghyun. "Want one?" He asks.
"No thank you," Jonghyun replies, not looking up from the tablet. Taemin shrugs. That's what he expected. Jonghyun doesn't need to eat food, and so he usually doesn't, but he does have the ability to so Taemin still likes to offer. Just in case.
While his laptop is still loading, he peeks over at the tablet.Jonghyun is in the music app again, organizing songs into different playlists. He's been very interested in the task ever since Taemin first showed him the app. Since then, he's been listening to and downloading all kinds of songs that are far from Taemin’s own tastes. Taemin thinks that it's one of the only human things that Jonghyun really, genuinely enjoys.
All of his playlists have names, but none of them make any sense to Taemin except for one: the one that's just his name. That one is the one that Jonghyun shares to his music player every couple of weeks, and that one is the one that is full of songs that Jonghyun thinks Taemin would like. And on each song, he's been correct so far. Taemin doesn't know how he does it.
The last time he got some new songs was just yesterday, though, and he doesn't want to be nosy, so he looks back to his own laptop. Wiggling an earbud into the ear that isn't facing Jonghyun, he draws circles on his touchpad until the laptop has fully started up and then clicks right to his video subscriptions to unwind.
A while later– he's not sure how long—he's pulled out of a string of dance practice videos by the softest tap on his shoulder. He taps the spacebar to pause and looks up. Jonghyun is standing now, holding his quilt square around himself and looking at Taemin with those soft eyes of his. The tablet is turned off and tucked safely onto the end table next to the couch.
"Can you take me to the bedroom?" He asks. "I want to nap."
"Yeah, of course," Taemin says. No problem. He takes his headphones out, puts his laptop onto the couch cushion next to him, and offers Jonghyun his hand. With a polite word of thanks, Jonghyun steps on. He's warm, almost too hot to the touch, and practically weightless.
Well, not practically weightless. Entirely weightless. The only pressure that Taemin feels on his palm is from the weight of the quilt. The only thing keeping Jonghyun from floating up to the ceiling is the quilt. Star problems, Taemin guesses.
He carries Jonghyun to the bedroom carefully, roll stepping and holding his wrist with his free hand to make it as smooth and steady as possible for him. As they get closer to the bedroom and farther away from the lamplight of the living room, the warm glow that Jonghyun emits becomes more noticeable. He's a little ball of light in Taemin's hand , soft and cozy, and when he steps into the room he doesn't bother to flip the light switch.
Jonghyun gives him another quiet thank you when he sets him down on top of the dresser. Over the past couple of months, the two of them have been working together to turn it into more of a comfortable living space for the little star. Clearing Taemin's stuff off of the top, emptying out the top left drawer, filling it up with Jonghyuns new things. Taemin even pulled on the knowledge of the one semester of woodshop class he took in high school to install a little trap door and ladder that goes from the top of the dresser into the drawer so Jonghyun wouldn't have to ask Taemin to let him in every time.
He's working on creating a nice Jonghyun size wooden house to sit on top of the dresser too, but for now, he's just nestled a nice comfortable cat bed in front of the window for him. Jonghyun has also made himself a little nest from a couple of Taemin's old scarves and cut off sleeves inside of his drawer, and that's where he's going now. Taemin opens his trapdoor for him and, as his glowing little head disappears through the hole, smiles, "sleep well."
Glancing back over his shoulder as he leaves the room, he smiles again at the nice orange glow he can see through the crack around the drawer.
Then, yawning, he heads back to the couch to finish watching his videos. He hits up his friends when he's done, popping on his headset and turning on the tv when they convince him to play a couple of video games. Then it's time for him to throw something together for dinner, and then to get outside and jog around the block before it gets scary late instead of cool late. Once he gets back, he does his daily stretches and then sits in the middle of the living room with his face in his hands for a solid 5 minutes before he decides that he doesn't want to do the rest of his workout and just goes straight to making himself his bedtime smoothie.
With that, he peeks carefully into the bedroom and then walks in when he finds that Jonghyun has finished his nap. He's out of his drawer, in his cat bed, chin in his arms as he gazes out the window. He glances at Taemin for a second before looking back outside. Taemin grabs his rolly chair from his desk to be next to his dresser so he can look out the window with him for a little bit.
"Want some?" He asks, offering his smoothie. Jonghyun looks at it quietly. He takes his time to think, like always, and then lifts his eyes and asks, "what is it?”
