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“answer the door, kim seungmin."
“i thought you had a date with your girlfriend?”
“i changed my mind. we’re going clubbing.”
“i have homework?”
“don’t care. i’m at your door. open up, bitch.”
-o-
“i’m wearing your clothes and you’re doing my hair and makeup," minho says as she shoves past seungmin. without even a pretense of greeting, she kicks her shoes off and throws her coat onto seungmin’s head.
“what the fuck.”
“i brought donuts."
“mi casa es su casa, i guess.”
“you bet your ass it is. put the party playlist on.”
minho sweeps her arm across the duvet with a grand gesture, and seungmin’s books and notes messily tumble to the ground, clearing the space for her to dramatically flop onto the bed. giving up on her homework for the night, seungmin settles against the headboard with a krispy kreme special edition barbie donut.
“so. why are we going clubbing on a tuesday night?”
there’s a pause. minho lifts her chin, haughty, as if to look down upon even the thought of answering. her lip trembles only slightly- if seungmin hadn’t been staring at her mouth already she probably wouldn’t’ve caught it.
“jiwoo broke up with me.”
“ah.”
a dainty shrug. her fingers flex, as if she were examining her nails. kitty-cat, seungmin thinks, safely from the inside of her head.
“this time it lasted, what, 2 months? that’s probably top three.” forgoing the bed, minho strolls over to the closet, digging through a pile of clothes that probably at least half belong to her.
seungmin frowns. “no, not top three. you always forget about-“
“-oh, jisung’s friend from work,” minho finishes, holding up a pair of leather pants.
she pauses, a little too nonchalantly. “you’re not gonna ask why?”
“uh, no,” seungmin says. she has long mastered the art of not caring about minho’s latest fling. at least, that’s what she tells herself. firmly and with the ease of long practice, she shoves down any lingering feelings into her fun little box of Emotions Seungmin is Not Allowed to Have.
she is not allowed to have minho the way that these girls do, but at least she has her like this. girls come and go every month, but seungmin stays steadfast. the dull ache of fondness in her chest contracts sharply as she watches minho struggle to put pants on while simultaneously dancing the macarena, seemingly over her brief bout of vulnerability.
god, she’s so fucking stupid, seungmin thinks in wonder. she’s not entirely sure which of them she’s talking about. this is the kinda shit you get into when you fall in love with someone.
“shit. seung-myeong, you gotta help me. i think these pants are stuck.”
“…let me go get the vaseline."
-o-
a few stressful minutes and half a tin of vaseline later, the clothes are on. hwang hyunjin, fashionista expert, would be ashamed of both the lube-a-licious maneuvers and the backwardness of their getting ready. you were, she once said to seungmin severely, meant to put clothes on after makeup, not before, to avoid getting stains on the ‘fit’. and hair, of course, was meant to be last.
ah, but neither of them ever listened to hyunjin anyways. seungmin rolls her eyes at the judgemental hyun-polaroid stuck to her wall. be careful, or minho will actually try to shove toilet paper in your mouth this time, she thinks.
not that minho has ever actually followed through with any of her threats. anyone who's familiar with minho-isms just takes them as declarations of affection at this point.
seungmin’s neck itches, but she’s nearly done with minho’s crown of braids and she’s not about to mess it up by stopping now. the softness of minho's hair is a wonder considering how often she bleaches it, switching hair colors almost as often as she switches dates. seungmin asked her about them once, when they were both a little too tipsy after a party, curled up together in a mass on the carpet.
the world gets blurry when seungmin’s drunk, and minho always goes soft. so seungmin can be a little more daring; can lean her head against minho’s shoulder and whisper questions. sometimes minho even answers.
“why don’t you ever date someone for good?” why not me, why not me, you could have me instead.
minho didn’t answer for a long time. her eyelashes were long and wispy in the dark. seungmin wanted fiercely to smooth the wrinkle in her brow with the pad of her finger. or with her lips.
then, minho laughed softly.
“why would i need to, kim seungmin? i have you right here.”
you’re right, seungmin had wanted to say. you think you’re joking, but you’ve never said anything more true. you have me for good. you didn’t even need to try.
