For: xiusoo
From: hockeffusions

Title: a trespassing, a study in beech leaves
Rating: PG-13
Length: 4170 words
Summary: Joonmyun nurses a geranium and a gaping chest wound for a week.

Notes: Thanks so much to the mods for running this event and to A for helping me out at the last minute!

The door closes behind Jongdae. Joonmyun sits at the kitchen table - not his, these are Jongdae's scratches in the varnish that make its edges curl up into transparent chrysalises that catch against Joonmyun's hands when he rubs them across the tabletop. There's not a lot of space for his fingers amongst the two wrapped bottles of wine and the potted plant and the stacks of papers, but he needs something to do as he listens to the rattling of Jongdae's suitcase wheels on the concrete of the corridor, fading into the rhythmic bump-bump-bump of the case bouncing down the stairs. "The publishing house want to do a promotional tour," Jongdae said one afternoon. It was two months ago. Joonmyun was leaning in the doorway, coat over his shoulder, about to leave. The wan autumn sunlight streamed through the window and patterned Jongdae's thin hands into origami, into paper lotus blossoms of tendon and shadow and skin. "Joohyun's book has been translated into English so they want to tour." There was an undertone in Jongdae's voice and Joonmyun frowned. "You don't sound keen." Jongdae huffed. "I'm not. I hate publicity and I hate travelling. You can imagine how much I'm going to hate a week of a publicity tour in America." "Sounds like a decent round trip," Joonmyun replied. "Do you have to go?" The twist of Jongdae's mouth, a sprained scrap of cartridge paper in the thin light. "Sadly." A pause in which Joonmyun became momentarily lost in the play of shadows across Jongdae's philtrum. "Could I - would you mind house-sitting for me?" And so here Joonmyun is, surrounded by Jongdae's cooling exhalations and the rustling of the bottles' wrapping between his fingers. He's at a crossroads, he feels like. He should be doing something, answering some emails or maybe nursing the reality of Jongdae's absence in the space between his heart and his lungs, that peculiar tissue that rises into his throat when Jongdae's fingers linger just a little too long on Joonmyun's sleeve. Instead, he's looking at the bottles of wine with their gold paper and red ribbons, and he's looking at the potted plant. Jongdae apologised profusely when he handed them to Joonmyun. "You're doing me such a favour," he said. "They're really not enough." Then he looked at the geranium in its terracotta pot and laughed. "And sorry to give you another plant." Joonmyun shook his head. The terracotta was heavier than he'd imagined as he took it from Jongdae, cool in his palm, dousing the spark from where Jongdae's fingers had slid alongside his own. "One more plant won't make any difference in your apartment." "Oh, it's not for mine," Jongdae replied. "It's for your plant-phobic hovel." Joonmyun should never have invited Jongdae over for dinner that day. He'd left one single, solitary pair of socks - clean - on the kitchen table by accident, put there whilst tidying the rest of his apartment, and Jongdae had declared on the spot that Joonmyun was a slob. "It's not just the sock," he'd elaborated, pouring them both glasses of wine. "You have the world's messiest bookshelf. It's a travesty. And your countertop looks like a barista's shopping cart exploded on it. And you don't pair your shoes in the doorway." Joonmyun had stirred the pasta viciously. But it's true that Joonmyun doesn't have any greenery in his flat. He's never been good with plants, unlike Jongdae, whose entire apartment is filled with vegetation. It spills from his kitchen counter, soft petunias with petals of such a dark purple that they almost appear black, velvety and so soft that Joonmyun can't even feel them when he brushes his fingertips against them. There is a small pot of variegated ivy on his bathroom windowsill, pointed leaves snaking towards his toothbrush. A cluster of cacti guard the stack of literary magazines in the corner of Jongdae's bedroom and there's a pot of red daisies weighting down the manuscripts on Jongdae's desk. The corner of the study is home to a weeping fig, almond-shaped leaves dropping onto the carpet where they turn to tiny shrivelled crisps, husks of their former selves, with monotonous regularity. And inside is nothing compared to outside - push open the sliding glass door on the other side of the study area and the rooftop beckons, wide and vast, the wind's howling interrupted by neat hedges that shelter a thousand different forms of chlorophyll-sustained life. "It's a geranium," Jongdae supplied, nodding at the plant in Joonmyun's hand. Its soft leaves are tender against his fingertips, red blossoms clustering around