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Jisung and Felix have sent each other Valentine's notes and little gifts since junior high.
It sounds silly! But as at the time no one would be interested in two lanky, nerdy, gay-as-shit boys, so they took matters into their own hands.
It started as a joke, really. Felix got Jisung a humongous red helium balloon tied to his locker after he joked that no one would do it. Like, ever. Felix could not stand the self deprecating tone that came with the comment so I might as well do it myself! he thought. Jisung laughed until he cried, and hugged him with what seemed like real gratitude.
Jisung got him a box of chocolates in a heart shaped box the next year.
It quickly caught on as a little tradition as the years passed; hallway crushes and month old relationships went by but their friendship remained, along with every homemade brownie, every over-the-top heart shaped note, though every break up and every toxic friendship; the joke seemed endless, and their friendship flourished through it.
In their senior year of highschool, Felix wrote;
For my one and only love,
I’ll love you until you want me gone <3
And they decided they would keep it up until they became sick of it.
And when Felix found a man that loved him as much, maybe even more than he loved him, Jisung could not be happier. Felix often refers to Jisung as his first boyfriend, but his current boyfriend doesn’t mind at all; if anyone could have been worthy, it would’ve been Jisung, in Chan’s humble opinion.
Felix and Chan are disgustingly in love, and Jisung is happy for them, he really is. He remembers the late night talks when they were younger, and he remembers so bittersweetly the way Felix’s wavering voice would confess that he feared he would never find someone that loved as strong as him. That maybe he was too over the top, that every person he liked eventually got sick of him was a him problem. Seeing adult Felix walk around with, quite frankly, the human equivalent of a dog makes him so, so happy.
But he can’t help but want the same for him.
♡
Chan is an absolute sweetheart. In the only way that Chan is actually stern with him is as his captain. As Chan’s front hits the pool, Jisung snaps out of his train of thought.
Felix got him into swimming somewhere between highschool and college, with the excuse that it was good exercise. In Jisung’s humble opinion, he just wanted to ogle at three years his senior Bang Chan, who was the rising star in their local swimming scene.
It’s just a coincidence that he started liking it as well. And he got quite good at it! But the slender form that practiced sometimes in that same pool certainly helped. And those piercing eyes beneath a brown, wet fringe made Jisung tremble the first time they landed in him. And not precisely from the cold.
Across the Olympic Pool, stands Felix, smiling at him in all his freckled glory. And behind him, two piercing black eyes stare back at him.
Lee Minho was an enigma. He’s actually warm, playful even as Jisung found out the first time he gathered the courage to talk to him outside of their usual casual greeting. As their friend group started overlapping (Felix getting closer to Chan introduced Changbin, Seungmin and Minho into their lives, as they introduced Hyunjin and Jeongin’s to theirs), he found out very quickly that Minho was not half as terrifying as he originally seemed.
But when he’s concentrating, those feline eyes of his go cold, they focus on the water; on diving correctly, on getting his technique right, on spending the least time possible getting to the other side of the pool. As they calculate, the warmth that he now associates with him completely leaves him for a few minutes.
And when they stare into Jisung’s eyes, it still feels like he sees the very matter of his soul. It makes something warm and fluttery grow inside his body, it grows and spreads through every vein, and reaches his trembling fingertips. He blames it on the way the water clings to his skin after dipping into the pool.
(He knows it’s not the cold. It’s never been the cold.)
Before he knows it, Felix is reaching his side of the pool, marking his time to dive in.
As he enters the water, the water silences every single one of his thoughts. His ears hear nothing but the way the water moves around him, the way his body crosses through the pool, and for a few moments, no one else exists.
And then, as soon as he emerges out of the water, Minho leaps over his head.
Chan helps him get out of the water with a tight grip on his wrist and starts talking to him, perhaps something about his technique or how much time he spent inside the water, but his ears go deaf as his eyes follow the slender figure flowing through the pool, through every stroke, smoothly forcing itself through the water.
