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Were it not for Lee Felix, Seungmin would have a much more peaceful existence on this earth.
For one, he’d probably have a normal roommate, not one who insists on wriggling into his bed at 7 AM, grumbling that Seungmin’s alarm woke him up so now Seungmin is morally obliged to cuddle him. Not one who occasionally licks Seungmin’s cheek when he’s feeling affectionate. Not one who will come home from the supermarket with Shin Ramyun, peanut butter, watermelon gummies, and a devilish gleam in his eye that betrays he’s been watching cooking TikToks again (Seungmin is pretty sure the algorithm is just serving Felix shitposts at this point, but Felix does not seem to have any awareness that people could, or would, just lie on the internet and devours every post without an ounce of skepticism).
Not one who serves him “a somehow delicious and weirdly, strangely good” (sic) Shin Ramyun abomination as a snack a little while later, and with a look that says it’s ok if u don’t like it but i will probably be sad and cry so please like it, seungmin-ah, my best friend.
If Seungmin did not know Felix, he’d have a lot more free time. More time to dedicate to figuring out how to perfect his coffee at home–he still hasn’t found his ideal espresso-to-water ratio, and he has a bad habit of under-grinding the beans. He’d probably encounter fewer interruptions while trying to keep up with his habit tracker for things like Seungmin help I was shaving and I think I missed a spot on the back of my thigh, do I look hairy, can you do a spot check (“Can’t you ask Chan-hyung for help with this?” Seungmin had asked, and Felix’s neutral-pleasant expression had cracked open into a deep sorrow, as if Seungmin had mortally wounded him). Fewer interruptions. A more peaceful life.
Fewer roommate’s boyfriend’s roommates, too.
“Yooooo Seungmaaaann,” says one of the aforementioned roommate’s boyfriend’s roommates, Jisung, when Seungmin kicks off his shoes in their doorway.
Seungmin quirks an eyebrow, and Jisung flushes, sinking low into his seat on the couch. Nobody should ever look so shameful on their own couch, but that’s Jisung.
“I mean, hi, Seungmin,” Jisung course-corrects.
Seungmin is fine with the familiarity–they’re the same age after all–but it is pretty funny how Jisung flusters with something so simple, the smallest fracture in someone’s expression. It seems like Chan agrees, what with the way he’s giggling loudly from the kitchen.
“Hi,” Seungmin says, neutral.
“So explain this to me,” Changbin says, emerging from the bathroom, and Seungmin feels at once like he is on fire. Changbin nudges his glasses up his nose with a knuckle, undoubtedly leaving a smear of skin oil on the lens, and Seungmin wants to be mad about it but there’s no space left in his body for an emotion like anger, not when he’s all filled up with flames. With this all-encompassing, insanity-making heat. “Jisung spilled Sprite on his keyboard and he needed Felix to come fix it.”
“Bin,” Chan says, and there is something like a warning in his voice.
“What? I’m just asking questions,” Changbin says. “Not that I mind the extra company but is Felix capable of coming alone? Is it something that’s possible? Have we tested it? I have never seen him not attached to Seungmin.”
Oblivious to the insult, Felix bounds over to Changbin and throws his arms around him. It’s hard to tell from this angle, but a suspicious arm movement makes Seungmin consider that Felix might be groping Changbin’s ass. Seungmin subsequently forces himself not to consider what Changbin’s ass feels like (round soft big solid jiggly–).
“Hyung,” Felix pants into Changbin’s neck. (Of all the strange things Felix does on the regular, this behavior is one Seungmin can’t blame him for.) “Hi, Changbin-hyung.”
Chan rounds the corner into the living room, and even though he’s holding two giant bowls of chips, his shoulders still somehow sag. He’s not one inclined to jealousy, normally, but– “Did you come here to see everyone but me?” Chan asks, the light tone a little bit too jovial.
Felix turns his head to look at Chan, cheek mushed up against Changbin’s shoulder. “No, I’m here to see you, too.”
“Aw, how sweet,” Seungmin says, releasing some of that hot fire inside him on Chan, a great victim. “Chan-hyung’s finally graduated from ‘chopped liver’ to ‘afterthought.’”
Chan glares at Seungmin, but only for as long as it takes Felix to extricate his limbs (is it really only four? he seems impossibly twisted around Changbin’s body, for there only to be four limbs) from Changbin and turn around. He plucks one bowl of chips from Chan’s hand and shoves it at Seungmin before ducking in to kiss Chan’s lips.
Changbin, newly liberated, continues on. “So what I’m saying is, why does Kim Seungmin always come along?”
“I’m his minder,” Seungmin says, ignoring the way his own heart skips when Changbin says his name. Is he sweating. More importantly, is the sweat visible. “Do you really think he could make it across town on his own? There’s a subway transfer. He’d get lost.”
Felix horks down a handful of chips and nods. “I’d get lost.” The way chip flakes scatter from Felix’s mouth as he talks is almost as nauseating as the way Chan gazes fondly at Felix, as if he can’t see the chip flakes at all, blinded utterly by love.
Showing an uncharacteristic skepticism, Changbin questions, “You guys come here at least three times a week every week and he doesn’t have the route memorized?”
“Don’t talk about Lixie that way, Bin,” Chan says. “How many times a week do you try to make ramyun, and how many times have you ever succeeded at it?”
“That’s different. Making ramyun takes a lot of steps–”
Seungmin looks down at his smart watch. “Over 800 steps? Because that’s how many steps are between our apartment and yours.”
“--and this is what I’m talking about!” Changbin finishes, voice increasing suddenly in volume. “I just don’t like being picked on all the time. If I wanted that, I’d still be living at home with my sister.”
“Who’s picking on you?” Seungmin asks. “I’m not picking on you. Felix, are you picking on Changbin?”
Felix has migrated to the couch and is mounting Jisung, whose noodley arms can do little to fight off Felix’s love attack. “Nope!”
“I’m also worried about the risk of abduction,” Seungmin says, voice a little lower. Changbin is just gullible enough that he might actually buy this. “You know, some guy approaches him and starts talking about Jesus–that’s all it would take.”
Changbin shrugs. “I’ll give you that, but–what? The kidnapper is going to see your paper-thin silhouette and mild manners and be warded off?”
Seungmin twists his expression into one he keeps in reserve–his maniac grin, lips peeled back, eyes wide and delirious.
Changbin shudders. “Fair enough.” He raises both hands in defeat–those hands which are so small, especially compared to the bulk of the shoulders they’re held in front of now. Seungmin feels like he’s going to die because why did he do this. He always does this. Changbin is just trying to–Changbin is just there, bothering nobody, and Seungmin has to go and open his mouth and make things weird and hostile. Instead of ruminating, Seungmin turns away from Changbin’s still-somehow-friendly face and wanders over to find Felix.
Seungmin mostly holds the toolbox and offers moral support while Felix takes apart Jisung’s keyboard on the living room floor. He knows well by now that additional involvement would just be regarded as interfering; Seungmin’s fingers are too oily to touch the delicate insides of this keyboard, or he’s going to snap something trying to latch a key back into place, or something. So he dips q-tips in alcohol and hands them to Felix, who swipes them along the surfaces. He plucks new switches from the toolbox and discards the ruined ones Felix has pried off the keyboard. Jisung watches in a deep squat, eyes wide, mesmerized.
“You learned all this from YouTube?” Jisung asks.
“Mostly, yeah. And a noona in university.” The three of them (herbivores) are mostly quiet other than occasional questions along similar lines, and Chan and Changbin have followed the natural progression of almost any interaction they ever have into doing some light bodyweight exercise and “checking each others’ form” in a way that is surely more handsy than entirely necessary. Seungmin tries not to watch, but he feels his attention tugged towards the two forms in black.
The way Chan’s hands splay over the bulk of Changbin’s pecs–”Are you even flexing? Dude how are you this solid?”–might actually be the reason Seungmin is as fucked up as he is. Would his own hands look like that? Would Changbin give him free reign over his body like this, seeing as how Seungmin doesn’t have the excuse of “checking form?”
Would Changbin even let him get close enough to touch?
-
Were it not for Lee Felix, Seungmin would spend a lot less time insulting people on the internet. But they finished fixing Jisung’s keyboard, and under the guise of making sure it was in proper working order, Felix hooked it up to the computer and booted up his Steam Deck. And now–
Changbin sniffs loudly. “You really shouldn’t talk about other people’s mothers that way.”
Seungmin, having just finished a round, cedes the command position to Jisung, who has yet to try out his newly-fixed keyboard. He rolls his eyes at Changbin. “I wasn’t even using a mic. They didn’t hear me.”
“It seems like a bad idea, though, to just insult people’s moms like that! You’re sending some major mom-hater vibes into the universe.”
Seungmin does not know what he did to make Seo Changbin think he believes that vibes are a thing that exist. Seungmin also does not know how to let sleeping dogs lie. How not to goad said dogs into arguments. How to cool himself down when Changbin focuses his attention on Seungmin. “Are you a mom apologist?”
“No!” Changbin says, flushing.
“Seungmin, be nice. He doesn’t know what an apologist is,” Chan chides. “He just loves his mom.”
Changbin, still pink, puffs out his chest. “Hell yeah I do.”
Seungmin’s insides are melting. His outsides are on fire. He has to– “You are the biggest loser I have ever met in real life.”
Changbin shrugs. “But my mom loves me.”
Seungmin, who had a pretty normal and moderately loving childhood and is also happy to have had the umbilical cord cut a few decades back, is unmoved. He’s still gearing up to respond, probably with something harsher and biting, when Jisung starts clacking away at the keyboard and yanks Seungmin’s focus back to the gaming at hand.
Plenty of time to rile Changbin up later.
-
Seungmin isn’t really sure when the animosity started. But something about Changbin makes Seungmin feel iron-hot and unable to ignore it.
Maybe it’s that Changbin is such a solid target and receives his blows so well. He reacts with the perfect amount of bullheadedness without ever lowering himself to Seungmin’s level. He fights back, but never bitingly; he’s never even said something he didn’t fully mean.
It drives Seungmin insane. Seungmin wants to break him. Seungmin is going to keep pushing until he finds the limits of Changbin’s goodness.
Or, or, Seungmin is going to give it up. Seungmin thinks about it often. Seungmin is not this kind of person. Seungmin is a normal dude, who should have normal crushes on guys like–maybe like Jeongin, who is safe and sweet and non-threatening. Nothing about Jeongin makes Seungmin feel like he’s going to lose his mind. Or like Felix’s friend from that party, Yunho, who is similarly tame and around whom Seungmin can control himself. Guys like that are good and safe.
Not guys like Seo Changbin, who always misses spots when he shaves; who wears gym shorts at least six days a week; who has never had to fend for himself in the world. Who has always been loved so securely and is so innocent with it. So innocent that Seungmin wants to take him apart, wants to keep shoving until that niceness shatters. Wants to find out what’s really inside Seo Changbin.
Seungmin is not the kind of person who wants to pry open his lovers. Seungmin is a normal guy, and he is not going to let Seo Changbin take that from him.
-
“Wake up, loser,” comes Felix’s voice, deep and raspy with morning crust. “We’re going to the park.”
Seungmin squints open, eyes burning. It’s a rare thing for Felix to be up before him; Felix doesn’t sleep in a ton, but he doesn’t tend to get out of bed until Seungmin is already making his coffee and clanging around the kitchen.
This morning, though, he climbs right into Seungmin’s bed and lays himself on top of Seungmin’s prone form, flush to Seungmin’s body from tip to toe.
“I’m sorry I called you a loser, you’re not a loser,” he says right into Seungmin’s ear canal.
Seungmin squeezes his eyes shut, willing the burn of them to ease. He’d been up too late the night before, fixated on the task of reorganizing all the files on his laptop and backing up data to his external harddrive. Something he’d thought he’d spend half an hour on became a chore he couldn’t seem to peel himself away from until long after his phone reminded him to get ready for bed and set itself to bedtime mode.
“I don’t wanna go to the park, it’s cold,” Seungmin grumbles when his mouth (and his brain) finally catch up.
“I take it back. You are a loser.” Felix blows a raspberry onto Seungmin’s nape and Seungmin wails. “And a bad dog. What kind of dog doesn’t want to go to the park?”
“Why do you want to go to the park anyway.”
“Pickup game of soccer Chan’s put together. Says he’s stuck creatively and needs to get out.”
Seungmin sighs. Mentally runs through the processes that will get him there, to the park: get out of bed. Wash face. Do Something to hair. Have coffee and toast. Brush teeth. Put on clothes – maybe his khaki cargo pants and a baseball jersey. Is it all worth it? To run around a park for a couple hours in the cold?
“Hyunjin and Changbin are gonna be there,” Felix says. “I think maybe Minho and Jeongin, even.”
Well. Yes. Sometimes social time is worth it.
Which is what Seungmin has to remind himself 25 minutes later when he and Felix are shuffling down the street towards the park, bodies tensed against the blistering cold February winds of Seoul. There are many benefits to leaving one’s home. Social time. Seeing friends. Getting exercise and fresh air. Calling Chan old. Running away from Chan. Watching Changbin race around their makeshift field, progressively getting sweatier, the tips of his hair curling with it, and stripping layers as his body heats up–
Seungmin tucks his face deeper into his scarf as if to hide himself from the judgment of the world. Felix seems to interpret this instead as Seungmin sheltering himself from the wind, so he wraps an arm around Seungmin’s shoulders and hugs him close.
“It’s supposed to warm up later,” Felix says, “and it won’t be so bad once we’re running around.”
In fact, once they are running around, it is much worse, and for all the reasons Seungmin anticipated.
Chan and Hyunjin pass the soccer ball back and forth while Seungmin huddles on a bench with his second coffee and attempts to straighten his head. He’s determined not to lose it this time, no matter how insane he feels with Changbin around. He’s going to be normal. His normal self. An office worker, 25 years old, whose wardrobe is primarily neutral tones. He does not party. He does not bite people. He does not have promiscuous sex. He does not release his deeply repressed sexual desire through bullying the target of said sexual desire. He is normal.
