Archive of Our Own ^beta

It is a perfectly sunny day in early December, and Wonwoo is sitting in his kitchen sink and crying.

It’s not what he had planned.

It only makes it worse for him to think about how he must be making Mingyu feel guilty for speaking what was only the truth. He looks stupid, anyway, sitting with his knees to his chest in a too-small sink. But it feels safe there - small and enclosed and like he’s less alone when he’s shielded from the silent expanse of his apartment.

Mingyu is biting his lip on the other side of the laptop screen, and he’s so quiet that Wonwoo can hear his long fingernails tapping against his desk even over the sound of his sobs.

“I’m sorry, Wonwoo, but you know…”

“I do know,” Wonwoo clears his throat, trying to stop the tears from clawing against it, “and you’re right, you are. We can’t keep doing this. I just…”

Wonwoo looks at his fridge. A magnet of him and Mingyu when they were juniors in high school is hanging up, his weekly grocery list sitting beneath it. He doesn’t want to take it down. But he’s tired too, tired of always being jealous of Mingyu’s friends for being able to see him and tired of feeling like he’s only getting half of what he wants.

“You just…?” Wonwoo stays staring at his fridge. “Hyung?”

“I don’t want to end it like this, you know? I don’t want this to be your last memory of me and I don’t want you to remember how we fought the last time we saw each other in person. I just, fuck, I miss you so much.”

“I miss you too.”

Wonwoo looks back at the computer screen. He knocks a bottle of dish soap onto the ground as he rotates, but he can’t seem to find it within him to care if it spills everywhere. Because even though Mingyu sounds sad, his face looks so okay, and how can Mingyu be so okay without him? It only makes him cry harder to see it.

“Can I come to see you?” Mingyu’s question takes Wonwoo by surprise, enough so that his cries stop for a moment if only a fleeting one.

“Why would you want to do that? Aren’t we broken up now?” Every bone in Wonwoo’s body wants to say yes. He wants to say, of course, you can come see me. You can come see me every day of my life if you want. But he’s not supposed to be dating Mingyu anymore, not since five minutes ago, because they just weren’t working.

“Well, just for a week. And then we can break up, right? Because if I’m being really honest, I don’t want it to end like this either. When I think about the last time I saw you I want to remember it fondly, and not… not like that.”

It takes Wonwoo a moment to process the words. Why, he wants to ask. Why are you breaking up with me then? If you still want to see me, why are you breaking up with me? But something in him says that would be a delusional thing to ask, so he swallows it before it can bubble out between his lips.

“Yeah,” Is all Wonwoo settles for instead.

“Yeah?”

“I want to see you. Please come see me.”

“Do you have any Christmas plans?”

“No, I don’t-” Wonwoo shakes his head, “I don’t have family in town or anything. And they’re going abroad anyway.”

“I’ll come see you then if that’s okay?”

“Yeah, that’s fine. That’s good. A final Christmas?”

“A final Christmas. Look, Wonwoo I gotta go pick up my friend from the train station, but I’ll let you know when I get the plane tickets.”

“Okay, see you later, Mingyu.”

“Yeah, I’ll see you.”

It’s the first phone call in years that Mingyu doesn’t end by telling Wonwoo that he loves him. It hurts, a little, but then Wonwoo remembers that after Christmas, he won’t get to talk to Mingyu at all. Maybe it's better to ease himself into it, start with not telling Mingyu that he loves him even if he still does.

Wonwoo climbs out of his kitchen sink.

He realizes that the bottle of dish soap had burst when it hit the floor, and the soap spilled all over the floor. He gets a roll of paper towels and begins to clean it in silence. And really, it’s always been silent since Wonwoo moved away a year ago.

Mingyu had always been loud, too loud even, music always playing and the television running. Wonwoo had always been silent; he hated loud noises and hated music that threatened to make his eardrums bleed. But he wonders if somewhere along the line he began to appreciate the noise because there was nothing he hated more about living alone than the constant silence. If nothing else, it was a subtle reminder that Mingyu wasn’t there.

And in just one month, he would be condemned to a life of eternal silence, one without Mingyu’s too-loud music or laughter or dad jokes.

It’s sleeting when Wonwoo goes to the airport to pick up Mingyu. He can feel his too-tight glasses digging in behind his ears and he has to squint at the road to see through the ice and snow. There’s nothing but static coming from his radio. The music would have been distracting, sure, but he wishes there was something to take his mind off Mingyu besides the mind-numbing white noise coming through his speakers.

The airport is big.

Too big.

Wonwoo worries that he may get lost. No matter how many times he goes there, he can’t seem to find his way around. Everyone always assumes that he’s good with directions, but he never has been. Sometimes he pretends that he is, not wanting to disappoint anyone. Mingyu had been able to see through the facade right from the start. Wonwoo had secretly been glad that they weren’t about to get lost on Jeju Island, but he pestered Mingyu about his lack of faith in him for the following week.

Luckily, his phone doesn’t lose signal and takes him to the gate where he’s set to meet Mingyu. It doesn’t take long to find him after he pulls under the awning. Mingyu’s standing in front of the glass door, shivering despite the large coat wrapped around his shoulders. Wonwoo rolls down the window. Would Mingyu even hear him if he yelled that far?

Mingyu’s head snaps up as soon as he hears Wonwoo’s voice. With a giddy smile, he moves towards the car, suitcase rolling behind him and leaving marks in the snow.

The sound of Wonwoo unlocking his car is loud, the click seemingly echoing around the empty vehicle.

Mingyu sits his suitcase in the backseat and climbs into the passenger seat. Wonwoo clears his throat.

“Hey.”

“Hi, hyung,” Mingyu leans over the console to press a soft kiss against Wonwoo’s cheek. Wonwoo can feel himself go red from the action. “It’s great to see you again.”

“I’m glad you’re here.”

Mingyu hums in response.

It’s the truth, Wonwoo thinks. It’s the truth despite the emptiness in his chest when he says the words, and it’s the truth in spite of how strange it feels to be sitting here with the man he loves but can’t have. The static on the radio now seems oddly fitting.

He pulls out of the airport and Mingyu begins to fiddle with the radio. Wonwoo takes his eyes off the road long enough to stare at Mingyu sitting beside him. He looks exactly the same as he did the last time they’d seen each other. While Wonwoo had a penchant for changing the color of his hair every month, he had never seen Mingyu dye his hair, not even once.

“It’s not gonna work, you know?” He says

“What isn’t?”

“The radio. I’m sure the snow’s downed a line somewhere.”

“You’re probably right. I’m not used to it; we don’t get much snow in the South.”

“I remember,” Wonwoo laughs dryly, “I wish I didn’t either.”

“Isn’t it nice, though? So beautiful. It feels like I’m in a Christmas movie right now. I’ve never had a white Christmas before.”

“It’s nice a few days a year, sure. But most of the time it’s just cold and I have to spend too much time shoveling snow and keep my faucets dripping at night.”

“You did always hate the rain noises I liked to play at night.”

“Yeah, they sound like-”

“An egg frying,” Mingyu interrupts with a laugh, “I know. And you nearly ruined it for me too, because I can’t listen to it without thinking about that and then I get hungry.”

“I’m sure you do, Mingyu.” Wonwoo is mentally rolling his eyes, but he doesn’t want to upset Mingyu. “I’ll make you some fried eggs while you’re here then, yeah?”

“Yeah. Just don’t overcook them.”

“I know I’m a bad cook, but I can make over-easy eggs. Don’t worry, I won’t burn them.”

“This time.”

“Right, I won’t burn them this time.”

The static on the stereo breaks. A man’s voice comes through, and it’s still too difficult to make out the majority of what he’s saying, but Mingyu begins to fiddle with it again anyway. After a few tries, he finds a station that’s playing classical Christmas music, and he turns it down so that it’s in the background, just an afterthought to their conversation that had come to a lull.

Wonwoo wonders if it will be too awkward to start it again.

“Do you have any plans for while I’m here? I don’t know the area, obviously, so I’m going to need some guidance.”

“Christmas stuff, I guess,” Wonwoo answers and breathes a sigh of relief that Mingyu started the conversation for him. “I’ll make you go ice skating with me. And we can go to some of the local museums and I’ll show you the giant light display they have around the block from my apartment. It’s really something else.”

“It’s very bold of you to assume I’ll be able to ice skate without falling on my ass.”

“Bold of you to assume I’d assumed that. I’m actually very excited to watch you fall on your ass.”

“You wouldn’t dare.” Mingyu lets out a scandalized gasp at the mere idea.

“Oh, but I would. And you know I would. Remember when we went roller skating at the boardwalk?”

“Shit, how could I forget? Most embarrassing two hours of my life,” Mingyu pauses as Wonwoo begins to laugh. “Hey don’t laugh at me. Do you know how mortifying it is for a ten-year-old girl to come up to you and attempt to give you roller skating advice? Not to mention the incident with the ice cream truck.”

“Hey, it’s fine,” Wonwoo responds as he turns into his neighborhood, “You’ve seen me embarrass myself plenty of times too.”

“That’s true. Seems that I embarrass myself more often, though.”

“Certainly. I always tell you to think before you speak. Doesn’t seem to make much of a difference, though.”

“Oh, shut it,” Mingyu laughs. Wonwoo sees his eyes crinkle as he glances over into his side mirror. He pulls into the driveway and turns the car off.

“Is it terrible that it’s so cold I don’t even want to get out of the car?” Mingyu asks.

“It’ll get cold in the car anyway. Come on,” Wonwoo steps out of the car and squints against the cold air, “But for the record, no. It’s not terrible.”

“I would hope not.”

Wonwoo unlocks the door, his hands shaking. From the weather or nerves, he couldn’t tell. He feels a pair of arms wrap around his waist from behind as he struggles with the key. He has half a mind to tell Mingyu to keep his hands to himself when he’s trying to do something, but the stronger part of him reminds him that he really likes it quite a lot when Mingyu touches him.

The warm air inside his apartment makes him shiver.

“Do you want a hot chocolate?”

“When do I not?” Mingyu laughs, jumping onto the island.

“That’s why I asked.”

Wonwoo sets the kettle to boil before jumping up next to Mingyu. He wouldn’t normally sit on his counters - his mom had said it was gross to sit where you would prepare your food, and he’s always figured that she’s right. He leans his head against Mingyu’s shoulder for so long the water almost boils over and he has to jump off the counter to stop it from going everywhere.

Mingyu laughs at him.

Wonwoo makes the hot chocolate and slides a Santa mug across the counter to Mingyu. The silence falls thickly over his shoulders, even more so than the snow coming down faster than ever outside his door.

“Hyung?” Mingyu pauses but doesn’t get a response. “What are you thinking about? I swear I can see the gears turning inside your head.

“I just…” He licks his lips. “Well, we only have...”

“You’re thinking about the end of the week before it’s even begun?”

Wonwoo nods.

“Come here.”

He walks closer, leaving his mug sitting next to the stove behind him. He can feel the cold of the tiles even through his socks. Mingyu raises his eyebrows at him and he laughs, but then Mingyu’s face is startlingly close to his. He can smell the cheap hot chocolate powder on him, and then Mingyu’s lips are on his so suddenly that he hadn’t even noticed him leaning in.

Mingyu’s lips are chapped from the wind, but Wonwoo finds that he doesn’t care because the kiss feels just as electric as the first time. He feels fingers ghost against his jawline and he shivers against the light touch. There’s a pit in his stomach, but where he would normally find love or even arousal he finds dread instead. He kisses Mingyu harder, hoping that it will get rid of it, his arms curling around his soon-to-be ex’s back, and even when he thinks he should stop, Mingyu is still a black hole that he can’t help but fall into orbit around. As such, he lets Mingyu slide his tongue in between his lips and starts to go limp against his touch like Jell-O.

He pulls back when Mingyu starts to pull against his hair.

“Let me finish my hot chocolate first, yeah?” Wonwoo’s voice is raspier than he’d expected it to be.

He feels a yawn bubble up from his chest and he suddenly wishes that his hot chocolate were coffee instead. Better yet, he wishes it were hot chocolate and coffee mixed together, like the kind that the barista at Mingyu and his local coffee shop used to make them before school. It hadn’t been an item on the menu, not technically, but most of the workers at the shop were people they had gone to school with when they were younger. It was nice.

All of the coffee shops in Busan were, well, what you would expect from a large store in a large city. He never knew anyone.

It was lonely.

“How’s Soonyoung?”

“He’s fine,” Mingyu responds, “Why do you ask?”

“I was just thinking about the cafe. Does he still work there?”

“Not anymore. Honestly, we’ve kind of lost touch. Granted, I still see him on my socials and whatnot, but it's been a while since we last saw each other face to face. He lives nearby, I guess, but he moved about an hour away into the city.”

“Did he? I wouldn’t have seen that coming.”

“Yeah, he’s actually going to university up there. Same one as me, if you want to get technical. But we never see each other.”

“Finally got his life together?”

“Something like that.”

Wonwoo finishes his hot chocolate. All that’s left in the mug is the powder that he hadn’t properly mixed in his haste.

“It’s getting late,” He says, eyes cast out towards the dark just outside his window. “Aren’t you tired?”

“Not really,” Mingyu hums, “Jet lag. I slept on the way here.”

“Maybe you should try to fix out your sleep schedule?”

“Maybe tomorrow.”

Mingyu grabs Wonwoo’s wrist and pulls him closer; he’s giggling and Wonwoo finds himself blushing at the familiar action. He feels two large hands cup his cheeks and he struggles to keep eye contact. He had forgotten just how pretty Mingyu’s eyes were.

“You’re stupid,” He manages to mumble out. Mingyu must be able to feel the heat from his cheeks on the palms of his hands.

“Yeah. But you love me anyway.”

“Yeah,” Wonwoo admits, grinning a toothy smile.

When Mingyu kisses him again it feels less wrong, even if only a little. Sure, Wonwoo is keenly aware that this won’t be his for much longer. But he is just as aware that he’s tired and that everything in him wants to melt right into Mingyu, right until he can’t tell whose limbs are whose anymore. He wants to wonder if the hands on his face are Mingyu’s or his.

And it all fits so perfectly, anyway. The two inches between them seems more than that when they’re this close. It makes him feel small. He feels like he should hate it, but something in him feels so small all the time as is.

It’s nice to have someone who can protect all six feet of him, even when he doesn’t feel like he’s enough. And somehow, it’s nice to have someone make him feel as small physically as he does emotionally. Suddenly, he’s insignificant again, but this time, it’s not a problem with him or his mental health. The only problem is the world and how it treats him.

