love me, please
onho
pg13
wc 3508
Something is sitting funny in his tummy, though he only uses funny and tummy because he likes the why it rhymes, it’s one of his idiosyncrasies, but there really is something in his stomach that’s weighing him down, like if he was in one of those New York mob movies he wouldn’t need his feet cemented because this thing in his midriff would drown him without any help. And that, really, is the only way he knows how to explain it, that he’s having trouble sitting straight, imaginary pole down his back when both seated and standing, that when he’s in bed, turning from side to side to his back and even trying belly down, he just feels it, festering, an untreated wound with an infection.
He hates this feeling, but he doesn’t know what it is.
Sometimes, when he’s eating breakfast, a sea of nothingness in a kitchen with four members moving, jostling, screeching and general camaraderie, that his spoon will hover above his cereal by an inch or two, Jonghyun once measured it, and just stare across the table, at the fridge door with silly word magnets, the latest purchase of how to create drunken statements. He sits there, that thing in his stomach weighing him down, causing his shoulders to drift down, shoulders to hunch, and he can’t think a single thing and feel anything. He sits. He lets his cereal go soggy and it takes five minutes for the others to realize that their leader is inert, doing nothing but breathe, somehow sustaining an unsustainable life.
Then life resumes, someone knocks him on the shoulder, another takes the spoon from his hand and dumps the cereal, because he can’t stand the taste of mushy cereal that’s disintegrated before it’s chewed and then it’s just him and Minho, staring at each other because it’s Minho that sits across from him, right in front of their fridge with lewd magnets plastered all over it and it’s Minho that his eyes revert to when he returns to reality.
Minho smiles now and then, soft curves of lips that makes him think of Rosy the Riveter, with her handkerchief and American propaganda, books that he read in high school and facts which he has no reason to remember (cheetahs don’t have claws, his favorite palindrome: tattarrattat, which doubles as his favorite onomatopoeia).
Key butts in then, in the little private moments that the two of them never get, grabbing him by his arm, pulling him out of his seat and telling him that the’s not even dressed yet, still in his Tom & Jerry pajamas, which he sometimes just stares at and tries to figure out who it is he always roots for, Tom or Jerry, which ends up with Tom because Jerry is kind of a jerk, even though Tom just wants to eat him.
Maybe he just likes cats.
*
Then, when they’re in a car, Jinki is in the front seat with their manager, and Minho is in the back, sharing the back-backseat with Jonghyun and Jinki can see him in the side-view mirror on his side, which is a nice treat, and then he’s interrupted by Taemin asking for him to tell Key to stop playing with his hair, that it’s fine and then he does that, and he’s too embarrassed to look in the mirror anymore. Their eyes had met when he had reached back, with a stern frown that no one takes seriously, including himself, and Minho had half-smiled again, lips rosy and he half-thinks that he wouldn’t mind seeing Minho actually cry because it’d be unusual and he wants to see what that mouth would look like in misery.
It’s embarrassing to think like that, because it’s surprisingly intimate, because then his mind gains a form of rare control and goes beyond seeing him cry and wants to know the reason for tears and he thinks that the reason should be something like he loses, or that he’s so happy he cries because he likes him so much and- oh yeah, it’s embarrassing, because then Jinki thinks, yeah, he’d say yes. He’d either say yes or run his hands through his hair and initiate something they’d never be able to let go despite their positions.
*
Backstage Minho sometimes sidles up to Jinki and starts massaging his shoulders unasked, unbidden, unwanted. Sometimes his hands go down a little too far on his shoulders, reaching dangerous territory on his biceps, though he would go to war to feel those hands everywhere, anywhere.
“You okay hyung?” He asks, leaning too close, breath tickling the short hairs around the cartilage of his ear.
Jinki nods, silently, telling himself not to ask Minho what he thinks he’s doing, about if he knows that he wants to see Minho cry, that he’s secretly a sadist because he wants that so badly, to see Minho that upset, he wants Minho to be miserable, just like him. He wants Minho to become his carbon copy, to follow him around, or maybe he just wants that last thing, he wants Minho to follow him around and not follow his other hyungs, Donghae and Changmin, that damned Kyu-line business.
Then he shrugs. “Kind of, I might have a cold.”
