my boy (it'll take some time)
Sep. 8th, 2021 11:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
girlrocktitle: my boy (it'll take some time)
fandom: cravity
pairing: minhee/seongmin
rating: t
word count: 8.0k
a/n: well this is definitely A Thing!!!! i wrote this fic as a purely indulgent birthday gift to myself, so i crammed in all the tropes + elements i've been wanting to read into one shitty story (me: what's the worst i can do ??? [2 seconds later] ah... extremely mundane famous/non-famous secret established relationship miniz fic with extensively formatted social media elements...), but it's objectively awful and definitely the last thing i'll be writing for the rest of the year. i'm very burnt out of writing and i know it shows *___* but i just wanted to get this up because i worked hard on the css stuff lololol. only read at your own risk after having seen this disclaimer!!! and preferably... plz no flames. like I Already Know. don't worry.
if you still want to read shitty alternate reality miniz fic:
README.txt
also: title song. DON'T LAUGH!!!
🐶🐰
my boy, we don't see each other much / it'll take some time / but somewhere down the line / we won't be alone
🐶🐰
8:24
5월 10일 수요일
KAKAOTALK
32m
KAKAOTALK
7h
KAKAOTALK
7h
KAKAOTALK
7h
PHONE
8h
TWITTER
14h
"There's something I've always wanted to know," Song Hyeongjun is saying. Seongmin watches him wave his cup of scalding oolong tea around in easy circles, smoke curling lightly under the faded orange light, and tries valiantly to gauge whether the action is supposed to appear menacing. The eventual decision is inconclusive: Hyeongjun poses like a mafia boss in an old gangster movie, but the ambiguous aura is undercut by the fact that he still has baby fat clung to his cheeks and sports bright, fire-engine-red idol hair. Seongmin can't fathom a more objectively ridiculous visual.
"What?" Seongmin asks. He leans away in minute apprehension. Hyeongjun responds in kind by placing his cup down and leaning forward again, pushing his face so close to Seongmin's that he swears he can count every single pore freckled along his skin.
"You and Minhee," he begins conspiratorially, grin wicked and wide. His teeth jut into shark-white rows, the gleam of them nearly blinding. "So, who confessed first?"
The day Minhee's manager drives him down to Suncheon for his first proper break in eleven months, Minhee takes Seongmin by the wrist outside their old apartment block and drags them to the nearest Ministop for vanilla soft serve. The waning dredges of July have begun to curdle and melt under the weight of relentless sunlight, insouciant embrace burning sticky and hot and sore.
"You couldn't have just taken a train down?" chides Seongmin when he sees him. He pulls his elbow back to nudge against the soft flesh at Minhee's side. Minhee gently recoils, hand tugging Seongmin along with the movement, and when he straightens back up his face looks vaguely contrite. He trains down those signature furrowed brows Seongmin hasn't seen outside of a television screen since the last year, and—only now can Seongmin see the fuzzy ends of hair in proper detail. Arched outlines appearing sharper beneath afternoon light, something Seongmin could run a finger along. Could truly feel.
"They told me it was a liability," Minhee explains through a defeated sigh. "You know, I have a manager now."
Seongmin paces forward and snorts.
"I can see that," he says, turning back to throw a surreptitious glance at the broad-shouldered man quietly trailing behind them. He's spent the past five minutes alternating between scrolling through his phone and trying to keep track of their every movement. "Is he supposed to be a manager or a bodyguard?"
"A bit of a both," Minhee admits, laughing. "Half of us aren't from Seoul, I don't know how they managed to dispatch so many people."
"Well..." Seongmin quirks a meaningful eyebrow. "I'm sure you'll be making them a lot of money soon. Like, ridiculous amounts of managerial money."
"Probably."
"You're a long-term investment now, hyung!" Seongmin exclaims brightly.
Minhee disengages his hand just so he can push against Seongmin's shoulder, whining in protest. "Idols are still people," he interjects sagely. Like something out of an emotional Instagram post elucidating the dangers of the industry, lighthearted but tinged with something strangely wise and sincere.
"Okay, hyung," Seongmin says placatingly. He tucks his hands together and skips on ahead. Two streets later they round the corner and pull up to his favored Ministop, nestled between various shops and an expensive watch store, stood tall in all of its fluorescent yellow glory. A poster affixed to the glass front boasts a discount on an exclusive fried chicken combo. The edges overlap the faded paper surface of another advert, this one singing the virtues of cheap sim cards.
"So you get three days off?" he prompts this time.
"Yeah," Minhee says. He runs an awkward hand through his hair before leaning against the door to force it open, waiting for Seongmin to duck in past him before he continues, "But, honestly. Three days is more than it seems."
"I'm sure," Seongmin mumbles. But he sounds unconvinced; doubtful.
Sure: three days was enough for Minhee to see his parents. It was enough to eat a few good meals, hopefully visit his favorite park and sit on the grass by the riverbed. Three days was less than 72 hours, what with the back-and-forth and long drive back to Seoul, but neither of them dared to say it. For someone like Kang Minhee, three days was all the time in the world.
For someone like Seongmin, though: three days amounted to nothing.
Three days was an afternoon and then another afternoon. Momentary indulgences strung across an unimpressive celebratory garland, a decorative piece both out of place and misleadingly cheerful, like confetti at a funeral. Three days was the semblance of a break. Nothing more than an illusory respite.
Later on, what Seongmin will remember is the way his skin had prickled their whole walk together. The way his sandals clacked against faded concrete. How Minhee's hoodie had pressed around his face like a shield, even in the scorching heat, and how his hand brushing against Seongmin's had felt strangely present, almost surreal. A boy, although— nearly a man, but also— still just a boy. His Minhee, even if he'd never say it out loud.
Three days was everything and nothing. Seongmin was seventeen, barely in high school, and trying to make something unspeakable work.
Kang Minhee was a soon-to-be international superstar.
That's how it began, approximately.
During Seongmin's second year of university, he learns three simple facts about himself.
One, he hates drinking.
Of course—it's not the drinking itself that's the issue. What Seongmin doesn't believe in is rattling loose the pieces he keeps closest to his chest, in unveiling soft vulnerabilities he isn't willing to carve out just yet. To him, drinking is like that time he'd had to get his wisdom teeth taken out and sat in the backseat of his mother's car fidgeting the entire way to the dentist's office, so focused on keeping his mind sharp that his misplaced determination had distracted him through the actual teeth-pulling ordeal. When a nurse sat him back up to apply gauge against his cheek and asked with a nurturing, smiling mouth how he was feeling, Seongmin remembers blinking rapidly and clenching his hand into a fist. He'd forced his brain through the undulating, drugged-up fog and replied as distinctly as he could, gripped by the illogical folly of a man determined to fight against the biology of his own body. He was the kind of person who was convinced he could sheer stubbornness his way through cutting an onion dry-eyed.
Back in the misty, condensation-soaked alcohol aisle of a late-night 7/11, Kim Sunoo stares him down. Generously, he proposes:
"I think you might have control issues."
Seongmin shrugs one shoulder in response.
"Yeah," he says eventually. "Maybe." Hugging a large bag of turtle chips to his chest, Seongmin watches as Sunoo turns back to deliberate over his taste of poison for the evening. He pokes his tongue into the rough flesh of his cheek and continues, "But—hey. You're the one trying to pre-game your way into a boy's pants right now though, so I think I still win in this scenario."
Sunoo gasps in affront. "I'm not trying to get into his—I just need to be a little bit tipsy before I see him, okay!"
"But Hwang Intak is nice to a fault," Seongmin argues, exasperated. "And we both know it. All you need to do is relax."
"You don't get it," Sunoo stresses. He spins a bottle around to check its alcohol percentage, then makes a disappointed face and sticks it back onto its shelf. Seongmin peers over. 23%? Jesus. He glances back up at Sunoo as he begins to gesture wildly about, insisting, "He's also, you know. Painfully straight!"
"Really? Because I swear he keeps some interesting company."
"Not by choice!" Sunoo laments. Glancing down, he mumbles, "That's just... what happens when you major in Performing Arts."
Seongmin opens his mouth to argue again, and then—abruptly coming to the realization that he's thought of no proper consolation to offer him—snaps it back shut. Sucks to hear it, have you tried majoring in Education instead? Sunoo's current emotional state seemed too delicate for such an interjection. "Well, I still think that... you should... just. Try to relax."
"And I will," Sunoo assures him, hand immediately encircling a soju bottle. He cocks it toward himself and says, grinning, "Like this."
Seongmin rolls his eyes, although he acquiesces as they walk toward the cashier with their items in tow. "Fine. At least I'll have an excuse to leave early when you get drunk."
"Oh, come on," Sunoo objects, trying to wave a dismissive hand from around the bundle of alcohol currently nestled in his arms. "You'll love this guy. I swear. He's hot, tall, really good at—at... tennis, I think. Or was it ping pong? Either way, he's super fit."
Seongmin makes a face. "Is being fit really a prerequisite for playing ping pong? All you have to do is like, hit stuff."
"Hah? Yeah, why wouldn't it be?" Sunoo knits his eyebrows into a considering frown. "Well, that's not the point! He's very smart and lowkey. I think you'll get along."
"You know that's not the problem," Seongmin reminds him, even though this argument is a moot point by now. It would have to exist as a truth fundamental to the balance of the universe, a force necessary in keeping the planet spinning on its axis: something that just existed, inherently so. Sunoo would never stop trying to set him up on double dates; Seongmin would never be able to tell him the real reason he wasn't interested. It was how they would continue to work, irreversibly. "I'm just not looking to date right now."
"That's what people say when they're scared of getting rejected!" Sunoo insists, the way he always does. "You're way too cute to not be seeing anyone right now."
"You're going to be the death of me, Kim Sunoo," Seongmin replies flatly. "You really are."
Sunoo laughs and bats his eyes at him. He sets down three bottles onto the counter with a shit-eating grin, clearly and completely undeterred. "Well, I'm flattered!"
In reality:
No matter how well they got along, he and Kim Sunoo were fundamentally different people. This meant that Sunoo could never understand, because—really—how could he? The Kim Sunoo he knew reveled in bombastic displays of affection. He favored a sort of public romance that demanded hands in hoodie pockets, kissing by the campus fountain, candid shots of entangled fingers at the university library. Sunoo was an ultimate romanticizer of campus life. Someone who believed in blind dates and setting his friends up and in university as a time for playing around, who was convinced adulthood would come in like a gentle, folding wave, quietly toppling over these four long years of leisurely self-searching.
