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It’s long since gone dark by the time Mingyu arrives, carrying a single rucksack and bundled up in a thick coat when he steps off the train. Seokmin waves at him from beyond the barriers, and Mingyu waves back, grinning with all his pointed teeth. They hug as soon as they reach each other, warm and familiar, and Seokmin laughs as pure joy wells up in his chest. It’s been nearly a year since he’s last seen Mingyu, and he’s missed him more than words can say.
“I’ll ask you again,” Mingyu says, leaning out of the hug. “Why’d you move so bloody far away?”
Seokmin laughs again, too happy to do much else, though the question has been heavy on him at several pivotal points over the last year. “You know what Soonyoung and Hansol are like, they picked the place,” he says by way of reply, leading Mingyu out across fluorescent-lit floors and into the dark chill of outside. It’s raining impossibly lightly, the light flecks visible under orange streetlights but barely felt on his face. “They asked me to move in, and I needed the change of scene. Plus, you know Brighton, gay capital of the U.K.! Wanted the experience of it.”
“Yeah, I know,” Mingyu says, face turned up to the rain as Seokmin leads him over to the car. The beach is straight ahead as soon as they step out of the station, and several glowing bonfires are visible along the shoreline from where they’re walking. The crowds are out and about too, and Seokmin holds onto the end of Mingyu’s sleeve to make sure they stay together. “You just picked the busiest year of me life to do it. At least we could’ve met up on a free evening when you lived up north.”
“I know. It’s been hard. I was close to coming up and visiting Granddad with Hansol in the summer, but my work schedule has been all over the place. It was hard to make time.”
“S’alright,” Mingyu says, coming to a stop beside the car when Seokmin does, digging in his pockets for his keys. “He knew you’d’ve come if you could. Would’ve been good to see you then, but at least I’m seeing you now.” He shrugs his rucksack off at Seokmin’s hastening and deposits it in the boot of his car.
“Still,” Seokmin replies, shutting the boot firmly after it. “I missed you. And my family, of course. But I didn’t know back at Christmas that I wouldn’t be seeing you again for another ten months.”
He turns to look at Mingyu, the two of them stood opposite each other in the November cold. It’s the type of wintery chill you only get by the seaside—fresh, biting, and just a little bit alive, especially with this many people milling about in it.
“Neither,” Mingyu admits, nervously blinking a few times. The angles of his face are shadowed under the glow of the streetlight directly above them, and the way that makes him feel hasn’t changed in nearly a year. “Your Granddad insisted I finally take a week off to come see you, y’know. Said he could manage without me, but you wouldn’t.”
Seokmin laughs again, but the butterflies in his chest are all aflutter with a more nervous tension. He sincerely hopes he hasn’t been the only one thinking about their New Year’s kiss all this time, that Mingyu has been burning with the same restlessness and impatience for them to meet again as Seokmin has. “He may be right. Soonyoung and Hansol are impossible to keep up with sometimes. I need to be around someone more on my level.” He reaches out to grasp Mingyu’s hand this time, pulling him between the parked cars and across the road. He has tiny droplets of water clinging to his eyelashes from the damp, light rain, and his hair is falling into his face underneath his hood. “Come on, let’s get over there before we miss it all.”
“Huh. Thought we would be driving there,” Mingyu remarks, accepting Seokmin’s hand in a warm grip and sticking close to his side.
“No, silly, the beach is just here! Everyone celebrates Bonfire Night on the beach. The main fireworks are set off from the pier, so you have the best view over the ocean.”
“Fair enough,” Mingyu says agreeably, before treading in Seokmin’s footsteps to better snake through the increasingly dense crowd along the coast, children clinging to the barriers and teenagers clogging up the pathways leading onto the sand. Seokmin takes them on a winding route alongside the pavement, the headlights of slow-moving cars spotlighting them as they go.
They come out past the music hall and into a more open space where a dozen stalls on wheels are set up, all flashing madly in the dark with the array of plastic goodies they’re selling. Mingyu squeezes his hand, and Seokmin looks back to see him pointing and grinning at where the families and young couples are queued up, each waiting to buy a glowing princess wand or neon green headband or a knock-off lightsabre blinking like strobe light.
