Work Text:
Today, the sky is a desert fire.
The drapes are parted, heavy waves of linen and silk pooling on the laminated flooring, gold embellishments ripples on their expanse. The ivory-coloured walls soak in the remains of the daylight, and happy sunbeams are star-crossed lovers, playing hide-and-seek in every corner of the spacious room. They run and chase, pull each other in, drown in one another, lose their own shine to become part of something new, brighter than the drowsy, bleary-eyed sun. They trade slow kisses on every smooth surface they can find - the door of the ridiculously wide wardrobe, the kind where portals to the ether would be found in the 20th century novels; a towering canopy with the bed covers below, fluffy and creased - a sign of having been occupied just a few hours back, so tempting, so sweet, still savouring and guarding up the shared warmth of the hosts; the delicate gold frame of the dressing table mirror. Here, at their final destination, they amalgamate, flicker in a last hurrah, and vanish.
Through the reflection in the mirror, Minho lights up with a soft smile.
His skin is a honeydew, a dipping neckline a swirl of sweet and tart. A sharp nose casts pale shadows, and his eyes, melted chocolate, do not look away. This is a feast for one person only.
Every time, Chan is left mesmerized.
Minho hums melodically, lowers his eyes and goes back to his routine; he is almost ready anyway, the rest that is left is simple finishing touches he knows like the back of his hand. In the radiance of the setting sun, his skin glows, eyelids shimmering with soft amber tones, lips cherry and soft, nothing over the top, just enough to captivate, electrify, and tantalize. There is not a single line, crinkle, or dot of imperfection in sight. His blouse is of a creamy tone, silk flows down his hands, contours his frame in the most exquisite ways, compliments his carefully tousled dirty blonde hair. A line of rose gold, so thin, so transparent it nearly gets lost in the pools of his neck, and an array of diamonds freefalling to its clavicle, teasing the sensitive expanse of skin just above the blouse collar. He is an elysian view, a summer dream you cannot wake up from.
Chan’s attire isn’t really anything to write home about: a shirt that is so unnervingly white that it washes off his own pale complexion, the jacket, basic and boring, the slacks and the shiny black shoes that do look quite presentable - well, at least they work off every penny’s worth, and there were a lot of pennies put into their purchase. The chrome watch is resting on his wrist, a flex for some, yet a dear old friend to him. Not a way to show off - a way to ground himself. To surround himself with as many things familiar as possible. While knowing perfectly well his most familiar thing, the piece of his soul, will fade in between the overhead lights and blinding flashes of the paparazzi the moment they arrive to their spot of the evening. Like a sunbeam, flying too close to the sun.
“Are you nervous?” Minho says. Here, in their safe haven, his tone is a mad scientist concoction. Two tablespoons of softness, a splash of hesitance, a drizzle of carefulness, all with a melting determination cube floating to the top waiting to dilute the entire cocktail.
Chan shrugs. “No. You should be, though. Are you?”
“It’s the same old all the time anyways,” Minho makes a strangely endearing hand gesture as if batting away an annoying mosquito. He grows quiet and adds, “But this time should be much more entertaining than before.”
Chan raises his eyebrows to Minho’s smirk.
“Because you will be there with me, of course.”
Chan can’t help it - he laughs. It really is funny, even if there is an eternally sad chamber of his heart that is silently bleeding inside.
“I won’t make that much of a difference, c’mon. I think we should be grateful they even allowed me to come.”
Minho wants to interrupt him when Chan adds, smirking:
“Whan if I pull up and they look me up and down and say ‘Nope, this one should leave right now’?”
Minho flicks a powder puff in his general direction, wrinkles on his forehead showing in a bout of slight irritation.
“Then I’m leaving right after you, and they can give this stupid award to somebody else. Hell, they can send it to me in a parcel, I will pawn it off and give all the money to that ahjumma from the market who makes me a mean naengmyeon every time I go on a diet.”
“You’ve got it all planned to a T, baby.”
“Of course I have,” Minho’s chest puffs up ridiculously, and Chan cannot fight another round of giggles. Minho spreads his lips in a wide grin, front teeth and cat whiskers on full display, so adorable, so beautiful his fingers start tingling.
The truth is, he wants to drop down on this bed, get under the covers, expensive shoes and sanitary concerns be damned, pull Minho by the hand and hide them inside their little world. Hold him through the dying sun and the soft moonlight, and never let go.
The cat whiskers waver, shake, and drop.
“When you talk like this about yourself-” the words are almost ripped through his mouth when he stops short, takes a deep breath, and begins at a completely different pace. “You have worked so hard for many years. You will never be a nobody in the industry even if you do your best to become one. Just enjoy your evening, okay? Eat some finger food, talk to the big guys like you always do, share your gym routine with that scrawny-looking rookie from that movie I’ve been filming in, Hyunjin? That broody-looking dumbass who always drinks his coffee extra hot and then cries to me for a full day about how the roof of his mouth hurts. Yeah, he wants to bulk up now, can you believe?”
With that, he stands up, tugs the corresponding creamy-coloured silk jacket off the back of the chair, and saunters to the bed. He steps almost in between Chan’s legs before he stops. Reaches forward to have a final fix of Chan’s crooked bow tie. Wants to say something and bites his tongue. Instead, he holds out his hand, and what Chan sees is chocolate, cooled off, firm, and yet, never not sweet.
Chan smiles. His hand stretches out to Minho’s until they come together, like puzzle pieces.
“I will find you at the end of the evening, yeah?”
There is steel in Minho’s voice when he says, “Don’t you dare not to.”
***
They ride in separate cars.
Both of their cars pull up to their remote area at the exact same time, courtesy of Kim Seungmin, who is probably the most organized person to ever grace the planet earth. He’s got a plan for everything and anything, so Chan and Minho allow him to play them like little pawns in a grand game of chess and arrange them in all necessary ways. Seungmin is technically only Minho’s manager, but he is also his closest friend and confidant, and for the longest time, Minho’s interests have included Chan’s interests too. Seungmin knows, obviously, because how can he not. He doesn’t judge - there is a hot ginger-haired attorney waiting for him in bed every night too, the relationship much less complicated than that of Chan and Minho, but barely more… conventional. And so, Kim Seungmin has made it a mission to make their lives as easy as possible. It’s a Herculean task, but so far, he manages.
Which is why, the separate cars.
Chan’s car makes a detour to pick up first Changbin, then Jisung. The sound editor and the sound mixer drop on the cushioned backseats one by one, and soon enough, the car is filled with noise, all types of bickering so familiar to Chan’s experienced and sensitive ears that blocking them all out is barely an issue.
“Still can’t believe they extended an invite to us,” Changbin booms, but Chan can’t understand his surprise. The pair has worked extremely hard for the past couple of years, all three of them have had their hands in some of the biggest projects of the current year. The history of several nominated movies today has their names engraved in it. In the truest sense of this word, they should absolutely be proud of themselves.
The words in Chan’s head ring hollow.
The car stops right at the front of the red carpet, spreading and stretching so far forward that looking up makes him sick. Changbin exits the car with the confidence of old money, Jisung near him desperately trying and desperately failing to act normal. Behind their backs, Chan stands up, one foot, two feet on the damned ground. Flattens his tuxedo, feels his stomach doing jumping jacks. Fixes the watch, thumbs the metal’s cold until it sobers him up. Then, he starts walking.
The whole thing is so uneventful that he’s forcing himself to keep a straight face even if his entire being is itching to make a grimace. Photographers look at them in offence, almost as if their whole presence in front of them is a waste of their time. Some bored young woman in the corner takes a single shot of Changbin and Jisung striding forward like a circus duo, and then a few of Chan, muttering to herself something along the lines of “it’s going in my hot rookies binder”. Chan, who is decidedly not a rookie, still feels his ears reach the melting point.
The inside is boring, too, but quite pleasant in terms of mingling and networking. No big guns are out yet, so the trio is comfortable chatting away with folks from similar technical fields, sharing the experience and laughing at stories from the draining workdays of toy soldiers of the film industry. The hall starts to fill up soon enough, though, the noise levels gradually rising until they have to make an honest effort to make themselves heard, talking directly into the ears of those who even care and aren’t wasted at this point. Getting wasted before the ceremony begins is quite embarrassing, Chan thinks and promptly takes the half-empty glass out of Jisung’s thankfully steady hands, just to make sure. The show hasn’t begun yet.
Until the air starts crackling and all the voices turn fuzzy.
The sleek black limo stutters and stills, and the ravenous screams ensue. The door opens. Chan is frozen, staring ahead through the glass door.
The lead actor and the ultimate star of the current front-runner for Best Picture at today’s awards, “Half Time”, Lee Minho steps into the spotlight.
