Archive of Our Own

The next morning, Minho wakes up in fight or flight mode.

For the first moment of half consciousness, it is unbelievably warm in the bed. Engulfed in such a comforting heat, Minho wiggles his legs under the covers and nuzzles the side of his face in his pillow. He hums contentedly at the wonderful feeling, prepared to fall back asleep again; but when he catches the inhale of that deep, masculine scent and his vision sharpens to the unfamiliar ceiling above him, Minho jolts up into a seated position.

He never stays overnight with his hook ups, but when he lifts the covers, Minho finds that he is fully clothed in appropriate sleepwear. He looks around with shaky pupils which dart from the floor to the walls. Guitar, laptop, posters, vanity, and a leather racing jacket hanging off of the door. His eyes settle there for a moment as he begins to remember the events of last night.

Slowly, he breathes again and loosens the grip he has around the covers. The relief is short lived as he bristles again when he hears the sound of someone approaching.

It’s Chan who comes through the slightly open bedroom door. His hair is fluffed up cutely and he is still just as bare chested as last night, the waistband of his sweatpants hanging low on his hips.

“You’re awake!” he says cheerfully as he walks in.

Minho opens his mouth to say something but his lips only wobble unsurely. He blinks up at Chan who blinks back down at him, noticing his hesitance.

“Minho? You okay?” he says, his eyebrows furrowing with his remorse. “Shit, I scared you, didn’t I?”

Minho settles again. His shoulders slump and he sighs that tight feeling out of his chest. He opens his mouth to speak again, something, anything, because the look of worry in Chan’s eyes is getting increasingly worse, but he can’t seem to find his voice.

The words are in his head, so he thinks them, you scared me, hyung, but I'm okay, and then they’re in his mouth, in the back of his throat, and then, on the tip of his tongue.

But still, Minho can’t utter a single word.

Instead, he nods his head.

Chan pouts. Carefully, he comes around to his side of the bed and sits up next to him.

“Sorry,” he says. Minho looks at him fascinated – he looks so much like a scolded puppy with eyes like that. “I didn’t mean that. You looked so spooked for a second there. It’s me, Chan hyung, remember? I’m sorry that I left; I just went to the bathroom.”

Minho blushes. He shakes his head insistently.

Chan smiles. He tilts his head.

“Are you feeling shy, or something?”

Minho opens his mouth again. In his lap, his hands twitch upwards before he consciously keeps them down. The movement catches Chan’s attention. He glances down at them and back up, and recognition of what Minho wants to do with them seems to flash across his eyes. All of a sudden, he’s bright again and lifting his hands too.

“Can you sign?” Chan says, moving his fingers with each syllable.

Minho blinks his wide eyes. He nods and lifts his hands, saying, can you?

Chan beams and nods enthusiastically. “Yeah! I can! I took sign language as an elective.”

Minho’s eyelashes flutter in wonder. It just makes sense that Chan knows sign language and is so happy to share it when someone asks. It makes even more sense that Chan can find a way to understand him, even when he is unable to verbally communicate his feelings.

For a moment, Minho wonders if Chan is an angel sent down just for him. How else could someone be so good, so patient and kind?

Minho signs, I just didn’t know where I was, but I’m okay now. He considers, and then adds, it wasn’t your fault.

Chan nods with a relieved smile. He tilts his head and pouts, “So you weren’t upset that you didn’t wake up next to me?”

Minho’s face falls. He makes an x sign out of his arms and says firmly, no.

“Hmm, I don’t believe that,” Chan sings, getting up and walking around his room. He gives Minho his back as he opens his wardrobe and pulls out some clothes, as if he won’t accept anything else as an answer. “After all, I couldn’t shake you off of me last night.”

Minho grabs a pillow and throws it. Chan barks out with laughter as it hits him square on the back and falls with an unceremonious thump! to the floor. He turns around and laughs harder at the disturbed look on Minho’s face, his arms stubbornly folded across his chest.

“Okay, okay!” He throws his hands up in surrender. “I give up. You win.”

Minho puffs his face up as if to bask in his victory. Chan giggles at his face and tosses the pillow back on the bed.

“You’re silly, Minho. I like it,” he murmurs affectionately.

Minho feels like he’s on top of the whole wide world with just that little bit of praise.

Pulling out some clothes from the wardrobe, Chan says, “I’m gonna get started on breakfast. You can change into some of my clothes, if you’d like.” He looks over his shoulder at Minho. Minho quickly nods, glancing at the pile of clothes forming at the foot of the bed. Chan smiles and turns back. “I don’t know if you feel comfortable showering here, but I left you a towel in the bathroom if you do. There’s a spare toothbrush on the counter as well. I guess, it’s yours now.”

Minho thinks warmly, he’s never had a toothbrush that belongs to him under someone’s else’s roof, not even as a kid. He never had his own best friend, always fading into the background of larger groups. Then, he thinks, that what they had last night was essentially a sleepover. He likes it. It is nicer than one night stands that leave him feeling used and not seen like he always wants when he steps out of that house and into the night.

Chan pulls a shirt over his head and then a sweatshirt. He peers into his vanity mirror and laughs awkwardly at his hair. Minho looks curiously and spots a straightener box tucked on top of his wardrobe. He looks handsome with straightened hair and cute with what looks like his natural hair texture. Minho likes the look of both. Chan catches his eyes in the mirror and smiles.

“What do you wanna eat, Minho yah?” Chan asks. “Whatever you want, and I’ll see what I can do.”

Minho puts a hand on his tummy thoughtfully. Chan’s smile widens.

His eyes shine determinedly as he signs, omelette.

Chan giggles, “Okay. Consider it done. Go get changed, yeah? If you need something, just text me and I’ll be with you.” He turns around and asks gently, “Is that okay, Minho?”

