Aside from the amazing doughnuts and thanks from the imaging department (including them buying the PT team fancy coffees in the late morning), the rest of Friday moseys by in a blur. He blames it on the morning sugar-high and the afternoon crash.

         The weekend falls flat and Mingyu doesn’t even leave his apartment; calling in delivery for dinner four times. That’s right, four dinners in three nights because he’s losing sleep. He can only dust his entertainment center so many times. There’s a lot he could be doing. He could be volunteering somewhere, helping someone, doing something, doing anything, but the skies are overcast, and he just wants to lay on his couch unmoving.

         All he can do is count the stitches on his cuff, watch the raindrops race each other down his living room window, catch dust as it falls from his ceiling; it’s a boring weekend that stays vacant and will remain his least productive weekend for the foreseeable future. It’s disgusting. It’s atrocious. He’s not a mess and he’s not put together. He’s somewhere in limbo between a slug and a stale slice of bread. Maybe he’s catching a cold. He can feel it in his limbs and how heavy they feel, as if the air was made of molasses. It’s been a while since he’s been sick. He had a horrible immune system as a kid and well into high school. It only started getting better after he started hitting the gym and eating better during college, but look at him now. He could go to the gym, but running on a treadmill and lifting weights for hours at a time just doesn’t feel like the right medication. Maybe he should go on a drive, but, oh, his car is so far away. The couch seems like a perfectly sound place to spend this dreary day.

         Wonwoo would probably berate him for being little-more productive than your average pet rock, but Mingyu’s just not driven to do anything. He spends all his time wondering if Hansol made well on his promise to come back into work just because he wanted to spend time with Seungkwan. He wonders if Soonyoung and Wonwoo have situations like that too. Does Wonwoo venture to Soonyoung’s workplace just to say hi or make sure he’s not bored? Soonyoung’s come in a couple times to bring Wonwoo his work ID or a jacket he left behind on chillier mornings. How long do you have to date before that kind of thing becomes normal? Acting like you’re married—Mingyu laughs mentally—well, Wonwoo and Soonyoung are practically married. It just feels so natural between them, effortless even, but Mingyu’s pretty sure that’s just how they make it look. Relationships take effort, they take energy and commitment from both sides. He knows it’s about being able to meet in the middle, about compromise and compatibility. It’s the reason he hasn’t been able to match up with anyone since the beginning of time.

         Everyone was always so eager, so ready to put everything they’ve ever worked for on the back burner and focus on a future with Mingyu and when he was young that was scary. Even as he’s getting older, he can’t imagine someone just putting everything down and waiting for him, needing his approval for a joint decision. The idea of ruining someone’s potential always pulled Mingyu out of promising relationships prematurely. The people he dated were always amazing in their own right, good at what they did, dedicated to what they did and what they wanted, but they could always put Mingyu ahead of that dream for one reason or another. And despite being flattered about those choices, Mingyu will admit that he never felt worthy of such attention.

         He wasn’t worth a crushed dream. He wasn’t worth the tears and he wasn’t worth the heartbreak. Up until now, he still doesn’t feel like he deserves the warmth and joy of a relationship with another, living, breathing, dreaming human-being.

         Of course, Mingyu doesn’t know when that started to change. Ever so slightly, that notion started to change. He could never give up his dream of stability, but now that he has it, he’s not sure he has a dream to wager in a relationship. What’s next? What’s the new goal if he’s already achieved what he set out to do? He’s only in his mid-twenties. It’s too early to be done.

         Achieving stability—disappointingly—was not to be the root of his happiness.

         “Hey, you’re coming out to lunch with me today.” Wonwoo comes into the breakroom, his tie untied and his hair a little messy. When Mingyu looks up at the clock, he sees that it’s 10 till 9.

         Wonwoo is late for work.

         “Okay?” It’s not that Mingyu doesn’t usually go out to lunch with Wonwoo. In fact, within the last few weeks they’d gone out all daily but the weekend and the two days Wonwoo didn’t work. Asking him out to lunch on a Monday was usually only spoken between their grumbling stomachs, not with words, especially words that are so demanding. Maybe he’s worried about Jeonghan coming back to work on Wednesday or maybe he’s worried about something more pressing. Joshua has probably told him enough horror stories about Jeonghan and Old Man Perelman, but that’s probably not enough to deter Wonwoo who has worked in the city with undoubtedly worse city-forms of their most atrocious patients. Cities are always filled with angrier, more bitter people.

