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Hyungwon doesn’t trust people who are unnecessarily hot.
Whenever the camera clicks, the photo of them comes out looking like a magazine shoot. Hyungwon isn’t anything like that. Ninety percent of the time, the photo of him comes out looking like the internet’s next big meme.
Mingyu says that requires talent.
But Kim Mingyu fits the unnecessarily hot criteria perfectly, and Hyungwon trusts him exactly zero percent. The two of them are roommates, and Hyungwon spent the first week of their coexistence mildly afraid that Mingyu was either going to scoop his brains out with a spoon or make Hyungwon fall madly in unrequited love with him.
But Mingyu does none of these things, and while Hyungwon still doesn’t trust him, he grows to be attached to their living situation. Mingyu’s abilities to cook and clean and fix are, plainly put, superhuman. Hyungwon’s a little suspicious that he’s some kind of housewife AI in disguise, on the run from the government. Or heaven’s backup plumber.
And then Hyungwon remembers the times that he had to go rescue an inebriated Mingyu from a campus party, and the three mugs that Mingyu had accidentally broken, and these theories go flying out the window.
---
Unlike Hyungwon, Mingyu goes to the gym every Wednesday and Saturday.
Today is Wednesday, and the door bursts open and Mingyu comes inside, hair plastered to his forehead with sweat and a stain on his right leg. He still looks gorgeous. He also looks like he has a favor to ask, which immediately sets Hyungwon on edge.
“Hyungwon,” Mingyu says, tone nervous.
Hyungwon puts his book down with a decent level of suspicion. “What?”
Mingyu’s muscles look more pronounced than usual, probably from the gym’s black magic. Hyungwon doesn’t know how that place works, and doesn’t want to. Despite the muscles, though, it doesn’t distract from Mingyu looking guilty as hell, because for all his talents, a poker face is not one of them.
“Come to the gym with me next Wednesday?” Mingyu asks, speaking fast, like Hyungwon will be more inclined to accept the message that way.
News flash: it doesn’t work. “You want me to what?” Hyungwon says, mildly disbelieving. “Where’d this come from? Did you hit your head?”
“I’m just saying, it’s a nice place…”
“Cut the crap and answer the question. Why do you want me to come with you to the gym next Wednesday?”
“C’mon, Hyungwon—”
“No. It’s bad enough that you visit hell two times a week. I’m not being dragged along.”
Mingyu sighs, exasperated. “They’re treadmills. Not torture machines.”
Hyungwon waves a dismissive hand. “Same difference.”
He’s not even that averse to the idea of exercise— he goes running in the morning, sometimes, if the weather is above twenty. It’s just the idea of exercising in a gym . With a bunch of machines that he’ll look stupid trying to operate and sweaty, buff, good-looking people effortlessly bench pressing boulders next to him. Also, he likes to push Mingyu’s buttons just to see how far he can get before Mingyu explodes.
“Please?” Mingyu tries, again.
“Give it up, Kim Mingyu. Where’d this request come from?”
Mingyu sighs, understanding that he isn’t getting anywhere without telling Hyungwon the reason.
“Okay— so— one of my gym friends—” Mingyu has multiple of those. It’s kind of astounding, how he can just go up to someone and befriend them in a matter of seconds. Hyungwon can do it sometimes, but he’s not nearly as good. “— he. May have started bringing someone along.”
Hyungwon squints, not connecting the dots. “Okay? So you already have more company?”
“And the guy he’s bringing is um. Very.” Mingyu chokes. “You know.”
Oh.
Oh.
Hyungwon’s face splits into a grin. “You like him? You’re nervous? I can’t believe this.”
“You can shut the fuck up,” Mingyu mutters, raking a hand down his face.
Hyungwon cackles. “So you want me there to play wingman?” he asks, finally understanding the origin of Mingyu’s odd request. “Need I remind you I suck at love and have absolutely no idea of how to go about doing something like that?”
“You don’t even need to do anything,” Mingyu pleads. “Just be, like, moral support and shit.”
“You’re asking me to go to the gym.”
“Hyungwon.”
“His friend— my gym friend—is really hot,” Mingyu tries, and Hyungwon wants to ask if Mingyu’s sure of which one of them he’s actually attracted to, but Mingyu won’t let him get a word in edgewise. “He’s like, your type. And he’s gay.”
Hyungwon rolls his eyes. “Hot people are out of my league, this isn’t convincing me.”
“He’s hot, but he’s also, like, soft. Lots of layers. Like an, um, an onion.”
“So now you’re telling me to go for someone who’s going to make me cry.”
Mingyu squirms, and Hyungwon decides that he’ll take pity on him in a moment.
“The last person you slept with was your bed,” Mingyu finally says. “C’mon, Hyungwon.”
Hyungwon bites back a retort and swallows. He’s probably not considered normal by dating standards in that (1) the prospect of meeting a hot guy holds no persuasion value to him, and (2) unlike Mingyu, Hyungwon can’t just do casual crushing or prospective dating. He’s never given a stranger a number or asked someone out at a party or even had a one night stand. He just falls really hard and fast and usually ends up bruised from the ground.
So the only reason Hyungwon ends up saying yes is because Mingyu is a good roommate, and also, it’s possible that Hyungwon is curious about who exactly has got Mingyu this down for the count.
“I’ll come with you, but on two conditions,” Hyungwon says. “One, no trying to set me up with your hot gym friend, and two, no expecting me to be a useful wingman. I can’t believe you’re roping me into this.”
Mingyu beams, and it’s blinding. “Dude, thank you so much.”
Hyungwon sighs. “Already regretting it.”
---
Mingyu is serious about the whole gym thing.
On Wednesday, Hyungwon packs a duffel bag with a ratty t-shirt and shorts, stuffs a water bottle in on second thought, and then reluctantly follows Mingyu over to the nearby rec center.
Hyungwon is already sweating from the weather, which apparently has not received the memo that it’s autumn . He’s tired. He has a paper due at midnight tomorrow. Not that he was going to start it until, well, tomorrow, since it’s only a thousand words, but that’s completely irrelevant. What’s relevant is that he doesn’t want to be here.
“I’m going to the bathroom,” Mingyu tells him. “You can go in first.”
Hyungwon internally cusses Mingyu for throwing him to the wolves, and pushes open the door. The place smells like sweat. Loud workout music blasts from the speakers. Hyungwon feels extraordinarily out of his element with his battered sneakers and distinct lack of abs.
“Hyungwon?” someone says, and Hyungwon turns around.
It’s Jeon Wonwoo. They’re coworkers at the campus bookstore, Newton, and while they don’t know each other outside of that, Hyungwon likes him well enough.
“Oh, hey, Wonwoo,” Hyungwon says, surprised.
“Nice to see you,” Wonwoo says. “I don’t really know anyone at this place.”
“Same,” Hyungwon says. “My friend dragged me here.”
“Really? That’s coincidental, so did mine,” Wonwoo says. “There’s no way in hell I’d be here if he hadn’t asked me… there’s way too many people.”
Hyungwon’s about to launch into a tirade about how that is so relatable, but a seed of suspicion worms into his mind.
“Did you just start coming here, then?” he asks, to be sure.
Wonwoo’s eyebrows raise, and Hyungwon gets a very, very bad feeling. “Actually, yeah, around two weeks ago? How’d you know?”
Hyungwon is about to tell Wonwoo that his question was born out of pre-existing circumstances, not because Wonwoo looked unfit or anything, but at this moment, Mingyu walks into the gym and spots the two of them. Hyungwon isn’t sure whether to laugh or cry at the sheer panic that crosses Mingyu’s face, but Mingyu resolutely walks over.
Hyungwon probably isn’t imagining Wonwoo’s dazed expression. Mingyu tends to have that effect on people. He looks like a Greek statue come alive, except Korean and dressed in 2018 clothing.
