Work Text:
It had been almost two months since Minho first met Jisung. They’d met up almost everyday since, whether to go to the cafe Ryujin worked at or to just wander around campus and chat.
Jisung was nice to talk to, he was kind and understanding and the added bonus of him truly understanding disability and pain like Minho only made him so much easier to be around. He didn't get weird about hospital talk or accommodations, he didn't cringe when Minho mentioned disturbing symptoms—most of the time he’d actually tell Minho they matched—and he didn't tell Minho to just push through, because he understood how that could sometimes worsen things.
Minho was well aware he was crushing hard. It was hard not to spot it, and harder to not crush on Jisung. What with how sweet he was. And how cute.
Ryujin had been teasing him endlessly since day one, asking when they were getting married, asking Minho if he’d finally grabbed himself by the balls and asked Jisung out, shit like that. Generally being the little shit she is.
Minho was finally thinking of properly doing that, grabbing himself by the balls and asking Jisung out.
Minho and Jisung found each other at the bench just outside the University building, still on campus. Minho was sat on top of the bench, crutches—it was a double crutch day, he’d woken up with such stiff knees he’d not been able to get out of bed for a good half hour—strewn on top of the table behind him.
Jisung wheeled over in his chair and maneuvered himself so he was sat perpendicular to Minho, just off to the side of the bench. Minho turned his head to look at him, a smile plastered on his face.
“Hiya, how are you?” Minho asked.
Jisung smiled softly, looking up at him. “I’m good. Back was fucked this morning but it’s better now.” Jisung said, gesturing to his back with his thumb. “You?”
“Stiff knees. Otherwise, strangely energized.” Minho answered.
He watched Jisung’s smile spread, watched him huff out a small laugh through his nose. It was adorable. At least to Minho.
They settled into a comfortable silence. Minho brought a knee to his chest, letting the other leg dangle over the edge of the table. He rested his cheek against his knee, trying to rehearse what he was going to say in his head. It was just asking Jisung out. One simple question. Do you want to go on a date with me? That was all he had to ask.
Jisung could see something was up. It must have been painted on Minho's face. He could tell he was frowning, but Jisung seemed to have quickly picked up on How To Read Lee Minho. Maybe Ryujin had secretly taught him. Or he was naturally very observant. Minho never knew which answer he preferred.
“What are you thinking about?” Jisung asked, voice soft, wheeling slightly closer.
Minho opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again, closed it once more. He must have looked like a fish. He couldn’t seem to form the words, to force them off his tongue. He just had to ask the question. It was just a question.
“Do you—” Minho paused. “Do you want to—um,” he tried again. “—come over to my apartment?”
Minho wanted to stab himself for changing the question at the last second, wanted to tell Jisung to forget that and to ask again, properly. He wanted to ask the real question that had been driving him crazy. He wished the words wouldn’t stop on the tip of his tongue, wished they wouldn’t morph into new, different words as they left his mouth.
But what is done is done.
“Sure, ground floor or lift?” Jisung asked.
“Lift.” Minho answered.
The day ended quickly, like the world wanted to skip everything up until Jisung and Minho began to make their way towards Minho’s apartment building.
Minho wasn’t sure if he wanted it to go quicker or for everything to slow down.
As they waited for the lift up to Minho’s floor, he had a wave of nostalgia, balancing his weight on one crutch and his best leg and tapping the floor with his crutch end, Jisung next to him in his chair, looking expectantly at the lift, as if expecting it to end up out of service like the University lift.
The ding of the lift doors opening echoed in the empty reception of Minho’s apartment building. Minho let Jisung push himself in first, followed him into the lift. He pressed the button labeled ‘4’ to go up to his floor.
Lift music played as Minho watched the tiny screen above the buttons presented the floors they passed.
First floor, second floor.
“We should watch a film.” Jisung said as they passed the third floor.
“We’ll pick something out when we get in then.” Minho answered as they reached the fourth floor.
The doors opened with a ding. Minho stepped out, Jisung followed.
Minho walked slowly through the hall, stopped in front of his apartment door. Number 419. He propped one crutch up against the wall and grabbed his keys from his pocket, slid it into the lock and unlocked the door with a click. Minho pushed the door open and let Jisung wheel himself in before grabbing his crutch off the wall and walking in himself, locking the door behind him.
Minho’s apartment was one of the ADA apartments, which, fortunately, meant that it was big enough for a wheelchair. It was the apartment he’d moved into when he became wheelchair dependent. That brief time of his life where he needed this as much as Jisung does now.
Back then, it had been scary, and restrictive and Minho had hated it for a long part of his time as a wheelchair user. Now, he realized it wasn’t so bad. The wheelchair had helped and taken enough strain off of him that he’d been able to recover even the small amount he has now.
