Work Text:
“i tell him & he holds me. i tell him about the truck, its very large redness. he holds me & says, as he’s said before, we’re both going to live to a hundred & then die peacefully in our sleep at the exact same time. i say, yes, i say, absolutely. i kiss him, yes. at the same time i think, but what about two hundred? three?”
—chen chen, “a small book of questions: chapter iv,” your emergency contact has experienced an emergency
Jisung is uncertain of when the thing first started, really.
It came out fully formed. Like a calf, ready to walk.
Later, when he tries to make sense of it all, dissect each piece, break it into parts to process, he finds out this: it’s just that all of his dumbass brain cells manage to stack on top of each other to form the white-grey matter of coherence in a trenchcoat.
It’s the oldest of jokes. And the punchline comes first:
They are doing an interview that Jisung only half-consciously remembers and only because of the thing. And then Minho, apropos of nothing—or perhaps a question Jisung didn’t catch—says real quiet from behind him:
“If we were married, I’d make sure you went to bed earlier than the a.m. hours, Han Jisung.”
Jisung almost snaps his neck from how fast he turns to look at him. Minho is staring down at the cue cards, though, as if he never even said anything. And maybe he didn’t. Jisung did stay up ‘til four last night, who’s to say it wasn’t an exhaustion fueled hallucination.
Then, as they’re walking down the corridors, Jisung’s crazed heart still beating an unsure rhythm, he licks his lips and leans closer to Minho.
“If—if we were married, I’d bring you those snacks you like from that specialty store three streets down all the time.”
The corner of Minho’s mouth lifts almost imperceptibly. “You already do that anyway. It’s one-nil, better catch up.”
I’d bring them to you even through a rainstorm. A snowstorm, Jisung thinks but Minho is already too far down the hall. Ah, well.
°°°
Recently, it feels like Jisung’s had to overhaul the entire foundations of his existence. Like, he knows everything there is to know about Minho. He knows him as a stranger, a hyung, a confidant. A friend. The closest one. How the fuck is an if we were married game different from that? What is he supposed to do with those thoughts? Dream about them? He already does.
He’s been doomed from the beginning.
“Honey, I’m home!” Minho calls from the entryway. They took the same car.
“Oh, you’re back?” Jisung plays along, walking into the kitchen.
“What, expecting someone else? You’ll make me jealous.”
It’s a bright and sweaty afternoon. August flares white from behind the window. Jisung just had the workout of his life and his head is clear and he’s leaning over the sink to drink straight out of the tap, water running down the side of his cheek and jaw to his neck and it’s so nice and cool he’s actually considering just sticking his whole head in—
“Don’t even think about it.”
And he’s staring sideways at Minho’s back, thinking about where to go from here, just wishing he could keep wallowing in it selfishly. All the more reason to enjoy it now, if it won’t last. And if it does—Jisung doesn’t actually know what he’d do then.
Minho’s back says: belonging. The folds of a t-shirt and the sweat bleeding through, clinging to one part and loose in the other. It’s a complex thing, the way Jisung wants to press his forehead into the middle where his warmth radiates, right out of the core and up to the surface.
He wants to bite, feel Minho’s traps under his teeth, hold him by the sides of his waist, and make the skin and fat and muscle yield in his hands. He’d be rough with it and then gentle right after. Like wrenching a painful memory out into the light, trying to recall something you thought you’d forgotten.
“If we were married, I’d rub your feet after practice, even if they were really stinky,” Jisung says, still sideways, because the thought just occurred to him and he’s taking a breath before going in for one more dip.
Minho turns, then, and his mouth twists into this agitated little frown that makes Jisung only want to push for more, a tingle at the bottom of your spine kinda feeling.
“If we were married, I’d bring you a glass so you wouldn’t drink from the tap like a heathen. And pick up the sticky lemon seeds off the counters you leave behind every morning. And—”
“Okay, okay. Stop, leave the whole arsenal for later. And I won’t bathe whole in the kitchen sink—”
“That’s what I thought.”
“—today,” Jisung adds as he expertly avoids the kitchen towel swat and dances out of the room.
“If I were your husband, I wouldn’t pick up the dirty clothes and wet towels after you,” Minho yells after him. “Or, rather, they’d go straight into the rubbish!”
Jisung laughs. It’s the lightest he’s felt in weeks.
°°°
There are bad days and then there are worse days.
Jisung always thinks he’s got this down, by now he should have curated a little Minho handbook of all the nuances and signs that betray one of those is coming. And even if it takes him unawares, he could just scroll down to the page that says: here. Like this. You know what to do.
“Hyung. Minho-hyung.”
“Don’t.
He wishes he could hold him, him and his inexplicable sadness. Him and his meanness. Take the messy parts in, give them a place to stay.
For now, he has to settle for this. Has to thread carefully, approaching a scared animal, as if he knows what Minho is feeling. As if Minho ever knows what Jisung feels. They don’t, of course. They never do.
It’s all right. That doesn’t matter, though. As long as they get this. As long as Minho accepts that Jisung is going to sit there, blinking the sleep away and fiddling with a water bottle opening. Sit there until Minho dances his soul out and it’s the circulation of fluids and the equilibrium reached when Minho finally collapses next to Jisung. Like coming down from a caffeine high.
The mirror fogs up behind him. Jisung opens his arms.
“If we were married, I’d hold you whenever you were sad.”
Even at your worst, you’re still better than my good days, Jisung thinks.
Minho wipes the sweat from his forehead into Jisung’s nice shirt. Jisung scrunches his nose and holds him tighter.
“If we were married, you’d never be sad. Because you’d be married to me,” Minho shoots back.
Then, they sit with it. Sometimes, that’s all you have to do.
