God This Was So Good - Tumblr Posts

❥the sun will rise, and we will try again (m)

↳ Minho would tell himself everyday that it was good enough. That he was happy enough. Content enough. Alive just enough.

He chose you over himself, you just never really knew it.

lee minho x fem!reader — friends to lovers, unrequited love, angst, porn with plot, explicit sexual content. [11,6k wc] cws: heavy pining, alcohol consumption, sexual activity under the influence, penetrative sex (unprotected), some light teasing.

Minho has never been sure whether to curse or be forever indebted to his eidetic memory.

On one hand, it made school a breeze, and the majority of his career prospects thereafter similarly simplified. Not that he had taken any of them truly to heart, obviously — given the fact that he had followed you all of the way to another country for not much reason beyond feeling like it.

That’s what he said, that’s always what he would say.

But it’s his eidetic memory that has such a particular way in proposing his suffering. He deliberates that he may always remember exactly what it was that you were wearing that night, and precisely the food stands that surrounded the two of you at that moment in time. It’s been three years since that night and the two of you had attended the Christmas festival each and every time — the same one, same location — and sure, the shop locations and snack booths change year after year; the only constant being the large glühwein stand in the middle of the festival which served as the prime meeting spot for all of the attendees.

A large windmill-looking contraption, seats strewn about as far as one could see and people at every inch of one another — laughing, smiling.

Loving.

And Minho remembers this night in particular because it was the first year that the two of you had moved to Germany together — you for school and Minho for…his own reasons. Years later and of all of the things he does remember, he’s not sure he recalls whichever lie it was that he had told you about why it was that he chose to move to another country with you; the only thing that was for sure, is that whatever he said was not the truth.

Long, tan coat with a burgundy scarf accenting colorfully, Minho remembers watching the way you struggled to hold the strap of your bag up and on your shoulder as you juggled a glass of glühwein in one hand, and your change in euros in another — realizing that dealing in cash was a rather distinctly Berlin sort of thing that would certainly take some getting used to — but taking your bag and slinging it over his shoulder, hearing the desperate exhale of a “thank you” escaping from your lips as if freedom had surely been assumed to never come — he pulls the polaroid camera out from the main pocket and smiles with just the left corner of his mouth, holding it up and dangling it in front of you. “Shall we? Commemorate the move?”

Minho takes one of the two of you together, you snuggled up into his arm next to him in an attempt to fit into the frame — he takes another — and then for the third one, it’s the moment he’ll certainly never forget for as long as he lives, he truly believes that.

The way your arms wrapped around his own in the instant and warm lips pressed to the skin of his cheek just as he takes the photograph. It became quite a topic of humor once the film developed — the look of shock on Minho’s face at the sudden realization of what had physically occurred. And emotionally.

Minho knows that he was in love with you long before that moment — and well aware of it at the time, as well. Figure one would have to be to move to another country just to be around a person — and sure, the two of you were friends and had been for a good while prior but…it was a big change, a huge leap of faith. Minho thinks, his final shot at what could be the rest of his life.

And it was an easy choice for him. A man with no particular ties to home and a hunger for adventure — for seeing, doing, experiencing. Despite having never even been to Germany prior, he found himself now uprooting his entire life to go live there for however long it took. Whatever it was, at least. Acknowledgment? Acceptance? Love? Loss? Minho figured that at the end of this, he would have some answer, and may as well get to experience life while he was at it.

Although, perhaps choosing to live together wasn’t the best option, given the circumstances. His circumstances. Not to be confused with circumstances that the two of you were equally and equivocally involved in and aware of. He was well aware that his feelings were one-sided.

Until they weren’t.

It’s another moment in time in which his photographic memory deserts him in the most cruel ways. All of the test taking and number crunching in the world that served him well, only to betray him like a dagger straight to the heart. A scene that he can’t stop replaying in his mind even still. It’s been years. 

For the most part, Minho has learned to let go — to move on. Minho has learned to be precisely what you need him to be in your life — crushing and deforming himself to fit into the exact mold that you find ideal at any point in time. A friend. A companion.

After two and a half months of perfect dating bliss (if you were to ask him, of course) he still remembers the way you smiled at him — pathetically, like you were cooing at a puppy who wasn’t able to get it’s way — when you told him that you just wanted to be friends. That they should go back, undo, revert the process.

Long, long after Minho had already ingrained the taste of you into his mind for the rest of eternity, and the way you looked the first time he kissed you, when it wasn’t the intent of a couple of drunk friends late one night just having a giggle.

Lee Minho resigned himself to making himself as small as he had to in order to make you feel as big as you could, unbeknownst to you, of course. Any way that he was required to bend and lessen, he was happy to oblige — an alternate state of happiness, perhaps.

You were always going to be the only thing that mattered, forever, he thought; and at the expense of himself, if necessary.

He thinks often about how he simply just doesn’t want you to forget where you belong; and not in a possessive, jealous, weird wannabe-boyfriend kind of way, it’s just that he truly is in love with you and will do anything for you, and that love like that — romantic or otherwise — is hard to come by nowadays. Minho had always prided himself on his absolute devotion to people. To anything that he deemed worthy of himself.

You, the most worthy in his eyes, albeit you would never know, probably.

And that was the burden that Minho had to bear after that night of being told that all of the late night kisses, and cuddling, and holding hands in your center-city loft: for a fleeting moment in time, he was able to live precisely the way that he had dreamed of with you — memories he would have to hold onto to despite the pain that they held, because they also served as the happiest simultaneously. He contemplates often if he should have told you in that moment — told you everything — spilled his guts out for you, a full display of raw emotion and disgusting vulnerability. Would it have mattered? Would it have changed the course of the relationship? Friendship?

Minho looks down at his phone, setting next to him on the concrete flooring of your shared balcony, tapping the screen to illuminate it with intent to read the time.

“Almost 2am, eh?” he says to no one, tipping the beer bottle in his hand all of the way back in an attempt to drip any remainder of alcohol onto his tongue, but to no avail. Rolling his eyes, he abruptly sets the bottle down, clattering with the other four empty bottles also keeping him company.

“Late night,” he adds under his breath, as if to be playing out a conversation between two people despite no one else being present. This is by design, because Minho would rather be dead than ever make his own problems, yours.

But he knows where you are, and he knows what you’re doing.

And most pained of all, he knows who with.

