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When Jisung’s fingernails rake the meat of his thigh for the fifth time in as many seconds, Minho can’t help but flinch.
Darling, he thinks with a foolishness he can’t afford, don’t do that. But thinking isn’t the same as saying, so he uses brute force instead.
“Hyung. Let go.” Jisung’s fingers quiver inside Minho’s vice grip.
“No.” You’re hurting yourself.
Jisung lets out an agitated exhale and Minho wishes that he could tuck it right back into his lungs, revert his anxiety into the contentment of a few hours prior, before the lukewarm reception they received on the pitch for their next album.
Instead, he does something only marginally less protective: smooths Jisung’s curled fingers straight and pretends like he knows how to read palms.
His thumb drags across a random crease near the base of Jisung’s pinky finger, “Look at your corporate success line, Sung-ah. See how it gets a little faded in the middle?
Jisung unsuccessfully tries to yank his hand back, but Minho only holds on tighter, “That’s where we are now. But look! It picks up again,” he squeezes at the line’s thick tail. “This is only temporary and capitalism will ultimately prevail in our favor!”
Jisung glares at him through tear-specked eyelashes, “You’re making that up. Corporate success line? That’s not a thing.”
“You must be mistaken. I’m actually incapable of lying,” Minho lies.
Jisung glares harder but Minho can see the corners of his mouth trying to wobble upwards.
Minho’s goal is to see a real Jisung-smile, though, so he examines his hand with renewed vigor. “Oh? Your JYP line is interesting. Seems like he might want to eat ramyeon with you sometime soon.”
“Hyung,” Jisung curls into himself with a groan, but not fast enough to hide the helpless, open-mouthed grin splitting his face.
“Don’t shoot the messenger!” That’s what Minho hears himself reply anyway. His mind is disconnecting from his body, sidetracked somewhere in the soft expanse of Jisung’s hand.
-
Later that day, after the exact texture of Jisung’s skin has crossed Minho’s mind one time too many, he looks up the basics of palmistry. Most of the sources he finds focus on three main features:
I. The head line, which explains the way one processes information and directs their thoughts.
II. The life line, which demonstrates physical health as well as the energy with which one manages their world.
III. The heart line, which indicates how one relates to other people and wishes others would relate to them.
Apparently, the depth, length, and shape of these lines detail the personality of their possessor in an actual reading.
Hm. Seems complicated.
Minho decides that he prefers the straightforwardness of the JYP line. Though in fairness, he’s biased towards anything that comes with a Jisung-smile.
-
Bias, compounded by Minho’s poorly suppressed desire to touch Jisung literally all the time: that’s probably why the palm reading—something that was meant to be a one and done Jisung-smile inducing shenanigan—happens a second time.
(Jisung had frowned the world’s saddest Jisung-frown after he spilled Iced Americano all over his new shoes. What else was Minho supposed to do?)
-
And suddenly twice becomes thrice becomes eight times becomes Jisung personally requesting readings when Minho goes too long without offering:
“Linoring, can you tell me if bok choy will be in stock at the supermarket today?” Jisung looks at Minho with his roundest eyes.
No living creature, Minho included, is immune to Jisung’s roundest eyes. “It depends. Do you want the interpretation based on your vegetable line or your grocery line?”
Jisung scoffs, “Don’t be silly. Obviously I need both.”
Minho’s traitorous heart swells.
I. Head
How did Jisung’s happiness become a consideration in what Minho does and doesn’t do? Minho mulls the question over during the van ride to a recording session, watching as Jisung tries and fails to get his neck pillow to compromise with his headrest.
Minho doesn’t realize he’s moved to pin it in place until he sees his own hand reaching over the empty seat between them.
Jisung mashes his face against Minho’s knuckles in thanks, “Finally. I couldn’t fall asleep with this damn thing moving around.” Minho doesn’t say anything. He’s just a little stuck on the smooth press of Jisung’s cheek, that’s all.
Luckily, Jisung doesn’t seem to pick up on Minho’s blankness, “Have you ever heard a song that makes you feel like you’re turning blue…? How can I explain it... ” He fiddles with the airpod in his left ear. “Like you’re turning blue,” he repeats lamely.