And then Minho is shocked, a little outraged. “We could have gotten porridge or something for you, hyung, why didn’t you tell us, you can’t get sick! You won’t be able to sing.”
Bitter, that thing in his stomach makes him nauseous, makes him want to bend over and dry-heave, try to get it out via his throat. “I don’t like porridge,” is all he says, “and don’t tell anyone please, I’ll be fine.”
“You won’t always be fine,” Minho says reprovingly, hands removed from his shoulders (and sometimes biceps). “You need to tell people what’s going on.”
He smiles, his stage-smile, bright but normal, because his stage smile isn’t completely fake, it’s mostly real. “I’m always fine though.”
They stare at each other and Minho moves abruptly away, triply faster than how he’d creeped up to Jinki.
He thinks about doing to the bathroom and crying so hard he’ll throw up, get rid of this sickness, the stone tied in a figure 8 knot around his stomach and messing up his insides.
*
“Minho told me you’re not feeling well,” Taemin says and Jinki’s surprised that he told Taemin, of all people, Taemin who Jinki can convince with some ease that he’s fine.
Like always, he smiles, and shakes his head. “I’m past it now, don’t worry about it.”
Taemin’s eyes narrowly suspiciously. “Does it have to do with this morning? Or last week?”
Jinki shakes his head fervently. “No, not at all. They’re not connected at all.” Blatant, utter lie, but lies work better than the truth in Jinki’s track record.
*
He tells himself he can walk it off, not talk about it, pretend nothing happens, joke with Jonghyun as usual and try to eat his breakfast as normal. Corn flakes still sit on his suspended spoon as he stares at the fridge door, wondering when he’ll be able to live a normal life, when he won’t think about flinching when he sees a million cameras aimed at him, if he’ll ever walk into an airport without a sense of dread.
Life refocuses and he’s seeing Minho again, unsmiling, making him think of presidents at a podium, staring across a mass of people, sitting and maybe some standing in the back, and how they don’t really smile, they stand there and they speak. But Minho doesn’t speak, he hardly speaks, he sits there, observes and listens, two things he’d rather Minho not do, because then when it’s the two of them, it’s awkward, because then Jinki’s filling in the space between them with senseless chatter and he sucks at it, thus the senseless bit, and Minho observes him and he’s sure that he knows. He knows more than the crying bit, that he knows about how Jinki thinks he wants a poster of Minho that he can just stare at because he’s unearthly and beautiful, that his face belongs on a Bernini statue in Italy.
Or France. He’d settle for France.
*
Grass is greener on the other side of the fence, and he knows this adage to be true when he sees Taemin and Minho, joking together and in a fit of unreasonable jealousy, he fools around with Jonghyun later, both of them laughing at nothing, making stupid jokes and moving in-sync. He’s a petty jerk, he knows, he’s a petty douche who asks for nothing and is upset when he receives what he asked for.
His grass is wilted with a drought, though, and he knows that the grass is greener because those two have always gotten along well, always clicked, like Jonghyun and Key and despite his own closeness with all the members, he sits alone in the front and he always has the single seat in planes, because he’s the leader and it’s what he does. He’s pissed that no one ever tells him it’s okay, that he doesn’t have to do it, and he’s mostly pissed that Minho looks at him and sees this but does nothing.
It’s not his fault he’s become a pathological liar when it comes to himself. He blames Minho.
*
“You got better?” Minho asks as they sit down and watch the local news, at Jinki’s behest.
“From what?” He asks.
“From your cold,” Minho frowns. “You had a cold, a bit ago.”
“Oh, that.” It was a lie, it wasn’t a cold but the thing eating him up inside. “Yeah. It was nothing, it passed right over,” cue the smile, “I told you so.” The words are weird on his lips, as though it’s not his right to say such things because they’re oddly gloating, but he wanted to try just once.
Minho gives a frustrated groan. “Hyung, don’t lie to me.”
“I’m not,” he says, though that’s a lie. “I was totally fine.”
Minho is frowning, sinking lower in the couch. It’s a position that Jinki wants to take, let the weight of his burden sink him into it, let it wash him away, let him roll off the couch, crawl to his bed and then curl up under too-warm blankets. “Then how come you’re not smiling?”
Oops, he thinks, he thought he was.
