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girlrocktitle: 쉽다
fandom: drippin
pairing: gen, minseo/???
rating: t
word count: 6.7k
happy birthday misssoobun!!! love you dearly, fuck morkly, minseo only girl ever, manifesting 22 being kind to u, and hope you enjoy this silly little thing i whipped up on a whim T__T i'm sure you can tell that this ended up being much longer than i intended so it's probably really disjointed and nonsensical but ummmm. Is_For_You.jpeg 💖❤️🧡💛💚💙💜
🎂
Minseo is nine months into his debut when he embarks on his most misguided personal journey yet, an ultimate reckoning of self-realization.
"Hyung," he says.
Yunseong is bent over his laptop a few feet ahead of him, watching what looks like a cheap zombie movie on his Netflix account. At the sound of Minseo's voice, he slaps a palm down on the spacebar and leans back slightly, his neck craned out, eyeing where Minseo stands at his door.
"What's up?" he asks, hands falling instinctively open. Minseo stares at his parted mouth and long hair, the sloping lines of his big brown eyes. Every inch of the face he's spent time after time meticulously recreating in his mind, a face that has always made him think: I'm in love with you. Even if you'll never feel the same way, I do, I do. I do.
Minseo takes a deep breath, steeling himself.
"Hyung," he starts again, awkward and stilted. He leans against the doorframe and wraps four fingers against the rough skin stretched around the bone of his elbow, rubbing at the persistent dry patch.
"If I asked you to, would you kiss me?"
A preliminary truth:
Hwang Yunseong is a terrible choice of first love. At times Minseo wonders if his obsessions should be built on nurturing principles instead, on a connection shaped through more than tenuous attraction and blossoming strife. Minseo only knows how to love people who will never like him back, or—at least—not in the way he wants them to. Yunseong with his strong frame and the fluid roll of his body line during long dance practices, push-pulling in relentless tidal waves whenever Minseo edges at his orbit; Junho with his pinched brows and easy laughter, the way he can only bear to cling to Minseo in ephemeral bursts, a closeness teasing at Minseo's true desires.
Another truth: loving without purpose is hot like shame. It strikes a flame so gradual and licking it chars black and brown before it even starts to hurt, pain melting down at the foundation.
Minseo is used to making terrible decisions, though. And fire is still warmth, no matter what it burns through.
An opening question:
Does something ever make you so miserable its mere memory becomes untenable? Something cancerous and infected, something so ugly in its contortion it begins to fester from the inside out?
All Minseo remembers from eight entire episodes is the feeling of being forgotten. The way he'd pulled at the front of his shirt and stared down the 52 KIM MINSEO sticker that glared right back at him, startling in its generic mediocrity, barely, not even, average. He'd pulled at it as if picking stubborn lint off fresh laundry, fingers prodding and prying at his own anomalies.
Everyone has stories they cast to the dark recesses of their past. Notions reflecting an outdated version of themselves, a shallow copy, a lesser self. Hollowing out the decimated shell they drag along like a tantruming child, searching for a chute deep enough to compost it.
Minseo has been copied over and over again. Affixed to new roots, rebooted. He was miserable for every month he spent in the dorms in Paju, tossing and turning in his bunk bed and wondering what made him so much more unlikable than anyone else, why his efforts never translated into success. After he was eliminated, he remembers walking up to Yunseong and saying, "I'm going to be happy from now on."
"That's good," Yunseong had replied, brows furrowing slightly. "Minseo, we're going to be okay."
After that, a momentary wave settled over. Minseo sat on the curb outside the company building in between dance practices with Sungjun and bit into his cheat-day black lemon soda bars with a sense of routine satisfaction. Dongyun cried into his chest when he first got eliminated, and then a week later he was sent back to the dorms, and Minseo finally knew to feel nothing. For the first time in his life, he felt unflappable in his newfound carelessness.
(It wasn't until their managers told them that only one of them would make the final group that things started to splinter apart again. Yunseong and Junho had both leaned back with a muttered fuck, entirely feeling. When Minseo watched Yunseong cling to Donghyun at the finale, two boys sobbing openly in public farewell, he wondered what the ugly, wounded sensation in his stomach was supposed to say about him, why he was still capable of such meanness.)
Junho leaves them, of course. Then Hyeop comes, and Sungjun leaves too, and Alex shuffles into their practice room for the very first time, beckoning a revolving door of hellos and goodbyes, a shifting tide. When Junho returns his head is cast down and his eyes bloodshot. They handle him with all the fragility they can muster for the first month or so, trying to restructure the truth of their futures.
Against his better judgment, Minseo is consumed by blustery, angry desire through it all. He imagines kissing Yunseong after practice, right by the edge of the mirror. One time Junho wrestles him down too hard and Minseo feels the wind knock out of his lungs, scraped raw and burning with feverish want. He imagines pulling him closer, hands pressing into his collar, mouths touching. The way their lips would bruise together.
Minseo should know better, but he doesn't.
That's how they debut.
"Whose idea was it to make the walls like this?"
They're at late-night practice going over a cover medley for the nth time, and Minseo is laid flat on his back, squinting at the jagged blue-brown patterns adorning the sides of the room.
Alex turns over and follows his line of sight. He hums as if only just noticing this glaring illusory phenomenon. "Maybe it's a psychological thing," he offers. "You know, certain colors improving your stress response? Or, something."
"Hm." Minseo frowns. "Maybe."
"Isn't blue supposed to put you to sleep?" Dongyun counters dubiously. "Are we being sabotaged by our own company's architectural failures?"
From beside them Hyeop leans back with a sigh, throwing an arm across his forehead and snorting. "What the fuck are you guys talking about," he says, promptly offering nothing more to the discussion. Minseo pokes him in the side in retaliation.
Hyeop yelps at him, but before he can scramble over and torment Minseo any further they're interrupted by Yunseong clapping his hands together. He walks toward the laptop connected by the stereo speakers, and Minseo valiantly fights back an exhausted groan. If he has to listen to that opening JUICYJUICYJUICYJUICY verse on YouTube's top resulting lyric video one more time, he might actually start crying. It's 11PM and he hasn't even had dinner yet.
"Guys, why are you all lying down?" Yunseong calls out, hand threatening at the play button. "Get up already!"
Minseo grumbles into the soft skin of his forearm. Hoping, like a child without object permanence, that if he were to close his eyes hard enough the law of equivalent exchange might prevent Yunseong from noticing him as well.
"Minseo, that means you," Yunseong says.
"Hyung."
"You don't listen to me, and then you're the one who has the most trouble staying on-beat when the instructor comes!"
"I thought I was doing better! Last night you told me I had it down!"
"Better doesn't automatically mean good," Yunseong chides. "Look." He drags Minseo up from his armpits and then walks back, slowly moving his hips as he launches into an impromptu acapella cover. Dongyun starts laughing so hard an unceremonious snort slips through, and Minseo turns back to glare at him.
"You're into this?" Dongyun mouths. Minseo rolls his eyes and turns back, hands on his hips.
"You see?" Yunseong says. "You have to move your hips like that."
"I do—I move my hips like that," he insists.
"You really don't," Yunseong denies, and the finality of his tone has Minseo's hackles nearly through the roof. Just because Yunseong could dance like his entire career was on the line—
"There's no time for shame when you perform, Minseo-yah," Yunseong reminds him, the way he always does. He moves forward and places his hands on either side of Minseo's hips, the motion so sudden it only worsens Dongyun's accompanying snorting fit. Before Minseo can recoil or move back, Yunseong is guiding him side to side, gentle but firm, like a hand treading through the cool friction of agitated water.
Minseo coughs. "Hyung. What are you doing—"
"I'm demonstrating," he interrupts easily. "Sometimes you just have to do things. Commit. Loosen up a little bit."
"I get it," Minseo manages eventually, his face on fire. "I know."
"Okay, great," Yunseong smiles. "And now that you're up, we can start again!"
"Ugh. Fine." Minseo turns to stare down Dongyun, who scrambles up and exchanges a look with him. At least they can be useless together, he thinks, dragging his feet back to formation.
Dongyun leans over and whispers, I question your taste, right into Minseo's ear. Then JUICYJUICYJUICYJUICY comes on again through the speakers and Minseo really does nearly cry.
Minseo's mom loves to tell the story of how she picked out his name two months into her pregnancy. Even when his father had presented his own list she'd held firm, deadset on the warmth of its ambiguity, the syllables pretty and easy.
The thing is—as she's told Minseo time and time again, more than he could ever begin to count—his mother had been waiting on a daughter. In her pregnancy diary she wrote about wanting a first child who would grow up holding her hands and wearing her old dresses. A girl with indomitable spirit, capable of grazing her knees biking down the side of their apartment road, a girl who would learn to fall and fall and pull herself back up, every single time.
Kim Minseo was born a near-exact three kilos and shaking in his mother's arms. She kept the dresses in the right-most section of her bedroom closet, but when he was younger, biking around and around the block, reveling in the shades of mindless repetition only a childlike tenacity could sustain thrill in, she would take him into her arms and say: just like a daughter, our Minseo. My son.
The problem with a name like Kim Minseo, though, is that it blanketed any attempt at self-importance. It was a name universally, endlessly, hilariously common. Kim Minseo was a girl on a famous YouTube channel. A classmate in his homeroom, three more scattered around his grade. Kim Minseo was the boy he'd filmed all of his PR videos with as a trainee for the sake of the inevitable broadcast gag, the actress who topped his Naver search every time he looked himself up.
"Maybe if you got nominated for a few acting awards," Dongyun tells him sympathetically.
"But I'm a terrible actor!"
"Yeah," Dongyun accepts, far too easily for Minseo's liking. Couldn't he at least lie first, just a little bit? "You're just too honest."
Dongyun was honest, too. He told it like it was—imbued with the maturity that well-supported boys are given the opportunity to harness.
"He gets you," Dongyun told him once, after Minseo had curled himself in Dongyun's bed and fisted at his sheets, wailing about all the ways Yunseong would never understand. Back then Minseo had still been convinced of his inscrutability, believing that the lines of his infatuation ran far too deep to see. Thought that a pumping heart run on pure desperation alone, the most taxing and polluting fuel of all, could still be cloaked in meticulous subterfuge.
