Dearly Bruh-loved

Taehyun blinks at the small LCD screen in front of him before dragging his eyes back to concerned face responsible for the intrusion into his visual space.

“So?  Is it good?”  Minho asks, genuine insecurity mixed in his tone.

“Um.”

Taehyun, for his part, is not quite sure what he’s looking at.  There seems to be a picture of Minho and a few vaguely descriptive lines about himself so…a profile of some sort?  For what, Taehyun has no clue.  To be fair, Minho had been explaining his dilemma about…an app?  Or something?  Taehyun started to tune him out about 25 seconds in; they were friends, sure, but this is how their friendship operated and thrived.  Most outsiders couldn’t really fathom their friendship, them being quite the opposites, but one mutual class and a bucket load of Minho’s persistent charm later they ended up the closest of buddies, spending time together like today, “studying” in the campus library whenever they got a chance (despite Taehyun’s continuing feigned reluctance).

Pushing his phone closer to Taehyun’s face Minho whined.  “C’mon, dude, I need your opinion!  Is my profile okay; should I change it?  What about my profile pic?”

Frowning, Taehyun pushed the phone away from him and leaned back in his chair, bringing his own phone up to his face to toss a flippant, “Yeah, it’s superb,” Minho’s way while he started texting another friend.  “All the girls will be throwing themselves at you, I’m sure it,” he said dryly.

Minho whines again, pouring his gaze over his own phone as he deletes and rewrites another short blurb about himself for the 8^th time.  “You weren’t listening, I told you it’s not a dating service, man.  It’s a place for meeting new bros there aren’t any girls on this app.”

Oh.  Now that piqued his attention.  Taehyun blinked once before leveling an inscrutable stare at an oblivious Minho, still absorbed with perfecting his profile.

“It’s what.” Taehyun replied flatly.

Minho huffs, annoyed that he has to go through this once more.  “Like I said 5 minutes ago, I joined this new app.  It’s supposed to be a great way to meet some cool, new dudes.”

‘Some cool new dudes.’

Taehyun sets his own phone down before smoothing down his blonde hair and folding his hands in front of his mouth, leaning forward on his elbows.  Minho still hasn’t noticed him staring, still too wrapped up in rewriting his profile for ‘some cool new dudes’.

“Minho,” Taehyun starts calmly.  “What in God’s name are you doing?”

Agitated, Minho replies, “How many times do I have to tell you?  I’m trying to meet some bros—”

“‘Meet some bros’?”  Taehyun cuts him off, incredulous and no longer as calm. “What is this, a new Grindr?”

“Huh?” Minho finally stops typing to look up at his friend, confusion etched into every line of his face.  “What’s Grindr?”

Pinking slightly, Taehyun sits up straight and coughs, looking everywhere but at his friend.  “Uh—nothing, don’t—anyway, never mind, Minho, what the fuck are you doing?  This sounds like a dating site scam.”

It’s Minho’s turn to looks embarrassed as he cradles his phone to his chest and stutters, “It’s not—it’s not a dating site I keep telling you—”

“No offence,” Taehyun replies in a clipped tone, “But you ‘tell’ me a lot of bullshit.  And I know a dating profile when I see one.”  Abruptly, Taehyun leans forward and plucks the phone out of Minho’s grasp who protests loudly.  He’s actually paying attention to it now, focusing on the app’s layout as he clicks around.  “Why would you spend this much time on something that’s not a dating site, anyway?”

“Because!  I want to look cool!”  Minho says defensively.  “Who wants to be friends with some lame dude?”

“An unfortunate number of people if we’re going by your number of Twitter followers,” Taehyun muses.  “Myself included,” he finishes dismally.

Attempting to get back his phone, Minho leans over the small table covered in abandoned textbooks and notebooks between them, grasping at Taehyun who easily fends him off with one hand distractedly.

“Give it back!”  Minho’s whining again, but that has long since lost its charm on Taehyun ages ago.

“Wait,” Taehyun frown deepens as he takes in the information in front of him.  “…Why did you check your interest as ‘Whatever, Bro’ instead of ‘JUST Friends’?  What the hell are you doing?”

Minho uses Taehyun’s moment of disconcerted disbelief to snatch his own phone back.  “Because,” Minho reluctantly starts, “It sounds so…aggressive.  And—And if I check ‘Long Term Bromance’ doesn’t that sound so needy?  Who wants a desperate bro, bro?”

Taehyun can feel a headache coming on as he looks at Minho’s fidgety form.  Why did he deal with this kind of stress?

“Plus,” Minho continues quietly.  “One time when Danah and I got into a fight she called me—” Minho stops suddenly and looks at Taehyun, a look of distress plain as day on his face.  “She called me ‘aggressively heterosexual’!  I don’t want to prove her right!”

“She—she called you what?” Taehyun sputtered.

“Exactly!  I’m a chill dude there’s nothing aggressive about me, right?  And why would she bring my orientation into it!  I don’t get it!  What does that even mean?”

Taehyun takes in the sight of Minho before him; his backwards ‘OBEY’ snapback, the stretched, black tank top with a colorful, pin-up looking bikini clad woman surfing graphic printed on the front, the basketball shorts, the Nike socks and sandals combo despite it barely being 45 degrees outside and only getting cooler as the sun set.

Yeah.

He had no idea on Earth why Minho’s sister would ever call him ‘aggressively heterosexual’.

On any other day, Taehyun would have laughed at this because really, the whole situation was not only hilarious but just so purely Minho but, honestly, it was all a bit too much.  He put his face into his hands and groaned.

“I can’t believe this.”

“Same, dude.”  Minho says, shaking his head and continuing on his quest for the perfect profile.  “It doesn’t make sense, man.  I love her but sometimes she doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”

Taehyun dragged his face out of his hands to look across the table at Minho tiredly, again too distracted with his phone to notice the look he was giving him.  Deciding to not press the issue, Taehyun sighed and sat back, changing the subject in efforts for this whole debacle to be pushed into the past as quickly as possible.

“I’m mostly surprised you and your sister were fighting, you guys usually get along really well.”

“It was over something little, dude, honestly I can’t even remember.”  Minho took a moment to ponder, his face scrunched up as he tried to recall more details.  “I mean, I was in high school, anyway, we were always at each other’s throats then.”  Shaking his head fondly at the memory, Minho goes back to his editing, chuckling all the while.

Taehyun stares at Minho dumbfounded with this new information.

“Your sister called you ‘aggressively heterosexual’ like 4 years ago offhandedly in a fight and you still haven’t let it go?”

“Those things stick with you, bro.”  Minho sniffed, shrinking at Taehyun’s raising voice.

Taehyun schools his expression into one of passive neutrality and starts dropping his books into his bag.  “…I’ll see you later.”

Alarmed, Minho looks up.  “But you haven’t helped me with my pro—”

“I will see you later, Minho,” Taehyun says with enough forceful finality that Minho’s mouth clamps closed.  He watches mournfully as Taehyun stalks away from their table, muttering obscenities under his breath as he goes.

-----

Minho giggles for the 17^th time (Taehyun is not counting he is just observant) and Taehyun has had just about enough.  They’re at his place studying this time.  It’s small and cramped in comparison to the library, but with a majority of the campus having some form of assessment to take in the next week, there weren’t any available tables for the pair to spread out and neither of them had the foresight to check out one of the study rooms ahead of time.  Taehyun is on his bed attempting to read the same paragraph he’s been trying to comprehend for the last 6 minutes.  He drops the heavy textbook in his lap noisily, narrowing his eyes at Minho who is curled up in a large bean-bag chair shoved into the corner of Taehyun’s room, a book open but forgotten in his lap, all attention on the phone in his hands.

“What are you doing?”

Minho looks up, practically bouncing in his spot.  “I’m going through all my fist bumps and messages!  Dude, I got so many!  I knew I was right to change my pic to the one where I’m wearing my chill shorts instead of my party shorts, you know?  Makes me seem more relatable.”

“Fist bumps?” Taehyun asks, ignoring the bit about the wardrobe change.  Sometimes it was too easy to drag Minho within an inch of his life, taking the low-hanging fruit was almost too mean.  Taehyun was a lot of things, but he wasn’t unnecessarily cruel.

…Often.

“Yeah, you know, on that thing that you didn’t help me with,” Minho says accusingly.  “Some of them have really funny profiles, right?  Listen to this: ‘I’m just a guy who likes a good, long chillaxing sesh’—”

“Oh my God, you still have that thing?” Taehyun groans.  He had tried to block that whole thing from his memory, thank you.  It had been days and Minho hadn’t brought it up so he assumed Minho realized what a joke it was.  Which in retrospect, Taehyun realized any assumptions based in Minho having any sort of common sense were foolish to have.

“Well, yeah.  And I’m about to make so many new bros, dude, look at it!”  Minho excitedly gestures for Taehyun to join him on the bean-bag, ignoring the disdainful look on his host’s face.

He’s excited and it’s cute and it’s Minho so Taehyun only sighs before dropping in the space next to him on the large bean-bag chair.  He opens his hand and motions for Minho to hand over his phone, not wasting a moment to start swiping through his inbox the moment he does.  The moment Taehyun opens the profile of the first messenger, Minho eagerly begins an info dump.

“His name’s Lee Chul Su, he’s 29, and he seems super cool and he have so much in co—” Minho cuts off his own statement with a cry of distress when he sees Taehyun brutally delete the message.

“No one over 26,” is the only monotone explanation he gets.

