Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

If emotions were Minho’s cage, vulnerability was the pretty little key that clicked the lock shut and trapped him inside.

He’s content to be stuck in his dorm room for the first few days because it felt like the only option he had. When he woke up the first morning after that night, he hadn’t even left his bed. He was paralyzed by the sudden, too-fast replay in his memory of his crying, his confession of falling in fucking love with Chan, and swore to himself right then that he’d never speak to anyone ever again. Perhaps, Minho thought, if he was still enough in bed, it would translate over to his mind and spirit. He could magically cease to exist until the world had forgotten about what he’d said and how he’d acted and consequences could be a thing of utter fiction.

Eventually, regrettably, he had to get up. He felt like a zombie those first couple of mornings as he ambled around for food, so emotionally stressed and exhausted that he merely gave a metaphorical middle finger to the reminder that he was missing all of his classes. Nothing in this world would make him walk out that front door, not when the cruel reminders of reality were already so unbearable in the privacy of his own room.

The headache he believed to be from all that alcohol wasn’t a drink-related symptom at all — it was the result of his vulnerability, he realizes, leaving constant reminders of those brief minutes outside Changbin’s front door that had his skull throbbing and ears ringing. Even going on a marathon of cat videos isn’t helping him, because he scrunches his eyes shut and tries to shake the thoughts away of Chan’s surprised face every few minutes without fault whenever he finally thinks he’s distracted enough to move on.

Two days locked in this cage turns to three, to four, and he’s suddenly nearing a week with no social contact. He can feel the urge to be a normal, functioning member of society kick in more around this time, but one simple flashback to what he’d done is enough embarrassment to tide those impulses over for another day.

You can call Minho a coward for this and he probably wouldn’t disagree — in fact, he knows this is a sign of weakness.

That’s exactly why he avoids these fucking scenarios. He knows his limits, knows his boundaries, and he’s gone a good few years never opening up so this shit never had to happen again. Being weak was bad enough, but at least he could be pathetic in private without giving however many hundreds of students on campus the satisfaction of knowing Lee Minho actually did possess flaws, idiosyncrasies, shit that made him.. human.

Fuck that, and fuck people. Fuck everyone, actually.

God, but the boredom was beginning to seriously kill him. He thinks it’s some time around Thursday or Friday when his mind begins begging for an excuse to just go out or talk to someone, circumstances be damned. He wasn’t waiting for someone close to notice or really make the first move, because he’d established early on with his friend group that he wasn’t the type that could be advised out of these scenarios where he’d sometimes go radio silent.

Maybe he was just afraid of being comforted.

Even so, this is the longest he’s gone completely AWOL. He’s not sure how he should feel, because there was no preparation for return in his mind despite the loneliness beginning to slowly eat away at his sanity. Part of him distantly wonders if he’d somehow abandoned himself on Changbin’s front door, like he’d given his heart and soul to Chan without even being aware and was now stuck with the emotionless husk he always attempted to pretend he was.

He thinks it’s finally Friday or Saturday morning when someone decides that they’ve reached their breaking point. Minho is lying on his bed with his arms folded behind his head, staring at the ceiling with the most vacant eyes and thoughts of him, and then his nightstand begins vibrating.

At first, he doesn’t snap out of it. Rays of morning sun hit his uncaring, statuesque body, so lost in his brooding thoughts and fantasies that reality itself became the whitenoise. It’s maybe the fifth or sixth consecutive buzz when he realizes something was interrupting his unbroken stream of thought.

Peering over, he sees his phone gently rattling the material of the surface, screen lit with a pesky notification. Minho had muted every group chat and app he could think of, so..

He picks up his phone and glares through the battle his eyes are having with so much blurry brightness, eventually making out the characters that form the name of the only person (outside of family) that he didn’t have the heart to mute.

My Sungie is calling…

For the briefest second, Minho contemplates hitting the red decline button. The immediate guilt he feels wash over him just from the thought alone, however, prevents him from even moving a muscle towards it.

He swore off speaking to people, right? But Jisung technically wasn’t really a person anyway. He was life’s gift-wrapped demon sent straight to Minho’s front door, like a little imp destined to buzz around his head and take joy in making his life far more complicated than it ever had to be. So, yeah, Jisung doesn’t count. Best friends had their own tier among humanity, and Minho isn’t the least bit sorry for his bias.

He hits the green ‘accept call’ button a breath later, holding the phone to his ear.

“Oh, thank fuck, you finally picked up,” Jisung’s voice comes out, his relieved breath into the phone laced with static as the call still attempted to establish good connection.

Minho blinks up at the ceiling, wondering why his best friend sounds like he’s in the middle of some life-threatening crisis. “Ji—..”

“Listen,” Jisung cuts him off, tone desperate and dramatic enough to earn him a role in a horror movie. “I’ll let you win every Mario Kart match until the end of time. I’ll stop stealing all of your fries while you’re not looking on those days we go out to get fast food. I’ll never side with Seungmin in an argument ever again, but you need to start coming back next week or else I’ll die.”

Minho softly frowns. “You steal my fries?”

“That.. th-that’s not the point!” Jisung shrieks. “Did you not hear the part about me literally dying, dude? I’ll genuinely do whatever you want if you just get back here and restore peace to the group.”

With a sigh, Minho decides he’ll entertain these undoubtedly exaggerated antics. He doesn’t think anything could convince him to return right now, but it was too nice hearing someone else’s voice to hang up. “What’s wrong?”

“Everything,” Jisung says gravely. “Well, not everything, but Hyunjin is ruining my life and I need you to get back here so he stops going mad with power. Ever since he hooked up with Changbin and Felix I haven’t been able to—..”

“Pause,” Minho says. “Hyunjin did what?”

“Yeah,” Jisung sighs a bit impatiently. He seems to have forgotten that Minho has literally missed a whole week of whatever chaos his little group had gotten into now. “After you left Changbin’s party, I decided to stick around for a while, right? Huge fucking mistake. Felix and Hyunjin thought about playing my game again after a few more shots, and then, like, Hyunjin was all, ‘what if we play with Changbin?’ and next thing I know they’re all making out on the sofa and feeling each other up and— eugh. Totally killed my buzz. By the time Changbin started pulling them both into his bedroom, Seungmin said he was gonna leave, but Chan didn’t wanna stick around to hear any of it and I didn’t either, so the three of us just walked to one of those always-open convenience stores and ate junk food on the curb until the sun came up.”

Jisung speaks so fast that it sounds like the equivalent of reading a paragraph with no spaces, and Minho can only really form bits and pieces before being forced to move on. That’s sort of a good thing, honestly, because he’s not sure how much he wants to dwell on the fact that his suspicions about Hyunjin liking both Changbin and Felix were true and he’d been doing.. that with them both until the fucking sun rose.

Instead, he chooses to focus on the more innocent details. “You, Seungmin and Chan just ate snacks until dawn?”

“Well, we talked a lot, too!” Jisung defends. “Seungmin left kinda early because y’know he’s got the sleep schedule of a senior citizen, but Chan said he didn’t mind talking to me for as long as I wanted. He had a lot he wanted to ask, too.”

Minho hums distantly. “..What did you talk about?”

“Australia. Malaysia. Mostly just the foods we miss. Then we talked some about Changbin and any future collaborations the three of us could do once we can get a break from classes.”

“That sounds nice,” Minho murmurs, voice going flatter than usual. “What.. what did Chan ask about?”

“It was me who started it, honestly,” Jisung recalls. “I asked him why you left early and he said you just weren’t feeling too great. I was gonna whip out my phone to text you about it, but then he said you were probably resting and needed space, and then I was about to be, like, ‘listen here, buddy, I don’t care how cool you are, I’m pretty sure I know my best friend better than your bubble butt ever will,’ but then he began just.. asking nonstop about you. It’s like bringing you up made him totally disinterested in any other topic. He really, really likes you, Minho.”

Minho’s body feels tense. “What did you tell him?” he whispers a bit nervously.

A broken laugh comes through on the other end of the line. “Nothing incriminating, dude, don’t worry. He asked a lot about things he wouldn’t’ve been able to know just by hanging around you, y’know? Like, he asked a bunch about how things were back in high school, what I thought of you, clarification on why you’ve sworn Seungmin and Hyunjin to be your greatest enemies, stuff like that.”

He can’t help but pout into the phone’s mic he’s got pressed against the corner of his bottom lip. “He should’ve asked me all that stuff.”

“Could he?” Jisung honestly questions. “Bro, you haven’t been around ever since that night, and while me and the other guys know you sometimes do your little hibernation thing, Chan doesn’t. I tried explaining it to him ‘cause the dude looked actually devastated once he realized you weren’t showing up for lunch, but..”

Minho can hear Jisung adjusting on the other end of the line, shifting around a bit awkwardly before his voice comes out again more weighted, more serious.

“..Minho, he misses you bad. He’s not smiling much anymore. Hell, I’m not either — but that’s because I’m uncomfortable as fuck having to watch Hyunjin and Felix grope Changbin’s big beefy biceps every two fucking seconds. That’s why you’ve gotta get over whatever this is and come back next Monday. If I need to sit through another lunch trying to talk to Seungmin while I’ve got softcore porn on one side and Chan looking like a kicked puppy on the other, I’ll actually combust.”

Minho definitely could imagine striding into lunch on Monday with a smirk like the menace he is, equipped with enough threats in reserve to simmer Hyunjin’s horny meter down to something socially acceptable. He still has those pics of him biting Minho’s socked toes in his camera roll, so one little idea of ‘accidentally’ sending them to Changbin might just be enough to do the trick.

Still, his mind floods with the image of Chan’s forlorn expression, waiting for him, and something in him twists beyond mental comprehension. He just can’t. He’d done one of the few things he swore he’d never do again, especially with someone so important to him, someone he wanted nothing but good for, and.. and he doesn’t know how to fix that.

“Sung, I don’t know,” Minho huffs woefully. “I.. I really don’t think I can come back yet.”

“Minho, this is the longest you’ve ever been gone for,” Jisung states, like Minho didn’t already know that. Guilt fills his stomach. “Have you even talked to anyone since then? Have you gone out at all?”

“No.”

“..That’s not good, dude. I know you’re not feeling awesome, but you need to remember what I said about living, alright? You need to live. That advice wasn’t just applicable to the Chan situation—.. wait,” Jisung pauses.

Oh no.

“..Minho, is all this about Chan? Did something happen?”

Minho sighs. “Jisung, it’s really not a good time. Don’t ask me about any of it.”

Jisung sniffs on the other end, his voice suddenly becoming more light and scheming. “No worries,” he hums. “I wasn’t planning on asking you.”

Fuck. First it was Hyunjin with the soju, now Jisung. Before Minho can retaliate or begin questioning what he planned on doing, his phone screen lights up with the signal that the call has ended. He throws his phone into his unwashed mess of bedsheets, bitterly wondering just how much regret a single human can harbor before literally being consumed by it. If he’d never answered the call, Jisung wouldn’t now be plotting away and playing detective over what happened last Saturday night. If he’d never accepted the soju and gave in to his urges, there wouldn’t even be anything to investigate to begin with.

Minho isn’t sure what he should do now. Pretending to not exist until the drama passed clearly wasn’t viable, but he’d sooner eat his own foot (hah, Hyunjin) than willingly be within breathing distance of Chan. The thought of having to hear what he thought terrified him — it wasn’t long after he admitted to having romantic feelings for him that the Uber showed up, his saving grace while the blonde stood there in shock, so stunned that his arms naturally slipped from where they’d been holding Minho’s body in a tight embrace.

Minho still remembers the feeling of his arms around him, like the heat of his muscled limbs had been invisibly tattooed onto his body.

He misses it.

He misses him.

Fuck, fuck, fuck. Minho wishes he was normal so he could deserve all of this.. pining. He wishes he didn’t have such a fucked past that warped the way he thought everything was and had to be. This problem probably seemed so absurd to most people, and maybe it was, but most people weren’t Minho. They hadn’t heard what he’s heard, felt what he’s felt and the lack thereof, so it was natural that he just couldn’t be understood. Nobody could understand.

And the only person who truly seemed to get him was the one he just had to go and fall in love with. Grr.

*

The moon rises, falls, and then the sun takes its place, and it’s suddenly the end of the week once again. Minho finally decided to check the time for once.

He also finally decided to de-zombify himself, actually walking out of his room during the day, eating at normal hours and genuinely showering with some effort. He shaved, scrubbed himself thoroughly with soap and managed to return to his skincare routine once the steam had cleared. It was a massive improvement compared to the half-assed attempt at hygiene he’d been doing all week, merely standing beneath the spray of hot water, lost in thought until his mood went as cold as the water beginning to prune his skin.

The thoughts didn’t improve much, but Minho admits that being clean again somewhat helped, and it was never a bad thing to wash his sheets and become reacquainted with the long lost sight of a tidy bed littered with fresh scents. Most of his morning had been a healthy distraction thanks to cleaning up the mess he’d been leaving behind the past week, and it’s noon when he sags into the nearest chair with his limbs pleasantly spent.

Then a knock is heard at the door, and Minho’s form tightens all over again. He was gonna need to see a masseuse at this rate, body undoubtedly tense with knots from inhuman levels of stress.

It’s not like he’d invited anyone over or anything, and package deliveries got sent to the office.

Minho slouches further in his seat, the knots transforming from muscle-deep to a clenching twist deep behind his belly button. Maybe it was some college official here to tell him that his unannounced absence hadn’t gone unnoticed and he was getting kicked out, bye-bye to his degree. That’d be a really funny cherry on top to this whole situation, huh?

As much as he adores running away from anything and everything potentially horrible, Minho has to remind himself that he’s actually an adult and does possess a great deal of maturity when he’s not actively uprooting demons from his past. He tells his mind to shut up for five minutes as he huffs out of the chair, padding bare feet across his carpet to face whatever stands on the other side.

He’s sporting a neutral face when his hand twists the knob, feeling that brief burst of cool air on his face when the door swings open wide on its hinges.

Then he looks up, and all the coolness is gone, replaced by a burn beginning from within right when their eyes meet. It travels to his chest, to his ears, to his sharp cheekbones. It floods him until his whole being feels like it glows with a feverish blush, gulping away the urge for his jaw to fall open.

It was him.

It was Chan.

Despite all manners of horror blooming in his gut, he can’t help but feel as if he’d been sucked into a scene out of some cheesy, award-winning romance movie. It was as if their eyes locked in slow motion while some copyrighted theatrics of violin and piano — fuck, just a whole orchestra at this rate — swirled gently around their stunned forms before they both exhaled, like.. like seeing each other again for the first time in a week finally allowed them both to breathe.

Even with how drained he looked, Chan was still unfairly handsome. His eyes lit up seeing Minho with their telltale softness, darting all over and around his face to take in every little detail as if to commit him to memory, like he’d disappear if he blinked. Energy surged in his frame, no longer slouching, the hints of dark circles beneath his eyes seemingly fading by the second. Visual, pure proof that Minho’s presence seemed to give him life, spirit, purpose.

His wardrobe appeared to be indicative of Jisung’s comment about how his mood had dipped with Minho’s absence: Chan was still in his usual all-black ensemble, that never changed, but now he was completely covering himself again. He had on a hoodie a couple of sizes too large even for him, baggy and swallowing his form. The hood itself had been lazily pulled over his head, but his mess of bleached blonde stuck in every direction, giving it some extra height.

Speaking of height, he was in boots, and Minho wasn’t even rocking socks right now, meaning this was the first time Chan was taller than him — significantly. Minho had to look up a bit to glance at the fond tilt of his head, how the plump pink of his lips were glossed with a light sheen of spit from where Chan had nervously skimmed tongue over the seam before speaking.