Maybe he’s not so crazy after all.

So when Mingyu threads his fingers into his grown-out hair and starts to walk him into his bedroom, Wonwoo doesn’t complain. He’s tired anyway. Too tired to wonder what it is that he wants. Rational Wonwoo would want a conversation. But this drained version of him only knows that Mingyu’s lips against his neck feel good, even if they’re not good for him.

Wonwoo wakes up with fingers in his hair.

He hasn’t opened his eyes yet, content to sit in a trance-like state between realms of consciousness, but he can tell that Mingyu has already awoken. He suspects that time has slipped into late morning already, the hours ticking by as he dreamed of things that had been long since forgotten.

When he opens his eyes, he sees Mingyu above him. His head is laid on Mingyu’s chest and he wonders how someone can manage to look so good so early in the morning, not to mention at such an angle. He’s not even sure that Mingyu has seen him awake. His eyes aren’t looking at Wonwoo like he had expected; they’re fixated on the white wall in front of him. If Wonwoo didn’t know better, he would wonder if he were sleeping with his eyes open.

Wonwoo reaches up a hand to meet Mingyu’s. His eyes break from the wall to look at Wonwoo, a smile crossing his face. Wonwoo’s eyes flick to the nightstand where his suspicions about the time are only confirmed.

“It’s late. Why didn’t you wake me up?” Wonwoo shifts to lay on his stomach against Mingyu’s chest.

“Would you really have wanted me to? I didn’t want to bother you.”

“Dunno. But if you’ve been up for a while…”

“I haven’t. Don’t worry about it, okay?”

Wonwoo nods against Mingyu’s chest. He has to squint against the sun, even in bed. It filters in through his blinds at just the right angle, and although it does wonders for waking him up most days, it doesn’t make staying in bed the most enjoyable. Usually, that’s not so rough, but on the rare day he does want to stay in bed he curses himself for never investing in better blinds.

He’s sure that Mingyu loves it. He had always called him a vampire, and Wonwoo often wondered if it was true.

Mingyu’s fingers are still in his hair.

“You’ve quite the penchant for my hair, don’t you?”

“I think that’s an awfully strong word for it,” Mingyu’s voice is still cluttered with sleep, lower and raspier than normal and Wonwoo hates himself for thinking it's attractive.

He hates it all.

“I’ll have to shave my head when I go to the military, you know.”

“I don’t want to think about that. You’re going to ruin my morning with this kind of talk.”

Wonwoo rolls his eyes, but he can tell from Mingyu’s tone of voice that it’s all in jest.

“And you’ll still manage to be beautiful with your head shaved. I don’t want to hear about your grievances, Mingyu.”

“Are you meaning to imply that you won’t?” Wonwoo can sense the concern in Mingyu’s eyes that always appears when he puts himself down.

“Well not that,” Wonwoo shakes his head. “Not really. Just that you could have a bright purple mohawk and still be the most gorgeous person. It’s not really so fair.”

“And it’s not fair that you’re more intelligent than I always have been. Or that you’re kinder and better with kids. And it’s not fair that you’re a million times more interesting. So I don’t want you to be too self-deprecating, okay?”

Wonwoo has a mind to push back, but he doesn’t think he’ll get anywhere. He never does. Quite often, he finds, the easiest thing to do is just change the subject.

“Do you want to do anything?”

“Yeah,” Mingyu rubs his eyes and sits up a little, making Wonwoo adjust so that he’s supporting his own weight again. “I didn’t really get to see any of the city last time I came. So of course, it is now your obligation to show me around.”

“What do you want to see?”

“I dunno. Show me your life, I guess. I haven’t gotten to see it recently.”

“My life?”

“Sure. Where do you go shopping? Where’s your job located? Are you friends with any of the neighbors? What do you do during the Christmas season? Speaking of which, where’re your Christmas decorations?”

“That’s way too many questions for me to answer in one go, Mingyu.”

“That’s fine, Hyung. You don’t have to answer. Just show me instead. But we do need to put up your Christmas stuff. I’m sure you have it all in a box hiding somewhere.”

“It’ll be such a pain to take it down, though. And it’s so dusty. It’ll annoy my allergies.”

“But it’ll be so pretty. Please? Just for me, and just while I’m here. I’ll take them down before I leave.”

Wonwoo stares.

“Fine. But only because you’re asking and only if you’ll pick them up.”

“I promise. Where are they?”

“That’s the thing,” Wonwoo swallows, sitting up in bed so that the covers fall and expose his bare chest, “I don’t remember.”

“How can you not remember?”

“Well, I don’t know. They’re in a box somewhere.”

“How many boxes do you have just sitting around?”

“I never got around to unpacking all my stuff. Kept saying I would do it, but I never really did.”

“Let me unpack it for you, then. It’ll be fun.”

“God, you’re the only person that would enjoy digging through all my old stuff.”

“Where do you keep it?” Mingyu continues on as if he hadn’t heard Wonwoo. Maybe he hadn’t. Wonwoo isn’t sure.

“It’s in the closet,” Wonwoo groans and motions towards a door on the other side of the bedroom. He turns his face to the side as Mingyu gets out of bed. He feels himself blushing as he realizes that they still aren’t wearing anything, their clothes scattered along the floor. Something about seeing Mingyu like that in the early morning light makes him feel nervous again, like when he was fifteen and in love with him for the very first time. He wants to call the cyclical nature of their relationship cute, endearing even, but he finds that the circle quite closely resembles a Ferris wheel and that every time he reaches this height, this nervousness, and cluelessness, he feels like he’ll pass out from fear.

He’s never liked heights.

“You weren’t joking when you said you never unpacked.” Wonwoo hears Mingyu half-shout from the other side of the room, accompanied by a series of crashes that make him cringe.

“Are you messing everything up?”

“Don’t worry!” Mingyu’s laugh bounces off the walls, “I’ll clean everything back up.”

Wonwoo rolls his eyes. It’s endearing, but only because he knows that Mingyu loves to clean.

“Here it is,” Mingyu says. He has a large box in his arms labeled with the word CHRISTMAS in all caps. Wonwoo can tell by looking that it was written by Mingyu and not by him. In comparison, his boyfriend’s handwriting had always been exceedingly messy. It had improved since high school, but only marginally, and there were times when he still had to squint to read it, even when he was wearing his glasses.

Mingyu’s forearms strain against the weight of the box, and Wonwoo curses himself for finding everything that he does attractive. His hands? His arms? His legs? His terrible handwriting? It all manages to be attractive or endearing and it’s making ending anything incredibly difficult.

By the time Mingyu has finished decorating the living room, the floor is covered in glitter and Wonwoo’s eyes hurt from the number of lights applied to the walls. He had told Wonwoo that the sticky strips he used to hang the lights wouldn’t damage the walls, and god, Wonwoo hopes he’s right. His landlord would absolutely slaughter him if the paint peeled off.

But, something is charming about the room and all its festivity. If nothing else, it makes Wonwoo feel nostalgic. It makes him remember past Christmases with his family and friends and with Mingyu. He always whined about the decorations that began to appear months before Christmas, but they were a defining aspect of his childhood.

It helps that Mingyu is holding him.

The entire scene feels straight out of a memory. The arms around him are stable. They don’t shake. When Mingyu speaks, his voice doesn’t waver. It’s like everything is the same as it was when they were seventeen.

“Are we going to do anything?”

“I don’t know,” Wonwoo responds, his eyes tracking the gaudy decor of the room.

“Aren’t you hungry?” Wonwoo nods into his chest.

Less than an hour later, they’re sitting at a cafe nearby and Wonwoo is wondering if people are judging them for not having changed out of their pajamas. But it’s almost Christmas, and the entire street is filled with buzzing energy. Mingyu assures him that nobody cares what he wears. If anyone is staring at him it’s probably just because he’s so pretty. Wonwoo scoffs, but only to hide his embarrassment.

Mingyu holds his hand across the table and nobody stops to stare. Nobody even casts them a sideways glance. It’s nice. It’s nice to be able to fade into the background like this, Wonwoo thinks. The music playing in the cafe is quiet, barely audible among the conversations that come from nearby tables. The waiter comes over to take their order, and Wonwoo lets Mingyu order for him. Their food arrives at the table soon thereafter, and as always, Mingyu has impeccable taste.

“Do you have any plans for after this?” Mingyu asks, and Wonwoo just shakes his head. “You didn’t plan a lot, did you?”

“Not really,” Wonwoo says in between bites of food, “I figured I would just let things take their course. Be casual. Live together for a week. I didn’t want you to feel boxed in.”

“Well, feel free to do as you like. But I won’t feel boxed in if you do plan anything. I’d love to get to see all of your favorite spots around the city. Any place you didn’t show me last time, or any you did and just want to go back to.”

“I guess we could just walk around if you want to get out of the house. There are a lot of lights up in the square, and sometimes they have cute little markets. Nothing special, but the vibes are nice.”

“Let’s do that then,” Mingyu smiles, his canines poking out for Wonwoo’s eyes to crinkle at, “Walk around. Be casual. And then when I move out too we can walk around and be casual in my new city. Wherever that may be.”

Wonwoo doesn’t know if Mingyu is playing dumb or if he’s actually forgotten. Mingyu had always been a little forgetful - it was cute - but forgetting why he was here would be a lot for even him. But the look of realization that passes over Mingyu’s eyes as Wonwoo stares at him lets Wonwoo know that he had forgotten, even if for just the briefest moment.

“Or not,” he follows up, “You know. We’ll see, I guess.”

“It’s fine. We don’t have to talk about it yet. We can just pretend like that didn’t happen.”

“Yeah,” Mingyu agrees, “I think that’s probably the way to go. We’ll talk about everything later. After all, I didn’t come here just to talk about things I would rather avoid.”

“Right. Well, is university going well?”

“Surprisingly, yes. I know we all thought I’d flunk out. And sure, I’ve changed my major like four times, but I actually think I’m going to stick with this.”

“And this is…” Wonwoo trails off, prompting Mingyu to finish the sentence.”

“International relations. Gonna travel around the world and talk to people for a living, I guess. But it’ll be nice. Let me see the world, and I’ve always thought politics were interesting, even if they make me deeply angry.”

“You know, I can actually see that. International businessman Mingyu? Sounds hot to me.”

“Does it really?”

“Sure. Hotter than being an editor anyway. Which is fun and all, but is also sort of an old man job.”

“Is it? I always thought it was hot, or at least interesting. It’s like you’re the lead in a drama. Editing books and writing and being all good at expressing anything like you want to. It’s a gift.”

“I don’t know. I guess the grass is always greener on the other side.”

“Yeah,” Mingyu nods and takes a drink of his soda, “Your life is so interesting.”

“Anything but.”

“Really? You with all your fancy books and your fancy apartment and all of the streets that I don’t know the names of. You wake up every morning and you look out your window and you see the city. You sit on your balcony and you watch the people go, and you’re there with them and just one of them and you get to be nobody. You don’t have to run into your middle school best friend at the grocery store.”

“And all I am is nobody. It’s a gift to write, sure, but more than anything else, it’s a gift to be known.”

“Are you not?”

Wonwoo shakes his head.

“I don’t know anyone. And I hate to admit it, but there are days when I am so deeply lonely that I don’t know what to do with myself. I’m a homebody, sure, but only to a certain extent. I just wish that there was someone to call when I needed to cry.”

“You can call me. Always.”

“But you can’t be there in person. You can’t wipe away my tears when I need it.”

“But I can now. So cry this week. Cry if you want to or need to and I’ll wipe your tears because I can right now.”

Wonwoo doesn’t cry. But he thinks he might later; he thinks he might cry when they get back to the apartment or at the worst possible time. He’ll cry when they’re watching a funny movie or when they’re having sex. And Mingyu won’t ask why. He’ll just wipe his tears and hold him until he can talk.

Wonwoo’s eyes water against the cold when they leave the cafe. He wishes he had brought a scarf with him, but he hadn’t even bothered to change clothing. He laces his fingers with Wonwoo’s in hope that his hands will warm, ignoring any chance that they would get glares along the way.

“You should date a girl when we break up,” He starts. Mingyu makes a questioning noise and looks at him like he’s just a little bit crazy. “I know you’re bi. And you deserve to get to be open with someone. Take someone to a new years party. Kiss them on the lips in front of everyone. Tell your grandparents.”

“I’m not going to go find a girl once we break up, Wonwoo. I can’t just rebound from this. And I’m certainly not going to date someone just so that we can be open. It doesn’t bother me that I have to be worried anymore. I mean, it does. But it’s worth it. I can deal with that.”

“But you shouldn’t have to. You deserve more than what the world gives you, Mingyu.”

The street signs are where they always are. Icicles dangle from them, the words smudged from age. Silence settles over the two like snow as Wonwoo leads Mingyu down a street to a clearing where an ice rink and a large Christmas tree stand. Songs are playing in the background, but they’re too quiet for Wonwoo to make out.

“So this is the Christmas center, then.”

“I guess, sure,” Wonwoo stares at the line of old stores that sit along the sidewalk. A young girl presses her nose against the glass to get a better look at the toys, but an old worker comes out and yells at her for leaving fingerprints. She starts to cry and her father picks her up and carries her away from the glass. “Do you want kids? When you’re older?”

“Yeah. I think about that sometimes. About being a dad, that is. It sounds weird to me now, but I think I’ll want kids when I’m older for sure. Do you?”

“I don’t know. They’re sweet. I like them, really. But I don’t know if I would like them if they were my own. Maybe it would be too much responsibility for me.”

“It’s a big choice, sure,” Mingyu hums, “But you have plenty of time to decide. It’s not like you need to plan the rest of your life now. All you have to do is go ice skating with me.”

“What?”

“Come on. You told me that we would, right?”

“I thought you didn’t want to,” Wonwoo questioned, “I thought you said you’d fall on your ass.”

“Sure will. But it will be one more experience that I’ll have had, so you can bet that I’ll be doing it anyway.”

Mingyu does fall on his ass.

His legs flail out from beneath him like he’s a newborn deer, and Wonwoo can’t help but laugh. Mingyu glares at him, but the mirth in his eyes reveals that he’s not truly angry.

Wonwoo might not admit it, but he’s glad that Mingyu asked him to go skating. It had been a full year since he had moved to the city, and almost as long since he had last laced his skates. But something about blades against the ice made him feel free, invincible. And Mingyu is smiling at him with his stupid little teeth and his stupid little smile and Wonwoo doesn’t want it to end.

