It’ll be a cold day in hell when Taemin forgives him, the man decides when he wakes up that morning. He kicks his boyfriend hard behind the leg, causing Jonghyun to grunt as he jerks awake.

“What?” he mumbles, sitting up and his calloused fingers through Taemin’s dyed auburn hair. The younger smacks the hand away and glares up, turning his head as well to refuse any kisses that might change his mind. He rolls out of bed and points at the canvas that he’d left to dry the night before, which is now ruined by a guitar leaning against it.

“You know how long I’ve been working on this one,” he says furiously, taking the neck of Jonghyun’s guitar and gripping it as if he wants to break it. He does want to break it. He holds it up in the air, threatening to bring it down and shatter it against their ty carpet, which makes Jonghyun’s eyes grow to take up half his face.

“What the , Taemin? What the actual ?” he demands, getting up and tearing the guitar from the younger boy’s hand. He tosses it onto the bed, smearing blue and green paint on their sheets, which only makes Taemin angrier because he knows that he’s the one who will be doing the washing up later.

“You know how much this paint costs too! God, it’s like you don’t even care about the art I do!” he screeches, pushing Jonghyun back a few steps, but suddenly he’s pinned against the dresser and his canvas falls flat on its face, leaving a puddle of blue paint around its perimeter. Taemin struggles, kicks, screams out for Jonghyun to let him go, but the older man doesn’t. He doesn’t have to, and he knows it.

“You bought that paint with my money, you’re living in this apartment because of the rent that I pay, you only get to eat food because I buy the damn groceries around here! When has your art ever made money, huh? When has your art even done a goddamn thing for us?” he’s demanding, and Taemin doesn’t have an answer. He just sobs, trying to get away, but he’s weakening now.

“… I thought it made you fall in love with me,” he whispers, remembering that look on Jonghyun’s face the first time the older man had spotted Taemin painting in the park. If he’d known it would have turned out like this, Taemin would have snapped his brushes right then and there, but hindsight is 20/20 and Taemin must be blind.

“Yeah? Or maybe it was how quick you were to spread your legs for me,” Jonghyun snapped, throwing Taemin against the bed and grabbing his clothes from the floor. He grabs his guitar too, reaching over Taemin like the younger man doesn’t even exist, and walks out, walks out again, like he always does when these fights get too intense.

Taemin lays there for a moment, staring at the ceiling with tears burning in the corner of his eyes, before he gets up too and throws a shirt onto his skinny body. He’s allowed to leave too, isn’t he? Walk out on an empty apartment and the shadows of a relationship that he once thought could make him happy.

~

He sits at the window of the coffee shop, knowing that this $6 cup of hot chocolate is a luxury that he shouldn’t be splurging on, but he was too angry at Jonghyun to control his impulses. He takes a sip, barely letting the hot liquid touch his sensitive tongue, before setting it on the artistically designed table and pressing his teeth to his nails instead.

“You shouldn’t do that, you know,” a voice says from beside him. Taemin’s head snaps to the side and sees a tall man in a dark coat and an obnoxiously gingham scarf staring back at him with eyes that seen to take up half his face. The man’s fingers, long and elegant and delicate, are frozen on the keyboard of the beat-up laptop in front of him, but his attention is clearly not on whatever he’d been typing anymore.

“Do what?” Taemin asks, taking his hand away from his mouth. The man nods at the wet finger that Taemin’s doing his best not to let touch the table.

“Bite your nails. It’s bad for you,” he chastises gently. Taemin scoffs and rolls his eyes, but it’s the first good conversation he’s had in weeks. Maybe that’s why he doesn’t shy away from it, but rather throws himself into it headfirst, like diving into a pool with no bottom.

“Yeah? What are you, my mom?” he bites back. The taller man laughs and tilts his head from side to side playfully, as if considering even the slightest notion of that, before boldly moving to sit in front of Taemin at the same table. Taemin moves his hand to make room for the laptop, taking the chance to subtly wipe his finger on his jeans.

“I’m Minho, by the way,” the tall man says, grinning over the edge of his device. Taemin cracks a smile at that grin, that expression like some kind of animated sunflower stepping out of a kid’s show.

