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Nothing has prompted this, and nothing has preceded it. The air felt no different than usual and there were no world-shaking catastrophes, no mental lapses, no more stress and uncertainty and exhaustion than usual.
It’s the night before a rare day off, the dorm is quiet with three of its four residents home, and Lee Minho watches as a drunk Kim Seungmin pushes the door open and stumbles inside.
Twelve forty-nine, a solitary Seungmin is wriggling out of his shoes and pressing his hand to his cheek in an attempt to warm the cold, ruddy skin up.
Overindulgences happen. Getting drunk alone on a Saturday night is not something that happens to Seungmin. Lee Minho watches from the couch, and waits to be noticed.
Eventually, he is. Seungmin turns on another light for the kitchen and noticeably jumps at the presence on the couch, a hand flying dramatically up to press to his chest. “Christ,” he blurts out, voice louder than usual, “you’re like a gargoyle.”
“A gargoyle?” Minho echoes.
“Yeah.” Seungmin slowly lowers his hand and exhales, with a noticeable shakiness that Minho doesn’t love. “Lurking. Scaring me.”
“I wouldn’t have to scare you if you came home at a normal time,” says Minho lightly, drumming his fingers on his thigh and watching as Seungmin pours a glass of water, hastily gulps it down, and then pours another. “You were out by yourself?”
Seungmin shakes his head. “Not by myself,” he says, planting his hands on the counter, “with Hyun– Hyunjin. He wanted to play bartender, and three-racha were still at the studio.”
“That is arguably worse than being by yourself,” Minho responds, watching the way that Seungmin’s eyes crinkle when he laughs. Drunk Seungmin is more loose, more unreservedly silly. “That’s it?”
“Uh.” Seungmin blinks. “... no. I needed to talk to him.”
Minho doesn’t ask about what. “I need to talk to you too, actually,” Seungmin continues anyway, cutting off Minho’s desire to get up and go to bed, knowing that the entire house has returned (relatively) safely.
“Okay,” Minho says flatly. Seungmin just stares at him. “So talk.”
Seungmin continues staring at him. Something uncomfortable tickles at the divot between Minho’s ribcage, nerves flaring up that he’s quick to quash. “I didn’t mean to say that,” Seungmin says. “That I need to talk to you, I– I wasn’t planning on doing this tonight.”
“I really despise the path that this conversation is going down,” Minho complains, standing up and crossing the short space into the kitchen– up closer, he can see the sleepy ruffle of Seungmin’s hair, his flighty attention. Drunk Seungmin tends to be markedly spaced-out, but this Seungmin seems grounded, uncomfortably so. “Just say what’s on your mind, yes?”
“I’m gay, hyung.”
For a moment, Minho just looks at him.
Seungmin stares back like he’s trying to draw out a reaction– hands tangled with one another, brow furrowed, cheeks sucked in slightly and something glinting in his eyes. If he were a better hyung, Minho would rush forward in support, offer words of compassion, tell him he’s loved, but– but Minho just looks at him.
Something shifts in Seungmin’s expression. If he didn’t know better, Minho would guess that his feelings were hurt. “You aren’t gonna say anything?” Seungmin says, the ice in his words undercut by the degree to which he’s slurring them. “Seriously? Do you have any idea how long I–”
He cuts himself off, hands tugging apart from one another to pull at his hair. “What do you want me to say?” Minho asks, and Seungmin just scoffs.
“I don’t even know,” he mutters, a tense undercurrent in his voice. “I thought if anyone would get it, it would be. The one everyone thinks is. You know.”
Minho’s mouth feels dry. “Thinks is what?” he asks before he could help himself, and Seungmin’s eyes flick up to meet his own.
Neither of them speak for a second. Seungmin looks away quickly and starts fidgeting with his hands– since when has anything made him act so put-out?-- and Minho moves before he could register his own guilt, patching over the awkwardness that has suddenly blossomed between them.
The quietness of the room settles in when Minho pulls him into a hug, tight and brief, hands on Seungmin’s shoulders. “The significance of you telling me this isn’t lost on me,” he says, as Seungmin’s warm hands settle on his hips. He pulls back; Seungmin’s hands remain planted. “I just. Think this is a conversation for when you’re sober.”
They’re close. Minho can’t remember the last time they were this close. Surprisingly, Seungmin’s breath doesn’t reek of alcohol, and some of the ruddiness has faded from his expression. “Why?” he asks, lips clicking quietly, mouth red and soft and so close, eyes unmoving from Minho’s own.
