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1.
Minho grumbles under his breath as he detangles his wired earphones and plugs them into the phone jack. It's a mild inconvenience, he knows it. One of these days, he’s really going to force himself to buy a new pair of AirPods that Jisung has been pestering him about.
Whatever, this does the job just as well as wireless earphones—the job being: to save his poor ears from suffering under the wrath of his members’ loud, incessant laughing.
He glares at the source of the noise, how dare these rowdy men interrupt his peaceful break time! Hyunjin was crouching down on the floor, clutching his stomach from laughing too hard. “Hannie, do that again!” He yells, body shaking from giggling uncontrollably.
Normally, he would’ve joined in on the fun—whatever fun they were having—and will probably be the one who is leading the laughing and the shouting. However, he is still a mortal being who is capable of getting socially drained in the middle of an exhausting two-week-long comeback promotion.
“Keep it down,” he says, getting their attention. His threat request was responded to with a series of yeps and got its thrown casually by the members. Yeah, they’re certainly not gonna keep it down.
He’s already positioned himself on the leather bench on the far right side of their waiting room. Even if the spot wasn’t getting enough ventilation and the bench was far too hard for his bum’s liking, he’ll do whatever it takes to sit as far away from the noise as possible.
Truth be told, when you’re in a group together with Hyunjin, Jisung, and Changbin, staying away from the noise is basically just a fever dream.
To kill his boredom, and to distract himself from the boisterous men at his side, he opens up his Youtube app and plays the first cute cat video that pops up on the Home tab. The rest of them were huddled around Felix’s phone, howling at whatever dance move Jisung was doing in front of the camera.
“Let me do the twerking thing too, hyung,” he heard Jeongin say. He felt his eyes bulge out of his sockets. Jeongin? Twerking? His head snaps in their direction and watches them once again, the cat video playing on his phone already forgotten.
He doesn’t get it, that TikTok thing. It was just any other app that has video clips on it. If it was up to him to give a verdict on the app, he would rate it a -10/10. Why would someone watch a 10-minute limited video when you could watch an hour-long documentary on Youtube?
Plus, he discovered that it was yet another distraction, after finding out that Felix and Hyunjin spent the entirety of their dance practice filming TikTok videos instead of practicing their new choreography. (He couldn’t bring himself to get mad at them though, the two of them looked very cute while dancing to an aegyo song.)
What his mind truly cannot decipher is… even Seungmin, they even got Seungmin, who was uninterested and detached from the growing world of social media trends, roped into their madness.
It’s certainly not that Minho was jealous and cranky that the app was taking most of Seungmin’s time and attention. It’s just that, what is so great about TikTok that it got Seungmin laughing and giggling every five minutes?
So no, he certainly doesn’t have a one-sided beef with a social media app. That TikTok could engulf Seungmin whole and erase his entire existence for all he cares.
He grudgingly resumed the cat video, his initial annoyance seeping out of him as he giggled quietly in the corner when the cat on screen tried to attack its reflection in the mirror. How cute , he thinks. If his members were cats instead, then maybe he would’ve enjoyed watching their TikToks.
“Hyung! Minho hyung!”
He huffs in annoyance and pauses the cat compilation video on his phone. He sits upright and faces the person who shamefully disturbed his entertainment. How rude, the cat was about to bonk its head on the mirror.
“Come here, join us,” Seungmin calls, hand waving up and down and smile growing bigger each second, signaling Minho to come over to their spot and join in whatever TikTok trend that they were doing this time.
Minho stared at him, unmoving, mentally trying to send brainwaves to Seungmin and telling him to fuck off. Sit your ass back there and have fun with your TikTok instead, Kim Seungmin.
When Seungmin sensed that Minho won’t budge from his seat, much to Minho’s annoyance, he walks over to his hyung and puckers his lips together in a pout. “Just this once. Pleaseeeee?”
Ha. Never in a million years would that trick work on me , is what he wanted to say. But Seungmin, with his big brown glassy eyes staring at his hyung, lips puckered and eyebrows raised, Minho is a goner.
Damn Kim Seungmin and his ability to use Minho’s soft spot for anything cute. Minho can’t help it though, Seungmin looked very much like a puppy begging for treats, ears droopy and paws reaching out for the snacks.
He quickly shook his head in an attempt to erase that thought from his head. He’s not a furry, okay? Seungmin just looked like a puppy, a very cute one, nothing more, nothing less.
Minho shot him a glare, Seungmin knew what he was doing.
He exited the Youtube app and turned his phone off.
You see, Minho still doesn’t get it, that TikTok thing. But what he gets, however, is his inability to deflect Seungmin’s cute pout. He sighs as he remembers the million other times that Seungmin has used this move on him, and it worked every. single. time.