         “Don’t agree so fast. I need to talk about something.” He looks for an explanation for the out of character behavior as Wonwoo fixes his hair in the reflection of the paper towel dispenser and ties his tie with nimble fingers only to realize he’d forgotten his cardigan in his car. He quickly excuses himself to half-run, half-jog back out to get it. He comes back in with three minutes to spare, “So, Soonyoung,” Mingyu is surprised to draw the connection that the sparkly beam of sunshine that can’t bake for his life might be the reason for Wonwoo being so frazzled this early in the day, “I need to complain about him to someone and you’re my lunch buddy, so I need you to clench your and deal with my sob story later, okay?”

         “Okay.” Wonwoo blinks a couple times, not expecting Mingyu to agree again. The thought of burying Mingyu in complaints doesn’t seem to burden him all that much because he just takes a deep breath, smiles, and pats him on the shoulder on his way out to the lobby to search for today’s first patient. 

         Monday morning passes easily. Mingyu’s patients are back on track and doing well and (a little bitterly) he makes some statement that Minghao’s anti-recovery curse has been lifted from the clinic. Wonwoo doesn’t bat an eye which is cause for concern because for the last three weeks, Wonwoo would usually jump at a chance to about his high school ghost. He tests the waters by making another off comment about how the weather is better because Minghao hasn’t stopped by, but Wonwoo just hums in agreement while finishing up his last patient’s paperwork and sorting the file away to hand back to Joshua. Lunch was surely going to be interesting.

         “So, what happened with Soon-” Mingyu can’t even unwrap his banh mi or finish his sentence before Wonwoo spits out the boba straw and starts rambling.

         “He’s been working on this number for a really long time and it was coming together well from what I heard. But his teammate elected to change it last minute and omit one of the more technically advanced moves in place of a crowd-pleasing move. And Soon agreed. So,” he takes another sip, “I went to go watch their practice on Friday since I couldn’t make it to the semi-finals this weekend and it’s basically a - a striptease- I don’t know.”

         Mingyu almost chokes before he can swallow, “He’s a dancer?”

         “Yeah, at Performance Studio.” Wonwoo finally takes a breath to take a bite of his own sandwich. Mingyu’s sudden curiosity about Soonyoung’s profession briefly derailed his train of thought. He could have sworn that Mingyu knew.

         “Well,” Mingyu draws out. Curiosity is on the tip of his tongue and probably written all over his face, but Wonwoo probably doesn’t know that Minghao works there too. He would never hear the end of it if he found out his boyfriend and Minghao were co-workers, “I mean, he’s a professional. It’s just choreography. What’s the problem with that?”

         “Nothing, and I know- I know he’s a professional, okay?” he seems to weigh his words, “But you’ve never seen Soonyoung dance so sinfully.” Mingyu heaves a cough with how Wonwoo drags out that last word, “It’s something I thought I’d only see behind closed doors, and it’s not entirely his style so I have a feeling he didn’t choreograph that section.”

         “Did you talk to him about it?” For a guy that’s never been in a real relationship with any man, woman, or anyone in between Mingyu has some awfully sound advice, “If it really bugs you, I think you two should talk it out. It’s okay to tell him if something like that makes you uncomfortable even if it’s part of his career. I’m sure he’ll understand.”

         Wonwoo just narrows his eyes at Mingyu’s baseless advice, but shrugs, “We argued about it after the competition and I got to sleep on the couch last night. He always gets so uptight when it comes to being on stage- it’s frustrating.” He swallows and wipes his mouth. Apparently, that was enough to help him reset his aggressions, “But whatever, they won and they’re moving onto finals. I’ll have make-up when the semi-finals winner’s plaque comes through the mail in a couple days, but the main point here is that it’s essentially Minghao’s fault that my back is acting up again from sleeping on the couch.”

         Oh.

         He knew.

         Maybe that’s why he wouldn’t let Minghao’s name die on all the days he didn’t have to come in. Every day in between Minghao’s appointments, Wonwoo would experiment and bring up his name casually in front of Mingyu and each time he’d call Mingyu out for doing a thing. It’s come to the point where Mingyu has to consciously relate Minghao’s name with not biting his lip and not staring into space ‘with a dreamy look in his eyes’. Wonwoo, however, can see that his brain processes the method every time the dancer is mentioned and ends up pointing that out too.

         “Look, I know why Minghao changed the moves. It was a hard one for him—handsfree kick flip and landing on his hands, busted knee yada yada, but why did you tell him to change it to that?” he scrunches up his nose before taking another bite and sipping another sip. “I don’t even get s and I have to undress myself.”

         A pearl shoots up Mingyu’s straw and he chokes prematurely. The timing couldn’t have been better (or worse, depending on the perspective) because he at least gets Wonwoo to drop his angry face and laugh for a minute, “I didn’t tell him to change anything. I don’t know the first thing about dance. If anything, I’m surprised that Soonyoung is still letting him compete despite knowing about the injury.”

         "Soonyoung doesn't know."