somebody to love, for skinseas
Title: somebody to love
Recipient: skinseas
Pairing: Seungyoon/Mino
Rating: PG
Summary: There’s no sugar coating it. Seungyoon used to be an unapologetic Big Bang groupie and Minho almost wanted to bang him.
Notes: hello lovely recipient! first of all, i'm incredibly sorry because i know i took a huge, huge amount of liberties with your prompts. i sort of mashed two together and then put them through a blender ): but i really hope you still enjoy this! there’s a zillion songs called “somebody to love”, but this fic was titled specifically with my favourite big bang song in mind.
April 25 - SEOUL
There’s a sharp gasp to Minho’s right. He squares his shoulders, bracing himself for what’s coming.
“Jiyong oppa?” And there it is. The hesitant, hopeful voice of another young fan whose delusions Minho is once again forced to crush.
Minho lifts his head and gives the girl a friendly smile, and as if on cue, her face falls. She bows to Minho apologetically before grabbing her friend’s arm, both of them power walking away with their heads close together. No doubt this’ll be something they’ll tell their friends about later.
“Why does this keep happening,” Minho sighs. He turns back to Seunghoon and Jinwoo, both of whom are busy fiddling with their DSLRs and are much too accustomed to these repeated cases of mistaken identity to be fazed. “I don’t even look that much like him. And honestly, do they just expect G-Dragon to be chilling out in line for his own band’s concert?”
“It’s the red weave,” Seunghoon answers. Minho reaches out to grab said weave self-consciously. “That, and the fact you do bear a startling resemblance to Taeyang and G-Dragon’s biologically impossible love child.”
Jinwoo hums thoughtfully. “I’ve read a fanfic like that.”
“We’ve all read a fanfic like that, Jinwoo.”
Minho feels the need to make clear that he has never read a fanfic like that, and is about to verbalise this when there’s a tap on his shoulder. This time he can’t restrain the exasperation in his voice when he twists his head around to tell whoever it is behind him that, “No, I’m not G-Dragon, I’m not even his brother, I can’t get a sample of his spit for you. I’m sorry.”
The guy standing behind him blinks, taken aback, and then laughs. The first thought to flit through Minho’s mind is confusion, usually the reaction he receives is disappointment which-he’s not going to lie-is starting to chip away at his self-esteem. The second thought is that the dude is… He’s a type. He looks like one of those trendy university students that hang around Hongdae near the more underground bars, black military jacket with a random assortment of buttons sewed on it, skinny jeans, and big thick-rimmed square glasses that frame his round face.
Hot Hipster Stranger leans in a bit closer, scrutinising Minho’s face. “I… kind of see it,” he says. “But I think it’s mostly the weave.”
“Didn’t I tell you,” Seunghoon jumps in, finally done with fixing the lens onto his camera. “Oh right, do I have to introduce you guys? Seungyoon, this is Minho, my roommate and minion. Minho, this is Seungyoon, he used to be Wild and Young, now he’s a hobo that keeps on snapchatting me pictures of the old warehouses he lives in.“
Seungyoon’s easy-going facade cracks a bit at this. “They’re covert urban landmarks.”
“Wait,” Minho says, recognition finally kicking in. “Wild and Young? Like that Taeyang fansite.” His mind is reeling and he does a quick re-assessment of Seungyoon, from the top of his messy hair to the welts of his Doc Martens. Minho knows not to judge a book by his cover, but Seungyoon looks like the last person on Earth who’d be a Big Bang fansite master.
Seungyoon is clearly embarrassed by the fact too, scratching his chin and averting his gaze. “I ran it for a little while from high school to my first year at university. My uncle works in event management so I’d get free tickets to things, and I’d always loved photography so…” He shrugs, like it’s no big deal. Only Minho knows from Seunghoon’s own stint as a fansite master during college how much work goes into camera maintenance, travel, buying five hundred copies of the same album just to get into a fansign. It’s always a big deal. There’s no sugar coating it. Seungyoon used to be an unapologetic Big Bang groupie and Minho almost wanted to bang him.
“Anyway, just dropping in to say hi,” Seungyoon finishes. “Tell Ayeon I hope she’s doing well.”
Seunghoon waves an inattentive sort of goodbye and Seungyoon makes his way back to his place in line. Minho watches him leave, oddly fixated by his laidback gait.
“Your friend is interesting,” Minho says.
Jinwoo nods. In his hands, his camera is somehow more dismantled than it had been a few minutes ago. “He’s nice.”
The concert is incredible.
Minho hadn't been overly enthusiastic when, upon the announcement of Big Bang’s MADE tour, Seunghoon had appended on his bucket list the mission to go to as many dates as he could afford. He’d also managed to persuade Minho to come along after harshly making the argument that small stints in underground clubs and working part time at Starbucks didn’t really count as employment, and it’s not like it’d hold him back from anything. That had stung, but more displeased than Minho was Ayeon, who thought Seunghoon had grown out of his Big Bang fanboy phase when he'd sold the last of his concert DVDs in order to get them through a month where rent was exceptionally hard to meet.
"I have all this excess money now thanks to Grandpa Lee kicking the bucket," Seunghoon had delicately argued. "I’d end up spending it on something stupid anyway."
Minho hadn't seen the issue with this line of reasoning. Ayeon was, and is still, a lot less convinced.
But despite Minho's reservations, from the moment the light dimmed and the opening lines of Fantastic Baby echoed through the stadium, he'd been transported to a different world. A world where strobe lights are suspended in space in place of the sun, and nights are spent following G-Dragon into a heedless bacchanal. Minho's ears are ringing, and in the immediate aftermath, he finds himself thinking he wouldn't mind experiencing the concert fifty times over.
Needless to say, Seungyoon hadn’t crossed Minho’s mind the entire night. And Minho is sure if he went home now he wouldn’t fall asleep thinking about him either. But even so, somehow when he spots Seungyoon breaking off from a crowd of people exiting the stadium, and jogging towards where Minho’s standing, it feels like the only natural conclusion to the night.
"Hey," Seungyoon greets. "Not with Seunghoon and Jinwoo?"
"Nah," Minho answers. "They're meeting up with some friends, I'm taking a taxi home."
They lapse into silence, but it's not an awkward one. It's a shared moment where they both stand looking out into the street, letting the last clear memories of the concert settle as sediment in their minds. Seungyoon is the first one to speak again.
"Hey, by Minho, you wouldn't happen to be Song Minho would you?" he asks. "Jiho's friend?"
Minho looks over at Seungyoon in surprise. "I am," he says. The revelation that they both know Jiho doesn't seem as exciting to Seungyoon, who nods lazily like he wasn’t expecting any other answer. Minho supposes it isn't a huge deal, they already have Seunghoon and Jinwoo in common, they're bound to have other people.
But that spark, the moment where you meet a stranger and the unfamiliar edges begin fitting into place, the feeling that you’ve discovered another piece of the puzzle that you didn’t even know you were looking for-there's nothing more thrilling to Minho.
"I've heard some of your demos," Seungyoon explains. "I actually make music too and I was wondering..." He takes his phone out of his pocket and hands it to Minho. "I know we just met each other but honestly, being a musician is a labour of love and I need a bit more love in my life."
A part of Minho's brain wonders whether that was Seungyoon flirting with him, or if the analogy itself is just fractured. He takes Seungyoon's phone, still in his post-concert daze, and punches his number into it.
"You could have gotten it from Seunghoon," Minho says.
"I like to avoid taking to Seunghoon if I can help it," Seungyoon says teasingly. Beyond the glasses and the intimidating nonchalance Seungyoon carries, Minho realises he's actually sort of cute. "Plus, I wanted to talk to you."
“Oh,” Minho says dumbly. “Was it a good talk?”
“It was.” Seungyoon looks behind him. “My friends are leaving, but I’ll catch you around.”
“Sure.” Minho waves to Seungyoon’s retreating figure. “See you around.”
June 6, 2015 - BEIJING
Seungyoon and Mino have officially been texting for over a month.
“Congratulations,” Seunghoon says. “Which means you can afford to not text him this very hour, right?”
Minho feels effectively shamed, tucking his phone away and turning back towards his drink. A couple with their arms around each other's waist walk past their table, and Seunghoon's eyes follow them with derision. Minho spots the flash of a ring around both their fingers, and Seunghoon doesn't miss it either.
"How old do you think they are? Around twenty three?"
Something had happened between Seunghoon and Ayeon a few weeks ago. In the three years of them dating-and two of Minho living with them-they've never really fought, and even right now on the surface things are amicable.
However, Seunghoon's agitated behaviour had been steadily increasing in the last few weeks, peaking when they'd landed at Beijing yesterday afternoon. And although Seunghoon has always been a jaded type of person, recently he's been acting like any show of happiness existed to be a pointed attack towards him.
Minho, a decidedly mediocre friend, doesn't probe. Seunghoon probably doesn't want to talk about it anyway. If he did, he'd have gone with Jinwoo back to their Airbnb apartment after the concert, not drag Minho to this bar. And it's a good bar. The interior is lit up with warm autumn colours making it look like a homely restaurant, and really, it's a nice, cosy place not befitting of holding drunken waste, which is what Seunghoon is aiming to be if the fervour in which he skulls down his beer is any indication.
"This is why I don't commit," Minho sighs. Seunghoon redirects his glare away from the couple and towards Minho.
"Just drink," he commands, face now a glowing pink.
Minho does drink. Not as much as Seunghoon, but enough that he wishes he was as miserable Seunghoon to justify how drunk he was on his way to becoming. The song playing from the speakers changes into a rough acoustic number, the unfamiliar Chinese syllables curling around Minho like a soft blanket, and sleepily he thinks Seungyoon might like this song.
Minho wakes up the next morning with Jinwoo's soft body breathing lightly next to him and a pounding headache. Beyond the feeling of a jackhammer striking the back of his head, he’s grateful for Seunghoon’s foresight in booking a late afternoon flight, and sluggishly reaches a hand out towards the bedside table to grapple for his phone.
