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Of all the terrible weekend nights that Jisung has endured, tonight easily ranked among the top three.
Maybe it was the worst one, ever.
He had planned to never see Minho again, let alone find himself standing in front of Minho’s door at two-thirty in the morning, but the special delivery he carried under his arm put a bullet hole to that notion. And Jisung had no Plan B to fall back upon.
He straightened his posture, took a deep breath, and pressed the doorbell.
A moment later the door swung open, revealing Minho squinting through his glasses at the hallway light that spilled onto his sleep-heavy face. He motioned Jisung inside.
Jisung followed him into the dimly lit apartment and toed off his shoes, careful not to drop the box in his possession, while Minho gestured to a pair of house slippers for Jisung to wear.
“I’m so sorry to bother you at this hour, hyung.” His voice was raspy from nerves. “I didn’t know who else to reach out to.”
Minho quirked his mouth in a sleepy half-smile that sent Jisung’s heart into a palpitating frenzy. He had no business looking so gorgeous in a simple white v-neck undershirt and gray sweatpants.
And the glasses. Jisung had never seen him wearing them before; perhaps it was for the best that Minho used his powers sparingly, for the sake of Jisung’s sanity.
“Don’t worry about it,” Minho stifled a yawn. “If you can’t come to me for an emergency like this, then I haven’t done my job as a friend.” He eyed the wobbling box in the younger’s grasp. “Can I see it?”
Jisung reached inside and pulled out a writhing ball of fur that burst into tiny staccato mews, and passed it to Minho. His expression turned much more awake once he held the kitten before him.
“It’s so tiny, my god,” Minho said with an affectionate pout. The kitten was all black with green eyes and faint brown stripes across its belly. “Poor baby, what did you get yourself into, huh? Where’s your mama?”
He sat down on the living room couch and gestured Jisung to sit beside him. Jisung settled in the armchair next to the couch instead; Minho was too busy examining the kitten to object.
“Its body was so cold and it was barely moving at first,” Jisung said. “I tried to warm it up as best I could.”
“To be honest, I was expecting to see worse from the way you sounded over the phone.” Minho checked the kitten’s eyes and looked into its mouth. “Did you notice any other symptoms of illness?"
Jisung shook his head.
“Good," Minho said with a nod. “You did good.”
Jisung felt himself flush at the compliment and snapped his gaze toward his lap.
“It’s a little skinny but not acting lethargic, or hypothermic, which is the most important thing,” Minho continued. “Probably 4 to 5 weeks old judging by its teeth. It seems to be doing fine but we should bring it to the vet in the morning anyway.”
Jisung swallowed at we.
“Where did you find it?” Minho asked. He cradled the wriggling bundle of fur to his chest.
“I was walking home from work when I heard it crying from a storm drain.” Jisung fiddled with the hem of his plaid shirt. “So I called animal control and they said they would send someone to rescue it, but no one came for hours. And by the time I called again they were closed, so I contacted the police and they said to try again in the morning since it wasn’t an emergency.”
Minho blinked in disbelief. “Not an emergency? Heartless bastards. It’s supposed to rain all day, would’ve been too late.”
The kitten was now attempting to climb into Minho’s undershirt, stretching the collar and exposing more expanse of skin than Jisung was prepared to see. He felt his cheeks heat up and looked away.
“How did you get it out, then?” Minho asked, oblivious to Jisung’s distress. He dislodged the kitten from his shirt and tucked it under his chin, nuzzling it.
“I climbed down myself,” Jisung said as if it were that simple, when in reality it had been anything but. When it was past midnight and evident that no help would arrive, he had removed the drain cover (badly bruising his finger in the process) and peered down the pitch blackness of the drain pipe. Two eyes glinted at the bottom, flickering in and out of view as if signaling an S.O.S.
So with his phone flashlight in hand, a bag over his shoulder, and a prayer on his lips, he had climbed down the rungs of the concrete pipe.
He cried when he scooped up the trembling kitten; he didn’t stop crying until he got home and gathered the courage to call Minho.
Jisung kept these details to himself.
“You did an amazing thing,” Minho’s voice was soft and sincere and a little tinged with awe.
The younger shrugged and looked down at his left hand. His bruised pinky throbbed. “Anyone with a conscience would have done the same.”
“Don’t be so sure. I don’t know if I could’ve done what you did. My fear of heights probably outweighs my love of cats.” Minho smiled through another yawn and shifted into a more comfortable position, his free arm draping over the back of the couch. Jisung wondered had he been sitting next to him, would the older boy have wrapped his arm around him instead?
