Archive of Our Own

“Yah, Mingi, come on,” his dance instructor laments. There are bags under his eyes. Grease in his bandana. Paper overflows from a tray askew on his desk, where bills are due—stamped red and unembarrassed—in full view of anyone who might wander in from the hallway.

It’s not like they have it easy either, Mingi supposes. Adults. Whatever it is they do, when they end up working their dead-end jobs. Raising a family. 1AM six pack at the convenience store.  Bible study on Fridays.

Mingi shudders. His back sweats against the cheap particle board of the office. It is winter. Branches are broken. Ice hangs from them, coolly precarious, like the fate of childhoods at all academies like this one—not quite hagwon, not quite a series of auditions.

A few months ago, a student disappeared without notice. He was small, thin, a little dour. Big-eared, charismatic and athletic. When he danced, he would twist at the waist, like sun dappling a river where it bends. Between him and the other students, there was a tension. Constant, electric. Whether admiration or jealousy, it depended on the day. And as for where he went—the Big Four, university, or the psychiatrist’s couch—it’s difficult to tell. Mingi can’t pretend he cares. The reduced competition is what matters. But—

“You could try to give a fuck,” the instructor says, irritable.

“I’m here six hours a day.”

“Who cares if you’re here when you’re just laying around listening to music. A waste of everyone’s time and energy. Most of all your own.” A paper file slaps against the desk.

Mingi’s imagination spills open. An inky kind of high. In it, the wall folds over his fist. Flake of plaster, wooden splinter. The contempt of the teachers, bristling over his skin and crawling out his mouth. Scream. There could be blood, leaking down his thumb. There could be a crack, if he pushed his palm up into the cartilage of his instructor’s nose. But outside, the light’s gotten low, like an echo. Back home, his mother must be doing the extra cleaning she’d picked up, to make up for this ridiculous expense, his dad’s pay cut.

“Yeah. I’ll uh. I’ll try—harder, seonsaengnim.” Mingi’s swallows, and lets his anger go; remnant of a war already lost.

There’s a shadow skulking in the hallway. The instructor nods towards it. “You would benefit, Mingi-yah” he sighs, “from being more like Yunho. You know that?”

Yunho, who Mingi notices is as tall as him, but rounds his shoulders instinctively as he walks through the doorframe. Could be a trick of the light, but the twinkle in his eye has no malice in it. His nose straight, his pointed pink cheeks.

Yunho smiles. It is amiable. “Ah, no but seongsaengnim,” he protests, hands up. “I’m just here to check in about the schedule…”

And sure, of course Mingi’s seen him around. At the lockers, swarmed by straight-A, front-row, shiny-haired girls. Exiting a luxury car at the gateway to school. Cheering sincerely at recitals, his earnestness a beacon. Yunho’s pants are creased perfectly down the fronts of his shins, his arms agreeably limp, like noodles. Mingi wants to bend them behind his back and knee his face into the grimy curb. He could. He’s capable.

Yeah, Mingi’s the kind of boy who’s spent all his life fighting his life.

What’s another Jeong Yunho to him, in the grand scheme of things?

*

The problem with keeping an eye on Jeong Yunho, Mingi discovers, is that Jeong Yunho is already keeping an eye out for him. Mingi has no idea how he’s suddenly everywhere. Eyebrow tipped up at the corner. That smile, slicing electric against the grain of Mingi’s dull fucking life.

One day, Mingi is wandering around school like a ghost in oversized headphones and the next—“catch,” Yunho is calling, tossing him a bag of shrimp chips when his stomach starts to growl. Nearly taking him out at the forehead. Mingi’s sunglasses skitter across the cafeteria floor, and “here,” Yunho chirps, dodging his hips into the line to press them back into his palm. An apologetic smile to the lunch ahjumma. And then there’s open studio freestyle. Mingi giving himself over to the music, fish-flop-twisting his hips to meet the floor. Sweat down his neck, whipping his head around to spot himself in a spin when—Yunho’s reflection in the half-open window. Crackling leaves. The sweet awe in his eyes, when he looks right at Mingi, mouthing “damn.”

Against the lethal niceness of it all, Mingi can only grit his teeth. Yunho’s attention winding through the hallways, unabashedly keen and obvious. Blasting him stupid like hot air on a muggy day. It’s annoying, how it bowls right into his stomach, an involuntary kind of thrill.

Because it’s not like Mingi’s starved for attention.

Not like he isn’t being noticed 99.9% of the time. How could he not be? Mingi strives to be obvious, works hard for it even. Those off-brand aviators he carelessly flings around. A wardrobe of leather and cotton that’s distressed and spiky at intervals—yeah Mingi’s whole deal is so loud he might as well be yelling.

It’s just that attention pools weirdly in a place like this.

You get what you give is what the teachers sigh, but the saying’s never sat well with Mingi. Adolescence is a lesson in how life is unfair. It’s laughable that his classmates would believe that reward is proportionate to sacrifice, when it’s obvious that all those who stand out are Yunho-types—‘talented’ in direct relation to their chaebol coffers. Everyone else is just here to get a slim fucking chance.

But it’s fine, Mingi supposes, to see his classmates bowing and bobbing their heads. Every system needs its firm and resolute believers, especially the fantasy of the entertainment industry’s purported meritocracy.

A fantasy, of course, that academy’s dress code plays into. School is a sea of white and grey. Bland colors that mask its students’ thrashing hunger for success. Uniformity makes it easier for true talent to shine, or so the story goes. It’s more enviable to stand out silently. Uniqueness, only to be tolerated when it’s carefully calibrated for marketable consumption.

To the other students, it’s weird enough that Mingi would choose to perform provocation in the extreme. Rips in his sweater and leather cuffing his wrists. But mash it together with Mingi’s taut arrogance, his uneven temper and it all comes off as look-at-me childishness. Worse still—clumsy desperation.

And in a place like this, desperation is blood in the water. Too dangerous; too contagious.

So yeah, Mingi gets plenty of attention. It’s just that in practice, well.

It looks a little more like being entirely ignored.

*

Standing in the door of the cabin, Mingi thinks that the hills might roll out forever. Acrid yellow one day; lushly green the next. Wildflowers, rearing their tiny neon heads before being crushed to paste underfoot. The warm hue of the porch light upon a wooden threshold. Two cigarettes in a jam jar, fizzling out. One after the other, then lighting up again.

Things cycle in quick succession out here, just a few miles out of town. A turning, as if the sun were endlessly rising and setting.

The first time Yunho brought him to the cabin, there was a storm. Where the porch creaked, Mingi swung his body back and forth and noticed that the horizon—grey-lit and pink—stretched out far, so far beyond what his eye could see. Felt a shadow rise in his throat. Felt gripped, for once, by the alien desire to understand what made people who suffered for nothing want to go on living.

Today, the sky is an unreal cerulean blue.

The headlights of Yunho’s Audi approach, sliding like butter through kicked-up clouds of dust. A gift from his parents for his sixteenth birthday; for his perfect grades, his boundless potential. Mingi can’t help but snort. How much of this has become familiar to him. The rev of expensive brakes. Yunho’s grating innocuousness. Sand rough against Mingi’s cheek.

“Annyeong, chingu-yah,” Yunho singsongs, getting out of the car.

Mingi tries for nonchalant. “Who died? You’re late.”