Hyungwon kind of wants to know how Mingyu never has to worry about whether the people he’s into are gay or not. The university they’re at is notorious for being LGBTQ-friendly, but seriously. Does Mingyu have gay vibes he sends to people of the same sexuality? Like magnets, but of similar poles? How does he have this ability? The last three people Hyungwon crushed on all turned out to be straight.
“Hi, Wonwoo,” Mingyu says, and to his credit, the awkwardness isn’t apparent to anyone who isn’t looking for it. “You and Hyungwon know each other?”
“Yeah,” Wonwoo says, wary. “We both work at Newton.”
“Really? Small world.”
A little too small, Hyungwon thinks. I’m friends with the guy you like. Jesus Christ.
“Hoseok’s over there, by the way,” Wonwoo tells Mingyu, gesturing over to the other end of the gym. “Uh, in case you were looking for him.”
Mingyu bites his lip. Wonwoo’s entire body language screams, I am uncomfortable.
“What do you usually do here, Wonwoo?” Hyungwon asks, internally wincing in sympathy for Mingyu. “I’ve never been here before.”
“I haven’t tried half of the stuff in here,” Wonwoo says, stiff demeanor relaxing a little once he’s facing Hyungwon. “The stairs are okay, though. Wanna come with me?”
“Sure,” Hyungwon says. “Mingyu?”
Wonwoo tightens up again, and Mingyu notices.
“Nah, I’m good,” Mingyu says, disappointment written all over his face, and heads off to presumably find Hoseok. Hyungwon follows Wonwoo over to the stair machines and tentatively sets a foot on it. He doesn’t even like regular stairs.
He’ll have to explain to Mingyu later, if Mingyu asks, that Wonwoo doesn’t have anything personally against him. Wonwoo’s not that good with people he doesn’t know very well, Hyungwon knows that— it took him a month last year to even talk to Hyungwon. And anyway, Hyungwon isn’t too good with emotions, but even he could tell that Wonwoo was uncomfortable, not hostile. Flustered as well, if the blush was any indication.
Hyungwon fiddles with the buttons, picking the automatic program that looks the least exhausting, and hits go. The stairs start rotating underneath his feet, and Hyungwon can tell from the first step that this is one of the most boring and tiresome thing that he’ll ever do.
“This makes me really appreciate elevators,” Wonwoo says.
“I can see why your friend wanted company.”
Wonwoo shrugs. “Yeah. He takes working out really seriously and stuff, though, so we don’t end up talking much. He just likes having people here with him.”
“That’s understandable,” Hyungwon says. “The people part. Not the working out part. The most I do is go running in the mornings from time to time.”
Wonwoo shakes his head. “I can’t get up that early.”
Hyungwon laughs. “My definition of morning’s pretty loose. Anything before 2 PM works.”
He’s kind of sweating on the stairs at this point, and Hyungwon can feel the burn in his legs. He makes a note to inform Mingyu that this place is indeed a torture chamber, opposing point invalid.
“Oh,” Hyungwon comments, as the machine lights up. “Apparently I’ve climbed the Pyramid of Giza at this point.”
Wonwoo groans. “That’s so tall, what the hell.”
“I know, right? But I’m pretty sure Mingyu over there is the height of the of the fucking Eiffel Tower.” With the mention of Mingyu, Hyungwon remembers that he’s supposed to be selling his friend, not bashing on him and his height. Whoops.
Wonwoo’s face colors with something outside exertion. “Yeah.”
“Hey,” Hyungwon says. “What about this: whoever gives up on the stairs first has to buy the other person a peanut butter bar from the vending machine outside.”
The vending machines here are full of low-fat, zero-sugar food, which is kind of disgusting. But a peanut butter bar was a peanut butter bar, right?
“You’re on,” Wonwoo says. “Although we’ll have to sync up our levels, then.”
It turns out that Hyungwon and Wonwoo are both ridiculously competitive, although it’s not outright. They don’t trash-talk or egg each other on, but they don’t step off the stairs, either, and Hyungwon’s pretty sure he catches Wonwoo looking over a few times to make sure he hasn’t dropped a level. By the time Mingyu comes over, Hyungwon’s thighs feel like liquid, and he’s about certain that he’s not going to be able to walk tomorrow.
“It’s been an hour and a half,” Mingyu says. “Whoa, have you guys been on the stairs the whole time?”
Wonwoo wheezes, “We’ve got a competition going… Hyungwon, let’s call it a draw.”
“Fine,” Hyungwon says, and hits the stop button as Wonwoo does. “I can’t feel my legs.”
Wonwoo wipes his face, which is covered in sweat. Hyungwon can pretty much hear Mingyu’s heart rate pick up. Mingyu is sweaty, but he still manages to look perfectly put together. Whereas Hyungwon probably looks like a rain puddle, or like, a blurry meme. The world is so unfair.
Another guy comes up behind Mingyu and says, “I’m going to go change now. Wonwoo, I’ll meet you outside. See you next Wednesday, Gyu.”
Mingyu nods. “Alright. Hey, Hoseok, this is Hyungwon.”
The pieces click, and Hyungwon grits his teeth. Because, for one, Mingyu’s introduction sounds like the beginning of a sales pitch, and for two—
This Hoseok guy is ridiculously hot. He’s drenched from a workout, but it makes him look ethereal, and Hyungwon is disgusted. One should not look like Adonis in a muscle tee and Nikes. He can practically see Hoseok’s muscles through the thin fabric of his shirt. What the hell, Mingyu. Hyungwon wonders if hot people have some sort of truce. Where they befriend each other just to like, make everyone feel inadequate and glisten under the lights together.
“We could split the peanut butter bar,” Hyungwon says to Wonwoo, who is the one person here that Hyungwon trusts. Although Wonwoo’s really attractive, too. God dammit.
“Wait, from the vending machine?” Hoseok asks. Wonwoo nods. “Those are really gross. You guys shouldn’t eat them, trust me. They taste like cardboard.”
“Thanks for the heads-up,” Hyungwon says stiffly. “Anything in there that tastes okay?”
Hoseok winces and shakes his head, and Hyungwon shrugs. “Damn.”
“Alright,” Mingyu says, and if his cheerfulness is fake, Hyungwon can’t tell. “Let’s head out.”
---
Hyungwon is a recipient of the domino effect the next week.
“I didn’t know you knew him,” Mingyu whines, when they get back to their apartment. “Why didn’t you tell me you knew him?”
Hyungwon squints. “Because you never gave me a name?” he says. “Listen, I just thought I happened to run into him at the gym, I had no idea he was the guy you liked.”
Mingyu waves a dismissive hand. “You’re being so logical,” he says, and Hyungwon shuts his mouth with a derisive click. “You were right, though. You do suck at playing wingman.”
“I told you,” Hyungwon says. “And anyway, it’s fucking weird. He’s my coworker.”
“And I’m your roommate.”
“So fucking weird.”
“You wanna come to the gym with me next week, then?”
Hyungwon is freaked out. Because Mingyu isn’t joking. Hyungwon really doesn’t get his roommate’s thought process. He’s sort of glad for that; he would probably lose sleep at night from the sheer irrationality of it.
“Why,” Hyungwon says.
“He’s uncomfortable around me, and I don’t want to do that to him,” Mingyu says, voice disappointed but acknowledging. “I’ll make you brownies.”
Damn, Mingyu’s playing his trump card right away. “What the fuck?” Hyungwon says, then decides he doesn’t care. Mingyu’s brownies are incredible, and it’s possible that he feels a little bit of sympathy for Mingyu’s plight. “They better be good brownies.”
“You know me,” Mingyu says smugly, and Hyungwon thinks, despairingly, that Mingyu could probably buy his way through the world with food. He doesn’t even need to go to college. “And by the way, what’d you think of Hoseok?”
“Hoseok?” Hyungwon asks, faking ignorance. Like he could forget a face like that. “Oh, your gym friend dude.”
“Yeah, my gym friend dude,” Mingyu snorts. “What’d you think of him?”
