Chapter Text
Taehyun blinks at the small LCD screen in front of him before dragging his eyes back to concerned face responsible for the intrusion into his visual space.
“So? Is it good?” Minho asks, genuine insecurity mixed in his tone.
“Um.”
Taehyun, for his part, is not quite sure what he’s looking at. There seems to be a picture of Minho and a few vaguely descriptive lines about himself so…a profile of some sort? For what, Taehyun has no clue. To be fair, Minho had been explaining his dilemma about…an app? Or something? Taehyun started to tune him out about 25 seconds in; they were friends, sure, but this is how their friendship operated and thrived. Most outsiders couldn’t really fathom their friendship, them being quite the opposites, but one mutual class and a bucket load of Minho’s persistent charm later they ended up the closest of buddies, spending time together like today, “studying” in the campus library whenever they got a chance (despite Taehyun’s continuing feigned reluctance).
Pushing his phone closer to Taehyun’s face Minho whined. “C’mon, dude, I need your opinion! Is my profile okay; should I change it? What about my profile pic?”
Frowning, Taehyun pushed the phone away from him and leaned back in his chair, bringing his own phone up to his face to toss a flippant, “Yeah, it’s superb,” Minho’s way while he started texting another friend. “All the girls will be throwing themselves at you, I’m sure it,” he said dryly.
Minho whines again, pouring his gaze over his own phone as he deletes and rewrites another short blurb about himself for the 8th time. “You weren’t listening, I told you it’s not a dating service, man. It’s a place for meeting new bros there aren’t any girls on this app.”
Oh. Now that piqued his attention. Taehyun blinked once before leveling an inscrutable stare at an oblivious Minho, still absorbed with perfecting his profile.
“It’s what.” Taehyun replied flatly.
Minho huffs, annoyed that he has to go through this once more. “Like I said 5 minutes ago, I joined this new app. It’s supposed to be a great way to meet some cool, new dudes.”
‘Some cool new dudes.’
Taehyun sets his own phone down before smoothing down his blonde hair and folding his hands in front of his mouth, leaning forward on his elbows. Minho still hasn’t noticed him staring, still too wrapped up in rewriting his profile for ‘some cool new dudes’.
“Minho,” Taehyun starts calmly. “What in God’s name are you doing?”
Agitated, Minho replies, “How many times do I have to tell you? I’m trying to meet some bros—”
“‘Meet some bros’?” Taehyun cuts him off, incredulous and no longer as calm. “What is this, a new Grindr?”
“Huh?” Minho finally stops typing to look up at his friend, confusion etched into every line of his face. “What’s Grindr?”
Pinking slightly, Taehyun sits up straight and coughs, looking everywhere but at his friend. “Uh—nothing, don’t—anyway, never mind, Minho, what the fuck are you doing? This sounds like a dating site scam.”
It’s Minho’s turn to looks embarrassed as he cradles his phone to his chest and stutters, “It’s not—it’s not a dating site I keep telling you—”
“No offence,” Taehyun replies in a clipped tone, “But you ‘tell’ me a lot of bullshit. And I know a dating profile when I see one.” Abruptly, Taehyun leans forward and plucks the phone out of Minho’s grasp who protests loudly. He’s actually paying attention to it now, focusing on the app’s layout as he clicks around. “Why would you spend this much time on something that’s not a dating site, anyway?”
“Because! I want to look cool!” Minho says defensively. “Who wants to be friends with some lame dude?”
“An unfortunate number of people if we’re going by your number of Twitter followers,” Taehyun muses. “Myself included,” he finishes dismally.
Attempting to get back his phone, Minho leans over the small table covered in abandoned textbooks and notebooks between them, grasping at Taehyun who easily fends him off with one hand distractedly.
“Give it back!” Minho’s whining again, but that has long since lost its charm on Taehyun ages ago.
