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When Chan found out on an otherwise average day in late January that his boyfriend, Minho, had never spent a Valentine’s day together with a romantic partner, he didn’t really have a strong initial thought - just one of pure curiosity about the timing of any of Minho’s previous relationships and that it was interesting that none of them lined up over February 14th.
What got Chan truly invested in Minho’s Valentine-less state was the question he’d posed shortly after.
“Do you want to do something together? Will you be my first ever Valentine?” Minho had asked him with a cheeky, exaggerated wink.
Chan had agreed in a heartbeat, lighting up with enthusiasm as he instantly locked in to the idea of giving Minho the best first romantic Valentine’s Day he could ever hope for.
Over the next several days, Chan begins to formulate a plan and put it in motion. In order to make sure everything is in order, he gets out a glittery purple pen Minho had gifted him and a notebook he’d bought himself with Pokémon print on the cover and starts making a list.
After some questions Chan had for Minho on that otherwise average day in late January about preferences for location and activities for the date - the answers to which were “Home, my place or yours - it’ll be a Friday night I don’t wanna go anywhere else once I’m free from work.” and “Hmm… as long as there’s some form of food, then within reason surprise me.” - Chan makes his first priority planning the dinner and dessert portion of the evening.
Since he’ll be working that day as well, he figures his best bet is to order takeout from one of their favorite restaurants. He writes down several options for combinations of dishes they like to share (and even calls the restaurant to unfortunately confirm that no, they can’t really accept a “takeout reservation” several weeks in advance, but they’d be happy to do so on the actual holiday.
Something he can make from scratch is cookies, which he can even prep the night before so once he gets off work on Valentine’s day all he has to do is put them in the oven while he gets the rest of the evening ready.
With the food situation squared away, he nearly moves on to the next item on his list when he looks up and catches a glimpse of his small table and mostly undecorated dining room and decides he should probably get some decorations to make the Valentine’s Dinner Experience more romantic and less Average Friday Evening.
With a plan made to get decorations in the next few days, he starts considering activities they could do for a date night. Playing board or card games together might work, or watching a movie together… Again, he worries that a “regular” date night would be too average for Minho’s first romantic Valentine’s. Or maybe it would be fine? Or… Or…
You’re overthinking it, move on to the next thing before you combust, a voice in his head that sounds an awful lot like Minho points out, and he sighs before agreeing with said voice. The activities can be planned later, when he has more time to focus on just that aspect of the date and not trying to make an outline of the entire evening.
So he circles “Date night activities?” to come back another time and glances down at the next item on his list.
…
Ah.
It’s three words that read, “Gift for Minho???”, and in Chan’s opinion the question marks are incredibly justified.
It's hard to get a gift for someone who has Minho’s personality.
In the years that Chan has been friends with him, he’s learned that Minho has a tendency to buy himself things that he needs as he needs them, and that he very directly gives lists to those asking detailing what he wants during the holiday season (without expectations that he receive everything, of course). On top of that, he seems to know exactly what to give as gifts, making it difficult, for Chan at least, to feel like anything he gives in return can compare.
Minho does love experiences as gifts, which is why Chan had taken him to a cat café for his birthday just two months prior. So while Chan is confident that creating a romantic dinner environment in the comfort of one of their homes is a great start, he’s struggling to think of what else he can get him.
He knows that Minho appreciates any gift he receives, but that doesn’t mean Chan doesn’t want to try to make it something even more meaningful than a Christmas gift might be. They’ve only been dating a few months, but the years of friendship before this point means that he has a chance to create something that really shows how well Chan knows him.
Unfortunately, he can’t come up with anything to write down that afternoon. Then even three days’ worth of brainstorming in the shower, while driving, between tasks at work, and while he’s lying in bed before dozing off leaves him drawing a blank. By the fourth day, he’s starting to worry that the pressure of getting a “perfect gift” might hinder him from being able to get him anything at all.
