BUBBLE TEA [JOHNNY • TEN]

🧋1. plates and stairsteps🧋

"Mark, the green plates aren't clean yet. I'm sorry, but you gotta use the glass ones. They're not that bad, see?" A tall young man pleaded with his younger brother, holding a plate out in front of him, a glass one, with an exasperated face.

"No, the green ones are clean and untouched from you and your stupid ex-boyfriend. Glass isn't clean." The other boy argued, despite looking at a clearly spotless plate other than the food on it. "Plus, the food is touching, Johnny. Not eating."

"Ugh! Mark, can you please just compromise? It went twice through the dishwasher, can you just-"

"No." Mark narrowed his eyes (not actually looking at Johnny, but at the plate itself) and shook his hands side to side in frustration. "Absolutely not, it's not clean."

Johnny sighed and pinched his eyebrows. "Mark, please. You're 16, now. You can't be serious. Just use the plate."

"Just because I'm sixteen-" Mark raised his voice and Johnny shushed him. "I... that's unfair." He was becoming increasingly upset and already he felt a headache coming on, the urge to outstretch his fingers and retract them violently becoming more forefront.

"You're acting like a child, Mark. Stop." Johnny sighed, putting the plate down, the plate making a loud clatter. Mark blinked hard, his hands going from an idle shaking to flat-out flapping close to his face.

Mark shook his hands faster at that, clearly upset. "Sixteen... I'm sixteen... sixteen, plates, plates..." he trailed off, opening his eyes and staring away from Johnny, to the floor.

"Oh no." Johnny's face paled. Repeating words only meant one thing for Mark, and that was an oncoming meltdown.

He ran upstairs and opened Mark's room door, not realizing that the footsteps could be heard from downstairs and was making Mark more and more frustrated.

Johnny frantically looked around grabbing a small weighted blanket (no more than two pounds), a tangle, and Mark's green headphones, the ones with the torn cushions.

He'd wanted to buy his brother new ones but money was tight. Being a freelance artist was hard and other than money here and there from commissions, Johnny always felt like he was letting Mark down. There wasn't much he could do about his financial situation, seeing as he's a struggling college art major living with his autistic brother in the middle of Seoul, a completely different place than they would have been used to three years ago.

Downstairs, Mark could hear the frantic stomping above him and he wanted to scream. His hands flapped aggressively, his face contorting, eyebrows furrowing and becoming scrunched. He whined and shut his eyes as Johnny's movements slowed for a moment.

And then, he hit the Stair.

It was the one stair out of place. Sometimes, the boy's parents used to joke that the house had one creaky stair that ruined everything and their dad said multiple times that it got him caught trying to sneak their mom out. The floorboard was out of place and for whatever reason, the Stair made an unholy grinding noise.

It was their family bad luck.

Usually Johnny was careful to avoid it, but he was so in a rush that it had slipped his mind completely.

Mark whined again, hitting his head with the hard part of his palm. The Stair was the last straw, sending the teenager flying into a fit. He collapsed on the floor, sitting in an awkward position, Johnny running downstairs in time to see his brother.

"Hey, hey! Mark!" Johnny whisper-yelled, as Mark hit himself in intervals of two seconds. He forced headphones onto Mark's ears, already connected to his cellphone and started playing something on his playlist, which made him slow his movements, the muscles in his face calming.

Johnny had tried gently lying the blanket on his brother as well, but that didn't go so well. Mark made a shrill noise suddenly and threw the blanket off, hitting his head more frequently, but the same intensity; no harder.

Johnny sighed, moving away and sitting in the corner of the kitchen. He just had to wait this one out, he guessed.

His mom was really good at this, nearly immediately sedating Mark's meltdowns. He wished he knew what got him to calm down and wished she had told him.

———— 🖤 ————

An hour had passed and Mark's movements slowed. Johnny, who'd been scrolling on his phone while waiting out the storm, looked up to see Mark with teary eyes and a red spot on his head.

He looked exhausted, his hand finally falling from his head. He'd been curled into the corner of the kitchen, whining, but the whining had stopped and all the left hanging in the air was silence.

"Feeling better, Markie?" Johnny asked softly. Mark just nodded and leaned back, head hitting the wall.

After meltdowns, sometimes Mark just didn't talk, sometimes for quite a while. And that's was okay; back when Johnny was in 4th grade, he had learned sign-language for his little brother, who still couldn't speak. Now, he's happy he learned the skill, happy he can still talk to him.

He signed to him: "Are you hungry?"

"Not the plates..." Mark signed back with a disgusted face. "Not the plates."

"No plates, we can go to Hoba Boba." Johnny smiled, signing back. Mark's eyes lit up, but his face stayed exhausted.

It was the latter's favorite bubble tea spot downtown and it always cheered him up. Sometimes he'd get food, sometimes just a tea. But Johnny knew it was his favorite and was more than willing to drive him out to the cafe, especially since the meltdown was semi-his fault.

"Do you wanna come with me?" Johnny asked, getting up and grabbing his wallet and Mark's mini backpack. The younger one nodded, taking the eldest's hand and standing up.

"Come on, you can get whatever you want. Promise."

Mark smiled weakly as the two left the house, Johnny making sure the lights were off before locking the door behind him. The two walked to the bus stop and within minutes boarded the next bus downtown, a tired Mark with his headphones on and the same song looping, and a sympathetic Johnny sitting with him.

Johnny looked out of the window and sighed. He wasn't exactly discontent with the way his life was turning out, but the daily routine of tiring meltdowns, spending money he doesn't have, and feeling stuck in one place was starting to get old.

Maybe he needed something new, something unpredictable.

Maybe someone.