Chapter Text
There comes a point when you are studying for a test worth fifteen percent of your grade where you realize that no matter how many times you review your notes and have your best friend quiz you on the material, you'll still be one hundred and twenty percent fucked. Astrophysics major Yoo Kihyun reaches that point on a Wednesday night at nine twenty-five, thirty six hours and thirty-five minutes before his electricity and magnetism class, after reviewing motional emf equations and Faraday’s law for the trillionth time and still getting six out of ten practice problems wrong. He’s on the last stick of his third pack of gum - he’s a stress chewer - his phone sits dead beside his empty can of Arizona iced green tea, and Minhyuk doesn’t look like he’s faring too well on the preliminary sketches for his next advanced painting project either.
Flattening his gum and sticking it to the roof of his mouth, Kihyun flips his textbook closed and sinks down in his cushy private library study room chair until he can rest his head on the top.
Minhyuk glances up from his sketchbook and reaches over the table to open his textbook again, graphite staining the outside of his littlest finger. “You can’t give up, Ki, come on.”
Kihyun closes his eyes and sighs through his nose. “I’m not giving up. I’m just taking a break.” He’s giving up. There’s no point; if he doesn’t understand now, there’s a very small chance he’s going to understand Friday morning.
“You get five minutes.”
Frowning, Kihyun opens his eyes and narrows them at his best friend and his uncharacteristic motivation. “That’s not a break.”
“Okay, six.”
Kihyun rolls his eyes. “Thanks.”
Grabbing his empty pack of gum, Kihyun spits out his last piece into the paper box, the flavor lost and the pink mass difficult to chew. “I’m going to the vending machine. You want anything?”
Minhyuk taps the end of his F pencil against his sketchbook. “Water and some peanut m&ms?”
Nodding, Kihyun pushes out from the table. He pats his pockets to make sure he has his student card. “Can I borrow your phone? I want to check if my TA got back to me about office hours.”
“This is why you should always bring your charger,” Minhyuk says, pushing his phone over to Kihyun who takes it with a grin.
The library isn’t so packed during the week as it on the weekends so Kihyun decides to wait for the elevator. Minhyuk doesn’t care about his privacy, leaving his phone without a pass code or fingerprint recognition, and Kihyun easily opens up the internet browser and logs into his university email as he waits for the elevator to come up from the second floor.
His email is more spam from the organizations he’s signed up for and the university advertising events than anything important. Unfortunately, there’s no response email from his TA yet but that’s fine, it’s not like he wanted to pass his class or anything. He’s already talked to his mom about the possibility of dropping out of college and joining a clown school. She gave him the stink eye but didn’t verbally express her opposition to the idea so he’s assumed he’s not in danger of being disowned if his life comes to that.
When the elevator doors open, he steps in and presses the button for the first floor. As soon as the doors open again on the ground floor, Minhyuk’s phone pings in his hand. Out of reflex, Kihyun glances down at it and sees that something has been posted in the Class of 2019 group on facebook.
He deleted facebook a couple months ago, but even when he used it, he didn’t care about anything his fellow juniors posted in the group meant for their graduating class. Still, he taps the notification as he moves through the halls of the library to the vending machine.
Facebook’s blue, white, and grey interface loads onto the new post.
Chae Hyungwon
Got an extra ticket to the indie film festival Friday night and looking for someone to eat cheese and crackers and shit-talk with because I have to go for a class and am dreading it. If you just want the ticket, that’s cool too. Orig $20, selling for 19.99.
1 comment
Chae Hyungwon I’m kidding, it’s $10
Kihyun's lips quirk up at the post. This guy is probably a film student. He always feels bad for the arts and humanities majors who are forced to go to events for a grade.
A pair of students is standing at the snack machine so he heads for the drink one first once he finds the vending machines. He takes out his student ID and taps it against the card reader before keying in the number for a bottle of water. As the bottle is slowly pushed out of the line, he opens Hyungwon’s profile, curious about the kind of guy he is.
And he’s...beautiful. Unfairly so.
His profile is friends only, so there isn’t much to see except his hometown and a few randomly public statuses and photos. But the very first picture is his recently updated profile shot. It’s a candid shot of him taken by someone else. He’s leaning over a table with his chin in his palm and lightly curled mocha brown hair falling artfully into his eyes as he stares out a tall window.
Kihyun’s heart skips a little bit.