But on the fifth day of trying to think of a gift, he happens to pass by a local shop on his lunch break. He’s been in a few times, but never for very long, usually just buying knick-knacks to send to family and friends over the holidays. So the sign on the door advertising a service he didn’t know they offered hits him like a bolt of lightning. He enters without a second thought and strolls right to the counter, phone in hand pulling up the pictures he needs. The shop worker cheerfully agrees, and just like that Chan has the perfect gift set to be delivered just in time for Valentine’s Day.
He realizes later that day, too, that the best way to plan activities with Minho for a date night is much like the way to plan for food – brainstorm a list of ideas, and the mood of the evening will determine where they go next.
(The little voice in his head that sounds like Minho was right, it is much easier to plan when he’s not overthinking. And he avoids combustion.)
It feels like all the puzzle pieces for the plan to make ‘Minho’s Very First Romantic Valentine’s Day’ the best it can possibly be have finally locked into place.
Chan finds himself wishing the few short weeks would hurry up already just so he can give this perfect Valentine’s date to Minho, and with his plan in place he’s sure it’ll all go smoothly.
It has to, right?
Valentine’s Day rolls around and things are going… not as well as Chan had hoped, but still pretty well!
With it being a holiday centered around spending time with loved ones, more people took time off than he’d anticipated and he’d had to pick up some odd jobs here and there to make sure everything was running smoothly.
Picking up odd jobs, which he’s normally perfectly fine with, unfortunately today led to him attending meetings he didn’t normally attend in order to understand just one task he had to do later, setting up for future projects that he’d have to hand off to someone by next Monday anyway when they came back from their holiday off, and generally working under more pressure than he typically had to deal with on an average day.
So much so that he leaves work later than his normal clock out time than his intended plan to leave a little early. He’d left in such a flustered rush that he isn’t even really sure what time it is until he plops down in the driver’s seat of his car.
Checking the clock makes him think he’s misreading it for a moment before he finally accepts reality.
Okay, he’s running late by… exactly thirty seven minutes… maybe it’s not going as well as he’d thought…
“Fuck,” he whispers emphatically, about to put his head in his hands before forcing himself to jolt back upright.
No, no, it’s okay, I can do this, I can still make it home in time to get everything finished.
He quickly dials the number for the restaurant, and thankfully, mercifully, they aren’t too busy and the food will be delivered to his apartment before Minho will arrive.
A small victory, but at this point he needs all the wins he can get.
He turns on the engine shortly after and after glancing around at his work’s (mostly empty by now) parking lot he takes off. He turns off onto and begins mentally running through his checklist of everything he’s going to do once he gets home.
He can still pull this off. Everything will be fine!
Chan is struck with the dreadful realization an hour later, having been home for the last forty five minutes or so, that nothing is fine. Everything is going about as wrong as it can be.
It started off okay, at least he’s pretty sure it did, with him preheating the oven and pulling out the chilled cookie dough he’d prepared in advance. It starts going slightly less okay when no matter what he does, the cookies just look so… ugly. They smell good, and they probably taste good too, but nothing changes the fact that they’re an unsettling shade of greenish-brown that he desperately hopes will look more appetizing once they're done cooking.
I can turn this around, ugly cookies can still be tasty, he reminds himself as he walks away from the cookies still warming up on the counter after their time in the fridge. He even sets a timer to remember to put them in the oven properly shortly before Minho arrives.
The next step will be decorations, but which part?
He allows himself precisely fifteen seconds to stare off into space and contemplate life before he shakes his head. He’s overthinking again.
He should… do the dining table first, since the primary focus of tonight is a nice dinner.
The first thing Chan does is set out a lace-edged white tablecloth he’d gotten from his mother years ago (that he’d made sure to wash earlier this week, just in case!) and smooth it over the table’s surface, making it look as pristine as possible.
The next thing he does is pull out two tacky yet charming candlestick holders (also gifts from his mother; he isn’t quite sure why she thought he’d need them but boy is he grateful for it now), along with pink candles that he’d gotten from the stationary shop. They’d come with a note about pink candles being symbols for romantic love and happiness. And also potentially good for fighting anxiety, which he seems to have a lot of tonight. Man, he hopes these candles work.
