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Yunho thought things were going well. He thought things were going really well with Mingi — the kind of well that leaves zero room for hesitation, and so he hadn't hesitated. Tonight was going to be the night. He was going to tell Mingi he liked him. That maybe they were more than just friends. That maybe they had always been more than just friends — that, at least in Yunho's mind, they had been for as long as the two of them had been making memories together.
Mingi had asked if he wanted to go dancing, so Yunho picked the club.
There was a cover charge at the door, and it was while Yunho was digging through his bag with the vague, desperate hope of "no, no, I might have cash" that he first realized he didn't have his ID on him. A loose connection with one of the bartenders and the biggest "you owe me big time" eyes Yunho had ever had the nerve to make, and somehow he managed to get let in. Mingi was a champ through the whole thing, even offering to run back himself to grab the ID — or, if Yunho didn't want to be left alone (they'd slammed two shots each before heading out, both of them eager to get a good buzz going before the main event), maybe Mingi could coordinate with one of the others to—
"You're so sweet, but I promise it's okay. See, he's letting us in now!"
It was not okay, and Yunho felt humiliated and would do his absolute best to never come back to this club again.
After that whole debacle, they were both feeling a little sobered up, so Mingi suggested something to sip on while the dance floor continued to fill. The night was still young. They had time. They were in no rush.
Except that Yunho was wearing his most precious tight Diesel top with the long sleeves — the one that Mingi had said made him look like he could be in Mission Impossible — and he had gotten through maybe three sips of the most amazing cherry limeade of his entire life before he dribbled some of it right down the front.
He wanted to cry. He wanted to scream and hide in the bathroom and cry there instead, but Mingi was already tipsier than himself and the poor thing was urgently flagging down the bartender for napkins, which was exactly the sort of behavior that, as the crowd steadily thickened around them, drew more than enough attention to make Yunho want to dissolve into the floor.
But Mingi was a sweetheart, and a persistent one, and so Yunho sat as still as he could manage, with Mingi dabbing away at the patches on his skintight top with an uncoordinated, well-meaning strength. Somehow, amazingly, the marks lifted enough that they weren't visible in the low strobing lights of the club, and so Yunho laughed and squeezed Mingi's arm. It was those eyes, he thought. Mingi could do anything in the world with those eyes — they were sparkling, and Yunho told himself it was only the alcohol, and not that Mingi looked at him like that, like he meant it. He leaned in close, because really, when had it gotten this crowded in here, this loud, and when exactly had the press of people around them started to feel less like a crowd and more like a kind of privacy, like it was him and Mingi and no one else for miles? And he raised his voice just enough to say, "Okay. Let's hit the floor now that I look sexy again."
Mingi didn't say anything to that, but maybe he just didn't think he needed to, because he laughed until it reached his eyes and clasped his hand over Yunho's where it sat on his arm, covering it entirely. God, those eyes. Maybe Mingi could just close them for the night so Yunho didn't have to keep getting lost in them. He would question it, but Yunho knew he would listen if asked sincerely enough.
"Let's dance!" Mingi said back, already bouncing a little.
Mingi might have been closer to the dance floor, but Yunho got there first. If there was one thing in the universe that could rival his feelings for Mingi, it was his love of dancing — anywhere, any time, any song. Yunho could never stay upset when he was moving his body. Even when he struggled with a move, even when he didn't hit it just right, he'd smile and shake it off and try again, and dance, and dance.
And with Mingi, he could dance on and on and on. Their bodies knew each other's rhythms, had memorized each other's patterns over years of this exact thing. Yunho knew which beats Mingi would land hard on the downbeat, whether a song would have him mouthing the words silently or belting them out loud, which ones had him swaying and which ones had him jumping up and down with his hand in the air.
They had been dancing together for years, and what a lifetime those years had been.
