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Everything starts and ends with you
Mingi feels.
People wouldn’t normally take him for the type that’s deeply in touch with his emotions, but he does feel. A lot. Sometimes too much.
Yunho knows.
It might be the angle the purple light grazes his left eye two thirds into the show. It might be the belt across his shirt slipping slightly lower than last night. It might be the way Jongho hits that one note two cents off pitch. It might just be what he said at breakfast and remembers later when he’s in the middle of a move he knows by heart without sparing a thought.
And because the purple light grazes his left eye from that particular angle a lot during this tour, they simply skipped the usual drawing straws the first day outside of their home-match area. Without so much as a muttered word, the others accepted their fate in unspoken sympathy when Hongjoong meaningfully stepped between everyone and the reception counter to do his thing without any preceding group conversation.
And as much as he wishes every night anew that the damned purple light will behave this time, or for Jongho to nail his note, or at least be two cents off pitch in the other direction, he is already prepared for whatever is going to hit him the second he steps out of the small en-suite bathroom into the cosy space of their accommodation for the night. Or he isn’t.
But Mingi has that thing about him where you don’t stop him when he gets up from where he sat on the bed, deep in thoughts and his gaze in the night clouds he definitely can’t see even with his glasses on. Still in his bathrobe and hair still very much wet, from the looks of it.
Yunho swallows whatever words were about to form in his throat, because you don’t stop Mingi when his eyes are away from the night clouds and on you in a split second, and when he moves towards you, and when it takes an hour until he reaches you and you have enough time to stop him, because you can see in his eyes that he feels right now.
Yunho reads his face. He has an hour to do it anyway. Enough time to see his features calm and relaxed in their typical night-after-a-show manner. No sign of distress or purple stage light in a stray eyelash. Yunho would see it if it was there. But he sees an edge to the barely-there normal relaxed Mingi smile that would’ve likely stayed hidden if he still wore his make-up. But he doesn’t. His bare face reads to him like his favourite book he read a hundred times since childhood, and that’s for someone who hates reading books.
He wants to say something, make a comment about his lip probably starting to tremble if he keeps it this way. But he swallows that too. He just stands there, barely between the bed closest to the door and the bathroom. Waiting an hour for Mingi to reach him and hook his finger under the belt of his bathrobe without fearing he’d try to stop him.
Yunho stands still as a board as Mingi pulls at the belt and it moves away from his waist like it’s nothing. It’s not because he’s uncomfortable, but because you don’t stop Mingi when he loosens the belt of your bathrobe with his gaze trained on his own hand and the way the knot easily falls apart under it. You don’t stop him taking the collar in his hand and feeling the fabric as if there was nothing more important in the world than the softener fluffiness of this very-much-too-large-even-for-him piece of clothing.
Yunho feels a warmth slowly licking up from his waist to the tips of his ears and it’s not embarrassment nor shyness nor arousal. It’s more like a smile threatening to steal itself onto his lips, but it’s starting from where Mingi didn’t even really touch him. It’s that fondness he inevitably finds in himself for this man at all times and especially when he is like this. Like when he does something you expect and he doesn’t, because he’s someplace, maybe, if you’re lucky, one day you will reach him. He’s in his feels and Yunho knows.
And so Yunho sees what’s coming, or he doesn’t. And maybe it’s the smile he feels in the last layer behind his actual lips, but he just lets it unfold before his eyes and in front of him until the purple light and the strap belt and the two cents off pitch and the words from breakfast are gone and there’s just the feeling that Mingi needs to feel. He’s here to make it not too much.
Mingi mindlessly squishes the bathrobe collar between his fingers for another hour or ten hours before he finally lifts his gaze to look Yunho directly in the eyes. It’s not one of those unspoken questions, but it would be one if he didn’t already know Yunho’s answer. So his eyes go back to his hands, one on either side of the bathrobe collar and it takes him maybe half an hour or maybe ten seconds to part them and draw them out in slow motion, like it’s now the most important thing in the world to study how the white fluff moves across Yunho’s pale skin and the minimal sheen it still has to it from the damp bathroom air.