Any confidence of the evening going well starts dropping again when he discovers that the candle holders, no matter how he positions them – even taking the tablecloth back off! – are wobbly. Putting the candles in them to test how well they hold them makes them even more wobbly, with the candles falling out and clattering on the table seconds after being placed in the holders.
Finally, finally after several minutes of trying and trying and trying to get the candles to stay upright, he finds that melting the bottoms of the candles at just the right spots gets them to stay. They’re still precarious, but at least they’re staying.
Now it’s time to move on to…
Oh, wait, what time is it?
Checking the time reveals, much to Chan’s dismay, that Minho will be arriving in about twenty three minutes. He even double checks Minho’s last text message to make sure, and Chan wonders if maybe his throat is drying up a bit with how hard it suddenly is to swallow.
He’s about to put his phone away when he gets a new notification, an email from the shop that was making Minho’s gift. Cautious optimism mixed with at this point fairly justified pessimism over what the email could entail fills Chan in that moment, and clicking on said email is the deciding factor for which emotion will win…
And the winner is pessimism, Chan’s heart sinking as he reads the very apologetic note that due to a flood of orders, they were unfortunately only able to get to the basic design orders and the first half of the custom design orders done – and Chan’s request unfortunately fell within the second half.
He tries really hard not to wonder if things could get much worse, because he knows that even thinking that accursed phrase has a tendency to make the universe say, “Oh, you wanna bet?” and proceed to make things worse.
But apparently the universe was playing a sick game today, because the doorbell rings and alerts Chan (and scares the shit out of him) to the presence of someone at his door. It’s not Minho, he has his own key, so who…?
Oh! Maybe their dinner order is here!
He nearly falls to the floor to pray once he opens the door to the majestic view of a delivery driver holding his takeout containers. He thanks them profusely, refusing to acknowledge that he might be about to tear up over something going right for once.
Feeling just a pinch more motivation has him walking a with a little more spring in his step as he moves to deposit the food on the counter, and he opens the boxes to see the glory that is two of his and Minho’s favorite meals.
Only… one of the entrées is wrong. And it’s one he likes, sure, but it’s not what he’d ordered and he doesn’t have time to get it replaced before Minho gets here and is the universe done fucking with him yet? He’d like to be done with the universe fucking with him.
Sighing with as much force as he can muster, he’s startled once more by his phone alarm going off.
Cookies in the oven, right… he can do that at least, and then he’ll finish decorating with the cute Valentine’s banner he’d bought a few weeks ago, and…
And he didn’t account for the fact that while his arms are long, sure, he certainly can’t reach as high as he needs for the banner to hang nicely on his wall.
A moment of stunned disbelief at how many things can go wrong is interrupted by a text from Minho that he’s on his way.
Frantically, he rushes around to find something, anything to stably stand on so he can just get this banner hung up. Somewhere in the middle of the search, however, he skids to a stop by the dining table and stares at the candles before reaching for the lighter. He has to admit, with the candles lit now, the table setup instantly looks much more romantic.
Satisfied, he runs to his supply closet he barely uses and finds that there’s a couple of spare folding chairs (Seriously, mom, what was with all the table-related apartment-warming gifts?) that are sturdy enough to be stood on, so they’ll have to do.
He manages to tack up one corner with only a little struggle, and now that he knows more what he’s doing he adds support to the middle.
It’s right as he’s about to stick the other corner to the wall, he hears a sound that feels him with joy and nerves in equal measure, and he turns on his chair, still holding up the banner as he knows that Minho has arrived.
And in a twisted imitation of those slapstick comedies he'd caught glimpses of as a kid, the sound of a key in the lock is followed by everything that had been going even somewhat well immediately going to shit.
One of the wobbly candlesticks he'd fought for so long with earlier decides to give out, toppling the lit candle still in its charmingly tacky holder onto the tablecloth. Letting out a panicked yelp, Chan of course lets go of the banner and jumps off the chair to make sure the candle doesn't catch the whole table on fire. He makes it to the table and yanks the candlestick up and away, dribbling a bit of hot wax onto his finger. Now worried about his possible burns on top of the clearly scorched tablecloth, he also has to watch helplessly when he looks up and sees half - just half! - of the lovely banner droop shamefully to the ground. To add insult to injury, the candle in his hand isn't even lit anymore, nor the one on the other side of the table. Did he really put it out just by running past it?
