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Minhyeong still isn’t sure how he got here.
Sure, there had been some back and forth between them about going out for food and even the fans had gotten involved in it, so it had seemed kind of inevitable. And, yes, Minhyeong had been amused with the fan interest and the support’s excitement, because it’s nice to have someone be so obviously interested in him.
And Yoonsu is cute.
He’s young and smiles readily and when Minhyeong says anything that can be considered a compliment he blushes a scarlet red.
So he’s been doing it a lot, enjoying the pleased little expressions on the support’s face.
It is only supposed to be a one time thing, though. Minhyeong, the senior, taking the rookie out for lunch. It’s normal and it’s nice. Just Minhyeong being a good role model and getting to know a colleague who appreciates him.
Except, towards the end Yoonsu casually suggests that they do it again and Minhyeong, seeing no reason why they shouldn’t, agrees.
And then it happens again.
And again.
Right before the fifth time in just as many months Hwanjoong cheekily asks Minhyeong if he should be concerned.
Minhyeong rolls his eyes and texts Yoonsu to let him know he’ll be right there.
It’s not anything weird, as far as he’s concerned. It’s just, spending time with Yoonsu makes Minhyeong feel good. The young man is comfortable and likes to talk, but he also smiles at Minhyeong so sweetly and looks at him like he hung the moon.
It’s not that he needs the ego boost, but with how things have gone lately it’s nice to be reminded that people consider him someone to emulate and that they like being around him.
And Yoonsu has no reason to butter Minhyeong up, because they’re not even on the same team.
So he keeps doing it and he keeps paying for the man, watching with growing fondness as the young support tries out different snacks and gets excited about the new places Minhyeong takes him to.
They talk a lot, too, about pretty much everything. The more they get to know each other the more Yoonsu’s initial shyness evaporates. He brings up movies he likes and then the manga he’s been following since he was a kid and after lunch date six starts divulging about his family and the anxiety he feels living up to their expectations.
In turn Minhyeong talks openly about his move to HLE and his need to prove that he isn’t just a good adc when he’s with the team he’s known a good part of his adult life.
And when talking about Gumayusi gets stale, it turns to the person Lee Minhyeong.
It’s easy and it’s comfortable and quickly goes from polite interest in a colleague to monthly meetings with a friend. A friend who makes Minhyeong smile and happier when he leaves than when he showed up.
Yoonsu is nice and he’s honest and spending time with him is a breath of fresh air.
“You’re so handsome, hyung,” Yoonsu admits once, clearly flustered the moment he says it. His ears look like they’re on fire and Minhyeong wants to reach out and touch them.
“Thank you,” he replies, giving the man a smile back. He wants to compliment the support in return, but Yoonsu quickly takes over the conversation again and babbles about wanting to have a new pet but not knowing if he’s ready for that kind of responsibility.
He doesn’t let Minhyeong get a word in for quite a while, almost as if he wants to escape the anxiety of having just called Minhyeong good looking.
Minhyeong watches him fondly and lets him.
“You’re cute,” Minhyeong compliments him during their next lunch, finally returning the favour. And Yoonsu is. He’s a little too young to be called handsome, maybe, but looking at him makes Minhyeong smile and feel good. He likes looking at him, all animated expressions and sparkling eyes. He’s round and soft and Minhyeong has the constant urge to touch him when Yoonsu laughs and presses his hands to his cheeks when they go red.
They keep having lunch together and it goes from once a month to twice a month and then casual little meet ups at work to grab a drink. It’s nice and it’s a budding…something.
Things don’t change until some time after.
“Hyung,” Yoonsu speaks up one day, something about the tension in his voice causing Minhyeong to sit up straighter.
“Yes?”
“Do you know how you always pay for our lunches and stuff? Because you’re the senior and that’s kind of expected of you?”
“Well, I also like doing it, but yes?”
The other man looks nervous, but gulps in an anxious breath and then steels himself. Minhyeong tilts his head, curious where this is going.
“Can I take you out on a date next?”
Minhyeong blinks. “You want to pay for our next lunch? You know you don’t have to, right? Our friendship won’t be any lesser if you don’t p-”
“No!” Yoonsu interrupts. Minhyeong falls silent.
“I don’t want to pay for our next lunch. I want to take you on a date. To have dinner. At a restaurant.”
“You want to take me out on a date?”
Yoonsu nods decisively. “A date.”
Minhyeong knows all about projecting confidence and where the other man is trying his hardest to look the part, his fingers are clutching his phone a little too tightly and he’s biting his lips.
He’s worried and Minhyeong doesn’t like it.
