Archive of Our Own ^beta

Seokmin has been out of work for three months, at this point. Three long months.

There’s nothing planetside—he’s exhausted every avenue, every contact he’s built up over the last four years of living here. Nothing he’s qualified for, anyway. Nothing that would pay the rent on his apartment past the end of this month, which is where his lease ends.

“An entire fucking year in space,” Seokmin moans. It’s largely directed into the mouth of his beer glass.

“It’s not like we wouldn’t dock,” Mingyu says. “The pay is decent, and the quarters aren’t bad. Small crew, for a trader.” He reaches across the table to pat Seokmin's forearm, firm enough that it makes his beer slosh in the glass. “It could be way worse, right? I think it’ll be fun.”

One of Mingyu’s worst features—and the list covering this topic is not easy to narrow down—is his relentless positivity. He has to find the good in everything. He outright refuses to wallow. Seokmin thinks of himself as a generally cheerful person, but he is also a reasonable person, and all reasonable people know when it’s time to wallow.

“I wanted to build something here. I wanted--” to make a home, Seokmin doesn’t say, because Mingyu would only come back with something about how home is wherever you make it, and then Seokmin would genuinely have to shoot him. “I don’t wanna move around again.”

“Come on. It’s been years since we’ve worked together,” Mingyu wheedles, smoothly gliding over the fact that the last time they worked together it was a complete disaster that resulted in almost a full year of no contact between them.

Four years is as long as Seokmin has ever lasted in one place since his childhood home. It’s a good run, for most people. Too long for many. Seokmin has never particularly felt that pull, though, that most of his friends seem to feel. The one that keeps pulling them up into space, scattering them out somewhere entirely new every few years. He doesn’t seek adventure. He wants his feet on the ground; he wants to find somewhere to stay and put down roots that are long enough to keep him there.

“Yeah. Alright, yeah,” Seokmin says, and Mingyu makes a cheerful little noise, and Seokmin tries to think charitable thoughts about him.

They drink, after that. Mingyu buys the next two rounds to celebrate, and then Seokmin is drunk enough to buy a few rounds himself, and he has a very limited memory of what follows.

They’re expected to board a few days before they’ll disembark. It’s a skeleton crew, at that stage—really just the other members of the cargo crew, but the captain is there to receive them on the first day. Most captains aren’t. It’s a good sign, maybe.

“She’s a beauty, isn’t she?” he asks. Genuinely asks, Seokmin realises. The question is not rhetorical.

“Yeah, wow. Very beautiful,” Seokmin says, gesturing broadly at the extremely standard trade ship sitting idle at the dock. Standard to his eyes, anyway. Seokmin’s not an engineer; a ship is a ship.

“A series twelve Nomad, right? But with some seriously impressive modifications,” Mingyu says, because he always knows exactly what to say to people at exactly the right moment. The captain—Choi Seungcheol, he’d said—is very obviously personally flattered by the praise, his chest visibly expanding by an inch or so.

“You know your shit,” Seungcheol says. He’s impressed. Mingyu’s own chest expands, because he also lives and dies by praise. The two of them will probably get along famously. Which is fine, and Seokmin is absolutely not bothered by the way Mingyu always manages to make the better first impression.

“It looks floaty,” says Junhui.

He’s the third member of the four-person cargo crew—the fourth being a particularly stoic man named Chan, who is not new to the ship. No one, including Seungcheol, appears to know what to make of this statement, so they move smoothly on to a brief tour of the ship. It’s a little old, although not the oldest Seokmin has worked on. The steel of its outer shell is stained with exhaust fumes and the floor of the hold bears the marks of years worth of cargo movements. The actual living quarters are nice enough, though. Lived-in. Seokmin gets the feeling that the majority of the crew has been flying together for a fair while, judging by the state of the mess. Personal effects left lying around as if their owners aren’t concerned about the possibility of them being taken.

The cargo hold feels cavernous, empty as it is; the first day is spent preparing the hold, and the second day is spent loading it. Seokmin enjoys the work well enough. It’s not particularly volatile cargo, so no special measures need to be taken beyond basic loading protocol. It’s been a while, certainly, but it’s familiar enough. Junhui is—odd, but competent, and Chan appears to be incredibly dedicated to the art of cargo storage and maintenance. It goes smoothly. The airlock remains open until well after the sun sets, and Seokmin enjoys the way the dust kicks up at his feet and the particular inky black-blue of the sky for as long as he’s able to.

On the third day the remainder of the crew begins to filter in from wherever they’d been spending their shore leave. Seokmin meets them each as they enter through the hold, and he does his best to fix the memory of their faces to the memory of their names. The first officer arrives before even the captain does; well before Seokmin is expecting to see anyone, while it’s still cold enough out to warrant a jacket. The sun’s barely even up.

“Lee Jihoon,” he says, greeting each of them individually, equal parts serious and oddly awkward. His bow is rigid enough that Seokmin wonders whether he’s ex-military.

Yoon Jeonghan—first pilot, apparently—arrives with Seungcheol around two hours or so after that. It’s obvious by body language alone that the two of them have been flying together for years; a certain bone-deep familiarity Seokmin finds his stomach bubbling with jealousy over. It’s clear that he and Mingyu know each other, also. That must be where Mingyu picked the contract up from.

It’s a slow trickle from then on. There are three members of the engineering crew whose names Seokmin is certain he’s going to mix up for at least a week: a Hansol, a Soonyoung, and a Wonwoo. There are others, too, that Seokmin misses while he’s busy with other tasks. He imagines a ship of this size must have at least another pilot on board, as well as a navigator. Seokmin lets himself enjoy the excitement of it, despite himself—he’s always liked the way things feel right before a voyage. There’s always this electric little prickle of camaraderie, regardless of how many times he’s done it. It’s the one thing he actually likes about these contracts.

It’s late afternoon by the time the hold is ready, with everything secured in its place and the locks triple-checked. Seokmin’s shoulders ache, low and dull. It’ll be more of a burn tomorrow. The temperature is dropping rapidly as the sun begins to dip, and Seokmin could retreat to the crew’s quarters if he wanted to. The work is done. The hold is still open, though, and he wants to soak in the last of it. The sun casts long shadows across the dock, sapping away whatever warmth is left. Goosebumps freckle Seokmin’s arms.

“Want to grab some food?” Mingyu asks, appearing from between two of the largest steel containers. He looks about as tired as Seokmin feels, his hair damp where it’s obviously just been pushed back off his forehead.

Seokmin is hungry, actually—he hadn’t realised until the idea of food was set out in front of him.

“Yeah. In a little bit, though,” Seokmin says, not wanting to give up the last of the sunset. It’ll be dark in half an hour or so, at most. Mingyu makes a sound very much like a dog being denied biscuits.

“You’re not doing anything,” Mingyu pushes, and then literally pushes at Seokmin’s arm to press the point. “C’mon, I missed lunch and everything,” he says, which is only true by Mingyu-standards of what counts as lunch.

Movement from the end of the gangway distracts them both from the impending argument. Another crewmember—just one, too starkly backlit by the sun to make out anything more than a silhouette. The only luggage they have with them is a large duffel slung over their shoulders.

Mingyu raises an arm in greeting. The figure steps in past the overhang of the ship, and then they’re in shadow, and Seokmin’s chest inflates with air fast and full enough to make him dizzy.

Its—Minghao, it couldn’t be anyone except for Minghao. Taller than the last time Seokmin saw him, of course, and a little more muscular, but. That face, that same face. He looks the same as he always did. He looks more beautiful than he ever did.

“Myungho?” Seokmin asks. Everything tilts. He hasn’t stood in the same space as Minghao for ten years now.

Minghao stops immediately, at the very top of the gangway.

“Do I know you?”

The sun—it must be the sun, so Seokmin walks towards him, letting Minghao get a good look at his face.

“Lee Seokmin. It’s me,” he says, close enough now that he could reach out and touch him. He wants to. He wants to take Minghao’s bag for him. He wants to touch Minghao’s cheek.

Minghao blinks. He’s looking right at him, and—there’s nothing. There’s no recognition in his expression at all.

“I don’t remember the name,” he says, not rudely, but not particularly warmly either. “I’m sorry.”

It feels a lot like something very heavy is pressing down on his chest, squeezing his ribs inward. Minghao doesn’t remember him. Not his face; not even his name. Nothing.

“Um, Kim Mingyu,” Mingyu says, hovering somewhere behind Seokmin’s shoulder. Seokmin doesn’t take his eyes off Minghao’s face, but Minghao does; he greets Mingyu politely and gives them both a small, tight smile.

“It’s nice to meet you. I’d better-- uh, I should check in with Seungcheol.”

Seokmin doesn’t watch him as he goes. He’s far too busy with the way his chest is caving in.

He quietly hopes that Mingyu will drop it entirely. He’s still there, though, looming at Seokmin’s shoulder until Minghao’s footsteps on the upper catwalk recede.

“Who was he?”

Fuck.

“Someone I knew a long time ago,” Seokmin says, and his voice gives him away entirely. He knows before he finishes the first word. He wishes desperately that it were anyone in the world besides Mingyu witnessing this; anyone less likely to pick up on whatever is in his voice or all over his face. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Okay,” Mingyu says. His voice is horrifyingly gentle. “Let’s eat later, yeah? I’m gonna go wash up.” He reaches out to squeeze at Seokmin’s shoulder, once, and then he leaves without pressing for more.

Seokmin doesn’t wait for the sunset.

He passes both Junhui and one of the engineers—Wonwoo, maybe—on his way to the crew’s quarters, and he greets them both. He runs into Chan outside the berth he shares with Mingyu, and Chan has a pressing opinion to deliver on the long-term storage of electromagnetics that cannot wait. Seokmin listens, and he nods, and he responds.

Mingyu must have already gone up to the dining room; the lights are out when Seokmin enters their room. He doesn’t bother to turn them on. He crawls in under the covers of his bunk, curled up on his side like a kid with a bellyache, and he cries.

Minghao had always planned to fly.

Both of his parents were pilots. Seokmin had never quite understood this part; both of his parents were pilots, and both of them had died in the same way. Both of their bodies were entirely lost to space.

