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‘What the fuck Song Mingi.’ Yunho sighed almost inaudibly as he closed his eyes and let his head fall back against the car’s headrest.
Beside him sat Yeosang in the middle seat with Hongjoong on his right, Seonghwa taking up the passenger seat.
Yunho took a deep breath. Why was it so fucking hard for him to just act normal? What Mingi had done earlier that night had seriously thrown him off his game.
He hadn’t been able to focus at all for the remainder of the concert, and even now, an hour later, he couldn’t tell if he was acting normal or not.
It’s not like they had reserved seats or anything, so Mingi didn’t exactly steal Jongho’s seat, but they did ride in the same arrangement more often than not. Yunho beat himself up for making it noticeable. Well, as long as Mingi didn’t notice, he’d be fine, right?
Mingi noticed. Or maybe he didn’t! Maybe it was actually just a coincidence that Mingi sent Yunho a text reading: ‘are you feeling okay?’.
Yunho simply clicked the off button on his phone as he closed his eyes and took yet another deep breath to calm his beating heart.
Maybe Mingi was just showing concern randomly. Maybe Mingi wasn’t feeling good, and so he texted Yunho to confirm if he was also not feeling good. Actually, they had shared a large chicken wrap for lunch now that Yunho thought about it.
Yeah, yeah that must’ve been it. That’s definitely why Mingi texted him. Not because he practically shoved Jongho out of the way to get into the first car when he was usually the one everyone else had to call for so the last car could finally drive. Yeah. Definitely.
Yunho felt his heart beating in his throat and made an attempt to swallow it back down. Despite his best efforts, the feeling wouldn’t go away.
After what felt like forever, they finally parked by their hotel. Yunho hadn’t really been in there yet. Only briefly gone in to leave his suitcase in his room when they’d first arrived before heading out to explore the city of Copenhagen with San.
To be honest, he wasn’t sure if he was gonna be able to find his way to his room. That was proven wrong when they parked however. Yunho was both the first person out of the car, the first person in the elevator, as well as the first person out once they made it to the 8th floor.
Thankfully he remembered to mumble out a brief ‘Good work today guys!’ before making a beeline for his room whose whereabouts he’d suddenly managed to subconsciously recall.
‘Uh.. Goodnight Yunho!’ Hongjoong shouted after him as he fumbled to get the keycard out of his pocket.
The little green lamp lit as he swiped the card to let him know that he now had permission to open the door. It felt like the light had given him permission to finally allow himself to think about what had happened.
Yunho closed the door behind himself with careful hands, head spinning. With raged breathing, he slid down the door until he was sat on the prickly hotel carpet with his back against the door.
He couldn’t get the image out of his head. Mingi, kneeling in front of him, taking Yunho’s hand in his. How he’d said ‘Will you be my valentine?’ with the biggest grin on his face like he wasn’t actively fucking up Yunho's entire psyche.
Fuck.
He couldn’t even recall how the rest of the performance had gone, let alone how he had reacted.
Yunho felt sick, like he was gonna throw up. In a way he found himself pathetic, a fucking loser.
Like, what kind of person can’t handle a silly pretend-proposal from a friend?! On Valentine's Day of all days.
They always do bits for their Youth stage and frankly, Yunho should’ve seen the proposal coming. Unfortunately his aching heart couldn’t in fact handle it, however ‘simple’ the gesture might’ve been.
Youth was honestly one of the most difficult songs to perform on this tour’s setlist.
It wasn’t particularly vocally challenging and the choreography was fairly simple too, at least compared to many of the group’s other songs.
The difficult part was keeping his emotions in check for the entire duration of the song. Youth highlighted their long friendship, and it had honestly made Yunho quite emotional when he’d first heard it.
The recording and their first couple of practices for the choreography had been hard in this aspect, but for a while, it got easier. He got used to it, and he was able to focus more on the performance itself than on what the song meant for his relationship with Mingi.
That was until Mingi started getting creative with the bits they’d do on stage. It was difficult to concentrate on performing when he knew that by the time they were done, Mingi would do some new, probably stupid thing that Yunho would then have to react to and in front of an audience at that.