Mingi wanted another shot, but Yunho talked him down to sharing a drink instead. They rushed off to the side of the club and stood shoulder to shoulder at a high top already sticky from earlier patrons, all fits of giggles as they shared their first lemon drop — the first time either of them had ordered it. It was the sort of silly, embarrassing moment you could only share with someone who already held all your real secrets. They grimaced at the tart taste but knocked it back quickly so they could get back to their favorite place.
The alcohol fueled them for another hour at least, and they kept dancing in the throng of grinding bodies and strangers making out and the younger crowd trying to get up to the DJ booth for their five minutes of fame. They moved closer without thinking, and maybe it was the crowd, or maybe it was that magnetism Mingi had that made Yunho incapable of escaping him for long, always drawn back to his body heat and those fucking eyes.
They danced on and on until Mingi needed to use the restroom. He guided Yunho to a spot near one of the poles to wait, just some marker he could fix in his memory so he could find his way back after navigating the notoriously long line for the bathroom.
Yunho waited with everything in him sweating. When Mingi got back, he would ask if they should get out of here. If he didn't do it now, then maybe—
He got so lost in his own head that he didn't notice Mingi coming back from the wrong direction until he was already almost there, arm slung around someone's shoulders, a second person close behind him.
"Small world," Yunho said, a sinkhole opening up in his stomach all at once. It's the shots, he thought. But no, he knew. It was them. He smiled the way anyone with this much alcohol in his system would smile and leaned forward, letting himself fall into San's sturdy, warm body.
He smiled at Seonghwa next, his hyung red in the ears and adorably, helplessly drunk. And then San was twisting and pulling Mingi backward into the crowd by both hands, laughing, and Seonghwa was looping himself around Yunho's arm, and just like that the night rearranged itself around him into something he hadn't planned for.
He loved them. Of course he loved them. The alcohol made that feel very true and very large, swelling up warm in his chest right alongside everything else that was already in there. But he had wanted Mingi alone tonight, and the wanting and the loving were all tangled up together now in a way he couldn't quite sort through, so he just let Seonghwa pull him back into the crowd and tried to find the beat again.
They danced. The music helped. Yunho kept finding his way back to Mingi between songs the way he always did, brushing his shoulder, catching at his wrist, leaning close whenever either of them said anything over the noise. It felt like it meant something every time. It probably meant something every time. Mingi would smile at him, warm and easy, and the thought would come back around again that maybe the night wasn't lost after all. Maybe he just had to wait. Maybe he just had to find the right moment.
The right moment, if it existed, refused to be found.
San danced like he was trying to outrun gravity, all reckless energy and huge movements, and at one point he grabbed both of Yunho's hands and spun under his arm so dramatically that they nearly took out an entire group of strangers. Yunho laughed hard enough that he forgot, briefly, what he'd been turning over in his head. That was the thing about being drunk and dancing. He could only hold so many thoughts at once, and sometimes the wrong ones slipped through the gaps.
Seonghwa, drunk and sweet and impossible to be annoyed at, kept pulling Yunho close between songs to tell him things. Hands on his shoulders, very serious expression.
"You're really handsome tonight," he informed Yunho. "Seriously, you're so chic and sexy."
"Hyung, you say that every time you drink."
"Because it's true every time I drink."
Yunho laughed and loved him and wished he were Mingi.
That felt bad to think, even drunk, so he let it go and just held onto Seonghwa for a moment instead.
Every time the crowd shifted and San ended up between him and Mingi, every time Mingi drifted off to laugh at something Seonghwa was shouting in his ear, Yunho felt the shape of the night he'd imagined slipping a little further away. He wasn't sure if that feeling was getting worse or if he was just getting worse at managing it. Probably the second one. He'd had a lot to drink and he was in love with his best friend, and neither of those things were getting easier to handle as the night went on.
He kept trying. He kept finding his way back.
Mingi glanced between the two of them and sighed. "Okay, I think we need to get them home."
The way he said it made Yunho pause.
"You want to go home already?" Yunho asked, a frown creeping into his expression halfway through. "But I thought we were gonna dance the night away…"
What would usually have earned him a little choreography moment only gave him furrowed brows and a pout as Mingi let Seonghwa drape himself across his back. Yunho would have very much liked to peel him off, but he was somewhat occupied rubbing circles into San's back, the poor guy visibly on the decline.
