Archive of Our Own ^beta

☆

After the first time that Felix woke up thrashing and kicking and screaming until his voice ran hoarse, Minho visited his university’s library and borrowed a thick stack of psychology textbooks.

On the bus ride home, he kept a protective hand over the cracked, peeling spines. As if the books would fall apart when he wasn’t looking, scattering the pages’ contents onto the skid-marked floor. Every time the bus stopped and started, he imagined smooth, sterile models of neurons and synapses rolling underneath seats and between legs like loose marbles, always at risk of getting crushed underneath a stray commuter’s heel.

Minho had ignored the tickle of dust curling into his nostrils as he hunched over the moth-bitten textbook pages. He read about how nightmares were a common response to PTSD (he knew this), how the amygdala, the structure of the brain involved in identifying potential threats, likely became overactive during post-traumatic nightmares (he hadn’t known this), and how post-traumatic nightmares often involved exact replays of the trauma that had triggered them in the first place (he hadn’t known this either—but now, he couldn’t forget).

For all the information that those crumbled tomes boasted about nightmares and amygdalae, not a single one could tell him how to make any of it stop. So, he walked to the registrar’s office the next day and filled out a form to change his major from computer science to psychology, determined to find out for himself.

Two years, countless class credits, and one B.S. in psychology later—and Minho still feels like he’s staring at an unreadable block of jargon.

“Hey, hey, hey,” Minho says in a hushed voice, letting Felix burrow his snotty face into his chest. “I’m here. I’ve got you. Uncle Minho’s got you now.”

Felix curls a tight fist around the cotton of Minho’s t-shirt, knuckles going pale from the grip. He’d been screaming just seconds before, so his voice crumbles a little when he speaks again. “Where’s Mommy?” he says in that frantic, sandpaper voice. “I want Mommy.”

Minho swallows hard, still hugging Felix close to his chest. “It was a bad dream, Felix,” he says softly. “But you’re awake now. And you’re okay.”

Dr. Rivera likes to tell Minho that the earlier he labelled a nightmare as nothing more than a jagged, finger-smudged fragment of Felix’s imagination, the easier it would be for Felix to calm down—but it always breaks Minho’s heart a little, yanking Felix down from a world where his mom exists to one where she doesn’t.

Minho can feel Felix’s breathing slow against the ebb and flow of his own chest. He smooths a hand across the soft mop of hair on Felix’s head, as steady as a tide.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Minho asks after a stretch of silence, sensing that Felix is calm enough now to form more coherent thoughts.

Felix shakes his head wordlessly, smearing snot and tears onto the front of Minho’s shirt. The sensation is a little gross, but Minho doesn’t mind all that much. Just another shirt to throw in with the next load of laundry.

“Alright. That’s okay,” says Minho, gingerly patting Felix’s head. “Want to read about Little Red Riding Hood again?”

Another shake of his head.

Minho tries his best to hold back a bone-tired sigh. The initial waking up from a nightmare is always the most visceral, the most terrifying—but getting Felix back to sleep? Even Hypnos himself would need a good thirty minutes before he could make a dent in that hyperactive toddler brain.

“Okay. What do you want to do, then?” Minho asks patiently.

Felix sniffles wetly. “Wanna talk to the moon,” he mumbles, the sound vibrating against Minho’s ribcage.

Minho lets out a soft laugh. “Yeah? You wanna say hi to the stars?” he asks.

“Mhm."

Felix pulls his face away from Minho’s chest. His eyes are still red and raw from crying, but his lips are pulled into the gap-toothed smile that Minho is so used to seeing during the day. Minho feels his own expression mirror Felix’s.

“Okay, sure,” Minho says, ruffling Felix’s hair. “Let’s go visit the moon.”

☆

Before they head up to the rooftop, Minho washes Felix’s face clean of all the gunk he’d left behind from crying. Minho changes into a clean hoodie, too, and he makes Felix put on one of his own. Sure, it’s still only the beginning of October—but the last thing that Minho needs to add to his plate right now is a sniffly, feverish five-year old.

By the time they trek up the two flights of stairs leading to the rooftop, Felix is nearly back to his usual bubbly self. He’s chatting animatedly about some new snack that they’ve started serving at school after naptime, and Minho interjects with vaguely interested mm’s and ooh’s when appropriate. He’s tired, though, exhausted from a particularly grueling shift at the restaurant, and he can’t help it when his mind starts to go fuzzy at the corners.

“Uncle Minho,” Felix whines in a sing-song, tugging at the baggy sleeve of Minho’s hoodie. “Did you hear me?”

Minho blinks, bringing his attention back to Felix. “Hm?” he says. “I’m sorry, I spaced out. What did you say?”

Felix exhales huffily. “I said, what’s that sound?” he repeats.

They stop in front of the door to the rooftop, and Minho strains his ears. He hadn’t noticed it before, too mired in the fog of his thoughts to take in his surroundings, but he hears it now. There’s definitely music coming from the rooftop—specifically, the earthy, whispery-soft strumming of a guitar.

Minho furrows his brow. It’s not unusual to see people hanging out on the rooftop—the little community garden that spans across the roof tends to attract everyone hoping to get away from the concrete ground and asphalt skies of the surrounding city—but it seems a little late in the evening for for any get-togethers.

“Not sure,” Minho replies, gently pulling Felix forward by his hand as he takes a step towards the door. “Let’s find out, huh?”

When he pushes the door open, the music grows louder, streaming from the rooftop into the hallway. Minho realizes then that someone is singing along to the music, the voice sweet and clear as it bubbles into the night sky. He quickly spots a man with cow-licked hair the color of soil as the source of the music. He’s turned towards the garden plots so that Minho can only see his back—but Minho can tell from his silhouette that the man is hunched over a guitar, his shoulders bobbing in a steady rhythm as he strums at the strings.

Minho is so caught off guard by the sight that he doesn’t notice Felix wriggling out of his grip until he’s already bounding towards the mystery guitar player. “Wait, Felix,” Minho sputters, helplessly holding out a hand as he stumbles forward. “Don’t—”

“Hi,” Felix says to the man, causing the music to stop. “Are you singing to the moon?”

When Minho catches up to Felix, he places two protective hands on his shoulders. “I’m sorry,” he says, flashing the stranger an apologetic smile.

Now that he can see the man’s face, Minho notes absentmindedly that his eyes are the same shade of brown as his hair. Like soil, like mud. Like something bound to cause a mess.

Instead of replying to Minho, the stranger looks Felix in the eyes and smiles. “No, but you’re close,” he says calmly. “I was singing to the plants.”

Felix wrinkles his nose. Minho tries not to do the same. Did he really just get snubbed for a toddler?

“That’s silly,” says Felix. “Why are you singing to the plants? Plants don’t have ears.”

The man laughs. “No, they don’t,” he agrees. “But they grow better when you sing to them, you know.”

Minho blurts out, "That can't be true."

The man looks up at him with those earth-colored eyes. He raises an inquisitive eyebrow.

“There’s no way that’s true,” Minho continues. “I mean, it's just pseudoscience, right?”

Felix tugs on Minho’s sleeve again. “Uncle Minho,” he whispers, though there’s not much of a difference between this and his usual voice. “What’s sue-doe-science?”

Minho hums contemplatively. “It’s like,” he says, “lying, sort of.”

Felix blinks. “But, lying is bad,” he says. “Ms. Summers read us a story in class about that. If you keep lying, then no one will believe you, and you’ll get eaten by wolves.”

Minho frowns. “What in the world are they teaching you at that school?”

“I promise you,” the man interjects, “that I’m not lying.”

He flicks his gaze back down to Felix, then strums a chord on his guitar. “You see how the strings move when I strum them?” he says.

Felix nods.

“Every time the strings move, they send vibrations that leave this hole as music,” he continues, pointing to the sound hole in the middle of the guitar. “Plants don’t have the ears to hear music, but they can feel it in the form of vibrations. And the vibrations help them grow bigger.”

Felix stares at the guitar, wide-eyed. “Will they help me grow bigger too?” he asks excitedly.

Another laugh. “I don’t think so,” the man says. “But everything’s worth a shot, right?”

