Hyung, Sir, Choi Minho.
Title: Hyung, Sir, Choi Minho.
Rating: PG 13
Pairing: 2min
Summary: Minho likes coffee. Taemin is bittersweet, demanding, flyaway like the wind but Minho lets him be just so.
A/N: part two of the other thingy. Also LJ is being stupid and saying the post is too big or something so i'm posting this in two parts
part 1
*in here I'm taking the legal age of consent/ age to drink as 18
They fall into some sort of pattern over the next few weeks, Minho coming to pick up Taemin from school on a general three out of the five weekdays and then drive him back to his own apartment. He goes today, after receiving a text from the boy at lunchtime telling him that he wants to eat noodles after school and he thinks, why not?
There's a group of girls hovering near Taemin waiting at the gates when he goes to pick him up; Taemin looks impatient and darts to the door as soon as he arrives.
'Thank god you're here,' he sighs out once he gets in. 'Those girls have been giggling about you ever since the end of school.'
'...wait, what?'
'One of them recognized you last time you picked me up, and asked me if you were the teacher that covered us that time in chemistry,' he explains. 'I said yeah, and then they started swooning about how hot you were and stuff.'
Minho splutters. 'What?'
'I know, right?' Taemin continues, oblivious. 'I mean, I should have started telling them that time I was over at your place when you only had a towel around your waist, they would have been so jealous.'
He reddens, left hand immediately going to his clothed stomach protectively. 'What do you want to eat for dinner?' he asks, trying to change the subject. Minho thanks the stars that Taemin's easy to distract.
'Noodles!' he perks up, still watching the blur of the streets through the car window. 'Woah, Minho, did you see that guy? He had really, really nice legs.' Minho wonders how Taemin can say that when he has his own slender, shapely legs, and eyes them secretively in those soft grey uniform pants.
'Should we go get those noodles now?' he asks instead.
'Yeah, ok. Wait, did you see the girl who walked past? She was so pretty. Nicest lips I’ve ever seen.'
He looks over at Taemin, just in time to see him wet his lips with the tip of his tongue and make him groan inwardly. It was a wonder Minho survived all this time with this boy.
They got back to Minho's apartment, the noodles resting beside Taemin's feet for the duration of the journey because they were too hot to put on his lap. Minho still insisted on his 'condition' when Taemin came over, feeling some sort of accomplishment whilst he watched him work and smug in the fact that none of the other teachers had this sort of influence on him. It was endearing to watch Taemin's eyebrows crease when he was working on a particularly difficult maths problem, or how he bit down on his lip as he worked on an english essay. It came to the point where Minho knew what homework he was doing based on his current facial expression.
'Chemistry again?' Minho asks, wrapping noodles around his chopsticks idly.
Taemin looks up at him. 'You know, I still find it really creepy how you know that.'
Minho laughs. He had, and probably would never tell him how he knew. He didn't want Taemin to change his expressions on purpose, or become self-conscious about how he generally sat with his left ankle under his right knee when he did chemistry homework.
'Did you know,' Taemin starts conversationally, 'that I’ve stopped getting detention?'
'Really now?'
'Yeah. It's kinda funny to see that the teachers are so surprised my brain actually works.' He raises his eyebrows mockingly.
- -
Minho gets drunk on a night out with his friends, stumbling home in the early morning alone and laughing giddily to himself. He's on the top of the world, his mind telling him to do things without thinking of the consequences. Like calling Taemin.
Taemin won't pick up, though. Minho pouts to himself, his mind a kind of hazy clear with the alcohol. He lights up when he thinks of texting him.
Hjey taee I feel rellly gooood rihgt now
taee tae taemin-ah taeaeaeeee minnie taeminnie taemino taeminho hahahahahhahahaa
oops I driped my pgone
TAE MIN HOE?
NO CRASKS
WERe did my ned goo
this is batroom not bedroom
FOUND T
my bed ur bed wat is thje difernce
I feel reelly gooood
not god GOOD
no wait I thjink I fel horny
sleeeep sleep slep slap
good nhgt tarmunnie
no peeing wifh a boner is realy hard
is that why boners are hard
He wakes up the next morning with a blearing headache, groaning as he stumbles to the kitchen for some water. It's too early to do anything else, so he goes back to bed, picking up the phone on the floor next to it and automatically unlocking the screen to check for messages.
From: Taemin
…
I’ll come by tomorrow when you're NOT drunk or hungover
Minho has the decency to blush the following morning when he hears the knock on his door, opening it to find Taemin on the other side with one perfectly raised eyebrow and a tapping foot.
'You know,' Taemin muses after he's made himself comfortable on the sofa with his feet propped up in Minho's lap. 'I’ve never actually been drunk before.'