“Wait,” Taehyun frown deepens as he takes in the information in front of him. “…Why did you check your interest as ‘Whatever, Bro’ instead of ‘JUST Friends’? What the hell are you doing?”
Minho uses Taehyun’s moment of disconcerted disbelief to snatch his own phone back. “Because,” Minho reluctantly starts, “It sounds so…aggressive. And—And if I check ‘Long Term Bromance’ doesn’t that sound so needy? Who wants a desperate bro, bro?”
Taehyun can feel a headache coming on as he looks at Minho’s fidgety form. Why did he deal with this kind of stress?
“Plus,” Minho continues quietly. “One time when Danah and I got into a fight she called me—” Minho stops suddenly and looks at Taehyun, a look of distress plain as day on his face. “She called me ‘aggressively heterosexual’! I don’t want to prove her right!”
“She—she called you what?” Taehyun sputtered.
“Exactly! I’m a chill dude there’s nothing aggressive about me, right? And why would she bring my orientation into it! I don’t get it! What does that even mean?”
Taehyun takes in the sight of Minho before him; his backwards ‘OBEY’ snapback, the stretched, black tank top with a colorful, pin-up looking bikini clad woman surfing graphic printed on the front, the basketball shorts, the Nike socks and sandals combo despite it barely being 45 degrees outside and only getting cooler as the sun set.
Yeah.
He had no idea on Earth why Minho’s sister would ever call him ‘aggressively heterosexual’.
On any other day, Taehyun would have laughed at this because really, the whole situation was not only hilarious but just so purely Minho but, honestly, it was all a bit too much. He put his face into his hands and groaned.
“I can’t believe this.”
“Same, dude.” Minho says, shaking his head and continuing on his quest for the perfect profile. “It doesn’t make sense, man. I love her but sometimes she doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”
Taehyun dragged his face out of his hands to look across the table at Minho tiredly, again too distracted with his phone to notice the look he was giving him. Deciding to not press the issue, Taehyun sighed and sat back, changing the subject in efforts for this whole debacle to be pushed into the past as quickly as possible.
“I’m mostly surprised you and your sister were fighting, you guys usually get along really well.”
“It was over something little, dude, honestly I can’t even remember.” Minho took a moment to ponder, his face scrunched up as he tried to recall more details. “I mean, I was in high school, anyway, we were always at each other’s throats then.” Shaking his head fondly at the memory, Minho goes back to his editing, chuckling all the while.
Taehyun stares at Minho dumbfounded with this new information.
“Your sister called you ‘aggressively heterosexual’ like 4 years ago offhandedly in a fight and you still haven’t let it go?”
“Those things stick with you, bro.” Minho sniffed, shrinking at Taehyun’s raising voice.
Taehyun schools his expression into one of passive neutrality and starts dropping his books into his bag. “…I’ll see you later.”
Alarmed, Minho looks up. “But you haven’t helped me with my pro—”
“I will see you later, Minho,” Taehyun says with enough forceful finality that Minho’s mouth clamps closed. He watches mournfully as Taehyun stalks away from their table, muttering obscenities under his breath as he goes.
-----
Minho giggles for the 17th time (Taehyun is not counting he is just observant) and Taehyun has had just about enough. They’re at his place studying this time. It’s small and cramped in comparison to the library, but with a majority of the campus having some form of assessment to take in the next week, there weren’t any available tables for the pair to spread out and neither of them had the foresight to check out one of the study rooms ahead of time. Taehyun is on his bed attempting to read the same paragraph he’s been trying to comprehend for the last 6 minutes. He drops the heavy textbook in his lap noisily, narrowing his eyes at Minho who is curled up in a large bean-bag chair shoved into the corner of Taehyun’s room, a book open but forgotten in his lap, all attention on the phone in his hands.
“What are you doing?”
Minho looks up, practically bouncing in his spot. “I’m going through all my fist bumps and messages! Dude, I got so many! I knew I was right to change my pic to the one where I’m wearing my chill shorts instead of my party shorts, you know? Makes me seem more relatable.”
