rurusayshi (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rurusayshi) wrote2024-04-02 12:44 am
rurusayshi) wrote2024-04-02 12:44 am
rip my wips and everything else
what the title says.
the past few months have been a bit strange for me. i don't really want to get into the details of what's been going on in my personal life, but my current housing situation isn't exactly what i'd call ideal right now. it's been a bit of an adjustment, but i'm trying to get used to it. i don't have any other option, sadly.
aside from that, STARDEW 1.6!!!!!! the new update was probably the highlight of my 2024 because i've been waiting for it so long. literally can't even tell how pleased and happy i am with the update. ily concernedape. you are the best ♡ i decided to stick around on my year 10 perfection farm to check out the end game content. compared to the 1.5 version, there's a bit less for those of us who've already reached perfection. i don't mind it though, there is still plenty of to do + new dialogues and events are everything to me.
i'm unable to keep up with my reading goals this year since i had to dnf a lot titles.
books aren't the only stuff that i've left half though, out of 4 events i've joined i dropped out from 3 lmao. very responsible behaviour, right, i know. minsung ficathon had the worst because i wasn't even able to outline my prompt properly........................... for the rest, i actually tried my best. i have two gdoc files that sit at 3k, so i tried.
mv fest. 2min. natty - sugar coat
Lights shining above the stage. Pretty decors across the background —some small, some huge, in every color. The black blanket of hungry eyes, blinking lazily meters away. Whispers leaving expecting mouths. A high pitched shout, belonging to a child. Behind the curtains, there is him. He is waiting. Not at ease, no, his stomach nurtures a heavy lump that sours each second passing by. But he has to wait. They told him to wait, so he waits.
Until the lights are turned off, until the headlights slices through the darkest of the night, until the darkness vanishes under the early rays of soft sun shine, until it is no longer the night.
Until it is a new day, until months catch up.
“Why didn’t you come sooner, hyung?” Kim Seungmin asks in his perfectly even tone. But his hair is disheveled and he is not wearing the other pair of his socks. His body carries the warmth of sleep, and a sort of familiarity that does hurt in the end.
“You never told me your address.” Minho deflects. That’s what he is best at these days. But it only works if people are willing enough to pay attention to him. And if they have patience to spare him time.
Seungmin has both.
But Seungmin is also smart. Seungmin knows him a bit better than anyone else, like he holds pieces that make up Lee Minho, like Lee Minho is written in a way that Seungmin doesn’t even need to trace the sentences to get to the rest. Of course he doesn’t buy it, his face says so. If Seungmin is master at Lee Minho 101, then Minho is master at Kim Seungmin 101 too. Maybe the problem was that. That they knew too much about each other. That its comforting roots grew to be burdensome.
“Hyunjin knew.” Seungmin doesn’t let it slide quietly. “Chan and Changbin hyung too.”
“I shouldn’t have come here,” Minho backtracks as the words leave his mouth. It is never a good idea to visit your ex of four years in the dead of the night, after two years into break up, in a different country that is kilometers away from where they met, fell in love, fought, became miserable and ended things all together. No one does that. Unless they are pathetic enough to hold onto the past. And hurt. And scared. And stupid.
“Don’t be stupid,” Seungmin grabs his wrist, then pulls him inside. He doesn’t even need to use much strength, Minho shows no resistance. “I’m not going to let you leave at this hour.”
The familiarity he felt a minute ago vanishes under the soft shadows and soft lights of the life that he wasn’t part of for the past two years. The couch here is rich in green and made out of velvet, on the corner a single woolen blanket stays. The coffee table is glass, and the heavy books on top of it are most likely to be decors than something anyone would read. Minho doesn’t know the names of the drinks the TV stand has. Minho doesn’t know the names of the people the pictures have. Here Seungmin smiles next to a freckled, sun kissed face. Here Seungmin sleeps and his half finished beer doesn’t give Minho any indication of who held the camera at the time. There he is in front of a Golden Retriever, holding its paw, eyes crescent moons.
Everything Minho missed, everything he will never find a chance to have resides in the smallest, the most mundane details that push him into thoughts he would rather never have. He shouldn’t. It’s already over. There is nothing for him here.
From his behind, he hears the kettle is on, hears the cupboards opening and closing, hears the two mugs settled on the counter, hears the night stretching into a long and never ending one with the questions he would prefer not think about, even more not to answer.
But Seungmin is back in a second, holding two mugs, eyes pointing to the couch, telling him to sit down. Minho only sits down because standing in the middle of the room means his existence is only so much as a fragment of time that’s buried in the past that didn’t even make it here. So he sits down, putting enough distance between them that their knees don’t touch. He reaches for the mug to keep his mouth occupied. Doesn’t matter how hot the tea is. Doesn’t matter what type of tea it is.
Seungmin doesn’t touch his drink. His eyes follow his movements in silence. Minho can tell there is judgment in his gaze, something managed to linger for two years but that’s understandable he thinks, there is no clear cut when you leave someone, no matter how much you can put distances in between. Minho knows it’s not resentment, it’s nothing close to him being unwelcomed that’s held in Seungmin’s expression. But it gets annoying after sometime, because this Seungmin isn’t new at all, this Seungmin is just better at getting what he wants and that is to have Minho talk.
“Missed my face?” Minho asks, with no humor, his tongue thick, and just like that Seungmin wins again like he does everytime. It’s unchanged like how the sun moves from the east to the west, how water boils at 100 degrees, how gravity is absolute on earth.
Because it doesn’t matter what Minho says, or how he opens his lines, because Seungmin has an awful way of being straightforward with his words. “You quitted.”
Oh to be Lee Minho and give yourself on a silver platter to Kim Seungmin for him to catch you from the things you are running away from in the first place. Oh to be Kim Seungmin to carve his way in, stop at the pockets of his deepest shames and let them out as if those don’t matter enough to be kept quiet. As if it is that easy, as if it didn’t cost them both sleepless nights in distress because all they could ever have was hope.
Not Did you quit? Why did you quit?
Why now, why not before? is left unsaid.
Behind his mug, Minho schools his expression very carefully. “You already knew, didn’t you?” It sounds like an accusation. Maybe it’s an accusation. Certainly not his first intention but it gives Seungmin a taste of struggle, from his tightened jaw to abruptly stilled hands.
“No, I didn’t.” Seungmin answers.
“At least have balls to tell my face the truth—“
“I said I didn’t!” The urgency and the frustration of his tone doesn’t cover how this is not the whole truth, that he is not lying but twisting and leaving out words to keep things as the way he thinks is the best. Minho doesn’t want that. Not after everything. Seungmin knows he hates that.
A deep and tired sigh escapes his mouth before Seungmin speaks. If he looks spent, if he looks sad, if there is more than sympathy in his words, he doesn’t try to hide. It’s just Minho choosing not to see it. “You put your freedom above anything and what they were going to offer you would never get close to that.” Seungmin almost reaches out for his wrist but he stops himself midway, his hand hangs in the air awkwardly. “Not because I thought you couldn’t do it, hyung. Not because I was expecting you to fail. Never that.”
“But I was set to debut, you know?”
Minho smiles in a way that it tugs the corners of tears welling in his eyes. But he doesn’t cry, and he won’t cry. Not in the middle of his ex of four years apartment. It’s not like he has no one to cry with. Not like he is alone. Not like he needs Seungmin to know why he just couldn’t do it.
Because he was going to debut. On a different premise since his age was a problem. You are too old, one of the managers seized him up and down with an apparent dislike evident in his stance. What were they thinking? Then the same mouth found praises for his footwork, how he moved his body, how he fit in and how he managed to stand out. Then it was for his voice. Then it was for his stubbornness, for the nights he has spent in empty studios. Eventually the time grew to be endless and took the shape of something similar to a limbo, and then those praises turned out to be pity.
But Minho was going to debut. On a different premise when the company decided to follow Japan’s idol system, although on their own terms. A theater, just for them. Then a whole building because it was cheaper that way instead of renting venues for weeklong fan meetings. Group performances, individual shows, merch already on the way because of the demand, it was a success.
Minho was going to debut.
But.
“I was. If I waited for one more week, then…”
“You don’t have to justify why it didn’t work out in the end, hyung.” This time Seungmin seeks out for his hand and doesn’t change his mind midway. He keeps it between his palms and doesn’t shy away from squeezing it once. “You don’t owe me an explanation.”
“What about to myself?” Minho’s eyes settle on their hands. The urge to intertwine their fingers tugs the strings of his heart, but he doesn’t deserve that. He doesn’t even know this Seungmin, doesn’t even know if he has someone in his life.
“It doesn’t have to be now. As long as you feel like it was the right thing to do.”
That’s the problem. Minho doesn’t know. Minho has no idea. Maybe he should have done it years ago. Maybe he should have never left his own dance crew behind for a fraction of a dream. It’s difficult to deal with the compilation of regrets sitting heavy on top of his shoulders.
So he closes his eyes as he rests his head back, and then he says, “Kim Seungmin.”
“Minho hyung.”
“Do you regret leaving Seoul?” Ending us. Breaking up with me. Saying goodbye to Soonie, Doongie and Dori. Moving kilometers away, changing continents. “Because you did the right thing, I think.”
Minho stopped blaming Seungmin if he ever genuinely did. They picked their own paths, and given how much his was to all about discretion and sacrifices, Minho has no right to find fault why it didn’t work out the way he hoped it could. They had options, they chose and it hurt. Minho spent his nights disoriented and hating the quietness the lack of Seungmin brought. He woke up alone and had no one to shelter him from the cold because Seungmin wasn’t hugging him from behind, because Seungmin had already moved out. His favorite icecream flavor didn’t matter anymore, not when Seungmin wasn’t there to pick a fight for his own until it was added to the cart. After their breakup, pushing his cart between the aisles, his hands still found Seungmin’s favorite one. Never had the heart to finish it so he let Jisung and Changbin have it all. When he came back home at four in the morning, when he reached for something light and something quick, because that’s what Seungmin always cooked for him, when Minho tried the exact same soggy pastas, it never tasted the same as how Seungmin made it for him.
“Why did you come here tonight, hyung? Why not before?”
“Why this, why that… You are always full of whys Kim Seungmin,” Minho’s eyes trace the ceiling and only now he notices the colour of the walls doesn’t follow up there. “But don’t you get it, hyung has none of the answers you are looking for.”
Seungmin frowns. “It’s not like hyung ever had answers before,” His laugh sounds bitter, prompting Minho to turn his face to him. “It was always me filling in the blanks. My words over yours. My answers to interpret what goes in your head.”
As Minho parts his lips, Seungmin gets up, leaving Minho’s hands to his own. It brings him back to the night Seungmin fidgeting in the living room and telling him they should break up, that he already packed his clothes, that later he will come for the rest. That he already got his ticket to Heathrow, that this was for the best, that their dreams ran over what they had and all left was to suck it up and accept it.
Minho played his part. What else was he supposed to do?
“What are you trying to say, Seungmin?”
“Because you never ask why, hyung.” Seungmin says through gritted teeth. ”You just let things happen.”
Seungmin moves to collect their mugs, then he passes in front of Minho on his way to the kitchen without sparing a single glance at his side. Minho follows him after, and leans against the doorframe. “Seungmin,” Minho calls his name but Seungmin doesn’t respond to him. He takes his time washing the mugs, and for a while, all Minho sees is Seungmin’s back. He thinks maybe this will be the last living memory of him again. Two years ago, Seungmin left him wearing an old but well-cared expensive button up that Minho ironed a night prior. Now it is a gray tshirt with striped shorts. One yellow pair of socks, with a little dinosaur print on the side.
“Seungmin,” he tries again with his voice almost cracking at the last syllable. This time Seungmin turns off the faucet and pushes himself off from the counter to turn around, revealing the exhaustion playing on the lines of his face, the slight hunch of his shoulders. “You knew how much it was going to suck living in a pretending, but you let me have my dreams. I wanted the same for you.”
The night they met at the laundromat, Seungmin was a crying mess watching the washing machine tumbling his clothes in half silent half loud sobs. It was his first year and first time getting a low grade. Because there was this school he built his whole dreams around for the masters, now it was over, he said. Minho, like any responsible older would, sat down with him after he brought enough booze and let him pour his heart out. Annoyed him to the point that drunk Seungmin forgot about his dreams and made everything about Minho himself.
Minho knew he was a goner for this boy by then.
Minho also knew he didn’t have the heart to take that boy’s dream away.
(Drunk Seungmin always made his entire world about Minho and Minho thought he didn’t need anything else as long as he got to have Seungmin for himself. He sometimes let himself be selfish like that.)
A part of him knew that a long distance would have torn them apart. But Minho sat down with Seungmin to help him do his paperwork. Prepared enough food and snacks because they were going to have Chan over so that Seungmin could practice for his English exam. Any time outside from the company building and the night shifts at the local supermarket was spent dedicated to Seungmin because Seungmin was going far away.
Seungmin deserved better than what he could have promised to him. That’s what kept Minho standing on the ground. How he swallowed the breakup he had to live with.
“You did what I couldn’t. And I don’t blame you for that,” Minho breathes slowly because the hurt is inhaling rocks and expecting his voice to be steady. “I never did.”
Seungmin clenches his fists into the edges of the counter. “Is that why you never replied to me?”
One week after their breakup, Seungmin wrote to him. Can I see you? it read. Please. Another one. I don’t think I can do this. Everyday until his flight, the messages kept coming back.
“We were both hurt,” and that Minho didn’t trust himself to not to beg Seungmin to stay with him. “It was for the best.”
“The best,” Seungmin repeats like he spits out a disgusting swallow that leaves his stomach queasy. “You’re not— This isn’t fair, hyung. You can’t just show up after two years and refuse to give me an answer.”
The straight line of Minho’s shoulders bends down under the weight of Seungmin’s gaze. Because Seungmin is right. Minho’s not fair. Their breakup found a voice from Seungmin’s mouth, but it was Minho who drew the line. The walls he built didn’t have any room for hesitation, at the time, when he kept himself in the confines of the steel like silence, he was so sure of that he just had to unlearn this part of himself yearning for Seungmin. That kept his tongue tied. It is for the best, he thought and let the silence between them stretch, grow and become uncrossable until tonight.
But when stubbornness you rely on turns so far inward and it becomes a pit from which no one else can rescue you, then you realize what you’ve lost and your mistakes.