Jisung already seemed so comfortable here, moving around freely, no furniture blocking his way, no too small hallways making it hard to get around. He parked in front of the sofa, carefully transferring out of his chair and onto the sofa. Minho came to sit next to him when he beckoned him over with a wave of his hand.
Minho set his crutches down on the floor beneath their feet, pushed up against the bottom of the sofa. He sat down next to Jisung, feeling him lean into him. Minho wrapped an arm around his shoulders, pulling him even closer as Jisung tucked himself into his side.
They chose a film to watch, Howl’s Moving Castle. It was Jisung’s favourite. That soon descended into a Ghibli Studio film marathon.
They were halfway through Spirited Away when Minho stood up, balancing himself on the arm of the sofa for a second, steadying himself before he walked to the kitchen, checking his fridge for what he could have for dinner. A question popped into his mind.
“Jisung-ah?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you want to stay for dinner?” Minho asked, turning towards the sofa, leaning against his now closed fridge.
Jisung smiled gently. “I thought I already was.”
Minho’s heart fluttered in his chest. He was seriously in love, wasn’t he?
Takeaway was ordered, the film was watched. By the time there was a knock at the front door, they had already moved onto Kiki’s Delivery Service. Minho grabbed one of his crutches, walked over to the door to grab their food.
The guy was nice, only gave Minho’s crutch a glance instead of commenting like some had in the past. People really enjoyed commenting on disabled people’s way of living, for some stupid reason Minho would never understand. He grabbed the food, tipped the guy and shut the door behind him, walking back to the sofa, bag in one hand, crutch in the other.
He set everything on the table. It smelled great. Jisung’s stomach growled and he looked away, sheepish.
Minho found him much too cute for his own health.
They ate, and watched every Ghibli film they could find, chatting about classes and annoying professors and worse doctors. Jisung told Minho all about this girl in his class who had decided to move him out of the way using his chair. Minho told him about this specialist he’d gone to for new medications, who had told him it was just a lack of muscle in his things and calves, completely disregarding his official diagnosis.
When they finished their food and all the empty containers had been put in the bin, Jisung checked the time on his phone and grimaced.
“Minho?”
“Yeah,”
“Is it ok if I crash here tonight, it’s way too late to catch the train home.” Jisung asked.
Minho frowned. “Isn’t there a train from here in twenty minutes?”
Jisung pursed his lips, staring down at his phone. He had the train lines pulled up. “The next one isn’t wheelchair accessible. It says they still haven’t replaced their ramp.” He explained.
“Problem is, I only have one bed.”
Jisung shrugged, then patted the sofa cushion he was sat on. “I can sleep on the sofa.”
Minho frowned instantly. He’d slept on this sofa before, when he was too weak to stand, to walk back to his own room. However comfortable it was to sit on for a couple hours, it was not comfortable to sleep on for a full night, no matter how small you were.
“You will not. The sofa is horrible, you’ll fuck up your back.” He stated.
Jisung pursed his lips. “Well I’m not going to force you to sleep on the sofa in your own home.”
Minho pondered on it for a second, trying to find a better way of doing it. An idea came to him. “You know, we could always just… share.” He shrugged, trying for casual, ignoring the way his heart was doing somersaults in his chest.
Jisung blinked at him. “Share?”
“Yeah,” Minho replied, trying not to sound too eager.
Then Jisung smiled, and Minho swore it felt like seeing the first few rays of the summer sun after a harsh cold winter when he said “Ok, let’s do that.” A huge smile on his face as he spoke.
They went to Minho’s room.
It wasn’t much, a small square room with a queen in the corner and a desk and a bookshelf and about a million posters and photos everywhere. He had photos of himself as a kid, of his parents, photos from family holidays to his grandparents’ house. There were photos of him in high school with his friends back then, that group of friends who had helped him when he first became ill, Ryujin smiling next to Minho in his chair. More than all that, were photos of his cats.
Jisung immediately wheeled to the desk where a good number of cat photos were displayed.
“Those are my cats,” Minho started from where he stood against his closed bedroom door. “Soonie, Doognie and Dori.” He supplied when Jisung looked over his shoulder at him.
Jisung smiled warmly, looking back at the photos, scanning each one. When he was done looking at them all, he moved to the center of the room to simply take it all in.
At the top of Minho’s bed, under the sheets, was a wedge pillow, on the wall next to it were even more photos. There were posters of western bands and local groups and even hand crafted decor and cut out words. There was even a sea shell that Minho had picked up at the beach, the last time he’d gone. He loved the thing, it made him sort of nostalgic. Sometimes he missed the beach, the sea, the sand under his feet. But sand versus crutches? Sand always seemed to win and Minho didn’t have enough no-crutch days to actually go to the beach without his aids.