Felix nods his head vigorously. Sometime during the conversation, a bright smile sparked up across his face, something like the stars of a constellation—and, well, Minho might not be a huge fan of this guitar-wielding, tomato-plant-serenading stranger himself, but Felix is, and that’s enough to make the hardened carapace of tissue clenched around his heart soften for a moment.

“What’s your name, buddy?” the stranger asks, gingerly setting his guitar to the ground. He flicks his gaze up to Minho, as if asking for permission, and it’s the first time he’s acknowledged Minho in the conversation.

Begrudgingly, Minho gives a lopsided shrug of his shoulders. Whatever, it says.

Do anything unsavory with that information and I’ll shove your guitar down your throat, Minho thinks.

“Felix,” he answers, puffing his chest out proudly. Felix holds up his hand, fingers splayed out. “I’m five.”

The man’s eyes curve into celestial sickles. They suit each other, Minho thinks. Those crescent moon eyes, and Felix’s sparse stars smile.

“Well, I’m Seungmin,” he says. “I’m twenty.”

And just like that, Seungmin is back to ignoring Minho’s existence. He leans forward, conspiratorial, and says, “You wanna know a secret, Felix?”

Felix’s eyes go big again. He glances over at Minho—again, asking for permission.

Minho gives another half-shoulder shrug. Anything for you, this one says, and Minho’s thinking the same thing.

When Felix turns back to Seungmin, he’s got an impossibly grave expression on his face. “Yeah. I’m real good at keeping secrets,” says Felix.

“Well,” Seungmin says in a stage-whisper. It’s loud enough for Minho to hear—but for Felix’s sake, Minho pretends to be absorbed with the drawstrings of his hoodie. “I think it’s not just the vibrations that help them grow. I don’t even think it’s the music. I think it’s the person playing the music.”

Minho glances up from his fidgeting hands—and at that moment, Seungmin’s gaze clicks with his. They stare at each other for a second, half a second, an infinitely divisible stretch of time, before Minho jerks his head back to his hoodie drawstrings. His cheeks are burning, and he’s not sure why.

“I think we’re not the only beings like us in the universe,” he hears Seungmin say. “I think plants get lonely sometimes, too.”

Minho wills himself to look up again—or maybe he just can’t stop himself. Either way, he thinks that magnets are definitely involved here. Attraction and repulsion. He just can’t figure out which end of the pole Seungmin falls on.

Felix’s expression is still somber, but there’s a new note of wonder to his furrowed brow. “I hate being lonely,” he says. “Sometimes, when I feel lonely, Uncle Minho and I come up to the roof and say hi to the moon and the stars.”

Seungmin’s smile doesn’t necessarily disappear, but it creaks a little under the weight of this new information. “Well,” he says, “I’m sure that the stars also appreciate having someone to talk to.”

“You should start singing to the stars, I think,” Felix says. “And the moon too. They might feel left out if you only sing to the plants. And no one likes feeling left out.”

“Of course,” Seungmin says. He leans forward again and brandishes his pinky at Felix. “Only if you remember to say hi to the plants whenever you come up, too.”

Felix grins as he links little fingers with Seungmin. “Deal.”

Then, Seungmin is looking up at Minho again. The attention is too sudden, too much, and Minho feels the joints in his fingers turn stiff and brittle. Seungmin gets up from his chair and takes a single step forward, so that he’s eye-to-eye with Minho. He offers his pinky to Minho.

Minho stares back at it.

“You too,” Seungmin prompts, pinky outstretched patiently. “You should promise, too.”

“You’re asking me,” Minho says, “to promise to… speak to the plants?”

Me? A grown man, and not a literal five-year old? He doesn’t say the rest, but he’s sure his quirked eyebrow and tightly lined lips get the message across.

Seungmin has the nerve, the audacity, to roll his eyes. As if Minho is the toddler here. “Yeah,” he says, “I’m asking you.”

Minho keeps staring at Seungmin’s pinky, disdainful. Then, he glances over at Felix, at all his bright-eyed ferocity, and he sighs. “Sure,” Minho says, and he hooks his own brittle-boned pinky with Seungmin’s. “I promise.”

Seungmin’s skin pressed against his own is surprisingly cold, his hands raw and icy from playing guitar. It’s impossibly idyllic, Minho thinks, to flay oneself out in the night air for God knows how long, just to indulge in some silly superstition about lonely tomato plants. Idyllic, indulgent, and idiotic—because only idiots have the emotional bandwidth to care so much, so deeply. Idiots and toddlers.

Minho is a little envious, maybe. Of both of them.

Seungmin’s lips curl into a satisfied smile. “Good,” he says, and finally lets go of Minho’s stick-straight pinky. He turns back to Felix and asks, “Felix, how good is your Uncle Minho at keeping promises?”

Felix purses his lips contemplatively. Finally, he settles on an answer of, “Pretty good! But he doesn’t make a lot of promises anyways.”

Minho shrugs. He’s been doing a lot of that tonight, he’s noticed. It’s ambivalence, or apathy, or something else. “I don’t make promises I can’t keep,” says Minho.

Seungmin frowns. “Well, where’s the fun in that?” he says. “You’ll never learn how to ride a bike if you don’t fall over every once in a while.”

“Or you could just take the bus,” Minho counters. “Avoid the bike-related injuries altogether.”

Seungmin laughs at that. The sound is just like his singing, light and bubbly, and it makes something flutter up from Minho’s stomach into his ribcage.

“Don’t tell me you’re afraid of a few scraped knees, Minho,” Seungmin says, a challenge in his voice.

“Don’t worry,” Felix says, that serious, tight-lipped expression returning to his face. “If you get hurt, I’ll help you put on a Band-Aid. Like you always do for me.”

Minho blinks, taken aback. He lets out a quick exhale of a laugh. “Sure, Felix,” he says, crouching down slightly to tousle his nephew’s hair.

“Hey," Minho says. "It’s getting late, and you have school tomorrow. Wanna go say hi to the moon and the stars now?”

Felix nods. Minho lets his hand linger in his hair for a moment longer, at least until Felix is skipping away towards the edge of the roof. He watches as Felix sits cross-legged on the ground and props his chin up on his hands, face tipped towards the night sky.

“He does it by himself?” Seungmin asks, gaze fixed on Felix.

Minho’s lips quirk into a small frown. “Yeah, he does,” he says, a tad defensive. “You have a problem with how I’m taking care of my kid?”

Seungmin flicks his eyes back over to Minho. There’s a hint of amusement in his eyes, sprinkled somewhere among the rain-soaked soil of his irises. There’s a little bit of understanding, too, and that makes Minho feel like a body cut in half, split open right in the middle.

“That’s not what I was asking,” Seungmin says. “I meant, does he like doing it by himself?”

Minho doesn’t realize that his fingers are still stiff, still rigid, until he feels the thin bones melting into his skin. He stops clutching at the drawstrings of his hoodies and lets his hands fall loosely to his sides.

“It’s better for him to do it by himself, I think,” says Minho. “It’s—he has these nightmares. And he doesn’t like telling me about them. So he tells the sky instead.”

The explanation sounds a little ridiculous, and Minho cringes inwardly when he finishes speaking. “His therapist says it’s healthy,” he tacks on, just to have some sort of justification. “Talking about his feelings, I mean. Even if it’s not to another person.” I swear it’s science, he wants to say, as if this will somehow make him sound less and not more childish.

But Seungmin nods, because of course he does. He serenades tomato plants and makes promises he might break, wears scraped knees and cold-blistered fingers like shiny tin badges. Whispering secrets to the stars doesn’t seem entirely out of his realm of understanding.

“Do you?” asks Seungmin.

Minho blinks. “Pardon?”

“Do you talk to the sky sometimes?” Seungmin elaborates.

Minho scrunches his nose up. “Uh, no. I don’t really have anything to talk about.”

“Who says you need something to talk about?” Seungmin cranes his head towards the sky, and moonlight washes brassy and blue over his face. “Everyone gets a little lonely sometimes. It’s not just the plants and the moon.”

Minho wonders then if that’s why Seungmin came up to the roof, too: because he’s lonely. Because he finds better company among clouds and dirt than in flesh and bone and sweat and blood.

