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If Wonwoo ran off, stormed outside in the middle of the night when it was freezing cold and pouring rain, Mingyu thinks he would chase after him. He doesn’t know why he thinks this in the first place, especially doesn’t know why he thinks about it again now as he knocks back a glass of orange juice at 3:23 in the morning, but he’s pretty sure it’s true. He’s also pretty sure he doesn’t even like orange juice to begin with, but here he sits, drinking a nice, tall glass he poured for himself in the darkness of his apartment’s kitchen because he can’t trust the tap and it’s all they have. It’s way too acidic. And pulpy. He has no idea how Seokmin drinks it.
For the past five weeks, he has woken up at 3:13 a.m. (or within five minutes on either side), and he hasn’t the faintest idea where the habitual insomnia came from, but he’s mostly concerned with when it plans on leaving and how he always seems to start thinking about Wonwoo whenever he spies the blinking red number on his alarm clock and feels another little piece of his soul leave his body. Some days, he just lies in bed and stews over the million-car pileup happening between his ears; other days, like today, he takes his stewing to the kitchen and chokes down a glass of juice that he always hopes will distract him but never does.
He’s fairly certain he knows why he thinks about Wonwoo, but he also can’t really make sense of why it’s always him or why it’s always at 3 in the morning or why he’s so fixated on the idea of following Wonwoo out into a downpour and his willingness to do it. Probably because it’s romantic. His head is absolutely filled with an entire store of romantic notions doing nothing but collecting dust, and Wonwoo seems like a good place to drop them off. He’s handsome and doesn’t seem like he cares much about romance in the first place, probably gets tired of it easily and doesn’t have nearly as many thoughts in his head as Mingyu does about showing up with bouquets of roses for no reason or standing outside windows with a boombox. Yeah, Mingyu would definitely chase after him.
Sometimes, he thinks about telling Wonwoo he’d chase after him in a storm, but he doesn’t know why he thinks about that, either. He knows exactly how it would go.
“Hey, Wonwoo,” he’d say, and Wonwoo would tilt his chin up like he does whenever someone gets his attention, raise his eyebrows just slightly in that way Mingyu’s always noticed. Maye he’d have his glasses on, too, and push them up the bridge of his nose a little. A minute detail, sure, but Mingyu always thinks about it. “If you ever got upset and stormed off, I would run after you,” Mingyu would then tell him, “even if it was raining.”
Then Wonwoo would get that look on his face that he gets every time he doesn’t really follow, like he’s kind of annoyed at how he’s read so many books but still isn’t on the same page. “What the hell are you talking about?” is probably what he’d say, maybe accompanied by an eye roll. If he were wearing his glasses, he’d likely take them off and clean the lenses on his shirt. He might even say something like “Why would I want you to run after me?” or “What would you do that would make me storm off in the first place?” Despite all that, Mingyu still wants to tell him sometimes.
There are other things Mingyu thinks he’d be willing to do, too, like call him from right outside his front door or lend him his jacket when it’s cold or cover him with a blanket if he accidentally falls asleep. There are also things he’d be willing to say, things like he sees the world in Wonwoo’s eyes, which he kind of does, or he’d die a thousand times before living once if Wonwoo wasn’t there. Seokmin says he just watches too many dramas. Mingyu thinks he might be right, but knowing the root of the problem doesn’t fix it.
Seokmin only knows about all the dumb thoughts Mingyu has because he once wondered aloud why it seemed like he was running out of orange juice so much faster than usual, and Mingyu felt so guilty he immediately confessed to drinking it when he was thinking too much at 3 a.m. Nosy guy that he is, of course Seokmin had to ask what he was thinking about, and open book that he always lets himself be, of course Mingyu had to tell him. Seokmin hadn’t even been surprised, and Mingyu wasn’t surprised that he wasn’t surprised, which is why he doesn’t feel bad about stealing the orange juice.
