Work Text:
They’re just busy – Jongdae knows that. It’s a thing that happens sometimes. One of his work projects heats up during tax season, and they go weeks barely speaking except for half-asleep greetings late at night or a Saturday morning strategy meeting over coffee to divide up the critical errands before they each go back to work.
He knows it’s normal in a long-term relationship to go through times when even the sex feels like it was more for short-term stress relief than anything else.
These things happen. And Jongdae knows that you get through them with patience and faith, until the dull part recedes and it’s like falling in love all over again.
He’s not sure what’s going on lately, though. They’re maybe a little busier than usual – Jongdae’s been spending a lot of time in Chanyeol’s studio laying down backup and demo tracks, and his sister-in-law is writing her master’s thesis, so he babysits his niece twice a week. Minseok’s parents are preparing to move south for better weather, so that Minseok spends hours at his parents’ house helping go through thirty years of belongings and then hours at their own trying to decide whether he can actually fit his high school action figure collection and his grandmother’s tea ware in their house without giving himself clutter hives.
They haven’t been fighting. Jongdae would almost prefer that – at least then he’d know what to do: hash things out, apologize, whatever. They’re just … existing. And something about Minseok’s expression when he stands in their living room with a cardboard box in his hands makes Jongdae’s belly feel cold.
He catches himself doodling azaleas at work, when the customer had clearly requested a logo shaped like gears and pipes. Memory catches him up and squeezes hard. Jongdae steps out for a break. The view beyond his takeout coffee may be Seoul in late summer, but Jongdae sees mountains.
They hadn’t even hit their hundredth day yet. Jongdae had only agreed to go hiking because it was so early in the relationship that he wanted to say yes to everything. An hour into the hike, Jongdae made the mistake of asking how long they would be walking.
“This is a day-long hike,” Minseok had said.
Jongdae hadn’t been gracious about it. He’d complained out loud and cursed under his breath. He’d gone so far as to wonder whether maybe his newish boyfriend wasn’t long-term material after all. Minseok had cajoled and prodded him up the mountain all morning, until at the top of one rise, there was a break in the trees, and a wide carpet of pink azaleas swept down toward the valley amid the green trees, under a deep blue sky.
“So few people come to this park,” Minseok had said. “I come every spring, just to look at this view. I used to think I’d never see anything else so beautiful. Until I saw you.”
Jongdae gulps his coffee around the lump in his throat.
He tries to carry it with him, but of course Chanyeol calls late afternoon, with a bunch of last-minute changes that have to be made for an idol group demo.
“Sorry,” Jongdae texts.
“No worries,” Minseok responds. “I was up so early to go to the gym. I wanted to go to bed early anyway. BSLY”
Be safe, love you.
Jongdae wants to trust that Minseok typed it out of more than just muscle memory.
A few more weeks go by. They’re fine. Jongdae and Minseok don’t fight, or anything. They even have time to go to the movies once, even if it turns out to be depressing and not the romantic comedy they’d hoped for, so that they poke morosely at their post-film desserts.
Minseok corners Jongdae in the shower one morning before work and drops to his knees. Jongdae lets himself drop into the pleasure. When he feels his toes start to curl and everything start to rush through him toward Minseok’s mouth, he thinks maybe this is it, maybe we’ll be fine now.
Minseok holds him for a little bit afterward, then brushes his wet hair aside and kisses Jongdae’s cheek. Jongdae reaches down, but Minseok grabs his wrist.
“I need to get going,” he says. “Just wanted you to start off the day right.”
Jongdae figures they’ll make up for it in the evening – except that Minseok’s mother calls in a panic in the afternoon about his and his sister’s baby clothes. So Minseok rushes to their house after work and stays late enough that he sleeps there. The next evening Jongdae has a late client meeting, and so on and so on, the rest of the week so full that they barely see one another. They both wake up once in the middle of the night and try to get some sleepy sex going, but the lube bottle is empty, and at 2:30am everything seems like kind of a hassle, so they go back to sleep.
Jongdae remembers a couple of days after that to order more lube. When they first got together, he ordered it in packs of six, automatically scheduled for delivery every other month (which was way too much, he changed it to every three months [the bottles are kind of big]). He’s a little embarrassed that neither of them noticed it was mostly empty. The box arrives, and Minseok wisecracks about it while he puts the bottles away in their nightstand. But of course that’s on an evening when Jongdae has to leave to babysit.
A few more weeks. They’re still fine. Aren’t they?
“When’s the last time we went on a date?” Jongdae asks one Saturday afternoon.
They’re cleaning, as they do every Saturday afternoon, because Minseok is spiritually allergic to any type of mess.
Minseok pauses. He’s up on a stepstool, dusting the tops of the picture frames on the wall. He’s he only person Jongdae has ever met who does this more than once or twice a year. He does it once a week. He has his hair held back by a light blue bandanna, and his shorts are cutoff sweatpants that ride up when he reaches up. They’re a horrible piece of clothing, apt to flash testicle, but Jongdae feels his breath catch at how freaking beautiful Minseok is.