This, at least, Minho can relate to.

“Sure,” is all that Minho can squeeze out of his throat.

Before either of them can say anything else, Felix is back. He throws his hands around Minho’s waist, cheek pressed to the side of his stomach as he hugs him.

Minho laughs, hand instinctively going to Felix’s shoulder. “All done, bud?” he says.

Felix nods, rubbing his cheek against the cotton of Minho’s hoodie.

Minho squints down at Felix—because, well, they’ve been down this road before, and he doesn’t quite believe Felix. “You sure?” he asks skeptically. “You’re 100% certain that you’re ready to jump into bed and go to sleep? And that you won’t make me read you five more bedtime stories before you actually get tired?”

There’s a pause before Felix nods again, slower this time.

“Ah,” Seungmin pipes up, “can I suggest something?”

He picks his guitar back up and slings it over his shoulders. “I used to babysit my younger cousins a lot in high school, and they always had trouble falling asleep,” says Seungmin. “I can play you a lullaby, if you want?”

Technically, Seungmin is asking Felix, not Minho, but he glances over at Minho anyways. Minho feels the urge to shrug again, that comfortable middle. Instead, he forces himself to give a curt nod, a slight jerk of his chin.

(And Minho would’ve been lying if he said that he hadn’t enjoyed Seungmin’s clear, sweet singing voice. Like spring water, like skyglow.)

Felix nods too, albeit much more enthusiastically. “What song are you gonna play?” he asks excitedly.

Seungmin screws his face up in his contemplation. “Something to make you feel less lonely, maybe,” he says.

He looks over at Minho when he says this. Minho glances down at his feet, blinking away the stars in his vision.

“C’mere, Felix.” Minho pulls a chair over so that it’s facing Seungmin. He takes a seat and, as Felix rushes over, scoops the toddler up and puts him on his lap. “Remember to say thank you to Seungmin afterwards for taking the time to do this, okay?”

But he doesn’t get the chance to. By the second verse, Felix is already nodding off against Minho’s chest, eyelids drooping until they close completely.

But in your dreams whatever they be, Seungmin sings in that soft, clear skies voice as Minho slowly gets up from his seat, Felix clutched carefully in his arms. Dream a little dream of me.

That night, Minho doesn’t dream of Seungmin, because Minho hasn’t dreamed in years. Not since the accident, not since he started learning about amygdalae and teacher-parent conferences and midnight conversations with the moon. But when he lays in bed that night and stares up at the ceiling, Minho thinks about vibrations—the kinds created by blistered fingers and bruising vocal cords. The kinds that make tomato plants and five-year olds and men with smooth, scrape-free knees feel a little less lonely.

☆

“Which one tastes better,” Minho says, “elephants or hippos?”

Felix frowns and stops swinging his legs. He’s sitting on top of a washing machine, cheeks bulging as he munches on a packet of animal crackers. Minho leans against the same rumbling machine, his weight propped up by his elbows. The air in the laundry room is thick and stuffy, and because of that, Minho’s voice comes out like thick bunches of cotton—but Felix looks at him now like his words are sharp enough to skewer him straight in the chest.

“That’s a really mean thing to say,” Felix says, a crestfallen expression on his face.

“What?” Minho lets out an incredulous laugh. “How am I being mean?”

Minho holds out a cupped palm. Felix fishes a cracker out of his bag and presses it into his hand—a cat, because Felix always saves the cats for Minho.

“It’s mean because you’re making me think about how I’m eating animals right now.” Felix stares sadly as Minho nibbles the head off his cracker, then the legs, then the tail. “Makes me feel like a bad person.”

Minho snorts. “Listen. Buddy. In this life? None of us are angels,” he says. “Do I have to show you that video about where chicken nuggets come from again?”

Felix’s eyes go wide. He plugs two fingers in his ears. “La la la la la!” he chants loudly. “Can’t hear you!”

Minho gives a good-natured roll of his eyes and tosses the rest of the cracker into his mouth.

Behind them, the LED countdown on the washing machine blinks from two minutes to one. Minho is about to tap Felix’s shoulder and lift him off the machine so that he can get ready to transport the soaking mass of clothes to the dryer—but someone walks in just then, his basket piled high with clothes, and Minho forgets all about his own laundry.

“Oh!” Felix chirps, excitedly swinging his legs back and forth again. “It’s Seungmin! Twenty!”

Seungmin blinks, as if adjusting his vision to a sudden appearance from the sun. “It’s Felix,” he says with a small smile, setting his basket on top of the closest machine. He holds up a hand full of starfished fingers. “Five.”

Felix beams at that. “You remembered.”

He remembers, Minho thinks.

“I have a good memory,” says Seungmin, cracking open one of the washing machines. “Especially when it comes to numbers.”

Felix furrows his brow as he tips his face towards Minho. “What’s that thing in your brain called again?” he asks. “The one that helps you remember stuff? Hippo-something?”

“Hippocampus,” Minho supplies.

Minho used to review vocab for his neuroscience courses in the living room while Felix watched Nickelodeon, cycling through flashcards in a hushed voice as he dog-eared brittle textbook pages. He remembers Felix staring up at him in awe as he explained parts of the limbic system, hippocampus and amygdala and hypothalamus. He remembers pointing out the distinct seahorse shape of the hippocampus, and he remembers dissolving into delirious, sleep-deprived laughter when Felix asked him why it wasn't shaped like a hippo.

He’s a little surprised to hear that Felix's sticky little brain had clung onto this memory. Pesky little thing, the hippocampus could be.

“Right!” Felix says with shiny eyes. He digs around in his bag of animal crackers for a few seconds before pulling out a hippo-shaped cracker. “You probably have a very big hippocampus,” he tells Seungmin as he brandishes the cracker at him.

Seungmin stares down at the cracker for a moment, as if unsure of what to do with the gift. Then, he breaks out into a smile, the same crescent moon smile as a few nights ago. It’d been impossibly bright against the backdrop of the night sky—but even now, under the harsh overlights hanging from the ceiling, Minho cannot believe that scientists haven’t thought to bottle up the moonbeams spilling from the crinkled corners of his eyes.

Minho glances down at his feet. The sun feels awfully tame once you’ve had a glimpse of the moon.

“Thank you,” says Seungmin. Minho looks up again to find Seungmin taking a series of careful bites from the cracker—first the head, then the limbs.

Felix squinches his nose up. “Gross,” he says disdainfully. “You eat your animal crackers just like Uncle Minho.”

Seungmin turns to Minho, still chewing slowly on his small mouthful of crackers. “So,” he says, his voice dead-serious, “you’re also a sociopath?”

Minho cracks a lopsided smile at that. “Sure,” he says. “And I have the psych degree to back up my self-diagnosis."

Seungmin gives a low whistle. “Wow,” he says. "An animal torturer and a college man? Impressive credentials.”

“Uncle Minho doesn’t torture animals. He loves them,” Felix interjects, his voice going high at that last sentence. “He used to have three cats. And he doesn’t even eat meat.”

Then, Felix shivers a little. Probably reminded of the chicken nuggets video.

Seungmin clicks his tongue against his teeth. “You're vegetarian? That’s responsible. I mean, I would rather eat glass shards for a week if I got to have meat with every meal than go vegetarian—but still. Good for you.”

Minho squirms, shifting his weight from his heels to his toes and back again. He wishes he had some higher moral justification for going vegetarian—something about methane gasses or intelligent livestock, anything like that—but really, when he stopped eating meat a little less than two years ago, it was for purely selfish reasons. Minho doesn’t remember much else about the day he went vegetarian, but he does remember the photos from the car crash: he remembers scorched-through skin and charbroiled limbs, eight of them in total. He remembers vomiting up the burger he’d had earlier that day. Medium-rare, he remembers.

Pesky little thing, the hippocampus could be.

“It’s not so bad,” says Minho. “I like tofu.”

Seungmin starts tossing the contents of his laundry basket into the open washing machine. Minho squints at the pile of wrinkled, forest green t-shirts, none of them looking like they’d fit Seungmin particularly well.

“Those aren’t for the army of small children that you’re secretly raising, are they?” Minho asks, gesturing at the t-shirts.