“Fist bumps?” Taehyun asks, ignoring the bit about the wardrobe change. Sometimes it was too easy to drag Minho within an inch of his life, taking the low-hanging fruit was almost too mean. Taehyun was a lot of things, but he wasn’t unnecessarily cruel.
…Often.
“Yeah, you know, on that thing that you didn’t help me with,” Minho says accusingly. “Some of them have really funny profiles, right? Listen to this: ‘I’m just a guy who likes a good, long chillaxing sesh’—”
“Oh my God, you still have that thing?” Taehyun groans. He had tried to block that whole thing from his memory, thank you. It had been days and Minho hadn’t brought it up so he assumed Minho realized what a joke it was. Which in retrospect, Taehyun realized any assumptions based in Minho having any sort of common sense were foolish to have.
“Well, yeah. And I’m about to make so many new bros, dude, look at it!” Minho excitedly gestures for Taehyun to join him on the bean-bag, ignoring the disdainful look on his host’s face.
He’s excited and it’s cute and it’s Minho so Taehyun only sighs before dropping in the space next to him on the large bean-bag chair. He opens his hand and motions for Minho to hand over his phone, not wasting a moment to start swiping through his inbox the moment he does. The moment Taehyun opens the profile of the first messenger, Minho eagerly begins an info dump.
“His name’s Lee Chul Su, he’s 29, and he seems super cool and he have so much in co—” Minho cuts off his own statement with a cry of distress when he sees Taehyun brutally delete the message.
“No one over 26,” is the only monotone explanation he gets.
“But—”
“Anyone over 26 is probably a predator.”
Minho looks sadly at his phone but doesn’t protest any further. At least until Taehyun goes on to the profile of the next one and deletes that one too.
“That guy was only 25!” Minho starts to argue.
“Yeah but he wants to have sex with you,” Taehyun says dryly, not bothering to look up as he scans the profile of another ‘potential bromance’.
“W-What?—No he—”
“I looked at his profile. All his pics were ab shots, pec shots, pics of him flexing his biceps—he’s clearly on here looking for ass, Minho. Is that what you want? Are you trying to put out?”
“No!” Minho asserts a little too vehemently and Taehyun cringes and leans away from him. “You know I’m not into dudes.”
“Yes, I am aware,” Taehyun mutters. He doesn’t mean to sound so bitter but how can he not when he has to do all the work because clearly Minho doesn’t know what he’s doing. “So in effort to not waste your time or his, I deleted him. You're welcome.”
After that, Taehyun scoots away, saying Minho is distracting from his ‘creative process’ and promises he’ll give it back after he’s done. Not really having a choice, Minho picks up his economics book and attempts to get something done while Taehyun clears out his messages. It’s a short while later when Taehyun tosses the phone back before standing up and stretching.
“You sure are popular; I had a lot of crap to wade through.” Taehyun tosses over his shoulder before he slips back on his bed and picks up his textbook again, seemingly bored with Minho’s activities.
Only a handful of messages remain in Minho’s inbox, who pouts at Taehyun ineffectively.
“Don’t whine, I did you a favor,” Taehyun says. He flips to a new page before asking, “Why are you so interested in this anyway? You have more friends than you can keep track of; you hardly need to turn to a social app to meet people.”
Minho shrugs even though he knows Taehyun isn’t looking, picking at a fraying thread on the chair he’s sitting on. “I don’t know, I just thought it’d be cool, that’s all.”
“Well, if you find a new bestie let me know—I’ve been trying to pass you off to someone else for months.”
Minho gasps in dramatic behest and tackles Taehyun, wrapping as much of his limbs around the other man as he can and pins him to the bed.
“You’re heavy get off!” Taehyun yells as he flails around unsuccessfully, Minho latched on to him with the tenacity of an infant.
Minho’s voice is muffled from his face being pressed into Taehyun’s shoulder when he says, “Not until you admit I’m your best bro in the whole world.”