Yunho couldn’t remember how long he’d been in love with Mingi for. In a lot of ways it felt like he’d never not been in love with him.
He knew that it’d been around 3 years since he finally realized that he was in love, though.
March 9th, 2020. That’s when it clicked for him and he finally understood why his chest always felt so tight when Mingi smiled fondly at him, or when he touched Yunho’s skin in literally any way.
Yunho knew it was all friendly of course. The touches and the looks he’d always send him. Even when Mingi would wink or blow kisses at him, he knew that it was all just for fun, but he couldn’t help but want for it to mean something more.
The worst thing was when Mingi was too honest with him, though. It confused Yunho, which made it hard to focus on his job, and it made it hard to just be normal around Mingi.
Yunho recalled clearly the countless times Mingi had claimed that Yunho ‘treated everyone in the group the same’, and established how he ‘wished that Yunho would treat him differently than the other members’ because after all, ‘their relationship was special’.
Right, it was, Yunho felt it too. Mingi always said that they were ‘best friends’. Yunho hated that label.
Of course he wanted to be Mingi’s best friend. At least Yunho didn’t want anyone else to take that role.
But when all he wanted was for Mingi to like him back as something more than a friend, hearing Mingi utter the words ‘best friends’ over and over again felt like pure torture.
Mingi always looked at Yunho with this look whenever he would say it and Yunho couldn’t for the life of him figure out how to read it.
Usually Yunho was an expert at reading Mingi, whether it was words or actions. Even the smallest twitch of Mingi’s eyebrow would immediately give it away whenever he would lie about being ‘fine’.
Yunho felt insanely guilty every time he believed, even just for a single second, that Mingi could be in love with him too. But how could he not when Mingi said those things with that strange, longing look in his eyes?
Yunho felt crazy for even thinking about this.
Sometimes, he thought that maybe Mingi was already onto him and only said these things as a way to taunt him.
Mingi wouldn’t do that though. Yunho was sure of that.
‘Fuck.’ Yunho dragged out the word as he pressed the palms of his hands to his eyes, and that’s when he remembered Mingi’s text from earlier.
He cursed at himself under his breath as he reached for his phone in his back pocket.
So much for trying to appear non-challant.
‘Hey Mingi,’
he typed, and then deleted it again. Who starts their text with ‘Hey Mingi’?! That’s something you write to a classmate you haven’t seen in 6 years, not your best friend.
He tried again, biting at the peeling skin around his thumb nail.
Okay.
Yunho read the text for the 10th time.
‘are you feeling okay?’.
No emojis, not capitalized, one question mark, no abbreviations.
Okay, focus, Yunho. He started typing again.
‘yeah, i’m fine :)’.
His finger hovered over the send button for a few seconds until he decided to backspace.
‘yeah, i’m fine, just tired’
He blinked at the text a few times, contemplating whether to put the smiley face back in the text somewhere to make his indifference to the situation seem more believable.
He didn’t get to ponder for long though.
Yunho startled at the sound of knocking directly on the other side of the door he was leaning against.
Shit. How much time had passed?
He checked the time on his phone as he got up to open the door. The large numbers revealed that it had been nearly 40 minutes since they’d first arrived at the hotel.
Yunho was seriously a mess, he thought to himself as he tugged the handle to open the door to who he presumed was either their manager or Hongjoong.
The person he was faced with on the other side nearly made his heart drop into his stomach.
‘Mingi….’
His best friend just smiled, an invisible question mark forming above his head.
‘Hi, uhm, I-’ Yunho was cut off by Mingi. ‘Do you wanna grab some post-concert dinner? Or whatever you wanna call it, midnight snack?’.
The question couldn’t even process. Yunho was too caught up in the fact that Mingi didn’t even seem the tiniest bit affected. Maybe he hadn’t caught onto Yunho’s awkwardness after all.
‘Ah-’ was all Yunho could manage to get out. Mingi let out an understanding noise. ‘Tired?’ His gaze softened as he reached out to put a reassuring hand on Yunho’s arm.