“Something you want?” he asks, slowing to a stop in a nook of the beach railing as he watches Mingyu eye up the stall. “We could get matching headbands!”
Mingyu looks at him, then looks back at the stall. “You sure? I know it’s all overpriced tat…”
“Sure!” Seokmin says, redirecting them into the nearest queue. “We’re celebrating that you’re here! If this is really your first holiday all year, I think you deserve it.”
Mingyu smiles at the ground, and Seokmin’s heart feels set to burst at the way his face is glowing. “Yeah, you’re right. I’ve never done this before, it’s well exciting!”
“What, buy tacky toys for fun?” Seokmin laughs. “I’m sure you have!”
“No, Bonfire Night. I’ve never celebrated. My parents thought it was all trouble. Never bought tacky toys either, though.”
Seokmin’s smile subsides slightly. He’s heard a little about Mingyu’s family, enough to know that Mingyu only ever sees them on the Lunar New Year and doesn’t go back home otherwise. He’s spent the Christmas holidays working for Seokmin’s grandparents for three years running, now. “Then I’m glad you made the trek down here to spend it with us. It’s fun. I brought us some earmuffs for the fireworks, by the way, so you don’t have to worry about the bangs too much.”
There’s a shine to his eyes when he looks down at Seokmin, lips pulling back into one of his pleased smiles. “You know me too well.”
“I haven’t forgotten the New Year’s Eve fireworks,” he says, and there he goes again, coming back around to that night. He presses his lips together to squash the words and hopes the heat in his cheeks isn’t visible, turning to shuffle forward in the queue.
“Yeah, me neither,” Mingyu says, and there’s a meaningful lilt to his voice that makes Seokmin’s heart soar with heady hope. “That was a proper good night.”
“It was,” Seokmin agrees, and the words sit on the tip of his tongue. What did it mean to you, that night? Our kiss? It meant everything to me.
The music floating across the beach from the music hall abruptly changes from something classical to upbeat pop, and the mood around them shifts with it, a few children exclaiming and waving their respective light up toys around in glee, teenagers chatting and laughing louder as the night becomes theirs. Mingyu sways from side to side in a playful dance, and the people in front of them move forward, and the moment moves on with them.
“I want a wand, me,” Mingyu says, peering over the heads of the group in front of them to see what the stall is selling. “Unless you actually meant it about getting matching headbands.”
“Of course I meant it about the matching headbands! Don’t you want to?”
“Duh.” One canine is hooked over his bottom lip as he grins wide at Seokmin. “You wanna be Mickey or Minnie?”
“We only have Minnie left,” the woman at the stall says as the teenagers finish up paying. “Last two, actually.”
“Then I suppose the decision is already made,” Seokmin says, fishing out his wallet and forking out two fivers for the horribly overpriced, glowing red Minnie Mouse ears.
They buy a packet of sparklers and a lighter while they’re there too, and by the time they step away the rain has mostly let up. Mingyu pushes back his hood to put on his headband as Seokmin does the same, and their hair stays mostly dry as they continue down to the beach, hand in hand again. The chill of the evening is more substantive now that the rain has dispersed, dense cold hanging in the air and quickly cooling his warm cheeks, but it’s worth it for the clear sky above them that twinkles with stars.
The beach is more spacious than the streets, with the tide most of the way out and small groups circling their fires dotted every ten feet or so down the sand. The streetlights getting further away on land makes it more shadowed out here, the orange glow of flames the only thing lighting up the people around them in flickering gold.
“We’re joining Soonyoung and Hansol at their friends’ bonfire,” Seokmin explains once they can walk comfortably side by side again. The sand is firm under their feet from the rain and recent tide, but he has his eyes trained on the ground anyway, wary of the odd rock tripping him up in the dark. “They said they were somewhere opposite the bandstand, and that’s just up ahead, so let me know if you spot them.”
“Don’t need to,” Mingyu says, pointing over to where a man is standing from a group of people sitting around a tall bonfire. “Think they’ve found us.”
