Work Text:
It’s just out of courtesy, he tells himself. Seungcheol had implemented a new rule amongst them: at least an energy bar before they enter the practice room because they didn’t want a repeat of last week to happen again.
(If Minghao focuses on the spot long enough, he's sure he could still see the contents of someone’s stomach spilled on the floor. He shudders at the memory.)
“Hansol-ah,” he calls out as he traverses their dorm floor. The room he peeks into is empty, devoid of any life besides the whirring of the fan. “Hansol-ah?” Again, as he makes his way towards their shared bathroom.
A hiss accompanies the silence and the running water stops when he knocks on the bathroom door. A boyish, raspy voice responds back, “Yeah?”
“Have you eaten?” He waits, hears feet against wet tiles walking towards the door. “Not yet.” The voice is closer.
“Jun-hyung made some toast. Come and eat once you’re done.”
“Okay.” He replies in English. Minghao stands there for a second more and moves away when he hears the familiar squeak of the shower knob being turned.
He asks again, after practice when they’re all sweaty and gross and find themselves steering clear from each other as they claim a spot on the floor; the cold welcoming after hours of non-stop dancing. Minghao joins Hansol in a corner of the room, who’s greedily quenching his thirst. He greets him with a small nod and a smile that he doesn’t really feel. Korean is still awkward when spoken in his tongue, alien and unfamiliar.
Hansol is the one to break the silence between them, “I’m exhausted,” he expresses. Minghao nods, offers him a light chuckle and a sigh before agreeing, “Yeah.”
It’s not like he meant for it to happen, he really didn’t, but the conversation dies there. He hears it, his chuckle echoing against the walls and reverberating back to him, even with all the bickering Soonyoung and Seungkwan have somehow gotten themselves into. The silence fills him with trepidation, like he’s said something wrong.
Hansol isn’t the kind to judge his proficiency, he knows this. The boy is gentle when correcting him, albeit playful and teasing. But the unease still forces itself within him.
So he asks the one thing he knows how to say fluently: “Have you eaten?”
Hansol seems to be broken out of his thoughts when he refocuses his gaze on Minghao. “Not yet,” he responds while shaking his head.
Minghao reacts with a nod and more or less vibrates a small Oh, barely audible. He doesn't mean to do it again but the conversation ends there just as quickly. He knows the Korean for Do you want to get food after practice?, hears the question being asked all the time but doesn’t ask it. The foreign language is still awkward when spoken in his tongue.
He gets a text in the group later that night. A shaky photo of Mingyu and Hansol standing in front of the cup noodles shelf, hands busy and full, Anyone want anything from the mart??? sent with it. A flurry of messages enters the chatroom within the minute.
what are you guys doing??
did u guys sneak out
coups-ah is mad
lololol
he says to get him ramyeon
His phone continues buzzing against the palm of his hand as Minghao trudges back into their dorm room, limbs leaden and aching.
He speaks the language better, teetering into his 20s. “Hansol-ah,” he calls out and makes his way towards the boy. An open palm is readily offered for Minghao to grab and they bump shoulders. “Have you had lunch?”
Hansol answers, “Yeah,” and Minghao listens keenly when he tells him about the restaurant that Mingyu brought them to. I inhaled the fried chicken, hyung. He says inhaled with so much significance that Minghao finds it hard to contain a fond laugh from escaping. We even ordered seconds. Minghao nods along, replies back warmly, Sounds like it was really good and Okay, I’ll ask Mingyu to share the location with me.
Then, Hansol says something about going together but he says it vaguely like, “Ah but hyung, it would be nicer if you went with someone,” and supplies, “I mean, food tastes better when you’re eating with a friend, right?” when Minghao doesn’t respond.
Minghao had agreed and thought of a certain someone who’d been saying that he’s really, reaaallllyyyyy craving fried chicken right now. Can we get fried chicken? for three days straight.
“How did you know about this place?” Soonyoung asks, takes a big bite of his chicken and chews animatedly. “Mingyu.” The reply comes back promptly and he cuts off a piece of his chicken, takes it in small, careful bites. He’s briefly reminded of a pair of dejected brown eyes when they announced that they wouldn't be joining the group for dinner. Myungho’s bringing me to get chicken, Soonyoung had exclaimed, giddy at the prospect of food.
In the end, they’d left, just the two of them. No one else seems to be in the mood for fried chicken. Not that he asked.
It was an accident, a slip of tongue, in truth, when he said it.
“What do you mean, Eisa?” Jeonghan laughed, tone teasing as the rest of the members followed. He had fumbled over his words then – the sentence structure but managed a Sorry. Pause. That’s not what I mean.
Speaking a second language is still hard for him, even when he’s gone through countless language lessons. It’s hard for him to express what he actually means to say, so he ends up saying it bluntly and more often than he likes: harshly.
His blunder died on its own when Seungkwan brought up their new album and turned their attention away from Minghao’s slip-up. He leaned into the touch of somebody’s hand on the small of his back, comforting really but unwelcomed.
Throughout the live, Hansol doesn’t meet his eyes once.