But the thing is that:
Two, he doesn't actually need friends.
Or, well...
Seongmin meets Kim Hyunwoo during an Anthropology lecture he'd meant to take last year, much to his personal embarrassment. His aversion to consulting with academic counselors and abject lack of department friends meant he'd been blindsided when he signed up for classes the previous semester, the course completely slipping out of mind, and—well. Here he was. Amongst a gaggle of unfamiliar faces and brief flashes of first-years he vaguely recalls from department MT, rousing the niggling suspicion that Seongmin was well and truly alone in this curricular mishap. Maybe he should have paid more attention during the planning section of their orientation course.
Hyunwoo is soft-spoken at first meeting, but any traces of his gentle character are largely eclipsed by the fact that he is horrifically, and purely unnecessarily, tall. Seongmin mentally logs this observation with a sense of both abject disgust and begrudging fascination; he can almost respect the way Hyunwoo, by virtue of his awkward gait and ridiculous vertical build, sticks out wherever he stands. But only almost.
Officially, they meet after lecture, out in the hallway between the course hall and an open-plan study area. A meeting of pure chance: Seongmin had ducked behind him to avoid being sighted by one of the business majors Sunoo kept trying to set him up with during their unbearable "double dates." (Of course: Four people having dinner together doesn't automatically make a double date, Seongmin said every time, but the complaint only fractured against unreceptive ears.) And that would have been all, except for how—one week later—Hyunwoo sees him in the hallway and quickly rushes to hide behind him. Crouching down to Seongmin's height, he pleads, "Will you help me this time?"
"Yeah, uh. That's not going to work," Seongmin laughs. Instinctively, he takes hold of his arm and tugs him into an empty study room, shutting the door behind them.
"Phew," Hyunwoo breathes out. "Thanks, hyung!"
Hyung? Seongmin thinks dryly. "Who the hell were you trying to avoid?"
"Ah, um—well. It's all Donghyun-hyung's fault!" Hyunwoo huffs and pulls out a chair, plopping into it unceremoniously. Seongmin follows suit and sets his phone down nearby. "He set me up on a blind date with Lee Jaehee last week, and now I can never... never show my face around her again."
Seongmin tries not to laugh at the tortured and earnest edge to his tone. Some people were just so painfully twenty in a way he'd never be able to understand, and Kim Hyunwoo was clearly one of them. "Was it really that bad?"
"No—I mean! No, she was really nice." He slumps down onto the table and pouts. "I'm just too awkward. We kissed once and then I had no idea what to say and realized it would never work, and... well. Now I need to figure out what to say before we see each other at practice."
Seongmin nods sympathetically. "I get it," he commiserates. "My friend also keeps trying to set me up on double dates with him. Not even really dates, but—"
Speak of the devil. Across the table, his phone screen suddenly lights up and flashes with a notification from Sunoo himself. Seongmin sighs and drags it closer.
"Oh!" Hyunwoo says.
"Yeah, that's him," Seongmin says with a sigh, but Hyunwoo isn't done. He makes a choked noise and enthusiastically points a finger in his phone's direction, eyes wide and curious.
"Hyung!"
"Huh?" Seongmin squints. "Do you know him or something?"
"Your background?" Hyunwoo gestures brightly, and—ah. Seongmin can't control his wince of recognition when Hyunwoo flashes him a fervent grin. "Kang Minhee—I didn't know you were an idol fan!"
And, really. Seongmin tries to object. He does. He tries cutting in with a, No, well, you see, I'm really not..., but his protests make zero headway as Hyunwoo barrels on, hands clapping together happily.
"You know what, hyung?" No, he really doesn't! "You should join the performance club!" Hyunwoo's insisting smile is infectious and dazzling. "We always do a lot of K-pop covers, and I'm in the rap group, and—and—and Donghyun-hyung says I might actually get to perform this semester!"
"That's... nice," Seongmin tells him, dazed. He reaches a hand to scratch behind his ear. "But, uh. That's really okay."
Hyunwoo pouts at him. "Okay," he hedges, "but... find me after lecture if you ever change your mind, okay?"
With a pat of his shoulder, Seongmin smiles at him and goes to stand up. "I probably won't," he informs him honestly. "But I wouldn't have to find you. We can just message each other?"
"Really?" Hyunwoo asks, scurrying after Seongmin with all 190 centimeters of his lanky body, arms knocking around the study room chair he'd just been folded into.
Seongmin is, much to his own chagrin, uncharacteristically charmed.
"It's funny," he starts later. Once they've successfully tumbled back into the hallway and toward the mouth of safety, Hyunwoo standing beside him, head cocked in question.
"What is?" He says. His expression is wide and open. Strong brows and sleepy eyes that eclipse nothing, youthful and sweet and cracked apart.
"Just—you remind me of someone I know."
There was this time once, back in high school. It looked like this: Seongmin flipping through the pages of his mini calendar, phone on speaker in front of him. Leaning forward slightly and saying: I'll be in Seoul soon.
As if distance were the problem. As if 10km and 300km weren't functionally the same, when calculated through a phone screen.
Still, this didn't stop Minhee from chuckling into the speaker and replying, Okay. Then I'll wait for you. The words had tickled all the way down his spine. Fluttering and jerking, a movement near-mechanical. Like a moth in the dark blindly circling restricted instincts.
Back then, I'll be there was nothing more than a mantra suggesting closeness. It teased at an imagining more powerful than fact. Seongmin had learned to tear his fingers into it from the very start, drag his nails through the flesh of possibility, say: soon, soon, soon, and truly mean it.
There's a garden patch not too far from their high school's campus that hasn't been attended to in years. The weeds there have grown strong and tall, bits and pieces even breaking through cracks in poorly-laid gravel, invasive and sturdy and proud. When Seongmin comes home after his first semester of university, he and Wonjin walk over and soak in the yolk-yellow sunlight together. Seongmin crouches down and begins to rip away at the harvested excess, squinting as he rolls a blade between his fingers. Quietly, he thinks, there's a morbid sort of comfort in knowing that what he's left behind has learned to be forgotten. Seongmin certainly never did.
"You know," Wonjin is telling him. When Seongmin looks up at him, his face is open and pensive and fond. "You've grown up a lot."
"What?"
"Back in high school, you would have hit me for implying Minhee meant anything to you. But... you actually talk about him more these days."
"Hyung, that's because you were super annoying in high school."
Wonjin swipes a palm by his eyes and sniffles obnoxiously. "Wow. Harsh!"
"Stop that. You know you had no reason to be hanging around a first year's classroom in the first place," Seongmin continues, merciless. He wipes his hands and goes to sit down beside Wonjin, tucking his legs together. "So damn suffocating."
"But my boyfriend was all the way off in Seoul," Wonjin wails, throwing his arms around Seongmin's shoulders. Seongmin makes a displeased face and pushes him off with a curt grunt, although this does nothing to stop Wonjin from rambling on, "I was so bored, you know! What was I supposed to do?"
"Hyung, that doesn't mean anything. I know what it's like to have—" he pauses abruptly, biting at his lip. "Nevermind."
"Huh? What?"
"That's just—it's obviously not a good excuse."
"No, not that," Wonjin dismisses. The grin he flashes him then is nothing short of devious. "Before. What were you going to say?"
"Nothing!"
"Seongmin-ah, that didn't sound like nothing. I think that sounded like you were, hmm, maybe about to call Kang Minhee—"
Seongmin screeches. "Do you ever shut up?!" he hisses, raising two fists to strike at Wonjin's shoulder. His knuckles thud dully against at the cotton fabric in unrefined motions, cheeks smarting with the truth of his own self-evidence. "Seriously, shut up—"
"—your boyfriend," Wonjin finishes through the continued assault, undeterred. Then he twists himself away from Seongmin and graces him with a duly unimpressed stare. "Also, ow! What the fuck?"
"You deserved that," Seongmin sneers, hitting him once more for good measure. Giggling at the way Wonjin yelps with overperformed misery, he taunts, "I guess I haven't grown up that much after all."
Wonjin rolls his eyes. "And to think you call me suffocating."
When Wonjin and Jungmo are officially discharged from the military and move into an apartment out in Mapo together, Minhee arranges for the four of them to celebrate around Chinese food and a round of drinks. This would normally be fine, of course. Except that—for reasons unknown to Seongmin—he enters the private dining room to see Song Hyeongjun already sitting there.
Thirty minutes and three beers in, Wonjin pulls Jungmo up by the arm and begins to scurry him away suspiciously. "Smoke break!" he announces by way of explanation.
"Um, I need to go to the bathroom," Minhee adds apologetically, eyes flitting between Hyeongjun and Seongmin. (He said he was hungry and I was already on my way out! Minhee explained as the five of them settled down. Easygoing as always, Jungmo clapped him on the back in response and said, Don't worry, you two can cover dinner with your idol salary, haha, right before Wonjin slapped his neck and stressed, You're the worst, hyung. You have more than enough money to be treating your dongsaengs, show some remorse!)
So here Seongmin was now. Staring sullenly at his half-eaten plate, legs tucked up in his chair like a child, making no move to rearrange his posture.
"Oh. They smoke?" Hyeongjun asks curiously.
"No," Seongmin explains sourly, shaking his head with a resigned sigh. "They're probably just making out behind the restaurant."
Seongmin waits for him to make some sort of commentary in response, but Hyeongjun just nods in apparent understanding. Briefly, he wonders whether he's the only person in the world left with proper restraint.
"Well, while Minhee is gone..." Song Hyeongjun starts.
Great. Just great!
"There's something I've always wanted to know," he tells him, and—
You know how this one goes.
"Actually," Seongmin tells him. "Hyung is the one who begged me to date him."
Hyeongjun's brows raise all the way up up up to the roof. "Really?"
"It was super embarrassing," Seongmin adds, with something of a pitying air. "I didn't even want to say yes, but..."
Hyeongjun looks positively gleeful now, hands gripped right on the edge of his seat. "But?"
"You know." He shrugs, concludes sagely, "Well, I figured he'd be a millionaire eventually."
Hyeongjun throws his head back with a clap of his hands, following up with a loose hah! Then, looking Seongmin right in the eyes, the corners of his mouth stretching all the way across his cheeks, he says, "You're not bad, Ahn Seongmin. I'm glad he has you."
"Who has who?"
That's Minhee's voice floating in from the doorway. Seongmin looks up to see his hand brushing open the separating curtain as he walks back into the room, eyeing their proximity with poorly-concealed suspicion. "What were you two talking about?"
