Work Text:
Yeosang wakes up with a headache pushing at his temples and immediately wishes the day was at its end.
Reddish light glows through his eyelids—reminiscent of the way he used to slowly stir awake when he was still in middle school, faking sleep and hoping if he pretended he was dead to the world, he wouldn’t actually have to get up. Yeosang floats in that limbo for a moment, before—
A hand lands on his shoulder, shaking him through the blanket gently.
“Yeosang-ah,” He hears Seonghwa’s voice. “Don’t forget about that midterm.”
Fuuuuck.
Yeosang opens his eyes to the overhead lamp on—it burns through his retinas, he can already feel that building headache ready to split his head open if it so much as brushes against something. Seonghwa stands over him, halfway between apologetic and slightly exasperated. It’s a balance that only he could really pull off, Yeosang thinks.
“Why,” He croaks out, delicately rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.
“Are you asking seriously?” Seonghwa questions.
Yeosang pauses. He isn’t really asking out of genuine curiosity. He just doesn’t want to be awake. Or alive. Seonghwa takes his silence at the inquiry as a dismissal.
“There’s tylenol in the kitchen,” He tosses over his shoulder, “I’m going to go see Hongjoong.”
Yeosang waits until he’s left the room before muttering under his breath, “How do you have energy for that?” It’s honestly sort of unfair—hangovers always get Yeosang so bad, he’s out of commission for at least half a day afterwards on average. It’s ridiculous. Seonghwa gets drunk much faster than him on average and he still wakes up early on purpose. Ridiculous.
He contemplates flopping back into bed and going back to sleep despite Seonghwa waking him up, but the moment his head touches the pillow again, he feels anxiety rise from the depths of his stomach until he felt nauseous enough to sit up again.
Yeosang regrets bugging Seonghwa to wake him up for that test, now—one of the few memories he has from that party was pulling Seonghwa aside and shaking him by the shoulders, already tipsy, and saying that He has to wake him up, he’ll do anything, it’ll be the only favour he ever asks from him, please. And more like that, until Seonghwa had agreed and pushed him back into the fray with a gentle hand to his cheek, laughing as Yeosang had another red cup shoved in his clammy hands.
The next day, he really regrets it. Curse Seonghwa for actually listening to him—who does that?
Either way, dragging himself to his feet is a herculean task that Yeosang manages, to his own surprise.
He makes it into semi-presentable clothes, if dark sweatpants and a plain hoodie could be considered as much. Yeosang ends up in socks and slides with a bag slung over one shoulder before he shuffles out of his and Seonghwa’s apartment, taking a tylenol before shutting the door behind him.
The walk to class is quiet. Yeosang forgoes his usual routine of wearing AirPods and listening to music Wooyoung’s sent him and trades EDM beats for the ambiance of birds and the breeze ruffling tree leaves. Spring is creeping into summer, very slowly, the sun beating down on his shoulders until he feels warm despite the cutting wind.
His phone buzzes in his pocket right before he walks into the building for his class—Intro to Software Engineering, it makes Yeosang want to cry, sometimes, with how much work there is and how stupid he feels next to his classmates who know so much more than him.
Yeosang fishes his phone out of his pocket, spotting the message that flits across the screen. He reads through it, a smile slowly growing on his face as he rereads it once, twice, thrice before putting it in his pocket again.
Warmth travels up his spine, starting from his fingers and spreading everywhere else. By the time he’s in his seat, pulling out a pen while the professor sets up for the midterm at the front of the class, he’s almost forgotten about his headache entirely.
Yeosang is nine and tucked away into the corner of the playground, sheltering under the shade of a nearby tree while grains of sand stick themselves to his knees where he’s digging through mounds to make a castle. The shrieks of children are far off by the playset, he can hear the slap of flesh against metal as the other kids swing and climb.
He’s content, really. Being alone has never bothered Yeosang, he thinks, many years in retrospect. He’s far more used to his thoughts being his only company. Prefers it sometimes, even. His brother’s left him on his own enough that Yeosang’s gotten used to it, and most kids don’t want to bother with the guy who sits alone in the playground messing around with sand when they’ve graduated to tag and four square.
A moat’s taken shape around his castle when two feet enter the corners of his vision. Yeosang pauses before looking up, straightening to see another kid standing in front of him. He looks—sort of miserable. He should be, at least, with how he has bandages covering his knees and elbows, hair messy and clothes tracked with grass stains.
One look at his face finds Yeosang unfamiliar with him. Maybe someone who moved here recently? He’s not sure. Morning’s class was spent with his nose in a book—Narnia, specifically—while everyone else chattered and worked on homework that Yeosang scribbled and finished within the first ten minutes of class.
“Hi,” The kid greets him, despite the two not knowing each other. “What are you doing?”