Mingyu’s hand is in his. His skin is dry, and Wonwoo worries that it will crack and bleed the way it used to. His nose is red as he looks at Wonwoo, but his smile reveals that he doesn’t care about the cold. He laughs.

“Okay, I’m going to try doing it by myself now.”

“Are you?” Wonwoo asks, “Do you want me to let go?”

Mingyu nods, releasing his grip from Wonwoo’s side. His movements are awkward as he uses one foot to push him awkwardly along the ice. Regardless, he smiles like a child on Christmas morning.

“I’m doing it, Hyung!”

“Yeah, Mingyu,” Wonwoo laughs, a gentle chuckle from between his lips, “You are.”

It’s endearing, he thinks. Mingyu is still so uncomfortable on his blades, teetering and tottering and catching himself with his hands when he falls. And yet he doesn’t care.

Wonwoo skates closer to Mingyu to help him up. He hardly does anything to help, but Mingyu thanks him anyway. He grabs his hand again. Even if Mingyu can skate by himself now, he says, it feels nice to hold his hand. His head fits against Mingyu’s shoulder as they skate in time, their silence falling starkly against the noisy background of the square.

Some English Christmas song that Wonwoo doesn’t recognize is playing. He hears Mingyu hum along to it, his voice quiet and unsteady. He doesn’t ask what it is. He just lets himself listen. He always loved it when Mingyu would sing to him, his voice soft and gentle. But it only happened when he was sad or sick, and never just because he wanted to. Mingyu said he wasn’t a good singer and refused to concede even when Wonwoo would ask.

Wonwoo asks him to hum to him on the walk home, and Mingyu finally agrees. Wonwoo still can’t recognize the songs he hears, although they sound familiar enough. Were they from a movie he had seen? Maybe a new song he had heard on the radio? Or perhaps they were famous classical songs he hadn’t heard since childhood. He resolves to ask later. Even if it doesn’t matter, he can’t help his curiosity.

He cringes at the Christmas decorations when they enter his apartment. He had nearly forgotten that Mingyu had insisted on putting them up, too swept away in the reality of having him there. The air still smells vaguely of a pumpkin-scented candle that Mingyu had lit as he was putting up the decorations, and the Christmas lights still twinkled against the fireplace. He must’ve forgotten to turn them off. He’d have to chew Mingyu out, really, it was a fire hazard. But he would do it later.

“I would assume you don’t have any dinner plans?” Mingyu asks.

“You would assume correctly.”

“Can I make dinner?”

“Help yourself.”

Wonwoo jumps up and sits on the counter as he watches Mingyu look through the cabinets. His face is scrunching as he reads the labels on the jars and cans and Wonwoo can’t help but laugh at him. Mingyu doesn’t seem to hear and merely continues on with his business of thoroughly rampaging his food supply. Before he knows it, a plethora of ingredients are sitting on the counter near the stove, and Wonwoo has no idea how they are all going to combine together to create one, cohesive dish. If he tried he would end up with something closer to a concoction than a meal.

“Can you teach me what you do?” He asks, squinting to figure out what the cans say.

“To cook?”

“Yeah,” Wonwoo nods.

“Sure. Never thought you’d want to learn.”

“Well, I have to learn how to do some things for myself if I’m actually an adult now. Can’t always just order Chinese takeout, even if it is addicting.”

Mingyu nods and hands Wonwoo a can and a can opener. He squints to make out the label which reads “diced tomatoes”. Wonwoo gets to work opening the can as he watches Mingyu start to beat eggs in a bowl. He’s holding the fork gently between his middle and ring finger, his wrist moving in small circles. Mingyu frowns.

“What are we making exactly?”

“Pasta carbonara. I really think I should teach you how to make pasta from scratch, properly, before I leave. But it takes a while and I’m hungry so we’re gonna skip that step.”

Wonwoo laughs as he pulls off the lid of the can and tosses it in the recycling bin. There’s tomato juice spilled on the island and he’s not sure what to do with the can, so he just passes it back over to Mingyu.

“Do you mind making the pasta?”

“What kind?”

“What kind do you have? Just spaghetti is fine, honestly.”

“Yeah, I have some,” Wonwoo says, brushing his hair out of his face. He’s sure Mingyu would scold him for playing with his hair while cooking, but it’s become a habit as of late. He shrugs to himself as he rummages through his overcrowded cabinets. There’s an untouched box of spaghetti that’s sitting at the back of it all, behind loaves of bread he never got to eat and pastries that he picked up from the bakery simply because they looked delicious.

He starts a pot of water boiling over the stove, the flames licking up along the bottom of the container. Wonwoo hunches over to lean against the counter as he watches Mingyu go about his work. His sleeves are rolled up to his elbows, his forearms on display as he mixes together more ingredients. Wonwoo isn’t sure where the tomatoes went, but the can is sitting in the bin.

The water boils quickly and Wonwoo goes to pour the pasta into the pot. The water splashes against his hand and he hisses at the contact. He can see his pale skin start to redden as soon as the initial shock dies down. He rolls his eyes at himself and pours the rest of the pasta into the water.

“Did you get burned?”

“Yeah,” Wonwoo says, turning around to face Mingyu, “But it’s not a big deal. I’ve had worse. It might not even blister.”

“Let me see?”

Wonwoo swallows and holds out his hand for the younger to inspect. He nearly feels guilty as Mingyu tuts at him, holding his hand so gingerly as if he would hurt him with the wrong touch. Wonwoo can make out the beginnings of a blister around the bottom of his palm but does his best to ignore the pain.

“You should put it under some cold water. I don’t want it to get any worse.”

“It’s really okay, Mingyu,” Wonwoo says, finding that the pain didn’t bother him despite its intensity, “Don’t worry.”

“Just take care of it? For me?”

Wonwoo decides to indulge him and watches as cold water pours off his hand. Somehow, the temperature change stings just as badly as the initial burning sensation.

And then Wonwoo is sitting back on the counter with Mingyu in between his legs. He hisses as Mingyu (halfway against his will) applies burn cream to his finger and wraps it in gauze. Wonwoo protests the entire time, saying that it’s not so painful and that it doesn’t matter, but Mingyu gives him a look as if he can see through the lies. He sulks. Sure, it hurts, but the pasta is still boiling over the stove and nobody is watching it.

“What if the water boils over, Mingyu?” He asks.

“Then we’ll clean it up. It’s just water, after all,” Mingyu chuckles and begins to pack the first aid kit back up. “Anyway, you’re more important.”

“I told you I’m fine.”

“I don’t trust you,” He replies, his voice lilting playfully. “You’re always Mr. Tough Guy. But it’s okay to be hurt sometimes, you know? Gotta break down those barriers.”

Mingyu jokingly punches Wonwoo’s chest - Wonwoo laughs at him, but a blush starts to spread over his cheeks. How traitorous. But he has to admit to himself that he likes it a little bit, even if it comes off as childish from a purely objective viewpoint. Luckily for Wonwoo, his viewpoint on Mingyu is not one that would be described as “objective”.

And then the water is boiling over and Wonwoo is cursing and Mingyu is running to turn down the heat.

He laughs.

The rest of the meal is finished relatively quickly, mainly with Mingyu cooking while Wonwoo watches and hums.

“That song,” He says, “The one you were humming earlier.”

“Yeah?” Mingyu busies himself with rummaging through Wonwoo’s cabinets to find the bowls.

“What was it? It sounded really familiar. I could’ve sworn I’d heard it before.”

“You don’t remember?”

“No,” Wonwoo laughs, “I wouldn’t be asking if I did.”

“I wrote it for you,” Mingyu started. “A while ago. That winter that you were so sick for so long and nobody could figure out what was wrong. But I don’t think you’ve heard it since and you were pretty in and out of it back then.”

“Oh,” Wonwoo wants to cry just a little bit. He hardly remembered anything from those months, and he wasn’t sure that he wanted to. It had all been a blur, a mix of sensations and conversations that he wasn’t always fully conscious for. “Sing it for me before you leave. Doesn’t have to be now, of course. I don’t care when. But I want to hear it and remember it this time.”

He doesn’t recall Mingyu being into songwriting. Playing music, sure - he learned guitar when he was in middle school. But song writing? Mingyu had always forced him to read and reread his essays before he turned them in during grade school.

“I don’t know, it’s kind of embarrassing. I wasn’t much good, Hyung.”

“I don’t care. It’s the thought that counts anyway. And it’s…” He trails off. A couple seconds pass in silence with Mingyu looking at him expectedly. “It’s sweet. Romantic, I guess. That you would do that for me.”

“I won’t talk about it too much, but I needed a way to get out my feelings. I was scared.”

“That’s what everyone says when they bring it up.” Wonwoo sits down at the table, his legs crossed underneath him. “Of course, I don’t remember it too well. And I… I never wanted to cause anyone a burden like that. It wasn’t my intention.”

“Of course not, love,” Mingyu’s voice suddenly becomes much more tender. Wonwoo isn’t sure how to feel about it. “You never did find out what was wrong, did you?”

“No. Not really. Some people say it was probably psychological, but I don’t know. The good thing is it hasn’t happened since.”

“And I hope it will remain that way.”

Wonwoo nods as he picks through his pasta with his fork. He felt lightheaded at the mere thought of it coming back - he had lost a few months of his life to unexplainable fever and delirium and wasn’t keen on losing any more. He rarely spoke of how it scared or confused him at the time - everyone else was so frightened as it was.

Mingyu is making him wish he could cook. He takes a bite of the pasta and his eyes nearly roll into the back of his skull, because how in the world can food taste so good? Mingyu chuckles at his response as a groan slips from between his lips.

“How are you so good at this? I will never be able to understand.”

“Practice, I guess? And the ability to boil pasta without burning myself.”

“Hey, I don’t always do that, okay?”

“Just sometimes.”

“Right,” Wonwoo blushes, “Just sometimes. Like when I’m trying to make gnocchi because they always make the water splash up and that’s not very fun. But I’ve started boycotting gnocchi for that exact reason, and also because they get squishy really easily.”

“They…” Mingyu takes a moment to laugh and almost choke on his water. “They don’t get squishy if you cook them for the right amount of time. There are instructions on the packaging, you know?”

“What can I say, time management has never been my forte. But even so, if I wanted potatoes I would just have potatoes. What’s the need for potato pasta?”

“I don’t know, ask the Italians. I didn’t invent it.”

“Not to mention zoodles. Why are those even a thing?”

“I dunno, maybe somebody’s trying to do keto or something?” Mingyu clears his throat as he wraps more noodles around his fork in a way that Wonwoo can only attempt to imitate. “Not that I’m behind the keto diet or anything, but it’s probably something like that.”

“I guess that makes sense. But what’s up with there always being some new fad diet anyway?”

“Dunno,” Mingyu shrugs, “I always grew up watching my parents do them and I guess I never really understood. Of course I wish I hadn’t seen it, but I was a kid. Not like you have any choice about what you see then.”

“Yeah,” Wonwoo answers. “I think that’s kind of a universal experience. But I won’t do that to my kids if I have any. Sometimes I want to be a parent just so I can give my kids everything that my parents never gave me. Learn from their mistakes, you know?”

“Definitely. I get that.”

Twenty minutes later Wonwoo is washing the dishes and watching too much of the food go down the drain. He wonders if it will clog up, but he doesn’t feel like scraping the food into the trash can anyway. Mingyu hums the same song from before, and Wonwoo wants to yell at him to just sing it properly already. The lyrics are right there, right against the tip of his tongue but he can’t seem to pull them out.

It’s annoying.

Not much later, Wonwoo is laying his head in Mingyu’s lap as Mingyu plays with his hair. He had forgotten how good it felt to have his hair played with all the time. He wasn’t sure what it was that Mingyu loved about it so much, but it seemed like his fingers were always wrapped around the strands. His hands were there when they were making out and when Wonwoo woke up in the morning and when he was simply lying on the couch and watching some cheesy Hallmark movie that he didn’t care about at all. They all seemed to have the exact same story line and they were just so predictable. There was no intellectual stimulation at all, but Mingyu seemed to love them, so he had put up with them throughout high school.

Hell, maybe he even started to associate them with Mingyu and with the feeling of having his hair played with.

It was all so routine. The food, the banter, the movies. It was familiar. The entire scene was a cookie cutter image of his youth. It was pulled straight out of the magnet on his fridge - the one with them at age 17 smiling at some amusement park that they had gone to. Wonwoo couldn’t recall what it was like, but he could recall how Mingyu had enjoyed it, and that was all that mattered to him at the time.

It was all that mattered to him now.

Wonwoo isn’t sure when he drifts off. The exhaustion of a full day claws against his eyelids until he shuts them and lets himself drift in and out of consciousness in Mingyu’s lap for quite some time. He’s vaguely aware that the movie on the television has changed and that something new is playing. But he’s not sure if Mingyu is still awake or if he’s realized that Wonwoo is asleep because the fingers in his hair have subsided.

At some point Mingyu moves him into his bed and crawls in next to him. The sheets are cold against Wonwoo’s skin, and he feels a shiver run up his spine at the change. He wants to wake up and talk to Mingyu, thank him or touch him or ask him to kiss him, but his eyelids are glued shut even when he’s awake enough to make out the sensations around him.

On the second day that Wonwoo wakes, Mingyu is nowhere to be found. Part of him had expected to find fingers in his hair or lips on his forehead or a hand roaming his bare back. But the sheets next to him are disheveled and Mingyu has left the room. Wonwoo rubs the sleep from his eyes and swings his legs over the side of the bed. His knees are stiff from the awkward position he had slept in, but he finds his house shoes waiting for him.

They patter along the wooden floors as he walks to the living room. From there he can see Mingyu cooking in the kitchen, the sound of sizzling eggs sounding throughout the room. Wonwoo does his best to walk quietly as he moves to the couch and sits down. From his position he can lean against the back and stare at Mingyu unabashedly. He’s muttering something to himself, but Wonwoo can’t seem to make out what it is. It takes quite some time, longer than he had expected, for Mingyu to notice him sitting there. He looks over, presumably to check if he was still in his room, but instead makes eye contact with the man sitting in front of him.

“How long have you been awake for?”

“Ten minutes?” Wonwoo shrugs. “I’m not sure. I didn’t want to bother you.”

“You wouldn’t have been a bother,” Mingyu smiles fondly as he busies himself with cooking. “Come eat. The coffee’s almost done.”

Wonwoo obeys, his feet taking him from the couch and into the kitchen. He sits at the bar, his feet dangling in front of the stool. Mingyu leans over the granite to place a kiss on his nose before sliding him his food and placing his own meal at the spot next to it. Wonwoo finds it sickening how much he enjoys it. Mingyu always does so much for him, and he can’t seem to reciprocate in even the smallest ways. He knows that if he said that Mingyu would tell him it’s a lie, so he doesn’t even mention it.