"Nothing," says Seongmin.
"Everything," echoes Hyeongjun.
"Oookay." Minhee pulls his chair back out and settles into it quietly. Then he looks at Seongmin and cocks his head. "By the way..."
"What?"
"When did Wonjin-hyung start smoking?"
As far as Seongmin is concerned, his relationship with Kang Minhee is easy to understand. Minhee never pushes Seongmin any further than he can bear him to, and so they exist comfortably like this: two bodies suspended between subdued flirtations and immanent affection, never voicing what didn't need to be said. Their impossibility was protected of its fleetingness through Seongmin's unbothered secrecy—the understanding that Seongmin at his most wordless could be its own sort of mercy. A motion kind in its absence, a way of defaulting to uncritical.
But, one night—
"Humor me," Minhee asks. Just once, into the dark. "If we ever had a honeymoon. Where would you want to go?"
Honeymoon was said with inconceivable weight, a word Seongmin had thought too foreign to ever grace Minhee's vocabulary. He'd believed it to exist outside the range of their mental capacities: an idea you only heard of in romance movies, in his mother's recollections of a nostalgia-tinted youth. It manifested in photos of his parents, arm-in-arm, at scenic beaches in Jeju. Stories of dishes she ate outside on restaurant balconies under the glow of low-hanging orange lanterns, a marriage more familiar to him than any idea of his hypothetical own.
"Taipei," Seongmin admits finally, after letting the silence stretch to maturity. "You can go shopping with me and buy me all the clothes I want, and then we can go down the food stalls and eat skewers until we burst."
Minhee laughs loudly on the other end of the receiver. "So simple," he teases.
"Well, I'm easy to please," promises Seongmin blithely.
"That's not true at all."
"I'm easy to please if you understand me!" Seongmin tries this time.
"Now you're definitely just trying to pin your fussiness on me," Minhee whines, and Seongmin rolls over in his bed with a pleased giggle.
The thing is, it was a ridiculous conversation to begin with. Something that made no sense to even entertain. Seongmin knew little about himself, but the fact that he would never marry had always been something he understood deeply, like a festering wound. Or, maybe—just an old scar from a bad childhood fall, a mark ever-present but pleasantly forgotten, the lines of it drawn shallowly into skin.
"Seongmin-ah," Minhee is whispering. Outside moonlight tumbles in through the slats of his cream-colored blinds and ripples along the edges of Seongmin's solitary bedroom in quiet waves. Sprawling ginkgo trees animate its surface with their impressionable shadows, shifting and arcing in the wind, letting the autumn breeze run through their crevices. They present, in sweeping, gangly, uncertain motions, the nebulous outlines of a story.
"Yeah?" Seongmin asks, hushed. There's a version of this story unfolding in the shadows. One where two friends, or two boys, sit side by side. Their fingers rest centimeters away. One of them is waiting for the other one to say something, unaware that his friend mirrors his own determinations. In that version, they'll die waiting there.
But in this one, Minhee exhales and asks, "Do you actually want any of that?"
The thing about relationships is: someone always has to make the first move. Things don't die until they reach their stalemate, and there are always more pieces to move. Seongmin draws his legs up and hums.
"Well, not the honeymoon part..." he corrects. His voice is playful and frank when he leans in and adds, "But—you should still take me to Taipei."
Minhee chuckles faintly. "Okay."
"Okay?"
"Sure. And after?"
"After what?"
"We could get a dog," Minhee offers sans explanation. "Later on, if we ever lived together."
Right: because married people live together. In this version of the story, this... untenable hypothetical, one he could only offer Minhee through a generosity stretched to its limits—he and Minhee could share rings and a dog and an apartment overlooking the Han River. Seongmin closes his eyes and lets himself drift.
"I want to pick out the dog, though," he insists through a yawn. "I feel like you would have bad taste in dogs."
"There's no such thing as having bad taste in dogs, Seongmin. They're dogs!"
"You see? People who say that always like ugly dogs. And I don't want to have an ugly dog."
"Ah, but people who hate ugly dogs shouldn't own dogs in the first place."
"Then let's get a cat," he suggests. Seongmin wonders if he'll even remember the fading gradations of this conversation in the morning, when the ginkgo trees stand tall outside in bursting sunlight, when his dreams have warped him back to proper realism.
He supposes it doesn't matter.
"Cats are nice, too," Minhee says, which is a stupid thing to say. Minhee loves dogs. Seongmin knows that he loves dogs. Moreover, Minhee knows that Seongmin knows this.
Again: maybe it doesn't matter.
A final truth:
Three, dating an idol is the easiest thing in the world.
On day two of Minhee's company-mandated hometown pilgrimage, Seongmin sits in his bedroom at the edge of his childhood bed, a relic of days past and unbothered middle school naivety. Minhee still has that huge League poster on his ceiling Seongmin always made fun of him for. His middle school textbooks nestle in the bookshelf above his desk, highlighters strewn about its surface haphazardly.
"Five years, huh," Seongmin muses. "Don't let the fame get to you, okay?"
Minhee chuckles quietly when he settles down beside him. "Don't worry," he assures him playfully. "You have enough of an ego for the both of us."
"Hey!"
"No, no—it's a good thing! Self-confidence! I could use more of it."
"Don't joke around, hyung," berates Seongmin, crossing his arms. "Five years is a long time."
Minhee hums. From next to him, he clenches and unclenches his hands around his sheets, considering. He's silent for a long moment, and the pause weighs down between them, pulled to the floor by an unyielding gravity.
"It is," he admits.
In five years, Seongmin would be twenty-two. He'd still be at university or in the military, fulfilling a normalcy expected of him, and Minhee would be—
He would be—
In this moment, Seongmin wonders why eighteen looks so weary on Minhee. Sure, Minhee would always be a little bit awkward and gangly, wise for his years. Kang Analog, they teased relentlessly when he didn't know how to operate his new phone, whining when he couldn't take a proper screenshot. But the Minhee beside him was more than that. Someone Seongmin could only connect to implicitly, shouldering a fatigue that would forever go unspoken, something that ran deep deep deep beneath skin and all the way down into sinew and flesh and bone.
"It is," he echoes. Five years.
In two days, Minhee would be gone again.
So Seongmin does something then that he can give himself no time to second-guess, no time to deliberate over or regret. He turns toward Minhee and shuffles away slightly, creating a gap between the curves of their bent legs.
"Hyung," he says. Demanding but soft. Toeing that line between shame and shamelessness he would always be affixed to. Leaning forward, he asks:
"When are you going to kiss me?"
The thing is, Ahn Seongmin doesn't need friends. But maybe—
A part of him wonders when he started letting his guard down. Maybe, he thinks, it was when Sunoo started dating Intak, finally sparing Seongmin of those horrific dinner dates with various of his business friend types. Or maybe it was when Hyunwoo struck something of a friendship with Lee Jaehee, hilariously deciding to cover Crush's Mayday with her, and then became obsessed with a boy in the dance group who greeted Seongmin brightly whenever he came to watch at rehearsals. Hyunwoo bled open with his vulnerability, and Seongmin sometimes wondered whether friendship meant, at its core, being able to repay that frankness in kind. The night Sunoo finally dragged him out to drink, just once, he said in between recounts of his dates with Intak: You're so cold sometimes, Ahn Seongmin. What will it take to make your heart flutter?
He and Hyunwoo are studying in the library when it happens. Hyunwoo—dozing off on his shoulder, cheek slumped up against his bone and mouth hung dumbly open. Seongmin is in the middle of reapplying his lip tint through his phone camera, rubbing at the edge of his mouth with an index finger, when a notification banner slides in from above.
Maybe if Seongmin's guard had still been up, he wouldn't have tapped on the notification. Mindlessly, too, at that—when Seongmin clicks through it's entirely without finesse, eyes blinking amusedly at the message that reads, saw the cutest dog today ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, a selfie of Minhee hugging it attached underneath.
Maybe if Seongmin's guard had still been up, he wouldn't have yelped quietly at Hyunwoo shifting next to him and whispering: "Wait a minute."
"Um," Seongmin says. Was it too late to knock Hyunwoo out and run far, far away from the trappings of his own carelessness? He knows the answer is probably, so he quickly exits out of the app and puts on his most unconvincing smile instead.
"Oh my god," Hyunwoo says anyway. "That was—hyung. That—"
"Um," Seongmin offers again. Hyunwoo stares at him with the same droopy eyes and furrowed brows that had reminded him so much of Minhee, all those months ago.
"So..." he starts.
Hyunwoo continues to stare.
"So, I kind of have a boyfriend?" Maybe too generous of a word, but he and Minhee would never really know what to call themselves. Sometimes approximations sufficed, when push came to shove. "Or something like that."
Of course, Hyunwoo screams into the dead quiet of their library floor. When a librarian swoops in and asks them to leave, he babbles under his breath all the way until the exit, then turns on his heel and blocks Seongmin's path with his ridiculously wide shoulders once they've hit the pavement outside.
"Explain."
"You should have told me you were seeing someone!" Sunoo announces the next time they meet up. Seongmin barely has time to get in the damn café chair before he's being ambushed, sighing as he sticks a straw into his iced latte cup.
"I'm going to kill that kid," Seongmin tells him, although he's admittedly grateful Hyunwoo hasn't divulged the full truth of his relationship. You're not worried I'll tell anyone? he'd asked as they walked back to Seongmin's dorm, and Seongmin had just fluttered a hand and dismissively replied: No sane person would believe you. It was the one mercy they were allowed, after all. The ability to be seen in public without fear of gossip-mongering, without worry of fans or media spinning tales of Minhee's childhood affiliations into more than they'd ever believe them to be.
"No," Sunoo continues. "Don't, it's cute! And I'm sorry, really. I should have listened to you the first time. Will—will your boyfriend get mad?"
Seongmin giggles and pushes him goodnaturedly. "Why would he? I'm allowed to get food with friends."
"Um, okay, but. Super hot friends!" Sunoo crosses his arms. "Ones I picked out just for you!"
"What... how did you even pick them out? Did you just keep asking Intak to introduce you to his department friends?"
Sunoo glances around, looking disproportionately shifty and prim. "Well... maybe."
"Sorry, but I'd never date a business major anyway. I have too much self-respect for that."
"You're so mean," Sunoo complains. "You know that—"
"Intak can be an exception."
"Okay, good."
Sunoo takes a sip from his iced tea and hums.
