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It’s late.
It’s late and it’s a Friday night and it’s Minho’s bed and not someone else’s and he’s pretty positive the being an idol in your early twenties is the best time of your life thing is a load of bull. Something someone came up with, someone very desperate to convince themselves beat up bodies and a permanent late night no sleep daze and a ridiculous diet, and shitty no feelings hookups is not a straight line to burnout in your late twenties.
Minho stares at the ceiling and the ceiling judges back—all the water bottles and tea mugs cluttering the bedside tables, his body half tangled in a winter blanket so huge it defies all attempts of Minho trying to fold it into shape. His under-eye bags. The vitamin C under-eye night cream Hyunjin dropped off earlier without a word. His incessantly buzzing phone.
from: best and only dongsaeng
are u that
soz didnt mean to send
i have a ghibli classic pulled up on the projectr and delivery on the way
also pretty sure might be psychic
im reading ur mind right now
and i know u wanna hang
Minho sighs. He flips through the messages on his lock screen absentmindedly, up, down. They were sent over an hour ago.
from: best and only dongsaeng
would have wine but no corkscrew
can i com borrow urs
The images manifest in Minho's mind one by one: Jisung, all loungewear and tired eyes, no makeup, and a beanie covering the greasy mess his hair probably is—coming in like a flood, bringing a warm ache, something that wears at Minho relentlessly. Something that makes him ignore all the calls and texts, not only Jisung's. He lacks the bravery needed to confront. Himself, first of all. It's easier to just pretend there's nothing weighing heavy in the centre of his chest like speared in place with a metal rod.
There’s a tug in it too. A yank, really. Minho’s fingers twitch towards the swipe to unlock but he doesn’t. He sighs again and rolls onto his side. One of his earphones digs into his ear canal. There’s a knock on his door.
“Mm?” Minho hums, resigned. Let it come. The whole flashflood.
“Hyung.”
The door opens a crack. It’s not Jisung, instead it’s Felix’s concerned little face, complete with the deep lines between his eyebrows.
“Obviously you’re still alive and kicking and therefore have no excuse as to why that asshole is bothering me— I will hereby be opening the front door to any and all unwanted guests.”
“No guests, please. Haven’t cleaned the cobwebs ‘round the lighting fixtures yet.”
Felix glances pointedly around Minho’s room. ”Oh gee, the cobwebs. How awful. You slob.”
“Come closer.”
“No. I have a feeling you’re gonna smack me or whatever if I do.”
“I gotta tell you something. Come closer.”
Felix creeps closer to the bed suspiciously and still squinting at Minho but he does listen which makes him take over the ever-changing favourite dongsaeng tier.
Minho grabs him by the bottom of his shirt. “These mugs have been here for days. Two of them are Seungmin’s. He’s been threatening bodily harm in the group chat and I am but a fragile man but you, my comrade. You are the light saving me.”
“Whatever light can manage to stream in through the dust and cobwebs. Go on.”
“If you manage to take these back like the master of stealth you are I will feed you for a week.”
“You already do that,” Felix pauses. Contemplates. Minho tugs at his shirt threateningly. “Two weeks. And you gotta read these first.”
Felix hands him his phone. There’s a list of unanswered texts similar to his own.
from: minho’s dumbass husband
are we good
i mean
is mnho hyung good
plz reply i didnt mean to step on ur foot during practice and den call u a dickead
i was the dickhead
am
bro can u just tell him to talk to me????? idk how to
or just tell me if hes ok
“And so call him. Or something. And you’ve got a deal.”
“You know what. Maybe Seungmin doesn’t sound that bad, actually.”
Felix grabs the mugs by a handful. The ceramic clacks together and he presses them into his shirt, balancing with his phone under his armpit. “Nuh-huh. Better put on your cute maid outfit and get the dust flying. Heard you have guests coming.”
Minho tries to lunge after him but he’s not really expending the effort to catch him as Felix slips out from underneath his hands expertly.
And then it’s just him and his mess.
to: best and only dongsaeng
we have an electric one
Minho contemplates getting up and showered and dressed into something that doesn't have days old kimchi stains and creases following the way his body moved wildly in his bed in discomfort. But he contemplates for too long and then he just listens to the sounds of the dorm around him, water running through pipes. The swish of it heating his room. Outside, November freezes.
This time the knock on his door makes him sit up, run his hands through his hair, and regret not washing it. He pushes his glasses up his nose and tries to remember it's just Jisung. Just them.
“Yeah.”
“Ayo, hyung. What’s up?”