It’s the most and least intimate thing that has ever happened between two people that have known each other for the entirety of the part of life that counts. And Yunho doesn’t feel a sliver of shame when he stands, still as a board - not because it’s uncomfortable, but because it comes to him so naturally to give Mingi this space, it comes to him like breathing. He lets it happen and unfold before him not because he’s doing his friend a favour, but because it feels like breathing to be in this moment. To be this close and awkward and helpless and right.
The bathrobe glides down his shoulders in five hours or five seconds or something in between and Yunho feels every inch and every hair on his arms catch with and releasing the fabric, and it’s like it happens for the fifteen thousandth time and maybe it does.
Then Mingi’s hand is finally on his chest, the lightest touch to his skin, like a butterfly over his butterfly wing heart. It’s just like Mingi thinks he can still get away pretending there was never any contact between them. But Yunho very much feels the underside of his fingers and the inside of his palm with just the right amount of rough that feels like life against the smooth stretch of skin over his collar bone - despite his efforts with hand lotion. He suppresses the urge to lean into the touch to tease him. To show him he’s very well over the point of pretending he doesn’t know how his skin feels under his fingers this particular night, after this particular shower with the shower gel smell of this particular hotel. But this is not the time for teasing. It’s not the time for pointless flirting that will lead nowhere. Mingi feels. And it’s never certain what he feels, probably not even to him, but he does. And he’s here to make it not too much.
Mingi looks up and there’s the next non-question and the next non-answer and Mingi lowers his head and lets his cheek fall against Yunho’s fluttering heart in slow motion and his face is damp and Yunho’s chest is damp and they’re both warm against each other. Finally, the board that is Yunho comes to life and shifts around Mingi like an automatism and he doesn’t even have to move. It just happens.
And it’s maybe the first time in the past two hours that there’s a human noise in the room when Mingi softly sighs or breathes in his scent or releases the breath he’s been secretly holding, Yunho doesn’t know. He knows he’s making a similar noise when he lowers his face to look at the back of his friend’s head and he’s tempted to lower it even deeper to brush his nose into his hair and then he does just that. Mingi’s wet hair should tickle his face, but it doesn’t, because he’s used to doing it, because he does it every day, every night after Mingi showers with his hair still slightly clinging to his scalp and smelling differently every time. Or he doesn’t.
He removes his face from the other’s hair again, notices the smell of this particular night when he breathes in more air than hair and replaces it with his hand. Thank whoever came up with their current concept and pray they will be left to keep it for a little longer, because Mingi’s hair is soft under his touch, the colour being as close to his natural shade as it hasn’t been in a long time. You’re my Mingi. He thinks. But Yunho thinks you’re my Mingi when his fingers touch dull over-bleached silvery strands or baby pink stubble or long yellow and orange locks.
And Mingi hears it even though no one in the room says a word, because he reluctantly lifts his head in slow motion to not-ask another non-question and Yunho thinks the smile finally won and that’s his non-answer. Now Mingi just stares at his skin. Maybe he’s inspecting the freckles on his collarbone, maybe he’s counting them to see if a new one appeared since he last counted them. And it’s a miracle how Yunho can stand with an open bathrobe that’s barely and desperately clinging to dear life around his elbow joints and the only thing in existence are the freckles sitting above his heart.
We’re hopeless. He thinks and because Yunho doesn’t even not-ask non-questions, he lifts the hand that has been uselessly floating around in the void after leaving Mingi’s head and curls his fingers around the collar of Mingi’s bathrobe. Mingi doesn’t flinch either. He’s still inspecting the freckles, or maybe he is counting pores now, but the hand that pulls away at the fabric around him is so normal to him that he doesn’t react to it at all.
When Yunho, like a stupid idiot, busies himself with the fluff, he half expects Mingi to make a comment about his stupidity, just as he intended - and he feels like it’s coming, but Mingi just puffs some air onto his chest. Maybe he’s laughing at him. Yunho’s just waiting for a reaction, really.
