2min // side jongkey

ual references but nothing graphic 

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“You look really good tonight– I mean, you’re all dressed up…”

Again? This was the fourth time this week the girl had tried to hit on him.

    Taemin shuffled his keys around in one hand, continuing to walk down the dormitory hallway to his room, right next to hers. She followed him, with that as an excuse. Her name was Naeun, and she was a Sophomore, a year above Taemin at the University. He didn’t really mind her presence, but was beginning to get tired of the same string of pick up lines she continued to use on him. She was shorter than him, with long black hair, and long, pretty eyelashes. She was ideal for most guys prowling around campus.

“I was dressed up because I had a date,” Taemin lied.

    The expression on her face turned from eager to frustration. Taemin turned to his door and waited for the hail of questions to rain down on him.

“With who? Do I know her?”

“Doubt it.”

    With nimble fingers he unlocked his doorknob, turning the key before being stopped by a light hand on his wrist.

“Well, know if things don’t go well you always have me. You know, to talk to…”

    She turned and walked away without looking back, first giving a small, sad smile. He almost felt bad– but what for? He wasn’t interested in her, or dating her, so what was there to be apologetic for?
    He could easily hear that his roommate, Kibum, had company in their room, so he kicked off his shoes and laid on the couch, checking his phone for any stray messages he had forgotten to reply to. Even in doing so, his mind wandered back to what he could possibly do to get his neighbor to leave him alone. He didn’t not like her as a person, simply could not seem to get the message to her that he was not interested– and moreover, did not swing that way.

“–Taeeeeeeminnie!”

A long, drawn out voice sounded from his room, obviously being Kibum. He was drunk, and Taemin could hear giggling in the backdrop, as Kibum opened the door wider.

“Yeah? What do you want,”

    Kibum scoffed loudly, lazily wandering into the living room.

“You shouldn’t talk to your elders like that, you know. It’s not very nice. I’m going to be dead before you, and then you’ll regret talking to me so informal– informally? infor– yah…”

    His words trailed off, Kibum’s natural accent shining through, and making his words even more slurred. His shirt was barely on, hanging off on one shoulder, showing red blotches and bitemarks. He really had no shame when he was drunk.

“Okay, okay… Really– Seriously. Are you alright with sleeping on the couch for the night? I mean, I’m only using one bed and all but I don’t think you’d really want to stay in there– because you know,” Kibum winked and made a gun out of his left hand, shooting it twice.

    Taemin sighed as overdramatically as he could, throwing his head back onto the arm of the couch. The older boy stared down at him through dazed, cloudy eyes, his blonde hair messed up, and eyeliner smudged. He could not have looked any more wasted, Taemin agreed to himself. He assumed Kibum went clubbing again with his friends, and with his dancing ability clubbing was almost a competitive sport. He could easily see why he would be so wasted– seeing as Kibum took “you shouldn’t have another one,” as, “i bet you can’t take another one.”

“God, you need to get Jonghyun to start helping pay the damn rent if he’s gonna keep showing up here… Yeah, I just need to get some things from there and I’ll sleep out here. Try to keep it down, you’re really ing loud.”

    Kibum snickered and began walking back to the room, in the middle yelling back to his roommate again, “You know, you’re ing loud too– if it’s you’re referring to.”

    Just like that, Taemin swore he heard the older boy jump on his boyfriend from the other room. It was his thing, to pounce on whatever he wanted, whether it be his boyfriend, or shoes, or coupons at the supermarket. Kibum was exactly like a cat in more ways than one.

    Taemin moved so that he laid face down on the sofa. He wasn’t tired, but certainly didn’t want to go out with friends or study for that matter. He wouldn’t be able to sleep if he’d wanted to anyways, for certain reasons. Instead, he dragged his lifeless body up from the plush couch, shrugged on his dance team sweatshirt, and grabbed his keys and was out the door in a matter of minutes. He didn’t know where he was going, but felt like he needed to get out.