Final breath, and he’s drowned in it. Paps go vehemently crazy, flashes ripping through the lens like bullets, blood-hungry piranhas in the hunt for a legendary photo for the front page of forums and news blogs all across the nation. Journalists yell out their questions in a haste, itch to become the ones to get a desired reply - a bite for the one here, a crumble for the one there, and a fortune for that one in the corner who gets him to do some aegyo directly into the camera. Minho walks slowly, completely in his element, a marble statue with a grace only bestowed upon Greek gods of multiple civilizations ago. His posture exudes confidence, his expression drips with sensuality, his aura fumes with allure. His skin, so tempting, slightly whitewashed in the relentless unforgiving lighting, but nothing short of perfect, not as pale to be called unappealing and ugly, not as dark to become a bench talk for obsessed and insecure netizens for the next few months. His limbs, long and thin, even if he gets criticized for being just a tad bit too short for an actor. Arched brows, cherry lips. His hair, in a perfectly curated mess, looks different compared to how it was when they left home. They must have fixed it in the car or on their way through a couple of important meetings before arriving here. A multitude of rose gold bands on his fingers from the newest brand deal is a giveaway, framing his small hands and carefully manicured nails, companions to the necklace. He is a breathtaking sight, a reverie, a sweven; a haze.
His tone is calm and sweet when he talks, his mouth forming clean-cut sentences full of excitement about the project and its multiple nominations, lips stretching in the most captivating smile when he speaks of his fellow actors, the director, the screenwriter, all the staff he is endlessly indebted to for their constant support and hard work. He adds a sprinkle of relatability, sharing in a flustered voice about the last day of the filming when everyone gathered around for bowls of jjajangmyeon and side dishes he ordered from a local restaurant. The journalists coo at him, congratulate him with another nomination, the third one in a row for him.
A lady with a peculiar haircut and a small clipped mic asks:
“How are you planning to spend this evening? Will you go celebrate after your win today?”
Minho lowers his head in humility and chuckles, his tone perfectly level.
“Ah, winning an award today will be a dream for me, even though my first priority is seeing how the movie itself is received, definitely not excluding the hard work of everyone who has made this movie come to life. Especially Lee Minhyuk-hyung, I think I’m allowed to call him hyung now, after so many shared projects,” he smiles, and the reporters giggle. “But as for celebrating, I’m afraid this might not be the best year for that. Have to catch an early flight to Rome come tomorrow morning, so what I’m planning, at least hoping for is just a good night’s sleep, truly.”
“We hope that we can see you and Haewon-ssi together on the stage tonight! After the great chemistry you have shown on the screen, we root for your success in your respective categories,” chimes in another reporter, almost wiggling her eyebrows, and Minho’s warm eyes crinkle at the corners.
“Not to spoil anything, but the celebration? No matter the outcome of today, Haewon and me are definitely planning on a few things in the… future? Let’s just put it this way. She enjoys kayaking, and so do I,” he shrugs. The paps near the stunned reporter vibrate with excitement, thoughts of roaring headlines lasers in their eyes.
After another minute of posing, the final and the most important guest of the night is let inside and is immediately gone with the wind of a few claps on his shoulder and brushes of chests to his back.
Jisung’s glass in Chan’s hands is ice cold to the touch. Murky, with dying bubbles on the surface, and a sickly bitter aftertaste.
Crowds disperse, seats are getting filled. The lights go out, only to appear again. The stage is illuminated. This should feel magical, but it had been too many times in the past that Chan had sweated under those lamps in a pile of imperfection, feeling gross and disgusting about his very existence. The lights where shadows twist shapes of realities. The lights that helicopter over your every breath and your every thought. The lights that take, and take, and take some more, and blink dead above you when you’ve given everything you have.
He doesn’t trust these lights.
The show begins.
You see, the lights are fake.
So, what is real?
The reality is:
When Chan meets Minho for the first time through mutual friends in the industry, he’s confused. His former dream of becoming the greatest actor in history had long since been abandoned partially due to some form of stage fright he hadn’t felt the need to fight that much, and partially due to interests shifting, just that simple. Working behind the scenes as a sound engineer, with a few projects under his belt that had already hit the ground running - it's something that gives him purpose. It's something that gives him life.
The person in front of him, though, is fully devoid of it.
The most perfect face, contours and shapes carved by the hand of the Almighty, none less; voice melodic, a tingle of a door chime; tone pleasant, friendly, even; manners reeking of confidence and skill.
And eyes, dark brown, empty.
Lee Minho is barely more than a cardboard cutout of his own self, a copy of a copy of a copy, a shaky construction without a heart. Not a rookie anymore, with the newbie enthusiasm dried out and sanded, the gloss of the industry leaving nothing on him but a nasty soul handprint. So, the cogs in his head are clearly turning, but, so it seems to Chan, nobody is operating the machine anymore.
Whan Chan does not know at this point of time, is that Lee Minho is confused, too.
Confused about everything, truly. About what to eat for lunch. About how to afford next month’s rent. About how to not throw the weak, crumbling foundation of his career away and run back to his parents with a tail tucked between his legs. About how he urgently, desperately needs someone to believe in him, just a little, or a lot. He will take anything at this point.
He tells Chan all of it in the simplest terms and mostly in gestures and grimaces anyway; somehow, on that day, their mutual friends had bailed on them, leaving them alone at the doorstep of some restaurant neither of them want to spend half their monthly income in. Instead, they drive to the nearest chicken shop spot, and Chan, ignoring Minho’s pleas about breaking his diet (and losing his perfect look), orders a box of half and half. Later, they sit on the hood of Chan’s car, staring at the sky in the middle of nowhere, far away from the Seoul rush. Minho looks above, the stars finding home in his irises, and Chan sees the cardboard cutout catch flames, the shaky construction giving cracks for the first time.
Minho says he wants the stars to fall so that he could run off after them. Then, he takes one longing look at the fried goodness in front of him before snagging a drumstick and digging right in. Crispy white shirt, the best one he owns (Chan doesn’t know about it yet), splashes of yangnyeom sauce flying everywhere, him getting choked on it, him turning away, him breaking down, hiding his face in his hands, still covered in a stupid sauce that tastes heavenly even if he feels like shit now. Chan wiping his hands silently and draping his jacket over his shoulders. Chan looking at him for a long time, and then, listening.
Over the next year, life improves for the both of them. Chan gets booked in more serious projects, building his portfolio with a speed that he definitely does not want to jinx; Minho finds himself torn between two offers, the short appearance as a figurative Tree Number Four in a mid-popular sitcom and the supporting role in an indie project that is most likely never going to see the light of day due to a severe lack of budget, talking nights away with Chan about it and going back and forth in fear before declaring one day something along the lines of “What the hell, sure”, entering the indie project and landing on his breakout role. In a twist of fate, the critics all around the country get a whiff of “Maze of Memories” and are extremely generous with their praises, towards both the director and the cast, including that one young talent who played Yoon, the boy with a golden heart who gets broken down by the cruel city life, and what was the actor’s name? Lee… Minho? Like that other actor? Is he sure he wants to perform under this name, gosh, he will never get the push in the media when sharing a name with a superstar!
Somehow, he does.
Chan gets to see Minho get gently touched, then carried with a hesitant wave, and then completely swept away by his career bloomings. The world of fame is so new to him, a stark contrast to the only world he had been exposed to before - the one of hard work never paying off, hustling and grinding only to come home with an empty wallet and an empty heart.
Lush life finds him, picks him up, cocoons him, whispers unbelievable promises, but somehow, Minho still believes. Is it the stardom disease, overconfidence or simply an innocent wish for the things to finally work out the way he wants? The cushioned chairs at beauty salons where they assure him he’s going to look like a superstar after this treatment, acne facials, all that anti-aging shit, and a few additional injections just to make his features pop, right? - it feels… kind of good. The way his heart soars when elevators leap several dozens of floors up in the air in the span of milliseconds and deliver him to rooms with floor-to-ceiling windows, N Tower in direct view, another contract for a chest-constricting amount of money to his pocket - it feels like he deserves this. Why can’t he have this? Is there any way it can be wrong for him?
Chan almost loses him to this artificial bullshit. They have a nasty fall out after Chan begs Minho to slow down, assess his situation, not let himself get into the things he barely understands with people he barely knows. They don’t speak. Chan looks at his contact in his phone and hates himself for it.
Minho calls him in the middle of the night, screams into the speaker, voice hoarse, frayed, torn beyond belief. Chan asks him where he is, Minho doesn’t know. The worst night of his life is spent driving in circles around the dark sketchy streets of Seoul because Minho’s GPS is dogshit all of a sudden, because everything just has to go wrong at this exact moment when nothing else is going right. He finds him in a 7/11, unresponsive, sitting grown into his chair, with dashed marking lines on his entire face. One going across his forehead, two circles around the eyes, something strange on the slope of his nose. A gash on his cheekbone is bleeding. A clean one, blessedly not infected, an undeniable work of a scalpel.
Chan takes him back to his flat, cleans him up, moves him into bed. Then, hugs him, closes his eyes, wills himself not to shake with terror. The body near him is a vessel, empty again.