the stems, jostling for space like clouds in a rain-loaded sky. "Try not to kill it." He didn't say that he'd miss Joonmyun but the sentiment burrowed its way through Joonmyun's skin at the point where Jongdae's lips touched his neck. "See you in two weeks." And with that he was gone, leaving Joonmyun alone in the apartment where he still sits, breathing quietly amidst the photosynthesising plants. - The first day without Jongdae is the strangest. Joonmyun wakes up in his own apartment to find an extra key on the cluster hanging next to the front door, coated in red paint to match Jongdae's front door. The first time they met was outside that red door, Joonmyun new to the apartment block and exploring, resisting the urge to run his fingers across the concrete walls of the corridors as he made his way up one, two, five floors to the penthouses at the top. It was his first flat, the first place he'd bought with his own salary rather than with a fat envelope from his parents to help you along, Joonmyun, house prices aren't kind right now, and he had the urge to absorb everything he could about this block. The smell of the stairs - stale human piss and old beer turned acrid on the back of the tongue, nose filled with the thick scent of spray paint and fabric softener dropped by the young woman who smiled at Joonmyun when he was moving in. The cold of the concrete soaking through his shoes. The small light, unobtrusive, reticent and shy in the way that it played with the gaps between his fingers as he stood in front of the two doors on the top floor, one painted bright red and obviously someone’s front door. The other was a heavy fire door wedged open with a wad of junk mail, tasteless graffiti staining it yellow, and Joonmyun’s newfound wanderlust itched in his fingers. He pushed the fire door open and the light gripped him softly as he stepped out onto the rooftop. There was a howling in his ears, the lullaby of a buzzard and the musical lilt of a wolf pack, hungry and lonely, as his feet took him down a small path, out into the shelter of a square garden bordered on three sides by hedges. He was about to reach out and take a leaf from one of them between his fingers when there was a voice behind him. “Hello?" It wasn’t a greeting so much as a question and Joonmyun started, snatched his hand back to his body as if he'd been caught with his hand in the cookie jar, a quick sprint of guilt racing through his stomach. He knew then how his elder brother felt in Joonmyun's earlier memories, mouth twisted as he laid a finger across it and begged Joonmyun not to tell their mother that he'd been stealing food. It was uncomfortable, burning and liquid. “I’m sorry, I -" “This isn’t public access,” the voice said. “This is my garden." Joonmyun’s stomach shrivelled up and offered itself to the wolves. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t realise -" “Don’t worry about it,” the voice interrupted. It was so calm that Joonmyun finally managed to look its owner in the eye - a small man with tousled hair, ratty jeans and bright eyes. “I don’t recognise you so you must be new." “Yes,” Joonmyun said finally, clutching at the fact. “I had no idea, I thought this was public." A smile beneath the bright eyes. Feline, curling up at the corners like smoke. “It’s not. But I’ll show you what’s here, given that you’ve already found it." This was their first meeting. A trespassing, a study in beech leaves - for that was the plant that Joonmyun had been about to touch when Jongdae found him. He handed Joonmyun a leaf and it sat, deep purple and lovely, in his palm as Jongdae said, “That’s a copper beech.” The veins were evenly spaced in the leaf, about half a pinky’s distance apart, and the stem was short and slim but sturdy, covered in soft hairs up to the point of rupture where it was once attached to the main plant. “Pretty, but such a bitch in the autumn. They drop nuts with spiky cases and it's crazy painful when you sit down and end up with them buried in your ass." Joonmyun managed a laugh. "So all of this is yours?" Jongdae looked around, shrugged a little. "Yeah. It's mine." All of this - the entire rooftop a splendid garden, sheltered from the winds by the copper beech hedges. The floor was thick with flowering plants - tall white daisies up to Joonmyun's mid-thigh with pink begonias around their bases, thick petals open to reveal yellow centres; morning glories winding up canes in powder blue, midnight black, soft pink, blossoms half-unfurled in the slight fog of the early morning; royal-blue lobelia spilling from hanging baskets, tumbling down towards a cluster of Japanese maples, flowers brushing against their thin leaves. There were bedding plants with exquisite foliage, white and green and every combination therein, every type of leaf imaginable. There