Yeosang blinks, a little surprised. But the boy doesn’t budge, nor does he look malicious, so he answers.
“I’m making a castle,” Yeosang tells him. He’s happy to leave their conversation at that, but the kid takes a seat next to him, sitting cross-legged while he watches Yeosang build. There’s a few moments of silence, the boy sitting with his elbows propped up on his knees and his hands cradling his chin as he watches Yeosang painstakingly carve intricate details into the walls. He’s almost ready for the boy to get bored and run off, or kick his castle down before laughing—
“Do you need more water?” He asks. Yeosang blinks, surprised. He turns to face him a moment later.
“For what?” Yeosang questions, apprehensive.
“Your moat,” He points at the trench Yeosang’s slowly been digging around the structure. “It needs water. So people can’t get in.”
“Oh,” Yeosang says. He never really thought about it like that—he just made moats because everyone else did. And because most stories he read mentioned them, at least in passing. He guesses water makes more sense than nothing. “That’d be nice, then.”
The kid brightens up, smiling—he has one tooth missing, in his top row of teeth, but that doesn’t stop him from climbing to his feet without a moment of hesitation and grabbing the bucket Yeosang left tipped over on its side. “I’ll be right back!” He promises as he runs off. Yeosang watches him go, weaving through the crowd of kids on the pavement before turning back to his castle.
Yeosang thinks he probably won’t see him again. He hums to himself, unrattled.
(One bucket of water upturned on his lap, a fight in the sand, and a name acquired—Mingi— later, Yeosang is proven very wrong.)
He doesn’t remember any of that party, in all honesty—Yeosang got nagged into drinking too much before he had time to blink, and besides the knowledge that he was happy when he wasn’t thinking about how he’d feel the immediate day after, there’s nothing he recalls about that night a few days ago.
Yeosang starts wondering if this is something he should’ve questioned when Mingi starts acting… strange.
It’s nothing overly obvious—it’s just easy to spot the difference when Yeosang’s spent the past eleven years glued to Mingi’s side after the man attached himself to his side and refused to leave him behind, even when Yeosang initially tried his best to get away himself. He’s always been quietly grateful for Mingi’s persistence—he was stupid as a child, despite the constant reading he did. Yeosang thinks that he’d be a much different person had Mingi not dragged him into his life and carved out a space for him to live.
Mingi was just—the type of person to make the people around him better, just in the act of being himself. That or Yeosang’s just been around him long enough that he feels like his inherently good nature rubs off on him. Yeosang’s never really been malicious, but he doesn’t necessarily feel like a good person. Mingi isn’t a shining example of morality, either (read: spent most of high school tagging buildings and train cars) but there was this earnestness about him that couldn’t be replicated. Yeosang almost admired him for it.
This is just an aspect of Mingi he’s grown used to, with how long they’ve been friends. Yeosang is desensitized, or something.
Either way, as soon as Mingi starts acting strange, Yeosang can tell.
mingi, Yeosang writes out with one hand, phone lying flat against his desk as he erases and redraws the same line four times in a row on his architecture assignment. can you get me something to eat plz. will pay you. get smth for yourself too.
He clicks his phone off and slides it away, assuming it’d be the same pattern as always. He’d text Mingi, Mingi would read and forget to reply and come back to Yeosang’s apartment with food or empty hands. And if he didn’t bring anything, then he’d grovel for a bit and they’d order something for the two of them and watch a movie together until Seonghwa came out and told them to keep it down.
Their little excursions are fun. Yeosang appreciates the routine that he’s made, and how easily Mingi slips between the cracks until he’s a larger part of Yeosang’s daily life than he could ever anticipate. They never really drifted, per se, when they were teenagers, but there were definitely periods of time wherein they’d go a few weeks or months without speaking before reuniting again with little to no fanfare.
When Yeosang went off to university, he kind of expected this same thing to happen—he’d go back home every now and then and if Mingi’s visits lined up with his, then they’d catch up a bit before going their separate ways again.
Imagine his surprise, seeing Mingi at the freshman mixer—he didn’t even know what universities he was planning on applying to. Now, Mingi colours his days a bit brighter. His presence is something Yeosang treasures, if only because he imagines his days at university without them and feels a pang in his chest.
Maybe it’s something he should think about—but he’s far happier to push those thoughts away.
Yeosang’s phone pings instead of the silence he usually expects from Mingi. He pauses in his drawing, looking at his phone light up and pulling it towards him a moment later.
Superrrrr busy today :(, Mingi replies, Can’t come. Will make it up to u >:0 Promise.
Huh, Yeosang thinks. That’s new. His hand hovers over the keyboard of his phone before he decides to leave it. Not really a message that warrants a reply. He adds a thumbs up reaction before closing his phone again.