“Christ, I don’t know,” Hyungwon says. “I spoke to him for like, point two seconds. He told me to not buy a Satanic peanut butter bar. Good enough for you?”
Mingyu sighs, exasperated. “No, but— you know—”
Hyungwon thinks he knows why Mingyu wants him to come to the gym again, and Mingyu had promised not to try and set Hyungwon up. And Hyungwon is still going. He wants those brownies. He’s so weak.
“Listen, Mingyu, that boy is so out of my league that I can’t even get there by fucking bullet train,” Hyungwon says flatly. “For the sake of all of our sanities, I don’t think anything of him.”
“I think you should give yourself more credit.”
The realness of Mingyu’s voice unsettles him. That’s honestly one of the things about his roommate that genuinely terrifies Hyungwon— Mingyu’s as unthreatening as a puppy, but Hyungwon’s kind of emotionally constipated and can’t stand any compliment or conversation that’s not made palatable by a hefty dose of sarcasm. Mingyu, however, doesn’t operate like that, and sometimes it makes Hyungwon want to curl under his blankets and never come out again.
---
On Saturday, Hyungwon has a shift at Newton. He actually likes his job, which is surprising. But all he has to do is keep the shelves stocked, and sometimes he’ll take pictures of the books he finds interesting, which half the time is because he wants to read it and the other half because the summary is just too stupid not to record and send to Mingyu or Kihyun. Wonwoo works alongside of him and slightly disapproves of this second practice.
The other two employees here are Jun, who’s the cashier, and Changkyun, who helps people look for stuff and always looks like he’s slightly traumatized by the world around him. It’s what lets Hyungwon know the kid is a freshman.
They’re closing up the place when Wonwoo asks, “Please tell me you’re going to be at the gym next Wednesday?”
His voice is laced with desperation, and Jun, from where he’s sitting on the counter, widens his eyes and asks, “Wonwoo, when did you start going to the gym?”
Wonwoo glares at him, but it’s good-natured. “Fuck off, Jun. Not everyone’s a dancer.”
Jun is sort of magical in that he’s able to mesh with basically everyone, much like Hyungwon’s friend Kihyun. Hyungwon’s got a theory that it’s because it’s kind of impossible to dislike the awkward mom friend. He doesn’t know. He’s not a psychologist.
“His friend is dragging him,” Hyungwon informs Jun. “My friend is also dragging me.”
“So it’s like a double-date,” Jun says. “Except no sane person wants to go.”
Hyungwon grins— Jun gets it— before turning back to Wonwoo. “I’ll be there, unfortunately,” he says. “Mingyu bribed me with brownies, so I can eat back the calories I’ll lose.”
“Oh,” Wonwoo says. “Um, Mingyu?”
“Yeah. He’s my roommate. He makes really good brownies.” Actually, Hyungwon will tell Mingyu to give Wonwoo his baked goods— that’s a surefire way to get Wonwoo to fall for him. “Either he sold his soul to the devil, or he fills them with crack. I don’t give a shit either way.”
Changkyun walks out of the back door and asks, “Who sold their soul to the devil?”
“My roommate.”
“Oh, okay,” Changkyun says. He sounds chill with it, and this is how Hyungwon knows that the kid has gone cold to the world. “I’d sell my soul to the devil for some fried chicken.”
Hyungwon contemplates this. “Me too.”
“Me three,” Jun says. There’s a pause, in which Wonwoo is looking at them like they’re all insane, and then Jun adds, “Hey, Wonwoo, is Mingyu the guy you said you might like?”
Wonwoo turns purple, and Hyungwon wants to give Jun flowers and throw the guy a party. He just saved Hyungwon so much trouble. He might also cause Mingyu’s brains to implode and send the guy careening through the roof, but that’s just an unfortunate side effect.
“Jun,” Wonwoo says, closing his eyes. “I hate you so much. I want to castrate you.”
“Oh.” Jun’s smile creases with guilt. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know Hyungwon didn’t know.”
Changkyun looks a little bit like he wants to throw himself out the window. “Is this, like, a community crisis session?” he asks. “Am I not supposed to see this?”
“In college, you’re going to see a lot of things you’re not supposed to see,” Hyungwon says, thinking about the time he’d walked into an empty biology classroom and found people using vials not for their intended purposes. “So you might as well stay.”
Changkyun shrugs, and sits on the counter next to Jun. “Alright, then.”
Hyungwon decides that there’s no point in dragging things out any longer. For Changkyun’s sake, but also his. “Wonwoo, you should talk to Mingyu,” he says. “Because I’m telling you right now that Mingyu forced me to come to him with the gym with him because he wanted me to play wingman.”
“Wait, what?” Wonwoo asks, sounding strangled.
“You don’t have to worry about him not being interested. I assure you. He’s interested.”
Jun’s leaning forward, like he’s trying to get closer to a television screen. As if this were a sitcom starring Hyungwon trying to get the necessary information across and Wonwoo being seconds away from crawling into a corner and never coming out. Changkyun just looks like he’s having the last vestiges of his idealism stripped away.
“Wow,” Jun says. “Wonwoo, you’re so lucky. Like, just for the brownies.”
“If he makes you brownies, you should bring them to Newton,” Changkyun contributes.
“I’d sell my soul to the devil for brownies,” Jun says wistfully.
There’s this long pause where Hyungwon thinks that Wonwoo is contemplating returning to the womb, and Changkyun picks at his nails, and Jun looks like he’s regretting not bringing popcorn for this. Even though the butter would get everywhere.
Popcorn without butter sucks.
“What if I screw up?” Wonwoo asks, honest. “That’s always a possibility, right?”
For a single, terrifying moment, Hyungwon thinks he’s actually going to have to put the sarcasm away and give Wonwoo (shitty) life advice, but Changkyun steps in and says, “I have nearly zero idea of what is going on, but I think you should go for it.”
Wonwoo seems to mull this over. Hyungwon, relieved, adds, “Also, I won’t have to go to the gym anymore, so really, it works out either way.”
Wonwoo just glares at him.
---
Hyungwon has to go to the gym this Wednesday, though.
It’s still kind of astounding to him that people have a schedule for this kind of thing, when Hyungwon sometimes eats breakfast in the afternoon. And at the gym, Wonwoo actually does end up walking away with Mingyu, which makes Hyungwon in equal parts proud and disgusted. He hopes this works out for both of their sakes. Even though, again, he doesn’t understand how people just fall together like that.
Unfortunately, or well— not unfortunately, maybe neutrally?— because of this, Hyungwon winds up alone with Hoseok.
Hoseok raises an eyebrow, pointing to Mingyu and Wonwoo. “Did you do that?”
Hyungwon shrugs. “Sort of?” He might be responsible for like, thirty percent.
“It’s amazing either way,” Hoseok laughs. “So did you just start coming here? I don’t think I’ve seen you around before.”
A voice in the back of his head that sounds suspiciously like Mingyu or Kihyun points out that this is phrased like a pickup line, but Hoseok said it too genuinely for it to actually be one, so Hoseok tells this miscellaneous voice to shut up.
“Yeah,” he says. “Last week was my first time, actually.”
Hoseok nods. “What’d you end up doing here?”
“I just climbed stairs with Wonwoo. That was what the peanut butter bar contest thing was about, except, then, you know. It stopped being a peanut butter bar thing after your info.”
“Oh, okay. So then, are you going to climb stairs today, too? Or something else.”
Hyungwon shrugs, considering this, and pulls his water bottle out of his duffel bag. He brought two water bottles this time— last week, he’d sweated out an entire kiddie pool’s worth of water, and he was pretty sure he was dehydrated for the entire rest of the week. Hyungwon is uncertain if he wants to try something new with that kind of track record.
“I don’t know, probably stairs,” Hyungwon says. “It wasn’t too bad. Relatively.”
“Today’s leg day,” Hoseok tells him. “So I could do that with you, if you want.”