Yunho felt the relief spreading throughout his body like a wildfire. Warming him up and relaxing all of his limbs.
‘Yeah’ he breathed out. ‘I’m really tired’. …That’s all, he thought to himself.
Mingi’s eyes scanned his face and Yunho felt his shoulders tense back up slightly.
‘Okay’. There was a pause.
‘But i’ll miss y- we will miss you i mean. Me, Yeosang and San.’
Yunho let out a breath for a laugh. ‘Sorry’. He shot Mingi the most apologetic eyes he could manage as he fidgeted with the hem of his shirt.
They stood there for what felt like forever, and Yunho wanted it to end yesterday. The whole moment felt like torture. Disappointing Mingi made Yunho’s heart twist in his chest, but he really just couldn’t risk going out with the others and acting super weird.
Yunho also wondered if Mingi could somehow tell. He tried to act as normal as possible, but he had a feeling that maybe his awkwardness still showed to Mingi, they were long-time best friends after all.
Mingi finally spoke again, breaking the uncomfortable silence that had allowed Yunho’s mind to run wild. ‘Are you not hungry?’ Mingi began. ‘Uh, I just mean- You haven’t eaten since our chicken wrap, right?’
Yunho could’ve sworn that Mingi seemed… nervous? No. Yunho was probably just projecting - the only nervous person here was himself but perhaps he was nervous enough for two people.
‘Uh, I’m fine’ Yunho replied smiling. Not ‘I’m full’, he didn’t have it in him to straight up lie to Mingi but he knew that if he admitted to being hungry Mingi would without question practically drag him along, tired or not.
Mingi smacked his lips once and followed it by a ‘Well, if you say so!’. Yunho thought of this as a victory.
He remembered to wish Mingi a nice dinner as he watched him disappear down the hallway, headed for Yeosang’s room. Mingi replied with a simple click of his tongue as he made an ‘aye aye captain’ gesture flicking two fingers by his temple.
As soon as Yunho had shut the door he threw himself onto it and groaned.
It was impossible to tell if Mingi had caught onto him, but Yunho wanted to believe that he was in the clear.
He needed a game plan. A way to make sure that the rest of the tour would go smoothly like they’d planned. They still had three more stops left for the Europe leg of their tour, and Yunho really didn’t want to let this ruin anything.
He sighed deeply and closed his eyes, trying to think of what to do. Should he go talk to Hongjoong? No, he already had enough on his mind, probably.
Maybe Seonghwa would be better? But was Yunho even ready to tell anyone about it?
˗ˏˋ ♡ ˎˊ˗
He lied there contemplating for what felt like hours. He was tired, but the turmoil in his head made it impossible for him to calm down enough to even think about going to sleep.
Whatever option he’d end up picking, he’d have to pick it soon. Yunho mapped out every single possibility in his head multiple times yet he couldn’t settle on anything.
It was all Mingi’s fault anyway. Why did he have to propose to him? On stage? On Valentine's Day? Yunho got more and more frustrated as he tried to resolve the problem that felt like it was actively growing in size by the minute, and the minutes were starting to add up.
Yunho was pulled out of his thoughts when he heard a knock on the door. ‘Delivery!’ someone yelled from the other side.
‘Fucking hell Song Mingi..’ Yunho muttered under his breath as he got up to open the door.
When he opened it he was met with the biggest smile. Yunho felt his lip twitch. How could this man who caused him so much joy simultaneously cause him so much pain?
Mingi held up a white plastic bag next to his face, ‘I brought you some food!’ He stepped into Yunho’s personal space and made his way past him into the hotel room, widening Yunho’s eyes in the process.
‘I know you said you weren’t hungry, but-’ he continued as he toed off one shoe and then the other right next to Yunho’s abandoned ones.
Yunho’s gaze fixated on their perfectly aligned shoes in the doorway a second too long before he remembered that Mingi was still talking.