“Hey,” he says in a meek voice, shifting the dominant weight between each of his feet restlessly. “I’m sorry for showing up without warning.”

That’s fine. Please, don’t apologize to me with that look on your face. Just don’t apologize to me ever. You’re perfect. Nothing could ever be wrong. “How did you find my dorm?” Minho wonders a bit breathlessly, like staring up at Chan had punched the wind directly from his chest. He actually feels so lost looking at him that his mind forgets to focus on anything else, basic fucking deductive reasoning being one of them.

He realizes what the answer is going to be the moment brief guilt flashes in Chan’s eyes.

“Jisung,” they both say simultaneously.

Some sad excuse for a laugh escapes Minho’s nose in a huff of air. “Figured.”

Chan gulps, clearly trying to swallow down the hurt his poor, expressive face could never truly manage to disguise. “He explained to me that you disappear for a while sometimes, and, like, I really, really wanted to respect your boundaries and lay off until you felt well enough to come back.” Chan stumbles over his words, glancing to the hallway carpet to help form his sentence, gesturing around a bit with his hands. He eventually looks up again with sincerity in his eyes. “But, um, yeah. I just couldn’t stand it anymore, Minho. I wanted to talk to you again, or even just see you for a few minutes. I’m.. heh, um, I just needed to know that you were okay. If you want me to leave now, I can. You just gotta tell me to.”

Legend has it that if you search up ‘dilemma’ in the dictionary, you’ll actually see a still image of this moment where the definition should be.

Minho’s lids flutter with brief weight and his mouth parts the slightest bit. Despite his pessimistic little mind being out to get him and feeding him horror after horror for the day he’d see Chan again, it’s nothing like the all-consuming personal hell his cognitive distortions had designed for him. He expected his presence to be the figurative ball and chain before getting knocked into the ocean, overwhelming him as an active, living reminder of all of his damned vulnerability, but Chan..

Chan wanted to see him. He needed to make sure Minho was okay. Something good and warm and disgusting kicks in his chest at the care despite the internal screaming that he didn’t deserve it. Perhaps being apart from him for such an excruciatingly long amount of time amplified that stupid part of his heart that always clapped and cheered and threw a little dance party just from seeing Chan’s face.

And he feels.. light. There was no weight, no horror. Nothing but the boy in front of him that had done a piss-poor job of trying to disguise the fact that he very clearly wanted to continue having Minho’s company.

Minho feels like himself for the first time all week.

“Then leave,” Minho deadpans, jutting his chin out in the direction of the building’s exit. He sends Chan a challenging lift of one brow, seeing if he’ll take the bait.

Chan hesitates with a brief scowl in waiting, and it’s in that moment that Minho knew that Chan had him figured out. Even now, some of the friends he’s had for years still got caught off by Minho’s flat humor, but Chan.. Chan had him solved in only a handful of weeks.

A brief smile lifts the corner of his mouth, flashing a cute dimple at Minho, who’s already begun smirking himself.

“And take me with you.”

*

Minho didn’t know where Chan was driving them, but he didn’t care. He just rolls the window down and bathes in the feeling of fresh air in his lungs and wind all around his face, gently whipping his hair like a caress so soft that his eyes involuntarily close. He had nothing on him but the shoes that were by the front door and his phone in his back pocket, resigned to just let go lest he be dragged. Chan hummed at the wheel, unable to quit smiling every time he glanced over at Minho’s peaceful expression.

He really did feel like he was in some sort of movie scene, now. Like this moment held no borders or limits and they could just drive to the end of the earth until the credits started rolling. Minho would finally be leaving the past behind him, nothing but the wonderful unknown ahead and Chan at his side.

Maybe it was just Chan that was making Minho feel life through such a romanticized lens. It was like everything changed in his presence, knowing that what he’d said last Saturday night hadn’t scared him off.. yet.

Right when he begins to start frowning down the path of brooding and overthinking, Chan chimes in with a crestfallen sigh.

“I have a problem.”

Minho lolls his relaxed head in Chan’s direction, noting that the boy in the driver’s seat didn’t appear the least bit perturbed at all, even biting back a smirk when he peers at Minho from the corner of his watchful gaze on the road.

“How tragic,” Minho sarcasms.

“Truly,” Chan says seriously. “I’m driving around on a summer afternoon with a cute boy riding shotgun, and I don’t know where I should take him.”

If he was trying to make Minho smile, Minho doesn’t. He’s not accounting for the ten thousand flips his heart does, though, or the way a chill trickles pure adoration from nape to tailbone in a creeping wave.

“He hasn’t had lunch yet,” Minho plays along. “And he knows how much you love food. Maybe you and him can get something to eat.”

Chan taps his fingers against the steering wheel with a contemplative hum. The bones of his knuckles stick out so much, same as his veins, and it becomes temporarily difficult for Minho to believe that he was actually this close, that this moment was truly happening.

“Now that I think about it, I am kinda hungry,” Chan muses.

“You’re always hungry.”

“Haven’t been getting your extra fruit at lunch for the past week, though,” Chan recalls gruffly. “I’ve been in a food deficit thanks to you.”

“Good,” Minho mumbles, looking out the window again. The sun was high in the sky, beaming beautiful saturation through all the colors of both nature and town life. Minho remembers the constant comparisons between Chan and the sun, and it makes so much sense: the warmth, the shine, the joy it brought everything it greeted. “Those apples and oranges got to have your mouth too much. I was getting jealous.”

“No need,” Chan giggles. “Nothing tastes as good as you, I promise.”

Minho promptly ignores how his cock pulses a single throb of heat while he stares at the passing scenes, propping his elbow up on the open window so he could rest his jaw against his palm. “As romantic as that is, I doubt having me on all fours with my pants down is proper picnic etiquette. Looks like you’ll just have to suffer.”

“Boo,” Chan scoff-laughs with feigned disappointment. That gorgeous sass begins to dominate his tone. “Is this where I tell you that I’m saving you for dessert?”

Minho pauses with a pinched frown, staring out at nothing in particular. “Dessert actually doesn’t sound bad, honestly.”

Chan makes an agreeable noise. Minho can’t imagine him expressing anything other than agreeance, honestly, because it’s Chan and food — perhaps a stronger ship than him and Minho might be in the eyes of all their friends.

But then Chan asks him how going for some ice cream sounds, and Minho feels that weird connection again, like Chan somehow knew the thoughts and cravings and needs Minho had before they’d even truly processed through his own mind, because it only takes the mere mention of ice cream for him to realize that he doesn’t want anything else.

Minho moans out an orgasmic, “Ice creeeaaaam,” to the cloudless sky, eliciting a series of punched chuckles out of Chan.

“Could probably use it,” Chan thinks aloud afterwards. “It’s such a hot day today.”

Minho suddenly twists in his seat with a glare directed at Chan’s neutral side profile, sending him the most ruthlessly judgmental look he could inspire on his face. Despite his dramatics, he’s actually bursting with joy at the opportunity to finally hound him over something that’d been perplexing him since before they even knew each other’s names.

“You are wearing a black hoodie during the hottest time of the year, sweetheart. That is entirely on you.”

Chan huffs. Clearly, comments on his unique wardrobe weren’t unfamiliar to him. “I wear what I want, when I want,” he protests with practiced ease, “no matter how hot it gets.”

“Huh,” Minho comments, the sound monotonous. “And here I’d always believed your Aussie roots just somehow made you immune to overheating.”

Chan gives a wry grin to the license plate of the car in front of them. “Wish you would’ve spread something like that around. It’d be more fun than the usual rumors, anyway.” He drums his fingers against the wheel at a red light, highlighting all those artful shifts of vein and tendon beneath the skin. “But nah. Even back in Sydney, everyone around kinda gave me the ‘what the hell’ looks for what I wore. Pretty sure my closet back home didn’t have one single trace of the color wheel in sight.”

“You’re being yourself, at least.” Oh great, now Minho was defending him? Unprompted? What an actual fucking 180 since first meeting Chan. “Fuck what everyone else thinks. Plus, um, your style suits you.”

Yikes. Free compliments now, too, with no soju necessary. Hyunjin would be fuming and rattling with rage like a bratty little tea kettle if he got to witness this. Minho keeps his eyes very deliberately anywhere except Chan’s direction so he doesn’t have to see his fond, heart-melting glances or put up with the unspoken, reciprocated praise they seemed to be sharing.

He can’t protect himself from hearing Chan’s teasing, though. “Is this your underhanded way of saying you’d like to wear my stuff?”

Minho rounds on him with all manners of chagrined horror, ears dusting pink. “Shut up. What? How much distance did you have to jump to get to that conclusion?”

“Just caught you staring at my clothes a lot,” Chan says casually and, well, shit. Minho knew he was observant, but he had no clue just what Chan was picking up on that he never voiced. A lot, clearly.

“Well,” Minho mumbles, mainly just because he hated admitting others were correct at his own expense. “Maybe I was thinking about what’s underneath them.”

“Oh, you so wanna wear my stuff.”

“Fuck you.”

“You’d look really cute in this hoodie!”

Tea Kettle Hyunjin would surely be wheezing even harder now upon realization that Minho, for once in his life, had finally found someone who could handle his teasing and send it right back and actually get him flustered. He’s not sure if he can’t retaliate because it’s Chan or doesn’t want to, unable to fight the feeling that has him sinking into the passenger seat a bit bonelessly with blushing defeat.

The rest of the ride is like that, with playful flirting and a quick-witted, endless tennis match of compliments hidden among joking comments.

Was banter with Chan.. always this easy? It’s like the week apart hadn’t even happened, but even then, Minho doesn’t remember speaking this easily with Chan even before that. Perhaps it was his constant tension holding him back, and finally getting his head out of where it’d buried itself in brooding sands has helped him notice that they were quite literally always on the same wavelength. All Minho had to do was open his ears and notice, accept.. enjoy.

Chan eventually pulls them up to a parking lot for a little ice cream parlor, parking them in one of the few spots available beneath shade. This location must be a near-campus favorite, or maybe it’s just the weather, but the shop itself looks to be getting a lot of business. Minho recognizes a few students sitting out on the curb or hanging in chatty semicircles around the front of the place, so there’s undoubtedly a bit of a crowd inside.

If that wasn’t enough, he just now notices the subtle lacking of a familiar, firm square usually resting in his back pocket.

“Uh, you can go in,” Minho suddenly says, unbuckling his seatbelt but not making any move to open the door on his side.

Chan pauses with his hand on his own handle. “Not coming?”

“I’ll wait here,” Minho says, giving a tentative signal with his eyes to the crowd he doesn’t want to deal with right now. “Besides, um, I left my wallet back at mine.”

Chan sends him a soft glance, with a softer smile and the softest voice. “I don’t mind paying for you, Minho.”

Minho huffs, looking back at Chan with a disbelieving lift of his brows. “What, are we on a date now? Gonna feed each other and get all giggly?”

It’s meant to be perceived in his typically sardonic attitude, and Chan does chuckle a bit, but the smile once it fades seems pretty sincere. “It doesn’t have to be a date if you don’t want it to be,” he reminds him before leaning over a little bit more, an impish glint in his eyes on his following words. “..But if you tell me what flavor you want, and I come back, and we do exactly what you just said, then I unfortunately may have no choice but to believe I’m finally going on my first date with you.”

Minho glances down at his lap and bites his tongue, entering mental combat with whatever in his body thinks it’s okay for his breaths to start coming out shakier.

“So?” Chan asks, putting a hand on the space just above Minho’s knee.

Minho ignores the electricity in that contact, lazily making his thumbs wrestle where they’ve been idled in his lap for too long. “..I like strawberry,” he grumbles.

The gentlest laugh of air leaves Chan’s nose, and he gives Minho’s leg one squeeze. “I’ll be back.”

I know, Minho wants to say at Chan’s retreating form once the car door closes. For Minho, he left the ignition on so the air conditioning would continue to keep him cool. You always seem to come back.

He ignores the sight of people glancing Chan’s way as he returns to the car only a few minutes later with two cups in hand, slipping back into his seat with a sigh. He twists his form so he faces Minho fully, one leg dragged up to accommodate his position. He leans one hand over the center console, revealing a cold little mountain of pink goodness with a plastic spoon stabbed through the top.

“One order of strawberry,” he announces, and Minho smiles down at his order, immediately poking at the little flecks of actual frozen strawberry pieces decorated throughout the mound. Minho murmurs his thanks before glancing up with curiosity at Chan’s own order.

It’s.. a lot. There’s so many different colors, sprinkles, and what looks to be cookie crumbs drowning in ribbon upon ribbon of thick, golden caramel.

Chan looks up at Minho’s mesmerized expression after taking his first bite, humming around his spoon. “It had the longest name out of all the options, so I just pointed at it,” he breathily laughs. “Figured why not try it, y’know? Have a little variety.”

Minho eye-smirks at him through his first spoonful of strawberry, twisting in his seat so they face one another. “Typical flavors aren’t your thing?”

Chan shrugs. “Eh. I’m not really the vanilla type.”

Minho stares at him for one second, two, three, unmoving, before bursting out into maniacal laughter that makes him sound like some anime supervillain. Not only is it the first time he’s laughed all week, but it’s the first time Chan had gotten him to crack up this much and he wasn’t even trying. His eyes go wide in shock as he watches Minho smack his knee and rock around in his seat, a confused smile on his face.

“What’s going on? What did I say?”

Minho sighs once the laughing subsides, his free hand protectively clutching his ribs. “Fuck,” he huffs, out of breath. Then he replays what Chan just said in his head again, and the giggles start back up.

“Minho,” Chan playfully whines, poking him in the arm. “Now I really wanna know.”

Minho scratches the bridge of his nose, eyes still tightly shut with his attempt to wind down. “You, um, you remember that first party at that frat house? When we danced together?”

He finally looks over to Chan, who nods a little. “How could I forget?”

“Well, alright, listen,” Minho gulps, brain still lagging behind enough to safely ignore the little sparkle in Chan’s eyes when that night gets brought up. “This was still back when Jisung wouldn’t shut up about you, so he pointed out how you were there and started shamelessly playing porn director in his head, yeah? Just.. kink after kink after kink.”

Chan snorts as he sucks some excess caramel off his spoon, murmuring around it. “I’m so honored.”

Minho sigh-laughs, rolling his eyes at the memory. “I really don’t know what the fuck was going on in that moment, but something about it.. dunno. I just remember feeling so much.. resentment. Like I was determined to shut it all down, because in my eyes I’d painted you as someone super tame. We’d never even talked, but the narrative that you were grossly vanilla was already there in my head.”

Chan’s next laugh comes out a bit nervously. “Well fuck, I could’ve just told you that I am definitely not.”

Minho shrugs, smirking down at his ice cream. “S’fine. You got to do the honors of proving me wrong the fun way.”

Instead of eating, Chan sort of just pokes the ice cream around in his cup with his spoon, clearly much more interested in this conversation than anything else. His gaze feels weighted on Minho’s face, blinking slowly, speaking even slower.

“Is that why you did what you did with me? To prove something about me?”

Minho gives a single, tense nod. “Back then.. Seungmin said you wouldn’t want me. He said I was upset about the whole thing because deep down, I thought you wouldn’t want me like that, and.. I told myself it was confidence and competitiveness that made me approach you, that it was the sole desire to just ‘win’ and nothing else that made me do everything I’d done with you.”

Fuck. Minho hadn’t expected he’d learn anything about himself that he didn’t know already, but finally explaining this in words — to Chan himself — forces the realization to start dawning on him: Minho hadn’t been confident, he’d been insecure and used arrogance to disguise it. He wasn’t winning a bet against Seungmin, either; he was defending himself from a truth that he didn’t want to accept.

