#13. SHINee [Jonghyun/Minho]
Mod Note: Due to a mix up on our part, quid will receive two fics. This is the first one - eternal apologies to all parties involved :(
Fandom: SHINee
Title: when the leather runs smooth on the passenger seat
Rating: pg-13
Pairing(s)/Focus: jonghyun/minho
Length: 3424
Summary: Minho remembers what happened the last time Jonghyun tried to
take off on his own.
Warnings: N/A
Remixee author: quid
Title of work you remixed: these days are for chasing light
Link to work you remixed: http://quid.livejournal.com/7404.html#cutid1
-
The message on Minho's answering machine went like this:
'Hey, this is Jonghyun. This is still your number, right?' There was a pause and a drumming sound. Minho could almost see Jonghyun rapping on the corner of his table with a pen. Minho remembered Jonghyun's squat IKEA coffee table, a veneered birch number with wheels on the legs, and how freckled it was with dents. 'It's, uh, weird to ask you this, but would you mind watching my dog for a few days? Let me know.'
Once Jonghyun's voice cut off, Minho set his briefcase down on the counter. He leaned against the pantry cabinet, feeling the knob like a rock under his back. He could just ignore the message, pretend it wasn't his number. Jonghyun would find somebody else.
Minho dug through his briefcase for his cellphone.
why didn't you just text me? Minho typed, careful not to scroll up toward any previous messages.
He pressed his fingernails into his lower lip. Texting was nerve-wracking; Minho was not good with anticipation. He thought this every time he sent an important text, but he always forgot just how disconcerting it was until the next time he needed to text a valuable client, his father, or a wayfaring ex-boyfriend.
Minho paced across the length of the kitchen three times before sitting down in the armchair. Minho remember how, the first time Minho had shown Jonghyun the new apartment, Jonghyun had pointed at the armchair and said, 'What is that thing.'
'It's a chair?' Minho had said, feeling vaguely offended. It was a tall, grey tweed chair that used to be his father's. His mother had been considering getting rid of it the year before, but Minho had protested. Minho remembered how, in high school, he would sit on the carpet and watch his father work. He was always in the gray chair, bent over paperwork, the side of his face orange from the lamplight with shadows sinking into the wrinkles around his eye. Between his father's solemn focus on pending contracts and Minho's solemn focus on the small, white hairs on his father's neck, it almost felt like conversation.
'It's the only piece of furniture in this place that seems real,' Jonghyun had said, sinking into the threadbare seat. 'It looks like a catalog in here. It's depressing.'
The apartment was everything that Minho had ever wanted--view of the Seoul skyline, an Eames sofa--but now, Minho was inclined to agree. His footsteps on the hardwood echoed and it got cold at night.
Minho's pocket vibrated, and he jumped.
you change your number too often, jerk, Jonghyun's text read. That wasn't true. This number, he made it a point not to change.
where are you going?
im in trouble. need to leave for a while
by yourself? Minho knew immediately after typing it that yes, it was by himself. This was Jonghyun's thing, or at least the thing he pretended to be: soul-searchy, traveling martyr-cum-musician. Minho dialed Jonghyun's number.
'Hey Minho, I-' Jonghyun started.
'Don't be so impulsive. Don't go off by yourself, dumbass.'
'But, Mom! I'm an adult' Jonghyun whined, and Minho was taken aback by how easily they fell back into the old rhythm.
'I know you. Do you remember the last time you did this?'
'I gave my last ten thousand won to a fifteen-year-old runaway and you had to pick me up from a gas station in Gwangju. Did I ever really thank you for that?'
'No.'
'Thanks for that one time, Minho. I really appreciated it.' They grew quiet. Minho could hear Jonghyun tapping his feet.
'Let me come with you. I can drive and stop you from dying,' Minho said. He said it like it was so obvious that they should go together, no big deal.
'Who will watch my dog? She's really sensitive,' Jonghyun said. There was a loud slap of static, like Jonghyun was switching hands.
'I'll pick you up on Wednesday.'
'What time?' There was a grin in Jonghyun's voice.
Minho's alarm went off at 5am. Already awake, he turned it off. The hair on his legs bristled as he pushed off the blankets.
'Why are you doing this to yourself?' Dr. Kim said. Her usually firm voice sounded tinny through his phone's speakers.