"But you never even talk about him," he says lightly, curious but sensitive. Beneath it lies the inferences of an accusation. Something that reads a little bit like, if Seongmin were to truly think about it: Are you even dating?
It made sense to ask—of course. Even Wonjin, who had always known how he felt, wondered about them at times. Sunoo posted shots of Intak on his Instagram story three times a day, and the first thing Jungmo did when he got out of the military was look into housing for him and Wonjin. But, Seongmin—
He's my favorite person in the world, he doesn't say.
The thing is: Minhee was the kind of person who would message him things like, hyeongjun keeps teasing me for chasing after a younger man. are you going to take responsibility??? >.< at three in the morning. He was the kind of person who was always willing to make room for Seongmin's volatility, who let Seongmin spam their chat when he was away filming a survival show for months and months, who pouted when Seongmin said, my 1-pick is kim minkyu ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ, even though they both knew it wasn't true. Traces of his relationship with Minhee survived through an understated temporality, like—a stolen hoodie worn in secret, or a lip tint Minhee had gifted him that only really mattered because of the proud spiel he'd accompanied the hand-over with, a recount of learning what an MLBB shade was from the stylists at the shop, sounding as accomplished as if he'd unlocked every secret there could ever be to the meaning of the universe.
On day three, after dusk, Seongmin remembers riding their bikes to Minhee's favorite spot by the Dongchun riverbed. The trees had blossomed into a smattering of summer-white flowers, and Seongmin had let Minhee pull him forward with the same steady fist he'd taken him around with the day before, and the day before that, and during all their long, sprawling years together. From strangers living opposite each other in primary school to something along the lines of friends, or maybe more, an undying devotion stretched desperately across province lines. It was the same hand he'd used to stick a Pororo bandaid to Seongmin's scraped knee the time Seongmin had fallen from a swingset. The hands and arms he'd wrapped around Seongmin's stick frame the first time he resolved to call him hyung, offering the word up as if his mind and mouth were still warring interminably, a stalemate resolution of politeness and intimacy.
"I'm not going to kiss you here," Seongmin remembers telling him then, on the grass facing the still water, the sky dark and waning. Minhee's fingers had played along the lines of his knuckles, his mouth wrinkling into a steady smile.
"Okay," he said simply. It was too dark for anyone to see; they could have gotten away with it. But because Minhee would always be cooperative to Seongmin's disproportionate bouts of secrecy, he followed along anyway.
Minhee was... Minhee was the person who'd tell him, Who needs friends? Life is about being alone, and then scold Seongmin for parroting him. He wanted Seongmin happy more than anything else, and he called himself a bad influence in fits of self-deprecation, even though he'd taught Seongmin more good things than he'd ever know to repay him for. When Seongmin scolded him for his chapped lips the first time they kissed, Minhee fired back with a, Sorry I wasn't hydrating enough when I was on public broadcast television!, and he smiled as Seongmin giggled into the second kiss, their mouths sliding firmly together.
But:
You never even talk about him.
"I could," Seongmin tells him simply. "If I wanted to."
Sunoo cocks his head, as if he wants to press further, ask more. Because he's a good friend, he doesn't.
They leave it at that.
+
Three minutes into Hyunwoo's tirade on how Minwoo had magically joined X1's fandom last month, Seongmin interrupts him with:
"Wait a minute. I thought you said Minwoo liked... um. The Boyz?"
"That was forever ago," Hyunwoo tells him dismissively, tone congealing with disbelief at Seongmin's lack of discernment toward Minwoo's idol preferences. The last time Seongmin had witnessed someone's disappointment ooze out this viscerally, he was eighteen and his parents had just seen his mock exam scores. A 30% in math was no easy feat to live down. "Remember, he said that he didn't like Juyeon's hair anymore!"
"Huh?" Seongmin puzzles momentarily. "Who the hell is Juyeon?"
"Who the hell is—hyung!" Hyunwoo raises his hands in the air and then lets them drop down with an exasperated exhale. "I can't believe you ever convinced me that you were an idol fan. Seriously."
Seongmin considers a retort along the lines of, I literally never said I was an idol fan, you idiot, but deep down he knows it wouldn't be worth it. Hyunwoo's overactive imagination: 1, Seongmin's rationality, dignity, and sanity: 0. He drags a hand down his face in defeat and tries to conjure an image of their members in his head. "Is that the, uh. I don't know. The hot one?"
"I have no idea what that means for you." Hyunwoo puts a hand to his chin and hums thoughtfully. "But I think your type would be more, like. Younghoon, probably."
"Now I don't know what that means," Seongmin realizes, with no shortage of pained self-awareness. "Wow, and I hate this conversation. What was the favor you needed again?"
"Ah, right—!" Hyunwoo straightens up as if electrocuted and inhales with one big, expectant breath. "Hyung. I just have this one... this one... teeny-tiny request. Could you please, please, please please pleaaaase—"
"Just say it."
"Okay!" Hyunwoo dons the most beseeching expression his face can physically contort itself into, all wide eyes and fluttering eyelashes, lips pathetically pouted. He leans forward and grabs Seongmin's hands in his. Seongmin desperately, hopelessly hates him. "It's his birthday in two weeks. On Monday. Could you please get me a signed X1 album?"
Ugh.
17:50
5월 22일 월요일
KAKAOTALK
now
KAKAOTALK
1m
KAKAOTALK
1m
KAKAOTALK
1m
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2m
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2m
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2m
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3m
fandom: cravity
pairing: minhee/seongmin
rating: t
word count: 8.0k
a/n: well this is definitely A Thing!!!! i wrote this fic as a purely indulgent birthday gift to myself, so i crammed in all the tropes + elements i've been wanting to read into one shitty story (me: what's the worst i can do ??? [2 seconds later] ah... extremely mundane famous/non-famous secret established relationship miniz fic with extensively formatted social media elements...), but it's objectively awful and definitely the last thing i'll be writing for the rest of the year. i'm very burnt out of writing and i know it shows *___* but i just wanted to get this up because i worked hard on the css stuff lololol. only read at your own risk after having seen this disclaimer!!! and preferably... plz no flames. like I Already Know. don't worry.
if you still want to read shitty alternate reality miniz fic:
README.txt
- 1️⃣ most of the css elements are SCROLLABLE and some are also CLICKABLE (i.e. some notifs)! if you're reading on desktop with a mouse the cursor should hover over clickable elements for you, but just keep this in mind if you see anything "extra" on the page because it'll probably bring you to another readable section.
2️⃣ the idea is largely that these are fun "easter eggs" for the story, so it's okay if you don't see everything. they just move along the exposition of seongmin's character, but the fic should still be cohesive if you don't click on every single element!
3️⃣ turns out responsive design is very hard to do with overlays so i went with a small fixed width, meaning some of the social media stuff will go slightly out of bounds if you're reading on a small phone screen T__T pls accept my sincerest apologies ;; while i've done my best to adapt to most browsers and regular phone sizes, this is best read on a computer on chrome!
4️⃣ lastly... sorry in advance >__< this is Very Experimental, as things most often are on dreamwidth. but only 3.2 people read miniz fic so i'm sure we can all deal with it 🥰
also: title song. DON'T LAUGH!!!
8:24
5월 10일 수요일
KAKAOTALK
21m
Minhee-hyung
so bored ㅠㅠ
4 more notifications
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21m Minhee-hyung
so bored ㅠㅠ 4 more notifications
KAKAOTALK
32m Kim Hyunwoo
hyungggg can i ask you for a favor later lol >__<
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7h Kim Sunoo
you coming???
KAKAOTALK
7h Kim Sunoo
i'm getting dinner with intak and taeyoung and their friends tonight
KAKAOTALK
7h Kim Sunoo
yah ahn seongmin
PHONE
8h Mom
Missed Call
TWITTER
14h X1members Tweeted: 미니꾸안꾸❤️ 날씨가 좋아서
"There's something I've always wanted to know," Song Hyeongjun is saying. Seongmin watches him wave his cup of scalding oolong tea around in easy circles, smoke curling lightly under the faded orange light, and tries valiantly to gauge whether the action is supposed to appear menacing. The eventual decision is inconclusive: Hyeongjun poses like a mafia boss in an old gangster movie, but the ambiguous aura is undercut by the fact that he still has baby fat clung to his cheeks and sports bright, fire-engine-red idol hair. Seongmin can't fathom a more objectively ridiculous visual.
"What?" Seongmin asks. He leans away in minute apprehension. Hyeongjun responds in kind by placing his cup down and leaning forward again, pushing his face so close to Seongmin's that he swears he can count every single pore freckled along his skin.
"You and Minhee," he begins conspiratorially, grin wicked and wide. His teeth jut into shark-white rows, the gleam of them nearly blinding. "So, who confessed first?"
The day Minhee's manager drives him down to Suncheon for his first proper break in eleven months, Minhee takes Seongmin by the wrist outside their old apartment block and drags them to the nearest Ministop for vanilla soft serve. The waning dredges of July have begun to curdle and melt under the weight of relentless sunlight, insouciant embrace burning sticky and hot and sore.
"You couldn't have just taken a train down?" chides Seongmin when he sees him. He pulls his elbow back to nudge against the soft flesh at Minhee's side. Minhee gently recoils, hand tugging Seongmin along with the movement, and when he straightens back up his face looks vaguely contrite. He trains down those signature furrowed brows Seongmin hasn't seen outside of a television screen since the last year, and—only now can Seongmin see the fuzzy ends of hair in proper detail. Arched outlines appearing sharper beneath afternoon light, something Seongmin could run a finger along. Could truly feel.
"They told me it was a liability," Minhee explains through a defeated sigh. "You know, I have a manager now."
Seongmin paces forward and snorts.
"I can see that," he says, turning back to throw a surreptitious glance at the broad-shouldered man quietly trailing behind them. He's spent the past five minutes alternating between scrolling through his phone and trying to keep track of their every movement. "Is he supposed to be a manager or a bodyguard?"
"A bit of a both," Minhee admits, laughing. "Half of us aren't from Seoul, I don't know how they managed to dispatch so many people."
"Well..." Seongmin quirks a meaningful eyebrow. "I'm sure you'll be making them a lot of money soon. Like, ridiculous amounts of managerial money."
"Probably."
"You're a long-term investment now, hyung!" Seongmin exclaims brightly.
Minhee disengages his hand just so he can push against Seongmin's shoulder, whining in protest. "Idols are still people," he interjects sagely. Like something out of an emotional Instagram post elucidating the dangers of the industry, lighthearted but tinged with something strangely wise and sincere.