He was afraid Chan wouldn’t like him.

Because even back then, even if unwilling to recognize it for what it was, he liked Chan.

All things considered, Chan seems to have reached that same conclusion on his own, because he just gives Minho a gentle smile at the candid admission. “Kinda proved yourself wrong last Saturday, huh?”

Minho scoffs at himself. “I’m an idiot. I acted like an idiot.”

Chan frowns. “There’s nothing idiotic about saying what you feel.”

Shaking his head with a sad sigh, Minho slouches against the seat. “No, I was an idiot for not accepting those feelings for what they were before. Everything just got so unnecessarily complicated, and I felt like I was in a constant state of fear backed up by the stress of trying to anticipate the worst, you know?”

“Scared of falling in love,” Chan murmurs. “That’s what you said last weekend.”

“..Yes,” Minho grits out. “So scared that I was willing to invent a narrative for you that would’ve been easier to accept: that we were totally unalike, opposites, had nothing in common and would never like each other or get along, just like every single other person back on campus seems to think.”

“And that was easier for you to accept than..?”

“That we were too compatible,” Minho whispers icily. “That you’re perfect to me.”

Chan reaches over to place a hand over one of Minho’s, gently rubbing the pad of his thumb into the bone of his wrist. “I’m, like, beyond happy that you think that of me. The real me. Not the idea everyone seems to have of who I am before they get to know me.” He gulps, eyes drifting away to look at visions in his mind. “Everyone seems to think I’m always nice and happy and I get put on this.. pedestal.. for the most superficial reasons. Nobody cares about anything deeper, or that I definitely have extremely dark days and thoughts a lot of the time. I get angry, I’ve made mistakes I still regret, and I look like a nightmare when I first wake up in the morning, but.. nobody seems to want to understand things like that.”

Then Chan lifts his hand to thread his fingers with Minho’s, giving it a loving squeeze. “I know you do, though, Minho. You’re one of the only people who knows what that feels like. Even with how everything’s happened, I knew you didn’t see me as something only skin-deep, because I didn’t with you, either. You’re lovely, and you have such a warm heart under all that cold you try projecting.”

It feels so surreal to have Chan voice every single thought Minho’s had with deadeye accuracy, as if the words had been stolen directly from his mind. Bizarre was also this entire moment in itself, especially considering he was more the type to explain through actions instead of serious heart-to-heart conversations. He’s trying his best to be.. vulnerable, though. For Chan. In turn, he’s also trying to accept it being given to him, but he knows it will be a work in progress.

He knows he can feel the warmth in his body. He glances down at where Chan’s fingers have interlocked with his in his free hand and.. was it possible to be turned on in, like, a romantic way? Did love boners exist? Accepting that feelings were here was new enough for Minho as is, so attempting to decipher them just. Yeah. He’s not even sure where to start.

At least he always had a fallback he could rely on — his ultimate love language.

“Nah, I’m as cold as they come,” Minho sniffs dismissively, even though he gives Chan’s warm palm a secret little squeeze of his own. “Everything you’ve ever heard about me is true. When Hyunjin called me an alien-demon hybrid that one time, in fact, it was the first time he ever spoke the truth in his life. Run while you still can.”

Chan simply wears an obnoxiously fond smile, leaning in with a crooning voice. “Noooo, my Minho is just as sweet as his ice cream preference. I can’t be fooled.”

My Minho.

Minho rolls his eyes as his face unwittingly blossoms deep pinks just below his cheekbones, completely nullifying any truth to his attitude. “And you’re just as overwhelming as yours.”

Chan lifts the cup of his half-eaten monstrosity as if to make a toast. “Nothing vanilla, hm?”

Minho concedes with a smirking glare, suddenly ripping his hand away from Chan’s to seize his ice cream for himself. His own liquifying remains of strawberry get abandoned to the cup holder in the center console of the car so he can have both hands available, free to pluck the spoon from where it’d been lodged in a thick rivulet of caramel. He brings the plastic edge to the seam of his lips, bringing out a flash of tongue to collect the taste with humor — Chan’s gone from a scandalized gasp at his ice cream being stolen to a hitched little breath all within the span of two seconds.

Minho hums, because it actually tastes.. really good. Maybe this ice cream was the perfect comparison to Chan, because it was yet another thing to subvert his expectations. The caramel he’d anticipated to be too sweet was salted to balance the flavor out, melted enough now to slip easily down his throat without gluing his teeth together in the process.

Minho sends Chan a penetrating look as he digs the spoon in for an actual bite, bringing it to his mouth without ever breaking the invisible line drawing their eyes to one another. His tongue explodes with flavor and texture, the ice cream still cold despite having gone a bit soft with the heat. The genuine enjoyment must leak just a bit through his features.

“Might need to steal this,” Minho muses aloud.

Chan giggles. “Don’t wanna share with me?”

Does Minho want to feed Chan the same food? From the same spoon?

What, are we on a date now? Gonna feed each other and get all giggly?

If we do exactly what you just said, then I have no choice but to believe I’m going on my first date with you.

Minho immediately shovels up a nice amount of ice cream on the spoon in response, digging his elbow into the console between them to lean over and lift it to Chan with a hooded stare. “Open,” he purrs. “Before it drips all over you.”

There’s something a little darker in Chan’s eye contact as he parts his lips slowly, accepting the ice cream past his mouth with no further insistence from Minho. The pillowy pink of his mouth suctions against the plastic as he closes around his bite, and the crawling tension in the too-sensual drag of his lips as they pull back from the spoon has him too transfixed to look away.

Chan’s mouth eventually pops off the (now clean) plastic without a drop of leftover residue, hearing those little, wet mouth noises as he lets the cream dissolve on his tongue before swallowing with a subtle rise and fall of that gorgeous, contoured throat.

Minho is hypnotized. He tilts his head forward to emphasize the weight of his lids even further. “Not going to thank me?” he jests with that velvety timbre, cocking a single brow.

Chan only reveals his cute dimples with a smile too mischievous to deserve them. “It’s my ice cream, babe. I paid for it.”

Instead of tutting or scolding like he usually would, Minho treats Chan’s sass with indifference, breaking their shared gaze to gather more ice cream on the spoon in retaliation. He begins lifting it up to Chan with a concentrated look on the bite as it hovers in front of Chan’s mouth.

Chan parts his lips to accept it. Minho begins pushing it in before his hand twists halfway, forcing some of the ice cream to land on the corner of his mouth.

“Oops,” Minho deadpans.

Chan sighs through his nose in a suffering way, closing his eyes as he swallows what made it past his lips. His brows lift, voice coming out somewhat authoritative. “Minho.”

When Chan opens his eyes again, he’s greeted with the sight of mischief glimmering in the glare of the boy in front of him. 

“I’m not going to apologize,” Minho states, though he does reach up to eventually begin thumbing away at a droplet of melted cream that’d begun to crawl a small trail down the side of Chan’s chin. His touches are soft and brief despite his tone, savoring the way Chan’s face feels against the pad of his thumb.

Chan watches Minho watching the mess he was cleaning up, one of his brows beginning to raise in the periphery. “Always so diligent when you clean up messes,” Chan hums, teasing. “I would know.”

Minho’s thumb stills. His hand holding the cup autopilots to the cup holder, putting it there alongside his own treat. His mind floods with the phantom feeling of Chan’s fingers on his lips at that second party, feeding him his cum. ‘Would you like to clean it up?’ he’d whispered into his ear, proving then and there that he was definitely just as obsessed with Minho’s mouth as Minho was with his, just as filthy.

And now, here, he’s proving that he’s just as dirty-minded. Of all the disbelief Minho fed himself over these weeks, the one factor that he accepted the easiest was their sexual compatibility. It’d been like they were always on the same page, left yearning for nothing. Minho didn’t think it could get better than that.

Yet here they were.

Minho lifts his eyes to Chan’s as nonchalantly as he can manage, emphasizing his thumb by pressing it a little harder into the line of cream on his skin. “Doing it a little bit differently than last time,” he murmurs.

“You don’t have to,” Chan says on his next breath, oddly serious.

Wait.

Was Chan.. was Chan implying that he wanted Minho to use his mouth? To clean up the rest of the mess he’d made on his? Suddenly, the sight of pillowy pink just in Minho’s periphery begins to burn his retinas with the itch to stare.

“Is that what you want?” Minho asks.

Chan was so still that Minho couldn’t even hear his breathing anymore.

“Yeah.”

The only way Minho can get some release from the tension suddenly thrumming through his limbs was to let it escape from the hand on Chan’s face. Gone was the delicate press of his thumb at his chin — now, so viciously, every finger hardened with sudden bite as they dropped to Chan’s jaw, squeezing either side in a vise that commanded his face to tilt down with a tug.

Minho can feel his teeth clench through the skin, how the bone of Chan’s jawline tightens with an excited gasp.

“That’s not how we politely ask for things, is it?” Minho’s voice drips with barely veiled condescension, every note of his words too nice. “I thought you knew better, Channie.”

Chan’s eyes have darkened over with lust yet still manage to somehow sparkle with awe. He missed this side of Minho, clearly. Just as he’d been missing the rest of him. He can’t help but place a hand on Minho’s leg yet again, drawn in by the desire to simply be close, to touch him.

“Please, Minho,” Chan whispers. The sight of him begging is the most gorgeous, depraved thing Minho will ever have the honor of witnessing whether he’s got a mess running down the corner of his mouth or not. “Please.”

Minho wordlessly adjusts his grip on Chan’s jaw to lean him forward a little more, forcing Chan to come to him instead. The lock of his hand grabbing his face softens just a tad once they’re close enough to breathe in each other’s air, and that’s when Minho finally dips down to press the delicate ring of his lips against Chan’s chin, right where the trail of cream was continuing to lazily drip.

He tastes the hints of salted caramel on the seam of his lips, warmed further by the face it’d been cascading down. Chan releases a little sigh at the feeling of Minho’s mouth finally being on him again, decorating the air with the tiniest of mouthing noises.

Minho’s lips never kiss, exactly. He really does drag the plump of his lips along the trail upwards, bathing that sugary skin in his warm breaths.

It becomes a different story when Minho finally reaches the corner of Chan’s own mouth where most of the mess had been.

Minho plants a deliberate press against it, lips puckered to elicit a gentle kissing noise. Chan is completely still. Minho does one more, nose nuzzling into Chan’s blushing cheek, discreetly wiping away the remains of cream with every pull and drag of his lips. It’s such a delicate but intense moment, so close to one another that they were forced to breathe in nothing but one another’s scents: shampoo, cologne, the warmth of strawberry mixing with caramel.

Minho continues to gently mouth at him even when Chan begins to slowly turn his head, all the way until Minho was beginning to softly press against Chan’s own lips more than anything else. There was a wordless understanding that it was no longer ‘cleaning up’ anymore, that they were now, for the first time, having their first completely unprompted—

Chan begins to finally move his own mouth against Minho’s, meeting his gentle presses as both of their eyes slip shut.

—kiss.

It’s so much slower than they’ve ever kissed before, unrushed and sweet by all definitions. Minho’s hand grabbing Chan’s jaw slackens until it was a mere cradle, his thumb stroking along the line of his jaw in loving little swirls. Chan brings up his free hand to cup behind Minho’s neck to keep him there, insisting them even further together with a subtle push.

Chan’s lips are so soft and plump, just as desirable as he remembered despite now being felt in such a different way. Minho can’t help but part his mouth more so they can slot together and pull apart before repeating it all over again, gracing the car with a myriad of smacking noises when the wetness in the seams of their lips are finally introduced again.

It eventually deepens. It’s just as slow but grows more heated by the second, bodies naturally gravitating as much as they could towards each other, the press of their lips getting harder and hungrier. This meaningful makeout session in Chan’s car was so unlike how they’d attacked each other at that second party, but the desire for it to never finish just seemed to be an always thing for them. They both never tired, never pulled away, even their softest kisses sincere with the want to be together indefinitely.

They were undoubtedly worse than Changbin, Hyunjin and Felix, Minho thinks. Jisung was going to lose his mind.

Chan hums during one particularly deep press, sucking Minho’s bottom lip into his mouth and licking at it. Minho sighs sugary warmth when Chan pulls away, teasing his own tongue to lightly flick against his before it could leave.

Minho can feel Chan smirk against him before indulging, letting their tongues lazily swirl. Fuck, he tastes so good. Salt and caramel and spit that makes him want to groan and growl past his lips, suck on every flavor of him until Chan’s whole profile has been committed to Minho’s memory.

Minho lifts his free hand to blindly find Chan’s hood, knocking it off that beautiful tangle of blonde it was shrouding because Minho wants it messier. His hand is immediately in it, threading it between his fingers eagerly until he has a substantial handful. He gives light little tugs on his hair that make Chan gasp into his mouth, opening up for him, allowing Minho to decorate the perimeter of his lips in bruising sucks and kisses.

With every new little noise coaxed past Chan’s mouth, Minho can feel the throb in his cock and— wait, when had he gotten this hard? All the touching and tongue would undoubtedly have him worked up, but he didn’t know such a tame form of intimacy would get him so turned on without even realizing. He can suddenly feel the stickiness in his underwear from where globs of pre-cum pulsed, apparently so aroused from just getting kissed by Chan that his body subconsciously begged to be fucked by him. Was this what happens when you accept just how much you like someone? That even making out in a fucking parking lot could get you over if you were lost in it enough?

Minho is suddenly reminded of Chan coming untouched the first time they hooked up, and he realizes Jisung’s words had not only been utter truth, but a truth for much longer than Minho realized:

Chan really, really liked Minho.

The realization has Minho’s lips slowing with an enamored heat blooming in his chest. As if on cue, Chan takes control to cradle Minho in his hands, never letting up on his kisses — pecks at the corner of his mouth, his cheek, back again.

“Tastes so good,” he breathes quietly, the syllables rubbing against Minho’s lips.

Minho gently smiles. “But all the ice cream has been kissed away.”

Chan hums in agreement before giving a chaste peck to Minho directly on the mouth. “I know,” he says, giving Minho’s bottom lip a playful little nip.

Without thought, Minho surges forward to attack Chan’s face in kisses, desperately leaning over the center console as he trails his lips from cheek to jawline, nosing behind his ear as he strokes his hair and begins nipping a fading line of little bites down his neck. Chan sighs at the feeling, giving Minho’s thigh a firm squeeze.

“God,” Minho groans against his throat, suddenly taking a hand to guide Chan’s closer to the crotch of his jeans. “Feel what you’re doing to me, Channie.”

Chan’s breath hitches softly from above when he palms over Minho’s obvious arousal, his sighs decorated with the cadence of wet kisses on his neck. “You want me?” He sounds lost in the best way, as if he’d surrendered to a trance or a dream he didn’t want to ever wake from.

“Mm,” Minho trills, face buried in the curve of his neck. “I need you.”

Chan curses above him, and the gulp he takes sounds thick next to Minho’s ear. “Let me take you to the apartment,” he says. “Changbin won’t be home for a long time.”

It’s surprisingly difficult for Minho to rein in his desire and enact control over himself like he usually could. He pulls away from the plane of Chan’s throat with one last slow, long pull of his lips, lids lifting with the heaviness of someone who had been disturbed from a peaceful sleep. It’s even harder to look away from Chan, utterly mesmerized by the flush in his face and the reddened swell of his spit-soaked pout that stretches into a smile.

“Think you can last until we get there?” he asks as he puts the car in reverse and backs out of the parking spot with a glance over his shoulder, one arm behind Minho’s seat.

