Work Text:
“Wooyoung,” Mingi says on a sunny Thursday afternoon, “can you teach me how to make tteokbokki?”
“Fifty bucks,” Wooyoung says.
Mingi sits up. San, who prior to that moment had been using Mingi’s arm as a cushion, flops unceremoniously onto the empty space left on the couch. “ Please ,” Mingi wheedles, clasping his hands under his chin. “You know I can’t afford that! And it’s for a good cause!”
Wooyoung looks up at Mingi from his spot on the floor, distinctly unimpressed. “You could’ve afforded it if you didn’t spend forty bucks on that T-shirt.”
“It was the Fullmetal Alchemist fifteenth anniversary limited edition drop! What was I gonna do, not buy it?”
“What’s the cause?” San asks, words muffled from the way his face is smushed into the couch.
Mingi scratches the back of his neck. The idea’s been making him weirdly nervous ever since it first popped into his head about a week ago, but he still hasn’t put his finger on why. Maybe it’s the memory of the last time he tried cooking and gave himself food poisoning. “I, uh, wanted to surprise Yunho.”
Wooyoung, because he has some superhuman internal bullshit detector that goes off whenever someone’s hiding something from him, narrows his eyes. “All of a sudden? On a random weekday?”
“Yes?” Mingi tries. Wooyoung’s eyes get squintier. “Well, I mean, preferably a random weekday… exactly three weeks from now?”
San smacks around blindly for a phone. He ends up grabbing Mingi’s, unlocks it (“Wait,” Mingi says, “how do you know my password?”), and pulls up the Calendar app. “That’s Valentine’s Day.”
“Haha,” Mingi says, snatching his phone out of San’s hand. “That’s… a coincidence?”
“ Mingi ,” Wooyoung says. “You’re going to make tteokbokki for Yunho as a surprise on Valentine’s Day? Just the two of you?”
“Well, I’m not gonna be able to make it if you won’t teach me,” Mingi argues.
“And this is platonic? ” Wooyoung says skeptically.
Mingi huffs. It’s not like he hates this running joke in their friend group, that he and Yunho are dating - Yunho is objectively a catch, and far enough out of his league that most of the time he just chooses to take it as a compliment. But it’s at times like these, when he’s already a little on edge, that the joke kind of rubs him the wrong way.
“Cut it out,” he says. “He hasn’t had plans for Valentine’s since, like, high school. And he should! Out of everyone, he should.”
There must be something in his voice, because Wooyoung visibly softens, and San reaches out to pat his knee. “You’re right,” San says. “I think what you’re doing is really nice, Mingi.”
“I’m surprised you don’t have plans, though,” Wooyoung points out. “What happened to your boy from Felix’s party? You aren’t doing anything with him?”
Mingi makes himself laugh, even as the memory of his last conversation with Hyunwoo grips him by the base of the throat and shakes him around like a ragdoll. “What? No. That wasn’t anything serious. So you’ll teach me? To make it? I’ll buy you, like, three coffees.”
Wooyoung sighs and reaches up to pinch Mingi’s cheek, which is how Mingi knows he’s won. “Make it four.”
“Deal,” Mingi says. “But seriously,” he asks San, “how do you know my password?”
--
1 week ago
“Don’t come close to me,” Yunho warns. “I smell really bad.”
Mingi waits for the last kid to leave, then leans into the doorway and gets blasted by a wave of hot air. “Shit, it’s like a sauna in here,” he says. “What happened?”
Yunho hikes his duffel bag up onto his shoulder. His hair is damp, curling up slightly around his ears and the back of his neck. “The AC broke. They can’t get someone in to fix it until tomorrow morning.” He walks over to where Mingi’s standing in the doorway, bumping their shoulders together in greeting before turning the light off. He doesn’t even smell that bad – just sweat and something boyish, like summer nights with cicadas buzzing in the trees.
“Oh, ugh, yeah, stinker alert,” Mingi says, wrinkling his nose and making a show of clearing the air in front of his face. “Stay away from me dude, is it contagious?”
“Shut up,” Yunho snorts. They both wave at the receptionist as they cross the lobby. “How was class?”
“It was okay. The prof liked one of my questions.” Mingi pushes the door open, and the winter night greets him like a slap to the face. “ Fuck it’s cold,” he complains, zipping his jacket all the way up to his chin.
He shrugs his backpack off one shoulder and digs around until he finds Yunho’s scarf. It’s the one Mingi bought him for his birthday last year, a cream-colored cashmere and wool blend that’s seen so much use that its ends are already showing signs of fraying. Mingi saw it hanging on the coat rack before he left for class, which means Yunho went out without checking the weather again.
“Thanks,” Yunho says softly, taking the scarf from Mingi and wrapping it around his neck. It’s so long that it covers the entire bottom half of his face, creating the impression that Mingi is walking next to a six-foot-one, cream-colored Q-tip. “I knew I forgot something today.”
“What would you do without me?” Mingi jokes, even though he already knows the answer. Yunho taught himself how to cook in freshman year, armed with only YouTube and their shitty dorm kitchen; he’s the youngest teacher at his dance studio, teaching two classes a week in the evenings. Mingi still calls his mom whenever he gets a headache.
“Freeze my ass off, obviously,” Yunho says. His cheeks squish up as he settles into the layers of his scarf, the tip of his nose pink from the cold. “And I’d be out of a roommate.” He reaches over Mingi’s head, and Mingi follows the movement to see him push a low-hanging branch out of his path.
He coughs away a strange itch in the back of his throat. “No ass and no roommate,” he says. “Sounds like a bad time.”
Yunho grins at him. “Exactly.”
Their path takes them through the park, where the streetlights cast a fuzzy glow over the crown of Yunho’s head. Up ahead, there’s a food truck parked in the grass. Mingi matches Yunho’s pace as he slows to a stop and sniffs the air like a dog, then turns to Mingi, bright-eyed. “Want tteokbokki?”
The tteokbokki comes in a comically large cardboard container that Mingi has to hold with both hands. Yunho alternates between feeding Mingi and himself, laughing when Mingi misses the chopsticks and gets a large smear of sauce across his cheek.
“Don’t make fun of me,” Mingi whines. “I can’t even use my hands.”
“Sorry, sorry.” Yunho separates one individual napkin from the bunch he took from the food truck and dabs at Mingi’s face, his other hand holding Mingi’s chin. Up close, his lips are shiny and red from the sauce. Mingi keeps his eyes on the road so he doesn’t trip.
“This is so good,” Yunho says happily, as around them the park gives way to the streets of their student-dominated neighborhood. “I wish we could eat stuff like this more often.” He picks up the last tteok and holds it up to Mingi’s mouth. “Here.”
Mingi snags the tteok between his teeth. It really is good - just a little too hot and just a little too spicy, reminding him of dinner with his mom and brother back home. It should make him more homesick than it does, but he’s too busy trying to figure out what song Yunho’s humming.
It probably makes Yunho homesick, too, now that he thinks about it. Neither of them have gone home in a while, not since the summer. He watches Yunho wipe his hands with a napkin, the movements oddly graceful, as an idea takes root in his brain.
--
“He looks like he’s trying to take a shit,” Yeosang stage-whispers.
“Oh God,” Mingi says, horrified. “Is it that bad? Am I giving him diarrhea?”
Wooyoung holds up a hand. They fall silent, watching Wooyoung chew, his eyebrows drawn together. He swallows, then takes a bite of the fish cake. Mingi can hear dramatic music playing in the background.
They’re in the kitchen of Wooyoung, Yeosang, and San’s apartment, chosen by virtue of being the largest out of all their friends’. San is at class; Yeosang drifted out of his room half an hour ago, drawn by the smell of food, and has been acting as the host for their makeshift cooking show ever since.
