how i met your mother.
@feyxsiwoo
Minho doesn’t have a lot of experience with parents. He thinks back to his mother and is delivered to the mouth of a dark place. A swarm of bad memories waits there. There was the mother of his previous partner, too - the true matriarch of the estate and their lives. She was worse than his own. Her hands, her eyes, everything about her was cold and cruel.
So he doesn’t know what to expect when he meets Siwoo’s mother. He cares for her in a way Minho cannot hope to understand. The way his lips curl into a smile when talking about her, or how his eyebrows twitch with worry. He only wants to see her happy and healthy. Likewise, she dots on him, worrying that he’s vulnerable to the world without a familiar. This bond between mother and son, it’s kinder than he imagined. He doesn’t even have the wherewithal to feel envy.
They’re sitting on the train, side by side, and Minho studies Siwoo’s profile. His face is characteristically masculine, yet at the side, all of his angles soften. He thinks hard; what is it like to be Siwoo, to have someone watch over him and love him? His heart warms, becomes tender and gooey like hot pudding. He scoots over and nudges him with a sharp elbow.
“Look, I even brought crystals with me. The good kind!” he says, opening his palm to show off a polished clear quartz. He can feel the magic beneath the smooth surface, humming, waiting for someone to reach in and pull out its power - someone stronger than him. His own flesh and blood is too weak without the ethereal bond only a witch can give him. It’s something he doesn’t necessarily want, but knows he needs.
The clear quartz he picked has few clouds inside, making for a foggy bottom but a perfectly transparent point. When light passes through it, it breaks into ribbons of bright color. One of the good things about experiencing the bond between a familiar and a witch, then breaking it, is that he knows a damn good crystal when he sees one. “Do you think she’ll like it? I also bought chocolates for her, in my bag” he says, worried and biting his lip. Siwoo’s not his witch, but they’ll pretend today to make his mom happy, even if it means lying.