Minho scoffs, looking out of the window in mock disinterest. Truthfully, he just doesn’t want to see Chan’s broad form leaning towards him in the periphery or catch sight of his side profile as he commands the wheel. Feeling his body so close was already reason enough to jump him again. “Depends how fast you drive,” he seethes between his teeth.

Once Chan is back on the road, he takes that hand and puts it back on Minho’s thigh to keep there while he steers with the other. “I’ve got good incentive to,” he smugly smiles.

Minho wordlessly puts his own hand on top of Chan’s, rubbing his thumb across the back of his palm.

*

The engine of the car calms to a halt once they pull up to the apartment, and with it, Minho can feel that his composure has finally returned. That insatiable horniness hasn’t faded at all given the ache between his legs, but the promise of what was to happen once they walked through those doors placated the burn within just enough.

It was like the ride over had performed some silent trade neither of them were aware of, because now it was Chan who seemed to be pent up with nerves that couldn’t be restrained. His knee anxiously bounces once his leg doesn’t have any pedals to press on, the thudding too obvious to hide despite talking himself into stopping. Minho bites back a grin as they both step out of the car, one calmly striding to the front door as the other restlessly locks the vehicle with a press of his keys.

Minho leans against the wall, unable to contain a small smirk at the sight of Chan beginning to fumble for the key to the front door. He wasn’t shaking or trembling, but it was as if his fingers simply had too much energy to stay still. Were he in possession of a tail, it’d be wagging like crazy.

This was them at their rawest: expressive, bubbly Chan, eager and excited as a dog who’d just heard ‘walk’ or ‘outside.’ Then there was feline Minho, all slow blinks and nonchalant observance. He lifts out an agile hand to take the keys from Chan with an endeared smile lifting the corner of his mouth, pushing the key into the lock and twisting it open with one swift movement.

He invites himself in first with a relaxed gait, making sure to thread his fingers with Chan’s as he passes him to tug him inside as well. The door clicks and locks behind them with a pull from Chan, and Minho tosses the clanging set of car keys up onto the familiar kitchen counter off to the side before twisting around to give him a curious tilt of his head.

“Your room?” he purrs, donning a flirtatious glare.

Chan gulps with a nod, reminding Minho of the first night they’d touched each other and how polite yet excited he’d been to finally have him. He gives Minho’s hand a warm squeeze before taking the lead towards a part of the apartment Minho hasn’t seen before, opening up a door at the end of a hall with a cool gust of air.

Something in Chan instantly changes once they enter his personal space. It’s like his excited nerves turn to mere excitement, all of the edge leaving his form when he breaks from Minho’s hold to jog over to his mattress and jump up to the little neon light fixtures he’s got hanging on the wall above his bed. Then he does a tiny run over to his blackout curtains to pull them shut over the window that poured afternoon light into the room, bathing them in privacy and the shifting glow of relaxing colors.

It was adorable, how Chan moved. Giddy and lovely and so much lip biting to conceal his flustered grins. Minho can’t help but smile when he returns back to him after kicking off his boots, lazily wrapping his arms around Minho’s torso until his fingers twined together at the small of his back and their chests pressed together. He presses a kiss to the tip of Minho’s nose, then his mouth, then his cheek before knocking their foreheads together.

“Hi,” Chan giggles, pulling Minho’s body more flush against his.

Minho wraps his arms around Chan’s neck, booping the tip of his nose with his own. “Hello.”

Chan smirks at the affection, eyes going lidded as he nuzzles back against Minho’s nose and rubs them together, all the while placing careful little kisses on Minho’s cheeks and lips.

Those innocent affections eventually progressed into Minho being backed against the wall, full-on making out again with their hands in each other’s hair until Minho kicked off his own shoes and they both began fumbling aggressively on the buttons and zippers of their jeans. Escorting one another towards the bed came naturally, sliding each other’s pants off with a drag of hooked fingers, the following of underwear suddenly filling the air with deep musk that made Minho feel drunk all over again.

Something in the air shifts once they’re both exposed, the thick heat filling Minho’s lungs with craving that reveals itself in his hands. He places one on Chan’s chest, shoving him onto the bed until he reclined all gaping and breathless with his back to the pillows. Minho moves to straddle him with both of his knees pressing against Chan’s naked hips, their drooling cocks nearly knocking into one another.

Chan wordlessly teases his own fingers at the hem of his oversized hoodie before pulling up, allowing Minho to watch the reveal of his hollowed little belly button, the bumps of his abs, then the dusted brown of two nipples on a firm, broad chest swollen up with muscle. He yanks the hoodie over his head with lifted arms, revealing a flash of sparse armpit hair as it’s flung off.

Holy fuck.

Chan was totally naked beneath him, and Minho had reached an elated state his mind never thought fathomable. Every inch of his skin looked like honey, his fading tan just a few shades lighter than the caramel they’d swapped between their tongues just half an hour prior. His bleached strands were already a tangled nest thanks to Minho’s doing, so mussed that it nearly hid the dark roots beginning to grow in, as dark as his eyes that looked up to Minho himself with unguarded emotions he only thought possible in performance — but it was real. Chan was real and honest and wanted this, wanted it with him, gaze seeping adoration directly through Minho’s chest.

After his oversized hoodie is discarded, Chan’s hands trail to the hem of Minho’s own shirt, beginning to play beneath it and tug upwards.

Minho reflexively grabs his wrists with a silent gulp of sheer panic. He can’t remember the last time he allowed someone to see him nude — perhaps suppressed memories, perhaps because he just never wanted anyone to. Ugly words begin to flood his mind alongside realities he’s convincing himself will happen, but no anxiety cracks past his suddenly dead expression other than the hyperventilation rapidly shaking his chest.

Chan allows Minho to place his own hands back at his sides. He blinks up at Minho with understanding, sympathy etched into every facet of that beautiful face. “You don’t have to take it off if you don’t want—”

Fuck. Chan was angelic.

“I’ll do it myself,” Minho chokes out. Even if he hadn’t been naked in front of someone in years, and even if he knew he was terrified somewhere inside that he never bothered acknowledging, he knew he wanted this with Chan. Chan was one of the few souls on earth he’d met and never detected a hint of judgment from, like he could look at any body with a neutral smile because it was the heart that only ever mattered to him. On top of those facts, Minho.. Minho just trusted him. He reminds himself that these demons in his head are shadows from past experiences, and that’s enough in itself to not want to let it taint his experience with someone so lovely.

To calm his mind, Minho eases back into his commanding presence, sending Chan a wicked smirk before the silence went on for too long. “Besides,” he hums, “I never gave you permission to touch, did I?”

Chan clenches his jaw on one shake of his head, dutifully keeping his hands off of Minho. He’s patient and polite and so good, nothing but worship in his eyes that fall to knuckles suddenly gripping fistfuls of pastel blue fabric. It wrinkles in Minho’s tense fingers as he slowly lifts, the room so silent that the slips of it against skin as it’s pulled even manage to overwhelm the hum of the air conditioning.

Minho can tell when Chan sees his navel, lids fluttering just a bit where his gaze had been locked on Minho’s torso. Next came his abdomen, feeling the hem whisper up to his rib cage, past his chest then chin before it was getting ripped off. The collar catches on his longer strands of brunette, probably even a darker shade in the dim room. Minho carelessly flings his shirt somewhere behind him and shakes his head as if he’d just been doused with water, getting his hair to naturally fall back into place.

His performativity attempts to overcompensate for how secretly nervous he is. He becomes aware of his body as he does when he dances, able to visualize the sudden arch of his back, how his chest slightly pushes out, the forward tilt of his head when he refuses to shy away from staring at Chan’s reaction.

The tendons in his knuckles shift softly with the urge to touch, Minho can tell. Chan’s lips part so slow compared to his eyes that dance all over Minho’s naked form. He’s looking at him the way Hyunjin looks at art in the gallery or when he shares his most prized photographs he captured for his club. ‘It’s so beautiful,’ his friend would always say as he paraded them around the lunch table. ‘I can’t believe I got the shot. I don’t think I’ll see something like this ever again.’

Despite the practiced control of Minho’s body, he feels something in himself calming with every added second of Chan deifying him with his gaze.

“Minho..” he breathes. His voice sounds like he’s reciting poetry. “F-fuck, you look so—..”

Minho cuts him off before his heart gives out. The fun hadn’t even begun yet, and he’s not looking to melt atop Chan’s lap, or worse, begin getting just as gooey and Shakespearean back at him. “I don’t remember giving you permission to speak, either.”

Chan shuts up, the tips of his ears pinkening.

Hmm.

Minho dips his upper half forward until their chests brush together, and he can feel Chan’s accelerating heart through their point of contact. The arch of Minho’s back makes his ass stick up in the air — a predatory cat hovering over its meal of the day. He plants one elbow next to Chan’s tufts of fried blonde hair, his other hand crawling towards his face.

“Has my good boy lost his manners?” Minho pouts only inches away from Chan’s own. He presses his thumb against the plump bottom lip of the man beneath with a rough press, dragging it around as if playing with a toy. It juxtaposes Minho’s cold glare, like he was teasing something he owned. “Maybe I’ll just have to quiet you myself.”

That thumb is suddenly replaced by his index and middle, resting the fingertips just against the bruised warmth of Chan’s lips. They part open on automatic, inviting, and Minho wastes no time before pressing them in, watching closely as the pillowy pink gradually sucks down every knuckle. His appendages are immediately coated in hot spit, Chan groaning lowly with a flutter of lids as his tongue is petted.

Minho can’t stop watching, and he speaks once again with a voice that’s gone shockingly delicate after a huff of amusement. “You missed me a lot, haven’t you?”

Chan nods around his fingers, eyes slipping closed.

Minho hovers lower so he can plant a soft kiss on Chan’s cheek, breathing heat into his ear as his fingers begin to fuck in and out of his mouth. “Poor thing. So needy for me, huh?” He lifts to watch Chan’s face, raising a brow. “Only a few weeks and my Channie has already forgotten how to behave.”

Chan’s following whine comes out all muffled, brows pinching and raising at the middle in an obvious plea. It fades in his throat when the fingers begin getting pulled from the ring of his lips, dying altogether when the thin trail of drool connecting the pads of Minho’s tips to Chan breaks apart with enough distance.

Minho rubs his fingers together, feeling the slick gloss of saliva. “We’ll fix that,” Minho whispers. “You just need to do one thing for me, okay?”

Chan gives one terse nod, so desperate and eager to please. He stays still as Minho rises back to sitting height on his lap, watching the way the boy above suddenly brings those spit-coated fingers just below his own mouth.

Minho’s cheeks and tongue shifts a bit before his head tips forward, parting his mouth. A slow stream of his own saliva drips onto his fingers, adding even further to the mess. There’s enough that a bit even begins to glide down a knuckle, and Minho figures that’s enough before spitting the rest out. His eyes travel up to Chan’s with an evil glimmer, pulling the fingers away from his lips to reveal a subtle smile.

“Watch.”

That’s the only order. No moving, no touching, no talking. Minho even pauses when Chan’s breath hitches in confused protest before proceeding, pulling his filthy hand behind himself with nothing but the soaked fingers outstretched. He uses his inner core strength to keep his hips lifted slightly, barely able to feel any burn in his legs.

The angle leaves it all on display: legs spread, fingers spread even more, nothing but the tip of Minho’s middle finger beginning to disappear into him as his body slightly twitches with the urge to sink into it. He pushes it in more with a sigh, no resistance met from their combined spit acting as the lube. It’s not long before Minho’s index enters alongside it, opening himself up with his eyes fixed on Chan.

Chan’s lips parted into a small ‘o’ as if he were the one feeling it, brows and eyes going tense. Minho is struck past all his hums and rocking of his hips with a reminder: Chan loved to service him. So much so that he came from merely tonguing Minho to orgasm and even had fantasies just from the sight of watching him stroke himself. He was devoted to pleasing him, got off on it, and the only thing that ever seemed to rival that was watching Minho pleasure himself.

Minho smiles with his eyes, playfully cocking a brow. He’s upgraded to including his ring finger, letting his dancer’s body roll down onto all three as they push up into him. It was Minho’s own little sordid lapdance, and he was loving every second of it.

“It’s killing you, isn’t it?” Minho pants. “Not being allowed to touch, only able to wonder what it must feel like being inside me.”

Chan whimpers on a gulp, clenching his fists.

“Just a little longer, baby,” Minho says, hissing as all three of his fingers are released from him with an obscene squelch. “Then I’m all yours.”

Minho had gotten himself ready.

Now it was Chan’s turn.

He climbs off Chan’s lap with no tremble in his limbs, ambling down with a knee crawl to be reacquainted with a sight Minho thinks he’ll never be able to forget.

Chan’s cock was even more flushed than last time, pulsing with a twitch once he’d had it in view with Minho’s face. He looked painfully hard curving up to his abdomen, radiating enough musky heat to give the air conditioning some competition. Every little throbbing movement highlighted all of the pre-cum oozing from him in continuous, fat pearls, creating little strings that led to clear, shimmery blots all over his pelvis and abs.

If Minho weren’t falling in love already, this would’ve done it.

“Already so wet for me, sweetheart,” he purrs, leaning down to nuzzle against his reddening head. He mouths lazy and messy, dips the tip of his tongue into the slit on a hum, granting Chan a free pass when he hears a low curse from above.

He coats him in spit through sucks and licks all manners of disgusting, losing himself in it just as he did making out with him in his car. By the time he’s done he has saliva and pre-cum on his nose and cheeks, the mix of it dripping to Chan’s sac, and the veiled whines from above tattooed in his memory.

Once he’s ready, Chan looks down to the sight of his arousal with Minho’s openmouthed, panting, lust-lidded face its background. Everything was warm and soaked and pulsing, the two of them sharing in a mutual desire with only an iota of self-control preventing them from going borderline feral for each other.

Minho climbs back into his lap, watching how Chan watches the way his cock disappears from sight behind Minho’s body. Then Minho is lifting his core again, shifting backwards on top of Chan until his cock was shadowed by the ass that positioned itself only inches above it, elegant fingers coming down to hold it steady at the base.

“Baby,” Minho calls, grabbing Chan’s attention. His eyes dart up to Minho’s, wetting his lips.

“Are you ready?”

Minho feels the throbs of Chan’s wet cock, how he drips all over his knuckles and nails, but he waits for the submissive nod of his head before continuing.

Lowering himself, Minho first feels the slickness of Chan’s tip hit his rim a little off-center. He holds himself up as he adjusts Chan’s cock, teasing a bit by letting it rub around and against his hole with a sigh before sinking down further.

He’s so hard. Even despite Minho stretching himself open, nothing could’ve prepared him for feeling this sensation again — something he hasn’t allowed himself in such a long time. It’s almost like he forgot the feeling. Even if he remembered, though, it wouldn’t do this any justice.

Chan’s cock is unlike anything he’s ever taken before. A new experience and memory all on its own.

Minho sighs as he lowers even further, eventually feeling the head slip past his rim. His face tips back and his eyes close the more he takes, getting easier by the second with his steadying adjustment and just how much spit and pre-cum had been making the acceptance easier. It’s like it just glides into him, thick and firm but never stretching, never hurting, never painful, just like the person it belonged to.

Below, Chan’s eyes have rolled to the back of his head with a throaty groan, what little remained open of his lids only revealing the sclera. He looked as if he were in one of those demonic possession horror films and the demon had just entered his body — ironic, because he was the one entering Minho.

Minho felt it, though, just the same. He eventually lets his muscles give out and ditches the strength, letting his full weight fall onto Chan’s cock until his thighs and ass meet skin. His head finally tips forward and his eyes open on panting breaths that already sound spent, barely able to handle looking into the face of the man he was now connected to.

