Work Text:
And now I'm supposed to love you from a distance
Like it's nothing, like it's instant
— Before, NIKI
The car looks like one pernicious bump in the road could send it breaking down into smithereens.
Minghao tells Mingyu just as much when he sees it, eyes narrowing in disdain. Like, you expect me to get into that rust bucket? Except Mingyu knows he will, because well, Minghao is Minghao. And because Mingyu had been the one to ask.
Mingyu weathers everything patiently, with the air of someone who has been subjected to this kind of questioning all his life — which isn’t so far from the truth. He answers all of Minghao’s questions and then some: Yes, he’d planned everything out already. No, they wouldn’t be missing any of their classes; he’d done one better and reached above Minghao, texting Junhui himself to double check. Yes, Mingyu was already attached to the thing – how could he not, he bought it and fixed it up himself, at Seungcheol’s garage, spending days wiping his sweat with towels until they were sopping wet, muscles working themselves to the point of exhaustion. No, he wouldn’t return it. Or change the color. Did Minghao understand how expensive a paint job was?
“For old times’ sake,” Mingyu smiles, giving no other explanation. It grows stale quickly, his mouth turning wobbly at the corners.
Minghao, to his credit, looks at Mingyu suspiciously. He must be thinking of the same thing running across Mingyu’s mind. How the last couple months have been nothing but fraught with uncertainty, empty and vacant houses with the lights on but no one home. Full of jokes that carried on until they reached a sharpening point, keeping up appearances that neither of them were too sure mattered anymore. Lips stretched too tight over teeth, mouths caught in a thousand different lies a hundred different ways.
But this? This is real.
Mingyu hopes, from the bottom of his heart, that Minghao can see that.
“Alright,” Minghao draws out the last bit, enunciating the word in his own unique way, Mandarin tongue shaping Korean syllables.
Mingyu wants to reach out and laugh and erase the creases that mar Minghao’s forehead. Mingyu wants… Mingyu wants a lot of things. He always does.
Instead, he swings the door open and drives the key into the ignition. It slides home. The car roars to life. The open road sits in front of them.
“You coming?” He asks, a lot more calmly than he feels. His hands shake the entire time they’re on the wheel. Mingyu has to grip the leather extra tight in order to keep him tethered to the ground. It bites into his palms angrily. Makes him remember the reason for all this in the first place.
Minghao looks up to the sky, squinting into the sun. When he doesn’t find the answer he’s looking for, Mingyu watches him sigh and shake his head. But there’s a small smile there, a quick bolt of lightning that betrays true feelings, laying the heart bare.
Mingyu is filled with overwhelming certainty.
The passenger door opens.
“Where are we even going?” Minghao laughs. It gets carried away by the wind. Mingyu’s ears are buffeted by the world as it roars on by. He can hear everything and nothing at all.
Mingyu chances a look at his best friend. Minghao is all beaming brilliant smiles, eyes closed in bliss, cotton candy pink hair against the magnificent blue backdrop of the sky.
He’s the most beautiful thing Mingyu has ever seen.
“Well?” Minghao cups his hands around his mouth to be heard. Mingyu jolts back to attention, heat crawling up his neck at being caught.
Minghao is watching him intently. Well? Are you going to answer me?
“Somewhere by the sea,” Mingyu yells back just as Minghao says, “What?”
They catch each other on a good note. Minghao glances over. Mingyu is looking back. And before they can help it, twin peals of laughter streak out of their mouths and loosens the heavy thing sitting on his chest.
This is a kind of forgiveness, Mingyu decides. He can do that.
“Does it matter?”
“No, I guess not,” Minghao concedes, so softly that Mingyu nearly loses it to the wind.
Mingyu does catch what goes unsaid though: As long as I have you.
“You’re stupid,” Seokmin darts in quick, leaning in to flick Mingyu on the forehead. Hard.
Mingyu scowls and just barely refrains from punching his lights out. By that, he means Jihoon has already accounted for Mingyu’s heightened homicidal tendencies and Seokmin’s annoying aggravating ones (apparently “big dogs get aggressive when you put them in a room together,” whatever the fuck that means) and has thrown an arm around Mingyu’s midriff to hold him back from charging Seokmin with the intent to cause bodily harm. Not once does Jihoon look up from his phone screen. It’s honestly kind of impressive.
Mingyu, ever valiant, continues to choose a life path of struggle.