Minho’s cheeks feel warm as he nods. It’s weird to be so accommodated for, especially when he’s like this.

Getting out of bed, Minho notes the time on the bedside clock. It’s just after twelve. He picks his phone up and checks the lock screen, but there are zero notifications waiting for his attention. It’s just as he expected.

Looking back and forth at the bedroom door for Chan and the task at hand, Minho decides to make the bed. It’s easier for him than making his way around the unfamiliar kitchen to set the table. He picks up lost pillows from the floor and throws the covers up in the air. He stacks the pillows at the head of the bed and fits the covers around its edges, crawling off of it once he’s done and smoothing out the wrinkles.

Feeling an odd sense of accomplishment, Minho takes his borrowed pile of clothes and heads to the bathroom.

When he pads into the kitchen, Chan looks up from the chopping board and does a double take. His hand stills as he gazes at Minho from across the counter, his wide eyes sparkling. Minho stares back at him, blinking inquisitively and signing, what?

Chan giggles and signs back, you look like a doll in my clothes.

Minho looks down at himself.

Chan’s clothes hang off of him dramatically. He wears a band t shirt he doesn’t recognise and one of Chan’s black hoodies over it. His upper half drowns in the material, and the waist band of his wide legged sweats are tied into double knots just to stay up on his body. Even the pair of socks he wears had to be pulled up his legs, the heel section sitting just above his ankles.

Minho looks up with flushed cheeks. Chan giggles at him, incredibly fond.

I obviously don’t work out like you do,  he signs grumpily.

“You’re so cute.”

Stop calling me cute!

“I’ll stop calling you cute when you stop being cute.”

Minho rolls his eyes. He signs finally, then don’t chop your fingers up because I’m so cute.

“You’re so funny, Minho yah. I’ve never seen someone sign with so much attitude,” he laughs.

Minho tips his chin up high as he comes around to stand next to Chan and peer over the counter where he works. He is half way through dicing a green bell pepper, and on the side is a red bell pepper and onion. The egg carton is open, salt and pepper shakers sit above the chopping board, and there isn’t a single chilli pepper in sight.

Chan smiles next to him. He feels him watching him as he looks. Minho glances up at him and scrunches his nose. It doesn’t help with the swooning because Chan only smiles harder. Minho shakes his head and bumps into his side.

“Oh? The kitty wants to help?” Chan chuckles as Minho carefully takes the knife out of his hand, his touch brushing over Chan’s skin pleasantly.

“Because hyung isn’t paying attention,” Minho huffs, his voice slipping naturally out of his mouth.

Chan gasps, “You’re talking again..!”

Minho ducks his head and focuses on cutting the vegetables, feeling his embarrassment in his ears.

“Um. Yeah,” he mumbles, “It just sorta happens sometimes, when I feel… Unsafe, I guess.” He pauses and looks up, meeting Chan’s understanding eyes. “Not that I felt unsafe, really, I just—“

“Of course, Minho. Don’t worry, I get it.”

Minho says quietly, “You do?”

Not many people do get it. Mom certainly didn’t smile the way Chan does, like he could never be displeased with Minho, like he wouldn’t dare to raise a hand to his cheek to force the words out of his mouth. He doesn’t laugh cruelly like kids on the playground, prod him, push him, shake him around like a doll with a broken voice box.

Chan smiles and it squees! in Minho’s chest. He feels the kind crinkles of his eyes and that friendly cheek dimple in his heart, glittering, vibrating in its place, practically beaming with the same glow. He knows that feeling from watching animations and drama – it is the squee! of first love. It isn’t just romantic love, it is nurturing love, unconditional love, the type that doesn’t scream him to tears or pinch pink into his skin simply because he won’t speak.

It’s only a little overwhelming, for Minho has not known it before, his heart lying in his body dormant. It performs its physiological function, and that is that.

Now, all of sudden, standing in Chan’s kitchen with Chan smiling down at him, Minho feels alive with love and affection. There’s nothing to be sacred of here. Here, Minho is safe again.

He looks away and goes back to chopping. It’s the only thing he knows to do with such an unfamiliar sensation.

“Where are the chilli peppers?” he says, and Chan simpers at the sudden change of topic, bumping into Minho before he leaves his side at the counter.

As Minho continues to dice the vegetables, Chan notices his cutting expertise. Minho tells him about his cooking ventures, and although he insists he is only a beginner and he can’t make that grand of a dish yet, Chan is a broken faucet for awe and excitement at the fact. He wants to try Minho’s food one day, but Minho has to be careful with the peppers because Chan can’t handle spice!

Chan takes over after that and tasks Minho with setting the table. He shows Minho where the clean plates and cups are, in the cupboard next to the fridge, as well as the cutlery drawer, which is by the microwave. Minho nods and busies himself with the task.

Every time Minho glances over his shoulder, Chan is always looking away, but he swears he feels his fond gaze as he moves around the apartment.

When Minho is done, Chan praises him again.

Minho grumbles, despite loving every second of it, “I only set the table. Did you know I’m going to be twenty three, hyung?”

Chan grins. “Well, you’re the cutest almost twenty three year old I’ve ever seen.”

“I know I’m cute,” Minho says exhaustedly.

“What’s the problem, then?”

“It’s because I know already that you don’t have to keep saying it.”

“I’ll never stop saying it, Minho.”

“Why, hyung?”

“Because it’s the only thing that holds me back from putting my arms around you and kissing you everywhere. It must be tiring to keep hearing it, but what about my heart, Minho yah? You do everything cute and I can’t do anything about it. At least, if I voice the fact that I think you’re cute, I’m letting some of it out, and since I do it again and again, the weight of it gets less and less and I don’t feel like eating your face or squeezing you so hard you explode. I wouldn’t want you to explode because I’ve already decided that you’re important to me.”