The soccer ball knocking into Seungmin’s ankle startles him back to the present. “Hurry up and finish your coffee, Kim Seungmin. You need to warm up.”
The ball rolls sluggishly over the uneven ground back towards Hyunjin when Seungmin gives it a half-hearted kick. “Don’t rush me. Besides, who even said I was going to be on your team? Wouldn’t it be better for you if I were stiff and unprepared?”
“Yah, maybe I’m just considering your joints and muscles.” He rakes the ball backwards into his possession. “Because I’m nice.”
Seungmin narrows his eyes. “Yeah, doubt it.”
Hyunjin sticks his tongue out before shoving a sleeve up his arm and whirling to punt the ball back to Chan. One-by-one, their team trickles in, and Felix bounds across the grass every time someone shows up. He kisses Jisung on the jaw and slings himself around Jisung’s frame until Minho arrives, at which point he waddles to Minho’s side, even as Minho wraps himself protectively around Jisung’s frame. Seungmin is too far away to hear what they’re saying, but Felix beams and wriggles and Minho laughs.
The last few drops of coffee are unpleasantly cool by the time Seungmin gets around to drinking them, and he tucks the empty cup next to Chan’s abandoned jacket and Hyunjin’s bag, discarded on the grass by the bench. He stands and winds his arms back to stretch the place where his shoulders meet his chest, and he imagines Changbin’s pudgy hand there, pressing firmly into the muscle, the way Changbin often does to Chan and Jisung when they’re talking about working out, showing off their muscles, or complaining about how sore they are from working out. He banishes the thought as soon as he notices it, snatching his own traitorous hand away from his chest, which is around the same time Changbin comes into his line of sight, a solid figure despite his short stature.
Suddenly, Seungmin is ready to run. He feels like a dog whose owner has just said outside. (Walk. Outside? Treat? Seungmin wonders for a moment if he would beg for it. Seungmin puts his brain in time-out.)
Seungmin swallows some of the saliva pooling in his mouth. He forces himself to inhale deeply and fold into a hamstring stretch. No amount of lust is worth pulling a muscle. He’s going to stay focused today; he’s going to play soccer, get some much-needed sunlight, exercise. With a great mustering of willpower he notices the icy-wet scent of winter pavement, the branches of the nearby trees, spread wide and supplicating the sky for a bit of warmth.
Fully stretched and back on the ground, he at last jogs over to the gathered bunch. Felix bends over to stretch his legs and Minho gropes his ass in a manner so lewd Seungmin wonders whether they might actually get kicked out of the public park.
“Oh!” Jisung says. “Good idea, ‘Lix. I didn’t stretch yet either.”
Seungmin rolls his eyes. There’s a devilish gleam in Minho’s.
“Up-down to choose teams?” Chan suggests.
“Sounds good,” Minho says, and half of them are already holding their arms out when Seungmin says, “I think we should be strategic about it.”
“Strategic how?” Chan asks.
“I’m just saying, it’s not gonna be super fun if it’s me, ‘Lix, Jisung, and Jeongin versus… hyungs. And Hyunjin.”
Hyunjin starts laughing. Jisung opens his mouth in protest, but Felix is already hanging off his side, laughing and jeering, “You’re afraid of balls, mate.”
“Then how about Hyunjinnie and I pick teams?” Chan says even as he’s still laughing, right in the face of Jisung’s most pathetic pout.
“First you insult my soccer skills,” Jisung grumbles, “and then you play favorites. I always knew I was your least favorite.”
“Fine, you can be team captain but that opens the door to the possibility that Hyunjin and I are on the same team.”
“No it’s cool he can be captain,” Jisung says before Chan has even finished his sentence, which draws another round of giggles.
It’s true that Seungmin isn’t the most athletic even on a good day, but he’s truly off his game today. Changbin, playing defense for Chan’s team, works on the offensive, too; if he’s not running, he’s singing Scientist by TWICE at the top of his lungs and doing all of the most chest-emphasizing motions from the choreography, which is clearly a coordinated tactic to distract the opposing team. It’s working on Felix, anyway. Changbin passes to Jeongin, wails, “Better make a move~!” and drags his fingertips across his pecs before shooting a hand-heart right at Seungmin and twisting his arms into a passionate rendition of the dance to the chorus. Felix barely notices Jeongin dribble past him. Seungmin barely notices Felix noticing Changbin.
“KIM SEUNGMIN.”
Fwoop goes the soccer ball into the net.
Fwump goes the full, angry weight of Hyunjin’s body into Seungmin.
“What are you doing!” Hyunjin demands. Seungmin’s head nearly rolls off his shoulders from the aggression with which Hyunjin is shaking them. “You just let Jisung score!”
“It was a foul,” Seungmin says. He mocks pulling a card from his shirt pocket, which does not exist, and says authoritatively, “Foul ball. Red card.”
Chan laughs, and Hyunjin’s mouth twitches from the effort of not doing the very same. “Get your head in the game, Kim, or you’re off the team.” He knocks his knuckles against the side of Seungmin’s skull, and Seungmin winces back and pats down his hair where Hyunjin definitely mussed it.
“Hey, what about him?” Seungmin says, one fierce finger aimed right at Seo Changbin, who returns the gesture (but with two finger guns and an indistinct, you got a crush on me, ooh, you gonna fall for me, woah). “That’s not regulation.”
Hyunjin blinks at Seungmin, and Seungmin thinks, A picture is worth 1,000 words. A blink is worth 1,000 punches to the dick.
“If there were any way to make Seo Changbin stop doing girl group dances when he’s got one stuck in his head, I think Minho-hyung would’ve found it by now. Focus.”
With immense effort, Seungmin does manage to pull himself together, though no amount of focus could make him faster than Jisung or stronger than Jeongin. Chan scores nearly every time he gets possession, which Hyunjin picks up on fast and starts dogging him so aggressively that nearly anyone else would’ve gotten fed up with it, but Chan only giggles and pretends to be mad when Hyunjin gets into his space and elbows him in the ribs. Hyunjin playing defense leaves Minho as their team’s primary defense (and, honestly, their primary player, as Seungmin and Felix are approximately as sturdy as pond reeds and even less intimidating). What Minho lacks in precise skill he makes up for in brutality, cackling to the rhythm of his dribbling down the field, striking fear into the hearts of men and local park pigeons alike. Intimidation alone scores him three goals, but Jeongin stops fearing a collision and instead begins using his head to charge straight into Minho, which also works if only because of the chaos it causes when Chan throws Hyunjin out of the way, screaming, “WOAH WOAH WOAH JEONGIN, YENNIE, YEN-AH, BE CAREFUL,” and hotfoots his way to Jeongin’s side to make sure that the clunking noise was, in fact, the plastic of ball-meets-shoe and not of bone-meets-bone. At some point in the chaos Seungmin does get the ball and it’s only because Minho has now wrapped himself around Jisung, the goalkeeper, that he’s able to score.
“Nice one,” Changbin says to him, holding out a hand for a high-five.
Seungmin pulls a face–he isn’t sure what kind, but he hopes it looks pissy or at least condescending as opposed to the warm flare he feels in his chest–and says, “I just scored against your team, hyung.”
“I knowww,” Changbin whines, as if he’s never forgotten what team arrangements were made before. “I’m being a good sport.”
The ball sits unmoving in the midfield. Felix is straddling Jisung, holding him down in the grass while he begs for mercy, and Minho has one arm around Jeongin’s middle while Chan is tickling Jeongin’s stomach but pretending he’s trying to wrestle Minho’s arm away.
“Why? Nobody else is.”
Changbin proudly puffs his chest. “My eomma raised me right.”
Seungmin rolls his eyes, then takes off towards the ball. In the three seconds it takes Changbin to recover, Seungmin pulls a significant lead and reaches the ball, immediately heading for the goal. But Changbin cuts across his route, and Seungmin spins fast to look for someone to pass to.
Unfortunately, his team is still embroiled in the stupidest wrestling match imaginable, so he starts shouting.
“Pass! Pass!” he screams, but his voice is sucked out of him when he feels Changbin’s weight pressing into him from behind. The salt of Changbin’s clean sweat wafting in the air, in Seungmin’s space, makes Seungmin dizzy, reminds him of all the times he’s been stretched out on the floor watching anime with Jisung when Changbin had come in from the gym in his signature black tee and black shorts, dropped his empty shake bottle in the sink, and started to complain about something just for attention, which Seungmin unfailingly pretends not to give him, even as the awareness of Changbin’s presence expands to fill his whole body.
That awareness, that same grip of self-conscious panic overwhelms him now.
“Get off me,” he bites, shoving his weight back hard. Of course, there’s nothing he could physically do to Changbin even if he really wanted to, but Changbin, likely surprised, does stumble back, and for a moment Seungmin can feel little bit relief that Changbin is far enough away now not to be Kool-Aid manning himself through the walls of Seungmin’s prickly defense mechanisms.
In those moments, luckily, Hyunjin separated himself from the gaggle and became open for a pass; Seungmin boots the ball to him and pretends with everything he’s got that he doesn’t care what happened to Changbin. He forces himself not to look.
Changbin, however, is not great at avoiding being seen. Within moments he’s jogging towards Hyunjin, who is now closing in on Changbin’s team’s goal, which Felix is still restraining Jisung from guarding. And he looks–fine. Unaffected entirely by Seungmin’s shove, or (the worse thing) his razor-sharp words. They replay in Seungmin’s head now, over and over, and even now Seungmin can hardly believe that he said those words, in that tone.
Surely he was possessed. Surely that was some–some creature, some demon that took him over for a moment. He’s been harsh before, he is a fast talker and has taken jabs before. But to snap at someone, to snap at Changbin.
It reinforces everything Seungmin believes about himself.
Kim Seungmin owes a lot to Lee Felix–that he’s gotten way more comfortable with physical affection, and that he can now admit it does feel nice and healing to hold a loved one close; that he’s gotten so much practice insulting someone while gaming; that he’s gotten so much practice speaking English–but one thing he’s always careful not to put on Felix is his own sense of worth.
Nobody needs to know the truth about Seungmin, least of all Felix.
Nobody deserves to see that side of him. The beast underneath the creased slacks and pleasant smiles. The entries in his diary, rare but there, evidence of a darker thing within Seungmin.
Because the truth is that Seungmin is not a good person. With friends, he can maintain enough of a distance–even, somehow, keep Lee Tentacles Felix at arms’ length–but with a lover, he could not. He would not. He would ruin them.
The nasty, needy pieces of him would snarl and bite. He would demand, he would nag. He would try to control. Just like he did with his ex Daehwi, he would let the worst parts of himself show, and he would hurt them.
And Changbin is just–Changbin is too good. Changbin would lie down and take it. Changbin would sacrifice anything for someone he loved, and Seungmin does not deserve that. He cannot responsibly wield that kind of power over someone.
And yet.
And yet, maybe Seungmin is selfish enough to try, anyway.
Most of the time, the self-loathing is not so crushing. Seungmin gets up in the morning and brushes his teeth and goes to work, where he has normal interactions with his coworkers, mostly about maintaining the corporate language even in external emails (“They’re clients, Jongho. The filter has sent me three of your emails this week—stop calling them customers.”) and how more and more clients are enquiring about opportunities in specific regions.
He leaves after sorting his email inbox one more time—snooze to 9 AM, snooze to 11 AM, set a calendar reminder, archive—and confirming with his boss about starting to scan the archival corporate handbooks, which are currently hidden under a thick layer of dust in the static shelf behind the shelf that rolls from one side to another, into their database. Tomorrow.
Seungmin takes off his belt before he’s even got his shoes off, and he’s not thinking about how horrible of a person he is, and he hasn’t thought about it all day, because as horrible as he is, at least he isn’t insufferable enough to stew in his self-loathing all day. (Self-loathing is reserved for the minute and a half it takes Seungmin to use his water flosser every night, for the three minutes it takes his coffee to brew in the morning, and, when it can’t be helped, at 3 AM as he’s shifting left side to right side to back to front and thinking Maybe I don’t deserve to sleep, anyway.)
Hard to feel a lot of self-loathing with a roommate like Felix, anyway.
“Kim Seungmo,” Felix growls.
“Yongbok,” Seungmin says, normal.
Felix begins to cackle, his worst put-upon villain voice that is an appropriate warning that Felix is about to say something truly unhinged, like, “If a snake and a dog mated, would it be a dog head with a snake tail or a dog head and body with four snake tails instead of legs?” or, “What if I invested in AI fidget spinners?”
Braced as Seungmin is for the worst, Felix must only be bored tonight, because his most connivingest idea is that he brings his pillow to Seungmin’s room and they watch a three-hour YouTube video about the rise and fall (and then the second rise and fall, apparently) of Jojo Siwa (someone who Seungmin doesn’t really know, but when he’d said as much once, Felix’s jaw dropped open and he grew so passionately outraged Seungmin decided just to lie and say he’d been joking rather than be lectured about it for the rest of time). Seungmin haggles for Felix to order chicken while he showers, and also that Felix will let him keep up with the baseball game that’s on tonight, one of the first of the season. He forgets to insist that Felix change the pillowcase to one that doesn’t have Changbin’s face on it before he brings the cursed thing to Seungmin’s room, but it ends up being therapeutic because Seungmin gets to punch it a few times before Felix gets comfortable.
They’re still firmly in Jojo’s childhood era of ostentatious hair bows and a lucrative if exploitative Nickelodeon deal when Seungmin’s phone lights up with a notification - he’s been mentioned on a social media site by the local radio station. He’s still half-thinking about how weird the English word “blurt” is, checked-out, and expects the twitter notification to be some type of spam, but -
“Woah,” Seungmin says, before his brain latches onto a British phrase he’s been hooked on lately, and he adds, “Oh, my days.”
