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As a child of small to middling stature Minhyuk was extremely obnoxious, and he knew this with the rock hard certainty that a bear knows that it shits in the woods. Part of what made him obnoxious was that he was bored in school, and part of what made him bored in school was that he was smart, and part of what was smart about him was he knew that sometimes you have to lie to grown ups to survive.
One year he was bored enough in school not to lie enough, got a little bit too smart, and got kicked up a grade to hang out with the cool kids. He went from being one of the bigger kids in his class to the smallest, with the additional difficulties of going through puberty later and not knowing the right bad words. He was also, suddenly, presented with an academic challenge for the very first time.
"I don't need a tutor," Minhyuk said to his mother.
"That's nice, dear," she said back. "His name's Hyunwoo and he'll be here every Tuesday and Thursday at 4pm."
"Why can't you tutor me in geometry?"
"Because." His mother patted him affectionately on the cheek before nudging him out of the way so that she could put the milk back in the refrigerator. "I want you to be successful."
Hyunwoo was a grade above him. He'd had the same teachers last year. He'd been assigned the same homework. He also had a car, which made him unbearably cool, and he only knocked over the mailbox twice in the first month while backing out of the driveway.
"Pythagoras," Hyunwoo said, hanging over him at the kitchen table. "You know this, Min, why do you gotta be difficult about it?"
"It's my nature," Minhyuk replied, doing a complicated math thing that he would promptly forget how to do as soon as humanly possible. "I bend to no man."
"Chill out. You're 13."
“I am almost 14, thank you very much.” If Minhyuk had long hair he would have flipped it then. “Are you going trick or treating this year?”
“Don’t you think I’m a little too old?”
Minhyuk almost said no but caught himself just in time, instead taking a second to look at Hyunwoo.
Two parts of Minhyuk looked at Hyunwoo. One part was just himself, the normal Minhyuk who had eyeballs and stuff, and the other part was Puberty.
“I dunno,” Puberty said, using Minhyuk’s mouth.
“I’m taking my younger brother, though. You wanna come?”
The part of Minhyuk ruled by Puberty said No, Actually, I Am Far Too Much Of A Grown Up To Go Trick-Or-Treating This Year, Now That You Mention It. The other part of Minhyuk was somehow also ruled by Puberty by this time, and it said: “Yeah, sure, I guess.”
It wasn’t until October 31st at 4pm as Minhyuk stood in front of the full length mirror hung on the inside of his closet door that he took the time to consider what Puberty was trying to tell him. (This wasn’t actually how he thought of it. His thought process was rather more along the lines of Do boys kiss boys? And then Kissing seems really gross. And then Oh gosh, he’s gonna ask me if I did the homework.) If what Puberty was trying to tell him was that he wanted to [???] with Hyunwoo, then that seemed weird. He didn’t want to [???] with Hyunwoo, although he had the vague idea that taking part in [???] involved somebody taking you to a restaurant and buying you dinner, which he was very okay with.
Anyway, Puberty pointed out helpfully, it’s probably good that you don’t want to [???] with Hyunwoo because you are wearing half of a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle costume and you don’t even know all the turtles’ names.
Yes I do, Minhyuk pointed out right back. I just can’t think of all of them right now. Is one of them Descartes?
I’m you, Puberty replied. Don’t ask me.
This was only the first of many, many times that Puberty would let Minhyuk down, but that might be a story for some other time, especially since the doorbell rang at 5:14pm and his mother got to the front door before he could. A kid’s voice yelled Trick or treat! and he slowed on the stairs down to the living room, socks catching on the carpet, listening to his mother coo and cow over the very very scary toddlers terrorizing her at her doorstep.
Years later he would look back on that moment and think of it fondly, a little time capsule of innocence and pubescent shyness: standing on the topmost steps of the green-carpeted stairs in his childhood home, the lights off everywhere except for his bedroom light cutting across the hallway behind him and the amber-and-love light of his mother’s entryway, but right then and there as he lived through the memory for the very first time he felt a curl of anticipation deep in his chest.
“Hyunwoo!” his mother called out the door. “Are you here for Minnie? And oh my goodness, who is this—”
Minhyuk didn’t know the right bad words yet but he knew crap and it was at least bad enough to get a mean look from his mother so he decided to use it then, mostly because he’d forgotten to put his pants on and had to get back to his room before Hyunwoo came looking for him and discovered his spider-man underpants. Puberty was horrified at the prospect, of course, but Minhyuk was too, because Hyunwoo was a DC fan and he didn’t want to disappoint him.
