Archive of Our Own ^beta

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Minho’s flight arrives half an hour late—due to a combination of general air traffic and a sudden storm rolling into the Seattle area. He knows the city is rarely completely dry; Jisung mentions how it’s raining again, can you hear it in the background! in at least one of three of every video calls they have, even in the months closer to the start of summer. It’s just unlucky to finally experience it, delaying his and Jisung’s reunion by another thirty minutes, but he supposes that’s barely an extra dent in the unbearably-long two years that they’ve gone without seeing each other in person. 

The first thing he does at touchdown, as the plane comes to a rolling taxi along the runway, is pull out his phone and check his text messages. As expected, there are five new notifications, all from Jisung. 

Jisung | can you BELIEVE
Jisung | the audacity of the weather today
Jisung | it only said 20 percent chance rain ;-;;
Jisung | lmk when you arrive tho
Jisung | because i temporarily parked in a hotel parking lot a couple miles away from the airport for now or else i would have been booted out of the arrivals area for being too early 

i’m here | Minho

He gets a call immediately, and scrambles to swipe the screen to pick it up because he’d forgotten to put his phone on silent. 

“Did you just land or are you already inside the airport?” There’s no greeting, just Jisung’s eager question. His excitement is contagious and uncontained, even through the crackly distortion of the phone speakers and the loud thrum of the plane’s engine, and Minho can’t resist the instinctive upward pull of the corners of his mouth.

“Just landed,” Minho replies, grinning. “We’re still waiting on the runway, so…” He glances at the window to his left. Rain droplets are racing each other down the glass. The thick layer of dark clouds that they’d descended through now blankets the sky outside and above him, but the sight isn’t depressing. Minho is probably beaming like an idiot, the thought of finally seeing Jisung again outweighing everything else. 

“Okay,” Jisung says, and Minho almost laughs at the impatience in his voice. “Well, text me again when you’re inside… maybe at baggage claim? So I know when to start heading over.”

“Will do, mom,” Minho jokes, and Jisung giggles loudly on the other end. 

“Sorry, sorry,” Jisung apologizes, “But it’s just—well—you know?” he eventually settles on saying, and Minho completely understands. 

“Yes,” he affirms, and before he loses giddy confidence, blurts, “I’ve missed you.”

There is an extended moment of silence, where all Minho can hear is his own thumping heartbeat over the static of the receiver, before Jisung replies. “That’s what I meant to say,” he tells Minho. 

They’ve said it before already. But now it’s different. “But it’s so… cheesy,” Jisung finishes for him. Here, Minho imagines Jisung grimacing—an exaggerated downturn of his mouth. “Anyway. Missed you too. Can’t wait to see you! Bye!”

All that is said in a rush; then the line hangs up, and Minho is left with a silly smile stuck to his face as the plane finally pulls into its arrival gate. 

---

At baggage claim, Minho can’t help the anxious tap of his fingers against his laptop bag. He just has one suitcase that he had checked in, with clothes and toiletries to get him through the week. But the carousel is moving impossibly slow and he has yet to see a familiar hard-shelled maroon case push past the entrance flaps, and the smile Jisung had left him with has succumbed to a growing frown when his luggage finally appears on the track. 

Minho already has Jisung’s number ready-to-dial when he lugs his bag off the carousel, and puts the phone to his ear as he scans the airport for directions outside. 

“I just got my stuff,” Minho says, when Jisung picks up. 

“Nice!” Jisung says. “I’m coming, then.”

“Nice,” Minho echoes. “I’ll see you in a few.”

“Yes,” Minho can practically see the wide grin on Jisung’s face. “See you.”

As he ends the call, Minho realizes his heart is, once again, pounding in his chest. He’s not surprised. It’s been two years since he’s last seen his best friend face-to-face, and while video calls are great for keeping in touch, they just aren’t the same. The anticipation has him wheeling his suitcase faster, following the signs to the pick-up drive, and within a few minutes he’s outside. 

Though most of the storm has subsided, it’s still drizzling. By the time he’s found an area under the overhang away from others who’d just arrived to stand, Minho’s heart is practically threatening to burst out of its confines. Maybe it’s beating just a little too fast for a reunion between best friends, but Minho doesn’t have time to dwell on feelings he’s long since put names to when he spots a gray-bluish sedan approaching him along the drive.

Or—more aptly—spots Jisung. 

Minho only vaguely recognizes the car from a photo he’d gotten a while back—all he knows is that Jisung’s parents had chipped in when he’d bought it a few months ago, used—but he does spot Jisung through the front window, and he really spots the other’s wide smile, clear and bright even through droplets scattered by the sweep of the windshield wipers. 

Shit!! It’s happening, Minho thinks enthusiastically, breath catching in his throat, and he brings a hand up to wave—though there’s no need. Jisung has already caught sight of him too, and he pulls the car to a stop in front of him, popping the trunk and flinging his door open to step outside. 

“Minho!” Jisung greets, absolutely radiant, and barely a moment later he is in front of him, sweeping him into a tight hug. Like a blanket over a flame, Minho’s pulse, which had been skyrocketing moments prior, finally calms down, and his chest fills with warmth—stuttering traitorously just once, as he feels Jisung’s mouth, grinning, against the shoulder of his sweater. 

“Missed you,” Minho says again; he feels surprisingly confident with Jisung in his arms. A solid, real, Jisung. He can barely believe it. 

“Me too,” Jisung replies, again. Both of them lean into the embrace until Jisung lifts his face back up, meeting his gaze with glossy eyes. He isn’t quite crying—neither is Minho—but both of them share the mutual feeling that it’s been a while. 

Jisung stares at him for a moment—his shining eyes roam back and forth across Minho’s face, like he’s trying to commit all of it to memory—and Minho realizes he’d unconsciously started to do the same, when Jisung’s gaze shies away. 

“Let’s get this trip started,” he declares, slightly louder than necessary, and grabs the handle of Minho’s luggage before Minho can protest. He hoists it into his trunk and Minho can only follow, slipping off his laptop bag to set it next to his suitcase. Jisung gives the trunk lid a hearty slam and then slips past Minho to open his door for him, an exaggerated flourish of his hand gesturing for Minho to enter. Smugness is painted onto his face as he does. 

“Thanks,” Minho rolls his eyes, his smile growing impossibly bigger as he steps inside. 

“You’re welcome,” Jisung winks, closing the door for him. 

Then he’s stepping back into his own seat, and the other door swings shut, and it’s just the two of them in the car. 

Finally, is all Minho can think, as Jisung restarts the ignition. 

“It’s still relatively early,” Jisung launches into conversation as they leave the airport, “But you’re probably hungry? So I thought instead of heading out right away, maybe we could get lunch first—and then make our way further south after.”

“Hah,” is all Minho ends up saying at first, touched by Jisung’s usual thoughtfulness. “I forgot that it is around noon.” It has always been a little funny going through timezones; despite the four and a half hour flight from Illinois to Washington he’d only landed two and a half hours later, but he’d been up since seven in Chicago time, and he knows he’ll feel more energized after a good meal—he’d take pretty much anything after the packet of biscuits he’d been given on the plane, and wishes he had eaten a proper breakfast before leaving.

“Lunch sounds good,” Minho gratefully tells Jisung. “Are there any places you recommend?”

“Hmm,” Jisung seems to think for a moment. “Not sure, since I haven’t really been down in this part of the city… whoops,” he tacks on, sheepishly. “But I’m sure we’ll find someplace that looks good if we just start driving.”

“Sure,” Minho agrees, “I’ll keep my eyes peeled.” 

He looks out the window. They’re currently driving along one of the winding overpasses leading out of the airport. The patter of the rain on the car forms a steady rhythm and somehow makes being inside the car feel quieter, more intimate, especially now that they’ve both fallen silent. 

“I know we call a lot so it’s not like I have any major updates, but there are so many things I know I wanted to tell you,” Jisung starts up again, as if he’s thinking the same thing, and Minho huffs at the pleasant coincidence. “Still. Right now my brain is going blank, it’s crazy.”

“I get it,” Minho replies. “It’s been so long…” It’s been the longest wait ever, really. 

He’s stopped window-watching to look at Jisung. Really look at him; two winding years of seeing Jisung through a screen and now he has the urge to drink in everything about the Jisung right next to him. 

Most of it is probably biased; Minho thinks that Jisung’s hair looks a little longer, a little fluffier, a little softer than it had during their last video call two weeks ago, before both of them had gotten too busy with finals. And at this angle he can get a nice view of Jisung’s jawline, which, Minho thinks, definitely did not look as sharp when displayed by moving pixels. But Jisung’s cheeks, which he has always been endeared by, look just as he’d remembered; as do the mild curve of his eyebrows and the small divot just above his upper lip and— 

“But better now than never,” Jisung declares, and, not even five minutes into their journey, Minho realizes he’d already let himself get too carried away, let his heart do too much leading. 

You look good, he’s tempted to say, but feels like it would be a little too self-incriminating; he just wants to make fun memories on this trip, not confess all the feelings that he’d resolved to keep to himself. Instead he turns the radio volume up, tuning into what happens to be some funk song that’s ridiculously upbeat for the atmosphere, and both of them break into laughter. 

“Yeah,” Minho says, swallowing past the you look good in his throat, “I’m excited.” 

It’s an understatement, but it nonetheless describes how he feels as he meets Jisung’s twinkling eyes in the front mirror. 

<<<

HAPPY BIRTHDAY 🎉🎂🥳 | Jisung
look at you now. 20!!! | Jisung
no longer a teen, all grown up | Jisung

Minho | thanks but please stfuuu
Minho | [Missed a video call]
Minho | pick up the phone!!!!!

um your call lasted like one second | Jisung
i didn’t even get the chance to pick up | Jisung
[Started a video call] | Jisung

When Minho picks up the call, all Jisung hears at first is an overly-cheerful “Jisung!”

“Hello? Why does it look so dark over there—”

“Hi. Hello. Hi. Hello?” Minho rambles through the static. “Earth to Jisung, earth to Jisung. This is me, Minho! I… wanted to hear your voice.”

Jisung pauses for a moment, squinting at the fuzzy screen. Minho has never been one to deal out cheesy lines so freely like he does with deadpan remarks. “Are you drunk?”

Jisung is met with silence. Then: “No.”

“No,” Jisung says into the line. “You definitely are.”

“Am not,” Minho petulantly returns. “I can’t be drunk if I’m Minho!”

Jisung allows a silly little grin to make its way up his face. “You can’t be sober either, if you’re Minho.”

“No—ugh!” Minho pulls a face. “Why do you always have such good comebacks!”

“That wasn’t even good.”

“You’re just jealous you’re not legal yet,” Minho drawls.

“I never implied that!” Jisung protests, and then, as Minho’s words sink in, “Wait, you’re not even legal yet, either.” 

“Legal in Canada!” Minho says, dissolving in a fit of giggles on the other end. 

“You’re also not in Canada,” Jisung points out. Minho ignores him.

“But I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself,” Jisung continues, more amused than anything. “Where are you, anyway?”

“Canada,” Minho insists, lying through his teeth, and Jisung rolls his eyes. 

“Just in my room,” Minho tells him. “Chris is actually legal, so he let me drink, just a little. See?” Suddenly Jisung’s phone screen comes to life as Minho turns on the light. “Say hi, Chris.”

A man that Jisung has never seen in his life shoots him a crooked smile through the screen. Jisung realizes that the two of them must be sitting on Minho’s bed, and he can’t help the ugly feeling that worms his way to his stomach. 

“Hi!” the man named Chris says, offering a dimpled smile and a cute wave at the camera.

“Hi,” Jisung returns the greeting and the stomach worms mostly disappear; Chris seems chill and as long as Minho is having fun… “I’m Jisung.” 

“Look, no more alcohol, see?” Minho pans the camera around his room. “He put the bottles back in the fridge because the two of us are very responsible adults.”

