Work Text:
[before]
Han Jisung's world comes crashing down around him on a Tuesday before noon.
It's a fact he notices because it's the only day where he doesn't have any morning classes and it's also the day he therefore wakes up late to find Minho in their kitchen every week without fail.
“Try this,” he'd say and Jisung would open his mouth, sometimes willingly, sometimes taken over by a yawn, and Minho would then put whatever he'd been cooking that day right into it. And then he'd ask: “How is it, jagi?” in the sweetest voice, reserved only for any stray cats he pets on the street and Tuesday mornings in the kitchen.
And so today Jisung shuffles into the kitchen, rubs at his eyes until he sees stars and when his vision clears, goes to stand next to Minho by the stove. He's not wearing an apron, he notices. When he says “try this” Jisung's mouth is already open for the chopsticks.
Sweet and spicy soft-tofu melts on his tongue and he makes a noise of appreciation. When he opens his eyes, Minho is looking at him and smiling and Jisung doesn't know what his own face is doing but his heart is most definitely not doing what it had been until moments before ― and that's beating quietly.
And today Minho says: “So, I had been thinking about getting married.” instead of “How is it, jagi?” and Jisung's world collapses.
“Huh?”
There are sounds Minho’s mouth is making but Jisung can’t hear them. He can’t hear anything through the whistling in his ears.
“…and so that’s why I think it would make sense, no?”
Jisung actually doesn’t know what he’s thinking except for the need to remove himself from the premises as quickly as possible.
If they were to throw him into a body of water, he wouldn’t swim. The current would take him downstream like a piece of driftwood, and then he’d sink under the surface. Bug-eyed fish would move by him without fear.
Do fish know fear?
He knows shame: he’d be ashamed to swim.
Swimming is a display of self-preservation.
“I gotta go…” he finds himself saying, “see the fish. School.”
“What? Han Jisung, what are you saying?”
But by then Jisung is already at the door, grabbing his winter jacket from the hanger and slipping into his shoes. He doesn’t know whether he’s going to be needing his wallet, but his phone is in his sweatpants pocket and that’s as far as he’s willing to care for anything.
“Your classes don't even start for like two hours!”
°
“Run this by me one more time.”
Jisung sighs off puttingly. “I woke up. Came to the kitchen.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Minho-hyung wasn't wearing an apron today and his sweater was super cute, it had these little cats on it, but I couldn't even compliment him because he made me taste his food and then started talking about marriage. He'd been thinking about it, he said... why would he do that?”
“Yes, indeed. Are we talking about Minho-hyung, your soulmate, that guy?”
Changbin finally puts down his apple and waves the long peel he'd finished with in front of Jisung's eyes.
“Yeah, my bromate. My soul-bro. The roommate who is also my bro.”
“Your… okay. Alright.”
Jisung takes one of the apple half moons and eats most of it in one bite.
“Hyung. Do you know who he wants to marry?” he asks through the mouthful. He might as well be eating cardboard, that's what it tastes like.
Changbin squints at him.
“No idea.”
“Why wouldn't he have told me? That he's… you know what, I have a feeling that you're hiding something from me and I don't like this one bit.”
Changbin smacks him on the forehead with the apple peel. “Right, why wouldn't he. Your soul-bro who calls you jagi. Who you'd also been soul-bronically kissing and also more, for the last few years.”
“Hyung. My heart's doing something weird. Can I sleep on your couch tonight?”
[somewhere in between]
The first time it happens, Jisung doesn't even realise until he's sitting on the bus.
He gets ready, as usual, gets his thermos of coffee from the kitchen, as usual, and then meets Minho in their entrance hall, who pushes the door open just as Jisung is about to leave.
“Hi,” he says, shaking the snow from his hair vigorously. His cheeks and lips are bruised red. “It's cold out. Dress warmly today, Han Jisung.”
He smiles at him and Jisung knows he has to run otherwise he’s going to miss the bus but something in him, the strangest urge he'd never once felt before overcomes him.
“Thanks, hyung. Gotta run.”
And then he leans in and pecks Minho on the lips.
The epiphany comes after, sitting on the 406 bus headed to campus, just as he’s unrolled his headphones and is about to put one of them inside of his ear.
Oh, fuck.
“Oh, fuck.”
[again]
They don't talk about it. Jisung mostly because he's embarrassed and doesn't know how to bring it up, Minho because― he's Minho, and no one knows why he does or doesn't do things, least of all Jisung.
He's contradictions. He's harsh words and gentle eyes, actions that belie the true intentions behind what he says. The first time they'd met, Jisung had been a bit afraid and a whole lot of a feeling he's not sure how to describe, because turned-on doesn't really cut it. He'd been aroused beyond the feeling of his physical body.
