one-chance dreams
onho
pg13
wc 7880
two months in the making ;;;;
His two syllable confession hangs in the air and the silence that follows is Jinki’s answer, he knows, because they stare at him, eyes wide, Jonghyun’s jaw slack, Key’s eyebrows rapidly pulling together. But after a couple moments pass, Jinki’s stomach roiling and feeling very much like vomiting, they start to rush and reassure him. Nothing will change, they say, things can go on as normal, but Jinki hears a note of falsity. He hears the lie and an echo of the future rings in it.
And Jinki doesn’t regret it. He doesn’t regret it when things go downhill slip-shod fast, when at concerts they don’t hug him like they once did, they don’t include him as before, their laughs half as happy and management makes a decision. They know what Jinki had confessed to at the kitchen table, had known since the beginning, but hadn’t cared as long as nothing changed.
But things changed for the worse and Korea reacts to what they believe is bullying but is in fact a separation that had been fated when Jinki had made his choice seven months ago, a choice to man up and tell the truth. So management calls him in to the office and Jinki, polite as he always is, bows and says hello to everyone he passes, exchanges pleasantries with a few, and is five minutes early to the meeting.
They’re asking him to leave of his own volition and he acquiesces with a broken heart.
Lee Jinki, stagename Onew, indicative of his warm, welcoming personality, leaves SHINee on February 8th, 2013 after 5 years.
.
Jinki goes to university. That had been his decision, a week after confessing, that when it came down to it, when he would be asked to quit, leave behind his life, he would educate himself, get a job teaching math at an elementary school. The idea appeals to him greatly, being a teacher and at an elementary school the kids will be less likely to know about SHINee and the disastrous ending their teacher had with the group.
Dreams of seven years ago, when he attended school and trained to be an idol, have crashed, burned and left a wake of bitterness in him that he cannot destroy no matter how hard he tries. But Jinki is strong, he’s learned that he’s gotta be, that weakness is not acceptable.
His parents love him and that’s all he needs, really. He doesn’t need any of them to call him, to ask him how he’s doing, if he’s eating properly, if he’ll love anyone ever, but it would be nice if they did. Not necessary though. Jinki will learn how to not be lonely. He will learn that being alone in the world is possible.
.
He starts university the following fall, half a year after he left SHINee. He wanted to start fresh, at the beginning of the year and give rumors time to fade. He looks different than a year ago, skinnier because he’s not hungry, and hair longer than necessary. But Jinki doesn’t really want to cut it, so it remains long and reminds him of when he did musicals, of promoting and having hair that fell in his face constantly, pushing it away and singing on stage.
There are still whispers in the hallways of the university and Jinki ignores them. He moves on because this is what Jinki does, ultimately. He lives unobtrusively in the fashion that suits him best and continues his life because life will continue no matter what happens.
.
October 21 he receives a letter from Taemin and he reads it, wondering if he’s eager or sick as he scans the familiar handwriting.
Taemin, it seems, misses him. Key misses him, Jonghyun misses him and Minho is silent. But, Taemin writes, no one’s ever sure about what Minho thinks.
Or feels, Jinki adds. They’re separate things, thoughts and feelings, and Jinki knows the difference. He learned the difference.
.
They lied, Jinki thinks as he watches TV mid-evening, watching a recording of Strong Heart. They don’t miss him. They lied. Taemin lied. And he also sees that they don’t need him, that their new song, new album, doesn’t contain him at all and it’s beautiful because they know who they are. They know who they are even without him.
He calls Jonghyun a little before midnight, right after finishing a paper and submitting it online. He picks up after two rings, voice quiet as he says hello.
“How are you?” Jinki asks, polite, always so polite. “I saw you on Strong Heart.”
Jonghyun is silent. “I’m sorry, hyung, I’m sorry.”
“What are you saying sorry for,” Jinki laughs, leaning back in his swivel chair, overhead light too bright. “There’s nothing to apologize for.”
“We’re sorry for everything. We are, we really are, we didn’t know that you would-”
“It’s not know,” Jinki cuts in, “It’s think, Jonghyun, it’s think. I did, though, and I planned for it. Don’t apologize for something you weren’t capable of knowing. It’ll only make me hate you.”
Jonghyun gives half a sob, cutting himself off and there’s a beat of silence before he hears Minho, deep voice soft in his ear.
“Onew-hyung?”
Jinki sighs.
“It’s just Jinki now Minho, I’m Onew no longer.”
Minho is silent. “Jinki-hyung, we are sorry. If we could change what happened, we would, we would do anything to have you here again.”
“You only think this because I’ve been gone. I clearly remember our last concert together, don’t you? I have never felt more alone. This is just you trying to make yourself feel better and I’m not going to accept any apologies from any of you.”
Then, defeated, Jinki hangs up.
If only he hadn’t said anything, if only he had lived with himself for a while longer, until everything had ended. He could have lived happy with them and then would have faded into obscurity, and there would have never been all of this judgement. There never would have been this heartbreak, the phantom limb of a previous life overshadowing every moment.
.
December 14th, when the first snowfall of the year is predicted to be the next day, Minho appears at his doorstep and it is desperately gallant. Jinki exits, closes the door behind him, because he doesn’t want his parents to see him.
“Can I help you?”
Minho tries to smile at him. “I thought I’d say happy birthday.”
Jinki smiles at him. “Thank you.”
They stand like so for a moment or two before slight tremors start going through Jinki’s body from the cold. “Is that all?” He tries not to be hopeful, but it’s a lost battle.
Minho doesn’t say anything, gives no indication that he had even heard him and just stares at him. His face is impassive, stoic, except for a slight upwards twist at the corner of his mouth that has always been present. It’s deceitful.
“Why did you tell us? No one would have known if you hadn’t.”
Jinki stares at him, blinking as snow starts to fall four hours earlier than tomorrow. “I was sick of it, Minho, sick of lying. So,” he shrugs, “I told.”
He shifts then, impatiently, the world in his expression. Jinki wasn’t expecting anything from anyone, but it still hurts as Minho turns away and leaves without saying anything more.
Probably because he’d been lying to himself all along, about not expecting anything. He’d wanted to be accepted, to be loved for who he is, because they were a family and because nothing would change.
.
New Year’s is quiet and Jinki spends it in front of the tv, watching people he once knew and people he hardly talks to anymore and drinks an entire case of beer, gets drunk, and wrestles with his friends, winning each drunken match.
.
Spring semester Jinki studies abroad, going to England. His English is decent, after college level studying, and England is very different than when he’d been before.
He sends each of the members a postcard, not saying much, stuff like ‘this is the Tower’, ‘I ate at this cafe once’, ‘oh this spot is really touristy and we never went’ and ‘this looks like you.’ On Minho’s he wrote ‘I wish you hadn’t come by.’
.
He returns in the summer, English much better, and friendlier. People smile at him now because they’re friends with him, instead of smiling because he’s famous, instead of pointing and whispering.
Key starts texting him when he finds out he’s back, demanding information about England and Jinki is surprised that his English is now better. Well, yeah, that sort of makes sense, but it’s a throwback, a strong reminder that time changes people.
They talk about stupid things at first, Key for once trying to be more delicate, before he throws it to the wind and talks about the music shows, practicing choreography, how Jonghyun’s a bitch and ‘accidentally’ dropped his tooth brush in the toilet. He brings up Taemin and Minho as well, how they’re closer friends now, which Jinki doesn’t want to hear.
He texts Key about classes, about teaching, dreams, moving out of his parent’s and reveling in the privacy he now has, sleeping in on Saturday’s.
And then Jonghyun starts texting him, Taemin following two months later, and Jinki feels bitter.
So now they talk to him, he thinks. Now that they’ve lived without him, now that he’s different in an acceptable way. They’ve probably forgotten, though Jonghyun asks him sometime in October about how he knew he was gay, and Jinki doesn’t have an answer and ignores the text. Neither bring it up again.
.
On Minho’s birthday, Jinki tentatively texts him ‘happy birthday’ and doesn’t receive a reply.
Jinki’s fine with that. Really.
.
They all come over on his birthday, Key leading the way into his apartment, boasting about how they were careful about the sasaengs and how no one will know they were here. Jinki laughs and offers hospitality.
“Got any soju?” Jonghyun asks, going through a pile of papers full of notes on a table and making faces. “Taemin’s been bragging lately about how he’s a great drinker lately and we should prove him wrong.”
“Some. I have more beer though,” Jinki says, shrugging, watching as Taemin and then Minho file in, politely taking their shoes off. “I had friends over last night and they prefer soju to beer. There’s a convenience store close by and I could run out and get anything we need- I haven’t really prepared much, sorry.”
Taemin smiles at him, closed mouth, and it’s a punch to his gut how much older Taemin looks. He’s a man now, Jinki tells himself, an adult, no longer a teenaged boy trying to grow up too fast.
“Whatever you have is fine, hyung,” Key says, poking through his kitchen already. “I’m surprised you have such a decent kitchen though.”
Jinki bites his lip to keep himself from protesting and preventing him from banging his pots and pans together as he rifles through everything. “Stop going through his stuff,” Minho says, standing next to Jinki. “It’s rude.”
Key glances at Minho. “Since when have you cared?”
“It’s fine,” Jinki says to Key and then repeats it, quieter, to Minho. “It’s fine, really, don’t worry. But come in, please, make yourself at home.”
Minho looks at him, gazes fleetingly meeting before Jinki moves into the kitchen to take out the cheese, crackers and beer.
“Happy birthday,” Taemin says as Jinki sits next to him on the couch, the five of them arrayed in his living room. “Sorry for forcing you for this, but your precise birthday was the only day we could get free.”
Jinki smiles, taking a sip from his beer. “Taemin, that is not something to apologize for. But tell me, what’s been going on? How’s Japan?”
Key frowns. “Same as usual. Our Japanese is much better than before.”