It took Minho less than two years.
“Right,” Minho’s bottom lip catches on his teeth. His throat constricts tighter. “You’re right, Kim Seungmin. Hyung shouldn’t be here.”
“You’ll run away like a coward?” Seungmin’s voice strains when his fist hits the counter top. “For fucks sake hyung, what is it so difficult that you can come here but can’t tell me?”
He can say it fine. Minho’s just not sure if his answer is worth it at all. Not when it’s the same gaze that’s pained and weary and it’s him who is causing it. Not when he has nothing to offer Seungmin.
Because Minho just can’t tell Seungmin he misses him and that he needs to know if he is doing okay.
Instead all that forms on the tip of his tongue is, “Good night Seungmin,” and then because Minho has to be the worst with words, “I’m sorry.”
Seungmi̇n laughs and it’s an unbearable one. “For what?” he asks. “For tonight?
transkz fest. 2min.
summary: seungmin loved everything washed up at her shore, and that included lee minho.
The change came crashing upon the scene with no warning prior. A big, thunder-like roar. The noise of something falling apart. Hit with a sudden force. Jolting every soul within earshot into a state of heightened awareness. Seungmin emerged from his cabin and his eyes fixated on the source.
It was a boat, —now nothing more than a wreckage — weathered and broken, trapped amidst rock formations.
Then he saw a woman.
[It sure was a mystery, ‘Where did Kim Hyejeong go? A new love interest perhaps?’ We saw it on all magazine covers! Late night show discussions! Now it is ‘What is the purpose behind Kim Hyejeong’s lifelong island adventure?’ Those I have little interest in. But you Miss Kim, you must have a lot to say. You were alone for almost your whole life. Tell us, when you were back in Seoul how was it? Were you scared? Did you feel out of place?]
KS: It’s fine, I already accepted that my mother's influence isn’t dying soon. Before, I woke up to see a new article going around calling her crazy. Speculations, theories… Me too, I spent a lot of time trying to understand her. Guess it was more of a distraction… Focusing on the impossible was easier. Because when I kept asking myself who I was, I couldn’t find an answer. It left me in a bad space. But Minho unni was always there for me.
“Did she ever tell you why?” Minho asks one day.
They are having dinner together. The gentle embrace of a balmy evening wraps around, suffusing the atmosphere with the soft, muted hues that characterize a summer night. None of the dishes are fancy — Minho tells him with the smallest smile appearing at the corners of her lips every time Seungmin watches her cook— but they are the kind that leaves you reaching for more. Minho’s cooking tends to be like that. When you are a food critic, she always says, you learn a few tricks.
Seungmin's shoulders are lifted in a nonchalant shrug, “She needed a change.” he explains but it takes some time. Years of living on an isolated island gets Seungmin’s tongue often trapped in an effort to string his words together.
“Need for a change is when you go on a trip, Seungmin.”
“Like how noona found herself on my island?” But he is getting better with his words. When those words are to get back at her.
Minho tears a piece of a napkin and crumbles it down into a little ball before she sends it to Seungmin. It lands on his forehead. “Don’t speak with your mouth full,” she says. “Something will get stuck and when you die because of your own stupidity, they will accuse me of murdering you. ‘18 years alone on an island didn’t kill but three months with her did.’ Can you imagine the headlines? The headache it will bring?”
“And the tears, you forgot to add your tears.”
“Kim Seungmin, I never cry.”
“Sure,” Seungmin lets her. Doesn’t mention how he sees her crying over animal rescue videos. “Sure, you never noona.”
But Seungmin understands why Minho is asking about her. What was his mother thinking buying a yacht, supplying it like they are getting ready for the end of the world and leaving with a child no more than six years old? Everyone is asking why. Seungmin too is asking why.
Because.
Seungmin’s never understood why she’d picked a deserted island to settle down. Never he’s understood what prompted her. Never he’s understood her. When the waves took her body away, she didn’t leave anything personal behind. Clean cut, nothing else but eight years of isolation and decaying objects. The instinct to survive. Some regret, probably. Followed by a nine year long silence and loneliness. The waves, the seagulls and Seungmin.
Her cruelest and most personal memory was perhaps Seungmin himself.
What was she thinking? Seungmin asked. To the sky, to the waves, to the night. He’d got no answer.
If Seungmin read books to pass time when he was small and then because he was curious about the world across the sea but it was also because he was desperate to understand her. The same ones, on rotation, withering away under his finger tips, salt stuck in between the pages. Seungmin put his fingers under every line and wondered about the second meanings hidden between the sentences. The stories of characters seeking adventures. Characters in terrible situations. Characters with greed bigger than their bodies ever could weigh. Characters with loneliness. Characters in love. A mosaic of everything he thought his mother was.
But Seungmin doesn’t get it at all. What granted such hate to push her miles away from any life possible, he’s never understood.
“I don’t think it was hatred,” Minho mumbles as she rests her chopsticks. “Hatred is a fuel, it makes you want to live.”
Seungmin makes a face. Suddenly it was the last months. The heels of his feet sinking into the soft dirt where gravel met grass and grass met sand and he was standing next to Minho, listening to her shout with all her might against waves pushing and pulling against the shore. Dumpster heads good for nothing and cuntasaurus that had no balls to come clean and spit the truth to her face and shit chop with no taste and [redacted] princess syndrome backstabber and [redacted] wet sock in between her and her promotion and [redacted] corn-syrup detergent flavored cakes. Back in her flat, the twitter drama starring someone calling Doongie’s meows door creak and Minho plotting her revenge by convincing them to try a diarrhea recipe and following their tweets daily to keep herself updated and entertained.
Those, Seungmin understands. Finds them funny at times. Admires to be like her even.
Maybe his mother had shit chops with no tastes in her life. Maybe she didn’t hate them but she found no joy being with them either. Maybe it wasn’t spite but was her adventurous nature. The characters in the books find silliest reasons to travel the land, sail the seas, fly over the skies.
Seungmin shrugs and uses his chopsticks to poke a mushroom slice sticking to his bowl’s sides. “Adventurous,” he starts. It is a difficult word on his tongue. “Maybe she felt adventurous.”
“There is no denying that,” Minho huffs, almost annoyed. But she reaches for Seungmin’s bowl and puts it together with his own, then grabs the smaller cups, heading for the dishwasher. “What if your mother was superstitious?” The look on her face is serious —lips pursed and eyebrows knitted together. “Maybe she had a reason to believe in a whale attack. A giant one, big enough to devour the whole Korea. Maybe it was the aliens.”
Ridiculous. Even Seungmin knows none are a possibility. But Minho is happily invested after his mother’s case and Seungmin simply doesn’t give enough shit about his mother anymore to be offended by the implications Minho is going for. “Go on,” he instead encourages her. Not because he feels hopeful that Minho can discover the truth. The truth was drowned under the sea, already dead and cold. Gone forever.
“Maybe she woke up one day,” Minho continues as she wipes her hands with a kitchen cloth and turns around to face Seungmin. “and decided she was going to die. Maybe she was terminally ill.”
That, Seungmin’s considered for a long time.
“But,” now there is a subtle frown reaching the lines of her face, taking its seriousness into something close to disappointment, something like telltale signs of anger. These past months, Seungmin’s studied her enough to read between the lines that this Minho — arms crossed before her, eyes not meeting Seungmin’s— is biting the tongue ready to spit venom. “that doesn’t explain why she had to drag you with her. She had millions to spend on a luxurious yacht for a lifetime-long vacation yet nothing for your future.”
In truth, Minho is wrong. There is paperwork for the inheritance and an open case for him to reclaim her shares in the family business. A 220 meter square apartment in Gangnam. Another villa in a secluded suburban area with a garden full of fruit trees. His own childhood house, one hour drive away from here.
Then there are people. An aunt he has no memory of. Three cousins. All but one is older than him. Other distant relatives. His mother’s ex boyfriend number 1. Ex boyfriend number 2. Ex boyfriend number 3. The bestfriends. The business partners. Her lawyer.
It’s money. That’s what he is, that’s probably what he will ever be to them.
“You are thinking about those leeches,” It isn’t a question when Minho’s soft voice follows up Seungmin’s thoughts like they are her own. He doesn’t know how she always does that. She must have the magic, he thinks. It’s terrifying. And easier. He has less reasons to open his mouth to get the lump out of his lungs. That weighty, heavy thing, almost always stuck there. “What do you say Seungminnie? Maybe she didn’t leave you behind because she knew they were spineless enough to suck dry a child’s wallet.”
“Doesn’t that mean…” Seungmin frowns when the thought finds him. See, everything he has a chance of becoming is the amount his pockets are full of. And else is that he is an outsider, but not just to his family. He is an outsider when they are walking next to Han River, an outsider when Minho brings him to nice restaurants, an outsider when he tries to hold a conversation with the strangers. Minho’s presence is comfortable and Seungmin depends on her because she doesn’t sugarcoat her words, has no interest in money that’s not her own and willingly be there to support him through the difficulties he is going through to understand a world Seungmin is trying to be part of. Maybe, she feels obligated to do so. Maybe, his mother felt the same way too and took him with her. So Seungmin parts his lips and says, “I’m a burden?”
Seungmin’s heart lurches into his stomach when the entirety of Minho’s posture shifts. “Oh Seungminnie,” she says as she takes a step closer to put her hands on his shoulder. She rubs her thumbs over the crumpled tshirt Seungmin is wearing. “No way you can be a burden. Where did that come from, hmm? Did you hit your head somewhere today? Did you watch Hyunjin’s boring art house movies?”
“They were fun, actually.” Seungmin mumbles to change the subject.
Minho though, rolls her eyes. “You are not a burden,” She repeats. It has a firm grip coming from her lips. Said with a finality that is almost challenging. “Annoying sometimes, sure, especially when you refuse to eat your veggies but not a burden.”
Seungmin must have made a sort of face then, because the hands around his shoulders catch the fabric of his tshirt and pulls him into a tight embrace. “Kim Seungmin,” she says as her unwavering gaze settles on Seungmin’s eyes, sharp like a knife. “I nag a lot. I complain a lot. Sometimes I have the temper of a five year old. Because I care and I worry about you. Your annoying parts are endearing and if once again you dare to call yourself a burden I will make sure to feed you with raw vegetables and nothing else.”
When she lets go, a part of hers is left attached to him. Seungmin collects them as they are his only possession. Each piece feels close to the sappy lines he reads from the books. Hyunjin’s movies, the love songs he sings, those too. Something poetic and flowery like his heart stilled from the outside, but inside it is trembling as if the biting gusts from the sea are mercilessly shaking his sole shelter, his boat. Like thunder roaring. He has been feeling like that for a while. In moments like this it bursts open like waves hitting against the jagged rock formations. Unavoidable. Forceful. Balm for his questioning nature.
Because.
See, Seungmin is nothing but full of questions. His curiosity is suspended in these scraps he calls his emotions. They are difficult. They need him to be honest. They are all at once and when they are all at once, they are overwhelming. Then he is emotionless, well practiced in a way they are fake. Minho sees right through him. She always does. Everyone else, not much.
It is like a muscle memory why he chooses to fight with his emotions. Seungmin knows fighting the best. He fought eighteen years to survive.
“You think dependency is burdensome Seungminnie,” Minho looks troubled. “It is very big here, isn’t it? Cities are like that. Scary. Noona is scared sometimes too. More when I’m alone. Less when I have people listening to me. So talk to me, it feels good to be understood. And even if I fail to get you, it is still better than to bottle up everything inside.”
Eighteen years of solitude. Nine years of listening to solely his own voice and nothing else. No one has told him he should let things out and not keep them inside because his emotions are long buried in the deep, resonant caverns of his chest. When he opens himself up, everything comes gushing out molds together like a big clawed monster that are his emotions.
“I don’t know what to do with what she’s left behind,” Seungmin says. “Or with myself. Or how I feel.”
Minho laughs. But it is without humor, rather tinged with resentment. “Fuck your family,” she answers like that’s the most normal thing to do.
Fuck your bloodline that cripples you with ancestral guilt, Seungmin fills the the blanks and mimics Minho’s voice in his head.
“And for anything else, Seungminnie, you deserve time to find out.”
“But I want to know now,” Seungmin protests like he is five years old, still a child, like he had never left Seoul. This is new to him, this person who finds it difficult to keep his frustrations to himself. “It isn’t just my family, it isn't about her. It’s me, noona. It’s about who the fuck I am.”
Minho doesn’t flinch. But she looks unsure when her tongue peeks out and wets her lips. “I get that,” she says. The everything else that her words are reaching for vanishes in an instant when Seungmin’s familiar ringtone gets in between.
It’s his aunt.
Ten seconds in, she doesn’t give up. The stubbornness must have run in the family, Seungmin thinks and he leaves the kitchen for his room as he takes the call.
His aunt has plans for him. A family dinner. Shopping with his cousins. A private piano lesson for him, apparently it’s his cousin’s teacher. Then something else she asks and he hums to agree but he doesn’t pay attention, not when he hears the front door getting shut. She continues talking, asking about his food preferences. Noona’s gamjatang. He can’t say. So instead he doesn’t pick anything. Then it is the dress code, she mentions he doesn’t have to worry about it. I already have a suit and a shirt noona got for me, he thinks. Then it is some relatives she talks about. Seungmin doesn’t know any of them. Long monologues about things he can’t keep up. Something she keeps coming back to, apparently she is bitter. Then Doongie is meowing, then the front door makes a sound again.
Seungmin finds a reason to hang up. I’ll be there, he says. The food delivery, he reasons. It is not the food delivery, but Seungmin doesn’t give a shit about lying. He knows everyone lies.
Minho is already on the floor and a cushion remains empty beside her when Seungmin is back in the livingroom. His eyes lands on the crisps, chocolate bars and beer cans sitting on the coffee table.
“We were out of my favorite chocolate,” Minho shrugs when she reaches for the remote control. The screen brightens up her sharp features in different colors, blurs the visible signs of exhaustion. Seungmin sees the remnants of everything and everyone she has encountered throughout the day lingering idly on her. Every face Seungmin doesn’t know, every name he has never heard of.
There is a tinge of jealousy in Seungmin’s gaze until he remembers something so little, something so much Minho like that the jealousy daring to burn inside diminishes in an instant.