Because I miss him, he thought, but said nothing. He tried to imagine what she was doing right now: reading the newspaper, drinking coffee in her bathrobe? Making her kid breakfast? He could hear the morning news in the background.
'What are you hoping will happen?' she said.
Minho grabbed a t-shirt off the nightstand, sniffed it twice, and stuffed it into his duffel bag. The phone slipped in his grip; his hands were sweating.
'I'm only going to call if it's an emergency,' he said. He paused, tried to rub the wrinkles out of a blazer. 'Sorry for always calling you at your house.' Dr. Kim started to speak, but Minho hung up.
It was unbearably hot and humid out, the waning summer's one last 'fuck you' before the relief of fall. Minho had the air turned up, but a pool of sweat was collecting where his Ray-bans met his nose.
'Hey,' Jonghyun said, closing his apartment door. Jonghyun took the steps leading to the sidewalk two at a time. There was a hiking backpack thrown over one of his shoulders, and with every bounce it made a sound like frying pans colliding. He had his dachshund cradled in one arm and his guitar draped over the other.
'Hey,' Minho said, leaning over to pop the trunk. 'You're bringing the dog?' Jonghyun had gotten a haircut since the last time they'd seen each other. His hair was short and messy, and it made him look younger, brighter. Beads of sweat gathered along the edges of his forehead.
'Her name is Roo and yes, because you ruined everything.'
Jonghyun laid his guitar case down along the back seat, gingerly, like putting a child to bed. Minho jumped at the crash of Jonghyun's backpack rolling into the trunk, and then Jonghyun was slipping into the seat beside him.
'Are you ready?' Jonghyun asked. He positioned Roo in his lap and reached behind him for the seatbelt. Minho was distracted by the way Jonghyun shifted in the seat, the way his shoulders twisted and pulled his shirt taut.
'Yeah,' Minho said. Maybe.
'This is not a roadtrip car,' Jonghyun said, two hours south of Seoul. The windows were half-down and Minho's hair was tickling his face, to his unending annoyance. Jonghyun had his head down, improvising a hairclip out of two guitar picks and a piece of medical tape taken from the first aid kit in the glove compartment. Roo was uninterested in the outside air, preferring to lie with her nose tucked under Jonghyun's t-shirt.
'What?' Minho pushed a strand of hair behind his ear. He glanced at Jonghyun in his peripheral vision.
'You need something old, something a little beat up, for a roadtrip. Not a BMW.' They passed a girl on a scooter, and Jonghyun waved exaggeratedly. 'Where's your sense of romance?'
Minho returned his eyes to the road. He wasn't the type of person to own a vintage Mustang. He went to coffee shops for the caffeine, not the atmosphere. He knew only one song by The Smiths, and it was the one that Jonghyun used to scream in the shower. He was going to say something acerbic about how he's sorry he's so lame, how not everybody can be an eccentric, indie lyricist sweetheart, but then Jonghyun reached over and clipped Minho's bangs back, his fingers brushing Minho's forehead, and Minho inhaled instead. Jonghyun smiled.
'Don't you want to know what I did to get in trouble?' Jonghyun asked with his hand on the back of Minho's headrest. Jonghyun smelled sweaty, but it wasn't unpleasant.
'Not really.'
'I stole money,' Jonghyun said, moving back to his own seat. Minho didn't know how to react, so he nodded.
Both Roo and Minho had to pee, and the sun was setting. The buildings were sparser now, giving way to fenced-off fields. Jonghyun got out of the car to ask a couple waiting at the bus stop for directions to an inn, and Minho watched him gesture with his hands. He made a hand motion that looked like a dolphin jumping. Minho pulled his cellphone out of the cup holder; it had been vibrating on-and-off for the last five hours, but he had been determinedly ignoring it while Jonghyun was present. It announced four new calls, three of which were work-related. His supervisor hadn't been happy to give him three days off, and had implied that Minho was exploiting his position as the CEO's son. That accusation had caused Minho to sulk in his office for a few hours. He'd been accumulating vacation time for a year, so his request was within his boundaries.
The fourth call, however, was from Minho's father. There were thousands of things he could've called about: to tell Minho that the quarterly reports were out, to yell at Minho for approving a proposal, to say that Minho's mother had recovered from her cold. But one reason stood out darkly in Minho's mind: his father knew where he was, what he was doing, who he was with. That possibility was enough to make him dizzy. He grabbed the steering wheel to steady himself.