It really did feel like that: a connection. Something feels like it just got completed, like everything was finally where it was meant to be. He feels it. He feels it in his chest, he feels it in his thighs and hips and ass and mind and heart. He swears his vision fades in and out of focus for a few seconds as he eventually catches Chan’s eyes. “Oh my god,” Minho whispers to him, hoping he knows what he means. “Oh my god, Chan. Fuck.”

Minho coaxes his hips to give a wavelike roll, feeling how Chan’s cock deliciously rubs against him with some cosmic synchronicity, like it was designed to. “Oh, shit,” Minho hisses, doing it over and over and over again. “Feels so fucking good.”

Chan’s hands fist the duvet, knuckles blanching. His unabashed moans as he feels himself get hugged around Minho’s heat are the most gorgeous he’s ever heard, melodic and breathy and desperate, something you could only imagine in fantasy suddenly come to life. Chan’s abs go tense and his mouth never seems to close, permanently stuck in a moan with volume or lack thereof. Minho wonders what he must be thinking, must want to say.

He suddenly gets a wicked little idea.

“Channie,” he purrs, swiveling his hips around so every inch of Chan’s cock had pushed in as far as physically possible, had brushed and rubbed against everything inside that it could. On the outside, Minho has his hands on Chan’s torso and a twist of pleasure in his features, but he’s got his arms folded with an inquisitive glare in spirit. Maybe one of these days he’ll be able to fuck Chan completely deadpan, swallow up his cock without batting an eye so he could train his eyes on every single little pathetic cry and frown he seduced out of him.

“You have permission to speak.”

“Minho..” Chan immediately whimpers. He was past barks of overwhelm or even whining, already reduced to surrender at the feeling of Minho grinding on him with his cock buried inside. He tips his chin to his sternum to watch Minho’s hips shift in circular motions, how his own drooling arousal smacks strings of pre-cum against his belly through the rougher grinds. “Fuck, so tight. So tight, Minho. Warm. You feel so g—!”

An unrestrained moan is ripped straight from Chan’s chest as Minho suddenly lifts himself on his cock before dropping back down. His arms fly up to the pillows above his head to claw at them, biceps going defined with straining muscle. Minho places gentle hands just beneath Chan’s pecs to keep himself steady as he does the motion once more, settling into the rhythm of genuinely riding him.

Innocent brows raise behind Minho’s locks of dark brunette. “What was that, Channie?” he croons viciously, beginning to give playful little squeezes to the tender flesh of his chest. “I’m so sorry, I couldn’t understand you.”

“Y-you..” Chan huffs, cut off by the clench of his own jaw. Even if he continued at that volume, Minho wouldn’t have been able to hear it — the true amount of spit they’d lubed themselves up with becomes grossly apparent with the lewd, wet squelches filling the room now that he was properly fucking himself down on Chan’s cock. Alongside it, skin smacks against skin, causing Minho’s ass to jiggle every time he forces himself to the hilt.

“Feel.. so.. good..” Chan eventually punches out, only able to manage one word between each rise and fall of Minho’s body.

Chan looks like a sculpture beneath him, arms flung overhead and every muscle tight with pleasure. Minho couldn’t even describe the sight of his head tipping back into the pillow with that gorgeous neck on display as pornographic, even if the sounds escaping past those lips of plump pink would suggest otherwise to anyone else. No longer angelic — Chan was an angel. An angel getting stolen away by throes of pleasure, corrupted into keeping, into being kept by Minho, claimed more and more with every passing second he worked him to climax.

He never wanted anyone else to do this for Chan. Here, now, Minho really gets it. He’ll fuck him day and night, make love to him if he so much as asks for it, anything. Just nobody else, ever. Only his.

He wanted Chan all to himself.

With the realization of how gone for him Minho was, the feeling of fucking himself open on his thick length seemed to heighten, as if intensity both physical or emotional fed off one another. He hisses through the building nerves at the base of his cock and how they’re coming too fast, eventually reclaiming the control to slow himself down into steady grinds once again.

Overcome with the strong yet gentle need to be close to Chan, Minho leans forward until their stomachs and chests greet another again with a warm press. He makes sure Chan stays buried in him, still slightly rocking his lower half on his cock, but it’s been significantly reduced to nothing more than a low boil; an intermission. It’s stifling and intimate, all hot breaths and how his own length rubs and drips against rigid abs. Their faces are close too, noses almost knocking together before Minho drops a kiss on a familiar corner of Chan’s mouth.

“You feel good to me too, baby,” Minho breathes soothingly, nuzzling along Chan’s cheekbone. Above, Chan’s arms tense as if struggling against invisible shackles. “Fill me up so nice.. like a perfect fit. S’like you were made for me.”

Chan clearly hesitates with the urge to lean up and kiss Minho breathless, expression pained and pleasured all at once. The poor thing. He looked out of it, lost to the snug little squelches still decorating the air every time Minho shifted his ass the slightest bit. He pulls his bottom lip between his teeth on a gravelly moan, glaring up at the boy above him past the wanton film glazing his eyes over.

“I am,” Chan whispers. “I’m meant for you.”

Now, perhaps more than ever, Minho begs for that to be the truth. He wants the universe to scream it so everyone has to hear, wants visual proof of how their names were carved together by some omniscient being of fate long before they’d even been aware of each other’s existence. Wanting it wasn’t enough. Minho has to know, Minho needs to feel it lock into place so the doubt could be eternally defeated.

All of this, and the only thing shown on Minho’s face is a sudden weight in his gaze, glancing down at Chan with challenge flooding every feature. “Yeah?” He lifts a hand to brush some blonde strands away from Chan’s view, making the eye contact all the more intensified. “Prove it.”

Chan finally looks like he’s got some fight back in him at the provocation. His stare hardens and the gentleness bleeds from his face, forcing Minho to remember that the man beneath him was just as competitive as he was.

“Let me touch you, and I will.”

Oh.

Minho tilts his head. Now things were starting to get really interesting. He decides to humor him, truly curious at just what Chan — soft but observant, strong but humble — had hidden up his sleeve.

“We’ll see,” Minho smirks, dipping his head down and pausing just before their lips pressed together. His next words whisper out with wisps of breath against Chan’s mouth.

“You have my permission. Touch me.”

It’s like being a first-hand witness to a wild animal breaking free of its constraints. Chan instantly surges up to make their lips connect so he can kiss him deep and messy, all the pent up lust-driven aggression in his limbs immediately wrapping around Minho’s form to make him the constrained one instead. Blunt nails skim pinkening lines along Minho’s naked back while Chan sucks the spit from his tongue, unable to resist thrusting up in some useless attempt to drive his cock even deeper into him.

Chan’s touches eventually begin relaxing again, scratches turning to pets and his hips halting back to a frictionless standstill. The kiss softens as a hand comes up to cup behind Minho’s head, the other flat on his lower back.

Was that all? Minho thinks, nearly giving in to the urge to ask it aloud. He’s not entirely sure what stops him from doing it — all he felt was some intuitive suspicion because he knew just how passionate Chan could be.. and this wasn’t it.

He knew he made the right call to not ask when the hold on Minho’s body became secure all of a sudden, punctuated by an uncharacteristic, smug dominance in Chan’s face and—.. wait.. Chan could be..?

“You should probably hold on,” Chan murmurs cryptically. The expression on the face Minho sees beneath him doesn’t look familiar anymore.

Minho can’t label the feeling that makes him comply, limbs immediately clinging to Chan’s waiting body.

He’s suddenly grateful he had. Grateful that he had the mind to trust Chan as much as he does.

The only warning Minho is permitted comes from the way he feels Chan’s muscles tense against him with preparatory exertion. He wasn’t being cradled anymore — he was being braced, and that realization was reached much too late.

Minho’s mind can’t catch up with the physical, barely able to process the fact that he was suddenly being manhandled by Chan. Life becomes a simple reality of his body being lifted and tossed around like it weighed nothing, knocked gasping and breathless against the soft mattress with his limbs still clung to Chan’s body.

Chan’s body, which was now on top of him.

Chan had flipped them, now being the one hovering over Minho all predatory and calculated. Minho gapes up at him with wide eyes, too stunned to even inspire tremors in his being, desperate for his mind to begin processing this reality he never thought would happen between them. He was pinned, trapped, helpless, just as Chan had been the many times they’d done this before, left vulnerable to his whims and weight above him.

Somehow, he also managed to stay buried in him. Chan relaxes the weight of his lower body on Minho until he was fully sheathed, yet didn’t make any moves to pull out and begin fucking into him. He merely stays there with both of his elbows beside Minho’s head that’d now acquainted itself against the warmed pillow, looking down with the most serious expression Minho had ever seen, even more heavy than last Saturday night.

“Minho?” Chan asks, tone flat. “I’m done playing this little game.”

W-what..? “Game?” Minho repeats back to him with a shaky whisper, his eyes beginning to blink with rapid confusion.

“Mm,” huffs the man above. “You said to prove that we were meant to be together, right?”

Minho gives a weak nod.

“Well, I’d like to admit some things,” Chan continues unblinkingly, showing a severity in his stare that Minho believes even he himself couldn’t display. “Things that I’ve known for a long time. Things I knew you weren’t ready to hear before right now.”

Minho gulps, and Chan attempts to appease the clear anxiety by thumbing a sharp cheekbone before he continues.

“I know everything,” he whispers, “I know it all. You don’t actually like being in control, Minho — you just have to be because you don’t trust anyone. You’re afraid of being hurt, of giving it away to someone who won’t love you. You’re waiting for the right person to take the control away from you.”

Minho didn’t know his eyes could go even wider, but they do. He didn’t know his mindset could be so expertly read to the point where he felt naked in soul, transparent and vulnerable and bare. It’s as if he’s been bested in a game he figured himself champion of, suddenly forced to admit he wasn’t the wisest or most aware. The awe overrides his petty petulence, letting the foundations of his reality crumble around him as he accepted being face to face with the one person on this earth that could prove they were meant to be.

Chan continues even in light of Minho’s stunned trance, his own eyes gentling. “It’s me, Minho,” he whispers. “I know you. I love you.”

I love you.

“Y-you..?” Minho whimpers, feeling everything at once, as if every hour, minute and second of their time together was being rewinded in slow motion for him on a remote. Every loving stare, every pet name, every affectionate touch and knowing stare.

“I love you,” Chan repeats, dropping a kiss to Minho’s cheek. “I love you. I’ve loved you for a while. A long time.”

On a groaning exhale, Chan pulls out and thrusts back in, causing Minho to release his own breath of pleasure that’d be heightened with the sensitivity in this moment. God, Chan.. Chan loved him? He was willing to admit it outright? To say it? To confess, to trust and be vulnerable enough for Minho to accept it?

Minho almost can’t believe it. His mind cries with defense and shock, almost as if the concept of being truly loved by someone was a foreign sensation not meant for him. His lower lip wobbles and his brows go tight in the middle, unwilling to accept that he deserved this from him past the masochistic barriers of self-loathing that had been fed to him for so long.

“I..” Minho begins, clutching even harder at Chan’s back. “I—.. oh!”

Chan thrusts into him again, a punctuation of utter pleasure against all of the internal horror clouding his face. “Minho,” he breathes, “I love you.” On another thrust in, he murmurs his next words against Minho’s mouth. “Keep repeating that back to me.”

Minho’s breath hitches, chest suddenly feeling too tense. “Repeating that you.. that you love me?”

“Mhm,” Chan purrs, shifting to begin kissing down Minho’s jaw. “If you stop, I stop.”

Then he begins to genuinely fuck Minho.

Chan was fucking Minho.

His thrusts are sharp and snappy, making the skin slap even harder than when Minho rode him. All of this hidden power, and for how many weeks, months..? He’d kept this all hidden for so long, just for Minho to feel comfortable and take control. He was willing to keep this side of himself undiscovered for the sake of knowing what Minho needed, only showing it once he could prove that he knew he was what the boy beneath had been meant for all along. He was patient but passionate and so fucking devoted, loyal and wonderful in ways that never begged for acknowledgement.

“You love me,” Minho begins, and it dawns on him for the first time in its truest form. “You love me.”

Chan grunts his approval, continuing to fuck into him. “Keep going.”

Minho wraps his body even tighter around him, whispering that truth into Chan’s temple that was beginning to dampen with sweat. He says it until it becomes a mantra, until Chan’s thrusts become so impassioned that it’s the only words he remembers anymore. There’s hot breaths on his neck and clipped groans in his ear. There’s soft, tanned flesh beneath his fingers and thuds of protest as the bed knocked against the wall. There’s flame licking up from his core to his heart until it collects tears in his eyes, and Bang Chan was in love with Lee Minho.

“You love me.” Minho can barely get the sounds past his lips anymore, so raptured in the feeling of Chan driving into him that he’s gone borderline incoherent. Almost as if in reminder, Chan lifts his head back to Minho’s to touch their sweaty foreheads together, tangling dripping strands of blonde with matted, deep brunette. Chan watches him close, nose nuzzling against his own with every forceful kick of his hips, having to pull his bottom lip hard between his teeth to trap the whimpers of ecstasy in his throat.

“You..” sighs Minho, his usual timbre of nonchalance now low with the weight of emotion. “You love—!”

Cut off, like the power being killed city-wide: every light flickering off all at once. Everything within had met a precipice that felt as if it went soul-deep and spilled over, drowning in so much feeling everywhere both physical and emotional that he could barely breathe, let alone think.

It surges out of him everywhere. First, his legs jolt with uncontrollable convulsions, and the surrender of the rest of his body follows. The warmth in his eyes follows soon after, so gone that he doesn’t even feel how the tears slip past his eyes and cascade to his halo of hair fanning against the pillow. His lids have scrunched shut and his lips parted wide as he.. moans.

Minho has never heard the sounds now escaping him — he never thought he could even make them. It’s the most foreign, defiled song he’s ever heard, notes interrupted with lewd pauses as the orgasm takes over and pulses streaks of endless, wet warmth between his stomach and Chan’s. Chan continues to mercilessly fuck him, determined with heavy breaths to lure every drop of bodily pleasure from Minho that he could.

Minho claws at Chan as he continues to come, though they were as physically close as they could be. He didn’t care. His moans taper off into whines and sobs as he blinks the wetness from his gaze, the cognizance returning to him just barely with the decline of the most intense orgasm he’s ever experienced.

“Chan,” he pants desperately. It feels as though the emotion has overstimulated him, all of his bones and veins buzzing electric with hypersensitivity. “Chan, Chan, Chan.”

Chan drops a sloppy kiss to his jawline in answer, humming his acknowledgement.

“I love you.”

And then what happened to Minho happens to Chan — his hips stutter on his next thrust in as he curses, the cage of his body locking up around Minho as his cock throbs thick into him, filling him up with his hot release and a gorgeous series of sigh-moans.

Minho blinks in bliss at the feeling, hugging him tight and peppering anything his mouth could reach in wet kisses. “I’m in love with you. I love you, I love you, I love you.”

Chan nearly collapses on top of him with his full weight as he finishes coming, breaths so harsh that Minho can feel them against his own chest. “I love you too, Minho,” he gulps dryly, lifting a hand to cup Minho’s cheek so he could guide their lips together again. “I love you so much.”

They both take a moment to just recover, healing the intensity away with soft, lazy kisses. Minho’s not sure how many minutes must pass of only that, but it doesn’t matter. Never did. He’s got his arms around the most beautiful person of all time, in his bed, with him still buried inside to the hilt so none of his release could drip out, and everything was perfect.