Jihoon holds steadfast through it all, nonplussed. He gestures to the counter, where his can of Coke sits. Seokmin makes a sound of acknowledgement, scrambling to oblige.
Mingyu glares at them both while the entire exchange happen, regretting many of the choices that lead him here.
“Seokmin’s right,” Jihoon comments drily, when Mingyu finally gives up, having exhausted himself. Mingyu pointedly ignores this and flops to the floor in a sprawl.
Seokmin and Jihoon take a moment to look at each other. Then eerily, as if rehearsed, they slowly turn back to him with matching disappointed faces, even speaking in unison. Freaks.
“You’re stupid. This isn’t gonna end well.”
Mingyu needs better friends. “You guys just like calling me stupid,” he pouts defensively. The look Jihoon sends Mingyu is so withering, a small part of his heart shrivels up in his chest.
“I’ll admit to that,” Seokmin holds up his right palm in mock seriousness. He rolls his eyes, which happens a lot more often than people are led to believe.
“But, you have to admit, you just agreed to fake date your best friend. Who you have been in love with since forever. To help him get with someone else in the end. This is unprecedented levels of stupid, even for you.”
Mingyu blinks hard. This thought has not occurred to him.
He loves Minghao, sure. Loves him like any other friend should, loves to the point of dying for him — okay, now that might be a little bit too brash, but Mingyu thinks if someone gave him the chance he would at least try to take a bullet for Minghao. Whether or not he’d actually do it, well, that entirely depends on how brave he’s feeling that day.
Anyways, you get the point.
They’ve been friends forever. Kim Mingyu loves Xu Minghao the way you do when you grow up together, when your families become each other’s family, whose futures have been tied together ever since the Xus moved in down the block.
Yeah, Mingyu loves Minghao. He’s not ashamed of it. This is nothing new.
But Kim Mingyu being in love with Xu Minghao? Actively and purposefully engaging in demonstrative acts of affection, out on display? For everyone else to see? That’s preposterous. Absolutely absurd. Entirely —
Mingyu’s eyes widen just as it hits him.
It might be entirely on point.
Oh, he’s so fucked.
Mingyu is 21 and his entire world is ending. To add insult to injury, it is a Tuesday, objectively one of the worst days of the week. On this Tuesday, Mingyu finds out that apparently … he is In Love with Xu Minghao. Seo Myungho. The same kid who accidentally kicked out Mingyu’s canine while they were both learning to b-boy, and instead of apologizing, wiggled his own tooth rigorously until it fell out, just so they could match. That guy. That one. His best friend.
Seokmin and Jihoon are discussing the latest Yu Gi Oh episode instead of paying him any attention while Mingyu is going through it. His world is shattering at his feet and they are too invested in a tooniverse to care. Mingyu is like, right here. Hello? He needs to find better friends.
There are a lot of revelations happening at this very moment. Mingyu is rather overwhelmed.
“I… what?” He croaks.
“You are going to fake date Minghao. Who you love.” Seokmin repeats, though the point clearly got across the first time, because there is a building pressure in Mingyu’s left temple. There might be a vein popping out, which causes him to panic even more, rendering the damage irreversible. It’s there now. Mingyu is sure of it.
Seokmin pauses mid-sentence, nudging Jihoon with his shoulder. “Is it whom? I never know.”
Jihoon makes an urgent sound. “Seokmin-ah,” Jihoon points at Mingyu, who feels very faint. “I don’t think he knew.”
Mingyu, like always, had volunteered at the drop of a hat. Wanting so desperately to be of service.
I could do it, Mingyu had offered to Minghao, bluffing bravery. There was a bead of sweat gathering at the nape of his neck, obvious in its discomfort, but Mingyu was too busy watching the way Minghao’s fingers worried themselves on his lips.
Truthfully, Mingyu was tired of watching his best friend sigh and complain, contorting himself to fit into boxes just so that someone could spare a glance his way. This isn’t like you. Mingyu itched to shake Minghao by the shoulders, hoping some sense would creep in.
Mingyu knew Minghao, inside and out. His Myungho, the one whose ears burned bright red when he laughed too loud in public spaces, the one who preached on and on about healthy diets only for Mingyu to find him hunched over a portable stovetop, devouring four packets of ramen late at night. His Minghao was wonderful.
And Joshua Hong couldn’t figure it out?