Felix sputters a laugh. “Oh?”
“I won tickets!” The bed jostles when Seungmin moves to sit, but Felix’s grip keeps him mostly horizontal.
“You won tickets!” Felix screeches, shaking Seungmin in glee.
“You don’t even know what they’re for,” Seungmin says.
Felix nuzzles into Seungmin’s cheek. “Do I have to know what they’re for to be happy for my best friend?”
“Roommate,” Seungmin corrects. “And they’re right behind the dugout.”
“Huh?”
“The seats. At the baseball match. I won the tickets. The big rival match next month I was telling you about? Tickets sold out like, immediately. I tried to log in at work but I missed it.”
Felix laughs, and either his nose is very cold or he just licked Seungmin’s cheekbone. Seungmin decides he’d rather not know. “You must be excited. I’ve never heard you speak so… fragmented-ly before.”
“You have no idea,” Seungmin says. “Sorry, I’m going to invite Jeongin.”
“Aw. But I wanted to sit in the digout with you.”
“The dugout.”
“:(“
As it turns out, Jeongin is unavailable. He’s going to Jeju with Minho and Jisung, because apparently they’d found a deal on plane tickets and Jeongin booked himself along without considering that this might be a couple’s vacation.
(“What were you thinking? What if they were finally going to get together on this trip?!”
“No way. It’s never going to happen for real.”
“Because you’re always up their assholes instead of letting them get up each others’ assholes. Or, presumably, letting Minho get up Jisung’s.”
“I literally hate you.”)
Chan was raring to go, ready even to buy a jersey to support the team, until he realized that the game was on his boss’s birthday and he’d agreed to a company dinner already. Hyunjin still had art at a gallery and he wanted to spend as much time there as possible during the exhibition, and not even Jongho could make the game, citing personal conflicts (which Seungmin suspected meant “I have personally conflicting feelings about you”), which left only Felix. Or Changbin. But with the game a week away, Seungmin and Changbin still hadn’t really made up after the whole shoving incident, and Seungmin’s inability to initiate reconciliations was still gnawing at his ass.
But Felix spends the evening before the game making frequent trips to the bathroom. He seems to have abandoned his bedroom entirely, instead collapsing into a heap on the couch, which Seungmin has laid towels across.
“I feel like this is why we don’t lick things, Felix,” Seungmin says. He has no qualms with giving Felix hard truths even in times such as this, with limp, greasy hair tucked under a headband, skin peaky and dotted in sweat.
“It’s not usually things, it’s usually people,” Felix whines into the couch cushion that Seungmin is probably going to burn after this.
“My point stands. Stop licking stuff and you’ll stay well longer.”
Felix pouts at Seungmin, all pathetic and bunched up on the couch. Seungmin looks down at him, and, okay, his ice-cold heart softens.
“I think I’m going to go to bed, I want to rest up because we’ll be in the sun all day tomorrow.”
Felix’s frown deepens. “I don’t think I’m going to be alive tomorrow, Seungmin.”
“I mean me and… whoever does end up going with me,” Seungmin clarifies. “You’re off the hook. In fact, I will be mad if you try to come with me. You’re staying home. Do you need anything before I get my pajamas on? I can run down to the convenience store.”
Felix shakes his head. “I can’t even keep water down.”
Seungmin does a quick inventory of their kitchen - finding it lacking in Jell-Os, sports drinks, and crackers, he ventures to the GS25 down the block and loads up a basket with the most palatable things he can find, plus some of Felix’s favorites in case he’s feeling well enough to try eating real food tomorrow. With 25K worth of mostly different forms of fruit (gelatinized, juiced, sauced) and the plainest carbs he can find, he unloads the haul in their kitchen and sets out a sports drink and some ibuprofen now.
“Take the medicine. Even if it comes back up, you’ll get some of it in your system to help break the fever,” Seungmin explains.
Felix just pouts at him. “I can’t even keep liquids down.”
“Anything you can get in helps,” Seungmin says. “Just keep sipping. It’ll stop eventually.” Holding his breath, he pats Felix’s head and then takes a few large steps back. “Anything else you need?”
“No,” Felix croaks. “Thank you. Oh - I texted Changbin-hyung for you.”
Ice floods Seungmin’s veins. “You - what. Why!”
“To go with you.” He looks up at Changbin, all pathetic. “Was that not - did I do bad?”
“No!” Seungmin says quickly. “No, you didn’t do bad. I just - uh. Thanks. I wasn’t expecting that.”
Felix smiles, but he already seems to be losing consciousness, loose against the couch. “Mhm.”
Seungmin is quiet as he irons his jeans and makes his coffee before heading out in the morning, but his shaky hands make every task a little more challenging. He drops a spoon into the sink harder than he meant to and immediately glances up at the couch, but the Lump of Felix doesn’t stir. Seungmin cracks a few more ibuprofen out of the blister pack and gets Felix a fresh glass of water, then checks his pockets for the necessities, all while trying desperately not to think about how fucking miserable he feels.
Last night, Changbin had texted him, the first contact they’ve had in weeks.
seo changbin (chan roommate): felix told me he’s sick and you still have that ticket. do you want me to come with?
Seungmin’s heart jumped to his throat, taking all of the contents of his stomach up with it. He sucked in deep breaths and willed the nausea down - Felix was doing enough vomiting for the both of them. After a brief hour-long spiral he settles on a friendly, if distant, of course! do you want to meet at the station at 11?
Stalling until the absolute last minute unfortunately does not make time stop moving, and Seungmin is uncharacteristically harried as he rushes to the station. He makes it just on time, but Changbin does not - Seungmin’s watch buzzes and he glances at it to read the messages as they roll in.
seo changbin (chan roommate): running just a second late
seo changbin (chan roommate): be there in five
If Seungmin had the energy, he’d message back something snarky like well, is it a second or five minutes? but right now he’s not sure he’d be able to live with himself if he gave Changbin even an ounce of his usual cruelty. Regardless, the anxiety and irritation pool in his gut.
Impossibly, everything is worse when Changbin shows up with a large iced Americano in each hand, looking stupid(ly hot) in an unbuttoned baseball jersey over a(n obscenely tight) black tee shirt and baggy jeans.
“I didn’t even think you liked baseball,” is the first thing out of Seungmin’s mouth, and he considers for a moment taking a vow of silence. Just for a year or two, until he learns how to be nice. And say kind things.
Changbin is incredibly good, pressing an Americano into Seungmin’s hands. “I borrowed the jersey from a friend,” he says, because of course he didn’t read into Seungmin’s comment and take it the bad way, even if Seungmin kind of meant it in the bad way. Changbin grew up with too much love and support to be bothered by that kind of thing, which is just another reason he drives Seungmin insane.
“And it fit?” Seungmin asks, and he considers drowning himself in the Americano in his hand. He meant it in the because your muscles are so fucking massive and i need you to choke me between your thighs way, but that might actually be worse than fat shaming for Seungmin’s ego. There is no good interpretation here.
But Changbin just laughs. “Gym buddy,” he says by way of explanation.
Changbin could never be called a social butterfly - he lacks the grace, the delicate float that a Felix or a Hyunjin could pull off - but he is remarkably sociable for someone who has no sense of subtext or the space between two lines. Rather than blustering or awkward, this makes him earnest and sweet, and makes Seungmin want to drag his fingernails down his own face.
Did Changbin forget about the shoving? Or did he never notice at all, the acerbic tone of Seungmin’s hiss of get off me so similar to his usual jaunts that it slid right off Changbin’s broad, proud shoulders? Maybe the depths of his own self-loathing and these horrible gross feelings about Changbin really have driven him off the edge and he imagined the whole thing, because Changbin seems content just to chat away about his mom’s new hobby of flower arrangement and his sister’s new boyfriend (verdict: he seems nice but hasn’t been nearly friendly enough to their mom, who deserves the world).
Their arrival and welcome to the stadium by the radio station who hosted the ticket giveaway halts Seungmin’s spiral. He and Changbin get tee shirts, foam fingers, and tote bags, and the stadium’s official branded cups full of beer, which can be used all season for discounted drinks.
Changbin frowns. “I guess it’s only soft drinks and beer, yeah?”
After a brief pause, Seungmin grins when he realizes what Changbin is getting at. “Yeah, hyung, protein shakes are not standard stadium fare.”
“Well, damn. Why did I even come.”
“Because you’re the only one who isn’t busy. Or busy dying.”
Changbin manages to flex around his armfuls of swag. “There is nothing that a healthy diet of sweet potatoes and a mother’s undying love can’t do.”
Seungmin blinks and wills his mouth not to twitch. “Except, apparently, make someone cool.”
Seungmin tries in earnest not to dwell, and the impending game helps. They’re shown to their seats, which are indeed incredible, and Changbin starts asking earnest questions, even if they are the type of questions that would make Seungmin doubt the intelligence of the asker if it were almost anyone else. Changbin is very intelligent, he’s just also dense, and rarely spends time memorizing things that he can’t see a direct utility in knowing. There’s something very cute about it, actually, the way Changbin tries his best to understand as Seungmin explains the roles of the different players and what makes this pitcher so valuable and what an inning is.
Changbin spares him any social hardship at all until Seungmin is flying high on the widening gap of runs between his team and the opponent at the end of the seventh inning. Seungmin realizes with a warm pang that Changbin really was listening to his explanations earlier and chose an opportune time to breach the topic, knowing there wouldn’t be long left in the game and if things went south they could part ways naturally soon.
“Listen,” Changbin starts, and the previous warm pang in Seungmin’s chest solidifies into a block of jagged ice. His biceps bulge from the way he leans forward, arms hanging over the concrete half-wall separating their seats from the dugout. (Or maybe that’s just the way his biceps normally bulge.) “I know things have been kind of weird, but to be honest with you I don’t really know why, I just - I don’t really want things to be awkward, and I just wanted to say that whatever is going on, it’s all water under the bridge to me.” His eye contact, just like everything else about him, is so painfully earnest. Paired with his own stumbling attempt to throw a rope across the rift between them, he’s nearly unbearable to Seungmin. “Or maybe I’m reading stuff wrong and it has nothing to do with me, in which case I’m sorry for making this about me.”
The excitable 30-somethings in the seats behind them really do not go easy with their thundersticks, and Seungmin’s reply is punctuated by the rhythmic rat-tat, rat-tat-tat, rat-tat, rat-tat-tat and the less rhythmic but still quite regular drunken shouts. Seungmin contemplates throwing himself onto the field and getting apprehended by the security rather than continue this conversation.
“You’re not,” Seungmin says. “You’re not” – tat-tat – “making it about you.” – tat, rat-tat-tat. “I – I shoved you.”
Changbin’s eyes wander, then snap to Seungmin’s face when he recalls. “That?”
“It was too far.”
“We were playing soccer. A physical sport.”
“Nobody else was shoving like that. It was too much. And I was kind of–harsh.”
“Seungmin-ah,” Changbin says, and his head drops between his shoulders, which shake. Then it jerks back, and he’s grinning, laughing. “Seungmin-ah, really? You’ve been being weird about that for a month?”
“I’m not being weird,” says the embarrassment in Seungmin’s chest, which warms his cheeks, even as he knows it’s a lie. “I just felt - whatever,” Seungmin grumbles.
“You felt bad because you shoved hyung?” Changbin teases, and the smile he lobs at Seungmin somehow turns the heat in his face up a notch. “My sweet dongsaeng was worried about me.”
He slings an arm over Seungmin’s shoulders, and Seungmin shakes it off. “Shut up, I wasn’t.”
“You thought you hurt me.”
“I didn’t.”
Changbin, evidently feeling soft despite Seungmin’s denials, buys Seungmin another hotdog and tousles Seungmin’s hair. Seungmin hides the flutter in his chest behind a petulant scowl.
The relief hits him so strongly he nearly does something uncharacteristic and cries, once he’s safe behind his bedroom door that evening. Changbin doesn’t hate him, and though he wishes he’d taken the initiative to apologize on his own and make some kind of resolution to do better, there is solace in the fact that Changbin does not seem to be holding any grudges - something Seungmin thoughtlessly attributes to Changbin’s own goodness and not the fact that Seungmin had been carrying around his guilt more heavily than was warranted.
Though scraps of the regret remain, he does move lighter, his stomach easier, conscience just the slightest bit clearer. He feels so good, in fact, that he cooks up kimchi jjigae for Felix - mild, because it’s Felix and Felix is still sick - and even commits a culinary abomination by handling the neon pink sludge Felix insists is just “a totally normal strawberry syrup” to make strawberry milk for him. (Regardless of what Felix says, the fucking bunny on the bottle is unhinged.)
Right around the time the jjigae comes together, the front door opens with a click.
“Oh! It’s Seungmin!” comes perhaps the most unwelcome, gleeful voice Seungmin can imagine.
“Chan-hyung, hi,” Seungmin says with careful neutrality. One slight miscalculation and he will be thrown over a shoulder or cornered and mauled.
He seems to have chosen the right move, because Chan only grins at him and waves the plastic bag he’s holding. “I brought reinforcements,” he says.
“Oh?”
He drops the bag on the counter and lets the handles fall open, the bag peeling open to reveal a carton of eggs and myriad drinks. Among them, a bottled Americano, which he holds out to Seungmin. “Heard you had a busy day and then came home and started caretaking.”
Seungmin shrugs, embarrassed. “It was nothing.” But he takes the coffee anyway and says, “I think Lix is in his room. He just took a bath.”
“So if I hurry he might still be naked?”
“I’m going to spit in your bowl of jjigae.”
“No, you’re not.” Chan giggles devilishly, musses Seungmin’s hair, and disappears down the hall, presumably to defile his boyfriend.
Luckily it seems they don’t get up to much because it’s only moments later that the couple reappear in the kitchen, Felix in too-large pajamas and with a towel over his shoulders to catch the damp from his hair.