Minho, sitting on the other side of Jinki, shifts throughout the entire evening. Everyone other than him has a couple beers and Jinki wants to touch him, pat his shoulder, squeeze his knee, but he knows he’d be rebuffed, rejected.
So he doesn’t and continues drinking, laughing loudly and trying not to ask why they changed so much.
.
Afterwards Taemin frequently comes by. He tells Jinki little things, like Key tripping and spilling a cup of water over Jonghyun, about a difficult piece of choreography for their newest Japanese single.
Jinki absorbs it and finds that he doesn’t care as much as he used to.
“What about Minho?” He asks, mid-January, padding around in a sweatshirt and slippers that match in their raggedness, several articles laid out in front of him, waiting to be read. “How’s he?”
Taemin winces and Jinki smiles while remembering how Taemin was never good at hiding his first instinctive reaction.
“Minho’s…” He’s contemplative and Jinki waits. Patience, he tells himself, patience is a good thing, good things come to those who wait.
“To be honest, hyung, Minho’s been weird since you left. Like, more closed off? I don’t know how to say it right, but it’s not like he doesn’t have anything to say. He’s always starting something and then never finishing it- which, to be honest, is more like you than him.”
Taemin pauses and Jinki takes the opportunity to set the water heater on.
“He disappeared on your birthday and was missing for a couple days. We think he visited you, but, you know, he said absolutely nothing. About you, where he was, nothing at all. He’s a mystery.”
Jinki is silent. “He did visit me.”
Taemin sighs and slouches in his seat; Jinki chuckles and nudges him. “Sit proper, you’re an idol aren’t you?”
“Doesn’t Minho strike you as really heterosexual?”
Jinki smiles, confused, and he hears the whistling of his water heater. “Want ramyun?” He asks, getting up and pouring some into the plastic cup. “I’ve got kimchi and beef flavors.”
“Yeah, you bet I do,” Taemin replies, scrambling off the couch, almost slipping but having too much grace to actually do so.
.
The library is comfortable, silent except for echoes and hushed whispers. Jinki spends a great deal of time at the library, because no matter how much time passes he will not be used to living alone. He misses living with four others, sharing space and food. He’s supposed to shop for himself, but he still catches himself buying extra meat for Taemin, seeing earrings for Key, hears a song Jonghyun would like and a pair of Minho’s favorite sneakers. He buys it all, makes a pile in his room of all the items and stuffs Taemin’s face with the food.
After all, the others hardly visit. It’d be hard to feed people who he never sees. In this way, Taemin becomes Jinki’s saving grace.
.
Two tickets arrive in the mail, the envelope addressed in Key’s handwriting. The two tickets, a note says, are for him and a friend for SHINee’s last concert.
Jinki’s eye is caught at ‘last’ and wonders what sort of friend Key intended.
There’s also a piece of paper stuck in and Jinki bursts out laughing when he finally recognizes the drawing as SHINee when they were five. He calls Jonghyun in the evening, when he thinks they’ll be done with schedules and is almost right in his timing.
“The drawing’s great,” Jinki says and Jonghyun laughs.
“I’m no better than three years ago, but I still like drawing.”
“Why did you do the five of us?”
“Because, hyung,” Jonghyun says, sounding amused. “SHINee isn’t SHINee without you.”
Jinki laughs- he wants to call Jonghyun on his bullshit, but he doesn’t. He also doesn’t ask about when the official statement about disbanding will be released. These two things, however, will not fester inside him. He’s learned better.
.
The concert is amazing and Jinki goes alone, sells the other ticket, and wears a hoodie that obscures most of his face. After all, this would be the worst place to be recognized. It’s the first time that Jinki watches the four of them from the audience and there have not been many performances that he’s watched since he quit. His singing parts have been redistributed, dances modified and it doesn’t quite hurt, the feeling is too simple for a four lettered word.
He leaves just before the concert ends, not needing to be there to know what he would see. He finds the backstage door and he’s admitted after the bodyguards get one good look at his face. The smells of backstage are familiar, sweat and makeup, leather and something wet.
He follows the sound of laughter to where the four boys (men now, really, Jinki corrects himself) are lounging around, limbs splayed everywhere. They’re beautiful, they always have been, but Jinki hasn’t wanted to cry like this in two years.
“Great show,” he says, letting the tears linger in his eyes. “You guys did great.”
“We did, didn’t we,” Taemin sighs, content, slouching further in his seat. “Though I’m kind of glad this is all over.”
“Don’t lie,” Key says and Jinki can see tear streaks on his beautiful, angular face despite the smile. It’s always been Key’s style to laugh and cry at the same time. “What will we do without SHINee?”
“Well,” Jinki says, shifting once, twice, then forces himself to stop. “You could go to art school.”
There’s a moment of silence and they all stare at him. Jinki smiles charmingly back.
“Ever the optimist, huh,” Key mutters and tension fills the room.
“I’m going to head home,” Jinki says, after a few more moments of silence pass, all of them avoiding looking at each other. “See you later.”
He leaves, closes the door gently behind him and is halfway down the hall when Minho catches him, bony fingers wrapped around his wrist. “I’ll give you a ride.”
“I’m fine with the train.”
They stare at each other for a moment, Minho’s grip loosening to the point where Jinki’s wrist slips, falls, out of his hand. “Tonight, just tonight, let me drive you home.”
“But-”
“It’s SHINee’s last concert, hyung,” Minho cuts him off. “No matter the time that’s passed, you’re going to get mobbed.”
Jinki sighs. “Fine then, but straight there and then you should go to the dinner and party.”
“How’d you know?” Minho asks, walking and Jinki keeping pace.
He smiles, lop-sidedly, half-heatedly. “We always did, before. Always.”
To this, Minho says nothing. After all, he never says anything, why start now?
.
“You’ve gained weight,” Minho comments ten minutes later, paused at a red light. “You look good.”
“Compared to when?”
“What?”
“I look good compared to when?” He repeats, patient. It’s the best virtue left to him.
“From- when do you think?”
Pause, yet another moment of silence to join the string of silences that stretch between them.
“I eat what I want now.”
“Like what?”
“Oh, you know, just whatever. I cook a lot; I’ve even started to make my own kimchi.”
Minho hums, the sound low in the car. It hangs between them, dangling in the otherwise silence.
“Thanks, by the way.”
“For what?”
“Saying I look good.”
Minho doesn’t say anything, but his hand curls around the wheel, moving upwards in a jerky movement to rest at the top. Now, Jinki thinks, there’s yet another barrier between them, this one physical. He’s putting it there, between them, on purpose.
“You always looked good though,” Minho mumbles later, pulling up at Jinki’s apartment.
“What?” Jinki asks, the jingle of keys louder than Minho. They stare at each other, Minho’s face a tragic painting, light splaying across the smooth, hallowed planes of his bones.
“How’s school?”
“You ask now?” Jinki asks, laughing. “But school’s good, the usual.” His hand is on the door handle, and the moment it takes for him to pull then push is interminably long.
“I’ll text you.”
“Sure,” and Jinki smiles, wide and semi-artificial, a smile just for Minho, as he steps out of the car. Minho won’t text him, he thinks as he unlocks the front door to the building and watches Minho drive away. He won’t.
.
Key does go to art school. Jonghyun starts a solo career, acts in a musical, and Taemin goes to college. Minho applies to college, but acting gigs pile up and he ends up not attending as often as he should.
Jinki has a year left by the time things settle to this point, by the time that SHINee is well and truly gone and Minho does text him. They’re simple things, like ‘good morning’ or pictures of the sky or food, sometimes emotes are included, cute ones that he wouldn’t have associated with Minho.
Taemin still frequently comes by and asks Jinki to read his essays over, badgers him for English help and Jinki sometimes just spends the time talking about England and what he used to do. He shows Taemin all the pictures he took and Taemin pays attention like he used to when they were younger and Jinki was advising him on singing.
.
Jinki graduates and Minho is the only one who shows up, which surprises Jinki. He never would have thought that Minho would be the one to attend, that Taemin would be too busy, Jonghyun performing and Key out of the country. Minho was always the busiest one of them all.
Minho gives him a dozen roses and his intention is impossible for Jinki to figure out.
“Congratulations hyung,” he says, deep voice, tall, black suit and looking better than Jinki in his off-black graduation gown.
“Thanks.”
They stand there for a few moments before a few of Jinki’s friends come up to them, one of them slinging an arm around his shoulders. Jinki laughs, turning with a smile, Minho’s presence receding to a corner.
Because Minho isn’t a part of his life anymore. That’s what Jinki tells himself, but then when he glances at Minho, he feels scalded by the glower and anger on his face.
“I’ll see you later,” Minho says abruptly and Jinki’s no longer happy. This was supposed to be a happy occasion and all he can think is why Minho looked like that, why he’s angry, why he’s suddenly leaving, if he was actually free or if he cleared up his schedule for this.
“Just a moment,” Jinki tells his friends, who obligingly comply and Jinki follows Minho to his car. “Why are you angry?” He asks after Minho refuses to look at him. “Did I do something?”
“No, nothing at all.”
Jinki’s not an idiot and he can hear the acid.
“Don’t lie to me.”
“You have no right to tell me what to do.” His voice is oddly blank now, laced of all emotion. “You left us.”
“I didn’t leave-”
“You didn’t have to say anything,” Minho now turns to him, his large eyes wider than Jinki’s ever seen them. “You didn’t hyung, so don’t tell me bullshit like it was festering inside of you, don’t tell me that you couldn’t lie any longer because telling us was making us lie, made all of your words at the beginning a huge fucking lie. Don’t.”
Jinki doesn’t know which hits him the hardest: the lack of tone or what he’s saying.
“I’m sorry.”
Minho laughs, broken, sharp metal, a knife to Jinki’s heart. “I don’t want an apology, Jinki, I want to go back five years ago, when we came out with Lucifer, when we were at the height of our career- any time before you told us you were gay.”