“I see,” Jisung has to repress a snort. Truthfully, he knows that Minho is a responsible adult, and that this is probably one of the rare times where he’s seen Minho actually let loose a little.

But then Jisung thinks about it some more, and realizes that Minho is always more let loose and carefree and when he hangs out with Jisung—even if it’s been more than a year since they’ve seen each other in person—and Jisung would know, because he’s Minho’s best friend. At least… Minho has always been his safe place, the one person that always treats him with warmth, and Jisung is pretty sure he’s that person for Minho, too. 

Take that, Chris, Jisung thinks. To Minho, he asks, “You should have introduced me to Chris before. Now I don’t really know anything about him, which feels a little impolite.”

“I can introduce you two right now!” Minho declares, flipping the camera back around and giving Jisung a flattering view of his double chin. 

“O-kay,” Jisung titters. On the other side of the call, Chris seems to be chuckling as well. 

“You literally already told me more than all I would ever need to know about Jisung in the last hour, Minho,” he hears Chris say. 

“What?” Jisung asks, his phone nearly slipping out of his fingers.

Of course Minho would talk about you, silly, and it’s not like that, his brain reminds him. You’re good friends.  

“What?” Minho echoes the thought, laughing, and Jisung detects embarrassment in his voice. “Did not!”

Then, directed at the phone, Minho says, “We’re worked on a project for communications together this semester. He’s very nice.” 

“That’s good.” Jisung finds himself amused again. He figures that part of that odd feeling he’d been struck with talking to Minho in the last few minutes had been because he’d been feeling like the elder one in their relationship, for once. Not that his relationship with Minho had ever been like that—they’d always felt like equals, just one best friend to another. But Minho always had this way of sneaking in responsible reminders here and there, like hey the weather’s getting colder these days, layer well before you leave for school, or, more often, a warm thought hidden behind a snarky comment: you better not stay up until 5 am again or else i will personally fly back home and serve you up on a cutting board myself. 

Today, Jisung thinks that their roles have been reversed. 

“Of course it’s good! Do you think I wanna fail my class?”

“No,” Jisung laughs. “Don’t sleep too late tonight, then.”

“I won’t,” Minho says, looking dead-on at the camera. “You don’t either, okay?”

“I won’t,” Jisung agrees. “You’re two hours ahead, though, don’t you think—”

“Shhh!” Minho dramatically brings a finger to his lips. “I know. I just wanted to call you.” 

“Me too,” Jisung tells him. “And wish you a happy birthday.”

“Thank you,” Minho replies. “Thank you!” he repeats. “Hey Chris! Now I have birthday wishes from my favorite person.”

Tinny laughter, probably from Chris, bounces through the phone; Jisung flushes. “Minho—” he starts, and then realizes he doesn’t have a good retort this time around. It’s one thing to know that Minho probably thinks of Jisung as his favorite person, but it’s another to hear it out loud, especially when—unlike Jisung—Minho rarely voices the sentiment. And now it’s giving him a twisted sense of hope, clawing out the what-ifs that he has buried to avoid dwelling on.

“Anyway, I’m going to hang up now,” Minho suddenly informs him. And Jisung shoves the what-ifs back down. “Thanks for calling—it was fun!” 

Minho | [Ended a video call]
Minho | I’m gonna sleep for now
Minho | you sleep well tooooo

i will, thanks! | Jisung

Minho | wtf that was embarrassing… sorry

no worries | Jisung
it was funny | Jisung
good morning btw how are you now | Jisung

Minho | that’s not what I wanted to hear
Minho | and I’m fine now I really didn’t have that much last night

chris said you spent an hour before the call introducing me to him | Jisung

Minho | so maybe I did
Minho | why must you remind me

i wish i could’ve been there to experience it | Jisung
would have been even funnier | Jisung

Minho | really 🔪

haha very scary | Jisung

i was thinking | Jisung
i know it’s still way too early to tell, but | Jisung
you’re not working next summer, right? | Jisung

Minho | probably not
Minho | hmm… well at least not in june
Minho | why?

just thinking… | Jisung

Minho | cool. not suspicious at all

 🙂 | Jisung

>>>

Stop One turns out to be a little further out in the metro area, at a small, homely cafe in Kent. Minho orders an item that is more breakfast than lunch, a crab omelet, because he hasn’t really seen it on menus before, and snickers to himself when Jisung opts for the same thing.

“It sounded good!” Jisung says, defiantly, when he notices Minho grinning cheekily at him. “Besides, the dining halls never serve anything crab, ever.”

“I didn’t say anything,” Minho tells him. 

“Yeah, but you were looking at me like that—I felt like I had to defend myself,” Jisung replies good-naturedly. “Our tastes just matched again, because I was also thinking about getting that before you ordered first.”

Minho laughs, reminded of old times. Of course. Their tastes do match more often than not, sometimes to the point where their old friends would make fun of them for it. Seungmin and Changbin had always used to complain that they had some sort of supernatural brainwave connection, and Hyunjin had always teased them whenever they’d order the same dish when they went out, even though whenever it happened it had always been purely by coincidence—it’s not like Minho and Jisung had ever conspired to order the same thing. It had just happened . 

Which is, in a large part, how their entire friendship had formed. He and Jisung had just fallen together, clicked with each other easily after one, two conversations. And Minho will never directly admit it to Hyunjin, but he’s glad that his friend introduced the two of them to each other back in middle school. Sometimes he starts reminiscing on old school memories and finds himself filled with overflowing love for Hyunjin, and Seungmin, and Changbin, and Jisung, and for all these people who have integrated themselves into his life—because, well, he’s not sure what he would do without them. 

“Were you also thinking about high school?” Jisung breaks his thoughts, a wistful look on his face. “Sometimes it feels like so long ago, even though it’s barely been a year.”

“Hey,” Minho protests. “It’s been three years for me,” he states, and Jisung shoots him a sheepish smile. “Remember when we went to a tea shop we had never been to with Seungmin your sophomore year and both came out with the exact same order. Out of, like… fifty drinks on the menu?” 

“Yes!” Jisung cackles. “That was so funny. Seungmin looked like he had wanted to take the nearest bus home, ASAP.”

“That’s just Seungmin’s default expression around us, I think,” Minho laughs too.

They continue to chatter on, bringing up memory after memory until their food arrives, and Minho digs into his omelet eagerly, finding it to be just the right mix of egg, cheese, and crab. The potatoes on the side have been well-seasoned, too, and the meal ends up being fairly filling, in addition to renewing his energy. 

As he figured they would, he ends up fighting with Jisung over who should foot the bill, an episode that ends when Jisung determinedly walks up to the cashier desk with his credit card. 

But Minho, not one to stew in defeat, follows him up to the register and asks if he can also get two slices of the strawberry cheesecake that he had seen in the display fridge. Jisung gapes at him, affronted. He’s still whining when they walk out of the cafe, though it’s more petty annoyance at being somewhat one-upped than at having dessert for the road. 

“You always do this,” Jisung claims, after they’ve situated themselves back in his car. 

“What do you mean?” Minho asks innocently, as Jisung plugs their destination for the afternoon into his phone. 

“You’re always too nice, it’s like—”

“I just felt in a cake-y mood,” Minho chirps. “Particularly cheesecake.”

“No,” Jisung says rather aggressively, turning to him. “You always do this with your friends. It was because you know I like cheesecake, and—” His cheeks have flushed red, and he suddenly drops the rest of the sentence. “Anyway, thanks.”

Minho grins sweetly, amused by Jisung’s flustered reaction, but also knows Jisung has almost hit the nail on the head; he’s never been one to mind spending money for his friends, but he’s especially weak with Jisung around. Him and his heart—it always has been and always will. “I don’t know. That’s bold of you to jump to conclusions like that.” He makes a show of shrugging casually. “What if I had gotten both slices for myself?”

Jisung makes a harrumphing noise before he starts the car. “As if.” 

“I mean, I could still make room in my stomach for both,” Minho teases, satisfied when Jisung lets out a snort.

“Sure. And I would like to lay my claim to one of the slices right here and right now,” Jisung declares, pulling onto the main road. “Thanks for getting them,” he says again, scoffing, but their eyes meet in the front mirror again and Minho can see a smile. 

Minho laughs. He notices that the rain has also stopped, and that the sky is starting to clear up. “Okay. One slice of cheesecake for one Han Jisung, courtesy of me, reserved for the road. Would that be all?”

“I could also do with a new phone, maybe someone to cover the cost of tuition, and…”

“That’s what a sugar daddy is for, not me,” Minho laughs. 

“Eugh,” Jisung makes an exaggerated groan. “Such are the hardships of life.”

“The life of a college student,” Minho laments, and then brightens. “But hey, I’m sitting in a car with my best friend and I’m not the one driving.” He makes a show of leaning back into his seat, rowing down the window to let the wind pass through his hair. Now that the weather isn’t so bad, the breeze is nice—not too cold, nor wet. 

“I am going to abandon you on the side of the road,” Jisung says, glancing at him. And then: “Unfair,” he mutters, to himself, like an afterthought. 

“What’s unfair?” Minho asks. 

After a moment of silence, “You,” Jisung says, with no elaboration. 

“We did agree to switch off with driving on the longer legs,” Minho reminds him. “So if you’re actually concerned about that...”

“That’s not,” Jisung begins, and chooses not to elaborate once more. “Hey, have you ever seen a cat stick its head out a car window?”

“...No?” Minho replies. “What?” It’s such a random question that he actually takes a thoughtful moment to turn it over in his head. Then he realizes that there’s probably a reason he doesn’t see cats in cars often in general—they’d probably find less enjoyment in the act and more fear, instead. 

Jisung glances his way again. “Never mind.” He pauses, seems to deliberate over something. “The wind made you look unfairly good.” Pause. “Also kind of funny. Your mouth looked like a noodle,” he tacks on, laughing.

When the words sink in, Minho feels heat rise up his neck. “Oh?” he says lightly, even as his pulse picks up. 

It’s a half-compliment at best, but he’s never been one to take compliments very well. Especially compliments from Jisung, even when he’s giving them out in his usual joking manner. 

A deflective comment is already on the tip of his tongue, pushing past the stupid, agonizing clench in his chest. “Actually, I—” 

“Cats don’t really like the fast wind through an open window,” Jisung informs him, as if the last bit of their conversation had never occurred.

Minho deflates. In relief, disappointment? It doesn’t matter. He decides to humor Jisung. “I see, so that makes me a dog, then?”

“What even?” Jisung bursts into laughter. “I didn’t mean for you to draw any connections like that, and besides, you’ve always been a cat person—both in terms of liking cats and acting like cats.”

“Sure,” Minho says.

“Look, you were even blinking weirdly when the wind started hitting your face. Totally more catlike,” Jisung points out. 

“Sure?” Minho says, again, now half amused and half flustered because he definitely hadn’t noticed a behavior like that, and yet Jisung had, after sneaking glances at him for two, three seconds tops. 

But Jisung is just like that, Minho reminds himself. Jisung is a people-watcher, is naturally attentive to these things. “So…” he changes the subject. “How many miles is it to that mountain?”

---

That mountain, as Minho puts it, is actually what Jisung explains to be one of the tallest peaks in the continental U.S.—so, actually, Mount Rainier is nothing to be scoffed at. 

“I just forgot its name, okay?” Minho asks, as Jisung shrugs and tells him that he only remembers the fact, anyway, because he’d briefly researched into different trails before coming. 

“It’s not like both of us love hiking,” Jisung states, to which Minho definitely agrees; this road trip, in general, is probably one of the most extensive things either of them have planned, given that both of them are not outdoorsy people and usually spend their breaks staying in—and given that neither of them have really ever been the type to plan their trips either. But the more they’d looked into meeting up and going somewhere together over the summer, the more places they had found and collectively decided to add to the list. 

“All of my college friends that have already been here say it’s beautiful, so I was trying to find something that would have the highest reward for the least effort. Unless you wanna walk like ten miles today,” Jisung informs him. 