‘…and also since you haven’t eaten anything since our wrap which we shared by the way’. Mingi was sitting on the bed when Yunho looked back up. Legs all the way on the bed, comfortably folded like he wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon.
He continued talking despite Yunho not having made a single noise since Mingi had arrived.
‘The waiter was really friendly!’ Mingi continued as he started unpacking the food on the bed.
‘He said usually they can’t give doggybags but then I told him about you and how disappointed you’d be if your handsome friend came back empty handed. I was really persuading him, you know. I even said that I-’
Yunho cut him off. ‘Mingi, thank you, really, but.’ He scanned Mingi’s face for any disappointment or discomfort.
Finding none, he decided to continue. ‘I can’t. I’m sorry, I’m just not hungry. Honestly I don't think I can stomach food right now.’ He chuckled with no sound, just air.
Mingi didn’t find it amusing at all apparently. ‘What? Why not? Are you sick?’ Mingi stood up off the bed and approached Yunho to put a hand on his forehead, which Yunho avoided.
‘No, I’m not sick. I just- I need to sort out my thoughts, that's all.’ Mingi had him crowded in the narrow hallway of the otherwise big hotel room.
Yunho cursed at himself internally for not moving further into the room earlier when he had the chance.
Mingi took another step towards him, causing Yunho to step back and stumble slightly over Mingi’s neatly aligned shoes, putting them out of order.
Yunho felt warm fingers wrap around his forearm and reluctantly raised his gaze to meet Mingi’s. Yunho’s mouth moved, but no words came out.
Mingi just patiently waited while drawing mindless circles on Yunho’s arm with his thumb. Yunho felt his heart thump louder and louder and he swore he could literally hear it echo in the quiet room.
Fearing that Mingi heard it as well, Yunho freed himself from Mingi’s grip and squeezed past him towards the bed. ‘I’m sorry Mingi, it’s really thoughtful of you, I just- I don’t know.’ The last words came out just above a whisper.
‘Hey, Yunho, you don’t have to apologize!’ Mingi chuckled and approached Yunho once again, keeping a more wary distance this time. ‘If you don’t want to eat together I can just leave the food here, I already ate with the others anyway’.
Mingi’s smile was so genuine it made Yunho want to throw up. Just get up and run as fast as he could towards the bathroom and fall to his knees next to the toilet. If it happened, Mingi would probably be right there beside him to help him out, Yunho thought.
‘Yunho?’ Yunho was brought back to reality where he was met with an understanding smile. ‘I’ll go, okay?. Text me if you need anything, yeah?’ Huh? It took a few seconds to process exactly what idea Mingi had proposed.
Yunho finally intervened when Mingi reached for his shoes. ‘No! Wait! Can you stay?’ He surprised both himself and Mingi and he could feel his ears heating up as he awaited Mingi’s response.
‘Uh, yeah, sure. I can.’ Mingi replied matter of factly. How was he always so calm? It somehow calmed Yunho down too.
Mingi came back into the bigger part of the room and sat carefully on the edge of the bed, opposite Yunho. The food was probably cold by now, but Yunho stabbed around in it with a plastic fork regardless, perhaps mostly as an excuse to look somewhere other than Mingi’s eyes.
‘Can you tell me what’s going on?’ Mingi nudged Yunho’s knee on the edge of the bed with his own. ‘Hm?’ More nudging. Yunho swallowed once. ‘I don’t really know, I think.’ Yunho tried.
Mingi tilted his head, questioning. ‘You said you had thoughts to sort out, remember? What are you thinking about?’ Fuck, why had he said that again? Yunho breathed through his nose as he looked around the room, avoiding Mingi’s eyes.
‘Yunho.’ Fuck. ‘Was it something I did?’ Mingi moved his head to get in line with Yunho’s gaze, attempting to draw the answer out of him.
Yunho’s eyes shot up to meet Mingi’s. ‘No!’ he exclaimed. ‘Well, nothing bad, anyway.’ He continued, not really sure where he was going with it yet.
He fidgeted with the hem of his sleeve as he mustered up the courage to be more honest than he’d originally planned. Okay. Inhale, exhale.