Minho presses his lips together and puffs up his cheeks in his effort not to smile.

What Chan has for him is… A serious case of cuteness aggression? Minho knows that he is cute objectively, but for someone to feel this strongly about him is almost unbelievable. He’s cute, but what about his unsettling eyes? What about the way that he can’t talk sometimes, and can only stare like some poltergeist in a movie? What about his bad jokes and lack of independence? How can Chan still like him and think he is cute even then?

Minho sets his plate down on the table. “Let’s eat, hyung.”

Chan teases and sits down at the table, drawing his chair close to Minho’s, “All of a sudden, you have no complaints.”

“I realised that hyung is as weird as I am cute,” Minho remarks, knocking his knee into Chan’s under the table. “It can’t be helped.”

“You like it.”

“I don’t.”

“You like to be called cute, don’t you?”

“I feel sorry for what hyung has to go through.”

“Hmm, then what about pretty? I think you’re pretty, too.”

“Okay.”

“Look! The kitty likes to be praised..!”

“Hyung. Eat your food, or you’ll face the kitty’s claws.”

They eat together quietly. Under the table, their legs brush together. Over the table, Chan is still captivated by him, watching as he eats his food. Minho eats as he naturally does, but somehow, it makes Chan swoon so much his egg roll falls from between his chopsticks. Minho can practically feel the thought radiate out of his head, cute, cute, cute!

Since Chan won’t eat by himself, Minho begins to feed him.

Feeling mischievous, he takes a piece of omelette from his own plate. Chan doesn’t notice his scheme, too thrilled with being fed, and takes the roll with a particular piece of chilli pepper into his mouth like normal.

Minho brings his hand up to his mouth as he watches the slow realisation dawn upon Chan. First, his smile fades and his mouth slows down. Then, his eyes widen into the plates they eat off of. And beside them, his ears redden in record timing, so bright Minho imagines steam shooting out of them.

“M—Minho—! You tricked me—! Ah, ah, ah—!”

Minho laughs behind his hand. His shoulders shake with his effort to be quiet and hide his amusement. Chan hurriedly gulps down all of his water, a droplet falling out of the corner of his mouth and trailing down his neck. Minho notices it in between his giggles.

“Minho!” Chan exclaims, but his voice is too soft and too whiny to scare him, and despite it all, he’s smiling too.

Minho collects himself, reigns in his smile. He sits up and goes back to eating himself, but there’s a twitch of a muscle in his face and he wants to smile again, beam from ear to ear like Chan does.

“Do you still think I’m cute, hyung?”

Chan’s eyes shine with a giddy sort of disbelief.

He shakes his head and says so earnestly Minho will think about his words in the middle of the night, “I think you’re beautiful.”

Soon, it’s time for Minho to go home. He doesn’t take his clothes with him. Chan tells him he’ll wash and dry them, and tuck them away for the next time Minho wants to sleep over. When Minho asks him about the clothes he’s wearing, Chan grins as he tells him to keep them.

As Chan pulls up in front of Minho’s family home, he looks hesitantly up at the house. Minho wonders if he can sense the horrors that haunt the walls.

“Minho. Are you going to be okay?”

Minho looks at him and nods. “Yeah. Hyung will call me.”

Chan breaks into a dazzling smile, and then it’s time to go. Minho doesn’t want to. Chan doesn’t want him to go either. It’s why they sit in the car for a moment, staring at each other. Minho looks wide eyed like he always does, and Chan looks like he always does too, achingly fond.

“Hyung?” Minho says.

Chan murmurs, one hand still on the wheel and his other arm leaning down on the console between them, “Yeah, baby?”

Minho huffs. How unfair.

“I don’t want to explode either.”

Chan giggles, “Yeah?”

“So,” Minho whispers. “I think hyung should kiss me somewhere.”

“Let some of it out?”

“Mhm!”

Chan’s laugh feels lovely against the back of his hand as he presses a kiss to his skin. “Here?”

Minho’s stomach does flips in his belly, like some sort of circus performance. Nobody has ever kissed him there. Nobody has ever thought to kiss him so carefully, so delicately, like he is a flower one breeze away from fluttering apart, and not on the back of his hand.

The gesture is so gentle it almost feels like a promise a knight might make to a prince, of protection and responsibility. Minho can’t believe it’s happening to him. He isn’t that precious. He isn’t special enough for such promises.

He murmurs, his eyes shaking, “Is it enough?”

“Not even close,” Chan says, kissing his cheek.

“Again, hyung,” Minho says greedily.

Chan’s mouth giggles over his nose. “Here, too?”

“Hyung ah, more, more.”

“How about…” Chan hovers over his mouth and kisses into his lips, his hand in the back of his hair, fingers entangling in the long strands underneath his ears. “Here.”

If Chan is going to explode without his kisses, Minho is going to melt with them.

He reaches towards Chan and holds the back of his neck, lifting himself up into the kiss as he tries to move away. Chan chuckles, and in turn, he reaches for Minho’s waist and pulls him into his lap.

He’s never been kissed like this before, never been made to feel so greedy for more. It is not hungry or insatiable, the way that men from the club kiss him. They take from his mouth, cold and detached, and leave Minho to lie there and feel the humanity slipping away from him.

Chan kisses him with a smile. He kisses him and Minho can feel his happiness for him against his face. With his kisses, Minho feels energised, replenished with love he has long needed since he was seven years old. He kisses Minho and it heals him, every word screamed into him, every hand to his face, every second he has spent isolated, and every tear from his dry eyes. He can feel it in his heart, beating back to life and aching for more and more.

Suddenly, it feels like Minho needs Chan’s kisses to live. He can’t leave now. He can’t go back into that house. How will his heart stay alive? It will fall back into that slump without Chan there to kiss him all lovely.

