shen and jin

1.
Jin flicks his cigarette out the window as he steers into the driveway, while the crunching gravel beneath his tires drowns out the faint strain of guitar on the old Honda’s radio. As he slams the door with a resounding thunk, he gazes up at his house, all pale cream with a blue mailbox and a navy-framed door. At the front, the blinds pop open as his mother suspiciously peers outside before she almost immediately retreats back into the darkness. Jin can’t help but chuckle as he walks down the short path to the door, absently jiggling his keys. Mrs. Xiang is nothing if not paranoid, and even the familiar sight of the family’s beaten red car makes her jump for the window.

He sticks his key in the lock with an amused expression and twists it once, letting the door slowly creak open as he squints into the gloom. The house is lit only by the glow of the blaringly loud television, which Jin can hear rattling on in the background. His mother is watching what sounds like a cooking show, despite the fact that she probably doesn’t know enough English to even understand what’s happening. With his hands in his pockets, Jin shuffles into the television room and addresses his mother with a rebellious slouch.

“Is Shen home yet?” is all he asks.

Slowly, her eyes drift away from the TV and slowly focus on Jin – little almond slits of puzzlement. Jin heaves an exasperated sigh when he realizes she has no clue what he just asked.

“Never mind,” he mutters, even though he doubts she understood even that, and hastily trips back into the foyer, down the hallway, and into his room.

Their room.

The door slams shut before Jin can even touch the knob. His brother is standing in front of him, his thick black hair hanging heavily in his face, and Jin can’t see his eyes – only the shine of his glasses.

“You smell like smoke again,” Shen says in an accusatory tone.

“So?” Jin casually strips off his jacket and flings it onto his bed. Shen’s bed is next to his, set at a modest distance so no one even thinks to look twice, especially not their parents.

Shen frowns. “Why’d you have to start that up? Do you even read the warning labels on those things?” Without asking permission, he digs his hand into Jin’s back pocket and grabs the pack. Angrily jabbing a finger at it, he reads from the side. “Quitting smoking now greatly reduces serious risks to your health.”

Shrugging, Jin carefully plucks the pack from his brother’s fingers and shoves it back into his pocket. “I’m all for the average human life expectancy going down. People suck.”

Shen snorts and averts his eyes, folding his arms across his chest as he says, “Maybe so, but you’ll never see me being that self destructive.”

“Whatever,” Jin mutters and glances around the room. All he sees is a pile of homework, a week’s worth of dirty laundry, and his guitar sitting solemnly in the corner with a broken string. Wordlessly, he picks up his coat again and scans the laundry-littered floor for Shen’s scarf. “Want to go to Ryan’s?”

“No.” Shen finds the scarf just as Jin does, and he tugs it out of his twin’s grasp before Jin can even offer it to him. “I want to stay here.”

Quirking an eyebrow incredulously, Jin extends his hand in a sweeping gesture to indicate the dirty, cramped room. “You want to stay here?”

A blush catches on Shen’s cheeks, and he turns his face away. “Well, no. You know what I meant.”

A knowing look enters Jin’s eyes. “You want to leave them alone?”

“Jared’s leaving soon,” Shen says softly, and he still refuses to meet his brother’s gaze. “We should give them time to talk.”

Silently, Jin pushes his arms through his jacket sleeves and transfers his pack of Parliament lights from his jeans to the top of the dresser drawer. When he’s done, he looks at Shen and takes one step to close the distance between them. His fingers slowly pull the blue- and gray-striped scarf from Shen’s hands, and, smiling, he arranges it on his brother’s shoulders. “I’m sorry I smell like smoke.”

“It’s okay.” Shen’s cheek twitches, and he takes Jin’s cigarettes and carefully tucks them into Jin’s left coat pocket. At Jin’s questioning look, he shrugs glumly. “I can’t control you. I might as well get used to it, right?”

“Right,” Jin responds, although it’s obvious from the faltering slant in his grin that he isn’t entirely certain. He rattles his car keys nervously and waits for a sign from Shen that everything’s okay.

He doesn’t get one.

Instead, he gets Shen’s stony black eyes as his twin sidesteps him and opens the bedroom door. “Mom’s probably not cooking, so let’s just get some dinner.”