There’s a KKT notification from his mother. He pulls it up, and in the process, notices that his last message to Seungyoon had been at 3AM last night, which is worrisome because he doesn’t even remember being conscious at 3AM. His finger hovers over their chat, afraid of what he might find. Surely it can’t be as bad as the time he’d drunk dialled Jaewon telling him he’d written a song about him, and then proceeded to try and slur the song out between heaving sobs.
As life goes, predictably it’s a lot worse.
"You don't even know that he likes guys for sure!" Seunghoon exclaims, looking annoyed that Minho's stupidity has forced him to yell with a hangover more than anything else.
"What?" Minho's almost screaming now too. "You told me Seungyoon liking guys was more true than my first name!"
"Yeah, but he never told me," Seunghoon huffs, with a smidge of shame but not enough for Minho to feel compensated. "Look, some things are just obvious and don't have to be asked. I mean, would I ask Jinwoo that he thinks New Mexico is the capital of Mexico? No, because I already know he does."
Jinwoo, who's been sitting on the edge of the bed watching the entire ordeal like it was one of his dramas, creases his forehead. "Wait. It's not?"
"And even so, what, just 'cos someone likes dudes they want a dick pic?" Seunghoon reprimands. "This doesn't change anything."
Minho makes a sound like he’s just been stabbed. "What do I do now? He hasn't seen it yet I'll just... I'll tell him it was an accident."
Seunghoon grabs Minho's phone away from him before he can do his damage control. "Yeah sure. Hey sorry Seungyoon, I accidentally took my dick out of my pants, took a picture of it and-" Seunghoon squints at the screen-"put a filter on it? Is that Hudson?"
"It's obviously Nashville you dumb fuck!" Minho shrieks, well over the threshold of panic now. "I'm sorry, that was misdirected. Shit, what do I do. I can't see him ever again. I can't see anyone ever again. Seunghoon, you need to kill me."
"Calm down," Seunghoon says, slapping Minho's face. Not hard, but enough to ground him. "Just tell him you meant to send it to Jinwoo."
"What! No!" Jinwoo protests. "Tell him Minho meant to send it to you!"
Seunghoon shakes his head. "Don't be stupid Jinwoo." He finishes typing and flings the phone on the bed. The three of them step away from it like it was grenade.
"Okay," Seunghoon says, breathing heavily even though he’d undergone no physical exertion. He places a hand on Minho's shoulder. "It's done. The bomb has been diffused."
June 13, 2015 - HONG KONG
"Do you recognise any of them?"
Seungyoon cranes his neck, following Minho's finger to where a cluster of girls stand at the front of the mosh, balancing cameras with lenses larger than Minho's face. Seungyoon shakes his head.
"No," he says. "I wasn't really well known or anything. The only other fans I really knew were Seunghoon and Jinwoo, which is only because you don't see many male fansite masters do you? It was better that way honestly, you get to avoid a shit-ton of drama."
Minho knows. He still remembers the uproar that had followed when Seunghoon had tweeted 'REST' that March three years ago. The barrage of disparaging tweets ended up becoming too much for Seunghoon to handle and eventually Ayeon had to come over to coax him out from under his covers. Then there was the backlash Jinwoo had faced last year when it was somehow leaked that he was running a Kim Bobby fansite on the side, using the money made from selling Seungri fan-goods to fund his 2014 Spring Bobby Photobook.
It was ludicrous, but Seunghoon and Jinwoo's existence as people were ludicrous. Seungyoon looks more like the kind of person Minho had expected to befriend when he first entered university. An expectation that was thrown out the window when he'd arrived at his boarding house in Jung-gu and walked into his roommate for the next four years constructing a G-Dragon shrine inside what was supposed to be their shared closet.
“I’m done,” Seunghoon says, him and Jinwoo emerging from the front of the pit looking harassed. “How in the world did I use to tolerate being at the front? The concert hasn’t even started and some girl was climbing on me.”
“iKON concerts are never this bad for me,” Jinwoo says, massaging his left shoulder and wincing. “I’m usually one of the eldest ones there so I have elementary school kids making room for ahjussi.”
Even through all the noise Minho can hear the drag of Seungyoon’s feet as he creates some distance between himself and Minho. Jinwoo, who usually notices nothing, manages to notice this and his mouth stretches into a terse and unsure line.
Minho's current situation with Seungyoon is a nuanced one. It’d be inaccurate to say Seungyoon has been acting weird since the dick pic incident in Beijing, because through most conventional paradigms, Seungyoon is demonstrating the perfect level of appropriateness towards someone he assumes is in a vague relationship with a mutual friend. They still talk and meet up and collaborate on music together, and Seungyoon had been enthusiastic about accompanying Minho, Seunghoon, and Jinwoo on their trip to Hong Kong, saving them cost in accommodation; but the way he speaks to Minho has lost that playful lilt, and even the late nights in Seungyoon's personal studio have been dried of their intimacy, now feeling more like staying up for a school project.
At least the subtle change in behaviour is confirmation that Seungyoon had definitely been interested in him before. Even if that's been effectively nullified.
“Do you think it’s weird we never met each other before the Seoul concert?” Minho asks, an obvious attempt to draw some kind of sentimentality out of Seungyoon.
Seungyoon doesn’t take the bait. “Better friends now than never, right?” he says, shrugging.
It’s because Seungyoon hasn’t really been acting all that weird towards Minho, that he doesn’t flinch when Minho asks him to go sight-seeing in the hours they have before their flight back home.
Outside it’s hot and humid. They’re too short of time to go anywhere exciting, and Seungyoon’s underhanded nagging means “sight-seeing” ends up being taking a taxi to a nearby mall. Minho sits in the food court nursing a can of Pepsi and idly thinks that at least the air conditioning is good.
“How many more concerts are you going to let Seunghoon drag you to before you’re sick of it?” Seungyoon asks, poking at the box of spring rolls in front of him.
“He’s paying for the tickets and air fare,” Minho says. “There are worse things Seunghoon could do with that much money.”
“He could give some of it to me,” Seungyoon grumbles.
“You aren’t really living in warehouses are you?” Minho asks skeptically. It’s a joke, he’s been inside Seungyoon’s studio apartment before. It’d definitely been small, but considering Minho shares a two bedroom, one bathroom apartment with his best friend and his best friend’s girlfriend, he doesn’t have much sympathy to offer. Seungyoon doesn’t have to hold his pee in the middle of the night, worrying about accidentally walking into his flatmates having shower sex. He knows Seunghoon and Ayeon think they’re doing him a favour by drowning out the noise thin walls can’t contain, but all it’s done is given Minho a Pavlovian response to the sound of running water.
“You’re somewhere else.” Seungyoon clicks his fingers in front of Minho’s face. “It looks like it was somewhere dark, so feel free not to share.”
Minho shudders. “I wouldn’t do that to you.”
Seungyoon grins. He opens his mouth to say something, but then hesitates, sucking his plush lower lip in thought.
Minho narrows his eyes. “What is it?”
“I…” Seungyoon takes his time, playing with the water bottle in his hands. Even when he fidgets, Seungyoon manages to do so with an odd sense of composure. “I’m really glad to have met you. I wish we knew each other earlier, especially since we were always only half a degree of separation apart but... I like the person I’m meeting now too.”
Minho blinks. “What?”
“The question you asked me at the concert yesterday,” Seungyoon reminds him. “I didn’t answer it properly.”
“Oh.”
Seungyoon smiles at him this time, slow and affectionate, making something in Minho’s throat jump.
“Listen,” Minho says, scratching the back of his head. “That picture… it wasn’t meant for Jinwoo.”
It takes Seungyoon a second, but then his lips part slightly. “You mean,” he says breathily, placing a hand over his chest. “That unsolicited dick pic was for me.”
Minho groans, smacking his half-full can of Pepsi against his forehead. “I was drunk, let me live.”
He feels long fingers run through his hair and then tug his head back. When Minho looks up he finds Seungyoon smirking at him. He glances around quickly, and then ducks his head to meet Minho’s mouth in a brief kiss.
It’s barely there, the feeling is gone as soon as Seungyoon moves away to lean back against his own seat.
“Is that it?” Minho asks. He’s used to his first kisses with people being slow and simmering, a sloppy inevitable end to a night; or sparking at the edges, Minho having to be careful not to overdo it.
He wouldn’t have believed Seungyoon kissed him at all if not for the fact his heart is skipping every other beat, and the mundane chatter and shuffling of chairs around him suddenly sounds sharper to Minho’s ears.
“That’s it,” Seungyoon answers simply, before taking a bite of his spring roll.
July 19, 2015 - SINGAPORE
“Taehyun, look out the window,” Seungyoon says, snaking out from beneath Minho’s arm to stare at the grassy canopy below them. “The view is incredible.”
“I don’t need to look out the window,” Taehyun seethes, clutching the underside of his seat and focusing very intently on Minho’s shoes. “I live here.”
Just to be a dick, Seunghoon does a few light jumps, causing the gondola to sway to the side. Taehyun inhales sharply, and Minho takes pity on him and throws the tourist brochure for Sentosa Island at Seunghoon’s head in a feeble attempt to make him stop.
“Babe, do you think we have time to drop by Marina Bay before the concert?” Seungyoon asks. Across from him, Taehyun and Seunghoon have found a common interest-or lack, thereof-both of them gagging loudly in unison.
“How the hell did you two even meet?” Taehyun asks, his repulsion at Seungyoon making exaggerated kissy faces towards Minho effectively quelling his fear of heights.
“You know we talk about this a lot,” Minho says. “It’s so weird we never met each other when we have all the same friends.”
“Destiny,” Seungyoon says, voice pitched saccharine.
“Please don’t be mistaken,” Taehyun says, grimacing. “That was the Universe trying to keep you apart.” He turns towards Seunghoon. “Is this your fault?”