Roo whined and put her front paws against the passenger-side door, her tail slapping the leather seat. Jonghyun lifted her up and got in, giving Minho a thumbs up.
The inn was run by an old lady with a spine so curved that she couldn't look up high enough to see Minho's face. She gave them the keys and Jonghyun bowed, exposing a sliver of skin right above the waistband of his boxers. Minho reached over and yanked Jonghyun's shirt down, earning himself a glare all the way to their room.
'Breathe, Roo!' Jonghyun said. He opened Minho's duffel bag, and Roo poked her head out.
'If she pooped in there, you're dead.' The room was dusty and small, but warm. It reminded Minho of Jonghyun's apartment, of the restaurants that Jonghyun liked, and of Jonghyun. There was one queen-sized bed in the center of the room. They could erect a pillow boundary between them, if it felt weird. He was surprised that, overall, it wasn't awkward between Jonghyun and him. There were those brief moments where Minho's breath caught in his throat, or Jonghyun smiled knowingly and Minho hated him, but it almost felt like they'd always been just friends. Minho felt so proud of himself that he wanted to call Dr. Kim and say see, I knew I was ready, I knew I'd be fine.
They did change clothes privately, however, taking turns in the bathroom. Minho put his phone on the ceramic counter and stared down at his missed calls. The room was still humid from Jonghyun's shower. Minho was starting to feel sick, again.
Six months ago, he'd been summoned to a conference. The only staff present had been his father and some stiff PR people. They were clustered at the front of the table and Minho was seated at the far end, making it feel uncomfortably like a trial.
'If I'm going to promote you to manager of Customer Service,' his father began, swiveling slightly in his chair, 'there are some issues we need to clear up.'
Minho assumed it was about the time he'd accidentally used informal language with the president of a partner company, or when he'd been asked to let Human Resources win the company soccer game but had scored a goal, anyway.
'There are some rumors, Minho,' one of the PR men said.
'We have a picture,' said another.
They slid the photograph across the table. It was blurry and taken from behind, but he recognized Jonghyun's broad shoulders and heavy-soled boots and Minho's own face, turned to the side, smiling. Their hands were clasped together.
'We've taken care of this photographer,' his father said, 'but you need to tell us the truth.'
It was the worst possible way to come out to his father: in a room of cold strangers with MBAs and comb-overs and clipboards. So he lied, said that it was just a friend and it was nothing. His father sighed in what Minho knew was relief, the PR people filed out of the room, and Minho, his face bright red, wanted to crawl under the table and die.
That was when the dizzy spells started. When he was at one of Jonghyun's shows, when he rode the bus from Jonghyun's place instead of from his own, when Jonghyun fell asleep in his father's old chair all Minho could think was that he was betraying both of them.
'And it's making you physically ill?' Dr. Kim had asked on their first meeting. She was severe-looking, her hair pulled back in a tight bun, but she had lipstick on her front teeth. He liked her instantly.
'Yes.'
'Then you have a difficult choice to make, but you need to make it.'
When Minho came out of the bathroom, water still rolling off his hair and onto the matted carpet, Jonghyun was sitting cross-legged on the bed with a notepad in his lap. Roo was asleep at his feet.
'Don't forget how in your warmth I breathed for such a long time,' Jonghyun sang in a jokey falsetto, a rerun of last season's hit melodrama playing on the TV.
Minho slid under the duvet. The sheet, warm from Jonghyun's body heat, sunk between Minho's toes. Minho closed his eyes and tried to empty his mind, tried to stop thinking about work and his father and everything that sucked, but he could feel Jonghyun bouncing his leg absently and it made Minho think of all the times before. A small room, an orange light, a broken air conditioner, a lumpy mattress, two bodies. Minho sat up, with the intention of wedging a pillow between them after all, but the hole in the center of the mattress caused them both to lean inward. Just enough for their shoulders to knock together. When they turned to look at each other, Minho was close enough to Jonghyun's face to notice the way an acne scar on his cheek sort of looked like a heart.
They stayed that way for a moment. Jonghyun's lips were slightly parted, maybe in shock or maybe in expectation, and the television cast a purple glow over his face. Then Minho was standing, grabbing Roo in one arm and his duffel bag in the other, closing the door behind him and exhaling into the cold air.