"Okay, hyung," Seongmin says placatingly. He tucks his hands together and skips on ahead. Two streets later they round the corner and pull up to his favored Ministop, nestled between various shops and an expensive watch store, stood tall in all of its fluorescent yellow glory. A poster affixed to the glass front boasts a discount on an exclusive fried chicken combo. The edges overlap the faded paper surface of another advert, this one singing the virtues of cheap sim cards.
"So you get three days off?" he prompts this time.
"Yeah," Minhee says. He runs an awkward hand through his hair before leaning against the door to force it open, waiting for Seongmin to duck in past him before he continues, "But, honestly. Three days is more than it seems."
"I'm sure," Seongmin mumbles. But he sounds unconvinced; doubtful.
Sure: three days was enough for Minhee to see his parents. It was enough to eat a few good meals, hopefully visit his favorite park and sit on the grass by the riverbed. Three days was less than 72 hours, what with the back-and-forth and long drive back to Seoul, but neither of them dared to say it. For someone like Kang Minhee, three days was all the time in the world.
For someone like Seongmin, though: three days amounted to nothing.
Three days was an afternoon and then another afternoon. Momentary indulgences strung across an unimpressive celebratory garland, a decorative piece both out of place and misleadingly cheerful, like confetti at a funeral. Three days was the semblance of a break. Nothing more than an illusory respite.
Later on, what Seongmin will remember is the way his skin had prickled their whole walk together. The way his sandals clacked against faded concrete. How Minhee's hoodie had pressed around his face like a shield, even in the scorching heat, and how his hand brushing against Seongmin's had felt strangely present, almost surreal. A boy, although— nearly a man, but also— still just a boy. His Minhee, even if he'd never say it out loud.
Three days was everything and nothing. Seongmin was seventeen, barely in high school, and trying to make something unspeakable work.
Kang Minhee was a soon-to-be international superstar.
That's how it began, approximately.
During Seongmin's second year of university, he learns three simple facts about himself.
One, he hates drinking.
Of course—it's not the drinking itself that's the issue. What Seongmin doesn't believe in is rattling loose the pieces he keeps closest to his chest, in unveiling soft vulnerabilities he isn't willing to carve out just yet. To him, drinking is like that time he'd had to get his wisdom teeth taken out and sat in the backseat of his mother's car fidgeting the entire way to the dentist's office, so focused on keeping his mind sharp that his misplaced determination had distracted him through the actual teeth-pulling ordeal. When a nurse sat him back up to apply gauge against his cheek and asked with a nurturing, smiling mouth how he was feeling, Seongmin remembers blinking rapidly and clenching his hand into a fist. He'd forced his brain through the undulating, drugged-up fog and replied as distinctly as he could, gripped by the illogical folly of a man determined to fight against the biology of his own body. He was the kind of person who was convinced he could sheer stubbornness his way through cutting an onion dry-eyed.
Back in the misty, condensation-soaked alcohol aisle of a late-night 7/11, Kim Sunoo stares him down. Generously, he proposes:
"I think you might have control issues."
Seongmin shrugs one shoulder in response.
"Yeah," he says eventually. "Maybe." Hugging a large bag of turtle chips to his chest, Seongmin watches as Sunoo turns back to deliberate over his taste of poison for the evening. He pokes his tongue into the rough flesh of his cheek and continues, "But—hey. You're the one trying to pre-game your way into a boy's pants right now though, so I think I still win in this scenario."
Sunoo gasps in affront. "I'm not trying to get into his—I just need to be a little bit tipsy before I see him, okay!"
"But Hwang Intak is nice to a fault," Seongmin argues, exasperated. "And we both know it. All you need to do is relax."
"You don't get it," Sunoo stresses. He spins a bottle around to check its alcohol percentage, then makes a disappointed face and sticks it back onto its shelf. Seongmin peers over. 23%? Jesus. He glances back up at Sunoo as he begins to gesture wildly about, insisting, "He's also, you know. Painfully straight!"
"Really? Because I swear he keeps some interesting company."
"Not by choice!" Sunoo laments. Glancing down, he mumbles, "That's just... what happens when you major in Performing Arts."
Seongmin opens his mouth to argue again, and then—abruptly coming to the realization that he's thought of no proper consolation to offer him—snaps it back shut. Sucks to hear it, have you tried majoring in Education instead? Sunoo's current emotional state seemed too delicate for such an interjection. "Well, I still think that... you should... just. Try to relax."
"And I will," Sunoo assures him, hand immediately encircling a soju bottle. He cocks it toward himself and says, grinning, "Like this."
Seongmin rolls his eyes, although he acquiesces as they walk toward the cashier with their items in tow. "Fine. At least I'll have an excuse to leave early when you get drunk."
"Oh, come on," Sunoo objects, trying to wave a dismissive hand from around the bundle of alcohol currently nestled in his arms. "You'll love this guy. I swear. He's hot, tall, really good at—at... tennis, I think. Or was it ping pong? Either way, he's super fit."
Seongmin makes a face. "Is being fit really a prerequisite for playing ping pong? All you have to do is like, hit stuff."
"Hah? Yeah, why wouldn't it be?" Sunoo knits his eyebrows into a considering frown. "Well, that's not the point! He's very smart and lowkey. I think you'll get along."
"You know that's not the problem," Seongmin reminds him, even though this argument is a moot point by now. It would have to exist as a truth fundamental to the balance of the universe, a force necessary in keeping the planet spinning on its axis: something that just existed, inherently so. Sunoo would never stop trying to set him up on double dates; Seongmin would never be able to tell him the real reason he wasn't interested. It was how they would continue to work, irreversibly. "I'm just not looking to date right now."
"That's what people say when they're scared of getting rejected!" Sunoo insists, the way he always does. "You're way too cute to not be seeing anyone right now."
"You're going to be the death of me, Kim Sunoo," Seongmin replies flatly. "You really are."
Sunoo laughs and bats his eyes at him. He sets down three bottles onto the counter with a shit-eating grin, clearly and completely undeterred. "Well, I'm flattered!"
In reality:
No matter how well they got along, he and Kim Sunoo were fundamentally different people. This meant that Sunoo could never understand, because—really—how could he? The Kim Sunoo he knew reveled in bombastic displays of affection. He favored a sort of public romance that demanded hands in hoodie pockets, kissing by the campus fountain, candid shots of entangled fingers at the university library. Sunoo was an ultimate romanticizer of campus life. Someone who believed in blind dates and setting his friends up and in university as a time for playing around, who was convinced adulthood would come in like a gentle, folding wave, quietly toppling over these four long years of leisurely self-searching.
But the thing is that:
Two, he doesn't actually need friends.
Or, well...
Seongmin meets Kim Hyunwoo during an Anthropology lecture he'd meant to take last year, much to his personal embarrassment. His aversion to consulting with academic counselors and abject lack of department friends meant he'd been blindsided when he signed up for classes the previous semester, the course completely slipping out of mind, and—well. Here he was. Amongst a gaggle of unfamiliar faces and brief flashes of first-years he vaguely recalls from department MT, rousing the niggling suspicion that Seongmin was well and truly alone in this curricular mishap. Maybe he should have paid more attention during the planning section of their orientation course.
Hyunwoo is soft-spoken at first meeting, but any traces of his gentle character are largely eclipsed by the fact that he is horrifically, and purely unnecessarily, tall. Seongmin mentally logs this observation with a sense of both abject disgust and begrudging fascination; he can almost respect the way Hyunwoo, by virtue of his awkward gait and ridiculous vertical build, sticks out wherever he stands. But only almost.
Officially, they meet after lecture, out in the hallway between the course hall and an open-plan study area. A meeting of pure chance: Seongmin had ducked behind him to avoid being sighted by one of the business majors Sunoo kept trying to set him up with during their unbearable "double dates." (Of course: Four people having dinner together doesn't automatically make a double date, Seongmin said every time, but the complaint only fractured against unreceptive ears.) And that would have been all, except for how—one week later—Hyunwoo sees him in the hallway and quickly rushes to hide behind him. Crouching down to Seongmin's height, he pleads, "Will you help me this time?"
"Yeah, uh. That's not going to work," Seongmin laughs. Instinctively, he takes hold of his arm and tugs him into an empty study room, shutting the door behind them.
"Phew," Hyunwoo breathes out. "Thanks, hyung!"
Hyung? Seongmin thinks dryly. "Who the hell were you trying to avoid?"
"Ah, um—well. It's all Donghyun-hyung's fault!" Hyunwoo huffs and pulls out a chair, plopping into it unceremoniously. Seongmin follows suit and sets his phone down nearby. "He set me up on a blind date with Lee Jaehee last week, and now I can never... never show my face around her again."
Seongmin tries not to laugh at the tortured and earnest edge to his tone. Some people were just so painfully twenty in a way he'd never be able to understand, and Kim Hyunwoo was clearly one of them. "Was it really that bad?"
"No—I mean! No, she was really nice." He slumps down onto the table and pouts. "I'm just too awkward. We kissed once and then I had no idea what to say and realized it would never work, and... well. Now I need to figure out what to say before we see each other at practice."
Seongmin nods sympathetically. "I get it," he commiserates. "My friend also keeps trying to set me up on double dates with him. Not even really dates, but—"
Speak of the devil. Across the table, his phone screen suddenly lights up and flashes with a notification from Sunoo himself. Seongmin sighs and drags it closer.
"Oh!" Hyunwoo says.
"Yeah, that's him," Seongmin says with a sigh, but Hyunwoo isn't done. He makes a choked noise and enthusiastically points a finger in his phone's direction, eyes wide and curious.
"Hyung!"
"Huh?" Seongmin squints. "Do you know him or something?"
"Your background?" Hyunwoo gestures brightly, and—ah. Seongmin can't control his wince of recognition when Hyunwoo flashes him a fervent grin. "Kang Minhee—I didn't know you were an idol fan!"
And, really. Seongmin tries to object. He does. He tries cutting in with a, No, well, you see, I'm really not..., but his protests make zero headway as Hyunwoo barrels on, hands clapping together happily.
"You know what, hyung?" No, he really doesn't! "You should join the performance club!" Hyunwoo's insisting smile is infectious and dazzling. "We always do a lot of K-pop covers, and I'm in the rap group, and—and—and Donghyun-hyung says I might actually get to perform this semester!"
"That's... nice," Seongmin tells him, dazed. He reaches a hand to scratch behind his ear. "But, uh. That's really okay."