Discomfort shoots out beneath Minho’s skin. He pulls himself back and shakes his head, jaw tense. “Does anyone else know?” he dodges.
“Chan-hyung,” Seungmin responds. His hands linger above his body slightly, as if missing the sensation of Minho’s body beneath them. “Told him a… long time ago, shortly after debut. I was worried something like this would damage the group, or our reputation. I asked if he could stand to have someone like me under his leadership.”
Minho tips his head slightly. Seungmin gives a faint smile. “Said of course he wouldn’t mind,” he says. “That I was strong and brave, and that he would keep my secret and lead me all the same. I almost told Hyunjin tonight, but I thought he… yeah. I wanted to tell you instead.”
“And is that what you were hoping to hear from me?”
“No.” Seungmin’s smile fades. “You’re just my wife.”
It takes him a couple of seconds to register the reference. “Are you seriously –”
“Kidding, hyung,” Seungmin replies– softly, so softly. His hair falls in gentle waves against his brow, polite and tipsy and infuriating. His head tilts to match Minho’s, who hadn’t realized he was still inclined toward his left shoulder. They righten themselves in unison. “Can I ask you something?”
“Will you listen if I tell you not to?”
A tinkling laugh. Fucking sparkles dancing in someone’s eyes, freshly fallen snow, joy distilled into a fine powder. Minho thinks he hates him. “ Are you like me, hyung?”
Minho notes that the awkwardness, the fidgeting, has entirely vanished. “Not completely,” he says, before he could stop himself, another lapse in self-control. “But, yes.”
(Would he have wanted to stop himself?)
Seungmin smiles at him. Moonlight cutting though the clouds, hitting the high point on a swing set, a kitten curled up on the stomach of a sleeping pitbull. “Thanks.”
“For?”
“For not making me the only one.”
Stupid fucking Seungmin. Minho takes a breath in through his nose. “Stupid Kim Seungmin,” he voices, “you’re never the only one.”
A breath, tense between them. Seungmin sways a little on his feet and fusses with his bangs, a mixture of soft blonde and brown, eyes averted and a tiny smile playing at his lips. “I’m sitting on the floor now,” he announces, doing just that. Minho blinks down at him.
Long legs spread out in front of him, arms stretched back, propping himself up. Seungmin looks up at him, smile spreading, drowsy and fond . The blood in Minho’s veins seems to slow, blocking him up, building lethargy. “Come on, hyung,” he says, shifting his weight forward to lift both hands up and for whatever reason, Minho indulges him.
He sits against the wall, a safe amount of distance between them that Seungmin immediately minimizes. His head thunks down onto Minho’s shoulder and his hands find Minho’s own, tracing over knuckles, the heart line on his palm, all the tiny calluses. “Seungmin,” Minho begins, but the other man just shakes his head.
“Let me have this,” he murmurs, “alright, hyung?”
More quiet. If there were cameras in their dorm, Minho thinks, this would be a grainy three-second clip picked out by an eagle-eyed fan and circulated across Twitter, Tiktok, likely their own Bubble accounts. Dog and cat, friends at last!
Minho shifts slightly to look down. You aren’t that drunk, he realizes to himself, are you?
“I really want to kiss you, Minho-hyung,” Seungmin whispers, quietly enough that Minho can kid himself into thinking he imagined it. The languid drag of blood in his veins rushes into double-time.
“That’s a bad idea,” Minho answers. Seungmin’s nails bite into his skin and his head lifts up from Minho’s shoulder.
They look at each other for a second. “Do you want me to kiss you?” Seungmin asks.
“You can kiss me if you want to.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
It’s a bad idea. Objectively, morally, subjectively, logically, reasonably– bad idea . Discomfort between them that builds up, palpable on and off-screen, rumors, fights, homophobia, culture, cameras, their bandmates. Minho takes a second to quiet his thoughts, then leans in and presses his mouth to Seungmin’s anyway.
He tastes like chapstick and skin, not booze. Their noses brush and Seungmin’s fingers curl around Minho’s own, silently anchoring them together there on the floor, no cameras, no bigotry, no hiding.
They pull apart. Minho considers speaking up for about half a second before Seungmin connects their lips again, a little firmer this time, more assured. His hand lands on the juncture of Minho’s jaw and throat, forward and strangely boyish.