Minho got into the car and though about calling Dr. Kim, but it was too early in the morning and nothing would happen as long as he didn't go back inside the room. He wasn't sure why he'd brought Roo with him. Maybe he just didn't want to be alone.
'I'm jealous of you,' he said to the drowsy dachshund. She was burying her nose into the crook of his arm. 'You're allowed to love him all you want.'
Minho awoke to a serenade. His neck was sore from sleeping with his head at a strange angle, his lower-back twinged when he moved: the usual car-sleep aches. Jonghyun was on one knee outside the car door, the body of his guitar resting on his bare thigh.
'Will nature make a man of me yet,' Jonghyun sang in English that was jarring even to Minho's untrained ears. 'When in this charming car, this charming man.'
'You're ridiculous,' Minho said, trying not to smile.
They were on the road again, on the final stretch to Busan when Minho finally asked what he probably should have asked in the beginning.
'Are the police looking for you? Because you've made me an unwitting accomplice.'
Jonghyun looked up. He'd made a few guitar pick hairclips for himself, although his hair was too short to need them, and they were stuck onto his head arbitrarily. There was one in Roo's fur, as well.'No. I didn't rob a bank or anything, just took fifty thousand won from Joonhyuk to pay my rent.'
Joonhyuk was the drummer of Jonghyun's band, a skinny literature major with a tattoo of a pizza above his elbow.
'You made it sound like it was serious.'
'I wanted to impress you,' Jonghyun said with a sigh. Minho was having trouble breathing. Jonghyun impressed him without trying.
'But Joonhyuk is pretty scary when he's pissed,' Jonghyun added.
The hotel in Busan was cleaner and bigger, but they didn't feel like hanging around. It was dark out, the air was salty, and they were hungry. They left a bowl of water for Roo, went out for lobster and, by the third pitcher of beer, Jonghyun was composing instant classics such as 'Minho, Your Hands are Large.'
They wandered back to the hotel at three AM, not drunk enough to stagger but not sober enough to stop smiling at nothing. Minho reached into his pocket for the room key. When he looked up, Jonghyun was staring at him so earnestly that Minho had to laugh.
'What?' Minho asked, cupping Jonghyun's shoulder with his palm.
'I haven't been able to write anything good since we broke up,' Jonghyun said. He seemed sobered, his eyes awake and wide.
'I still love you,' Jonghyun said, without a trace of embarrassment.
Minho froze, dully aware of how fast his heart was beating. He felt the nausea threatening to take over, saw the picture sitting on the conference room table, could hear his dad disowning him. But he was pushing Jonghyun up against the wall, Jonghyun was kissing him, their teeth were bumping together, Minho was fumbling for the keys, and then they were hopeless.
'You guys did it again?' Dr. Kim asked.
'Well, yeah,' Minho mumbled. He'd given in and called her as soon as he'd woken up. He sat on the hood of the car and frowned into his phone.
'I just want you to recognize that you're putting yourself back in the same position you were in before. You can't continue to balance two different lives.'
'I don't know what to do. I...love him, but I love my father and the company, too.'
'Do you really love the company? Or is it just the only way for you to relate to your Dad?'
Minho considered that. He'd barely known his father until they'd started working together,
'I don't know,' Minho admitted. 'It's so hard to be a person. Can you just tell me that I'm going to be okay, eventually?'
'You're going to be okay, eventually,' she said, even and warm.
Minho and Jonghyun walked to the edge of Busan, looking out over Suyeongman Bay. This had been their goal: the end of Korea and back. There was no sand on this side of the beach, just hard rocks that extended like a peninsula into the water, then dropped off. The smog was heavy, and it made them cough as they hiked. Jonghyun had found a way to carry Roo in his backpack. Her head bobbed above the zipper as they walked.
'Well, that's that,' Jonghyun said. 'No more land. I like how final that is. We're not turning around because we want to, we're turning around because there's nothing left.'
'Deep.'
'Shut up.'
Jonghyun shifted back and forth on his feet for a minute, as if to psych himself up, then took in a deep breath.
'CHOI MINHO!' He yelled it into the bay, the veins bulging in his neck. Minho winced and nearly tripped over a rock.
'Choi Minho. I won't wait for you forever,' Jonghyun said. He was still looking out into the water. 'But I will wait for you, for a little bit. So hurry up and figure things out.'