*
Things have no conclusion for him, they go on endlessly and he stares at the fridge, where Jonghyun has made the sentence “duude got wasted and missed the toilet last night” with the words. He had laughed with him last night about it, when he had opened the fridge to get some oj, or milk, he can’t recall, but it’s not as funny less than eight hours later. Now it’s annoying, frustrating, because he wants to make sentences like ‘don’t leave me’ and ‘why do I feel alone’ and maybe ‘love me please.’
*
Minho no longer sits across from him, and Jinki knows that it’s because he’s sick of Jinki avoiding his words, the confrontations, slipping out or calling out to a passing person because he forgot to return his mic, he needed to ask where they were going, what they were doing, or a made up excuse of going to get something to eat when they had just eaten lunch.
He still sits in the front seat and Minho sits where he can’t see him easily, where he can’t glance to his right and see Minho in the mirror. He misses the easy smile, he misses the slight frowns with a slight wrinkled nose.
*
One time he cries himself to sleep, silently, no wracking sobs from the leader, no noise escapes from him as he inhales and exhales as solidly as he can, air whistling from his mouth quietly, because that is the only sound he cannot suppress, though he wishes he could suppress his feelings.
The next time it happens, someone pads across the room and lays a hand on his shoulder, making him bury his head into the pillow and mumble something, pretending to be mostly asleep.
“Hyung, why are you crying?” Minho’s voice is deep, soft and it’s piercing, making the tears come a little harder and he suddenly can’t stop the sobs, the ugly noises that come straight from his heart, from his mind, from his entire being and he leaps out of bed, pushes Minho to the side and goes to the bathroom, locking the door.
That morning Minho sits across from him and Key mentions the red in Jinki’s eyes and Taemin is looking at him in concern, Jonghyun passes him an extra slice of buttered, toasted raisin bread. Minho is expressionless, staring steadily at Jinki and this time he can’t stare at the fridge, his cheeks are burning because he hates to be caught almost as much as he hates to cry.
They file to the car and Minho is ahead of him and the next thing he knows is that Minho has slid into the front seat. Jonghyun makes loud protestations, but Jinki is staring at Minho, because he’d wanted this, someone to upset the natural order of giving things to hyungs, someone to take the privileges that make him lonely, that isolate him.
In the backseat, sitting next to a sulking Jonghyun, sulking because Jinki told him to let it be, to let Minho have the front, he stares out his window in fascination, like this is what the backseat is like, cramped, able to feel Jonghyun’s shifting on the seat and an occasional arm brush.
*
Minho pats Jinki’s back just once, a small rub on his shoulderblade, kind of awkward, but it’s nice, a fireball sort of nice, something to keep him warm when he’s shivering on a pouring day with no umbrella, waiting for a bus that’s late. He wishes, abstractly, knowing that waiting in the pouring rain will never happen like he thinks of it, knowing also that his wish will never come true, that Minho will stand next to him, smiling and chuckling about their crappy luck, that they both forgot their umbrellas and that the bus is late, when usually neither happens.
*
Sitting late in front of the tv one night, watching a variety show he’s not even paying attention to, Minho heavily falls into the seat next to him, causing a tidal wave of couch proportions towards Jinki. They sit like that, quiet and Jinki catches himself nodding off, after all it is past midnight and he’d had a busy day. His head tilts towards Minho, almost falling onto his shoulder, before he catches himself. He can’t do that, or maybe it’s he shouldn’t? It’s late and the later it is, the less he understands himself and the rules he put into place for himself.
Then Minho speaks, his low voice shattering any self-possession and sleepiness Jinki had. “Why were you crying?”
Jinki has a multitude of questions to reply with, like is this an intervention, are you sure I was crying, and normal replies like, my fish died back home, or you know, sometimes you just gotta cry, but none of these possibilities, all valid, come out. Instead a question that he immediately regrets, a question he wants to shove back into his mouth and down his throat, appears. “Why do you care?”
The shock on Minho’s face makes him want to break down again, question his sanity and run out onto the streets and just go wild, lose himself in a crowd.
“I care because you’re my hyung,” Minho says carefully and Jinki can hear the caution in his voice, how he’s attempting eggshells, a tight-rope walk of destruction and doom. Jinki knows that this will not end well, because what he really wants isn’t something he’s allowed to want. “I want you to be happy.”
