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The first time Minghao paints his nails is at 9:37 on a random Tuesday night because he’s bored and has nothing else to do. Earlier that night, he had swung by the convenience store down the street from the dance studio with Chan and Soonyoung. Walking up and down the brightly lit aisles, Minghao was inexplicably drawn by the small bottle of black liquid on display. He grabbed it without a second thought, shoving it onto the conveyor belt to be scanned by the glaring red lights before joining Chan and Soonyoung outside.
“You aren’t going to get anything to eat?” Chan asks as he slurps up a mouthful of noodles.
“No,” Minghao says, “I didn’t dance as much as you two.”
Shrugging, Chan returns to inhaling the cup of instant ramen as quickly as possible. Despite the years since their debut and now, old habits die hard.
The left hand is much easier to paint than the right hand.
Minghao holds his left hand up against the light, admiring the glossy sheen of black. On the other hand, his right hand is a bit of a splotchy mess. He should have bought nail polish remover—that’s a thing, right?—but he wasn’t thinking back in the convenience store.
Minghao picks at the smidge of black on his right hand’s ring finger. The polish moves.
“What’s this?” Junhui’s thumb runs over Minghao’s nails.
The touch sends a shiver up his spine. It feels strange, like a thin film in between the two of them. He’s so used to being pressed up against others until it feels like his skin is crawling. These days, it feels weird to have any separation between him and another member.
“Looks good,” Junhui says. Minghao knows he’s grinning. He allows his hand to be raised up in the darkness, against the window. Junhui’s fingers trace over his hand. Minghao’s skin prickles.
“You can’t even see it,” Minghao scoffs, pulling his hand back. “What are you being so sweet for?”
“Can’t I say nice things to one of the most important people in my life?” Junhui asks as he tugs Minghao so his head is resting against Junhui’s chest. A thump. Another thump. An inhale, Junhui’s chest rises, an exhale. “Besides, I know you. You probably spent the whole night fixing up your nails just so they would be perfect.”
Minghao buries his head deeper into Junhui’s chest, cheeks flushing. Junhui’s hand comes up to rub circles into his back. He can feel Junhui’s chest shake with laughter before it calms down. Minghao listens to the steady rise and fall of Junhui’s breath for the rest of the car ride.
The stylists don’t say anything.
Minghao sits in the stiff leather chair as soft brushes prod at his cheek and allows his hair to be pulled back. One of the makeup artists slides something cold and heavy into his hand and when he looks down, it’s the same set of gold rings he wore for their music video. The rings settle into the middle of his palm, something comforting and familiar.
Minghao likes the way his hands look. Slender fingers adjorned with gold and black.
“Oh?” Seokmin asks as he holds up Minghao’s nails. He tugs Minghao’s hand to the left, then turns it to the right. The black nail polish catches the light just before Seokmin pulls Minghao’s hand towards him.
“I like it,” he tells Minghao. Seokmin brings Minghao’s hand to rest over his chest, right over his beating heart.
Minghao swallows the lump in his throat. Seokmin has never learned how to tone down the intensity in his gaze.
“You know, you always have your hand out for everyone to see,” Mingyu tells him one night.
“What do you mean?” Minghao asks dumbly, he’s only begun to feel the effects of the wine. His words feel heavier in his mouth and so does Mingyu’s gaze.
Mingyu scoffs as he tugs Minghao into his side. He pulls up his Instagram page, scrolling down the most recent posts. Minghao would love to attribute the flush of his cheeks to the wine but he knows it's more than that. In the end, he bats the phone out of Mingyu’s hand.
“Is that really so bad?” Minghao murmurs into the juncture between Mingyu’s neck and his shoulder.
“No, it isn’t,” Mingyu tells him. He runs a thumb across the back of Minghao’s hand. “I’m happy for you,” Mingyu tells him. His free hand comes up to caress the curve of Minghao’s cheek. His smile is something to be rivaled. Minghao doesn’t need to mutter a thanks. Mingyu already knows.