With his rabitting, suffocating bleeding heart, Jisung thinks to himself, not for the first time, that Minho might be the most attractive man he has seen in his life.
When Jisung stops zoning out, he finds a shit eating grin on Chan’s face, all dimples and malice.
“Shut up, man.” Jisung says, a flush beginning to rise from his neck.
Chan shrugs, “I didn’t say anything!”
As he tries to formulate something to answer back at that, the audience’s cheers start to rise in volume as Minho surpasses the fastest swimmer and touches the pool before the other could. Jisung hears Chan’s celebratory scream behind him, but he only sees the way Minho tears his gear off his eyes and lets his hair out of his swimming cap, wet brown hair framing his face as he looks at the scoreboard, a proud and exhilarated smile forms on his beautiful face.
Minho can’t get any more handsome than this, Jisung thinks. Victory on his lips and pride flowing through his veins, the harsh light of the pool reflecting on his skin. He can make out in the distance as Felix claps him on the back, toothy smile celebrating with him.
Jisung suddenly, selfishly, feels like he would’ve liked to be on the other side of the pool when Minho finished. But Jisung could not do backstroke the way Felix does it, and Felix couldn’t do breaststroke the way he does it. He guesses seeing Minho’s strong back do it’s thing is a blessing enough.
As they gather to go back to the lockers, Jisung wraps an arm around Felix’s neck.
♡
It’s noise all the way into the lockers, and after they finish debriefing with Chan, Jisung looks for Felix’s bleached blonde head, ruffling it as he finds it.
“It’s kind of fate that we had a competition on Valentine's Day.” Jisung grins, “Don’t you think?”
Felix’s smile falls a bit from his face. “Wait, did you leave me something?”
“Obviously. Didn’t you?” He feels his heart fall a bit. It’s been such a long lasting tradition for them that he didn’t really think about it. Maybe now that he has Chan, he shouldn’t have done that.
“I did!” Felix assures, quick. “But did you remember that I changed my locker?”
“You changed your WHAT.” Jisung exclaims— this is not happening.
“Yeah, remember? It had a leak last month so Chan moved my things into his. It’s bigger than ours anyways.” He smiles to himself. Jisung does not have time for this.
“Yeah, you’re in love, I get it. But what about the locker?” Jisung presses. He has a bad feeling about this.
“You didn’t hear Chan say it the other day? It’s Minho’s now!”
It’s Minho’s now. It’s Minho’s now. It’s Minho’s now.
It’s all Jisung can hear in his head for a few, blissful seconds where his body left the building, faked being sick, got kicked out of the university, left the country, flew out of the planet in a rocket–
His stupid, little Valentine's note that he has written every year as a bit since he was fifteen is finally biting him in the ass.
He turns to Minho at the exact moment he opens his locker, and a lone, pink heart-shaped piece of paper falls to the floor. Jisung cringes in the way Minho stands in shock for a second, then dries his hands properly to pick it up from the damp floor.
He knows the exact moment he reads the content of the note because his ears go pink, noticeable even through his damp hair. Jisung knows because he wrote it. Like, with his own right hand. And cut it into shape in that obnoxious pink paper. It’s embarrassing. He might die from embarrassment, actually.
By the time Minho looks around to find the culprit, Jisung is long gone.
♡
“Felix, I’m never leaving my bed ever again. I'm dropping my major. I’m leaving the country, actually. Already called the embassy to get my passport remade and everything. I should’ve never left home–”
The blonde, sprawled over Jisung’s bed, doesn’t even pick up his eyes from his phone to grace at Jisung’s pacing form, “You can’t, Chan would kill you if you left so suddenly.” He smiles at the thought of his boyfriend, then looks at him. “Also, you’re going to lose your security deposit if you keep that up. Making a hole on the floor and stuff.”