This is close, this is very close, but it’s not there yet. He swallows, then smiles widely. “Ha, relax a little Minho, it was no big deal. Just a bad day, you know, too many takes, wasn’t funny enough, my fish died, so on. Forget about it.”
Minho, Jinki sees, knows he’s lying. “Are you sure?” He asks, and Jinki almost feels like punching a wall, breaking his fingers, because this is not the question Minho’s supposed to ask, but this helps him. It helps him with not loving Minho, not wanting to press little kisses to his mouth, not run fingers through his hair and feel like combusting.
“Yes. I’m sure.”
Then Minho stands, ruffles Jinki’s hair a little, then leaves.
Jinki stares at the tv and feels like throwing up, so he turns the tv off, goes to the bathroom and dry heaves in front of the toilet for ten minutes.
*
Three hours later, Minho is sliding into the bed with him, arms curving around Jinki. And, sleepily, Jinki lets him and then turns, mumbling something, to face him. Minho’s face is close to him and Jinki, mostly asleep, smiles in a real way, his eyes crinkle and he feels an inkling of happiness.
“Jinki,” Minho whispers. “Please be happy.”
*
It was a dream. Jinki tells himself this. It was a dream, because there’s no way handsome, charming Mr Choi would slip into Jinki’s bed, no way he’d whisper endearing words of encouragement tinged with love into his ear. That was a dream, a pleasant dream, a dream nonetheless.
When Minho glances at him, slight bags under his eyes, Jinki reddnes, looks away and answers Key’s question about where he put the cereal. Then he glances back. Minho is still looking at him, a question Jinki doesn’t understand in his eyes and he blushes up to his ear and has to leave the room.
Minho follows and leans against the doorframe to the bedroom, nonchalant and all long lines. “Did you sleep well?” He asks, “Did you cry?”
The blush deepens and he stumbles over his thoughts he’s so incoherent. “N-n-no,” he mumbles and mimes looking for his phone, knowing all the while it’s in his pocket.
“That’s good.”
Minho continues to stand there and Jinki gives up the pretense of searching and stands, lost, forlorn and waiting, not sure what for, but for something that will change things.
Then Minho steps forward, closer, closer, until they are a little too close, intimately so, and Minho wraps his arms around Jinki. He freezes, because he’d done a little hoping for something like this, a hug, an embrace, but had never expected it to actually happen. Minho’s large hands are on his back, fingers smoothing the cotton fabric of his tshirt, up and down, up and down, with rounded movements at the top.
“I meant last night,” he said and this is unexpected, Jinki is used to disappointment and no dreams turning into reality. “I want you to be happy, I just don’t know how to make that happen.”
“Kiss me,” Jinki says, trying to be honest for once. “Kiss me, just once, let me know what it’s like.”
Minho stares at him, and Jinki thinks he’s like a lion, with regal, proud bearing. He doesn’t answer, but kisses Jinki’s cheek. Jinki closes his eyes and knows that he’s asleep because Minho wouldn’t do this, Minho wouldn’t kiss him on the cheek and then kiss him on the mouth, sweet little kisses that are addictive and make him cling to him, make Jinki’s legs tremble.
“Are you happy now?” He asks, and since they’re now pressed together, Jinki can feel the rumble in his chest, feel the width of his shoulders and the shape of Minho’s lips are indelibly printed upon his.
“I might be,” he says. “I might be.”
“Do you need me to kiss you again?”
Jinki pauses to take the time to think, because this could be important, but it could not be important, but he doesn’t want to take that chance. “I would like you to,” he says, “but we should go.”
Minho chuckles and Jinki can feel the vibrations, shooting right through him and he tries to smile, tentatively and Minho kisses him again and he can taste milk and traces of sugar on his lips and he sighs, closes his eyes because this is a beautiful dream.
“Let’s go then.”
He pulls away, goes to the doorway and watches Jinki, who is standing, lost, forlorn and waiting. “Don’t worry, I’ll love you more later.”
And this is somehow exactly what he’d been waiting for, a reassurance, a statement, something for him to cling on to, remember when he’s standing amongst people and has nothing to say, for when the food is dry and he can’t swallow, and it lightens the stone in the stomach, the thing that’d been making him sick for weeks, causing him to cry. This is what he’d wanted.
But the best part is that it’s not a dream.