He’s not interested in the film festival at all but he would definitely pay the ten dollars and go just to chill with a cute guy for a few hours. Plus, this Chae Hyungwon isn’t interested in going either.
Remembering where he is, Kihyun grabs the water bottle and quickly buys a soda for himself. He tucks them under his arm and glances at the snack machine that’s now free. He quickly buys Minhyuk’s m&ms and another packet of gum and a tiny bag of sour cream and onion chips for himself.
He lets the snacks sit at the bottom of the vending machine as he scrolls through the rest of Chae Hyungwon’s visible profile. Biting his lips, he scrolls back to the top and hovers over the message link.
Lee Minhyuk
About your post on the film festival...
He remembers that this is Minhyuk’s account only after he presses send but it’s probably fine. Knowing his record of pursuing guys, there’s an eighty-five percent chance that this guy is straight and a fifty-two percent chance that he’s also a douchebag underneath the sarcastic charm. And it’s only for one night. He’s not catfishing if he’s not leading the guy on for an extended period of time.
Chae Hyungwon
Oh wow. I didn’t think anyone would actually go for it.
Not five minutes after I posted anyway.
Lee Minhyuk
It was a very persuasive post
You had me at cheese and crackers
But I guess I could put up with your riveting commentary too
Chae Hyungwon
Amazing
Ok so I’m kinda busy right now so do you mind if we finish talking about this later?
Lee Minhyuk
Actually
Do you use twitter or whatsapp or we could even exchange numbers?
I don’t use fb on my phone and it’s a hassle to always switch to my computer
Chae Hyungwon
Oh yeah sure
I guess numbers would be easier?? I’ll text you
Mine’s xxx-xxx-2081
Lee Minhyuk
Thanks.
xxx-xxx-5375
“Are you using the machine?”
Snapping his head up, Kihyun looks at the girl standing behind him. “Oh, sorry.” Pocketing the phone, Kihyun bends down to grab the snacks. He slips the packet of gum into his pocket and shifts the two drink bottles around until he has a comfortable grasp on everything.
Minhyuk is aggressively moving an eraser across his sketchbook when Kihyun returns to their study room on the fourth floor and pushes the door open with an elbow.
“Making good progress, I see,” he comments as he drops Minhyuk’s water and candy on his side of the table.
He sits his lemon-lime soda on the far side of his textbook and tosses his chips onto the open pages of it. Slipping Minhyuk’s phone from his pocket, he quickly unlocks it and finds the facebook message to jot down Hyungwon’s number at the bottom of his notes. After he double checks to make sure all of the numbers are the same, he deletes the message and hopes Hyungwon doesn’t send one back.
♡
Hyungwon
hey, this is Hyungwon.
Is this Lee Minhyuk?
Lee Minhyuk (film tix)
yeah, hey
Hyungwon
so you’re sure you want to go?
Lee Minhyuk (film tix)
I’m without a doubt gonna fail a test that morning so
yeah
what better way to spend my night than
eating unsatisfactory finger foods and ripping apart amateur directors with a stranger to make myself feel better
Hyungwon
talk about a self fulfilling prophecy in the making
but I don’t know your life so good luck
Lee Minhyuk (film tix)
lol thanks
Hyungwon
so did you want to pick up the ticket beforehand or do you just want to meet up outside the festival?
it starts at 7 in mbb hall
I don’t mind either way
Lee Minhyuk (film tix)
i can meet you there
Hyungwon
sounds good
Lee Minhyuk (film tix)
you mind if I ask why you have two tickets for an event you don’t wanna go to?
Hyungwon
i only have shit people around me
Lee Minhyuk (film tix)
valid
i guess i’ll see you friday then?
Hyungwon
it’s just now hitting me how awkward this is going to be
whatever fuck it lol
see you friday
♡
Kihyun tears a long strip of spearmint gum from the pack and quickly peels back its shiny paper cover to slip the strip onto his tongue. It’s only ten forty-three in the morning and he’s already on his fifth stick of gum since waking up at nine. With his test in seventeen minutes and the film festival in about eight hours, he’ll probably come close to beating his personal record of seven and half packs of gum in a twenty four hour period.
As he skips up every other step of one of the many sets of stairs of Starship Hall, he feels his nerves fritz as he gets closer and closer to the classroom where his physics test will be held. He may have already come to terms with failing, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t a minuscule, bacteria-sized part of him that was hoping — praying — that he’ll pull through with a low, barely passing grade.
Clown school? Not exactly something he wants to commit to.
