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The thing about Lee Minho is that he is, objectively, the perfect boyfriend.
Too perfect, if you ask Seungmin. Which nobody does, because everyone who meets Minho just nods along like yes, obviously, this person is good at existing, what is your problem.
Seungmin's problem is the list on his phone.
things that are weird about lee minho:
1. never cold. ever. it is december.
2. cats obey him like he is their god
3. sleeps so still i check if he's breathing
4. gerald (we don't talk about gerald)
He's been adding to it for two months. He's up to fourteen points. He doesn't know what to do with it.
┈┈┈┈☆┈┈┈┈
ONE: GERALD
Gerald is a succulent. Was a succulent. He lived a short, full life on the windowsill and Seungmin loved him.
It's a Tuesday. Seungmin is on the couch. Minho is standing at the window doing absolutely nothing suspicious.
Then he starts hissing.
Not like a person. Like something that has never needed to worry about how it sounds to other people because other people were never really the audience.
Seungmin looks up. "Hyung. Are you hissing at the plant."
Minho spins around. "There was a cat. On the street."
"The window is closed."
"Cats have excellent hearing."
Seungmin looks at him. Minho looks back. Perfectly calm. The face of a man with absolutely nothing to hide, which is the face of a man hiding something.
"Okay," Seungmin says, and goes back to his phone.
Minho exhales.
Four minutes pass.
Minho says "hm" very quietly.
Seungmin looks up.
Gerald is dead. Not wilting. Not struggling. Ancient. Brown and desiccated like he lived a thousand years in four minutes and decided, peacefully, that he'd seen enough.
"MINHO—"
"He was already struggling—"
"HE WAS FINE THIS MORNING—"
"Brave face. Plants do that."
"PLANTS DO NOT—"
Minho picks Gerald up with the solemnity of a man conducting a small funeral and deposits him in the bin.
Seungmin buys Gerald II the next day. Hides him behind the books in the bedroom. Tells no one.
Gerald II is thriving.
┈┈┈┈☆┈┈┈┈
TWO: THE TOE
Wednesday. 7am. Minho walks into the coffee table.
This alone is suspicious. Minho has the spatial awareness of something that evolved to hunt in complete darkness. Seungmin has never once seen him bump into anything.
Then Minho makes a sound.
It is not a word. More like a language. It is layered — multiple frequencies from one throat, going straight past Seungmin's ears into the part of his brain that handles information like fire is hot and leave this place immediately.
The lights flicker.
All three cats scatter from three different rooms at the exact same moment like they've received an emergency evacuation notice. Doongie sends a glass off the counter on his way out and does not stop.
Minho appears in the kitchen doorway. One sock slightly raised. Face: neutral. "Morning."
"Hyung. What language was that."
"Stubbed my toe."
"That wasn't WORDS—"
"Pain makes people loud—"
"WHat the f-"
Minho kisses him on the cheek, takes his coffee, and goes to sit on the couch.
Seungmin googles the sound later, phonetically transcribed as best he can manage.
He closes the tab after four seconds. He puts his phone face down. He does not pick it up again for an hour.
"Old building," Minho says, from the couch, about the lights, unprompted.
Seungmin adds point fifteen to the list.
┈┈┈┈☆┈┈┈┈
THREE: THE MICROWAVE
Thursday. Seungmin is in the shower when he hears WOOMPH, then the smoke alarm, then immediate total silence — not the silence of something resolved but the silence of something stopped.
He walks into the kitchen.
The microwave is fine.
Minho is standing in front of it with his arms crossed, staring at it with the specific energy of someone who has just delivered a verdict and is waiting for compliance. The ceiling above it has scorch marks shaped like something Seungmin's brain keeps sliding off.
"Babe—"
Minho turns around. His face rearranges into pleasant innocence at a speed that requires more muscles than the human face should have. "Hey! You're done. Do you want—"
"The ceiling, hyung."
"That's been there."
"IT HAS NOT—"
"You're not very observant—"
"I NOTICE EVERY—"
Minho crosses the kitchen, takes Seungmin's face in his hands, and kisses him. Slow, deliberate, with the focus of a man who knows exactly what he's doing.
