Chapter Text
They say that as you get used to things, your reactions to them diminish. Habituation, in scientific terms, if you care about that sort of thing. Minho has never found that to be true; the delicate crown woven through Seungmin’s hair has never been less startling. He never gets used to it; every time he sees it feels like the first time. How lucky, then, that his eyes have always been wide open, or he’d be giving himself away every single time he catches sight of Seungmin and the gold shifting through his hair. It’s a wonder every time.
It doesn’t work like that for the others. He’s used to Felix’s iridescent freckles and Chan’s fingertips touched with gold, Jeongin’s stone-coloured heart and Hyunjin’s eyes that weep pearls, Jisung’s silver-splashed tongue and Changbin’s face made of roses. His eyes pass over all of those things, all of his friends, without thinking twice most of the time, but Seungmin’s crown of gold catches him every time, and he knows he stares. He can’t help it. It’s been years and he hasn’t changed in all that time, never mind how everyone else thinks he has.
It should be no surprise that Minho decides that Seungmin should be dressed as a prince for losing on the radio show. Seungmin has been a prince since the day Minho has met him; the crown nestled in his hair, visible only to Minho, has never fluttered or faltered. It has continued to shine day in and day out, no matter the circumstances Seungmin has found himself in. It’s admirable. It’s impossible, a modern-day miracle. Minho almost cannot believe in it, even when it’s right in front of his eyes, or maybe especially because it’s right in front of his eyes.
There’s a look Seungmin fixes him with, when he sees the costume their stylist was kind enough to procure for Minho. It makes Minho prickle, a frisson running over his skin, less physical than touch but no less present.
“Really?” Seungmin asks. There is no reading his feelings off of his face or voice. Minho doesn’t know how to pick a correct answer here.
He allows his lips to smile, one side of his mouth pulling up faster than the other.
Seungmin reads some kind of answer in it, nodding slightly to himself and taking the outfit, dismissing Minho’s presence just like that. Or maybe just taking it in stride. Minho and Seungmin are closer than they lead their fans to believe, but that doesn’t mean they understand each other, exactly. They get each other, but that’s not the same as understanding, necessarily.
When Seungmin comes back to their room, it’s both a letdown and exactly what Minho had wanted. It suits Seungmin; it could look ridiculous, but it doesn’t, not as much as it should, by rights. The outfit is tawdry if you take it with the crown Seungmin wears, but this wasn’t about dressing Seungmin as what he really is. Minho’s heart wouldn’t be able to take that. He’s not entirely sure he knows what this is about, either, just that when he won, even before he won, the idea was living in his head, conceived in an instant.
“I expected worse from you,” Seungmin says quietly, patting the plush fabric of the robe. There’s something little and questioning in his gaze, but Minho has never been easy.
“Don’t you know me better by now?” Minho says in a joking tone.
“Do I?” Seungmin asks, but there are no jokes in his voice.
Jisung calls him a dandy boy without even knowing or seeing the things that Minho knows. They say that uneasy lies the head that wears a crown, but Seungmin walks through the world as nothing but himself, a man of principles.
“I said I’d dress you as a prince,” Minho points out.
Minho likes non-answers. They seem fitting for someone like him, who knows more than he would ever know if he’d been born any other way. Some of his mother’s conception dreams were filled with eyes, and she knew what they meant the second she saw his face. He has no complaints about how he’s been raised, but he knows that the others wonder about him, sometimes.
Seungmin looks at him and stops patting the fabric of his robe. “So you did,” he agrees peacefully. “What a strange man you are, Lee Minho-hyung.”
“No stranger than any of the rest of us, really,” Minho says as blandly as possible.
Seungmin cocks his head slightly. “I don’t know if I’d say that,” he singsongs. “Lee Know-hyung is the oddest man I’ve ever met.”
There are no cameras on them yet, but Seungmin is acting like there’s someone in their room nevertheless. Then again, the gold threaded through his hair means that he’ll always be more or less honest.
“Ah, I should’ve picked something else,” Minho says, shaking his head, dazzled by pure gold. “Shouldn’t have gone with the first thing I thought of.”
Seungmin blinks at him. Minho can tell he’s considering something, even if he doesn’t know what it is, but Minho’s lips always loosen when he sees Seungmin, really sees him.
“Is this how you see me, hyung?” Seungmin asks finally, now fiddling with his sleeves.
Minho shrugs, gnawing on his lower lip. It’s so much easier not to look Seungmin in the face, focusing on the fool’s gold flower at the base of his throat instead. Seungmin’s eyes can draw Minho in just as effectively as his crown does, and Minho is always a better version of himself when he allows himself to be drawn in. However momentarily, he takes on the same principles that Seungmin wears day in and day out and tells the truth, becomes a little more noble, just because Seungmin is in his life, leading by unwitting example. Seungmin likes to say Minho is dishonest; hell, even Minho agrees that he’s dishonest. Seungmin is powerful because he’s honest; similarly, Minho takes his power from dishonesty, because if he were honest, he’d be found out. And being found out means he’s either crazy or a freak or an example, and he wants none of those things. Even with all of that, he’s still honest when Seungmin catches him, lets himself be caught by Seungmin.
“Hyung?” Seungmin pushes.
Minho shrugs again and lets himself be caught again, eyes rising from the flower at Seungmin’s throat to Seungmin’s lovely dark eyes. “You tell me. Don’t you know me by now?”
“You’ve never been a particularly understandable person,” Seungmin says, echoing Minho’s earlier thoughts without even realising it. “I don’t think I’ll ever know you.”
To someone else, that might seem like a condemnation. For Minho, it’s a bright, sparkling truth. “Funny. That’s exactly what I think about you.”
Seungmin laughs brightly, and Minho smiles with him.
“I still want you to answer the question,” Seungmin says, eyes still bright with laughter. “Hyung, please. I’ve already lost. You’ve already punished me. Surely you can do me one little favour.”
“This wasn’t about winning or losing,” Minho says carefully. It’s another concession, and it’s honesty, and it’s all those bright, beautiful, noble things that Seungmin unknowingly wears so, so proudly. He can only say them because he’s still meeting Seungmin’s eyes.
Seungmin’s face doesn’t flicker at all. “Oh.”
“We should go,” Minho says. He was fine telling the truth, but Seungmin says one syllable in response and now his ears are burning.
Seungmin is smiling now like he knows something that Minho doesn’t know. Like there’s something more to read in that one sentence.
“Whatever you want, hyung,” Seungmin says peacefully, but Minho doesn’t trust it all.
“Kim Seungmin,” he says, and he means for it to land as a threat. It absolutely doesn’t.
Seungmin laughs brightly and blows Minho an inexplicable kiss, dashing right back out the door of their room, where no doubt their manager and Jeongin are waiting. Minho won’t be able to take any kind of revenge. He doesn’t even know what kind of revenge would be appropriate.
He presses his hands against his face, and allows himself one moment before he goes back out to pretend that his and Seungmin’s concept is a divorced couple more than anything else.