Chapter Text
When needing to navigate living with two people he’d rather avoid, Minhyun thought he’d been pretty considerate. Jonghyeon and Aaron owned this place, so it wasn’t like Minhyun expected them to change their habits much. He’d intended to hide in his room, throw himself on Dongho more than usual, and maybe stay with his family for longer than planned.
It was only a month. Before, that had felt short.
But now Minhyun was sitting on his bed, staring at the videogame poster Jonghyeon had added to his door, debating on whether Aaron felt the need to knock so tentatively or whether Jonghyeon was outside for some reason. Out of options, he stood to find out.
Jonghyeon had clearly had a more eventful morning than Minhyun. For one, he looked like he’d gotten ready, wearing jeans and a t-shirt that advertised some restaurant Minhyun vaguely remembered from campus. Minhyun felt some regret, as two in the afternoon blinked from his clock, and he had nothing to show for it but unbrushed hair and sweatpants.
“Hey,” Jonghyeon said. He smiled tightly. Minhyun wondered vaguely how much Aaron had told him. Enough for him to be trying to fix shit; not enough for him to realize he couldn’t.
“Do you need something?” Minhyun asked. He moved aside to let Jonghyeon in but Jonghyeon didn't take the invitation, instead lingering in the doorway. Minhyun wished he’d just grab whatever he needed.
“I’ve got some stuff to do on…” Jonghyeon waved a hand toward his computer rather than use his words. “Do you mind?”
“I was just leaving.”
“You don’t have to.” Jonghyeon had no idea how much Minhyun absolutely had to. But before Minhyun could insist, Jonghyeon added, “you’re not dressed.”
For a moment, Minhyun considered pushing it. But clearly, Jonghyeon didn’t want Minhyun to make this easier for them both. Masochist.
The bedroom was small for two people. It had only one chair at the desk, and Minhyun had to drag his suitcase off it. Whatever Jonghyeon had to do better be important, for him to put them both through this.
Instead of opening his email or his calendar or anything reasonable, Jonghyeon opened steam, then clicked on a game Minhyun didn’t recognize. “There’s an event,” Jonghyeon said needlessly. Minhyun didn’t care. He sat on the bed, legs crossed, scrolling aimlessly through his phone. Now that he’d become aware of it, his face felt very unwashed and his pajamas dirty, but Jonghyeon kind-of had him trapped here.
Jonghyeon clicked his mouse approximately a dozen times to collect whatever reward he wanted, then a few more, until the screensaver of his PC looked back at him. He turned to face Minhyun. Something had settled in him now, like he'd found his courage in that blue-tinged monitor.
Minhyun got the unfortunate feeling that he’d been set up.
“We should talk,” Jonghyeon said.
Yeah, this had totally been planned. Minhyun allowed his phone to drop back to the bed. He rifled through potential responses, but what he really wished to do was to tell Jonghyeon to leave, and he wasn’t quite rude enough for that.
“I owe you an apology.”
“No offense, but your apology isn’t really the one I want.” Minhyun tried to smile. It fit oddly against his face.
Jonghyeon sighed. He clasped his hands together between his legs, leaning forward so that his elbows rested on them. Somehow, the move reminded Minhyun of meetings with higher-ups. The ones who would never let you forget their seniority. He struggled not to bristle.
“That doesn’t change that I owe you one,” Jonghyeon said. “I should have pushed Aaron to tell you sooner. I didn’t, because I thought... who am I to get in-between a friendship that’s lasted forever? But of course he shouldn’t have hidden it from you.”
So not telling him had specifically been Aaron's plan. That wasn't particularly shocking, but it wasn't easy to hear, either. Minhyun hoped Jonghyeon was getting whatever he wanted out of this.
But Jonghyeon's lasting silence meant he was waiting for a response, that he wanted something from Minhyun. "It's fine. No hard feelings," Minhyun said, even though it was bad form for the apologizer to want something from the recipient.
Still Jonghyeon didn't seem put to rest. This time Minhyun couldn't fault him on it. He'd never been much of an actor, and if his tone had been listless to his own ears, he doubted that Jonghyeon had found it much better. Yet they'd gone through all the steps. Jonghyeon could absolve himself of blame. Minhyun didn't understand what else he could be looking for. He'd already told Jonghyeon he didn't care about his apology.
Unless Jonghyeon was here for something different. Minhyun stared at him, this time not caring about the growing silence. He'd always been better than most at letting it hang there, comfortable even as others fidgeted.