“Okay.” Jin clutches the keys tighter and follows Shen, head down against the dark mood. The TV is still blasting in the den, and Shen stops long enough to poke his head inside and say goodbye. Their mother, predictably, responds in Chinese. Jin, scowling in the background, says nothing, and Shen pinches him on their way to the front door.

Once outside, Jin asks, “Are you mad at me?”

“A little,” Shen admits.

Jin hesitates on the path to the car. “Can I drive?”

“Don’t be an idiot,” Shen hisses, turning to stomp to the Honda, then stops suddenly when he doesn’t hear Jin’s footsteps behind him. Softly, he amends, “Yeah, you can drive.”

Jin has no response. He listens to the gravel beneath his feet and absently wishes his parents would get a real fucking driveway, just before he wishes that his mother would learn English and get a proper job like their father, who is probably wasting away at some factory this very moment. He doesn’t know where their father works, and, frankly, he doesn’t want to know.

Shen opens the car door with a scowl. “You forgot to lock it again.”

“I knew we were leaving again soon,” Jin lies as he slides into the driver’s seat. The sound of gravel under the tires makes his cheek twitch, and he tries to ignore it as he pulls into the street. Behind the line of houses and suburbs, the sun is setting, and he absently flips on his headlights.

Shen makes a noncommittal noise and turns to study the window.

“You’re bitchy tonight,” Jin mutters and lights a cigarette, briefly leaving the steering wheel unattended. Shen scowls and burrows into the seat, jabbing the radio controls to drown out Jin’s voice with a noisy guitar solo. As an afterthought, Jin rolls down his window to scatter the sudden stench of smoke.

They ride in silence for a while, with the cold winter air blowing Jin’s hair back as Shen, glaring, wraps his scarf tighter around his neck.

Jin clears his throat. “Hey, check this out. It’s one of the coolest things you’ll ever see.” He lifts one thin hand away from the steering wheel, the one with the cigarette, and tosses the butt into the oncoming night. Shen watches in the passenger side mirror as it sends a shower of copper embers streaking behind it like a bottle rocket. It lasts a second before it vanishes into darkness.

“Pretty, huh?” asks Jin.

“You’re littering,” Shen says, but there’s a smile twitching at the corner of his lips as he reaches across Jin’s lap to roll up the window. “So, what are we doing tonight?”

“I thought you said we were having dinner?”

Shen, pulling his hand back from the manual window, lets his fingers trail affectionately across his brother’s knee, and Jin suddenly knows he’s forgiven. “I know, but I only said that because I was pissed at you,” Shen says.

“Oh. In that case, I don’t know.” Jin can’t help but frown as he considers the possibilities. There are very few options for fun on a Friday night, unless you’re in enough with the in crowd to get invited to one of the occasional parties, which, being the theatre nerds they are, Shen and Jin definitely aren’t. Jin’s idea of fun rests more in the field of petty vandalism.

“No more exploding mailboxes,” Shen tells him firmly, as though reading his mind. “Or flaming bags of shit. Do you remember that time you almost lit me on fire?”

“Yes,” Jin responds immediately and stifles a grin at the memory. Boy, does he ever.

“Shut up, it wasn’t that funny.”

“It was,” Jin disagrees, but drops the subject before it can spawn an argument. “But you’re right, none of that stuff. We’re getting too old for it.”

“Really?” Shen arches one dark eyebrow in amazement. “You must be getting wise in your old age.”

“Exactly!” Jin crows, and he turns to wink at Shen when they halt at a stoplight. “Tonight, we will be known as the Lawn Ornament Liberation Front!”

“Oh, god. I knew it was too good to be true,” Shen groans and hits his forehead against the glass window. “Tell me you’re joking.”

“No joke! Soon, the world’s lawn ornaments will be freed, or we will release them into the sweet freedom of their deaths!” Jin whispers menacingly as the light turns green and they lurk steadily closer to their objective.

“And just how do you propose we do this?”

“I’ve got it all planned out. Take the wheel for a second.”

“Take what?”

“The wheel! Here.” Jin grabs Shen’s hand and places it on the steering wheel, just before he turns around to fish around their back seat. Shen makes a distinctly feminine noise that sounds suspiciously like meep.

“What the hell are you doing?” he hisses, clasping the faux leather wheel with both hands. “How will you know when to break?”

“When you tell me to,” Jin says simply.

“You’re crazy.”