‘Mingi, if I ask you a question can you be honest with me?’ Yunho said as he raised his head to look at the other. ‘Yeah, of course!’ Mingi sounded really confident which made Yunho more comfortable in what he was about to do.
‘What did it mean? That thing you did on stage today.’ Yunho’s eyes rapidly scanned Mingi’s face for any signs of anger, fear, disgust, just anything to indicate that Yunho had somehow crossed a line. Finding nothing, Yunho felt relieved.
‘Well..’ Mingi began. ‘What do you want it to mean?’ His voice was noticeably quieter now.
‘I..’ Yunho sighed and let the silence fill the air, neither of them breathing. The low static of the heater was all that could be heard in the quiet room.
‘Something? What if I want it to mean something?’ Yunho spat it out as quickly as possible in hopes that he wouldn’t regret it halfway through. His own honesty frightened him, but it was too late to think it over.
Mingi’s knee brushed against Yunho’s once more and his eyes followed the movement. ‘I think,’ Mingi began quietly. ‘I think I’d like that. If it meant something, I mean.’ It was like Yunho’s brain short circuited at that moment.
‘Mingi’ He couldn’t do anything but whisper the name of his best friend. He held his breath, awaiting Mingi’s next words, well knowing it was his own turn to speak. He simply couldn’t though, his words completely stuck in his throat.
‘I know I should’ve just told you.’ Mingi always filled all the gaps where Yunho was lacking. Talking when Yunho couldn’t get the words out.
Yunho just gulped. ‘I just didn’t want to risk ruining our friendship.’ Mingi said as his eyes searched Yunho’s face.
Yunho could’ve sworn Mingi’s eyes went lower than they were supposed to, but maybe he was misreading the situation. Either way, the thought made his face and ears heat up.
Mingi didn’t make note of it. He just continued, ‘I thought that maybe if I tried to be a bit more obvious, you’d give me some sort of signal to go off of.’ Yunho dropped his gaze as his jaw dropped open slightly.
‘That’s why I proposed to you today. I just didn’t expect you to freak out like that!’ Mingi chuckled softly. Yunho’s eyes widened.
‘You noticed that?!’ He wasn’t surprised really, he knew his own strengths and weaknesses, and he knew that Mingi was one of the latter.
‘Of course I did, silly.’ Mingi said as he gave Yunho’s arm a playful smack.
‘You usually always sit next to me in the car.’ Yunho’s lips pulled into a smile but he kept his eyes on his hands in his lap to avoid looking directly at Mingi.
‘Also, you were just acting really fucking strange you know that?’ Mingi was laughing now, a real laugh, but he wasn’t laughing at Yunho. Instead, it felt more like Mingi was laughing at how stupid they’d both been.
Not to realize way sooner. Not to confess way sooner.
A sigh escaped Yunho’s lips. ‘Was it that obvious?’. Yunho lifted his head to look Mingi in the eyes.
Mingi avoided his gaze and instead looked around the room, thinking. ‘Hmm, like, I knew something was up, but of course I was unsure how you felt exactly.’
Yunho nodded slowly as Mingi explained his thought process in detail to him. It felt weird hearing about his crash-out from the other’s perspective.
‘At first I was really worried. I thought I’d seriously fucked up!’ Mingi dragged the word out for emphasis. ‘Which is why I texted, and also why I kept coming in here.’
Yunho chuckled at that. ‘Really? But you acted so normal?’ he questioned.
‘Thank you, Yunho. I’m flattered, really, but no. I spent the entire car ride trying to think of an excuse to knock on your door. I don’t know, I think not seeing your face made me really anxious. It was my fault after all.’ Mingi smiled shyly, but Yunho was quick to deny his claim.
‘What? No! Mingi, it really wasn’t, I did this to myself by not just doing something about being in love with you sooner.’ Yunho froze. Putting it out there, raw, for Mingi to take felt very different from what they’d been doing up until now.
Mingi’s eyes widened and Yunho instantly felt smaller in the large bed. ‘You’re in love with me?’ Mingi breathed.