“We’ll talk later,” Jinki says a few moments later when Minho’s phone rings. Probably a manager or a publicity agent or- these thoughts are no business of his and Jinki takes a step backwards. “I’ll call.”
“I won’t pick up,” Minho says, ignoring the phone and getting into his car.
.
Jinki remembers, while getting drunk that night, friends rowdy around him, what Taemin said once.
“Doesn’t Minho strike you as really heterosexual?”
And he wonders why he remembers that and he also wonders why it was always Minho, when he was a skull atop a skeleton, when Minho grew up without his help and when he was the first to try approaching him.
.
He calls four times, the first one the next morning when he was hungover and the following three over the span of a few days. Minho keeps his word and doesn’t pick up any of the calls.
Gut instinct tells him to leave it as is, but gut instinct had told him to leave the closet and Jinki’s not as sure about that decision as he once was.
.
Then, almost exactly a week later, when Jinki is soon to start working as a teacher, Minho rings his doorbell.
Jinki lets him in, offers him something to drink, to eat (both offers are declined) and tries not to think about the mess of his apartment, with his graduation stuff still scattered around and the mess of books by his bed and everywhere else.
“Sorry it’s a mess,” he says, trying not to be too direct, to not ask one of the million questions that’s been haunting his mind.
Minho doesn’t say anything, surveys the living room and takes a seat at the couch without saying anything. Jinki swallows and sits at his card table, so they both have to turn their heads to look at each other. It is intentional.
Jinki has several questions, unformed ones that he’s merely brushed the edges of but he knows they’re there, but he’s too scared to broach any topic. He doesn’t know Minho anymore. He’s not even sure if he could classify Minho as his friend- an old friend, maybe, a previous colleague, but friend? Jinki balks at the word.
“I still don’t understand. I’ve tried, you know, all this time, all these years, to understand. I don’t. I can’t.”
Jinki sits a little straighter. “Why I told?”
Minho tilts his head, hair reflecting the overhead light. “No. Why you let us act the way we did. You were Onew, our leader, and you could have at least tried to put us in line. You could have done it and I don’t understand why you didn’t.”
He pauses before he answers, wondering if he should fold his arms on the table in front of him or if that’s too formal. “I don’t think I really had a reason for that, except that I thought I should let it run it’s natural course.”
“Natural course?” Minho echoes derisively. “If the world had let Hitler run his course, where would we be now? Hyung, a natural course isn’t necessarily the best course.”
“I thought it was for the best,” Jinki says in a small voice, resisting a very strong urge into sink in his seat.
Minho doesn’t say anything for three beats (Jinki counts for focus). “And now?”
“I don’t know,” Jinki mutters. “Is this what you wanted to talk about?”
“No- yes. Maybe.”
Jinki purses his lips. “Never knew you for indecisiveness.”
“You never knew me for much, though,” Minho bites back, only now seeming to relax, his tilted head falling against the top of the couch, body sagging lower. Jinki takes this as a cue for him to do so as well, pulling a leg up to rest his chin on his knee.
“Are you implying something?”
He shrugs, his head turning to look at him, ear pressed against the cushion. “Am I?”
Jinki shifts, uncomfortable under Minho’s gaze. “You weren’t this evasive either.”
A crease appears on Minho’s face momentarily, but he smooths it away with a practiced, actor’s smile that Jinki doesn’t know but recognizes it from seeing it on his television screen. The smile makes him even more uncomfortable.
“Sure you don’t want anything? I’ve got some beer, water, juice, tea, I recently bought some good oolong leaves from Taiwan and-”
“Water, please. With ice.”
Jinki’s leg falls back to the ground with a heavy sound which lingers for too long as he scrambles out of his seat and towards his kitchen. He can feel Minho’s eyes following him, a trailing fire that lingers at the base of his spine. His hands shake a little as he grabs the purifier from his fridge, pouring it before he remembers the request for ice and slops a little over the edge as he puts in three. Condensation is already forming on the glass.
“Here you go,” he mumbles as he passes the glass to Minho, who’s eyes are watching him and not the glass. It almost slips through both their hands, but Minho squeezes just in time, fingers firmly wrapped around the slippery glass. They’re just as bony as before, knuckles wrinkled and knobby, palm large.
“That was close,” Jinki murmurs, forsaking the table to sit on an armchair across from Minho. He bought the furniture used with money from his SHINee bank account, an account which he’s always reluctant to use. He got a job as soon as he could and created a new account to deposit that money in. The money from SHINee is somehow not to be used, sacred, special. That Minho is now sitting on a couch that he had spent hours agonizing over, wondering if he should get a used or new one, what colors, what fabric, means something he can’t figure out.
“C-can I ask you something, myself?” He asks, cursing himself for the stutter.
Minho smiles easily at him and it’s still a smile that Jinki recognizes but doesn’t know. “Of course. I did sort of barge in here.”
Jinki smiles uneasily back at him. The air is tense and he wonders why Minho doesn’t show the tension that he’s gotta be feeling, that there’s no earthly possibility for Minho to be as relaxed and at ease as he looks. “Why are you telling me this now? You’ve had so many other chances, why tell me more than four years later?”
Minho’s smile doesn’t lessen and Jinki mistakenly thinks that the corners tighten.
“Like when?”
“In the car,” Jinki immediately replies, remembering the leather seat, the stoplight, fingers tightening on the steering wheel. “You could have then. My birthday, whenever you’ve come over, we text, you could have asked to meet up or something.”
“I wasn’t as bitter then,” he says, tone thoughtful. “Nor vocal. SHINee disbanding changed everyone. Well, everyone but you.”
Jinki swallows, wondering if this is a dig at him. “Bitter?”
“Yeah, I was always a little bitter that you did what you did…” He trails off and Jinki doesn’t try to interrupt him while he’s thinking. “I guess I was jealous of you as well. All along, though I’ve been more jealous recently.”
“Why?”
“You haven’t figured it out?” Minho asks, eyebrows raising. Jinki wants to throw something at him because he shouldn’t be so easy-going about this, he shouldn’t be switching around and confusing Jinki. He thought that this would be a confrontation or something, not… this. “You were supposed to be the smart one,” he snorts.
“Well excuse me,” Jinki snaps at him, “but I am the only one with a degree from SHINee
“Give it a few years and then say that.”
“Obvious, because then Taemin will have graduated.”
Minho doesn’t say anything and just smiles at him. And it’s the actor’s smile no longer, but a grin Jinki recognizes from New Zealand, when they were young, from concerts so long ago, when they used to share dukbokki. His heart aches.
“Was there anything else?” He asks, staring out the window, not able to look at Minho anymore.
“I thought you had more questions,” Minho says, taking another sip from his cup. Jinki hastily looks back away, telling himself that it hadn’t been on purpose, that he’s not sneaking looks at Minho, the adams apple, long lashes, slender limbs.
“I don’t know if I want to ask them,” Jinki murmurs in reply, swallowing. “Because I don’t think I’ll like your answer.”
“Then I have another question for you. How did you know?”
“Know what?” Jinki asks warily, already five times sure that he’s not going to like his answer.
“That you were gay.”
Okay, thinks Jinki as he blinks. That’s easier. He supposes, distantly, that he might have been scared that he would ask him something more personal (somehow). Like if he’s had sex, if he’s ever actually loved someone, those sorts of things. Thing he wasn’t sure he could tell Minho.
“I knew before SHINee. I’ve known for years.”
The smile slips away and Minho’s eyes are larger than ever before, staring at him with a blank expression. He’s always been good at those, Jinki remembers, blank face, staring at seemingly nothing. It’s unnerving, though, to be pinned under that gaze.
Jinki smiles changes, shifting and edging along vague boundaries. “I’ve known since I was a teen. It was never anything like liking dolls, or pink, anything like that, but more of an inclination? I chatted with girls more easily than boys and I was always staring at boys in high school. It was the natural conclusion.”
Minho remains silent, staring at him, and Jinki continues blabbering.
“Management knew from the beginning, they did, I swear. I told them straight up that I was gay and they said that they didn’t really care, as long as I was careful, as long as it never came between us, stuff like that. And, well, I just got… tired. Of lying. That’s why I told, in the end, I was sick of hiding and I was getting more and more careless. And-” Jinki stops himself before he starts treading the territory of admiring the apples of Taemin’s cheeks, Key’s muscular legs, the texture of Jonghyun’s hair, Minho’s arms.
“I’m sorry, hyung,” Minho says, head falling into his hands, after a continued pause of silence. “I’m so sorry. I thought that you were more like me, that you sort of figured it out along the way.”
Jinki blinks. “And how did you find out?”
Minho grins at him and it’s a grin that is both unfamiliar and unrecognizable. He doesn’t know this expression, feral and alight with some joy. “It was you, hyung, it was you.”
“That’s not cryptic,” Jinki mumbles back, cataloging each of their conversations since he left- but it’s an impossible task.
“Come on,” he wheedles. “I can’t believe you didn’t have a clue. You had to have known something.”
“I didn’t know,” Jinki says, standing up, suddenly feeling reluctant to sit still and starts pacing back and forth. “At all. I always thought you were totally, completely straight. You were the straightest of us all. Like, ramrod, meter stick straight. Can’t get any straighter than you.”
“Have you always paced?” Minho asks, eyes watching him bemusedly.
“What?” Jinki asks, distractedly, and still nothing leaps out. Nothing other than maybe a slip of a hint at graduation, Minho closing his car door, unexpectedly angry. “Sometimes.” Minho hums and Jinki bites his lip, stopping and staring at him. “Since when?”
“A little after our last concert, actually. I had a kiss scene and it was wrong.” Minho smiles charmingly at him, the fake one. Jinki frowns.
“I need a drink,” he mutters to himself, heading towards his kitchen.
“I have water,” Minho calls after him.
“Something stronger than that,” Jinki says, mostly under his breath. “Much stronger.” He hunts through his cupboards and finds nothing other than a forgotten beer can shoved in a corner. He takes it out anyways, ready to settle for any drop of alcohol, but the expiration date was four months ago.