*
a/n sobbing bc onho
pg13
wc 3508
Something is sitting funny in his tummy, though he only uses funny and tummy because he likes the why it rhymes, it’s one of his idiosyncrasies, but there really is something in his stomach that’s weighing him down, like if he was in one of those New York mob movies he wouldn’t need his feet cemented because this thing in his midriff would drown him without any help. And that, really, is the only way he knows how to explain it, that he’s having trouble sitting straight, imaginary pole down his back when both seated and standing, that when he’s in bed, turning from side to side to his back and even trying belly down, he just feels it, festering, an untreated wound with an infection.
He hates this feeling, but he doesn’t know what it is.
Sometimes, when he’s eating breakfast, a sea of nothingness in a kitchen with four members moving, jostling, screeching and general camaraderie, that his spoon will hover above his cereal by an inch or two, Jonghyun once measured it, and just stare across the table, at the fridge door with silly word magnets, the latest purchase of how to create drunken statements. He sits there, that thing in his stomach weighing him down, causing his shoulders to drift down, shoulders to hunch, and he can’t think a single thing and feel anything. He sits. He lets his cereal go soggy and it takes five minutes for the others to realize that their leader is inert, doing nothing but breathe, somehow sustaining an unsustainable life.
Then life resumes, someone knocks him on the shoulder, another takes the spoon from his hand and dumps the cereal, because he can’t stand the taste of mushy cereal that’s disintegrated before it’s chewed and then it’s just him and Minho, staring at each other because it’s Minho that sits across from him, right in front of their fridge with lewd magnets plastered all over it and it’s Minho that his eyes revert to when he returns to reality.
Minho smiles now and then, soft curves of lips that makes him think of Rosy the Riveter, with her handkerchief and American propaganda, books that he read in high school and facts which he has no reason to remember (cheetahs don’t have claws, his favorite palindrome: tattarrattat, which doubles as his favorite onomatopoeia).
Key butts in then, in the little private moments that the two of them never get, grabbing him by his arm, pulling him out of his seat and telling him that the’s not even dressed yet, still in his Tom & Jerry pajamas, which he sometimes just stares at and tries to figure out who it is he always roots for, Tom or Jerry, which ends up with Tom because Jerry is kind of a jerk, even though Tom just wants to eat him.
Maybe he just likes cats.
*
Then, when they’re in a car, Jinki is in the front seat with their manager, and Minho is in the back, sharing the back-backseat with Jonghyun and Jinki can see him in the side-view mirror on his side, which is a nice treat, and then he’s interrupted by Taemin asking for him to tell Key to stop playing with his hair, that it’s fine and then he does that, and he’s too embarrassed to look in the mirror anymore. Their eyes had met when he had reached back, with a stern frown that no one takes seriously, including himself, and Minho had half-smiled again, lips rosy and he half-thinks that he wouldn’t mind seeing Minho actually cry because it’d be unusual and he wants to see what that mouth would look like in misery.
It’s embarrassing to think like that, because it’s surprisingly intimate, because then his mind gains a form of rare control and goes beyond seeing him cry and wants to know the reason for tears and he thinks that the reason should be something like he loses, or that he’s so happy he cries because he likes him so much and- oh yeah, it’s embarrassing, because then Jinki thinks, yeah, he’d say yes. He’d either say yes or run his hands through his hair and initiate something they’d never be able to let go despite their positions.
*
Backstage Minho sometimes sidles up to Jinki and starts massaging his shoulders unasked, unbidden, unwanted. Sometimes his hands go down a little too far on his shoulders, reaching dangerous territory on his biceps, though he would go to war to feel those hands everywhere, anywhere.
“You okay hyung?” He asks, leaning too close, breath tickling the short hairs around the cartilage of his ear.
Jinki nods, silently, telling himself not to ask Minho what he thinks he’s doing, about if he knows that he wants to see Minho cry, that he’s secretly a sadist because he wants that so badly, to see Minho that upset, he wants Minho to be miserable, just like him. He wants Minho to become his carbon copy, to follow him around, or maybe he just wants that last thing, he wants Minho to follow him around and not follow his other hyungs, Donghae and Changmin, that damned Kyu-line business.
Then he shrugs. “Kind of, I might have a cold.”
