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The dinner had gone well. Mingi had decided it was a date. Yeosang had not been told it was a date, which was a flaw in the plan that Mingi was choosing not to examine too closely, because if he examined it he would have to conclude that it was a very strange date and that he was the only one on it.
Still. The restaurant had been good, Yeosang had eaten well, and at the end of it Mingi had said "come see the studio" and Yeosang had said okay, which was the whole point. Step one, complete.
Step two was currently standing in the doorway looking at the acoustic panels.
Mingi watched him and tried to read the quality of the silence. With most people he could do this easily. With Yeosang it was harder, because Yeosang had several kinds of quiet and they did not all mean the same thing. This one looked like the good kind. But Mingi had been wrong before.
He'd spent a week preparing what to say about the studio. Not a script exactly, more a sequence: panels first, then the interface, then the monitors, then the chair if there was still interest. He'd mentally rehearsed Yeosang's questions and his answers. He'd mentally rehearsed Yeosang being politely unimpressed and the things he would say to recover the situation. He'd done this at 2am the night before while staring at the ceiling and he was aware, in the way he was aware of most things about himself, that this was not normal behavior for someone who was relaxed.
He was not relaxed.
"The panels took forever," he said. His voice came out steady, which was good. "I did most of them myself. Yunho helped with the corner ones."
"It's clean work," Yeosang said. He pressed two fingers into the foam, testing the give, then let go.
Mingi recalibrated his anxiety level down by approximately fifteen percent. A direct compliment from Yeosang meant something because Yeosang did not give them for free.
Yeosang moved to the desk. He looked at the interface without touching it, which was correct behavior around equipment you didn't own and Mingi appreciated it. He looked at the monitors. He looked at the mic stand in the corner with the pop filter still in its packaging beside it. His gaze traveled to the monitor stand and stopped.
On the monitor stand, between the right speaker and the wall, Mingi had left the lube and a strip of condoms. He had put them there deliberately. He had also been second-guessing that decision for the past forty minutes, going back and forth between "this is efficient, it communicates intent without requiring a preamble" and "this is insane, what is wrong with you."
Yeosang looked at the condoms for a moment. Then he looked at Mingi.
Mingi held the eye contact and said nothing because he had prepared for this exact moment and the move was to say nothing.
Yeosang said nothing either. He looked back at the desk.
Okay, Mingi thought. He's not running. That's information.
He crossed the room, sat down at the desk, and pulled up his latest project.
"Come listen to something," he said, because he needed two more minutes before he started the actual conversation and this was the most natural way to buy them.
He stopped the playback after half a song and spun the chair around. Yeosang was watching him with the expression that meant he was already slightly ahead of wherever Mingi thought he was. Which was fine. Mingi had prepared for this too.
"So," Mingi said.
"So," Yeosang said.
"I want to make a case for something."
"You want to make a case," Yeosang said, very neutral.
"Yes. Listen." Mingi had the structure clear in his head. He'd built it over several days. "First: we trust each other. Completely. There's nobody else in this group I'd have this conversation with without worrying it would get weird, but you're not going to get weird about it. And neither am I."
Yeosang said nothing. He was listening.
"Second: this room is private. Actually private. Nobody has the address except the members and none of them are going to say anything. You're the most private person I know and this is the safest space either of us has access to." He paused. "Third: we're both available. Not by choice, just by circumstance. The industry makes it impossible to see anyone outside the group without it becoming a thing. That's not changing anytime soon. So here we are, two people who can't see anyone, in a private room."
"Mingi," Yeosang said.
"I'm not done."
A small exhale. Not impatient. Marking that he'd tried.
"Fourth." Mingi leaned forward. "We're both very good-looking. I'm not being modest about this. If I woke up tomorrow and met someone with my exact face, I would probably want to sleep with him. You're the same. You know you are. So the two of us, in this room, is actually a very reasonable proposition on aesthetic grounds alone."
Yeosang looked at him for a long moment. Something moved in his expression that Mingi could not fully read. Then: "That's the strangest argument anyone has ever made to me."
"It's logical."
"It really isn't."
"It’s good arguments." Mingi straightened. He'd reached the end of the prepared section and was now at the part he hadn't rehearsed because it didn't need rehearsing, it was just true. "And also. I like you. That's the actual reason. I like you and I'd like to have sex with you and I think it's a good idea, so. That's the proposition."
Yeosang was quiet for a moment.
"That last part," he said, "you could have led with."
"I wanted the case to be solid first."
"You wanted to feel prepared."
Mingi did not confirm this. He moved on. "Are you thinking about it?"
"I'm thinking about it."
"What's the hesitation?"
Yeosang looked away. Not evasion exactly, more the thing he did when he was deciding how much to give. His eyes went to the monitor stand briefly, just for a second, before he looked back. Mingi tracked that small movement and understood it immediately.
San.
He'd hoped he was wrong about that.
"Don't wait for San," Mingi said. He kept his voice level because this was a fact, not a wound. "He means everything he does on stage, everything he says. I live with him, I know. But he's been meaning it for years and he's never done anything and he's not going to. That's just how he's built." He looked at Yeosang steadily. "I'm not built that way."
Something moved across Yeosang's face. Small and contained and gone almost before it arrived. Mingi saw it and felt a flat, clean pang of something he didn't examine, and then put it away.
"I'm not waiting for anyone," Yeosang said.
"Okay."