Wooyoung clears his throat and leans closer to Yeosang’s water bottle, which he’s holding up to Wooyoung’s face like a microphone. Mingi holds his breath. “The tteok is undercooked, and you put the green onion in too early,” Wooyoung says. “But it’s not bad. Yunho will like it.”
Mingi whoops and pulls Wooyoung into a celebratory side-hug, ignoring the latter when he squawks something about getting sauce on his sweater. Yeosang golf-claps, then makes grabby hands for the bowl.
“Oh, while we’re here,” Mingi says to Wooyoung, “can I borrow your makeup for tonight? I don’t wanna go home just to come back later.”
Wooyoung shrugs. Yeosang, who’s set in on the tteokbokki, gives Mingi a forty-five-degree thumbs-up, which in Yeosang-speak means ‘it’s fine, but I’d rather just order takeout’. Whatever. Mingi will take it.
“Mi casa es su casa,” Wooyoung says, “but what are you gonna do about clothes? Unless-” and here his smile becomes slightly evil.
“No no, not that,” Mingi says quickly. The last time he was without a party outfit, he let Wooyoung convince him to wear the tiniest shirt in existence, which in theory was a good idea but in reality meant spending the whole night desperately needing to shit. He breaks out into a cold sweat just thinking about it. “Anything but that. I’ll just get Yunho to bring my stuff over.”
“Aw, you guys are so domestic,” Wooyoung says. “I wish I had a best friend slash roommate who did nice things for me.”
They both turn to Yeosang, who blinks. “Did you ask me a question? I wasn’t listening.”
Mingi laughs at the look on Wooyoung’s face. “Me and Yunho are totally winning the best friend contest right now,” he declares, only half-joking. Yeosang and Wooyoung share a bone-deep, instinctive understanding that can only be achieved with literally watching each other grow up, but Mingi prefers what he and Yunho have. The whole world in the last tteok in the container.
“You just made that up,” Wooyoung says, “and even if you didn’t, Hongjoong and Seonghwa would be winning. No contest.”
“They’re literally dating!” Mingi protests. “That doesn’t count!”
Wooyoung looks pointedly at the empty bowl on the counter. Yeosang, who apparently has just now started to pay attention to the conversation, grabs Wooyoung’s hand and lifts it in the air like a referee declaring the winner of a boxing match. Mingi sighs but doesn’t argue. He knows when he’s beaten.
--
Mingi is sitting on the living room floor, his laptop propped up on the tea table and a mildly concerning ache in his lower back, when Wooyoung leaps up and runs to the door. A few minutes later, someone flicks him gently on the head. “Sit up a little,” Yunho says. “You’re gonna mess up your back.”
“What are you, my mom?” Mingi huffs, but he straightens (ha) anyway. “Did you bring my stuff?”
Yunho drops into the space on the floor next to Mingi, handing over a drawstring bag. “I just grabbed whatever was on your chair.”
“Perfect,” Mingi says. They are so winning the best friend contest right now. “How’d you do on your test?”
“I don’t know,” Yunho admits, sighing a little. He’s not the type to pout, but if he were, he’d totally be pouting. It’s really cute. “A lot of the questions were pretty hard.”
“You probably did fine,” Mingi says. He reaches out and straightens Yunho’s bangs, which have gotten rumpled in his walk to the apartment. “You were studying for, like, five gazillion hours. There’s no way you didn’t know the answers.”
“We can play FIFA,” Yeosang offers from the couch. “I’ll let you beat me so you feel better.”
Yunho laughs. “Don’t you have an essay to work on?”
“Haha,” Yeosang says, shoving a controller into Yunho’s hand, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I literally don’t know how to read.”
Yunho climbs up onto the couch between Yeosang and Wooyoung, leaving Mingi to work alone on the floor. Mingi frowns down at his laptop, a little miffed by the turn of events, but then Yunho taps the top of his head lightly. “Sit here,” he says, gesturing to the space between the couch and tea table. “It’ll be easier on your back.”
So Mingi spends the rest of the afternoon leaning against the bottom of the couch, Yunho’s knees on either side of his shoulders. It’s a little hard to focus with the noise of the game and the commentary behind him, but it’s nice to occupy the same space as his friends without feeling obligated to contribute to the conversation. Yunho brushes his fingers through Mingi’s hair during breaks in gameplay, which is a nice bonus.
San comes home when the sun is setting and immediately claims Mingi’s lap as a pillow. Mingi’s concentration is now threatened by both FIFA and the cat memes on San’s phone, which he can see from the corner of his eye. By the time Seonghwa and Hongjoong arrive, drinks and Jongho in tow, he’s managed about twenty pages over the last four hours.
The people who play games play a game, and the people who don’t (namely Mingi, Seonghwa, and Hongjoong) set up the drinks in the kitchen. Then they do a round of drinking games, which San loses horribly, but everyone agrees that making him chug the penalty drink would be cruel and unusual punishment, so it goes to Jongho instead. Then Wooyoung points at Mingi and says, “I need to put some makeup on you. Go change,” so Mingi goes to change.
To him, getting ready has always been one of the best parts of going out - swapping clothes, choosing accessories, all the small things that bring a look together. After changing, he finds himself sitting on the toilet lid, Wooyoung applying makeup to seemingly random parts of his face and body while Hongjoong pilfers his jewelry collection.
“Dude,” Mingi mumbles. The sensation of Wooyoung dusting glitter over his face is actually very soothing, and it’s making him kind of sleepy. “Did you start working out?”
Wooyoung seems pleased about the question. “Kinda? Sometimes I go with San and Yeosang if I don’t have anything else to do. Why? Can you tell?”
Mingi almost nods, before he remembers that Wooyoung is holding a very pointy brush very close to his eye, and reconsiders. “Your boobs are, like, sucking me in right now.” Wooyoung’s wearing a loose, low-cut shirt that hangs down when he leans over, exposing the expanse of his torso. It’s a nice view. Mingi isn’t afraid to admit that his friends are hot.
Wooyoung lets out a loud, delighted laugh. “Your mom sucked me in last night,” he informs Mingi, grinning from ear to ear.
“What am I even listening to,” Hongjoong laments. “Mingi, is it okay if I take this?”
Mingi cracks an eye open. Hongjoong’s holding one of his rings up, a black one with silver accents. Mingi doesn’t know what he’s planning to do with that, since Mingi’s hands are, like the rest of him, twice the size of Hongjoong’s, but he keeps his mouth shut because he enjoys living. “Yeah, of course,” he says. “You don’t think Wooyoung’s boobs are sexy?”
Wooyoung pauses in his glitter-applying to turn the full force of his Pout™ on Hongjoong, one hand on his hip. “You don’t think my boobs are sexy?”
Hongjoong wears the expression of a deer being cornered by a pack of wolves. “I don’t think there’s a safe way for me to answer that question.”
“We’re calling the Uber in fifteen minutes, so you guys should hurry if you want to do one more shot.” This is Seonghwa, who’s materialized in the open doorway of the bathroom like he sensed Hongjoong’s distress. (He probably did. Those two are freaks.) “Also, quit harassing my boyfriend.”
Wooyoung harrumphs. “You’re no fun.” He turns back to Mingi, sweeping a critical eye over his appearance before smacking his back like the roof of a car. “You’re all done. Go get drunk.”
“You’re the best,” Mingi tells him very sincerely, and flees the washroom before he has to witness Wooyoung asking Seonghwa about his boobs.
In the living room, Jongho seems to be demolishing San and Yeosang at a card game that Mingi doesn’t recognize (and can’t be sure that Jongho didn’t just make up on the spot). Yunho is the sole occupant of the couch, leaning against the armrest as he taps idly at his phone, a bottle cradled in the crook of his elbow.