“You just need to admit you have a huge crush on him,” is what Seokmin says, but Mingyu needs to do no such thing. He already knows he’s got a huge, desperate crush just as much as he knows he’s going to fail his calculus final if he keeps waking up at asscrack o’clock and never studying, and he equally knows there’s no point in voluntarily offering the information to anyone else when nobody is really asking for it. Another thing he knows is that he would gladly fail his calculus final if Wonwoo called him in the middle of the night the day of the exam and asked him to come help with something, made him give up those pivotal hours of sleep before the 8 o’clock test. Of course he’d go.
The real issue lies in how he knows why he would go but also doesn’t. Obviously, part of the issue is that he’s hopelessly romantic in all the most wrong ways, but he can’t get to the heart of it without backtracking, without asking why on earth he was never hopelessly romantic in all the most wrong ways with any of his previous crushes. Seokmin is most likely right about the dramas, he guesses, since he never watched any before he started his first year of university, but it’s still frustrating to think about how perfectly he can insert Wonwoo into his unreasonably lofty dreams of a future and a white picket fence and a big, beautiful garden, frustrating to think that Wonwoo couldn’t care less how easily he’s so frequently inserted into these stupid dreams.
He needs to stop watching so many ridiculously oversaturated dramas, but he won’t, if only just to get on Seokmin’s nerves. He gulps down the rest of his orange juice and stomps back to bed.
It’s so bitterly cold outside when he walks to the library the next day that he doesn’t even feel like studying by the time he gets there. All he’s really thinking about is how he’d rather hold Wonwoo’s hand than wear gloves even if he knows the gloves would be far more practical and a million times warmer. He doesn’t have any hands to hold anyway, so he’s stuck with the gloves regardless, nothing but tightly knit wool and abundant disappointment.
Something else disappointing is that integrals make so much less sense to him than derivatives for absolutely no reason. All they are is opposites, but he can’t seem to get that through his skull, and he can’t even indulge in a stupid fantasy where Wonwoo shows him how to do them because Wonwoo’s been so done with math for so long he probably doesn’t know how to do anything at all but analyze the implications inherent in the archetypal coloring of imaginary lights. Mingyu could never do that in the first place, and that might kind of make him the derivative to Wonwoo’s integral. He hates himself for drawing that metaphor together as he scratches down another bitter + C.
Studying is going about as well as he expected when he feels his phone buzz in his pocket, jarring him out of a near-stupor. Instead of the text he expects, something from Seokmin asking if he plans on paying him back for every drop of orange juice he’s consumed in the past month and a half, he’s greeted with a text from Wonwoo himself asking if he wants to come over and join in on a movie marathon for some franchise Mingyu couldn’t really care less about if he tried. It’s a long walk in the freezing cold, and Mingyu will show this exam what a real bomb looks like if he doesn’t find a way to understand integration before he leaves today, but it is already well established that he would lasso the moon and yank it down to earth if Wonwoo ever asked him to, and that sentiment doesn’t take a break just because finals are here. He shoves his notebook into his bag and subjects himself once again to the torture that is the subarctic temperature outside, pace brisk but still not quite enough to get feeling back in his face.
His fingers are close to falling off when he makes it to Wonwoo’s door, and he’s starting to get a headache from breathing in so much frigid air, but he balls his hand into a fist and bangs it on the door nice and hard, loud enough that he knows Wonwoo would have to be gone not to hear it. Waiting is torture, and it’s also torture to know they probably haven’t got their heat on very high if at all, but he still feels his lips tug up at the corners when he hears footsteps, feels them retreat all the way to expose his teeth when the door opens and Wonwoo is standing there looking like he always does, round wire frames perched on his nose, fuzzy gray sleeves tugged down past his knuckles. His eyebrows raise.