“You had to kiss a girl, then?” He says, going back to his living room. Minho’s no longer sitting, but looking around his room, poking through a pile of books. He clears his throat.
“Can I borrow this book?” Minho says, not embarrassed to be poking around in the slightest.
“Sure,” Jinki says, not even looking at the title. “But… Minho, what are you hoping to accomplish?”
Minho smiles and tucks the book under his arm. “Thanks, hyung, but that’s a conversation for another day.”
“I think,” Jinki says slowly, watching Minho as he walks out of the room to his entryway. “That after everything, I deserve to know.”
The book is set on the high table by his door as Minho bends down to slip his shoes on. When he’s done, straightened, long fingers brushing his shirt down, Minho smiles widely at Jinki and this smile Jinki knows from back in their trainee days, all the way up until he confessed, soft at the edges, trust-worthy, loving.
“I realized, hyung,” Minho says, opening the door. “Because I found out I loved you.”
Jinki has a moment to respond, which he wastes by uselessly blinking, wondering why such a sequence of words smoothly slid out of Minho’s mouth, and then Minho’s gone. He breathes deep and tells himself that he hasn’t secretly been waiting for Minho all along and that the cologne in the air is his imagination.
.
Teaching is both what he did and did not expect. He expected to have good and bad kids in his class, expected it to be a little boring after a while, but hadn’t expected to fall in love with it as much as he does. He knew that he’d like it, Jinki wasn’t about to do something he doesn’t care much for after all, but not to this extent. Kids are a joy he’d never known before.
Jinki doesn’t pick up when Minho calls him, deja vu filling him each time his phone rings. Minho even gets Taemin to call him, but after that first attempt Jinki doesn’t pick up for any of SHINee.
.
They stage it as a celebration, though Jinki believes that the celebration would have happened without Minho’s desperation to contact him. Jonghyun knocks on his door, Key, Taemin and Minho behind him.
“We know you’re there,” Jonghyun yells, pounding harder on his door. “Open up hyung!”
Grimacing, he opens the door. “What?” He growls. “I have work tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow’s Sunday,” Key says, smirking at him as they file in and Minho is last, Taemin bouncing inside with a plastic crown on his head.
“You’re avoiding me.”
“Damn right I am,” Jinki snaps back, shutting the door after Minho and walking back to his living room. “What are you guys here for?”
“Taemin’s birthday,” Key says as he places a cake on the table. Jonghyun is rooting through his kitchen, most likely looking for a cake cutter. Jinki frowns.
“His birthday was this past Tuesday,” he mutters. “And why here?”
“Tonight’s the only night you can drink, right?” Minho says, next to him suddenly.
The change in their relationship is too much, too fast. Jinki can’t handle it and immediately goes to his kitchen to help Jonghyun find everything. “It’s here,” he says, pulling a drawer open. Jonghyun grabs it and runs to Key with it. Key only berates him, asking him where the candles and fire-starter are. Sighing, Jinki starts searching for the candles he bought two years ago, for another friend’s party. They’re not new, but better than nothing, he supposes.
“I only have matches,” he tells Key as he stands next to him. There’s only one seat available and it’s next to Minho, but Jinki’s not sure if he’s ready for that.
“That’s fine,” Key mumbles, taking the candles and placing them on the cake. “This was sort of impromptu anyways.”
“Oh.”
Jonghyun opens a beer and hands it to Jinki first, a small smile on his face. “Hyung first.”
Jinki swallows and takes the seat next to Minho, trying not to shift uncomfortably too much. “Do they know?” He murmurs to Minho a few moments later, watching Key light the ten candles he had placed. A shrug is his answer. Frowning, he sips his beer.
Key starts singing happy birthday, and they all join in. Taemin looks happy, face alight with childish joy. It’s that expression that always jabs Jinki, a look at the child that Taemin never got the chance to fully be.
Jinki leans forward, reading the writing on the cake upside down and when he leans back, Minho’s arm is there and he wraps it around Jinki’s shoulders. Jinki freezes, wondering if he should lean forward or what. It’s not like he’s ever gotten any; the whole gay and then famous thing always dissuaded that. Though, Jinki recalls, a small half-smile slipping onto his face, he did go out with this one guy in England. So never gotten any is wrong, but Jinki has never been chased before, he’s never been seduced or any of the stuff that Minho’s pulling.
But it’s kind of nice. Minho’s fingers arch just over his arm, the pads resting lightly on his bicep, the rest of his arm emitting warmth.
“So you two are going out?” Taemin asks as Key serves cake onto plates. “Finally, really.”
Jinki frowns. “No. Why would you think that?”
“Minho’s arm,” Jonghyun says, mouth already stuffed with cake. It’s amazing how fast he can move sometimes.
“He’s always been affectionate,” Jinki rebounds, taking a plate from Key and uses the opportunity to shake the arm from his shoulder. “Nothing new.”
“Not really, not lately.”
“I want to go out with him,” Minho says and Jinki holds his breath as Minho leans forward, arms brushing, cologne filling his nose, to take a plate. “But I’ve been refused an answer.”
“Hyung,” Key says, gesturing the knife at him. “You can’t do that. It’s rude.”
Jinki wants to say nothing, but he’s held back for so long that he lets it slip. He’s figured that enough time has passed that he can say what he wants. “So you’re all so okay with it that you can now joke about it?”
It’s meant as a joke, half so, but it doesn’t come out the way he had wanted it to. They all pause, except for Minho who takes a bite of the cake, grimaces and puts it back down.
“What do you mean?” Jonghyun asks, setting his plate down. “Okay with what?”
Jinki swallows. “Homosexuality.”
“We’ve been okay with it for a long time,” Taemin says, eyebrows drawing together. “Why bring it up now?”
He swallows again. He can’t say anymore, not without hurting them, not without airing out such old grievances that would only reopen a wound- a wound that, for Jinki, had never healed. It’s why he’s still bitter, though he tries not to be, tries to never think about it. He has never gotten over what happened, has never forgotten being ignored, the way they fell silent, never touching him again. And Jinki has always craved love.
He finishes his beer and asks for another, which Jonghyun tosses to him. They all laugh when Jinki misses catching it, something he had done on purpose. Minho’s arm makes it back around his shoulders and Jinki is too tense to take any notice.
.
The cake is only half-eaten when they leave, Taemin carrying the box, Jonghyun’s keys jingling as they leave. The only one who stays is Minho.
“You can say it if you want to,” Minho says, with that rich voice of his. “You don’t have to hold back.”
“What’re you talking about?” Jinki asks, not looking at him, flicking a strand of hair back with a jerk of his head. He’s at the sink, washing the plates with too much energy, a stack of beer cans to rinse then recycle next to him.
“About accepting it. It was the best chance you were going to get.”
“I’m not about to blame you guys for what happened.”
Minho’s hand lands on his shoulder and Jinki tries, very hard, to not jump with surprise. He hadn’t realized that Minho was that close. “I do. I blame all of us.”
He swallows, turning to look at Minho. “You shouldn’t,” he mumbles, realizing the mistake of looking into Minho’s eyes immediately. Jinki can feel his body reacting immediately, leaning towards him, shoulders slumping, fingers loosing their slippery grasp on the plate in his hands.
“We let you down. I’m sorry.”
“You didn’t though. You never let me down.”
Minho’s hand slides down his shoulder to rub circles on his lower back and he leans in to press a kiss to Jinki’s jaw. His first reaction is to jerk away, but Minho’s arm circles his waist, fingers curved gently around his hipbone.
He smiles sadly at Minho. “You shouldn’t do this.”
“Why did you avoid me?” He asks, and Jinki picks the dish up again, dropping the sponge to rinse the plate off and tries to ignore Minho’s proximity.
“I don’t need to answer that.”
Minho stays close and kisses his jaw again, then presses light ones down the column of his throat, pulling at the collar of his shirt. Jinki gasps, pulling away and leaving the sink.
“I’m not going to give up,” Minho says, clearly not deterred by Jinki’s rejection. “Because I know you feel the same way.”
Jinki closes his eyes. “Minho, what I feel is unimportant. You discovered you were gay relatively recently and I don’t believe that you actually love me. It’s probably some sort of misplaced affection, but the likelihood of you actually caring for me romantically is so slim I refuse to believe it.”
Minho frowns. “I realized I was gay, or bisexual, because I realized that I loved you. It’s not misplaced and I’m insulted that you think so.”
Jinki swallows. “You should leave,” he mumbles, rapidly drying his hands as he leaves the kitchen. It’s too small a room for just the two of them. “Just go.”
But Minho catches him, hands circling his wrist. Jinki’s breath stutters.
“Why can’t you just give it a try?”
He’s too scared to move. He’s too scared for much of anything, because this is why he left SHINee. He was starting to feel like this, a sort of exuberant joy when they smiled at him, when they hugged him, eating meals together. As Minho steps closer, hand moving down to twine their fingers, another hand comes to trace the curve of his jaw. Then he hesitantly leans in to kiss him, and Jinki doesn’t move away.
“I hated all of you,” Jinki says, when Minho pulls away, eyes heavy-lidded. “I wanted to cry every day.”
“It’s okay now, though,” Minho whispers, fingers delicate on the top bone of his spine. It makes Jinki arch his spine, baring his neck to Minho.
“All I wanted,” Jinki continues, voice softer than a whisper. “Was to be loved.”
“Well, hyung,” Minho says, tone between serious and mischievous. “I guess I’m going to need to love you enough for four people.”
Jinki leans forward to press his smiling lips against Minho’s, kissing him slowly, taking all the time he needs and wants. “Yeah, I guess you’ll need to.”