“Ah,” Yunho’s eyes make little crescents. “Watch out. I’ll start thinking you care.” He tosses Mingi an apology kitkat. A pack of cigarettes.

“Whatever,” Mingi mumbles, and splits the chocolate. Half a grin wins against the unwilling muscles of his face.

Yunho turns the stereo up, fiddling with the jack through the car window. Tinny electronica of BigBang’s Bad Boy beginning to pollute the natural landscape. He takes a step forward that’s more like a leap. Then two.

Jesus, those legs.

“Annyeong,” Yunho breathes again, but this time in Mingi’s ear. Soft, because unlike Mingi, Yunho does care and doesn’t give a shit if anyone knows it. “Are we gonna dance, or what?”

Mingi shivers. Because yeah, sure, this really is familiar now. Yunho’s boy-scout enthusiasm reeling him into sync. The pulse of the bass, limbs unwinding with the music. Squashing their bodies into painful shape after shape, lungs warm and working and fueled by the blunt energy of innocence and desperation. Movement that with each imperfect repetition, begs to be made new. It’s all built into Mingi, when the chorus hits—round chest, sharp knees. Hair flip when the beat drops.

Yunho’s bared neck in the left corner of his eye.

Yeah, so much of this might be too-familiar to Mingi. But it feels timeless still, stuck in the dislocating space of dreams.

Because Yunho might believe dance is their future, but the two of them always end up back here somehow. Retracing their steps in this caught loop with no beginning or end, this debauched place drawn tight against the world’s will to barrel forward, where—

Yunho’s left hand on the wheel. His right in Mingi’s pants. Car-seat-leather and Mingi’s tongue writhing round a curse. There, y-yeah, fuck—right into Yunho’s mouth, hot and wet and stretched-wide to swallow it. The ivory-sweat-soap scent behind Yunho’s ear. Mingi breathes it in. Pants it back; into the delicious crease of Yunho’s neck, the hollow of this throat. Hips kicking up into his big, slick palm. Nails digging into Yunho’s inner thigh, where Mingi knows under the denim last week, his teeth had left a bruise. Blue-green and split. The grind of Yunho’s skin between his molars. A shade of pain made angelic by Yunho’s long-suffering face, the clutch of his knees around Mingi’s skull as he’d pressed his cock against the inside of Mingi’s cheek and—

Yeah, that’s it, good boy, Yunho murmurs. Fingers wound tight in Mingi’s hair, till Mingi locks his jaw and comes and no longer has any idea what’s then or now; what’s real.

*

When Mingi’s eomma pursed her wan lips and said, uri adeul, the Lord only helps those who help themselves, he did not anticipate being dragged out by the ear by the Korean Catholic Women’s Association for multiple volunteer shifts at church.

No, Mingi did not anticipate polishing communion silver and inventory-ing communion wafers instead of plunging face-first into a League marathon after school on a Tuesday.

He certainly did not anticipate being trapped in the tiny sacristry of his family’s place of worship with the very Jeong Yunho whose interest he’s been trying to ignore. Two too-tall boys, elbow to knee amidst the pile of musty velvet curtains, mothball-stained vestments slated for dry cleaning. The jurassic desktop computer in the corner wheezing under the weight of Father Lee’s poorly-planned spreadsheets, his half-drafted homilies.

“You’re better than the last guy they sent,” Mingi remarks casually. As if he hadn’t reformulated his opening retort at least five times over, ever since Yunho sauntered his ridiculous limbs into the room. “He dropped a tray of chalices because his boyfriend wouldn’t stop texting him to go play hooky at the PC bang.”

It’s not a lie, exactly. Not that Wooyoung’s come out to him about San or anything. But Mingi’s not the first person to spot them getting handsy in the alcove under the Saint Lucia mural, so who gives. Besides, the gay shock value for an uptight Catholic boy like Yunho’s more what Mingi’s after.

But—“wow, what happened to him?” Yunho asks, not shaken in the slightest. In fact, suspiciously perky in the cheeks.

Mingi stares behind him at the wall. “I had to kill him, obviously. He’s wedged between the desk and the photocopier.”

“Oh?” Yunho says, with a sly sort of lightness. “Hate crime, huh? Didn’t take you for a homophobe.”

Involuntarily, Mingi glances out the window, frowning in what he knows is an embarrassingly uncomfortable way. “Dude, no, of course not. I’m—” he blusters. Off-kilter from the fact that that Yunho’s managed to turn his offensive tactics back on himself. “It’s just. Being gay doesn’t mean you’re not fucking lame you know? Wooyoung’s into vintage emo and shit.”

“What’s wrong with that,” asks Yunho, who knows Mingi knows he’s got a penchant for Dashboard Confessional. It goes without saying that everyone knows, because Yunho’s personal tastes are doctrine and have a ridiculous amount of bearing on the tastes of the entire student body/youth catechism populations combined.

Mingi crosses his arms. “Nostalgia’s a disease.”

“Hm,” Yunho remarks. His fingers twitch involuntarily against the hem of his uniform dress shirt, as if his body’s helping him finish the thinking. Shirttails tucked neatly into his slacks at the front, but left out at the back, where normally a blazer would hide it. They look good on Yunho, these moments of absentmindedness. Tie slightly askew and sleeves jauntily rolled up; the contour of his biceps outlined by the shadows.

The clock on the wall reads 5:20PM. Across the street, the light blots on, shining through the stained church windows and dyeing Yunho’s face a pale jello-green. It turns his expression unexpectedly shrewd.

In the mirror next to Yunho, Mingi spies his own uncertain image (smirk, flashy clothes, feral skittishness) and can’t help but blush. His tshirt feels tightly plastered to his chest. Suddenly all too aware that he’s down on his knees amidst an array of half-polished communion silver. And sure, being sentenced to manual labor by a herd of Jesus-loving ahjummas is one thing, but the humiliation of trying to hold a conversation at the feet of the reigning prince of the student body is another altogether.

“You know, golden boy, if you’re not going to help,” Mingi scowls, “then why don’t you just get the fuck ou—"

“Mingi-ssi,” Yunho interrupts, folding at the waist. Like this, he’s cross-legged, eye-level. Polite. “I’m sorry to ask but—why are you avoiding me?”

It might as well be an insult. Mingi’s not sure what Yunho’s playing at with this bout of sudden-onset Good Samaritanism, but Mingi is fine. Mingi wants to be left the fuck alone. Mingi’s made his peace with his community-assigned role of social pariah and the last thing he needs is Jeong Yunho’s fake altruism, that saccharine, mild-mannered pity clinging to him like some pathetic haze.

“What’s it to you? Not like you’re short on friends,” Mingi demands.

The sacristry’s really too small for this, hemmed in as they are by clutter. Plastic storage bins, bookcases chock-full of theology. Mingi wishes he had enough space to wind his elbow and clock Yunho in the face, but it’s hard when he’s too close, close enough that their noses might touch.

“It could be fun, is all.” Yunho’s shrug is plain. He leans back against the wall, knees all up and awkward. Not the least bit impressed or threatened by whatever internal turmoil Mingi’s bringing to the table. “Oh come on, hand it over.” He pries the rag from Mingi’s clenched fist. Picks up the wine decanter and starts scrubbing vigorously, with a little flourish. Like everything Yunho touches, it immediately starts to sparkle.

“I mean. Doesn’t it get boring?” With all that diligent polishing, Yunho’s shirt’s started gaping a little at the chest. Its crisp, translucent cotton. Under it, Mingi catches the brown halo of a nipple, the sway of rosary beads against his sternum.