Ashamed by the turn his thoughts had taken, Jisung changed the subject. “Can you tell if it’s a girl or a boy?”
Minho lifted up the kitten’s tail to examine its rear, eliciting a meow in the process.
“Sorry buddy, that was undignified of me.” Minho kissed each of its little paws and handed the kitten back to Jisung. “Congratulations Mr. Han, it’s a baby boy. Hold onto him while I prepare his food?”
Jisung nodded, cradling the kitten in the crook of his arm, and Minho padded toward the kitchen. He opened one of the larger cabinets which was stocked with rows of canned cat food.
“I feed some strays that live near the building,” Minho explained as he popped open a can. “One of them looks just like Doongie with long hair. I should take a pic and show you.”
Of course he fed stray cats, thought Jisung. Minho wouldn’t be able to live without some sort of feline element in his life.
Minho didn’t need Jisung in his life, on the other hand, which brought Jisung to question why he was lingering in Minho’s apartment for this long anyway. He had planned to simply drop off the kitten and resume avoiding Minho at all costs.
The kitten purred in Jisung’s arms.
A few more minutes won’t hurt, I suppose.
With Minho at a safe distance in the kitchen, Jisung relaxed into his chair and viewed his surroundings. He had visited this apartment many times before and technically everything was in place: the couch, the mismatched coffee table, the TV stand that was used more like a bookshelf, the framed photos of Minho’s cats from back home. But it felt different at this hour, as though viewing the film negative of a familiar photograph. Witnessing the intimacy of Minho humming absentmindedly, barefoot and bespectacled with sleep-mussed hair, felt almost like an intrusion but Jisung couldn’t look away. A sole lamp glowed in the living room and left the edges of the apartment in darkness, as if nothing else existed beyond the warm spread of light.
Minho returned with the cat food in a small saucer and placed it on Jisung’s lap. The kitten dove in and Jisung gently held him upright so he wouldn’t faceplant into the food.
Minho leaned over Jisung’s lap to coo little encouragements at the kitten, and when Jisung hazarded a glance upward, Minho’s face was suddenly too close and too real. From downward cast eyes fanned lashes impossibly long in the dim light and he smelled faintly of soap and cinnamon-flavored toothpaste. Jisung ached to pull him down and lose himself in the crook of the older’s neck.
This was the most intimate version of Minho that Jisung had ever seen, and the irony of the timing was not lost on him. Because Jisung had done a very, very stupid thing after one too many shots of yogurt soju on a night out last weekend, a mistake of epic proportions that made him want to hide from Minho forever.
He didn’t remember drunk dialing Minho nor leaving a voicemail, but his roommate Hyunjin, who had been significantly more sober that night, recapped the play-by-play for him the following day.
“Hyung. Hyuuuuung. Lee Minho! The most handsomest hyung in the world. I have an offer for you… that you can’t refuse. Date me! That’s right, date me and you’ll get a free lifetime supply of… of kisses and cuddles. I give good kisses and cuddles, the best, I promise. Don’t let my manly… manliness... fool you. Don’t believe me? Let me prove it to you hyung. I’ve been stupidly in love with you since like the first day we met. That’s like two and a half yeeeeaaars, man, okay? Okay. You and me. Hyung and I are one!”
He had then broken into a passionate rendition of “My Destiny” before Hyunjin mercifully ended the call and confiscated his phone. It wasn’t enough though; the damage had been done.
Minho, being the obnoxiously honorable person he was, texted Jisung the next morning:
Hey hope u got home safely
Jisung had left those words hanging like an indefinite ellipsis to their conversation, and effectively, their friendship. He thought about playing it off as a drunken prank, but pretending that his rawest feelings were a joke ? It was perhaps more pathetic than nursing a two and a half year-old crush in the first place. So the only sensible option, obviously, was to cut Minho out of his life for good along with the chance of further humiliation—that was, until the pretense he had desperately constructed collapsed like a house of cards the second he laid eyes on Minho tonight.
“Jisung, you’re hurt.”
Minho’s brow dipped into a frown as he gingerly wrapped his fingers around Jisung’s wrist to better examine the injury. Jisung’s pinky was swollen and a blotchy blue-purple color. “What happened?”
“It’s nothing,” Jisung weakly insisted. “I was clumsy with the storm drain cover and it… sort of fell on my hand. But don’t worry about it.”
“You should have that checked out. What if you broke something?”
