Work Text:
Inviting Minhyuk over was probably not the smartest idea that Kihyun ever had.
It seemed like a pretty low-risk idea. His parents wouldn’t be home until late. It would be a welcome reprieve from the bustling environment that was Minhyuk’s house, where they had been hanging out most of the time.
They were still on summer break, but they had been working on their Personal Planning graduation requirements all week, getting it out of the way while they still had plenty of free time on their hands.
Working on schoolwork over summer was a pretty foreign concept to Minhyuk, but he played along remarkably well. Honestly, Kihyun figured he could get Minhyuk to do anything if it meant spending more time with each other.
Kihyun wasn’t complaining about that perk, either
“God, it’s hot.” Minhyuk muttered, tugging at the front of his tank top. The living room fan had been going at full strength all afternoon, humming a rhythm that Kihyun had composed mock resumes to. He glanced up, watching Minhyuk push a palm against his sweat-slicked hair, resting the heel of his hand against his forehead. His eyelashes were low against his tanned skin, summertime sleepiness from 4AM gaming binges.
Kihyun ignored the way his stomach jumped as Minhyuk let out a low groan.
“I’m tiredddd.” Minhyuk moaned, flopping against the coffee table, letting his arms loose over his work. Kihyun, without looking up, moved his own work swiftly out of the way. “Can we nap now?” Minhyuk asked, rolling his head to the side. “It feels like naptime.”
“No,” Kihyun said. “Not until we’re done.”
“But there is so much to do.”
“There is less to do the more you do it.” Kihyun said plainly, flipping his pages back to the requirements section. Reference letters next, god damn it. “I would start now if you want to do less later.”
He glanced up. Minhyuk’s eyes were closed.
“Hey,” Kihyun said, kicking his leg from under the table. “Don’t fall asleep on me.”
Minhyuk’s eyes didn’t open, but he kicked Kihyun back. Although it was less of a kick and more of a gentle caress on Kihyun’s inner thigh by Minhyuk’s toes.
“Min,” Kihyun said, staring him down as the foot slipped higher up his leg. “You can’t use…that stuff to get out of doing your work.”
The tiny smirk that tipped the corner of Minhyuk’s mouth made Kihyun wonder for a second if Minhyuk could see right through him. He probably could, that bastard.
Kihyun rolled his eyes, reached forward, and pinched Minhyuk’s nose. That got him to open his eyes. He grinned up at Kihyun, withdrawing his foot in defeat. “So mean,” he said slyly. “You started it.”
“I was trying to wake you up,” Kihyun slips a strand of hair behind Minhyuk’s ear. “Not distract you.”
“Oh, am I distracting?” Minhyuk leered, brows wriggling. His foot extended forward again, sticking Kihyun somewhere around his stomach. His toes were warmer than Kihyun imagined. For some reason, he always thought of Minhyuk as having obnoxiously cold toes to suit the rest of his personality.
Kihyun fought to keep his face neutral. Don’t smile, don’t smile. “Minhyuk—”
The front door’s lock clicked.
Kihyun froze. Across from him, Minhyuk’s expression of horror was probably a mirror of his own.
“’Rents?” Minhyuk whispered.
“Probably.” Kihyun hissed.
“Shit.”
They scrambled, the coffee table bumping as they pulled their legs away from each other, reeling in their scattered papers. They had about a second of staring intently at their homework before the front door swung open, and Kihyun’s parents entered the foyer.
“I’m not saying that either— oh ,” Kihyun’s mother paused, a bag of groceries in her hand, as she looked down at the two of them, hunkered over the coffee table. “Do you have a guest, Kihyun?”
Kihyun and Minhyuk exchanged glances. Then Minhyuk scrambled to his feet, patting the wrinkles out of his jeans, and moved swiftly across the living room.
“Hello there Mrs. Yoo,” Minhyuk said smoothly, extending his hand as if he hadn’t been frozen in terror ten seconds earlier. “My name is Minhyuk, Kihyun has been tutoring me for the past few weeks.”
Kihyun’s mother was a small lady, with curly hair and a soft face. Kihyun took after her more, in her round features and sharp instincts.
None of that was on display as Minhyuk extended his hand out. She smiled, hoisting her bag of groceries into the crook of her elbow, and shook his hand. “Lovely to meet you, Minhyuk,” she said. Kihyun watched, sitting at the table, as her eyes traveled over Minhyuk’s shoulder, to lock onto her son.
Kihyun swallowed and glanced away.
“You’re staying for dinner, right?” His mother asked, moving towards the kitchen. “Are you vegetarian? I’m making chicken tonight, but I can always make more vegetables if we need it.”
“Uh,” Kihyun cuts in, “he really should be getting home soon-”
His mother ignored him. “You’ll stay, won’t you Minhyuk?”
Minhyuk smiled, his eyebrows tilted up as he glanced between Kihyun and his mother, smiling in a way that faltered just on the edge of chill and happy.
Leave now . Kihyun telepathically thought desperately to him. Leave. Oh please for the love of god, leave.