-o-
when seungmin was in kindergarten and minho was braving the onslaught of grade school, she remembers buttercups. sunshine in the eternal summer, yellow dotting the fields of scratchy-soft grass. flower crowns were all the rage amongst the kids in the know, which lee minho unfailing was, even at age 7. seungmin was never very good at weaving the buttercups together; the flimsy stems would snap easily under her fingers every time she tied a knot.
she remembers watching minho snatch the broken crown from her clumsy hands and snap out instructions with a clarion tone of superiority. but even back then seungmin, who had always been slow with her words and fast with her hands, knew that minho was gentle, gentle. her hands were delicate on the gold of the flower petals, sweet on the tips of seungmin’s fingers as she guided her through the steps, soft on seungmin's forehead when the crown dipped into her eyes.
seungmin pauses in the middle of the last fishtail. she’d missed a strand after all, in her hurry to finish. she scritches minho’s scalp in silent apology and unravels it to collect the lost piece of hair. minho purrs under her fingertips like a well-contented cat, distracted by sifting through seungmin's makeup collection. soft.
minho has always hated to be seen as soft, but she is sweetness to her core. how could seungmin have seen this, and not fallen in love? the mocking curve of minho's smile, the cautious bark of her rare laughter, the way that her nose crinkles when she drinks her coffee (a dash of cream, no sugar)- seungmin collects her memories of minho like glittering jewels and stores them in that selfsame chest of Emotions. she ties off the now-complete crown, neatly tucking in the ends.
“done.”
“finally. turn around. where are the bobby pins?”
“um. check under the economics book. no, not that one. the green one? you literally took that class last year.”
“don’t talk back to me when i have a hot iron in my hand, kim seungmin."
minho is quick and efficient with seungmin’s hair, attacking her scalp with the straightener and all manner of terrifying pins. vaguely frightened but mostly just resigned, seungmin sits obediently and tries not to think about the feeling of minho’s hands in her hair. faintly in the background, katy perry sings about wanting to kiss girls. mood, seungmin thinks.
-o-
with seungmin's hair newly immaculate, minho goes back to the makeup scattered around the floor. seemingly done picking out palates from seungmin’s meager stash (mostly consisting of yongbok's hand-me-downs from her yearly purges), she reclines back onto the carpet, kicking seungmin with her free leg while she’s at it.
“now my makeup, slave.”
seungmin, resigned, collects the rolling tubes of highlighter left on the carpet and stacks them neatly on top of the vanity, nearly tripping over the now-empty donut box (they’d stopped in the middle of the pants crisis for a rejuvenating snack).
she turns to see minho watching her, an odd look on her face that quickly morphs into her patented bored expression. seungmin raises an eyebrow. minho flips her off.
they start off on the floor, but minho (expectedly) starts whining about her back. an inelegant clambering onto the bed ensues, both of them vainly attempting to avoid glitter fallout on clothing or blankets. curse hwang hyunjin and her unnecessarily correct fashion opinions. as seungmin leans in to apply eyeliner, the bed shifts under them, making minho's face sway and the lines wobble. she sighs and puts a hand under minho's chin to hold her face still.
there's a sharp intake of breath. seungmin, focused on eyeliner, barely clocks it. despite her firm grip on minho's face, she can't seem to get the angle right. it doesn't help that minho is seemingly determined not to make eye contact
she pushes lightly on minho's shoulders. "just. okay, can you lay back? the lighting isn't light-ing and i can't get shit done if you keep moving."
minho raises an eyebrow but complies, splaying herself flat against the bed. cautiously, seungmin settles herself over minho's hips. she can feel the leather sticking to her thighs as her dress slides up. focus, kim seungmin. no more gay thoughts: we have already exceeded the quota for today. shaking herself mentally, seungmin leans forward, caging minho in with her elbows. for a second neither of them move.
god, she can feel the heat of minho's face just from the proximity, faintly smell her cherry lip tint. why is she here? right, eyeliner. seungmin inhales a shaky breath and proceeds. business as always, she tells herself.