Seunghoon scrunches his nose. “Yes and I regret it immensely.”
Later in the afternoon Seunghoon and Taehyun argue over visiting Madame Tussauds or, an activity Seunghoon proposes with much glee, the zipline. After half an hour the compromise reached is going to the aquarium, something neither of them are particularly eager to do, cementing it as the only fair alternative. On the walk there Minho grabs Seungyoon’s wrist, pulling him off to the side and laughing as they both escape down to the beach.
The influx of tourists with sticky skin and warm breaths makes the air around Minho feel more oppressive than it already is, but that doesn’t stop him from gripping onto Seungyoon’s clammy hand even tighter. They settle down underneath a palm tree, and Minho rubs the fine white sand against his toes while Seungyoon rests his head against Minho’s half-clothed thighs.
“You know I actually really like aquariums,” Seungyoon says. Minho pinches some sand between his fingers and sprinkles it across Seungyoon’s hair.
“Are you just saying that to be contrary?”
Seungyoon chuckles. “No. I just think they’re cool.”
“Oh,” Minho frowns, feeling a little guilty. But it’s not like Seungyoon couldn’t have said no. He stares out into the ocean, the turquoise water laps against the bay in a perfect curve, like something out of a postcard. The colours feel too vibrant to be real, and Minho finds himself rubbing his thumb into the junction of Seungyoon’s shoulder and neck to ground himself.
Seungyoon shifts from his position below Minho. He produces an earbud from the pocket of his shorts and beckons Minho to bend his head down so Seungyoon can fit it into his ear.
Minho expects to hear Seungyoon’s dark, rough voice start the track-this is how they share their songs with each other, quiet moments in crowded places, an elbow nudge and a wire hanging between them-but instead the opening synths make Minho scoff in surprise.
“Sunset Glow?” he asks, bewildered.
Seungyoon stretches out his arms, closing his eyes against the bright sun. “It’s the perfect summer song.”
“I know,” Minho says. “I just didn’t think you’d like it.”
Seungyoon doesn’t give him a response. They listen to the song together, the slight breeze tickling the sweat layered on their skin, the balmy weather making Minho almost doze off.
“Hey,” Seungyoon breaks the silence again. “Are we going to talk about Nagoya?”
He says it so casually that for a second Minho’s stomach almost doesn’t curl in on itself. They’d talked about Nagoya, two weeks after they’d started dating, Seungyoon casually mentioning that he was moving there in September for an A&R internship with a recording studio. Minho hadn’t known what to say. Every relationship has an expiration date, he knows, but to have this one circled in bright red on a calendar isn’t something Minho’s accustomed to.
“What’s there to talk about?” Minho says, trying to keep his voice neutral. He shoves Seungyoon, urging him to sit up so he can stretch out the crick in his joints. Seungyoon leans his weight on his hands, staring across at Minho inquisitively.
“I just mean,” Minho struggles to find words. “There’s nothing we can do about it, so let’s just enjoy the time that we have.”
Minho has an inkling that this wasn’t the right thing to say. He doesn’t know where the inkling is coming from though, because Seungyoon doesn’t seem perturbed, he just looks satisfied to have received an answer at all and languidly reorganises himself so he’s lying down on Minho’s lap.
“Do you think Taehyun and Seunghoon are worried about us?” Seungyoon asks, barely making an attempt to stop the syllables from blending together.
“Not at all.”
“Good.” Seungyoon yawns, burying his head into Minho’s hips. “Let’s stay here forever.”
September 25, 2015 - TAIPEI SEOUL
“Sure you’re fine missing the concert?”
Minho hands Seungyoon his coffee. He forgot to get a cardboard sleeve for his own cup, and the warmth building up in his palm is beginning to sting. “Do you really think I care that much about Big Bang?” he says, switching to hold the cup with his freed hand.
Next to them, a mother is saying goodbye to her son who won’t stop crying. The small boy holds a garish pink and yellow balloon in his tiny fist, ‘WE’LL MISS YOU’ in a bubbly font. She probably won’t be able to take that on the plane, which is just as well, because the kid doesn’t seem to want to let the balloon go either, holding the string close towards his chest while he pulls at his mother’s coat with his other hand.
It’s a typical sight you'd expect to see at the airport but suddenly Minho feels awkward. The kind of awkward where you’re on a double date and watching the couple in front of you kiss, while you barely know the person you’re sitting next to. He wonders if he should’ve gotten Seungyoon a balloon, or even flowers. But he just doesn’t see the point.
“You care about me then?” Seungyoon asks, lifting the cup to his lips.
Minho shakes his head, taking one last look at the mother and son before turning back to Seungyoon. “Do I care about you? Well... obviously.”
Seungyoon merely raises an eyebrow at this, otherwise showing no discernible reaction.
“Do you… want a balloon?” Mino tries.
Seungyoon snorts, but not meanly. “Your parking ticket is about to expire,” he says. His hand comes up to wrap around the back of Minho’s neck, pulling him down for a long kiss. The strong taste of coffee and a mint Seungyoon had been chewing earlier in the car stays on Minho’s lips even as they separate.
“Have a safe flight,” Minho says, pecking Seungyoon on the cheek.
“Don’t be a stranger,” is the last thing Seungyoon says to him before giving Minho a jovial smile and disappearing behind the gates.
October 17, 2015 - SYDNEY
“Hey Minho, the shower is free.”
Ayeon stands at the foot of the couch, the ends of her wet hair dripping onto the shoulders of her white nightdress and making it translucent.
Minho recoils. “I’d rather hose myself down in the front lawn.”
“Don’t be a dick,” Ayeon says, slapping Minho with a wet towel. “We’d never do it somewhere my brother has peed.”
“People actually pee in the shower?”
“What conversation did I just walk in on?” Seunghoon interrupts. He kisses Ayeon on the forehead and flops down next to Minho on the couch. “For the record I don’t actually want to know.”
“Ayeon’s brother pees in the shower,” Minho tattles.
“He let us stay here free of charge, he can pee on your face if he wants.”
Minho punches Seunghoon on the arm, but because Seunghoon is in a good mood tonight-he had caught Daesung’s sweaty bandana at the concert, and it was currently tied around his wrist-he lets Minho’s assault go unpunished. Minho himself is also in a good mood tonight. For the first time in their jet setting adventures, they’re staying somewhere longer than two days, which means Minho has an entire week to be a stereotypical tourist along with some other things.
“Are you still messaging that girl on Tinder?” Ayeon asks, sitting on the armrest of the sofa.
“Yep,” Minho says. “We’re meeting up tomorrow night.”
Seunghoon jerks his head up. “We’re going to the Opera House tomorrow night!”
“Go without me.”.
“You are not going to go back to South Korea to tell people you went all the way to Sydney and didn’t see the Opera House,” Seunghoon protests. “That’s just embarrassing.”
Minho kindly does not point out that Seunghoon had dragged him all the way to numerous countries just to see Big Bang. He grants Seunghoon this mercy because he knows Seunghoon just doesn’t want to be left alone to have dinner with Ayeon’s brother and his wife tomorrow night. It’s not that Seunghoon and Ayeon’s brother don’t get along; ”I like you,” Ayeon’s brother had even assured Seunghoon a year ago, drunk on the evening of Ayeon’s 23rd Birthday, ”I just want you to break up with my sister.”
Minho feels bad for Seunghoon. But Tinder girl-Yuna, 26, 15 kilometres away-has a cute smile, and any overprotective siblings she may or may not have, Minho never has to find out about.
Ayeon clicks her tongue in disapproval. “To think I was worried if you were going to be okay going to Nagoya in December.”
Minho cocks his head to the side. “Huh. Why wouldn’t I be okay? Wait.” He tenses his shoulders. “Is this about Seungyoon?”
Seunghoon’s answer is straightforward. “Well, yes. I’m probably going to meet up with him but...” He eyes Minho. “If you aren’t comfortable with that, then I can just not.”
“Why wouldn’t I be comfortable?” Minho asks, confused. He’s self-aware about his tendency to get hung up on past relationships, but that’s always been part of the novelty of dating to him. A good muse when it comes to writing songs, but not a source of irreparable heartache. Not to mention him and Seungyoon had ended as well as a relationship could end. “I want to see him too, I haven’t talked to him in a while.”
Seunghoon studies Minho carefully, searching for a crack that isn’t there. “Fine,” he eventually concedes, like he’s lost an argument. “Just wanted to make sure.”
December 5, 2015 - Nagoya
“She was searching for apartments?” Seungyoon exclaims, eyes wide. Minho rolls his eyes from the other side of Seunghoon, who’s sulking in the middle seat of the taxi like a child.
“She was looking for an apartment for the two of them,” Minho says, for the hundredth time since Seunghoon had found the real estate website open on Ayeon’s laptop.
“That doesn’t make it any better,” Seunghoon snaps.
“What, did you want to be stuck living with Minho for the rest of your life?” Seungyoon laughs. Minho pouts, it’s not like that would be a terrible fate. Contrary to what most people believe, Minho is the orderly, well adjusted single friend, who has to put up with a terror of a dysfunctional couple that never do their own dishes, leave their clothes lying everywhere, and forget to pay the rent on time.
“Of course not,” Seunghoon says. “But I’d at least like forewarning.”
In all honestly, even though he’d never admit it to anyone, Minho had been nervous about seeing Seungyoon again after three months of mostly radio silence. But Seunghoon wouldn’t let him deliberate over it for too long, because as soon as Minho came close to doing anything like mulling, it was disrupted with a curt ”Minho, please message Ayeon and tell her I’m expecting a package around 2PM on Thursday.”
Which was probably for the best, because the first thing Seungyoon did upon greeting them at the airport was wrap Minho in a tight but brief hug, punctuated with a rough pat on the back. The kind of hug Minho would give Seunghoon, or Jiho, or Pyo, or basically all the people in his life he would never want to touch dicks with.
“Minho buddy, you okay there?”