It made Minseo think of how he could never remember the hanja for his name, always faltering on each precious stroke of that blocky 敏. He recalled a time his mother had corrected him and pinched at his cheek. Said: quick-witted, just like you, both of them ignoring all the ways in which he wasn't.
Clung to its proper suffix, though, Minseo's name spoke of a tenderhearted sensitivity. It shaped him with startlingly direct accuracy: someone prone to tempestuous affections, a weathervane buffeted side to side in storm. A boy, above all, branded by his invitation of susceptibility. Spun around, held down. Broken apart.
That's why Dongyun could take one look at him and bite at his lip, surreptitiously moving a foot back from where Minseo's head had slammed down onto cushioned bedsheet. Continue, "Yunseong-hyung gets you more than anyone, Minseo. He just doesn't—"
Well, he just doesn't love you.
"Why don't I know how to stop?" he asked.
"Why do we continue doing anything," Dongyun replied easily, tucking his phone behind his legs and leaning forward to run his hands through Minseo's hair. Dongyun was normally the one in people's laps, getting his hair played with, Yunseong or Changuk with their arms tucked around him. The reversal made Minseo want to squirm into the touch even further, something strange and sore rattling heavily inside him. "I mean, why are we idols if we don't love things that hurt us?"
"Yeah, but." Minseo pursed his lips, deliberating. "I don't know. It's not the same."
"Maybe you're just a masochist."
Well, that was—just great. "Very helpful," he intoned dryly, shifting around and gathering himself to push off the bed. He tacked on a petulant thanks as he sprung away, stopping right at the door.
"Dongyun-ah." A sigh. "I think I need to stop."
At that, Dongyun snorted. He flipped his bangs back with one sweeping palm and offered him a languid shrug.
"Good luck with that."
Don't we all love things that hurt us?
A final truth:
His whole life, Minseo had wanted nothing more than to be pretty. Idolhood was the closest he was ever going to get, and even through the blatant disappointments of faltering promotions it rang truer to him than any other fruitless pursuit of career, any picture he might have painted of a mundane life.
It was kind of like the way he used to think life would be easier if he were a girl. Something unquestionably carefree in its sincerity. But, also, only simple through hypothetical vestiges.
"Didn't everyone think that way when they were younger?" Minseo remembers asking once, when he'd been still open and stupid and naive.
"I don't think so," Dongyun said, frowning lightly. Minseo felt himself shrinking in on himself at the following, Not me, at least, and he reached a hand up to rub at his neck, awkward and unsure.
"Oh," he tried this time. "I guess it's just—one of those things, that some of us grow out of."
Now, twenty years old and similarly unfocused, Minseo still doesn't know. Backstage the stylists smear orange-red powder at the outer corners of his eyes, soft brown filling in his brows, dabbing baby pink on the open pout of his parted lips. Face with your idealized self enough times, even male idols will develop a dependence to their made-up faces, the smooth planes of stage makeup and studio editing. That's so girly, his brother says whenever he sees photos of Minseo backstage, his glittery eyeshadow and wavy blue hair, the bow on his school uniform.
A piece of him wonders: Is this all there is to it?
He doesn't ask again.
The thing is that Minseo is an older child, but not in a way that matters. Even at this age he remembers being the one his mother constantly doted on. His brother had been successfully weaned on the eternal principles of boyish rowdiness and zealous athleticism that his father so frequently favored, naturally tanned from long afternoons of playing football and practicing trickshots on the pitch next to their childhood playground. He'd never needed shielding. Not in the way that Minseo—volatile and precious from his very first steps—had all but demanded.
Minseo wore his sensitivity like a brand, a costume. He was only headstrong until it no longer benefited him, vacillating uncontrollably between fussiness and open shame, a meekness aimed at provoking sympathy. The week they left for their first reality filming, his mother had frantically messaged into their family group chat: Kim Minseo, make sure you wear your sunscreen. Are they going to make you exercise? Tell them if it's too much, okay?
Mom ㅜㅜㅜ I'm not that weak!!!
Weakness was all relative, anyway. He layered up on his sunscreen before heading to the pool, careful to smooth it around his neck. Later Yunseong wrapped his arms around him and held him underwater after Minseo had tried to push him in, and he let the microwaves disturb around the halo of his hair, bubbles blowing in a gaping arc and warping his vision. He spluttered and protested on the way back up, but Yunseong's hands kept firm on his sides, still and anchoring.
Maybe they both knew that Minseo liked him like this. Assertive and present, persistent. Never giving Minseo the upper hand, holding him down in the pool and pressing against him at the kitchen counter, Minseo boxed in and shrunk in on himself.
Maybe Yunseong just didn't know better. Maybe he didn't know how to stop.
"Huh. Junho told me you asked him the same thing yesterday," Yunseong answers with a quirked eyebrow. Minseo, never one to think a step ahead, gasps at the unexpected betrayal. "What are you trying this time?"
"I can't ask a simple question?" he demands. "I'm not saying you actually have to do it."
"Minseo," Yunseong sighs. "Then do you really have to ask like that?"
If I asked you to, would you kiss me?
Would he rather Minseo had said: Yunseong-hyung, am I a person you could ever love? Do you feel anything like the way I feel about you, or am I just another person in your orbit; someone who follows?
It was an inquiry into desirability, more than anything else.
Maybe, then: Hyung. Could you take pity on me? Just this once?
"I mean it," Minseo continues. "Is there anything you like about me?"
"Of course I like you," Yunseong says tiredly.
Minseo thinks of something Dongyun had told him once, a platitude built at bolstering Minseo's self-understanding: Of course Changuk-hyung loves me. He just doesn't like me.
For some reason, the distinction felt flipped here. The nuances of that statement long corroded and chiseled away, marked by a leader's obligatory address. One time, Minseo had wrapped his arms around Yunseong's stomach and begged him to tell him his new hair looked nice, but Yunseong had teasingly refused, letting Minseo tighten his grip around his middle.
"I'll go to Junho, then," he said, disentangling himself.
"Junho won't do it either."
"Then—I'll go to Alex!"
"Minseo-yah," Yunseong suddenly chided. With his thin and reedy high-tone voice. "Don't be insincere."
The rebuke had frayed at Minseo's nerves. Because—really, if anything—Minseo was the one who could say that. He was the one who understood what it meant to be soft and hapless at seventeen, eighteen, a boy wanting nothing more than to be fitted into unfamiliar fabric. Yunseong had been universally liked his entire life, popular in ways Minseo couldn't even begin to understand. Even Minseo didn't quite know how to elucidate why he liked Yunseong, why he was the first man he'd ever wanted, a truth independent of his relentless infatuation.
"I'm not," he'd said. Couldn't Yunseong see how his sincerity was so sharp it bled him out? Couldn't he give Minseo this, if nothing else?
Back in his bed, Yunseong's face is expectant and open. Minseo thinks his true self must be shuttered behind layers and layers of good-willed leaderisms, too tender for a glass display.
Minseo lets himself fall back with a resigned sigh. He blows out so hard he disturbs a few strands of hair sloping down his face, wobbling in place. "Okay," he says.
"Okay?" Yunseong repeats.
"So—that's a no?" he tries, one last time, hellbent on being difficult.
Yunseong just laughs. "Minseo," he says meaningfully, setting his laptop aside to roll over and lunge over where Minseo is stretched out, mercilessly tickling at his sides. Minseo wheezes and tries to roll away, the moment broken.
Damn, he thinks. Maybe he really is a masochist.
"Minseo," Junho snorts the first time, lifting his head out of his lap. He holds himself up with two palms faced down on the floor, arms taut. "Stop joking around."
Minseo is used to making bad decisions. The fire rips through an entire forest, razing it down to smoldered wood and burning ash, and Minseo is still left careless, wanting.
Like:
Curled above his phone in the dorm eating takeout dinner, he reaches over and asks, "Would it be weird if I messaged this fan back on KaTalk?"
"What?" Yunseong asks incredulously. He stares at him with the blatant expectation that Minseo will say something like: haha, just joking! Why would I do something that stupid? When it never comes, he groans and sets his container down. "Minseo, what the fuck?"
"I mean, am I just supposed to ignore them?" he protests.
"That's—literally—yes. Yes, that's exactly what you're supposed to do!"
At that, Minseo bites his lip and stares down at the chat box open on his phone again. When was supposed to be a good time to reveal that this had been a do first, ask later situation: before Yunseong grilled him on the dangers of unregulated fan communication? Or after, when the dread had already pooled down to the foot of his stomach?
"You already replied, didn't you," Yunseong says flatly.
Minseo chuckles awkwardly and gives him a muted nod. Yunseong reaches a hand up to pinch at the bridge of his nose, then holds it back out and drops his palm open. Minseo hands it over. After scrolling through his messages with open consternation, Yunseong glances back up at him with a sigh and asks, "How did they even find you?"
"I don't know," Minseo pouts. "I just—they were nice!"
"You can't talk to everyone because they're nice," Yunseong stresses. "Sometimes people who act nice are just trying to exploit you."
"I know. 'm sorry," Minseo mumbles.
Yunseong stands up and pockets the phone. "I need to take this to one of the managers," he says simply. End of discussion, no room for protest.
Minseo blinks up at him. "You'll take care of it, then?" he asks. But the way he says it implies: You'll take care of me, right?
Like you always do?
"It's my job," is all Yunseong supplies. Then he's turning down the hallway, fading into a corner.
Or, like:
"Junho and I are getting married," Minseo laughs directly to the camera. He flexes his fingers around Junho's shoulders recklessly, lacking any collection.
"We are?" Junho asks, his eyebrows raised.
"Yes. You buy the house," Minseo instructs. Up ahead of them, Alex laughs disbelievingly.
"I have to buy the house, too?" Junho presses. He looks deeply unimpressed, but he still makes no move to pry himself away.
Minseo knows that it doesn't have to mean anything if you don't want it to. Yunseong had taught him that through his effusiveness, each smile undercut by a deadpan stare, praise ringing redundant in its hollow receptacle.
