Work Text:
If Johnny just ignores his $2,700 credit deficit, he’ll be golden.
Because other than that, everything about the fact that he just lost his job is fine. It was a shitty job, anyway. They barely gave him ten hours a week, the people were the toxic kind of gossips, and his boss acted like it was a crime against humanity to turn down a last minute request to come in, even if she knew he was out of town. Not to mention that one time she decided to suddenly grant him 25 hours a week for a month even though he had a doctor’s note saying he had a muscle strain and shouldn’t actually be working. (And no, he couldn’t get any of his shifts covered because “that’s not fair on anyone else”.)
So losing his job is great! And if he ignores the credit deficit and the fact that his savings balance is the exact cost of rent this month, he doesn’t really need the money! He’ll get a new job in a few weeks, he’ll be fine until then.
What he does need is a second pair of Vetements flip flops.
And you know what, the flip flops alone won’t give him free shipping, so he’ll add a button-up with the Balenciaga logo all over it. The logo is rainbow and he is gay! It’s made for him.
…Hey, since he’s getting free shipping anyway, why not add that Off White wallet that says ‘For Money’ into his kart? For irony.
Checkout total: $964.
This is fine!
🛍
“How much was all of this?” Kun asks one day, roughly two weeks later, after walking out of his dark, dreary hole of a bedroom.
And look, it’s a fair question. If Johnny was in the business of questioning his purchases, he would probably ask the same thing in the exact same exasperated tone.
But Johnny isn’t in the business of questioning his purchases.
“Cheaper than therapy!” Johnny chirps.
“Cheaper than therapy for a year, maybe.” Kun sighs, pulling his glasses off of his nose so he can rub his eyes. “How did you manage rent this month?”
“I had savings!”
“And next month?”
That’s a problem for next month. I’ll figure it out!” There’s no way he can think about next month’s rent right now. That’s a stressful thought, and Johnny has no time for stressful thoughts. Not when he’s reaping the fruits of his labour.
But Johnny knows Kun, and Johnny knows Kun hasn’t let go of the question, so he adds: “I’ll have a job by then.” And so he doesn’t have to focus on the tremble in his fingers as he says it, he holds the Balenciaga shirt up to his chest. “How do I look?”
Kun has many kinds of pointed looks, but this is one Johnny doesn’t know the name of yet; till he figures it out, he’s called it the ‘I’m not sure if you’re acting like an idiot on purpose’ look, because he swears he can hear Kun say exactly that. Maybe Kun has said something like that in the past, just unfortunately timed, like when Johnny bought his first Rolex, or when Johnny bought a pair of Birks instead of paying his student amenities fee, or when Johnny’s response to Kun asking him to Prom was, “Duh, we’re going stag together?”
Or like when Johnny bought his second Rolex.
“You always look good, Johnny,” Kun says, tired, maybe a little annoyed. (Rude.) “You’d look good in a $5 Kmart t-shirt, too.”
“No one looks good in a $5 Kmart t-shirt.”
Kun clears his throat.
“Except you! Except you.”
🛍
Johnny loves his parents. He really does, honest! Yeah, he complains… but he only ever complains about one thing. Everything else is great! They both make great food! They let him play MapleStory on school nights! And they paid for college and never hung that over Johnny’s head. That’s a thing other parents do, apparently. Not Johnny’s though! They’re great!
His one complaint is this: his parents are frugal as fuck.
No, really – he’s pretty sure if you look up ‘cheapskate’ in the Oxford-Cambridge or whatever dictionary, you’ll see a picture of his parents instead of a written definition. And he gets it! He does, he really does, he’s not ungrateful. He promises he’s not. Especially since they paid for college, which is a thing other parents don’t do, apparently. He realises they were probably able to afford it because they were cheap. He’s connected those dots.
It’s just that growing up in a nice neighbourhood, where everyone gets nice, new things every season and you don’t, is hard.
It’s even harder when the other kids notice.
It was Halloween. Specifically: Halloween of 2008, and his third Halloween in a row dressed up as a taekwondo student. No one really cares if you dress up as the same thing every year in elementary school, but at age 13, it’s kind of a big deal. A huge deal. Even the laziest of Halloweeners at his school got to dress up as Blair Waldorf.
“Well I, for one,” Kun told him that day, as they sat on the steps in front of the school exit, thermoses in hand, as everyone else enjoyed flaunting their outfits on the school grounds, “Think it’s pretty cool that you’re almost a black belt.”
It was easy for Kun to say. His mother was willing to buy him body glitter from Claire’s so he could dress up as Edward Cullen.
“None of this is even going to matter when you’re older, anyway,” Kun sighed.
“Of course it isn’t,” Johnny replied. “When I’m older, I’m going to have enough money to buy whatever Halloween costume I want.”