Mingyu was appalled. Once he got over the shock of it, that Joshua could know of Minghao and not want anything else of it — especially when Minghao wanted all that and more (quite pathetically, if Mingyu’s being honest, which is saying a lot. Mingyu is a leading world expert on pathetic) — Mingyu became quite determined to fix that.
Was it because Joshua was American? Was it the culture difference? The goddamned cultural divide?
No matter. Mingyu had huffed, brushing the crumbs off his jeans. He would make do. Capable Mingyu, Dependable Mingyu, he reminded himself with a firm nod, puffing his chest out slightly. He could do this.
Joshua might have “beautiful sparkly doe eyes” and “a perfect symmetrical face” and “the craziest yaoi hands anyone has ever seen”, but Minghao had Mingyu.
Minghao, who might possibly be the best thing that ever happened to Mingyu — he had Mingyu, who knew how humiliating it was to pretend to be something you were not. It killed Minghao a lot more than most, to keep cutting and folding until the original got lost somewhere underneath all those distractions.
It killed Mingyu to watch it happen.
And so:
“I’ll date you,” Mingyu repeats steadily. His heart is thumping wildly against his throat. If Mingyu has to say it again, he thinks it’ll crawl out of his mouth and throw itself down between them. This is what you want, right?
After a brief stunned silence, Minghao barks out a laugh. “I’m sorry, what now?”
“We fake date,” Mingyu scrambles to rub his two remaining brain cells together for a spark. “It’ll make Joshua-ssi jealous.”
“Is that even going to work?” Minghao peers at Mingyu disdainfully from over the top of his wire frame glasses. Mingyu hates it when he does that.
He tries a different angle. “Well, you haven't had much luck doing what you’ve been doing so far, have you?”
The effect is immediate. Minghao’s shoulders stiffen, visible tension flooding his features as his mouth dips downwards in displeasure. Mingyu hides his smile in the palm of his hands, ducking his face away until he’s sure he won’t give himself away.
“I’m working on it,” Minghao says defensively. He glares, daring Mingyu to say something otherwise. Mingyu peacefully disengages, choosing to be merciful. He marches onwards.
“How hard could it be? Joshua-ssi will notice, he’s always noticed stuff like that. He’s always next to Jeonghan. Those two love to gossip. This is juicy.” Mingyu nods to himself.
Surely, this is perfect. Surely, nothing will go wrong. It’s soundproof. Ish.
Okay, in all honesty, it’s not the best plan in existence, but it’s also all they’ve got right now. Nothing else Minghao’s tried has worked, so they’re also desperate. And desperate times call for desperate measures. Like appealing to the baser, more primitive qualities of man – namely, jealousy.
“He’ll be intrigued. And besides, how hard could it be? We already spend so much time together as it is.”
Minghao is so easy to love. Prickly at first, but once you get past the gates you learn – as Mingyu had – that Minghao wears his heart on his sleeve the way other people wear shields and armor to protect themselves. Part of you wants to protect him. The other half wants him to love you, too.
It won’t be hard at all. Out of everything, this is the one thing that Mingyu is willing to bet his life on. It won’t be hard to love Minghao. It never has been.
Minghao hums and haws, taking his sweet time to answer.
Mingyu smirks, because Minghao is purposefully dragging his feet in the dirt, floundering for more time, the way he does when he’s particularly unhappy about a conclusion. Or when Mingyu is right about something Minghao doesn’t want him to be right about. In this case, it’s both.
“You got any other ideas?” Mingyu goads. The furrow in between Minghao’s brows deepen.
“Well, no.” Minghao traces his finger into a figure 8 on the table, petulant.
The final nail in his coffin, Mingyu bringing the hammer to his own goddamned funeral —
“It’s settled then. What could go wrong?”
A lot of things, actually.
Well, okay, at first, it goes great.
This is very important and crucial to note. Mingyu has good ideas, and a good heart, and by the grace of god or whatever higher beings there are out there looking out for him, this particular combination usually ends up working out well, in the end. Seokmin likes to complain that this is because for whatever unfathomable reason, Mingyu’s is the universe’s favorite, but Mingyu thinks it’s just because Seokmin is just not working hard enough. This, of course, usually ends with a furious kick to the shins (“Not everyone is born with a handsome face!” The like you, is implied, which is of course the only part Mingyu pays attention to. And his bruised shin.)
But then things get very serious. Too serious.