When he was fully clothed and heading back down the stairs he heard Hyunwoo say, “He’s 13 too,” but didn’t register the information until he was already down the stairs and sliding a little on the hardwood floor.
“Hello,” he said, and in the back of his head Puberty whispered, Oh my god. He has a brother.
Hyunwoo’s younger brother didn’t look exactly like him, or even that close— he had similar rosebud lips and uniquely shy eyes, but where Hyunwoo was hard and flat his brother was soft and curved. He smiled, and his dimples popped, and Minhyuk thought to himself: Wow, is this what being gay feels like?
He hoped it was, because it felt awesome.
“Jooheonnie,” Hyunwoo said, nudging his brother forward. “Say hi.”
“Hi,” said Jooheonnie, looking at the floor.
“Jooheonnie? Like honey?” Minhyuk’s mom said, pressing one hand to her heart. “Do people call you Honey?”
“No,” Jooheon said, but it was a whole half a second after Hyunwoo said, “Yeah, most people.”
Minhyuk’s mother ruffled his thick black hair. “I’ll call you Jooheon, dear. Are you boys all ready to go? Do you need anything?”
“We’re prepared,” Hyunwoo said.
“I have a really big bag,” Minhyuk said.
“And pepper spray,” Jooheon added. “In case of ghosts,” he said defensively when everyone looked at him.
“Isn’t it salt that protects against ghosts?” asked Minhyuk’s mother.
“I’ve got that too,” Jooheon replied solemnly.
“He’s a seasoned professional,” Hyunwoo said, but looked a little confused when Minhyuk’s mother laughed.
At the end of the night Minhyuk and Jooheon hunkered down on Minhyuk’s porch to squabble over candy, trading back and forth, arguing about the value of Nerds over Snickers (“You’re a nerd,” Jooheon muttered under his breath, pink in his cheeks) and, for some reason, Minhyuk briefly entertained the thought of going easy on him. This was a new and interesting feeling for Minhyuk, who was accustomed to sitting down and systematically destroying everything in his path when it came to manipulating other people in the name of candy, and its appearance gave him pause just long enough to remember that he wasn’t sure if he was gay yet but he was sure that he loved candy.
Minhyuk pulled a king sized Butterfinger out of his bag, and Jooheon lit up. “Wow,” he said. “That’s so awesome. I love those. Can I trade you something for it?”
“Nah,” Minhyuk said. Then he reached out and dropped the candy bar in Jooheon’s bag. “I don’t like these,” he lied. “You can have it.”
Later he would remember that he actually really wanted that Butterfinger. Immediately after that, though, he’d remember the look on Jooheon’s face when he gave it to him. Immediately after that he would lie in bed in the dark staring at the ceiling and wondering if he was more gay than he loved candy, and what that would mean for the contents of his stocking that Christmas.
Being a teenager was difficult enough already without skipping a grade or being gay. He wasn’t sure what he’d do if he stopped enjoying candy.
In high school Minhyuk dated five girls and two boys. They were all different and interesting. They all taught him something important. They were all kinda bad at sucking dick, but that was neither here nor there. (Minhyuk had decided after his third blowjob that he probably just didn’t like blowjobs that much, but who was he to say no when attention was on offer? Attention was one of his favorite things, and it was extra nice given by a person desperate to please him and failing miserably. Mean? Probably, but it improved the experience.)
The first boy he kissed didn’t deserve it. It was an important lesson.
The first girl he kissed, he didn’t deserve her. That was an important lesson too.
The second girl he kissed was perfect, a ray of sunshine, a dumpling. She moved away at the end of the school year and had a new boyfriend within a week, which made sense, because she was perfect.
The third girl he kissed was a goth. She was a whole education.
He didn’t date the second boy he kissed. The second boy he kissed he met at a football game in the middle of November. A drummer, of all things, in the marching band for a visiting team, and Minhyuk kissed him behind the bleachers without even taking his stupid marching band hat off first, but before that happened the second boy Minhyuk kissed walked up to him in his dumb hat during a break in the action and said, “Minhyuk? That you?”
“Last time I checked,” Minhyuk replied, because he was incorrigible. “Who’s asking?”
“Jooheon,” said the person under the dumb hat. “Hyunwoo’s brother. We went trick or treating together once.”