He looks up when Mingi sits down next to him, turning off his phone and placing it face-down on his lap. “I heard something about Wooyoung’s boobs?”
“They’re nice,” Mingi says, leaning over to snag the bottle out of Yunho’s arm. He unscrews the cap and drinks straight from the mouth, tipping his head back. When he looks back at Yunho, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, the latter seems to have zoned out, his eyes resting somewhere around Mingi’s collarbone. “Everything okay?”
Yunho snaps back into focus. “Your necklaces,” he says, a little too quickly. “They’re getting tangled.”
“Oh shit.” Mingi looks down, but it’s dim in the living room with the only light coming from the kitchen, and his line of sight isn’t great. “I think I need to go back to the bathroom. Do you think it’s safe in there? What if I walk in on Hongjoong and Seonghwa making out again?”
Yunho shakes his head. “Just- here.” He leans closer and starts fiddling with the chains around Mingi’s neck, his fingers brushing against the exposed skin at the base of Mingi’s throat. From this angle, Mingi can see his eyelashes flutter as he blinks. He has really pretty eyes. Mingi might be drunk.
Yunho reaches around to the back of Mingi’s neck and adjusts something. “There,” he says quietly. His hand skates over Mingi’s shoulder and down his arm, coming to a rest over the wrist that’s still holding the bottle. The side of his thigh is incredibly warm. “That’s better.”
Mingi wonders if Yunho can feel his pulse, the Morse code of his heartbeat jackhammering away. The problem is that Mingi has no idea what it’s saying - but then again, if anyone could figure it out, it’d be Yunho. “Are they gonna kiss?” he hears San whisper-shout.
“No way, dude,” Wooyoung whisper-shouts back. “It’s gonna take way more than that. Remember when they used to sleep in the same bed?”
“They can hear you, you know,” Hongjoong says at normal volume.
With not a small amount of difficulty, Mingi tears himself away from Yunho and turns to face the others, who have all assembled in the living room in the time it took for Yunho to fix his necklaces. “Shots for the road?” he offers, holding up the bottle in his hand.
“Shots for the road,” Seonghwa declares, and disappears into the kitchen to retrieve the shot glasses. In the subsequent flurry of activity, Mingi thinks he hears Wooyoung say “I told you so” to San, but then Jongho starts blasting Shots by Lil Jon from his phone speaker at max volume, so it’s all drowned out.
There’s a shift of weight on the couch. Mingi glances over, to where Yunho was sitting seconds ago, but there’s only an empty cushion and a slightly deflated armrest in his wake. Mingi rubs the side of his thigh, which feels strangely cold, and goes to help Seonghwa set up the shots.
--
“Mingi.” Mingi looks down to find himself suddenly in possession of a Solo cup filled with water. “Drink this.”
He looks back up, and is greeted by the first sight he’s gotten of Yunho since they walked into the party and he vanished to talk to someone he recognized from class. “Yunho,” he breathes, moving to throw his arms around Yunho’s shoulders. He’s been having a good time, but it’s different without Yunho in his periphery. A little hollow in the pit of his stomach.
Yunho stops him with a frown and a hand placed firmly against his sternum. “Drink first, or you’re going to spill it all.”
Mingi rolls his eyes but obeys, spilling most of it anyways as he tips the cup back clumsily against his teeth. He finishes it off, then turns the cup upside down to show Yunho it’s empty. “Are you still mad at me?”
“What?” Yunho’s hand drops, and he looks stricken. “I’m not mad at you.”
“You totally are,” Mingi accuses, swaying a little with the force of his conviction. Yunho grabs his arms to steady him, and the solidness of him is comforting enough to briefly make Mingi forget that he’s supposed to be upset. He’s so used to being the physically bigger one, the one doing the steadying, with everyone else. It’s nice to have a shoulder he can lean on without having to fold himself in half. “I haven’t seen you all night.”
Yunho opens his mouth, then closes it. His shoulders slump a little. “You’re right,” he admits. “I’m sorry. It’s not your fault.”
Mingi tries to shake his head, but it just throws him off-balance. Yunho grabs him again, around his waist this time, warm and easy despite everything. The collar of Yunho’s shirt shifts, revealing pale, delicate collarbones. It takes Mingi a moment to remember what they were talking about.
“You said you’d tell me,” he says, “if I did something.” They’d been in high school then. He has a vague memory of walking back to Yunho’s house, shirts untucked, drinking banana milk from the convenience store. They were fresh off making up from a fight, over something stupid probably, and promised to talk rather than resort to passive-aggressive bullshit. Yunho remembers, too. He’s sure.
Yunho presses his lips together, and all the alcohol sloshing around in Mingi’s stomach turns sour. He knows that look. Yunho hates lying, because he has an integrity that sometimes makes Mingi feel like the gross stuff that collects at the bottom of their garbage bin, so he’s going to try to avoid a direct response. Which means Mingi basically has his answer.
A hand brushes his arm, one he knows instinctively isn’t Yunho’s. “Hey stranger,” says a voice that sets Mingi’s teeth on edge.
He turns. Hyunwoo looks the same as he did the last time they spoke - same small delicate features, same sharp eyes and confident smile. Mingi’s way too drunk for this. “Hyunwoo,” he says.
Hyunwoo’s focus shifts to the side, where Yunho is standing, one hand still pressed firmly to the small of Mingi’s back. “You’re Mingi’s friend, right? Sorry, I don’t remember your name.”
“You’re good.” There’s a hard edge to Yunho’s voice. It’s been a while since Mingi’s seen him like this, everything about him permafrost-cold. Which Mingi would find weird if he were three shots more sober, because he hasn’t told anyone about his conversation with Hyunwoo; but since he is, in fact, three shots in the opposite direction, he just chalks it up to Yunho knowing him better than anyone.
“I haven’t seen you in forever,” Hyunwoo is saying. “Text me sometime, okay?”
“Yeah, sure, fine,” Mingi says, all three words all at once, even though he means none of them. Mostly he just wants Hyunwoo to leave. Unconsciously, he leans back into Yunho’s hand, solid like an anchor.
Hyunwoo winks at him, then disappears into the crowd. Someone tugs at his wrist - Yunho. “Let’s go somewhere quieter?” he’s asking.
Mingi nods and lets Yunho lead him out of the living room and into the hall, where it’s darker and more peaceful, save for the couple violently making out outside the bathroom. They come to a stop at the opposite end of the hall; Yunho lets go of his hand, and he slides down the wall until he’s in a crouch, his forehead pressed to his knees.
Yunho gives him about thirty seconds of peace before he asks. “What happened with you guys?”
Mingi shakes his head. He’s still holding the Solo cup Yunho gave him, crumpled from the force of his grip. You and me both , he thinks. “Nothing.”
There’s a brief pause. Even with his eyes closed, Mingi knows Yunho’s crouching down next to him, not touching but close enough that he can reach out if he wants to. “Mingi.” And oh, no, he’s using the Soft Voice. Mingi is too drunk to resist the Soft Voice. “It’s not nothing.”
He can’t resist the Soft Voice, but he would also rather die than tell Yunho what happened, high school promise be damned. “I can handle it,” he insists, lifting his head. Sure enough: Yunho, within reach. “I’m not a baby.”
He totally is, but Yunho has the emotional intelligence to refrain from pointing this out. “I’m not saying you can’t handle it,” he says. “But you’re obviously upset. It might help to talk about it?”
“What,” Mingi bites out, “like you talked about why you’re mad at me? Oh wait. You didn’t.”
He knows he’s being unfair. Yunho is only trying to help, in the same way he has for the past seven years. He has no reason to believe that Mingi won’t accept it. After all, for Mingi, he’s always been the exception to the rule.
