#like girl i already did that yesterday!!! wym i have to do it again?

[everswift]

me about any task i need to perform more than once: damn this is just like the myth of sisyphus…

[yeollieayheehoo]

Repair

Authors note: So this is a little different than how I usually write, it’s more dialogue. So yeah. Don’t come for me. 

Summary: There’s never a right time to confess

Pairing: Jongdae x Reader (female)

Genre: fluff

Rating:  PG

Warnings: explicit language, drug mention (ya’ll it’s weed.)

Word Count: 2.5K

OneDae [11:32AM] you ridin’ or you rollin’?

Y/N [11:32AM] im always rollin’ wym

OneDae [11:33AM] are you ridin’ with me or are you drivin you fuckin nerd

Y/N [11:33AM] depends

Y/N [11:33AM] do I get to dj or are you gonna play that dubstep trash you call music?

Y/N [11:51AM] did you die?

OneDae [11:54AM] im looking up a facility to put you in

OneDae [11:54AM] cause you’ve clearly lost your mind

OneDae [11:54AM] out here callin my music trash

Y/N [11:56AM] that’s cause it IS trash

OneDae [11:57AM] yall just have no sense when it comes to music. Yall just don’t have an ear for it

Y/N [11:58AM] I literally own an instrument repair shop

Y/N [11:58AM] fight me you fuck

“I would but my mama told me not to hit girls.”

“That’s because you’d lose. What’d you bring me?” You didn’t look up from your work order as Jongdae walked in, the smell of something toasted wafting from the entrance of your shop, filling the front room.  

“Pizza, extra mushrooms and bacon. Half with pineapple because it’s clearly the superior topping.”

“Why are you always wrong?” You finished filling out the paper, scribbling your signature at the bottom of it before attaching it to the saxophone case on the back counter.

“I’m not wrong. The rest of you are just lacking in intelligence. Why the fuck do you have 15 conga drums around the corner?” Jongdae paused as he walked around the counter, setting the pizza box down in the middle of it as his attention went to the back room where the drums in question sat.

“Blue Meadows High School dropped them off about 10 minutes before you got here and asked to me to repair the heads. Apparently the percussion director tore half of the hides the last time he tried to repair them.”

“Do you need help with them?”

“I might get you to start soaking the heads while I start on this Yanagisawa.” You leaned back in your stool, stretching your arms above your head before reaching for the pizza box, gesturing with your head to the stool beside you, telling Jongdae to sit.

“When do they need them by?” You shrugged, taking a large bite of the slice of pizza in your hand, holding your hand in front of your mouth as you spoke, “they didn’t give a time frame, but I’ll probably have them done by the end of the week”.

“What else do you have?”

“The Yanagisawa is an A-WO1, it’s got a leak and I’m gonna have to replace all of the key pads and see if it’s that, the drums, I have a guy dropping off a guitar at 2, the Davis kid popped the strings on his cello AGAIN, so there’s that too. That’s it for now.”

“Will his parents ever learn that their kid has no idea what he’s doing?”

“Probably not. You know how private school parents are.” Jongdae rolled his eyes, folding a slice of pizza in half before shoving half of it in his mouth. You chuckled as you stood, walking around him to the back, grabbing the roll of paper towels from your work bench, setting them down in front of Jongdae before eating another slice. There was a comfortable silence as you ate, falling into your weekly routine of almost eight years.

2011

“Wizard?”

“I’m in the back!”

“What the actual fuck are you doing?” You looked up from the piano you were working on, grinning from ear to ear as you got up from your seat. “So get this Chan. I’m working on a ukulele right? My front bell rings, so I get up to go see who it is and it’s this like huge, buffy dude, covered in dust and he goes, ‘do you fix instruments?’ and I say yeah, and he goes ‘me and my crew are cleaning out the old church on Dolson road to renovate it and there’s an old piano in there and my guy John lifted the lid and it’s a J&C, whatever that means, but I wanted to see if you wanted it? I don’t know if it’s worth anything but you could probably make a good penny off of it if you can fix it up’. And of course, you know me, I’ll try to fix anything.”