Felix must be feeling better, because he leans over the pot and inhales deeply. “Smells amazing. And I think I won’t puke or shit it out right away,” he says with the kind of glee one should reserve for Christmas morning or landing a dream job, entirely discordant with his word choice. But that’s Felix: beautiful and horrible, disjointed and complicated. “How was your date?”
“It was not a date,” Seungmin says, and he hears the sharp lash of his own voice, watches it strike Felix across the face.
But Felix’s flinch softens. More of that discordance: Felix can be so oblivious. But in rare moments he shows a stark intuition, and says things like—like—“Oh my god, Seungmin, you like like him.”
“Shut up,” Seungmin says right now. Everything is worse when he glances self-consciously at Chan and finds him with a warm smile, as if this were something cute and endearing and not the single most painful thing Seungmin has ever experienced in his life. “Don’t,” he squeaks, and his hands shake when he pops the lid of the rice cooker and shoves the paddle in deep, unable to care about squished rice grains when both Chan and Felix are looking at him with that mixture of fondness and pity.
“Seungmin, it’s okay,” Felix says. “I get it. I really get it. Changbin-hyung is so nice and like super hot. I really, really get it.”
Chan’s smile tightens around the edges. “I think he believes you, Lix.”
“It’s not like that,” Seungmin says. He refuses to make eye contact with either of them even as Chan fetches bowls from the cupboard and starts helping to serve up the stew. Felix rummages through the fridge and produces some braised sweet potato and bean sprouts to serve as banchan.
“It’s okay if it is like that, you know,” Chan says, and Seungmin’s brain feeds him a montage of himself approaching Chan, upending the steaming bowls of stew in each of his hands, and stepping back with a smug and satisfied smile leaving Chan’s front doused in jjigae.
With saintlike restraint, Seungmin only says, “It’s not.”
“It’s not okay, or it’s not like that?” Metal spoons and chopsticks clatter against the tabletop where Felix deposits them.
They sit, their conversation briefly broken while they get seated, give a hearty jal meogeseumnida, and dig into their food.
Felix is persistent, though. “Do you really think it wouldn’t be okay to like him? Changbin-hyung?” He has a crushed bead of rice stuck to his upper lip and red gochugaru collecting in the corners of his lips, but he is serious.
“I don’t want to do this,” says Seungmin instead of answering.
Felix’s gaze does not waver. “I know,” he says with empathy so visceral it gloms onto Seungmin’s insides like hot sugar, just as scalding. “And I know you don’t like it when I pry. But I just need you to know that it would be okay if you did have feelings for him.”
Seungmin tightens his grip on his chopsticks to mask the shaking of his hands. “Please don’t,” he says.
“I know you have hangups about stuff and I won’t pry. I know. I know. But Changbin-hyung is really a good guy and he–he’s safe, you know, Seungmin-ah?”
Hangups about stuff makes it sound so trivial, not like the tossing-turning agony, not like the inability to look himself in the mirror anymore, not like the pit of self-loathing into the depths of which he longs to throw himself when he considers what liking Changbin means, and what it would mean if Changbin ever got close.
Even now, their proximity makes Seungmin nervous; how soon before Changbin gets near enough to notice that the good parts of Seungmin are a fabrication - everything of substance is also of rot, the kind of bone-deep cruelty no amount of manners or friendly smiles can change. As it stands it’s only a matter of time before they all learn this and decide he’s more trouble than he’s worth - or worse, until he loses control, lashes out and hurts someone. He’s not sure he could ever forgive himself if it were Changbin he hurt. Good, pure Changbin. Changbin who has never done anything wrong in his life. Changbin who would see him and forgive him right away.
Changbin, who Seungmin could destroy so easily.
Seungmin stares into the angry-wound red of the jjigae and feels that raw pit inside him open up.
“He’s not safe from me,” Seungmin says.
“He’s not safe from you?”
“I don’t expect you to get it, Felix. And I don’t mean it like that. I just mean–not all of us have sunshine coming out of our assholes. I’m not–I’m not a social butterfly like you, I’m not–nice, honestly, and everyone I get close to ends up getting hurt by me.” Seungmin clears his throat. “Ugh, see? I’m doing it again. I can’t even own up to my own shit. They don’t just incidentally get hurt by me. I hurt them. I hurt people around me, because I’m–I’m just mean, and I’m bad.”
“Seungmin-ah, you’ve never hurt me,” Felix says, low and soft. “Or well–not… a lot? Everyone hurts other people sometimes. That’s part of the deal, right? You don’t get to love without also having to hurt sometimes.”
“Yeah, and I don’t want that,” Seungmin says, a bitter taste in his throat seeping in to color his words. “I don’t want to hurt anyone, or be hurt.”
“Isn’t it worth it, though?” Chan says. “Isn’t it worth it to have Felix in your life, even though you know sometimes it’s going to suck real bad?”
“Hey,” says Felix, wounded. He pouts at Chan, but Chan ruffles his hair and Felix giggles.
“I don’t mean it like that. I mean… if the cost of being able to love and be loved is a little bit of hurt, isn’t that worth it?”
Seungmin inhales, about to speak, but Felix cuts him off. “And also,” is what he says. “Also, I don’t think you’re mean.”
“I’m really mean, Felix. I have–really mean thoughts.” The final word gets twisted by an unexpected tightness in Seungmin’s throat, and here it is, the absolute worst thing that could be happening to him: tears. In front of not just Felix, but also Chan.
“Uhhhhhh…?” Chan says. “Yes?”
“Seungmin, everyone has mean thoughts.”
Seungmin cannot speak words, because opening his throat to make noise will allow the tears, too, to flow up and out. Or something.. He doesn’t know how the plumbing in there works but any unexpected muscle movement is liable to open the faucets so he’s currently frozen.
Instead, he simply scrunches up his face to show displeasure, even as Felix slips out of his own chair to curl up to Seungmin’s back.
“You’re just doing your best,” Chan says, in this heartbreaking, feather-light voice that makes everything sting worse. Seungmin does not deserve kindness. Seungmin does not deserve delicate treatment. It’s merely because he’s fooled them all that they believe he deserves to be handled with care.
“I’m not,” Seungmin says.
“If you’re not doing your best then I’m frankly terrified to see your best,” says Felix into the nape of Seungmin’s neck. “What would that look like? Getting up at 5:30 AM on Saturdays instead of 6? Picking up a third language?”
Seungmin has the presence of mind to let out a laugh, even if it’s a sad, wet one. “Stop it,” he says.
“You’re doing good, Seungmin,” Chan says.
“Would a mean person make me jjigae?” Felix asks.
“I’m compensating for my miserable personality,” Seungmin complains.
“What is a personality if not the culmination of what a person does?”
“Hyung, literally shut up or I will spit more into your jjigae.”
The tension depleted for now, Seungmin manages to pick up his spoon and dig into the food in earnest. His appetite is skittish at first but re-emerges quickly when whetted by the first mouthfuls of jjigae - it’s mild, but still delicious and almost hot enough to scald. It’s perfect.
Seungmin puts the conversation in a drawer somewhere safe in the back of his mind, embarrassed to have been seen in such a way, and guilty that he’s embarrassed about it. He’d love to be the kind of person who shares emotion easily, someone unafraid of affection and the exchange of vulnerabilities. But he’s never been good at allowing others to know his weak points – he’s too afraid of being hurt.
It’s easier, on a day-to-day basis, to forget that he’s let Felix (and, by extension, Chan) get so close.
So it’s especially disarming to find his confidence has been betrayed.
A few days later, it takes Seungmin a couple hours to notice the message, since it’s sent a little after his lunch break from work ends. He’s just wrapped up an afternoon meeting and is considering whether he should make a final coffee for the day and he decides to check his phone.
seo changbin (chan roommate): naver.maps/location=1234567890
seo changbin (chan roommate): are you a coffee drinker or a Coffee Drinker? because at this place you can do a sampling of different roasts paired with mini scones and stuff
seo changbin (chan roommate): i feel like usually you just get whatever iced americano is closest but i could also see you being kind of a coffee nerd
seo changbin (chan roommate): i’m not really a coffee nerd but i can appreciate a good sampler of any consumable. i love me some good sugary carbs. are you free this weekend?
seo changbin (chan roommate): hyung’s treat.
Get a goddamn grip, Seungmin commands his sweating palms. He scowls at his racing heart and hopes his nearest coworkers read his sigh as one of tiredness from a hard day’s labor rather than one of frustration at his own lack of control over his very overreactive body.
He doesn’t have context for this - no facial expressions, no hint at what Changbin is thinking; he doesn’t know why Changbin reached out, why he reached out now, if it’s because he just had a good time at the baseball game or because he’s thinking about Seungmin–Seungmin’s heart jerks in his chest–or because he has something he wants to talk about, because Seungmin has done something wrong (again).
He doesn’t have a manual for this, or even anyone he can tug into the bathroom and freak out about this with. Nobody to scheme up the perfect reply with. Unfortunately, he’s going to have to rely on his instincts and go in blind. He could reply to this later, but then he runs the risk of making Changbin feel like he’s not a priority. On the other hand, responding immediately might make his stupid crush even more transparent than it already is - does he want Changbin to know how he feels? Does he want Changbin to know how badly he wants to go drink coffee with him, to be around him, to hear his ridiculous laugh, to be refreshed by being around such a wholesome and kind person whom he admires so deeply?
If he weren’t at the office, he’d put his head in his hands and scream with frustration at it all. He’s heard that some people don’t function like this, that some people just read messages when they see them and respond and don’t think and think and think about them and try to find the motives of everyone in every social situation - there are people like Felix, who move through the world with pure intentions and don’t question whether doing what they want to do is manipulative, how their actions could be misconstrued.
Seungmin groans. He sees a nearby coworker shoot him a look, and knows he needs to put away his phone and at least pretend to be Doing Work pretty soon. Fuck it. Fuck it! Seungmin wants this. He wants to get coffee with Changbin–wants it like a starving tiger wants to catch a wild boar–and he is free this weekend. He can go for it.
With more effort than it usually takes to compose a single stupid message, Seungmin replies: I am for sure a coffee nerd. Are you prepared to be educated about the relative pros and cons of natural vs natural beans? (That is to say, what time should I be there? Free all weekend.)
The remainder of the week Seungmin spends in a state of mild disquiet. He goes about his daily life - working, keeping Felix entertained, maintaining a household - but the quiet moments no longer feel restful, instead just stretches of time his mind fills with anxiety. He fixates on small details, like if he should trim his nails even though they’re still plenty short and whether the budding pimple on his forehead is likely to calm down sooner if he pops it or leaves it alone. He contemplates buying a whole new outfit because nothing in his wardrobe seems adequate. He contemplates moving to Australia and starting a new life. He contemplates a lobotomy.
In the end, he wears a button-up Felix always calls his “dandy shirt” with jeans he likes the fit of - baggy enough to balance out his skinny legs, but not so much that they clash with the smart fit of the shirt. A classic indigo wash, great to dress down an outfit without looking sloppy. He parts his hair and nabs some of Felix’s concealer to dab over that damn pimple. Wears his favorite socks, grey with little puppies embroidered at the seam, and his white sneakers he’d cleaned the night before.
While he’s checking his reflection in the mirror a final time before leaving, he spots a pile of Felix’s rings on the bathroom counter and borrows one - Felix won’t mind. If Felix wanted to wear it, he’d have taken it to Chan’s. The simple silver band around his right ring finger almost feels like too much, might make it obvious that he’d put in effort today, but it feels right anyway.
He’s early by nearly a quarter of an hour, but Changbin shows up only five minutes later, and Seungmin hopes he doesn’t notice the way Seungmin wipes his palms on his thighs. Because clearly Changbin is treating this like a date, too.
Seungmin would never complain about Changbin’s choice to wear almost exclusively exercise clothes (despite the fact that this is actually just a lie - he would and has complained, many times, calling Changbin fifty shades of sloppy and ugly), but the way he looks today makes Seungmin want to complain (more) about the exercise clothes. Who even knew that Changbin owned slacks? Let alone ones that hug his thighs, erasing the crisp crease down the center nearly entirely where they stretch over the thick muscle. Not that Seungmin is looking.
Seungmin also pointedly does not look at the flattering contrast of Changbin’s warm-toned skin against his dark jacket and ashy grey button-down, open over a tucked-in tee shirt. Seungmin looks at his own stupid white sneakers and notices a new smudge from where he’d stubbed it on the sidewalk and says, stupidly, “Hi, hyung.”
This is so stupid.
“Hi, Seungmin-ah,” Changbin says, and he doesn’t sound stupid at all, or even awkward or weird. He just cases his earpods and stuffs them into his pocket and says, “Did you eat this morning?”
“No,” Seungmin says.
“Me neither. Let’s eat, yeah?”
Seungmin cannot breathe when Changbin holds the door for him, and he tries desperately to hide his shaking hands when he drops his bag at the table to reserve it while they order. He catches up with Changbin, who’s already at the counter and squinting at the menu like it’s written in Arabic.
“Do you think it’s worth it to do a sampler? I’m a total coffee newb, so I’m fine with just… like…” Changbin looks around as if the walls might do him a solid and name a type of coffee for him. “... espresso?”
“Espresso is a way of preparing coffee, not a bean,” Seungmin says, and within moments settles into a familiar routine with Changbin, something much more comfortable and natural for him: condescension. “Beans have different flavors depending on where they’re from, first, and second, how they’re prepared. Remember how I mentioned about washed versus natural?”
Changbin, for what it’s worth, is a great sport about being condescended to. He seems to understand, especially when Seungmin starts comparing beans and preparations to meat, and even eventually shows interest in getting a sampler. They each order a four-cup sampler and the accompanying carbs - mostly scones with different jams to complement the flavor profiles of the coffees - and Changbin adds croissants (which he pronounces in the most embarrassing way). Seungmin smacks him on the bicep, and is instantly consumed with horny regret.