And then Minho is shocked, a little outraged. “We could have gotten porridge or something for you, hyung, why didn’t you tell us, you can’t get sick! You won’t be able to sing.”
Bitter, that thing in his stomach makes him nauseous, makes him want to bend over and dry-heave, try to get it out via his throat. “I don’t like porridge,” is all he says, “and don’t tell anyone please, I’ll be fine.”
“You won’t always be fine,” Minho says reprovingly, hands removed from his shoulders (and sometimes biceps). “You need to tell people what’s going on.”
He smiles, his stage-smile, bright but normal, because his stage smile isn’t completely fake, it’s mostly real. “I’m always fine though.”
They stare at each other and Minho moves abruptly away, triply faster than how he’d creeped up to Jinki.
He thinks about doing to the bathroom and crying so hard he’ll throw up, get rid of this sickness, the stone tied in a figure 8 knot around his stomach and messing up his insides.
*
“Minho told me you’re not feeling well,” Taemin says and Jinki’s surprised that he told Taemin, of all people, Taemin who Jinki can convince with some ease that he’s fine.
Like always, he smiles, and shakes his head. “I’m past it now, don’t worry about it.”
Taemin’s eyes narrowly suspiciously. “Does it have to do with this morning? Or last week?”
Jinki shakes his head fervently. “No, not at all. They’re not connected at all.” Blatant, utter lie, but lies work better than the truth in Jinki’s track record.
*
He tells himself he can walk it off, not talk about it, pretend nothing happens, joke with Jonghyun as usual and try to eat his breakfast as normal. Corn flakes still sit on his suspended spoon as he stares at the fridge door, wondering when he’ll be able to live a normal life, when he won’t think about flinching when he sees a million cameras aimed at him, if he’ll ever walk into an airport without a sense of dread.
Life refocuses and he’s seeing Minho again, unsmiling, making him think of presidents at a podium, staring across a mass of people, sitting and maybe some standing in the back, and how they don’t really smile, they stand there and they speak. But Minho doesn’t speak, he hardly speaks, he sits there, observes and listens, two things he’d rather Minho not do, because then when it’s the two of them, it’s awkward, because then Jinki’s filling in the space between them with senseless chatter and he sucks at it, thus the senseless bit, and Minho observes him and he’s sure that he knows. He knows more than the crying bit, that he knows about how Jinki thinks he wants a poster of Minho that he can just stare at because he’s unearthly and beautiful, that his face belongs on a Bernini statue in Italy.
Or France. He’d settle for France.
*
Grass is greener on the other side of the fence, and he knows this adage to be true when he sees Taemin and Minho, joking together and in a fit of unreasonable jealousy, he fools around with Jonghyun later, both of them laughing at nothing, making stupid jokes and moving in-sync. He’s a petty jerk, he knows, he’s a petty douche who asks for nothing and is upset when he receives what he asked for.
His grass is wilted with a drought, though, and he knows that the grass is greener because those two have always gotten along well, always clicked, like Jonghyun and Key and despite his own closeness with all the members, he sits alone in the front and he always has the single seat in planes, because he’s the leader and it’s what he does. He’s pissed that no one ever tells him it’s okay, that he doesn’t have to do it, and he’s mostly pissed that Minho looks at him and sees this but does nothing.
It’s not his fault he’s become a pathological liar when it comes to himself. He blames Minho.
*
“You got better?” Minho asks as they sit down and watch the local news, at Jinki’s behest.
“From what?” He asks.
“From your cold,” Minho frowns. “You had a cold, a bit ago.”
“Oh, that.” It was a lie, it wasn’t a cold but the thing eating him up inside. “Yeah. It was nothing, it passed right over,” cue the smile, “I told you so.” The words are weird on his lips, as though it’s not his right to say such things because they’re oddly gloating, but he wanted to try just once.
Minho gives a frustrated groan. “Hyung, don’t lie to me.”
“I’m not,” he says, though that’s a lie. “I was totally fine.”
Minho is frowning, sinking lower in the couch. It’s a position that Jinki wants to take, let the weight of his burden sink him into it, let it wash him away, let him roll off the couch, crawl to his bed and then curl up under too-warm blankets. “Then how come you’re not smiling?”
Oops, he thinks, he thought he was.