“Any plans?” Mingyu asks, a lopsided smile sitting upon his face.

“No,” Wonwoo says in a breath, “Did you expect any.”

“Nah,” Mingyu shakes his head, “But that’s okay. If you want I can make reservations for dinner and we can spend the day here.”

“Yeah that sounds… good. I’d like that very much.”

“Okay then,” Mingyu says as he pokes his food around with his fork. “But you have to figure out what you want to do while we’re here. I know that you’re always flexible, but I’m putting the responsibility on you this time. I’m sure you’ve got some ideas in that head of yours.”

“I guess we could play a game. A board game, like we used to. Or we could watch some tv and movies on the couch. And just vibe. Or we could run to the store and you could teach me to make pasta like you wanted to.”

“A grocery store sounds cool. You can buy me all of your favorite city boy snacks.”

“There aren’t special snacks just because I live in the city,” Wonwoo laughs, his nose scrunching up.

“I don’t know, Hyung. It’s not there are any foreign food sections back home. Plus all the grocery stores are small, so I’m sure we can find something weird or exotic to try if we really want to.”

“That’s a good point. I saw ostrich meat once, it was… really strange. Honestly, I’m not even sure if that’s legal. Granted, it was probably fake but I kept my distance.”

“Man, you didn’t try it? I would’ve jumped on that even if it does sound really weird. You never know until you try, right?”

“I guess not,” Wonwoo replies, “But there are some things I think I would rather not know about.”

“Well, suit yourself. But I can’t say that I fall into that camp. Like, my life motto is just that you should try everything at least once. Even if you think it’s kinda weird or you might not like it. But I think the regret of not trying something is worse than the regret of wishing you hadn’t done something.”

“Yeah? Well what kind of weird things do you want to try?” Wonwoo leaves the question open, but the tone of his voice is telling, rising and falling in the right places to insinuate exactly what it is he wants to. Realistically, the part of him that’s a little bit fucked up hopes that Mingyu wants to do some weird shit to him during sex. He hopes that Mingyu wants to hit him and pull his hair and call him terrible names. He’s not sure if he would like it or hate it but he thinks that it would make him feel something or another and that’s not something he would complain about.

“Oh god, in that way? Um…” Mingyu blushes and starts to think. Wonwoo almost swears he can hear the gears turning in his head. For a guy who’s so bold, he sure seems to get bashful when Wonwoo asks him these things outright. “I guess there are some things that I fantasize about that we’ve never tried.”

“Then let’s try them while we still have the chance.”

“What if you don’t like them? Or what if you don’t want to? I won’t force you to, you know.”

“I know,” Wonwoo nods, “But you said yourself that you should try everything once, even if you think you won’t like it. So if you want to try, then let’s try it. You don’t have to ask me beforehand.”

“So I can just…” Mingyu trails off.

“Sure. Anything-” Wonwoo stutters and laughs. “Anything you want. I don’t um… I don’t really care. Or my opinion doesn’t matter that much, so. You know.”

“Your opinion-”

“No, that’s not,” Wonwoo cuts Mingyu off with a sigh, “I guess that’s not what I meant. Let’s not do this, yeah?”

“Yeah. Okay, Wonwoo.”

Wonwoo feels sick. He hates lying just a little, hates having to not tell the truth. But he hates even more that he can’t tell the truth without Mingyu turning it into something that he really never wanted it to be. He’s so close to telling him that he wants him to have his way because he just doesn’t give a fuck about what he wants anymore. Because he just doesn’t deserve a say in his own life because it never means anything. But he can’t. He’s so close but he still can’t and it makes him want to rip out his own hair.

Twenty minutes later, Wonwoo is lying with his head on Mingyu’s chest. He can hear his heart beating, a thumping against his ribcage that reminds him that Mingyu is alive and real and there.

“Did you ever dream of anything, Mingyu?”

“What?” Mingyu shifts, his back creeping up along the couch.

“I don’t know. Dream of a different life. Did you ever have a little poster board with pictures of all the things you wanted?”

“Well,” Mingyu laughs, “I guess there were things I dreamed of. There was never a posterboard, no. But I guess there was one in my head or something.”

“What did you dream of?”

“I wanted to be an idol when I was young. And then I wanted to play soccer - I’m sure you remember that phase. But there were never any realistic dreams. Nothing ever within reach. But the older I get, the more I’m okay with that.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. It’s fine if I never achieve anything crazy.”

“That’s how I feel too,” Wonwoo says, a melancholy smile dancing along his lips.

“What happened to wanting to change the world? Or inventing something nobody has ever heard of before? What about publishing a super famous book?”

“That’s fine, I guess,” Wonwoo says, a hand coming up to lay along Mingyu’s stomach, “But that’s not what I want. What I really want is to not be remembered. Cause then nothing matters, you know. If nobody is going to remember you anyway you can do whatever you want or you can do nothing you want and it’s not gonna matter in the long run. So fuck it. And I guess that’s just how I think these days. That I want nothing more than to live a life and then die and have nothing matter.”

Mingyu is quiet.

It takes quite a time for him to respond and Wonwoo fears that he’s said something wrong. He fears that he’s said something that Mingyu will balk at and call him stupid because even if nobody is going to remember him, he still wants Mingyu to love him and appreciate him and he wants him to think that he’s perfect just a little bit.

“But everything is going to matter somehow or another, right?” Mingyu responds, “Like even just in little ways that add up. It all has to matter.”

“I guess so. But it would be nice if none of it did matter. It would be nice if everything just got wiped clean. A clean slate.”

“That would be nice,” Mingyu hums in thought, “But it’s not the way it is. At least, I don’t think so. So we just have to be okay with how it is.”

There’s some Hallmark movie that has come on the television playing in the background. Wonwoo turns to it but takes off his glasses to lay down better. It’s not like he cares what’s going on anyway. He lets the world fade to a blur as Mingyu continues to stroke a hand through his hair haphazardly.

“You know it’s still warm back home?”

“Is it?” Wonwoo shifts to see a blurry Mingyu above him.

“Relatively so, yeah. Got up to sixty this past weekend. Which I guess isn’t so warm, but it’s been snowing up here. Thought maybe your parents would’ve mentioned it.”

“I dunno,” Wonwoo sighs, “I don’t talk to them so much these days. I never told them about us, at least not officially, although I’d be surprised if they didn’t know. Granted, I’m sure they’re still hoping for me to get married to a girl and have a lot of grandkids for them. And since I’m an only child… Well, it’s that much worse. It’s just easier to not talk to them most of the time. Talking about them is fine but…”

“You know I see it like,” Mingyu hesitates for a moment, “Either they’ll come to terms it or they won’t. And if they don’t, then they’re not the kind of people you should want in your life. Which is kind of a terrible thing for me to say because they’re your parents. But you’ve got to come first, sometimes. Most of the time, actually.”

Wonwoo doesn’t think he dozes off on the couch, but he’s not sure. Soon enough, he’s leaving the apartment with Mingyu. The supermarket is within walking distance, but it seems further away in the cold. Their boots leave crisp footprints in the newly fallen snow, and Wonwoo gets to watch as Mingyu’s nose turns red.

He wants to reach out a finger and touch it. He wonders if it will be as cold as Mingyu’s hands are.

The doors to the supermarket open with a distinctive woosh. They invite the pair into the warmth of the store. It’s familiar, but Mingyu still smiles at how large it is. It’s strange for Wonwoo to think that he too was once so intrigued by even the most simple parts of the city. But he was. When he first moved there, he loved every single part of it.

“So, are you here to show me your favorite city boy snacks?”

Wonwoo rolls his eyes.

“Are you here to embarrass me in public?”

“Always and forever, my love.” The pet name makes Wonwoo blush, a pink fever spreading across his cheeks and nose. Maybe it should be embarrassing that he’s still so easily affected, but it’s more so being called city boy when he’s still as far as one could get while living in one.

Granted, he’s more of a city boy than Mingyu. He has to show him around the store and help him locate all of the items that he wanted to find. Eventually, their cart is full of items (only half of which Wonwoo knows the name) and they’re standing in an egregiously long line to check out.

“The line isn’t usually this long,” Wonwoo explains, “It’s probably because it’s Christmas week. Everybody is trying to do last minute shopping.”

“Oh for sure. I’m sure you remember how crowded everything back home gets around this time of year. I can only imagine. But the lines don’t really bother me.”

“Yeah, it’s not really a big deal. But I miss smaller places. And smaller stores and smaller streets and… well, you get the gist.”

“I do. You know, for one of the few people that actually made it out, you sure seem to miss home a lot.”

“I…” Wonwoo glances away. He doesn’t want to agree. He doesn’t want to admit to agreeing. “I do. It was easy. And it was easy to get to know people. And everything was just so convenient. I was always going to be the big city kid in high school, or that’s what everybody said. But now that I’m actually that person I don’t think I like it so much.”

“Do you ever think about moving back?” Wonwoo almost chokes at the comment. He frowns in response, because he’s honestly not sure.

“I mean, not in a serious way. Sometimes I think about how much I wish I could. But I can’t, so it doesn’t matter. Even if I want to.”

“Who says you can’t?”

“Literally my employer, Mingyu,” Wonwoo chuckles and hits him lightly on the head, “I can’t just quit my job and leave.”

“Why can’t you?

“...What?”

“Why can’t you just leave?” Mingyu begins to load objects out of the cart and onto a table for the cashier to check out. He gives her a faint smile and nod before continuing his conversation with Wonwoo. “They can’t force you to stay. And I’m not just saying this because I want to be closer to you. Obviously, I do. It’s just… You don’t seem as happy here as you did back home.” He lowers his voice as they continue speaking.

“What would I do back home? It’s not like there are any major companies or anything. It would be so hard to find work. If I’m going to keep doing what I’m doing, I have to live in a major city. It’s really the only way.”

They’re back home by the time that Mingyu picks the topic back up. They hadn’t closed the conversation, not officially, so it had been laying at their feet asking to be addressed.

“Do you want to be an editor?”

“What do you mean?” Wonwoo is putting away the groceries when he turns to face Mingyu.

“I mean, do you enjoy your job? Do you like what you’re doing?”

“It’s fine. I get to read a lot of intriguing things. And I get to help other people get their books published. And that’s all good and fulfilling.”

“But do you like it?”

“I guess not,” Wonwoo shrugs, “But I don’t dislike it either. It’s just… a job is a job, you know. So I do it. It has its pros and cons, but what doesn’t?”

“Hear me out…”

“Okay.” Wonwoo isn’t sure what Mingyu’s about to say, and he’s not sure if he should be scared.

“In an ideal world. Which of course this isn’t but if it were, or if we could make it,” Mingyu starts, “You move back home. You run a little used bookstore like the kind that we used to visit when we were in high school. You used to talk about opening one like that. And I open a stupid little bakery like the kinds in the movies. And maybe we aren’t rich or anything. But we’re happy.”

“We were going to break up, Mingyu. And here you go, giving me hope. Always giving me hope, even for things that can’t happen.” Wonwoo can’t face him. He can’t face him with tears in his eyes or with that stupid melancholy smile on his face that he wishes he could wipe on his sleeve.

“But it doesn’t have to be impossible. It… it could,” Mingyu swallows. Wonwoo can hear it from across the room, he can hear the desperation in his voice. “It could happen, right?”

“Could it?”

“I don’t know, Hyung. But I want you to tell me that it could. I want you to tell me that it’s possible because I don’t want to go. I don’t really care if it’s a lie anymore. I just want you to give me false hope right now.”

“Okay,” Wonwoo chokes out. He turns to look at Mingyu and he holds him in his tear-filled eyes. “It’s possible. It could happen. We could move back home, and… and everything could be the way it used to be.”

He can see in Mingyu’s eyes that he doesn’t fully believe him, and he doesn’t fully believe himself either. But the words are there, and they’re real. They’re sitting in front of them, even if they’re just smoke from some pipe dream that he’s chewed up and blown back out again.

Mingyu kisses him. It’s somewhere in between soft and aggressive, and he can taste syrup on Mingyu’s tongue from their breakfast. Wonwoo sighs into his lips and smiles against him. There are eggs still sitting on the kitchen counter, and the stray thought that they should be put in the fridge passes through his head, but he doesn’t care to fix them. Really, he doesn’t care to be doing anything other than kissing Mingyu like this.

And god, it’s nice.

It’s nice to have Mingyu’s large, cold hands cradling his jawline, tilting his face up just enough for them to make out. He has one hand on the back of Mingyu’s neck and there are teeth pressing gingerly against his bottom lip, hard enough that he can feel the pressure but not hard enough to draw blood.

Wonwoo likes it most when Mingyu kisses him like this. It’s familiar but also new, it lacks the naivety of when they would kiss as teenagers, instead holding a sense of knowledge. Mingyu knows now. He knows all the little things to do to make Wonwoo feel right, and he knows how to do it in a way that nobody else does.

Mingyu slides a knee in between his legs, making him pant against his open mouth. Wonwoo can feel him smile against his lips, revelling in his ability to make him react. Mingyu starts to kiss along his jawline, his lips replacing where his fingers had been holding Wonwoo’s head as if he couldn’t quite hold it up by himself. Wonwoo does his best to steady his breath as Mingyu presses chaste kisses along his jaw and down his neck, not yet wanting to let him know just how much even the smallest actions got to him.

Wonwoo pulls back to look Mingyu in the eyes.

His pupils are blown wide and his lips are redder than normal. There’s a flush along his cheeks that makes Wonwoo smile. He’s seen him like this so many times over the years but it never quite gets old because he just looks good like this.

Mingyu lifts his hand to run his thumb along Wonwoo’s cheek and raises his eyebrows.

“Are you okay?” He breathes.

“Yeah,” Wonwoo smiles, “I just wanted to see you. See you like this.”

“Did you now?” Mingyu responds. Wonwoo nods and raises a hand to cover Mingyu’s against his face.

“Yeah. I like looking at you when you’re all like this,” He starts, suddenly aware that he can’t seem to stop speaking even if he were to try, “All worked up. It’s endearing, a bit, but mainly you just look so attractive. Always, no matter how many times I see you.”

“I’m going to guess that means no blindfolds, then?” Mingyu laughs as he presses Wonwoo harder against the counter. Wonwoo can feel it against his back, the cold granite apparent through the thin fabric of his shirt.

