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Mingi hovers at their front door and wearily eyes the thick clouds spitting on streets right in front of their living room window. Their clock is ticking just loud enough to be heard and he counts the seconds until their bell goes off.
“Who?”
“Alex.”
He buzzes her in and impatiently opens the door, waiting for the familiar ding from the elevator. Finally it opens and reveals Alex looking more like a wet dog than his partner. He spots the hoodie sheʼs wearing and clicks his tongue, watching her take off her platform boots (also very much not rain proof).
“Do you want to take a shower? I’ll lend you clothes of mine.”
Alex looks like she wants to protest but decides against it eventually, taking the clothes Mingi gives to her and then going to the bathroom to change. In the meantime, Mingi finally charges his tablet and waits until it restarts, looking for one of the shows Alex likes for them to have running in the background. He also turns off the big overhead light knowing that it gives her a headache and instead plugs a dinosaur night light into a socket and waits for her to return.
“Noona! Mingi made you come over in this weather?” San asks with a disbelieving tone in his voice like he’s ready to lecture Mingi for it.
Alex laughs, “No. I offered, he protested.”
She still laughs when she comes into his room and snuggles into the fuzzy blanket Mingi is holding open for her to slip into. She’s swimming in his clothes and didn’t even bother to put on any pants, fully trusting the graphic shirt to hide whatever she wants to hide. It’s not like Mingi cares, anyway.
“What do you feel like watching?”
Taking the tablet from him, she types out Mingi’s favourite show, ignoring Mingi’s small sound of confusion. “You hate that show”, he says and she shrugs. When the intro plays, she takes his hand and tuts as her fingers brush over his bitten nails and the skin around them.
“I don’t hate it, I just wouldn’t put it on if it wasn’t for you. And you had a bad day.”
Just like that. She shows that she cares about him and takes his struggles seriously without brushing them off. He squeezes her hand gently and lets her rummage in her bag for whatever she’ll need to put him back together. It’s in the form of a cute cherry pit cushion in the shape of a bear, his favourite pepero (matcha) and drink (strawberry aloe vera stuff that does nothing to kill thirst but tastes good), and lastly a small nail kit and bandaids for his fingers.
He lets Alex do whatever, knows that this is for her as much as it is for him. She applies ointment to the small wounds, sometimes from picking when his anxiety spikes and sometimes bitten and raw red. She softly presses into his skin, just enough for Mingi to really notice, but never to hurt him. The intro of the show comes to an end and he leans back against the headboard, pulling Alex with him and breathing deeply when she settles down on his chest.
While they wait for everything to dry, she gives him a free manicure and quietly talks about some funny comments she saw under the video they did together for Ateez’s Bouncy challenge; and some edits from a livestream she made the day after.
“I talked about your height because that’s safe and obvious, everyone talked about that, y’know?” Mingi hums and can’t help but link their fingers, her smaller hand pressing into his. “But one edit actually said like ‘Oh she wants him’ and yes, I do. But not in the way they mean it.”
“You want me?” It’s the insecurities talking, the ones that make his skin feel too tight and makes him crave hiding in a too small space and disappear. He knows that Alex likes him; wouldn’t risk being seen by news outlets or stalkers-slash-fans-question-mark just to cheer him up because his texts lacked the usual energy and enthusiasm.
Still, Alex mhms in agreement, “I want you, Mingi-ya. I feel so comfortable with you.”
“I feel like we're doing this relationship thing wrong?” Usually, Mingi would keep everything he has thought too much about in the tight confines of his head, locked away until it knocks against his forehead and spills over; he usually tries to pick it all back up, but the what if's are like bouncy balls and his eye-hand coordination is shit and he spends most of the time crawling around the floor or kicking them away under furniture while the other person watches him and gets a taste of the overcrowded place that is his brain. But his anxiety has been at an all time high for the first time since his last hiatus and mundane tasks keep him too tense or too loose.
“How could we do something wrong that’s only ours?” And it’s not that he doesn’t know that Alex is right, she always is because as much as her head plagues her, she’s free from anxiety beyond performance related things. “As long as none of us are hurting, how could it be wrong?”
Alex lowers the volume of the show and wraps two of Mingi’s fingers with bandaids, just those that have been bleeding, turning her full attention to him. She is so attentive as if most of Mingi’s thoughts aren’t the products of spiralling – she really wants to understand him even if nothing he says actually makes sense.
Her acrylic nails catch some of the light and the rhinestones on them turn into miniature rainbows. Mingi clears his throat, “Well, for one, we barely see each other. My childhood friends always talk about how they see their partners almost every day of the week. And I know that we can’t do that, we’re busy from morning to night, but. They also have jobs and other responsibilities, though they’re not in the public eye and don’t have to worry about a dating scandal… Still, should we try harder? Is there a way others are doing it that we haven’t tried yet?”