“But—”

“Anyone over 26 is probably a predator.”

Minho looks sadly at his phone but doesn’t protest any further.  At least until Taehyun goes on to the profile of the next one and deletes that one too.

“That guy was only 25!”  Minho starts to argue.

“Yeah but he wants to have sex with you,” Taehyun says dryly, not bothering to look up as he scans the profile of another ‘potential bromance’.

“W-What?—No he—”

“I looked at his profile.  All his pics were ab shots, pec shots, pics of him flexing his biceps—he’s clearly on here looking for ass, Minho.  Is that what you want? Are you trying to put out?”

“No!”  Minho asserts a little too vehemently and Taehyun cringes and leans away from him.  “You know I’m not into dudes.”

“Yes, I am aware,” Taehyun mutters.  He doesn’t mean to sound so bitter but how can he not when he has to do all the work because clearly Minho doesn’t know what he’s doing.  “So in effort to not waste your time or his, I deleted him.  You're welcome.”

After that, Taehyun scoots away, saying Minho is distracting from his ‘creative process’ and promises he’ll give it back after he’s done.  Not really having a choice, Minho picks up his economics book and attempts to get something done while Taehyun clears out his messages.  It’s a short while later when Taehyun tosses the phone back before standing up and stretching.

“You sure are popular; I had a lot of crap to wade through.”  Taehyun tosses over his shoulder before he slips back on his bed and picks up his textbook again, seemingly bored with Minho’s activities.

Only a handful of messages remain in Minho’s inbox, who pouts at Taehyun ineffectively.

“Don’t whine, I did you a favor,” Taehyun says.  He flips to a new page before asking, “Why are you so interested in this anyway?  You have more friends than you can keep track of; you hardly need to turn to a social app to meet people.”

Minho shrugs even though he knows Taehyun isn’t looking, picking at a fraying thread on the chair he’s sitting on.  “I don’t know, I just thought it’d be cool, that’s all.”

“Well, if you find a new bestie let me know—I’ve been trying to pass you off to someone else for months.”

Minho gasps in dramatic behest and tackles Taehyun, wrapping as much of his limbs around the other man as he can and pins him to the bed.

“You’re heavy get off!”  Taehyun yells as he flails around unsuccessfully, Minho latched on to him with the tenacity of an infant.

Minho’s voice is muffled from his face being pressed into Taehyun’s shoulder when he says, “Not until you admit I’m your best bro in the whole world.”

“Fine!” Taehyun relents.  “You’re my best friend! Now let me go; I don’t want to smell like Axe for the nest 5 weeks!”

True to his word Minho releases Taehyun from his hold smiling brightly.  “I knew you loved me.”

“Yeah, yeah.”  Taehyun won’t look at him and pushes him off the bed, but Minho doesn’t miss his small smile he’s wearing before he smacks him in the face with a pillow.  “Only because I have to.”

-----

“Yo, dude,”

Taehyun looks up from his small lunch startled.  He was eating alone and now suddenly there was Minho, plopped down in front of him.

“I need a favor.”

“For?”

Minho hesitates, plucks a piece of kimbap off of Taehyun’s plate to stall, chewing too thoroughly for someone who usually inhales their food like a Hoover.

“It’s about that app…”  Minho finally supplies reluctantly.  Taehyun groans and throws his chopsticks down on the table.

Why couldn’t he just have a peaceful lunch?

-----

His name is Bobby.

Taehyun learns this and a bunch of other information decidedly useless to him that he plans to dump from his brain the moment this whole affair goes up in flames because it will because Taehyun says it will and Taehyun is Always Right™.  He learns, for example, that Bobby is 2 years younger than Minho—only a year younger than Taehyun—and is a freshman at a neighboring university not too far away from their own.  He’s apparently a dancer, owns just as many Air Jordans and Supremes as Minho and has a strong penchant for Rap and Hip-Hop.  Also just like Minho.  Apparently they started bonding over and trading pics of each other’s snapback collections.

Taehyun wants to hurl.

Unfortunately, they’re currently on the bus and Taehyun has nowhere to go and Minho is loud and animated and has weeks of talking to this boy to unload on Taehyun.  Weeks of dull, shitty jokes even worse than Minho’s and God, Taehyun never thought he’d appreciate Minho’s humor over anyone’s for as long as he lived but every joke Minho read back to him from their messages made Taehyun grateful Minho wasn’t nearly as bad as the monster he was communicating with.  Weeks of music recommendations and clubs that Minho was already trying to convince Taehyun to go to (he put his foot down on that, though; Minho had Jihoon and Jiho for that no way in Hell was he drudging through an entire night of that).  Weeks of funny faces and childish selfies that Minho kept shoving in Taehyun’s face despite how unamused he was.  Weeks of silly memes and short viral videos of people even more sense-less than them doing some sense-less shit and getting hurt because they were sense-less.

Taehyun wishes he brought some Advil.

Or at least had the foresight to deny Minho this ‘favor’ but.  Well.  At least Minho owed him, and boy was he going to collect.

The favor was to accompany Minho on his first not-date—Minho emphasized how much of a ‘chill hang out between bros’ it was—with Bobby.  They were meeting in person for the first time at a café downtown not too far away from Bobby’s campus, and Minho was nervous (“It’s not ‘first date jitters’, Taehyun, shut up.”) and so he decided to bring Taehyun with him as a buffer of sorts.  Why Minho chose him of all people Taehyun had no idea but he’d pleaded, practically begged, and offered to pay for all the snacks and coffee Taehyun wanted while they were out (and Taehyun was weak to begging) so.  Here he was.  About to basically third-wheel his way through a coffee date.

Minho sent a quick ‘Hey I bumped into a friend along the way, is it okay if he comes?’ which was the worst excuse Taehyun had ever seen but he didn’t care to help and Bobby was nice enough to agree (not that he really had any choice, in Taehyun’s opinion) so he let it go and spent the walk up the street fixing his hair as he tried to ignore Minho’s increasingly enthusiastic rambling.

Even if he was in emotional distress that wasn’t a reason to look a mess.

They’re about to walk through the door when Minho grasps Taehyun’s arm tightly to halt him.

Taehyun only looks at Minho inquisitively who asks, “Do I look okay?  This snapback goes with my J's right?”

Taehyun musters up the most disgusted scowl he can manage before ripping his arm out of Minho’s hold and stomping into the café.

-----

It’s been 3 hours.  3 hours since they walked into that damn café, 3 hours since Minho nervously clung on to Taehyun’s sleeve as they scanned the small room, 3 hours since a young man stood up and waved at them both and Minho’s face lit up like Christmas, 3 hours since Taehyun was introduced to someone whose existence he had just learned of that day had attempted to, what Taehyun was 67% sure was, awkwardly hit on him at said introduction probably in an attempts to be funny even though he was on a not-date with someone else.

Taehyun was not amused.

Minho didn’t seem to care about or notice Taehyun, or the terrible pick-up that was most likely definitely a pick-up, for that matter.  He was having a lovely time, chatting and laughing about God knows what with his new best friend.

Taehyun snorts into his espresso—his 5^th one—at that thought.  The only satisfaction Taehyun had gotten out of this little outing so far, was the combination of ever-flowing, expensive French-pressed coffee coursing through his veins and the sugar from the copious number of pastries he had consumed.  He had lost count of how many of those he had eaten.

Sleep was far off for him

Oh, and the time he took Minho’s card, paid for a plate of pastries, set them down in the middle of table, and waited for Bobby to reach for one before yanking it toward himself, purposefully picking the one Bobby had been reaching for, and stuffing half of it in his mouth in one go, refusing to break eye-contact with Bobby the entire time.  Bobby didn’t try to interact with him for the rest of the afternoon.

But all the over-priced coffee and flaky baked goods in the world couldn’t mend the aching boredom Taehyun was enduring.  Sure, he could try to participate in their conversation but, God, at what cost?  There has to be something he can do to make this at least a smidgen unbearable.

Taehyun surveys the scene in front of him over the lip of his porcelain coffee cup, eyes narrowing as he really takes it all in.  Like how Bobby laughs maybe a little too hard at all of Minho’s jokes, eyes crinkling up every time, and Taehyun knows this because he is hearing them and they don’t deserve any laughter.  Absolutely none.  At all.  And maybe Taehyun has noticed that he’s scooched his chair awfully close to Minho’s, too, and that he’s reached out to play with one of Minho’s bracelets a couple too many times, and brushes their fingertips together when he draws his hand back.

Huh.

Taehyun might have been joking before but now…

It takes a lot more energy than he would ever admit to not cackle when it all clicks together.  Good thing he has a lot to spare.

Because Taehyun knows when someone else is getting hit on.  And Taehyun, is about to no longer be so bored.

This…This he could work with.

He tunes in to the conversation, it’s back to Hip-Hop which Taehyun can’t contribute much to, but he can work with this.

He sets down his cup and cuts in quickly with, “Hey, Minho, don’t you write some of your own lyrics sometimes?”  Both of the other men jerk their attention towards him; to his slight annoyance it’s almost as if they forgot he was there, but no matter.

“Uh, uh yeah, I mean a little but, they’re not very good.”  The tips of Minho’s ears are colored red as he fidgets with his own hands.

“Don’t say that, they’re really good!”  Taehyun turns his attention to Bobby, still keeping Minho in the corner of his eye as he says, “I tell him all the time he should dump his business major and go into music; he’s super talented.”