A few of his classmates are loitering around outside room 2301 when he arrives, the class that uses that room from ten to eleven still in progress. He finds an open space against the wall, leans up against it, and tries not to shove a second stick of gum into his mouth as he swings his bookbag around to dig out his flashcard keychain.
He flips through them as he waits for the current class to end, reviewing laws and equations one last time. Some concepts make more sense than they did during his and Minhyuk’s work session, but many of the letters on his flashcards still transform into wingdings whenever he reads them, like those optical illusion cards that change pictures depending on how you tilt them.
He’s trying to review Ampère's circuital law when his phone buzzes in the side pocket of his bookbag. Sliding the key ring over his finger, Kihyun takes out the mobile device and glances at the screen.
His eyes widen at the message.
Hyungwon
don’t fuck up on your test
Once he gets past the surprise of Hyungwon messaging him casually about something other than the festival later, he chuckles. The doors to his classroom open then too, and students begin to stream out.
Hyungwon
unless you already took it and in that case
i hope you didn’t fuck up on your test
Lee Minhyuk (film tix)
can’t really tell if this is supposed to be encouraging or not
Hyungwon
tonight will be so much better if you’re not crying in my lap about how much you suck shit
so
interpret it however you want
Lee Minhyuk (film tix)
then thanks…i guess
I’m going in right now
Hyungwon
okay
don’t ruin my night Minhyuk
I’ve been looking forward to this
Kihyun throws his bookbag down beside a chair in the far center left of the classroom with red staining the tips of his ears. If it wasn’t enough for Hyungwon to remember his test and wish him good luck (albeit in a very standoffish fashion), the gorgeous boy then had to say he’s been anticipating the film festival. The same film festival he said he was dreading.
It’s not too much of a stretch to think Hyungwon is looking forward to meeting him, is it?
Taking his gum, Kihyun unravels another piece and pops it into his mouth. He’s definitely going to beat his record.
“Hey, Kihyun,” Hyunwoo greets as he slips into the chair beside Kihyun, hair a little damp because he takes a nine forty-five swim class that lasts until ten thirty-five on the north side of campus. He’s an ordinary physics major but he and Kihyun have shared a few classes together over the years. “Ready for the test?”
Smacking on his gum, Kihyun stares down the older man who he considers to be a decent acquaintance. He doesn’t know about Kihyun’s particular stress relief methods — most people assume he just really likes to chew gum which is both true and not — so Kihyun feigns confidence and shrugs. “There’s no one more ready than me.”
There’s no one more ready to fail than him but Kihyun doesn’t believe lying by omission is that big of a deal. And he kind of promised Hyungwon that he wouldn’t doom himself to failure right from the start.
So, he’s as ready as he’ll ever be which is not ready at all.
But he wants to feel decent enough about his potential grade for if — when? — Hyungwon asks about it later. Maybe Hyungwon will smile at him and praise him for still trying his best despite not knowing the material.
Kihyun’s jaw begins to hurt as he chews more furiously.
He shouldn’t be thinking about things like that.
♡
“I’m going out so you’re on your own for dinner,” Kihyun says as he walks through the living room of his apartment-style upperclassman dorm. His roommate, Hoseok, is lounging on their couch in his usual combo of fitted muscle tee and sweatpants, his macbook pro seated on his chest as he scrolls through something.
The nutritional science and music double major hums out a noise to show he heard that.
The island in their small kitchen is clean save for the stack of supplements Hoseok adds to his smoothies and the plastic dollar store basket Kihyun keeps his inventory of gum in. Normally, he would keep his stash secret, but unlike Kihyun’s previous roommates, Hoseok knows not to take things that aren’t his.
Poking through the many flavors he has, Kihyun eventually plucks out blueberry punch.
“A cappella practice?”
Kihyun shakes his head even though Hoseok hasn’t turned away from his laptop. “Going to some film fest thing in MBB with a friend.”
Hoseok hums again. “Tell Minhyuk I said ‘hi’.”
Kihyun frowns at the assumption because he has more friends than just Minhyuk, but doesn’t bother telling Hoseok he’s wrong. “Yeah, sure.” Peeling off the plastic wrapper around the packet of gum, Kihyun tosses it in the trash before putting the pack in his pocket with his phone and face mask. “I’ll be back in a couple hours. Please have on pants when I get home.”
“No promises,” Hoseok says, telling Kihyun that he has a bottle of wine he’s been meaning to crack open.