Minho jolts, sliding his gaze away from the window. “Yeah,” he says. “I’m fine.”
Seungyoon accepts this answer without question, nodding and leaning back in his seat.
The taxi comes to a stop the street in front of Nagoya Dome and Seunghoon rolls his shoulders back. “Come on,” he says. “T.O.P is the only person in the world whose Japanese is worse than mine. I need to hear it one more time in person before I die.
“Hey, you know what?” Minho voices into the dark room.
Seunghoon is asleep beside him, mouth open unattractively with dried drool plastered on his chin. Both of them are lying on a futon laid out in Seungyoon’s living room. Seungyoon is sitting at the kitchen table, awake and in a worn Big Show 2011 t-shirt that hangs loosely on his skinny frame, the blue light from his laptop highlighting his face in a way that makes his puffy cheeks look hollow.
“Can’t sleep?” Seungyoon mumbles, his knuckles bump against his glasses when he rubs his eyes.
Minho pulls his legs against his chest, the thin blanket Seungyoon had given him pooling around his feet. “After all this time I don’t actually know why you like Big Bang.”
It takes Seungyoon a minute, his brain still slow from the long day and late night. “Huh?”
“Yeah like,” Minho moves forward so he’s closer to Seungyoon, though now he has bend his neck back in order to make eye contact. “For Seunghoon they live the life he wants to have. He used to dream about becoming an idol because of them. So now I think a part of him is living vicariously through G-Dragon or something. And Jinwoo… I think Jinwoo just thinks Seungri is cute. But what about you?”
“Why do I like Big Bang?” Seungyoon clarifies, sounding amused. He pulls his legs out from under the table and turns so he’s seated facing Minho straight on.
Minho nods.
“Because I like their music,” Seungyoon answers.
Minho waits for the punchline, and when it doesn’t come, he gawks. “What? Really?”
“Yeah. Did you think I devoted three years of my life to them while hating what they produced?”
“No.” Minho bristles, defensive. “I just thought there’d be something else to it.”
“I’m not that nuanced.” Seungyoon scoots forward, bowing in his chair like he’s about to whisper a secret to Minho. “Now tell me, what blackmail does Seunghoon have on you that you’re tagging along to see Big Bang everywhere even though you don’t like their music. And don’t try to deny it.”
“I wasn’t going to!” Minho grins, resting his elbows on his knees. “I make so little money that I have to live with my best friend and his girlfriend, why would I turn down a free trip somewhere? I’m not that nuanced either.”
They spend a long moment just looking at each other. In that stretch of time, it’s like nothing’s changed. And now that Minho has the opportunity to think back on it, he realises that’s the only way it should be. Because from the beginning of their relationship, to the end when Minho had bid Seungyoon goodbye at the airport, nothing had changed between them. He’s Song Minho and in front of him sits Kang Seungyoon, and the effortlessness of their silence has always meant as much as the ease of their words.
Seungyoon takes off his glasses, closes the lid of his laptop so that they’re completely shrouded in darkness. Minho can only make out the vague shape of Seungyoon’s mouth when he speaks.
“That futon is small,” he says, voice quiet. “Sleep with me?”
And the thing is, Minho really wants to. Which is why he should say no. But instead he stands up slowly, strides determinedly towards Seungyoon, and kisses him.
They’re high up in the air. Minho gazes out of the small oval window of the plane and can't see anything beyond a dirty grey cover of dense cloud. Not even a patch of blue sky. They’re scheduled to land in Seoul in approximately forty minutes, but Minho feels like half of him is still left in Nagoya.
“Seunghoon,” Minho says, voice not feeling like his own.
“Yeah?” Seunghoon answers. Minho doesn’t look away from the window.
“Why did I break up with Seungyoon again?”
At first Seunghoon is silent, and then there’s a barely audible “Geez.” Minho finally finds the courage to face him. Seunghoon hadn’t said anything when Minho had emerged from Seungyoon’s room this morning, hadn’t even spared him a judgemental glance, but now Seunghoon looks like he’s been waiting the entire trip to have this conversation.
“Because you thought it was the obvious thing to do, kid,” Seunghoon says, squeezing Minho’s knee. “And you forgot that you grew up.”
March 6, 2016 - SEOUL
The attendance for the final encore show for MADE is even larger than the opening. The only consolation Minho has is that this time around Seunghoon had let go of his belief that concerts were only worth attending if you were surrounded by a hundred other sweaty bodies in general admission, meaning that for once Minho wasn’t part of the long line that protruded from the entrance of the stadium. Jinwoo is standing there somewhere, having arrived five hours earlier, and as fond of Jinwoo as Minho is, he’s glad not to be with him.
“Hey, I think they’re opening the doors,” Ayeon says. “Where’s Seunghoon? He has our tickets.”
Ayeon has absolutely no interest in Big Bang beyond once telling Minho she felt like she was in a polyamorous relationship between all five of them and Seunghoon. However, since the announcement of the encore concert, Seunghoon had become oddly withdrawn. Staring distractedly into the air, watching old YouTube videos of himself dancing in Busan’s streets, redirecting any talk related to Big Bang into something else completely irrelevant. The realisation that this was Big Bang’s final concert, maybe for a good few years, possibly forever, had hit Seunghoon hard. Ayeon, a girlfriend more supportive than Seunghoon deserved, had asked him to buy her a ticket for the encore show even though Minho is sure feeding into Seunghoon’s neurosis went explicitly against her morals.
“There are no tickets,” Seunghoon’s voice resonates from behind them.
Minho and Ayeon whip their heads around, synchronised in their alarm. “What do you mean?” Ayeon says. “The gates are opening now.”
Seunghoon shakes his head and repeats, “There are no tickets. I sold them.”
“What?”
“All three of them?” Minho blanches.
“Yep. I scalped them to these three girls for eight hundred dollars each.”
“Dude.”
“That’s awful you-”
Seunghoon lifts a finger to hush them, and then, to their mutual horror, bends down on one knee.
“Oh my God,” Ayeon says, turning white.
“Seunghoon,” Minho says slowly. “You’re not thinking straight.”
“Can both of you shut up.” Seunghoon raises two fingers to massage the bridge of his nose. “I did this for effect. I knew you idiots would freak out.”
“Well congratulations,” Ayeon snipes, crossing her arms across her chest. “You were right. Now, where are the tickets?”
In lieu of answering, Seunghoon reaches into the pocket of his denim jacket and pulls out a scrunched up paper ball, presenting it to Ayeon like it was a ring. She takes it gingerly, pinching it between two fingers and straightening it out on her jeans. Minho stands watching the entire scene like the obedient third wheel he’s been delegated to.
“Is this the apartment I was looking at a few months ago?” Ayeon looks down at Seunghoon, like she didn’t quite understand the riddle.
“No, that apartment was awful,” Seunghoon says. “This is a better one. I gave them the deposit already, I just need you to sign on the lease.”
Ayeon does not, as Minho was afraid she would do, run into Seunghoon’s arms and start crying. Instead she smiles fondly, bending down to grab Seunghoon’s hand and pull him up from the ground.
“Thank you,” she says gently. “When can we go see it?”
Seunghoon wraps an arm around her shoulder, her small body fitting snug against his lanky one. “We can go now if you want. It’s not like we have anything else to do.”
“Okay, hold up,” Minho says, the preceding events finally catching up to him and all he can do is stare at Seunghoon, looking betrayed. “What about me? Not only do I not have a ticket, but you are now coercing me into homelessness.”
“Don’t be dramatic Minho, you can find other roommates. Or move into a smaller apartment.”
“Like that’s so easy!” Minho yells, disbelief no longer strong enough to mask his outrage. “You fucker, did you laugh while thinking about how much this would fuck me over?”
“No,” Seunghoon replies primly. “Clearly, I didn’t think about you at all.”
“Well that’s nice,” Minho snarls. At least Ayeon has the decency to look guilty.
“Come on,” Seunghoon says, steering Ayeon around. “The apartment isn’t actually far from here, we can probably catch a bus.”
“And you’re just going to leave me here?” Minho cries. Seunghoon ignores him, tugging Ayeon forward when she tries to look back. “You’re such a dick!”
“Well… not completely a dick.”
The voice sends all the circulation in Minho’s body come to a grinding halt. Of course Seunghoon would.
“Is this a coincidence,” Minho says, closing his eyes. “Or did Seunghoon really pay for you to come all the way to Seoul as my consolation prize.”
The Seungyoon standing behind him laughs. He looks good, comfortable. Minho is reminded eerily of the first time they’d met, except this time Seungyoon is dressed in a simple button down top and the glasses are gone. Minho himself probably looks exactly the same, except for the absence of the weave. Which, admittedly, is a fairly big exception. It’s a miracle Seungyoon had any desire to friend him all those months ago.
“I’ll have you know that I am no consolation prize, I was already in Seoul. But yes, Seunghoon called me three days ago being all ’Minho’s loins still burn for you’ and ’Also I need you to do me a favour so he doesn’t kill me’.”
“Fuck,” Minho breathes, feeling the humiliation all the way through his bones. “Are those the exact words he said? What am I saying, it’s Seunghoon, those are definitely the exact words he said.”
“The exact words he said were actually worse.” Seungyoon cackles at Minho’s discomfort but moves in closer regardless. They’re still a respectable distance apart, but if Minho wanted to, then only one step on his part could change that.
“If it makes you feel better,” Seungyoon says, lips quirking up at the edges, “my loins still burn for you too.”
Minho’s eyes trail down Seungyoon face, from his wide forehead to his bee-stung lips. “Nagoya is so far away,” he finds himself saying, but not really caring.
All Seungyoon does to reassure him is offer Minho a rueful smile. “Does that change anything?”
Minho shakes his head.
“Can we work it out?”
Seungyoon takes one of Minho’s hands in his own, drawing him in, forcing Minho to make the step he’s never considered taking before.
“I want to try,” Minho says, intertwining Seungyoon’s fingers between his own.