Reaching up, Minho holds Chan’s face in both of his hands and now, it’s him doing the kissing, pressing little but loving pecks into his lips again and again. Chan meets every single peck with his squeaky giggles.

“You can’t get enough of me,” he murmurs.

“It’s never been like this,” says Minho, grazing his thumbs across Chan’s cheeks. “When I go out and meet people, they kiss me as a precursor for sex, and I feel numb. It doesn’t feel good. It doesn’t feel like anything.”

“And what does it feel like now, sweetheart?”

Minho can’t keep his cool, then. His eyes shake and hjs eyebrows twitch with weakness. Baby is one thing, but sweetheart? Sweetheart is far too dear of a name for the likes of him.

Chan’s gaze flickers attentively across the rare expression and he smiles victoriously, as if he is proud to be chipping away at Minho’s blank exterior.

“You can’t go,” Minho says sadly.

Chan coos, “I’m not going anywhere, baby. I’m just a call away, remember?”

“But you’re not here to kiss me. It makes me feel good in my heart, hyung, and I’ve never, ever felt that before.” Chan kisses him, long and gentle, and presses their foreheads together. Minho whimpers, suddenly feeling a lot like his younger self, “Why, hyung? Why do you make me feel that way? My heart feels like it’s too big for my chest..!”

Chan’s arms are wrapped around him. He hugs him tight. It isn’t too much to constrict him, to make him feel trapped and held down, but it’s enough for Minho to feel like he’s held, that there’s somebody taking care of him. His face is in his neck. When Minho inhales, he smells his deep rose scent. He likes it. It makes him feel there. It makes him feel grounded and human.

“Nobody can hurt you anymore, Minho,” Chan tells him, and something in his voice breaks. Minho’s eyelashes flutter at the sound of. He didn’t mean to make him upset. “If you need somebody like you did last night, you call me. I’ll come and get you and kiss you everywhere, and if I can’t come and get you, I’ll stay with you on the phone, and if you can’t talk to me, I’ll talk and you just listen to my voice, yeah?”

“Okay, hyung,” Minho whispers, closing his eyes, tucked away in the crook of Chan’s neck, feeling safer than he ever has.

Minho climbs back in through the window. He didn’t bring his keys with him.

The house is quiet. Dad must still be asleep after taking the night shifts at work. There’s no sign of Mom and he doesn’t go looking for her. She hadn’t called last night, but he knows she would have a scathing comment ready on her tongue about Minho’s nightly habits.

Minho gets ready for a shower. He wants to go down to the shelter and tell Soonie all about Chan and their night together.

True to his word, Chan calls him.

He calls him in the evenings, mostly. Minho lies in his bed in the darkness of his room, thick covers pulled over his curled up body and the only light being his phone screen illuminating his face. They don’t video call, but Minho spends far too long staring at Chan’s contact picture. It’s a picture of the sea and the sunset, and Chan stands before it, his back turned to the camera. Looking at it as he listens to Chan’s voice makes him feel better about being in that house.

“Minho yah,” Chan coos down the line. “Did the kitty fall asleep?”

Minho snaps his eyes open. “I’m not!”

“Not what?” Chan giggles.

“Sleeping!” Minho huffs.

He rolls over from his side and lies on his back, adjusting his earphone that had fallen out as he did, in fact, start falling asleep. He stares up at the ceiling, wishing it was Chan’s.

“Don’t force yourself to stay awake, Minho,” Chan scolds. He loves the sound of his voice in his ears.

“I want to talk to hyung,” he mutters, eyelids lowering until he opens them again.

“But I’ll be here even when you wake up.”

“Liar,” Minho pouts.

“The restaurant called me because they were out of prawn crackers! I had to end the call!”

“You like prawn crackers more than me.”

“No, baby, I don’t. If I called you back, I would’ve woken you up, and the kitty needs to rest after a long day,” Chan sulks too, indulging in Minho and babying him back.

Minho falls asleep to the sound of his voice. He falls asleep to the sound of Chan working, the click clack of his computer, and the sounds of different instruments and beats. Sometimes, he even falls asleep to the mindless chatter of Chan and his friends. He will have plans, but Minho feels sad when he can’t call him, so he starts a call and keeps his phone in his pocket for Minho to hear him.

When Chan isn’t available at all, Minho lies awake for hours, thinking that maybe he shouldn’t have become so dependent on a single person. He can’t find it in himself to really be alarmed by the way they’ve become. It feels good to finally be acknowledged. Chan doesn’t seem to mind either.

Sometimes, when Chan calls Minho, he catches him off guard.

His phone rings very loudly as he’s sitting in the library studying for this final exams that semester. Hands springing up, Minho quickly answers the call and ends the sound of his ringtone with flushed cheeks. He ducks down in his seat at his study table, avoiding the dirty looks he receives from other students.

“Hi,” Chan says, his voice low and gravelly like he’s just woken up. Minho feels totally normal about it.

“Hyung!” he hisses, his cheeks burning with his shyness. “You embarrassed me!”

“What, what? What did I do?” Chan grunts. He must turn around because Minho hears the sound of his covers rubbing together. He inconveniently remembers what Chan had told him the night he stayed over, that he usually sleeps completely naked.

“I’m in the library and you made my phone ring really loud!”

“That’s not fair. Everybody knows to put their phone on silent at the library.” Chan laughs. It’s a deep chuckle than his normal squeaky giggles. “Aw. Now, I’m upset that I can’t see your face.”

“What does my face have to do with it?”

“You probably turned all red, didn’t you? Starting from your ears.”

Minho pauses. He lifts a hand to feel his right ear and, sure enough, it is warm in his fingers.

He denies bluntly, “No.”

