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“Jagiya!”
Standing in the bathroom door, Minho can’t help but stare at the shower nook as his feet freeze to the ground.
When no answer comes, he tries a louder, “Jisung-ah!”
Faintly, he hears the bed creak, then the unmistakable sound of Jisung’s socked feet padding across the wooden floor. When the other pokes his head inside, his face is sleepy, the skin crinkled with signs of good rest.
“Do we have a flamethrower?”
Jisung blinks his eyes slowly, then tries to focus them on Minho’s face with a slight concern etched into his features.
“Uh… No?”
Minho makes a displeased grimace.
“Mouse traps?”
“We don’t have a mice problem, hyung.”
Jisung still stares at him with his eyes wide open now, more alarmed than he was a question ago.
“When was the last time you fed Richard? Isn’t she hungry now by any chance?”
Jisung’s answer takes shape in a profoundly confused stare and his mouth hanging agape.
“Minho-yah, what—what the fuck?!”
An ungodly shriek comes out of Jisung’s throat when he catches a sudden movement out of the corner of his eye, now seeing the root of Minho’s weird (but still less-weird-than-his-usual) questions.
There, in their shower booth, two cockroaches idle serenely on the ground, going on about their roach-y business. Their little heads move in synchrony when they register the two intruders that happened upon them in this wee hour of Tuesday morning.
“Hyuuung!” Jisung whinges, now at a safe distance, standing in the middle of the hallway as he points an accusatory finger at him. “Why didn’t you tell me there were cockroaches from the start?”
Minho smirks, not unkindly. “Because I didn’t want to wake our neighbours in the dead of the night with your squealing.”
Jisung makes an offended face, arms crossing over his puffed chest. Minho adores him anyway.
“So,” he returns to the question at hand, “do you think Richard is hungry now?”
Not knowing he could offend Jisung even further, Minho is apparently halfway to digging his own grave tonight.
Jisung visibly shudders, disgust forming on his face.
“Did you just imply that our beautiful daughter would want to eat cockroaches?”
“Jisung,” Minho begins gently, “our fridge is full of dead bugs that you feed to her on a daily schedule.”
“But these are toilet bugs, yuck!”
With the flamethrower and Richard being out of the question, Minho has to resort to the only other solution.
He stands watch in case their new tenants, who are long overdue on rent, decide to move out from the shower nook and explore the rest of their bathroom. Meanwhile, Jisung scurries for his phone back into the bedroom to hopefully find a useful Reddit thread about how to wage a war against cockroaches.
When he comes back to reassume his place at least five meters away from the bathroom, Jisung scrolls through the device, already naming all the things people have listed on the site.
“One of the sure ways of how to prevent cockroaches from spreading is to disturb their communication,” he recites, then tilts his head up with an uncomprehending expression. “But… How do we know what they are communicating?”
Minho looks back from Jisung to the pair of insects still lounging on the ground, as if this whole situation doesn’t concern them at all.
“I guess it just means that we have to separate them?” Minho supplies, eyeing them skeptically.
Jisung hums, then goes back to the thread.
“Cockroaches communicate by rubbing their antennas or their buts against one another, sharing the exact location of a food source if one is found. One of the other ways of communication can happen through smelling the bacteria in each other’s feces… oh yuck, hyung! This is disgusting!”
Minho sees Jisung typing vehemently, his tongue poking from between his lips with concentration. He waits for any other information of how to exterminate their new enemies, but the other’s attention seems to be focused wholly on the mechanics of cockroaches’ culture.
“So,” Minho drawls out, not exactly looking forward to what comes next. “Should I just step on them? Or catch them and drown them?”
Before he can take a step closer to the shower booth, they both jump up with the sudden hiss that echoes through the bathroom. Jisung hides himself in the bedroom, only his head peeking out, eyes wide as saucers. Minho, on the other hand, after the initial shock has passed, gets himself mentally ready for battle, balling his hands into fists.
He won’t let himself, Jisung, and their gecko baby be terrorized by a pair of invaders with poor hygiene habits.
Taking a cautious step closer, Minho doesn’t let the pair out of his sight. He reaches for his left slipper and prays that his grim reaper side quest is going to be quick and precise. Minho is just about getting ready to swing his arm when Jisung’s sudden yell thwarts his first ever attempt at homicide.
“Wait!”
Letting his hand fall back to his side, Minho looks over his shoulder at Jisung, one eyebrow raised in question.
“In this article I found,” Jisung states, eyes boring into the phone screen, “they say that male cockroaches can be bisexual. Particularly the ones who possess the highest fitness—meaning the baby cockroaches of bisexual dads are bigger and stronger.”
“Jisung-ah,” Minho blinks at him, at his wit’s end. “How does this change our situation?”
Stepping out from behind the bedroom’s door, Jisung comes closer to him with his glorious pout. “You can’t kill a pair of possible bi cockroaches, jagi. That would be considered a hate crime! More so during pride month!”
