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In his day to day life, Minho doesn’t care about his sexuality a lot.
Of course, it’s part of him. But it’s part of him in the same way the scar on his stomach is, that one strangely personal fact about him that everyone knows because he let it slip, young and green behind the ears and willing to overshare in his eagerness to bond with the boys in that dingy dorm room and the fans watching whom his future depended on. Everyone still talks about that scar, and most do so fondly, and, really, Minho doesn’t mind that that part of him is out there. It’s changed, too, over the years, and he’s lived with it for so long that his eyes just slide over it when he catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror.
But if he doesn’t see anyone bringing it up, he forgets about it—and it’s the same with his sexuality. He has lived in it for the past 28 years. There has never been a time when he didn’t know he was gay and there has never been a time when he didn’t know that that was a fact that was meant to be shared sparingly with those around him, if he wanted a chance at a career. Any career.
He’s had moments, here and there, when he’d felt this as a sense of oppression bearing down on him, but most of the time he doesn’t mind very much. Much like the scar on his stomach, it’s a part of himself that doesn’t change, whether people know about it or not.
And, truly, he doesn’t care about his sexuality that much. There are simply more interesting things about him. He’s a good friend, a good partner and a good son. Those are the most important things to him, the things he spends most of his energy on. He’s a decent cook and a good trip planner, he’s a little odd and often too blunt for the people around him, but that’s okay, too. He isn’t going to win any Nobel Prizes, but he also isn’t stupid, and he has worked his way to a life philosophy that feels as close to zen as he can imagine—to take care of his own state of mind so he can take care of others. This he wouldn’t mind talking a little more about, in interviews and whatnot, but alas, nobody wants to hear something like this from an idol, and if he did share more, the audience, being offered a finger, would likely not just take his arm but attempt to consume him whole. He’d prefer that not happening.
There was only one time in his life when he had truly felt free when it came to his sexuality, and that was before JYP, when he was working odd jobs and spent every minute he wasn’t working dancing. That community, his friends there—being gay wasn’t out of the norm, and it was talked of freely, within the safe bounds of their world, at least. For a moment, he had seen a way to exist more openly, and though he hadn’t ever felt the need to be that—‘openly gay’, or whatever people wanted to call it—it had been so unusual that it stood out to him, even all these years later, as like the feeling he had had, that one time years ago when he had been in Japan with the guys, and they had gone hiking. It was winter, so they were as good as alone on the trail, and the trees surrounding them were barren and snow-whitened, but everything still carried that haunting kind of beauty Japan always did. He had been walking ahead of his friends, who were chatting behind him, spurred on by something nameless and something that seemed, in the moment, meaningless. Making his way up one last, steep few steps, he rounded the corner to a viewing platform—and was met with a view, miles and miles of snow-dusted country, and Osaka at his feet. He would never know what it was about that moment, but then and there, something had shifted inside him, and his entire life had sprawled out beneath him, and he had taken a breath that felt like the first one he had taken in years.
That’s how he had felt, for those few months, barely a year, that he had been nobody.
His friends had caught up with him, clapped a hand on his shoulder and dispelled that inexplicable view of his life and many years before that, he had auditioned for JYP and was accepted and without knowing it, but also without fearing it, had signed a waiver to seal that part of himself away forever.
That sense of freedom had been good, but it paled in comparison to what he really wanted. Sacrificing it hadn’t been much of a sacrifice at all. But then Han Jisung happened.
Han Jisung presented an … unexpected conundrum.
If it hadn’t been for Han Jisung, Minho thinks, everything would’ve been different. Easier, in many ways. He could’ve done his job, every day, and then he could’ve clocked out and met his dancer friends and maybe met someone there, built something far, far away from where the limelight put an x-ray to every one of his moves, words, and gestures.
But Han Jisung did happen, and Minho wouldn’t want to change it for the world, but it did mean that Minho was suddenly forced to be someone, or something, in regards to his sexuality. And the problem with having to be someone is that it always comes at the expense of being allowed to be everything else.