"Um," Taemin says. "Banana, strawberry yogurt, cinnamon, vanilla protein powder, milk." He swirls it around the cup a little bit as he lists off the ingredients. "It's a little thick," he adds. It was a big banana. Again, Jonghyun takes a while to answer. Taemin pulls out his phone after a minute to keep himself entertained while he waits.
It unsettled him a little bit, at first. Jonghyuns tendency to really take his time considering his replies. At first, Taemin thought Jonghyun was ignoring him, or that he had upset the little star in some way. It's a special kind of silence that Jonghyun has. Not a non-verbal kind, exactly. It took Taemin a long time to finally understand what it was.
It's the kind of silence that stems naturally from infinite patience. The kind of time needed to consider from someone that is used to spending an infinite amount of time doing nothing but infinitely considering. When Taemin thinks about it, for someone that only fell down from the sky 3 months ago, the speed at which Jonghyun thinks things through now has to be off the charts.
Eventually, he feels Jonghyuns small hand on his finger and when he looks up, Jonghyun nods at him. Taemin smiles back, humming, "mmkay.”
He opens Jonghyuns drawer and pulls out one of the tiny ceramic mugs he ordered for him online. Carefully, he pours a couple drops of smoothie into it and hands it to Jonghyun. Jonghyun takes it, sniffs it, and then tries a tiny, hesitant sip. Then he takes another, and then he turns back to the window, head nestled back into his arms, still holding on to the mug.
He likes it.
Proud of himself, somehow, Taemin smiles into his cup as he takes his own drink. It's like every time that he shows Jonghyun a human thing and Jonghyun likes it he wins an award.
He scoots closer to the window on his rolly chair, putting his cup on it so he doesn't have to hold it. Outside, the sun is long gone and the only light comes from the street lamp on the sidewalk. Wind rustles the leaves of his growing pepper plants and the neighbor’s big magnolia tree. Every now and again a car or someone walking their dog will make their way past the window. In the sky, stars twinkle faintly between patches of void.
Taemin finds himself transfixed on those for a while. Even after he finishes his smoothie and puts it off to the side, he puts his chin in his hand and stares up at each of them. Each one of them,a tiny pinprick of gas. Each one of them a distant little soul.
He glances down at Jonghyun. His attention is fixed upward, steady, resolute. Not once does he lower it to look at anything else on the ground. If Taemin leans just right, he can see the stars reflected in his golden eyes.
"Do you miss them?"
The question comes out of him before he realizes that he was thinking it. Once he processes it, though, he knows that he meant it and he lets it hang between them without taking it back.
Jonghyun turns to look at him slowly. He blinks those big eyes of his just as slowly. Taemin meets his gaze calmly.
Jonghyun doesn't often answer questions about being a star. Almost never, actually. But he never gets upset at Taemin for asking, either.
It's a long moment that they sit there, the two of them, looking at each other. Then Jonghyun turns away, looking back at the stars. "They don't miss me," he says.
And the fact that he answered, let alone that quickly, let alone with something like that, is what surprises Taemin. So much that he replies immediately himself without even taking a second to think it through: "Well, there's an infinite amount of them. Statistically, some of them have to."
Jonghyun doesn't respond. Even to acknowledge that he heard Taemin. Taemin scratches his cheek, turning back to the stars himself. That's fair, he guesses. Except, he realizes after a moment, "that wasn't my question, though." he says it to the window, mumbles it more to himself than to Jonghyun. He doesn't expect an answer. He doesn't get one, either.
Not until over an hour later when he's finally nestling himself underneath his bed covers. He plugs his phone into the speakers on his headboard and opens up his podcast app, selecting the soft D&D one that he usually falls asleep to. Then he hands it up to Jonghyun, letting him add whatever podcasts he likes into the queue for after Taemin falls asleep. Before he can take his hand away, Jonghyun gently touches his finger.
"I don't know," he says, and then, when Taemin frowns at him, confused, adds, "if i miss them or not. I would have to think about it more." He opens his mouth again after that, like he has more to say, but he hesitates. It's another long minute before he says, "I do know that i'm happier down here with you, though."
"Oh," Taemin replies. He turns a yawn into his pillow. "Well. Thank you. And," he says. He doesn't really know how to reply to that and he's a little too tired to be having a conversation like this anyway. "Take your time, little star."
Closing his eyes, rubbing his cheek into his pillow, he doesn't see Jonghyun nod, but he does hear and smile when he says, "sleep well, little human."