were shrubs with cream roses climbing up their stems and blossoming in their leaves, and another with pairs of budding leaves, the bright pale green of spring growth, hopeful, youthful leaves marching side-by-side up the growing stem, and yet another with soft, rounded leaves and white berries like clotted cream on their stems. Joonmyun didn't know what to say and so he said nothing, mouth open just a little. The buzzards' song tasted sweet on his tongue as he turned to Jongdae. "It's like another world up here." He forgot to give Jongdae his name that day but it didn't matter. They bumped into one another on the stairs in three days' time and introduced themselves properly. "I'm Jongdae," the other man said, pushing a hand through his hair. "And I have to go, I'm late for a meeting, but it was very nice to meet you!" And just like that - gone, feet clattering down the stairs as Joonmyun stood at the top and blinked. Today, standing on that same spot outside his own front door, Joonmyun feels as if little time has passed. He can still hear the bumping of Jongdae's suitcase down the stairs yesterday if he strains for it, or the pattering of feet all those months ago when they were strangers. The mug of coffee in his hand burns as he stands there. It's seven am and the morning air is thin, dizzying. Perhaps this hypoxia is why he can't bring himself to move, why his legs feel heavy and his stomach is leaden. He doesn’t usually miss people, but Jongdae isn’t people. He knocked his way into Joonmyun’s orderly life with bony elbows and ratty jeans and requests to get a drink together sometime because you’re new to this apartment block, right? and he hasn’t left since. Today is the first morning and Joonmyun waters Jongdae’s begonias with a sinking heart the colour of geranium petals. - Jongdae calls on the second evening from New York. “Just got back from a signing,” he says, voice a little too loud. Joonmyun puts him on loudspeaker, propping his phone against the geranium plant that Jongdae gave him next to the chopping board, and continues dicing vegetables. “Joohyun is glowing." “She must be pleased with the tour,” Joonmyun replies. “Oh, she is. She can’t stop smiling." Joonmyun met Seo Joohyun once, at a New Year’s party that Jongdae threw on his rooftop, having obtained Joonmyun’s decorating assistance with a bottle of expensive wine and puppy-dog eyes and then complained about his lack of height when they had to resort to Jongdae sitting on Joonmyun’s shoulders to string fairy lights through the copper beech hedges. They wove tributaries of plastic-wrapped electric cables through the purple leaves, Jongdae’s thighs heavy on Joonmyun’s collarbones. “I should have asked Chanyeol,” he grumbled. “He would have had this done in five minutes." Joonmyun’s hands tightened around Jongdae’s kneecaps. His fingers burnt hot as Jongdae leant forwards to reposition a fairy light. “I’m more fun than Chanyeol." Jongdae paused. “Are you sure? You are a lawyer, you know." Joonmyun slapped his leg and Jongdae’s resulting laughter quivered through Joonmyun’s bones. At the party, in the soft glow of the fairy lights, Jongdae introduced the two with a smile - “Seo Joohyun, successful author. Kim Joonmyun, a boring lawyer.” - and left, champagne in hand, neat slacks and pressed suit blending into the dark garden. It was worlds away from the Jongdae that Joonmyun knew in old jeans and a soil-covered sweatshirt and Joonmyun couldn’t bring himself to look away. The bracelets on Joohyun’s wrist chinked as she brushed a hair away from her face. “He says you’re just neighbours but he talks about you a lot.” She followed his gaze. “You must be good friends too." Joonmyun smiled and forced himself to make eye contact. Joohyun’s face was alive with shadows, sliding across the bridge of her nose and pooling underneath her cheekbones, her loose hair as she turned away from the lights. “Yeah, we’re good friends." Joohyun stretched the shadows as she smiled. “It’s nice. I know he’s my editor and I shouldn’t worry about him personally but I do. I worry that he’s lonely. I’m an author and he’s more of a hermit than I am.” She laughed. "He says he has his plants but that’s no a substitute for human company." Sometimes it seemed to be, to Joonmyun. Sometimes he would drop in at Jongdae’s because he felt an itching underneath his skin, like a wave breaking through his veins, and would stand in the kitchen like a spare part, speaking sentences that fell flat as Jongdae repotted an African violet with damp fingers. Something would knot in his stomach on those occasions, something like fear, like the biting adrenaline he always gets before taking on a new client at work, something akin to the fear of rejection. But then Jongdae would ask him a question and remind Joonmyun that it wasn’t malice