He has learned that in his career. Being Lee Know means that he has to be Lee Know, and as it concerns the majority of the world, he doesn’t get to be Lee Minho. He can let slip little glimpses and glances, and he does, has been fighting for the right to be a little weird since the first year, but those things he shares are small and carefully picked, since anything he might express a liking for will haunt him in inside jokes and fan banners for the rest of his career (the fact that he still likes pudding is a miracle). Being Lee Know, he doesn’t get to be everything else he is. Being Lee Minho means having thrown out his sous vide machine years ago and forgetting to wish his mom a happy birthday, both of which are things that Lee Know isn’t allowed to do, lest he sparks worry about losing touch with old hobbies or is accused of being a heartless, horrible human being. That’s what he doesn’t get to be. Human. He doesn’t get to be someone who still cooks, but has given up on that pretentious machine that isn’t useful for much in day-to-day cooking, and he’s not allowed to forget to wish his mom a happy birthday because they’re in another time zone and his blood pressure tanked almost the second he stepped off-stage and he barely managed to get back to the hotel before passing out. He hasn’t missed that stupid machine once and his mom had not even let him get an apology in and told him she loved him, and he had cried. This is what he doesn’t get to be.
So, Lee Know isn’t gay, but he also isn’t entirely straight either. The fans get many things wrong, but in this regard, many get things right, hit the nail on the head so squarely that for a moment, he feels understood, feels an echo—pale and distant, but nonetheless an echo—of that freedom from back when he was a dancer. It’s reassuring, and sometimes, in its light, he thinks he sees a way into a different world, one where he thinks that maybe, just maybe, he could share this part of himself, too, and it wouldn’t be so bad.
He has learned long ago that he can let the feeling comfort him, but nothing more. Because the world it shines a light on is a false one, an illusion just like the one that the fans fall for when they see him. An outside view, the romantic version of something that’s only romantic because the gory insides are strategically and intentionally deceptive.
A few years in, their managers had asked them if coming out would be an option for them. Not out of the goodness of their hearts or their interest in just letting them be out, no, just to weigh different emergency plans against one another. Nonetheless, he and Jisung had looked at each other and, without having to say a single word, had responded with a unified, resounding no.
There were many reasons. Their careers, yes, though there was a change in the air, that might, if luck was on their side, even carry them through safely, but then there was also the military, and practical things like investing and renting or buying real estate. Going out alone. If the majority of their fans were okay with it, it still meant that they would be walking around a much more unkind world with a target on their backs.
He still remembers, looking over at 18 year old Jisung as they paraded a list of outed celebrities and their broken careers and lives in front of them in that meeting room on the fifth floor, and watching a light in his eyes flicker out forever.
The anger he felt then still sits deep in his chest. It’s mostly what he feels now, when he thinks back on it all. It’s unusual for him, who has cultivated a habit of accepting the past for what it is, letting go of things he can’t change, focusing on the future. He can do that with most things. But not this one. He can’t help thinking it, the words circling over and over again in his mind: It had just been so unfair.
Being gay was hard enough already, even to someone like Minho, who had never doubted himself and was ready to defend that part of him to the death. Those millions of little jabs still hurt. The notes from the staff to tone it down, the music show executive making a comment because their staff had asked for one too many things to be cut.
Minho and Jisung, back then, knew nothing of all this. They were just them. Minho and Jisung. Two boys, in love. To them, nothing mattered except how they could talk for hours and never get bored and how their lips slotted together weirdly perfectly and how mind-bogglingly small the probability of their meeting their soulmate like this was. Huddled together behind the curtain in Minho’s bunk, Jisung clinging to his side, whispering things to each other that they had never told anyone before but suddenly felt safe enough to say, knowing the other would understand.
To the people who built their careers, they were anything but this. They were an opportunity, but also a liability. A thing to drip feed to the audiences, something that made sales skyrocket if used correctly, but also a ticking time bomb, a PR disaster waiting to happen. There were NDAs and emergency press releases with their names on it saved on every manager’s phone.
Minho doesn’t remember how many meetings they’d had. Early on, it had been almost every day. Extra hours of behavioural training with coaches, meetings with managers, even JYP himself, talking on and on about fan service, about how important this was, about things they could and couldn’t do, and the boundaries they shouldn’t cross lest they wanted to destroy their careers.
Despite hours of this, Minho is still terrible at it.
Jisung isn’t. Along with all his other talents, he continues to seem made for the limelight. He has a perfect poker face, he’s charming and can play off anything with one of those smiles of his.
