Work Text:
Hakyeon sat, alone, on the plush, white couch as the minutes slipped by and the sky darkened outside. He tried to focus on the book in his hands, eyes raking over the words but his brain was failing to process anything written on the page. He sighed for the twelfth time that minute and looked up at the clock on the wall. 7:15pm.
Hakyeon sighed again. He was not unaccustomed to Taekwoon working late; his job as a teacher often had him pulling long hours at school to ensure all the kids’ books were graded, all prep for the next day was taken care of, and anything else he could do to help the children under his care was done.
Taekwoon often took on a lot of extra work, but in his opinion that’s just what you did as a teacher - you worked hard so your class could have it easier. So what if that meant a few late nights here or there, a few weekend days sacrificed to ensure the lessons were resourced to be the best they could be? Taekwoon did it all for the children, and seeing them happy made him happy.
Hakyeon swelled with pride thinking about it, about what a wonderful, caring soul his boyfriend was, but that didn’t stop him missing Taekwoon. Taekwoon, who would be up in the morning before Hakyeon and got back late at night, shoulders seemingly carrying all of the problems of his children as well as his own.
As if on cue, he heard keys jangling in the lock, followed by a small thud, then an even smaller thud on the door. Hakyeon rose from the couch and crossed their apartment, discarding the book on the coffee table as he passed it. He fished his own keys out of the jade bowl by the door and looked through the peephole. He saw a nest of jet-black hair just underneath it, chuckled softly to himself, unlocked the door and swung it gently inwards.
Taekwoon did not move an inch. His laptop bag was hanging from his shoulder, pulling his shirt sideways so that the collar was pulling against his neck. He had a canvas tote bag filled with god only knows what in each hand. He muttered, “I dropped my keys.”
“I can see that,” answered Hakyeon, raising an eyebrow whilst taking the bags from Taekwoon, placing them just inside the doorway, then returning to ferry his boyfriend through the door, making sure he grabbed the fallen keys on the way. “Long day?”
Taekwoon let out a noncommittal whine and headed for their kitchen and the wine cellar that was built-in to the island in the middle of it. He pulled out a bottle of red wine, stared at it as if considering whether to get a glass or not, uncorked it and left it to breathe. He shuffled towards Hakyeon and dropped his head onto Hakyeon’s shoulder. “Timmy was a little shit again today.”
“Goddamn it Timmy, what did he do now?” Hakyeon ran his fingers through Taekwoon’s hair, causing him to let out a huff against his neck.
“We spent all afternoon designing this science experiment to test wind resistance, made our own paper parachutes for these little army figures that I got, and… and… and he ruined it.”
Hakyeon felt his boyfriend deflate on the last part of the sentence, and shepherded them both over to the couch. “What a dick.”
“You can’t call him a dick, he’s ten”
“I can call a kid a dick if he’s being a dick” Hakyeon asserted, grabbing his laptop from the coffee table. “No cooking for you tonight, I’m ordering delivery. Or I could cook?”
Taekwoon scoffed “Yeah right. You. Cooking. Your eyebrows still haven’t recovered from the last time.”
Hakyeon’s hand flew momentarily to his face. He smoothed down his eyebrows and then rolled his shoulders. “They have too, and it wasn’t THAT bad, they were just a little singed on the ends,”
“Hakyeon, you were missing a third of your left eyebrow. You pencilled it in every day for weeks.”
“And it looked immaculate, thank you very much.”
“Okay, I have some things to finish for school, so delivery works for me.” Taekwoon rose from the couch and shuffled towards where his bags of miscellany had been placed. “It’s the open day tomorrow and I have to make a model longboat for the Viking display” he said, pulling a strange brown oblong from one of the bags, settling himself at their dining table, craft supplies spread out in front of him.
Hakyeon kept a sigh from escaping his lips, went to grab a glass of wine for his boyfriend and sat opposite him. “Put me to work, what can I do to help?” He set the glass down next to Taekwoon, who looked up at him with soft adoration in his eyes.
“You can make the sails?” he said, nudging some fabric, string and a couple of sticks of balsa wood towards Hakyeon. Hakyeon reached out for the materials, and Taekwoon grabbed his hand, giving it a squeeze, silent I love yous and thank yous being conveyed through the gesture.