He was the one who put everything out of the grocery bags. He was the one who accidentally dropped one of her favorite chocolate bars. Then restocked the three other. He was the one who noticed he forgot to mention they were out of his favorite beer.
The one that now stands in between with the other snacks.
The real reason why she left the apartment.
Seungmin chooses not to call her out. Instead plops down beside her and immediately grabs the remote. “My turn,” he declares. “Remember?”
Minho rolls her eyes, kicks him in his shins and rests her back against the couch with a small smile.
Seungmin settles on an action movie that has red cars on the cover because Minho groans when she sees the title. “This is perfect,” he says.
“This is hell,” Minho retorts back.
The movie is the worst. The pacing is off, the lines are forced, scenes make no sense. But at some point someone must have thought the plot was worth enough to invest in. The others must have agreed. Minho once told him people with money are often stupid. So maybe Seungmin is stupid, too. Maybe that’s where he will start in life, because Minho also said everyone is stupid in the beginning.
Seungmin is unsure because he is not everyone. He just looks like everyone. But he can’t undone what has been done in twenty three years of his existence. Layers of his habits, his doubts, his self defenses, all of him, each piece that makes him human in a way that is convincing. But he remembers Minho’s words. The time, he thinks. He has plenty of time. Minho always tells him he has.
The time he has while watching this shitty show. When Minho complains about the stupid details, when Seungmin annoys her further with his questions. The time that stretches into night, into this small space he shares with her calm breathing.
When the end credits starts rolling, when another show’s trailer is playing, Minho’s eyes rest on Seungmin. The tired smile of hers has morphed into a gentle, unobtrusive curiosity that serves as a reminder that she is letting him be at his own pace.
It gets him weird, weird in a way the books and the songs describe, so Seungmin goes, “What is it, noona?” and then, “Finally decided my face is better than the movies?”
She ignores the question. “Maybe I might make an exception and not feed you raw vegetables.” Minho whispers as she lays her legs on Seungmin’s lap.
“Because noona is nice like that?”
“Of course I’m nice like that, Kim Seungmin. You dare to think otherwise?” She finds a pillow and holds it against Seungmin’s chin.
“I think noona is a bit…” Ah, that look. Threatening. Seungmin walks right into that, maybe that’s stupid, maybe that’s not advised, maybe in his eighteen years of being stuck on an island taught him nothing but he says it anyway, “out of control?”
Minho hits him with the pillow. It isn‘t impactful because she doesn’t really force it. But she complains. “Look at this ungrateful pup,” she starts. “watch me give your food to Soonie, Doongie, Dori and put an uncooked and unwashed squash in your plate. I will watch your misery in joy.”
“I have a food delivery app,” he reminds her. “and I already have the wilderness experience.”
“Eat shit,” Minho throws the pillow right at his face and gets up to bring more beer. She complains more, and shows him the middle finger. Seungmin mentions how Chan hyung says vulgar words are bad, and Minho gives him another finger. Something long and [REDACTED] and she has Seungmin laughing. He feels light, he feels small, he feels like an ocean and he reaches for the beer.
So maybe this, he thinks as he takes another sip, as he watches Minho watching him, as he starts giggling like a little baby, as Minho pushes him with another pillow hit, is fine. Whatever they have right now after Seungmin saving her life and in return Minho letting him stay with her situation isn’t really an obligation. Maybe it is because it is just as easy to fall into silence together and laugh at the same time at the same jokes. Maybe there is no reason to look for a because.
Seungmin doesn’t know and he can’t think when everything is so slow and calm and he rests his heavy head on Minho’s lap. When there are fingers carding his hair. When everything stills and everything is black and when he falls asleep.
[And this must be the part where you admit she must be the one for you Miss Kim?]
KS: No, actually unni and I were friends. Just friends.
[Miss Lee?]
LM: We all go through similar life stages, but Seungmin was never able to. So I thought, she needed people there for her. Friends. People she found annoying. Some regular faces. I was sure she would find someone to grow fond of. Then love, maybe. She was meeting new people every other day.
The question of who he really is remains as the most difficult. What he feels for Minho on the other hand is easier.
Or Seungmin used to think.
It’s because of Jeongin. He gave him ideas.
Every Friday, he spends his nights at Jeongin’s. He is the only friend he made without Minho’s own circle and also the only person he keeps seeing without any relation to his mother.
“But think about it,” Jeongin says, the controller falling down from his lap when he reaches forward to grab a handful of popcorn. “You saved noona’s life, her rescuers found your little island, now noona is repaying you by letting you stay. How are you not kissing her?”
How is simple because to Seungmin it is clear. There are those others, those who she seeks when she feels lonely, when she needs someone to share expensive cocktails coming with flutters of eyelashes and suggestive lines. Those in her little app. Some girls in pretty dresses, some guys with nice physiques. People that can make her laugh, people that are nice to look at.
Jeongin doesn't understand and if Seungmin thinks harder, he doesn’t either.
on the other hand, i was better with short pieces/drabbles. if i don't feel lazy, i plan to add smut to minsung one before posting it on ao3.
hyunho. “are we on a date right now?”
tags: death mention, fluff, misunderstandings, idiots in love
It wasn’t that Hyunjin didn’t know he was a catch. Oh he was the catchiest of all, of course he was. Not like it would surprise him if people had to wait in a line to properly take him on a date and shower him with expensive cocktails. Not like he didn’t think that if he lived in ancient times, poets would write songs about his beauty just for a fraction of a smile from him. Not like he didn’t know his charms alone would secure him a fashion deal and billboards across the busiest shopping districts. He would be easily the most followed Instagram influencer should he try to document parts of his life without necessarily paying it much attention.
Not that he could be less than anything. As Innie always says, “Your beauty is deadly, hyung.” and then he would follow with, because he is just a brat like that, “So much that be careful it’s not a curse.” as if he wasn’t predicting the future, as if beauty and death together in a sentence could really make enough sense to be taken seriously.
But it wasn’t about Innie and his spot on predictions. The problem wasn’t that, not even close.
The problem was none of the above either, no. Or it wasn’t like Hyunjin ever reduced himself to be shallow as a pretty book cover and less in every other department. His presence alone was a blessing, and he was talented as hell when he grabbed a paint brush and stood in front of a canvas.
The problem was that Minho, who was idly sipping his wine as if this wasn’t the most horrifying day Hyunjin had to go through, was looking at him like he was very much confused. Then something, a sort of recognition, the type that you would go oh, shit afterwards, appeared through the sharp lines of his face. Like hurt. Like Minho found a reason to be hurt in Hyunjin’s misery.
Like Hyunjin didn’t have to carefully prepare more than fifty handwritten letters and make sure his favorite fragrance on the paper would last long enough for his funeral, and maybe a few months after. Like he didn’t spend his whole morning cleaning his flat, and finding a bougie little tray for all the letters.
“Was I not clear enough?” Minho’s gaze was hesitant. “Or you were never interested in…?”
Of course Minho was clear enough. Of course Hyunjin was never interested. Who would ever look forward to their death?
Hyunjin spent his last two weeks ugly crying every night. In his desperate times, he even made up with Han Jisung. Called him and apologized to him and actually told him that he didn’t lose his Vivienne Westwood lighter, that it was just Kkami hiding it under the couch, that it wasn’t Jisung’s fault to begin with. Had to return Chan hyung’s hoodies. Had to tell Felix he never once cooked dinner for him but it was just this very nice neighbor of his who was already too gone for Hyunjin to ever turn him down.
If Hyunjin had enough, it was because he had nothing to lose. He was already dying today. Probably in a few hours. Maybe even less after he spilled his own drink on Minho’s shirt while shouting, “Fuck you, go to hell!”
As if Minho couldn’t, as if that’s not where he was visiting daily. Or weekly. Or monthly. Hyunjin didn’t know a thing about death officers’ working hours. Even less about how much they had to do paperwork before freshly born souls were farmed. (Baby souls, Minho once said and ever since then Hyunjin was freaking out inside) But he did knew a thing, and it was that Minho was here to accompany him to his death. And it was his own fault.
See, Hyunjin and alcohol were never a good pair. The worst thing I’d wish for my enemy, Seungmin’s words. Because drunk Hyunjin was desperately clingy. But his clinginess was harmless. Annoying? Yes. But it was just that. The actual problem was that when he drank to a certain point, then Hyunjin was unstoppable in an uncute way. The party pooper, the fun sponge, the eyesore, the worst person in the world. Because.
Because.
Well, that Hyunjin picks a person from the crowd, and calls them out as a cheater because drunk and heartbroken Hyunjin thinks every men is a cheater and they should all go to hell. Not his proudest moments, not in the slightest but that’s on his friends for taking Hyunjin out for drinks and leaving him unsupervised. Not solely his fault.
So he slapped Minho’s face, ruined his date, then started a make out session with him half an hour later. Somehow got his number. Somehow gave him his number. Called Minho in the middle of the night to invite him because he was bored and he was alone and he was hungry for a good fuck and appreciation. Then another night followed after, and then another.
Those were a month ago.
A month ago Hyunjin was still a happy person. Carefree, young and never ending. Aging ever so slowly, not even a wrinkle on his face, not a line to remind him he is mortal.
Until Minho confessed who he was, until Seungmin told him that’s how death officers actually find their death partners.
(Targets Seungmin, Hyunjin shrieked. Not partners, I made myself a target and you should all feel remorse for the lack of your actions.)
So, Hyunjin was dying. Possibly today. Even more likely in the next following minutes considering the look on Minho’s face. That’s why Hyunjin did what a logical person would do. He ran away. Dragging all the eyes on Minho first, then to himself, he took the nearest door on the left and threw himself outside.
Panting. Scared. At some point he even started crying but he didn’t care because if he was going to die, of course he was going to cry. They just needed to pick a nice photo of him for the press and his socials and then he was going to be eternal. His paintings were going to be so famous, he was going to join painters found fame after their deaths club. They were going to try to depict his ideas, interpret his messages, and find relations between colors of his choice and his life. He was going to be the next big thing.
But first Hyunjin needed to try a bit more for his life.
So he ran. He cursed. He took the first train, then immediately regretted it because this wasn’t a nice place to die. He exited the train the second it stopped, and he must have wasted all his remaining luck because he was very close to this very cute cat cafe where Minho could be distracted.
(The first time they met that wasn’t for a fuck, Hyunjin brought Minho here and then proceeded to watch him being all soft and giggly with the kittens for two hours.
Once he was back home, Hyunjin took his paints and brushes, ready to paint Minho and the orange tabby Soonie that night.
And sleep didn’t find him until he was satisfied.
And when Minho saw the painting, he blinked twice, then his ears got so red Hyunjin had to tease him for hours until he was threatened to be cooked in an air fryer.)
“Hyunjin.”
See, Minho found his location regardless. Maybe in another setting, this could have been romantic, poetic even. But now, Hyunjin wanted to curse his heart for thinking Minho was endearing, finding his little habits cute, and finding himself getting unbelievably infuriated with him.
“Hyunjin,” Minho repeated as he took a step closer. “What the fuck was that?”
“I don’t know,” Hyunjin short circuited in panic because he didn’t want to die in an ugly way. “I really really don’t know hyung, but please let me choose my own death.”
“What are you talking about?” Minho’s voice had an innocence to it that put guilt under Hyunjin’s skin.
“You know what I’m talking about.” Hyunjin hissed the words at Minho yet he was looking anywhere but him. Like he was scared. Like he was on the verge of crying.
Minho seemed genuinely confused. “Is this about cooking you in an air fryer—“
“Not that!” His beauty and talents deserved more than a stupid air fryer. “Make it like the depths of the ocean, or something people talk fondly about. Like… Like a jealous lover’s farewell surprise. Like it was terminal, like I had no choice but to wait my time to come under the moonlight, on a flower bed…”
Hyunjin was blabbering and sprouting out all the nonsensical glorified death scenarios Jisung came up with. Because the truth was, Hyunjin wanted none. He didn’t want to die. Not now, not any sooner, certainly not because of a mistake he made to a death officer.
“You were expecting to meet under the moonlight, on a flower bed, near the depths of the ocean?” Minho paused, his eyebrows creasing in the middle. “But Changbin told me this is how humans date?” He shifted his weight from one leg to the other, unsure. And then, “I’m going to eat him alive.”
Oh Hyunjin what a mess you made. Now he was going to deal with two angry death officers instead of one. “Don’t eat him, he was right!” But he was going to die very soon, and would it really matter if Minho eats this Changbin person when Hyunjin is already very much dead? “Or, eat him! Because I prefer a prettier death, like under—“
“Just tell me what was wrong,” Minho’s sigh was a long and exhausted one. The kind that lingered heavily on desperation and carried not an ounce of challenge that might set Hyunjin’s wandering mind off. No longer that fierce, pointed edge of his gaze. “Please.”
“I don’t want to die!” There, out for every passing soul to witness, Hyunjin’s last chance of survival. If a few heads turned to their side in suspicion and judgment and maybe some sort of fear, and that’s what it would take to postpone his death to a further date, so be it. “I’m still young and very much happy to be alive—“
“Hyunjin—“
“and I know, I don’t live up to my expectations but art is all about suffering in silence, crying under the blankets until your muse stops being a dick—“
“Hyunjin listen—“
“and I didn’t love enough, didn’t see enough, didn’t experience enough, didn’t read enough, didn’t cry enough. Kkami would never forgive me, and I’d miss him so much and there are the others, then—“
“Hyunjin, you aren’t going to die!” Hyunjin froze, eyes wide, his breathing uneven. What? “But you might, after I put you— No. Don’t even think about running away, I’d cook you alive.”
“Make up your mind hyung, am I going to die or am I staying alive?” Gods, Hyunjin must be one of those types who found last resort courage and became stupid, so so stupid. Because Minho was loud in his not taking it further attitude, enough to get Hyunjin squirm under his gaze, like a bug under a microscope but Hyunjin proved his stupidity yet again.
Hyunjin also shut his eyes in a desperate attempt to create an invisible wall between himself and everything else that’s not himself.
“Hyunjin,” Minho’s voice sounded closer than to his liking but at least it was calm and if Hyunjin was honest to himself, the silence swallowing the last syllable of his name came out bitter, almost tired. “Open your eyes, please. I’m not going to— Fuck, I won’t hurt you.”
