[Team One] Pure Gold

[miyeokguk.livejournal.com]

The cat gets stuck and there is a mess of spilled juice.  Chanyeol "helps" by photographically documenting the incident.  Joonmyun just sighs a lot. 

“He appears to be, well, um, stuck.”  Joonmyun, kneeling on the floor in a growing puddle orange juice supplied by a tributary leaking from a cracked pitcher on the kitchen counter, turns to face Chanyeol.  The cat meows angrily in confirmation, his voice taking on a weird echo as it’s magnified by the cabinet housing the plumbing pipes and their cleaning supplies.

Chanyeol can feel his bottom lip wavering, caught between yelping laughter and a whimper at Joonmyun’s adorable look of consternation.  He can’t help it. His flatmate may be older than Chanyeol, but Joonmyun is hopeless. Chanyeol’s only surprised it isn’t Joonmyun with his head caught under the sink.  “Hold on! Don’t move!”

“Wait--what?”  Joonmyun’s brows cinch tighter above the bridge of his nose.  He blows at the swatch of dark hair dipping into his eyes, but it only makes the fringe of hair frizzier.  Chanyeol cackles at the sight as he jogs backward towards his bedroom. He really can’t help it. Joonmyun is gold.  Pure gold.

Chanyeol skids in his sock feet on the floorboards, polished from decades of traffic, and snags the strap of his DSLR off his desk.  Three giant steps bring him back into the narrow kitchen, and he shoves up the baggy sleeves of his oversized hoodie as he snaps off the lens cover.  “Say 'kimchi',” Chanyeol croons, knowing the request will only result in a further perplexed look on Joonmyun’s face.

“Yeol,” he moans, not failing to comply as he fixes Chanyeol with a pout.  “Aren’t you going to help?”

“No!” Chanyeol crows.  His fingers twitch with excitement with every click of the shutter.  There is a damp patch of orange juice staining the yoke of Joonmyun’s chardonnay blue button down.  Chanyeol zooms in on it, angling to frame it perfectly next to the stiffened tail of their marmalade striped cat.  “I mean, yeah, but in a minute. Hang on!”

Joonmyun sighs, a decade of cat-parent weariness weighing down his voice and his shoulders. He turns back to face the cat, his head disappearing into the open cabinet up to his shoulders.  “Come on, Kitty! Just relax your foot, so I can get you--OW!” Chanyeol chuckles louder than he means to at Joonmyun’s muffled swear. He can’t tell if Joonmyun bumped his head in the dark cabinet, or if the cat took a swipe at his face with its claws.

The cat’s raised haunches are arching under Joonmyun’s armpit now, and Chanyeol is sorely tempted to livestream the rest of this ordeal on his Instagram.  Instead, he takes a last shot of Joonmyun’s and the cat’s butts raised in parallel and sets down his camera. He is, after all, a responsible cat-parent as well.  He nabs the spare flashlight off the top of the fridge and aims the beam under the sink, where the cat is entangled in a haphazard pile of reusable shopping bag handles and a blender cord.

“Thank you!”  Joonmyun’s voice is muffled instead of echoing, but Chanyeol detects the clear note of frustration in his roommate’s tone.  “Finally. Yeesh.”

“Don’t be mad,” Chanyeol says, patting Joonmyun consolingly on the butt.  “When these pics go viral, we’ll be eating beef every day for a month!”

“Yeah right,” Joonmyun huffs, “if our cat doesn’t eat me first!”  Chanyeol is cut off mid-cackle as the cat’s leg is finally unentangled and it catapults itself backward, flying out of the cabinet and knocking the flashlight out of his hand and into the orange juice puddle.  “But since you so kindly offered,” Joonmyun says as he rights himself, already stripping off his soggy socks and unbuttoning his damp shirt, “as soon as I shower, you can take me out for barbecue!”

Your turn, springmaid !