But Changbin only laughs and taps his phone against the payment dock, the tips of his ears an inviting pink. (If Seungmin closed his teeth on them, what would Changbin do? Would he laugh his worst, most obnoxious laugh and shove Seungmin away? Would he turn pink? Would he groan, or maybe whimper? Seungmin swipes the table number off the counter and turns quickly, unsure of the exact expression on his own face but very sure it’s not good or cool.)
Changbin is kind and sweet and despite all the nerves, Seungmin can’t help but feel contentment seep into his bones. There are good reasons to like Changbin; as much as Seungmin agonizes over his feelings, it’s never because Changbin is an unworthy person.
When he catches up to Seungmin at the table, he slips his phone from his pocket and starts showing Seungmin pictures from his recent weekend at home. He clicks to a shared album called Jihye’s dongsaeng is an idiot and complains that Jihye, his sister, had made him help their mom prep dinner and then made fun of his julienned carrots, which Seungmin cannot blame her for when Changbin scrolls to a photo of himself with an outraged expression, clearly mid-complaint, clumsily holding a knife and standing over a cutting board with wobbly carrot chunks rather than julienned pieces.
A few photos further on, Changbin is passed out on the couch, one arm over his head, pulling his shirt up and exposing a few centimeters of soft tummy. Seungmin is going to go insane, and Changbin curses and quickly continues flicking on until he finds pictures of himself carrying Jihye on his back, that same indignation all over his face.
“We went to a park after the rain and there were worms all over the path and she didn’t want to step on them,” Changbin grumbles.
The arrival of their orders elicits an excited hiss from Changbin, who begins rubbing his hands immediately.
“Hyung, don’t down it all in one go,” Seungmin chides while Changbin is sniffing at the tray before him. “You have to really savor the coffee or there was no point in even coming here.”
Changbin’s eyes suddenly lift, all brown and tender and wide fucking open in a way that makes Seungmin’s heart catch, breath backed up in his throat. Was the whirring coffee grinder loud enough to drown out that little gasp of an aborted breath? He will never know, and he’s sure he’ll be thinking about this very moment on his deathbed, full of decay and regret, many years in the future. If only the release from this mortal coil could come sooner. Could come now. “Oh, Seungmin. The point in coming here was seeing you.”
Horribly, miserably, heat spreads up his chest and over his neck. He can feel it, feverish and bright, erupt over his cheeks, all the way to his ears. “Hyung–”
“Let’s eat, okay?”
“Let’s eat,” Seungmin parrots, wishing he had some ice water to cool him down and hopefully make the blush dissipate more quickly. As it is, he turns his focus to the light roast on his far left and its coffee cake partner.
Changbin downs the first coffee like it’s a shot, and then grasps at his chest, eyes bulging. “That was really stupid,” he wheezes. “It’s so hot. I think I scalded my esophagus. Kim Seungmin I think I’m dying. I think I’m going to die. Tell eomma I love her. Bury me with her yangyeom gejang.”
“As expected, Jihye’s dongsaeng is an idiot,” Seungmin says, secretly grateful that Changbin has also done something humiliating, though it’s less impactful because Changbin doesn’t seem to experience normal human emotions like shame and embarrassment.
Evidently recovered enough to eat, Changbin grumbles, “This cake is the size of a single keyboard button.”
“Good thing you have two croissants, then,” Seungmin says. He, for one, is very pleased with the cake; the rich sweetness, the crunch of unincorporated brown sugar, pairs magnificently with the acidic Tanzanian bean.
“Hah! Who’s stupid now?” Changbin says. He has a crumb on his lip, somehow, and Seungmin thinks about standing up, stretching across the table, and licking it off. “One of the croissants is obviously for you, stupid. I brought you to breakfast and I’m not going to let you starve on these… these, morsels!”
Changbin is a fool. And ineloquent. He can be sharp, but he can also be incredibly thick-headed and unaware of his own callow behavior.
Seungmin wants to kiss him so bad.
Instead, Seungmin presses the paper coffee cup to his lips and takes a long, deep sip of some of the best coffee he’s ever tasted.
“Which was your favorite?” Changbin asks, lifting the last of his paper cups and tapping the bottom with his index finger, attempting to coax a final drop into his open mouth.
“Hmm. Big fan of the one from Honduras. There was a depth to it–I know it’d kick my ass into gear any morning.”
Changbin nods. “I get that. But I like to enjoy what I’m drinking. So that one was not my favorite. I liked the–whatever that fruity one was. It wasn’t even bitter.”
“See? Now you’re learning about coffee.”
Changbin smiles at him and says, “Enough learning. Want to order one to go and take a walk?”
“Sure,” Seungmin says, surprised at his own ease. Despite some definite Moments, being with Changbin was simple. Changbin was simple. He wouldn’t spend time with someone he didn’t want to spend time with, and he wouldn’t offer to take a walk with Seungmin if he didn’t want to. He wouldn’t use his bulk to block Seungmin from ordering and paying for their to-go coffees if he didn’t really, truly want to pay.
The rich roasted aroma of coffee follows them out of the store and down the block; this route, if they take it straight, will take them to Hangang in ten minutes. It’s not exactly warm–only the earliest of cherry blossoms are bravely peeking their pink heads out of their buds–but they have hot coffee and coats and are moving, so Seungmin doesn’t complain.
He is, however, a little breathless from the walk by the time they arrive at the riverside, and Changbin leads them to a bench where they both sit.
“It’s really nice to spend time with you, Seungmin-ah,” Changbin says, though he doesn’t look at Seungmin when he says it; he’s watching a family nearby, a little toddler who has seemingly just discovered how to do somersaults and scare the living shit out of their parents doing it.
“Oh,” says Seungmin.
“I don’t feel right not telling you why I invited you, though.” Now he does look at Seungmin, and it’s Seungmin’s turn to look away and pretend that the toddler is anything close to as interesting to him as that one eyebrow hair Changbin has that grows half a centimeter away from the rest of his eyebrow hairs, or the sweet slope of the tip of Changbin’s nose, how the lower lids of his eyes go round and soft when he smiles. As if there’s anything in the world more compelling to Seungmin than those tiny things. “Felix said that… you might have been… waiting for me?”
All the pleasant thoughts about Changbin’s smooth skin shatter, and Seungmin looks back at Changbin now. “Felix said what?”
“He didn’t really say it,” Changbin says. “He just–hinted, I guess, that you had a good time at the baseball game and–”
“I have to go,” Seungmin says, throwing himself upright from the bench, watching himself stumble as if in third person, feeling like his muscles have all been hollowed out and there’s nothing but rattling bones inside him now, shaking and quaking. His own words echo in all that empty space. “I’m going.”
“Seungmin-ah, will you wait?” Changbin is standing now too, even though Seungmin can only look at his feet. One of his shoelaces is untied. “I’m trying to talk to you.”
“I’m good,” Seungmin says. “We’re good. See you later.”
He hardly registers the direction he walks in–away, away is all he can think, somewhere he can be alone with this new reality. He can’t process in front of all these people, he can’t think about anything except getting out, hates himself for glancing back to make sure Changbin isn’t following him. Changbin isn’t; instead, he’s still standing at the bench, frozen, and Seungmin hurries away faster to get away from those eyes. That helpless look.
He wanders, running away from his thoughts, but they catch up to him before long. He finds himself back in his body, on the far east side of Mapo-gu, still holding the stupid fucking coffee, still two-thirds full but unpleasantly lukewarm. A relic of a time when he was content spending time with Changbin, before he knew about the reality of Changbin’s pity date. Seungmin dumps the coffee into a gutter and pops into a GS25 to throw the cup away.
The idea of seeing Felix makes Seungmin want to vomit, but Felix should still be at Chan’s. Should be at Chan’s all day. Seungmin should have enough time to go home and make a plan, even though he’s wandered far enough that the way back will be an annoying combination of buses and subways.
He does make it home, eventually, and when he does he wants to take a hot fucking shower and crawl into bed but if he does that then Felix will find him there eventually, and the mere concept of that is–unthinkable. With shaking hands, he digs out a duffel bag from under his bed and messages Jeongin: Can I stay over at your place for a bit.
yang jeongin (horny catholic): Umm let me check with hyungs
yang jeongin (horny catholic): Yeah it’s all good. The couch is ok?
you: wherever you’ll have me.
yang jeongin (horny catholic): What’s wrong? Did you and Felix-hyung fight or something?
Seungmin ignores this. Focuses instead on putting his razor in its case and putting that in his toiletries bag. Toothpaste. Moisturizer. His supplements. Socks, shirts, underwear, a couple pairs of pants. His iPad.
The door handle rattles, and Seungmin’s heart drops. Fuck. He wasn’t fast enough.
yang jeongin (horny catholic): Hyung? Are you okay?
Seungmin contemplates ducking back into his room, but Felix will come in sooner than later anyway. He stands, a deer in headlights, in the entryway, duffel bag over his shoulder.
“Seungmin!” Felix says brightly when he opens the door. “Hey–did it not go well with Changbin-hyung?”
Seungmin is not going to cry. He presses his lips together, then forces them apart to say, “I’m going to Jeongin’s.”
“What? Seungmin, are you okay?” Felix reaches out a hand to touch Seungmin’s shoulder, but Seungmin brushes past him. “Seungmin–are you mad at me?”
The dampness in Felix’s voice makes Seungmin glance over his shoulder. “I don’t know,” Seungmin says, and then he leaves.
Seungmin had needed to leave, and he has a place to go, but he isn’t ready to be around other people yet. He needs to think and be alone and figure out what the fuck he’s going to say to people when he’s asked about this, so without much waffling he heads to the bus station and takes it the five familiar stops to the bustling otaku district and books a cube at a manhwa cafe. It’s not as alone as he likes, but he’s not going to run into anyone he knows, and he can hunker away in a capsule and bury his face in a book until he’s ready to be perceived by the world again.
For the mandatory one drink, he orders a mixed grain latte without even glancing at the coffee options, and grabs a manhwa off a nearby shelf without even skimming the title.
He flops into his bedlike private bunk, slinging the duffle bag off to the side, and is mildly alarmed when he looks down to discover he’s holding a Japanese BL manhwa. On the front, a muscular athlete grins out towards the world, one arm slung over his taller, bookish love interest. Seungmin tosses the book aside as roughly as he dares and yanks out his phone, scowling as he punches in the free wifi password, leaned back against the back wall of his cube and trying not to think about all the other dirty heads that have leaned against this wall, all the dirty people who have sought solace among these cushions.
He doesn’t have his diary with him, but his notes app will suffice in a pinch.
I’m a fucking pity date. I’m a fucking pity date! I’M A FUCKING PITY DATE.
He swallows thickly, because the angry words give some tangibility to the sting in his chest. He will not cry in this manhwa cafe. He flicks away a banner notification, trying not to read any of the text notifications that have come in since he left the apartment, and then gives up and puts his phone on do not disturb mode.
I’m so fucking mad. I can’t believe Felix told him. I thought I could trust Felix, what the hell was he thinking. Why would he do this. I wish I could erase Changbin’s mind so he would never need to know about this. I wish I could go back and keep a straight face when Felix asked me about my feelings. Why am I so readable, so STUPID? Why can everyone see right the fuck through me?????
His breathing comes ragged, and he forces it down to a steady, normal pace. Someone is going to bring his drink soon and he has to look like a normal otaku who reads BL manhwa alone on a Saturday and not like a fucking loser otaku who reads BL manhwa alone on a Saturday and cries about it in public.
He’s been through enough humiliation lately.
With stiff control, he types slower but with no less vitriol, spilling the anger and despair into the vastness of his phone memory. He nods politely at the staff when his drink arrives and sits up to sip at it, though he’s much too distracted to notice the flavor. He types until his thumbs ache and then he thinks about what he’s going to tell Jeongin, Minho, and Jisung.
He wishes he didn’t have to tell them anything, but he knows that’s not how relationships work. Felix taught him that. Seungmin curls his fist against the cushion.
As a rule, Seungmin does not trust many people, and those he trusts haven’t come into his confidence easily; he’d thought Felix was different. The cruelty he’d received throughout his life–from his older sister, who Seungmin recognizes now was a kid who was suffering too, but that doesn’t take away the hurt and the scarred places; from his classmates, for whom Seungmin has less grace because even if they didn’t like Seungmin there was no reason for them ever to be so mean. That kind of pain had never come from Felix. Felix, one of the first friends he made in university, who had joined the same performance club as Seungmin had and quickly latched onto Seungmin. Felix who’d taught Seungmin how to dance, who’d helped him with his English, who tore apart their dorm kitchen with him because they both wanted something sweet at 2 AM and convenience store biscuits wouldn’t do it. Felix, who’d embraced all of Seungmin, who’d never judged him, who’d never made him feel lesser.
That reality had only shattered a short while ago, but already Seungmin sees it in sepia tones. (He needs to lay off the dramas for a while, probably.)
This must be the third time in a row Chan is calling, because his dial plows right over Seungmin’s DND. He doesn’t want to answer; he silences the ringing but doesn’t end the call, doesn’t even want Chan to know that he got the notification.
The staff come by again to let him know he’s got ten minutes before his reservation ends. As much as he’d like to hide here all day, he’s got to leave eventually, and whatever explanation he ends up giving to Jeongin and the others is going to have to be good enough. He can rehearse in his head as much as he’d like, but he’s not going to find the perfect way to describe the fucked-up situation, when from any angle it’s humiliating.
The door swings open before Seungmin can even knock, and Jeongin is glaring at him.
“Hyung!” he says. “Hyungs, hyung is here,” he shouts over his shoulder before looking back at Seungmin. “Get inside.”
Seungmin bristles at the confrontation. “Why are you being all pissy at me!”
“You pulled a Jisung and disappeared!”
(“Hey!” comes Jisung’s indignation.)