...
a/n: okay I'm finally done with this ;;;; this has been in progress for so long I can hardly believe that I'm done. I didn't know how to end this, so I sort of just... ended it like this lol but whatever, it's finished and that's all that matters to me right now.
pg13
wc 7880
two months in the making ;;;;
His two syllable confession hangs in the air and the silence that follows is Jinki’s answer, he knows, because they stare at him, eyes wide, Jonghyun’s jaw slack, Key’s eyebrows rapidly pulling together. But after a couple moments pass, Jinki’s stomach roiling and feeling very much like vomiting, they start to rush and reassure him. Nothing will change, they say, things can go on as normal, but Jinki hears a note of falsity. He hears the lie and an echo of the future rings in it.
And Jinki doesn’t regret it. He doesn’t regret it when things go downhill slip-shod fast, when at concerts they don’t hug him like they once did, they don’t include him as before, their laughs half as happy and management makes a decision. They know what Jinki had confessed to at the kitchen table, had known since the beginning, but hadn’t cared as long as nothing changed.
But things changed for the worse and Korea reacts to what they believe is bullying but is in fact a separation that had been fated when Jinki had made his choice seven months ago, a choice to man up and tell the truth. So management calls him in to the office and Jinki, polite as he always is, bows and says hello to everyone he passes, exchanges pleasantries with a few, and is five minutes early to the meeting.
They’re asking him to leave of his own volition and he acquiesces with a broken heart.
Lee Jinki, stagename Onew, indicative of his warm, welcoming personality, leaves SHINee on February 8th, 2013 after 5 years.
.
Jinki goes to university. That had been his decision, a week after confessing, that when it came down to it, when he would be asked to quit, leave behind his life, he would educate himself, get a job teaching math at an elementary school. The idea appeals to him greatly, being a teacher and at an elementary school the kids will be less likely to know about SHINee and the disastrous ending their teacher had with the group.
Dreams of seven years ago, when he attended school and trained to be an idol, have crashed, burned and left a wake of bitterness in him that he cannot destroy no matter how hard he tries. But Jinki is strong, he’s learned that he’s gotta be, that weakness is not acceptable.
His parents love him and that’s all he needs, really. He doesn’t need any of them to call him, to ask him how he’s doing, if he’s eating properly, if he’ll love anyone ever, but it would be nice if they did. Not necessary though. Jinki will learn how to not be lonely. He will learn that being alone in the world is possible.
.
He starts university the following fall, half a year after he left SHINee. He wanted to start fresh, at the beginning of the year and give rumors time to fade. He looks different than a year ago, skinnier because he’s not hungry, and hair longer than necessary. But Jinki doesn’t really want to cut it, so it remains long and reminds him of when he did musicals, of promoting and having hair that fell in his face constantly, pushing it away and singing on stage.
There are still whispers in the hallways of the university and Jinki ignores them. He moves on because this is what Jinki does, ultimately. He lives unobtrusively in the fashion that suits him best and continues his life because life will continue no matter what happens.
.
October 21 he receives a letter from Taemin and he reads it, wondering if he’s eager or sick as he scans the familiar handwriting.
Taemin, it seems, misses him. Key misses him, Jonghyun misses him and Minho is silent. But, Taemin writes, no one’s ever sure about what Minho thinks.
Or feels, Jinki adds. They’re separate things, thoughts and feelings, and Jinki knows the difference. He learned the difference.
.
They lied, Jinki thinks as he watches TV mid-evening, watching a recording of Strong Heart. They don’t miss him. They lied. Taemin lied. And he also sees that they don’t need him, that their new song, new album, doesn’t contain him at all and it’s beautiful because they know who they are. They know who they are even without him.
He calls Jonghyun a little before midnight, right after finishing a paper and submitting it online. He picks up after two rings, voice quiet as he says hello.
“How are you?” Jinki asks, polite, always so polite. “I saw you on Strong Heart.”
Jonghyun is silent. “I’m sorry, hyung, I’m sorry.”
“What are you saying sorry for,” Jinki laughs, leaning back in his swivel chair, overhead light too bright. “There’s nothing to apologize for.”
“We’re sorry for everything. We are, we really are, we didn’t know that you would-”
“It’s not know,” Jinki cuts in, “It’s think, Jonghyun, it’s think. I did, though, and I planned for it. Don’t apologize for something you weren’t capable of knowing. It’ll only make me hate you.”
Jonghyun gives half a sob, cutting himself off and there’s a beat of silence before he hears Minho, deep voice soft in his ear.
“Onew-hyung?”
Jinki sighs.
“It’s just Jinki now Minho, I’m Onew no longer.”
Minho is silent. “Jinki-hyung, we are sorry. If we could change what happened, we would, we would do anything to have you here again.”
“You only think this because I’ve been gone. I clearly remember our last concert together, don’t you? I have never felt more alone. This is just you trying to make yourself feel better and I’m not going to accept any apologies from any of you.”
Then, defeated, Jinki hangs up.
If only he hadn’t said anything, if only he had lived with himself for a while longer, until everything had ended. He could have lived happy with them and then would have faded into obscurity, and there would have never been all of this judgement. There never would have been this heartbreak, the phantom limb of a previous life overshadowing every moment.
.
December 14th, when the first snowfall of the year is predicted to be the next day, Minho appears at his doorstep and it is desperately gallant. Jinki exits, closes the door behind him, because he doesn’t want his parents to see him.
“Can I help you?”
Minho tries to smile at him. “I thought I’d say happy birthday.”
Jinki smiles at him. “Thank you.”
They stand like so for a moment or two before slight tremors start going through Jinki’s body from the cold. “Is that all?” He tries not to be hopeful, but it’s a lost battle.
Minho doesn’t say anything, gives no indication that he had even heard him and just stares at him. His face is impassive, stoic, except for a slight upwards twist at the corner of his mouth that has always been present. It’s deceitful.
“Why did you tell us? No one would have known if you hadn’t.”
Jinki stares at him, blinking as snow starts to fall four hours earlier than tomorrow. “I was sick of it, Minho, sick of lying. So,” he shrugs, “I told.”
He shifts then, impatiently, the world in his expression. Jinki wasn’t expecting anything from anyone, but it still hurts as Minho turns away and leaves without saying anything more.
Probably because he’d been lying to himself all along, about not expecting anything. He’d wanted to be accepted, to be loved for who he is, because they were a family and because nothing would change.
.
New Year’s is quiet and Jinki spends it in front of the tv, watching people he once knew and people he hardly talks to anymore and drinks an entire case of beer, gets drunk, and wrestles with his friends, winning each drunken match.
.
Spring semester Jinki studies abroad, going to England. His English is decent, after college level studying, and England is very different than when he’d been before.
He sends each of the members a postcard, not saying much, stuff like ‘this is the Tower’, ‘I ate at this cafe once’, ‘oh this spot is really touristy and we never went’ and ‘this looks like you.’ On Minho’s he wrote ‘I wish you hadn’t come by.’
.
He returns in the summer, English much better, and friendlier. People smile at him now because they’re friends with him, instead of smiling because he’s famous, instead of pointing and whispering.
Key starts texting him when he finds out he’s back, demanding information about England and Jinki is surprised that his English is now better. Well, yeah, that sort of makes sense, but it’s a throwback, a strong reminder that time changes people.
They talk about stupid things at first, Key for once trying to be more delicate, before he throws it to the wind and talks about the music shows, practicing choreography, how Jonghyun’s a bitch and ‘accidentally’ dropped his tooth brush in the toilet. He brings up Taemin and Minho as well, how they’re closer friends now, which Jinki doesn’t want to hear.
He texts Key about classes, about teaching, dreams, moving out of his parent’s and reveling in the privacy he now has, sleeping in on Saturday’s.
And then Jonghyun starts texting him, Taemin following two months later, and Jinki feels bitter.
So now they talk to him, he thinks. Now that they’ve lived without him, now that he’s different in an acceptable way. They’ve probably forgotten, though Jonghyun asks him sometime in October about how he knew he was gay, and Jinki doesn’t have an answer and ignores the text. Neither bring it up again.
.
On Minho’s birthday, Jinki tentatively texts him ‘happy birthday’ and doesn’t receive a reply.
Jinki’s fine with that. Really.
.
They all come over on his birthday, Key leading the way into his apartment, boasting about how they were careful about the sasaengs and how no one will know they were here. Jinki laughs and offers hospitality.
“Got any soju?” Jonghyun asks, going through a pile of papers full of notes on a table and making faces. “Taemin’s been bragging lately about how he’s a great drinker lately and we should prove him wrong.”
“Some. I have more beer though,” Jinki says, shrugging, watching as Taemin and then Minho file in, politely taking their shoes off. “I had friends over last night and they prefer soju to beer. There’s a convenience store close by and I could run out and get anything we need- I haven’t really prepared much, sorry.”
Taemin smiles at him, closed mouth, and it’s a punch to his gut how much older Taemin looks. He’s a man now, Jinki tells himself, an adult, no longer a teenaged boy trying to grow up too fast.
“Whatever you have is fine, hyung,” Key says, poking through his kitchen already. “I’m surprised you have such a decent kitchen though.”
Jinki bites his lip to keep himself from protesting and preventing him from banging his pots and pans together as he rifles through everything. “Stop going through his stuff,” Minho says, standing next to Jinki. “It’s rude.”
Key glances at Minho. “Since when have you cared?”
“It’s fine,” Jinki says to Key and then repeats it, quieter, to Minho. “It’s fine, really, don’t worry. But come in, please, make yourself at home.”
Minho looks at him, gazes fleetingly meeting before Jinki moves into the kitchen to take out the cheese, crackers and beer.
“Happy birthday,” Taemin says as Jinki sits next to him on the couch, the five of them arrayed in his living room. “Sorry for forcing you for this, but your precise birthday was the only day we could get free.”
Jinki smiles, taking a sip from his beer. “Taemin, that is not something to apologize for. But tell me, what’s been going on? How’s Japan?”
Key frowns. “Same as usual. Our Japanese is much better than before.”