Suddenly, Mingyu is doing things like buying Minghao flowers on the regular even though it caused his rhinitis to flare up, especially on days with particularly high pollen count.
He even wakes up before his alarm goes off, which is no small feat — it’s hardly a secret that Mingyu savors his sleep, that he will set a thousand alarms leading up to the time he has to be awake and ten minutes after, and still somehow managed to sleep through them them.
Point is, Mingyu will wake up early if it’s for Minghao. He’ll then saunter over to the farmer’s market stalls on the way to campus, where the halmeonis selling produce unashamedly and boldly coo over him. If he lets them squeeze his bicep (which he usually does), they usually throw in a couple more flowers for free.
“Achoo!” Damn it. He’d been so close to keeping it in. He’d even waited around the corner until all itchiness in his nose had subsided, so sure that he could go a whole two minutes without a sneeze sneaking up on him. Despite Mingyu’s best efforts, it happened anyway.
“Bless you,” Minghao says drily from where he’s sitting, closing his book to look up at Mingyu. One thumb sits embedded, marking Minghao’s place. Mingyu sniffles smiles in return.
Minghao laughs while he fishes around in his bag. Wordlessly, he holds out a handkerchief.
Mingyu’s hand is already outstretched, reaching out.
They perform the exchange, having perfected the routine by now: On Mondays Mingyu brings Minghao flowers from the farmer’s market. Minghao makes sure he has the tissues that Mingyu needs after handling them. The entire time, Mingyu checks to see if Joshua Hong is watching.
Mingyu presents him the bouquet with exaggerated flourish, eager to perform, preening under the attention, the laughs that Minghao lets out just for him. Mingyu lets himself watch Minghao push his nose into the fresh blooms for a little longer than proprietary dictates. Something in his chest squeezes.
He’s envious of the way Minghao can do that without turning into a mucous cannon, that’s all.
“Which ones did you sneeze on?”
Mingyu looks at him guiltily. Then, slowly, carefully, he points out each unfortunate victim.
Minghao doesn’t throw a single one out.
Mingyu sees the bouquet the next day in his dorm, flowers sitting in the droopy vase Minghao had rescued from Mingyu, a remnant from the one semester Mingyu had tried his hands at ceramics and promptly hated it because he couldn’t make anything good.
Minghao places them front and center, making Mingyu’s flowers the first thing people see when they enter his home.
Mingyu’s social life also starts to suffer. He starts to accompany Minghao everywhere, to every single art installation and museum popup that the other expressed interest in. How did Mingyu feel about forking over a day’s worth of wages to try out this new expensive hotpot place? Sure, Mingyu had been itching for something soupy anyways. Minghao wanted to spend the entire day in Seoul museum-hopping, close to exam season? Yeah, sure, his schedule should be free. It wasn’t like Mingyu wanted to be anywhere else.
For Minghao, Mingyu was always free.
“Don’t you have anything else going on?” Minghao was starting to get suspicious.
Their hands were currently clasped together, swinging between them while they took a stroll around campus. Mingyu had spotted Joshua earlier sitting on the veranda, one cup of coffee nestled between his hands. He had seen the way Joshua put his drink down when they’d passed by, a spark of interest carving up his face. Had seen the way Minghao’s eyes lit up when he’d seen it, too.
“I had to cancel three dates to be here, if that’s what you’re asking,” Mingyu shrugs nonchalantly.
Minghao halts in his tracks, eyes wide as he turns to Mingyu. The horror is evident on his face, there for all to see. It’s cute. It is actually really, really cute.
Mingyu laughs, a high-pitched horrible giggling sound that starts in his nose and migrates all the way down to his chest. God, he’s got it so bad. This is all sorts of embarrassing. But it’s also Minghao, so. It’s okay. Minghao’s seen embarrassing before, on Mingyu. There’s no need to hide.
“Yah. It’s a joke.” Mingyu bumps Minghao’s shoulder good-naturedly.
Minghao rolls his eyes. “You have a horrible sense of humor.”
“What does that say about you? You’re always laughing when I’m around.” Mingyu points a finger at Minghao accusingly, waggling it back and forth.
“That’s because your face is funny looking.” Minghao sniffs, stalking off. He keeps their hands connected though, starting the arm swinging up again.
Mingyu scrambles to follow Minghao’s lead, unable to keep his silly little grin from forming.
