If you wrote it down on paper you would most definitely say that two strangers, during their first meeting, sitting in silence would create nothing other than an awkward atmosphere. To say that this fact was surprisingly untrue made Jonghyun only that more curious about the person in front of him. His lips parted to speak, to finally break the quiet, but his food arrived just as he did so and his lips pursed; voice and words soon forgotten. Picking up his chopsticks, he mixed the noodles around in the ancient-looking bowl. He blew at the steam they created and caught a mouthful on the wooden sticks. Bringing it up to his mouth, he blew on them a final time before proceeding to take a bite. Mmm, he thought, delicious. There was something so undeniably comforting about ramen to Kim Jonghyun. It was hard to explain how the flavors and tones of the dish brought nothing but reassurance and safety to himself. Maybe it reminded him of his mother, who knows, but it was something he continued to order time after time in most places he had the opportunity to eat at. It occured to him suddenly that he had spent even more minutes with Lee Taemin in an unawkward silence, the only dialogue he was aware of having taken place in his very own mind.
Again with the riddles, he thought as he continued to eat his noodles, “Do you ever follow your own advice?” He wondered casually as he blew on a bite and then popped it into his mouth, “Or do you only say it in the hopes that whoever listens to it follows along.” Usually that was the case with inspirational quotes, mottos and guidance… wasn’t it? Do as I say and not as I do? Jonghyun didn’t look amused as he waited for his answer, he merely looked intrigued and satisfied by the culinary skills of the chef in the restaurant’s kitchen. It was odd how you could become so aware of the simplest things; how things you figured you wouldn’t notice would become blindingly obvious. He was taking note of how Taemin wasn’t drinking. Not a sip, not a single touch of his lips to the straw and to make it even stranger Jonghyun couldn’t help but speculate if the man was trying to make it look like he had been. He certainly played with the cup in the subtle manners of someone drinking… the only difference was there hadn’t been any drinking since it had arrived at their table.
To distract him from his thoughts, however, Taemin was now coyly presenting him with a question of his own. Jonghyun couldn’t help but let out a laugh as he joked, “Well from the way you talk I’d guess you’re two-hundred and twenty-one?” He raised an eyebrow and paused for added humor before shrugging his shoulders and taking another bite of his ramen, “I dunno. Maybe you’re nineteen? Younger than me, even if you don’t quite seem like it.” His lips parted to reveal his own number but he stopped himself and leaned even closer, his voice just as soft as Taemin’s had been, “How old do you think I am?”
With the freshly arrived food, so did the scents of the other man become overshadowed by ramen. He inhaled it before he quite realised what was going on, and it made him pinch the straw flat between his fingers as he made himself stop breathing. He preferred the scent of Jonghyun. But humans had needs and he had come willingly, so he made no complaint. Instead he watched the other, as he mixed the food. Watched, as he blew on it. There was a rhythm to the way he did it—the rhythm of someone used to this ritual, doing it now without a thought. Not like a babe might try to stick food in its mouth without knowing what it was. He wondered what it tasted like; wondered if it had the taste of which it smelled. Despite how the scent of food often seemed foreign and assaulting on his senses now, he sometimes did wonder what it was like to indulge in such ritualistic habits. Breakfast, lunch, dinner. Tea, and snacks. His own times of feeding were sporadic, and could often go many days between. In more foolish times, perhaps it was even made into a game.
“Follow my own advice?” Taemin repeated, a hint of a frown briefly etching between his brows as he watched Jonghyun’s lips absentmindedly. “Sometimes”, he mused out, head cocking curiously to the side. “Sometimes, not.” His lips tugged into a brief shadow of a grin. Speaking required inhales of breath to carry his voice; he breathed in through parted lips rather than his nose, but still scents seemed prominent. To his luck, the longer time passed, the more he would be numbed from the most of it. “But experience comes oft from failures”, he pointed out with another inhale of breath. “Does it not?” He wondered, even during there musings, if it were not only the heat of the food which kept the other from eating it within a matter of moments, from the way he was so easily focused upon it.
His thoughts were snapped out of the curious musings of food as Jonghyun guessed his age. Suddenly very conscious of his own being, his eyes darted up to watch the other man, and he could see the amusement, he could see joke it had been intended as. But it did not stop his shoulders from feeling taunt, before he made his muscles slowly unwind. He snorted, looked away. He even let out a soft chuckle, his full lips tugging into a slow grin, before his gaze swerved back to the other man. “Nineteen is a good guess”, he told him softly, before humming out a drawn out sound, observing him. “… Twenty-three”, he guessed, the first number which came to his mind, whilst the tip of a finger slowly traced along the rim of his glass—a slow, thoughtful circle, as his eyes stayed on Jonghyun. “You look like twenty-three.”
skj90-blog reblogged this from renetae and added:
“Yes, you will.” Jonghyun gave a sure nod of his head as he smiled at Taemin with a confident expression plastered onto...
renetae reblogged this from skj90-blog and added:
Alone in this feeling of comfort? No, you could not say he was. Whether it was wise of him or not, Taemin’s guard had...