“I went to a manga cafe. What, am I not allowed to go out by myself anymore?” Seungmin bites.
Minho, who has appeared behind Jeongin with crossed arms, is displeased. “That is not a fair representation of what you did and you know it.”
“You texted me, and then you walked out on Felix, and nobody could get ahold of you,” Jeongin says, words quick and hot with anger.
Seungmin can’t help but feel still that he’s having to justify decisions he made of his own free will, when nobody came to tangible harm. “So your feelings are my responsibility?”
“You’re impossible!” Jeongin cries, throwing up both hands and storming off to throw himself onto the couch next to Jisung, who hops up as if propelled.
“Hyung, don’t,” he says to Minho, whose chest is puffed. If Seungmin is impossible, Minho is infinite, and if they start to bicker they may never stop. Jisung, fortunately, is one of few forces on this mortal plane which can stand between Minho and something he wants (or wants to be angry at). Jisung has one hand on Minho’s bicep, but he turns to Seungmin and says, “Come on, get inside.” He ushers Seungmin into the doorway and closes the door behind him, placing himself bodily between Seungmin and Minho, not that they would likely brawl physically. “What these two hotheads are trying to say is that they were worried.”
“Why is that my problem?”
Jisung frowns. “You can bicker like that with them, but not with me. I’m not going to fight with you when you’re being unreasonable. Obviously it matters that your friends are worried about you.”
This works to twist something in Seungmin’s gut, something corklike that releases all of the anger in moments. Seungmin deflates. “Okay. I’m sorry I worried you.”
“Now do you want to talk about what happened with Felix like an adult, or?”
It’s Jeongin, still fuming on the couch.
“I really don’t,” Seungmin says.
“Okay,” Jeongin acquiesces with an ease that surprises Seungmin until Jeongin adds, “but Felix does know you were planning to come here. So he might come over to see you.”
“Tell him I’m not here.”
“We’re not going to lie to Felix,” Jisung says. “I don’t think I can lie to Felix.”
“You can’t lie at all, sweetheart,” Minho says. “And I refuse to compromise my morals for Kim Seungmin.”
Seungmin snorts. “What morals?”
Minho sneers.
So, all is forgiven.
Seungmin finally drops his bag next to the couch. “Please just let me have until Felix comes – if he does come – not to talk about it. I already apologized for worrying you.”
Jeongin’s lupine eyes, appraising and harsh, sweep Seungmin’s form from foot to head. He holds Seungmin’s gaze for what feels like a beat too long before softening. “Okay. But we are still worried about you.”
Jisung inhales, ready to speak, but Jeongin cuts him off: “And you. Hyung. I’m sick of this peacemaker act. Just yesterday you threw a tantrum at me because I threw out your expired fig jam.”
“It wasn’t that expired!”
“I will not abide an ecosystem of mycelium in the fridge where I store my food.”
“How many times have I told you that not all fungal colonies are mycelium-comprised. Words mean things, Yang Jeongin.”
“You’re a fungal colony,” Jeongin snaps.
Jisung pouts. “Minho-hyung, tell him he can’t talk to me like that.”
Jeongin listens to the new Taeyeon album with Seungmin, and they talk about the composition and the color of her voice. In the background, the kitchen bustles; presumably Minho is cooking and Jisung is doing whatever he does in the kitchen. Entertaining Minho, probably.
He’s only just managed to regain some grasp of normalcy when a knock on the door brings him crashing back down into reality. Steeling himself, he prepares to deny Felix the conversation until some of the deeply-wrought humiliation of the day fades.
But when Jisung opens the door, and Felix steps inside with the exact demeanor of a kicked, rained-on and abandoned kitten, Seungmin’s resolve… dissolves.
“Is it because I talked to Changbin-hyung?” Felix says wetly, without even a greeting, shiny Disney eyes turned on Seungmin. Jisung’s eyebrows pull together.
Seungmin sucks in a breath. “We can talk about this, but not here, please?”
“Use my bedroom,” Jeongin offers immediately, apparently just relieved Seungmin has decided to handle this maturely regardless of any petulance he showed earlier.
Felix is already crying by the time the door shuts behind them, big heavy drops that remind Seungmin of claymation water.
“I’m sorry, Seungmin,” Felix says, voice rocky like a ship cutting through tidal waves. “I’m so sorry.”
Seungmin does not say it’s okay; he does not yet forgive Felix. But he does say, “Thank you.”
“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” Felix sobs, and it’s so pathetic Seungmin is almost embarrassed for him. He considers pulling Felix into his chest just so he doesn’t have to look into those pleading eyes, but his resolve is (however minutely) better than that.
“Why would you tell him something I told you in confidence?” Seungmin asks, proud of how steady and gentle his own voice sounds.
“I didn’t—I didn’t really mean to tell him anything!” Felix says. “I know I did, and that hurt you—“ Felix’s breath comes out shuddery and he swallows down what Seungmin imagines to be another puddle’s worth of tears “—but it was innocent. I asked him how the date was, just like I asked you. And he went all pink and asked what I meant by ‘the date.’” Seungmin can’t bear to hear this. Seungmin can’t bear for Felix to stop talking. “And I just said—I said I was teasing. But that… I talked to you and it seemed like you’d be happy to hang out with him again, if he asked you to.”
Seungmin huffs. All laid out in this manner, it does sound innocent—if meddlesome. But before Seungmin can move past this, he needs to give voice to the way it feels from his perspective. He crosses his arms over his chest. “You asked him to take me on a pity date, Felix.”
At this, a bit of Felix’s tenacity seems to manifest itself. “Seungmin, no, I didn’t.”
“He wouldn’t have invited me if you didn’t interfere!”
“Only because—“ Felix stops short, looking guilty.
“What?” Seungmin asks. “Say it.”
“Only because you… give mixed signals, Seungmin. I’m not sure if he knows that you even enjoy his company. Or, he wouldn’t know if I didn’t hint at it.”
Seungmin’s fingers dig into the meat of his bicep. “Because I’m mean.”
Felix squarely meets Seungmin’s eyes. “I did not say that, Seungmin.”
“But that’s what this is about, right? I’m mean and the only reason he’d even consider spending time with me is as a favor. Because he’s too fucking nice.”
“Seungmin, no,” Felix says, and he sniffs again, another sad little tear spilling over the curve of his cheek. “Do you really think his judgment is that bad? Do you really think that we all can’t see how good you are under the jokes?”
“It’s not about anyone else’s judgment. It’s about my shit character.”
“I really don’t think – Seungmin, you’re not some criminal mastermind. You’re really not bad.” Felix, characteristically sensitive, adds, “But I can see that this is hard for you. I know you can’t believe me yet, but will you try? Will you try to trust that your friends aren’t just fools you’ve tricked into liking you?”
Felix has spun Seungmin’s narrative on its head by drawing attention to the presumption it finds its basis in: that Seungmin is smarter than all of them, and they’re all just soft-hearted suckers. Seungmin’s arms fall to his sides and Felix has grabbed him up in a hug before he finishes saying, “Okay. I’ll… try.”
Felix snots into Seungmin’s shirt. “I have one more ask.”
Seungmin, grumbly but mostly over the hurt, says, “I thought you were here to apologize, not to make demands.” He can feel Felix’s wobbly grin against his neck.
“Can I invite Changbin over so you can kiss and make up?”
“Absolutely not,” Seungmin says. “Haven’t you meddled enough?”
“No,” Felix says. “But fine. I just want you to get your happily ever after, Seungmin. Like me and Chan.”
Seungmin winces. “I would rather take an oath of celibacy than be anything remotely resembling you and Chan-hyung.”
A few days is a reasonable amount of time to wallow, Seungmin figures, so wallow he does. He stays with Jeongin for one night since he’d packed the bag anyway, and they stay up late watching animated movies from their childhood and showing each other the stupidest TikToks they come across. It’s healing, and it puts Seungmin in a better state to begin sorting out the whole situation.
Seungmin wishes for a second Changbin when he’s trying to figure out how to talk to Changbin. He needs one to consult about wording and to gas him up because as it stands he feels clueless every time he picks up his phone to type out a message, and of all his friends, Changbin is the best one at this kind of stuff. Felix almost doesn’t understand social anxiety at all, and Jisung understands it too well and is susceptible to developing ulcers by osmosis (osmoting?) Seungmin’s anxieties. Jeongin is maybe even more awkward than Seungmin himself is. Seungmin would never, ever show a vulnerable side to Lee Minho, and talking to Chan about his feelings makes him feel like throwing up.
So, Hyunjin it is.
Bribed with coffee and convenience store pastries, Hyunjin arrives in the early afternoon, sloppy but still somehow beautiful in a well-loved cardigan and a beanie, presumably to cover unwashed hair. Seungmin frowns and shoves one of the two iced Americanos across the table in Hyunjin’s general direction, and then dodges the hug Hyunjin tries to round the table to give him.
“Don’t touch me,” Seungmin complains.
“Why? Are you that fragile?” Hyunjin teases. He gives up on the hug and instead takes a long, deep drink of the Americano and sighs. “I love you, Kim Seungmin.”
“That’s why you’re not allowed to touch me,” Seungmin says. “I’m afraid you’ll get worse.”
Hyunjin laughs one of his best, guttural laughs. “Not possible.”
Rather than offering much practical advice, Hyunjin serves as a great cheerleader and listener. Seungmin whines and flops across the table and rolls around, and Hyunjin laughs at him for getting pastry crumbs in his hair and says, “I know, baby.”
It takes about an hour, but Seungmin composes a message to Changbin that doesn’t totally make him feel like braining himself with his cellular phone.
hey, hyung. i’m sorry for running off the other day. can we meet and talk about it?
The follow-up he adds only takes about thirty seconds to write: you don’t have to pay for my food this time. only your own, because he’s feeling bad but he knows Changbin would not ever tolerate Seungmin paying for his food, and also because it feels more normal to lean into the bit and condescend to Changbin than to grovel.
Changbin, ever the gentleman (except when he’s talking about his digestive habits), does not keep Seungmin waiting long. Seungmin’s hands are sweating and shaking and Hyunjin is patting him clumsily.
of course! what are you talking about, aish. of course hyung is going to pay for everything.
Seungmin stares into the middle space and wriggles his nose. He can feel his lips pulling down, a sting behind his eyes. He hates that he’s crying again about something as stupid as this.
But it’s not stupid, he chides himself. It’s not stupid at all. Nothing about this is trivial - not the way he feels about Changbin, nor his guilt, nor the heaviness of it all. This kind of thing is not easy or natural for Seungmin, who has hardly known healthy love and easy communication in his life until now. His family weren’t huggers, and he certainly never got used to apologizing and making up with his sister. In fact, the people around him never really talked about their feelings, and if they cried, it was in private.
Most things about this are new to Seungmin. It’s thanks mostly to his friends that he manages what he can now - a little gratitude, the swallowing of genuine compliments, the vaguest of affections. He still remembers how difficult it was for him to take Felix’s easy tenderness at first; how he’d stiffen when Felix draped himself over Seungmin’s back, the way he’d flinch when Felix’s nose bumped his neck in a loving nuzzle. He’s come a long way.
Even now, he lets Hyunjin laugh at him and wipe at his tears with the sleeve of his shirt. “Oh, Seungmin-ah,” Hyunjin says. “You have no idea, do you?”
“I’ve never had any idea about anything ever,” Seungmin grumbles.
“Especially about how much you matter, huh,” Hyunjin coos. “How much you deserve forgiveness and good things.”
“I don’t,” Seungmin says, choked words that come up like vomit. “I–”
“You do,” Hyunjin says. “Trust hyung for once, will you?”
This Seungmin refuses to take - it’s so startling and audacious that within an instant he’s no longer feeling sentimental at all. He flings Hyunjin’s hand away from his cheekbone. “You’re older than me by like six months! We were born in the same year! You are not my hyung!”
But still, Hyunjin looks smug as he takes a bite of his cream pastry. The smug, conniving bastard.
Despite all of his plans to let them at least get settled with their food before he starts talking, Seungmin can hardly handle the feeling of his guts trying to eat themselves, so Changbin has barely sat down at their table before he blurts, “I’m sorry I’m such a dick.”
Changbin’s arm, halfway to the pitcher he was presumably about to pour them both tea from, freezes. “You’re not a dick, Seungmin-ah.”
It’s weird to be this uncomfortable in such a familiar place. It’s their favorite Chinese restaurant, a little hole-in-the-wall place underneath a pharmacy on the ground-floor. The bottled drinks are 100 won cheaper than anything else in the neighborhood and they always bring out the tangsuyuk with the sauce on the side, even though it’s so perfectly crisp it’d have to be drenched for half an hour before it lost its crunch. The ahjumma running the shop adores Changbin and always gives him a whole boiled egg on his jjajangmyeon rather than the standard half.
Seungmin has been here so many times, and he’s never felt so out-of-place. He can’t meet Changbin’s eyes when their conversation pauses for them to place their orders - even when they’re alone at their corner table again, Seungmin fingers a scratch in the surface of the table and stares down at that rather than see the way Changbin is looking at him.
But then, Changbin reaches across the table and places his hand, big and warm and soft, over Seungmin’s. He gathers up Seungmin’s fingers in a gentle grip, thumb smoothing over the knuckle of Seungmin’s ring finger. “Look at me, Seungmin?”
“I can’t,” Seungmin says. “Please, I can’t.”
In his periphery, he sees Changbin hunching over, bringing his chin down to the table so he can squeeze his way into Seungmin’s line of sight. It’s so silly, so goofy and endearing, that Seungmin puffs up his cheeks because he can’t smile at a time like this. He doesn’t want to. Changbin can’t - he can’t be the one trying to comfort Seungmin right now, not when Seungmin has done wrong, when Seungmin is the bad one.
Seungmin inhales deeply and tries to draw out from his memory everything he’d planned to say, but the words don’t come, and he ends up just repeating, “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.”