“I’m a genius!” he suddenly declares and twists his body around to deposit a yellow-tinged envelope on his brother’s lap. Shen makes a face at it as he releases the wheel.

“What the hell is this?” he wonders, picking at the seal.

“A ransom note.”

Shen nearly drops it. “Why the fuck do you have a ransom note!?”

Grinning, Jin motions for him to open it. “Remember Mrs. Cranson?”

Shen carefully unfolds the letter, blinking. It’s assembled from what appears to be a collection of words and letters from an assortment of Seventeen back issues. “Yes,” he says, squinting as he adjusts his glasses to read the note. “Didn’t she give you a D in history?”

“Yes! In history, of all subjects! Who the fuck gets a D in history!?”

“You do,” Shen says simply. He smirks at the note, which contains a list of elaborate and outrageous demands. It also states that, after a week, having not met the ridiculous demands for the return of her exceedingly pink hostage, they will deposit the head of the doomed flamingo on her porch. “I can’t believe you did this.”

“She deserves it,” Jin mutters, hunching slightly in his seat. Even if he had spent a little too much class time face down on his desk, he still deserved the participation points, goddammit. “I think we should draw a moustache on it, too.”

“It’s hard to draw a moustache on a beak, Jin.”

“Fine. Crush my dreams.”

“If you insist.” Sitting up straighter, Shen points to a narrow side street and instructs, “Park there.”

“Why? Her house is the next block over.”

“To avoid detection, dumbass.”

“Oh, right.” Smiling sheepishly, Jin pulls over, and they both climb out of the car.

-

Two hours later, they return home, shushing each other in between bursts of laughter as they tote their hostage inside. After reliving the night’s exploits, they settle down in their room and attempt to stow the flamingo inside their closet. When Jin slides open the door, a crisp white envelope flutters down to his feet.

“Hey, what’s this?”

Shen’s face freezes. “Nothing,” he says, and makes a grab for it, but Jin is already opening it. His face falls.

“You applied to Southeast?” Jin asks.

“Yeah,” Shen says, refusing to look ashamed, but when he speaks his eyes are unnaturally dark. “I got accepted, too.”

“So I see,” Jin mutters with pursed lips. He tosses the letter back into the closet and shuts the door without another word.

“You’re not happy for me? At all?”

“I am,” Jin lies as he bonelessly drops to the bed. Moments later, Shen sits next to him and primly folds his hands in his lap.

“You could get in if you applied.”

“I couldn’t,” Jin snaps immediately. “Everyone knows you’re the smarter one.”

“Don’t even try to pull that bullshit on me. We have the same genes, and therefore the same potential. Things will turn out all right.”

“Whatever.” Frowning, Jin sits up and realizes he forgot to take off his shoes, and that their mother will probably kill him for tracking mulch all over the carpet, despite the fact that she rarely vacuums anymore, if at all. He can’t really bring himself to care.

“At least I still have my faith in mankind,” Shen says, and bends down to remove Jin’s shoes for him. He cradles them under his arm and opens their door, assumedly to place them in the closet by the front door. If Jin knows him half as well as he thinks he does, Shen will probably clean up the mulch on his way back to the room and subtly deposit it in the kitchen trash. “Unlike you, Señor Cigarettes.”

Jin cringes. “Do us all a favor, and never take Spanish. Your accent is terrible.”

“You’re just uncultured,” Shen says, and disappears into the hallway. In his absence, Jin crawls into Shen’s bed and burrows under the covers, comforted by his twin’s scent, somehow subtly different from his own.

When Shen returns, Jin is asleep.

-

A/N: I know, I know I said I was going to update Emerson, but this is what happens when you spend too much time trying to develop your characters – they grow their own story. How to Grow Fruit isn’t finished yet, but I’ve had this sitting on my hard drive for over a year now, with about 10000 words of notes, and I just had to post it or I was going to go crazy. This takes place about six months after the events in Fruit (Jared is visiting over Christmas break), but I won’t actually spoil anything from Fruit, except for the fact that Jared comes back. If I do decide to add anything spoilery from Ryan and Jared’s storyline, I’ll update Fruit first. (Yay for you, right?)

Thanks for all your support, guys! I've never really written anything in present tense before, so I'd love some feedback.

Also, make sure to vote for either Emerson or How to Grow Fruit in the Some Kind of Wonderful romance contest. There’s a link on my profile page.