He hears something that sounds like “You’re insufferable,” but he isn’t quite sure he didn’t imagine it as part of his non-plan. But then Mingi actually releases his chest from his inspection to capture his gaze with a glint in his eyes that maybe only Yunho knows. Or maybe everyone knows and Yunho just sees it differently. Does it mean don’t test my patience, or does it mean be patient with me? Maybe Mingi doesn’t know either, but nonetheless he grabs the lazy lopsided bow he made on his hip and releases it. It’s not like there was much left to reveal after tying that belt so low around his body. But the slight tension around his hip falls and so does the rest of the bathrobe when Yunho slides his hands between the cloth and the skin of Mingi’s shoulders, and for a split second in the one hour it takes to fall to his elbows like it did on him earlier, he wants to scream. He doesn’t even know why. It’s the first time that night, or ever, that there is something in the back of his throat that feels like agony. But it passes and he almost didn’t even notice it, so maybe it didn’t happen at all.
He wants to ask “Is it my turn now?” but it’s not the time for teasing. So he just places both his hands on Mingi’s upper arms, feels the biceps barely noticeably flex under his touch and he almost smiles, because it’s almost like Mingi’s showing off, but it’s just the bodily reaction to being touched. Or it’s not.
Yunho notices a bit too late that he, as well, lost the battle against aimlessly staring at the other’s chest, because Mingi touches his cheek suddenly, to make him look up, and it catches him off-guard, but it doesn’t. Their eyes lock and everything inside Yunho screams, but it’s not the bad screaming that comes from a purple stage light hitting your left eye in a particular angle. It’s like they all scream in their first encore because it’s still not over and we don’t have to leave just yet. Or like they scream together randomly in the middle of a Bouncy chorus when it’s definitely not part of the official line distribution, but who gives one.
He swallows and he hates himself for that, because you could mistake it for insecurity if you didn’t know him like Mingi does. And Mingi knows him and Yunho knows that Mingi knows him. So this is where he imagines a smirk slipping in behind the glint in his eyes and the corners of his mouth, but like his own, it’s not really there. There is nothing light-hearted about this whole situation. And there is also nothing heavy-hearted about it. Mingi is in his feels. And Yunho knows. And even though he knows that Mingi knows, he removes his right hand from the other’s bicep and instead takes Mingi’s left that has been dangling about equally uselessly like his before, and places it over his own heart. Look, me too. I’m also alive. He knows that Mingi understands. He always does.
His hand stays on top of Mingi’s. There is no chance he will worm himself out of this one. Not until Yunho is convinced he reached him in that place he doesn’t quite know where it is just yet. And it doesn’t take long, or maybe it takes five hours, but when Yunho releases him, Mingi’s hand stays there, over the butterfly in his chest that might have turned into a little bird just to prove a point.
Mingi nods lightly, or maybe Yunho imagines that, but then he looks up and asks a question. It’s the way the thin lines that are his brows move a micrometre towards the bridge of his nose and then back, and the answer can only be a maybe.
Yunho places his hand over Mingi’s heart. And it’s almost as if for a split second the other catches his breath, but Yunho knows he doesn’t. There’s a bird inside Mingi’s chest too, and if he didn’t know better, Yunho would believe it’s the same bird that’s under his ribcage.
And then they stand there with their hands over each other’s hearts and in any other situation, for anyone else but them, it would have been awkward. Would have asked for some kind of reaction, some kind of outcome or someone to say something. But between Yunho and Mingi you wouldn’t know if ten hours had passed or ten seconds or anything in between. Because they’re just standing there with their hands over each other’s hearts and Mingi is in his feels and Yunho knows. And Mingi knows that Yunho knows and wherever Yunho is right now; as long as his hand is over Mingi’s heart and Mingi’s is over his, it’s not as bad that Mingi feels, this particular night. Cause he is here to make it not too much.
Yunho thinks he wants to kiss Mingi. And he thinks that Mingi wants to kiss him too, maybe even more than he wants to kiss him. And he would think that Mingi’s heart, and definitely also his heart, skipped a beat while thinking about kissing the other, if he didn’t know that nothing of this ever happened. Because their hearts are still the same fluttering two birds that might be the same single bird if they weren’t in two separate chests. And because all Mingi probably thinks right now is the purple light that made his eyelash throw a shadow below his waterline or the belt that grazed his third rib tonight or Jongho’s two cents off pitch that mixed differently with the rest of the music or the thing he said at breakfast this morning when he got childishly jealous over their seating order. Or maybe that is all Yunho thinks about right now. Because even if he were looking for a sign of Mingi’s gaze travelling to his lips as if he was actually thinking about something else than all these things that might have made him feel today - he wouldn’t have seen it.