He completely ignores his last statement, still pacing. “Chan wouldn’t kill me. He’d be mad, and then he’d feel guilty over feeling mad, and then he’d jump to the conclusion that he did something to cross me or something. Like that’s something that he could do at this point— Anyways, not the point!” Jisung jumps on his bed, and lands on Felix’s side without completely crushing him. “I’m so embarrassed. I might never swim again, actually.”
“Of course you will.” Felix soothes, petting him on the head. “You just have to come to terms with the fact that you finally confessed your big, embarrassing crush to Minho. Kind of.”
“Look who’s talking, you have a big, embarrassing crush.” He whines. “On your boyfriend of a year.”
“Not my fault he’s lovely and perfect!”
“Please go think of his dick outside of my room.” Jisung pushes until Felix falls out of his bed.
He stands up, not fazed. Felix stands over Jisung’s wallowing form, thoughtful. “Is it that bad if he knows?” Felix asks, gentle.
Jisung ponders over it for a good second. “I’m not sure.”
“What did you even write on the note?” Felix asks gently, and Jisung buries his head in a pillow and honest to god whines.
It’s so stupid. If he had known it would go to Minho, he would’ve written something less unserious.
“...I wrote the entirety of the Mister Darcy proposal scene.” Jisung whimpers, “And it’s so good, it kind of fits him, even! But why did it have to be him?! It’s not fair!”
Jisung hears Felix very badly trying not to laugh. He’s failing miserably.
“Stop laughing, you bastard!” Jisung picks his head up from his pillow and hits him with it, pearls of laughter falling from the freckled man’s lips, “It’s your fault for not telling me you changed lockers anyways!”
“I already said I was sorry!” Felix laughs, and he sits down beside Jisung, “I’m sorry! But at least it made you confess? It’s been ages.”
“Yeah, I guess.” Jisung mumbles, “But I kind of wanted it to be on my own terms, I suppose.”
A beat passes. You would’ve never done it, they both think.
Felix wordlessly slides his body besides Jisung’s lying down one, and tangles itself through his limbs. Jisung thinks of all of the times they’ve done this over the years, and thinks fondly I don’t think I could hate him, even now. It wasn’t his fault anyways.
Jisung slots his head between Felix’s shoulder blades and closes his eyes.
A long moment passes, before Felix talks again, baritone right in Jisung’s ear.
“...Which proposal scene did you write?” he asks, curious.
“First one, in the rain.”
“ Love you most ardently?”
“Yup. 2005 version.”
“...We could see it. Like, now.” Felix looks at him.
Jisung turns to him, and considers him for a minute. After a whole minute, he sighs.
“You’re so lucky you’re cute.” And stands up to look for his laptop.
♡
It seems like Jisung can’t leave the country without a hefty fee from his university (believe him, he checked), so he does the next best thing; he avoids Minho entirely.
He comes up with the flu for their weekly gaming night, then he had an aunty in town for his and Minho’s studying session that they had scheduled beforehand, and he avoids open spaces in his campus like the plague; he feels hunted by his own thoughts, but those two piercing eyes follow him in dreams.
He knows he’s not completely running away only from his thoughts or himself because he runs into Minho’s solid body in a hallway four days after the Incident™, and he bolts before the man can even process that he bumped into him.
(“Jisung! Han Jisung!” he hears Minho yell after him, but Jisung has become one with the walls, white as a sheet, and then completely disappeared from view. He will not be noticed by his friends, and most definitely not by Minho. He might excell at swimming but he’s damn good at running too.)
A week passes like that, and then comes an actual event he can’t avoid; swimming practice. Chan might not kill him, but his disappointment might as well be a blade through his heart. He won’t do that to him, he will not let him down.
Practice goes well enough, but he doesn’t speak a single word to anyone. He can feel Felix’s concerned gaze through his peripheral sight and he can feel Chan’s worry from the other side of the pool.
He feels a pair of eyes silently pin him down from afar.