“It’s just,” Minghao grumbles, after a bit of silence, like he still can’t stop thinking about it now that the subject has been uncovered. Now that it’s out there in the open. “You’re always free when I ask. Is this what being an econ major is like? I should have picked that instead.”
“It’s not like film & media studies is too hard either,” Mingyu teases. “What do you even do, just watch movies all day?”
“Shut up,” Minghao laughs. The long-standing joke pads the space between them.
“I’m serious, Mingyu,” Minghao’s voice grows quiet. It’s one of those moments that makes Mingyu wonder if he should give up the ghost. If he should abandon everything and whirl Minghao around, face to face, heart to heart, all sincerity and honesty and truth. Tell him, look at me look at me look at me.
Mingyu is right here. Doesn’t that count for anything?
“Don’t tell me you have your whole life planned around me.” Minghao shakes his head. “Because that would make me an awful person.”
Mingyu registers that their hands are still clasped together, even though Joshua is out of sight. Something about that strengthens his resolve. He’ll keep this a little longer. He’ll hold on.
Mingyu chooses not to dwell on what that says about him.
What’s the saying? Ignorance is bliss?
He can afford to be stupid just a little bit longer.
“You are an awful person,” Mingyu says instead. The only thing he regrets is the sudden loss of warmth as Minghao yanks his hand out to shove Mingyu down into a snowbank.
Mingyu is down horrendous. At least, this is what Seokmin and Jihoon repeatedly tell him.
Mingyu doesn’t mind it all too much, really.
With Minghao, he finds himself more open to trying new things. These fake dates, they all broadened his horizons. It was good practice too, in the future, for when Minghao finally got together with Joshua, inevitably leaving Mingyu on his own to scramble for a date to look a little less lonely.
His current reasoning (re: the thing that he tells himself so he can sleep better at night, instead of staying awake staring up at the ceiling wondering, Is this what my life has come to?) is that all of this is valuable experience. Mingyu is learning. He’s being enlightened.
For example: Mingyu typically drew the line at avant garde, but then he found himself browsing at an exhibition actually enjoying himself as he dutifully snapped all of Minghao’s Instagram thirst traps. Like a little dog, trailing behind its owner. Just happy to be there.
Wasn’t that great?
Okay, yeah. So it wasn’t ideal.
But Mingyu had gotten a taste of what it was like to be with Minghao, and well — he was starting to realize that he liked it. A lot.
A lot more than any old regular friend would.
Somewhere in the midst of all of their dates, a switch flips.
Suddenly, it occurs to Mingyu that he is not faking it. Maybe he had never been. He can’t even be too bothered about the fact that – gag – Seokmin was right. In the end, Mingyu wasn’t able to carefully protect his heart at all. Instead, he was sitting here, out in the open, wishing everything fake was real.
The worst part about all of this is that he can’t quite tell if Minghao feels the same.
Minghao doesn’t notice that Mingyu notices this. He still inundates their Kakao chat with flurries of texts like, Oh my god Shua liked my post! and omg look what he commented (Mingyu isn’t quite sure what exactly he is supposed to be getting from these because Joshua almost exclusively uses emojis), and obsessively checking whether or not Joshua has viewed Minghao’s stories (“Myungho-yah, what if Joshua has a burner account, and we’ve been looking at the wrong username this entire time?”). Stories that Minghao and Mingyu had carefully selected and posted together hours before, not that anyone is keeping track (barring Mingyu, of course). Mingyu had even ended up monitoring these posts after they were uploaded, having to report back to Minghao, because he’d get extremely antsy and toss his phone to Mingyu, one arm draped over his eyes dramatically. I’m too nervous, you look.
And so Mingyu had the intimate knowledge of Minghao’s class schedules, the way Minghao liked his tea, Minghao’s Instagram passwords, how Minghao wanted to dress when he wanted attention or none at all. All of Mingyu’s life was filled to the brim with the little things he knew about Minghao. But he didn’t know if Minghao liked him back.
Although it wasn’t the first time he felt that this was becoming more of a punishment than a plan, it was the first time that Mingyu felt a little flutter of dread kicking in his stomach.
They were sitting shoulder to shoulder but it felt like Minghao was the furthest he’d ever been from Mingyu.
Something had to be done.
Cue present day —
Mingyu kills the engine.
He wrings his hands. Shoves them into his pockets. Fiddles with the hem of his shirt, then with the keys jangling in his hands, on the carabiner attached to the front loop of his jeans. Looks everywhere but at Minghao.