“Trust me, I know.”

“Look that neck was warped and split, I was going to have to make a new one.”

“Finish your story.”

“Oh right. Okay, so I say sure I’ll take a look at it and they’ve already got it loaded up on the back of a truck, so they bring it in and Chanyeol. They just gave me an 1883 J&C Fischers and Sons upright piano. Just gave it to me! They were gonna trash it! So of course I got it loaded on the tilter, and I’m taking out the pins and strings now and hello, who is this?” You pause, just now noticing the unfamiliar face that seems to stick out the side of Chanyeol’s bicep. You grin brightly and offer your hand, pulling it back quickly and wiping it on the leg of your jeans before sticking it back out.

“Hi, I’m Y/N.”

“I’m Jongdae.” He took your hand, smooth against the slightly rough skin of your own, but pleasantly warm as he shook it.

“This is Jongdae, a friend of mine from high school. He just moved to town, I was showing him around, thought we’d swing by and see if you wanted lunch, but it looks like you’re busy.”

“No, I could go for food. Let me wash my hands and get the dust off me.” You disappeared into the bathroom, making quick work of the tasks ahead of you, drying your hands on a paper towel as you walked back out, safety glasses hung on their hook next to the door.

  You can still hear him ask if you were always this eccentric as you climbed out of Chanyeol’s car when they dropped you back off at your shop. There was something in his voice, the way his tenor words dripped off of his tongue, pitch elevated in wonder, the laugh at the end of his question light, airy and full all at the same time.

You saw Jongdae almost daily after that. You took to each other quickly, finding his lean frame filling your doorway so often that you found it necessary to get him his own chair. He stayed late with you a lot of nights while you repaired that piano, watching you, almost mesmerized as your hands seemed to flow like water, gently caressing each string, carefully sizing the pins for the century-old piano. He helped you refurbish the keys, listened avidly as you instructed him how to sand the body, delicate hands cautious to keep the wood carving against the body as you prepared the instrument for staining. The glossy red-brown stain was his idea. The idea to keep it in your shop was his too, and most days you were glad for it. The idea for him to be the first to play it was your own after learning he could play, a way to repay him for spending so many hours working on it.

“So you never answered my question.” Jongdaes voice pulls you from the past, his head tilted as he stands, taking the leftover slices with him to your fridge in the back office. “Honestly, I’m probably not going. I want to get started on these drums, you know how I am. Will you take the goods with you when you go?”

“I’ll stay too.” You can feel your brows furrow as you frown, shaking your head.

“You should go, how are they gonna get their gas if you don’t?”

Jongdae shrugs, “I’ll text Baek to come get it. I’m not going to leave you here to do all of it by yourself when I know I can help.”

“Yeah but you told me yesterday you’ve been stressing about your apartment search. Go, smoke, relax. We’ll go hunting next week.”

“This is how I relax.” Your hands go to your hips and you raise an eyebrow, looking at Jongdae as if he's lost his mind.

“Dae. Me bossing you around is not relaxing.” Jongdae grins, laughing softly.

“Okay maybe not that bit, but watching you work is. Hearing you play is relaxing. I dunno, just being around you is relaxing, whether we’re in the shop or not. You’re my relaxation.”

There’s something heavy in the air between you at his confession. You figured he liked spending time with you from the way he was always with you, whether it was at home or here, but you would never call yourself relaxing. If anything you were exhausting, especially lately.

You didn’t really have the patience to teach, had turned down multiple music majors who had asked to learn under you. It took Jongdae seven years of watching and observing and proving he could repair something with the mentality that what he was fixing was his. Seven years before you finally decided you would give him a shot and you were surprised he was still around. You could be rude, short-tempered and impatient, something you thought he would have learned by now.

“Dae… I think you need your head checked..” Your voice is soft, demeanor vulnerable.