Minseok purses his perfect lips into a pout.
“That movie we saw doesn’t count, it was horrible,” he says. “Why, do you want to go out?”
“We could see if that French place has an open bar seat. Dress up,” Jongdae says.
The French place is where Minseok likes to go for celebrations. And they both look great in a suit. They can’t get a same-day table there, but sitting at the bar’s okay. They’ll be shoulder to shoulder, close together among all that noise.
“That sounds like a lot,” Minseok says. “Would you be okay if we stayed in? We should definitely get nice takeout, though. Is that okay? We’ll go on a date soon, I promise.”
Jongdae tries not to let his deflation show.
“Sure, that sounds good,” he says. “You can pick the food.”
Chanyeol finishes his demos and skives off to Fiji for two weeks, leaving Jongdae with more time at home than he’s had in months. He catches up on sleep. Cooks dinner for them several nights in a row – only one of which he has to set under a cover to wait for Minseok to return.
“That was nice,” Minseok mumbles just before he falls asleep leaning against the other end of the sofa.
Another Saturday: coffee, cleaning, football matches on the TV in the afternoon. Another Sunday: Jongdae leaves Minseok behind in bed to go to church, and they spend the afternoon grocery shopping and doing laundry for the week. Another work week where they barely see each other. On Friday night, Minseok says,
“I’m exhausted. Can we just stay in and cook a pizza?”
Jongdae isn’t going to say no, with those dark circles under Minseok’s eyes. He’s a homebody too. But some troublemaking part of him wonders, while they’re brushing their teeth for bed, why Minseok doesn’t seem to want to be seen in public with him anymore.
That wonderful thought eats at Jongdae for the rest of the weekend. He remembers when they used to spend their weekend afternoons in bed, sweaty and eager, giving each other stubble burn from hours of kissing. Minseok dressing him in the evening, rolling up the cuffs of his shirts to take him out and watch people watch them.
“All those eyes on you,” he used to murmur, “but I’m the one who gets to have you.”
Jongdae would always protest that people were looking at Minseok, not himself. He wonders now whether Minseok finally realized that.
“What’s wrong with you?” Chanyeol asks.
He’s back from Fiji with a crop of freckles over a golden tan and about a thousand ideas for new songs.
“This is literally a song about a carbonated beverage, and you’re making it sound like you’re at a funeral.”
Jongdae fakes cheer.
Everywhere he goes, he fakes cheer.
It sucks the most at home, especially when Minseok says,
“It’s been good to see you smiling lately.”
Jongdae stands under the showerhead with his hair clutched in his hands. If anyone was going to notice that his smiles are fake, it’s supposed to be Minseok.
That he doesn’t notice.
It’s a problem.
Apparently a bigger problem than Jongdae even imagined, given that the next Saturday, they get up to start their cleaning routine, and Minseok isn’t wearing his ring.
Jongdae drops the coffee carafe.
It shatters – coffee and glass all over the kitchen. And of course that’s a problem that needs to be addressed immediately. There isn’t time to howl about broken hearts when the kitchen is literally covered in mess. Minseok hustles off for their house slippers, and it takes them almost two hours before everything is clean enough to satisfy him. Plus with neither of them caffeinated.
“Well that was a terrible early morning adventure,” Minseok says. “You should go shower off all that coffee before I try to lick it off you.”
Jongdae wishes that he wasn’t so afraid, wishes that Minseok had his ring on – because of course he should make a joke here, an insinuation that Minseok should lick as much of him as he wants to.
But he can’t.
Minseok gazes at him for a moment, then strokes his upper arm.
“Go clean up, Dae,” he says in a voice so gentle that Jongdae is more frightened than ever. “I’ll run down the block and get us coffee.”
Jongdae watches him go. When Minseok’s at the door, instinct takes over, and Jongdae calls out,
“Be safe, love you.”
Minseok sticks one hand back through the doorway and waves.
Jongdae chokes. He stumbles into the shower and lets hot water pummel him in the face, hoping that’ll help him not cry.
“Why don’t we stop in here?” Minseok said.
They’d been dating for eight months, then. Jongdae, being slow on the uptake, had assumed they were stopping in a jewelry store so Minseok could pick out a gift for his mom or sister. Even when Minseok steered them over to the couple rings, it took Jongdae a second.
The inside of his chest had bloomed like a flower.
“Really?” he breathed.
Minseok’s smile was so broad and warm. It was like every comforting thing Jongdae knew wrapped up together at once.
They picked white-gold bands, very plain but sturdy-looking.
“I like this,” Jongdae said. “It’s like us. It looks like it can’t be broken easily.”
Minseok smiled again.
“To weather anything. To really last. You’re right, Jongdae, it is like us.”
Turns out the hot water can’t keep Jongdae from crying.
Minseok returns just as Jongdae emerges from the bathroom. He has a cup carrier and a bag. That means two coffees and some of the pastries Minseok likes. There will be cream breads, a mocha bread. And there will be a red-bean bun, because that’s what Jongdae likes.