Seungmin looks confused for a moment. “Oh,” he says as he glances down at the crumpled up t-shirt in his hands. “God, no. I wish I had the funding for a secret child army.”

He holds the t-shirt up, shaking all the wrinkles out of the fabric. Minho examines the white logo emblazoned in the front: a disembodied hand scoops a seedling out of the ground, and “Tiny Seeds” is written underneath the symbol in a tidy Serif font.

“I work for an afterschool youth program that exposes disadvantaged kids to science education. Biology, usually,” Seungmin explains. “Er, hence the terrible name.”

Seungmin balls the shirt up again and tosses it into the washing machine. “I get to do cool stuff with the kids sometimes. Y’know—sticking celery sticks in colored water and watching everyone go ooh and ahh as the food coloring travels up the xylem.” He frowns, though he looks more like he’s putting on an imitation of disgruntlement than anything. “Most of the time, though, I get stuck with laundry duty.”

Minho thinks this is a shame, because he doesn’t feel like Seungmin belongs in this stuffy, sterile room. Mess suits him much better—soil-encrusted fingernails and bleach-stained lab coats, and food coloring in every color of the rainbow.

“Is that what you want to do?” Minho asks as Seungmin measures out a careful capful of neon-blue detergent. “Teach science to kids?”

Seungmin shrugs. “I’m not sure what I want to do,” he admits, his hand steady as holds the measured detergent up to the light. “But it’s not a terrible gig. I like it enough. And the kids seem to like me too, at least.”

“I’d want you to be my teacher,” Felix pipes up. “You’re really smart, and really nice.”

Seungmin’s eyes crease at the corners again. “Thank you, Felix,” he says. “You are too.”

Felix gets all proud and puffy-chested at that. “Hear that?” he tells Minho. “I’m smart. And nice.”

Minho chuckles softly. “You sure are, champ,” he says.

As Seungmin fiddles with the settings of his washing machine, Minho realizes that their own rinse cycle ended a few minutes ago. “Ah, Felix,” he says, putting his hands under Felix’s armpits so that he can lift him up and off the washing machine. “Time to move the clothes.”

Felix pouts. “Do we have to?” he whines as Minho sets him on the ground. “If we move the clothes, then we have to leave. And I wanna keep talking to Seungmin.”

Minho lets out a nervous laugh. “C’mon. I’m sure Seungmin’s tired of us bothering him,” he says.

“I’m not,” Seungmin says instantly.

Minho doesn’t exactly glare at him—but he must do something close enough, because Seungmin blinks in understanding. “Ah. I mean… I’m really not. But you should listen to your uncle,” he says, turning to Felix. “Besides, I’m sure we’ll see each other around.”

Seungmin turns to Minho. “What floor do you guys live on? If you don’t mind me asking.”

“Ninth floor,” Minho answers. Just below the roof, just below the sky.

Seungmin lets out a quick, surprised breath of a laugh. “You’re kidding. I just moved ionto the ninth floor two weeks ago,” he says. “Apartment 914?”

Minho blinks once, twice. He’s not sure how he missed a new resident moving onto his floor. To be fair, though, that unit’s been empty for a few months now. It was only a matter of time before someone moved in. If Minho was a sentimental person, he’d call it inevitable. Fate.

“Right. Apartment 914,” says Minho. “Used to belong to Ms. Choi?”

Seungmin nods in confirmation. “It’s really a shame what happened to her,” he says, even as his lips arch into a small smile.

Minho isn’t doing much better; he can feel his own smile mirroring Seungmin’s, his cheeks aching slightly from the effort of pressing his lips tight together. He’s certain now: magnets must be involved.

“Yes,” Minho says, finally tamping his smile down into a straight line. “A shame.”

☆

Minho hadn’t realized they were still making Highlights magazines until he started spending extended periods of time in Dr. Rivera’s waiting room. He flips through one of the issues now, absentmindedly rubbing each smooth, glossy page between his thumb and forefinger.

There are about 37 things that Minho could be doing right now besides perusing a children’s magazine. (Trust him, he’s listed them out.) But, in the forty-five minutes that Felix spends with Dr. Rivera on every first and third Saturday of the month, Minho always manages to work himself up into a nervous, jittery-kneed mess, making it impossible for him to do anything other than stare at those saturated pages with glazed over eyes.

So instead, he spends those forty-five minutes reading about DIY Mother’s Day crafts and squinting at Spot the Difference games—because the alternative is to be left alone with his own racing, catastrophe-prone thoughts, and that’s just asking for disaster.

Minho is just about to fling the magazine across the room in frustration (seriously, where the hell is that last difference) when he hears a familiar voice trickle out into the waiting room like syrup.

“—super-duper nice, and he sings real good too,” chirps Felix.

Dr. Rivera gives him a wide smile. “He sounds wonderful," she says, lifting her head to look at Minho. "Felix here was just telling me about a new friend you both made. What was his name again, Felix?”

“His name is Seungmin,” Felix replies cheerily. “He’s twenty.”

Inexplicably, Minho feels the tips of his ears grow warm. “Ah,” he half-stammers. “He’s really more Felix’s friend than mine. I think he just tolerates me.”

Dr. Rivera’s smile doesn’t waver when she fixes her gaze onto Minho. He’s just starting to feel self-conscious when she turns to Felix and places a gentle hand on his shoulder. “Felix,” she says, “did you see that we got some new fish?”

Felix blinks his eyes wide. “Cool!” he gushes before bounding towards the fish tank on the other side of the room.

Dr. Rivera chuckles when Felix presses his face against the glass tank. Minho scratches a fidgety hand against the nape of his neck, sensing that Dr. Rivera hadn’t just wanted to show off her new neon tetra.

“This Seungmin guy,” Dr. Rivera starts. “Felix seems to like him.”

Minho doesn’t realize that he’s still holding the magazine until he starts rolling it up into a tight cylinder in his hands, the pages crinkling with each twist of his wrist. “Well,” says Minho, “Felix likes everyone.”

Dr. Rivera’s smile goes soft at the corners. “He does,” she concurs. “But I’ve never seen him latch onto another adult quite like this before. He talks about Seungmin like… well, like he talks about you, really.”

Minho loosens his grip on the rolled up magazine, letting it unfurl back into its normal state. Only, its pages are curled in now, like the fingers of an open palm.

“He’s a nice guy,” Minho admits. “But I… I guess I don’t want Felix to get too attached. In case Seungmin moves away, or something. I mean, he’s still working through those abandonment issues, right?”

Dr. Rivera stares at him again. There’s a sheen of pity in her eyes, thin and feathery, and Minho feels the urge to scratch his neck again. “I think you should be careful,” she says, “not to project your own feelings onto Felix.”

Minho feels heat prickle underneath his skin. The magazine creaks and crackles in his hands as he squeezes it into a tight cylinder again. He lets out a quick huff of a laugh, though it comes out more like an exhale than anything. “Don’t I pay you to psychoanalyze Felix?” he says with a thin smile.

Dr. Rivera gives an apologetic shake of her head. “Yes, you’re right. I’m sorry. That was unprofessional of me.” She glances over at Felix, as if to make sure that he still has his nose pressed up against the fish tank. “Have you given that list of clinics a look since last time?”

Minho thinks back to the crisp sheet of websites and phone numbers that Dr. Rivera had given him three visits ago. She’d encouraged him to get in touch with some of the clinics, gingerly commenting that she felt Felix wasn’t the only one who could benefit from therapy. Minho had plastered a tight smile on his face and nodded, telling her that he would call a few of the numbers the moment he got home.

The list is still crumpled at the bottom of his backpack, forgotten under the weight of MCAT review books and half-filled field trip forms.

“I’ve been sort of busy lately,” says Minho, and at least it’s not a lie.

Dr. Rivera nods. “Of course,” she says. “Just thought it wouldn’t hurt to check in.”

She glances down at the magazine in Minho’s hand, lips curling into a small smile. “Feel free to keep that, by the way,” she says, sounding amused.

Minho blinks down at the magazine and its creased pages. “Oh. Sorry.”

