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SHINee have been doing this together for so long that dress rehearsals are kind of rote by now. Like, sure, practice is important and Kibum has an eye for detail, especially when it comes to the fits their team is wearing, but at a certain point you have to trust the process. He’d carefully winnowed through their stage looks months ago, made adjustments for the line-up change with Jinki’s hiatus, and seen them live-tested in front of audiences.
Besides, no one ever does sound check in anything other than sweats or athleisure anyway - kids (adults now, god, they’re so old) who shell out hundreds of dollars extra to get up close and personal like that don’t want the polished, professional idol everyone comes to a concert for. They want pit stains and heavy breathing, they want phoning it in because you’re saving your energy to go that much harder later on. They want whatever facsimile of reality fifteen years in the fantasy trenches gets you, and SHINee are experts at providing.
All this to say - Kibum really isn’t prepared for the way Minho’s Juice fit clings to him these days.
He’s a professional, obviously, so not even his long time fansites catch him slipping (Kibum checks later just to be sure, not that there was anything he could have done about it if someone had video evidence of him drooling like an idiot over a set of perfect adequate abs. Kibum isn’t even an abs guy! He’s also not not an abs guy, but, you know, it’s a part of the overall package. Which is also important. The package, that is. Kibum is picky, sue him! Isn’t he allowed that? What’s the point of being in your thirties if you haven’t earned the right to some discernment?). Honestly, he barely catches himself slipping - it’s not like he looks at his long-term colleague and thinks you know what, in the year of our lord 2024, it’s finally time for Choi Minho to rail me.
He’s just just kind of angry.
“Aren’t you a millionaire?” he hisses when they’re finally under the stage and getting sweat-wicked and sprayed down and oxygenated and re-made in the three-something minutes the VCR provides them.
Only this man and his stupid big bambi eyes could manage to give him a deer in the headlights look while politely letting the make-up noonas (not that they’re noonas these days, yikes) freshen up his eyeshadow
“You’re asking financial advice now?” Minho asks, and his head does that little flick of his, the one that looks for a hidden camera without breaking character.
Kibum, already done with his quick change, plucks at the harness with a scoff. His fingers might catch fire if he touches the shirt itself, but he’s the one who debated three alternates to the leather monstrosity currently framing the shape of Minho’s ridiculous body. He finds the buckle instinctively, unbuckles it with the practised ease of an expert (in clothes, in unclothing men) before handing it off to one of the many milling stylist assistants. Politely, not one of them asks why Kibum is doing their job.
“I just think,” he says, with a lick of acid that is probably excessive for the situation at hand, “that if your shirt shrinks in the wash, you can probably afford to replace it.”
Ten years ago that would have been like waving red to a bull, and even today maybe that’s what he wants. What he gets instead is the sweat-sheen of Minho’s throat, the sharp white of his teeth when he tips his head back. His laugh. Kibum’s heart lurches into his mouth to meet it, because he loves his members and he loves - making them happy. Sure.
“You don’t like it?” Minho shrugs into his next fit. “You don’t think - what’s that thing you used to say? ‘What’s the point of having a body like that if you don’t let me show it off?’ Now you’re mad I listened to you?”
“I said that in a completely different context,” Kibum hisses, but someone barks a call time off to his left, and Taemin is off to their right wearing an expression like he’s on the verge of paying attention. The absolute last thing Kibum wants is that kid getting ideas. They’re almost never the right ones.
The counter runs down. They’re seasoned professionals - they hit their mark on the millisecond, crash full speed into a wall of sound and screams and their beloved Shawols. This moment will blend, blur into all of the others eventually - even with his precocious memory, Kibum can’t hold onto them forever. All he can give is all of himself, in moments, a perfect snapshot of time for their audience to treasure until the edges run ragged, and the fold tears in the middle, and they are set aside for what none of them will know is the last time, until it is.
He doesn’t think about Minho and his stupid, too-small shirt again that night, is what he means.
“Huh.”
Kibum buzzes over to Minho in an instant, hovering over his shoulder. “Huh, what huh?” he asks the iPad Minho’s reviewing the footage from last night’s concert on. This far into their career, they give themselves the grace of nitpicking the day after, not the hour.