“I can’t believe it,” Minho eventually rasps out, stroking his fingers through Chan’s sweaty strands. “You figured me out.”

Chan gifts him with one of his small, gentle smiles. “I had you figured out for a while, baby,” he whispers, kissing the edge of Minho’s eyebrow. “Everything that’s happened recently just helped me connect the dots.”

The staring, the jealousy, the fear, the silence. All this time, and Chan had been reading Minho like a book.

The vulnerability in that doesn’t even frighten Minho anymore. He accepts it, because he accepts Chan. Jisung was right all along — Chan would never hurt him. He always had the power to, and he never did, because he’d apparently loved Minho long before today.

Minho hums, blinking quick with curiosity. “How long?”

Chan laughs a bit, averting his gaze to their touching chests with a brief bout of shyness.

“When I first arrived on campus, I remember walking around that first week while I tried to memorize my routes, and I saw you. You were alone, and I remember the little cat design on the chest pocket of your mint green shirt. Your phone was out, and you were frowning down at it with this concentration in your eyes.. which I’m sort of grateful for, aha, ‘cause you would’ve definitely seen how I couldn’t stop looking at you. Even when I walked past, I couldn’t help but glance over my shoulder a few more times. You were vaguely imitating some dance on the screen, I think.

“Then the next time I saw you, I asked whoever I was with who you were. I wanted your name, wanted to know what you majored in, how old you were. I wanted to ask you, but, Minho..” Chan softly shakes his head at the memory, poking his tongue in his cheek. “I couldn’t work up the courage to approach you. You terrified me. Not because of any rumors, but because you were, like, I swear — I thought you were so unbelievably gorgeous that for the first time in my life, I couldn’t find the confidence to walk up and introduce myself. It almost felt like the kind of crush you have on a celebrity, y’know? So easy to daydream about them, then you try and imagine being in the same room and you just sorta freeze up.

“I learned to live with it, move on to focus on studies and friends and stuff, but it definitely got stronger the more I noticed you. You always had this.. glare. You never smiled, but I saw the way you’d sometimes just watch everyone for minutes and observe, and all I could ever think was, ‘wow, I’d love to know what could possibly be going through his mind.’ You were a true enigma to me, and when I asked around again, it was clear you seemed to be an enigma to everyone else. I stopped asking when it was obvious that some of the shit people were saying had little to no truth at all, nothing but bad-mouthed gossip they’d rather believe than bother thinking for themselves. It was then that I understood that you and I probably weren’t very different at all. Sometimes, we’d see each other at parties, or on campus, and I’d be working myself up to maybe try and say hi, but it was clear with how you scowled at me that you didn’t want to be approached.”

Minho winces with regret. “I’m sorry, Chan.”

Chan merely shakes his head and goes to speak again, but Minho silences him with a soft pad of his finger against his abused lips that quirk up in amusement.

“My friends thought I couldn’t stand you,” Minho continues. “For a long time I thought I couldn’t, either. But I think.. I think I still resent what happened to me when I was younger. It tore me apart in so many ways, and the only way I knew how to cope with it was to never let it happen again. I pretended all the rumors being spread about me didn’t affect me until I believed it, and then you came into the picture, right? Completely unlike me, and everyone loved you on campus. I guess it indirectly instilled that belief that I wasn’t lovable, or shouldn’t be, because I didn’t deserve it thanks to who I was.”

The sigh Chan releases is empathetic, and he presses a kiss into Minho’s finger before murmuring against it a bit playfully. “Not true at all. You’re beautiful and wonderful, and I’m going to always be grateful that you decided to say hi to me at that frat party.”

Minho snorts, beginning to lovingly stroke his thumb over Chan’s lips. They were so, so soft. Chan lets him, pliant with a tender smile on his face.

“Don’t thank me, thank Jisung. If it wasn’t for him waxing horny poetics about you for the half hour beforehand, none of this ever would have happened.”

Chan hums, a glint of mischief in his eyes. “You make a good point. Actually, he’s contributed a lot to us being together.”

Minho pouts. “For example..?”

“I was dying to ask you out after that second party, but I knew you were more comfortable taking the lead with where things went for us, so I let you. As much as I’d gotten to know about you now that we’d finally interacted a few times, I still wasn’t sure how you felt about me deep down. You started leaving me your fruit at lunch, though, and that cute little note, and I thought, ‘no, I definitely need him in my life. I have to talk to him.’ So I asked you to sit with me that one day, and you brought up the dating rumors bothering you.. then shut down when I said I didn’t care about them, and I knew something was up.

“I wanted to get to know you better and understand. I knew I was never gonna let myself live it down if I didn’t try now that I finally had the chance. Then I met your friends, and Changbin’s party happened, and I knew after I’d hugged you and told you that I wasn’t leaving you that that was what you needed — someone to trust, someone who could take control and just let you breathe and be there for you, and I wanted it to be me. It had to be. The idea of it ever being anyone else..

“And then you said you were falling in love before you got in the car, and I internally beat myself up every day after that night for not doing more, but.. what could I do? We were drunk. I didn’t want either of us coming to regret what would happen, so I hung out with Jisung and made him talk about you until his mouth went dry,” Chan giggles. “I told myself I’d talk to you about it all at lunch, but then you never came. I always pathetically anticipated seeing you come sit down at the table until Friday hit. I was so close to begging someone for your number, because I just needed to hear your voice and see that you were fine, but I wanted to give you the space Jisung said you sometimes needed. Then he called me this morning, like, ‘bro, guess who I just got off the phone with yesterday?’ and he went on this tangent about how you’d been grumpy ever since we first hooked up because you loved me, then he sent me your dorm number and wished me luck.”

“Jisung,” Minho curses his name with a glare. “One of these days, he’s going to regret ever sharing his own secrets with me. I will show that gremlin no mercy.”

“Don’t get too upset,” Chan grins, nosing along Minho’s ear before dirtily whispering into it. “He’s the reason we’re here right now.”

“We’re the reason we’re here right now,” Minho retorts, emphasizing the intensity of his adoration for Chan with a big kiss on his cheek, exaggerating the smooching sound. Chan chuckles into him, cuddling up on his body like an over-muscled koala. “He was right about me loving you, though. At Changbin’s party, after showing you my cats, I realized I was so gone for you that I had to physically exit your space before I did something impulsive. I whined at Jisung for however long about not being able to date you because you deserved someone better, then I saw you laughing with Felix and I got all jealous and angry.”

Something in Chan’s gaze softens. “No way,” he huffs in disbelief. “I started talking to Felix because I was jealous of Jisung making you laugh. I was asking Felix if you two used to have a thing, or if you mentioned even liking anyone else before, but we were both tipsy, so the convo sort of just rolled between other topics after that.”

Minho can’t help but bark out a sudden laugh, eyes scrunched with secondhand embarrassment for the both of them. “Fuck, so we’re both possessive messes. Got it.”

Chan joins in, but the squeeze he gives Minho’s body emanates seriousness. “Just means we’re on the same page about yet another thing, yeah? Just wanna belong to each other.”

Minho’s smile neutralizes into something tender, blinking up at Chan. “I’d love nothing more than to belong to you, gotta admit.”

“Mhm?” Chan hums, unable to knock the goofy smile off his face even between kisses. “You’re mine, then. And I’m yours.”

“Mine,” Minho confirms with another kiss. Then another, deeper. Messier. “Fuck, I love you.”

“I love you more,” Chan breathes into his mouth, giving a lewd, wet lick to the plump of Minho’s bottom lip.

“Do not get competitive with me,” Minho snarls against Chan’s blooming grin. “You will never win. Shouldn’t you know that by now? Thought my baby had a good memory, but maybe not.”

Chan graces him with a cocky little smirk, raising a single brow as he hovers more directly above Minho. “Are you in the position to be making threats, love?” he asks, giving one slow, delicious grind of his hardening cock back into the wetness of Minho’s entrance. Minho’s breath hitches, and Chan dips his head forward until their foreheads knock together, meeting the challenge in one another’s eyes. “‘Cause I’ll gladly fuck you until you don’t even remember how to speak.”

Minho smirks back, eyes going hooded with smugness. “You think you can outlast me in bed?” he purrs. “Turns out you can’t learn everything about me from Jisung, clearly.”

Chan isn’t the least bit affected by his banter, choosing to shut Minho up with action rather than word.

That’s how they wind up fucking again — the first time as lovers instead of unknowns from a complicated history they were both too enamored to bother dancing around anymore. They could finally enjoy each other now, with no questions or hesitance eating away at either of them as it had been for weeks, months, hell, since they’d first laid eyes on each other.

And Minho came to finally understand and appreciate just how compatible they truly were, how they matched each other in an intensity they’d never thought possible between two people. Chan fucks his cum into Minho until it drips from him and makes the boy beneath moan yet again on his orgasm, growling nothing to each other between deep kisses but mine, mine, mine.

Chan rested his head on Minho’s chest after that, drawing lazy circles with his index over Minho’s body as he answered his boyfriend’s many questions. Minho combed his fingers through Chan’s hair, determined to find out as much about him as he had about Minho. He looks up at all the decorations in the room, finally sated enough to begin noticing details in his surroundings that weren’t Chan himself, pointing at posters and decor and the sports equipment strewn about the place with endless, fascinated interrogation.

Chan humors him, rambling on about the things he brought over from Australia that made up his past: posters of his favorite bands, framed photos of his parents and siblings (and even one of his puppy). He even tries going into detail about how to play some of his favorite sports, laughing into Minho’s chest when he looks up to find him vacantly nodding, not a single thought of comprehension behind his eyes. Minho inquires more about his life back in Sydney, but they’re both interrupted when Chan brings up the restaurants he used to frequent and his stomach promptly growls.

“Recharge?” Minho snorts.

“Recharge,” Chan agrees.

Chan shoots from the bed and runs for the kitchen — naked. Actually naked, not even any socks on. Minho follows behind after securing a makeshift cloak around his body from Chan’s blanket, treading softly out into the kitchen to see his boyfriend padding around the counter fully nude and completely unashamed.

“Someone’s comfy in their own skin,” Minho grins, somewhat fascinated by the way Chan casually hums as he plucks his way around for a glass. He turns to the sink to fill it with water, sending Minho a little smile of his own.

“These are my pajamas,” he answers, filling the glass with water. He takes a much-needed gulp before handing it over to Minho who accepts it gratefully. “Changbin found that out the hard way.”

“Bad wording, babe,” Minho snorts against the brim of the glass, nearly choking on his next swallow from amusement.

“Dirty-minded,” Chan playfully scolds despite being unable to contain his own laugh, tugging the fridge door open to peruse the inventory. He has to bend forward a bit to look at the lower shelves, making his bare ass stick out.

Fuck. Jisung wasn’t kidding — Chan did have a big ass. It looked round and soft and a touch more pale than the rest of him.

Minho was too tempted. He strides over with only a few steps after placing the glass of water down, the sound of his hand pulling back for a strike utterly quiet until his palm makes contact with Chan’s right asscheek. Chan jolts with a little yelp right as the smack fills the air, suddenly upright yet again and rounding on Minho.

Minho doesn’t care, simply kneading his asscheek where it refused to leave despite the subtle sting in his palm. He fixes Chan with a flirtatious smirk, wetting the seam of his lips. “You’re not the only one here who has a thing for asses,” he clarifies, giving the round flesh there an obscene squeeze-pull that forces Chan’s naked form to knock against Minho’s.

Chan spends the next handful of minutes with Minho suddenly bent over the kitchen counter, his knees on the hard floor and his face buried between Minho’s cheeks, licking up all his release he’d fucked into his boyfriend to prove the point that nothing could rival how much he adored Minho’s ass, hands grabbing and pulling and worshipping every soft give as he sunk his nails in. He only stops when Minho says he’s about to come before he grabs the snacks and pulls Minho back to his bedroom, locking them up again in the dim and heated so they could continue to fuck without having to leave the bed again.

Minho — horny and desperate and on edge as if they hadn’t already been fucking for however long — immediately abandonds the blanket around his body to sit himself on Chan’s cock that’d hardened from eating him out, finally riding him once more. The grinds are steady enough for them to make out as Minho rolls his hips, letting Chan taste the moans in his mouth when Minho suddenly tightens around him, humming happily at the feeling of warm release beginning to drip down his abs between them.

When Minho sags against him, Chan lifts him up into a hover above his cock and gently fucks up into him until he comes again as well, nothing in the air but heavy panting and satisfied sigh-curses of pleasure. Then it’s intermission again full of naked cuddles and pillow talk, feeding each other the snacks Chan had brought in to get their energy back before they undoubtedly set each other off for round four, then five, then six.

This little routine keeps up even when they hear the front door of the apartment open and close, putting their palms over each other’s mouths to quiet their giggles. Changbin is a fairly silent presence outside Chan’s room, only the occasional cabinet opening or sink running acting as a reminder that Chan and Minho weren’t alone.

They attempt to be more quiet after that, spending more time whispering to each other between the intervals of sex. They’re lost in each other and their conversations, exhausting countless topics and questions with the desire to understand as much about one another as they could — both in personality and body. If they keep this up, Minho believes they’ll have learned almost everything about one another by next weekend.

Minho doesn’t even realize that nighttime has arrived outside until Chan peers at the window over his shoulder. It dawns on them both that they’d just been fucking and talking until the sun set, a whole day spent dedicated to nothing but each other.

It’s one of the best days Minho thinks he’s ever experienced in his life.

All good things must come to an end, unfortunately. “..Should I leave?” Minho tentatively questions, unsure of how Chan might feel about him occupying any more of his weekend. An impromptu sleepover might not be the right call, particularly this underprepared.

Chan brushes Minho’s soaked bangs off of his forehead. “What?” he murmurs. “No, Minho. I want you here.”

Then there’s hands all over Minho’s body and Chan is manhandling him again with a playful grunt, pushing Minho to the center of his bed on his back and looking down at him like he belonged there. “I never want you to leave, silly. Honestly.. I don’t even like the idea of us being apart anymore.”

Minho pulls Chan down on top of him, and he barely reacts in time to plant his forearms on either side of Minho’s head before they crash into one another.

“You shouldn’t say stuff like that,” Minho whispers. “Now I’ll never go back to campus if I get to keep you here.”

Chan sends him a tender smile, leaning down to press a kiss against Minho’s damp temple. “You’ll come back with me. I’m sure the idea of seeing everyone’s reactions will be way too tempting to pass up.”

Minho can’t fight the smirk off his face. “Very true. Poor Hyunjin might faint.”

Chan hums with sarcastic sympathy before dropping more kisses along Minho’s face, breathing into his skin on his following words. “They’ll learn to deal with it. I don’t care what anyone thinks, I’m seriously never gonna be able to take my hands off you.”

Minho fakes a scandalized gasp, and it goes a bit breathy when Chan begins sucking on his neck. “Lee Minho has corrupted the campus sweetheart. Quick, someone alert the press.”

Chan chuckles into his shoulder once he reaches it. “Mhm. What a terrible, terrible influence you are,” he replies, equally grave. “It’s too bad that I’m enjoying every single second of it.”

Minho giggles as he grabs at the back of Chan’s head, giving a gentle tug to his bleached blonde until his boyfriend is level with his eyes once again.

“Love you,” Minho says.

“You think?” Chan grins, sassy as ever. He laughs at Minho’s immediate glare, making up for it by rubbing their noses together as his giggles subside. “I love you too, baby.”

Minho reprimands his amusement by nipping his bottom lip, but the humor in the moment quickly fades when Chan reciprocates and they’re both engaged in a loving battle of teeth and lips and tongue.