°°°
The others catch on, which is kinda unavoidable when Jisung stops in the middle of practice to point at Minho.
“If I was your husband, I’d laugh, loudly, at all of your jokes.”
They are all staring at them. Minho’s mouth catches a knife-edge of a smile.
“If I was your wife,” Minho says. And Jisung’s world stops. He doesn’t hear the rest of it.
°°°
Changbin corners him after that.
“You can’t just do something like that with hyung when he’s in love with you.”
“He started it. And anyway, he’s not,” Jisung swallows, opens and closes his mouth a few times, lowering his voice at last, “that. With me.”
“Trust me. He is.”
“Of course, he isn’t,” Jisung frowns, except it doesn’t come out all that confident.
“You didn’t realise? All he talks about when he even says anything to us is you. He talks to you more than anyone. He knows you, knows everything there is. He also does the thing where he pretends his ears aren’t blushing every time you are close, you know the—”
“That doesn’t mean he’s—that,” Jisung whispers furiously, “with me. It could mean anything, like—”
“He also told me, verbatim,” Changbin says.
Ah, well.
Jisung also sits with that. For a very long, considerate time.
°°°
If we were married, you’d dog ear my favourite poetry book, Jisung thinks, and something in his chest pinwheels forward. You’d keep your charger next to the bed with mine. You’d eat the vanilla out of your vanilla-chocolate ice cream and give the chocolate part to me. You’d pick up the stuck lemon seeds off the counters I leave there every time I drink lemon water. You’d let me tell everyone about how stubborn you are and how we don’t fight except when I leave a wet towel on your bathroom floor. You’d pretend your ears weren’t blushing every time you were close to me. You’d know me, through and through.
And thinks and thinks.
°°°
Then, as they’re returning from a dragged-out shoot, and the late night/early morning is an impressionist painting over the Banpo bridge, Minho leans in close. His warm breath smells like the aloe drink Jisung just passed onto him. Seoul rushes around them, uncaring.
The hum of the car has lulled Jisung into a transient state, too wired to sleep but too tired to do anything but stare at the rising sun. Minho’s attention is almost overwhelming. His eyes are glazed over with exhaustion. Soft at the corners, though, just like the touch to the back of Jisung’s hand.
And in the silence, Minho reads him like the world’s shortest story.
“If you were my husband, I’d sleep in your bed every night.”
Jisung takes a breath.
°°°
Minho’s charger is in the socket next to Jisung’s.
It’s dark and quiet after drawing the heavy block-out curtains and Jisung is clenching his hands against his chest, so not ready to reach out, their late night and Minho’s proximity threatening to cave his lungs in.
They’re lying on their sides, sharing the opposite ends of a pillow, but the pillow is not big enough. Minho’s knee touches Jisung’s thigh as he shifts and it stays there, steady and warm.
Jisung’s shallow little inhales are the loudest sounds in the pin-drop quiet. They leave him a bit lightheaded. His heart is the beating wings of a bird afraid.
“If you were my wife,” Jisung whispers, “I’d kiss you every night before bed.”
Minho’s fingers trace a line down Jisung’s forearm from the softest part of his elbow to his wrist. And then there they are. Holding hands, as if it's the easiest thing in the world. To let Minho slot his fingers through the gaps. To let his own palm push up. Searching. Feeling it everywhere. The pulse in his carotids and the wedge shaped area of his upper thighs and behind his knees.
“Show me. How you would kiss me if we were married, Han Jisung.” Minho’s thumb makes contact with the underside of Jisung’s lip. Then, it traces the shape of his mouth. It’s a soft thing. Like a butter knife.
Jisung’s lungs fill out. Ribs expanding and crushing his heart.
“Like this?”
Time feels stretched out. Jisung tries looking at Minho, tries to make out the shape of him but his head won't listen and his heart won't listen and his body won't listen and oh, god, is this what it feels like to have a heart attack—
“No,” Jisung says, finally.
And it was always going to happen like this. That it took this long is a miracle in and of itself. Jisung barely feels the world shift. And yet.
“Like this.”
And he kisses Minho. Holding both his hands close to his chest, close to the thing threatening to jump out of there, so that Minho feels it, too, if he hasn’t realised the gravity of the situation just from the fact that Jisung is kissing him.
It’s a one-two breath press of the lips. It’s the most glorious thing Jisung’s ever felt. He can feel the stretch of Minho’s mouth into a smile because he doesn’t move far enough because he never wants to.
“Really?” Minho asks. “That’s how married people kiss?”
“Sure, hyung,” Jisung says. “Nice and—and familiar.”
“What about newlyweds? How do you think newlyweds would kiss?”
“Mm, I—”
“No, let me rephrase. How would you, Han Jisung, kiss me?”
And that’s—
“Hyung,” Jisung complains. “How can you just say that?”
“Well?” Minho puckers his lips obnoxiously. Jisung’s going to shoot straight through the ceiling, that’s how light and floaty he feels from all the fondness.
He takes a breath. Brushes his nose against the side of Minho’s when he leans in again. “Okay. Like this.”
He lets go of Minho’s hands, pressing his own palm into Minho’s jaw to guide him in and keep him there. To kiss him like the raw edge of a knife, of a cliff, of a hiker trail’s spine. Like an oh-yes-here-yes sigh of a kiss, like a bloodflood, something wild, like carrying the least lovable parts up to the light and saying I want it anyway, like believing you’re inventing love all over again. Like a dreamed-up kiss. Like the most real and vivid thing Jisung’s ever felt.
He presses Minho into the pillow, and they kiss, and kiss, and kiss some more, until the sheets are rumpled up between them and their mouths are swollen, and the day is rising up around them.
Like this, Jisung thinks. You’d love me like this.