Work Text:
This is the game: Jeongin taps out stories for Minho on the wall between their bedrooms and if Minho is awake, he responds no matter what.
There is a wall separating their bedrooms. On one side is Minho's and the other is Jeongin's.
Jeongin is eight when he moves into the apartment. It's a big deal that he has his own bedroom and doesn't have to share with his sisters who sleep in another room together now. He is so grown up that he gives them his night light and then spends those first few weeks regretting it, so frightened in the dark he doesn't get up even when he desperately has to pee.
He tells Minho about it on the way to the bus stop. They go to the same school so every morning they walk down the hill from their apartment complex where the bus picks them and a few other neighborhood kids up. They ride for twenty minutes and then peel off into their respective buildings before congregating again in the afternoon for the ride home.
His parents moved so they could be closer to the schools. Before, they lived far out in the country with his grandparents who drove Jeongin nearly an hour each day to reach the closest school. His grandfather always played the radio too loud and his grandmother shouted over it to compensate.
Minho isn't like that. In front of their parents, he is quiet and polite. Those first few weeks, he is the same with Jeongin, pointing out the different store and street signs while they ride to school, teaching him how to memorize the different markers indicating where they are on their route.
The cell tower means fifteen minutes.
The chicken shop means ten.
The mosaic mural under the bridge means one.
As they become more familiar with each other, Minho gets less shy. He's an only child, so he's always asking questions now about what Jeongin and his sisters talk about when they get ready in the morning. Jeongin makes up things he thinks Minho will find interesting because it's better than admitting Heejin is too small to talk about anything at all and Sua sings every other word she speaks.
Minho is always fascinated anyways and nods along.
"One day, I'll have siblings too," he says. "But they will be cats so we'll just meow at each other instead."
Eventually, they become so close that Jeongin confesses that he's given away his night light. Minho doesn't particularly care that Jeongin is afraid of the dark.
"Everyone is afraid of something," Minho comforts and then lists all of the things he thinks are scary. Tall buildings. His teacher. The ocean. Pororo.
He tells Jeongin about Morse Code and then they learn it together so that when Jeongin is alone at night and terror pools in his stomach he can rap against the wall.
H-i M-i-n-h-o
H-i J-e-o-n-g-i-n
It takes a while before they became proficient enough to have coherent conversations. Sometimes, Jeongin takes so long trying to figure out how to respond that Minho falls asleep first.
"If I am asleep, tap me a story to wake up to. I will listen to it in the morning."
"It doesn't work like that," Jeongin mutters because he's not stupid.
"Well why don't you try it." Minho says it with certainty, wielding his two additional years of age like a weapon.
Jeongin tries it.
A few nights later when he is swallowed up by the dark, he raps his usual greeting against the wall but Minho doesn't respond. The familiar terror seizes him when he realizes it must mean Minho is truly asleep on the other side.
He sweats alone in his bed and then starts tapping out a story he'd read in class.
A Hare was making fun of the Tortoise one day for being so slow.
"Do you ever get anywhere?" he asked with a mocking laugh.
He taps on until his wrist grows tired and his eyes heavy and falls asleep with his face mashed up against the wall, dreaming of riding on the back of a speedracing Tortoise.
In the morning, the two board the bus as usual, and Minho tells him he liked his story.
"You didn't hear it." Jeongin frowns.
"I did," Minho says in a sing-song voice, eyes wide with feigned innocence. "I listened when I woke up."
"Then what was it about?"
"A very rude rabbit."
Jeongin hits him on the shoulder. "Why didn't you respond if you heard me knocking?"
"I did," Minho denies, rubbing his shoulder, still a teasing smile on his lips. "I listened when I woke up."
"You're not funny." Jeongin feels embarrassed then, that Minho was listening the whole time and didn't once respond. Just ignored him. Maybe Minho thought Jeongin's fear of the dark was stupid after all. Just a stupid little kid afraid of the dark.
His old school was so small, there were only a handful of other children in his class. They were terrible. Jeongin was even smaller then and they teased him for it endlessly, chasing him around the field behind the school in the afternoon while he waited for his grandparents to pick him up.
He was always faster than them and managed to evade their jeering. Except for one time, when his ankle caught on a tree root and he smashed his knee into the dirt. The kids caught up to him and dragged him back around to the school. They threw him in the large grey dumpster and held the lid closed, laughing when he started to scream.
"Come on, Yeni—"
"I said it's not funny," Jeongin snaps and turns away from him. He doesn't want Minho to see that Jeongin's eyes have started to water. The choking heat in his throat and behind his eyes only embarrasses him more.
