Archive of Our Own ^beta

If you were to ask Song Mingi when he knew he loved Jeong Yunho, he’d probably say my thirteenth birthday, and that would be partly true. 

The fact of the matter is, when Yunho had stood behind him on the day he turned thirteen with his hands laced together in front of Mingi’s eyes, whispering happy happy birthday Mingi! low enough so only Mingi could hear it, Mingi had loved Yunho in that moment with every ounce of love he had to give. No one had even bothered to wish him a happy birthday in so long he’d nearly forgotten what day it was. But Yunho hadn’t. Yunho never did.

But there are other facts pertaining to this case.

So if you were to press, ask Mingi for another answer to the burning question, he might say the night I wrecked a car when I was seventeen, and that would be partly true, too.

He doesn’t think he’ll ever forget the way it had felt to be caught up in Yunho’s arms, bruised and bleeding in a dozen places after crawling out of the wreck of some old beater he’d stolen for kicks— caught up in his arms and shaken while Yunho had wept and ranted and peppered his face with kisses, I thought you were dead, you stupid son of a bitch, Yunho had screamed at him, I came around that corner and I thought you were fucking dead, don’t you ever scare me like that again, don’t you ever. The night was black and the brake lights of Yunho’s hastily dumped bike were red and the sound of its engine revving into the sky while Yunho had held him is imprinted on his soul. Mingi had known then what it was to love so fiercely that you would change the trajectory of your own pointless life, to drag yourself up out of the gutter you’d been born in and aim yourself toward something better.

But if that still wasn’t enough for you, if you really, truly wanted to know beyond all doubt when Song Mingi knew he loved Jeong Yunho, he would tell you, I knew the day I introduced him to the only other man I’d ever loved, because then I stepped back and let them love each other. I stepped back and watched them become each other’s sunshine, and I was happy because they were happy, even if their light wasn’t shining on me.

All of these are true. All of these make up a part of the whole.

But they aren’t all of it. Not even close. Mingi loves Yunho in a hundred thousand tiny ways and half a million big ones. There have been days when it has made him sing and days when it has made him weep, great wracking sobs that felt as if they’d split him apart like an earthquake racing along a fault line. That deep down kind of love, so deep it’s a part of you, that single shining golden thread in your dna. It’s part of his cells, part of his organs, it’s in the air he breathes and the tears he cries and in every single smile.

That’s what it all boils down to, in the end. 

Song Mingi loves Jeong Yunho. That is all.

That is everything.

/

Mingi has always loved illusions. He loves the feeling you get in the moment something you see turns into something else entirely, and you realize it has been that second thing all along. How just for a moment, both realities exist in a brief and shining bubble, an airless vacuum of possibility.

And then your brain accepts the new reality and everything suddenly expands again to fill the spaces the other has left empty. Within moments, it’s as if the other had never existed at all.

Except sometimes, Mingi can still see the phantom shape of what had come before superimposed beneath the new reality. Like the shadow of Venus, it’s only there if you don’t look at it directly.

He’s spent years not looking at things directly. 

After all, what the fuck good would it do?

He stares into the little mirror, trying to make sure every last speck of glitter is off his skin before he goes home. He doesn’t like his work world and his home world to touch when he can help it. His home, the one he’d chosen for himself, with friends that had somehow become family, is sacred. If he can still see the shape of things that came before— the dirty mattress on the floor, the empty bottles and cans in a haphazard drift against one grease-stained wall of that insect ridden kitchen, underdeveloped muscles that bunch and strain to lift up the little ones so they won’t cut their feet on broken glass —it only serves to make him more protective of what he has now. 

Of course he doesn’t want the two halves to touch. If you manage to claw your way out of a grave, you don’t stick around to see which monster will come to grab you by the ankle and drag you, screaming, back down into it. 

At least, that’s what his therapist says. She’s usually right, Mingi finds.

So he wipes his face clean and then wipes it again for good measure. He removes his costume and puts his street clothes back on, tucking the wad of bills into his front pocket. It’s too thick for his wallet, which is just the way he likes it. Two hundred fifty thousand won, give or take, is a good night. The belly piercing had been a good investment. He’d known it, but he’d put it off as long as possible. He doesn’t like needles. Any sharp objects, really. He doesn’t need the reminder.

He waves goodbye to several other dancers on his way out the door and jogs two blocks or so away from Treasure to the bus stop. He makes it a rule never to call for an Uber while he’s still at work— he doesn’t hide the fact that he dances but he also knows that some people in this world are twisted fucks that might try to hurt someone they view as a pleasurable object rather than a human being. It’s rare, but it’s happened. 

It’s almost three in the morning when he eases the apartment door open. The citrusy smell of the potpourri Yeosang keeps in a bowl in the entryway is one of his favorite scents in the world, clean and bright. He kicks off his sneakers and pushes them into place up against the wall.

There’s a lamp on in the living room, the soft, warm light spilling a little way onto the kitchen floor. Mingi goes in quietly, thinking to shut it off before he heads to bed but as soon as he steps around the couch he sees Yeosang and Yunho, and his stomach does a slow roll he does his best to ignore.

His roommate is curled up on his side, his cheek pillowed on a hand. His blond hair has grown long enough that it obscures one eye where it falls over his forehead. His dark lashes are a soft smudge against the smooth curve of his cheek. Behind Yeosang, one arm locked around his middle like an anchor, is Mingi’s best friend. Yunho’s face is tipped down against the softness of Yeosang’s hair and for a moment Mingi feels like his heart might stop entirely. He wishes, not for the first time, that he could paint or draw or do anything even remotely artistic that would allow him to capture some particle of that simple beauty on canvas or paper or a marble plinth. Some little piece of loveliness and light that’s just for him, that he could keep close and look at when everything around and inside of him is ugly and dark. 

Yeosang’s book has fallen to the floor. Mingi stoops to retrieve it and sees the title— Leaves of Grass. Mingi had given it to him for his birthday in June and it gives him a stupid little thrill to know that Yeosang had been laying here reading these poems to Yunho before slipping into sleep. It makes him feel connected to them somehow, as if he’d had some small part in creating this little tableau that hurts him and heals him all at once.

Mingi quietly shuts off the lamp, trying his best not to be too loud. He reaches over the pair of them and draws the throw blanket down over Yunho’s shoulder, careful not to let it fall too heavily or cover Yeosang’s face. His fingers itch to thread through Yunho’s dark hair but he only tucks the blanket gently in behind him and is about to retreat to his room when Yunho’s eyes open and lock on his.

“Hi,” he whispers, smiling sleepily.

Mingi’s heart cracks a little further and he winces. “Sorry, go back to sleep,” he murmurs, and now he does let himself smooth Yunho’s hair back because Yunho is awake and that’s somehow less creepy than doing it while he’s asleep.

Yunho hums as Mingi’s palm brushes the hair back from his forehead once, twice, three times. It’s a thing they’ve always done, Mingi thinks; everything has always been in threes, all the way back to the beginning. Games and songs and dancing and decisions and side dishes at lunch. Three candles on Mingi’s first cake at the age of thirteen. Three beers they’d drunk warm and too quickly at the age of sixteen. One for Yunho, one for Mingi, and one for the two of them to share. Hana and dul and set, they’d always told each other. You and me and us.

Yunho’s eyes are closed again. Mingi fights with the desire to stay there with them, to absorb their comfort like sunlight, through his skin and into his soul where the shadows are the darkest. He makes himself walk away and closes himself in his room and he refuses to look in the mirror for fear he’ll see those shadows swimming their way to the surface again, undaunted by his own meager light.

/

Mornings are a crap shoot for Mingi. He’s either up with the sunrise or up with the sunset and there is rarely an in-between. The sunsets usually happen after he’s worked, so he disregards those because that’s part of what he thinks of as Treasure time and not a part of home. 

So, the sunrise. Their apartment is a corner unit and his bedroom boasts windows that face east and south. For a lot of the year, the rising sun spills over his bed in a warm river and the first thing he understands upon waking is that he’s alive to greet another day.

He doesn’t take that for granted. He tries not to take anything for granted

Today, Mingi scrubs his hands over his face and tries to decide if he wants to get up and do something with his Tuesday or if maybe today will be the day he turns over and burrows beneath his blankets and goes back to sleep. He chuckles to himself, knowing he won’t. He just likes to remind himself that the option is there.

Yiruma, faint and haunting, nudges its way into his consciousness and he stands up automatically. If neoclassical is playing, that means Yeosang is awake and Mingi can have company with his coffee. He’ll be doing yoga and they won’t talk, but they will still be sharing the same space and that’s mostly all Mingi wants in this moment. 

He pads into the kitchen in his slippers, trying to be as unobtrusive as possible. Yeosang is in Warrior’s Pose, his torso straight and slender, and Mingi takes a moment to thank whatever gods look out for fuck ups like him that today isn’t a shirtless yoga day. If it had been, he’d have taken his coffee back into his room on principle. 

Today, however, is a Yunho’s-tee-shirt day. It’s worn and frayed at the collar and cuffs. The sleeves, which had come down to mid bicep on Yunho when he’d worn it, nearly cover Yeosang’s elbows. The hem hits him mid thigh.

In a way it’s almost worse. He remembers buying that shirt for Yunho in the spring of their nineteenth year. It had been the first time Mingi had been able to afford anything that wasn’t a knockoff, and he can still feel the slow spread of pride when he remembers the way Yunho’s eyes had shone when he’d unwrapped it. Yunho had owned plenty of clothes, name brand and otherwise, but he’d worn the shirt Mingi had given him until it was threadbare and stretched out of shape. When Yunho could no longer wear it, he’d given it to Yeosang for his workouts so it wouldn’t be thrown away. 

There’s something in that gesture that makes Mingi’s throat tighten around some emotion he doesn’t want to inspect too closely.

Mingi preps the coffee maker and sits at the breakfast bar to wait for it to brew. He pointedly does not watch Yeosang come out of the Dancer’s Pose and immediately fold himself into a backbend, arching his spine until it pops audibly. He absolutely doesn’t notice when Yunho’s shirt rides up in the process, exposing the smooth golden plane of Yeosang’s belly.

Of course he doesn’t. That would be stupid and self destructive, on top of being rude and shitty and not something a friend should do.

The coffee maker beeps and Mingi practically leaps off his stool. He fumbles a couple pretty glass mugs out of the cabinet and fills them both with coffee, adding two heaping scoops of sugar to Yeosang’s. Mingi drinks his black unless it’s iced. 

“Mingi, you’re my hero” Yeosang says from the living room, still bent over backwards. “I was hoping for coffee.”

As Mingi watches, Yeosang kicks up so he’s doing a handstand instead. The faded tee falls down around his head and Mingi sees the black roses that trail up the length of Yeosang’s spine briefly. Then he dips down in some kind of bizarre— and incredibly hot —push-up and springs up to his feet. 

Mingi swallows convulsively and drops his eyes before Yeosang catches him looking. He stares at the mugs in front of him and thinks they’re kind of like a metaphor. On the outside they may look the same, but inside one is sweet and the other is bitter. He thinks it’s pretty apt.

“Are you going to let me have mine without begging?” Yeosang asks at his elbow, and Mingi startles so violently that he knocks one of the mugs off the counter. It hits the stone tile and shatters, splashing Yeosangs’s pants and bare feet with coffee and shards of glass.

“Fuck!” Mingi hisses. Yeosang tries to step back and Mingi grabs his wrist. “Don’t,” he says roughly. “Don’t move, you’ll cut yourself.” He moves before he can think about it, looping his arm around Yeosang’s hips and lifting him up to sit on the counter despite his squawk of protest. 

“Mingi,” Yeosang gasps.

“There’s glass on your feet, you gotta sit still for me, okay?” He looks up into Yeosang’s wide, dark eyes. “Okay?”

“Okay,” Yeosang says. He looks bewildered and so pretty that Mingi’s heart hurts.

To avoid thinking about that, Mingi takes a large step away toward the closet, hoping he isn’t tracking glass further across the floor in the process. It takes him a good ten minutes to make sure the floor is clean of even the tiniest slivers.

Then he can’t avoid it anymore, he has to make sure Yeosang’s pants and feet are clear as well. While Mingi had cleaned the floor, Yeosang had gathered most of the large shards he could see to reach from the now-stained folds of his sweatpants, but Mingi sees the sparkle of tiny shards glittering on the arch of one foot. He uses a damp paper towel to lift them off the skin, a trick he’d learned a long time ago in another life, when some of the homes he’d lived in had been more likely to have shattered glass covering the floor than carpeting.

“Which coffee was it?” Yeosang asks as Mingi inspects his other foot.

Mingi shrugs. “Don’t know. They’re the same until you taste them.”

For some reason Mingi can’t fathom, this strikes Yeosang as hilarious. He cackles delightedly, reaching for the mug Mingi had set out of arm's reach, and sips carefully. “Mm. This one’s mine.” 

“You’re officially glass-free,” Mingi says, letting Yeosang’s foot drop. His heel strikes the side of the counter with a dull thud and Yeosang laughs again.

“When I said you were my hero, I didn’t expect you to take it seriously,” he says over the rim of his coffee mug.

Mingi grabs himself another mug— metal this time, no sense tempting fate —and fills it with coffee. “Noted. Next time I’ll let you cut your feet to ribbons.”

Yeosang smacks his arm and drains his coffee. “Okay, Hero, help a bitch down off the counter.”

There’s a moment— a heartbeat, a breath —when Mingi very clearly sees how this should play out in a perfect world. In a perfect world, Yeosang would lock his arms around Mingi’s neck; Mingi would slide his hands beneath Yeosang’s thighs and hitch him up so that Yeosang’s legs could wrap around his hips. He’d get two good handfuls of that amazing ass and then he’d press Yeosang’s back against the first available bare wall and—

Mingi shakes his head to clear it. He can feel the tips of his ears beginning to burn and he can’t make himself look at Yeosang again. He turns his back instead, dragging in a steadying breath and heaving it out in what he hopes sounds like a sigh. “Hop on then, bitch,” he quips, and this is good, this is better, he can get a grip on himself if he doesn’t have to look at those dark eyes and that pretty mouth and be reminded of everything he can’t have.

Yeosang clambers onto his back and Mingi brings him to the couch by a circuitous route, half-running in twisting loops and making ridiculous fighter plane sound effects. He uses Yeosang’s legs as Gatling guns and they’re both laughing hysterically by the time Mingi flops them both down onto the couch. He uses his back to smoosh Yeosang back into the cushions and Yeosang retaliates by tickling him until he slithers off the couch to the floor.

He lays there a minute trying to catch his breath. Yeosang is grinning at him from the couch and Mingi wonders why no one ever told him that sometimes people can make you incredibly happy and incredibly sad at the same time, by simply existing.

Every time he thinks he’s used to it, it pops out from some unexpected corner and he’s back to square one.

“Can I have some of this coffee?” San calls from the kitchen. 

“Oh shit, did we wake you?” Mingi asks sheepishly. “I’m sorry. And yeah, have what you want.”

San shuffles over and folds himself into the armchair since Yeosang has commandeered the entire couch. His eyes are still puffy from sleep, but he’s smiling at both of them so Mingi figures they hadn’t actually woken him.

“Dance today?” Yeosang asks San. “You start TAing September first, right?

San smiles, shy and happy. “Yeah. I'm really excited.” He snorts. “And terrified.”

“You’re going to be amazing,” Mingi assures him. “You already are.”

“Nerves are okay,” Yeosang says from the couch. Despite yoga and glass emergencies and a mug of coffee, he looks as if he could drift to sleep any second. “Nerves mean you know it’s important to get it right. You’ll be more careful if you’re nervous.”

“Wise words from Mr. Impulsive himself,” San teases. “When was the last time you thought about anything long enough to get nervous?”

“I get nervous a lot,” Yeosang admits, sobering suddenly. “I might not show it often, but I do.”

That’s news to Mingi. “About what?” He asks, turning his head toward Yeosang.

Yeosang looks at him for a beat before shrugging and cutting his eyes away. “Random stuff,” he says. He pushes himself up to sitting with a groan. “Ugh. I have to get out of Coffee Pants. And then get ready for class. I don’t want toooooo.” He stretches and stands, then leans down and gives San a loud and enthusiastic forehead kiss.

Me, too, Mingi wants to say, nearly does. Kiss me, too.

Yeosang doesn’t kiss him too, but he does stop just outside his door and throws a smile, bright and full of fun, in Mingi’s direction. “Bye, Hero Boy.”

“Hero Boy?” San asks when Yeosang’s door has closed behind him. “What’s that about?”

Mingi shrugs. “He caught me prancing around in my cape so I needed a cover story. Told him I’m actually a superhero and not a stripper.”

“Dancer,” San corrects automatically. “You’re just as much of a dancer as I am. Your paycheck just happens to get deposited into your g-string instead of a bank.”

Mingi snorts, grinning. He will never go a day without being grateful for this family he’s found. “I guess that’s true.”

“As for the prancing around in your cape thing,” San continues, “I think I’ve lived with you both too long because I feel like there’s a good chance that story is true.”

/

Mingi and Yunho head to Vocal together because taking the train alone is boring as fuck. Sometimes Yunho will take the train to Mingi’s and they’ll go together from there. Sometimes Mingi will head over to Yunho’s and they’ll repeat the process. 

On Tuesdays they go from the BookNook when Yunho gets off shift. Mingi will have a coffee and a muffin or a bagel while he waits for Yunho, and skim through whatever random book he grabs from the lending library at the cafe’s entrance. Mingi never knows what might be available on any given day in the haphazardly stacked shelves. Last week he’d grabbed Wuthering Heights. Today it’s a self help book for people suffering from kleptomania. He supposes the fact that it hasn’t been stolen speaks to its usefulness.

He isn’t surprised when Yunho drapes himself over his back— Yunho touches people, it’s how he connects, it’s fine — but he’s grateful he’s facing away from the counter so no one sees the constellation of emotions that wheel across his face. He feels every single one as they pass; happiness, wistfulness, love, and an aching, bone-deep anguish that is always lurking just beneath the surface of his thoughts. 

Yunho peers over his shoulder at the book. “What’s this?”

“Self Help for Kleptomania,” Mingi says. His voice is steady. He’s proud of that.

“Hm. You should steal it,” Yunho suggests beside his ear, his soft laugh a warm puff of air that raises goosebumps on the entire left side of Mingi’s body. “Prove a point.”

I love you so fucking much are the words that nearly leap out of his mouth. He swallows them back. He will always swallow them back. 

Aloud, he says, “Ready to go?”

The train ride from the BookNook is shorter than from either of their apartments and as a result they have time to walk around before class starts. The academy that holds their vocal class is right across the street from a mile-long green space on the banks of the Han River. They sit on a bench looking out at the water in the shade of a large maple and eat the tangerines Yunho buys from a fruit cart at the entrance to the park. One for Yunho, one for Mingi. The third sits between them, waiting to be divided.

“I talked to my mother yesterday,” Yunho says around a section of tangerine. “She said to tell you hello and ask us again to come down for a weekend. I told her you work weekends, but…”

“But she hasn’t seen her baby boy since Christmas,” Mingi teases. 

“She didn’t have a shit ton to say about me,” Yunho says with a laugh. “But she sure does miss her ‘Mingi-yah’.” He bats his lashes at Mingi and squawks when Mingi fires a tangerine peel at him. He plucks it off his lap, but instead of tossing it back at Mingi, he begins to shred it. “How do you feel about that?”

“About the fact that she calls me ‘Mingi-yah’?” Mingi grins.

“No,” Yunho groans, but he’s smiling. “About going home for a weekend.” 

Mingi’s grin fades and he looks down at his hands. “I don’t know,” he says quietly. He doesn’t know if he’s ready to go back there. Doesn’t know if he ever will be, even if Yunho’s mother is one of the only good memories from that hellhole, other than Yunho himself. He’d like to see her. He wishes she would come to Seoul instead.

Yunho is watching him, his eyes skating over Mingi’s face as though he can read something there. Maybe he can.

“Okay,” he says finally. “That’s okay, man.” He looks up at the dapples of light falling through the leaves above them. “Shit, maybe I can talk her into coming up to Seoul instead. Take her shopping, or to a salon or some shit. Really do it up.”

“Think she’d cook for us?” Mingi asks hopefully..

“If you asked her to, I bet she’d do just about anything,” Yunho says. He pushes to his feet and holds out a hand for Mingi. “Come on. Mom’s not here so I guess we have to sing for our supper.”

Mingi lets Yunho tug him up the path back toward the academy and tries to just focus on how nice it is when Yunho links their fingers and swings their arms like he’s done since they were kids together. Every good and bright memory he has of the town where he’d grown up circles back to Yunho. In a very real way, Yunho is the reason Mingi can be here today, walking back toward vocal class with his best friend, their fingers linked together and tangerine sticky.

Someday maybe Mingi will be brave enough to tell him that, tell him everything.

Maybe.

/

There’s a new student in Vocal, Wooyoung, and the kid has some serious pipes. Mingi runs scales with him at the direction of the vocal coach and is surprised how pure and clear the kid’s tenor range is. Mingi, who never intended to do anything with singing and is really only there because it’s an excuse to spend time with Yunho, is impressed by his drive. He tells Yunho so on the way home.

“Should’ve gotten his number,” Yunho says, chugging half his bottled water at a go. It had been warm enough that afternoon before class; three hours later the sun has gone down and somehow it’s gotten even warmer.

Mingi makes a face. “It’s not like that.”

Yunho smirks. “Come on, he was cute. You like cute.”

“I’m not interested,” Mingi snaps. “Sorry,” he says immediately. “It’s hot and I feel gross. Sorry.”

Yunho looks over at him. “Where’s your water?”

“Drank it.”

“Dude.” Yunho pulls another water bottle out of his pocket. “Here.”

“Thanks.” Mingi chugs the water, making sure to stop at exactly half. He caps it and tucks it back into Yunho’s pocket. “I fucking hate late summer.”

Yunho snorts. “You say that about winter, too, every damn year. Pick a fucking hill to die on, will you?”

“Not until you learn the fucking bagpipes like you promised.”

“Why would I learn them first? No one can tell if you’re playing them well anyways, they sound like a pack of dying cats.”

Mingi cocks his head as they jog down the stairs toward the trains. “Do cats travel in packs? Isn’t it like…a herd?”

“That’s sheep. Or like, bison. Maybe a swarm.”

“Wow, no. A swarm is shit with wings, like bees.”

Yunho rolls his eyes. “Oooh, a know-it-all,” he says with a grin, and his eyes are bright like stars. “See if I learn the bagpipes for you now. You’ve officially been downgraded, my friend.”