He pulls back. "I switched it off with the off button," he says pleasantly. "Like a normal person. Eggs?"
Seungmin is three steps down the hallway before he remembers he was suspicious.
He turns around. Minho is already at the stove, humming. His shoulders are only very slightly rigid in the way of someone pretending not to know they're being watched.
"This isn't over," Seungmin says.
"Completely agree," Minho says, and cracks an egg with one hand.
Seungmin goes to get dressed and is annoyed about how attractive that was.
┈┈┈┈☆┈┈┈┈
FOUR: THE VISITOR
Friday. 11pm. Minho is in the bathroom. Seungmin answers the door.
The thing in the hallway is shaped like a person. Generously. It's tall, wearing a very nice blazer, and smiling with too many teeth. Its eyes are a colour Seungmin's brain receives and immediately returns marked not our department. When it opens its mouth the hallway drops twelve degrees.
"Is Minho home?"
Seungmin's entire nervous system lights up like a switchboard.
"One moment," he says, in a voice he will later describe as heroically steady.
He closes the door. Walks to the bathroom. Knocks.
"Hyung. Someone's at the door."
"...what do they look like."
"Nice blazer. Too many teeth. Looking at their eyes feels like a threat to my continued existence."
A very specific silence.
"Tell him not now. I'm busy. He'll understand."
Seungmin walks back. Opens the door.
The dude-shaped thing smiles. There are more teeth than before. Seungmin chooses not to address this.
"He says not now."
dude-shaped thing nods with the practiced resignation of someone who has been told not now by Lee Minho across many centuries and has developed a complete emotional vocabulary around it. He reaches into his blazer and produces a card.
It is warm. Seungmin doesn't look at it directly.
"Tell him Beelzebub called," he says. "About the thing."
"Right," Seungmin says. "The thing."
"He'll know."
Beelzebub turns the corner and simply stops existing in any detectable way.
Seungmin closes the door.
Looks at the card.
BEELZEBUB. Lord of the Flies, Prince of Hell, Senior Management. Available Mon–Fri. Tuesdays reserved for Lee Minho matters.
At the bottom, smaller: If this feels urgent, it isn't. Tuesday.
Seungmin sits down on the kitchen floor.
Doongie comes and sits next to him. His expression says: I have known for a very long time. I decided it wasn't my place.
"MINHO."
"STILL BUSY—"
"BEELZEBUB- WHO THE FUCK NAMES THEIR KID BEELZEBUB? DO THEY HATE HIM?- CAME ABOUT THE THING."
Silence.
"THANKS DARLING."
"MINHO WHAT IS THE THING—"
"I'LL EXPLAIN LATER—"
"YOU SAID THAT YESTERDAY—"
The bathroom door opens. Minho leans out. His hair is pushed back, eyes doing eleven calculations, none of them going well. He looks at Seungmin on the floor. He looks at Doongie. He crosses the kitchen, crouches down, and kisses Seungmin — soft, no agenda, just I know, I know, I'm sorry, stay.
"I'll make ramen," he says quietly. "Two eggs. And I'll tell you everything. I promise."
Seungmin looks at him.
"...two eggs," he says.
The corner of Minho's mouth does something devastating. "Two eggs."
Later, Seungmin texts Jisung:
dude I think something is wrong with minho
Jisung responds in three seconds: bro something was ALWAYS wrong with minho lmaooo
Seungmin puts his phone face down.
┈┈┈┈☆┈┈┈┈
FIVE: THE BATHROOM (12:23am. it all comes out.)
Seungmin gets up for water.
The bathroom door is ajar. There is a red, flickering light coming from inside it that is not the bathroom light. He should go back to bed.
He opens the door.
Lee Minho is sitting cross-legged on the bathroom floor in a summoning circle — on fire in a controlled, deliberate way that suggests it is exactly as on fire as intended — wearing his good silk pyjamas, holding a printed and annotated screenshot of a Day6 album listing, surrounded by three demons in business casual.
The first demon has a clipboard.
The second demon has its arms crossed and radiates the energy of someone who was told this would take fifteen minutes.
The third demon has been slowly edging backward for what appears to have been some time.
Minho is pointing at the album listing with the calm authority of a man running a very efficient board meeting.