For Minho, moving to Germany with you was an easy decision — not one he had put a lot of thought into. A man that fresh out of college made a good living for himself freelancing photography work along with a handful of other things here or there, it landed him a comfortable amount of money to play around with for a while, and Berlin being the relatively cheap city that it was; affordable accommodation helped make the choice even simpler.

Plus, it was with you, as if he would ever give up the opportunity.

And it wasn’t some deeply considered, manipulative, creepy attempt at trying to mind game you into a relationship with him — that happening was all-in-all, a happy accident. Of course, the ideal outcome of his, but not gamed for, not finagled. More than anything, Minho just wanted to be around you. Exist in your space. Experience a life with you in it; by whatever means necessary.

He would find, however, that this would result in grave emotional torment. Every day waking up and going to sleep feeling the same way: having to swallow the hot dagger of things not being exactly how one wishes them to be. It was good enough, sometimes suffering is. These are the choices we make to coexist with others.

Minho would tell himself everyday that it was good enough. That he was happy enough. Content enough. Alive just enough.

He chose you over himself, you just never really knew it.

When you eventually crawl out of your bedroom at a quarter past eight in the morning, you come to find your roommate already sitting at the shared dining room table — coffee in-hand and newspaper lying on the table. A sight for sore eyes, that Lee Minho. Always stable. Rarely changing. If there was one thing you could count on, it was him — for better or for worse, as it were.

“Morning, sunshine,” he says dryly, eyes not prying themselves from the words laid out in front of him, “long night?”

He’s being funny, or so he thinks — knowing how hungover you are.

“Ha ha, Lino,” you quip back, accessorizing with his nickname from college to express just how unamused you are by the exchange already. “Yeah, I got in pretty late. What time did you go to bed?”

“Around midnight,” he lies, and it feels like a jab to the heart every time he does, not enjoying the habit he’s made recently of telling little fibs to you in the moment.

“Lucky you,” you respond, pouring yourself a coffee and plopping yourself down into a white chair adjacent to the one where he sits. “But I don’t have class today so I suppose it’s fine. Do you want to do anything?”

Minho finally looks up, eyes slowly pulling from the article he had been reading, “are you capable of doing anything today?”

“Oh my god, I had a few drinks, I didn’t get annihilated, calm down. Let me have a coffee and a painkiller and I’ll be fine,” you quickly answer, rolling your eyes. “I want to go to the mall to get a new dress.”

Always somehow the best and worst way to spend a day with you, he thinks to himself.

“Alright, let me know. Alexanderplatz? I might want to take some photos while we’re out that way.” he adds, looking back to his newspaper and sipping from his mug.

“Of course, Princess,” you respond, kicking back the rest of what’s in your mug and standing to head back towards your bedroom. “Anything you want.”

Deep down, despite knowing the joke, Minho always hates it just a tiny amount when you say that — because it’s not true. However, over the years, and especially in Berlin now, Minho has absolutely mastered the art of acting; of not projecting, of maintaining a cool, calm and collected demeanor.

You’ll never know the way he dies by your hand every day. Not if he can help it, at least.

The mall is busy, Alexa Centre typically is, but especially around holiday season with the Christmas festival just across the street, and Minho can’t help but regret just a bit his agreeing to come with you for this excursion.

“What did we come here for, again?” he asks, trying to manage his tone as to not sound exceptionally annoyed. Which he is, but he doesn’t want to sound it.

"I need a dress,” you reply, rolling your eyes because you can see right through him regardless.

And Minho sort of wants to forget the reason again, because he knows what a new dress entails.

“You should get something new, too, you’ve been cycling through the same shit for a few years now,” you tell him, linking an arm into his and pulling him into the direction that you had desired to go.

To Minho, every moment with you happens in slow motion — so that he carefully craft the memory; etch it into his brain for all of eternity, at least that’s what he hopes. Every touch, every split second of intimacy — whether as friends or anything else — he doesn’t care. These are all of his moments. The flip book he proverbially looks through every night before he goes to sleep to remind himself of what he’s doing, and why he’s there, and all of the ways that he has failed as every second passes by.

“Yeah, I guess I should,” he answers, allowing himself to be dragged into a shop and stopping next to you in front of a mannequin — adorned with a silver, loosely fitted, glittery dress and a large, fluffy black coat atop it.

“Wow,” you say, a little bit in awe at the outfit on the mannequin, but more so at what the outfit on the mannequin could mean for your trip to the Centre. “If I'm really able to get this shopping trip done this quickly, it’ll be a fucking miracle.”

Minho laughs and agrees, moseying himself over to the men’s section and rifling through some long-sleeved shirts on the hanger. It’s only a short while before you return to meet him, shopping bags indicating a successful foray into Alexanderplatz, and in record time, at that.

“I’m gonna get something,” he says, pulling a few hangers onto his arm and continuing to look around. It was a good trip, things had gone well.

And we can’t have that, now can we?

“Are you still seeing that girl?”

Minho stops in his tracks, frozen in place by the question. It’s certainly not an out of place one by any means — not given the relationship between the two of you. Friends tend to talk about their romantic situations…circumstances…affairs.

But truthfully, he hated talking about it with you, because it made him feel fake.

Minho did date. In fact, he had been seeing the same woman for a few months now. Not anything serious — and yes, she knew that — but it was the phoniness of the entire thing. He sits awake in bed every night pining for another woman that he can’t have while he runs around and attempts to forget it between the legs of the one that he can have.

He hated that man. That man, like every other man. But deeply, Minho was looking for any sign that he could eventually forget you, let you go. Move on. He figured he would be doing you and himself a disservice to not at least try.

Suppose sometimes that comes with collateral damage — albeit, with intent to take the best care he could.

“Yeah,” he finally responds after what feels like hours, “she’s been busy so we haven’t met lately but, yeah.”

“We should all go out together some time!”

Sounds like a fucking miserable idea.

"I’d like that, let me know,” he responds. Fucking fool. God forbid he let you suffer for even a second at the expense of his own well being.

Despite the relative quickness of the shopping trip, rain falls from the skies as the two of you exit the large shopping mall — people crowded around under the awning in feeble attempt to stay dry — the wind not lending itself to the endeavor, and Minho looks over at you as you attempt to shield yourself from the wetness; strands of hair strewn about and squinting, he pulls out his camera for the first time since the two of you have left the apartment and snaps a quick shot of your profile. You slap his arm playfully as he brings the device back down from his face and smiles.

“I must look crazy in that photo, quit it.”

“Nah, you don’t,” he replies, looking back at it on the digital display. He reconsiders not once, but twice, if he should say the thought really running through his mind.

His heart tends to get the best of him, however.