Minho can’t do that. He’s not as charming, first of all, whatever weirdness sits in his bones rubbing against his innate sense of rebellion, making him always a little too unpredictable and intense to be palatable and too stubborn to be charming.
But there’s also the fact that he can’t hold back that thing his eyes do when he looks at Jisung. No matter how hard he tries. He can’t help that touching Jisung is like second nature to him, or that his heart does a somersault in his chest when Jisung laughs, all gummy and sweet, or that the way there are still butterflies in his stomach when Jisung winks at him on stage and that, when he gets too into his head, nothing will calm him except the quiet presence of Jisung next to him, and that doesn’t change whether they’re on stage in front of hundreds or thousands, or in the company meeting rooms.
In truth, he doesn’t mind that he can’t hide it. He lives for the loves in his life, all of them, his family, his cats, his friends, and Jisung—hiding a physical manifestation of that? He wouldn’t, not for all the money in the world.
He laughs it off, with his friends, tells them that he simply doesn’t care to hide it, that the company can go to hell. His friends pat him on the back, sympathetic, but also a little impressed, and Minho would be able to smile and console himself with the small but certain happiness that was Jisung, waiting for him, at home.
But there is a part of it where they, the managers and coaches and executives got to him. He has never admitted it to anyone, least of all Jisung, with his heart full of love and optimism, who would fight him on it. But Minho knows: that there is a part of him, of them, that he failed to protect. A part of them that they crippled and that he will never be able to get back.
Those trainings, “behavioural training” as they called them, back in the early days, had been a lot about nuance. This, they could say, because it would be chalked up to the brother-like bond members of a k-pop group might have. This, too, they could do. Touches here were innocent; an arm around the shoulders was good. But an arm around the waist? That was dangerous territory. It could be done, if it was casual enough, but it would require a good deal of acting. There was a minimum distance between their faces, and they should always, always flinch if the other got too close. (This was Jisung’s favourite rule to break these days. ‘You have your ways of showing it,’ he’d said, a few years ago, ‘and this is mine. I never want anyone to think I don’t want you close to me.’)
Minho never told anyone, least of all those coaches and managers, but he never really understood. They would say those things, about arms around waists, and everyone in the room would nod and Minho would nod along, but deep down, he wouldn’t understand. “Nonchalance,” Chan would later tell him. “You just have to act like you don’t care! It’s only a big deal if you make it feel like a big deal. Just pretend as if you don’t care.”
Well, Minho hated lying, and he was bad at pretending to begin with, and he never understood how he was meant to act nonchalant when apparently a single wrong move could end his career.
The training was meant to give them a guidebook, but all it did was make Minho so scrambled and uncertain that, for a while, he found himself analysing his movements even when he was alone and then, even when it wasn’t with Jisung. He would overthink it when he shoved past Jeongin in the kitchen, and he would watch the others, like Changbin and Hyunjin, curled into each other, on the practise room sofa, and he would try and apply what they had tried to teach him, but he always came up empty. Everyone seemed to constantly do things that were against the rules, the things that they told him would implode his life, but they seemed to be fine.
The training was meant to teach him carefully constructed nonchalance. Minho tried, but piling all the scraps of their teaching on the unstable ground of everything he saw around him and didn’t understand, resulted in nothing solid at all, and left him with the shaky, insecure defence mechanism of an angry 15 year old boy.
The thing he can’t think too long about is that he’s now 27, and he feels like he should’ve grown out of that and developed something, something more mature, but he hasn’t. He still makes faces, pushes Jisung away too forcefully, makes him not complete hearts and poke at Jisung’s eyes, when all he wants when he’s on stage is to crawl into Jisung’s ribcage, where the lights can’t find him.
Of course he teases Jisung when it’s just the two of them, too, and Jisung teases him back, because they’ve always been best friends, as well as lovers, and teasing is a part of their daily life that neither of them would want to miss—but it feels different. When Minho does it at home, he can poke at Jisung’s eyes, but then reroute to where the little mole used to be on his cheek or press a kiss to his forehead. And Minho at home never pushes Jisung away (Minho at home plasters himself to Jisung’s back in the shower and refuses to let go).