They make it through with gradual changes to their routine. Minho’s anxiety is a medically documented fact now, the pills are a must. All ties to his sketchy circle are cut off, a new manager is hired through a good word of Changbin, Chan’s newly acquired gym friend and a sound technician as well. Kim Seungmin is pulled into Minho’s orbit and immediately gets to work on damage control. Thankfully, everything is tidied up and taken care of before the press finds out, and the word never gets out to the public. When asked in a random interview about a band-aid on his cheek, Minho answers in a level voice:
“I’ve actually picked up rock climbing recently. Still clumsy at it, as you see.”
Minho keeps sleeping in his bed because he doesn’t want to leave. Chan lets him.
Chan has seen the sides of him that no one has ever had an ounce of honour to see. When Minho bags an intense project of a high emotional scale and digs a hole into his mental state through the Stanislavski method, Chan is there to pick up all the broken shards. Minho comes home, the mind still in the clutches of his character even though the body isn’t, him curled into himself on the kitchen counter, Chan feeding him, laying him in bed, leaving to turn the lights off, failing because Minho catches his hand and begs to stay, holding him through the night with the lights still on.
Minho pays extra for the electricity bills.
Diets come after. Truth be told, they had never left, but the reality of staying on the upper level of the food chain as a successful actor threatens to be shattered after a throwaway snide remark from a director. A week later, it’s a cast coordinator’s turn. Chan cooks a meal for them when Minho rises up and dashes towards their room. The meal is ready, calling for him has been to no avail, so Chan steps inside to pick him up personally. There, in their room, in front of the mirrored wardrobe door, Minho stands, bunching up his tee and gnawing at his lip. Then, dragging the tee up, up, up, leaving the entire plane of his stomach bare.
Chan swallows and stares.
Minho places his hand on the round swell of his lower belly. He scowls at himself accusingly, then blinks at Chan through the mirror.
“What is wrong with me?”
Chan can barely speak through the knot in his throat.
“Nothing.”
“What?”
“Nothing,” he tries louder. “Nothing is wrong with you.”
Minho redirects all his glaring daggers at him.
“You can’t be serious. Look at this.”
“I’m looking.”
“And? Any comments? Opinions? Suggestions?”
“I have- a few.”
Minho stomps his foot impatiently. Chan takes off and dives down.
“Comment: you should go eat because the food is getting cold.”
Minho’s face doesn’t move.
“Opinion: you’re beautiful.”
It gets hard to breathe.
“Suggestion: let me kiss you right now.”
Something in Minho’s eyes twists, uncoils, and melts.
They meet in the middle, Chan capturing Minho’s upper lip between his, Minho pushing further, lowering his head just a bit, to make the hair-thin gap between them disappear. His hands slide forward, fingers dig into his nape, tug on the dark curls, closer to the prize. Chan puts his two hands on Minho’s waist like it's exactly where they belong. Minho is impossibly close, pushing and pulling, trading short hungry kisses with long and languid ones, sliding into his mouth with his tongue, playing him however he wants. Chan doesn’t think he understands.
His stretched hand lays on Minho’s naked stomach. Minho’s eyes darken and lose focus.
“Do you get it now?”
Minho doesn’t bother with a reply and pulls him in again for another kiss. Chan tugs the damned tee off his frame and asks again. Minho refuses a reply. He trails kisses, licks and bites down his body like a man possessed, kneels down, runs his lips all over his hipbones. His hands are steady on the waistband; there is a mission and it’s his now. Minho moans, and it doesn’t sound like defeat. It sounds like…
“Yes.”
That day, Chan doesn’t stop.
Maybe this is the perfect way to deal with the toxicity that this industry is force feeding Minho under the guise of making him the best actor he can be. His pimples get worse after particularly grueling makeup sessions during the filming of some sci-fi crap; years down the line, Minho regrets ever damaging his skin for this nothingburger of a project. Chan finds him back home one day, sitting on the couch, looking in the compact mirror and quietly willing himself to accept all the scars and acne littering his face. When they meet eyes, Minho, on autopilot, grabs a concealer tube they had given him on set. Looks at it questioningly. Then, drops it in the bag and takes out a skin treatment gel instead.
Chan smiles.
Here comes the bitter truth - Chan cannot blame Minho for his defense mechanisms. Bang Chan the sound engineer works his ass off while being surrounded with a great support system full of people that couldn’t care less if he pulls up with dirty hair or smelling like a bathroom stall in some Itaewon club. After working hours, he is free to decide whether to hit the gym or call it a day and begin again tomorrow. He can order a giant pizza, one of those with french fries on top (who does that?), and devour it in record time. Lee Minho the superstar cannot do any of those things. They doll him up on set and scold him for getting too pale, too dark, too anything that does not conform to their equipment. After filming, even if tired beyond words, with his eyelids barely open, he climbs onto his exercise bike and prays to not get his head smashed onto the handlebars. He doesn’t eat much these days, because a casting director called him a pig again, and he will not do any diets this time because he’s already in shape, yes, but eating in this environment feels simply unbearable, so he won’t do that.
Here comes another bitter truth that Kim Seungmin had laid out in front of them - the announcement of their dating can go all kinds of catastrophic ways. Later that day, they discuss it, heart to heart. Chan says right off the bat that he does not want to put Minho’s career in jeopardy. His heart swears he sees Minho deflate. His mind claims nothing of the sort is happening. They discuss some more, lay the groundwork for Seungmin and his future magic. Then, the magic starts working, and Chan belatedly realizes that the bolts in the magician’s carefully constructed mechanism keep unscrewing.
Minho’s image - a humble, simple man with a mortgage and a talent too big for a naked eye to see through baggy sportswear - takes a smooth turn to that of a sultry moody gentleman exuding wealth and sensuality, regal beauty cutting through the thickest camera lenses, aura demanding power and control. Magazines go positively rabid at the new development, brand deals start piling up, but now everything is organized, cleaned up, transparent, with Minho toeing the line between giving it all out and keeping everything for himself. Every day, he wakes up, walks the damn line, and every night, he chooses the exact same side. Every night, he climbs back into bed with Chan.
Chan cannot blame Minho for protecting himself and their relationship. Chan knows a masquerade when he sees it. He doesn’t need words of affirmation (he does), and he doesn’t want to add to Minho’s worries even more when his life is already as hectic as it is. Chan shouldn’t be scared, but deep down, he is.
These days, set lighting comes earlier than sunrise. He sees Minho leave home with eyes red and limbs unbending. Quiet mornings are a mosaic of millions of camera shutters, snaps loud, annoying, inescapable. Minho refuses to take his shirt off for photoshoots, but offers everything else. You want a clavicle? You want a strip of skin below the belt? You want a line of legs tangled in the sheets, a torso hidden with the fabric, upper face buried in the pillows, mouth agape? Or maybe, a naked back on a bed of roses, him turning his head just a few degrees to the side, blush rising high to his cheekbones, gaze inviting, imploring or commanding, so intense and so unreadable one can read it in any way, shape or form they want? Come get it, Minho will do it all with a smile on his face and a few more ideas thrown onto the pile.
Of all his works, Chan likes the close-up shot of his eyes the most, burnt chocolate and porcelain skin, nothing else in focus, the rest of the background washed out. He looks at the dying stars inside the irises and thinks of eternity. It is a mask, still, honest in its fakeness.
The days of Minho being a defenceless plankton in an ocean full of sharks are becoming a thing of the past. The updated reality presents itself with him toying with MCs during promo interviews, just flirtatious enough to allure, just detached enough to drive the crowd crazy. He is never desperate in his approach, no, his job is to become the one the audience grows desperate over. Each glance and casual brush of skin with a random cast member gets its own viral edit. Local forums wake up to the madness, too, articles gushing about his ethereal beauty and natural charm. One comment talks proudly about having paid a surgeon a fortune for a nose like his. Everything is swollen, and everything hurts, they say, but it’s going to be so worth it.
Chan’s name continues to chase Minho’s in the credits, continues to get pushed further and further away, down by three minutes at least. When Minho is home, they laugh at it and bet on the distance next time. This is the side of him that Chan will fight heaven and hell for. A world of love, hidden in the crook of his neck, snoring sweetly, hands pressed together in a prayer and tucked under his cheek, face mask still on. Chan unpeels it ungracefully, throws it in the bin, turns the TV off and moves him to their bed, a kiss on the forehead never a duty and always an honour.
No one sees him the way he does, and sue him for being so greedy. They know his wit when he speaks to producers and show hosts, coming up with the most ridiculous abbreviations and strings of logic. They don’t know his obsession with fart jokes or sweet mumblings in the dead of night, either reciting his lines for a new role or narrating some kind of insect-caused apocalypse. They see his flippant and aloof persona. They are kept in the dark about piles of lunchboxes Minho has packed religiously for all of his shifts throughout the years each time he has made it back home before dawn, exhausted, wrung out and manning the stove like a man possessed, the smell of gochujang warming Chan up in his sleep; neither are they aware of the small binder of all tickets to Sydney Minho has booked on a whim, when Chan had grown too quiet, losing a thread between him and his elderly parents, a collection of sunrise polaroids because neither of them are capable of sleeping past 6:30 am anymore, a colourway of youth; a linen bag full of seashells and bottled Australian air, Minho untwisting the lid at times and pressing a bottle to Chan’s nose to resuscitate him, to Chan’s sigh-filled confusion and Minho’s childlike joy.