“You look beautiful.”

And you smile at him in response before letting out a quiet “oh shut up,” Minho puts the camera down and away once again.

He finds himself musing to no one all too often, perhaps, “am I allowed to look at her like that?” And unfortunately, never being met with an answer.

Minho is happy for every day that goes by where he is not met with an invitation to go double dating with you and your partner, but as the days drag on with no such invite and more noticeably, you spending more time at the apartment, he begins to feel a worry — a distinct cloud of eerie sadness wafting over the shared living space that is never acknowledged. Every relationship has it’s struggles — Minho forces himself to not wish ill of yours, despite knowing that the wishing of any intent does little in actuality. Would it make him a bad man to wish for you and your partner to break up?

He feels guilt every time the fleeting thought passes by him, but still it passes by all the same.

After a week, Minho startles to the sound of you knocking on his door close to midnight. Meek knocks, knocks entirely unlike you.

“They said it wasn’t working out, I don’t know,” you say, arms crossed and shoulder leaned up against the door frame of Minho’s bedroom. “I didn’t ask a lot of questions.”

“Are you okay?” Minho asks, shifting in his seat — uncomfortable with the topic, and the nervous energy coursing through him at the prospect. He disgusts himself, on some basic, primal level.

You sigh and shrug. “Yeah, I mean, it’s fine,” you start, answering on the exhale. “We weren’t together all that long and it was just kind of casual so…it’s fine.”

Make a move on his newly single best friend, Lee Minho absolutely will not. Not under any circumstances. Minho questions if he would make any sort of move on you at all, under any circumstances at all, and fails to come up with a scenario in which he might.

But it delights him, deep down, no longer having to deal with the intrusive thoughts of the sheets you lie between elsewhere. For now.

“Hey, I know it’s late but uhh,” you begin, changing your demeanor from a solemn one to a more joyous one in an attempt to pick up the mood. “Would you want to like…go get a drink and some take out or something tonight?”

And Minho simply smiles at the proposition.

“Sure, of course I would.”

It’s one of those nights where you’re happy to be living where you are. Berlin — seemingly a city that never really sleeps, with corner stores open for hours on end and selling just about anything you could imagine — including alcohol; it's a stop to the nearest one before the kebab place on the adjacent corner, to then make your way to the dimly lit park only a couple of blocks down from the apartment. A relatively cold night, not one the two of you would be loitering in under normal circumstances certainly — but desperate times call for desperate measures, and to Minho, “anything that you desire” falls into that slot. Thus, chilled to the bone with a bottle of wine to share between the two of you and a kebab each — you sit on a cool, grassy hill just under a couple of trees where the visual of the streets and the very much alive city sidewalks still remain lit. Minho takes it upon himself to steal a few glances at you, of course — some from his peripheral — some much less inconspicuous, as you speak about living in the city and how much you have been enjoying it, how you considered never moving back home.

How you had everything that you needed right here already.

“What do you think?” you ask the man next to you, turning and looking towards him as he stares out towards the streets not too far off from where the two of you sit — wine bottle in hand and taking a swig directly from it before beginning to answer.

Trying to figure out which lie to tell you this evening.

“I like it here too,” he replies, trying to reign in any volume of emotional tone from his words. “It’s nice.”

“It’s nice? That’s it?” you chuckle, stealing the bottle from his hands with playful aggression and sipping from it just the same as he had. “Sounds like you could be anywhere, then.”

Internally, Minho laughs at just how unfathomably untrue that statement is.

“It’s a beautiful city and I enjoy being here,” he amends, carefully and not wanting to give too much of himself to the conversation. “And of course, I enjoy spending time with you.”

Even just saying it makes his heart drop into his stomach, despite it being a completely normal thing for friends to think and feel towards one another. To say 'I enjoy your company, thank you for being a part of my life.'

Minho knows that it feels bad because the intent is off. Truthful words hiding behind a cloak of fictitiousness. It’s true but in all of the wrong ways.

“Truthfully, I couldn’t imagine being here with anyone else.”

Words that flip Minho’s entire world upside down in an instant.

In a movie, this would be the moment where he finally kisses the girl, confesses his feelings for her and empties his heart right at her feet — only for her to joyously accept him and his love, and for them to live happily ever after.

He’d have been lying if he said he didn’t consider it.

But in the end, he settles for the removal of a wine bottle from your hands — drinking down the remains, and standing up in place — reaching a warm hand down to you for you to take.

“It’s getting late, we should get back home.”

When the two of you do arrive back home, taking turns showering in the single shared bathroom and trading off goodnight wishes before retiring to each room, Minho flops himself into his bed for the night — arm draped across his forehead to do his typical pre-sleep routine of torturing himself with countless thoughts of what if’s and what could be’s. On tonight’s agenda; a little special treat of realizing that he is no longer in any position to be dating anyone else — that things have become too entrenched. He was not escaping you, not so long as this continued to go on.

He realizes in the moment that this was always the life that he had chosen. Was it really reasonable to assume that he would ever be capable of being in a good, healthy, committed relationship with another person? Unlikely. Long ago, years ago, when Minho had chosen you, he had chosen all of the things that would go along with that.

Including the endless pining of not being with you, albeit, this not a part of the manual when signing up, of course.

For the first time, Minho acknowledges and makes peace with how unhealthy his pining is. It’s easy to make a case for anything when it’s impact on your life is easy to ignore. They say “when it starts impacting your life negatively, that’s when you know you have a problem.”

He knows, he just doesn’t necessarily want to fix it — not in the way that may be required of him, at least.

“I love you, why won’t you let me.”

The words ring through his brain repeatedly as he dozes off to sleep, but not before sending off a lazy text to the other woman, about how they should have lunch tomorrow — to talk.

such a unique flavor of masochism, unrequited love.

Minho sometimes finds himself wondering what goes through your mind when someone mentions his name to you.

He tries not to allow himself much time to it — because the what if’s make him crazy with unknowns, but certain weak, lonely nights at home — nights when you’re out with friends, or late with class work, he can’t help himself. Does it make you smile? Do you get butterflies? Do you feel anything?

One particularly lonely Wednesday night, he reminisces about the first time he met you. A weekend spent together as a result of a mutual friends gathering: a rental home for an after-semester getaway for partying, relaxing, maybe even hooking up. At least, that had been Minho’s plan. Meet a nice girl, have a nice weekend together, probably never speak to her again after the fact. Nothing against her, he just hadn’t been looking for anything at the time.