Then the door opens, revealing Minho looking happy to be visiting Chan. And Chan is so distressed at his lack of any real Valentine's setup that he can't even appreciate Minho's wonderful self just yet.
Minho smiles at him and blinks twice.
“Hello, stinky, I'm home.”
And then,
Ding!
The timer on the ugly cookies goes off.
Of course. Fucking… of course.
“... Chan?”
Oh, he never responded. He couldn't. He was too busy looking around at everything - at the unfinished decorations in just about every sense of the word, the candle in his hand mocking him alongside the scorch mark, the dinner that's the wrong order and cookies that he just knows must look terrible and there’s an empty space on the table he'd left for the present that never showed up and it’s just…
It's just…
It’s all wrong.
He’d wanted everything to be perfect for Minho’s first ever romantic Valentine’s day, and he couldn’t even manage to make it half-decent.
He thinks he’s aware of the sensation of his eyes burning and his throat feeling all clogged up, but he doesn’t realize he’s started crying until Minho is right in front of him and carefully reaching his hands up, waiting for Chan to nod before cupping his cheeks and using his thumbs to swipe away the fallen tears.
“Channie, what’s wrong? Is there anything I can do to help?” Minho asks softly, eyes searching Chan’s face for a hint of what might be causing his distress.
“The, the oven, it’s still…” he mumbles through his tears, gesturing weakly toward the kitchen.
Minho blinks and his gaze follows Chan’s hand before he nods in understanding. With so much care it makes Chan dizzy, Minho settles him into one of the chairs surrounding the dining table before reluctantly pulling away to sort out whatever disaster must have occurred in the oven.
Chan tries to focus on anything but his own failings, but it’s hard when the only sounds he can hear are those of Minho fixing his mistakes, the only things he can see are the stupid candlestick and extinguished candle still in his hand and the tablecloth that’s now ruined and now that he’s sat down he can now feel the mild but still itchy burn on his finger… it’s no wonder, then, that his tears start falling just a little bit harder.
Minho returns just in time to see Chan decide to finally set down the candlestick so that he can properly bury his head in his hands.
Chan can sense that Minho is trying to figure out what to do – that he’s unsure the best way to move forward that will both help Chan feel better and figure out what the hell went wrong to cause him so much upset in the first place.
In the end, he settles for being himself.
“Well, I’m home, there’s food, and I am surprised, so this date is already off to a great start in my opinion,” he deadpans.
And if it were anyone else, Chan would think that they were mocking him by reminding him of how badly he’s failed at making a perfect date.
But it’s Minho – Minho who expresses his kindness in the strangest ways and supports the people he loves by pretending to be enemies and is so blunt at times that it’s always very clear when he’s joking and when he means exactly what he says.
For a moment, Chan is stunned as he processes Minho’s words, looking up in disbelief that his boyfriend could possibly think this is anything but a hot mess.
But then, he supposes after the moment passes, if Minho’s never had a Valentine’s date before, he has nothing to compare it to.
And well, he’d said it himself – Minho appreciates any gift given to him, and prefers experiences as gifts anyway. And Minho had said he’d just be happy to be home and… wait, did Minho refer to Chan’s apartment as his home? Twice now?? How is he just processing this???
That sweet, adorable, loving realization hits Chan so hard on top of the, in his mind, complete and utter disasters that ended up being not so bad after all that he can’t help it. He just starts laughing.
He laughs harder and harder, hysterical and hiccupping and wholly drained but completely enamored with this strange, kind person who said yes to being his partner.
Minho just stares at him for a moment, clearly confused and a bit concerned, but even more so he’s taken over by Chan’s infectious laughter and after a while joins in, even if he has no clue what could be so funny.
After a while, their shared laughter comes to a close, and Chan knows that it’s time to tell Minho about his Valentine’s plans. They make sure to move to Chan’s old but surprisingly comfy couch for a conversation that might take a while.