Mingi grabs a handful of Yunho’s shirt and they roughhouse their way down the concourse, laughing like hyenas. “To what?” he demands. “An accordion?”

“Pfft, you wish,” Yunho says, poking a finger into Mingi’s dimple. “You get a triangle. Dearly Beloved… ting… Song Mingi was an assface extraordinaire… ting… but we loved him anyway… ting…”

Mingi smooshes Yunho’s cheeks together until his lips are puckered like a fish’s mouth. “‘Dearly beloved’ is for weddings, you absolute donut.”

Their train arrives and they swing into seats, whispering now. “I know,” Yunho leans in to say. “Can’t let you die single, baby-ah.”

Mingi stares at the posters above the windows across from him and prays for strength. His lips twitch. “Maybe I should marry the pack of cats.”

“Clowder,” Yunho says.

“Bless you,” Mingi replies solemnly.

Yunho lets out an unexpected shout of laughter and claps his hands over his mouth as people up and down the train car turn to look at them. He bows to them repeatedly while he whispers promises of retaliation to Mingi under his breath for the rest of the train ride.

/

“Oh good, you’re home,” Yeosang says, spotting Mingi on the living room floor. He slings his book bag in the general direction of his bedroom door and crouches down by Mingi’s head. “Can I talk to you?”

Mingi is in a side split with his chest flush with the floor. There’s a fan blowing directly on him because it’s so hot even their aircon can’t keep up. He's mildly concerned that the skin of his chest and stomach may have fused to the floor. He’s not going anywhere quickly. “Uh, sure.”

“Preferably when you’re not making out with the laminate,” Yeosang adds, rising. “Do you want water?”

“Please.” Mingi walks himself upright on his hands a little at a time. His muscles feel loose and rubbery. The knot in his hamstring has eased, which is what he’d been aiming for. He hugs one knee and accepts the water Yeosang brings him gratefully. “What’s up?”

Yeosang watches him for a few moments before answering. “I think you should go to Gwangju with Yunho,” he says finally. “He won’t tell you so because he doesn’t want to push you, but he really wants you there with him.”

Mingi blinks. This isn’t what he’d expected at all. “I…I’m not sure—”

“I know it was bad for you there,” Yeosang begins, and Mingi has to bite back a knee jerk response— you don’t know the first fucking thing about Gwangju — because it’s not Yeosang’s fault that he doesn’t. Mingi has purposely avoided talking about it in all but the vaguest terms with Yeosang. He’d have done the same with Yunho if he could have, but Yunho had been there for a lot of it.

“Yes,” he says, because that’s the easy answer. “It was.” 

Yeosang nods. “But I also know that Yunho and his mom were a big part of your life back then. You know she loves you, and I believe you love her.”

Love? Is that what he feels for the woman who never made him feel dirty or stupid or just plain bad just because of his situation? Who always had her arms wide open, wide enough to wrap around him and Yunho both? Had love been what she’d felt for him? Was it love that he carried home from visiting Yunho with his belly full for the first time in a week? Was it love wrapped up in tin foil? Take this home to the little ones, Mingi-yah, she’d said. I made too much, I always do that, so silly, hmm? Take it home and share it. Take it, Mingi-yah.

Mingi feels tears prick his eyes. He is so not ready for this conversation. He nods because if he speaks he’s going to lose it. There’s no way to encapsulate the horror of his years in that motherfucking town, the film of scum he still feels sticking to his skin sometimes no matter how often he showers. No way to explain how sometimes he still wakes up sweating and crying, curled up as if to protect a stomach that remembers exactly how it feels to be so hungry you’re afraid you might die from it.

Mingi doesn’t want Yeosang to see that part of him. Pretty, bright, big hearted Yeosang who sees the world in every color imaginable should never have to see into the part of his past that is all shades of the same shadow. Mingi is afraid it would hurt him somehow, taint him somehow, steal some of his joy.

Despite his best efforts some of this must show on his face because Yeosang looks like he’s going to cry. “I’m sorry,” he breathes. “I’m sorry, it’s not my business, I’m sorry.”

“No, hey,” Mingi says. Somehow it’s easier to pull all his hurt back inside the lines in the face of someone else’s pain. “You’re okay. It’s okay. It’s just…”

Terrifying.

Agonizing.

“…hard.”

“Okay,” Yeosang says quietly. “I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

“Yunho really enlisted you to get me to go?” Mingi asks. He doesn’t know how to feel if that’s true.

Yeosang looks away. “Not…exactly.”

“Not exactly? Or not at all?”

“Not…as such.”

“Is that like ‘per se’?” Mingi asks, hoping for a smile.

Yeosang obliges. It’s small, but the corners of his mouth tilt upward. “Somewhere in the neighborhood.”

Mingi sighs. “Yeosang.”

“Fine. No. He doesn’t even know I’m asking. I was kind of hoping you’d just message him and tell him you’d go and then there would be a happy Yunho.”

But not a happy Mingi, Mingi thinks. But his happiness isn’t Yeosang’s responsibility, and he knows it. 

Can he do this? Can he go back there? Bring himself into close proximity to all those old monsters? Maybe. For Yunho he thinks maybe he can. For Yunho’s mom, too.

Mingi pulls out his phone, opens KKT. “Okay.”

Yeosang’s mouth falls open. “Did you just say okay?”

Mingi nods once, grim. “Yeah. Okay.”

“You’re seriously the best, do you know that?” Yeosang leans forward on his knees and wraps his arms around Mingi with a happy laugh. “Do you?”

“Nah,” Mingi says, and lets himself hug Yeosang back for a brief, shining moment. “You are.”

/

Gwangju seems…smaller, Mingi thinks when they step out of the train station into the bright noon sun. Dingier, its sharp edges even more defined, but looking around he finds he doesn’t recognize the specter that has loomed in his subconscious since the day he’d left, nineteen and no longer a minor who had to live where they told him to and accept whatever treatment came his way.

He’d been terrified, and when he’d left Gwangju he’d been running.

Now he’s back. Still scared, maybe, but he’d like to think he’s not running anymore.

A little ways down the road, a woman stands beside a car. Her dark hair is blowing free of a tidy little bun as the breeze picks up. That breeze carries her delighted laugh to the two boys on the platform, and she begins walking toward them quickly, waving both hands.

“Mom!” Yunho calls, waving over his head. He looks at Mingi and his face is suffused with joy. In that moment Mingi knows that he will return to this wretched fucking town every year if it means he gets to see that kind of happiness on Yunho’s face. Every year for the rest of his fucking life.

“Come on,” Yunho says, laughing as he catches hold of Mingi’s hand and laces their fingers together.

And then they are both running, both laughing and when they reach her she opens her arms wide, wide, wide and there is room in her embrace for Yunho and Mingi both.

Later, when they have eaten and talked and laughed and Mingi has reacquainted himself with the little home that had felt like a palace to him, YuJun sends them into the living room .

“To relax,” she insists. “A long day of travel needs relaxation at the end of it.”

“We have to do the dishes, though,” Yunho protests.

“You will,” YuJun laughs. “Just like old times, hmm? You wash and Mingi will dry and I’ll keep track of how many you break. Now go sit down, both of you.”

They do, and Mingi realizes after a few moments that he’s no longer perching tensely on the edge of his seat, afraid to get anything in this bright and happy home dirty. He sits on this sofa as he would sit on the one in his apartment, and if he thinks of the scared and sad little boy he’d been, he keeps it to himself. 

Yunho starfishes on his end of the couch. “I missed this so much,” he says. “It even smells the same.”

“I didn’t realize you were so into this couch,” Mingi says, smiling. “Should I leave you alone so you can get reacquainted?”

“Yah!” Yunho grabs a couch pillow and raises it to pelt at Mingi.

“Yunho!” YuJun calls from the kitchen. “Not in the house!”

Yunho drops the pillow sheepishly. “Yes ma’am,” he calls. “How does she always know?” he whispers to Mingi.

Mingi can only shrug.

After another moment, YuJun taps on the living room door. Yunho gets to his feet and hauls Mingi up as well. “Come here,” Yunho says and laces his hands over Mingi’s eyes from behind. 

Mingi’s entire body freezes up for a moment. It’s a core memory being re-enacted right now and he isn’t sure how he feels about that. 

He’s absolutely positive how he feels about Yunho’s chin on his shoulder and his cheek smooth against his own, however. He relaxes back against his friend and wishes before he can even see the candles.

“We know your birthday passed,” YuJun says from somewhere in front of him, “but I couldn’t pass up the chance to sing happy birthday to you again, Mingi-yah.”

Yunho’s hands slip away from his eyes and in the darkened room three candles flicker atop a little cake shaped like a star. They sing to him in the little house where he made the first birthday wish of his life on the day he turned thirteen. His wish that day had been so simple, please let me be happy someday, because he hadn’t known what else to wish for. He supposes his wish today is just the grown up version of that first wish.

Please, please let them always be happy.

He blows out the candles and accepts his birthday hugs and thinks that his first wish has come true. He may not have everything he wants, but he has more than he had ever hoped to have.

They wash the dishes and they don’t break any and they claim kisses from YuJun as payment. When she goes to bed, they have a beer each on the porch swing and split the third, passing it back and forth the way they always had.

“I’m really glad you came,” Yunho says quietly. He pushes against the porch floor so they’re swinging gently. 

“Me too,” Mingi says. “I didn’t expect cake.”

Yunho chuckles. “There was no talking Mom out of it.” 

“You get your voice from her,” Mingi murmurs, downing the last sip of beer. “It’s pretty, hearing you sing together.”

“I don’t remember a time in my life when she wasn’t singing,” Yunho says, and Mingi can hear that he’s smiling even though it’s dark to see it. “She sang when she cooked, and when she cleaned, and at bath time and bedtime and just about every other time.”

“Sounds nice.”

“It was.” Yunho yawns hugely. “Damn, it’s been a day. Are you ready for bed?”

Yunho’s childhood bedroom isn’t noticeably changed from the last time Mingi had been in it, before he’d left for Seoul. The same posters are on the walls, the same awards on the shelf above the little desk, the same blue comforter.

Mingi laughs a little to himself as he gets his pajamas out of his bag. 

“What’s funny?” Yunho asks, rummaging for his toothbrush.

“I was just thinking…did your mom ever ask why you’ve only got pictures of guys all over your walls?”

Yunho looks up from his bag and gazes around the room. “Huh,” he says. “I didn’t even think about that.” Then he points. “Not entirely guys,” he says triumphantly. “There’s a picture of Girls Generation.”

Mingi moves closer and peers at a poster half the size of his palm. “Oh yeah. Well this doesn’t count.”

“What do you mean? Of course it counts, they’re women!”

Mingi lifts an eyebrow. “Bruh. They’re a beard group. They’re like a membership card— like dick, will PARTY. Like Cher.”

“Your logic is flawed.” Yunho purses his lips in thought. “You like guys, but you don’t just like guys. What’s your excuse?”

“I never liked Girls Generation,” Mingi shrugs, laughing when Yunho grabs him in a headlock.

It’s so much like before; the déjà vu almost makes Mingi dizzy. They brush their teeth side by side in front of the bathroom mirror like they always had, taking turns spitting and rinsing. They wash their faces and pat them dry, use toner and moisturizer like they always had. YuJun had taught them both to shave in this bathroom, Mingi seated on the closed toilet seat and Yunho perched on the counter beside the sink. 

Yunho had patched him up in this bathroom more times than Mingi can count. Falls from bikes and black eyes, a car wreck, an undeserved beating. Yunho had seen it all.

“Is that why you’re going into medicine?” he asks aloud before he can stop himself.

Yunho meets his eyes in the mirror. “Is what, why?”

Mingi lifts his hands and lets them fall. “Nothing. Never mind.”

Yunho’s childhood bed is, blessedly, a double— Mingi doesn’t want to think about the feat of acrobatics it would take for two guys who were both six feet tall to fit into a single. 

Definitely shouldn’t think about it, at any rate. 

Yunho crawls in first. His eyes are heavy-lidded already and Mingi wonders if he’s getting enough sleep lately. He glances at the clock beside the bed and sees that it is nearly one in the morning. His brain is operating on Treasure-time apparently. It’s Friday night and back home he wouldn’t even be done with his shift for another hour. He pulls his tee shirt off and reaches for his sleep shirt.

“You have a belly button ring?” Yunho asks loudly, struggling upright and only making it about halfway. He’s staring at Mingi’s stomach like he’s never seen it before.

Mingi looks down, surprised. Like his ears, now that it’s healed he rarely thinks about it anymore. “Hm. Yeah. I didn’t tell you?”

“Fucking… no, you didn’t tell me,” Yunho says, running a hand over his face. “No you did not, what the fuck.”

“Oh. Sorry, I guess I didn’t think it was a big deal.” Mingi tugs the sleep shirt down, covering the offending accessory. 

“It’s not a big deal,” Yunho acquiesces as Mingi shuts off the light and climbs into bed beside him. “I didn’t mean to like…yell or whatever.”

“I don’t think it would bother you,” Mingi mumbles.

“It doesn't,” Yunho insists. “I am supremely unbothered.”

“We stan an Unbothered King.”

Yunho shoves Mingi’s shoulder. “Shut up,” he laughs. 

“Yes, Majesty,” Mingi snorts. “Whatever you say.”

“Shut up or I’ll put my cold feet on your legs.”

“It’s August,” Mingi replies in a bored tone. “Your feet aren’t cold. Try again.”

Yunho props himself up on an elbow to glare down at Mingi. “I regret singing happy birthday to you. You weren’t worthy.”

Mingi grins up at him. “Your mother carried that entire song on her back. Besides, no takebacks.”

“I am offended,” Yunho says, touching the back of his hand to his forehead like a Victorian lady feeling faint. “Appalled. I’ve been attacked.”

“Drama Queen. Unbothered King. Damn, you’re the entire royal house all by yourself, huh?” He reaches up and pulls Yunho’s hand away from his forehead with both of his. “Please, Sire, don’t have me put to death,” he whisper-wails, making smooching sounds all around Yunho’s hand. “Please, I’ll do anything!” he cackles.

Something flickers in Yunho’s eyes. In seconds, his hand twists in Mingi’s and suddenly Mingi’s wrists are pinned above his head, between Yunho’s palm and the headboard. Yunho is staring down at him and Mingi forgets to breathe. 

“Anything?” Yunho asks quietly.

Very slowly, Mingi nods. Time stretches and slows around him, a drop of dew suspended on the very tip of a flower petal. 

Yunho is still staring at him, closer now, and closer. Mingi has never wanted anything as badly in his life. Another heartbeat, another breath, and—

No. This isn’t right. They can’t.

“You should message Yeosang,” Mingi hears himself whisper, hating himself for a thousand reasons all at once. “And tell him goodnight. We’re both pretty tired, yeah?” 

Yunho freezes. Their faces are close enough that Mingi can see the instant Yunho realizes the magnitude of what he’d been about to do, and if Mingi had thought his heart had been broken before, he learns a brand new lesson now.

Yunho releases Mingi’s wrists as if they’d burned him and backs up until his ass hits the wall. He looks absolutely miserable, and Mingi would feel terrible for him if he wasn’t dying by inches already. 

Stopping Yunho had been the right thing to do, the only thing to do, and he knows it. But oh, it fucking hurts.

“Goodnight, Yunho,” he says dully, and turns away.

“Night,” Yunho whispers. His voice sounds like maybe he might cry. 

Mingi closes his eyes before his own tears can escape.

He never should have come.

/

He wakes at dawn, disoriented. The light is wrong, the bed is wrong. His eyes catch on the silver glitter of Yunho’s trophies and for one terrifying moment he is fifteen again. He’s fifteen and his lip is split and his ribs feel like someone took a baseball bat to them but Yunho is here and that makes everything okay. He will be okay.

Then Mingi wakes fully, the past popping like a soap bubble and in its place is Yunho’s room, dim still because his windows face north and the sky is a pearly gray. Everything is still. Not even the birds are awake yet, it seems.

He slides out of the bed as quietly as he can and makes it all the way to the door before Yunho speaks. 

“I’m sorry.”

Mingi looks down at his hand on the doorknob. He wants to say sorry for what and don’t be sorry but most of all he wants to say are you sorry we almost kissed or sorry that we didn’t because I don’t fucking know the answer to that either.

“Me too,” he says aloud. “Go back to sleep.”

YuJun is on the porch swing with a cup of coffee when he steps out the door. He’d known she was up because the coffee had been brewed, with his and Yunho’s mugs set out beside the pot. Faded and chipped as they are, he recognizes them all the same. Yunho’s bears a right sun, Mingi’s a gilded star.

No matter where he turns, it seems, the past is reaching out its specter hand for his. 

He sits beside her on the swing and sips his own coffee. 

“Still an early bird, Mingi-yah,” she remarks, and pushes her small, slippered foot against the floorboards to make them swing. “Did you sleep well?”

Mingi hums, unsure how to answer. YuJun seems to take his silence in stride. The stillness of the morning is nearly absolute; outside their little pocket of existence the morning mist shrouds everything in mystery and hush. There are no cars going by on the main road yet, no breeze to tease tendrils of fog into revealing what they conceal.

“It’s hard, I think, to be back here,” YuJun says after a moment. “Maybe next time all three of you will come.”

Mingi doesn’t have to ask who she means.

“Yeosang should be here instead of me,” he says quietly.

“Hmm. I disagree. Not instead. Too.” She sips her coffee. “He’s such a pretty boy,” she remarks, then sighs. “Boys weren’t so pretty when I was young. You’re lucky.”

Mingi ducks his head. “Am I? Lucky?”

“Of course.” YuJun smiles up at him. “Look where you are.”

Mingi glances down the silent street. “In Gwangju.” His tone says clearly he doesn’t find that so very lucky.

YuJun pats his knee. “Mm. In Gwangju today, back in Seoul tomorrow. In your pretty apartment, with your friends. In school, when the term starts. Dancing. All of those things are where you are.”

“I didn’t think about it that way,” he admits. 

“Of course not,” she says with a little huff. “In your head, you’re still running.”

Maybe. Maybe he is. “I missed you,” he says.

“I missed you too, Mingi-yah,” she says with a chuckle. “You still have the same way of changing the subject when something I say gets a little too close to a tender spot.”

“Touché,” he says with a sardonic smile. “It wasn't an easy decision for me, to come back here.” It’s the closest he can come to admitting how scared he’d been, how cold inside.

“What made you choose to come?”

“Yunho,” he says quietly. He can’t manage more around the lump in his throat, but he doesn’t think he needs to.

YuJun has always understood him.

“Oh, Mingi,” she whispers sadly. “My little star. Come here.” She sets down her mug and opens her arms. It’s just for him this time, this embrace, and Mingi doesn’t know what else to do so he lets YuJun hold him while he cries.

/

The tree is still standing, on that stretch of backroad where he’d almost died. The trunk is so big that Mingi doesn’t think he can get his arms all the way around it, the dark bark scarred with reminders of more than just his own wreck. Mingi looks at it for a long time.

Across the road from the tree is a retaining wall at the base of a hill. Mingi sits on top of the wall, taking advantage of the spotty shade afforded by the scrub brush behind him. 

Unlike nearly everything else in this town, the tree looms just as large in reality as it had in memory. The road has been repaved since that night years ago, but Mingi thinks he can still pinpoint the exact spot where he’d dragged himself, bleeding and dazed, from the wreckage. Down just a little bit from where he sits is the spot Yunho had dumped his bike. If he lets himself, he can still hear the sound of the engine screaming as the tires spun fruitlessly against the acrid air. Can still hear the sound of Yunho’s terror as he’d screamed Mingi’s name.

“I never wanted to see this place again,” Yunho says quietly, hopping up onto the wall beside Mingi. “Even after you left. I used to drive around the long way, just to avoid it.”

“Really?” Mingi asks. “Why?” It wasn’t your wreck, he thinks. It didn’t touch you. None of that shit, none of those jagged edges and razor wire, ever touched you. I made sure they didn’t.

Yunho looks at him. For a moment Mingi thinks he won’t answer, that he can’t answer. Then Yunho looks across to the tree again. “It was years before I didn’t wake up screaming,” he says. “Years, Mingi. Even after I came to Seoul, I dreamt about it; coming around that bend and seeing Mr. Yao’s fucking beater all smashed to shit in my headlight.” He swallows audibly. “You were on the road, man. You weren't moving at first and I thought…” He shakes his head. “I was so fucking mad at you,” he laughs a little, without a trace of humor. “I think I would’ve punched your fucking lights out if you hadn’t already been half dead.”

Mingi remembers being shaken. Remembers being kissed. They hadn’t spoken of that, afterward. Everything else, but not that.

History repeats itself, apparently. 

They haven’t talked about last night either. Yunho had come downstairs about an hour after Mingi’s talk with YuJun, met Mingi’s eyes, and offered a tentative, wordless apology. Mingi had nodded, and they’d smiled at each other, and that had been that. He can forgive Yunho if Yunho can forgive him. It’s the way it’s always been. 

Yunho will tell Yeosang when they get back to Seoul because that’s also the way it’s always been; Yunho admits his mistakes. It’s the kind of man he is. Mingi just prays Yeosang will understand. He thinks he will. Mingi will make sure Yeosang knows that Mingi has no intention of standing between them. He refuses to be the reason Yeosang’s light dims, even for a moment.

“I’m grateful for your restraint,” Mingi says now. He’s talking about the night of the wreck but also about last night, and he knows Yunho knows it.

“No problem.” Yunho swings his feet against the retaining wall and plucks a wildflower, spinning it between long fingers. 

Mingi thinks of telling Yunho that he knows it had been YuJun who had bailed him out that night. Thinks of telling him that he’d paid her back, with interest, before he’d left for Seoul. She’d cried when he’d handed her the money, had tried to give it back, but he’d closed his fist around her smaller one and squeezed just hard enough to make his point.

He thinks Yunho probably knows all that anyway. It’s history. Ancient history. Theirs. 

“Hana and dul and set,” he whispers.

“You and me and us.” Yunho replies, and takes Mingi’s hand, squeezes. “Let’s take Mom out to dinner tonight. Our train leaves at eight tomorrow, so there won’t be a lot of time for goodbye.”

/

School starts up again, Mingi’s final year. By this time next fall, Mingi will be a social worker. Certified, bona fide, out of his mind.

He can’t wrap his mind around it, most days. 

The days blur together at first; the sluggish heat of early fall covers everything in a haze of fine dust and time slows to a crawl, expanding in slow motion like strands of molasses taffy. 