Seungyoon nods. “Then let’s try.”
Recipient: skinseas
Pairing: Seungyoon/Mino
Rating: PG
Summary: There’s no sugar coating it. Seungyoon used to be an unapologetic Big Bang groupie and Minho almost wanted to bang him.
Notes: hello lovely recipient! first of all, i'm incredibly sorry because i know i took a huge, huge amount of liberties with your prompts. i sort of mashed two together and then put them through a blender ): but i really hope you still enjoy this! there’s a zillion songs called “somebody to love”, but this fic was titled specifically with my favourite big bang song in mind.
April 25 - SEOUL
There’s a sharp gasp to Minho’s right. He squares his shoulders, bracing himself for what’s coming.
“Jiyong oppa?” And there it is. The hesitant, hopeful voice of another young fan whose delusions Minho is once again forced to crush.
Minho lifts his head and gives the girl a friendly smile, and as if on cue, her face falls. She bows to Minho apologetically before grabbing her friend’s arm, both of them power walking away with their heads close together. No doubt this’ll be something they’ll tell their friends about later.
“Why does this keep happening,” Minho sighs. He turns back to Seunghoon and Jinwoo, both of whom are busy fiddling with their DSLRs and are much too accustomed to these repeated cases of mistaken identity to be fazed. “I don’t even look that much like him. And honestly, do they just expect G-Dragon to be chilling out in line for his own band’s concert?”
“It’s the red weave,” Seunghoon answers. Minho reaches out to grab said weave self-consciously. “That, and the fact you do bear a startling resemblance to Taeyang and G-Dragon’s biologically impossible love child.”
Jinwoo hums thoughtfully. “I’ve read a fanfic like that.”
“We’ve all read a fanfic like that, Jinwoo.”
Minho feels the need to make clear that he has never read a fanfic like that, and is about to verbalise this when there’s a tap on his shoulder. This time he can’t restrain the exasperation in his voice when he twists his head around to tell whoever it is behind him that, “No, I’m not G-Dragon, I’m not even his brother, I can’t get a sample of his spit for you. I’m sorry.”
The guy standing behind him blinks, taken aback, and then laughs. The first thought to flit through Minho’s mind is confusion, usually the reaction he receives is disappointment which-he’s not going to lie-is starting to chip away at his self-esteem. The second thought is that the dude is… He’s a type. He looks like one of those trendy university students that hang around Hongdae near the more underground bars, black military jacket with a random assortment of buttons sewed on it, skinny jeans, and big thick-rimmed square glasses that frame his round face.
Hot Hipster Stranger leans in a bit closer, scrutinising Minho’s face. “I… kind of see it,” he says. “But I think it’s mostly the weave.”
“Didn’t I tell you,” Seunghoon jumps in, finally done with fixing the lens onto his camera. “Oh right, do I have to introduce you guys? Seungyoon, this is Minho, my roommate and minion. Minho, this is Seungyoon, he used to be Wild and Young, now he’s a hobo that keeps on snapchatting me pictures of the old warehouses he lives in.“
Seungyoon’s easy-going facade cracks a bit at this. “They’re covert urban landmarks.”
“Wait,” Minho says, recognition finally kicking in. “Wild and Young? Like that Taeyang fansite.” His mind is reeling and he does a quick re-assessment of Seungyoon, from the top of his messy hair to the welts of his Doc Martens. Minho knows not to judge a book by his cover, but Seungyoon looks like the last person on Earth who’d be a Big Bang fansite master.
Seungyoon is clearly embarrassed by the fact too, scratching his chin and averting his gaze. “I ran it for a little while from high school to my first year at university. My uncle works in event management so I’d get free tickets to things, and I’d always loved photography so…” He shrugs, like it’s no big deal. Only Minho knows from Seunghoon’s own stint as a fansite master during college how much work goes into camera maintenance, travel, buying five hundred copies of the same album just to get into a fansign. It’s always a big deal. There’s no sugar coating it. Seungyoon used to be an unapologetic Big Bang groupie and Minho almost wanted to bang him.
“Anyway, just dropping in to say hi,” Seungyoon finishes. “Tell Ayeon I hope she’s doing well.”
Seunghoon waves an inattentive sort of goodbye and Seungyoon makes his way back to his place in line. Minho watches him leave, oddly fixated by his laidback gait.
“Your friend is interesting,” Minho says.
Jinwoo nods. In his hands, his camera is somehow more dismantled than it had been a few minutes ago. “He’s nice.”
The concert is incredible.
Minho hadn't been overly enthusiastic when, upon the announcement of Big Bang’s MADE tour, Seunghoon had appended on his bucket list the mission to go to as many dates as he could afford. He’d also managed to persuade Minho to come along after harshly making the argument that small stints in underground clubs and working part time at Starbucks didn’t really count as employment, and it’s not like it’d hold him back from anything. That had stung, but more displeased than Minho was Ayeon, who thought Seunghoon had grown out of his Big Bang fanboy phase when he'd sold the last of his concert DVDs in order to get them through a month where rent was exceptionally hard to meet.
"I have all this excess money now thanks to Grandpa Lee kicking the bucket," Seunghoon had delicately argued. "I’d end up spending it on something stupid anyway."
Minho hadn't seen the issue with this line of reasoning. Ayeon was, and is still, a lot less convinced.
But despite Minho's reservations, from the moment the light dimmed and the opening lines of Fantastic Baby echoed through the stadium, he'd been transported to a different world. A world where strobe lights are suspended in space in place of the sun, and nights are spent following G-Dragon into a heedless bacchanal. Minho's ears are ringing, and in the immediate aftermath, he finds himself thinking he wouldn't mind experiencing the concert fifty times over.
Needless to say, Seungyoon hadn’t crossed Minho’s mind the entire night. And Minho is sure if he went home now he wouldn’t fall asleep thinking about him either. But even so, somehow when he spots Seungyoon breaking off from a crowd of people exiting the stadium, and jogging towards where Minho’s standing, it feels like the only natural conclusion to the night.
"Hey," Seungyoon greets. "Not with Seunghoon and Jinwoo?"
"Nah," Minho answers. "They're meeting up with some friends, I'm taking a taxi home."
They lapse into silence, but it's not an awkward one. It's a shared moment where they both stand looking out into the street, letting the last clear memories of the concert settle as sediment in their minds. Seungyoon is the first one to speak again.
"Hey, by Minho, you wouldn't happen to be Song Minho would you?" he asks. "Jiho's friend?"
Minho looks over at Seungyoon in surprise. "I am," he says. The revelation that they both know Jiho doesn't seem as exciting to Seungyoon, who nods lazily like he wasn’t expecting any other answer. Minho supposes it isn't a huge deal, they already have Seunghoon and Jinwoo in common, they're bound to have other people.
But that spark, the moment where you meet a stranger and the unfamiliar edges begin fitting into place, the feeling that you’ve discovered another piece of the puzzle that you didn’t even know you were looking for-there's nothing more thrilling to Minho.
"I've heard some of your demos," Seungyoon explains. "I actually make music too and I was wondering..." He takes his phone out of his pocket and hands it to Minho. "I know we just met each other but honestly, being a musician is a labour of love and I need a bit more love in my life."
A part of Minho's brain wonders whether that was Seungyoon flirting with him, or if the analogy itself is just fractured. He takes Seungyoon's phone, still in his post-concert daze, and punches his number into it.
"You could have gotten it from Seunghoon," Minho says.
"I like to avoid taking to Seunghoon if I can help it," Seungyoon says teasingly. Beyond the glasses and the intimidating nonchalance Seungyoon carries, Minho realises he's actually sort of cute. "Plus, I wanted to talk to you."
“Oh,” Minho says dumbly. “Was it a good talk?”
“It was.” Seungyoon looks behind him. “My friends are leaving, but I’ll catch you around.”
“Sure.” Minho waves to Seungyoon’s retreating figure. “See you around.”
June 6, 2015 - BEIJING
Seungyoon and Mino have officially been texting for over a month.
“Congratulations,” Seunghoon says. “Which means you can afford to not text him this very hour, right?”
Minho feels effectively shamed, tucking his phone away and turning back towards his drink. A couple with their arms around each other's waist walk past their table, and Seunghoon's eyes follow them with derision. Minho spots the flash of a ring around both their fingers, and Seunghoon doesn't miss it either.
"How old do you think they are? Around twenty three?"
Something had happened between Seunghoon and Ayeon a few weeks ago. In the three years of them dating-and two of Minho living with them-they've never really fought, and even right now on the surface things are amicable.
However, Seunghoon's agitated behaviour had been steadily increasing in the last few weeks, peaking when they'd landed at Beijing yesterday afternoon. And although Seunghoon has always been a jaded type of person, recently he's been acting like any show of happiness existed to be a pointed attack towards him.
Minho, a decidedly mediocre friend, doesn't probe. Seunghoon probably doesn't want to talk about it anyway. If he did, he'd have gone with Jinwoo back to their Airbnb apartment after the concert, not drag Minho to this bar. And it's a good bar. The interior is lit up with warm autumn colours making it look like a homely restaurant, and really, it's a nice, cosy place not befitting of holding drunken waste, which is what Seunghoon is aiming to be if the fervour in which he skulls down his beer is any indication.
"This is why I don't commit," Minho sighs. Seunghoon redirects his glare away from the couple and towards Minho.
"Just drink," he commands, face now a glowing pink.
Minho does drink. Not as much as Seunghoon, but enough that he wishes he was as miserable Seunghoon to justify how drunk he was on his way to becoming. The song playing from the speakers changes into a rough acoustic number, the unfamiliar Chinese syllables curling around Minho like a soft blanket, and sleepily he thinks Seungyoon might like this song.
Minho wakes up the next morning with Jinwoo's soft body breathing lightly next to him and a pounding headache. Beyond the feeling of a jackhammer striking the back of his head, he’s grateful for Seunghoon’s foresight in booking a late afternoon flight, and sluggishly reaches a hand out towards the bedside table to grapple for his phone.