Nothing else happens for the rest of the night, save for Seonghwa coming home at around ten in the evening, to Yeosang’s quiet judgement. Seonghwa doesn’t pay him any mind and Yeosang puts his assignment away, giving up on it. Him and Seonghwa make peace over a large bowl of kimchi jigae, shared in silence. When Yeosang finishes, he retreats into his room.
Yeosang falls asleep, but only after staring at his popcorn ceiling and tracing the bumps with his eyes. When he wakes up the next day, he’s greeted by several unread messages from Mingi, same as usual. Memories of last night, mundane, quickly slips away.
“You guys are pretty close,” Yunho says to Yeosang, one day, when they’re both seventeen and stupid. Yeosang looks up from his fries to look at Yunho from across the table.
“Hm?”
“You and Mingi,” Yunho clarifies. His feet nudge against Yeosang’s under the table of the shitty little fast food place they’re in—some chain restaurant that was near their high school, about a ten-minute walk away. Nothing like McDonalds or any of their usual haunts. It was more like some place they’d make up for a TV show set, maybe. It’s not the best place for a date, but Yunho was the one between the pair of them to be more worried about things like that.
Yunho was just naturally chivalrous. Yeosang thought it was sweet—probably why he made it this far in the first place. Yeosang’s luck with partners was historically awful. Mostly because he’d never found himself interested in anyone long enough to consider getting together with them past just a thought that would flit through his mind before being put to rest a moment later.
He doesn't remember how the two became acquainted, just that one day Yunho sat next to him at lunch and asked if he wanted to meet after school with red colouring his cheeks and Yeosang felt so compelled to say yes that the words bounced around his head for the rest of the day. Yunho curled his fingers into Yeosang’s on their way home and against the setting sun, Yeosang watched their shadows meld into one on the pavement.
“Yeah, I guess we are,” Yeosang shrugs. He eats another fry, wiping his salt-streaked fingers on the napkin in front of him. “But we’ve known each other since we were nine. It'd be a bit more surprising if we weren’t, don't you think?”
“Oh, that makes sense,” Yunho says. His shoulders slump a bit, almost out of relief. Yeosang pauses, fixing Yunho with a stare as the other pokes at his burger, half-eaten while the paper it’s wrapped in crinkles.
“Is that… a problem?” He asks after a few moments. Yeosang feels startlingly out of depth here.
“No, it’s whatever,” Yunho dismisses, though he still doesn’t look up to make eye contact with Yeosang. He feels… weird. Just weird at the dismissal, at the atmosphere that’s slowly building between the two.
“I don’t like him, or anything,” Yeosang clarifies awkwardly. He clears his throat as Yunho looks up at him, expression indiscernible. “If that’s what you’re worried about. He’s just a friend.”
“I believe you,” Yunho replies, taking a sip from his coke as Yeosang feels nerves crawl in his stomach. His appetite’s slowly sapped away. “I was just wondering. Mingi talks about you a lot.”
“Does he?” This is surprising to Yeosang—He hasn’t drifted from Mingi, but they haven’t been seeing each other as much since him and Yunho got together and they started the new year, both in different classes. Yeosang still sees him a decent amount, but nowhere near as much as he used to. He sort of assumed that Mingi would’ve just… not moved on, but slowly stopped talking about Yeosang.
Yeosang’s the type to fade in and out of people’s lives—he has friends he used to be close with for a few months at a time before they just drifted, inexplicably. He’s never had a proper friend group, just a rare passerby or two who he’d keep company until they found someone better. Less quiet, less indecisive.
He supposes it was just natural to imagine the same coming from Mingi, but hearing from Yunho that Mingi never stopped talking about him just… stuns him into silence.
“Yeah. Why do you sound surprised?” Yunho huffs out a laugh between a bite of his fries. Yeosang shrugs, letting his gaze drift away from Yunho and back down to his food. He doesn’t feel very hungry anymore.
“Dunno, just, like. Didn’t expect that.” When Yeosang looks up again, Yunho’s staring at him as if he’s found a particularly interesting rock on one of his late-night beach trips. “What?”
“Nothing,” Yunho waves off, this time looking much more relaxed than he was a few minutes ago. “D’you want to go to lake today?”
Yeosang’s shoulders slump, inexplicably relieved at the change in conversation.
“That sounds fun,” Yeosang agrees. Yunho shoots him a smile before they melt into comfortable silence.
The day ends with the pair of them skipping stones and watching ducks float over tranquil waves. Yeosang turns a smooth pebble over in his palm as he does Yunho’s words in his mind. He whips the stone into the water and sunlight scatters against the waves as dusk creeps up on the two.