"I'll come live in it. We can raise Alex there."
It doesn't have to mean anything if you say it to an audience, divorce it of its intention. Didn't everyone wish— when you were younger— wait, is this all there is to it?
"You're ridiculous," Junho tells him later in the car, twisted around in his first row seat. Minseo just giggles at him.
Or, like:
"Hyung was my first teacher," Keum Donghyun is saying through the tinny speakers of Minseo's iPhone, boxed in shoulder-to-shoulder with Yunseong. Minseo's fingers flex and unflex uselessly, arm hooked around his raised knees. He watches as Donghyun continues on, his pearly-white smile easy and illuminating: "Really, he used to be my role model."
In truth, Minseo can't remember when he first fell in love with Yunseong. During Produce he hadn't known any of them the way he should have, too green to properly break himself in, hovering at the edges of a preestablished foundation. Yunseong had been made for other people's adoration, and Minseo watched him dance around Donghyun and the high-ranking boys through something like a glassy lens, the vantage point of an unwelcome spectator.
Maybe that's why this incising want cuts so deeply. Why he isn't above the tendrils of jealousy that constrict his chest every time he sees Changuk bent over Dongyun, a hand playing at his ear, their cheeks almost pressed together. Our Dongyunie is the cutest of seven billion people, he says every time, smiling to himself whenever Dongyun laughs back in that charming, low-tone voice of his, the one that endears in its unpretentious simplicity.
Minseo likes the idea of being sought out as a first choice. Acting as a natural anchor, not a creature tugged roughly to shore and left writhing out on the sand.
"Why are you always getting dinner with Keumdong these days," Minseo accuses petulantly when Yunseong returns to the dorms later than usual, both of them standing in the kitchen. "What are you two—what are you always up to?"
Yunseong runs the sink to rinse out the insides of his cup and fixes him with an unimpressed stare. "Really, Minseo?"
"What?"
"You're jealous of Donghyun now?"
"Well, I'm just saying. You've never taken cute polaroids with me."
"Minseo, please. He's nineteen," Yunseong reminds him. "He was, like, sixteen when we first met. Why would you be jealous of a sixteen year old?"
"I liked you when I was nineteen," Minseo counters, blinking furiously. Was that supposed to make him feel better or worse? This insistence that his age automatically annulled any possibility of romance?
Yunseong drags a hand down his face, saying nothing for a moment. "I know you did." He sighs. "That's not—Minseo, that's not the point."
Something was, though. It's just that they'd never know how to get to it.
It's hard to tether yourself when everything around you undulates with each step. Minseo gets motion sick whenever he's tired and hungry, and their early morning commutes to music show rehearsals in the manager's van constitute a special circle of hell. Each lurch and turn has his head fogging up in a haze, brain victim to the frenetic, jolting pain pulsing from temple to temple.
"I don't feel good," Minseo whines. He presses his face against the tinted window glass, cheek sliding down the ice cold touch of 6AM condensation in one fell swoop. Dongyun laughs sleepily from his side and nudges at his fingers.
"You never do," he says. Their pinkies hook together, and Minseo melts back into his seat, the line of his shoulders evening out. "It's because you always forget to take your vitamins in the morning."
"I don't think those help with being carsick," he protests. "It's just how my brain works. My inner ear balance, or whatever."
Dongyun hums. "It's the principle of the thing, though."
"Okay. Thanks, mom." He scoffs. "I'm sure my muscles would all just shrivel up and atrophy if it weren't for your generous assistance."
"Sometimes I forget how difficult you are before you've had breakfast," Dongyun starts ruefully. "And then you open your mouth."
Minseo flushes. "Sorry," he whispers. "Just—you know. The headache."
"Close your eyes, then," Dongyun instructs. He reaches into his pocket and fishes out his airpods, wordlessly offering one over to Minseo. "Want to listen?"
"Okay," he whispers. Minseo shifts closer to Dongyun with the earbud pinched between two fingers, then starts laughing when he sees what album is loaded up.
"Dongyun-ah. Why the hell are you listening to Avril Lavigne at 6AM?"
Dongyun shifts around and pouts at him. "Listen," he defends. "She takes me places."
"Uh huh."
"But if you don't like it—"
"No, no," Minseo hurriedly interjects. He makes a show of putting the earbud in and grins at Dongyun, the one that flashes an amount of teeth the members commonly call things like unsettling, and, Minseo, can you please just try smiling like a normal person? "It's good. Thanks."
The only lyrics he recognizes from this song are something about a girlfriend and the boy she likes, but for some reason Minseo finds a strange comfort to its unfamiliar anthemic edge. He glances to his left and sees that Dongyun has his eyes closed, a small smile affixed on his face. His lips look pink even through the barest glimmer of waning moonlight.
Minseo falls asleep against Dongyun's shoulder. His hair tickles at his neck, but Dongyun says nothing when they wake up and drag themselves out the side of the van, fingers still hooked together.
When Dongyun's hand falls away, all he says is, "I told you she was good."
There's something Hyeop tells Minseo in his bedroom once, the night he finds him smarting on the floor from the abject failures of his foolishly-supplied propositions.
"Are you here to comfort me?" Minseo asks from where he lies down, hopeful and pleading. He's been scrolling through sticker packs on his phone for the past half hour to pass the time.
Hyeop gives him a strange look. He lifts a foot and steps around his legs, jumping ungracefully to the other side. "No? I'm here to get my charger you stole."
"Oh," Minseo mumbles. He swings his legs around and sits up to make room for him, watching as Hyeop unplugs the charger from its socket.
"I hear you've been going around asking people if they would kiss you, though."
Minseo perks up. "Oh, yeah. Would you, hyung?"
"Minseo. No." Hyeop rolls his eyes. "First of all, why would I—no, I wouldn't. Would you even want me to?"
"Uh," Minseo says. "I guess not. But wouldn't it be nice if someone said yes?"
Hyeop spins on his heel and places a hand on his hip, sighing. "Minseo, you need to stop asking people if they'd kiss you. It isn't healthy."
"What do you know about healthy," Minseo mumbles peevishly, tired of always being wrong.
"I heard that," Hyeop fires back. "Okay. Fine. What's up?"
Minseo just shrugs awkwardly. He reaches a hand down to tug at his sleeves, humming contemplatively. "Hyung," he starts. "Do you… do you still talk to Seokhwa-hyung? And the others, and everyone else?"
"Sometimes," he frowns. "What are you getting at?"
"I don't know," Minseo says. He doesn't know what to do with the ambiguity of that answer, too even to prod at. "Yunseong-hyung is still friends with everyone, you know? And Junho, and hyung, and I. I just—"
Minseo still vividly remembers the mortification of being passed over for group battles, holding the leftover team together. There is no fate more insignificant than being made de facto center of the forgotten, hailed most promising of the least fortunate, confidence shattered and spirit running on fumes. Before Produce, Minseo had been so used to taking his high school boy's brand of self-confidence for granted that when he woke up and finally realized that it'd dissipated—that he'd lost it in some invisible crevice—it was too late to do anything about it. Kind of like when you don't think about your keys at all until you need them, but someone still inevitably asks: well, when's the last time you remember seeing them? And you can do nothing but stand there with your hands on your hips and go: Honestly, how the fuck should I know?
Even then Minseo knew that half of them would never debut. Minseo was lucky to have clawed his way out, riding on the coattails of his members' stronger offerings, chasing his tail in a game of futile catch-up.
In front of him, Hyeop tuts and leans down to face him, tucking his legs and resting his hands on his thighs. Minseo stares back at him, eyes wide and unblinking, mouth open in question.
That's when Hyeop says it.
"Minseo-yah," he starts, surprisingly soft. It's a kindness he so rarely musters for Minseo, the shade of it reminiscent of a mother guiding her child, offering them enduring enlightenment. "You know, not everything is made to last."
Hyeop reaches a hand to brush at the hair falling over Minseo's face, the bangs he needs to get trimmed at the shop later. Minseo's eyes flutter closed.
Before he goes, he says, "Sometimes you need to know what's worth holding on to."
When Minseo finally goes to Dongyun, he just laughs with his head bowed and says: "I didn't think you'd actually ask."
"What? Why not?"
"Well, you didn't ask Changuk-hyung," he starts.
"I'm not that much of a masochist." Changuk would have definitely bumped him in the head and run away for his life, and then Minseo would have had to sit there rubbing the sore spot ill-temperedly and contemplate the tribulations of his existence.
"...and you've never had eyes for anyone but Yunseong-hyung and Junho."
"That's not—" That's not the truest statement you've ever said to me? One day Minseo would learn how to lie, but for now his acting aspirations would have to remain solely that. "Well, I asked Hyeop-hyung, so your statement is automatically invalid."
"All right, relax," Dongyun laughs. "If you're actually asking, though—then. Yeah. I would."
Minseo stops short, staring at Dongyun with open incredulity. "Huh?" he asks, voice hushed even to his own ears.
"What?" Dongyun defends. "You know you aren't undesirable, right? You can't help that Yunseong-hyung is painfully straight and you aren't Junho's type, but that doesn't mean—other people can't like you."
"So I'm your type?"
Dongyun shrugs. "You said it was just a hypothetical, right?"
"Yeah," Minseo breathes, blinking at him. Dongyun's smile stretches easily, lazy. Nothing like the deep wrinkles that mar Minseo's face whenever he thinks of Yunseong, Junho, boys who would never love him, made ugly in his affection.
Don't we all love things that hurt us?
If this hurt, then Dongyun didn't show it. More likely, it just wasn't love. Dongyun didn't let himself feel largely, in all the grand gestures Minseo depended on so much. That's why he and Changuk worked, and it's why people said, Dongyun just has a trusting face, gravitating to his peaceful composure, pulled toward him in ways Minseo could never manage.
Minseo already knows what being in love looks like. At times he wonders how it would look on Yunseong: whether his character would take new shape if he truly needed someone, in the way only a fool can need another person.