The guy has a leg day, dear god. Meanwhile, Hyungwon considers it a win if he’s able to open a can of chicken noodle soup without a can opener. By the end of the day, Hyungwon’s pretty sure he’ll be able to write a five-page essay on why he and Hoseok are not compatible, submitted to Kim Mingyu via LINE accompanied by cute animal emojis. This shouldn’t be a depressing thought, but it kind of is.
“Sure,” Hyungwon says, because having Wonwoo there was nice, last week. He gets why Hoseok wanted a gym buddy. “Don’t judge my skinny legs, though.”
They head over to the stair machines, and Hyungwon calibrates the level to what he had last time. Hoseok’s own level is, surprisingly, not that much higher.
“Your legs aren’t that skinny,” Hoseok says. “You’re probably better at this than I am.”
“Yeah, well, my classes are on the third floor,” Hyungwon says. “Might be due to that.”
Hoseok laughs. “Which campus are you in, by the way?”
“North.”
“Damn. I’m on the south.”
Hyungwon nods absentmindedly, bobbing his head along to the music. The south side of campus was pretty far— their school was big. He’s not surprised that Hoseok would make the trip to the gym, though, despite the distance. That guy had exercise coded into his DNA.
“That sucks,” he says. “Guess it explains why we haven’t ran into each other before.”
“Yeah, I guess it took your roommate forcibly dragging you here,” Hoseok laughs. “Hey, Hyungwon, I have another bet for you. Except it’s not for vending machine food.”
Hyungwon dips his chin. Some part of his mind is telling him this might not be the best idea, but his legs are starting to burn, so it doesn’t register quite as clearly as it might’ve before. “I’m listening.”
“So there’s this ramen shop nearby.”
“Uh huh?”
“Whoever climbs less feet has to buy the other person ramen.”
Hyungwon likes ramen okay. It’s not his favorite food or anything, but noodles are pretty good in general, and he was really hungry the last time after he was done with all this. Enough that on the way home, he was kind of wishing he’d eaten the peanut butter anyway. Even if it tasted like cardboard.
“You’re on,” Hyungwon says. “But it can’t cost that much. I’m broke.”
“Nah, everything on the menu is pretty cheap,” Hoseok says, and this is the first clue Hyungwon gets that Hoseok is much more serious about his ramen than Hyungwon is. “Even for uni. It won’t break your wallet or anything.”
Hyungwon nods, and ups his level by two to match Hoseok’s.
Hoseok is the one to break first, and Hyungwon wins by a net three feet.
---
When Hyungwon tells Mingyu he’ll be back to the dorm later because he’s going to get ramen with Hoseok, the expression on Mingyu’s face tells him that Hyungwon’s hypothetical five-page essay is now completely meaningless. Hyungwon could hand him an entire psychological dissection of their incompatibilities, and Mingyu wouldn’t be swayed from his belief that the two of them were soulmates.
It’s rather tragic. But Hyungwon is dramatic when he’s hungry, and doesn’t give a crap.
“Let’s go,” Hoseok says, and they do.
The ramen place is nice. It’s called Ramansae, this hole-in-the-wall shop with abstract pictures of noodles on the walls. Hyungwon is pretty sure this could constitute as a date place, even if ramen isn’t necessarily one of the world’s most romantic foods. Hoseok has probably been on a date here before, Hyungwon thinks, and then immediately realizes that Hoseok probably goes on dates here. Hoseok probably has a boyfriend. There’s no way someone looks like that and isn’t taken.
They get a seat near the window, and a waiter comes over to take their order, with dark brown hair and eyes that point upward like the ten-ten of a clock.
“Hoseok,” he beams, cheeks bunching up. “Hi!”
“Hey, Soonyoung.”
“You here on a date?” Soonyoung whispers, except it’s not a whisper at all because Hyungwon hears it loud and clear. Hoseok’s face goes red.
“No, we just— we had a bet,” Hyungwon says, rescuing him. “He owes me ramen now.”
“Wow, Hoseok, you’re buying someone else ramen? I can’t believe it,” Soonyoung teases. “Do you guys want the daily special? It’s twenty percent off.”
“Yes,” Hoseok says. “What about you, Hyungwon?”
There’s this feeling of power when someone else has to buy food for you, and Hoseok thinks regretfully that it’s a shame he’s too nice to take advantage of it. He’s not about to exploit Hoseok’s wallet. He barely knows the guy.
“Same, then.”
“Alright, I’ll go tell Jooheon, and he’ll be back with your order,” Soonyoung says, leaving, but not before turning around and shooting Hoseok a conspicuous wink.
Hoseok groans. “I’m sorry about him. Subtlety isn’t his strong suit.”
“You’re good,” Hyungwon says. He knows about embarrassing friends. He lives with Kim Mingyu.
Hoseok grins, and it’s a ridiculously good smile. So unfair. There are just some people who have it all. “Yeah, I usually come in here alone, so he just makes his assumptions. “
Hyungwon nods, and starts talking about the time Mingyu thought Kihyun was his boyfriend for the entire first week he knew him. It occurs to him about three sentences in that Hoseok probably doesn’t want to hear all about that, but Hoseok seems interested, eyes crinkling at the right parts, and Hyungwon thinks again, unfair.
The noodles come five minutes later, and Hyungwon comments, “Fast service.”
“Just wait until you actually eat it. It makes up for the distance,” Hoseok says. “I usually come here once a week. Usually on Friday, after the gym. Wednesday this week.”
Hyungwon is pleased that Hoseok would change his schedule for him, and then is promptly horrified by his own thought. He asks, “You go to the gym on Fridays?”
Hoseok smiles, a little sheepishly, and puts a forkful of noodles into his mouth. “Uh— Wednesdays, Fridays, and Sundays, all around this time. Most Fridays, I’ll let Soonyoung and Jooheon drag me to a party afterward or something. They’re very persuasive.”
Hyungwon nods. “I get the dragging thing. Mingyu and Kihyun are usually responsible for that.” He pulls a face. “I’m starting to realize that I get manhandled around a lot.”
Hoseok laughs. “You mean you don’t like parties and the gym?”
“I prefer sleep more.”
“Understandable,” Hoseok says. “I’m usually running on fumes and caffeine. It’s going to crash on me in thirty years, and I’ll be falling asleep during business meetings.”
“Oh, you a business major?”
“Um— actually, that was just a joke. I’m majoring in child education. I like kids.”
There’s no way that this guy’s single. That just doesn’t happen. But then he thinks about Soonyoung’s wink, and wonders if the laws of probability are being broken right here on this campus, a hole in the universe.
“I like kids, but they kind of terrify me at the same time,” Hyungwon says. “I’m majoring in accounting. It’s boring as hell, but at least I can pay back Mingyu’s cooking and stuff with good budgeting skills.”
“You’re lucky,” Hoseok says enviously. “My roommate’s a sick break dancer and draws really well, but cooking is not something he can do. I can’t cook for shit, either. This is the one meal a week that I actually enjoy.”
“Huh, really?”
He notes that Hoseok’s bowl is already three-quarters of the way empty and wonders how the hell he pulled that off; the guy must really like ramen. Hyungwon would’ve pegged Hoseok as someone who had an entire diet regime along with his leg days, and maybe he does, but he’s also a person who eats ramen at least once a week. A paragraph of Hyungwon’s five-page incompatibility dissertation shreds itself to pieces.
“Really,” Hoseok says seriously. “I’d date someone if they made ramen well enough.”
Well, that’s not Hyungwon. Hyungwon also can’t cook. At all.
“That’s some unique criteria,” Hyungwon comments. Which I do not fit. And which I am not disappointed by. Because that would be weird.
“I can’t date Jooheon, though, because that’d be like incest,” Hoseok sighs. “And I’m not taking Mingyu away from Wonwoo. The universe doesn’t work in my favor.”
They finish up their ramen and walk outside, the sky colored dark blue with evening. Hoseok waves before turning around and heading in the opposite direction, and Hyungwon stares for a single second at his retreating back before shaking his head and walking back to his dorm. Mingyu is going to give him such a hard time. Chivalry is dead, and Hyungwon hates everything.