But this is different. Just the thought of him telling Yunho, and Yunho struggling for a response - agreeing with Hyunwoo without saying a word - makes him sick. Even more sick than how he feels watching Yunho pull away from him, hurt written all over his face. Unlike Mingi, he’s almost completely sober. There’s no way he won’t remember this tomorrow.
“I wasn’t- I’m not mad at you,” Yunho says. “But if you didn’t want to talk about it, you could’ve just said so.”
“I did say so.” His voice is rising, in both pitch and volume, panic and anger and tequila pushing it higher. “You’re the one who kept asking .”
“Okay,” Yunho says. Mingi watches him climb slowly to his feet, pull his phone out, and type something, his face unreadable in the dim glow of the screen. An eternity passes, which is just enough time for Mingi to stew in his own words until his brain feels like mush. “Can you stay here for a bit?”
The anger vanishes. The tequila’s dying off, too, leaving him all panic. “Where are you going?” he asks, his voice bordering on a whine.
“I’m going to get one of our friends to take care of you,” Yunho says, “because I don’t think I can do that right now.”
Mingi stares at the sad crumpled Solo cup he’s still holding, which is looking more and more relatable by the minute. “So you’re leaving again.”
Yunho sighs. “Just don’t move,” he says, and then he’s gone.
In the end it’s Hongjoong and Seonghwa who take him home, being the least wasted aside from Yunho - Hongjoong because he has work the next morning, Seonghwa because he’s a mature adult who knows his own limits. Mingi feels like a stupid overgrown child, sandwiched between the two parent friends as he trips over his own feet.
If he hadn’t fucked up, if Yunho wasn’t mad at him, they’d be walking home together right now. Yunho would be squinting against the blue-white fluorescents of the convenience store two blocks from their apartment. He had a light dinner today, so he’ll want ramen. Mingi can see it: watching their cup noodles spinning around in the microwave, freezing his ass off on the little plastic chairs outside, Yunho reaching across the table to split his chopsticks for him.
But he had fucked up, and Yunho is mad at him, so here he is: the soles of his feet landing hard on the sidewalk. Hongjoong and Seonghwa see him all the way to the inside of his apartment, where they finally seem to believe that he won’t die if they leave him alone. He falls asleep with his bedroom door open, waiting to hear Yunho’s footsteps in the apartment.
--
Mingi wakes up sometime in the afternoon to the one-two punch of guilt and a hangover. It gets worse when he sees the glass of water and bottle of aspirin on his nightstand, which he definitely hadn’t put there himself. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out who did.
He takes two tablets and drags himself out of bed, feeling like a giant slug with his blanket wrapped around him. His bedroom door is closed; he pushes it open, and is greeted by the silence of an empty apartment. The only signs that Yunho came home at all last night are a mug drying on the dishrack, and the shoes he was wearing at the party lined up neatly next to the welcome mat.
Mingi dumps his slug body onto the couch and pulls out his phone as he waits for the aspirin to kick in. No messages from Yunho - not surprising, but still makes his heart feel like a chunk of lead - but a few from their other friends. Including:
wooyoungie
migni wut da hELL happened to yuno??????????/
he looks so SAD
come get ur man !!11!!!11
jkk he jus told me
sry ur figthing 🙁
He sends Wooyoung a thumbs-up, then goes through and replies to all the messages asking whether he’s alive. By the time he finishes texting Jongho (whose message, for the record, was yo did u die lmao ), it’s well past noon and Yunho still hasn’t come home.
Which is weird. Not to say that he doesn’t get it, because he totally does, but Yunho’s not the type to deal with conflict by avoiding it. Even after their biggest fights, when they said things to each other that would’ve ended a weaker friendship, Yunho would always stick around. He’d been counting on it a little, this morning.
Then he remembers: Yunho has an exam on Friday. He wanted to get a head start on studying Sunday, as in today, which is why he didn’t drink that much last night. Hence the early morning, the mug on the dishrack.
San picks up on the fourth ring. “Mwuh? What?” he mumbles, voice fuzzy with sleep. “Mingi? What’s up?”
“Sannie.” Mingi’s throat feels like it’s been run through a cheese grater. “Do you know where Yunho is right now?”
San, bless his heart, doesn’t ask why Mingi isn’t asking Yunho directly. Probably Wooyoung told him what happened. There’s a concerning lack of privacy in their friend group. “Not sure,” he says. “But we were gonna study at the law library later. Maybe he went early.”
“Yeah, maybe,” Mingi says. “Thanks. Your voice sounds super sexy right now, by the way.”
San giggles. “I know, right? I could totally start an ASMR channel. I just have to get drunk all the time.”
“RIP your liver,” Mingi observes solemnly.
“A small price to pay,” San says. “Anyways, I have to go brush my teeth. Talk to you later, love you, bye!”
The apartment feels even quieter after San hangs up. Mingi resolves to go to the library right away, sits up, gets hit with the fury of a thousand headaches, then sits back down and resolves to wait until Yunho gets home. San teaches taekwondo lessons in the evening, so he should be back before then. Plenty of time for Mingi to turn back into a normal human being and maybe make an apology soup.
When the time for San’s lessons rolls around, Mingi is freshly showered and in a clean pair of sweats, stressing out slightly over a pot of bubbling broth. The sky outside is turning a scary shade of gray, clouds hovering low to the ground like a threat. Yunho’s umbrella is hanging on the coatrack. Mingi stresses out a little more.
He’s about to add the seaweed when thunder booms outside, and what sounds like ten thousand metric tons of rainwater hits the pavement. Mingi looks at the soup, over at the coatrack, back at the soup, back to the coatrack again, then turns the stove off and grabs his phone on the way out of the kitchen.
The rain is falling steadily when he steps out of the apartment, almost cinematic in the way it beats evenly against his - technically Yunho’s - umbrella. It reminds Mingi of that one American music video Hongjoong made him watch, except he’s not an American pop singer, he’s just a random college guy using his best friend’s nice department store umbrella, so instead of looking slick and sexy he just gets uncomfortably damp.
Campus is full of students rushing to get home. He reaches the law library and ducks under the awning, trying to ignore the sensation of wet hair against the back of his neck. He’s in the middle of debating whether a text or a call would be more awkward when he hears Yunho say his name.
He looks up. Yunho’s standing just outside the automatic doors, thumbs hooked into the straps of his backpack. He’s wearing Mingi’s old dance studio hoodie, the one with the fraying cuffs, the hood pulled over his head. It feels a little like an apology.
Mingi’s chest does that thing it always does when he’s confronted by an unresolved fight, where his ribcage feels like it’s fossilized. “You forgot your umbrella,” he says.
Yunho considers him for a second, stone-faced. Then he breaks into a smile, bright even through the darkness and the rain, warming Mingi straight through. “Thanks,” he says. “I didn’t want to get your sweater wet.”
“It’s been through worse,” Mingi reminds him. “It’s probably, like, ninety percent sweat by now.”
Yunho makes a truly hilarious face of disgust. “Ugh, don’t say that while I’m wearing it. I’m trying to be in denial.”
They step out into the rain. Mingi opens the umbrella, and Yunho immediately reaches over to take it. His palm closes over Mingi’s, and for a second, Mingi considers not letting go, walking home with Yunho’s fingers folded neatly over his own. Then he shakes himself and pulls his hand away. “If it helps,” he says, “I’m pretty sure half of that sweat is yours.”
“I don’t know if that helps,” Yunho says. It doesn’t seem like he noticed Mingi’s brief hesitation, which is good, because Mingi doesn’t think he could explain himself if he did. “I’m sorry about yesterday. You were right. I was being a hypocrite.”