Still, Minho didn’t do anything about it, so he fake-groaned as he walked over to their little circle to take part in their silly TikTok videos, lips curling into a small grin as he caught Seungmin smiling at him.
“Ohhh, Minho hyung is here!” Changbin says, scooting to his left to make space for Minho. “Hurry and explain, Lix, before hyung changes his mind.”
2.
“See you tomorrow!” He bids their choreography teacher goodbye as he heads out of the practice room. Today was tough , he thought. Winter is just around the corner, which means that it’s award show season, a never-ending series of practicing and performing for a whole month.
As soon as he exits the building, he then only realizes that he forgot his padded jacket inside, tucked in between the pillows on the couch. However, he’s already outside the building and was too lazy to go back and retrieve it.
He shrugs and continues walking on the way to their house. He’s wearing his hoodie anyway, that will shield his body from the cold, right? Halfway to his destination is when the universe starts to fuck with him just a little bit—because it started snowing.
He observed the tiny specs of snowflakes slowly cascade from the sky and rested on his hoodie. For something that is annoying and inconvenient, why is snow so pretty?
He blew the snowflake that fell on his nose and sprinted to their house. Not only did sprinting make him lose his breath, but it also made him bump into a certain someone named Kim Seungmin.
“Woah, back off!” The taller man exclaimed, taking a step back from him. “Minho hyung?”
“Ow,” he whispered, rubbing his forehead that hit Seungmin’s shoulder. “You were in the way.”
“What are you doing running around the neighborhood when it’s snowing? You might slip and fall.” Seungmin took off his jacket and wrapped it around Minho after noticing that the other man was shivering in his place. “And with just a hoodie on too,” Seungmin added with a tsk, unhappy about his hyung’s current choices.
“I left my jacket in the company. It was cold so I ran,” Minho replied, looking at the man before him. Seungmin was wearing a hoodie too, with his phone in his hands and a vaguely familiar app was running open.
“What are you doing outside when it’s snowing? Let’s go inside.”
Seungmin smiled at him, clear braces on full display. “I’ll follow in a few. It’s the first fall of snow.” He walked to a small tree in front of them and nested his phone in between two branches. “I’m filming a TikTok, there’s a trend going around.”
Minho narrowed his eyes. TikTok. Again.
Seungmin was an insanely pretty man with an equally pretty voice, so Minho already braced himself for any possible rivals that he might encounter. However, what he didn’t anticipate was that an app, an app , is gonna be his opponent for Seungmin’s attention.
“A TikTok? Really? You’re gonna willingly freeze your ass off just for a 15-second video?”
The younger man scoffed as he was pressing some buttons on the screen, Minho figured that he must be setting up the timer. “Mind you, I was perfectly and warmly dressed for the occasion. You’re the one willingly freezing your ass off walking home with just a single layer of clothing.”
Minho watched Seungmin as he selected the timer and pressed the start button. “Come join me,” he said, backing off so the phone camera can capture his whole body. “I’m heading inside,” Minho says, annoyed, as he glanced into the camera.
A mellow English song started playing, a familiar voice of a woman echoing through their front yard. Minho turned to Seungmin, only to find the younger man with closed eyes and outstretched arms, clearly enjoying the snowfall.
With legs shaking from the sudden chilly breeze that blew past them, he tried to walk over to their front door. He was too caught up in savoring the view in front of him—mind too busy coming up with words that can describe how pretty he thought Seungmin looked—that he forgot to look where he was walking and slipped on the snowy pavement.
Flailing around like a madman, he waddled over to Seungmin and latched onto him for support. Luckily, Seungmin didn’t notice his little accident. The man jolted at the sudden contact and his eyes flew open, only to find a flushed Lee Minho wrapped around his torso.
“What are you doing, hyung?”
“I’m cold and I need heat so I’m stealing yours,” Minho replies, voice muffled from where his face was buried in Seungmin’s chest.
He smiled to himself as he felt Seungmin put his arms around him. “Says the one who’s wearing a jacket.”
“Shut up.”
The song ended abruptly but the two of them remained standing outside, wrapped in each other’s arms. Minho then realized what they were doing and where they were, so he quickly unlatched himself from Seungmin with a, “Thanks for the heat,” before sprinting inside their house where Felix and Jeongin were obviously watching the scene from their living room window.
“Cute,” Seungmin mutters under his breath, slightly giggling as he watches a replay of the video. He saves the video and uploads it on his private TikTok account with the caption ‘🐶🐱 #firstfallofsnow.’
3.
“What do you want for lunch?”
Silence. “What do you want for lunch, Seungmin-ah?” He repeats.
Minho thought that he might be hearing things when he heard a tiny chuckle coming from beside him, except that the chuckle was indeed real, because Seungmin was beside him, giggling away on his phone screen.