“Oh yeah,” Minhyuk said. The flashback was, in a word, overwhelming. Standing at the top of the stairs in his childhood home in a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle costume, the amber-and-love light of his mother’s entryway, the ultimate sacrifice of a king size Butterfinger. He blinked, tried to breathe, and said, “I remember you, Honey.”
Every single one of Minhyuk’s friends crowed OooOOOHHH in unison. “Honey?” said Hyungwon, hooking his long arm around Minhyuk’s neck and dragging him in close. “This guy is Honey to you?”
“Secret boyfriend?” Yeojoo asked. “Secret boyfriend,” Kihyun answered. “Secret boyfriend,” they chanted together quietly. “Secret boyfriend, secret boyfriend, secret boyfr—”
“We’ve been caught, Honey,” Minhyuk said, shaking Hyungwon off violently. He stood, taking Jooheon’s hand apologetically. “They’ve discovered our forbidden love.” He pulled his phone out of his pocket and made a very big show of scrolling through his contacts. “Who were you again?”
Kihyun coughed into his fist and it sounded like the word slut.
“I dressed as Robin for Halloween,” Jooheon said, and— oh god, he was sincere. “Hyunwoo was Batman. Remember? And you gave me your—”
Time slowed down.
Minhyuk had read in books that when one is about to die their life flashes before their eyes but mostly what flashed in front of his eyes was the firm and certain knowledge that his friends were about to roast him into the ground.
“—king size Butterfinger,” Jooheon finished.
If it were a movie there would have been silence. In real life they were at a high school football game in the middle of November and people were shouting and air horns were blasting and Yeojoo choked so horribly on her Twizzler that it took seven minutes for her to stop hacking up red onto her brother’s shoulder.
“He what?” Hyungwon said, between delivering medicinal whacks to Yeojoo’s back to help her breathe a little easier. “He gave you— Ki, you could at least help me.”
“If she dies I won’t have to split the inheritance,” Kihyun replied calmly. “Could you pass me the rest of the Twizzlers?”
“You’re a monster. Get them yourself. Can’t you see I’m busy?”
"Hey, where's—"
The crowd screamed, the din drowning out the conversation and masking Minhyuk's cunning escape— scooping Jooheon's elbow up like he was accompanying him to a royal ball, taking his hand, smiling brilliantly. "Let me take you away from all this," he said.
"What?" said Jooheon, squinting and leaning in to hear him better. "I have to, uh— you know, I'm with the band—"
Four years ago Minhyuk had been a child and so it made sense that his imagination had stopped at [???] when it came to the carnal pursuits, but when he saw Jooheon in his dumb hat and his equally dumb uniform and saying his name with that perfect pink Princess Peach mouth, his imagination went right back to [???] and it was scary and weird and so, so good that Minhyuk almost couldn't swallow around it.
"Can I kiss you?" Minhyuk yelled. The football team was doing something exciting and behind the bleachers the sound of people stamping their feet was deafening.
"I— I guess," Jooheon yelled back. "Why?"
Unfortunately the answer to that question was [???] and Minhyuk was powerless to explain what [???] meant to somebody else, especially when he couldn't even explain it to himself. It was just [???], but also not just [???] because [???] was everything, even the stuff he didn't even know about yet. But also none of that, because everything was okay, because anything was okay, because it was—
Man, and he'd thought being 13 was hard. 17 was really giving it a run for its money.
"Why not?" asked Minhyuk— to Jooheon, to himself, to the universe— and then kissed him behind the bleachers without even taking his stupid marching band hat off first.
There was another boy after that, a short summer vacation fling that mostly involved smoking clove cigarettes in a tent and making out lazily under the musty hum of a thousand low summer evenings. He took one girl to homecoming and her sister to senior prom and kissed each of them in different limousines.
None of them were good at sucking dick. None of them made him want to [???] with them. None of them— not one— was worth a king size Butterfinger.
On his 21st birthday Minhyuk didn’t actually get that drunk. He’d been getting drunk for several years at that point, clandestinely, behind closed doors and at parties where there was more peer pressure than common sense, and on his 21st birthday he found that alcohol simply didn’t taste quite as good without that sweet, bitter tang of crime.