Yunho laughs next to him and Yeosang grins. Something in his stomach twists.
Wooyoung’s dorm is almost like a liminal space, at this point, if only for how many times Yeosang’s been high out of his mind in there. It’d be more of a struggle trying to remember the last time he was sober in there than anything.
He doesn’t have any qualms about this, though. It’s a fun stress reliever, and Wooyoung’s made it a habit to be anywhere but his dorm when he’s not smoking—something about a roommate who stresses him out and he can only stand when he’s high, but Yeosang’s not touching that with a six-foot-pole.
He lazes in Wooyoung’s bed, watching the LEDs on the wall spin between the colours of the rainbow. It’s dizzying in a way that has him entranced, falling further into the visual until he’s zoned out.
Yeosang comes back to himself when Wooyoung kicks his knee. He yelps half-heartedly before looking up, head craning to look Wooyoung in the eyes where he’s leaning against the headboard of the bed. Wooyoung doesn’t seem very sympathetic to Yeosang’s miseries at all.
“What’s wrong with you,” He says. It’s not really a question. Yeosang usually loves how blunt Wooyoung is, but he frowns, now, letting his head flop back against his shitty blanket.
“Nothing,” Yeosang tells him. Wooyoung laughs like he’s just told a very funny joke.
“Be serious,” He insists. “Half the time you come here, it’s to whine about work you didn’t finish on time because you kept procrastinating or to complain about a professor. The other half is, like, to disassociate. So which is it?”
Yeosang chews on his bottom lip as he stares at the kaleidoscope of constantly changing colours on the ceiling. “Have you spoken to Mingi recently?”
This is the wrong question to ask, clearly—Wooyoung jumps on the opportunity for gossip before Yeosang can even blink.
“No, why? Are you fighting? Did he say something? Did you—?”
“Never mind,” Yeosang groans, rolling over and ready to stumble off the bed before Wooyoung yanks him back by the arm.
“No! Tell me more, what’s wrong with Mingi?” Wooyoung presses.
“Nothing’s wrong, I just—” Yeosang sighs, frustrated. “I’ve been thinking, lately.”
“That’s new,” Wooyoung comments, his grip on Yeosang’s arm loosening.
“Okay, if you keep this up I’m just going to go find someone more helpful—”
“No, okay, fine, I’ll cut it out,” Wooyoung promises, pulling Yeosang into his side with an arm around his neck until their thighs are pressed against each other where they sit against the headboard of his bed. It’s oddly therapeutic.
“Nothing happened,” Yeosang says finally. “He’s just been. I dunno. Acting weird?”
“Weird how?” Wooyoung prompts.
“Well, he just. We haven’t eaten together in a while. And he texts me back a lot more, lately, he didn’t do that before. And—what?” Yeosang interrupts himself when he hears Wooyoung stifling a laugh from next to him, brow furrowed.
“Sorry, it’s just, like—” He swallows a laugh, shaking his head as one hand slaps Yeosang’s knee. “When you said he’s been acting weird, I thought you meant, like, avoiding you and refusing to talk to you, or something. Not just him texting you more?”
Yeosang flushes. “Well, it sounds stupid when you put it like that—”
“Because it is,” Wooyoung giggles. “Listen, just, like. You always do this thing where you get really in your head about something when you don’t have to, like, at all. And then you spend weeks worrying about it before realizing that nothing was wrong in the first place. This? This is, like, the build-up to that. What I’m saying, is that you need to get yourself together, just a bit.”
Yeosang chews on the inside of his cheek. Wooyoung’s not necessarily wrong. Yeosang’s just always been stubborn when it comes to acknowledging that sometimes he catastrophizes when he doesn’t need to, anxiety getting to him before he can work out a reasonable plan of action for things that make him feel off-centre. And, well—
Mingi is the centre for a lot of things in his life. Yeosang feels the world shift slightly to the left and his skin burns under Wooyoung’s as his addled mind sharpens at the thought.
“Oh my god,” Yeosang says out loud. “I have to kill myself.”
“What? No, dude,” Wooyoung protests, but Yeosang pays him no mind. Mingi’s name runs in his head on a loop.
I’m so fucked. I’m soooo fucked, Yeosang thinks, half-hysterical.
“I got you a gift,” Mingi tells Yeosang at sixteen, cheek scuffed because he threw himself off a swing last week and landed on the pavement instead of the sand like he was planning. Despite his marred face, there’s a smile stretched wide against his lips as he holds the plastic bag out to Yeosang.
Yeosang’s mouth shapes into a small O, surprised. “You didn’t really have to get me anything,” Yeosang says weakly. He’s not really gotten used to expecting things from Mingi—Ever since he’s started working at his mum’s restaurant after school, he comes back with more pocket change than Yeosang’s ever seen in his life. He’d be jealous if Mingi hadn’t spent almost half of it on the two of them— Meals, comics, video games to play together when they’d crash at Mingi’s place after a long day of school.