Minghao spent his entire childhood in space, though, and most of his early teen years. It was only once he’d lost them both that he’d come back down. Seokmin met him at fourteen years old; he’d moved in with his grandmother, a woman whom Seokmin had always known to live alone. He was the strangest person Seokmin had ever met up until that point, completely unaccustomed to living on the land. Seokmin was fascinated with him. He used to follow Minghao around like a puppy at his heels.

At eighteen Minghao passed his pilot’s licensing, and Seokmin had cried then too. He was proud, of course. But he knew what it meant.

“I’m not leaving you,” Minghao had said. He had Seokmin’s head in his lap, long fingers marking the same path behind Seokmin’s ear over and over. “Not like that. I’m not taking any long contracts,” he said, which was true, then. He mostly couriered for a long time, taking shorter trips to nearby moons. He was usually not gone for more than a few weeks at a time. “And I’ll always come back to you.”

At nineteen, Seokmin had enlisted on a federation starship. Not one designated for combat—it was an exploration vessel mostly engaged in mineral collections in outer rim planets. He’d been around four months into a university degree, at that stage. His father had just died.

Seokmin has only vague memories of the time directly surrounding his decision. His father’s illness had been sudden—he’d died within weeks of the first diagnosis. Seokmin was hollowed out with grief. The only thing he’d had to hold onto with both hands was Minghao, warm and solid and sure. The devastation of having to leave him was almost greater than his grief for his father. There wasn’t a lot of choice, though, or there hadn’t seemed to be at the time. His father’s death had left their family with a debt they had no means of paying off on what his mother could earn alone. The contract was for a year, and the pay for that year alone would cover the debt along with the funeral. His sister was older, yes, but her own degree was almost finished, and once Seokmin returned she would have graduated, and they’d be back on their feet again.

Seokmin left, and Minghao took his first long contract after that. Fourth pilot on a massive company trading vessel. They’d kept in contact as much as it was possible to do so, within their limits, but it had slowed, and eventually it stopped entirely.

Seokmin came back, and the end of that year. Minghao never did.

Seokmin considers, for at least twenty minutes after waking up, not going to breakfast at all. He listens to Mingyu putter around the room, very obviously dawdling in the hopes that Seokmin might wake up and come with him, and Seokmin takes slow, even breaths until Mingyu gives up and draws down the ladder to head out alone. He could stay like this; he could lie in bed until his work shift starts, and he could skulk down to the hold without being seen.

This is his… it’s as close as he has to a home at the moment. It’s the place he’s going to be living for a year, at the very least. He thinks of sending his mother a message—a real one, not the cheerful report he’s got drafted. He knows what she would say, though, and he doesn’t want to break her heart just to prove himself right. She’d tell him to be brave, even if it’s hard, and keep going. So Seokmin gets up.

The crew of the ship is small enough that they take their meals together. Seokmin’s more familiar with larger ships where they eat in shifts and mostly stick to their own crew. The dining area here is just a small mess attached to a galley, though, with one long table capable of seating the entire crew and the galley itself directly behind it rather than in a separate room. Cooking is a communal effort, so he’s been told, but Seokmin is unsurprised to find Mingyu over the stove when he arrives for breakfast, cracking eggs into a large pot of ramyeon.

Minghao is there, too, at the table and sandwiched in between Jeonghan and Jihoon. He gives Seokmin a little nod in greeting. There is a stone the size of a fist in Seokmin’s stomach.

“Seokmin!” Seungcheol calls from the head of the table. “We were just talking about you. You haven’t met Seungkwan, right? Our navigator,” he says, clapping a hand over the shoulder of the man directly to his left. Seungkwan, visibly jolted by the hand, gives a little wave. “And this is Minghao, our second pilot,” Seungcheol continues, waving his spoon in Minghao’s direction.

“We met,” Minghao says, voice soft. Seokmin does not look directly at him.

“Our Mingyu tells us you go way back,” Jeonghan says, leaning back in his seat to allow Mingyu himself room to set the ramyeon pot at the centre of the table. Seokmin would love to know how he managed to become our Mingyu sometime in the space between dinner and breakfast.

“Since forever ago, yeah. We worked on a federation starship,” Seokmin says, offering his widest grin with the largest amount of teeth in order to begin making up for lost ground. He likes to be liked. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be liked. “We were bunkmates,” he adds. It’s strange, actually, to be back in the exact same position he was in at twenty-one.

“Sexy,” Jeonghan says.

“No,” Seokmin says, as immediately and with as much force as Mingyu himself says it. He imagines the offended look on Mingyu’s face is mirrored on his own, as well. There is, perhaps, a grain of truth to it—one single grain, uncooked—but you make mistakes when you’re twenty-one years old and lonely and sharing a bedroom for a year.

Jeonghan brays out a laugh, entertained by the force of the reaction. “That was gonna be my second question,” he says, looking between the two of them. “I guess that’s my answer.”

“Oh, no way. I’m single. I’m very single,” Mingyu says, a statement which Seokmin knows to be a pointed and hopeful announcement to the crew at large. It’s unclear whether or not the bait lands because most of them are busy descending on the food, portioning the ramyeon out into their bowls.

“We’re not usually so nosy,” Seungkwan says, and he does genuinely sound apologetic. He seems to be hanging back to collect his own food once the frenzy has calmed down. “This is the first time in a long while we’ve had three new crew at once. Ever, actually.”

“Fresh meat,” Soonyoung—Seokmin is sure this one is Soonyoung—says, laughing thickly through a mouthful of noodles. He taps at the side of his nose. “We’re like sharks. We smell the blood.”

“Don’t scare them, Soonyoungie,” says a gentle voice which, ironically, scares the absolute hell out of Seokmin. He twists in his seat to find another crew member—Seokmin assumes, because as far as he’s aware this ship doesn’t take passengers, although the person hovering at the doorway is dressed more finely than the rest of the crew. He’s not engineering, at the very least.

“I wasn’t,” Soonyoung insists, wounded. “We’re just excited about meat.”

The guy at the door laughs, equally as gently as the tone of his speaking voice, and pats at the back of Soonyoung’s hair as he passes.

“Joshua, this is Seokmin,” Seungcheol says, barely looking up from his bowl now that there’s food in it. “You met the others already.”

Joshua smiles, sweetly, and he thanks Wonwoo when he fills his bowl for him, and nobody tells Seokmin what his job is. It feels rude to ask, somehow.

The conversation drifts, naturally. Seokmin is grateful to be out of the centre of attention. Not that he minds attention—not that he doesn’t seek it actively, usually, but it feels like too much this morning, to have the eyes of so many new people on him. To be sitting across the table from someone who is not new to him at all. Just like that, Seokmin’s resolve slips; he looks.

Minghao always did eat carefully. He took his time, enjoyed his meal without rushing it. He never over-ate. He dips his spoon into the soup now with a fine-boned wrist, takes a sip of it without slurping. He listens to the conversation and doesn’t contribute, but he turns his head just a little towards whoever is speaking, looking up at them now and then. Seokmin drinks his fill in quick glances; up and then back down at the table. He misses the entire conversation.

‘-do you think so, Seokmin?” Mingyu asks, and apparently Seokmin’s panicked eye contact isn’t enough to communicate that he has no idea what’s being asked of him. Mingyu only cocks his head. God damn him.

“Uh, yes,” Seokmin says, and it’s immediately obvious that the coin flip landed on the wrong side. “Or no,” he says, “perhaps.”

It’s threatening to be a genuinely uncomfortable moment until Jeonghan snorts—and then gags, because he must have had a mouthful of ramyeon soup, and then he makes a noise like a dying bird. There’s a little chaos: Seungcheol patting Jeonghan's back, and Joshua covering a surprisingly satisfied smile with his hand, and Seungkwan scrambling to pour a glass of water for Jeonghan. Seokmin is pretty sure he can feel Minghao’s eyes on him and, because he is an idiot, he looks. Minghao’s gaze skitters away the second Seokmin meets it.

The rest of the meal is more or less calm. The conversation shifts from person to person smoothly, even with half the table talking over each other. They all seem to be able to follow the thread. Seokmin wants to throw himself in; he normally would, but today his stomach feels weird and his skin feels tight and he can’t think of a single thing to say.

The first month or so goes like this: Seokmin avoids Mingyu’s questions and sad-dog eyes, and Minghao avoids Seokmin.

He’d like to be able to say that he doesn’t notice it, but. He notices it from the first day. He looks for Minghao down every hallway and in every room he enters. Not actively, obviously, but he can’t find a way to shut that part of his brain off. It knows that Minghao is here, close enough to touch.

Seokmin has no reason to go up to the flight deck and Minghao has no particular reason to come down to cargo. It’s not a large ship, though, is the thing. The cargo hold itself is, and the engine rooms are as well, but the living quarters are not particularly. There’s the bunks and the showers, and there’s the mess, and there’s also a rec room just off that with sofas and books and one screen. There are games, too, which Mingyu discovers and ropes Seokmin into a game of chess, which neither of them know how to play.

Seokmin only comes across Minghao in the rec room once in that first month, reading a book curled up in the corner. He leaves about ten minutes after Seokmin arrives.

It’s not until that particular moment that a thought occurs to Seokmin. There’s a possibility—it’s possible that Minghao does, actually, remember him. That he knows exactly who Seokmin is, but is choosing to pretend not to in order to avoid him. The thought hits him like a bullet, making his skin prickle all over with an uncomfortable sticky shame. He can’t really think of another reason why Minghao would be so set on avoiding him. He can’t have made that bad of an impression, surely; they’ve never even been alone in the same room.

He genuinely cannot choose which option would be worse: that Minghao can’t remember him at all, or that Minghao does, and wants so little to be around him that he’d pretend to have forgotten him.

The urge to hide is incredibly strong. There’s a significant part of Seokmin that would like to put his head down and plough through the next eleven months as stolidly as possible, avoiding everything else. The word “stolid” doesn’t really apply to him, though. In the end, loneliness very quickly wins out.

“Where’s Minghao been?” Hansol asks, one evening after a particularly uneventful shift. He’s dealing out four hands: for Seokmin, Mingyu, Jeonghan and himself. They play an odd version of poker on board this ship to account for the missing cards in the deck, and Seokmin finds the rules of it almost impossible to follow. He also desperately wants to win and has yet to.

At the mention of Minghao’s name his stomach knots itself up. He tries not to look at anything other than his own hand, and he hopes he’s successfully projecting nonchalance.