Minho wrapped his fingers around Jonghyun's wrist, feeling Jonghyun's pulse quicken under his thumb and, laughing, sprinted for the car.
Fandom: SHINee
Title: when the leather runs smooth on the passenger seat
Rating: pg-13
Pairing(s)/Focus: jonghyun/minho
Length: 3424
Summary: Minho remembers what happened the last time Jonghyun tried to
take off on his own.
Warnings: N/A
Remixee author: quid
Title of work you remixed: these days are for chasing light
Link to work you remixed: http://quid.livejournal.com/7404.html#cutid1
-
The message on Minho's answering machine went like this:
'Hey, this is Jonghyun. This is still your number, right?' There was a pause and a drumming sound. Minho could almost see Jonghyun rapping on the corner of his table with a pen. Minho remembered Jonghyun's squat IKEA coffee table, a veneered birch number with wheels on the legs, and how freckled it was with dents. 'It's, uh, weird to ask you this, but would you mind watching my dog for a few days? Let me know.'
Once Jonghyun's voice cut off, Minho set his briefcase down on the counter. He leaned against the pantry cabinet, feeling the knob like a rock under his back. He could just ignore the message, pretend it wasn't his number. Jonghyun would find somebody else.
Minho dug through his briefcase for his cellphone.
why didn't you just text me? Minho typed, careful not to scroll up toward any previous messages.
He pressed his fingernails into his lower lip. Texting was nerve-wracking; Minho was not good with anticipation. He thought this every time he sent an important text, but he always forgot just how disconcerting it was until the next time he needed to text a valuable client, his father, or a wayfaring ex-boyfriend.
Minho paced across the length of the kitchen three times before sitting down in the armchair. Minho remember how, the first time Minho had shown Jonghyun the new apartment, Jonghyun had pointed at the armchair and said, 'What is that thing.'
'It's a chair?' Minho had said, feeling vaguely offended. It was a tall, grey tweed chair that used to be his father's. His mother had been considering getting rid of it the year before, but Minho had protested. Minho remembered how, in high school, he would sit on the carpet and watch his father work. He was always in the gray chair, bent over paperwork, the side of his face orange from the lamplight with shadows sinking into the wrinkles around his eye. Between his father's solemn focus on pending contracts and Minho's solemn focus on the small, white hairs on his father's neck, it almost felt like conversation.
'It's the only piece of furniture in this place that seems real,' Jonghyun had said, sinking into the threadbare seat. 'It looks like a catalog in here. It's depressing.'
The apartment was everything that Minho had ever wanted--view of the Seoul skyline, an Eames sofa--but now, Minho was inclined to agree. His footsteps on the hardwood echoed and it got cold at night.
Minho's pocket vibrated, and he jumped.
you change your number too often, jerk, Jonghyun's text read. That wasn't true. This number, he made it a point not to change.
where are you going?
im in trouble. need to leave for a while
by yourself? Minho knew immediately after typing it that yes, it was by himself. This was Jonghyun's thing, or at least the thing he pretended to be: soul-searchy, traveling martyr-cum-musician. Minho dialed Jonghyun's number.
'Hey Minho, I-' Jonghyun started.
'Don't be so impulsive. Don't go off by yourself, dumbass.'
'But, Mom! I'm an adult' Jonghyun whined, and Minho was taken aback by how easily they fell back into the old rhythm.
'I know you. Do you remember the last time you did this?'
'I gave my last ten thousand won to a fifteen-year-old runaway and you had to pick me up from a gas station in Gwangju. Did I ever really thank you for that?'
'No.'
'Thanks for that one time, Minho. I really appreciated it.' They grew quiet. Minho could hear Jonghyun tapping his feet.
'Let me come with you. I can drive and stop you from dying,' Minho said. He said it like it was so obvious that they should go together, no big deal.
'Who will watch my dog? She's really sensitive,' Jonghyun said. There was a loud slap of static, like Jonghyun was switching hands.
'I'll pick you up on Wednesday.'
'What time?' There was a grin in Jonghyun's voice.
Minho's alarm went off at 5am. Already awake, he turned it off. The hair on his legs bristled as he pushed off the blankets.
'Why are you doing this to yourself?' Dr. Kim said. Her usually firm voice sounded tinny through his phone's speakers.
Because I miss him, he thought, but said nothing. He tried to imagine what she was doing right now: reading the newspaper, drinking coffee in her bathrobe? Making her kid breakfast? He could hear the morning news in the background.