In the past, Aaron's relationships hadn't particularly liked Minhyun. Or rather, they had often been jealous. Enough so that Minhyun knew for a fact that he'd ended one of them, even though he hadn't meant to. A couple months ago, when Minhyun faced the reckoning that was accepting he was in love with his childhood friend, he'd dared to admit that maybe those people had reason to be uncomfortable. Maybe he and Aaron had never been good at drawing lines.
But for Jonghyeon to feel threatened? After what had just happened? It was so absurd it was laughable. And yet, a bit of pleasure welled up in Minhyun's gut. For the first time since he'd stepped foot in Aaron and Jonghyeon's apartment, he got his feet under him.
“Seriously,” Minhyun said. “I’m only here a couple weeks, and then I’ll be gone again, and this will all be over. It’s fine.”
This should have eased Jonghyeon’s heart or whatever, because Jonghyeon would have Aaron all to himself again. But if anything, Jonghyeon’s frown deepened.
“Don’t you think we should get to know each other?”
“We’re not in high school anymore. Aaron doesn’t need me telling him when he’s going for someone he shouldn’t. He can make his own decisions.”
By the end of it, Minhyun wasn’t certain if he was saying this for Jonghyeon’s benefit. If he was, then it wasn’t what Jonghyeon was looking for. He raised an eyebrow. “I’m not looking for you to approve me.” His lips twitched, like he was laughing at Minhyun. “I just mean that we both matter to Aaron. Shouldn’t we be friends?”
Oh. Jonghyeon had finally dropped his cards on the table, and they weren't what Minhyun had thought. This wasn't jealousy; Jonghyeon wasn't yet another of Aaron's partners who'd been threatened by Minhyun.
He was the first one that wasn't. At all. To the point where all Aaron and Minhyun's closeness meant to him was that he should make an effort to know Minhyun himself.
Before, Minhyun would have sworn that he hadn't relished the jealousy of others but its absence felt a lot like loss, the stiffness of his chest like a heart prepared to shatter.
He couldn't do this anymore.
“Listen, Jonghyeon, I’m sure you’re—great. But Aaron and I don’t share everything.” That was a lesson Minhyun learned under twenty-four hours ago but call him a quick learner. “You don’t have to be close to me to be close to him. Especially with me leaving soon. I have a lot of things to do.”
Jonghyeon’s gaze flicked over him. Presenting a certain aura wasn't easy, with Minhyun being unwashed and in pajamas, but he did his best. Jonghyeon left.
--
Even though Minhyun wanted Aaron’s apology, he knew better than to expect something formal. You hit a point in a friendship where you stop saying a lot of the normal things. Or at least, they had.
Instead, Aaron’s apology came in the form of him asking Minhyun to do a video with him. And Minhyun, forever slow at reacting, forever a beat behind, had no answer.
This wasn’t a normal occurrence. Minhyun hadn’t been in one of Aaron’s videos in forever, but originally, the channel hadn’t been Aaron’s. It had been theirs.
They had had a decent amount of followers back then, too, considering their videos had been in Korean, and Aaron hadn’t been nearly as consistent with subtitles as he was now. Over the years, Minhyun’s interest in being a Youtuber had faded, but it had still taken Aaron years of work to make Aaron-and-Minhyun less of a thing than just Aaron Kwak.
After he managed that, he blew up.
"It's been forever," Minhyun said, trying to buy his whirring mind time. He wished it spun more toward answers and less toward panic.
“It doesn’t need to be anything big,” Aaron said. “But, I always say we’re still close friends, and it’s been—what, five years? Since they’ve seen you?”
A return to the past. That was what Aaron was offering him. Things had become so complicated for them, and Aaron wanted to give him back the days where they’d fool around and post the videos online.
Minhyun always had had trouble saying no to him. This time was no different.
“My viewers are gonna flip,” Aaron said. “They’ve wanted you to come back for forever.”
"They won't remember me." Switching to English had been Aaron's first big step toward popularity, and that was one of the many areas where Minhyun could not follow.
“The die-hard ones,” Aaron amended. “They go back and watch the videos. Fans have subbed a lot of the ones still on my channel.”
Strange, to know that some people still watched them. He'd learned to accept that so much of Aaron's life was preserved online, and to accept that being Aaron's friend meant tiny snippets of himself were there too. But it had never stopped scratching at him either, the rough brush of sandpaper against his skin.
