“hyung, why are we going to this game again? you hate soccer,” taemin points out, shoving his hands deep into his pockets as he trudges along the pathway towards their school field. the early morning breeze blows strands of his hair into his face despite tying his hair back into a ponytail.

“jinki hyung invited, so i’m being a nice cousin and accepting.”

taemin grumbles about how jonghyun wakes up earlier than he does and how he isn’t there suffering instead of him. he hadn’t appreciated being pulled out of bed at six in the morning and forced into the shower where he couldn’t even catch another wink of sleep because kibum would slam his hand against the bathroom door every few or so minutes. he also didn’t appreciate the fact that it was jonghyun who had let him in in the first place and yet-

“he’s on the soccer varsity?” taemin can already hear the cheers and screams of the students from the field and he feels a little bit of an adrenaline rush shoot through his blood stream.

“no, but he didn’t want to watch the game alone, so.”

the screams grow louder and taemin has to wince when they climb up to the bleachers and settle down on front row seats. taemin looks around and finds that there were more supporters for the guest team than for their own.

“jinki hyung!” he hears kibum shout and decides to question the popularity of their team later on. he waves at jinki when their eyes meet and they exchange smiles. somehow, having jinki for a tutor, despite how much taemin was against it at first, brought them closer and erased any schemes taemin ever had on ruining the older. during the few other sessions they’ve had at their dorm and a couple of other gatherings outside of school, taemin had gotten to know jinki better and realized that jinki found him to be comfortable company – always smiling and joking around as compared to just always smiling when around other people.

taemin can kind of get used to the feeling of being special.

“i didn’t know you were into soccer, hyung.” taemin plops down next to jinki while kibum stalks off for a while to answer a phone call. taemin doesn’t need three guesses to know who it’s from; saturdays are usually jonghyun and kibum’s days for a hang out.

“i’m not really that into it. i just have a friend who’s in the team. he doesn’t know i’m here though, so it’s kind of a surprise.” jinki grins at him and wraps an arm around his shoulders. “sorry you had to wake up so early for this.”

“it’s okay, hyung, i don’t mind so much anymore.”

when kibum comes back, the players have already spilled onto the field and taking their respective positions. there is a moment of silence when the referree speaks to both team captains about playing fair and good sportsmanship, but taemin doesn’t really pay attention because he sees a familiar face on the field and oh my god, why didn’t i realize sooner?

he remembers the smell of grass and trees, the feel of the wind blowing against his blazer, and the taste of victory on his tongue.

”i beat you, minho hyung!” he exlaims, clumsily kicking the ball back towards the older who picks up the ball with a huff.

“only because i let you win.” minho slings his arm around taemin’s shoulders and pulls him close into his sweat-drenched t-shirt.

“hyung, gross, you stink!” taemin cackles madly while running away from the empty threats that spill out of minho’s mouth.

“minho’s on the soccer team?” he mumbles mostly to himself because he figures neither of the two beside him could hear over the loud screams of the crowd and the live commentary, but jinki turns to him with eyebrows raised.

“what was that?”

“… i didn’t know minho was in the soccer team,” he repeats, leaning in closer to jinki’s ear.

“oh, are you guys close? he only tried out this year.”

taemin blinks. “what made you think we were close?”

jinki turns to the field when cheering erupts from their side of the field. minho’s just scored a goal.

“i know for a fact that minho’s older than you are, and even if it’s just a year difference, you don’t usually drop honorifics unless you’re close to the person, right? you get that from kibum.”

“well, yeah, but uhm has he ever mentioned me, like, to you?”

they focus their gaze on the game for a few seconds when they hear the crowd chanting “goal! goal! goal!” and minho kicks the ball into the opponents goal once more after a well-made pass by donghae.

“no, never.”


{…}


the game ends and they spectacularly lose despite minho and donghae’s excellent teamwork and junsu’s leadership skills. taemin only knows all this because he’s heard it from the commentator when the buzzer for the end of the game sounded and the scoreboard flashed their loss by a mere point.

“ah well, it was a good game, though. i’m going to go wait for minho outside the lockers, how bout you guys?” jinki asks, stepping down from the bleachers once everyone has cleared out.

“we’ll stay with you.”

taemin’s head snaps up and gives kibum one of his what-the--are-you-doing-really looks. kibum only retaliates with a quirked eyebrow and a mouthed ‘what’.