Venom rises in his throat. “What,” Mingi warns.

“You know,” Yunho smiles, and takes a swig of communion wine, straight from the jug. “Being in trouble, all alone.”  

*

“See, what’s real, Mingi-yah,” Yunho says, “isn’t the effort you put into the move or even the move itself.” He tilts his head to the sky as he demo-es the choreography again.

Hands framing face, sharply angled fingers, tension in the mouth. Tall grass in the field. Crows grumbling overhead. Mingi’s panting with exhaustion, but he can’t hear his breath. This stupid in-class sequence he’s been having trouble with, made effortless as it ripples through Yunho’s body, from the crest of his hip up to his shoulders.

Colder times are coming, but out by the cabin, the sky is crystal clear for now. Sunlight drenches the ground in luxurious sheets, the glare it creates against Yunho’s dark hair, blinding—and Mingi wonders once again how Yunho manages to dance with this insane purity of grace. Like he isn’t scared of the burnt-out ruins on their world. Like he sees youth—nestled within himself, in a classmate across the street, or in Mingi, even, as something to cherish and not to resent. Something to dive head-first into. To laughingly pursue.

“Watch me,” Yunho says, with a faultless grin and Mingi’s fingers itch to pull him open at the jaw. To spit in his mouth and smear saliva, ruinous, across his bow-lips. His apple-round cheeks.

Because Mingi is not the same. Mingi is a school-hating, church-despising child and youth manifests within him as a festering affliction. An equal and equivalent force against the hell of subordination. Because, no matter what the teachers insisted upon in school, Mingi harbored kindergarten-age suspicions that life was more complex than what was being regurgitated to him. That the sea could be many colors but blue; that a pig take could many more shapes than fat. That it could follow then, naturally, that authority was nothing but a convenient adult illusion.

After all, if the point of God’s mystery is that ‘God knows’, when no one else does, then the point of a parent is likely the same. Go figure that Mingi sees no reason to submit to either. Generally prefers to resist, well, everything. If only out of spite.

Until Yunho.

Yunho, who wears a charmingly crooked expression and an apron at his part time grocery job. Always at the ready to reach the tallest shelf. Who rejects every ahjumma’s advance to Yunho-yah, get some pizza after dance club with my Yeji won’t you? A quick bow, a firm refusal—ah I’m sorry, eomeonim, I just have so much homework this week. Yunho, who dons the too-short robes of an altar boy on Sundays—jeans embarrassingly visible, shin-to-ankle—and winks at Mingi every time Father Lee sings the litany offkey. Who blows off the CSAT training and tennis lessons his parents press upon him to dance with Mingi by the cabin. To clasp Mingi’s sweaty palm in his and say, eyes sparkling, “I believe in us, fighting!”

“Let’s debut together,” Yunho insists, and for once, Mingi isn’t immediately doused by his own incompetence—his blistered feet, his forehead bashed into an unfeeling locker. By what his father, soju-drunk and broke, once called his ‘total delusions of grandeur’. For once, Mingi lets his mind wander to the straight line of Yunho’s back as he stretches. The abandon of Yunho’s body as he throws it into the music, so momentum throws his pretty face over his right shoulder. His damp cow eyes fixed on Mingi’s mouth. Shit, Mingi could take him from behind. Mingi could revel in it forever, their two sets of white sneakers rolling inwards to the beat.

The truth is, Mingi hasn’t forgotten the terrifying fragility of his chances in the entertainment industry for long enough to imagine what it would be like to actually live them out.  

Until now. Until Yunho.

Who isn’t God. Who is no judge nor jury. Who is a remarkably normal, well-adjusted boy, Mingi has to remind himself, until sitting bored in class, he slips back once again to that terrible afternoon. Where Yunho, the beautiful, insatiable bitch, having fucked himself wet and loose on Mingi’s aching dick, had wrapped Mingi’s hands around his throat and begged him to press down with his thumbs till it pulsed.

Can dreams support the weight of the whole material world? For Yunho maybe. His ineffable measures of privilege. And yeah, Mingi knows he’s not nearly the same, but Yunho’s managed to tempt him anyway, into something dangerously akin to faith.

Something like—

“What’s real, Mingi-yah. It’s not the move itself,” Yunho is repeating. He slips Mingi’s arm into his and raises it. A gentle adjustment at the elbow, as if to pose the same theory, but in a different way. “The move becomes real when you think about it as an action. Something with intention. That has consequence in the world. Like this. My hands, shading my eyes to see the sky more clearly. My knees, coming down to test the richness of the dirt.”  

Yunho’s probing gaze. “When you dance, Mingi-yah, what do you want it to do? Where will you let it take you? Where do you want to go? It’s okay to think about, you know.” He tips Mingi’s chin up with his fingers. “Because look, it’s beautiful up there.”

Gleaming branches. Leaves fluttering kite-like in the wind. Mingi opens his eyes, and it is. It’s unbearable.

Mingi closes his eyes, and every genre of revelation is wearing Yunho’s face.

Dare he believe? It’s already too late.  

*

“I see the prodigal son returns,” Wooyoung snipes, but flips a cigarette out of the carton anyway, into Mingi’s waiting palm.

Mingi lights up with a huff. “I’m the hyung here, don’t forget.”

“Please. Three months? Might as well be three seconds. You’re a child.”

Perched out on a dumpster, the waistband of Wooyoung’s slacks is rolled low on his hips. Bangs escaping his tiny ponytail. He pulls his non-regulation denim jacket closer around himself. “Missed you, you big lug.” His grin shows too many teeth.

“Not like you to be sentimental,” Mingi ushers smoke away from himself lest he get busted by a teacher later. Nicotine buzzing him back to life. “Thought you were busy voring Sannie whole in the dark, dubious corners where the priests can’t see.”  

“Kinky,” Wooyoung rolls his eyes. “Look who’s talking.”

“Oh yeah?”

The wind cuts here, back behind the cafeteria, but for Wooyoung, Mingi and the other assorted misfits, it’s a respite. Safe from the panoptic view of the popular kids’ cafeteria tables, the epicenter of all manner of damaging, chastising gossip. A handy place for a few smokes or nap. Steam wafting from the vat of barley tea eternally brewing in the kitchen building nearby.

Mingi counts the scratches on its metal door.

“You and Prince Charming? It’s all anyone can talk about,” Wooyoung hops off the dumpster to scuff his cigarette butt into the dirt. “Gotta say I’m surprised. Thought you’d have cleaned up your whole teen vampire look a bit, hanging out with mister squeaky-clean 24/7.”

Mingi looks down instinctively. His nail polish-kimchi-spattered shirt. “As if you’re much better.”

“You weren’t complaining, last month,” Wooyoung says, glancing snidely up from under his lashes.

“Save it,” Mingi snorts, although he can’t deny the curl of interest in his gut. Blame Wooyoung for always looking this good. Shirt rucked up, his naked clavicle. Tongue pressed against that infuriating pout. No, Mingi can’t hate it at all, how shameless Wooyoung can be about wanting to get his face fucked. How easy he is for a casual blowjob or two out by the bleachers.

But—“whatever, you’re right,” Wooyoung sighs, turning the charm abruptly off. “Sannie’s made me a wife guy now.” He rests an elbow on Mingi’s shoulder, right back to friendly. “Seriously though, what’s up with you and Jeong Yunho? We saw you two playing air hockey at the arcade after mass last Sunday. In broad daylight!”