The figure angles himself in their direction, cups his hands around his mouth, and bellows out, “MINGYU!”
“Yup, that’s Soonyoung,” Seokmin says, gripping Mingyu’s hand as they head up the beach towards the group, the sand sifting beneath them as it gradually becomes looser.
Soonyoung runs up to meet them as best he can on the sand, almost slipping over onto his hands and knees when he gets close, but Mingyu catches him and greets him with a strong hug.
“I missed ya, ya eejit!” Soonyoung says, clapping him on the back and drawing the attention of several other groups around them with his volume. “Where’ve ya been all year?”
“I could ask you‘t same thing!” Mingyu says, and Seokmin waves at Hansol, who’s standing up much more slowly and calmly. Soonyoung and Mingyu begin to waddle walk towards the bonfire together, Soonyoung laughing madly and gripping Mingyu’s shoulders.
“Is certainly good to see ya, fella.”
“Hi, Mate,” Hansol says, going in for a much more normal hug. “Glad you could come.”
“Glad to be here,” Mingyu says, waving shyly to a few of Soonyoung and Hansol’s friends as he approaches. “Dead nice of yous to ask me, really.”
“Our pleasure,” Hansol says easily, leading them over to their seats on the sand. They’d saved a space beside the two of them, and once they slot in there the circle is tight and complete around the fire. It makes the glow on the sand look brighter, hemmed in by the bodies huddled close for warmth, and the sight significantly settles Seokmin’s nerves. There’s something beautiful and calming about the way the flames dance and small sparks fly, wood crackling as he waits and watches Mingyu settle in and catch up with Hansol for a minute. They’re pressed thigh to thigh here, and Seokmin would rest further into his side if he could, just to catch the light of the fire and keep it burning between them.
“You’re just in the nick of time. They’re due to start any minute, I reckon,” Hansol says, gesturing to where the pier looms out into the ocean, lit up by the crew organising the fireworks show there. “We thought you might not make it.”
“We were queuing for these,” Seokmin says, pointing at their headbands. “We wouldn’t have missed it for the world.”
“Seok waited for me for ages, actually. My train was proper delayed,” Mingyu explains, sounding guilty.
“That’s not your fault, and I didn’t mind!”
“Still. M’glad you didn’t have to miss owt.”
“You’re glad we didn’t miss anything, you mean—this is your first proper bonfire night, I’ve been to loads! It wouldn’t have mattered much to me if you were late. Besides, the fireworks were never the most exciting part of tonight.” He doesn’t look away from Mingyu as he speaks, who only glances up at him before looking into the fire, ducking his head to cover up his smile.
“I’m gonna put the headphones on now, then,” Soonyoung says, suddenly much gloomier than before. He’s picking up a pair of thick headphones from his lap, the wire plugged into his phone.
“Oh, I forgot you don’t like the bangs neither!” Mingyu says, leaning over to pat Soonyoung’s knee. “This is definitely not the best holiday for the group of us.”
“I like the colours!” Soonyoung protests. “And the bonfires! Just not the sounds!”
“Here, I have yours too,” Hansol says, passing over the earmuffs Seokmin had left with him earlier in the evening.
“Thank you!” he says, taking them and handing a pair to Mingyu, who thanks him in turn. They both have to take their Minnie Mouse headbands off the fit the earmuffs on, but end up giving them to the two young girls sat halfway around their fire instead. Both girls had been not-so-subtly watching them ever since they’d sat down, and are positively delighted by the gifts, so Seokmin can’t feel much regret about spending money on them.
The group of people sat a few meters over from them are in the process of cheering loudly as a woman walks over to join the group, a model of a Guy slung over her shoulder. When she reaches the circle, she pulls the Guy from her shoulder and flings it onto the bonfire in one movement. The flames roar and spit, and the rest of the group shriek and laugh as the straw and rags of the Guy immediately start to fall apart on top of the fire. Mingyu is settling the earmuffs onto his head as he watches, but Seokmin leaves his off for a minute longer, tuning into the sound of the sea beyond them. It’s the perfect background noise for this sort of setting, he thinks—the crackle of logs, the rush of water, the high calls of friends chatting and shouting at each other across the beach. In the near year he’s lived here, he doesn’t think he’s seen the city so collectively alive until now.