Love has a funny way of knowing when you’re least equipped for taking it on.

You walking into the house in your skinny jeans and a loose sweater, bag slung over your shoulder — Minho doesn’t believe in love at first sight on a fundamental level, and he would certainly never attribute the connection the two of you shared to it if he were asked.

It was a thought he kept to himself, completely asinine and unreasonable as it was, he couldn’t ignore the truth of the matter.

He remembers Hyunjin introducing the two of you when the three of you had all found yourselves at the makeshift bar — watching you attempt to find an empty cup that was not previously used with much trouble. Minho holds out an empty and seemingly dry cup from his hand and towards you without saying a word. He remembers the way you stared at him like he was insane, and like he surely thought you were an idiot.

Hyunjin catches the scene, sliding himself over and between the two, “it’s okay,” he assures you. “He’s mine, he means no harm.”

“Kind of nuts for a woman to take a cup from a strange man at a house party, don’t you think?” you say in response, not entirely to Hyunjin alone, but also to the stranger in front of you.

“I accidentally had two,” Minho says dryly, pointing to the bottom of his own cup that had a beverage inside of it. “It was stuck, but you’re welcome to continue on your search.”

It’s against your better judgment in usual circumstances, but with Hyunjin’s glowing approval you take the chance — accepting it and pouring yourself a drink. Holding it up in a bit of a cheers towards the man with the brown hair and the sort of crooked smile, you thank him.

That was the moment, for whatever reason. You didn’t know it, there was no indication at all.

That night, as he stands with you in a group of people, listening to the way you speak and interact with not only them, but him — he thinks that he’s probably going to fall in love with you. Looking back now, he realizes he already had by the time the drunken conversation about whether people have one or two butts had begun to take place in the living room of the rental home.

Minho would find himself spending the next year contemplating all of the ways that the two of you would be perfect for one another. The nature of infatuation — you can convince yourself of it easily, can’t you?

It’s been years now, of Minho never saying what he’s really thinking. Suppose people never really do? That’s what he tells himself.

“Do you want to go to this party tonight?”

Minho looks up from his book, sprawled out lengthwise along his bed in sweatpants and a black shirt with bleached out splotched from the last time he had attempted to do his hair and he finds the question a little hilarious, given the way he currently looks — in no position to be seen by people, and hardly even much of one to be seen by you.

“Um,” he starts, squinting a bit as he attempts to run the idea through his mind. “Where? Who?”

“Couple of friends from my humanities class are having a get together,” you say, shrugging as the words leave your mouth. “We’re not doing much else so figured I’d ask.”

“Yeah, sure,” Minho answers, slowly sitting himself up from his bed and sliding a bookmark in between pages before closing his reading material. “Give me like, thirty minutes?”

You roll your eyes. “Who are you going there to impress?”

People don’t say what they’re really thinking.

“Can’t I not want to look like I just rolled out of bed?”

“You are just rolling out of bed”

“yes, but I don’t want to look like it,” Minho insists, standing and walking towards his clothing rack, “now get the hell out so I can get ready.”

“Oh my god,” you exasperate on your exit.

The playful banter being one of the things Minho loves about your friendship the most. Play fighting made his heart skip a beat or two, every time. A bizarre charming point, perhaps, but a charming point to him all the same.

When the two of you arrive to the apartment, the gathering is already in full swing. A relatively small grouping of people — all from different places in the world — a few drink options sitting out on the kitchen counter but nothing too excessive or over the top, Minho is actually pleased to find that this would probably just end up being a reasonably chill night. A night to just spend time in your presence, and among good company. He introduces himself to your friends and vice versa before settling down on one of the smaller sofas in the general living space with small drinks in hand. You look at him, watching him survey his surroundings in the same way that he always does — taking everything in. Enjoying the moment.

“Tonight will be nice,” you say softly to him, leaning over to nudge him lightly. “Thanks for coming with me.”

“Of course,” he responds before bringing his glass to his lips and sipping, “everyone seems nice.”

“They are,” you affirm as you take a sip of your own.

A few hours into the night, right around 11pm, the host of the party calls for the attendees to gather around the living room for fun and games. Minho raises an inquisitive eyebrow, unsure of what to expect, but another caring nudge from you settles him once again.

It always was just that easy for you with him.

As the host carries on an explanation of what was planned for the rest of the night, you lean into him and ask delicately, “sorry for asking if it’s a sore spot but…did you and that girl stop seeing each other?”

After all, love is a pretty good reason to make everything go wrong.

Minho shifts in his seat a bit, and almost choking on the liquid he had just taken into his mouth he manages to swallow down and sort of chuckle. “Yeah, not a big deal, though. We both agreed.”

Lying to you never got easier no matter how many times he did it.

“Ah,” you respond, unsure of how else to carry on the topic. “Well that’s good — I mean, it’s not good, but it could have been worse…I guess? Sorry.”

Do you know what it’s like to be so in love with someone that you can’t even breathe?

“Yeah, it’s fine, I’m fine.”

Sort of true, depending on how you look at it.

The two of you bring your attention back to the host in just the moment that they mention a game of truth or dare. Minho’s fight or flight response kicks in immediately despite his perfectly managed demeanor on the outside and you can’t help but feel a bit of discomfort yourself. Doing things that you wouldn’t normally do was not your idea of fun, even in the nature of a game.

And as the game carries on among the people in the room, everyone makes it out relatively unscathed. No one being asked to do especially heinous acts, Minho begins to feel a sigh of relief at the fact that he might actually be able to get out of this night having only had to chug a beer, or maybe lick a kitchen floor — all things he can manage without a care.

“Okay Minho, truth or dare,” a blonde girl from across the room shouts a bit louder than necessary.

“Dare, give it your best shot!” he responds enthusiastically, happily playing along with the atmosphere of the evening.

“Okay,” she smirks, tone dropping into something a bit mischievous, and in the moment Minho truly considers that maybe he got a little bit too brave.

“Seven minutes in heaven with her,” she says, pointing towards you. “Should be easy enough, shouldn’t it?”

He swallows hard, because of course it is. The two of you live together. Your entire life is effectively one long game of seven minutes in heaven together, just without all of the spontaneous joys the kids tend to enjoy of it when playing such a game in the teenage years.

“Okay, where?” he answers confidently as the girl walks over to them and drags them both down a hall and into a bedroom.

A bedroom? Really?

While the implications are certainly not lost on him, and despite being absolutely and madly in love with you, Minho finds himself at least a little insulted at the thought that someone would consider that he’s not capable of even being in such a wide open space as a bedroom offers with you. He loves you, and he wants you, but he’s not a fucking snake.