Kihyun leaves their dorm with a laugh that disappears as soon as he’s in the hallway and realization that he’s really doing this punches him straight in his mouth.
He forces himself not to put a piece of gum into his mouth, having finished pack #4 just thirty minutes ago when he was changing into something casual but attractive - a long sleeved black v-neck that shows just enough collarbone tucked into a pair of solid light blue jeans. With a real watch.
(Because his How To Be Gay starter pack may have come without a working gaydar, but that doesn’t mean he shouldn’t put a little effort in just in case).
MBB Hall is a relatively small building dedicated to the fine and graphic arts, housing a small room for events or exhibitions primarily held by those departments but also sometimes used for other events. To Kihyun’s inartistic eyes, the hall looks like a mausoleum and it gives him the creeps, but this will probably be the last time he even breathes in its direction.
He climbs the too-wide stairs up from the street, trailing behind a boy with way too many anime buttons pinned to his university tote bag and ignoring how his hands twitch for a piece of gum.
Chae Hyungwon, as it turns out, is the cosmos’ greatest masterpiece. Standing outside the tall, grand doors of MBB Hall, he looks like a work of art himself.
He’s a lot taller than Kihyun expected, with slim legs that look like they go on for days. Kihyun had thought about it a couple times over the past two days because he’s cheesy, but he really wonders if the other boy is a model. No one should look so effortlessly amazing leaning up against the outside of a possible mausoleum and fiddling with a slip of paper as he stares out into space.
Kihyun takes his face mask out of his pocket and slips it on as he finishes climbing the last few steps. He walks straight up to Hyungwon and clears his throat.
Hyungwon glances at him with wide, light grey eyes that Kihyun prays are color contacts because it would be really really unfair if that’s his natural eye color.
“Chae Hyungwon?”
The lollipop stick poking out of pink, pillowy lips shifts from one side of Hyungwon’s mouth to the other as he tilts his head and gives Kihyun a once over.
“Lee Minhyuk?” His voice, although muffled around the candy, is a deep tenor that reminds Kihyun of hot chamomile tea and soft sheets.
“He-“ Kihyun clears his throat again when his voice comes out strangled. “Hey.”
Hyungwon blinks once, glances down at the tickets in his hand, and then blesses Kihyun with a small smile. “Welcome to hell,” he says, passing over one of the tickets.
Kihyun’s pretty sure he’s in heaven right now and talking to a literal angel, but he takes the ticket with a laugh. “Thanks for the invite.” Pinching the ticket between his fingers, he takes out his wallet in order to hand Hyungwon the ten dollars for the ticket.
Slipping the money into the front chest pocket of his oversized denim shirt, Hyungwon pops his lollipop out of his mouth. “Guess we should go in before all the snacks are gone. I did advertise the finest,” he says as he turns to enter the building, absentmindedly rubbing the red, hard candy over his lips.
Kihyun sighs dazedly at the sight and follows after the other boy.
He can feel a solid crush forming already and that is the opposite of good.
♡
“So, uh, how was your test?” Hyungwon asks as he piles up chocolate chip cookies on a tiny, square napkin. “And sorry if my text this morning was too familiar. I thought I should try to make things more comfortable before, well, now, but I realized later that I might’ve overdone it.”
Kihyun shakes his head. “No, it was cool. I appreciated it actually. Kind of took the edge off,” he says, not exactly lying. He picks up a tiny plastic cup of cola and then his own napkin full of cookies. There are no cheese and crackers, there isn’t even any free pizza - which is honestly blasphemy - but he can’t complain when Hyungwon exhales a soft sigh that Kihyun unashamedly convinces himself is relief.
As they leave the long table holding the meager snack selection to find seats three rows from the very back, Kihyun continues.
“Still failed it, but I promise I’ll save my tears for later.”
Hyungwon crosses his legs at the thigh, wonderful pale skin about two shades lighter than his face slightly bulging through the wide, gratuitous rips in the tight, black jeans. “Much appreciated. Tears are the one thing I can’t handle.” He gently sits down his leaning tower of cookies on the empty seat to his right before turning to face Kihyun, angling his body so that he’s putting all of his weight on his left hip. He folds one arm over the back of his portable chair and lifts the other to twirl his lollipop stick.
Kihyun sucks his bottom lip into his mouth and chew on it nervously, blinking twice to clear out the interested leer he could feel his lids drooping in to. He is, in fact, capable of hanging out with a very cute, very very very hot boy without making his thirst completely obvious.