*
Things have no conclusion for him, they go on endlessly and he stares at the fridge, where Jonghyun has made the sentence “duude got wasted and missed the toilet last night” with the words. He had laughed with him last night about it, when he had opened the fridge to get some oj, or milk, he can’t recall, but it’s not as funny less than eight hours later. Now it’s annoying, frustrating, because he wants to make sentences like ‘don’t leave me’ and ‘why do I feel alone’ and maybe ‘love me please.’
*
Minho no longer sits across from him, and Jinki knows that it’s because he’s sick of Jinki avoiding his words, the confrontations, slipping out or calling out to a passing person because he forgot to return his mic, he needed to ask where they were going, what they were doing, or a made up excuse of going to get something to eat when they had just eaten lunch.
He still sits in the front seat and Minho sits where he can’t see him easily, where he can’t glance to his right and see Minho in the mirror. He misses the easy smile, he misses the slight frowns with a slight wrinkled nose.
*
One time he cries himself to sleep, silently, no wracking sobs from the leader, no noise escapes from him as he inhales and exhales as solidly as he can, air whistling from his mouth quietly, because that is the only sound he cannot suppress, though he wishes he could suppress his feelings.
The next time it happens, someone pads across the room and lays a hand on his shoulder, making him bury his head into the pillow and mumble something, pretending to be mostly asleep.
“Hyung, why are you crying?” Minho’s voice is deep, soft and it’s piercing, making the tears come a little harder and he suddenly can’t stop the sobs, the ugly noises that come straight from his heart, from his mind, from his entire being and he leaps out of bed, pushes Minho to the side and goes to the bathroom, locking the door.
That morning Minho sits across from him and Key mentions the red in Jinki’s eyes and Taemin is looking at him in concern, Jonghyun passes him an extra slice of buttered, toasted raisin bread. Minho is expressionless, staring steadily at Jinki and this time he can’t stare at the fridge, his cheeks are burning because he hates to be caught almost as much as he hates to cry.
They file to the car and Minho is ahead of him and the next thing he knows is that Minho has slid into the front seat. Jonghyun makes loud protestations, but Jinki is staring at Minho, because he’d wanted this, someone to upset the natural order of giving things to hyungs, someone to take the privileges that make him lonely, that isolate him.
In the backseat, sitting next to a sulking Jonghyun, sulking because Jinki told him to let it be, to let Minho have the front, he stares out his window in fascination, like this is what the backseat is like, cramped, able to feel Jonghyun’s shifting on the seat and an occasional arm brush.
*
Minho pats Jinki’s back just once, a small rub on his shoulderblade, kind of awkward, but it’s nice, a fireball sort of nice, something to keep him warm when he’s shivering on a pouring day with no umbrella, waiting for a bus that’s late. He wishes, abstractly, knowing that waiting in the pouring rain will never happen like he thinks of it, knowing also that his wish will never come true, that Minho will stand next to him, smiling and chuckling about their crappy luck, that they both forgot their umbrellas and that the bus is late, when usually neither happens.
*
Sitting late in front of the tv one night, watching a variety show he’s not even paying attention to, Minho heavily falls into the seat next to him, causing a tidal wave of couch proportions towards Jinki. They sit like that, quiet and Jinki catches himself nodding off, after all it is past midnight and he’d had a busy day. His head tilts towards Minho, almost falling onto his shoulder, before he catches himself. He can’t do that, or maybe it’s he shouldn’t? It’s late and the later it is, the less he understands himself and the rules he put into place for himself.
Then Minho speaks, his low voice shattering any self-possession and sleepiness Jinki had. “Why were you crying?”
Jinki has a multitude of questions to reply with, like is this an intervention, are you sure I was crying, and normal replies like, my fish died back home, or you know, sometimes you just gotta cry, but none of these possibilities, all valid, come out. Instead a question that he immediately regrets, a question he wants to shove back into his mouth and down his throat, appears. “Why do you care?”
The shock on Minho’s face makes him want to break down again, question his sanity and run out onto the streets and just go wild, lose himself in a crowd.
“I care because you’re my hyung,” Minho says carefully and Jinki can hear the caution in his voice, how he’s attempting eggshells, a tight-rope walk of destruction and doom. Jinki knows that this will not end well, because what he really wants isn’t something he’s allowed to want. “I want you to be happy.”