Chan fucks Minho the slowest he has all day after that, slipping between the pliant parting of Minho’s thighs and staying buried to the hilt while they lazily kiss and mouth at each other’s necks and jaws. His thrusts are gentle and intermittent, more dedicated to simply living in the moment with his boyfriend instead of trying to get either of them over. Minho’s arms have relaxed around Chan’s broad shoulders, boneless against the mattress. Exhaustion makes his mind floaty and calm, relaxed, as if he were getting the most sensual massage of all time.

Minho orgasms after a slow and gradual buildup, having came so many times today that the pleasure buzzing through his core leaves nothing but one soft, long moan escaping past parted lips. Chan smiles into his neck through it, trailing kisses along all of the hickeys he’s marked him up with until he releases a weak groan and spills inside Minho again.

He’s so full. His eyes are closed. He thinks he’s too exhausted to move, yet he’s proven wrong with the way his lips automatically part to accommodate Chan’s. “So perfect for me, Minho,” he whispers into his mouth.

“And so, so beautiful.”

*

It’s such a shame that sleep comes to all as a basic human requirement. Were things like exhaustion and rest unnecessary, Chan’s positive he’d make Minho feel good well into the night on sheer devotion alone, if nothing else. He loved knowing he was giving him pleasure now that he was invited into his heart, and he wanted him to never feel alone ever again — no pain, no turmoil, no worry. Nothing but endless worship to his wonderful body and even more gorgeous personality, because that, Chan believes, is something not even his regrettably human self could ever grow tired of.

He hisses as he pulls out of Minho, unable to deny how the sensitivity of fucking all day had finally caught up with him. Below, a soft breath of discomfort huffs past his boyfriend’s reddened pout.

“Are you alright, baby?” Chan blinks, lifting a hand to stroke his thumb across Minho’s face. “Did I hurt you?”

“Mm-mm,” Minho denies simply. “Your cum is dripping out of my ass.”

It takes all of Chan’s willpower to not release an ugly laugh that’s much too loud for the moment, ever amazed by how Minho’s deadpan delivery never seems to wane from his character no matter what he was feeling. He kisses the spot right between his eyebrows to stave off the suppressed chuckle tightening his throat before he lifts himself off of Minho entirely.

“I’ll clean you up,” he says as he swings his legs off the mattress. After spending so long horizontal, the sensation of his feet meeting the floor takes a second to adjust to. “I’ll be right back.”

He didn’t catch what time it was, but the apartment is quiet and Changbin’s door is closed when he walks out of his bedroom. He’s quick to clean himself once he’s ambled in the dark towards their bathroom, partially to avoid any encounters, and also.. he really wasn’t kidding when he’d said he doesn’t like to be away from Minho. Perhaps it’s that fresh feeling of getting together, or maybe he was finally able to accept how obsessed he was with the other man now that he knew it was returned with that same intensity. He can’t imagine this feeling of utter love ever fading anytime soon, no matter how much time they spend together in the future, which will hopefully be forever.

A big commitment, Chan knows. A bit ambitious to be thinking about on the first day they officially begin dating, too, but..

Chan doesn’t realize he’s had the washcloth under the running sink for so long that the entire square of it was soaking wet, so lost in thought about Minho that he’d gone numb to his surroundings. He turns the handle and wrings out the dripping excess before padding back to his bedroom quicker than necessary.

Seeing Minho in his bed felt like finally coming up for air. He doesn’t even tear his eyes off of him as he blindly reaches for the doorknob to lock it, falling back on to the bed as gently as he could so as to not jostle the beautiful sculpture that’d made home in his pillows and sheets. He’s in the same exact position he’d been in when Chan left, expression still peaceful and sated.

“I’m gonna clean you up, okay?” Chan says. Minho merely hums his assent.

Chan starts with his stomach. So much cum had dried and gone tacky, making the surface of his skin look glazed over with transparent wax. He takes care to be gentle but thorough with his body — even though Minho was comfortable with showing it, Chan knew he hesitated to take his clothes off in the beginning. He’s grateful Minho was willing to share it with him, because every inch is so utterly perfect, and he wants every touch to prove that.

Next were his legs. They were heavy with thick muscle yet pliant as Chan moved them aside to clean the steady stream of his own release that lazily dripped from him. He’d have to clean his sheets tomorrow morning, but nothing would ever feel like a consequence after what he got to have with Minho today.

“You can shower here tomorrow if you’d like,” Chan offhandedly comments while his mind floats on the topic of cleaning. He knows his laundry basket has already reached mountainous territory anyway, so he carelessly throws the washcloth over his shoulder to collect with the rest of his dirty clothes once he’s finished cleaning Minho up.

“Shower with me,” Minho groggily demands, emitting cute little huffs of exertion as Chan maneuvers him beneath the wrinkled sheets.

“Sure,” Chan smiles, getting himself comfortable against his pillows before he gestures for Minho to rest his head where Chan’s shoulder meets chest. Minho immediately curls into him like a cuddly cat, one leg thrown over Chan’s and a hand resting flat on his stomach beneath the covers. “You should rest now, though,” he orders into Minho’s warm hair.

Minho lifts his head to look at Chan through the dark, his tired eyes barely opening. “You’re not going to sleep?”

Chan gives him a soft look, idly scratching his nails along Minho’s upper arm. “I.. I have insomnia. Restless mind. It might be a while before it calms down enough for me to feel tired.”

Minho sniffs and lets the weight of his head drop, smooshing his cheek into Chan’s shoulder. “Then I’ll stay up with you,” he mumbles petulantly, but his voice is already threatening that he’ll be out like a light soon.

Chan wants to rebut him, insist that he get the sleep he needs, but he’s so beyond fucking endeared by Minho that he doesn’t have the heart to do anything except coo endlessly on the inside. His diplomatic solution for this? “Well,” Chan whispers, “how about I just talk and you listen, okay?”

“Mm,” Minho hums into Chan’s skin.

It comes easy afterwards for Chan to have his one-person convo with mumbles and hushed sentences, almost like an ASMR podcast of sorts. Minho had probably figured out by now that Chan tended to be a big talker, rambling endlessly about anything and everything if given the reins.

He touches a bit more on his insomnia and how he can usually stay up for over twenty-four hours before even feeling drowsy. Minho hums along a bit sympathetically when he explains being plagued often by nightmares before transitioning into a more lighter segue on music, how creating tracks when he was younger helped to pass the time when it was evident that lying in bed and doing nothing never seemed to fix anything. That progresses into detail of how he met Changbin, their little mutual dream to create stuff together if the opportunity ever arose again.

Minho stops humming along at some point, but Chan continues. He speaks unfiltered and unedited, a constant stream between recounting memories or even simply speaking his thoughts aloud. All the while, he never stops brushing his fingers up and down Minho’s statuesque form.

He’s in the middle of humming some random melody he recalls when Minho makes a sound against his skin in response. Chan lifts his head to look at him, song interrupted, bathing the room in a warm silence.

“Minho?” Chan breathes.

Minho makes a sleepy noise in the back of his throat before unconsciously adjusting his head against Chan’s body, his breaths still the even, heavy cadence of someone who wasn’t awake. Even then, he mumbles something else that seems oddly structured enough to be words if heard closely enough.

Chan has to bite back a knowing little smile. 

Minho talks in his sleep.

For the first time, Chan goes quiet. He’s utterly fascinated by the sound of Minho’s voice even though his murmurs are indecipherable, like he was trying to subconsciously talk back to him. He gets quieter in random intervals, sometimes nothing more than dreaming hums or the rustle of his soft hair as he nuzzles into Chan’s skin. Now that Chan wasn’t speaking, he could even appreciate how beautiful the peaceful sound of his breathing was.

He looks down at Minho the best he can without disturbing the stillness, eyes having adjusted to the dark enough to take in the outline of his face, his sharp nose, the subtle rise and fall of his torso beneath the sheets. Reality hits Chan: Minho was sleeping naked next to him. Minho, the boy he’d been enthralled by since he first arrived here. His face had gentled with the expression of someone who was experiencing total comfort, body warm and soft and beautifully close.

Chan’s not used to being relaxed by the mere presence of someone else to such a degree. He doesn’t realize he’s drifting off to the sound of Minho’s voice until it’s too late, his eyes slipping shut and mind quieted by the lullaby of his boyfriend’s existence at his side.

Minho fell asleep to Chan’s voice, and Chan to Minho’s.

*

Even from this far away, Minho could tell that Jisung wasn’t having a fun time.

He’s always been averse to responsibility and authority, so attempting to adopt those traits within a week — as one of the youngest in their group — gains him about as much respect at the table as one would expect. Minho can’t hear what he’s yelling and theatrically waving about now, but he can see the pain in his apathetic smile when Hyunjin does nothing but cackle in response. Then Changbin says a comment that makes Felix giggle into his arm he’d been cuddled up against, and then Seungmin retorts with some scathing, dry quip of his own, and Changbin is suddenly standing with a plastic spoon as his weapon and an angry vein bulging in his forehead. Hyunjin is laughing so hard that he’s one gust of wind away from completely dismounting his seat.

Jisung tilts himself far enough backwards in his chair that he begins balancing on only the back legs of it, rubbing the heels of his palms into his eye sockets on a groan. His phone call with Minho had been nothing but the truth, it seems — ever since he began his brooding little vacation of total self-isolation, the group had collapsed into total chaos now that he wasn’t around.

And this was just a brief taste of what it’d be like without Chan as well.

Minho graces the sight of his stressed best friend with a pitying smile, stalking towards the table as they all continued to act out their little pretend fight that Jisung forced himself in the middle of, looking up to the ceiling to pray and beg for anything out there to come rescue him from his hellish nightmare.

Well. Hopefully he doesn’t mind an alien-demon hybrid answering the call.

Because Jisung is tilted back in his seat as he looks to the paneled ceiling, he’s greeted with the upside-down sight of Minho as he walks into view from behind. He gives him a kind smile, particularly just because he knows his sudden, unexpected appearance will naturally terrify the distracted boy as intended.

“Oh, holy f—!” Jisung shrieks upon seeing Minho, startled so much that his chair properly reacquainted all four of its legs back with the floor. He sounds short of breath, clutching his racing heart over his shirt for good measure as he whips around in his seat and hyperventilates using his entire body.

His little jumpscare moment seems to draw the attention of the rest of the occupied table, because Felix is first to chirp, “Oh, it’s Minho!”

While Minho is sure Hyunjin and Seungmin begin grumbling their individual variations of half-hearted interest (and he’ll be dealing with them later), his eyes can’t tear their rapt amusement away from how Jisung’s entire being seems to deflate with utter relief. He claps his hands together in a silent thank you, his pleas listened to, graced once again with full enthusiasm now that he can shuck his burdens onto Minho.

“I thought you’d never come back,” Jisung says while pulling out the seat next to him in open invitation. Minho just tilts his head at him with a smirk, waiting for him to notice. Jisung continues as his eyes wander back to him, “I’ve been genuinely suffering, dude! I might need to go see a doctor. All this skinship shit has been making me nauseous and what the fuck are you wearing.”

Minho looks down at the oversized hoodie he was wearing. The sleeves were so long that he couldn’t even see his fingers. “I’m wearing clothes,” he deadpans, looking up to Jisung with a raised brow.

“No shit,” Jisung huffs. “But are they your clothes?”

Minho can’t swallow down his smirk. “They are now.”

Jisung twists in his seat to fully investigate, donning a scowl that has his eyebrows pinching in the middle. “Hold on,” he blinks, “even your hair looks fluffier than usual. Dude. What? No way. Did I smoke something bad? Oh no. Maybe Hyunjin actually did make me sick and I’m going through, like, the trippiest fever dream of all time.”

“Oh, now who’s being dramatic?” Hyunjin scoffs.

“Not me!” Jisung says with a turn back to the table, waving a rapid arm up and down Minho’s idle frame, his soft strands of brunette, the glow in his face and the uncharacteristic wardrobe. “He doesn’t wear black clothes during summer! Nothing in this world could convince him to!”

With Jisung’s sudden crisis stealing his focus, he’s left unaware of the way the table has wordlessly torn their eyes to the new individual arriving on scene. He only seems to snap out of it when he hears the plastic clammer of a tray being placed at his side, followed by an accented, soft voice that could only ever belong to one person.

“Guilty,” Chan says, moving to sit in the chair that Jisung had pulled out for Minho. “I wanted to share it with him, but honestly? He just looks better in it than I do.”

Hyunjin snorts at Jisung’s agape, stunned features. They only seem to exaggerate upon witnessing Chan extend his hand out towards Minho who accepts it easily, letting the blonde pull him into his lap by one of his sweater paws.

Minho hums as he settles into Chan’s lap, one arm flung around his neck, and Jisung looks as though his ‘self-destruct’ switch had been flipped.

Seungmin huffs a sarcastic little laugh into the next bite of his apple. “Sucks for you, Sung,” he crunches and chews. “Looks like it’s just you and me as the Singles, now. Help is not on the way.”

Jisung finally remembers to close his mouth, if only so he can speak again in a grave timbre, though his eyes are stuck and threaten to capsize in sheer horror. “I can’t believe it.”

“Can’t you?” Minho purrs, his cheek digging into Chan’s temple once his boyfriend wraps his arms in a loose ring around his middle. “You’re the one who texted him my address, prick.”

“Yeah! You’re so welcome!” Jisung guffaws, suffering to the ceiling once again. “This is what I get for putting someone else before myself. Ugh.”

“I was right!” Felix beams, leaning over Changbin to poke Hyunjin’s soft cheek. “We said they’d get together!”

Hyunjin smirks, nipping at Felix’s finger. “Now we just need them to go on their actual honeymoon and the prophecy will be fulfilled.”

“Honeymoon?” Chan perks up from beneath Minho’s weight, giving his torso a tender squeeze. His voice breathes warm puffs of amusement straight into that bare expanse of Minho’s neck that the baggy hoodie couldn’t properly cover. “Had no clue we were jumping to marriage so soon, baby. You didn’t tell me.”

“We’re.. we’re not,” Minho struggles out in spite of it obviously being a joke. His cheekbones feel tingly and his ears go hot beneath his hair. Though it’s only been a week since he’s been around anyone other than Chan, so much has changed. He nearly forgets where he is in his sudden urge to bury his face in Chan’s neck. “That was just banter.” He clears his throat, attempting to reestablish his deadpan role in the circle.

“You sure?” Changbin suddenly pipes up. “You guys could move in together so Minho wouldn’t have to take up secret residency in your bed, Chan. I’m tempted to start making him pay rent.”

Hyunjin and Felix both seem to whack him simultaneously, making Changbin yelp. “You knew about Minho and Chan and didn’t tell us?!”

“I didn’t, at first!” Changbin yaps. “They were quiet in his room, but the shower..” he shivers, “is literally right next to my bedroom.”

Chan releases a few guilty giggles into Minho’s shoulder while the latter defiantly glares to the table despite the brilliant scarlet glowing his cheeks. “We are not talking about marriage just so you guys can argue over who would get to be the best man on my side.”

“Agreed, because the answer is obviously me,” Jisung hmph’s, folding his arms.

“Dunno,” Minho muses, casually rubbing some soothing circles into Chan’s upper bicep as he ruminates to his best friend. “Do I want a massive schemer who goes behind my back to be my best man?”

“I helped you, y’know! You should be thanking me!” Jisung howls, brows lifting in a clear plea for his logic to be understood. “Besides, that means I’m clever! Shit, bro, I could be your wedding planner too. I already know what everyone would do.” He picks up his fork and begins pointing at everyone in succession, listing off roles as if he were directing a play.