Kun huffed into his soup. “Whatever.”
🛍
Johnny has never regretted a purchase. Nay, not a single one, because every purchase is an investment. Sure, he may not need this $200 Valentino card holder, since he already has one. Versace, not Valentino. There’s nothing wrong with his Versace one, it’s fine. He bought it earlier this year and it still looks amazing. He still likes it. It has a Medusa head on it and he’s not tired of her.
But at some point it’s going to get old and worn. Or it’ll rip somehow, and Johnny won’t have a card holder. Or maybe just, you know, maybe he wants to apply for a real adult job instead of retail, actually use his Bachelor of Computer Science, and then he can’t carry a bright orange card holder around. He’ll need something more adult! And he’s looking for jobs like that right now, so this isn’t even an unlikely scenario! It’s a totally worthy investment.
Not that Johnny really wants to work in a place that would frown upon his bright orange Versace card holder. Or work in anything IT-related at all, for that matter. He’s done the degree, he tried the job, it’s not for him. It’s really not for him.
Like it would have killed him if he kept doing it. Literally! Haha.
So yeah, this card holder isn’t a waste of money even if he doesn’t need it right now. It’s an investment. If he never gets a job, it’ll still be useful somewhere! Every item he has ever owned has been useful to him at some point, and if it hasn’t been useful then it will be. There’s no such thing as a regrettable purchase. The word ‘regret’ isn’t even in his dictionary!
(No, no, not true. It is definitely in his dictionary. He does regret completing a degree in computer science considering it was… how it was.)
Besides, $200 is kind of a bargain. It’s originally $390. Almost double!
He’s buying it.
🛍
Things fall apart when Johnny’s credit card gets declined at the Louis Vuitton.
No, not his regular credit card. That one maxed out at the start of the month.
His better credit card. The one with $15,000 credit and no monthly maximum spend.
“Oh,” he utters, voice so low no one can hear it quiver. “It was working fine an hour ago.” Not a lie. He bought a cake shake from Portillo’s for lunch. “I wonder what happened.”
“Shame,” says the sales attendant, both like it’s the greatest shame that could befall a man and like it doesn’t matter at the same time. She pulls the scarf she’d just neatly packed into a pretty little cardboard bag and rips its wrapping apart with no grace whatsoever. “I’ll put this back for you.”
Desperate times call for desperate measures. Feeling numb and struggling to breathe counts as a desperate time, right? Also crying in public. Not that Johnny is crying in public, but he will if he let himself. He now has the loss of the scarf on top of his usual base level sadness, the stuff he usually doesn’t acknowledge exists. God, he’s way too aware of his sadness now. Not good, not good, not good–
Kun storms out of his room approximately five minutes after Johnny returns home and about only four seconds after the thud of an ice block falling onto the floor. “What the fuck is going on?”
“Do you think I’ll break this if I use a hammer on it?”
Kun looks down at the ice block, third emergency credit card encased inside, and then back at Johnny with what he can only describe as ‘fury’. “You maxed out your second credit card?”
“I don’t know what did it! Okay, I do, it was the cake shake. But in my defence–”
“I thought we agreed to stop eating out while you’re still looking for a job! I made you lunch!”
“And I’m going to eat it! But I don’t think my interview went very well.” Before Kun’s gaze can soften at all, Johnny averts his eyes to the emergency credit card still, miserably, encased in ice. “What if I used a hairdryer?”
“Johnny,” Kun sighs what Johnny has taken to calling his ‘mom away from home and not in a good way’ sigh. (But, like, never to his face. Absolutely not. Johnny would rather die.) “You have got to stop spending like this while you’re unemployed.”
“Hey now–”
“No, you wouldn’t let me say this to you when you were working even though you and I both know that you were never earning enough to fund your spending habits. But it’s been two months now, and you’ve been acting like you haven’t lost your job at all! What’s wrong with you? How the hell are you going to afford rent?”
“With this!” Johnny pointed at the ice block. “What do you think it’s there for? Emergencies!”
“It shouldn’t have gotten this far to start with! What the fuck are you going to do if you max this one out too? Have you even thought of that?”
“Have I ever skeeved you on rent or bills once? Have I ever failed to pay you back for anything?”
“No, but –”
“Then why butt your nose into my business? I asked for your help getting my card out, not for financial advice! Why do you even care how I spend my money if it doesn’t affect you?”
“Because I…”
And there’s a pause. A pause just long enough to make Johnny’s hair stand on end, to make his already numb fingers even more numb, to feed his already active fight-or-flight response eight espresso shots straight, undiluted, no froth, no nothing.
“…Because I’m your best friend,” Kun finishes.