Biting back a smile, Minho crosses the distance between them. With his hand that is not holding his slipper he runs his fingers over the exposed skin of Jisung’s forearm, leaning closer to whisper, “So you wouldn’t mind being awakened in the middle of the night by a cockroach sneaking into our bed and leaving it stinky poop all over you? As long as they are bisexual?”
Minho’s words combined with the tickling of his skin make Jisung recoil in revulsion, surely imagining that his fingers are actually the cockroaches’ hairy legs and feet.
“Okay, so on the other hand we don’t know for sure if they are bisexual…”
Minho laughs as he squeezes Jisung’s wrist and returns back to assume his fighting stance. The pair hasn’t moved from their spot, as if they are totally immersed in whatever theatrical performance the two humans are doing.
Before he can swing, Jisung stops him again, this time boldly stepping into the bathroom to look through the cabinets. He finds rubber gloves, sanitary gloves and even some kind of spray that he thrusts into Minho’s hands with a shrug of his shoulders. Armed with these new instruments, Minho feels more like a failed attempt at a school janitor than a ruthless murderer of insects.
“I love you, jagi,” Jisung says as he sends a thumbs up Minho’s way, standing in the hallway with only his nose and eyes peeking into the bathroom. “I know you can do it.”
Minho sighs, wanting this to be over already.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers towards the cockroaches. “I’ll promise I’ll try to make your ascension to heaven be quick.”
𓆣♡𓆣
When all is done and Minho is proclaimed the sole victor of this great battle of Shower Booth, he takes few slips of toilet paper and wraps the lifeless corpses of his enemies and yeets them out of the window.
It feels more dignified than letting them be swallowed by the toilet water.
“Is it done?” Comes Jisung’s tiny voice from behind the bathroom door.
Minho tells him that the air is clear and Jisung cautiously steps inside. He looks around the bathroom, features tight as if he was witnessing a bloody crime scene. Meanwhile, Minho gets rid of the gloves and decides to throw away his slippers as well.
The blood of his enemies would not look good staining the floors of their apartment.
“Well, I’m not showering here tonight,” Jisung states, a finality in his voice.
Minho silently agrees as he washes his hands and with them his sins of this Tuesday morning endeavours. He dries them on his sweatpants, not wanting to touch anything in there until they disinfect the whole room, floor to ceiling.
When they retire to bed, changed into their sleeping clothes, Minho spoons Jisung with his chest pressed to his back, rubbing his nose into the soft skin of his neck.
“You haven’t rewarded me for my heroic deeds yet,” he whispers, feeling the vibrations from Jisung’s laugh lighting up a fire inside his core.
Tilting his head to face him, Jisung looks up with his round eyes, blinking at him prettily.
“And what is it that my hero requires for his loyal service?”
Minho grins as he rises on his elbow, bringing his lips to Jisung’s. He teases him with the gentlest touch, but lets him be the one to chase the kiss. It’s slow and unhurried, Jisung opening up for Minho’s taking with a hand on his nape, keeping Minho close.
When they pull apart, Jisung places a peck to the tip of Minho’s nose.
“Go to sleep, my saviour,” he sighs dramatically. “I’ll order the cleaning supplies for tomorrow.”
With a goodnight kiss, Minho brings Jisung closer into his arms, his eyes falling shut as he breaths in Jisung’s scent.
He can sense that Jisung is still scrolling through his phone fifteen minutes later, when he should already be done with ordering the sanitizers.
“Jagiya,” he murmurs into his neck, “we have to wake up early.”
“Mhm,” Jisung mutters, the bright screen still shining in front of Minho’s closed eyes.
He sighs loudly before he cracks his eye open.
“What are you doing on Bubble?”
Jisung wiggles in his hold, trying to angle the screen towards Minho’s sensitive eyes.
“I’m asking STAY about disinfectants.”
“Huh?”
“I couldn’t decide which one to buy, so I asked if anyone had any experience with them.”
“Baby,” Minho huffs, now fully awake. “You know that you are using my phone, right? My Bubble?”
“Well, yeah. Don’t worry, I told STAY all about your heroic deeds.”
“You did what?”
“I told them you fought cockroaches and won.”
Minho blinks at the screen as Jisung scrolls through the Bubble conversation, seeing the words ‘flamethrower’, ‘Richard’, and ‘bug repellent spray’ all in one sentence. He chuckles to himself, then reaches for his phone and pushes the side button, making the screen go black.
“Hey, I haven’t picked one yet,” Jisung protests, but it’s useless against Minho’s tight grip on his waist.
“Sleep, jagi.”
In the end, Jisung does as he is told, cuddling into Minho’s embrace. Minho places a soft kiss to his lips as he smacks his favourite butt, telling Jisung that this is what he gets for stealing his phone and impersonating him without his knowledge.
“I had to spread your victorious tale,” he mumbles from his sleep. “Might even write a song about it. I’d call it ‘The Great War’ or something.”
Minho chuckles, his eyes already closed. He tightens his hold on Jisung’s body.
“You know, I think Taylor Swift already has a song about this.”