The thing about Hwang Yunseong, really, is that he's easy with his affection when he wants to be. It's just that his affection can only be fashioned under meaningless expectation, something purposely designed to not endear. He's barely any taller than Minseo but still reaches past him to grab cereal bowls from the cupboard, leaning back to chide, "Hyung has to do everything for you, don't I?" He wraps his arms around Minseo in the living room when they're still disgusting and exertion-battered from practice, waiting their turn for the showers, the press uncomfortable and suffocating.
Yunseong always says, Hyung is in charge of taking care of you, right?, as if it's true.
It is true, of course. But—
As if it has merit.
Which it does, of course. But—
Minseo knows what being in love looks like, because he sees himself in the mirror every morning, hair disheveled and smile shaky, tight. He knows what a heart feels like when it's being torn to pieces through a paper shredder, and he knows that the way Yunseong laughs at him is loveless, when it really comes down to it. That Yunseong has never felt the way Minseo feels about anyone before, that some things are meant to be let go of.
"I had this dream," Minseo tells him one morning, yawning through his hands. "You were so nice to me."
"You make me sound cruel when you put it like that," Yunseong complains. "Am I not already nice to you?"
"You kissed me."
Yunseong's eyebrows quirk up. "Again?"
"I'm not asking you. It's just what happened."
Yunseong says nothing then. He reaches into the cupboard and grabs two bowls, spilling in frosted flakes and pushing one toward Minseo. Minseo's hand hiccups as he pours his milk in and the slightest pool of liquid sloshes over the porcelain lip, staining the countertop.
"Thanks, hyung," he says. Yunseong gets up to pull out a napkin and watches as Minseo accepts it quietly, rubbing restlessly over the offending spot and balling the cloth in one fist.
"Of course."
Minseo opens his mouth again, but then Alex and Changuk and the rest are walking in, letting the chairs creak against the floor tiles as they drag them out. Dongyun sits down next to him, his shoulder just barely brushing past his shirt.
"Would you really?" Minseo asks again.
"Is that so shocking?" Dongyun answers.
When Minseo asks him if he's ever been kissed before, Dongyun just laughs, taking Minseo's hand in his.
"You know I had a boyfriend in high school, right?" Dongyun tells him. "Um, Changuk-hyung knows," he adds on belatedly.
Minseo just gasps. How could he ever have known? Kim Dongyun was frustratingly resistant to delving into the secret fissures of his seemingly imperturbable surface, unknowable to the naked eye.
"You think hyung is going to tell me about his favorite dongsaeng's secrets?" Minseo says with a note of disbelief, and Dongyun laughs in acknowledgement. "But your—was he—you actually had a boyfriend?"
Dongyun shrugs. "As close as you get in your first year of high school, I guess."
Minseo thinks of the friends they'd seen at Dongyun's graduation ceremony, yelling out his name in good-natured teasing. The way that Dongyun was a person who commanded love, just like Yunseong did. "If you were dating… aren't you worried he'll tell people, at some point?"
"Hah," Dongyun chuckles, rubbing at his arm. "Probably not. I mean—not if he wants to become a politician, I guess."
Ugh. Of course. Minseo rolls his eyes and scoffs. "You Hyundai boys are all alike."
"Hey—what's that supposed to mean? I wasn't even that good of a student, you know? I'm still terrible at math."
"Whatever, you history genius. And I'm also terrible at math! That's what normal people are like!"
"Maybe we should have just gone to art schools," Dongyun tries. Minseo thinks of all the times he'd stared at Junho's mindless composition homework while he tore his hair out trying to understand how bell curves worked, and he gives him a solemn nod of agreement.
"I'm sure your family would have never allowed that, though," Minseo continues.
"Nah, I could have gone," Dongyun says. "Especially once I became a trainee. My mom was always like, you know. Just follow whatever dream makes you happiest, yada yada. That's the best thing you can offer me."
"Wow. Mine too," Minseo whispers. "And we're not even rich."
"Okay." Dongyun nudges him and watches as Minseo wobbles delicately, smiling. "I get it."
Minseo laughs, feeling his body relaxing. He places his head back onto Dongyun's shoulder and starts to hum. Their fingers are still laced together loosely, the mere impression of another's skin against his. "So what happened to you and your boyfriend?"
"Too busy," Dongyun answers simply. "You know, Minseo... life doesn't have to be all about—I don't know. First loves aren't everything you make them up to be."
"So you did love him?" Minseo asks.
"Well, I like to think I did." He glances down and catches Minseo's eye, offering the edge of his smile. "But—you know. Maybe one day we'll meet somebody else and realize it was never as serious as we made it out to be."
Minseo had always thought love was something you knew inside out, something that took so much space it left no room for your own realizations, a consciousness stamped out by the irrationality of flirtatious sentiments. But Dongyun and Hyeop both talked about love in this roundabout way, emphasizing the ambiguities of attachment. Knowing when to let go.
Now, because of Yunseong, Minseo knows: it doesn't have to mean anything if you don't want it to.
"Dongyun-ah," he says. "What if I asked you now?"
🎂
ummmm. ♡
fandom: drippin
pairing: gen, minseo/???
rating: t
word count: 6.7k
happy birthday miss
soobun!!! love you dearly, fuck morkly, minseo only girl ever, manifesting 22 being kind to u, and hope you enjoy this silly little thing i whipped up on a whim T__T i'm sure you can tell that this ended up being much longer than i intended so it's probably really disjointed and nonsensical but ummmm. Is_For_You.jpeg 💖❤️🧡💛💚💙💜Minseo is nine months into his debut when he embarks on his most misguided personal journey yet, an ultimate reckoning of self-realization.
"Hyung," he says.
Yunseong is bent over his laptop a few feet ahead of him, watching what looks like a cheap zombie movie on his Netflix account. At the sound of Minseo's voice, he slaps a palm down on the spacebar and leans back slightly, his neck craned out, eyeing where Minseo stands at his door.
"What's up?" he asks, hands falling instinctively open. Minseo stares at his parted mouth and long hair, the sloping lines of his big brown eyes. Every inch of the face he's spent time after time meticulously recreating in his mind, a face that has always made him think: I'm in love with you. Even if you'll never feel the same way, I do, I do. I do.
Minseo takes a deep breath, steeling himself.
"Hyung," he starts again, awkward and stilted. He leans against the doorframe and wraps four fingers against the rough skin stretched around the bone of his elbow, rubbing at the persistent dry patch.
"If I asked you to, would you kiss me?"
A preliminary truth:
Hwang Yunseong is a terrible choice of first love. At times Minseo wonders if his obsessions should be built on nurturing principles instead, on a connection shaped through more than tenuous attraction and blossoming strife. Minseo only knows how to love people who will never like him back, or—at least—not in the way he wants them to. Yunseong with his strong frame and the fluid roll of his body line during long dance practices, push-pulling in relentless tidal waves whenever Minseo edges at his orbit; Junho with his pinched brows and easy laughter, the way he can only bear to cling to Minseo in ephemeral bursts, a closeness teasing at Minseo's true desires.
Another truth: loving without purpose is hot like shame. It strikes a flame so gradual and licking it chars black and brown before it even starts to hurt, pain melting down at the foundation.
Minseo is used to making terrible decisions, though. And fire is still warmth, no matter what it burns through.
An opening question:
Does something ever make you so miserable its mere memory becomes untenable? Something cancerous and infected, something so ugly in its contortion it begins to fester from the inside out?
All Minseo remembers from eight entire episodes is the feeling of being forgotten. The way he'd pulled at the front of his shirt and stared down the 52 KIM MINSEO sticker that glared right back at him, startling in its generic mediocrity, barely, not even, average. He'd pulled at it as if picking stubborn lint off fresh laundry, fingers prodding and prying at his own anomalies.
Everyone has stories they cast to the dark recesses of their past. Notions reflecting an outdated version of themselves, a shallow copy, a lesser self. Hollowing out the decimated shell they drag along like a tantruming child, searching for a chute deep enough to compost it.
Minseo has been copied over and over again. Affixed to new roots, rebooted. He was miserable for every month he spent in the dorms in Paju, tossing and turning in his bunk bed and wondering what made him so much more unlikable than anyone else, why his efforts never translated into success. After he was eliminated, he remembers walking up to Yunseong and saying, "I'm going to be happy from now on."
"That's good," Yunseong had replied, brows furrowing slightly. "Minseo, we're going to be okay."
After that, a momentary wave settled over. Minseo sat on the curb outside the company building in between dance practices with Sungjun and bit into his cheat-day black lemon soda bars with a sense of routine satisfaction. Dongyun cried into his chest when he first got eliminated, and then a week later he was sent back to the dorms, and Minseo finally knew to feel nothing. For the first time in his life, he felt unflappable in his newfound carelessness.
(It wasn't until their managers told them that only one of them would make the final group that things started to splinter apart again. Yunseong and Junho had both leaned back with a muttered fuck, entirely feeling. When Minseo watched Yunseong cling to Donghyun at the finale, two boys sobbing openly in public farewell, he wondered what the ugly, wounded sensation in his stomach was supposed to say about him, why he was still capable of such meanness.)
Junho leaves them, of course. Then Hyeop comes, and Sungjun leaves too, and Alex shuffles into their practice room for the very first time, beckoning a revolving door of hellos and goodbyes, a shifting tide. When Junho returns his head is cast down and his eyes bloodshot. They handle him with all the fragility they can muster for the first month or so, trying to restructure the truth of their futures.
Against his better judgment, Minseo is consumed by blustery, angry desire through it all. He imagines kissing Yunseong after practice, right by the edge of the mirror. One time Junho wrestles him down too hard and Minseo feels the wind knock out of his lungs, scraped raw and burning with feverish want. He imagines pulling him closer, hands pressing into his collar, mouths touching. The way their lips would bruise together.
Minseo should know better, but he doesn't.
That's how they debut.
"Whose idea was it to make the walls like this?"
They're at late-night practice going over a cover medley for the nth time, and Minseo is laid flat on his back, squinting at the jagged blue-brown patterns adorning the sides of the room.
Alex turns over and follows his line of sight. He hums as if only just noticing this glaring illusory phenomenon. "Maybe it's a psychological thing," he offers. "You know, certain colors improving your stress response? Or, something."