Technically they all have separate rooms in this hotel, but Kibum had woken up to the sound of Minho clinking empties into the recycling, and an extra blanket folded neatly on the couch. Once he was done throwing pillows at Minho for waking him up, he’d had to swallow down the urge to ask why Minho hadn’t just crawled into bed with him. If nothing else, he knew the answer. Hadn’t Kibum spent half a lifetime demanding his space from his members? Especially this one. Minho probably thought he was being respectful, as though Kibum needs that kind of reassurance from him these days.
“Yah, calm down. I was just going to say you were right, don’t you like that kind of thing?”
Kibum loves that kind of thing, but is only ever suspicious when Minho seems willing to give it up. He notches his chin into hard muscle, digging in with his chin until he wins a low hiss from his target, although Minho doesn’t even shrug to dislodge him.
“The shirt does look like it shrunk, all right?” Minho complains. “It’s kind of indecent. You should see what they’re saying on X.”
Kibum has seen what they are saying on X. He has also seen what they are saying on Instagram, TikTok, and a brief sojourn into Weibo. He wishes, fervently, that he had not learned the word ‘pregnant’ in so many languages.
“Twitter, it’s still Twitter, how many times do I have to tell you?”
“Oh yeah? Where on the page does it still say Twitter then, genius?”
“They put ‘tweet’ in the dictionary, smartass, you can’t just undo that kind of thing because of one man’s ego.”
“Since when did you care about something like the dictionary? Elon Musk purchased the company fair and square, if he wants to call it X then I’ll respect his decision.”
“‘Fair and square’, what do you know about billionaire vanity purchases, huh?”
“It is,” Taemin announces from the doorway, where neither Minho nor Kibum had noticed him entering, “nine o’clock in the morning. What…what could the two of you have found to be mad at each other about already?”
“Everything,” Kibum bites, at the same time as Minho huffs “Nothing!” and they pause for a moment to exchange an eyeroll (Kibum, fond) and a grin (Minho, fonder).
“That doesn’t answer anything!” (Taemin, exasperated) but it’s not like Taemin is interested in the answer either way. He shuffles in with his own tablet in hand, their perfectionist maknae, and Kibum resolves to put any thoughts of impregnation (Minho, or any of their overeager fans) aside.
Look, Choi Minho has always been hot. That’s the whole reason he’s an idol, although Kibum is willing to admit (insist) that he’s picked up a few of the other aspects in the time since SHINee was formed. Everyone who meets the guy is aware of it before he even enters the room, and in private moments Kibum can allow that Minho has managed to keep his head small enough to suit his face even with that kind of pressure.
It sounds kind of flip when he puts it that way, but the truth is that Kibum has met more than one (more than a hundred) guys in their industry who started out perfectly normal and ended up fucking weird after that kind of attention. Not the usual eating disorder, camera paranoia kind of weird, the asshole kind. Minho has had his asshole moments over the years, but they've been precisely that - moments. Even when he could barely stand to be in a room with the guy, Kibum had understood that the biggest problem with Minho was that he was a fundamentally nice person.
Hell, sometimes that was the whole reason Kibum couldn't stand him. What kind of robot person looked that good and wanted to be that good? How is anyone supposed to defend themselves against that face, those abs, and the ability to ask how your day is going? Minho’s relentless heterosexuality has served as a shield for most of their relationship, and Kibum’s own youthful desire for men who maybe didn’t want to be so good had taken care of the rest for a while. But at some point, even he’s had to concede that maybe it would be nice to cook dinner for someone other than a camera.
As for Minho’s heterosexuality--
“What is your type, if you’re not into guys like me?”
In Kibum’s defence, he’s in the middle of reviewing a brand rep proposal when Minho drops that one on him. He’s not even sure what Minho’s doing in his house, other than entertaining the kids. He hadn’t invited the man over, and Minho hadn’t texted to say he was coming. Per usual (and when had it become usual?), he’d just let himself in and started doing the fucking dishes.