It was winter, freezing outside, and Taemin loved it. He didn’t know what about winter

was so pleasing to him, but he loved the feeling of frost nipping at his face and his breath being visible in the air. For a while, still undecided on what to do with himself, he stood outside in the cold near the building. Other than a woman quietly talking into her cellphone, a man standing by the doors most likely waiting for a ride, and a few passing cars there was no one out this late. It hadn’t snowed yet, but with the temperature at such a low point Taemin didn’t doubt that it would pretty soon. Maybe in the next week, he hoped.

The woman on her cell phone ended her call, and began walking towards the doors to go back inside the building. She wasn’t tall, had black hair, and a dull pink pea coat. Taemin didn’t get a good enough look at her to recognize her or anything, but instead glanced and looked back to the street again, lost in his own thoughts.

Before he could begin coming up with ideas as to where to roam around for the night, he

felt a tap on his shoulder, and looked up to a smiling, joyous face staring at him.

Oh no.

“What are you doing out here, Taemin?” Naeun’s cheeky smile never left her face as she asked the question. Her nose and cheeks were tinged pink from the cold, and her hands were clad in plush gloves. Taemin wondered how long she’d been out here, because he’d only seen her about an hour back.

“I’m just,” Taemin didn’t really have an answer, so he trailed off and let Naeun continue talking and asking questions.

“Do you need a place to stay for the night? Why are you out so late, and in this cold weather? Are you alright, did you have a fight with your roommate?” She continued asking questions with no responses, but she didn’t seem to mind, a smile never leaving her face.

Taemin really didn’t want to hurt her, but he was running out of options and couldn’t find an excuse he hadn’t already used on her to escape. He didn’t want to go back to his dorm, and no one was picking him up. If he was to walk away he didn’t really have a destination. He started tuning out her talking and looked around for escape routes.

The man he’d seen before was standing only a good five feet away, on the other side of the doors from him. He was tall, wore a grey slim-fitting jacket and scarf, looked about Taemin’s age…

    “Taemin, you’re shivering, you should really go inside, come on, I’ll make you something to eat at my place,”

    “N-no, wait,” Taemin sputtered out, his hand already locked in her persistent grasp. He kept repeating in his head that saying anything too rude would be completely uncalled for, but he started doubting his own patience.

    He took a breath and went with the second plan he had in mind– the first one being to just run.

    “This,” Taemin shuffled over to the man across from the doorway, taking his hand and hoping to god he’d go with this idea, “this is my boyfriend, we’re waiting for my friend to pick us up.”

    The man looked down, at the two suddenly near him and took a moment to raise an eyebrow and make eye contact with Taemin, who was now trying to act as pitiful and helpless as ever. His eyes plead for understanding, and the tall brunette complied, smiling at Naeun and showing off perfect white teeth and eyes that shone more radiantly than the sun. Taemin knew he was freezing his off, but in that moment he felt hotter than a summer afternoon.

    “Is this a friend of yours? Why have I’ve never met her, honey?” The man unlaced their fingers and instead, in a more convincing twist, moved his arm around Taemin’s waist, pulling him closer. Now he certainly felt warmer, not only because of physical contact, but because out of sheer coincidence the man he chose to play “boyfriend” with turned out to be incredibly handsome and understanding of his situation, even without words.

    Back to reality, Naeun looked as if she was going to cry. She certainly wasn’t, because she was a confident person and knew that she was above that, but she looked all levels of uncomfortable. As if she’d been punched in the stomach and left to lay on the ground. It took a few moments, but she recollected herself and smiled a weak, fake smile and backed away from the two, nearly bowing in apology but catching herself. Taemin felt extremely guilty.

    “We’re neighbors, I just wanted to make sure Taemin wasn’t catching a cold out here,” she gave a hollow laugh, gravitating towards the doors once again.

    “That’s really nice of you, but my friend said he’ll be here in just a few minutes so he wanted us to wait outside,” the man smiled again, the same heart-melting, cancer-curing smile.

    Taemin snapped out of his daze, smiling as well and waving as she turned to walk to the doors and said goodnight. He didn’t quite know what pushed him to the fake boyfriend option– though he’d done it before with Kibum. He’d never attempted this scenario with a complete stranger, and it was a miracle he went along with it.     

    On that note, the stranger dropped his arm as soon as she was out of sight and pulled out his phone, checking his text messages.