His fingers are still numb. His heart is still over-beating. The goosebumps haven’t really gone but, well – what’s the word for that feeling of loss when you’re so ready to act on something and it turns out you don’t even have to? Not that he knows what he was going to act on, or how. He just knows his body was ready for something big, and then nothing big happened.
Kun is Johnny’s best friend. Water is wet.
“I’m sorry I yelled and said mean things to you,” Johnny tells his best friend. “My interview really sucked today.”
He doesn’t need to go into the other stuff, right?
No, he doesn’t. Not judging by the expression on Kun’s face.
“I saw the cutest video of a seal this morning…”
Water is wet.
🛍
The day Johnny gets a job offer, which he accepts, he decides to buy a 75-inch flat screen TV.
Johnny does not watch TV. He watches Queer Eye on Netflix and Disney Movies on Kun’s Disney+ subscription, and even more Queer Eye on Netflix, and that’s about it. But he could start to watch TV! Not to mention, he’s not the only person living in this house – Kun can benefit from a TV too. Considering he has a Disney+ subscription. Not to mention, Kun could totally hook up his plane games to the big screen and play his heart out. Johnny can pretend to be his passenger. Or co-pilot. Probably not co-pilot, actually; just passenger, then.
Surprisingly enough, or maybe not that surprising, Kun doesn’t look impressed when he gets home from his client meeting. Which is so not fair, because Kun wasn’t here to see Johnny set it up with his own hands, and arms, and bent under the wall-mounting and fingering wires and things. (See, Johnny has never had any doubt about how hot he is. All he needed in high school was the clothes to match.)
“You can play Microsoft Flight Simulator on here,” Johnny tells him, before he can say his customary ‘what the fuck is this’ or ‘where did you find the money’ or, his favourite, ‘you need therapy’. “If we draw all the curtains and stuff, it’ll be cool, don’t you think?”
Kun licks across the front of his teeth. “What’s the occasion this time? Get rejected twice today?”
“I was given an offer, actually.”
Johnny’s cheeks feel hot under the look Kun gives him – a bit of pride, a bit of surprise, a little bit of ‘I knew it’.
“It’s not big, but it pays well. I’m going to be technical writer for a tech start-up.”
“Oh, Johnny, that’s great!” Kun reaches over for their usual hug, which Doyoung describes as “a heterosexual hug for heterosexual male friends”. Doyoung has yet to tell either of them what a homosexual hug for homosexual male friends would be. “You can finally use your degree! Are you sure you can–”
“– Afford the TV? Sure, I’ll earn the money it cost eventually.”
“You’re beyond help. I don’t know why I bother.”
🛍
Everyone has vices. Johnny wouldn’t call making solid investments a vice, but others would, so he guesses that’s his. Other than that, Johnny can be a little self-obsessed. Okay, “self-obsessed” is a strong term – he gets in his own head, maybe? He knows, logically, that the world doesn’t revolve around him, that things happen outside of his personal bubble, for reasons that have nothing to do with him and are beyond his control. But sometimes – many times – it feels like no one pays attention to him, like, really, truly, no one pays attention to him, and he has to make up for that.
Anyway, Kun’s vice is alcohol.
To be fair, Johnny’s vice is also alcohol. But Kun prioritises alcohol so much that it’s one of the few things Johnny doesn’t actually have to purchase ever, since Kun always has a stash that he’s ready and willing to share. If there’s any of it left.
A lot of Kun’s sadder songs get made when he’s drunk. Objectively, they’re his best ones. Kun knows it too.
But here’s where Kun’s vice of alcohol and Johnny’s vice of narcissism or whatever the euphemism for that is clash: Johnny has this tiny, strange, impossible inkling that a lot of those songs are about him.
He tries to ignore it. He tries to ignore most cases in which he thinks things are about him until he has definitive proof that it is absolutely about him – and he definitely doesn’t have proof in this case. Just hints here and there that could also not be hints.
Like, he just named a song ‘J’ once. But ‘J’ could stand for ‘Jay Chou’. Kun loves Jay Chou.
Or the Prom thing. Was Kun asking him out on a date-date and not a stag-date? Because if so, that sucks. For… reasons. But that was eight years ago now. There’s no way that could still be significant. Heck, Kun probably doesn’t even remember. Johnny only remembers because… it happened.
Kun is passed out on the couch when Johnny gets home from a particularly gruelling day of… well, the same shit, technical writing is literally just the same shit over and over again for two weeks straight and then nothing for the rest of the month. It’s vile, it’s soul-crushing, Johnny hates it.
So anyway, Kun is passed out on the couch, and it isn’t often that Kun drinks enough to actually pass out – more like enough to put him on that precarious border between tipsy and actually drunk – so Johnny is immediately worried.
But what can he do? Kun is already passed out on the couch; it’s not like he can wake him up and tell him not to keep drinking.