Aaron's viewers had seen Minhyun's high school-self and now would see him again. Would they think that nothing major had changed? That Minhyun was boxed in by time, preserved in amber and unmoving as his best friend turned his face to the light and grew?
Dry-mouthed and too hot, Minhyun had ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea’ on the tip of his tongue, but it didn’t dislodge from his mouth. Things had been weird between him and Aaron, ever since the dinner. Minhyun didn’t want it to get worse. This was Aaron’s olive branch, and it would be bad for Minhyun to refuse it.
“What would we even film?” he asked instead. Aaron did an eclectic mixture of vlogs, reaction videos and livestreams where he’d play games or just talk about whatever and somehow be so interesting that a million people tuned in.
“I’ve got a bunch of clips to react to that people sent in,” Aaron said. “I’ve been trying to get Jonghyeon to do it with me because a bunch of it is PubG stuff, but he’s super against filming anything.”
Minhyun did not want to be Jonghyeon’s replacement. He made a face.
“Not that then,” Aaron said easily. “It could always be a livestream, but then we’d be on live.” Aaron swaved a hand, disregarding that option with a single gesture.
This relieved Minhyun, because live was absolutely terrifying. But once again, something in him stopped him from speaking up. Soon, Aaron would run out of ideas for what Minhyun could do. And now that Minhyun knew Jonghyeon refused to film anything, he wanted to step up. Aaron might have a subpar boyfriend, but his best friend was better.
“I can do that,” Minhyun said. He tried to sound as certain as humanly possible, but didn’t manage to cajole the concern out of Aaron’s eyes. Before Minhyun could try again, another thought occurred to him, and this one had him ducking his head to hide a smile. “My colleague will lose her mind,” he said. “She wore your merch all the time.”
“Hanae?” Aaron asked, because of course Minhyun had already told him about this, because Minhyun told Aaron absolutely everything going on in his entire life.
“I caught her watching one of your streams on her work computer once.” Minhyun wrinkled his nose. He would never admit that he’d listened to Aaron’s streams during work sometimes too. Whenever he missed Aaron’s voice, and needed it to wash over him. At the time, he hadn’t been embarrassed about it, but now it seemed unbearably clingy. Like Minhyun was just another fan.
These thoughts only ever plagued him when Aaron was sitting beside him. Minhyun was starting to remember why he’d been so fucking desperate to get away from here.
“Did you tell her you know me?” Aaron asked.
“When I go back, my desk will be right next to hers. I’ll tell her then.” See? Minhyun also had a future. It might not be glamorous, but it was there. Tangible. Minhyun had made it himself.
Except the line between Aaron's eyebrows told Minhyun he'd said something wrong. Once, he would have understood what exactly it was. Now, they could have been strangers, for all Minhyun knew. Had this always been their destiny? Different people on different paths, destined to split apart.
“I only didn’t tell her ‘cause she was one of our supervisors,” Minhyun said, just in case. “But we’ll be coworkers once I’m permanent staff. They’re having me formally apply, just because it’s standard, but I’ve got the job.”
He was rambling. But despite the excess of words, none of them smoothed the line on Aaron’s forehead.
--
In the end, Aaron decided against the livestream. Even with his sensible explanation—normally, Aaron spoke in English on his channel, and Minhyun couldn’t exist in English for anything past simple sentences—a pit opened up Minhyun’s chest, sucking whatever it could within. This was the kind of thing a person experienced, when they were normal, and their best friend had his own gravitational pull. Of course he couldn't keep up with Aaron.
The pit only deepened when Aaron refused to tell him the video's topic. Until the day they planned to film, Minhyun had himself half-convinced that Aaron had no idea what to do with him, or that he regretted asking Minhyun. Maybe he'd just been being nice. Maybe he'd expected Minhyun to say no. There was a reason Aaron got popular after he started doing things alone.
By the time they were preparing to film, Minhyun's stomach twisted with an unease that kept clawing up into his throat. He swallowed, reflexively, to little result. Aaron hadn’t seemed to notice the state he was in, instead stealing glances at Minhyun as though waiting to see his reaction to a joke. Clearly, he had something planned.
Minhyun fiddled with the hem of the third shirt he’d tried on today, which would not lay correctly for anything. He tucked his stool closer to their old kitchen counter. It had a plant on it now—Jonghyeon’s touch, though this was easy to ignore. Nostalgia crowded in the empty space between them.
How many nights had he spent in this same position, squandering his free hours with conversations about everything and nothing? In some ways, Minhyun had fallen in love with Aaron sitting right here.