Mingi shakes his head, dodging a puddle on the sidewalk. “You were trying to help. I was just being dumb.”
“Hey,” Yunho says. “You weren’t. You’re never dumb.” Mingi looks up, raising an eyebrow. “Not when it matters,” Yunho amends.
As far as Mingi’s strengths go, taking a compliment is pretty far down the list. He’s always looking for a catch, the disclaimer, the second half of the sentence. But to hear Yunho say it, it could almost be true. And he wants it to be - wants more than almost anything to be the person Yunho thinks he is.
He says, “Even that time I broke your bike?”
“Ugh, my bike ,” Yunho cries, clutching his chest with his free hand. “So young. Gone so soon.”
Mingi laughs and lets himself rest his head on Yunho’s shoulder, leaching off his warmth. “Gone but not forgotten.”
“Wise words,” Yunho agrees. He nudges Mingi. “See? Not dumb when it matters.”
Mingi looks down at the sidewalk, at their footsteps falling in sync. The way they’ve been since they met - middle school all the way to college. One of them reaches their hand out and the other answers. “Colde dropped an album today,” he says.
So they listen to the new Colde album, Mingi’s wired headphones dangling between them. Yunho always listens to Mingi’s music, even though he doesn’t really like R&B. Mingi’s heard his music around their apartment enough to know what he does like - mostly pop ballads about falling in love, sometimes sadder ones that he can sing along to in the shower.
Actually, now that he thinks about it, Yunho’s music would make a pretty good Valentine’s Day soundtrack. Yunho’s generous about letting Mingi pick the music when they’re together; maybe he should try to repay the favor.
He spends the rest of the walk listening to Yunho talk about his day, starting with the really good cup of coffee he made in the morning and ending with San tripping and nearly taking out an entire shelf of textbooks. When they get home, he stealthily (read: goes into his room and closes the door) pulls up Spotify on his laptop and makes a new playlist. Then he saves it, turns off his laptop, and goes to the living room to watch a movie with Yunho.
--
The next Thursday, exactly a week before Valentine’s Day, Yunho comes home from class and says, “Do you know where the lighter is?”
Mingi looks up from his phone. “Why,” he says slowly. Out of all their friends, Yunho is probably the least likely to set something on fire, but it’s the principle of it. A twenty-year-old guy who doesn’t smoke asks for a lighter, it’s survival instinct to be a little suspicious.
Yunho brandishes a small paper bag, white with a pink ribbon tied around the handles. His smile is brighter than the winter sun. “There was a fancy candle place selling stuff on campus. They had banana milk-scented ones! I wanted to see if they actually smelled like banana milk.”
And that’s as good a reason as any, so Mingi peels himself off the couch and goes to rummage through the kitchen cupboards. He finds the lighter, inexplicably, wedged between two cans of beans (“Why do we even have beans? We never eat beans,” he asks Yunho, who looks shifty and changes the subject).
They put the candle on the kitchen table and turn all the lights off in the apartment. Yunho, by virtue of being the one who spent fifteen dollars on a novelty candle, gets the honor of lighting the wick. He cups his hand around it, which is stupid and pointless because they’re literally indoors where there’s no wind, but Mingi is so distracted by how beautiful Yunho’s fingers are that he forgets to make fun of him for it.
They stand in silence as the flame flickers to life. Yunho sniffs the air, then says, “I’m getting the banana, but I don’t know about the milk.”
“Is there even milk in banana milk?” Mingi wonders.
“I think I just spent fifteen dollars on a candle that smells like bananas,” Yunho says, dejected.
Mingi thinks so too, but looking at a sad Yunho is the emotional equivalent of repeatedly slamming a door on his fingers, so he nudges Yunho’s shoulder. “It looks pretty good on the table. We could just use it as decoration.”
Yunho makes a thoughtful noise, leaning his weight into Mingi a little. “If we never light it, no one will know that it just smells like bananas.”
“Exactly,” Mingi says. Yunho looks really nice in the candlelight, despite it coming from directly below him, which everyone knows is the most unflattering angle. At least in theory, anyway.
In reality, though, Yunho’s eyes are cast in a golden glow when they meet Mingi’s. He smiles, one of the small unthinking ones that show up when he sees a nice sunset, or when he nails new choreography. “Your roots are growing out a little,” he says quietly.
“Ugh, I know,” Mingi complains, reaching up to cover the top of his head. “But if I dye my hair again it’s gonna start falling out.”
“I don’t think you need to dye it again,” Yunho says. “It looks nice like this.”
“You’re lying,” Mingi accuses. “I look like a shitty anime cosplayer.”
“Mingi.” Yunho leans closer, fixing Mingi with one of his Looks™ - head tilted down, eyes looking up sternly, all business. “You look nice. Also,” he adds, “you’re borderline an anime cosplayer, so you can’t even joke about that.”
Mingi’s laugh is way too loud for the dark room, the winter night crowding in through the kitchen windows, but Yunho doesn’t seem to mind. Just looks at Mingi with that same small smile. “Hey, you’re the one who said I should get Saiki-K hair.”
“And it was a good idea,” Yunho says, nodding to himself. “Just like all my ideas.”
Mingi says, “What about the time you-”
“I’ll kill you,” Yunho says cheerfully, and Mingi can’t help but laugh too loudly again. Yunho’s shoulder is warm where it’s pressed against his. He thinks he could stay here forever.
He also thinks, as Yunho blows out the candle and then freaks out when smoke starts getting everywhere, that it would be nice to have a few more candles on the table for their Valentine’s Day dinner. They retreat to the couch; Yunho puts his head in Mingi’s lap, and Mingi holds his phone close to his face as he places an online order for a bunch of novelty candles. Then he turns off his phone so he can listen to Yunho talk about his day.
--
Mingi might have gone slightly overboard.
It’s 4:35pm on Valentine’s Day. His custom curated Spotify playlist (whose name, for the record, is every single dog emoji available on the Apple keyboard) is playing softly from the speaker on the counter. There are candles lining every available surface of the kitchen, and a vase of flowers on the table. Steam curls off the surface of the tteokbokki, dished out into two plates.
Mingi’s in the middle of taking roughly five thousand photos to post on Instagram when he hears the front door open. He stands up, feeling suddenly nervous, but Yunho doesn’t wander over to find him like he usually does. Instead, he hears the door to Yunho’s bedroom open, then close.
Which is definitely a little weird, but Mingi isn’t super worried about it. Yunho will come to the kitchen eventually; they always say hi to each other when they get home. He nudges the banana milk candle slightly to the left, and tries not to watch the clock too closely.
Exactly twenty-three minutes later, Yunho’s door opens again. Mingi walks over to greet him and stops dead in his tracks.
“How do I look?” Yunho asks. He’s wearing his nice sweater, the one he never wears because he’s terrified of getting a stain on it - a cream-colored cable-knit V-neck that highlights his collarbones and the broadness of his shoulders. He’s styled his hair so that it curls nicely over his forehead, framing his face. He looks like a slice-of-life K-Drama come to life.
The first thing Mingi thinks is, Is it normal to find your best friend really hot?
The second thing he thinks is, Oh shit, does he know about the surprise? Who told him? Was it San? I bet it was San.
Before he can confirm his suspicions, Yunho’s speaking again. “Is it too much? We’re just going to KQ . This feels like too much.”
Mingi’s frowns. That definitely wasn’t part of the plan. “Who’s ‘we’?” he asks.
Yunho shifts his weight, scratches the back of his neck. He’s nervous. Mingi gets the very distinct feeling that he’s not going to like this answer.
“A guy from my seminar group asked me out,” Yunho says.
Mingi does not like this answer.