"Limited edition," he is saying. "The original pressing. Not the repackage. Not the standard. The original first press, the one with the photobook, the one that sold out in nine minutes. I know Asmodeus has a contact. Use the contact."
Clipboard demon makes a sound.
"I don't care what it costs," Minho says. "It's for my boyfriend's birthday." He consults the listing. "And I need it gift-wrapped. Properly. Not like last time. Last time looked like—"
"A toddler did it during a minor earthquake," Seungmin says.
Every single thing in the bathroom becomes aware of Seungmin at the same time.
The three demons turn. Their faces — approximately — communicate one unified message across species and dimension: oh no.
Clipboard demon looks at Minho.
Second demon looks at the door.
Third demon stops edging.
Minho turns around.
He looks at Seungmin. Seungmin looks at him. The summoning circle flickers between them.
Clipboard demon makes a small sound.
"Not now," Seungmin and Minho say, simultaneously, in the flat automatic tone of people who have lived together long enough for certain responses to sync up.
The clipboard comes down immediately.
Second demon leans toward third demon. Makes a quiet sound. Third demon makes a sound back. They have transitioned fully into the energy of coworkers watching HR drama unfold in real time and trying to look busy.
Minho looks at Seungmin.
Seungmin looks at Minho.
"So," Seungmin says.
"So," says Minho.
"Devil."
"That's a reductive reading of a fairly—"
"Minho."
"Yes. Devil."
"Gerald."
"Already struggling—"
"HE WAS NOT—"
"Brave face—"
"THE TOE—"
"Accident—"
"THE MICROWAVE—"
"COMMANDING PRESENCE—"
"BEELZEBUB- AGAIN WHO THE HECK NAMES THEIR KID THAT—"
"TUESDAYS—"
Clipboard demon raises the clipboard slightly. Makes a tentative sound.
"NOT NOW," Seungmin and Minho say. Together. Again.
The clipboard comes down faster than before.
Second demon makes a sound. Third demon makes a sound back. First demon has given up on the clipboard entirely and is just watching with undisguised investment. They are three demons who came here for a professional transaction and got a relationship drama and they are not complaining.
Seungmin presses both hands over his face. Breathes. He is going to handle this with dignity.
"The album," he says.
Minho holds up the listing.
Seungmin looks at the demons. "Out," he says. "Thank you. Tuesday."
First demon makes a sound that is almost certainly finally. They leave — not through the door, just gone, between one second and the next. The clipboard clatters to the tiles. Nobody comes back for it.
The circle fades. The bathroom is just the bathroom again. Fluorescent light, cold tiles, Minho's amber-cedar smell that Seungmin has spent two years calling home without knowing why.
Minho gets up.
He stands in front of Seungmin and doesn't say anything, just watches him the way you watch something you're afraid of losing — quiet, careful, reading his face for information Seungmin hasn't decided to give yet.
Seungmin takes the album listing from his hand.
He looks at it.
He looks up.
"Tell me," he says. "All of it."
Minho is quiet for a moment. Then he sits back down on the bathroom floor, back against the tub, and Seungmin sits across from him, back against the door, and the light is fluorescent and slightly unflattering and there is a demon clipboard abandoned between them.
"I'm old," Minho starts.
"How old."
"Old enough that the calendar systems don't really—" He stops at Seungmin's face. "Very old. I've existed since before most things you'd have a reference for."
"Okay."
"I've spent most of it—" Minho pauses. Something moves across his face that is old in a way that has nothing to do with how he looks. "It gets loud," he says finally. "When you've existed that long. Everything gets loud. The weight of it." He looks at his hands. "I'd been dealing with something — nothing you need to worry about, it's resolved — but I was in Seoul, three years ago. Walking. I ended up near a stadium."
Seungmin goes very still.
"The doors were open," Minho says. "For soundcheck. And I heard—" He looks up. His expression is something Seungmin has never seen on him before. Unguarded in a way that Minho, in two years, has never quite been. "You were singing. Just running through the set. Not even performing yet. And everything—" He stops. "Went quiet. Even down in hell, everything just-calmed"
Seungmin doesn't say anything.