or indifference that kept Jongdae quiet, merely an ease with other people’s stories. It was his job, after all - listening to a writer pour their story onto a page, fluid and jumpy and horrifically flawed, so that he could later analyse it, edit it, turn it over and over in his mind and in his fingers It wasn’t malice or indifference that kept Jongdae silent, merely being at ease with letting someone else speak. It was his job, after all - listening to a writer pour out their story onto a page, analysing it, editing it, turning it over and over in his mind and in his fingers to turn it into something beautiful, worthy of a half-a-million-copy print run. But other times Jongdae would drop in at Joonmyun’s and cling. Not overtly, not obtrusively, but in the little things. He’d be in Joonmyun’s elbow room as he cooked, or needlessly order and reorder the magazines on Joonmyun’s coffee table at eleven pm, or drag him out for coffee at two pm on a Saturday because neither of them had anything better to do. Their ankles would knock into one another and they’d fight over the sugar cubes, all fingers and thumbs and swooping stomachs. Some days he didn’t need Joonmyun, but some days he did. Joonmyun looked at Joohyun then. “He makes sure to find company if he’s lonely. I think that he’s okay.” And then the countdown to midnight began and Joohyun could do nothing but smile at him, stars rising in her champagne glass and bursting in the sky as Jongdae wound his way through the crowd to stand next to Joonmyun under the falling fireworks, gunpowder clinging to their kissing palms. Today, Jongdae tells him about the signing and the little girl who told Joohyun that she wanted to be an author just like you when I grow up! and how Joohyun’s face had seemed to split in half with her smile, so broad and bright. He tells him about the skyscrapers and how much he hates them for being beautiful when they are so artificial. He tells him about the bookstore they found tucked away in the corner of town, like a postcard into the cover of a hardback book. “I hate how alive this city makes me feel,” he says. “It shouldn’t be doing this to me when it’s so infested with humans." Joonmyun comes close to slicing his finger as he cuts an aubergine. He’s gripping the knife so hard that his fingertips have turned the same colour as the petals of the geranium, sitting in pride of place and soaking up nothing but sodium streetlights on his windowsill. “So are you coming home early, then?" “Oh, shut up,” Jongdae says and Joonmyun laughs. “You know I would if I could." - Day three and the gap in Joonmyun’s chest has shrunk a little, he thinks. So has the geranium - it looks faintly dejected and Joonmyun frowns at it as he makes coffee. The lump in his chest has shrunk, a burst abscess with all the yellow guilt fluttering through his veins as he lifts a leaf of the geranium. Soft, with tiny hairs, and in need of water. He remembers that he forgot to water it yesterday. “I just forget!” he said in exasperation to Jongdae once, when the latter asked why he was so good at killing plants. “I forget that they need watering because they don’t tell me." This was one of the few times that Joonmyun has ever seen Jongdae’s face darken. He turned back to his seedlings, separating the clumps as the tendons in the backs of his hands stood out. “They’ll tell you. You just don’t listen.” Joonmyun started to protest but Jongdae held up a hand. “You’d see it if you paid attention, Joonmyun. Their leaves and stems start to droop because they don’t have enough water to replace what they lose in transpiration. If it’s bad, they begin to change colour as they dry up, lose the ability to carry out their life processes. They turn brown and shrivel and it’s the equivalent of watching someone develop jaundice without realising that something is wrong. You have to notice." A long silence followed, in which Jongdae placed his tiny rudbeckias in plastic pots, in which Joonmyun swallowed and breathed. Jongdae had a lot of seedlings and it took a long time before he ran his hand, soil and all, through his hair to declare them finished. “You want to stay for dinner?" This morning, he hastily fills a mug with water and tips it into the pot. The soil at the base of the plant swells, small clods of earth rising to the surface as the water pools and then sinking back down as the rest of the compost absorbs the fluid, packing it away for later inside its terracotta home. Joonmyun feels a rush of pride and nurses his coffee, nitpicking over the wording of a text to Jongdae. There’s a strange push and pull in his fingers as he hesitates over the touchscreen of his phone, a push to let Jongdae know that Joonmyun misses the soft scrape of his knuckles across the small of Joonmyun's back, the touch amplified by the scratching