There’s no vomit and nothing spilt anywhere, so it could be worse. Johnny manhandles Kun till he’s giving him a non-consensual piggyback (“put me down” is what Kun usually has to say during a piggyback of dubious consent) to his bedroom. He lays him on his side and props him up against two out of the four pillows on his bed so he won’t roll onto his back, and he tucks him into bed the way he likes. He picks Kun’s phone up on his way to get some water and aspirin to put by Kun’s bedside table, and he shouldn’t look at it. He doesn’t, usually! Privacy and all that. Not that Johnny would have a problem if Kun looks through his – okay, maybe a little bit. They know practically everything about each other, and the key word there is “practically” because they do not actually know everything. Kun might know things about Johnny that Johnny doesn’t know himself, but he certainly doesn’t know everything.
So he shouldn’t look at Kun’s phone, but the screen lights up as he picks it up and there’s a text. The text is from Sicheng and it says, ‘you’ve carried a torch for him for more than ten years now. don’t you think that’s a little excessive?’
Johnny shoves Kun’s phone in his pocket while he gets the water and Aspirin.
Sicheng is probably talking about Jay Chou. Yes, yes, he knows if he says this aloud to a friend, like Ten – oh, god, especially Ten – he’ll just get a groan and an eye roll in response. But this is why Johnny thinks it’s about Jay Chou: Kun has dated other people.
Yeah.
Kun has dated other people, and the only constant that entire time has been Jay Chou.
Therefore.
Johnny doesn’t need to bother closing Kun’s curtains, because Kun’s room is always a dark void, so all he does is plug his phone and save his Logic project before he shuts his computer down. Kun will be pissy about it in the morning, but Johnny is a big believer in hardware needing rest. He didn’t struggle through four years of hell just to let his loved ones live with an overeager cooling fan.
Oh. Interesting. Kun’s nice headphone set has a tiny scratch on it. Mm, it looks a little worn. He’s had it for years, hasn’t he? At least three years.
So Johnny stays up a little later, parsing through reviews upon reviews of studio headphones.
Kun cannot possibly be mad about this purchase.
🛍
Kun doesn’t wake up until 2pm. Johnny isn’t much of a cook, he has a few go-to recipes that he can make in a scratch, so he can’t make Kun a comforting stew, or his favourite steamed fish. All he can offer is air fryer fried chicken and tuna fried rice. But hey, at least he can cook, so air fryer fried chicken and tuna fried rice are ready and lukewarm by the time Kun wakes up.
Johnny has a meeting in an hour for which he needs to be at the office, and he should definitely start getting ready. But he hovers around the living room, watching Kun stare at the microwave, hip checks their drawers closed, gulps down a glass of water like he’s a fish.
“How was yesterday?” Johnny asks, voice as neutral as possible (so not very neutral) as Kun finally settles into the rocking chair Johnny had impulsively bought the day after their housewarming. “Did you get up to much?”
Kun sighs. He’s quiet for long enough that Johnny isn’t sure he’ll even answer. “You know that demo I tried to sell that got plagiarised?”
“Mm.”
“I spoke to a lawyer yesterday, and I have grounds to sue.”
“…But?”
“I don’t have the money, and I probably won’t win anyway. They’re too powerful.” Kun picks at his lunch. “So there’s nothing I can do about it.”
Johnny doesn’t know much about music law. Or just law, for that matter. He doesn’t think saying something like “No, but I’m sure there’s something you can do, and you should try suing anyway!” would be worth much coming from him.
He does know one thing, though.
“I bought you a new pair of headphones. Hopefully that’ll cheer you up.”
“You bought me… what? Why?”
“The R70 or something… I forgot the brand name because it was, like, six in the morning and I use AirPods, so –”
“My headphones work fine.”
“There was a scratch!”
“They work.”
“I know, but they won’t always work! So when those stop working, you have these.”
“When are you going to admit you have a problem?”
Alas, Johnny would continue this conversation, but he absolutely has to start getting ready for that meeting now. “When my problem stops making me feel good.”
🛍
His problem does get to a point where it stops making him feel good.
See, Johnny is thick-headed. He knows he can take a while to catch onto things. Much longer than other people do. Or should. He tries to justify to people that he has his own pace, but maybe it goes back to that vice thing where he’s too busy thinking about himself to notice the world around him. It might not be that, though. It’s just a thought.
But it didn’t take him long to catch onto this. Is that good or bad? He has no idea. This feeling is foreign to him. He’s never experienced receiving a delivery and feeling absolutely nothing.
Yeah, that’s how it happens. Box arrives at his doorstep, Johnny opens box, Johnny rubs hands over the Vetements logo stitched into the band of the black boxer-briefs and… nothing. No rush of joy in his chest. No fluttering of the heart. No instant surge of energy.