So, as if there’s nothing strange about this sudden development, he says yes.
“Okay.”
“Wait, really?”
Minhyeong nods. “Sure. Take me out on a date. I’m curious where you’d take me.”
He smiles and it’s like Yoonsu’s strings break because he immediately deflates. It’s a good thing, though, because he settles and grins cutely, tension gone and worry forgotten.
He invites Minhyeong out to a nearby restaurant three weeks later and it’s the first time Yoonsu has initiated anything about their relationship.
Minhyeong, as the older and busier of the two, has been making all the arrangements so far and while he’s liked it he also likes not knowing and the element of surprise.
What do Yoonsu’s choices say about him, he wonders.
When he’s sent an address - Minhyeong has a schedule first, so he’s changing and then going to the restaurant directly - it’s a place he’s never been to before.
It’s small and quaint, with tiny windows that hide the place away from the outside world. It’s warm inside, the smoke of the kitchen billowing into the dining room whenever the door to the kitchen opens.
It smells good and the lights are yellow, casting comfortable shadows and adding to the atmosphere. It’s cozy and friendly and it makes perfect sense for what Minhyeong knows about his young friend.
Stop it, he tells himself when he feels a familiar tension in his gut. It’s how he feels when he takes first, daunting steps into the unknown, and it brings back memories. His first match on a new team. His first interview and press conference. Stepping onto the Worlds stage. Shyly leaning in for his first kiss.
Yoonsu is sitting at a table near the back, looking nervous but excited when Minhyeong shows up.
“Hyung,” he says brightly, hands letting go of the hem of his dark blue sweater. It’s one Minhyeong hasn’t seen him in before, but it makes him look older. Different. He’s not sure he likes it.
“Sorry I’m late,” he apologizes, sitting down and glancing around. “I like the place, though.”
“Thanks.” Yoonsu preens. It’s cute. “You weren’t late, though. I was just early.”
There’s a tension between them that Minhyeong hasn’t felt before with the other man. They’ve shared so many lunches and they’ve all been fine. Comfortable and enjoyable and fine.
This is different, though. This is…
He’s dressed up and they’re at a restaurant his date chose for him and Yoonsu is sitting in front of him all redfaced and adorable.
They’re on a date. Yoonsu had specifically called it a date and Minhyeong had agreed knowing that. He’d even bought himself a fancy new dress shirt because this is a date. All of it had been intentional and him sitting here is intentional.
So, yes, Minhyeong doesn’t know how he got here and yet he totally does.
Yoonsu might have set it in motion with halting, stuttered words and eyes that were pleading with Minhyeong to say yes, but Minhyeong had agreed.
And so here they are.
The tension lessens when they start talking, familiarity returning, but it’s still different. Yoonsu’s cheeks are red for most of their meal and he glances over at Minhyeong more than usual. As if he’s checking to see if the man is still there.
It should make Minhyeong feel self-conscious, but in reality it feels good and he hopes Yoonsu likes what he sees. Minhyeong has tried, after all, and hasn’t Yoonsu called him handsome before?
Yoonsu pays for them, even talking Minhyeong into taking a second dessert, and it’s something Minhyeong isn’t used to at all. Not with Yoonsu nor any of the partners who came before him, but at the same time it’s nice and it’s cute how excited Yoonsu seems about getting to do something for Minhyeong in return.
And it’s not like Minhyeong minds being taken care of for once.
Yoonsu even holds the door open for him as they leave and it makes Minhyeong chuckle.
“Now what?” he asks as they’re outside, a cold breeze causing him to wrap his coat tighter around himself.
“I’m going to walk you to your dorm.”
Minhyeong shakes his head. “Yoonsu, it’s late and I’m a grown ass man. I can make my way home myself.”
“No,” Yoonsu insists. “I asked you on a date. It needs to… I need to end it properly and take you home.”
The man blushes. “I don’t have a car, though, so I thought we could walk. I can also call us a cab if you want? I know it’s cold.”
Minhyeong waves that idea away. “Please, you’ve already spent plenty on me. The walk won’t kill us.”
It ends up taking them twenty minutes and they barely talk, but it’s a comfortable silence. The city isn’t quiet, but it’s different from what it’s like during the day and Minhyeong likes the way the lights make everything look different. Softer, fluffier. As if the day is fading away and is about to tick over into a new one right in front of his eyes.
It’s nice and it makes him want to be out there more.
It’s also nice to be walking with Yoonsu, whose rosy cheeks eventually get defeated by the cold. Minhyeong has to stop him at one point and wrap his scarf around the man’s neck, because he’s clearly not used to being out here for this long and he’s started shaking.