There’s a faint pulse of music coming from somewhere as Jisung stands in the doorway. Speakers blasting across rooms. The sound fading when Jisung steps in and closes the door behind him.
“I don’t think a what’s up really equals to having cops on the other line but sure. What’s up?”
“Just in the area,” Jisung smiles, only half his mouth curling upwards in one heartbreaking movement. “An electric wine opener? Now that’s bougie. Don’t think you really want us to borrow it.”
“Haven’t really stopped you before,” Minho comments, eyes flitting across Jisung’s body, almost exactly like he imagined. This could not get any worse. “That’s my hoodie.”
Jisung shuffles towards the bed. He’s hesitant in it, nothing like before when he’d just have thrown himself onto the mattress, getting comfortable. It’s clear something’s changed. Minho hates it, hates feeling like this, balancing on some kinda edge when everything's been perfect before already.
“Is it?”
Jisung sits on the side of the bed like someone visiting a sick person in the hospital. Making himself small. Shoulders curling inward. Too careful. But he's here and a part of Minho sings, victorious; most of him shrinks in fear.
Minho wants to tug him down. Mess him up, a visceral kinda feeling, to shake him and demand explanations and knock down the monolith that now stands in between them. It's been weird for days. But Jisung's here and Minho doesn't know what to do with him, or with himself. Doesn’t know what to do with his hands, they feel heavy and clumsy and not his.
“You hate mint.”
Jisung looks at his clothes like he's only seeing what he's wearing for the first time today. “Hm.”
Minho lies back against the pillows. He pats the space next to him; there goes. His brave little heart beating the feelings straight out of his chest, wanting to escape. The need to have him close now that he's here.
“Hyung, you…have you been—” Jisung cuts himself off and then goes slowly, lies rigid right next to Minho. “Are you ok?”
It's time to pretend Minho's nose isn't scrubbed red and his eyes puffy and that his sad boy music for a pathetic sort of distraction isn't what's been happening moments before Jisung came to him.
“I don't know what you're talking about. Don't be weird, Han Jisung.”
“Me. Weird. Sure, fine, I'm sorry hyung. Here—” Jisung rolls over and the closeness seems like never before, like remembering something you'd been trying to recall for a decade, something so obvious it makes you stupid. His warm breath puffs across Minho's face. And, yup that's definitely a kimchi garlic onion something that Jisung's had for dinner. Minho's nose scrunches up in distaste and he pushes at Jisung's forehead.
“Oh, my breath stinks?” The question is delighted, accompanied by the corners of Jisung's eyes squeezing shut with joy.
“Yes, fuck. Get away,” Minho complains.
But he doesn’t, he comes even closer, huffing and breathing all over Minho's face and limbs octopusing around Minho's helpless body because it seems to have given up on him, on all the ways he could easily overpower Jisung's insistent touches. His socked feet kick up against Jisung's bare calves.
“Gross!” Minho protests but he still hurts for him, this pulsing marrow-ache.
“You like gross,” Jisung brings their cheeks together. “I know you do, admit it, I know—”
He stubble-scratches his jaw against Minho's skin, itchy as fuck and Minho locks up, tries to get his hands between them but Jisung is one step ahead, grabbing his arms in a tight grip as he proceeds to rub his face all over Minho's cheeks. Like he's fucking nineteen again and lording over the fact that he has more shit to shave than Minho.
It makes him think of the things he's barely permitted himself to think about, the warm body and the touches and the stubble of a man older than him and the fact that this is the closest they've been in days and have yet to acknowledge the straight line of their universe has irrevocably been knocked off course.
Jisung must sense his body going slack and he loosens his hold, Minho immediately switching to grabbing Jisung's hands so he doesn't do anything else. Like kiss him, mouth still too close to Minho's cheek for comfort. That would be the worst thing in it all, wouldn't it.
The veins grown in a pattern weaving through muscles and tendons of Jisung’s wrist are palpable. Minho traces his thumbs over them. He knows that if he pressed just tight enough, he’d be able to feel the rush of blood. Warm. Alive. Just how Minho is. Whole body buzzing from it.
He slides off to the side but leaves their bodies pressed together, Jisung on his front, Minho on his back. Winded, as if he just ran a half-marathon. A flush that's more noticeable now that Minho doesn't really go outside. This autumn has been way too cruel.
“So. Is this the part where we talk about the thing?” Minho says lightly.
“The thing.”
“Yep.”
“Just to clarify—by the thing you mean the fact that I am a cool freak that can bend the rules of the time-space continuum? And not the you have a hyung kink thing—ow, jesus!”