"Hm." Minseo frowns. "Maybe."
"Isn't blue supposed to put you to sleep?" Dongyun counters dubiously. "Are we being sabotaged by our own company's architectural failures?"
From beside them Hyeop leans back with a sigh, throwing an arm across his forehead and snorting. "What the fuck are you guys talking about," he says, promptly offering nothing more to the discussion. Minseo pokes him in the side in retaliation.
Hyeop yelps at him, but before he can scramble over and torment Minseo any further they're interrupted by Yunseong clapping his hands together. He walks toward the laptop connected by the stereo speakers, and Minseo valiantly fights back an exhausted groan. If he has to listen to that opening JUICYJUICYJUICYJUICY verse on YouTube's top resulting lyric video one more time, he might actually start crying. It's 11PM and he hasn't even had dinner yet.
"Guys, why are you all lying down?" Yunseong calls out, hand threatening at the play button. "Get up already!"
Minseo grumbles into the soft skin of his forearm. Hoping, like a child without object permanence, that if he were to close his eyes hard enough the law of equivalent exchange might prevent Yunseong from noticing him as well.
"Minseo, that means you," Yunseong says.
"Hyung."
"You don't listen to me, and then you're the one who has the most trouble staying on-beat when the instructor comes!"
"I thought I was doing better! Last night you told me I had it down!"
"Better doesn't automatically mean good," Yunseong chides. "Look." He drags Minseo up from his armpits and then walks back, slowly moving his hips as he launches into an impromptu acapella cover. Dongyun starts laughing so hard an unceremonious snort slips through, and Minseo turns back to glare at him.
"You're into this?" Dongyun mouths. Minseo rolls his eyes and turns back, hands on his hips.
"You see?" Yunseong says. "You have to move your hips like that."
"I do—I move my hips like that," he insists.
"You really don't," Yunseong denies, and the finality of his tone has Minseo's hackles nearly through the roof. Just because Yunseong could dance like his entire career was on the line—
"There's no time for shame when you perform, Minseo-yah," Yunseong reminds him, the way he always does. He moves forward and places his hands on either side of Minseo's hips, the motion so sudden it only worsens Dongyun's accompanying snorting fit. Before Minseo can recoil or move back, Yunseong is guiding him side to side, gentle but firm, like a hand treading through the cool friction of agitated water.
Minseo coughs. "Hyung. What are you doing—"
"I'm demonstrating," he interrupts easily. "Sometimes you just have to do things. Commit. Loosen up a little bit."
"I get it," Minseo manages eventually, his face on fire. "I know."
"Okay, great," Yunseong smiles. "And now that you're up, we can start again!"
"Ugh. Fine." Minseo turns to stare down Dongyun, who scrambles up and exchanges a look with him. At least they can be useless together, he thinks, dragging his feet back to formation.
Dongyun leans over and whispers, I question your taste, right into Minseo's ear. Then JUICYJUICYJUICYJUICY comes on again through the speakers and Minseo really does nearly cry.
Minseo's mom loves to tell the story of how she picked out his name two months into her pregnancy. Even when his father had presented his own list she'd held firm, deadset on the warmth of its ambiguity, the syllables pretty and easy.
The thing is—as she's told Minseo time and time again, more than he could ever begin to count—his mother had been waiting on a daughter. In her pregnancy diary she wrote about wanting a first child who would grow up holding her hands and wearing her old dresses. A girl with indomitable spirit, capable of grazing her knees biking down the side of their apartment road, a girl who would learn to fall and fall and pull herself back up, every single time.
Kim Minseo was born a near-exact three kilos and shaking in his mother's arms. She kept the dresses in the right-most section of her bedroom closet, but when he was younger, biking around and around the block, reveling in the shades of mindless repetition only a childlike tenacity could sustain thrill in, she would take him into her arms and say: just like a daughter, our Minseo. My son.
The problem with a name like Kim Minseo, though, is that it blanketed any attempt at self-importance. It was a name universally, endlessly, hilariously common. Kim Minseo was a girl on a famous YouTube channel. A classmate in his homeroom, three more scattered around his grade. Kim Minseo was the boy he'd filmed all of his PR videos with as a trainee for the sake of the inevitable broadcast gag, the actress who topped his Naver search every time he looked himself up.
"Maybe if you got nominated for a few acting awards," Dongyun tells him sympathetically.
"But I'm a terrible actor!"
"Yeah," Dongyun accepts, far too easily for Minseo's liking. Couldn't he at least lie first, just a little bit? "You're just too honest."
Dongyun was honest, too. He told it like it was—imbued with the maturity that well-supported boys are given the opportunity to harness.
"He gets you," Dongyun told him once, after Minseo had curled himself in Dongyun's bed and fisted at his sheets, wailing about all the ways Yunseong would never understand. Back then Minseo had still been convinced of his inscrutability, believing that the lines of his infatuation ran far too deep to see. Thought that a pumping heart run on pure desperation alone, the most taxing and polluting fuel of all, could still be cloaked in meticulous subterfuge.
It made Minseo think of how he could never remember the hanja for his name, always faltering on each precious stroke of that blocky 敏. He recalled a time his mother had corrected him and pinched at his cheek. Said: quick-witted, just like you, both of them ignoring all the ways in which he wasn't.
Clung to its proper suffix, though, Minseo's name spoke of a tenderhearted sensitivity. It shaped him with startlingly direct accuracy: someone prone to tempestuous affections, a weathervane buffeted side to side in storm. A boy, above all, branded by his invitation of susceptibility. Spun around, held down. Broken apart.
That's why Dongyun could take one look at him and bite at his lip, surreptitiously moving a foot back from where Minseo's head had slammed down onto cushioned bedsheet. Continue, "Yunseong-hyung gets you more than anyone, Minseo. He just doesn't—"
Well, he just doesn't love you.
"Why don't I know how to stop?" he asked.
"Why do we continue doing anything," Dongyun replied easily, tucking his phone behind his legs and leaning forward to run his hands through Minseo's hair. Dongyun was normally the one in people's laps, getting his hair played with, Yunseong or Changuk with their arms tucked around him. The reversal made Minseo want to squirm into the touch even further, something strange and sore rattling heavily inside him. "I mean, why are we idols if we don't love things that hurt us?"
"Yeah, but." Minseo pursed his lips, deliberating. "I don't know. It's not the same."
"Maybe you're just a masochist."
Well, that was—just great. "Very helpful," he intoned dryly, shifting around and gathering himself to push off the bed. He tacked on a petulant thanks as he sprung away, stopping right at the door.
"Dongyun-ah." A sigh. "I think I need to stop."
At that, Dongyun snorted. He flipped his bangs back with one sweeping palm and offered him a languid shrug.
"Good luck with that."
Don't we all love things that hurt us?
A final truth:
His whole life, Minseo had wanted nothing more than to be pretty. Idolhood was the closest he was ever going to get, and even through the blatant disappointments of faltering promotions it rang truer to him than any other fruitless pursuit of career, any picture he might have painted of a mundane life.
It was kind of like the way he used to think life would be easier if he were a girl. Something unquestionably carefree in its sincerity. But, also, only simple through hypothetical vestiges.
"Didn't everyone think that way when they were younger?" Minseo remembers asking once, when he'd been still open and stupid and naive.
"I don't think so," Dongyun said, frowning lightly. Minseo felt himself shrinking in on himself at the following, Not me, at least, and he reached a hand up to rub at his neck, awkward and unsure.
"Oh," he tried this time. "I guess it's just—one of those things, that some of us grow out of."
Now, twenty years old and similarly unfocused, Minseo still doesn't know. Backstage the stylists smear orange-red powder at the outer corners of his eyes, soft brown filling in his brows, dabbing baby pink on the open pout of his parted lips. Face with your idealized self enough times, even male idols will develop a dependence to their made-up faces, the smooth planes of stage makeup and studio editing. That's so girly, his brother says whenever he sees photos of Minseo backstage, his glittery eyeshadow and wavy blue hair, the bow on his school uniform.
A piece of him wonders: Is this all there is to it?
He doesn't ask again.
The thing is that Minseo is an older child, but not in a way that matters. Even at this age he remembers being the one his mother constantly doted on. His brother had been successfully weaned on the eternal principles of boyish rowdiness and zealous athleticism that his father so frequently favored, naturally tanned from long afternoons of playing football and practicing trickshots on the pitch next to their childhood playground. He'd never needed shielding. Not in the way that Minseo—volatile and precious from his very first steps—had all but demanded.
Minseo wore his sensitivity like a brand, a costume. He was only headstrong until it no longer benefited him, vacillating uncontrollably between fussiness and open shame, a meekness aimed at provoking sympathy. The week they left for their first reality filming, his mother had frantically messaged into their family group chat: Kim Minseo, make sure you wear your sunscreen. Are they going to make you exercise? Tell them if it's too much, okay?
Mom ㅜㅜㅜ I'm not that weak!!!
Weakness was all relative, anyway. He layered up on his sunscreen before heading to the pool, careful to smooth it around his neck. Later Yunseong wrapped his arms around him and held him underwater after Minseo had tried to push him in, and he let the microwaves disturb around the halo of his hair, bubbles blowing in a gaping arc and warping his vision. He spluttered and protested on the way back up, but Yunseong's hands kept firm on his sides, still and anchoring.
Maybe they both knew that Minseo liked him like this. Assertive and present, persistent. Never giving Minseo the upper hand, holding him down in the pool and pressing against him at the kitchen counter, Minseo boxed in and shrunk in on himself.
Maybe Yunseong just didn't know better. Maybe he didn't know how to stop.
"Huh. Junho told me you asked him the same thing yesterday," Yunseong answers with a quirked eyebrow. Minseo, never one to think a step ahead, gasps at the unexpected betrayal. "What are you trying this time?"
"I can't ask a simple question?" he demands. "I'm not saying you actually have to do it."
"Minseo," Yunseong sighs. "Then do you really have to ask like that?"
If I asked you to, would you kiss me?
Would he rather Minseo had said: Yunseong-hyung, am I a person you could ever love? Do you feel anything like the way I feel about you, or am I just another person in your orbit; someone who follows?