“Nothing,” Mingi mumbles. “Seonsaengnim told us to practice together, don’t get it twisted.”

“Got a crush?” Wooyoung asks, keenly.

“Not like that,” Mingi grumbles, flushing anyway. “Probably doesn’t lean that way.”

Wooyoung snorts. “Yeah right, I think Yunho-ssi’s performance of Le Sserafim’s Fearless at last year’s talent show would strongly disagree.”

Mingi laughs despite himself. A real one. Can’t help it. The memory of Yunho duck-walking across the stage in a pink mohair sweater, thigh highs. Mingi had thought it was ridiculous back then, but now—

Wooyoung can tell. He turns, a knitted-together little frown. “Hey, just—be careful, Mingi-yah, you know, rich boys like that—”

“Aw, come on. He’s not that bad. He’s a socialist—” Mingi protests. Too quickly.

Wooyoung stares. “You really like him, huh.”

Mingi palms his bleach-frizzled bangs back, frustrated.

Because ‘like’ isn’t the word, exactly, for how what he feels about Yunho after that day in the sacristry. But it turns out he’s not the sheltered, docile boy wonder Mingi assumed he’d be.

Are they friends now? Mingi doesn’t know.

He’s just not used to it, the ease with which Yunho’s constantly proffering things up to him these days, like a perversely enthusiastic puppy playing fetch. Liquor stolen out of his dad’s cabinet. Well-worn manga. Wicked impressions of Kim seongsaemnim and Father Lee so funny that they make Mingi spit water. Invitations to play Valorant, rides home from school.

No, Mingi definitely didn’t expect to find himself keeping watch for Yunho, late at night. His stained black jeans. The narrow street hugging the fence out by the demolition pit. A peeling billboard and the thrill of watching the bourgeoisie son of a prominent nationalist family spray paint ‘CLASS STRUGGLE’ across it with alarming proficiency. Mingi’s never experienced anything like it—that camaraderie. Yunho’s hand in his. Fleeing together from security guard torchlight, legs working till their lungs might burst.

And maybe Mingi’s too used to courting attention; begged for scraps of it so long that it’s hard for him to understand what to do with all these cherished parts of Yunho’s life that he's just… voluntarily offering to share. But there’s a modest satisfaction to it, he’s realized. Their companionable silence up at Yunho’s family’s half-abandoned vacation cabin. An old TV flickering in the corner, shadows dancing across the mismatched patterns of the rug and sofa. Mingi sketching, Yunho idly playing bass.

Yeah. ‘Like’ isn’t really the word for how he feels about Yunho, when horrifyingly, the more Mingi tries not to, the more obsessed he gets.

Wooyoung’s clearly caught on. Mingi’s hesitance a dead giveaway.

“Yah, seriously?” he yelps, in a tone that seems tinged with what, disappointment? Disbelief? It snags at Mingi, right in the chest.

In the distance, the bell rings. He spots a few students in the far courtyard, stepping out of the library and settling in a circle to peruse the books on their knees. Studious. Yunho’s set. Mingi can’t see his telltale bobble head towering amongst them yet but he’s pretty sure that if he leaves now he can still catch Yunho on his way out from last period music composition.

“I gotta run,” he tries. Feeling caged-in.  

But, “ah come on—don’t,” Wooyoung jolts forward to catch him by the wrist. It’s a bad move. Mingi’s instincts kick right in, throwing his shoulders back so he can shake Wooyoung off with a snarl. But brute strength is nothing compared to Wooyoung’s lithe jujitsu tricks, his jabby little knees, and Mingi groans to find himself twisted in a surprisingly painful arm bar.

“Fucking—let go—” he spits.

Wooyoung, panting in his ear. “Jesus, just—will you listen?” Backing off once he’s sure Mingi’s gone limp, before scruffing him roughly by the back of his neck for good measure. “It’s just—I’ve been hearing some stuff about that dude, okay?”

Mingi works a fist into the joint of his shoulder. “Ow,” he mutters, sullen. But the real apprehension in Wooyoung’s face makes him pay attention.

“You remember Jeong Gunho? His brother? Two years below us. They were super close, you know. Together all the time, at church, at school. But last month he just like, disappeared one day? And no one knows what even happened to him.”

“So?”

“It’s weird, okay?” Wooyoung purses his lips. “Yunho-ssi’s prancing around smiling and acting like everything is fucking normal. Like his brother never existed. What's going on, is he even worried? Apparently all the teachers told his classmates to stop asking questions. It’s freaking people out. Like okay, now Gunho’s suddenly gone and we’re all supposed to accept that with no good reason?”

Mingi shrugs, halfhearted. “Maybe he changed schools.”

Wooyoung bites his hair tie into his mouth so he can fix his ponytail. He flicks Mingi once in the forehead. The squint in his eye isn’t unkind. “Look, I’m not trying to tell you what to do with your fucking life, okay. All I’m saying is to watch your back. Boys like that? Don’t hang out with boys like us just cause. No offense, but you’ve got to wonder what he wants out of you in the end.”

An uneasy lump in Mingi’s throat.

Because it’s not that he hadn’t considered how odd it is, that Yunho’s taken such a unexpected interest in him. Their hotwired intimacy. But it’s not like he’s been hiding Mingi away from his other friends either, like an embarrassing secret or some kind of closeted plaything. And Mingi would loathe to admit it, but the truth is that he’s tortured by his own outsider status. It’s been validating to see the raised eyebrows when Yunho leans jauntily towards Mingi at the end of each school day and says “time for us to get the hell out of here.”

So, yeah, Mingi would really prefer not to think too hard about it.

Wooyoung on the other hand. Wears his stigma with a brazen, rebellious integrity. Never seems burdened by it, in fact, gets way too trigger-happy when it comes to talking shit about the elite. His bared teeth, contemptuous wrists. And sure, he might seem lacquer-hard but Mingi knows he’s really goo inside—grudgingly protective of the other misfits around him. Probably why he’s getting so fucking paranoid right now, that Mingi’s going to get screwed over by some harmless chaebol.

Fucking Wooyoung. Mingi’s suddenly fond as shit about him. “Yeah, well, I’m not planning to let Jeong Yunho drench me in pigs' blood Carrie-style at the prom,” he says gruffly. “What do you take me for.”

Wooyoung examines him carefully. “Pity,” he sighs eventually. Arms crossed and back to breezy. “You’d look hot in that pink satin dress. A crystal tiara?”

Impulsively, Mingi plants a stupid, sloppy kiss on his cheek. “Thanks, Youngie.”

“Gross,” Wooyoung makes a face but doesn’t wipe it off. “Get out of here, Cinderella. Your chariot awaits.” He nods towards the back school gate, where Yunho’s dawdling. Blazer over his shoulder and hand in his pocket. “Jesus, straight out of a K-drama. How’d he even know to find you here?”

“Eat your heart out,” Mingi smirks, and ruffles Wooyoung’s freshly-fixed hair goodbye. “Tell Sannie hi.”

Mingi hurries out towards the street, leaving Wooyoung to the courtyard rodents. Over the grille of the black iron gate, the red brick of the school, the sky melds blue and orange. The lilting scent of fabric softener from the adjacent laundromat. As Mingi lets himself out, Yunho looks up from his book. His sheepish smile indicating he’d been wondering where Mingi had been.