When they’re all headed towards the exit, he gives Minghao a small smile—barely a smile, it was more pursed lips and reluctant eye contact—before ducking his head down and falling into step with Seokmin. Minghao had taken back his extended hand, felt the distance, the barrier. He struggles with language.
“You know that I didn’t mean that, right?” He complains to Junhui later, huddled in the older’s dorm room, speaking freely in Mandarin because he hadn’t known how to express this bubbling frustration mixed with guilt and something else entirely in Korean or in any other languages.
What did you mean then, Junhui had asked and Minghao finds that even in his native tongue, he doesn’t know what he meant—what he wanted to mean.
“Can you teach me how to cook?” he pleads instead.
They spend the remaining hours of the night looking up easy-to-cook Korean food recipes and switching to easy-to-cook Chinese recipes when Minghao had turned down all of Junhui’s recommendations because It seems really hard. I don’t want to ruin it. What kind of an apology am I sending with a ruined dish?
When the silence become too long of an interval and the frequency of them slurring their words with no meaning increases more than they’re able to string comprehensible sentences, Junhui had physically pushed him out of the room, said, You know you can just talk to him and say whatever it is you want to say without cooking him a meal, right?
Minghao had grumbled then, childish and whiny and Junhui had closed the door in his face.
Laying in his bed now, Minghao makes a mental grocery list.
Hansol finds a bowl of stir-fried ramen greeting him on their dining table when he comes back after his schedule the next day. Droplets of condensation can be seen on the plastic wrap covering the bowl. He picks up the note, damp from the vapor but the words are still legible.
For Vernon, it reads, Hope like it :)
Written underneath it, a small Sorry.
With the note between his fingers, Hansol stifles a laugh, smiles at the missing pronoun and unwraps the plastic. When he takes a bite, warmth encompasses his entire being. The broth takes him back to shushed laughter and sneaking around for secret ramen suppers under the dim lighting of their dorms. That night, Hansol dreams of a back—reliable and warm—turned away from him. In that dream, Hansol comes into the kitchen hungry.
Minghao gets a text when the clock nears midnight. It reads: hope *you like it.
He wakes up the next morning and finds that his heart feels lighter and his steps have a peppy skip to them. When Chan asks, much later during the performance team’s practice session, he dismisses it with a barely concealed grin.
Junhui squints knowingly. It doesn’t escape Minghao but he couldn’t care less. Not when he has a satisfied patron.
The apology ramen starts something. There’s this craving to feed his members, Hansol more so than others.
It begins with a simple dish, one where he could put in a little too much condiment but is still edible once served. He learns simple Korean recipes first, wants to make sure that there will be at least one person willing to taste it. More often than not, Hansol is the one at the dining table.
With eager eyes, the patron watches the novice chef move about in the kitchen, opening and closing the cabinet, pulling and pushing the drawers, grabbing a utensil then another. They make small talk – with Hansol doing most of the talking as Minghao busies himself with the stove and occasionally steals glances at the tab screen to make sure he’s still following the recipe.
For two people who could not be any more similar in personality—opting to stand away from the commotions and observe the more rowdy members with faux exasperation and barely concealed fondness before they’re forced (in Minghao’s case) to join them—there wasn’t a moment of silence in the kitchen. Hansol talks a lot. He shares a lot. Minghao in return, listens. Partly because he struggles with multitasking, especially when the task at hand is something he’s inexperienced in.
But also because he loves hearing the younger conversing freely. He speaks with a slip of English and sometimes he’d ask, how do you say it in your language?
He absorbs Hansol’s words, his pronunciation, the language spoken in his tongue. Drinks it, records it, repeats wordlessly the foreign words he rarely uses but understands. He does quip back from time to time when all he has to do is stir the contents inside the pot. Even when he turns his back again against Hansol, the younger continues droning on.
He quiets down when Minghao switches off the stove.
“Is it done?”
Minghao sneaks a glance. Hansol’s peering curiously from his place at the dining table with his neck stretched out. “Mmh,” he hums in response, transferring the contents of the pot into a bowl. He can’t help the fondness from brimming, nearly spilling over.
When Hansol takes the first bite, he savors it. Really savor it.
It’s the sight that Minghao cherishes the most: the slight bobbing of his head as his mouth chews the food delectably. And it’s always paired with a small smile afterwards, private and satiated. No matter how many times Minghao cooks for him and no matter how many times Hansol ends up telling him that it’s good, Wow hyung. You’ve really improved a lot, the swirling inside his chest never stops returning anyway – that anticipation of having someone taste the meal you made, the first bite taken.
He doesn’t need to ask, not verbally at least. The question poses itself the moment it’s served and placed on small plates and in bowls (Are you hungry? Have you eaten? Is the taste to your liking?, it asks), analyzed at the tip of the fork and answered when the hungry patron picks it apart with his teeth.
But he asks anyway. “Is it okay?”
The answer comes after the second bite. By then, the swirling had quelled, replaced instead by a tender swelling.
“I like everything you make, hyung.”
At the dining table, Minghao finds it easy to speak the language. At the dining table, the language they speak is new; translations are rough and direct but Minghao finds that he speaks it best, especially with Hansol.