They hear his laugh, a perfected lilt to it. They have never heard his evil cackles when he watches another stupid reality show where a narcissistic guy gets his just desserts, neither do they hear his soft giggles when Chan turns this shit off and begins tickling him like a mad man. They don’t understand his silences the way Chan does, heavy hearts embracing in permanent midnights, clocks reset each time, reality a joke. They are hooked on his hooded eyes, bitten lips, smeared makeup, a wild fantasy, a smoke of lust in a house of mirrors. But they will never find out how his eyes widen, lose focus and roll right back, in a sweet slow motion, lips plush and wet, mouth chasing the remnants of oxygen. His blush is the colour of the martini he drinks in that wallscape ad in the city centre, a place that will make any onlooker stop in the tracks, freeze, and stare. But only Chan knows its deepest shade, only he sees how Minho’s face is engulfed in flames when he fucks into him, slow and deep rolls yielding to the haste and chase, every inch of his skin left to his mercy, all of his senses tuned up to the max, a molten gold between the smith’s fingers, moonlight to his ocean.
Chan will take a flying bullet for him, or two. Minho will curse his stupid ass and cover him with his own body when the third and fourth bullets rip.
Chan has long since abandoned the doubtful voice that has told him to stop being so utterly pathetic about his love for Minho, but somewhere along the way, he realises that this might be exactly what Minho needs. He makes funny faces when Chan coos at him, scowling and twisting his features in silly shapes when Chan catches him in a bear grip from behind and tugs in possessively, yet his body is a melting mess, pliant and waiting, demanding Chan to hold him just a little tighter, stay just a little longer, stopping the clocks and making it last. Chan would call him a random vintage term of endearment of the day, and Minho would pretend to throw up, only to press a kiss to his neck within the next few minutes. Chan would fall asleep with the smell of his shampoo in his lungs and wake up with a handful of Minho, his lithe frame draped around him, warming him in the way no blanket can.
Minho needs someone to love him loud. Chan will crank up the volume until his voice is gone.
Right now, he is but a squeak among the roaring of the crowd. The ceremony is in full swing, all technical awards having been distributed to their rightful owners. The myth, the legend and the dumbass himself Hwang Hyunjin snags the Best New Actor award, and Chan, spurred by the overly enthusiastic duo of Changbin and Jisung, claps louder than the rest of the audience. Hyunjin looks at him questioningly before shrugging and stepping off the stage, instantly swallowed up in hugs and kisses.
Minho is in the front row, a martini on a thin leg gently swaying in the clutch of his fingers. An faceless executive on his left arm palms his shoulder, hand lingering, circling around before staying the way it is, shamelessness smelling acrid in the room. A faceless model on his right arm lays a hand on his hip, straight blonde hair falling over her shoulders like a waterfall. She thumbs his belt, looks into his eyes, sings a canary song into his ears, and Minho gives her the time of day. He presses his upper body a fraction of a distance closer to her, in a subtle attempt to make the executive’s hand slide off his shoulder. It does, and the line of Minho’s back softens marginally, only for Chan’s hawk eyes to see. The blonde model turns towards the light, which exposes a rain of freckles scattered across her face.
“Oh, that’s Felix,” Jisung says offhandedly. Chan and Changbin turn to him, confused. Since when does Jisung mingle with models like that?
“Did you just call me ugly?” Jisung practically yells, offended, before Changbin clamps a hand over his mouth to remind him of volume regulation - nature’s gift to every human, Han Jisung included. The little imp licks at his palm, making Changbin groan in defeat, before pushing his hand away and proudly declaring, “Well, we met at a club a week ago. Dude fucked me so good I made him breakfast.”
“You’re lying. Also, you cannot cook.”
“Listen, he enjoyed my signature fried rice with Takis!” Jisung puffs his chest, as if this sentence isn’t an embarrassment to his whole persona. “And he liked my Neuvillette figurine. And asked me out on a date.”
“What.” Chan blurts out. Changbin is dangerously close to actually passing out.
“Wait, so what the hell is this?” Changbin all but directly points at the scene in the front. One finger raised in a suspicious direction, and Chan will start cutting them all down.
Jisung scoffs. “You know what this is. And that Haewon thing too. Also, Felix told me they were good friends.”
Chan knows what this is. His hands still itch to protect. Minho has been swimming with sharks for so long, he’s learned all the ropes and patterns. Mind of steel, he can totally handle himself. Still, Chan wishes he could help.
He always does, and Minho always cackles at him. Kisses him on the tip of his nose, shoves a spoon of curry in his stupidly gaping mouth and proceeds to have the time of his life when curry turns out too spicy and burns through Chan’s entire will to live.
He keeps thinking about it.
About the way Minho’s blouse stretches and flows in delicious ways, how the accessories make him glimmer in the fading lights during intermissions. How his fingers get a phantom feel of his blonde nest of hair, how he can smell the cherry martini on him even across the theatre. So close, so far away.
Minho doesn’t even turn his head in his direction, all attention poured into his company. It doesn’t hurt, he is being honest when he says it. This side of Lee Minho, the luxury, the fame and stardom oozing from him, is not his to claim. And yet, he’s starving.
When Minho throws his head back, he’s starving. When his eyes crinkle and he smiles at the person in his orbit, he’s starving. When he puckers up his lips and his eyebrows arch, fire pools in his stomach. When the chocolate in his eyes mixes with liquid steel and the executive has long since moved away, huffing and puffing, Minho’s face a marble relic, he almost breaks the chains.
Minho receives the award for Best Actor. The crowd erupts. He steps onto the stage. His words hold sincerity for the fellow cast members and the director, even if reflected through the prism of ash at the flat of his tongue. Chan counts his claps. Don’t overdo, don’t underdo.
Minho doesn’t look at him.
Later that evening, the Best Picture award lands in the hands of Lee Minhyuk, the name of ‘Half Time” echoing off the walls. Everyone is suddenly ushered onto the stage, Chan, Changbin and Jisung included, to the surprise of all three. There is an ocean between the figure dripping with gold and sunlight and a tuxedo captive, unnoticed in the background of a teary-eyed Minhyuk giving a heart-shattering speech.
They don’t look at each other.
It is the right thing to do.
It doesn’t feel right at all.
Afterparty is a torture. Chan won't stay, but the big fish from a measly dozen groundbreaking leading projects is short of being extended that grace toward. The doors close, the glass is fogged. Behind the veil, a figure draped in creamy silk stays, a sunbeam in the dead of night, deflected in the arms of ghosts.
They stick to him like poison. They’re so used to blowing out every candle in the room. Chan hopes to keep just this one safe.
He turns on his heels and walks away.
The array of options in a hotel bar is not a sight for sore eyes. Chan downs half a glass of whiskey and coke that consists of 99% coke and 1% whiskey and decides to call it a night.
His room isn’t extremely spacious, yet he feels smaller than a bug crawling under trash bags two blocks away. He sits on his bed, still in his clown costume of the day, somehow unwilling to peel off the disguise.
He’s feeling reckless, sick, abandoned, hurt, for all the reasons and none of them at the same time. He feels guilt and shame simmering in his bloodstream, ants roaming in his brains, heart pounding in a disgustingly human way, so alive, so dazed and confused.
The knock is a gunshot in the dark.
Chan opens the door without a glance at the peephole.
Minho is bathed in the dirty yellow of the hallway lights, too saturated and unnatural on his honey skin. Not a single flaw in sight, even after an endless day. His blouse, his red lips, the shimmering eyeshadow holding strong. A rose gold dangly earring with a small star dropping down the line of his neck. Eyes wide, round, innocent, hoping, praying, asking. Begging for home.
They would never understand his eyes. This look, they would call exactly that an imperfection. Chan wouldn’t even care.
He steps outside the door and kisses him firmly.
It’s risky; while the hotel is asleep and no one will be looking for Minho in this exact location, you never know trouble until you do. Everything can go down in flames. Everything can fall apart like a house of cards.
When Chan withdraws, Minho’s eyes are blown out, gaze unreadable. Somehow, Chan isn’t worried.
Minho pushes him inside the room, the door closing with a decisive click.
Expensive shoes are toed off of and lost in the corridor. They are two gravities pulling at each other, two hurricanes, two tidal waves, and they never just meet - they collide.
Foreheads gently knock onto one another. The air in the space between is heavy, electric, quiet in the eye of the impending storm. They both know. Chan's fingers brush the sleeve of Minho's blouse, flatten the silk absent-mindedly, thumb the delicate sewing. Minho takes a ragged breath, closes his hands on Chan's waist and dives in.
No escape.
Their mouths slot together, and it's so deep, so warm already, the slide of their lips the abode of peace. The faint aftertaste of candied cherries is making Chan's head spin. He presses closer, the pathetic semblance of a distance finally gone, kisses harder, takes a bite he owns, tears a whimper out of Minho's mouth. Minho wants more, one hand tangled in Chan's unruly curls, the other one tugging erratically on the back of his jacket, as if pleading for something. Chan knows what he wants. His kisses grow softer and milder, to assure Minho, to calm him down, whatever it is, because it doesn't work. Nimble fingers take a grab of the hair on his nape and pull, make him see stars. Minho stretches his patience until he tears a hole in it.