There’s a KKT notification from his mother. He pulls it up, and in the process, notices that his last message to Seungyoon had been at 3AM last night, which is worrisome because he doesn’t even remember being conscious at 3AM. His finger hovers over their chat, afraid of what he might find. Surely it can’t be as bad as the time he’d drunk dialled Jaewon telling him he’d written a song about him, and then proceeded to try and slur the song out between heaving sobs.
As life goes, predictably it’s a lot worse.
"You don't even know that he likes guys for sure!" Seunghoon exclaims, looking annoyed that Minho's stupidity has forced him to yell with a hangover more than anything else.
"What?" Minho's almost screaming now too. "You told me Seungyoon liking guys was more true than my first name!"
"Yeah, but he never told me," Seunghoon huffs, with a smidge of shame but not enough for Minho to feel compensated. "Look, some things are just obvious and don't have to be asked. I mean, would I ask Jinwoo that he thinks New Mexico is the capital of Mexico? No, because I already know he does."
Jinwoo, who's been sitting on the edge of the bed watching the entire ordeal like it was one of his dramas, creases his forehead. "Wait. It's not?"
"And even so, what, just 'cos someone likes dudes they want a dick pic?" Seunghoon reprimands. "This doesn't change anything."
Minho makes a sound like he’s just been stabbed. "What do I do now? He hasn't seen it yet I'll just... I'll tell him it was an accident."
Seunghoon grabs Minho's phone away from him before he can do his damage control. "Yeah sure. Hey sorry Seungyoon, I accidentally took my dick out of my pants, took a picture of it and-" Seunghoon squints at the screen-"put a filter on it? Is that Hudson?"
"It's obviously Nashville you dumb fuck!" Minho shrieks, well over the threshold of panic now. "I'm sorry, that was misdirected. Shit, what do I do. I can't see him ever again. I can't see anyone ever again. Seunghoon, you need to kill me."
"Calm down," Seunghoon says, slapping Minho's face. Not hard, but enough to ground him. "Just tell him you meant to send it to Jinwoo."
"What! No!" Jinwoo protests. "Tell him Minho meant to send it to you!"
Seunghoon shakes his head. "Don't be stupid Jinwoo." He finishes typing and flings the phone on the bed. The three of them step away from it like it was grenade.
"Okay," Seunghoon says, breathing heavily even though he’d undergone no physical exertion. He places a hand on Minho's shoulder. "It's done. The bomb has been diffused."
June 13, 2015 - HONG KONG
"Do you recognise any of them?"
Seungyoon cranes his neck, following Minho's finger to where a cluster of girls stand at the front of the mosh, balancing cameras with lenses larger than Minho's face. Seungyoon shakes his head.
"No," he says. "I wasn't really well known or anything. The only other fans I really knew were Seunghoon and Jinwoo, which is only because you don't see many male fansite masters do you? It was better that way honestly, you get to avoid a shit-ton of drama."
Minho knows. He still remembers the uproar that had followed when Seunghoon had tweeted 'REST' that March three years ago. The barrage of disparaging tweets ended up becoming too much for Seunghoon to handle and eventually Ayeon had to come over to coax him out from under his covers. Then there was the backlash Jinwoo had faced last year when it was somehow leaked that he was running a Kim Bobby fansite on the side, using the money made from selling Seungri fan-goods to fund his 2014 Spring Bobby Photobook.
It was ludicrous, but Seunghoon and Jinwoo's existence as people were ludicrous. Seungyoon looks more like the kind of person Minho had expected to befriend when he first entered university. An expectation that was thrown out the window when he'd arrived at his boarding house in Jung-gu and walked into his roommate for the next four years constructing a G-Dragon shrine inside what was supposed to be their shared closet.
“I’m done,” Seunghoon says, him and Jinwoo emerging from the front of the pit looking harassed. “How in the world did I use to tolerate being at the front? The concert hasn’t even started and some girl was climbing on me.”
“iKON concerts are never this bad for me,” Jinwoo says, massaging his left shoulder and wincing. “I’m usually one of the eldest ones there so I have elementary school kids making room for ahjussi.”
Even through all the noise Minho can hear the drag of Seungyoon’s feet as he creates some distance between himself and Minho. Jinwoo, who usually notices nothing, manages to notice this and his mouth stretches into a terse and unsure line.
Minho's current situation with Seungyoon is a nuanced one. It’d be inaccurate to say Seungyoon has been acting weird since the dick pic incident in Beijing, because through most conventional paradigms, Seungyoon is demonstrating the perfect level of appropriateness towards someone he assumes is in a vague relationship with a mutual friend. They still talk and meet up and collaborate on music together, and Seungyoon had been enthusiastic about accompanying Minho, Seunghoon, and Jinwoo on their trip to Hong Kong, saving them cost in accommodation; but the way he speaks to Minho has lost that playful lilt, and even the late nights in Seungyoon's personal studio have been dried of their intimacy, now feeling more like staying up for a school project.
At least the subtle change in behaviour is confirmation that Seungyoon had definitely been interested in him before. Even if that's been effectively nullified.
“Do you think it’s weird we never met each other before the Seoul concert?” Minho asks, an obvious attempt to draw some kind of sentimentality out of Seungyoon.
Seungyoon doesn’t take the bait. “Better friends now than never, right?” he says, shrugging.
It’s because Seungyoon hasn’t really been acting all that weird towards Minho, that he doesn’t flinch when Minho asks him to go sight-seeing in the hours they have before their flight back home.
Outside it’s hot and humid. They’re too short of time to go anywhere exciting, and Seungyoon’s underhanded nagging means “sight-seeing” ends up being taking a taxi to a nearby mall. Minho sits in the food court nursing a can of Pepsi and idly thinks that at least the air conditioning is good.
“How many more concerts are you going to let Seunghoon drag you to before you’re sick of it?” Seungyoon asks, poking at the box of spring rolls in front of him.
“He’s paying for the tickets and air fare,” Minho says. “There are worse things Seunghoon could do with that much money.”
“He could give some of it to me,” Seungyoon grumbles.
“You aren’t really living in warehouses are you?” Minho asks skeptically. It’s a joke, he’s been inside Seungyoon’s studio apartment before. It’d definitely been small, but considering Minho shares a two bedroom, one bathroom apartment with his best friend and his best friend’s girlfriend, he doesn’t have much sympathy to offer. Seungyoon doesn’t have to hold his pee in the middle of the night, worrying about accidentally walking into his flatmates having shower sex. He knows Seunghoon and Ayeon think they’re doing him a favour by drowning out the noise thin walls can’t contain, but all it’s done is given Minho a Pavlovian response to the sound of running water.
“You’re somewhere else.” Seungyoon clicks his fingers in front of Minho’s face. “It looks like it was somewhere dark, so feel free not to share.”
Minho shudders. “I wouldn’t do that to you.”
Seungyoon grins. He opens his mouth to say something, but then hesitates, sucking his plush lower lip in thought.
Minho narrows his eyes. “What is it?”
“I…” Seungyoon takes his time, playing with the water bottle in his hands. Even when he fidgets, Seungyoon manages to do so with an odd sense of composure. “I’m really glad to have met you. I wish we knew each other earlier, especially since we were always only half a degree of separation apart but... I like the person I’m meeting now too.”
Minho blinks. “What?”
“The question you asked me at the concert yesterday,” Seungyoon reminds him. “I didn’t answer it properly.”
“Oh.”
Seungyoon smiles at him this time, slow and affectionate, making something in Minho’s throat jump.
“Listen,” Minho says, scratching the back of his head. “That picture… it wasn’t meant for Jinwoo.”
It takes Seungyoon a second, but then his lips part slightly. “You mean,” he says breathily, placing a hand over his chest. “That unsolicited dick pic was for me.”
Minho groans, smacking his half-full can of Pepsi against his forehead. “I was drunk, let me live.”
He feels long fingers run through his hair and then tug his head back. When Minho looks up he finds Seungyoon smirking at him. He glances around quickly, and then ducks his head to meet Minho’s mouth in a brief kiss.
It’s barely there, the feeling is gone as soon as Seungyoon moves away to lean back against his own seat.
“Is that it?” Minho asks. He’s used to his first kisses with people being slow and simmering, a sloppy inevitable end to a night; or sparking at the edges, Minho having to be careful not to overdo it.
He wouldn’t have believed Seungyoon kissed him at all if not for the fact his heart is skipping every other beat, and the mundane chatter and shuffling of chairs around him suddenly sounds sharper to Minho’s ears.
“That’s it,” Seungyoon answers simply, before taking a bite of his spring roll.
July 19, 2015 - SINGAPORE
“Taehyun, look out the window,” Seungyoon says, snaking out from beneath Minho’s arm to stare at the grassy canopy below them. “The view is incredible.”
“I don’t need to look out the window,” Taehyun seethes, clutching the underside of his seat and focusing very intently on Minho’s shoes. “I live here.”
Just to be a dick, Seunghoon does a few light jumps, causing the gondola to sway to the side. Taehyun inhales sharply, and Minho takes pity on him and throws the tourist brochure for Sentosa Island at Seunghoon’s head in a feeble attempt to make him stop.
“Babe, do you think we have time to drop by Marina Bay before the concert?” Seungyoon asks. Across from him, Taehyun and Seunghoon have found a common interest-or lack, thereof-both of them gagging loudly in unison.
“How the hell did you two even meet?” Taehyun asks, his repulsion at Seungyoon making exaggerated kissy faces towards Minho effectively quelling his fear of heights.
“You know we talk about this a lot,” Minho says. “It’s so weird we never met each other when we have all the same friends.”
“Destiny,” Seungyoon says, voice pitched saccharine.
“Please don’t be mistaken,” Taehyun says, grimacing. “That was the Universe trying to keep you apart.” He turns towards Seunghoon. “Is this your fault?”
Seunghoon scrunches his nose. “Yes and I regret it immensely.”