For a while, it is silent, and then there is a quiet tapping of a shoe on the floor of the bus.
J-e-o-n-g-i-n
I a-m s-o-r-r-y
D-o n-o-t c-r-y
"I'm not crying," Jeongin mutters, wiping his eyes. He lets out little stabilizing breaths until they reach their stop, Minho's sneakered feet tapping all the while.
S-o-r-r-y
.... --- -- .
This is the game: Jeongin runs as fast as he can and Minho waits until he slows down and looks over his shoulder to give him a look that means he's ready to be caught.
Jeongin is the fastest boy in his school. It is a big deal because everyone wants to be nice to someone so quick. He's still scrawny at fourteen, shorter than the other boys on the track team, and he always runs like there is someone chasing him.
Sometimes, there is someone chasing him.
It's Minho.
Jeongin doesn't mind it then, even giggles when he's caught. Laughs it off when Minho teases him for how hard he's breathing. Minho is still faster than Jeongin. He's two years older and his legs are stronger and longer. He practices with a dance group in a nearby town and takes a train to get there, coming back late at night exhausted and sweaty. When he's not at school or dancing, he's washing dishes at his parents' restaurant or running deliveries.
He's always on his feet.
Jeongin's parents joke that Minho must sleep standing up too. Jeongin laughs along, smug with the knowledge that he doesn't. Even when it is late and Jeongin might already be asleep, he knows that when Minho finally rests for the night, dressed down and hair blow dried, he comes to a horizontal rest flush against his bedroom wall and taps a message for Jeongin's ears alone.
When he takes his sisters on the train to see Minho's dance team perform, they tease and jab at him, begging him to start dancing so he can be as cool as Minho. It is an impossible ask.
The truth is, Jeongin has two left feet when he's not running. Minho has tried to teach him a few basic moves, but he always ends up falling all over himself. So he leaves the dancing to his hyung and focuses on running faster and faster.
He vows that one day, he'll be faster than everyone in their town, Minho included. Minho indulges him and says that when that day comes, it'll be Jeongin's turn to give chase.
.... --- -- .
This is the game: Jeongin is playing hide and seek from his family. Minho's bedroom is always the hiding spot and somehow they still never find him.
His family loves Minho. They have loved him from the day they met him, bowing politely and announcing that he would look after Jeongin with his life.
"What a big promise," his mother had cooed. Jeongin, at the time, was hidden behind her skirt, peeking timidly out at his new neighbor.
"I keep all of my promises," Minho said.
His family doesn't seem to care if Jeongin spends the night at Minho's place. The two families swapped keys long ago and there is always someone coming and going between the two units. His sisters often visit to play with Minho's cats while they do their homework. Minho's father comes by to watch sports or complain about work and someone is always cutting up fruit.
It is Minho who insists on returning Jeongin back to his bedroom at the end of each night, especially as they get older. At sixteen, it is already clear that Jeongin has the speed and wit to run at the collegiate level.
"Star athletes need their beauty sleep or their legs will shrivel," Minho chides every time without fail.
"Why don't we just knock down the wall," Jeongin says one day, half asleep and hanging off the side of Minho's bed. Minho is sitting on the floor with his back against the bed, DS in hand. He's playing Pokemon.
"We can't," Minho murmurs, eyes glued to the screen.
"Why not?"
"It's a load bearing wall."
"What does that mean?"
"If we knock it down, the whole building will collapse."
"I don't believe you."
The thing about Minho is that he is a liar. He lies to Jeongin all the time. Even though Jeongin hates it, eventually he understands it is Minho's own way of teasing. He'll lie only once about something before he reveals the truth. But he does it so often, that Jeongin is always on his toes. Always weary of Minho's mischievous grin. Jeongin may be a mighty fast mouse but Minho is still a cat.
Minho shrugs, smug when he catches a rare Pokemon.
"Ask your parents, they'll tell you the same thing."
Jeongin supposes it's true. Minho doesn't mind being caught in his lies but telling Jeongin to ask his parents is almost a sure sign that he's actually telling the truth.
He sighs in defeat and then rubs his eyes.
"Maybe when we're older," he murmurs drowsily. They could live in the kind of apartment where there are no load bearing walls to get in the way of their late night talks. They could stay up endlessly and then fall asleep next to each other in the same room for the rest of their lives.
"Maybe when we're older," Minho echoes quietly.
.... --- -- .
This is the game: If Jeongin knocks, Minho answers.
H-o-m-e-?