---
Mingyu actually does not give him a hard time.
Mostly because Wonwoo gave him his phone number, and now Mingyu’s too distracted to properly rail on Hyungwon. Which is a win, although a little bit of Hyungwon’s mind is disappointed, because he’d been preparing hypothetical comebacks on the way home, and now he’d saved those brain cells for nothing. He’s expended unnecessary energy. And Kim Mingyu has more game than Hyungwon will ever have in multiple lifetimes over.
Anyway, Mingyu might not be giving him a hard time right now, but he will, if he finds out what Hyungwon is currently doing. The thing is, at this stage, Hyungwon is superfluous to the whole Mingyu-Wonwoo thing, so he is excused from going to the gym on Wednesdays. Hyungwon is happy about this. Really, he is. He’s elated. But right now, on Friday— Friday— he is heading to the gym. Possibly at the same time Hoseok said he was going. And if Mingyu finds this out, Hyungwon will not live it down, Wonwoo or not.
“I’m going to the library,” Hyungwon says, one foot out the door and academic bag slung over his shoulder. It’s been emptied out and filled with gym stuff instead.
“On a Friday?” Mingyu asks, not suspicious, just sympathetic. “Your professors are insane.”
“I know, right?”
His voice is a key off. Before Hyungwon can embarrass himself any further, he coughs and beelines it out into the hall.
Hoseok is there at the gym, which is simultaneously a relief and a disappointment. Because at least it doesn’t mean that Hyungwon came to the gym for nothing— he still hates the establishment— but maybe last Wednesday was a fluke. Maybe Hoseok was just humoring him with the noodles.
But then Hoseok spots him, and the smile that spreads over his face looks genuine enough that Hyungwon would take it even if it were fake.
“Oh, hey, Hyungwon!”
“Hi.”
“You weren’t here Wednesday,” Hoseok says. “I was depressingly third-wheeled.”
It shouldn’t be legal for Hoseok to imply— but not clarify— that he was both single and enjoyed Hyungwon’s company all in one statement. Fortunately, he doesn’t say anything incriminating like that, although the “Spare parts unite” that does come out of his mouth isn’t much better.
“Well, I’m glad you’re here now,” Hoseok says casually. “I want a rematch.”
It takes a second for Hyungwon to understand what Hoseok is talking about. “Wait, but didn’t you say that Wednesdays were your leg days?”
Again, the only remotely active thing that Hyungwon does regularly is running, when he decides that he should probably do something to oil his rusty circulation and make sure that all of his, like cholesterol or whatever doesn’t settle into his thighs. (He’d slept through health class; he doesn’t know how this works.) The rest of his body is therefore thoroughly average, not unhealthy, but also not up for a match against the likes of Hoseok.
“Oh, you remembered that,” Hoseok says, surprised. “Yeah. Today’s arm day. Sunday’s stomach day.”
“So you want me to match you in arm strength. I’m calling bullshit, my arms are like, noodles—”
“And speaking of noodles, we’ll end up getting ramen either way,” Hoseok says, voice pleasant. “Did you like the ramen from last time? Answer carefully, this determines our entire relationship.”
Hyungwon laughs awkwardly. Relationship. Ha. But the ramen was good, definitely, tasting like home. Which was kind of impressive, considering it hadn’t been explicitly geared toward Hyungwon’s hometown. Maybe there was some kind of soup-esque voodoo involved. “Yeah. I liked it.”
“Good,” Hoseok says. “Alright, so rematch?”
Hyungwon feels himself slipping and is nothing short of terrified. “Alright. Rematch.”
True to prediction, Hyungwon loses spectacularly. There aren’t even clear guidelines on this match, but it doesn’t matter, because no matter what the rules are, Hyungwon loses. Unless it’s in terms of how many machines Hyungwon can mistakenly operate until Hoseok takes pity on him and helps him out, in which case, Hyungwon takes home all of the trophies. By the end of it, Hyungwon’s arms go from regular noodles to cooked ones, feeling like they’ll fall off his torso if pulled gently.
“And you do this every Friday,” Hyungwon says, as he staggers out of the building.
“Yep.”
“I have a theory you’re secretly Iron Man.”
Hoseok shrugs. “Doesn’t his suit do most of the work for him?”
Hyungwon opens his mouth, clicks it shut. “You know, I don’t know the mechanics of that,” he says. He’s a fake fan. “But point is, I can barely walk . And you go to parties after this.”
“You get used to it after awhile,” Hoseok says. “Well, kind of. I think. Hey, at least you get ramen now?”
“One, I’m probably not even going to be able to hold my chopsticks, and two, I’m paying for it, so don’t you dare try to make me feel better with that. Although those noodles were good— goddammit , Hoseok.”
Hoseok laughs, bright and airy, and Hyungwon feels his mind stretch out like pulled taffy as it attempts to analyze whether that statement came out flirty. Hopefully not. He prays not.
The two of them enter the ramen shop, and the same waiter is there, Soonyoung. Hoseok and Hyungwon end up ordering the daily special again, and Hoseok educates him a little bit on ramen, which is really just an informal discussion on the pros and cons of cup noodles. From what Hyungwon gathers, Hoseok kind of views instant ramen as the food version of an incubus. Seductive and yet, completely evil.
Hoseok leaves for the bathroom thirty minutes later, and Hyungwon, as he’s stacking the bowls, is— well— for lack of a better term, ambushed.
“Listen,” Soonyoung says, and his friend— Jooheon? Yeah— stands threateningly beside him. “Hoseok hasn’t dated in some time, and you seem to do it for him, so I’ll give you a forty-percent discount. But if I hear about you hurting him, I will dice you .”
“Fry you over medium low heat,” Jooheon adds gravely. “Shred you to pieces. Like cilantro.”
Hyungwon’s mind is too waterlogged to properly comprehend anything they’re saying. “What—” he splutters. “Hoseok and I aren’t dating.”
And Hoseok is apparently single, but that’s not the issue at hand here.
“Yeah, right, cut the crap,” Soonyoung snorts. “You guys came here together last week, too, and this is like, basically Hoseok’s sanctuary. The secrecy is cute and all, but it’s over.”
“No, I’m serious,” Hyungwon says, getting his bearings. “I’m just here because I lost to him on arm day. That’s why I’m paying.”
“Wait, you what?” Jooheon says, arm dropping to his side. He’s holding a knife, which Hyungwon is a little concerned about. “You competed with him on arm day? You? Why?”
Hyungwon would be offended if it weren’t so reasonable. “He asked me. I complied.”
“Oh my god,” Soonyoung says, slightly awed. “You’re kind of an idiot. Wow.”
“At least it wasn’t stomach day,” Jooheon says, and Hyungwon understands this on a spiritual level. He probably wouldn’t be here eating ramen if it’d been stomach day. He’d be in a coffin from early death.
“Well,” Soonyoung says. “Ignore everything we just said, then. You’re not getting a forty percent discount.”
“Wait, there was a forty percent dis—” Hyungwon realizes his mistake. “Shit, no, me and Hoseok are totally dating. Uh huh. Definitely. Arm day? Don’t know what that is. We are very much in a committed relationship, yep.”
Soonyoung rolls his eyes, and Hyungwon sighs.
To make matters worse, Hoseok comes back from the bathroom right in time to hear the last few words of Hyungwon’s pathetic bluff, and asks, “Wait, I’m dating someone?”
---
Hyungwon manages to visit Hoseok at the gym for three more weeks until he is thoroughly, one-hundred percent busted.
At this point, he’s admitted to himself that he may possibly have a crush, because the way he acts around Hoseok— it’s not platonic. And the fact he even has to wrestle with the question of an infatuation basically means it’s there; at some point, he finally pushes aside his thin spiderweb of excuses and stares dead-on at the ugly truth.
