Work Text:
"She can't know."
Moonjo drummed his fingers on the table and looked up. He'd spent the morning cleaning, so the kitchen had that sterile, doctor's office smell. It seemed that the only cleaning supplies Moonjo really had were more … body disposal grade.
"About what?"
"About—" Jongwoo frowned. "Well, all of it."
Moonjo nodded, almost solemnly, as if the idea of being forced to act a certain way was some kind of prescription downer. "Alright. Then she won't."
"Aish— Should I explain? Where we stand tonight?"
The train had run its way through the more populated expanses of Seoul, purging itself of the majority of its commuters, until it was just them in that train car, making the early afternoon pilgrimage to Busan. They'd roll into town a bit after sundown. But for now, the countryside flew by them in disjointed blips.
"Sure."
Moonjo seemed more than content to just peer across the sprawl of farmland, eyes lost indefinitely in a kind of fog. Jongwoo, on the other hand, jittered all the way down his spine, and his fingers twirled the hem of his shorts in an anxious dance. He knew laying it all out was less for Moonjo's sake and more for his own, but that notion didn't negate the incessant urge to have it said.
"You're my roommate. We met through my work. I still work for Jaeho hyung, and he introduced us at a conference. I—"
"Do dentists really attended conferences, though?"
"That doesn't— I don't— Wouldn't you know that?"
Moonjo's eyes drooped closed and a small smile took up his face. "We met at a conference." His eyes opened, and he directed them down at Jongwoo. "I knew Jaeho-ssi from college."
Jongwoo nodded. "Busan National University. He was a business major."
Moonjo's smile seemed to deepen. "Maybe I minored in business. And your hyung and I shared a class."
The look in Moonjo's eye wasn't one Jongwoo was often privy too. It was a distant, imaginative kind of expression, and he wore it with a thoughtful kind of absence that suggested he was properly envisioning it. Jongwoo felt the corner of his lips turn up a tad.
"Yeah, maybe you did."
"Wouldn't that mean we could've crossed paths back then?" Moonjo suddenly said.
Jongwoo blinked. "I mean, I guess."
"Why didn't we?"
Jongwoo felt a swirl of something pull between them. "I— I didn't go out a lot. But maybe you didn't either? I don't think you're going to easily convince my eomma you're the partying type." Moonjo exhaled, a small laugh. "Plus—" Jongwoo added, without much thought, "I was busy with Jieun. We used to go on all these silly dates, you know, with the beach being so close by, and…"
"Your eomma," Moonjo interrupted, "Will she need to be convinced of that too? That you're still seeing her?"
Jongwoo sighed, eyes dropping to his hands, still fiddling with his shorts. "Yeah." His stomach spasmed a tad, nervousness flooding back in through their trance. "It has to be business as usual. Everything has to be as it was last summer."
The taxi driver eyed Moonjo's fancy get up, and gave them an impressed hum.
"Here for work?"
"No," Moonjo smoothly replied. The car bumped harshly, and Jongwoo instinctively grabbed onto him. "I'm meeting my boyfriend's mother."
Jongwoo could've gasped, but instead he pinched the skin of Moonjo's forearm hard enough to inflict pain. The taxi driver did not say a single thing for the rest of their drive.
"You should've taken that opportunity to practice." Jongwoo spat, voice a whisper as the taxi rushed off into the night behind them. The road by his mother's was excessively dark, and Moonjo was merely the tall outline of a man. Said outline did a little shrug.
"I was getting it out of my system. I'll behave now."
But Jongwoo was still a nervous wreck as they approached the door. If Moonjo was nervous, he couldn't tell. The doorstep light flickered on and then died, plunging them back into darkness once more. They stood there for an awkward second, and Moonjo tilted his head, eyeing Jongwoo with amusement.
"Should I knock?"
"No," Jongwoo grimaced, and knocked.
The stoop flooded with light near instantly. Jongwoo blinked back the brightness, but didn't get the chance to process anything before he was being swallowed in an embrace of thin arms.
"Ahhhhhh— ! My son! Thank you so much for coming tonight," was smothered blaringly into the nape of his neck. Jongwoo physically startled at the onslaught, but couldn't resist sinking into the influx of comfort which surrounded him suddenly. Eomma.
It was a brief reprieve from the larger moment at hand, as once he was released, he was promptly reminded of their circumstances. His mother was already staring wide eyed at Moonjo, as impolite as he'd expected her to be in his entrancing presence.