There’s this movie that Mingyu and Minghao used to watch together all the time, back when Minghao was being a little pretentious and decided that he was going to start getting into international cinema. We don’t even know English, Mingyu had complained. Minghao had smiled, sly. But we can learn. We have all the time in the world. And that was all Mingyu needed to sit down and watch it with him.
Mingyu doesn’t remember much of it now. Just glimpses of motion and emotion. What ifs and if I hads, piling up on the roof of a random house on the beach, so heavy that it threatened to cave in. The past was worth regretting. You already knew how things played out. It was easier living there. The future? Now that was hard. Somebody else lived in that house on the beach, but you could pretend, for the night, for an infinitesimal fleeting moment, that it was yours. That it could be yours. Waves came in from the shore, and around, on all sides, cold water lapping at bare ankles and seeping deep into your bones. When did the water get here? The inevitability of slow decay. It is hard to tell when things are rotting from the outside. By the time you figure it out, it’s too late. The entire thing comes crumbling down on top of you.
This feels a little bit like that, yeah.
“Mingyu-yah.” There is something broken in the way Minghao calls his name. Mingyu’s entire body freezes.
“Did you take me all the way out here,” Minghao says slowly, fingertips trailing over the hood of the car, “so that you could break up with me?”
Mingyu gulps. The sound of the sea rushes in. It tells Minghao all he needs to know.
In retrospect, it was supposed to be romantic. Valiantly sacrificing himself for the romantic interest (Minghao being the insanely and easily lovable main character — of course — pining over someone who was handsome in a mysterious and sexy way. This unfortunately happened to be their Korean-American classmate Joshua Hong, currently studying at their university on foreign exchange, and not Kim Mingyu, but no matter. He was never going to be able to compete with that, anyways.), freeing Minghao from any further entanglements or weird sense of misguided but well-meaning loyalties to Finally Pursue His Dreams.
Mingyu had it all planned out. Fix up that old clunker sitting abandoned in Seungcheol’s shop. Pour his heart into that thing because he didn’t know where else to put it — better than sitting on his hands anyways. At least he’d make use of it. Then he’d drive both of them to the beach. No reason, other than that all of Minghao’s favorite movies involved the ocean, and maybe somewhere deep inside Mingyu was hoping for a miracle. Something to convince him that they could start anew. But yeah, they’d sit in the sand. Watch the sunset until the sun flies down the horizon and bleeds out into the sky. Spill his feelings out into the sea because Mingyu was — is, will always be — terrified of Minghao looking over at him one day and seeing, really seeing, just how much Mingyu had given away to him.
The ocean took things in when they came to her, and in her own way, spat them back out whenever the time was right. This was exactly what they needed, he and Minghao.
It was like a metaphor, or something. Poetic. Pathetic.
Mingyu got those two mixed up more often than he’d like to admit.
“Fuck you,” Minghao scowls and flings open the passenger door with a force so wild that, once the sheer shock wears off, Mingyu is belatedly very grateful that he let Seungcheol talk him into replacing the hinges. Minghao shoves himself into the passenger seat, very resolutely staring ahead. His shoulders have crawled up to his ears, fists clenched tightly, like he is bracing himself to fight the world.
Mingyu, respectfully, does not want to get in the way of that. But it’s also partially – okay, mostly – his fault that Minghao is like this, so it is also becomes his responsibility to fix it.
“Don’t you want to look at the ocean?” Mingyu tries. “It’s very pretty. We drove 3 hours for it.”
“Take me home.” Minghao levels Mingyu a look so vitriolic he valiantly tries not to flinch. It happens regardless. “You’re stupid, and I want to go home.”
Minghao’s voice wobbles on the last bit.
“Okay,” Mingyu feels like somewhere he lost the plot. He also wants to cry, but if everyone currently in the car cries, no one will be able to drive them the three hours back. “Let’s go home.”
Mingyu curls up his hurt and packages it away for later.
He obeys. He drives. The ocean sits in his rearview mirror.
It doesn’t occur to Mingyu that Minghao is silent because he is too busy crying until sometime in between hour one and two, when Mingyu finally allows himself to glance over. He catches a glimpse of a reddened nose and swollen eyes in the fading daylight, glistening tear tracks.
Minghao catches him looking.
Mingyu’s neck cracks with the force he uses to whip his head forward and back towards the road.
