Work Text:
Cinnamon. Sugar. Both burnt.
Minho closes the door behind him and sniffs the air. Faint smoke rises from the door to his left further down the hallway. The kitchen. He sighs and begins shedding his outerwear, his soaked shoes.
“Felix? What’d you burn?”
The shoe cabinet clicks shut and he decides not to think about the miniscule puddle of water he’s tracked into the front hall. No answer from the kitchen but low cursing, pots clanking on marble, the telltale sound of the faucet opening, too much at first and then dialled back. Minho narrows his eyes at the doorway and waits. In the absence of any admission of guilt, he decides to march forth.
There’s more smoke in the kitchen, concentrated around the sink where the water gushes over whatever poor springform pan had emerged blackened from the oven. No Felix. Instead—
“Hi,” says Chan, lopsided smile, grey on his temples, flour or age Minho cannot bring himself to discern.
“Hi,” Minho tentatively replies. “What are you—” He waves a hand vaguely around.
Chan slides out from behind the island and turns the faucet off. The kitchen abruptly goes quiet. Minho hears his heart thumping with the tap-tap-tap of the water. Still no Felix.
“Surprise,” Chan says with a hesitant grin and a spread of his hands. “Felix isn’t here, by the way. Just me.”
That last bit said with a certain reluctance that would be strange on any other boyfriend. Significant other. Ex-husband back in the picture for reasons other than joint custody and therefore, inherently absurd. Minho leans against the door moulding and folds his arms for lack of something better to say.
In the end, he settles on, “Are you spending Christmas with—”
Chan waits. Minho swishes spit around in his mouth and tongues the inside of his cheek. The pause between drops of water dripping seems to stretch into eternity.
“We didn’t talk about this,” he hedges.
He has long since stopped thinking it strange that he has to pencil Chan into his life the way he does his pupils. Old habits and contingency measures from an ancient war that continue to persist like a fortified bunker underground. Holidays are to be spent with family, birthdays to be celebrated with a text or a phone call, vacation time portioned carefully and generously so as to not interfere with the other’s work-life balance. Minho thinks it functions alright. He hasn’t really bothered to ask Chan about it.
“It’s Christmas.” Chan’s brow furrows before he consciously schools it into submission, “I wanted to surprise you. Fat lot of good that did, though,” he laughs awkwardly and gestures towards the oven door hanging desolately open and smelling like an ashpit. “I’ll order takeout. Go ahead and wash up.”
The ‘don’t tell me what to do’ rests like spun sugar on Minho’s tongue before he swallows it down and with a curt nod, begins to head out of the kitchen.
“Wait.”
The faucet is silent now, holding its breath. The oven watches with its mouth agape. Burnt cinnamon seems to settle in Minho’s bones as a hand spins him around to kiss him on his wind-chapped lips. Chan’s fingers rest on his collarbones, testing out the bones of his throat for reassurance of some kind that feels awkward and lonely in a way Minho hasn’t felt in a long time. It occurs to him that he hasn’t kissed Chan in months. He gasps a little, startled, and winds his arms around Chan’s neck. Felix, thanksgiving food still unprocessed in his stomach, his voice a glorious pinch on the arm. You’ll have one foot in the grave at the rate you’re taking this. Chan’s hand splays on the small of Minho’s back and pulls him closer. The fear uncoils from some deep gorge in his stomach and Minho lets himself be kissed against his kitchen door until he’s audibly reminded of the single muffin he’d had for breakfast.
Chan pulls away, his mouth embarrassingly pink. “Food.”
Minho nods, making no move to disentangle. Chan pulls his phone out and begins to look at delivery options, unconsciously swaying on his feet. His hand still circles Minho’s waist. Minho feels his face redden and burn.
“Let’s go out,” he whispers, then clears his throat. “Get your coat.”
It’s sleeting by the time he parks outside his favourite cafe. He sits and squints out of the foggy windshield at the CLOSED sign as if sheer force of will would make it open back up. Next to him, Chan laughs. Minho shoots him a glare.
“Last time I try to be nice to you,” he mutters and puts the car back into gear.
Chan grins. “You know there are better date night ideas than risking our lives in a snowstorm on Christmas.”
Minho grumbles to himself in lieu of a reply. Chan leans over to kiss his cheek and keeps his hand idling in Minho’s hair for the rest of the drive home. He’s still grinning like a certified fool when Minho shuts the front door behind them and begins irritably shaking water off his hair and coat.
“First, you show up unannounced, then you have the nerve to try to cook in my kitchen knowing damn well you—”
He should be over it by now, having his back pressed to various walls and doors in the house he shares with his friend as his long distance boyfriend reminds him exactly how long it’s been since they’ve had time to properly make out. But as Chan slips his hands underneath Minho’s thighs to hoist him up next to the shoe cabinet, Minho figures he doesn’t quite mind. It’s the kind of relationship that only makes itself known when either of them find it in themselves to strongarm their way into the other’s life, usually on special occasions. Minho isn’t sure what holds Chan back but he knows his own limits fairly well, even as the days of being wild dull with time and get replaced by sweetness that sluices between the creases of his brain. Minho sighs against Chan’s temple and Chan’s touch gains purpose, his fingers skipping over the skin of Minho’s stomach and hovering above his fly.