“Blue… like sad?” Minho asks, because Jisung’s thought processes are seldom conventional. It’s probably a side effect of being dropped on his head as a baby, albeit at an unfairly advantageous angle.
“No! No, the opposite. Blue like the sky!” Jisung elaborates, like it’s a perfectly clear explanation. “Like your blood is boiling. So I guess, confident? Empowered?” He nods to himself, “I want to write music that replicates that feeling.”
Replicate a feeling. Minho’s chest tickles. What a very Jisung thing to say. To him, feelings aren’t a means to an end; they are the end. His emotions rule him, too vivid to disobey.
This is probably the part in the conversation where Minho should tease him for being cheesy, but he can’t bring himself to do it, not when he’s so earnest. “That’s great, Sung-ah.”
Maybe that earnestness is what got Minho in the first place. It eroded his defenses in innocent fractions, which became whole numbers, which became a permanent Jisung-shaped floater in Minho’s peripheral vision.
I. Head, continued
“Jisungie, palm.” Jisung dutifully complies, wedging the shopping bags he had been holding between his shoes.
Minho takes his sweet time re-adjusting Jisung’s hand under the lights of the subway tunnel. “I’d avoid walking under any hanging flower pots today. Your gravity line isn’t looking too hot.”
“Isn’t it a little late for that? There’s literally thousands of pounds of concrete above us right now.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Minho disregards the squint being sent his way in favor of flattening Jisung’s palm against his own. Lets himself be a hint reckless in the disorder of the commuter crowd, threading their fingers together in what he hopes is a casual way. “It cancels out because I’m here.”
Jisung smiles faintly at the intersection of their bodies, hunches a bit. “If you say so.”
Even his droopy string bean posture is cute. It’s making Minho’s cells vibrate. Could this be the sky-blue feeling Jisung mentioned?
A few minutes later, when Jisung is busy losing his mind over a rat he sees on the tracks, Minho steals one of the bags at his feet so he doesn’t have an excuse to let go when they get on the train.
II. Life
The fact of the matter is that Minho depends on Jisung.
Searches him out for things big and small; needs the comfort of his presence during challenging times as much as his simple company in the periods in between.
The thought strikes him as he and Jisung work together to tackle the kitchen tangerine pile that Chan restocks every Saturday.
Jisung is up first in their two-person system. At this point he’s the designated peeler because Minho dies a little inside—and is not afraid to complain about it ad nauseum—when the rind gets under his nails. He rips the peel off in tiny, ragged pieces, depositing the stripped fruit into a ceramic bowl.
Next, Minho breaks the tangerines into chunks and feeds them both. Jisung is banned from this role because he’s a distraction-prone clown and will forget that they're supposed to be eating. Today, his hands also need to be free so he can swipe through his Webtoon update.
Every so often he ignores the fruit Minho presses to his lips, instead opting to recap the latest developments in the story he’s reading. He always makes sure to take the proffered fruit delicately between his teeth when he’s done talking.
Then it’s quiet again. A grounding, comfortable quiet.
Minho likes Jisung’s silence as much as his words, because no one else is silent like Jisung, expressive and present even in the calm. It’s impossible to not feel at home in the firm brace of his elbows against the countertop, the stray beam of afternoon sunlight that frames him in gold.
It’s a fact: Minho would be untethered without Jisung. Incomplete, even. It’s kind of nauseating. His field of vision wobbles dangerously.
Right on cue, the freckle on Jisung’s left cheek twitches towards the ceiling in amusement. “You’re staring, darling. Are you sleepy?”
Minho’s fingers scrape dumbly at the bottom of the bowl but there’s no more fruit.
II. Life, continued
Jisung is his own anchor. He’s someone who lives deeply within himself, whose first and last need is independence and by extension, solitude.
This is exactly why he’d probably be able to pass through his everyday life quite easily without Minho.
Maybe this assessment is slightly ironic considering that Minho is sitting in Jisung’s bed as per his invitation, as per Jisung’s obvious concern about the tiredness he thinks Minho is feeling.
(Minho isn’t tired; he’s in love. But it’s the thought that counts.)