“No thanks.” Minho fakes a loud yawn. “I already feel like I could crash. Potentially.”

“We didn’t even eat lunch two hours ago,” Jisung points out, snickering. “Maybe you’re just getting old.”

Minho narrows his eyes at him. “I was up early, okay. And we’re all getting old. That’s how time works.”

“See, even your sense of humor is old!” Jisung declares. “Anyway—” his phone cuts in to inform him that he should make a right turn in half a mile— “the place we booked should be kinda closeby.”

“I couldn’t tell,” Minho dryly replies. Though they haven’t passed many lodgings yet, the mountain itself, looming ahead of them through the treetops, is an impressive sight to behold, and an obvious signifier that they’re close. Even though it’s mid-June, he can still see snow dappled across its rocky ridges, but the sun has also finally made an appearance, and Minho finds himself looking forward to the hike, just a little. 

First, though, they pull into a quaint, rustic lodge at the base of the mountain, where they check their luggage in for the night. The place is situated right in the middle of nature, with trees surrounding them and a pond right outside. Their room has a very cozy feel to it, though it is quite small—like the bed itself takes up half of the room’s space. Minho supposes that’s what vacationing as two college students, does, though; when he and Jisung had been booking all their rooms months ago, they’d always end up filing through reviews to find a place that seemed nice, and then just selected the cheapest room option from there. 

“Okay,” Jisung says, the word exiting his mouth with a punchy sound as he flops back into the bed. “We should go out soon, so we can do the entire hike in daylight,” he tells Minho. 

“Smart,” Minho replies, dropping into the bed next to him. Neither of them make any move to get back up.

After a couple minutes of them sinking into the mattress in silence, Jisung laughs. “We really should go…” he says. 

“Yes,” Minho agrees. Then he sighs; he knows he’s not going to be here again, at least not in the near future, so they should definitely make the most of it. “I’m going to get changed. Let’s try to be ready in ten?”

Ten turns out to be fifteen, because while Minho manages to pull himself off the bed it takes Jisung a little longer. Minho is merciless about it as they walk back out to his car, earning him an amusingly defensive Jisung. 

And then they realize the two slices of cheesecake Minho had purchased are still sitting in the car, so they sit in the parking lot in the shade of tall evergreens, taking bites with plastic spoons. Minho finds it to be a rather silly image. 

“I’m glad we aren’t going camping. I don’t think we’d survive.”

“We’d be fine,” Jisung waves it off. “But having a bed and a room is always so much nicer than a thin tent and a sleeping bag.”

“What about seeing the stars?” Minho asks. Truthfully, though, he has to agree. He supposes camping has its merits, but he’s gone on enough outdoor trips both for school and with his family when he was younger. 

“Could just take a quick walk outside here at night,” Jisung replies. “It’s not like we gotta spend the entire night outside to do that.”

“That’s awfully unromantic.”

“Who ever said it had to be romantic?” Jisung laughs. 

Minho shrugs, and then flushes, because he’d been halfway to imagining him and Jisung laid out together on some blanket under the stars. He doesn’t know how he had let his mouth get ahead of him like that—but then again, he’s with Jisung, and talking about anything comes easily with Jisung. Nearly.

So sue him. Perhaps he does want to do romantic things with Jisung. He just hasn’t really figured out how to do that, let alone determine whether or not Jisung could ever possibly want the same. And, really, he knows that camping and the likes can sometimes get as unromantic as possible, so it’s just his mind running off on hypothetical what-if scenarios that will never come true. 

“You’re right,” Minho ends up saying. “I can think of a lot better things. For example, eating cheesecake in a car. Very romantic.”

Jisung huffs. “Obviously.”

With that, they fall into comfortable silence as they work to finish their respective slices of cake. Then there’s another, quite long, drive that takes them to the trailhead, and it’s nearly four by the time they actually start up the trail. 

“Five miles?” Minho still balks at the distance, even though it could definitely be worse. 

“I know,” Jisung commiserates. “And it’s kinda steep. But the internet says that if we’re only hiking one trail, this is the one to take—because the views are great.”

Jisung seems mildly nervous, and Minho realizes the other had put more thought and research into this step of their itinerary than at first glance. “I’m sure they will be,” he reassures, “And besides, this old man —” Jisung laughs and Minho grins, “—could afford to take a longer walk once in a while.”

And great they are. Minho is glad he brought an extra layering jacket, because their already-high elevation only grows higher, and late afternoon brings chillier weather, but he can’t really compare the scenery to much else that he’s seen in his life. They pass by a lot of snow at the top of the trail, and in addition to the views of the peak Minho’s favorite part is probably the waterfall they pass on the loop down, as the sun has started to set. He and Jisung linger on the overlooking bridge for a while—despite paling at the sharp drop below, as neither of them have ever been good with heights—to listen to the rush of the water and feel the mist hit their faces. 

Minho wouldn’t say this out loud—both to avoid his own embarrassment in addition to an unnecessary boost to Jisung’s ego—but as they had taken a breather over the waterfall, part of the view he had stopped to admire had been Jisung himself, when the setting sun had cast his face in a startlingly attractive glow. 

He’s always thought Jisung has looked handsome, or, at least, once those initial awkward middle school and early high school years had subsided. But on the bridge, under warm orange rays of sun, there had been something breathtaking to the sight, and a swoop in his stomach that Minho knew hadn’t been caused by the sheer drop of the rocks below. Jisung had pretty eyes, prettier when he was laughing at something while talking to Minho, but even prettier still as he leaned forward against the rail, evening rays basking his features in gold.

Or maybe it had just been the past two years of physical distance between them speaking. 

Minho is still running over the image, hanging a gilded portrait in the walls of his head, by the time they reach Jisung’s car again. He knows both of them are tired, hungry, and sore, but nonetheless satisfied. 

“Maybe we shouldn’t have done this first,” Jisung says. “What if I wake up and can’t walk tomorrow?”

“I’m sure you won’t feel that bad,” Minho laughs. “Here, let me drive.”

Jisung starts to protest but Minho has already swiped the keys from his hand. “I don’t mind,” he says, even though he’s just as exhausted, because his driving companion is Jisung. He makes a show of going around the car to open the shotgun door for Jisung like Jisung had for him earlier, beckoning for Jisung to get in. 

“Alright,” Jisung easily acquiesces, and Minho grins crookedly, pleased. 

“We should drive out a little to find somewhere to have dinner,” he says, as they leave.

“Yeah,” Jisung says, and side-eyes Minho to check that he’s watching when he pokes his stomach. “I’m hungry.” 

“I know,” Minho replies, laughing quietly—the sun has now almost fully set, giving their ride a sleepier atmosphere. That, and Jisung’s voice has gone fuzzy; he seems like he could genuinely conk out.

It’s another long drive back; then a little longer still as they pass their lodge on the way down. Dinner is a small pizza place because it’s the first thing Minho spots, and when he asks Jisung if that sounds good and gets no response he realizes that the other actually has dozed off. 

“You better be fine with this,” Minho says to himself, as he parks the car and turns to look at Jisung. In the car’s dim inside lighting, he can see Jisung’s head resting against the side of the door, chest rising and falling with his breaths. He almost feels bad waking Jisung up, but he knows Jisung will appreciate the food, even if it means losing some extra time to sleep.

“Hey,” Minho says, placing a gentle hand on Jisung’s shoulder. “Dinner.”

Jisung returns to consciousness with groggy blinking of his eyes, and turns to glance at Minho. “Ah,” he says, obviously, “I fell asleep.”

“That you did,” Minho laughs, finding it hard to tear his gaze away from Jisung’s sleepy eyes and ruffled hair. 

Jisung stretches, then squints outside at the lights. “Yum. Pizza.”

Minho snorts, propping his car door open. “Let’s go.”

They finish their food in record time, splitting a pizza that is par for the course—but probably tastes better because of the appetites they’d accrued after the physical exertion. Jisung makes a show of patting his stomach as they leave, insisting that he’s fully awake to drive back to their room. But Minho still has the keys, and Jisung doesn’t put up much of a fight before accepting the passenger side seat again. 

When they step back into their room, Jisung falls face-first into the bed, and Minho has to shove him around, prod him to get back up. 

“Shower,” he orders Jisung, who groans back at him. “You said you weren’t tired anymore.”

“That was twenty minutes ago,” Jisung all but whines. “Now…”

Minho ends up showering first, coming back out to find Jisung sprawled out across the bed and quietly snoring. Of course, he thinks, to no surprise. He has less remorse this time as he shakes Jisung awake, steering him to the bathroom. 

“You’ll thank me in the morning,” Minho tells him. “We should be up early. Maybe seven or eight, remember?”

“Oh, yeah…” Jisung mumbles, and then closes the door. Minho hears the water start, and collapses into the bed himself, reveling in the crisp and warm feeling of the covers as he slides under them. 

His eyes are heavy when he hears Jisung coming back out. 

Jisung lets out some sort of huff. “Look at you.”

What do you mean, Minho wants to defensively retort, but instead what happens is that his tired body does nothing. 

There is shuffling around the room and what Minho can only assume is Jisung putting on clothes, before the noise stops. Then Minho registers an unexpected touch at his forehead; before he can react, the touch turns into a sweeping motion as Jisung pushes his hair back, tucking it behind his ears. 

His breath catches before he regulates it back into a steady in and out; he doesn’t think Jisung realizes he is still awake, and he doesn’t really want Jisung to realize right now.

The fingers move upward to card through his hair. Minho’s not sure what has compelled Jisung to do this, but even as someone who has never really initiated much physical touch—Jisung has always been the touchier one of them—he has to admit that the feeling is surprisingly pleasant and comforting. So much so that he actually does fall asleep to it, to Jisung rhythmically tracing the lines of his hair. 

<<<

yoooo | Jisung
i have over a hundred pages of reading to do tonight | Jisung
and could use some company!! | Jisung

Minho | that’s rough

are you going to make me ask | Jisung

Minho | ask what?

okay if that’s how it is | Jisung

Minho | I was kidding sorry

Minho | I was just in the middle of making dinner
Minho | han jisung don’t ghost me
Minho | [Started a video call]

Jisung picks up the call to a knife in his face.

“Good afternoon,” Minho greets him behind the close-up view of the blade covering the camera. The knife disappears, and Minho’s forehead comes into view. “Wanna see what I have so far?”

“Sure,” Jisung laughs. 

The camera pans to display diced vegetables on a cutting board. “Onion, bell pepper…we don’t really have a grater so I’m trying to cut garlic myself but I can never get the pieces small enough,” Minho explains. “But I also have chicken that I’m going to cook the vegetables with… and then… aha!” 

Jisung watches a blurry fridge door open and a bag of something comes out. “Peas, carrots, corn,” Minho lists off the bag. “I’ll just mix some of this with leftover rice and egg and make fried rice…and if there’s too much leftover rice then I’ll just have leftovers of leftovers tomorrow.”

“Fancy,” Jisung says. 

“Actually, if you want real fancy there is steak in the fridge. But I’m saving that for after midterms,” Minho laments, pointedly making eye contact with him through their screens. “Ah, to be a high schooler, back home again eating my parents’ food.”

Jisung resists from rolling his eyes. “You like cooking, though.”

“Can’t deny that,” Minho tells him. “You should try it sometime.”

“I am!” Jisung is quick to defend. “Yesterday I…cooked eggs and bacon on the stove, for breakfast!”

“Damn,” Minho remarks. “You’re practically on your way to joining a cooking show.”

“Shut up,” Jisung says. “You wish you could try my breakfast.”

“I guess I can’t entirely deny that either,” Minho says, face softening in a way that makes Jisung’s insides constrict and twist into knots. Before Jisung can say something overly mushy like miss you too, the moment passes and Minho’s face disappears from view; chopping noises ensue. 