“Where to,” Mingi demands. A blunt sort of impatience seeping through. Is he imagining it? The way the breeze ruffles the gap between the hair on his arm and the hair on Yunho’s. Inches away. Leading to what those less generous than he might call an incredible sexual tension.

Yunho’s thigh nudges at him, warm. “Want to eat beef?”

“If hyungnim is buying,” Mingi teases, but none of this feels like a joke.

Yunho cocks his head, almost shyly. “Then let’s go, Mingi-yah.”

Wooyoung’s right. He’s ridiculous, dazzling. His loose cardigan, the naive promise in his every step.

Mingi tries to focus. The light across the road changes to green. They’re about to cross, when a car pulls up with a screech. Big and expensive. Wheels all bumped up against the corner of the curb.

Mingi jumps away a tad too late, his white sneaker scuffing rubber. One of Yunho’s arms coming up to brace defensively against his waist. Uncharacteristically, he curses softly under his breath. A trepidation in his posture that Mingi’s not seen before.

The woman who emerges from the polished Bentley chrome is just as lustrously rigid. Her hair coiffed in the universal language of ‘expensively kept housewife’ and her arm clutching a bag cut from the kind of buttery leather that costs at least twice Mingi’s annual tuition.

“Yunho-yah,” she wavers. “You didn’t tell me—where did you—where have you been?” Her voice wobbles with the tearstained threat of a mother whose hurt is but a vehicle for the expression of a truly destructive anger.

“Eomma,” Yunho’s neat little bow. A full ninety degrees of formality. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”

The air around Mingi tightens in flashes. The conversation unfolding in front of him, in possession of a bizarrely rote hysteria:

Her: The thing I can’t stand is
Him: Eomma, I just got off school
Her: You weren’t home. I was so scared, do you know how scared I
Him: Eomma, did you read your text messages? I told you I was going to eat dinner with a friend
Her: You didn’t tell me. You could have told me
Him: Eomma, I’m about to go eat dinner with a friend
Her: You know how I get, ever since your brother, ever since
Him: Eomma, I’ll see you at home, look Eomma
Her: Your brother, Yunho-yah. Your brother
Him: Eomma

The air damp with furious tears, and Yunho, now made mute. A smooth, beautific patina descending upon his face. This woman would make accusations just to break a silence, that much is clear.  

Mingi looks up. He doesn’t know what to do with his body. The gash of sunset orange now burns a separation across the darkening navy sky.

Perhaps Wooyoung was right, Mingi thinks. Who knows, in Yunho’s house, how deep the shadows go. The sirens might stop there, but it would appear that nothing was on fire.

*

Mingi isn’t sure why he expected melodrama. His personal penchant for it, maybe; or Wooyoung’s conspiracy theories.

But it all comes out with an unsettling ease, as everything to do with Yunho does.

K-bbq. The scald of steam and soju glasses around them clinking. Amidst the raucous chatter, Mingi is never certain if Yunho is feeding Mingi or feeding Mingi in order to feed himself. Spiritually, or whatever.

Yunho likes his meat rare. Strips of crimson steak and jellied pork fat. A dab hand at grilling, so much so that the shop ahjussi occasionally comes by to admire his skill with the tongs and a pair of kitchen shears. An approving pat on the shoulder. A free glass of soda. A pinprick of red, on Yunho’s lower lip.

Mingi’s tasted enough blood in his lifetime—blows to the jaw from his father and bullies alike—that he prefers his meat well-done. But Yunho lifts his chopsticks and grazes chunks of half-cooked galbi with Mingi’s hungry mouth and Mingi can’t help but open up obediently.

“Good job,” Yunho comments, mild. Mingi sucks the meat against his tongue and lets its iron-tinged taste enter his being like the eucharist blessing; like a portion of Yunho that slowly suffuses Mingi’s whole and will never again leave either of them.

 A bite of white rice. The warm satedness of it making Mingi bold.

“What happened to your brother,” he blurts out. Unable to hold it back any longer.

A swell of smoke encircles Yunho like a puff of fine charcoal powder. Someone at the next table sneezes. “Watch your hands,” Yunho says, lightly, without missing a beat, and moves Mingi’s palms away from the grill.

When Mingi looks up, Yunho’s eyes are dark, left ajar. His white face. Hardly a drop of color where just an hour ago, the red had swarmed up, sweet and sweaty by his cheekbones after a particularly vigorous run through of Taemin’s Move.

“My brother died,” Yunho says. Bloodless and calm. “Gunho killed himself in the summer.”

*

Does Yunho know the difference between living and acting?

Watching him try on suits, Mingi is increasingly unsure. His elegant figure cutting through the monochrome reflection of the city dusk. The floor-to-ceiling windows of the Thom Brown boutique bringing out the flint in Yunho’s eyes.

Mingi’s gotten too used to it, probably. How they’ve become extensions of one another; so much so he’s forgotten Yunho’s pedigree, its ambient implications. Who can blame him? To Mingi, Yunho’s just, well. Yunho. Just another student worrying about exams, potato chip dust in his hair. Just a dancer, striving for bone-breaking alignment, eyes glued to their twinned image in the studio mirror. Just a frantic lover, pressing himself into Mingi, ass to pelvis. Nails scrabbling into his back, so Mingi’s eyes roll back with a dazed pleasure composed mostly of disbelief.

In this setting though, there’s no hiding it. Their difference. Under the crisp black blazer, Yunho throws his shoulders back as if he owns the place. Every part of his body wears another shade of silver. From the spectacle frames sweeping his bangs back behind his ears. To the shiny lapels of his jacket. To the gilded heels of his dress shoes and the rings adorning his long fingers. Mingi and the shop assistants, all of them staring in wonder as he strides by, so comfortably, confidently. So beautifully.

Attention follows him, scandalous, but he barely seems to notice. Mingi’s is suddenly aware of the chasm growing between himself and… this not-not Yunho, who’s seamlessly wearing his face. Who’s retained his familiarity, his kindness, but none of his warmth.  

“It’s only for next year,” he looks at Mingi, his long-lashed eyes apologetic, before getting up to change back into his school uniform.

Mingi wanders aimlessly through the narrow dressing room hallway. Trying to be reasonable.

A new school across the ocean, under American skyscrapers. Business school training. Had Yunho flinched when his appa passed down the ruling? Did he protest or yell, or spout childish, frustrated tears? It seems ridiculous to Mingi that the same Yunho who’d so passionately grabbed him by the hand and insisted on training six days a week; who’d pulled him back from the brink of quitting dance altogether; who has a penchant for petty graffiti at inconvenient hours of the night, would just give up and yield to the whims of his conservative parents.

But the conflict between expectation and want is the force that problematizes everyone. Yunho is not exempt. Being recognized by any adult is abhorrent to Mingi, but he shut his door on his mother’s world a long time ago.

Mingi can’t pretend he has any idea what it’s like for Yunho, to suffer a good family. A dead brother.  

A hand reaches out to drag Mingi behind the dressing room curtain.