“Hyunjin would be the wedding photographer, obviously. Changbin will probably be Chan’s best man, but he can DJ at the reception. Seungmin will.. I don’t know, kick anyone out who gets too rowdy? He’ll probably have the funniest speech, so he’s not allowed to have any more glory. Felix will handle the cake, and as for the catering.. well,” Jisung turns to Minho with a slant smile and a shrug of one shoulder. “We wouldn’t be able to hire anyone who can cook better than you, so you can cover it.”

Chan shifts beneath Minho to look up at his boyfriend with wide-eyed, innocent interest. “You cook?”

Minho’s still in the middle of shaking his head mid-scoff at Jisung’s little plan. “Yeah. I used to work part-time at a barbecue place and picked up grilling pretty easily. I’ve been interested ever since.”

“He’s not just interested,” Jisung says seriously, voice dropping as if he were recounting an old legend. “He’s amazing. Better than any restaurant around here. He would serve the drunk customers at the barbecue place because they’d tip him extra.”

“They thought they were eating gourmet,” Hyunjin recounts, head tipping back with a loud laugh and round of applause at the memory.

The anecdotes start rolling in for the rest of the table, naturally bleeding over to a different topic without Minho even needing to interject, and just like that, he’s already adapted back into the group dynamic without so much as a minute or two worth of conversation. The only difference from before was that he had Chan at his side, finally past all the wandering stares and secret little glances that’d been packed with brooding and worry and turmoil.

Chan hugs him closer, placing his chin on Minho’s shoulder so he could speak softly into his ear. “Never told me you could cook, baby,” he hums, lifting a hand up to pull Minho’s cheek against his lips for an intimate peck that makes him feel as if they were in their own little bubble, even here. “Now I’ll really have to marry you.”

Minho cough-laughs into the fabric of his flapping sweater paw, pretending to clear his throat to obscure his blushing face from sight. Chan takes the hint with a coo, pulling Minho’s face into his neck so he could hide his happy little sounds and squirms while Chan spoke to the rest of the table with a wide grin on his face.

*

Parting with Chan for his classes was hell, but he was so lost in the rose-tinted thoughts of him that it obscured Minho’s surroundings, unable to bother noticing the passing glances or comments cast in his direction as he dreamily flitted between lectures and lessons. Chan had kissed his temple before they had to separate, promising he’d find him the next time they were both free on campus.

He knew he was in love.

He was so in love that it ached the trauma in him — the years of spite and indignation that’d assumed the throne in his heart, only to be completely usurped by a kind boy with a pearlescent smile and a nest of bleached wave-curls, who smelled of the sea no matter how many times he showered and asked for all of your leftovers with shy crescents in his eyes. Minho wasn’t cured, but Chan was healing something within him in every second of every hour he spent in his arms, by his side, and he wanted to spend the rest of time basking in that sunshine until his core itself couldn’t help but glow.

That was it. Minho fights back the threat of tears upon realization as he steps out of his last class before break, understanding that whatever they had going on between them wasn’t just the excitement shared between two people who’d just begun dating. Deep down, somewhere, he feels like he’s known Chan for forever. He could deny it all he wanted when he first saw him stride on campus with every student worshipping the ground he walked on, but that unmistakable connection was there. It was like he saw something in himself when he looked at Chan, a sense of completion.

He couldn’t even blame it on the highs of physical intimacy. He’s never felt this with anyone else before, like.. like he could look at his face and see weeks and months and years beside him before they’d even happened. He saw purpose in Chan, a reason to get up, something to look forward to and work for. The dark corners of his mind telling him that he’ll lose him or that this bond will eventually snap like the rest felt so insignificant. There were no other bonds like this one, and though they’ve only been officially together a brief while, Minho feels convinced there will never be a bond quite like this again.

The next time he sees Chan is in the pathways outside, yet another movie scene of gazes locking in slow motion, the blooming smile on either of their mouths even slower.

And then they both run.

“Hi!” Minho breathes into him with a huff of laughter once they collide, because Chan seems unable to resist picking him up and spinning him around under the ocean of cloudless sky and beaming sunlight.

“Minho,” Chan places him back down easily, hands dropping to his boyfriend’s waist. “Will we ever get used to this?”

“Maybe,” Minho replies, bringing up playful fingers to comb and ruffle through all that shaggy hair. Here and now, though, he’s sure he could watch the way Chan’s dimples reveal themselves on an amused hum millions of times and never tire of it. “But I won’t apologize for continuing to try and tackle you.”

Chan nods with a fond sigh. “Wouldn’t expect anything less, love.”

After their greeting, they walked hand in hand over to a nearby, unoccupied bench beneath the shade of a tree. They discussed their projects and classes they’d attended while they’d been separated, already beginning to plan what they’d do together once the weekend came around again.

Sitting at the bench progressed into Minho laying with his head in Chan’s lap, looking up at him while Chan fingered strands of silky brunette away from his eyes and forehead. Minho’s skin felt warm from Chan’s hoodie, but the heat he was experiencing within went far beyond the excuse of weather or clothing.

“Chan..?” Minho murmurs.

Chan looks down at him with his brows raised and a questioning, “Hmm?”

Minho plays a bit bashfully with his fingers in his lap, wrestling his thumbs in a match that never ends. “Were you serious earlier?”

Chan tilts his head curiously, puppy-like. “When?”

“At lunch. What you said about, about..” Minho trails off with a tight gulp, finding sudden interest in a leaf that’d abandoned a branch above and had begun flicking about in the breeze. He can feel his face heat when Chan releases a soft sound of sudden understanding.

“Marriage?” Chan smiles in his periphery. Minho doesn’t respond other than giving him a small glance from the corner of his eye, but that’s all the response he needs.

“I wasn’t kidding,” Chan breathes out far too casually for Minho’s flipping stomach to account for. “But that’s too far away to really start thinking about, right? There’s so much to do before then.”

Chan lifts his head to look out at the world around them with wonder in his eyes, and Minho can’t help but regain interest in staring up at the sparkle there, or how his boyfriend takes in a deep breath of air like he always does before beginning to speak once again.

“We have to finish college, and that’ll be a while,” Chan muses, idly combing his fingers through Minho’s hair still. “Then, y’know, work and stuff. I’d just like to take every day as it comes with you, but I know for sure that I want to take you to Australia with me the next time I can go back and visit.”

Minho’s gaze softens significantly. “What would you like to do there, Channie?”

It’s as if Chan were a box of fireworks that’d just been lit. A bright smile breaks out on his face and now he’s looking out as if he could see the scenes themselves, as if they were already there. His hands have abandoned Minho’s hair to gesticulate happily, the spokesperson of enthusiasm itself.

“You’d meet my family! My mother would love to cook with you, if you wanted. I’m not sure how much help I’ll be, but I’ll try. And then, then! I’d have to take you to those restaurants I’d mentioned. Um, haha, I dunno if you’ll like them all that much, but nostalgia makes everything taste better, y’know? Oh!” Chan snaps his finger, brows lifting with an idea. “You probably guessed, but I’m a total beach boy. I need to see the sea,” he giggles. “We can go to Tamarama Beach! It’s beautiful. The waves are so big. I’ll teach you how to surf, too!”

He was speaking so quickly, so excitedly, yet Minho understood every single word. Chan was infectious in the most golden and poetic of ways, able to coax a genuine grin on even someone who’d been rumored to never smile at all. His words were an adventure Minho wanted to go on so long as he was by his side, filled with nothing bad but the sudden sadness that they weren’t going already. He’s never been out of the country, yet he can already visualize the beaches behind his lids and the eventual warmth from the hug Chan’s parents will give him — they were undoubtedly as gentle and kind as he was.

Minho doesn’t know how long he stays lost in him and his tangent of pure joy. He’s not sure when his mind slipped into a state of peace he thought only achievable in sleep or meditation.

He knows when it ends, though.

Click-click!

Click-click! Click-click! Click-click!

Was that a fucking.. camera shutter?

Minho’s ears immediately train on it once he picks up that it was directed towards them. The twist of his head follows soon after from where it rested in Chan’s lap, his sharp glare immediately focusing on a lithe figure. Their face is hidden behind the many bits and pieces of what makes up an expensive-looking camera.

Chan was aware of the sudden paparazzi as well, given how quiet he went. When Minho glances back at him, though, he doesn’t look very bothered.

“Hi, Hyunjin!” he beams.

Minho’s gaze softens with confusion back on the figure, suddenly aware of the glossy jet-black hair that’s been tied back into a half ponytail. He stands back to full height from where he’d been crouched a couple feet away from their bench, pulling the viewfinder away from his face to inspect his shots with a distracted, murmured, “Hello.”

“Um,” Minho begins. “Care to tell me why you’re going around snapping shots of unsuspecting victims?” He has ruder things he could say with a lot more bite to them, but Chan’s fingers are playing with his hair again and.. and god, it feels so nice.

Hyunjin snorts down at his camera, clicking through the photos he took to review his work. “It’s for my photography club,” he explains, eyes devoted with focus as they dart around the details of each individual shot. “The theme this week is candids, and there was something about how.. look, look!” he breathes with excitement, rushing over to them once he apparently finds ‘the’ moment he wanted to capture.

Instead of politely asking Minho to sit up or simply crouching beside the couple to share the photo, Hyunjin sits right on top of Minho’s lap and leans over him with all his weight. “Fuck, my stomach,” Minho huffs out to the chimes of Chan’s giggles.

“Hush,” Hyunjin whispers as if about to show them something sacred that deserved their undivided attention. “Look at this.”

He leans himself and the screen at an angle that allows them both to see, and Minho is struck for a second by the image.

Hyunjin had managed to capture that very second where Minho felt lost in Chan from only a mere minute ago. Chan stole the show — he took up most of the photo with his waving arms and brighter-than-the-sun smile, so exuberant even when he didn’t know he was being filmed. His eyes looked to the sky with nothing but love for their future together, caught right as he was explaining all of the animals he’d like to introduce Minho to at the wildlife park near his home.

And Minho.. Minho had love in his eyes as well, but it wasn’t the sky he was looking at. He looked serene yet captivated, eyes so permanently fixed on Chan in the photo that one could believe he’d never tear them away in real life, either. His hands were in his lap, no longer restless and fidgeting, and even his sharp side profile couldn’t mask just how much tender devotion rested in his face.

As Chan and Minho continue to look, Hyunjin speaks with a bit of pride in his tone. “I love taking photos of people especially, but candids are my favorite because of stuff like this. It’s so pure, you know? People are at their most comfortable, and this is the most comfortable I’ve ever seen Minho look.”

“Maybe I’ll remember that feeling again when you’re not crushing my rib cage,” Minho retorts, sounding perfectly fine.

Hyunjin deliberately forces more weight on him to extend the camera more towards Chan, ignoring his wheeze of anger. “You know what I’m talking about, right?” He allows Chan to take the camera in his hands, letting him get a good look at the photo up close. “Capturing people in those seconds considered fleeting, making them eternal reminders of life, feeling, etcetera, blah-blah-blah.”

Chan smiles down at the photo. “This is a really beautiful photograph, Hyunjin. You have a wealth of talent.”

“Don’t take his side!” Minho grumbles beneath Hyunjin’s armpit, senses overloaded with the toxicity of his luxury deodorant.

“And Minho looks gorgeous here. Can I have a copy of this if you decide to use it?”

“Of course!” Hyunjin preens. “And this will definitely be the photo I use for my club. Not only is it one of the best shots I’ve ever taken, but it’ll also annoy Minho, so I get extra points.”

“Lovely,” Chan says.

“I want a divorce,” Minho groans.

Hyunjin finally decides to clamber off Minho’s torso and grace him with a full stomach of air once again, the world full with the chorus of Chan’s mirthful little noises as he strokes away all the tension from his boyfriend’s grumpy features. Minho would tell anyone he’s still grouchy, but it’s clear in how he closes his eyes and accepts all the reverent touches that he’s utterly incapable of resisting Chan in the slightest. He settles in silent acceptance, like one of those haughty cats that demand affection his partner is all too happy to give.

“Gross, but also sort of amazing,” Minho hears Hyunjin say with an obvious smirk. “I’ve never seen anyone make him so peaceful.”

“I can still hear you,” Minho pouts.

“I’ve never taken shots like these before, either..” Hyunjin continues without acknowledging him. “I guess because I’ve never been comfortable enough with the subjects to take more intimate photos without them knowing, but these are really something. I guess I get why the romance genre is always such a constant topic in my club.”

“What will you title the photograph?” Chan inquires in that bubbly voice of his.

“Hmm,” Hyunjin frowns at the screen, the thoughtful tap of his shoe against the pathway subtle. “It needs to be something simple but with a punch, I think. As enticing as the photo itself, but also sort of gets the message across of you two, y’know? Like, as people. It’s sort of funny, ‘cause that day at lunch after that first time you two hooked up, I likened you and Minho to a sun-moon analogy because you were both just so.. different, but needed each other, right?”

“Not this again,” Minho moans petulantly, rolling onto his side so his face gets buried in Chan’s tummy.

“Even in this photo, it’s still there?” Hyunjin analyzes, a bit of humor in his voice. “You’re all happy and.. ‘woah!’ whereas Minho seems so relaxed and still. With how different you two are despite having gotten together, I’m sure there’s a title in there somewhere I can think of.”

“I think so,” Chan hums. He was so patient throughout Hyunjin’s impassioned explanation, waiting until the very end before he began to bring up his thoughts. “I agree with the sun-moon thing, too. Pretty accurate.”

Minho groans, and it comes out all muffled and pathetic while trapped in the fabric of Chan’s shirt. He can feel his stomach shaking with laughter against his face.

“See!” Hyunjin cheers with all the grudge of someone who’s been wanting to prove he was right for months. “Minho didn’t like it!”

“Too bad,” Chan murmurs. “He’s my other half.”

Minho is on fire, and nobody cares to notice that, apparently.

After a few more clicks and beeps from Hyunjin’s camera, Minho can hear a few things snap shut before his footfalls begin to fade into the distance, followed by a distant air kiss and a bellowing farewell that Chan returns with twice the enthusiasm.

Then it’s just them again. Just them.

My other half.

Minho finally feels safe enough to roll onto his back again, face looking up towards Chan’s, who’d already been staring down at him with gentle happiness within every facet of those features Minho’s been studying for countless days, weeks, months. Even now, he doesn’t feel like he knows all of it yet, all of him.

Chan brushes the back of his index over one of Minho’s cutting cheekbones as if it were the softest of things. “Gonna scold me for telling him that?” he taunts. “‘Cause I promise you my vows will probably be way more sappy.”

Minho fondly rolls his eyes. “I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it. Right now, I’m just happy.”

“Only now?”

“Whenever you’re here.”

Chan slips a hand beneath Minho’s nape to slightly lift his head, bending down to let his mouth drop against Minho’s forehead, then nose, then lips. He breathes him in for a second longer on that last kiss before beginning to pull away.

One of Minho’s own hands shoots up to cup the back of Chan’s skull, intertwining his fingers with that mess of bleached waves and tangles to just keep him there.

“No,” Minho whispers against his mouth, calm again. “Don’t leave yet. Stay.”

Minho can feel the smirk against his lips before another warm press slots against him, then two, then three. The hold on Chan’s hair turns into a weightless caress of love that words could never do justice, his body burning in one of those few moments that makes him understand Hyunjin wholeheartedly — the moments you wish to capture for all eternity.

Chan eventually pulls back just enough to speak, sighing against him with a bliss he knew could be nothing but wholly requited.

“Haven’t I told you before, Minho?” Chan smiles that same smile from the first night, the sight more beautiful than any photograph ever could be.

“I am never leaving you.”