At first, Yeosang would try to insist that Mingi should keep the money for himself, save it and spend it on things that actually mattered. But the more he said as much, the more Mingi got upset with him before he blew up at Yeosang and said some things that, a few years in retrospect, neither of them really remembered at all.
Yeosang only remembers that their brief stint of silence (barely two weeks) ended when Yeosang bought lunch for two and brought it to the table that Mingi was sitting at, alone, and the rest was history. He learned to stop turning down Mingi’s gifts, and Mingi toned down his excessive spending.
“It’s your birthday, dude, this is like, the one time I’m supposed to get you a gift,” Mingi laughs, taking a seat next to Yeosang. The rocks are bumpy even when he’s wearing sweatpants, so Yeosang can only imagine how much Mingi’s legs must be stinging in his pair of shorts. Still, the breeze and view is too lovely to consider abandoning—the beach looks beautiful around sunset, water scattering the rays of light into thousands of glittering patches across the horizon. Yeosang thinks they lucked out, living so close by. He doesn’t know what he’d do without such a nice view.
“Well, what’d you get me?” Yeosang asks, lips quirking up into a smile as he pulls his legs under him, sitting cross-legged as he turns to face Mingi. The other teen quickly mirrors his position, untying the bag and handing it over to Yeosang.
He roots through it, pulling out a few books. They’re both familiar and unfamiliar—things that Yeosang remembers mentioning in his long-winded rambles from his excursions to Mingi’s place, laying on his bed chattering while Mingi tried fruitlessly to finish scribbling out homework sheets. New ones, too, crisp. The ones he’s mentioned reading are more worn with use.
Yeosang’s heart warms. Knowing Mingi’s been listening, bothered to remember what he likes, and went to all the effort of compiling the books he’d only gotten from the library—it’s just so sweet of him.
“Thank you, Mingi,” Yeosang says sincerely, looking up at Mingi, who’s staring at him with shining eyes.
“There’s something else, though—” Mingi reaches out for one of the books, a copy of the Portrait of Dorian Gray with ruffled pages. “I know you mentioned that you wanted to talk to people about your books, but, like, you read some old stuff, sometimes, dude.” Yeosang watches him stifle a laugh before opening the book’s first few pages.
“So, like, I looked up some stuff— andIannotatedacoupleofbooksforyou,” Mingi says the last few words in a rush. Yeosang almost doesn’t catch it, but when he processes the words, he almost gasps.
“Mingi—You—Oh, Mingi," Yeosang lunges forward, almost bowling over Mingi as he wraps his arms around the other teen, hugging him tight. Mingi almost yelps, arms encircling Yeosang as he pats his back before pulling back.
“It’s—cause you kept talking about how you wanted to talk to people about your books and no one had read them so I thought it’d be fun to get you copies I could ruin and write in so it could be like we were having a little conversation while you were reading—” Mingi chatters as Yeosang pulls back.
“You don’t even like reading, when did you have time—?” Yeosang laughs in disbelief, flipping through the book and seeing so many notes in the margins, squished into the sides of paragraphs of text in Mingi’s clunky handwriting.
“I’ve been planning it a while,” Mingi says, a little breathless with excitement as Yeosang looks up at him again. “I just—I wanted to get you something nice, you know. Instead of just something expensive. You said you didn’t like stuff like that.”
I like you, Yeosang wants to say for a moment.
Then, he catches himself and looks back down at his books again.
“This is so… Thank you, Mingi,” They make eye contact and as Yeosang stares at the sun painting Mingi’s face into various shades of gold and pink, the breeze ruffling his hair, he thinks it’d be easy to fall in love with him. “You mean a lot to me,” He continues, voice softer. The moment between them is tender, air charged with something gentle stirring in the wind.
“Of course, Yeosang,” Mingi replies, equally as quiet. As if it was expected that he’d do this much for someone like Yeosang. His heart aches, a bit.
Yeosang shuffles closer to Mingi, until their thighs are pressed against each other where they turn back to the sunset, sitting side by side with legs dangling over the rocks. Mingi ignores the scrapes on his knees and Yeosang ignores the sting of his palms as he leans his head against his shoulder.
(He meets that Yunho next school year, dates him after a few weeks, and Mingi slowly fades out of his life for a brief moment. His books stay on Yeosang’s desk, hidden from the sun to save them from light-bleaching. Yeosang rereads them frequently, then.)