There’s an easy way out here. Minho would have to shove Seungmin off of him, push a hand against his mouth, and chalk this up to an alcohol-encouraged mistake that neither of them have any business lingering on.
The smallest flash of teeth, the hand on his jaw sliding around to the back of his neck, pulling, Seungmin pushing himself up, up, closer. “Fuck,” Minho hears himself breathe, a sound swallowed up between Seungmin’s lips and trapped beneath his tongue.
Click .
Instinct kicks in and Minho does just that– he flies back like Seungmin is scorching to his touch, the younger man’s head cracking against the wall in his haste, panic instantly rising and choking him. Fully within their view is Felix, having stepped out of his room with a small stack of dishes in his hands, frozen.
“Oh!” Felix’s voice lifts the way it does when he’s trying to placate, to downplay. “Um! Fucking hell, sorry, I just–”
“It’s fine,” Minho spits, the panic solidifying into nausea, shameful and hot. He doesn’t look at Seungmin. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Really? ‘Cause this looks like something we–”
“ Don’t worry about it .”
Whatever spell had fallen over Minho in the past five minutes has entirely dissipated, leaving behind a live wire, a nerve ending, motivating him to stand up from the floor and advance on Felix. He grabs the dishes and turns on his heel, still refusing to look at Seungmin, clattering them down into the sink and snatching the bottle of soap.
The room is quiet for a while, save for aggressive scrubbing and clinking of ceramic. “Minho,” Felix tries again, “you–”
“It’s fine, ‘Lix,” says Seungmin this time, voice soft. Minho can guess the train of thought spinning sound in that empty little head of his, though it further sickens him to picture it. “We weren’t doing much anyway.”
“That’s not why I’m…” Minho resists the urge to throw the mug he’s washing at Felix’s head. “I don’t care that you two were kissing. I mean, that’s… yeah. That happens. I mean. Jisung never stops trying to kiss people, and I’d trade my left nut to get my hands on Changbinnie-hyung, so–”
Abruptly, Felix cuts himself off. The nervousness radiating off of him could power a small city. Minho rinses the last of the dishes, puts them on the rack, and braces his hands on the edge of the sink. “I won’t say anything,” says Felix quietly. “I swear. It’s not a big deal.”
Seungmin clears his throat. “Thanks, Bokkie,” he replies, when too long has gone by with neither of them saying anything.
“Right.” Minho examines a tiny chip in the wall paint and ignores Felix’s eyes on him, Seungmin’s unmoved position on the floor, his own mind, the guilt oozing out of every pore. “... good night.”
The door shuts again and leaves the two of them to sit in their own silence. An inhale, feet shuffling against the floor, and suddenly Seungmin is standing. “I’m sorry,” he says, voice much firmer than Minho expected it to be. He finally looks over– Seungmin’s jaw is clenched tight and his eyes are bright, shiny. A soft-hearted teenager who cried the hardest when Minho was eliminated. Something private, undisturbed, now gone sour. “I shouldn’t have come onto you.”
“I’m not letting you take the fall for this,” says Minho in return. “You’ve been drinking. I should have said no.”
But you didn’t, his brain oh-so-helpfully supplies. You wanted to kiss him. “Still,” Seungmin protests, “I wasn’t– thinking.”
“Do you ever?” Minho says, to which Seungmin gives a quiet, breathy laugh. He looks so pretty, even after what just happened, contrasting to the soap suds on Minho’s forearms, the acid from his tongue.
“I guess not.” Seungmin’s head tilts to one side. “What are you thinking, hyung?”
“Wish I knew.” Minho tips his chin up a little, swallowing back against the it was a mistake fighting its way up his throat. “Do you regret it?”
“No,” Seungmin says easily, quickly– too quickly. “I wouldn’t have said anything if I thought I was going to regret the outcome.”
“You’re wise beyond your years, Kim Seungmin,” Minho replies. Neither of them say anything for a second– now that it’s just the two of them, his panic seems to have settled, at least for the time being. He brushes a bit of water off his arm and takes a deep breath. “So are we pretending it never happened? Or?”
Seungmin has a weird expression on his face, Minho realizes. Seungmin must have noticed Minho catching on, because he suddenly shifts it and pushes at his bangs again, looking away. “I’d rather not,” Seungmin says after a pause.
“Right. Alright.” Minho blinks. Seungmin looks back at him. “Is, uh. Why did you want to kiss me?”