“great, i think they’re over here!”

taemin spends their whole walk purposefully bumping into kibum and sending him stumbling to the side. the older retaliates by shoving a hand at taemin’s cheek and pushing him away. jinki only laughs at their display before wrapping both his arms around their shoulders. taemin sniffs indignantly but he smiles when he realizes that jinki still hasn’t changed his deodorant.

they don’t wait long before the team starts spilling out of the locker room in pairs and in groups. taemin can only name some of them because he isn’t much of the social buttefly that kibum and jonghyun are. he only knows donghae, junsu, and hyukjae because they performed at the dance club’s culminating activity last year and the rest are just nameless faces to him, though he’s sure kibum knows most of them. of course, there’s that one face he still has yet to see come out of the locker room.

“minho!” jinki calls out, waving his arm frantically above his head. taemin looks up from where he was scuffing his shoe against the cement and falling asleep and sees minho’s bug eyes widen at the sight of them.

“hyung, you watched?” minho asks, and taemin’s sure he’d already forgotten what minho’s voice actually sounded like until that very moment.

taemin shifts his weight from leg to leg when minho’s eyes meet his for a fraction of a second.

“yeah, i did! you were really good out there!”

and then minho does something that taemin hasn’t seen in three years; he smiles, all wide and silly, and wraps his arms around jinki.

the corner of his lips twitch and he turns away from the two, watching kibum text away on his phone instead. it’s been a while since taemin’s seen something other than a serious look on minho’s face and he’s totally forgotten how handsome he actually looks when he smiles.

there’s so much he’s forgotten about minho and he’s not sure whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing. either way, he just wants to pull the two of them apart and just walk back to their dorm and sleep away all this grumpiness.


{…}


jinki takes them to a restaurant not twenty minutes from the campus and treats them to brunch. it’s cute and it’s homey; with pictures of random families framed and hung on the walls and traveling letters stuck and pressed below the glass of the table. they sit somewhere further inside the restaurant where the booths are and where they can hear the relatively oldies music playing in the overhead speakers.

“this is a nice restaurant, hyung.” kibum says, sliding into the one of the couches, and pats the space beside him for taemin to sit. he actually kind of wants to sit beside jinki because the older usually feeds him food from his plate and it’s less annoying than the way kibum does it. it may also have something to do with the fact that jinki has gotten a haircut and he looks so much more handsome with it. but minho already side-steps him and slides in next to jinki so taemin will have to deal with kibum for now.

“isn’t it? minho and i usually meet up here for breakfast if we both don’t have morning classes,” jinki answers with a smile as he looks around to call for a waitress. taemin nearly bumps into kibum’s shoulder when he slides and plops down on the seat with a small huff.

“do you stay somewhere around here, minho?” kibum asks.

taemin doesn’t want to look at minho in the face – he isn’t so sure what might happen given their past – but he doesn’t want to look too rude either with jinki there so he opts to read the letters decorating their table.

“yeah, my building’s only a three minute walk from jinki hyung’s.”

taemin reads one that’s from a girl in seoul writing to her parents back in incheon about life in the big city and how she misses them and their home. taemin thinks about his own parents who now live alone in their house because he’s dorming and his older brother is in army training. he decides on giving them a call later to ask how they are.

a waitress comes over and asks for their orders. jinki and minho recite their orders without glancing once at the menu while kibum and taemin decide on sharing a short stack.

kibum asks if there’s a bookstore somewhere nearby because he kind of needs to buy this book for his class. jinki tells him that there is one a block down and he offers to bring kibum there because he’s been dying to check this one book out as well. the whole time this conversation happens, taemin tries to give kibum a look that says hyung, you better not leave me all alone at this table with minho or i swear i will cut off your balls in your sleep and doesn’t budge when kibum tries to leave the booth. kibum rolls his eyes at taemin and hisses angrily in his ear ‘grow a pair, why don’t you?’ and steps over taemin, making sure to hit him with his elbow on the way out.

taemin watches them leave with a frown on his face and a bruise on his shoulder. he rubs at his arm and slumps back into his seat. and it’s then that he remembers that he’s alone with minho and his gaze snaps up to the older.

the last time they were alone was more than two years back and it wasn’t exactly the best memory to have as a ‘last time’. agreed, it was his fault that memory hadn’t ended as nicely as it should have, and taemin was a kid who hardly got mad at anyone – especially not at minho – but he’d been pushed way too much and he could only handle so much pressure. he thinks that, at the moment, only kibum knows the real reason why he’d done what he did.

the older boy isn’t even looking back at him, though he’s sure he knows that taemin’s looking at him. and there’s a big serving of awkward with a side of tension right at that moment really and taemin isn’t sure he can handle much more of this atmosphere.