But because his life is set to expert difficulty, it’s only natural that Hyungwon then leisurely drags his candy out of his mouth and presses the sticky, red ball of sugar against the seam of his lips as he puts all of his attention on Kihyun.
“So what was the test in?” he asks, pursed lips still squished against the lollipop.
Kihyun slips his hand into his pocket, feeling his rectangular pack of gum. He clears his throat and pretends to be interested in looking around the small room. “Physics. I’m an astronomy major.”
“Oh?” Hyungwon raises an eyebrow and finally, thankfully, (a little unfortunately), curls his tongue around the sugary mound and pulls the lollipop back into his mouth, a bump immediately appearing in his left cheek. “That’s cool. You don’t look the space nerd type.”
With a strange twitch of his fingers, Kihyun finally cracks and gives into his addiction. He takes out two sticks of gum and pulls down his face mask over his chin, shoving them in his mouth. “And what’s the space nerd type look like?”
He’s not offended; on some level, he gets it. He does have on a $150 watch.
Hyungwon sucks loudly on his candy as his pretty eyes casually take a tour across Kihyun’s hunched and awkward geography. “Not like this.”
It’s a complete non-answer (and one that can be given any kind of meaning). He really didn’t plan on flirting, remembering his history with chasing after straight dudes, but some stupid burst of stupidity works a smirk over Kihyun’s face. “Okay, but not like what?” he pushes, matching Hyungwon’s unwavering stare.
Hyungwon laughs a little bit, just a short, surprised chuckle. “Let it go, Minhyuk. I’m trying to not make you uncomfortable before the movies are even shown.”
“Try me.”
Shaking his head, Hyungwon pinches his finger around the stick of his candy and bites down on the sugary mass. “Fine,” he says as he munches on his now broken lollipop. “You’re cute.”
Cute as in adorable or cute as in ‘I would smash’, Kihyun wants to ask but he occupies himself with blowing a huge, blue bubble to prevent himself from ruining the good mood between them.
Hyungwon takes the clean stick out of his mouth and reaches behind himself to put it on his plate. “You look a little different than I imagined since your last couple of profile pics have been of your dog in cheesy costumes.”
Holy shit. Kihyun didn’t even think about Hyungwon going through Minhyuk’s facebook and he makes a mental note to kiss his best friend for: one, actually making his profile friend’s only and, two, being obsessed with his dog.
“They’re not cheesy; they’re precious,” he says, playing up the role of someone who is crazy about their pet because it seems like something Hyungwon would expect.
Hyungwon raises the hand not draped over his chair in surrender before slipping it into his back pocket and pulling out another lollipop.
Kihyun watches him unwrap it. “Aren’t you going to eat your cookies?”
“Aren’t you going to eat yours?” Hyungwon returns, locking them in a stalemate. He glances up at Kihyun under his thick lashes as he slowly curls his tongue around the green bulb of sugar and sucks the candy into his mouth.
It’s meant to be teasing, a playful dare for Kihyun to make another comment, but all it does is make warmth spread throughout the weak astronomy major.
“I’d like to welcome you all to the 2018 Independent Film Festival!”
Hyungwon turns away from Kihyun to look at the woman MCing the event and Kihyun immediately reaches for the cola he left by his feet. Sticking his gum to the rim of the cup, he takes a long sip and ignores how the carbonation stings as it goes down.
“We have a lot of great short films tonight so I hope you enjoy!”
“I’m already suffering,” Hyungwon mumbles under his breath.
Kihyun nods, agreeing for a different reason. “Same.”
♡
“I know I’ve said this for almost everything we’ve seen but I’m serious this time. What the fuck am I looking at?”
Kihyun breaks off a soft chunk of one of his cookies as he watches colorful, animated amalgamations of human and animalistic features on Ghibli-like monsters gradually go from cute and innocent to slimy and uncomfortable. “I don’t know, I kind of like it,” he whispers back as an anaconda with the lower body of chubby legs wrapped in a red plaid uniform skirt swallows a freckled boy with three eyes and no arms in one bite.
Hyungwon glances at him, not one bit of amusement in his eyes. “Get out.”
“It’s better than the one that was just a bootleg Tickle-Me-Elmo vibrating on street corners.”
“That had some interesting angle choices.”
Kihyun snorts as he nibbles on his cookie. “Don’t pull that on me, asshole. It was a completely irredeemable piece of shit and you know it. At least this one is so weird that it’s kind of cool.”