Mingi, instead, looks at his neck for a split second and this time it’s not an hour or ten, it is just a split second, because if it were longer, Yunho would’ve had the chance to brace himself. He looks at his neck, where the skin of his shoulder and his throat connect and Yunho is not even sure he ever gave him a warning cue, but he leans in and presses his nose into this very crook. Drinks in as if he’s trying to smell his pulse.
And this time Yunho is caught off-guard, if only for the same split second, because he doesn’t think among the twenty thousand nights he stayed by Mingi’s side while he felt, something like this ever happened. Or maybe it did and he just forgot while thinking about the things that no one ever thinks about. And because this feels like a reset for the ten seconds or ten days it will last, Yunho’s body reacts differently than all the other two hundred times this exact thing happened or it didn’t, and he closes his eyes and lets his head fall back just a millimetre and he exhales deeply through his nose. And no one will ever know he did that, because he is here to make sure it’s not too much.
And what if Mingi’s shallow breathing against his pulse point makes him wonder what his lips would feel like right there and what if he actually felt them right there and what if it felt like all the other times this exact thing happened. Or it didn’t.
He leans down. And he presses a kiss into Mingi’s hair that is definitely less damp than before and Mingi doesn’t flinch, because it already happened three hundred times before.
Whether Mingi feels or not has never made a difference in how Yunho would express his loyalty towards him. There has never been a doubt over where his place is. The place that one teenager one day decided for him and dragged him there and built a shiny cage around him that never consisted of any solid material he couldn't escape. It consists of something that neither of them will ever know how to explain to anyone, not even themselves. It keeps Yunho right by Mingi’s side, right next to him at all times, because one day a stupidly tall and handsome teenager that randomly appeared out of nowhere in his life to never leave again, decided it’s where he belongs.
And this is what Yunho says to him while there are no words to come out of his mouth and there don’t have to be any, because Mingi knows. It’s why Mingi allows himself to feel even though he’s not the type that’s deeply in touch with his emotions, because Yunho…
He wonders what will happen if it’s ever too much. Can it get too much while he’s in his shiny cage of whatever links them together, since he’s always close enough to catch him? Was he really still in his place when Mingi closed himself off to the world and was it because back then, it got too much?
“You’re thinking stupid stuff. That’s my part,” he hears Mingi say. When he opens his eyes he sees that no one said anything. It’s like three hours have passed and he knows the deal by now, it could’ve also been thirty seconds. But Mingi is still buried in the crook of his neck, drawing in the scent of the hotel shower gel and Yunho’s nose is still in Mingi’s hair. Maybe the lack of proper breathing leads to lightness in the head. And to urges to say things he doesn’t mean. Or maybe he does. But he doesn’t say them.
Instead he lightly taps Mingi’s cheek with a fingertip to make him look up.
Let me return the favour. Or maybe he just wants to lose control for two seconds or a minute, but not longer, because there’s not enough time when Mingi feels. And Yunho doesn’t mind. Because Yunho doesn’t even know if he’ll ever be in such a situation. Because there’s no purple light, or belt, or off pitch, or conversation at breakfast for him. And if there is, he doesn’t realize.
Mingi looks at him and if an outsider looked at them, they would think that he smiled. But that’s just Mingi’s Yunho face. And instead of losing control, they look at each other again. And outside, the sun could be rising or it could still be in the middle of the night, five minutes after Yunho exited the bathroom. And they both know that Mingi needs to feel. So Yunho takes one of his hands in both of his and traps it over his heart again, the thing in his ribcage that has been replaced with ten fluttering birds and one of them might be the one that was previously in Mingi’s chest, but of course, they both know that it’s still there.