“Fine!” Taehyun relents. “You’re my best friend! Now let me go; I don’t want to smell like Axe for the nest 5 weeks!”
True to his word Minho releases Taehyun from his hold smiling brightly. “I knew you loved me.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Taehyun won’t look at him and pushes him off the bed, but Minho doesn’t miss his small smile he’s wearing before he smacks him in the face with a pillow. “Only because I have to.”
-----
“Yo, dude,”
Taehyun looks up from his small lunch startled. He was eating alone and now suddenly there was Minho, plopped down in front of him.
“I need a favor.”
“For?”
Minho hesitates, plucks a piece of kimbap off of Taehyun’s plate to stall, chewing too thoroughly for someone who usually inhales their food like a Hoover.
“It’s about that app…” Minho finally supplies reluctantly. Taehyun groans and throws his chopsticks down on the table.
Why couldn’t he just have a peaceful lunch?
-----
His name is Bobby.
Taehyun learns this and a bunch of other information decidedly useless to him that he plans to dump from his brain the moment this whole affair goes up in flames because it will because Taehyun says it will and Taehyun is Always Right™. He learns, for example, that Bobby is 2 years younger than Minho—only a year younger than Taehyun—and is a freshman at a neighboring university not too far away from their own. He’s apparently a dancer, owns just as many Air Jordans and Supremes as Minho and has a strong penchant for Rap and Hip-Hop. Also just like Minho. Apparently they started bonding over and trading pics of each other’s snapback collections.
Taehyun wants to hurl.
Unfortunately, they’re currently on the bus and Taehyun has nowhere to go and Minho is loud and animated and has weeks of talking to this boy to unload on Taehyun. Weeks of dull, shitty jokes even worse than Minho’s and God, Taehyun never thought he’d appreciate Minho’s humor over anyone’s for as long as he lived but every joke Minho read back to him from their messages made Taehyun grateful Minho wasn’t nearly as bad as the monster he was communicating with. Weeks of music recommendations and clubs that Minho was already trying to convince Taehyun to go to (he put his foot down on that, though; Minho had Jihoon and Jiho for that no way in Hell was he drudging through an entire night of that). Weeks of funny faces and childish selfies that Minho kept shoving in Taehyun’s face despite how unamused he was. Weeks of silly memes and short viral videos of people even more sense-less than them doing some sense-less shit and getting hurt because they were sense-less.
Taehyun wishes he brought some Advil.
Or at least had the foresight to deny Minho this ‘favor’ but. Well. At least Minho owed him, and boy was he going to collect.
The favor was to accompany Minho on his first not-date—Minho emphasized how much of a ‘chill hang out between bros’ it was—with Bobby. They were meeting in person for the first time at a café downtown not too far away from Bobby’s campus, and Minho was nervous (“It’s not ‘first date jitters’, Taehyun, shut up.”) and so he decided to bring Taehyun with him as a buffer of sorts. Why Minho chose him of all people Taehyun had no idea but he’d pleaded, practically begged, and offered to pay for all the snacks and coffee Taehyun wanted while they were out (and Taehyun was weak to begging) so. Here he was. About to basically third-wheel his way through a coffee date.
Minho sent a quick ‘Hey I bumped into a friend along the way, is it okay if he comes?’ which was the worst excuse Taehyun had ever seen but he didn’t care to help and Bobby was nice enough to agree (not that he really had any choice, in Taehyun’s opinion) so he let it go and spent the walk up the street fixing his hair as he tried to ignore Minho’s increasingly enthusiastic rambling.
Even if he was in emotional distress that wasn’t a reason to look a mess.
They’re about to walk through the door when Minho grasps Taehyun’s arm tightly to halt him.
Taehyun only looks at Minho inquisitively who asks, “Do I look okay? This snapback goes with my J's right?”