Hansol is right—the show starts only minutes later, with the music cutting out to make way for a voice asking them to count down for the show. There must be speakers set up all along the shore, because everyone counts down from ten in unison and the fireworks fire off right on time, all red and blue shimmering explosions in the sky. The first few spit and chug their way up, just a few hesitant sparks to pave the way before the really big ones go off, their bangs louder and longer and ripping through him like adrenaline. He can feel Mingyu curling up into his side and gripping his arm—or maybe he’s the one doing that, gravitating towards Mingyu until they’re all pressed together—but neither of them can look away from the explosions of glitter colouring the black night above. Dazzling purple fireworks come next, then the ones that rain down, then golden ones that fizz in clumps before quickly dying out.
The ones that whistle and scream are his least favourite, so when they go up he turns his focus instead to the way the crowd around him exclaims as each one goes off, watching the little girl with his Minnie Mouse ears jump up and down when several go off in succession. The bangers, despite their noise, are some of his favourites—they make him jump each time, but also capture a surge of undefinable excitement he gets from the reverberation. It makes him feel like a child again, brings back memories of watching the fireworks each year with his parents and his brothers, then with his friends, and one time with a date. And now, with Mingyu.
The group ahead of them, the ones who had brought their own Guy, have also brought their own fireworks. A fountain of silent gold sparks spurts into life somewhere closer to the tide, and the group cheers, and he watches and appreciates the sweet burning smell of gunpowder it leaves behind. It complements the smell of winter, the smell of the sea.
A series of gold fireworks go off in the sky too, collectively making the loudest bang yet. Mingyu audibly gasps when they go up, and Seokmin finally turns away from the show to face him, only to find his face similarly lit up by the glow of the fire and the sparkle of the sky.
“That’s mental,” he says, looking at Seokmin and pointing at the sky. “They’re well good!”
When they’d kissed on New Year’s Eve, Mingyu had told him the same thing, impressed by his own handiwork at the time. Seokmin had laughed at him then, and they’d sung Auld Lang Syne with his family, and then they had kissed under all the twinkling colours of the sky.
He wonders if Mingyu is reminded of that now, too. Seokmin can’t help but glance down at Mingyu’s mouth, then bite his own lip, and Mingyu doesn’t look away from him, doesn’t miss where his mind wanders. Seokmin desperately wants to kiss him again, but doesn’t want to overstep a boundary, doesn’t want to kiss him without knowing what it means for Mingyu.
He turns back to look at the fireworks again, but they’re just dying out, the voice over the sound system promising a second round in ten minutes. The sky is empty, only the tangy smell of smoke left over. Mingyu feels like that. Like the gunpowder, the smoke, the untouchable traces of light and colour in the sky. So tangible, yet so out of reach.
“Is it over?” Soonyoung asks, tentatively taking off the headphones he’d been pressing tight to his ears. “That was good.”
“It’s just an interlude,” Hansol tells him, and Soonyoung nods wordlessly, face falling slightly into a pout.
“We bought sparklers if you want to do one,” Seokmin offers, pulling down his earmuffs and looking around at Soonyoung without directly looking at Mingyu again. That perks him up a bit, and Seokmin goes around passing out their sparklers to the people around the fire who want one, which quickly uses them all up.
Mingyu pulls him aside after kindly lighting the sparklers for the young girls, and the two of them walk towards the shore together as they watch their sparklers ignite and trace patterns of light in the air. Seokmin’s butterflies are barely letting him catch his breath, but the glint of pure light in his hands, the way the sparklers fizzle down and burn gives him something real and beautiful to focus on.
Mingyu’s dies out first, and he drops it in the sand to cool. The two of them stop still, a little way away from anyone else, very nearly at the shoreline together. Seokmin’s sparkler burns out too.
“I thought you were gonna kiss me again, just then,” Mingyu says, and Seokmin breathes in, dropping his sparkler beside Mingyu’s.
“Me kiss you?” he says. “I think you’ll find that you were the one who kissed me on New Year’s!”