Playing pretend, acting, lying, sometimes—it’s all part of their job, whether they like it or not. It’s not just something reserved for the kind of secret they’re hiding. It applies to everyone, all the other members, all other idols in the industry. There’s no way to keep your most precious things safe if you’re not willing to do anything to protect them.
Anything really means, anything, too, and that isn’t always as graceful and easy as an intervention from their managers, or letting someone else answer a question, or just omitting part of the truth. No, sometimes, to protect what you need to protect, you need to be someone you don’t want to be and do ugly things. He has watched Felix look a fan in the eye with a brilliant smile and tell a lie, has watched Jeongin jerk away and make fun of touches in front of cameras that he had sought out the night before in tears, has watched Chan smile as he plays off the thing Minho knows hurts him the most. Sometimes, protecting what needs protecting also means saying something, accidentally, that hurts one of the others—and then, helping someone protect something also means playing along with it, even if it hurts. Jisung’s good at that part, even if he folds the hardest afterwards, and needs the most reassurance.
Minho never judges them, even when he’s the one picking up the pieces. Because for all the pain, that’s one thing there never is: judgement. They’ve all witnessed each other having to do this too many times for that, yes, but they’ve also witnessed the joy, that sparkle of happiness in their eyes when they get to be in the thing that they lied to protect, and it makes it all worth it. They would die for each other, so they lie for each other.
But for Minho, it’s also something more personal; after all, isn’t he the worst of them?
Week after week, month after month, for years, he has had to pretend to be disgusted by Jisung, and by the implication that he is something with he ultimately is—to play at being homophobic and to aim that at the most precious person in his life. Like he’s simultaneously the bully and the bullied. Or worse, he’s the bully, and Jisung is the bullied.
Jisung has always been the most forgiving to all of them, but especially Minho. Actually, he proclaims he doesn’t mind it at all, but Minho isn’t sure he believes that part entirely. But he forgives the easiest. Maybe it’s because of what he’s been through, maybe it’s the fact that he’s love incarnate, but even when Minho pushes him so hard he nearly falls, he still doesn’t hold it against him. Minho’s heart will feel like it’s about to be ripped clean in two as he watches Jisung stumble by his own hand and Jisung will just laugh it off and wave away his apologies later, before biting him in the cheek as revenge, before they cuddle up to watch TV.
The others know that Minho doesn’t want to acknowledge when he does what he has to do, and they know he’s grateful when they come to his aid, even when he can’t always say it, because they know he will always return the favour, he who has the least hold-ups about protecting his life.
To Jisung, Minho always apologises. He holds Jisung closer, runs his hands through his hair and brushes eyelashes off his cheeks and apologises, and tells him he’ll be more careful, that hyung’s sorry that he’s so bad at pretending he doesn’t care for Jisung. Jisung has learned that interrupting Minho is no use, so he lets him finish, lets Minho pour out his heart until Minho feels all empty and aching inside, and only then does he turn to him and kiss him and tell him that he struggles with it, too, and that that’s why he doesn’t mind—because he knows that Minho does it because he cares for him so much. If there was no love to hide, Minho wouldn’t have to push so hard.
But the truth of the matter is that Minho has pushed him so often that he’s terrified that he’ll never be able to do anything else. It’s his existence, betrayed; tenderness, atrophied. It’s everything Jisung is to him, betrayed over and over and over again. It’s Minho, even in the privacy of their home, sometimes finding himself second guessing how he touches Jisung, and feeling that realisation like a stab to the heart, that makes him wonder how many other parts of himself he has let this job take from him, makes him wonder who he could’ve been, if not crippled by the weight of it all.
It had been this, that had sent him spiralling a few years ago, when he’d fallen into a burnout so deep it had Jisung calling Chan in the middle of the night, several nights a week. They had tried to get him to take a break, had even involved his parents, but Minho had remained stubborn. He refused, maybe in part to punish himself, but also because he was scared—scared that if he caught another glimpse of everything he had let get away, he might never come back. So he had pushed on, even when he couldn’t hide the strain of it all. But, it seemed, that despite this, most of the fans didn’t even notice. The thought made him bitter, angry, at first. The manifest reminder of everything that had driven him into being someone he didn’t recognise, not shaped, as he thought, by himself, not strong and resistant to it all, but just a product of his surroundings and, worst of all, a worse person for it—and they didn’t notice.