Later in the afternoon Seunghoon and Taehyun argue over visiting Madame Tussauds or, an activity Seunghoon proposes with much glee, the zipline. After half an hour the compromise reached is going to the aquarium, something neither of them are particularly eager to do, cementing it as the only fair alternative. On the walk there Minho grabs Seungyoon’s wrist, pulling him off to the side and laughing as they both escape down to the beach.
The influx of tourists with sticky skin and warm breaths makes the air around Minho feel more oppressive than it already is, but that doesn’t stop him from gripping onto Seungyoon’s clammy hand even tighter. They settle down underneath a palm tree, and Minho rubs the fine white sand against his toes while Seungyoon rests his head against Minho’s half-clothed thighs.
“You know I actually really like aquariums,” Seungyoon says. Minho pinches some sand between his fingers and sprinkles it across Seungyoon’s hair.
“Are you just saying that to be contrary?”
Seungyoon chuckles. “No. I just think they’re cool.”
“Oh,” Minho frowns, feeling a little guilty. But it’s not like Seungyoon couldn’t have said no. He stares out into the ocean, the turquoise water laps against the bay in a perfect curve, like something out of a postcard. The colours feel too vibrant to be real, and Minho finds himself rubbing his thumb into the junction of Seungyoon’s shoulder and neck to ground himself.
Seungyoon shifts from his position below Minho. He produces an earbud from the pocket of his shorts and beckons Minho to bend his head down so Seungyoon can fit it into his ear.
Minho expects to hear Seungyoon’s dark, rough voice start the track-this is how they share their songs with each other, quiet moments in crowded places, an elbow nudge and a wire hanging between them-but instead the opening synths make Minho scoff in surprise.
“Sunset Glow?” he asks, bewildered.
Seungyoon stretches out his arms, closing his eyes against the bright sun. “It’s the perfect summer song.”
“I know,” Minho says. “I just didn’t think you’d like it.”
Seungyoon doesn’t give him a response. They listen to the song together, the slight breeze tickling the sweat layered on their skin, the balmy weather making Minho almost doze off.
“Hey,” Seungyoon breaks the silence again. “Are we going to talk about Nagoya?”
He says it so casually that for a second Minho’s stomach almost doesn’t curl in on itself. They’d talked about Nagoya, two weeks after they’d started dating, Seungyoon casually mentioning that he was moving there in September for an A&R internship with a recording studio. Minho hadn’t known what to say. Every relationship has an expiration date, he knows, but to have this one circled in bright red on a calendar isn’t something Minho’s accustomed to.
“What’s there to talk about?” Minho says, trying to keep his voice neutral. He shoves Seungyoon, urging him to sit up so he can stretch out the crick in his joints. Seungyoon leans his weight on his hands, staring across at Minho inquisitively.
“I just mean,” Minho struggles to find words. “There’s nothing we can do about it, so let’s just enjoy the time that we have.”
Minho has an inkling that this wasn’t the right thing to say. He doesn’t know where the inkling is coming from though, because Seungyoon doesn’t seem perturbed, he just looks satisfied to have received an answer at all and languidly reorganises himself so he’s lying down on Minho’s lap.
“Do you think Taehyun and Seunghoon are worried about us?” Seungyoon asks, barely making an attempt to stop the syllables from blending together.
“Not at all.”
“Good.” Seungyoon yawns, burying his head into Minho’s hips. “Let’s stay here forever.”
September 25, 2015 - TAIPEI SEOUL
“Sure you’re fine missing the concert?”
Minho hands Seungyoon his coffee. He forgot to get a cardboard sleeve for his own cup, and the warmth building up in his palm is beginning to sting. “Do you really think I care that much about Big Bang?” he says, switching to hold the cup with his freed hand.
Next to them, a mother is saying goodbye to her son who won’t stop crying. The small boy holds a garish pink and yellow balloon in his tiny fist, ‘WE’LL MISS YOU’ in a bubbly font. She probably won’t be able to take that on the plane, which is just as well, because the kid doesn’t seem to want to let the balloon go either, holding the string close towards his chest while he pulls at his mother’s coat with his other hand.
It’s a typical sight you'd expect to see at the airport but suddenly Minho feels awkward. The kind of awkward where you’re on a double date and watching the couple in front of you kiss, while you barely know the person you’re sitting next to. He wonders if he should’ve gotten Seungyoon a balloon, or even flowers. But he just doesn’t see the point.
“You care about me then?” Seungyoon asks, lifting the cup to his lips.
Minho shakes his head, taking one last look at the mother and son before turning back to Seungyoon. “Do I care about you? Well... obviously.”
Seungyoon merely raises an eyebrow at this, otherwise showing no discernible reaction.
“Do you… want a balloon?” Mino tries.
Seungyoon snorts, but not meanly. “Your parking ticket is about to expire,” he says. His hand comes up to wrap around the back of Minho’s neck, pulling him down for a long kiss. The strong taste of coffee and a mint Seungyoon had been chewing earlier in the car stays on Minho’s lips even as they separate.
“Have a safe flight,” Minho says, pecking Seungyoon on the cheek.
“Don’t be a stranger,” is the last thing Seungyoon says to him before giving Minho a jovial smile and disappearing behind the gates.
October 17, 2015 - SYDNEY
“Hey Minho, the shower is free.”
Ayeon stands at the foot of the couch, the ends of her wet hair dripping onto the shoulders of her white nightdress and making it translucent.
Minho recoils. “I’d rather hose myself down in the front lawn.”
“Don’t be a dick,” Ayeon says, slapping Minho with a wet towel. “We’d never do it somewhere my brother has peed.”
“People actually pee in the shower?”
“What conversation did I just walk in on?” Seunghoon interrupts. He kisses Ayeon on the forehead and flops down next to Minho on the couch. “For the record I don’t actually want to know.”
“Ayeon’s brother pees in the shower,” Minho tattles.
“He let us stay here free of charge, he can pee on your face if he wants.”
Minho punches Seunghoon on the arm, but because Seunghoon is in a good mood tonight-he had caught Daesung’s sweaty bandana at the concert, and it was currently tied around his wrist-he lets Minho’s assault go unpunished. Minho himself is also in a good mood tonight. For the first time in their jet setting adventures, they’re staying somewhere longer than two days, which means Minho has an entire week to be a stereotypical tourist along with some other things.
“Are you still messaging that girl on Tinder?” Ayeon asks, sitting on the armrest of the sofa.
“Yep,” Minho says. “We’re meeting up tomorrow night.”
Seunghoon jerks his head up. “We’re going to the Opera House tomorrow night!”
“Go without me.”.
“You are not going to go back to South Korea to tell people you went all the way to Sydney and didn’t see the Opera House,” Seunghoon protests. “That’s just embarrassing.”
Minho kindly does not point out that Seunghoon had dragged him all the way to numerous countries just to see Big Bang. He grants Seunghoon this mercy because he knows Seunghoon just doesn’t want to be left alone to have dinner with Ayeon’s brother and his wife tomorrow night. It’s not that Seunghoon and Ayeon’s brother don’t get along; ”I like you,” Ayeon’s brother had even assured Seunghoon a year ago, drunk on the evening of Ayeon’s 23rd Birthday, ”I just want you to break up with my sister.”
Minho feels bad for Seunghoon. But Tinder girl-Yuna, 26, 15 kilometres away-has a cute smile, and any overprotective siblings she may or may not have, Minho never has to find out about.
Ayeon clicks her tongue in disapproval. “To think I was worried if you were going to be okay going to Nagoya in December.”
Minho cocks his head to the side. “Huh. Why wouldn’t I be okay? Wait.” He tenses his shoulders. “Is this about Seungyoon?”
Seunghoon’s answer is straightforward. “Well, yes. I’m probably going to meet up with him but...” He eyes Minho. “If you aren’t comfortable with that, then I can just not.”
“Why wouldn’t I be comfortable?” Minho asks, confused. He’s self-aware about his tendency to get hung up on past relationships, but that’s always been part of the novelty of dating to him. A good muse when it comes to writing songs, but not a source of irreparable heartache. Not to mention him and Seungyoon had ended as well as a relationship could end. “I want to see him too, I haven’t talked to him in a while.”
Seunghoon studies Minho carefully, searching for a crack that isn’t there. “Fine,” he eventually concedes, like he’s lost an argument. “Just wanted to make sure.”
December 5, 2015 - Nagoya
“She was searching for apartments?” Seungyoon exclaims, eyes wide. Minho rolls his eyes from the other side of Seunghoon, who’s sulking in the middle seat of the taxi like a child.
“She was looking for an apartment for the two of them,” Minho says, for the hundredth time since Seunghoon had found the real estate website open on Ayeon’s laptop.
“That doesn’t make it any better,” Seunghoon snaps.
“What, did you want to be stuck living with Minho for the rest of your life?” Seungyoon laughs. Minho pouts, it’s not like that would be a terrible fate. Contrary to what most people believe, Minho is the orderly, well adjusted single friend, who has to put up with a terror of a dysfunctional couple that never do their own dishes, leave their clothes lying everywhere, and forget to pay the rent on time.
“Of course not,” Seunghoon says. “But I’d at least like forewarning.”
In all honestly, even though he’d never admit it to anyone, Minho had been nervous about seeing Seungyoon again after three months of mostly radio silence. But Seunghoon wouldn’t let him deliberate over it for too long, because as soon as Minho came close to doing anything like mulling, it was disrupted with a curt ”Minho, please message Ayeon and tell her I’m expecting a package around 2PM on Thursday.”
Which was probably for the best, because the first thing Seungyoon did upon greeting them at the airport was wrap Minho in a tight but brief hug, punctuated with a rough pat on the back. The kind of hug Minho would give Seunghoon, or Jiho, or Pyo, or basically all the people in his life he would never want to touch dicks with.
“Minho buddy, you okay there?”
Minho jolts, sliding his gaze away from the window. “Yeah,” he says. “I’m fine.”