Practice ends with their signature relay swimming, Chan and Jisung on one side of the pool and Felix and Minho on the other, just like that fatidic Valentine’s day.
(It already feels like it was a lifetime ago. A before and after in his life, even.)
Minho looks at him from the other side of the pool with an emotion that he cannot make out.
♡
Jisung quickly realizes that he can’t remember ever seeing Minho this distracted before.
Chan gets to the other side of the pool, and Felix jumps into the water, right as practiced. Minho’s gaze is completely focused on him though, and Jisung wants so badly to run, he feels himself tremble in the effort to not bolt. Between fight and flight, he’s completely frozen, Minho’s gaze hypnotizing, luring him back to him.
He barely realizes Felix has touched his side of the pool, but muscle memory and instinct scream at him to jump in the water, so before he can overthink it, he’s already deep in the water.
The water tries to drag out every single thought out of his head like every other time he has swimmed this same routine, but every one of his thoughts think of the blurry figure at the other side of the pool.
Minho. Minho. Minho.
By the time he hits the wall and his head resurfaces, he realizes that Minho has not jumped yet.
Minho looks at him from the verge of the pool, completely towering over him. An intense emotion, one that Jisung can’t put his finger on, is present on his gorgeous, chiseled face. He opens his mouth, like he’s going to say something to him.
Jisung feels like an eternity passes; the world has ended and only the both of them remain, looking at eachother like nothing else exists. Chan taps Minho on the shoulder and he seems to snap out of it, putting his gear on and jumping over to the water.
Chan helps Jisung get out of the pool, and tries to say something but Jisung doesn’t plan to stay long.
By the time Minho resurfaces from the other side of the pool, Jisung is already gone.
♡
Jisung hides in a bathroom stall for a while after that.
He managed to grab all of his things before people came looking for him, hiding in one of the facility's bathrooms so people actually think he left. He hasn’t, clearly. This might be one of the top ten most pathetic things he has done, but this week can’t get worse than it is anyways.
He’s tired. Swimming has always been one of those things that calms him down, but this practice round was so, so stressful. Minho’s eyes seem to follow him even when he closes his eyes, and he thinks I can’t keep doing this. He can’t run forever.
He won’t be able to outrun Minho, anyways.
He has two options, clearly. Either he talks to Minho like a civilized person, apologizes for leaving the note, and tells him that the whole thing was a mistake. (The actual adjusted, normal thing that he should’ve done from the beginning.) Or he hides forever, quits swimming, changes his usual walking routes and their meeting spots and never talks to him ever again.
Yeah, that seems like an understandable, totally sane course of action.
Jisung sighs, and leaves the bathroom stall. It’s a pity, really. He’s very fond of all of his friends, and he’s not sure how long it will take to get over MInho and this whole stupid situation, but he guesses he has nothing left to do after all.
As soon as he steps out of the stall, though, he feels a shiver go down his spine.
There’s someone else in the room.
Before he can react, though, a body moves faster than his, and corners him to the wall.
“You’re not getting away this time.” Minho pants, damp hair covering part of his face. “Jisung, stop running.”
Jisung tries to escape, but Minho grabs both of his wrists, and pins him against the wall with his own body. Jisung feels his heart beat out of his chest, and he knows Minho must feel it as well. He tries to get himself out of Minho’s grasp, but he finds that Minho is much stronger than him.
(He’s not going to think about that fact. At least, not now. Wrong timing.)
“I said stop running.” Minho repeats, “I’m not going to let you leave until you give me an explanation.”
Forget how intimidating Minho seemed before; he never thought he would say this, but Minho is fucking terrifying when he actually wants to look the part. Jisung goes limp without noticing, and Minho lets up with his grip, only hovering over him.
“Okay.” Minho sighs, “Jisung, I’m sorry for doing this, but you’ve literally done everything humanly possible to avoid...” me, avoid me goes unsaid, and Minho continues, “Where have you been?” He looks, and he manages to look concerned even while completely towering over him.