But it’s the fact that the dragging doesn’t end once into the bedroom — still being pulled towards a small door at the other end of the space, the girl pulling it open and shoving the both of you inside and closing it immediately thereafter.

And now Minho suspects that this might just be the tiniest closet ever invented. How do people even make closets this small? Much less use them. What the fuck.

He can hear the girl outside of the bedroom say some words — he can hear her voice, but the actual things she says get lost among his hyper awareness at your body pressed tightly up against his own. Hands splayed out on his chest in an attempt to keep yourself held upright and steady.

You shift against him in an attempt to create space, or comfort. Something. It’s a fleeting attempt. “Sorry,” you whisper.

“It’s okay,” he responds, clearing his throat. Minho stands statuesque in the darkness of the space — surrounded by a handful of coats that smell faintly of old cigarette smoke, cologne and beer.

Silence takes over. It’s awkward. Minho thinks it’s the first time that the two of you have ever felt this uncomfortable in the company of the other. Not even the break up was this bizarre.

And he knows it’s not only radiating off of him. Not with the way you keep shifting against his chest.

“We don’t have to do this,” he says finally, “It’s just a game, we can just go home if you want.”

“No, it’s fine,” you respond quietly. “It’s kind of nice, I haven’t been this close to a man in a while,” you chuckle.

Minho knows it’s a joke, all in good fun,  but the implications of it are impossible to ignore. He wonders for a second — running the sentence through his brain a few times before truly asking himself what he’s really wondering.

Is this…sexual tension?

of course, it’s not the first time he’s ever experienced the concept of sexual tension. But not with you. Not like this. When the two of you briefly dated the first time, sex had never even been on the table; he realized later, after the fact, that this was because you had firmly been in friendship mode the entire time, and never truly viewed him sexually. As someone who could be fucked. Who could fuck you.

Minho doesn’t want to simply fuck you. He figures that if he had played his cards right in any number of situations, it’s possible that he already could have. It’s not completely unheard of for friends to fuck, and the both of you are obviously good-looking.

It’s not what he wants, though. And it’s definitely not worth tanking any potential future just for one night.

It is becoming painfully apparent, however, that the two of you actually share very little physical affection, even just as friends. Feeling your body pressed up against his has Minho realizing that he doesn’t remember the last time that the two of you hugged — really hugged. Not an arm linked or being dragged around by a wrist — but an actual, full embrace.

He snaps back into the present, thinking about checking his phone for the time, but knowing fully well that not more than two minutes could have possibly passed.

Around 2am, games end and cups dry as guests begin exiting the apartment. You both thank the host for the invite and the warm reception before heading out into the chilly night to make your way home. A somewhat bizarrely quiet walk back home, no doubt as a result of the game played.

Minho staunchly disbelieves in wishing death upon anyone, but if emotions were personified, they’d be the first to go.

You turn the second key into the door, lock clicking open and door lightly squeaking as it opens. Minho walks in first, kicking his shoes off and setting his coat up on the hanger — setting his wallet and keys onto the holder next to the door designated just for such things. You follow suit.

But it’s a swift switch of direction, when you reach forward and dig fingers into Minho’s shirt — pulling him towards you, into you, and spinning him so that his back presses up against the door. You push into him, chests meeting just as they had back in the tiny closet at your friends place. All part of the game.

This, however, was not.

And Minho’s head spins, the way your cold lips press up against his own, so fast that he almost doesn’t know what hits him. He doesn’t meet your enthusiasm at first — considering the fact that this is all a mistake, just a misunderstanding. Surely you simply fell into him, this is all just a funny scene in a romcom where the girl accidentally slips into the guy who is desperately in love with her and it doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t mean anything at all.

You pull off of his lips, peppering kisses lightly to the side of his mouth, “Minho,” you whisper between two, “kiss me back.”

“I—” he tries to respond, but before he knows it, your lips are pressed to his hard again and now he knows it’s intentional, despite not knowing why. Part of him wishes he was a better man, a stronger man. A man that could resist the temptation of experiencing bliss for even just a moment in time.

But he isn’t.

Minho brings his hands up, cupping the sides of your face and kissing back against you with matching firmness. He pulls himself off of the door and brings his body forward and against you. He’s all encompassing, feeling as though he’s attempting to devour you. Not far from the truth, perhaps.

It’s sloppy, messy. Minho thinks that the two of you never kissed like this before, not even during the brief stint of dating. He wonders for a moment what has changed, neither of you having drank that much that night, nothing was different in your relationship — not really.

He was forever constant. “I love you” running through his head each second that he’s able to taste you on him in that short time before you carefully pull from him and smile at the sight of his bright red, brutally kissed lips.

“We should go to bed,” you say, gently holding one of his hands in your own.

“Yeah,” the only thing he can manage to utter out that won’t expose him as everything he really is.

“Thank you for tonight, it was really fun,” you say, slowly pulling your hand from his own, and Minho only nods and whispers “sure” in reply as you turn and head towards your bedroom, shutting the door behind you.

Minho stands there in the doorway of the apartment, in the aftermath of a whirlwind that he’s sure will be just as quickly forgotten by you as it had been decided upon. The worst bit, he thinks to himself, is that he’ll probably never forget that moment for as long as he lives, given that they come to him so few and far between.

When he sends himself to sleep that night, opening the scrapbook of memories of us that he has carefully cultivated in his mind, he slots it away along with all of the rest. So, so, many memories of moments in time in which he’s allowed to experience paradise.

The mere existence of you, over the years, grows to be so big inside of him. All consuming.

“Minho.”

And he’s barely conscious at all, only drawn awake by the utterance of his name and the way that every expanse of his flesh that your fingertips touch leaves a trail of fire in it’s wake.

“Touch me.”

It’s all a whisper, barely legible, so little that he believes for a moment he may still just be asleep. He focuses for a second — as hard as he can will himself — on the physical sensation of you pressed up against his side, in his bed, hand roaming the exposed skin of his chest under his duvet — only dipping low enough to brush against the waistband of his boxer briefs and that is the moment that he is brought wide awake and to his senses, tensing strongly under your touch — so strongly that it causes you to pause and slowly pull back from him.

“Should I go?” you ask, and he becomes starkly aware of how standoffish he appears, quickly responding that no, you should not, before reaching over to you and snaking a hand of his own around your waist and under your loose bed time shirt.