Changbin doesn’t say anything, just keeps stroking Seungmin’s finger with his thumb until it starts to sting in oversensitivity. He lets Seungmin breathe and shift in his seat and look everywhere but at Changbin. Seungmin doesn’t want the contact to end but it does hurt, that same repetitive motion, and when he pulls his hand away, he replaces it quickly with his other hand before Changbin can retract his - and Changbin’s smile is visible even when Seungmin only sees him out of the corner of his eye.
“I had a lot I wanted to say,” Seungmin says at last.
“Hyung is good at listening.”
“I know,” Seungmin says, bitter. “You’re good at everything. How is it so easy for you?”
Even this, Changbin is good at - he knows when a question is rhetorical, that Seungmin doesn’t want an answer. He just squeezes Seungmin’s hand instead.
“Why am I so miserable about this? Like - most people can just - have crushes and have it be fine, and they’re normal about it and don’t have a whole - meltdown.”
On a two-second delay, Seungmin hears his own words, and his own alarm has him glancing up at Changbin’s face to see if he has heard - if he has realized - what Seungmin just said. But he’s only nodding, eyebrows furrowed as he listens with the entirety of his brainpower.
Face hot, Seungmin continues. “I just - I lose control and I hate the feeling. Like - I don’t even know what I’m saying until it’s already out of my mouth. I act like a crazy person and it’s awful, and I hate being out of control.”
“That sounds really upsetting,” Changbin says.
“I feel like fucking - jumping out of my skin,” Seungmin says, the admission tumbling out and bringing with it the sting of tears. He already knew that he was bad at talking about his feelings, but it’s humiliating how lately he can’t seem to get through a genuine conversation without crying. “It’s…”
Changbin looks up at Seungmin now, and when their eyes meet, Seungmin gathers the courage to finish his sentence.
“... scary.”
“What are you scared of?”
Seungmin startles and yanks his hand back when the staff approaches their table, dishes balanced up their arm. His posture pulls straight and he musters a smile, scrambling to move his and Changbin’s cups and silverware to clear space for their meals.
They thank the staff for the meal and, once they’re alone again, Changbin coos and says, “Eat first, Seungmin-ah,” when Seungmin inhales to start talking again.
Maybe Changbin is onto something, because as much as Seungmin doesn’t actually feel like eating, the familiar flavors bring comfort. The sugary soda, too, seems to nudge him towards an energy and courage that were elusive before. He manages a few mouthfuls of noodles and even opens his mouth for the pork Changbin holds out to him, smothered in the sweet-sour-not-quite-spicy sauce. This kind of fussing over him is unusual, too, but he doesn’t have the spirit to bicker with Changbin right now. Besides, the food is really fucking good, and he doesn’t want to refuse it.
The anxiety gnaws at Seungmin’s gut again, and he uses the same tactic from before, letting out the words before he can overthink them. “What if you don’t like me?” Seungmin asks.
Changbin swallows, starts, “But I–” and then stops, swallowing again. He takes a mouthful of his drink and then says, “But I do like you.”
Seungmin punches down the jolt of emotion this sparks - Changbin doesn’t mean it the way Seungmin does, he’s only saying as a person. He likes Seungmin as a friend, as superficially as he knows Seungmin. “You don’t know me,” Seungmin says.
“I don’t know what you mean.” With anyone else, Seungmin might scoff and insist they do, demand they hear what he’s trying to say. But Changbin’s earnestness always disarms him.
“I have a lot of baggage, hyung,” he says quietly. He picks out some wood ear mushroom from the tangsuyuk, pops it into his mouth and chews it for as long as he can.
“I’ve never met anyone who didn’t,” Changbin says. “What kind of baggage are we talking about here?”
“I’m not good at relationships.” He catches himself stirring the sauce with his chopsticks and lets them rest in the bowl of noodles instead. “I’m just not that… nice? Or likeable?”
Changbin blinks, face screwed up. “Lots of people like you, Seungmin.”
“They don’t know me,” Seungmin says.
“I don’t know what you mean by that,” Changbin says again. “What don’t people know about you?”
“Like… my relationship history. What I’m like when I’m... when someone... when I’m… unhappy?”
Changbin’s eyes shift around, eyebrows still sitting low. He’s really trying to follow Seungmin’s narrative, but it’s clearly a challenge for him. “Nobody’s at their best when they’re unhappy.”
“In my last–” Seungmin catches himself, sucks in all his breath and grabs his drink to gulp that down instead of finishing the sentence.
But Changbin isn’t going to let him off the hook so easily. He gathers up a big piece of pork and a slice of carrot and holds them out to Seungmin, who hesitates before closing his mouth around them and eating. Changbin waits patiently for him to swallow and then says, “In your last… relationship?”
Seungmin rubs his hands over his face. He didn’t plan to talk about this. “Yeah. It just went–bad. It was my fault,” Seungmin says. “Daehwi is so nice. Please don’t think badly of him.”
Seungmin had needed too much. Demanded too much. Was never happy, always resentful, and let himself stew in nastiness until he boiled over. Lashed out. A hundred I should’ves, a thousand I wish I hads, a million I’m sorry Is flicker through Seungmin’s mind - communicated better and showed gratitude and forgiven more easily. He doesn’t say this to Changbin now, but looks at him pleadingly, begging him to understand.
“I don’t even know him, Seungmin,” Changbin says. “And you know - I don’t tend to judge people based on what I hear. Whatever you have to say about him or your relationship - I can compartmentalize that.”
Seungmin sniffs, grateful. “It just went bad. I - yeah. I should have - I didn’t - but.” He clears his throat, shoves more noodles into his mouth even though he doesn’t want them, just to buy himself time to organize his thoughts and figure out what he wants to say. Eventually he settles on, “I have a lot of regrets about how it went. And I don’t like the person I was.”
Changbin nods. “And you’re afraid of becoming that person again?”
“I am that person,” Seungmin says.
Changbin rests his chin on his hand, elbow propped on the table, and looks crookedly at Seungmin. He thinks, and he licks his lips, and he says, “I don’t think like, the real you is the you that you are when you’re in a rough spot.”
“It’s not only then,” Seungmin says. “It’s always. I’m just not really that nice.”
“Why do you keep saying that?” Changbin asks, without any sharp edge or judgment, but with genuine curiosity. “I think you’re nice. Felix thinks you’re nice. Hyunjin is downright obsessed with you.”
“Well, Hyunjin is a deeply questionable human being,” Seungmin says. “I would not trust his judgment on this.” He cracks a smile to show he’s joking, and then frowns. “See? It’s like that. Like - I really like Hyunjin. Why do I have to be mean like that?”
“That’s not mean,” Changbin says. “That’s your sense of humor. Hyunjin would laugh at it, too. You’re not being mean at his expense, at least not in a way that would hurt his feelings. It’s not mean.”
Seungmin scratches at his eyebrow, not because it’s itchy but because he needs something to do with his hands, and he needs to put some kind of barrier between Changbin’s raw gaze and his own face. “I wish I wouldn’t,” Seungmin says. “Like - Felix would never say something like that about another person.”
“Felix isn’t you,” Changbin says. “You aren’t Felix. Felix expresses affection in different ways from how you do.”
“Affection?” Seungmin scoffs. “That’s not affection.”
When Seungmin looks up, Changbin is grinning at him.
“What,” Seungmin deadpans.
“I can’t tell whether you don’t know, or whether you think nobody else does.”
“Know what?” Seungmin asks.
“That teasing is your love language,” Changbin says softly. “Nobody else thinks it’s mean. And if anyone had a problem with it, they’d say something.”
“How do I know that!” Seungmin asks. “They’re just - they don’t want to upset me by telling me to fuck off.”
“If anyone told me you’d done something to upset them, I’d tell them to tell you,” Changbin says. “To talk to you about it. Because I know you don’t actually want to hurt anyone. And if you ever took something too far with me, I’d tell you to cut it out.”
“I don’t! I don’t want to hurt anyone,” Seungmin says.
“Yeah. Because you’re nice.”
“I’m not,” Seungmin says.
“I can see that you think that,” Changbin says. “But I’m - I’m not sure what your idea of a ‘nice’ person is. Or where it comes from. But I don’t think a ‘nice’ person has to be docile and happy all the time. I don’t think that’s what makes a person nice or not.”
Seungmin has to admit that Changin has him there - he’s never stopped to think about how he’s been defining niceness this whole time, and maybe it’s some vague image in his head that he has a hard time aligning himself with. Ever since his breakup with Daehwi, he’s had an especially hard time with his self-esteem, compounded by a few years spent single, no external validation to patch over places where his confidence falters. He’s spent a lot of time with himself, getting to know himself, and - if he’s honest - perhaps being meanest of all to himself.
A weak “Yeah” is all he can offer Changbin now.
That, and, a few moments later: “I’m sorry. I’m sorry for running off the other day. I was having a good time - and I misunderstood. I freaked out. That’s what I wanted to say to you today.”
Changbin has stolen a mouthful of Seungmin’s noodles and has a smudge of black sauce on his chin. He’s no less handsome to Seungmin for it. “It was forgiven before you even left,” Changbin says. “Don’t worry about it. I figured you were upset about something.”
“I thought - I thought Felix asked you to hang out with me as like - consolation.”
Changbin laughs at him, his most annoying (endearing) one that makes the group of college kids a few tables away shoot a glare their way. “Did you not listen to me when I said that I wanted to see you and I was having fun?”
“You would say that, because you’re nice,” Seungmin grumbles.
“Yah! I’m nice but I’m not a liar,” Changbin argues. “Shut your dumb mouth and finish your noodles before I do it for you.”
Considering how direct Changbin has been this whole time, it startles Seungmin when he suddenly clams up as he’s leading them up the stairs back to the street after they’ve finished and paid. His cheeks are pink, and he looks intently forward and not at Seungmin when he says, “I meant it when I said I liked you, too.”
Seungmin’s mouth is so, so dry. “Like…?”
Changbin sneaks a look at him from the side of his eyes, now. “Yeah,” Changbin says. “Like that.”
“Oh,” Seungmin says, trying hard not to feel so damn pleased about it. It’s not like he’s in a good place to start dating anyone right now anyway. “Hyung, I–”
“It doesn’t have to change anything,” Changbin says quickly. “And it’s - it’s just a small thing, for now.”
They haven’t talked about a destination, but there’s a nearby park where the cherry trees are starting to blossom, and they head in that direction without discussion.
“Yeah,” Seungmin says. “I’m… I’m not sure about - I mean.” He breathes a little laugh. “Look at me. I’m not ready for that kind of relationship, I think.”
“Like I said, it doesn’t have to change anything. We can just spend time together as usual,” Changbin says. “And see what happens? Maybe?”
“Yeah,” Seungmin says. “And I - I mean, I said it before, but. Me too.”
“You too?”
“Me too.”
“Oh my god you’re fucking idiots,” Felix screeches so loud that Seungmin grabs a pillow, intent on smothering him with it before one of their neighbors calls the police on them.
“We had an adult conversation about it!” Seungmin says to the pillow he’s currently suffocating Felix with. “Why does that make us idiots?”
Felix flails and lands a blow on Seungmin’s neck, so Seungmin releases the pillow, which Felix flings off his face, panting. “‘Me too.’ Fuck the fuck off, Kim Seungmin. You can’t even say ‘I like you.’”
Seungmin rubs the smarting spot on his neck. “Why do I have to? He knows what I meant.”
“It feels good to express your feelings in words!” Felix says.
“What, like you and Chan-hyung?” Seungmin asks, gagging. “‘Hyung I wish I could live inside your bones,’” he mimics in English, putting on his worst approximation of an Australian accent. “‘Felix, you’re literally my soulmate.’ Fucking foul.”
“Yes! Like that,” Felix says, sniffingly. “We’re cute.”
“You’re disgusting,” Seungmin says. “Nauseating and unhinged. I wish I could unhear the way you talk to each other.”
Felix pouts, huge and pathetic. “No, we’re adorable!”
“... Sure.”
When Chan comes in, he finds Seungmin still straddling Felix’s middle, and he freezes in the doorway. “Am I interrupting something?”
Seungmin collapses sideways, glares at Chan. “Yes. I was just telling Felix how gross you are.”
“Me, specifically?” Chan asks, crestfallen.
He and Felix are too similar sometimes, so sensitive. Seungmin rolls his eyes. “You, as a unit,” he says, gesturing between the pair of them.
Chan brightens. “Yeah,” he agrees easily.
Seungmin’s life would be very different, if he did not know Felix. For one, he would probably have a worse roommate–maybe someone who would always forget to flush or who would play loud music late into the night. Felix might leave balled-up dirty socks all over the place and eat Seungmin’s snacks, but he’s an alright roommate.
What’s more is that he knows a lot of great people, and he’s introduced a lot of them to Seungmin.
Minho is cooking meat. The occasion is that Jisung has spilled coffee on his laptop keyboard and feels bad about asking Felix to come fix it again, only weeks after his most recent Sprite Incident. For some reason that makes it Minho’s job to prepare food as a thanks.
Felix had insisted he didn’t need meat, and then changed his mind and said that actually, since Minho was cooking meat, they should have a party and invite Chan and Changbin and just make it a party for Hyunjin’s birthday, even though it has already passed.
Because the universe and all creatures within it love Felix, because Felix always gets what he wants (unless what he wants is being good at video games), Minho acquiesced. Hence: party.
Seungmin and Felix made the cake (read: they tried to make a cake, and it went horribly wrong and they still haven’t figured out if their oven is salvageable, so they bought a cake and stabbed some Pocky sticks in it as decoration, and then Felix got overenthusiastic with the writeable chocolate icing and mostly there are just globs of brown goo all over what was once a pretty blue cake with basic floral decorations). Chan and Changbin paid for and delivered the food. Jisung and Jeongin cleaned, presumably, seeing as how their apartment is a little tidier than usual, shoes lined up neatly on the rack by the door rather than in one massive heap blocking most of the entryway.