“I know this sucks,” Yunho is insisting, nose nudging up against Mingi’s neck. Fingers winding across the span of his thigh. “But we can practice over video. I’ll call you every day. We can still debut together. I don’t see why not—

The vanity lights are hot on the back of Mingi’s neck. He shoves out abruptly at Yunho, his tousled hair. Mouth open in surprise and the cloying starch of his shirt, now rumpled. Mingi doesn’t mean to, it’s just—he’s increasingly unwilling to bear it. The muddled contradictions. These hacked-off bits of Yunho—hidden and decipherable, young and adult, now and what might be—all united into a single alien image in standing front of him, half-dressed in expensive clothes. As if reflected back from some futuristic mirror that Mingi isn’t a part of. Can’t quite see.

But—“I’ll make it up to you, Yunho murmurs. The special softness he reserves for Mingi, wobbling through his cheeks. He touches Mingi’s shoulder hesitantly. As if trying to still a frightened dog. As if trying to soothe him back to the present. As if they both don’t know that just a few months ago Mingi wouldn’t have let him off about it without a black eye at least. A busted lip.

“Let me make it up to you,” Yunho tries again, drawing him in by the waist. Mingi’s palm automatically coming up to rest against his naked chest, where Yunho’s silver crucifix always dangles. Skin-warm.

Mingi’s nauseous. A gash in his stomach, where Yunho’s certainty seems to live. This dreaded moment where youth submits to life, finally come knocking at their door. And sure, Yunho might tease Mingi constantly, about how he performs a flamboyantly nihilist despair, but it seems so obviously implausible to Mingi, that this dreamed-up future of theirs might endure—beyond an international move, a set of looming family expectations.

It eats him away like acid.

Because does Yunho know the difference between living and acting?

Mingi looks at him, up close and flushed with the sincere conviction that nothing between them is going to change—and realizes that even now, especially now, Yunho’s the kind of true believer both fortunate and stupid enough to have no fucking clue.

So, “sure,” Mingi says roughly, “make it up to me,” and presses Yunho to his knees. The plush carpet. The gasp he makes as he buries his face in Mingi’s crotch. Eager. Mingi savors it, hand heavy in his hair. The wet click as Yunho takes Mingi’s cock deep into his throat and rolls it over his tongue. His eyes lax, his dick drooling into the front of wool suit trousers that aren’t yet paid for. Yeah, Mingi fists Yunho forward by the delicate chain of his rosary beads till his nose hits the skin of Mingi’s belly and chokes him again and again till he gags, thinking the whole time of—

Two months ago. White light dissolving on a path. Hiking the up behind the cabin just to drink a beer, catch the view. Mingi, relishing being in Yunho’s shadow when Yunho had turned, the sunset blazing orange behind him at the peak and said, “see that, Mingi-yah? That’s our future. Up the road where you’re walking now. There’s the actual future and I’ll meet you there.”

The sun seemed to set at both ends of the hill. Yunho looked like he was being engulfed by flames. Mingi stood there, blinded by all that light, wondering why he was still haunted by the icy things that came to him at night. That strobing sense of predetermination—even under Yunho’s care—that to acknowledge the possibility of a future was the one thing he’d never be able to do.

Still, he wanted Yunho to come through those red-drenched trees. Wanted to believe him saying “I’ll meet you there. The place where we’ll be together in the end,” because then, at least at the end, Mingi would have known that it all made sense.

But it’s winter now. Yunho is leaving and Mingi, in the preposterous cold, has to ask himself—which way did I forget to go? Which turn did we miss? Which bend can I follow back?

Wiping come from the corner of his battered mouth—“believe me, Mingi-yah,” Yunho says. A hairline fracture in his voice. Can he even believe himself? He presses his rosary into Mingi’s palm with the finality of a keepsake. The black beads made from crystal, and growing quickly cool again, absent the scald of Yunho’s body.

What is it that Mingi’s eomma always says? The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.

*

Mingi’s never been cared for in the way Yunho cares for him. Indulgent, encompassing.

Yunho doesn’t wish him good morning; instead, this morning the cornelias are pretty, did you see? Yunho texts; I hope your day goes easy, let’s eat chicken later. I hope your night isn’t too sore, does your bruise looks like the moon? You looked tired after third period, let’s sneak out for coffee. His messages to Mingi are routine, ceaseless, and in them Mingi hears echoes of how the members of Yunho’s family have variously loved him. Here, have this pair of jeans, he texts Mingi, have some gimbap, my eomma packed banchan. Come, eat this rolled omelet with cheese. Will you eat these carrots from my hand? Are you happy? Do you like it? Don't leave me. I am trying to please you with everything I have. Here, have grapes. Have a croissant.

It makes Mingi feel chosen. It makes that fact that Yunho didn’t tell him about Gunho sting more, not less.

Mingi thought he liked the brutal truth. Facing it, head on. Had no reason before, to think ill of any of Yunho’s forms of attention, happy just to sop it up.

But now. Gunho’s dead, Yunho had said, two days ago, as if it were nothing, and too bad, Wooyoung’s paranoia’s rubbed right off on him. Poking insistently to the surface. Making Mingi wonder. Did Yunho ruffle Gunho’s hair like he does Mingi’s, when he cursed at his quadratic equations? Bribe him with candy to get him through? Did Gunho do aegyo to get out of trouble? That expression of Yunho’s that Mingi hates to admit he likes—part-exasperation, part-delight.

Perhaps Yunho’s fascination for Mingi’s not about him so much as a displacement of a deeper grief. Perhaps Mingi's some grotesque transitional object that Yunho can’t help but cling to, in the absence of his brother.

Did Gunho fit, like Mingi does, so perfectly under Yunho’s arm?

Who cares. Mingi’s always turned sadness to anger. The better to fight with. After all, sentimentality is useless to his survival.

And now bleeding from the nose, all over the ugly paisley couch up at the cabin, Mingi thinks about the romance novels he reads in secret, under the covers, behind the door of his locker, with his heart between his teeth. A heroine can be sad, distressed. She languishes, hours passing by, on brocade couches, canopy beds. Expiring from her illicit passions, her secret liasons between manicured hedges and marble fountains.

But Mingi is no princess, no matter how many tiny cakes or treats Yunho presses upon him. Not to be caught mid-swoon. Not to be treasured. No, he’s damaged goods—just another boy forced to be on edge and alert to the sound of tires in the rain. Forced doors and cracked windows. Holding his breath. Bracing for violence. No, Mingi, thinks, far better to strike out first. To open the door, fists at the ready and let it all in, unfeeling. Let the punches rebound, diffuse upon his rubber body.

He touches two fingers to his swollen eye, wincing.

2:30AM and Mingi’s got no clue why he’s here apart from that it’s somewhere to go. Rain outside. Parents late at work. Cold house. Noting, jealously, that the table and chairs have been neatly scrubbed down since the last time he was here. Mint smell and dishes stacked neatly against the wall, making him feel like a visitor to this place.

Mingi’s never here, without Yunho, but clearly Yunho’s been without him.

Is there a first aid kit in the bathroom? Mingi’s scrounging about in the cabinet when behind him, the front door clicks. Yunho, hurtling in with the dust, his shoulders scrunched up with worry.

Outside, the wind howls.

Yunho stamps his feet on the doormat. “You didn’t answer your phone—” his lips are chapped and chewed. There are leaves tangled in his hair. He looks dutifully concerned. “Where were you, I was texting, Yeji said she saw you outside the 7/11 and they were—they—”  

“You sound like your eomma,” Mingi scoffs, but it comes out half-hearted. He’s ashamed, nonsensically, of how much his head throbs. Does he have a concussion? What a mess he must look, with dirt scuffed up his arms. His grazed elbows. Blood dried from his eyebrow down his cheek, someone’s metal ring having broken the skin. His vision gone all watery, starting to blur—

“Oh Mingi,” Yunho says softly, taking two steps forward. There’s a wounded look in his eyes, like it’s he and not Mingi who just got his face bashed into the curb. “Jesus, what did you do.”