She laughs. “It’s fine, Minho,” says Dr. Rivera. “I have a whole pile of back issues in a storage room somewhere. I’m not exactly hurting for Highlights.”

“Still,” Minho says, flexing the magazine back and forth in an attempt to straighten its pages. “I feel bad.”

Dr. Rivera raises a hand—and for a moment, it looks as if she is going to place it on Minho’s shoulder, just like she had with Felix. Instead, she takes the magazine from his hands and rolls it up in the direction opposite to how Minho had. She unfurls it again. When she hands the magazine back, the pages are still a little bent, but significantly less so.

“Well,” she says, “that’s okay. You’re allowed to feel bad once in a while.”

On the bus ride home, Minho reads aloud sections from the borrowed magazine. Felix falls asleep with his cheek pressed against Minho’s arm during a short story about a talking tulip, and Minho lets his voice peter into a whisper. They don’t get to finish the story—but Minho imagines his own ending, one where the flower finally finds a conversation partner in a boy with a voice like the night sky.

☆

Predictably, it is on a Sunday that Felix utters those dreaded two words:

“I’m bored.”

Weekends almost always require Cirque du Soleil-level mental acrobatics to keep Felix occupied. Sundays are doubly worse, though, because there aren’t even Saturday-morning cartoons to keep Felix’s restless brain buzzing with colorful antics. Paw Patrol reruns can only occupy Felix for so long before he starts itching for conversation, for momentum, for a level of attention that only Minho can provide.

Usually, Minho’s fine with that, he truly is—but he’d been hoping to knock out a few practice tests today, and he can’t really do that while trying to entertain a toddler with the attention span of a fruit fly.

“Hi, bored,” Minho says, resting his elbows on top of his open review book. “I’m Minho.”

Felix gives him a blank stare, and Minho shakes his head. “Nevermind,” he says. “What do you wanna do?”

“Can we go to the roof?” asks Felix.

Minho furrows his brow. It’s only four in the afternoon, and Felix has only ever asked to visit the rooftop at nighttime. “But the stars are still asleep,” Minho says.

Felix frowns impatiently. “I know,” he says, “but I want to go say hi to the plants.”

Minho blinks, taken aback. “Oh. Why?”

Felix gives Minho a horrified look. “Why? Because I pinky-promised Seungmin that I’d talk to them sometimes, and breaking a pinky promise is bad.”

Minho mirrors Felix’s frown. “Ms. Summers doesn’t have a weirdly violent story where the moral of the story is to always keep your pinky promises, does she?”

“Mm, I don’t think so,” says Felix. “Unless you count the story where the girl who broke a promise to her friend woke up without teeth.”

Minho stares at him. “I think I need to pull you out of this school,” he says.

Still, Minho closes his review book and walks up to the roof with Felix, because it’s not like he’s ever been able to say no to him anyways. He isn’t surprised when he sees Seungmin crouching by a plot of plants. He's more intrigued to find that Seungmin doesn't have a guitar slung over his shoulders, but a small wicker basket in his arms.

“Seungmin!” Felix greets, immediately running over to the man’s side. “Did you come up to talk to the plants too?”

To his credit, Seungmin barely even flinches at Felix’s outburst of excitement. Instead, he smiles and straightens his spine so that he’s standing at his full height. “Hi, Felix. Minho,” Seungmin says, turning that bright smile over to Minho.

Already, Minho regrets capitulating to Felix’s demands to come up to the roof.

“Hey,” Minho says, shoving his hands into his hoodie pockets to keep himself from wringing them together.

Seungmin turns back to Felix. “No, I didn’t come up to talk to them,” he says. “I’m picking some stuff up for dinner.”

He tips the basket towards Felix and, by extension, towards Minho. It’s filled with a few small tomatoes, along with a pile of assorted herbs, none of which Minho can name.

Felix wrinkles his nose at the sight. “You’re eating grass for dinner?” he asks uneasily.

Seungmin laughs. “They’re herbs. You add them to other food to make it taste better,” he explains. He points out a handful of wide, flat leaves and says, “This is basil. And this—” He picks up a thin stalk with small, pointy leaves jutting from the stem. “—is thyme.”

“That’s silly,” says Felix. “You can’t eat time.”

Seungmin blinks, looking thoroughly confused. Minho taps Felix’s shoulder. “Different kind of ‘thyme,’ Felix,” he says. “Remember when we talked about the difference between sun and son?”

“Oh,” Felix says, his voice tinged with the cool blue of disappointment. “That would’ve been cool, actually. Eating time.”

“Ah,” Seungmin says, finally realizing the source of Felix’s confusion. “Sorry. I don’t think I’m good enough at cooking to make the theoretical construct of time edible.”

“Uncle Minho’s really good at cooking,” says Felix. “I like when he makes me dino nuggets.”

Minho snorts. “Those don’t require any actual culinary skills, Felix,” he says. “I just stick them in the oven for fifteen minutes. And sometimes I even mess that up.”

Seungmin knits his eyebrows together. “How do you mess up dino nuggets?”

Minho huffs. “Oh, and I’m sure you’re an amazing chef,” he says. “Mr. Can’t Even Cook Time.”

Seungmin quirks an eyebrow. “Is that a challenge?” he says, amusement glittering across his eyes like a moonbeam.

“Please.” Minho scoffs. “Everything I say is a challenge.”

Minho realizes then, as Seungmin’s smile widens, that he’s got two shallow dimples pocked in his cheeks, right at the corners of his lips. He’s startled by the sudden awareness that he’s close enough to Seungmin to notice this—and, well, he takes a small step backward.

“You’re lucky that I was already planning to make enough pasta for three anyways,” Seungmin says. “I mean, I was hoping to have the leftovers tomorrow—but if you’re going to challenge me so directly, I think I can figure something else out for lunch.”

It takes a moment for the meaning of Seungmin’s words to sink in, and even when it does, Minho’s not sure he’s interpreted him quite correctly. “Are you,” Minho says, “inviting me over for dinner?”

“I’m accepting your challenge,” Seungmin corrects him.

“Right,” Minho says, hoping his smile doesn’t look as obvious as Seungmin’s.

☆

Minho knows that the traditional gift for dinner parties is a bottle of wine. He hates the idea of showing up to Seungmin’s place empty-handed, but he also doesn’t have many options, considering that he hasn’t indulged in anything stronger than a celebratory beer at the end of finals week in nearly two years.

(Before those two years, Minho does remember sinking into a sea of gemstone-colored bottles, amber and emerald and onyx. It’d been just after he got that call from the hospital, the one telling him that his sister and brother-in-law were in critical condition. He doesn’t remember much else about that stained glass stretch of time—but he supposes that’s exactly what he’d been hoping for at the time.)

So, Minho rummages through his fridge for a large tub of kimchi instead. He holds the chilled container out to Seungmin now, face fixed in a grimace, as if he has just presented the other man with a dead bird.

“It’s homemade. My grandma forces me to take some home with me every time we visit her,” says Minho. “We always have a lot left over. Mostly because Felix hates kimchi—but he pretty much hates any food that isn’t shaped like an animal.”

“The shape makes it taste better!” Felix calls out from the kitchen.

Right now, Felix is staring at the large plastic bin that Seungmin had pulled out from underneath his sink when Felix asked about it. It’s filled with rich, dark soil, along with food scraps, shredded newspaper, and hundreds of wriggling red worms. Felix had shrunk away from the bin at first, hiding timidly behind Minho, until Seungmin patiently explained the purpose of the worms.

“They’re called red wigglers,” Seungmin had said, gently scooping one of the worms out with a trowel. “You feed them stuff like leftover fruits and veggies, and then they poop out something that helps plants grow.”

During Seungmin’s explanation, Felix’s expression had morphed from fear to disgust to awe. Now, he’s crouched over the bin with a furrowed brow, eyes darting from worm to worm as he tries desperately to etch every movement into his brain.

Minho watches him now. Mostly because he is just so fond of this boy—but partially because he’s not entirely sure that Felix won’t just dig his stubby fingers into the compost bin if he’s not being supervised.

“Can we get some worms for our apartment?” asks Felix.

“Hell no,” Minho deadpans.