Minho, sitting on the other side of Jinki, shifts throughout the entire evening. Everyone other than him has a couple beers and Jinki wants to touch him, pat his shoulder, squeeze his knee, but he knows he’d be rebuffed, rejected.
So he doesn’t and continues drinking, laughing loudly and trying not to ask why they changed so much.
.
Afterwards Taemin frequently comes by. He tells Jinki little things, like Key tripping and spilling a cup of water over Jonghyun, about a difficult piece of choreography for their newest Japanese single.
Jinki absorbs it and finds that he doesn’t care as much as he used to.
“What about Minho?” He asks, mid-January, padding around in a sweatshirt and slippers that match in their raggedness, several articles laid out in front of him, waiting to be read. “How’s he?”
Taemin winces and Jinki smiles while remembering how Taemin was never good at hiding his first instinctive reaction.
“Minho’s…” He’s contemplative and Jinki waits. Patience, he tells himself, patience is a good thing, good things come to those who wait.
“To be honest, hyung, Minho’s been weird since you left. Like, more closed off? I don’t know how to say it right, but it’s not like he doesn’t have anything to say. He’s always starting something and then never finishing it- which, to be honest, is more like you than him.”
Taemin pauses and Jinki takes the opportunity to set the water heater on.
“He disappeared on your birthday and was missing for a couple days. We think he visited you, but, you know, he said absolutely nothing. About you, where he was, nothing at all. He’s a mystery.”
Jinki is silent. “He did visit me.”
Taemin sighs and slouches in his seat; Jinki chuckles and nudges him. “Sit proper, you’re an idol aren’t you?”
“Doesn’t Minho strike you as really heterosexual?”
Jinki smiles, confused, and he hears the whistling of his water heater. “Want ramyun?” He asks, getting up and pouring some into the plastic cup. “I’ve got kimchi and beef flavors.”
“Yeah, you bet I do,” Taemin replies, scrambling off the couch, almost slipping but having too much grace to actually do so.
.
The library is comfortable, silent except for echoes and hushed whispers. Jinki spends a great deal of time at the library, because no matter how much time passes he will not be used to living alone. He misses living with four others, sharing space and food. He’s supposed to shop for himself, but he still catches himself buying extra meat for Taemin, seeing earrings for Key, hears a song Jonghyun would like and a pair of Minho’s favorite sneakers. He buys it all, makes a pile in his room of all the items and stuffs Taemin’s face with the food.
After all, the others hardly visit. It’d be hard to feed people who he never sees. In this way, Taemin becomes Jinki’s saving grace.
.
Two tickets arrive in the mail, the envelope addressed in Key’s handwriting. The two tickets, a note says, are for him and a friend for SHINee’s last concert.
Jinki’s eye is caught at ‘last’ and wonders what sort of friend Key intended.
There’s also a piece of paper stuck in and Jinki bursts out laughing when he finally recognizes the drawing as SHINee when they were five. He calls Jonghyun in the evening, when he thinks they’ll be done with schedules and is almost right in his timing.
“The drawing’s great,” Jinki says and Jonghyun laughs.
“I’m no better than three years ago, but I still like drawing.”
“Why did you do the five of us?”
“Because, hyung,” Jonghyun says, sounding amused. “SHINee isn’t SHINee without you.”
Jinki laughs- he wants to call Jonghyun on his bullshit, but he doesn’t. He also doesn’t ask about when the official statement about disbanding will be released. These two things, however, will not fester inside him. He’s learned better.
.
The concert is amazing and Jinki goes alone, sells the other ticket, and wears a hoodie that obscures most of his face. After all, this would be the worst place to be recognized. It’s the first time that Jinki watches the four of them from the audience and there have not been many performances that he’s watched since he quit. His singing parts have been redistributed, dances modified and it doesn’t quite hurt, the feeling is too simple for a four lettered word.
He leaves just before the concert ends, not needing to be there to know what he would see. He finds the backstage door and he’s admitted after the bodyguards get one good look at his face. The smells of backstage are familiar, sweat and makeup, leather and something wet.
He follows the sound of laughter to where the four boys (men now, really, Jinki corrects himself) are lounging around, limbs splayed everywhere. They’re beautiful, they always have been, but Jinki hasn’t wanted to cry like this in two years.
“Great show,” he says, letting the tears linger in his eyes. “You guys did great.”
“We did, didn’t we,” Taemin sighs, content, slouching further in his seat. “Though I’m kind of glad this is all over.”
“Don’t lie,” Key says and Jinki can see tear streaks on his beautiful, angular face despite the smile. It’s always been Key’s style to laugh and cry at the same time. “What will we do without SHINee?”
“Well,” Jinki says, shifting once, twice, then forces himself to stop. “You could go to art school.”
There’s a moment of silence and they all stare at him. Jinki smiles charmingly back.
“Ever the optimist, huh,” Key mutters and tension fills the room.
“I’m going to head home,” Jinki says, after a few more moments of silence pass, all of them avoiding looking at each other. “See you later.”
He leaves, closes the door gently behind him and is halfway down the hall when Minho catches him, bony fingers wrapped around his wrist. “I’ll give you a ride.”
“I’m fine with the train.”
They stare at each other for a moment, Minho’s grip loosening to the point where Jinki’s wrist slips, falls, out of his hand. “Tonight, just tonight, let me drive you home.”
“But-”
“It’s SHINee’s last concert, hyung,” Minho cuts him off. “No matter the time that’s passed, you’re going to get mobbed.”
Jinki sighs. “Fine then, but straight there and then you should go to the dinner and party.”
“How’d you know?” Minho asks, walking and Jinki keeping pace.
He smiles, lop-sidedly, half-heatedly. “We always did, before. Always.”
To this, Minho says nothing. After all, he never says anything, why start now?
.
“You’ve gained weight,” Minho comments ten minutes later, paused at a red light. “You look good.”
“Compared to when?”
“What?”
“I look good compared to when?” He repeats, patient. It’s the best virtue left to him.
“From- when do you think?”
Pause, yet another moment of silence to join the string of silences that stretch between them.
“I eat what I want now.”
“Like what?”
“Oh, you know, just whatever. I cook a lot; I’ve even started to make my own kimchi.”
Minho hums, the sound low in the car. It hangs between them, dangling in the otherwise silence.
“Thanks, by the way.”
“For what?”
“Saying I look good.”
Minho doesn’t say anything, but his hand curls around the wheel, moving upwards in a jerky movement to rest at the top. Now, Jinki thinks, there’s yet another barrier between them, this one physical. He’s putting it there, between them, on purpose.
“You always looked good though,” Minho mumbles later, pulling up at Jinki’s apartment.
“What?” Jinki asks, the jingle of keys louder than Minho. They stare at each other, Minho’s face a tragic painting, light splaying across the smooth, hallowed planes of his bones.
“How’s school?”
“You ask now?” Jinki asks, laughing. “But school’s good, the usual.” His hand is on the door handle, and the moment it takes for him to pull then push is interminably long.
“I’ll text you.”
“Sure,” and Jinki smiles, wide and semi-artificial, a smile just for Minho, as he steps out of the car. Minho won’t text him, he thinks as he unlocks the front door to the building and watches Minho drive away. He won’t.
.
Key does go to art school. Jonghyun starts a solo career, acts in a musical, and Taemin goes to college. Minho applies to college, but acting gigs pile up and he ends up not attending as often as he should.
Jinki has a year left by the time things settle to this point, by the time that SHINee is well and truly gone and Minho does text him. They’re simple things, like ‘good morning’ or pictures of the sky or food, sometimes emotes are included, cute ones that he wouldn’t have associated with Minho.
Taemin still frequently comes by and asks Jinki to read his essays over, badgers him for English help and Jinki sometimes just spends the time talking about England and what he used to do. He shows Taemin all the pictures he took and Taemin pays attention like he used to when they were younger and Jinki was advising him on singing.
.
Jinki graduates and Minho is the only one who shows up, which surprises Jinki. He never would have thought that Minho would be the one to attend, that Taemin would be too busy, Jonghyun performing and Key out of the country. Minho was always the busiest one of them all.
Minho gives him a dozen roses and his intention is impossible for Jinki to figure out.
“Congratulations hyung,” he says, deep voice, tall, black suit and looking better than Jinki in his off-black graduation gown.
“Thanks.”
They stand there for a few moments before a few of Jinki’s friends come up to them, one of them slinging an arm around his shoulders. Jinki laughs, turning with a smile, Minho’s presence receding to a corner.
Because Minho isn’t a part of his life anymore. That’s what Jinki tells himself, but then when he glances at Minho, he feels scalded by the glower and anger on his face.
“I’ll see you later,” Minho says abruptly and Jinki’s no longer happy. This was supposed to be a happy occasion and all he can think is why Minho looked like that, why he’s angry, why he’s suddenly leaving, if he was actually free or if he cleared up his schedule for this.
“Just a moment,” Jinki tells his friends, who obligingly comply and Jinki follows Minho to his car. “Why are you angry?” He asks after Minho refuses to look at him. “Did I do something?”
“No, nothing at all.”
Jinki’s not an idiot and he can hear the acid.
“Don’t lie to me.”
“You have no right to tell me what to do.” His voice is oddly blank now, laced of all emotion. “You left us.”
“I didn’t leave-”
“You didn’t have to say anything,” Minho now turns to him, his large eyes wider than Jinki’s ever seen them. “You didn’t hyung, so don’t tell me bullshit like it was festering inside of you, don’t tell me that you couldn’t lie any longer because telling us was making us lie, made all of your words at the beginning a huge fucking lie. Don’t.”
Jinki doesn’t know which hits him the hardest: the lack of tone or what he’s saying.
“I’m sorry.”
Minho laughs, broken, sharp metal, a knife to Jinki’s heart. “I don’t want an apology, Jinki, I want to go back five years ago, when we came out with Lucifer, when we were at the height of our career- any time before you told us you were gay.”