Taehyun musters up the most disgusted scowl he can manage before ripping his arm out of Minho’s hold and stomping into the café.
-----
It’s been 3 hours. 3 hours since they walked into that damn café, 3 hours since Minho nervously clung on to Taehyun’s sleeve as they scanned the small room, 3 hours since a young man stood up and waved at them both and Minho’s face lit up like Christmas, 3 hours since Taehyun was introduced to someone whose existence he had just learned of that day had attempted to, what Taehyun was 67% sure was, awkwardly hit on him at said introduction probably in an attempts to be funny even though he was on a not-date with someone else.
Taehyun was not amused.
Minho didn’t seem to care about or notice Taehyun, or the terrible pick-up that was most likely definitely a pick-up, for that matter. He was having a lovely time, chatting and laughing about God knows what with his new best friend.
Taehyun snorts into his espresso—his 5th one—at that thought. The only satisfaction Taehyun had gotten out of this little outing so far, was the combination of ever-flowing, expensive French-pressed coffee coursing through his veins and the sugar from the copious number of pastries he had consumed. He had lost count of how many of those he had eaten.
Sleep was far off for him
Oh, and the time he took Minho’s card, paid for a plate of pastries, set them down in the middle of table, and waited for Bobby to reach for one before yanking it toward himself, purposefully picking the one Bobby had been reaching for, and stuffing half of it in his mouth in one go, refusing to break eye-contact with Bobby the entire time. Bobby didn’t try to interact with him for the rest of the afternoon.
But all the over-priced coffee and flaky baked goods in the world couldn’t mend the aching boredom Taehyun was enduring. Sure, he could try to participate in their conversation but, God, at what cost? There has to be something he can do to make this at least a smidgen unbearable.
Taehyun surveys the scene in front of him over the lip of his porcelain coffee cup, eyes narrowing as he really takes it all in. Like how Bobby laughs maybe a little too hard at all of Minho’s jokes, eyes crinkling up every time, and Taehyun knows this because he is hearing them and they don’t deserve any laughter. Absolutely none. At all. And maybe Taehyun has noticed that he’s scooched his chair awfully close to Minho’s, too, and that he’s reached out to play with one of Minho’s bracelets a couple too many times, and brushes their fingertips together when he draws his hand back.
Huh.
Taehyun might have been joking before but now…
It takes a lot more energy than he would ever admit to not cackle when it all clicks together. Good thing he has a lot to spare.
Because Taehyun knows when someone else is getting hit on. And Taehyun, is about to no longer be so bored.
This…This he could work with.
He tunes in to the conversation, it’s back to Hip-Hop which Taehyun can’t contribute much to, but he can work with this.
He sets down his cup and cuts in quickly with, “Hey, Minho, don’t you write some of your own lyrics sometimes?” Both of the other men jerk their attention towards him; to his slight annoyance it’s almost as if they forgot he was there, but no matter.
“Uh, uh yeah, I mean a little but, they’re not very good.” The tips of Minho’s ears are colored red as he fidgets with his own hands.
“Don’t say that, they’re really good!” Taehyun turns his attention to Bobby, still keeping Minho in the corner of his eye as he says, “I tell him all the time he should dump his business major and go into music; he’s super talented.”
“Really?” Bobby turns to Minho, astonished and pleased. “Dude, that’s so cool! I kind of write a little, too, we could…I don’t know…do something together one day, maybe?” Bobby prompted shyly.
“Yeah,” Minho started, rubbing the back of his neck nervously. “Yeah I’d like that.” And then he did The Thing. The Thing where when he’s flustered, smiles bashfully and looks down, a thick array of dark lashes framed against his face before looking up and shooting that smile straight through Taehyun’s someone’s heart. The Thing that initially convinced Taehyun that maybe the bothersome dude-bro in his class wasn’t so bad after all.