Something is wrong.
For three days in a row, he barely wakes up on time for work. Heck, it’s a wonder he can even get out of bed at all. The weather is exactly the kind of warm that Johnny usually likes, but he keeps his Gucci sweater on all day. He called his parents and they let him talk to Flower, his baby, his bubu, his puppy, and after he hung up, he stayed in bed with his blankets up around him and stared at the ceiling until he didn’t realise he’d been staring at the ceiling for almost 40 minutes.
He keeps his door closed whenever he’s home. Kun doesn’t knock, but he does text him to ask if he’s okay.
‘yeah! just sleepy 🥱 taking a nap!’ and no, he doesn’t want to go out later and no, Kun doesn’t need to cook him dinner because he’s not really hungry, and no, he’s not feeling up to a movie either, he really just wants to sleep. But thank you! Coochie eyes emoji, two hearts in orbit emoji, no, delete, red heart emoji, nope, delete, the heart that looks like an exclamation mark? Ew, that’s disgusting, delete, the coochie eyes emoji speaks for itself.
But Kun is smart, and Kun catches him coming out of the bathroom after he’s woken up a little too late on a Saturday. Johnny’s still coming to his senses, and their little apartment smells like home.
“I asked your mom for her tofu stew recipe,” Kun explains, probably because Johnny’s mouth is gaping open like a fish. “I don’t know if I got it right.”
Johnny takes a deep breath, let’s the aroma wafting from the kitchen fill his chest. “It smells like you got it right.”
“Either way, it’ll taste good.” Kun shrugs. “I’m going to start watching ‘100 Days My Prince’ as I eat. You’re welcome to join me.”
Kun normally works through his Saturday afternoons. Wait… Kun took the last Saturday off, too. Is it because of the legal proceedings? Is he tired? He looks tired. Shit, Johnny hasn’t paid attention to Kun at all. That’s so shitty of him. Isn’t it shitty of him? Especially since Kun’s going through such a stressful time. Johnny’s stressful time is technically over, since he has a job now, and it’s a stable number of hours a week, and it pays well, and money isn’t… okay, it’s not as much an issue as it used to be, if only because he’s actually capable of paying off his credit debt now, but because he’s busy paying that off, he’s kind of dealing with the same amount of money? Anyway, at least he can pay it off, so yeah, his stressful period is over! And Kun’s has just begun. Like, where is Kun getting the money for a lawyer? Oh shit, should Johnny help him pay? Johnny should help him pay. That would make up for how shitty a friend he’s been.
“You’re going to bail on an entire afternoon with Do Kyungsoo?”
Kun is already at his bedroom door by the time Johnny is done thinking.
And listen, Johnny is sad. But there is no way in hell he is bailing on an entire afternoon with Do Kyungsoo.
🛍
Four episodes in, Johnny’s head is resting on Kun’s head, which is resting on his shoulder, and their arms are crossed around their own bodies, lunch bowls long put away. This is normal… ish. Like, they’ve done it before. It’s uncommon, not unheard of. Especially in college. It was the ‘I didn’t get into the soccer team’ position. Or the ‘I have way too much shit on my plate’ position. Or the ‘I’ll miss you during your semester abroad’ position. Just best friend things!
“I’m worried about you,” Kun tells him, in the brief pause between episodes.
“Me? You should be more worried about yourself right now.”
“I am worried about myself. I can worry about both of us.”
Johnny gets that. He would like to say something like ‘thank you’ or ‘I’m fine’ or ‘I worry about you too’, but then the fifth episode starts and it’s time to be quiet again.
🛍
Johnny discovered his fondness for buying things – his emacity, if you will, thank you Merriam-Webster Word of the Day email subscription – when he was nine years old. He never received pocket money from his parents, but his father’s estranged second cousin came to visit one day for god knows what reason (judging by his parents’ mood that entire day, not good reasons) and gifted Johnny with a $100 bill. He used this bill to buy a jacket he’d been eyeing since last year at Nordstrom, during the first and only trip his mother had ever taken to Nordstrom. His parents really didn’t approve of it, but Johnny had been walking in and out of the department store for months on end and he had been doing his research. Benefits of buying the jacket included: 1) it was on sale; 2) it was an investment (he just learnt that word); 3) it would beat his current jacket, which a bird pooped on once; and 4) his classmates would stop pointing out that a bird pooped on his current jacket if he wore a new jacket instead.
He didn’t know Kun back then. Kun would come two years later, and it would take an extra year after that for Johnny to conclude that no, God does not exist, even if Kun’s arrival made it seem like he did since he was the literal answer to all of Johnny’s prayers. Kun deserves all the credit for how good he is.