“But it’s yours,” Yoonsu protests, as if Minhyeong doesn’t have plenty more. He has the money to buy as many news ones as he wants, too. Hell, he could mention needing one on his next stream and fans would send him twenty more before the day was through.
He doesn’t need this one and he wants Yoonsu to have it.
“Don’t worry about it.”
“But…”
Minhyeong grins at him. “It looks good on you. Keep it.”
And there go Yoonsu’s cheeks again. It probably makes Minhyeong a bad person for liking that he can so easily do that to the young support.
Yoonsu speeds up, clearly embarrassed about the way Minhyeong looks at his burning cheeks, and mutters something to himself that Minhyeong doesn’t catch. He follows, laughing and feeling a surge of affection.
It’s almost a shame when they reach the HLE dorms. Yoonsu looks curious as he gazes up at the building, though, and Minhyeong decides to bring him inside next time they go for lunch.
Maybe when the others are busy, he decides, because he already knows they’d tease him about his young…whatever they are.
“So…” Yoonsu eventually says.
Minhyeong feels that he wants to say something more, so he waits patiently.
Yoonsu fiddles with the scarf Minhyeong has given him and mumbles into it. Minhyeong has to lean in to catch what he says.
“I guess this is the end of the date.”
“Yes,” Minhyeong agrees. “I guess it is.”
Minhyeong wonders what the man’s brain is doing, because he can tell there’s something going on up there. He doesn’t want to rush him, though, and while it’s cold Minhyeong doesn’t have to be anywhere.
It’s like Yoonsu still has something to do and he’s willing to wait and see what it is.
“Hyung,” Yoonsu whispers eventually. He looks nervous again.
“Hmm?”
“Can I kiss you?”
And there it is. The thing that causes this to go from friends or colleagues having a meal - though the meal was labelled ‘a date’, so what else could it be, Minhyeong’s stubborn brain supplies - to something more. Something deeper.
Not just a senior taking his junior out for lunch and joining him on dinner dates. It’s a man taking another man on a date.
“It’s what you do, right?” Yoonsu continues. “After you go on a date and you take your date home? You…you kiss them?”
Minhyeong’s voice wavers as he answers. “You make it sound like you’re following a script. You don’t have to do anything, Yoonsu, only what you want to.”
“I want to, though.”
Minhyeong wants to laugh, because there is that sweet earnestness again. The big eyes and the way Yoonsu is all wrapped up in a coat that’s too big and a scarf that’s not his. He looks cosy and warm and Minhyeong does want to lean in and relish in it, in him, but…
“Yoonsu,” he says, seconds away from stopping this. He should, right? Encouraging this would be… It would be…
He’s not sure how to end that sentence. There are some words he could use, but they all sound wrong.
He looks at Yoonsu and feels his breath quicken at the anticipation in the man’s expression. The eagerness and the affection, clear to see. The support is still untouched by the unwritten rules of the business. He’s not yet affected by decorum and the need to project a perfect, palatable picture.
Yoonsu is honest and earnest and right now his eyes say enough.
The hope he sees there starts to dim the longer Minhyeong takes with his answer, though. He catches it, the moment doubt and embarrassment take hold and the younger man starts biting his bottom lip nervously.
“I’m sorry. Do you not want to? Did I misunderstand?” Yoonsu laces his fingers in front of him nervously. “I suppose it makes sense. I’m nothing like Keria-seonsu, right?”
Ah, yes, the industry's worst kept secret. His past relationship with Minseok.
He doesn’t mind that Yoonsu knows, because he’s not ashamed of it - on some days, when he thinks back to how good they were together, he’s even downright proud - but the way the boy’s excitement turns to doubt and self-consciousness makes him angry.
And he can tell Yoonsu’s been thinking about it. He’s probably looked at Minseok and then himself and noticed all the differences. Maybe he’s catalogued them, ticking off every single thing that would make Minhyeong like him less.
Minhyeong huffs, displeased, and glances up at the building in front of him, then off to the side. He hopes no one’s watching the cameras right now…
He grabs hold of Yoonsu’s hand and pulls him along to the side of the building until they’re hidden away in the little alley that leads to the back door.
“Stop,” he tells him. Yoonsu backs up against the wall, eyes big.
“What are you talking about? How are you nothing like Minseok?”
“I’m not. He’s s-”
“You are,” Minhyeong interrupts. “You’re both cute and talented and sweet. You make me laugh when I shouldn’t or, even better, when I really, really need it. You both hide away your edges because the world expects differently from you and it makes me want to show you that you can be outspoken. You can be loud. It’s okay to just be you.”