“We’ll talk later,” Jinki says a few moments later when Minho’s phone rings. Probably a manager or a publicity agent or- these thoughts are no business of his and Jinki takes a step backwards. “I’ll call.”
“I won’t pick up,” Minho says, ignoring the phone and getting into his car.
.
Jinki remembers, while getting drunk that night, friends rowdy around him, what Taemin said once.
“Doesn’t Minho strike you as really heterosexual?”
And he wonders why he remembers that and he also wonders why it was always Minho, when he was a skull atop a skeleton, when Minho grew up without his help and when he was the first to try approaching him.
.
He calls four times, the first one the next morning when he was hungover and the following three over the span of a few days. Minho keeps his word and doesn’t pick up any of the calls.
Gut instinct tells him to leave it as is, but gut instinct had told him to leave the closet and Jinki’s not as sure about that decision as he once was.
.
Then, almost exactly a week later, when Jinki is soon to start working as a teacher, Minho rings his doorbell.
Jinki lets him in, offers him something to drink, to eat (both offers are declined) and tries not to think about the mess of his apartment, with his graduation stuff still scattered around and the mess of books by his bed and everywhere else.
“Sorry it’s a mess,” he says, trying not to be too direct, to not ask one of the million questions that’s been haunting his mind.
Minho doesn’t say anything, surveys the living room and takes a seat at the couch without saying anything. Jinki swallows and sits at his card table, so they both have to turn their heads to look at each other. It is intentional.
Jinki has several questions, unformed ones that he’s merely brushed the edges of but he knows they’re there, but he’s too scared to broach any topic. He doesn’t know Minho anymore. He’s not even sure if he could classify Minho as his friend- an old friend, maybe, a previous colleague, but friend? Jinki balks at the word.
“I still don’t understand. I’ve tried, you know, all this time, all these years, to understand. I don’t. I can’t.”
Jinki sits a little straighter. “Why I told?”
Minho tilts his head, hair reflecting the overhead light. “No. Why you let us act the way we did. You were Onew, our leader, and you could have at least tried to put us in line. You could have done it and I don’t understand why you didn’t.”
He pauses before he answers, wondering if he should fold his arms on the table in front of him or if that’s too formal. “I don’t think I really had a reason for that, except that I thought I should let it run it’s natural course.”
“Natural course?” Minho echoes derisively. “If the world had let Hitler run his course, where would we be now? Hyung, a natural course isn’t necessarily the best course.”
“I thought it was for the best,” Jinki says in a small voice, resisting a very strong urge into sink in his seat.
Minho doesn’t say anything for three beats (Jinki counts for focus). “And now?”
“I don’t know,” Jinki mutters. “Is this what you wanted to talk about?”
“No- yes. Maybe.”
Jinki purses his lips. “Never knew you for indecisiveness.”
“You never knew me for much, though,” Minho bites back, only now seeming to relax, his tilted head falling against the top of the couch, body sagging lower. Jinki takes this as a cue for him to do so as well, pulling a leg up to rest his chin on his knee.
“Are you implying something?”
He shrugs, his head turning to look at him, ear pressed against the cushion. “Am I?”
Jinki shifts, uncomfortable under Minho’s gaze. “You weren’t this evasive either.”
A crease appears on Minho’s face momentarily, but he smooths it away with a practiced, actor’s smile that Jinki doesn’t know but recognizes it from seeing it on his television screen. The smile makes him even more uncomfortable.
“Sure you don’t want anything? I’ve got some beer, water, juice, tea, I recently bought some good oolong leaves from Taiwan and-”
“Water, please. With ice.”
Jinki’s leg falls back to the ground with a heavy sound which lingers for too long as he scrambles out of his seat and towards his kitchen. He can feel Minho’s eyes following him, a trailing fire that lingers at the base of his spine. His hands shake a little as he grabs the purifier from his fridge, pouring it before he remembers the request for ice and slops a little over the edge as he puts in three. Condensation is already forming on the glass.
“Here you go,” he mumbles as he passes the glass to Minho, who’s eyes are watching him and not the glass. It almost slips through both their hands, but Minho squeezes just in time, fingers firmly wrapped around the slippery glass. They’re just as bony as before, knuckles wrinkled and knobby, palm large.
“That was close,” Jinki murmurs, forsaking the table to sit on an armchair across from Minho. He bought the furniture used with money from his SHINee bank account, an account which he’s always reluctant to use. He got a job as soon as he could and created a new account to deposit that money in. The money from SHINee is somehow not to be used, sacred, special. That Minho is now sitting on a couch that he had spent hours agonizing over, wondering if he should get a used or new one, what colors, what fabric, means something he can’t figure out.
“C-can I ask you something, myself?” He asks, cursing himself for the stutter.
Minho smiles easily at him and it’s still a smile that Jinki recognizes but doesn’t know. “Of course. I did sort of barge in here.”
Jinki smiles uneasily back at him. The air is tense and he wonders why Minho doesn’t show the tension that he’s gotta be feeling, that there’s no earthly possibility for Minho to be as relaxed and at ease as he looks. “Why are you telling me this now? You’ve had so many other chances, why tell me more than four years later?”
Minho’s smile doesn’t lessen and Jinki mistakenly thinks that the corners tighten.
“Like when?”
“In the car,” Jinki immediately replies, remembering the leather seat, the stoplight, fingers tightening on the steering wheel. “You could have then. My birthday, whenever you’ve come over, we text, you could have asked to meet up or something.”
“I wasn’t as bitter then,” he says, tone thoughtful. “Nor vocal. SHINee disbanding changed everyone. Well, everyone but you.”
Jinki swallows, wondering if this is a dig at him. “Bitter?”
“Yeah, I was always a little bitter that you did what you did…” He trails off and Jinki doesn’t try to interrupt him while he’s thinking. “I guess I was jealous of you as well. All along, though I’ve been more jealous recently.”
“Why?”
“You haven’t figured it out?” Minho asks, eyebrows raising. Jinki wants to throw something at him because he shouldn’t be so easy-going about this, he shouldn’t be switching around and confusing Jinki. He thought that this would be a confrontation or something, not… this. “You were supposed to be the smart one,” he snorts.
“Well excuse me,” Jinki snaps at him, “but I am the only one with a degree from SHINee
“Give it a few years and then say that.”
“Obvious, because then Taemin will have graduated.”
Minho doesn’t say anything and just smiles at him. And it’s the actor’s smile no longer, but a grin Jinki recognizes from New Zealand, when they were young, from concerts so long ago, when they used to share dukbokki. His heart aches.
“Was there anything else?” He asks, staring out the window, not able to look at Minho anymore.
“I thought you had more questions,” Minho says, taking another sip from his cup. Jinki hastily looks back away, telling himself that it hadn’t been on purpose, that he’s not sneaking looks at Minho, the adams apple, long lashes, slender limbs.
“I don’t know if I want to ask them,” Jinki murmurs in reply, swallowing. “Because I don’t think I’ll like your answer.”
“Then I have another question for you. How did you know?”
“Know what?” Jinki asks warily, already five times sure that he’s not going to like his answer.
“That you were gay.”
Okay, thinks Jinki as he blinks. That’s easier. He supposes, distantly, that he might have been scared that he would ask him something more personal (somehow). Like if he’s had sex, if he’s ever actually loved someone, those sorts of things. Thing he wasn’t sure he could tell Minho.
“I knew before SHINee. I’ve known for years.”
The smile slips away and Minho’s eyes are larger than ever before, staring at him with a blank expression. He’s always been good at those, Jinki remembers, blank face, staring at seemingly nothing. It’s unnerving, though, to be pinned under that gaze.
Jinki smiles changes, shifting and edging along vague boundaries. “I’ve known since I was a teen. It was never anything like liking dolls, or pink, anything like that, but more of an inclination? I chatted with girls more easily than boys and I was always staring at boys in high school. It was the natural conclusion.”
Minho remains silent, staring at him, and Jinki continues blabbering.
“Management knew from the beginning, they did, I swear. I told them straight up that I was gay and they said that they didn’t really care, as long as I was careful, as long as it never came between us, stuff like that. And, well, I just got… tired. Of lying. That’s why I told, in the end, I was sick of hiding and I was getting more and more careless. And-” Jinki stops himself before he starts treading the territory of admiring the apples of Taemin’s cheeks, Key’s muscular legs, the texture of Jonghyun’s hair, Minho’s arms.
“I’m sorry, hyung,” Minho says, head falling into his hands, after a continued pause of silence. “I’m so sorry. I thought that you were more like me, that you sort of figured it out along the way.”
Jinki blinks. “And how did you find out?”
Minho grins at him and it’s a grin that is both unfamiliar and unrecognizable. He doesn’t know this expression, feral and alight with some joy. “It was you, hyung, it was you.”
“That’s not cryptic,” Jinki mumbles back, cataloging each of their conversations since he left- but it’s an impossible task.
“Come on,” he wheedles. “I can’t believe you didn’t have a clue. You had to have known something.”
“I didn’t know,” Jinki says, standing up, suddenly feeling reluctant to sit still and starts pacing back and forth. “At all. I always thought you were totally, completely straight. You were the straightest of us all. Like, ramrod, meter stick straight. Can’t get any straighter than you.”
“Have you always paced?” Minho asks, eyes watching him bemusedly.
“What?” Jinki asks, distractedly, and still nothing leaps out. Nothing other than maybe a slip of a hint at graduation, Minho closing his car door, unexpectedly angry. “Sometimes.” Minho hums and Jinki bites his lip, stopping and staring at him. “Since when?”
“A little after our last concert, actually. I had a kiss scene and it was wrong.” Minho smiles charmingly at him, the fake one. Jinki frowns.
“I need a drink,” he mutters to himself, heading towards his kitchen.
“I have water,” Minho calls after him.
“Something stronger than that,” Jinki says, mostly under his breath. “Much stronger.” He hunts through his cupboards and finds nothing other than a forgotten beer can shoved in a corner. He takes it out anyways, ready to settle for any drop of alcohol, but the expiration date was four months ago.