This is close, this is very close, but it’s not there yet. He swallows, then smiles widely. “Ha, relax a little Minho, it was no big deal. Just a bad day, you know, too many takes, wasn’t funny enough, my fish died, so on. Forget about it.”
Minho, Jinki sees, knows he’s lying. “Are you sure?” He asks, and Jinki almost feels like punching a wall, breaking his fingers, because this is not the question Minho’s supposed to ask, but this helps him. It helps him with not loving Minho, not wanting to press little kisses to his mouth, not run fingers through his hair and feel like combusting.
“Yes. I’m sure.”
Then Minho stands, ruffles Jinki’s hair a little, then leaves.
Jinki stares at the tv and feels like throwing up, so he turns the tv off, goes to the bathroom and dry heaves in front of the toilet for ten minutes.
*
Three hours later, Minho is sliding into the bed with him, arms curving around Jinki. And, sleepily, Jinki lets him and then turns, mumbling something, to face him. Minho’s face is close to him and Jinki, mostly asleep, smiles in a real way, his eyes crinkle and he feels an inkling of happiness.
“Jinki,” Minho whispers. “Please be happy.”
*
It was a dream. Jinki tells himself this. It was a dream, because there’s no way handsome, charming Mr Choi would slip into Jinki’s bed, no way he’d whisper endearing words of encouragement tinged with love into his ear. That was a dream, a pleasant dream, a dream nonetheless.
When Minho glances at him, slight bags under his eyes, Jinki reddnes, looks away and answers Key’s question about where he put the cereal. Then he glances back. Minho is still looking at him, a question Jinki doesn’t understand in his eyes and he blushes up to his ear and has to leave the room.
Minho follows and leans against the doorframe to the bedroom, nonchalant and all long lines. “Did you sleep well?” He asks, “Did you cry?”
The blush deepens and he stumbles over his thoughts he’s so incoherent. “N-n-no,” he mumbles and mimes looking for his phone, knowing all the while it’s in his pocket.
“That’s good.”
Minho continues to stand there and Jinki gives up the pretense of searching and stands, lost, forlorn and waiting, not sure what for, but for something that will change things.
Then Minho steps forward, closer, closer, until they are a little too close, intimately so, and Minho wraps his arms around Jinki. He freezes, because he’d done a little hoping for something like this, a hug, an embrace, but had never expected it to actually happen. Minho’s large hands are on his back, fingers smoothing the cotton fabric of his tshirt, up and down, up and down, with rounded movements at the top.
“I meant last night,” he said and this is unexpected, Jinki is used to disappointment and no dreams turning into reality. “I want you to be happy, I just don’t know how to make that happen.”
“Kiss me,” Jinki says, trying to be honest for once. “Kiss me, just once, let me know what it’s like.”
Minho stares at him, and Jinki thinks he’s like a lion, with regal, proud bearing. He doesn’t answer, but kisses Jinki’s cheek. Jinki closes his eyes and knows that he’s asleep because Minho wouldn’t do this, Minho wouldn’t kiss him on the cheek and then kiss him on the mouth, sweet little kisses that are addictive and make him cling to him, make Jinki’s legs tremble.
“Are you happy now?” He asks, and since they’re now pressed together, Jinki can feel the rumble in his chest, feel the width of his shoulders and the shape of Minho’s lips are indelibly printed upon his.
“I might be,” he says. “I might be.”
“Do you need me to kiss you again?”
Jinki pauses to take the time to think, because this could be important, but it could not be important, but he doesn’t want to take that chance. “I would like you to,” he says, “but we should go.”
Minho chuckles and Jinki can feel the vibrations, shooting right through him and he tries to smile, tentatively and Minho kisses him again and he can taste milk and traces of sugar on his lips and he sighs, closes his eyes because this is a beautiful dream.
“Let’s go then.”
He pulls away, goes to the doorway and watches Jinki, who is standing, lost, forlorn and waiting. “Don’t worry, I’ll love you more later.”
And this is somehow exactly what he’d been waiting for, a reassurance, a statement, something for him to cling on to, remember when he’s standing amongst people and has nothing to say, for when the food is dry and he can’t swallow, and it lightens the stone in the stomach, the thing that’d been making him sick for weeks, causing him to cry. This is what he’d wanted.
But the best part is that it’s not a dream.
*
a/n sobbing bc onho