Minho looked worried —shoulders slumped, pupils dark but devoid of the usual little twinkles inside, no smile lines next to the corners of his lips, burrowed eyebrows, a frown. Hyunjin couldn’t go against this Minho when he was led to a bench and set down.
“You thought you were going to die,” Minho said. “today.”
Hyunjin nodded.
“You thought I was on a mission to collect your soul.”
The lips forming words didn’t end in a question but Hyunjin nodded anyway. Only now it sounded too unlikely, like a lie grew to be a weighty thing enough to turn true in unsuspecting and naive eyes. Oh gods he was an idiot.
“Hyunjin, I was trying to take you on a date,” Minho let out a weak laugh. “Like how humans normally do. Because I thought you felt the same way, you know, maybe it is foreign to you but we death officers also have hearts that can be broken.”
In Hyunjin’s opinion, it was never the case, that Minho was heartless. The memory still lingered around the fringes of his mind —Minho crouching down on the street to feed strays and his smile radiant on his cold-touched pink cheeks. Another one, showing up with homemade sandwiches on his door to make sure Hyunjin didn’t die out of neglect. One entire night when he slowly stroked Hyunjin’s post assignment crisis figure and lulled him to sleep until Hyunjin was barely opening his eyes.
“I guess this just means that we clearly had different visions on how we view each other,” Minho glanced away in what looked like a defeat. “But it’s okay. Hyung’s got it. I have an eternity to forget about you and you can finally stop worrying about death.”
There was something in Minho’s voice, the lilt that clamped Hyunjin’s throat shut and all of his words got jammed up. He swallowed hard and thick, his heart yelling at him to get up and apologize and correct this mess he made. Face it coward, a voice said. Make your not-so-death day a beginning of something important.
“Minho hyung, go on a date with me.” Hyunjin caught Minho’s wrist as he was standing up to leave. Heart beating double time, his chest brimmed with the simplest form of emotions until he could comprehend more complexity to trust himself to not fuck up again. So simple like he was that five year old kid ready to swallow down the whole world until he himself grew dreams in colors. “We don’t have different visions on how we view each other.”
“What?” Minho stood still, not an inch of him moving.
If Hyunjin was an idiot, he was more of an idiot when he took a liking to someone. “I will cook dinner for you?”
“Hyunjin, do you even have an idea how stoves work?”
“I have an air fryer and it can cook things that are not me.” Stubbornness and persistence ran thick in Hyunjin’s blood because he didn’t know how to let things go.
The puff of air that escaped Minho’s lips brought out Hyunjin’s unfiltered childish smile. “So?” he asked, hopeful. “Is that a yes?”
“You’ve just admitted to me these past two weeks you were freaking out about me taking your life and now are you seriously asking me on a date?” Minho exhaled all the built up confusion from being at the end of Hyunjin’s changing attitudes.
“Can’t I?” he tried and reached out to lace their fingers together. See, stubbornness. The confidence of knowing Minho’s heart had stitches to his own. “I know I was being stupid but can’t I make it up for it? Can’t hyung give me a chance?”
And when the silence stretched out and the desperation turned Hyunjin into this needy thing, “It’s not like hyung is normal either. You found me slapping you hot. That was the first impression. Can’t we just accept that I don’t make the right decisions all the time?”
“Fine,” Minho gave up, a smile finding its way on his face, the apple of cheeks, the mischievous glint of his eyes. “Better find a good recipe and thank your parents that you are cute.”
Hyunjin hooked his arm around the back to Minho’s neck, and pulled him closer to himself for a quick, little peck. “Right, hyung? I’m the cutest.”
minsung. "please kiss me already."
tags: explicit, youtuber!jisung, youtuber!minho, secret relationships, buttplugs, fluff
“You can touch it, you know.” Jisung tells the camera with the cocky grin of his.
That gets the comments raining down rapidly. Minho turns his attention to the screen, “They are calling you meanie, Jisungie.” he says. “Maybe I should do it instead of them?”
Without listening to his answer, Minho runs a hand over the strands before carding his fingers near the bottom. “It’s so soft,” Minho describes Jisung’s hair to his subscribers. “and smells like strawberry milkshake.”
It’s Minho’s shampoo actually. But the comments are busy with which brand it is, and Jisung throws a glance for help. Minho, the little devil he is, acts like he didn’t notice it. The smile tugging the corners of his lips tells otherwise.
“The cheapest one I’ve got from the supermarket,” Jisung explains once he puts his hand dangerously close to Minho’s crotch. That gets him a sharp, pointed look but the camera angle only shows above their chests. “Usually I steal hyung’s shampoo.”
Comments take another turn. The obvious ones, asking them if they are together. Some of Jisung’s subscribers are already sure that they are in a relationship. They aren’t just flatmates, they are boyfriends! they say often. Some, these are the minority, call these subscribers delulu. Minho starts typing on his anonymous account to annoy the last group.
[kittykatino: can’t you sh!theads see they fcked before the stream]
[kittykatino: jisung fcked minho real good, look at how he is glowing]
[hnjsngsgf: ew stop ruining their beautiful friendship]
Minho’s giggling when his head finds Jisung’s shoulder. It sounds sinister, vile, like he has no filter on. “Some of your subscribers are really funny, Jisungie.”
“As if yours are any good, hyung,” Like a muscle memory, Jisung leans down to Minho’s space at ease. It comes naturally, a five-year-old relationship warrants that type of familiarity after all. “Just the other day they were fighting over whether the paw spoons are superior or the kitty head spoons.”
“That’s a very important topic to debate on.”
“Really, what is your answer jagi?” Jisung tries his best to sound interested but he is busy reading a comment about how Minho seems to have a hickey below his neck.
That doesn’t warrant him an easy way out from Minho’s sharp, noticing gaze however, no.
So Minho pushes himself up until his lips are almost brushing Jisung’s ears and he whispers, “The paw obviously, like the one I have inside right now.”
The paw, the butt plug.
Jisung starts coughing incredulously, his cheeks puffed out, red as a tomato, as if something got stuck down his throat. Minho pats his back while not giving an ounce of an effort to hide his laughs.
“Minho hyung is the worst,” Jisung declares once he stops dying. “Guess what he just told me?”
A lot of comments are very close calls, but once it goes out of hand Jisung claps his hands. “Let’s keep everything below PG 18, everyone!”
At the same time Minho types:
[kittykatino: obviously minho said he is wearing a kitty plug. it’s sooooo obvious]
[kittykatino: he doesn’t want to waste his jagi’s c0me]
Jisung reads the comment and rolls his eyes. Mi̇nho just shrugs. Because kittykatino gets ignored in an instant since a heated argument takes place instead.
“Jisungie, they are calling me a bad influence. ‘Minho is corrupting our precious oppa.’ Am I corrupting your innocent mind jagi?” Minho does his best to imitate being heartbroken and a pout appears on his face.
“Minho hyung can’t corrupt me, he is not a bad influence. Don’t call him that.”
Jisung mumbles something more, but it gets lost when Minho picks on his boyfriend’s discomfort and nudges him in small movements. “Really, you guys were very into him playing Cultist Simulator so maybe all of us are a bit corrupted here.”
But Jisung talks less and less until it is Minho announcing a recipe he is planning to try. “It has everything Jisungie loves, so expect the video soon since his birthday is also drawing closer.”
“Hyuuuuuung,” Jisung drops his phone on his lap to whine. “No more talking, I want my surprise to stay as a surprise.”
“Get your headphones, this will be a little secret between me and your subscribers.”
Jisung doesn’t listen to him very well sometimes and instead shakes his head. “They will spoil it for me. I won’t be able to read the chat for two weeks. Can’t even use social media. And what if Hyunjin spills it like he did last year? Have mercy on me and respect my precious birthday present.”
If a pout grows on Minho’s lips, he doesn’t even try to cover it. “He is a big baby, but can’t go against the birthday boy’s wishes.”
Minho’s focus shifts back to the camera. A mischievous glint appears and in an instant disappears. “I have an idea!” He looks so earnest and Jisung loves him for it but he knows his boyfriend is up for no good. “Guess what I’m getting for his birthday. Not gonna reveal it yet for obvious reasons but maybe later,” A wink follows as if that’s a promise and he is very serious about it. “maybe then I can.”
Jisung has very creative subscribers and he is proud of them most of the time but this is not it, he thinks. That is if he wants to stay alive. “Creativity is a double edged sword, isn’t Jisungie?” Minho snickers from his side as he reads the chat.
“Don’t give him ideas, he is already awful with ideas.” Jisung tries to defend his sanity.
Because.
Because the chat is overflowing with very vivid depictions of different types of lingerie wear, toys, plugs, some innocent food suggestions turn into his suffering because of course people catch up, of course they are not stupid, of course his boyfriend knows what he is doing.
And the worst is he doesn’t even have the heart to completely stop them. It is that easy to get him that desperate for Minho, so when he starts fidgeting where he sits, Minho finally decides to show him some mercy by faking a yawn.
“I’m so sleepy,” he says, closing one eye. “This one,” he uses his index finger to poke Jisung’s cheeks. “tired me out so much. So goodbye all! Take care, love yourselves, sleep well and eliminate annoyances!”
Minho half gets up to turn off the camera, then Jisung is pulling him on his lap the moment he hears the usual beep! sound. “Fuck, I’m so hard jagi.” he breathes out. “And that’s all because I let you trick my followers against me!”
“Yeah, Jisungie wants to see me in a kitty costume wearing a pink little fluffy tail, hmm?” Minho muses back. “Do you prefer me to go all meow meow on you jagi?”
“Fuck—“ Jisung’s one hand grips Minho’s hips hard, the other finds his cheeks, a finger stroking the skin under. “Please just kiss me already.”
As if Minho didn’t kiss him plenty today.
But he just does that, no teeth but slow and sensual enough to drive him crazy, Minho kisses Jisung like he means it, only to giggle in between for how much flustered he got his boyfriend.
“Hyuuuuung,” Jisung whines. “Jagi, love of my life, other piece of my heart, owner of my super cock—“
Minho hits him.
“Please have mercy on me. Pretty please?”
Puffed up cheeks, reddened lips, pupils lost in lust, heavy inhales and exhales, Minho has no heart to deny him.
So he kisses like Jisung asks. Then lets Jisung fuck him with the plug. Then Jisung gets too cocky, so Minho rides him until all Jisung can muster out are whines and growls and moans and nothing coherent other than Minho’s name.
When they are both finished and panting and tired as fuck, “When should we tell them, hyung?” Jisung asks. “Because I think they already know.”
Minho stops drawing flowers on Jisung’s naked back with the tips of his fingers and says, “Let them fight a bit more, don’t take my joy away.”
minbin. fire. arson.
Mere meters away a solitary figure stood, his unwavering gaze sharp and watching. Reds and yellows dancing ahead, he didn’t dare cast his eyes away. Not even a blink. Not even a breath. Mesmerized and hopeful, appreciating the work he had done. Waiting for someone.
It was a message if anyone dared to ask. An invitation or a call. Didn’t matter if messages were to be less destructive, less scary or maybe less angry.
Changbin felt him before his voice found its way in. His hot breath tickled his neck, and then it was his embrace that enveloped him from behind in the faintest grip. As if he was given a chance to leave. As if it was up to him. As if he could dare to defy him. Changbin was no man without wisdom, yet he was a fool in love. He did things for this love. He did hurt for his love. And he was proud.
“What a sight to see…” Minho spoke. “Is it all for me Changbin-ah, hmm? This is for me?”
“Always,” Changbin indulged him, his voice a collection of sentiments that knew no distance when it came to him. Unfettered and honest, confident.
“My prettiest sinner,” Minho’s chuckle was soft against his ear. Then his lips pressed into Changbin’s shoulder. “Tell me, what is your wish from me?”
The usual one. He didn’t think of anything else. See, this was what it meant to be in love. The fire did consume and so did Minho but what was his heart if it wasn’t made to be consumed. What was a mortal’s life hoping to suspend the time? Then suffer all along in a misery that stretched into minutes, then hours, weeks and months and years. Changbin knew his answer before he needed to think about it.
“Stay with me,” his words sounded.
“And that is all?” Minho always prompted him with another chance. But it was a trap when his hands found their ways inside this shirt, nails grazing over his skin. Teeth seconds away from sinking in. No less than gentle but. “You don’t want anything else? A puppet of a soul for your sick fantasies? Another to murmur you love words? Sickeningly sweet, fake as fuck, but that’s all your need? Isn’t that what you crave my pretty Changbinnie? This heart of yours yearns for me so much I feel responsible.”
“Stay,” Changbin repeated as he turned around. Let his hand curl around the edges of Minho’s jaw, his thumb pushing on his bottom lip. The weight of Minho’s feline-like gaze now settled down heavy and dangerous on him. “You will stay with me.”
Minho had no choice. He would burn himself otherwise. Bound to the fire, made from fire even, but weak against a contract, weak against this human named Seo Changbin that he had to play hard to get before succumbing down his pride. A human in love with a demon, expected. Wasn’t unheard of. Many did. A demon in love with a human, sangerous. A tragedy. A weakness.
Changbin used his hand holding Minho’s jaw to pull him closer. Then they were kissing. All bites, fighting for domination, flames in reds and yellows in the background, tasting ash and cheap wine.
i have a very short kazuo ishiguro's never let me go inspired minbin one. i love it so much but the engagement is really low, which kind of upsets me.
i'm unable to keep up with my reading goals this year since i had to dnf a lot titles.
books aren't the only stuff that i've left half though, out of 4 events i've joined i dropped out from 3 lmao. very responsible behaviour, right, i know. minsung ficathon had the worst because i wasn't even able to outline my prompt properly........................... for the rest, i actually tried my best. i have two gdoc files that sit at 3k, so i tried.
mv fest. 2min. natty - sugar coat
wip under the cut
Lights shining above the stage. Pretty decors across the background —some small, some huge, in every color. The black blanket of hungry eyes, blinking lazily meters away. Whispers leaving expecting mouths. A high pitched shout, belonging to a child. Behind the curtains, there is him. He is waiting. Not at ease, no, his stomach nurtures a heavy lump that sours each second passing by. But he has to wait. They told him to wait, so he waits.
Until the lights are turned off, until the headlights slices through the darkest of the night, until the darkness vanishes under the early rays of soft sun shine, until it is no longer the night.
Until it is a new day, until months catch up.