Seungyoon accepts this answer without question, nodding and leaning back in his seat.
The taxi comes to a stop the street in front of Nagoya Dome and Seunghoon rolls his shoulders back. “Come on,” he says. “T.O.P is the only person in the world whose Japanese is worse than mine. I need to hear it one more time in person before I die.
“Hey, you know what?” Minho voices into the dark room.
Seunghoon is asleep beside him, mouth open unattractively with dried drool plastered on his chin. Both of them are lying on a futon laid out in Seungyoon’s living room. Seungyoon is sitting at the kitchen table, awake and in a worn Big Show 2011 t-shirt that hangs loosely on his skinny frame, the blue light from his laptop highlighting his face in a way that makes his puffy cheeks look hollow.
“Can’t sleep?” Seungyoon mumbles, his knuckles bump against his glasses when he rubs his eyes.
Minho pulls his legs against his chest, the thin blanket Seungyoon had given him pooling around his feet. “After all this time I don’t actually know why you like Big Bang.”
It takes Seungyoon a minute, his brain still slow from the long day and late night. “Huh?”
“Yeah like,” Minho moves forward so he’s closer to Seungyoon, though now he has bend his neck back in order to make eye contact. “For Seunghoon they live the life he wants to have. He used to dream about becoming an idol because of them. So now I think a part of him is living vicariously through G-Dragon or something. And Jinwoo… I think Jinwoo just thinks Seungri is cute. But what about you?”
“Why do I like Big Bang?” Seungyoon clarifies, sounding amused. He pulls his legs out from under the table and turns so he’s seated facing Minho straight on.
Minho nods.
“Because I like their music,” Seungyoon answers.
Minho waits for the punchline, and when it doesn’t come, he gawks. “What? Really?”
“Yeah. Did you think I devoted three years of my life to them while hating what they produced?”
“No.” Minho bristles, defensive. “I just thought there’d be something else to it.”
“I’m not that nuanced.” Seungyoon scoots forward, bowing in his chair like he’s about to whisper a secret to Minho. “Now tell me, what blackmail does Seunghoon have on you that you’re tagging along to see Big Bang everywhere even though you don’t like their music. And don’t try to deny it.”
“I wasn’t going to!” Minho grins, resting his elbows on his knees. “I make so little money that I have to live with my best friend and his girlfriend, why would I turn down a free trip somewhere? I’m not that nuanced either.”
They spend a long moment just looking at each other. In that stretch of time, it’s like nothing’s changed. And now that Minho has the opportunity to think back on it, he realises that’s the only way it should be. Because from the beginning of their relationship, to the end when Minho had bid Seungyoon goodbye at the airport, nothing had changed between them. He’s Song Minho and in front of him sits Kang Seungyoon, and the effortlessness of their silence has always meant as much as the ease of their words.
Seungyoon takes off his glasses, closes the lid of his laptop so that they’re completely shrouded in darkness. Minho can only make out the vague shape of Seungyoon’s mouth when he speaks.
“That futon is small,” he says, voice quiet. “Sleep with me?”
And the thing is, Minho really wants to. Which is why he should say no. But instead he stands up slowly, strides determinedly towards Seungyoon, and kisses him.
They’re high up in the air. Minho gazes out of the small oval window of the plane and can't see anything beyond a dirty grey cover of dense cloud. Not even a patch of blue sky. They’re scheduled to land in Seoul in approximately forty minutes, but Minho feels like half of him is still left in Nagoya.
“Seunghoon,” Minho says, voice not feeling like his own.
“Yeah?” Seunghoon answers. Minho doesn’t look away from the window.
“Why did I break up with Seungyoon again?”
At first Seunghoon is silent, and then there’s a barely audible “Geez.” Minho finally finds the courage to face him. Seunghoon hadn’t said anything when Minho had emerged from Seungyoon’s room this morning, hadn’t even spared him a judgemental glance, but now Seunghoon looks like he’s been waiting the entire trip to have this conversation.
“Because you thought it was the obvious thing to do, kid,” Seunghoon says, squeezing Minho’s knee. “And you forgot that you grew up.”
March 6, 2016 - SEOUL
The attendance for the final encore show for MADE is even larger than the opening. The only consolation Minho has is that this time around Seunghoon had let go of his belief that concerts were only worth attending if you were surrounded by a hundred other sweaty bodies in general admission, meaning that for once Minho wasn’t part of the long line that protruded from the entrance of the stadium. Jinwoo is standing there somewhere, having arrived five hours earlier, and as fond of Jinwoo as Minho is, he’s glad not to be with him.
“Hey, I think they’re opening the doors,” Ayeon says. “Where’s Seunghoon? He has our tickets.”
Ayeon has absolutely no interest in Big Bang beyond once telling Minho she felt like she was in a polyamorous relationship between all five of them and Seunghoon. However, since the announcement of the encore concert, Seunghoon had become oddly withdrawn. Staring distractedly into the air, watching old YouTube videos of himself dancing in Busan’s streets, redirecting any talk related to Big Bang into something else completely irrelevant. The realisation that this was Big Bang’s final concert, maybe for a good few years, possibly forever, had hit Seunghoon hard. Ayeon, a girlfriend more supportive than Seunghoon deserved, had asked him to buy her a ticket for the encore show even though Minho is sure feeding into Seunghoon’s neurosis went explicitly against her morals.
“There are no tickets,” Seunghoon’s voice resonates from behind them.
Minho and Ayeon whip their heads around, synchronised in their alarm. “What do you mean?” Ayeon says. “The gates are opening now.”
Seunghoon shakes his head and repeats, “There are no tickets. I sold them.”
“What?”
“All three of them?” Minho blanches.
“Yep. I scalped them to these three girls for eight hundred dollars each.”
“Dude.”
“That’s awful you-”
Seunghoon lifts a finger to hush them, and then, to their mutual horror, bends down on one knee.
“Oh my God,” Ayeon says, turning white.
“Seunghoon,” Minho says slowly. “You’re not thinking straight.”
“Can both of you shut up.” Seunghoon raises two fingers to massage the bridge of his nose. “I did this for effect. I knew you idiots would freak out.”
“Well congratulations,” Ayeon snipes, crossing her arms across her chest. “You were right. Now, where are the tickets?”
In lieu of answering, Seunghoon reaches into the pocket of his denim jacket and pulls out a scrunched up paper ball, presenting it to Ayeon like it was a ring. She takes it gingerly, pinching it between two fingers and straightening it out on her jeans. Minho stands watching the entire scene like the obedient third wheel he’s been delegated to.
“Is this the apartment I was looking at a few months ago?” Ayeon looks down at Seunghoon, like she didn’t quite understand the riddle.
“No, that apartment was awful,” Seunghoon says. “This is a better one. I gave them the deposit already, I just need you to sign on the lease.”
Ayeon does not, as Minho was afraid she would do, run into Seunghoon’s arms and start crying. Instead she smiles fondly, bending down to grab Seunghoon’s hand and pull him up from the ground.
“Thank you,” she says gently. “When can we go see it?”
Seunghoon wraps an arm around her shoulder, her small body fitting snug against his lanky one. “We can go now if you want. It’s not like we have anything else to do.”
“Okay, hold up,” Minho says, the preceding events finally catching up to him and all he can do is stare at Seunghoon, looking betrayed. “What about me? Not only do I not have a ticket, but you are now coercing me into homelessness.”
“Don’t be dramatic Minho, you can find other roommates. Or move into a smaller apartment.”
“Like that’s so easy!” Minho yells, disbelief no longer strong enough to mask his outrage. “You fucker, did you laugh while thinking about how much this would fuck me over?”
“No,” Seunghoon replies primly. “Clearly, I didn’t think about you at all.”
“Well that’s nice,” Minho snarls. At least Ayeon has the decency to look guilty.
“Come on,” Seunghoon says, steering Ayeon around. “The apartment isn’t actually far from here, we can probably catch a bus.”
“And you’re just going to leave me here?” Minho cries. Seunghoon ignores him, tugging Ayeon forward when she tries to look back. “You’re such a dick!”
“Well… not completely a dick.”
The voice sends all the circulation in Minho’s body come to a grinding halt. Of course Seunghoon would.
“Is this a coincidence,” Minho says, closing his eyes. “Or did Seunghoon really pay for you to come all the way to Seoul as my consolation prize.”
The Seungyoon standing behind him laughs. He looks good, comfortable. Minho is reminded eerily of the first time they’d met, except this time Seungyoon is dressed in a simple button down top and the glasses are gone. Minho himself probably looks exactly the same, except for the absence of the weave. Which, admittedly, is a fairly big exception. It’s a miracle Seungyoon had any desire to friend him all those months ago.
“I’ll have you know that I am no consolation prize, I was already in Seoul. But yes, Seunghoon called me three days ago being all ’Minho’s loins still burn for you’ and ’Also I need you to do me a favour so he doesn’t kill me’.”
“Fuck,” Minho breathes, feeling the humiliation all the way through his bones. “Are those the exact words he said? What am I saying, it’s Seunghoon, those are definitely the exact words he said.”
“The exact words he said were actually worse.” Seungyoon cackles at Minho’s discomfort but moves in closer regardless. They’re still a respectable distance apart, but if Minho wanted to, then only one step on his part could change that.
“If it makes you feel better,” Seungyoon says, lips quirking up at the edges, “my loins still burn for you too.”
Minho’s eyes trail down Seungyoon face, from his wide forehead to his bee-stung lips. “Nagoya is so far away,” he finds himself saying, but not really caring.
All Seungyoon does to reassure him is offer Minho a rueful smile. “Does that change anything?”
Minho shakes his head.
“Can we work it out?”
Seungyoon takes one of Minho’s hands in his own, drawing him in, forcing Minho to make the step he’s never considered taking before.
“I want to try,” Minho says, intertwining Seungyoon’s fingers between his own.
Seungyoon nods. “Then let’s try.”