“No idea. He’s never down here, lately,” Jeonghan says, leaning back in his chair to catch a very blatant glimpse of Mingyu’s hand. Ordinarily, Mingyu would yelp and press his cards to his chest. At this moment he’s too busy giving Seokmin obvious, doleful eyes; an are you okay? expression that Seokmin occasionally appreciates but deeply does not right now.

Seokmin gives Mingyu his best stop looking at me or I will kill you expression far too late: Jeonghan has already noticed, and now he’s looking at Seokmin, his normally round eyes narrowed. He looks like a bird of prey, this way. He looks like a hawk considering when to swoop.

“He’s the best at cards,” says Hansol, who doesn’t seem to have noticed anything at all. “He stops you from cheating.”

This, mercifully, gets Jeonghan’s sharp bird eyes off Seokmin.

“I don’t cheat. That’s not true,” he says. “You are very bad.”

There’s a soft little hmm from where Joshua is curled up on one of the armchairs, ostensibly not paying attention to the game. Jeonghan scoffs and hurls a handful of peanut shells at Joshua’s head.

“Maybe we should call for him,” Jeonghan suggests. His voice is light when he says it, but Seokmin knows that his eyes are on him. He can feel the heat of Jeonghan’s gaze on his cheek as he shuffles and reshuffles his hand, pretending to put the cards in order.

“Let’s just play,” Mingyu says, too quickly, “I’m gonna win this one, hyung.”

It’s not the smoothest cover but it does work, largely by virtue of Hansol’s obliviousness. They play two hands, and Jeonghan wins both under dubious circumstances. On a different day, Seokmin would probably get worked up about it himself; as it stands, he enjoys watching the way the tips of Mingyu’s ears flush red followed by his cheeks, as he holds his body stiffer and stiffer with barely repressed frustration.

“It’s not fair,” Mingyu whines, after Jeonghan fans out an extremely improbable winning hand. Jeonghan coos back at him in the exact same tone and pinches his cheek, probably far more entertained by Mingyu’s distress than by the winning itself. He’s certainly earning more of a reaction from him than he’s getting from Hansol. Seokmin wants to join in, somehow—he wants to be part of the joke, even if he has to be the butt of it. He’s not used to feeling this type of hesitance, or like he’s on the outside looking in.

“I’m getting a drink,” Seokmin says, more abruptly than he meant to. He gets a polite nod from Hansol and an odd look from Joshua and nothing at all from Jeonghan and Mingyu, who are too deep in the argument to notice.

He steps out of the warmth and the noise of the rec room and into the cool dark of the dining room and it feels like some kind of ridiculous irony that Minghao is standing there, startled, at the sink.

“Oh,” he says, and if that weren’t eloquent enough, he adds, “um.”

“Hi,” Minghao says. He doesn’t seem to be annoyed. It’s the first time Seokmin has seen him out of his pilot’s clothes. He’s in a soft-looking set of pyjamas and a long robe, his hair tucked neatly behind his ears. His skin catches and reflects the light spilling in from the next room, like maybe he just got done putting on cream.

“I’m just getting some water,” Seokmin says, and Minghao only nods.

His walk doesn’t feel like his walk. He feels stupid, somehow, like he’s doing even this wrong, making a fool of himself walking from the door to the counter. He sets a glass under the water filter and he waits for it to fill. He does all this like a normal person would. He tries not to look, really.

Beside him, a little further down the counter, Minghao is steeping some tea in a small pot. Little fingers of steam curl out of the spout and Minghao rolls the bag of leaves up neatly. Minghao had always drunk what seemed to Seokmin like insane amounts of coffee: cups and cups of it a day, never anything but. Where it had left Seokmin jittery and stressed it had never seemed to affect Minghao much. He drank it black.

Minghao hadn’t turned a light on when he’d come in, and the quiet calm of the kitchen feels like a tiny oasis. There’s no one else to see them. It’s the first time Seokmin has been alone with Minghao, and it feels like a chance.

“You don’t drink coffee, now?” Seokmin asks, before he can stop himself. He doesn’t think it’s rude—he’s pretty sure it wasn’t rude, but Minghao stiffens immediately, the calmness of his face shuttering into something harder.

“No,” Minghao says, bland and controlled and final, and Seokmin swallows around the nausea rising up his throat.

“Oh. I’m--hey, I--” Seokmin stutters, but he can’t seem to get anything more than that out, and Minghao is already gathering up the pot and his cup. He says goodnight before leaving, at least. Seokmin doesn’t even manage to return it.

Most of what Seokmin does day-to-day is maintenance. It’s an old ship; there’s an endless list of small repairs and minor fixes for ageing equipment. It’s fairly mindless work. Mindlessness isn’t a bad thing, though—it means that Seokmin can sink into the rhythm of the work and not have to think about a whole lot else.

There’s a list of general weekly tasks to work through slowly, along with anything else the crew think needs attention, and neither Junhui nor Chan seem to be at all bothered with which tasks they get delegated. Seokmin is… somewhat more inclined to complain, but the easy way in which the other two accept the work makes him oddly jealous. Or envious, maybe, rather than jealous. He wants to be a person like that. Someone diligent and hardy.

So: when Soonyoung pops his head into the hold and asks for a spare set of hands, Seokmin says, “yes! Absolutely! Where do you need me?”

“Oh, wow. I like that energy,” Soonyoung grins. He raises a fist and shakes it. “Let’s go, team! To life support!”

Soonyoung begins a ridiculous walk out the rear doors and Seokmin finds himself genuinely unable to stop himself from following in step. Soonyoung laughs, delighted, when he notices that Seokmin’s lifting his knees just as high as he is, so he adds in some hand movements for good measure. It’s insane. It makes Seokmin laugh loud enough to echo off the metal frame of the hold. He very much ignores the looks he knows they’re getting from the rest of the cargo crew.

Life support on this vessel is one of the smaller sections of engineering. It’s always kind of freaked Seokmin out, also. The idea that a small slip could take out the only thing keeping them alive out here—he’s pretty sure that’s not an irrational fear. He treads carefully and keeps his arms pinned to his sides, in case one of the cables sticking out from the central machine is the Kill Everyone cable.

“Just here,” Soonyoung says, gesturing vaguely at a bunch of incomprehensible machinery. “I need you to hold this up for me so I can get in deep,” he says, coming up behind Seokmin to more helpfully position his hands on a cool metal cylinder. He lifts the piece up with Seokmin and then his own hands disappear, meaning Seokmin is left with the burden of thirteen lives in his hands, which is fine. It’s totally fine. Soonyoung straps on a headlamp and ducks under the cylinder, reaching into the machinery with both hands, and Seokmin very carefully does not move.

Soonyoung makes a little noise as he works—humming, small sounds of surprise or interest—and Seokmin tries to focus on that rather than on the weight of the metal or the way his arms are beginning to strain even now. It’s only been a minute. There’s no reason for his biceps to be sore like this, for him to feel like his wrists might start to shake. There’s little beads of sweat already forming at his hairline and the urge to reach up and wipe them away is almost unbearably strong.

“Oh, damn,” Soonyoung says, his face halfway buried, which feels like it’s not a good sign.

“Damn? Damn what?” Seokmin says and yes, his voice comes out a little higher than usual, but he’s still surprised when Soonyoung pulls his head back to peer up at him.

“You okay?”

“Yes, uh huh,” Seokmin says. “Is it okay? Did I move?”

“You’re good,” Soonyoung says, giving Seokmin a considering little up-and-down. “Are you nervous or something?”

“I mean,” Seokmin says, and then he’s releasing one of the most pathetically weak laughs of his lifetime.

“Okay,” Soonyoung says, elongating the o. He pulls both arms out and reaches up to take the weight of the piece off Seokmin’s hands. “Hey, it’s fine. You don’t need to be so careful,” he adds, and then, horrifyingly, he smacks at the side of the machinery with the wrench he’d been holding.

Seokmin’s abject terror must show on his face—it usually does—because it makes Soonyoung laugh, bright and not unkind.

“Relax, okay? She’s strong. You can trust her.” He smoothes one hand down the side of it like a normal person might do with a horse. “It’d take more than that to bring her down.”

“I’m sure,” Seokmin says, not at all sure, “but if something goes wrong we all go down with it, so.”

Soonyoung scoffs, seemingly more at the concept of the machine’s failure rather than at Seokmin himself. “She won’t. She’s the best in the skies,” he says, with genuine pride. It’s almost personal, actually, and it’s then that Seokmin realises he might’ve been working on this particular machine for years.

“Sorry. I’m sure it’s, um, a really really good life support machine,” Seokmin says. “It’s just- it’s been a while since I’ve been out here, you know. It takes getting used to.”

Soonyoung makes an ahh noise and nods his head very much like a person pretending to understand. “Not a space guy, huh?”

“Right, yeah. I’m a big ground guy,” Seokmin says, trying to make a joke of it. Soonyoung does laugh, to his credit. He sits back on his heels.

“C’mere,” he says, and then he’s laying down flat on his stomach and patting at the floor beside him. Seokmin, with absolutely no idea of what’s going on, manoeuvres himself carefully down onto the floor, resting his cheek on the cool metal to match Soonyoung’s pose. “Hear that?”

It takes a second for Seokmin to realise that Soonyoung means for him to press his ear to the floor and listen. There’s the steady whirr of machinery, mostly. The rush and wheeze of hydraulics. It’s a lot clearer like this, with his ear flat to the inner part of the ship. Seokmin wonders what part of it exactly Soonyoung wants him to listen to.

“See?” Soonyoung asks—he’s whispering now. “She’s breathing.”

“Oh. Yeah,” Seokmin says, and then he realises that there are tears in his eyes. It should be embarrassing, probably, but Soonyoung is only smiling at him, and the ship rolls on steadily underneath them.

“She’ll take care of us. You don’t have to worry, okay?”

Soonyoung closes his eyes then, so Seokmin does too. It’s oddly soothing, laying there on the floor. Seokmin feels his heart rate slow down, the sweat on his forehead cooling against the metal. He listens, too.

“Hey,” Soonyoung says, and his eyes are already open when Seokmin opens his. “We should be friends.”

“Yeah, okay. Please,” Seokmin says, and he wants it desperately. He wants something out here that feels like his.