Even at eighteen, Jeongin prefers communicating like this, despite the mobile phone on his bedside table. He texts with Minho during the day constantly unless he is at track practice or in class or if Minho is at a work shift.
He works with his parents at their restaurant full time now. He's not going to college like Jeongin. He was a good student even through graduation, tutoring Jeongin on the subjects he struggled with, but he never bothered with the college entrance exam himself. He still dances with his team but seems ambivalent when Jeongin asks him about his future plans.
It used to make Jeongin sad to think that Minho wouldn't go first, off to a university where he'd bring back stories and advice that he'd always carefully supplied to Jeongin: Which teachers were cruel or sweet, how to dress, and what to say or not to say.
But it isn't as if Jeongin has spent his life in Minho's shadow. He's much faster than Minho now, faster than anyone in their town. Fast enough to run all the way to Seoul where he'll be running for the university.
And if he's being honest, he's glad Minho didn't leave. It meant having Minho around while Jeongin worked through his own exams. It meant study breaks in the park near their house, watching Minho practice his dance routines while Jeongin baked under the sun. It meant staying up late into the night in Minho's bed after track meets, when Minho would indulge him and watch movies on his laptop until both of them drifted off to sleep.
He was always right there. Right on the other side of the wall, in the seat next to him on the bus, sitting in the bleachers, voice high and exhilarated when Jeongin crossed the finish line before anyone else.
In a few days, he will take the train to the city and move into the dorms.
He's going early for the track team's summer training camp. Minho couldn't take time off to help him move in, so he's going to see Jeongin off at the station with the rest of his family. His sisters and mom are tagging along so they can play tourist while Jeongin settles in.
The number of nights where Jeongin can tap against his bedroom wall and expect someone on the other side to respond is dwindling but not gone.
He gets a response now.
Y-e-s
Jeongin knows Minho is back. Knows his work schedule like the back of his hand even when it's irregular because he has to cover for flaky part timers.
O-v-e-r-?
A long pause.
C-o-m-e
Jeongin is going away, but he'll come back for holidays. He'll come back in the summer and Minho will be here like always, the promise of a future of knocks and responses. It's that promise that has him wiping his sweaty palms on his sleep shorts and inching into Minho's room where Minho is still brushing out his damp hair, wet from his post-shift shower.
"Hi Innie," Minho greets softly. He looks tired. Worn from a day of being on his feet. He looks handsome. Sharp eyes and soft cheeks. A pronounced philtrum and pouting lips. Rabbit teeth and a wicked smile. His hyung. Waiting for Jeongin to come in.
"Hyung." Jeongin swallows. "I have something to tell you."
Minho must hear the nerves in his voice because he sets down his hair brush and turns to face Jeongin, eyeing him carefully as Jeongin sits at the edge of the bed.
"What is it, Jeongin-ah?" he asks, soft and open.
He's become softer as they've grown older. Or maybe Minho has always been this soft and it is Jeongin who has grown tougher. He doesn't cry as easily, doesn't stutter over his words or cling to the back of Minho's shirt like he used to when they were kids. Maybe it is not that either of them have changed but simply that they are growing into the future versions of themselves.
Jeongin pats the space next to him. "Come sit."
Minho blinks, tentative for a moment before he sits gingerly next to Jeongin on the bed, thigh flush with thigh. Jeongin's heart makes its own kind of morse code in his chest, loud enough that he wonders if Minho can hear it too.
"I'm leaving soon," he starts. "My room is so bare. It's all packed up. I was even going to take my posters but Heejin insisted on leaving them up and started crying when I tried to take them down. She's getting my room while I'm away but she's been such a baby about the whole thing."
"She's going to miss you."
Jeongin laughs and shrugs. "She's coming with me. It's not like I've left yet."
Minho hums. "Not yet but soon. Our city boy. Our track star."
Y-o-u-r-s his heart pumps out.
They sit in quiet again. Minho doesn't rush him, endlessly patient.
"Hyung," Jeongin says, breathless. "I just wanted to say before I go that I…"
It's as if his throat closes. No sound comes out.
He thinks the feeling is nervousness but then recognizes it again as terror. A new kind of terror. Different from the terror that seized him a child when the lid of the dumpster was slammed over him, locked in a disgusting heap of trash for hours before his grandparents found him. Different from the quiet terror of the dark before he learned a code that turned darkness into comfort. Different even from the momentary terror right before the starting gun of a meet where he worried his legs would turn to stone.
There's a gentle touch at his knee and he releases his breath, the terror coming out with it.