“Really?”  Bobby turns to Minho, astonished and pleased.  “Dude, that’s so cool!  I kind of write a little, too, we could…I don’t know…do something together one day, maybe?”  Bobby prompted shyly.

“Yeah,” Minho started, rubbing the back of his neck nervously.  “Yeah I’d like that.”  And then he did The Thing.  The Thing where when he’s flustered, smiles bashfully and looks down, a thick array of dark lashes framed against his face before looking up and shooting that smile straight through Taehyun’s someone’s heart.  The Thing that initially convinced Taehyun that maybe the bothersome dude-bro in his class wasn’t so bad after all.

Taehyun tore his gaze away from Minho (with not nearly as much effort as it may have looked to an outsider, thank you) to chance a look at Bobby.  In the back of his mind, Taehyun hoped he hadn’t looked that sprung the first time he got hit with that smile, because there really wasn’t a better way to describe the way Bobby looked either than dazed.  And if Taehyun was even just a little bit more uncouth he would have fist pumped because God was he good.

Satisfied, Taehyun folded his hands in his lap and leaned back in his chair.  “Well,” Taehyun started loudly.  Bobby jolted like he had just been violently shaken out of a deep sleep.  “It’s getting pretty late we should probably head back, we all probably have homework we should be doing. It was very nice to meet you, Bobby.”  Taehyun held out a hand for Bobby to shake, which he took automatically even though he still looked a little lost.

To his credit, Bobby only looked a little off put by the mischievous grin spread wide over Taehyun’s face.

-----

Minho rocked back on his heels as he glanced between the address in his phone and the number on the apartment building, Taehyun sighing impatiently next to him.  He’s not nervous he’s just—well—what if this didn’t go well?  What if Bobby’s roommate didn’t like him?  What if he says something really foolish and ruins everything and—

“You’ve checked it about nine times already I’m sure we’ve got the right place,” Taehyun gripes, ready to get inside because it was chilly and the setting sun wasn’t helping the situation and he knew Minho was just stalling anyway.

Not too much earlier, Minho had gotten a text from Bobby explaining that a mix up at his roommates job had left him in possession of 6 large pizzas that someone needed to eat, and invited both Minho and Taehyun over if they wanted.  Neither of them were the type to turn down free food so here they were, standing in front of Bobby’s apartment building on a Friday evening.

“Right.”  Minho makes no move towards the door.  Rolling his eyes, Taehyun marches forward and pushed the ringer for Bobby’s room.

“It’s 401 right?  That would suck if I pressed the wrong one,” Taehyun says before switching to the intercom button and yelling, “Hurry up we’re cold!”

Looking horrified, Minho drags Taehyun away like that could somehow undo the damage.  Before he can say anything a muffled, crackly laugh emerges from the box.

“I’m coming, just chill out, ok?”

Taehyun shimmies out of Minho’s grasp to press the intercom button once again and shoots back, “We’re definitely acing the ‘chill’ part of that.”  He looks over his shoulder at Minho who mouths a ‘really?’ at him.  In return Taehyun shrugs.  “I’m getting cold and you took too long.”

Bobby’s all smiles when he lets them, wasting no time in explaining the backstory behind their fortunate pizza windfall.

“Sorry if our place is kinda messy,” Bobby apologizes as he unlocks his apartment door.  “We weren’t really expecting this to happen.”

Minho laughs and clasps him on the shoulder warmly.  “Don’t worry, wait until when you see my place, dude, it’s like a bomb went off.”  Bobby laughs with him and Taehyun wrinkles his nose.  Of course he’d get stuck with a couple of messy boys who wallowed in their own filth.  Bobby’s roommate was probably just as bad, too.

They walk inside and it is…not as bad as Taehyun imagined.  It’s actually quite nice.  Nicer than Minho’s room anyway.

“Sweet digs, man,” says Minho while he slips off his shoes.  “I’m actually a little jealous you guys did it up.”

“It’s mostly my roomie Jinhwan, he’s good at finding cool stuff that’s pretty cheap.”  Bobby leads them to a small table with a large stack of boxes and gestures for them to help themselves.

“Well someone has to spruce things up.  All you brought was a PlayStation and one desk lamp.”

The three young men turn to see who Minho assumes in Jinhwan walking out of a bedroom, dressed down in sweats and wearing a friendly smile.

“Don’t forget I brought a plate to eat pizza rolls off of, too!”  Bobby said with exaggerated indigence.

Jinhwan walked up to Bobby and lightly punched him in the arm saying, “Wow, you sure know how to make yourself sound mature.”  He turned towards Minho and Taehyun and gave a small wave.  “Hi, I’m Bobby’s roommate and the sole person responsible for keeping him alive.”

Taehyun laughed loudly at that, and Minho was a little surprised to see him acting so warmly toward anybody.  Well, at least anybody that he didn’t really know.

“So,” Minho started as he sat down.  “How’d a couple of freshmen end up with an apartment?”

“Yeah, I’m surprised you guys don’t live on campus.”  Taehyun supplied distantly, concentrated on piling as much pizza as he could on his plate.  Minho blinked at the greasy mound and Taehyun leveled his stare and shrugged.  “I’m hungry.”

Jinhwan laughs and explains, “I’m actually a year older than him; I hated the dorms so much I thought it was better to rent out with this one than stomach another year of that.”

Both Minho and Taehyun’s eyebrows jolt upwards in surprise.

“Oh, I thought you were younger.”  It suddenly clicks in Minho’s mind and he looks at Taehyun excitedly.  “That means you two are the same age.”  He laughs when he sees Taehyun’s bewildered expression as he takes in Jinhwan.

“Everyone thinks he’s younger ‘cause he’s so damn short,” Bobby laughs through a mouthful of pizza.  Jinhwan kicks him underneath the table and Taehyun snorts at Bobby’s yelp.

They all eat until they can’t move and sit slouched in their chairs trying to digest the ponds of cheese n bread they consumed until Jinhwan looks at the clock and mumbles an, “Oh shit,” before dragging himself to the couch that’s nearby.

Bobby glances at the clock too and groans.  “C'mon, dude, not your shitty drama—”

“This is quality programming, you just have poor taste,” Jinhwan shot back as he scrambled for the remote.

Suddenly imbued with enough energy to move from the thought of having to watch Jinhwan’s show, Bobby pushes away from the table.  He grabs one of the boxes of pizza before gesturing to his room.  “Jinhwan wasn’t lying about the PlayStation.  You guys can play if you want instead of watching this sappy garbage.”  Jinhwan haphazardly throws a pillow at Bobby who easily dodges it, laughing as the soft missle glided past his shoulder.  Taehyun quickly glances between Bobby and Minho before sauntering over to the couch and sprawling out next to Jinhwan.

“I’d rather chance whatever this is than watch you two tea-bag each other in Call of Duty for an hour.”

“Hey, I only tea-bag after I’ve 360-no-scope somebody, man, you know that!”

Taehyun just waves his friend off with one hand, eyes glued to the screen in front of him.  “Sure.  And close the door, too, I don’t want to hear all that racket.”

“I don’t think he likes me very much,” Bobby says after they’ve gone to his room and he’s setting up the console.  He says it with a small chuckle, but the insecurity is still plain as day on his face.  Minho sits up straighter against the headboard of Bobby’s bed where he’s currently settled and shakes his hands in front of him erratically.

Eyes wide, Minho shakes his head explaining, “Taehyun?  No, he’s just shy!  Trust me, he’s like that with everyone when you first meet him.”

“Everyone?”  Bobby looks to the door symbolizing the easy comradery they’ve witnessed blossom between Taehyun and Jinhwan.

“…I guess Jinhwan’s special.” Minho laughs to break the tension and continuous sincerely.  “Seriously, bro, you should have seen the way he was with me when we first met.  I was almost sure that he was trying to hex me with the way he glared at me.”

Bobby guffaws and tosses Minho a controller.  “Shut up, you’re lying.”

“I’m serious, bro!  He’ll warm up to you.  I had to strong-arm him into hanging out.”  Minho pauses makes a face as if he’s thinking deeply.  “I’m still not sure if he actually even likes me…”  A playful shoulder check from Bobby later, Minho breaks the façade and laughs.

“Now I know your lying,” Bobby says as he settles in next to Minho.  “I can’t imagine anyone not immediately loving you.”

Minho ducked his head, a silly smile spreading across his face as a warm feeling sets in his stomach.

“Shut up,” Minho mumbled, knocking shoulders with Bobby gently.  They exchanged shy smiles and stayed pressed against each other, playing video games shoulder-to-shoulder for the rest of the night.

Taehyun had spent most of what was supposed to be his lunch texting Jinhwan and lamenting about the heedlessness of his friend, and how said friend was all but blind when it came to Jinhwan’s friend and gosh, how fortunate they were to have such attentive and mindful friends such as themselves to shepherd the poor boys along their way.  Taehyun could have (and probably would have) spent hours bemoaning how unobservant Minho was but unfortunately, Jinhwan had to go to work, leaving Taehyun to a peaceful and uninterrupted lunch.

“Yo, can I ask you a question?”

Taehyun closed his eyes, taking a deep breath through his nose and exhaling slowly.

Clearly, “peaceful” wasn’t going to be an accurate descriptor for his lunch.

Taehyun opens his eyes to see Minho already reaching over to his plate.  “What,” he says as he tries to stab the offending hand but he’s too slow and Minho’s already stuffing Taehyun’s food in his mouth.

“You think my new bro Bobby’s into dudes?”

The sound of Taehyun’s chopsticks clattering on the table ring unusually loud in his own ears.