“You had to kiss a girl, then?” He says, going back to his living room. Minho’s no longer sitting, but looking around his room, poking through a pile of books. He clears his throat.
“Can I borrow this book?” Minho says, not embarrassed to be poking around in the slightest.
“Sure,” Jinki says, not even looking at the title. “But… Minho, what are you hoping to accomplish?”
Minho smiles and tucks the book under his arm. “Thanks, hyung, but that’s a conversation for another day.”
“I think,” Jinki says slowly, watching Minho as he walks out of the room to his entryway. “That after everything, I deserve to know.”
The book is set on the high table by his door as Minho bends down to slip his shoes on. When he’s done, straightened, long fingers brushing his shirt down, Minho smiles widely at Jinki and this smile Jinki knows from back in their trainee days, all the way up until he confessed, soft at the edges, trust-worthy, loving.
“I realized, hyung,” Minho says, opening the door. “Because I found out I loved you.”
Jinki has a moment to respond, which he wastes by uselessly blinking, wondering why such a sequence of words smoothly slid out of Minho’s mouth, and then Minho’s gone. He breathes deep and tells himself that he hasn’t secretly been waiting for Minho all along and that the cologne in the air is his imagination.
.
Teaching is both what he did and did not expect. He expected to have good and bad kids in his class, expected it to be a little boring after a while, but hadn’t expected to fall in love with it as much as he does. He knew that he’d like it, Jinki wasn’t about to do something he doesn’t care much for after all, but not to this extent. Kids are a joy he’d never known before.
Jinki doesn’t pick up when Minho calls him, deja vu filling him each time his phone rings. Minho even gets Taemin to call him, but after that first attempt Jinki doesn’t pick up for any of SHINee.
.
They stage it as a celebration, though Jinki believes that the celebration would have happened without Minho’s desperation to contact him. Jonghyun knocks on his door, Key, Taemin and Minho behind him.
“We know you’re there,” Jonghyun yells, pounding harder on his door. “Open up hyung!”
Grimacing, he opens the door. “What?” He growls. “I have work tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow’s Sunday,” Key says, smirking at him as they file in and Minho is last, Taemin bouncing inside with a plastic crown on his head.
“You’re avoiding me.”
“Damn right I am,” Jinki snaps back, shutting the door after Minho and walking back to his living room. “What are you guys here for?”
“Taemin’s birthday,” Key says as he places a cake on the table. Jonghyun is rooting through his kitchen, most likely looking for a cake cutter. Jinki frowns.
“His birthday was this past Tuesday,” he mutters. “And why here?”
“Tonight’s the only night you can drink, right?” Minho says, next to him suddenly.
The change in their relationship is too much, too fast. Jinki can’t handle it and immediately goes to his kitchen to help Jonghyun find everything. “It’s here,” he says, pulling a drawer open. Jonghyun grabs it and runs to Key with it. Key only berates him, asking him where the candles and fire-starter are. Sighing, Jinki starts searching for the candles he bought two years ago, for another friend’s party. They’re not new, but better than nothing, he supposes.
“I only have matches,” he tells Key as he stands next to him. There’s only one seat available and it’s next to Minho, but Jinki’s not sure if he’s ready for that.
“That’s fine,” Key mumbles, taking the candles and placing them on the cake. “This was sort of impromptu anyways.”
“Oh.”
Jonghyun opens a beer and hands it to Jinki first, a small smile on his face. “Hyung first.”
Jinki swallows and takes the seat next to Minho, trying not to shift uncomfortably too much. “Do they know?” He murmurs to Minho a few moments later, watching Key light the ten candles he had placed. A shrug is his answer. Frowning, he sips his beer.
Key starts singing happy birthday, and they all join in. Taemin looks happy, face alight with childish joy. It’s that expression that always jabs Jinki, a look at the child that Taemin never got the chance to fully be.
Jinki leans forward, reading the writing on the cake upside down and when he leans back, Minho’s arm is there and he wraps it around Jinki’s shoulders. Jinki freezes, wondering if he should lean forward or what. It’s not like he’s ever gotten any; the whole gay and then famous thing always dissuaded that. Though, Jinki recalls, a small half-smile slipping onto his face, he did go out with this one guy in England. So never gotten any is wrong, but Jinki has never been chased before, he’s never been seduced or any of the stuff that Minho’s pulling.
But it’s kind of nice. Minho’s fingers arch just over his arm, the pads resting lightly on his bicep, the rest of his arm emitting warmth.
“So you two are going out?” Taemin asks as Key serves cake onto plates. “Finally, really.”
Jinki frowns. “No. Why would you think that?”
“Minho’s arm,” Jonghyun says, mouth already stuffed with cake. It’s amazing how fast he can move sometimes.
“He’s always been affectionate,” Jinki rebounds, taking a plate from Key and uses the opportunity to shake the arm from his shoulder. “Nothing new.”
“Not really, not lately.”
“I want to go out with him,” Minho says and Jinki holds his breath as Minho leans forward, arms brushing, cologne filling his nose, to take a plate. “But I’ve been refused an answer.”
“Hyung,” Key says, gesturing the knife at him. “You can’t do that. It’s rude.”
Jinki wants to say nothing, but he’s held back for so long that he lets it slip. He’s figured that enough time has passed that he can say what he wants. “So you’re all so okay with it that you can now joke about it?”
It’s meant as a joke, half so, but it doesn’t come out the way he had wanted it to. They all pause, except for Minho who takes a bite of the cake, grimaces and puts it back down.
“What do you mean?” Jonghyun asks, setting his plate down. “Okay with what?”
Jinki swallows. “Homosexuality.”
“We’ve been okay with it for a long time,” Taemin says, eyebrows drawing together. “Why bring it up now?”
He swallows again. He can’t say anymore, not without hurting them, not without airing out such old grievances that would only reopen a wound- a wound that, for Jinki, had never healed. It’s why he’s still bitter, though he tries not to be, tries to never think about it. He has never gotten over what happened, has never forgotten being ignored, the way they fell silent, never touching him again. And Jinki has always craved love.
He finishes his beer and asks for another, which Jonghyun tosses to him. They all laugh when Jinki misses catching it, something he had done on purpose. Minho’s arm makes it back around his shoulders and Jinki is too tense to take any notice.
.
The cake is only half-eaten when they leave, Taemin carrying the box, Jonghyun’s keys jingling as they leave. The only one who stays is Minho.
“You can say it if you want to,” Minho says, with that rich voice of his. “You don’t have to hold back.”
“What’re you talking about?” Jinki asks, not looking at him, flicking a strand of hair back with a jerk of his head. He’s at the sink, washing the plates with too much energy, a stack of beer cans to rinse then recycle next to him.
“About accepting it. It was the best chance you were going to get.”
“I’m not about to blame you guys for what happened.”
Minho’s hand lands on his shoulder and Jinki tries, very hard, to not jump with surprise. He hadn’t realized that Minho was that close. “I do. I blame all of us.”
He swallows, turning to look at Minho. “You shouldn’t,” he mumbles, realizing the mistake of looking into Minho’s eyes immediately. Jinki can feel his body reacting immediately, leaning towards him, shoulders slumping, fingers loosing their slippery grasp on the plate in his hands.
“We let you down. I’m sorry.”
“You didn’t though. You never let me down.”
Minho’s hand slides down his shoulder to rub circles on his lower back and he leans in to press a kiss to Jinki’s jaw. His first reaction is to jerk away, but Minho’s arm circles his waist, fingers curved gently around his hipbone.
He smiles sadly at Minho. “You shouldn’t do this.”
“Why did you avoid me?” He asks, and Jinki picks the dish up again, dropping the sponge to rinse the plate off and tries to ignore Minho’s proximity.
“I don’t need to answer that.”
Minho stays close and kisses his jaw again, then presses light ones down the column of his throat, pulling at the collar of his shirt. Jinki gasps, pulling away and leaving the sink.
“I’m not going to give up,” Minho says, clearly not deterred by Jinki’s rejection. “Because I know you feel the same way.”
Jinki closes his eyes. “Minho, what I feel is unimportant. You discovered you were gay relatively recently and I don’t believe that you actually love me. It’s probably some sort of misplaced affection, but the likelihood of you actually caring for me romantically is so slim I refuse to believe it.”
Minho frowns. “I realized I was gay, or bisexual, because I realized that I loved you. It’s not misplaced and I’m insulted that you think so.”
Jinki swallows. “You should leave,” he mumbles, rapidly drying his hands as he leaves the kitchen. It’s too small a room for just the two of them. “Just go.”
But Minho catches him, hands circling his wrist. Jinki’s breath stutters.
“Why can’t you just give it a try?”
He’s too scared to move. He’s too scared for much of anything, because this is why he left SHINee. He was starting to feel like this, a sort of exuberant joy when they smiled at him, when they hugged him, eating meals together. As Minho steps closer, hand moving down to twine their fingers, another hand comes to trace the curve of his jaw. Then he hesitantly leans in to kiss him, and Jinki doesn’t move away.
“I hated all of you,” Jinki says, when Minho pulls away, eyes heavy-lidded. “I wanted to cry every day.”
“It’s okay now, though,” Minho whispers, fingers delicate on the top bone of his spine. It makes Jinki arch his spine, baring his neck to Minho.
“All I wanted,” Jinki continues, voice softer than a whisper. “Was to be loved.”
“Well, hyung,” Minho says, tone between serious and mischievous. “I guess I’m going to need to love you enough for four people.”
Jinki leans forward to press his smiling lips against Minho’s, kissing him slowly, taking all the time he needs and wants. “Yeah, I guess you’ll need to.”
...
a/n: okay I'm finally done with this ;;;; this has been in progress for so long I can hardly believe that I'm done. I didn't know how to end this, so I sort of just... ended it like this lol but whatever, it's finished and that's all that matters to me right now.