“You got here quick,” he tells him. Mingyu hates that hearing his voice makes him feel especially poetic and willing to serenade him in the middle of a crowd or hold him while he’s crying, and he doesn’t think he even got here that fast, but Wonwoo gives him no chance to defend himself. He steps to the side to usher Mingyu in, careful to nag him about taking his shoes off, and Mingyu does exactly as he is told, would have done it even without explicit instruction. It’s been too long for him to forget the no shoes inside rule, especially since Wonwoo never forgets to remind him.
Mingyu can’t stand this apartment, really and truly. All the doors stick when you try to open them because none of them fit in their frames right, and the bathroom sink has crazy water pressure that makes it come nearly sideways out of the faucet if you turn it on all the way like Mingyu usually does because he never remembers not to. He was also right about the heat not being on, those cheap bastards, so now he’s inside but still freezing, and he was wrong about Soonyoung being here, so he’s just stuck with Wonwoo and a stupid mouth that’s all too ready to funnel out thoughts from an equally stupid brain and nobody around to stop it.
He tucks his legs under himself on the couch and pulls the thick fleece blanket Soonyoung usually uses up to his chin, does his best to tuck it in beneath him, and prays that it’ll warm him up if he gives it enough time. Wonwoo snorts and sits beside him at a perfectly reasonable distance, one Mingyu wishes would be either a little greater or a little less, and starts fiddling with a loose thread in his sweater before picking up the remote. He must be impervious to the cold after an entire month of being too frugal to keep it at bay; his hands don’t tremble in the slightest while Mingyu’s teeth chatter so hard he thinks he’ll have to get new ones.
“Soonyoung’s gonna kill you for stealing that blanket,” he says, flipping the television on. It’s already idle on the startup screen for the first DVD out of six or seven—Mingyu can never remember how many, only that it’s way too many and Seokmin owns all of them—and the soft chaos of shreds of scenes being played while the disc waits for someone to push play fills up the silence.
“Not my fault,” Mingyu says, pulling it up more over his neck. “He should have been here to use it.”
“He’s so obnoxious,” Wonwoo sighs, head lolling back on the couch. “He told me to text you, then immediately went to meet Seokmin at the grocery store to buy snacks, and they still aren’t back.” He taps his own leg with an irate fist, a bundle of long fingers and pronounced knuckles that Mingyu knows he would be only too happy to grab hold of and sprint through a crowded street, away from a scuffle and back to calm.
“Why didn’t he just ask Seokmin to tell me earlier?” Mingyu asks, stuffing his hands into his pockets in futile hopes of remedying their numbness. “Or text me himself for that matter?”
“Like I said,” Wonwoo says with a tired shrug, “he’s obnoxious.”
Five more minutes pass. Seokmin and Soonyoung still have yet to reappear, and Mingyu isn’t warmer by a single degree. He’s actually half convinced he might have gotten even colder since arriving, and he wishes Wonwoo would spill where they keep extra blankets so he could grab one or maybe eight more, but he doesn’t look at all inclined to do so. It would probably be so much warmer if they both got under the same blanket, Mingyu thinks, then curses himself for thinking. A chill runs up his spine. He’s certain the tip of his nose is long gone.
“Jesus,” he grumbles, “why won’t you guys turn your stupid heat on? I should’ve stayed at the library.” A sigh, riddled with faux dreaminess. “It was so warm there.”
“We’ll gladly turn the heat on if you’ll foot the bill for it,” Wonwoo scoffs, and Mingyu considers really doing it for too long. Then he follows with, “You were at the library?”
“Yeah.” He swears he can see each puff of air condensing the second it leaves his mouth. “I have a calculus exam on Tuesday, so I was studying for it.”
“Do you think you’re ready for it?” Mingyu doesn’t know if Wonwoo is genuinely interested or just making small talk, but he’ll keep talking as long as Wonwoo wants him to.
“Not at all,” he confesses. “I still don’t understand any of it.”
“Then why did you leave?”
“Because you asked me to come over.” The room grows very silent very quickly, and when Mingyu risks a glance Wonwoo’s way, he finds him staring pensively at the ceiling, eyebrows lowered. “Sorry, was that too honest?” he asks with an awkward chuckle. Wonwoo hums, and it doesn’t sound like dissent, but it doesn’t sound like assent either.