Their memories meant nothing to the running camera, however, which resolutely blinked its red light.
“Are you ready to find out what you’re doing today?” Aaron on camera was a strange parallel to real-Aaron. He didn’t lie, but he did… exaggerate, and he somehow became easier to comprehend. Like some of the depth of him faded away. “Any guesses?”
Aaron could hoist the persona up without even trying now, after so much practice. Sitting beside him, only and forever himself and nothing more, Minhyun felt see through. “Aaron, you took out every pot you own. We’re cooking.”
“You’re cooking,” Aaron corrected. “We’re recreating that video.”
“What video?” Minhyun asked, in vain.
Aaron’s eyebrows did some complicated gymnastics on his face. "You know."
Minhyun did. It had been the video that soared above all the others they'd done together—mainly because it had ended in disaster. Minhyun had promised Aaron, who back then had still been relatively new to South Korea, that he'd make him some of the best foods Aaron hadn't yet tried. He'd intended it as something nice for a friend who'd crashed into Minhyun's life and changed it so much, even then.
Instead, he’d nearly set his mom’s kitchen on fire.
The uncertainty in Minhyun darkened into anxiety. His palms tingled with it.
“Is that… a good idea?” The worst part was Minhyun could feel himself make this look of genuine panic at Aaron, who was grinning at him. He’d picked this to watch Minhyun fail again.
“You tell me,” Aaron challenged. “You told me you cook now.”
Yeah, well, he’d lied.
There had been a time when Aaron only needed to look at Minhyun to know everything about him. He’d had to try hard to keep things from Aaron, and even that only ever worked for a short period of time. But now… now, Aaron didn’t seem to think Minhyun’s discomfort meant anything.
This shouldn’t have been surprising, considering the whole-ass storm in Minhyun’s head that Aaron hadn’t picked up on, but absurdly, Minhyun felt the push of tears against the back of his eyes. Those disappeared before Aaron could notice them, thank God. He never cried.
Minhyun let himself consider whether he was really doing this or not for a beat, before accepting that he was physically incapable of telling Aaron no. This was, after all, Aaron’s peace offering. The reminder that what they had went back forever, and how at the end of the day, they were only two friends against the world. Minhyun wanted to believe it. Even if it meant being that same dumb teenager, stagnant and unchanging, recreating a video that might end the same damn way.
“What am I making?” he asked, and prepared for disaster.
It could have gone worse. Actually, it had gone worse, eight years ago. The food at the end looked edible, at least, and Minhyun hadn’t felt the urge to cry any other times, so that was something. They sat down to eat with the camera still rolling. Minhyun did not even try to move until Aaron took his first bite.
“It’s good,” Aaron said. His eyebrows climbed up his forehead. Minhyun stared back a little too intently. Real surprise, or surprise for the camera? Had he expected Minhyun to fail? Had he wanted Minhyun to fail, so the video was funnier?
“Really?” Minhyun asked, a second later than he should have. In response, Aaron spooned out more into another bowl and passed it over.
The bite wasn't restaurant quality, and it certainly wasn't the same quality as Aaron's food, but it was fine. Decent, even. Swallowing it settled Minhyun back into his skin for the first time that day. He watched Aaron through all those memories crowding the table with them, and shared a meal with his favorite person in the entire world. Minhyun had missed this. Minhyun had missed him.
“Seriously,” Aaron said. “If you’re going to start cooking like this, I’m going to make you cook for me.”
“Ah, don’t say that. This is a fluke.” Aaron was absolutely talking the food up more than it deserved, but it made Minhyun’s chest go warm in a nice way. Ugh. The flickering candle within him wasn't exactly something a best friend should ignite, but Minhyun didn't care, not when it burned away the cocktail of insecurities he'd dealt with before. This kind of feeling—the pleasure of Aaron’s attention; the fondness oozing out of him—Minhyun could get drunk on it.
“I think you just want me to keep feeding you.”
“What gave you that idea?” Minhyun grinned and stole a bite from Aaron’s bowl.
Aaron swiped it out of reach. "Hey!"
“You’re the worst, you know,” Minhyun said. “I’ve been back almost a week, and you haven’t even cooked me a meal—and now you make me cook for you? Hyung, I’m hurt.”
“Oh, don’t ‘hyung’ me.” As always, Aaron’s way of mimicking Minhyun’s voice could not have been less accurate. It involved Aaron pitching his voice high and contorting his face. “You only call me that when you want something from me.”