Taehyun tore his gaze away from Minho (with not nearly as much effort as it may have looked to an outsider, thank you) to chance a look at Bobby. In the back of his mind, Taehyun hoped he hadn’t looked that sprung the first time he got hit with that smile, because there really wasn’t a better way to describe the way Bobby looked either than dazed. And if Taehyun was even just a little bit more uncouth he would have fist pumped because God was he good.
Satisfied, Taehyun folded his hands in his lap and leaned back in his chair. “Well,” Taehyun started loudly. Bobby jolted like he had just been violently shaken out of a deep sleep. “It’s getting pretty late we should probably head back, we all probably have homework we should be doing. It was very nice to meet you, Bobby.” Taehyun held out a hand for Bobby to shake, which he took automatically even though he still looked a little lost.
To his credit, Bobby only looked a little off put by the mischievous grin spread wide over Taehyun’s face.
-----
Minho rocked back on his heels as he glanced between the address in his phone and the number on the apartment building, Taehyun sighing impatiently next to him. He’s not nervous he’s just—well—what if this didn’t go well? What if Bobby’s roommate didn’t like him? What if he says something really foolish and ruins everything and—
“You’ve checked it about nine times already I’m sure we’ve got the right place,” Taehyun gripes, ready to get inside because it was chilly and the setting sun wasn’t helping the situation and he knew Minho was just stalling anyway.
Not too much earlier, Minho had gotten a text from Bobby explaining that a mix up at his roommates job had left him in possession of 6 large pizzas that someone needed to eat, and invited both Minho and Taehyun over if they wanted. Neither of them were the type to turn down free food so here they were, standing in front of Bobby’s apartment building on a Friday evening.
“Right.” Minho makes no move towards the door. Rolling his eyes, Taehyun marches forward and pushed the ringer for Bobby’s room.
“It’s 401 right? That would suck if I pressed the wrong one,” Taehyun says before switching to the intercom button and yelling, “Hurry up we’re cold!”
Looking horrified, Minho drags Taehyun away like that could somehow undo the damage. Before he can say anything a muffled, crackly laugh emerges from the box.
“I’m coming, just chill out, ok?”
Taehyun shimmies out of Minho’s grasp to press the intercom button once again and shoots back, “We’re definitely acing the ‘chill’ part of that.” He looks over his shoulder at Minho who mouths a ‘really?’ at him. In return Taehyun shrugs. “I’m getting cold and you took too long.”
Bobby’s all smiles when he lets them, wasting no time in explaining the backstory behind their fortunate pizza windfall.
“Sorry if our place is kinda messy,” Bobby apologizes as he unlocks his apartment door. “We weren’t really expecting this to happen.”
Minho laughs and clasps him on the shoulder warmly. “Don’t worry, wait until when you see my place, dude, it’s like a bomb went off.” Bobby laughs with him and Taehyun wrinkles his nose. Of course he’d get stuck with a couple of messy boys who wallowed in their own filth. Bobby’s roommate was probably just as bad, too.
They walk inside and it is…not as bad as Taehyun imagined. It’s actually quite nice. Nicer than Minho’s room anyway.
“Sweet digs, man,” says Minho while he slips off his shoes. “I’m actually a little jealous you guys did it up.”
“It’s mostly my roomie Jinhwan, he’s good at finding cool stuff that’s pretty cheap.” Bobby leads them to a small table with a large stack of boxes and gestures for them to help themselves.
“Well someone has to spruce things up. All you brought was a PlayStation and one desk lamp.”
The three young men turn to see who Minho assumes in Jinhwan walking out of a bedroom, dressed down in sweats and wearing a friendly smile.
“Don’t forget I brought a plate to eat pizza rolls off of, too!” Bobby said with exaggerated indigence.
Jinhwan walked up to Bobby and lightly punched him in the arm saying, “Wow, you sure know how to make yourself sound mature.” He turned towards Minho and Taehyun and gave a small wave. “Hi, I’m Bobby’s roommate and the sole person responsible for keeping him alive.”