“It’s really not that bad,” Jisung said, his throbbing finger indicating otherwise.
Minho released his grasp, his fingertips brushing the sensitive skin of Jisung’s inner wrist. “If the swelling doesn’t go down after the weekend, promise me you’ll see a doctor?”
Jisung nodded, and Minho finally stepped away. The older walked back to the kitchen and returned with a bag of frozen peas wrapped in a towel. “Here, for the swelling.”
Jisung pressed the cold bag against his injured hand, seeking to soothe the heat that lingered from Minho’s touch as much as to treat the swelling.
Minho lay down on the couch and plopped the kitten onto his stomach. The ball of black fur chased the prey that was Minho’s wiggling fingers.
“My mom has a friend who runs a cat rescue and I’m pretty sure I can drop him off there in a few days. But before I do,” Minho turned to Jisung with an innocent pout, “are you sure you don’t want to be his forever dad?”
Jisung huffed a laugh. “As tempting as that sounds, Hyunjin’s allergic to cats, unfortunately.”
“Time to get a new roommate,” Minho said easily.
“I’m too attached to him. Mostly, his uncanny ability to pay his half of the rent every month.”
“Mm, point taken.”
Normally they would have slipped into an easy banter to which they could lose hours and it would feel like time had barely passed. Instead, a heavy silence descended around them like fog, leaving a restless feeling in the pit of Jisung’s stomach.
Minho broke the silence first, his voice hushed. “You don’t have to keep avoiding me.”
Jisung’s body tensed. In his mind, he had folded his humiliation over and over on itself until it became a distorted origami figure. Now Minho threatened to unfold it back to its true form, and Jisung wasn’t ready to face it.
“I should be going.” Jisung hated how stupid and clichéd that sounded but his brain was too busy grappling for an escape route. He rose from the chair, and his lips were numb as words fell out. “I’ll... I’ll let you get back to sleep. Thanks for all your help, hyung. I hope the kitten finds a good home.”
Jisung didn’t look for Minho’s reaction as he slipped his shoes back on and opened the front door.
“Does the offer still stand?”
Jisung froze at those words, as he crossed the threshold, one hand braced against the door frame and the other on the handle. He turned enough to look back at Minho who was now sitting up on the couch with an unreadable expression.
“Hyung?” Jisung exhaled more than spoke.
“What you said. Last weekend.” Minho stood up to approach Jisung, cautious and deliberate in his movements.
Jisung’s racing mind was outpaced only by his heart.
Minho narrowed the gap between them, each step closer an amplifier to Jisung’s deafening heartbeat, until a few inches remained. Jisung stepped backward just past the threshold and Minho was now leaning against the door frame, the space between them having dwindled to almost nothing.
So absorbed was he in searching for a coherent response that Jisung almost missed the way Minho leaned in, hovering so close that Jisung could discern the barely-there mole on Minho’s nose.
Then Jisung felt a gentle press of lips to his cheek and Minho pulled away just enough to catch the younger’s gaze. He placed a hand on Jisung’s face and let his fingertips graze the shell of an ear and his thumb sweep the curve of Jisung’s cheek.
The gesture was enough—more than enough—for Jisung to turn his head and his mouth was on Minho’s, soft and tentative. Minho pressed back more firmly, parting his lips, inviting Jisung to mirror his movements.
Jisung’s head swam in adrenaline and confusion, one fueling the other, but he dared not overthink the moment, melting into it instead. His hands found Minho’s slim waist and his palms welcomed the heat of skin radiating through the thin fabric of Minho’s shirt.
He couldn’t believe that he was kissing Minho and that Minho wanted him .
Their lips parted with a soft sound before Jisung captured the other’s mouth in another kiss, this time deeper and more emphatic.
“You were right,” Minho half-gasped as he pulled away for air after some time.
“About?” Jisung’s eyes flitted across Minho’s flushed face, committing every detail of his features to memory.
“You do give good kisses.”
Jisung chuckled breathlessly and pulled him into a tighter hold by the waist. “Don’t forget I give good cuddles, too.”
Minho curved his lips in a knowing smile and hummed. “Guess I’ll find out soon enough.” He leaned in once more to lightly peck Jisung’s cheek. “I’ll text you in the morning. Good night, Jisung.”
Jisung stared back a little dumbly, still high from the maelstrom of emotion and kisses and, well, Lee Minho. “Good night, hyung.”
A tiny meow escaped the apartment as the door closed softly, and Jisung lingered where he stood for just a moment longer.
“Good night to you too, kitty.”