It was an inquiry into desirability, more than anything else.
Maybe, then: Hyung. Could you take pity on me? Just this once?
"I mean it," Minseo continues. "Is there anything you like about me?"
"Of course I like you," Yunseong says tiredly.
Minseo thinks of something Dongyun had told him once, a platitude built at bolstering Minseo's self-understanding: Of course Changuk-hyung loves me. He just doesn't like me.
For some reason, the distinction felt flipped here. The nuances of that statement long corroded and chiseled away, marked by a leader's obligatory address. One time, Minseo had wrapped his arms around Yunseong's stomach and begged him to tell him his new hair looked nice, but Yunseong had teasingly refused, letting Minseo tighten his grip around his middle.
"I'll go to Junho, then," he said, disentangling himself.
"Junho won't do it either."
"Then—I'll go to Alex!"
"Minseo-yah," Yunseong suddenly chided. With his thin and reedy high-tone voice. "Don't be insincere."
The rebuke had frayed at Minseo's nerves. Because—really, if anything—Minseo was the one who could say that. He was the one who understood what it meant to be soft and hapless at seventeen, eighteen, a boy wanting nothing more than to be fitted into unfamiliar fabric. Yunseong had been universally liked his entire life, popular in ways Minseo couldn't even begin to understand. Even Minseo didn't quite know how to elucidate why he liked Yunseong, why he was the first man he'd ever wanted, a truth independent of his relentless infatuation.
"I'm not," he'd said. Couldn't Yunseong see how his sincerity was so sharp it bled him out? Couldn't he give Minseo this, if nothing else?
Back in his bed, Yunseong's face is expectant and open. Minseo thinks his true self must be shuttered behind layers and layers of good-willed leaderisms, too tender for a glass display.
Minseo lets himself fall back with a resigned sigh. He blows out so hard he disturbs a few strands of hair sloping down his face, wobbling in place. "Okay," he says.
"Okay?" Yunseong repeats.
"So—that's a no?" he tries, one last time, hellbent on being difficult.
Yunseong just laughs. "Minseo," he says meaningfully, setting his laptop aside to roll over and lunge over where Minseo is stretched out, mercilessly tickling at his sides. Minseo wheezes and tries to roll away, the moment broken.
Damn, he thinks. Maybe he really is a masochist.
"Minseo," Junho snorts the first time, lifting his head out of his lap. He holds himself up with two palms faced down on the floor, arms taut. "Stop joking around."
Minseo is used to making bad decisions. The fire rips through an entire forest, razing it down to smoldered wood and burning ash, and Minseo is still left careless, wanting.
Like:
Curled above his phone in the dorm eating takeout dinner, he reaches over and asks, "Would it be weird if I messaged this fan back on KaTalk?"
"What?" Yunseong asks incredulously. He stares at him with the blatant expectation that Minseo will say something like: haha, just joking! Why would I do something that stupid? When it never comes, he groans and sets his container down. "Minseo, what the fuck?"
"I mean, am I just supposed to ignore them?" he protests.
"That's—literally—yes. Yes, that's exactly what you're supposed to do!"
At that, Minseo bites his lip and stares down at the chat box open on his phone again. When was supposed to be a good time to reveal that this had been a do first, ask later situation: before Yunseong grilled him on the dangers of unregulated fan communication? Or after, when the dread had already pooled down to the foot of his stomach?
"You already replied, didn't you," Yunseong says flatly.
Minseo chuckles awkwardly and gives him a muted nod. Yunseong reaches a hand up to pinch at the bridge of his nose, then holds it back out and drops his palm open. Minseo hands it over. After scrolling through his messages with open consternation, Yunseong glances back up at him with a sigh and asks, "How did they even find you?"
"I don't know," Minseo pouts. "I just—they were nice!"
"You can't talk to everyone because they're nice," Yunseong stresses. "Sometimes people who act nice are just trying to exploit you."
"I know. 'm sorry," Minseo mumbles.
Yunseong stands up and pockets the phone. "I need to take this to one of the managers," he says simply. End of discussion, no room for protest.
Minseo blinks up at him. "You'll take care of it, then?" he asks. But the way he says it implies: You'll take care of me, right?
Like you always do?
"It's my job," is all Yunseong supplies. Then he's turning down the hallway, fading into a corner.
Or, like:
"Junho and I are getting married," Minseo laughs directly to the camera. He flexes his fingers around Junho's shoulders recklessly, lacking any collection.
"We are?" Junho asks, his eyebrows raised.
"Yes. You buy the house," Minseo instructs. Up ahead of them, Alex laughs disbelievingly.
"I have to buy the house, too?" Junho presses. He looks deeply unimpressed, but he still makes no move to pry himself away.
Minseo knows that it doesn't have to mean anything if you don't want it to. Yunseong had taught him that through his effusiveness, each smile undercut by a deadpan stare, praise ringing redundant in its hollow receptacle.
"I'll come live in it. We can raise Alex there."
It doesn't have to mean anything if you say it to an audience, divorce it of its intention. Didn't everyone wish— when you were younger— wait, is this all there is to it?
"You're ridiculous," Junho tells him later in the car, twisted around in his first row seat. Minseo just giggles at him.
Or, like:
"Hyung was my first teacher," Keum Donghyun is saying through the tinny speakers of Minseo's iPhone, boxed in shoulder-to-shoulder with Yunseong. Minseo's fingers flex and unflex uselessly, arm hooked around his raised knees. He watches as Donghyun continues on, his pearly-white smile easy and illuminating: "Really, he used to be my role model."
In truth, Minseo can't remember when he first fell in love with Yunseong. During Produce he hadn't known any of them the way he should have, too green to properly break himself in, hovering at the edges of a preestablished foundation. Yunseong had been made for other people's adoration, and Minseo watched him dance around Donghyun and the high-ranking boys through something like a glassy lens, the vantage point of an unwelcome spectator.
Maybe that's why this incising want cuts so deeply. Why he isn't above the tendrils of jealousy that constrict his chest every time he sees Changuk bent over Dongyun, a hand playing at his ear, their cheeks almost pressed together. Our Dongyunie is the cutest of seven billion people, he says every time, smiling to himself whenever Dongyun laughs back in that charming, low-tone voice of his, the one that endears in its unpretentious simplicity.
Minseo likes the idea of being sought out as a first choice. Acting as a natural anchor, not a creature tugged roughly to shore and left writhing out on the sand.
"Why are you always getting dinner with Keumdong these days," Minseo accuses petulantly when Yunseong returns to the dorms later than usual, both of them standing in the kitchen. "What are you two—what are you always up to?"
Yunseong runs the sink to rinse out the insides of his cup and fixes him with an unimpressed stare. "Really, Minseo?"
"What?"
"You're jealous of Donghyun now?"
"Well, I'm just saying. You've never taken cute polaroids with me."
"Minseo, please. He's nineteen," Yunseong reminds him. "He was, like, sixteen when we first met. Why would you be jealous of a sixteen year old?"
"I liked you when I was nineteen," Minseo counters, blinking furiously. Was that supposed to make him feel better or worse? This insistence that his age automatically annulled any possibility of romance?
Yunseong drags a hand down his face, saying nothing for a moment. "I know you did." He sighs. "That's not—Minseo, that's not the point."
Something was, though. It's just that they'd never know how to get to it.
It's hard to tether yourself when everything around you undulates with each step. Minseo gets motion sick whenever he's tired and hungry, and their early morning commutes to music show rehearsals in the manager's van constitute a special circle of hell. Each lurch and turn has his head fogging up in a haze, brain victim to the frenetic, jolting pain pulsing from temple to temple.
"I don't feel good," Minseo whines. He presses his face against the tinted window glass, cheek sliding down the ice cold touch of 6AM condensation in one fell swoop. Dongyun laughs sleepily from his side and nudges at his fingers.
"You never do," he says. Their pinkies hook together, and Minseo melts back into his seat, the line of his shoulders evening out. "It's because you always forget to take your vitamins in the morning."
"I don't think those help with being carsick," he protests. "It's just how my brain works. My inner ear balance, or whatever."
Dongyun hums. "It's the principle of the thing, though."
"Okay. Thanks, mom." He scoffs. "I'm sure my muscles would all just shrivel up and atrophy if it weren't for your generous assistance."
"Sometimes I forget how difficult you are before you've had breakfast," Dongyun starts ruefully. "And then you open your mouth."
Minseo flushes. "Sorry," he whispers. "Just—you know. The headache."
"Close your eyes, then," Dongyun instructs. He reaches into his pocket and fishes out his airpods, wordlessly offering one over to Minseo. "Want to listen?"
"Okay," he whispers. Minseo shifts closer to Dongyun with the earbud pinched between two fingers, then starts laughing when he sees what album is loaded up.
"Dongyun-ah. Why the hell are you listening to Avril Lavigne at 6AM?"
Dongyun shifts around and pouts at him. "Listen," he defends. "She takes me places."
"Uh huh."
"But if you don't like it—"
"No, no," Minseo hurriedly interjects. He makes a show of putting the earbud in and grins at Dongyun, the one that flashes an amount of teeth the members commonly call things like unsettling, and, Minseo, can you please just try smiling like a normal person? "It's good. Thanks."
The only lyrics he recognizes from this song are something about a girlfriend and the boy she likes, but for some reason Minseo finds a strange comfort to its unfamiliar anthemic edge. He glances to his left and sees that Dongyun has his eyes closed, a small smile affixed on his face. His lips look pink even through the barest glimmer of waning moonlight.
Minseo falls asleep against Dongyun's shoulder. His hair tickles at his neck, but Dongyun says nothing when they wake up and drag themselves out the side of the van, fingers still hooked together.
When Dongyun's hand falls away, all he says is, "I told you she was good."
There's something Hyeop tells Minseo in his bedroom once, the night he finds him smarting on the floor from the abject failures of his foolishly-supplied propositions.
"Are you here to comfort me?" Minseo asks from where he lies down, hopeful and pleading. He's been scrolling through sticker packs on his phone for the past half hour to pass the time.