He stumbles on his way to the sofa. Minseok frowns at him when he sits.
“Did you not sleep well?” he asks.
He reaches out to touch Jongdae’s face. Jongdae grabs his hand, pulls it down until both their hands rest on his own knee.
Their two hands together. One ringed; one not.
“Jongdae, what’s?” Minseok said, and then “oh shit.”
“Just tell me,” Jongdae whispers.
“Tell you what?”” Minseok says. “But hold that thought, I must’ve left my ring in my gym bag.”
Jongdae figures he must blink rapidly for the entire moment it takes for Minseok to go to the door, dig through his bag, and sit back down.
Minseok holds the ring out to him.
“You know I have a policy,” he says, making that sideways little grin that melts Jongdae like ice cream every time. “I can’t put it on myself.”
Jongdae takes the ring from Minseok and stares down when Minseok holds out his left hand, fingers spread.
“You didn’t?” he says.
“Didn’t what?”
Jongdae has to force himself to say it out loud.
“Didn’t take it off on purpose?”
“Well, yeah, I guess so. I went swimming yesterday, you know how my fingers always shrivel up when I’m cold. Can you imagine if it fell off in the pool? I’d have to go shrieking through the gym in my wet swimsuit demanding that they dig it up out of the filters or whatever, and then I’d never be able to go back there again from the horror.”
Jongdae, who by this point is composed of 96% pure confusion, finds himself a little wobbly about the lower lip area.
“Jongdae,” Minseok says, again in that gentle voice. “What’s wrong?”
“I thought,” Jongdae says.
“I thought maybe you’ve gotten bored with me. With – with us.”
“What? Jongdae, why?”
He hates to say it, now that they’re sitting close together, holding hands, with that look of distress on Minseok’s face. Jongdae wants to grin and make a joke about being under-caffeinated.
But he also knows that’s unfair. Not to the unhappy Minseok in his mind who’s halfway out the door, but to the Minseok sitting in front of him right now, holding his hand.
“You keep not wanting to go out,” he says. “And we hardly see each other lately, we’ve barely had sex in two months. I don’t know where you are, lately. I don’t know where your head is. I thought. I worried.”
“Oh.”
Minseok squeezes his hand.
“First things first, put my ring back on me,” Minseok says. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Jongdae does as he’s told, and kisses Minseok’s knuckles. Already the knot of worry has started to loosen, and Jongdae feels like a thousand kilos have lifted from his heart. Minseok gathers him close.
“It’s a crap time of year, and we both need to work on setting better boundaries so we don’t work too much.”
Jongdae’s able to laugh a little about that, with his face mashed against Min’s shoulder. Minseok squeezes him.
“I’ve been really upset,” Minseok continues.
Jongdae pulls away and looks up at him, but lets Minseok clutch at his hand.
“I should’ve said something, I didn’t realize it was so obvious. I’m sorry, Jongdae.”
Jongdae twines their fingers together. He doesn’t know what he did, but anything they can talk about, they can fix. He feels so much better, now that they’re talking. It was the silence that he couldn’t take.
It takes Minseok several tries to get started, which tells Jongdae how serious it is.
“I just. My – I don’t know why it bothers me so much, but this thing with my parents moving. Like, what’s even wrong with me? I haven’t lived there since I was nineteen, but every time I go over there to help them pack or get rid of stuff, it’s like digging into my heart with a shovel. I don’t even know what my problem is!”
Jongdae has to hug him then – because yes, obviously Minseok has been bothered by this for months, and Jongdae hates that he’s upset, but it doesn’t have anything to do with them at all, so Jongdae feels like he could take flight from sheer relief.
“So it’s not that I don’t want to go out with you, love,” Minseok says. “I just want to be home. I guess maybe I still thought about my parents’ house as home, but that’s going away. This is home now. This is where you are. Our space.”
He leans back and tips his face up to the ceiling.
“God, every week I’ve been running around like I’m on fire, and trying to be as helpful as I can to my parents and not yell at them for making their own decisions about where to live. And it’s like all week I can only think about how I can’t wait until Saturday. Wake up with you, have coffee, clean the house, and just be here, watching football and eating takeout. It’s like the one solid, peaceful thing that I can count on week in and week out.”
Jongdae could laugh at himself, for how all those months of worry evaporate at once. Minseok is right – they need to work less. They need to find better ways to make space for each other. But he’s also right that their each other really is their solid, peaceful thing.
“Except when your boyfriend drops the coffee pot,” he says, reaching out to touch Minseok’s face.
Minseok grins.
“Trying to ruin my beautiful Saturday!” he says. “Unfortunately for you, my faith in our ability to order a new one online sustains me.”
“I’ll pay for rush delivery, so we can stay home to snuggle and still have coffee tomorrow morning.”
Minseok’s smile turns softer.
“You were really worried, love?”
“I was,” Jongdae said. “Should’ve known better.”
“We have our whole lives to remind each other,” Minseok says.
“We do.”