A spiritual stimulation, if you will.
And it had been the easiest thing in the world to let him settle inside of his life. Inside of him.
By the time Jisung realised, Minho had half the wardrobe full of clothes and a kitchen cabinet and two shelves in the fridge and they'd been living together.
Suddenly, Jisung has not only one, but three entire blankets he can huddle up in when staying up to study in the living room in the transitional period between autumn and winter, when it is not yet cold enough to turn on the heating but not warm during the nights anymore.
And suddenly, Jisung has someone who makes him eat after he’s come from the studio and food is the last thing on his mind when all he wants is to find the sweet release of sleep; someone who is there to make fun of him but also cheer him on; someone who gives him a hug or aggressively cuddles him on the couch in a chokehold and someone who is there for all the good and the not so very good things.
And they're kissing goodbye and hello.
It's these soft little kisses, innocent, and so not an actual case of concern, until they're not.
They're cooking together. Well, Minho is cooking and Jisung has been delegated to watch-duty. Watch-duty means he gets to look at him moving around the tiny kitchen without being noticed.
He gets to see the way Minho's forearms flex as he prepares the chicken, the way the veins appear from around the bulging muscles. The way he pouts when he spills salt across the counters and the way his focused face is, essentially, the best expression Jisung's ever seen on him. It's because he's delegating the energy spent on making his eyebrows downturn in a frown elsewhere.
Watch-duty ends when Minho actually catches him staring.
“Hey, what are you looking at,” he says. Angry eyebrows make a comeback. “Come here and tell me if this is good.”
Jisung gets a bite of knife-cut noodles and chicken with a lemon-spicy aftertaste and he nods enthusiastically. “Very good, hyung.”
“Yeah?”
Jisung doesn't even realise how close they'd gotten, until he's pressed into the counter and Minho is pressed against his front.
“How good.” But it's not really a question, because Minho is leaning in to take the answer right out of Jisung's mouth.
Minho's hand is wet when he presses it into Jisung's jaw to tilt his head and kiss him. Jisung wonders what happened to the innocent kisses, then they get burned out of his mind when Minho's tongue enters his mouth. He kisses him hungry and open mouthed and Jisung presses himself closer in the tight circle of his arms, moans with appreciation.
He can't find it in himself to really mind.
[and some more]
Minho dances as if no one were watching.
But people are, Jisung is and he knows other guys are, they are watching him dance as if he were the only one dancing, or at least that's what it feels like to Jisung. He drinks his one beer and Minho spins around on the dancefloor and he pushes another guy away from him and spins and spins and then he stops, runs a hand through his sweaty hair and comes back to Jisung.
“Let's go home?”
And on their way back, Jisung tucks his fingers inside the sleeve of Minho's shirt, measures, feels up the skin, as if he were trying to make sure everything's still in its place. The same body as it was a few weeks ago, the same person, the same warm, open and generous soul.
He remembers every centimeter, every hollow, the scent of various parts of a body. And his fingers remember, too, that's why something inside of him settles when they find everything they do.
And back at home, back in their foyer, Minho hugs him close.
Measures him up just like Jisung had done to him, his nape, the strands of growing soft hair on the top of his head, the hollow underneath his neck betraying the beat of his heart.
“Han Jisung, stop me right now. I’m about to do bad things to you.”
Jisung shakes his head into Minho's shoulder in a no. And then he pushes up with his mouth, kisses Minho's chin but it's as easy as anything to slide higher, to fit their lips together. To kiss him first.
Eager mouth wanting more even as it gets the other one to open up underneath.
Jisung wants him to do bad things to him so badly .
“You have three seconds,” Minho says and Jisung pushes him towards the direction of his bedroom. He gets them horizontal, it feels like three seconds could fit an eternity inside of them.
Finally on top of Minho, Jisung's thighs are still stiff and hard with nervous energy, still containing traces of resistance. But that moment is ridiculously short and when they soften, Jisung accepts him, hungry and ready.
“Two.” Minho gets a hand around Jisung's cock, the other moving inside of himself, Jisung's hands everywhere across the exposed skin, he follows them with his mouth, bruising and marking, imagines the way the marks are going to look tomorrow. Some red and purple, the ones where he didn’t bite hard enough fading to yellow.
Jisung wants him so badly he can barely breathe with it.
And on the one he braces his feet on the bed, fucks into him, loses the solid ground underneath him, fucks him hard until Minho's coming crying out his name.