“Hyung,” Jisung murmurs from where his head rests in Minho’s lap, “give me one of your palms? I need to check something.” Minho is surprised into obedience, dangling a hand over Jisung’s face for easy access.
Jisung reaches up to spread his fingers wide, before bending them into an assortment of complicated shapes. It’s amusing until his eyebrows crease in concentration and Minho is left feeling incredibly shy.
He scrutinizes the clothes heaped over the back of Jisung’s desk chair to take his mind off of it.
Jisung suddenly gives a theatrical gasp and giggles to himself, batting at Minho’s middle. “Your tangerine rind tolerance line, hyung. It’s like…” The giggling balloons into a belly laugh, “Janky.”
How rude. And nitpicky. Minho may be riding high on prolonged physical contact and two varieties of Jisung-laughter, but he will never take slander: “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“It means you need a corrective procedure, stat,” Jisung says seriously, craning his neck to meet Minho’s eyes. “Watch.”
He fishes a fragment of peel from the pocket of his sweatpants and places it on top of Minho’s now upturned hand. “Don’t move an inch. This is the riskiest part.”
His hand slaps over Minho’s in what is essentially a horizontal high five, sandwiching the peel in the process.
A beat ticks by. Then, Jisung weaves their digits together, taps the back of their joined hands against his cheek with an air of immense self-satisfaction. “Looks like the operation was a success. Now that I’ve transferred you some of my rind mojo you can take a turn peeling the tangerines every so often.”
What an idiot. It would be so easy to kiss him from this position, just a simple bend at the waist, really. That would shut him up.
It’s a familiar impulse: Jisung’s every action fishhooks directly into Minho’s stupidest, sappiest inhibitions, and he’s perpetually left fighting a losing battle with its line. He’s already losing; it would be so easy to kiss him, to submit to the metaphorical fishing line at long last.
It would be, that is, if Jisung relied on–no, needed–Minho even half the amount that Minho needs him.
That’s the core issue: Minho is certain that Jisung cares about him. He’s just equally certain that Jisung doesn’t need him.
As long as they don’t feel the same way, Minho will act cautiously. He refuses to become the cause of Jisung’s sadness or confusion or anger or any emotion accompanied by anything less than a Jisung-smile.
Meanwhile, Jisung continues to clutch Minho’s hand. The tangerine rind splinters tackily in the gaps where their skin doesn’t meet.
-
Business progresses as usual. Except it doesn’t because ever since Jisung made the move to pick up Minho’s hand first, Minho has gotten even worse at pretending like he doesn’t want to constantly touch Jisung. And that’s saying something.
“Hannie, palm. I need to check your UberEats line to figure out what’s going on with my lunch order.”
Jisung sighs, “My line for your food? That doesn’t even make sense.” He leans forward to present his hand anyway, “Admit it. You want to hold my hand soooo bad.”
Minho freezes midair, stopped cold by embarrassment and the tiniest shadow of fear: “It was supposed to be here an hour ago. I’m just making sure that my delivery driver isn’t stranded in a ditch somewhere.” Freeze was a misnomer with the way his ears are starting to burn.
“You don’t have to make excuses. My hands are always open for you, my sweet hyung~!”
The fishing line jerks taut. “You won’t have anything to open when I’m done with you.”
Jisung cradles Minho’s paralyzed hand like it’s something precious: “My big baby. You’re such a fool.”
III. Heart
And so read my lines becomes code for hold my hand. This doesn’t mean that Minho no longer enjoys screwing with Jisung, especially when he managed to coax him outside on a day as nice as this one. Nothing beats the greenness of spring-summer.
He traces a curve between Jisung’s thumb and index finger, “Your balding line is looking pretty prominent. Your days as lead visual are numbered, Han Jisung. I’d say you have until age twenty eight, tops.”
“No! Not my luscious locks! They’re all I have!” Jisung uses his remaining hand to clutch at his hair, aghast.
“I might be able to revise my interpretation for a price,” Minho amends, squeezing his eyes shut with a pucker of his lips.
So maybe he likes to torture himself sometimes, tempt fate a little. He’s only human.