And maybe, if they were not Yunho and Mingi, maybe if they were someone else anywhere else in the world or in any other universe, or if they were Yunho and Mingi in another universe, maybe Mingi would bring the fingers of his spare hand up to his lips and touch them. And then that Mingi would reach over to Yunho’s face and touch his lips with his fingers and it would be the single most stupidly romantic cheesy thing they ever did. And the single most stupidly brave thing, and they would never beat that.
But they’re Yunho and Mingi and they’re in the present and in this reality, and if you asked either of them, a thought like this would never cross their minds.
Yunho and Mingi from the present in this reality touch each other’s arms and they touch each other’s shoulders and they let their hands roam across each other’s skin on their chests and backs like they’ve done a thousand times. And every time they learn something new, while there is nothing that surprises them anymore, because they’ve known each other for seven million years and they’ve known every inch of each other for equally as long.
And no one even notices that the bathrobes have since fallen to the floor and pooled at their feet with all the roaming and helpless shifting in between moments that are like any other. And they don’t even know in which places their bodies touch and flush together because they touch everywhere and so there’s no more or less significant way for them to connect. And in the end they’re just in each other’s arms and everyone’s head touches everyone’s shoulder, and everyone sucks in the signature scent of each other’s neck, and even the hotel shower gel smells like something they’ve smelt before. And maybe it’s very late in the night or very early in the morning, but Mingi definitely would’ve fallen asleep immediately if he hadn’t felt tonight, and Yunho definitely would’ve fallen asleep immediately if he hadn’t had to make it not too much.
So, because they both really want to sleep and the only way to sleep is to let Mingi feel and to let Yunho be next to him, they drop like felled trees onto the bed that Mingi has been sitting on earlier, since the other bed is occupied by their cases and clothes, as if this situation happened a billion times before and they knew they wouldn’t need the other bed.
And they lie there how they fell for a second or two minutes, but not longer, because they need to tangle up and touch each other’s skin again, like they don’t know exactly where the other has a dip or a special freckle or a scar from when he tripped over his own stupid long legs that one night after too many glasses of even-they-can’t-remember.
And it’s never awkward or shameful between them, lying together completely bare, with every part of everyone touching every part of everyone. Because they have seen each other infinitely more naked than this a countless times.
Mingi runs his hand along the delicate curve of Yunho’s long neck, until he reaches his jaw and he lines it out from one end to the other. And then he brushes his thumb against his lip and the birds in Yunho’s ribcage turn into a thunderstorm for barely a split second and Mingi would never know, because they turn back into light butterfly wings so fast that Yunho himself would never know either. So he removes his own hand from wherever it was entangled just now, to ghost it over the spot where he didn’t feel the birds turn into thunder and into butterflies again in his own chest. And if it were any other situation, he would have made a Yunho comment about how Mingi is going to out-train San and Yeosang one day if he keeps hitting the gym this hard, and that he will get inferiority complexes next to him. But he just allows himself to briefly move his fingertips a bit more playfully along his pecs.
Mingi knows anyway, and he will roll his eyes at him and smile and secretly blush and everyone will see how he secretly blushes. And Yunho will hide his face in his hands in solidarity and then they both pretend things like this don’t happen every single day.
Yunho shifts around a bit, because closer is not possible, only different, so he can nuzzle his face into Mingi’s chest. And because they’ve done this a billion times, Mingi starts moving his legs around to search for Yunho’s feet that have subsequently disappeared, and somehow they end up completely interleaving their legs until they’re safe and secured. Mingi’s hands are in Yunho’s hair and around his waist to keep him flush against his body, and if he wasn’t dead tired and completely bloodless, he would have continued to lightly rub circles into his side or upper thigh. And if Yunho wasn’t dead tired and completely bloodless, he would have continued to gently massage Mingi’s scalp with his feather light and nimble fingers. But since they can barely keep their eyes open, they halt in their intimately familiar movements and just lie there. And breathe. Properly breathe. Maybe Mingi breathes properly for the first time today.
And then he caresses Yunho’s cheek for a split second or a minute, but not longer, because it would make it too much, and then moves his hand higher up to gingerly but protectively hold his head to his chest. And for the first time in at least two hours, or maybe ten hours, someone breaks the silence.
“Stay with me, please, Yunho-ya.”
And Yunho feels.