“So, anyway, I should finish reading this book for my lit class tomorrow, and I may have put off a big chunk of it until the last day,” Jisung scrambles to continue the conversation, throat oddly dry. 

“What book?” Minho asks. The chopping noises stop and his voice grows more distant. Something whirs to life. “I’m turning on the stove fan, so tell me if you can’t hear me.”

“Hard Times,” Jisung tells him. 

“I thought we read that in high school?”

“I didn’t,” Jisung says, miserably. “I don’t dislike the book that much, but it does drag on.”

“Hmm… sounds like you’re having a hard time.” 

“I knew you wouldn’t be able to resist at some point,” Jisung groans. “So predictable.”

“Me? Predictable?” Minho scoffs. His voice wafts from one side of the speakers to another; Jisung hears a pan begin sizzling. 

“Yes,” Jisung says. “And distracting. I should probably stop calling you when I want to actually get stuff done.”

“But,” Minho says. 

“But,” Jisung agrees. There’s no need to finish the sentence—they both know how it ends—but he does anyway. “I like calling you.” He makes sure to say it in an obnoxiously cutesy manner for the most effective delivery, and to conceal how dangerously earnest it might have come out of his mouth otherwise.

“I’m ending the call.” Jisung can’t see Minho from the camera’s current position, but he can imagine the expression the other is making—his mouth is probably a blank line, his eyes unimpressed. 

“No—wait!” Jisung laughs. “I’m gonna read now, so it’ll be peaceful and quiet.”

“If you say so,” Minho dubiously replies. There is an expectant pause. “Well? Did you start reading? The book isn’t going to read itself.”

“Okay,” Jisung sighs, flipping to his last-bookmarked page.

>>>

He sleeps well. They probably both do; tired from the previous day. Minho suspects that having Jisung next to him might have something to do with it, too, but when he wakes up it’s only a few minutes before his alarm and he decides it’s too early to think about reasons for feeling more well-rested than usual. 

Jisung is still knocked out, breaths coming out in soft exhales. His face has missed the pillow, one cheek squashed into the sheets, and the blankets have covered his chin and his mouth. Minho stares, endeared, before he notices that Jisung is curled up towards his side of the bed and realizes that the faintest pull he feels is from one of Jisung’s hands, which must have latched onto the loose material of Minho’s shirt at some point in the night. 

His heart skips a beat, once, twice. All of a sudden, Minho knows he needs to get up. He can’t stay here right now, not when he wants to pull Jisung close to his chest and kiss his forehead. Or leave multiple kisses, dot them like stars.

As he sits up, though, his alarm goes off, and Jisung stirs, eyes cracking open and searching for—him. 

“Morning,” Minho croaks when Jisung blearily grins up at him, hoping he sounds as calm as Jisung looks. He reaches over Jisung to turn off the alarm, and when his hand grazes Jisung’s ear on the way to his phone the fleeting contact is searing. 

Jisung mumbles something incoherent, then rolls over and groans into the bed. Neither of them move for a moment; Jisung actually looks like he’s about to knock back out when he suddenly steps out of the bed in one surprisingly swift movement. 

“Just so you know, that took a lot of effort,” Jisung says, stumbling off to the bathroom. 

A half-relieved, half-amused smile makes its way up Minho’s face, and—with an equally forceful amount of effort—Minho extricates himself from the covers and attempts to steel his weak, weak heart. 

---

He’s grateful the place offers a rather extensive free breakfast downstairs—there’s fruit, hot food, and an assortment of pastries that has Jisung’s eyes lighting up. They fuel up for the drive, and, more refreshed from his sleep than he’d anticipated, Minho does not have to fill his cup with coffee. 

When they kick off the second leg of their journey both of them are in good spirits and Jisung has found a wild, raucous rock song on the radio to bob his head to, with the window rowed down and socked feet propped onto the dashboard and the whole shebang. Practically a picture-perfect model of a road trip.  

Minho is still driving, though he has agreed to switch off with Jisung later in the day—they have about eight hours of driving to do to get to their destination for the night, a lodge along the southern Oregon coast.

As Jisung delights in the energizing music and the rush of wind through his hair, Minho grins and reminisces. 

“Remember in high school…” he begins.

“What!” Jisung whips his head away from the window to loudly ask him, and Minho just ends up laughing. 

“High school!” He replies, raising his voice so it can be heard over everything else, and then realizes he should probably elaborate. “When you snuck over to my house at midnight and we took a drive to the middle of nowhere!”

“Oh yeah!” Jisung says, and then dials the music down so they can speak normally. “That was wild. I thought we were actually going to get lost.”

Back during the winter of Minho’s senior year, Jisung had suddenly come over one night—unannounced except for a single text saying yo look out your window right now when he had already arrived. When a surprised Minho had texted back wtf, Jisung had replied wanna go somewhere? 

And well, Minho was the only one with the car, and he also happened to be probably the only one who would entertain Jisung’s silly ideas at the hour. Mostly, though, Minho hadn’t ever been one to deny more time with Jisung, or deny Jisung in general. 

So they piled into Minho’s sedan and Minho had begun driving. To nowhere in particular, until—too busy giggling about some funny lunchtime incident with Jisung—he’d taken some lesser-known turn and they’d ended up on a dimly lit road that seemed to be surrounded by cornfields. 

Jisung had turned to him with a very serious look in his eye, and said, “I think we should turn the car around.”

Minho, ever the little shit, had proceeded to start telling an internet deep-dive horror story about a driver who had ended up in some alternate reality and was doomed from the moment he had entered. Jisung hadn’t taken it particularly well, so Minho had finally made a U-turn and gone back in the direction of their hometown—or at least, so he’d thought. 

After a few more wrong turns and fields of old farmland, they’d ended up in a neighboring city, and Minho, still feeling bad for spooking Jisung, had pulled into a cafe that was still open at the hour, insistent on treating the other to a drink. 

“It would have still been hard to get lost,” Minho points out, now, in response to Jisung. “I probably should have used the GPS sooner, though.”

“That’s true,” Jisung agrees. 

“Have you ever heard this story where a group of friends is driving along the West Coast, actually, and—”

“Stop!” Jisung shushes him right there, and Minho laughs because he’s just pulling Jisung’s leg. 

“I didn’t actually have a story, but…”

“I still sometimes think about the one you told that night,” Jisung complains, faking shivers.

“Sorry,” Minho says, genuinely remorseful. “I thought hot chocolate would have undone that.”

Jisung rolls his eyes, then snorts. “Don’t be sorry. My stomach has good memories of that night, at least.”

They’d ended up ordering two mugs of hot chocolate, along with some apple pie that had caught Jisung’s eye in the display window. Minho had steered the topic back to more lighthearted teenage things, like teasing Jisung about the crush he had harbored at the time for… Changbin, of all people.

Minho remembers being quite jealous until it had passed over, even if Jisung hadn’t been very serious about it to begin with. It had come up, been almost pried out of Jisung’s mouth in some old conversation, and Jisung later admitted that it had come and gone pretty quickly. 

But Minho recalls how, more than once, he’d asked himself what Changbin had that he didn’t, or why Jisung had liked Changbin like that and not him. Later, Jisung had also told him that it hadn’t been as much of a crush as it had been him looking up to Changbin in that way because he’d admired Changbin’s confidence and the way he had held himself. 

What about me, Minho had wanted to ask. He did ask, that night—sparked by only the courage of stupid adrenaline they’d gotten trying to make their way back to civilization—half as a joke and half to see what Jisung would actually say, but Jisung, seemingly at a loss for an answer, had just shrugged. 

Minho had been glad for the good food and warm drinks, because he’d assumed the response indicated that Jisung hadn’t ever thought about him in that way before. Which was fine, because Jisung had always been very vocal about how Minho was his favorite friend and Minho would always be content with that, even if he wanted more, even when he’d been quietly nursing a crush on Jisung at the time.

Though—he still is nursing one. And it’s more than a crush, now, if Minho allows himself to be honest about it. 

“You shouldn’t think so hard,” Jisung cuts in. But it’s the feeling of a gentle hand on his arm that jolts him out of his reverie, not Jisung’s voice. Jisung retracts his hand. “Or else we’re going to end up in the wrong city, again.”

“My phone GPS is literally set to the highest volume,” Minho tells him, the sensation of Jisung’s fingertips lingering against his skin. “I don’t think I could take a wrong turn if I wanted to.”

“I guess,” Jisung says dubiously.

Minho decides to play along. “You seem to have little faith in me when I’ve been driving much longer than you have. And when I was your teacher.”

“That’s irrelevant,” Jisung snootily crosses his arms and sticks his chin up higher. “What if I’m actually fearing for my life right now?”

“Ah, I see,” Minho remarks, and presses further down on the gas pedal—for the briefest second—just enough to make the car jerk forward a little, and Jisung yelps. 

“There is a speed limit!” he says, voice shrill. 

“Just checking to make sure you knew that,” Minho says lightly. “And that I am a very safe driver.”

Jisung responds by turning the radio back up. “What was that?” he pretends not to hear. 

Their childish bickering continues. Minho doesn’t feel a single bit bad for persisting in it.

---

“I have to pee,” Minho tells Jisung, pulling into a gas station. “And we need gas. Can you?”

“Yeah, sure,” Jisung agrees, as Minho makes a beeline for the mini-mart. When he comes back out, Jisung is standing outside by the car, nozzle docked in the tank. 

“I meant to grab my phone from the center compartment, but I ended up with yours,” Jisung greets him, waving a very familiar phone screen in his face. “I didn’t know you still had this as your background.” 

“Oh,” Minho says, hoping his ears are less red than they feel. “Yeah.”

The incriminating background in question is from two years ago, the last time Minho had seen Jisung in person. He’d come back from his first year of college for the summer, and had helped teach Jisung how to drive. At the end of the summer, Jisung had driven the two of them to the nearest beach and it had been the first time Minho had gotten fully in the water—he’d never really learned to swim so he’d always waded, close to shore. The specific shot is in the beach parking lot, when Jisung had stolen Minho’s phone and taken a picture. He’s making an exaggerated winky face at the camera, wet bangs dangling over his eyes, while Minho, equally dripping, is caught mid-turn with a scowl on his face. 

But the picture had stuck, and Minho can’t help but think fondly back on that summer’s memories whenever he looks at the screen. 

He expects Jisung to tease him about it—something like, wow you really missed me that much, huh? —but instead all Jisung says is, “You should get a new one.”

“What—” Minho begins, but Jisung is shoving his phone into his hands. 

“Cheese!” Jisung insists, as Minho opens the camera app and reluctantly snaps a shot. 

It’s probably even worse—when the background is the gas station and not palm trees against a blue sky and blue ocean, and when the face Jisung pulls is more ridiculous this time, some lip bite accompanied by a peace sign. Minho stares at his neutral deadpan and Jisung’s comical gesture and laughs. 

“Set it!” Jisung tells him. “At least for this week.”

It’s easily settled; after hovering over the photo and deeming it a combination of both silly and cute, Minho more than readily complies.

---

Jisung glances at the clock for probably the fourth time in the last ten minutes, and Minho can’t help but snort. 

“Staring at the time isn’t going to make it pass any sooner,” he says, moving to cover the display with his hands. 

“No,” Jisung whines, pulling an exaggerated face. They had switched off after lunch, and now it’s mid-afternoon and Jisung has started to get a little antsy behind the wheel. Minho knows they’re close, though, both because the phone tells them they’re scheduled to arrive in half hour, and also because this stretch of the highway has taken them from green, vegetation-thick inland to blue, sweeping ocean—right now, they’re traveling directly along the coast.

“We’re almost there,” he replies.

“I know,” Jisung says. “And it’s not like I want the time to pass faster—I just want to reach our next stop faster.”

Minho raises an eyebrow, sharp tongue already on its way to another teasing remark. “The two are pretty similar.”

“They aren’t,” Jisung insists. His head, which had been nodding along to the band playing on the radio, stops in its movement. 

