#!dawn

Jinki tensed. They didn't talk when things weren't serious, and just the mention of money sounded so.

She'd been laid off, simple as that. The office where she shuffled papers for forty-some hours each week was blundering through an economic crux and simply hadn't been able to pay as many employees. Her work had been deemed unnecessary. She'd been let go, simple as that. Her voice was heavy, tired. The best she'd been able to interview for were low-paying retail jobs.

Jinki took this news in stride. She'd been in an out of work a lot when he was a kid. They'd never quite lived like royalty -- he'd gotten enough socks for Christmas and lived off instant ramyun for long enough stretches in between child support checks form a man he never knew well enough to consider a father that he knew he could handle it, but when she got choked up and started on about uncertain futures, he had to gulp down fear and clench his fist in his hoodie pocket.

See, somewhere in the back of his head, Jinki had always prided himself on the expectation that things would be okay in the end. His mom would wind up with enough money to retire in the country in peace with some goats and some apple trees and he'd have enough to drive out and see her every month or two, maybe with his spouse, to come back to the fresh air and make sure she wasn't working herself to hard. He'd put her through enough shit as a nervous kid in a small city apartment and he knew she deserved to breathe easy in the end. He hadn't worried about it in years, honestly, having been too busy with his own future, but he could hear the age in her voice and the old dreams were staining his thoughts red all over again.

"Don't worry, Mom. It -- it'll be fine," he assured her with cracked words, terrified at how hollow they sounded. 

Somehow that hollowness provoked a demon in his throat and he coughed up too many months' shortcomings in a single sob, hanging up the phone with strangled reassurance and pushing himself off the bed to glare at the dark circles under his eyes in his dirty miror. He'd make it turn out fine; he had to. He was a sorry idiot but he was certainly not beyond repair. He had obligations and honor and a small bit of family that still needed him. He could give them the future he wanted if he could pull his stupid goddamn head out of his stupid goddamn ass.

And for once in his life he stuck to his own advice.

An hour later, he'd walked up unapologetically to the same restaurant where he'd picked up a certain quiet busboy and demanded fruition from the 'we're hiring' sign taped to the front window. He grossly fluffed up his nonexistent resumé for minimum wage scrubbing dishes and taking bags of leftovers out to a back alley dumpster, but he didn't really give a shit. He'd taken matters into his own hands and he felt, in the tiniest, stupidest sense, like everything would be fine.

Because no matter how many flaws Lee Jinki had, a lack of loyalty was certainly not chief among them, and all he wanted to do was provide for the one person he'd ever been able to trust. He clenched a soapy plate in his fist and blinked up at the fluorescent kitchen lights as his heart swelled blindly, stupidly.