Work Text:
By the time Minho leaves the practice room - lights off and doors locked - Seungmin is already waiting for him down by the vending machines. His black hair is slightly ruffled, a byproduct of excessively running his hands through it during vocal training, and Minho has half a mind to stop himself from reaching out and messing it up even more. He looks hazy, soft around the edges, but his eyes still hold the familiar spark no matter how tired he appears.
“Took you long enough.” his voice is gravel against glass vocal cords. He pockets his phone, whatever he was looking at swiftly forgotten, and hands Minho a bright yellow can of tea. A little lemon mascot mocks Minho with its overwhelming enthusiasm for life, but he has no more fight left in his body. Well, at least for cartoon mascots.
“I told you before bribery won’t work on me.” Minho scoffs but accepts the can with a small, easy smile. Without much thought, he bumps the cold metal against Seungmin’s knuckles and watches the other wince at the contact.
“Yeah, yeah, let’s go, hyung.” Seungmin produces a black mask from his bag and pulls it over his nose. Blame it on the exhaustion, but Minho can't help but stare; the movement of his long fingers, simple and yet so strangely mesmerizing, soft and dark in the harsh white lighting of the company hallway. Seungmin notices. “I asked the manager to let us walk tonight.”
Minho lets a quiet “oh” slip out, as his mind catches up with the words, and he catches up with the younger man. He fixes the bag on his shoulder and fishes out his own mask (white, how ironic) from the depths of his pockets. It’s an old jacket, one that might’ve been Hyunjin’s at some point judging by how it hangs on his shoulders, but ownership over most things has long become a formality between them all. “And what if I didn’t want to walk? Have you considered that?”
Seungmin sends him a glance with a distinct lack of amusement and lets out a noncommittal hum. Minho should frankly feel offended. The other’s voice comes out muted as he crosses the lobby in leisurely paced strides. “Wouldn’t that suck, huh.”
Minho attacks him with the can again, this time aiming for the exposed sliver of skin between his hair and jacket collar. The cool touch lasts merely a second, but it’s enough to get the younger to hiss and squirm away. Minho’s satisfied smile remains hidden behind his crumpled mask, betrayed only by the crinkling of his eyes and an exhale through his nose. Serves him right.
Seungmin rolls his eyes and mutters some quiet complaint to no one in particular as he pushes the doors to the outside open. The fresh evening air comes in as an avalanche, invading Minho’s lungs and filling his whole being with the pale ghost of spring. After a day spent inside a mirror box of a room, staring at nothing but the harsh lines of his body contorting to heed the call of his own perfectionism (“mulishness” as Seungmin would supply, not that he’s any better), the sudden feeling of entirely unrestrained, open sky above him makes Minho’s bones ache all over again as if he didn’t spend proper 30 minutes doing cool-down stretches. The cool breeze is fire against the drying sweat at the roots of his hair, and Minho pauses to inhale through his teeth, tasting the bitterness of early blooms on his tongue. Seungmin is right there next to him, waiting patiently and swaying a little. He closes his eyes and turns his head upwards, breathing in deeply. A familiar cadence they fall into so easily - come together, get out, breathe. A moment cherished between the hunched shoulders and seeking eyes.
"Ready?" "Yeah."
They walk. It's not as crowded anymore, but that doesn't stop the two of them from bumping shoulders or grazing hands here and there, the gravity of each other's presence more than any actual concern for space. Minho opens the can of his tea with a crisp click of metal, and downs half the can in one gulp. It's bitter, and when he silently offers Seungmin some, the younger declines with a shake of his head.
"How was practice?" Seungmin breaches the silence, his voice settling back into something less strained. Minho makes a mental note to make him some tea when they get home.
"Not much different than it was with you." He sighs. "We went over some new ideas, Hyunjin showed me some songs he was thinking of covering. Felix did his stretches. The usual stuff."
Seungmin hums in acknowledgment, his eyes morphing into something more questioning a second later. Minho understands.
"I let them go early." He shrugs. Then adds, "They should rest more."
Minho doesn't let Seungmin throw out any accusation along the lines of "And you don't?", which he knows is sitting on the tip of his tongue, and instead returns the question.
"How was yours? Anything new?"