🛍
Johnny adds a Maison Kitsuné hoodie to his cart. There’s no guarantee it’ll cheer him up, but at the very least, it’s over 50% off. He’ll add the rest to his savings. Or use it to buy something else. It’s a little basic but whatever, he’s on the lookout for a new hoodie and this is the cheapest one they have, so. Whatever.
It might work.
🛍
Yuta’s solution for Johnny’s sadness is to go on a date.
Johnny does not like dating. At all. It is banal. Everything about it is stupid and dumb and Johnny would rather walk around in public wearing a pair of Walmart-brand sneakers with a hole over his left toe than “get to know someone and see if you’re compatible”.
The only reason Johnny said yes is because going on a date means wearing a nice outfit.
No, don’t be ridiculous. He’s not going to buy a new outfit. He’s got plenty of clothes, and they’re all fantastic. This is exactly why he invests! Okay, not dates, specifically, but you never know what situation you’ll find yourself in in life, and it’s good to be prepared for everything.
Burberry is great for dates. The trench coat. He doesn’t need to be ostentatious anywhere else: Stussy trousers, hold the logo, simple black Burberry top to go with the coat, and some Yeezys. He’s only going to a bar with some guy from Tinder, after all; no need to bring out the boat shoes. Besides, Matt’s Tinder bio suggests that he’s a sneaker head.
The bar is a bit of a drive away, so it’s not like Matt the sneaker head cancelling right as Johnny is ready to leave is… yeah, okay, it’s bad. But it could be worse. He could have been five minutes away instead of thirty. Thirty is still bad, but five… yikes.
This is exactly why Johnny hates dating.
“You’re all dressed up,” Kun muses, looking up from the stack of legal papers on his couch. (Legal papers he probably doesn’t have to read, but insisted on doing anyway. Johnny knows Kun.) “What’s the occasion?”
“I was supposed to have a date, but he just cancelled. So now I’m all dressed up, no occasion.” Johnny holds his arms out and twists his body so his coat swishes with him. “I look good though, don’t I?”
Kun snorts. “You’d look good in ratty old pajamas, Johnny.”
“I don’t feel good in ratty old pajamas, though. C’mon.” Johnny strikes a pose. “I put a lot of effort into this outfit.”
Kun peers at him over the top of his glasses. “A lot of money, too.”
“And it would have been money well spent if the date had gone ahead! Oh!” Johnny snaps his fingers. “Let’s go get drinks. You and me.”
“Not on a date, though, right?”
Error 404. Brain function terminated. Attempting reboot. “No!” Johnny not-laughs. “Silly. It’s just been ages since we went out together. We’re both busy and stressed and it’ll be nice to take a night off.”
“Mm. I can’t. I’m a little caught up tonight.”
And so Johnny retreats back into his room and throws off his fancy clothes and washes off his makeup and changes into an old Adidas tracksuit because, contrary to popular belief, Johnny does wear outfits more than once a year. Especially at home.
He only heads back out intending to double check how tired Kun looked, but Kun, ever attentive, notices. “Oh, you’ve changed.”
“From butterfly to caterpillar.”
Kun purses his lips. He pats the space next to him on the sofa, shuffling aside. “Sit.”
Johnny rests his cheek against the back of the couch, arms crossed, legs tucked into the seat. He watches as Kun rubs his eyes with two fingers, before adjusting his glasses back in their place. (Kun only started wearing glasses a year ago. Johnny was so jealous, because he looked pretty without them and he looks pretty with them.) “Can I do anything to help?”
“You know you don’t need nice clothes to be a butterfly, right?”
This is not the first time Kun has told Johnny something of this sentiment. It’s gotten less frequent over the years, probably because Johnny has consistently given Kun a vaguely honest but definitely unsatisfactory response. “I just want to feel nice” or “they help me feel like myself” or even as simple as “but I like them”. Or sometimes just “I know” and absolutely nothing else. A change of subject at most.
Considering how Johnny’s been feeling lately, though, he wouldn’t feel right saying any of those things. He wouldn’t feel right telling Kun the complete truth, either. He needs a middle ground.
“I’m not really much of anything without them.”
“Without nice clothes?”
“Yeah.”
“What do you mean?”
Johnny swallows the tightness of his throat away. “I just, you know. I don’t do much. I don’t have much of a reason for… yeah. Existing, or whatever. I’m just here. I might as well try to be happy while I am.”
That’s the first time he’s ever admitted out loud that he’s not happy. And he might’ve swallowed a fly or something while talking, because something is stuck in his throat, damn…
Kun stares at him for a very long time. Fair enough, really; Johnny would do the same for him. He does it anyway, worrying situation or not. “There’s nothing I can say to change your mind, is there?”