"Every loud thing," Minho says. "Hundreds of years of loud things. And your voice just—" He makes a small, helpless gesture. "Turned it off. For the first time I can remember."
The fluorescent light hums overhead.
"I came back," Minho says. "For the actual show. And the next one. And the one after that. And somewhere in there it stopped being about the quiet and started being about—" He looks at Seungmin. "You. Specifically. Inconveniently."
"Inconveniently," Seungmin repeats.
"I'm a devil, Seungmin. Falling in love with a beautiful singer was not in the plan."
Seungmin looks at him on the bathroom floor. This ancient, ridiculous, furnace-warm person who threatened a microwave and freed Gerald and has Beelzebub on a Tuesday schedule and showed up at a soundcheck three years ago because something was loud inside him and Seungmin's voice turned it off.
"Hyung," Seungmin says.
"Yes."
"You still do that. Ask me to sing."
"Yes."
"When we're home. When you've had a hard day. You always ask."
"Yes," Minho says, quietly.
Seungmin thinks about every time. The evenings on the couch, Minho with his head in Seungmin's lap asking "sing something" in his home voice, the soft one. Seungmin always complaining first. Always doing it anyway. Minho always going still and quiet and — at rest. Something in him settling.
Seungmin hadn't known what he was doing.
He'd been doing it anyway.
"Does it still work," Seungmin says. "The loud things."
"You're here," Minho says. "So yes."
Seungmin gets up off the floor.
He reaches down.
Minho takes his hand and Seungmin pulls him up and then he takes Minho's face in both hands and kisses him — real, unhurried, no agenda, just I have you, I've had you, I didn't know how much but I have you — and Minho's arms come around him and hold on.
From the corner, a very small sound demonic: awwww.
They break apart.
They turn.
In the corner, somehow still present, is the second demon. It has both hands clasped together. Its face, approximately, is doing something soft and delighted. It looks like it has never seen anything this good in its entire, extremely long existence.
Seungmin stares at it.
It stares back.
"OUT," Seungmin says.
The demon leaves so fast it forgets to do it gracefully. Just: gone.
Minho presses his forehead to Seungmin's. His shoulders are shaking.
"Stop laughing," Seungmin says.
"I'm not laughing."
"You're LAUGHING—"
"I'm not, I'm—" Minho laughs, real and bright, the one that crinkles the corners of his eyes, and Seungmin grabs his face and kisses him again just to make him stop and it doesn't work, not really, Minho is still smiling into it.
"I love you," Minho says. "My beautiful singer."
"I love you," Seungmin says. "You pretty piece of shit—"
Minho fake gasps.
"Geraly two is in the bedroom and you are not allowed near him-"
"GERALD TWO—"
"EIGHT MONTHS, MINHO, HE'S BEEN THERE EIGHT MONTHS—"
"That's why that corner smells like chlorophyll—"
"DO NOT go near him."
Minho holds up both hands. "Gerald II is safe," he says solemnly. "I would never. I've grown."
"You're hundreds of years old."
"Growth is not age-dependent."
Seungmin takes his hand and pulls him to bed.
They lie down and Minho pulls him close — furnace-warm, source known, somehow still the same — and Seungmin tucks himself in and closes his eyes.
"Sing something," Minho says softly, into his hair.
Seungmin exhales.
He sings, quiet and low, just a few lines of something easy. He feels Minho go still around him. Feels the loud things — whatever they are, wherever they live in four hundred years of existing — go quiet.
He stops. "Better?"
"Yeah," Minho says. "Always."
In three minutes, they're both asleep.
┈┈┈┈☆┈┈┈┈
the album arrives nine days later. photobook included. wrapped perfectly. the card says: told you. — m<3. seungmin cries. minho sees. minho says nothing. minho is smug about it for the rest of the year.
gerald II survives. beelzebub sends chocolates. the second demon allegedly told the story to everyone in hell. it is, apparently, very popular down there. seungmin finds this out via beelzebub on a tuesday. he adds it to the list on his phone. point sixteen: my boyfriend's demons think we are couple goals. he is not even a little surprised.
┈┈┈┈☆┈┈┈┈
Hope you enjoyed!
-Rhea<3
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