But someone must have nudged the sun just shy of its usual location, because Minho undoubtedly flew too close, knows it for a fact when he feels a kiss, gentle and star-warm brushing the seam of his mouth.
Minho doesn’t have to open his eyes to know it’s Jisung, can feel it in the way he cups the half-halo of his balding line against one of Minho’s cheekbones to hold them both steady as he goes in for another.
He cracks his eyelids anyway. It turns out to be a mistake because it means he has to watch Jisung pull away in agonizing frame-by-frame detail, witness the way words are forming forebodingly on his tongue. Sorry, he’ll say, I wasn’t thinking. I guess I got carried away. Was feeling a little too blue, as in the sky.
But these days Minho acts on fishing-line rashness more than anything else, so he slides the pin back into the grenade. Allows himself to seal the distance once more, swallow Jisung’s regrets before they can ever see the light of day.
Allows himself, for one shining moment, to pretend like Jisung needs him back.
The sensation is honeylike, sweeter and sweeter until Minho’s fingers are jittering from sugar overload and Jisung’s undivided attention.
Jisung kisses with the same earnestness he radiates in every other part of his life. It’s palpable: this is the person that declares Minho his soulmate, pours his whole self into his work, reshaped some vital part of Minho’s brain in his likeness.
Eventually, Jisung starts snickering so hard that he has to detach himself. He’s flushed pink against the grass. “I better not go bald after all that!” Minho rolls his eyes but his shoulders are already shaking from laughter.
They don’t talk about the kissing.
III. Heart, continued
They don’t talk about the kissing, but it keeps happening—on picnic blankets, under umbrellas, in beds—until read my lines becomes code for hold my hand, becomes code for kiss me until you physically can’t.
“What are we doing?” Jisung asks one night, in the aftermath of some particularly vigorous palm reading.
It’s worse because Jisung pauses in the middle of washing his face over the bathroom sink to raise the question. Worse still because Minho was trying to load the toothbrush he keeps in Jisung’s care, but now his fucking hands are trembling.
Foam glistens cruelly on Jisung’s forehead, his temples. Minho blinks several times in quick succession. Maybe when he next opens his eyes his self-indulgent fantasy won’t be on death row.
The clump of suds that slides down Jisung’s cheek is a guillotine. It’s too late.
In all fairness Minho did this to himself, had it coming from the instant he prevented Jisung from apologizing after their first accidental kiss.
Jisung’s face is warping with something. Minho doesn’t want to see it. Doesn’t want to think about what it means. He brushes his teeth at breakneck speed, leaving Jisung to splash away his remaining soap bubbles. Climbs into Jisung’s bed and feigns sleep before he can be chased down with another unanswerable question.
In a parallel universe with different rules, Minho could wish Jisung into needing him back.
He’d surrender to the constant snag of lovesick delusion, do shit like hand feeding Jisung citrus fruit for the sole purpose of kissing it out of his mouth. Jisung would say get your own, greedy, but he’d already be turning sky-blue. Minho would be a little dizzy with the knowledge that it was him and only him wielding the dye.
III. Heart, continued, ending
The beams of the early sun kindle the wall opposite the window in warm toned stripes. Jisung’s exposed earring winks from where he’s side-sleeping next to Minho.
These are the perfect conditions for Minho to make his stealthy exit from Jisung’s bed. Then he could keep pretending like he hadn’t almost made his gums bleed in his haste to run away the night before. Not that he got very far.
Of course he didn’t. Jisung was the one in pursuit.
Jisung stirs in his blanket pile, bleary-eyed. Too late. Too late. His lips unfasten and Minho is sewn to the sheets, fixed on the shadows at the back of Jisung’s mouth, on Jisung’s cheek freckle, on his own fear. “Hyung, baby, what are you thinking?”
Minho can’t answer because he isn’t thinking. His brain never quite recovered after he read Jisung’s palm for the first time and now he’s trapped in an incessant cycle of seeing-feeling-impulsively-acting.
It’s happening again. His hand moves without his consent, making the short journey to Jisung’s cheek. Jisung softens into the touch. They stay like that for so long that Minho almost forgets, almost falls back asleep.