One of the balls slips from his arms and jumps too far out of reach, only coming to a halt in front of Alex, who picks it up and frees it from all the dust it collected on the floor. Mingi is too focused on this one to notice another one rolling out from underneath a bed.
“And in general… I enjoy our time together! Wouldn’t change it for the world but, shouldn’t we do more things? Other things? Go on actual dates?We can’t really do any of that but… Are we missing out?"
Mingi’s words are more stream of consciousness; his mouth runs without his permission, “I also don’t think I do enough for you, I want to give you more of me or my time. I can’t or I’d risk my job or our relationship – or, or both! And I want to lose neither, I also couldn’t pick what’s or who’s more important to me because one is my passion and I also earn money with it but then there’s you.”
And I don’t want to let go of you, you make me feel safe and right, not like I’m standing on the side lines of my own life but actually am a part of it. I’ve never felt like a burden when I’m with you or like I should be a certain way. That always were other people, but never you. You’ve never caused an anxiety attack but only helped me through and out of them. You’re so valuable to my life and it scares me because we haven’t been together for too long and you already make my life tremendously better.
He’s out of words and loses his grip on every ball he painstakingly picked up and they’re sliding over his cheeks, collecting at his jaw and are caught by Alex’s hand. She cups his face, makes him feel small in the best way possible, less like he’ll be run over and more like his mind slows down and he’s able to stop thinking about some things that come with adulting and being part of the entertainment industry.
“Are you back with me, darling?” She uses English pet names on him and it is the final thing that brings Mingi back into his bedroom. He nods and sniffles, bringing up his hands to his face to hide behind them.
Alex doesn’t take it personal, she never does, and instead pets his hair, scritching the back of his head and neck with her nails and patiently waits until he’s ready to look at her again. When he does, he receives a gentle smile for his efforts and he leans back when she leans in because for a moment he thinks she wants to kiss him – she doesn’t. She carefully swipes a finger underneath his eye and collects a lash, holding it out for him, “make a wish?”
He never really makes wishes, not on birthdays or on new years or when he finds eye lashes because he feels watched and his head blanks. So now as well, he just blows it away without even beginning to think.
The storm outside picks up and Mingi takes the cherry pit cushion from Alex’s Mingi emergency pile and heats it up in the kitchen, letting out a long sigh. San makes a noise of confusion from where he raids their snack cabinet and hugs Mingi from behind when he doesn’t get a reply; pressing him close to his toned chest and nuzzling his neck.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m okay, Sanie. Go back to your game.”
It’s obvious that San doesn’t like parting from him when he clearly isn’t okay, but he still does so after a final squeeze. The microwave beeps and Mingi quickly turns it off – just in case Seonghwa is taking a nap – and makes his way back to Alex. She closed the curtains while he was gone and turned herself into a burrito, making grabby hands at the hot cushion in his hands and… She looks so cute he maybe could convince himself that he’s in love with her. He doesn’t have to be; she isn’t in love with him either. But sometimes. Sometimes he thinks he could be.
“I thought you brought it for me?” He decides to tease her and receives a weak slap against his arm that makes him smile slightly.
“Pretty smile~”, she whispers and embarrassment crawls in his chest, heats up his cheeks; he gives the cushion to her because she has cramps and his stomach is slowly loosening the knots inside of it.
He turns off the show and tunes into the rain outside as he crawls back into the bed next to Alex, taking some makeup remover and cotton pads. Alex manoeuvres the cushion into the blanket and then wiggles closer to him.
“You know”, she says as Mingi carefully peels off her fake lashes and puts them in a case he keeps around for her, “I know that your head sometimes hates you, or it seems like most people do, but they don’t. We don’t hate you.”
“I know you don’t.” His voice is too quiet to sound convincing, he still tries.
“Your heart does but your head doesn’t believe it. And it sucks and is unfair, but it’s not your fault.”
Mingi’s breath hitches and he looks at the slightly red skin of Alex’s cheeks freed from foundation.
“You like to say that you shouldn’t have let it get this bad, that you should’ve asked for help earlier. But sometimes we have to let it get bad bad to notice that we’re fucked and can’t fix this on our own.”
It’s clear that Alex spent the time he was in the kitchen to make sense of her thoughts and get to the root of Mingi’s word vomit; because at the end of the day he knows that their relationship only has to work for them and that he’d never considered anything wrong if it wasn’t for societal expectations.
Mingi leans in and noses her temple, smelling the roses of the makeup remover and remnants of her shampoo.
“You’ll have to leave later again, right?”
Alex sighs and her lips form a straight line while she nods, “Yeah. But we can still have dinner together.”