Chan's insides detonate. Eyes dark and blown wide, he tugs Minho by the hips until they stand flush against one another. Keeping him so close he cannot run away even if he tries, he rocks forward, the slide of curves making his blood boil.
Minho is a man of many actions and few words, with the way the tuxedo jacket is sliding off of Chan’s shoulders and a bowtie is tugged off, a silk snake on the side of the bed. They are followed by his shirt, the expanse of his frame uncovered. Minho's small hands are two icicles on his burning skin. One of his hands moves behind, digs into his back muscles, eliciting a wet, shaky sigh out of Chan. Slyly, in an act of retaliation, Chan slips a hand under the hem of Minho's blouse and brushes his stomach, as a small treat for himself. Enjoys the way Minho's bicep, wrapped around Chan’s shoulder in a firm grip, contrasts with the softness of his belly. His traitorous, reckless hand palms lower, and Minho drops his head into the juncture between Chan’s neck and the shoulder, mouths and licks into his skin like he cannot get enough, sucks on his earlobe and grazes the corner of his jaw with his teeth. Chan gasps, body arched into his touch, whining in the way he barely recognizes himself. There is a lone lamp light casting a pale beam on the nearside wall, and its specks are swimming before his eyes.
Here, chests pushed so close to one another, Chan feels Minho’s heartbeat ricocheting off his own ribcage, drumming erratically, shards flying everywhere. His breath is heavy, scorching flames licking the side of his face. Chan gently pulls him up to his level by the cheek, right into his orbit, bites a kiss into those lips, cups his chest under the silk, thumbs a peaking nipple. Minho falls apart, a rag doll with hands helplessly holding onto his shoulders, a groan a ripple in the quiet of the room.
He doesn’t come to his senses even when Chan breaks the kiss, only to crouch a little and lift him by the backs of his thighs. His legs squeeze Chan’s hips like they belong there, Minho barely controlling his muscles, eyes wide, mouth agape, nothing but a single goal in mind. But tonight is not the night to throw him on the bed, drag him across the sheets and have his way with him fast and rough. Tonight, he wants to make it last, dig himself a cage under Minho’s skin and gnaw on the bars every time he breathes.
Pants and underwear are off in a single slide once they have laid down, but Chan’s hands freeze on the top button of his blouse when Minho suddenly blurts:
“Wait.”
Chan immediately puts his hands away and leans back, eyes waiting. Minho gulps.
“Leave it on.”
Blame his brain, overstimulated by today’s events, but it takes him a few more seconds than necessary to register what Minho means and the way he means it. Chan breathes out harshly, patience tested once again. The silk between his fingers is like sand on Bondi Beach. And here, wrapped in shadows and shitty hotel lights, Lee Minho looks like a dream come true.
“Okay.”
Tentatively, breath a blazing fire, he lowers his mouth to the collar of his blouse. Thumbs a dangly rose gold earring that’s been driving him insane. Pulls it with his teeth, plants a soft and shallow kiss on the earlobe. He knows, he knows, he knows. And he digs his fingers into the sheets, mentally crosses his heart and leaves another kiss down his sternum. Another one on the round line of his belly, deeper, wetter. And he goes lower.
Minho screams.
Tips his head back and shivers, a heatwave crossing his whole body. Limbs messy and uncoordinated, a charged wire, deadly to the touch, chest heaving, its ebbs and flows a metronome in Chan’s head. And he’s whining, so quiet, so lost in the senses, so helpless, and despite all of this, so, so starving. Legs tangling in the hotel sheets that are times rougher to the skin than those in their home, knees trembling and drawing together, only to be pushed apart with Chan’s large palms on his thighs, and he’s moaning with it, choking with it, almost gone with it, and yet he wants more.
Minho’s hand grabs the back of his head and pushes down, down, down. Chan feels the cold metal of his rings tangle in his curls, and molten lava starts running down his spine. Eyes seeing red, he covers Minho’s hand on his head with his own and thumbs the rings, eliciting a high-pitched sob from above. Something in Minho’s voice tells him that he hasn’t won, not yet.
He tugs him up and off, and Chan reluctantly moves to the silky skin of his thighs, fighting for a bite before the tugs rise in strength and intensity. Chan raises his torso, covers Minho with his own body, the blouse, a former creamy beauty all soaked with sweat, a ruined barrier between them. Their lips come together and glide along languidly, Minho’s fingers rigid on his shoulder blades, chest a tad bit too tense below him. In the moment it registers to Chan, Minho already pushes a decisive hand in between their frames and creates a breathing distance.
“I-” he begins, but as soon as a syllable flies off his lips in a sound too loud for the hush of the night, every shadow in every corner listening to him attentively, he stops, breath cut short. For a few incomprehensible seconds, his expression is stricken, eyes blown wide, eyeshadow smudged on the side of his face, a vivid aftertaste of cherries on his lips. In this moment, there is nothing picture perfect about him, and it makes Chan burn even more.
He covers his cheek with a warm palm, calloused fingertips drawing soothing circles behind his earlobe. Minho looks terrified.
“I…” he chokes out once more, heart galloping towards something Chan cannot understand. And then, the candles in his eyes are blown out. His frame slowly sags in the sheets, as if by command. Something in his features twist in defeat.
Before Chan chances to question any of it, in a single strong jerk of his core, Minho flips them into reverse positions.
Chan comes to his senses with his back denting the mattress, hands managing to clutch onto Minho’s shoulders at the very last second to save his balance. Above him, an unruly blond halo shines, streaking down Minho’s honeyed skin. Otherworldly, the humble yellow light shining through the peaks of his shoulders in an incarnation of wings. He doesn’t get a say, doesn’t get to utter a single word when strong thighs bracket his hips and a hand, skin soft and smooth, with no blemishes and calluses in sight, covers his eyes.
From there, Minho rises, and just like an ocean tide, he falls.
Something within him shifts, clicks in an entirely different manner. The helplessness gives way to determination, fear is wiped out with cold and calculated desperation. He tilts his head backwards, and for a split second, his golden hair is strewn in the air, a lightning strike for a naked eye. A blouse, irreparably ruined, is bunched up his chest, the hem clutched between his teeth, cherries soaking in the fabric. All of him on full display, even though Minho fights to keep it a secret. There are angry, bulging veins on the other hand that works between them, the slide so good, so right, so perfect. Through the gaps between Minho’s fingers, Chan still sees more than he deserves; stares with his mouth drooling, lonely and empty, so he brings Minho’s wrist closer and starts peppering it with kisses. The haggard breathing from above is the only reaction he can get out of him. Minho is on an entirely different plane now - his bravado is getting the best of him, the tempo turns erratic and messy, hand shaking, hips dragging and stuttering, too slow in his raving and roaring mind. A warfare is behind his closed eyelids, and the more he tries, the more he fails, his head drooping at long last, no air in the room left.
Chan will never leave him behind. Even closed off, even stubborn and sensitive to the point of pushing away everyone he is loved by, Chan will never let him fall.
So it is with a grip of his hips and his hand covering Minho’s - repairing the lost pace, breathing his strength into him, his love sobbing, folded in half, face buried in his clavicle - with another full thrust, with just one more clash of them, two pieces into one, Chan lets them fall together.
***
They don’t talk about it.
In fact, they barely talk at all; Minho was quick to go back to his filming schedules after the non-obligatory obligatory post-awards congratulatory string of videos and posts speaking of his gratitude, joy and honour of being presented with so many gifts and how none of this could have come to life without the support of his loving fans and, this is where Chan mentally bows out because the list of people who Minho fully owes success to is ridiculously, obnoxiously long. These posts frame every netizen’s social media feeds: Lee Minho the Superstar, with a random blue wall of his agency in the background, beaming with glee and pride, stacks of trophies enveloped in his arms.
Chan’s new projects don’t kick off until a week later, but the idea of a vacation apart from Minho after long years of almost non-stop work does not sit quite well with him. Minho has a flight booked for Switzerland, or Italy, or some obscure moody European place for the first movie of an action series in the making, something that Minho had called a “Marvel wannabe piece of crap” that his agency had pressured him to sign up for. Well, he'd called it this way when they used to communicate. And once the day of the flight comes and Chan checks up on him once again, to make sure he’s even alive between the preparations, he receives a thumbs up and a plane emoji. He tries not to think too much of it, knowing how Minho gets sometimes under a pile of stress, needing a bit more space when his head gets too busy even for his own thoughts. So when the same thing happens to Chan, in a quiet apartment too big for him and him alone, the creamy walls blissfully shadowless and the dressing table collecting dust, specks suspended in the air like fireworks, he opens a browser and, ten minutes later, closes it with a two-way ticket to Sydney sitting in his e-mail inbox, both credit card and his heart a tad bit lighter than they used to be.