"No, just them. I just meant if you could call someone to meet them at the apartment and make sure they're okay."
Yunho understood. The flush of embarrassment that went through him was instant. He felt foolish for doubting, even for a second. They had agreed to dance to their hearts' content. Mingi would forget maybe, but never forsake.
Mingi called a car while Yunho called Wooyoung, who confirmed he was sober and already on his way to make sure Seonghwa and San had everything they'd need. By the time the two of them had gotten their friends into the car and were standing on the curb watching it pull away, Yunho could have kicked himself.
Yunho turned around and tipped forward and let his head drop against Mingi's chest because he needed somewhere to put himself and that was the only place that made sense. Mingi was warm and solid and smelled like the night, and Yunho pressed in a little closer and tried to feel more of it past the alcohol still buzzing through him. Mingi didn't ask. He just brought his arms up around Yunho's shoulders and held him there on the empty sidewalk.
Yunho stayed there a moment longer than he needed to. So warm and right and perfect and Yunho wished he could feel more of it past the alcohol thrumming in his blood. He tried harder, wriggling around a bit and pressing into Mingi's sturdy frame while ruining his hair in the process. Even this — even something that was not enough — was still Mingi.
"What is it?" Mingi asked, after a while.
"I just realized no other bar is going to let us in," Yunho said. "I still don't have my ID, and I don't know any other bartenders in this part of town."
Mingi shifted, resting his arms across Yunho's shoulders, and let out a long, matching sigh. "Well, we don't have to go home yet. There's a convenience store on the corner and I'm kind of hungry. Want to get snacks?"
Yunho didn't want to get snacks. But he said yes.
He thought about it the whole walk over, while he and Mingi talked about nothing in particular.
They reached the corner, and Mingi held the door open for him and then immediately wandered off toward the ice cream freezers, and Yunho stood there in the snack aisle thinking about how he wanted Mingi to corner him after dance practice someday, to tell him that he'd always thought of Yunho that way too, that it wasn't all in his head. Instead Mingi was crouching down to squint at the labels and asking him whether he should get strawberry or mango.
He wanted to dance with Song Mingi, his boyfriend, at the club. He wanted to share a bathroom with him in an apartment they'd share just the two of them. He wanted to get ready at the same time and reach around each other for things and argue about counter space and who forgot to turn off the fan because those were the biggest problems they would ever have together.
He wanted Mingi. He wanted Mingi. He wanted Song Mingi.
"—the other one has a discount though so I guess it doesn't really —"
"Shut up!"
Mingi froze. Yunho froze.
Mingi slowly uncrouched from in front of the freezer and turned around to look at him, a confused pout settling onto his stupid, pretty, half-drunk face. Yunho wanted to disappear. He wanted to scream and cry and run and hide somewhere dark and small. God, he was doing this with a stain on his shirt, a stain that was significantly more visible here under the store's fluorescent lights than it had been on the dance floor.
But they weren't on the dance floor.
"Yunho? What the hell, I'm just —"
"Shut up!" Yunho said again, louder. There wasn't much point in trying to be subtle when both of them were tall enough to see clearly over the tops of the aisles, so he may as well just get it over with. "Just shut up, Song Mingi! I want to go home!"
He stormed out through the sliding doors and into the night air, which did nothing for him except confirm that his shirt was too thin for this, though the alcohol helped. There were a few people nearby but mostly he was free, finally, to let the tears that had been threatening for the last twenty minutes actually fall. He heard the door jingle behind him and rapid footsteps, and he knew Mingi was somewhere back there, but he didn't stop walking. He couldn't. He couldn't let Mingi see him like this, not right now, not ever again. He just needed to walk home so he could go to sleep and wake up and pretend tonight had never happened.