'What are you hoping will happen?' she said.
Minho grabbed a t-shirt off the nightstand, sniffed it twice, and stuffed it into his duffel bag. The phone slipped in his grip; his hands were sweating.
'I'm only going to call if it's an emergency,' he said. He paused, tried to rub the wrinkles out of a blazer. 'Sorry for always calling you at your house.' Dr. Kim started to speak, but Minho hung up.
It was unbearably hot and humid out, the waning summer's one last 'fuck you' before the relief of fall. Minho had the air turned up, but a pool of sweat was collecting where his Ray-bans met his nose.
'Hey,' Jonghyun said, closing his apartment door. Jonghyun took the steps leading to the sidewalk two at a time. There was a hiking backpack thrown over one of his shoulders, and with every bounce it made a sound like frying pans colliding. He had his dachshund cradled in one arm and his guitar draped over the other.
'Hey,' Minho said, leaning over to pop the trunk. 'You're bringing the dog?' Jonghyun had gotten a haircut since the last time they'd seen each other. His hair was short and messy, and it made him look younger, brighter. Beads of sweat gathered along the edges of his forehead.
'Her name is Roo and yes, because you ruined everything.'
Jonghyun laid his guitar case down along the back seat, gingerly, like putting a child to bed. Minho jumped at the crash of Jonghyun's backpack rolling into the trunk, and then Jonghyun was slipping into the seat beside him.
'Are you ready?' Jonghyun asked. He positioned Roo in his lap and reached behind him for the seatbelt. Minho was distracted by the way Jonghyun shifted in the seat, the way his shoulders twisted and pulled his shirt taut.
'Yeah,' Minho said. Maybe.
'This is not a roadtrip car,' Jonghyun said, two hours south of Seoul. The windows were half-down and Minho's hair was tickling his face, to his unending annoyance. Jonghyun had his head down, improvising a hairclip out of two guitar picks and a piece of medical tape taken from the first aid kit in the glove compartment. Roo was uninterested in the outside air, preferring to lie with her nose tucked under Jonghyun's t-shirt.
'What?' Minho pushed a strand of hair behind his ear. He glanced at Jonghyun in his peripheral vision.
'You need something old, something a little beat up, for a roadtrip. Not a BMW.' They passed a girl on a scooter, and Jonghyun waved exaggeratedly. 'Where's your sense of romance?'
Minho returned his eyes to the road. He wasn't the type of person to own a vintage Mustang. He went to coffee shops for the caffeine, not the atmosphere. He knew only one song by The Smiths, and it was the one that Jonghyun used to scream in the shower. He was going to say something acerbic about how he's sorry he's so lame, how not everybody can be an eccentric, indie lyricist sweetheart, but then Jonghyun reached over and clipped Minho's bangs back, his fingers brushing Minho's forehead, and Minho inhaled instead. Jonghyun smiled.
'Don't you want to know what I did to get in trouble?' Jonghyun asked with his hand on the back of Minho's headrest. Jonghyun smelled sweaty, but it wasn't unpleasant.
'Not really.'
'I stole money,' Jonghyun said, moving back to his own seat. Minho didn't know how to react, so he nodded.
Both Roo and Minho had to pee, and the sun was setting. The buildings were sparser now, giving way to fenced-off fields. Jonghyun got out of the car to ask a couple waiting at the bus stop for directions to an inn, and Minho watched him gesture with his hands. He made a hand motion that looked like a dolphin jumping. Minho pulled his cellphone out of the cup holder; it had been vibrating on-and-off for the last five hours, but he had been determinedly ignoring it while Jonghyun was present. It announced four new calls, three of which were work-related. His supervisor hadn't been happy to give him three days off, and had implied that Minho was exploiting his position as the CEO's son. That accusation had caused Minho to sulk in his office for a few hours. He'd been accumulating vacation time for a year, so his request was within his boundaries.
The fourth call, however, was from Minho's father. There were thousands of things he could've called about: to tell Minho that the quarterly reports were out, to yell at Minho for approving a proposal, to say that Minho's mother had recovered from her cold. But one reason stood out darkly in Minho's mind: his father knew where he was, what he was doing, who he was with. That possibility was enough to make him dizzy. He grabbed the steering wheel to steady himself.