Mingi dances and studies and sings and wonders why his days, so full of activity and purpose, still feel as if there’s something lacking. Something he’s forgotten, or overlooked. It plagues him, that sensation of incompleteness, through scorching days and windless nights.

When the weather turns finally, when the rain brings the relief of cooler air instead of more oppressive humidity, that feeling eases. Not all the way, but enough that Mingi stops feeling as if he should be looking over his shoulder all the time. His lungs expand again and pull in the scent of rain instead of ozone.

On a Monday night after a particularly busy weekend, Mingi wakes up at sunset to a quiet apartment. San has taken advantage of the midterm week off and gone home to see his sister’s new baby. Mingi smiles, remembering the wonder on San’s face when he’d shown Mingi and Yeosang picture after picture of his new niece. He and Yeosang had oooooh d and ahhhhh d appropriately, and privately agreed that the baby looked like nothing so much as a darling, black-haired potato.

“All babies do,” Yeosang had giggled, leaning his head on Mingi’s shoulder. “I know I did. You probably did, too.”

Mingi wouldn’t know; there are no pictures of him before the age of twelve, when he’d met Yunho. Unless there’s an official one in some government file somewhere, the dim and dusty image of a boy abandoned before he even learned to walk. There had been no one to set him down before the money, the book, and the spool of thread. No one to rejoice over his choice, or to proclaim his future.

As far as Mingi is concerned, his life began at age twelve.

And he will proclaim his own future.

He showers most of the sleep away. When he emerges, clean and marginally more awake, Yunho is in the kitchen, unloading bags of takeout along the breakfast bar. 

“A feast,” Mingi observes. “What’s the occasion?”

Yeosang struggles into the apartment before Yunho can answer. His arms are full of bags that clink, and Mingi takes two of them as Yeosang kicks off his boots. He peers into one. “Jesus, did you buy out the store?”

Yeosang kisses Yunho’s cheek and unloads two bottles of wine from the bag Mingi had left him with. One is red and one is white. The bags Mingi holds are full of soju and beer.

“Mingi, you know I’m terrible with these things, do you mind?” Yeosang slides the bottle of red wine across the breakfast bar toward him with an apologetic look. “I’ll take the bags.”

Mingi rummages in a drawer for the corkscrew and opens the bottle easily. Yunho smirks when Yeosang sighs. 

“Date night, huh?” Mingi says as he scans the array of food and drinks. He looks down at his tank and sweats. “Give me a minute to get dressed and I’ll get out of your hair.” It only hurts a little, he tells himself. Just enough to sting.

“What?” Yunho says, looking back over his shoulder from the cabinet where he’s getting plates. “No, that’s…not…”

“It’s not date night,” Yeosang says, crunching down on a slice of pickled daikon. “Oooh, that’s good,” he says to Yunho. Then he grins at Mingi. “It’s Celebration Night.”

Confused, Mingi slides onto a stool. “What are you celebrating?”

Yunho sets a plate in front of Mingi, but doesn’t answer. The tips of his ears are pink. Mingi looks a question at Yeosang.

“What Yunho is too modest to say,” he says, jabbing an elbow into Yunho’s side, “is that he got an invite to interview for the medical program today.”

Mingi gapes at Yunho, who ducks his head even further. “Are you kidding? What school?”

“SNU,” Yunho admits quietly. 

“Holy shit!” Mingi is off his stool and halfway around the corner before he quite realizes it. He drags a sputtering Yunho into a ferocious hug and squeezes until his arms tremble with the effort. “You brilliant bastard,” he gasps out, laughing and crying, “I fucking knew you could do it!”

Yunho’s arms come around his waist and cling there. He’s laughing a little dazedly. “It’s an interview, not an acceptance.”

“Fuck you,” Mingi says, still beaming, and holds Yunho at arm’s length. “Fuck you, don’t do that. SNU invites maybe 1% of all applicants to interview.”

“That’s what I told him,” Yeosang sniffles. His eyes are drenched but he’s smiling like the sun. “He’s just being a dumbass. A really, really smart dumbass, but still.” 

Mingi realizes belatedly he’s still holding onto Yunho’s arms and forces himself to let go and step back. “I should let you guys eat before the food gets cold. Congratulations again.”

“Wait, what?” Yeosang leans forward and grabs his arm. “No, stay. We want you.”

Mingi swallows. “Um.”

“You have to celebrate with us,” Yunho elaborates, and Mingi remembers to breathe.

/

Mingi is, in a word, drunk.

The wine is gone. Ditto the soju. The one remaining beer stands like a lone survivor on the breakfast bar, surrounded by its fallen comrades and the remains of Chinese takeout.

Everything is sort of floaty. Howl’s Moving Castle plays forgotten on the TV, acting as background music for the world’s slowest game of rummy. Mingi peers at his cards, trying to remember what it was he’d been planning to discard. Had it been the two of clubs? He holds the fan of cards closer and struggles to focus. No, it had been the Jack of hearts. He’s almost sure of it. He slaps it down on the discard pile with a triumphant snap. He hadn’t liked that card anyways, with its smug little face and stupid hat.

Yunho, who’d never had much fashion sense anyway, pounces on the discarded Jack and crows happily. “Rummy!” he announces, and fans his cards out with a flourish.

Yeosang throws himself backward with a groan, scattering his cards. “Goddamn it, I was so close! I demand a rematch!”

“Noooo,” Mingi wails. “Please no. Any other game but this. Spades, War, Go Fish, something, anything but Rummy.”

“Strip poker?” Yunho suggests. His smile is wide and guileless. “We all have socks on, right? That’s like…two extra items before you have to take off the big stuff.”

Mingi thinks of that night in Gwangju, of Yunho’s reaction to his bellybutton piercing. He wonders what Yeosang’s reaction would have been. He wonders if Yunho had told him.

“Not strip poker,” he says, trying to focus on the conversation again. “I don’t have the…whatsit.”

“Brain space?” Yeosang offers helpfully.

“Self control,” Mingi responds, and wonders vaguely if he should have said that out loud. Probably not, but oh well.

Yeosang is gathering up the cards, trying blearily to get them all facing the same way. “What about Slap, Slap, Kiss?”

“What’s Slap, Slap, Kiss?” Yunho asks, trying to help and succeeding only in scooping the scattered cards into a haphazard pile.

Yeosang looks between Yunho and Mingi, shocked. “You haven’t played Slap, Slap, Kiss? Where did you grow up, on the moon?”

“Gwangju,” they reply in unison, and Yeosang laughs delightedly.

“Okay okay, look here. We deal out the cards, until they’re gone. Then one person takes their turn, and flips a card. Then the other players flip. If the first player’s card is higher than the other ones, he slaps them.” He reaches out and taps Mingi lightly on the cheek.

“What if his card is lower?” Mingi asks, trying to focus on the cards Yeosang is straightening into a useable deck.

“Then he has to kiss them,” Yunho guesses. 

“How’d you know?” Yeosang asks him, grinning.

“It’s in the name,” Yunho replies primly. “Simple dedick…deduck…”

“Deduction?” Yeosang cackles. “Fucking amateur.” He turns to Mingi. “Wanna play?”

Mingi nods. Yes, he absolutely does. In the back of his brain a tiny voice suggests this might be the worst idea he’s ever had, but he pushes himself to his feet and staggers over to the breakfast bar, and the little voice is promptly drowned in a few swallows of beer. The results of bad decisions are a problem for Tomorrow Mingi. Tonight Mingi wants to follow this twisted path to the very fucking end.

He brings the beer back to where they sit in a loosely defined triangle and hands it to Yunho. “Hana, dul, set,” he mumbles. 

“You, me, us,” Yunho whispers. He takes a few sips and hands the bottle to Yeosang. 

Yeosang downs the rest of the bottle and sets it on the entertainment center. “Let’s rock and fucking roll,” he declares, and deals the cards.

/

A few minutes in, and Mingi is considerably less drunk. 

It could have something to do with his metabolism and the speed at which it processes the alcohol. It could be that enough time has elapsed that the effects are wearing off.

But mostly he thinks it has something to do with the fact that Yunho is kissing Yeosang right in front of him because Yunho’s card was lower than his and this is really fucking happening. He’s really playing a fucking drinking game with his best friend and his roommate and in a minute he will flip his card and find out if he’s getting kissed or slapped. And it won’t stop there, because Yeosang’s turn is next and this whole scene is going to play out again and he’s not sure there’s enough alcohol in the world to still the nerves that threaten to jitter him to pieces. 

Yeosang sits back with a little laugh, and his eyes are dancing when he turns them on Mingi. “Your turn, Hero Boy. Your fate awaits. Flip your card.”

Mingi can’t think. He can’t decide if he wants his card to be higher or lower than Yunho’s Seven of Diamonds but it stops mattering because he flips his card. 

It’s a ten.

“Oooh,” Yeosang teases. “Come on, come on,” he says to Yunho. “Kiss him. I don’t make the rules.”

Yunho raises his eyebrows at Mingi, a question: is this okay? Are you okay?

Mingi answers by leaning forward until his lips touch Yunho’s. By sheer force of will he keeps it brief and very nearly platonic; he kisses Yunho’s mouth the way he’s kissed his cheek a thousand times before, a quick and easy peck. He can get through this game with his heart intact if he tries hard enough. He sits back.

“Weak,” Yeosang mutters, then shakes himself. “My turn, are you ready?” His card is the Queen of Hearts.

Yunho sighs. “Looks like we’re both getting slaps.”

He’s right. Yunho flips a nine, and Mingi flips a four. Yeosang slaps them gently, both at once. Then he pinches their cheeks for good measure. “Cuuuuute,” he coos.

Then it’s Mingi’s turn. He turns over an eight.

“Very middle of the road,” Yunho quips, and flips a two.

Mingi grins and slaps Yunho’s cheek. He lets his fingers graze Yunho’s jaw as he pulls his hand away and has the satisfaction of seeing his lips part on an indrawn breath.

Yeosang flips an ace. “Wait, are aces high or low in this game?” he asks Yunho, brow furrowed.

Yunho’s eyes flick to Mingi, assessing. “Aces are high,” he replies, and Mingi becomes aware of two things at once; one is that, like himself, Yunho is not as drunk as he had been. He can see it in his eyes. The second is that Yunho had the chance to prevent Mingi from kissing his boyfriend, and he purposely didn’t take it.

Mingi feels a curl of warmth low in his belly and wonders if he’s going to make it through this night unscathed after all.

Mingi looks at Yeosang. “Aces are high,” he echoes.

Mingi expects Yeosang to kiss him the way Mingi had kissed Yunho, brief and chaste. He’s wrong. Yeosang surges toward him like water, his face hovering over Mingi’s for a barely a moment before he is kissing him, kissing him for real. Yeosang’s tongue traces the seam of Mingi’s lips so they part for him and hums in pleasure when Ming responds with some small sound he doesn’t mean to make but can’t help. Their lips glide over each other easy, easy. Mingi feels like he’s melting.

Then Yeosang is easing back, smiling softly, just a little smug. Mingi’s heart is pounding. He can still feel Yeosangs’s mouth on his. His eyes fly to Yunho, certain they’d gone too far, but Yunho is grinning.

“My turn,” he says brightly.

They play more, and Mingi gets slaps for the next six plays. He doesn’t mind. He watches Yunho kissing Yeosang and promises himself that if he gets another chance to kiss Yunho he won’t chicken out. That way when they go off together to Yeosang’s room at the end of the night and he goes off to his alone, at least he’ll be going with irrevocable knowledge of how it feels to kiss them, how they taste when he does. It’s more and better knowledge than he’d woken up with at sunset. It’s more than he ever thought he’d have.

On the very next play, he gets his chance. Yunho turns over a two. Mingi’s card is an ace.

“Are aces still high?” he asks Yeosang, because somehow this has become their way of asking is this okay, are you okay, can I kiss you, can I kiss him, do you want me to?

Yeosang's smile is sweet and savage. “Aces high, baby, do your thing.”

Mingi doesn’t wait to be told twice. He rises to his knees and yanks Yunho up with him. Yunho’s hands bracket Mingi’s throat, his thumbs tipping Mingi’s chin up so he can kiss him the way Mingi has always known he would kiss; firmly and with devastating thoroughness. His fingertips press into the back of Mingi’s neck and Mingi can’t think of anything beyond Yunho’s mouth on his, they way their tongues clash and slide, the way Yunho tastes like soju and something else, something warmer that Mingi can’t quite name. Mingi kisses Yunho back, kisses him like the world is ending because it kind of is, and Mingi doesn’t ever, ever want to stop.

They have to, though. It’s a kissing game, after all, and all games have rules. He thinks they’ve gone over whatever arbitrary time limit they’d agreed upon, so he softens the kiss until he can ease away.

Yeosang is watching them, fascinated. “Wow,” he breathes.

Mingi smiles weakly, scooting back until he can lean against the couch. “Your turn,” he murmurs to Yeosang. His lips feel kiss-bruised, swollen. He loves it. He loves them.

When it’s his turn again, he turns over a three.

Yunho flips, a three.

Laughing, Yeosang also flips over a three. “It’s a sign,” he giggles. “Kisses for all!”

“How though?” Yunho says, scooting closer to peer at the cards. “He only has to kiss us if our cards are higher. This is a tie.”

Yeosang shrugs and stretches, languid as a cat. “Mingi gets to choose. The only catch is, we both get the same penalty, so whatever you choose, it’s for both of us.” He leans in until Mingi meets his eyes. “So what’s it gonna be, Hero Boy? Slaps or kisses?”

Mingi looks from Yunho to Yeosang and back again. This night is winding down; he has a feeling this will be his last opportunity to be with them this way, everyone so open and unguarded. He’ll be sad about that fact tomorrow, but for tonight…

“Kiss me,” he whispers, opening his arms. “Both of you. Just kiss me.”

They move to him, both at once, as if they’d only been waiting for him to ask. Perhaps they had. Mingi doesn’t know, and he doesn’t care. Yeosang’s mouth is on his, taking him apart inch by inch. There’s a fist in his hair, tugging his head back and exposing his throat. He thinks it’s Yunho’s; Yunho is certainly the one tracing kisses along his jaw, the shell of his ear, and down the side of his neck. Yunho’s teeth scrape lightly against the skin of his shoulder and Mingi gasps into Yeosang’s mouth. 

Yeosang fumbles at the hem of Mingi’s tank top, then pauses. “Can I?” he asks. At Mingi’s nod he tugs the shirt up and off. “Ohhh,” Yeosang breathes. “Oh, wow.”

“I told you,” Yunho murmurs, and bites down a little harder on that sensitive spot at the juncture of Mingi’s neck and shoulder. Mingi moans, and feels Yunho’s lips curve into a smile against his skin. “So pretty.”

Mingi is so hard he's aching with it. He knows Yeosang and Yunho must be aware of that fact, but he can’t find it in himself to be embarrassed. However he’d envisioned this game to go, it can’t hold a candle to the reality of this moment.

Yunho kisses him, messier now. Yeosang’s fingertips leave a burning trail behind them as he drags his nails gently down the center of Mingi’s chest to his navel. Mingi’s hips cant up involuntarily, and when Yeosang palms his length through his sweats he draws his breath in with a hiss.

“No?” Yeosang murmurs. Mingi moans. “I need words, baby, yes or no, okay?” Yeosang reminds him softly.

“Yes,” Mingi gasps out. “Jesus fuck, yes, please.” He thinks he might die if they don’t touch him soon, but he’s terrified he’s going to explode if they do. He watches, chest heaving and skin on fire, as Yeosang holds out his palm to Yunho. Yunho licks a wide stripe up the center of Yeosang’s hand. “Fuck you, that’s so hot,” Mingi whispers in disbelief.

Then Yeosang’s hand is in Mingi’s pants, small and strong and wrapped around his cock with just the right amount of pressure, the right amount of slide. Mingi turns his head, searching for Yunho. His entire body feels like fireworks are going off beneath his skin and he needs…he needs…

Yunho kisses him then, swallows down the throaty moan he makes when Yeosang twists his wrist in a way that makes Mingis’s toes curl. He feels like he’s going to fly apart like shrapnel and he doesn’t care; he just wants it, that explosion, that release, doesn’t care if he gets launched into the fucking stratosphere as long as Yeosang’s hands keep touching him and Yunho’s mouth never ever leaves his skin.

“I’m close,” he whimpers. Yunho rests his forehead against Mingi’s and just breathes with him, one hand in his hair and the other at his throat, cupping his jaw. “I’m gonna cum, holy fuck,” Mingi cries frantically, fingers digging into Yunho’s arms. He doesn’t want to yet, he isn’t ready yet, he doesn’t it to be over, but—

“I’ve got you,” Yunho murmurs against his mouth and—

“Baby, you’re so pretty like this, so pretty for me,” Yeosang whispers and—

Mingi comes with a low cry, spilling over Yeosang’s fingers and onto his belly and Yunho kisses him through it until he’s shuddering with the aftershock and adrenaline comedown, and sensitive enough to cant his hips away from Yeosang’s gentle hands.

He kisses Yunho languidly, sort of floaty, sort of sleepy, the ringing in his ears ticking down to a bearable drone and suddenly there’s a warm, wet cloth on his belly. He jumps.

Yeosang smiles at him, mischievous and delighted. “Hi,” he says. “Don’t mind me, I’m on cleanup duty. Carry on,”

Mingi snatches the towel and wipes his stomach clean, then fold it in half. “Your…um…hand?”

“All good here.” Yeosang wiggles his fingers in the air. “Lemony fresh.” He yawns, glances at his watch. “Jesus, it’s four in the fucking morning.”

Yunho groans. “I work at eight.”

“Oh shit,” Yeosang giggles. “We fucked uuuup.”

“Not even close,” Yunho says. He drops a kiss on Mingi’s hair. “You okay?”

“Hmm?” Mingi drags his eyes open. He’d been dozing and hadn’t realized. “What? Yeah. I’m…good. Great. Yes.”

/

Mingi means to talk to them about it, he truly does.

He wakes up full of resolve but adulting gets in the way. There are plenty of times he’s with Yeosang and plenty of times he’s with Yunho but there never seems to be a time when all three of them are together. He doesn’t want to speak to one and not the other; the very idea leaves a bad taste in his mouth and so he waits. 

Except now it’s been like a month and it seems so fucking akward to bring it up now, like hey remember that time we got drunk as shit and played that game that ended with me nutting all over myself? No? Okay, good talk.

It’s fine.

It’s just he doesn’t know where they stand. He knows it had probably been a one-off, a booze and celebration related relaxing of the rules that usually governs relationships with someone they know and trust, and he doesn’t fault them for that at all. He’d rather it be him they experiment with than some rando off tinder or something. It’s safer for them because he’s clean and also not an ax murderer. 

He doesn’t know if it’s safer for him, for his heart, but that’s his worry and not theirs.

If they approach him again, will he accept?

Fuck yes, in less than one heartbeat, yes. It had been so late when they’d (ha) finished, he hadn’t gotten to reciprocate and that feels like he’d taken from them and not given anything in return. He’d like a chance to even things out.

But will he go looking for it? 

Absolutely not. If they weren’t looking for anything other than that one night, he might make them feel uncomfortable or pressured. Besides, he’s not sure he could handle the rejection. He considers himself a strong man but the idea of them saying no thanks, not interested, it was fun but one-and-done makes him want to claw off his own fucking skin. 

It’s fine. 

If he could just settle in his mind what they want from him, it would be okay, he thinks. A one-off, he can deal with. It sucks to think he’ll never get to feel so close to them again— okay, if he’s being honest, ‘sucks’ is the biggest understatement of the century; he will be devastated.

But an ongoing thing? An occasional third to scratch an itch, a safe harbor in which to fly a tiny freak flag?

Mingi just doesn’t know. He doesn’t know if he can do that, come only so close to them and never any further, still a third wheel, still on the outside. He doesn’t know if he can shrink his heart to fit a box like that because…because…

He loves them. With everything he has in him, he loves them. It might be stupid, but he can’t help wishing they loved him back.

Being wanted is wonderful; he’d felt so wanted that night, by both of them, felt like neither of them had wanted to be anywhere else than there, with their hands on him and their mouths on his. 

But being wanted and being loved aren’t the same thing. 

Mingi is wanted every time he steps up on the stage at Treasure. Men want him, women want him, hell even some of his fellow dancers have expressed interest. 

That’s not what he needs from Yunho and Yeosang.

But he’s terribly afraid that’s all there is for him.

I’ve got you, Yunho had said that night, his mouth a whisper away from Mingi’s.

So pretty like this, Yeosang had told him.

Neither of those things is love.

But he wonders, sometimes, because:

Mingi had been dozing on the couch one morning after working a shift. He hadn’t meant to, had only intended to sit a minute and watch a little tv, but somehow he’d ended up sideways and his eyes had been so heavy and he’d been planning to get up and go to his bed in just a minute, truly. But Yeosang had stepped out of his room then and even though Mingi’s eyes were closed he swore he could feel when Yeosang stopped in front of him. Swore he’d felt a kiss pressed to the crown of his head before he’d given in and slipped into true sleep

and because:

Yunho sat beside him on the train and and his arm had slipped around Mingi easy, easy. They’d watched videos of cats and when Yunho had laughed he’d pressed his forehead into Mingi’s temple and left it there

and because:

He’d woken up at sunset to an empty house but there’d been a sticky note on the fridge in Yeosang’s looping scrawl asking him to meet them at the movies if he was up before show time (he hadn’t been) and to eat the Bulgogi and rice in the fridge if he’s hungry (he had been). He’d only realized later that it had been their date night they’d invited him to.

and those things feel like love to him.

So yeah, sometimes. When he’s feeling brave, when the golden light of a late fall morning wakes him and he realizes all over again that he is safe and warm and alive, he wonders.

But he never quite dares to hope.

/

With the cooler weather and shorter days comes winter food stalls. They litter the park near the vocal academy, and he and Yunho try a new stall or cart before nearly every class.

Wooyoung has taken to joining them on Tuesdays. He only attends the academy once weekly.

“I take dance, too,” he tells them, blowing on his cup of tteokbokki before attempting to eat it. “Because I love both and didn’t want to choose between them.” He frowns. “If I could get a part time job, it would make things a lot easier, but I can’t find anyone who can accommodate my weird hours.”

“Weird, how?” Yunho asks. “Class schedule wonky?” He holds a piece of his chicken out for Mingi to eat, laughs when Mingi takes a ferocious bite.

“No it’s…my Mom works nights sometimes, so I’ve got to be home for my little brother. He’s only six.”