He’s pretty sure that desperation comes through in his voice, not that Soonyoung seems to mind. Soonyoung grins at him, and Seokmin grins back, and then Soonyoung is helping him back up to his feet and fixing the headlamp back onto the centre of his forehead. Seokmin holds the cylinder up for him again, and it takes maybe three more minutes or so, and it’s possible the panic was a slight overreaction on his part. Soonyoung doesn’t tease him for it.

Seokmin spends the rest of that day listening. It’s odd; he hadn’t really heard the patterns of the sound before. It seems obvious now, the rhythmic churn of the ship. You can hear it much more clearly down here, what with the engineering rooms feeding off from the cargo bay. He likes the thought of it as a living thing much more—like being in the belly of a big whale, and not a hunk of metal floating through nothing.

The thing is: Minghao was Seokmin’s first love. He’d been terrified, at the time, that he would never feel it again. In the first few months after he came back he would talk about it often. To his friends, obviously, when he’d been drinking, and sometimes to his sister. They’d all said the same thing. This was what first love was always like; all-consuming, life or death, until it wasn’t anymore.

He hadn’t, though, in the end. Felt it again.

Not that Seokmin had spent the last decade alone, contrary to how Mingyu would tell it. He’s dated. Seokmin likes people—he likes to have people to care for, and he finds it easy to care. He likes to think he’s loved a lot of people, and that he loved all the people he dated. And if it was never in quite the same way, the idea of that didn’t scare him like it used to.

He sees Minghao at breakfast and at dinner too, most days. He sees him on the catwalk, sometimes, on his way up to the flight deck. He sees him laughing and he sees him yawning and he sees him push his glasses up his nose, on the days he decides to wear them.

That feeling he’d had the first time: like a hook underneath his ribs, or like magnets tucked into his skin. Life or death. It’s almost embarrassing to feel it now, this many years later. But Seokmin would recognize it anywhere.

The routine of things evens out, and the work transitions from pleasantly mindless to actively boring, mostly. They play stupid games in the cargo hold to pass the time, and Junhui shows them the little devices he likes to tinker with. Chan seems to be particularly fascinated by them; the new functions Junhui manages to draw out of old machines.

“Hey man,” says a voice that can only be Hansol, the only person on board who would refer to him as ‘man’. “Could you get this up to the flight deck for me? Seungkwan was asking for it.”

“Sure, yeah,” Seokmin says, trying not to be too blatantly eager about it.

Hansol hands over a—thingy. Some kind of part, Seokmin guesses. He gives Seokmin a double-thumbs up of appreciation before disappearing back into the engine room.

Seokmin has not actually been up to the flight deck since that first day, when Seungcheol had shown them the ship. They were on the ground then, too, which means the view out of the windshield was of the docks rather than what it is now.

There are a few portholes around the ship. Not in the cargo hold, but there are a few dotting the rec room and the dining area. They’re only small, though. It’s nothing like this; an endless field of stars in total black.

At the centre of everything is Minghao, bent over the navigation console. He mustn't have heard Seokmin come in, or else he thought it was Jeonghan or Seungkwan or anyone else who’s normally up here.

It’s as familiar as ever, looking at him now. The way it makes his mouth run dry, his breath run short.

Seokmin knows he shouldn't just stand here and stare like an idiot. It's difficult to convince himself not to, though. Minghao's hair is loose and soft, and his shoulders are broad where they're squared over the console, and—oh. There, on the smooth skin of his back where the material of the armhole hangs low. A tattoo.

It's new. Well—new is relative.

Seokmin had never wanted a tattoo because he knew how painful the needles would be and doubted he'd be able to withstand more than three minutes of it. He was also kind of worried about passing out in front of people. Minghao had never liked the idea of something so permanent, something so difficult to change.

It's definitely a tattoo, though. Seokmin can't make it out, this far away and with only a corner of it visible. It's only black lines to him, curling out from underneath Minghao's tank top. If he had to make a guess, he’d say it looks like flowers. Vines, actually; like creeping vines.

"Is that mine?" Seungkwan asks, snapping Seokmin's attention back to the room. Minghao turns, too; Seokmin can see the movement in his peripheral vision.

"Yeah, it is," Seokmin says, although Seungkwan is already taking it out of his hands before he finishes.

"Could you tell Hansol," Seungkwan says, drawing up to his full height, which is still shorter than Seokmin, "that I would appreciate it if he could fulfil my requests in a more timely fashion."

"Sure will," Seokmin says. He absolutely will not but doing that, but it feels pertinent to agree regardless.

“And another thing,” Seungkwan says before launching into what feels like several more other things in great detail. It’s difficult to tell whether he actually expects Seokmin to remember and repeat the tirade back to Hansol or if he just needs the tone of it to be conveyed.

The shape of Minghao moves quietly from his periphery until Seokmin can see him properly, floating just over Seungkwan’s shoulder. It’s easy enough to look—Seungkwan is barely paying attention to him, at this point. Minghao has this little half-smile on his face and, when Seokmin meets his eyes, he mouths: go.

Seokmin blinks.

Minghao says, “hey, Seungkwan? Could you take a look at this?”

“Oh. Yes,” Seungkwan says, visibly derailed and regaining his bearings. “Thank you,” he adds to Seokmin, and then he’s striding across the room to Minghao, who’s still wearing that little half-smile.

One last look: Minghao gives him a minute nod, like a signal, and Seokmin makes his escape.

He floats, more or less, back down to the cargo hold. It felt conspiratorial, somehow. A moment only the two of them were sharing.

“You’re smiling,” Junhui points out. He’s squatting on the floor repainting one of the tracks, most likely out of boredom rather than anything else.

“I’m always smiling. I’m very smiley.”

Junhui squints, tilting his head like a suspicious little cat. He drops the paint brush back in its tin and stands, advancing on Seokmin as if he needs a closer look to analyse the situation.

“Hm,” he says. “Wanna play hide the treasure?”

Seokmin does, in fact, want to play hide the treasure.

Their first port is almost two months in. It felt like forever away when Seokmin had first boarded, but the date actually comes up quick enough to take him by surprise. It’s an outer ring moon Seokmin has never visited before—for good reason, judging by how little of interest shows up about it when he searches up the name. Still, they’re taking a total of three days planetside, and by noon on the first day the cargo is already offloaded onto the dock and being transferred into the possession of the buyers.

The effort of offloading barely even touches Seokmin. He’s much too busy savouring it: the breeze, the sun. The dirt, even. He wants to stay out so long that he comes back with a sunburn.

Mingyu disappears almost immediately, along with Junhui. Chan stays, of course. Seokmin wonders if he’s going to go any further than the docks until the next load of cargo rolls in. It doesn’t seem like the cargo’s even been secured yet—or if it has, no one’s told Seokmin what it’s going to be. He’d been expecting to see Jihoon leave with Seungcheol to meet with potential sellers, given that he’s first officer, but it’s Joshua who appears at docks beside him. Jihoon is instead dragged out by Soonyoung under what appears to be less-than-voluntary circumstances.

Seungcheol doesn’t seem to have any particular rules about what they do until they’re due back in the bay. “No bar fights, yeah?” is all he says, and it’s obviously a joke judging by the way he grins through it. Seokmin takes a little offence to this. He could get into a bar fight.

“You should try one of the teahouses on the main strip,” Joshua says, shielding his face from the glare of the sun with one hand. “The leaves are grown locally.”

“Really? Oh, wow,” Soonyoung gasps, eyes wide in that particular way he has when Joshua says basically anything. “We’ll definitely go,” he says, shaking Jihoon’s arm for emphasis. Jihoon says nothing.

Seokmin hadn’t realised, when Soonyoung had asked him a handful of days ago if he wanted to go exploring, that Jihoon would be coming with them. He’s kind of bracing himself for an extremely socially awkward day, but—it’s fine. It’s nice, actually. They go directly to the main street, so enamoured Soonyoung is with the idea of following Joshua’s suggestion, and they choose the largest teahouse on the strip. It’s four storeys tall, with an extremely cheap faux-historical facade, and they manage to get a seat on the balcony that wraps around the uppermost floor. It’s an uncomfortably humid day, but the breeze out on the balcony is cool enough to dry the little patches of damp dotting Seokmin’s back.

“Tourist gouging,” Jihoon grunts, running a finger down the spine of the menu where the prices are listed. It makes Soonyoung laugh, for some reason, so Seokmin does his best to laugh too. The sound that comes out of him is not the casual, breezy laugh he was aiming for.

“He makes you nervous, right?” Soonyoung asks, which is deeply embarrassing of him to do. For Jihoon too, apparently, because the tips of his ears flush red with shocking speed. “He’s our Jihoonie,” Soonyoung says, tipping himself against Jihoon’s side and crushing a kiss to his temple. “He’s soft and gooey on the inside, really.”

Seokmin is kind of expecting Jihoon to shove him off. He doesn’t, though. He scoffs, but the look on his face is obviously pleased even if he can’t meet either of their gazes. It’s so surprisingly sweet that Seokmin almost physically feels some of the tension drain out of him. Jihoon is just a person—a person who likes getting compliments and kisses on the cheek.

“I keep forgetting that you don’t really know us,” Soonyoung says, releasing Jihoon from his grip. “Most of us have been around so long we’re fusing with the ship.”

“It’s kind of-” impenetrable, Seokmin wants to say. Intimidating. “Overwhelming, yeah.”

“Crash course,” Soonyoung says, and holds his hand up with one finger extended. “The captain. Huge baby,” he starts, which earns what sounds like an offended grunt from Jihoon. “But he’s the best, seriously. He’d do anything for us. He saved the ship from the scrapyard, basically. It would’ve been junked by now.” He looks to Jihoon for confirmation.

“We got it off the ground, just the three of us,” Jihoon says, and then clarifies, “Seungcheol, Jeonghan and I. About eight years ago.”

Seokmin tries to imagine it; the three of them pulling the weight of thirteen. He wants to ask more—how the three of them met in the first place—but Soonyoung is already flicking out two more fingers, accounting for Jeonghan and Jihoon.

“If there’s something you need, you should ask Jeonghan,” he says. “I know what he seems like, but he always takes care of us. Plus, he’s got the captain like this,” Soonyoung mimes what Seokmin thinks is supposed to be a dog’s collar with a leash.

“Don’t gossip,” Jihoon admonishes.

“It’s not gossip if it’s true.”