…Maybe Minho was a little more observant than he looked.

Minho takes advantages of Taehyun’s momentarily shell-shocked state, pulls the entire tray towards himself, and picks up the forgotten utensils.  “W-Why—why would you think that?”  Taehyun quickly recovers when a thought occurs to him and he narrows his eyes.  “Wait.  Why would I be able to help you with this?”  Taehyun asks suspiciously as he leans back in his seat.

With a shrug Minho casually drops, “You fuck dudes, so I figured…I don’t know, you’d have some special insight, or something.”  He doesn’t even look up from Taehyun’s bowl and shovels more food in his mouth.

Okay.  Maybe Minho was a lot more observant than he looked.

Taehyun was glad Minho had decide to basically commandeer his tray, because if he had been eating, at least 7 grains of rice would have definitely just have gotten lodged oh so nicely in the back of his esophagus.

In record time the color in Taehyun’s face drains away as he tries to formulate a coherent response.  “I-I-I don’t—I’m not—” is all he manages, though.

“I mean,” Minho starts through a mouthful of food.  “I know you dick down girls too, but that’s not the important part, for this.”  He finally looks up in takes in Taehyun’s panicked expression and stops chewing.  “…Oh.  You didn’t know I knew.”

“We’ve never talked about it!”  Taehyun’s voice is an 1/8^th of an octave short of shrill.  The urge to bolt is getting increasingly tempting.  Minho’s eyebrows knit together in concern and for some reason that makes it worse.

Minho starts speaking slowly, softly.  “I’m sorry, I wouldn’t have put you on the spot like that if I knew that—well, that we weren’t there, I guess.  I just know you have a thing for that Seungyoon kid, at least.  Honestly, man, I figured we were being open with each other about this stuff since you never try to hide it whenever that dude’s around so—”

“What!?”  Taehyun’s voice has far surpassed the point of “shrill” at this point.

“…Or you do.”  Minho’s starting to look a little embarrassed with only aggravates Taehyun further because he can’t believe Minho has the gall to be embarrassed of all things when he’s not the one who’s discovering his business is written all over his face at times, apparently!  “Well, if it makes you feel any better, he likes you too?  Every time we’re together you should see the way he looks at me, dude.  I can feel him trying to burn a hole right through—”

“Shut up!  Shut up, shut up!”  Taehyun’s face is burning bright red and he tries to hide it in his hands.  It doesn’t work.  Minho pats him awkwardly on the shoulder.  Never in his life has Taehyun wanted the ground to open up right underneath him and swallow everything within a 20 mile radius into a black hole of nonexistence more than in this moment.

After a stiff cough and moment of silence later, Minho cautiously broached the silence with, “So…’bout Bobby?”  Probably not the most tactful choice.

A little wounded and a lot flustered, Taehyun wasn't feeling particularly helpful.

Instead, he spring ups from his chair and jabs a finger in the direction of his mostly devoured lunch to declare harshly, “You’re paying me back for that,” before marching away from the table, blush still high on his cheeks.

-----

Any recent free-time Minho found himself in possession of was spent at Bobby’s apartment, or texting Bobby, calling Bobby, Snapchatting Bobby…well, the point’s been clearly made.  Minho’s life all but revolved around his new friend.  And his newfound state of perpetually preoccupied did not go unnoticed by his other friends, either.  The ample amount of comments his roommate Jihoon made about never seeing him unless he was about to sleep were still eclipsed by Taehyun’s abhorrent amount of short, underhanded remarks regarding Minho’s absence.

But what was a man to do!  Bobby went to a different university, so of course Minho had to take extra time out of his day to see him!  And because he couldn’t run into him casually on campus and have a quick conversation, it was basically mandatory to text him constantly to simulate that experience!  He was just trying to be a good friend, is all!  And he still saw everyone else he cared for…sometimes…occasionally…

Well.  Maybe not as often as he would have liked.  But that was thing about being with Bobby; Minho couldn’t keep track of time, keep track of his schedule.  One minute he’s taken the bus to Bobby’s apartment to see how many waves they could get through in the new DLC map for Zombies in Black Ops, the next it’s after 2 in the morning and they’re lying on Bobby’s bed talking about the complexities and seemingly unseen artistry of dabbing.

They were very engaging conversations.

Still, while Minho enjoyed the amount of time he spent hanging out at Bobby’s place, he thought it would be nice if they expanded their horizons, some.

“Yo, you should come visit me,” Minho announces suddenly into the phone pressed to his ear.  He’s on his bed sprawled out on his back in the middle of his midafternoon bro-chat with Bobby that he took during his break between classes.  It was totally a normal thing that totally normal bros did all the time, of course.

“Uh, okay, sure, man.” Bobby laughs, slightly surprised.

“I’m serious!”  Minho insists as he sits up.  “I’m always over there, bro, you should come down, meet some of my other friends.  It’ll be great.”

“I’m serious, too, I’ll come through whenever you want.”

Minho frowns because he still hears the playful, amusement in Bobby’s voice.

“Come over tomorrow, then,” Minho says triumphantly.  “Since you’re good ‘whenever’.”

Bobby laughs loudly, taken aback but he readily agrees to Minho, anyway.  Which is how Minho ends up at the station close to the Northside of his campus before noon, 20 minutes before Bobby was even supposed to show up.  He was excited, ok?  Plus, what if Bobby got there early?  He wouldn’t know where to go, he’d be awkwardly standing there, lost and lonely.  What kind of bro would do that to another bro?  A bad one, that’s who.

When Bobby’s bus actually did get there a couple of minutes later than scheduled, Minho may have worked himself into a bit of a frenzy thinking about Every Possible Bad Thing that could happen.  But, the moment he saw Bobby smiling, a parting of clouds and an emergence of bright sunshine, any worries he previously had were dashed to pieces.

They’re walking and talking idly, when Minho notices Bobby running his hands up and down his arms.

Frowning slightly, Minho tips his head toward his friend.  “You cold, man?”

Grinning cheekily, Bobby shakes his head.  “Nah, I’m good.  Probably should have checked the weather before I rolled out, though.”

Minho stops walking and purses his lips for a moment.  “Here,” Minho shrugs the jacket off and holds it out for Bobby to take.  Hesitantly, Bobby reaches out, but then pauses.

“You sure, hyung?  I don’t want you to get cold, either.”

Minho puffs out and pats his chest in an exaggerated matter.  “I run hot.”

Bobby’s eye linger for a moment when their fingers run across each other as he takes it, a small uptick in the corner of his mouth.  “Yeah.”  A soft smile alights on Bobby’s face as he gingerly slides the jacket over his shoulders, handling it like something precious.

There’s a…moment.  Of what, Minho’s not sure, but it’s almost like something right behind his sternum settles, clicks into place and flows into his core, a fuzzy warmth spreading into his fingertips and toes.  He feels as if he has to rip his gaze away to place it in front of him, anywhere instead of the man next to him.  Minho clears his throat, shrugs it off and jogs ahead, turning around to call out, “Hurry up, dude, I wanna show you around, real quick.  Unless you want to stand outside all day.”

Bobby snorts and catches up easily, hands tucked snug into the pockets of Minho’s jacket.

Thinking it would be a good idea, Minho gave him the grand tour of (Minho’s) top most important spots on campus, because, hey why not right?  He talks animatedly about every spot he drags Bobby too, relaying a story about some adventure he had or silly thing he and his friend Hyuntae convinced their friend Jihoon to do.  Bobby always laughs at every story and every joke and Minho can’t stop smiling in return.  It ends with them striding over to the small ice cream parlor across the street from Minho’s residence.

Bobby sends Minho a quizzical look.  “…Isn’t it a bit too chilly for ice cream?”

“Bro,” Minho starts dramatically, throwing a hand over his chest, aghast.  “It’s never too anything for ice cream.”

“I got an idea to warm us up then,” Bobby gives him a quick once-over and Minho feels heat creep up his neck, for a reason he can't place and has no motivation to analyze.  “You showed me that court nearby, what about a quick game of one-on-one?”

Minho grins in response, ignoring his earlier reaction to grab Bobby’s wrist and drag him in the direction of the aforementioned basketball court.  “First to 10?  Loser pays.”

“The first time you came over to mine I gave you free food!”  Bobby sputters in indignation.
                                                                                                                                              
“You mean the time Jinhwan got all of us free food.”

Bobby laughs easily and concedes, “Fine, you’re gonna need that home court advantage, though.”

They get to the court and Minho doesn’t fail to notice how Bobby carefully folds and sets his jacket down on a neighboring bench after he takes it off.

They’re maybe about 15 minutes in when Bobby pauses after Minho scores.

“Shit, I guess it’s warmer than I thought,” Bobby says right before he lifts up the hem of his tank-top, bending over slightly to dab his forehead. There’s a flash of exposed skin and Minho also (suddenly) feels very, very warm, much warmer than he was a single moment ago.

For some unfathomable reason it goes absolutely downhill for Minho after that.  He trips on 8 separate occasions, messes up 3 layups, and fails to block Bobby an uncountable amount of times.  Needless to say, Minho is the one forking up the cash while Bobby stands next to him beaming, a free double-scoop in his hands.

“So how is it?” Minho asks, still pouting over the fact that he lost.  They’re back at the small basketball court, sitting next to each other on the lone bench.

“Good.”  Bobby replies casually.  He turns to grin at Minho before he says, “Even better ‘cause it’s free.”