“So you need some days and some nights,” Mingi says. He pokes Yunho in the cheek with his tornado potato until Yunho takes a bite in self defense. 

Wooyoung finally takes a bite of his tteokbokki and hisses through his teeth. “Hot,” he complains. “But yes, basically. No one wants to give a part timer that kind of leeway. I’ll keep looking though,” he says. “Something will come up.”

Yunho nudges Mingi. “I’m going to call Hongjoong,” he says significantly, then walks a little bit down the path.

Wooyoung takes another bite and chews thoughtfully. “So you and Yunho, huh?”

Mingi slides his eyes sideways to look at Wooyoung. “Me and Yunho, what?”

“How long have you been dating?”

Mingi nearly chokes on his mouthful of potato. “We’re not…that’s…no,” he says, coughing. “We’re best friends.”

Wooyoung smirks. 

“What?” Mingi demands.

“I dunno,” Wooyoung shrugs and scuffs his beat up sneakers in the gravel in front of their bench. “But if me and my ‘best friend’ were anything like you and Yunho…” He whistles through his teeth. “I’d be shopping for rings, you know?”

Mingi has no idea what to say to that.

Yunho strides back up the path, grinning. He hands a slip of paper to Wooyoung. It’s the address of the BookNook, Mingi notes when he peers at it.

“Are you free at some point between ten and six tomorrow?”

Wooyoung looks at the slip of paper. “What’s the BookNook?” he asks Yunho.

“The cafe I work at. The boss is a cool dude, and he understands wonky schedules. Do you like coffee? It’s kind of a prerequisite.”

Wooyoung grins. “Man, coffee is life.”

/

“That was cool of you,” Mingi says after class as they walk up the block toward the subway station. “Talking to Hongjoong about Wooyoung.”

How long have you been dating? Wooyoung had asked that like it was normal, just took it for granted that Mingi and Yunho were together. Why? Mingi wishes he’d had the time to ask.

Yunho shrugs. “He seems like a good kid.”

It’s more than that, Mingi thinks. Yunho had seen a kid who obviously didn’t have a shit ton of money but was trying to make what he did have stretch between his passions while also attending school, and had done what he could to smooth the kid’s path. No fanfare or grand gestures, just kindness for its own sake.

He thinks of YuJun, of those extra plates of food packed tightly in tin foil, of jackets that just magically appeared at her house before the winter well and truly set in

I was cleaning out the upstairs closet and found this. Mingi-yah, do you know anyone who could use it?

and he suddenly feels warm again despite the cold. The apple truly doesn’t fall far from the tree.

Something is off, though. He can feel it the same way he can feel the wind biting through his gloves. It’s a sharp, gnawing feeling. He watches Yunho from the corner of his eye for a few strides, then reaches out and catches his sleeve. “Hey.”

Yunho looks back at him. “What?”

Yunho jerks his head at the metal railing of the bridge. They’re halfway over, above a culvert of some type filled with shipping containers and debris. At the other end of the bridge is the station entrance, but he wants to talk to Yunho before they’re surrounded by other people, even if commuter traffic is usually light at this time.

They lean their forearms on the bridge and gaze out over the wasteland below. 

“What’s up?” Yunho asks again. 

Mingi leans closer and nudges Yunho’s arm with his shoulder. “You tell me.”

Yunho sighs. “How did you know?”

Mingi shrugs. “I don’t know, man. I stopped questioning the custody arrangement on our single shared brain cell a long time ago. So spill it.”

Yunho bows his head and studies his hands. “The interview is tomorrow. With SNU.”

“Okay,” Mingi says, and waits. It’ll come; Yunho just has to line all his words up first. 

“What if I fucking tank it, Mingi?” Yunho blurts out. “What if I get in there and I screw it up so bad I never get a second interview?” He turns to Mingi and grabs his arms. “What if I don't get in?” His chest is heaving, staring at the ground between their feet.

Mingi ducks his head until he gets Yunho to look at him. “Hey. Those are good questions, okay? They are. But I’ve got one a better one. What if you do? What if you go in there and you fucking ace it? What if they offer you a place in the program right on the spot?”

Yunho shakes his head. “What if they don’t, though?”

“No. Listen to me. What if they do? It’s just as fucking likely to happen as anything else. You’ve worked your ass off and you’ve given it 100% of your best. Don’t undermine yourself now, at the last minute. Don’t walk in there believing anything less.”

Yunho stares at Mingi for a long time, looking like he wants very badly to argue but needs to process first. As he does, Mingi sees his shoulders relax. Then his jaw. Suddenly, Yunho tips forward until his head hits Mingi’s shoulder.

“I’m fucking terrified,” he admits in a whisper.

Mingi runs a hand up and down Yunho’s back to comfort as much as to warm them both. “Of course you are,” he says on a chattering laugh. “You’d be crazy not to be. But there’s being scared because the outcome is in someone else’s hands, and there’s being scared because you think you don’t measure up. Don’t be that bitch.”

/

Sometimes Mingi hates math with such a passion that if he could go back in time to when Euclid lived he’d hunt that fucker down and rip off the man’s balls with his bare hands.

Nine times out of ten his brain will chug along like a well oiled machine, juggling numbers in a kaleidoscopic array and the answer will just be there.

That tenth time, though.

Mingi stares at the problem he’s been staring at for what feels like three hours. It takes up half the damn page, for fuck’s sake. 

Finally, he slams the book shut. It’s either that or start tearing out his hair, and he really doesn’t want to do that. His temples are pounding. He messages Yeosang, who should be on his way back from the drinking and painting thingy he attends once a month, and asks him to pick him up a Coke. Sometimes Mingi likes his caffeine and sugar in life-threatening doses, and it sounds like exactly what he needs tonight. 

Ten-four, good buddy, Yeosang responds.

Mingi drags the wretched book of torture back toward himself and tries a pep talk. You can do this, you can do it in your sleep even, just give it one more look and maybe it will click.

He doesn’t believe it for a second, but he’s about to give it a try anyway when he hears the chime of the front door’s keypad.

“That was fast,” he says to Yeosang as the door opens, but it isn’t Yeosang at all. It’s Yunho. 

He shoves through the door in such a rush that it hits the coat closet and bounces back fast, nearly knocking into him as he kicks off his shoes and strides into the kitchen. There are two hectic pink patches on the apples of his cheeks. His eyes are fever-bright and frantic.

Mingi is off his stool in seconds. “What is it? What happened?”

Yunho plants a hand on each side of Mingi’s face and presses their foreheads together. “The interview,” he whispers. His eyes are wet.

Mingi slips his hands over Yunho’s shoulders, worried. He doesn’t remember ever seeing Yunho like this. “What happened? Yunho!” he says sharply when Yunho doesn’t answer right away. “What. Happened.”

“They gave me a second interview.” Yunho is laughing even as tears threaten. “Right on the spot, just like you said.”

“I told you,” Mingi tells him, squeezing Yunho’s shoulders tightly. His heart is singing. “I’m so fucking proud of you.” 

Mingi kisses him before he can think, before his brain even registers what he is doing. He’s so happy, and so proud, and Yunho is looking at him like he hung the moon, and he just…follows his heart. It’s only a moment before he realizes what he’s done and he pulls away, trying to apologize, stammering with nerves. They stare at each other for a beat, two, and then Yunho drags him back in, leans into him until Mingi’s back is flush up against the breakfast bar. Yunho kisses him as if he wants to devour him and Mingi lets it happen, lets Yunho lick into his mouth while Yunho’s thumbs trace his cheekbones. Mingi sucks Yunho’s bottom lip between his teeth just to hear him gasp, and then does it again because he can. 

Yunho pulls back to look at Mingi, and his smile is a wonder. He dips his head down and kisses Mingi quickly once, twice, three times. When he pulls away this time Mingi chases his mouth and then they’re kissing in earnest again, breathless, wanting. Mingi never wants to stop, never wants to stop doing just exactly this, and—

“What the hell is going on?” Yeosang asks behind them, and all the pretty castles in the air Mingi had been building come crashing down around him.

/

“I thought we were going to all talk before we…just…” Yeosang waves his hands around, clearly frustrated that he can’t find the right words, ”…crawl all over each other again!” He sets the bottle of Coke down on the breakfast bar a little harder than necessary and it falls over, rolling almost to the edge.

They all ignore it. 

Yunho’s cheeks had been pink before; now they flush deeper as Yeosang stares at him. “We were. It just…”

Yeosang’s eyes narrow. “Boy, if you give me some k drama supporting role bullshit like ‘it just happened’, I swear to god—”

“It’s my fault!” Mingi manages to push the words out against air that feels palpable, thick with tension. “I kissed him , it’s my fault.”

“Don’t do that,” Yunho says quietly. “Don’t take it all on yourself. Yeosang’s right. We should have all talked first. We wanted to, intended to even, but there was never a time when we were all together.”

Yeosang crosses his arms. “Well, we’re sure as fuck all together now so maybe we should—”

The front door keypad chimes again, and San comes in, looking exhausted. “Hey,” he says.

On any other day, Mingi thinks, San would’ve clocked the atmosphere in the apartment before he’d gotten his shoes off. He’d have taken one look at the three of them and known immediately something was up. 

He can only be grateful San hadn’t beat Yeosang home. He shudders inwardly at the idea of trying to explain why Yunho had been pressing him up against the counter while Mingi had practically wrapped himself around him like a vine.

Just best friend things, he thinks and nearly laughs before remembering that to his knowledge, San had never found himself on the living room floor with his best friend’s boyfriend making him gasp.

At least he sincerely fucking hopes not.

And okay that’s a thought he’d rather drink bleach than ever entertain again, so.

“Hey,” he manages as San shuffles past on his way to the room. “Long day?” It sounds inane to his own ears, but he can’t for the life of him come up with anything better.

“The longest,” San mutters, offering Mingi a tired smile. “I’m gonna go be unconscious for a while.” He glances over his shoulder at Yeosang and Yunho, gives them half a wave. “Night.”

“Night,” they echo.

Yunho sighs when the kitchen is theirs again. “Thank god you came home first,” he says, tangling his fingers with Yeosang’s. 

Yeosang smiles faintly, but his eyes are on Mingi’s. “Will you come and talk with us? I don’t think it should wait another month.” He turns and walks across the living room in the direction of his bedroom, pulling Yunho with him.

Mingi swallows and tries to tell himself that everything will be okay. There had been tension, but not the tears and recrimination he’d been fearing. They’re grown ass adults, and they’ll handle this the way friends should; fairly and with consideration for everyone involved.

After another moment, he grabs the bottle of Coke off the counter and follows them.

/

Yeosang’s room is as different from Mingi’s as it can get; where Mingi prefers jewel tones and varied fabrics that feel amazing against the skin, Yeosang leans toward soft pastels and gauzy panels. His bed is a low platform nearly flush with the floor: a pool of cushions and puffy comforters. It reminds Mingi of a cloud, cotton candy pillows piled high. 

One wall is a floor to ceiling rendering of Monet’s Water Lilies. It’s all so… Yeosang. Mingi feels his heart clutch. This is a side of Yeosang that most people don’t get to see, the soft, sweet colors that hide inside the sarcasm and savage wit.

Yeosang walks up the bed with his hands held out like he’s walking a tightrope and sits with his back against the wall. He looks for all the world like a weary monarch preparing to hold court. 

“Come on, sit down before I lose my damn nerve,” he says impatiently. Yunho and Mingi join him, and Mingi is aware that they always sort of settle into this sort of loose triangle with each other. Equidistant. He doesn’t know if that’s a good or a bad thing.

Hana and dul and set, he thinks, and shivers.

“Are you cold?” Yunho asks. He pulls a multicolored throw from the end of the bed and settles it over Mingi’s shoulders. Mingi can’t help but follow the graceful lines of Yunho’s shoulders with his eyes as he leans back on his hands again. His eyes flick over to Yeosang guiltily when he realizes.

Yeosang only smiles faintly, as if his mind is elsewhere.

“So,” Yunho says, and then doesn’t continue. He looks a mute plea at Yeosang. “I…don’t know what to say,” he admits. “I’ve never done this before.”

“Maybe we should lay out some ground rules.”

Mingi huffs out a laugh before he can stop himself. “Contract negotiations.”

Yeosang looks at him sharply. “What do you mean?”

“Ground rules just sounded so formal,” Mingi explains. He doesn’t know why it struck him as funny. Maybe it’s just nerves. “Like saying ‘Party A promises not to kiss Party C unless Party B is also present’. It just sounded funny to me.”

After a moment, Yeosang laughs, to Mingi’s great relief. “You’re right,” he admits, tapping his hands in a staccato rhythm on his knees. “I haven’t done this before either. What I was trying to say was…was… ugh, why is this so hard?”

“Probably because we’re sober,” Mingi says, and now it’s Yunho’s turn to look at him as if he’d said something not quite right. “I don’t mean I wasn’t in control of myself that night, don’t think that,” he hurries to add. “I knew exactly what the fuck was happening. I couldn’t always believe it was happening,” he admits, scratching at his neck self consciously, “but I was on board.” A thought strikes him, and it’s not a pleasant one. “Wait, did either of you not want—”

“No, no, no,” Yunho reassures him quickly. “We were right there with you. Hell, we were the ones who started it. Don’t…don’t worry that you were, I don’t know, pushing us or something.”

Something inside Mingi loosens; he hadn’t realized until just this moment how worried he’d been that he’d somehow coerced them into it; that they’d gone along with it to humor him somehow. This whole situation has him more fucked up than he’d realized.

“I’m sorry, we started it?” Yeosang says, whacking Yunho in the chest with a pillow the color of the morning sky. “Please. If it wasn’t for me, the two of you would still be pecking each other like great-aunties at Chuseok.” He makes exaggerated kissing sounds, the. snorts. “I wanted to knock your heads together.”

“We caught on eventually!” Yunho protests, catching Mingi’s eye and grinning. “Didn’t we?”

“Oh definitely,” Mingi agrees. “Lots of catching on. A good time was had by all. 10/10 would recommend Slap, Slap, Kiss.”

Yeosang is giggling helplessly, his head tipped back against the wall. “It was pretty fun, wasn’t it.”

“Too bad we can’t just play it again and save the talking for another day,” Yunho says.

“I don’t think there’s any more liquor in the house,” Mingi says.

“Would you need it?” Yeosang asks him, suddenly serious. His eyes are dark and steady on Mingi’s. “Would you need to be drunk to do it again?”

Mingi wets his lips. Dammit, he feels put on the spot right now, like he’s the only one asked to show their hand at a game of poker. But this isn’t a game, and his feelings aren’t a game, and he can do this. “To kiss you again, you mean?” he clarifies. Yeosang hesitates, then nods. “No.” Mingi says quietly. “No. I wouldn’t need a drop of liquor to kiss you again. Either of you,” he adds, feeling Yunho’s eyes on him.

“I kind of knew that last part,” Yeosang says. His smile is soft and fond. 

“Would you?” Mingi has to ask. He can’t keep it inside; he feels so exposed being the only one who has admitted anything so far. He craves their reassurance the way he craves oxygen, wants so badly to know that they want him, too.

“Of course I wouldn’t,” Yeosang says, as if it ought to be obvious. “Do you have any idea how many times since that night I’ve wanted to just haul off and pounce on you?”

“I— you did?”

“Yes, you entire asshat! Holy shit, I thought you knew. I suppose I can understand why you didn’t, though.” He narrows his eyes pointedly in Yunho’s direction. “Some of us have self control.”

“In my defense,” Yunho says loudly to be heard over their laughter, “I don’t have any self control to speak of.”

Mingi, who knows first hand that isn’t true, snorts. “You were in distress, you get a pass as far as I’m concerned.”

“Distress?” Yeosang cocks his head. “What do you mean?”

“Distress isn’t the exact word I want,” Mingi says. He looks at Yunho for support. “What’s the fucking word, man?”

“Horny?” Yeosang offers.

Yunho bursts out laughing. “No, god, give me some credit. I was…it was…I got the second interview, for SNU. They offered it to me at the end of my first. I was flying high on that, and—”

He doesn’t get any further, because Yeosang launches himself into Yunho’s arms with a cheer. The trajectory takes them both backward off the bed and they hit the floor with a thump. Yeosang is covering Yunho’s face with kisses. “I knew you could do it!” he crows, punctuating each syllable with another kiss. Yunho is giggling helplessly beneath him. 

Yeosang looks over his shoulder at Mingi. “You get a pass for tonight,” he says lightly. “I think kissing him senseless was the only appropriate response under the circumstances.” He climbs off Yunho and takes his place at the head of the bed again, smoothing his hands over his hair with a decisive nod. “But going forward…”

Yunho climbs back up onto the bed, his cheeks pink from laughter. “Let me state for the record that I also do not need alcohol to kiss Mingi.”

Yeosang rolls his eyes. “Yes, yes, loverboy, we know. ‘No self control where Mingi is concerned’ has been established.”

Mingi feels suddenly warm all over.

“But going forward,” Yeosang repeats. “How do you two feel about kissing when it’s just one on one?”

“Like if you and Mingi are here and decide to kiss each other?” Yunho asks. “I think…I think I’m okay with that.”

“Or if you and Mingi are, yeah.” Yeosang clarifies. He taps Mingi’s knee and then leaves his hand there. “What about you?” When Mingi only blinks, Yeosang explains. “Say you and I are hanging out, and you want to kiss me, but Yunho isn’t around at that moment. Do you feel like kissing would be okay? Or if it were Yunho, and I’m not there. Tonight doesn’t count,” he adds when Mingi opens his mouth, “if that’s what you were going to say. Extenuating circumstances. I’m talking just as a random occurrence.”

Mingi nods slowly. “Yes, as long as the two of you are okay, I think I am too.”

“Only ‘think’? I’m asking for clarification purposes. If you’re not sure, or you’re uncomfortable…”

“I say ‘think’ because it hasn’t really happened yet,” Mingi explains. “So I can't just say ‘I know’.”

Yeosang sits back. “That’s fair.”

“What about other stuff? Beyond kissing, I mean,” Yunho wants to know. 

“See?” Yeosang says to Mingi, mischief lighting his eyes. “Horny was the right word.”

Yunho holds up his hands in a what can you do? gesture. “No self control, remember?” His eyes slide over Mingi in a way that makes Mingi’s belly tighten with lust. “How do you feel about that?”

“About…uh, what?”

“About doing more.”

Mingi shifts a little, not uncomfortable but definitely more alert now. “With…?”

“With one of us. Either.”

“Por que no los dos?” Mingi quotes under his breath. “I think…” He swallows, his mouth suddenly very dry. “I think that should be something for all of us, if we ever decide we want to,” he says finally. “Like, kissing or whatever, one on one is fine. But anything more, maybe we should all be on board. If that makes sense.” He huffs out a little laugh. “I haven't done this before either.”

Yeosang hums, his eyes thoughtful. Then he reaches out to each of them and takes one of their hands. He waits until they also take each other’s, so they’re all connected. 

You and me and us. Mingi can’t, won’t let it matter that they are only talking about physical things. Yeosang and Yunho have each other for the rest; Mingi isn’t a part of that. He knows it. He accepts it.

It’s fine.

“Okay,” Yeosang says, squeezing their hands. “Kissing one on one is fine and acceptable behavior within reason; yea or nay?”

“Yea,” Yunho says. His eyes are on Mingi’s.

“Yea,” Mingi whispers. He’s remembering how it felt when Yunho had dragged him back in, kissed him like he would never be able to get enough. The knot in his belly tightens.

“Yea,” Yeosang echos. “Okay. Anything more than kissing, we negotiate with all three of us. Yea or nay?”

“Yea,” Mingi and Yunho and Yeosang say together.

It’s enough, Mingi tells himself, sitting cross legged on Yeosang’s bed with their hands in his. It’s enough that they want me. 

It has to be.

/

After a little more talk, during which they all agree to speak up if anything feels wrong or uncomfortable or if they just want to stop altogether, Yunho goes home to bed. He gathers his things, so hastily discarded earlier, and pulls Yeosang into his arms for a hug. When they kiss, Mingi looks anywhere but at them.

It’s a little awkward when Yunho opens his arms to Mingi at the same time Mingi puts his hand out for their usual complicated handshake, more awkward still when they both course-correct and still aren’t in sync.

“Oh my god, you’re both assholes,” Yeosang mutters. He reaches up, puts a hand on the back of both their heads, and pushes them toward each other. “Now, kiss.”

Laughing, they do as they’re told.

Yeosang retrieves the bottle of Coke from his room and pours them both a glass. He hops up on the counter in the dimly lit kitchen, very nearly in the same spot Mingi had set him the day the coffee mug had shattered on the floor, and takes a sip.

Makes a face.

“Gaaaah,” he complains, sticking his tongue out. “How do you drink this shit?”

Mingi keeps his eyes locked on Yeosang’s while he drinks half the glass in one gulp.

Yeosang laughs, delighted. “You’re such an asshole,” he says fondly. He chews his bottom lip for a moment. “How do you feel after talking things out?”

“Good,” Mingi says, draining his glass until the ice cubes click against his teeth. “I sure do love me some ground rules.”

“You’re never gonna let me live that one down, are you,” Yeosang asks in exasperation.

Mingi leans a hip on the counter beside Yeosang’s knee, grinning widely. “Nope.”

“Brat.”

“Thank you.”

“I feel better now that we’ve talked too,” Yeosang says with a sigh. “It was weighing on me. In fact, I think there’s only one thing that’s still bugging me a little.”

Mingi looks at him. “What’s that?”

“Well, I kind of feel like we aren’t starting off on an even footing,” he says. He reaches out and tucks Mingi’s hair behind his ear, his movements hesitant, like he isn’t quite sure if this is allowed. “Yunho got to kiss you tonight, but I didn’t. It’s sad, really.”

Mingi smiles and sets his glass aside. “You’re right, that is sad.”

“I know, right? A tragedy.” Yeosang reaches out again, brushes Mingi’s cheek with gentle fingertips.

Mingi moves so he’s standing between Yeosang’s knees and braces a hand on either side of him, leans in so their noses brush. “Of epic proportions,” he says softly.

“Practically a hate crime,” Yeosang whispers, and kisses him.

It’s slower this time, softer, with none of the frenetic energy of his earlier kiss with Yunho. It also lacks the surreal quality of the first time, when Mingi had been halfway between sober and drunk and halfway convinced that he was dreaming the entire thing.

There’s nothing halfway about it, this time. Yeosang kisses Mingi with purpose, as if he’s mapping out the ways Mingi likes to kiss and be kissed so he can remember them for next time. It is unbelievably hot that Mingi’s pleasure is that important to him.