“Okay…?” Minho prompts him.

“You’re going to make me say it, aren’t you?” Jisung asks, like Minho is privy to Jisung’s thoughts. His assumption isn’t unwarranted; there’s always a good chance Minho might truly be able to guess what Jisung has to say at a given moment. However, right now Minho doesn’t have a clue as to what the other is insinuating. 

“Say what?” Minho asks, leaning an elbow against the side of the car to look at Jisung. Their windows are down, just a crack, and he thinks he can barely smell the salt, feel the mist of a spray, in the air flowing through the car. 

“Now I don’t want to,” Jisung says, childishly. “It’s dumb.”

“I don’t think what you say is ever dumb—” Minho pauses. “Well—” He pauses again, well aware that they’ve both had some rather silly things come out of their mouths before. “You know what I mean.”

“That’s true,” Jisung says. Minho observes him as he worries his lower lip with his teeth, and then words come rushing out. “I don’t want the time to pass faster because this is time that I’m spending with you,” he starts. “I do want to reach our lodge faster so we have the rest of the time to explore the area together.”

“Oh,” Minho says. His fingers twitch—his first instinct had been to bring a bashful hand up to cover his mouth, a bashful hand to cover a bashful smile. He folds his fingers into a fist instead, carefully, one by one, to distract himself. To pretend that his fingers are the culprits and not his heart.

It’s not like Jisung is saying anything he doesn’t already know, but hearing it directly from Jisung’s mouth has Minho feeling faint, like he has to ask Jisung to stop the car so he can catch his breath for a moment. Or maybe so he can kiss Jisung senseless against the sea spray and warm sun.

“See, dumb and cheesy,” Jisung mumbles. 

“Not dumb,” Minho firmly repeats, past the warmth that has begun to spread outward from his chest. He knows Jisung doesn’t mean it like… that …, but sometimes he wishes Jisung wouldn’t say such things because they make him want to take Jisung’s hands in his—make him want to say dumber, cheesier things back and cling to the idea that Jisung might want what he wants, too. 

“It’s the same for me too,” Minho says, careful. Controlled. “I mean, that’s what road trips are for, right? The driving, the music, the scenery… and mostly, the company.” He knows this is what Jisung means. “If we’re spending so many hours in a car together, you better bet I want to enjoy the company.”

“Good,” Jisung says, satisfied. His rhythmic head-bobbing resumes, a little less violent but a little more enthusiastic, and his fingertips do a little happy dance on the wheel. “Anyway, you’re right about the scenery too, it’s really pretty here.” 

He lets the windows down further, the fresh air and sea salt breeze rushing in all at once. This serves extra enlivening for Jisung—maybe a little too much—because suddenly he’s beaming, foot stepping down harder on the gas. 

Minho lets out a sharp gasp; Jisung has to slam the brakes before they get too close to the car in front. 

“Sorry,” Jisung says, sheepish grin on his face. “I got a little excited.” 

“If we crash then we’re never going to arrive. Anywhere,” Minho remarks, ominously. Punctuated with a threatening eyebrow wiggle and all.

Jisung shoots him a cheeky thumbs-up, one hand temporarily off the wheel. “Smart observation,” he says. 

Their car swerves out of its lane for a fraction of a second. Minho gives his seatbelt an extra tug, allowing it to snap back loud enough for Jisung to hear. 

“I want to take back everything I just said—I’m never sitting in a car with you again,” he teases, and Jisung laughs loudly, brashly, the sound half echoing around the car and half whisked away by the wind brushing their open windows.

“Unfortunately, like you said,” Jisung retorts, “You’re stuck with me in this car the whole week.”

Minho snorts and glances back at Jisung’s hands, both now dutifully wrapped around the steering wheel. He will always sit in a car with Jisung, regardless of the destination, and they both know it. The sentiment holds especially true here—with a boisterously-grinning Jisung to his left and the rolling blue Pacific to his right, there’s nowhere else he’d rather be.

---

They make it three minutes to their destination for the night before Jisung is asking to pull over. Jisung’s the one asking because they’d switched off driving yet again, when Minho had wanted to laugh at the restlessness exuding from Jisung and Jisung had easily given up his spot behind the wheel. 

“Look,” Jisung points out now, as they pass by a sign, “Kissing Rock Beach—” he giggles, and that’s how Minho knows Jisung is getting really antsy. “That sounds interesting, we should check it out.”

“It’s probably just a ploy to get tourists like you to stop,” Minho says. They’re so close that he’s tempted to keep driving, but he pulls into the parking lot along the road, watches all the cars behind them soar past, because he’s unable to say no to the whims of Jisung.  

“I knew you were curious, too,” Jisung grins triumphantly, one leg already out the car.

“Sure,” Minho says. This is one of the rare times that a sure is easier than the truth. But Jisung’s not entirely wrong, so he hauls himself outside. The breeze is calm now that they aren’t driving into it, and he can hear the crash of waves clearly too. He steps forward to the overlook and to take in the beach down below, along with a rock jutting out the shoreline. There’s also a large rock formation right by the parking lot that Minho had noticed pulling up; if he’s being honest, though, he can’t tell which one is the namesake of the place.

“That doesn’t look very much like a kiss,” Jisung has come to stand next to him, sounding mildly disappointed. “Only if you look really hard. Or maybe it’s our angle?”

“Told you,” Minho is the one with a victorious note in his voice this time, earning a jab to his shoulder. 

“The view is still pretty, though,” Jisung says. He’s not wrong; up here the beach looks smooth, washed clean by the sunlit water. “Should we go down?”

“Hmm, tell you what,” Minho says, an idea forming in his head. “We go and check in now, maybe get something to eat that’s not gas station food first, and then we could come back later and maybe catch the sunset?”

Now this sounds a little romantic, though Minho tells himself Jisung won’t read too much into it. 

“That sounds good,” Jisung agrees. “I guess I can never say no to good food.”

Minho nods. Pretends to be an evil villain sitting in one of those human-swallowing chairs. “All part of my master plan.” 

Jisung jabs him in the side and bolts for the car.

Another twenty minutes later, they’ve wheeled their suitcases into the room and Jisung has once again made himself comfortable on the bed, all sprawled out. Minho grins and prods his legs. “Are we doing a repeat of yesterday?”

“No,” Jisung groans, and gets up reluctantly, and they find a cozy restaurant nearby serving fresh, grilled fish. It’s nice, nice enough that a content drowsiness hits Minho after they’ve finished eating and he’s tempted to hit the sack early instead. Funnily enough, Jisung is the one that holds him to his words, driving them back to the beach just in time for them to catch the tail end of the sunset. 

The way down to the beach is short and they take to walking along the long expanse of shore as the sun dips below the horizon. Minho attempts to take a few photos but the dimming light makes it hard to capture both the sunset and Jisung (to Jisung’s half-hearted protests). In the end he settles for separate photos—one of the sunset and another of a blurry Jisung chasing an innocent sandpiper into the water. He’s sure Jisung has snapped a few of him at equally unsuspecting moments, but he can’t really protest. 

They’re still walking along the shore when the sun takes its last rays with it into the ocean, and when the stars start to appear on the opposite end of the sky. Out here, beneath the small town and far from big city lights, the stars seem to be winking down at them, twinkling all the way back to the car. 

Jisung has latched onto Minho’s arm—or, more aptly, Minho’s sleeve—his other hand carrying shoes and socks he’d taken off to avoid getting wet. 

“It’s getting cooler,” Jisung had said, when they’d finally decided to turn around. He’d picked up something in the sand, pocketing it before Minho could squint at it in the darkness, and had then come sprinting back towards him, worming his hand inside Minho’s arm to grip the crook of his elbow. Minho had been the only one to bring a jacket, and Jisung had decided to cling to his side for it. 

When Minho glances behind them he can’t see much but he can imagine it, the way their footprints have merged together in the sand: Jisung’s imprints veering rapidly towards his before they sloppily come together, a jumble of feet and a crooked trail.

The beach seems especially quiet now; the other tourists have probably left and the two of them are walking far enough from shore that the waves come less as crashes and more as a rhythmic washes of noise, fading in and out, in and out. Minho keeps glancing up at the stars—drawn to the way they’re so much brighter and almost within reach, here—and detects a pressure on his shoulder as he realizes Jisung has tilted his head against him to look up, too. 

An indescribable feeling fills Minho’s chest, floods his face, his hands, his bare feet. It’s like he’s become acutely aware of the billions of grains of sand spread finely beneath them, the millions of stars hung wondrously above them. And at the focal point of this infiniteness, he’s aware of Jisung’s flyaway hairs tickling his neck, Jisung’s warm fingers pressing steadily into his elbow, Jisung’s quiet exhales melting into the salty, tide-induced breeze. 

They’ve stopped moving, Minho registers that. Mostly because the five fingers around his elbow are pressing harder, questioning.

“It’s beautiful, right?” Jisung asks. 

Minho turns his head and his breath is whisked away. The dark strands of Jisung’s hair are lost to the night, leaving his face bright and clear; starry reflections dance in his eyes and a serene smile streaks across his face. 

“Yeah,” Minho says, so breathless it’s a near-whisper. He breaks the eye contact he hadn’t realized they’d been holding and wills his voice back into his throat. “It is.”

“It’s insane,” Jisung has lowered his voice to match Minho’s level. “I forgot the sky could look like this.”

“Right?” Minho laughs, a shaky thing, and starts leading them down the beach again. Jisung’s head returns to rest on his shoulder and he’s ready to combust, to become one of those dying stars above. It wouldn’t be so bad, Minho thinks, being one with the stars.

He wonders if Jisung can feel his controlled breaths in the careful rise and fall of his shoulders, or, maybe, the way his heart is thumping so loud against the distant ocean waves. 

He doesn’t ask. Maybe he will one day, maybe he will ask if Jisung can ever feel his heart, the way it always reaches for him. For now, he fists his hands into his pockets and soaks in the macrocosm—and Jisung. 

---

Minho throws himself face-down into the bed, and hears Jisung’s laughter bouncing off the walls of the room before he disappears into the shower. Minho laughs into the sheets too, mostly to himself. Just when he thought he couldn’t feel more, here comes something—a moment on a beach, no more than a few overwhelming minutes—to prove him wrong. 

When Jisung comes back out and Minho sits up, planting his toes into the fuzz of the carpet, he thinks he can still feel the world spinning beneath him. The world has always been spinning; it’s been spinning since he and Jisung met in middle school, since their friendship cemented in high school, and at every point in his life. But he can really feel it, feel the inevitable passing of time like grains of sand underneath his feet. 

Jisung gives him a questioning glance when Minho sits on the edge of the bed for a moment too long; Minho shoots him back a weak smile, then dips into the bathroom as fast as possible. 

Back there, Minho had been a speck of nothing in a sea of everything, and still that had been a breathtaking feeling—like the course of the universe had altered. Except nothing had really changed; Minho had already been and would continue to be in love with his best friend.

<<<

“Minho…?”

“Hi?” The voice on the other end says back, parts confused and bemused. 

“I…uh, didn’t expect you to actually pick up,” Jisung says. “It’s past midnight here, so it’s dead in the middle of the night there. Sorry. Did I wake you up?”

Minho laughs, a tinny but unmistakable sound that goes straight to Jisung’s stomach, a shot of warmth. He just misses Minho so much. He buries his face into his pillow, glad that he’d chosen to dial a voice call. Not that Minho would be able to see him through the screen, anyway, with his room dark. 

“I should be asleep,” Minho affirms. “But.”

“But what?” Jisung asks, rolling back onto his side.

“It’s funny, I was sleeping maybe up until half an hour ago? And then I woke up to some commotion, and went to the window to peek outside, and I saw someone on the street below the apartment feeding a flock of pigeons,” he laughs again. “And then the pigeons got scared away by a couple stray cats. It was entertaining. So you caught me just as I was about to go back to bed.”