He smiles softly. “The things I loved about Minseok are things I know I can grow to love about you too and you shouldn’t consider yourself lesser than him.”
“How could I ever compare…” Yoonsu stops himself, looking away. As if he doesn’t even want to acknowledge it.
“You’re wrong,” Minhyeong simply tells him, pressing a cold hand to Yoonsu’s cheek and turning the man’s face back to him.
He can see that Yoonsu doesn’t believe him, though, and he sees the doubt. He wants to erase all of that and let him know that in Minhyeong’s eyes there is no need for him to compare himself to anyone.
Minseok will forever be special to Minhyeong, sure, and is still important to him even now, but Minseok will also never again be what Yoonsu still has the potential to be.
And that includes Minhyeong letting him know that the answer to his question should have been an honest ‘yes, you can kiss me’.
“It’s okay,” he whispers, giving in to the urge and pressing a kiss to the young man’s lips.
It’s soft and it’s over in seconds. A fleeting touch of lips. Yoonsu startles and then stares up at Minhyeong with big eyes.
Minhyeong frowns. “You wanted a kiss, right?”
Did he misunderstand? Did he overstep?
“I didn’t think I’d actually get one,” Yoonsu admits, his voice weak with surprise and wonder. “I’ve been trying to be confident, more like you, but I didn’t think it’d actually…”
Minhyeong looks down at him, feeling that surge of fondness again. Yoonsu is young and in this moment it shines through perfectly. He’s had it all laid out in his head, their little date, but now that they’re here he’s freaking out about getting what he wants.
“Do you want another?”
Yoonsu’s hand clutches Minhyeong’s coat and he feels it grip tighter.
“Yes, please.”
Minhyeong grins and leans in once more. This time Yoonsu is a little more ready and he welcomes the kiss, opening his mouth and allowing Minhyeong to deepen it. It’s velvet and heat and Minhyeong presses into the support’s soft body until he feels him shake.
He means to pull back then and give both of them some time to breathe and get used to the change in their relationship, but when he does Yoonsu follows so eagerly and clearly so not ready to break the kiss that he’s immediately tempted to continue kissing him. He gently grabs Yoonsu by the neck so he can angle the kiss better and smothers a surprised, delicious moan with his mouth.
It’s so good that he continues kissing the support until he feels a little lightheaded.
“It’s late,” he gasps when he realizes it, finally pulling back. He’s also not sure where exactly the building’s cameras are and if he remembers correctly there’s at least one window in their dorm that looks out over the little alley way they’re in.
If any of his team mates see him making out with the twenty-two year old DNS support he’ll never hear the end of it.
“I don’t care,” Yoonsu answers, pulling Minhyeong in. He sounds petulant, but also needy and Minhyeong groans as he lets him and kisses back greedily.
“Yoonsu,” he eventually murmurs, wrenching his mouth away and pressing a kiss to the man’s temple instead. Yoonsu feels hot.
“We both have matches tomorrow,” he says, a final attempt at being a functional adult, but he’s not sure if he’s reminding Yoonsu or himself.
The other man says nothing, he just breathes harshly and hangs onto Minhyeong’s coat. His eyes are a little unfocused and not even the cold can scare away how red he is this time. Minhyeong thinks it’s adorable.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, yeah?”
“Hyung.” Yoonsu trembles in Minhyeong’s hold.
“Yes?”
“This is… We are… I…”
Minhyeong presses a quick kiss to the man’s lips again, interrupting the anxiousness, and wraps him in a hug.
“Tomorrow we will see each other at LOL Park and we’ll greet each other like rivals on the Rift. Then once we’re both done I will send you a text to ask you out on our next date. Okay? And until then, neither of us have to worry about what any of this is.”
He grins.
“You could even say no if it’s all too much and I’d accept it.”
“Absolutely not,” Yoonsu responds grumpily. Minhyeong chuckles into the side of his face. He eventually pulls back.
“Tomorrow,” he repeats. “For now I am going to give you some cash to get a cab home.”
“Hyung,” the other man complains and Minhyeong knows it’s about paying. Yoonsu asked him on a date, after all. He made the first move and in the script he’s made up he’s supposed to pay.
Except, this is Minhyeong’s date too.
“Let me,” he whispers. “Consider it a thank you for a great first date.”
It takes a while and some grumbling, but Yoonsu eventually relents and takes the money. They wait together until the cab arrives and then, after Minhyeong once more reminds the other man of tomorrow, he watches it drive away.
He already can’t wait until their next date.