Yeosang traces the beginning of this problem back to that party—the one that left him almost out of commission for his midterm before he got a very lovely text from Mingi that cheered him on before—constantly getting avoided in very subtle ways. (Wooyoung would’ve said he’d been overreacting, at this point, but Yeosang hasn’t had dinner with Mingi in at least six days. He knows he’s being avoided.)
The only issue is he can’t remember anything. And none of his friends do, either, because it’s been weeks and they’re not freaks who commit every interaction between him and Mingi to memory. So it’s really up to him to figure out what the hell he said or did that led to Mingi being more secretive.
At least, that’s the initial plan.
Yeosang wakes up at the early hour of three in the afternoon during his reading week. He can already hear Seonghwa outside, chatting with someone loudly enough that it makes Yeosang pull his covers over his face and groan.
He pulls himself out of bed, dressed in sweatpants and a t-shirt before he opens the door, speaking as he makes his way outside. “Seonghwa, I don’t mind Hongjoong coming over, but could you please keep it d—”
He cuts himself off as he steps into the living room. Yeosang’s greeted with Mingi, dressed up quite nicely by his own standards, sitting on the couch while Seonghwa and him catch up like they’re old friends. It’s strangely unsettling, seeing him get along with Seonghwa—his roommate’s been shuffled away into one category in his mind, and Mingi the other. It makes for a strange crossover.
“Oh,” Yeosang says dumbly. “Hi.”
“Hi,” Mingi greets. He smiles, but it looks a little strained. “Sorry for dropping by without warning you.” Yeosang shakes his head, brushing his hair back with one hand. He’s suddenly struck by how messy he must look, face unwashed and hair unbrushed.
“No, it’s fine. Sorry I was asleep,” Yeosang apologizes, though he doesn’t really know why he is. He feels a little stupid.
“It’s—do you wanna go out with me?” Mingi asks, then looks surprised, as though he hadn’t meant for the words to slip out. Yeosang blinks.
He just… didn’t see this coming. The source of his confusion over the past few days coming back to him and inviting him out without a moment’s notice.
“Um,” Yeosang starts. Mingi seems to come to his senses, then.
“Well, actually, I could, like, come back later, some other day or something, you just woke up and all—” He’s getting up from the couch as he speaks, throwing his tote bag over his shoulder and is halfway to the door before Yeosang processes it.
There’s just this—this defeat in Mingi’s demeanour, something that makes his heart ache a little, and words are spilling out of Yeosang’s mouth before he can catch them.
“I want to go,” Yeosang blurts out. Seonghwa, from the couch, stifles a cough into his fist, which Yeosang knows is a laugh, and promises himself that he’ll get revenge sometime later. For now, he’s stuck on the quiet hope blooming on Mingi’s face. He’s always been a little awful at masking his emotions—it’s something Yeosang finds intensely endearing about Mingi.
“Just give me, like, half an hour to get ready,” Yeosang finishes. Mingi nods, taking a seat on the couch again, and Yeosang takes it as his cue to rush inside and get dressed as fast as possible.
Mingi looked pretty well put together; A neat black tee and baggy ripped jeans spiced up with a lovely silver belt, a racer’s jacket thrown on top while he wore sneakers various shades of brown. All tied together with a scattering array of accessories, necklaces and earrings, rings galore on his hands. Yeosang does his best to live up to those standards, ending up in a white button up tucked into similarly baggy jeans, though his are a pale blue.
He stares at himself in the mirror of the bathroom in silence for a few seconds before rooting through the drawers for Seonghwa’s makeup, smearing concealer under his eye bags and massaging BB Cream into his skin.
Half-an-hour later, right on the dot, he’s all but ready for his impromptu hang out with Mingi. He feels strangely anxious, nerves worming their way under his skin. It’s a good type of nervousness, strangely enough. More like anticipation than worry.
Yeosang takes a deep breath before making his way outside.
Yeosangie~~~ Good luck on your midterm today :) ik you were stresseddd out about it… kept mentioning it at the party. hope you didnt get too in your head about it. But like, for real, you will do great. i think youre one of the smartest people i know. Not to be sappy, but i admire you a lot. i can tell that its been weighing on ur nerves more than youre making it seem. I can see right through you lolll.. You cant hide anything from me atp :P tho ik i cant hide anything from you either, lol. Anyway gl!!!! hope the hangover doesnt have you too fucked up :] ily
The lights of the aquarium makes Mingi look dreamy, blue bouncing off his face and making the pair of them feel like wanderers through a distant fairytale when Yeosang gets lost within the larger, stretching exhibits that take up full walls. They’ve already been here a few hours, time losing meaning the longer they roam.
He stares at the jellyfish for a while, drifting into his own world before he’s made aware of a presence staring over his shoulder. Yeosang hums, simply leaning back into Mingi as he hooks his chin over Yeosang’s shoulder, staring at the bob in the dark waters.