Mingyu might’ve said that Hoseok was Hyungwon’s type to try and get him to the gym, but horrifyingly, Hoseok is . He’s also very much out of Hyungwon’s league. This, at least, Hyungwon had predicted correctly, although the rest of his thought process is in shambles.
It’s Friday, and Hyungwon is going to the gym again.
“Gonna go print a paper,” Hyungwon yells, and throws his backpack over his shoulder.
He doesn’t expect Mingyu to scramble up from the couch, saying, “Wait, I’m coming with you, I need to start this project, fuck my life—”
In Hyungwon’s defense, Mingyu had never gone to the library on Friday in all of the months that Hyungwon had known him, but there are unfortunate firsts.
“You’re coming to the library?” Hyungwon asks, dumbfounded. “Why?”
Mingyu groans. “The paper’s due Saturday at midnight, so. Library. C’mon, let’s go.”
“Uh…” Hyungwon says eloquently. “You— you can’t come to the library.”
“What?”
“It’s— closed.” Hyungwon is terrible with excuses, and lies. This is what he gets for being honest with his mom about who really spilled yogurt on the carpet when he was seven years old. This is his karmic retribution for not learning how to bluff at a young age.
He should never play poker.
“Okay…” Mingyu says, dragging the word out. “It’s closed. And yet, you’re going?”
Hyungwon knows this is a lost cause. “It’s closed to, um, anyone who’s over six feet tall. Shelf inequality and all that. Sorry, man.”
“Okay, what the hell is up with you,” Mingyu says, half-laughing. “Are you, like, actually going on a secret date or something? Cause as funny as this is—”
The look on Hyungwon’s face gives it away. Dammit. It’s the lips. He can’t hide anything with his mouth. Mingyu gasps, outraged, and well, Mingyu might be perfectly harmless, but he’s not dumb, and his arms are stronger than Hyungwon’s (maybe Hyungwon should consider lifting weights. He could do that while he was in bed, right?). Mingyu plucks the backpack out of Hyungwon’s grip, and before Hyungwon can react, unzips it. An energy drink and a towel fall out, laying in a sad heap on the floor.
“Wh—” Mingyu says. “Wait, Hyungwon? Are you going to the gym?”
Hyungwon closes his eyes. His life flashes before him. Goodbye, world.
“You are going to the gym,” Mingyu says, and the suspicion in his voice increases with each syllable. “Wait, have you been going to the gym all these past Fridays?”
“Gotta go,” Hyungwon chirps, and attempts to yank his bag back from Mingyu.
Mingyu’s been doing his arm days, though, and it’s fruitless. “Chae Hyungwon, what’s up?” he asks, and then gasps. “Wait, isn’t today Hoseok’s—”
“Total coincidence,” Hyungwon says feebly.
With this, the final pieces click together, and any confusion left on Mingyu’s face is replaced by utter glee. “Oh my god,” he says. “You like him. Holy shit. I was right .”
Hyungwon gathers up his gym stuff and lets his last shreds of dignity slip through the folds of clothing. “I’m going to go now.”
“Yeah, yeah, you go do that,” Mingyu says, maniacally grinning.
Hyungwon shuts the door and heads down the stairs, contemplating the mechanics of never returning to the dorm. He has a change of clothes in his backpack, along with his phone and wallet. But then he thinks of his cooking skills versus Mingyu’s cooking skills, and thinks better of it. Hyungwon is too weak to food.
“Hey,” Hoseok says, when Hyungwon arrives. “I thought you were ditching.”
“Yeah, sorry,” Hyungwon says. “I was held up by my roommate.”
Hoseok’s brow furrows. “Oh— everything okay with Mingyu?”
“Hmm? Yeah, Mingyu’s fine,” Hyungwon says, and thinks, you have no idea.
But to Mingyu’s credit, he doesn’t harass Hyungwon that much that night. Sure, there’s a couple of quips, but otherwise, it’s like that maniacal grin from earlier had never been present, along with the promise of doom that came with it. But Hyungwon should’ve known that Mingyu wasn’t just going to let it slide completely.
Because when Hyungwon walks into the backroom of Newton Books the next day, Wonwoo is sitting on the counter with a highly uncomfortable look on his face, and Hyungwon gets a very, very bad feeling.
“I’ll keep my mouth shut, don’t worry,” Wonwoo says.
“That bastard,” Hyungwon says, exasperated. Although he knows Mingyu means well, Hyungwon can’t just operate like most people. This shit is a big deal to him. It fucking sucks. “And I’m sorry. This is probably weird as hell for you.”
Wonwoo shrugs. “Hoseok’s my friend. You’re my friend. I think it’s okay.”
“I swear I’m not even doing anything,” Hyungwon grumbles. “Literally, I’m just losing to him on arm day.”
Wonwoo groans. “You’re competing against him on arm day?”
“Alright, you know what?” Hyungwon says, arms crossed, because that’s what Jooheon had said too. “Don’t question my bad life decisions.”
“I’m not judging you at all,” Wonwoo says, with surprising sincerity.
“Right.”
“No, really, I’m not,” Wonwoo says, and pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “I won’t say anything. God knows that I don’t know anything about this shit, either.”
Hyungwon’s about to reply with something about how Wonwoo’s clearly got more game than he does, but then he realizes that Wonwoo just gave him an exit from the topic, and he takes it gratefully. They end up discussing the logistics of sleeping the entire day and what the fuck dreams are made of, and Hyungwon, not for the first time, thinks that Mingyu has pretty good taste.
Jun says, “I had a dream last night that I drowned in frosting.”
Wonwoo’s picking up trash from underneath a table, and he just looks at Jun. “Congratulations, your subconscious is just as weird as the rest of you.”
“It was blue, like you know, the Funfetti kind?” Jun says. “Changkyun, do you know what I’m talking about?”
Changkyun shoots him a thumbs-up, and Jun grins. “Don’t encourage him, Changkyun,” Wonwoo sighs.
“By the way, Hyungwon, I overheard your conversation,” Jun says. “Good luck.”
Hyungwon drops his chin, disgusted with the situation, because come on, falling for someone at the gym is so cliche. Try explaining to someone that no , Hyungwon is not attracted to Hoseok for the arm muscles. He hasn’t even looked that much at the muscles. He’s so into what Hoseok says. God, that’s awful.
Changkyun pats him on the back, and Hyungwon briefly wonders if Changkyun ever has any issues in his love life. The kid’s never mentioned it, at least.
Mingyu is sitting on the couch when Hyungwon gets home from the bookstore, messing around on his laptop, and Hyungwon walks up to him and punches him in the shoulder. It feels like hitting an iron ball, and Hyungwon tries not wince.
“You aren’t going to do anything,” Hyungwon snaps. “No interfering.”
Mingyu smiles, this placid smile that’s probably going to land Hyungwon six feet under someday.
“I’m not suggesting you do anything drastic,” Mingyu says. “It’s just, I learned from Wonwoo that Hoseok likes ramen. So I’m going to teach you how to make it.”
Hyungwon cocks an eyebrow. Yeah, right. He can’t even boil an egg. He sets the kitchen on fire by stepping foot in it. But his amusement fades away when he sees the dead serious expression on Mingyu’s face, and this, coupled with the memory of Hoseok saying he’d date someone just for their ramen-making abilities, makes Hyungwon regret every decision he’s ever made, starting right with being born.
---
Mingyu goes through with his threat, and Hyungwon cuts his hand on the knife and burns the noodles.
“You know, I’m kind of impressed,” Mingyu marvels, as he removes the mass of noodles from the bottom of the pan, which resembles a square of black worms. “How did you even manage to do this?
“I told you, I’m a lost cause.”
This is Mingyu’s karma for trying to interfere with Hyungwon’s nonexistent love life.
“Nah, the kitchen still intact, so you exceeded my expectations,” Mingyu says, and scrapes the noodles into the trash. They didn’t even get halfway through the recipe. “But we’re cutting this lesson short. Put a bandaid on your cut.”
