There are many things Seunghyun question about himself sometimes, one being why he just has to share an apartment with Jonghun, another is why he decided mixing chocolate mint ice-cream with mango swirl was a good idea. But the question that he asks himself the most is that does he have a huge embarrassing, not a man-crush but an actual crush (or would it be a man-crush, ever mind that), on his best friend for life, Choi Minhwan or not. He thinks he does, but at the same time he’s also denying it, the denial stage Jonghun told him when he asked about it.

“It’s because he’s your best friend that you’re denying it,” Jonghun points out when Seunghyun had asked him why his heart raced whenever he saw Minhwan. “So just it up and accept it.”

“But he’s my best friend,” Seunghyun whines, hugging a pillow tightly, “and best friends aren’t supposed to fall in love!”

“But you fell in love with him,” Jonghun points out. “You told me your heart races whenever you see him, you get flustered and nervous whenever you try to talk to him. Either you’ve done something to embarrass yourself, which isn’t surprising, or you’re in love with him.”

Seunghyun throws the pillow at Jonghun, “you make me sound like a girl, hyung.”

“You sound like a girl right now.”

Seunghyun pouts, he wasn’t trying to act like a girl or anything, girls are complicated and he didn’t want to make him any more complicated. Honestly his heart really beats ten times faster whenever he’s around his best friend now and he gets nervous for no apparent reason. “Yeah and? It’s not like you don’t sound like a girl either whenever you go off about Jaejin.”

Jonghun sighs and runs his hand through his dark hair, “you’re in love with him and don’t bring Jaejin into this. God, knowing you, you probably know the exact date and time you realized this.”

“No I don’t,” Seunghyun retorts back.

Actually he did know the exact date and time it happened, the day he realized his love for his best friend. It was a hot Saturday in July at 3:41 PM. They were at the beach after a long drive with a grumpy Jonghun, an overly excited Hongki, a complaining Jaejin, and Minhwan and him.  Just by chance the two were sitting under the protection of the beach umbrella they brought, away from the sun.  Seunghyun teases Jaejin, yelling out that he’ll get tanner than he already is from under the umbrella and earns a scowl from the other and water squirted at his face.

Seunghyun merely laughs it off and throws a plastic toy shovel at the elder receiving another scowl from him. “Just saying!” the tall boy yells out.

He turns to Minhwan excitedly, wanting to get him in on the fun. He’s about to tap on Minhwan’s shoulder, but he hears faint snoring. The other was fast asleep and his head falls onto Seunghyun’s bony shoulder. His breath hitches and he can feel his face heating up, although they’re best friends, he’s never seen Minhwan’s face up close. It had a childish glow to it, his lashes are fairly long and he couldn’t help but to want to poke the other’s cheek. He reaches out and pokes Minhwan’s cheek carefully; they were as squishy as he thought they would be.  Minhwan begins to stir and his eyes flutters open soon afterwards. He rubs his eyes and looks around in a daze before giving Seunghyun a sheepish smile and mumbles an apology for falling asleep on the other. That’s when he realizes that within the 6 years, a month and 13 days they’ve known each other that he might have fallen in love with the other.

Love that was only realized 5 years, 3 months and 21 days later during a sweltering hot summer at the beach, under an umbrella while watching the others play in the water.  And he’s still in love when the sweltering hot summer transitions to a cool, breezy autumn. He’s still in love with his best friend now, and he doesn’t think he’ll fall out of it any time soon.

Seunghyun sighs into his knees, “you at this, Jonghun.”

Jonghun shrugs, “you should’ve asked Hongki.” He stands up and heads to their small kitchen to prepare dinner. “Hongki’s a lot better at giving advice than me,” he admits, “even if I did play around with some girls and Minhwan isn’t a girl.”

Seunghyun looks up from his knees and grins, “he’d look cute as a girl, dressed in a girl’s uniform.” He laughs, “I bet he’d be prettier than the other girls I’ve seen.”

Jonghun drops the ladle he was holding, he totally didn’t expect that. “Now you sound like a ert, please don’t put that image in my head,” Jonghun complains. He honestly didn’t need an image of Minhwan in a school girl uniform, anything but that. It’d make him feel like a e.

“It’s not like you don’t imagine Jaejin in girl’s clothing,” Seunghyun says, grinning when he notices Jonghun’s figure tensing up. “He’d be a really pretty girl.”

“Shut up Seunghyun, or you’re not getting dinner.”

“You’re no fun, hyung!” Seunghyun yells out.

---

There are many things Minhwan questions sometimes, like why he’s living with Jaejin when he could just live in dorms at the university he was attending, or why he thought it was a good idea to put off his homework until midnight. He also questions his tastes in friends, but friends are friends and sometimes you do question why you’re friends with someone. But he also questions if he has feelings for his best friend, Song Seunghyun. He didn’t know when it happened, he doesn’t know when these feelings developed, all he knows is that he likes him and it may be a bad thing. You can’t just suddenly develop feelings for your best friend.