“I am into guys like you, honey,” Kibum says absently, annotating a line in the contract with a question for his manager. He’s curled up on the couch with Comme Des, who boofs quietly when the kitchen produces a clatter and an uncharacteristic curse word. Minho’s wide eyes appear around the corner, quickly followed by the rest of him.
“What?”
“What, what?” Kibum is trying to chase his train of thought about what glass closet idols have to offer the ahjumma market and why that isn’t reflected in the number this deal is suggesting. Kibum is not concerned with whatever propping up Minho’s ego needs right now.
“You’re into me?”
“Sure.” Kibum cuts a quick gesture at him, up and down. “Look at all that. Tiny face hunk of man meat, what’s not to like.”
“Oh.”
For whatever reason, that apparently isn’t the reassurance Mr Tiny Face Hunk Of Man Meat was looking for. Minho disappears back into the kitchen. The familiar lullaby of dishes being pedantically pre-washed is almost enough to smooth over the whole blip in routine, if not for the discordant note of Minho actively ignoring him.
Kibum blinks down at a line of legalese. It fails to resolve itself into sense, and when the past two minutes finally intrude properly into his consciousness, they don’t do much better. He doesn’t exactly startle off the couch, but Comme Des is disturbed enough by his sudden movement to huff his way off Kibum’s lap.
Oh? Kibum mouths to himself, staring up at the ceiling. What the fuck is ‘oh’?
“Then what was the problem with the shirt?” Minho explodes, because that man has never been able to keep a feeling to himself in his life when it comes to Kibum. He’s back around the corner with his sleeves rolled up and a tea towel slung over his shoulder, looking like someone’s idea of a domestic wet dream. Not Kibum’s. But someone’s.
“Oh My God.”
“You had final sign-off on the stage fits! If there was a problem with it you should have said!”
“Are you seriously still thinking about this?”
“Yes, because it’s confusing! Why is the shirt suddenly not okay when it’s a little tighter?When the whole point is to show off a body I work hard for? Wouldn’t that make it better? Unless you don’t like guys with abs, except I’ve definitely heard you talking with Taeyeon-noona about how you do--”
“Wait. Stop.” The Tom and Jerry routine is fun and funny for the camera, but he’s getting tired of Minho stringing this bit out for an audience of one. Honestly, it’s kind of…well, it’s Minho, so Kibum won’t say mean-spirited, but his sinuses sting with a vague disappointment anyway. He sharpens his tone on it, the faggy little click of his tongue, the nasal tilt of his vowels. “You think this whole time I’ve been deciding what looks good based on how much I want to fuck a man?”
“No! I - wait, yes? Wait, is that bad? You’re looking at me like that’s a problem, why is that a problem?”
“Don’t be stupid, do you want to sleep with every hot woman you see? Actually, don’t answer that, I don’t want to know what goes on in that brain of yours when it comes to this.”
Kibum sees, in real time, the moment the world changes. There’s no accompanying sound, no sudden movement. Minho barely even opens his mouth before he catches the thing he was about to say, but it’s already too late. They know each other too well, for too long. Even when it comes to impossible things, why should they have to say them? The truth stumbles into the air between them, awkward, sweet.
Oh, Kibum thinks, dizzy. It’s that kind of ‘oh’?
“Hrrgh,” Minho says, sitting on one of Kibum’s kitchen chairs. It’s hard to pick up the precise cadence of the groan, because his big, knobby hands are plastered over his face. Despite the tingling in the tips of his own fingers and how hard it is to draw in a proper breath, Kibum has to bite back a smile.
He sets his laptop to the side, closes the lid. The silk legs of his pyjamas shush against each other, fighting with Miss Truth for attention as he shuffles over to Minho, stands with his hands on his hips before him. It’s that or cross his arms over his chest, and in the face of the changing world, he’s not feeling quite as defensive.
“Do you have something you want to say, or should I guess?”
“Don’t guess,” Minho tells his hands.
“You just don’t want me to guess right and then get to say I told you so.”
“It’s not an ‘I told you so’ if you only said it like, two seconds before.”
