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Seungmin would follow Minho anywhere. To the edge of the world, maybe. To the depths of the earth, too, where the swirling heat, he imagines, is not unlike now in the middle of August.
The gravel path is narrow, and it wiggles and stretches and curves around patches of tall grass, and if Seungmin falls behind by a little more than a few steps, Minho disappears behind corners and curves. But just for a few seconds until Seungmin quickens his pace again and catches up, hand outstretched before him, barely grasping the back of Minho’s shirt.
It’s so warm, so warm. The sun is beating down on the boys relentlessly, seeping through the fabric of their clothes and clinging to their uncovered hair like an invisible halo. It’s even warmer out here, where there is only the vast sky, flat grassland, and harsh midday sun. Seungmin thinks he never experienced an August so stifling hot.
The gravel path curves for a little longer, and Seungmin follows Minho to a small clearing where the grass isn’t so tall anymore. The path widens and turns into a pit of coarse sand. Minho stops in the middle, and Seungmin stops a few feet away, waiting.
Minho has his eyebrows drawn together, lips pursed, and Seungmin thinks he looks ethereal. He can see Minho’s nose shiny with sweat, and the front of his shirt is a little damp. Seungmin wants to look at him forever.
“Okay,” Minho says. “We’ll do it here.” He takes a little foldable knife out of his back pocket and flicks it open. Seungmin looks at Minho’s hands but he doesn’t move. He hears Minho sigh, resolute, as if in preparation. Seungmin's gaze follows the line from Minho’s hand to his arm (muscly, hot arm), stumbles upon his shoulder, climbs up his ear, and reaches his eyes. Wide, questioning eyes. Minho is looking at him, waiting.
“Hyung,” Seungmin says, and it comes out a little like a whine, a little breathless.
“It’s just a drop, Seungmin-ah,” Minho says placatingly, a bit exasperated. They’ve had this conversation at least five times already. Seungmin knows that it’s just a drop of his blood. He knows he will barely feel it, and the cut on his pinky will heal in no time at all.
(“It’ll heal until your wedding,” Minho had said with a teasing smirk, his own fingers running over Seungmin's knuckles last night as they lay on Minho’s bed side by side. The windows were open, and the gentle wind blew out the thin white curtains like sails. Seungmin wanted to float away in the night’s ocean, never to be found again. He was glad for the dark painting their skin in greyish blue, rendering all other colors invisible. Minho would’ve teased him for the light pink dusting his cheeks).
“Hyung,” Seungmin whines again, “why me?” He knows why. He knows, Minho explained it to him in painstaking detail. It’s something about being born on the 22nd of September, in the very middle of the Virgo-Libra cusp. Seungmin’s special like that, Minho said. Seungmin is not sure about it; Minho’s the one holding magic in his beautiful hands, the one who knows about the sun's movements, and Virgo Libra cusps, and how special it all is in the grand scheme of the universe.
But Seungmin doesn’t care about the universe. He wants to be special to Minho.
“Kim Seungmin,” Minho says, still exasperated. “You know why, I told you like five times already. Come on, let me get this done so we can go home.” He stretches his hand towards Seungmin, palm up, and shakes it a little. Seungmin sighs, resolute. For all his whining, he feels powerless in front of his hyung. Seungmin’s painfully ready to do anything he asks, jump off a cliff, and maybe choke to death on his own spit if that’s what Minho wants.
Seungmin isn’t sure when exactly he started feeling like this about Minho, just that it happened a while ago, and that it was gradual. He might’ve woken up one day gasping and drenched in sweat and painfully aware of himself, but that was when he finally gave up and accepted that he was in love. Fleeting images of his dream faded into the low light of morning, but the feeling (ah, the feeling) remained, making him blush a pretty pink and collapse into his mattress with a groan.
But for all his horny dreams, Seungmin also felt heavy. It was like an invisible hand reached through his chest bone, grabbed his heart, squeezed, and hasn’t let go since.
Minho’s outstretched palm is waiting, and Seungming finally steps forward and gives him his hand. Minho grabs it quickly, but there is a gentleness in the way his fingers curl around Seungmin’s, in the way he twists and holds his hand palm up, and brushes his thumb over the smooth pad of Seungmin’s pinky. Seugmin holds his breath watching the tip of the pocket knife press gently into his skin, and whines a little at the sting and the not-so-gentle-anymore squeeze of Minho’s thumb.
A single drop of blood gathers on the tip of Seungmin’s finger, and Minho turns his palm downwards and shakes once. Seungmin watches the droplet soak into the coarse sand. He expects Minho to drop his hand, but his hyung doesn’t let go. Instead, still holding onto Seungmin, he crouches down and writes something in the sand around Seungmin’s blood with the tip of his knife, carelessly, like he’s done this a hundred times before. Maybe he has — Seungmin doesn’t always accompany Minho on his spell-making business.
Once Minho’s done, he stands up and steps away from his magical sand drawings. The symbols, no longer in Minho’s shadow, glitter like gold and diamonds in the sun. Seungmin looks at the shimmering and holds onto Minho’s hand tighter. Minho squeezes back, and Seungming can see in the periphery the way the corners of his lips lift up in the tiniest smile.
“It’s done,” Minho says, and he sounds pleased. Seungmin draws his eyes from the glittering magic in the sand to Minho’s side profile, his gaze getting caught on the sharpness of his nose, dipping into the uplifted corner of his lips.
But suddenly, Seungmin is flooded with sadness and longing so intense and so overwhelming that he’s not sure if it’s him, or something else. In the sweltering midday heat, it seems terribly unfitting. With his free hand, Seungmin clutches at his chest, which suddenly feels so heavy with an enormous weight pulling him down to the ground, and curls over himself. His fingers squeeze Minho’s hand tight, and Seungmin hears, or feels, Minho make a surprised noise, turning and moving closer.