"In the 6 hours that we didn't see each other?" he mumbles out, no real bite behind the obvious sarcasm. "No, hyung, nothing new."
They leave it at that. Minho's mom used to joke that the absence of news is already good news, which was mostly about his more distant relatives who never seemed to call outside of needing help, but he supposes it can apply here too. He got his wisdom from new, after all.
It’s a precipice of a late evening, and the wind is starting to pick up. There is a strip of burnt orange peaking in between the buildings they pass by, and at times when the gaps are particularly wide Minho gets to watch the light glide across Seungmin’s form. The strands of his hair are set alight, looking almost golden; the wind just won’t stop playing with them, and it makes Seungmin scrunch his eyebrows and huff behind his mask and- and it’s a sight so lovely Minho wishes the world’s engineers would hurry up and invent already a way to transfer images from eyes to paper because no camera could possibly capture the intricate way Seungmin looks like spring itself right now.
If Seungmin notices that Minho is staring, which he probably does because Seungmin always notices everything, he doesn’t say anything. In fact, they walk in silence until the sun bids Seoul goodbye, and with it a nightly chill sets in across the busy streets. The already bright city around them ignites even more with each passing moment, bright neon and flashing lights blooming across every possible surface. It's beautiful in its own way, even to an eye that has grown accustomed to the sight.
There is an obvious downside to the kaleidoscope of lights around the city though, as it’s too much light to see the stars; even at a darker, clearer time. It pangs a little, a strange ache for something distant, that catches Minho entirely off-guard. He looks up, seeking… whatever answers the sky may hold for him but finds nothing but the maroon-ish dark expanse punctuated by a twinkling light of an airplane or two.
There is something, though.
It brings Minho a strange comfort to see a lone moon crescent hanging up above, a silent observer. No matter how bright and overwhelming Seoul gets, it's never enough to drown it out.
Minho sighs and looks over at Seungmin, only to find him with one of his fingers raised up in front of his face, one eye closed and staring up at the sky. As if sensing the other’s incredulous stare, he looks over and stares back.
“It’s waxing.”
“What?”
“The moon is waxing. You know, growing.”
“I know what a waxing moon is, dummy. What are you doing?”
Seungmin brings his hand down, flexes it, and suddenly looks uncharacteristically flustered, much to Minho’s confusion.
“That’s how you tell if it’s waxing or waning. If you bring your finger to the side and it makes a “P” it’s waxing.”
Minho keeps looking at him, legs moving on autopilot but his mind completely zeroed in on the man at his side, who grows more and more flustered by the minute.
“I- when I was a kid I remembered it through “growing pains”,” he air quotes, “crescent makes a “P”, “growings pains”, it’s growing... You- you get it.”
Minho finally looks away from Seungmin and brings up his own finger to hover right around where the crescent hangs. He’s not entirely sure what he expected to happen because his finger sure does make an English letter “P” where it aligns with the apparently waxing moon. He hums.
“Did you come up with that yourself?”
“Sort of? My parents really wanted me to jumpstart learning English as a kid so they sent me to weekly tutoring. My teacher mentioned it once.” Seungmin laughs softly at the memory. “The only thing I got out of those classes was astronomy trivia in a foreign language.”
Minho doesn’t even bother suppressing a smile at the image of a young Seungmin with eyes full of stars, matching the stories his tutor would tell him.
“Did you like the stars a lot as a kid?” he finds himself asking on instinct, grasping at the first thing that comes to mind, if only just to keep Seungmin talking in that soft way of his.
“I did. Like- a lot actually. Begged my parents for a telescope when I was 7, and then stayed up every night for a month straight because of it. My mom hated it, we had to draw up a whole formal contract about only being allowed to stay up on weekends, but getting a bunch of star maps in return.”
“A contract, really?” Minho scoffs in amusement. They stop at a busy intersection and have to actually slot together, shoulder to shoulder, in order to hear each other properly. Minho hovers a protective hand at the small of Seungmin’s back, a touch barely there.
“It wasn't my idea, okay,” he sends him a leveling stare, as they start to cross. “Plus, I got some really cool maps out of it.”
They weave their way between two older-looking buildings and slip into a much quieter street, winding between houses and smaller stores and restaurants. Even though the bigger streets are still close by, it gets marginally quieter, and the two of them exhale in relief.