“Were you going to-” Wonwoo inhales as Mingyu begins kissing down his neck again. “Do what you want, Mingyu.” He manages to get the sentence out between soft gasps as Mingyu begins to suck against the soft flesh. He imagines it, and he’s not sure that he would like it, but then he thinks that maybe he deserves to have the kind of sex that he doesn’t particularly like. He thinks that it would be right, somehow, for him to have to have sex in the way that he doesn’t want or with some other person he doesn’t want. He thinks perhaps it would be punishment for him, and not the fun sexy kind, but rather punishment for all of the stupid choices and mistakes he’s made. Yes, he decides, he deserves whatever Mingyu decides to do to him, unless it’s something that he loves.

“No, love,” Mingyu breathes in between kisses, “I want to watch you see me. I want to see the way your eyes expand. I want to see all of you.” He pulls back to face Wonwoo head on, holding his stare for so long that Wonwoo wonders if he can see all of the thoughts in his head. But then either he’s kissing Mingyu or Mingyu is kissing him and somewhere along the line they’re walking back into his bedroom.

And then Wonwoo is laying on the bed, the soft sheets pressing against his back where his shirt rides up. He’s looking up at Mingyu over him whose arms are pressing against either side of his head. Mingyu laughs. Wonwoo isn’t always sure how, but Mingyu laughs and he presses a soft kiss to Wonwoo’s forehead before helping him pull off his shirt with all the aggression he had previously.

It gives Wonwoo whiplash.

Mingyu unbuttons his own shirt and moves to speak, but stops. His tongue flashes out against his bottom lip and Wonwoo about dies.

“Can I tie you up?” He whispers, sliding the shirt off from his shoulders.

“Can you…” It takes Wonwoo a moment to decide, but he likes it. He’s not supposed to do things like this that he likes, he reminds himself, but he wants to feel like that. He wants to feel Mingyu restrain him, wants to feel his wrists held in one larger hand.

“If you don’t want to, it's okay.”

“No!” Wonwoo responds almost too quickly, “I want you to do it. I want you to tie me up.” He feels a blush spread across his cheeks at his enthusiasm that receives only a chuckle from Mingyu.

He watches from the bed as Mingyu grabs a silk tie from beneath the bed.

Wonwoo’s wrists hurt. He can see indents from where the fabric had been tied too tightly and he wonders if he’ll have bruises tomorrow. Mingyu is sitting nearby, his legs hanging off the edge of the bed. He crawls over to hug Wonwoo from the back and press a soft kiss on the cartilage of his ear.

“You were so good, hyung,” He says, “So good and pretty for me. Are you feeling okay?”

“Yeah,” Wonwoo blushes at the praise, “I’m okay. I feel good.” And it’s not a lie. Despite the soreness in his wrists, Wonwoo feels good like this, sitting on his bed with Mingyu’s arms around him.

“Do you want a bath?” Wonwoo nods in response and Mingyu stands up to run him one. Wonwoo is left sitting there, feeling just a little small with his legs swinging off the side of the bed. His feet are cold.

The sound of the water rushing into the tub flows into the room from the attached bathroom. He jumps off the bed, his feet landing softly against the ground. Mingyu is waiting for him in the bathroom, a pair of underwear hugging his legs tightly. Wonwoo hadn’t bothered to put any clothes back on, and he suddenly feels embarrassed at that revelation. Should he have?

The younger man turns around to smile at him before inviting him into the bathtub. It was warm enough to make Wonwoo’s skin tingle as he got in, the bubbles coming nearly to his nose. It had been a good long while since he’d last had a bubble bath, the kind that his mother used to force him to take in his childhood. But Mingyu always made them like this for him.

He’d asked one day, why he always did them like this. Mingyu had thought it might be a nostalgic thing, he said. Wonwoo wasn’t as close with his mother as he used to be, so he figured that bringing back a memory like that would help him feel closer to the posititve memories he did have - memories from before their relationship soured. Wonwoo didn’t even know that he had mention the baths to Mingyu. There were so many things that Mingyu mentioned that Wonwoo didn’t remember telling him. But Mingyu remembered. He always remembered.

It was a pain to work the dried sweat from his hair and skin, but a second pair of hands running themselves through the strands helped. Wonwoo sighed as he let them massage against his scalp. He frowned at the scent of his hair - it was pleasant, smelling faintly of roses, but it was a scent that wasn’t familiar to him. Where had Mingyu gotten the shampoo from? Perhaps he had brought it with him, but perhaps he’d found it buried somewhere in one of Wonwoo’s cabinets.

“Are you reading anything, Hyung?”

“Am I reading anything?” Wonwoo raises en eyebrow at the question that had seemingly come out of nowhere. “I guess so, yeah.”

“Tell me about it, then.”

Wonwoo sighs but decides to oblige the younger’s request. He begins to explain the plot of the book - he had already read it once before and was almost certain that Mingyu already knew what happened. He might have read it by himself. But he spoke of it anyway, and found himself smiling as he went back through how each character had been developed and how each scene had been crafted so beautifully. It was all so interesting, really. Wonwoo probably could’ve spoken about it for hours, and Mingyu would’ve let him. Not wanting to speak too much of it, Wonwoo paused for a break and looked back at Mingyu who was continuing to work his fingers through his hair, despite it surely having been thoroughly cleaned by then.

Much to his surprise, Mingyu is smiling at him. His eyes are shaped into little half-moons and his two sharp incisors are poking out from behind his bottom lip. Wonwoo leans forward to place a chaste kiss on the freckle that sits on top of his nose. Mingyu gives him a soft chuckle in response.

“Go ahead, keep talking about it.”

So Wonwoo takes another breath and resumes his long-tired rambles. Nobody else listens to him like this, he thinks. Only Mingyu. There’s a sense of warmth in his chest as he goes on and on and Mingyu sits and listens through it all, not caring to do anything but listen to him and play with his wet hair.

“Do you mind if I get out?” Wonwoo asks soon thereafter, “It’s getting kind of hot is all.”

“Yeah, no worries. I’ll give you your privacy.”

And Mingyu leaves him there like that. Wonwoo smiles at the gesture - Mingyu had just seen his body and all of him, but still stepped out when he was done bathing. It was simple and small, but there was something in it that made him feel thankful.

He’s just finished getting dressed when he hears his phone ring from the next room over. He sighs and walks into the bedroom to pick it up, not bothering to check the contact before answering.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Wonwoo, it’s Eunho.” It takes everything in Wonwoo’s body to not sigh when he hears the voice on the other side of the line. “I’m really sorry for the call, I know it’s Christmas break, but I’ve emailed you the story we’ve been looking at, if you wouldn’t mind starting the edits.”

Well, Wonwoo thinks, at least he apologized.

“Yeah, of course,” He replies, “But I thought we didn’t have to be done with the editing phase until March?”

“The publisher is trying to get the release date moved up as much as possible, so you’re going to have more work to do than we expected. God knows what’s with the change, but it’s not impossible to find another editor on short notice, so I think it would be within our best interests to get it done as soon as we can.”

“Alright, I’ll see what I can get done.”

“Thank you so much, and my apologizes once again. Although if it’s possible, is there any way you can get it done by the 13th? I think that’s three weeks from now, which is certainly faster than we’re used to, but…”

“Yeah, don’t worry about it, Eunho. I’ll make it happen.”

“Awesome, thanks a lot Wonwoo. I’ll talk to you later.”

“Yeah, good-” Wonwoo doesn’t get to finish his sentence when he hears the disconnect tone.

He tosses the phone on his bed and runs a hand through his hair. He should’ve expected it, should’ve seen it coming that his job would somehow find a way to get in the way of his week with Mingyu. His head turns as he hears a knock on the door frame. There Mingyu is, standing there with his eyes squinted and his lips pursed.

“Did you hear?” Wonwoo asks.

“No,” Mingyu shakes his head, “I just got here. Who was it?”

“Work. My boss.” Mingyu turns around to flop back on his bed among the crumpled sheets, “They moved up the deadline for the project I’m starting by two whole months. I couldn’t say no, of course, but I really don’t have the time. And during my week off for Christmas.”

“When’s it due?”

“January thirteenth. It’s only a week less than it would usually take me to edit a book, but it’s longer than average. Not to mention that I’ve hardly touched the thing, let alone read through it. But it’s out of my hands.”

“Well, don’t fret if you have to work on it while you’re here. It’ll be better if I can keep you company while you go through it, won’t it?”

“Guess so,” Wonwoo sighs, “But my idea of our time together didn’t contain my job interfering. It’s always like this, isn’t it?”

“Like what?”

“Things getting in the way,” Wonwoo says, “My job or my location or my parents. There’s never quite the peace that I wish there were.”

“Sadly, I don’t think there ever will be,” Mingyu smiles a melancholy sort of smile, his eyes lacking their usual happy creases. “Life’s not perfect like that. We just have to make the best with what we got, right?”

“Yeah,” Wonwoo nods, “Maybe I’ll like the book. Maybe it’ll be one of those that I’ll be proud to have worked on.”

“See, that’s the way to think about it.” Mingyu reaches out a hand to Wonwoo who grabs it and pulls himself off of his back. “It’ll make you feel like I’m a part of your full-time life. That’s not such a bad thing, is it?”

“No, it’s not. You’ll get to see all of the editing I do. You’re the one who said it was sexy or interesting or whatever.”

“It is. I’ll get to stare at you while you sit there in your glasses, your forehead creased in thought.”

“Or, you know, I could just put the work off for a few more days until you leave. And then I could make it up in early January.”

“You said you don’t have enough time as is, didn’t you?”

“I mean, yeah,” Wonwoo rubs his eyes with the back of his hands, “But I’ve pulled a few all-nighters before. It won’t hurt me to do it again.”

“You act like I’ll let that happen. You, my good sir, need to get your beauty rest.” Mingyu takes Wonwoo’s hand as he jumps off the bed. Wonwoo laughs at him as he bows in response. “May I have this dance?”

“Oh, but of course!” Wonwoo replies, a cheesy grin spreading across his features. He places his other hand on Mingyu’s shoulder, and they begin to step around the room in a clumsy sort of dance. It takes all of Wonwoo’s concentration to not step on Mingyu’s toes, and they’re terribly out of sync without any music to dance to.

“We’re not all too good at this, are we?” He asks.

“What do you mean?” Mingyu asks, faking bewilderment. “Clearly, we are the most talented dancers of the century. Who cares about editing or studying? Let’s go join the Paris Ballet. We don’t need to know French, our sick dance skills speak for themselves.” This is precisely when Mingyu steps on Wonwoo’s foot. Perhaps the older would’ve teased him for it, but he was far too busy laughing to get out the words.

Maybe he’s slap-happy, he thinks. Mingyu is funnier than he had been that morning, but his cheesy jokes and remarks were hitting Wonwoo in the right way.

“Don’t worry,” He says between giggles, “I don’t think learning French could be that hard.”

“Are you sure? I’m pretty sure they just throw random letters into their words for fun. Maybe they roll a dice or something to figure out which ones to include.”

“That is a valid point, however I can say ‘oui oui baguette’ which probably makes me certified fluent in French.”

“I mean, hell, I couldn’t say any more than that. Therefore, I will be accepting your oui oui baguette as at least a little bit French. Any other words you know?”

“...Bonjour?” Wonwoo asks the word more than he says it, his voice rising at the end.

“See, there you go. That’s three french words which are probably like 0.000001% of the way there or something. Which is better than zero percent.”

“That it is. It is actually a whole 0.000001 of a percent better. Now, what if I were to learn a fourth word?” Wonwoo asks, “Where would that place me?”

“Ooh a whole nother word? Man, maybe you would know like 0.00001% of the language.”

“Moving me up a whole decimal place for one word? You know what, I will take it. I can also say croissant, which can be my fourth word.”

“See, there you go!” Mingyu laughs as they continue their messy dance, “That’s plenty of French for the Paris Ballet.”

“Wouldn’t it be weird if I had ended up doing ballet all big like that? Like if my parents had put me into ballet when I was a kid, who would I even be?”

“Technically, you would still be Jeon Wonwoo. Just, you know, a different Jeon Wonwoo. Probably a Jeon Wonwoo that never dates a certain Kim Mingyu. So for that reason, I will be glad that you never ended up as a super successful, famous ballet dancer.”

“Well then, I will be glad that I got to be with a particular Kim Mingyu instead.”

“And I’m glad you are,” Mingyu attempts to spin Wonwoo under his arm, which fails terribly and ends in Wonwoo giggling under his breath, “Just as I could have been many versions of Kim Mingyu, but I was lucky enough to end up being the one that gets to hold a certain Jeon Wonwoo. I mean, sure, I could’ve been famous or rich or I could have changed the world, but that version of me wouldn’t have you, so I think I can pass on all of those things.”

“Even if it doesn’t end the way that we wish it would?”

“No matter how it ends, Wonwoo. I will never regret having taken the path that gave us our time together.”

“God, you’re so cheesy. You’re making me blush,” Wonwoo laughs as he feels the heat spreading across his face.

“It’s my talent. I have the talent to make Jeon Wonwoo blush whenever I see it fit.”

“Yeah, and don’t you go using it to your advantage.”

Mingyu just laughs at him as they continue to dance around the room, narrowly avoiding the furniture and articles of clothing that were discarded haphazardly.

“I would never, my dear,” Mingyu says.

Eventually, the silent music fades into the background before dissipating into thin air and Wonwoo finds himself sitting on the couch in the living room perusing the email from Eunho. He can hear the sizzling of the pan in which Mingyu’s cooking from behind him mixed with the tap of his own fingernails against the armrests as his eyes jump along the words typed on his screen. The book is longer than he had hoped - just over 100,000 words. It’s longer than average, certainly, but not unmanageable. Rather than starting dissecting it, he scans the title over and over again.

Eighty Miles an Hour.

Is it bland? Should he suggest a change? Wonwoo doesn’t know. He’s never been the best at deciding the title of a work. He resolves to ask Eunho about it when he’s further along in editing the story.

Mingyu is humming again, the notes passing through the air and landing in the living room next to Wonwoo.

Wonwoo wishes he would never stop humming.

He closes the laptop and rubs the back of his hands across his tired eyes. Dots dance in his vision as he does so, turning the world around him all shades of purple and red and purple and red and purple and red. He’s a tad dizzy when he stands up and has to set his hands on the leather surface of the couch to steady himself while he makes sense of his surroundings.

He makes eye contact with a certain someone from across the way, but he breaks it as soon as he realizes it ever happened.