“It’s an ‘I told you so’ if I tell you so.” Kibum squats, bringing himself level with the rapidly spreading flush crawling up Minho’s neck. He keeps his touch light when he plucks at Minho’s wrists, not quite demanding. “Come on, honey, let me see your face.
Like with every time Kibum asks Minho to give him something, he gets what he wants and then some. Minho lets his hands fall, but before Kibum can decide what the next move is here, Minho has already decided. Broad fingers bracelet Kibum’s wrists, the find tremble running through them shackling him in place more certainly than actual handcuffs might have. Revealed, Minho’s expression is a study in determined vulnerability: jaw tight and brow furrowed and somehow still open, so open.
Ah, I love him, Kibum thinks, and doesn’t even mind.
“I know you won’t,” Minho says, “but you still have to promise not to laugh.”
“Wah, who do you take me for?”
“I said I know you won’t!”
“Then you know I promise!”
Minho makes a sound kind of like one of the dogs finding a surprise snack under the couch, except it’s a laugh. He bounces Kibum’s wrists between them like that’s supposed to mean something, and they must be the same kind of alien after all because the obvious affection burns pleasantly in his gut.
“You’re so annoying,” Minho says. “I want you to be attracted to me. I want you to think I’m hot, in a way you want to - to sleep with.”
Kibum waits expectantly for the rest of the confession, but Minho and his earnest puppy eyes are blinking back at him just as expectantly. And look, Kibum isn’t an idiot, he knows what Minho means, but - really? Really?
He wrests one wrist (only one, mind) free of Minho’s grasp and whacks him on the shoulder.
“Yah! Why!”
“What kind of confession is that!” Kibum demands, hitting him again. “Choi Minho! You can’t come out to me after all these years by telling me what you want me to want!”
“Wh - I’m not - stop hitting me!” A brief but furious battle interrupts them before Minho finally manages to capture Kibum’s hand again. He threads their fingers together, squeezes. It doesn’t hurt, but it could. “Do you think a straight man wants his best friend to fuck him? What kind of thing are you complaining about now?”
“Okay, but that’s not what you said!” But he’s said it now, and Kibum can feel the flush of it working through his face like too many shots of soju. He thinks he could probably get drunk on this, too, the heady certainty of something he’d never been stupid enough to let himself want. “You think I’ve never met a straight man whose ego got busted because I didn’t want him to stick it in? You have to be precise with these things, they have to be about you!”
“But it’s not just about me,” Minho insists, grip squeezing like he can impress the truth upon Kibum’s skin that way. “You’re the only man I’ve wanted like this before. And I haven’t wanted anyone else more than the way I want you. And - and you liking me is a part of that, okay? It’s the most important part. I could go basically anywhere and find someone who wants to have sex with me, but you’re the only person I really care about feeling that way, okay? You’re the person I want to want me like that, and it’s driving me kind of crazy lately because I can’t tell if you do or not.”
Kibum opens his mouth to argue back, a lizard-brain instinct born from years of back and forth, only to find that - for once, finally - there are no words waiting for him. He gives it a second, sucks his tongue back over his teeth like maybe he’ll find a loose syllable hiding between his central and lateral incisors. But there’s nothing aside from the coppery taste of anxiety, the thrill of too much saliva driven on by the surge of adrenaline in his system.
They’re not even on a precipice. Minho has shoved them both bodily over, and whatever Kibum says next determines how they land. He can make it safe for them if he laughs now, if he pats Minho on the cheek and kisses his forehead and tells him he’s proud of him for being so vulnerable. If he summons a smile tinged with sadness, shoves enough silence to speak volumes into it - he won’t have to say anything. Minho would understand. That’s the way they are now, isn’t it? They understand each other.
It’s that same awful understanding creeping across Minho’s face that makes the decision for Kibum, in the end. It’s no trouble for him to take that hit - to tuck his feelings away neatly with all the other unnecessarily difficult scenarios he’s avoiding in this life of theirs. But to see that same terrible acceptance on Minho’s dumb, dear face, it’s too much. Kibum is no stranger to wielding cruelty as a weapon when he needs to, but both of his hands are occupied right now. He can’t bring himself to pick it up.