Hyunwoo pouts at him. "Okay," he hedges, "but... find me after lecture if you ever change your mind, okay?"
With a pat of his shoulder, Seongmin smiles at him and goes to stand up. "I probably won't," he informs him honestly. "But I wouldn't have to find you. We can just message each other?"
"Really?" Hyunwoo asks, scurrying after Seongmin with all 190 centimeters of his lanky body, arms knocking around the study room chair he'd just been folded into.
Seongmin is, much to his own chagrin, uncharacteristically charmed.
"It's funny," he starts later. Once they've successfully tumbled back into the hallway and toward the mouth of safety, Hyunwoo standing beside him, head cocked in question.
"What is?" He says. His expression is wide and open. Strong brows and sleepy eyes that eclipse nothing, youthful and sweet and cracked apart.
"Just—you remind me of someone I know."
There was this time once, back in high school. It looked like this: Seongmin flipping through the pages of his mini calendar, phone on speaker in front of him. Leaning forward slightly and saying: I'll be in Seoul soon.
As if distance were the problem. As if 10km and 300km weren't functionally the same, when calculated through a phone screen.
Still, this didn't stop Minhee from chuckling into the speaker and replying, Okay. Then I'll wait for you. The words had tickled all the way down his spine. Fluttering and jerking, a movement near-mechanical. Like a moth in the dark blindly circling restricted instincts.
Back then, I'll be there was nothing more than a mantra suggesting closeness. It teased at an imagining more powerful than fact. Seongmin had learned to tear his fingers into it from the very start, drag his nails through the flesh of possibility, say: soon, soon, soon, and truly mean it.
There's a garden patch not too far from their high school's campus that hasn't been attended to in years. The weeds there have grown strong and tall, bits and pieces even breaking through cracks in poorly-laid gravel, invasive and sturdy and proud. When Seongmin comes home after his first semester of university, he and Wonjin walk over and soak in the yolk-yellow sunlight together. Seongmin crouches down and begins to rip away at the harvested excess, squinting as he rolls a blade between his fingers. Quietly, he thinks, there's a morbid sort of comfort in knowing that what he's left behind has learned to be forgotten. Seongmin certainly never did.
"You know," Wonjin is telling him. When Seongmin looks up at him, his face is open and pensive and fond. "You've grown up a lot."
"What?"
"Back in high school, you would have hit me for implying Minhee meant anything to you. But... you actually talk about him more these days."
"Hyung, that's because you were super annoying in high school."
Wonjin swipes a palm by his eyes and sniffles obnoxiously. "Wow. Harsh!"
"Stop that. You know you had no reason to be hanging around a first year's classroom in the first place," Seongmin continues, merciless. He wipes his hands and goes to sit down beside Wonjin, tucking his legs together. "So damn suffocating."
"But my boyfriend was all the way off in Seoul," Wonjin wails, throwing his arms around Seongmin's shoulders. Seongmin makes a displeased face and pushes him off with a curt grunt, although this does nothing to stop Wonjin from rambling on, "I was so bored, you know! What was I supposed to do?"
"Hyung, that doesn't mean anything. I know what it's like to have—" he pauses abruptly, biting at his lip. "Nevermind."
"Huh? What?"
"That's just—it's obviously not a good excuse."
"No, not that," Wonjin dismisses. The grin he flashes him then is nothing short of devious. "Before. What were you going to say?"
"Nothing!"
"Seongmin-ah, that didn't sound like nothing. I think that sounded like you were, hmm, maybe about to call Kang Minhee—"
Seongmin screeches. "Do you ever shut up?!" he hisses, raising two fists to strike at Wonjin's shoulder. His knuckles thud dully against at the cotton fabric in unrefined motions, cheeks smarting with the truth of his own self-evidence. "Seriously, shut up—"
"—your boyfriend," Wonjin finishes through the continued assault, undeterred. Then he twists himself away from Seongmin and graces him with a duly unimpressed stare. "Also, ow! What the fuck?"
"You deserved that," Seongmin sneers, hitting him once more for good measure. Giggling at the way Wonjin yelps with overperformed misery, he taunts, "I guess I haven't grown up that much after all."
Wonjin rolls his eyes. "And to think you call me suffocating."
When Wonjin and Jungmo are officially discharged from the military and move into an apartment out in Mapo together, Minhee arranges for the four of them to celebrate around Chinese food and a round of drinks. This would normally be fine, of course. Except that—for reasons unknown to Seongmin—he enters the private dining room to see Song Hyeongjun already sitting there.
Thirty minutes and three beers in, Wonjin pulls Jungmo up by the arm and begins to scurry him away suspiciously. "Smoke break!" he announces by way of explanation.
"Um, I need to go to the bathroom," Minhee adds apologetically, eyes flitting between Hyeongjun and Seongmin. (He said he was hungry and I was already on my way out! Minhee explained as the five of them settled down. Easygoing as always, Jungmo clapped him on the back in response and said, Don't worry, you two can cover dinner with your idol salary, haha, right before Wonjin slapped his neck and stressed, You're the worst, hyung. You have more than enough money to be treating your dongsaengs, show some remorse!)
So here Seongmin was now. Staring sullenly at his half-eaten plate, legs tucked up in his chair like a child, making no move to rearrange his posture.
"Oh. They smoke?" Hyeongjun asks curiously.
"No," Seongmin explains sourly, shaking his head with a resigned sigh. "They're probably just making out behind the restaurant."
Seongmin waits for him to make some sort of commentary in response, but Hyeongjun just nods in apparent understanding. Briefly, he wonders whether he's the only person in the world left with proper restraint.
"Well, while Minhee is gone..." Song Hyeongjun starts.
Great. Just great!
"There's something I've always wanted to know," he tells him, and—
You know how this one goes.
"Actually," Seongmin tells him. "Hyung is the one who begged me to date him."
Hyeongjun's brows raise all the way up up up to the roof. "Really?"
"It was super embarrassing," Seongmin adds, with something of a pitying air. "I didn't even want to say yes, but..."
Hyeongjun looks positively gleeful now, hands gripped right on the edge of his seat. "But?"
"You know." He shrugs, concludes sagely, "Well, I figured he'd be a millionaire eventually."
Hyeongjun throws his head back with a clap of his hands, following up with a loose hah! Then, looking Seongmin right in the eyes, the corners of his mouth stretching all the way across his cheeks, he says, "You're not bad, Ahn Seongmin. I'm glad he has you."
"Who has who?"
That's Minhee's voice floating in from the doorway. Seongmin looks up to see his hand brushing open the separating curtain as he walks back into the room, eyeing their proximity with poorly-concealed suspicion. "What were you two talking about?"
"Nothing," says Seongmin.
"Everything," echoes Hyeongjun.
"Oookay." Minhee pulls his chair back out and settles into it quietly. Then he looks at Seongmin and cocks his head. "By the way..."
"What?"
"When did Wonjin-hyung start smoking?"
As far as Seongmin is concerned, his relationship with Kang Minhee is easy to understand. Minhee never pushes Seongmin any further than he can bear him to, and so they exist comfortably like this: two bodies suspended between subdued flirtations and immanent affection, never voicing what didn't need to be said. Their impossibility was protected of its fleetingness through Seongmin's unbothered secrecy—the understanding that Seongmin at his most wordless could be its own sort of mercy. A motion kind in its absence, a way of defaulting to uncritical.
But, one night—
"Humor me," Minhee asks. Just once, into the dark. "If we ever had a honeymoon. Where would you want to go?"
Honeymoon was said with inconceivable weight, a word Seongmin had thought too foreign to ever grace Minhee's vocabulary. He'd believed it to exist outside the range of their mental capacities: an idea you only heard of in romance movies, in his mother's recollections of a nostalgia-tinted youth. It manifested in photos of his parents, arm-in-arm, at scenic beaches in Jeju. Stories of dishes she ate outside on restaurant balconies under the glow of low-hanging orange lanterns, a marriage more familiar to him than any idea of his hypothetical own.
"Taipei," Seongmin admits finally, after letting the silence stretch to maturity. "You can go shopping with me and buy me all the clothes I want, and then we can go down the food stalls and eat skewers until we burst."
Minhee laughs loudly on the other end of the receiver. "So simple," he teases.
"Well, I'm easy to please," promises Seongmin blithely.
"That's not true at all."
"I'm easy to please if you understand me!" Seongmin tries this time.
"Now you're definitely just trying to pin your fussiness on me," Minhee whines, and Seongmin rolls over in his bed with a pleased giggle.
The thing is, it was a ridiculous conversation to begin with. Something that made no sense to even entertain. Seongmin knew little about himself, but the fact that he would never marry had always been something he understood deeply, like a festering wound. Or, maybe—just an old scar from a bad childhood fall, a mark ever-present but pleasantly forgotten, the lines of it drawn shallowly into skin.
"Seongmin-ah," Minhee is whispering. Outside moonlight tumbles in through the slats of his cream-colored blinds and ripples along the edges of Seongmin's solitary bedroom in quiet waves. Sprawling ginkgo trees animate its surface with their impressionable shadows, shifting and arcing in the wind, letting the autumn breeze run through their crevices. They present, in sweeping, gangly, uncertain motions, the nebulous outlines of a story.
"Yeah?" Seongmin asks, hushed. There's a version of this story unfolding in the shadows. One where two friends, or two boys, sit side by side. Their fingers rest centimeters away. One of them is waiting for the other one to say something, unaware that his friend mirrors his own determinations. In that version, they'll die waiting there.
But in this one, Minhee exhales and asks, "Do you actually want any of that?"
The thing about relationships is: someone always has to make the first move. Things don't die until they reach their stalemate, and there are always more pieces to move. Seongmin draws his legs up and hums.
"Well, not the honeymoon part..." he corrects. His voice is playful and frank when he leans in and adds, "But—you should still take me to Taipei."
Minhee chuckles faintly. "Okay."
"Okay?"
"Sure. And after?"
"After what?"
"We could get a dog," Minhee offers sans explanation. "Later on, if we ever lived together."
Right: because married people live together. In this version of the story, this... untenable hypothetical, one he could only offer Minhee through a generosity stretched to its limits—he and Minhee could share rings and a dog and an apartment overlooking the Han River. Seongmin closes his eyes and lets himself drift.
"I want to pick out the dog, though," he insists through a yawn. "I feel like you would have bad taste in dogs."
"There's no such thing as having bad taste in dogs, Seongmin. They're dogs!"
"You see? People who say that always like ugly dogs. And I don't want to have an ugly dog."