Look, he doesn’t consider himself a squeamish person—but he can’t say that he doesn’t expect to wake up with dirt and worms all over the living room floor if he says yes.

Seungmin laughs as he takes the container of kimchi from Minho. “You can always come visit anytime you wanna see the worms,” he says, walking over to the kitchen to set the container of kimchi on the counter. He bends over to pick up the lid strewn on the floor and firmly affixes it to the top of the compost bin. “I’m not sure how much the visits would be worth it, though; they don’t like to be out in the light for too long.”

Felix frowns at the plastic bin. “But don’t they get lonely down there in the dark?”

Seungmin hums contemplatively. “Mm, I don’t think so,” he says. “They all have each other, don’t they?”

As Seungmin prepares their dinner in his kitchen, Minho sits beside Felix on the couch and flips through one of the many picture books on Seungmin’s shelf. Seungmin had explained, a little sheepishly, that he buys a lot of children’s books for the kids he teaches at Tiny Seeds, and that he likes to keep the ones that he’s particularly fond of. The ones that Minho reads to Felix now are, fittingly, from a series of picture books about the life of a fictional earthworm.

They’re about to start their third book, Seungmin humming a soft melody to himself as plumes of steam curl out from the kitchen, when it hits Minho: the whole scene is just so goddamn domestic.

Worse yet: it’s easy. It’s like laughing, like toeing one’s shoes off at the door after a long day at work. Natural, comfortable, instinctual.

And Minho feels his chest go tight as a knot, because he remembers when hearing Minyoung’s voice every night felt like a reflex, too. Now, when he calls his sister’s number, he hears nothing but an automated message telling him that her voicemail is full. He remembers how Minyoung used to collect seashells from every beach she visited, and he remembers always picking out some of his own to bring back to her whenever he had the chance. If the shoebox full of shells that he has tucked underneath his bed is any indication, then this, too, is another residual reflex.

Most of all, Minho remembers when he knew (when he thought he knew) that Minyoung’s presence in his life was a given—and he’s just not ready to be proven wrong again.

☆

That evening, Minho learns that Seungmin makes his tomato sauce from scratch, that he tries a different combination of herbs on his pasta every time he cooks it, and that he knows how to cut hot dog halves into tiny octopuses, steaming and shiny-skinned. Predictably, this last discovery delights Felix.

“See,” Felix tells Minho as he munches on one of the octopus-shaped hot dogs sitting atop his spaghetti, “Seungmin thinks the shape makes them taste better, too.”

The pasta is just fine without the hot dogs, though. Seungmin had incorporated Minho’s kimchi into the spaghetti, and the whole meal tastes so much better than Minho had assumed it would. Minho’s still not sure why he’d expected (hoped, really) that Seungmin would be a bad cook. Maybe because, as Minho watches Seungmin chat animatedly with Felix at the dining table about the biological processes behind composting, Minho thinks that it would be so unbelievably unfair for Seungmin to be smart, good with kids, and great at cooking. And yet—

“You win,” Minho says once he’s helped Felix get his shoes on.

Seungmin raises an eyebrow. “I win?” he repeats, sounding only a little smug. Minho can’t fault him; he’s pretty sure he would be acting a lot more insufferably if he was in Seungmin’s position.

Minho rolls his eyes. “I was wrong,” he says, feeling like he’s just been forced to divulge top-secret government intel to a rival nation. “You’re not a terrible cook, I guess.”

Seungmin gives him a gummy grin. “You have such a way with words, Minho.”

“I try,” Minho says.

“Well,” says Seungmin, folding his arms across his chest, “what do I get for winning?”

Minho squints at him. “Isn’t the feeling of accomplishment satisfying enough?” he asks.

“Not if I can get something better, no,” Seungmin says cheerily.

Felix tugs at the bottom of Seungmin’s shirt. “You should ask him to read you a bedtime story,” he half-whispers to Seungmin. “He’s really good at all the voices.”

Minho feels his cheeks grow hot. He forces out a loud laugh. “Alright, Felix, let’s remember to respect other people’s personal space now,” he says, gently tugging on Felix’s arm to pull him away from Seungmin.

“How about this,” Seungmin says. “You can repay me by coming over for dinner again.”

Minho blinks. Then, he lets out another laugh, short and airy. “Okay,” he says, “now it really feels like you’re just inviting me over for dinner.”

Seungmin shrugs. “Maybe I am."

Minho feels his center of gravity go all unbalanced, like a planet knocked out of its orbit. “So you want us to come over again and eat all your food?” he says. “Maybe I’m missing something, but I don’t really understand what you’re getting out of this.”

Minho means for this to come off as a joke, something light and teasing—but the words feel sharp and thorny when they leave his lips, and they scratch up the insides of his cheeks like steel wool.

Seungmin, thankfully, doesn’t seem to notice. Or maybe he does, and he just doesn't care. His smile doesn’t waver as he says, “Everyone gets a little lonely sometimes, Minho. Just like the plants and the moon.”

Minho can’t tell who Seungmin’s referencing: Minho, himself, or both.

☆

The next time that they come over for dinner, Seungmin makes kimchi fried rice. Minho gifts him a bottle of red wine, the first brand that his eyes had landed on in the grocery store.

(He’d consulted multiple Google searches in a fruitless attempt to figure out which variety was the best to bring to your hallmate/friend/budding parental figure to the nephew whom you have guardianship of—but alas, no hits.)

The time after that, Seungmin confesses he’s run out of creative ways to use the Tupperware container of kimchi that Minho had given him. Minho confesses he’s run out of wine expertise.

“I tried to pick out another bottle,” Minho admits, “but I got confused. I couldn’t tell you the difference between a merlot and malbec if you put a gun to my head.”

When Seungmin smiles, Minho notices those barely-there dimples on the corners of his lips again, like the faint imprint left after a supernova'd star.

“Alright,” says Seungmin, “I’ll make sure that if I ever get held hostage by a rogue gang of trivia-loving wine enthusiasts, it won’t be with you.”

So, they compromise:

Seungmin makes fettuccine alfredo (without any kimchi). Minho gifts Seungmin a six-pack of Bud Light Lime and promises to stop pretending that he knows anything about wine.

Again, it’s easy. It’s so easy that Minho doesn’t even think to wonder whether Seungmin feels the same way, because there’s a small seed curled deep inside him that already knows the answer. It’s so easy that, when Minho complains over their pasta that night about how difficult it is to find a reliable babysitter and Seungmin offers to look after Felix if he needs him to, Minho doesn’t think twice before accepting.

Now, as Minho delivers drinks to the wrong table for the third time during his shift, he realizes that things with Seungmin might be getting just a little too easy.

“Hey,” Chan says, bumping his hip against Minho’s as he nudges past him to wipe down an empty table. “You good? You seem like you’re… thinking a lot.”

“Minho’s thinking?” Hyunjin calls out from where he’s restocking the water glasses. “Somebody call an ambulance before he sprains something.”

Minho glares at him. “You’re lucky there are security cameras in this place,” he deadpans.

Chan gives a nervous laugh. “Okay, let’s calm down here, yeah?” he says, ever the mediator. “I just meant that you seem a little moody.”

Minho sighs, running his hand through his hair. “I’m just a little stressed out,” he says. “I left Felix with… um, with a new babysitter.”

Chan furrows his brow, concerned. “Did they seem sketchy or something?” he asks.

“No, no,” Minho says with a quick shake of his head. “Seungmin's great. And Felix likes him a lot. It’s just… I don’t know. I think Felix might like him too much?”

Chan blinks. “And that’s a bad thing because…?” He lets his voice trail off, waiting for Minho to fill in the blanks.

“It’s not a bad thing, I guess,” Minho says. “I just don’t want him to get too attached. In case something happens, and Felix doesn’t ever get to see him again. I don’t want him to get hurt.”

This is the same fear that he’d expressed to Dr. Rivera—only this time, it feels a little more raw, a little more real, like a mineral turning solid underneath the earth. Minho thinks back to what Dr. Rivera had told him, something about not projecting his own feelings onto Felix, and that fear crystallizes completely in his gut.

For the next few seconds, Chan seems to be turning Minho’s words over in his mind. “Well,” he says slowly, “is it actually all that bad if he gets hurt?”