He grins a little at Minho who is smiling back at him, patient and encouraging. Waiting for Jeongin to settle back into himself, to follow after the feeling in his chest and speak in the only way he knows how.
He has always spoken better with his body anyhow.
He leans in, the fastest boy in their town, and smashes his lips against Minho's.
For a moment, they are locked like that, Jeongin pressed up against him, warm lips pressed against his, soft and foreign. Minho's hand still on his knee.
And then there is a gasp of air and pressure around his shoulders as he's shoved backwards, so roughly he nearly falls off the bed before he catches himself.
Minho stands, eyes wide and chest heaving. Alert. Mouth red and gaping, whiplash between shock and. and.
"What are you doing?" He's angry with him.
"I'm—" Jeongin starts to say. He'd expected confusion, maybe embarrassment. Not anger.
"I'm confessing to you," Jeongin says, voice hoarse and small.
Minho shakes his head. "No you're not."
That tone. The same one Minho has always used with him when he's putting his foot down. The tone that tells him to finish his food, that he's pushing himself too hard, that he needs to be kinder to his sister or study harder. The voice that tells him to go home at the end of the night.
He scowls back. "Yes I am. Hyung, I'm in love with you."
"No," Minho says again, firm. The softness has entirely evaporated from his face.
"I am," Jeongin insists. His heart beats wildly in his chest, too fast to decipher any sort of message. "Is it because I'm younger?"
Minho scoffs. "Jeongin, you're leaving in two days."
"But I'm coming back. I'll be back every time there's a break. You won't even miss me," Jeongin promises, desperate suddenly. Despite Minho's insistence on certain things, he has always done his best to give Jeongin everything he asks for. Everything he wants.
"You shouldn't," Minho says shaking his head.
"What?"
"You shouldn't come back. You have the rest of the world is waiting for you in Seoul."
"But you're here," Jeongin gets out and despite himself, feels himself start to cry. "Don't you want me to come back? Don't you love me too?"
Minho shakes his head, distraught and there is the disappointment Jeongin was expecting. Minho has let him down before, but it has never felt like this. It has never felt permanent or damaging in a way that Jeongin couldn't recover from. This does not feel soft like Jeongin thought it would even when he fantasized about the worst case scenario. This feels like talons raking against his ribs.
"No, Jeongin," Minho says. He is looking away from Jeongin. "That's not what I want at all."
Jeongin wants to call him a liar. He wants Minho to say it isn't true but Minho will only lie once to him and he's not brave again to ask twice.
.... --- -- .
This is the game: When Jeongin is hungry, Minho feeds him.
At the beginning of his first collegiate track season, Jeongin sprains his ACL.
One moment he is running like he's made of wind and the next, his track spikes catch wrong and his body twists out of control. There's a pop and then he's hitting the rubber, rolling like a crash test dummy cut loose.
There is a rushing sensation behind his ears, the sounds of his coaches and teammates yelling coming in and out of focus.
He and Minho have not spoken since Jeongin left.
Minho saw him off at the station like he promised, hugged him stiffly and wished him well and has not texted or called since.
Between the instinctual tears that spring to his eyes and the shaky breath he tries to seize control of, Jeongin thinks that Minho is going to be so disappointed in him if he cannot get up.
But he cannot get up. He can barely even fold in on himself, a failed pillbug trying to make itself small.
He is done for the season.
He doesn't need surgery but the physical therapy required is intensive and swallows the remainder of his year. He doesn't travel for Chuseok and instead celebrates locally with Chan and Felix, two international students he's become close with on the team.
His parents send him photos and unsurprisingly, there Minho is, sat between his sisters, grinning and sweet, hair grown out longer than Jeongin has ever seen it. He is also, Jeongin is shocked to see, blonde. A dirty blonde, slightly grown out at the roots, but still blonde. A look entirely new, the kind of thing Jeongin never would have expected from his hyung.
He wonders if he did it himself or if one of the part-timers convinced him to do it. If he had a girlfriend or boyfriend now who said he'd look just like an idol with the right bottle of dye.
He doesn't get to see it in person until he comes home for the summer. He is walking without crutches by then because he's diligent about his exercises. He wants to get back on the track by next season despite warnings from his coaches. He has always been stubborn like that.
Stubborn enough to go months without hearing Minho's voice, seeing his face, or reading any of his texts. Not that Minho had sent any.
When he gets home, he spends time catching up with his sisters and parents and visits a few old high school friends but somehow avoids the apartment directly next to him.
Jeongin is stubborn but he is not as stubborn as Minho.
H-o-m-e-? he knocks on his third night. He gets no reply.