“Sure,” Minhyuk said smoothly. “I can stay for dinner.
Kihyun’s mother smiled gaily at that and moved into the kitchen to start dinner, as Kihyun felt a corner of his soul wither away.
—
It was mashed potatoes, peas and baked chicken. Garden salad. Normal. Bland. Universally acceptable.
Kihyun focused on the bowls as they were each being passed around. His head felt like it was stuffed full of cotton. Beside him, Minhyuk was dishing out potatoes. Across from him, Kihyun’s mother and father sat, staring them down like the boys had been brought in for interrogation.
In a way, Kihyun figured, they had been.
There were so many ways this could go wrong, Kihyun couldn’t even focus on one thread of concern. What was his mother thinking? How much did she know? Was this an interrogation? Kihyun wasn’t prepared for this, which meant Minhyuk was definitely not prepared for this. All Minhyuk knew was that his parents were strict. He didn’t know that they were smart.
Kihyun flinched a bit the first thing he heard his mother talked.
“So Minhyuk, tell us a bit about yourself.” Kihyun’s mother said cheerfully. “What are you and Kihyun getting up to in the living room?”
Kihyun took the salad bowl with sweaty palms. From this angle, he could see a bite mark hiding under Minhyuk’s collar that he wasn’t certain was hidden from his parent’s line of sight.
“Um?” Minhyuk said, scratching the back of his head. “Uh, it’s kind of embarrassing, but Kihyun is helping me out with school related stuff. I’m pretty shit—I mean, I’m not very good at it.”
“Oh?” said Kihyun’s mother, in a tone that sounded like how she might react to something a child had said. “He’s tutoring you?”
Kihyun felt his pulse quicken as he chased a cherry tomato out of the bowl. Please make it not gay, Minhyuk. His mind screamed. Please do your best.
“I guess, yeah.” Minhyuk said cheerfully. “He’s really diligent, it helps me work. Sometimes I don’t understand something and he helps out. These mashed potatoes are delicious, by the way.”
Kihyun’s mother didn’t miss a beat. “Thank you, dear,” she said smoothly, passing the bowl around. “Are you in the theatre too, then?”
Minhyuk laughed out loud. “Uh, no.”
“Why not?”
It was more of an accusation than anything else. It went in line with his mother’s assumptions. Musical theatre equaled homosexuality, or something. Whatever asinine connection there was, Kihyun was grateful for that moment that Minhyuk didn’t fit the stereotype.
Minhyuk didn’t seem to notice what was going on. He just shrugged. “Not my thing.”
“Funny that you would find yourself friends with my son, considering that’s all he seems to care about these days.” His mother said lightly. “He must be expanding his horizons.”
Kihyun swallowed and glanced over. Minhyuk’s eyebrow twitched, but he didn’t say anything.
They ate, and the questions kept coming. Minhyuk answered most of them with a sort of smoothness that reminded Kihyun of how he talked to teachers about his failing grades or chatted with his mom about upcoming tests. It was a cheerful, open attitude that sounded too charming to be dishonest. Too candid to be a lie.
Of course, none of it was really a lie, but it wasn’t real, either. Not until his mother put down her glass of water, and asked the question of the night very plainly.
“So Minhyuk,” she starts, “What do you do in your spare time?”
Shit.
There was no good response to this. Kihyun knew well enough that Minhyuk did nothing outside of school. He relaxed like nobody’s business. His work ethic was substandard at best. His free time was spent with video games and hanging around town with friends.
“ Oh ,” Minhyuk said, around a mouthful of mashed potatoes. “Well, I play lacrosse.”
Kihyun almost spat his peas out.
“Do you?” his mother asked, leaning across the table with a sparkle in her eye.
Minhyuk nodded, swallowing his food. “Yeah, it’s kind of tough right now, since the season’s on, but on days like this it’s always good to take a break and get some homework in.”
Kihyun willed himself to not stare at Minhyuk like he was growing a second head. Be cool. Be cool. Oh my god that was a straight-up lie.
Kihyun had to wield his face to neutralize, not to blow Minhyuk’s cover. He had underestimated his evaluation of his interpersonal skills. Minhyuk was a calculating bastard.
“Oh, you like sports, then?” asked Kihyun’s dad, brightening up. Kihyun knew his dad didn’t speak a lot when a new company was over. Kihyun suspected he was still slightly self-conscious about his English, but when sports came up, he was always excited to join in. Even something like lacrosse, that Kihyun was fairly certain that neither of his parents knew anything about.
“Yeah,” replied Minhyuk. “I play hockey in the winter sometimes, if my friend’s teams need a fill. It’s hard to manage it with my schedule considering I tend to stay up late with schoolwork. Early morning practices are difficult to manage with classes.”
Oh my god, he was going for the throat.
“Oh, that’s wonderful,” said Kihyun’s mom. “See, Kihyun here always played sports as a child. But he got interested in other things.”
Kihyun smiled weakly.