They’re interrupted by the waiter then and, unprepared, they order a pot of the tea marked local favourite with a hand-drawn star.

“Who else? Wonwoo came in about six years ago. And we were his first ever flight, right?” Soonyoung asks Jihoon, although he clearly isn’t really looking for an answer. “He’d never been up before that. None of us even knew, back then.” Wonwoo hasn’t spoken a full sentence to Seokmin at any point in the last month. As if sensing what he’s thinking, Soonyoung adds, “he warms up, if you talk to him. You just need to crack his shell.”

It takes another ten minutes for the tea to arrive, and in that time Soonyoung manages to rattle through most of the rest of the crew. It’s a mix of helpful information (Seungkwan responds favourably to bribes) and useless information (Chan refuses to eat shellfish after a particularly horrendous job hauling improperly cryo-frozen crab). Seokmin tries his best to soak it in, to hold onto any clues for what might endear him to each person. He tries his best not to ask the question his brain is screaming at him to ask.

“I don’t understand what Joshua’s job is,” Seokmin confesses, which seems like as good of a distraction as any.

“He’s- customer liaison, kind of. He’s really special,” Soonyoung says, which doesn’t illuminate anything at all. “He’s gotten us a lot of work.” Which does explain, kind of, why it was Joshua who went along with Seungcheol. Seokmin can’t really imagine Jihoon sweet-talking any prospective clients. Soonyoung lowers his voice and leans in a little closer, as if he thinks someone might overhear them. “Jeonghan found him. We almost didn’t-- but Seungcheol wouldn’t leave without him.”

Jihoon reaches out to press his hand to Soonyoung’s wrist, effectively cutting him off, and Soonyoung snaps his mouth shut as if realising he shared too much. Seokmin wonders if he should tell them he has absolutely no idea what any of it meant. He takes a sip of tea instead, which is still far too hot. It tastes mostly like wet grass. He counts backwards from five in his head.

“And Minghao?” he asks, as casually as he can manage. If there’s anything strange in his voice, neither Jihoon nor Soonyoung seem to pick up on it.

“He’s the best. He’s the coolest ever,” Soonyoung says. “He walked off one ship and straight up to ours—I swear, I was there. He asked for a job just like that. This was about three years ago, maybe?”

Only three years. Seokmin had been expecting longer, for whatever reason—it takes him a second to adjust to the idea. It leaves a gap of almost seven years of darkness.

“What kind of ship was he leaving?”

“No idea. He’s kind of… secretive, I guess? He doesn’t tell us much,” Soonyoung says, and Seokmin tries not to let the disappointment sour in his stomach. “Not me, at least.”

“Because you tell everyone everything,” Jihoon interjects.

Soonyoung sputters at that and the two of them spend a few minutes bickering back and forth. Seokmin doesn’t follow much of it. They drink the tea down to the leaves, and then the waiters start giving them pointed looks until they vacate the table. There’s a line of people waiting on the ground floor, now—a mid-afternoon rush, Seokmin supposes. The sun isn’t as high overhead anymore, so the heat isn’t as oppressive. It’s nice enough to wander down the main street, ducking into stores that sell sweets or toys or handmade goods. It’s Jihoon who spots the little secondhand bookstore tucked into the mouth of one of the alleyways.

The store is larger inside than it had looked from the street, narrow but receding far back into the building. Jihoon heads directly for an aisle marked Applied Sciences and Soonyoung trails after him, not wanting to be derailed from the one–sided conversation they’re having, so Seokmin hangs back. It’s been years since he’s read a book, honestly—years since he’s even set foot in a bookstore. He’s almost certainly not going to buy a book today, either, but the atmosphere of the store feels nostalgic and soothing and Seokmin finds himself wandering.

The aisles themselves are narrow and stuffed from the floor almost to the ceiling with stacks of books in what must have originally been alphabetical order. Judging by the amount of books with the word War in the title Seokmin figures he’s found his way into the history aisle. He browses aimlessly until he reaches a section that has less to do with wars and terraforming and more to do with niche histories—local culture and mysticism and other things Seokmin imagines he might read about if he was the sort of person to buy books.

He’s in the process of trying to wedge out a particularly thick book on the development of the star atlas when he hears the unmistakable sound of Mingyu. It’s his voice, for sure; he’s making an attempt to be quiet, but is definitely chattering on about something at a volume that’s less than bookstore-appropriate. It’s a prime opportunity for one of Seokmin’s favourite activities: scaring the hell out of Mingyu. He slinks up the aisle in the direction of the sound, careful to walk on the balls of his feet. Once he’s close enough he hunches over, peering through the gap between the shelves, and then he very nearly gives himself away, because it’s Minghao standing beside him.

“So then I told her that I’d read the entire book, even though I only read the last page, and she put me in charge of the whole thing,” Mingyu says, which must be the punchline to a joke, because Minghao laughs. It’s muffled; he’s trying to keep quiet, obviously, so he covers his mouth, but Seokmin can still see the way his eyes crinkle with it.

Jealousy washes over Seokmin in a wave so thick and cloying that it genuinely makes him feel a little unwell. Of course—of course, Mingyu would get this. He would ask Minghao to spend the day with him, and Minghao would say yes just like that. He’d be allowed to tell jokes and have Minghao laugh at them, get his eyes to crinkle up. Make him smile. He’d have Minghao look right at him without flinching away.

The two of them have their backs to Seokmin, half-heartedly browsing the shelves in front of them. They’re mostly focused on each other. Minghao looks more at ease than Seokmin has seen him at any point during the past month. Mingyu’s still talking—Seokmin’s tuned him out by now and would have no idea what he’s on about—and Minghao is listening attentively. There’s this little smile at both corners of his lips, like maybe he thinks Mingyu is being kind of ridiculous. Like maybe he thinks that’s cute.

“What are we doing?” Soonyoung whispers, somehow directly next to his ear despite Seokmin not hearing him approach at all.

Seokmin rears his head back so fast that he bites down on his tongue, just barely managing to swallow a yelp. Soonyoung leans forward to look through the gap himself, bringing both hands up to make circles around his eyes as if using a pair of binoculars.

Ooooh he mouths once he pulls away, wiggling his eyebrows at Seokmin. There’s a brief, awful moment in which he thinks Soonyoung will know—that he’ll read the jealousy on Seokmin’s face and know. If Soonyoung makes any kind of noise, enough that either Mingyu or Minghao decide to investigate, Seokmin will absolutely have to die on the spot.

Soonyoung takes a breath and, before he can speak and effectively ruin Seokmin’s life forever, Seokmin presses a hand over his mouth.

It’s probably only about a minute or so of complete agony before, on the other side of the shelving, the sound of Mingyu’s whispering begins to fade as they move further down the aisle. When it’s gone entirely, Seokmin removes his hand. His palm is unpleasantly damp.

“Why are we hiding?” Soonyoung asks. His eyes are as round as saucers.

It feels impossible to come up with an actual lie within the next half second, so Seokmin says, “I don’t think Minghao likes me.” Which is more or less the truth.

“No way. He likes everyone,” Soonyoung says, unaware that it’s perhaps the worst thing he could say at this moment.

It’s probably a mistake. Seokmin recognises that before he even does it. Still—Soonyoung is looking at him like he really wants to know, and Seokmin so badly wants to tell someone. Even if it’s only a small part of it.

“I think I upset him. I don’t know,” he says. “I’m not sure what I can do to fix it.”

Soonyoung does one big, slow nod, bringing his hand up to his chin in thought. He doesn’t question why or how Minghao might be upset with him, for which Seokmin is deeply grateful. His ability to lie on the spot—to lie at all, frankly—definitely doesn’t extend that far. “You should get him a present,” Soonyoung decides, after a pause. “Something really thoughtful.”

He then launches into a story about a fight he’d had with Chan last year, after which they didn’t speak for almost two months, that had only ended once Soonyoung had bought him a brand new pair of split leather work gloves. He only pauses when a sound from behind the shelves makes them both jump but, when they look through the gap again, it’s a middle-aged woman with a small dog tucked under her armpit.

“Let’s go. I’ll run point,” Soonyoung says, saluting solemnly before turning on his heel to creep his way back towards the front of the store. He cranes his head around the corner at the end of the aisle and, when the coast is clear, he waves Seokmin through. Jihoon is waiting for them by the door with a small parcel of books in his hands.

“What,” Jihoon says, his voice flat.

“We were on a mission,” Soonyoung says, throwing a wink back over his shoulder which Seokmin returns by reflex.

“Okay,” Jihoon says, in a tone that suggests he won’t be asking further questions.

They must have spent longer than Seokmin realised in the bookstore, because their shadows are stretched long on the ground walking back to the docks. Lamps are beginning to light up the main street as more people pour in, and they see the teahouse again from a fair way off, all four storeys now lit with string lights. Seokmin thinks of Soonyoung’s advice, and he thinks of the decorative tea sets for sale that were stacked up by the counter when they’d first walked in.

“I’ll catch up with you,” he says, and Soonyoung seems content to continue dragging Jihoon along by the arm, so Seokmin gets to duck back into the teahouse alone.

The sets aren’t overly expensive but they aren’t cheap either, by the standards of Seokmin’s salary. He picks each one up in his hands, turning the cups to inspect their design, before he chooses one.

It’s stupid, maybe. But Seokmin knows that Minghao likes tea—it’s the only thing he knows for sure about Minghao, now.

Seokmin ignores Mingyu for about a week solid. It’s kind of an impressive feat, really, given that they sleep in the same room and also work in a different but no less shared room.

He gets the feeling that Mingyu has some idea of why he’s being ignored because he largely slinks around with his proverbial tail between his legs rather than confronting him about it. He leaves Seokmin in peace while they work, and he returns to their room only to sleep.

Seokmin notices it now, though. How often Mingyu and Minghao end up sitting together at meals. How easily they seem to talk to each other. The casual way in which Mingyu touches him, slinging an arm over Minghao’s shoulders or touching his hip when they pass each other in the small space of the galley. They’re obviously friends, now—or whatever. Seokmin wouldn’t fucking know.

He lets the ice thaw in increments out of pure practicality. It’s a genuine effort to properly ignore Mingyu in such close proximity and even Seokmin, fueled by many years of built-up pettiness, only has so much energy for it. He finds the leftovers of the fruit taffy he’d gotten with Soonyoung while cleaning out his satchel before bed one night and, on instinct, he offers some to Mingyu.

