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Minho doesn’t expect to answer the door and feel twenty-four all over again, not when there are ten years and way too many things hanging between then and now. But the past rarely warns you before it comes knocking at your door; no amount of time could ever change that.
"Jisung," Minho says, testing out the way the name curls around his tongue before coming loose in the air, testing out how it feels to have an excuse to say it out loud again after all these years.
"I needed to see you one more time before I got married," says the man in front of him before Minho has the chance to open his mouth again.
Minho feels twenty-four all over again, he feels the tingling of having been kissed breathless by Jisung, feels the unconditional love he harboured for Jisung unfurling inside his chest. Minho feels twenty-four but he isn't; when Minho was twenty-four Jisung promised he'd marry him and swore he’d never be able to stop loving Minho with all his heart.
Now Minho is well over thirty, taking a step back and away from Jisung just as he’d done at the edge of twenty-five, feeling stupid and lost all over again but knowing much better than he used to. Now Minho is stunned into silence by the weight of promises that had expired years ago.
He doesn’t know what to say, has forgotten how to speak. It feels like an appropriate reaction when your first love turned biggest what-if shows up unannounced at your doorstep to remind you that he’d successfully walked out of your life and never felt like looking back until now.
“Sorry,” Jisung says, followed by a hyung that sounds exactly like Minho remembered, a hyung that wrings out of Minho all the longing he’d been secretly collecting inside his chest since the last time he’d seen Jisung and splatters it all over the floor between them. “I’m getting married and you’re not welcome to come.”
"What?" Minho finds his voice somewhere between his indignation and the ache of his heart that keeps growing and growing the longer he looks at Jisung and manages to spot all the differences ten years have patted down on his face.
“I keep thinking about you every time I try to sit down to write my vows,” Jisung admits, and Minho wants to know why, why now, why like this. “A part of me seems to be stuck, still wanting to write vows only to you.”
Minho had never allowed himself to imagine that he still had a bit of Jisung in his hands, that a tiny piece of Jisung’s heart could still be safely tucked in the pocket of his favourite hoodie. Because if he had he would’ve tried to do something about it, the same way he wanted to do something about it now.
“So I looked for you like crazy, because the only way I could think to get this out of my system was saying it to your face.”
But it’s too late. Ten years ago Minho was already late to do something and now the distance between Minho and success had turned abysmal.
“Hyung, I think– no, I know that I’ll never love someone the way I loved you.” Ten years and the past tense still crushed Minho’s heart. “I know that love and happiness will never feel the same way they did with you. And I’m okay with that, I really am.”
Jisung looks very young while telling Minho he’s special, he looks very young as he says, “But I’m still terrified of the thought of you anywhere near the ceremony because I don’t trust myself not to leave my fiance at the altar for you, even after all these years. So please, please– ” Jisung looks so young as he begs, “Please, tell me that you don’t love me anymore, that you can’t love me anymore. Please tell me that it doesn’t matter if it never feels the same. ”
Jisung looks young, but he’s not, at least not the way he used to be when he was twenty-two, proud to be in love with Minho, and occasionally a bit too selfish. Jisung is not young when he stands before his soulmate’s doorsteps begging to be let go in order to make someone else happy the way he knows they deserve to be, not when he rescinds a one-in-a-million kind of love for a promise that’s still fresh on his lips.
And Minho is no longer twenty-four. He really isn’t.
“I don’t love you anymore,” Minho says, chokes a bit on the words and the tears gathering in his eyes. “I– I’ve moved on, and I don’t love you anymore.”
Jisung looks similar to how he did when Minho first met him, especially when he cries like his world is about to break irreversibly, especially when he says, “Thank you.”
Minho isn’t twenty-four, sure. But if he were … God, he would hate himself so much for letting Jisung just walk away like that, he would hate himself for giving into Jisung’s whims so easily and giving him the entire world just to end up staring at Jisung’s retreating back.