Thank god, Minho thinks. He's already over protective of this boy, and he doesn't want to think of Taemin hanging out on the streets or in the park, rowdy and leering and not enough sense to tell the difference between a bird and a squirrel.
'Not until you're 18,' he says, grimacing at the thought.
'Come on, Minho, I’ve actually had alcohol. I just don't want to get drunk in public, and it's not like I want to get drunk in front of my parents. Please?'
Sometimes (a lot of the time) Minho hates how Taemin's eyes droop down and look inexplicably sad, and how his lips automatically become poutier when he wants something.
'Fine,' he sighs out. 'But not today. Someday when I’ve gotten over the night before yesterday.'
It turns out, it's only a week and two days later that he buys alcohol in preparation for Taemin coming over.
I got 96% in my chemistry test, Taemin had texted him, and that means we're gonna celebrate
'What are you going to tell your mum when you get home drunk?' Minho asks him once he steps in through the doorway.
'I told her that I was gonna stay over at a friend's house to celebrate getting that term test over with,' he grins, entirely too pleased with himself. It kicks into Minho's brain.
'Wait, what? You're staying overnight?'
'Come on, Minho,' Taemin rolls his eyes at him. 'It's not like you're gonna kick me out, alone and drunk in the dark of the night with nowhere to go.'
He's planned this, Minho realizes, cursing the day he ever agreed to follow Taemin out of that café.
(And he still hasn't got his jacket back.)
- -
They start off steadily, one beer each. Minho watches, holding back his laughter as Taemin grimaces at first, unused to the bitter taste but then shrugs his thin shoulders, swirling the liquid around in his mouth until he gets used to it and almost begins to enjoy it. He tells Minho about the day of his chemistry practical, aided with the bottle of beer in his hand.
'And the guy at the table next to me put in potassium instead of magnesium into the hydrochloric acid and pooft, glass everywhere!' He imitates the explosion with his arms. 'I felt kinda sorry for the guy, though. He had to go into that chemical shower thing no one's ever used because he got the acid on his clothes, and we all had to go out.' He drains the last of his first bottle, gesturing for Minho to hand him a second. 'But he was alright, I think he suffered more from having to take off all his clothes in front of the class rather than having any acid burn him.'
Minho is already discovering that Taemin has a weaker alcohol tolerance than him.
'You know,' Taemin says, peering at his face with the utmost concentration. 'You have really nice eyebrows. Yeah, you do.' he reaches up from across him, and touches his eyebrows admiringly.
'How much are you planning to drink?' asks Minho, turning stiff when Taemin leans down to stroke his thighs like they were a pet.
'Enough until I’m drunk!' he laughs, tipping back his bottle again. 'But not enough so that I’ll throw up, because that would be bad.' He hands his third empty bottle to Minho with a hiccup.
Minho stops after his second beer, reasoning that one of them has to be sober. Taemin's sat next to him, laughing giddily at the news that's playing on the television, his hands loosely clasping his fourth bottle. He leans over to the table to get a pretzel, but loses his balance and falls into Minho instead.
'Oh, hi, Minho.' Taemin blinks up at him, head in his lap and eyes looking darker than usual. He pushes himself up, but doesn't distance himself away any further. Minho sees his face get closer, closer with his head tilting up, Taemin's eyes automatically closing and letting his lips fall into a natural pout.
'Woah, Tae,' he says, taking a hold of his wrists and pushing him away gently. Taemin whines, trying again to close the distance between them.
'Tae, I can't, not when you're drunk, okay?' Minho keeps a firm grasp on him, hoping that at least part of his words make it through to him.
'But I wanna kiss you,' Taemin mumbles, slouching back against the sofa and gazing thoughtfully at Minho.
'I can't, Minnie. You're too young.' The words come out laced with regret, and he sighs, regretting the fact that he has to be the responsible one. 'Maybe we should go to sleep now. It's late.'
He lets Taemin have his bed, the younger falling onto the mattress haphazardly and lying across it diagonally. Minho lies on the sofa, his body too long for it to be comfortable.
- -
The next morning, Minho's practising flipping his pancakes as Taemin stumbles sleepily out of his room, looking rumpled in his bed head and slouching pants.
'It smells good,' Taemin says, inhaling deeply as he dumps himself down on a chair.
Minho glances at him, noticing his fluffy hair and sleepy mouth. It feels strange for them to be like this; not like any sleepover he's had with other friends but more that Taemin's 'stayed the night'.
'Of course it smells good. You didn't help.'
'Hey, the last time we made pancakes and I added salt instead of sugar was a genuine mistake,' Taemin drawls, letting his arms sprawl over the table.
'You're hopeless, Tae,' he grins, and when he begins to plate up the food Taemin drags himself up lazily to raid the cupboards, filling his arms with anything sweet that he can find.
'Does that even taste good?' Minho asks disbelievingly, eyeing Taemin's current pancake and the mix of golden, chocolate and strawberry syrup it's drowning in.