“Denial,” Jaejin practically sings out when Minhwan finally talks about it with his flat-mate. He knew confiding to Jaejin about this issue was a bad idea; he didn’t even know how Jaejin and Jonghun hooked up with each other, so why bother asking Jaejin? Oh right, he was the only one who actually cared.

“Shut up Jaejin,” Minhwan grumbles out.

“Hyung, Minhwan, call me hyung,” Jaejin scolds playfully, only to get a glare from the younger in return. He laughs and perches his chin on the palms of his hands, “but no, seriously, you’re denying it right now.”

Minhwan crosses his arms and huffs, “I’m not denying anything!”

Jaejin pats Minhwan’s head, sometimes he hates being short and these are one of those times, he always gets treated like a kid. He is not some little kid that you can assure with a pat on the head. “He’s your best friend, you have feelings for him and you say you don’t.”

“Best friends aren’t supposed to be in love,” Minhwan retorts back, swatting Jaejin’s hand away.

Jaejin snorts, “that sounds like something Seunghyun would say.”

It does sound like something Seunghyun would say and Minhwan covers his face. Jaejin looks at Minhwan sympathetically and awkwardly pats his back. “It’s okay, knowing Seunghyun he probably likes you back and is probably in the same denial as you are,” Jaejin reassures.

“I really don’t think he likes me back,” Minhwan pouts. He couldn’t help but to be a pessimist on this situation. It would take a miracle for Seunghyun to like him back, a miracle.

Jaejin sighs and ruffles his hair, “you sound like a high school girl right now.”

“Now you sound like Jonghun, hyung.”

“No, I’ve always been like this,” the elder replies back nonchalantly.

“Oh yeah,” Minhwan pauses, “you’ve always been an .”

Jaejin places a finger on Minhwan’s lips, shushing him, “language, young paladin, language.”

The shorter grunts and pushes the hand away, “it’s not like you don’t curse! I hear you say and all the time!” It was a daily occurrence for Jaejin to curse, so why couldn’t he curse? This was unfair treatment. He was a grown man; he can curse all he want.

“It’s weird hearing it come out of your mouth,” Jaejin deadpans. “But seriously, back to your problem. When did you even realize this?”

Jaejin brought up a good point. When did he become aware of holding these feelings for Seunghyun? When did it all happen? Really, he wasn’t quite sure. It just came to him like when you wake up early in the morning with the sudden realization that it’s the weekend and you have no reason to wake up so early. It just felt like that. So honestly, he didn’t know when he fell in love, so maybe it was a while ago, a week ago, a couple days, or maybe even months. He just wasn’t sure.

“It just happened,” Minhwan says with a shrug. His mind was jumbled and Jaejin didn’t help at all, maybe Myungsoo was a better alternative. Myungsoo always listened to his problems.

“Oh that. That happened with me and a noona.”

“You always tell me the story about you and that noona, Jaejin,” he whines, “I need love advice not a spiel of your previous relationship.”

“Just, “Jaejin pauses, “just tell him.”

Minhwan looks up and begins to protest, “but—“

“You won’t get another chance,” Jaejin reasons. “I was going to ask a girl out, but some guy took her before I got the chance and I lost it.”

“But you have Jonghun now.”

“And I’m perfectly happy.”

“I’ll never understand how you guys got together.”

“I don’t either,” Jaejin says. “So are you going to confess?”

Minhwan begins to ponder, should he reveal his feelings, should he risk the chance? He doesn’t know, his mind is still jumbled and not in any state to make a decision. “I’ll sleep on it,” he ends up saying.

Jaejin sighs, but still gives Minhwan a smile, a weary one. “Don’t sleep for three days straight again.”

“I won’t, it’s okay,” Minhwan says as he stands up. “I felt so well rested though.”

But instead of heading towards his comfortable bedroom, he heads for the fridge and grabs the only tub of vanilla ice-cream they had. Though sleeping sounds nice, he’d rather drown his worries in the cold treat. Jaejin and his complaints that he should probably diet, just him he thinks as Jaejin tries to pry the ice-cream out of his hands.

---

Seunghyun ends up going to Hongki for any possible advice on his love crisis. Jonghun was practically useless seeing how he mainly dealt with girls that had crushes on him not the other way around (how he managed to even be in a relationship with Jaejin, he’ll never know) and so his next best choice was Hongki. But it sadly turns out Hongki was even worse than Jonghun, having dealt with the same situation, and drags him to Minhwan’s shared apartment with Jaejin to “deal with the problem himself.”

“Hyung, this is the worst possible idea ever,” Seunghyun says frantically with wide eyes.

Hongki scoffs and shakes his head, “how bad could this possibly be? The most that could happen is Minhwan denying your feelings and I doubt he will.”

Seunghyun blinks, Minhwan accepting his feelings would be a miracle, he doubted the other held the same feelings like he did. “How are you so sure?” Seunghyun asks. “Did Minhwan actually tell you? I really don’t think he likes me back in a like like way, hyung.”