He texts Minho about it when he sits by the window, overlooks the aircraft by the side of the one he currently occupies with more interest than he genuinely feels right now, willing his hand not to reach out and check if the message had been seen.
Minho doesn’t reply.
Chan puts the phone on airplane mode before he takes off.
Sydney proves to be a soothing balm on his invisible wounds. Lacerations - nonexistent to anyone but him, and even he has to go down a rabbit hole or two to just admit them to himself - are slowly closing up with gusts of the humid ocean wind, with a wild flush of greenery around, with audacious seagulls still claiming a tax bite on any food he might hold in his hands a little bit too carelessly. His family and friends notice his peculiar state of mind and go in respective circles before approaching with inquiries. Then, upon finding him as confused and unclear about his own feelings, they go all hands on deck for the good old Straya Therapy. And so, what ensues is a lot of walking, much less working and ruining his eyesight in front of a laptop. More eating, less giving up on breakfasts for the sake of a quick cheap caffeine fix. More sleeping, less lying restless, letting thoughts create anthills in between his gyri.
His phone remains silent. The quiet makes Chan want to throw up.
Once the Australia detox is over and he is back in the Seoul gloom, their apartment is so cold that it seems uninhabited. Minho stands before a pile of laundry, folding every corner together. Words get stuck in Chan’s throat. Is he supposed to say hello? Is he supposed to comment on how shaky Minho’s hands are, how skittish and wary he seems? How the stupid laundry he is folding isn’t even ironed properly? Minho grew up independent, lawful good in terms of household activities, now acting like a college jock with no semblance of understanding how laundry is supposed to look like?
Chan is so tired, so confused, and above it all, so deeply hurt. Digging deep inside himself for the reasons feels like hurting himself even more, so he hoists his travel bag up on his shoulder and goes to the master bedroom.
That night, Minho hugs him in his sleep, face resting on his sternum. Chan winds his arms around him, something inside him tearing off and soaring above.
New interviews featuring the cast of one of Minho’s current projects begin to flood Chan’s feed. Lost, worried, not even knowing what to think anymore and, on top of all, severely Minho-deprived, Chan clicks on a random one. The atmosphere is chilling, which is the warmest description he can come up with. The vibes are off, the chemistry is akin to a dumpster fire. Minho is completely checked out of the conversation, tone flat, posture twisted, not even hiding the fact that he’d been staring at the same crack in the floor board on his right side for the past twelve minutes. Hwang Hyunjin, now sporting a buzzcut (which looks weirdly fitting on him) stares in his direction with widened eyes, mouth a drooping line. The rest of the cast does an awful job of keeping up appearances and ignoring the tension in the surroundings. The supporting male character dude looks daggers at Minho who clearly doesn’t give a fuck.
Chan moves on to another interview. The clicks and clacks of the keyboard echo in the empty apartment, only lit by the screen of his laptop. It’s clearly another night of Minho being somewhere, anywhere but here.
Yet here he is, sitting with his hands pressed to his thighs, back straight, gaze cold and unwavering, staring down the interviewer on the opposite side. The concept this time around is a much more serious one, away with all the Buzzfeed-esque nature of other promo content. The host takes a breath and begins:
“Your character is a great asset to the story. Junhyuk serves as a contrasting figure to the world filled with fear and violence. He is unabashedly confident, his moral compass is unbreakable even if the environment that he is being put in is constantly trying to tear his very nature apart. Junhyuk tries, time and time again, to save as many people as he can, and he remembers every loss he has experienced on his way as the story unfolds. Minho-ssi,” the cadence shifts slightly, and Minho is awaken, eyes a pair of glaciers, laser-focused, “as the one who has had a chance to live in Choi Junhyuk’s skin for this movie, why do you think he acts the way he does? What is the fuel, the driving force that helps him to stay so strong, to never waver from his ultimate goal which is to break the perpetuum mobile of violence?”
Minho looks caught off guard. His face pales. Chan notices his awful state the moment the camera pans to him. Lips chapped and bruised, no amount of lip treatment managing to cover the fact, purple circles under his eyes buried under tons of make-up yet somehow peeking out. His foundation being two shades off on his greyish face. Minho is lost, words on the tip of his tongue, yet his mouth opens up and closes again and again, no sound coming out. Eventually, his features twist.
“His stupidity.”
The interviewer blinks.
“He’s a part of a system, isn’t he?” Minho says. His quiet, grim tone is a ricochet in the studio. “He wants to be a hero in a world full of villains. More power to him, I guess. Playing a losing game has its reward too, sometimes.”
“Would you say that the reward in question would be his morals?” the interviewer presses. Minho’s eyes turn red. There is a red button being repeatedly slammed somewhere, maybe even in Chan’s own head, and for a moment, he forgets that he is incapable of stopping any of what is happening, a fly stuck on the silver screen.
Of course, he notices it earlier than anyone when Minho’s throat fills with blood and poison.
“What morals? There's only his self-serving ideals and ego. Which he pays a hefty price for later in the movie,” the syllables quiver and shake. “What Junhyuk is unwilling to understand is his place. In that world, the one that is rotten to the core, he is fighting air pretending to be better than everyone else. People in that world are so far gone they don’t even understand what he means when he does what he does. People think he’s a fucking idiot. People think-”
“That’s his journey though, isn’t it, Minho-ssi?” the interviewer slows his roll in the softest way. “So, does it actually matter that much what people think as long as he stands proud on what he owns up to?”
“It does,” a beat later, Minho utters.
It’s heartbreaking.
“Why?”
Something in Minho’s eyes slams at the bars of its enclosure before it is all wiped out with fire, fire, fire.
“Because what Choi Junhyuk is, at the end of the day, is a product, and byproduct, of the very system he is supposedly fighting. He can stand in front of a mirror and punch himself so many times as he wants and it’s still going to be much more useful in the grand scheme of things than whatever he has done in his life.”
The interviewer’s mouth flattens, wrinkles folding in deep disappointment. He gently taps the cue cards on his knees and says, voice barely raised in an indication of a question.
“So you think that his fight is pointless? And his existence is pointless?”
“Not necessarily.” Minho thinks a bit before lowering his eyes. “I think the fight had been lost way before he was even born into this world. To stand in line and do what he’s told - that’s what his existence is about.”
The video cuts off when Chan slams the laptop shut.
The rhetoric is roughly the same in his other interviews - with Minho being much less eloquent with his wording, throwing punches at his character left and right. Too dumb, too pathetic, too weak in a world full of shit, acting all high and mighty by refusing to rot and die like everybody else. Then he laughs, cackling not teasing in the slightest, just twisted and noxious and…
Bitter. That’s what he is. Chan lands on the correct word, yet the ground under his feet still goes up in the air like in a lost game of Minesweeper.
Bitterness clogs his every word, doesn’t let him breathe, cuts off his humanity, shoots at the dams and leaves a flood of hatred in its wake. Toxicity and cold make his limbs contract in small tremors. His eyes are dead. Hwang Hyunjin is utterly heartbroken in a seat next to his, either staring at Minho with worry or pretending not to.
At a certain point in the timeline, it gets clear that Minho had received some kind of warning from the producers about his antics, so in more recent content, he just sits in a corner and stares into nothingness. When asked, he does a half-assed job of sounding excited. Editing crew across multiple channels do their absolute best to show him in as much of a bubbly giddy state as the rest of the cast. He does look genuinely happy in one of the videos, maybe because his screen time in there was around two seconds.
Lee Minho is the new public enemy, it seems, once Chan braces himself for a quick sweep of the online reception. The criticism is flooring. Netizens tear him a new asshole every hour of the day. The words “entitled”, “rude” and “disrespectful” are the stars of every comments section. A few articles pass by, and now people come to the conclusion that he is ugly, too, and has never actually been that attractive. Then there’s a brief talk about possible plastic surgeries and his botched face. Twelve hours later, when Chan wakes up and decides to torture himself some more, there’s a hot post about Lee Minho walking out of a restaurant, the title going “Why is he so fat and greasy?”
Chan wishes at least one of his texts - either an innocuous trap-like “having curry for dinner” or a nearly demanding “will you come home today” - would be met with anything, simply anything but hopeless silence.
Minho gets mobbed by a horde of paps at the airport when he comes back from… where? Yeah, Chan wishes that he knew that too. All his resentment is instantly gone the moment he hears about the attack - Minho getting caught in the wave of the crowd, people pushing him, squeezing him from all directions, their phones everywhere, flashes on every pore of his skin, hungry, drooling over him, his eyes round with fear, his hands shaking, earpods temporarily blocking the noise until he is pushed some more to the point where they fly out of his ears and get inevitably crushed under the crowd’s soles. In the end, he falls down. The mob roars, clacks their teeth, flexes their muscles, euphoric with glee. Minho is down, and he screams, a guttural shriek thinning out in between the noise. Of course, the mics catch him cursing the crowd at the top of his lungs, each syllable loud and clear, there are so many beautiful descriptives the paps will have the time of their lives uncovering while going through the footage. Kim Seungmin, seemingly allergic to gym by his looks, manages to put Minho back up on his feet in a staggeringly short time, only to tug him faster to the exit. The steel in his voice finally makes the security wake up and do something in the severity of the situation. Minho is pushed inside of a sleek black Jeep and taken away, again and again and again, fuck knows where.