He was still waiting for it. The inevitable question. They had traversed this far down the road of personal information, what would stop them from popping a question like “Do you have a girlfriend?” It was innocuous, it was devious. Kihyun knew that’s exactly what his parents were getting at with this interrogation.
But then his mother was packing up the plates and taking them to the dishwasher, and the conversation ebbed out to a full silence.
That was it. Dinner was over. Thank fucking god.
—
Kihyun stared down at the soaked gravel road as they walked home, wondering if there was a way to burn the previous hour from his consciousness.
He didn’t want to talk, not when his mind was in overdrive, calculating all of the scenarios he would be faced with in the future. There was too much here that could go wrong, too many outcomes that felt more like reoccurring nightmares than reality.
So, he was quiet. He was quiet as they walked down the alleys on the way to Minhyuk’s house, past slumping backyard fences and barking dogs. Minhyuk was quiet too, whacking mosquitos off his shoulders, fingers pinched around a Tupperware container packed with mashed potatoes.
“That was intense,” Minhyuk broke the silence when they hit the streetlight, jabbing the infrared button rapidly. “I thought they were gonna kill me.”
Kihyun let out a huff of air, the remnant of a laugh that died on the way to freedom. “Yeah,” he said. “Same here.”
“But I guess I passed?” he said, turning to Kihyun, grinning lopsidedly. “Unless these potatoes are poisoned, that is.”
“No,” said Kihyun. “They like you.”
“Pff, really?”
It was hard to figure Minhyuk out sometimes. He came across as straightforward and honest with every word out of his mouth. He didn’t seem like the person who had internal introspections about people. But he still understood people, to some extent.
Sometimes Kihyun just figured he was playing dumb.
“They like you because they think you’re straight,” Kihyun said dully as the walk light flashed on. “They think you’ll be a positive straight influence on their wayward son.”
Minhyuk whipped his head around to Kihyun, before he burst out laughing.
“Oh my god, are you serious?” he cackled.
Kihyun flattened his mouth out. “Would I joke about this?”
“I dunno, it’s pretty funny.”
“Well, at least one of us thinks so.”
Minhyuk seems to not care about that as he turns to Kihyun, grinning endlessly at him. “Hey you.”
“What.” Kihyun grumbled, turning around to face Minhyuk, and then he stopped.
Minhyuk was standing on the sidewalk, backlit by the setting sun. His hands shoved into the pockets of his shorts, his hair stylishly messy, shoulders bare and tanned and face cracked into a smile that was as relaxed as it was charming. Then he was walking up to Kihyun, circling his arm around his waist, pulling him up against him so their warm, sweaty bodies pressed against each other.
“We’re in public.” Kihyun fidgeted, but there wasn’t anyone around. It’s not like it was something really weird either, just two dudes hugging in the middle of metro Vancouver suburbia. Maybe Kihyun was just feeling self-conscious, what with everything else hanging over his head.
“I like you.” Minhyuk lilted, breathing into the soft hair at Kihyun’s nape. “A lot.”
“I’m shocked.” Kihyun growled out, but there was no heat behind it.
Minhyuk let out a little laugh, and pressed his mouth against Kihyun’s ear. “I’d like you even if your parents were sharks.”
“Sharks are pretty nice, actually.”
“I’d like you even if your parents actually tried to kill me.”
Kihyun stared up at him. Minhyuk was looking down on him with those bright eyes, smiling hard enough that they crinkled at the corners.
There was a tiny part of Kihyun that wanted something dramatic to happen.
Not murder, nothing like that. But maybe he did want his parents to discover the nature of their relationship, wanted them to be offended and scandalized and try to ground him for months. He wanted that force to push back against, to properly rebel against, something to give him a reason to not want to be a good kid anymore.
He had run on that high a few months back, that rebellious anger. But now, it doesn't seem appealing. He didn’t want to get Minhyuk into the middle of that.
“Okay, okay. Don’t joke about that.” Kihyun groaned.
Minhyuk squeezed him tighter. Kihyun let his shoulder be compressed into a hug, let his feet be lifted off the ground, let himself be spun around a couple times before finally, being dropped in the grass.
Kihyun stood there awkwardly on some random person’s front lawn, the setting sun beaming into the corner of his eyes, blinking at Minhyuk’s happy, concerned face as he shoved his hands back into his pockets.
Maybe, Kihyun figured, it would be better to think less selfishly sometimes.
To be mindful of what someone else’s worries were.
Kihyun looked Minhyuk right in the face.
“I still want to spend my time with you. I don’t give a shit what my parents want. I just want this. I want you. ”
He said it loudly. Defiantly. Like it was as much of a message to his parents as it was to Minhyuk.
The worry between Minhyuk’s eyebrows softened, just enough for Kihyun to realize that he wasn’t the only one who was walking with a twist in his stomach.
“Yeah,” Minhyuk said, a dash of charming smile. He brings Kihyun closer to him and plants a big kiss on his temples then to his pretty, flushed cheeks, “Same here.”