"Wa," she muttered, and threw a hand out to mock-dust-off Moonjo's sleeve. "And who might this be, Jongwoo-yah?"
"I told you he was coming," was Jongwoo's instinctual response, shame spiraling up his chest at the insinuation he might not have prepared her for Moonjo's arrival. Not that Moonjo would give a fuck. He smiled dopely, and extended a hand.
"Seo Moonjo, eomeonim. Your son's roommate."
Jongwoo was more than accustomed to the museum-like stillness of their humble home, as he was infected with the same parasitic need to drape his space in a kind of cleaniless reserved for furniture store show rooms. Perhaps it was a compensatory urge, anything to offset the meager array of their possessions. Moonjo seemed to take it in exactly as intended— he strolled about, eyes pulled everywhere, a giddiness hidden in his expression, its exact depth only something that Jongwoo would be privy to. His mother delighted in whatever manner of it she could deduce, as she rushed around to different decorations, leaking a steady gush of anecdotes, a tour-guide like quality to her posture. It was almost silly, given her usual exterior of disgruntled modesty. When he usually thought of her, while lost in thought on their living room couch, or drifting off into the recesses of the night, he often recalled her stern, begrudging demeanor, one hand snagged around a fish-bloodied knife, the other pointing his way lecturingly, remarking some flavor of, "It's not supposed to be pretty. Hardwork always dirties you. Wipe that look off your face." It was perhaps the highs of such successful social posturing which undid her now, especially while witnessed by someone so exceedingly adequate as Moonjo. Moonjo who held almost no value in his stellar social performance, beyond what cover it could give the true nature of his sinister lifestyle.
This perfect dance— it seemed their presentations of self were bizarrely complementary. Jongwoo stood watching, tempering his manic breath, trying to reassure himself that there wasn't some grand tell in his behavior that would give away the nature of their relationship as soon as they so much as locked eyes.
Despite the implausibility of that, Jongwoo tried to keep an overly palpable distance between them. When they sat down for dinner, Jongwoo took a seat diagonally from him, forcing his mother to soon take that vacant, centralized seat once she finished bringing out the food. When Jongwoo risked throwing a glance Moonjo's way, he saw his brows raise a tad, which immediately funneled a surge of fear through his chest. His mother was going to see the ease with which they interacted. The intimacy. Jongwoo scowled, and looked away.
When his mother finally sat down, it was beside him. She'd laid out quite a feast, but Jongwoo went straight for his water.
"Do you drink, Moonjo-ssi?"
Jongwoo squinted. "Why wouldn't he?"
"I do." Moonjo stood to offer Jongwoo's mother the soju she'd positioned at the table's center. She smiled, and lifted her shot glass to meet the lip of his bottle.
Is this her plan? Unwind us with drink? Get us silly enough to fess up?
His mother gave him a wide grin, which was definitely intended to be a normal expression of kindness, but Jongwoo took it as formidably evil in this moment.
"This meal looks delicious," Moonjo marveled, continuing his string of flattery that had been ongoing from the moment of their arrival. If Moonjo had ran this tactic by him on their way to Busan, Jongwoo might've shot it dead with some quip about his mother hating overdone insincerity. He really couldn't have anticipated how charmed she'd be, but then, hadn't he been too? In a far different way and with a far different set of advances. But charmed, nonetheless.
With almost practiced ease, Moonjo bounced against her questions with their pre-determined cover story. Jaeho affiliation. The College Experience. Lying came so easily to him Jongwoo almost found himself bewitched by the story.
"How's Jieun-ah?" His mother elbowed him then, pointing her curious gaze his way for a change. Jongwoo's stomach rolled with nausea.
"Great," he said, as blandly as he could. "Busy with work."
"Does she like her job? I'd imagine working in the TV industry would be so interesting. Does she talk about it?"
"I—" The pretense of an answer tangoed bitterly with a surge of anger, the nature of which he'd spent the better part of his year embracing at the behest of Moonjo's endless interest. It proved slightly harder to curb now, anything unreflective of that sentiment feeling nearly impossible to repress from the tone of his voice.
"I believe she works in the more technical side of things." Moonjo said.
His mother turned to look at him with sudden interest. "Really. Like what?"
"Press releases. Digital marketing. Things of that nature." Moonjo smiled lightly, turning his gaze onto Jongwoo. "If you think about it, her job is basically all… writing."
That earned him a smile. Even a faint chuckle. For a moment, Jongwoo was relieved.