Mingi realizes this is the first time he’s kissed either of them without a catalyst, no drinking games or extenuating circumstances to hide behind. He’s kissing Yeosang because he wants to be kissing Yeosang, because it feels good, 

Really, really good. Mingi’s hands drift up from the countertop to rest lightly on Yeosang’s waist. He remembers the mental picture he’d gotten the day the mug had broken, sliding his hands under Yeosang’s thighs so he could lift him up, and before he realizes it his hands are tight on Yeosang’s hips and Mingi drags him closer, closer, until their hips are flush and Yeosang is gasping. 

Mingi forces himself to keep things on this level, gathering up every ounce of self control he possesses to keep from taking it too far, from taking what he wants less than an hour after they’d agreed that anything past kissing should be a group decision.

It’s Yeosang who breaks the kiss off, burying his face in Mingi’s neck and breathing hard. He’s trembling, and Mingi feels a surge of savage joy that he isn’t the only one teetering on the cliff’s edge between too much and not enough.

“I need…I just need a minute,” Yeosang says against his skin. “Just…Jesus fuck. Mingi.”

Mingi squeezes his eyes closed; it does something to his insides to hear Yeosang say his name in that tone. He isn’t sure what, and he doesn’t intend to inspect it just now. He cups the back of Yeosang’s neck instead and presses a kiss to the shell of his ear. “It’s okay. You’re okay?”

Yeosang nods. “Yeah. Yes. I’m okay.”

“Okay.” Mingi holds onto him, tries to keep it light, and rocks Yeosang side to side a little. “That was a lot, hmm?”

“For you, too?”

“Mmhm.” Mingi’s heart rate is re-entering the normal range. In a few minutes he may even be able to move without it being glaringly obvious that he’s got a raging hard-on. Baby steps.

“But you’re okay?” Yeosang sounds more steady now. He’s no longer shuddering, but he’s clinging to Mingi’s shoulders all the same.

“I’m okay.”

Yeosang sits back a little so Mingi can see his face. His cheeks are dusted with pink and his lips are parted slightly. His eyes are wide and dark on Mingi’s. “I want to kiss you again,” he says. “But I don’t just want to kiss you, so we’d maybe better not.”

“Okay,” Mingi responds easily. He feels the exact same way and it’s a relief to him that Yeosang admitted it first. 

Yeosang wiggles backward so they are no longer up against one another. “Okay,” he agrees. Then he groans and scrubs his hands over his face. “Definitely did not want to stop,” he admits, with a self-deprecating laugh. 

“You’re a paragon of self control,” Mingi tells him, smiling.

Yeosang brightens. “You’re right! I am to be commended!” He nudges Mingi away and hops down off the counter. “Now I’m gonna go commend my ass into the shower and then bed. I’m kissing you goodnight in my head instead of for real,” he says primly. “Because I currently don’t trust myself. I hope you’re happy.”

/

And he is. He is happy— there’s something exhilarating about being wanted by someone you want in return, he’d be lying if he said there isn’t. It can be overwhelming at times; he spends at least some portion of many days in a state of heightened awareness and near-constant arousal and has developed an almost Pavlovian response to the sound of playing cards being flipped over or shuffled. When he’s with them, either of them, they’re all he can think about. When he isn’t, he’s thinking about the next time he might be with them. So yeah, overwhelming.

But it’s the good kind of overwhelming, a warmth in his belly, a fluttering heart. He suspects Yunho and Yeosang of being in on some scheme to tease him past the point of his endurance and he hopes to god they never stop.

There’s the way Yeosang will skate his fingertips across Mingi’s arm, his thigh, the back of his neck. Nothing pointed or obvious, just little touches in passing that leave goosebumps or shivers in their wake and keep him thinking about things he shouldn’t for hours afterward.

There’s the way Yunho will bite him, barely a scraping of teeth before pressing a kiss to the same spot, the way he'll band an arm around Mingi’s chest from behind and sink his teeth into that spot Mingi likes, piercing and painful and so so good.

Hands on his belly, his back, his hip. Fingertips skimming his jawline, the shell of his ear, the fullness of his lower lip. They touch Mingi in a thousand different ways, each guaranteed to make him want and ache and think of them constantly.

Not that he didn’t already.

He does his best to give as good as he gets, because it makes him feel good to make them feel good. He’ll get a good fistful of Yunho’s hair, kissing him dirty in the elevator and using his body like an anchor pinning Yunho’s to the wall. He’ll pick Yeosang up when he kisses him sometimes because it catches Yeosang off guard every time he does it, has him flustered and pliant in Mingi’s arms; Mingi loves the pretty little sounds Yeosang makes when he does.

But for all of that, agonizingly, they don’t manage to get together with the three of them, at a time when doing anything more would be feasible. It’s incredibly fucking hot to be edging each other interminably, but Mingi is only a man. Eventually even his self control will snap.

In an effort to engineer a situation where they will all be in the same place at the same time, Mingi decides to throw a party. Just a little get together, the kids from Vocal and a few of their other friends. There will be music and dancing and food and drinks, and hopefully at some point in his evening, Yunho and Yeosang.

Preferably naked and in his bed. Or Yeosangs’s, he’s not picky.

/

“Okay here’s the thing,” Mingi says after Wooyoung’s third run through of the solo song he’s working on for his final. “Your voice is beautiful, don’t let anyone tell you it’s not, okay?”

Wooyoung nods.

“Okay, that’s established. But this song, it needs a stronger delivery than you’re used to giving, right? You’re used to tipping into your falsetto rather than barreling into it.”

Yunho turns around on the piano bench. “I think I understand what you’re trying to say,” he says to Mingi. “Like that little nun in Sister Act.”

“Exactly, man.” Mingi gives Yunho a high five. 

“What little nun? What’s Sister Act? Is that some old ass play or something?”

“Okay, fuck you for that,” Mingi laughs. “We’re literally the same age.”

Wooyoung grins. “Whatever you say, ajussi. But seriously, what do you mean, tipping or barreling? Use small words, please, my brain is broken.”

Mingi does his best to explain, and then Yunho demonstrates because his range is closer to Wooyoung’s and together he thinks they get Wooyoung on the right track.

They’re packing their things to leave when Mingi remembers something. “Oh hey, I’ve been meaning to ask you— I’m having a get together at mine on Friday, if you don’t have work or class or kid brother, we’d love it if you wanted to come.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Almost all of Vocal is coming, so you'll know people.”

“Hongjoong and Seonghwa too, probably, right?” Yunho asks. 

“Last I checked they’re set to come by.”

Wooyoung grins. “All the ajussis in one room, wow. Sounds like a swell time. Hey!” he squawks when Yunho swats him. “Alright, alright, sorry. What time is this soirée, you wild youths?”

“Eight, you little asshole,” Mingi says with a grin.

When Wooyoung is gone, Mingi and Yunho push the piano back against the wall and straighten the desks. Mingi shrugs into his coat while Yunho shuts off the lights. 

“I have a question,” Yunho says as they start down the stairs. “Just out of curiosity.”

“That’s terrifying. I’ve seen your browser history.”

“You should be familiar with it, I copy/pasted yours,” Yunho shoots back. “Anyways, Yeosang is wondering if you have any ulterior motive to this party Friday.”

Mingi feels his lips try to curve into a smile and forces them into a grim line instead. “Oh? That’s funny. Yeosang asked me the same question yesterday, only he said he was asking for you.”

“Ah,” Yunho says, ducking his head. “We should’ve agreed on our stories beforehand, I guess.”

Mingi laughs out loud and jumps down the last two steps to the entryway floor. “I guess you should have,” he agrees.

“Mingi.” Yunho reaches for his arm before he can open the door to the street, turning Mingi back to face him. “What I’m asking is, um. I…I mean we… ”

Mingi raises an eyebrow. Whatever it is, Yunho is having one hell of a time getting it out. “You…” He prompts when it seems like Yunho has given up. “Should we try charades? Do you want to draw it?” He pats his pockets. “I know I have a pen here somewhere.”

“We want to know if you’re planning on bringing a date to the party!” Yunho yells in a single breath. His eyes are a little wild as his voice reverberates through the empty academy.

“Oh, is that all? No,” he answers simply. “The entire thing is an excuse to get all three of us together. I kind of assumed you guys knew that.” He looks at Yunho a little more closely, sees the tightness in his jaw and the muscle ticking there. “Hey,” he says. “Are you okay?”

Yunho stares at him. Half his face is in shadow and it makes it hard for Mingi to read his expression. “I don’t…I think I’m… fuck,” Yunho grits out harshly. He kisses Miingi instead of saying anything else, kisses him deep and strong and so slowly it makes Mingi’s heart stutter in his chest. It feels different to him in a way he can’t name, but he’s helpless to do anything but kiss Yunho back the same way. They kiss and kiss in the foyer of the silent academy and when they finally remember that they’re supposed to be leaving, Yunho holds his hand the whole way home. They don’t talk about the kiss or Yunho’s question but those things hang heavily between them, linking them as surely as their tangled fingers.

Later, alone in his room, he watches the first snow falling outside his window by the hazy yellow light of the street lamp and it occurs to him that the word he’d been searching for to describe Yunho’s kisses tonight is tender.

He doesn’t know what to do with that information, and so gets under his blankets and tries to sleep instead.

/

The party is an excellent distraction on many levels. 

For one, Mingi feels as if he hasn’t taken the time recently to just enjoy music for its own sake. He’d always loved it as far back as he can remember, but it had taken on special significance once he’d met Yunho. Back then Yunho had always been singing or humming under his breath, his control amazing even then, untutored and raw. Mingi doesn’t sing nearly so well but that hadn’t deterred him from loving music almost as much as Yunho had. It’s just one more thing in a list of thousands they share.

For two, he has a large and eclectic circle of friends and acquaintances and it always fascinates him to get a bunch of them together and see what new friendships spring up. 

For three, he needs something to get his goddamn mind off his nerves.

Because he is nervous, and that’s a hell of a thing to realize at the eleventh fucking hour.

The thing is, the longer this goes on and the more invested he becomes, the less comfortable he is with being…a sometimes for them, when they are an always for him. He knows he overthinks things, it’s basically part of his make up at this point, but the closer they get to each other and to what Mingi now thinks of as an inevitable conclusion, the more he feels like maybe this is the surest way to break his own heart. Because at the end of the day, no matter whose bed they end up in, they are they and he is he and those two existences are separate.

To quote some poet or other in one of those books Yeosang likes to read on rainy afternoons and snowy mornings, we doesn’t always equal us.

He hadn’t understood it, when he’d first skimmed the book for lack of anything better to do before work some long ago night. He thinks he gets it now.

He wants them. That’s irrefutable. They want him. He believes that whole heartedly; haven’t they shown him over and over again these last few weeks that they do, in a dozen different ways?

But wanting isn’t loving and sometimes we isn’t the same thing as us, and sometimes Mingi thinks he’s going insane from trying to keep his head above water.

And even that is enough to make him feel guilty, because sometimes:

He’ll stop whatever he’s working on for school and glance up, and Yeosang will already be looking at him as if Mingi is someone that makes him happy just to look at, to be near. He’ll smile, and Mingi will smile in return, and he’ll go back to his studies with some kind of sweet warmth in his belly

and sometimes:

Yunho will come by after work or class and bring something for Yeosang; the chocolate he favors or a new drink he’d mentioned wanting to try or sometimes just a rose from a street vendor that had struck Yunho’s fancy on his way past. Mingi will look up to find a bottle of Coke or a tangerine or a flower in Yunho’s hands for him, his eyes bright and his smile soft and everything in Mingi’s middle feels like champagne bubbles

and sometimes:

Mingi will move past one or the other of them and they will reach for him, draw him in, curl up against him like they just want to exist in his space, share his air

and sometimes:

Yunho will kiss him in that way that doesn’t feel as if it’s about sex or even wanting but about something deeper, something fuller, something that makes Yunho hold Mingi like he’s made of glass or smoke or ritual fire, pressing kisses into his mouth like an offering

and Mingi will fall asleep with these things moving through his mind like mist. 

So, yeah, he feels guilty. Guilty that all these pieces of themselves they’ve chosen to share with him don’t always feel like enough. Guilty that he’s dissatisfied with some because he wants all.  

He needs a goddamn distraction, and it’s party time. 

/

Mingi dances with everyone at some point during the night. He and Hongjoong and Seonghwa attempt an abbreviated version of a currently popular TikTok dance with mixed results, he teaches Felix to slutdrop to the hoots and cheers of onlookers and the fascination of Felix’s boyfriend, and swing dances with Ryujin from Vocal until one too many spins send her running to the bathroom. Mingi makes sure a friend follows her and insists she come find Mingi if she needs more help. 

He cleans up discarded plates and cups, inspects the punch bowl for potency and adds more vodka, jokes with Chris Bang over something that had happened in their AbPsych class on Wednesday. He sees San engaged in a lively conversation with Lily and Soobin and is glad; something has been bothering San recently, and Mingi feels bad that between work and school and his near-constant focus on the Yunho/Yeosang dilemma, he hasn’t been as attentive as maybe he could. Yeosang would tell him if anything was really wrong, Mingi feels certain, but he keeps an eye on San for a little while, anyway, just to make sure.

When Wooyoung arrives, Mingi makes sure to introduce him to a few people he doesn’t yet know. At some point, Yeosang takes Wooyoung under his wing, laughing with him and drawing others into their little circle. It eases Mingi’s mind because the party is getting a little rowdier now as the drinking continues and if Mingi is not available at some point he wants to know the kid is being looked after.

He laughs a little to himself; maybe Wooyoung has a point, calling him Ajussi even though they’re same-age friends. He’d just referred to Wooyoung as a kid, after all.

Mingi dances some more, and flirts in a friendly way, drinks punch and does a shot with Hobi, San’s dance studio director. He talks to Changbin and Jongho and pretty much everyone who has shown up at some point. He’s never still, never bored, never alone for more than a few moments at a time.

And even so, there is never a single second of the night where he is not terribly, achingly aware of Yunho and Yeosang. He knows where they are in the apartment at any given time, feels their eyes on him and knows they feel his on them. Every so often their gazes will lock on each other’s at the same time, and Mingi will feel a tug of lust, a fire in his belly and the snap of electricity in his veins. 

The charge of it, the rush of it, doesn’t abate the longer the night wears on. If anything, it just grows stronger as the party begins to wind down. Before he realizes it, it’s one in the morning and many people have already left. He’s considerably more drunk than he’d intended, but not so bad that he isn’t certain of his own actions. No excuses, no hiding.

Wooyoung helps him clean up cups and bottles and plates. The food on the breakfast bar has been well picked over but they wrap it anyway. Yeosang wipes down a stool where someone spilled an entire cup of the punch.

Wooyoung yawns. “I had a lot of fun tonight, but I should probably head to the train.”

“The trains aren’t running anymore tonight,” Yunho says, holding the fridge door open so Wooyoung can stack the trays of food inside. 

Wooyoung looks up in alarm. “What do you mean? I thought they ran until five thirty!”

Mingi shakes his head but stops because it makes him feel a little wobbly. “Til twelve thirty. They start up again at five thirty.”

“Well, shit,” Wooyoung says. “I need to pay more attention.”

“Why don’t you just sleep here?” Mingi suggests with a shrug. “We happen to own the best napping couch in the city, and we have blankets and stuff.” 

“I don’t know if…”

Yeosang rubs Wooyoung’s back briskly. “I’d rather know you’re safe here than in an Uber driven by someone you don’t know. I can loan you some pajamas and everything, hmm?”

Wooyoung agrees once they manage to convince him it's no trouble. Mingi rummages in the bathroom cupboard for a spare toothbrush and leaves Wooyoung to get changed. Yunho grabs some blankets and a pillow from Yeosang’s room and makes a little nest on the couch.

“It’s like having a little brother,” he says with a soft laugh. 

“He’s literally the same age as us,” Mingi reminds him.

Yunho grins. “Shut up, Ajussi.”

Yeosang skims his knuckles down Mingi’s arm, smiling up at him with a mischievous question in his eyes. Mingi looks at Yunho. Yunho has his bottom lip caught between his teeth and for a moment Mingi thinks he’s going to back out. He doesn’t know how he feels about that but he doesn’t get the chance to examine it very closely before Yunho leans in and kisses him once, twice, three times.

Wooyoung clears his throat quietly. Mingi starts guiltily, but Yunho takes his time turning away from Mingi like he doesn’t care who knows. Yeosang squeezes his hand before letting it go.

“You guys go on,” Mingi says quietly, tilting his chin in the direction of his room. “I’ll be there in a second.”

Yeosang and Yunho move off down the hall hand in hand. Mingi turns back to Wooyoung.

“Called it,” Wooyoung snickers with an arched brow and smug little smile. 

Mingi sighs. “Yeah, yeah, fine.” Then he frowns. “It’s not..we aren’t exactly…”

“Official?” Wooyoung supplies.

Mingi nods. That’s as good a way to phrase it as any he could come up with. It twists a little at his insides, but he does is best to ignore it. They want him, he reminds himself. He wants them. It doesn’t have to be any more complicated than that.

Wooyoung must mistake Mingi’s expression for worry. “I won’t say anything to anyone, if that’s what’s bothering you. That’s your business, not mine.”

It hadn’t even occurred to Mingi to worry about that, but he’s not about to get into it with Wooyoung now. “Thanks,” he says. “There’s a toothbrush still in the package on the bathroom counter for you in the morning.”

Wooyoung settles himself on the couch and pulls the comforter up over his feet and knees. “Thanks for letting me stay.”

“Of course.” Mingi flicks the lights off and is just starting down the hall when Wooyoung calls out to him again.

“Hey, Mingi?”

Mingi turns back. “Yeah?”

Wooyoung’s grin flashes in the low glow from the street lamps outside. “Fighting!” he calls softly, and Mingi laughs all the way to his bedroom door.

/

Mingi steps into his bedroom and his laughter drowns beneath a flood of want. Yeosang is standing at the foot of Mingi’s bed between Yunho’s knees. His torso is bare, the roses and vines on his spine vague smudges in the dimness. Yunho takes a mouthful of champagne straight from a bottle and Yeosang dips down to kiss him. A little champagne drips down Yunho’s chin and onto his bare chest. Mingi feels his eyes unfocus briefly as he imagines sucking it off Yunho’s skin.

His sharply indrawn breath has them both turning toward him and for one instant Mingi feels as though he’s intruding, that he’d walked in on them and interrupted something private.

But Yeosang is reaching for him, desire stamped plainly on his features and when Mingi reaches them Yunho hands the bottle of champagne to Yeosang to set aside. He tugs at the hem of Mingi’s button down that had come untucked, running his thumb over the soft material. His knuckles skim Mingi’s stomach, and the muscles there tighten in response.

“Nice shirt,” Yunho murmurs. “Are you particularly attached to it?”

Mingi struggles to focus beyond the sensation Yunho’s knuckles against his skin. “Ah, not really—”

Yunho moves so quickly Mingi barely registers it, doesn’t process the sound of tearing fabric until his shirt is hanging open and half off one shoulder.

Oh fuck, am I in trouble here, Mingi thinks, and lets the shirt fall to the floor.

Yeosang retrieves the bottle of champagne and offers it to Mingi. Mingi’s throat is dry from nerves and want and he drinks more and faster than he means to. He lets Yunho tug him forward and press a kiss and a bite to his belly. He grips Mingi’s hips so hard Mingi thinks it will bruise, that tomorrow he’ll be able to see the shadow of Yunho’s fingers on his skin like a brand. He couldn’t give a fuck less. 

In fact, he welcomes it. This Yunho, a rougher and more demanding Yunho than Mingi is used to, is someone he’s only glimpsed briefly before, and Mingi finds the duality makes him dizzy in the hottest way possible. 

The moments begin to pass by in flashes of clarity. Drinking more champagne. A kiss from Yeosang that leaves him breathless. Staring down at Yunho as Yunho unbuttons Mingi’s jeans, draws down the zipper. Crawling clumsily up toward his headboard, holding his arms out to them as he settles against it, whispering here, come here, touch me, let me touch you.

Eventually the flashes of clarity settle into a shimmery, wavering sort of consciousness that makes him feel as if he’s seeing through water. Everything is soft, safe.

Yeosang is kneeling beside him. His golden skin is glowing in the pale light from the street lamp outside. He’s beautiful, and Mingi suddenly wants to touch him more than anything. 

Yeosang catches Mingi’s hand in midair and presses a kiss to each fingertip. He doesn’t move Mingi’s hand away from his lips when he’s done, like he’s waiting for Mingi to do something. Mingi pushes a finger gently against Yeosang’s mouth and Yeosang takes it in, sucks it gently. Mingi pushes a second finger in and Yeosang takes that one too, swirling his tongue around Mingi’s fingertips. 

Mingi’s lips part on a breath. “One more?” he asks, and Yeosang nods. Mingi’s cock throbs against his belly, dripping precum onto the skin there. Mingi closes his eyes, imagines Yeosang’s soft mouth wrapped around the head of his cock instead of his fingers. He moans, breathy, and opens his eyes again. The soft gauzy feeling in his head is starting to dissipate the way fog will when the sun hits it. In its place the rough and jagged edge of need is beginning to push through. He turns his head.

Yunho is beside him propped on an elbow the way he’d been back in Gwangju, that almost-kiss, so close and never close enough. “Kiss me,” Mingi whispers, “kiss me this time, okay?”

Yunho does, pressing his lips to Mingi’s forehead first and then each cheek. Despite the shimmering, wavering quality of his thoughts and the aching fullness of his cock, Mingi’s focus is riveted on the sensation of Yunho’s lips against the skin. It’s so much already, so many feelings inside and so many sensations outside that for a moment he’s overwhelmed. Yunho laces  their fingers together and presses his hand into the mattress beside his head. His kiss has an edge to it, like he’s holding himself back from doing exactly what he wants. Mingi doesn’t know how to tell him it’s okay, he wants to be ruined tonight by both of them, and wants to ruin them in return.

Then Yunho sits back, tips the champagne bottle to his lips, and Mingi feels like he might cry. His eyes drift closed. He hears the click of a lube cap. His mind swirls.

Yeosang leans over him then, his knee slotted between Mingi’s thighs. He taps Mingi’s nose gently. “Eyes on me now, okay?”

Mingi nods mutely.

Yeosang kisses him once, then trails his mouth down the column of Mingi’s throat, to his chest, lower. He reaches Mingi’s piercing— a hoop today, silver glinting against the cream of his skin —and flicks it with his tongue. Mingi gasps.