Taehyun laughed loudly at that, and Minho was a little surprised to see him acting so warmly toward anybody. Well, at least anybody that he didn’t really know.
“So,” Minho started as he sat down. “How’d a couple of freshmen end up with an apartment?”
“Yeah, I’m surprised you guys don’t live on campus.” Taehyun supplied distantly, concentrated on piling as much pizza as he could on his plate. Minho blinked at the greasy mound and Taehyun leveled his stare and shrugged. “I’m hungry.”
Jinhwan laughs and explains, “I’m actually a year older than him; I hated the dorms so much I thought it was better to rent out with this one than stomach another year of that.”
Both Minho and Taehyun’s eyebrows jolt upwards in surprise.
“Oh, I thought you were younger.” It suddenly clicks in Minho’s mind and he looks at Taehyun excitedly. “That means you two are the same age.” He laughs when he sees Taehyun’s bewildered expression as he takes in Jinhwan.
“Everyone thinks he’s younger ‘cause he’s so damn short,” Bobby laughs through a mouthful of pizza. Jinhwan kicks him underneath the table and Taehyun snorts at Bobby’s yelp.
They all eat until they can’t move and sit slouched in their chairs trying to digest the ponds of cheese n bread they consumed until Jinhwan looks at the clock and mumbles an, “Oh shit,” before dragging himself to the couch that’s nearby.
Bobby glances at the clock too and groans. “C'mon, dude, not your shitty drama—”
“This is quality programming, you just have poor taste,” Jinhwan shot back as he scrambled for the remote.
Suddenly imbued with enough energy to move from the thought of having to watch Jinhwan’s show, Bobby pushes away from the table. He grabs one of the boxes of pizza before gesturing to his room. “Jinhwan wasn’t lying about the PlayStation. You guys can play if you want instead of watching this sappy garbage.” Jinhwan haphazardly throws a pillow at Bobby who easily dodges it, laughing as the soft missle glided past his shoulder. Taehyun quickly glances between Bobby and Minho before sauntering over to the couch and sprawling out next to Jinhwan.
“I’d rather chance whatever this is than watch you two tea-bag each other in Call of Duty for an hour.”
“Hey, I only tea-bag after I’ve 360-no-scope somebody, man, you know that!”
Taehyun just waves his friend off with one hand, eyes glued to the screen in front of him. “Sure. And close the door, too, I don’t want to hear all that racket.”
“I don’t think he likes me very much,” Bobby says after they’ve gone to his room and he’s setting up the console. He says it with a small chuckle, but the insecurity is still plain as day on his face. Minho sits up straighter against the headboard of Bobby’s bed where he’s currently settled and shakes his hands in front of him erratically.
Eyes wide, Minho shakes his head explaining, “Taehyun? No, he’s just shy! Trust me, he’s like that with everyone when you first meet him.”
“Everyone?” Bobby looks to the door symbolizing the easy comradery they’ve witnessed blossom between Taehyun and Jinhwan.
“…I guess Jinhwan’s special.” Minho laughs to break the tension and continuous sincerely. “Seriously, bro, you should have seen the way he was with me when we first met. I was almost sure that he was trying to hex me with the way he glared at me.”
Bobby guffaws and tosses Minho a controller. “Shut up, you’re lying.”
“I’m serious, bro! He’ll warm up to you. I had to strong-arm him into hanging out.” Minho pauses makes a face as if he’s thinking deeply. “I’m still not sure if he actually even likes me…” A playful shoulder check from Bobby later, Minho breaks the façade and laughs.
“Now I know your lying,” Bobby says as he settles in next to Minho. “I can’t imagine anyone not immediately loving you.”
Minho ducked his head, a silly smile spreading across his face as a warm feeling sets in his stomach.
“Shut up,” Minho mumbled, knocking shoulders with Bobby gently. They exchanged shy smiles and stayed pressed against each other, playing video games shoulder-to-shoulder for the rest of the night.