“Why did you kiss me? ”
The answers to both questions are obvious. The corners of Seungmin’s mouth are starting to curl upward, a private, amused little smile that Minho instantly scoffs at. “You’re cheeky, you know? Who taught you that?”
Seungmin takes a couple of steps forward. “Can we do it again?” he prompts.
A breath, two heartbeats. Minho swallows. “Bedroom.”
***
Minho’s back hits Seungmin’s mattress and he gives a soft oof in protest, hands blindly grabbing for the body he knows to soon be following– he’s stronger than Seungmin but their difference in height is suddenly at the forefront of his mind, what with the way Seungmin is suddenly crawling over him, his hands on Minho’s hips, his mouth securing against Minho’s own, insatiable even after kissing again in the kitchen, the hallway, and against the closed door.
They aren’t… rushing it. Minho refuses to let anything go beneath their clothes, it’s just– busy schedules and limited social lives, it’s been years since he’s been able to properly turn his brain off and get into his body instead, all lingering touches and flashes of teeth, tongue, Seungmin’s hands (so big? ) securing around his waist, lips tracing down his jaw, his neck–
“Fuck,” Minho blurts out, voice breaking embarrassingly in the middle, “stop.”
Seungmin does. His mouth, kiss-swollen and red, lifts from Minho’s throat. “Something wrong?”
“Most everything.” Minho digs the heel of his palm against his forehead and sighs, thinly. “I don’t. Want to have sex with you.”
“... Okay? That’s not necessarily what I was getting at.”
“Seungmin. Read between the lines. You need to stop doing that or I’ll want to have sex with you even more.”
The last two words were not necessarily ones he’d planned on saying. Seungmin’s eyes grow wide and he looks away, flustered, giving Minho the opportunity to shimmy up the mattress and cool the searing heat that was starting to pitch itself between his legs.
One makeout and he’s already getting hard? Seriously, how old is he? “To put it bluntly,” Minho tacks on, as an explanation. Blushing, Seungmin waves a hand and sits on the opposite end of the mattress, hair a mess and teeth sunk into his bottom lip. Pointedly, stubbornly, Minho looks away.
“Another time, maybe,” Minho says, then freezes. Does he not possess the ability to shut the fuck up? Seungmin’s eyes fly to meet his in half-wild disbelief and Minho pushes both hands against his face, now, smacking them gently against his skin and groaning. “Don’t– say nothing. That’s not. Relevant. Christ .”
“I’ve never seen you like this, hyung,” says Seungmin with a crooked, overly-pleased smile. “We’ve been kissing for what, ten minutes? And now you’re talking about sex? Do we need to have a, what’s it called, birds-and-bees talk? Giving or receiving preferences?”
“You have never been less attractive to me,” Minho replies.
“Sure,” Seungmin says.
Silence, then, save for Seungmin’s quiet laughter. Minho can feel a smile threatening to take over his expression and he battles it, lowering his hands. “Kiss me.”
“You just told me not to?”
“On the mouth. Nowhere else. And keep your hands above the belt, pervert.”
Seungmin listens. Their lips reconnect and the smooth glide has Minho keening almost immediately, chest pushing up and eyes falling closed. He swallows against the dryness within his mouth and lets his hand lift to the back of Seungmin’s head, guiding him closer, reinstated to his position between Minho’s legs.
The arousal isn’t easy to best, but Minho manages. He forces their kiss to remain soft, lazy, and Seungmin seems more than happy to press him into the mattress and take what Minho has to give; time distorts on that bed, the two of them deaf to the clicking of the second hand, existing only to touch one another, for one another.
One of Seungmin’s hands finds Minho’s and their fingers twine together. Minho squeezes once, hard.
They break apart. Seungmin’s breathing shakes slightly. “I really like doing that,” he whispers, to which Minho kisses the corner of his mouth and pulls him back down.
Three chaste kisses later and Seungmin is pulling away again, their foreheads knocking together, hands still tightly clasped. “What do we do?” he asks, and Minho shakes his head.
“Turn that vacant brain of yours off,” he says, softly. No phones, no camera flash, no tabloid journals or obsessive fans– “we can figure it out tomorrow.”
“What if you regret it tomorrow?”
“I will regret it if you keep questioning my sound logic.”
A laugh, like drizzling rain on a hot day or falling asleep pressed to the window of an airplane. Minho thinks he loves him. “Okay,” Seungmin concedes, and when their lips meet again Minho can’t think of a single reason strong enough to regret Kim Seungmin.