'Yeah. Want some?' He carefully cuts a square and waves it in front of Minho, offering.
'I’m pretty sure I’ll get diabetes from that one bite,' he teases.
'Come on, Minho, stop acting like such an old man and live a little.' He stretches over the table, trying to reach Minho's mouth and only growing more frustrated when he leans back in his chair, effortlessly avoiding him and grinning. When he can't reach, he gives up and stands to walk around to Minho, challenge in his eyes that says you're going to eat this whether you like it or not and Minho tries to press his lips together, snorting with laughter instead of laughing with his mouth. Taemin leans over, so close that Minho can see the curve of his neck and all that's in his mind is that he's nearly sitting in his lap and that the syrup's trickling, drop by drop off his fork.
'Eat it,' Taemin whines, and he gives in, allowing him to shove it into his mouth and all he can taste is syrup and sugar dancing on his tongue, and he can't help but think this is what Taemin would taste like.
['How much of last night do you even remember?' Minho asks at one point. (At which point he can't remember, but he's certain he's asked it.)
'Everything, really. Until you carried me to bed.'
'Oh,' he says, and there's this kind of awkward silence because they both know what he's asking, but neither of them are brave enough to face it yet.]
Minho doesn't know what's become of him, spending most of his evenings with a boy four years younger than him when he should be out socialising with his own friends his age; drinking, partying, doings things people his own age did. Instead, he finds himself helping this boy with his homework on the rare occasion he needs it; finds himself almost spurting out chocolate milk out of his nose at some of the blasé things Taemin let slip out of his mouth and spending far too much time challenging the boy at Ultimate Sudoku.
He prefers Taemin's company though, and is almost certain that the younger boy is more mature than his own friends. But he finds himself staring a little too long when Taemin's doing his homework, wondering how those pursed lips would feel against his own skin. He tries to snap out of it; Taemin's too young for him to think of like this, he tells himself. But he finds that the line blurs, especially when it comes to 3am and their minds aren't working properly, causing Taemin to tell one of his more (very) vulgar (more straight forward, he puts it the next day) pick up lines. It's not all Taemin - Minho's done more than his fair share of toeing-the-line flirting with him, innuendoes that he claims he never meant to make.
But they both know better; there's only so many times that Minho can say those innuendoes were a coincidence and compliment Taemin on his hair.
(there's also only so many times one can catch the other staring at them and brush it off as nothing, and the frequency only multiplies as time goes on.)
His father phones to tell him to come to dinner again; it's been almost three weeks since his mother had last seen him, and as far as she's concerned, that's three weeks too many.
Usually when they sit down to dinner, his mother talks about anything and everything; the neighbours' new wind chimes, her friend she saw whilst grocery shopping, how the price of beansprouts had gone up. He and his father generally interjected at the suitable times they were supposed to, sharing bemused looks with each other when she forgot the vegetables on the stove that nearly boiled over.
It's during one of these rare silences when his mother had gone to fetch the soup that his father speaks up, voice calm and unassuming.
'You know, Minho-ah, that Taemin's grades have gone up recently.'
'Oh.' He tries to withhold the surprise in his voice.
'Also, I keep thinking I see your car after school. Isn't that the strangest thing?'
'It is, isn't it? Very strange,' he echoes.
He knows, Minho panics. It's so obvious he knows, oh my god his own son with a student he knows he knows he knows
'Ah, I was thinking that you would make a good tutor for Taemin, but I just never thought he would listen, you know?' He smiles serenely at Minho, piercing a potato with his fork to pop into his mouth.
- -
'Have you had your first kiss yet?' Minho asks one afternoon, fiddling with the water bottle in his hand.
Taemin finishes chewing and swallowing before answering. 'Nope, why?' he pops in another piece of kimbap immediately after.
'Just wondering.' He won't admit to himself that he's glad.
'Have you?'
'Yeah.' his gaze flickers to Taemin to see his reaction. He seems composed, pausing in his chewing to take a sip of milk.
'How old were you when it happened?'
'18?'
Taemin looks up at him, a smirk appearing on his lips. 'I’m gonna beat you.'
- -
May comes with a blisteringly hot heat, Minho wiping the sweat from his brow and turning the air-con in his flat higher. The whole city is wearing shorts, because no one can bear the long pants sticking to their clammy skin. It was so that Taemin arrives to his car wearing his PE uniform, nonchalant with the summer sun streaking down his skin.
'Thank god your car has air-con,' he says as he collapses in, sweat dropping in rivulets down his neck already. Minho can't help but watch the sweat make its way down until it passes his collar, snapping back to attention when Taemin leans toward the fan above the radio, sighing contentedly.
'Can we please get ice cream? Or ice lollies or just ice?'
Minho says yes, because that's all he can do.