“Well, I mean… what are you going to do, say the facts are false? That’s kind of Donald Trump, I don’t think you’d be down with that.”
“Will you book an appointment with a therapist by tomorrow afternoon, or do I have to do it for you?”
Kun is serious. This is Kun’s serious voice. This is not Kun’s “you’re my best friend and I’m really fucking worried about you but I don’t want to push you too hard in case you hate me” voice, this is Kun’s “take care of yourself, or perish” voice. Johnny feels tingly in the ankles.
“I’ll call someone tomorrow morning.”
🛍
Johnny has been to therapy before. Once when he was 16, the school counsellor told him he had a superiority complex. The superiority complex was the source of all his problems, and perhaps if he stopped thinking of himself as better than everyone else, he wouldn’t have such a problem fitting in, and he might like people a little more.
The second time, when he was 19, the student psychologist told him he needed to stop studying computer science and study something he really wanted to study. Take a year off to figure out what he wanted to do. Or don’t come back to college, even! It’s not for everyone, and that’s okay. You can find a path for yourself without a degree.
Both of them were ultimately unhelpful, so why bother with therapy, really? It’s like the student psych said: it’s not for everyone, and that’s okay. He can find a path for himself without therapy. Besides, shopping might be a temporary fix to a problem Johnny doesn’t know the size of (he doesn’t think it’s very big, he thinks people are making a mountain out of a molehill, honestly) but at least it does something! He’s been to two therapists and they’ve done nothing helpful.
So why bother, honestly?
🛍
Johnny is only quarter of the way through listing out how every single item in his wardrobe makes him feel when Kun comes back from his big meeting with the record company’s solicitor. He only sees it because he has so many clothes that he’s spread them out all the way to the living room and the kitchen, and he’s starting from there.
Kun’s back is hunched. His eyes look dull even through his glasses, and he hasn’t returned with any of the papers he usually does whenever he visits his lawyer.
Johnny cannot look away.
“How did it go?” he asks.
Kun doesn’t respond immediately. He slips into his slippers, yanks his top button undone, before answering, “We settled.”
“For how much?”
Kun leans his forehead against the wall of their entryway. “Not enough.”
That has Johnny throwing his Balenciaga sock-shoes onto their couch and rushing over to wrap Kun in the Emergency Hug. The Emergency Hug is not their usual kind of hug, the one that Doyoung calls a “heterosexual hug between heterosexual male friends”, but something warm and tight and soothing (hopefully). There aren’t a lot of emergencies between them, frankly, because things have to really suck for the Emergency Hug to be necessary, but it’s happened once or twice.
Besides, it’s easy today because Johnny is in his favourite Gucci sweater, which is warm and cozy by default.
Kun doesn’t cry. Johnny feels his breath fan against his chest, feels his hair tickle his neck. Kun almost feels like a brand new sweater. Just, you know, Johnny can’t wear him. Which is fine, because he’s not into Norman Bates couture. He hopes that never becomes a thing.
“What’s with the clothes everywhere?” Kun asks, voice muffled because, well. His entire face is pressed into Johnny’s shirt and he’s basically talking into Johnny’s chest. Hm.
“I’m making a list of everything I’ve bought, why I bought it, how I was feeling when I bought it, and how it makes me feel now.”
“Is that what your therapist asked you to do?”
“Kind of. She made me do it with what I was wearing today, and it made me think. So I’m doing it with everything.”
“Hm. Seems a little excessive, but if it works.”
Johnny hopes it works.
🛍
Healing is a long and slow process. There’s no ‘aha’ moment, there’s no direct flight up, there’s no climax or even an end in sight, really. You go through the motions and hope things work out, which you usually never know until someone else points out that you spend a lot more time meeting friends now, or that your skin looks nicer, or that “yeah, you were in a really bad way before, but I’m glad you’re better!”
None of that has happened to Johnny yet. Sometimes he still feels like nothing. Sometimes he still stands naked in front of his bathroom mirror and compares himself to a hat stand. Sometimes he feels good after posting one of his unopened colognes away, but then two days later, he’ll wish it was still here. There’s no drama, no pizzazz; it’s there at the back of his mind, and it’s not really doing wonders, but it might be doing something.
‘No drama, no pizzazz’ is exactly how things happen with Kun.
He’s on Kun’s bed. There’s nothing special about this. They’ve spent ample amounts of time on each other’s beds, watching things, listening to music, talking about their day, having heart to hearts. The latter is rare now, but that’s what’s happening on Kun’s bed today. Lying on their backs, side by side, looking up at the bare ceiling. It’s a little dark for Johnny’s taste, but he’s with Kun, so he’ll live.
“I don’t know,” Kun says in response to the question, ‘Are you happy?’. “I guess, in a way? I’m working my dream job and it pays me enough to living comfortably… ish. I don’t have a lot of things that trouble me. Every once in a while I have an existential crisis, but who doesn’t?”