Alcohol had never really been something he enjoyed that much, though. One of the biggest things it did was take away your inhibitions, and Minhyuk didn’t have any to start with. Getting drunk was just being himself with inner ear problems, the inability to judge his volume, and a lighter wallet. He’d still go out drinking with his friends but it was more casual than anything. He had a better time when he wasn’t drunk, if only because he could take a piss without falling over, and so it was that he was completely sober one October when Jooheon staggered into the bar bathroom behind him.
Jooheon and Minhyuk made eye contact in the mirror. “Oh fuck,” Jooheon said. He grinned wide, a lot wider than made sense, but then again he was positively glowing with the cozy pink of alcohol. “He didn’t.”
“Oho,” said Minhyuk, turning around smoothly. He leaned back against the counter and ran a hand back through his hair. “But it appears he must have. Who are we talking about?”
“Hyunwoo. He invited you, right?”
“Oh, him,” Minhyuk said. He oozed confidence with such fervor it bordered on the obscene. “Yes. Of course he did. I was just testing you.” He swallowed, and took a risk. “Happy birthday?”
It was another one of those moments. Pockets of time, packaged up sweetly like a four dimensional photograph in the back of one’s head. Outside the bar music thumped somewhere, somewhere, Minhyuk felt it more than heard it. When Jooheon stepped forward his sneakers squeaked on the tile and it was so much louder than the music, he heard it so much deeper, he wasn’t drunk but he felt like he must be under the influence of something because Jooheon stepped in close and Minhyuk’s whole body filled up with a buzzing honey warmth.
“Thanks,” Jooheon said. He said it quietly; he was so close, he didn’t need to speak above a murmur. His breath smelled like rum— of course he’d been drinking rum, Jooheon was too sweet to drink anything but rum, moscato, cherry cordial— and his hand was so breath-catchingly warm against Minhyuk’s face that he couldn’t help but close his eyes and lean into the touch. “I’m 21 today.”
“Younger than I thought,” Minhyuk said, because he was incorrigible. “A baby.”
Jooheon snorted, and for a second Minhyuk was worried that he’d stop holding his face in order to argue more effectively. But it was less than a second, really, because Jooheon curved in and kissed him more quickly than he could finish the thought.
The ass of his jeans got wet, goddamnit, because he pushed himself up onto the bathroom counter to pull Jooheon’s hips in as close between his legs as he could. Jooheon kissed him like he was curious, every movement a question, and Minhyuk tried to answer every single one. Everything was a question, every kiss and touch, and the only thing Minhyuk could think of was [???]. Jooheon kissed him, and it was [???] in the same way that a tidepool is the ocean.
Jooheon pulled away, coming up for air. “Hold on a second,” he mumbled, “I just remembered that I came in here because I really have to pee.”
They ended up in a cab. They ended up on Minhyuk’s doorstep. They ended up on Minhyuk’s sofa, too lazy to walk all the way back to the bedroom and too impatient to do anything than find the closest soft surface.
There was a funny veneer of guilt layered over the experience as Minhyuk undressed Jooheon against the nostalgic backdrop of one of his grandma’s crocheted throw blankets which he’d draped over the back of the couch, but it was so thin and so truly funny that all it did was make the memory just that much more memorable. (Do you remember, Minhyuk would ask Jooheon much, much later, That time I sucked your dick on my grandma’s blanket? Jooheon would sigh, and say, I’ll never be able to look that woman in the eye.)
Minhyuk pulled Jooheon’s t-shirt off, trying to give himself time, trying to unwrap him like a present. He did, really, but the kind of unwrapping found under the Christmas tree of an over-excited five year old with sharp nails and a heart filled with determination, and it was only by the grace of God that Jooheon’s shirt survived the experience unscathed.
Here’s the story of how Jooheon felt: soft, first and foremost. It wasn’t just the way his body gave easily under Minhyuk’s fingertips but the feel of him too, the almost-velvet feel of his skin, so delicate and excited that heat poured off of him in waves, that Minhyuk could almost (almost) pick up his pulse through the very lightest of touches. (It occurred to him later that it was probably his own pulse he was almost picking up, but it didn’t matter either way.)
He felt good, almost as good as he sounded. He sounded good, almost as good as he tasted. He tasted good, he tasted really really good, he tasted like skin and sweat and cologne and all kinds of tastes that were at best boring and at worst disgusting (did he detect a hint of stale beer at the divot between Jooheon’s collar bones? tres magnifique), and he tasted better than anyone Minhyuk had ever, ever kissed before.