“Why didn’t you come sooner, hyung?” Kim Seungmin asks in his perfectly even tone. But his hair is disheveled and he is not wearing the other pair of his socks. His body carries the warmth of sleep, and a sort of familiarity that does hurt in the end.
“You never told me your address.” Minho deflects. That’s what he is best at these days. But it only works if people are willing enough to pay attention to him. And if they have patience to spare him time.
Seungmin has both.
But Seungmin is also smart. Seungmin knows him a bit better than anyone else, like he holds pieces that make up Lee Minho, like Lee Minho is written in a way that Seungmin doesn’t even need to trace the sentences to get to the rest. Of course he doesn’t buy it, his face says so. If Seungmin is master at Lee Minho 101, then Minho is master at Kim Seungmin 101 too. Maybe the problem was that. That they knew too much about each other. That its comforting roots grew to be burdensome.
“Hyunjin knew.” Seungmin doesn’t let it slide quietly. “Chan and Changbin hyung too.”
“I shouldn’t have come here,” Minho backtracks as the words leave his mouth. It is never a good idea to visit your ex of four years in the dead of the night, after two years into break up, in a different country that is kilometers away from where they met, fell in love, fought, became miserable and ended things all together. No one does that. Unless they are pathetic enough to hold onto the past. And hurt. And scared. And stupid.
“Don’t be stupid,” Seungmin grabs his wrist, then pulls him inside. He doesn’t even need to use much strength, Minho shows no resistance. “I’m not going to let you leave at this hour.”
The familiarity he felt a minute ago vanishes under the soft shadows and soft lights of the life that he wasn’t part of for the past two years. The couch here is rich in green and made out of velvet, on the corner a single woolen blanket stays. The coffee table is glass, and the heavy books on top of it are most likely to be decors than something anyone would read. Minho doesn’t know the names of the drinks the TV stand has. Minho doesn’t know the names of the people the pictures have. Here Seungmin smiles next to a freckled, sun kissed face. Here Seungmin sleeps and his half finished beer doesn’t give Minho any indication of who held the camera at the time. There he is in front of a Golden Retriever, holding its paw, eyes crescent moons.
Everything Minho missed, everything he will never find a chance to have resides in the smallest, the most mundane details that push him into thoughts he would rather never have. He shouldn’t. It’s already over. There is nothing for him here.
From his behind, he hears the kettle is on, hears the cupboards opening and closing, hears the two mugs settled on the counter, hears the night stretching into a long and never ending one with the questions he would prefer not think about, even more not to answer.
But Seungmin is back in a second, holding two mugs, eyes pointing to the couch, telling him to sit down. Minho only sits down because standing in the middle of the room means his existence is only so much as a fragment of time that’s buried in the past that didn’t even make it here. So he sits down, putting enough distance between them that their knees don’t touch. He reaches for the mug to keep his mouth occupied. Doesn’t matter how hot the tea is. Doesn’t matter what type of tea it is.
Seungmin doesn’t touch his drink. His eyes follow his movements in silence. Minho can tell there is judgment in his gaze, something managed to linger for two years but that’s understandable he thinks, there is no clear cut when you leave someone, no matter how much you can put distances in between. Minho knows it’s not resentment, it’s nothing close to him being unwelcomed that’s held in Seungmin’s expression. But it gets annoying after sometime, because this Seungmin isn’t new at all, this Seungmin is just better at getting what he wants and that is to have Minho talk.
“Missed my face?” Minho asks, with no humor, his tongue thick, and just like that Seungmin wins again like he does everytime. It’s unchanged like how the sun moves from the east to the west, how water boils at 100 degrees, how gravity is absolute on earth.
Because it doesn’t matter what Minho says, or how he opens his lines, because Seungmin has an awful way of being straightforward with his words. “You quitted.”
Oh to be Lee Minho and give yourself on a silver platter to Kim Seungmin for him to catch you from the things you are running away from in the first place. Oh to be Kim Seungmin to carve his way in, stop at the pockets of his deepest shames and let them out as if those don’t matter enough to be kept quiet. As if it is that easy, as if it didn’t cost them both sleepless nights in distress because all they could ever have was hope.
Not Did you quit? Why did you quit?
Why now, why not before? is left unsaid.
Behind his mug, Minho schools his expression very carefully. “You already knew, didn’t you?” It sounds like an accusation. Maybe it’s an accusation. Certainly not his first intention but it gives Seungmin a taste of struggle, from his tightened jaw to abruptly stilled hands.
“No, I didn’t.” Seungmin answers.
“At least have balls to tell my face the truth—“
“I said I didn’t!” The urgency and the frustration of his tone doesn’t cover how this is not the whole truth, that he is not lying but twisting and leaving out words to keep things as the way he thinks is the best. Minho doesn’t want that. Not after everything. Seungmin knows he hates that.
A deep and tired sigh escapes his mouth before Seungmin speaks. If he looks spent, if he looks sad, if there is more than sympathy in his words, he doesn’t try to hide. It’s just Minho choosing not to see it. “You put your freedom above anything and what they were going to offer you would never get close to that.” Seungmin almost reaches out for his wrist but he stops himself midway, his hand hangs in the air awkwardly. “Not because I thought you couldn’t do it, hyung. Not because I was expecting you to fail. Never that.”
“But I was set to debut, you know?”
Minho smiles in a way that it tugs the corners of tears welling in his eyes. But he doesn’t cry, and he won’t cry. Not in the middle of his ex of four years apartment. It’s not like he has no one to cry with. Not like he is alone. Not like he needs Seungmin to know why he just couldn’t do it.
Because he was going to debut. On a different premise since his age was a problem. You are too old, one of the managers seized him up and down with an apparent dislike evident in his stance. What were they thinking? Then the same mouth found praises for his footwork, how he moved his body, how he fit in and how he managed to stand out. Then it was for his voice. Then it was for his stubbornness, for the nights he has spent in empty studios. Eventually the time grew to be endless and took the shape of something similar to a limbo, and then those praises turned out to be pity.
But Minho was going to debut. On a different premise when the company decided to follow Japan’s idol system, although on their own terms. A theater, just for them. Then a whole building because it was cheaper that way instead of renting venues for weeklong fan meetings. Group performances, individual shows, merch already on the way because of the demand, it was a success.
Minho was going to debut.
But.
“I was. If I waited for one more week, then…”
“You don’t have to justify why it didn’t work out in the end, hyung.” This time Seungmin seeks out for his hand and doesn’t change his mind midway. He keeps it between his palms and doesn’t shy away from squeezing it once. “You don’t owe me an explanation.”
“What about to myself?” Minho’s eyes settle on their hands. The urge to intertwine their fingers tugs the strings of his heart, but he doesn’t deserve that. He doesn’t even know this Seungmin, doesn’t even know if he has someone in his life.
“It doesn’t have to be now. As long as you feel like it was the right thing to do.”
That’s the problem. Minho doesn’t know. Minho has no idea. Maybe he should have done it years ago. Maybe he should have never left his own dance crew behind for a fraction of a dream. It’s difficult to deal with the compilation of regrets sitting heavy on top of his shoulders.
So he closes his eyes as he rests his head back, and then he says, “Kim Seungmin.”
“Minho hyung.”
“Do you regret leaving Seoul?” Ending us. Breaking up with me. Saying goodbye to Soonie, Doongie and Dori. Moving kilometers away, changing continents. “Because you did the right thing, I think.”
Minho stopped blaming Seungmin if he ever genuinely did. They picked their own paths, and given how much his was to all about discretion and sacrifices, Minho has no right to find fault why it didn’t work out the way he hoped it could. They had options, they chose and it hurt. Minho spent his nights disoriented and hating the quietness the lack of Seungmin brought. He woke up alone and had no one to shelter him from the cold because Seungmin wasn’t hugging him from behind, because Seungmin had already moved out. His favorite icecream flavor didn’t matter anymore, not when Seungmin wasn’t there to pick a fight for his own until it was added to the cart. After their breakup, pushing his cart between the aisles, his hands still found Seungmin’s favorite one. Never had the heart to finish it so he let Jisung and Changbin have it all. When he came back home at four in the morning, when he reached for something light and something quick, because that’s what Seungmin always cooked for him, when Minho tried the exact same soggy pastas, it never tasted the same as how Seungmin made it for him.
“Why did you come here tonight, hyung? Why not before?”
“Why this, why that… You are always full of whys Kim Seungmin,” Minho’s eyes trace the ceiling and only now he notices the colour of the walls doesn’t follow up there. “But don’t you get it, hyung has none of the answers you are looking for.”
Seungmin frowns. “It’s not like hyung ever had answers before,” His laugh sounds bitter, prompting Minho to turn his face to him. “It was always me filling in the blanks. My words over yours. My answers to interpret what goes in your head.”
As Minho parts his lips, Seungmin gets up, leaving Minho’s hands to his own. It brings him back to the night Seungmin fidgeting in the living room and telling him they should break up, that he already packed his clothes, that later he will come for the rest. That he already got his ticket to Heathrow, that this was for the best, that their dreams ran over what they had and all left was to suck it up and accept it.
Minho played his part. What else was he supposed to do?
“What are you trying to say, Seungmin?”
“Because you never ask why, hyung.” Seungmin says through gritted teeth. ”You just let things happen.”
Seungmin moves to collect their mugs, then he passes in front of Minho on his way to the kitchen without sparing a single glance at his side. Minho follows him after, and leans against the doorframe. “Seungmin,” Minho calls his name but Seungmin doesn’t respond to him. He takes his time washing the mugs, and for a while, all Minho sees is Seungmin’s back. He thinks maybe this will be the last living memory of him again. Two years ago, Seungmin left him wearing an old but well-cared expensive button up that Minho ironed a night prior. Now it is a gray tshirt with striped shorts. One yellow pair of socks, with a little dinosaur print on the side.
“Seungmin,” he tries again with his voice almost cracking at the last syllable. This time Seungmin turns off the faucet and pushes himself off from the counter to turn around, revealing the exhaustion playing on the lines of his face, the slight hunch of his shoulders. “You knew how much it was going to suck living in a pretending, but you let me have my dreams. I wanted the same for you.”
The night they met at the laundromat, Seungmin was a crying mess watching the washing machine tumbling his clothes in half silent half loud sobs. It was his first year and first time getting a low grade. Because there was this school he built his whole dreams around for the masters, now it was over, he said. Minho, like any responsible older would, sat down with him after he brought enough booze and let him pour his heart out. Annoyed him to the point that drunk Seungmin forgot about his dreams and made everything about Minho himself.
Minho knew he was a goner for this boy by then.
Minho also knew he didn’t have the heart to take that boy’s dream away.
(Drunk Seungmin always made his entire world about Minho and Minho thought he didn’t need anything else as long as he got to have Seungmin for himself. He sometimes let himself be selfish like that.)
A part of him knew that a long distance would have torn them apart. But Minho sat down with Seungmin to help him do his paperwork. Prepared enough food and snacks because they were going to have Chan over so that Seungmin could practice for his English exam. Any time outside from the company building and the night shifts at the local supermarket was spent dedicated to Seungmin because Seungmin was going far away.
Seungmin deserved better than what he could have promised to him. That’s what kept Minho standing on the ground. How he swallowed the breakup he had to live with.
“You did what I couldn’t. And I don’t blame you for that,” Minho breathes slowly because the hurt is inhaling rocks and expecting his voice to be steady. “I never did.”
Seungmin clenches his fists into the edges of the counter. “Is that why you never replied to me?”
One week after their breakup, Seungmin wrote to him. Can I see you? it read. Please. Another one. I don’t think I can do this. Everyday until his flight, the messages kept coming back.
“We were both hurt,” and that Minho didn’t trust himself to not to beg Seungmin to stay with him. “It was for the best.”
“The best,” Seungmin repeats like he spits out a disgusting swallow that leaves his stomach queasy. “You’re not— This isn’t fair, hyung. You can’t just show up after two years and refuse to give me an answer.”
The straight line of Minho’s shoulders bends down under the weight of Seungmin’s gaze. Because Seungmin is right. Minho’s not fair. Their breakup found a voice from Seungmin’s mouth, but it was Minho who drew the line. The walls he built didn’t have any room for hesitation, at the time, when he kept himself in the confines of the steel like silence, he was so sure of that he just had to unlearn this part of himself yearning for Seungmin. That kept his tongue tied. It is for the best, he thought and let the silence between them stretch, grow and become uncrossable until tonight.
But when stubbornness you rely on turns so far inward and it becomes a pit from which no one else can rescue you, then you realize what you’ve lost and your mistakes.
It took Minho less than two years.
“Right,” Minho’s bottom lip catches on his teeth. His throat constricts tighter. “You’re right, Kim Seungmin. Hyung shouldn’t be here.”
“You’ll run away like a coward?” Seungmin’s voice strains when his fist hits the counter top. “For fucks sake hyung, what is it so difficult that you can come here but can’t tell me?”
He can say it fine. Minho’s just not sure if his answer is worth it at all. Not when it’s the same gaze that’s pained and weary and it’s him who is causing it. Not when he has nothing to offer Seungmin.
Because Minho just can’t tell Seungmin he misses him and that he needs to know if he is doing okay.
Instead all that forms on the tip of his tongue is, “Good night Seungmin,” and then because Minho has to be the worst with words, “I’m sorry.”
Seungmi̇n laughs and it’s an unbearable one. “For what?” he asks. “For tonight?
transkz fest. 2min.
summary: seungmin loved everything washed up at her shore, and that included lee minho.
wip under the cut
The change came crashing upon the scene with no warning prior. A big, thunder-like roar. The noise of something falling apart. Hit with a sudden force. Jolting every soul within earshot into a state of heightened awareness. Seungmin emerged from his cabin and his eyes fixated on the source.
It was a boat, —now nothing more than a wreckage — weathered and broken, trapped amidst rock formations.
Then he saw a woman.
[It sure was a mystery, ‘Where did Kim Hyejeong go? A new love interest perhaps?’ We saw it on all magazine covers! Late night show discussions! Now it is ‘What is the purpose behind Kim Hyejeong’s lifelong island adventure?’ Those I have little interest in. But you Miss Kim, you must have a lot to say. You were alone for almost your whole life. Tell us, when you were back in Seoul how was it? Were you scared? Did you feel out of place?]