But then the blankets are shifting with a pop because Jisung is twisting to stretch out his spine. “You do know–about last night–it’s not what we’re doing that’s important, right? I’d be happy grocery shopping. What I meant yesterday… What I should have asked is…”
Jisung’s window-facing cheekbone. The bridge of his nose. They’re doused in kitchen-tangerine orange as he clambers to his knees to look down at Minho.
“Your heart line. What does it say?”
Light doesn’t normally have a sound, does it? Because in that moment it hums, wave after wave of white noise crashing into Minho’s eardrums.
He should float away in the flood. It would be the cautious thing to do.
But he’s suspended against the current. The culprit is the fishing line and its stubborn hook, Jisung’s knobby knuckled hands fisting in the blankets.
“Does it matter?” Minho mumbles bonelessly from the mattress, “You don’t need me. Not like I need you.”
Time stagnates as comprehension trickles across Jisung’s face.
Mortifying. It’s absolutely fucking mortifying that Minho is this weak.
“You’re right. I don’t need you.”
Minho is numb, but it’s okay. As long as Jisung isn’t hurt in the fallout.
“I don’t need you.” The room sharpens as Jisung’s fists unfurl and flutter towards Minho like he can’t stop himself, “But I want you.”
Minho fractures between the crosshairs of head, life, and heart.
“Loving you isn’t an obligation; I don’t have to do it.” Jisung shifts his weight, makes intense eye contact with nothing. “I want you–love you–on my own free will, because you’re the best person I know.”
Minho’s head starts to swim, though from tenderness or vertigo he’s not sure.
The concepts of need and want are fundamentally at odds. Asymmetrical.
Asymmetrical. Not unreciprocal; not lacking balance.
Jisung’s emotions break him down. Minho makes him laugh.
Minho needs support. Jisung's independence is enough for two.
Jisung peels their fruit. Minho feeds them both.
Jisung’s thought processes are seldom conventional.
This makes sense. This makes sense.
Minho’s blood is boiling. Maybe this is what turning blue feels like? No. Minho has felt this before. This is murderousness.
“Han Jisung,” Minho focuses on the ceiling like his life depends on it, “you just rebooted my brain in the most unpleasant way possible. If you ever do that again, I will not hesitate to sell your entire rock collection on Craigslist.”
“You’d rather I phrase my touching confession differently, huh?” Jisung deposits his bony ass on Minho’s thighs, pokes him in the stomach, “Say that I don’t want anyone else to read my JYP line? Grovel on my knees for your hand—pun intended—in boyfriendship?”
How insufferable.
Minho doesn’t hesitate to haul Jisung closer by the back of his neck, breathes the answer down his throat.
IIII. Head-Life-Heart
Minho stops slurping his pink lemonade to bother Jisung. “Darling, palm.”
Jisung keeps scribbling in his lyric notebook. Their picnic blanket is in the shade, but somehow his legs still look like they’re getting sunburned.
Minho chucks a tangerine in the vicinity of Jisung’s head.
That gets his attention.
Jisung blinks expectantly. The breeze makes his fratty tank top billow for a split second. “Aren’t you going to mention which line you’re going to check?”
“No.” Minho isn’t in the business of pretending anymore.
“Wow,” Jisung’s eyebrows shoot up, “You want to hold my hand soooo bad.” He laces his hands behind his head in defiance.
And abruptly, renewedly, Minho understands. Feels it, because it’s lancing through his own ribs, channeled through the lightning rod of Jisung’s bare arms:
Gratitude, in its bluest hue.
Wanted. Trusted. Secure. Grateful. Happy. Han Jisung and his singular soul makes Minho feel them all at once, all the time, and the realization knocks him directly onto his metaphorical rear end.
How revolting. Minho needs to get it together, and he’ll start by addressing Jisung’s sorry excuse for a taunt. “Actually, I do want to hold your hand. Quite badly.”
He unceremoniously snatches one of them. “Is that a crime? Am I really going to serve time for wanting to hold my cute boyfriend’s hand? Besides, according to your skinship line, you like it when I hold your hand.”
Jisung ducks his head. When he raises it again Minho’s heart soars into the sun, because he’s beaming his best Jisung-smile. “Of course I do, baby.”