Minhyun ducked his head in vain to hide the way his lips curled up. It was true. There was something about meeting a person before he really understood what ‘hyung’ meant that made using it not seem so important. Minhyun could remember the illicit thrill of dropping the title when they were children, even though Aaron hadn't spared the loss a blink. That same wildness crept within him now, low and demanding as a prowling lion.
He leaned even closer, until they were inches away, until Aaron's smile slid from his face. "Didn't you miss me, hyung?" Minhyun's voice was deep and barely audible to his own ears. For a heartbeat or a minute or an eternity, neither moved. The air between them sparked with something that raised the hairs on the back of his neck.
Aaron broke first. "Fine," he said, lunging for his chopsticks. He grabbed a piece of meat and held it out to Minhyun. A flush crept along his neck, and he refused to meet Minhyun's eyes, his cap hiding them away entirely. He was trying to break this strange moment.
But Minhyun wasn't ready to lose it. Not yet. Not even though this was crossing lines they shouldn't, and he knew it.
Aaron jolted when Minhyun's hand curled over his elegant fingers. A heartbeat raced against his palm, Aaron's or his or both, beating in sync. Guiding the chopsticks to his lips, he accepted the bite. His fingers sat firmly atop Aaron's hand as he chewed.
Aaron swallowed with Minhyun, his eyes dark. Something in them burned, a look Minhyun had never seen before from him. Minhyun's fingers tightened.
But then he caught sight of that little potted fern. The unfamiliar scrawled writing on the fridge that didn't have a place in Minhyun's memories. Everything Jonghyeon had added in the past three months here.
Scalded, Minhyun released Aaron. His heart lurched to his throat, even as he tried to corral the meat to his stomach, not his lungs. Tilting his head sideways, he coughed once, using the excuse to gather himself. His fingers tingled with the memory of Aaron's warm skin under his, painful twinges as though Minhyun's hand had been asleep and Aaron's touch had woken it.
What had he been thinking?
As Minhyun looked anywhere but at Aaron, he found the incriminating blinking light of the camera instead. Shit. What had he been thinking? The last look Aaron had given him didn't belong to on-screen Aaron. It was too difficult to decipher. Too dangerous. In only seconds, it had seared itself across Minhyun's eyelids. Even only looking at Aaron caused his stomach to swoop with the memory of it.
"Are we--are we done?" Minhyun asked.
Aaron stood so quickly he bumped the table. Minhyun had to stabilize Jonghyeon's fern before it spilled dirt everywhere. "Done! Definitely done. Do you want the rest of this? You can have it."
How was it that things were worse without the camera? Minhyun dropped his palms to his thighs and rubbed the sweat from them. His heart had slowed now, but it had also sank. He should have known. "It was nice of you to eat so much of it at all," he muttered. When he tried to take Aaron's bowl to wash it, Aaron didn't let him.
"What? If that's what you think, then I guess I will finish it." Even though he'd been prepped to run, Aaron began eating again, trapping himself there with Minhyun despite what he'd just done.
It was amazing how a single person could make Minhyun's heart lurch in so many ways. Minhyun couldn't bear to meet his eyes.
“Was I—was I good?” Minhyun asked the floor. “I know this time it wasn’t… should I have messed it up?”
“Huh?" What did it mean that Minhyun knew the exact way Aaron's eyebrows would move as he said that? "You were perfect.”
“I wasn’t funny.” Just because Aaron had the personality to make the internet love him didn’t mean Minhyun could do the same. He was a little too boring, a little too safe. But even as he thought this, the ghost of that wildness growled from the bottom of his stomach. A foreign feeling of wanting to push, and if that didn't work, to shove. It tasted almost like anger, but wasn't. He blinked a few times to clear it away, unsure where it had come from. Objectively, it was better for everyone if they ignored whatever moment Minhyun had created there. Right?
“Minhyun, you used scissors to cut an onion. That’s hilarious.”
Minhyun hadn't been paying enough attention to comprehend Aaron's point. "They were cooking scissors?" Surely, Aaron knew that. Even when they'd lived together, everything in the kitchen had been his, cooking scissors included.
He hadn't been trying to make Aaron laugh, but he liked that he did. Aaron laughed shamelessly, easing Minhyun's heart. He was the expert on these things, and that laugh meant Minhyun no longer needed to worry that Aaron only humored him.