Hyeop gives him a strange look. He lifts a foot and steps around his legs, jumping ungracefully to the other side. "No? I'm here to get my charger you stole."
"Oh," Minseo mumbles. He swings his legs around and sits up to make room for him, watching as Hyeop unplugs the charger from its socket.
"I hear you've been going around asking people if they would kiss you, though."
Minseo perks up. "Oh, yeah. Would you, hyung?"
"Minseo. No." Hyeop rolls his eyes. "First of all, why would I—no, I wouldn't. Would you even want me to?"
"Uh," Minseo says. "I guess not. But wouldn't it be nice if someone said yes?"
Hyeop spins on his heel and places a hand on his hip, sighing. "Minseo, you need to stop asking people if they'd kiss you. It isn't healthy."
"What do you know about healthy," Minseo mumbles peevishly, tired of always being wrong.
"I heard that," Hyeop fires back. "Okay. Fine. What's up?"
Minseo just shrugs awkwardly. He reaches a hand down to tug at his sleeves, humming contemplatively. "Hyung," he starts. "Do you… do you still talk to Seokhwa-hyung? And the others, and everyone else?"
"Sometimes," he frowns. "What are you getting at?"
"I don't know," Minseo says. He doesn't know what to do with the ambiguity of that answer, too even to prod at. "Yunseong-hyung is still friends with everyone, you know? And Junho, and hyung, and I. I just—"
Minseo still vividly remembers the mortification of being passed over for group battles, holding the leftover team together. There is no fate more insignificant than being made de facto center of the forgotten, hailed most promising of the least fortunate, confidence shattered and spirit running on fumes. Before Produce, Minseo had been so used to taking his high school boy's brand of self-confidence for granted that when he woke up and finally realized that it'd dissipated—that he'd lost it in some invisible crevice—it was too late to do anything about it. Kind of like when you don't think about your keys at all until you need them, but someone still inevitably asks: well, when's the last time you remember seeing them? And you can do nothing but stand there with your hands on your hips and go: Honestly, how the fuck should I know?
Even then Minseo knew that half of them would never debut. Minseo was lucky to have clawed his way out, riding on the coattails of his members' stronger offerings, chasing his tail in a game of futile catch-up.
In front of him, Hyeop tuts and leans down to face him, tucking his legs and resting his hands on his thighs. Minseo stares back at him, eyes wide and unblinking, mouth open in question.
That's when Hyeop says it.
"Minseo-yah," he starts, surprisingly soft. It's a kindness he so rarely musters for Minseo, the shade of it reminiscent of a mother guiding her child, offering them enduring enlightenment. "You know, not everything is made to last."
Hyeop reaches a hand to brush at the hair falling over Minseo's face, the bangs he needs to get trimmed at the shop later. Minseo's eyes flutter closed.
Before he goes, he says, "Sometimes you need to know what's worth holding on to."
When Minseo finally goes to Dongyun, he just laughs with his head bowed and says: "I didn't think you'd actually ask."
"What? Why not?"
"Well, you didn't ask Changuk-hyung," he starts.
"I'm not that much of a masochist." Changuk would have definitely bumped him in the head and run away for his life, and then Minseo would have had to sit there rubbing the sore spot ill-temperedly and contemplate the tribulations of his existence.
"...and you've never had eyes for anyone but Yunseong-hyung and Junho."
"That's not—" That's not the truest statement you've ever said to me? One day Minseo would learn how to lie, but for now his acting aspirations would have to remain solely that. "Well, I asked Hyeop-hyung, so your statement is automatically invalid."
"All right, relax," Dongyun laughs. "If you're actually asking, though—then. Yeah. I would."
Minseo stops short, staring at Dongyun with open incredulity. "Huh?" he asks, voice hushed even to his own ears.
"What?" Dongyun defends. "You know you aren't undesirable, right? You can't help that Yunseong-hyung is painfully straight and you aren't Junho's type, but that doesn't mean—other people can't like you."
"So I'm your type?"
Dongyun shrugs. "You said it was just a hypothetical, right?"
"Yeah," Minseo breathes, blinking at him. Dongyun's smile stretches easily, lazy. Nothing like the deep wrinkles that mar Minseo's face whenever he thinks of Yunseong, Junho, boys who would never love him, made ugly in his affection.
Don't we all love things that hurt us?
If this hurt, then Dongyun didn't show it. More likely, it just wasn't love. Dongyun didn't let himself feel largely, in all the grand gestures Minseo depended on so much. That's why he and Changuk worked, and it's why people said, Dongyun just has a trusting face, gravitating to his peaceful composure, pulled toward him in ways Minseo could never manage.
Minseo already knows what being in love looks like. At times he wonders how it would look on Yunseong: whether his character would take new shape if he truly needed someone, in the way only a fool can need another person.
The thing about Hwang Yunseong, really, is that he's easy with his affection when he wants to be. It's just that his affection can only be fashioned under meaningless expectation, something purposely designed to not endear. He's barely any taller than Minseo but still reaches past him to grab cereal bowls from the cupboard, leaning back to chide, "Hyung has to do everything for you, don't I?" He wraps his arms around Minseo in the living room when they're still disgusting and exertion-battered from practice, waiting their turn for the showers, the press uncomfortable and suffocating.
Yunseong always says, Hyung is in charge of taking care of you, right?, as if it's true.
It is true, of course. But—
As if it has merit.
Which it does, of course. But—
Minseo knows what being in love looks like, because he sees himself in the mirror every morning, hair disheveled and smile shaky, tight. He knows what a heart feels like when it's being torn to pieces through a paper shredder, and he knows that the way Yunseong laughs at him is loveless, when it really comes down to it. That Yunseong has never felt the way Minseo feels about anyone before, that some things are meant to be let go of.
"I had this dream," Minseo tells him one morning, yawning through his hands. "You were so nice to me."
"You make me sound cruel when you put it like that," Yunseong complains. "Am I not already nice to you?"
"You kissed me."
Yunseong's eyebrows quirk up. "Again?"
"I'm not asking you. It's just what happened."
Yunseong says nothing then. He reaches into the cupboard and grabs two bowls, spilling in frosted flakes and pushing one toward Minseo. Minseo's hand hiccups as he pours his milk in and the slightest pool of liquid sloshes over the porcelain lip, staining the countertop.
"Thanks, hyung," he says. Yunseong gets up to pull out a napkin and watches as Minseo accepts it quietly, rubbing restlessly over the offending spot and balling the cloth in one fist.
"Of course."
Minseo opens his mouth again, but then Alex and Changuk and the rest are walking in, letting the chairs creak against the floor tiles as they drag them out. Dongyun sits down next to him, his shoulder just barely brushing past his shirt.
"Would you really?" Minseo asks again.
"Is that so shocking?" Dongyun answers.
When Minseo asks him if he's ever been kissed before, Dongyun just laughs, taking Minseo's hand in his.
"You know I had a boyfriend in high school, right?" Dongyun tells him. "Um, Changuk-hyung knows," he adds on belatedly.
Minseo just gasps. How could he ever have known? Kim Dongyun was frustratingly resistant to delving into the secret fissures of his seemingly imperturbable surface, unknowable to the naked eye.
"You think hyung is going to tell me about his favorite dongsaeng's secrets?" Minseo says with a note of disbelief, and Dongyun laughs in acknowledgement. "But your—was he—you actually had a boyfriend?"
Dongyun shrugs. "As close as you get in your first year of high school, I guess."
Minseo thinks of the friends they'd seen at Dongyun's graduation ceremony, yelling out his name in good-natured teasing. The way that Dongyun was a person who commanded love, just like Yunseong did. "If you were dating… aren't you worried he'll tell people, at some point?"
"Hah," Dongyun chuckles, rubbing at his arm. "Probably not. I mean—not if he wants to become a politician, I guess."
Ugh. Of course. Minseo rolls his eyes and scoffs. "You Hyundai boys are all alike."
"Hey—what's that supposed to mean? I wasn't even that good of a student, you know? I'm still terrible at math."
"Whatever, you history genius. And I'm also terrible at math! That's what normal people are like!"
"Maybe we should have just gone to art schools," Dongyun tries. Minseo thinks of all the times he'd stared at Junho's mindless composition homework while he tore his hair out trying to understand how bell curves worked, and he gives him a solemn nod of agreement.
"I'm sure your family would have never allowed that, though," Minseo continues.
"Nah, I could have gone," Dongyun says. "Especially once I became a trainee. My mom was always like, you know. Just follow whatever dream makes you happiest, yada yada. That's the best thing you can offer me."
"Wow. Mine too," Minseo whispers. "And we're not even rich."
"Okay." Dongyun nudges him and watches as Minseo wobbles delicately, smiling. "I get it."
Minseo laughs, feeling his body relaxing. He places his head back onto Dongyun's shoulder and starts to hum. Their fingers are still laced together loosely, the mere impression of another's skin against his. "So what happened to you and your boyfriend?"
"Too busy," Dongyun answers simply. "You know, Minseo... life doesn't have to be all about—I don't know. First loves aren't everything you make them up to be."
"So you did love him?" Minseo asks.
"Well, I like to think I did." He glances down and catches Minseo's eye, offering the edge of his smile. "But—you know. Maybe one day we'll meet somebody else and realize it was never as serious as we made it out to be."
Minseo had always thought love was something you knew inside out, something that took so much space it left no room for your own realizations, a consciousness stamped out by the irrationality of flirtatious sentiments. But Dongyun and Hyeop both talked about love in this roundabout way, emphasizing the ambiguities of attachment. Knowing when to let go.
Now, because of Yunseong, Minseo knows: it doesn't have to mean anything if you don't want it to.
"Dongyun-ah," he says. "What if I asked you now?"
ummmm. ♡
no subject
Date: 2021-08-03 10:32 am (UTC)before i even get into the insane line by line commentary that is to come i just want to say how much i love the fact that u went for gen/minseo-centric (despite VAGUE KIMDONGYUN ENDGAME but we're not there yet) because well it's the perfect way to get all of minseo's particularities across....?! like yes haha he's desperately pining for all these boys yes haha he has issues but his pov and the structure u chose is EXACTLY what i didn't know i needed from drippinfic? like whenever i vaguely thought about writing for them i could never get beyond vague ideas because i was idk pigeonholing myself into One Thing and ik u called it disjointed but i think this is actually the only way minseofic was going to WORK. does that make any sense i dont know but nobody is doing it like you! also did you name this fic after the SF9 SONG?