    “Thank you,” Taemin mumbled quietly, still somewhat hazy and lost and a little disappointed at the lack of physical contact, “thank you so much, I really owe you.”

    “No problem, Taemin,” He made eye contact, his dark bangs swishing lightly as he turned his head to look back at Taemin, who now seemed completely surprised.

    “You know my name?”

    “She said it, so I assumed.”
 

    “Oh, right,” Taemin flushed, breaking eye contact and staring at the pavement, “I was kind of out of it, I didn’t even notice…”

    The man laughed, putting his hands in his pockets and continuing to watch Taemin carefully, as if he still needed help and protection from something.

    “My name’s Minho, by the way, I live on the fourth floor.”

    Taemin didn’t process it until now but Minho’s voice was really gorgeous. Most of what Taemin could tell about him was that he was gorgeous, but his voice… It was smooth, baritone, deeper than his own for sure, but not rough in any way. He was surprised he’d never noticed Minho around, but then again hardly knew anyone on the floors below him. On top of that, he was a freshman, and had only moved in with Kibum six months back.

    “I’m on the fifth, room 519,”

    “Seriously?” Minho’s eyes widened, and his smile dropped to a surprised “O.”

    “What’s so weird about that?”

    “I’m 419, you’re right above me,” Minho responded still staring in disbelief, “you’re the one making all that noise?”

“What do you mean?” Taemin cocked his head, dark black hair falling over his eyes a bit with the action.

“You’re– I mean like, there’s always…” Minho paused, looking for words to use and

finding few that would make sense in a sentence, “bed springs and loud… loud bedroom activities.”

Oh.

Taemin burst out laughing, half at his lack of words to describe loud , and half at the confusion that it was him that was coming from. Minho looked even more lost than before and raised an eyebrow, almost as if concerned.

“That’s my roommate and his boyfriend, believe me, there’s a reason I’m standing out

here right now when I could be watching Netflix on the couch,” Taemin covered his mouth, still laughing quietly at Kibum and his antics.

“That… makes more sense, yeah,” Minho chuckled with him, amused with Taemin’s familiarity with the issue.

There was a comfortable, yet awkward silence for a moment, neither knowing how to

continue on with a conversation. Taemin could leave, but he definitely didn’t want to yet, enjoying talking to this sweet stranger who apparently lived right below him. His hands were cold, he noticed, even though he’d put them in his sweatshirt pocket a few minutes back. It certainly was cheesy of him, but he wished the fake affection from before would return, because despite it being unreal and just an excuse to get a girl to stop bothering him, it did make him feel warmer and brought a light, weightless feeling to his heart.

“So, are you single?” Minho asked casually, causing Taemin to nearly give himself whiplash at how fast his head shot up, “I mean, you weren’t interested in the girl back there, but you couldn’t tell her you were taken without lying, right?”

Taemin nodded, saying nothing, but looking down at the concrete to hide the red in his face.

“Do you wanna like,” Minho paused, looking at the ground as well, confidence from before dwindling until he was nothing but an anxious, shy mess, “maybe do something on Saturday? If you’re free? I mean, I’ll pay too and I have a car, so I’m just–”

“Yes,” Taemin squeaked, cutting him off.

A sleek grey car pulled up in front of the tall building, and Taemin thanked every higher

power that it took so long to show up. Minho smiled like he’d won the lottery.

“Alright, yeah, Saturday. I’ll see you, Taemin,” he trailed off, walking towards the car and waving once before getting in the passenger’s side.

Taemin exhaled, seeing his breath as a white cloud in the air. He watched as the car

zoomed away to an unknown destination and he smiled to himself, giddy and in disbelief. His phone vibrated in his back pocket and he slid it out, the same goofy grin still on his face as he read over the text Kibum had sent that said, with many typos, “we’re done and like asleep uu can come on back if u want taemo.”

Taemin scoffed at Kibum’s drunk writing and rolled his eyes. He decided living in this building was going to get far more interesting soon.

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a/n

short lil thing idk. i might make a sequel i havent decided. waaaaaaaaaaaaaa

-ki