KS: It’s fine, I already accepted that my mother's influence isn’t dying soon. Before, I woke up to see a new article going around calling her crazy. Speculations, theories… Me too, I spent a lot of time trying to understand her. Guess it was more of a distraction… Focusing on the impossible was easier. Because when I kept asking myself who I was, I couldn’t find an answer. It left me in a bad space. But Minho unni was always there for me.
“Did she ever tell you why?” Minho asks one day.
They are having dinner together. The gentle embrace of a balmy evening wraps around, suffusing the atmosphere with the soft, muted hues that characterize a summer night. None of the dishes are fancy — Minho tells him with the smallest smile appearing at the corners of her lips every time Seungmin watches her cook— but they are the kind that leaves you reaching for more. Minho’s cooking tends to be like that. When you are a food critic, she always says, you learn a few tricks.
Seungmin's shoulders are lifted in a nonchalant shrug, “She needed a change.” he explains but it takes some time. Years of living on an isolated island gets Seungmin’s tongue often trapped in an effort to string his words together.
“Need for a change is when you go on a trip, Seungmin.”
“Like how noona found herself on my island?” But he is getting better with his words. When those words are to get back at her.
Minho tears a piece of a napkin and crumbles it down into a little ball before she sends it to Seungmin. It lands on his forehead. “Don’t speak with your mouth full,” she says. “Something will get stuck and when you die because of your own stupidity, they will accuse me of murdering you. ‘18 years alone on an island didn’t kill but three months with her did.’ Can you imagine the headlines? The headache it will bring?”
“And the tears, you forgot to add your tears.”
“Kim Seungmin, I never cry.”
“Sure,” Seungmin lets her. Doesn’t mention how he sees her crying over animal rescue videos. “Sure, you never noona.”
But Seungmin understands why Minho is asking about her. What was his mother thinking buying a yacht, supplying it like they are getting ready for the end of the world and leaving with a child no more than six years old? Everyone is asking why. Seungmin too is asking why.
Because.
Seungmin’s never understood why she’d picked a deserted island to settle down. Never he’s understood what prompted her. Never he’s understood her. When the waves took her body away, she didn’t leave anything personal behind. Clean cut, nothing else but eight years of isolation and decaying objects. The instinct to survive. Some regret, probably. Followed by a nine year long silence and loneliness. The waves, the seagulls and Seungmin.
Her cruelest and most personal memory was perhaps Seungmin himself.
What was she thinking? Seungmin asked. To the sky, to the waves, to the night. He’d got no answer.
If Seungmin read books to pass time when he was small and then because he was curious about the world across the sea but it was also because he was desperate to understand her. The same ones, on rotation, withering away under his finger tips, salt stuck in between the pages. Seungmin put his fingers under every line and wondered about the second meanings hidden between the sentences. The stories of characters seeking adventures. Characters in terrible situations. Characters with greed bigger than their bodies ever could weigh. Characters with loneliness. Characters in love. A mosaic of everything he thought his mother was.
But Seungmin doesn’t get it at all. What granted such hate to push her miles away from any life possible, he’s never understood.
“I don’t think it was hatred,” Minho mumbles as she rests her chopsticks. “Hatred is a fuel, it makes you want to live.”
Seungmin makes a face. Suddenly it was the last months. The heels of his feet sinking into the soft dirt where gravel met grass and grass met sand and he was standing next to Minho, listening to her shout with all her might against waves pushing and pulling against the shore. Dumpster heads good for nothing and cuntasaurus that had no balls to come clean and spit the truth to her face and shit chop with no taste and [redacted] princess syndrome backstabber and [redacted] wet sock in between her and her promotion and [redacted] corn-syrup detergent flavored cakes. Back in her flat, the twitter drama starring someone calling Doongie’s meows door creak and Minho plotting her revenge by convincing them to try a diarrhea recipe and following their tweets daily to keep herself updated and entertained.
Those, Seungmin understands. Finds them funny at times. Admires to be like her even.
Maybe his mother had shit chops with no tastes in her life. Maybe she didn’t hate them but she found no joy being with them either. Maybe it wasn’t spite but was her adventurous nature. The characters in the books find silliest reasons to travel the land, sail the seas, fly over the skies.
Seungmin shrugs and uses his chopsticks to poke a mushroom slice sticking to his bowl’s sides. “Adventurous,” he starts. It is a difficult word on his tongue. “Maybe she felt adventurous.”
“There is no denying that,” Minho huffs, almost annoyed. But she reaches for Seungmin’s bowl and puts it together with his own, then grabs the smaller cups, heading for the dishwasher. “What if your mother was superstitious?” The look on her face is serious —lips pursed and eyebrows knitted together. “Maybe she had a reason to believe in a whale attack. A giant one, big enough to devour the whole Korea. Maybe it was the aliens.”
Ridiculous. Even Seungmin knows none are a possibility. But Minho is happily invested after his mother’s case and Seungmin simply doesn’t give enough shit about his mother anymore to be offended by the implications Minho is going for. “Go on,” he instead encourages her. Not because he feels hopeful that Minho can discover the truth. The truth was drowned under the sea, already dead and cold. Gone forever.
“Maybe she woke up one day,” Minho continues as she wipes her hands with a kitchen cloth and turns around to face Seungmin. “and decided she was going to die. Maybe she was terminally ill.”
That, Seungmin’s considered for a long time.
“But,” now there is a subtle frown reaching the lines of her face, taking its seriousness into something close to disappointment, something like telltale signs of anger. These past months, Seungmin’s studied her enough to read between the lines that this Minho — arms crossed before her, eyes not meeting Seungmin’s— is biting the tongue ready to spit venom. “that doesn’t explain why she had to drag you with her. She had millions to spend on a luxurious yacht for a lifetime-long vacation yet nothing for your future.”
In truth, Minho is wrong. There is paperwork for the inheritance and an open case for him to reclaim her shares in the family business. A 220 meter square apartment in Gangnam. Another villa in a secluded suburban area with a garden full of fruit trees. His own childhood house, one hour drive away from here.
Then there are people. An aunt he has no memory of. Three cousins. All but one is older than him. Other distant relatives. His mother’s ex boyfriend number 1. Ex boyfriend number 2. Ex boyfriend number 3. The bestfriends. The business partners. Her lawyer.
It’s money. That’s what he is, that’s probably what he will ever be to them.
“You are thinking about those leeches,” It isn’t a question when Minho’s soft voice follows up Seungmin’s thoughts like they are her own. He doesn’t know how she always does that. She must have the magic, he thinks. It’s terrifying. And easier. He has less reasons to open his mouth to get the lump out of his lungs. That weighty, heavy thing, almost always stuck there. “What do you say Seungminnie? Maybe she didn’t leave you behind because she knew they were spineless enough to suck dry a child’s wallet.”
“Doesn’t that mean…” Seungmin frowns when the thought finds him. See, everything he has a chance of becoming is the amount his pockets are full of. And else is that he is an outsider, but not just to his family. He is an outsider when they are walking next to Han River, an outsider when Minho brings him to nice restaurants, an outsider when he tries to hold a conversation with the strangers. Minho’s presence is comfortable and Seungmin depends on her because she doesn’t sugarcoat her words, has no interest in money that’s not her own and willingly be there to support him through the difficulties he is going through to understand a world Seungmin is trying to be part of. Maybe, she feels obligated to do so. Maybe, his mother felt the same way too and took him with her. So Seungmin parts his lips and says, “I’m a burden?”
Seungmin’s heart lurches into his stomach when the entirety of Minho’s posture shifts. “Oh Seungminnie,” she says as she takes a step closer to put her hands on his shoulder. She rubs her thumbs over the crumpled tshirt Seungmin is wearing. “No way you can be a burden. Where did that come from, hmm? Did you hit your head somewhere today? Did you watch Hyunjin’s boring art house movies?”
“They were fun, actually.” Seungmin mumbles to change the subject.
Minho though, rolls her eyes. “You are not a burden,” She repeats. It has a firm grip coming from her lips. Said with a finality that is almost challenging. “Annoying sometimes, sure, especially when you refuse to eat your veggies but not a burden.”
Seungmin must have made a sort of face then, because the hands around his shoulders catch the fabric of his tshirt and pulls him into a tight embrace. “Kim Seungmin,” she says as her unwavering gaze settles on Seungmin’s eyes, sharp like a knife. “I nag a lot. I complain a lot. Sometimes I have the temper of a five year old. Because I care and I worry about you. Your annoying parts are endearing and if once again you dare to call yourself a burden I will make sure to feed you with raw vegetables and nothing else.”
When she lets go, a part of hers is left attached to him. Seungmin collects them as they are his only possession. Each piece feels close to the sappy lines he reads from the books. Hyunjin’s movies, the love songs he sings, those too. Something poetic and flowery like his heart stilled from the outside, but inside it is trembling as if the biting gusts from the sea are mercilessly shaking his sole shelter, his boat. Like thunder roaring. He has been feeling like that for a while. In moments like this it bursts open like waves hitting against the jagged rock formations. Unavoidable. Forceful. Balm for his questioning nature.
Because.
See, Seungmin is nothing but full of questions. His curiosity is suspended in these scraps he calls his emotions. They are difficult. They need him to be honest. They are all at once and when they are all at once, they are overwhelming. Then he is emotionless, well practiced in a way they are fake. Minho sees right through him. She always does. Everyone else, not much.
It is like a muscle memory why he chooses to fight with his emotions. Seungmin knows fighting the best. He fought eighteen years to survive.
“You think dependency is burdensome Seungminnie,” Minho looks troubled. “It is very big here, isn’t it? Cities are like that. Scary. Noona is scared sometimes too. More when I’m alone. Less when I have people listening to me. So talk to me, it feels good to be understood. And even if I fail to get you, it is still better than to bottle up everything inside.”
Eighteen years of solitude. Nine years of listening to solely his own voice and nothing else. No one has told him he should let things out and not keep them inside because his emotions are long buried in the deep, resonant caverns of his chest. When he opens himself up, everything comes gushing out molds together like a big clawed monster that are his emotions.
“I don’t know what to do with what she’s left behind,” Seungmin says. “Or with myself. Or how I feel.”
Minho laughs. But it is without humor, rather tinged with resentment. “Fuck your family,” she answers like that’s the most normal thing to do.
Fuck your bloodline that cripples you with ancestral guilt, Seungmin fills the the blanks and mimics Minho’s voice in his head.
“And for anything else, Seungminnie, you deserve time to find out.”
“But I want to know now,” Seungmin protests like he is five years old, still a child, like he had never left Seoul. This is new to him, this person who finds it difficult to keep his frustrations to himself. “It isn’t just my family, it isn't about her. It’s me, noona. It’s about who the fuck I am.”
Minho doesn’t flinch. But she looks unsure when her tongue peeks out and wets her lips. “I get that,” she says. The everything else that her words are reaching for vanishes in an instant when Seungmin’s familiar ringtone gets in between.
It’s his aunt.
Ten seconds in, she doesn’t give up. The stubbornness must have run in the family, Seungmin thinks and he leaves the kitchen for his room as he takes the call.
His aunt has plans for him. A family dinner. Shopping with his cousins. A private piano lesson for him, apparently it’s his cousin’s teacher. Then something else she asks and he hums to agree but he doesn’t pay attention, not when he hears the front door getting shut. She continues talking, asking about his food preferences. Noona’s gamjatang. He can’t say. So instead he doesn’t pick anything. Then it is the dress code, she mentions he doesn’t have to worry about it. I already have a suit and a shirt noona got for me, he thinks. Then it is some relatives she talks about. Seungmin doesn’t know any of them. Long monologues about things he can’t keep up. Something she keeps coming back to, apparently she is bitter. Then Doongie is meowing, then the front door makes a sound again.
Seungmin finds a reason to hang up. I’ll be there, he says. The food delivery, he reasons. It is not the food delivery, but Seungmin doesn’t give a shit about lying. He knows everyone lies.
Minho is already on the floor and a cushion remains empty beside her when Seungmin is back in the livingroom. His eyes lands on the crisps, chocolate bars and beer cans sitting on the coffee table.
“We were out of my favorite chocolate,” Minho shrugs when she reaches for the remote control. The screen brightens up her sharp features in different colors, blurs the visible signs of exhaustion. Seungmin sees the remnants of everything and everyone she has encountered throughout the day lingering idly on her. Every face Seungmin doesn’t know, every name he has never heard of.
There is a tinge of jealousy in Seungmin’s gaze until he remembers something so little, something so much Minho like that the jealousy daring to burn inside diminishes in an instant.
He was the one who put everything out of the grocery bags. He was the one who accidentally dropped one of her favorite chocolate bars. Then restocked the three other. He was the one who noticed he forgot to mention they were out of his favorite beer.
The one that now stands in between with the other snacks.
The real reason why she left the apartment.
Seungmin chooses not to call her out. Instead plops down beside her and immediately grabs the remote. “My turn,” he declares. “Remember?”
Minho rolls her eyes, kicks him in his shins and rests her back against the couch with a small smile.
Seungmin settles on an action movie that has red cars on the cover because Minho groans when she sees the title. “This is perfect,” he says.
“This is hell,” Minho retorts back.
The movie is the worst. The pacing is off, the lines are forced, scenes make no sense. But at some point someone must have thought the plot was worth enough to invest in. The others must have agreed. Minho once told him people with money are often stupid. So maybe Seungmin is stupid, too. Maybe that’s where he will start in life, because Minho also said everyone is stupid in the beginning.
Seungmin is unsure because he is not everyone. He just looks like everyone. But he can’t undone what has been done in twenty three years of his existence. Layers of his habits, his doubts, his self defenses, all of him, each piece that makes him human in a way that is convincing. But he remembers Minho’s words. The time, he thinks. He has plenty of time. Minho always tells him he has.
The time he has while watching this shitty show. When Minho complains about the stupid details, when Seungmin annoys her further with his questions. The time that stretches into night, into this small space he shares with her calm breathing.
When the end credits starts rolling, when another show’s trailer is playing, Minho’s eyes rest on Seungmin. The tired smile of hers has morphed into a gentle, unobtrusive curiosity that serves as a reminder that she is letting him be at his own pace.
It gets him weird, weird in a way the books and the songs describe, so Seungmin goes, “What is it, noona?” and then, “Finally decided my face is better than the movies?”
She ignores the question. “Maybe I might make an exception and not feed you raw vegetables.” Minho whispers as she lays her legs on Seungmin’s lap.
“Because noona is nice like that?”