Minho throws his legs over Bobby’s lap in petty revenge, almost knocking the cup out of his hands in the process.  “You’re welcome.”

“I won this, fair-and-square, bro.  Well.  Mostly.”  Bobby pauses and he nudges Minho with his elbow playfully.  “You didn’t have to throw the game, you know.  But I appreciate you buying for me.”

“I didn’t!”  Bobby just gives him an ‘Oh really?’ look and Minho scrambles for an excuse.  “I’m really out of practice, okay, don’t rub it in.”

“Dude, you ‘missed’ two layups in a row.”

Minho wants to defend himself, truly, but he doesn’t even know why he fell apart so abruptly.  So he shrugs and stares at his own cup like he suddenly found something very interesting.  “Shit happens, okay, dude?” Minho mumbles.  Quickly trying to change the subject, Minho remembers the conversation with Taehyun that they never finished and asks, “Hey, you notice how the girl who rang us up was checking you out?”

Bobby nearly chokes on his spoon.  “Huh?  Oh, uh, nah I guess I didn’t.”

“Really?  She was cute, man, you should’ve asked for her number.”  The only response Minho receives is a weak shrug and a noncommittal hum.  Minho raises an eyebrow.  “What, you don’t think she was cute?”

“I didn’t say that—just…not my type I guess.”

Minho scooches closer, leaning in to wag his eyebrows as he asks, “Oh, so what is the type of Mr. Kim,” in the most obnoxious voice he can manage.

Bobby tosses his head back and laughs loudly at Minho’s antics.  “I don’t know, man.  I guess my type’s whoever I like at the moment.”

“Oh, come on, you have to give me something, here.”

What Minho gets is an eye roll and a hand on his ribs halfheartedly pushing him away.  Minho pushes back into Bobby’s personal space.   “Don’t hold out on me, bro, c’mon,” Minho whines.  Frankly, after spending so much time around Taehyun, he’s not used to that working at all, and is genuinely surprised when Bobby sighs and caves.

“Uh…Pretty?”  Minho scoffs.  Way to go with the basics.  “Okay, okay, fine.  Uh…funny I guess?  Tall—”

“Taller than you?”

Surprised by the sudden question, Bobby hesitates.  “I don’t mind,” he supplies slowly.  Minho nods and hums thoughtfully, then gestures for him to continue.

“I really don’t know what else!”

“I’m not letting you go until you give me something good, so, you might wanna come up with something.”

“I guess…” Sighing, Bobby leans his head over the edge of bench.  He’s silent for a few seconds before he gives Minho a side-long glance to supply mischievously, “…I’ve always had a thing for nice thighs.”

Nervous laughter bubbles up Minho’s throat as another wave of heat slithers up the nape of his neck.  He clears his throat and looks away.  “See?  How hard was that?”  Trying to find anything else to focus on, Minho looks around, and Bobby’s half-melted treat catches his eye.  “Hey, I paid good money for that, you better finish it.”

Bobby looks down and spoons out a large glob of ice cream and holds it out.  “I’m about to go into a sugar overload, you finish it.”

Minho shrugs.  “Okay.”

A second after Minho’s teeth click against the spoon he realizes Bobby probably meant for him to grab it.  Oh well.  Minho wraps a hand around Bobby’s to steady it and pulls back slowly.

“Huh.  That is pretty good.  I’ve never actually gotten that before.”  Minho’s hand is still clasped over Bobby’s who looks slightly frazzled.

“Uh…R-Right,” Bobby stutters out.  “We should probably go inside it’s um…it’s starting to get kinda cold again, you know.”

Minho nods in agreement and hops up off of Bobby and the bench.  “Oh!  You know what we could do?  I could introduce you to some other bros of mine!”  Bobby looks unsure for a split second and Minho throws a reassuring smile to him.  “Don’t worry, dude, they’re a little bit different from Taehyun.  A much easier crowd, I swear.”  He reaches a hand out for Bobby to grasp, and pulls him off of the bench.

“Sure, let’s do it,” Bobby says as he tosses an arm around Minho’s shoulders.  “I’ll be sure not to mention how badly your ass got handed to you, either.”

-----

Taehyun and Minho’s schedules didn’t match up well so they saw little of each other, even less than usually recently—ever since Minho became friends with Bobby.  Taehyun didn’t care, though.  Not when he would text Minho asking when he was coming over to find out Minho had forgotten they had made study plans and was already at Bobby’s or when they actually were together and all Minho would do is spend the entire time talking about the last time he and Bobby hung out or how excited he was for the next time he and Bobby would be hanging out.

Taehyun didn’t spend any of his open slots that used to be scheduled for Minho Quality Time caring that he wasn’t actually with Minho.

He did, however, spend the hours he normally spent with Minho trading texts with Jinhwan about how their respective friends had ditched them for the other and only talked about how “cool” the other one was (Taehyun harped on this point a lot, considering both Minho and Bobby were total losers.  But then again, “birds of a feather”, right?).  Jinhwan had used the word “dumped” to describe their situation and Taehyun stopped texting him back for a whole 10 minutes in protest.  He wasn’t a fan of that descriptor.

But Taehyun didn’t care.

It had been a couple of weeks since the Terrible Awful Never to be Brought Up Again Conversation™ as Taehyun had dubbed it in his brain and neither of them had mentioned it.  Well, short of Minho grinning mischievously whenever Seungyoon was in the general vicinity, and “accidentally” bumping Taehyun into him the last time he caught them talking.  The large bruise on Minho’s arm was a badge of warning to never do that again.

But either than Minho being more of a little shit than usually, everything was basically back to normal.

Minho sighs again for the umpteenth time in the last 25 minutes and pushes his food around his plate as he stared into it sullenly.

Well, almost back to normal.  Taehyun couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen Minho have food in front of him and not pour it down his throat like he had a built-in garbage chute.

He frowned at Minho’s dejected form and let out a frustrated sigh of his own.  Minho had been mopey since Taehyun had seen him and frankly it was starting to get annoying.  “What’s wrong with you?”

“Hm?”  Minho looked up at his friend slowly, a full pout on his face.  “I’m fine.”

Taehyun let out another harsh sigh.  “Clearly not; you haven’t touched your food at all and you’ve been a petulant baby all day.  So what’s up with you?”

Minho looked back down and went back to pushing his food around.  Eyebrows pinched together he shook his head and said, “Nothing’s wrong, but…I brought Bobby up here earlier today.  You know, to hang out, meet some of my other bros.”

“Oh?”  Taehyun sat up straighter.  He hadn’t known about that.  Which shouldn’t have been too surprising but Minho never missed an opportunity to yak away about Bobby to Taehyun.  Literally, at any given moment Taehyun was at risk of having to sit through full minutes of Minho waxing poetic about how cool, and funny, and great his new bestie was.  God, he couldn’t imagine what a meeting of all of them together would have been like.  On the surface, Bobby seemed like he would have fit perfectly in with Minho’s other group of friends, so what could the problem be?  “Did they not get along?”

“No, they hit it off,” Minho’s frown only got deeper with that statement.  “Especially Jiho and Bobby.”  He starts pushing the food around in a more…belligerent manner.

“Are you jealous?”  That might have been a tad bit blunt and it didn’t really make that much sense but honestly he couldn’t really think of anything else.  Plus, he couldn’t take another single second of Minho’s testy behavior and the sooner he got this sorted out the sooner he could move on with his life.

Immediately, Minho’s head jerked up.  Eyes wide and defensive he let out, “Jealous?  Jealous of what?  What do I have to be jealous about?” in a semi-aghast rush.  “I should be happy right?  That they get along so well.  So I should be all good, right…?” He trails off helplessly, a deeper frown than the one before taking over his facial features.

Still a little miffed about the Terrible Awful Never to be Brought Up Again Conversation™ (and that Minho’s been abandoning him) Taehyun can’t help but egg Minho on.

“Well, originally I thought Jiho was as ‘aggressively heterosexual’ as you—”

“—Hey—!”

“But, I don’t know, sometimes he seems a little…” Taehyun waved his hand around in a vague manner trying not to laugh at Minho’s wide-eyed and confused expression.  “If you’re not careful Jiho might steal Bobby away from you.”  He’s joking—mostly—but Minho actually looks upset.  Almost legitimately bothered by that thought.  At least more bothered than someone who’s just friends with someone else should be with that prospect.

“That’s not funny.”  Minho barks out abrasively as he jabs at the piece of fish on his plate.  Taehyun’s lips spread into a thin line.  Who the Hell does he think he is to be snapping on him like that?

“You know Bobby likes you a lot, right?” Taehyun cuts back immediately.  The look on Minho’s face almost makes him regret being so candid.  Almost.  Eyes boring into Minho, Taehyun spits out, “Don’t play dumb either; you know what I mean by that.  Remember what you asked me last time?  Here’s your damn answer: for some asinine reason he likes you.”

Minho is quiet for a long time.  Excruciatingly long.  Taehyun doesn’t care, though, he keeps his eyes trained on Minho the entire time while the other man refuses to make eye contact.  Finally, Minho speaks up, voice so quiet Taehyun almost has to lean in to hear him.  “This really isn’t funny, Taehyun.”

“I know it’s not.  We’re being 'open' with each other now, remember?”  Taehyun echoes Minho’s statement from before, punctuating his remark with a laugh so harsh Minho flinches like he’s been hit.  A part of Taehyun wants to stop before he goes too far, but he’s irritated and upset and annoyed and aggravated because Minho had to cop an attitude with him over what?  Over the truth?  That Minho himself–even if he only asked for half of it—had asked for?  And after they finally see each other for real and not through a quick text or a wave when they coincidentally walk by each other on their way to class.  Even worse he wasn’t even going to take him seriously, try to disregard him and live in denial because he didn’t want to deal with it.