Mingi caught up. He was trying considerably harder than Yunho was. He caught Yunho's elbow and Yunho spun around, and there was Mingi looking at him with this expression full of grief and confusion and something that looked almost frightened, in the way that only someone who cares very much can look frightened.
"Yunho, what's going on? Did something happen while you were waiting for me earlier?" he asked, and his voice was so serious completely and immediately, like he was already prepared to go to war over whatever had hurt his best friend. "If someone said something to you—"
"Nothing happened," Yunho said, quieter than he meant to.
"Was it really about the ice cream, because —"
"I don't care about your ice cream!" The words came out faster than he could think them. "Fuck, Mingi, why aren't you getting it? We shouldn't have come here! We shouldn't even be here right now. We should be at the club, and I should be dancing and you should be holding me and telling me you love me too, Song Mingi!"
The words left him all at once, too fast to call back.
Yunho's chest heaved. His eyes were wet. He was standing in a convenience store parking lot at half past midnight in the shirt he'd spilled on, and he had just said every single thing he'd been quietly folding and refolding in his chest all night long.
Out loud, to the one person he'd been most afraid to say any of it to.
Across the parking lot, a man walking his dog had very clearly heard every word of it. Yunho didn't care about the man. He couldn't look at anything except Mingi.
Mingi, who had gone completely still.
Mingi, whose face Yunho knew better than his own because he had spent years staring at it every day, and who Yunho was now realizing he could not read at all.
The silence stretched out between them, long and airless, and Yunho was already beginning to recalculate, running the numbers on how many hours it would take before he could blame this on the alcohol, whether Mingi would let him do that, how many years of something quieter and safer and smaller he would be willing to live with if it meant he didn't lose him entirely and—
—And then Mingi took a step forward.
Just one. Just enough to close a little of the distance between them. Yunho's breath caught somewhere in the middle of his throat and stayed there.
"We should be dancing," Mingi said slowly. "And I should be holding you."
"Mingi —"
"And telling you I love you too."
Yunho blinked. The parking lot was quiet except for the low hum of the store lights overhead and the distant sound of a car pulling out somewhere behind them. Mingi took another step, and then another, unhurried and certain, the same way he moved across a dance floor when he already knew exactly where he was going. Yunho didn't move. He couldn't have moved if he'd wanted to. The whole night was pressing in around him all at once—every small stupid thing that had stood between him and this moment, and now Mingi was right there, close enough that Yunho could see his individual eyelashes.
"You've been weird all night," Mingi murmured, and there was something soft at the edges of his voice that Yunho, if he was brave enough to believe it, might call fond. "I thought I did something wrong."
"You didn't do anything wrong," Yunho said. It came out very small.
"I did. I waited too long, but I promise I'm here. I'm telling you now," Mingi said. "I love you too, Jeong Yunho."
Yunho had spent the entire night inside his own head, running every possible version of this conversation, mapping out every angle and every worst case and every careful hedge. And then Mingi brought both hands up to cup his face, his palms wide and warm and steady, and Yunho's head went completely, mercifully quiet.
Mingi leaned in slowly. Slowly enough that Yunho could have stopped him. Slowly enough that it was clearly, unmistakably a question.
So Yunho closed the gap, and he kissed his best friend.
It wasn't a dramatic kiss. It wasn't the kind that got written into songs. It was soft and a little clumsy, and Mingi tasted like the shots they'd done three hours ago, and Yunho was almost certain he had a now very visible cherry limeade stain on his shirt. And Yunho was certain there was no dance better than this. No moment in the universe that could feel better than Mingi kissing him drunk in the parking lot, a mile away from the dance floor.
It lasted only a moment before they broke apart, barely an inch between them, foreheads almost touching.
Mingi was smiling. It reached his eyes.
"Come dancing with me tomorrow night," he requested breathlessly. "And Thursday." He kissed Yunho on the lips quickly, a cheeky smile on his lips. "And Friday." Another kiss. "And Saturday." Another — this time lingering long enough that Yunho pushed into it as well.
"Every night you'll have me," Yunho answered.
"Then we'll dance every night till we die."