“Wow,” Jisung feels a smile breaking across his face. “That’s… wild.”

“Right? You just happened to call on such an eventful night,” Minho says. “So what’s up on your end?”

“Dunno,” Jisung replies. “The usual, I guess.”

“Tired…? Stressed?” 

“Maybe. I mean finals are coming up, so…”

“Yeah,” Minho says. “Oh—it’ll be your first set of college finals,” he teases. 

“Uh huh,” Jisung dryly agrees. “Scary.”

“Okay, so not that stressed, then,” Minho says. He doesn’t prod further, which Jisung is thankful for, because really the only reason he’d had for calling was because he wanted to hear Minho’s voice. Which feels lame to say out loud, even if Minho wouldn’t make too much fun of him for it.

“You know, by the way, those stray cats I mentioned earlier? Actually, I…”

Jisung falls asleep to Minho rambling on about the cat-centric stories he’s garnered recently. It feels a little selfish, a little indulgent, but mostly safe, and easy, and natural to drift off when Minho’s on the other end of the line, and when he wakes up in the morning to no alarm—and his phone’s dead battery—he knows Minho had let the call run, too.

>>>

The leg to San Francisco is another long one, but it boasts a full day of driving and a full day of beautiful scenery. After passing through a beautiful stretch of redwood forest, they have brunch in an old port town, at a nice cafe along the bayfront. 

Then it’s more redwoods, tall canopies of green craning their heads to the sky and shading the road, and then, because they’d opted for a longer, but more scenic route: ocean, and ocean, and ocean. Gray, muddled ocean, shrouded in mystique under the coastal fog, and then blue, rich ocean, twinkling magically once the sun breaks through. Minho doesn’t think he could ever get tired of the endless blue and green, of the sunbeams dancing across the waves, nor of the endless conversations he has with Jisung along the way. 

Minho thinks they’re falling for another tourist trap again when Jisung has him following the signs to a glass beach, but he’s pleasantly surprised; they take a half-hour detour collecting various pieces of translucent glass among the sand and stones, all smoothed over and spit out by the ocean. 

They eventually pull away from blue, merging back onto the 101, and by the time they finally reunite with the water, coming down into the bay on the Golden Gate, it’s evening. The sun has just started to set, casting the city in real shades of gold. They’re tired, both having driven long stretches, and they make a quick stop at a burger place before crashing at their room for the night. 

But Minho hasn’t ever felt so good feeling tired. When Jisung curls up to him on the bed, Minho doesn’t have the capacity to overthink it anymore; he pulls Jisung into him, back to chest, and the last thing he hears is Jisung’s sleepy exhale turning into a giggle—he grins against Jisung’s neck and falls into slumberland.

<<<

“I can’t see anything.”

“That’s because the lights are off.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, oh.”

“You’re under my blankets, now.” A laugh. Jisung is tired, delirious, and without filters. “So you can be in extra darkness, in the dark. Maybe if you try hard enough you can see my face?”

A pause. “Nope, not really,” Minho laughs with him. “Just lots of gray.” Jisung is buried under the covers, rolled on his side and facing his phone. He sees Minho turn on his video, too, and is met with equally grainy gray-black pixels, anything else indiscernible and lost in the dark. “My lights are off too.”

“Sleepy times for all,” Jisung announces. “I’m sleeping early tonight because I didn’t last night and now my brain just feels foggy and the bed feels very inviting.”

“Uh huh.” Another laugh, quieter this time. “You brushed your teeth before crawling in, right?”

“Yeah, mom.”

“Just making sure!” 

“Well, did you?” Jisung shoots back.

“Of course.” A defensive reply.

“Of course,” Jisung mimics, whiny and annoying. “Of course, I, Lee Minho, wouldn’t even think of not brushing my teeth before going to bed. Ever. I brush my teeth, and floss every night, and I probably also say good night to the cats outside before I—”

“Are you saying you don’t floss?”

“Aha —I do!” The words are said so victoriously that both of them dissolve into more laughter. 

“The dance doesn’t count.”

“That’s low, you know I wasn’t even thinking about the dance.”

“And your guess about the cats is wrong,” Minho continues. “I say good morning to the cats if I see them when I go out to class.”

“Oh no, how could you leave the cats outside at night without a bedtime story and warm pets?” 

“Shut up,” Minho says through his laughter. “The cats aren’t like you.”

“Woah,” Jisung replies. “Woah, are you saying I need bedtime stories and warm pets? That’s a little presumptuous of you—last time I checked, I never received  or asked for either.”

“Cuddles, then,” Minho corrects. He is being so, so, obnoxious. Jisung wants to hate him, but only feels stupidly mushy feelings bubbling further up his chest. “Aww, look Jisung, you’re under the covers right now, getting cuddles from the blankets.”

“If I had my lights on you’d be able to see me glaring at you through the screen.”

“Last time I checked,” Minho ignores him, “I was telling you some bedtime stories, too. On our last call. And you fell asleep so fast.”

“Okay,” Jisung says dryly. “You got me. I am in fact a cat in a human suit. Meow. Meow meow. Congratulations on your discovery.”

“Shhh,” Minho coos. “I’ll pet you now, no need to hiss at me.”

“I wasn’t hissing?” 

“Maybe not. But almost.”

“Goodnight, then.”

“Wait—let me tell you a story.” 

“And let me guess, it’s a bedtime story?” Jisung knows Minho is teasing but he hopes anyway, that Minho doesn’t want the call to end as much as he does. Jisung wasn’t really going to end it; he was just threatening in good fun, but Minho had jumped to reply so fast that it makes Jisung feel warmer, cozier, in his homemade alcove. 

“It could be, if it makes you fall asleep on me again.” He can hear it, the sly smile in Minho’s voice. But the slyness gives way to earnesty. “I’ve been meaning to tell you about this, though, the other day I passed by…”

Jisung does fall asleep on Minho again. 

The next morning, Minho pretends to be offended. 

“Are my stories just boring?” he asks, as they call again over Jisung’s hassle to get ready for class.

“Nah,” Jisung replies. He’s searching for a converter cord for his USBs, and words are thoughtlessly spilling out of his mouth. “You’ve just got a nice storytelling voice. It’s kinda cozy, you know? For the record, I am trying to listen to what you’re saying, but I was already kind of tired and I couldn’t help falling asleep…”

There’s a prolonged pause and Jisung wonders if he’s said too much. But when he peers back at the screen of his phone Minho is smiling at him and any embarrassment that had surfaced quickly fades. Instead his stunned heart trips twice—why does Minho have to smile at him like that ? He shifts his attention back to the clutter beneath his desk, as Minho says, “You better have slept well, then.”

“I did,” Jisung chirps, extra-enthusiastic as he’s found the cable he was looking for. “Best sleep I’ve had since the last time we called.”

“I’m glad,” Minho leans back, types something on his laptop—he’s working on some sort of paper on his end of the call. He glances back at his phone screen, briefly, though. “You should return the favor sometime. I think I could also use a good bedtime story once in a while.”

“I’ll think of one. Tonight?” Jisung suggests, dropping the cord into his backpack. He’s going to be late for class. He almost always is, whenever he decides to call Minho. But Minho doesn’t need to know that. 

Minho’s grin expands. Jisung’s toes curl, plunging into the fur of the carpet. Which reminds him that he needs socks, so that he can put on his shoes and leave for class. 

“Yeah, that sounds good,” Minho says, voice all roses and no thorns, and Jisung only realizes he’s put on two mismatched socks when he shucks his shoes off back at the entrance of his dorm, two hours later. 

>>>

There are parts of this trip that they carefully planned out, or at least planned out enough to wing the rest—rooms for each night and any specific locations either of them wanted to stop at. Then there are parts of the trip that they haven’t talked about much, have danced around the subject of.

The end of it, to name one.

Maybe because they already know all there is to know. The road trip comes to an end in the suburbs of Los Angeles, where they grew up. Back when they’d been making plans, Minho found out Jisung was going to stay with his parents for a week, but then he’s driving all the way back to Seattle for summer classes. He said he could make the return trip in two days if he didn’t take the coastal routes; Minho laughed and said he was crazy and told him to sleep like a bear the night before, if he really wanted to do that. Minho got himself a job at home, in the meantime, though it doesn’t start right away. So when Jisung goes back, they will part ways.

It’s also only a couple more days to LA, and that had only occurred to Minho because some of the scenery they’re passing has started to look vaguely familiar. His family took a road trip up to San Francisco, once, and as he and Jisung leave the city he remembers the wharf, the cliff house, and all the streets that are built like mountains. 

Jisung is gripping the steering wheel very, very tightly. Neither of them are used to the steepness of the roads, but Jisung had offered to drive first and now looks like he regrets it. Minho considers offering to take over, but Jisung bears determination through the regret and they're probably almost out of the city so he leaves it be.

“At least now you’re definitely awake?” Minho teases instead, voice light. 

“I guess,” Jisung says, a hint of a grin on his lips. “Maybe this works better than coffee.” 

They hadn’t had a chance to get coffee, or really anything to kickstart the day, because they had missed breakfast. And that had been… awkward? Awkward doesn’t really describe it, because Jisung and Minho just aren’t. It had been… something.

They had missed the hotel’s breakfast because they had slept in late. And they had slept in late because they had crashed into the bed the previous night, because they had been so tired and fallen asleep so quickly, because neither of them had thought to set alarms. They had slept in late because Minho had been hugging Jisung too tightly for him to worm his way out easily; Jisung had insisted that he’d already been up at nine, but didn’t want to wake Minho up, and then he’d fallen back asleep, so neither of them had actually gotten up until almost eleven, and they’d scrambled to check out of their room before the hour. 

Jisung’s face had been mildly flushed when Minho had woken up. He’d looked about as warm as Minho had felt, but Minho had been feeling a cozy sort of warmth, had woken up with a pleasantly fuzzy drowsiness to his brain. Which began to dissipate when he’d noticed now close Jisung’s face was to his—he could see the cracks in his lips, the wideness of his eyes, the pink tinge of his cheeks. 

“Hi,” Jisung said. “Morning,” he added, like an afterthought.

“Good morning,” Minho had mumbled. He could feel the overthinking incoming, it just hadn’t hit yet. Because the bed was warm, the blankets were warm, Jisung was warm… 

Jisung’s eyes darted up, down, left, right, everywhere; Minho chased his gaze but couldn’t catch it. “Uh, could you unhand me?” Jisung finally tried, meeting his eyes again. His smile was crooked, causing his cheeks to bunch up crookedly too. 

Minho blinked once; Jisung was still very close and his heart had finally decided to run faster in its hamster wheel. 

“Okay,” he managed. One hand was splayed across Jisung’s back, and the other had found its way to Jisung’s shoulder. He remembered how they had fallen into bed the night before, already tangled together, but his selfish arms had pulled them even closer, chest-to-chest, while he’d slept on, unaware. 

That would explain the ensconcing warmth.

“Okay,” Minho repeated, extracting his arms. He desperately hoped Jisung couldn’t hear his heart pounding, but just thinking about it made it run even harder and Minho decided he shouldn’t have thought about it but it didn’t matter anymore because Jisung was sitting up.

“Thanks,” Jisung said, the crooked grin still on his face. The loose t-shirt he’d worn to sleep now hung dangerously crooked too, over his shoulders, showing a strip of collarbone that Minho’s gaze couldn’t help but be drawn to. Minho dropped his gaze back to the bed and felt the heat in his chest rise towards his neck and ears. “Also, it’s not really morning anymore,” Jisung cheerily informed him. “We’re supposed to check out in…” he turned around, glanced at the clock on the nightstand. “Twenty minutes?”

That had finally propelled Minho into action. 

Now, an hour later and on the outskirts of the city, with steep streets finally behind them and noon rays of sun breaking through the bay’s low fog, Minho feels like he can allow a calm to settle in again. 

“Hey, I think that was the last hill,” Jisung says. 