“I’m Taemin,” he replies, feeling like his heart is going to explode from nervousness. A real conversation, huh? How would this go, he wonders, even though he knows that he’s out of practice. He starts a mental time for when the conversation will end, and Minho will make some lame excuse for why he needs to leave.

“Taemin, huh? That’s actually the name of the main character in this play that I’m writing,” Minho says with bright enthusiasm, and Taemin can’t help but notice how every tooth in the man’s head are right where they need to be. A dentist’s wet dream. Taemin laughs at his line, wondering if he’s serious or if this is some charmingly lame attempt at flirting.

“Really?” he asks skeptically. The way Minho tilts his head causes his hair to brush against perfectly formed ears, and his eyes seem to sparkle with mischief, but in a way that draws Taemin closer.

“Really. He’s this really cute guy—” Taemin laughs out loud “—who goes to a coffee shop and meets the love of his life, and is super charming and adorable and bites his nails even though it’s bad for him,” Minho says with such a big smile that Taemin can’t even be mad. In fact, his cheeks go a bright red. When was the last time someone called him adorable?

“Does your character have a boyfriend like I do?” he asks, shooting Minho down, but at this point it feels more like a rehearsed obligation. That smile doesn’t falter, though, and Minho even leans closer, resting his elbows on either side of the laptop and leaning his chin on his interlocked fingers.

“Damn, that’s a shame. I guess he does now,” he says, tilting his head so that his cheek is resting on the back of one of his hands. It’s such a soft cheek, like a marshmallow or a pillow, which only makes Taemin smile more. He feels like he’s out of practice in this department, his lips aching a bit and his own cheeks feeling sore, but he can’t help it in the face of this optimism.

“It’s a good line, though, you should use it more often,” he encourages with a laugh, drinking his hot chocolate now that it’s cooled down.

“I’m glad you approve,” Minho replies before laughing, and the sound takes Taemin by complete surprise. While the man’s voice is almost illegally deep, his laugh sounds like a seal chewing on a squeaky toy. The sound makes Taemin laugh, which only makes Minho laugh more, and soon they’re doubled over in their seats, hitting the table and clutching their stomachs and Taemin feels ing happy, so ing happy.

“Oh ,” he says finally, catching his breath and straightening up in his seat and just grinning at Minho with every tooth proudly displayed between chocolatey lips. Minho sits up too and leans his back against the window, stretching out long legs and wiry arms. Taemin was just now starting to notice the bags under his eyes now, and he smiled a bit more gently at the sight.

“What?” the taller man asked, looking over and touching his face. “Is there something—”

“No, just… you look tired,” Taemin said quickly, and his smile relaxes until it’s just a small crescent between his lips. He leans his cheek onto his knuckles and just watches Minho, watches the surprise melt into relief melt into something… warm. Something that Taemin didn’t even know he missed until it’s on Minho’s face and he feels like he’s drowning in it.

He can’t even remember the line that Jonghyun used on him the first day, he realizes now. In fact, Jonghyun had been a different kind of charming all together, the kind of suffocating seductiveness that made Taemin’s spine tingle and his fingers numb. This guy was just cute. Bright and cute, like a grape or a pumpkin. He looks at Taemin like Taemin’s the only thing in the world, and Taemin looks back at him like a dying flower would look at the rain.

“Well, I’ve been up a few nights in a row working on this thesis,” Minho says, turning his laptop around so that Taemin can see the words punched out on the cracked screen. The words are huge and confusing and each sentence seems to go on forever. Taemin pulls away and laughs sheepishly, rubbing the back of his neck.

“I can’t understand any of it. I’m just a college drop out who does painting now,” he admits. Minho’s eyes light up at that sentence, no disappointment or shattered expectations or anything that Taemin’s been expecting this whole time.

“No , really? What do you paint? Do you have pictures of it?” he asks, perked up with a genuine interest that rips the conversational rug right out from under Taemin’s feet. Fumbling for his phone, Taemin tries to remember if he’s even taken pictures of anything recent, if he’s even proud of anything recent. It seems like such a long time since Jonghyun’s looked at his work seriously, but that’s a thought that Taemin wrestles from his brain as he hands his device over.