“You’re just trying to make me uncomfortable,” Minho replies defiantly, jaw clenched and indignation plainly etched into his features.

Any hesitation Taehyun had left smelted into a sharp blade of fury.

“This isn’t a joke, Minho!  What?  You think playing with someone’s feelings is funny?  Being childishly jealous and possessive over someone when you don’t even feel the same way is messed up.”  The volume of Taehyun’s voice is steadily rising at this point, and a few nearby people have already started to look.  Ignoring them, Taehyun continues to let loose, the caustic edge in his voice ripping into the man in front of him.  “What if he sees you acting that way?  You think he won’t notice?  You think he won’t get the wrong idea?  Won’t get his hopes up for something that will never happen because you don’t have the common goddamn courtesy to set shit straight because it’s ‘uncomfortable’ for you to acknowledge!”

Minho takes it all, unmoving and silent through every grating syllable.  Staring into his plate like it’s the one yelling at him, he refuses look Taehyun in the eye and that only makes him angrier.  Another flourish of rage courses through Taehyun, causing him to spring up in such a rush he almost knocks his chair over.

“He’s supposed to be your friend, Minho.  Can’t be a good friend to any one person so you just half-ass it with a bunch of different people, is that it?”  Taehyun slams both of his hands on the table and leans over only inches away from Minho’s face.  “How about you do Bobby a favor and let him know now that you’re going to halfway string him along until it gets too uncomfortable for you to deal with so he can be prepared,” hisses Taehyun in a voice low before spinning on his heels and striding away, not taking a single second to look at back at Minho’s stiff form still staring down in front of him.

-----

Taehyun was being…Minho didn’t even know what he was being but whatever it was, Taehyun would get over it eventually; he always did.  In the meantime, Minho wasn’t going to be bothered by Taehyun lashing out at him.  What was that going to do?  If he had a problem he could talk to him like a functioning adult.  Until then, Minho was going to let him sulk away in his own little corner undisturbed.

Of course Minho wasn’t happy about it, a part of him wanted to reach out to him and make it right.  It wasn’t like they had never fought before—they were pretty different people, after all—but it was usually over something stupid.  Some small, insignificant argument and then one of them would apologize and everything would fall back into place and be good again.

But this was different.  And Minho was going to stand his ground.  What he had with Bobby was a good thing—a really good thing—and he was happy!  He had made a good, new friend and that should have been enough.  Why Taehyun had to go and try and ruin it, Minho didn’t understand.

Minho’s at Bobby’s apartment sitting on his bed, knees drawn up, and they’re supposed to be picking out a game to play.  He’s been trying to spend as much time away from his own campus as possible in the last few days, lest he runs into Taehyun.  Which, if Minho was being completely honest, didn’t have a high possibility of happening anyway.  The only schedule Minho knew better than Taehyun’s was his own.  Bobby’s been talking about something called The Division, managing to keep the pseudo one-sided conversation up by himself, only getting basal responses in return, and Minho is grateful he hasn’t pried, has let him stay in his own head since he showed up.  Every day he forcibly hadn’t been able to talk to Taehyun only made him more restless.

Really, why would he say that?  What was he playing at?

Bobby must have asked a question, and the grunt Minho gives him in response wasn’t adequate enough, so he reaches out to touch him, a hand wrapping around Minho’s forearm.  And maybe…Minho had been skirting around any physical contact, too, putting a small insulating wall of air between them as much as he could.  Bobby’s hand is like a zap of electricity and Minho pulls back immediately.

“Y-Yeah that’s uh—that’s perfect, bro, let’s do it,” Minho babbles, jolted out of his reverie.  He tries to ignore the guilt chewing away at his innards when a flash of concern whips over Bobby’s features.

“Are you alright? Is it…is it because of Taehyun?”  A spike of anxiety stabs right in the middle of Minho’s gut and up his throat at Bobby being so on the mark.  How did he know?  Taehyun wouldn’t have said anything, would he?  Oh God, this was not a conversation he was ready to have.  Bobby sees the expression of shock on Minho’s face and rubs the back of neck guiltily.  “Sorry, man, Jinhwan might have told me you guys were fighting.  Apparently he mentioned you and Taehyun’s response was, uh, how did he put it?  ‘Hostile’.”

A flood of instant relief washes over him.  Bobby knows but he doesn’t really know, not the whole truth, anyway.  For a moment, Minho wants to smile.  It’s not exactly difficult to imagine Taehyun snapping and throwing a fit at the barest mention of his name.  And then he remembers exactly why they’re fighting and he feels wrong all over, again.

“Nah, don’t worry about.”  Minho flashes him a bright grin to reassure him, but Bobby doesn’t look like he’s buying it.  “So uh, you wanna order a pizza or something?  It’s on m—”

“Minho-hyung,” Bobby cuts in before he can finish.  Minho doesn’t think he’s ever seen Bobby look this serious and he can’t maintain eye-contact, stares down at his own interlocked hands, instead.  “I’m not tryna be nosy but, dude, you’ve been really off lately.  You know you can talk to me, right?  About anything?”

Minho hates the way his throat tightens up on him, his voice sounding hoarse to his own ears as he replies, “Yeah.  Yeah I know.”

“If it’s all about Taehyun, it’ll blow over.”  Bobby says.  “I know I don’t know the whole thing, but you guys are good friends and sometimes fights happen.  And I can tell he cares about you a lot.  It’s uh…it’s hard not to, with someone like you.”  Bobby says the last part so softly it’s only thanks to their proximity Minho hears him clearly.

It’s quiet between the two of them until Minho wills a cramped breath around the clog of emotion in his throat.  “He just—He just says shit, you know?  Usually I don’t care—I mean we’ve been bros for over a year I know how he is—but this time it’s like he has to shit on everything that I…”  Minho trails off and looks over to his friend, finally realizing how close Bobby has shifted.  Their backs are against the wall Bobby’s bed is flush against, arms brushing anytime one of them moves.  He swallows thickly and finishes softly, “That I care about.”

There’s another pause, this one much longer than the first and Minho can’t hold his gaze but he can’t look away either, so he’s stuck in this limbo of having hundreds of pins and needles piercing every pore of his body, wanting to bolt but not wanting to be anywhere else.  He wants to speak, to say literally anything but he can’t get past the lump in his throat.

“Hyung—” Bobby starts to talk but he can’t finish and lets out a trembling breath, instead.

Minho feels the ghost of Bobby’s breath on his face and he so badly wants—

…What does he want?

There isn’t much space between them already, so when Bobby completely closes the gap between them it’s not as much of a shock as it should be.

Then again, things with Bobby had always been natural from the start.

He’s so warm and comforting, his lips are soft and Minho is frozen and floating at the same time.  He sucks in a breath and he’s consumed by the warmth of Bobby’s hand on his face, the scent of Bobby’s cheap cologne wafting over him, the delicate press of lips against his own.  Minho’s turned inside out but still feels more of an aggregate being than he has in days.

The air surrounding Minho, the air leaking into his lungs is jelly, a thick, viscous liquid substance that’s stifling, making everything move painfully slow and muted.

Times still moving at a halted space when Bobby pulls away, tentative and apprehensive, a clear question on his face.

It’s slow when Minho stands up, and he’s still floating, almost feels like he’s viewing someone else in his body when he backs up watches Bobby crumble, and the only thing he can manage to do is stutter out, “I’m—I’m sorry.”

Minho sees himself slip on his shoes, mind still ice, all of his limbs weighed down as he pulls himself through the sludge, when he runs down the stairs of Bobby’s apartment.  He can’t hear anything but his own blood pounding in his ears, can’t think of anything but the softness of Bobby’s lips.  Time is still slow, his breath still ragged when he stumbles into his own room.  Whatever Jihoon says to him when he passes by is lost and he’s fighting gravity to fall onto his bed.  The moment he hits his sheets time rushes back, the past 30 gelatinous minutes solidified and came crashing down into him with terrifying force.  As everything plays back, Minho can see his actions in absolute clarity and feels icy-hot shame claw its way through him.

The single moment where he stood and watched Bobby shatter swirling through his head on a loop.

Taehyun’s sitting on his bed, textbook in his lap, thinking about turning in for the night when his phone starts to ring.  And not a little buzz with a short musical blurb accompany it signaling a text, but an actual long, drawn out ring. Someone was calling him on the phone.  Who did that nowadays?  It couldn’t have been his mom: he had already talked to her earlier that day, so unless it was an emergency she wouldn’t have been calling.

Frowning, he reaches over to his desk and picks up his phone to see Minho’s name on the display.  Well, not Minho’s name exactly, more like a rude explicative followed by a slew of negative emojis, but Taehyun knew who it was supposed to be and that’s what mattered.

Taehyun hesitates for a couple of seconds before swiping the call open.

“Hi.”

He hates how nervous he sounds to his own ears.

“Hey,” Minho’s voice, low, tired, and equally as nervous, washes over him and Taehyun draws the phone closer to his ear.  “Didn’t think you’d actually pick up.”

“My finger slipped.”  A lie.  A bad one, at that.  Minho knows and Taehyun can tell by the chuckle that filters into his ear.  It’s not much, but built up tension in his shoulders melts away and he relaxes against his headboard.