Not because he put so much work into this night just for it to go to waste. Their friendship isn’t one that’s measured in effort, in give-and-take. And not because Yunho didn’t tell him about the date, either - Mingi understands why he wouldn’t. When it comes to things like this, Yunho never does anything until he’s absolutely sure.
That’s the problem: it’s neither of those things, even though they’re both valid reasons to be upset. So why does Mingi’s brain feel like that time Hongjoong dropped his laptop down five flights of stairs? Why is he filled with the urge to block the doorway so Yunho can’t leave?
Yunho’s looking at him expectantly, still waiting for an answer. “You look fine,” Mingi says. “It’s not too much. It’s, uh, good. Just right.” He winces internally.
Yunho gives him a bemused smile. “Thanks, I guess? Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” Mingi says quickly. “You should go. To the seminar. I mean, to the date. At KQ . Your date at KQ. You’re gonna be late.”
Yunho’s frown deepens. Mingi is faced with the terrible certainty that Yunho’s going to ask him what’s wrong, and he’s not going to be able to answer. But then an alarm on Yunho’s phone goes off (it’s the Neon Genesis Evangelion opening; Mingi set it as a joke, but Yunho never changed it back), and his frown fades as he checks the time. “You’re right. I’ll see you later?”
Later . Not tonight. Which means there’s a very real chance that Yunho won’t come home until the morning. “Yeah,” Mingi manages, over the tsunami-sized wave of nausea that hits him.
He watches from the hallway as Yunho puts on his coat and shoes, grabs his keys, and pats his pockets for his wallet and phone. His hand is on the doorknob when he turns back. For a moment, Mingi is seized with hope, but Yunho just sniffs the air and says, “Is that tteokbokki? It smells really good. Save some for me if you can! I’ll try to bring some leftovers back, too.”
Mingi would actually rather chug a two-liter bottle of mouthwash than eat the leftovers from Yunho’s date, but he can’t figure out a way to say that and not sound like the worst best friend in the world, so instead he just says, “Okay. Thanks. Um, have a good time.”
Yunho beams at him. “Thanks!” he says, and then he’s gone.
Mingi drifts over to the living room and sits down hard on the couch.
Yunho’s on a date. Yunho’s on a date for the first time in three years. Yunho’s on a date for the first time in three years, and he did his hair, and he’s wearing the sweater he never wears. Mingi looks through the doorway to the kitchen, with the two plates of tteokbokki going cold, the unlit banana milk candle.
It’s not even that he thinks his plans were better - it’s that Yunho deserves the best. What has this seminar guy done to earn a date with Yunho? Can he read Yunho like Mingi can? Has he cataloged every version of Yunho’s smile? Would he remember to check the coatrack to see if Yunho left anything behind? Does he care as much, does he love Yunho as much as-
As-
As-
“Oh shit,” Mingi says.
--
As it turns out, Valentine’s Day is a deeply inconvenient time to have an existential crisis about the nature of your feelings towards your best friend.
Mingi’s lying on his stomach on the couch, half his face smushed into a cushion (which is definitely a little gross - he can’t remember the last time they washed it), scrolling despondently through his contacts. Hongjoong and Seonghwa are absolutely off limits. Yeosang, San, and Wooyoung are doing a roommate thing. Jongho is - free? Maybe? But calling him would only cause excruciating pain for both of them, so he decides against it.
In the end, his respect for his friends’ time (and a healthy amount of fear of what Hongjoong would say if Mingi interrupted his and Seonghwa’s date) wins out against his desire to be coddled. So he goes for the next-best thing, which is to put on his big noise-canceling headphones and go for a walk.
The bracing cold helps a little, in that it provides an emotional reprieve from having to sit in an apartment full of the smell of uneaten tteokbokki. He picks the side streets to avoid having to see any couples on dates. He probably looks weird and pathetic, stalking through alleyways alone in sweatpants and his enormous winter jacket, but he has bigger things to worry about.
Like - oh God - the fact that he’s in love with Yunho. Which he definitely is. He wants to hold Yunho’s stupidly beautiful hands. He wants to make all of Yunho’s favorite foods. He wants to discover a whole new Yunho-smile that’s just for him.
But he can’t. Because stupid seminar guy beat him to it. As if it would take a genius to figure out that Yunho is the catch of the century. The millennium. The- the era .
Then again, Mingi isn’t really in a position to judge, is he? After all, it took him seven years to figure out what the seminar guy figured out in, like, three months. And who’s to say that the seminar guy isn’t the right person for Yunho? Who’s to say that Mingi is ?
If he could, he would walk around forever, or at least until Valentine’s Day is over and he no longer has any social obligations preventing him from whining to every single one of his friends over FaceTime. Unfortunately, though, he forgot to put socks on before he left and is losing feeling in his ankles, so he turns around and goes home.
The sight of their front door, with the stupid neon welcome sign that Yunho bought for their first-year dorm and kept when they moved out, almost makes him turn around and go right back out into the cold again. He’s being irrational, he tries to tell himself. All that’s waiting for him on the other side of the door is the remnants of his stupid surprise dinner.
He unlocks the door. Steps inside.
“Mingi?” says Yunho.
Mingi turns on his heel and grabs the doorknob.
“No, no, wait,” Yunho says, materializing beside Mingi and slapping a hand on the door before Mingi can open it. Which is really hot. Yunho is really hot. Mingi eyes the door longingly. “Stay for a minute. Please.”
Very, very slowly, Mingi turns around. Yunho doesn’t look angry or upset, which is a relief. Just confused, and maybe something a little more complicated underneath that. “Hey,” Mingi manages weakly. “You’re, um, home early. Bad date?”
“You could say that,” Yunho says. Which in the range of possible answers isn’t as devastating as, say, ‘seminar guy and I are getting married, and also I hate you’, but doesn’t exactly make Mingi rest easy either. “What’s going in the kitchen?”
Ah, shit. “...Surprise?” Mingi says weakly.
Yunho’s eyes widen; the tension in his face lets up a little, a line going slack. “That’s… for me?”
“I, um.” Normally he’d try to joke his way out of it, downplay all the effort and embarrassment until it’s small enough that he can pack it up and store it somewhere invisible. But his body still feels like one big raw nerve from the memory of Yunho leaving, and Yunho’s hair is all ruffled from the wind, and it’s a little too long for Yunho’s taste but just the length that Mingi likes, and Yunho is so beautiful, and-
And maybe constantly calling your best friend beautiful is not, strictly, a platonic thing to do. Fuck .
Mingi runs a hand through his hair and leans back against the closed door. “Yeah,” he admits, avoiding Yunho’s eyes. “You said you wanted to eat more home cooking, right? It’s not as good as your mom’s, obviously, but Wooyoung said it was pretty okay.”
“And the candles?” Yunho asks, his voice even.
Mingi winces. “I thought they’d be nice? I don’t know. I tried to pick scents you’d like, but now that I’m thinking about it, it would probably be pretty overwhelming to smell, like, five billion things when you’re eating dinner, so. Sorry. Bad idea on my part.”
Yunho doesn’t say anything for what feels like the longest moment in the world. Then, “You even got flowers.”
“Yeah,” Mingi says, “they’re the cheapest ones, sorry, turns out flowers are pretty expensive on Valentine’s Day-”
“ Mingi ,” Yunho interrupts, and there’s a distinctly desperate edge to the way he says Mingi’s name. He looks up, and Yunho - easygoing, air-sniffing, hides behind doorways to scare people Yunho - is wild-eyed and frantic, his eyes roaming over Mingi’s face like he’s searching for something he’s scared to find.