“They look happy,” Mingi comments after a while. Yeosang shrugs.
“I don’t think they have brains, honestly,” He informs Mingi. A laugh is huffed out by his ear, one that makes the hair on his arms raise.
“You probably don’t need a brain to be happy,” Mingi says simply. “Just a heart.”
That makes Yeosang’s insides squeeze into a fist before he clears his throat. “Don’t think they have those, either,” He teases gently.
“Oh, well. Sad for them. Or not really, I guess.” Yeosang laughs at this, nerves that were twisting in his stomach unwinding with each passing moment. The ride there hadn’t been silent, but there was a charged air in the space between them that made it a little unbearable to stand being in such an enclosed space with him. Even when Mingi shared an AirPod with him for the majority of their bus ride, Yeosang still felt just slightly uneasy.
It’s nice that the stress is melting away—it’s been a while since he’s seen Mingi. He missed him. He wasn’t afraid to admit that. It was just everything else that was hard to put into words, words that he wouldn’t stumble over before giving up and squashing all those feelings down to pretend he never had them at all.
Mingi isn’t unattainable by any means, Yeosang doesn’t think so. He’s just… Yeosang can never tell what he’s thinking. His emotions play out on his face easily enough, but Mingi has a habit of retreating into his head when it comes to things that he’s really stuck on. In the past ten years, he doesn’t think he’s heard about one crush or anything alike from him. Just dismissals.
Yeosang might’ve come to the realization that he wanted nothing more than to kiss Mingi, but Mingi’s arms around his waist while they watch jellyfish float aimlessly could mean anything, at this point.
“It’s nice, hanging out with you,” Yeosang says finally, pulling away from him, even if it makes his heart ache a bit. He blinks up at Mingi, a smile on his lips. “We haven’t spoken in a while.”
He doesn’t mean it to be accusatory, but Mingi winces like he’s been struck.
“Yeosang, I—About that, it’s…”
“Don’t worry,” Yeosang dismisses, “You don’t need to explain everything to me. It’s normal not to spend, like, every single day with me.”
“I like spending time with you, though,” Mingi clarifies, before Yeosang can continue. “It’s just…” He trails off, a little frustrated. Yeosang watches him struggle with what to say before he just extends a hand to Yeosang. He blinks, a bit taken aback, before hesitantly taking his hand, fingers wrapping around Mingi’s palm.
“Let me just—come with me, for a bit. Okay?” Mingi asks. He looks far more serious than Yeosang thinks he’s seen him before. Yeosang nods, wordless.
He’s led outside, back to the real world. Yeosang’s almost surprised at the fact that the sun’s gone down, the moon rising and sunset already passed. The hours slipped away in Mingi’s presence. He’s always had that weird effect, making time feel shorter than it should’ve been. Yeosang feels like he’s always running too far ahead, wishing that he could slow down to appreciate things before they’d slip between his fingers like grains of sand.
Mingi looks unbothered, walking down the street, hand in hand with Yeosang before stopping at a pier nearby. Yeosang’s surprised there’s one here at all, but the aquarium’s closer to a smattering of ponds than anywhere back at the university. They’re farther away from the heart of the city, out of the way enough that there isn’t as much foot traffic on a weekday evening.
There’s a single lamp lighting up the small pier, and Yeosang follows Mingi as he sits down cross-legged at the edge, staring out at the waters lit up by the full moon. Yeosang shivers a bit at the cold, not escaping Mingi’s notice.
“Oh, are you cold?”
Yeosang’s shaking his head no, but Mingi’s already shrugging his coat off, putting it around Yeosang’s shoulders. His ears warm and that feeling spreads to the rest of him. It’s not at all related to Mingi’s jacket.
“Sorry for dragging you out here, I just. I wanted to go someplace more private,” Mingi apologizes. “I didn’t think it’d get cold so fast.”
“Fall’s only just rolling in,” Yeosang dismisses. “It’s fine. You couldn’t have known.”
Silence falls between the two before Yeosang breaks it again. “Today was fun,” He says again, echoing his words from earlier. “I haven’t been to an aquarium since I was, like, ten.”
“Yeah, I remember,” Mingi grins. “I went with you, remember?”
Now that he has the reminder, Yeosang does recall Mingi there—one hand wrapped around his as they rushed through the halls, significantly more crowded as they flit between people, watching the displays for a maximum of ten minutes before running to the next. Yeosang remembers being petrified of getting in trouble while Mingi urged the two of them on.
In the end, they were given a warning that scared Yeosang to near tears and Mingi decided to stop yanking him around.
“Yeah, I do remember, actually. You made me cry,” He accuses lightheartedly, a teasing smile playing on his lips.