“Of course I’m nice like that, Kim Seungmin. You dare to think otherwise?” She finds a pillow and holds it against Seungmin’s chin.
“I think noona is a bit…” Ah, that look. Threatening. Seungmin walks right into that, maybe that’s stupid, maybe that’s not advised, maybe in his eighteen years of being stuck on an island taught him nothing but he says it anyway, “out of control?”
Minho hits him with the pillow. It isn‘t impactful because she doesn’t really force it. But she complains. “Look at this ungrateful pup,” she starts. “watch me give your food to Soonie, Doongie, Dori and put an uncooked and unwashed squash in your plate. I will watch your misery in joy.”
“I have a food delivery app,” he reminds her. “and I already have the wilderness experience.”
“Eat shit,” Minho throws the pillow right at his face and gets up to bring more beer. She complains more, and shows him the middle finger. Seungmin mentions how Chan hyung says vulgar words are bad, and Minho gives him another finger. Something long and [REDACTED] and she has Seungmin laughing. He feels light, he feels small, he feels like an ocean and he reaches for the beer.
So maybe this, he thinks as he takes another sip, as he watches Minho watching him, as he starts giggling like a little baby, as Minho pushes him with another pillow hit, is fine. Whatever they have right now after Seungmin saving her life and in return Minho letting him stay with her situation isn’t really an obligation. Maybe it is because it is just as easy to fall into silence together and laugh at the same time at the same jokes. Maybe there is no reason to look for a because.
Seungmin doesn’t know and he can’t think when everything is so slow and calm and he rests his heavy head on Minho’s lap. When there are fingers carding his hair. When everything stills and everything is black and when he falls asleep.
[And this must be the part where you admit she must be the one for you Miss Kim?]
KS: No, actually unni and I were friends. Just friends.
[Miss Lee?]
LM: We all go through similar life stages, but Seungmin was never able to. So I thought, she needed people there for her. Friends. People she found annoying. Some regular faces. I was sure she would find someone to grow fond of. Then love, maybe. She was meeting new people every other day.
The question of who he really is remains as the most difficult. What he feels for Minho on the other hand is easier.
Or Seungmin used to think.
It’s because of Jeongin. He gave him ideas.
Every Friday, he spends his nights at Jeongin’s. He is the only friend he made without Minho’s own circle and also the only person he keeps seeing without any relation to his mother.
“But think about it,” Jeongin says, the controller falling down from his lap when he reaches forward to grab a handful of popcorn. “You saved noona’s life, her rescuers found your little island, now noona is repaying you by letting you stay. How are you not kissing her?”
How is simple because to Seungmin it is clear. There are those others, those who she seeks when she feels lonely, when she needs someone to share expensive cocktails coming with flutters of eyelashes and suggestive lines. Those in her little app. Some girls in pretty dresses, some guys with nice physiques. People that can make her laugh, people that are nice to look at.
Jeongin doesn't understand and if Seungmin thinks harder, he doesn’t either.
on the other hand, i was better with short pieces/drabbles. if i don't feel lazy, i plan to add smut to minsung one before posting it on ao3.
hyunho. “are we on a date right now?”
tags: death mention, fluff, misunderstandings, idiots in love
fic under the cut
“What do you mean this is a date?” Hyunjin had to double take. “Are we on a date right now?”It wasn’t that Hyunjin didn’t know he was a catch. Oh he was the catchiest of all, of course he was. Not like it would surprise him if people had to wait in a line to properly take him on a date and shower him with expensive cocktails. Not like he didn’t think that if he lived in ancient times, poets would write songs about his beauty just for a fraction of a smile from him. Not like he didn’t know his charms alone would secure him a fashion deal and billboards across the busiest shopping districts. He would be easily the most followed Instagram influencer should he try to document parts of his life without necessarily paying it much attention.
Not that he could be less than anything. As Innie always says, “Your beauty is deadly, hyung.” and then he would follow with, because he is just a brat like that, “So much that be careful it’s not a curse.” as if he wasn’t predicting the future, as if beauty and death together in a sentence could really make enough sense to be taken seriously.
But it wasn’t about Innie and his spot on predictions. The problem wasn’t that, not even close.
The problem was none of the above either, no. Or it wasn’t like Hyunjin ever reduced himself to be shallow as a pretty book cover and less in every other department. His presence alone was a blessing, and he was talented as hell when he grabbed a paint brush and stood in front of a canvas.
The problem was that Minho, who was idly sipping his wine as if this wasn’t the most horrifying day Hyunjin had to go through, was looking at him like he was very much confused. Then something, a sort of recognition, the type that you would go oh, shit afterwards, appeared through the sharp lines of his face. Like hurt. Like Minho found a reason to be hurt in Hyunjin’s misery.
Like Hyunjin didn’t have to carefully prepare more than fifty handwritten letters and make sure his favorite fragrance on the paper would last long enough for his funeral, and maybe a few months after. Like he didn’t spend his whole morning cleaning his flat, and finding a bougie little tray for all the letters.
“Was I not clear enough?” Minho’s gaze was hesitant. “Or you were never interested in…?”
Of course Minho was clear enough. Of course Hyunjin was never interested. Who would ever look forward to their death?
Hyunjin spent his last two weeks ugly crying every night. In his desperate times, he even made up with Han Jisung. Called him and apologized to him and actually told him that he didn’t lose his Vivienne Westwood lighter, that it was just Kkami hiding it under the couch, that it wasn’t Jisung’s fault to begin with. Had to return Chan hyung’s hoodies. Had to tell Felix he never once cooked dinner for him but it was just this very nice neighbor of his who was already too gone for Hyunjin to ever turn him down.
If Hyunjin had enough, it was because he had nothing to lose. He was already dying today. Probably in a few hours. Maybe even less after he spilled his own drink on Minho’s shirt while shouting, “Fuck you, go to hell!”
As if Minho couldn’t, as if that’s not where he was visiting daily. Or weekly. Or monthly. Hyunjin didn’t know a thing about death officers’ working hours. Even less about how much they had to do paperwork before freshly born souls were farmed. (Baby souls, Minho once said and ever since then Hyunjin was freaking out inside) But he did knew a thing, and it was that Minho was here to accompany him to his death. And it was his own fault.
See, Hyunjin and alcohol were never a good pair. The worst thing I’d wish for my enemy, Seungmin’s words. Because drunk Hyunjin was desperately clingy. But his clinginess was harmless. Annoying? Yes. But it was just that. The actual problem was that when he drank to a certain point, then Hyunjin was unstoppable in an uncute way. The party pooper, the fun sponge, the eyesore, the worst person in the world. Because.
Because.
Well, that Hyunjin picks a person from the crowd, and calls them out as a cheater because drunk and heartbroken Hyunjin thinks every men is a cheater and they should all go to hell. Not his proudest moments, not in the slightest but that’s on his friends for taking Hyunjin out for drinks and leaving him unsupervised. Not solely his fault.
So he slapped Minho’s face, ruined his date, then started a make out session with him half an hour later. Somehow got his number. Somehow gave him his number. Called Minho in the middle of the night to invite him because he was bored and he was alone and he was hungry for a good fuck and appreciation. Then another night followed after, and then another.
Those were a month ago.
A month ago Hyunjin was still a happy person. Carefree, young and never ending. Aging ever so slowly, not even a wrinkle on his face, not a line to remind him he is mortal.
Until Minho confessed who he was, until Seungmin told him that’s how death officers actually find their death partners.
(Targets Seungmin, Hyunjin shrieked. Not partners, I made myself a target and you should all feel remorse for the lack of your actions.)
So, Hyunjin was dying. Possibly today. Even more likely in the next following minutes considering the look on Minho’s face. That’s why Hyunjin did what a logical person would do. He ran away. Dragging all the eyes on Minho first, then to himself, he took the nearest door on the left and threw himself outside.
Panting. Scared. At some point he even started crying but he didn’t care because if he was going to die, of course he was going to cry. They just needed to pick a nice photo of him for the press and his socials and then he was going to be eternal. His paintings were going to be so famous, he was going to join painters found fame after their deaths club. They were going to try to depict his ideas, interpret his messages, and find relations between colors of his choice and his life. He was going to be the next big thing.
But first Hyunjin needed to try a bit more for his life.
So he ran. He cursed. He took the first train, then immediately regretted it because this wasn’t a nice place to die. He exited the train the second it stopped, and he must have wasted all his remaining luck because he was very close to this very cute cat cafe where Minho could be distracted.
(The first time they met that wasn’t for a fuck, Hyunjin brought Minho here and then proceeded to watch him being all soft and giggly with the kittens for two hours.
Once he was back home, Hyunjin took his paints and brushes, ready to paint Minho and the orange tabby Soonie that night.
And sleep didn’t find him until he was satisfied.
And when Minho saw the painting, he blinked twice, then his ears got so red Hyunjin had to tease him for hours until he was threatened to be cooked in an air fryer.)
“Hyunjin.”
See, Minho found his location regardless. Maybe in another setting, this could have been romantic, poetic even. But now, Hyunjin wanted to curse his heart for thinking Minho was endearing, finding his little habits cute, and finding himself getting unbelievably infuriated with him.
“Hyunjin,” Minho repeated as he took a step closer. “What the fuck was that?”
“I don’t know,” Hyunjin short circuited in panic because he didn’t want to die in an ugly way. “I really really don’t know hyung, but please let me choose my own death.”
“What are you talking about?” Minho’s voice had an innocence to it that put guilt under Hyunjin’s skin.
“You know what I’m talking about.” Hyunjin hissed the words at Minho yet he was looking anywhere but him. Like he was scared. Like he was on the verge of crying.
Minho seemed genuinely confused. “Is this about cooking you in an air fryer—“
“Not that!” His beauty and talents deserved more than a stupid air fryer. “Make it like the depths of the ocean, or something people talk fondly about. Like… Like a jealous lover’s farewell surprise. Like it was terminal, like I had no choice but to wait my time to come under the moonlight, on a flower bed…”
Hyunjin was blabbering and sprouting out all the nonsensical glorified death scenarios Jisung came up with. Because the truth was, Hyunjin wanted none. He didn’t want to die. Not now, not any sooner, certainly not because of a mistake he made to a death officer.
“You were expecting to meet under the moonlight, on a flower bed, near the depths of the ocean?” Minho paused, his eyebrows creasing in the middle. “But Changbin told me this is how humans date?” He shifted his weight from one leg to the other, unsure. And then, “I’m going to eat him alive.”
Oh Hyunjin what a mess you made. Now he was going to deal with two angry death officers instead of one. “Don’t eat him, he was right!” But he was going to die very soon, and would it really matter if Minho eats this Changbin person when Hyunjin is already very much dead? “Or, eat him! Because I prefer a prettier death, like under—“
“Just tell me what was wrong,” Minho’s sigh was a long and exhausted one. The kind that lingered heavily on desperation and carried not an ounce of challenge that might set Hyunjin’s wandering mind off. No longer that fierce, pointed edge of his gaze. “Please.”
“I don’t want to die!” There, out for every passing soul to witness, Hyunjin’s last chance of survival. If a few heads turned to their side in suspicion and judgment and maybe some sort of fear, and that’s what it would take to postpone his death to a further date, so be it. “I’m still young and very much happy to be alive—“
“Hyunjin—“
“and I know, I don’t live up to my expectations but art is all about suffering in silence, crying under the blankets until your muse stops being a dick—“
“Hyunjin listen—“
“and I didn’t love enough, didn’t see enough, didn’t experience enough, didn’t read enough, didn’t cry enough. Kkami would never forgive me, and I’d miss him so much and there are the others, then—“
“Hyunjin, you aren’t going to die!” Hyunjin froze, eyes wide, his breathing uneven. What? “But you might, after I put you— No. Don’t even think about running away, I’d cook you alive.”
“Make up your mind hyung, am I going to die or am I staying alive?” Gods, Hyunjin must be one of those types who found last resort courage and became stupid, so so stupid. Because Minho was loud in his not taking it further attitude, enough to get Hyunjin squirm under his gaze, like a bug under a microscope but Hyunjin proved his stupidity yet again.
Hyunjin also shut his eyes in a desperate attempt to create an invisible wall between himself and everything else that’s not himself.
“Hyunjin,” Minho’s voice sounded closer than to his liking but at least it was calm and if Hyunjin was honest to himself, the silence swallowing the last syllable of his name came out bitter, almost tired. “Open your eyes, please. I’m not going to— Fuck, I won’t hurt you.”
Minho looked worried —shoulders slumped, pupils dark but devoid of the usual little twinkles inside, no smile lines next to the corners of his lips, burrowed eyebrows, a frown. Hyunjin couldn’t go against this Minho when he was led to a bench and set down.
“You thought you were going to die,” Minho said. “today.”
Hyunjin nodded.
“You thought I was on a mission to collect your soul.”
The lips forming words didn’t end in a question but Hyunjin nodded anyway. Only now it sounded too unlikely, like a lie grew to be a weighty thing enough to turn true in unsuspecting and naive eyes. Oh gods he was an idiot.
“Hyunjin, I was trying to take you on a date,” Minho let out a weak laugh. “Like how humans normally do. Because I thought you felt the same way, you know, maybe it is foreign to you but we death officers also have hearts that can be broken.”
In Hyunjin’s opinion, it was never the case, that Minho was heartless. The memory still lingered around the fringes of his mind —Minho crouching down on the street to feed strays and his smile radiant on his cold-touched pink cheeks. Another one, showing up with homemade sandwiches on his door to make sure Hyunjin didn’t die out of neglect. One entire night when he slowly stroked Hyunjin’s post assignment crisis figure and lulled him to sleep until Hyunjin was barely opening his eyes.
“I guess this just means that we clearly had different visions on how we view each other,” Minho glanced away in what looked like a defeat. “But it’s okay. Hyung’s got it. I have an eternity to forget about you and you can finally stop worrying about death.”
There was something in Minho’s voice, the lilt that clamped Hyunjin’s throat shut and all of his words got jammed up. He swallowed hard and thick, his heart yelling at him to get up and apologize and correct this mess he made. Face it coward, a voice said. Make your not-so-death day a beginning of something important.
“Minho hyung, go on a date with me.” Hyunjin caught Minho’s wrist as he was standing up to leave. Heart beating double time, his chest brimmed with the simplest form of emotions until he could comprehend more complexity to trust himself to not fuck up again. So simple like he was that five year old kid ready to swallow down the whole world until he himself grew dreams in colors. “We don’t have different visions on how we view each other.”