“Aish.” He’s still squatting awkwardly on the ground, but this makes it easy to thunk his forehead into Minho’s knees, bone on bone. “I was supposed to spend today arguing with lawyers.”
“Isn’t arguing with me way more fulfilling?”
“It probably pays better,” Kibum admits. “Minho-yah. If - if I give you what you want, everything will change.”
“Ah…sorry, but I think we’ve already passed that point no matter what.”
“Oh my god, you’re supposed to tell me that nothing will change if I don’t want it to! Haven’t you read enough romance scripts to know how friends to lovers is supposed to work?”
“Kibum-ah.” Ugh, his voice has that horrible real note that Kibum knows is just going to kill him when he sees it on Minho’s face, and - yup, sure enough, there’s Minho’s stupid square fingers under his chin, gently nudging Kibum into meeting his stupid serious gaze, and Kibum is dead now. “You’d be so mad at me if I tried to follow a script for something like this.”
God, how come the mortifying ordeal of being known isn’t any less mortifying when you know it’s reciprocated? The urge to squeeze his eyes shut and squirm out of Minho’s grasp entirely is almost overwhelming, but unfortunately Minho is fucking correct. There’s no going back to the world of half an hour ago where Kibum was ignoring his own desires and could tell himself that Minho wasn’t increasingly obvious about his.
“Not that mad,” he protests, half-hearted at best. “It’s not like I’m doing a great job of knowing what the hell to say right now.”
“That’s okay,” Minho says. “Honestly, the longer you go without shooting me down, the better I feel. If we get to dinner time without you kicking me out of the house, I think that means we’re dating.”
“Don’t tempt me.”
Minho grins like a firework going off, and Kibum bites at the bare skin of his knee before he has the chance to make any dumb comment about which one of them is tempting the other. It’s a short-sighted plan; Minho cuts himself off with a yelp, but instead of deploying violence in kind, he curls his hand back, rubbing gently over the short fuzz at the nape of Kibum’s neck.
There’s a perfect confidence in the way he touches Kibum, somehow both sure he’ll like it and expecting nothing at the same time. All the tension holding Kibum’s objections together somehow melts out through the jut of bone at the base of his skull, soothed away with each pass of Minho’s thumb.
“Shit,” Kibum sighs, because no one else has quite managed to touch him like this before. Who could? “Ah, fuck.”
“Yeah?”
He smells infuriating. Kibum noses along the outer curve of his hamstring, chasing the salt of old sweat and fabric softener. They use the same brand, mostly because Minho had been outraged that Kibum didn’t have any and bought some for him. It had been annoying before; the fact that he now smells like Kibum’s day-old sheets is going to kill him all over again.
Yeah? He nods into the bulge of Minho’s thigh muscle, because if he’s going to experience the consequences of his own actions, he at least doesn’t want to watch them coming. He’s braced for another chuckle, but hasn’t he just been rhapsodising about how kind-hearted this man is? There’s no laughter as Kibum makes the decision to give them a soft landing, only a gentle sigh to match it and the split-second clench of Minho’s hand in Kibum’s hair to betray his own nerves.
“Jagi,” Minho says, raw, like they've just tumbled off stage. “Jagiya. How am I supposed to kiss you if you're hiding down there?”
“Presumptuous,” Kibum accuses. But he lifts his head. “You think I'll be that easy for you?”
“I think this is the hardest thing either of us have done for a long time.” The corner of Minho's mouth quirks, a flash of Flaming Charisma slicing through all this sentimentality. “That being said, if you need me to earn it, you know I’m good for it.”
With a shiver of premonition, Kibum can see himself leaning in to the offer. The promise of what Minho might be good for is tart on his tongue, and he holds it there for a moment, savours. There’s a deep dark closet in the corner of his mind, full of what Minho might earn from him and the ways he might do it - but he’s right. He can’t kiss Kibum while he’s down on his knees. And for all the satisfaction they’ve both wrung out of the tension between them ratcheting higher over the years, want Kibum wants right now is relief.