“Yunho,” Mingi responds, instinctively reaching out. Yunho flinches away, and it’s probably the worst thing Mingi’s ever felt, this feeling. Suddenly he couldn’t care less about Yunho knowing how he feels, about Yunho not loving him back - he’d keep his mouth shut for the rest of his life, if it means Yunho stays by his side. If it means Yunho never looks at him like this again.
“I don’t,” Yunho starts, then stops, shaking his head. “Is this, is this some kind of joke, or- or a pity thing, because I can’t do this anymore, I can’t-”
“What?” Mingi almost reaches out again, but thinks better of it. “What’s wrong? Do- do you want me to leave?”
“ No ,” Yunho almost shouts. “I- fuck.” He buries his face in his hands. A second passes, everything silent except for the sound of Yunho’s breathing. Mingi watches his shoulders rise and fall, feeling like his ribcage is being passed through a paper shredder.
Then Yunho lifts his face out of his hands and says quietly, “Mingi, I’m in love with you.”
Okay, screw the paper shredder. This feels like one of those hydraulic presses, the ones in the videos where they crush increasingly improbable objects. Like cans and bricks and, apparently, every single organ in Mingi’s body.
“But,” Mingi starts. Then, because his brain has decided to submit him for the Biggest Idiot in the Entire Universe competition, the sentence that ends up coming out of his mouth is, “But- your date?”
Yunho shakes his head, looking resigned. “I couldn’t do it. He was nice, it was nice, I just- couldn’t. It wasn’t you.” He rubs his eyes. “I’m sorry. You can- we can forget this happened, or if you want some space, I understand.”
Mingi frowns. “Why would you- oh my God. You don’t know?”
Yunho looks like he’s considering taking back what he said a week ago, about Mingi not being dumb. “Don’t know what?”
“Oh my God,” Mingi repeats. He’s aware that this is probably not the most romantic - or effective - way to transmit this message, but in his defense, he’s been through a lot today. You try waking up at eight to prepare a Valentine’s Day dinner for the best friend you’ve apparently been in love with for the past seven years, only to get ditched, only to find out that said best friend loves you back, and see how your brain is doing by the end of it.
“Yunho,” Mingi says. “Look around you.” Yunho obliges, surveying the entryway. “Okay, not exactly around you,” Mingi amends, “I meant the kitchen. My bad. The point is that obviously I- um, love you too, or whatever.”
Yunho raises his eyebrows, but Mingi can see something dawning in his eyes, bright like a sunrise. “‘Or whatever’,” he echoes.
“I mean- fuck, you know I’m bad at this,” Mingi complains. “I always want to tell you everything, and I think about how hot you are a lot, and I bribed Wooyoung into teaching me how to make tteokbokki for you. That sounds pretty gay to me.”
“But you dated other people,” Yunho points out. “Not that you aren’t allowed to, obviously, but- I just didn’t ever think you were interested.”
Mingi winces. “Yeah, I also didn’t realize I was interested until, like, an hour ago? Apparently I really don’t like it when you go out with other people.”
Yunho laughs, a soft helpless sound, and covers his face with his hands again. “Tell me about it.”
“Oh God,” Mingi says, horrified. “You had to watch me- and with Hyunwoo- oh my God. I’m so sorry. I’m the worst best friend ever.”
Yunho snorts into his hands. Normally Mingi would find this kind of gross, but it turns out he’s pretty reluctant to think poorly of Yunho. “I don’t think ‘not dating other people’ is part of the best friend agreement.”
“Well, it is now ,” Mingi says. He hesitates. “I mean- if you want it to be.”
Yunho drags his hands down so just his mouth is covered, allowing Mingi to get the full effect of his unimpressed stare. “Mingi, I’ve been in love with you for four years. You think I want you to date other people?”
Mingi flails a little, partly because he can’t figure out how to make his argument, partly because the sound of Yunho saying the words ‘I’ve been in love with you for four years’ is making his thought processes go haywire. “I don’t know! I can’t even believe that this is real. I mean, I’m just Mingi. You’re you .”
Yunho’s head snaps up, hands dropping away, eyes narrowing. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Oh no. Mingi recognizes that voice. It’s Yunho’s Lecturing Mingi™ voice. (Yes, there is one specifically for Mingi. Yes, they probably should’ve figured out the whole ‘being in love with each other’ thing sooner.) He flails a little more. “Just that you could date anyone you wanted? There’s a reason why our friends always say you’re ‘husband material’.”
Yunho doesn’t look convinced. “And you aren’t?”
“What? No,” Mingi says. “Unless it’s, like, one of those weddings in Vegas where everyone is drunk and there’s a guy in a priest costume. Which, I don’t even think those are legally binding, so-”
“Mingi,” Yunho interrupts. His face has turned stormcloud-esque. “That’s- did someone say that to you?” Thunder metaphorically booms in the distance. “Was it Hyunwoo?”
Mingi pauses. “...No?” Yunho’s glare is so intense that Mingi’s surprised laser beams aren’t shooting out of his eyes. “Seriously, it wasn’t,” he says. “He didn’t say anything I didn’t already know.”
I knew this was a good idea when I saw you , is what Hyunwoo had said, to be more precise. They were in his room, the blinds drawn against the sunlight; Mingi was scanning the floor for his pants.
What do you mean? Mingi had laughed.
Come on, Hyunwoo had said. You’re, like, perfect hookup material. You just want fun, you’re not looking for anything serious. I like that about you.
Mingi doesn’t remember what he said next, just the taste of ash in his mouth, the way the minutes suddenly felt like hours. He hasn’t texted Hyunwoo since. The fact that Hyunwoo hasn’t texted either probably says something.
“He doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” Yunho says. “Mingi, you- how could I not love you? How could anyone?” Mingi opens his mouth to list a few reasons (what happened to Yunho’s bike, for example, or the fact that he can barely say ‘I love you’ without cringing), but Yunho pushes on. “Do you know when I realized I loved you?”
“Um,” Mingi says, “am I supposed to guess, or-”
“When we stole Bumjoong’s soju, and San got shitfaced,” Yunho answers. “You spent the whole night taking care of him. Even though you were also drunk. Even after he puked on your shirt.”
“It washed out,” Mingi says weakly. “I still have the shirt, actually.”
Yunho must become aware of the whole stormcloud, thunder-and-lightning thing going on around him, because he visibly softens. “Sorry,” he says. “I didn’t mean to get worked up. It’s just hard to hear you talk about yourself like that, Mingi. You’re the best person I know.”
Mingi shakes his head. That can’t be true, because Yunho’s the best person he knows, both in the moral-integrity sense and the talent-and-accomplishment sense. And he’s pretty sure he has a better judgment of people, given Yunho’s whole being-in-love-with-Mingi thing.
Oh, God. Yunho’s in love with him. Yunho, his best friend of seven years, the catch of the era, loves him. Mingi can’t decide whether to pinch himself or to shake some sense into Yunho.
“You are ,” Yunho insists. “Don’t ask me if I’m sure or not.” Mingi closes his mouth, caught out. “I’ve been sure for four years. I like dancing the most when it’s with you. I look forward to coming home to you every day. I can’t imagine a future without you in it. It’s like you said. What else is there?”
Mingi says, “Actually, I’m pretty sure I said something like ‘that’s gay’, so yours is way better.”
“Quit deflecting,” Yunho says, then hesitates, suddenly unsure. Mingi realizes just how afraid Yunho must have been, to have this conversation - four years of feelings, balancing on a tightrope. How brave he must have been to speak first, not knowing at all what Mingi would say. “Do you- Can you see a future with me? With us?”
Mingi pictures it. Coming home to Yunho, not as a roommate, but as something more. An apartment with doorways high enough for both of them, sticky notes on the fridge, a dog at the foot of their bed. Yunho’s fingers around his. The curve of his cupid’s bow in the morning.