Seungmin gets a face-full of steam when they pass by an area with several small street food stalls, and Minho laughs at his disgruntled huffs. Maybe if it were a different night, with less exhaustion and more vigor, they would’ve stopped to eat, taken a detour to find a quiet corner to continue talking, or even invited others along with them. But at this moment, eyes stinging with strain and muscles stiff from exertion, Minho is just glad that he got to be here at all. While he and Seungmin usually finish their respective training around the same time, on most days their journey back entails sitting quietly in a van, napping. Their walks are a rarity, especially these days; a pocket of comfort outside time they never get to fully indulge in.
“You know, I really liked the moon back then.” Seungmin breaches the silence again, quieter than before. “When I started keeping a diary I would address it as a letter to the Moon. Tell it about my day and what was going on. I thought I was keeping it company.”
Minho barely suppresses a coo of just- pure adoration.
“I always felt so bad, that it’s just up there, so far away all alone, and I would get all worked up about it too. Like, I obviously couldn’t really comprehend the scale of the distance yet, but when I’d read about it I would just- I got so sad.”
Minho wants to reach out and pull Seungmin into a side hug, in an instant desire to comfort whatever part of kid-Seungmin may still linger within the man, but before he can act upon it the other bursts into a bashful laugh.
“Oh god- you’re lucky you weren’t there when I was told that most stars in the sky are dead.” Minho gasps dramatically at the mental image. “It’s not even a true fact, but man-”
“I could only imagine, wow.”
“Yeah.”
Minho watches Seungmin exhale and lift his eyes to the stars once again. He wonders, for a moment, what the other feels when he looks up. A familiarity maybe? Nostalgia? Or if it’s still a sight tinged in sadness, even if misplaced.
“I got so hung up over it I started trying to keep track of all the stars I could see.” He gets quiet again, a somber tone coloring his voice. “I think I was just starting to understand the whole concept of death and everything, so it really scared me. To think that I’m looking at a ghost of a star, and if I look away or even blink, it could just- disappear. And what if- what if I forgot it. Or never got to look at one in the first place.”
His words are barely a whisper.
“What if a star appeared, and then dimmed without me even noticing it.”
Seungmin’s stare is blank, directed up above still, and it pangs Minho as much as his words do. He thinks about himself then. Imagines.
Going through life, unseen, unsensed by him. Never making it into the team, never auditioning in the first place, never realizing dancing feels more comfortable, more him, than breathing sometimes. Never meeting all of them. Passing by Seungmin on the street, perhaps, making eye contact but never recognizing each other. Two perfect strangers who would never even know about a spring night like this, walking side by side through a quiet neighborhood, knuckles grazing.
He thinks back, suddenly, to the moment a mere hour earlier, when the sunset illuminated Seungmin’s face and made him look so ethereal. An ephemeral moment of pure beauty, caught between the scrunch of his eyebrows and the twinkle in his eyes. What a shame it would be, for no one to see him like that, for him, Minho, to never get to witness Seungmin.
“Is this-” his voice is suddenly hoarse, and he winces at the sound, “Is this why you got into photography? You know, capturing moments and all…”
Seungmin turns to him with the usual teasing glint back in his eyes.
“Aw, hyung, are you getting all philosophical on me, huh?”
“Wh- you brought it up!” He sputters indignantly. “Dumbass.” It gets Seungmin to laugh, so Minho lets it slide this time.
“But,” he draws out the sound, “to answer your question, maybe? I don’t know, I always liked taking pictures. It’s funny, because it’s sorta unnecessary with us now, if you think about it. We’re practically on camera at all times. But, I still want to have some memories that are just for me.”
He turns to look at Minho, eyes clear. Below his mask, he’s probably smiling, if Minho had to guess, but it’s not important. Because Minho just looks back, all words halting, unnecessary.
They pause on a street corner, right below a streetlight. The dorms are still a little way out; a couple more alleyways and less obvious shortcuts, but this is a familiar stop they wouldn’t dare bypass.