Minho hears the soft exhale of a smirk. Chan is smirking whilst naked in bed, and Minho is totally normal about it.

“I love your little kitty outbursts of emotion.”

“What’s kitty about that? Hyung is half asleep talking nonsense.”

Minho slowly relaxes in his seat again, the warmth dissipated from his face. He’s tucked away in a nice, little corner, far away enough from the other students to talk quietly with Chan as he writes up notes from his previous classes.

Chan is quiet for a moment. Minho glances at his phone screen as the seconds of their call tick by. He wonders if Chan has fallen asleep again, then concludes that he hasn’t.

Though he can hear Chan’s soft breathing, he cannot yet hear his little snores that make him sound a lot like a wolf, breath getting caught in his snout.

As if Chan can sense Minho’s wondering thoughts through the phone, he scolds, “Focus, baby.”

Minho blinks robotically.

Calling everyday, Chan has gotten used to calling Minho those affectionate names. His favourite is baby as it’s the one he calls Minho the most. Minho isn’t used to it. It makes his heart lurch. It sends tingles under his sleeves and across his arms. He pretends like he doesn’t hear it so as not to ruminate too much on the feeling.

“You’re distracting me,” Minho argues, looking around the library like he’ll spot Chan hiding behind a bookshelf.

Chan laughs, “Me? I was texting a work hyung. You must miss me if that’s all it takes to get you distracted.”

“How did you know?”

“I could hear that you stopped writing for a while.”

“Well, I could’ve been reading my notes.”

“It doesn’t sound like you were,” Chan teases, and Minho can hear his smile but he cannot see it, and it makes him grip his pen tighter.

He sighs, glancing back at Chan’s contact picture and feeling his chest ache. “And I do miss you, hyung.”

“Minho yah,” Chan coos. “I miss you too. My back is empty without you stuck to it.”

“Then, why haven’t you come and picked me up in your fancy sports car?” Minho says, his notes forgotten now as he doodles little cat drawings in the margin of his lined paper.

“I had a really big deadline today.”

“Did you make it?”

“Just about.” Chan teases, “I’ve been a little distracted myself, Minho yah.”

“By me?"

“Yes, by you! What can I do when I call you every night and you’re so cute that I can’t think straight?”

Minho picks his phone up and cradles it in his hand. He stares down at the picture and the contact name, and his eyes flutter with his beating heart. Has he been selfish, wanting to hear him every night? Maybe he has, but Minho can only feel himself wanting more.

“I didn’t mean to get in the way of your work,” he mumbles half-heartedly.

“No, it’s more like work is in the way of my Minho.”

Minho brings his hand up to his warm face. It’s not like Chan is there to see him, but he still feels the need to hide. He just can’t help the way his heart swoons at the idea of being Chan’s.

“You smiled, didn’t you?”

“I didn’t,” Minho says, but his words are muffled behind his fist and over pronounced by a lie.

There’s no use hiding, apparently. Chan has him figured out.

Minho shakes his head and eases the smile out of his face. He closes his laptop and starts packing away his things in his bag.

“Hyung, come and get me.”

Chan giggles, “What? Now? But you’re meant to be studying.”

Despite that, Minho can hear the sound of him getting out of bed. He blinks away the bare image of him as he swings his bag over his shoulder and tucks his chair back under the desk.

“I can study at yours. I want to be with hyung.”

“You’ve already decided that I’m going to pick you up,” Chan says. “You really are the youngest sibling.”

Minho huffs at that as he makes his way down the stairs of the building.

“Well, you’re the only hyung I have now,” he mutters. “So, come and get me.”

Like the first time Chan picked him up, Minho doesn’t know what to do with himself when he spots him standing there. He’s well aware that he isn’t the brightest when it comes to social intelligence, always feeling a little awkward with himself, but what is he supposed to do as he walks up to Chan at the edge of campus?

Chan has to sense his shyness because he puts his hands in his pockets again, and giggles as he skips a step to rush over and end the excruciating walk.

“Hi,” Chan coos.

Minho’s eyes flicker away and back again. When did staring get so difficult?

“Hi, hyung,” he says. He feels a little huffy at having Chan be so amused by him, but deep down, his knees are itching to start jumping around, his feet feeling plush on the ground with how giddy he feels finally getting to see Chan’s smile again.

Chan looks him up and down. The hands behind his pockets fidget like he wants nothing more than to get them on Minho. Minho wants that, too, fiddling with the straps of his backpack.

“You look nice, Minho.”

“I do?” he mutters, looking down. He’s only wearing jeans and an open flannel, a simple white t shirt underneath it. He had even walked past a couple other guys with the exact same outfit, just in different colours and finer details.

Chan grins and shakes his head.

“Here, let me carry that.” He takes Minho’s bag off of his back before Minho can let him do it. Swinging it over his shoulder, he gestures for Minho to follow and they set off out of campus. “Sorry. I had to park a little far.”

“That’s okay, hyung.”

Chan laughs as he walks behind his shoulder. He catches his hand and intertwines their fingers, making Minho blink widely at the sudden surge of warmth up his arm.

“Walk next to me, not behind me.”

Their shoulders brush together. Minho likes trailing behind Chan, likes the idea of Chan gently tugging him along, but this is nice, too. He knows he gives off the impression that he doesn’t like to be touched, but it isn’t like that at all. He loves it. It buzzes under his skin. He feels his body ache for even more.

Touch is only a little difficult.

Initiating contact is just a bit frightening.

But when Chan takes his hand, when Chan kisses him like he asks, like he wouldn’t dare to deny him anything at all, it feels like it’s all Minho has ever needed. Just a bit of care that he doesn’t have to beg for. Attention he doesn’t have to wonder what else he needs to do to earn.