Chan feels so sick he nearly throws up.
Calling Seungmin before had proven to be about 10% successful - which roughly translates to Seungmin updating Chan on the fact that Minho is, in fact, not dead in a ditch, but giving next to no information about his whereabouts. Seungmin had said that Minho has been putting his all into finding a passion project, tearing through dozens of scripts and rejecting every single one of them. Maybe he’s going on one of those script hunts this time too.
Betting on vague possibilities has only done so much for Chan so far. Kim Seungmin picks up on the second ring.
“Where is he?”
“Meeting up with a screenwriter. This one looks promising, and they want him. Y’know, with all this buzz recently, it is appreciated.”
Chan sighs.
“What’s more important,” Seungmin continues, voice as excited as a weather broadcaster's on TV, “is that he wants them too. Hearing the actual thrill in his voice for the first time in a while… Listen, whatever it is, he’s getting back to normal. Give him more time.”
“After today?” Chan sneers. “Seungmin, are you kidding me.”
“Fuck, I know. I hate it too. I just think he’s gonna be fine soon. Really, really soon. Please, Chan-ssi.”
Chan hangs up before he starts yelling or sobbing right into Seungmin’s undeserving ears.
Yet, the bastard is right. Because that same night, Chan hears the door open, only the squeaky hinges betraying the quiet of the night. In his bed, in the dark, his senses overloaded, he can make out the soft thump of a bag carefully laid near the doorstep, a dull sound of shoes being put onto the rack. A hiss of tap water - hands being washed in the bathroom. The click of a light switch in the kitchen.
Then, silence.
Chan waits for him, with bated breath and heart slamming into his hurting ribs at a deathly speed on the wrong lane, in the pitch dark, waits and waits and waits and then waits even more, loses it, wills himself to stand up and go there, stops himself because he doesn’t even know what to say at this point. Everything is so quiet. Everything is so wrong.
He finds him sprawled on the kitchen table, overhead lights glinting off the rose gold dangly earring between his unbending fingers. His eyes, two amber stones, are half-closed, eyelids drooping, energy washing off of him.
Chan picks him up in his arms, like always. Deposits him on the bed, takes off his street clothes, tugs a pair of pajama shorts up his legs. Leaves him topless, because that’s how he prefers to sleep.
Minho doesn’t fight it, the opposite of the usual.
Chan lays down by his side, turns to the wall and prays for the morning to come faster. When Minho’s arms cling to him from behind, clammy and cold, he shakes.
***
“How are you?”
Minho raises his head and looks directly into his eyes, gaze unreadable. Then, he clicks his tongue.
“This is not how you want to start this conversation.”
“That’s exactly how I want to start this conversation,” Chan corrects him softly. He’s got his sight set straight on Minho, too, so direct and so disarming, painfully honest and shamefully nervous. Doing his absolute best not to crumble in front of the one he needs to be strong for the most, fingers drumming an offbeat rhythm. “So, how are you?”
Minho stares at him some more before turning away, giving his undivided attention to the slowly awakening surroundings. It’s 7 am in this coffee shop on the outskirts of the city; a lone waitress makes her way in and out of the kitchen in a faux busy manner, shoes clacking back and forth, moves lazy, posture begging for an additional hour of sleep, hell, even ten minutes will suffice; the kitchen is a bubble of energy, a hustle and bustle of clanking pans and knife chops even though there’s barely any customers so far in this asscrack of the morning; a lanky dude with pillow creases across his face fiddles with the cash register - the register must be manning him instead of the other way around. Minho sits close to the window, and the sunrise is blooming on his skin, a strip of golden light is a waterfall over the side of his face. The remains of last night had been washed down the drain with a cleansing foam, swallowed down with a daily dosage of vitamins. In the most beautiful time of day, when it hurts to be alive, Lee Minho, the love of his life, looks unattainably, impossibly perfect.
The facade is always impeccable.
Minho’s lips tremble when he says:
“I’m sorry.”
“I know you are,” Chan sighs. “But that’s not what I’m asking about. I saw what went down at the airport yesterday. I know you’re sorry, but what’s more important is-”
“You’re doing it again,” Minho spits, voice barely above a whisper, words swishing up his larynx. His stare is accusing, as if Chan just hurled an insult at him. His tone is awfully, agonizingly bitter. Chan blinks.
“What?”
“Always putting me above yourself,” Minho continues, as if he didn’t even hear Chan. “Acting like I’m the be-all and end-all in this relationship, like everything revolves around me. Like I’m the only one who matters.”
Chan’s jaw clenches. “Now where did this come from?”
Minho chuckles humourlessly. The golden light shatters into sunbeams, and they all run away from his frame, casting on the nearby wall. Minho’s eyes are pleading for things Chan cannot understand.
“It came from the fact that I’m saying that I’m sorry for hurting you but you only seem to care if I am hurt.” After a small pause, he says it with a final, subdued tone.
The damn clock above his head is way too loud for the quiet of the coffee shop. The waitress’s heels keep on clicking, nonstop, in this empty fucking space. The spring inside Chan’s psyche is pulled taut.
“You want me to be mad at you?” he says.
Minho’s eyes widen, caught, before he hastily looks away.
“Yes,” he mouths.
“Would that help? Honestly?”
Soft blond waves fall down, hide the glimmer of his eyes, carve ornaments of shadows on his cheeks. His genie in a bottle. His dream come true. His always and forever.
Murmuring, heartbreakingly, “No.”
The silence is heavy between them. The waitress comes in a clutch, appearing out of thin air by their side with two steaming cups, the aroma diluting the tension the more it settles on the table. Another customer is in and out in record time, making way too much noise around the cash register and leaving way too little money in it. Time is viscous, a swamp the two hunched figures cannot crawl out of.
Chan reaches for the cup, almost hugs it to take in the warmth. Sips a bit, and nothing helps to fight the cold. Minho’s hands lay down motionless on the table, skin white, eyes drilling the poor cup, lips pursed.
Chan can hear the sirens before they blare. Minho pushes the cup away decisively and reaches to his ear, for the one thing that makes Chan’s heart stop in his chest. One click, and a dangly rose gold earring with a star drooping down settles on his palm.
A gift, old as time.
Minho raises his eyes at him.
“Sometimes, I’m stuck filming until ungodly hours,” he begins, “and assistants keep offering me coffee. I can’t stand it anymore. So, I think I’ll pass today.”
Chan is quiet, breath stuck in the throat.
“And sometimes, I get so homesick I feel foreign in my own skin. I keep looking around and thinking, ‘Wow, I hate all of it, everything. I wish I were anywhere but here now.’ But in those moments, I’m usually stuck somewhere I can’t really escape from. Like Europe, for example. In those crazy rural areas where the nearest bus stop is like two hours on foot away? The public transport in there is absolutely dead after 11 pm.”
The clacks of the waitress’s heels get erratic, as if she is growing impatient with Minho’s speech. In the back of his mind, Chan clearly registers her eavesdropping, in a quite shameless manner. He sips some more. The coffee is above average.
“They change everything about me when I’m filming. Different hair, different height, different face, it’s caked with so much makeup I can’t breathe through it. But I always bring this earring with me. I take it out and I play with it when they get everything ready for the next scene. One stylist wanted to know the brand, but I didn’t tell her,” Minho says with a soft, mischievous smile.
The corners of Chan’s mouth quirk involuntarily. “You don’t have to hide it. It’s just an earring, is all.”
“No. It’s not just an earring.”
He raises his palm, flips it, causing the earring to slide down, right into the safety of his other palm below. And he closes his fingers down on it in an iron grip.
“I am in the middle of nowhere, stuck in that fucking forest, the whole crew is fixing the lights. I haven’t had a good night’s sleep in, what, months? Years? I don’t want to be there. I don’t-” the words get stuck to the roof of his mouth, and Minho forces them through. “I don’t want to be there. I want to be with you, in our bed, I want to hear your annoying snores in my ears and feel your stupid clammy hands on my stomach because you just have to hug me in your sleep or you’ll die. Instead, I’m there, in that cold forest, freezing my ass off, no connection, and I only have this earring to keep me sane.”
The register dings with a purchase. Chan stares at Minho, who keeps his eyes down.
“Yesterday, at the airport, I thought I dropped it. Bent down for a moment, then the crowd pushed me. Seungmin was livid. Told me off like I’m a third-grader. Asshole.”
“Minho, what the fuck?” spits Chan, fiery. “That was- that was dangerous, you of all people should know that, fuck, I can buy you a thousand more of these earrings-”
“You don’t understand!” Minho slams an empty palm on the table. The abandoned cup of coffee jumps off the surface, the pit-a-pat of the heels ceases immediately, and even the kitchen grows calmer than it used to be ever since they came here. The cash register utters another excited ding.