The first member Minghao drags into his nail painting scheme is Wonwoo. They’re discussing what poses they’ll enact tomorrow during the photoshoot when Minghao frowns and notices the chip on his left index finger.
“Are you going to repaint it for tomorrow?” Wonwoo inquires.
Minghao picks at the nail, peeling back another chunk of black. Another part of his soul, for someone else to see. Then again, at this point there are very few sides to him that the members haven’t seen. Minghao scratches off another strip of black. This part, still, is too vulnerable.
“You should, it would look really nice for the camera,” Wonwoo says idly as he scrolls on his phone.
“What about you?” Minghao asks. He peels off another chunk. The stylists on set may not mind but Minghao doesn’t know about tomorrow’s director. The contrast would be startling.
“I can paint mine to match,” Wonwoo offers.
“Oh, that’s cool.” Minghao says. He reaches into his bag, rummaging for the two bottles of nail polish he had stuffed in there earlier. Just in case. One bottle old, one he bought just yesterday.
Hands clasped around two glass bottles, Minghao’s grip tightens. “What do you think about red?”
“It’s a good color.”
The two of them work in silence, quietly dragging the tiny brushes over their nails. At the end of the night, they still haven’t made a plan for tomorrow’s photoshoot and the follow-up interview. That’s okay though. Right now, Minghao’s heart feels like it could burst.
Junhui’s tongue sticks out of the corner of his mouth as he paints a strip of black down Minghao’s left thumb. His foot taps against the floor, an erratic thump thump thump before it’s a swish swish—swish as he engages with the task at hand. It’s cute, with how focused Junhui is and how carefully he swipes the brush and how delicately he holds Minghao’s hand.
“There,” Junhui says proudly.
“You still have another four to paint,” Minghao laughs. “And we need to do a second coat,” he adds as Junhui pouts.
“Yeah, but didn’t I do a good job?” Junhui presses.
“You did,” Minghao acquiesces and Junhui’s face unfolds into a brilliant smile that could rival the sun. The jerk of his hand nearly causes the bottle of black nail polish to topple over and Minghao clicks his tongue.
“Sorry, sorry.” Junhui grins as he dabs the brush into the bottle.
He doesn’t sound sorry at all. He flashes a grin as the brush trails down Minghao’s pointer finger. Another swipe. The smugness radiates off him as he finishes painting Minghao’s right pinky and when he twists the cap of the polish shut, he bats his eyes at Minghao expectantly.
“You’re incorrigible,” Minghao mutters before he leans in. Junhui’s smile is from ear to ear when Minghao pulls apart. “Finish with the second coat and then we’ll talk.”
“Okay,” Junhui says.
He raises Minghao’s hand with a tenderness just like Seokmin’s. Just like the first time. Minghao doesn’t dare look up. There’s a downside to knowing someone for so long, for someone being his only anchor until he finally grew into his own skin. Junhui has seen him shed and molt a hundred times over and each time, Minghao feels like he’s about to burst into flames.
“Good?” Junhui asks.
“It’s good.” Minghao’s throat burns.
“Sophia usually uses nail polish remover whenever her nails start chipping,” Hansol tells him.
Minghao nods but he doesn’t say how he likes the incomplete look. There’s a certain charm to the way the nail polish starts to crack and fall off. He still likes the way it looks, the way it appears in photos—always there and imperfect.
“Oh, she also told me to consider gels,” Hansol tells him after several beats.
“Okay,” Minghao replies a few beats later. And it's the way it’s always worked between the two of them, a familiar silence filling the spaces. Minghao’s nails are starting to peel but he feels whole.
Since he’s signed away his soul in black on a neatly printed line, Minghao’s identity hasn’t been his. It’s whatever the company wants, whatever they dictate. Looking back he was a bit of a fool when he thought the green rooms were suffocating. Those days they swung between being trapped in the tiny practice rooms with poor lighting and even worse air circulation to being trapped behind a grainy camera capturing the pixelated madness. The freedom back then is something Minghao can only dream of.