By the time Hyungwon heads to the gym the next Friday, he’s basically done with life. Mingyu tries to teach him how to make ramen two more times, and to Hyungwon’s horror, he’s actually improving. Not by very much, but he improves. He can get through the entire recipe now. The result tastes terrible, but it’s identifiable as ramen, and Mingyu is smug.
With this kind of trajectory, Hyungwon is going to be able to make an actual bowl of ramen that tastes semi-good within a couple of months, and he’s deadass terrified of what Mingyu— or, well, he himself— is going to do once that happens.
On top of that, his professors have been plying him with a larger amount of assignments than usual, and if he’d been lying about going to the library before, he certainly isn’t now. Hyungwon hasn’t gotten that much sleep this week, and his biological clock is pretty weak. Back in high school, when everyone was bragging about functioning on four hours of sleep, Hyungwon got seven or eight and still came to school with dark circles.
“You don’t look so okay,” Hoseok notes, when he meets Hyungwon at the gym.
“Thanks,” Hyungwon says, mock-offended. “Really boosting my self-esteem here.”
Hoseok rolls his eyes, semi-fond. “Like you had one to begin with,” he says, and Hyungwon gapes. “No, seriously, you look like you’re about to keel over.”
Hyungwon shrugs. “Just… a lot of homework. And stuff. You know the drill.”
Also, my roommate is teaching me how to make ramen. I understand this is a valuable life skill that I’ll thank him for in the future, but it’s just weird because I know I’m doing this for your sake. I’m so concerned about basically everything that’s running through my head right now.
“Shit, that sucks,” Hoseok says.
“Eh.”
“Do you wanna take a break for the day, then?”
“Are you suggesting I skip a workout?” Hyungwon asks, in mild disbelief. “Are you okay? Did someone clone you? Where’s the real Hoseok?”
“He’s right here, concerned for your wellbeing.”
Any retort Hyungwon has dies in his mouth. He tells himself that it’s a joke. “Wow, that was so smooth,” he quips back, trying not to stammer.
Hoseok shrugs. “Back to the question. You going to take a break?”
“I’ll probably just climb some stairs,” Hyungwon says.
He’s a little bit horrified to realize he’s kind of developed a fondness for the stair machine. It’s so predictable, and the suffering is so precise. Not like Hoseok, going around throwing around lines like that as if they cost him emotional pennies.
“Okay. I’ll climb some stairs with you, then,” Hoseok says, nodding.
“Dude, isn’t it your arm day, though?” Hyungwon asks, alarmed, and is even more alarmed when Hoseok just shrugs.
“Does it really matter?”
Hyungwon is thoroughly weirded out now, because what’s the point of creating an arm-leg-stomach day schedule if one isn’t going to stick to it. Also, Hyungwon wants to tell Hoseok not to break it for his sake, because then the more idiotic parts of Hyungwon’s mind will take that and run with it. They get on the stair machines, and Hyungwon wishes that infatuations were more like climbing stairs than falling off a neverending cliff.
“I guess I’m buying you ramen,” Hoseok says, when Hyungwon wins.
“You don’t sound all that disappointed.”
Hoseok grins. “I get ramen either way. Whether I’m paying for it or not doesn’t matter.” He pulls a face. “This is why I suck with rent.”
“It’s okay, the economy’s already fucked over. We’re just a small part of it.”
“That makes no sense, but for some reason it makes me feel better.”
Hyungwon hates everything. At the ramen shop, Hoseok keys his number into Hyungwon’s phone, and now Hoseok’s presence isn’t just something Hyungwon has to worry about every Friday. There is now the potential for Hyungwon to be bowled over at any minute of any day, and he thinks, blearily, that this is why he swore of crushes in fifth grade.
---
Hyungwon finds out that Hoseok is bad at texting.
It’s not even the messages themselves. It’s just, Hoseok texts like he’s updating an Instagram account, which basically means that he’ll send over pictures and funny phrases at random times at the day, but won’t be able to hold a conversation for more than five minutes. Hoseok apologizes for this two days in, and Hyungwon thinks he gets it.
There’s an element of uncertainty when one sends something into the void.
I really like talking to you, Hoseok types one Friday night, when the sky is pitch black and Hoseok is probably drunk. I hate talking over messages but I like talking to you.
Suffice to say, Hyungwon hadn’t gotten that much sleep that night.
Apparently, Wonwoo is like this over text, too, because Mingyu complains about getting left on read frequently.
“I mean, someone has to send the last message,” Hyungwon tells him.
Mingyu groans. “He types with perfect punctuation,” he whines. “He uses semicolons .”
This is what crushes do: they take people down for the count.
Mingyu and Wonwoo aren’t that disgusting of a couple, though. The only part that’s really disgusting is how they won’t acknowledge that they’re dating. Because sure, Mingyu might talk about Wonwoo a little more than he talks about other things, but he’s by no means lovesick, and Hyungwon likes that. He can always tell Mingyu to shut up, anyway, if he rambles on for too long.
And Hyungwon doesn’t talk about Hoseok if he can help it. Two months pass, and Hyungwon doesn’t make a move.
But Hyungwon and Hoseok talk, and Hyungwon pockets information about him like he’s shoplifting from the convenience store. It shouldn’t feel like stealing, but it does, because Hoseok will give Hyungwon pieces of himself that aren’t things you give strangers, and Hyungwon will just take it and then reply with something dumb. It’s a defense tactic, and it probably makes him an asshole, but in his defense, Hoseok terrifies him.
Exhibit A:
They’re at Ramansae again, and it’s basically empty for the night because the weather’s so bad. The gym had been pretty empty, too. Hoseok went because a viable tornado probably couldn’t prevent him from getting in his thrice-weekly workout. Hyungwon went because he’s so fucked. The lighting of Ramansae is warm, shadowy snow outside the windows, and Hyungwon feels himself teetering off the edge.
“I can’t believe you set a new record on the stair machine,” Hoseok says. “You’re ridiculously good at it.”
Hyungwon takes a bite of noodles. “I used to do Cross Country. Everybody judged you if you stopped before the end of the race, so I kind of just learned to keep going.”
“That mostly explains it. But still, it’s impressive.”
“Alright, you can shut the hell up now. Stair climbing isn’t that cool when you can bench press, like, an entire apartment building.”
“Maybe not the entire apartment,” Hoseok laughs. “Maybe a single room.”
Hyungwon’s a little bit impressed by how that statement manages to be both self-deprecating and cocky all at once. Most people tend to lean toward one end of the spectrum or another.
“Have you been coming to the gym since freshman year?” Hyungwon asks.
“Yeah, basically. I found it two months in.”
“You’re goddamn insane.”
“I don’t know, maybe. But It’s a good way to regulate, you know? Like, the atmosphere is comfortable, and there’s people and music, and it stabilizes your brain chemicals. I kind of need something like that.”
It makes Hyungwon think about how he hates the gym because of the exact same reasons Hoseok likes it, but he’s starting to reconsider. And he thinks that maybe the gym is Hoseok’s sanctuary, along with the ramen shop they’re currently in, and that the routine is what keeps Hoseok sane. Hyungwon gets that. It’s like how the only way he functions is with sleep and running. And he wants to say something about that, but when he opens his mouth, all he can see is the bottom of the rabbit hole.
“The stair machine and I are in a toxic relationship,” Hyungwon says instead.
Hoseok laughs, and lets Hyungwon have his evasion.
Also, the ramen lessons continue, with one additional development. To Hyungwon’s mild horror, he starts trying to make ramen when Mingyu isn’t around. Because his bad cooking skills are funny, but Hyungwon is also prideful, and now that he’s started this he finds himself determined to become good at it.
But he doesn’t want Mingyu to know that he’s gotten invested, so now he starts making mediocre ramen on purpose whenever Mingyu is teaching him. There’s probably some kind of psychological complex related to this, but Hyungwon refuses to think too hard about it.