“Still with me, baby?” Yeosang asks, his voice a low purr.

Mingi props himself up on his elbows, staring down at Yeosang with wide eyes. “Yeah. Yes,” he breathes.

And then Yeosang takes Mingi in his mouth and Mingi forgets to breathe at all.

It’s obscene, the way that pretty mouth is stretched around his cock. Mingi doesn’t think he’s ever seen anything more beautiful than Yeosang looking up at him through his lashes.

Yeosang’s mouth is wet and warm, and Mingi’s head falls back in pleasure. He floats like that for a few moments, gasping every time Yeosang pulls up and flicks his tongue across the slit or swirls it around the head. 

When Yeosang moans around his cock Mingi’s eyes fly open again. Yunho is down near the foot of the bed. Mingi let’s his gaze catch and drag over Yunho’s slender his waist, up that smooth torso, shoulders wide and strong as he slides a palm toward himself down Yeosang’s back to the swell of his ass. Mingi watches, fascinated as Yunho pushes into Yeosang slow, slow, letting him adjust. Yunho’s eyes are heavy lidded, his gaze locked on Mingi. He pushes in again, slowly, hissing through his teeth. Yeosang moans again, swallowing convulsively around Mingi’s cock.

“Oh my fucking god,” Mingi groans. He tries to focus back on Yeosang, can’t stop staring at Yeosang’s lips closed around his cock. There’s spit and precum dripping down his chin. Mingi’s hips kick up, just a little, as Yunho brings his hips flush with Yeosang’s ass and gives it a little smack. Yunho holds there, trembling with the effort, as Yeosang pants and whines around Mingi’s cock.

After a few moments, Yeosang pulls off Mingi’s cock with a hiss and a gasp. “You can move, please move, it’s okay, please,” he babbles. His eyes are wide and glassy with pleasure as he looks up at Mingi. “Please fuck me,” he whispers. Mingi doesn’t know if he’s speaking to him or to Yunho. Or if it really matters.

“He wants to get fucked,” Yunho pants, watching Mingi and starting to rock his hips slowly against Yeosang’s.

Mingi nods. His cock, wet with spit and precum, throbs in response to Yunho’s voice. His heart is racing

Yunho snaps his hips against Yeosang and Yeosang gasps and moans. “So let’s fuck him.”

Mingi looks down at Yeosang, then reaches down and grabs a fistful of his hair. “Okay?” he asks. “Yes or no, Yeosang?” he demands when Yeosang doesn’t answer right away, his tone sharp. 

“Yes!” Yeosang moans. 

Mingi doesn’t know if it’s a response to his question or the fact that Yunho is pounding into Yeosang in a steady rhythm, and he doesn’t really give a shit at the moment. He tightens his grip on Yeosang’s hair and guides his head back down. Yeosang’s gets the message, and Mingi’s cock is once again encased in that hot, velvety mouth. He fucks his hips up gently, falling into an unconscious rhythm with Yunho as they fuck Yeosang between them.

“Next time you fuck me,” he tells Yunho, and has the pleasure of seeing Yunho’s hips stutter, of hearing him moan Mingi’s name and Yeosang’s in the same breath.

The change in angle and rhythm must hit just the right spot for Yeosang because his moans become one long whine and his fingernails dig into Mingi’s hips, sharp enough to draw blood.

“Fuck yes,” Mingi breathes. “Keep that fucking pace,” he snaps at Yunho. His balls are tight, his belly’s tight, and the head of his cock is hitting the back of Yeosang’s throat with every one of Yunho’s thrusts. “Jesus fuck,” he nearly yells when Yeosang swallows around him, “you feel so fucking good.” His hips start to stutter, and he knows what’s coming but the ferocity of it still takes him by surprise and he swears viciously as he empties himself into Yeosang’s mouth, over his tongue and down his throat

Yeosang takes it all, doesn’t even break rhythm, although his eyes are streaming tears with the effort. Mingi can only lay there for several moments, gasping, his eyes squeezed shut as he rides out the aftershocks. 

Then Yunho yanks Yeosang upright, still thrusting into him with relentless strokes. Yeosang’s head lolls back against Yunho’s shoulder. His cock is hard and heavy between his legs. As Mingi watches, a bead of precum appears at the slit.

Mingi scrambles up onto his knees, kneeling in front of Yeosang. Yunho’s arm is banded around Yeosang’s chest, keeping him upright as he fucks him with one foot planted on the floor for balance. Yeosang looks blissed the fuck out and Mingi knows that this image has seared itself into his brain; it has changed him at a level so deep that he will never be the same. Just the idea of it has his cock twitching again, even though he knows it’ll be a hot minute before he’s ready to go again.

But that doesn’t mean he has to stop making them feel good. He wants to know, not just imagine, what Yeosang sounds like when he comes, how it feels when he does. He wants Yeosang in his lap, wants his cock buried in Yeosang to hilt. He wants Yunho over him, inside him, fucking him into the mattress until neither of them know anything but each other’s names. He wants to take Yunho apart piece by piece until he doesn’t know up from down and the only thing he can see is Mingi as Mingi drives him over the edge.

He wants everything, all of them that they can give, and he doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to stop wanting more.

Mingi kisses Yunho hard and dirty, then smooths his knuckles across Yeosang’s cheek. When Yeosang’s eyes open, Mingi kisses him too. “Can I touch you, pretty?” he whispers. “Wanna make you feel good, okay?”

“Yes— ah! Yeah, please,” Yeosang gasps.

“Mingi, hurry,” Yunho moans. “I can’t…real close, okay?” His hips stutter, his flat stomach clapping obscenely against Yeosang’s ass.

Mingi wraps his hand around Yeosang’s neglected cock, thumbs at the slit to spread the precum pooling there, times his strokes with Yunho’s thrusts.

“Baby, oh my god,” Yeosang gasps, his eyes locking on Mingi’s. “That’s so good, please don’t stop, please, just like that, oh god, oh fuck, Jesus please!”

Hot cum spurts against Mingi’s stomach, spills over his hand as he works Yeosang through his orgasm. Yeosang kisses him like he’s drowning and Mingi is the air. He tastes sweet and sounds even sweeter.

Yunho clamps a hand on the back of Mingi’s neck and drags him forward until their foreheads are pressed together, his eyes on Mingi’s. His pupils are blown wide, his mouth parted on panting breaths as his hips stutter out of rhythm. Yeosang moans brokenly between them, over-sensitive and fucked out and beautiful.

“Are you close, baby?” Mingi asks, as Yunho’s hips stutter again. At Yunho’s frantic nod, Mingi smiles. “Come for me then,” he whispers, “want you to come for me, okay?” and kisses him just as Yunho begins to moan his name.

/

After, when they’re clean and warm, Yunho and Mingi curl up on either side of Yeosang. He’s tucked up on his stomach under Mingi’s softest blanket, sleeping with his head burrowed beneath several pillows.

“Are you still okay?” Yunho asks softly. He’s watching Mingi steadily, his thumb tracing back and forth over Mingi’s bicep. 

Mingi, who feels as fucked out as he supposes it’s possible to feel, nods. “You?”

Yunho hesitates, and Mingi feels a wash of worry. “I didn’t get to touch you as much as I wanted to,” he admits.

Mingi relaxes. He’s been afraid Yunho was going to say he was having regrets. He thinks, after what they’d just shared, he would crumble into dust if he were to find they wished it had never happened. “I didn’t get to touch you enough either,” he whispers. “Maybe next time we can.”

Yunho smiles sleepily. “Yeah. Yeah, I’d like that.” He reaches out, smooths a hand down Mingi’s hair once, twice, three times, then lets his arm drape across Yeosang’s sleeping form. He hums comfortably as his eyes drift closed. “Next time, ‘kay? Mm. Love you,” he mumbles.

Mingi’s heart stumbles in his chest and it’s a minute before he remembers to breathe. Had Yunho just said…? 

No, of course not. That’s an embarrassing level of wishful thinking right there and he refuses to entertain it.

Even if he had said it, he’d obviously meant it for Yeosang and not Mingi.

He watches them sleep as the room lightens with daybreak and tells himself it’s fine. It’s fine if this is all, if this is everything he can have.

Tells himself he believes it.

/

It’s amazing to Mingi in the days, the weeks after that night that he could have ever thought he was happy before. Any joy he’d felt in the past pales in comparison, like a single candle beside a conflagration. It just feels so good to be with them, in whatever capacity he finds himself; shopping for the upcoming holiday with the pair of them and having dinner afterward, Saturday morning coffee curled up on the couch with Yeosang before Mingi goes to bed, kissing Yunho as they sit side by side on the piano bench at Vocal, sheet music scattering unnoticed. 

It’s enough, he thinks. It’s enough, because—

He’s so happy.

It doesn’t crash and burn right away, you see. 

Maybe that’s why when it does, Mingi is unprepared to navigate the wreckage.

He’s writing lyrics for his final project for Vocal, and there’s some line from some damned poet he wants to quote. The trouble is, when you can’t remember the name of the poet, the poem, or the specific line you want, even Naver is of little assistance.

The only thing Mingi knows for certain is that he’d read it at the BookNook, because he remembers reading that line and being so moved by it that he’d spaced out at that big ass pothos vine Hongjoong keeps in the center of the cafe.

Too bad that’s all his brain had decided to commit to memory, instead of the fucking line itself, but Mingi thinks it’s fine, at least he has that much to go by.

The wind is so nasty it practically shoves him in the door, rifling through pages of displayed books in the entryway and he has to tug the door closed behind him because the wind wants to pull it open again. The bell over the door jingles madly until he manages to get the door latched properly.

Then he starts scanning the shelves. The thing about the lending library portion of the BookNook is that the shelves are a hodgepodge most of the time. People borrow and return and donate so often that something you read last week may occupy an entirely different spot when you look for it next.

Or not be there at all, which Mingi fears may be the case with his book. Of course, he could be staring at it this very moment and not know, because when you don’t know the name of the book or the author, reading bookbindings isn’t very damn helpful.

“Oh, hi Mingi!”

Mingi looks up toward the voice, and smiles at Wooyoung. “Hey, man.”

“Can I make you an iced cappuccino before I’m done for the day? They’re ridiculously good.”

Mingi shakes his head. “Nah, but thanks. I’m not here to stay, I’m just looking for a book and then I’ve gotta run.”

Fifteen minutes later and growing increasingly more frustrated, Mingi still hasn’t found it. 

Wooyoung skips down the few steps into the entryway, shrugging into his coat. “I could’ve made you that cappuccino,” he laughs, “since you’re about as indecisive as me when it comes to reading material.”

Mingi swears under his breath. “I wish that’s all it was. I need a specific book, that I know I’ve read here, but I don’t remember enough about it to find it again.”

“Okay, well, two pairs of eyes are better than one. I’ll help, what’s the author’s name?”

“No idea. That’s my problem. I’m looking for a specific poem, but I’ll be damned if I remember if it was in a book of poems by the same author, or a…a…a whatsit.”

“Compendium?” Wooyoung offers.

Mingi arches an eyebrow. “I was trying to say ‘collection’, but go off, I guess.”

Wooyoung makes a sarcastic face, then laughs. “If it’s a poem, I might be able to help you. What’s it about?”

“Ah. It has the word ‘destruction’ in it.”

Wooyoung waits a beat, clearly expecting more. When Mingi isn’t forthcoming, Wooyoung claps him on the shoulder. “I’m gonna need a little bit more than that, my guy,” he tells Mingi solemnly.

“That’s kind of all I’ve got.”

“You’re looking for a poem, but you don’t know the name, or the poet who wrote it, or what it was about?” Understanding dawns and he wags a finger in Mingi’s direction. “You’re fucking with me, right? Did Hongjoong tell you to ask me for a book that’s impossible to find so I’ll stop bragging that I have our entire inventory in my head? He’s so salty about that, it’s hilarious.”

Mingi levels a stare at Wooyoung. “You have the entire inventory of the BookNook in your head? What are you, a fucking alien?”

Wooyoung narrows his eyes. “What year did Gershwin debut the song ‘I’ve Got a Crush On You’?”

“Nineteen twenty eight,” Mingi recites without hesitation.

“What play?”

“Treasure Girl. What does that have to do with— oh.”

“Yeah,’oh’.” Wooyoung rolls his eyes. “Pot and kettle much? Anyways. Do you remember anything other than the word ‘destruction’?”

Mingi sighs. “‘Hate’, I think. I know it’s not a lot. I’ve used up the time I had, though. I’ve gotta get going, I have to— oh, ew, it’s icing out,” he says, peering out the window. “I didn’t bring an umbrella either. Wait!” He turns back to Wooyoung. “The word ‘ice’ is in it!”

“You are way too worked up over a poem about destruction, hate, and ice,” Wooyoung says with a snort. “That sounds fucking depressing as…as…holy fuck, I think I know what poem that is!” He scans the shelves with a scowl for a minute or two and then pulls a slim volume from its place between two larger books. Mingi had overlooked it, assuming it was a magazine. “Here it is! Fire and Ice by Robert Frost. Right?”

It’s the right poem. Somehow, it’s the right fucking poem. “You’re insane, I can’t believe you pulled that out of your ass with three words. I owe you so big, it’s for lyrics for my final.”

“Nah,” Wooyoung says. “You don’t owe me, that’s payback for helping me with mine. I watched Sister Act,” he says laughing. “You were right about the little nun. I’m cuter though.”

Mingi barks out a laugh. Outside the sleet continues. “Hey, what are you doing right now? Do you have to get home for your brother?”

“Not tonight, Mom’s off work all week. Why?”

“It’s Roomates’ Dinner night,” Mingi explains. “That doesn’t mean much since none of us cook, but we’ll usually end up ordering takeout. Worst case scenario we settle for shitty microwave popcorn.”

“Why do I feel like there’s a story in there somewhere?” Wooyoung asks.

“Because there is. Come on, I’ll tell you on the way.”

/

Dinner ends up being an actual meal, courtesy of San and his mother’s re-gifted crockpot, which Mingi had considered using precisely twice in the past and had chickened out both times.

It’s a carb fest for sure but at least there is spinach and tomatoes in it, which makes Mingi feel only marginally better as he lays on the floor holding his distended stomach gently and trying to breathe.

Yunho and Yeosang haven’t fared much better, it seems. They’re at opposite ends of the couch and neither of them look very comfortable. Yunho in particular had been quiet for a lot of the night, but he chalks that up to school stress. If Yunho still looks like he’s unhappy by the weekend, Mingi will talk him into going out somewhere. 

Or maybe, since they’re all here…he flushes a little and reminds himself they’re all grossly full right now and a repeat of last time is probably not in the cards. Still, maybe he and Yeosang can team up and de-stress Yunho in other, less demanding ways.

Wooyoung goes home soon after dinner. San heads to his room, looking distractedly at his phone every few minutes. Mingi wonders briefly if he’s seeing someone, but then Yunho taps his knee to get his attention and he puts that aside.

The first thing Mingi realizes is that Yunho isn’t smiling, the way he always seems to be when he’s with Mingi or Yeosang.

The second thing he notices is Yeosang won’t look at him. Is, in fact, very pointedly looking anywhere but at Mingi. That hasn’t happened in all the years he’s known Yeosang, since he’d come to Seoul at the age of nineteen. 

Suddenly, the heaviness in his belly doesn’t have anything to do with San’s crockpot tortellini.

“What’s up?” he asks, even though he’s pretty sure he knows. The vibration of his own voice in his head sounds strange and distorted, as if it isn’t really him speaking. 

“We think…I mean, we’ve talked. Yeosang and me. And we think maybe we need to take a step back from this.” Yunho’s voice doesn’t sound like his either. Mingi wonders if it’s because of the ringing in his ears, sharp and deafening.

“Take a step back from…this,” Mingi echoes. “From me, you mean. Take a step back from me.”

“No,” Yeosang whispers. “Mingi, no. It’s not like that. This has just been so fast and so intense.”

Fast. This has been fast for them? He’s waited what feels like a lifetime to be with them and it’s been too fast? This can’t be right. He has to be misunderstanding them somehow. He reaches out, links his fingers with Yeosang’s, hoping he’s right, that any second Yeosang will squeeze his fingers or lean into him in for a kiss or...or…

Yeosang gently pulls his hand away.

That’s when Mingi knows for sure that this— whatever this had been— is over. They are they and he is he and there had never been an us outside of Mingi’s mind.

He’s only been fooling himself.

They don’t want him anymore. Mingi had been a sometimes for them and now he’s a not anymore. They can call it a break or taking space or whatever shitty cliche they want to wrap it up in and call it a gift. Mingi knows better. They’re done with him, or bored of him, or maybe he just gave in too easy, didn’t make them chase him because he’d wanted so badly to be caught. To be kept. 

He just doesn’t understand why, after everything, he isn’t enough.

He’d done it all, hadn’t he? He’d stuck to the rules and he’d given them what they’d asked for, never pushed or crossed a line that he knew of. They’d have told him, right? They’d have told him so he could fix it, apologize, make it better and god, god he can’t stand feeling this way, as if he’s done something wrong and so he has to be punished, losing something precious to him in the name of teaching him a lesson.

“So this is it?” he hears himself say. From this distance, he sounds so much more calm than he feels. “You guys are done with me now?”

Yunho draws in a sharp breath, as if Mingi had slapped him, and suddenly, fiercely, Mingi wishes he had. How can Yunho act hurt when he’s taking everything Mingi has ever wanted away?

“We all agreed that if any of us needed or…or wanted to stop,” Yeosang whispers. “we would all talk about it.” There are tears in his eyes, as if it’s his world crashing down and not Mingi’s.

“But we didn’t,” Mingi says. “We didn't all talk. You talked. And you,” he says to Yunho, and oh, that burns like acid in his gut. “The two of you talked, decided to put your toy back on the shelf and you didn’t bother to talk to me about it, because the toy doesn’t get a fucking say.”

That small, sane part of his brain is screaming at him to rein it in, pull it back; begging him to stop before he goes too far. He’s acting entirely too upset for someone who isn’t supposed to be emotionally invested, and he needs to calm the fuck down before they start to suspect. His mind races like a rat in a trap: do they know, did I fuck up, did I slip up somehow? Are they freaked out because they realized that this was never a game to me and now the stakes are far too high?

Mingi feels his breath hitch and wrestles viciously with himself. He will not show them what’s going on inside him. Not after this.

He looks at Yunho, whose jaw is clenched so tightly that a muscle tics in his cheek. Feels his heart splinter.

“Why?” Mingi asks him. Even though he’s positive he doesn’t want the answer, he needs it. He has to know.

“I’m sorry,” Yunho says. He doesn’t say anything else, and he doesn’t answer Mingi’s question.

Sorry. Mingi hears the word in his head and in his heart and his brain supplies the rest of what Yunho isn’t saying, sorry you weren’t good enough, sorry this was all too much too fast. We wanted you and now we don’t and this is done, we are done with you. Back on the shelf you go. So sorry. 

“You’re not sorry. You’re a fucking liar,” Mingi grits out. It’s all he can say without screaming.

/

It hurts to be discarded, Mingi knows that. He’d expected, in the days following, that this would be the thing that hurt the most about all of it. 

To love someone the way Mingi loves Yunho, the way he loves Yeosang, and settling for being only desired in return had been a dull ache in his chest the whole time.

To have even that taken away, to feel as if he no longer measures up, gives a serrated edge to that dull ache. It had felt like the worst possible pain.

But it’s the loss that hurts worse. It's a hundred thousand little losses that snap at him with claws and teeth until he feels as if he might go mad from it.

It’s waking to the soft strains of the music Yeosang uses to wake up in the morning, and knowing that if he goes out there he won’t be greeted with a kiss. It’s reaching for Yunho’s hand without thinking and seeing Yunho shove his hands in his pockets to avoid Mingi’s. It’s in the careful way they greet him, the stilted conversations, all the little spaces between them that just seem to grow wider every day until Mingi feels as though he’s seeing them across some impossibly wide gulf, their beloved forms tiny and indistinct with distance.

Nearly every day there is some fresh hurt inflicted on a heart already so raw that Mingi is surprised sometimes that it’s still beating.

Mingi tries to study. He tries to sing. He tries to write lyrics for a final he no longer cares about. He works, he sleeps.

And everything he does reminds him of them. They’d been a part of him, more than even he had realized. He misses them like he would a limb.

Mingi sits on the bench at the little park by the academy. It’s warmer today, the sun doing its best to remember the days when it had been strong. The branches above him are dark and wet, empty of leaves. He stares at the river and hates that he can feel the empty space beside him where Yunho should be.

“Do you mind if I sit?”

Mingi looks up to see Wooyoung standing by the bench. He hadn’t even heard him walk up. He sighs.

“Help yourself.”

Wooyoung sits, scuffs his feet in the gravel, looks out at the water. He’s holding a tornado potato out to Mingi.

“What’s this?” Mingi asks without much enthusiasm. 

“It’s this cool new thing called food. I thought we could try some.” Wooyoung takes a bite of his own, chews exaggeratedly. “Mmm. Good.”

Mingi snorts, despite himself. He doesn’t really want food, but he appreciates Wooyoung’s humor. “I meant, why did you bring me food?”

“I knew what you meant,” Wooyoung replies easily. “I just wanted to see if I could make you smile. You don’t, lately. Smile, I mean.”

Mingi doesn’t know what to say to that. Half the time his face feels numb anyway, as if this constant brittle sadness has covered over all the feelings that used to animate it.

“Do you really think I didn’t know why you guys bought me food all the time?” Wooyoung asks suddenly. 

It’s a strange enough question that Mingi looks over at him. “What do you mean?”

Wooyoung shrugs. “You guys just…included me. You never made it a big deal, never made a show of…I don’t know…feeding the less fortunate.”

“It wasn’t a big deal, that’s why.” He won’t insult the kid’s intelligence by denying it. “We were all hungry so we all ate. That’s all.”

Wooyoung hums. “Okay.” He eats some more of his potato, then huffs out a little laugh. “It tastes better if you, you know, eat it.”

Mingi takes a bite and chews mechanically. It feels like sawdust in his mouth. He wonders miserably if he will always feel like this, hollow and crumbling into dust.

“Listen,” Wooyoung says. “This is totally and completely not my business and I’m probably overstepping, but I—”

“Wooyoung.” Mingi holds up a hand to stop him. He doesn’t want to hear whatever platitudes the kid is going to come out with in an effort to make Mingi feel better. “Please don’t, okay? I just…I can’t.” He stands up, rakes a hand through his hair. “I’m sorry. I have to go.”