Now, even behind closed doors it’s hard to unlearn the personas he’s been forced to portray, being squished and repackaged time and time again. Minghao doesn’t know where THE8 of Seventeen ends and Xu Minghao of Anhui begins. His true identity has become a nebulous thing. It’s easier to pour these thoughts and feelings into his art but even then, he knows there are still parts he needs to keep tucked away.
Stretched then shoved, repacked, rebranded over and over. But this—Minghao lifts his hand up to the ceiling to admire the sheen to the dark black—this is something he can still do. This is something he can still show. This is something he doesn’t need to hide. This is him.
Whenever Seungcheol asks him to drink, Minghao knows the night will stretch into the early hours of dawn and if he doesn’t end up with a mild hangover, then he definitely has a headache from the lack of sleep. Still, Minghao accepts Seungcheol’s invitation to drink tonight. He doesn’t have anything scheduled until tomorrow afternoon.
Minghao’s hands shake as he pours the whiskey for Seungcheol. The ice in the glass cracks as the liquor flows. He wipes at the drops with a small napkin.
Seungcheol doesn’t speak as he accepts the cup. From past experience, Minghao knows that he’s waiting for him to breach the subject. Seungcheol has spent so long leading them, looking after them, that there are times where Minghao thinks he knows them better than they do. Seungcheol knows what makes them tick, what gets them moving and running and chasing towards the dreams on the horizon.
Minghao takes a sip from his own glass. “It’s good, isn’t it?” he asks even though he already knows the answer.
“You have impeccable taste,” Seungcheol laughs, tilting his chin up in acknowledgement.
A glass later, Minghao wipes the sweat off his palms and pretends he’s starting to get buzzed enough for what he says next. “It’s not weird, is it?”
Glancing down, Minghao looks at his hands and feels naked, barren. It wasn’t always this way—surely someone else would argue that this was Minghao at his core. The person that was spat into the world would always be Minghao, Xu Minghao, THE8 of Seventeen. It didn’t matter how many layers a person had to peel back, there was only one true version of himself.
But as Minghao has gotten older, as he’s grown and continuously pushed himself to new limits—he’s not certain he’s the same skinny, awkward boy from Anhui with emotions too strong for him to express. While that little boy makes up a part of Xu Minghao, the Xu Minghao of today is not the same person as that little boy.
“It’s what you want,” Seungcheol tells him, eyes full of kindness. “How could it ever be strange? Besides, if someone has an issue with it, they’ll have to go through me first!”
Minghao has almost hit the thirty-six hour mark of being awake. It’s definitely not the worst, but at this point his eyes feel swollen and the world around him keeps spinning. As predicted, his drinking session with Seungcheol went until the early morning and he had to call one of the managers to come and pick up their incapacitated leader.
As for Minghao, well Minghao couldn’t sleep the entire night even after Seungcheol passed out because of his appointment at the nail salon. He ended up too tense and excited, wide awake for every second in the salon as he watched his nails turn from the blank canvas to the representation of his soul.
The afternoon schedule passed by in a blur—Minghao doesn’t even remember who he met or what they did but at this point he’s been through enough similar things it doesn’t matter. When he’s finally home, he washes off his makeup and rolls into bed, hair still damp. Minghao stares at his hands with a giddy sort of excitement. He hasn’t felt this way in years.
The silver glitter catches the light quite nicely, he thinks as he traces over that nail with another finger.
Minghao is too busy admiring the way his hands look from all different angles that he doesn’t notice the front door unlocking and a weight slipping into bed beside him. Warm arms wrap around his torso and a quick kiss is pressed to the base of his neck. A familiar hand slips into his, pulling his hand down until their fingers are intertwined and their palms are flush with each other.
“It’s you,” Junhui says. His thumb grazes over Minghao’s nail.
“It’s me,” Minghao, slightly bleary-eyed, agrees.