He reaches out. His cool, slender fingers. But Mingi jolts away.

Because Yunho doesn’t care, how could he? And Mingi could care even less, about who started the fight, why it happened in the first place. Hey, without a sense of purpose, who’s really living—and being beat into the floor outside the convenience store, Mingi had at least subject himself to the pain-relieving euphoria of knowing that everything is temporary and nothing matters; had grinned up from ear to ear at the boys hurling blows, at the iron-tang between his teeth, because what a relief, honestly, to finally know his place—at the hurting end of a fist, cheek against the tarmac, boots to his rib. What bliss, to give up trying to be worth anything, trying to change his fate and to understand that he’s alive on this planet just to be a useless piece of—

“Mingi-yah,” Yunho tries again, irritatingly level. It sounds like pity.  

The tautness in Mingi’s stomach threatens to explode. “Can you knock it the hell off,” he scoffs. “Let’s not do this. I’m not Gunho, and you don’t have to pretend to give a shit about me.”  

Yunho falters. “Is that what this is about,” he says, tiredly. Palm to his forehead. As if at a loss as to how to explain. As if Mingi’s a child, unable to understand. “Look—"

But “no, this is fucked up. You’re fucked up!” Mingi is suddenly, unequivocally furious. “I said. I’m not—don’t—God. Do you see him when you look at me? Did you buy him desserts? Help him with his homework? Tell him those ridiculous stories about debut? Fighting!” he mimics, sarcastically. “You know, this is my real life,” Mingi’s hands, shaking now. Itching to strike out. He balls them tight, getting all up in Yunho’s face. “This is my real fucking life, not just some fantasy sandbox that’s yours to play around in so you get to feel better or whatever.”

“I’m not!” Yunho, gone pale now, pleading. His back hits the wall. Mingi’s never seen him so flimsy. Folding like paper, hands clenching weakly at Mingi’s biceps. The tremor in his lip. “That’s not, I—”

Mingi shoves forward. Yunho’s crumbling shoulders.

“Mingi-yah, please. Listen to me—”

“I don’t want to hear it!” Mingi yells, and this time, his fist hits wood. Inches to the left of Yunho’s head. Visibly, Yunho flinches. His eyes squeezed shut.

Instantly, Mingi regrets. The force of it thrumming up his arm.

But Yunho opens his eyes and they’re out of focus. As if all his memories of Gunho might seep in and merge into the present. Double vision.

What does Yunho really see when he looks at Mingi? Things come around and repeat themselves, but never entirely. Night and day. Mingi’s corn-bleached hair, Gunho’s dark schoolboy cut. His wet, babyfaced expression; Mingi’s narrow glare. Totally different and yet—

“You know, you’re just like him,” Yunho whispers. His mouth part open. “But you’re nothing like him too. He felt—so much. Like you. About everything. Colors were so brighter. Music was louder. And he loved—that was how he felt about the people in his life. Strongly. But Gunho—he hid things from me. From us. He never—He was so depressed. I didn’t know. None of us knew, and then—and then he—”

There’s something unfurling in Mingi’s body. Something unnerved, starting to churn. Mingi’s taken aback by the unexpected flare of need, that he sees in Yunho’s otherwise resigned face. He’s read this all wrong. He’s not sure how they ended up so close. Yunho’s nails, digging into the fabric of his shirt. His thigh a hot line against Mingi’s hip.

Is it sick, the way Mingi sees Gunho reflected back in Yunho’s eyes?

Panicked, he tries to pull away.

But Yunho wraps his fingers around the back of Mingi’s neck, keeping him there. “Yeah, you’re nothing like him. Not at all.” In the low light of the cabin, his eyes look very dark. “I mean. I never knew what Gunho was feeling. But you, It’s just—it’s all over your face.”

And it’s true, Mingi thinks, dazedly. He can’t deny it. It’s all there. The scar across his forehead—four stitches he got from his first brawl. His teeth in some homophobe’s arm. The stubborn furrow in his brow when he's faced with what’s unfair. The defiant cut of his jaw. The dent in his lip that Wooyoung once swiped come out of with his thumb, then sucked right back into his mouth.

Yeah, everything about Mingi’s written brashly on the surface.

But not Yunho, Mingi realizes. The plastic-round curve of his face. The unlined crescents of his eyes. How there’s only ever reticence, hidden in the perfect, infernal sweep of his mouth.

“What’s it like,” Yunho says. Uncertain. “To not be able to hide how you feel?” His tongue darts out to wet his lower lip. He looks scared. He looks starved.  

And Mingi thinks he understands. That this isn’t about grief, not entirely, although it might have started that way. That the prince of the academy, golden boy Jeong Yunho is envious of him. His stupid feelings, his obstinate sense of self. That under those shiny ambitions, the sweet obedience, the diligent care he has for others, is a Yunho who’s entirely abandoned himself. That perhaps he’s the pitiable one, in the end.

“Um. It’s—” Mingi says, hoarse. “It’s—" He rests their foreheads together. Tingling with a vindication that could reach the point of violence.  

Yunho suddenly seems, to him, very small. His slim, breakable neck. His breath growing shaky, shallow. Thumb restlessly stroking the side of Mingi’s mouth, where the skin’s inflamed and hot, and tomorrow there’ll be a bruise, black and blue.

The tension between them. Like taffy. Mingi swallows. “But. Do you know—how do you feel?”

“About?” Yunho stutters, and Mingi’s head spins, hazy from how perversely all this is going straight to his dick. Crudely, he grinds his hips forward. So he pins Yunho against the wall, this time for real. So they’re pressed together, pelvis to pelvis and Yunho lets out a soft, broken moan that makes Mingi really fucking want to find out.

“This." Mingi murmurs, gentle. "How do you feel about this, Yunho-yah?” 

“I—” Yunho says, “I don’t—" eyes wild, and then Mingi feels his teeth hit Yunho’s with the kind of desperation strong enough to draw blood.

Yunho’s slick, sweet mouth. The clumsy press of his tongue. Has he done this before? Chaste, faultless altar-boy Yunho. His fingers fluttering weakly at Mingi’s hips, unsure where to put his hands. What does he think about, late at night in bed, after he’s said his evening prayers? Mingi would die to find out. Mingi doesn’t give a damn, pressing closer and closer so Yunho’s mouth is stretched wide to the limit, fingers tight in his hair. Yanking back, wanting more, wanting—

“How does it feel, Yunho-yah,” Mingi breathes, grazing his teeth down the pulsating line of Yunho’s throat. 

He’s never seen Yunho like this before. Not-pretty. The color mottled in his cheeks. The contorted gape of his mouth. He bites down hard, and Yunho lets out an ugly sound. Debauched. Grotesque. Nothing like the picture-perfect student Mingi’s used to. He reaches down and grasps at the front of Yunho’s crotch, the hard line of his cock jutting obscenely out from the thin school uniform fabric.

“Do you like this?” Carelessly, Mingi kneads down.