“They’re gonna be the best damn sails you’ve ever laid eyes on. So, tell me more about Timmy the Dick”
Time passed, they ate and worked on the longboat together and, after it was done, they washed up and headed to bed. Taekwoon snuggled into Hakyeon’s side, head in the crook of his neck. Their legs tangled together as Hakyeon ran his hands through his boyfriend’s hair.
“I miss cooking for you” Taekwoon said quietly “it feels like I haven’t cooked in ages, we seem to live on delivery food. I miss the taste of a home cooked meal.” His words began to draw out, as he was succumbing to sleep. Hakyeon hummed, kissed Taekwoon’s forehead and began to plot.
They rose together, too early for a Saturday in Hakyeon’s opinion, but for once he didn’t mind as he had some Serious Planning and Preparation to do whilst Taekwoon was at school. For you see, Hakyeon had a plan, a cunning plan, a plan so cunning that you could appoint it as president of the cunning society.
Hakyeon was going to cook breakfast for Taekwoon.
He marvelled in the plan’s simplicity. Taekwoon wanted home cooked food, he had a home in which to cook the food, and they had the Sunday off together. He was going to make the best breakfast Taekwoon had ever eaten, or he was going to die trying.
Perhaps, actually, given Hakyeon’s previous attempts in the kitchen, he should be a bit more hesitant with the words “die trying” as he recalled the November afternoon they spent in the hospital, Hakyeon clinging a dish towel to his bleeding hand. Bagel related injuries, he’d said on the hospital report, and boy did he have the scar to prove it.
Hakyeon set to work researching the best breakfast foods he could make for his boyfriend, was meticulous in choosing the recipes, calculated how long he would need to undertake each element and set to work making a list of all the ingredients he would need.
He settled on a simple menu: French toast with blueberry compote and fresh whipped cream, and fresh, hand-ground coffee.
Simple. What could possibly go wrong?
The rest of Hakyeon’s Saturday passed in a haze of recipe reading, research, and a trip out to the store to buy the ingredients and a new stove top coffee pot. He proceeded to then hide the ingredients away so that Taekwoon wouldn’t be suspicious when he arrived home from school. He set about tidying their apartment, changing the sheets on their bed, and taking great care in watering the many, many plants.
After a few more hours, as the sun was starting to dip below the horizon bathing their apartment in an orange glow, Hakyeon heard the familiar jangling of keys in the lock. The door swung open and Taekwoon shuffled in, closing it behind him and depositing his keys in the jade bowl. He made his way over to the couch and plopped down beside his boyfriend.
“Hello, darling” Hakyeon murmured, pressing a kiss to Taekwoon’s temple whilst lightly holding his face “I opened a bottle of red wine, it’s breathing on the counter.” Taekwoon made a happy whining noise in the back of his throat and Hakyeon took that as a sign to pepper his face with kisses.
The rest of the evening passed uneventfully. They lay in bed in their matching pyjama sets, which had been Hakyeon’s idea and whilst Taekwoon protested initially, he was too smitten to resist Hakyeon’s excited wiggling at the fact the pyjamas had little succulents on them. Taekwoon snuggled into Hakyeon’s side, an arm and a leg thrown over him. Haykeon ran his hand through Taekwoon’s hair, listening to his breathing slowing as he started to drift off.
“Angel, I have my alarm set early tomorrow. There’s a plant sale at the local nursery and I want to see what they have on the website before everything sells out.”
Taekwoon huffed out a small laugh and mumbled something that was probably an assent, but he was too far into sleep’s clutches to be making much sense. Hakyeon let out a laugh of his own, kissed the top of his boyfriend’s head and then fell asleep thinking of powdered sugar and cinnamon.
Hakyeon’s alarm went off at 8:30am on the bright Sunday morning, the early winter sun starting to stream through the curtains. He dislodged himself from underneath Taekwoon, who whined and rolled into the space Hakyeon left behind. Hakyeon shuffled into his slippers, did his morning stretches, and then went into the kitchen.
He began pulling everything out of the cupboard, then tied his brand new apron around his waist - he couldn’t resist, it had little kittens on the pocket. He pushed his hair back and pulled out his phone with the recipe in the bookmarks and set to work.
Ten minutes later, with the smell of vanilla and cinnamon in the air, Hakyeon commended himself for doing well. The syrup mixture had been made and he was cooking the blueberries in a pan on the stove. No fingers had been cut, no eyebrows lost.