“Yeah. You just have to get on the highway in one mile,” Minho unhelpfully supplies, echoing his phone’s directions.

Jisung scoffs, but smiles fully for about the first time since they left. Then, instead of following those directions onto the highway, he pulls into the nearest gas station. Recalculating, the GPS voice chirps. 

“We should need gas,” Jisung says. “And maybe some sort of food?”

“I’ll get food,” Minho agrees, dipping into the mart. He ends up coming back out with two sandwiches courtesy of a tiny sandwich shop inside, plus a couple snacks that had caught his eye. He hadn’t been expecting to see Calbee’s onion ring chips, and neither does Jisung, by the way his face lights up when Minho shows him the bag. 

They eat in the car, pulled over to the side of the gas station, windows down for the cool air. It’s probably the laziest start to their day that they’ve had since leaving Seattle, but today’s the best day to do it—currently the GPS estimates their arrival time as a bit before four. Even along the scenic route, they’re only driving a few hours south before stopping for the night, so there’s plenty of time to take it slow.

For Jisung, this means leisurely and loudly munching down on the cucumbers in his sandwich. Minho knows asking him to stop would only lead to louder chewing, so he leaves it be, turns up the radio to the sound of both a man and a guitar wailing. He also leaves this be. 

Only after also wiping the oil off their hands after downing the bag of onion ring snacks that Minho insists are for the road but easily gives in once Jisung asks for one, which becomes two, then five, then only crumbs, do they get on the highway south. 

The sun is fully out now—Jisung puts on this obnoxious pair of shades, wide and round with a plasticky white rim that he says he got from some arcade. 

“I just remembered that I have these,” he says as he dons them, delighted. 

“Of course,” Minho says, as Jisung pretends to be offended. He doesn’t have his own pair of sunglasses, though, so he puts the car shades down on his side instead. The sun still hits his lap, bright and hot but not uncomfortable. Jisung has some CDs he’s been hiding, and right now they’re listening to cheery voices chirping what is love! 

Jisung sings along to most of the verses; Minho just laughs the whole way through.

Two hours and multiple girl group albums later, they end up in Santa Cruz. The Boardwalk is as lively as it was the first time Minho visited with his family, but this time he’s only with Jisung so he doesn’t have to do things like get roped into riding the rickety wooden roller coaster. They don’t plan to ride anything, actually; but Jisung points out that the line for the thing that looks like a gondola lift is short so that’s how they end up too high above the ground and wishing they hadn’t. 

“This was a bad idea,” Minho says, as Jisung scoots closer to him on the bench. Their feet are dangling openly out, and the beach running alongside them is beautifully sunlit blue, but they’ve got to be maybe fifty feet off the ground, and the bar isn’t low or thick enough that one of them could, possibly, worst-case scenario, totally slide out. 

“Yeah,” Jisung agrees, sheepish, because it had been his idea. “I thought it would be fine because you’re here, though.”

“Jisung,” Minho can only say, as they reach another pole and the ride swoops a little, dipping with the cables above. His stomach swoops too, sloshes around in a mix of amusement, warmth, and fear. “That’s sweet but you picked the worst possible person because who else do you know that is as scared of heights as we are?”

“I know, but it was with you,” Jisung mumbles, insistent. He sighs, too. “You’re right, we are a sorry excuse for two people.” He takes his baseball cap off and scoots closer still, tucking his head between Minho’s shoulder and neck, and impossibly, impossibly, Minho feels better. 

“It’s okay,” Minho says, somewhat confident. “We won’t die. Probably.”

“Probably,” Jisung laughs, nervously. “I wonder if someone has died from this. Before?”

“Well, don’t wonder!” Minho scolds him, and Jisung laughs again. But he sounds less anxious now, so it works. 

Ten minutes later they are unceremoniously deposited on the platform they arrived on, just with wobbly knees and relief in their chests. 

“Never again,” Jisung declares, and Minho agrees. 

Pleasantly, though, Jisung’s hand still loiters, fingers tucked into the crook of his elbow, and his head is still bent towards Minho. So Minho drags them over to the carnival games and they spend the next half hour forgetting about the ride they will never get on again, competing first against each other, and then against the games themselves, because they really must be rigged. 

In the end, their joint work wins them a singular, small stuffed dolphin. Jisung puts his cap back on and then puts the dolphin over his cap, creating even more shade over his face. He looks absolutely ridiculous for ten seconds, and Minho snaps a picture before it falls off. 

It’s late afternoon when they get back into the car. The grease of garlic fries lingers on their fingertips, and the blue dolphin ends up on the dashboard corner, accompanying them for the rest of their journey. 

---

Monterey isn’t much further. But they get there just as the aquarium closes. Jisung demands they go tomorrow morning instead. Minho says that if they do then they might not make it all the way home by the end of the night, to which Jisung asks so what if we add an extra night? Just one?

And what if they do. 

Minho knows Jisung would love the animals—they went to a different aquarium, much smaller, down by where they lived a few years ago, and he had been enraptured already—so. In the end, they don’t think much about it. 

“We can just drive south tomorrow and find somewhere to stop at night if we don’t make it,” Jisung says. 

“Okay,” Minho agrees, all too easily. 

They go to the wharf instead, in the evening, catching the sunset and some seals; the seals are still honking, almost comically, in the distance, when they exchange memories from childhood days together over bowls of clam chowder. 

They walk along the pier some more after it’s dark, weaving in and out of various tourist shops and making fun of the particularly tacky items before heading back to the car and finding their  hotel for the night.

It’s a small inn but they actually have a whole king bed to themselves this time, so Jisung goes into an extra wide starfish sprawl as Minho washes up. Then Jisung does the same, and then they spend a while messing around on the beds with their phones, showing each other silly videos that end up on their feeds. 

Minho turns the lights off at eleven; Jisung whines put Minho hears him setting his phone down on the other nightstand. Then he feels the covers yanked away, in a purposeful move by Jisung. Minho scoffs into the darkness, hears Jisung’s muffled giggles in response, and yanks back and holds his ground—he expects a second wave of yanking, but it doesn’t come.

“Minho,” Jisung begins instead. 

“What,” Minho replies, fingers still gripping the comforter in case Jisung decides to deploy a sneak attack. 

“I’m really glad you agreed to do this with me,” he says. “Let’s do something similar again maybe, next year, after you graduate.”

“That sounds good.” Minho readily accepts. He has no idea what he’ll be up to in a year but he knows that if it involves Jisung he’ll find a way to make it happen. 

For now, he rolls to the side to face Jisung, tracing the hazy outline of his face in the dark. “Also… for this year, we agreed on all of this together, though?”

“True. But I guess I brought up the idea originally,” Jisung points out. “A genius idea, for sure.”

“Uh huh,” Minho goes along with it. “I’m glad your genius brain thought up this genius idea.” He still can’t help but tease. “Even if we were already going to meet up for sure this year.”

There’s no verbal response, but he does feel a forceful kick to his shins beneath the blanket. 

“That kind of hurt,” Minho says, extending his arm to reach down and massage it. He pinches Jisung’s side on the way back up, eliciting a shriek from the other. 

“We were going to meet up already, but I thought up this road trip.”

“You’re the crazy one who also wants to drive back to school after all this.”

“Yeah, that’s me,” Jisung is defiant through his pillow-muffled laughter. “Stop being so annoying.”

“I can’t.”

“Yes, you can.”

Then Jisung does something they’ve never done in all their nights of bed-sharing thus far. He reaches out and finds Minho’s hand, twining their fingers together. Just like that. His fingers are warm between Minho’s, and they fit together so, so seamlessly. 

“Easy,” Jisung tells him, quietly victorious. “Let’s sleep now.”

“Okay,” Minho acquiesces. In the dark, he smiles, a toothy white, for Jisung to see.

---

The next day is also lazy, after they’ve decided that there’s no real rush to get back. After brunch, they spend a few hours in the aquarium—it’s kind of a whole other world inside. Many exhibits span floor to ceiling and it’s all too easy to grow immersed, watching various creatures navigate the water far better than any of them ever could. 

Afterward, they get lost again, this time on a winding scenic drive that eventually drops them off at another beach, where they grab tacos from a nearby truck and eat them along a low stretch of cobblestone wall overlooking shore. When they finally do leave the area, it’s just past four. 

“This is what road trips should be like,” Jisung declares, stretching his arms dramatically over his head and kicking his seat back as Minho drives them along more coastline.

“You say that on the day we’ve driven the least so far,” Minho laughs. Still, he agrees with Jisung; even though it’s one of their last days on the road he doesn’t feel as off-put as he had yesterday by that thought. 

“And?” Jisung asks. “I’m just saying. The vibes are good.”

“The vibes are good.”

“You know what I mean.”

“You mean the company is good,” Minho says, just as Jisung had told him a while back. Now, Jisung preens. 

“Exactly.”

They really don’t drive much—they only make it a couple hours before pulling into a motel along a small beachfront that boasts vacant rooms. After eating at a restaurant a couple blocks down, they make it back to their room and crash for the night. 

And in the morning, the other half of the bed is empty.

---

  [Started a call] | Minho

“Hello?” Jisung sounds completely cheerful when he picks up.

“You scared me,” Minho breathes out. Inhale, exhale. “Where are you?”

“I walked five minutes out to the beach,” Jisung tells him. He must sense that Minho is worried, because he immediately follows it up with, “I’m sorry—I tried to tell you I was going to just be out for a bit but you were sleeping really soundly. I wrote a note on the notepad, though?”

“Ah, it’s okay,” Minho says, relieved. He glances at the nightstand, and, sure enough, sees the scrawl of black ink on paper. “I missed that, so that’s my bad. I’ll come join you, then?”

“Not yet,” Jisung cuts in suddenly. “Well—that’s a yes, but take your time.” He turns on his video and Minho is reminded of the last time they called weeks ago, when they were still thousands of miles apart. 

Now they’re mere minutes apart and he sees Jisung through his phone screen, stray hairs flying in the morning breeze. It’s just for a moment, but having seen this Jisung in person, Minho confirms again that the video doesn’t quite capture him well enough. The focused expression Jisung is making, lips pursed and staring at the screen, though, is still enough to make his heart skip a beat.

Then Jisung finds the button he’s looking for—switching to the rear camera—and Minho sees the beach across the street, palm trees dotting the crescent curve of the sand. That too is pretty, but better witnessed with his own two eyes. 

“Come find me,” Jisung laughs, mischievous. Minho can’t see his face anymore but he’s up to no good, Minho is sure of it. “But not too quickly.”

Then he hangs up.

“Okay…?” Minho says, mostly to himself, since the other end of the line is now dead. So he puts on a proper shirt and a pair of shorts, brushes his teeth… leisurely, as Jisung had suggested twice, grabs his hat and the other room key and heads out. 

Finding Jisung is easier than he’d thought it would be, since Jisung is exactly where he’d been when he’d picked up Minho’s call. 

“Good morning,” Jisung grins when he sees him, like he didn’t shock him breathless when Minho had woken up and found him missing. 

“Good…” Minho has half a mind to reprimand him, but then again, Jisung did leave a note. “Morning,” he finishes lamely. In Jisung’s hand is a plastic bottle. “What’s that?”

“My spectacular reveal,” Jisung tells him, bringing it up to Minho’s face. “It’s a bit funny, but the sentiment is there. Or should I say… sediment?” his mouth quirks up, and it’s so stupid but also so perfect that Minho grins with him too.

Jisung’s recycled one of their empty water bottles into something that sort of looks like it came out of a souvenir shop, half-filled with sand and half-filled with various rocks, shells, fragments of places visited. 

“The pebbles here are from Oregon, and the ones here are from Washington,” Jisung beams. “The glass is from that one beach we were at the other day. And a lot of the other stuff is from other places we stopped at. All the sand’s from here though.”

A tangible memoir of their travels, from start to finish. Minho likes it. 