He tapped Seungmin’s shoulder in annoyance. “What do you want for lunch?”
Seungmin turned to face him and removed an earphone bud from his ear, “Hmm?”
“Nothing,” he mumbles. He stood up from where he was sitting on their couch in the living room and walked over to their kitchen.
He looked back to check if Seungmin would follow him, but no, Seungmin was back at it again, now full-blown cackling at god knows what.
Fine, see if TikTok-nim could make your lunch.
Seungmin secretly observes Minho from the corner of his eyes, watching Minho work around the kitchen. He’s sulking , Seungmin thinks, as Minho chops the onions with a small put on his face. He knows just what to do.
☁️
“Hyung.”
His ears perk up at the call. He finally came home.
“You’re back,” he says, eyes still glued to his phone. The article that he’s reading about pandas is very informative, if only he was actually reading and not using it as a disguise to look busy while waiting for Seungmin to come home from his ‘errand.’
“Hyung,” Seungmin calls again.
He looks up, a witty retort on the tip of his mouth waiting to roll out, when his line of sight was covered with bright colors.
He backs out slightly, readjusting his vision.
There, he sees Seungmin, smiling down at him with a bouquet of roses, varying from pink and red buds.
“For me?” He asks softly.
His insides felt mushy and warm from the surprise before him. Who knew Seungmin could be this romantic?
“Was scrolling through TikTok and saw an ad for the newly-opened flower shop nearby,” Seungmin says. “Each rose has different meanings, by the way.”
Minho stares at him and points to the pink one, “What does this mean?”
“It symbolizes gratitude and appreciation,” he says. “And the red roses…” Seungmin trails off, cheeks slowly turning red, the same scarlet hue as the roses in his hands.
“The florist told me that it’s meant to be given to someone you love.” Seungmin takes Minho’s hand and gives him the bouquet. “My first thought was you.”
Okay, maybe TikTok wasn’t so bad after all.
+1
Under the guise of being curious about what got Seungmin, and the rest of the world, it seems, so invested in the app, Minho reluctantly downloads TikTok on his phone.
But truly, his main mission was to locate Seungmin’s infamous private TikTok account that he once overheard from Jisung and Changbin. Based on what he heard, he was even seen in one of the videos.
“I thought Minho hyung didn’t like TikToks?”
“I heard from Felix that Seungmin uploaded a video of them cuddling!” Changbin quietly shrieks to an excited Jisung.
Cuddling? Him? And Seungmin? The scandal!
“What’s his username? I wanna see.”
“It’s @ksmi—”
“Why are you sitting on the floor and eavesdropping like a weirdo?”
Oh fuck.
He looked up at the man smirking at him. He didn’t notice that there was a person behind him, now looming over his figure. Fucking Kim Seungmin and his power to magically show up at the right moment.
“I heard my name being casually thrown around, so I’m merely tuning in to the conversation,” he scoffs, ears already tinting a bright pink.
“Oh, are you sure? What are they talking about, anyway?”
“Something about TikTok…” he trails off. Seungmin stares at him. “...and something about us cuddling,” he shudders at the last part.
“I knew it,” Seungmin laughs and takes out his phone from his pocket. He held up the phone to Minho’s face and played a seemingly familiar video.
Minho’s eyes widened, it was the one taken from last week! His face flushed completely when he saw himself in the video, clinging onto Seungmin’s body as if it was the last thing on Earth that he could hold on to.
“Delete it.”
The younger man laughed and stuck out his tongue. What a brat. Seungmin went on his tippy toes and raised the phone up in the air. “Only if you can reach it.”
He huffed and retreated his hand that was about to tickle Seungmin’s side. He doesn’t want to risk accidentally getting elbowed in the face because Seungmin can be a little aggressive once he’s tickled. (He learned that the hard way when he ended up with a bruise in his jaw after tickling Seungmin awake.)
Whatever, two can play at that game.
☁️
“Okay, so what are we doing?”
Minho opens his TikTok app and turns the camera on, propping it up against the wall so the screen can fit the both of them.
He clicks the start button and sits back down on the floor beside Seungmin. As the timer counts down to a 0, an English song, one that is very familiar to Seungmin, started playing.
The younger man shook in laughter as soon as he recognized the song and the trend that came along with it.
“You know this trend is used for kissing your best friend.”
“It doesn’t explicitly say that you can’t do it with your boyfriend, does it?”
Seungmin giggles like a lovesick fool, “You’re so in love with me.”
“Don’t get ahead of yourself, Seungmin-ah, it’s just a trend.”
“Mhm, sure,” Seungmin whispers as he leaned forward to capture Minho’s lips.
And if Minho would be the one who won’t stop filming TikTok trends with Seungmin and uploading it on his own private account after this, it would be his secret to tell.