Minho clears his throat, breaks eye contact, and feels himself flush, from the tip of his ears and down his neck. Curse you, Kim Seungmin; and thank you, face masks. The other doesn’t relent though and keeps his eyes fixed, silently following the motion of Minho crouching near a streetlamp and clicking his tongue.
“I really hope she’s- ah, there you are, baby!” Minho coos, his voice immediately raising in pitch.
The baby in question is a small orange cat, slinking her way out of the darkness and towards Minho’s outstretched hand.
“Hello there, cutie! Aw, did you miss us?” The cat takes a moment to sniff Minho’s fingers, but deems him a friend quickly enough, and graciously accepts pats and scritches. “Here, baby, just give me a second-”
Minho digs into his bag and produces from the depth a packet of cat treats.
“There you go.” He rips it open and presents a handful to the cat, who only takes a singular sniff before digging in. Minho balances himself where he is squatting, and continues patting the cat with his free hand.
“Do you have treats stashed in every bag you own?” Seungmin’s voice rings out up above, and Minho cranes his neck back to lock eyes with him, utterly unimpressed.
“No, only the ones I take to the studio,” he scoffs, “for this exact occasion. Keep up, Kim Seungmin.”
The younger doesn’t retort anything back, and just crouches down by the other, simply observing the cat and an obviously smiling Minho, softly whispering praises at the animal.
“Are you not gonna pet her? You’re so cruel, Seungmin-ah.”
He raises an eyebrow at the other’s scandalized tone but still reaches out a timid hand, slowly, as not to startle the stray. The cat repeats her earlier motions of sniffing a stranger’s fingers, but this time doesn’t seem particularly interested in letting Seungmin touch her and goes back to licking Minho’s fingers.
“Who’s the cruel one now, huh.” Minho can practically hear Seungmin’s pout and a laugh bubbles in his chest, escaping in rapid “ha”s. He shakes out whatever remains in the bag and plops it in Seungmin’s hand. Without a second of hesitation, he curls his hand around Seungmin’s, larger and much warmer, and reaches out towards the cat again.
“C’mon, baby, don’t be mean to Seungminnie.” This time the cat is much kinder indeed, which is mostly a product of the treats, but they will take whatever win they get.
The touch of their hands is soft, so soft. Minho could realistically pull away at any moment now, his support wasn’t really necessary in the first place. But he doesn’t. He wouldn’t. Instead, he rubs his thumb across the ridge of Seungmin’s hand in a comforting motion. His eyes are trained on the cat, so he doesn’t see the way Seungmin looks back at him with twinkling eyes.
“Are you just going to keep calling her “baby” every time we see her?”
Minho sputters.
“Well, it’s not like she’s mine to name, but I guess we can come up with something for her. I don’t know what you have against “baby” though…” he mumbles the last part, unbearably cute if you were to ask Seungmin.
“Hmmm…” Seungmin taps his chin in an exaggerated show of thinking, as the cat finally finishes all of her treats. “Garfield.”
“No.”
The two of them immediately dissolve into soft laughter, much to the cat’s dismay, who starts bumping her head against Seungmin’s hand, obviously seeking attention. His fingers immediately move underneath her chin, still a little hesitant, and content purring fills the air around them. Minho leans into Seungmin’s side, as much as he can without sending the two of them toppling to the pavement, and reaches out to pet the cat as well.
“It should be something bright and sunny. She’s so affectionate and warm, aww.”
“Is “Garfield” not bright and sunny to you?”
“Oh my god, shut up.”
They spend another quiet moment, just showering the cat in affection and basking in each other’s warmth before Minho speaks up again.
“I think we should call her Yellow.”
Seungmin fixes him a look. Minho pinches him before he can even open his mouth.
“If you say “Garfield” one more time-”
“Fine, fine!” Seungmin squirms away and raises back to his full height, momentarily towering over the older. “A cat called Yellow. Tsk.”
“Don’t tsk at me, heathen.”
Minho takes a moment to engulf the cat’s face in his hands and gives her some last parting scritches before he takes Seungmin’s outstretched hand and hauls himself upwards. The cracking of his knees goes uncommented as per Minho’s threatening glare.
“Bye, baby Yellow. We’ll see each other again soon hopefully, okay? Don’t miss us too much.”