In the corner of the room was Minho’s cane and his old chair. Ok, old was an exaggeration. He’d last used it less than a year ago, and using it again wasn’t even completely off the table. If he had a bad enough flare up, he knew the chair was the best option. It still had all the stickers on it and the fingerless gloves he’d used were exactly where he’d last put them—on the seat, waiting.
When Jisung turned back to face him, spinning his own chair on the spot, he gave Minho this huge smile that made Minho’s insides melt and said—like it was normal, like it wasn’t making Minho’s heart jump out of his chest and into his throat, like it didn’t make Minho want to walk over, lean down and kiss his stupid mouth—
“It’s just so you. It’s beautiful.” Jisung said, insinuating that he thought Minho was beautiful.
Minho felt giddy. Like, honest-to-God heart beating out of his chest, cheeks flushing, giddy.
He was seriously down bad for Jisung, it was almost embarrassing.
In the end, Jisung transferred onto the bed, Minho by his side, backs against the wall. Minho told him all about his three amazing cats. When Jisung asked where they were living, and if he could meet them, Minho explained he’d had to leave them with his parents for a while because he was still dealing with the aftermath of his last flare up. He hadn’t really been in any shape to take care of himself, much less his three needy cats.
Minho had stopped concentrating on what Jisung was saying a couple minutes ago. He hadn’t meant to, what Jisung was telling him was interesting, but Minho was once again stuck on whether he’d ever actually get that stupidly hard question out.
Jisung noticed, of course he did.
“Hey, Min?” He asked, snapping Minho out of the clouds, bringing him back down to earth.
“Huh, yeah?”
“You good?” Jisung asked, a small smile on his lips.
He could just say yeah, I’m fine. He should just say that, right? But suddenly, he realized, that question would never be asked, never be answered, if he didn’t bring up the courage to force the words out. And what better time than the present? Minho just hoped this went well.
“Ji, I’ve got something to tell you…” Minho said, looking away from Jisung, trying to steel his nerves.
He heard Jisung hum, encouraging him to speak, to tell him what’s on his mind.
“I—” Minho took a deep breath, forced himself to look at Jisung. “I like you. Like, a lot.”
Jisung stared at him, eyes slowly widening in shock. For a second, Minho was scared he had made the wrong decision, scared he should have just shut his mouth. Only for a second, because soon Jisung was smiling, his eyes turning into crescent moons as he smiled so wide, so brightly it was almost blinding.
“Is it ok if I kiss you right now?”
Minho had not expected that. Out of anything he had imagined happening after he finally confessed his feelings, hearing Jisung say that had truly not been one of the things he had entertained. But he wasn’t opposed to the idea of being kissed, he couldn’t, not when it was Jisung who wanted to kiss him.
He nodded.
Jisung began to lean in, shifting so he could more comfortably face Minho. He reached up, cupping Minho’s neck, then he pressed his lips to Minho’s.
It wasn’t fireworks, it wasn’t a flame ignited. It was warm, like a hot cup of tea. It was home.
Minho didn’t waste any time getting his hands into Jisung’s hair, kissing him back, pouring all the words he hadn’t said into the kiss.
Then he felt Jisung giggle into the kiss, pulling back just enough to catch his breath.
“What’s so funny?” Minho asked, leaning back enough to look Jisung in the eye. Jisung’s eyes sparkled
“I thought I was going to be the one to confess first. I was planning this whole thing with Ryujin’s help so it’d be perfect.” Jisung admitted, leaning closer to press a quick kiss to Minho’s lips.
“Ryujin knew?”
Jisung chuckled again, smile brightening with every second. “She told me I shouldn’t be scared of telling you, and also maybe told me to stop being a baby and just confess.”
“Yeah, that sounds like her.” Minho sighed.
Minho had always known he liked kissing, even in the small amount of relationships he’d been in before Jisung, he had always known that about himself.
But he hadn’t expected how different it would be with Jisung, it wasn’t just kissing, it was like a conversation with no words, just a beautiful warmth in his chest and lips against his own and Jisung in his arms.
Now they lay in Minho’s bed, Jisung’s head on his chest, sleeping. They’d had a real talk about it all after all that kissing, and then after the talk, they’d kissed some more. Minho was happy, he was happy because now he could think of Jisung as his boyfriend. It was nice. So was the weight of Jisung’s head on his chest, the feeling of admiration and joy that bubbled up in his heart, just under where Jisung rested his head. He found himself whispering into the silence, whispering into the night: “I really like you, Han Jisung.”
He heard a deep, sleep rough voice whisper back “I really like you too, Lee Minho.”
Jisung leaned up and pressed a sweet kiss to his lips, then, with his eyes still closed, and a smile already on his lips, he said “Now go to sleep, I’m tired.”
Minho had never been happier.