“Maybe it’s because you have everything you want. And you knew what you wanted to start with.”
“I don’t have everything I want.”
“Well, what else do you need? Do you want to live alone?”
“I’m not talking about things, Johnny.”
“…So, people?”
Kun exhales in the form of a hiss. “Sometimes what you want doesn’t want you back. There’s nothing you can do about it.”
Johnny’s throat tightens up again. The air feels thick, hot. Humidity does not suit him. “I can’t imagine why anyone wouldn’t want you back.”
Kun doesn’t say a damn thing. Johnny can’t even hear him breathe, so he turns on his side so he can see him.
It’s hard to tell what he’s thinking. “Maybe if you told them, you’d realise you had the wrong idea.”
“Oh, I’ve dropped many hints. Some bordering on blatant confessions.”
“Yeah, but people can be really smooth-brained. Some people need to be communicated to in Neanderthal, like ‘me like you’. Or, or! A giant teddy bear hugging an equally giant heart that has ‘I love you, Johnny’ embroidered onto it.”
Kun laughs, humourless. “’Love’, huh?”
“I mean. Not if that’s not the word you’d use.”
“I think I’d use the word ‘love’.”
“Yeah?”
“It’s just a little scary, because I’ve never used it before. Always stuck with ‘like’ in my head, because I wasn’t sure if you felt the same way.”
“I think I’d use the word ‘love’ too.”
Kun’s smile is totally going to mess with his brain chemistry. He’s pretty sure it’s not good a good idea to induce this much serotonin while he’s barely in control of his chronic depression. There’s probably going to be some weird, false sense of security there and it’s going to mess with him, even if they end up spending the rest of their lives together. (Johnny is pretty sure they will.)
Even more worrying: kissing Kun feels just as good as buying a really expensive, fresh off the runway outfit. Or receiving an iPhone on launch day. Or buying something good quality for someone you love, like when he bought his mom a professional grade knife set and block.
Even more worrying: brain turns to complete swill when Kun flips him onto his back. Forget smooth brain, Johnny’s is just liquid. He can hear it swish around in his skull until Kun hooks a finger into his waistband, and then he can feel his liquid brain leak out both his ears.
Should he tell his therapist about this? That’ll be weird. Will that be weird? It’ll be weird, won’t it? He tries to imagine it. Starting their session with a disclaimer about how there's probably a lot of... what's that hormone? The love hormone? Oxytocin? There's probably a lot of oxytocin running around his brain and making him functional and the magic cure was getting a boyfriend. If boyfriend is the term. No, that's too long. How about a "by the way, if I seem happy today, it's because I got the depression fucked out of me and it's probably temporary"? See, that's such a weird thing to tell your therapist.
Okay, no, he feels way too good about seeing Kun fling his Supreme t-shirt onto the floor. He should definitely tell his therapist.
🛍
Johnny has big news. It is very big and very important news, a huge deal, a massive deal, so excuse him if he feels a little shown up by a giant teddy bear.
“I thought you wanted this,” Kun says, very fast, very whiny, like he’s been possessed by Doyoung. “You asked for it. You said I should give this to you. I thought you’d like it. The one time I try to indulge and do something you’d like instead of just cook some shit up in the kitchen–”
“No, I like it!” Johnny picked both of Kun’s hands from the air and brought them somewhere he wouldn’t hit something. “I did ask for it. I love it. It’s great.”
“Then where’s the reaction?”
“Just… you’ve kind of outshone me! I have big news today!”
“It’s not a competition. You can still tell me your news.”
Johnny frowns. True, but still. He didn’t need the distraction. “You remember that photography competition I entered? The one where you get hired by Vogue if you won?”
“Yeah. Did you…?”
“I won second place!” He squeezes Kun’s hands, because they feel like they’re about to vibrate out of his grip. “So I won’t be hired by Vogue, but someone on the judging panel works for an indie online magazine and wants to me to take over for a few weeks doing their street fashion column.”
“Johnny, that’s fantastic!”
“Isn’t it? So I quit my job!”
“Whoa… hey now–”
“It didn’t spark joy, so I Marie Kondo-ed it. As soon as I got the offer for the column, I drafted my resignation letter, printed it out and handed it in. Felt good.”
“Okay, but–”
“I’ll just find a new job in between! Easy!”
“…Right…”
“And my deficit on my second credit card just hit $5000 as of my bank transfer this morning, so I went online shopping. Expect something delivered today. Don’t open it.”
“…Johnny…”
“It’s my first unplanned spend in a month! Let me have this.”
🛍
Johnny eventually actually, properly learns to save when Kun promises to propose if he gets out of debt.