Chan finishes wiping the table down and shrugs, offering Minho a gentle smile. “Getting hurt is just a part of growing up, Minho,” he says. “You can’t protect him forever.”

Minho stiffens. He’s not sure how he’s meant to reply to something like that, something that cuts so deep into his core that it makes it hurt to take in a breath—but before he can respond, Minho feels his phone buzz from an incoming call in his pants pocket.

“Oh,” Minho says, “it’s the babysitter. I should take this.”

Quickly, he unties his apron and hangs it up on a nearby hook. “If anyone asks, I’m taking my lunch break, okay?” Minho calls out as he pushes open the double doors to the kitchen.

He has to elbow past all the mess and bustle of the kitchen before he makes it to the back door. By the time he bursts out into the alleyway, the almost-autumn air prickling at his exposed arms, Seungmin’s call has already fallen through. So, Minho calls him back, anxiously tapping his foot against the concrete ground as he waits for the call to connect.

“Hey,” Seungmin greets in that clear voice of his, cloudless even through the crackling phone speakers. “Sorry for calling you at work.”

“It’s fine,” says Minho. “I gave you my number for a reason, yeah?”

Minho feels the sudden urge to chew on his nails. He stops himself, if only because he’s just spent the last three hours touching strangers’ food. “So, what’s up? Is Felix okay?”

Seungmin hesitates before answering, and that pause feels like a sinking weight in Minho’s stomach.

“Honestly, I’m not sure,” says Seungmin. “He’s… I mean, he was acting super fussy all morning, but I just assumed that was because he missed you. But then he wouldn’t eat anything I gave him, no matter what animal it was in the shape of. So I decided to feel for his temperature and,” Seungmin pauses to take a breath, “his forehead was burning, Minho.”

Minho doesn’t realize how hard he’s breathing until he feels a sharp pain in his chest, like his lungs are freezing over from the chilled air. “I’m coming home,” he says.

“Oh, God, Minho, you don’t have to—”

“I’m coming home,” Minho says again, firmer this time. “I’ll be there in half an hour.”

He doesn’t wait for a response before hanging up on Seungmin. He barely even waits for a response when he tells his manager that he’ll be leaving early, just quickly slings his bag over his shoulder and promises that he’ll pick up an extra shift next week. Chan and Hyunjin stare at him with wide eyes as he rushes out the door, the two of them stunned into silence for once.

Seungmin sends him texts the whole bus ride home, messages along the veins of I promise I have this under control and I really hope you didn’t actually leave work and Minho please just answer me. Minho dismisses each notification as it comes in with a swipe of his finger, tunnel vision leaving his sight blurry.

He hadn’t been thinking when he left work, and he isn’t thinking now as he twists open the door to Seungmin’s apartment without so much as a knock. The apartment is deadly quiet, and his mind races to all the worst possible justifications. There’s no one in the living room or the kitchen, so Minho carefully pads towards the bedroom.

Minho is not sure what he’d expected to see when he pushes past the door to the bedroom—but it certainly is not Felix tucked in and asleep in Seungmin’s bed, a peaceful (if not strained) expression on his face. Seungmin seems to be asleep too, but he’s sitting upright instead of lying down. His hand is nestled in Felix’s hair, and his head lolls forward every few seconds as he dips in and out of sleep.

And Minho feels something in his chest stitch back together, something he hadn’t known was broken in the first place.

Seungmin jerks awake when Minho takes a few steps towards the bed, making the floorboards creak.

“Sorry,” whispers Minho. “Your door was unlocked.”

Seungmin blinks a couple times, rubbing the residual sleep out of his eyes with his knuckles. “S’okay,” he whispers back. “I can’t believe you came after I told you not to.”

It’s meant to be chastising, Minho thinks, but Seungmin has that star-stitched smile on his face as he speaks, and Minho can’t help but mirror it. (At least, he tries to; Minho doesn’t have nearly the same bottled brightness that Seungmin does.)

“How is he?” asks Minho. There’s a sweat-matted strand of hair stuck to Felix’s forehead. Minho carefully sweeps it away now, his fingers brushing against Seungmin’s in the process.

“I think he just has a low fever,” Seungmin replies. “But I got him to drink a bunch of water before he fell asleep. So, he’ll be okay, I hope.”

Minho lets out a slow exhale, breathing out every worry that he’s been carrying under his ribcage for the last thirty minutes. Before he can stop himself, his breath takes the shape of two whispered words: “Thank you.”

“Yeah,” Seungmin says, looking a little taken aback by his sudden sincerity. “Of course.”

“No,” says Minho. “I mean—thank you. For everything. You—You’ve been…” He’s unsure of what he even planned to say in the first place, and his voice trails off.

Still, Seungmin’s smile quirks at the corners, and he says, “You too.”

Minho lets out a slightly choked laugh. “You don’t even know what I was going to say.”

“No,” says Seungmin, “but I understand.”

Seungmin’s hand is still nestled comfortably in Felix’s hair, and Minho’s is still on his forehead. Slowly, Minho moves his hand towards Seungmin’s and rests the pads of his fingers on the back of Seungmin’s knuckles, like he is checking for a pulse. He doesn’t feel it, but he knows it’s there.

“I still don’t get it,” Minho whispers. “I still don’t get what you see in me.”

Seungmin stares at Minho contemplatively, as if he’s not so sure himself. Then, he flips his hand over so that his palm faces the ceiling, and he tangles his fingers with Minho’s. “I see the whole world in you,” he says. “I see the sky above my head and the ground beneath my feet.”

Minho blinks, because he thinks that’s what he sees every time he looks at Seungmin, too. He sees skyglow and soil—only, he’s pretty sure that Seungmin is made of something much more brilliant than himself, something infinitely more solid. Something far enough to dream about, but close enough to touch.

“I don’t understand,” Minho says, and it’s only half a lie.

Seungmin squeezes Minho’s hand once, twice, three times. Like a heartbeat. “I don’t either,” confesses Seungmin. “But I’m okay with that if you are.”

Minho doesn’t think he is, doesn’t think he ever has been. Not having an explanation feels a little like taking a step forward and landing on thin air. But if he’s got Seungmin there to catch him when he falls, or at least to patch up his scraped kneecaps, then maybe he’s slightly more okay with it.

He lets his skin melt into Seungmin’s and, for once, tries not to think about the dissonant pulses thrumming in their wrists, stuttered syncopation. “I think I’m getting there,” Minho says.

☆

The last time Minho went on a date, a real date, he was still staying up until 5 AM. And, well, he still does stay up till 5 AM sometimes—but it’s to coax a fussy, nightmare-prone toddler back to sleep, not to hop from party to party so that he can knock back enough terribly mixed drinks to replace the blood in his veins with alcohol.

All he’s saying is that it’s been a while—so he thinks it’s warranted when his stomach starts fluttering the moment Seungmin answers Minho’s knock on his door.

“Hi,” is all that Minho can manage to muster up in greeting.

“Hi,” Seungmin says back, grinning. “You look nice.”

Minho glances down at his own torso, like he’s already forgotten what he has on. As if he hadn’t spent a painstaking amount of time picking between two button-up shirts in slightly differing shades of off-white.

“Thanks,” says Minho. “You look like the members of an academic decathlon team projectile-vomited on you.”

Seungmin has traded in his usual uniform of a cozy, colorful hoodie for a forest green sweater, the fabric pocked with red and yellow diamonds. Minho isn’t lying when he says it’s the dorkiest-looking get-up he’s ever seen. Privately, though, he thinks the look suits Seungmin, makes him look just as made from clay and earth as he is.

“Oh, good,” Seungmin says. “I was going to sprinkle in some tests throughout the night to make sure you were actually Minho and not just an evil doppelgänger, but I think that just confirmed it for me.”

They go out for dinner and a movie, because Seungmin is a little clichéd like that. Minho had rolled his eyes when Seungmin told him his plans—but secretly, Minho had been thrilled. He’s never had much of an opportunity to luxuriate in clichés, has never had the time nor the space nor the person. So when Seungmin asks him all the typical first date questions over dinner, and when they both argue over who gets to pay the check, and when Minho’s hand brushes against Seungmin’s as they reach into the popcorn bucket at the same time, Minho feels… normal. Like this is what his life could’ve been, or maybe what it should’ve been. Like he can call his sister when he gets home to gush about the date, and she'll actually pick up

It feels a little treacherous, this sense of normalcy—but Minho thinks he might be learning to embrace the danger of it all.