As much as he wishes nothing more than to genuinely be lost in the moment, his mind takes him to countless what if’s, as it always does in such situations. Feeling the way you move beside him with every press of his hand into the apex of your thighs, he relishes the look, the sound — of course — but at the fore front of his mind, and his chest, the painful feeling of emotional strangulation in his throat; knowing what this is to you, and precisely what it isn’t.

Equally inconsequential to the both of you but in strikingly different ways: to you, a quick release, and to Minho: the image of you coming just another moment added to the scrapbook of his insignificance.

For the first time possibly ever, when Minho walked into the dining room in the morning for his coffee, you’re already up, sitting there waiting for him. A common scene but flipped, that feels so frequent to him now. Constantly unsettled in all of the ways that he thought he had been.

“Morning,” he says, grabbing a mug from the cupboard and pouring himself a drink, then walking over to join you at the table. “Sleep well?”

“Yeah,” you say. And that’s all.

He had hoped that deep down, the two of you could get out of this situation unscathed. It wasn’t much. Just a hand down your panties and then you retired to your own room again for the night. That’s what Minho told himself for the entire rest of the night that he couldn’t sleep, at least. It wasn’t important. It didn’t matter. Everything will be fine.

“We should talk.”

Ah.

“About last night.”

Minho knew that already.

“Okay,” he says, almost sheepishly — a tone not often worn by him, but with a million thoughts running through his mind and almost all of them meaning the worst, it was all he could manage out in response.

“I’m not blaming you, obviously, I started it,” you begin, rolling your eyes — at yourself mostly, but painfully so to Minho all the same. “But we shouldn’t cross lines like that. Like I said, totally my fault, I just don’t want there to be the wrong idea or anything, ya know?”

Yeah, he knows.

As far as he’s concerned — truly, all things considered — this was the best possible outcome, actually. On a scale of terrible to catastrophic, this was much closer to the terrible end of the spectrum. Obviously, you weren’t going to confess your undying love for him and how you wanted to be with him forever and ever, but if the only wound Minho has to leave with is the reminder that he will only continue to suffer in all of the same ways he already had been; he writes that off as a win, as pathetic as it was.

He chuckles in response, corner of his mouth upturning as he gives you a playfully devilish grin from over his mug, “Wasn’t good enough, huh?”

Laugh through the pain.

“Oh my god Lino, really? Stop it! Don’t make it weird!”

He watches you shy away in embarrassment, hiding behind the newspaper you had in your hand and continues to laugh. He knows it’s not the case, but he has to keep things light — especially because of the way his chest feels so fucking tight in that instant.

Naturally, you take it as his admittance to the terms, which is as intended by him. Meanwhile, Minho wonders how long he can stand being reminded of all of the ways he will never be the one for you. Yes, he chose this. Yes, he would choose it again.

but still, he wonders sometimes.

Placing your used mug in the sink and filling it with water, you grab your belongings and head towards the door, pulling your keys from the rack and waving at him. “I’ll let you know when I’ll be home!” before turning on your heel and running out of the door.

Minho remains in his seat, still staring up at the front door long after it has already closed behind you. Despite being an often self-reflective man, it’s the first time ever — truly ever — that he finds himself feeling almost guilty about the thought that crosses his mind, going just as quickly as it had come. A fleeting conception in a split second of hurt.

It’s so fucking exhausting loving you.

Is this resentment?

When the next party rolls around — only a few weeks later, Minho makes it a point to be more mindful. No more drunk party games, no more passing physical touches. It’s not the end of the longing, not by a long shot.

But suppose it might be time, he thinks to himself. He’s been thinking it to himself since that morning at your dining room table.

You see, the thing about Lee Minho is how he loves totally. Completely. With every fiber of his being, and despite some times coming off as cold or standoffish, the one thing that was always going to be true of him was that once you were his: you were his completely.

Well, the better way of looking at it was that you had him completely, rather than the other way around.

A contract that Minho once happily signed his life away to, now feeling bitter to the thought — for the first time since that night at the house party back home where you met, Minho contemplated letting go. Moving on. Properly.

But he knew that that meant letting you go, and that was a tough pill to swallow.

You had noticed the way that Minho no longer cared after you the way that he once had, but in ways so subtle that you almost questioned if they were there at all. The tiniest gestures and changes: Minho was far from rude, far from mean, not even particularly uncommunicative.

But he was distant. Impersonal in a way that felt brand new, like a stranger of exact likeness had moved in overnight.

Minho contemplates all of the ways in which he can forget you, while you, unknowingly, contemplate all of the ways in which you can retrieve him.

Two people simply never feel exactly the same way about one another at exactly the same moment.

So you try not to think much of it, watching the way the brunette across the room runs her hand down his arm as she laughs at whatever it is that he’s saying to her. You think of how charming and funny and warm Minho is. Kind, constant.

But the clock is ticking, unbeknownst to you.

There is a world in which the greatest tragedy is a love story that, despite both people feeling the same — fails to occur simultaneously. As the sand in the hour glass for Minho ticks away, yours only just begins — and the problem being, you just don’t know. An alternate universe where the glimmer that would appear in Minho’s eye each and every time he met yours — it didn’t live any longer, and it’s typically only in those moments of hindsight that you ever really noticed it had existed at all. In it’s absence.

Minho looks over towards you from across the room during a short pause in the conversation with this other woman, and it’s different. Surely you’re not imagining it now. It’s still him, it’s still warm, and he still carries care, concern for you.

But a glimmer of light behind the eyes dims with every passing second, before turning back to the person in front of him and grinning wide.

Had you always…?

When the night ends and the two of you head home together, it’s silent for the majority of the way. Minho carries a half empty beer bottle in hand with him and a cigarette in another — you weren’t fond of when he smoked but it had become a social drinking thing he picked up since living in the city. Besides, who were you to say anything about it?

Saying anything to Minho at all now felt completely foreign to you.

Getting back to the apartment building, Minho sets the glass bottle down on the street and heads up with you, still in silence and putting out his cigarette at a trash can just before the stairs. it feels like five hundred flights of stairs despite only being five, but finally reaching the front door feels like a god send. Reprieve. Being near him…you now find suffocating.

“Night,” you say in feigned brightness before turning and heading towards your bedroom, hopeful that you can make it out of this night relatively unscathed.

“Is everything alright?”

The first thought to your mind, is “no,” obviously, because it’s not. The second, is the better choice.

“Yeah of course, I’m just tired,” you laugh, “exhausted from watching you flirt with that girl all night I guess!”