“Did you try any of this?” he asks, holding out four pieces in his palm, and he tries his level best to not feel guilty at the way Mingyu’s entire face lights up at the attention.

“No! I can have these?”

Seokmin nods, and Mingyu bounds over to take them from his palm, unwrapping two at once and shoving both into his mouth.

Mingyu eats basically everything like it’s his last meal and it’s difficult not to take some kind of enjoyment in that. He’s grateful, too, and he digs around in his own bags until he finds a small block of chocolate he must’ve been saving and offers it to Seokmin. The ice melts, just like that.

They talk while they finish getting ready for bed. Seokmin washes his face over the basin and Mingyu talks through a toothbrush and a mouthful of foaming toothpaste, complaining about the temperature specifications the client has for some of the cargo they’re hauling now. It feels like normal. It feels good, having Mingyu’s presence warm in the room again.

“What d’you think of Jihoon?” Mingyu asks, seemingly out of the blue once both of them are settled in for sleep. Seokmin gets the impression it’s a question he’s been sitting on.

“Uh,” Seokmin says. “As a first officer?”

“No, like. What’s he like?”

Seokmin cranes his head around to look at Mingyu where he’s tucked into his own bunk, propped up on his belly.

“Why are you asking me this?”

Mingyu puffs out his cheeks, obviously annoyed at not getting a real answer. To be fair, Seokmin doesn’t really understand what he’s trying to ask, so.

“You’ve spent more time around him than me. Soonyoung told me you guys went to that tea place together.”

“... he’s nice,” Seokmin says, eventually. Because Jihoon is nice.

“Really?” Mingyu asks. He twists the blanket between his fingers, making little whorls in the material. “He seems kind of… I don’t know, gruff.”

It’s the combination of the blanket-twisting and the way he says “gruff” along with the general existence of Mingyu that raises a red flag for Seokmin, probably slower than it would have been if he were slightly more awake.

“Don’t do this,” he says, firmly. He points a finger directly at Mingyu in a way he hopes communicates the severity of the situation. “Do not.”

Mingyu’s shoulders hunch defensively. “I’m not doing anything,” he says, as if Seokmin hasn’t known him for the better part of a decade. “I was just asking.”

“You don’t need to sleep with our first officer,” Seokmin says. “You need a hobby. You need to start knitting, or something.”

Mingyu mutters something that sounds suspiciously like asshole and flips over onto his back, breaking their eye contact. He hits the mattress with a needlessly loud huff.

“I’m serious, Mingyu. It’s a bad idea. We’re trapped out here for a year with these people.”

“I won’t,” Mingyu says, extremely unconvincingly.

They lie there in silence for a few beats, almost certainly both contemplating the fact that Mingyu absolutely would and will, if he’s given half a chance.

“What about Minghao,” Seokmin asks, unable to keep the bite of bitterness out of his voice. He’d decided to let it go, but—well. He didn’t, apparently.

Mingyu rolls back over onto his stomach immediately, pushing up on his elbows to meet Seokmin’s eyes.

“It’s not like that. I wouldn’t do that,” he insists. “Really. I know you’re- I know there’s. Something.” That little something hangs heavy in the air between them, and Seokmin sees the sulk on Mingyu’s face before he even hears it in his voice. “I don’t know anything, though. Right? You won’t tell me anything.”

It’s more than sulking, actually. Mingyu is hurt.

There's not a whole lot Seokmin dislikes more than having to admit when something isn't Mingyu's fault. He does know it, though, even when he can't bring himself to say it. He kept Mingyu in the dark on purpose.

"I knew him a long time ago," Seokmin says. It feels strange, giving away something he held so close for so long. "It was-- important. To me. I thought it was important to him."

The sympathy in Mingyu's face is almost too much. It is too much, actually, to look at directly. Seokmin wants to make a joke, to say something stupid and defuse the tension in the room. But it's the kind of technique that never works on Mingyu, unless he's making the choice to allow it, so Seokmin says nothing at all.

"Back when we first met," Mingyu starts, careful like he knows how thin the ice he's treading on is, "it was him?"

At twenty-one, Seokmin had signed up for his second federation starship voyage. It was less than two years since the last time he'd heard from Minghao and Seokmin can remember, even now, what a raw nerve he'd been at the time. He'd butted heads with Mingyu far worse than they do now; vicious fights and long periods of coldness. He'd also sought comfort in Mingyu in ways that were probably a mistake, selfish on both their ends.

Mingyu had tried, more than once, to ask about how he'd gotten his heart broken. Seokmin had given him scant details, not enough to sketch out the full picture. Never a name.

"Yeah, that's-- yeah."

Mingyu nods, and he doesn't press for more. He's always been far more gentle than Seokmin ever was.

“I’m really sorry. You’re important to me,” Mingyu says, sincere and unbearable. “You’re important to a lot of people. It’s not like that with me and Minghao. But we don’t have to be friends, either,” he says. “I won’t, if you don’t want me to. I swear.”

Seokmin is pretty sure he would’ve taken Mingyu up on that offer any time before about five minutes ago. He finds he can’t, though, with the offer actually on the table. He doesn’t want to take something away from Minghao.

“Don’t be dumb,” he says, flapping his hands in a way he hopes seems casual and unbothered. Less-bothered. “It’s fine. You should be friends.”

Mingyu's mouth twists a little to the side; an expression of skepticism. It's fair enough, considering the fact that Seokmin doesn't really mean it. He wants Minghao to himself—of course he does. But he doesn't have Minghao at all, and he's trying. He's really trying not to give in to the worst of his instincts.

"Tell me if that changes, okay?"

Seokmin gives him a thumbs up, hopefully signalling an end to the emotional honesty. It does earn him an eye roll, but it also gets Mingyu to flop over onto his back again and switch out the lamp, so. Success.

The room falls into almost total darkness, aside from the glowing strip at the edge of the hatch, which is probably what gives Seokmin the little shove of bravery that makes him say, "hey, um. I love you, you know?"

The word love comes out with a little strangled-chicken edge to it. It's clear enough for Mingyu to hear it, evidently, because he makes his own strange noise in return before Seokmin can hear the rustling of sheets and thump of feet that mean Mingyu is on his way over.

"I love you too," Mingyu says, suspiciously watery, and then he's crawling into a bunk that absolutely does not have room for him. There's a brief struggle—Mingyu's knees going places they shouldn't, a whuff being forced out of Seokmin when he has to take half of Mingyu's considerable weight—before he settles, his head somehow tucked under Seokmin's chin.

"You cannot sleep here tonight."

"Okay," Mingyu agrees, in a cheerful tone that suggests he definitely will.

Seokmin is too tired to muster up much of a protest—or maybe it's just the fact that it's been months since he's had someone this warm and this close to him. More than a year, probably. It's easy enough to fall asleep like that, Mingyu's heavy, steady breath puffing out against his neck.

Seokmin was once brave, when it came to Minghao.

He’d seen Minghao around the neighbourhood with his grandmother only two or three times before he’d invented an excuse to knock on their door—asking a favour for his mother, as he remembers it. Something like that. Minghao had spent very little time around anyone his age back then and while he hadn’t been shy, exactly, he was certainly hesitant. Quiet, definitely. Seokmin had filled in all the silences between them on that afternoon without really thinking twice about it. He’d asked Minghao to come by his apartment whenever he felt like it and he doesn’t remember even being surprised by it when Minghao actually had, only days later.

Seokmin was also the one to kiss Minghao first. He remembers that part very clearly. It’d taken Seokmin a long time to sift through the way he felt about Minghao and understand it for what it was, but the distance between that realisation and the kiss was less than a full day. Seokmin knew, and then he’d held Minghao’s face in both hands and kissed him, and Minghao had kissed him back.

He’s not exactly sure when that kind of bravery deserted him, but he feels about as far away from it now as it’s possible to get.

The tea set burns a hole in his locker, left in the same spot he’d tucked it into once they’d boarded again. He’s spent weeks imagining giving it to Minghao—going back and forth between the idea of presenting it in person and just leaving it at Minghao’s door for him to find. Imagining how Minghao might react to it, what he might say. None of these extended fantasies result in Seokmin actually doing anything more than sitting around thinking about it.

Instead, he does what he has done for three months and counting. He does his work, and he watches Minghao in his periphery, when he gets the chance to, and he leaves it at that.

It’s easy enough to sink into the pattern of it. He spends more time in the hold than he technically needs to and he lets everything whittle down to that—just doing the things he needs to do.

“Hey,” Jeonghan says, out of absolutely fucking nowhere. Seokmin jumps hard enough to very nearly smack his head into the vent cover he’d been trying to replace. “Sorry,” Jeonghan grins, not sounding all that sorry. “You almost done here?”

Seokmin briefly but very seriously considers lying, because he absolutely does not want to be delegated another task. He’s technically not even on shift anymore; he’d only come down after dinner because he was fairly certain he’d forget to do it if he left it until tomorrow. He imagines, quite vividly, saying no without further explanation, striding off, and being tucked into bed within the next fifteen minutes.

“Yep! Almost, yeah. What do you need?”

“Do you drink?”

It’s enough of a non sequitur for Seokmin to ask, “alcohol?” before he has the chance to realise how stupid it sounds.

“Alcohol,” Jeonghan confirms. “Wanna come have a drink?”

Seokmin’s brain catches up and flushes him with a pleased kind of warmth. “Yes! Definitely! Now? Cool!”

“Whenever you’re ready, yeah,” Jeonghan says, flapping a hand at the half-secured vent cover. He turns to leave, so the last part comes floating over his shoulder. “Captain’s quarters, okay?”

Seokmin does not make any weird noises of distress. He does say okey dokey, which is kind of unfortunate, but that’s it. It’s a big deal—it feels like a big deal. Seokmin’s never actually had a full conversation with Seungcheol up to this point, let alone been anywhere near his quarters. He wonders if this is some kind of test that he’s definitely about to fail.

Within fifteen minutes Seokmin is, in this order: washed, dressed, and ushered into the captain's quarters with a bone-rattling shoulder clap from Seungcheol.