It starts out as a bit of a long-winded rant, Chan's sure, but Minho simply listens, hanging onto every word and empathizing with every new thing that went wrong. It’s such a seemingly small gesture of affection and care but Chan thinks, by the end, that he might be even more in love with Minho than he already was.
“Thank you for telling me everything, Channie,” Minho says after making sure he processed everything. Then he tilts his head, blinking rapidly for a few seconds as he thinks.
“Can I tell you something, Channie? I don’t want it to come across as a criticism, just an observation of what I’ve noticed about you and this whole plan… but it might be something that’s hard to hear regardless. Is that okay?”
Chan hesitates for only a second before he nods. It may be hard to hear comments on his own behavior, but he knows Minho is doing it because he cares so much.
“Love, I think you’re putting too much pressure on yourself to make this, and things in general, perfect.”
Ah. Hit the nail on the head.
And it’s the truth, Chan himself knew he was doing too much, but it still stings to hear for some reason. He nods again, accepting the observation.
“And honestly, I really do admire how hard you work on things like this, putting in the effort to make sure we’ll have fun together on a date, especially that I’ll enjoy it I’ve noticed… But I don’t want you to get burnt out because of it.”
Oh. He hadn’t thought of it like that.
“The thing about “perfect”,” Minho continues, “Is that it’s just a concept. It’s based off of preconceived notions and expectations from the self or from others about something being the absolute best it can be. And Channie, I think you’re hurting in the end yourself trying to achieve an unrealistic amount of perfection. You don’t mean to, but you set yourself up to fail if you set all your goals to be practically unattainable. I think it would be better for you to stop pushing yourself to be perfect when it’s not possible.”
Chan can feel the tears start again this time. It hurts in such a specific way to be told that no matter what he tries he simply can’t be perfect… but he recognizes that Minho has a point. The tears drip down his cheeks and he doesn’t try to hide them, too focused on hearing Minho out and trying to internalize it all.
“And that’s okay, Channie,” Minho reassures, firm yet gentle. “It’s okay to not be perfect, because I think you’re perfect in your imperfections. You don’t have to hold yourself to, frankly, ridiculous standards just to make me happy because I love you the way you already are.
“I love how sincere you are, and I love your sense of humor. I love how much you care and your kindness and I love how dedicated you are to making sure we have fond memories together. And I’m deeply impressed by how much of this evening’s plans you managed to pull off anyway with way less time than you’d planned for and so many setbacks.
“And love, that’s enough. You don’t need to try any harder. You are doing enough.”
Deep down, Chan of course knows that perfection is unattainable – it’s a goal post that never stops moving ten yards back anytime he gets close to it, a star he’ll never reach no matter how hard he tries. Hearing it from an outside perspective just makes it more real. It makes it sting even more, but then it soothes it with the validation that he is trying, and that in itself is enough.
He sniffles once, twice, and shakily nods some more. He opens his arms, hoping Minho understands, and sighs gratefully when Minho pulls him into a tight, comforting hug.
He sniffles again after a while, and takes a deep breath to verbally respond.
“I, I understand…” he mumbles in a wobbly voice. “At least, I’m starting to… Thank you, Min. I… I’ll try and, I’ll probably need help remembering but… I’ll try to do better for myself.”
Minho smiles, gentle and kind and everything and Chan can’t stop more tears from leaking out from the overwhelming love he has for Minho.
“Ahh, I can’t believe you’re crying more now, I thought my speech was motivational enough, sheesh.”
Chan bursts out laughing again because he knows, again, that if anyone else spoke to him this way he’d think they were making fun of him, of his crying. Even further, it would give him tonal whiplash hearing someone else go from the soft, loving tones to the loud, exasperated complaints complete with what must be the world’s most dramatic eyeroll (and an extremely fond smile fighting to appear on his lips).
But it’s Minho, so it all makes sense, and Chan wouldn’t change anything about Minho for the world.
Huh. He supposes, after everything, that that’s something he and Minho have in common.
How about that.