It drops from your lips before you even have a chance to control it, petty bitterness lacing each and every word and it’s so obvious, too. Completely transparent in it’s contempt. You wince as you turn back towards your door and can only pray that he takes it as the joke you only barely were capable of tonally implying.

Minho’s taken aback, confusion splashed across his features.

“What?”

“I’m kidding, goodnight!”

“You don’t get to do that.”

And all you want to do is run away to your bedroom and hide, go to sleep, try again tomorrow, but it’s the tone of his voice in those quiet words that stops you. That, and the growing romantic inquisitiveness for him in your heart.

“You don’t get to—” Minho starts again, but pauses, and you can tell the way that he sounds; his voice, his demeanor even without the ability to see him, he’s angry. Years of pent up emotional obstruction, after all. “You can’t act like this, not about that. That’s absolutely not fair.”

You finally turn around to face him as he still lingers in the doorway of the entrance, not even having removed his coat or shoes yet.

Minho wears a mask almost all of the time around you, and for a short while, he remembered what it had been like to live without you being at the forefront of his ever waking thought — incredibly selfish of you, he thinks to himself, to place yourself there once again. He had almost remembered what it had felt like to feel whole again — to not have to wear the mask that hides each and every pathetically tragic thought and feeling that came to him.

The mask is still off, evidently, from the way sorrow graces his every feature in the dimly lit entry way of your apartment. The place that may surely become the grave for you both, in some way or another.

“Minho, I—” you respond quietly, sadly. It sounds exactly the way you sounded when you broke up with him and stings in all of the exact same ways, Minho recalls.

He never was able to forget, after all.

“I don’t know, I must have just had a bit too much to drink,” you say, trying to laugh off the entire situation. “It’s not an excuse, of course, it’s not like you’re my—”

Minho’s eyes had since pulled to the side, jaw clenched in irritation, until the utterance of those words left your mouth. Eyes now pulling in your direction.

“Your move,” he thinks to himself in the moment.

“You’re not my boyfriend or anything,” and it’s the twist of that specific word that just so perfectly does the same to the perpetual knife in the heart that he’s carried for you for years.

You simply chuckle, hoping that the moment passes so that the two of you can go to sleep and carry on like normal in the morning.

“You’re so fucking selfish,” Minho spits, and the words feel like a slap to the face, because what? Where is this coming from?

Little do you know.

“What the fuck?”

“Love to play house, have a man around to go out with, to hold your bags for you, to rub you off one every now and then when it suits you,” he says, the resentment fully flowing through his tone with every word. “And then have the fucking gall to be jealous when I just talk to another woman? Do you hear yourself?”

It’s not the words that he’s saying, because he’s right, but rather the way that he’s saying them. Minho has never spoken to you like this in all of the years that the two of you have known each other.

Words coming from a place of the deepest contempt, and sounding just the same.

“You don’t get to talk to me like this,” you finally respond, walking back in his direction as he goes back to grabbing his wallet and keys — the only things he had happened to set down upon walking in. “Minho, it’s not fucking okay to talk to me like that.”

“Nothing about this situation is okay!” he shouts, turning back towards you and dropping his wallet from his hand; it landing in such a way that numerous items spill from it, although, he notices not — having been caught up in the moment. “You have no idea. You don’t have a clue what it’s like being around you every day. You’ll never fucking get—”

It’s then that Minho pauses, noticing the way that your eyes had stopped watching the way his lips tore into you and had settled towards something on the ground. Following yours, they land on presumably the same item that your own had just moments earlier.

A lone polaroid photograph from the first Christmas festival since moving to Berlin together — your lips playfully planted to his cheek. Even after all of those years, the quality of the photo had not waned. Perhaps Minho had just taken extra special care of it — just as he had with all of your other memories before.

“Minho…”

Perhaps this is it, defeat after all, he contemplates. Years of playing a dangerous game, all leading up to this moment.

Failure. Freedom?

“Here’s the truth,” he says, airy in tone and eyes still dropped to the ground, not daring to look back up and chance meeting yours. “I love you. I’ve been in love with you for years. Nothing makes me happier, and nothing makes me sadder — than you.”

A pause takes the room, neither of you being entirely sure what to say in the moment. It’s been such a long time coming, the confession from Minho — feeling immediately liberated upon the last word leaving his mouth, in spite of what it was, and in spite of what it meant, too.

Maybe this was freedom after all.

“And I’m moving out.” he finalizes his statement, bending down to gather the belongings from his wallet and carefully placing them back into the spots from which they came — the photograph included.

“What if I wanted to try?” you say suddenly. “Again, I mean. Try again.”

And in moments like these, Minho desperately wishes he were a stronger man, a man more capable of doing what’s best, what’s right, what’s safe.

“Don’t,” he responds, a pathetic plea to talk you down from whatever it is that you’re attempting to do. Unconvinced that it’s coming from a place of genuine reciprocation.

Change can be terrifying, sometimes people will do anything to avoid facing whatever may lie ahead. A concept that Minho finds himself all too familiar with.

But it’s the look on your face in that very instant, that has Minho halting with his hand on the doorknob. You won’t beg, you wouldn’t, and it’s not fair;  too much to ask of a man that had already given you everything of himself before you even knew it. Maybe that was his fault, maybe it was yours.

Maybe it was everyone’s, and also no ones.

But what if the timelines did manage to overlap — just briefly — just long enough. Strings of fate barely holding onto each other by a thread before the inevitable snap of discontentment. That is, unless force be relinquished in just the knick of time.

Could they do it? Had they done it?

“For the last time,” Minho starts, and for the first time — in all irony — with full transparency. “I will do anything for you, so tell me.”

You know it’s easier for you in that moment than it’s ever been for him in all of the years that he’s put himself aside to be next to you, but the fact does not do much to quell your fear of the unknown, the what if’s. You wonder how Minho has lasted, living every day in and out just like this — and worse.

But you have to do it.

“I want to try again,” you answer, looking up at him through lashes and tears welling in your eyes ever so slightly. “I know it’s selfish to ask you to stay, but I have to. Please stay. Please try again.”

A man that always prided himself on being a bit cool, tough looking — all too happy to rush towards you and scoop you into his arms after the words finish leaving your lips — wasting no time pressing his own to yours, as well.

“Don’t expect too much of me,” you say, somewhat playfully between kisses, “I haven’t been in love with you for as long as you have with me.”

“Oh shut up,” Minho replies, kissing you hard again.