The room is smaller, actually, than what Seokmin had been expecting. It's still the largest on board, but aside from the sleeping area and a small adjoining toilet there's only enough space for a sofa and a low table, arranged over an extremely threadbare rug that looks as if it hasn't been updated since the ship's maiden voyage. It's decorated sparsely and is messy in a way that Mingyu would absolutely never allow their own room to become.

There's also an odd amount of things mixed into the mess that Seokmin knows for certain are Jeonghan's. It's not difficult to spot—Jeonghan has a penchant for things that could only be described as "trinkets". Seokmin wonders if his collection became too big for his own room and had to spill out into the captain's.

"Beer? Soju?" Seungcheol asks, using an arm around Seokmin's shoulder to steer him over to the table. He was expecting Jeonghan to be here, clearly, but is a little surprised to find Joshua perched on one of the floor cushions as well. He probably shouldn't be. It feels as though Joshua's always turning up in places Seokmin doesn't expect to find him.

Seokmin isn’t a big drinker, typically, but he is a nervous drinker, which means he’s more than halfway to drunk within about twenty minutes. He’s pretty sure the others started without him, judging by the volume of Seungcheol’s voice and the red flush on Joshua’s cheeks, so he reasons that he’s only catching up with the room.

He's in the sweet spot between not enough and too much alcohol to tell some of his best stories; ones that he honestly didn't find funny at the time but always earn him laughs now, told with enough dramatic flair. It makes his head buzz a little, having the attention of all three of them. Getting Seungcheol to laugh, overly loud and glass-shaking when he smacks the table with a hand. He gets lost halfway through the third story, forgetting the order of events completely, but that only seems to amuse them further as they try to pick up the threads of it.

“You can’t drink as much as Mingyu, huh?” Seungcheol asks, while actively passing a fresh bottle for Seokmin to twist open. They don’t drink at meal times, usually, which means that—it means Mingyu must have already done this, whatever it is. An initiation.

“You drank with him?”

“About a week or so after we boarded, yeah. He passed out in front of the door and was impossible to move. Kept triggering the sensor,” Seungcheol says, snorting at the memory.

Because Seokmin is more than halfway to drunk, he doesn’t bother with trying to swallow the feeling. He is jealous—he’s always jealous. He doesn’t know how else he’s supposed to take it, if not bitterly. They asked Mingyu to join them the first chance they got, and he drank well, and he made them laugh. Seokmin is an afterthought, this long into the journey.

“Don’t be jealous,” Joshua says, somehow light and barbed at the same time.

Seokmin knows he should be good-natured about the teasing—he’s with the captain, for fuck’s sake, he’s supposed to be making them like him—so he grins. “I know how Mingyu gets when he drinks, so. Not jealous.”

This earns him a little bark of laughter from Jeonghan. A point in Seokmin’s column.

“Ah, we should ask him again. And bring Jihoon, too,” Jeonghan says, a glint in his eye that even Seokmin doesn’t miss. The look Jeonghan and Joshua exchange falls into the category of scheming.

“You know about that?” Seokmin asks, before he can think twice about how much he’s giving away. They’re probably not supposed to know—he thinks Mingyu might not want them to know.

“Everyone knows,” Joshua says, a laugh in his voice. “Everyone except for Jihoon, maybe. He’s not exactly subtle about it.”

It’s the way he says it, or maybe it’s the alcohol in Seokmin’s stomach—there’s something that turns Seokmin’s bitterness inside out. He doesn’t want them to be laughing at Mingyu, here where Mingyu can’t defend himself.

“He’s the best,” Seokmin says, setting his glass back down on the table with a little more force than he was intending. “He’s-- kind, he’s really good. He takes things seriously.” He takes the way people feel seriously, is what Seokmin means. He wouldn’t laugh, if it were any of them.

“Oh,” Joshua says, with two little blinks of surprise, and then he leans forward to stroke his hand gently over the back of Seokmin’s hair. He’s seen this same touch from Joshua many times, with the other members—but he’s never done it to Seokmin, before now. “Cute.”

“Mingyu is good. We love Mingyu,” Jeonghan says, placatingly, and Seokmin begins to feel a little silly.

The conversation devolves into a discussion about Jihoon’s (lack of) love life, and a speculation on what his type might be, which not even Seungcheol seems to have any real insight on. It feels like being let in on something; like Seokmin is part of it, even though he has nothing to say.

He drinks everything that’s poured for him until he’s overly warm and fuzzy at the edges and so he misses it, when Jeonghan slides him a particularly shrewd look.

“And? What about you?”

“Me?”

“What’s going on with you and Minghao?”

That warmth in Seokmin’s stomach turns to an embarrassed sort of heat, caught out and not ready for it. Jeonghan is looking at him like he knows, somehow, his hand propped up on his chin.

“Is that--” he starts, flicking his eyes to Joshua, who doesn’t appear to be surprised by the topic change. Great. That is a great sign. “Did he say something?”

Does he know, Seokmin wants to ask. Does everyone know?

“He didn’t,” Joshua says, gently, and he rests a reassuring hand on Seokmin’s forearm, which is almost too much for him to bear. “No one’s noticed. Not about Minghao, anyway,” he adds, gesturing to Seungcheol as if to illustrate his point. Seungcheol seems to have no clue what they’re talking about, but has perhaps drunk too much to be concerned with figuring it out. He only stares at the three of them, eyes large and blinking.

There are only dregs left in Seokmin’s glass, but he raises it to drain them anyway, just to have something to do with his hands. The silence that follows should feel uncomfortable, probably, but it feels more patient than anything.

“He forgot me,” Seokmin says, willing his voice to come out less waterlogged than he knows it wants to. He’s aware that it’s not much to go on. It really doesn’t even begin to explain everything. Even so, another look passes between Jeonghan and Joshua, flying directly over Seungcheol’s head. Seokmin can’t parse it.

Joshua’s hand, which hasn’t moved off Seokmin’s forearm, gives him a little squeeze. “Minghao can be…” he says, trailing off as he searches for the correct word. “Private. Um, closed off.”

“It’s not you,” Jeonghan says. He scrunches his face up, his mouth taking on an odd twist. Seokmin gets the feeling that there’s something he’d like to say but won’t, for whatever reason.

“It feels like it’s me.”

It hangs awkwardly in the air for a few beats. Seokmin rolls the glass in his hand and doesn't meet any of their eyes.

"He asks about you, you know."

Seokmin has to run that sentence back in his head twice before he's able to make sense of it.

"Minghao?"

It's not as if they could be suddenly talking about anyone else, but.

"Mhm," Jeonghan says. His smile turns a little sly, although there's no meanness to it. "He has this way. He asks like he's doing due diligence, or something, about the new crew members," he adds. "But he only asks about you."

It would be stupid to take it as any kind of sign. But Seokmin is mostly drunk, and he wants, so it fills him out with hope anyway. Minghao thinks of him, too. Minghao wants to know about him.

Jeonghan smooths a thumb over the skin between Seokmin’s eyebrows. “This doesn’t suit you,” he says, and then presses a fingertip to the corner of Seokmin’s mouth, like he’s trying to coax out a smile. It comes easily enough—Seokmin smiles, and Jeonghan gives him a grin in return, patting his cheek twice before his hand retreats.

“Are you fighting with Minghao?” Seungcheol says, apparently only just rejoining the conversation.

"It's past your bedtime, old man," Jeonghan says, although when he pushes himself up off the floor he makes a noise very much like the ones Seokmin's grandfather used to make getting out of bed. It had seemed completely incongruous when Soonyoung used the word "baby" to describe Seungcheol, but it begins to make more sense now that Seokmin is watching him whine and fuss over being put to bed.

"We should go," Joshua says, leaning in close enough to whisper. He has this knowing smile on his face, which Seokmin thinks he's supposed to be able to decipher but absolutely can't. He gets up, gracefully, and then he helps Seokmin get up, which is deeply ungraceful, and they slip out into the hallway.

Seokmin is on autopilot, from then on. Saying goodbye to Joshua, walking to his room. Washing his face. Brushing off Mingyu's sleepy whining about where he's been. He typically falls asleep more or less immediately when he’s been drinking, but when he climbs into bed he finds himself shifting, unable to make himself completely comfortable. Having his eyes closed feels no different to having them open. He listens to Mingyu’s breathing evening out and, underneath that, the sound of the ship’s breathing, and he wonders if it’s time for him to stop being a coward.

He asks about you, you know. He asks about you.

Seokmin wakes up feeling like he’s made the decision already. It doesn’t last, of course. His brain does its best to talk him out of it at least ten to fifteen times over the course of the day. He’s out of bed late enough that he misses a proper breakfast and is more or less useless from that point on, distracted enough to make the kind of basic mistakes he hasn’t made in years.

Chan, out of patience with him after two or so hours of this, asks him to do a full inventory recount. The kind of work you could reasonably do in your sleep. It gives Seokmin time to think, and think, and think.

He works a full shift and then some, and he doesn’t make it up to the mess before most of the crew have already finished eating and disappeared. He heads back to his room in the quiet and he digs out the tea set.

Minghao's room is two doors down from Seokmin's. It’s a different layout to his own, level with the floor rather than accessed by a ladder. He’s never been inside, obviously, but it's directly opposite Soonyoung and Wonwoo's, and Seokmin has been inside their room on more than one occasion, dragged in by Soonyoung himself. It was always difficult to tell whether Wonwoo minded having his bedroom invaded. He mostly sat there quietly, and he joined in on whatever games Soonyoung decided on playing without either enthusiasm or sourness.

Seokmin spends so long psyching himself up to knock on the door that the decision is taken entirely out of his hands. Before he can either knock or leave the box on the floor and run, the door slides open with a hydraulic hiss and Seokmin is confronted with Jeonghan about four inches away from his face.

“Oh,” Jeonghan says, quite calmly, which might have partially covered up Seokmin’s undignified squawk. “Hello.”

“Hi,” Seokmin says, instead of fuck. Whatever dregs of bravery he’d mustered up sweat their way out of his skin. “I just wanted to, um. Could you give this to Minghao, please?”

Jeonghan looks down at the box, and then up at Seokmin’s face, and then backwards into the gloom of the bedroom Seokmin had extremely forgotten he shares with Minghao. “I’m going to Seungcheol’s room. And I am going to be there all night,” he says, very loudly. He brushes past Seokmin without taking the box from his hands.