“Not on purpose!” Mingi protests. “Not my fault I didn’t know you’d be so scared of authority figures.”
“All I did was read and do homework, then, of course I’d be scared of them.”
Mingi huffs, almost offended. “Well, I wasn’t the smartest kid.”
“That’s not true,” Yeosang protests almost immediately. Mingi looks a little surprised at the instant rebuttal. Yeosang flushes a bit, but continues. “You weren’t,” He insists. “I thought you were really smart. Smarter than me, honestly.”
“Hardly,” Mingi dismisses, though there isn’t as much weight in it. He says it off-handedly, but shuffles a bit closer to Yeosang, a silence carrying between the two before Mingi breaks it. “I didn’t mean to avoid you, you know.”
“It’s okay if you wanted to,” Yeosang says again. Mingi shakes his head, frustrated.
“Do you remember what you said to me before that midterm you had a few weeks ago?” Mingi asks. Yeosang pauses in surprise.
“At that party?” Mingi nods. “No, I don’t, honestly.” Yeosang almost feels bad for the confession, only just curbing his feelings at the look of mild amusement on Mingi’s face. “Why? Did I say something bad?”
“We’ve known each other a while now, right?” Mingi says instead, turning the conversation on its head. Yeosang’s caught off-guard in a way that feels almost frustrating.
“Mingi, what—”
“I’ve been, like. Thinking on this a lot. Because at that party, you told me something and I had to get away for a bit just to process it, because—well, Yeosang. You’re not the most open person in the world, sometimes. I know you pretty well, but you telling me that you wanted to kiss me was something I had to just. Step away and turn over in my head before I came back to you and pretended things were normal.” Yeosang’s stunned into silence. Mingi continues before he can comment.
“And, like, I tried to think about it and also talk to you, but things kept getting mixed up in my head. Every time I tried to convince myself that I could just forget about it, I realized I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to forget and pretend that things could just go back to normal, because the moment you said that, I realized that I just—I just wanted you—”
Yeosang falls forward, hands cupping his face before pressing his lips against Mingi’s.
Mingi’s hands are on his waist a moment later, the heat of them sending goosebumps crawling up his skin even over his shirt. Yeosang is caught up in the rush of things, pressing himself closer until Mingi’s speaking between quick pecks against Yeosang’s lips.
“Yeosang-ah—”
“I like you,” Yeosang blurts out, voice quiet and almost shaky, and it’s then he realizes that his fingers are shaking, he’s just so overwhelmed by this all, this daydream wrapped up in such a neat package that he’s praying it’s not going to disappear the moment he blinks. “I like you so much, Mingi, so much, ever since you got me those books in high school—”
Mingi huffs out a laugh, pulling back so Yeosang is straddling his lap and his hands are on his waist, staring at Yeosang with eyes that are gleaming with unbridled joy. “I thought you were just drunk—”
“I didn’t realize it until after the party,” He admits. His hands are hanging around Mingi’s neck. Yeosang wants to press himself so close that there’s no space left between them, melting into one. “I got high and realized I liked you and had a crisis—”
Mingi laughs out loud at this, throwing his head back. Yeosang scowls, slapping the back of his neck lightly.
“Yeosang,” Mingi says, voice softening into something fond when he’s free from his laughing fit. “You’re—I—Please stay with me. Please.”
“I’ve been glued to your side since I was nine, do you really think I’m going to throw you away the moment I have you?” Yeosang presses another kiss to his face, a grin overtaking his features. Mingi falters for a moment.
“With Yunho—”
Yeosang shakes his head. Adrenaline makes his heart beat faster than he thinks it should be going, fingers still shaking as he pulls back, one hand on Mingi’s face.
“Yunho was just—I liked him but he wasn’t you. That’s why I ended things with him so quickly.” Mingi looks unconvinced, chewing on the inside of his cheek.
“All I did when we were dating was read those books you gave me for my birthday the summer before,” Yeosang admits. “I read them until they were falling apart, and then I taped the pages back in after I scanned them all so I could keep reading them.”
“The notes weren’t even any good,” Mingi says shakily, wiping a hand beneath his eye as he laughs wetly.
“They were from you, stupid,” Yeosang says, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “What else could I want?”
Mingi’s lips meet his again and Yeosang melts into his embrace. The feeling of Mingi’s hands on him is addicting and the air between them grows warm and charged as Yeosang fits himself into all the spaces Mingi leaves empty.
“I like you so much,” Mingi whispers as he pulls back, all smiles, their foreheads pressed together. “Do you want to eat dinner together?”
“Naturally,” Yeosang says. “You owe me so many.”
“I won’t miss one again,” Mingi promises.
Not for the rest of my life goes unsaid. Yeosang hears it anyway, and tastes the words on his lips a moment later.