He’s hit with a sense of yearning so strong it’s like being struck by lightning. He crouches down, hiding his face in his knees, leaning back against the door for support. He doesn’t have to see to know that Yunho’s followed him down to the floor. He always does.
“I think,” he starts, then takes a deep breath. “I think that, um. I think I want that more than anything in the world.”
There’s a long pause. Then: “More than those black Sony wireless headphones?”
Mingi laughs, a little ragged around the edges. “More than a million black Sony wireless headphones.”
Yunho makes a soft, happy noise, and Mingi looks up automatically, like a sunflower reaching for the sun. Yunho’s kneeling next to him, one hand braced against the floor next to Mingi’s hip. His smile is ten times brighter than any sunshine. “That’s a lot of headphones.”
“I know,” Mingi says. “Sorry, by the way. For not realizing sooner. Now that I think about it, it was really obvious this whole time.”
Yunho shakes his head. “Don’t,” he says. “We’re here now. That’s all I need.”
Mingi finds it kind of hard to believe that he could be enough for anyone, much less someone like Yunho. But it’s like Yunho said - what else is there? What’s left to do but try to be the person Yunho thinks he is?
He looks down at his knees. “I really want you to kiss me,” he says. “Is that okay?”
He hears Yunho laugh quietly, and then there are fingers hooked under his chin, tilting his face up. Mingi’s brain helpfully reminds him that, beyond the intelligence and humor and heart of gold, Yunho is just straight-up hot.
“That,” says Yunho, “is definitely okay.”
So Yunho kisses him for the first time on the floor of the entryway of their apartment, when he’s still wearing his puffy winter jacket, the smell of tteokbokki lingering in the air. It’s both exactly and not at all like what he expected. Where Yunho is normally all easygoing and playful, here he’s more direct. Focused, purposeful. He kisses the way he dances.
The hand that was under Mingi’s chin finds its way to the back of Mingi’s head, tugging at the short hair there. Yunho plants his other hand on the floor between Mingi’s legs, dangerously close to the seam of his pants, and Mingi makes a frankly embarrassing sound in the back of his throat.
Yunho pulls back immediately, frowning. His lips are pink, shiny with spit, and his bangs are mussed. Mingi kind of wants to shove him to the floor and take off all his clothes. “Are you okay? Did I do something?”
“Yeah,” Mingi says, then quickly amends, “no,” when Yunho moves to put space between them. “I mean, you didn’t do anything bad. I just really want you to try the tteokbokki, and if we keep going I don’t know if you’re gonna be able to do that.”
Yunho raises his eyebrows, and- is that a smirk on his face? Jung Yunho is smirking ? Mingi gets the distinct sense that he’s created a monster. “Oh? Why not?”
“Ugh, you know why,” Mingi says, shoving ineffectually at Yunho’s shoulders. “Don’t act like you put your hand near my dick by accident.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Yunho says, batting his eyelashes in fake sincerity. He climbs to his feet and holds out a hand to Mingi. “But I do want to try the tteokbokki. It smells really good.”
Mingi takes Yunho’s hand and lets himself be hauled up. The momentum sends him into Yunho, who catches him by the elbows, eyes creased with mirth. “It’s probably cold and gross by now,” Mingi warns him. “I didn’t put it in the fridge before I left.”
“Oh, I put the plates in the fridge when I came back,” Yunho says. “If we reheat it in the pan it should be fine. And I’m sure it tastes good anyways.”
Mingi stares at him, a little awed. “Dude,” he says. “Are you even real?”
Yunho laughs and leans forward, hiding his face in Mingi’s shoulder. The difference between this Yunho and the version from two minutes ago, with his hand in Mingi’s hair, should feel jarring, but it isn’t. He’s like a stained glass window in one of those super old churches, all the different colors with the sunlight shining clear through. “Are you asking in a good way or a bad way?”
“A good way, duh,” Mingi says. A part of his brain pings with a memory, and he gasps. “Oh, man. We’re totally winning the best friend contest right now. Hongjoong and Seonghwa can suck it.”
Yunho lifts his head again, his expression suddenly guarded. “‘Best friend’?”
Mingi immediately realizes the error of his ways. “Boyfriend,” he amends quickly. “Boyfriend contest. Because we’re boyfriends now. Um- if you want to be?”
Yunho looks like he’s about to make a joke, but something on Mingi’s face must telegraph how pants-shittingly terrified he is that Yunho’s going to come to his senses and change his mind, because his smile fades into something more serious. “More than a million Sony headphones,” he says.
“That’s my thing,” Mingi complains, to hide the shockwave of joy that hits him, a mini earthquake behind his ribs. “You don’t even want Sony headphones.”
“I mean, I don’t not want them,” Yunho says. “Okay, let me do this again. Mingi, I want to be your boyfriend more than I want a million candles that actually smell like banana milk.”
“Oh wow,” says Mingi. “That’s a lot of candles.”
“Yup,” says Yunho.
“Cool,” says Mingi.
“Cool,” agrees Yunho.
They high-five.
“Okay, but seriously,” says Mingi, clasping their hands together. “We need to eat the tteokbokki. I’ll be really sad if we don’t. And I need to take this jacket off. And then ,” he says, blushing a little, “we can, um. Go to my room? Or yours? Or- uh. The couch?”
They look over at the couch, which they bought secondhand when they moved into the apartment, and now contains the stains of probably every substance that’s ever come through their front door. Yunho shudders in horror. “Anything but the couch.”
“Yeah, I don’t know why I thought it’d be an option,” Mingi says, starting to tug Yunho into the kitchen. “Unless we want to catch, like, five thousand venereal diseases.”
Yunho makes a face. “Please don’t talk about venereal diseases before we eat.”
“It’s true, though,” Mingi insists. He very reluctantly lets go of Yunho’s hand to shrug his jacket off, hoping Yunho doesn’t notice how sweaty he’s become from wearing a full winter jacket indoors. (It’s wishful thinking. Yunho definitely noticed.) “Oh! Let me put on some music.”
So Yunho heats up the tteokbokki in a pan while Mingi connects his phone to the speaker and pulls up the playlist he made. He stares at the playlist title for a long moment, glances up at the sight of Yunho’s back as he stands over the stove, then goes back and adds a heart emoji to the end.
Yunho perks up when he hears the first song. “Oh! I love this song!”
“I know.” Mingi crowds into the space next to Yunho. He props his chin on Yunho’s shoulder and says, “I hear everything you sing in the shower.”
“Hey, you know I can’t help it,” Yunho says. “What playlist is this?” He looks down at Mingi’s phone, where the playlist is still displayed, and lets out a loud, delighted laugh. “Oh my God,” he says, pulling out his own phone. Mingi takes over pan-stirring duties as Yunho taps at something, then holds the phone out in front of Mingi.
It’s a Spotify playlist, Mingi realizes. Almost a hundred songs long, a decent chunk of which Mingi recognizes - a combination of what he likes, some sadder stuff, and a lot of what are very clearly love songs. The title of the playlist is a series of chicken emojis.
“Oh my God,” Mingi echoes. “Is this-?”
“It’s your playlist,” Yunho confirms. “I mean, it’s a playlist about you. Is yours-?”
“Yeah,” Mingi says, because now that he thinks about it it’s pretty laughably obvious. Every single song on the playlist is gentle and loving and steady - Yunho through and through. “Mine’s about you, too.”
Yunho grins at him. This, Mingi realizes, is the Yunho-smile that’s just for him - warm like a sunset, like summer nights with cicadas in the trees, like biking home from school with their uniform shirts untucked. The whole universe in the name of a Spotify playlist. “We’re definitely winning the boyfriend contest.”