This, quite unfortunately, leaves Seokmin still standing in the doorway when Minghao appears in the lamplight, head cocked to the side in confusion.

"Seokmin...?"

Minghao's eyes flick to glance over Seokmin's shoulder, as if Jeonghan might still be standing there to save both of them from the situation.

"Hello," Seokmin says. "Yes." Both their eyes fall to the box in Seokmin's hands, which more or less eliminates the possibility of Seokmin escaping unscathed. "I brought something for you."

There are a few beats of excruciating silence in which neither of them speak.

"Why?"

Seokmin's palms are clammy where he's gripping the box and he wonders, briefly, if it might leave a mark on the material, and whether he would die of embarrassment immediately or if it might take a few days.

"Um. We got off on the wrong foot, I think,” Seokmin says. He goes for a disarming smile which is probably closer to a baring of teeth than anything. “I think I said the wrong thing. And I thought-- that you might like this.”

A blink, and another beat of silence. “Alright. Thank you,” Minghao says, and holds out both hands. Seokmin passes the box over, careful not to let their fingers brush.

Balancing the box in the crook of his arm, Minghao slips the catch open and Seokmin sees, quite clearly, the flicker of something complicated passing over his face at the sight of the tea set. He’d like to say he used to be able to read Minghao like a book, but that’s not really true. He doesn’t know what the look means now and he might not have known back then, either.

Minghao ghosts a thumb over the porcelain of one of the cups. He doesn’t speak. There’s the sticky slide of Seokmin’s heart sinking to his stomach; he should have left the set and ran.

“Anyway! I hope you enjoy the tea,” Seokmin says. He did not, actually, give Minghao tea, which he now remembers. “Drinking tea in the cups, I mean. I hope you enjoy that.” He gives Minghao a nod, rather than putting either of them through the misery of attempting a proper goodbye, and turns to leave.

“Seokmin,” Minghao says, and it sounds like wait, so Seokmin hesitates by the door. “I’m not being fair to you. I know that.”

“It’s okay. I--” understand, he almost says, but he doesn’t understand, and he doesn’t want to pretend that he does either. He wants Minghao to tell him. “I don’t want to upset you.”

Minghao scrubs a hand over his face, his weight visibly sagging with the way his posture changes. “Yeah, I know. I can tell that you don’t,” he says. “Which makes me more of an asshole.”

“You aren’t,” Seokmin says, taken aback by Minghao using that word. He doesn’t think that. He would never think something like that. “Please don’t say that.”

Minghao shakes his head but doesn’t push it further. He doesn’t say anything, actually. He’s still fiddling with the box in his hands rather than looking up, and Seokmin gives him time. He’d take anything, at this point.

“Come in, okay?”

Minghao takes a step back and gestures for him to sit at the small collapsible table and chairs set up in the corner of the room and Seokmin follows where his hands lead, because there’s nothing else he can do. He sits and he watches while Minghao sets the box down and begins to unpack it methodically, piece by piece. The small, bell-shaped pot and its delicate lid. Two matching cups in a jade green. The room is utterly quiet, aside from the ceramic clink of the tea set.

“I was with people I’d known, when it happened. My crew at the time,” Minghao starts, eventually. “Woke up in the clinic with a person I didn’t recognise crying over me. My bunkmate, as it turned out.”

The back of Seokmin’s neck prickles with dread. It hadn’t occurred to him until now—the idea that something bad might have happened to Minghao. The idea that he might’ve gotten hurt.

“They thought back then that there was a chance it’d come back. In trickles or a big wave,” he says. “But nothing ever did. Not even my name. Had to get that off my ID.”

Silence stretches between them. It feels a lot like being dipped into tar; like the seconds are going on without him and his body can’t keep up with them.

“Your memory is gone?” Seokmin is asking before he even comprehends the question himself. It doesn’t even sound like his own voice.

“Yeah. Everything from before that day,” Minghao says. He says it like it’s nothing. The pressure on Seokmin’s ribs feels like enough to stop his heart. “I know a little bit, obviously. All the information that they had on my file. Bits and pieces I got from what I had on board.”

It’s enormous. The idea of it is so vast and the weight of it so crushing that Seokmin genuinely feels breathless with it. Minghao doesn’t remember him because he cannot remember anything—not his life on the ground or his life before that, with his parents. Not the years they spent together. So much of what Seokmin knows about himself came from Minghao, or at least the seeds of it started there, and it feels impossible for it to just be gone. It’s too big for him to hold in his hands.

“Please don’t cry,” Minghao says, which is how Seokmin realises his eyes are stinging with tears.

“I won’t,” Seokmin says, his voice traitorously wobbly.

Minghao turns to flick the hotplate on, taking his time filling the kettle. Giving Seokmin time to collect himself, he realises. He blinks over and over again until he feels his tears recede and the sting of them starts to fade.

“I don’t want to upset you either. But this is why,” Minghao pauses, his hands hovering over two well-used tea cups before reaching for the pair Seokmin bought. “This is why it’s hard for me, being around people who knew me before,” he says. “The person they knew is gone. He’s been gone for years. I’m someone else.”

Seokmin wants to say it, feels the words pushing up his throat: you aren’t. You’re Minghao. How can you be gone, if I still remember you?

He says nothing, instead. They wait in silence for the kettle to boil.

“It made me feel like—I don’t know, like a ghost I guess,” Minghao says. He portions two spoons of tea leaves into the pot’s strainer and pours in the steaming water. “Like I was walking around in the body of someone they were all mourning.”

Seokmin tries to imagine it; living in a home you can’t recognise with friends you’ve never known. Having people love you when you don’t love them back.

“People who knew me before have these expectations of me,” Minghao says. “And when I don’t meet them, they’re disappointed. I’m only going to disappoint you.”

“You won’t,” Seokmin says, suddenly and with more force than he really meant to. “I know you won’t.”

“You don’t know that,” Minghao says, frustration creeping into his voice. “You don’t know me.”

Seokmin wants, desperately, to tell Minghao that he’s sorry. He wants to say the right thing, for once. He can feel it already, though—the way his sadness is weighing Minghao down.

“Well. I’m Lee Seokmin,” he says, injecting a little lightness into his voice. He puffs his chest out to straighten his shoulders and extends his hand for Minghao to shake like a businessman in an inner-ring planet might. “It’s nice to meet you.”

Minghao blinks at him, and then at his hand, bemused.

“That’s-- so corny,” he huffs, but he’s smiling. A real smile—not a strained one, not a polite one. He’s smiling like he wants to laugh. “Xu Minghao,” he says, and then he takes Seokmin’s hand to shake. It’s the first time he’s touched him in almost ten years. “It’s nice to meet you too, Lee Seokmin.”

It feels a little like a change in temperature. The air in the room shifts, just like that, the string of tension suddenly slack.

“Tell me about yourself?”

“What should I tell you?” Minghao asks. The smile is still there—he takes a seat and leans forward to cup his chin in his hand.

“Everything. From that day,” Seokmin says. “Up until right now.”

Minghao snorts. And then he tells Seokmin everything.

He left the trader he’d been flying with at the very next port, only halfway through his contract. He’d done a little couriering after that, while he got his bearings, and then he cycled through contracts until he found his way onto a research vessel that aimed to scout the far reaches. The idea of that used to be one of Seokmin’s worst nightmares. The sheer distance of it—months on end without any real port. Years, even. The way Minghao tells it feels less like total isolation and more like adventure, though, like he used to talk about back when he was grounded.

He picked up his tea habit after spending a month on a little moon whose main export was oolong. He never read a lot until his first stretch on the scout ship after which he hoarded books voraciously, although he keeps his permanent collection whittled down to only his favourites. He learned to dance around four years ago working on a passenger ship, from a woman who was once a famous dancer and was now an instructor for wealthy central planet children. That was his last contract before he’d spotted Soonyoung’s hair—green at the time, apparently—from across the dock, and he’d walked over to ask for a job.

Minghao talks for long enough that their tea goes cold, neither of them remembering to drink it, so he makes a fresh pot without breaking the rhythm of the story he’s in the middle of. Seokmin wants to bathe in the warmth of his voice. He wants to cover his skin with it.

When the new pot is fragrant enough Minghao tosses what’s left of their first serving and pours a fresh one for each of them, practised and graceful. He doesn’t spill a drop.

It doesn’t taste remarkably different to the tea he’d had with Soonyoung and Jihoon. He finds himself wanting to know the difference, wanting to know how each variety is made and what it is he’s meant to be tasting. He thinks he could ask that, now, and Minghao would tell him.

Minghao’s fiddling with the handle of his teacup, not quite looking at anything.

“How long have you known me for?”

It’s the first and only reference he’s made to before, and Seokmin feels his heart swell up towards his throat.

“Since we were fourteen,” Seokmin says, careful. “When you came to Earth.”

It’s only after it’s out that Seokmin realises how odd that sounds, like he’s trying to be poetic about it. It seems to amuse Minghao, anyway, his mouth twisting up a little at the corner.

“And were we…?”

He doesn’t need to finish the sentence; they both know.

“Yes. For almost five years, yeah,” Seokmin says. He won’t cry. He will not cry.

There’s silence, for a little while.

“You must have been so lonely,” Minghao says, gently. His voice would be too soft to pick up if they weren’t alone in the room together.

“You must have been too.”

Seokmin’s own voice is a little thick now, but Minghao doesn’t stiffen or flinch away from it. He reaches across the table to where Seokmin’s hand rests beside his cup and he turns it over to lay flat, his own thumb resting in the centre of Seokmin’s palm.

He’s never noticed the lines there before; the way two of the longest ones intersect and then trail off, right where Minghao’s thumb rubs a slow circle. It doesn’t mean anything. He’s only looking, and so is Minghao, and the moment stretches out. Seokmin finds the solid weight on his chest that felt like a root seeking ground isn’t there anymore. Seven more months on board yawn out in front of him and feel like nothing; like not enough.

“I’ll ask you about it,” Minghao says, eventually. “But not today. Okay?”

Seokmin nods. He’d wait for years, if he had to. That would be okay.

He curls his fingers over Minghao’s thumb, and then Minghao is smiling again.

“So? What about you?”

“What about me?”

Minghao gives him this look—this picture-perfect recreation of one he used to level Seokmin with on an almost daily basis. Amused, exasperated. Fond.

“Tell me about yourself.”