of the shirt’s fabric. That Joonmyun misses the curl of Jongdae’s mouth around a soup spoon, the distorted reflection of his lips in the metal distracting Joonmyun so much from his own meal that he butters his plate instead of his bread. He misses drinking cheap soju at midnight on a weekday, nestled against one another in the corner of the rooftop garden. Jongdae deadheads his flowers in the gloom and Joonmyun looks at the sky with red cheeks and they talk, they talk and talk and talk until Joonmyun’s voice is hoarse and Jongdae is so drunk that he doesn’t stop Joonmyun’s hand when it lingers on his thigh, his cheek. They are drunk, and it is the only time that they will admit that they are in love with one another. And that is the pull in Joonmyun’s fingertips - that is fear. Fear that Jongdae would take back his geranium and his red apartment key and his friendship, his bony elbows and ratty jeans and his soil-stained fingers, if Joonmyun told him in the sober light of day. It is perhaps unreasonable, given how long they have known, how long they have held their breath until the wine bottle is uncorked and ethanol soaks their skulls. But the fear is primal and it sank long ago into the depths of his gut, lodged beneath his overworked liver and his terrified heart and biting deep into him when Jongdae’s lips brush his jaw. It is clear and it is cold and it makes him delete his entire paragraph to leave only the first line: how is los angeles? make sure you get enough sleep After consideration, he sends Jongdae a photograph of the plants he’s just watered. your children are well Jongdae doesn’t reply and Joonmyun feels faintly sick, as if Jongdae had heard the cells of Joonmyun’s fingertips screaming at one another as they tried to decide what to type. The gap in his chest gapes raw and wide. - The room is hot and stuffy and Joonmyun is sweating under his collar, the sheen creeping up his neck and cheeks. His client sits opposite, one ankle resting on the alternate leg, hands and demands open. "I just don't see why she should get away with this," the client is saying. He turns the joint in his wrist over - much bigger than Jongdae's, broader bones covered in thicker flesh - for emphasis. "They're my kids, not hers. If she'd looked after them properly..." Joonmyun can't focus. He drank half of a bottle of wine late last night, one of the ones that Jongdae gave him, and he's still faintly hungover for this eight-am meeting. And his attention is drifting, away from his client's Rolex watch and grievances with his estranged but not yet divorced wife, back to the lines of Jongdae's hands as they dragged up Joonmyun's arms one night on the rooftop. His hands stilled at Joonmyun's elbows. "I shouldn't," Jongdae said, biting his lip, staring at Joonmyun's throat instead of his eyes. "We can't, I -" "It's okay," Joonmyun said, soft, heart thundering in his ears. The insides of his veins whispered with Jongdae's passing touch, the rustling of copper beech leaves in the wind and soft petunia petals against skin. And when Jongdae's fingers dug deep into his biceps, his veins set to bright flame, a burning brush pile, the rich, hot cream of magnolia blossoms painted behind his eyelids. He caught his breath and opened his eyes, just to check - and Jongdae was still there, biting his lip in the dark, hands cradling Joonmyun's neck. They kissed that once. "Hey, are you even listening?" Joonmyun stabs the nib of his pen deep into his own hand as he makes a fist. "Of course, sir, you were saying about the child support payment that she would have to pay you." The client looks a little abashed. "Yes. Well, I know that..." The sweat on Joonmyun's neck is eating into his skin, he thinks, burning in the acrid, unpleasant way of tyres and plastics and oil. It was never this when Jongdae's hands were there, hot like morphine, hot like propofol, anaesthetic, hypnotic, turning his lungs to a redundant pair of paper bags as he struggled for air. It was never this when Jongdae bit deep into Joonmyun's lip and they shivered together, a pair of cold-wracked souls on a rooftop. It was never this - "So what do you think, Mr. Kim? Is it worth pursuing the case?" Joonmyun thinks of Jongdae's hesitant hands. "Of course, sir. When are you next available for an appointment?" - He sends a text in the early afternoon of the fifth day, fingers itching and his geranium looking at him from the countertop, leaves perked up once more and flowers of soft, matt red like bruises. i fucking miss you. The reply from California is almost instantaneous. and i you. A moment later: aren't you supposed to be doing boring lawyer stuff? why the sudden confession? would you like me to retract my statement? Jongdae sends a series of horrified emoticons and Joonmyun laughs, giddy with the helium in his chest.