Roo whined and put her front paws against the passenger-side door, her tail slapping the leather seat. Jonghyun lifted her up and got in, giving Minho a thumbs up.
The inn was run by an old lady with a spine so curved that she couldn't look up high enough to see Minho's face. She gave them the keys and Jonghyun bowed, exposing a sliver of skin right above the waistband of his boxers. Minho reached over and yanked Jonghyun's shirt down, earning himself a glare all the way to their room.
'Breathe, Roo!' Jonghyun said. He opened Minho's duffel bag, and Roo poked her head out.
'If she pooped in there, you're dead.' The room was dusty and small, but warm. It reminded Minho of Jonghyun's apartment, of the restaurants that Jonghyun liked, and of Jonghyun. There was one queen-sized bed in the center of the room. They could erect a pillow boundary between them, if it felt weird. He was surprised that, overall, it wasn't awkward between Jonghyun and him. There were those brief moments where Minho's breath caught in his throat, or Jonghyun smiled knowingly and Minho hated him, but it almost felt like they'd always been just friends. Minho felt so proud of himself that he wanted to call Dr. Kim and say see, I knew I was ready, I knew I'd be fine.
They did change clothes privately, however, taking turns in the bathroom. Minho put his phone on the ceramic counter and stared down at his missed calls. The room was still humid from Jonghyun's shower. Minho was starting to feel sick, again.
Six months ago, he'd been summoned to a conference. The only staff present had been his father and some stiff PR people. They were clustered at the front of the table and Minho was seated at the far end, making it feel uncomfortably like a trial.
'If I'm going to promote you to manager of Customer Service,' his father began, swiveling slightly in his chair, 'there are some issues we need to clear up.'
Minho assumed it was about the time he'd accidentally used informal language with the president of a partner company, or when he'd been asked to let Human Resources win the company soccer game but had scored a goal, anyway.
'There are some rumors, Minho,' one of the PR men said.
'We have a picture,' said another.
They slid the photograph across the table. It was blurry and taken from behind, but he recognized Jonghyun's broad shoulders and heavy-soled boots and Minho's own face, turned to the side, smiling. Their hands were clasped together.
'We've taken care of this photographer,' his father said, 'but you need to tell us the truth.'
It was the worst possible way to come out to his father: in a room of cold strangers with MBAs and comb-overs and clipboards. So he lied, said that it was just a friend and it was nothing. His father sighed in what Minho knew was relief, the PR people filed out of the room, and Minho, his face bright red, wanted to crawl under the table and die.
That was when the dizzy spells started. When he was at one of Jonghyun's shows, when he rode the bus from Jonghyun's place instead of from his own, when Jonghyun fell asleep in his father's old chair all Minho could think was that he was betraying both of them.
'And it's making you physically ill?' Dr. Kim had asked on their first meeting. She was severe-looking, her hair pulled back in a tight bun, but she had lipstick on her front teeth. He liked her instantly.
'Yes.'
'Then you have a difficult choice to make, but you need to make it.'
When Minho came out of the bathroom, water still rolling off his hair and onto the matted carpet, Jonghyun was sitting cross-legged on the bed with a notepad in his lap. Roo was asleep at his feet.
'Don't forget how in your warmth I breathed for such a long time,' Jonghyun sang in a jokey falsetto, a rerun of last season's hit melodrama playing on the TV.
Minho slid under the duvet. The sheet, warm from Jonghyun's body heat, sunk between Minho's toes. Minho closed his eyes and tried to empty his mind, tried to stop thinking about work and his father and everything that sucked, but he could feel Jonghyun bouncing his leg absently and it made Minho think of all the times before. A small room, an orange light, a broken air conditioner, a lumpy mattress, two bodies. Minho sat up, with the intention of wedging a pillow between them after all, but the hole in the center of the mattress caused them both to lean inward. Just enough for their shoulders to knock together. When they turned to look at each other, Minho was close enough to Jonghyun's face to notice the way an acne scar on his cheek sort of looked like a heart.
They stayed that way for a moment. Jonghyun's lips were slightly parted, maybe in shock or maybe in expectation, and the television cast a purple glow over his face. Then Minho was standing, grabbing Roo in one arm and his duffel bag in the other, closing the door behind him and exhaling into the cold air.
Minho got into the car and though about calling Dr. Kim, but it was too early in the morning and nothing would happen as long as he didn't go back inside the room. He wasn't sure why he'd brought Roo with him. Maybe he just didn't want to be alone.