“Don’t think that’s true,” Mingyu says, and Seokmin looks up to find him grinning again, still too shy to meet Seokmin’s eyes.
“It is!” Seokmin insists. “Trust me, I remember!”
“I do too!” Mingyu says, indignant in a giddy sort of way. “I wasn’t expecting it, ‘n I definitely didn’t instigate it!”
“Me neither, though!”
They both look at each other, then break into laughter at the same time, and Seokmin presses himself closer into Mingyu’s side as he clings to him. Having the subject broken with this sort of good spirit is such a relief that his knees feel weak.
“I did think about it, just now,” he admits into Mingyu’s coat, watching the water lap up the sand just inches away from their toes as their mood settles again. “But I was too scared.”
“Why?” Mingyu asks. “Wouldn’t have minded.”
He leans out again to look up at Mingyu, who meets his eyes this time. “Really?”
“Yeah, really.”
“I didn’t know if you even thought twice about New Year’s, you know. But it meant a lot to me. This whole time, I’ve been waiting to talk to you in person about it.”
Mingyu exhales, a little shaky, expression more serious now. “This long?”
He nods. “Like I said, we kept missing our chances to see each other. I know you’ve been busy with Granddad this year, and I really did want to come up and see you…”
“I just can’t believe you’ve been waiting for me. I thought you came to the gay capital of the U.K. for the experience?”
Seokmin shrugs. “Not like that. Not really. Had something else on my mind.”
“What’s that?”
He pulls on Mingyu’s hand, grips it between both of his own and presses it between their bodies. “We’ve been like this for a while, haven’t we? Even before Christmas. You must already know that I like you. Even moving to the other side of the country didn’t change that.”
Mingyu watches him carefully, taking a breath in. “Is this what you asked me to visit for?”
“It’s all I’ve been able to think about lately,” he admits, and he sounds more vulnerable than he’d ever wanted to. “I just need to know, one way or another, if it’s the same for you. I don’t think I can wait and wonder anymore.”
Mingyu takes a moment, breaths loud and heavy. It’s cold enough now that he can see his breath billowing out as frosty air, clouding up for a second before disappearing out to sea. “’Tis,” he says. “It is the same for me. But I never thought I’d be in a position to tell you that.”
The blood rushes to his ears for a moment, and he barely hears his own response over the noise of it. “You didn’t know I was the same? Jeonghan always told me I was obvious.”
“It’s not that,” he says, squeezing Seokmin’s hand. “I had an idea about it. But my job—Seok, I work for your family. And to be honest, I value your family a lot. This job is everything to me. I can’t do anything to risk that.”
Seokmin almost laughs out loud with relief. “Mingyu, you don’t need to worry about that! Granddad won’t fire you for dating me, he’ll be delighted!”
Mingyu doesn’t seem assured, wide eyes turning to him before he urges him further along the beach. He picks up their blackened sparklers and they head up the shore, towards where the beach ends against the rocks, empty and quiet. “I don’t know. He still likes things to be proper and right. It’s not just the job, Seok, they’re like a second family to me. The idea of causing any—I dunno, conflict of interest—”
“It’s not like that at all, I promise you. Look at me, seriously.”
They stop again, and Mingyu turns to face him. “How can you be sure, though?”
“Halmoni already asked me if I was dating you before, you know. She was actually pretty disappointed when I had to say no. This isn’t something that would ruin things for you, Mingyu, it would only change things for the better. You’d become even more a part of the family than you already are, the way everyone else’s boyfriends and girlfriends were at Christmas. Don’t you want that?”
“That’s exactly what would clash with my job,” Mingyu says, and Seokmin swallows down the taste of fear on his tongue. The bittersweet ache of being so close, yet coming up against a formidable, unexpected barrier like this. “I can’t work for you and date you at the same time.”
“You don’t work for me! You work for my grandfather!”
“You know what I mean.”