“so, uhm, you played really well today. i mean, even if you guys lost, it was a pretty good game,” taemin begins, straightening up in his seat and gives him half a smile. minho looks at him and taemin sees that surprise-confusion-detachment string of emotions pass through his eyes again.

“thank you, taemin-ssi.” minho gives him a polite smile and a bit of a bow. taemin feels a little thrown off by the formal language because even he hadn’t bothered with it when he spoke.

“uhm, so… uhm…” taemin tries to begin, scratching his head for any possible conversation starters but he comes up with none. he finds it so difficult to have to try and start a conversation like he doesn’t know minho when they’ve been friends for longer than they’ve been strangers.

“how are you?” minho says for him, still with that polite smile on his face and a tone way too formal and business-like that it reminds taemin of the time when he met his father.

“fine, you?”

“fine.”

taemin decides to give up for the time being.


{…}


taemin excuses himself from the bathroom when they’re mostly finished eating, shoes scuffling against the smooth floor of the restaurant. he rests his hands on the sink once he’s inside and stares at himself in the mirror. he tries to calm his erratically beating heart down and breathes deeply. the image of jinki feeding minho his food and vice versa – as much as he tries to deny it – sets off a twitch in the corner of his mouth and a burn in between his chest and stomach.

he’d come to terms with the feelings that kibum and jonghyun constantly reminds him he has for the small eyed ball of sunshine for a while now, and it all had just been a matter of remaining on standby for any indication that jinki played for their team (although taemin’s on the fence about being biual himself because he’s pretty sure he’s noticed a few girls in their school). now it seems as though if he waits any longer, minho would find out before he does if jinki really is interested in guys – interested in him.

the door to the bathroom opens and closes and who else could it be, what with taemin’s obvious luck.

“are you okay, taemin?” jinki asks, moving to stand beside the younger boy, and places his hand on top of his head. they look at each other’s reflections and smile. taemin thinks they’d look like one of those cutesy adorable couples people usually coo over. they’d have a relationship that was full of shy smiles and blushing cheeks. he blinks when jinki pulls at his cheek and laughs at him, “earth to taemin.”

taemin takes a quick scan of the bathroom stalls from what he can see in the mirror, checking if they’re alone. he doesn’t need a repeat of his highschool life if anyone ever overhears or sees what taemin’s about to do.

he turns to jinki who’s a little bit surprised, but still kind of finds the whole situation funny, which taemin doesn’t really understand; he isn’t even trying to make the other laugh.

“why can’t you be this serious when we’re having tutor?”

taemin squares his shoulders and chews on his lip for a moment before taking a huge, huge deep breath. “hyung,” he says with an air of determination and finality.

“yes?”

“i really- i- i really…” he trails off, every molecule of confidence he tried to gather slowly slipping from his grasp.

“you really?” jinki tries to help him, like he always does.

taemin’s so scared at that moment because he knows that this could very well break him if it all goes wrong. he bites the inside of his cheek and stares right into jinki’s eyes.

the ventilation fan whirs overhead, the only sound that they hear once taemin’s lips push against jinki’s. taemin feels like he hasn’t ever had his blood rushing so fast before and he thinks that so much more things could be better with this scene; his lips are too dry and so are jinki’s, the smell of the bathroom almost overpowers the smells that taemin likes so much on jinki, and his eyes are open, completely, staring up at jinki who stares back down at him.

there’s a small sound that echoes around the room when taemin pulls back and their lips separate. jinki still looks like he wants to say something but has lost all power to speak, and taemin feels and definitely looks like he’s ready to bolt if he ever hears something other than acceptance in jinki’s voice.

an unnoticed figure stands by the door, watching the scene take place, and his voice smashes the silence that fills the bathroom.

“jinki-hyung?”


a/n: so, finally, some love. XD i've been dying to get this story going but i didn't have much guts to push through with it till now. your comments give me strength~