“This is not just an earring,” Minho whispers, bile on the tip of his tongue. “It’s my sleepless nights, with you and without you, my memory of you, my reminder that in the end, it’s all gonna be over and I’ll be coming back to you.” Breath ragged, eyes wild, hair illuminated, caught in flames of the daylight. He looks like a wrathful, vengeful demigod, Chan merely an ant below his feet. “It’s my entire life I wasted away from you, filming, promoting, getting drunk at those events, letting all those people touch me and handle me the way they want while I wait until they get distracted by another shiny toy to get away from them. Laughing them off, kissing their asses, making empty promises, I hate it, I hate it so much,” his life force is seeping out of him with every single word he spews out of his guts. “This earring, it’s been mocking me these days. All these trophies, they are laughing at me. And I can’t tell you how much I hate it, how I hate all of it.”
They sit here, a few measly feet away from each other. There’s an ocean between them. A glass of martini, or a thousand. A starless night, or a million. The words untold, and the words thrown recklessly for the anxious minds to twist. Actions, acted and unacted. Noise, when the quiet runs dry. Warfare, when all they have longed for is peace. It’s darkness, blinding and terrifying.
Minho’s sunlit hands are trembling.
“To stand in line,” Chan begins, voice hoarse. It feels as if he hasn’t spoken in years. “And do what you’re told. This is what your existence is about.”
It hurts.
Minho furrows his brows.
“That’s what you said in that one interview you did for that movie you hated,” says Chan offhandedly, staring out the window. He wills his heart to stay intact, even if the surface is cracked all over. Minho’s frame in front of him shrinks. He lets out a dry chuckle.
“Honestly, I can’t even remember which one you’re talking about. I was in a fog all throughout that promo.” His fingers continue drumming on the table. Time picks up its pace. A cash register chirps again.
Chan doesn’t laugh.
“Is that how you feel?”
The drumming stops.
“Who the fuck cares,” says Minho, lowly. His tone is a cliff drop. “It was just a stupid interview.”
“Minho. Is this how you feel about yourself?”
“Stop- fuck,” Minho rubs his eyes, now clearly annoyed. “What does it have to do with- I am saying that you don’t deserve this. Me being fuck knows where half of the time, us always stuck in that state where we can’t even breathe around each other because what if my precious career takes the brunt of it-”
“Minho, we have talked about this so many times, I’m okay with not going public. I’m not some victim you have trapped,” Chan’s voice grows stern. Somehow, it infuriates Minho even further.
“Are you serious? You’re okay with this pathetic excuse of a life like this?”
“Minho-”
“I’m an absent piece of shit who strings you along and wastes your time instead of being your actual partner. I disappear, I’m out of touch, then I come back and ignore you because it’s more convenient to me than talking it out. I force you to watch me cosplay as fresh meat for pervs in the industry, then wake up every day and wonder if any of them have sniffed you off my skin. What, pray tell, are you getting out of being with someone like me?”
Chan is speechless. The gall of Minho deciding everything for him and rendering him powerless in his own relationship leaves him choking on his own ire.
“I’m not even going to respond to it. Because you’re trying to make me feel like I’m a fucking idiot for loving you, and we’re not doing that. What is all of this for, so that you could hate yourself for the rest of your life?”
“No,” Minho clings onto the tablecloth, eyes shining with a newfound determination. The earring lies lifeless near a cold coffee cup. Something ignites.
“I’m quitting. I’m retiring from acting,” Minho says.
In a split second, the earth tilts on its axis, wavers and tumbles over. Time evaporates, crumbles, disintegrates. The sounds and syllables don’t make any sense in Chan’s mind.
“What?” he is frozen, stupefied. His lips refuse to move. “You- What do you mean ‘quitting’, are you-”
“Hyung,” and the way Minho winces, screws his eyes shut and turns away kills the shreds of hope that it might all be a silly prank. And yet, Chan ignores common sense.
“Baby, you- This is your whole life. You cannot throw it all away like this, you… You don’t even want that. Fuck, look me in the eye and say you want it. Because you don’t and I know it. Minho!” Chan shrieks when Minho, with an exhausted sigh, drops his head right down the table and hugs it with his arms. He stands up from his chair and crouches down near Minho’s seat, squeezing his knee gently. Minho jerks his head left and right, refusing to give his words any time of day.
“I called Seungmin already,” his voice comes off muffled, gutted, blue and so, so done. “The news will hit the tabloids on Monday. This is the last day of this madness. I will be free soon. 24 hours left.”
His eyes look at him through the obstruction of his elbows, a kitten watching the world bloom for the first time. Chan is drowning in a sudden wave of tenderness.
“No-ya,” he still says, swallowing his selfishness. “I know it’s been a tough… fuck, decade for you? You’ve worked so hard, all of your life. I’ve seen you rise from nothing, become this shining star in the sky, doing what you love so much, and you’re the happiest when you take a character and make it yours. I’ve seen you do this so many times, I know this is your fate. This is what you’re meant to do. This is who you are.” And when Minho shakes his head again, he adds: “Seungmin told me you were looking for a new project. I know you don’t want to quit. Baby, I will be by your side, always, whatever it takes. You don’t have to do this.”
“What if I want to be by your side, too?” Minho’s simple words are sharper than a thousand knives. Disarming, hurting beyond belief. “What if I want to stay with you?”
A tricksy, jovial patch of sunlight hops onto the spot where Minho slowly, unsurely, inches his hand towards Chan’s and intertwines their fingers. A dreamy soft glow envelops their corner. Outside, clouds are stretching lazily on a deepening blue sky, the birds are soaring above the eaves of the houses huddled up together. The purr of delivery bikes caresses eardrums, making a home inside. The doors open and close. The clacks of the heels are the instrumental to the song of the day. The cash register can’t seem to stop dinging. Slowly yet surely, the city is coming back to life.
Crouched by the table, Chan lays his head on Minho’s lap, any potential audience be damned. They are seated in a fairly secluded booth, so it's okay. Is it? Minho only snickers. Fuck, Chan would take a cannonball to the stomach to hear this sound every day for the rest of his life.
“Can you promise me to think about it?” Chan whispers. Minho snorts, but doesn’t interrupt, which in itself is a victory in Chan’s books. “You can do a project a year. Or permanently become Minhyuk-ssi’s muse like he’s been begging you to. You will be filming once every five years or so, this way,” and the way Minho outright cackles at it tells Chan that they will be alright.
Minho tugs Chan up to sit near him at the couch, knees softly knocking under the table in this nonexistent space between them. Nobody pays them any mind anymore. They have only a few minutes until the clocks strike eight and the whole place is raided by coffee addicts and early birds.
And it’s funny, the way this conversation has been built brick by brick for a decade, the foundation barely glued together with implied meanings and crumblings of phrases, only for it to collapse on a soft Sunday morning with one simple sentence.
“Let’s go public,” Minho says.
Chan smiles. Grins, even. It’s embarrassing how his entire face instantly turns bright red. And Minho laughs deliriously, once again. And Chan loves him so, so much.
“Okay,” he replies, and it’s as easy as breathing.
A car drives by their window, all of them on display. In broad daylight, they are weaved together, tender ache blanketed over them, all for the greedy, hungry eyes to take in. These eyes have grown so accustomed to stealing their souls, wrenching them out piece by piece as if they are entitled to them. Now, they can watch. Pretend to claim, pretend to have power over. Pretend to propel and put on a pedestal. Pretend to dismantle, kick in the dirt and spit all over them.
When the fog of delusion parts, Chan and Minho will still stay together, bathed in the morning shine.
“Do you think Seungmin will be upset if…” Chan lowers his gaze, catching the beautiful pouty bow of Minho’s lips. His breath is warm heaven on his skin, and he’s starving. Been starving for so long, he can’t believe himself. “If we put a bit of a preview for Monday’s announcement?”
The corners of Minho’s lips curl deliciously.
“I think that, deep down, he’s a Satan to my demon. And,” he hums belatedly, realizing, “he did encourage me to just rip the bandaid off and end his misery.”
“You think us kissing for the whole Seoul to see will end his misery?”
“This man loves his PR crisis shenanigans.”
“Nobody loves those.”
“Try him, then.” Minho tilts his head, leans in just slightly, so inconspicuously it’s mesmerizing. “His boyfriend is a romantic soul. You could be friends.”
His beautiful blond locks, a burning gold, fall into his eyes. Chan raises a hand to softly brush them aside. Then, he looks into the eyes across him.
“Do it,” he says. “I want you to do it.”
“Why?”
“This is the one thing I can’t give you. Only you can take it.”
The cashier tells someone to have a good day. The clock hands finally round up. Traffic outside is picking up.
There is no doubt in Minho’s eyes when he closes the miniscule gap between them and lets their lips slide together. The warmth, the glow, the sweet finale and an even sweeter beginning. He licks inside, swallows the choked gasps, the shock of the lightning pulsing under his skin. Chan is so addicted, he could never quit even if it kills him. And the time never stops.
When he hears a click of a camera shutter, loud and clear, definitive and final, on his aching skin, cold for days, it feels like sunlight.