“I can’t believe you said all those things about me not cooking for you, though,” Aaron said. He was pouting again. Minhyun swallowed hard and averted eyes that he didn't remember raising. “I took you out to eat.”
“That doesn’t count.” Maybe Minhyun would be more lenient if Jonghyeon hadn’t been there, but Aaron didn’t get to claim that dinner with his secret boyfriend could replace cooking Minhyun a meal.
“I’ll cook tomorrow,” Aaron promised.
“And it’ll only be us?” Minhyun pressed. He didn’t want another surprise, and it wasn’t too much to ask his best friend to spend time solely with him. No matter what the pound of his heart told him.
Aaron nodded, and for a second, Minhyun thought he might have gotten away with being selfish. But then Aaron spoke. “Don’t blame Jonghyeon for what happened. It was on me.”
No shit. "I know. He apologized, anyway."
It was obvious that Aaron hadn’t known that. So Jonghyeon hadn’t told him. Minhyun wondered why—because it hadn’t ended well? Because Jonghyeon hadn’t found it important? He was the temporary one in Jonghyeon’s life. Couldn’t blame him for not extending much effort, especially when Minhyun pushed him to do exactly that.
“Did something happen, then?” Aaron asked.
Minhyun didn’t follow.
“Minhyun, you two refuse to even be in the same room as each other. Unless it’s me you’re avoiding?” Aaron’s brows came together, his hurt so genuine that Minhyun needed to reassure him.
“It’s not you,” he muttered. “I’m just trying to not interfere too much. This place is small for three people, and it’s yours and Jonghyeon’s. I’m doing my best to stay out of the way.”
Once again, Minhyun couldn't seem to put words in an order that would smooth out Aaron's brow. He only looked more stricken now. “It’s your place, too.”
Minhyun's chest gaped open with those words, spilling out something raw and foreign. Minhyun didn't want to linger on that, and so instead reached for the fading spark of anger.
What did Aaron want from him? For Minhyun to act as though nothing had changed? In his rush to return, giddy with the realization that more had always lurked at the edges of his and Aaron's friendship, he'd forgotten the weeks they'd spent at odds, the wounds only superficially smoothed by Minhyun disappearing out of his life for a year and Aaron keeping secrets.
Aaron might be brilliant at achieving anything he set his mind to, all dreams included, but not even he could stop time from changing things. Minhyun wasn't the same person who had lived here; he didn't want to be that same person. Aaron couldn't force him into the role, no matter how much he apparently wanted to.
“I get it, you know,” Aaron said.
Minhyun laughed, more than a little bitter. Aaron understood nothing.
"No, really. Reverse culture shock is a bitch. You go back to a place where everything should be the same as always only to find that it’s all different, and you can’t tell if it changed or if you did.”
Minhyun hadn't thought of it like that, and he didn't like the implications. If Aaron was right, then it wouldn't only be this place and Aaron that were different, it would be his other friends and his family and Busan too.
“You try and fall back into the role you had there once, but it doesn’t fit right. Minhyun, I get it.”
He had forgotten how deeply Aaron could see through him. Pulling in a deep breath, Minhyun spoke. "You understand, then. Why I'm acting different. This place isn't home anymore."
In another world, this might have been how Minhyun asked Aaron to move to Japan with him. But that was a world that didn't exist anymore, and so Minhyun had nothing to soften this statement.
Only a week ago, Minhyun had sunk into Aaron's arms and smelled familiarity and comfort and a homecoming, but he'd been wrong. Naïve. If Minhyun comprehended one thing about himself, it was that he'd always choose stability over risk. For a moment, he'd let himself believe Aaron could be his home, and he'd quickly discovered why that would never, ever work.
For a long time, silence hung between them. What was there to say after Minhyun's statement? How could you continue a conversation after that?
Finally, Aaron stood and removed the camera from its tripod. "I didn't mean to get into all of that." His voice was measured when he spoke, careful in a way that said Minhyun had hurt him bad. But it was simply the truth, wasn't it? This apartment was once home because Aaron had been home, but their separation had been inevitable. Aaron rushed toward the sun; Minhyun kept his feet on the ground. Everything happening now was just how it all fell apart. "All I was trying to say was that you and Jonghyeon would get along really well if you gave him a shot."
Always back to Jonghyeon. On some level, Minhyun conceded that if Aaron believed that, it was likely true. He knew them well enough.
But count Minhyun out. He wasn't going to be here long anyway.
This time, when Aaron left, Minhyun did nothing to stop him.