“Seungmin-ah?”
“Hyung,” Seugmin breathes, his voice wavering, and feels something hot and wet roll down his cheeks. The weight on his chest is cold, and pressing down into his lungs, and Seungmin thinks it should be raining instead of the sun beating down on the back of his head. The air shimmers, but that may be his tears blurring the view.
Minho grabs onto Seungmins shoulder, so gently, and turns to face him, head inclined to meet Seungmins teary eyes. His expression shifts from alarmed to concerned and sad at the same time, and maybe his eyes glitter with something else for a moment, too.
“What happened? Why are you crying?” Minho’s voice is laced with worry and honey so sweet. Seungmin wants to get drunk on it and drink it for the rest of his life. The tears on his face roll down to his chin, and Seungmin is gasping for air and clutching at his chest and Minho’s hand like it’s his only tether to life. A whine, a sob, nothing that resembles human words, escapes Seungmins lips, and then his wet face is smushed into Minho’s sweaty shoulder. Seungmin feels a hand in his hair and sobs harder.
But the pain of longing and the overwhelming sadness feel foreign. Like Seungmin’s just a vessel, a ghostly magical conductor for channeling whatever it is that the universe deems necessary to put down on this earth. Still, the tears (and probably snot) don’t stop flowing and soaking into the soft fabric of Minho’s shirt.
Seungmin squeezes his eyes shut against Minho's shoulder and draws in a shaky breath. Minho smells like sweat and dust and like the tall grass on the edges of their winding path. He feels Minho’s fingers in his hair, tentative between strands, so so gentle that Seungmin is weak in his knees.
It takes him a minute to calm down. He releases Minho’s fingers from his grasp, realizing with a lick of embarrassment how tightly he was squeezing them. Peeling his face off of Minho’s shoulder, Seungmin doesn’t dare meet his hyung’s eyes. Instead, his gaze is drawn to the tiny drawings on the sand, the light much duller and much less magical. After a second, the shimmering fades altogether.
Seungmin feels light. Not in the way one feels light after a good cry, exhausted but relieved. No, Seungming feels like nothing happened at all — like the only proof of his sudden breakdown is his tear-wet blotchy red cheeks and glossy eyes. The weight on his chest is gone, and the painful yearning is fading like a distant, murky dream.
“Seungmin-ah?” he hears Minho’s tentative voice and feels a hand on his cheek. A thumb gently swipes the wetness under his eye, and Seungmin wants to cry again, but for an entirely different reason this time. He lifts his chin to meet Minho’s worried and questioning gaze.
“Hyung, what kind of spell did you make?” Seungmin asks, suddenly, surprising even himself a little. Minho looks momentarily lost, blinking a few times in quick succession. He answers after a second, suddenly looking shy and with a questioning note slipping into his voice.
“To get rid of... Of yearning, I guess.” Minho is not looking at Seungmin anymore, but his hand twitches on Seungmin’s cheek. Seungmin narrows his eyes
“Hyung. You told me the Virgo Libra turn date is called the Cusp of Beauty. Why would you need my blood for a spell related to yearning?”
“Well, maybe it’s about yearning for someone beautiful! Spells could be mysterious like that!” Minho’s ears are a little pink now, and he’s still not looking at Seungmin. Some things start clicking into places in Seungmin's overheated head.
Maybe Minho was making the spell for someone else, but it hit Seungmin instead. That would explain why Seungmin just went through the process of getting rid of some very painful yearning that felt strangely foreign to his own body.
But still, what does being in the middle of the cusp of Beauty have to do with yearning?
Seungmin looks at Minho intently, at his steadily reddening ears and pointedly downturned gaze. The hand on Seungmin’s cheek is shaking a bit, and Minho finally drops it down just to curl his fingers into the hem of his shirt.
Seungmin gasps. Oh. Oh .
“Hyung. Hyung,” he breathes, insistent and suddenly giddy. His chest explodes with thousands of tiny butterflies, and a teasing smile stretches wide across his lips. “Hyung, did you want to stop yearning for me?”
Minho whines a pathetic endearing sound and buries his face in his hands. His ears are properly red now from embarrassment, and Seungmin thinks they would be hot if he reached out and pinched them between his fingers.
Seungmin feels triumphant. In this August heat, among tall grass and winding gravel pathways, and a little sting on his right pinky, Seungmin grows so tall as if to rival shimmering skyscrapers, as if to rival the very sun shining down on him. He was not alone in his pining. The timid grasping of hems of shirts, gentle shivers in the purple-grey nights with ghostly curtain sails, and tiny wishes to be near Minho for an eternity whispered into the depths of the old stone well were not his alone.
Did Minho not see? Seungmin thought he was so painfully open. Is Minho blind?
“Hyung, are you blind?” Seungmin asks, suddenly breathless, and grasps at Minhos wrists. Minho looks up at him startled again, and blinks, mouth open. Seungmin laughs, and his cheeks hurt from smiling so wide. “At the well, I wished for you. For an eternity,” he whispers.
Minho stares. His eyes twinkle, and Seungmin swears he sees magic shimmer in his hyung’s eyelashes, like a tiny speck of golden dust.
“Yah, Kim Seungmin!”
Minho is laughing, his ears still red, and he twists his wrists in Seungmin's hold until their hands are clasped, squeezing tight. Seungmin’s smile rivals the sun, and Minho is ethereal before him. He holds magic in his hands. Seungmin wants Minho to hold his heart, too.
The air shimmers, and it might be the August heat. It could be all the yearning fading.