“I’ll take a raincheck,” he declares, rising. Minho watches with wide eyes, body twitching like he’s going to follow (good boy, Kibum can’t help but smirk to himself). A light touch on the shoulder keeps him down, and Kibum is in his lap before there’s any complaining.
Knees spread over broad thighs, arms draped over his shoulders, Kibum leans in. Close enough to feel the warm stutter of Minho’s breath ghost over his mouth.
“Better?”
Strong hands span his waist, jerk him in closer still. Minho’s grin is bright enough to do its own toothpaste commercial.
“Almost perfect.”
So Kibum kisses him. What other choice does he have? Almost has never been good enough for either of them.
For a second, it’s sweet. Maybe even two. Kibum can’t help the way he smiles into it, equal parts delighted and amused with how gentlemanly this Minho is, how romantic. All mouth and no tongue but still open for Kibum, still wet with anticipation. Dipping in to taste and pulling back to tease. Minho must feel the smile, must cut himself on the edge of it - or maybe they both only have two seconds of sweetness left in them after all this time.
Later, Kibum remembers the pieces of it. The sharp drag of Minho breathing in through his nose, the blunt ache of his grip biting into Kibum’s flesh, holding tight, tighter. Kibum takes his revenge with his teeth, testing the give of Minho’s lower lip. Swallows down the curse it digs out of him, hasn’t Kibum always been good at drawing the fight from this man? Minho’s hands are hungry on his body, dragging up his spine, down his thigh. Like there’s not enough of Kibum to grab, like he could have all of him in his grasp and still need more. It’s a heady thing, that kind of desperation, and Kibum drinks deeply.
“That’s it, honey,” he mumbles. Minho breaks away from him, breathless, but he’s back again in a heartbeat. Smears his mouth from the corner to Kibum’s throat, scrapes his teeth over the skin there, and oh, there’s his tongue. “God, you really just - ah, you want it, huh?”
Minho huffs into his neck, and honestly, there have been enough horny sounds coming from both of them that it takes Kibum a couple of seconds to realise that this time he is being laughed at. “Stupid,” Minho says, pressing a fond kiss into Kibum’s neck. He pulls back, blasting Kibum with the full earnest force of his face at its Most Sincere, and what is Kibum supposed to do except maybe start counting eyelashes? “I want you.”
There’s a lot Kibum could say to that. Namely, was that so hard? after Minho had fumbled the confession moments before. Wasn’t that so much more cinematic? But if he does that, they’ll almost definitely start bickering; as satisfying as that is, Kibum thinks they’ve finally found something better to do with their mouths.
“Choi Minho,” he laughs helplessly, cupping the back of Minho’s dear, dumb skull in both his hands. Minho leans into the touch, the world’s biggest, smuggest cat. It’s adorable. “I guess I want you, too.”
Later - much later - Kibum’s whole body has melted pleasantly into Minho’s, still draped over his lap, chin notched in his shoulder while Minho drowsily draws nothing in particular up and down Kibum’s back. It’s kind of like ASMR, except definitely sexier, and also they’d probably been kind of loud for a while there. Sue him, it’s been forever since he could waste hours making out with someone he really likes, and he’s never been able to do it with--
“Ah, fuck,” he sighs, and flaps one reassuring hand against Minho’s arm when he feels the firm body underneath him startle. “No, not this. I just really have to review that contract by today. Yah, why are you always so distracting? You’re lucky I like you, you think I’d let just any guy pull my attention away like this?”
Minho, apparently reassured by Kibum’s grumbling that no one is having an abrupt change of mind, simply hums and wraps both of his stupid gorilla arms around Kibum, pulling tight.
“Nope,” he says, popping the p smugly. Kibum is so, so fond, his heart might explode right out of his chest, and then who is going to look over his contract?
“I’m not going to change,” he warns. “I’m still going to be busy. I’m still going to get annoyed at you and yell.”
“Yeah.” Minho sounds like someone just told him he has free golf balls for life or something. Blissed. “You’re lucky I like you.”
Kibum supposes he can’t argue with that.