Selfless kisses that are made just for him, for his pleasure and his need, not to be taken from his mouth.

Minho wants it again.

He wants to be kissed.

It’s been too long and he wants to feel his heart get giddy like before.

In Chan’s apartment, Minho studies on the dining table, his laptop, notes, and pens situated around him. He’s even less productive than he was in the library with Chan on the phone, because now, Chan busies himself in the open kitchen, making them both dinner. He moves around the place in only a black tank top and sweats. Stealing glances of his back, Minho wants nothing more than to abandon his work and go over there to lurk behind him with every step.

“Minho,” Chan laughs, catching him watching. “Focus.”

“I don’t want to.”

“You have to. You have exams.”

“No.”

Chan shakes his head fondly as he peels some carrots behind the counter.

“You’re so cute. You must be a lot of peoples’ campus crush.”

Minho frowns. “No way.”

“Are you serious? Even if people do think you’re weird, which is fine, who cares, really, don’t you know how pretty you are!” Chan exclaims, his eyebrows furrowing as he gazes at him, as if the prettiness he speaks of physically pains him. “If I went to college with you, you’d definitely be mine.”

“I don’t have a good personality, though.”

“That’s not true. I think you’re very kind. That’s why Soonie is safe and waiting for you to take him home. And you’re hilarious; you always make me laugh. You’re studying to be a doctor, which means you’re incredibly smart and resilient. You’re cute, you know that well enough from me. And…” Minho sits with anticipation as he holds in a breath. “Even though I don’t know much about it yet, I can tell you are very strong. You’ve been through a lot, haven’t you, and yet you’re still here, so, so sweet.” Chan pauses and looks up to meet his eyes, saying ever so sincerely, “Minho yah, I think you have a wonderful personality. It’s a shame you don’t seem to think so, too.”

Minho is blushing up to his hair.

He doesn’t know what to say. He knows even less of what he’s supposed to do, except the only thing he can think about which makes sense to him is kissing Chan. He can ask. He can, and Chan will happily oblige. But it doesn’t feel right. It isn’t what he wants. What he truly wants is to go over there, pull Chan down, and kiss him himself.

“Sorry..!” Chan says, blushing himself. “I said too much. I couldn’t help it. The kitty just doesn’t think enough of himself.”

He turns around back to the stove and busies himself with cooking again. Minho can see the heat in the backs of his ears.

With all of his courage, Minho stands up and walks behind Chan. Chan catches him there with a little glance over his shoulder. He giggles, and says something fond. Minho can’t hear him, despite the fact that his eyes fixate on his lips.

“I made it a little bit spicy for you—“

“Hyung.”

Minho grabs onto the material of Chan’s tank top.

Chan puts the cooking spoon down and turns around to face him, giving him his undivided attention as he says softly, “What is it, baby?”

Minho’s eyes shake as he looks up at him. Chan smiles patiently, bringing a hand up and resting it on Minho’s waist. It’s nothing, really, but it makes Minho feel like Chan has got him, like he’s holding him up through everything. He can’t fall, not when Chan is there to catch him and hold him up in his arms.

Feeling the resolve in his heart, Minho reaches up on his tippy toes, closes his eyes, and kisses Chan’s lips.

As far as kisses go, it probably isn’t one of Minho’s best. Their lips press together, and that’s it. Minho doesn’t think Chan moves even a bit, and then it’s over, and he has to wonder if he made a mistake, somehow. The drumbeat sound of his heart is deafening in his ears as Minho drops back onto his heels and dares to look up at Chan. But Chan’s gaze is so full of love that Minho’s fear is gone in an instant, and then they’re kissing again.

Chan pulls him flush against his body and kisses him deeply, more than just a shy peck of the lips. His hand is cradling his cheek again and his tongue slides affectionately into his mouth, kissing him sweetly and sucking the ache out of him.

Minho whimpers, feeling everything.

“Oh, sweetheart,” Chan coos, squeezing his waist. “Is that what you wanted? Have you been waiting for a kiss this whole time?”

Minho hides in his shoulder, mumbling, “Yeah, but then I wanted to kiss you.”

Chan hums in his hair, pouting his lips and leaving little kisses on his head.

“You are so, so precious, Minho yah. Did you like it when I said all those nice things about you? Is that why you wanted to kiss me?” When Minho’s breath stutters in his neck, Chan rubs his hand along his back and murmurs, “But I’ll keep saying nice things, not so you’ll kiss me, but because it’s all true and you deserve to hear it. Someone needs to appreciate an angel like you.”

Angel. Minho feels dizzy being called such a tender name.

They eat together. The food is delicious. It is so good Minho lets himself sway in his seat. Chan observes it and giggles when Minho tells him he doesn't mean to, it just happens when he eats especially tasty food. Chan says that even when he thinks Minho can’t get any cuter, Minho continues to surprise him.

After that, Chan insists that Minho studies productively. Minho doesn’t want to study. He makes it clear with shakes of his head and incessant no’s, but once Chan gets him into telling him about production animals, Minho talks through his notes. He tells Chan with wide eyes, “Did you know that if a calf doesn’t suckle in the first twelve hours, it dies?”

“Oh no!” Chan frowns. “Poor things. Why won’t they feed?”

“They can be born with a defect that makes it hard to suckle, like a cleft palate, or they can have a low blood pH from a lack of oxygen which weakens their suck reflex. There’s lots of different reasons, but if it happens, you have to force it to feed off of another mother cow, or feed it with formula milk. But formula milk is pretty expensive, so..."

When Minho looks up, Chan is swooning with his chin in the palm of his hand.

“Hyung is looking at me weird,” Minho mutters.

“The kitty is so smart,” Chan sighs, “You’d have been my campus crush, for sure. Now, I’m jealous that other kids get to see you like this every day. My little nerd.”