"Do you have a girlfriend, Moonjo-ssi? A handsome man such as yourself has ought to have someone!" His mother rocked in her chair a bit, clearly excited to cut into the meat of his life. Jongwoo rolled his eyes, bitterness renewed, and went for another awkward sip of water.
"I don't," Moonjo said.
Jongwoo met his eyes over the rim of his glass.
"I don't date women. I'm gay."
"Jongwoo-yah, are you okay?" His mother, apparently somewhat unphased, grabbed his shoulder as he coughed abrasively, water going where water shouldn't. It was, in all honesty, a painful but amazing cover for whatever fucking look would've occupied his face otherwise. Once he could finally breathe, he realized his mother was standing.
"I'm going to bring you both some pears."
Jongwoo stood abruptly as soon as she'd dipped into the kitchen.
"Bathroom."
You
What the fuck was that
You
She's going to suspect
+82 010 3470 5683
Do you think she likes me
You
Don't do that
You
She likes you just fine
You
I, on the other hand, rlly hate you right now
+84 010 3470 5683
:)
+84 010 3470 5683
I like your house
You
Yeah I know
+84 010 3470 5683
Smells good
You
She makes good stew
+84 010 3470 5683
No the house.
You
???
+84 010 3470 5683
House smells good
+84 010 3470 5683
Smells like you
Jongwoo turned his phone the fuck off.
"… And did you grab the thinner pillow? He won't do that new age memory foam stuff."
The night was done up in a sparkly coat of darkness, the backyard motion light spritzing the post-rain shrubs with freckles of iridescent dew beads. Dinner had gone on without a hitch, but Moonjo had mysteriously taken his leave far earlier into the night than Jongwoo had anticipated. Which left him with his mother, who'd ventured outside at Jongwoo's request. Moonjo liked quiet. He'd never vocalized as much, but Jongwoo could see the way sleep played out across his features throughout a given week, and had learned the conditions under which he best slept.
"Yes, yes," his mother breathed out with a light puff of smoke, one of Jongwoo's Emergancy Backup Cigarettes between her toughened fingers. "Look at you, nobly sleeping on the couch." She paused, and tapped her cigarette against the arm of her plastic chair, spewing ash into the space between them. "You haven't had to do that since Jieun used to come around."
Jongwoo had his eyes entirely fixed on the handle of their storage shed. It was a pretty handle. Very pretty. Extremely efficient, surely. Especially nice when viewed within the context of his racing heart. His half empty pack of cigarettes sat tauntingly in his lap, but it had felt sacrilegious to waste one outside of Moonjo's presence, given how rarely he partook.
Everything truly, really did come back to Moonjo.
And at some point, he'd given up on obscuring it. At some point during the night, he'd accepted that it had become common knowledge, entirely against his will, in some way or another, and now he was just left to wait.
"Mm," he hummed. His leg rattled anxiously. He heard his mother sigh, and as if acting in defiance, he held his breath.
"Does he have any family?"
The question caught Jongwoo off guard.
"I—" An axe, splitting the circumference of Ms. Eom's skull like he'd been trying to take a slice of it. Blood had sprayed across her face as if achieved under the efforts of some rusted face mist. It had occurred to Jongwoo in retrospect that he surely wasn't the first one to see her in such gruesome disarray. Moonjo had once told him he'd fantasized about killing her so often it'd become sort've meditative, but Jongwoo had never had the heart to ask if he'd done a decent job of it. If the sight of her fresh corpse was reminiscent of any waking dreams he'd conjured to endure her decades of strategic abuse. He also hadn't had the heart to tell him that it'd felt like an accomplishment.
But it colored his voice when he replied, "I think they're dead."
"Mm," his mother nodded in his peripheral. "You think?"
He immediately course corrected, hardly able to lie to her. "I know. He just doesn't talk about it much."
"Were they close?"
Jongwoo finally looked over at her. The cigarette was canoeing, and Jongwoo instinctually took it when she held it out, if anything under the pretense he would fix it. He didn't meet her eye, worried his unconscious eagerness to keep the conversation Moonjo-centric would somehow show.
"I don't know if he… wanted to be." He licked the unburnt part, and took a long drag. His mother watched, with a small smile that he didn't like being fixed with.
"Well," she said, taking the cigarette back. She looked away before she added: "He seems to like you just fine."
Jongwoo kind of wanted to kill himself. Instead, as a preventative measure, he blurted out:
"You know." A nervous hand ran up his chest and settled at his collarbone, fidgeting with the hem of his shirt. "Right?"