"Ah, but people who hate ugly dogs shouldn't own dogs in the first place."
"Then let's get a cat," he suggests. Seongmin wonders if he'll even remember the fading gradations of this conversation in the morning, when the ginkgo trees stand tall outside in bursting sunlight, when his dreams have warped him back to proper realism.
He supposes it doesn't matter.
"Cats are nice, too," Minhee says, which is a stupid thing to say. Minhee loves dogs. Seongmin knows that he loves dogs. Moreover, Minhee knows that Seongmin knows this.
Again: maybe it doesn't matter.
A final truth:
Three, dating an idol is the easiest thing in the world.
On day two of Minhee's company-mandated hometown pilgrimage, Seongmin sits in his bedroom at the edge of his childhood bed, a relic of days past and unbothered middle school naivety. Minhee still has that huge League poster on his ceiling Seongmin always made fun of him for. His middle school textbooks nestle in the bookshelf above his desk, highlighters strewn about its surface haphazardly.
"Five years, huh," Seongmin muses. "Don't let the fame get to you, okay?"
Minhee chuckles quietly when he settles down beside him. "Don't worry," he assures him playfully. "You have enough of an ego for the both of us."
"Hey!"
"No, no—it's a good thing! Self-confidence! I could use more of it."
"Don't joke around, hyung," berates Seongmin, crossing his arms. "Five years is a long time."
Minhee hums. From next to him, he clenches and unclenches his hands around his sheets, considering. He's silent for a long moment, and the pause weighs down between them, pulled to the floor by an unyielding gravity.
"It is," he admits.
In five years, Seongmin would be twenty-two. He'd still be at university or in the military, fulfilling a normalcy expected of him, and Minhee would be—
He would be—
In this moment, Seongmin wonders why eighteen looks so weary on Minhee. Sure, Minhee would always be a little bit awkward and gangly, wise for his years. Kang Analog, they teased relentlessly when he didn't know how to operate his new phone, whining when he couldn't take a proper screenshot. But the Minhee beside him was more than that. Someone Seongmin could only connect to implicitly, shouldering a fatigue that would forever go unspoken, something that ran deep deep deep beneath skin and all the way down into sinew and flesh and bone.
"It is," he echoes. Five years.
In two days, Minhee would be gone again.
So Seongmin does something then that he can give himself no time to second-guess, no time to deliberate over or regret. He turns toward Minhee and shuffles away slightly, creating a gap between the curves of their bent legs.
"Hyung," he says. Demanding but soft. Toeing that line between shame and shamelessness he would always be affixed to. Leaning forward, he asks:
"When are you going to kiss me?"
The thing is, Ahn Seongmin doesn't need friends. But maybe—
A part of him wonders when he started letting his guard down. Maybe, he thinks, it was when Sunoo started dating Intak, finally sparing Seongmin of those horrific dinner dates with various of his business friend types. Or maybe it was when Hyunwoo struck something of a friendship with Lee Jaehee, hilariously deciding to cover Crush's Mayday with her, and then became obsessed with a boy in the dance group who greeted Seongmin brightly whenever he came to watch at rehearsals. Hyunwoo bled open with his vulnerability, and Seongmin sometimes wondered whether friendship meant, at its core, being able to repay that frankness in kind. The night Sunoo finally dragged him out to drink, just once, he said in between recounts of his dates with Intak: You're so cold sometimes, Ahn Seongmin. What will it take to make your heart flutter?
He and Hyunwoo are studying in the library when it happens. Hyunwoo—dozing off on his shoulder, cheek slumped up against his bone and mouth hung dumbly open. Seongmin is in the middle of reapplying his lip tint through his phone camera, rubbing at the edge of his mouth with an index finger, when a notification banner slides in from above.
Maybe if Seongmin's guard had still been up, he wouldn't have tapped on the notification. Mindlessly, too, at that—when Seongmin clicks through it's entirely without finesse, eyes blinking amusedly at the message that reads, saw the cutest dog today ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, a selfie of Minhee hugging it attached underneath.
Maybe if Seongmin's guard had still been up, he wouldn't have yelped quietly at Hyunwoo shifting next to him and whispering: "Wait a minute."
"Um," Seongmin says. Was it too late to knock Hyunwoo out and run far, far away from the trappings of his own carelessness? He knows the answer is probably, so he quickly exits out of the app and puts on his most unconvincing smile instead.
"Oh my god," Hyunwoo says anyway. "That was—hyung. That—"
"Um," Seongmin offers again. Hyunwoo stares at him with the same droopy eyes and furrowed brows that had reminded him so much of Minhee, all those months ago.
"So..." he starts.
Hyunwoo continues to stare.
"So, I kind of have a boyfriend?" Maybe too generous of a word, but he and Minhee would never really know what to call themselves. Sometimes approximations sufficed, when push came to shove. "Or something like that."
Of course, Hyunwoo screams into the dead quiet of their library floor. When a librarian swoops in and asks them to leave, he babbles under his breath all the way until the exit, then turns on his heel and blocks Seongmin's path with his ridiculously wide shoulders once they've hit the pavement outside.
"Explain."
"You should have told me you were seeing someone!" Sunoo announces the next time they meet up. Seongmin barely has time to get in the damn café chair before he's being ambushed, sighing as he sticks a straw into his iced latte cup.
"I'm going to kill that kid," Seongmin tells him, although he's admittedly grateful Hyunwoo hasn't divulged the full truth of his relationship. You're not worried I'll tell anyone? he'd asked as they walked back to Seongmin's dorm, and Seongmin had just fluttered a hand and dismissively replied: No sane person would believe you. It was the one mercy they were allowed, after all. The ability to be seen in public without fear of gossip-mongering, without worry of fans or media spinning tales of Minhee's childhood affiliations into more than they'd ever believe them to be.
"No," Sunoo continues. "Don't, it's cute! And I'm sorry, really. I should have listened to you the first time. Will—will your boyfriend get mad?"
Seongmin giggles and pushes him goodnaturedly. "Why would he? I'm allowed to get food with friends."
"Um, okay, but. Super hot friends!" Sunoo crosses his arms. "Ones I picked out just for you!"
"What... how did you even pick them out? Did you just keep asking Intak to introduce you to his department friends?"
Sunoo glances around, looking disproportionately shifty and prim. "Well... maybe."
"Sorry, but I'd never date a business major anyway. I have too much self-respect for that."
"You're so mean," Sunoo complains. "You know that—"
"Intak can be an exception."
"Okay, good."
Sunoo takes a sip from his iced tea and hums.
"But you never even talk about him," he says lightly, curious but sensitive. Beneath it lies the inferences of an accusation. Something that reads a little bit like, if Seongmin were to truly think about it: Are you even dating?
It made sense to ask—of course. Even Wonjin, who had always known how he felt, wondered about them at times. Sunoo posted shots of Intak on his Instagram story three times a day, and the first thing Jungmo did when he got out of the military was look into housing for him and Wonjin. But, Seongmin—
He's my favorite person in the world, he doesn't say.
The thing is: Minhee was the kind of person who would message him things like, hyeongjun keeps teasing me for chasing after a younger man. are you going to take responsibility??? >.< at three in the morning. He was the kind of person who was always willing to make room for Seongmin's volatility, who let Seongmin spam their chat when he was away filming a survival show for months and months, who pouted when Seongmin said, my 1-pick is kim minkyu ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ, even though they both knew it wasn't true. Traces of his relationship with Minhee survived through an understated temporality, like—a stolen hoodie worn in secret, or a lip tint Minhee had gifted him that only really mattered because of the proud spiel he'd accompanied the hand-over with, a recount of learning what an MLBB shade was from the stylists at the shop, sounding as accomplished as if he'd unlocked every secret there could ever be to the meaning of the universe.
On day three, after dusk, Seongmin remembers riding their bikes to Minhee's favorite spot by the Dongchun riverbed. The trees had blossomed into a smattering of summer-white flowers, and Seongmin had let Minhee pull him forward with the same steady fist he'd taken him around with the day before, and the day before that, and during all their long, sprawling years together. From strangers living opposite each other in primary school to something along the lines of friends, or maybe more, an undying devotion stretched desperately across province lines. It was the same hand he'd used to stick a Pororo bandaid to Seongmin's scraped knee the time Seongmin had fallen from a swingset. The hands and arms he'd wrapped around Seongmin's stick frame the first time he resolved to call him hyung, offering the word up as if his mind and mouth were still warring interminably, a stalemate resolution of politeness and intimacy.
"I'm not going to kiss you here," Seongmin remembers telling him then, on the grass facing the still water, the sky dark and waning. Minhee's fingers had played along the lines of his knuckles, his mouth wrinkling into a steady smile.
"Okay," he said simply. It was too dark for anyone to see; they could have gotten away with it. But because Minhee would always be cooperative to Seongmin's disproportionate bouts of secrecy, he followed along anyway.
Minhee was... Minhee was the person who'd tell him, Who needs friends? Life is about being alone, and then scold Seongmin for parroting him. He wanted Seongmin happy more than anything else, and he called himself a bad influence in fits of self-deprecation, even though he'd taught Seongmin more good things than he'd ever know to repay him for. When Seongmin scolded him for his chapped lips the first time they kissed, Minhee fired back with a, Sorry I wasn't hydrating enough when I was on public broadcast television!, and he smiled as Seongmin giggled into the second kiss, their mouths sliding firmly together.
But:
You never even talk about him.
"I could," Seongmin tells him simply. "If I wanted to."
Sunoo cocks his head, as if he wants to press further, ask more. Because he's a good friend, he doesn't.
They leave it at that.
+
Three minutes into Hyunwoo's tirade on how Minwoo had magically joined X1's fandom last month, Seongmin interrupts him with:
"Wait a minute. I thought you said Minwoo liked... um. The Boyz?"
"That was forever ago," Hyunwoo tells him dismissively, tone congealing with disbelief at Seongmin's lack of discernment toward Minwoo's idol preferences. The last time Seongmin had witnessed someone's disappointment ooze out this viscerally, he was eighteen and his parents had just seen his mock exam scores. A 30% in math was no easy feat to live down. "Remember, he said that he didn't like Juyeon's hair anymore!"
"Huh?" Seongmin puzzles momentarily. "Who the hell is Juyeon?"
"Who the hell is—hyung!" Hyunwoo raises his hands in the air and then lets them drop down with an exasperated exhale. "I can't believe you ever convinced me that you were an idol fan. Seriously."