'I'm jealous of you,' he said to the drowsy dachshund. She was burying her nose into the crook of his arm. 'You're allowed to love him all you want.'
Minho awoke to a serenade. His neck was sore from sleeping with his head at a strange angle, his lower-back twinged when he moved: the usual car-sleep aches. Jonghyun was on one knee outside the car door, the body of his guitar resting on his bare thigh.
'Will nature make a man of me yet,' Jonghyun sang in English that was jarring even to Minho's untrained ears. 'When in this charming car, this charming man.'
'You're ridiculous,' Minho said, trying not to smile.
They were on the road again, on the final stretch to Busan when Minho finally asked what he probably should have asked in the beginning.
'Are the police looking for you? Because you've made me an unwitting accomplice.'
Jonghyun looked up. He'd made a few guitar pick hairclips for himself, although his hair was too short to need them, and they were stuck onto his head arbitrarily. There was one in Roo's fur, as well.'No. I didn't rob a bank or anything, just took fifty thousand won from Joonhyuk to pay my rent.'
Joonhyuk was the drummer of Jonghyun's band, a skinny literature major with a tattoo of a pizza above his elbow.
'You made it sound like it was serious.'
'I wanted to impress you,' Jonghyun said with a sigh. Minho was having trouble breathing. Jonghyun impressed him without trying.
'But Joonhyuk is pretty scary when he's pissed,' Jonghyun added.
The hotel in Busan was cleaner and bigger, but they didn't feel like hanging around. It was dark out, the air was salty, and they were hungry. They left a bowl of water for Roo, went out for lobster and, by the third pitcher of beer, Jonghyun was composing instant classics such as 'Minho, Your Hands are Large.'
They wandered back to the hotel at three AM, not drunk enough to stagger but not sober enough to stop smiling at nothing. Minho reached into his pocket for the room key. When he looked up, Jonghyun was staring at him so earnestly that Minho had to laugh.
'What?' Minho asked, cupping Jonghyun's shoulder with his palm.
'I haven't been able to write anything good since we broke up,' Jonghyun said. He seemed sobered, his eyes awake and wide.
'I still love you,' Jonghyun said, without a trace of embarrassment.
Minho froze, dully aware of how fast his heart was beating. He felt the nausea threatening to take over, saw the picture sitting on the conference room table, could hear his dad disowning him. But he was pushing Jonghyun up against the wall, Jonghyun was kissing him, their teeth were bumping together, Minho was fumbling for the keys, and then they were hopeless.
'You guys did it again?' Dr. Kim asked.
'Well, yeah,' Minho mumbled. He'd given in and called her as soon as he'd woken up. He sat on the hood of the car and frowned into his phone.
'I just want you to recognize that you're putting yourself back in the same position you were in before. You can't continue to balance two different lives.'
'I don't know what to do. I...love him, but I love my father and the company, too.'
'Do you really love the company? Or is it just the only way for you to relate to your Dad?'
Minho considered that. He'd barely known his father until they'd started working together,
'I don't know,' Minho admitted. 'It's so hard to be a person. Can you just tell me that I'm going to be okay, eventually?'
'You're going to be okay, eventually,' she said, even and warm.
Minho and Jonghyun walked to the edge of Busan, looking out over Suyeongman Bay. This had been their goal: the end of Korea and back. There was no sand on this side of the beach, just hard rocks that extended like a peninsula into the water, then dropped off. The smog was heavy, and it made them cough as they hiked. Jonghyun had found a way to carry Roo in his backpack. Her head bobbed above the zipper as they walked.
'Well, that's that,' Jonghyun said. 'No more land. I like how final that is. We're not turning around because we want to, we're turning around because there's nothing left.'
'Deep.'
'Shut up.'
Jonghyun shifted back and forth on his feet for a minute, as if to psych himself up, then took in a deep breath.
'CHOI MINHO!' He yelled it into the bay, the veins bulging in his neck. Minho winced and nearly tripped over a rock.
'Choi Minho. I won't wait for you forever,' Jonghyun said. He was still looking out into the water. 'But I will wait for you, for a little bit. So hurry up and figure things out.'
Minho wrapped his fingers around Jonghyun's wrist, feeling Jonghyun's pulse quicken under his thumb and, laughing, sprinted for the car.