“Do you think you’ll fail it?” he asks instead of answering.
“Definitely,” Mingyu snorts, “but if I fail well enough, I can still pass the class.”
Wonwoo’s gaze slides toward him suspiciously, and he’s making that face again, that face that says he’s a page and a half behind and pissed off about it, though Mingyu can’t recall opening the book to begin with. “God,” he groans, “what is wrong with you?” Mingyu would also love to know. “Why in hell wouldn’t you stay in the library?”
Mingyu hums, and he is reminiscing memories of things he’s never done, nostalgic for places he’s never been. “There are a lot of things I’d do as long as you were the one asking me to do them,” he tells him. Wonwoo turns fully, readjusts his elbow on the back of his couch and rests his chin in his palm, pushes his glasses up just like Mingyu always expected he would. Mingyu can’t read the expression in his eyes, but that’s not very unusual. He snuggles further into his blanket.
“What if I asked you for a bouquet of roses?” he asks. Mingyu isn’t sure why there’s a hint of a smile tugging at his lips, but he’s glad for it. “They’re pretty expensive.”
“I’d buy you one,” Mingyu says without hesitation.
“What if I ask for ten?” Mingyu’s eyebrows edge a little higher on his forehead.
“I’ll get you ten.”
“What if I ask for a hundred?”
“I don’t know why you’re determined to see me go into debt buying you flowers,” Mingyu begins, “but I will.” Wonwoo sighs and fiddles impatiently with a stray string poking out of the couch cushion.
“Why?”
“I don’t know,” Mingyu tells him, “but I definitely would.” His fists bunch up in the edges of the blanket, knuckles scraping against the cold air outside, and he figures he’s been honest enough today that he may as well keep going. “I would do a lot of other dumb stuff, too, like chase you out into the rain if you got upset and ran off.” He waits for Wonwoo to ask him what he’s on about, but he doesn’t wait for very long before he hears him laughing, muffled and subtle but still enough to make his nose scrunch up the same way Mingyu always remembers it at 3 in the morning.
“You’re such a weird guy.” Mingyu doesn’t want to imagine any affection in his tone, but he’s got an overeager brain that goes right ahead and imagines whatever it wants anyway. “I always thought you seemed normal enough, but you’re just as weird as everyone says.”
“Everyone being who, Soonyoung and Seokmin?” Mingyu scoffs. “I’m not even remotely weird compared to them.”
“Well,” Wonwoo starts. Is he inching closer? Mingyu’s thoughtless mind likes to imagine he is. “If you’re so not weird, why have you taken the most convoluted approach in asking me to kiss you?”
There go all those predictions Mingyu had, washed down the gutter and out to the pavement. Thank god he’s not a meteorology major. “Pardon me?” he asks, and Wonwoo smiles for real, and Mingyu thinks maybe he passed out studying at the library and is now having a very realistic dream with his head pressed against the table and drool getting all over everything.
“I can take a hint, Mingyu,” Wonwoo says, and he is definitely much closer than he had been a minute ago, definitely not just a pretty hallucination. He looks so smug, and Mingyu hates that he likes it even though he already knew he’d like just about anything if Wonwoo was doing it. “What kind of lit major would I be if I couldn’t read between the lines?”
“A shit one, I guess.” And now he knows his cheeks are getting kind of red. He knows Wonwoo can see it, too, and he always pictured himself as the cool one, but it’s quickly becoming apparent that if either of them were to sprint out into a downpour like an idiot, it would probably be Mingyu. So much for all those romantic thoughts.
“Will you kiss me right now if I ask you to?” This is certainly not the way Mingyu imagined things would go.
“I think you can infer the answer to that,” Mingyu says, and Wonwoo snorts a single laugh. “Besides, I thought I was the one who wants you to kiss me.”