Wooyoung scrambles to his feet. “Mingi, wait. I shouldn’t have— what about class?”

Mingi thinks about sitting beside Yunho in Vocal for three hours, the awkwardness of the ride home as they both try to pull together shreds of conversation like a shroud for everything that has died between them. Thinks of going home, of himself and Yeosang circling around each other like magnets that have been depolarized, no longer able to touch. 

He wants to weep at the emptiness inside him.

Where do you go when home doesn’t feel like home anymore?

“I have to go,” he says again. Wooyoung wavers before his eyes, as if he’s swimming in the tears Mingi is trying so hard not to shed. 

“Okay,” Wooyoung whispers. “That’s okay, man. Can I…do you want me to come with?”

Mingi shakes his head. He needs to be somewhere, anywhere else before can allow himself to feel everything that’s trying to claw its way up from his gut. Knows he has to let it out because if he keeps it in he’ll be undoing years of the work both he and his therapist have done, painstakingly assembling the pieces of himself that had been ripped from him with every cruelty inflicted and every back that had been turned.

Knows that if it happens here, in the open, pieces of him will scatter in the wind and he will never be whole again.

If he ever really had been.

/

Mingi ends up going home, because he doesn’t know where else to go. He holds himself together as best he can, hunched in on himself and staring at his hands to avoid catching anyone’s eye on the train. By the time the elevator doors open on his floor he is shaking with the effort of holding it all in. He botches the passcode for their door twice before he finally gets it but he has to use his left hand to steady his right in order to manage it.

Yeosang is at the kitchen counter, listlessly stirring a bowl of rice and vegetables. His head flies up when Mingi walks in, his eyes wide. “You’re here!”

Mingi kicks off his shoes and tugs at his jacket. His throat feels like there’s something stuck in it. He thinks it might be a sob and he refuses to let it out. Not in front of Yeosang. “I still live here,” he mutters instead.

Yeosang either ignores his tone or doesn’t register it as he hops down off the stool. “You skipped Vocal. You never skip Vocal.”

“How—”

“Yunho,” Yeosang says, gesturing at his phone on the counter beside his dish. “He messaged and asked if I knew where you were.”

“What does he care? What do either of you care?” Mingi snaps. His lungs feel filled with glass. He hadn’t thought he could hurt worse. He’d been a fool to think it when every day since they’d discarded him proves him fucking wrong. They’re still talking about him instead of to him.

Yeosang’s face is pale. “That’s not fair,” he whispers. “Mingi, you’re not being fair.”

Fair. Fair. It would be funny, Mingi thinks, if it wasn’t so goddamned awful. 

His guilt and sorrow and loneliness are eating Mingi alive from the inside but Yeosang thinks he isn’t being fair.

Suddenly, he knows he’s going to lose his shit on Yeosang right there in their pretty kitchen; he can feel the words forming, every nasty, terrible, mean and untrue thing he can come up with to hurt Yeosang the way he’s hurting. It might relieve some of the pressure building up inside him, to make Yeosang’s heart bleed alongside his own.

Mingi pushes roughly past Yeosang before any of that can happen, strides into his room and slams his door behind him. His chest is heaving, great ragged breaths laced with fire. He slides down to the floor, his back tight against his bedroom door, hands clamped across his mouth to keep the sobs inside. His eyes, gritty and burning, stay dry. Eventually the trembling subsides, leaving him exhausted and aching.

He is ashamed of himself. He’s hurting and he’s sad and he’s empty and alone, but right now, in this moment, shame is drowning out the rest, flooding and filling all the hollow places and displacing all his air. He’d almost allowed himself to lash out at someone he loves simply because he’s in pain, because it hurts him to know they still care enough to worry about him.

Mingi wants— maybe even needs —them to be the villains in this story, and it fucks him up that they aren’t adhering to that narrative. They’re still trying in their own way to navigate their way back into friendship with Mingi, and he just keeps slamming the door in their faces.

It fucks him up that even after all this time, all his work and effort, he still sometimes doesn’t know what to do when he’s being shown basic human kindness. He’s better at it, sure. But lashing out at Yeosang, and by extension, Yunho, just for giving a shit if he’s okay is a new low. 

That’s not fair, Yeosang had whispered. 

And he’d been right. It isn’t fair. None of it is. Life isn’t fair; Mingi knows that better than he wants to. But that doesn’t give him the right to wrap himself up in his pain and turn his back on the people he loves just because they can’t love him back the way he wishes they could.

He thinks he should probably tell them that. Thinks he should stop wishing things were different and start figuring out how to move forward with the way things are.

He just needs to find the courage.

/

As it turns out, courage isn’t the only thing required to attempt to mend things with Yunho and Yeosang.

He also needs an opportunity, and that is something he can’t seem to manage. If he and Yeosang are at the apartment, Yunho is at work or class. If he and Yunho are at the Academy, Yeosang is busy elsewhere.

Mingi imagines there are plenty of times that Yeosang and Yunho are together, but it’s just never when he is also present. He doesn’t want to give up, but it’s extremely discouraging to feel like the universe itself is against his attempts at repairing this. 

He tries telling himself it doesn’t matter, that it’ll happen if it’s meant to, but that just feels like he’s making excuses.

Things between them are tense, which is to be expected, but sometimes it hurts so much he has to leave the room for a minute so no one will see him cry. He misses the way they’d been with each other. Not the sex or the kissing or the little touches, but just the way they’d existed as three parts of a whole, three little stars orbiting some tiny, lovely sun.

Hana and dul and set. You and me and us.

Wooyoung has been a fucking blessing. It seems like he’s made it his life’s mission to get conversations flowing between Mingi and Yeosang or Mingi and Yunho. He perseveres even when it’s awkward and stilted and awful. Mingi is grateful for it, even if it doesn’t always work. If it gets too bad, Wooyoung will suggest going for a walk or to a movie or even just hanging out in Mingi’s room to play video games or fiddle with Mingi’s keyboard, or work on his final for Vocal. 

It’s a little island of normalcy in a shitstorm, essentially, and it does a lot to keep Mingi sane.

Want to come over tomorrow? Mingi messages Wooyoung late on a Monday night after a particularly tense evening during which Yeosang hadn’t uttered a single word. Mingi had been struggling with the rice cooker and the awful silence had continued even though Yeosang usually never missed an opportunity to tease him about it. The rice had ended up in the trash, a half-scorched mass. The fire alarm had gone off. Yeosang hadn’t even flinched.

Sorry, dozed off, Wooyoung replies a little later. I wish I could, but I’m covering Yunho’s shift tomorrow. He’s got a date.

Oh, he types back, squinting. That’s not like Yunho— but things change and he’s no longer privy to the plans Yunho makes with Yeosang. He’s tired enough that there’s not more than a sting when he thinks of it. He must be taking Yeosang somewhere special. It’s nice of you to cover.

Mingi sets the phone aside and lets his eyes close. He really hasn’t been sleeping well lately, but his bed is soft and warm and he’s drifting. He falls asleep before Wooyoung messages him back.

When he wakes, the sun has already risen. It’s disorienting to realize he slept past sunrise, but he’s grateful for the extra sleep. He checks his phone for the time, but he’d left it off the charger while he slept and it’s dead so he plugs it in to let it charge while he showers. 

Mingi is sipping at his first cup of coffee and trying to figure out what to do with his day when Yeosang comes out of his room. He’s still in his pajamas. He looks like he’s just woken up.

“I thought you were going out with Yunho,” Mingi says, surprised into speaking despite how little they’ve been communicating lately.

Yeosang pauses in the act of reaching for the coffee pot. It’s a moment’s hesitation, a flinch, but Mingi sees it and feels a prickle of unease. 

“No,” Yeosang says quietly. He isn’t looking at Mingi. He pours his coffee and then just stares at it, like he’s trying to decide if he really wants to drink it or just dump it down the sink.

Something isn’t right. Mingi knows it, suddenly and without a doubt. He wants to reach out, take Yeosang’s hand. Wants to lead him to the couch and wrap him up in his arms and get him to tell Mingi what’s wrong, what’s happened to put that look on his face. 

But he can’t. Yeosang isn’t his to touch anymore, never really was his, no matter how much Mingi might wish otherwise.

“What is it?” he asks. “Yeosang, what’s wrong?”

Yeosang shakes his head and sets his mug down on the counter without taking a single sip. “Nothing,” he says, trying for a smile. “I’m just tired.” He pauses as if he means to say something else, then just turns and goes back to his room.

Mingi reaches for his phone, thinking to message Yunho to find out what’s going on, or Wooyoung to see if he knows anything, and remembers he’d left it charging. He dumps his own coffee, and after a moment Yeosang’s too, and heads to his room.

He clicks on KKT. His chat with Wooyoung is still open from last night. His eyes skim what he’d written before crashing out.

He must be taking Yeosang somewhere special. It’s nice of you to cover.

Wooyoung had replied within minutes, but Mingi had fallen asleep and missed it.

He reads it now, reads it again and again, trying to make sense of the words.

What are you talking about dude, Wooyoung had written. They broke up like two days ago.

/

This can’t be real, is all Mingi can think. Wooyoung has to be wrong, somehow. Yunho and Yeosang wouldn’t just…break up. They’re a unit. A team. A fixture. The sun rises in the East, the Earth goes around the Sun, and Jeong Yunho loves Kang Yeosang. 

It’s an irrefutable fact.

But Mingi thinks of that moment in the kitchen, of Yeosang involuntarily flinching at the mention of Yunho’s name. Thinks of the hurt he’d seen on Yeosang’s face.

Oh. 

Oh, no.

He doesn’t run across the apartment to Yeosang’s room, but it’s a damn near thing. He hip-checks a barstool on his way by, barely feels it when he barks his shin on the coffee table as he moves around the sofa.

He does manage to knock, realizes even in his worry that he needs to respect Yeosang’s space at least perfunctorily, but Yeosang doesn’t answer. 

He knocks louder. “Yeosang!”

Still no answer. It occurs to Mingi that Yeosang might be in the shower, that he can’t hear him knocking. He should chill, he should wait until Yeosang comes out again and not just go barging in where he might not be welcome.

His hand is on the knob anyway, and he’s warring with himself whether to just walk in when it turns under his hands.

Yeosang has been crying. His eyes are red-rimmed and puffy. “What?” he says. Mingi can tell he’s trying for a blasé tone, but Mingi can hear the hurt in it. 

“Is it true?” Mingi asks. “Are you and Yunho…did you…” He trails off, realizing even as he asks how terrible it must sound, coming from him. 

Yeosang wraps his arms around himself, like he’s trying to keep himself together, and Mingi’s fingers twitch, instinctively wanting to reach out and take Yeosang in his arms.

“Yeah,” Yeosang mutters. He isn’t looking at Mingi. “We’re taking a…a b-break.” Yeosang presses his lips together so tightly they almost disappear. He’s trembling, Mingi realizes, tiny fine tremors from the effort of holding himself still, not letting himself fall apart.

Mingi knows the feeling well.

“I’m sorry,” he says. It sounds hollow even to his own ears, no matter that he means it with his whole heart. 

“Yeah,” Yeosang’s tone is colorless. “Yeah, me too.” He steps back as if he’s going to close the door again, and shut Mingi out. Instead, Mingi gathers his courage and follows him in and shuts the door behind him. Yeosang turns away.

“Where is he?” Mingi asks. Maybe if he can just sit them down and remind them that they’re supposed to be together, everything can go back to the way it was.

Please, he just wants everything to go back the way it was. 

“Yeosang,” Mingi repeats when Yeosang doesn’t answer. He hates talking to people’s backs but if it has to be then so be it. “Where’s Yunho?”

Yeosang does turn then, and his eyes are drenched and streaming. “I don’t fucking know,” he sobs.

Mingi opens his arms. Yeosang stumbles blindly into them. They stand in Yeosang’s room and Yeosang cries his heart out against Mingi’s chest and Mingi has no idea what to do other than what he’s doing right at this moment. Doesn’t know how to help other than petting Yeosang’s hair and murmuring to him that everything will be alright.

He holds Yeosang until his sobs taper off to the occasional hitching breath and sniffle. Mingi hates himself for savoring the sensation of Yeosang’s arms around him in a situation like this. It’s selfish to feel that way when everything has gone so wrong on every level.

As if sensing Mingi’s dilemma, Yeosang pulls away, shrugging out of Mingi’s arms and wiping his eyes and face. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be doing this. I can’t be fucking doing this.”

“What do you mean? Doing what, crying?” Mingi asks, confused. 

“This.” He gestures to where Mingi still stands, a foot inside his door. “You. This whole thing.” He laughs bitterly. “This is what caused all the fucking trouble in the first place.”

Mingi freezes. It feels as if someone had dropped a stone into his belly and he can feel it sinking. “What.”

Yeosang looks like he wishes he could bite his tongue in half. “Nothing. Never mind. Forget it. I’m sorry I cried all over you, okay?”

“What caused all the trouble?” Mingi asks again. “Me? I caused it?”

Yeosang crosses his arms and huffs in an impatient way, but he looks miserable rather than annoyed. “I said to forget it, Mingi.”

“How the fuck am I supposed to just forget you said that?” Mingi drags a frustrated hand through his hair, he isn’t sure if he feels sad or pissed of or some amalgamation of the two. “You and Yunho are having problems because of me?” Yeosang looks away, his arms across his stomach as if he’s protecting himself from something. “This is my fault, and neither one of you ever said word fucking one to me? What the fuck, Yeosang!”

Now Yeosang does look up at him, his dark eyes snapping with fire. “I didn’t say it was your fault! I said it was because of you!”

“How are those not the same thing?” Mingi yells. 

“They’re just not!”

“That doesn’t make any fucking sense! I haven’t…I didn’t…” He can’t even find the words. What could he have done? He hasn’t even spoken to them beyond pleasantries since…since they’d ended whatever their arrangement had been. But now his best fucking friends, who should have been together forever, are now on the rocks because of him. He doesn’t even know what he’s done besides exist, but it’s obviously something if it’s got Yeosang in here crying and Yunho off who the fuck knows where.

Somehow they must’ve realized he has feelings for them. Somehow that must’ve caused a wedge between them. He feels a wave of guilt wash over him, cold and salty as unshed tears.

Mingi takes a deep breath, prays for calm. He has to fix this. “Listen to me. The two of you have something amazing, do you understand me?” His voice breaks but he pushes through it, his tone rising angrily. “You don’t just throw away something that special! Not for anything, especially not someone like me!”

Yeosang is crying again, tears streaming down his cheeks, dripping off his chin. “Don’t say that,” he sobs. “Someone like you, what does that even mean?” He puts his hands over his face. “I can’t talk about this with you, not without…Can’t you please leave it alone? You don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“The fuck I don’t!” Mingi shouts. He’s crying now too, but he’s past the point where he cares. “None of this should have happened, Yeosang. None of it. If I could go back to that fucking night, to that stupid fucking card came and change everything, I’d do it in a heartbeat, don’t you get that?”

Yeosang gasps as if Mingi had slapped him. His eyes are shocked and hurt, the lashes wet and tangled. “Don’t say that,” he whispers brokenly. “We—”

“Nothing we did was worth this,” Mingi tells him, and the truth of it rocks him to his core. “I lost my best friends because of it. I’m not going to stand by and watch you two—” He breaks off, knowing he has to get a handle on himself. Yeosang’s eyes are stricken. He wants to fall on his knees and beg forgiveness for yelling when Yeosang is already hurting but goddamn it, he’s hurting too. He doesn’t even know how he’s still upright beneath the crushing weight of his self loathing.

They’re being stupid, and that hurts him worse than anything, that they’d let something as unimportant as Mingi’s ridiculous and unnecessary feelings cause this kind of damage. Especially when Mingi worked so hard to never let them affect anyone but himself.

Mingi points an accusing finger at Yeosang’s phone, tossed haphazardly on his bed. “You need to call him right now. Right fucking now, because this isn’t right. ” He yanks Yeosang’s door open as Yeosang opens his mouth to argue. “You need to get your shit together! Both of you do!” He strides across the living room. He needs to get the fuck out of this apartment. He needs to find Yunho and knock some sense into him.

“It’s not that fucking simple, Mingi!” Yeosang wails behind him. “Wait, where are you going?”

Mingi rounds the corner into the kitchen and stops short.

San is at the breakfast bar.

San has probably heard everything. It’s too late to do anything about that. Mingi opens his mouth to explain, to ask him to look after Yeosang, to apologize but the only thing that wants to come out is more tears so he grabs his jacket from its hook and slams out of the apartment.

/

It takes Mingi longer than he’d planned to get to the BookNook. He’s too busy brooding at his hands in his lap to listen to the announcements so he misses his stop by two and has to backtrack. 

Wooyoung’s smile is bright. “Do you have  another poem for me to find?” he asks cheerfully, then clocks Mingi’s expression and sobers immediately. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

“I need you to tell me where Yunho is.” Mingi says without preamble.

Wooyoung winces. “I should apologize to you for dropping that on you last night, about them breaking up. I thought you knew.”

“Not your fault,” Mingi says curtly. “Do you know where he is? Yeosang doesn’t know either and I have to talk to him.” 

“I really don’t,” Wooyoung says. “He only said—”

Mingi’s phone starts ringing in his pocket. He fumbles it out to see the caller ID.

It’s YuJun.

Mingi holds a finger up to Wooyoung and jogs up the levels of the cafe to the back where no one is sitting. 

“Hello?”

“Mingi-yah, hello.”

“Is everything okay?” he asks. “Are you alright? Do you—”

“Mingi-yah, everything’s fine. I promise. I'm calling because my son has just informed me that he didn’t tell anyone where he was going when he got on the train to Gwangju yesterday.”

Mingi slithers down in his chair until his forehead touches the table. He’s afraid he’s going to cry, and he doesn’t want YuJun to hear it in his voice so he just breathes for a minute.

“I told him that was a terrible thing to do,” YuJun continues. Her voice has a stern tone and Mingi understands that if Yunho isn’t right beside his mother, he’s within earshot. 

“We—” it comes out like a croak. The word feels forbidden to him now. “We were worried. Thank you.”

He hears a rustling, then the creak and slap of the porch door. He closes his eyes, picturing her moving out to the porch swing. It had always been her favorite spot for serious talks. His lower lip trembles and he bites down on it, hard. He misses her. 

“Mingi-yah,” YuJun says softly. “Is everything alright?”

Squeezing his eyes shut, Mingi focuses on keeping his voice even. “Why do you ask?”

On the other end of the phone, YuJun sighs. “I ask because my son is home looking like death warmed over and you are in Seoul sounding like your heart got thrown in the ocean, and neither one of you has mentioned Yeosang.”

“I don’t know what to say to that,” he admits softly. He has to whisper or his voice is going to break. “It’s their story to tell.”

Yujun makes an impatient sound. “That’s a pile of horse shit.”

That startles Mingi into a watery laugh. “It’s not.”

“Excuse me, respect your elders.” Then her tone softens. “My Mingi-yah,” she says, and her voice is so kind. “Don't you know you’ll always be part of Yunho’s story?”

I’m not, though, Mingi thinks. I don’t think he wants me to be anymore. I don’t know how we come back from this.

“I miss you,” he says, partly to change the subject from something so raw, and partly hoping to make her smile.

“I miss you too,” she says, and now her voice is trembling. “I’ll send him home to you both soon, alright? I may have to yell a little first,” she says sorrowfully. “But I think he needs it, don’t you?” 

Mingi wishes, not the first time, that he could have had a mother like her. Perhaps he had, in some small way, because she’d been in his life.

“Yes,” he says. 

YuJun sighs again. “Little star,” she says, and the old nickname nearly brings him to tears again, “your story isn’t over.”

Mingi stays at the booth for a long time, staring at the table. He wishes, for her sake and his own, that he could believe her. 

He sends off a quick message to Yeosang

He’s in Gwangju.

and closes the chat. He doesn’t know if Yeosang will reply and at this moment he doesn’t really care.

Maybe YuJun really can smack some sense into Yunho so he’ll come back to Seoul and stop being an absolute ass hat. Reconcile with Yeosang, get into medical school. 

Happy ever after. It’s all he’s ever wanted for his best friend, after all.

And Mingi? 

Mingi will keep his distance. He doesn’t intend to risk ruining anything so bright and precious again.

/

Yunho stays with his mom for a few more days. Mingi doesn’t even know he’s gotten back— he just walks into Vocal the following Tuesday and there Yunho is, seated at the piano. There is a sheaf of sheet music beside him on the bench, in the place where Mingi used to sit. 

It’s fine.

Mingi keeps his head down, staring at the notebook of lyrics he hasn’t worked on for more than a week. The final is next Tuesday. He doesn’t think he’ll be taking it anyway. His song isn’t ready. It makes him sick to look at, now. He’s tempted to take the entire notebook outside and set it on fire. 

It’s a love song for someone who doesn’t love him back. It deserves to be turned into ash.

He’d only ever started coming to Vocal for Yunho anyway. There’s no real point in staying.

“This is so awkward,” Wooyoung groans, his head tucked down behind his notebook. 

“What is?” Mingi asks. He hasn’t heard a word the vocal coach has said all class. He’s been too busy trying not to look at Yunho and failing miserably.

“You!” Wooyoung hisses. “And him! The pair of you!”

Mingi clears his throat. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Wooyoung gives him a look of absolute scorn. “Please. When you’re not looking at him, he’s looking at you. When he’s not looking at you, you’re looking at him. It’s fucking exhausting!”

“Lower your fucking voice,” Mingi grits out through a fake smile, glancing around to make sure no one around them is listening.

“I’m being traumatized in real time and you’re worried about my volume,” Wooyoung says in exasperation. “I see how it is. Don’t mind me, I’ll just be over here in a doom spiral.”

Mingi clenches his jaw and reminds himself that violence is never the answer and that Wooyoung is actually pretty cool when he isn’t being a little shit.

“Listen, all I’m saying is, maybe after everyone leaves you guys find a reason to stay late and just…I don’t know…fuck it out or something, you know?”

Mingi flicks him in the forehead hard enough that the vocal coach hears the thwap, and then Mingi doesn’t need to find a reason to stay after because the vocal coach makes him.

He hears Wooyoung’s weird, screechy laugh echoing all the way back up the stairs.

Thankfully Mr. Lin doesn’t get all on his case, just respectfully requests Mingi set a better example for his fellow students moving forward. Mingi mumbles promises and escapes as soon as he is able.

Yunho is waiting for him on the steps outside the academy. “Hey,” he says quietly.