[and again]
againagainagainainagain
[and a bit later ― ]
“Your tummy is like a trampoline,” laughs Jisung.
He's laying sideways on Minho and talking about his Saturday afternoon plans. He's going to buy a book about positive thinking ― he already has one and it's very useful, he'd learned about setting up goals from it. Jisung shares all this with Minho in an overly dramatic voice; he laughs at him and it makes Jisung's head bounce up and down with every movement.
“You need to have one hundred and thirteen positive goals,” he announces, “I have set nine, for now.”
“Such as?”
“I want to get a haircut. And I want a huge studio and a dog.”
“Does marriage fit somewhere in between those goals?” Minho says and then his belly stops moving, as if he stopped breathing for a bit.
Jisung actually does stop breathing. And his heart stops. And everything stops, really, because it feels like he's been here already. A deja-vu but a nightmare. A deja-mere.
“Huh? Why are we here again?”
“You ran away from me the other day, right before I could ask you what your thoughts were on a spring wedding. Or if it would be better to elope.”
“I… don't have any thoughts on those things, hyung. I'm sure you would look great in pastels, though... and whoever you're going to marry, too. Anyway, haha, now that we are done with this discussion, I think I have to go―”
Minho wrestles him back down and gets him in a grip, pressing his front against Jisung's back and throwing a leg over his hips. Minho's really warm, he realises. And his back hugs that are also chokeholds are still the best thing on the planet.
Jisung stares resolutely in front of him and breathes through the dread settling somewhere in around his heart.
“I think the fuck not, Han Jisung, you're not escaping again. Of course, I'm not forcing you into anything, I'm just running the facts through you. The timing is right, I have a job, and we live together-”
“You live together?” Jisung interrupts him.
There is a moment of loaded silence. And then Minho's grip on him slackens and he's pushing him down from the sofa.
“Han Jisung, you tell me right now how many times you'd been dropped on your head as a baby,” Minho says calmly but his eyes are furious, “or so help me god you will be flying from the window in the next few seconds.”
“Wait, hyung,” Jisung gasps. He doesn't know about the baby dropping, but he knows about his skateboard phase and wiping out on it more than a few times. He knows he played football when he was six and had gotten to know the ball with his face intimately; he did boxing with Changbin for fuck's sake, so the amount of braincells available is bound to be pretty limited. Minho knows that, too. “waitwaitwait .”
“Who did you think I was going to marry, huh, fucker?”
“I don't…”
“Are you seeing what I'm seeing? Are you seeing what I have to deal with every day?” Minho sighs and then goes and sits right on top of Jisung. “And you have the audacity to think I'd have tolerated another bug-eyed, braincells-lacking oblivious little shit in my life.”
“Hyung…” Jisung whispers, “that's the most romantic thing anyone's ever said to me.”
“Glad it was this and not the literal marriage proposal―”
“Who even proposes like that? How was I to know that you… that we…” Jisung then stops and finally lets the few remaining neurons make the few remaining connections, “oh. Oooh.”
“Your friends have literally started a betting pool the day after you'd met me. Hate to break it to you, honey, but you're in love with me,” Minho leans down over Jisung and frames his head with his forearms, “how embarrassing.”
And then Jisung doesn’t do any more thinking because the remaining cells get the fuck out of his head as soon as Minho kisses him.
It’s a hello, there you are, it’s an I’ve been looking for you, it’s a kiss that isn’t the first but it somehow feels the best. It makes Jisung feel like he could survive even if Minho were to throw him out of the window for real.
He presses into Jisung’s lips, gets a hand around his jaw to tilt it sideways and let their mouths fit together perfectly, feeds a hot breath to him and follows it with his tongue.
It feels cathartic.
It feels like coming off the 27 meter fall without breaking his bones.
“I'm so happy, hyung,” Jisung gasps into the space between their lips, “you have no idea, I…. I couldn't stand the thought of you with someone else.”
Minho smiles at him, a quirk of his lips and a scrunch of his nose, the smile that makes Jisung’s heart go absolutely insane with the exhilaration of it. That he’s allowed to see it, and be on the receiving end of it. That he’s worthy.
“So… it’s a yes to the spring wedding?”
[and at the end that is also a beginning of sorts]
Changbin clears his throat.
“I’m going to present you with a drinking game right now. Character A,” he waves towards the projector at Minho’s picture, “wants to get married. Character B, however―” it changes to reveal Jisung, the most unflattering picture of him sleeping with his mouth open, and he feels a hand settle on top of his. The wedding bands softly clack together.
“―he doesn’t even know they’d been dating in the first place. Drink every time you think Jisung deserves a smack to the head during this story.”