Her silence had a mystical quality, like she were some wise sage he were asking a heavy handed question to.
"Well," she started, and Jongwoo's stomach did a triple lutz. It was a sensation violent enough to be mistaken for a diarrheal precursor. "I didn't buy that he'd ever met Jaeho. The only person I've ever seen speak so highly of him was Jieun."
Jongwoo laughed despite himself. It came out shakey but with a hint of relief. He risked a glance at her, and found her holding out the cigarette, which was nearly dead, but the look on her face suggested it was more about the gesture than anything. Jongwoo took it with a trembling hand, and after failing to relight it, just went into his pack for a new one. Moonjo was technically here in spirit.
After a sufficiently long drag, he decided to say what he'd felt instinctually called to say.
"He actually has met him. He said he almost liked fighting with him. Said it was like going to a batting cage."
His mother laughed, and reached over to slap his knee. "He's witty. What does he see in you?"
Jongwoo rolled his eyes, unable to hide his smile.
The screen door quietly slid closed. They bid each other good night, and Jongwoo was already halfway to the couch before he heard his mother double back. She came up behind him, turned him by his shoulders, and pulled him into a bruising hug.
Her subsequent whisper had a frantic, urgent tone to it. "I want you to be happy, adeul."
Jongwoo didn't know where to put the feeling that had gathered in his chest. So he hugged it tightly into hers. She pulled away gently, brushing his bangs into place, and drifted back off into the dark.
"You don't have to sleep on the couch," she whisper-yelled, before promptly ascending the upstairs steps.
"Jagiya?"
"Go back to sleep," Jongwoo hissed. The bed creaked when he sank into it. Moonjo had a staunch monopoly over his quilt, so Jongwoo had no choice but to yank at it from around his shoulders, freeing some from his grasp. Unfortunately, Moonjo rolled with the motion, twisting around to face him.
"I've been awake," Moonjo said, like it were some kind of gotcha and not a deeply concerning habitual pattern of his. "Did you go outside?"
"Yeah," Jongwoo said. He'd taken to falling asleep on his back, and so the words were directed at his ceiling. His body buzzed, adrenaline not quite letting him off the hook yet. Moonjo would've already noticed. He always did.
"Did it go well?"
"Yeah," Jongwoo said, as casually and without emphasis as he could. He had no interest in rehashing the conversation with Moonjo. "Basically."
A pause. They both breathed into the silence of Jongwoo's childhood bedroom. Then:
"You never answered my question."
"What? I literally just did."
"No, the one from earlier."
Jongwoo squinted, and turned to eye him. "What was it."
"I texted it to you. Remember?"
"What, when you asked if she liked you? I answered that."
"No you didn't," Moonjo said, smiling, his eyes twinkling.
Jongwoo propped himself up on an elbow and fished for his phone on the nightstand. "I literally fucking did— I said she liked you. I literally remember, it's…"
They both winced at the light from his phone. Jongwoo scavenged for the message and fully sat up when he found it.
"Right here," he pointed at Moonjo, narrating, "you said Do you think she likes me, and I said—"
"She likes you just fine." "— she likes you just f—" Jongwoo threw his phone sharply at Moonjo's chest. "Fuck you."
Moonjo sat up with a strange amount of ease. He gathered Jongwoo's torso in his arms, and then pulled them both back down so they laid together on the bed. Jongwoo had a sense of self respect, but hadn't the heart to resist.
"But…" Moonjo muttered into the nook of Jongwoo's neck.
"But what."
"Does she?"
Jongwoo yanked his neck back so he could look Moonjo in the eyes. "Like you?"
Moonjo hummed, and it vibrated through Jongwoo's neck.
And Jongwoo might've been half exasperated if he hadn't the faintest sense that Moonjo was not so slyly trying to ask for reassurance. Jongwoo sighed, and tucked Moonjo back into his neck.
"If anything, I think she's happy it's you."
In response, Moonjo nipped his teeth into Jongwoo's jaw. Jongwoo yelped, rolling a bit, tangling their legs further in play protest.
"You're being kind of loud," Moonjo whispered.
Jongwoo frowned, and Moonjo followed the motion with his eyes. "It's fine."
"You used to live here." Moonjo leaned in to press his lips to Jongwoo's jaw with undeniable intent. "Are the walls thin?"
"No," Jongwoo whisper-spat. "Be fucking reasonable right now."
"No?" Moonjo said, voice hopeful. "They aren't?"
"Not what I was saying," Jongwoo said, leaning in to bite at his chin. "Go to sleep."