“Wow, you’re really cute.”

The first time Jinki hears this, he thinks that he misheard.

When he turns around, Jinki comes face to face with a tall, handsome stranger with large eyes and a small smile. Flustered, Jinki asks, “Excuse me? Were you talking to me?”

The stranger nods, humming in affirmation. Jinki’s heart picks up speed when he notices that the stranger has inched just a bit closer, enough to where Jinki can feel the heat of the taller man’s body near his side. The bar they’re seated on is spacious―there was no reason for this man to be so close—yet Jinki can’t find that he minds, not when those dark eyes are trained on him, following his every movement as the smile curling up the corners of his lips widens.

“Oh. Well, I, um, I didn’t hear you,” Jinki finally says, mouth dry. He awkwardly sips on the beer in his hands to relieve himself, but it doesn’t help at all; the stranger had an incredibly strong gaze and it was hard not to feel the intensity of it, heating up his cheeks and making the hairs on the back of his neck raise. Jinki his lips nervously, meeting that gaze head-on. The stranger was attractive and it was rare as it was that someone of that caliber to even came up to him at bars or clubs, so he was going to make the most of it.

“I said, ‘You’re really cute,’” the stranger repeats, and this time Jinki realizes that it wasn’t that he didn’t hear him, but that the taller man was speaking in English.

Jinki at English.

He had no idea what the guy just said to him, but he didn’t want to look like he didn’t understand so he decided to give it a go. In clumsy, heavily accented English, Jinki hesitantly replies, “Nice to meet you too.” He hopes he said the right thing—it’s the only phrase he really remembers from his lackluster high school English class. The one he barely passed.

When the stranger laughs at his response, Jinki’s face turns bright red. Embarrassed, he demands defensively, “What? Did I say it wrong?”

“No, not at all,” assures the other man, leaning even closer; Jinki can smell the heavy scent of his cologne and finds that he really, really likes it. He also likes the way the other man smiles, eyes bright and friendly. “I’m Minho, by the way. I just recently moved here from the U.S. and I was wondering if you’d like to show me around sometime?”

Jinki thinks it’s completely unfair how someone from America could speak such good Korean, and he thinks maybe he isn’t the best person to show him around if Minho was just going to . They only just met and Jinki can already feel the harassment yet to come. But then Minho flashes him another one of those handsome smiles, and Jinki immediately turns to putty.

“S-Sure,” he mumbles back, shyly bringing the glass back to his lips to hide his eagerness.

Minho’s grin widens even more and Jinki’s heart stutters dangerously in his chest when the taller man swoops in to plant a quick peck on Jinki’s cheek, murmuring, “Thank you, you really are so cute.”

Jinki may be drunk, but he isn’t dunk enough not to be startled by the affectionate action, and he jolts back in his stool, eyes laughably wide as he sputters, “W-What was that?! What did you just say to me?”

“Don’t worry about any of that, we kiss all the time in the U.S.,” Minho simply answers, shrugging―a strikingly Western gesture, reminding Jinki once again that Minho is from a different country—and casually placing an arm around Jinki’s shoulders, pulling him close like they’ve known each other forever.

Jinki doesn’t even think any of his friends have hugged him like this, let alone kiss his cheeks, but he finds that he doesn’t want to pull away. I must be really drunk, he decides when Minho looks at him again and makes the shorter man’s stomach flip.

Downing the rest of his beer, Jinki mutters under his breath, “Handsome men are dangerous.”

Minho must hear him because he laughs again, but Jinki was too drunk to really remember what happened afterwards.

“Wow, you’re even cuter in the morning. It should be illegal to be as cute as you are.”

Jinki’s eyes fly open at the sound of the foreign language, jolting suddenly awake to be greeted with Minho’s face only inches away from his own, still smiling at him like always. Jinki has no idea what Minho just said to him, his English still rusty, but it doesn’t stop the blush from burning his cheeks and spreading down his neck. He covers his face with his hands to hide the embarrassment.

“You must be so proud of yourself,” Jinki mutters, squirming when he feels a sharp pain jolt tellingly up his lower back. “You finally got into my pants.” Minho chuckles and Jinki can feel him nodding because their bodies are pressed right up against each other; they’re also very, very , which doesn’t help ease Jinki’s embarrassment at all.

It’s been a few months since they’ve met now. It turned out that Minho had moved next door to Jinki and had seen the older man leave his apartment that fateful night before they officially met, so he’d followed him to the bar where he finally confronted him. Jinki had reprimanded him later whenever he found this out, calling it stalking and that Minho was a total creep (an attractive one at that, but Jinki would never admit this aloud), but Minho defended himself by declaring it was “love at first sight” and that he had been bound by obligation to follow his heart, no matter the societal labels.