“No rule saying it can’t be both of us.” He drums at his own cheek with his fingertips, only narrowly avoiding smudging the lens of his glasses. Smug as ever, this guy, and still grinning. Mingyu is so hopelessly enamored. “Are you gonna do it or not?”
“If you’re asking me to, I guess I can’t say no, huh?”
Wonwoo hums. “I’m asking.”
Six weeks’ worth of midnight thoughts are two hands at Mingyu’s back, pushing him out of his safety blanket and toward the terrifying unknown that is Wonwoo’s lips. They’re soft like Mingyu always thought they’d be, and somehow, he tastes sweet and salty at the same time. He can feel how Wonwoo is still smiling, even when he puts a deliberate hand around the back of Mingyu’s neck and nudges at his jawline with his thumb. Mingyu doesn’t think he’s ever kissed someone who just grinned the entire time like this, and it only makes him that much more of a goner.
“Can I buy you dinner sometime?” Mingyu backs up to ask, and Wonwoo just stares at him like he’s speaking in riddles. “Or take you to a movie? Or something?” Wonwoo eyes him curiously, smirking.
“You would anyway if I asked you to, wouldn’t you?” Mingyu isn’t sure whether it’s necessary for him to nod or not. “You can, obviously. You can also lend me your umbrella or throw rocks at my window or do whatever dumb thing it is that you’re into.” There are a lot of different emotions clutching at Mingyu’s chest, and they’re probably all evident on his face. Confusion manifests itself most clearly. “Seokmin told me you watch a lot of dramas. Now stop talking.” Mingyu can do nothing but obey.
“The two of you seem to be having a nice time,” Soonyoung hollers a few minutes later when he kicks the door in with a bang, and Mingyu feels Wonwoo’s teeth hit his before they leap apart. He curls himself up in Soonyoung’s special blanket out of spite. “So sorry to interrupt.”
“Yes, so very sorry,” Seokmin echoes unapologetically, “but it’s time to kick off this movie marathon.” They both wedge themselves onto the couch on Wonwoo’s opposite side, forcing him back closer to Mingyu—absolutely on purpose, Mingyu is sure—and they are also both conspicuously emptyhanded.
“Thought you were getting snacks,” Wonwoo muses. “What happened to them?”
“We ate them all on the walk back,” Soonyoung shoots coolly. He’s making that excuse up on the spot for sure. “But we’re still hungry.”
“So woefully hungry,” Seokmin croons, throwing his arm across his forehead. “We’ll starve before the opening credits are done, I suspect.”
“Oh, don’t worry about that,” Wonwoo says, patting Mingyu’s thigh. “Mingyu said he’ll order food for us.”
“The hell I did!” Mingyu scoffs, but nobody is listening.
“You’re a hero, Mingyu,” Soonyoung cries, reaching past Wonwoo to give him a hearty slap on the shoulder. “A real angel on earth.”
“I always knew you were a good guy,” Seokmin says sweetly, dreamily. “You may steal all my orange juice, but deep down, you’re so generous.”
Mingyu is teetering on the edge between life and death when he feels Wonwoo’s fingers slip between his own and squeeze, yank him back toward the living side. He’s grinning like a complete dick when Mingyu looks at him, eyes squeezed into giddy crescents. How is he supposed to stay mad? “You will, though, won’t you?” Wonwoo mutters, and he’s so self-satisfied, but Mingyu can’t tell him no. Of course he can’t. He sighs hard enough to blow the windows out.
“What do you guys want?”
Now he’ll fail his calculus exam and be out forty dollars that he certainly doesn’t have, but some idiotic part of his brain is still convincing him that he’s glad to put up with it just for the sake of his 3 a.m. mental trainwrecks. And he will put up with it, too, because he’s still got a hand clasped in his and he can still feel Wonwoo smiling against his lips and he would still tightrope walk across a canyon if only Wonwoo said the word. Mingyu guesses he’ll just have to learn to live with that.