But conversely, it was also this that helped him eventually emerge from the darkness: because if they didn’t notice, or didn’t mind this, then maybe, if he really tried, he could pretend a little less, and, in the process, claw some of himself back.
Nothing much changed to the outside, he doubts any of his members aside from maybe Jisung noticed anything, but something inside Minho shifted. And gradually, he got better.
That was years ago, now, and Minho is better. He still protects, fiercely, and with everything he has. He still plays pretend, but, like someone relearning how to walk, he’s noticing that he can put more weight on his feet than he thought, that he doesn’t have to pretend as much to be okay. In short, he has stopped being so careful about what Lee Know is, though he’s as vigilant as ever about protecting what Lee Minho is.
He still hurts, often, late at night, when the apartment is quiet and he lies awake. It’s Changbin, who checks in on him these days, asks him how full his “existential dread meter” is, softening the very real concept of Minho spiralling again into a playful little text he can send every few weeks. This is what keeps them all together, Minho knows. He’s more grateful for it than he can say.
Despair and anger are softened by wear and by the quiet rote of a life too busy to question too many things.
Most importantly, he still has his loves. His cats are getting old, but they’re healthy. He’s as close, if not closer than ever, with his Mom and Dad. He has good friends. And he has Jisung. Their apartment, their home, that nobody knows about and lovely, lovely Jisung himself. A small, warm weight, curled into his side every other night; the person who makes him laugh every single day, wipes his worries away with one of his gummy smiles and a shake of his little butt.
He still pushes Jisung away on stage. He hasn’t miraculously learned a way to understand what is beyond understanding. It still hurts, of course, and he still spends evenings on the couch mumbling apologies into Jisung’s hair. But there’s acceptance there, too, now. Forgiveness—his own, added to Jisung’s which has never wavered in all these years.
He thinks of all this and nothing, in that sudden moment when his body catches up with the fact that Jisung really is about to kiss his cheek on stage.
They’ve practised every part of every one of the four days of the fan meeting several times. They’ve played through the games, discussed all possible ideas, pairings. There had always been the possibility of Minho and Jisung ending up together by accident, though they didn’t even have to ask staff to know that they would prefer if, on the days of the pepero games, they would not choose each other.
But now, none of that matters. Chance intervened, and neither him nor Jisung were willing to let this opportunity pass them by—evidenced by the way Jisung reached for him the same moment Minho did. He can feel the way Jisung is trembling next to him. His own knees want to give out. He can’t stop laughing.
His hand still instinctively shoots up and his face still pulls the smile he can’t shake into a half grimace, but Minho finds himself not caring. A rush goes through him when Jisung’s lips meet his cheek. Jisung is warm and familiar and Minho knows the little noise he makes like the back of his hand and for a split second, the veil between Lee Know and Lee Minho becomes impossibly thin.
He doesn’t want more than this. He wants to keep Jisung to himself, wants to keep their happiness safely tucked away in their apartment, out of reach of anyone but them, where he can protect it forever—but still. He thinks of the coaches, the managers, thinks of all the shit they’ve been through, the staff watching who don’t want them to do this, who are probably nervous as hell, but also hears the screaming in the arena pitch impossibly higher when it’s their turn, and he thinks Jisung-ah, can you believe this is happening? After everything, can you believe that this is happening? He can’t wait to tell him later. Can’t wait to kiss Jisung properly, and to hear his voice, at a million miles a minute, telling him what he felt.
All too soon, it’s over. He sees a tremble in Jisung’s hand when he motions for Minho to keep the chain going, to kiss Chan, which he does, pretending to be disgusted of course, even though that, too, is pretence. They’ve all spent years crawling into each other’s beds to cry and be held when work wore them down in ways their families could never understand.
Then, the attention of everyone is off him and for a moment, Minho grows a little faint. His soul trembles, his thoughts scatter—his body still goes through the motions, goes on idol autopilot, does something or other, that will no doubt entertain the masses. The moment is over and everything will go on as before, time marching on into an ever-unknown future, but something inside of him, something that’s buried deep, something so personal he doesn’t usually let it come to the surface when he’s working, is trembling. Young and giddy and excited, it shimmers, exults, dances and yells
“Who cares! Who cares! This is happening, and it’s beautiful. Who cares!”