Don’t look, Mingyu coaches himself, despite the way his eyes itch to stray back to the right. Don’t look don’t look don’t look.
“Did you ever think,” Minghao sniffles, deathly quiet, “for one second, that maybe it got real for me, too? That I was scared, too?”
No, because that would mean—
Minghao is glaring at Mingyu, angry fat tears rolling down his cheeks.
Mingyu feels thunderstruck.
His foot slips. In his daze, he accidentally presses on the brakes instead of the gas. A horrid squeal erupts from his tires as the car stops and they jerk forward.
Mingyu’s right arm launches out instinctively to protect Minghao, hovering protectively over the other’s chedt. The only thing that keeps Mingyu from braining himself on the dash is his seatbelt, nearly choking him in the process.
“Did you just almost kill us?” Minghao demands, like there aren't more pressing matters at hand.
Mingyu ignores him, self-preservation instincts kicking in. He offers profuse apologies to the ahjussi behind them, who is cussing them out with a surprising ferocity despite a seemingly harmless demeanor. Mingyu feels detached from his body. Maybe he actually did kill them and this is his conscience trying to come to terms with the fact they’re like, Dead dead. God, that’s depressing. Does a God even exist?
Well, Mingyu thinks grimly, he’s surely about to find out.
Distantly, muscles moving of their own accord, he pulls over to the side of the road, turning on the warning lights. There are a thousand buzzers blaring inside his brain, the record player of memory stuck on Minghao’s Did you think and ending with That I was scared, too.
Frankly speaking, Mingyu does not have the emotional capacitance for processing anything right now. His world is ending for the second time this year alone.
On impulse, he holds two fingers up to under his jaw, feeling the jump of muscle beneath his touch.
Nope. Definitely not dead. His heart is still beating, strong as a horse.
Minghao watches this all happen. He repeats himself, this time not so much a question as it is an accusation. “You almost fucking killed us,” he says incredulously.
Mingyu considers this. Yes, this is true. But also —
“We didn’t die,” Mingyu offers hopefully.
“We almost did, though.” Minghao retorts.
And whose fault is that, Mingyu wants to throw back sulkily. But he values his life, and there have been too many justifications for Minghao to decapitate Mingyy today, so he doesn’t.
“Am I still stupid?” Mingyu asks nervously.
Minghao barely takes a moment to decide. “Yes,” he snaps.
“But I thought… you and Joshua..?” Mingyu prompts, genuine confusion.
Minghao makes a disbelieving sound. As if he is personally affronted at the suggestion, when all of this had been for Joshua and Minghao from the very beginning. Wasn’t it? Isn’t it? Mingyu’s brain is desperately trying to make this all work in his head. Nothing is fitting together quite like it should be. His head aches from doing the mental acrobatics.
Minghao gesticulates with his entire body, arms moving up and down in exaggeration. “I like you.”
“That’s not true,” Mingyu blurts out automatically. “You like Joshua.”
Minghao sends Mingyu another incredulous look. Like, are you really telling me how I feel right now?
Minghao huffs, looking up at the ceiling. There are no answers inscribed on there. Mingyu looks too, unable to tamp down his curiosity — he can’t see anything of much consequence besides a questionable splotch he hadn’t noticed before. He’ll have to take the power washer to it when they get back.
No one says anything for a while.
“Mingyu?” Minghao is grinding his teeth so hard that Mingyu swears he hears the way Minghao’s jaw clicks as it works itself to the bone.
“Can we make it back home in one piece, at least?”
Mingyu gulps. He nods, shutting the warning lights off. On goes on the turn signal.
This time he presses the right pedal. Just like that they’re moving. Easy does it.
“Yeah,” he croaks. “I can do that.”
They sit in silence for the rest of the ride, but it’s fraught with unshakeable anger. Mingyu feels like he is one step away from stepping off a very large cliff. Or being throttled alive. Or maybe Jeonghan will pop out from seemingly nowhere, a phone camera in his hand, that terrible gremlin smile etched on his face, yelling, Gotcha!
Mingyu nervously checks the backseat in his mirror. There’s no Jeonghan. Yet, an ominous voice in his head reminds him. He could still be hiding somewhere. Jeonghan-hyung proved very resourceful when he wanted to be.
Having exhausted everywhere else to look, Mingyu trains his eyes resolutely on the road. He is too terrified to glance over at Minghao.