“Mingyu!” he laughs again, but it doesn’t hold any warmth this time. He feels slightly desperate. “Listen to me, please. You can have both of these things. If you want to date, we can date. If you want to stay on at your job, you can. I’m not even there most of the year, and I always do most things you do at Christmas anyway, you know that, the kitchen is practically our domain—”
“You say that now, but what if things really change?” Mingyu sounds desperate, too. “Seokmin, I want to do this. I really, really like you. But I’m really scared, too.”
Seokmin takes the sparklers from his hands and tosses them back in the sand. Then he leans up on his tiptoes, takes Mingyu’s face between his hands, and kisses him on the mouth.
It’s gentler than their kiss on New Year’s Eve, which was all adrenaline-fuelled and spontaneous. It feels tentative, like a kiss hanging on the edge of something, tilting the two of them one way or another as they prepare to fall. But it tastes of hope, too. Feels like the way fireworks twinkle as you watch them.
He pulls back, thumbing along Mingyu’s cheek. “And I’m telling you that your fear is all there is. Nothing else is stopping us. Not your job, not my Granddad, not distance, not time or effort or my feelings or your feelings. I understand why you’re afraid, really. But all we have to do is try. If it doesn’t work out, then it doesn’t work out. I just can’t wait any longer. I can’t, I don’t want to, and we don’t have to. If this is what you want.”
Mingyu exhales, shaky, and Seokmin feels the hot air on his face. “I do want it. I really do.”
Seokmin breaks out into a smile, unstoppable and utterly hopeful. “Then give in. I’m right here.”
Mingyu obliges without a pause, leaning back down to kiss him again, Seokmin still smiling into it. He can feel the cold tip of Mingyu’s nose against his skin. “I will, then. I will. Just let me do this right.”
His heart soars the same way the waves do. “We have one week to catch up on the last year of missed time. Buy me a burger and we’ll call this our first date, and I won’t even complain that you’re definitely going to tell Granddad about this as soon as you get back to Newcastle.”
Mingyu laughs in an adorable stutter, stumbling along with Seokmin’s hand in his as they pick up the sparklers a second time. “It’s not, like, a permission thing! I’m just an honest person! And like I said—”
“I know, I know, it’s okay. You can do whatever you need to feel comfortable with it. I can promise you now that it won’t be a problem.” He leans up to kiss Mingyu’s cheek, and swings their hands together all the way up the beach, smiling even when they stop off at the bin to dump the sparklers. He can’t help but giggle to himself, can’t help but track Mingyu’s face as he watches him go through the first, shy phases of acceptance about this, glancing repeatedly at their joined hands.
“Alright,” he says. “Okay. Come on, then.”
“Where are we going?” he asks, following anyway as Mingyu pulls him up the path at the edge of the beach. When they come up over the ledge, it’s to find an array of food vans and stalls lined up here, the smells of sugary doughnuts and oily fish batter wafting along the shore.
“I’m buying you a burger,” Mingyu says. “And I’ll get a Yorkshire pudding, and we’ll call this a date, like you said.”
“You don’t have to!” Seokmin says, even though he really, really wants to. “By all means, please do, but don’t feel like—”
“I want to,” he interrupts, kissing the back of Seokmin’s hand briefly as they join the back of a queue, and Seokmin feels like he could explode into coloured light at any moment. “So I will.”
They get a hot chocolate and packet of marshmallows with their food, and Mingyu kisses the cream from his mouth after Seokmin’s first sip, and Seokmin feels the sparks reverberate up and down his body, right down to his toes. They sit and eat on a bench under the seaside string lights until the second round of fireworks begins, which sweeps them both up in the show for a little while longer, Mingyu’s head knocked against his as they sit pressed together.
After that they make their way back to their bonfire, hand in hand, Soonyoung demanding to know if they’d seen the last round of fireworks. They roast marshmallows over the fire with the rest of the group, knees knocking together, and Seokmin attempts to feed Mingyu one that burns his tongue. He only laughs at Seokmin, and they devolve into giddy hysterics together, and then Seokmin kisses him until his lips are numb from the cold and the kissing and the fresh, bright excitement between them.
The fire doesn’t die down for a long, long time. They stay on the beach until nearly everyone else has gone home, sitting and talking and kissing under the light of the moon, the blinking stars, the smell of sweet smoke left in the night.