It's when they're sitting in his apartment, with Taemin's lips wrapped around his red watermelon popsicle and Minho kind-of-watching-him-but-trying-not-to-get-caught that Minho thinks of another condition.
'Tae. You know how I said I won't kiss you until you're seventeen?'
Taemin straightens up at this, eyes brightening.
.
'Yeah. What, you want to now?'
He laughs, not maliciously but out of endearment at the way Taemin licks his lips unconsciously, maybe moistening his lips at the thought, or maybe just because of the remaining popsicle juice.
'No. I was thinking. Well....' He isn't quite sure how to put it without making Taemin complain about how old he is.
'You know how you have exams coming up?'
Taemin slits his eyes guardedly, leaning an elbow against the back of the sofa.
'Yes.'
'Well, say, hypothetically, that you got straight As.'
'We know that I’m gonna get straight As. Please.'
'If you get straight As in every subject,' Minho carries on, pretending that Taemin hadn't interrupted him at all. 'I wouldn't be opposed to giving you a prize.'
Taemin grins at this, the kind of grin that Minho was equally scared and happy to see because it was wicked and curled up in the sort of way that told him there was a plan formulating in that head of his.
'And is this related to the topic before?'
'Um. Yes?'
'And do I get to decide the duration and intensity of this prize?'
Minho got bewildered by the sudden onslaught of questions.
'...Yeah?'
And there was a sly smirk on Taemin's lips, the sort that told Minho there were only bad things in his mind.
'It's a deal, Choi.
- -
Ever since that night, Taemin hadn't texted Minho. At all. And Minho, who had become used to the boy texting him things at 3am like 'there's a spider on my wall I think I’m gonna name him Gilbert' was at a loss. He held out for four days, refusing to cave and be the one to text first. But it was on his way home from his last university lecture of the day, when he had unthinkingly bought two portions of noodles that he realised he missed Taemin. A lot. So he caved.
To: Taemin
are you sick?
From: Taemin
no
He wonders if he's done something wrong.
To: Taemin
what's up
From: Taemin
the ceiling
To: Taemin
you're funny.
From: Taemin
I know I am
To: Taemin
I meant what are you doing you know
From: Taemin
revising. Hush.
And this continues on for the next few weeks, with Minho hardly ever getting to see Taemin because he's on study leave now, and he realises that Taemin's taking this 'condition' seriously. He finds it strange how he actually misses Taemin's presence in his flat; it seems so much more empty and quiet without the boy's presence in the evenings, leaving him to eat dinner by himself. He starts to wish he never made that stupid comment about the 'prize'.
Two more weeks go by.
To: Taemin
good luck. Text me after, or something
It's the day of Taemin's last exam, Minho waiting for the day to come so he could pick Taemin up after and talk and eat food and play video games and finally beat Taemin's ass in football again. Without the boy in his apartment, he had been forced to actually do work, and the result was that he had finished his dissertation with a month still to spare.
From: Taemin
thanks, as always
Minho's reminded of the fact he's never missed a day to say good luck, even when the exam was first thing in the morning. He would set an alarm just to text Taemin, then fall back asleep promptly after.
Whatever, he thinks. It'll be worth it if he does well.
A text comes two hours later.
From: Taemin
I’m done. Pick me up?
Minho doesn't bother to exit out of the text before he shoves the phone in his pocket and goes to find his car keys.
When he arrives, Taemin's perched on the little part of kerb the school gate leaves room for, his blazer lying carelessly beside him and his top button already loosened. His face is tilted up to receive the sun's kiss, leaning back on the gate. Minho drinks in the sight, heat beating faster with the excitement of finally seeing the boy again after a whole month.
He beeps the horn, stirring Taemin out his daydream and he taps his fingers on the stirring wheel as he waits for him to pick up his blazer.
'Hey, Tae,' he grins once Taemin climbs in. He pauses to scrutinize Taemin's face; Taemin shifts uncomfortably under his glare. He looks older, Minho thinks to himself. Is it possible for a teenager to get wrinkles over a month?
'What are you looking at, you idiot,' he mumbles, and he tells Minho to just start driving as he fumbles with the radio to get it back to the rock channel rather than the horrible indie pop Minho prefers.
Minho glances at Taemin when he can whilst he's driving, the other chattering inanely about his last exam.
'I hate when the question seems so easy that I think it's a trick question,' he grumbles. 'What's the point of the question if it just tells you the answer in the first sentence? And hyung, stop staring at keep your eyes on the road. It would really suck if we crashed and I didn't even get to eat after exams.'
'So, when do you get your results?' Minho asks entirely casually when they're in the line for some fried chicken.
'Probably next week some time. Hey, hyung, do you think we can get corn with it as well?'
Sometimes Minho curses how vague Taemin can be, and also easily distracted.
next