“This is fine! Everything is going well.” he said out loud to nobody in particular, putting a hand on his hip as he stirred the blueberries. “I can probably do more, you know. I’m good at this.”
He left the blueberries and started rummaging through the cupboards for other items to add to his breakfast menu. He found an avocado and some eggs, and decided it couldn’t be too hard to smash an avocado and poach some eggs. Whilst he had the eggs out, he’d always wanted to try and make a croque madame after trying one in Paris on vacation with Taekwoon, a trip to celebrate their fifth anniversary. It would be nostalgic and romantic , he thought to himself. He was sure they had some ham in the fridge, so he shuffled over, proud of himself for thinking of it. This was the best decision he had ever made!
This was the worst decision he had ever made. Fifteen minutes into the cooking process and Hakyeon was trying to boil down blueberries but he couldn’t seem to get the consistency quite right so he kept adding more sugar, or more blueberries, and now he had more compote than he knew what to do with. On top of that, he had attempted to poach four eggs via different means but wasn’t happy with any of them, as well as trying to roast some coffee beans, fry some eggs, glaze and fry some bread and smash an avocado - and just how does one perfectly smash an avocado, he would like to know - and then all of a sudden there was a flash of orange and the smoke alarm was going off.
He started violently batting at the kitchen blinds with a hand towel as Taekwoon ran in through the door. As if by force of presence alone, the fire on the blinds went out. Hakyeon stood, limply holding a charred towel in his hands, the stove top coffee pot whistling being the only thing to break the silence.
“...This doesn’t look like a plant sale.”
“I uh. I made breakfast, surprise!”
“... it sure is.” Taekwoon properly surveyed the kitchen then. He took stock of the seven pots in the sink, two surfaces completely covered in what looked to be a combination of flour and avocado, for reasons he was unsure of, and the gently smouldering blinds. He could smell burning, and it bothered him that there could have been at least three sources of that smell. He went over and opened the windows in the kitchen, and then the ones in the rest of the apartment for good measure.
Hakyeon slumped into one of the stools by the breakfast bar. Taekwoon came back into the kitchen and stood between his legs, tilting his chin up to get Hakyeon to look at him. Hakyeon kept his eyes down.
“Love, what happened?”
"The instructions said to roast the coffee beans and I didn't think being mean to them was the way forward so I just used your chef's blowtorch to like. Char them a little"
"But now we have no blinds in the kitchen"
"I never liked them anyway"
"Hakyeon you paid $200 for them"
Hakyeon let out a defeated wail, went to throw his head down onto the counter but re-evaluated when he saw the flour-avocado combination on the surface. “I just wanted to do something nice, and you said you missed having home cooked meals. I didn’t think I was that bad of a cook. It was all going well at the start…” his voice cracked, and Taekwoon took Hakyeon’s face in his hands, stroking his thumbs over Hakyeon’s cheekbones.
“I appreciate all of the effort you went through.” Hakyeon gave a watery smile as Taekwoon moved back to properly survey the food. “The French toast still looks good, we have some jam in the fridge, we can eat it with that. Those poached eggs also look edible, how about we make some Hollandaise sauce and do a makeshift eggs Benedict to go with the French toast?”
Hakyeon nodded weakly, bottom lip still quivering slightly. “I’ll take down the blinds and clean up the various messes I’ve made”
Taekwoon came to kiss him on the forehead “Teamwork makes the dream work.” he said gently
“Do not use the motivational phrases you use on your ten year olds on me, Jung Taekwoon”
“Be brave, dream big, and smile often!” Taekwoon replied as he went to the fridge.
“I didn’t know that if you mixed avocado and flour together it made cement ” complained Hakyeon, trying desperately to clean the mixture off the counters.
“You can do anything you set your mind to!... Except cook, apparently”
Hakyeon let out an affronted noise that sounded a lot like gack. “Too soon, Taekwoon, too soon.”
They both burst into easy laughter and Taekwoon briefly abandoned making the sauce to shuffle over and kiss Hakyeon gently “I love you, even though you’re a danger to kitchens everywhere.”
“I am never going to live this down, am I?”
“No you are not, the others will be hearing of this within the hour. I’ve already taken pictures for the group chat.”
“Mother fuck.”
Taekwoon broke into renewed laughter and kissed the straight line of Hakyeon’s mouth until he also burst into laughter. The sun shone through the window, which was now devoid of blinds. Hakyeon didn’t mind much. He’d never liked those blinds anyway.