Eventually, Chan and Minho remember that they have dinner and cookies and the rest of the date waiting for them.
Minho asks Chan, more than once just to be sure, if he truly doesn’t want to call the restaurant to inform them that they sent the wrong order. He’s had a long enough evening, to be honest, and and a quick menu check reveals that this entrée and the one he’d ordered to begin with are the same price so… If it happens again, he’ll file a complaint. But until then, he’ll enjoy a meal he hadn’t planned on but still tastes just as good.
They have a chat over the meal, too; at first Chan allowing himself to complain just a little more about his shitty work day and Minho encouraging him to take Monday off in response to how much work he had to do today, both of them fitting in as many terrible jokes and puns as they can. Then Minho gushes about his cats for a while as Chan listens on, sure he has stars in his eyes as he gazes at his boyfriend.
(And the charmingly tacky candlesticks and tablecloth were nowhere in sight – Chan’s sure Minho hid them when he was washing up just so he wouldn’t have to see them and dwell, and what a strange thing to give Chan butterflies but oh well.)
After dinner, Minho takes Chan into the kitchen where the ugly cookies are waiting for them, and to Chan’s astonishment his wish was fulfilled – they do look less ugly once they’ve been baked. They look appetizing, even, and Minho is quick to devour one and shower Chan with playfully overzealous praise for his baking abilities. It makes Chan giggle and blush nonetheless, pleased that the evening is getting better as it goes along.
(Chan is almost positive that having a good time is just a side effect of being in Minho’s presence, but he’s not about to complain.)
With many of the cookies eaten, they begin tossing around a few ideas of what to do next, one of which being Chan suggesting playing a board game before evaluating his tiredness and shooting it back down, much to Minho’s amusement. Then they fall silent and look at each other before nodding, and in tandem agreeing out loud, “Movie time.”
It’s about five minutes later, cuddled up to Minho and surrounded by blankets and a stuffie that Chan remembers something.
“Ah, I forgot to ask, did you want me to tell you what your gift is going to be? Or keep it a secret?” he asks, and Minho considers it for a moment before answering with a grin.
“Keep it a secret. A surprise within reason, if you will.”
That sets both of their laughter off again, before long turning into intermittent giggles as they lean against each other and settle in for a rewatch of one of their favorite movies.
It may not have been the perfect, grand Valentine’s date Chan had been wishing so hard for, but he’s okay with how it turned out – soft and romantic and loving suits him and Minho just fine.
The following Wednesday is when Chan’s customized Valentine’s gift finally arrives – two days after Chan found himself agreeing with Minho’s assertion that he deserved some more rest and took some paid time off.
Chan presents the gift to him excitedly, and Minho takes it fondly, joking before he's even attempted to remove the tape about how nice it is that Chan finally gave him “The flamethrower I’ve always wanted,” complete with batting his eyelashes and fake swooning.
Then the box is opened, and the gift inside is pulled out, and for the first time in Chan’s life he witnesses Minho stunned into silence for nearly a full minute. It’s such a long period of pure shock that near the end Chan starts to worry that maybe he’d done something wrong.
Then he yelps as he’s tackled backward onto the couch, pinned into place by Minho’s strong limbs (his dancer thighs, Chan thinks distantly and dreamily).
“Chan, this may be the best thing I’ve ever received, and if you want to back out now’s your chance before I start kissing you into next week.”
Chan shivers, ears quickly turning bright red as Minho waits patiently (kind of) for his response. Then he nods his head so hard he worries it might wobble right off his neck. His worries prove unfounded when Minho plants one hand on the couch and the other on Chan’s face and dives in to kiss him.
It’s as passionate as it is careful, full of love and affection and admiration on both ends.
They continue kissing and feeling close, reveling in each other’s warmth as Minho’s gift sits where he’d placed it oh so carefully on the coffee table.
It’s a painted porcelain sculpture of three cats sleeping peacefully together – each modeled after Minho’s own precious kittens.
Chan’s pretty sure, in his dazed, kiss-drunk mind, that Minho’s reaction is a pretty good indicator that he fucking nailed this gift.