Seongmin considers a retort along the lines of, I literally never said I was an idol fan, you idiot, but deep down he knows it wouldn't be worth it. Hyunwoo's overactive imagination: 1, Seongmin's rationality, dignity, and sanity: 0. He drags a hand down his face in defeat and tries to conjure an image of their members in his head. "Is that the, uh. I don't know. The hot one?"
"I have no idea what that means for you." Hyunwoo puts a hand to his chin and hums thoughtfully. "But I think your type would be more, like. Younghoon, probably."
"Now I don't know what that means," Seongmin realizes, with no shortage of pained self-awareness. "Wow, and I hate this conversation. What was the favor you needed again?"
"Ah, right—!" Hyunwoo straightens up as if electrocuted and inhales with one big, expectant breath. "Hyung. I just have this one... this one... teeny-tiny request. Could you please, please, please please pleaaaase—"
"Just say it."
"Okay!" Hyunwoo dons the most beseeching expression his face can physically contort itself into, all wide eyes and fluttering eyelashes, lips pathetically pouted. He leans forward and grabs Seongmin's hands in his. Seongmin desperately, hopelessly hates him. "It's his birthday in two weeks. On Monday. Could you please get me a signed X1 album?"
Ugh.
17:50
5월 22일 월요일
KAKAOTALK
now
Kim Hyunwoo
thank you so much!!!!!!
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KAKAOTALK
now Kim Hyunwoo
thank you so much!!!!!! 7 more notifications
KAKAOTALK
now Kim Hyunwoo
and
KAKAOTALK
1m Kim Hyunwoo
please ignore that
KAKAOTALK
1m Kim Hyunwoo
i mean. i wouldn't. wait i take it back
KAKAOTALK
1m Kim Hyunwoo
haha
KAKAOTALK
2m Kim Hyunwoo
i could kiss you!!!
KAKAOTALK
2m Kim Hyunwoo
he loved it
KAKAOTALK
2m Kim Hyunwoo
thankyouthankyouthankyou
KAKAOTALK
3m Kim Hyunwoo
hyung!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
no subject
Date: 2021-09-10 01:58 am (UTC)i already mentioned the first section but KJSDHFKDJSHFS i love when people include vagueanimosity lemtang for no reason ❤️ it is REAL and PERFECT. and the "who confessed first" sets the ~plot in motion perfectly like even if i wasnt INSANEMINIZFAN420 i would still be super interested!!!
ok onwards first of all idol/nonidol secret relationship? classic. 200iq trope. and the way their first scene together has that interaction like: "You're a long-term investment now, hyung!" Seongmin exclaims brightly. / "idols are still people" / "okay hyung" and how that segues into seongmin’s angst???? like seongmin who minhee's always cared for in his own quiet way but now hes so worried (even if he wont directly say it) that their relationship is going to change unrecognizably once minhee becomes an "international superstar".... TT and i love this bit soo much:
AND THEN SUNOO AND BAEKSEUNG ARE LITERALLY SOOOOOO FLIPPING CUTE HERE. like sunoo telling seongmin "I THINK YOU MIGHT HAVE CONTROL ISSUES" (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️) man i love when ahnseongmin has issues (of various types). really their friendship is so funny but also so sweet and i need it to happen irl T__T
and DONGSAENG HYUNWOO actually made me tear up you already know.... and this introduction made me laugh soo much:
by virtue of his awkward gait and ridiculous vertical build 😭 yes that sure DOES remind me of someone. also lost it at u making him go out with jaehee and then become obsessed with minwoo KJEHDCFVJok im gonna tear up again but i need this to happen irl T__T [2] ok honestly I THINK SEONGMIN DESERVES TO BE CALLED HYUNG AS A TREAT!!! i also copied this line: "You know what, hyung?" No, he really doesn't! "You should join the performance club!"
SEONGMINS INTERNAL MONOLOGUE IS SOJVSHSVHSBDDJ.... NO HE REALLY DOESNT! jesus christ he’s perfect. i also love the phone background reveal and the way the Beautiful CSS visually accompanies it ❤️
and i think PROSE-WISE this was my favorite bit:
honestly all of your prose is like.... so well-crafted to me i feel like i always end up reading extra slowly so i can take it all in!!! but the above paragraph is like TT maybe this IS romance.....
THE WONJIN SCENE WAS SO HILARIOUS BTW!!! like seongmin screeching and hitting wonjin for calling minhee his boyfriend when he like. clearly is... i literally love them so much & seongmin calling wonjin out for hanging around the first year classrooms for no reason JSDHFKS!! wonjin you're embarrassing the hoes. also i'm obsessed with every gotdam miniz fic needing questionable moguham pandering. that's just law now it seems
also so random but i love the way u write the text dialogue especially highlighting minhee's tendency to um you know quadruple text etc etc... like "practical music / is / very / practical" well so true king i agree. i agree.
AND THEN THIS MINIZSONG DINNER SCENE IS ONE OF MY FAVORITES FOR SURE... like: "So here Seongmin was now. Staring sullenly at his half-eaten plate, legs tucked up in his chair like a child, making no move to rearrange his posture." yes we all know the childish side that hyeongjun awakens in him!!!! but then "hyung is the one who begged me to date him" i literally cant stand him. but hj making it serious with YOURE NOT BAD AHN SEONGMIN IM GLAD HE HAS YOU.... TTTT minizsong is so serious. i wonder if seongmin was thinking in his head that he's glad minhee has hyeongjun as a friend too TTTTTTT like ok probably not but its a nice thought.
NOT GONNA SAY ANYTHING ELSE ABT THE CHAJUNHO CAMEO BUT I LOVE YOU SO MUCH 🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰
ok i was gonna say the minizsong scene was my favorite but honestlyyyyy how could anything top this phone convo in the dark scene T__T
honestly gasped a little bit. this conversation is like…… its layers. like its soooo freaking cute but you can feel the tension of a mostly unspoken relationship bubbling under the surface. the way you dragged out the "seongmin-ah" [exposition] "yeah?" [exposition] "do you actually want any of that?" [full stop] is. GIRL ITS MASTERFUL!!! its just written sooo well and i love the meditations on how you'll die waiting if no one makes the first move. and yes their relationship is good because it doesnt necessarily need to be quantified most of the time but sometimes... IT DOES. society when seongmin opens his mouth etc etc. and then taipei and dogs and living together andddjkhsdfhsskf 🥺 man.
AND:
the imagery here... seongmin following his instincts... TOEING THAT LINE BTWN SHAME AND SHAMELESSNESS HE WOULD ALWAYS BE AFFIXED TO...... yes. you know it!!!!!!
alright one day i'll be able to write a comment that makes sense but UMMM THIS FINAL SUNOO CONVO TT seongmin internal voice HES MY FAVORITE PERSON IN THE WORLD? THISSS?????
oh my facking god... i literally love how you explore the difference btwn how seongmin feels internally abt minhee and how he expresses it ESP in relation to kim "posts 3 pics of intak a day" sunoo. and if we're tinhatting for a moment its also really interesting to think about it in terms of how this mirrors their irl dynamic... iykyk. but honestly idk i can just really relate to having to navigate differing levels of Feelings Expression and i think u write seongmins perspective so perfectly. oh and then ofc how it relates to Secret Relationship like. yeah sometimes secrecy IS better. seongmin lowk the perfect person for a secret relationship tbh
also sorry last thing but oh my god seongmins 30% math score JBDJSBDJX WHO REMEMBERS….. and then the final scene HELP!!!!!!! “Remember, he said that he didn't like Juyeon's hair anymore!" / "Huh?" Seongmin puzzles momentarily. "Who the hell is Juyeon?"
I LITERALLY LAUGHED OUT LOUD 😭 #DEOBIS_OUT #ONEITS_IN
TLDR (totally incoherent as usual) i cried. thank u for writing this i know you struggled but it was amazing and im soooo glad u stuck it out bc i love it so much T__T 수고해쓰..... ❤️
do you ever read perfect fanfiction
Date: 2021-09-13 05:14 am (UTC)first of all, your writing is gorgeous. i think you write seongmin pov perfectly TTATT idk i just love how well you balance humor, seongmin's personality, and the quiet love but also gentle ache of miniz's relationship.
LIKE HELLO? i know miniz community is just like 4 people but you are truly the backbone, who is doing it like you!! when i first read this, i got so excited that i missed out on some banger lines but there are definitely more that got to me ;-; here's one:
AND HERE'S ANOTHER:
you just get it. YOU JUST GET IT. i love the mention of minhee's self-deprecation and the way he understands seongmin so well and how they just operate on their own pace, but there's also this nuance of stalemate. (One of them is waiting for the other one to say something, unaware that his friend mirrors his own determinations. In that version, they'll die waiting there. But in this one, Minhee exhales and asks, "Do you actually want any of that?") literally so sorry for spewing incoherent comments but um i have more.
sorry for lumping random quotes together BUT WHY IS KANG MINHEE JUST THE PERFECT GUYYY. also him texting/bothering seongmin during lectures is so cute. i could cry
i don't think i could comment on how much i love your seongmin once again without talking about KIM SUNOO and how you made them foil besties in this. No matter how well they got along, he and Kim Sunoo were fundamentally different people. This meant that Sunoo could never understand, because—really—how could he? The Kim Sunoo he knew reveled in bombastic displays of affection. like seongmin's ruminations on how he could never be sunoo literally k*lls me. SO TRUE! but also #loveyourself seongmin TAT
you already how much i am a proponent of seongmin & sunoo friendship (their banter is so cute and funny btw + i love how sunoo kept trying to set seongmin up with BUSINESS MAJORS) but also your inclusion of SUNOO/INTAK and the larger 03z network made me lose my mind. never change miss girlrock never change. i don't really know any of the non-cravity x1 members beside like DONGPYO but still read through that whole text interaction like so true queen!!! AND I LOVE THE HYEONGJUN INTRO SET-UP yes i needed to mention that
speaking of side characters um HYUNWOO / BAEK SEUNG OF EPEKS FAME? he was so endearing in this, i feel like you're priming me for his appearance in hometown cha cha cha as an intern of the fictional tv show seaside village grasshopper. the tbz juyeon convo made me laugh out loud btw
also i read your fic interactivty post and like i have nothing smart to say but i also think you're an innovator who innovates and these interactive elements ARE SO COOL i found myself lingering on them so much and scrolling back through them. i just think you're so good at capturing text in fic without it ever feeling over done while also contributing to the rhythm of the prose....again no one is doing it like you [2]. THANK YOU <3