Yunho’s shoulders seize up. “Ah—no—fuck, no—” he gasps. Too much. He can’t bear it. His face scrunches up with the kind of exquisite forbearance reserved for martyrs, and Mingi immediately wants to tear him from limb to limb, to crack his chest wide open and dig his fingers into his gleaming insides. To make him come and watch him hate to suffer it, the waves of pleasure shuddering through his prone, helpless body.

“No?” Mingi taunts, “you don’t like it?” Hastily undoing the button of Yunho’s pants and shoving his hand into his briefs. Yunho’s too-warm here, the coarse hair damp with sweat. The sensitive, clammy skin of his shaft. Mingi’s head spins, greedy with the overwhelming sensation of what he once thought untouchable. He strokes Yunho once, twice, spreading precome roughly over the tip.

Yunho goes limp, head thudding back against the wall. “N-no,” he tries again, weakly and Mingi rolls his balls viciously against his fingers. As though he isn’t petrified inside, at the irresistible urge possessing him now, to shatter Yunho’s veneer, reduce him to his smallest, frailest parts.

But Mingi looks at Yunho—the tortured resignation flitting through his whole body, and just can’t help himself. He’s so hot with it he could die. He grinds his dick against Yunho’s thigh, just to take the edge off, and feels Yunho’s cock twitch in his hand in response.

Mingi laughs at him, cruel. Pleasure spiking in his belly.

“How do you feel, Yunho-yah,” he demands. “I wanna know,” and starts jerking him off in honest, so Yunho’s limbs flail like a marionette and he lets out a distressed little wail.

“Does it feel good,” Mingi asks again, chasing it. The sense of inviolable power thrumming through him. Yunho’s cock slick and smooth in his hand. He's so responsive all of a sudden, now he’s given himself over to it. The way he's moaning on the upstroke, hips shifting in uneven thrusts. Bangs sweaty in his eyes. Yunho wants it now. Mingi can tell. The familiar talc-incense-sex smell of him permeating the air.  

“Tell me how it feels,” Mingi bites down on his earlobe. “Feels good, doesn’t it?”

Yunho’s shot pupils. His pleading, awful expression. He looks gorgeous. He looks despoiled. He looks the kind of young that’s fucking criminal. “Y-yes—please—” he gulps, choking on it, and comes, hot and sticky and right into Mingi’s hand.

Mingi’s lived his life in the shadow of boys like Yunho. Lived his youth timid all over behind a violent posture, a pair of fangs. Submerged in a world not his, nor of his making, he’s been nameless, airless, invisible. Striking out from the corners he’s constantly being backed into.

But not now, he thinks triumphantly, thighs straddled on either side of Yunho’s slender neck. Calves braced against his shoulders. Yunho, sprawled across the dusty rug, his hands flung back. The purple on his wrists. Mingi put it there.

No, not now, Mingi thinks, with his cock in his hand, stomach clenched and rippling. Pants halfway down his thighs. Stroking himself painfully fast and punishing. Yunho’s come all over his fingers, making the glide easy, slick. Below him, Yunho’s trembling. His mouth, gently open. Tongue resting on his lower lip. Eyes half-lidded, exactly how he looks—pious, devout—right before he’s about to cross himself and take communion.

“Fuck,” Mingi grits out, head thrown back, and Yunho follows the movement of his hand, the vulgar curve of his dick. His expression pooling with a new, dangerous desire. “Mingi-yah,” he whispers, with wonder. Tears smudged round the corners. The neck of his shirt, crumpled and gaping open. His rosary flipped back over his shoulder. Exposing the flesh.

Yunho licks his lips and Mingi feels it, building in his gut.

If only, Mingi thinks vindictively, if only Yunho’s mother could see him now, and then comes all over his aching face.

*

They built a fire that night. Half-dressed and giggling. Mingi remembers how Yunho’s face had quivered a shy, inhuman orange in the flickering light.

After Mingi had fallen asleep, Yunho stayed up alone, watching the flames burn into the quiet hours of the morning. Staring till the wood had been reduced to a fine, white dust.

“You okay,” Mingi asked, “what’s up?” when he woke up in the morning to find Yunho still toeing the ash.

“Sorry?” Yunho said. Back to amiable. A tight apologetic smile.

“Whatever,” Mingi had replied, injured.

The two of them, mutually smarting from retreat.

A measure of choreography, circling around. A dance that would grow to be habitual to them, over time.  

Two steps forward, one step back.

*

Mingi doesn’t mean to light the fire. He doesn’t mean a lot of things. But that doesn’t mean they don’t happen to him, like everything he’s ever resented about the circumstances of his life.

A lit cigarette. An unintentional nap. The stuffing of an old, flammable sofa, escaping containment. Fire, slicing sharp and electric across the tacky window lace, the venetians.

Standing outside the burning cabin, there’s an exhilaration Mingi feels, watching the place light up to maximum against the pitchy, encroaching damp of the night. As if buoyed by the searing reality of a failed hope. As if remembering that the fatalism inherent to his being was, no is the truth; and he’d known it all along. That no matter how much or hard Yunho believed, it would never be enough, in the end.  

He’s been living in dream time, he supposes. No line between day and night, yesterday and tomorrow. In this place, rich with Yunho’s invented promise. The foolish, youthful fantasy he labored to bring into being. Yunho, who is standing next to him now, with ash in his hair and hollow resignation in his jaw, as the dream he once convinced Mingi to share, before them, it burns. After all, after America, Yunho’s family, there’s nothing left here to imagine a future with. Neither of them able to admit it. Neither of them caring to stop it. The encroaching fire. Adulthood. How can they?  

It hurts Mingi, more than he’d imagined.

Yunho, observes it all poetically, as if in a trance. The silver moon overhead clashing with the blaze and casting him in uncanny shadow. Hesitantly, he takes one step forward, then another. As if some invisible thread's pulling him forward, until he’s standing at the edge of the porch.

Danger. Something stuck in Mingi’s throat. Trying not to call out. His fingers clenching, by his side.

But Yunho climbs the steps to the cabin, seemingly resolved. Looking over his shoulder at Mingi with the tragic face of a great, doomed beauty, heat from the fire blowing in his hair, and Mingi has to fight the urge to follow him. He always has. But tonight, something gives him pause. Some sense of dread as his heart horribly starts to pound. Mingi thinks, distantly, of Gunho. 

The birds fly overhead. The wind blows. There are no sirens in the distance.

The flames start to lick, hungry, at the cuffs of Yunho’s sweatpants, a frightening, frigid peace plastered all over his face, and Mingi, terrified, takes a step backwards. Realizing that he understands nothing actually; has always been afraid of understanding too much. About the hell of Yunho’s loneliness. His indifference to his own life, that only the closed loop of Yunho's, what, delusions? Beliefs? seemed to help ease. Above them, a black tunnel of smoke looms, threatening to swallow them both. 

And turning his back, Mingi can’t look any more. Can't stay trapped here any longer. He starts to slip away. Mingi starts to run. There are tears, stinging his eyes.

Because Mingi would have liked to touch that loneliness, he thinks. He's tried. Would have liked to combine the lightness of Yunho’s secret pain with the advertised weight of his own suffering. Would have liked to make something of this combination. Something they both understood to be real. Something like love. He doesn’t believe in possibility, but he would have thought it possible, Mingi thinks. Because Yunho taught him some measure of that.

But it’s already too late. He’s out of the forest, striding into the anonymity of a cold white light.

Yunho behind him, meticulously wrecked by the flame.