So much so that he wants to take Jisung’s hand in his, cradle it over his heart, and say, huh, that really touched me. Instead he just smiles some more and says, “I’m surprised you managed to collect all this in secret.”

“I wasn’t trying to hide it too much,” Jisung says. “But now it gets to be a surprise. Here,” he sticks the bottle out further. He speaks now with an edge, daring. “You can keep it.”

“No, you should keep it,” Minho says back. He knows Jisung wants him to fight back, sees the secretly-triumphant smile Jisung tries to hide when he does. “You made it.”

“Are you saying you don’t want it? My masterpiece?” Deflection.

“That is definitely what I meant.” Deadpan.

“We’ll get another bottle and split it, then,” Jisung resolves, but not before frowning insufferably, wide eyes drooping and sly mouth curled down. It’s all theatrical. It tugs at Minho’s heart anyway, an agonizing pull, because his heart had already been delivered to Jisung’s palms when he showed Minho his masterpiece. “Is that better?”

“No.” Minho lies through his teeth. Jisung kicks him, feet all sand-speckled and rough, and they’re off just like that, ebullient, chasing each other as the waves chase them.

<<<

Minho | [Missed a video call]
Minho | I’m in class right now

[Missed a video call] | Jisung
well now i’m in class >:(( | Jisung

Minho | [Missed a video call]
Minho | don’t you have my schedule?
Minho | this is really really bad timing
Minho | like. Purposefully bad timing? 🤨

yes | Jisung
i have it | Jisung
i know you’re in class again | Jisung
i thought it would be funny tho | Jisung
[Sent a voice message] | Jisung

Minho | you know I literally cannot listen to that bc I am in the middle of listening to my professor lecture?!?

exactly | Jisung
you gotta wait | Jisung

Minho | okkkkkk
Minho | bye for now then

Minho | out of class now, listening
Minho | wait I just realized this is only three secs long
Minho | .
Minho | [Saved a voice message]
Minho | I missed you too
Minho | [Sent a voice message]

flattering, now you can listen to that on loop | Jisung
[Saved a voice message] | Jisung
yeahhhh just one more month | Jisung
still a while but soonnnn | Jisung

Minho | !!!
Minho | soon :))
Minho | also you’re not in class now either, right?
Minho | keep me company on the bus home?

picture me in slow motion | Jisung
the wind is flying through my hair | Jisung

Minho | what

i’m smiling | Jisung
and my response is | Jisung
i thought you’d never ask | Jisung

Minho | lollllll??!??!
Minho | I know we’ve been watching a lot of dramas
Minho | but even so that’s almost too dramatic

ok so are we calling or not | Jisung
[Started a video call] | Jisung

>>>

They check out, get lunch, dawdle along the beachfront. More teasing, more smiling, more reminiscing. Jisung’s handmade souvenir bottle finds its way next to Minho’s actual water bottle, and Jisung cackles when Minho almost absentmindedly drinks sand the first time he reaches down and picks up the wrong one. Everything flows, conversation and laughter and the silly sand in the bottle. 

Then the road veers inland; the raucous energy ebbs. 

The last leg to LA is quiet. Quiet in the sense that neither of them are talking much; the radio is tuned to some soft rock song and Jisung has his window down again, just a sliver but enough for the wind rushing in to have been whipped into a smooth flow, a constant backdrop. 

Minho swallows, turns down the radio. “Where should we go?” he asks. It’s open-ended enough that the answer doesn’t have to be either one of their family’s houses—they could still go to the beach, or get dinner, or do anything else, really, first. 

“We should…” Jisung replies immediately, though he doesn’t finish his sentence. “I dunno. Let me think.”

Minho huffs. “Okay.” He thinks about it, too. They could always go to one of the restaurants they frequented in their area growing up. He knows there’s a noodle place Jisung loves nearby, and a BBQ that had been so expensive but worth it the last time they had gone. “What about—close to our neighborhood, the Japanese restaurant that has really good udon?”

He’s met with silence at first, and Minho assumes Jisung is mulling the idea over in his mind. But when the song on the radio putters out and another one takes its place, overly cheerful, Minho glances over at Jisung again. 

And his heart drops.

His heart drops, drops out of the car and spills onto the highway, but the car keeps on moving and he keeps driving because he can’t stop.

But he can take the nearest exit, so he does, crossing two lanes to get to the offramp, as Jisung clears his throat next to him, probably realizing that Minho has noticed the glossiness in his eyes and the teeth biting his lower lip. 

“That sounds good,” Jisung says, while Minho pulls into the lot next to some small community park. Meekly, he adds. “Just not home, yet.” There is only the faintest of a wobble in his voice, so barely there that Minho wouldn’t have known if he hadn’t looked. 

“Not home, yet,” Minho firmly agrees, shutting off the engine. “It’s been ages since I’ve seen my parents. But they can wait a little longer; before this trip, it was also ages before I got to see you, and…” Jisung always brings out the honesty in him. “... and now I really don’t want this to end.”

“Yeah?” Jisung looks at him. Minho reaches out, collects the tear forming at the corner of an eye before retracting his hand back into his lap. It wouldn’t be the first time, but this time feels a little too intimate, in this quiet sanctuary, the car that has only seated them the past week. 

“Sorry,” Jisung says, blinking the rest of it away. He laughs, a short, cracked laugh, and averts his gaze. “I was getting sappy, I guess.”

“You made me sappy too,” Minho points out. “But I was also already thinking about going somewhere else first so…”

“So that’s good. Just a little more gas money,” Jisung laughs, lighter this time. He plays with the hem of his shirt, and then lets out a long-suffering groan. “I can’t believe I almost cried like that.”

“You still kind of did,” Minho teases. He wants to hug Jisung. He really wants to do it, to give all his warmth to Jisung, but there’s a whole center compartment that stretches dauntingly like an uncrossable ocean between them, so all he says is, “We can leave it at almost , though.”

“Ah. How nice of you.”

“That is me. A splendidly nice person,” Minho hums in acknowledgement. He hears a dog barking in the distance, reminding him that they are still stationed at some park that he has never been to in his life. “Am I okay to get back on the highway, then? We can stop anywhere, it doesn’t have to be for food.”

“Yes,” Jisung tells him. “Wait. Just stay here for a moment.”

“Here…?” Minho repeats. “Sure.”

He glances over again, allowing his gaze to linger this time because he doesn’t have to keep it on the road. But Jisung doesn’t seem to be on the verge of tears again—he surely isn’t, because he’s already looking at Minho with this certain clarity in his eyes. 

“I just really missed you, you know?” Jisung is saying. Now he’s looking at Minho’s forehead, just shy of home. “And I’ll miss you a lot after, too. I’ll still be here a week before I go back, so we should go somewhere else in that time, or, I don’t know, you could just come over, we could just hang out.”

Minho sees.

It had been a brief moment, when their eyes met, but still now, as he chases Jisung’s skirting gaze, he sees. The directness lurking beneath the indirectness. The question in Jisung’s statements. 

“I’ve been in love with you for years. So—yes,” Minho answers. One of his hands falls onto that oceanic center compartment, tugging, unable to stop itself. “Another week with you sounds really good.”

“Um, I… good?” Jisung replies, reiterates. He sounds flustered, like he had been expecting something but not that. Still, the certainty in him continues to burn, when he finds Minho’s eyes again. It burns, bright. And it hits home, home as in Minho’s heart, because they are home already, if only not by name. “Me too.”

Of course Jisung’s also been in love. Probably just as long, too. It has to have been years, something ubiquitous, if they have been best friends for that long and Minho only surfaced from the blindness now. If the clarity only snuck up on him now, like the first wave to hit the shore at dawn and face the all-seeing sun.

Minho’s hand, spit out by the riptide, swims and swims. They aren’t lying in the dark this time—they’re coasting the daylight—but he feels unimaginably brave. He takes Jisung’s palm in his, slipping his fingers into the crevices between Jisung’s own. Jisung’s fingers curl into the back of his hand and his fingers curl into the back of Jisung’s hand, and, like this, they form five crescents. Five smiles. 

Minho is smiling all over and Jisung is too, in his eyes and his mouth and his fingers and his heart. 

“Yeah, so where to next?” Minho asks, heart smiling and pounding more than a mile a minute. It’s pounding more than it had been when Jisung gunned the gas days ago and sent them flying for a moment, flying past Pacific blue and sky blue all in one big blue blur. But he can already feel it quieting, slowing down—like still waters, a gentle tide. 

Because it’s Jisung. 

Minho shouldn’t have had anything to fear, when it has always been Jisung.

“Does it matter anymore?” Jisung asks. Eyes alight, a grin breaking across his face. He tugs their joined fingers into his lap. “As long as we’re spending time together.”

Minho might be lost for words. He’s confessed, done the hard part. But now the sunset has caught up to them too, in all its majestic golden glory. It’s a happy sunset, and Minho knows any sunset is going to be a happy sunset, if it’s with Jisung. If it’s with fire-tipped sunbeams dancing across all of Jisung’s smiles. 

Breathless, and now shameless, he stares. Jisung blinks owlishly back. 

“I think I said earlier, though, noodles sound good,” Jisung amends. He ducks away from the attention, but his smile has turned soft, secretly satisfied. 

Minho commits the sight to memory. Freely, as it’s no longer one he has to steal. And there will be more of these moments to come, to freely commit to memory. “Okay,” he says, equally satisfied, once he’s done. 

So he twists the key forward and then he does what they’ve been doing this whole week—he drives.

---

The smiles last the whole way there, more permanent than the sunset.

“Would this count as a date now?” Jisung asks, once they’ve taken their seats and the waiter has passed them their menus—not that neither of them need to look at the menus, when they’ve been here enough times to have many of the dishes memorized by their texture and taste. Even if the last time was two years in the past.

The last time, they came only as best friends. They haven’t been here as anything but best friends. Except today isn’t so different; at heart, they are still best friends. Anything else is an addendum—a welcome one—to their relationship.

It’s easy. “If you want it to be.”

“I asked first.” Jisung squashes his feet with his own, gently, under the table. I asked first, his feet also say, awaiting a response.

The teasing is familiar, the open fondness too. Jisung has always worn his heart on his sleeve, proudly vocal, and Minho has too, just more through his actions than his words. And yet it had been Jisung’s subtle actions earlier, and Minho’s words.

So Minho laughs. With Jisung, he really does feel like he can do anything, and it seems inevitable, now, that it would come to this. 

“Yes. Then it’s a date.”

On their first date, Minho places Jisung’s order and Jisung orders for him in return because they know each other like that. Jisung slurps his noodles fast, like he’s always done, as Minho alternates between chopsticks and spoon and savors all at once. 

“You could try making this sometime,” Jisung says. He loves saying things like that, spouting out badly-veiled requests for Minho to cook for him.

Minho just shrugs. “Maybe.” He always follows through, in the end, so it’s not as cryptic as either of them pretend it is, especially when Jisung mimics his maybe and then brings his bowl to his smiling lips, finally tackling the broth.

On their first date, Minho returns Jisung to his parents at the possibly unacceptable hour of midnight, after they’ve ambled around the streets and fought over who would pay for dessert and then wandered around another nameless park and attempted to stargaze only to fail spectacularly because of all the city lights. But they decide they’ll drive out the next night and go somewhere—not another thousand mile road trip but maybe just ten miles, far enough to see more stars. 

Minho returns Jisung to his parents at midnight, and they also share their first kiss at midnight, when Minho’s hand intercepts Jisung’s hand before it can ring the doorbell. 

“One minute,” he says, fingers curling warmly around Jisung’s palm in the cool dark, and just like that, Jisung sees him, too. 

Minho leans in; Jisung meets him halfway. One minute really becomes five or ten minutes and by then it’s already the start of a new day, but it doesn’t matter because there’s no rush.

There will soon be more waiting across those thousand of miles apart, but two years of being long-distance best friends has worked out just fine. They will easily go for one more.

---