However, Hyungwon does not learn his lesson from the gym mishap, and the door to their apartment room slams open mid-stir.
“Classes ended early— holy shit, it smells good,” Mingyu says. Hyungwon, hands wet, stares between the stove and Mingyu in petrification. “Wait, Hyungwon, are you—”
“What is my life anymore,” Hyungwon laments.
The way Hyungwon is frozen, and Mingyu is staring at him, open-mouthed, is more fitting for one of those stupid dramas where the best friend steals the boyfriend than for what it actually is. It’s kind of funny, really. Hyungwon’s dirty secrets are going to the gym and learning how to cook. He wonders what that says about his life.
“Dude,” Mingyu says, awed. “It actually smells really good, what the fuck.”
Hyungwon sees no choice. He turns off the stove and ladles the soup into the bowl, handing it over to Mingyu like he’s possessed. Mingyu blows on it for a few seconds before taking a bite and closing his eyes.
“This is amazing,” Mingyu says. “I’m impressed.”
Hyungwon is both embarrassed and pleased by the praise. Mostly embarrassed. He kind of wants to jump into a hole and never come out.
Mingyu finishes the ramen, Hyungwon eating some also, and Mingyu says, “So are you going to give this Hoseok?”
Hyungwon shrugs, awkward. “I don’t know.”
Hyungwon had practically stuck a knife into his ribs and set Mingyu’s fingers on the handle, and Mingyu is actually nice for only giving it a half-hearted twist before leaving Hyungwon alone.
“I’m pretty sure he likes you, too.”
---
Hyungwon gets good enough at making ramen to learn a couple of variations. He is now responsible for Tuesday dinners. He is a coward.
Mingyu doesn’t push it, which probably means he can tell that Hyungwon is completely pathetic. Also, again, Mingyu is actually a nice person. Hyungwon still doesn’t trust hot people— he will never get on their level— but he acknowledges Mingyu’s kindness.
New Year’s comes and goes. Hyungwon eats a brownie at midnight, and he doesn’t think about kissing anyone.
On January 21, a song comes out. It’s called Neverland, and it’s by an openly gay Korean idol, and Hyungwon thinks (rather despairingly) that he was a goner by the first piano chord. There are several comments on how the video made them cry, but Hyungwon doesn’t cry. Instead, he jots down a note to buy cheese puffs at the convenience store, and he thinks about the concept of bravery.
Hyungwon turns on the stove, and his ramen comes out probably the best it ever has. He puts it in a container, sets a cover over it, and walks outside. It’s Hoseok’s stomach day, and Hyungwon is certain that he’s going to die.
There are plenty of times when he almost turns around and walks home, but then sighs and plods on. It’s okay, he thinks, if Hoseok rejects him. There’s a veil of peace in his mind, and although it’s thin and barely conceals the anxiety whirling around underneath, it’s enough.
He gets to the recreation center and debates on waiting for Hoseok to finish up, but then he realizes that the unfortunate thing about ramen is that it gets cold and soggy after a while, and reluctantly heads for the door of the gym. Hoseok is on a machine near the entrance, and when he spots Hyungwon, he gets off of it and comes over.
“Hey,” Hoseok says. “You don’t usually come on Sundays?”
“I’m not joining you on stomach day,” Hyungwon quips, weak. “Abs are not on the agenda.”
“Oh,” Hoseok says, then adds teasingly, “Well, did you just come to visit me, then?”
“Kinda, yeah.”
The expression on Hoseok’s face. If Hoseok’s rejected, he’ll at least get a story out of it.
“Okay?” Hoseok says. “Um— did you need to tell me something, then?”
Hyungwon nods, and now Hoseok looks equally as anxious, but he pulls on a jacket and gets his bag and the two of them silently walk out of the gym. The faux-peace in his mind gives way, and Hyungwon’s thoughts are suddenly a blaring cesspool of alarm bells and the distant worry that his noodles are getting worse by the second.
“What’s up?” Hoseok asks, when they’re out of earshot.
“Well,” Hyungwon says, eloquently. “First, sorry about interrupting your stomach day—”
“Dude, you’re fine. Cut to the chase.”
“But, um,” Hyungwon says, and well, here goes nothing. “You said that you’d date someone for their ramen making abilities a while ago, and, um.”
Hoseok looks confused, and then he looks at the stainless steel container near Hyungwon’s side, and then his eyes widen, and then Hyungwon can no longer look at Hoseok’s face for fear of what he’ll see.
Hoseok says, slowly, “That I did.”
“So, I made you ramen,” Hyungwon plows on. He should’ve planned this out better, goddammit. “It probably doesn’t taste as good as it did originally. But, yeah. See if it’s up to par.”
“You made me ramen.”
“Yes.”
“Wait, so,” Hoseok says, and Hyungwon is terrified. His legs feel like they’re about to give out from underneath him any minute now. “Are you asking me out?”
“I don’t know, am I?” Hyungwon asks weakly. “Can you just take the ramen and put me out of my misery? Don’t you have stomach day to get back to?”
“Answer the goddamn question.”
“Fine, I’m asking you out,” Hyungwon mumbles. There. He did it.
Hoseok says, “I’m not going to date you for your ramen making skills.”
Oh. Okay. Hyungwon’s chest feels like a punctured lead balloon. He’s glad his eyes are down now, because even if that might seem weak, it’d be worse if Hoseok could see the sheer disappointment and embarrassment in his eyes. He comforts himself with the idea of getting to tell Mingyu told you so and future cheese puffs, but it’s scant consolation.
Hoseok continues, and his voice is soft. “I’d date you regardless of whether you could cook or not.”
Hyungwon whips his head up, eyes wide, and breaks into laughter a second later. He really can’t function like a normal human being, he thinks. He cradles the container of ramen to his stomach and wheezes, and Hoseok ends up laughing along too, although his laughter is more confused than anything. Hyungwon kind of doesn’t even want to calm down because he’s so relieved . Also, he has no idea of what happens next.
“You asshole,” he says to Hoseok, when he’s sufficiently calmed down. “Couldn’t you just have told me that from the start?”
Hoseok’s smile is both fond and blinding. “Couldn’t you just have asked me from the start instead of giving me ramen?”
Hyungwon doesn’t have any answer to that. Hoseok takes the bowl out of his hands and takes a bite, and he says, “you can tell this is amazing, even if it’s been sitting out for awhile.” And then Hyungwon tells him he should come over to their dorm instead, so he can get it fresh.
---
Mingyu beams when Hyungwon tells him. “I sort of believe in humanity again,” he says.
“Glad to semi-restore your faith.”
“You two weren’t designed to be just friends. It’s gross.”
This is true, especially the gross part. They operate better as a couple, not because they’re all over each other or anything, but because it’s just easier when Hyungwon gets to hold Hoseok’s hand when he wants to and tell him that he looks good without it being weird.
Hoseok is a good boyfriend. That doesn’t surprise him. What surprises Hyungwon is that he hasn’t messed up yet, and he hopes that’ll hold out for awhile.
It’s the crappiest kind of long distance because they’re not even far apart, just far apart enough for it to be inconvenient for two uni students who generally have no time. Hoseok still sucks at texting, but he’ll stop by Hyungwon’s dorm whenever he can and bring him coffee at the campus bookstores on Saturday and find him in the library on weekends.
“So,” Mingyu says, and his eyes gleam. “Come to the gym with us next Wednesday?”
Only Mingyu would find the idea of a sweaty double date appealing.
“No, never ,” Hyungwon says, and throws a stray cheese puff at Mingyu, who catches it neatly in his mouth.
“Shame.”
And Hyungwon blames Hoseok for the next words that come out of his mouth.
“But I can make you guys ramen afterward instead,” he says, and a hundred-watt smile spreads over Mingyu’s face. And Hyungwon, like an idiot, smiles back. It’s not a perfect moment— Hyungwon’s sure Mingyu will hold him to that offer multiple times over— but right now, he’s so happy. It’s a little cheesy, but it’s true. He is.