H-o-m-e-?
Minho would not keep him waiting a second time.
He gets no reply and when he knocks on the front door the following day he learns that Minho has moved out. He works at a different restaurant in the neighborhood where his dance team practices. He's putting himself through culinary school. Lives in a small apartment above the restaurant.
Jeongin is halfway across the city before he can even think of it, knee forgotten until he is bursting through restaurant doors, eyes scanning a crowded room until he locks eyes with a well-dressed waiter. Blonde. Rabbit teeth and a pronounced philtrum.
"Jeongin," Minho stutters out, eyes wide.
"Hyung," Jeongin grits out, the strain of the journey crashing over him now. Heat builds behind his eyes. He's angry. He's sad. He wants Minho to come running up to him and pick him up and spin him around in front of all these stupid customers.
Minho walks over slowly. Smiles, tentatively. Sad, too.
"Come upstairs, hyung will make you something to eat."
.... --- -- .
This is the game: Minho's roommate Bada has a vase full of ox-eye daisies in the kitchen. If Jeongin plucks out all the right petals, Minho will love him back.
She gives him one straight out of the vase, wet stem catching on his sleeve. She is smiling as she scolds Minho for not bringing such a cute face around sooner and then slips out the door to the dance practice she's running late for.
Minho offers to take the flower back but Jeongin has already clutched it to his chest and tells him that it belongs to him now.
Minho doesn't put up a fight. He makes kimchi fried rice instead, serving it with two fried eggs the way Jeongin likes. Jeongin eats it at the counter top and Minho hovers on the other side, watching. Jeongin eats slowly, chopsticks in one hand, daisy in the other.
"It's good," Jeongin says begrudgingly.
Minho smiles, pleased. "Of course it's good. Have I ever made you anything bad?"
Jeongin shakes his head, throat tight.
Minho's smile falters and he looks down.
Jeongin finishes eating in silence.
He wants to ask a million things. Why did he move out without telling Jeongin? Why didn't he call when Jeongin hurt his knee? Why didn't he call at all?
He doesn't want to be the one to speak first. Wasn't it enough that he had confessed? Wasn't it enough that he came all the way here?
But Minho is waiting on him patiently, face so open that it seems impossible that the last time they saw each other, it was contorted so furiously.
"Why did you dye your hair?" It is the only question that seems safe.
"Oh," Minho says and then drags his fingers through it as if just realizing it. "I guess it was time for a change. Bada did it for me."
"She seems nice."
"She is," Minho agrees.
"Is she your girlfriend?" Jeongin asks.
Minho's expression pinches. "No."
That's all he gets. Jeongin sets the daisy down in his lap, fingering at the petals, plucking one out delicately.
H-e l-o-v-e-s m-e n-o-t
He plucks out another one.
"Are you really going to make me ask all the questions? Don't you want to know what I've been doing? Don't you want to know if I have a girlfriend?" He knows he sounds petulant, young like he is, but he can't help it. He is young. He is petulant. His favorite person in the world won't look him in the eye because Jeongin opened his stupid mouth and—
"Of course I do," Minho says roughly. "Of course I want to know."
"Then ask me!" Jeongin bursts out. It's not a sob because he pours all of his energy into ripping out another chunk of flower petals. But it's a close thing.
H-e l-o-v-e-s m-e
"Jeongin-ah," Minho says, coming closer. Close enough that he can see a familiar emotion in Minho's eyes. Fear. Terror. "Do you have a girlfriend?"
Jeongin laughs.
"Of course not. I'm still in love with my stupid hyung back home."
Minho closes his eyes and when he opens them, his eyes are clear. He reaches across the table and gently takes the plucked daisy from Jeongin's hands and sets it on the counter.
"Your stupid hyung is sorry."
His hands are so much smaller than Jeongin's now, but they feel as familiar as gloves, calloused and warm as they wrap around Jeongin's wrists.
Jeongin swallows. "Why is he sorry?"
"For a lot of things," Minho admits. "But mostly for not saying he loves you first."
Jeongin's breath catches.
Minho's fingers have dug into his forearms, crawling his way closer, close enough that Jeongin can see himself in the reflection of Minho's pupil. Close enough that he can see the truth as clear as day in them. Still, he has to ask. Minho is a liar but he will only lie once.
"You love me?"
"I do," Minho murmurs and closes the space between them.
.... --- -- .
This is the game: When Jeongin and Minho move into their first apartment together, they always announce they are home with a special sequence of knocks against the door, a code as familiar as the sound of their own voices.
H-O-M-E