“...Hiding, I guess.” Jisung lets out, not really trusting his voice to go back to its normal volume without breaking into an anxious sweat. This is kind of his worst nightmare. “Lixie spent a lot of time in my dorm. I spent a lot of time in the library?”
“Okay.” Minho sighs. “I need you to be honest with what I’m going to ask now, alright?” he says slowly, but firmly. Jisung nods.
“Did you write that note?” Minho asks, going straight to it. Jisung closes his eyes, and lets his head hit the wall behind him. He had to start out with that. This is going to be a nightmare to explain.
“Yes. But it wasn’t like, meant for you.” He explains. He sees Minho’s face fall minutely, but he keeps talking. Now that he has started he can’t seem to shut up. “A long time ago Lixie and I started gifting each other Valentine’s stuff because we were like, pathetic and young, I guess. I started putting weird notes in his gifts in like, sophomore high or something. It was just a harmless thing we did that made us feel better about being single or something. And then came Chan along, and I’m so happy for Lixie, he deserves all that and more. But with Chan the guys came into my life and you , and I’ve been so pathetically into you for so long but I never intended for you to find out like this, I swear I was going to bring this to my grave, well, I don’t know if my grave but—”
And as Jisung keeps rambling, he misses the change in expression in Minho’s face.
“Wait, wait—” Minho interrupts, “Jisung.”
Jisung keeps rambling, anxious energy pouring out of him in waves. Minho gently puts a hand on his cheek, and Jisung finally looks him in the eyes, his breath caught in his throat.
“Jisung.” Minho whispers, “You meant it?”
“Haven’t you been hounding me up all week long because you figured it out?” Jisung responds, voice trembling. “That I’ve been pathetically pining after you since we met?”
“...I thought you were making fun of me because you finally figured out I have a pathetic crush on you, Jisung.” Minho answers, looking at him, a storm of emotions battling for dominance in his eyes. Jisung stands frozen.
What.
“ What.” Jisung deadpans.
“What do you MEAN what?” Minho snaps back, annoyed, but his burning red ears betray him, “I confess to you and all you can say is ‘what’?”
“What am I supposed to say?! I’ve been running away for nothing for a week straight! ‘Sorry for avoiding you, I thought you were going to kill me’?!”
“Oh, shut up. Like I could, anyways.” And then Minho leans into him.
Jisung meets him in the middle.
He feels like he’s on fire. It’s been so long that he’s longed for this, it doesn’t feel real. Minho’s hand caresses his face while the other travels to his waist.
Jisung separates to breathe. “Wait—”
“We’re not waiting, I’ve waited enough.” Minho mumbles against his lips, then dives back in.
Jisung gives up to the sensations.
He guesses there are worse ways to die.
♡
(“You think they figured it out?” Chan mumbles into Felix’s hair, both of them cuddled into Chan’s bed.
“They’re dense, but not that dense.” Felix mumbles sleepily, “Either way, I couldn’t take it anymore.” He cuddles into Chan’s embrace. If they could merge into a singular form, it would’ve probably happened at this point. “Thank you for letting me move your stuff into your locker. And moving Minho’s to mine.”
“Anything for you, baby.” Chan smiles, “But I really hope this plan of yours works. I didn’t see either of them look anything but miserable this week–”
Chan gets interrupted by Felix’s phone going off. His phone has a special vibrating setting for Jisung’s texts, so as soon as he feels it, Felix untangles from Chan’s arms to check his phone.
Hannie :-)
you’re insane, lee yongbok.
anyways,
(PICTURE)
Minho and Jisung pose for a selfie. Jisung looks like he got mauled by a lion, and his face is red from his neck up. Minho would look normal if not for the redness of his lips and the blush on his ears.
Felix and Chan high-five, and go to sleep knowing that their job here was done.)