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You’ve been friends with Mingyu for a while, introduced by mutual friends. You mostly hang out in groups, but there have been occasions where it ends up being just the two of you by nature of people having to bail last minute. It’s never weird, Mingyu is fun and outgoing and is the same whether there are 2 people or 20. You sometimes think you catch him looking at you when you aren’t speaking, or wonder if his friendly hugs last a second or two too long to be JUST friendly anymore, but you ignore it. You’ve got a crush on him, obviously, who wouldn’t, but you don’t think it’s reciprocal. Mingyu is just LIKE that.
With the holidays approaching, it’s been a few weeks since you’ve seen each other. Every weekend is a different party or activity and even though your friend group got together last weekend, you didn’t get to talk to him that much with all your friends and their partners and everyone swirling around with festive cheer.
On Tuesday he texts you “hey are you free Thursday night?” Miraculously, you are. “So listen. You can say no. I know it’s a crazy ask and it’s last minute. But would you come as my plus-one to my team’s holiday happy hour? If I go another year without bringing anyone I’ll never hear the end of it. You’d be doing me a HUGE favor. Open bar. The place we’re going has decent apps. I will owe you forever🥺” How can you say no. So you don’t.
Mingyu fills you in on the details during the week. It’s his whole department at work, plus partners. He’s apparently the last single person is his team, and it’s a hot topic amongst his coworkers.
“They’ve been trying to set me up with a girl in marketing for ages 😩” he complains. “We’ve met before, she’s perfectly nice, we just have no chemistry at all.” You think mingyu could have chemistry with a rock, but you’re going on a fake date with your crush so you don’t mention that.
You meet Thursday night at the restaurant. Mingyu offers to come meet you at your apartment, but the restaurant is halfway back to his place anyway so you manage to convince him not to go out of his way. He’s dressed pretty casually, black jacket over jeans, and he grabs your arm before you head inside.
“Hey uh, I apologize in advance,” he mumbles.
“Apologize for what?” But he doesn’t answer, just squares his shoulders and leads you inside to the private party room. It looks like you are the last to arrive, as people glance over and see the two of you enter. Mingyu leads you both directly to the bar, stopping to say hey to the many people who call his name on the way. He grabs a beer and a seltzer for you, and you’re surprised, although you shouldn’t be, that he ordered your favorite flavor. You brush it off - Mingyu remembers little details about all of his friends. After a fortifying sip of his beer, Mingyu turns to the waiting crowd.
You don’t know why he was so nervous, it’s Mingyu. Mingyu can work a crowd, especially a crowd of his team members. You meet his boss, other teammates, everyone is perfectly nice. But it’s when you get to his core group you start to realize maybe why he apologized.
“It’s so nice to finally meet you! We’ve heard SO much about you,” one of his coworkers, named Lisa you’re pretty sure, exclaims after Mingyu has introduced you around. And she isn’t the only one - more of his teammates, MOST of them even, have something to say. About how long they’ve been waiting for Mingyu to bring you to something, how excited they are that you’re there, how thrilled they are that Mingyu is finally seeing someone.
That last one makes you choke on your drink. You wave off the concern and step away from the group in order to catch your breath.
“I’m so, SO sorry,” Mingyu rushes to say. You hold your hand up to stop him while you bring your heat rate back to earth.
“Mingyu, why does your whole team think we’re dating?”
He looks at the ground shyly, ears turning red. “I uh, I kind of didn’t tell them that we weren’t. They’ve heard me talk about you and then when I said you were coming with me they drew their own conclusions,” he pauses. “And I liked their conclusion so I didn’t correct them. But I’m sorry if they made you uncomfortable I should’ve told them the truth.”
“Wait. You liked that they thought we were dating?” Surely you heard wrong. What?
“Well yea. I’ve had a crush on you for months.” Your heart is about to fall out of your body. MINGYU has had a crush ON YOU for MONTHS?? “They know all about it, they always ask me on Mondays if I saw you over the weekend and managed to ask you out. Finally I told them you were coming to this and it got them off my back…Except I hadn’t asked you and then it was almost too late and you could’ve already had plans. Thanks for not having plans, by the way.” You’re still catching up with what he’s said when he finishes, since Mingyu can turn into quite the yapper when he gets excited.
“You’ve liked me for months?” You heard all the rest, but you’re still on that part.
“Months,” he confirms. “Please tell me that I haven’t made a terrible mistake and you actually hate me and never want to see me again. If you do can you please hold out like 2 more hours until this is over so that I don’t have to have a terrible break-up at my department holiday party?” You haven’t really said anything and he’s starting to get nervous.
“What? No of course I don’t hate you. I hate myself because I’ve been harboring a crush of my own for months and we could’ve been already dating!” You’re starting to replay all the looks, the hugs, the dinners where everyone else mysteriously cancelled, and wondering how you could have missed it.
“Oh thank goodness,” Mingyu exclaims, pulling you in to a kiss with a smile. It’s soft, and you can feel his smile against your own. But it feels like it’s full of yearning, full of promise, full of excitement about the future. It goes on a little longer than is probably appropriate for a work holiday party, but when you break away you find that no one is paying attention. He glances up and chuckles. “Look,” he says, and you look up to see a sprig of mistletoe above you. “I guess it was meant to be.” Mingyu slings his arm over your shoulder and leads you back to the group.
“Oh Mingyu, you’ve got a little something on your face,” Lisa teases, pointing out where a hint of your lipstick has smudged on Mingyu’s lip.
“I can fix that,” he says, and motions at his cheek for a kiss. Everyone laughs when you give him one, leaving a perfect red kiss mark for everyone to see.