Minho is cooking the meat.
Felix is carefully prying off keys, criss-cross applesauce on the living room floor.
“It’s a good thing you bought that whole repair kit last time, and that we didn’t have to replace the spacebar then,” he says, shoving his glasses up his nose with his shoulder.
Seungmin can sense he is not needed for this, and he can also sense Changbin’s presence even in the next room, an awareness which consumes an irritatingly large ratio of his attention. Every moment is a battle not to look up and find Changbin, but it would be too obvious like this, when Changbin is all the way over there, hovering at the kitchen bar and sneaking handfuls of the prepped dinner ingredients when he thinks Minho isn’t looking, and Seungmin is all the way over here, in Jisung’s computer corner.
“Hey Lix, what time did you tell Hyunjin to show up?” Chan asks, leaning over Felix’s shoulder to see what he’s doing.
“Uh, six?” Felix says. “I think six. You wanna check my messages and see?”
Seungmin rolls his eyes, because of course Chan and Felix are that open with each other; no secrets, no locked phones, no goddamn boundaries. But Chan just says that six sounds right, ruffles Felix’s hair, then seems to change his mind about only ruffling his hair, curving his fingers under Felix’s chin to tilt it upwards so he can bend down and kiss the corner of Felix’s lips upside down instead.
Seungmin and Jeongin meet eyes, and Seungmin can only assume his own facial expression is as thoroughly exasperated as Jeongin’s.
Jeongin suggests that they “start setting up” for Hyunjin, and it’s as Jisung is becoming enlightened to the fact that this was, in fact, a surprise birthday party for Hyunjin that the devil himself struts through the door.
“A surprise party for Hyunjin?” Hyunjin says, frozen in the doorway as he repeats back what he’s just overheard. “Uh, oops. Jisung told me yesterday.”
Jisung frowns. “I can’t believe you’d throw me under the bus like that. I trusted you to lie to them and pretend you were surprised.”
“Oh,” Hyunjin says. “Oh! Sorry.” He spins around and walks right back out the door, latching it firmly behind himself.
Chan giggles even as Hyunjin barges back through the door and says, “Wait, Jisungie, you didn’t even tell me it was supposed to be a surprise. How was I supposed to know?”
“How could I have told you? I didn’t know.”
Seungmin sighs a sigh heard round the world. “If you two would ever read your text messages–”
“Maybe if you sent shorter and less boring messages!”
Changbin and Chan’s escalating giggles only seem to feed the flames of the argument, and it’s Jeongin who finally breaks them apart by snapping a birthday hat over Hyunjin’s close-shaved head and saying, “Happy birthday, idiot.”
“Wait, wait!” Felix leaps up, sending various bits and bobs flying. “We have–we have something–Seungmin-ah, help me with the… the, uh… the C-A-K-E.”
“Felix, I can spell,” Hyunjin says.
“Well it’s English! I thought you didn’t speak English!”
“Every Korean goes through like eight years of mandatory English education in public school, I know how to spell ‘cake’–”
“No you don’t!” shrieks Felix, who takes a running leap over the couch and slams right into Changbin. “You know nothing! Please let me have this!”
Hyunjin laughs into his hand, even as Jeongin shoves him back out the front door. “Come back with a better attitude,” Jeongin says, but he’s laughing too. “I want Oscar-worthy surprise. Tears, even.”
Take three does go better, even if Minho insists they can’t turn off all the lights while he’s cooking over a hot stove (because he’s a party pooper and a shit). Hyunjin gasps and coos and thanks them all for the party which he definitely didn’t know about, gives them a few sniffles in lieu of tears. The lights come back on, and he squints at the cake and says, “Oh, the decoration is so cute! But, Felix? I’m 25 this year.”
“That is a five!”
“Oh… No, wait. I can kind of see it.”
Seungmin is not Minho’s errand boy, but unfortunately math is not something Seungmin can argue against.
“We only have four sets of dinnerware in the kitchen,” Minho says over the hissing sound of meat hitting a hot pan. “There’s more in the storage closet.”
Seungmin’s eyes dance around, looking for someone else he can tap in to do the work for him, but Changbin is the only other person around, and–
“I’ll help,” he says before Seungmin can even ask. “Pretty tricky to carry four more sets all by yourself, hm?”
“Thanks, hyung,” Seungmin says, and he trails after Changbin through the bathroom and into the storage closet, where Changbin flicks on a light and waves away some dust motes. Seungmin’s heart seizes when he sneezes.
Oh, no. He’s so cute.
Seungmin shoos away the dust and his treacherous thoughts, watching Changbin from behind as he reaches up to flick open the cabinet. On the bottom shelf wait a stack of brass bowls and plates, which Changbin quickly grabs and sets on top of the washing machine, and upon appraisal, Seungmin is sure one person could have managed this task alone.
But on a higher shelf sit some cups and banchan dishes, and before Changbin even lifts an arm it’s clear that he won’t be able to reach.
It’s clear, but Seungmin’s useless brain sure takes its time booting up, watching Changbin huff, back flexing as he stretches high. Changbin’s body is muscles all the way down, from his barbell-calloused palms, the smooth stretch of forearm, ballooning out after the miniscule dip of elbow into a tricep whose girth definitely surpasses that of Seungmin’s entire thigh even at its widest point. Seungmin swallows. Continues his visual journey down the ridge of Changbin’s shoulder, conspicuous even under Changbin’s cotton tee, to his intercostals, so viscerally meaty Seungmin’s mouth waters and he swallows again.
Changbin whips around, and Seungmin is caught staring.
“Yah,” Changbin says. “Would you put some of that height to use,” he starts, though his voice shrinks with each word, and for some reason - his eyes flicker to Seungmin’s lips, “and help me over here?”
Courtesy of his aforementioned idle brain, Seungmin steps forward without thinking about how it would close the distance between them, how suddenly he’d be looking down into Changbin’s face, breathing in his clean scent without any intention of doing so.
“Oh,” Changbin says, and up this close Seungmin notices for the first time the places where Changbin’s eyebrows grow unruly, that he has a wonky eyelash growing at a different angle from the rest. That his eyes are a startlingly clear brown, that the pores of his nose are so small. Seungmin’s stomach drops into freefall.
Seungmin reaches up towards the dishes, but Changbin catches his wrist. His hand is warm, but the callouses on his palms drag rough against the thin, sensitive skin of Seungmin’s inner wrist. His grip tightens, and he tugs Seungmin’s arm closer.
Seungmin can’t think, can’t breathe, can’t stop his gaze from dropping to Changbin’s mouth, can’t possibly have intended this when he’d followed Changbin into this closet, but here he is, leaning in close, hearing his own humiliating gasp when he finally gives up on all his resolve and lets his lips find Changbin’s.
The kiss is warm and dry, soft, and even chaste. Then Changbin’s free hand cups Seungmin’s waist – a gentle weight, but there’s something unbearably intimate (and painfully erotic) about the touch. Seungmin’s heart gives a kick in his chest and he breaks the kiss, which was little more than a press of lips.
Changbin’s hand slips down over Seungmin’s wrist to entangle their fingers, and his eyes glimmer with a bit of impishness when they look up into Seungmin’s.
“Minho-hyung can never find out about this,” he says before laughing. “He’ll end us both if he finds out we kissed under his roof.”
“Hyung,” Seungmin whines, feeling hopeless and hopelessly endeared as he throws his free arm over Changbin’s shoulder and tucks his face against Changbin’s neck, feeling warm, warm, warm, and so soft.
“If you fucked in my closet I will castrate you both and feed you each other’s balls,” Minho says, voice singsong but eyes murderous when he glances up at the pair of them stacking the procured dishes on the counter.
“We were gone for less than two minutes!” Changbin says.
“I have learned better than to have faith in any man’s endurance,” Minho says.
Jisung frowns big. Seungmin pretends not to notice, which is easier because his attention (and his breath) is once again stolen away when Changbin’s hand catches his waist so he can squeeze past Seungmin, deeper into the kitchen.
“Woah,” Jisung says, because for as good of a bro as Seungmin is to him, never calling him out on his weird situationship with Minho, Jisung still has the social skills of a houseplant (a/n: worse than a houseplant. at least a houseplant won’t publicly humiliate you). “Did you guys actually fuck in there?” “No.” Heat flares up in Seungmin’s cheeks, and he knows his defensive tone and reddening hue do not make him more believable.
“I have that effect on most people,” Changbin says, though he’s not coming across entirely natural either, pink creeping up his neck. “I’m surprised it’s taken you this long to notice.”
Felix, fortunately, has enough social grace to make up for everyone else’s lack thereof (or is at least beautiful and charming enough to pull them through their fumbles). He wraps himself around Jisung and says, “Jisungie, they’re working through stuff. They need their space, which I think you can understand, of all people.”
Jisung frowns big, part two.
Chan rinses off the dusty closet dishes and Changbin hunts down every last condiment jar and banchan dish from the fridge. The dining table only seats four, so Jeongin and Jisung tear apart the living room to push together the coffee and end tables so everyone can sit, each informal spot set with chopsticks and a make-do coaster. Felix carries an armload of cups, which he’s filled with ice, to the tables and starts taking drink orders while Hyunjin helps him pour, and Seungmin assists Minho to carry the finished dishes out to the table.
“So I think all we have to do is pop the keys back on the keyboard and then it’s as good as new. Or, well, refurbished. Twice,” Felix says to Jisung, whose limbs are inexplicably sprawled across the tables.
“Jagi,” Minho says, “are you volunteering yourself up as dinner here? Because you know hyung won’t hold back.”
Jisung, highlighter pink, scrambles to fix his posture, and Changbin says, “Gross, hyung. Also, what? You want to eat Jisung? His macros would be terrible and he’d be so tough to chew, he’s all tendon.”
“HEY! I’d be delicious.”
Hyunjin coughs. “Hey, I want something to sit on. Do you have some extra pillows or something in your bedroom?” he asks.
“Sure,” Jisung says. “You can use whatever you find.”
“I don’t want his ass on my pillow,” Minho grumbles, but he doesn’t actually do anything to interfere with Hyunjin, which is as close to permission as Minho gets on the average day.
Phone in his tiny hand, Felix is showing Jisung the sorts of custom keys one can order online if one is into that sort of thing, but he’s interrupted when Hyunjin reappears in the living room, arms full of pillows and face carefully neutral, and says, “Isn’t it kind of weird that you guys share a bed?”
Seungmin chokes on his cola. “They share a bed?”
“Hm. I always assumed there were two beds in there.” This is Chan, who looks more amused than anything else.
“Why would we not share a bed?” Minho asks.
“We’ve literally been dating for two years,” Jisung whines.
“You’ve WHAT?” Jeongin cries, and when Seungmin looks closely at him he can almost see tears in Jeongin’s eyes. “Why did you let me come on vacation with you?”
Minho shrugs. “It was funny.”
Jisung laughs and leans his head back onto Minho’s shoulder. “Hyung! You said it was because you felt bad for him because he seems so lonely.”
“Yeah, it was doubly funny that you believed I thought that,” Minho says and kisses Jisung on the forehead, and considering how completely normal that image is for Seungmin to see, he’s disappointed in himself for not realizing sooner that Minho and Jisung are a couple. “Two jokes for the price of one.”
“I live with you!” Jeongin says. He drags his hands down his cheeks, which are flaming red. “Have you–” His wide eyes flick across the room, taking in all the horizontal surfaces. “–our furniture, is it–please tell me you didn’t–”
Minho keeps his lips smugly sealed.
“I really thought they were still in their slow burn era,” Hyunjin says with his mouth full, which is when Seungmin realizes Hyunjin has eschewed all common courtesy and dug into the food first and entirely without decorum. Spitefully, Seungmin snatches the meat from the center of the table and heaps more than his fair share onto his plate (considering it penitence for everyone’s insufferability–truly, Seungmin has the worst taste in friends), then passes the dish to Changbin.
“Hyung wanted a long courtship but I’m impatient,” Jisung says.
“Never would’ve taken you as a romantic, Minho,” Chan says, so brimming with joy it’s foaming out his ears.
Minho’s ears, on the other hand, glow red, but he says nothing and meets nobody’s eyes.
Somehow endeared by it all, a surge of courage overtakes Seungmin from somewhere deep in his gut, and, heart in his throat, he slips his hand onto Changbin’s thigh. Changbin turns to look at him, eyebrows low like they get when he’s deep in thought. He opens his mouth, about to speak, but Seungmin squeezes the clothed meat of Changbin’s thigh. Shhh.
A little nod, and then Changbin shifts, dropping his left hand under the table to rest on top of Seungmin’s, rough with callouses but warm with an affection that expands to flood the whole of Seungmin. It’s not natural or easy for him, but he’s come around to the idea that maybe he can get used to it. Before Changbin (and, perhaps more pertinently, after Daehwi) Seungmin had lost all motivation to try and be better, to learn how to give and receive love, but Changbin – Changbin deserves a Seungmin that is better, softer, and more loving. With Changbin as his catalyst, Seungmin has a reason to try to grow into someone worth being with.
For the time being, he can subsist on small moments such as this, Changbin’s gentle acceptance and welcoming gaze, and gratitude that Changbin is a good enough person to wait until Seungmin is, too, a good enough person.
“Thank you, hyung,” Seungmin says, low enough that only Changbin can hear.
Changbin looks at him again. “I didn’t do anything?”
“Just–thank you, okay?” He flips his hand under Changbin’s so he can lace their fingers together, even though the position is a little awkward because of how they’re sitting.
Changbin squeezes his hand. “Okay. You’re welcome, baby.”
All the quiet intimacy of their hands clasped under the table is lost when Seungmin yanks his hand from Changbin’s and smacks him on the chest. That’s what he gets for springing pet names on Seungmin without warning.