“Taehyun, I’m sorry,” Minho says quietly. “You were right, man, I wasn’t being a good friend.  To either of you.”

A flash of everything Taehyun had unloaded on Minho tumbles back to him and he blurts out, “I’m sorry, too.”  He’s relieved they're doing this over the phone, because he’d probably be too embarrassed to do it in person.  “I was mad at you and I shouldn’t have brought Bobby into it.  That wasn’t fair to you and especially not to him, either.  That…that was a dick move and something that I should have handled better, or probably let Bobby tell you himself—I don’t know, but—I’m sorry.  I’m really sorry.”

“Thanks, dude.”

“Yeah, same,” Taehyun breathes out uneasily.  He hates this; this isn’t how things are supposed to be between them.  “Let’s not talk about this anymore, okay?  So, um, how’ve you been?  How’s Bobby doing?”  Taehyun asks tentatively, an unasked question of ‘How are things between the two of you?’ laced into his words.

There’s a long pause, so long Taehyun almost thinks they’ve been disconnected, until Minho finally speaks.  “I messed up.”  A simple statement, and it only takes a little prompting from Taehyun for clarification of what Minho means before it all starts to tumble out.  “Shit, dude, I didn’t mean to—Bobby kissed me and I—I messed up, I really messed everything up—”

Taehyun shoots up into a rigid position, eyes wide and mouth open.  Holy shit was this beyond expectations.

“He kissed you?”  Taehyun also wants to yell ‘And you didn’t tell me?’ as an immediate follow up but then again, they hadn’t exactly been on speaking terms.  And that wasn’t exactly the most important part of the issue, at the moment.

“Yeah.  Yeah, he did and I blanked like a dumbass.  I just didn’t know what to do!  I walked out but I didn’t mean to—I really didn’t, I swear, dude—but I was so caught off guard, man, I didn’t even realize what I did until it was too late.”  Minho let's out long, frusturated groan. “Shit I really, really messed this up.”

“You did what!?”

Taehyun’s yelling at full volume now.

“I know I’m an idiot.”  Minho groans.  They may not be speaking face-to-face, but Taehyun can see the look of distress he know's Minho wearing.  “I feel like shit, dude, how could I do that?”

“Well?  What did you say to him afterwards?”

Another pause temporarily halts the conversation and Taehyun dreads whatever Minho’s about to hit him with.

“…I haven’t talked to him, yet.  I…don’t even know what to say,” Minho answers timidly.  The volume of his voice drops even further as he mutters, “It’s been three days; I don’t think he wants to talk to me, anyway.”

“Minho,” Taehyun practically hisses his friend’s name into the phone, and he feels a wave of annoyance seep into his skin.  This is precisely why they couldn’t fight, because then Minho had free reign to do shit like this.  “Minho, what is wrong with you?”

“I already feel bad enough, bro, don’t make me feel worse.”  Minho whimpers.

“You feel bad?  Are you serious?  How the Hell do you think Bobby feels then?”

“I know.  Shit, Taehyun, I know!”  Taehyun has never heard Minho sound so upset, and he feels a little guilty for raising his voice.

Sighing, Taehyun glances around his room until he spots his keys, and gets up to grab them.  “Here I come again to swoop in and save you from your own helplessness; just another ‘Day in the Life of Nam Taehyun’.”  He mumbles into the phone as he snatches his jacket off the back of his desk chair.

“What do you—”

“You know those jeans I bought you?  The only pair of pants you have that actual fit you?”  Taehyun cuts him off easily, shoving his feet into his shoes angrily.  Of course he wasn’t going to get a full nights worth of sleep, of course he was going to have to deal with Minho’s drama on the one night of the week he got everything he needed to do early.  Typical.

“Yeah but—”

“Make sure they’re clean and get them out, now, that’ll save me some time.”

“Time for what? What are you doing?”  Minho’s confused voice only causes Taehyun to frown deeper, and his door slams behind him with a lot more force than what was necessary.

“Time that I’ll need to make you look presentable!  Because we are going to go to see Bobby.”  Taehyun can hear Minho draw in a panicked breath, probably to argue, but he shuts him down instantly.  “You are fixing this today.”

-----

“I’ve already texted Jinhwan.  He made sure Bobby’s here.”

They’re standing outside of Jinhwan and Bobby’s apartment, waiting for Jinhwan to come down and fetch them, the sun set and chill settled in around them.  At least, Taehyun is standing, Minho is pacing large circles in front of him, hands jammed deep into his pockets and a deep frown furrowing his brow.

“Taehyun, I haven’t even thought of what I’m going to say to him.”  Minho shoots over his shoulder, footsteps anxiously heavy on the concrete.

“Whose fault is that?  You had the bus ride over to figure that all out, no one told you to waste it.”  Taehyun looks back down at his phone, bright display lighting up his face in the dark.  “Where the Hell is he?  I texted him like 4 minutes ago,” Taehyun mumbles, annoyed and impatient.

A hand latches on to Taehyun’s sleeve, and he looks up to see Minho staring down at him, uneasy and timid, and Taehyun’s eyes soften.  Minho’s mouth opens and closes as he tries to fit his words together.  Softly, he manages to whisper, “I’m scared.”

“It’s only been three days he can’t hate you that much,” Taehyun supplies gently.

“Not just that.”  Minho’s hand moves to tighten around Taehyun’s wrist.  “Dude, I’ve never—” his voice falters as he tries to gather his thoughts.  “I’m not even sure where I’m at, right now.”  And Taehyun gets it, he’s been right where Minho is, and it is scary.

“You like him.”  It’s silent and Minho just looks at him.  “Don’t bitch out now, you wouldn’t be here if you didn’t, right?”

Minho nods.

“Then that’s where you are; that’s what’s important.  You’ll figure the rest out as you go.”  Taehyun’s phone lights up and he looks down to see a message from Jinhwan.  “Or you’re going to have to, anyway.”

Taehyun readjusts Minho’s grip to hold his hand, keeping him in place.

Jinhwan greets both of them normally as if Minho doesn’t look 30 seconds away from having a breakdown and Taehyun doesn’t have a mom like vice-grip on him.  He even makes casual conversation with Taehyun on the way up to his apartment ignoring that they have to stop every 7 seconds for Taehyun to jerk Minho back into walking.  Truly an angel on earth.

They walk into the apartment and Taehyun is relieved he had the foresight to push Minho ahead and position himself between Minho and the stairs, because the moment Jinhwan opens the door to reveal Bobby sprawled out on the couch and he stumbles backwards like he’s attempting to make an escape.  Taehyun grips his shoulders and shoves him forward, violently hissing, “Don’t you goddamn dare,” through clenched teeth.

Bobby scrambles to stand up, almost as if he has the same instinct as Minho to bolt, and swivels to Jinhwan, looking betrayed and beyond panicked, and Taehyun is conscience-stricken when he sees Jinhwan’s face fall.

“U-Um, so, Taehyun wanted to come over and he brought…Minho…so…” Jinhwan trails off helplessly looking at Taehyun for assistance.

Well.  Maybe this wasn’t the most well thought out plan.  But at the end of the day this was about brute-forcing a reconciliation not about tact.

“Hey, Jinhwan, you never showed me your room,” Taehyun announces before dragging a slightly startled Jinhwan with him.  Tact had never been Taehyun’s strong point.  The door shuts imposingly behind them, leaving Bobby and Minho standing awkwardly in the living space.

Minho’s not quite prepared for the lurch of longing he feels when he finally gets a good look at Bobby.  Maybe it’s only been a few days, but going from talking to someone every day to a sudden cut of radio silence made it feel like weeks.

He missed him.

Missed the way he’d always lean into him when he laughed at one of his jokes, missed his smile, shy and blithe.  He really, really missed Bobby’s smile.  Even more so in this moment where the air between them is brittle like graphite, and he wishes more than anything that things would suddenly go back to normal, that Bobby would greet him like always and just smile.

But Bobby won’t look at him—not really—and it hurts.  It hurts more than he had thought it would even though he knows he’s not in the position to feel jilted.  Bobby’s not the one who walked out on him.  Sobering a thought as that was, it doesn’t change the way he feels, doesn’t stop the grip of emotion that closes around his throat when he tries to speak, tries to say anything to dissipate the cloud hanging around the both of them.  Minho considers it a small miracle Taehyun left because he’d probably kick Minho’s ass for being so awkward and hopeless.

“You wanna hang until they’re done doing whatever?”  Before Minho is even done speaking he wants to kick his own ass.  That wasn’t what he wanted to say! That wasn’t how this was supposed to go; not in the slightest!  How exactly was this supposed to go?  Minho might not have parsed out even a partial plan but he was still without a doubt that he was already wrong.

Bobby blinks slowly and scratches the back of his neck nervously, brow drawing in to a slight frown.  “Sure,” he starts hesitantly.  Bobby takes a step forward, then pauses, and glances at the TV that’s still on.  “Do you wanna…?”

“We never got to play that game you were talking about, last time.”  It’s an indirect reference to The Other Day and Bobby doesn’t miss it, goes rigid and Minho is mentally kicking himself again but he’s already here so he powers on.  “If—if you want to.  It looked cool, and all.”

Nailed it.