Yunho gulped, ‘Wasn’t it obvious by now?’ His voice was timid.
No reply came, but Mingi asked a question of his own, ‘Is it obvious that I’m deeply in love with you too?’
Yunho felt dizzy. All the words were stuck in his throat so he simply bumped their knees together once more, wanting to feel closer to Mingi. It felt like he was impossibly far away even though they were sitting in the same bed.
‘So..’ Yunho asked. ‘For how long..?’ He couldn’t find the right words to ask the question, but Mingi understood him right away.
‘Dude!’ He exclaimed. ‘Since, like, forever!’ Mingi replied and ran a hand through his hair in disbelief as if saying it out loud made him realize how many years he had actually been in this state, unable to do anything about it.
‘Can I just say I’m really fucking happy it worked.’ Mingi chuckled out of relief and reached for Yunho’s hand, settling on fidgeting with the bracelet on Yunho’s wrist. Yunho followed the movement with his eyes.
‘But like, I’m sorry I freaked you out like that.’ Mingi didn’t look at Yunho as he said it.
Yunho was looking at their hands, close, but not quite touching in the way he was so deeply craving.
He held his breath. It felt like sparks of heat on his skin every time Mingi’s fingers brushed his wrist.
‘You can hold my hand, you know?’ Yunho sounded more confident than expected, making him feel accomplished.
The fingers on his wrist stilled and Mingi was silent for a moment before replying. ‘Right.’ He didn’t move his hand a single centimeter, though.
‘Yunho.’ Mingi’s eyes were still fixated on their hands in Yunho’s lap. Yunho only hummed in response.
‘Can I kiss you?’ Mingi asked and looked up to meet Yunho’s eyes. With shaky breath, Yunho managed to push out a ‘yes’ before leaning over his lap, closer to Mingi.
When their lips touched, it felt unlike anything Yunho had ever imagined. Heat spread from where their skin made contact and went on to warm up his entire body.
Mingi was slightly rough leading the kiss. His hand made its way from Yunho’s wrist, still resting in his lap, onto Yunho’s thigh, making Yunho hold his breath.
He decided that he should show Mingi how much he enjoyed it too, so he grabbed onto Mingi’s chin to guide him closer, inviting him fully into his space as he leaned backwards.
‘Wait.’ Mingi said, as he broke the kiss, leaving Yunho puzzled. ‘Let me just-’ Mingi began as he started moving the containers of food onto the floor next to the bed. Yunho chuckled as he leaned back onto the pillow, watching Mingi do all the work. ‘Thank you, Mingi.’
Mingi crawled back onto the bed, hovering over Yunho for a second, scanning his face. Not for long though, as Yunho took matters into his own hands by pulling him down by the collar of his shirt.
The kiss was gentler this time, and Yunho could tell that Mingi was trying to hold back. It didn’t work. Mingi bit down slightly on Yunho’s lip, tasting him.
The action made Yunho laugh into the kiss. ‘Eager aren’t you?’ He said. A sound escaped Mingi’s lips followed by a dragged out, almost inaudible ‘Fuck.’ Yunho just laughed some more, appreciating the way Mingi wanted him as badly as he had also wanted Mingi for so long.
Having been called out, Mingi gave up on masking his desire and deepened the kiss, making sure to taste all of Yunho’s skin.
Pulling back slightly, Mingi whined ‘Fuck, why did we wait for so long?’ Yunho gulped. ‘I know, right?’ he breathed the words into the kiss.
‘Mingi.’ Yunho pulled back to look into Mingi’s eyes. ‘I’d love to be your valentine.’ Mingi buried his head in the crook of Yunho’s neck and mumbled into his skin. ‘Fuck, Yunho, don’t do this to me.’
Yunho just chuckled. ‘Do what? I’m not doing anything?’ Mingi whined and groaned as he leaned further into the man underneath him. ‘Please tell me I can sleep in here?’ he pleaded. Yunho ran a hand through his hair. ‘There’s nothing I’d rather want right now, Mingi.’