“What?” Minho stood still, not an inch of him moving.
If Hyunjin was an idiot, he was more of an idiot when he took a liking to someone. “I will cook dinner for you?”
“Hyunjin, do you even have an idea how stoves work?”
“I have an air fryer and it can cook things that are not me.” Stubbornness and persistence ran thick in Hyunjin’s blood because he didn’t know how to let things go.
The puff of air that escaped Minho’s lips brought out Hyunjin’s unfiltered childish smile. “So?” he asked, hopeful. “Is that a yes?”
“You’ve just admitted to me these past two weeks you were freaking out about me taking your life and now are you seriously asking me on a date?” Minho exhaled all the built up confusion from being at the end of Hyunjin’s changing attitudes.
“Can’t I?” he tried and reached out to lace their fingers together. See, stubbornness. The confidence of knowing Minho’s heart had stitches to his own. “I know I was being stupid but can’t I make it up for it? Can’t hyung give me a chance?”
And when the silence stretched out and the desperation turned Hyunjin into this needy thing, “It’s not like hyung is normal either. You found me slapping you hot. That was the first impression. Can’t we just accept that I don’t make the right decisions all the time?”
“Fine,” Minho gave up, a smile finding its way on his face, the apple of cheeks, the mischievous glint of his eyes. “Better find a good recipe and thank your parents that you are cute.”
Hyunjin hooked his arm around the back to Minho’s neck, and pulled him closer to himself for a quick, little peck. “Right, hyung? I’m the cutest.”
minsung. "please kiss me already."
tags: explicit, youtuber!jisung, youtuber!minho, secret relationships, buttplugs, fluff
fic under the cut
Minho leans away from the camera to admire his boyfriend’s silver curls. He can’t keep his eyes off ever since last night when Jisung appeared on the doorframe but that’s only inevitable he thinks.“You can touch it, you know.” Jisung tells the camera with the cocky grin of his.
That gets the comments raining down rapidly. Minho turns his attention to the screen, “They are calling you meanie, Jisungie.” he says. “Maybe I should do it instead of them?”
Without listening to his answer, Minho runs a hand over the strands before carding his fingers near the bottom. “It’s so soft,” Minho describes Jisung’s hair to his subscribers. “and smells like strawberry milkshake.”
It’s Minho’s shampoo actually. But the comments are busy with which brand it is, and Jisung throws a glance for help. Minho, the little devil he is, acts like he didn’t notice it. The smile tugging the corners of his lips tells otherwise.
“The cheapest one I’ve got from the supermarket,” Jisung explains once he puts his hand dangerously close to Minho’s crotch. That gets him a sharp, pointed look but the camera angle only shows above their chests. “Usually I steal hyung’s shampoo.”
Comments take another turn. The obvious ones, asking them if they are together. Some of Jisung’s subscribers are already sure that they are in a relationship. They aren’t just flatmates, they are boyfriends! they say often. Some, these are the minority, call these subscribers delulu. Minho starts typing on his anonymous account to annoy the last group.
[kittykatino: can’t you sh!theads see they fcked before the stream]
[kittykatino: jisung fcked minho real good, look at how he is glowing]
[hnjsngsgf: ew stop ruining their beautiful friendship]
Minho’s giggling when his head finds Jisung’s shoulder. It sounds sinister, vile, like he has no filter on. “Some of your subscribers are really funny, Jisungie.”
“As if yours are any good, hyung,” Like a muscle memory, Jisung leans down to Minho’s space at ease. It comes naturally, a five-year-old relationship warrants that type of familiarity after all. “Just the other day they were fighting over whether the paw spoons are superior or the kitty head spoons.”
“That’s a very important topic to debate on.”
“Really, what is your answer jagi?” Jisung tries his best to sound interested but he is busy reading a comment about how Minho seems to have a hickey below his neck.
That doesn’t warrant him an easy way out from Minho’s sharp, noticing gaze however, no.
So Minho pushes himself up until his lips are almost brushing Jisung’s ears and he whispers, “The paw obviously, like the one I have inside right now.”
The paw, the butt plug.
Jisung starts coughing incredulously, his cheeks puffed out, red as a tomato, as if something got stuck down his throat. Minho pats his back while not giving an ounce of an effort to hide his laughs.
“Minho hyung is the worst,” Jisung declares once he stops dying. “Guess what he just told me?”
A lot of comments are very close calls, but once it goes out of hand Jisung claps his hands. “Let’s keep everything below PG 18, everyone!”
At the same time Minho types:
[kittykatino: obviously minho said he is wearing a kitty plug. it’s sooooo obvious]
[kittykatino: he doesn’t want to waste his jagi’s c0me]
Jisung reads the comment and rolls his eyes. Mi̇nho just shrugs. Because kittykatino gets ignored in an instant since a heated argument takes place instead.
“Jisungie, they are calling me a bad influence. ‘Minho is corrupting our precious oppa.’ Am I corrupting your innocent mind jagi?” Minho does his best to imitate being heartbroken and a pout appears on his face.
“Minho hyung can’t corrupt me, he is not a bad influence. Don’t call him that.”
Jisung mumbles something more, but it gets lost when Minho picks on his boyfriend’s discomfort and nudges him in small movements. “Really, you guys were very into him playing Cultist Simulator so maybe all of us are a bit corrupted here.”
But Jisung talks less and less until it is Minho announcing a recipe he is planning to try. “It has everything Jisungie loves, so expect the video soon since his birthday is also drawing closer.”
“Hyuuuuuung,” Jisung drops his phone on his lap to whine. “No more talking, I want my surprise to stay as a surprise.”
“Get your headphones, this will be a little secret between me and your subscribers.”
Jisung doesn’t listen to him very well sometimes and instead shakes his head. “They will spoil it for me. I won’t be able to read the chat for two weeks. Can’t even use social media. And what if Hyunjin spills it like he did last year? Have mercy on me and respect my precious birthday present.”
If a pout grows on Minho’s lips, he doesn’t even try to cover it. “He is a big baby, but can’t go against the birthday boy’s wishes.”
Minho’s focus shifts back to the camera. A mischievous glint appears and in an instant disappears. “I have an idea!” He looks so earnest and Jisung loves him for it but he knows his boyfriend is up for no good. “Guess what I’m getting for his birthday. Not gonna reveal it yet for obvious reasons but maybe later,” A wink follows as if that’s a promise and he is very serious about it. “maybe then I can.”
Jisung has very creative subscribers and he is proud of them most of the time but this is not it, he thinks. That is if he wants to stay alive. “Creativity is a double edged sword, isn’t Jisungie?” Minho snickers from his side as he reads the chat.
“Don’t give him ideas, he is already awful with ideas.” Jisung tries to defend his sanity.
Because.
Because the chat is overflowing with very vivid depictions of different types of lingerie wear, toys, plugs, some innocent food suggestions turn into his suffering because of course people catch up, of course they are not stupid, of course his boyfriend knows what he is doing.
And the worst is he doesn’t even have the heart to completely stop them. It is that easy to get him that desperate for Minho, so when he starts fidgeting where he sits, Minho finally decides to show him some mercy by faking a yawn.
“I’m so sleepy,” he says, closing one eye. “This one,” he uses his index finger to poke Jisung’s cheeks. “tired me out so much. So goodbye all! Take care, love yourselves, sleep well and eliminate annoyances!”
Minho half gets up to turn off the camera, then Jisung is pulling him on his lap the moment he hears the usual beep! sound. “Fuck, I’m so hard jagi.” he breathes out. “And that’s all because I let you trick my followers against me!”
“Yeah, Jisungie wants to see me in a kitty costume wearing a pink little fluffy tail, hmm?” Minho muses back. “Do you prefer me to go all meow meow on you jagi?”
“Fuck—“ Jisung’s one hand grips Minho’s hips hard, the other finds his cheeks, a finger stroking the skin under. “Please just kiss me already.”
As if Minho didn’t kiss him plenty today.
But he just does that, no teeth but slow and sensual enough to drive him crazy, Minho kisses Jisung like he means it, only to giggle in between for how much flustered he got his boyfriend.
“Hyuuuuung,” Jisung whines. “Jagi, love of my life, other piece of my heart, owner of my super cock—“
Minho hits him.
“Please have mercy on me. Pretty please?”
Puffed up cheeks, reddened lips, pupils lost in lust, heavy inhales and exhales, Minho has no heart to deny him.
So he kisses like Jisung asks. Then lets Jisung fuck him with the plug. Then Jisung gets too cocky, so Minho rides him until all Jisung can muster out are whines and growls and moans and nothing coherent other than Minho’s name.
When they are both finished and panting and tired as fuck, “When should we tell them, hyung?” Jisung asks. “Because I think they already know.”
Minho stops drawing flowers on Jisung’s naked back with the tips of his fingers and says, “Let them fight a bit more, don’t take my joy away.”
minbin. fire. arson.
fic under the cut
In the depth of the darkest night, a fiery glow of reds and yellow haunted the sky. A house, set ablaze, stood in the middle of flames. Minutes ago, it was quiet. So so quiet.Mere meters away a solitary figure stood, his unwavering gaze sharp and watching. Reds and yellows dancing ahead, he didn’t dare cast his eyes away. Not even a blink. Not even a breath. Mesmerized and hopeful, appreciating the work he had done. Waiting for someone.
It was a message if anyone dared to ask. An invitation or a call. Didn’t matter if messages were to be less destructive, less scary or maybe less angry.
Changbin felt him before his voice found its way in. His hot breath tickled his neck, and then it was his embrace that enveloped him from behind in the faintest grip. As if he was given a chance to leave. As if it was up to him. As if he could dare to defy him. Changbin was no man without wisdom, yet he was a fool in love. He did things for this love. He did hurt for his love. And he was proud.
“What a sight to see…” Minho spoke. “Is it all for me Changbin-ah, hmm? This is for me?”
“Always,” Changbin indulged him, his voice a collection of sentiments that knew no distance when it came to him. Unfettered and honest, confident.
“My prettiest sinner,” Minho’s chuckle was soft against his ear. Then his lips pressed into Changbin’s shoulder. “Tell me, what is your wish from me?”
The usual one. He didn’t think of anything else. See, this was what it meant to be in love. The fire did consume and so did Minho but what was his heart if it wasn’t made to be consumed. What was a mortal’s life hoping to suspend the time? Then suffer all along in a misery that stretched into minutes, then hours, weeks and months and years. Changbin knew his answer before he needed to think about it.
“Stay with me,” his words sounded.
“And that is all?” Minho always prompted him with another chance. But it was a trap when his hands found their ways inside this shirt, nails grazing over his skin. Teeth seconds away from sinking in. No less than gentle but. “You don’t want anything else? A puppet of a soul for your sick fantasies? Another to murmur you love words? Sickeningly sweet, fake as fuck, but that’s all your need? Isn’t that what you crave my pretty Changbinnie? This heart of yours yearns for me so much I feel responsible.”
“Stay,” Changbin repeated as he turned around. Let his hand curl around the edges of Minho’s jaw, his thumb pushing on his bottom lip. The weight of Minho’s feline-like gaze now settled down heavy and dangerous on him. “You will stay with me.”
Minho had no choice. He would burn himself otherwise. Bound to the fire, made from fire even, but weak against a contract, weak against this human named Seo Changbin that he had to play hard to get before succumbing down his pride. A human in love with a demon, expected. Wasn’t unheard of. Many did. A demon in love with a human, sangerous. A tragedy. A weakness.
Changbin used his hand holding Minho’s jaw to pull him closer. Then they were kissing. All bites, fighting for domination, flames in reds and yellows in the background, tasting ash and cheap wine.
i have a very short kazuo ishiguro's never let me go inspired minbin one. i love it so much but the engagement is really low, which kind of upsets me.
paperplanes
currently, i'm writing another 2min fic for skz mixtape fest and hopefully, HOPEFULLY, i'll manage to finish it on time. i love 2min to the moon but WHY and WHY i can't manage to portray their relationship properly i don't know. their dynamic is very complex and every single 2min fic i've read is so beautifully written, so maybe maybe i expect too much from myself. i really hope to have a beautiful 2min fic, so there is that on my mind.
another event i'm holding & participating is minbin gift exchange. yesterday was the last day to join and we have 18 participants!!!! just before a month ago i was telling moon that i wasn't even expecting number to be higher than 10 but 18 people!!!! i hope no one ever drops out and we'll stay as 18 lol we did pair people today and everyone is a fruit.
minbin | lee know / seo changbin | 1,3k | rated: m | completed
tags: major character death, alternate universe - never let me go (2010) fusion, angst, bittersweet, established relationship
tags: major character death, alternate universe - never let me go (2010) fusion, angst, bittersweet, established relationship
currently, i'm writing another 2min fic for skz mixtape fest and hopefully, HOPEFULLY, i'll manage to finish it on time. i love 2min to the moon but WHY and WHY i can't manage to portray their relationship properly i don't know. their dynamic is very complex and every single 2min fic i've read is so beautifully written, so maybe maybe i expect too much from myself. i really hope to have a beautiful 2min fic, so there is that on my mind.
another event i'm holding & participating is minbin gift exchange. yesterday was the last day to join and we have 18 participants!!!! just before a month ago i was telling moon that i wasn't even expecting number to be higher than 10 but 18 people!!!! i hope no one ever drops out and we'll stay as 18 lol we did pair people today and everyone is a fruit.
no subject
Sometimes things are hard. Somewhere in 2017 or so other stuff happened and I dropped out of everything and it sucked.
Good luck with the gift exchange!!
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the change is sometimes good, sometimes bad unfortunately. i tend to give up everything and isolate myself but this time i’m trying to not to be like that!!
thank you so much ♡
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That's very true; it's a mixed bag. Fingers crossed for you and things working out in a comfortable way!
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Also, well done on writing despite personal life stuff being hard... I know for me personally writing is the first thing to go, so I'm dead impressed you've written so much. Fingers crossed the event stays at a nice neat 18! 🤞
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i wish i could’ve said i’m able to spend quality time on writing :( because sadly similar to how it is to yours, i seem to struggle with it if it needs planning/has parts. but i’m hoping to get used to this situation and be able to focus on more me time ♡ thank you so much!!