“Yeah. Yeah sure, bro.”  And then Bobby’s shuffling off to his room and it takes a few seconds longer than it should to register that he’s supposed to follow.  Minho doesn’t fail to notice the fleeting look Bobby throws at the door when Minho closes it behind him, how he lingers near his TV, fumbling with the game case for much longer than necessary, or how he avoids Minho’s eyes when he hands him the controller and sits on the floor against his bed, as far away Minho as he can be without being outright.  Reminding himself that this is his own fault doesn’t make him feel any better, but it’s the only thing that keeps him from sliding down next to Bobby and pressing up against him like they’re supposed to be.  Or at least like they used to be.

The loading screen is painfully slow, and connecting to the server is even worse, and neither of them speak, both waiting for the other to break the silence.  Minho thinks it should be him but he doesn’t know what to say, how to go about this.  He wasn’t ready—he wanted to be, more than anything he did, but he just wasn’t. And he didn’t want to mess up his relationship with Bobby any more than he already had.

Bobby’s voice, unusually soft, still manages to startle Minho when he utters a small, “Hey.”  Staring straight ahead, Bobby shifts around, fiddling with the analog sticks.  “Listen, man, can we talk about…what happened?”

A spike in Minho’s heart rate and an ‘Oh God this is really happening’ pierce through him simultaneously but he still manages to grunt out an affirmation.  This was the moment Taehyun dragged him out of the warm comforts of his bed for, this was the moment where he fixed everything, made everything between him and Bobby okay again.  Whatever he said next was vital beyond measure and boy, was he still lost. Where does he start, how does he—

“Dude, I know you’re probably still mad about—about what I did and I want you to know that I’m really sorry.”  Bobby lets out in a rush.  Minho is dumbfounded because he’s the one who’s supposed to be apologizing he’s the one who’s supposed to be making amends, not Bobby.  Still, he can only sit there confounded as Bobby continues to ramble on, incentivized by his silence.  “I wasn’t thinking, and that wasn’t fair to you, bro, and I know that, but I thought...maybe...I don't know, it doesn't matter.  I was wrong and I’m really sorry, man.  I know this is selfish but can we just forget about the whole thing?  We haven’t known each other for that long but you’re one of my best bros already and I don’t want to mess that up.  I still really wanna be friends if you do.  But if you don’t I get that.”

Bobby finally looks up at him and Minho finds himself nodding along dumbly, mouthing, “Yeah.  Sure, that’s alright,” with a voice foreign to his own ears.  Bobby’s shoulders sag and he lets out a relieved breath, a shaky smile teetering on his face.

“Thanks, man.”

The realization hits Minho that he has an out.  Things could go back to the way that they were before, where it was simple and natural and safe.  Bobby had just laid out a hard reset and Minho could take it without question.

But he doesn’t want to.

And if Taehyun found out that he did he probably wouldn’t live to see the morning.

“Wait, wait, Bobby—” Minho starts suddenly as he springs up to his feet.  He’s started pacing again, but it’s not helping him organize his thoughts like it's supposed to.  Surprised, Bobby scrambles to stand up after him, game forgotten by both of them.

“Do you want to go?”  Bobby asks tentatively, looking puzzled.  Minho hates how sad he looks, hates that he's the one making it like this, and his stomach twists, again.

“No!  No I don’t wanna leave, bro, I came here to see you.”  Minho sinks back down on to Bobby’s bed with his head in his hands.  He feels the mattress dip next to him before Bobby’s voice fills his ears, achingly closer than it’s been in days.

“If you’re still mad—”

“That’s not it!  I have something I want to say but I don’t know how,” Minho croaks into his palms.  He looks up to see Bobby’s worried face and he decides to just start talking, hoping Taehyun was right in saying he would figure it out along the way.  “Bobby...you’re the only dude I’m willing to split screen with—I mean look at this shit,” Minho gestures wildly to the display in front of them.  “This is terrible, I can’t see shit!  I get confused and forget which one’s mine, my KD ratio gets trashed—bro, I can barely see who's there you know how many times I get peeked?—but I don’t care because I get to hang out with you!”

There’s another crinkle in Bobby’s brow, this time one from pure, distilled confusion.

“…Okay…?”

Well, okay.  So maybe that wasn’t very clear.  Fair enough.

Minho draws in a deep breath and feels the nape of his neck and the tips of his ears grow hot.

“I wasn’t mad, Bobby.”  His friend only looks more confused and Minho doesn’t want to clarify anymore but he doesn’t have a choice.  “When you—you kissed me, I wasn’t mad.  Caught off guard?  Yeah—and I’m sorry I walked out like that, I wasn’t ready, yet, bro—but I wasn’t mad.”

Clearly, Bobby is still not convinced going by the look of bewilderment that only becomes more pronounced as more words tumble out of Minho’s mouth.

Goddamit.

Screw it; it was now or never.  In the wise words of the ever knowledgeable Aubrey Graham: YOLO.

Minho grabs Bobby’s shoulders and presses their mouths together in a rush.  It’s different from their first kiss, both of them are stiff and it’s much rougher, but the thoughts and feelings Minho wants to convey are there.  Minho pulls away only slightly to mumble, “I wasn’t mad,” against Bobby’s mouth before leaning in to kiss him again.  He feels Bobby smile and melt into the kiss and the weight that’s been drawing him inward dissipates at once and he feels light and airy all the way through.

Bobby leans back, pulling them apart, a glowing grin spread wide on his face, and if Minho hadn’t already know he was sprung before, the way his chest squeezes tight at the sight would have confirmed it, right then.  Ears blooming even redder, Minho pushes his face back into his palms.

“I like you a lot, bro,” Minho mumbles into his hands.

Bobby laughs, gently grabbing Minho’s wrists to pull them down and away from his face and says, “I really like you too, bro,” before swooping in to press another kiss to Minho’s lips.

-----

“So I see you two made up?”

Taehyun and Jinhwan chatting idly to pass the time while their friends worked out their little bromantic escapade.  Jinhwan is sitting on the edge of his own bed with Taehyun draped over the chair paired with the small desk that’s shoved into the corner.

“Only because he’s absolutely lost without me,” Taehyun sniffs.  Jinhwan only giggles in response and Taehyun sits up straighter.  “Look: I had to fix his entire life today.  If I wasn’t here what would have happened?”

“You’re not wrong,” Jinhwan says and then laughs fully.  When he’s done he says more seriously, “I feel like you just did a really nice thing.  You’re a good friend.”

Taehyun stares intently at his nailbeds.  “If I didn’t make sure Minho didn’t ruin this I would’ve had to deal with a full month of rebound partying and hookups and the resulting next-morning, hungover, pity-parties of regret.  There’s only so many times I can watch a single human-being shotgun 4Loko.  This is the much easier path, trust me.”

“I’ll have to take your word on that.  Still,” Jinhwan sighs, “I wish I had someone like you to set me up with someone.  Bobby only tries to hook me up with friends of his that are still in high school.  High school!  Can you believe that?  Not even freshmen but high schoolers?  Junhoe and Hanbin are nice kids, I’m sure, but how inappropriate is that?”

“Maybe it’s because you look so young.  I bet everyone our age probably thinks you’re the one in high school.”  Taehyun jokes.  Jinhwan lobs a pillow at him in retaliation and Taehyun catches it with ease.

“Don’t even joke about that,” Jinhwan groaned.  “Half the time I try to go out I get turned away!  They refuse to believe my ID is real.  I’m destined to waste away, alone forever.”  He punctuates his remark with a dramatic flop onto bed, bouncing slightly when his back connects with his mattress.

Taehyun throws his head back and laughs loudly at Jinhwan’s dramatics.

“I’m hungry,” Taehyun muses aloud after a moment of silence.  “Let’s get food.”

“What about the other two?  Bobby won’t let it go if I eat without him.”

“Ugh,” groans Taehyun.  “Neither will Minho.  They should be done by now, anyway, I’ll go ask them what they want.”

“Godspeed,” Jinhwan calls after him as Taehyun drags himself out his door.

He pauses right as he reaches for Bobby’s doorknob.  They should have worked it out by now, right?  The last thing Taehyun wants to walk in the middle of his some disgusting, ooey-gooey, bro-heart-to-bro-heart.  Snorting at that thought, Taehyun wraps his hand around the doorknob.  This was Minho he was thinking of.  He probably just burst into tears and word vomited and now they were playing some FPS happy as could be.

Taehyun swings the door open.  “Listen, losers—” is all Taehyun manages to get out before the words die in his throat.

Minho’s on his back, knees up and hands firmly gripping Bobby’s waist, who has his knees on either side of Minho. One of Bobby’s hands is pressed into the space to Minho’s head, the other low on his abdomen, fingertips in the process of slipping underneath the hem of his shirt.

Both of them are staring at Taehyun like they’re a pair of deer on a backroad and Taehyun is a sedan with the high beams on.

Hopefully, Brain Bleach qualifies for Amazon prime shipping.

Taehyun slams the door and spins on his heels, immediately marching back to Jinhwan’s room in a flourish.  Jinhwan jumps upright, startled by Taehyun’s sudden entrance.

“Grab your coat.  Let’s go.”

“Um?  What about—?”

“Nope!  Not worrying about them they can fend for themselves.”

Jinhwan doesn’t ask questions, just rolls off of his bed and follows Taehyun wordlessly, trying not to laugh.

Taehyun’s phone doesn’t stop buzzing as they make their way down the stairs, and it’s only because of Jinhwan’s quizzical look that he grudgingly looks at the messages Minho is sending him.  He ignores all of them—most of them being blushing emojis, anyway—to send his own in response.

‘Congrats, dumbass.’

Minho sends back a wide smiley and Taehyun can’t help but smile back at his phone’s screen.