“Goodbye, Minhyuk. I’m not listening to you defend this.” Hyungwon, long finished with his second lollipop, breaks one of his own cookies down the middle and fits the half into his mouth.
“But I have this theory that—”
With a long-suffering ‘oh my god’, Hyungwon pinches the corner of the mask still sitting at Kihyun’s chin and pulls it up over his mouth as if that will mute him.
“It’s shit, you’re shit, this entire festival is shit,” Hyungwon mumbles with his mouth full.
The room isn’t silent, filled with light chatter, but Kihyun’s burst of laughter sounds above it all. A few people turn around to look and he quickly tries to collect himself with a hand to muffle his laughter. Hyungwon begins to laugh too, restrained yet genuine, and they don’t stop until the animated film finishes with a sudden cut to black.
Still giggling just a bit, Hyungwon slaps Kihyun’s thigh familiarly. Kihyun jolts at the hit but only looks at Hyungwon with a wide grin and stars in his eyes.
He was high-key ready for this night to be awful — for Hyungwon to be stuck-up and overconfident in his own skills as a film student, for his sharp tongue to feel like the crack of a whip rather than a playful pinch, for them to not get on at all. But Hyungwon is a homey sort of easygoing, the kind of person that makes you feel like you’ve known them forever. He’s mouthy, has something to say about everything, but listening to him ramble about this and that doesn’t tire Kihyun out like Minhyuk’s rants do. He’s straightforward and confident and pretty and funny...
Two days ago Kihyun thought he’d be okay with this being a one night thing. Now, nothing is more disappointing than the possibility of saying goodbye to Hyungwon after the festival and that being the end of what can be a great friendship (never mind his problematic budding crush).
Pulling out his phone, Hyungwon checks the time and groans. “It’s been an hour and a half and we still have another category left,” he complains, squeezing his eyes shut and sinking down in his chair. He pops one back open and sets it on Kihyun. “You wanna go and get a burger?”
Movies and dinner sounds a lot like a date.
Kihyun coughs. “Now?”
Blinking open his other eye, Hyungwon frowns. “Uh, yeah? I'm not sitting through this garbage for another hour.”
Kihyun unwraps his third piece of gum since the start of the festival. "Oh. Okay, yeah, let's go."
♡
Hoseok, as expected, doesn’t have on pants when Kihyun gets home close to ten, the older man still stretched out on the couch but now on his stomach and in short, baby blue boxers. There’s a tall bottle sitting on the floor next to a fat glass with red wine pooling inside.
Hoseok looks up from his laptop, a jazzy instrumental playing through its speakers. “Oh, hey, welcome back.”
Kihyun swipes the glass of pinot noir and takes a sip as he plops down onto one of their bean bag chairs. “Dude, I’m fucked.”
“Um,” Hoseok glances over at him and then down at where his glass once sat, “I’m sorry to hear that?”
“I don’t believe in soulmates so I don’t wanna say that he’s my soulmate but I’m pretty sure he’s my soulmate.”
“Minhyuk?”
Kihyun gags. “Where is the air freshener? I need to get that out of the atmosphere.” He stands and fans the air as he goes to open a window.
Hoseok snorts and pauses his latest composition. “Okay, then who are you talking about?”
Taking another swig of wine, Kihyun savors the taste before dropping the glass by Hoseok’s side. He returns to his bean bag chair. Instead of sitting in it, he drops to the floor and buries his face in its softness.
He tells his roommate about Hyungwon and the film festival and ditching early to get burgers. He tells him about how they shared a large fry and how cute Hyungwon’s scandalized expression was when Kihyun revealed that he’s never tried dipping french fries in mayo. He tells him about how easy it was to just fall into conversation with the other boy and effortlessly leave the festival behind to get to know each other.
“And when we left Burger Burger he said ‘we should hang out again some time, Minhyuk’ and I’m sure Gay Jesus is having the time of his life laughing at me.” He sighs.
He hears Hoseok shifting around. “Why did he call you Minhyuk?”
“Because I’m an idiot and didn’t tell him the truth when I had the chance,” Kihyun groans, wishing the bean bag chair will suck him in and swallow him.
“Just tell him now.” The clink of the wine bottle hitting glass chimes as Hoseok refills.
Rolling onto his back, Kihyun regards his roommate with knitted brows and a frown. “It’s not that easy.”
Hoseok raises an eyebrow as he raises his glass to his lips. “Yeah,” he takes a generous sip, “it is.”