He would hate himself for it, at fifty, thirty-three, or twenty-four. No matter the universe or the timeline, or the Jisung walking away. He would hate himself for lying to the love of his life about the single most sacred thing in the world, Minho’s love for him.
And sure, Minho at twenty-four wouldn’t chase after Jisung, hadn’t chased after Jisung. Minho at twenty-four wouldn’t beg Jisung to rethink his life choices or cry about proclaiming he was no longer in love. But that didn’t really matter now, did it?
It didn’t have to matter what Minho had or would have done, not if he did something now, not if he stopped daydreaming about who he no longer was and took claim over his own body, right there and then, at thirty-four, one foot out of his apartment, body readying itself to run if that’s what it took.
It didn’t really have to matter, did it? Surely their world wouldn’t just come crumbling down like this, right? Not after so many years and so much care, not after Minho’s heart had never stopped beating at the pace Jisung had set for it all those years ago.
It just couldn’t matter, it couldn’t crumble.
Minho runs out of his apartment, leaves the door wide open, and his keys forgotten somewhere inside. He has nothing in the pockets of his sweatpants or in his hands, he has nothing but the incredibly burdensome weight of his heart sitting inside his chest.
He is and he isn’t. Because he’s still in love with Jisung, could never not be, but he’s no longer certain that Jisung would drop everything and anything for him, he’d stop feeling sure about eleven years before today.
“You’re a fucking coward, Jisung.” Is the first thing Minho says when he catches up to Jisung. He almost screams it, almost lets every single one of his neighbours know how fucking scared he is about having chased after Jisung.
Minho sees Jisung’s figure still, he sees Jisung turn around while furiously wiping the tears off his cheeks that no longer go with the confused and slightly pissed-off expression he wears. Minho sees the man in front of him but he also sees the seventeen-year-old boy furious at being misunderstood all the time.
Minho can’t help but think about how falling in love with someone can fuck everything up.
“Excuse me?” Jisung asks. Minho still knows him like the back of his palm and it’s only mildly terrifying.
“You heard me. I think you’re being a coward.” Before Jisung has the chance to say something else, Minho keeps going. “You were a coward back then and you still are now. Always placing all the responsibility in my hands. You wanted me to break up with you even though I didn’t want to, and now you want me to tell you that I don’t love you just so that you can feel better with yourself. But I’m so sick and tired of lying.”
If Jisung were still twenty-two then maybe he would’ve backed off, maybe he would’ve turned around and left Minho’s heart bleeding right in the middle of the hallway. But it sure had been a while since twenty-two for him, because instead of running Jisung takes a step towards him.
“I think you’re the coward,” Jisung says with so much conviction that it renders Minho speechless. “You didn’t fight for me back then, you didn’t even chase after me or tried to see me again after the last time.”
Minho swallows the need to tell Jisung that he didn’t either, that he never fought or tried hard enough for Minho to try and keep his hope alive. Because it doesn’t matter anymore. They’re both to blame, they both wasted so much time; that won’t change now.
“But I’m doing it now,” Minho says because this is what matters.
Never mind the atrocious distance between them or the entire lives they’ve lived while being apart, never mind who’ve they become or how they could tear each other to pieces once again in the future.
“ Hyung. ” Never mind their ages; at heart they can still be who they were without invalidating who they are.
“I’m not asking you to drop your entire life for me. I’m actually not asking you for anything.” Never mind the situation, Minho still drops down to one knee and says: “All I want you to know is that I could never stop being in love with you. And I would never not take you back if you were to appear at my door looking exactly like you’ve always looked, like my first love and best friend, like my soulmate.”
Never mind that Minho has never been good with words because he has to be good with them now.
Jisung is thirty-two, he’s an adult, he drops to his knees and cries saying, “Don’t do this to me.” But he still slumps against Minho’s body, he still hides his face in the crook of Minho’s neck, and he still is twenty-two somewhere deep in his chest.