Minho blushes furiously at that. How humiliating! He ducks his head down behind his textbook and Chan barks with laughter behind it.

“What’s funny!”

“Your face! You’re so cute, Minho! So, so cute!”

“There’s nothing on my face!”

Chan giggles carelessly, “You really aren’t as straight faced as you think you are, Minho yah.”

Minho lowers the textbook in surprise and asks quietly, “Really?”

“Yeah?” Chan smiles sympathetically. “Why? Have you been told otherwise?”

Minho blinks. “My whole life.”

The atmosphere changes. For once, Minho doesn’t feel awkward or uncomfortable about it. It isn’t a social worker trying to gain his trust, or a police officer asking for a statement. It’s Chan. Chan with his warm, kind eyes. Chan who kisses him and holds him and murmurs praise like Minho is the number one boy in the world, simply for existing and blinking his wide eyes, something that only earned him punishment with others.

“Do you do it on purpose?” Chan hesitantly asks.

“Sometimes,” Minho mumbles, looking down and back up again.

“When you smile.” There is pity in Chan’s eyes as he gazes at Minho. “Why?”

Minho shifts in his seat.

“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” Chan says hurriedly. He reaches over the table and places a careful hand over Minho’s, his thumb strumming over his knuckles. “I just want to know more about you, that’s all.”

“It’s not a big deal.” Minho shrugs. He likes the feeling of Chan’s hand over his. “I don’t know why I am the way I am. I just know that there was always someone angry at my house, so… Keeping my face a blank slate felt kinda like I was protecting myself from that person.”

“Did it work?”

“Most of the time I just faded into the background. Other times, it didn’t matter what face I wore. I was there and it was convenient.”

Chan squeezes his hand. When Minho looks up, he wears a pained expression.

“It’s okay, hyung,” Minho says.

“No. It’s not okay.” Chan frowns.

“Well, it doesn’t really happen anymore. The house is pretty much empty, now. My parents still fight, but it isn’t as intense as it used to be. They don’t like each other, but none of us are kids anymore, so I don’t really know why they stay together. They’re both not very nice people, though. Maybe that’s why they don’t leave each other.” Minho blinks as he realises he’s let his mouth loose. “Sorry.”

Chan shakes his head.

“Can I hug you, Minho?”

Minho stands up from his seat and says gently, “Okay, hyung, but I’m fine. I told you, it’s not a big deal.”

Chan pulls him close in his lap. He wraps his arms around him and kisses his temple.

Reluctantly, Minho puts his arms around him too and settles in his chest. Despite insisting he’s okay, and really feeling like he is, not tearing up or shaking like he might have when he was a kid, Minho feels himself relax, alleviated of tension he didn’t know he’d been carrying.

“Sorry, Minho.” Chan pitifully laughs in his hair, kissing down his temple to meet his eyes. “It feels like I’m comforting myself after hearing that, but I can’t help it. I just really felt like hugging you. Touching people is how I show my love, but I know you don’t like—“

“I never said that,” Minho blurts, pressing down on Chan’s back where his hands lie. “I like when hyung touches me. And the hug is helping. Thank you.”

Chan falters. “I guess, you never did say that…”

“You must have been assuming things about me,” Minho teases, poking a finger into Chan’s cheek.

“Ah! I didn’t mean to!”

“It’s not that I don’t like touch,” Minho says. “I just can’t help how my body reacts when I don’t know it’s coming because of… Well. You know.”

Chan tightens his arms around him protectively. His eyebrows furrow with his emotions and he lets out an indignant huff from his nose. It tickles Minho’s cheek. He can’t help but scrunch his face up, and then Chan is burying his face into the side of his head again, as if too much of his emotions are filling him up.

“I wish I could go back in time and save you from that house,” he mutters against his ear. “How could those people hurt you? How could they take your precious smile away from the world?” He noses at Minho’s cheek and huffs again. “Minho, I want to see it. You don’t have to hide it from me. I’ll never hurt you, I couldn’t.”

Minho smiles. It’s the smallest little thing, the littlest curve of his lips, and yet it has Chan cooing all the same.

Chan smiles back but it doesn’t have his usual joy. “There you are. How could anyone ever hurt you? I can’t understand it, Minho yah. You’re lovely. You are so, so lovely.”

Minho stays over again that night. Chan hands him his clothes from before, but Minho throws his t shirt back at him, looking pointedly at Chan’s wardrobe. Chan giggles and hands him one of his t shirts. It hangs off of one shoulder and exposes too much of his collarbone, but mostly, it smells of Chan.

In bed, they lie facing each other. Slowly, Chan reaches for his face and holds his cheek in his hand, thumb grazing.

“I had an angry person in my house too,” he says softly.

Minho’s eyelashes flutter. “You did?”

Chan’s expression falters. His eyes bleed with guilt, but he blinks it away and continues with a firm press of his lips.

“It was my dad, and then it was me. I always swore I wouldn’t be like him, but then…” He laughs emptily. “One day, you sit down and realise, you’re just like that horrible parent you told yourself you wouldn’t become. And now, I don’t talk to my siblings anymore.”

Minho feels Chan’s gentle hand over his cheek and can’t imagine him angry. He remembers Chan’s wall of photographs, though, and how it is absent of any family members.

“Do you miss them?” he whispers.

“Always.”

“Have you ever tried to reach out to them?”

“Nah. They wouldn’t want to hear from me.”

Minho brings his hand up and places it over Chan’s, just like he did earlier.

“You don’t know that, hyung,” he says, his eyes shaking in the dim night time light. “My brothers and sisters weren’t nice to me all the time either. I was their burden to take care of while Mom and Dad hated each other too much to be proper parents, and they were still kids too.” Minho says honestly, his voice lowering into an intimate mumble, “But I’d give anything to hear from them again.”