Minho smacks a little decorative pillow with the little decorative buttons on it into Jisung’s face. “Shut.”
“First you wanna talk now you want me to shut? Mean hyung. You weren’t even there!”
What’s redder than a tomato? Minho’s ears are about to fall off.
“And I don’t wanna know.”
Jisung shakes free. There’s a line of red circles with dots in them all across his forehead. He wriggles his eyebrows and the line dances with it. He’s ridiculous. “Sure you don’t.
There's no version of Minho that could've imagined the trajectory of this. Stretched across one or more universes, he doesn’t really know how that works.
All while the world continues on around them, uncaring.
“You know. The guys have started calling you that recently,” Minho says.
Jisung sucks at being patient but he’s good at it when he has to be. Was good at it when Minho was nineteen and heartbroken-mad and then later, welcoming him back as if the silence never happened. And then again and again.
He’s good at it for Minho.
“What?”
“It’s Felix’s contact name.”
“What is?”
“Minho’s husband.”
Is this how it was always going to happen? Minho shot the elephant swelling in the room but Jisung's pupils staring straight at him are the barrel of a gun.
Bang.
Jisung picks at the lint on Minho’s mattress cover. He’s amassing a little pile and Minho stares, amused, instead of having to look into Jisung’s eyes.
“They have no idea how hilarious that joke’s about to become. Became. Whatever.”
“Is it?”
It’s Jisung’s turn now. “Is it what?”
“Is it funny? I think it’s quite serious. And the fact that you haven’t even asked for my hand in marriage. Han Jisung, where are your manners?”
“Hyung. Not—don’t.”
“Is that not why you’re here?
Jisung sighs out. It blows the little lint pieces collected all across Minho’s pillows. He turns to look at Minho. He’s so, so lovely. The buttery brown undertones of his skin, lips pursed, Cupid’s bow sloping upwards. Eyes lit from within.
The boy out of time.
“Right, yeah, no. Our prince deserves a grander proposal than me with my greasy hair and gross dakgalbi breath ready to throw myself at his feet. ‘Cause I know you’re a romantic even if you pretend you aren’t.”
And there Minho is, with his three day clothes and a snotty nose, his clumsy hands and he thinks there wouldn’t be a moment more perfect.
Instead, Minho reaches a heavy hand, bunching up Jisung’s collar and yanks him forward. Jisung hisses at the roughhousing, complains as Minho manhandles him to where he wants.
“Ouch, motherfucker—this love confession thing is more painful than I thought.”
And Minho—
Everything gets lost in the white noise that rips through his head.
Jisung’s face is too close to him. A hurricane. If Minho were to walk into the centre of it, it would swallow him whole. Swallow the sound of his heart thumping away.
He knows he probably looks stupid, mouth open and numb, trying to find the words but they just won’t come but Jisung is just smiling at him gently, a little nervous. Patient.
“And how would. How would one theoretically go about it painlessly?”
Jisung slides a hand across Minho’s jaw. It’s the most vivid thing Minho’s ever felt and his betraying heart thumps so loudly it for sure is gonna give them both away. Hidden here from what?
“It should involve my lips.”
“Hmmm.”
“And their lips.”
“Mhmmm.”
“And saying things we actually mean to. Should say. Hearing that I’m the only one in the world for them. In this and any other universes that exist.”
Minho can’t stop thinking about it. About how he’s already kissed Jisung before and it was right in this bed but it feels like a fever dream.
“That’s so cheesy.”
“Like I said. No one knows what true yearning for romance you’re hiding.”
Minho tugs at Jisung’s hair. When did his fingers even make their way there? It’s kinda tacky with sweat and messy, getting even messier as Minho tangles his hand into the strands but it’s Jisung.
“No one but you, right? That’s how that one goes,” Minho teases, takes his own bottom lip in between his teeth. Jisung’s eyes track the movement, go out of focus.
“Now that we went over the theory…,” Jisung trails off. Minho’s heart pounds.
Is that how it was always gonna happen?
Minho wants to joke about it again but Jisung looks so serious and Minho’s kind of impatient and wants to do all the things involving his lips and Jisung’s lips and all the things that follow.
And that’s how it was always gonna happen. That it took this long is one of a dozen miracles.
And sure, Minho’s kissed a Jisung before but not this one. It’s a blur, it’s awkward for about two seconds, Jisung’s lips kinda just pressed somewhere over the corner of Minho’s mouth before he’s tilting his head and kissing Minho into the pillows.
