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They aren’t paired off when they first meet.
Minghao approaches relationships carefully but has to push himself to interact with the others.
"Who is it you get along with best?" he's asked after the first two weeks at Pledis. It's hard to give a straight answer.
"Junhui hyung," Minghao responds, throwing out the name he's associated most with, despite that not being more than awkward small talk and a slightly cold shoulder.
It seems like chemistry's only natural when you don't need it to be. Nevertheless he strikes up something, anything, with Junhui, and they roll with it, even though it's an uphill street.
"We've got to have more than our home country in common," Junhui says, scratching his head and trying to come up with more topics of discussion, like a good older brother figure. Minghao's heart drops at how hard he's trying.
"Tell me what your hometown is like," he urges, and Junhui shrugs, weaving together stories of a place he hasn't lived in for years.
Affection develops instead of the resignation he was expecting, and Minghao feels settled enough to actually want to stick around.
He doesn't really think much of Mingyu at this point, because he doesn't have to. Mingyu spends a good lot of time with Wonwoo and that's all Minghao's noticed, no attention paid to the subtleties of their interactions. If it's real then that's great, but if it's not he envies their skill at faking it.
_
Things change drastically over the years. For one thing, Minghao realizes he can't attach himself to a single person.
He gets along well enough, at least, with the group as a whole, and all of them put on a good show of friendship just as they’ve been trained to. In the end, it's just work, and every job comes with difficult coworkers and long, tiring days.
Mingyu’s reliable, yes, but it doesn't endear him to Minghao at all. It's rather irritating that he's such a package, actually.
The day he can lash out at Mingyu during filming for broadcast is oddly relieving. Minghao's sincerely pissed at Mingyu for ignoring him, and evidently he hasn't noticed.
"Can't believe I even try," he mutters in disbelief as Mingyu's eyes are focused on the fire.
“What?” It's like the cocktail party effect, except instead of reacting to his name over the chatter and wind, Mingyu’s good enough to detect spite.
“Pay attention to me, for once, maybe? Value my opinion?” Still a whisper but barely louder.
Jisoo overhears and rolls his eyes, looking towards the cameramen on break. That red light... means recording.
“It’s fine how it is, dude, I have it covered,” Mingyu counters, stirring the coals as they glow, not igniting a good flame the way he anticipates they will.
“You really...” The other boys sit through the argument, silently taking sides even though they know it doesn't matter. The fire’s built alright, built on anger and sparks of agitation.
("You were filming?" Mingyu asks later, wide-eyed. Both of them are perceptive enough to understand this only signals more time together in the future.
“This’ll work,” the producer says, replaying the footage on the video camera. “Might cut it off before it gets too intense, though.”)
They have Minghao disclaim any negative feelings during the next day's segment. After all of it, he realizes things turn out much cleaner when their emotions are just an act.
_
They like to play this game, Minghao thinks, unless he's wrong about that too and it's onesided. But their interactions aren't so mundane when each of them is focused on one-upping the other.
“I really liked filming on the dirt,” he says in a tired haze, mixing up the word for the sand on the beach as Junhui laughs, corrects him and slaps him on the back. Junhui’s familiar so Minghao takes it in stride, but behind them Mingyu snickers and if looks could kill, he’d need a blindfold to stop him from glaring at his groupmate. His life’s important to their career, after all.
Mingyu doesn’t say anything else on the rest of the walk from the radio show to the parking garage, but Minghao stews for a few minutes before deciding he has better things to think about, namely the ice cream in the dorm freezer with his name on it.
Petty fights are supposed to happen in rivalries and close friendships, and to say they’re best friends is most certainly false (though that’s what they’ve stated countless times already), so Minghao has to categorize them as enemies. An enemy he doesn’t feel any emotion for, yet still has to battle.
He laughs on the inside when he realizes Mingyu’s that self-centered, thinks of the irony of how saying “I know Mingyu very well” is just symbolic of how much Minghao’s been made to study him.
Despite the very obvious indifference between them to those that see the two daily, Minghao finds himself paying more attention to other conversations in an effort to collect more saucy words for his vocabulary. It passes the time, at least.
_
Minghao would genuinely like to know what it would be like to care about Mingyu to the point that he could actually hate him. Nothing he really does is any more than temporarily irritating, but on the flip side there’s no legitimate happiness in their interactions. It's better this way, most likely, where the worst they have to do is tolerate each other, and the best they can do is hang out awkwardly.
The director says cut and a few seconds pass before Mingyu leaves the room wordlessly. The way his loving behavior disappears is much like the flip of a switch, quick with the effect of powering him down immediately.