He jerks up the volume of the radio. Minghao’s hand shoots out immediately and turns it back down.
Minghao is very clearly telling Mingyu to suffer.
No need for that, Mingyu thinks hysterically, psychoanalyzing everything that has led up to this very moment and sending himself into a spiral all by himself. He’s incredibly resourceful like that.
“Nice weather we’re having,” Mingyu says while he internally panics, settling on the shittiest fucking conversation starter he can think of. He immediately craves a swift and merciful death. He prays for something to come careening into his side of the car. Just his side though. Minghao doesn’t deserve any of that. One of them, at least, should emerge unscathed from all this.
Minghao’s stomach growls, cutting clean through the silence.
“You’re hungry.” Mingyu doesn’t pose it like a question. Minghao continues to fight him anyway.
“No,” Minghao says, stubborn until the bitter end. His stomach growls again, a burbling sound.
“We’re taking a stop,” Mingyu crows. Before Minghao can argue any further, Mingyu flicks on his blinker to take the nearest exit. He tries to keep the triumphant look off of his face, but he must not be doing a very good job because Minghao’s face darkens and Mingyu is left immediately fearing for his life again.
It looks crowded when they pull into the parking lot. If it’s possible, Minghao’s face darkens even more.
“I’ll get it,” Minghao says, brokering no room for argument. He’s already unbuckling his seat and reaching for the door handle, slipping out before Mingyu can properly respond.
“Okay,” Mingyu says. His voice echoes back at him.
When Minghao comes back, greasy food gathered in his arms, he throws the receipt in Mingyu’s face.
Mingyu is pretending to be busy fishing out the bills in his wallet, even though he has the exact change marked away already.
“Did you get —“ He asks, out of habit, forgetting that he’s not exactly Minghao’s favorite person right now.
“Yeah.”
“And did you remember to —“
“Yeah.”
“No pickles?” Mingyu winces. One last thing. It’s not too terribly inconvenient if Minghao didn’t remember — Mingyu doesn’t blame him either. He can just idle the car and walk back in there to ask them to remake his burger.
“Yeah,” Minghao says shortly, tossing him the bag. He’s still not looking at Mingyu. “Yeah, I got everything.”
“Oh,” Mingyu says. Because it means a lot, Mingyu thinks (he’s not really sure, this is uncharted territory for him) when you unintentionally stomp on someone’s heart and they still have the decency to remember your fast food order to a tee.
“You’re welcome,” Minghao huffs, slinking down until the seat belt cuts into his chin. He puts extra care to peel off his socks and sticks them on the dash, wiggling his toes for good measure. Mingyu doesn’t tell him to take down his feet and Minghao holds Mingyu’s burger for him to take bites out of while he drives them back home.
They pull into the garage beneath Minghao’s apartment.
Minghao makes no move to get out. Like, you’re going to make me say it? After all this?
“I hate you,” Minghao tells him matter of factly. It sticks, wetly, in his throat though, which tells Mingyu the exact opposite. Minghao lets Mingyu lean over, as far as the console will let him. He goes willingly into Mingyu’s arms.
Already forgiven, then. Mingyu can work with that.
“I’m sorry,” he breathes into the crown of Minghao’s hair.
“You better be.” Minghao pauses for a moment. Then, a pause. Offering up a bone: “The car’s pretty good. You fixed it up yourself?”
Mingyu perks up. “Yeah, I did. You really think so?”
“It didn’t break down on us during that 6 hour drive, so yeah.” Minghao settles on, which is as good as Mingyu is going to get. He feels like he could take on the sun.
Minghao gets out and leans on the passenger side door. “So, are you gonna pick me up tomorrow in this thing, or what?”
Tomorrow. Mingyu feels his grin growing stupid. Not too eager, he tells himself. Not too eager.
“Yeah!” His voice bounces around the walls of the empty parking garage with excessive enthusiasm. It seems to go on forever and ever and ever. Minghao screws up his face in a way that seems like he’s judging Mingyu, but Mingyu knows he’s really trying his hardest not to laugh.
Nailed it.
(min9kyu_k): xuminghao_o added to their story.
It’s a picture of the ocean in the rearview mirror. Mingyu isn’t sure when Minghao had taken it, but there it sits, the sunset and the open road and the beautiful blue. Picture proof.
“Not bad. Company could be better though @/min9kyu_k”
Mingyu laughs. He’ll make it up to Minghao.