“This was nice,” Minho says as they linger outside his doorway at the end of the night.

“It was,” Seungmin says with a small smile. “It is.”

Minho invites Seungmin in to say hi to Felix before they part ways, and he regrets it almost immediately.

“Minho,” Jisung says with a shark-toothed grin, “is this who you dressed up all nice for?”

Minho pinches the bridge of his nose between two fingers, as if to stave away his inevitable headache. “Seungmin, this is Jisung. AKA my usual babysitter, AKA one of my coworker’s younger cousins, AKA the reason why nepotism is an inherently flawed hiring practice,” says Minho. “Jisung, this is Seungmin. AKA none of your business.”

Jisung pouts. “Geez. I slave away all night to take care of your precious Felix and this is how you repay me?”

Minho raises an eyebrow. “I repay you with $17.50 an hour, actually.”

Jisung hums. “Touché,” he says.

Once Jisung debriefs Minho and assures him that Felix is fast asleep, he finally leaves (but not before waggling his eyebrows obnoxiously as he flicks his gaze between Minho and Seungmin). Minho just barely resists the urge to slam the door behind Jisung.

“I’m sorry,” Minho says. “Jisung is… well, he’s only a high schooler, so he’s got room to grow. I usually wouldn’t trust him with anything more intelligent than a toaster oven—but Felix likes him.”

Seungmin laughs. “It’s fine,” he says. “I like him, too.”

He reaches out to brush his thumb against the shell of Minho’s ear. Minho doesn’t realize th simmering heat under his own skin is until he feels how cool Seungmin’s finger is. “I like that he gets you all flustered,” Seungmin adds, his grin going wide and toothy. “I feel like I never get to see that.”

Minho doesn’t know how to tell him that it’s not Jisung that’s got him all off kilter right now, but Seungmin. Seungmin with his ugly green sweater, Seungmin with his finger on Minho’s ear.

“Trust me,” Minho mumbles. “You get to see much more of it than anyone else.”

Seungmin is smiling so broadly now that Minho can see those ghosted dimples on the corner of his lips. He’s close enough to watch them form, close enough to dip his thumb into them if he wants.

“Yeah?” Seungmin says, his voice dropping a couple notches in volume. “Can I see more?”

Minho gets the sense that he’s asking for permission, but Minho just—he doesn’t know what for. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say that he doesn’t remember; it’s been a while since Minho last dated, sure, but it’s been an even longer stretch of time between now and when he last hooked up with someone. He has grown unaccustomed to the push-and-pull of flirting, to that tightrope walk of tension.

“I,” Minho says, his voice coming out in breaths, “think I’d like that.”

At Minho’s trepidation, Seungmin frowns. “I’m sorry. Am I making you uncomfortable?”

“No,” Minho replies quickly, “that’s not it at all. I just—it’s been a while since I last…”

His voice trails off. He feels the shell of his own ear burn between the pads of Seungmin’s fingers, and he thinks the skin there might be a little too thin for his liking.

Seungmin hums, half in understanding, half in reassurance. “That’s okay,” he says. “I know this is moving really quickly. We can slow down, if you want.”

But Minho’s been living with training wheels for the last two years, and he’s tired of going slow. He cups Seungmin’s cheek in his palm. He can feel heat spread slowly to the surface of Seungmin’s skin. The sensation feels like a prayer, a purpose.

“Fast is fine,” says Minho. “We have a lot of catching up to do.”

☆

They don’t see each other for a week after that. Minho tries to conjure up the time, or even the serendipity, but the magnets that had brought them together those first few weeks seem to be conspiring against them now. Still, they text in the small pockets of free time that Minho has, during lunch breaks and in the sliver between Felix’s bedtime and his own, and it’s enough to keep them satiated over those seven days.

But when Minho bumps into Seungmin in the lobby as he’s leaving the apartment, he thinks it might be on the worst day possible.

“Minho,” Seungmin greets with a smile that rivals the sun. “It’s been a while.”

That’s an understatement, Minho thinks, but he nods anyways. “Something like that,” he says. He glances over at the guitar case slung against Seungmin’s back. “Where’re you coming from?”

“Just played a set at a local coffee shop,” says Seungmin. “I was gonna go up to the roof and play to the plants for a bit. Wanna come with?”

He sounds so unbearably hopeful that Minho wants, desperately, to say yes. It’d probably be more enjoyable than what he was planning to do anyways.

“I wish I could,” Minho says, “but I have plans.”

“Ah. Work?”

Minho shakes his head. “I’m… visiting my sister.” He takes a breath before adding, “It’s been two years. Since—Since she died.”

For once, Seungmin looks like he’s had all the breath sucked out of his lungs. “I’m so sorry,” he says, his voice blurring at the edges. “Is there… anything I can do?”

MInho blinks quickly—half because he hadn’t expected Seungmin to ask that, and half because he doesn’t want to cry, not here, not now. “Do you wanna come with?” he finds himself blurting out before he can stop himself. “I mean—you don’t have to. Obviously. I don’t want you to feel like—”

“Yes,” Seungmin interjects. “Yes, of course. Of course I want to.” He pauses, furrowing his brow. “But do you want me to?”

Seungmin doesn’t ask his other question aloud, but Minho knows he’s wondering it: would your sister want me to? And Minho doesn’t know for sure, but he wants to think that the answer is obvious.

Yes, Minho wants to say. Because you make me happy. Because you make Felix happy. Because you make the both of us feel a little less lonely, and I know that Minyoung would adore you for that alone.

“Yeah,” is all that Minho says. “I want you to.”

☆

Seungmin doesn’t ask about the accident on the bus ride there, and Minho doesn’t talk about it. Instead, Minho tells him about the other shades of Minyoung’s life: about the seashells, about her love of astronomy, about the way she used to call Felix her little slice of the night sky because of the freckled constellations sprinkled across his face.

Minho is so preoccupied talking about her that he doesn’t notice they’ve arrived at the cemetery until Seungmin taps on his shoulder, gesturing for him to get up as the bus slows.

“I guess I should’ve left the guitar at home,” Seungmin says with a nervous little laugh. “It feels… inappropriate, somehow.”

“It’s fine,” Minho says, waving a dismissive hand at him. “She liked music.”

She would’ve liked your music, I bet, Minho wants to add.

They’d picked up a bouquet of calla lilies at a flower shop before coming here. Minho lays two of the blooms on Minyoung’s grave, then two more on the grave beside hers.

“I like that they’re in pairs,” Seungmin says, gesturing at the lilies. “Keeping each other company.”

Minho scrunches his nose up. “That’s cheesy,” he says, even as he wordlessly takes Seungmin’s hand in his.

They’re silent for a moment. Seungmin stays still as a tombstone as Minho stares at the twin graves, blinking as rapidly as he had in the lobby. He's never known what to do or say when he visits her; Minyoung had always been the sentimental one. When they were kids, she used to sneak out onto the roof on especially clear nights and stare up at the stars in awe. Minho never quite understood the appeal, but he supposes that’s where Felix gets his love of the unreachable.

“Hey,” Minho says, breaking the silence. “What songs did you play at the coffee shop earlier?”

Seungmin rattles off a few song titles, most of them unfamiliar to Minho. They're all folk ballads and niche indie pop, and Minho really only listens to Top 40s. Then, Seungmin names a song that Minho actually knows, and he interrupts him.

“Can you play that now?” asks Minho.

“Yeah,” Seungmin says, carefully pulling the guitar case off his back. “Of course.”

Seungmin strums the opening chords, the same chords he played that night on the roof. He starts singing about stars and sunbeams in that sweet, clear skies voice of his, and Minho thinks he might understand a little better why his sister loved the night sky so much.

When Seungmin finishes the song, they stand there for a little longer, keeping the lilies company. Minho thinks flowers might get a little lonely sometimes, too.

☆