In fact, everything Minho ever did was because it was “love at first sight,” as he often liked to claim. He used it as an excuse to do everything, like cuddling with Jinki on the couch when they were watching TV, randomly showing up at Jinki’s job (the security team at the office was severely lacking, Jinki had quickly learned this because absolutely no one could resist Minho’s charming smile) and following him around like a lost puppy, sneaking into Jinki’s house to cook him food because he didn’t think Jinki ate enough, or stealing kisses when thought Jinki wasn’t paying enough attention.

Minho was nothing if not relentless, creating room for himself in Jinki’s life, even joining the older man’s circle of friends. Surprisingly, Jinki had grown jealous watching Kibum, one of his close friends, chatting away easily with Minho in English, who looked happy to be having a proper conversation in the language he’d grown up learning with someone who actually spoke it quite fluently. “Love at first sight” was the first English phrase Jinki had learned from Minho, and after the first few weeks of listening to Minho confess his undying love and constantly complement him in English so that he wouldn’t understand, Jinki had secretly began to take up the language just to get a taste of what Minho was saying.

It was worth it, Jinki soon found out because Minho’s compliments were extremely flattering and often times made Jinki blush bright red whenever they were of the ual sort. Jinki would be stunned into silence whenever they were sitting together and Minho would turn to look at him with an extremely serious expression and tell him how much he was in love with Jinki. The elder realized that despite Minho’s constant laughter, he wasn’t kidding in the least―those kisses Minho stole actually meantsomething to him, so Jinki began to reciprocate them, meeting the taller man halfway and kissing back, finding that he liked it more and more every time.

The affects were astounding because for every step Jinki took forward to match Minho’s pace, Minho would go even faster, sweet pecks against lips turning into tongues sliding hot over each other, a gentle brush of fingers against a cheek turning into heavy petting in sensitive areas, and soft sighs of content turning into muffled moans to keep from alerting the neighbors. Jinki knew it wouldn’t be long until they go all the way, finding himself wanting to take that step increasingly more and more every day, so when Minho pinned him to the wall last night, mouthing at Jinki’s collarbones and growling in English about how much he wanted to bend the older man over and him, Jinki his lips and replied with an impish smirk, “So then why don’t you?”

Stunned, Minho had pulled back, eyes almost comically wide on his handsome face. “You understood me?” he wonders aloud, and Jinki just giggles, shrugging exactly the same way Minho does, his eyes bright and mischievous.

“Maybe, maybe not,” Jinki says back, for once feeling like he has the upper hand on the younger man. He curls his fingers into the front of Minho’s shirt, tugging him closer before continuing, “So are you going to do anything about this?” He gestures suggestively to the pressing against the inside of his jeans and Minho’s shocked expression melts into a grin. He surges forward to crash their lips together, tongue delving into Jinki’s mouth and the backs of his teeth, this kiss so much more intense than all of the ones before.

“I think I will.”

In the end, Jinki was born Korean and it would always be that way, so his ragged whimpers and moans were all in garbled Korean, mixing with Minho’s string of English curses as they stumbled into bed, tugging at clothing and kissing furiously, before their bodies were finally joined together and ed. Come morning, Jinki recalls the night before and feels embarrassed of his needy whines, but he’s never felt more satisfied before in his life. He finds that he is happy with Minho, that he wouldn’t mind it one bit if Minho decided to stay by his side forever because they way Minho looked at him, as if Jinki was the only other person in the world, was completely worth it.

“How long have you been practicing English? Have you always known what I was saying?” Minho finally asks because he’s been meaning to since last night, pulling Jinki’s hands away from his face so he can take a good look at those adorably flushed cheeks and Jinki’s soft, shy smile. Minho adores the way Jinki’s eyelashes flutter when he blinks and the soft sighs that escape the elder’s lips just before he wets them with his tongue.

“I haven’t always known, but I’ve known long enough,” Jinki honestly replies, breaking Minho out of his reverie and biting his swollen lower lip before leaning closer to capture a quick kiss. When Jinki pulls away, Minho finds that he is extremely reluctant to let him go, so he follows him back instead, pressing the older man into the mattress and sealing their mouths together, stealing the very breath from Jinki’s lungs. When they finally part, Jinki feels extremely hot, winded like he’d just ran a marathon as he adds, “You tell me you love me like fifty times a day.”

“Because it’s true,” Minho says with a small smile, this time somewhat more bashful than the usual ones, before he continues, “Because I’m in love with you.”

The way Minho admits those words, eyes sincere as they look right into Jinki’s soul, makes the older man’s heart flutters dangerously in his chest. But this time he welcomes the feeling, grin as bright as the sun as he replies back, “I’m in love with you, more.”

English is now officially his favorite subject.