Late that night, his laptop screen is illuminating the otherwise dark kitchen. It sits solemnly on the table and stares at him as if waiting for him to answer a question he doesn’t know the answer to. Mingyu’s soft snores float through their bedroom door and into the kitchen. Wonwoo is lucky, he figures, that he sleeps like a board. He hardly ever notices them, always the first one asleep and the last to wake.

But on this particular night, he finds that he cannot sleep. He’s not sure why - not sure what wakes him at two in the morning, not sure why he can’t find sleep once again. And so he sits and stares at his computer and begins to go through the document with a fine tooth comb that he keeps put away except for when editing.

And the story is good.

Confusing, he thinks, strange. But it’s good. The entire thing is told through a dream-like lens, as if from a hundred feet above it all or through a thick, lavender fog. He gets to making his suggestions, a small red cursor moving across the screen at record speed. There’s a lot to fix, he thinks, but also lots of potential. Heaps of it, really. More than he ever had, more than is saved in his USB with all of his discarded stories. It always seems that he’s better on this side of the writing process, doesn’t it?

A hand against his shoulder startles him. Mingyu’s hair is in his face, the strands hopelessly tangled and his eyes dull with fatigue. Wonwoo cranes his neck back to look at him. He wonders if he looks equally tired. More so, in all probability.

“Why are you awake?” He whispers, a finger coming up to linger against Mingyu’s cheek.

“I could ask you the same, Hyung,” His voice is soft and deep in the harsh glow of the computer screen.

“Couldn’t sleep. Decided I had better ways to spend my time than just lying in bed like that.”

“Working, are you?” Wonwoo nods. “Come back to bed. You can finish your work in the morning. Tell me about it then.”

“I-” Mingyu gives Wonwoo a particularly stern look that causes him to drop his train of thought. “Alright, I’ll come.”

It is far past morning when Wonwoo stirs the next morning. Mingyu is still asleep next to him for once. He takes a moment to run a finger down the slope of his boyfriend’s nose, the pad of his thumb lingering along his lips. The birds are quiet that morning, not crying or screeching like nature’s own, albeit aggressive, alarm clock.

The floors are cold against his bare feet. He hates to leave Mingyu, hates to make him feel like he doesn’t care. He bites his lip as he remembers Mingyu’s face the night before - tired and tired and tired. Had he worried too much when Wonwoo left bed in the middle of the night? Had he startled as he woke and discovered that there was no warm body beside him? Had he considered that he would spend many long nights in the future without Wonwoo in bed next to him?

His laptop is waiting where he left it the night before, with stickers from coffee shops and teenage vacations beginning to peel off the cover. It’s battery is nearly drained, Wonwoo had forgotten to plug it back in before following Mingyu back into their bedroom. But the words appear on the screen nonetheless, and Wonwoo continues where he was the night before without even bothering to make coffee to kill his caffeine-less headache.

The main character leaves home - they always do.

The main character makes friends - less realistic than one might hope, he’s come to learn.

The main character falls in love.

He’s not even editing the book, Wonwoo realizes. Just reading it. He supposes that’s not such a bad place to start. Perhaps it’s not how he generally gets to editing his books, but it’s not a bad method. It’s a good sign that it’s readable; he figures it’ll do quite well on the shelves.

The main character - Nayoung, that is to say - gets married. But he’s hardly touched the book, so he can’t assume that it’s a wonderful sign that her happy ending happened so early in the book.

Nayoung meets a strange man - a close friend of her father’s before his death. She discovers that he had quite a bit to do with it and sets out to make things right.

Nayoung finds her clues.

She talks to people.

She fights with her husband, who had far more to do with it than she had expected.

And she is so, so close to figuring it all out. So close to piecing together the mysteries of her father’s death and her newly made friend’s body that she discovered in the ravine and the hands that mysteriously appeared deep in the soil of her childhood home with no bodies to be accounted for.

Nayoung takes a corner too quickly and her car falls straight into the ravine in which her friend’s body had been found.

And that’s how it ends - just as quickly and unexpectedly as it had all started.

Wonwoo hates it. He’d read enough books to have a feeling that she would die, but he expected her to be shot dead by someone in the case, another victim in a long list that she had been trying to solve. It had subverted his expectations entirely, and he had loved it.

It had been a good while since a novel had made him properly cry, he realizes as he looks at the teardrops that sit peacefully atop his keys. He hears Mingyu move behind him.

“How long have you been there?” He asks, not bothering to turn around.

“Not quite an hour, I think.”

“You should’ve roused me.”

“Didn’t want to disturb you,” Mingyu laid a hand lazily on Wonwoo’s shoulder. “You looked well absorbed.”

“Yeah,” Wonwoo wipes the tears from his face with his fingers, “I was. But I’m done with my first read, so I’m sure I can take the rest of the day off. Sorry to be working while you’re here.”

“No worries at all, my love. I would tell you if it bothered me.”

And then there is a cup of coffee in front of Wonwoo and his headache is fading and he’s starting to make that early morning type of conversation despite the sun having already hit its peak in the sky. How was the weather going to be? Cold, but less so than the days had been prior. Wasn’t it Christmas Eve already? Yeah, it seemed to be so. Were they going to do anything to celebrate? Probably go out and look at the light show with everyone else.

“Were you crying?” Mingyu asks.

“Yeah,” Wonwoo responds, “My head hurt and I was tired and the ending of that book hit a little bit harder than I had been expecting.”

“You’re still tired after sleeping in that much, Hyung?” Mingyu’s voice is playful, still, but Wonwoo can make out the bits of concern that hang along the edges.

“Bold of you to say that, you slept in even later than I did.”

“Very funny,” Mingyu says, “But I’m being serious. Are you ever not tired?”

Wonwoo hesitates.

“Sure. I mean more often than not I am, but that’s just how it is here. People are busy, people are tired. It’s how we live our lives.”

“Still, if you’re so tired that you’re crying…”

“It was the book, Mingyu, I wasn’t-” Wonwoo inhales. He wasn’t. He wasn’t that tired. He’s not that tired. Sure, his eyes are dry and there’s always a yawn in his chest threatening to bubble up, but all considered he’s not that tired. Not enough to make him cry, right? Now that he considers it, was the book really all that sad or was he just tired? “I’m not too tired. I’m okay.”

“I’m saying this because I love you,” Mingyu starts, “Have you considered, like, talking to someone? About your stressors and your problems?”

“I don’t have problems, Mingyu. I appreciate your concern, but I’m fine.”

“Okay, hyung.” Mingyu bites his lip, but doesn’t press the conversation any further than that.

Wonwoo is glad that he doesn’t. He doesn’t want to answer the questions, doesn’t want to have to think about any of the answers. Wonwoo is perfectly fine, he reassures himself, he is perfectly strong and he can handle the lifestyle he has chosen.

Wonwoo is having a considerably difficult time trying to decide what to wear. It’s just a date with his boyfriend. It’s nothing formal, nothing different, nothing out of the ordinary, and yet he cannot seem to figure it out. He knows he’s overthinking it. He throws on a robe and goes out to find Mingyu.

“Are you not getting ready, my love?”

“I am,” Wonwoo nods, “But I can’t figure out what to wear, so I will be copying you.” He surveys Mingyu’s outfit, giving him a long look up and down.

“Oh, so we’re going with matching couple’s outfits, are we?”

“Well,” Wonwoo clears his throat, “I do hear they’re all the rage these days.”

He can’t help but think that the black jeans don’t look quite as good on him as they do on Mingyu - they don’t hug his thighs in the right way and they make his legs look even longer than they are, almost gangly in nature.

“Look at us!” Mingyu exclaims, a laugh slipping from between his lips, “Like two peas in a pod, huh?”

“I guess so,” Wonwoo returns the laugh, albeit less enthusiastically, and intertwines his fingers with Mingyu’s as they leave the apartment.

They stop to get ice cream on the way. There’s still snow on the ground and ice fettered along the bottom of the streetlamps, but they stop to get it anyway. Mingyu pulls out a polaroid camera to snap a photo of Wonwoo eating his ice cream inside the small parlor while his eyes are turned, much to his surprise.

“You have a polaroid?” He didn’t even question the unprompted photo-taking.

“Yeah, I got it earlier in the year. I have a bunch of photos hanging in my bedroom and everything. And this one,” He begins to shake the picture to help it develop, “Will be going alongside the rest of them. Or maybe in its own special location. Haven’t decided yet.”

“Well take one of the both of us before I leave, yeah? And give it to me. Let me put it on my wall or in some undecided special location.”

“Okay,” Mingyu laughs as he bites into his ice cream. “I can do that.”

Wonwoo shivers as he continues to eat his ice cream. Even his coat and hat and the soft heat of the parlor can’t stop the cold from seeping through his skin and straight into his bones. Soon enough, his lips will turn blue and his fingernails will turn blue and Mingyu will look at him in concern. He’ll say that it’s not quite normal for his lips and his fingernails to turn blue.

“It’s a miracle this place is still open on Christmas Eve, isn’t it?” Mingyu says.

“Yeah, it seems like everything is closed, even in Seoul. Good to let everyone spend time with their friends and families, but not so convenient for us.”

“Then it is our Christmas miracle.”

“Funny that our Christmas miracle is no more than an ice cream shop,” Wonwoo smirks, “When the temperature is hardly zero degrees.”

“Dunno,” Mingyu shrugs, his unzipped jacket coming off one of his shoulders as he does, “Makes me feel young and stupid again. Eating ice cream in the middle of winter. It’s little, sure but… I think we have to appreciate the little things right now.”

“Like eating ice cream in the middle of winter?”

“Yeah. And like stupid matching outfits and stupid Christmas lights and stupid bubble baths. Not every day is going to be your best day or mine, but they all have little good things like that if you look hard enough.”

Wonwoo looks and he sees the stranger who helps the man at the ice cream bar clean up the box of sprinkles that go everywhere when he drops them. He sees an elderly woman who laughs with a young boy and wipes ice cream from the tip of his nose.

Not much later, he sees the color-changing lights on the Christmas tree in the square. It’s so tall he thinks that it must be brushing the atmosphere, turning it the same shades that light up the streets and bounce off the metallic buildings. His head is leaning itself onto Mingyu’s shoulder despite their height difference, and his eyes are threatening to close.

Mingyu’s fingers are wrapped around his.

It’s been a long time since they were able to be a couple publicly. Wonwoo has never been a huge fan of PDA, but living in the city has provided him with some amount of safety, even if it's small. After all, it’s Christmas Eve. Nobody cares. Nobody will bother to separate them, blabbering on about all of the things they do that they should not.

Even Wonwoo sometimes thinks they should not do all the things they do. Not that he can help his attraction, anything but. It’s been a struggle, but it has been one that he has won. And so he gets to stand in the square and watch the Christmas tree lights and lean his head onto Mingyu’s shoulder.

They don’t speak on their way back. There’s not much to say. The night is late, the sun having set hours and hours ago. The children are surely asleep by now; there are no little girls or little boys with their noses pressed to the glass. They see no shopkeepers coming out to scold them as they walk.

Most of the Christmas lights are turned out by the time they reach the more residential area of Seoul. Most of the lights are turned out in general. All that’s left is the two of them, fingers intertwined as they walk down the sidewalks that are covered in half-melted dirty snow.

It’s windy.

And yet, it is less so when they enter Wonwoo’s apartment. The world inside of the rooms feels infinitely smaller, more intimate even. It is, he notes, just as aggressively Christmas-themed as the outside world. Mingyu had certainly left his mark on the space, but he had found that it was growing on him, albeit rather slowly.

Wonwoo falls asleep not much later, Mingyu’s arms around him gently as if he would shatter if he were to be touched too roughly or held too tightly.

It’s early on Christmas morning when Wonwoo wakes for the first time. He had forgotten to close the blinds before they had gone to sleep the night prior, and the sun streamed in through to fall against Mingyu’s cheeks. Nonetheless, he finds his boyfriends still sound asleep. He closes his eyes again, not wanting to leave their bed and not wanting to do anything other than lay in Mingyu’s arms, the position from which he had not moved all night.

When he gets out of bed with Mingyu two hours later, he can’t remember if he ever fell back asleep.

They make waffles for breakfast.

Wonwoo manages to dig out a (potentially too old) bottle of whipped cream from his fridge along with a bag of frozen strawberries and far too many variants of chocolate chips.

They’re nostalgic too - they remind Wonwoo of his childhood favorites. He had begged his mom to make him Western foods when he was young, idolizing other cultures and never wanting to idolize his own. He’d grown out of it, almost felt bad about it. But the foods were still nostalgic for him and reminded him of that phase in his life.

“Are you reminding me of my childhood on purpose?” He asks, a grin spreading across his face. Mingyu stills from his place by the counter.

“I guess,” He says sheepishly and raises a hand to scratch at the nape of his neck. “I wanted it to be like when we were young, you know. Easier. I can’t make it like that again, but I can try to remind you of it.”

“You’ve done a good job.”

“Thanks,” Wonwoo can almost hear the smile in Mingyu's voice, even though he can’t see his face. “I’ve um… I’ve tried to help. You know, make life a little easier.”

And life has been easier since Mingyu arrived.

Maybe not a lot.

But it has been.

It started small, with little differences that Wonwoo hadn’t even noticed. But the little things were the nicest parts - he didn’t have to cook for himself, didn’t have to be alone at night, didn’t have to spend the holidays alone, didn’t have to run his own baths.

It’s a rash decision, really. It’s not well thought out or well planned out, but it is like this that Wonwoo looks at Mingyu with a sense of determination in his eyes. It is like this that he says that he wants to move back home. He wants the life they talked about. He doesn’t care about his big-city job or his big-city life. He cares about Mingyu and that is all.

“You’re going to…” Mingyu hesitates, “You really want to? Come back? Because don’t do this for me, Wonwoo. If you’re going to do it, you need to do it for yourself.”

“I’m not doing it for you, Mingyu. I mean I am, in the sense that you’re part of what makes me happy about moving back home. But I’m moving back to make myself happy.”

“Oh my god,” Mingyu breathes, “You’re… You’re being serious?”

“Yeah,” Wonwoo nods, “I’m really going to do it. We’ll make it work, I just… Fuck, Mingyu, I can’t keep living this life. I’m going to sound so cheesy, which is generally your thing and not mine, but all of this?” Wonwoo gestures around the apartment, “None of it means anything if nobody loves me. So, to put it simply, yes. I’m serious.”

Wonwoo thinks he may have made Mingyu cry. His cheeks are wet when he reaches out to touch them, when he reaches out to cradle the younger man’s face between his two hands. He swallows thickly as he remembers that he is the reason that Mingyu is like this. He’s the one who left, but Mingyu had to carry that loneliness just as much as he had.