Minhyuk dragged his hand back through Jooheon’s hair, twisting his grip at the roots and pulling his head back, baring his throat, and Jooheon positively mewled. It was so much, the way his eyes fell shut, the way his eyebrows furrowed in desperation, the way his perfect pink Princess Peach mouth opened in breathless, wordless pleading. Jooheon gripped down hard on Minhyuk’s thighs where they bracketed his hips on the couch and rocked upward like he knew what he was doing.
Oh, god. Did Jooheon know what he was doing? Why shouldn’t he? Minhyuk hadn’t seen him in years, maybe he was a fuckboy now. Maybe he’d had one-night stands with half of the student body at his university. Maybe he didn’t stutter anymore when someone asked if they could kiss him.
“Can I suck your dick?” asked Minhyuk, on the off chance that it would get a blush.
It was a stupid thing to do; Jooheon’s face was still flushed from the alcohol he’d had an hour or two before and even if he were to blush Minhyuk wouldn’t have been able to tell. Luckily, he still stuttered when he said, “I— Wait, really?”
“Happy birthday,” Minhyuk said, slipping off of Jooheon’s lap and falling to his knees on the floor.
Thinking rationally, he barely knew this guy. He’d given him a candy bar once, he’d kissed him at a football game, and yet when they saw each other at a bar the first thing they did was abandon their friends and catch a cab for (ideally) Pound Town. Minhyuk didn’t know why. He didn’t have a reason. It was just that when he looked at Jooheon his heart beat in a pattern that could only be described as [???] and wow, fuck, he really wanted to suck Jooheon’s dick.
Jooheon tipped in toward him, running his fingers back through Minhyuk’s hair in a way that could almost be called reverence, pushing him back a little to look at him face to face. “Wait, can we—”
Face to face, close— Jooheon was even prettier like this. The heat in his cheeks glowed like a flame behind diffused glass, his shy eyes not so much shy as they were dark, pupils wide.
“Why did you want to kiss me?” Jooheon asked. “In high school. At the football game.”
Minhyuk cocked his head to one side. “Who wouldn’t?”
“Hey.”
“Because,” Minhyuk conceded, however vaguely. “I didn’t have a reason. I just wanted to know what you tasted like. I’m very proactive,” he added on. “I take initiative. That’s on my resume.”
“And it’s not Hyunwoo,” Jooheon said.
“What is?”
“Who you like.”
“What?”
Jooheon was looking less inebriated by the second. A terrible thing. “You— you like me, or— ‘cause Hyunwoo—” He gestured vaguely with flopping hands. “You know, he’s Hyunwoo.”
“Do you see him? Is he here?”
“I—” Jooheon had the decency to look baffled. “Obviously he’s not here, this—”
“Then who cares?” Minhyuk pushed up on his knees, spreading Jooheon’s beautiful thighs with his hands, stroking his palms up his legs slow and close. “I don’t care. If I wanted to suck his dick I’d have asked him, now can I suck your dick or not?”
Jooheon flopped back against the couch and took a deep breath— in, out; in, out— and then said, “Yeah.” His voice was hesitant but his hips were loose and easy, knees apart in content welcome. Minhyuk slid his palm from his inner thigh to the fly of jeans, cupping the heat in his hand, and Jooheon bit his lips together but didn’t speak.
He was so sober. He was so sober, but he felt like he was high on something— he had to be high on something— because everything about this moment rang in his head like a bell. He could feel the seams of Jooheon’s boxer briefs through the denim, and not only could he feel them he noticed them. Minhyuk reached forward to unbutton Jooheon’s jeans and noticed the give of Jooheon’s soft belly, warm against Minhyuk’s fingertips. He felt the click of each individual tooth of the zipper as he undid Jooheon’s fly and he noticed every single one.
Minhyuk had expected something a little more definite when he figured out what [???] meant. An actual label, ideally, something other than an unpronounceable staccato beat thrumming deep from the thickest, darkest, reddest place in his chest, but the best label for it was the noise Minhyuk’s old couch made when Jooheon pushed up enough to shove his underwear down past his dick. The best label for it was the way Jooheon blushed even harder when his dick caught on the elastic waistband only to spring free suddenly and slap him on the stomach. The best label for it was salt and heat on the tip of his tongue, hands in his hair, Jooheon saying his name in that high sweet desperate voice—
Suffice it to say, words eluded him. But that was all right, all things considered, because his mouth was too occupied to speak anyway.