“You don’t hold it against them?”

“No. I just wish they didn’t leave me behind.”

It’s quiet for a moment. Chan stares at him and Minho stares back. It looks like Chan has more to tell him, something else he feels the need to say, so Minho squeezes his hand. When his eyes shake back into focus, he even smiles again, that same smile from earlier.

“That doesn’t put you off, does it?” Chan asks, and Minho is surprised to find a chip in that happy go lucky, golden retriever image he’s built of him; his ear to ear smiles, his squeaky laugh, and his playfully flirtatious remarks. Minho realises, then, that he’s barely cracked the surface of who Chan really is. “You’re not having second thoughts about me, are you?”

“No, hyung.”

“Yeah? I mean, I wasn’t as bad as my dad. Like, I never hit my siblings, or anything like that.”

Chan winces like it’s painful to talk about. Minho doesn’t like that look on him. Determined to ease his pain, to make him smile, to make him laugh again, to make him so bright it brightens him too, Minho shakes his hand off of him.

He shuffles closer and holds Chan’s face instead, saying softly, “Hyung. The kitty is still in your lap, right?”

Chan giggles softly. Minho feels his heart soar and lets himself giggle too. The sound of it makes Chan coo and reach for his waist, pulling his body even closer.

“There you are.”

“Tell me, hyung.”

Chan takes a deep breath.

“It’s just that you’ve been surrounded by conflict your whole life, so I really wouldn’t hold it against you if you started to get unsure about me.” He murmurs regretfully, “I had Dad’s anger. I look like him, too.” His eyes refocus and he says passionately, promising, swearing, “But I’d never hit you or yell at you like he did to us. I swear it, Minho. I’m not that person anymore that gets consumed by their rage. I went to therapy and I got better, and I still go, just to take care of myself, but I wanted to open up to you… I wanted you to know that our lives aren’t all that different. We just played different roles.”

“Hyung…” Minho says brokenly.

“What do you say, Minho yah?” Chan says, smiling hopefully. “Do you still want to do this? Have sleepovers and call every night with me? Follow me around and ask me for kisses? Is it still okay with you?”

“Yeah,” Minho croaks, like his emotions are lodged in his throat.

He’s not going to cry. He doesn’t feel it in his eyes, and he can’t remember the last time that he did. That doesn’t stop him from feeling overwhelmed, because Minho has felt love more in these past few months than in the almost twenty three years he’s lived. And now, he’s learning that all of that love, composed of Chan’s unrelenting kindness and his gentle hand, comes from a background as violent as his own.

Minho believes again. He feels his faith replenishing. There is hope.

“I trust you, hyung..! More than I’ve ever trusted anyone before..!” Minho exclaims breathlessly, hurriedly, because his heart is beating too fast and his hand is tingly on Chan’s face, and to be honest, all he wants to do is just kiss him! “You make me feel safe, hyung. I can’t even imagine you angry with me! It’s like a giant puppy dog getting mad, and I couldn’t be scared of that!”

Chan bursts into laughter. Minho flushes. He should have just kissed him!

Thankfully, Chan pulls him in and kisses the convoluted nonsense out of his mouth. He rolls onto his back and pulls Minho on top of him, kissing him so nicely and so deeply Minho thinks that maybe he could cry again, or ooze into a lapful of ooey gooey marshmallows. He whimpers against his mouth as he pulls away first, gazing down at Chan affectionately.

Minho likes it up here. It’s how he kissed Chan the first night he slept over.

“I’m sorry you had to go through that, hyung,” he murmurs, his thumb grazing the bottom of his lip where he had kissed him. “If I could go back in time, I’d save you too.”

Chan smiles forlornly. “Yeah? I’d probably be a nightmare.”

Minho frowns and denies stubbornly, “No.”

Chan giggles and pulls him back down, rolling onto his side and keeping Minho close. He presses fluttery kisses on Minho’s cheek, making him squirm and close his eyes when his lips brush over them. Minho meets his lips and kisses him just as sweet.

“Hyung.”

“Yeah, baby?”

“If I went back in time, to my younger self, I’d tell him all about you,” he whispers. “I’d be alone, then. Scared. But I’d tell him that one day, we meet someone kind, someone who makes us feel a lot less alone, and… Someone who makes us feel very, very loved.” His lips tremble as distinct memories of his loneliness flash across his eyes. They disappear and Chan is there, his soft, aching eyes shining with a layer of tears. “That’s all we ever wanted, hyung, and now, it’s what I’ve got. So it doesn’t matter to me what you were like back then. Maybe you were an angry kid, but you’re a kind man now. I know hyung would never hurt me. Ever.”

Chan whines, blinking his teary eyes away.

“Ah! You’re going to make me cry saying things like that!”

Minho blinks his big eyes in genuine concern. “Sorry, hyung. Are you okay?”

Chan giggles, shakes his head, and kisses him.

“I’m so, so happy, Minho yah. Stay with me forever, please, so I’ll be happy like this just as long.”

“I’m happy too, hyung. I won’t go anywhere.”

“My beautiful boy,” Chan coos, pulling him down for kiss after kiss. “You are so pretty when you’re happy. I’m so glad.” He knocks their heads together and promises with his gemstone eyes Minho couldn’t bear to disappoint, “You’ll always be safe with me, Minho yah. So, smile, yeah? Don’t hold yourself back anymore.”

“The kitty is safe,” Minho mutters, nuzzling into his neck, feeling a little bit kiss dizzy.

Chan chuckles and strokes his hair. “The kitty is safe. After all, hyung is right here.”

Minho smiles as he falls asleep. He can’t smile with his whole face just yet, honestly feeling a little shy now that Chan is anticipating it, but he really is happy.