But, he reminds himself, it will be sorted in due time.

“You have to help me plan the rest of my life now,” He says, “Because I have no concrete plan. And objectively, it is your fault that I decided to uproot my life.”

“But you’re happy you did?”

“Of course, I am, Mingyu. Don’t you dare think otherwise.”

They never get each other Christmas gifts. It’s been years since they last did. Sure, Wonwoo likes getting things. But he decided that his dread when it comes to buying the proper gifts far outweighs the happiness he might get from receiving one. And Mingyu? He never cared much to receive gifts anyway. It was never his love language, not even remotely so, so he simply didn’t care and let the normal tradition fade to the background of their lives.

This is precisely why it is strange for Wonwoo to be holding a neatly wrapped box between his hands. The paper leaves glitter on his hands and underneath his fingernails. Mingyu looks at him expectedly.

“You know, you didn’t have to. Get me anything, that is.”

“I know,” Mingyu says. “I wanted to.”

“But we never get each other gifts. I mean, I didn’t get you anything.”

“I hadn’t expected that you would. It’s, um, it’s not a big thing or anything. So, don’t feel bad about it.”

“Oh,” Wonwoo stills his fingers against the present. He feels a sudden urge to shake it and turn it around and try to guess what the box enclosed, just as he had each Christmas morning of his youth. “Okay then.”

He hesitates.

“Go ahead,” Mingyu prompts, “Open it.”

Wonwoo picks apart the wrapping carefully, sliding his index finger underneath the lines where Mingyu had placed the tape.

And it’s just a box.

So, Wonwoo opens the box.

And inside the box is placed one DVD with no markings or indications upon it. It sits inside a transparent case that appears to have had something written on it in Sharpie, sometime long ago. Besides this, the gift seems entirely ordinary.

“It's… a DVD?”

“Well, yes,” Mingyu starts. “Granted, there are things on it.”

“What’s on it?”

“A couple old videos I found. You’ll have to watch it to find out. Think of it as a surprise.”

Wonwoo hardly even knew that his television had a DVD player. Likewise, he didn’t know that it would take so long to load the little silver disc. He sits there with Mingyu’s legs splayed across his laps and picks at his fingernails as he waits.

He hears a familiar voice from the speakers. It’s been a long time since he heard it - the clearly spoken syllables and sharp vocal tone.

His grandmother had died a long time ago. Long enough that he sometimes struggled to remember what she looked or sounded like, her features turning to mush somewhere in the back of his brain. The date of the video is stamped clearly on the bottom. January 17th, 2001. In 2001, Wonwoo’s grandmother was perfectly alive. She was alive enough to sit on the edge of a bed and hold Wonwoo’s face in between her hands and tell him a story that he couldn’t quite remember after twenty years. His eyes scan the television screen. Not much farther away is a young, young Mingyu, his legs swinging in the air. They’re not yet long enough to touch the ground, not long like they are as they’re sprawled out on the couch.

“That’s you?” Wonwoo asks, “In the video?”

“Yeah,” Mingyu says, “Always has been.”

“But we didn’t meet until we were what, eleven?”

“I’d thought as much, but I guess not. Do you remember me then? When I was that kid?”

“I-” Wonwoo hesitates before shaking his head. “I don’t. Clearly, I knew you, but…”

“That’s alright. I remember. Now I do.”

“You do?”

“Sure,” Mingyu starts, “That was the summer I’d spent with my aunt and uncle. I guess my parents felt like getting rid of me for a few months, so that’s where I went. And just next door was your house.”

“You were… You were the boy next door? The little kid I spent that summer with? I thought you’d moved away.”

“Moved away? I never even lived there.”

“I guess you’re right. I just didn’t know it at the time. And somehow I didn’t recognize you just six years later.”

“I changed a lot, Hyung. Kids do that. So I wouldn’t blame you.”

“You met my grandmother, then?”

“Seems so. If I’m honest, I don’t remember her. I don’t remember much from that summer.”

“What do you remember?”

“I remember meeting the boy next door,” Mingyu says, “I remember how he was older than me and taller than me. But he was always so nice, and he’d let me play with him. I remember how his parents would cut us fruits to eat. I remember how they tried to teach me how to ride a bike, and I remember skinning my knees every time.”

“When did you find the video?”

“A few weeks before I left home. I was at my aunt and uncle’s again for the first time in a while. It might sound silly, but it all just clicked. I looked at that little kid and I just remembered. I’d had my suspicions before - I felt like I’d known you from the first time we met and your house looked oddly familiar. But I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable, so I never asked.”

“You could’ve, you know.”

“But you would’ve said no. That we hadn’t known each other before.”

“You’re right. I forgot that it was you. But I still remember a lot. I remember that you told me you’d come back to play the next summer.”

“I did?”

“Yeah. I checked in the windows of the house next door every day. Creepy, I know. But, you never came, so I gave it up. And then I forgot who you were.”

“Memories are tricky. Because I know I forgot your name and your face. And all those things about you. But I never forgot how you made me feel, even if I wasn’t old enough to attend school yet.” Mingyu exhales as he continues to speak, but Wonwoo’s eyes are fixed on the television.

His grandmother closes her eyes and sets down the storybook that she was holding in one hand. Nevertheless, she continues her story and young Wonwoo and Mingyu continue to listen. The words fall from between her lips so smoothly, so elegantly, that Wonwoo wonders how many times she told him the story in his childhood. Certainly, it couldn’t have been so many times if he had forgotten it so easily. Could it have been? It’d been quite some time since he had gone to her grave. He stopped going in late high school after a fight with his mom and hadn’t been since.

He feels like an awfully bad grandson for it.

“Hyung?” Wonwoo turns. “Hyung, are you mad at me for not telling you when I figured it out?”

“No,” Wonwoo shakes his head, “I could never be mad at you. Not for something like that. I’m just… surprised.”

“Maybe it was meant to be, then?”

“Maybe,” He hums.

The video is longer than he expects.

The sun has started to track itself down towards the horizon, and his head is laying on Mingyu’s thighs as they continue to sit on the couch. They’re not watching the video anymore, not really, but Wonwoo is still reveling in the sound of his grandmother’s voice flowing from the speakers.

“So we met when I was five,” Wonwoo starts, breaking the long-held silence.

“Right.”

“And then I forgot your face and your name and I went back to my life like I’d never met you.”

“Right.”

“I don’t know how I did it. God knows I couldn’t do it now, couldn’t do it even if I tried.”

“Good thing you don’t have to, then.”

“And then we met again in middle school,” Wonwoo continues, “When you stole my jacket off my desk and I found you wearing it in the cafeteria.”

“Yes, that is what happened. It’s a miracle you weren’t more upset at me.”

“I could never stay upset at that face.”

“I don’t know, I’ve seen you try.” Mingyu shifts underneath Wonwoo, his hip bones brushing against the top of Wonwoo’s skull.

“When did you like me for the first time? When did you fall in love with me?”

“Asking so suddenly, are you?”

“No, it’s just-” Wonwoo inhales as he starts to play with his fingernails. The cold has started to eat away at their length; their edges are ridged and torn. “I want to know. I’ve never asked you properly. Never cared to know until now.”

“I dunno. First time I saw you, I guess. Second time I saw you. And every time after that. Didn’t know it at the time, but I think I always did. ‘Cause you always made me feel so special even when you weren’t trying to or anything.”

“I was always trying to. So I’m glad I’ve made you feel that way.”

Mingyu is silent.

The air around them stills as the DVD stops.

Wonwoo glances at Mingyu who shrugs at him.

“Didn’t watch the video all the way through before now. I guess it has a scratch or something.”

“Sounds like it. That’s fine, you can turn it off.”

The television dims to black with a soft click. Wonwoo hadn’t realized it had been the major light source for the room, coupled with their Christmas lights. The sun was almost set already, the clock reading four in the afternoon.

“You’re leaving soon,” Wonwoo says it with such finality that it catches Mingyu off guard. Neither of them had been apt to think about it. “When is it?”

“Day after tomorrow,” Mingyu whispers, carding a hand through the older man’s hair. “It’s fine, though. You have your own plane ticket to book, don’t you?”

“That I do. When should I come?”

“I hate to be selfish,” Mingyu sighs, “Actually, I don’t hate to be selfish. I love to be selfish. That being said, I would tell you to come as soon as you can. Once your project is finished, as soon as you can get away from your job. Pick up and come. When’s your lease over?”

“End of the year. I’d had every intention to keep leasing it for the coming year, so that’s the impression that my landlord is under. But, I haven’t put down a deposit or anything of the sort, so there’s no reason why I can’t bail on him.”

“Then come at the beginning of the New Year, can’t you? We can celebrate Korean New Year together, even if we can’t do regular New Years.”

“You always did like the colors.”

“I still do, Hyung. They’re so pretty.”

“Okay, then,” Wonwoo agrees after a moment of hesitation. “I’ll come at the end of the year. Which, god, is so close. So soon. It feels strange, doesn’t it?”

“Not to me. It feels precisely like it’s meant to be.”

Not quite ten hours later, Mingyu goes to sleep, and Wonwoo emails his boss his two-week’s notice and purchases a plane ticket for early January. He sets to work on the story, picking it apart at a much quicker rate than normal.

It is not until they are seated at the ramen store down the street at 9 in the morning does Wonwoo realize that Mingyu is leaving.

It’s bittersweet.

But he’s very real and very there in that moment as he loudly slurps ramen at a time much too early for slurping ramen. He’s playing with his still wet strands of hair and he’s kicking his feet despite being far too tall and he’s giving Wonwoo that toothy smile that manages to make him feel like he’s about to combust.

So, yes, Wonwoo reminds himself, at this moment Mingyu is very much here and that is all that matters.

“It’s so good, right?” He asks, licking broth off of his lips and earning an eyebrow raise from Wonwoo.

“Yeah, this is like my go-to ramen place. And not just because of the proximity.”

“Don’t worry, we still have Gong’s ramen at home. It might not be as good as this, but they will deliver now if you heckle them enough.”

“Have you been heckling poor Byeol into delivering you ramen?”

“You know it,” Mingyu laughs, “But she only does it because she loves me. She’s basically my grandmother at this point. It seems like she’s always around.”

“How did that happen?”

“To be honest?” Mingyu takes a sip of water through the thin, green straw that sits within his glass. “I’m not sure. One day she just started coming to my family gatherings and I’ve never been able to get any context on it. I’m not complaining, though. She’s a sweetheart and makes a killer bowl of ramen.”

“Are you going to be with them for New Year’s eve?”

“Probably,” Mingyu hums, “I always do, and there’s no reason that this year would be any different. It’s a shock they didn’t harass me about coming here for Christmas instead of coming home.”

“Are we going to have to tell them about us when I come back home? Properly, I mean.”

“Only if you’re comfortable with it. I think they would take it fine. But if you’d rather let them figure it out by themselves, that works too.”

“I think the second would be my pick with my own family,” Wonwoo says with a halfhearted laugh. “But with yours… I’ll leave it up to you. They’ll catch on sooner or later, so I’m not sure that it matters anyway. Chances are they’ve already caught on, right?”

“I’d say so. They’ve stopped bothering me about getting them grandkids, which could be some kind of sign. Or maybe they’ve just decided that I’m not cut out to be a parent.”

‘ “Have you thought about adopting?” Mingyu stills at the question. Even Wonwoo is surprised to ask it - surprised to ask it when he’s never been the most enthusiastic about having kids.

“I mean, the idea has passed my mind. But, hell, I wasn’t going to be the one to bring it up. You don’t even want kids.”

“Sure, but you do. And maybe it’d be different if I were raising them with someone who I actually love, you know. I never wanted my own kids because I didn’t want to get a wife and go about it in the traditional sense. But we could live our own little Hallmark fantasy if you wanted to.”

“Do you think we could really adopt? In Korea of all places?”

“Dunno,” Wonwoo mumbles, “I’ve never looked into it. But we shouldn’t count it out of the pictures, at least a few years down the road, that is. Once we’re all established and everything is figured out and we’re scrambling for our places a little less than we are right now.”

Wonwoo’s head perks up as he hears a soft ding come from his phone. His fingers tap against the back as his eyes scan his messages.

“Who is it?”

“It’s my boss. And some of my coworkers.”

“What do they have to say? Are they upset that you’re leaving? Because, if they are-”

“No, it’s really nothing like that,” Mingyu interrupts to say, “They were wondering if I want to go to a New Year’s Eve party with them.”

Wonwoo stares at the message. It’s strange. He knows them all, certainly, had grabbed drinks a few odd times after work or had attended events with them when the job called for it. But he wouldn’t have considered them to be friends, let alone close ones. Wouldn’t it all be awkward for him to go?

“Well, are you going to go?”

“I don’t really know them that well.”

“I, for one, think you should.”

“Huh? Why would you want me to go to a party?” Wonwoo waves down the waiter and asks for the check. He casts his eyes towards Mingyu, wrinkles creasing between his eyebrows as he frowns.

“Well, it’s not like you’ll be seeing them for a while afterwards. And it wouldn’t do you any harm to get out.”

“They’re not my friends, Mingyu.”

“But maybe you’re theirs.”

It is with this that Wonwoo begrudgingly texts back that he will in fact be at the New Years Party with his coworkers. He leaves out the part where he was forced by his boyfriend to agree.

Mingyu insists on paying for the meal. Wonwoo whines and tells him that it can really be his treat, but Mingyu insists. He insists that it had been Wonwoo’s house that he had stayed at and Wonwoo’s idea to take him everywhere they had been and to show him everything he had seen. It was the least that he could do.

Soon they’re walking back through the square and passing by their apartment block. The wind stings Wonwoo’s face, but his hand is kept warm in Mingyu’s and underneath their long coat sleeves. The block is emptier than he had been used to with so many of its normal attendees still in bed the morning after Christmas. If he tried, he could hear the sound of their footsteps against the cement, even against the strong winds that blew about the few leaves that were left on the sidewalk.

He takes Mingyu downtown, just past the city center where they had been skating just a few days before. In that time, the feel of the city had already changed. There were no joyous songs ringing from speakers and few children were present on the streets. The excitement that had been tangible before Christmas had now fizzled down to small vibrations under the concrete, the festivities replaced with the silent hope that next year would somehow be better.

It is like this that Wonwoo finds himself inside a half-forgotten art museum. There's not a single car awkwardly parallel parked on the road nearby; there is not a single coat on the coat rack that sits by the door. The worker is sitting in a rolly chair, his head lolled uncomfortably against the desk as he stirs in his sleep and his black hat falls from his head, revealing unkempt hair.

