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Free class should be abolished as a concept, thought Yunho, seated in the front row of the classroom, pretending to do his homework.
Free class fucking sucks, thought Mingi, sitting right outside the classroom, his tall frame hunched under the window so as not to be seen. He pulled his knees in their ripped black jeans closer together, mashing at his PSP.
No one can fucking concentrate, so no one actually does any work, OR has fun. Free class is a complete waste of time, thought Yunho angrily.
Why won't this motherfucker die?? thought Mingi, doing worse at his game the angrier he got, health bar dwindling.
When the class (if a free class can even be called a class, thought Yunho,) was over, Yunho put his head through the window. Then looked down at the top of a head of purple hair.
“Hey. The bus is gonna leave.” said Yunho, head upside down.
“How did you know I was here, Spiderman?” replied Mingi. Their heads were close, Yunho's lips not far from Mingi's forehead. Mingi's deep voice betrayed nothing.
“I got friends in high places,” said Yunho cheerily, before his head disappeared from Mingi's sight.
“Great choice at which class to skip,” whispered Yunho on the way home, squished next to Mingi in the uncomfortable seats. It didn't help that both of them were tall and lanky. “Free class sucks.”
Yunho wouldn't have used the word sucks with anyone else. But he'd struck a strange, unlikely friendship with the kid who always wore black, and with him it just felt natural to say it.
Mingi wasn't listening though, head against the window, earphones on full blast, tumbling the sleek circular controls on his black skull-stickered Sony Mp4 device.
***
An unlikely friendship, but really, was it?
They both wore cross necklaces and refused to condescend to speak to most of their peers. As such, they were both outcasts.
They both even liked churches, but Yunho hated seeing Mingi at his. Or, rather, his father's (for now).
“You can't sleep here,” Yunho hissed at a groggy Mingi, then took a better look under the other's hood, and sighed. Not groggy, but drunk, then.
Mingi stirred on the church bench, bending sideways to hug himself more comfortably. “What else is open at 6 AM on a Saturday?”
“Go home-”
“First bus is at 7:30.”
Yungo took a worried glance behind him, at where his father was greeting the clerk of the church shop, who was just unlocking their booth. He looked back at Mingi, sniffed disapprovingly, “you smell like shitty vine.”
“I took the eu-eucha-rist a little early”, mumbled Mingi, struggling to slur out the word eucharist. Yunho rolled his eyes. “If you're gonna sleep here, then you gotta pray with us. Dickhead.” Yunho hadn't said that word before, but he heard Mingi say it sometimes. It felt good on his tongue.
“Y’ shouldn't curse in church.” mumbled Mingi before flopping the other way, apparently deciding the other half of the hard wooden bench was somehow more comfortable.
It was so absurd to be lectured by Mingi like this, so funny, even though Mingi was too wasted to appreciate the irony. Yunho smiled.
***
“You always have crazy ass acessories.” Mingi said admiringly at the black beads and silver cross dangling from Yunho's neck. “You gotta lend me some for tonight.
“Acessories? They're rosaries.”
“Lots to pray about at a goth club, right?” nudged Mingi, and Yunho couldn't help but smile. The mood was good. The afternoon light lit up Mingi's cluttered, postered room in all shades of red.
Mingi had tons of accessories, too. Studded, spiked bracelets, makeshift cloth bracelets with names of bands in elaborate red letters. Long black-beaded necklaces, not unlike the long rosary Yunho was wearing, a gift from his father. He uncoiled it so its double chain became a single, long one. Then, still wearing it, draped it over Mingi too, laughing. They've never been so close. A long moment passed, inhaling each other's scent, connected by the necklace. Yunho's powdery scent with a whiff of frankinscense, Mingi's Cat Von D's Sinner perfume (stolen from his sister) (Yunho just had to go on a rant about how demonic pop culture had become when he saw the name on the bottle, but Mingi just laughed.)
For a moment the world shrunk, reduced to the size of the two boys’ necklace-denoted perimeter. “You are coming with me, right?” said Mingi, thick lips close, voice suddenly a little insecure, as if still doubting if Yunho had truly been serious when he agreed to brave the goth club. As always, Yunho tried to diffuse tension with a quip. “Can't have you losing the necklace, can I? Gotta keep an eye on it.”
“Necklace? It's a rosary.”
Both laughed this time.
***
The righteous were supposed to guide the wayward, but not at night and not to a goth club, so Yunho had made the best excuse he could think of to his parents and was presently following Mingi's thight-jeaned ass into a red-and-black basement that passed for a club.
The thing is, Yunho really should've been more worried about this. He knew that. It should've rattled him, at least. Sure, he did feel the thrill of forbidden love, the sweet guilt that crept up his stomach as Mingi kissed him, flush against the red brocaded wall, pushing the guilt back down with his tongue.
You think you're better than everybody? was an accusation thrown at Mingi often, but rarely at Yunho. And Yunho didn't think he was better than everybody, but… He knew he was good. He knew he was moral and righteous and he'd been going to church more than any other kid he knew (well, his dad worked there but that wasn't the point, was it?) and somehow… It was unbelievable that he could be wrong. Bad? Sinful? No way.
So he kissed Mingi back and felt a strange sense of power coursing through his veins, a feeling that he could do anything, and it would always, naturally, be good, because he was good.
“... Wanna wait for the first bus at the church?”
Mingi giggled. “I thought you told me not to come there drunk.”
The kisses were thrilling enough, but there was nothing Yunho loved more than Mingi, and only Mingi, correcting him, poking at him, pointing out his hypocrisies like they were the medieval frescos in the church vault, there to be admired, secretly laughed at for their weird proportions and bizarre imagery, but never fixed or changed, always carefully preserved.
***
Yungo was drawing an anatomically correct human with all his organs visible, with angel wings and a halo, on the back of his notebook. Mingi was drawing a goth model with angel wings, a halo and devil's horns on the back of his history book.
“Fuck, your wings are better than mine” whispered Mingi enviously.
“Maybe you'd be better at them if you went to church more often.”
“Missed me that much?” asked Mingi with an embarrassed yet pleased smile, without meeting Yunho's eyes. Under the table, Yunho dragged a hand up Mingi's ripped jeans in reply.
***
Mingi in all black, Yunho in all white, they looked like giant chess pieces on the church's chequered floor. Puffed up by the role of tour guide, Yunho led Mingi around the empty church, hand on the small of his broad back, detailing every scene depicted on the walls and the stain-glass windows. Mingi chuckled at St. Christophorous donkey head. His favorite was St. George because I mean, you just can't beat slaying a fucking dragon.
“What, not an angel?” asked Yunho with raised eyebrows.
Mingi emitted a low hum, squinting at a fresco of archangel Michael. “Maybe if you had drawn the wings.”
***