Hongki stops pulling on Seunghyun’s arm and raises a questioning brow at him. “Did you seriously just use like like?”

The taller looks down at his shoes and kicks the gravel, “maybe.”

“Sometimes I feel like I’m talking to a high school girl.”

“That’s what Jonghun told me yesterday.”

An awkward silence engulfs them and Hongki grabs Seunghyun’s bony arm and pulls it towards the complex. In front of the complex Hongki immediately drags Seunghyun inside despite his loud protests. “Hyung! No, oh my god no,” Seunghyun tries to pull his arm away, but Hongki was much stronger than him. “Hyung, this is embarrassing.”

“If you didn’t have this crush on Minhwan I wouldn’t be doing this,” he yells out. “Jaejin better pay me back well.”

“Jaejin?” Seunghyun asks, “what does Jaejin have to do with this?”

Hongki ignores Seunghyun’s question and shoves him into the door. “Be a good boy and knock on the door for me,” he says nonchalantly.

“But—“

The blonde points at the door with a deadpanned expression, “door,” he says bluntly before mumbling some incoherent words.

Seunghyun rubs the back of his head and knocks lightly on the door. Almost immediately the door opens, revealing a very irritated Jaejin. “Jesus Christ, I can’t deal with him,” he mumbles. His face brightens at the sight of Hongki and Seunghyun, “thank god you’re here. Seunghyun go deal with Minhwan, he’s acting like a kid right now and refuses to let go of tub of ice-cream.”

Seunghyun gives Jaejin a weird look, “what.”

“He was about to go to sleep, but he just decides to go to the fridge and drown all his problems with ice-cream,” Jaejin huffs out. “I’m out, you deal with Minhwan’s little fit.” He pushes Seunghyun into the flat, slams the door shut, locks it, stomps towards Hongki and grabs his arm, “we’re going to go sing at the karaoke.”

Hongki looks at Jaejin in confusion, “what?”

“Call Jonghun, we’re going to sing until we can’t speak anymore, I can’t take with this anymore.”

“Uh.”

Jaejin drags Hongki away, leaving Seunghyun alone in the flat with a sulking Minhwan, baffled. Honestly he didn’t want to confront Minhwan, maybe he can somehow avoid talking about his little crush on him. Just a maybe.

“Hey,” Seunghyun says as he plops himself next to a rather blank looking Minhwan, hugging a tub of ice-cream. The two sit in a rather awkward silence, they’ve never sat in silence, usually Seunghyun would prattle on about how the rain is controlled by some wizard or some weird like that. But he wasn’t talking at all and neither was Minhwan. The tall boy coughs into his hand, and finally breaks the silence hanging around them, “I heard Jaejin couldn’t deal with your .”

“Oh, uh, yeah.”

“Jonghun kicked me out of the flat because he couldn’t deal with my ,” Seunghyun says in a reassuring tone.

Minhwan looks down at his half-empty tub of ice-cream, grabs the spoon left abandoned in the half-melted ice-cream and scoops it into his mouth. “Why?” he mumbles while eating the cold treat (not really, it’s a bit warm now).

Seunghyun brings up his legs to his chest and buries his face into his knees. “I was acting like a girl apparently,” he answers.

“What.”

Seunghyun starts to panic, he’s too close to actually revealing that he has a stupid crush on Minhwan, too close. “I was, um, discussing about some problems and uh, it just happened?” he manages to say with a lot of trouble. At least he didn’t actually spill that he liked Minhwan.  “God, that was close,” he sighs in relief.

Minhwan his head to the side, “close?”

“I almost told you that I liked you.”

Silence.

Minhwan stares at Seunghyun with wide eyes and Seunghyun looks back, eyes slowly getting larger and his mouth opens in surprise. His hands flies to his mouth, covering it. “I didn’t mean to say that!” Seunghyun yells out from behind his hands. “Oh god, our friendship is ruined.”

Minhwan just stares at Seunghyun, not a word has come out of his mouth so far. “You like me?”

Seunghyun nods, hand still covering his mouth.

“I was worried for nothing,” Minhwan says in disbelief.

Seunghyun blinks, “what.”

Minhwan drops the tub and embraces Seunghyun into a tight hug. “I like you,” he says in a small voice.

“You what,” he says a bit dumbly.

“I like you,” Minhwan says one last time.

“Oh,” Seunghyun scratches the back of his head before smiling brightly, “so I was worried for nothing? A laugh bubbles up, “god, I was acting like a girl for nothing.” He turns to Minhwan and gives him a big grin, ”does that mean we’re boyfriends now? Gosh, I’ve always wanted to be boyfriends with you.”

“You’re so silly,” Minhwan says, giving Seunghyun a quick peck on the cheek and nods, “yeah we’re boyfriends now.”

“No,” Seunghyun points at his lips, “kiss right here Minhwan.”

He sighs and leans in. giving Seunghyun a small, light kiss. Minhwan gives him a small smile, “happy?”

“Yeah, we’re officially boyfriends.”

----

a/n: birthday fic for someone thats long overdue