And it’s not the first time Minho touches you sexually — not even in the month, but this time is different — carrying you with legs around his waist to the couch in the living room, plopping you with back against the cushion and immediately covering you with his entire being, kisses become more and more hurried and needy. So needy. The way you feel in your stomach makes you think you might just be right there with him.

Minho wastes no time pulling his torso off of you and prying his shirt off, following suit with your own before quickly working towards his jeans; the sound of belt buckle clattering and zipper pulling resonating in your ears, and it’s enough just then to realize that this is really happening. Part of you is a little surprised that it hasn’t yet.

Better late than never.

Minho stands to pull his jeans from his legs, and once again follows through with your own — pausing to really take in the sight before him. Sure, he’s seen you in swimwear before, and even changing, but this was different.

This was for him, this was meant for him to see now.

“You’re so beautiful,” he whispers, carefully lowering himself back down to you and shuffling his hips in between your legs; hardened length settling just against your clothed core and eliciting a sigh of relief, but also desire from the both of you, sighs immediately swallowed by the others mouth in between fervent kisses. “You’re perfect.”

You relish in the way that Minho makes an attempt to consume you entirely that night. Lightly toned body pressed fully against your own, his hips gently pressing against your own as his hands snake up and into your hair — fingers wrapping within strands as if you hold you in place, as if to ensure you could never leave him. Not now. Not after all of this.

Chaste kisses following the natural curve of your jawline, down towards your ear and up against it, Minho whispers that he loves you but his voice dripping with desire, with passion, and you believe that truly nothing could sound better to you. Minho still ever so delicately grinding against you — as if with no intent at all — completely encompassing you beneath him and breathing, whispering in your ear, the feeling comes onto you quickly. Not that you will orgasm, but that you desperately need to.

“Minho,” you groan, bucking your hips up to meet his own, “Don’t. Just—”

It’s not really a sentence, and so Minho chooses to not acknowledge it as such.

“Hm?” he quietly responds, pulling his left hand down from it’s entanglement in your hair and caressing the side of you all of the way down until it finds it’s resting place on the underside of your thigh. Pulling it up and out to give Minho a better angle to not fuck you with, it makes you want to cry in desperation. You find it unbelievable how quickly you’ve unraveled beneath him after all of these years. Had this been the case all of this time, or was it a simple matter of the strings of fate perfectly aligning at just the right moment.

The thought it interrupted by the man above you, whispering in your ear if it’s okay, if he can have you, and ignoring all of the patriarchal implications of the concept of a woman giving her body to a man; in the moment, in a vacuum, just between the two of you. It feels right.

And so, you are happy to have him.

Minho allows your leg to drop to free up his hand and release himself from his fabric confines — fingers then gently making their way to the side of your panties and carefully toying at the side — but not enough to make much happen, and Minho laughs at your impatience from under him, huffing against his face at his lack of being inside of you.

“Where did all of this come from?” he quips against the side of your face, and you choose not to acknowledge it in favor of focusing on the main event; the way he finally pulls the fabric aside and exposes you to the tip of his length and wasting no more time pressing into you slowly. Such a delightfully pleasant stretch as you adjust to him — and Minho feels it — every pulse and squeeze of your walls around him as he attempts to steady himself inside of you. It’s been so long, that he’s wished for this moment, he thinks about how it’s somehow even better than he ever could have imagined it being — your warmth enveloping him in every conceivable way and all at the same time. Emotionally, mentally, physically.

You can feel his breath against your ear, the way it already begins to lose it’s cohesion with the first few gentle strokes into you, but really, it’s that first groan of “fuck” into your ear that has you reeling, and your orgasm creeping up on you much faster than you had ever thought possible. The throaty, airy, desperation in his voice — so weak because of you, so absolutely enamored by you in all ways.

It wouldn’t be long, not for either of you. It had already been too long, it turns out.

“M—Minho, I—” you whimper out and against the skin of his shoulder: a desperate plea of your own. “I’m going to come soon, what the fuck,” in much fewer and less complete words, but you’re thankful that somehow he must have caught the memo, lifting his torso up with his hands planted flat against the couch cushion beneath you in an attempt to fuck into you better, more thoroughly, the best attempt he can make in the moment to try to get you there before him. He hasn’t said it, but you can tell that he’s close — too close for his liking, surely.

“Close?” he sputters out, forgoing sentences altogether, and with a quick nod and a biting back of a sharp whine, Minho changes the angle of his hips in such a way that grinds his pelvis right against your clit and you swear in that moment, you think you’ll pass out on the spot. Repeated chants of his name along with desperate requests to not stop and it’s a handful more presses of his hips into your own before your eyes roll into the back of your head before clenching shut; mouth ajar in silent shouting as your orgasm washes over you in intense waves, the man between your legs never relenting until his own catches him, following your lead of pleas of names as he does his best to fuck the both of you through your orgasms, until his body no longer reads capable of cooperating and he collapses — once again pressing his torso flush against your own and panting hot breath into the curve of your neck.

It does cross your mind, albeit briefly: that perhaps this would now be the end of everything as you know it between you and Minho. That maybe everything the two of you had experienced up until that moment had just been a journey to this — that no one was in love, that none of this had been real all along.

But when Minho pulls himself back up a bit, granting enough space between your two bodies to once again allow himself to plant kisses on every centimeter of skin that his mouth could possibly reach, all the while telling you all of the ways in which he’s madly, desperately and completely in love with you, you actually do wonder if maybe sometimes, just maybe, two people can feel the precisely the same way for one another, at precisely the exact same moment in time; because surely if it were possible, it would feel just like this.

Between kisses onto the flesh just below him, Minho contemplates all of the ways in which this was never meant to actually be. He knows that deep down, nothing he did ever put him in a position in which he deserved this, that he was never owed love, or sex, or you.

He wonders how he ended up so lucky, after all. Minho thinks back to the first year that you both moved to Germany together, and the first christmas festival — the night that the two of you took the polaroid photograph that he would forever keep with him everyday since that night, unbeknownst to you. He still remembers every detail perfectly, right down to the way your lips felt pressed against his cheek, despite knowing so many more feelings now.

Minho pulls himself up, just barely — only enough to reach your cheek to kiss you in just the exact spot that you had kissed him that night, and then whispers into the skin, “I love you.”

The single most important moment in Lee Minho’s life: that kiss at that Christmas festival that year. Life is only ever a series of moments that form us, shape us.

And the next second, we are in another moment.

♡ send me your thoughts and feelings in my ask.

—this is a oneshot, there will be no part 2.