"I mean it."
"Okay," Mingi said again. He wasn't entirely sure he believed it but it also wasn't the point right now. He waited.
Yeosang looked at the condom strip on the monitor stand. He looked back at Mingi. Something settled in his expression, a decision arrived at and not being revisited.
"Your pitch was terrible," he said.
"The aesthetic argument was strong."
"The aesthetic argument was genuinely strange." A pause. "The part where you said you like me was good."
"That part I meant."
"I know," Yeosang said. "Yes."
Mingi's chest did something he did not have a clean word for. He stood up.
— — —
The couch was small, pushed against the far wall under the only window, and it was where Mingi had imagined this going when he'd planned it out in his head. In his head it had gone smoothly: he'd said the things, Yeosang had agreed, they'd moved to the couch, it had proceeded from there in a logical sequence.
In practice, Yeosang sat down on the couch and looked up at him, and Mingi stood in front of him and forgot everything he'd planned.
He sat down beside him. Too close, probably. Yeosang didn't move away.
Mingi had kissed people before. He knew how it worked. He turned toward Yeosang and Yeosang was already looking at him with that composed, faintly amused expression, and the composure of him was so complete that Mingi felt his own dissolve entirely in contrast. He leaned in.
He misjudged the angle. His nose bumped Yeosang's cheek, not badly, just enough to be wrong, and he pulled back a centimeter and recalibrated and Yeosang made a sound that was definitely a suppressed laugh.
"Don't," Mingi said.
"I didn't say anything."
"You were going to."
"I really wasn't," Yeosang said, and closed the distance himself.
That was better. That was considerably better. Yeosang kissed with a quiet directness that caught Mingi off guard in a way none of the prepared arguments had prepared him for, and the laugh and the bumped nose evaporated immediately. Mingi got a hand in his hair and felt him lean into it slightly and stopped thinking about sequences and steps and what came next.
They stayed like that for a while, unhurried. Yeosang's hand found his arm and rested there without urgency, just weight. Mingi pulled back once to look at him and Yeosang looked back, dark-eyed and still and not performing anything, and the sight of him like that did something immediate to Mingi's ability to be calm about any of this.
He kissed him again, less careful this time.
They worked out the logistics of the couch gradually and without grace, Mingi too large for the space and Yeosang not especially helping, both of them adjusting until something workable was found. At some point Yeosang's shirt came off and then Mingi's, and the difference in their builds was stark and immediate, Mingi broad and large, Yeosang fine-boned and lean even with all the muscles, and Mingi was careful with the size of himself in a way that he didn't need to announce because Yeosang could feel it.
"You're overthinking," Yeosang said, into the quiet.
"I'm not."
"You are. You've been overthinking since the restaurant."
Mingi pulled back enough to look at him. Yeosang's expression was still collected, mostly, except for the edges of it, which had softened in a way that wasn't performed and wasn't for anyone in particular. Just the truth of him, up close.
"I'm fine," Mingi said.
"I know," Yeosang said. "So am I. So stop planning and do something."
Mingi did something.
He reached for the lube from the monitor stand, which required a slightly undignified stretch from the couch, and Yeosang watched this with an expression that was entirely too composed for someone in his position, and Mingi said "don't," preemptively, and Yeosang said "I still didn't say anything," and that was the last either of them said for a while.
Mingi took his time. He paid attention to Yeosang's breathing, to where the tension in him sat and whether it was the good kind, to the way his hands moved and where they settled. Yeosang grew quieter and then less quiet, the careful management of himself loosening in increments, and each increment felt like something given. Mingi wanted more of it. He worked slowly and with full attention until Yeosang said his name, low, and that sound went through him like a current.
When he finally pushed in, slow and careful, Yeosang's breath came apart and his hands tightened on Mingi's shoulders and held on. Mingi pressed his forehead to his temple and held still, feeling him adjust, waiting.
"Okay," Yeosang said, quietly. Not a question.
Mingi moved.
He was not thinking about the argument or the sequence or the aesthetic case he'd made with a straight face twenty minutes ago. He was thinking about nothing except the warmth of Yeosang and the sounds he was making and the way his head had tipped back against the arm of the couch. He pressed his mouth to his throat and felt his pulse and kept going, slow and then less slow, following what Yeosang's body told him without needing it translated.
Yeosang came with his hands in Mingi's hair and a sound he clearly hadn't planned on making. Mingi followed him shortly after, going still and heavy, the heat of it rolling through him slowly.
He stayed there for a moment, not moving. Yeosang's hand was still in his hair. The studio was silent.
Eventually Mingi shifted, carefully, and pulled him close. Yeosang came without resistance, which was not something Mingi had predicted and which he noted, privately, as significant.
They lay there in the quiet. The monitors hummed. Outside the panels, the rest of the building did not exist.
After a while, Yeosang said: "The couch is very small."
"I know."
"You planned everything else. You could have planned a bigger couch."
"I was working within a budget."
Yeosang made the small dry sound that was almost a laugh. He didn't move from where he was. "The dinner was nice," he said, after a moment. Not quite looking at Mingi.
Mingi went still. "Yeah?"
"You didn't have to pay."
"I wanted to."
A pause. Mingi could not read what was in it. Then Yeosang said, simply: "Okay," and didn't move, warm against his side.
Mingi decided this was enough. More than enough. He held on to it without ceremony and said nothing, because nothing needed saying.