“I really wanted us to eat first,” he says, voice tinged with regret.
Minho pinches his side until Chan relents and puts him down. “Go put the apron on, I’ll supervise.”
Soup would be the easiest thing for Chan not to burn but Minho isn’t in the mood for soup. The rain outside mounts to a storm as Chan tries his best to roll out dough for mandu. He’d taken a few minutes off duty to put on some music and the house now echoes with bittersweet mambo. Minho watches, mildly impressed, as Chan sings along with Leslie Cheung and manages to roll almost perfect circles. He catches Minho looking and leans in for a kiss as the music swells for the second verse.
His hunger grows by degrees as they finish lining the basket with mandu and put it away to steam. Minho yelps with surprise when Chan grabs his hand and pulls him away from the stove only to spin him around and dip him backwards. He pulls Minho back up and begins to sway, still mouthing Mandarin with as much soul on his face as he can muster with flour peppering his hair and cheeks.
Their faces are centimetres apart, warm with an appetite stoked by the process of cooking, their hands clutching clothes and desperate to reach skin. It would be a good time to say something heartbreakingly sweet. Watch Chan’s lips forget the foreign language he’s miming to impress Minho and spread into a smile he’d learned to temper with his expectations. For good reason, Minho reminds himself as his gaze roams the breadth of Chan’s face. And then they’re kissing again because their bodies are conveniently choreographed.
Chan spins Minho around one last time as the song ends and stops at arm’s length as if having forgotten what to do now that the music is gone. They stand staring at each other as the next song plays and Minho opens his mouth to say something again.
“I’ve wanted to tell you something for a while now,” he begins, aware that he’s stalling. Has been stalling for years. It’s exhausting , Felix would say. Aren’t you exhausted? Hyunjin and Seungmin’s 3-year anniversary came and went. Changbin moved to Kowloon and forgot to get in touch until months later. Jeongin emerged into the sunlight from the recesses of Jisung’s apartment and decided he preferred the cave and its inmate. Felix stayed and called it like it was. It’s exhausting. Some variation of cut it loose or cut yourself loose when he knew perfectly well neither was likely nor possible.
“Yeah?” Chan prompts. He’s still holding Minho’s hand, his thumb brushing absentmindedly over the knuckles.
And work is fulfilling, why wouldn’t it be? Fear, then. The juvenile hesitation to commit to anything longer than a summer fling even as one outgrows the age range when such attitude is considered charming. Or maybe some vague aversion to cohabitation. Nothing needed to happen and yet something had to. The year tiptoeing out behind them and January waiting in the shadows to loop the tape again. Disaster waiting in the wings. The brittle shell of his solitude, twice cracked, and nobody to pick up the pieces this time. Even children were braver.
Minho considers he could live like this. That wasn’t the hard part.
He moves closer until he’s in Chan’s arms. A man sings in Spanish about a home waiting with open doors as Minho rests his head on Chan’s shoulder, years gone by flying like a mourning dove across his mind. Whatever has to give must give quickly while time still does them the courtesy of flowing like a river and not rain. The flour dusts away and Minho sees the years shot through Chan’s head, congealed like silver on his temples, woven in the crown, braided like sweetgrass in the thick curls that proliferated in the back of his head. Signs of his mortality. Minho wonders where his own are. His hair is still dark, his face relatively unlined. Perhaps it is the thinning skin under his eyes and the backs of his hands, the soft bones Chan had felt when he had grasped Minho’s fingers and is yet to let go.
The kind thing to do would be to just tell him for once. Throw caution to the wind and say half the things roiling in the hollow of Minho’s chest. What could it hurt now that he had already given his heart away?
“Stay,” Minho tells Chan. “I love you. Stay with me.”
Chan smiles the way Minho had hoped he would. His hand cups the back of Minho’s head, as they continue to sway on their feet.
In the end, who knows what will do them in. The fear is unending. It will likely sit by Minho’s door and wait in the shadows like the looming new year, a clock in hand, winding it over and over to remind him of mortal time and lovers who lie and get angry and become distant as specks of disease in a healthy body. No amount of pre-discussion and scheduling and tabling time would account for another separation, a death, an accident.
But he could go on anyway, just for the hell of it. For the sake of a morning kiss or a hand that stays on the small of his back until his aching bones have safely ascended a staircase.
For the sake of love. Just for the hell of it. And who could begrudge him this?
As December waves in a halo of shrinking tail lights bouncing like stars on snow, Minho decides he could live like this. He would prefer to live like this.
Caetano Veloso croons the denouement of another song. Chan tips Minho’s face up to press another kiss to his mouth. The timer for the steaming mandu goes off.