Minghao's not really hurt because he didn't know Mingyu's uninterested, at all, he tells himself.
It's more because, it's not Mingyu specifically, but the fact that someone's pretending to care this much about him on his own birthday is just-
Not that he's planning ways to reverse this on Mingyu's birthday-
Seokmin is tired and ready to get up too but he takes a look at Minghao’s disheartened face and empathizes.
“Don't take it personally,” he tells Minghao.
"I wasn't going to" is the reply, curt and adamant, but it's far too late. He already has.
_
"I want one experience so it's not a total lie," Mingyu says when Minghao asks why he wanted a lesson in basic Chinese. They've been claiming to spend time with one another with alarming regularity for two kids who have no interest (but investment, yes) in each other, and it's starting to get hard to keep track of their story.
"So you have a conscience," Minghao says, slipping some of their witty stage banter into an off the record conversation. Why did he say this? It was an accident.
Mingyu frowns, and Minghao can tell he's not going to take this.
“We need some basic knowledge of language for international schedules and if I'm not getting it from you it'll be an instructor at some point.” Minghao hears this as If you don't teach me now I'll have to rely on you later and I'd really rather not.
"You seriously don't know anything," Minghao remarks gleefully when the attempts to speak come out sounding less discernible than the distorted vocals in Highlight.
“I should have gone to Jun hyung instead of you,” said clueless boy answers, grinding his teeth. Mingyu clearly has half a mind to get up and leave, so he changes the subject. Not that Minghao would mind if he did.
“You need street talk or entertainment industry terms?”
Mingyu masters the general sounds of some greetings phrases, tones ignored, but if he's lucky with who he asks for directions maybe they'll understand him.
“You can leave my room now,” Minghao says abruptly, right when Mingyu stops stumbling over the words for you've worked very hard today.
“You're not going to sleep now,” Mingyu accuses, and Minghao suddenly knows he needed this to end because friendliness is uncharted territory between them and he's not prepared at all.
“Get out,” he repeats with no explanation, knowing Mingyu will give up.
Mingyu was the first to be apathetic towards him, so it's not really Minghao doing anything wrong now.
It’s just retribution, and maintenance of the way things are, because it’s secure even if it’s not satisfying.
_
The fansign is, in a phrase, nonstop DSLR shutter sounds, and it's hard for Minghao to hear the voice of the girl in front of him. It's a regular state of affairs but the venue doesn't help at all.
He tries his very best to make out the words, nodding agreement, making a mental note to ask anyone if they'd been to this restaurant before.
"I love you," she exclaims before moving along the table, and he smiles back, mustering all the sincerity he has in him. Carats are the world to each of the boys, even when they're breaking the rules to take pictures of them, even when they're expecting too much back on an individual level.
As the crowd dwindles he's handed an instant camera and sent off to snap pictures of the other members. He takes a pretty cute one of Seungkwan, catches Jihoon in a bad moment with another, and crosses his very useless fingers that he runs out of film before Mingyu stares him in the face.
"Smile," Minghao instructs, not even looking through the viewer, just haphazardly pressing the button to get the polaroid as fast as possible. When the picture comes out blurry or obscures Mingyu's face one of them will laugh and point and show the fans, and both of them will pretend to argue again. The actions come rather naturally now, and the predictability makes it easier.
The photo comes out and the black fades to a very high contrast, charming depiction of the boy in front of Minghao. He's always been a good looking guy and you'd have to be terribly ignorant not to see that, but he smiled, for Minghao. Or so they pretend.
He looks up and has to remember to crack a joke at Mingyu's expense, but some of it actually comes from his heart.
_
He might be starting to like Mingyu. Not that kind of like, but like, he'd thought it would go on the same dull, frustrating way for the rest of their careers and he'd have to deal with it. But if he's catching himself enjoying (a generous word, but a meaningful one nonetheless) the forced time they spend together, things would be marginally better, right?
Another rehearsal for another special stage and maybe it's just because the cameras are all there and the fans' eyes are trained on them without rest but Mingyu never really stops looking at Minghao.
The choreography's set, of course, and he already knew they'd be together, but where there's room for improv there's room for ignorance and yet their hands find each other, always.
“You're sweet,” Mingyu says casually when Minghao pulls the chair away from under him, laughing when he lands on the ground, not maliciously or out of obligation, but out of fondness.
Minghao extrapolates before he can stop himself.
He sees himself falling in the future, falling hard, until he hits the ground and it hurts him where it matters.
_
It won't ever happen, he determines the next day when the ice is back in Mingyu's voice and they avoid conversation, staring out the adjacent windows of their respective sides of the company van.
It could never happen.