Wonwoo takes off his coat so that it’s sitting across his forearm. He glances at Mingyu. The architecture of the building is old. Surely, it hasn’t been updated within the past century, and certainly not recently enough for any cameras to be installed. He tells Mingyu as much and receives a smirk.

“We shouldn’t wake him up, anyway,” He says, gesturing to the worker who has since started snoring softly.

“Oh, but of course not,” Wonwoo snickers, “It would appear that we have no choice but to enter by ourselves.”

Wonwoo hasn’t previously stumbled into this art museum. It feels, more often than not, that he has found and been in every establishment within a ten mile radius of his apartment, but none of the paintings on this wall nor the architectural style of the building seem even remotely familiar.

He blinks at them.

He’s never been one for paintings.

Or sculptures.

Or really art in general on the days that he isn’t using it to make him seem more sophisticated than he is.

Granted, he finds that he’s becoming even more delicate, even more easily affected by these kinds of things than he once was. He’s not sure if it’s come with age or exhaustion; he’s not sure if these things are one and the same.

Wonwoo stands with his head halfway leaned against Mingyu’s shoulder and his eyes halfway closed.

His sweater is itchy.

It’s the first time he’s noticed it.

Their steps echo throughout the empty hall, the sounds pinging off the marble floor and the marble wall and the marble staircases. The galleries aren’t labeled thoroughly, with every turn taking them into a new gallery that they had not expected to see. For its rather empty state, the museum had quite a few things for him to look at.

Eventually, the two of them float their way into an area littered with sculptures. They’re modern - more so than most Wonwoo sees, made of metal and ceramics and plastic. He stops outside a plastic enclosure and stares at a robot as it does its work. The small, dark green hunk of metal bobs hopelessly in a cerulean liquid. He’s not sure how it hasn’t electrocuted. The robot moves occasionally, swimming about and hitting the sides of the enclosure before being swallowed by the currents.

Mingyu turns to him and lays a hand along his shoulder. He jumps. He’s not sure how long he’s been staring, not sure how long he’s been trying to puzzle out what it’s all supposed to mean.

They leave the sculpture room.

And then they’re back in his apartment.

Truth be told, Wonwoo doesn’t know where the time went. He had only blinked. Just once, no more. But in that time they had managed to sneak back out past the guard and through the cold, dead city.

His apartment had become cold during their time away too.

The cold air had settled over it, dust from a volcanic eruption or ash from a fire hundreds of miles away.

Mingyu calls some restaurant to make reservations. Wonwoo appreciates the effort. He hardly cares anymore, tired and done and so close to some silly perfect life.

But there are hardly any formal restaurants out in the country and his income will probably be less steady at that point anyway.

It’s best to take advantage while they can.

The lighting in the restaurant is dim and hushed voices crowd in a corner nearby. Wonwoo can’t trace their source, the tables are far too spread out for him to make any reasonable inferences of its location. He catches only bits of words, all business and meetings, and terribly, terribly drab.

A thumb runs over his knuckles, their hands held and hidden underneath the pristine white tablecloth. Wonwoo knows practically nothing about tasting wine and he feels stuffy and out of place every time he wears a suit, but it’s fun. It’s fun to play dress-up like this, pretending that he’s someone he’s not.

Mingyu looks better suited to it than him, anyway.

Mingyu looks good like this, good in a way that he never could. Good in a way that makes him think it might not be such a bad thing if Mingyu leaves him for someone else one day.

He doesn’t say so.

He settles, instead, for telling Mingyu that he looks handsome.

“Thanks, Hyung,” Mingyu chuckles, a soft red flitting across his cheeks, although Wonwoo isn’t sure if it's from the compliment or the alcohol.

Wonwoo isn’t there. Wonwoo is across the country in a small town with Mingyu. He’s with his old friends at university. He’s back with his parents and he’s listening to his grandmother tell him a story he won’t remember.

And then he’s back at the apartment with Mingyu. He’s not sure where the time went, not sure what he did in that hour he was away. He’s only sure that he can’t quite remember, it all a blur of good food and wine and hushed conversations.

And he knows that Mingyu is taking off his black blazer and letting it fall to the floor next to their bed.

He’s perfectly aware of Mingyu’s hands along his jawline and his neck and his waist. He falls back onto the mattress when the other man pushes him slightly and he stares back up, his face turning a soft shade of pink.

And then Mingyu’s lips are on his and Mingyu is unbuttoning his shirt and then his pants and Wonwoo remembers nothing at all.

Morning comes all too soon, his harsh alarm ringing throughout the room and pulling him from his sleep. Mingyu shifts next to him and slowly opens his eyes, a hand coming to rub them as he does his best to wake up. It’s not yet five in the morning, but Mingyu has to get to the airport for his flight.

His flight.

Mingyu has to get to the airport to catch his flight back home.

The shower water is too hot on Wonwoo’s back as it washes the sweat and gunk from the previous night off his skin. He leans half of his weight against the tile wall, not having the energy to stand fully so early in the morning.

But Mingyu still cooks him breakfast.

The clock flashes an ugly 5:12, but Mingyu still cooks him breakfast. Wonwoo wouldn’t generally eat so early in the morning, but he can’t say no, can’t turn Mingyu down. So they sit and they eat and Wonwoo nervously eyes the suitcases in the corner.

It’s cold.

The car takes forever to heat up as the two sit and wait. Mingyu’s suitcases are piled in the backseat and Wonwoo is wondering if sitting here just a little longer would really hurt anyone.

But he leaves.

He puts the car in reverse and backs out of the parking lot and starts to drive. There’s nobody else out, no other headlights or quiet conversations or tired yawns. There’s only them.

And they don’t talk.

The radio is off.

And then it’s under the awning and Mingyu is stepping out and getting his bags from the backseat.

“Mingyu?”

“Yes?” He turns.

“I’ll see you soon,” Wonwoo says. And he kisses him, soft and light and no more than a touch. But he kisses him all the same and he gets to see Mingyu’s eyes crinkling when he pulls away.

“I can’t wait to see you again, my love. I can’t wait to start our life together.”

It is like this that Mingyu leaves. He walks into the airport, bags rolling behind him. He doesn’t stop to turn around, doesn’t stop to wave or offer a final goodbye to Wonwoo. He doesn’t have to. After all, it would only be a momentary goodbye, only one that would last for a few days.

Wonwoo goes back to sleep when he reaches his apartment.

The sun is past halfway in the sky by the time he wakes again. Part of him expects to find Mingyu next to him, but he only finds an imprint of where Mingyu had been laying that morning.

He gets out his laptop once again and begins to write. What other choice does he have?

The days pass in this manner. Wonwoo sleeps. He writes. He goes skating in the city square before they take down the display.

It is December 30th by the time that Wonwoo returns to work. He’s reminded that he has agreed to go to a party with his coworkers. He smiles and nods and internally regrets the decision. He knows, however, that Mingyu will heckle him if he backs out.

He meets with his boss.

“You're… practically finished with the entire project?”

“I guess so,” Wonwoo blinks.

“I didn’t even know it was possible for someone to work this fast.”

“Neither did I, to be honest. But I’m moving back home and I have a lot of good things coming, so I guess I’ve just felt particularly motivated over the past couple days. I’ve got a lot done on it.”

Wonwoo heads to the small ramen shop after work that day, his hands cold and his breath making small puffs in the air as he walks along the crowded street.

And then he is at a party he doesn’t want to be at. It’s not terrible, per se. Certainly, it could be worse. Some terrible New Year's stream is playing on the television and Wonwoo is working on his third glass of champagne as he sits on the couch and chats with his coworker. He’s being told all about a new cat, and he can’t really find it within himself to care. All he can do is wonder whether or not Mingyu would want a cat.

He casts his eyes around the apartment. Christmas decorations are still up, soft lights illuminating the otherwise dark room and reflecting off the tacky tinsel that’s pinned along the baseboards. People - mostly those he knows, but a few he’s never seen before - stand in clumps around the room or sit on the couches and chairs or on the floors.

He hears the sound of a phone ringing over the singing on the television. He doesn’t realize that it’s his until his coworker politely points it out, a soft hand on his forearm pulling him out of his thoughts.

He retreats to an empty bedroom in which the air is particularly cold and still, particularly in comparison to that in the living room.

It’s Mingyu’s mom.

It’s Mingyu’s mom, probably telling him that Mingyu got home safely even though he had already heard. It’s Mingyu’s mom lecturing him for moving back home so rashly, for encouraging Mingyu to do what he wants, even if that doesn’t include college.

“Hello?” He picks up the phone and sits on a leather ottoman.

“Wonwoo?” The voice on the other side is soft and winded. Wonwoo frowns.

“Yes? What is it, Mrs. Kim?” He braces himself to be yelled at.

He braces himself to be scolded and chastised and he thinks of how he will respond.

But the yelling never comes.

Instead he hears her cry, softly at first, and then louder until he isn’t sure what to do or say.

“Mrs. Kim. Is everything okay?”

“Wonwoo,” She manages to get out, “I don’t know how to tell you this.”

“Take a deep breath,” Wonwoo says, ignoring the feeling of dread that burrows its way deep into his stomach, “I promise it will be okay. Just tell me what you need to say.”

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, but…” She trails off, almost as if trying to figure out her next words. “Mingyu’s gone.”

“Mingyu’s gone? Where did he go? Do you need me to call him?”

“No, Wonwoo. You don’t understand. He didn’t leave. He died. Mingyu’s dead. He’s gone. And he’s not coming back.”

The words after that don’t sink in. Not fully, not like they’re supposed to. He cries. Mingyu slid off the road, she says. It was icy and he was going too fast and he slipped off a curve into a ravine. It was far too late by the time they found him.

Wonwoo shivers in the cold room, hot tears streaking his face and sticking his eyelashes to his cheeks.

“No,” He hiccups, “No, he didn’t die. He couldn’t have died, right?”

“I’m sorry. I can’t do anything. I want to do something, but I can’t do anything. I’m sorry,” she cries, “But I wanted to let you know. I wanted to tell you that, and I wanted to tell you that I always supported you and Mingyu. I wasn’t going to say, but I always knew. And I always loved you no matter what. And above all, I am so so sorry for not being able to protect him.”

“It’s not your fault. I should’ve protected him too. But I didn’t. I always wanted to protect him like he protected me. And I couldn’t do that.”

“We’re having a funeral in early January. The seventh. You don’t have to come, but I’ll book you a plane ticket if you want.”

“You don’t have to worry. I already have one.”

“I see.” There’s a moment of stillness in the conversation. “I’m sorry again, Wonwoo. Let me know if you need anything.”

“Thank you.” Wonwoo says, but the words are empty. He’s laying on the floor now, his tears flowing into the carpet.

It’s worse when he hangs up.

She’s not there on the other line, not there to talk to him and keep him grounded and there.

It can’t be true. It just can’t. He can’t be gone. Mingyu promised they would always be together. He swore. He told him that they would get to live their perfect life together.

He promised.

But he lied.

Wonwoo knows it’s unfair to be angry at him for leaving. It’s not like he had a choice. But he is angry. He’s angry that Mingyu got his hopes up and then turned around and left him like that.

Mingyu was all he had, and that was enough for him.

But now he doesn’t have Mingyu anymore.

He doesn’t have anyone.

He slips out of the party largely unnoticed, his hands trembling as he lifts them to wipe the tears from his face.

The train ride back to his own apartment feels long. Longer than it had been on the way there. He sits across from a short businesswoman and tries to keep his head down so that she won’t see the tear stains on his face. His fingernails dig half-circles into his palms.

The decorations are still up when he gets home.

He takes them down and leaves them on the side of the road in a big, black garbage bag.

There aren’t many people at the funeral, and Wonwoo doesn’t recognize all of them. It’s cold in the church and he feels stiff and awkward in his suit as he listens to some pastor talk about god and the afterlife. He doesn’t want to be here. He doesn’t want to be here and listen to some old man talk about some hogwash when he knows that he’ll never get Mingyu back and he’ll never see him again.

He’ll never hold his hands again.

He’ll never kiss him again.

They’ll never argue again.

Someone gives him a pitying look from across the way and he feels like throwing up. How dare someone pity him. He never asked for that. He can take care of himself. Nobody who isn’t Mingyu is allowed to care for him that much. Nobody else can ever pity him.

He leaves when they invite everyone to look at the body.

He can’t bring himself to do it. He wants his last memory of Mingyu to be them kissing at the airport, Mingyu looking ethereal even in the dim lighting of the airport at six in the morning.

How dare they let people look at him. He wouldn’t have wanted that. He would’ve wanted his privacy, even in death. And yet there everyone is - staring at him and crying when even Wonwoo isn’t crying.

He sits on a bench outside the hall and jumps as he sees Mingyu’s mother across the way from him.

“Didn’t want to look?” She asks.

“Couldn’t bring myself to.”

“I couldn’t either.”

It’s quiet for a considerable amount of time.

“You look nice,” She says, “I haven’t seen that suit before.”

“Thanks,” He says. But all Wonwoo can think about is how only a week ago Mingyu was tearing it off of him and kissing him and touching him until he saw stars.

“Are you going to stay for the reception?”

“I don’t think so. I don’t want to be here.”

“I’d figured as much. I brought you the key to his house, if you want to go.”

“Can I?”

“Please,” She says, holding out a small silver key. He takes it from her. “Take whatever you want. I don’t think I’ll be able to keep much, so most of it will probably go to charity anyway.”

There isn’t much in the house. The air is still, but Mingyu’s things still sit along the kitchen table. His phone doesn’t turn on and Wonwoo decides to not touch it. There’s an envelope sitting in his bag with Wonwoo’s name on it and his fingers still around it as he picks it up. He wants to open it, but he’s scared of what he’ll find.

He immediately recognizes it as the song that Mingyu had written for him when he had fallen ill. Tears begin to fall down his face once again as he reads the lyrics. He hurls the envelope across the room and it floats sadly to the ground. He looks at it with as much anger as he can muster and crosses the room.

He tears the page to pieces, sobs racking his body as he squats on the floor. His hands are shaking so hard he can hardly manage to tear it.

He never wants to read it again. He never wants to be reminded of how much Mingyu loved him and how much he did for him. Wonwoo had never been able to do enough in return, anyway.

It is January seventh.

It is a particularly cold day and he should be arriving and planning for the rest of his life. But he is not, because all Wonwoo can do is sit in Mingyu’s kitchen sink and cry.