“They can admit us together, yeah? So what do you want me to do?” He’s the same as he’s always been, cheerful and optimistic Jongdae, like what he said didn’t create an earthquake in him also.

“I guess we need to get the old heads soaking so we can pull the rings from them. It’ll take a few hours. Go ahead and grab the basins from the back room and start filling them with warm water, I’ll start pulling the heads off.”

“I can do that while the basins are filling.”

“Okay then. I’ll start on the Davis kids cello, if you need me let me know.”

Jongdae watches you for a moment, the way your body moves into autopilot, years of routines taking over. It’s stupefying. He could spend hours watching you work, but he’s not here to do that today. Right now he’s here to make your life easier, so he goes to work.

He’s finishing taking off the last head when he hears you play. It’s not pretty at first, though it never is but that’s because you choose to tune by ear. The melody is in dissonance at first, low notes clashing with each other for the spotlight.

He puts the last head in the bin to begin soaking and as he stands, the melody begins to form. He's careful to stay quiet as he leans through the window between work rooms. If he’s being honest with himself, he finds you breathtakingly beautiful like this. Your eyes are closed, head tilted to the left as you focus. The bow looks elegant in your hands, fingers moving gracefully across the strings and frets. It’s almost sensual like they were dancing across a lover's body.

“What are you doing? He’s so lost in his thoughts he doesn’t notice you’ve stopped playing and are standing in front of him, leaning against the window pane.

“You’re beautiful when you play.” It’s the only thing that comes to his mind and he finds himself delighted in the blush that colors your cheeks.

“Are you saying I’m ugly the rest of the time?”

“Have you seen yourself when you wake up?” He laughs, quickly stepping back when you try to thump his arm.

“Fucker. All the heads soaking?”

“Yup.”

“Cool we can start on the saxophone. You wanna go ahead and remove the pads? I’ll grab the replacements.”

“Hey Y/N.”

“What’s up, buttercup?”

“I don’t know if there’s really ever a good time to say this-“

“-I swear if you tell me you’re quitting after begging me for years-“

“-I like you. I really like you . I don’t know if you know. I’m hoping you know. I’m hoping you like me the same way. I always have to be around you, I don’t know if you’ve realized that yet. It’s like I can’t breathe if I’m not. At first, it was just because you were so different, you were so weird, it was like the strangest breath of fresh air I’ve ever had. And then I watched you as you fixed the piano in the front room and I realized I’ve never been so in love with something the way you are with your work. You put every part of you into an instrument when you repair it, and it gives you those pieces back when you play. It’s like watching a witch cast a spell if I’m being honest with you. You put your soul into repairing something and when you play, it’s like the melody is the instrument returning your soul back to you. And maybe that makes no sense. Maybe I make no sense. Maybe all of this makes no sense and it all sounds insane and it’s not cute or romantic, but we aren’t romantic people. We try to make it through our days and try to find the meaning of life in the smoke we drown ourselves in. All I know is somewhere between us fixing that piano and now, you put your soul in me to fix me and I can feel you everywhere and I want you to feel me too.”

It’s silent after Jongdae stops speaking. He can’t read your face or body, still leaning against the window frame.

“Start on the pads Dae.” He nods, hand rubbing the back of his neck as he feels the adrenaline from his confession fade. “Yeah, okay.”

“And Dae?” He must walk past you to get to the front workbench where the saxophone sits. Your quick to reach out and grab his hand as he walks by you. You pull him back to you, tracing your finger along the lines of the palm of his hand in yours, trying to remember a time when his hands were smoother

“Yeah?”

You have to lean up slightly to press your lips against his. It’s quick, a confession of your own, more than you could say in words. You grin as you realize for once in his life, Jongdae is speechless and you take charge of the opportunity.

“I feel you too Dae. Don’t wait that long to ask me out on a date. Go start on the pads.” You pat your hand against his cheek and walk to the storage room.

“Wait you can’t just do that and then walk away!”

“I just did fuck head. Saxophone. Go.”