The cat, Yellow, meows back at them loudly and slinks back into the darkness out of which she came. Minho follows her tiny shape as far as his eyes allow him until his attention is brought back to the man in front of him. They are barely a breath apart, and Seungmin’s fingers immediately begin to swipe at Minho’s jacket, much to his amusement.
“Aish, hyung, you’re covered in cat hair now. What are your cat brothers going to say, hm?” There’s a cute lilt to his voice, barely inching on a whine, and it makes Minho chuckle. His fingers are deft and precise, brushing off his jacket, with maybe a bit too much fervor than necessary. Not that either of them would comment on it.
“They’ll understand us, I’m sure.”
“We”, “us”. It’s so easy for them to slip into a familiar pattern of simply being in each other’s space, teasing and understanding and co-existing.
Seungmin’s hands slide down from Minho’s shoulders, press lightly on the lengths of his arms, and linger at his sleeves, where his fingers peak out.
“Your hands are so cold, hyung.” He says with a wince and an edge of worry.
Minho just smiles, eyes crinkling and ears warming up yet again, and laces their fingers.
“Guess you’ll have to hold them then.”
They start walking again, on the final stretch towards the dorms. It is much warmer, Minho notices, with Seungmin’s hand around his, both at the point of contact and deep within his chest. Whatever nightly chill continues to creep around, wind breaking through the barrier of his jacket, is simply no match to the way the swinging of their joint hands makes him feel. Warm. Safe.
As they are inching closer and closer to home, their feet naturally seem to slow down - an attempt to make the moment last longer.
Seungmin clears his throat to get Minho’s attention, as if he isn’t the only thing that exists to him right now. He’s back to being nervous again, and Minho wonders at the way they’re mirroring each other from an earlier conversation.
“Hyung…” he starts, “do you… do you believe in fate?”
Minho’s eyes widen, caught off-guard. He regains his composure with a chuckle.
“Hey, who’s getting philosophical now, huh?”
Seungmin whines back something unintelligible and swats the other’s shoulder with his unoccupied hand.
Minho swats back, of course, if only to grasp Seungmin’s hand for a fraction of a second.
“Okay, okay-” they settle with matching huffs and hidden smiles, “I guess… I don’t really think about it too much, but I guess not really. At least in, like, a grand, “destined for incredible things” way. I just don’t think any of us can claim to know how the universe works, honestly. I know that I know nothing and all that, y’know.”
“You definitely know nothing.”
Minho swats at him again but continues.
“I guess, I prefer to think that I just got particularly lucky this time around, that’s all.”
Minho looks at Seungmin curiously, at how quiet he suddenly gets. He stares straight ahead, looking through the air, unfocused. His voice, when he eventually speaks up, is full of so much warmth and softness that it makes Minho blush all over again.
“So everything is just a lucky coincidence?”
Minho hums in affirmative.
“Then…” he turns to look at the older, “then I guess I’m lucky too.”
The dorms are finally in sight, right there, just across the street. The grip of their hands remains.
“Minho-hyung,” he looks at him with what Minho could only call pure adoration, a look he mirrors himself so much these days. ‘I’m glad our orbits aligned. I’m glad we got to witness each other.”
Minho blinks rapidly, suddenly overwhelmed by the sheer warmth of their touch, and Seungmin’s eyes, and his soft words, and the chilly air, the day's worries and the evening’s comfort, and everything’s everything. How lucky he is.
He doesn’t say anything, just brings their joint hands up to his mouth and presses a kiss to Seungmin’s knuckles. It’s barely a pressure, a little awkward through the fabric of the mask, but it’s enough to make the younger flush and gasp. He presses again, and again, in hope that the unbearable, profound affection he holds for the younger communicates clearly enough.
Seungmin’s other hand, unwavering, settles at the side of Minho’s head, bringing him to a halt. His lovely fingers brush away the hair from his forehead, gently graze his eyebrows and linger for a moment at his cheek, cupping his face.
“Thank you for walking with me, hyung.”
Minho smiles and pulls him to cross the street, towards their home. He chuckles at the way Seungmin staggers for a second, but with nothing but love in him.
Minho thinks back to the sunlight dancing across Seungmin’s face, all the times he got to see that before, and all the times he’ll get to witness it again, in the future.
“Of course.”