“Hey,” Mingi replies. He hates this, hates feeling as if his oldest fucking friend is a stranger, as if they only know each other enough for this small greeting. 

“Can I walk with you?”

No, Mingi thinks of saying. No, keep your distance, I’m not the one you’re supposed to be talking to right now. You’re supposed to be fixing things with Yeosang.

Aloud he says, “If you want.” 

Instead of heading up the road toward the trains, Yunho points back toward the park. “Let’s go this way.”

Mingi nods curtly. They walk in silence, their breath pluming cold before them, mingling. Mingi ignores it the way he’s trying to ignore the oppressive feeling of a thousand words left unsaid, hanging between them like a lodestone. He’s exhausted from carrying its weight.

“How’s your mom?” he asks as they enter the park. 

Yunho smiles a little, but there isn’t much humor in it. “Still angry with me, I think. She yelled a lot.” He ducks his head, tucking his chin into his scarf. “I’m sorry about leaving without telling anyone. That was a shitty thing to do.”

They’ve reached the bench they’d always say on, back before everything had become so immeasurably fucked. It looks smaller, to Mingi than it had a few weeks ago. Colder. A metaphor, perhaps. For what, he doesn’t know.

Yunho sits. After a moment, Mingi does too.

“I missed this,” Yunho says suddenly. He’s staring out at the water. “I missed you. When I was in Gwangju.”

If there is anything Yunho could have said to cut Mingi more deeply, Mingi can’t think what it would be. The wound it leaves is so deep and clean it’s nearly bloodless. “Shouldn’t you and Yeosang be—”

“I’m not talking about me and Yeosang,” Yunho cuts him off, still staring hard at the water. “I’m talking about you and me.”

“There is no ‘you and me’,” Mingi whispers.

Now Yunho turns to him, his expression unreadable. “We’ve been friends since we were twelve. There has always been a ‘you and me’.”

Hana and dul and set, Mingi thinks, and wants to weep. You and me and us.

Don’t you know you’ll always be part of Yunho’s story? YuJun says again in his mind.

Maybe. Maybe he will. It’s just that he’s pretty sure his chapter in it has ended.

“I wanted to apologize,” Yunho says now. “I waited for you tonight so I could tell you that, that I’m sorry.”

“Why?” Mingi asks before he knows he’s going to. “Why are you apologizing to me?”

Yunho frowns. “Because I hurt you. I hurt all of us, and when I tried to make it right I only ended up making it worse.” He turns back to the river. “I ruined everything.”

Mingi feels as if he’d stepped sideways into some parallel dimension, where everything is warped and slightly off-center. What the hell does Yunho mean, he ruined everything? Doesn’t he know that everything is ruined because of Mingi? How can Yunho not know that everything Mingi touches ends up broken? After more than ten years of knowing everything that Mingi is or was or ever will be, how can Yunho sit there and think he’s the one to blame?

“Don’t,” Mingi rasps out. His throat feels like sandpaper suddenly, a thousand tiny scores and tears. 

“Don’t what? Blame myself? How can I not? Look at us!” Yunho sits forward, his head in his hands. “We’re sitting here like strangers who just happened to sit at the same bench. It isn’t right!”

“Listen to me.” Mingi can’t let this go on, can’t let Yunho keep feeling guilty when Mingi knows the truth. “Yeosang told me, okay? I know this is my fault.”

Yunho looks up at him sharply. “He what?”

Mingi looks down at his hands. “It was the day your mom called to let us know where you were.” He laughs self deprecatingly. “I didn’t even know you two had broken up. Wooyoung had to fucking tell me.” He holds up a hand when Yunho tries to say something. “It’s not my business. I know. Yeosang made that pretty clear. I’m not SNU material, maybe, but I can manage basic concepts like that.” He sighs. "But yeah. He was crying, and so I hugged him— like a friend would,” he adds quickly, needing Yunho to understand. “He was crying so I hugged him and that’s when he told me. The whole thing is because of me, and if I could fix it, I would.”

Yunho is staring at him. “That’s not…i don’t think Yeosang was—”

Mingi stands up. “It’s okay. You don’t need to make excuses or anything. I just want you to know that I know, and that I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for it to turn out this way and I’m sorry everything is all fucked up. That’s…that’s all, okay?” He swallows hard. He doesn’t want to cry here, in this freezing park, but he thinks he will if he stands here another moment with Yunho looking at him like that.

“Mingi,” Yunho says, and stops.

Mingi nods. That about sums it up. Mingi, Mingi, Mingi. Always at the bottom of every problem.

“I missed you too,” he says, because why not? What more can break? His heart is dust in his chest. “While you were in Gwangju. I missed you more than anything.”

Then he turns and walks away.

/

Mingi finds reasons to stay away from the apartment. Part of that is because he thinks that if he’s not there, Yunho and Yeosang will have a chance to talk things out, realize they were meant to be, and get everything back on track. 

The other part is that he’s pretty sure if he has to watch it happen he’ll end up institutionalized.

So he stays away. He works, and sleeps, and on the nights he isn’t working he stays out. 

The first night, he finds himself in a bar and even though he knows that self-medication is one of the most dangerous forms of coping mechanisms, he lets himself have it for that one night. He almost goes home with someone whose name he doesn’t even know and that yanks him back to reality pretty damned quickly. He apologizes to her and staggers out of the bar and onto the sidewalk, where he is violently ill against a light post. He manages to get an Uber to take him home once he’s sure that portion of the festivities is over and he is asleep in his own bed when the sun comes up.

The other nights he spends at the library on campus. It stays open 24 hours and you can get in and stay as long as you want with a valid student ID. He studies for his finals and lays the groundwork for his final dissertation due in the spring.

He doesn’t think of Yunho, or of Yeosang, more than once every few minutes. He figures that’s an improvement.

Besides, it only hurts when he breathes, so.

It’s fine.

But the long nights and lack of sleep finally take their toll. The last three paragraphs he’s constructed are disjointed and basically rehashing the same two points over and over and when he reads it back he sees that he has consistently misspelled the word ‘the’. Not his finest work for certain.

He yawns and tries to shake himself to alertness and then he wakes with his face smooshed into the desktop and finally admits he has to go home and stay there.

He staggers into the shower and then he falls face first onto his bed and he knows this isn’t right and he knows he should talk to someone about it and then he doesn’t know a damn thing for the next twelve hours.

Mingi wakes with the sunset. All that gorgeous garnet-tinted light spills over him and he stretches and blinks and reminds himself that he is here, he is warm, he is safe.

He’s also alone.

He pushes that thought away before it can stab him in the chest. 

The apartment is quiet; Mingi doesn’t hear the television or music or even the quiet sounds of someone attempting to cook or study. It’s quiet and that’s why Mingi thinks it’s empty.

He’s wrong. 

He brushes his teeth and looks at his hair with a grimace. He’d fallen asleep with it wet and now he looks kind of like an electrified porcupine. He tugs a beanie down over the offending mop and makes his way to the kitchen. He doesn’t have the appetite for anything much but he thinks he has just enough fuck around and find out to wage a war with the rice maker again. That way at least he’ll feel as if he’d accomplished something. 

On second thought, maybe a cup of ramen. He and the microwave are at least on speaking terms.

He laughs to himself and steps into the kitchen and the laughter dries up in his throat like it has been vaporized. He breathes it out like steam.

Yunho is in his kitchen. He’s leaning on the counter, angling toward Yeosang with his back to Mingi. Yeosang is on the other side of the counter, saying something in a low tone that Mingi can’t quite make out. He's smiling softly. He looks happy.

Mingi’s heart swells with twin floods of happiness and despair. He’s happy because they are, he is. All he really wants for them is happiness. He'd spent his birthday wish on it. 

But oh. Oh, it hurts.

He takes a step back, then two, meaning to retreat back to his room because there is absolutely no way his face isn’t covered in longing and love and this horrible aching sadness. He’s too unprepared, too exhausted to manufacture a mask that could fool them, and he can't, he can’t—

“Mingi.”

Oh please, he thinks. Please don’t say my name. Not now. Not when you are you and I am me and there never was an us. 

They’re both looking at him. Mingi feels frozen to the spot, a deer caught in the fascination of light even as its destruction bears down on it, meter by irrevocable meter.

I have to do this, he realizes. I have to let them have their say, give them the closure they need so they can move forward. It doesn’t matter that I’ll be left behind. I can’t let it. 

“Mingi,” Yeosang says again. “Can we talk?”

“Sure,” he says. There’s nothing else he can say, no way to push this away anymore. It has to be now. He can do this. It’s fine.

It’s fine.

/

They sit in the living room because Yeosang’s room doesn’t feel right for this and Mingi’s room is ground zero for past mistakes. 

“San is out with Wooyoung,” Yeosang tells them, folding his legs beneath him and tucking himself up small on the arm chair. “So maybe we can just…” he trails off, looks at Yunho, at Mingi, before looking back down at his knees. “I don’t know. I don’t know how to start.”

“Maybe we shouldn’t,” Mingi says, a last, desperate attempt to step back from the precipice. He won’t survive the fall in one piece and he knows it. “Maybe we should just leave it alone.”

“Can’t,” Yunho says from his spot on the floor. His fingers tug nervously at the corners of the cushion he’s sitting on. “I’m not going to say I’m not freaked the fuck out right now because I’d be lying. But we can’t just leave it alone.”

“He’s right,” Yeosang says quietly. “Too much of this is because we haven’t talked things out.” He smiles sadly at Mingi. “And because we haven’t all been as honest with each other as we should have.”

Mingi wants to run. He cannot possibly sit here and listen to them telling him that they know, that they figured out how he feels and that it’s ruining everything. He can’t possibly survive hearing them say that he turned out to be a burden, a liability, that sex doesn’t equal love and sometimes we doesn’t mean us.

He knows all that already. 

“We should have been honest,” Yunho says. “We should have told you when we realized, but by then everything had…”

“Gone to shit?” Mingi offers through bloodless lips.

Yunho laughs. “Yeah, something like that.” He looks up at Mingi and his eyes are so sad that Mingi doesn’t think he can bear it.

“I’m to blame, more than you, I think,” Yeosang says to Yunho. “It freaked me out, and I didn’t react well. I’d never…never had to deal with anything like that before, and I was scared.”

“We broke it off with you because we didn’t know how to handle it,” Yunho admits. “It was small and cowardly, but I was so afraid that it would only get worse if we kept…being together. That it would hurt more.”

“I’m sorry,” Mingi breathes, and his voice is so small.

“The worst part,” Yunho continues as if Mingi hadn’t spoken, “is I had my fucking suspicions. I had my suspicions and I still went ahead with that card game.”

The hits just keep coming. Mingi feels more battered and bruised now than when he’d dragged himself out of that car wreck all those years ago. He doesn’t want to hear any more.

“We’re both to blame. I knew, I think, even before that night.” Yeosang admits. He presses his forehead to his knees, and his voice shakes. “I knew how that game would end, and I still… That was the most selfish thing I think I’ve ever done.” he whispers. “I‘m so sorry, Mingi.”

Mingi doesn’t know what to say. They’d known? They’d known how he felt that far back— or suspected, at least? Had he been that pathetically obvious?

“I’m sorry, too.” Yunho says. His eyes are wet in his pale face. “For so much, but especially for not telling you. All I can say is I was afraid of what those feelings would mean for all of us, and so instead of facing it head on like a friend should have, I let it ruin everything.”

“I’m sorry,” Mingi says again, shaking his head. Nothing, he thinks, has ever been as hard as this, but he understands now that it has to happen. It has always been inevitable. “I never meant for you to know. I know everything is fucked to hell and back but I thought if I could keep it to myself, everything would be okay.”

Yeosang looks up sharply. “Wh—”

“I really didn’t mean for this to happen,” Mingi continues. He has to keep going because if he stops he will never have the strength to begin again. “You’re my best fucking friends, and I thought it would be enough to be wanted if I couldn’t be loved.” He shudders and wraps his arms around himself and tries to believe that he can get through this. 

Yunho’s eyes are wide. “Mingi…”

“I know,” Mingi says miserably. “I know you weren’t looking for that, and I know that it ruined things but I couldn’t…I couldn’t help it.”

“Wait. Stop, stop.” Yeosang demands when Mingi tries to continue. “I think…” He swallows hard. “Something isn’t making sense.”

Yunho looks as if he’s going to start laughing or sobbing at any moment. “I feel like we’re having two different conversations.” He laughs a little in a bewildered way. “Mingi, what are you saying? No apologies or explanations, just…what are you trying to say?”

Mingi blinks at him. “That I’m in love with you. Both of you.” When Yunho and Yeosang exchange a look of startled unease it hurts him almost worse than when they’d broken it off, grinding in his gut like glass on bone. He hadn’t thought they’d be cruel about it. 

“Oh my god,” Yeosang murmurs. “You…this whole time, you…” He trails off, gesturing wildly as he plants his feet on the floor and his hands on his knees. “You’re serious, right? You’re not fucking with us? Violence is never the answer but I’ll make a goddamn exception if you’re fucking with us on this.”

Maybe it’s his exhaustion, or his stress levels. Maybe Mercury is in Haterade or some shit, Mingi doesn’t know— but suddenly he is furious with them. Sitting here, listening to them talk about how burdensome his feelings are, had been bad enough. Now they want to accuse him of fucking with them on top of it?

“Fuck you,” he snaps, his eyes blazing. “Fuck both of you, I’m done here.” He pushes up off the couch and makes it almost to the hallway before Yunho’s hand clamps over his arm.

“Mingi, stop,” he says, gripping Mingi’s arm harder when Mingi tries to shake him off. “You haven’t been hearing us.”

“Fuck you, I just sat there and let you both shit all over me for the last half hour. I don’t need to listen any more to get the picture.”

“You obviously missed a few salient fucking points!” Yunho yells, losing patience.

“Like what?” Mingi fires back. “Like I ruined everything? I know that! Like you wish we’d never been together? Believe me, you made that fucking clear! Like—”

“Like I love you!” Yunho shouts over him. “Like I’ve loved you so long that I don’t remember what it feels like not to!”

Mingi freezes; his ears are ringing, buzzing with temper. His brain misfires. He can’t have heard Yunho correctly. “What?”

“I. Love. You,” Yunho grits out. 

“We’ve been friends since we were twelve,” Mingi whispers. “Of course you love me, that's not—” 

Yunho’s eyes are steady on Mingi’s. “It isn’t about friendship, what I feel for you. I don’t even know how long I’ve felt this way because I never let myself look too closely at it.”

Mingi looks down at Yunho’s hand on his arm, then over Yunho’s shoulder to where Yeosang stands, watching them solemnly. “I don’t understand.”

“We’re in love with you,” Yeosang says simply. “That’s what we’ve been trying to say.”

“You’re…I…what.”

Yunho snorts out a laugh. “Yeah, same.” He squeezes Mingi’s arm. “Will you come back, sit down?”

Mingi sits. Yunho sits beside him. After a moment, Yeosang perches on the arm of the couch, beside Mingi.

“Well,” he says. “This has certainly been an evening.”

“I feel like there’s still so much I don’t understand. It’s a little confusing,” Mingi says. If he’s being honest, he feels like maybe he suffered a brain injury and this entire evening has been a concussion-induced hallucination. The nearness of them is as alien as it is familiar, something lost and found again.

“You’re not the only one struggling,” Yeosang says into the silence. “We spent the last month thinking you wouldn’t be able to handle our feelings. I’d done everything I could to stop loving you and still it was like trying to stop a landslide with my bare hands. I didn’t have a choice. It was hard enough to admit it to Yunho— and what a mess that conversation was, let me tell you —I couldn’t face the idea of telling you, of having you look at me differently.” He sighs. “I was so afraid you’d reject me.”

“I thought I was the only one who felt that way,” Mingi admits. “Like I was constantly worried I’d slip somehow and you’d know. You really tried that hard to stop?”

Yeosang laughs up at the ceiling. “Only about a thousand times. Think of it like this. Here I am with these feelings, right? But I’m already with someone whom I love, so it feels wrong. You’re my friend, so it feels wrong. I was a wreck.”

Mingi hums. “That does sound rough. At least I was single when I was pining like an asshole.”

“Ohhhhh, he’s got jokes,” Yeosang says over Mingi’s head to Yunho. “He thinks he’s cute.”

“He is, though, so,” Yunho says, and pokes Mingi in the ribs. 

Mingi squawks, then sobers. “Can I ask…hm. Never mind, not really my business.”

“Nope, no. No more of that,” Yeosang says. “We all made enough trouble by not asking, not telling, and not listening. I refuse to go through this again with you assholes, so from now on, we communicate.”

Mingi snorts and bumps his head against Yeosang’s hip. “Fine. I was going to ask why you broke up. I’d assumed it was my fault—”

“I told you it wasn’t,” Yeosang sighs. “I may have been snot-crying at the time, but I meant it.”

“Sounds gross,” Yunho decides.

Mingi smirks. “It was. Anyways, I assumed it was because of something I’d done. Was it?”

Yunho sighs sheepishly. “No. And I hate that you thought even for a minute that you were to blame. We were doubting ourselves and doubting each other. We thought we were unhappy with each other. That break— I think it was necessary,” he admits, looking at Yeosang with a soft smile. “Talking mom helped put things in perspective. She was the one who suggested that maybe Yeosang and I weren’t unhappy with each other at all. We were unhappy without you.”

Mingi turns to him. “You told your mother?” Yeosang snickers behind him. Mingi rolls his eyes. “I can’t believe you told your mother we were…”

“Fucking?” Yeosang offers helpfully.

“No,” Yunho cries in disgust. “Jesus, no. I just explained that we had been…ah…together.”

“So you told her we were fucking.” Mingi throws up his hands. “I can never look her in the eyes again, what the actual hell, Yunho.”

Yeosang groans. “Would you relax? YuJun is his mother. She gave birth to him, she obviously knows what sex is.”

“It was an immaculate conception and you’ll never convince me otherwise,” Mingi insists loudly. 

Yunho laughs a little and leans over until his forehead is pressed to Mingi’s temple. “I missed you. I fucking missed you.”

Mingi closes his eyes. He’s still scraped raw inside and he supposes he will be for a while. They’d all managed to hurt each other while desperately trying to do the opposite. Even unintended wounds take time to heal.

“I missed you too,” he says quietly. “Both of you. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to explain how much.” 

“We’ve got time,” Yeosang says with a smile.

“Yeah?” Mingi asks. He presses a kiss to Yunho’s forehead and then just stays there a minute, breathing in the good, warm scent of him. He hadn’t thought he’d ever have this chance again. 

Yeosang slips down from the arm of the couch and into Mingi’s lap to gather Mingi and Yunho in his arms. “I really, really want to be with you both,” he says. “I don’t just mean the sex, although, yes please.” He laughs softly to himself. “I mean everything. All the little stuff and the big stuff and the stuff in between. I’ve never done this before but I can learn. We all can. If…”

“If?” Mingi asks.

“If you want to. Try, I mean. All of us, together. Can we try?”

Yunho squeezes Mingi’s hand. “What do you think? Yea or nay?”

Hana and dul and set, Mingi thinks. You and me and us.  

Everything, from the beginning, has always been in threes. As if they’d just been waiting for the one person that would make we into us.

“Yea,” they say, all three together.

/

If you were to ask Song Mingi when he knew he was loved, he’d probably say our first Christmas Eve together, and that would be partly true.

The fact of the matter is, it had been one of the best Christmases Mingi had ever had. There had been food and drink and Christmas music pouring through San’s Bluetooth speaker. Wooyoung had hung mistletoe in the entryway and stationed himself by the door as their friends arrived, claiming kisses from everyone even as he took their coats and hung them in the closet. San had presided over the crock pot again, filled with mulled cider this time instead of tortellini. Yeosang had carefully hung the ornaments he’d designed for the three of them on the tree; a sun, a star, and a sweet little rose had glittered golden against the dark green of pine. Jongho had sung an achingly lovely medley of carols while Yunho had accompanied him on Mingi’s keyboard. There had been laughter and tears and presents and dancing and at one point Mingi had stood with an arm slung around Yunho’s waist and the other draped across Yeosang’s shoulders and watched their found family laugh and talk with one another, and he had known that he was exactly where he was supposed to be.

But there are other facts pertaining to this case.

So if you were to press, ask Mingi for another answer to the burning question, he might say the time they got up at three in the morning to make me breakfast, and that would be partly true, too.

He doesn’t think he’ll ever forget the way it had felt to step out of the elevator, exhausted after his shift at Treasure, to hear the smoke alarm blaring behind their door. He’d burst into their acrid-smelling, hazy apartment to find Yunho using the sink sprayer to subdue the rice cooker, which had been dumped haphazardly into the sink’s basin and was still fitfully belching smoke. Yeosang, covered in flour and what had looked a bit like raspberry jam, had been using a cookie sheet as a fan to try and clear the air. The cookies that had formerly presided on it had been scattered all over the counter and floor in his haste. Mingi had laughed until he’d had a coughing fit, crouching on the breakfast bar to reach the smoke alarm and cursing all rice cookers and their progeny unto the seventh generation. We wanted to surprise you, Yeosang had told him sadly as he and Yunho surveyed the wreck of their pretty kitchen. Mingi had promised them he had indeed been surprised, and it hadn’t been a lie.

But if that still wasn’t enough for you, if you really, truly wanted to know beyond a doubt when Song Mingi knew he was loved, he would tell you I knew I was loved a thousand different times and in a thousand different ways. I knew I was loved because we chose each other, and kept choosing each other day after day after day. I knew I was loved because we had finally become us.

He’d known when Yunho had crept to the bedside the morning after too much soju with aspirin and a bottle of water and sat with him while he swallowed the medicine down, and Mingi had closed his eyes against the too bright sun and groaned about his aching head and had smiled, shy and sweet, as a kiss was pressed to his temple. When Yeosang’s painting entitled Hana and Dul and Set had been featured in a showing at a prestigious gallery in Gangnam, he had wept from joy and nerves, and Mingi had held him close and his heart had been full, so full of love and pride. When they had graduated from college there had been a celebration that had lasted into the wee hours, with their friends raising glass after glass to the social worker, the med student, the artist. When they had stepped off the train and onto the platform, and a small and pretty woman had waved with both hands from beside her parked car, and the three of them had run, laughing, as she opened her arms to them wide, wide, wide.

All of these are true. All of these make up a part of the whole. Sometimes we truly does become us.

That’s what it all boils down to, in the end.

Song Mingi loves Jeong Yunho loves Kang Yeosang, and they will always be a part of each other’s story.

That is all. 

That is everything.

.