It isn’t just about the lips. The means to an end. It’s about the before and after and the hands, sliding upwards into Minho’s shirt and the way Jisung touches him, steadfast and inevitable, completely convinced of this. His tender palms trail over his torso, tugging his shirt up, up, Minho’s ribs expanding underneath them as he tries to suck in a breath.
That’s how it was always gonna happen.
Minho grasps Jisung’s hair from where it's the thickest on the top of his head and tries to get Jisung’s mouth exactly where he wants it and fuck, there, hips canting upwards almost subconsciously. So unconcerned with this being sexy or even coordinated, just two circuits feeding off of each other.
All of their interactions lately are laced with so much left unsaid. Once upon a time, Minho thought that was their charm, that words didn’t mean much to them. Now it just feels stupid and fantasy-childish. He wants to hear everything. He wants to be touched but also talked to sleep. Talked to waking up. Talked to middle-of-the-afternoon mindless moment as they pass each other by during schedules.
And Minho should know by now. How to move so that nobody notices his world exists all cracked and crooked and standstill but suddenly he can't even remember whether he moisturised his face this morning. It's Jisung’s warm and heavy body doing the asking and Minho’s body answering and nothing matters but everything does at the same time.
His hands, for Jisung. His mouth, for Jisung’s mouth. And that thing in his chest, in and out of rhythm.
When they pull back—and they do, and Minho could spend all the buzzed up moments of the day just doing this, kissing Jisung back, being kissed, but they do—it's soft. Their mouths coming apart. Minho can feel the texture of Jisung’s wet mouth stretch into a smile before he does. Pull away completely. Minho doesn't know what Jisung’s face is doing other than grinning because he refuses to open his eyes.
“What else?” Minho says on a gasp.
“Mmm?”
“What else does it involve? Tell me.”
He watches Jisung lick his lips. They’re all red, look just as swollen as Minho’s own feel. Reality and unreality whirls by him in flashes.
“Some over the clothes action. Under the clothes, if I’m lucky enough,” Jisung says, punctuates it by rubbing a hot palm across the skin of Minho’s side.
“Oh, yeah?” Minho asks, leans up to take Jisung’s bottom lip into his mouth again.
“Feeling very lucky today, indeed. But not like—not like that.”
“Like what?”
Jisung groans into Minho’s mouth. Minho arches up against him, hand cupping his nape to bring them close. Teases the softest ah on Jisung’s open mouth. Because he can now. Can leave his teeth on Jisung’s mouth and get a playful bite back, then—a kiss. Deep and slow. Because they can't not.
Minho is thinking about all the past and future versions of them. But he’s also thinking about pulling his t-shirt off and tugging the knit of Jisung’s hoodie over his head, messing up his hair even more and letting Jisung pull his sweatpants down right back. He's scraping his fingernails down the dip of Jisung’s spine. He's palming that hot, smooth skin. He's taking Jisung’s tongue into his mouth, everything wet and slick and too good.
Jisung’s breath is also awfully, impossibly hot when it brushes over the skin adjacent to his ear, kissing the shell wetly and the shivers tumble down Minho’s vertebra like they've been spilled at the top.
“Like,” Jisung mumbles into his ear. “I’m kissing the guy I’ve been in love with for several years. Even though he’s already kissed me before.”
“And you’ve already kissed me before,” Minho says.
“But this is our first time kissing each other.”
“Hmm, that sure is hell of a lot kissing.”
“Yeah,” Jisung smiles at him dopily and then they’re just smiling at each other, something Minho would probably be very embarrassed about later, if Jisung ever recounts this particular moment in a silly conversation.
All the possibilities course through him and all his past selves—they, too, move with him every decision he makes. They made him who he is. He makes them who they are. Giving way to the future, uncertain and yet, now that he knows—breathing gets a bit easier. All the parts of him, shaping the way he lets himself press his nose into Jisung's neck and inhale.
“We don’t—we still need to. So much before it’s all in place.”
Minho doesn’t want to move. He wants Jisung’s hands underneath his shirt again but instead they’re gentling down his cheeks and he wants Jisung’s thigh between both his but instead it’s his ankles knocking the bones together and it’s. Minho sighs, forced to let this particular moment go.
On the edge of breaking the world just so they could stay like this forever.
But there’s things waiting for them out there. There’s stuff they have to do and there’s stuff they need to do and then there’s the part where they get to do what they want. Minho can’t wait to get to that part.
“Hyung, we have all of it. Everything we need.”
“What?”
“Time. Us.”
And they do.