“I usually do oil paintings. I did this one last month, it’s kind of sloppy, though,” he says quickly, trying to justify the deconstructed flames that he’d tried to portray. Jonghyun had said that it looked like a bloody on a canvas.

“Damn, this is really good! It reminds me of like… fire? But if you pulled apart all the layers or something,” Minho says with a brightness that’s just a slap to Taemin’s face. The young man grins at that, taking the phone back and trying not to blush anymore. It doesn’t work, and he feels his cheeks going as red as his hair.

“That’s what I was going for, but my boyfriend—” He stops himself short, and even Minho clears his throat a bit awkwardly. They’re having too much fun to think about just how taken Taemin is, and just how much Minho wishes he wasn’t. Taemin wracks his brain for something else to talk about, trying to save this conversation from drowning in his own -ups and mistakes.

“I really am writing a play, though,” Minho says quickly. What a ing hero. “It’s about… Well, it’s kind of weird, actually. It’s supposed to be a detective story, but at some point, my main characters turned really gay for each other, and I’m not really sure how I’m going to bring it back on track,” he explains, laughing with his cheeks going a cute pink. Taemin laughs too, out of amusement and relief.

“Aw, it sounds like you just really need to get laid,” he teases, making Minho’s cheeks go even redder. Taemin’s own cheeks are feeling that soreness again, that feeling that he was beginning to fall in love with.

“I get laid!” the tall man says defensively, but neither of them really believe it. Taemin just shakes his head, clicking his tongue in mock disapproval and wagging his finger at the older man for such a blatant lie,

“Really? When?” he presses. Minho scoffs and sticks his tongue out, a childish look that makes Taemin’s heart flutter just a bit. He hears a phone buzz, causing a look of disappointment to flash in front of Minho’s face. Taemin feels it too, and a desperate part of him wants to beg Minho to just not check his phone, to just stay here and talk to Taemin some more, and maybe neither of them should get up.

But Minho checks his phone, because he’s his own man and Taemin has a boyfriend, and Taemin drinks some more hot chocolate, which is really just lukewarm by now. Minho sighs and frowns softly, looking at Taemin with an apologetic expression on his whole face.

“I’ll tell you about my entire life next time,” Minho promises, writing his phone number on a napkin and sliding it to Taemin across the table. He gets up and packs up his laptop, waving at Taemin brightly. “I’ll see you around, okay? Text me!”

“I will,” Taemin promises as he watches the man leave before looking down at the napkin. He closes his eyes and breathes in deeply before tossing it into the trash.

~

Taemin goes home and tries not to think about it as he sits in front of their coffee table. The coffee table, he reminds himself, that he shares with his boyfriend. What did he imagine would happen anyway, if he’d kept that number? Would he text Minho and begin to fall in love with the man’s adorable charms? Start meeting Minho around town and become bolder and bolder each time? Start cheating on Jonghyun, or worse, break up with him to date some guy he’d only just met? Was he going to find love in a coffee shop like the character in an anime? He laughed and rubbed his ridiculous hands over his ridiculously stupid face.

What did it matter that Minho made him so ing happy if nothing could ever come from it?

The sound of the door opening behind him caused Taemin to turn around, and he sees Jonghyun coming back from another day in the studio. They exchange awkward smiles as Jonghyun leans his guitar against the wall by the door before sitting next to Taemin on their over-stuffed couch. He put an arm around Taemin’s shoulder and pulls him close, and for a moment, Taemin considers pulling away, but instead he leans on his boyfriend’s chest.

“I’m sorry,” Jonghyun says, looking down into Taemin’s eyes. The younger man sighs and nuzzles his nose against Jonghyun’s jaw. No, it’s a good thing that he didn’t keep Minho’s number. Jonghyun might not be perfect, what they had might not be perfect, but for Taemin, it was better to stay in a sinking ship than jump into an unknown ocean. He wrapped his arms more firmly around Jonghyun’s waist and sighed, inhaling the man’s comforting scent.

“It’s alright,” he whispered, and it must have been one cold day in hell.