Jooheon came quickly, quietly, one hand clenching loose in Minhyuk's hair and the other clinging to the edge of the couch cushion like he was trying not to be swept off a cliff by a tidal wave. He made a noise but it was far too small, a whining gasp of “oh” as he rolled his hips up one more time into Minhyuk’s mouth— like he was trying to be quiet, like Minhyuk wanted him to be quiet, in what universe would anyone want Jooheon to be quiet while he was cumming (various and sundry family members excluded).
He had no such complaint about Jooheon’s speed. He always appreciated an efficient orgasm. It left extra time for his favorite part, which was lying around with no clothes on and having a whole buffet of soft skin ready and waiting for him to sample. (Jooheon looked like he should taste like a sweet hawaiian bread roll, fluffy and pliable and laced with honey.)
“Sorry,” Jooheon stuttered. “I— that’s— I’m kinda drunk, I’m normally a lot, uh, a lot more oh jesus—”
Minhyuk sucked the head of Jooheon’s dick clean and it sent a beautiful shudder down Jooheon’s whole body. His hand was still in Minhyuk’s hair but his grip was slack enough that when Minhyuk pushed up between his knees he didn’t have time to stop him even if he’d wanted to.
“Hey,” Minhyuk mumbled, his mouth so close to Jooheon’s that their lips nearly caught together. “Wanna taste yourself?”
It was silly to ask, really, because both of them knew that it was going to happen anyway. The sound Jooheon made when Minhyuk kissed him was almost as good as the noise he made when he came, better in some ways; a portent of future moans, perhaps.
“That’s really salty,” whispered Jooheon.
“Yeah you should really eat more fruit,” Minhyuk whispered back. “Pineapple juice is really good. Have you ever tried pineapple juice?”
“Wh— are you saying I’m not delicious?”
“No,” Minhyuk said, “but I bet you five bucks I’m yummier.”
It turned out that the reason Minhyuk had never liked blowjobs that much was because none of them were given to him by Jooheon, but then Jooheon gave him a blowjob and it changed his entire life.
Minhyuk lay on his back in the middle of his living room floor, held on tight to the carpet, fell up into the heat and dark of Jooheon’s mouth like he’d rocketed past the event horizon of the black hole at the center of the galaxy and could now do nothing but brace himself for the inevitable. The inevitable was very similar to what he knew about black holes, in that he was pulled apart into uncountable multi-dimensional strands which were then braided, pulled like toffee, split at the atomic level, sorted alphabetically by color, and then squashed back together in a form that was almost but not quite identical to how everything had been before.
“That was the most fun I’ve ever had sucking a dick,” Jooheon said, his voice coming from somewhere on the other side of the universe. “Are you always like that?”
“Like what?” asked Minhyuk, speaking into the void in the vain hope that his words would shoot past asteroid fields and nebulas and star systems to finally murmur in Jooheon’s ear.
“Wiggly,” Jooheon replied.
“No,” Minhyuk said. Then he thought about that a little bit more because his brain was starting to turn back on in stuttered shifts and he had more processing power available for the inspection of sexual histories. “I don’t think so. Good question. You should suck my dick again sometime and we’ll find out.”
“For science?”
“Fuck science.”
“I’d rather you fuck me,” Jooheon said, and then laughed, and then sat up, and then thought so loudly and obviously and terrified about what he’d just said that it almost gave Minhyuk a sympathy migraine. “That’s— I’m— I think I’m still, I gotta still be drunk—”
“I really don’t think I can right now,” Minhyuk interrupted, sitting up. He took one of Jooheon’s hands in both of his own, like an idiot, a goddamn fool, and said, “But please stay here tonight,” and it wasn’t so much a request as it was a prayer.
“Well,” Jooheon said, and blushed. “I mean… I guess. Since you asked so nicely.”
If Minhyuk had ever stopped to think about it he might have come to the conclusion that he’d always been looking for the wrong thing, or, rather, he’d thought that what he was looking for was different from what it was. His head would say [???] and he’d look for the answer. His heart would beat [???] and he’d look for what he was missing. He’d look at Jooheon and the air around him would shiver with [???] and all along, all this time, it was the question that was important.
Some people look for the answer, but Minhyuk was looking for the question he wanted to ask every day for the rest of his life.*
* “Okay but could you like for real give me a king sized Butterfinger because I’ve been thinking about the one I gave to you for, like, eight years.”