"well, seungminnie? hopelessly in love with me yet? i've heard my devasting aura at can kill grown men at close range." minho's lips purse in a mockery of a kiss. at this distance, all it would take is a breath for either of them to close the distance.
and seungmin… just can't take it anymore. the last few hours- the last few months, years, of slow torture, wanting what she can't have. of watching minho, of loving her, and hearing it played back to her in this twisted facsimile of a joke. she didn't think minho had it in her to be this cruel.
"please. please don't say that. don't do this to me." seungmin is almost begging at this point. she's already on her knees, for god's sake.
minho's eyes instantly narrow. there's something dangerous in the air, tension held taut between them like a fishing line. seungmin doesn't think her throat has ever been drier. the box of Emotions is rattling, the hinges metaphorically squealing.
"don't do what? why can't i?"
the furrow in minho's brow is back, as well as a kind of desperation in the arch of her eyebrow and the tenseness in her shoulders. and so, as she has always and forever done for lee minho, seungmin caves.
"you know that i've been in love with you for years," she says, resigned. "i can't keep- i don't know how to- you can't- i'm sorry. i know that you don't want me like that. but you could-you could at least not twist the knife. please."
it's out. like a ridiculous pressure-release of relief, a flow of blood unstaunched from her heart. there, it's out in the open. at the very least, they can still stay friends, right? minho couldn't stop talking to every person who confessed unrequited feelings for her- she'd never keep a friend for more than a week.
"kim seungmin."
it comes out like a whisper, the words harsh like they were torn from minho's chest.
"kim seungmin. do you know how you make me feel? i've been in love with you since i was 6 years old. what the fuck."
the only way to describe how seungmin feels in that moment is to say her heart simply stops in its chest; hummingbird-beat shocked into stillness.
"i don't- i. sorry, what?"
"i'm in love with you too, you absolute idiot. i always have been." minho is fuming, now, furrow in her brow morphed into a full-faced glare.
the world seems to turn white. seungmin blinks. feels her lashes flutter against her cheek.
"but. the ranking. the blind dates. you always-"
a scoff, all too raw. "i never cared about them. why do you think i always came back? i thought you never wanted me like that. i didn't want to- i couldn't push my feelings onto you- i thought if i tried hard enough to move on i could have you just like this but i never could- i couldn't stand to lose you, but i-"
seungmin puts her trembling mouth on minho’s. cuts off the jagged string of words as she leans into her. it’s a reverent prayer of a kiss, the communion between their lips as she asks for deliverance. she can taste minho’s lip tint, the artificial-sweet scent of it reminiscent of mere minutes ago, dizzy while she brushed setting powder over minho’s eyelids. seungmin presses herself further against minho. she does not breathe.
minho’s lips are soft- a little chapped. when she’s deep in thought, she chews her lower lip until it’s raw. seungmin’s spent many wasted hours wondering how that spot would feel against her mouth, against her hands. she tastes the roughness of it on her tongue as she licks into minho’s mouth.
-o-
after what could have been hours or minutes or years, they break apart. minho is still save for the rise and fall of her chest. seungmin stares at her in wonder. commits to memory the smear of cherry red on her mouth, the startled widening of her eyes, the frizz of her hair as it starts to escape the braids.
god, she wants to kiss her again. and again. there shouldn't be a world, seungmin thinks faintly, where she is not allowed to be constantly kissing minho. why aren't they kissing, again?
she voices this thought aloud and is awarded with a bark of laughter.
"there'll be plenty of time for kissing," minho says. seungmin's not sure all the time in the world would be enough time for kissing minho. but.
"you promise?"
"kim seungmin, i'm not going anywhere. and neither are you."
"...i thought we were going clubbing?"
"shut up. you know what i mean. also, i changed my mind. we're staying in."
seungmin heaves a contented sigh. "whatever you want."
"and what if i want you?" she says it half-jokingly, petulant, but lee minho isn't really one to take something halfway.
the lighting in the room are dim, but seungmin meets minho's eyes steadily.
"you have me. you've always had me. you have me for good."