"Minseo is nine months into his debut when he embarks on his most misguided personal journey yet, an ultimate reckoning of self-realization." fellas is embarking on your most misguided personal journey yet (attempting to kiss your bandmates in the most pathetic ways possible) gay? asking for a friend.
^ when i made a noise in a public setting and almost threw my phone. LIKE U WERE REALLY JUST THROWING PUNCHES FROM THIS FIRST SCENE AND DIDNT LET UP THE WHOLE TIME!! i loveee the way that this sets up and the way this scene runs through most of the fic... i love ur non-linear timelines so much T__T and i'll just say this now so i don't sound like a broken record but every time i quote something it's partly because i'm also in awe at your writing style it's so perfect and imo is only getting better and better!!!!! it's such a DELIGHT!!!!!! like "tenuous attraction and blossoming strife" is such an amazing description and this fic is truly full of phrases like these.... ok let's talk about minseo.
and i already sent u this passage but:
YOUR MINSEO IS SO FACKING PERFECT I GENUINELY CANNOT SAY THIS WITH ENOUGH FEELING. the way he's sooo sensitive and ultimately so kind but also so capable of meanness and feeling his negative emotions WAY too deeply ("the ugly, wounded sensation in his stomach" and "blustery, angry desire") it's like. it's genuinely so targeted KJSDFVNCJDS U ALREADY KNOW I HAVE SPECIFIC TASTE BUT LIKE TTTT my god.
and then that practice room scene with JUICYJUICYJUICYJUICY was so funnyyyy and i said this already but you speaking through kimdongyun and judging minseo's taste was iconic.... With his thin and reedy high-tone voice. like we get it
my god why is this comment so disjointed i'm sorry. but i have all these one-line descriptions of minseo that are making me cryyy put all together:
A boy, above all, branded by his invitation of susceptibility. Spun around, held down. Broken apart. / Minseo—volatile and precious from his very first steps. / His whole life, Minseo had wanted nothing more than to be pretty. / She would take him into her arms and say: just like a daughter, our Minseo. My son.
UMMMM 딸같은우리민서??? VOLATILE AND PRECIOUS????? ALL OF THIS?????????? can i just say i'm so glad we have the same hyperspecific image of minseo it's actually amazing. Thinking about the patheticness scale rn....
speaking of pathetic:
and
LIKEJHJRHJFHVDJHJHFVNDAKJHDJSHFKS%#$@%^#@^% ok sorry but you literally are hitting all of my buttons with these sections i cant even begin to describe.... and then later on when it becomes clear that yunseong KNOWS how minseo feels about him so it's less "doesn't know better" and more "doesn't know how to stop" $*&^#&@% yunseong you'll pay for this (being straight and unintentionally leading minseo on and liking keumdong more than him) ok sorry anyways i just think you're so crazy for giving them that dynamic. like it's not even secret pining its EMBARRASSING AND OUTWARD PINING. like fr minseo being visibly and admittedly in love with yunseong and yunseong being AWARE of it and them having to navigate their relationship around it is soooooo. like holy fuck. do u UNDERSTAND that im OBSESSED WITH THIS? AND YOU? no. the same way that dongyun on vlive doesn't understand that.... ok i actually need to stop
btw i screamedddd at the "Damn, he thinks. Maybe he really is a masochist." realization after the yunseong semi-rejection like GIRL YOU THINK? and then the way it goes into the "minseo stop joking around" one sentence scene with junho likeeeee.... the way we don't get minseo's reaction either like YASS LETS GO SHOW-NOT-TELL! WE ALREADY KNOW MINSEO'S SIDE SO THE LACK OF IT HITS EVEN HARDER!! ITS JUST... SO GOOD!!! once again i love how u interwove all of minseo's various dynamix like junho barely speaks but minseo's feelings for him still feel so immediate?? maybe thats cuz i already have the background but STILL. god poor minseo. where were we
i think i already said this but i just love how DEEPLY REAL THIS FEELS... all the details you interweaved aka the SASAENG_FAN_DEBACLE and yunseong being like "you already replied didnt you" [yunseong in his head like i hate gay people so much its unreal.jpeg] & the JUNHO WE'RE GETTING MARRIED SCENE.... yeah i'm never getting over that. "It doesn't have to mean anything if you say it to an audience, divorce it of its intention. Didn't everyone wish— when you were younger— wait, is this all there is to it?" youuuuuuuuuuuuuu. and of course i adored all the minseo girlisms yes renjun is shaking yes there's layers to minseowife i don't have to say anything
i keep getting distracted from this comment cuz i keep rereading a line and then ending up rereading the whole scene have i said this is the perfect fic yet because it is. ok i'm laughing at "I don't think those help with being carsick," he protests. "It's just how my brain works. My inner ear balance, or whatever." not our joint self-insert LOL anyone else hate having an inner ear? but also oh my goddddddd this avril lavigne in da car scene... this is when i started thinking oh my god is she really going to dongyun endgame?!?!??! and then the HYEOP SCENE RIGHT AFTER... "are you here to comfort me?" / "no tf? i'm here to get my charger that you stole because youre a bratbabybitch." um paraphrasing slightly but IM HYEOPFAN. minseo definitely does need to stop asking people to kiss him and hyeops ambiguouslygayhyung words_of_wisdom are soo perfect. like:
i could cryyyyyyyy. i think we should all be a little bit more tender to minseo.... i know coming from ME but really. T__T
OK FINALLY THIS DONGYUN SCENE OH MY GAWDDDDD. i want to paste the whole thing but i started genuinely entering another realm at "you've never had eyes for anyone but yunseong and junho" / minseo trying to deny it but then being like ok that don't even sound right... "You know you aren't undesirable, right? You can't help that Yunseong-hyung is painfully straight and you aren't Junho's type, but that doesn't mean—other people can't like you." JUNHO [REDACTED] and [REDACTED] anyone? but ojshejdsjehcnjehdcds TTTT sorry i like dongyun so much here and i love minseo saying U HYUNDAI BOYS ARE ALL THE SAME...
wait i forgot how perfect the yunseong scene that u spliced this section with was...
LIKE I GENUINELLLLLYYYYYYYYYYYY. ITS LOVELESS WHEN IT REALLY COMES DOWN TO IT? I HAD THIS DREAM YOU WERE SO NICE TO ME? YOU KISSED ME? AGAIN????? i. and the way it ends with Dongyun sits down next to him, his shoulder just barely brushing past his shirt. why am i so in love with the way u end scenes in this fic especially it feels sooooo subtle and loaded each time... AND THEN OF COURSE DONGYUN-AH WHAT IF I ASKED YOU NOW. GOD!!!!!!!! I LOVE HOW U ENDED IT AMBIGUOUSLY LIKE THIS... [guy who clearly likes ambiguous relationships too much] but it was so fitting cuz of the whole knowing when to let go / it doesnt have to mean anything if you dont want it to / etc etc like jesus christ. i typed all these mfing words and i feel like i havent even unearthed all these layers yet.
oh my god i just scrolled back up i'm so sorry for typing this much and saying nothing but kaia u truly made my day with this extremely niche extremely targeted minseofic words cannot explain how it made me feel and i know i will be returning to it time and time again. ilysm T______T ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜
no subject
Date: 2021-10-11 06:32 pm (UTC)“like yes haha he's desperately pining for all these boys yes haha he has issues” @#H$@*#$)HFLHFLSHD BUT YEAH T__T i’m glad i went for minseo-centric cuz idt i could have made this work if it were hwangseo or chaseo endgame… well at least NOW but given the state of hwangseo hangang dates lately i kind of want to write hwangseo messy datingfic where minseo is too obvious about their dates / yunseong kind of acknowledges them but also refuses to tell anyone <3
also why was my sf9 phase over the summer so serious… let me go put on 쉽다 real quick
THANK U FOR BEING NICE ABOUT MY WRITING STYLE BTW TT___TT i was really like let me force MINSEO to be the recipient of my purple prose experiment but it’s fine HSDFHLH <3 also ”the way he's sooo sensitive and ultimately so kind but also so capable of meanness and feeling his negative emotions WAY too deeply” YUPPP SO TRUEEEE is anyone else here kimminseo fan?
”With his thin and reedy high-tone voice. like we get it” WELL DID I LIE?
ok my reply is about to be even more disjointed LMFAO I’m So Sorry but 딸같은우리민서… yes… :smiling_face_with_tear: IT’S REALLY LIKE THAT!!!
omg i feel soo much tori this is literally the best comment ever idt anything can ever top this HSLDFHLH TTTTTT THANK U FOR UR CLOSE AND FAITHFUL READING!!! THANK U FOR GETTING ALL THE PATHETIC MINSEOFIC LAYERS THE COMPLEKSHITTIES THE NUANCES!! i love playing on like “to be seen is to be loved” and how that can be true when someone is sincere enough to acknowledge those affections but with yunseong it feels like it comes from both a place of cruelty AND care… his duality. like how he’s mascking around minseo and then the fruitiest bitch in the room around anyone else :D
i honestly wish i could teleport back to the day we witnessed JUNHO WE’RE GETTING MARRIED… truly so formative in our general junho appreciation/stannery 😭 also yasss inner ear balance issue twinsies <3 SORRY FOR THIS PROJECTION MINSEOSDFLHDSFLHSDFL the way i’m like this is the most pathetic character i’ve ever written and then there are just random moments inspired by my life. ANYWAY... u just get it u get EVERYTHING i'm shaking and sobbing it's like unreal. OK.
[2 months later] THANK U AGAIN FOR LIKING THIS. I LOVE U SO MUCH TORI ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜 i’m glad i could make the ambiguity appeal to u and i hope one day we can maximize our drippinfic joint slay once again :’)
no subject
Date: 2021-08-04 02:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-09-10 10:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-12-07 11:48 pm (UTC)